Guild Wars 2

Thanks for clearing that up, Linsey

skullmount.1758:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

skullmount.1758:

Lazaar.9123:

Refer to:

Linsey.4579:

Don’t worry a whole lot about the icons shown, they are all placeholder.

Linsey.4579:

I hooked them all up. Not sure why my account isn’t showing as a dev account, but I am in fact, Linsey Murdock.

I’m not sure I’d believe these yet. There still is no red tag to that account, it only has two posts, and AFAIK all dev accounts are first namelast name.XXXX (some with spaces between first and last).

This is untrue. Many Dev accounts are one name only. There is a difference between Dev account names and Dev forum posting names.

I know that is Linsey’s account. No reason to think someone would impersonate her, but if you feel the need, bring it to the Moderator’s attention, and I’m sure the results will be appropriate.

Good luck.

I went through three pages of the dev tracker, and clicked on their names so it would show the .xxxx and all of them were their first and last names (except GMs Talon and White Noise, but they’re GMs). Hence why I’m skeptical.

There is also the fact that this account exists

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/LinseyMurdock-4165

It has the usual red banner display name, with Anet job title.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Way to jump to conclusions that the next set of legendaries won’t include a short bow since they have yet to release what new legendaries will be made available. Calm down or just keep raging on based on lack of information. I don’t care. I’m used to posts like this these days.

Whether or not a shortbow, or any other specific weapon, is included at release, the issue still stands. It’s rather unlikely that the term “handful” would have been used to describe a full set of legendary weapons. With anything short of a full set, a lot of people are going to, rightfully, feel left out.

Melinea.1875:

I think there are both, the bee as well as the insect. They are on the same row. I’m also worried about the Chaos of Lyssa icon… doesn’t it only drop from the Crown Pavilion which is not even in game right now?

This is the part of the collection that concerns me, too. I hope it’s just a reused icon, or a temporary art placeholder. Precursor crafting should not include crafting a 500g (and currently unobtainable) cosmetic item and many people do not like, and have no interest in making. The precursor itself is already taking up that position.

Ayrilana.1396:

Unless they specifically stated that it would be free then you cannot say that they lied or purposely held this off for the sole purpose of making money. “Implying” is not evidence as people can see only what they want to see and the create their own connection to justify it. Why not complain that the new maps will be locked behind the paid expansion when previous updates have provided them for free?

Anyway, this topic is outside the scope of the OP’s post. If you’d like to discuss this further please create a new thread.

It’s a stretch of semantics to say that it’s not totally dishonest. It was a feature touted along with other free updates (features which we did get for free), and long before any mention of a paid expansion. This was a time when living story was the only new content for the foreseeable future.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Ayrilana.1396:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

rhapsody.3615:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Good to know people without the xpac get to continue having fun with the RNG.

---

slowclap****

Just as you won’t have access to any of the other new skins/maps/skills, etc introduced in the expansion. Why do people keep thinking they should be given expansion content for not buying the expansion?

“Expansion content” that was originally dangled in front of the player base back in 2013 as a QoL update that was put on hold and is now being packaged with the xpac. Sorry, but this was a feature that Anet shopped to people a while back as a free update to the game and now people will need to pay to get it.

Excuse me if i think that is just a touch on the greedy, disingenuous side of things. It would have been fine if they stated back then that they were shelving it and that it might only be available with an xpac. Instead they strung people along every time it was brought up in the forums.

Isn’t it greedy on the players side to assume that everything outside what was originally included on the game CD has to be free?

Did you miss the part about how Anet first talked about the feature as a free QoL feature to the game back in 2013? Did you miss the part about them stringing along the player base before just going silent about it? Or how it would have been fine if they just admitted back then that they were not going to offer it as a QoL update anymore?

They were actually implying this before release, it not directly mentioning it. I know there was also specific mention of finding hints or clues in the world about what is required to make a legendary…and here we are 2.5 years later, and I’m fairly sure no one has found anything like that.

The idea was certainly sold to players as a QoL feature to be added later, not as part of a paid expansion. I’m glad we’re getting it now, and while it is disappointing to see it not as a free feature update, I’m not too bothered by it.

The collection system looks good, but I think it should be in addition to the existing systems, not taking one of them away. Precursors obtained through RNG, whether it be drops or the forge, should remain tradeable. Perhaps making them even more rare to encourage use of the new system, but still leaving the old as an option. Keep only the pres obtained through the new collections bound.

