Guild Wars 2

Again, they don’t want you to tick siege. They WANT it to expire because temporary siege is supposed to be temporary….

You’ve found an exploit, a way around it, I don’t know what you think the response should be except making the stupid stuff expire after 30 mins whether you are using it or not.

It’s not illegal gambling….

Has your state banned baseball (or Magic the Gathering and Pokemon) cards? Oh wait, they haven’t, because selling randomized packages of things is not considered gambling well..almost anywhere?

I don’t think this solution will freshen up matches much, if at all. What it does is two things:

1. Makes the system actually “fair” in that stuff is actually worth an amount of points somewhat based on the difficulty of doing it.

2. Melts into the score some actual statistics on population..not population compared to the other two servers…. meaning the current ranking system gets slightly better at matchmaking.

Solving the problem with stale matchups is the next step, and would be slightly more controversial. It basically, IMO, requires a score handicapping system of some sort… and/or a serious push by ArenaNet to equalize the server populations. (Free transfers to lower pop servers, or other incentives)

I recommend this as superior in all ways to the current system:

1. Player kills during a window are worth 1 point (can be disabled if they are worth little/no WXP to punish farming).
2. Objective takes are also worth 1 (or maybe more) points during the window.

With these two combined, we now have an indication of how much activity is going on during that window, and we can do the following:

3. At tick, objectives are each worth X% of the total points earned during the window. This means they are actually worth an amount of points based on activity and difficulty.

This will subtly and not-so-subtly change a lot of behavior in people who care about the scoreboard. Now getting most people to care about the scoreboard is the next trick (I suggest rewards that don’t suck and happen no matter what, and maybe a score handicapping system).

Your fantasy is not reality.

The majority of players realize that the scoreboard is only a reflection of how big the server is compared to the other two and how much participation they have. The “winner” rewards system is also not much to write home about.

So what happens is the players take the opportunity to score as much wXP and have as much fun as possible, and since your typical player likes to “win” regularly and wXP is granted mostly from taking things….they take things from the weaker player.

This was explored fully in DAOC, but unfortunately people have some rose-colored glasses about the 3-realm system as being somehow “self-fixing”…. as evidenced by how ape they went when Warhammer Online was released with only a 2-realm system.

Facts are facts though, 3-realms rarely leads to the scenario of the two small guys ganging up on the big guy because most players believe it’s about having fun and not worrying about some meta-scoreboard they have little control over.

Your premise that what is most effective to put points on a largely meaningless scoreboard should be the most rewarded is silly.

You should think bigger and expect more from ArenaNet, unless you want WvW to become a ghost town only populated by a bunch of siege monkeys and tower humpers.

What should come first is what the majority of players find FUN and what adds excitement and strategy to the game. And this is fighting other players for the objectives spread among the battlefield.

Once you establish that, you MAKE those fights the most effective way of accomplishing goals and then you make them rewarding.

(Also, I’d argue given the current state of the game… killing players is much more effective than killing yaks. Supplying keeps rarely stops people from taking them. Your definition of effectiveness of actions seems particularly shortsighted or literal. Just because something doesn’t directly score a point doesn’t mean it’s not effectively scoring points?)

Yeah but two of those are being played because they can basically gank at will and get away from any fight, even ones they picked…

One’s just being played just because it’s the only half-decent heal/support class….

So there’s that? I don’t really think nerfing the only group heals we’re regularly getting is gonna make wuvwuv more interesting….

I do not agree. I think it shows that something is too effective if you can beat over double your numbers in a fight…unless there is some other mitigating factors.

Everybody might have access to the “same things”… but not everybody wants to or can play the same way. Some people want to form up an elite 5-man with perfect combination of classes… some people want to pug up in the zerg. The advantages given to the former should not be so overwhelming as the latter group feels like fodder…and when things get to the point where the 5-man can kill 3 or more times their numbers regularly I think that problem point has been reached.

