Guild Wars 2

Jim Hunter.6821:

DBL turned out bad for participation because people hated the map and quit playing it after the first hour. No one I knew even showed up for the second test.

Well, I was only there for the first couple hours in the first test, had other plans for rest of the time it was up so I don’t know how the rest went, but I did see quite a few “real wvw” guilds in there. But the second test was a failure because they also failed to properly inform players from the first test that they were still in the test, no emails were sent to them, only new invites. Not like the map had any significant changes to make anyone want to go back and try it either.

But gais, the real wvw gais who quit 2 years ago didn’t get to vote on keeping the dbl, it’s the pve gais in wvw now who voted, the results were not legit, if it’s not too legit you must acquit.

TheGrimm.5624:

They were also asking for terrain that favored havoc over zerg and maps that required players to break into smaller groups to cover. And they were asking for more vertical maps, even if not in the sense that DBL delivered.

We do agree, more maps though mean more options and keeps the game fresher which will retain people.

They went overboard on what players were asking for. More chokes probably would have been ok, but larger map to force groups to break up while making it a pain for everyone else? while making structures more worthless? gimmicks galore all over to tie in with HoT that no one wanted, giant laser in the middle that was a lag failure.

I want new maps, but geez, maps designed for wvw like the originals not the HoT adventure bullfrog.

TheGrimm.5624:

Do hope that a third map is under way. As stated before in an ideal world would love to see 2 additional maps per year added and then they could be rotated weekly or some how linked.

It’s most likely not, and won’t be until it’s selected as the priority choice, which won’t be until we get the next priority poll after the scoring changes are done. Also keep in mind, if they go into developing another map and your expectations is 2 per year, expect no other developments from wvw. Eotm took over a year to develop, I expect dbl took almost just as long.

TheGrimm.5624:

They can test a new map in tandem. There are enough people that enjoy EoTM as is that it wouldn’t make sense to disrupt EoTM players game play if this is for the BLs.

Besides based on forum posters there are different people that EoTM so wouldn’t you want BLers testing instead? ANet has shown with the mixed borderlands that they can add mixed maps. That said we also saw where limited testing did not meet various players expectations so how can you expect good tests without full player base access.

Dunno why anyone would want eotm to be a testing bed either, when it’s constantly labelled as “not the real wvw”, players who went in there just to level, so wvw alts, karma trainers, and pve players… that’s who we want to testing and giving input on new maps? They also tried testing dbl on it’s own in beta, and that turned out bad for participation.

If you take out aoes the zergs/blobs will become even more powerful and unstoppable with the boon sharing meta in place. Elementalist already seeing their roles reduced as most commanders want more guardians, revenants, necros to play/deal with the meta.

Condition is powerful in the smaller group settings, for zergs they are pointless because of the amount of cleanse and resistance going around.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Xenesis.6389:

A flat grassland with 3 towers (just straight stairs leading to a room with no walls, when you capture the tower you get a cookie). Done!

Projectiles would still be obstructed 50% of the time….

I’ll have them trim the grass before every match.

Server population status gets updated like once a week.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World#List_of_worlds

Paavotar.3971:

Xenesis.6389:

A flat grassland with 3 towers (just straight stairs leading to a room with no walls, when you capture the tower you get a cookie). Done!

Remember that the towers shouldn’t give any PPT or any other buff, or any meaningful thing that could matter in the context of the match up. Oh and no guards and lord either.

I forgot to mention it’s a chocolate chip cookie, which you find in a box in lords room unguarded.

What’s your version of population re-adjustment?
Or did you mean links? which case in 2 months.

A flat grassland with 3 towers (just straight stairs leading to a room with no walls, when you capture the tower you get a cookie). Done!

You can have a 3rd borderland when everyone accepts the second one…. :P

Diku.2546:

For Full details

For a Better Long Term Solution to WvW – Google Search – wvg world vs globes

Geez dude, you gonna spam that in every single population thread that comes up? make your own thread and bump it.

Xillllix.3485:

Turamarth.3248:

Xillllix.3485:

They promised the Orbs would be back as well, never happened.

Do you have a source for that?
The patchnotes for the removal said
“Orbs or some similar mechanic may return in the future, but only if we’re confident that they won’t create similar issues.”
The posts from Devon Carver also all said pretty much the same thing.

