Guild Wars 2

Urrid.4593:

But haven’t you heard? WvW has “more players than ever!” If I wasn’t on a “top 5” server I would think they might be on the T1 or T2 servers, but I am on TC, so even that lie doesn’t really hold water. WvW matches are ghost-towns by monday on blowout matches.

Each reset there is less and less excitement. I selfishly hope whatever it is they’ve been working on refreshes everyone’s interest but I just have the worst feeling.

I has anecdotes. I has evidence!

Sorry but, I couldn’t resist. But yes, yes, they are lying to you.

Fenrir.5493:

Also, i recently saw the light, there is a game called Wildstar, and i think that is the game that will make a drastic change in the MMORPG industry, somehting that GW2 tried and failed.

By being a standard MMO in every way? The only cool idea they have is the plots.

Have fun gear-grinding your way to victory.

Aza.2105:

I disagree, compared to the rate which CC is applied and the abundant amount of skills that apply CC, stability is not balanced in comparison. Only a small fraction of skills grant stability. And some classes have situation access to it.

Like I said, spam is a problem. Counter play via stability/stun break vs. control is not and is in fact superior to DR. There is obviously an issue in that there is either too little or too much stability vs. control in current team comps or the ability for team comps to bring stability. For example, introducing it into traits that cause skills to add brief moments of stability would be a good direction, in my opinion. It brings more viable traits, less passive play (requires proper skill activation), and stability is a hard punisher for willy-nilly spamming your control.

Conditions and certain controls are a bit too easily accessed by classes at the moment (necro, warrior respectively) which is certainly a problem.

Aza.2105:

Lets say if they did use stability right? There are different variations of loss of control that can be applied afterwards. In a organized group, they can simply wait for stability to fade and continue the cc lock down. Or they can boon strip it.

It baffles me that you treat the application of stability as if it were some solo player, yet treat the counter of it and subsequent control chaining as if it were a team effort. Yes, an organized group, with control and boon removal, will beat a guy with stability.

I’ve seen many builds appear to deal with SRangers and Necros, Warriors going far vs. the usual bunker SRanger, and winning has been incredibly common. Hell I’ve seen Cleanse Mesmers that shadow middle/far and play hard counter to condition spam.

But, I play in the bad tier so… I get to have more fun I guess.

samo.1054:

In GW1 if you used a knock-down skill on a knock-downed foe you wasted your skill. No such punishment for spam here. You can just spam your kitten and it will stack or take on the effect of the last used CC. So yeah, you don’t need the brain here in this pvp. Just faceroll over your CC skills and you’re good to go.

In GW1 if you got knocked down, you stayed knocked down.
In GW2 if you get spammed with CC, a single stability counters all of it.

The comparison is poor. There are problems with spam, counter-control and control are better when they are about counter play than they are about DR and “oops, your CC failed”.

Convenant.7092:

Actually it was explicitly spoken that you’d never have to get out of your way to playing however you want to be competitive. That’s the definition of playing however you want. Please inform yourself before thinking.

Which is beyond stupid to actually believe, ergo:

The Explorer’s Guild of Tyria doesn’t get jack-kitten, and exploring is a major part of the game that I wouldn’t even specifically call "PvE’ as it is commonly defined, more like PvCamera. When to RPers get rewarded for their X hours RPing like the best RPers out there?

And aside from rings and a backpiece, WvW is pretty much in line with the rest of the game.

ParaldaWind.4523:

GvG is open field combat…

GvG is structured combat in the open field. Semantics to a degree but not quite the same thing.

Urrid.4593:

If you do not have the badges aleady,

Collecting the needed badges is slower than playing PvE and buying the items outright off of the Trading Post. My rough estimate is anywhere from 2x-10x slower (depending on which server you play on badges are more scarce.)

The dependency in time spent is what I take issue with.

I am unsure how true that statement actually is but that may have something to do with my being in T1, but even our (four to seven of us) daily havoc nights for a few hours net us at least a hundred badges if we get good, consistent team fights but even then, just cycling camps/sentries for supply usually gets you plenty of badges even if you never encounter a soul that isn’t surrounded by 79 other people.

Certainly the Karma gain in WvW is simply massive, and that is a supplementary armor venue. Grinding PvE even in the new zones/circuits would still take you a good seveal hours to get the money for a full set + weapons. I’d actually say they are relatively comparable at this point.

