Guild Wars 2

-WvW Guilds from a server is required to register their guild on the npc every matchup
-Non Wvw guilds/ non registered guilds when entering a WvW map will be randomly moved to a server to balance the skirmish on any tier/matchup
-Players not representing the registered WvW guild or not representing a guild on that matchup will be moved to a different server to balance the man power per skirmish.

Couple of interactions I’m curious about:

If I enter with no guild tag, get placed on Server B. And then represent a Guild that is on Server A, what happens ? :p

If you’re in 2 guilds, one on each side, Can you swap between them ? And what happens when you do ?

-F2P accounts are limited to EoTM

Don’t like, simple reason, how are we ever going to bring fresh people into WvW ? Making it exclusive is going to backfire.

I understand the idea though, no spies etc.

-WvW guild that is registered on server A but the guild member player is on server B will be randomly moved to a different skirmish matchup

Didn’t understand what you meant with this one.

-Registered Guilds can now queue 10v10 up to 30v30 on obsidian sanctum vs other guilds from every other server (all tiers) during a skirmish, this will give points on warscore

Like this one, you planned to make OS into an instance then, so there could be multiple OS in play at the same time ? In that case might as well just ask them to cut out the Arena area alone for that. (And make the rest of OS into EotM Megaserver, so you can actually find people there)

On the whole, looks interesting. That is an interesting way to take on teams and guilds, I honestly like that you can just jump it at a completely random server and see what happens, but others might dislike that part.

Having guild fame etc linked up to representing a world in WvW is interesting, and stretching that a bit further it could be a way to let WvW only guilds upgrade things through WvW later on.

Not sold on the have to re-register each week, would prefer an option to register with one world and stick to it.

You’re still linking a Guild to a Server correct?, so a guild couldn’t decide to register with another server for a week? But could not-register, and go together as a group and hope they all get to the same random server/map? Would like to see a way to stay together with guildies on this, but can imagine some tricky situations. (Hey guys, lets all 20 of us go to this dead server during night time! Uhm, why are we split up into 10 on each team? No one else here?)

Bear and Snow Leopard elites used to be the best skills in WvW to escape with, still miss them, only way my old Norn Guardian would ever get away from anything at all.

At launch there was free Transfers, and I had friends on both sides of the pond that I wanted to play with, so transfered back and forth almost every single time I played so I could play with someone, mostly just picked random servers. Lost complete count of the number of servers I ran around with like this. But I never touched WvW back then, so it didn’t matter at all for me.

Once they actually put a price on transferring, I ended up on Kaineng as my last transfer, with the buddy I played the most with, so stuck there. Later on when starting to try WvW, that was where I started (31st may, kitten you Anvil Rock!). Just as Kaineng had hit rock bottom 24th spot after the whole Kain-Train fiasco.

Since then I’ve transferred once, because guild wanted to try somewhere else, so went to CD for a couple of weeks (despite me hating that place in GW1 so much!), and quickly went back again.

Got a secondary account (because I messed up some pre-ordering back in the days), that I’ve mostly kept at different EU servers, but haven’t really used much, except if some RL friends nags about playing with me. its on AG atm.

:(

Was looking forward to finally get to run with you some day now that we where linked again.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

…

If we instead had twice as many worlds, but if each had about half the population, it would be much easier to create linked teams with similar populations. This would lead to better matchups for everyone, and encounters would be less predictable. In this scenario, we would allow players free transfers to the new empty worlds for a period of time. These worlds would start out linked so that they wouldn’t begin in an empty state in a match-up. We would lower the player population cap on all worlds so that more worlds would become and stay “Full.” The result would be that guilds that want to expand would have an excellent option to do so with a move to these new open worlds.

TLRD; This idea would be great in theory, but I see no practical way of accomplishing it, without nuking every single server, and forcing people to join new servers from scratch.

This would work very well with the Linking system, having something like this, where the “n” are the new servers:

• Match-up 1
  * Green: 1 + 12 + n13 + n14
  * Blue: 2 + 11 + n15 + n16
  * Red: 3 + 10 + n17 + n18
• Server
  * Green: 4 + 9 + n19 + n20
  * Blue: 5 + 8 + n21 + n22
  * Red: 6 + 7 + n23 + n24

With each server having a max of say 50% of the existing servers, in both population for full, as well as reduced map limit. Would certainly make it easier to balance the population, and make servers much closer in size to each others.

Now for the reasons I don’t think it will ever work.

• There is no way you will get players to de-stack willingly.
• There is no variety in play-styles, everyone is thrown into full zerg-fest
• Each server community would have even less impact in WvW, thus apathy
• Recruitment for servers will be from a smaller pool, less growth or variety

(1)

The simplest one to point out is the lack of reason to de-stack. There needs to be a reason for people to want to de-stack, hostory shows there is next to none. The average WvW’er on a big server went there for a reason (or didn’t move away from it for a reason), they like/want big battles, with lots of commanders and guilds etc. They no more want to be forced out of that into some tiny server with “nothing”, than I want to be stuck into T1 blob-fest ever again!