Having RNG pre drops being bound sets up for some really massive disappointment. I know I’d be more than slightly bothered if I had a bound pre drop for a legendary I’ve already made or have no interest in making. If these drops must be bound, at least have them be an exchangeable token, instead of giving us an extremely rare bound item that we have absolutely no use for.

Andraus.3874:

No you can’t get a helm yet. The poster above my post is incorrect. If you would have chosen a helm then you wouldn’t be able to get shoulder gear yet. I am unsure of the level that you get it but it’s definitly after level 10. I’m thinking it’s closer to 15 or 20, then there will be helms you can buy for your level.

I think the earliest crafted ones are at 15, but you can definitely get a helm at 10 from the trade post or drops.

In any case, it’s not anything to be concerned about. You’ll be able to use any appropriate helm once you acquire one.

I don’t know the specific rewards, but you’ll likely get one soon from either story or leveling rewards.

Your guardian will be able to wear any heavy armor helm that you meet the level requirement for. Any that you can’t equip would have to be too high level or of another armor type (light or medium).

Any currently compatible helms in your inventory will be shown in the Hero > Equipment panel. If you select the helm item slot, the item list to the left will show any helms you have in your bags.

Those options are only cosmetic, and even then, only effect the items you start out with. It does unlock the associated skins in the wardrobe, but it has no effect on your ability to equip another helm/shoulder armor.

You can choose to show your helm in the hero panel. Press H, go to the first tab (top one on the left – Equipment), then select Equipment again in the categories there. Make sure the checkbox on your helm slot (the top item slot to the left of your character) is checked. If you’re still very low level, you might not have a helm yet from rewards/loot drops.

Also, I believe that helms are always hidden during story cutscenes/conversations.

There are quite a few game mechanics that can alter precision on the fly, so the first step to ID’ing/reproducing a potential bug is to rule out any normal/intended causes.

You didn’t mention which class, but some do have traits that effect precision. Other players can also increase your precision with traits that effect allies or skills like banners.

Being in/out of combat will effect some, like ranger’s Spotter trait. Spotter also effects other players.

Guardian has a trait that converts toughness to precision, which could be increased by other players’ nearby using traits/skills that increase your toughness.

Warrior has a trait that gives precision for signets, provided they’ve not been activated and are on cooldown.

Weapon swapping could alter it as well, if all weapons aren’t the same stat and tier. A weapon set using an accuracy sigil would increase precision while that set is active.

I’d like to see the zone-specific dailies gone entirely. It’s not much better in mid-level zones with a zerg of level 80s trashing events. The previous region specific ones were bad enough about causing players to flock to the starter zone of a region, but this just enforces that zone as the only place to go.

Not sure if this is intended or not, but several of the achievements in the “A Very Merry Wintersday” category don’t count towards meta progress. It’s not very intuitive to have achievements all lumped into one section, and be told to “complete these achievements” for meta progress, then have several of them not count.

I had no idea some of them didn’t count till I finished the scavenger hunt, which has two previously hidden achievements. I wasn’t all that surprised by those not counting, but according the dulfy.net’s guide the jump puzzle and snowball mayhem achievements also do not count.

I’m looking at a achievement category with 10 finished achievements, with a meta achievement telling me 8/11 are done. Is it supposed to be like this, or are there 4+ bugged achievements?

Maybe those of us that played yesterday will start on day 2 of the log in rewards, because we already had the chance to get normal daily rewards between reset and patch. I’d be fine with that, since I got a laurel/other items with the daily before the patch.

Not sure how they handled players that were on yesterday post-reset, but did not complete the daily before the patch today. Are they screwed out of a laurel/old daily rewards?

This is completely unacceptable. How did this even get approved?

There’s been more than a few times when I’ve used the exchange to get just 100 gems to be able to afford something. With all the odd/varying prices, we need options in buying amounts of gems.

It’s bad enough that we are stuck with a minimum real cash purchase of $10, now this has spread into the exchange too.

The only new player experience “improvements” I can agree with to any degree are the story pacing changes and the rewards. But I do fear what the story changes are going to do to BL ticket weapons. Their greed might just backfire on that, though.