And our amulets are 10 laurels cheaper! :P

Urrid.4593:

If I want to change sets of armor/weapons in a timely manner so I can play competitively and have a wider range of experiences in WvW my best bet is something like this 1) Gem Store (gems to gold) 2) PvE 3) Everything else.

It takes 5g and a bunch of badges (of which you should have more than enough) to get a full set of gear. It takes zero time to do this: go to merchant → click on tab with gear → buy gear.

Your PvE equivalent is either to craft (upwards of 20g+ in mats for a full set) or to grind 1200+ tokens of dungeon gear or 300k+ karma (for some odd stat sets).

Its fine to complain about legendaries (I have no idea WHY you’re complaining about a PvE end-goal, I don’t WvW to get shinnies I do it to kill people, but that’s another matter) but to actually complain about armor now? Four months ago, sure. Now? Not so much.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s an educated estimate.

Oh, I thought your were talking about Deadeye.

I’m not actually sure how much more gold-generating Champions actually do compared to what used to be possible from CoF/SE, in fact I’m almost certain it’s a lot less of a faucet and more a of a shifter.

I’ve run through the CS/FGS gauntlets and without good drops on skins/mats, the blues/greens and ~10s (minus some WP fees) aren’t exactly worth my time.

@Rainu

It’s 4/5 Gambit Dead-Eye being a 40 second encounter with a zerker Thief for 40s net profit. 40 seconds for 40s that is made out of nowhere.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s thousands across all servers.

I’m hard-pressed to visualize how “thousands” are doing this even with overflow swapping. Not to say that the source isn’t bad but I just don’t see “thousands”.

Pfft, I say give every class a Grandmaster trait that does this but it in the worst tree possible! Like Zeal.

Johje Holan.4607:

Vena I think your view is colored by JQ/SoR/BG battles. Nothing should be judged by how it would affect just that match. Tier 1 NA is its own animal. No other match is like it – EU or NA. Most matches there is an obivious weaker server(s).

I would likely extend my opinion to T4/5/6 who have regularly had end-of-week close matches. (Out of bias, I’d also say that T1 NA (+TC) holds a majority share in all of WvW population figures on the NA side of the pond.)

lioka qiao.8734:

And meanwhile Elder Scrolls Online is soaking up ideas for their squad system. Heyooooo

They’re going to need to soak up a lot more than a mere commander system… like a combat engine and system that’s actually playable in PvP.

But I have this odd feeling that their “No this isn’t the Hero Engine, we modified it so it doesn’t count!” isn’t suddenly going to change. These things don’t tend to osmose as rapidly. (Note: This isn’t actually a knock on the engine, but on the PR stint of trying to cover up using it.)

I’d reduce the damage + duration on conditions + their application rate (cooldowns) (bleed/burning in particular). They currently eat through health way too quickly.

Physical:

• Toughness
• Vitality
• Power
• Precision
• Critical Damage
• Aegis
• Protection
• Evade

Conditions (at current):

• Vitality
• Condition Duration Reduction (hard to achieve in sPvP, WvW conversely allows many ways of stacking this)
• Condition Removal (limited and on long cooldowns while the sources are spamspamspam)
• Condition Damage
• Condition Duration

In a balanced wonderland, over-stacking conditions that then get cleansed should be a punishment not a “Oh, oops… let’s just reapply them all!”. Make their cooldowns longer (or lower the cooldowns on condition removal and/or add secondary effects if you cleanse a kittenton of conditions in one go) and less auto-applied with already burst-y skills.

Conditions work outside of defensive stats aside from Vitality since you have no trait-way of stacking duration reduction and traits affecting condition removal is limited, and they need only one (sometimes two) offensive stats to make potent. Cut their damage such that you’d need close to two to three times the investment in condition damage to match a physical spec since those require three stats to actually function to any great degree.

Also add a boon that does the same as protection but for conditions, whether that’s to damage or duration.

Gamadorn.2659:

There are better ways then buffing the third server, but the fact of the matter is the way the maps are setup with the amounts of people and the disparity in population between servers means SOMETHING needs to be done to balance things out.

There’s not much you can do. One side will always have more people than another unless you make it instanced Alterac Valley… but then what’s the point?

Aion? Abyss had population issues.
WAR? Hahahaha.
WoW? Wintergrasp comes to mind for non-instanced.