So just how are you going to make it tempting enough for the average WvW’er to even consider moving ? It would have to be something pretty substantial to tempt them, while at the same time be something that encourages them to stay on that server, and not just grab it, grind some gold, and transfer out again. So obviously no gems, or legendary weapons or ascended etc. Well unless you make them SERVER BOUND, so you can’t sell them and can only use them while on that server -_-

(2)

This proposal also further cements the effect of Linking that we’re all supposed to have one single play-style, “Welcome to Zergling Wars 2! Now with 20% less Firebats!” If you got this to work (somehow), it means that ANY link would have enough population to fight somewhat evenly with every other link.

That is great in and by itself, but what about those of us that doesn’t like Zerging ? That doesn’t want skill-lag when soloing a camp because 150 people is dancing “the robot” in SMC mashing 1. The idea of all tiers is equal is great in itself, but what about those that liked the lower tiers for various reasons? (hardware limitations, low-pop roaming, easy dailies, enjoying the small scale open world pvp style, etc).

(3)

For some people, the community/server is the reason they play, so obviously if there are 4+ different different communities present, then those people are going to feel less invested in the game play. Nature of the beast.

(4)

This will hurt some guilds more than others, probably WvW specialized guilds would have more problems with this than others. Also, PvX guilds is going to find this a nightmare.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Having outlined some of the thinking behind this proposal, we’d like your feedback on these three topics.
1. How do you feel about this proposal?
2. What, if anything, would you change about this current proposal?
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?

(1) Good in theory, not possible in practise. Only way to get this working is nuking all servers and start new ones. AND remember to make it dynamic this time, so you don’t end up with empty servers down the road again.

(2) If you want to test this, just implement the lower pop caps, and lower map caps, and make transfer free to all medium worlds. And see how it works. And ignore every single request to open full servers, ever! Have moderators flat out close them on sight.

(3) Nope. Granted I’m from Kaineng, and I’m fairly certain we would be a medium pop server under your new system anyway.

Bearer of Burden.4621:

Most people want to win and want to have it easy.
Most people think that being where everybody else is will allow then to will easy
That is how stacked servers came into existence.

You can link anyway you want, but people will still try to get that easy win and move server accordingly and/or stay on there currect stacked server.

The only one solution to fix this is to force equal numbers in wvw at all times, so no one server can outnumber another for any length of time

• yes its gonna be hard to program this
• yes people will have to be kicked from the game when opposite server losses players in wvw (idle players first, then on a first in first out bassis )
• yes there will be more and longer queue’s

So if people want to play (and avoid queues) they will have to transfer

• make server population level depend on average number of wvw players over certain time
• make transfers to low.pop servers free (once a week)
• population will have a change to balance itself

This way, the server’s with best players online will win, as every server will have equal numbers in wvw.

Will this be fair: YES
Will we like this: NO
- we will hate getting kicked because opponents have less players
- we will hate being in queue waiting for opponents to get more players

+1

Agree with this. This or blow up servers, only way I can see people de-stacking, ever. And I think it gauges the player reactions and feelings perfectly.

Jim Hunter.6821:

You need to add better rewards that don’t promote bandwagoning. Instead of increasing rewards for winning the Skirmish/match just guarantee better rewards for the things you accomplish (capturing/killing) but add diminishing returns based on the amount of players that helped.

So solo capping towers or keeps should guarantee exotic with a high chance for ascended drops. Each additional player that helps should lower that chance by about 10% until you hit the current drop rate (should never be 0% chance).

This encourages more players to go out and get stuff done without relying on a commander. Which means less coverage gaps (because smaller groups will be willing to run), less blobs, and it may even encourage players to move to lower pop servers.

+1

This should be highlighted, blobbing should not be the most profitable way to play WvW, or we will never get rid of this mentality.

And this is the only way to ever make people consider moving to smaller servers. It solves some of the main problems in WvW from the very start, but unfortunately ANet’s Care-Bear-Rule prohibits them from fixing this.

Jeknar.6184:

Overall score will matter when winning start to matter. Right now there is no point in winning as you gain nothing for it. At least with rewards for skirmishes we can focus in winning during the time we play instead of stressing over what happening while we are not playing.
Skirmishes can be much more competitive opposed to Matchups that are pretty much over by monday.

I find it amusing how much this is starting to remind me of EotM. I do not think that has to be a bad thing, I think it could a good move depending on how they did it, to make WvW either more casual or competitive, depending upon the execution.

Anyway, I do think that focusing on “This Skirmish” is a good step for both types. Curious about how they are going to handle rewards, certainly hoping it won’t be “Stack server for rewards!” type.

(3) So if I where to make a Copy/Paste out of the suggestions above, and add some of my own, while still trying to keep it within some “limits”:

• Use #2: Red/Blue/Green for teams/maps.
• Use #3: Guest world capture.
• Team name: “Color [Server1][Server2][Server3]” ex: “Red [DB][BP][Kain]”
• Enemy name: “Color Invader [Guild][Server]” ex: “Red Invader [SIN][Kain]”
• Player name: Same as normal just add [server] tag at end. ex: “Elrik Noj [SIN][Kain]”

PS: This assumes you’re also working on the name plate de-clutter that you guys talked about before.

