Guild Wars 2

Bad timing on the poll. Let’s see those scoring changes first, since the objective of server merges was to reduce the amount of lopsided matchups.

mcarswell.3768:

annoying environmental effects are one of the most hated features of DBL…you’re probably not going to get much support for that part of your idea.

Why is this? I enjoy not having to rely on zergs and doing my own thing. If my playing would benefit my side it would motivate me to continue playing. Capturing camps, sniping dolyaks, capturing shrines and so on. NPCs can play a role in delaying capturing and in scouting. Currently lack of scouting is one of the biggest problems in WvW.

Desert borderlands was good because it provided smaller goals for individual players, namely shrines. Most of the terrain was not fit for large-scale fights, but having terrain that ostensibly favours one side is key for defending. It could be as simple as having vantage point for ranged players or choke for wall skills and traps.

What pray tell could you mean by “VR”?

Problem with requiring 20 people to run a guild mission is that it would dramatically decrease participation to those missions. It’s hard enough to have 5 people online and willing to run some coordinated WvW for a while without breaks.

You must be one of the few who would pick up a MMO game for story. Have you tried some single player games?

Chris Cleary.8017:

The core issue here is we don’t want to have players feeling that their main source of income is generated while they are not at the computer. We have already started to see the impact of this in-game and within the community. Not only does this behavior impact players in the world when they run across a pack of unattended farmers, but also the players who are performing the unattended farming. Eventually these players spend less and less time actually playing the game, and more time unattended farming.

Isn’t that a natural consequence of seeing the game as some kind of loot machine? Instead of asking “how do I maximize my gains?” these afk farmers are asking “what’s the least effort I have to put into this?”. Two sides of the same efficiency coin. Seeing the game as loot machine is the kind of mindset that breaks the community. What you’re doing here is banning methods and changing rules, but those are just symptoms.

Chris Cleary.8017:

1) Using skill (1 or more) while AFK
2) AFKing in a place where it is beneficial for your character to be at
3) Unresponsive to interaction with GMs

If all 3 of these apply to what you are doing, you may get actioned for it.

May I have a comprehensive list of “places where it is beneficial for my character to be at”, so I don’t accidentally go to bathroom, answer phone or eat dinner while my character is sitting at those spots?

15 second loading screen doesn’t sound so good for SSD. I have regular HDD and my loading screen times were 20 seconds (loading character on map) and 17 seconds (moving to WvW borderland).

Torolan.5816:

To be fair, Anet was under no obligation to throw in a free character slot and to my knowledge never suggested that there would be a free slot.

If I was charging 45 bucks for expansion that included new profession and not have the courtesy to throw in character slot to create said character, I would be taking a gamble. The risk of this gamble is having tons of players who have their slots maxed, wondering if they should buy HoT, knowing that there’s no way around to create the new character without deleting old one and deciding against buying the expansion. Payout is them buying expansion and a new slot from gem store.

Anet took that gamble and it didn’t quite work out for them.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

^But, did ArenaNet make those statements, or was it NCSoft? Are the lessons learned (no such word as learnt) the same for publishers as they are for developers? Does ArenaNet even agree with the statements made by NCSoft?

Questions to mull over, perhaps?

ArenaNet is wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft. When you’re owned by something, you don’t have agency and you don’t get to make any decisions not permitted by your owner.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Adjust scoring to be relative to current activity and population (Large) is the Skirmish idea Tyler explained in this thread.

Oh I’ll have one of those, thank you.

Are you only going to implement one of the options? What Tyler Bearce said on opening post sounds great as a whole. It’s difficult to choose just one feature, because they’re tied together. I don’t quite understand this poll.

Unchecked yak score is biggest single contributor to large score discrepancies (option #6). This is caused by population differences during nightcapping (option #1) and makes recovering difficult (option #5). Putting focus on objective captures (option #2) would help this problem somewhat, since popular times would tick more. Changing tick to 5 minutes is convenience.

Ultimately it just comes down to this: does the scoring make sense or not?

Roxanne.6140:

Every server has their share of off peak players. I don’t think it is so simple as you put it.

We’re talking about individuals here. Not zergs or anything of the sort.

