Guild Wars 2

GavNation.4307:

Whats the point of WvW?

Fight’n.

If you need more reason, it’s not for you. I feel like GW2 PvE is pointless and dull, and that’s why it isn’t for me. Different strokes.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Wow. “We all” is like you and one other person, OMG thats like the entire world population man!

Okay, except for this one guy who enjoys being wrong. Probably some other similar guys, too.

FrizzFreston.5290:

I agree that Colin probably doesn’t know everything

That’s a void statement. No one knows everything, thus everyone is eligible for that excuse, and therefore it isn’t a meaningful excuse for saying things that are clearly bullkitten, which he did.

FrizzFreston.5290:

but him trying to bring us information he does know is probably the last thing he does need to stop doing.

He didn’t do that. He did make a PR maneuver that attempted to escape a difficult publicity situation with non-information. If you like that sort of thing, then American business “communications” are definitely something you’ll enjoy reading more of! They’ll do nothing if not “stay on message.” Lap it up.

FrizzFreston.5290:

And time spend apologizing is equally wasting when there’s always something in the game someone doesn’t like.

ArenaNet doesn’t need to apologize to children for not gifting them the perfect Christmas toy. ArenaNet needs to apologize for being so locked down in NDA that their employees must effectively behave as if they’re under Secret clearance, and then they need to speak to their customers as adults that are honestly interested in being a part of a gaming and game-building community. Then they need to stop “communicating” with us with stupid claims like this thing about a senior programmer spending a whole year on fixing culling, as if that actually happened in the way the statement implies, and as if that would be a good excuse or even a thing to brag about, if it’s purely true.

An apologetic posture, in that context, would be far from wasted.

WvW: Resurgence of Bile

Entenkommando.5208:

If I recall correctly Colin said that the culling fix took an entire year of work for one of their senior engineers.
That means either he just made coffee breaks 75% of the time or something about their code is severely broken which makes changes take for ever.

Exactly. We can all agree that Colin needs to stop making kitten up, or acting like he knows what the hell is happening around him, and instead should just start apologizing and being silent.

morrolan.9608:

Hexalot.8194:

Nubu.6148:

Hexalot.8194:

What part of “subscription model” did you not get ?

Ive to pay 1 € per year honey .

For what, Mine-craft ?

You can buy a CU lifetime sub. You still pay $1 a month though.

Nope. $1 per year, not month. That was the minimum they could ask, due to a ToS at Kickstarter.

morrolan.9608:

Colin’s state of the game message has driven away more

WvW is their top priority.

Wall of text about not-WvW.

Yep.

They became losers when they got upset enough to call you a loser.

You became a loser when you became upset enough to come here to post this; in effect, calling them losers.

Both sides are losers. Posts above are explaining types of losing.

Chaba.5410:

Tspatula.9086:

The way Anet develops content, no discussing anything before its done leads to the major problems with the new map and maps like EotM. I am pretty sure Mike O’Brien and upper management feel that this is their game and player feedback is only for very minor tweaks. We are supposed to play what they give us because they define what the game is supposed to be.

Yes.

I honestly don’t understand the obsession with wanting to own and manage the game design by those who don’t actually make investments in the company. I suppose it has to do with some nostalgic attachment developed by being a customer for the past few years. Don’t consume the product if you are no longer enjoying it. No one is forcing you to play what you are given. Another game company will compete.

It’s not an obsession with wanting to own and manage. It is a desire to be involved and respected as more than a consumer. The desire is coming from multiple origins, not the least of which is marketing that plays on and exploits precisely that desire.

MMO gaming is not the only first-world stage where this drama plays out. It does have some special characteristics here, good and bad, for all involved parties.

You say “no one is forcing you to play”—a common white knight shield—and that glosses over the fact that coercion is grey and fundamental to all sides of adversarial issues between profit seekers and their sources of income.

Certainly, competitors are preparing their wares. What they’ll deliver, and the itches they’ll scratch, are open to question. I think that we do well to press them toward improved versions of themselves, to encourage that competition, and I don’t think that means always being nice about it.