This is far from perfect, but it should give us something to start/work with. The main drawback is that there will be some “elitism” over different servers, but honestly less so that we already see with guild tags. It is a PvP mode, some of this can’t be avoided when you gather multiple competitive people.

Some random ideas, and some wish-list items, in no order:

• Add a /server chat channel, may disable it for default since only WvW’ers are going to care much. But it would help with restoring call-outs to people currently not in WvW, recruiting for server guilds, and in general finding players/help, and thus form community. (And new and interesting avenues for trolls to explore, nothing new)
• If you limit links to max 3, you could name one of the home BL keeps after each server (ex: Dragonbrand Garrison, Borlis Hills, Kaineng Bay), this “could” give each server some more incentive to defend/protect/scout home BL for those that miss that. It “could” also give each server a matter of pride to hold their keep. And again “could” encourage server hugs and high-fives if another server comes to help save a keep etc. No guarantees, just an idea, also randomize it.

(stupid word limit! I’ll get you next time Inspector Gadget!)

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The team has been looking at ways to improve the server identity within the World Linking System. We have come up with several potential solutions, and we’d like your feedback on them.

Thank you for reading our concerns and working on and posting about it, appreciate it very much!

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Solution 1: Alliance Names Proposal

This feels like putting a plastic bag over the problem, if we call them Badlands, Overgrowth and Frostreach or something. It would equalize that the Host server would feel as lost as the Guest server. (ooh! Team Mystic, Team Instinct, Team Valor!)

I just don’t think it tackles what I think is lacking the most, a way to find other players from the same server, and find people to play with and form a community with.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Solution 2: Guild Focused Proposal

If we’re first going to put hats (or plastic bags) over the link-names, I think the Red/Blue/Green is as good as any other option. Simplicity, and using existing precedents etc. I’d recommend adding way to clearly tell a person what color he is, visible on the screen/UI somehow, since a lot of people forget etc.

But it does run into same problems as “Solution 1”, in that it is still a plastic bag, and doesn’t solve what I feel needs to be solved.

I do not like the guild claiming part, I do not see it solve much, and there will be plenty of people messing around with multi-server guilds, or personal bank guilds etc just to try to mess with people.

Think I’d like to see something more like “Objective Captured by Red! [Kain]” for both sides. The “Red” clearly tells the information needed by everyone, the tag behind specifies which server is active. Use majority as you do for guild claiming etc. 3 Kain and 2 BP and 1 DB = Kain majority. Or list all “Objective Captured by Red! [Kain][BP][DB]” for same example. If 10 DB only just show [DB].

Lets us show others who we are, that we are active, shows others on our link that we can do stuff too! and helps us find others on our own server a bit easier.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Solution 3: Some Guest Names Proposal

Like some of this. Having the captures for guest servers helps a bit, no more: We capture this for our overlords. All over it is a decent compromise, but I feel it doesn’t try to tackle much.

Would still prefer my above example of “Objective Captured by Red! [Serv]”, it gets the information we need, and adds the server tag at end without getting in the way.

If you write out “enemy names” in a similar manner: “Red Invader [SIN][Kain]” I don’t think it would be any more confusing. Get the information needed out to the enemy/player with as few words as possible, make it easy for him to read it fast and get the information he wants.

If you’re working on the de-cluttering of the name plates anyway, consider just: [color][guild][server]. If you’re making color icons for the first one it would look something like: “(G)[SIN][Kain]” and you can even leave the server tag an optional in options.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Questions:
1. Which proposal is your favorite?
2. What, if anything, would you change about any of the current proposals?
3. Is there another proposal you think is better?

(1) I like some parts of all of them, but if I had to pick an order then 3>2, and not 1.

(2) Where to begin … Naah not that bad.

Largely I feel that these proposals are “hats” (or plastic bags), put it over the link to mask the problem. And I think the 3rd example helps best with this, probably with a mix of 2.

What this doesn’t fix is to help server-mates get together, group up, find others, play with etc. Because if you want to find a community you will want to find one that you can play with every time the links change. This is why I’m so adamant about having a server tag or something, so we at least have a way to look for each others. (That, and a /server chat channel! plz!)

Many people miss different things for this aspect, some miss having their own borderland, as a way for server-mates to group together and defend Garrison, meet up and recognize names in the spawn etc. Others identify through the names of the maps, to get everyone to rally to defend “Kaineng Keep” etc. Right now, we’re sort of locked to Guilds as the only way to do that (recognize guilds from same server, ask guilds what servers they are from to join etc. It kinda works, but not for everyone.)

(Continued in next post…)

Just to mention, when ANet changed the world population method to only work for WvW, they mentioned how they did it (briefly with little details). But from what I understood of it, they count “man hours” in WvW, not how many people logged on. So this is already done.

Junkpile.7439:

Need to remember that many many players only play WvW when their server is leading.

This however, is the biggest problem when it comes to balancing population.

Several people suggested Divinity Reach, and with some work I think it could be really interesting.