2 years ago on this forum, WvW lead said it would come back. Lost the thread.

It did, as the ruins… for the same bloodlust buiff, which means they couldn’t counter the fly hacking.

mordran.4750:

Anet created an environment that is highly exploitable. Players will always

a) choose the easiest way possible
b) don´t give a kitten about population balance because of a)

This is, has been and will always be forseeable. So Anet has the responibility to create a as much as possible balanced environment for everybody, hands down. They horribly failed to do that. On my server people are simply tired of getting roflstomped constantly fighting against 2 linked servers while being the only one not linked for language reasons. So people simply don´t log in to wvw anymore, if that´s the whole point of that, congratulations to the Anet geniuses, mission accomplished.

You can make an environment with no transfers ever, but a) and b) will still exist, it has in any multi faction pvp game. There will always be 2nd accounts to get around everything, more so when they’re free.

They can go make 3 faction groups and we’ll still get people in here complaining about bandwagons to green , why is no one on red blah blah blah. You get roflstomped by a linked server, hey guess what that was happening even before links, hell it happens in eotm.

Population imbalance will always exist in a large open pvp areas like wvw, the only way around it is to run smaller instances like battlegrounds. What they needed to do was design wvw fighting for something else other than points, points which is dictated by the biggest population and best coverage, the system was broken from day one. In every competitive game that requires you to score points to win, the sides are always equal, just look at any sport for this.

The players are just as responsible for the imbalance especially when you have entire guilds pick up and leave with allies to other servers, they create the vacuums. But they leave for a purpose, to find a better environment for themselves, whether that’s finding better enemies or finding better allies and getting away from their previous allies who have become toxic(yes it happens and also the other way around). That’s all player created.

mordran.4750:

and Anet made it possible. It is without doubt their responsibility

Meh Anet gave us options, players took advantage of it for their own personal greed and need to win. Even if Anet had come down with heavy handed restrictions for populations, we would abuse it and of course complain to them about that too.

vana.5467:

Swagger.1459:

This game just started to evolve in a healthy way with all HoT related stuff and I much prefer the devs continue down this path.

My face when..

Can I borrow that reaction, felt the same way when I read that.. like seriously… wow.

Funny responses.

Just about every thief build is classified as one a trick pony.

“D/D signets..”
“naw man 2 years old”
“15k backstab?”
“naw man others stronker use invul”
“from stealth?”
“naw man use stealth traps”
“didn’t have time”
“nah man just aoe 1 shot squish ded”
“but evades?”
“naw man wait till he stops jumping around”
“now what if trap build?”
“naw man just run the other way”
“but bow..”
“naw man run when he bow other way”
“what about condi”
“naw man run all condi removal”
“but that means I have to sacrifice skills”
“naw man 1 shot squish ded rememer?”
“but dire?”
“naw man still 1 shot squish ded”
“ok so I should run dire, condi bombs, aoes, condi removals, stealth traps, invuls, meta class?”
“naw man dey two of them now, just run”
“well… beep…”
“wait wait wait I have a blink”
“naw man just put head beteen knees and wait fer dey face plant”

DeceiverX.8361:

snip

tldr I’m a baddie, everything is fine. – usual thief response.

Have fun then

I didn’t even have time to react to the gank, like I said I didn’t even get a chance to push any of my 3 oh beep buttons. Steal, cloak and dagger, backstab, done. I wasn’t exactly prepared for a quick gank since I was watching a zerg on zerg fight below from the mini cliff at nwt. I’ve already checked on the signet build and can see it having 100% crit uptime with quickness and enough passive bonus damage to blow up someone.

That type of thing was possible in the old days for certain sacrifices, today it’s more than possible with the trait changes and hot additions. Even if I did hit my oh beep buttons I was going to be dead anyways. And yes the point is, damage has increased too much all around, too many passive traits that can break the system, stat combinations that make reaching certain stat caps even easier.

I put up that screenshot cause it happened last night and thought it was funny as this discussion was going on, same thief got a mesmer friend the same way, I’m sure he got his fair share of unsuspecting victims last night while jumping back to the safety of his zerg. I know it’s possible on other classes like mesmers and warriors etc.