I’d like to know what they were thinking with the leveling lockouts and gating. I haven’t heard a single aspect of it that I like, or feel is any sort of improvement. I’m glad I have a level 80 of every profession, because there is no way I am going to make a new character in this horrible system. The previous trait changes/gates were bad enough, but backing off offhand weapons, weapon skills, and utility skills just makes the early experience dull and boring. And if been informed correctly, you can’t even earn skill points to unlock a new/better/different healing skill till around level 13.

Trog.2918:

Yep, I keep getting the charmatrix crash too, in Queensdale, roughly the same spot every time I think. I never used to have crashes until recently

Same crash I’ve had 4-5 times. Happened several times while I wasn’t even interacting with the game at all. Another while I was idle and chatting ingame, and a friend standing right next to me crashed at the same time.

It could just be a coincidence, but this seems even more common to me when there is lag caused by server/internet issues. During the first week of LS season 2, Dry Top had some major lag problems, and I was getting stuck in place every few minutes when the lag was especially bad. I can’t think of any other time when I had experienced this bug so many times over a short period.

And, as mentioned above, this is fairly easily reproduced by breaking CC “too fast”. If you use a stunbreak right as the CC lands, you’re most likely going to be stuck until you do an emote. Using a movement/teleport skills also (usually) fixes it, as well as being hit with another CC.

This is also not the same issue as the movement key momentarily not working. No combination of movement key presses, releases, or re-presses will fix this issue. Having your movement key being temporarily unresponsive (till re-pressed) or having it stop you while still being held down (again, till re-pressed) is an entirely different issue.

I like the idea of having the open world being part of the story, the technical side of it is a disaster. This is a lesson that should have been learned in past releases, but they keep trying it. Having progress rely on events, especially chained ones, is asking for progress-stalling bugs like this.

We don’t have the info to know what the cause is, but it’s clear that they have great difficulty in making this type of content functional. If they can’t figure out how to get these things running smoothly without multiple patches over the course of several days(or even weeks), then it’s best to just not do things this way at all. The last two releases relied on instances for progress, and both went rather smoothly. Today’s patch managed to break 1 minute into the open world portion.

The Order’s globe is a bit difficult to read, but I don’t think any of the lines displayed there are the ley line we know of. According to the wiki page for the Chanty, “The globe is the Order Threat Assessment Board, indicating draconic and other supernatural threats on a huge scale”.

I did notice one odd thing while looking at the globe. I saw the shadow of something fly across a section of it. It looked similar to the shadows of Zhaitan’s champions seen in Orr. I only saw it once, and didn’t see any birds/bats in the cave.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Would be an interesting twist if this centaur turns out to be an ally offering help in protecting the Pale Tree… say, from an evil corrupted Nightmare Tree which is the source of the vines (because as we know from sylvari personal story, there’s more than one sylvari Tree in Tyria).

I’ve thought that maybe the Sylvari Trees could actually be servants(or even champions) of Mordremoth, and that the Pale Tree was just “corrupted” by Ventari and now stands against her creator. Mordremoth’s influence could have been involved around the time the Pale Tree’s seed was discovered.

That seed was planted around the same time as Primordus’ awakening, and we have yet to see any signs of him aside from minions. Mordremoth could have begun to wake up long ago, with recent events just speeding up the process and getting his attention. His area of direct influence over plantlife is quite large, and the seed was found in Maguuma Jungle cave guarded by plant creatures. It’s possible that he was responsible for the creation of these seeds that would become the Sylvari race.

I’m not sure how many followers Ventari actually had, but this group could certainly be descendants of his followers or other centaur that are against the Modniir’s war against Kryta.

According to an interview with Ree Soesbee and Jeff Grubb (http://www.guildmag.com/magazine/issue9/interview.htm), the Maguuma centaur from GW1 were actually the Harathi that we have in GW2. With the Harathi being focused on Kryta and the war with humans, I don’t think the centaur remaining in the Maguuma Wastes would be members of that tribe. If they are associated with a known/existing tribe, my guess would be the Tamini.

I think it’s more likely that these centaur are not associated with the other known tribes. I don’t see the Harathi or Tamini tolerating the existence of Prosperity. They would have wiped out the town or taken everyone as slaves by now.

LadyGiselda.7956:

Im not a centaur expert but i think is more probably that the centaur give us problem than be an ally. Centaur are territorial and aggresive creatures. I imagine this centaur is watching us and preparing some interesting problems (ambush etc..).