They’re going for the “convince me that I achieved something” dollar. That’s a really strong market these days. Very smart of them.

nod nod nod

Beside which, the Desert BL Beta previews were only for HoT hype and to generate some quick-fix feedback. The majority of what we’ve said in the past, which can be shown to be quite opposite to the directions that EoTM and Desert BL have gone, was said in 2013, 2012, and before that during the pre-launch betas.

That was when we thought that WvW was serious about being an RvR game.

Decent choices. Still waiting for this patch.

Jan. 3, 2013

https://i.imgur.com/eDAeTad.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/vN8S4hm.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/mLlRUCd.jpg

I always reset my ~ Kovu on friday night. ANet can’t dictate to me!
~ Kovu

Solori.6025:

Question…

When has a skill ever been changed because it was too strong in WvW?

Mesmer Portal uncapped at launch, later capped to allow 20 players to travel through.

Retaliation damage equal in all modes at launch, later reduced by 33% in WvW and PvP zones.

LetoII.3782:

Yeah.. Just flicking back through the pages of that subforum you see 3,4 even 5 threads with Anet response PER PAGE. WvW it’s a few 2’s, some 1’s and mostly none.

Can’t spell Forever Alone without FA.

Replacing the player organization concept of Servers with one of Alliances would also displace the perception of a shrinking population. This perception is relevant only to customers, because NCSoft and ANet parties and partners are all variously privy to the real data. They make some of these decisions based upon that data, including what they choose to reveal, when, and how.

Auto-allocating current server association to a same-named alliance would displace the perception of lost group loyalty. This can work regardless of the number of WvW tiered matches they produce from the resulting set of alliances. It is entirely possible to create a smaller number of matches from the same number of server/alliance organizational units.

Lord Kuru.3685:

The reason for the OP new specs is to push players to buy HoT.

Yep. Presented as an incentive to drive sales, while discouraging the perception that it creates a buy-to-win scenario in the PvP league scheduled to occur before the next balance pass.

Lord Kuru.3685:

You’re not really getting a free ride though. You’re kind of working for Anet as a “playmate” to their real customers: those who exchange cash for gems. This is an integral role because probably only a small minority of people do buy gems, and if only they were around, the game world would be too empty and deserted.

That’s okay. I’m not acting as a true adversary to ANet. I do as I will, and counsel others in respect to their needs, not mine.

Lord Kuru.3685:

That’s why cash shops that give big gameplay advantages are so dangerous: if you drive off the “freeloaders,” the actual customers have no one to play with and they leave also.

True, and perhaps that is part of why I instinctively have no interest in free-to-play games on Steam.

Lord Kuru.3685:

I think HoT is a problem in this way. HoT players have an enormous advantage over core players (OP new professions, guild upgrades, new gear sets, gold-making-opportunities, etc.), and that’s going to drive a lot of core-only players to leave the game. But that empties the game world more — at a time when Anet can’t afford the game world to be more empty.

True as well. As a core-only player I don’t bother with PvP now, and can’t enter the new maps. This is by design. In the same way, there are Tactivators and siege weapons which I can’t interact with. On day one of HoT launch, they had an obnoxious BUY HoT NOW red text response to them in the UI.

It was in that moment that I logged out and increased by Camelot Unchained backer pledge instead of buying HoT: a decision which stands unchanged today.

Sagramor.7395:

Virtute.8251:

But if you really want to analogize customer behavior to lover’s quarrels and breakups, there is always “hell hath no fury”.

I think that you probably underestimate how much of the playerbase are this type of customer.

Maybe, but experience has taught me that a thing like GW2 is well enough designed that hundreds of thousands of people are perfectly willing to take it as it comes.

Sagramor.7395:

I too am probably far from Anet’s ideal customer since I can count on one hand the gem purchases I’ve made in 3 years, which if memory serves were primarily for character and bank slots, not vanity items which I have no desire to purchase through the gem shop. So comparing to a subscription model I would’ve only paid for a few months of game time over 3 years (minus a few breaks). Were GW2 using a subscription model I would’ve left a long time ago (and likely not come back), but being B2P I’ve left and come back a few times with no risk. Additionally I never purchased HoT since I’m a WvW player and it wouldn’t have been worth the money for merely access to new class/specs.