I don’t believe combat in this game is even complex enough for people to “outplay” others at a level they can kill many times their number, to be perfectly honest. To me it just says they’ve chosen classes and builds to work as a team and got in voice chat…. and I don’t think anybody really deserves a medal for it or superpowers, just an advantage.

Whole mechanic for Ranger pets is not good, as well as the whole mechanic of downed while underwater.

I prefer calling out the real issues and not just getting certain tricks nerfed. Pets should be able to die, and underwater downed should be changed to be the same as regular downed….

Yeah, why should players be rewarded for not being able to pick fights…I don’t get that aspect at all. You have an approximate equal number of people on map, whose fault is it if you’re getting “zerged”?

Also 15 people killing 20 is possibly skill and luck… 5 people killing 20 is probably something wrong with the game.

It seems a lot of people don’t really want to fix zergs but to reward their own… giving small groups superpowers would encourage some more people to run 5-man.. it would also encourage everybody else to run with the zerg for safety…. it basically eliminates the “medium size” group and splitting up… right? You’re doing the opposite of what you claim you want to do, IMO…

I’d say the power of a gamepad which I think everybody should use…is being able to apply things you’re used to from one game to the next.

I recommend trying the thumbstick for movement though, especially if your mind is not locked in to WASD movement you’ll find it almost life-changing just to be able to point in any direction and go….

Guardian’s block skill is actually at Mace 3 slot, because magic.

I don’t see how you’ve solved the core problem by giving people more “options”. This just means people will stack magic find infusions on to their existing magic find armor sets… and we will still be swapping armor and giving up stats for loot which has effects on the game that are almost entirely negative.

There’s really no way of tackling this core issue except actually tackling it…and trust me the majority of players would rather not be worrying about Magic Find or swapping armor sets or getting into endless debates about being a “team player”….

Any solution to the Magic Find problem starts with removing it from all the normal gear and runes and replacing it with something else.

They’ve already admitted they don’t like the mechanic of people sacrificing effectiveness for more loot and thus hurting themselves and the “team”…

I don’t really feel the need for more ways to increase your magic find through gear. I think the best thing would be to remove it from the game as a stat on gear… make it come from WvW, guild, banner bonuses.

If that’s not enough, there’s also the possibility of magic find being boosted but not taking up a stat slot. Like every masterwork item you equip gives you 5%, every rare 8%, every exotic or ascended 10%…. but it’s debatable whether that is required. Why can’t the bonuses from things like guilds and WvW be enough?

Your concept that because there is no ‘trinity’ everybody is for themselves is ridiculous. It’s contradicted not only by just about every design aspect in the game, but by a developer in this thread admitting this is not what they wanted or meant to happen.

I think discussions on a social contract and such are pretty much blather, because nothings going to change unless there is a change or removal of Magic Find that makes it so you do not sacrifice any other stats to get it. However, I don’t think you should counteract blather with even sillier nonsense. Not a team game that’s focused on team PvP, world events, has buffs that buff allies whether you want to or not and if they are in your group or not? Please..come on…

They aren’t talking about farming as being the collection of large amounts of things.

They are talking about the repetition of whatever content currently is thought to provide the best rewards to the exclusion of all other content.

These situations are pretty much inevitable, even if they perfect it they will then add a new dungeon or fix a bug and it’s screwed up again. Diminishing Returns is basically a way of ‘self-healing’ these problems.

They do it because they understand simple psychology of MMOs. The players are willing to do the most boring things over and over if they think it means more carrots…and when it gets boring they dont’ blame themselves..they start to blame the game, call it boring, and quit. It might not be fair, but it’s psychology! To keep you playing, they try to make you explore a variety of content even if you go kicking and screaming.

I’m confused…I’ve always heard the opposite. Vitality seems the way to go in this game unless you’re planning on catching lots of heals, which in the current state of this game..probably means you’re a Guardian or Elementalist?

This is the first I’ve heard that Toughness is overpowered…usually hearing that either Toughness or Healing Power or both could use love?