Take a look at some graphs:
http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/15/
Desolation has night-capping team that works 2:20 – 10:00. Evenings are hard-fought battles. Desolation wins the matchup by 90k points.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/9/
Kodash has no night-capping team but fights well during evening hours. Losing by 55k points.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/26/
Sunday May 8 Far Shiverpeaks overtook Riverside’s 8k score lead in just 4½ hours of uncontested PvD.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/13/
Look at this graph! Every time Baruch Bay peaks it’s 1 in the night and this domination continues because nobody will capture stuff back. Players are sleeping. 90k win to Baruch Bay.

I could go on and on, but the message is clear: bulk of points are made during night when theres just few individuals playing. It doesn’t matter what happens during prime time when there’s competition between the three servers.

Aeowia.7214:

“During prime time hours, the multiplier would always be at it’s maximum of 3”
Why would be that so called “prime time” treated differently, than the rest?!

Because they want to have equality for player time. One person in 60-man zerg during prime time contributes jack **** for score. Same person catapulting undefended keeps three in the morning would make their server win the matchup and create five thousand point difference in score. Been there, done that. It’s not fair way to give such power to players who play in different time periods. This is why score has to scale with general player activity.

I like most of the changes proposed, but there are a few problematic points:

1. Increasing rewards from player kills is risky. This will encourage forming big blobs of players and give huge advantage to servers who are able to do so, due to population difference. Personally I’d like to see fights centered around objectives, but if capturing a tower is worth the same as 2-3 player kills it’s not worth bothering.

2. “Last stand” – please no. This will create resentment in players who have worked score lead during week to have it washed away by friday players. If last day fights don’t matter in current system, then middle week fights don’t matter with Last Stand. You will reach the goal of comebacks naturally with other changes proposed. There’s no need to create arbitrary rules like this.

It doesn’t work with small player numbers and creates strange scoring scenarios.

Palador.2170:

Because food in the real world doesn’t work that way?

Yes it does. A python can eat prey size of deer and survive off it for weeks.

Infusion.7149:

Except thieves are much more glassy than mesmers or rangers (vitality wise) and have 900 range max. You also cannot compare a 1200 range weapon with a melee range one because the melee range should hit more often or harder to make it worthwhile to deal with kiting and CC.

Alright then, but OP was saying that all the classes have similar burst damage. Unload as a ranged skill still has 0.4*8/1.5=2.13 power coefficient and you can fire it three times in rapid succession before waiting for initiative to regenerate. It was a good skill before, but now Anet decided to give it stacking might also.

I haven’t done the calculations, but those who are worried about low vitality could even get themselves +vitality armor and still deal okay damage when compared to other classes. Health difference between thieves and rangers is 4277 health.

Thieves have such a fantastic damage multiplication from traits. Here’s what I have:

• +10% damage to foes with condition
• +20% damage to foes below 50% health
• +5% critical strike chance while above 90% health
• +7% critical strike chance when attacking from behind or side
• 4s fury when attacking enemy below 90% health
• +10% pistol damage to crippled foes, cripple on critical
• +10% critical damage to foes above 50% health
• +250 ferocity while you have fury
• Gain haste when flanking
• +1% … +15% more damage per initiative spent

Take a look at Mesmer’s trait list. My first thought when looking at it is I don’t need any of these.

Cooldown.3876:

dont come and say thiefs have the highest burst cause i see other classes doin the exact same thing

I thought my longbow ranger dealt pretty good damage in full berserker gear. Then switched over that gear to my thief. God almighty that damage! One Unload from dual pistols can kill normal PvE monsters just like that. I played it for a while in WvW and never have I seen enemy players fall so fast.

The coefficients are ridiculous. Thief dagger: (0.8+0.85+1.1)/1.68=1.63
Compare this to something like mesmer greatsword attacks: 0.945/1.4=0.675
oh the poor mesmer! Deals one third of thief’s damage when you take into account all damage multiplications from traits.

These are not the same. Thieves have invisibility, best movement in game from shortbow 5 and quite possibly the highest damage output. 12k backstabs. Only thing they don’t have is health.