I suspect they recanted on their plan of not release any expacs, but instead releasing new content via living story, because they weren’t generating enough money through gem sales. I have no issues with purchasing an expac as long as it delivers something I feel adds value worthy of the price tag. But when you have issues in WvW stacking up since (before?) launch going unresolved over a month after a release of an expac, which only made matters worse in the process, I’m not in any rush to buy said expac. Give me a retail box worth my ~$50 as an almost exclusively WvW player and I’ll buy it.

Precisely.

However, among my WvW friends and guilds, there is a clear trend. The majority that did not leave the game did buy HoT and did begrudgingly complete and repeat the PvE quests for the various things. They are only now more solidly returned to focusing on WvW and GvG as their only thing.

A solid 30-50% of them straight up left the game, regardless of whether nor not they bought HoT. I’m referencing a few hundred people in that percentage.

The on-going league play is now doing that to the PvP community, too.

Nillagate, Nilla Quarry, Sanctum of Nilla

Seriously, though. It’s not a bad idea. The way it will actually happen is that they’ll rebuild the Alpine map to include all current and future changes, then slot it into whatever new thing they’re building to replace WvW with.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Virtute.8251:

Among the community of current GW2 players, there is surprisingly little talk about former GW2 players, such that I suspect that most current and former GW2 players simply aren’t maintaining relationships.

I wonder if this is a GW2 specific failing, or a failing of the whole idea that B2P games can easily entice old players to return because it’s “free.”

That would be a dangerous idea for a company to bank on. I’m not sure that ANet honestly believes that. Perhaps some of their customers do. I would argue that ANet more probably believes that they actually are delivering a raft of great things that continuously add desirable value to the product, and that it is that continuing service that they would point to as the thing which drives loyal and repeated sales. They wouldn’t say that it is easy, but they would say that they’re succeeding at it.

The players clearly disagree, but the signal-to-noise ratio appears extremely noisy to ANet, to the point that they’ve delegated the noise volunteers, and they seem to believe that this entire sub-forum is noise.

My own experience says that for me B2P held me in the system longer than I would have tolerated ANet as a subscriber. However, ANet also did not collect gem sales from me that would equal a 1:1 with what I may have paid in a subscription model. I’m not sure which model would have capitalized on me more.

I do suspect that I’m a bad example for both models, in terms of monetization, because I have a low tolerance for displeasure in subscription, and a high resistance to impulse purchase of vanity and convenience items. Neither model succeeds against me when the product is failing its purpose more often than not in my judgement. In other words, I’m not the ideal customer. I’m a hard sell.

But if you really want to analogize customer behavior to lover’s quarrels and breakups, there is always “hell hath no fury”.

Lord Kuru.3685:

So why was this not predicted? We did have a preview of the new BL, and though people didn’t like it, there was no expectation that it’d be completely empty of players.

The assumption of the existence of returning players was coming primarily from people who don’t retain relationships with many (or any) gamers who have exited GW2. Among the community of current GW2 players, there is surprisingly little talk about former GW2 players, such that I suspect that most current and former GW2 players simply aren’t maintaining relationships.

I believe that the set of former players contains many people who left as groups, and they took those relationships with them, leaving most current GW2 players to form new relationships with other current GW2 players, instead of continuing maintenance on the old relationships.

The majority of current GW2 customers (people who play, are generally happy with it, and talk about the game often and in optimistic terms) are the cream of the crop for ANet, a company that seeks to retain its ideal customer. They are the ideal customer in that they are loyal to the point that they will hold that loyalty in spite of all, come what may.

Therefore, those customers fail at imagining why former customers are not returning, because the failure is an issue of perspective. The customer that has played GW2 for years and still plays usually doesn’t comprehend the perspective of the customer that left the game a year ago and vowed to never look back. They certainly don’t comprehend that there are whole guilds of people that collectively left the game as a guild decision, and that returning would also be a guild decision.

