Guild Wars 2

There is quite a bit of misinformation floating around regarding EHP and survivability. I’ve created a spreadsheet to help out with this, and it includes some default values for base stats and accounting for 1x or 2x heals per fight.

Preview sample.

You can download the spreadsheet from Strike Force Public Forums.

Talesslaser.7813:

I don’t see the point of this post…SBI is just smart. Obviously we’re not running around defending every supply camp, but we have eyes everywhere at our towers and our response time is generally quick if there’s a tower under attack, unless there’s something more important going on. There’s even pugs that go out of their way to do nothing but run dolys and scout on defense, or do nothing but run supplies to where it’s needed, instead of just attack for the sake of the rest the the people putting pressure on the other servers. Those people individually deserve as much credit for our success as our large guilds do, and any leader you talk to would undoubtedly say the same.

Amen. Many PuGs regularly contribute in a massive way to our victories. Lots of them are great leaders too. 100g doesn’t buy leadership qualities – it just makes you easier to find on a map. Similarly, you don’t need to be in a large guild to be a war hero.

Dhar.6392:

Last match up SBI vs BG vs JQ; this week…same servers. WTF! I’m blown away… only 3 realms competing for #1?

They removed the Orbs…. they need to reset scores to zero… and start over as if this is Launch. Any major change to Wv3 should get the same.

Not saying SBI wouldn’t still be grouped this way… but it would provide more justification going forward.

Every single one of your posts is about undermining SBI. I’m sorry you have such a hard crush on us.

OMG proof of BG hacking! Scroll up a few posts from here. How did Predator quote Snow Aeth before Snow Aeth posted?

http://i.imgur.com/MBd91.png

The prosecution rests.

SmokeyNYY.7841:

Except that the best defense is not a strong offense. The best defense is actual defense…You see your assumption can be proven wrong across all sports and even in actual warfare. If you over extend your offense your defense is severly hindered. I.E. Rome and now the USA.

Where did you learn history, from a movie? The decline of the Roman Empire is a terrible example for this.

Too short, want to read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_best_defense_is_a_good_offense

No offense buddy, but the SBI community is so inclusive that we get beyond language barriers to work together. You sound like someone alienated because we didn’t act according to your plan – get over yourself.

We have incredibly organized guilds that go out of their way to invest in our WvW success. These are guilds that fund our war effort. They are active in our community forums. They communicate with each other and coordinate attacks together. Nobody issues orders, we ask for help without authority.

If you are somehow feeling disenfranchised and you want to feel more involved, I suggest you get acquainted with our server forums. I have to warn you though; on SBI we play for the battle, not for badges. You might want to lose that chip on your shoulder.

PS: The best defense is a strong offense.

Good luck, have fun!

What Xeeron said pretty much sums it up. Everyone in tier 1 is acutely aware of the bandwagon jumpers that flock to the new flavor of the week server. I’m not looking forward to their inevitable exodus to SBI.

You can’t control this. You aren’t to blame for the zerg of bad apples into your community. I fully realize there are great guilds and players on every server that just want a challenging fight.

However, you can control the attitude your community exudes. You can make the people who diminish your server’s integrity feel unwelcome. You can even go to the extent of self sabotage in order to get them to leave. It’s extreme, but I personally would rather lose our #1 NA ranking than win alongside exploiters. If necessary I’ll take a week off and PvE or sPvP instead.

Not everyone will share this commitment to a fair match-up. Not everyone will even be aware of poor sportsmanship when it does occur. Still, some guilds or community leaders need to step up and be a voice for fair play, and the extent to which you pursue this has an impact on the perception of your server.

I don’t claim to be privy to the attempts BG made to distance themselves from the zerg that plagued their server and soon will plague SBI. Maybe you guys worked really hard at it and it just didn’t work. Maybe we’re in for a rude awakening this week as we have to contend with the same thing HoD, JQ, and now BG have endured.

Until we get extended (30 day+) lockouts in WvW after transfer, this will be a recurring problem. Still, I don’t think it’s fair to call an entire server unscrupulous. Many times you are a victim of your own success.

I think more vocal leadership from BG guilds will erase the tarnish from your reputation. Orb removal will go a long way to reducing the animosity between servers too since the most blatent hacking (fly mode orb retrieval) just won’t be possible anymore.

You can’t control the cards you were dealt, but you can control how you play them.