They don’t have to nerf anything, just make it so that every time zone is equally valuable. Currently low-population timezones are magnitudes more valuable than popular timezones. This is how score can be fixed:

• Give points based on order of servers in tick and not tick itself (ordinal scoring)
• Remove points from dolyak arrivals
• Keep points from player kills
• Rework realm bonus thresholds to match the new values

Dolyaks are the biggest offender. They rack up tons of points if left unchecked. Ordinal scoring also encourages defending as much as it does attacking. Balanced matches become hectic fights over which server stays at the top. 5 point camp can make the difference between getting first place reward and second place reward.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Since it’s clear that this is a big concern for players, we’ll fix it.

Interesting response, because it sounds like you’re taking forum feedback as it is and seem to make no distinction between valid and invalid concerns like someone who has no experience of the game mode. Do you play Guild Wars 2 or WvW yourself? In your own words what do you like about it and what you don’t like about it?

dank.3680:

I had to watch 10 mins of your latest stream just to see. As suspected I found out your idea of “ton of fun” is a few 3v1 ganks and running halfway across the map at the mere sighting of any thing else.

That is the fun part. Unfairness and total domination of hapless opposition. That’s what causes blobs and that’s what discourages soloing. Server stacking and night capping are its manifestations. Sieging undefended objective at 3 in the morning because you know it’s going to make your server win. Make a deal with the devil.

When you think about it, it all boils down to this.

If I want balanced game that respects its players I go play chess.

Jethro.9376:

Personally i would love enemies not being just weak/defenseless sponges.

That’s more of a question of battle system in general, but slapping regen / protection / stability on trash mob is just going to slightly increase killing time for that mob and not make the fight any more interesting. Majority of the professions have no convenient way to deal with boons.

How difficult can it be to discuss skill balance without insulting other players? I don’t need to learn to play. I know what these skills do and how to counter them also. This is a topic discussing how to balance these skills so that their power is more in line with combat flow.

1. thief for single target
2. thief
3. warrior has highest hp/armor
4. mesmer and necromancer come to mind

Miku.6297:

I’m lost what do you mean makes them agro another target instead… first you are talking about PVP but that sounds more like PVE; most wvw stuff is PvD or PVP.

In WvW autoattacks often aggro neutral monsters when fighting stealth classes in open field.

Miku.6297:

Stealth is allready quite different from porting out and leaving the game, the stealthed player is still in the area, they are still hitable with area effect attacks, you can even mash 1 and hit them…

Problem is I don’t know that. Mesmer is near ledge and disappears. Did she use torch 4 and drop down ledge? Should I go check that? Maybe I should start frantically swinging my sword to thin air in case that Mesmer turned invisible and blinked on top of me. Maybe that Mesmer instead ported and I’m a fool for doing the above. In any case if she catches me off-guard I will die.

I’m not saying stealth is OP, it’s just not fun to play against and could be fixed.

Wall of Reflection
Summon a barrier of mystic power that reflects projectiles.
Duration: 10 seconds (12 seconds traited)
Combo field: light
Recharge: 40 seconds (32 seconds traited)

Not only does this skill completely negate all ranged damage, it reflects those attacks right back at their source. The wall also lasts absurdly long time. This skill is toxic, because as a ranged class there is nothing I can do about zerg guardians casting this skill and making my contributions to fight nonexistent.

Suggestions for balance:

• Reduce duration significantly (to 3-5 seconds). Look at how League of Legends handles its game balance. There are extremely powerful skills but they never last a long time, because fights in general are fast-paced and reactive. There’s nothing reactive about casting Wall of Reflection and sitting 12 long seconds behind it.

• Remove projectile reflect. Completely negating ranged damage is good enough, but why would it also have to make opponents kill themselves? Casters and ranged attackers are often “glass cannons” which makes this ability absurdly powerful.

• Increase cooldown to 120 seconds. Being the ultimate answer and hard counter to all ranged attacks, surely its cooldown should reflect the fact that it should be used sparingly and not spammed every time it comes off cooldown for 37.5% uptime!

Stealth
Turning invisible is pretty good ability. Only way turning invisible could be better is if it would also turn you invulnerable. It makes your opponent lose targeting and if they have autotargeting setting on, aggro another target instead. During stealth you have full privacy to position yourself properly, escape, waypoint out, prepare your skills and launch attacks on your foes. This is the kind of fantasy that’s half the appeal of thief class. Other half is instakilling enemies. However, playing against stealth is not very fun. Everyone has probably experienced thieves repeatedly turning invisible and jumping around the map while you’re left wondering what you should do about it.