Yeah, it seems more likely that they would attack. The Maguuma centaur were always aggressive in GW1. They were always fighting with White Mantle in some parts of the jungle.

I think the only non-aggressive centaur was the tribe in Elona that Zhed Shadowhoof belonged to. And even that tribe could be distrustful of humans, and Zhed himself used the derogatory term “two-legs” when talking to, or about, humans.

I could only see these centaur being friendly out of necessity if they believed that an alliance was their only chance to stand versus Mordy. I think it’s more likely that they are corrupted and already working for him.

A friend just pointed this out to me. I have no idea how long he’s been up there…but we are being watched. No indication that the centaur are related to Mordy, but corruption is always a possibility. Or they end up being allies, seeing that their terrority is under assault by a dragon.

Thiagugu.9682:

Tamias.7059:

Honestly, and I don’t expect this to be a popular opinion or anything, but I hope the waypoint system is removed or otherwise rendered unusable.

With no waypoints, we would have to find another way to move around….MOUNTS CONFIRMED!!!!!!

I mentioned that to some friends earlier today. If waypoints were in some way disrupted, people would think it was a sign of mounts being added.

Tim.6450:

What if thriving waypoints (waypoints that don’t erode) are waypoints that are on ley lines so that they can draw magic from them?

This seems very likely, and GW1 players should recall why. The Central Transfer Chamber in was an Asura gate hub built on top of “a major pocket of magical energy” (quite possibly a ley line junction), which also happened to be the resting place of Primordus, who’s head was mistaken for a statue. The town’s in-game description also states that the gates are directly powered by this magic.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/CTC

Polestar to the vast wheel of Asura Gates, the Central Transfer Chamber is a magical and architectural marvel constructed atop a major pocket of magical energy. The Asura channel that raw power to fuel all the gates in the network and link them together via this great crossroads of transport. Most of the major gates across Tyria lead to this location.

If the Asura were indeed using a ley line junction to power their original gate network, then it’s very likely that the Asura-built waypoint network would rely on similar sources of power. Or even be utilizing the the ley lines themselves as conduits for transit through the waypoints. Given the apparent lack of understanding of ley lines, this could be happening without them even realizing that they were being used for anything more than a power source.

Dry Top does seem to be on the higher end in regards to system resources. The large piles of broken masts and tattered sails, combined with more liberal use of particle effects is probably a big part of that. But having the game running at around 60 fps, yet still seeing noticeable skill delay/lag is almost certainly a server or connection related problem (seemingly server, in this case).

This most recent update seems to be helping, for now at least. We’re just now getting into prime/evening hours for the western NA time zones, and I’ve seen the worst lag later at night(early AM hours EDT). The previous two updates that claimed to fix this also seemed to helped (for me, at least), then the issues started showing up again and getting worse over time.

Taygus.4571:

yes!, thats another thing, how can there be soooo much lag in instant content?? This is unplayable ):,

I wasn’t referring to the actual instances, but to the effect caused by the green map star for that particular stage, which happens in the open world version of Dry Top. The problem seems to be specific to that particular stage’s star icon graphic. The glow/highlight effect that appears when you mouse over the story/event tracker text for that stage is a massive white block instead of an animated ring/burst of light. A white block that seems to be a massive graphics asset capable of bringing my PC to its knees.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

What I had seen, it is an issue that I cannot reproduce, it is a very rare, random occurrence. Or perhaps I have already gotten used to working around it, I don’t know. Of course, I also do not play in full screen, so perhaps that also makes a difference?

I still get instances of a held right button mysteriously unclicking itself when not playing fullscreen. It’s just that when I am playing in fullscreen, that issue has occurred along with the unclicking. I don’t play fullscreen as often as I used to, so I can’t be 100% that issue exists in the current build, but I know the initial right button issue is still there whether in fullscreen or windowed mode.

Taygus.4571:

anyone else notice massive frame lag paticularly when an even starts near you..or when the tiers change?.

Noticed a massive lag spike when tier 2 unlocked.

I’ve noticed that some of the story map markers do the same thing. One of the early steps that guide you through the series of assisted leaps just before the Fallen Hopes instance is the worst I’ve seen. When this particular step updates the map/tracker, I get a second or so stutter.

