Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m Zoel Train, God Emperor of Fort Aspenwood, and I’ve been asked to convince you to come to Fort Aspenwood and bask in the glow of my glorious reign and get on the Aspenwagon.

First of all, Fort Aspenwood isn’t going anywhere any time soon. I should know; I’ve been trying to run this sucker into the ground since release. We’re also short on guilds, so everyone who comes gets to feel like the perfect cross between Lebron James and Dr. Kevorkian.

Second, we’re far too cool to care about PPT unless we’re winning in PPT.

Third, and this is the selling point, we’re awesome.

I could get into the tedious details of how we have awesome queues or that our militia isn’t god awful but honestly BOOORORRRRINNNG

If you really want to hear those details and have me sell it to you in person then I can put on my serious business face and talk to you in the medium of your choosing. I’ll even put on the serious business face, because Tier 2 is serious business.

I felt p bad for novus last night. I only commanded for 3 hours but FA’s militia won something like 8 of 8 engagements against his militia. Although I am in fact God Emperor of Fort Aspenwood, it should have been 3 of 8, because Novus made spot on calls that should have won at least five of them. Two of them were easily wins for novus due to his amazing death from above calls (although on 3 we just out-manned you guys too hard to lose). It seemed like DB was running straight glass pretty hard out there.

There is a lot of anti DB sentiment esp. I know for sure with Agg since they absorbed a lot of guys who went from Ret to VK to Agg, and people are fairly upset with Novus, but MEH. People get like that. 90% of those people developed into players that fit in better with the structure of Agg or similar guilds, so it doesn’t really bug me. I’d rather they be happy in Agg than miserable here.

You’re not even supposed to be public relations. You’re supposed to be the Consumer Relationship Manager so I don’t have to anymore.

Jayne.9251:

Zoel.9154:

It helped that the instant result of some of the transfers is that we had a lot of players come back to the server for reasons that shall remain nameless. Well. One reason. I don’t think [RET] has had that large a force on reset in a long, long time.

That’s pretty awesome. Yeah I’m seeing a ton of you guys out there. Someone commented on map the other day that they didn’t think they’d ever seen that many GODS guys out at once either.

I’ll put it this way. That reason transferred. It’s a zero sum game.

Your skills as our public relationship officer are suffering.

It helped that the instant result of some of the transfers is that we had a lot of players come back to the server for reasons that shall remain nameless. Well. One reason. I don’t think [RET] has had that large a force on reset in a long, long time.

JonPeters.5630:

I think the kittenumptions that everyone is making are:

1) The current ratings of servers are valid. They are not because we are not getting enough varied match-ups to even generate valid data. Trying to judge the quality of a server based on their current rating is much like judging the quality of people’s Reddit posts by the average # of up-votes they get.
2) How big a spread will make a game a blowout? Is 400 rating points even a significant difference? Really its just a number with very little meaning right now. Once this system starts working (based on the math of the system the idea is that a rating +/- deviation is in fact an accurate measurement of the range of what their rating might be in a perfect world so this is technically the way this whole thing was supposed to work from the get go.

I don’t want to do all of the probability math right now, but with absurdly high certainty there will only be a small amount of randomization each week as in order for a situation like Kaineng moving up to T1 to occur, every server from Blackgate to Maguuma would have to roll a lower range number than Kaineng, and some of them would literally have to roll almost -100% while Kaineng rolls almost +100%. As the blog post stated, at the end of the day we are really just going to see a bit of nice slight subtle movement so that match-ups are less stale, and eventually ratings are more accurate.

Jon

Most core players pretty much understand why the stale matchups are better than the one up one down matchups we had before they stabilized. Remember when you were going to flat-line all the glickos when paid transfers ended?

When glickos were unstable people were unhappy because they would curb stomp one match and get curb stomped the next while they settled. About six months in they finally created competitive matchups, and glicko actually IS a valid representation of each servers chance to win.