Gamadorn.2659:

Adding the orb buff back in, tied to a holding a location (which is basically the same as holding the orb it’s just a permanent spot) is going to do the exact same thing that they did before…..strengthen the server that has more people and more coverage.

There is an immensely distinct difference between then and now. Then, the orb was behind walls and gates + 80 people. Now its just behind people. One was an impossible battle the other can be won with knowing how to work a map and the open field. Sort of like how north camp used to be when it housed the orb.

Gamadorn.2659:

They are basically saying….we are bringing back orbs, but removing the picking up of the orb and making it a moving target, instead…fight over this spot to get the buff. We already saw what happened with the orbs…the bigger servers own them longer and make them stronger….you don’t have to believe me…if you played when the orbs were around you know what i’m talking about…it’s been done…proven…already happened…the only thing that’s changing is the location that you need to obtain the buff…

I’ve played since inception, you needn’t worry.

I also remember that the orb runs, under fire and the constant attempts at cut-offs and ganks, were some of the most fun people had on Borderlands. I also recall, back in that day when BG wasn’t anywhere near the dominance it now shares with SoR/JQ, that orb didn’t make us throw in the towel when we didn’t hold it. We went out and tried to get the kitten thing, everyone did even the third server.

That was the whole point of it. It would sit in a keep and shout at the other two servers: “Look! Look at me, bring it!” It was the source of the 2v1.

Ragnar.4257:

Why do you assume Gamadorn is talking about point-total, and not PPT, for determining who is “weakest” ?

Really? PPT is even easier to manipulate and if you base it on PPT, then you’re going to have moments where the strongest server has the buff.

SoR being in third on reset is because they had the lowest PPT, they didn’t magically just get put there with equal PPT.

Gamadorn.2659:

It’s really a simply concept I don’t understand what you fail to understand about it…

even in the T1 example…yes at the time if BG is the lowest point total they are the weakest server at that point in time…. it’s not saying overall EVER bg is the weakest of the 3, but at this moment in time for whatever reason they are.

It is not simple, there is no flaw in my comprehension.

BG doesn’t simply “deserve” anything nor do we want to be handed a crutch just as much as we wouldn’t want to be randomly handed pity keeps.

Imagine, now, its Friday reset: SoR is in third (as was the case this week on reset) and the game decides that they are the “weakest” server. Now SoR for, however many PPT tics till things equilibrate, effectively has 10% more man power. But, now, imagine that they don’t spend that time raising their PPT but simply spend that time getting their things to T3 first and foremost. BG and JQ won’t touch them because of the buff and they cannot do anything about said buff. A few hours later, you have SoR, buffed, T3-Waypointed Keeps on every BL.

Do you know what happens next? They attack everything because they have several hours worth of PPT to make up, T3-Waypointed keeps, and are buffed. I hope you find that scenario fun because that is what will happen every single reset night.

This same thing will happen in every single close match-up.

Gamadorn.2659:

Once again… if their is a specific objective to be held on ANY map (if there is sufficient reason to hold it), on average throughout the day more often than not the larger server (strongest whatever, the one with the most points) is more likely to hold that objective longer than the other servers… that’s it…

Like: Garrison, Hills, Bay, and any tower? Maybe we should remove all objectives from all of the maps because at any given time, on average, the strongest server will hold them.

Tell me, would you rather load into a map with all three T3-Waypointed keeps and nothing else, or a map with the said keeps but also an open-field point of contest? At least you can do something about the open field nodes because that allows you to outplay your opponent in the open field. What is TC going to do? Chase you all around the map with 80 people? Who’s going to defend the node(s) then? More, they can’t have every node be camped by 50+ people, with proper scouts, you will find out which node can be crushed and you will crush it.

Why not take Briar (say you’re on that side) and start trebbing Bay? That takes all of one person to maintain (let’s say two, you park one guy on a defensive arrow cart to protect the treb/gate), and then TC has to either stop your treb or chase your main force around the map over nodes. Whereas before all TC had to do was retake Briar with its mega-zerg and call it a day.

One of the big reasons, currently, that zerging is so easy is because objectives are easy to reach and defend because walls/doors buy you a lot of time. When you break the game up into objectives that cannot be time-gated with walls and doors, you cannot just “zerg to the rescue” it will be gone by the time you get there. Sure you can “zerg it back” but you’re not going to hold it…

Gamadorn.2659:

Whoever in last place ALWAYS will get a speed buff to drive faster to catch up to the pack…that way he can almost never fall so far behind he can’t get back to the pack to stay in the race…. this is the example I am saying for the lowest server… to prevent it from falling SO FAR BEHIND that it doesn’t matter what they do…buff them until they get back to the pack and if they pass the 2nd place server… they lose it…right?