I also noticed this morning that if I mouse over the LS tracker text in the upper left with that step active, the mini map green star becomes a huge white square that covers about 1/4 of the map. This white square bug takes my framerate from 60 down to 10 or lower. Moving the mouse away, and removing the highlighting of the story icons returns everything to normal.

It seems very unlikely that it’s caused by the mouse or its driver/software. The cursor being confined to the monitor the game is displayed on is a function of the game itself. It should not be possible for the mouse to leave the game/monitor without first minimizing, alt-tabbing, or otherwise removing focus from the game. I have also not seen either of these issues with any other game.

It’s not a Razer problem. I’ve had this happening since release and I have never used a Razer mouse. My Logitech G600 is the only mouse I’ve used with this game.

I don’t think it’s related to the mouse itself at all, because when this happens I’ve also seen the mouse cursor is “escape” the game in fullscreen. Normally, GW2 (and most games) will confine the mouse to whatever monitor(s) the game is being displayed on in fullscreen mode. If you happen to press any mouse button, or try re-pressing the right button, after the cursor has escaped the game window the game will lose focus and minimize. Of course, this particular aspect of the issue is limited to those with multiple monitors.

Seems like it’s actually worse now than it was an hour or two ago. I used Heartseeker to close a short gap between to my target, and leaped the wrong direction to where it was a few seconds earlier. The de-sync issues appear to be returning, with the visible and actual locations of enemies not be the same.

I’m still seeing some NPC/player freezes in the Dry Top I’m on right now. It’s not as bad as it was, but occasional 1-2 second pauses and a constant slight, but noticeable, lack of responsiveness in skills is still there.

The fact that these spikes have happened while I’m running a tracert to the game server, without any noticeable effect to the tracert, tells me that nothing on my end is contributing to the problem.

It’s a lot better now, but I’m still seeing noticeable delay on 64.25.38.233. Was just doing the Crystal Shard/Race event, and pick up crystals is still very laggy. I made an Inquest NPC drop their crystal, and immediately attempted to pick it up. The NPC had already picked it up and ran beyond melee range before my character even started the animation to pick it up.

The several second skill lag is gone, but combat does feel a bit unresponsive/delayed at times. I’ve also still had multiple instances of getting stuck in place using mobility/teleport skills. Getting stuck using these skills has always been an issue, but the lag problems seem to make it much more likely to happen. I got stuck in place 2-3 times during a single champ event in Dry Top this morning.

Dry Top has been horrible tonight on NA server as well. I noticed a good bit of lag/delay (combat totally stopping for several seconds) and mobs being totally de-synced, like a devourer that appeared to be right in front of me while my attacks where being directed to an empty spot about 900 distance away.

I also spent a few hours killing world bosses without any noticable issues, and even went back to replay a couple of the new story instances with no lag. But as soon as I got back into Dry Top and tried playing, the lag, delays, and combat pauses returned.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I think it’s a sign that Mordremeth has the power to disrupt waypoints with his dragon magic.

That’s what I’m assuming, too. Maybe we’ll see some more severe effects with the next episode.

I also noticed the Mirkrise Waypoint in Brisban has the same periodic flicker as Prosperity Waypoint, along with a buzz/zap sound.

The waypoint at Prosperity dims/flickers every few seconds, too. The flicker is similar to a contested/disabled waypoint. I noticed it yesterday, but I thought it was a distance rendering bug at first, till it did it while I was standing around next to the waypoint. There is no spark, and nothing is making contact with it. There isn’t even anything moving around it.

edit:
I think the two are possibly related. Both happen at 16 second intervals. The flickering waypoint has a short flicker, then goes steady for several seconds before a longer series of flickers. The entire flicker cycle restarts every 16 seconds, which is the same time between the vine’s attempts to touch the other waypoint.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Aren’t they already in the wiki?

Some are, some aren’t. They won’t show up there until someone that contributes to the wiki actually buys a recipe and sees what it makes.

The info displayed in recipe tooltips is very much lacking, particularly for food items. With most armor/weapons, just seeing “A recipe to make Soldier’s Draconic Gloves” is often enough because it’s fairly easy to remember that which stat combo “Soldier’s” refers to. But when the recipe info is limited to “Recipe: Cactus Soup”, you really have no idea what you’re actually looking at. There is no reference to what “Cactus Soup” actually does.

