Guild Wars 2

Deniara Devious.3948:

Thus ACs are still too good and making ballistas a bit irrelevant. I am sure Arenanet can find that ACs are deployed much more often than ballistas. Ballistas projectiles are blocked so easily by the terrain and thus actually not working that well in many situations. AC is more or less the easy mode in WvWvW.

Your argument is completely non-persuasive. Everything you said was ALREADY true before the AC trait line was released or AC damage was buffed. Does that mean that the ACs that everyone used to just stand in were OP?

Considering that I can down and have been downed by a single ballista shot, they are just fine. Imagine if ballistas fire an arching arrow that didn’t get blocked by terrain, the QQing would be a million times worse than it is with the ACs now. In fact, ANet should implement this because it would be glorious and I’m tired of people whining about ACs.

Other servers actually gasp counter ACs with players or by building counter ACs. They don’t just assume that walking up to a gate with 2 rams guarantees victory.

Kincaidia.3192:

It’s broken currently, in more ways than one. It is instantly repeatable, and on top of that you can (or could until recently) actually trigger it after you’ve taken the tower. It needs to be a 30 minute wait AFTER Siegerazer has been killed, and at that time marker it needs to check to see if the tower is owned or not.

^this.

There is a bug that AFAIK has never been acknowledged nor fixed with the breakout events where whenever a breakout is triggered another one will ALWAYS be available immediately regardless of the failure or success of the first breakout with no cooldown. There is nothing sillier than having Siegerazer waiting in your spawn after you have just used him to take a tower back. If the first and second breakouts both fail to capture the tower I believe there is the normal cooldown.

DevonCarver.5370:

One up and one down solves some problems but creates a bunch more. Including that it invalidates ratings entirely. It no longer takes into account quality of victory but simply uses the fact of victory to move a server out of the matchup they were previously in. The system we are using now creates varied matchups, which will allow us to get more accurate ratings. As those become more accurate we can dial down on the amount of variance we are introducing to have matchups that are varied, but less prone to large rating gaps between the servers. But, again, this is entirely based on server rating, which is the thing we have actually been calculating this entire time. Until that number is a more accurate reflection of server quality, we are going to keep mixing the matchups up.

Some variation is necessary to ensure that the overall server ratings remain accurate, but right now it is too varied. What purpose is there in sending the top ranked server into tier 2, for example? We already know that server #1 beats server #2 and #3 in tier 1. It goes without saying that they should be even more capable against tier 2 servers.

The fundamental flaw here is the assumption that the server ratings are not accurate or at least semi-accurate. Obviously, they are accurate within each tier. The only time they are not accurate is possibly at the fringe of each tier, e.g. the top server in tier 2 may actually be better than the lowest server in tier 1 but because of stagnant ratings/matchups it takes forever for movement between tiers.

Having a system where winner moves up and loser moves down where activation chance is based on rating seems like it would generate much more meaningful data and matchups.

Have more people sentry your towers with siege set up?

Zosk.5609:

Anti personnel siege should not work like this… in every other game it would require line of sight.

Then they’d have to make changes to LOS, because requiring people to be on the very edge of any wall to hit over it sucks.

WvW infusions are +5 stat, not +4 stat, unless the item description is lying.

Crawford.4135:

Visiroth.5914:

I put a WvW defensive infusion into my ascended laurel defensive slot just fine.

1. Where did you get your Ascended Amulet/Ring/Accessory item from?

As I said, from laurels. Purely laurels, not the WvW badge + laurel.

I put a WvW defensive infusion into my ascended laurel defensive slot just fine.

Your ascended amulet has a UTILITY slot. You can only put defensive infusions into defensive slots, and offensive infusions into offensive slots.

Sinaya.4201:

What would a WvW’er have to do PvE for other than… well, I can’t think of anything other than a Legendary or Back Items honestly. Ascended Trinkets (Except for back items) are available via Laurels, which are available to every play style. (Even sPvP) All of the armor and weapon stat combinations are available via Badges of Honor. Unless you’re looking for a specific Skin or something, the WvW-shouldn’t-have-to-PvE argument doesn’t really stand up.

Laurels have only been available to WvWers for 1 week. I am not even sure that you can always complete the daily in WvW either, although it seems like it.