Most people are ecstatic about the removal of orbs. This was Arenanet responding to our complaints. Why you feel the need to complain about their action is beyond me.

There is a ton of content in GW2 for every kind of player. If you can’t find something to keep you entertained then I don’t know what to tell you.

The game has been out for two months. In that time they have added paid tPvP, a massive halloween event, more jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, mini-games, fov fix, another november event, new gem store items, many bug fixes, balancing corrections, economy stabilization, and a litany of engine related performance improvements.

All of that within 60 days of the launch of an AAA MMO title. This level of developer responsiveness is unheard of and is worthy of commendation.

The game will never be ‘perfect’ for everyone. MMO’s are always in a state of improvement. It seems some people have no idea how massive an undertaking an MMO is, and just have unrealistic expectations of how quickly their personal issues can be addressed.

Thanks Habib! Awesome to hear this from Anet. When it comes to responding to community concerns – you guys deliver in spades.

Perception certainly distorts reality. We have definitely gained a non US prime time krew, primarily thanks to our new Korean friends.

However, I disagree with the premise that SBI has boasted an off peak force larger than our opponents. For the past few weeks we have repeatedly seen our massive prime time gains be erased overnight by BG. This has been the trend. Take it by day, lose it by night.

We’ve had some herculean efforts from our guilds who contributed extra coverage by staying up late before we had any meaningful night krew dedicate themselves to this task.

I suspect that this will change however. It would be nice if Anet released metrics on population changes that would make such migrations more visible to all players. I’m assuming the fair weather fans that just want to win will start showing up on our server soon, if they haven’t already started that process.

We are taking steps to preserve the community and integrity we value, but I don’t envy any server that has had to contend with these issues in the past (HoD, JQ, BG). Here’s hoping we can maintain what we’ve worked to build so far.

I really wish Anet would just lock out WvW participation for something like 30 days after you xfer. This way people can still move servers to join a guild but it will stymie all the server hopping that has plagued tier 1. Anet could also implement an age-on-server check that prioritizes joining the WvW queue. That would reward long time residents and encourage server stability.

Right now there are two class of players as I see it: those that take pride in their server and work to improve the community on it, and those that exhibit no allegiance to anything other than being on the winning team.

We can take steps toward community improvement, but developer support to promote the former class would be good for everyone as far as I can see.

Retaliation changes are related to balance. I have no complaints with Arenanet making changes that they deem fit to have classes more in line with one another.

The argument for just accepting such a change in skill order is weak and illogical. It is a poor design choice. Sure we will eventually adapt, but the problem is that if this will be the approach in the future then many more players will be disenfranchised by an ever changing skill bar ordering.

Cooldowns will have to be in a state of flux as the game continues to be tweaked for balance. Anyone familiar with UI/UX design knows that the cardinal rule is to never break expected behavior. Once people have become accustomed to your application interface that is something you don’t want to change.

I fully understand that they are trying to organize skills by length of cooldown, but this will be a recurring problem unless they offer a way for players to reorder their bars or just decide to usher in today’s control setups as legacy and adopt them going forward despite future CD balancing.

It’s okay to be critical of a game you love and I certainly love GW2. My post is meant to call attention to this matter so that Anet can improve in the future.

Way to break the muscle memory we’ve learned entirely. How would you feel if tomorrow all the controls in your car were organized differently? Gas pedal becomes clutch, brake pedal becomes gas, and clutch becomes brakes.

This is an egregious break from smart UX design. It is not an insurmountable problem – sure we can adapt over time, but this is a poor choice on behalf of any developer. To those that disagree, all I can say is I hope they decide to reorder some of your skills at some point down the line so you can enjoy this approach as well.

For those that don’t understand, I’m referring to the Guardian Greatsword skill changes, which in this last patch changed the order that skills appear on your bar. I understand that Anet wants to order skills by length of cooldown, but this really is going to be frustrating for pretty much any Guardian that uses GS.

I can fully appreciate the need for balance and have no complaints about the goal of changing skill cooldowns. The problem is that if the planned approach is: change cooldowns = shuffle bars, that is a losing design strategy and it will rear its head again as more and more professions are forced to adapt in the future.

You should have simultaneously released a patch to allow players to reorder their bars as they please.

PS: Why did my post with 30k+ views and dozens of comments get deleted instead of moved here, or wherever else more appropriate?