This is something that’s been an annoyance/inconvenience since release, but the latest living story chapter really highlights it. An item that costs 130 of a somewhat slow to come by currency should not be a blind purchase. The new recipes creating account bound food makes it even worse, because you can’t even sell the food if the recipe turns out to be something that you won’t use yourself. The combination of cost and being account bound is also likely cause for the general lack of information on these new foods from out-of-game resources like the wiki and this forum.

Can we get some better in-game info on recipes? At least the ones sold by NPC vendors, and particularly the food items that lack a standard naming scheme.

After level a character (a 2nd engi) in the new system, I found a few aspects that I certainly don’t like and I feel are extremely limiting/discourage to new players (or even to veteran players looking at trying an new alt).

The 14 point trait system makes sense, but backing off each trait tier by 20 levels just slows down the feeling of character progression. It’s also rather detrimental to some professions/builds that are more reliant on traits to be viable.

I also like the idea of earning trait unlocks through gameplay, but the current implementation is just awful. Most of my newly-80 engineer’s traits are unlocked by tasks that are simply too much trouble to do, and even more so for a level-appropriate character. Champions at the end of long (and not obviously related) event chains or in remote areas, which don’t often get killed. Orr temples which can leave you sitting around for a couple hours waiting for events to reset. Level 30 adept traits that require tasks in level 50+ maps, and even one that requires a level 59 story mission.

What is the purpose of unlocking the trait tier at 30, if the actual trait is walled off until I double my level?

Why would I want to repeat unrewarding story mode dungeons on a character that will likely never need to be the opener for an explorable path?

Being able to unlock them through gameplay is great, and could have been a nice encouragement to exploration. But I see the tedious/difficult nature of many of the tasks, and high cost of buying the unlocks, leading to many traits never being tried. It’s just an encouragement to buy what you need to fit a build, and never look at other options. Experimentation should be encouraged, not turned into a burden or nuisance.

There are a lot of things to do in this game, and they could have chosen much better tasks to unlock traits. Or at least chosen ones that are level appropriate to the trait tier.

Ben K.6238:

It’s not there to deter spies. It’s there to deter bandwagoning during season 2.

Yet the server rank based reward system, and sale/free transfers only encourage and reward bandwagoning. In my opinion, it’s a token effort at best. Overall, their decisions are designed to cause bandwagoning, not deter or prevent it.

The restrictions seem almost pointless to me. Season one’s locked-in server assignment for rewards made a lot more sense, and made mid-season bandwagoning completely useless.

The spring tournament’s design encouraged pre-tourey bandwagoning even more. And it ensures that bandwagoning remains an option even after the tournament has started, with a relatively minor restriction.

Sceinna.3561:

Then they need to come up with a system that works and not punishes people that don’t have bandwagoning intentions. Hell, these are the people that buy gems and support your game and you punish them?

Why not lock down transfering during the seasons instead? Right, because it doesn’t make you money.

They had it right with season one. They allowed transfers, but your rewards were based on the server you started the season with.

Allowing mid-tournament transfers that let you get the rewards from your new server is just inviting abuse. I’d say there are a quite a few players that would not consider a week without wvw (especially when they can still play on EotM) enough of a deterrent to keep them from transferring for more rewards.

The problem highlighted in this thread seems to be that some players transferred before the restrictions went into effect, but have been wrongfully locked out of wvw. Then there is the (lesser, IMO) issue of players that transferred after the tournament started just now having their wvw lockout go into effect. They are rightfully being locked out, it just started too late.

Hannelore.8153:

A simple solution for all of your concerns about server pride/WvW recruitment: Add a server-specific chat channel that is common to every player bound to that server, and subsequently appears on every single map. This is what other games do.

I would also like to see a server tag displayed next to our guild tag. Like, [JQ] for me.

’Nuff said.

I would like that, as long as it’s per zone/city(maybe region?), and not game-wide. I don’t want a global/world chat that has everyone from my server, no matter where they are in the game. As nice as it would be to do a server-wide wvw rally call or guild recruitment, having a global chat tends to be a mess of spam, trolling, and generally childish behavior.

maddoctor.2738:

mrstealth.6701:

Rallying calls in pve (cities or populated zones) has been a major source of support for wvw on my server for a very long time. Having players from every server mixed into these mega-overflows is going to make that nearly impossible to do. I see this having a large negative impact on our ability to get people into wvw when reinforcements are needed.