The coverage gap between t1 and t2 and t2 and t3 is so immense it boggles the mind. Fort Aspenwood could roll t3 with stupid ppt, and in t2 it barely hangs on for dear life. Look at the match scores of servers before and after tier moves, and you’ll see that the data supports the notion that the tiers are actually accurate.

Your new system makes sense for t4-t8, it does not make sense for t1-t3.

wow.

the first three match ups would be blow outs and wvw would basically be over for every player in the first 9 servers for a week

wow.

we actually do know this because these servers actually have played each other.

REMEMBER: Every time you build a trebuchet, a horde of loot bags fly to it.

[RET] of Fort Aspenwood (NA) is an organization dedicated to virtual murder in exchange for virtual possessions. We are a hard core (but not elite) guild looking for players who are interested in continual improvement while playing World Versus World.

- We are not a PvE guild

- We accept players of any skill level with a good attitude who are interested in spending a lot of time in WvW. Unlike attitude, we can develop skill.

- We require use of teamspeak, representation while in WvW, and again, a good attitude.

- Seriously, a good attitude. This means that you are accepting of criticism, wipes, and trying new things.

- If you would like more information or to join, please message Zoel Train, GM.

We have the following propaganda videos for your perusal.

I love fort aspenwood and hope to never have to call another server home. I’m almost remiss to ask others to come here, because I don’t want anything to disrupt the chemistry we have here. But our teammates want better coverage so I’ll do my best to sell you on Fort Aspenwood.

Obviously, Fort Aspenwood has great queues. The downside for guilds is that you’ll face significant pressure sometimes, and the upside is that your contribution will always be apparent.

Fort Aspenwood is a great destination for individuals looking for a fresh start in WvW. We have some of the most talented guilds in the game for every type of playstyle. Whether you want to do zerg versus zerg, metagame, GvG, or havoc squad, you can find a guild to be your home on Fort Aspenwood.

Fort Aspenwood isn’t really a server so much as it’s a team. Like Malose said, we don’t have any central planning (other than theorycrafting and “hey wouldn’t it be cool if…”)

We just look at the game state, figure out what needs doing, and we do it. We don’t need a central figurehead, just respect.

Everyone on Fort Aspenwood is tough as nails. Do we win every week? Oh god no, not even close. But we’ve gotten pretty far on determination, practice, and effort. We disregard negative Nancys. When we wipe, we respawn. Name another server with a better success to coverage ratio. I don’t think you can.

Fort Aspenwood is a treasure and it’s a treasure you can have right now. If you’re thinking about switching servers anyway, nothing wrong with that— go ahead and join Fort Aspenwood. People can say a lot of things about Fort Aspenwood, but nobody can say they didn’t have a good time when they were here.

oh. Here is our reset night video.

Everyone on DB who I’ve actually interacted with has been a pleasure from day 1, since it was DB/CD/FA.

There are some new guilds on DB (obviously) but I’ve never actually talked to them so I dunno what they’re like. [RE] is pretty good at GvG I hear. [Agg] has a level of coordination that veers between terrifying and inspiring.

Dear Tier 2,

What in great flame ram gods name is going on here.

I would pay some cash money for some better ones.

Finishers: A one hour finisher in a game mode where I might be lucky to get one fight in an hour some days? That’s worth my money, since I might not get the benefit of it. I would throw down for permanent ones though, or cheaper ones with a certain number of uses.

Other cosmetic items that could be taken from existing assets:

It’d be cool if you could just change the look of Guards (without claiming the keep) Give me that champion risen wizard skin on the lord in SMC. Heck, let me drop them on structures the other team owns; they shouldn’t mind.

Ghostly trebuchets would be neato bandito.

Main gem items used in WvW right now:

1. Merchant express
2. Communal bonfire

Other not game breaking items with similar effects that could be implemented:

1. Most WvW guilds don’t do guild missions usually, so Anet would probably make money off of purchasable crafting stations that work similar to the bank access item. I know I’d use it once in a blue moon if I ran out of trays.