Honestly don’t know what other maps would be interesting, as most of them is structure entirely different. I can just imagine that some of the home instances could make for some wacky PVP maps.

Rata Sum might actually make an amusing map to play in WvW.

Simply based on popularity, I don’t think EBG needs changes. A facelift probably wouldn’t hurt, except that it would take resources from other things, and you can bet that would be whatever little resources are invested in WvW in the first place.

Personally would rather see them work on Alpine and Desert to turn them into proper 3 way maps, without the home map advantage. This would eventually let them consider creating new and different maps that aren’t locked into the same pattern of EBG +3 BL design, which limits their map design a lot.

Right now, whatever they make has to be either another BL map, or something to replace EBG, the most popular map by a landslide.

(1a) Half of this is already implemented. The PVE population doesn’t count for servers being full or empty etc, the medium, high, very high, full ratings are only based on man-hours in WvW.

(1b) I agree that it would be great to have all pve players on a single/multiple PVE servers, and have them choose a WvW server when joining WvW only. But unfortunately I suspect this is a whole lot of more work under the hood than we can imagine.

(1c) The problem with server lockdowns, is that it really kittenes off too many customers with valid concerns. Like having an entire family spread over multiple servers, one of them find a great community on a server and wants to invite the others, but full. And if ANet relents and opens up, 3-4 people with valic concerns move over, and 30-40 band-wagoners.

(2) Unless they have the resources to put own people in charge of overlooking and keeping up with this, I fear it would just become too much extra things to keep track of for ANet. Basically another thing that will be done once, and then abandoned.

Just imagine if they do this, make an overhaul and adapts skills for WvW, and then 6 months down in time we get a general GW2 update with skills and trait changes. Suddenly a few of the WvW changes conflicts heavy with some new traits, or other skill changes. And then they don’t have anyone to adapt and adjust this to the new changes? If they can’t dedicate at least a small team to this, it won’t work.

(3) I very much doubt that ANet will be able to get rid of the lag from the Engine, if they could, I suspect they would have done so by now. And I’d also guess that the problem isn’t in the servers themselves, but in the code. If it was just server hardware they probably would have fixed that long ago. And from what they have told about their server structure, it seems to shift loads over to other servers and clusters etc, so the servers naturally divide the load between themselves on the fly.

Some will obviously be very much against lowering the map caps for various reasons. Some love their large scale combats, some play this game for big zerg fights, etc.

Personally I’d prefer to see them go over to a dynamic map system. Where the system creates and removes/freezes maps as needed to the shifting population. That would work well with a reduction to map limit as well, if there would be a queue, it would spawn a new map.

Hwarang.4789:

Getting rid of name tags from an enemy’s perspective, so geurilla/ninja (whatever you want to call it) tactics/strategies are more applicable.

I think it’ll encourage a variety of war strategies and can expand from the only type of warfare we’re all accustomed to: blob fighting.

I would love this so much, been wanting this from the first time I stepped into WvW and saw a random enemy trying to hide behind a bush or something.

Make actual stealth gameplay work, hiding, ambushing, trying to predict which way they’re looking etc. Without that dumb huge red line of text hovering over your head saying “Hey guys, he’s right here!”

Oh boy would lots of people rage though.

I’ve seen something similar suggested several times before, even suggested it myself a couple of times. So obviously in favor.

What I’d like to see is having a map that function as a server specific instance, a server hub so to speak. A map that you can log in/out of like HotM, that is an integrated map of WvW, but since it is a single server specific, you don’t get kicked out of it for week reset etc.

Fill it with portals to all the other maps, all the services, merchants, crafting stations, bank, TP, laurels, badges vendors etc. Let it be the most convenient map in the whole game, to get people into the map. PvE’ers and WvW’ers alike. Function like a HUB map that PVE’ers are encouraged to use, and perhaps they do get interested in trying WvW etc.

Great for guilds to gather up before a raid/run, prepare and ready before running through the portal. Place to cool your heels and sell of trash etc while still seeing team chat. You could probably remove most of the vendors stuff in the usual maps if you did this.

Also like the ideas of dueling arena, build tester, and stab-dummies. Know my own guild would love that, though not super important for myself.

This is a strange case, in that I agree with every single post so far.

Should note one thing, at Poll for linking, one of the ANet people said that they checked the amount of votes and percentages from each separate server. And with a single exception they where very close to the final outcome of the vote. So except for a single server, every other server voted pretty close to the final outcome.

Iirc there was some hints that the Server that was the exception was FC which was heavy against it. But I can’t verify that, so don’t quote me on it.

I just answered this in another post as well, but as short as I can make it:

Merging servers means we have static population on each server.

Player being players will as always move about an up to the bigger servers.

And the whole cycle of stacking servers will begin again, servers wanting to fill their coverage, wants the best fight guilds, wants a large enough militia etc. And people that goes there because they hear it’s great, or wants to be carried etc.

Byt merging to a STATIC 12 servers (NA), we would re-create all the same problems we’ve had with the server system since launch.

It would honestly be better to move to EOTM system than merging … But I still prefer linking to either, since it allows ANet to adjust the population by un-link/link servers to compensate. But let’s be fair, WvW was never competitive, and never will be. Trying to force it to be Competitive is like driving a WV beetle in a F1 race.