Exotic accessories are only available in the PVT combination in WvW. There are also runes that can only be attained with dungeon tokens.

Additionally, it is ridiculous to expect WvWers to attain ascended gear through laurels alone, when PVErs have laurels, fractals, and guild missions at their disposal as viable avenues.

Never experienced this before April 30, it happens all the time with long falls. Even with some not long falls, I’ve died jumping off the cliff in front of the NW tower in WvW borderlands which is not consistent with the fall distance.

This keeps happening to me when I jump onto the wall to hit people down below. First I thought it was skill lag, but it’s pretty reproducible. Has to be related to getting stuck on siege and the horrible double falling.

Pinko.2076:

kickstarter: lower pop cap per server

They have done this before, and people were still experiencing lag in SMC battles.

Tearofsoul.9843:

The funny thing is NO ONE was complaining about AC pre-patch, I mean NO ONE.

So please, if it is working, DON’T try to “fix” it

There was actually a thread complaining about how the old arrow carts were too OP earlier this year, let alone any comments saying that they were too weak, so you’re wrong on all counts.

I like the OP’s timer suggestions.

DevonCarver.5370:

Luiz Swordbreaker.6547:

Thanks Devon! Are you guys considering changing the name tag on enemies to say just “JQ, SBI, FA + rank” etc? That would also really help with the clutter

We are tossing around ideas for this as well. We have not settled on a solution as of yet.

Please do this.

I agree that they will probably add a catapult mastery that increases range, but if that was their plan, they should have rolled it out along with the arrow cart range increase for balancing purposes.

Arrow carts also need to not hit through doors when aimed at their backside and/or do a lot less damage against siege in general.

Also, you guys are thinking too small. Just imagine how glorious oil mastery will be.

People have been complaining about zergs and PvD since day 1. Predictably, when ANet does something about this, people just complain harder. Comically enough, just a few days ago there was outrage about swirling winds nerf and how it would make defending harder.

Guess what guys, now you need more coordination when attacking. You can’t just ignore ACs on the wall, what a horrible turn of events this is!

lordkrall.7241:

Aneu.1748:

Arenanet really screwed up with this patch they are about to lose a huge amount of players.

You mean just like after every single patch they ever released in this game? (or GW1 for that matter)

*You mean just like after ever single patch anyone ever released for any MMO?

Ragnar.4257:

I approve of this change in theory, but it should have come at the same time as an end to the bollocks that is tower to tower trebbing, particularly garrison -> bay and SM -> friggineverything

If the enemy has a treb, you should have to go, and should be able to go, and kill it.

So break into SM and kill it? The 2 servers who don’t own SM shouldn’t let the 1 that does treb their towers with impunity.

Armor Master [Armorsmith] sells 6 different level 80 exotic sets. Armor Trader [Armorsmith] sells level 70 Invader armor only. On the enemy BL, the Armor Master was on the left side while the trio of NPCs was on the right side.

I’d rather have damage numbers on screen (not just log) when you hit someone in stealth than revealed on everyone that comes out of stealth.

Can’t say I often lose or win by a small margin (only time it matters), and even when it happens I have no way of knowing whether my opponent had ascended gear or not.

Maybe when ascended weapons and full gear sets are available this will change.

EndPoint.1024:

I think you’re a month too late….read this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Willing-to-share-WvW-details about siege despawning…

Don’t believe everything you read. All siege despawning after 30 minutes is flat out wrong. Anyone who spends any appreciable time in WvW can observe this.

Rashagal.5867:

Vayra.3290:

Visiroth.5914:

covenn.7165:

Fizzlepip.5218:

Kitten. Which one am I missing? Warriors can enter but generally die soon after. Plus they can be killed while in Vengeance.

They don’t always die soon after…… and if the get up and through a portal where nobody is hitting them. Sure you can immobilize him like an ele Of course a downed ele doesn’t have the option of getting back him and kicking your kitten in either. Heh

If a Warrior runs in without killing anything he’ll just die when Vengeance wears off…?

And? He can still be ressed. It takes a few seconds longer than ressing the ele, but the end result is the same.

The end result is markedly different in that the player is defeated and drops loot for the killer, and incurs a repair cost to the defeated.