Mario Kart is a terrible example because it is a great example of how people game the system by purposefully starting the race off behind to gain said explosive power-ups. This is pretty much standard practice when you play with people who want to win and are cutthroat about it (my friends).

I personally love seeing the triple mushroom, Bullet Bill first place entries.

Apologies, I was busy with work.

Gamadorn.2659:

It is very easy to define the weakest server…the one with the least points in the weakest server….you do understand game mechanics right?

So you’re saying that Blackgate is the weakest server? I think both SoR and JQ would take issue with that claim and giving them (us) a considerable stat bonus. In some tiers its pretty easy to define, in others? Not so much. (Its easy in the TC/DB/MG case because TC is a limbo-T1 server.)

Its Friday morning, NA, and three servers are neck and neck, but one server let’s its PPT dip for a moment to gain the buff and then flip EVERYTHING to paper before the point totals equilibrate to remove the buff again.

Its not easy, and anything that is simply “given” asks to be abused. And while we’re at it, why not just give the “weakest” server Determined lords on their keeps? People dislike owning nothing but camps just as much as they dislike orbs.

Gamadorn.2659:

You logic is flawed in saying 80/3….the point is that the server that can field 250 people on all their maps….say TC can have 100 people in eternal, 100 people in DB BL and 50 people in TC BL vs DB who only have 100 people in eternal and 50 ppl in DB BL…cannot afford to fight for the orb as well as the higher population server..that means MOST OF THE TIME…the HIGHER population or “Stronger” server will hold it throughout the day….giving them a buff…im not saying that a smaller server couldn’t take it…i’m just saying OVERALL ON AVERAGE throughout the day….the stronger server will more than likely hold it longer than the other two servers…making it more lopsided…

If DB can afford to have 50 people in their BL, and the orb requires the control of three individual control points, for example, all in the open field. How exactly is TC’s 80/3 going to stop your 50 from simply wiping out one of the orb nodes and nullifying the bonus? Are they going to camp all 80 people on one node? Then who’s scouting their towers or keeps? Who’s on the other nodes? Why isn’t MG doing the same on their BL? Or if its just one KotH node, and they just park 80 people on top of it, who’s scouting their keeps and towers? Why aren’t your havoc groups doing something?

And still, this comparison remains utterly flawed because TC is not a T2 server. It cannot be helped that there are four T1~ish servers for three slots of T1. But I doubt a bit more flavor to the day would be bad for T1/4/5/6 who consistently have decent matches.

The whole idea behind the orb was to inspire the three worlds dynamic to actually be about three worlds, not “I have my share of the pie, now I will leave this map because it serves no other purpose”. Right now, the Borderlands are pointless.

VOLKON.1290:

Where is this “zerg down the orb” info coming from if I may ask?

His imagination.

The problem right now isn’t about “balance”, teams will run whatever comp is strong or they will try to run a counter build to the meta (or they’ll just run twenty spirit rangers).

The problem is that there is no incentive to run TeamQ. I gain barely anything more from it than I do from SoloQ, and both produce less than HotJoins. There is no name recognition (team roster go go), nor is there some unique reward (legendary shards/zkeys, go go). The majority of the player base before and/or after the patch were SoloQ players and now they at least have an environment in which to play without too much worry of random premades farming them and feeling “superior”.

What we’re missing, simply, is that little bit of an extra, unique incentive to take the step up to forming, organizing, and running a team for TeamQ. Rewards or automated tournaments, either, will do the job. It just doesn’t exist at the moment.

I mean, hell, here’s a quick patch:
Winning TeamQ rewards you a TeamQ Reward Chest which contains a chance at minis, rare skins (the new ones), or such.

BlazeQ.1095:

It always sucks to be the red team…

I think red has enough other advantages: two towers in the shadow of its keep, fastest camp in the game, can treb SMC.

Ya, they have Mendon’s and Anzalias but you can’t have everything. Think of poor Blue and Durious/QL.

sostronk.8167:

Despite what people think, I’d argue black and blue that running havoc is much more “WXP profitable” than zerging.

I’d be right there beside you.

yolosmurf.8052:

i only get foefire and kylho

You and me both.