Again League of Legends had a champion that could turn invisible and instantly kill enemies (Rengar). Turning invisible is Rengar’s ultimate ability and has rather long cooldown. There’s indicator (exclamation mark above character’s head) when Rengar is about it kill you. League also had the kind of hygiene to not allow people to just leave during games.

Suggestions:

• Add a marker when stealthed enemy is in certain radius around you.
• Differentiate stealth from porting out / leaving the game.
• Break stealth when player does significant actions such as launch attack or blink out.

however if players could farm from multiple guild halls have advantage of joining them could become problem stems from multi-guild ability that gives members material storage I think

I think kitten has a kitten. Kittens become very hard to understand when most of the kittens are replaced by kitten kittens. This is also patronizing kitten kittens. This way of kitten is also ignorant of how kitten use kitten. Most of the real kittens are kittens that get into kitten and cause you to become upset subtly.

Troll claiming is one of the best ways to semi-permanently put a knife in the gut of opposition. Imagine that every time they come to keep, they leave with 5 (or even 10) less supplies they could have if legitimate guild had claimed the objective.

Second best way is to build a bunch of useless siege right on top of supply depot or merchant and waste the objective’s supply that way.

Third way used to be to join your side commander’s guild and guest enemy world, following their commander and providing real-time info on their movements. Anet fixed that exploit.

Kanebrake.6192:

So much NOT this. A lot of people wanted new maps that were NOT like eotm and had less pve than alpine did. Then they gave us more pve in a map that was a lot like eotm. And that was only the beginning of the problems people had with desert bls. No one asked that the new map be filled with gimmicks, but that is what we got. So people legitimately complained because it was pretty much the opposite of what had been requested over the past 2.5-3 years.

What do people want then? Apparently the thing for many players is forming massive blobs of players and duking it out with another massive blob of players aka EB and EotM. Points are useless, caravans are useless, siege is useless for them. Personally I find no satisfaction in that type of playing. Either you run over enemies or they run over you.

What Anet did with desert borderlands is breath of fresh air. What if the environment supported small group playing? What if you could hide and avoid the blob? What if sentries marked enemies on the map? What about defeating big zergs using tactics?

I’m with Anet on this one. You’ve already got your blobbing maps. This map challenges individuals to intelligent playing and learning the tools of WvW.

vesica tempestas.1563:

in any other game you would pay a $15 a month sub, thats $180 a year. + expansions.

That’s a pretty strong assumption you’re making there, as if monthly fee is something players would obviously agree to pay. Plenty of great games cost nothing and provide good quality entertainment for years – take a look at Twitch directory of games for example.

Some companies have tried the scheme of monthly fee for games and vast majority of them have failed. Players have come in at release and played for some months before moving on the next thing. It’s not like companies can just release a half-baked game and start collecting rent. Competition is tough and they have to justify what exactly that 15 bucks per month gets for players that they haven’t experienced already. Server costs and yadda yadda is not our concern.

I was looking to get it for WvW and general PvE playing. Every bit of stats is helpful, but I don’t play fractals myself. I wish they would make a WvW version of this item with some +% guard damage like what regular WvW infusions have.

Versatile mighty infusion gives 5 power and 5 agony resistance. It can be put into defensive infusion slot in case you have no use for defensive stats on your character. Price of this infusion is quite high though: 100 passion flowers, 250 powerful bloods and 50 mystic coins which totals 250 gold with market rate.

Is 250 gold a fair price for 5 extra power?

Tyeme.6589:

I just voted on the WvW poll and saw the reduce impact of night capping. So I guess we’re going to marginalize the contributions of WvW players who don’t play during “primetime”. They don’t play within the prescribed timeframe, they are not worth as much.

No. Easy way to balance this would be to separate score gain from points. Server with highest points per tick gets 100 score, second highest 70 score and lowest 50 score, or something like that. That way every timezone is equally valuable. What happens currently during nightcapping is that some servers have squads that capture entire borderlands unopposed and get massive score lead (+400 points per tick compared to opponent’s <100). This is so big advantage that no amount of daily fighting can overcome it.

lil devils x.6071:

If you focus scoring on PPK instead of PPT and stop rewarding PvE, PvD kill NPC get rewarded system and instead make it so the score is more based on PPK while fighting over objectives you solve numerous problems at once rather than make more.