Exactly.

nglcpyro.4906:

In that case I’d instantly pop Mist Form (the cantrip), and play it super safe. If it happens again, THEN I’d have to vapour no matter what which I think was the real point of it, not as an easy get out of jail for playing outside your limits. I’d also be facepalming how I fell for the same trick twice. Well played

Didn’t they change it so vapor form shares a cooldown with mist form so you can’t do that anymore?

Do you guys not check on towers/keeps when you see white swords up?

covenn.7165:

Fizzlepip.5218:

Kitten. Which one am I missing? Warriors can enter but generally die soon after. Plus they can be killed while in Vengeance.

They don’t always die soon after…… and if the get up and through a portal where nobody is hitting them. Sure you can immobilize him like an ele Of course a downed ele doesn’t have the option of getting back him and kicking your kitten in either. Heh

If a Warrior runs in without killing anything he’ll just die when Vengeance wears off…?

nglcpyro.4906:

As far as I can tell and heard, it’s mostly bad ele’s who use it like this. I can’t think of a situation where I’d deliberately fight just outside safety when I can just bombard from inside with a Staff.

You are on the wall with a Staff and get pulled down.

At least they don’t get healed back up to 50% HP when they use it anymore.

Advent.6193:

If I were to guess, the whole reason servers/bandwidth/game engine were arguably
skimped on is because of this reality. Most corps assume a lower sales number
than they end up getting.

Most companies overestimate how well their MMOs will do. Star Wars Galaxies, Hellgate London, Age of Conan, Aion, Warhammer, APB, FF14, SWTOR, Secret World all games that were expected to have better sales and/or sustained players. I’m sure more can be added to this list. Maybe the only recent MMO from the last few years to have realistic expectations was Rift.

CHIPS.6018:

But where are their resources being used on? NC Soft aren’t making any other title that I even heard of. Tell them to send over a few programmers to help out. The GW franchise is their most successful franchise in North America by far. Surely they should put in more resources to make sure it remains successful.

Lineage 3? Continued work on older games like L1, L2, and Aion? Unannounced projects? They’re not going to keep people on the payroll if they aren’t expecting to use them.

GW2 made the most money for NC Soft globally in each of the two fiscal quarters its been out out of any of their games.

Ungood.3054:

Sergo.2867:

This has been a great matchup for me on Tarnished Coast. Great fights everywhere I turn.

I would imagine, and it great to hear that you have having wonderful fights.

Did you guys realize that over the course of the last month you have totally changed all your opppnets. (Tarnished Coast)

Have a Look.
This week -
You faced – Blackgate and Kaineng
3rd Place – yah you got served at 145.

last week – Week 5 –
You faced – Blackgate and Fort Aspenwood
2nd place – You scored 179

Week 4 –
You faced – Santum Rail and Stormbluff.
Took 2nd – with a score of 111

Week 3 –
You faced – Santum Rail and Stormbluff
Took 2nd – With a Score of 174

Week 2 -
You faced – Santum Rail and Stormbluff
Took 2nd – With a score of 186

You know what I noticed. You your server was doing progressively worse from week 2 to week 4, facing the same opponent that crushed you, week in and week out.

So while maybe you can say you were having fun, it’s pretty clear your server as a whole was not.

Also notice – Week 5, new fight, new worlds, you scored a Staggering 179 Points, a far jump from the 111 of the week before, even if you took 2nd again.

At this point it’s pretty safe to assume that new worlds to face brought new vitality to the fight. You did better against Kaineng and Blackgate (which had come down from Tier 1) then you were doing against Sanctum rail by the end of your 3rd week.

So spare me this “Oh love of the fight” line, your server was giving up, and the numbers showed it, New faces brought new vitality and you fought again. That is what the numbers show.

So yah. Tarnished Coast and Stormbluff Isle, are great example sof how this system not only works but also due to maintaining unbalanced matches crushes a worlds spirit to even go out on the field anymore.

By Week 3 against Sanctum Rail, Stormbluff scored a 42, of what was once a 168 when they first met, you can see they just gave up.

Does that mean they don’t want to fight? hardly, they scored a 152 the following week upon Transfer away from Santum Rail, still taking 3rd, but showing much more fight.