Of my fifteen games in SoloQ so far:
0 – Skyhammer
1 – Spirit Watch
2 – Foefire and Forest
3 – Temple
7 – Khylo

I don’t even believe that Skyhammer is a map at this point, and the game seems to be aware that I play a lot of WvW because it keeps giving me the mini-WvW map.

Lux.7169:

Sensotix.4106:

we were in the same ranking he was 12 and i was rank 11 so it should have worked

Rating, not PvP rank. Your ladder rating/rank.

If they both started fresh, which they seem to have, they’d have the same MMR.

Virindiira.1025:

they can do Flame Ram too

Flame Ram will only have one addition:
New Flame Ram skill! Death By Ram: One opponent is instantly killed, from any range, by a falling Flame Ram. The Flame Ram and its user are destroyed upon using this skill. If a Superior Flame Ram was used, the dropped Superior Flame Ram explodes upon impact.

Opponents killed this way suffer 100% armor damage, their character loses 10 levels and WXP ranks. They also gain an unremovable title and debuff: “Killed by Flame Ram.” Any damage dealt to debuff players by Flame Rams will cause 15s of Fear followed by 10s of Chill, all Flame Ram damage to said player is increased 100 times.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Let me guess, you’re one of those who would be happier if there were no structures at all on the playing field, and we all just go out there and throw rocks at each other?

No.

But a siege on a keep that last 5 hours, the first three of which are nothing more than people flinging balls of fire at walls, and the last two are spent in carnage festival at the Lord’s room, I prefer getting to the inevitable final part more quickly.

Not to mention that those pesky havoc squads that like to throw down trebs at camps for 5 minutes, become all the more threatening.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Sounds like it’s… random.

Where are your sunglasses? And The Who riff in the background?

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

We have even less reason to defend, and that much more reason to zerg. Anet might as well remove the outer wall to the Bay Keeps and the castle. The Garrison wont have a wall for long either if the bad guys get into Cliffside/Longview with enough supply for a couple of trebs.

You’re not supposed to lose those towers, and if you do, its because of a 2v1… and in which case Garrison wasn’t going to have walls or supply left in it anyway. This at least shifts attacking Garrison/Hills (lol Bay) from “We have to spend two hours sieging down its walls and 1700 supply pool, and then five hours prying it from the cold, dead hands of its defenders!” to “We have to spend half an hour sieging down its walls and then five hours prying it from the cold, dead hands of its defenders!”

Anything that encourages people to hide in their keeps less is a good thing.

Not sure how/why this would encourage zerging anymore than before.

My games were all on Khylo… >.>

Gamadorn.2659:

I hope so….I don’t mind stat bonuses… (Hell I think giving a stat bonus to the weakest server will help balancing), but those stat bonuses simply CANNOT be tied to an objective that needs to be taken and held by a server….that will inherently give the strongest server the biggest advantage in owning it….and it’s stupid and will make things worse…

How does one define “weakest server”. Who is the “weakest server” in NA T1?

If, for example, the orb were three open-field capture points that need to be held concurrently, how does any server, no matter how big or small, have an inherent advantage? Three points of focus means 80/3 at best means, 80/3 is all it takes from any one server to take said point of focus. There are three servers to a map.

Even if you own diddly-squat on a map, you can still fight to deny the orb bonus even if you can’t capture it (unlike in the past where the orb was a physical object and singular, and hidden behind 80 people and steel walls). Whereas at current, a borderland that is all one color or locked down, is almost always abandoned for focusing on less unfavorable fields of war because it servers no purpose but being ppt fodder.

This treb mastery is pretty much OP but that may or may not be a good thing because it will certainly speed up the supply draining of keeps (even a havoc squad will now wreck your supply if left alone). The increased blasts are better than a range increase but they will make Bay even more worthless as a keep as I’m pretty sure those trebs will be untouchable from below now (can still be hit from the side). The rest of the usual treb spots won’t change much since most of them were already “safe” spots.

Can’t hide in your keeps anymore.

LotuS.4378:

np guys, few more months till Wildstar.

I’m not sure I get the idea here… W* doesn’t have RvR.

Delta Blues.8507:

Hacking in GW2 is serious, is happening, and it has a long story of being denied probably because it’s gonna be really hard to fix, but they really should start working on it

I don’t think they’ve ever actually denied it, hell, they removed the orbs for that exact (as stated) reason.