- Problem with PPK scoring is that is encourages zerging even more than currently. Stand with big enough zerg and you’re practically invulnerable. I’m all for more fights, but scoring is the wrong way to do it.

The biggest problem with WvW at the moment is lack of information. We need to know where our side players are playing and we need to have more means to track enemy movement also. False positive sword signals need to be corrected and scouting rewarded. This requires automatic detection system similar to what sentries have currently.

I’ve seen it a couple of times now that big zerg has ported to enemy borderlands, ran straight to their tier 3 garrison and captured it before the enemy could even know what’s happening, how big the threat was and where they could get reinforcements to defend. Information is a good tool to level the asymmetric playing field and even better when players are involved in gathering this intelligence.

Silas Eorth.7348:

If you have no intentions to purchase any shared slots, then why kitten about them? For those of us who salvage tons of stuff, they’re great. Especially if you have a salvage-o’matic tool.

I’m complaining about service that doesn’t meet my needs, because I want my needs met and in the process help this company stay in the business. I believe they’ve shot themselves in the foot by offering this service instead of useful service that would gain more revenue for them. Good for you if you only need to move salvage tool between characters.

CETheLucid.3964:

That said to directly answer the OP, you’re probably better off buying them as sets VS one at a time.

No. Read my post. I want to swap all of the necessary items, not just one or two of them. These things are not divisible, like you can’t divide ownership of a cat by slicing the cat in half and giving the halves to different people.

DoctorDing.5890:

It’s main purpose is for shared equipment.
Put a salvage-o-matic in that slot and say goodbye to disposable salvage kits forever on all your toons
Likewise for all the permanent “summon trader/bank/whatever”, teleport to airship etc etc.

Yes, but that’s the purpose of the bank – to swap items between characters. With 1 shared inventory slot I have two options:

1. Put salvage-o-matic there and miss out on switching permanent gathering tools, food, armor, siege bluprints etc.
-or-
2. Just use the bank to swap all the things I need swapped.

I’m going to use the bank option every time and not buy 1 shared inventory slot.

I think that Anet has a problem understanding the scale of some things. At the moment they are selling a single shared inventory slot in the gemstore for 700 gems. What am I going to do with one shared inventory slot? Moving stuff between characters is a wholesale process:

- Ascended armor pieces (6)
- Ascended trinkets (6)
- Ascended weapons on some cases (1-6)
- Gathering tools (3)
- Salvage kit (1)
- Food and oils (2)
- Siege weapons (2+)

When I’m moving stuff between characters I need to swap all of that and I need a good amount of bank space for it. That means I won’t buy your 700 gem shared inventory slot ever, but I might consider buying 700 gem shared 20 bag slot. Get it right or you keep losing business.

traviswrdunbar.4780:

I use shortbow on my ranger.

I find the lack of range too restricting compared to longbow. 900 range becomes ~1.27 * 10^6 area in front. 1500 range becomes 3.53 * 10^6 area, which is 178% more. This is a huge deal for catching opponents and staying safe.

DeWolfe.2174:

Of course, that’s people simply trying to play, anywhere they can. EB is without question the first to queue. Thus making the desert bl not the first choice of players, it makes it the “if I have to” choice.

This is not true. EB is one map and borderlands are 3. If EB and borderlands are equally popular then EB should be more congested. Tier 1 servers have had actual queues to borderlands and great fights in them even at times when EB wasn’t queued. Just because you personally don’t like playing the borderlands doesn’t mean nobody does.

misterdevious.6482:

The reason for runaway scores is runaway yaks. Most of the score generated comes from the 3 points that yaks generate when they successfully make a delivery. Anyone can kill a yak and most people can take a camp.

If you flip every camp on an enemy borderland you reduce the PPT generation of that map by about 66%. If you flip every camp on a borderland except north camp… you still cut their PPT by about 50%. These numbers were calculated before the maps were recently updated and do not include the extra PPT generated by Speedy Yaks.

• If you have no one on able to flip keeps or towers… your PPT will suffer.
• If you have no one on willing to flip camps or snipe yaks… the enemy PPT will soar.