So yah. Numbers don’t lie. This system is bad for everyone. Tarnished Coast, was just lucky to get new blood to fight thanks to Kaineng’s rising, as you can see by the continual decline in your performance numbers, you were well on your way to succumbing to being demoralized by being locked against an Oppont you never should have been facing, and eventually you would have just lost the will to even keep trying, or the people to make a diffidence as they jumped ship. Which is what I theorize happened to Stormbluff, they took a population crash thanks to messed up system that locked people into feeling dead ended in blowout tiers, where they can’t win.

But hey, Maybe you were enjoying the decent, and losing, your sever as a whole was not, and the numbers prove that.

The scores look like that because SBI was hemorrhaging players back when they were in T1, and continued to do so once they were in T2. You can see that SBI has been in free fall, this isn’t speculation. Back at the end of days on SBI there were barely queues even on Fridays.

Kilrain Daggerspine.6843:

John Smith.4610:

I have to make the argument that your deals are coming at the expense of another player. You are arguing against market efficiency because you want to exploit other people easier, I don’t agree that’s a positive goal for the game overall (though I make no judgement about personal goals).

I would hardly consider it exploiting other players, that player would have the same possibility to learn prices as anyone else, not to mention those opportunities would also be open to him.

You want to use someone for your own personal gain. That is the definition of exploiting someone.

Vodka.3958:

With the February patch coming up, A-Net has announced that should fix the Que somewhat

I got the distinct impression that was planned “for the future.” As in, not in the WvW patch which is delayed till March.

GottFaust.5297:

After some heavy testing I managed to replicate Humanpony’s claim of the hung process. The sad part is that it was only once and I couldn’t get it to happen again. I did sniff around a bit with wireshark and it appears to be pinging what I guess is the login server, but not the ip of my server (Gates of Madness) or the eternal battlegrounds. I can’t draw any concrete conclusions from this info. Did anyone else manage to test it and have more luck?

The process has remained running for me 100% when I exit the game. This has also been reported by others since the Jan 28th patch: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/GW2-exe-process-not-terminating-on-close-Merged

According to Resource Monitor, there is no network activity coming from gw2.exe hours after I have exited the game.

As for logged out party members still showing on the map, this has been in the game since day 1, it is not a WvW exclusive issue. I don’t know if it was ever fixed, but it used to happen in PVE maps.

Ruprect.7260:

Why did only a few of us have the outmanned buff and not everyone? Are only some of us outmanned?

It has been this way for months, probably since launch.

Hackuuna.4085:

Culling has two parts: location reporting and rendering. Allied location within a certain radius can be culled if the culling mechanism says that the number of enemies nearby are closer and more worthy of location reporting than the allies.

Enemy and ally culling are handled independently now.

Habib Loew.6239:

This update allows the culling system to handle allies and enemies separately so that being surrounded by a group of allies will not impact the culling of enemies (and vice-versa).

Genev.2450:

“Aggressively culled allied players” does not mean you can’t see people on the minimap anymore, and it only really should happen when you’re in large encounters or very large zergs – not when you’re running around on your own or in very small groups trying to find out where other people are, as people have reported doing.

It should mean exactly that. Culling determines which players the server itself reports to you, the client. If your client is unaware of certain allied players, it doesn’t know they exist. Therefore, it can’t draw a dot on the minimap for these players.

The affinity culling system that they are using now does not aggressively render allies. According to ANet, enemies and allies are on entirely different lists which are independent. Habib has posted on these forums explaining this, and further explicitly stated that the maximum number of allies you can see is half of what it used to be.

As to the OP’s theory, he continually ignores reports of there being queues while a server has the outmanned buff, or of reports of people entering a queue when others ahead of and behind him enter the map with no queue. This should be enough to debunk that culling is responsible, though it could partly be attributed to people counting allies.

When you’re running in zerg, it’s quite easy to spot whether you’ve reached the culling limit as players pop in and out. Based on the ability of your team to defend or attack, you can also estimate whether your numbers are similar to the enemy. I’ve been in lengthy queues, entered a map where it seemed like we had 30 people max, and our performance reflected that. Unless we had 130 people hiding in the jumping puzzle…

People are requesting the new math for ratings when it potentially hasn’t even been finalized yet. This is beyond silly.