This is a tangent but the suggestions and reporting features in this game seem really, really bad compared to other games.

Teleport-gatherers…have no real idea how I’m supposed to report them, for an example, and just give up and hope they have detection in place….

Why would a hardcore WvWer in this game stay in tier 3 and above is a better question.

This game is currently balanced for 5v5 combat and at about 20 people per side it becomes almost entirely a button-mash-fest.

You get a bigger variety of fight-sizes and less queues and zergs during prime time in the mid-level tiers. If you play during prime time and WvW is your only concern, that’s where an intelligent person would head.

Suggestions like kiting people, or removing boons, not AEing, or running away are completely incompatible with a large-scale combat game…. for very obvious reasons. You have goals that go beyond whether you personally live or die in the fight…that’s the whole point of WvW. If you want a 5v5 or 3v3 or 1v1 that’s the other way….

It’s amazing when people can tell other people to “learn to play” but they don’t even understand the simplest concepts….

Also, how is preventing people from attacking and forcing them to calculate whether an attack will do more harm than good actually fun….that’s kind of a mystery to me. Frankly I’d rather a fight be about positioning, executing the proper moves, knowing when to stay and go….. not about staring at buff bars or looking for spell effects in the current spell-effect-soup and trying to do quick math….

Everybody knows Confusion and Retaliation are poorly designed and not OK. Only baddies defend them!

Your claim that AE effects shouldn’t be used on large groups of people is quite interesting, please elaborate.

There’s a fundamental difference in opinion on what siege should be able to do.

A lot of WvW types come from the DAOC/Warhammer camp (for obvious reasons, these were the prototypes for this style of play). I think some typical views that come from this camp are (and I can only speak for myself).

1. Ability to kill other players or stop or slow to a crawl a siege from “safety” should be very limited…. there seems to still be a lot of going through doors and walls here. You should have an advantage defending but you should also have to fight and take risks….

2. Mindlessly plopping down a bunch of siege is not a “defense plan” and should at best stall an attempt to take anything until defenders can arrive and an actual plan can be formed and executed… usually this involves actually “fighting”!

3. Generally we want more fighting and hearing more map chat about portals to the jumping puzzle and what pre-emptive siege needs put up and what siege needs “refreshed” (read that exploiting the timeout timer) is just kind of disappointing. I’d rather hear about troop movements, fights, and the natural “updating” of structures that you hold (like gaining of waypoints), myself…

All that being said, I think the design of arrow cart is it is supposed to be an “open field” siege and therefore it really needs to be doing a lot of damage if it’s working as intended….but frankly I still see a lot of them being fired from safety?

Even if you want to complain about “mindless zergs” the answer is not to let a mindless group on arrow carts stop them in their tracks.

I sense they mean arrowcarts to be the “open field” type of siege and since they are exposed they need to be strong. However, they need to fix some exploits because I sure see a lot of them at keeps (shooting through doors and walls, maybe?)

As long as they don’t shoot through doors, it’s not much of an issue.

Oh wait.

Even if it happened, I’d imagine it would come at the same time as Trait line revamps and expansions so your wish is not going to be granted, OP!

Not to suggest they did something, but they wouldn’t necessarily announce that sort of thing in patch notes…

Remove Portal from the game and maybe the JP becomes an interesting place… if not I think we’d be better off having it removed completely.

I think of the intention as a little mini Darkness Falls (DAOC) style thing… but control being granted based mostly on ‘existence of mesmers who like jumping puzzles’… surely a better way can be found.

1. There’s really nosuch thing as removing the AoE cap. All games I’m aware of have had some caps on AoE effects. When people say remove it they really mean increase it, or they’re just unaware of this fact.

2. Yes it would require a review of every single ability in the game. That is obvious and people claiming otherwise are just foolish.

3. Yes, defense of structures is a concern. Some players claim they want to be able to do unorganized mindless camping defenses that slow the game to a crawl or quagmire….but reality is the game needs to favor the attackers to keep things moving and players being rewarded with treats.