Since the megaserver will put people with the same Home on the same instance, it won’t affect rallying calls that much. Yes it will have players from other servers mixed in, if your server doesn’t have a high enough population to support one map but that’s also a problem with the current system.

I’m also going to miss having a familiar community in cities and at world events. I like being able to stick with the same commander/group through multiple events. With events starting at the same time in every instance of a map, what are the chances of actually sticking with the same group between events? And I mean group as being the entire group doing the event, not my party.

Once again, if you are of the same Home server, when you port to kill another World Boss you will be put in the same map instance as everyone else you were playing with before. Provided there is enough room on the map instance (same with the Overflow system). I don’t think the Megaserver will affect this part of the game much either.

The only thing helping a group like that stay together is in the increased chance of landing in an instance with people on the same home server, but instances will be filling rapidly during world events. It seems that large groups will very likely be broken up among several different instances when changing maps.

There is a way to prevent this from happening in the game already. There is a soft cap on all maps and there is no reason to remove it, after the map reaches the “soft cap”, only players of the same Home will fill the last spots until you reach the “hard cap”. Although there IS a possibility for the Megaserver to disrupt big groups, it won’t happen as easily, and as often as people say.

The one good thing I see with this change is having more populated maps for leveling/general pve. But I don’t see it being a huge difference. Taking 24 nearly empty instances of a map and combining them into one still leaves a very low population map.

If 6 out of those 24 instances have 1 person each, it will allow those 6 people to play together and even do Group events that would’ve been hard to solo.

There is a reason they are putting the Megaserver tech on low level zones first, to see how the system works and adjust it as needed.

It will have a higher chance of putting you on a map with others from your home server. And it’s not even a large increase for that chance, and there are other factors that have higher influence. If someone from your server happens to land in a different instance than you, they will increase the chances for their party, guild, and server to be there.

And since world events now happen at the same time for everyone, those instances will be filling up very fast. Getting an entire group into the same map before it fills up would be difficult. For every player that lands in another instance, that instance gains a higher chance of pulling in even more players from your server.

Looking at the chart on the megaserver announcement page, the percentage chances of being paired up with people from your guild/server are barely better than the current overflow system. With those numbers, getting tossed into some random instance will be the standard.

Rallying calls in pve (cities or populated zones) has been a major source of support for wvw on my server for a very long time. Having players from every server mixed into these mega-overflows is going to make that nearly impossible to do. I see this having a large negative impact on our ability to get people into wvw when reinforcements are needed.

I’m also going to miss having a familiar community in cities and at world events. I like being able to stick with the same commander/group through multiple events. With events starting at the same time in every instance of a map, what are the chances of actually sticking with the same group between events? And I mean group as being the entire group doing the event, not my party.

The only thing helping a group like that stay together is in the increased chance of landing in an instance with people on the same home server, but instances will be filling rapidly during world events. It seems that large groups will very likely be broken up among several different instances when changing maps.

The one good thing I see with this change is having more populated maps for leveling/general pve. But I don’t see it being a huge difference. Taking 24 nearly empty instances of a map and combining them into one still leaves a very low population map.

It could also help eliminate world events that fail because only a few people show up. The downside to this will be getting stuck with full-map zerg lagfests more often, instead of having more enjoyable events with 20 or so players.

Overall, I think the downsides outweigh the advantages of this system. I’d rather take my chances with too few people showing up for events, than being stuck in a full map that causes server lag and has a large impact on game performance. This makes the event scale and take much longer, which is made worse by the lag and performance issues, as you aren’t able to play as effectively.

Jamais vu.5284:

Your sentiment might be very true during the first half year of a game’s lifetime, but certainly not almost two years later. New actual content that isn’t an overflow map is long overdue.
You will not recruit new players or make old ones return with bug and lag fixes. They generate zero publicity. What WvW needs right now is a reason to log in.

I do agree that the time put into EotM would have been better spent on something like an alternate set of WvW maps. Another set of matching borderlands to be used in turns with the existing maps. At least that would give a change of map each week. It could even have a different number of keeps/towers/camps, as long as the total PPT stayed the same.