MikeFerguson.8921:

As many of you know, it is possible for someone to queue up for a map after you and get in first. We’re trying to get that fixed as soon as possible but unfortunately we still need a bit more time to solve the problem. We will definitely keep you updated when there is any news on our progress.

I’m pretty sure this is still happening . Tonight a guildmate queued for WvW, followed by a second guildmate for the same map. The second guildmate got in WvW first, and commented how it was strange he beat the first guy in.

mjharrison.3209:

Visiroth.5914:

mjharrison.3209:

crouze.3078:

Culling = server calculating what you will see and then send you the data.
pro: you can play with a worse internet connection / GPU.
con: calculating needs time and you have to wait longer for the data.

No. Culling = client – server comms are capped to a specific amount (5KB/sec), which means if there is a sudden spike in the amount of data required to be sent (such as 30 players from each side clashing at high speed or portalling in), then then server only sends as much entity information as will fit in that 5KB/sec, which in practise means delays in receiving player model/position updates.

I don’t know where you’re getting this number from, but in large fight I’m getting network utilization of 0.15-0.20+% on a 100Mbps link. That’s 0.15Mbps or 150Kb/sec. This is a far larger number than the 40Kb/sec you are claiming is the maximum.

The actual number doesn’t really matter, the point is, it’s capped, and culling occurs when entity property update payload exceeds capped bandwidth.

I assure you the number is not 150KB/sec however. That would be > the bandwidth of a T5 line with 5K clients connected… Typical numbers for MMOs are in the lowish single-double digits KB/sec (ie: 5-50KB/sec). FYI you need to look at process-specific bandwidth, not system bandwidth, specifically UDP traffic.

I said 150Kb, not 150KB. which is why I converted your 5KB/s into 40Kb/s as comparison. FYI my system network utilization before launching GW2 was 0%.

Looking at the individual process bandwidth yielded similar results. The bandwidth peaked even higher at a tower fight. It also showed that my ping to their datacenter is absolutely horrible @ 250ms. How is this possible for a US server…

Ned Stark.9356:

IndigoSundown.5419:

For those anticipating NWO, I wish you well. However, NWO will be a Perfect World F2P game, complete with P2W and gamble boxes coming out of your characters’ ears. If that floats your boat, then more power to you.

Same with GW2. Only difference? I was dumb enough to pay 35 bucks for what I couldve done for free.

The difference is the gamble boxes in PW games have actual progression items in them, they aren’t just cosmetic. Not to mention the cash shops are total P2W. GW2 is not P2W, you don’t need anything out of the cash shop to play.

Czar Peter.7961:

I’m still waiting on ANet to make good on their promise to make ascended items available in WvW; the current laurel system is completely inadequate. Adding a huge incentive for players to log in daily or be left behind is one of the oldest tricks in the MMO book. ANet can fix this by making laurels purchasable through karma and badges of honor.

They said that this was coming in Feb.

Seera.5916:

And how is ANet supposed to know yours isn’t one of them? I’d imagine they’re trying username and passwords, one by one, with some variations on passwords until they run into the lock out. If they hit the lock out, move on to the next one in the list.

Yes, it stinks that they feel this is the best course of action. But I don’t blame them for doing it. Reduces number of tickets they’ll receive due to the hacked database causing stolen accounts. Which means CS can spend more time on more important matters.

First of all, I thought the problem was originally that there was a list of usernames + passwords that was floating around from compromised sites. It should be trivial to flag accounts based on this.

Secondly, they could compare our hashed passwords in their databases with the hashes of the blacklist passwords? Considering that this is from September such a comparison program would have finished long before now. Forcing us all to change passwords 4 months later isn’t the best way to protect our security or lighten CS’s workload. If that was their goal, they should have done it in October, or even September.

mjharrison.3209:

crouze.3078:

Culling = server calculating what you will see and then send you the data.
pro: you can play with a worse internet connection / GPU.
con: calculating needs time and you have to wait longer for the data.

No. Culling = client – server comms are capped to a specific amount (5KB/sec), which means if there is a sudden spike in the amount of data required to be sent (such as 30 players from each side clashing at high speed or portalling in), then then server only sends as much entity information as will fit in that 5KB/sec, which in practise means delays in receiving player model/position updates.