2. An of very limited use dorito (commander tag) icon reskin. PvE commanders (lol) would probably use them too. They would be useful for those situations where you have a stupid number of tags on the map.

Shout out to [Agg] for completely rolling us at Klovan tonight. I hope one day [RET] can do pushes that organized on a consistent basis.

re: video from earlier.

I mean sometimes it makes sense to do that, like we’ll do it to bay if we think the inner seige is going to be protracted and we want to condemn the defenders to inner for the remainder of the attack. If you already have the seige handy might as well.

At durios it doesn’t make much sense tho

i dont really claim to understand exactly what took place here, but it did make my night

http://youtu.be/d2jk4CKlmgY

it’s processing, give it a minute

Jski.6180:

Zoel.9154:

i almost made it through an entire episode of breaking bad during this amazingly epic tower defense

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqqaZNzv8TU

Less to do with AC and more to do with your numbers and the choke point you where at. We do this all the time with out AC but having AC does help the classes who have bad aoe.

they had numbers. One guild supposedly brought 75. (I question the veracity of that fact.) They just didn’t attack it. Because we had arrow carts. We’re just farming randos while DB would rather push anz than try to take back Klovan or Jerrifers.

(and yes, it was almost as easy before; why did we want to make it easier again?)

i almost made it through an entire episode of breaking bad during this amazingly epic tower defense

FA has good queues, tier 2, opponents that will apparently GvG against you if you’re into that sort of thing, and a WvW community that tends to give everyone the benefit of the doubt unless they turn into jerks.

TC is also a good location for the time being; they’ve lost a lot of pop.

In fairness taking a camp before the tick is worth more than a tower now whenever you get 2 yaks.

Stars.8576:

Maniac.5163:

It must be difficult for some of you DB posters to drag that ego around with you.
Just sayin’

It must be difficult losing.

Are you actually in [RE]? I recommend you compare the people you get GvG’s with versus how much you actually see those in game, and you’ll get your answer as to whether or not most people care.

I don’t understand the people who are knee jerkingly mad about the idea of a guild-viewable only commander tag

It would do more to reduce large zergs than any other change you could possibly make in this game.

Mayoken.9851:

Can FA and TC please deploy forces “all out” tonight? I want to see you guys try your hardest. I want to see PINK, GODS, RET, BT, VK , everyone out tonight
Bring DB’s PPT below 200 if you can.

Challenge offered.

On a wednesday?

dude. we have church. comon.

i guess you guys didn’t really care about it either.

Vespirisa.1497:

Zoel.9154:

@CO/RE

FABL has a dumb connection do you want to move bls?

we don’t care about bay even remotely so

As you guys res a mesmer through the gate at Bay

yeah i don’t approve of that

I made sure we knocked down the outer gate. fact.

also not as that was an hour after my post

@CO/RE

FABL has a dumb connection do you want to move bls?

we don’t care about bay even remotely so

Thustlewhumber.7416:

Impressed with FA right now.

oy, I’m sure we all appreciate the compliment here on fort aspenwood, but please don’t be impressed with ppt post patch

say you think something we did is cool, but our ppt has nothing to do with player skill. All it means is we have more people willing to give the game a chance to fix itself. Until the ranks re-adjust for population, it’s meaningless.

Running around DBBL last night for a few hours I saw one stack of TC (TSL) and a stack of DB. There were maybe 1/3rd of the players we’d normally see on a given night pre-patch. We took towers with zero opposition at points. Keeps obviously we didn’t bother with.

So then why should it be easy to get a critical mass of arrow carts?

Sorry, you did need seige to take down defended structures before the patch. I’m not really sure where you could have gotten the notion that you didn’t need it.

Do you think we just used it for giggles?

Heijincks.9267:

Zoel.9154:

Heijincks.9267:

Caliban.3176:

Again I see people saying that players needed tools to defend.

Could those people explain how all those guilds use to do it without those tools? There was no real difficulty in doing it.