Overall, combat is a lot less fun than it use to be, if I wanted to be killed like in a fps shooter I’d be playing overwatch not gw2.

Akkeros.1675:

Jana.6831:

Isn’t it one month?

I believe it was voted that way, changed to 2, and then when we complain we are told we voted that way

A lot of the votes actually went for 1 month and 3 months, with some to 2 months and less to 4+ months. Since most players wanted 1 and 3 so they compromised with 2. It wasn’t a “majority vote” for one option.

Jana.6831:

Running a full zerker ele has got its difficulties.
I can make you screenshot with equally high or higher damage from all other classes.

That’s the point, combat balance is out of whack since the changes. One reason is obviously because they wanted more fast action combat for spvp, hence why they nerfed the bunker builds.

My ele runs 1582 toughness, but dead in 3 hits I didn’t even get a chance to hit my 3 oh beep buttons, I might as well be running 1000 toughness. I was dead so fast my first thoughts were, yeah someone is using a macro, not, kitten that guy had skillz.

I don’t know what anet considers balance, but a stealth skill that hits for 7800? almost half the health of an ele? Yeah whatever, I’ve already seen the light, they won’t make any changes to stuff brought on by the expansion, there’s no hope for any semblance of balance. I’ve accepted that.

Down to play one night a week again, not sure why I even bother playing reset night either.

Pfft dunno why people complaining, game looks balanced.
Also thief needs a buff please, stealth skill should be hitting harder.
Thank you.

Combat was like the one big foundation of this game. When players leave for another game the usual excuse as to their return is, they missed the combat it’s much more enjoyable. Then they decided to change things with the trait changes last year and the elite specs and conditions given more power to be viable, then more boons were handed out to compensate for that.

But meh I’ve accepted they will only balance this game to their precious 5 man arena mode, not that they can even balance that mode either, but at least things were more enjoyable, for the most part, before june of last year.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Xenesis.6389:

You yaks bend people need to take a chill pill or something.
Up to tier 2 servers have links, YB will certainly get one too.
Relax, relinks happening on friday.

OP is on BG.

Then why is he in here complaining about links and using YB as an example? they’re not the only server with problems. Relinks are on a 2 month schedule voted on months ago, most of the votes went for 1-3 months so they settled on 2. Dev posted last week it was happening this friday not on tuesday, yet here we are people asking why it wasn’t done on tuesday.

And if anyone comes in here with the excuse well “I don’t read the forums, don’t know what’s been happening”, if you’re going to use the forums, then at least read the dev post which is still on the first page.

Also YB can’t compete with t2 servers which all have link servers with them, why would they leave YB without a link unless they want to be cruel and leave them in t3 by themselves?

You yaks bend people need to take a chill pill or something.
Up to tier 2 servers have links, YB will certainly get one too.
Relax, relinks happening on friday.

Jayne.9251:

Xenesis.6389:

Big
Giant
>Colosseum<
In The
Middle

Nope. Big giant 100-step tower with a WP at top, and broken, open walls along the way up.

Although I like this idea too as it would encourage community/sport.

/shrug

Whichever, wvw is done at this point. They ran off a good portion of the playerbase with the expansion and there’s no getting them back, unless they have a time machine they can dust off in the basement.

Their main focus is the next expansion, so I don’t expect much in the future to help grow this mode.

Big
Giant
>Colosseum<
In The
Middle

All they really did was moved the cost out from the structures and into the guildhalls and scribing. Just another thing that screwed over small guilds.

Also you don’t have to put in the upgrades/tactivators yourself, someone else can put them in from their own guild if it’s open.

Decorations for pve cost a lot, schematics for wvw cost a lot, not sure who got the better deal out of the guild hall money sink, maybe pve.

So speaking of links, I just noticed that wow has been doing it to their realms since 2013, here’s how they go about it.

They have realms permanently linked 2-5 servers.
When you see a person’s name it’s their name, title, guild name, followed by (*) for their realm name, if you hover your mouse over them you see their full realm name in the tooltips.
When they’re in chat you see the realm name next to their name, you don’t for those of your own realm.
You can do everything cross server as if it’s one big server, party, raid, guilds etc.