Advantages and disadvantages with both Link/Merge.

The main problem with merging is that it would lead right back to where NA servers where before the linking, with population stacking on the largest servers, and abandoning the lower servers entirely. Save for a few die hard nut cases like myself.

Players will move about, and if we merge all servers together, it means they can stack servers again. Until they find a way to stop that, I prefer Linking to Merging.

At least with Linking they can shift the population around, but linking different servers. To avoid the massive stacking we’ve seen in the past.

Unfortunately this only encourages what I’m going to tell you now: Save up gold, transfer to Gem’s and transfer to YB if you liked their community. As long as you stay on the “guest server” you’ll unfortunately never get a stable community again

+1 to this.

And/or the option to decide for yourself what is considered “junk”, I’d love to check that for minor runes/sigils.

Jeknar.6184:

I actually wonder if people really BUY gems to transfer or if they just convert it with gold… Honestly, the only time I bought gems was when I wanted to buy some gem store item and I was saving gold to finish a legendary.

Jeknar, you’re making it very difficult to try to not like you, when you’re so reasonable. But I agree, all the transfers I’ve seen or heard about so far are 95% converting gold to gems. The only times I’ve heard of cash for gems to transfer yet is when the rest of their guilds have moved over, but they haven’t had time or just sick of farming pve for gold.

Anyways I’m just happy to finally get out of T1/2!

Also, some people have to understand that some of these servers are really rally small these days. Guessing the band wagoners from earlier linkings have band wagoned to new servers again, so ET and AR for example would be so small that any server linked with them would hardly notice any difference at all.

And even at that, large parts of Kaineng went hiberating during last link, because we found it boring up in T1/2. One of my guilds went on vacation in T4 servers (and yes, converting gold for gems, both ways), the other guild rather spent the time in Halloween/Labyrinth or just taking breaks off from WvW. So I think some people are really overestimating the effects of some of us small servers.

We’ve had a few suggestions on this already, and I think the one I liked best was give us Proof of Heroics instead, and let us BUY tomes for those.

Less clutter, more options, those that want tomes can still get them, the rest can get other stuff. Siege or foods or what nots.

Yes because Kaineng, ET, BP, AR, SoR, FC, DR combined still probably wouldn’t be able to outnumber most of the host servers. You can link as many of us as you want to whatever server, and they likely won’t notice a difference.

Now if they linked BG and Mag, then yes. That would create some sick queues.

But the whole “Omg they got 2 servers, we got only 1 !” the number of servers doesn’t matter, the number of PLAYERS does. And if all those servers I had listed above has a 100 players each and that’s pushing it, thats 700 players during a week total divided over all time zones. The largest servers can pull that many on reset night alone.

Reh.5986:

I think the frog camp should get sick of the stupid players every once in awhile. 400 vet frogs and 10 champions should throw siege and start taking the map. Those boring hours when nothing is happening…

Probably the old Bronze tier player in me speaking, but I wouldn’t mind that -_-’ If there is only players from 1 side on the map, trigger npc mega outbreak mode!

Lexander.4579:

joneirikb.7506:

Don’t really think it would make much sense if looking at it from a realistic perspective. The way you fight with a spear is to fight in a group to benefit from the reach of the spear over other melee weapons. Once the enemy get close, you typically either drop it and fight with another melee weapon, or you grab the spear and fight like a staff.

In some ways I think the GW1 approach with Javelin was at least more coherent. But on the whole agreed with Illconceived Was Na, that functionality and purpose is more important anyways.

from a realistic perspective a warrior wielding a huge two-handed sword cant spin like a spinning top while covering a huge distance and evading all attacks

on-topic: yes we need the spear weapon class usable on land

Realism got nothing to do with this game at all. Was mostly a point that the fighting style of a Spear basically resemble a melee staff anyways, except for the first couple of hits from reach. So might as well just give a couple of spear skins to staff, and let more classes use melee staff. It would be the same thing. (Unless you start going down the sillyness that is D&D spears)

Don’t really think it would make much sense if looking at it from a realistic perspective. The way you fight with a spear is to fight in a group to benefit from the reach of the spear over other melee weapons. Once the enemy get close, you typically either drop it and fight with another melee weapon, or you grab the spear and fight like a staff.

In some ways I think the GW1 approach with Javelin was at least more coherent. But on the whole agreed with Illconceived Was Na, that functionality and purpose is more important anyways.

TheDevice.2751:

Here is my (and others) list of suggestions to make WvW better and gooder

1. Guild Airships I would also include boats and land vehicles

2. Food / Sustenance. Make a new supply called food which can be gathered or implement the food already in the game. Create a mechanic that will make your character weaker while having not eaten after a period of time.

3. Weather. Make rain and fog and other harsh conditions really play a part in sieges and treading the world. Rain should slow you down and maybe cause weakness. Fog should hinder your range of sight.

4. Sleep and rest. Make it so your character needs a minute or two of rest to recoup. . A meter maybe that depletes over time. Weather conditions, food/sustenance and travel can play a part in the depletion of the meter.