There was no need for this change and it really did kitten up a lot of things. Overall attendance in WvW has gone down for my server and their opponents, easily seen through all the queues. (Though our dominance might have had something to do with that as well as our use of the Arrowcarts to spawncamp and farm)

Do you prefer it if WvW removed all walls, all gates, and all supply? That’s exactly why. Many people prefer it if WvW was played out like an actual war involving both siege and players, in which one cannot succeed without the other.

I guess you prefer it if it’s about just some gigantic gladiator arena.

Did you have problems using arrow carts pre patch? Arrow carts were overpowered before and did not need a buff; most people simply didn’t know how to use them. Now that they’ve been buffed by 80%, people use them more frequently because oh right, these things cost very little supply, are built like tanks, and 160 supply worth can do more aggregate damage than 100 players with 100% uptime.

You HAD to clear arrow carts against competent opponents pre-patch. The difference is that you could leave some up because the aggregate damage wasn’t enough such that you had to tediously outpace your opponents supply by a factor of 3.33 to 1 in order to beat carts.

Sieges of bay, hills, or garrison generally were at a minimum half hour to 45 minute affairs, which is a pretty reasonable time frame for a not-so-persistent battleground that resets from week to week. The three to four hour sieges currently required make the idea of doing that, well, unattractive. Hills has become the keep you take when the other server is asleep.

It’s just not worth waiting 2h to 3h for a fight when you can just go straight for someone’s spawn, their north camp, whatever, and just ignore PPT.

Overpowered before? Really? You’d probably have to stack a few of them together to make them most effective, otherwise the damage is simply ignored, or that the annoyance they provide doesn’t make them worthy of being a priority. Supply doesn’t always allow them to reach effective critical mass either.

To take something requires more supply to defend it. I think that’s true for all scenarios, even in real life. When you take the objective however, you become the defender, and whoever wants to take it thereafter must use more supply than you to take it if they want it, especially so if the objective wasn’t freshly taken. I don’t see this part as an issue.

Regarding taking major objectives, I personally prefer the longer time it takes to get it. Not that I like manning siege, but because I do not think of it as practical taking it quickly considering that it is a major objective. It is more rewarding after taking it because it requires so much more planning and effort. Plus, it makes it more valuable to defend. I don’t think you and I WvW for the same reasons. I don’t WvW exclusively for the fights, but rather the prospect of something akin to playing chess.

I used to be into that, but there are better games to suit that need. Why not play Eve online?

Even if YOU want to spend 3 to 4 hours taking hills, chances are the other people on your server wont.

And yes, you did have to stack a few of them before to get an insane damage output. So…. we did. Now, we stack even more for more damage because it is the only defensive strategy worth using.

I’ll keep posting a video that shows how effective they were pre-patch, because they were.

I’m not really sure what sort of strategy you think this is, though. The defense is always carts and trebuchets, the offense is always trebuchets. There isn’t exactly a higher level thought process that goes into this thing. Before you had to pick out the right time to take out your opponents offensive seige on foot, choose locations inside your keep to make a hold, or pick good times to go on supply runs.

Now, you just sit. And wait. Then wait some more. We’ve gone from chess to checkers.

IRSyKo.5843:

Thet.7153:

lani.7431:

So… TC are you planning on taking back you Hills anytime soon?

Naw, we might get back to you at a later date. As has been stated before, us TC old gaurd are lacking the incentive to play WvW, for many reasons.

What is “old guard” ?

FrankieBonez.8361:

Evalana.5480:

I found the cross-eyed norn… </3

Score update with one of my favorite people on DB!

oh snap! XD

If only we can get to you in that BT ball . . . .

Soon Eva…..soon.

Bring your ball and we will bring our ball….and combine them

You’re one ballsy guy.

Heijincks.9267:

Caliban.3176:

Again I see people saying that players needed tools to defend.

Could those people explain how all those guilds use to do it without those tools? There was no real difficulty in doing it.