Obviously easier for wow to do this since everything in regards to pvp is instanced (arena and battlegrounds), and phased (like megaserver except they can phase content to your levels too). They’re currently running open world events that phase mobs difficulty to your own level while having like 100 people of different levels around you, the upcoming expansion also phases stuff to your level so you can do the new zones in any order.

Anyways it’s neat to see where they have taken their phasing and linking technology, hopefully anet plans on upgrading theirs especially to wvw side of things. When we talk about links and hard merges, permenant links is another option to take. Obviously they will need to do some work so that the identity of linked servers are not completely lost, or try and shift “server pride” to an “alliance pride”. Yesterday I was for Dragonbrand! today I’m for Eotm Green! j/k XD

Tumult.2578:

Where are the invitations and offers of help, of guilds offer to help. Where are the tips on gear, stats, weapons, traits, classes or anything designed to actually help and welcome new players.
It kind of seems like doing this means learning on your own by dying over and over because it is clear the goal is not loot, it’s to kill your opponent and by helping anyone, you help the opponent.

I suspect the game mode is not as bad as this makes it look.
My point is, where do we see the players effort to bring more players into this game mode?

Megaserver killed off a lot of the effort to get players into wvw, no central place like lion’s arch to call in reinforcements and recruitment, it’s a pain recruiting other than in wvw maps. There use to be lots of guilds around for training and learning wvw. HoT also helped killed wvw population, killed guilds, etc. Anet also never really properly supported the mode very much. The tournaments helped for recruitment I’m sure, but also helped burn wvw players out.

I was thinking of putting up a general tips and tricks thread like the stickies, but at this point of the game mode’s life, with little support from anet, with the population constantly bleeding, what’s the point? Guild’s usually have their own builds to use anyways, whether it’s custom or metabattle.

nyctalopia.4735:

when the changes to the guild system and to traits had clear rationales behind them and came in response to player feedback and consultation.

Did we ever even have a chance to give feedback on the current guild system with the guild halls? Guild halls spaces were previewed in beta but not the actually guild system. Pretty sure if it ever was shown to us in beta, we would have told them to turn around and march that grind back into development.

GW2 is p2w only in regards to PvP, as expansion accounts have an advantage over all other accounts with the elite specs (which is almost all cases are better), runes, sigils etc. If the expansion accounts were not in the same pool of players as all other accounts then it wouldn’t be considered p2w as that advantage wouldn’t exist.

People who buy expansions for other games usually have their expansion advantages moved to a higher section of the game(part of the reason for new levels), players who get higher levels and new spells etc get placed in their own brackets, not the case in gw2 since everyone is 80 and play in the same pool of players.

There is no p2w in regards to pve as far I can think of, there aren’t any paid for rewards that hold an advantage over other players, just convenience and cosmetic items. That section of the game is just pay to progress, like any other expansion for other mmo’s. You can pay for potion boost, but you can also get them for free too.

Dunno why people get so worked up over the labeling.

Why are people coming in here every week to complain about matchups? Do you not know how wvw works with glicko ratings? Anet doesn’t decide who goes where. TC got a good roll and DB got a bad roll which made them switch this week. Relax you’ll probably be back to t2 next week.

People still arguing that dbl killed wvw? cause as pointed out a million times, it wasn’t the only factor. The map hasn’t been in the game since like april and we’re still losing players. I’m sure we never got back the havoc guilds that were lost, and gvg has died off, plus spec balance is out of whack and no sign of it ever being anywhere near balanced with it in the hands of the spvp team, who only balance to that game mode and not everything else. Not to mention the whole condi vs boons direction combat has taken since the trait revamps and elite specs. /gag

He’s no longer Hardcore, he’s mostly casual now, farming for bloodstones last I heard.

Havoc groups definitely have a better time in t4, which is why my guild had moved there a year ago. So the question is, do players in t4 want it that way?, should anet move a couple of the link servers to t3 instead? Perhaps keep the old t7 t8 servers in current t4 and move the old mid tiers to t3?

JediSange.1645:

Xenesis.6389:

People need to accept that players will move to find better situations for themselves, a guild that wants to fight will have more opportunities to do so in t1 than they would in t4.

I would disagree with this — kind of. This week we were reliably beating larger groups because we can outplay people at T4. If your guild is good, you can win fights in T4 a lot easier than in T1. Even if you’re getting “zerged on”, a smaller, competent team will do better. So much of what I see in T1 is back capping. Yes, there are havok fights as well — But mostly back capping and a blob full of actual builds so it’s harder to zerg bust or for smaller groups to shine.