I only have time for 2 to 3 matches a day currently due to work/WvW taking up the majority of my time, but I have only have 1 game of 4(us)v5(them) and that was actually a surprisingly good game.

Every other game has been 5v5 and competitive, of course to me 500-400 is still a good game. So my opinion may not matter at all.

Certainly better than what it used to be:

• Queue up, lose to premade 500-100.
• Queue up, random people close match.
• Queue up, lose to premade.
• Etc…

Silentshoes.1805:

Vena,

To see the percentages, reverse the “sort” on the rating. The 0% will appear, then you go through the pages and the percentage rises until at 40 pages, I saw 47%.

OK, I got it.

Though my math is producing a vastly different number.

• Each % is occupied by 22-25 people (below 43%, I counted).
• The top 1000 is 56% and above of the population (I am estimating this by the evolution of my ranking, while at work, decreasing from 990 to 55%).
• The bottom 55%, assuming a constant rather than gaussian distribution of populations (particularly around 50%) would lead to…
• 2210 people who have passed the 10 fight limit.
• Or just 22 people per % for 100% = 2200 players.
• Assuming that there is no gaussian spike in the middle, though I saw no upward rising trend from 0% to 43% so unless there are literally orders of magnitude more players around 50% than anywhere else… it wouldn’t be there.

This is guess work, though, since I have no idea what happens between 43-55% and if my assumption on 55% being the cut-off to top 1000 is accurate for NA. I can’t judge EU at all aside from each percentile being occupied by 37-40 people below 26% (if we do the same, there are 3700 people in EU).

Either I’m making a mistake or your assumption on #2000 being 47% is wrong.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I was astonished when I saw that SoloQ rank points were 150 per victory. They actually nerfed the already mediocre rewards we got. If they had any sense SoloQ would be 200 per victory and TeamQ 250-300.

HotJoins 50 per victory, no additional gain.
SoloQ 300 per victory.
TeamQ 600 per victory.

Tada!

Ahh I didn’t see that thanks, somehow I missed it in glancing through the thread.

Thanks.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

fact

Zzzz. That word shouldn’t be used that way, ever.

Its such a grind to get proper stat sets and IV values unless you’re just using a program to spit out “pokemon”.

Amir.1570:

Its frustrating that being able to save the game is heavily dependent on ANET at this point. We need answers from ANET themselves. What are they planning to save this games future?

SoloQ was certainly a step in the right direction because no-one found it fun to have the only way to play being: Get farmed by teams. In spite of the explosive threads on here about disastrous MM, I haven’t experienced it and I haven’t heard of it in my guild (even if the populous is mostly WvW). But maybe my 11 games don’t count for anything, who knows.

TeamQ needs to have a substantially higher reward than SoloQ than hot-joins, to get the populations shifting. Its silly that you can gain the most rank/glory from farming hot joins. It should be completely the opposite + other things.

Avead.5760:

Well in reality you arent 90%.You are 90.123456789 % :P
And thats only you and no one else.If more people came to 90% and you were above them rating wise you wouldnt be 90% now.You would be 95% or something.
You confuse ratings with position in the ladder.There is still a ladder beyond the top1000.They just dont say to you that you are 1567 or something.They just tell you how much of the total population is below you.If those people get higher than you or near you your % will change

Not sure what happened to my post (O-o), but alright. I think I understand this now.

Thanks.

I’m still curious how one goes beyond the top 1k players.

I’m a bit confused, how does one look beyond the first 1000s players who rank?

Also how does the math take into account that multiple people will sit at the same ? You can have a bunch of people sitting at every % from 99 to 1%. Doesn’t this presume that each % is occupied by an identical population?

Vex.7486:

All was needed to be done to the orbs was swap the Out-manned buff With the Orb buff. So many players asked for this, a completely fair solution instead of freaking out and removing them all together and yet it got completely ignored.

This is an incredibly bad idea, and is detrimental to the entire concept of cooperation.

Without some sort of meaningful bonus to the Borderlands (MF and experience boosts are not meaningful) they are nothing more than small-scale EBGs without a SM to fight over and shift the dynamics of the battle. They are just PPT fodder.

An open field, choke-rich central point encourages people to go out and fight, not hide in their keeps. It allots a significant value to havoc squads that can threaten that point if it is left unattended. It breaks the monotony of staggered/locked BL after everyone has their own little share of the pie but can’t do anything offensive. It turns the BLs into something meaningful.

mjharrison.3209:

DAOC’s Darkness Falls was a masterstroke on multiple levels.