I don’t believe that most people who expected a “mass influx” of fresh blood have actually asked many former GW2 players about it.

It’s also extremely likely that people were simply imagining that a big and heavily marketed event must necessarily lead to big success, just as has happened in the past, with thousands of people logging in for the first time during ANet’s 2012 and 2013 Free to Play Weekends.

Maintenance of the GW2 customer base now and going forward is entirely a game of holding onto current customers and pulling old customers back into the fold. Gamers that are hunting for new experiences are not in the market for GW2. ANet has already captured the bulk of any fresh blood it will receive.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Was it the changes to guilds and WvW upgrades? The autoupgrades? The huge grind required to play the new professions?

Or were these all small mistakes that, when put together, created an unpredictable perfect storm of fail?

Partly the latter, but there were many people like myself (I’ve seen them posting here about it) who chose not to pre-purchase, because we either refuse to pre-purchase a finished product that isn’t limited by physical distribution scarcity (that’s me) or we didn’t trust that HoT was something we would feel good about paying full price for (that’s also me).

In those case, many of us saw HoT from the outside and decided we didn’t want in; that the base game is good enough for what we’ll do with it, and it’s more important to be a “didn’t buy” data point than a “did buy” which would effectively lie about our acceptance of 2015 GW2 as a product we’re happy to support.

Skeletor.9360:

It was not buzzing 16 years ago…it was introduced. The idea of getting user needs early and often has been around much longer. Scrum is simply a management tool for poor managers. Agile and scrum are still just only being accepted within the last 5 years or so.

Notice he used the term “stakeholder”…very agile!

It was introduced 21 years ago, tracing its origin back to at least 30 years ago, and the PDF I linked was an example of it buzzing well after its introduction. The PDF comes as a citation in the scrum Wikipedia article’s first (2006) publication.

Skeletor.9360:

Scrum is just a new buzz in development.

It’s not new buzz. It hit buzz level 16 years ago.

Skeletor.9360:

They simply need to list what people want and let them vote on the biggest issues.

Do they want more content?
Do they want bug fixes?
Do they like huge zerg blobs?
Do they like siege decay?
Do they want a “report hacker” option?

Really just take some polls.
THEN figure out what you are going to do.

The problem is they don’t even ask. They just work on some kitten they want to work on.

A Scrum process that incorporates the end-user as a stakeholder in both production and product outcomes is one which addresses exactly the sort of things you’ve listed there.

ANet uses an insular Scrum process that treats all of their actions and thoughts as tightly guarded intellectual properties.

Entenkommando.5208:

Yes they censor reddit, they censor google, they get your IP from the NSA and delete your ingame account.

Free aluminium hats! Get them before the ANet coorperates with Aliens to control your brain!

lost my gf cuz of ladderbords

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

I don’t know why anybody would even imagine they have a requirement to have an official reply here

It’s a subjective, per-topic, judgement. I believe that the subject of alliances in connection with a “major wvw overhaul”, per the evidence, deserved to be replied to then locked instead of ignored and deleted. There is real information there, and it clearly points to the conjecture and speculation that it caused.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

if they replied to one angry thread they’d have to reply to all of em, and the manpower/hours required for that could bankrupt any company :P

Not true. The ways it is done without replying to every complaint or rumor are well established, and relatively straight forward. It’s also a compounding situation, where having behaved that way over time will bolster the community and create reasonable white knighting within the community, because that white knighting actually gets backed up by company action.

A customer therein defending the company is then made less of an apologist, and more of a reasonable person acting on experiences with the company. This isn’t the case with ANet.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

PR control? They know the vast majority of posters in this forum are angry and complain, why would deleting one of the many controversial threads in this forum change the public opinion? :P

It’s a long term game of preventing the conversation from showing up in Google on its keywords and gaining PageRank for appearing on the guildwars2.com domain.

Additionally, it absolves them of any perceived requirement to officially reply yet, which was one of the subjects of the deleted thread.

theTurkey.2970:

Unfortunately, this type of “communication” is becoming the norm.