I don’t disagree that you can beat bigger groups with smaller groups in t4. It’s about the amount of opportunities to face those groups, it’s better in higher tiers. The two zerg busting guilds we had on Ehmry got bored after the first links because they just couldn’t find groups to fight, they had to move.

I think the biggest problem and question right now is Anet’s strategy for creating the links.

Are they trying to balance servers according to their tiers?
Do they plan to stay on this course?
Or are there plans to have a more general balance for all servers in the future?
Do they plan on keeping tiers separate with population and glicko walls?
Or do they want to bring servers closer together in the tiers next to them?

Are we the players happy with their “current strategy” for creating links according to their tiers? Would we prefer a different strategy? Such as creating balance between two tiers, t1 and t2 close to each other, t3 and t4 close to each other, maybe even make those tier pairings separate like a national and american league in baseball.

Most of the links are on the bottom tier right now, maybe they need to be more in the mid tiers instead? so leaving t1 as is with no links, using t4 as the low population tier good for roaming and small groups with no links or maybe just 1, using t2 and t3 as the rotating mid tier that has all the links, to go back to the old gold/silver/bronze ranks. Should link servers get some time as host servers?

Do we want them to eventually try and create population balance between all 12 servers/links? This requires a lot more time as they need the top servers to drop players for the rest of the servers to be able to reach them in population size even with links, or they can sort of expedite this process by folding t4 into t3.

The other problem is we have is many different players who are comfortable playing with different amounts of players. A lot like to blob, a lot like to zerg, some like to havoc, some like to roam. Not everyone cares for complete balance between all servers (it’s one of my dreams for wvw), frankly that will never happen without a complete reset of wvw and heavy restrictions, to make sure that balance can be maintained while players populate the servers.

Players moving are doing so to find the right amount of players for them to play with in their time zones. Players coming in here to complain about populations are doing so because they don’t want to move to find the right situation for themselves, they want anet to step in and balance the population around them according to their comfort levels, because of friends guild or server loyalty. In part that is Anet’s fault for doing poor links, such as the 4 linked monster in t4, or the old t8 servers shoved to t1 in the first links, which forced players into an uncomfortable situation.

People need to accept that players will move to find better situations for themselves, a guild that wants to fight will have more opportunities to do so in t1 than they would in t4. A havoc team that wants to take objectives without getting a blob on their heads will have more opportunity to do so in the lower tiers.

Players that seek a complete balance between between all servers, need to accept that it will never happen both because of rules in place my anet and by the players who are just seeking their own enjoyment in the game.

I think both the developer and player need to figure things out and get on the same page for links.

Not really a prediction when players have been bleeding out of wvw for years now. Only one event really saw a huge dip in active players for wvw in a very short period of time, and that was the release of the expansion which brought a lot of other problems not just the new map.

The other half dozen reasons it’s been dying

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Timeline-Situation-Explained

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Returning-player-Why-is-WvW-dead-anyway

Next Step: Relink
Timeline: Next Friday

Condi…
Stealth…
Thieves….
Condi thieves….

1. Probably wait until the relinks happen. Servers may be shuffled, unless you stick with a host server, I don’t expect any of t1 and t2 host servers to change.

2. As you go down the tiers you find groups will be smaller, if you don’t like running with t1 50 man blobs then try t2. There will always be zerg sized groups around 20-30 no matter the tier, but less frequent in the lower tiers, even t4 can have them just mostly in na primetime.

3. If your friends only played for 2 weeks and probably don’t have much on the account, they can delete all characters and get a free transfer(once per week) to another open server. I believe you keep your bank stuff, so you can save all the good stuff and get them after you make another character.

4. Free accounts is another option, if anything you can use it to scout servers, just note you cannot move this account from the server you pick until it’s upgraded in which case you will receive a free transfer.

5. My guild was the same size and we moved over a year ago from t2 to t4 and we were much more effective in those lower population tiers (we didn’t have a zerg responding to us every time but it still did happen). t4 today may be the same size as then, but with the 4 link mishap it kinda ruined the tier. So again maybe wait for the relinks (which we expect will happen next friday) if you want to move down to tier 3 and 4.