I don’t know where you’re getting this number from, but in large fight I’m getting network utilization of 0.15-0.20+% on a 100Mbps link. That’s 0.15Mbps or 150Kb/sec. This is a far larger number than the 40Kb/sec you are claiming is the maximum.

foofad.5162:

Downed is not the problem. Battle rezzing is.

They’re both a problem IMO, but battle ressing is the larger problem of the two.

I think they really need to add some kind of debuff to people who have been revived, an HP debuff with maybe a stat decrease as well. Same with coming back from being downed.

Right now there is just no way to thin a zerg because everyone gets ressed too fast.

MRA.4758:

ANet would be the first company to build a multi million dollar product without doing some market research first. Although I don’t know the answers to your questions, I would guess that somebody at ANet has some pretty substantial numbers on what players tend to like and dislikle.

~MRA

EA dumped 200-300 million on launching TOR and its post-launch performance was disappointing to them. Or how about TSW that couldn’t even meet sales expectations? FF14 delayed subscription fees for over a year because of horrible reception. Getting accurate market research and following it can’t be as easy as it sounds.

Seera.5916:

You only have to change it if you made this password BEFORE they first announced the password blacklisting.

I’d imagine we’ll only be forced to change passwords again if another major MMO or MMO community database gets their password database hacked. I doubt it’s anything they’ll do regularly.

What makes absolutely no sense is they are requiring everyone to change their passwords, regardless of whether or not those passwords are on the blacklist. If my password is not on the blist then it’s secure…I don’t want to come up with yet another unique password, this one is already original.

Regarding brute forcing, I’ve always thought those “time to crack” durations are bogus when dealing with online services that handle authentication. Last I checked you can’t attempt a log-in for GW2 thousands or hundreds of times a second. I’d assume after X failed tries the system would also lock you out.

Is this still bugged?

Spitjaw.2987:

For me new system is like..10 million times better.
And no..i am not running in zergs.
Also…thiefs are insta rendered now as soon as they start attacking out of stealth.

ALSO..this is just my personal experience.
Love those changes.

This has also been my experience. Thieves are no longer stealthed for 5+ seconds. I also see more enemies when there’s a group, though not all.

Some people seem to be making the assumption that the tiered matchups always feature 3 servers of relatively equal coverage. In T2, the top server is usually a T1 caliber server that is vying to get (back into in some cases) T1. In the early days, SBI or IOJ might be in T2, then move up to T1. Then we had BG, then SOS, then BG again. Now it’s SOR and so far it looks like they’ll move up and SOS will move back down. Short of SOS catastrophically melting down I predict they will win T2 next week.

MRA.4758:

SteepledHat.1345:

But how do you sort legitimate trades from gold sellers moving gold or players shifting funds.

They can utilize pattern recognition techniques to sort out malicious from legitimate actions. If they have enough data, the observed features of these actions should be significantly different. You should keep in mind that gold sellers, to be a business, have to repeat certain activities over and over again to do their “trade”. This is very distinct from a legit player that occasionally shifts funds.

~MRA

I hope you realize legitimate guild leaders of WvW guilds have been banned with a false positive of being gold sellers. These people had to send in tickets to get the ban reversed. So no, ANet’s process of determining a real player from an RMT is far less than perfect.

Aye.8392:

There seem to be some bugs in the respawn. Sometimes you can kill a monster and it immediately respawns — as if the timer start is tied to the point that the mob came into the world instead of to the time it died and the respawn time has already elapsed. As soon as the monster dies it is replaced. If you kill the creature again there is usually a reprieve, but there are many times when mob death seems to immediately trigger respawn. I don’t have video recording or I would try to get you some footage, but it definitely does happen.

I’ve noticed the exact same thing happen.

There’s also a bug (maybe similarly rooted) with WvW breakout events where the breakout starts as expected some 20-30 minutes after your side holds no towers, progresses and you capture the tower, then the breakout NPC will be back in your spawn ready to start another breakout for some reason.

Rukia.4802:

maybe even enrage timers, no wp zerg rushing should be allowed in ANY dungeon.

Please no enrage timers. This is one of the lamest ways to enforce “difficulty” imaginable.

I also don’t see why other people care so much if some PUGs use zombie tactics to tackle content or not. Presumably you don’t do it, or need to. Why does it matter that other people do or not?