There was no need for this change and it really did kitten up a lot of things. Overall attendance in WvW has gone down for my server and their opponents, easily seen through all the queues. (Though our dominance might have had something to do with that as well as our use of the Arrowcarts to spawncamp and farm)

Do you prefer it if WvW removed all walls, all gates, and all supply? That’s exactly why. Many people prefer it if WvW was played out like an actual war involving both siege and players, in which one cannot succeed without the other.

I guess you prefer it if it’s about just some gigantic gladiator arena.

Did you have problems using arrow carts pre patch? Arrow carts were overpowered before and did not need a buff; most people simply didn’t know how to use them. Now that they’ve been buffed by 80%, people use them more frequently because oh right, these things cost very little supply, are built like tanks, and 160 supply worth can do more aggregate damage than 100 players with 100% uptime.

You HAD to clear arrow carts against competent opponents pre-patch. The difference is that you could leave some up because the aggregate damage wasn’t enough such that you had to tediously outpace your opponents supply by a factor of 3.33 to 1 in order to beat carts.

Sieges of bay, hills, or garrison generally were at a minimum half hour to 45 minute affairs, which is a pretty reasonable time frame for a not-so-persistent battleground that resets from week to week. The three to four hour sieges currently required make the idea of doing that, well, unattractive. Hills has become the keep you take when the other server is asleep.

It’s just not worth waiting 2h to 3h for a fight when you can just go straight for someone’s spawn, their north camp, whatever, and just ignore PPT.

Vespirisa.1497:

So FA has been spawn camping our borderlands N camp for awhile…

what else are we going to do

attack hills?

I don’t like to ban spies from TS except when they start streaming the audio from porn into our teamspeak. I’m not really bothered by it but it always ends poorly for me when I suggest other sources of audio.

Either way, the meta isn’t sufficiently complicated that it actually gives the other team any good information, especially now that the response to any given attack is arrow carts.

One time this guy was trying to give up to date combat info from listening to me command on TS, in addition to some other shady stuff. I figured this out because he decided to bind his push to talk key to the same key for both voice chats and said “Yeah, I’m listening to him on my speakers so I can still hear you guys.”

l o l

Then the guy tried to pass on my second to second moves that he could have just seen on his screen, so he had a 4 second delay on anything he did. I didn’t even have to use los or any real strategy. It was hilarious.

I have some video but I haven’t posted it yet because I sound awful- I was still recovering from bronchitis when this went down.

It’s actually kinda like that in every tier.

You don’t really have to defend structures so there’s not usually a reason to take a fight, other than over supply or for giggles.

eh

you guys can have fabl hills

good trebbing i guess

better fights in se camp

Urrid.4593:

Sure it might be more “realistic” or whatever crazy reason Anet has come up with but some things are not worth adapting for. Treb VS AC feels like EVE Online so a big no thank you is in order.

This guy speaks my language.

two teams sometimes attack a third in a game where your options all boil down to defend/acquire/pressure. crazy!

it drives me nuts to hear people complaining about double teaming. Is one team supposed to sit on their hands while the other two fight it out?

I too long for realism when roleplaying a romance between my moogle and a talking cat.

Nodrey.3948:

Thanks for making WvW completely unfun and unfair to play. The double teaming is not over exaggerated, it’s disgustingly obvious. Where the hell our TC’s commanders that I ran around with pulling insane plans that had people going “Wtf just happened?” Things are so disgusting, I dont know which is worse, the obvious double teaming, or the fact that our commanders who know what the kitten they are doing seem to have vanished like a fart in the wind.

You can thank Devon Arrowcarter for that one.

You may have noticed on reset that both DB and FA went for hills immediately in their own borderlands. Unfortunately FABL was (and remains) bugged so the massive advantage you get from arrow carts at hills evaporated due to the spawn distance. I wasn’t in DBBL but it sounds like TC pressured them hard enough at Garrison for FA to take hills there during reset.