“Becoming”? It has been the norm from the start.

They got tired of deleting threads and deleted an entire sub-forum.

morrolan.9608:

An alliance system with campaigns is clearly the most flexible and best way to handle RvR, every RvR game that is coming out has a similar system

False. CU will be endless RvR matches, realms as teams, with multiple servers that each contain a single RvR match. Their flexibility is found in the complete absence of any PvE instance. Everything they ever do in that system will be RvR.

Swagger.1459:

Virtute.8251:

Swagger.1459:

how do you make the masses loyal enough to participate in wvw consistently?

You don’t. Where WvW lacks or loses player loyalty, it is a problem of boredom.

There is no “make the masses” do anything in gaming. You encourage it, with fun that is addictive and inspires desire. That is how WvW became a thing to be argued in favor of by its fans.

When it is forced as in “make” someone do something, you have conditions like relentless grinding, time-gating for its own sake, and collective cognitive dissonance between company and customers where neither side can agree with the other’s mental image of the thing despite being able to see the other’s perspective clearly. All things that the silly GW2 Oath propagandized against. They are old mistakes all over again.

Those mistakes are the root of the GW2 complaint meta.

You are too focused on that one word. If you were to use it within the context of the rest of the post you’d realize I understand.

Sorry, I did know that we agreed more than not. I picked that word to harp on because it was very illustrative of what actually happens in a lot (perhaps most) AAA game development. It’s in the designs, the marketing, and the company-to-customer communications.

Swagger.1459:

Additionally, it was a question for someone else to answer since they were talking about loyalty, but you answered it pretty well.

Thanks. ^^;

DeceiverX.8361:

just upping the rewards enough or allowing WvW-only food buffs to be purchasable for BoH would probably help promote the game mode a lot.

Rewards in WvW have always failed because they are event-based with the same code that accomplishes the heart, point of interest, and undynamic dynamic events in PvE. They all fail for the same reason.

Rewards should be calculated as a metric of activity. The loot-drop mechanic is what sucks in MMOG. However, ANet is married to it. Hence the account wallet, bank tab and inventory bag slot expansions, etc.

As with many things, they’ve built their downfall into the system as a required component of the business model, and made a killer profit along the way. Their partners are milking China even harder.

Swagger.1459:

how do you make the masses loyal enough to participate in wvw consistently?

You don’t. Where WvW lacks or loses player loyalty, it is a problem of boredom.

There is no “make the masses” do anything in gaming. You encourage it, with fun that is addictive and inspires desire. That is how WvW became a thing to be argued in favor of by its fans.

When it is forced as in “make” someone do something, you have conditions like relentless grinding, time-gating for its own sake, and collective cognitive dissonance between company and customers where neither side can agree with the other’s mental image of the thing despite being able to see the other’s perspective clearly. All things that the silly GW2 Oath propagandized against. They are old mistakes all over again.

Those mistakes are the root of the GW2 complaint meta.

Arius.7031:

The alliance thing is quite probably fake, devon’s statement on the subject implies that at least:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3uznbc/major_wvw_overhaul_colin_j_ft_e/cxj91cj?context=3

Grain of truth: https://i.imgur.com/lk0scpx.png

Show us where in the game these strings are used; particularly, “Only Guild Leaders and Officers can send alliance chat.”

PopeUrban.2578:

I’m not really interested is catering to “fight guilds”

They aren’t WvW guilds. They’ve co-opted WvW for a self invented game type because the game (foolishly) still hasn’t catered to large scale TDM, literally one of the easiest game types to track and code.

This is simply not true. The “fight guild” style exists in every RvR game, because it is open-world PvP. GW2 Beta was filled with people assessing and encouraging WvW as their next RvR game, and we had “fights guilds” from day one. Anvil Rock, in particular, was very heavy with that play style, because it was the launch-day choice for most tPvP players, considering that the PvP lobbies were server-bound. When they entered WvW, they often ignored commanders and chased fights.