Uh and other stuff!

I wouldn’t mind a few of these in specific pve maps, but for WvW that should be focused on fighting and points, I don’t like them.

(1) The vehicles would be a nightmare to get balanced, especial something that flies. Also there are limitations in the GW2 engine, so they can’t handle it unless it is a transformation. (Just look at every instance in the game with things like these, they actually have the airships etc be the static land, and move the terrain around it, and even that bugs like heck.)

(2) Forcing people to eat food and get penalties if they don’t, is just going to annoy people for no real benefit. The game is already crazy high fantasy, and not gritty dark realism survival mode (to my great disappointment). There are already people that dislike how food works in the game (the buffs), and this would just add more fuel to that fire as well.

(3) The problem with this is largely that it would just be annoying most of the time, and irritate people more than it would be of any benefit. We already have rangers that hates on all things maps, because small shrubbery, a large rock, or even sometimes grass can mess up and give them “obscured” when trying to shoot.

If you added even more effects on top of that, you’d have a lot of angry people that felt the game was just working against them. On the whole this idea is trying to move more away from combat skill, and more into random effects. Any fight based players are going to dislike that a lot. Weakness for example with 50% miss, as a permanent feature during a specific terrain, well that is a random effect that is going to sit and just mess over anything you try to do. If two people are trying to duel under those circumstances for example, I think they’re going to rage quit :p

(4) The players already have to, lets keep it at that. The only thing this does is create forced stops, pauses, breaks, downtime, deadtime, in a supposedly action PvP-type game.

In general it sounds like you want a completely different game. Or want to turn GW2 into a completely different game. Don’t, most players enjoy it for what it is. And what most people want fixed for WvW is mostly in regard to population balance, and skill balances etc, to make the fights more interesting. I do think these could be interested in specific PVE maps.

Example: Dry Top/Silverwastes

Some of these could be very fun there, I don’t know about vehicles because of the engine limitations, but things like the Charr batmobike as they work like transformations (so the player becomes the vehicle). Dry Top already have sandstorms, though linked to a own timer/mechanic, it could be interesting to see that changed and have random weather at times, with a slight bias toward sandstorms since it is Dry Top.

You could create a own specific food to that map, probably “bottle of water” that you have to take to avoid penalties, you know to avoid dehydration in the sandstorms, could even link it to specific weather. And here you could also add in a stamina bar of some sort (or re use something we already have, like the energy bar), so you have to stop and wait to have it recharge, it won’t slow you down if you don’t, but most feel uneasy about going into combat without any energy.

On the whole sounds like you’re interested in another type of game, just a couple of examples from top of my had that might interest you if you haven’t tried them already:

Skyrim (Elder Scrolls), Dark Souls, Withcer, and next year Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

I can hear it when I enter LA, the CPU fans start working overtime.

Agreed with you, been annoyed that I couldn’t turn off those since launch. Especially story. I’ve done it once, and not interested in doing it again, so would like to turn it off.

Probably been suggested before.

Basically, I miss GW1’s way of handling Outfits. And would like to see that carrying over to GW2.

• In GW1 you could enable/disable Outfit and Hat separately, and thus also mix them as they where 2 different pieces.
• You could also enable/disable them separately for show/hide in City/World. So walking into a city you automatically put on your finery or casual clothes etc.
• This effectively allowed us to mix Outfit’s with normal Head armor skins, or Hat’s with normal Armor Skins.

Problems:

• It might be hard to allow mixing all the Hat/Helmet’s, as there would likely be all kinds of clipping issues with some of them (Pumpkin head for one)
• Might be too much work to separate all the heads from the Outfits.

Benefits:

• Just letting us enable Outfits in/out of cities would help us somewhat retain the feel of old Town Clothes.
• Let us enable/disable head pieces for City/World, would also help on the same, as for ex my guardian perhaps wants to walk with helmet off when in cities etc. Helps with immersion and feel of roleplay.
• If allowed to mix hats and helmets this way, it would create a lot of more options for looks. Personally find the main restriction with outfits to be the head piece that is locked to it.
• Gazillions of people get to use Cat-Ears with their outfits sigh Necessary evil I guess.

Other notes:

• Not my preferred option, but tonics as outfits ? Miss the old town clothes, and being able to color them etc.
• Best of all would be return of old town Clothes system with a GW1 style enable/disable, but I know that isn’t coming back.

I remember that Dawdler, my suggestion was about making it an ordinary Title, similar to the “Mist Threader”, “Yak Slapper”, “I’m Rich You Know” etc.

Largely because this would be much less work for ANet, and might be a reasonable “hot-fix”, to at least help us a bit with server identity crisis. It would also make it optional.

Yeah, me for example would be something like:

Tarnished Coast Bronze Commander [SIN]
Kaineng

right now. Or something, never remember what rank thingy I am, since I never see it.

Link the legendary sounds with one of the sound sliders, like the player musical instruments or something, that lets players enable/disable it as they please. (Off in my case)

A couple of days after we got the new Build/Trait system before HoT, they had bugged the target caps for most Guardian skills. Including all shouts and Empower to name a few.