Short version is, anybody who thinks this change is easy or should be rushed is talkin’ crazy talk. Personally, I think a more achievable goal that would help would be to start by raising the cap of AE/PBAE effects from 5 to 10. They could maybe even start smaller and start with buffs and heals since these seem especially weak in a zerg?

Would like to see the notes first (and the max value, etc)…but no idea how a trait on one class can be ‘boon hate’.

How is it not just another flavor of damage boost trait (like many classes have) but that is just unreliable in it’s final value?

For it to be boon hate, wouldn’t it have to make you consider not giving people boons? Are you really going to consider that just because one class MIGHT trait something that gives them some extra damage?

There is little to no problem with downed. It forces one side to ‘push’ if they want to decisively win a battle and kill people. I’d say if anything the downed state should be buffed…you should take less damage from ranged attacks while downed.

What’s the real issue? The real problem is the classes that have downed abilities that allow you to escape and stall being spiked. Remove all/most the teleports, stealths, knockbacks and other nonsense and then you will see nobody complaining about it in WvW..because the only way to get up is if the other side is chased off or allies work to get you back up.

(I guess the problem here, though, is PvE….)

It’s philosophical but I think you kind of have to put crowd control and control into a support bucket.

For example, are you stunning that person to prevent them from doing damage, or so your team can do more damage to them, or maybe both? Totally depends on the situation.

If you dump anything that is not healing or damage into a support bucket, though, you can avoid philosophy and just go kill stuff….

Also, nobody believes you when you say you love sitting in the same spot doing the same thing all day. Sorry…

They didn’t do this out of spite, or just to punish bots…

1. It is a ‘catch-all’ for problems with the game when people find ways to farm loot more efficiently than others, which is bound to happen in a game this size. It prevents any one exploit from being exploited too much.

2. Also despite your claim you love doing this…they know that players will have more fun and play longer if they do a variety of things. But, if you give them extra carrots they will do the same thing over and over…. and declare the game boring (even if it is unfairly!). Thus, DR short circuits this issue as well by taking away the extra carrots….

They mean it to be a completely separate game.

I think it’s weird, myself, but there it is.

If people can’t trade in their WvW and PvE “experience” for better sPvP gear, why should the opposite be true?

I’d frankly much prefer they just had a battlegrounds/scenario system like WoW or Warhammer Online. (And also they need to stop pretending this is the most important part of the game because most people aren’t going for it…) But they ripped this out of MOBA-land where everything’s supposed to be “fair”-ish and it has it’s own seperate progression for that reason.

Healing is not really support… since the purpose of support is to cover all the things that aren’t directly about ‘damage’…

However, it’s really hard to make a healing class in this game without dipping heavily into support abilties… healing is very weak for most classes and kind of weak for the few classes that can manage to pull it off…

Basically, it’s sort of a problem with the game that everything comes down to DPS classes vs non-DPS classes..not a problem with the players so much.

I’d say the fact that dropped player siege times out aggressively and that they’ve implemented an alternate system for permanent upgrades to the set pieces is a pretty good indication of their intentions.

Not to get all meta about it..but games like this almost ALWAYS try to minimize the effectiveness of keep camping… it’s because keep-camping creates lose-lose situations where the majority of people don’t have fun…while active offense and defense creates lots of win-win situations where the attackers get either points OR a fight OR both.

IOW, the devs have no good reason to promote the dropping of tons of pro-active siege everywhere and the fact you have to game the system by “refreshing” it just shows how much time you’re willing to waste jamming square pegs into round holes.

Don’t do that, then? Nobody is asking or forcing you to..it’s not even particularly effective.

You’re trying to fight the game design and mechanics just to do something that nobody really cares about.

The siege you dro kitten upposed to be disposable and temporary…permanent upgrades to structures are meant to happen through the upgrade system. Allowing your siege to last hours without interaction allows you to override/bypass the normal upgrade system.