Have you guys done all the dungeons? There are POIs in each of them that you find by completing story mode.

This is certainly a graphical issue, but I believe it is tied to the fact that you are using Dwayna on your PvP and PvE gearsets. I know it doesn’t help with the OCD of seeing an odd display like that, but at least you can understand why it’s happening and that you are not alone!

That was an awesome post, thank you! Can you post some pictures and a review of your experience with portrait mode?

I’m debating if I should hold out until new monitors are released but I’m not sure when that usually happens. If it’s at the end of the year or early next, I’d rather wait to see if I can find a 30" or greater lcd with more than a 1600 horizontal resolution. If nothing is coming on the horizon, your post has my interest in Eyefinity piqued again.

Thanks!

And you thought my post was well written…

@ Jon Peters: I love this game, sincerely. You have done what I would have once considered impossible for the MMO genre – made a game that is intrinsically rewarding and thus far more accessible to working adults. Thank you for that!

For all the beauty that exists in the game, FoV/camera positioning is a sore spot for me and many other players. I understand there may be technical limitations that could delay a change in FoV or maximum camera zoom, but to flat out deny any future improvement in this arena doesn’t make sense to me.

Without any modification, today, you can use windowed mode to adjust the game FoV. The only restriction is that you have to squash the vertical resolution to gain horizontal field of view. This is suboptimal, but yields some of the desired results.

Alternatively you can spring for an Eyefinity 3x display setup. Personally, I have no problem investing in that, but I fear not every player is financially advantaged to be in the same position.

My problem with Eyefinity is that I can’t find a bezel-less solution for a truly seamless and immersive gaming experience. Do you have any advice on the best setup for a gamer just trying to experience the glory that is the GW2 game world?

I’ve scoured Google for anything that would offer me this experience and come up short each time. Aside from some oil & gas industry specific displays that run between $15-30k a pop I’ve yet to find a triple monitor setup that eliminates gaps between the monitors. I welcome any advice you can offer.

Otherwise, can you please reconsider the decision to make no adjustments to FoV/Camera or at least revisit the subject after the camera smoothing fix is implemented? If it indeed fixes the deficiency that myself and other players underscore in numerous threads then great, but I’m less than optimistic that it will.

This is a part of the game that affects every player and I realize the symptoms may be tied to the engine limitations which means iterations will be a reasonably long time coming, but I think most of the community just wants to know that this is a priority and it will be addressed whether or not that is in the immediate future.

Finally, I’d just like to thank you for the incredible responsiveness you and your team have had throughout launch. I’ve been playing MMO’s since EQ and never before have I seen such a smooth title launch with devoted community interaction to keep us appraised of your priorities. I worry that with all the complaints sometimes it can seem as though your efforts are in vain but there are gamers out there that recognize the complexity associated with MMOs and the long term view that is required to sustain them for years.

Thanks!

Asura Guardian: workaround is to simply kill the veteran last. I had a bugged mob still trapped under the rubble of tower 1 that never stopped being invulnerable, so I just focused on killing the veteran last at tower 3 and that worked perfectly.

The GW2 game world is amazing – just astoundingly good to look at. For all the great aesthetics, my biggest gripe is the camera field of view itself:

• Maximum zoom distance needs to be increased.
  I think this is the single biggest improvement that you can make right now. There are far too many instances where the camera takes away from game immersion. Maybe the problem is limited to Asura race, but I think everyone probably experiences this as well. There are many environments, jumping puzzles, terrain changes, and encounters (read: large bosses) where the limiting factor is how much you can see and how realistic the world feels as you try to navigate with that constraint. All of these stem from the fact that there isn’t a way to zoom out further or in close enough.

• Minimum zoom distance should be first person view.
  Related to the last line above, sometimes you just need to be able to go first person to scope out your surroundings. Perhaps there’s a vista you’re trying to reach and need to find a way up. Zooming to a translucent character model still obfuscates your view and that problem is exacerbated by the fact that panning the camera up is still tied to your third person view. The best workable solution is to face your character away from what you’re looking at and hope that panning sideways can afford you an angle on your target. This is neither natural nor optimal. Experiencing the world should be as natural as looking around is in real life, or as close to that as a computer game can get you.

Despite this quality of life shortcoming, GW2 is a phenomenal achievement. I hope you can take this criticism constructively because I really am thoroughly impressed with the fantastic artwork and content within the game.