I could stand in the middle of a zerg and be invulnerable, casting a single hold your ground with 15 people around me would heal me 2/3 of life, Empower was so overkill healing I didn’t know what to do. I ran around a couple of days in EotM just having fun with feeling invulnerable. I couldn’t die until they reduced the zerg around me to less than 10.

Been calling him Freddie since first time I saw him.

I’m not interested in a fix on GW1 to be honest. I’ve gotten spoiled to bits by GW2’s combat system, and controls. And don’t miss the MTG style skill bar combo setup at all one bit.

I would love to see them remake the story, areas, setting etc in the GW2 version of the engine.

I keep wanting to go back and play some more GW1 to finish more of the HoM stuff, but I just can’t stand the combat system at all any longer. If they released a own DLC or something just with “Pre-Searing Ascalon” as a stand alone with own characters, I’d buy it in a heartbeat, and my guildies would have trouble getting me out of it for anything at all.

@ Reaper Alim.4176 +1

(A) Really agree that they should look into lessen the reward the higher numbers do things. For the simple reason of encouraging people to split up. Create some Risk for the Reward. Make players try to find the golden spot where they can feel they accomplish things while getting rewards for it.

(B) There was a suggestion for a “Local Outnumbered Effect” a while ago, and I think that would have handled this pretty well. If just linking this to static areas like for example the presence of the keep system, I’d be against it.

Also, I’m really not fond of messing with stats for Outnumbered, but there are other ways it could be handled I guess.

© Suggested same myself, it would be interesting to see how it interacted with the “Band Wagon’ers”. (And to find out how much really is perceived effect or not).

TLDR: Make a “Title” with the name of your server, so you can wear to make people recognize where you from.

A way to help people organize themselves and find a server community (if they want to). By letting everyone pick a title with the name of their Server. It doesn’t fix everything, but at least it lets us find each others and make it easier to find guilds from the same server, and run together with people you’ll be with on every link.

Some notes:

Obviously if they just make 1 of each title and and let anyone pick whatever, there will be some trolls that is going to use this (nothing new).

If they make so that you gain a the title after some trivial matter like gain a WXP level on a server it will narrow down a little bit (and would be a good start for a server specific reward track down the road). It would at least help a bit toward that.

Better would be to have a specific custom title, named something like “server title” (Original huh?), that displays your current server as a title. But that would probably require some more development.

Optionals, ANet could also just hard lock so this title was always enabled for everyone not on your own server in WvW (enemies and linked servers). But I don’t like that route, as it would take away peoples freedom to choose to show the server name or not. Also, could create some more stupid elitism environments internally in a link.

This obviously doesn’t fix everything, like feeling that you contribute to the match, when you capture a camp and it says “another server campured a camp” on your screen, all too easy to go “naah, not OUR fight.”

Edit: For this, would also really love the option to have separate titles for WvW and other modes (If you want to).

Good compromise.

Personally the more I see this in action, with as bunkerish as people are these days, the more I’m all for skipping downed and go right do dead.

Ran with guildies the other day 3 of us roaming about, ended up fighting 5 or 6 (forgot) enemies, they ambushed us, and took me out early (yup I suck), the others got a few downed, but couldn’t concentrate on killing them, so they kept getting back up and re joining the fight until our team got taken down one by one.

Lying on the ground dead watching, and seeing that if not for the down state, my guild leader would likely have killed them all alone -_-’

ANet really should change their entire perspective on WvW/PvP, the same CareBear rules that works very well for them in PvE is handicapping them fiercely in WvW/PvP.

Three largest problems still are:

• Population imbalance
• Coverage imbalance
• Fair-Weather Effect/Fighting losing battles not fun

Everything else is lipstick.

There is a post saying that linking WILL be every month ?!

But just for sake of argument, I had to spend a lot of time digging up this, because I couldn’t for the life of me remember where it was… This is the only post I know of where they have discussed 1 month linking since the poll:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Server-Linking-Discussion/first#post6343541

Svarty.8019:

joneirikb.7506:

But I think the largest problem here is one of perception. Our Fair Weathers stop playing the moment it looks like a match is going against them, thus drying out the numbers. While the fair weathers of the winning side obviously keeps going.

I would propose that the solution should be to again modify the scoring system. If it were possible to recover a losing game or to gain some kind of benefit when there is one dominating force, then I believe people might be more keen to stick around.

This solution would ideally apply not only to the whole one-week span of a match, but also moment-by-moment. HOW this happens is a matter for the developers to achieve, but the problem of, “oh we’re wiping over and over? I won’t bother then”, is ubiquitous.

I’d agree that would solve half the problem. The scoring is only relevant to those that want/see the WvW mode as a competitive mode.

For the rest, you’re going to have to make the fights fun. Going out into a map, and getting slaughtered over and over by larger numbers, and there isn’t much you can do about it, even if you’re winning in points by it (for some reason). They wouldn’t enjoy it, they wouldn’t have fun.

If you solved that second one, I think there would be more people playing on all servers, and thus making the game more interesting for those that plays for the score as well. But that is probably the most tricky thing in the game to solve.