Also, the devs have no desire to promote keep camping. Nor do the vast majority of players….if they take the time to think it through. If sitting in keeps waiting becomes the best/effective/only way to defend…. everybody loses.

Svarty.8019:

Of all the tactics in WvW, the golem rush fails the most. It’s the last thing we should complain about.

We all know that nightcaps and zergs are the main problems at the moment, and Arenanet have stated that they are discussing ways of addressing both. Isn’t that all we can ask?

Night capping has absolutely no effect on anybody’s enjoyment of the game — the “points” are largely irrelevant despite the hardcore WvWers attempt to make them mean something.

All these people talking about scouts and defenders and oil are silly… there’s next to no reason to sit in a keep. It’s boring and only a handful of these same hardcore WvWers do it. The fun for most people is in responding to an attack with a defending force… or the suspense to take down a keep before the defense arrives or using tactics to keep the defenders at bay why you finish.

Anything that makes it likely there’s not even going to be a response is not going to positively impact the quality of fights or the fun factor out there. Includes these golem rushes and zergs so large and doors so weak they go down in seconds.

Portal itself is not good for WvW… you can pretty much leave out the rest of the sentence.

Whether it’s rezzing one behind a gate or having to “sweep for mesmers” or jumping puzzle shenanigans or this tactic…. no one ability causes more problems, exploits and non-fun crap to happen.

Classes are pretty much grey-mush and combat is too fast-paced and button mashy… and really it feels like they’re already overdue for a review of class mechanics and abilities to adjust everything (maybe also while upping the AE cap to 10 or more).

These things take time and willingness, though. All you can do is let them know you’re concerned and are willing to accept changes (even big ones) that make the game better…and be patient. (Or go play something else…)

If you notice, the chest for Megadestroyer and Arah Steps is bigger (1 extra item I think), but contains no guaranteed rares.

I’d prefer consistency myself, but I think the initial purpose of the daily chest was mostly a psychological effect….to get people who were farming particular events to spread out and stop.

(It seems likely there are more meta-events that end in a boss other than the two I mentioned that haven’t been changed…)

I’m not even sure how you can claim that’s not cheating, but sabotage isn’t. They are the exact same thing… impersonating somebody to gain advantage?

Not sure how you reach the crazy conclusion that scouting is similar to it at all, either…

One is like breaking into the other teams locker room and stealing a playbook.

The other is the team statistician noticing they just ran this play and for these reasons often run this play next…

I think unless the rules for a game say otherwise, you can assume impersonating a member of the other team to sabotage or steal from them is cheating, FYI! Just for future reference guys…

Chopps.5047:

Zosk.5609:

Can’t we just all agree that near perma-stealth is probably not very “fair” AND retaliation and confusion should stack duration? Then, everybody wins!

I don’t want to derail this conversation too far but what’s your opinion on stability stacking rather than having duration?

I think given the current paradigm of some buffs stacking duration and some stacking up (which I’m honestly not the biggest fan of)… I think it should stack duration since it’s a binary effect.

My thoughts on retaliation and confusion (and damage barbs/damage shield effects in general) is that they usually make games less fun and MMOs seem to take two paths..make them so minor that one wonders why they even bothered putting them in there in the first place. Or make them powerful at which case they become very frustrating for players..often frustrating to the point of making things non-fun or being arguably overpowered.

This game did the latter…the fast-pace of combat is saving them from too much nerfing as half the time in large-scale WvW combat people don’t even know what kills them anyway…. if they realized how much they died to stacks of retal and confusion for just dodging or trying to heal themselves or remove conditions they might take to the streets! (Virtually of course, nobody would have to put clothes on…)

Can’t we just all agree that near perma-stealth is probably not very “fair” AND retaliation and confusion should stack duration? Then, everybody wins!

It’s fun and needs a lot of work. To be honest, I put it as sort of the mutant baby of WoW and League of Legends…both are alright and can be fun but neither were my favorite.