I’ve been playing WvW for years and never have I seen this info. Today I learned!

Gaile Gray.6029:

The first topic, as you probably guessed from the title, is WvW Reward Tracks! Here are a few questions:

1. How do you feel overall about reward tracks?
2. What are your thoughts on the rate at which you gain participation?
3. How do you feel about the rate you earn reward track points?
4. Overall, what are your impressions about the types of reward tracks we have?
5. Are there any other reward tracks you would really like to see?

1. I am pleased that we finally got reward tracks for WvW.

2. Participation gaining is fair. Killing NPC’s, capturing points and so on all add up to it and getting maximum participation is rather easy with persistent capturing. I would like to see better indication when participation is starting to decline. Weak point of participation is defense events. Sometimes defenders are doing valuable job delaying siege placement, alerting others and providing scouting information. I’d like to see this incorporated better into participation gain.

3. Currently it takes 500*40/550 * 15min = 9h 5 min at max participation to complete a single track. This is fine, but it would be nice to get partial rewards that don’t require whole 15 minute commitment. I think Edge of the Mists’ version of getting rewards every 5 minutes is better.

4. WvW players definitely don’t need dragonite ore, empyreal fragments or bloodstone bricks, as these are already available in abundance from castle lords and other rewards. I’d like to see rewards that are tied to WvW: siege blueprints, siege disablers & traps, food and fine crafting materials. I’d also like to know what exactly is the difference between what reward tracks I pick.

5. I guess the tracks could be more defined. Best thing would be picking track that aligns with out own goals in game, whether it’s to collect skins, crafting legendaries, collecting “fun” items or powerplaying.

Lucifirius.3196:

They’re used for Ascended crafting. If you have no interest in them, that’s on you, but some of us want Ascended gear and as such enjoy them as rewards.

Ascended gear is usually not bottlenecked by lack of these three materials. If you’re playing WvW you’re already getting tons of dragonite ore and empyreal shards from tower lords. No reason to get them from reward tracks too.

They are presented in tooltips as the reward or reason to strive forward in reward track. I’d be much more excited to get some ectos or tier 6 fine crafting materials – items that have wide variety of uses – instead of valueless trash.

Are these supposed to be valuable? I have full stacks of them filling inventory, plenty of refined versions of them on bank and I’m not going to craft more ascended weapons any time soon. When I look at the reward tracks in WvW and PvP, many of them contain dragonite ore and empyreal shards as reward. I’m forced to just discard them from my inventory.

Inspired by the latest patch notes and dismayed by lack of power in Power Mesmer, I’ve decided to switch my Mesmer to use conditions instead. I don’t have HoT and I play exclusively WvW, so that restricts my building options. I was thinking of running scepter/torch for main damage and scepter/focus for movement support. I’ll be roaming most of the time.

Skills signet of domination (+condition damage and stun are both excellent), signet of midnight (condition duration is good now that partial second damage counts too), blink for general movement and escapes and signet of humility for predictable 1v1 fights.

What kind of attributes should I get for armor? Conditions are slow at killing, so I probably need some defenses?

Since Mesmer is the slowest profession along with guardian, I’ll have to use traveler runes. They give 252 points worth of stats compared to usual 175 one attribute runes, so it’s not so bad deal for condition build.

emma.5967:

They marketed and SOLD it so.

No, you don’t own the game. You bought a license to play it. Have you read the terms of service that you agreed to?

high socks.7628:

I don’t invest in HoT because I already paid money buying this game originally. I don’t want to be pouring more money in this game, especially when I don’t know how much I love this game.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve been playing a long time but still, $50 is a lot of money to just throw around for some new skills

Well you got your years worth of entertainment there. Now it’s time to pay some more or just accept that the playing field won’t be even without it. I agree that $50 is a lot of money for some skills.

I’m so happy that Anet finally fixed some long-standing issues with WvW. I love these quality-of-life changes:

Provisions Master IV: This teaches players to automatically pick up loot from fallen foes.

World vs. World objectives display their upgrade tier on their map marker. They are displayed by 0 to 3 silver pips appearing on the icon.

Squads can now be joined regardless of distance via left-clicking the commander marker on the map and selecting “Join Squad.”

I haven’t played borderlands after update yet, but it sounds good that the pathing finally is more sensible now.