Jigme.8524

The problem is not the number of server, but the number of players. When the link was made DB had a lot more active players. There is a very high probability that DB will get a link next linking.

DB could probably play against 10 servers if it was the 10 lowest populations servers and win by simply outnumbering them. The number of servers does not matter.

Earlywood.7438

They are trying to keep the ranking working, and thus also the Glicko. If you moved to 1-2 week links, glicko would honestly be a mess and the rankings would be pretty chaotic/random. Which would further mess up match-ups something fierce.

As said above, the number of servers is not the problem. I’m quite confident that DB could beat a single team of: ET, Kain, AR, BP, DR, IoJ for example with little difficulty.

I also honestly doubt that “transfers” gives ANet much money at all, most of the people that I see transferring converts in game gold to gems to pay for transfers. Grinding PVE to gain it most of the time. That doesn’t sound like $ profit for ANet.

Svarty.8019

The Bandwagon/transferring is indeed annoying. But unless you want to lock the servers, there really isn’t any good way around it. I think you could lessen the impact somewhat by saying no transfers the first month of a 2 month link.

But I think the largest problem here is one of perception. Our Fair Weathers stop playing the moment it looks like a match is going against them, thus drying out the numbers. While the fair weathers of the winning side obviously keeps going.

This creates a perceived situation where the enemy has “so many more player” that people will believe that it is because other players have band-wagoned to the winning server. Obviously there are people that does that as well, but I believe the effect of that is much smaller than most imagine. With the exception of the T1 stacking.

To clarify, the mention to go to a monthly re-link was mentioned in the same post and in relevance to moving away from Glicko to a 1up1down system. I believe they specified that the Glicko system would be too slow for 1 month.

Jana.6831:

Yes
That was too much fun and helped the smaller group.

Just to point out I’ve seen it help both ways. Been in groups where 10 of us taken out 20 defenders, and they keep running in 1 and 1 to banner the lord, until eventually we’re down a few, and the remaining 20 can push in and kill.

Just can’t say it is something that will help only the smaller group.

(Got mixed feelings on banner lords, no real opinion one way or another)

“Eye of the Beholder” Basically, perspective.

People are going to use which word they want depending on a bunch of things including their personality, mood, how hard they where beaten, how much they got hard coutners or outplayed etc. saying “good/skilled” is the respectful variant, where “cheese” is the disrespectful version trying to downplay the achievement of the opponent by claiming he wasn’t the one solely responsible for the win.

It’s humans.

I really miss GW1’s version of outfits, where you had hats and outfit separately, and could enable/disable them separately. (Even set them to on/off separately for town/maps).

Still miss town clothes, that you could mix, but sadly those are not coming back. Still not fond of the various tonics I got in exchange

Haha, the only thing I think I could seriously suggest is let us Cata/Treb Asura’s over walls.

But to stay on topic, hmm, how about Thief getting a trait to let them wall run, so they can walk up walls ?

OOhhh! Or a Mesmer portal grenade, so they can lob the portal entry and create a portal there!

One counter point regarding Zerging, it is not the most efficient tactic. It is just the easiest, least risk, and easiest personal reward. It also has the advantage of the strongest benefit in WvW, destroy enemy morale. But for going pure PPT, it is actually pretty mediocre if the enemy is willing to split up, take stuff, and die a couple of times when caught by the zerg.

The problem is that it is indeed low risk, and as long as the enemy players are the same type (mostly fair-weathers), they will get demoralized and won’t try to mount an effective counter play. Thus leaving the map to get karma-trained until they outnumber again.

The inherent problem here is that ANet refuses to change this, because of their golden Care-Bear-Rule: “You should always be happy to see another player on your team”. So they will never make a change to the game that penalizes being more people.

Do like suggestions A+B, unfortunately they will cause problems with the Care-Bear-Rule. The same with C, but I object that for different reasons, If you break a 1vs1 or 5vs5 encounter because of Outnumbered the entire rest of the good combat system goes down the drain. They would need to completely rework how Outnumbered triggered and localize it for that to even remotely work. Prefer to see other changes done to Outnumbered (Like A+B).

As other have suggested, I think one of the ways to combat this is to reward skilled play, especially skilled group play. If a guild runs a dedicated 20 man group with Coms, builds, synergy, trained to pull things of together, they should be able to fight against large zergs, this would make a counter to the zerg, and reward skilled play. And make organized guilds feel a bit more wanted again ?

Hmm, remove heavy loot bags, and enable them with outnumbered ?

I can see both sides.

Both like the mechanic for being something unique to GW2 and saving me a whole lot of times.

But also specifically in 2vs1, even if you down one of the others, you might not be able to finish them off, as the other player keeps harassing you if you try to finish him.

On the whole I liked the changes they did a while back, to allow only 1 rally at a time, instead of the whole pack, that fixed the worst problems with Rally. Guess I’m willing to let the rest work as is for now.

I’ve said it before, friendly fire in any form is the best way to get rid of zergs in the game. They will quite literally blow themselves up. But I don’t think it would make for a very fun game.