Even though in DAOC in Warhammer I was in Scenarios/RvR constantly, in this game I find it can be extremely repetitive and button-mashy a lot of the time. To be frank while it’s fun in it’s current state it’s not something I’d want to do every night I play. (Luckily, the game has relatively mindless but engaging PvE…and is free to play!)

The logic of the AOE limit is extremely simple.

Abilities balanced for 5v5 fighting. Limit imposed as quickest way to make sure AE abilities are not overpowered when they hit 10 or 20 without splitting abilities.

Fixing will require a review of almost all abilities in the game (since so many are AE of some sort), likely a LOT of splitting abilities between sPvP and WvW, or just admitting 5v5 is not where it’s at and balancing the abilities for WvW instead.

People who think it’s an easy fix are foolish. It’s possible they could get away with increasing it to 8 or 10 or so.. and just dealing with the aftermath as it comes. But would that help anything, or would it cause more problems? Nobody knows!

Fun is challenging, but as you said, not frenetic and not so challenging it requires you to come up with every shady trick and borderline exploit. Fun for a wide audience probably means multiple difficulty levels, honestly…as MMOs like this one have a wide variety of player types.

When I hear people talking about stacking on a mob because it’s attacks won’t work…or how you can kill this mob from safety from this ledge…. I’m kicked right out of my fun zone already. Just cleaning up the dungeons and making the rewards consistent would be awesome.

Honestly, I never understand why people a handful of organized people mashing buttons on siege should really stop an attack.

It’s not “fun” and it’s not a “good fight”… it just leads to lots of inaction as well.

Some changes are warranted as now it often feels like there’s no reason to defend at all, but I don’t think ‘buff siege’ is the real answer. I’d think slowing down takes (more better doors.. doors have more absorb against non-siege attacks) and more strategic options for defenders (back/postern doors) would be better.

But still, if you want to defend something against a serious attack, you should be forced to have a game plan other than try to get through the door and mash buttons on siege from relative safety.

Right. The solution to mix up the matches more is already (sort of) being worked on… it’s equalizing population as much as possible and making participation more fun and rewarding so that a wider array of people show up.

The system is pretty much doing the best it can, barring large transfers that screw it up (for obvious reasons)….

My question is, why are people caring so much about numbers that are about 99% population and participation trends (in my approximation). Honestly, I think a more effective way of getting WvW server points is to whine in Lion’s Arch that you need people out there than actually play.

I think it’s fair to say that if you buy the gems with gold (a bad idea for most players anyway!) and are discounting any convenience or other benefits of the pick, and you aren’t a hardcore gatherer…it will be a long time before you get a ROI for this purchase.

However, math wise, they’re completely pulling stuff out of their rear end. There’s no basis for deciding that the average person uses 20 picks per day. The daily based logic is complete nonsense…

colesy.8490:

I’ve farmed those wps for about 3 hours (half today, half yesterday) with… ~200% MF or so and it’s definitely had an effect. Got four rares and an exotic yesterday, got some more today and got 3 piles of crystalline dust literally within seconds of each other.

The only problem I have is that basically every other stat you have sucks if you go MF, not whether it has a relevant effect.

That’s a separate argument…almost everybody thinks Magic Find, as a concept, kind of sucks. Vast majority of players would prefer not to have to worry about carrying a set of ‘farming gear’.

Also, most players don’t think it’s fair that my support Guardian can switch to that gear with little downside (I give up healing power and toughness and gain precision and magic find, which is not a huge deal in most Orr events).. but that a glass cannon has to give up some power to use a farming set.

Nor do most people think it’s really a good idea that in a game based on teamwork, somebody can decide to handicap their effectiveness to get more loot…

But here we are, it’s in the game and we’re probably stuck with it. I’d LOVE for somebody to find that Magic Find didn’t work at all and we can all retire our farming sets and never swap again…. but the fact is that even if that was found, ArenaNet would just fix it.