There is nothing inherent to an RvR scoreboard that demands concern for the scoring mechanic. Realm-based combat matches last too long (even if only a week) to ever enforce or demand player concern for the scoring.

Score in RvR is an open-ended incentive and measure of progress. It is not an exclusive meta-reason to play, as is the case in nearly any other PvP type.

Therefore, “fights guilds” are an entirely valid outcome for RvR.

WvW is RvR, even if ANet doesn’t own the “Tri-Realm” trademark.

Chaba.5410:

We often forget that EOTM players used to be WvW players.

Right, and that set of EoTM players tends to be ones who weren’t in WvW for the PvP combat. That’s why EoTM appeals.

Chaba.5410:

At the same time it would be a disaster to try to have WvW as it was at launch since that style is relatively played out amongst the vets still playing. I am at a loss of ideas there.

There are reams of good ideas and interesting paths that WvW could travel, but on HoT launch day I chose to pay a different studio instead, because ANet has proven that they aren’t a studio that is willing to deliver the product that WvW should have been iterated into. They won’t even discuss WvW in the terms that it requires.

Chaba.5410:

My personal opinion is that reward tracks and a sort of bonus progression that are calculated/given out per tick similar to what happens at the end of an sPvP match, something along the lines of “top defender” “top repair” “top player kills”, may provide highly visible feedback to the individual player of their contribution to the team. It could go a long way towards incentivizing playing for the team (whether server, or alliance, etc.).

I’d agree, except that we need a reduction in the frequency of reward icons appearing next to the mini-map. These need to be consolidated into the daily and weekly rewards output rather than constantly begging to be clicked with spinning lens flares.

sephiroth.4217:

I was same spot as OP in terms of WvW play hours (6,500 hours), now I don’t touch WvW. And many people saw WvW going this direction from the day they put golems on the trading post.

I saw it back in 2012, as the clearly defined blueprint that must be followed when RvR is continuously and consecutively compromised by blending it with the PvE world constraints. These aren’t new mistakes. They are iterations on an obvious roadmap.

Since I’ve been proven right in that, and already spun my wheels in the corporate communications mud over the whole thing, I didn’t buy HoT, and am unsure how deep the discount needs to be, as Mike and krewe can’t possibly sell me their PvE “experience”, and esports fandom is even more laughable than in real sports.

Good luck. o7

Less Talkin More Rekz

owait

Xillllix.3485:

Skeletor.9360:

Hi,

Just and honest opinion about the new game. For those who had fully developed characters etc and were not buying new content, to have their world turned upside down with no options I believe will make many people leave the game.

I suggest having 2 separate games completely. The new one and the old one. If you want to see what happens just have 3 old style servers and allow free transfers. When those 3 fill up…open three more…when those fill up….etkittenil you find that few actually like the new content.

It might be different for non-wvw content, but all I do is wvw and it is now ruined.

Thanks

I would suggest that you moved to a top tier server and take more time to learn the map. It is a little design masterpiece. The complexity just make it rewarding in the long term.

As for players leaving, well they already left last year, they probably aren’t coming back, but the maps got bigger so they feel more empty. Having just 1 copy of it would be plenty.

I am in both top tier NA servers, participated in Desert BL Beta, and disagree with your assumptions that top tier is any better in these regards, and that time will improve it or make it more rewarding. Those things aren’t true for the people that enjoyed WvW the longest, with the most time put into it. Those things are true for the people that did not play WvW exclusively.

I believe that this is ANet’s honest answer to how WvW is its own form of RvR, because there are multiple other studios building their competitor products, which themselves lean more toward the traditional RvR, or toward an RTS hybrid of it, than does WvW.

Therefore, I think that ANet is intentional in making Desert BL more close match any other map from Tyria, rather than competing on the same features and styles that will have other branding in the market next year.

Ah, ok. I missed that one in my abject Super Unexcitement™. That’s clearly a case of wasting time fixing what isn’t broken. But good on you, Anet… have fun with your job. I can’t fault you there. Doesn’t mean I’ll agree with dollars.