GW1 had the same concept and, to put it lightly, it was a terrible idea and was shelved.

PvE’rs don’t want to have to wait/deal with PvP to do PvE.
PvP’rs don’t want PvE’rs clogging up queues to “get the leet dungeon!”.

If you put anything of worth inside of said dungeon, you exasperate the problem (OS is bad enough with all the tears and q.q it produces over simple things like kites). Considering that GW1 is years younger than DAoC and existed amongst the modern generation of gamers… well, you get my point.

Niim.9260:

Game would open up a lot more without them and no more suicide charges because you know you can port back in 30 secs. Enjoy your crutch dynamic though.

1.) Remove Waypoints Upgrade.
2.) Fortified Doors Upgrade -> Resistant to Golems.
3.) Cannons deal more damage to Golems.
4.) ???
5.) Profit.

VOLKON.1290:

I agree, removing waypoints would be far more detrimental to WvW than beneficial. You’ll wind up with much less going on as more people will be needed to stay at home and keep eyes on keeps. Staying at home is boring for a lot of people, so the inability to ever be able to travel quickly will begin to suck the fun out of it to a degree. That should be the lowest priority on the list, somewhere beneath “flossing the neighbor’s cat”.

No Waypoints (with a few additions, see above) will lead to a lot better “world war” environment. Right now, laying siege to a keep amounts to a check list of things to do with golem rushes almost being a necessity at T3 Keeps with Waypoints, because the moment you so much as sneeze at the door, a force of 80 people teleports in from out of nowhere into the heart of the Keep.

If you have no WPs, people have to maneuver a lot more in the open field and they have to actually engage in combat with one another if they are cut off, not run away until the WP opens up for 3 seconds. If you get caught with no scouts, you lose a keep not “Quick everyone spam WP!”.

The only keep one could argue for having a WP is Garrison, it is the heart and soul of the Borderlands, but that might just be too strong of a boon to the home team besides their nigh-impervious North-Eastern Tower and the already nigh-impervious Garrison.

Liquid.9672:

Guys, wait to see what the buffs do before freaking out. Anet understood that the previous orb buffs only made the strongest server stronger. My guess is it’ll be something along the lines of defense against guards/lords and maybe increased Wexp. Something like that and not direct stat buffs.

I’m thinking it will be just like the Orbs were before but the placement of it will make it impossible to hold + everything else. So unlike before where you could hold the keep and the orb, because they were both in Garrison and you couldn’t touch it without taking a fully defended Garrison, now the Orb and the keeps will have next to nothing to do with one another aside from being on the same map.

problematic.9623:

I agree with you Vena. I am also interested. I will edit the post to communicate the topic better.

Its not so much that I haven’t seen it occur, in either direction, but more that I’m interested in where you got >50% from.

It’s probably safer to say that “hardcore” players have come and gone, some returning others not, but I don’t know how you’d ever gauge such a statement with numbers or percentages, nevermind how you’d actually weigh such numbers with who left for what reason. I know as many people who left for RL as I know who left out of boredom or dissatisfaction.

This cirque has been run before, on the eve of NW releasing…

… I don’t think anyone plays that game anymore. So let’s count our chickens after they hatch when it comes to “great things on the horizon”.

problematic.9623:

Fun fact for the WvW community and Developers:
More than 50% of the NA bracket hardcore multi-game organizations/guilds are no longer active in the WvW scene.

I’m actually interested in how you even went about corroborating such a “fact”.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

-WvW only ablities added (1)
-WvW traps added
-WvW NA/EU reset times separated
-New mastery skills constantly being added (1 this is a repeat)
-WvW UI overhauled
-Random matchups
-WvW and Obsidian Sanctum separated

Here’s an edited version showing things that we actually care about in wvw. I even added one to the bottom that we also don’t care about. Look at the only things that actually changed wvw….

I fixed your list Milky.

EU certainly cares that they have reset at their own hours of the day, not in the middle of the night. And we all care about not having to face the same drool week after week. And we all care that the RP JPers aren’t clogging EBG. And my catapults care that they deal 45% more damage.

Mif.3471:

Finishers I’ll concede, even though I am yet to see people actually use them in WvW.

I don’t think I have yet to see a fight end without at least five cows falling from the sky after the last patch…