However, I think the primary focus should be fixing the core problems, like coverage/population being the deciding factor in most matchups. Anet can’t really force players to spread out evenly among the servers, but they could alter the scoring system to make server stacking less effective. Give a bonus percentage to PPT at each tick based on the current wvw population (total of all 4 maps, averaged over the duration of the tick timer) of each server. Tweaking the amount of boost would take some time, but I believe it could be helpful in reducing server stacking to get more/faster rewards, especially during tournaments. The basic rewards systems in wvw could also be adjusted to increase basic rewards (coin, karma, wxp, MF) to servers that manage to gain a PPT tick lead against servers with a higher current population.

Cactus.2710:

It appears that several people here missed the tongue-in-cheek part of my original post. I’m well aware that at least two threads complaining about severe lag in WvW suddenly disappeared.

I don’t think they achieved anything by doing that. There are just as many new threads on the topic, and the ‘Streisand Effect’ coming into play due to the deleted ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

atheria.2837:

Zulika Mi Nam.1092:

PhaNTaSiZe.4215:

You ppls’ connections and/or pcs must suck, b/c I barely ever have lag or skilllag issues, aside from a 3way clusterfudge inside Stonemist here and there when theres an INSANE amount of ppl in one place. Other than that, no issues. Maybe it’s not the game that is the problem, but for you that’s just the easiest thing to blame it on…

You heard it here guys. Your PCs just officially hit the wall and are “over the hill”. All of them hit the limit at the exact same time too.

Don’t feel bad, my 4930k, 690gtx, Raid0 SSDs, and 64G of ram I put together last month – poof also “over the hill” at the exact same time yours was.

I;m going to buy some intel stock. -and yes T1 here.

What’s worse than that?

How about commanders who call all the players out in map chat so the griefing can start against any who have disconnects and tells them they need to start the client over.

Negating our many (and for me documented in glorious screenshots) disconnects are people in the game who are not being kind – in fact they are getting pretty darn nasty about this being the player’s “fault” even with all of our graphics turned down and rebooting ad nauseum.

It’s not our computers – it’s whatever happened Friday that is different than it was the week before – EB continues to disconnect many.

There are always people that assume it’s your PC because it doesn’t happen to them. You get comments like that because people are completely ignorant to how the internet functions, or even to determine the difference between PC performance and network/server issues.

The widespread nature of lag/disconnects points to the cause being either the servers themselves or a routing point between players and the server. The fact that many of the problems seem to only effect wvw, and not pve, server issues are most likely the cause. Even if it’s a 3rd party network provider causing the issue, it’s likely closer to Anet’s end since it effects so many people. Anet might not be a direct customer of that particular provider, but they do have control over which networks they buy bandwidth from.

Shifting their own services away from the provider(s) peered with the problem network, even if just temporarily (to allow time to fix said issues), could solve the issues players are having. I’ve seen this very thing happen with at least one other game due to major issues with one network. Unlike residential services, these types of network services usually give the customer some leverage over the direct provider via Service Level Agreements. And those providers would have similar contracts with the other network providers they peer with. In simple terms, if Anet’s ISP is not providing the quality of service being paid for, Anet should have the right to terminate the contract and change provider.

Seigfried.5938:

Anet thinks things like the seasons and tournaments are update. They are not! During a season we don’t do anything different. It’s the only time we are actually rewarded, somewhat, for our efforts. Hence I gave up on playing for ppt or playing in any large scale combat.

The seasons/tournament really just highlight and exacerbate the issues wvw has. Population/coverage has been a problem since release, and reward systems that encourage bandwagoning only make that worse. And the temporary spike in wvw population from achievement/reward chasers does nothing to help that in the long run, but it does make the lag issues even more of a problem. I don’t see the temp influx of pve’ers helping this tournament much at all, because many will go to EotM to get achievement progress.

This new transfer price layout could have helped the population issues for the tournament, if they had thrown out the pre-tournament sale pricing and implemented a reward system that does not reward/encourage bandwagoning. The players most likely to go for the free transfer offer, are already a free transfer server, and will only be moving to a higher ranked free transfer server. There is no reason or incentive to move to a server at the bottom of a league.

I know that a lot of us want more/better rewards for wvw, but these tournaments are not the way to go about that. Making the wvw rank chests more rewarding at higher ranks would be better than implementing tournaments that make the core problems worse.