To agree with Dawdler, as I said in Fort Aspenwood last night, the Desert BL is an appropriate size only if each tiered match contained one copy of that map. That would only work if ANet would improve the client and server tech to make that feasible. We need more people in this map concurrently.

These map dimensions can’t work at current participation levels, with 3 identical copies in the match. It would have worked in 2012 and 2013.

That ANet believes that their data is showing them experiencing growth (or that they say this still, in public, with straight faces) is absurd. Those numbers are over-cooked. :^)

sinject.4607:

the new borderland map that drastically improves upon the last both aesthetically and gameplay wise?

the wvw community truly is the worst.

Not true. That is perspective dependent. An RvR player (a form of PvP player) tends to very much dislike the change as done. The PvE player, who would like to go into WvW sometimes so long as it is not too heavily focused on PvP combat; they tend toward enjoying the change, because the new map feels more like any other given map in Tyria.

So, you may be the map’s target audience. Do not insult the rest of us by presuming that your outcome is indicative of some failure or deficiency in us, by saying things like we are “the worst.” This is again the white knighting of ANet that is not constructive; in different clothing.

Aeolus.3615:

@Virtute.8251 offcouse it needs to be in a todo list :P it is a visual bug, Anet loves to fix broken/oudated in this case textures.

I mean that it should have been done before it needed to hit a to do list that isn’t yet done, because it is trivially easy to complete.

However, again, I notice it without really worrying about it. I take it as indicative, and nothing more.

Yeah, I’m not sweating this one. It’s just a matter of thoroughness, and it doesn’t need to be on a to do list. The map is a flat raster image. It can be done by an artist in photoshop, if nothing else.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

On two days, I have spent more than an hour each day standing in place, whisper chatting with friends about gripes and other games, browsing the web on monitor 2, while waiting for any activity at all on the server home map. I did this on an account in Tier 1 NA, and an account in Tier 2 NA.

When finally a Tier 2 guild chose to investigate the map, we spent the hour scouting it for signs of a hidden kitty cave, and found none.

No significant fights were had. The “massive” is absent from MMOG, so far.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

In T1 and T2, guilds that have previously avoided EBG in favor of home BL defense and opponent BL offense have thus far avoided the BL except to investigate. We do not find fights in the BL. We fight doors, get bored, and return to EBG with everyone else.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

The commander that believes that guardians should all wear a complete Nomad armor set, and says so in Teamspeak while linking his gear in team chat, enjoys this new BL. I am not being facetious. It happened in the new BL.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

Since 24 hours before HoT release, on the new BL and the old one, I have not been involved in one traditionally standard battle between two groups both numbering more than 15 people. In all cases where one side numbered more than 15, the other did not. I am certain that it has happened, but I have not been there to see it. Again: T1 and T2, where it was taken for granted.

ArchonWing.9480:

• In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

This is not yet changed significantly, but may be due to the fact that all structure sieges I have witnessed occurred unopposed. There was no fight.

ArchonWing.9480:

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

This is irrelevant. The RvR mode is broken here. The rewards mean nothing when in the face of that, and the silly loot rewards are not the reason that competitive players choose RvR over dungeons and fractals. The traditional WvW player does not “really enjoy PvE”, and Mike O’Brien has been foolish to believe the malformed data analysis and opinions that lead him to make that statement.

ArchonWing.9480:

• How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

Paired with other choices made for HoT implementation, I have refused to buy HoT and will continue to play WvW at my leisure without further payment. I would have canceled a subscription.

ArchonWing.9480:

• In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

Hire the people from EA Mythic/Bioware who haven’t already joined CSE. Refuse to assign any PvE gameplay designer to the WvW team. Compartmentalize WvW development to make zero compromises within it in regard to any other area of Tyria.

ArchonWing.9480:

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

Good luck.

ArchonWing.9480:

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

Goodbye.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

WvW, or nowhere at all. I will not buy through the aggressive paywalls until the price matches my return, and currently I am opposed to most of what I’ve seen as a not-yet upgraded account. That applies to WvW and Guild Hall Arena, not to PvE. I expect to pay for PvE maps and story content in a modern expansion done in the schematic of GW2.