Also, you should recognize that a lot of commanders on every server just aren’t playing right now. The siege change hasn’t really changed combat so much as it’s made the frequency of fights abysmally low outside of reset. You still have to use siege to open up a tower, you still have to use siege to make it a plausible fight when you enter, it just takes extra hours.

The main difference is that the level of impatience is so high that occurrences like this one, pre patch, are pretty common place now.

Commanders who are on are also making a lot of “bad” decisions because the strategy the game asks for does not intersect with reality. If you’re commanding and you or most of your teammates have to go in two hours or it’s getting later in the night, your choices are:

A. Run in, probably wipe, maybe take it, probably not.
B. Log off.

sunspots fabl is broken

we should take advantage of the fact that we can’t actually do anything in wvw right now to make anti arrow cart propaganda videos

SO. hi.

how bout dem fabl disconnects.

Guess it’s almost time for Habib Loew Memorial Reset

Urrid.4593:

Zoel.9154:

If there’s one thing I learned from eve online it’s that you should never, ever, under any circumstances, play a game because it might be good one day.

HAHAHAH oh my god. All those months wasted.

Yeah, never again. The promise of good someday will not keep me coming back. Devon would do well to know that this isn’t MMO players first rodeo and when a developer starts saying things like “it will be better [in time]” that is pretty much code for pack it up, the developers are understaffed / don’t care / are out of touch.

How quickly this problem of Arrowcarts 2.0 gets addressed with speak volumes about the future.

oh god someone from tarnished coast agreed with me

game over man, game over.

Dear Devon Arrowcarver,

I would like to give you my condolences on having the most unlucky name in the history of video game development.

If there’s one thing I learned from eve online it’s that you should never, ever, under any circumstances, play a game because it might be good one day.

manbearpig.8095:

Zoel.9154:

so. this is FA’s score right now.

A quick look see showed that we have no queues and I’d say around 120 on all four maps combined

Clearly this is because of our amazing skill and has positively nothing to do with arrow carts.

We just lost bay because whoops nobody was there to staff it.

We’d normally have many more people, but there just isn’t much participation for some reason.

so about those 9 ac’s on your south gate of bay earlier today

yea carts are p effective when you’re on them

so. this is FA’s score right now.

A quick look see showed that we have no queues and I’d say around 120 on all four maps combined

Clearly this is because of our amazing skill and has positively nothing to do with arrow carts.

We just lost bay because whoops nobody was there to staff it.

We’d normally have many more people, but there just isn’t much participation for some reason.

Sylpharion.1452:

Epic battle at FABL Bay. DB tags Hills to lure us there, then sacrificed a Golem to Garrison Watergate as a distraction to hide their actual 10(?) Golems rush on Bay.

As soon as WP timer opened up we dropped superior siege left and right, then flash built half of it just in time to wipe part of the massive DB zerg coming in to lords room.

Very nicely done and unexpected. Would’ve lost Bay if there wasn’t anyone watching Bay at that time.

and then we did

i’m not sure very many of us play now

we’re +285 with zero queues and mostly empty maps

are you guys sure you like the arrow cart change

Zikory.6871:

You guys are silly. Rams and Golems are just as useful as before! You just can’t run up to any gate and flash build them. Try building some counter siege to clear it out a bit. Over all the AC’s (even though I don’t fully agree with the damage) made people have to try for towers.

uhhh if you made catapults and trebs to counter ac’s why wouldn’t you just use those to open the wall?

You already made those.

You’d really waste more supply on a structure you’re already opening?

ok fess up

how many of you aren’t going to go straight to hills instead of garrison on your home borderland this reset

I’m hoping that the ramifications of this patch will become dead obvious in the next week, since, in addition to being anti-fun, most of us haven’t seen hills flip since the patch. Potentially +50-75 ppt for the entire week if your server is smart enough to go all hills. You can reflip bay and garrison later, good luck with hills.

I’m not sure how much people will agree with this design decision if every reset comes down to three fights in three borderlands on friday night.