As mentioned, the point of a 3 way matchup is to have 2 teams put pressure on the top team, because in a 1v1 one side can overwhelm the other side to submission and that side disappears for the week. Not to say that’s doesn’t happen right not, but just think without a 3rd team to take the focus off your team it could be much much worse.

Unfortunately with the way the mechanics are, there’s no reason for teams to go after the top team, There’s no way to slow their points, or steal points from them by attacking them directly, instead both the 1st and 2nd teams focus on the 3rd place team in order to try and stop the 3rd place team from giving free points to each other.

Yes we’ve seen servers outright do 2v1’s, but they never last, all it takes is one pug commander to wander into the wrong area to take a tower and all bets go off. The one and only time it did work for weeks was when JQ and TC decided to gang up on BG for a season, both sides knew if they didn’t do something they wouldn’t be able to beat bg’s population and coverage at the time.

The 3 way in wvw never worked the way it was suppose to, because anet never put in the proper mechanics to allow it to function like it should, they set it up to feed on the weak from the start, and provide more momentum to the winners (orb bloodlust buffs).

Sylvyn.4750:

The Quad server is more T3 by sheer population/coverage rather than T4, though.

Well yeah combined they are closer to t3, but by themselves they’re all t4, they wouldn’t replace any of the current t3 servers as a host.

YB SoS SBI are all still t3 sized servers, even if YB doesn’t look like t3 to some, their celebrity commander has been missing who use to be able to pull big numbers around him and keep their ppt up, they’re still bigger than the other t4 servers.

Crystal Desert, Kaineng, Eredon Terrace, Borlis Pass, Sorrow’s Furnace, Ferguson’s Crossing, Gate of Madness, Darkhaven, Ehmry Bay are all t4 type servers that could be used as links to balance out t3. And maybe make t3 big enough to compete with t1 and t2.

It’s just a thought on a scenario that could have 3 competitive tiers, and not t1 rotating sometimes with t2, t3 forced to endure t4 servers, t4 forced to endure t3 server, mismatches and barely any fun thanks to poor links. But I know there are players who don’t want to be on t1 sized servers anyways.

Jeknar.6184:

Xenesis.6389:

I’m interested to know if you fold the t4 servers onto the t3 servers, how big would their population be? enough to compete with t1 servers?

No… Maybe the servers from the SF links, but Dh and EBay would at best make a T3 server be ‘competitive’ to T2.

Who said anything about only adding dh/eBay to their own link lol, we all know one of the 4 link should have been with them.

Tongku.5326:

Xenesis.6389:

Close t4 and link it with t3, I would be interested to see if they could compete with t2 or even t1 then. XD

Nope.

As you see the results from YB. YB doesn’t have a link and is doing fine, actually completely blowing out T4 while being somewhat balanced (minus timezone coverage gaps) for current T3.

YB isn’t a “t4” server, the 4 in the 4 link are though. I’m interested to know if you fold the t4 servers onto the t3 servers, how big would their population be? enough to compete with t1 servers?

I’m wondering if it’s better to try and build bigger t3 servers to compete with the top 6, would it be better to try and produce 9 servers for a better rotation between tiers instead of the walls that keep getting created between tiers.

I already know we’ll get complaints from players who want to play on emptier servers, but you know what, that eventually will happen anyways as we continue to lose players from wvw and gw2.

I wouldn’t be surprised if TC is hibernating just in time for the relinks. Hey even BG got themselves open for a week for transfers.

xzzx.7408:

What makes WvW awesome?

Don’t ask me. I’m stuck in the tier 4 slum.

You should come see the Imperial palace in tier one some time, we have got the latest in lag and one button for everything installed. Guest from three lands tend to drop in very frequently, and the lord is often entertaining them with his airship shows and snow makers (don’t mention this to him, but they tend to clug up and make ice shavings instead). Miyani is usually busy serving tea and crumpets, sometimes she has time for a private showing of legendaries from the mystic toilet, I mean forge, same thing…

We’re already passed the denial, anger, bargaining, depression phases, we’re on the acceptance phase, git with the program sir.

Close t4 and link it with t3, I would be interested to see if they could compete with t2 or even t1 then. XD