I do not pay for the privilege of the rest. Not on these terms.

Hah, I know, right? The one aspect of PvE that we expect and take for granted as part of a WvW map, and that’s the one that gets removed.

coglin.1867:

There are some dishonest statements here. I and my wife were in a WvW beta, as we’re some of my kids, guildies, and some friends. We have never streamed or had any affiliation with gaming new. They had a beta large enough to queue 3 maps, at least on the beta server I was on.

I agree the forums is a very small aspect of the player base, but it appeared to me thay most of what we recieved, fit the demands on the forums. I did not agree with most of those demands. I simply noticed several complainers post history show they did not participate in the discussion.

What are the dishonest statements? Your family and friend involvement in Beta says nothing toward that claim.

What appeared to you for demands is demonstrably wrong, and the demonstration is in the archived CDI threads and the entirety of gw2wvw.net

I noticed this too, and chuckled, but didn’t feel badly about it. It is true, however, that part of the art dept. time for this change should have changed “the mists” to reflect this new map. The story dept. should have been involved to justify the change, because WvW is compromised by binding to Tyria and lore. Do that right, or stop doing it.

Just stop doing it, because you aren’t doing it right.

Good points, Archon.

I would add that white knighting ANet in player feedback/complaint threads is not constructive in the form that coglin showed, which I’ve seen repeated ad nauseam these past three years.

ANet deserves to be vouched for, and sometimes they take it upon themselves. What we don’t need is players attacking each other on behalf of ANet for some emotive sense of obligation to a krewe they adore.

I have two paired opinions on this topic.

One is that I agree with ANet that their game is more than WvW, and as it is constructed in all of their systems, I understand and accept that WvW is bound to be compromised due to it being a component of Tyria which respects the PvE landscape and lore in ways that PvP does not.

The other is that I fundamentally disagree with that binding and compromise, and even more strongly disagree with that linkage being deepened by the HoT content. I believe that WvW and GvG both deserve the same separation, attention, and respect that PvP receives as a competitive sport (or at least as a more than casual PvE pass-time).

That includes the fact that WvW should be broken from PvE in terms of all balancing, because it is not a PvE dungeon with player-kills enabled. Its maps should not be touched by gameplay designers that do not specialize in RvR content. ANet should have gone full-bore with Mike Ferguson’s ideas building on his days at Mythic, and they should have innovated that in the direction it was naturally going. In the way that players asked for. Not in the ways they chose in spite of.

The sum of my two opinions means that I do not respect WvW now as a competitor in the RvR space. I believe that ANet failed at differentiating and owning the WvW concept of RvR in any way that is good and fun for a PvP loving gamer. It compromised too much, and can’t turn back.

This suspicion is why I did not pre-purchase HoT. This outcome is why I’m waiting for a significant sale on it that feels good enough.

coglin.1867:

Where were you two with your feedback on this matter during the last 2+ years of discussion on the topic of new maps?

It is not like this is some new idea that they dropped out of the blue. This was overwhelmingly demanded via payer feedback.

Yes, we have asked for and talked about changes since Beta.

The changes that we get, and the changes that are complained about the most, are generally changes that weren’t asked for, or are changes that have been accomplished in ways that either do not solve our concerns or even exacerbate our disagreement.

Where were we? Here. In the game. In the streams. In the forums and subreddits and CDI. ANet can’t follow the conversation, and can’t reply with proper results. This isn’t the RvR game that people were excited about in 2012. It’s a cop out.

We have an ongoing thread, chat with API dev, and end-user debug of the K/D values.

TL;DR is that the K and D aggregate totals don’t match the K and D per map totals.

https://i.imgur.com/VZewphe.png

This error accumulates over time, and we don’t know which set of K/D is the least inaccurate.

A separate issue is a ~4-hour-interval spike in the K/D data reports, which can possibly be blamed on server compute time scheduling (resource queuing).

Was also in comms with the thief: can confirm that OP ate a sick burst from stealth.

Can also agree that it’s a reason to delete the class and fire half of ANet.