Guild Wars 2

Fuzzion.2504:

styx.7294:

Fuzzion.2504:

According to polls at gw2wvw.net there will be very little shift in populations as money is not a real great Input into decision making.

Theres also the 24/7 action and instant action in WvW in the upper Tiers which is very elusive to the casual gamer and hadcore players, both alike. Offcourse some prefer different sorts of action, and for those, i think they might take advantage of the free transfers.

Remember, free transfers to lower tiers was a request by the community. See, Anet listens

If money is not an input into decision making about transfers why does your server and others pay other people’s transfer fees?

Edit: Looked at the poll. 20% of the people who voted are transferring? That seems like a pretty big shift to me.

I dont think the top 6 servers wave money at guilds to come over. Yes BG bought Anet, but thats a different story.

I think guilds that want to come over, do come over.

The process is simple. A Scout or two from a server is sent , anonymously to see what the server offers. The big guilds send scouts to other servers as well. The info is feed backed to the GMs of the guild and a decision is made. A guild rep contacts the Top 5 guilds from the particular server and then makes arrangements to assist in any non-pecuniary means for the transfer. Once the transfer is 3/4 complete, announcements are usually made.

No, this is how it works.

If you’re a big guild in the low tier, big servers send people to you and offer you gold to transfer over. If things are going bad on your server and your big guild has bad morale, they start thinking that for the price of free or next to free they’ll try the change of scenery ’cause hey, they got nothing to lose and maybe a change of scenery will fix their internal drama.

They then go out and recruit people from other guilds, from LA, from anywhere on their low tier server telling everyone about how amazing high tier servers are and how free it is it to get there, you just need to join their guild.

It turns out the high tier server is laggier, has queues, and isn’t the sort of WvW they liked maybe. Less than a month after being on the new server, the guild dies. People feel an obligation to stay though because people paid for them to be there. They join the guilds that paid for them or just right out quit.

Edit: Maybe this isn’t every transfer story but this is the story of most transfers that I’ve seen leave Gate of Madness from their own mouths. I suppose it’s not the story that they tell to the server they arrived on or maybe not the story that servers with many guilds take notice of. But here we have few guilds and I try to remember each of their stories.

Virtute.8251:

Maladon.5760:

styx.7294:

etrigan.4213:

styx.7294:

Fuzzion.2504:

According to polls at gw2wvw.net there will be very little shift in populations as money is not a real great Input into decision making.

Theres also the 24/7 action and instant action in WvW in the upper Tiers which is very elusive to the casual gamer and hadcore players, both alike. Offcourse some prefer different sorts of action, and for those, i think they might take advantage of the free transfers.

Remember, free transfers to lower tiers was a request by the community. See, Anet listens

If money is not an input into decision making about transfers why does your server and others pay other people’s transfer fees?

Edit: Looked at the poll. 20% of the people who voted are transferring? That seems like a pretty big shift to me.

The only decision that matters to WvW guilds is whether they will get good fights 24/7. As for the the gems/gold that it costs, a hardcore WvW will find a way…

Hence the mass exodus from the lower tiers.

From what I’ve seen, it’s not the hardcore guilds that make the exodus.

Thread over…

You’re confusing “hardcore” with “hardheaded”, and presuming a non-existent evil in leaving your server(s), as well as a non-inherent honor in refusing to leave.

None of that. I’ve never once appealed or stated anything about honour and there is no good or evil in a game people play for fun.

I wouldn’t even use the word hardcore if you hadn’t. I assume you mean it’s someone who is devoted to WvW? Nutz has it right for what most guilds who transfer from low tier to high tier look like. It’s not the guilds that excel at WvW.

Kincaidia.3192:

no lull times on BG? Why have we been outmanned during primetime on 3 out of 4 maps every night outside of reset night for the past 3 weeks?

Thread is about whether the server status is not full, not whether you’re outmanned (which has nothing to say about server status) by other full servers.

At launch I was sure I was going to main mesmer or warrior or thief. Guardian was the last thing I wanted. 5 months in as a mesmer I made a guardian to give my friends some sustain in WvW and haven’t looked back.

I can’t speak for other guardian builds but at least playing healway in group settings makes me feel pretty spoiled.

etrigan.4213:

styx.7294:

Fuzzion.2504:

According to polls at gw2wvw.net there will be very little shift in populations as money is not a real great Input into decision making.

Theres also the 24/7 action and instant action in WvW in the upper Tiers which is very elusive to the casual gamer and hadcore players, both alike. Offcourse some prefer different sorts of action, and for those, i think they might take advantage of the free transfers.

Remember, free transfers to lower tiers was a request by the community. See, Anet listens

If money is not an input into decision making about transfers why does your server and others pay other people’s transfer fees?

Edit: Looked at the poll. 20% of the people who voted are transferring? That seems like a pretty big shift to me.

The only decision that matters to WvW guilds is whether they will get good fights 24/7. As for the the gems/gold that it costs, a hardcore WvW will find a way…

Hence the mass exodus from the lower tiers.

From what I’ve seen, it’s not the hardcore guilds that make the exodus.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Upcoming_changes_and_features says guild halls aren’t worked on but the sources are over a year old. Maybe we need an update on whether this has changed or not?

Fuzzion.2504:

According to polls at gw2wvw.net there will be very little shift in populations as money is not a real great Input into decision making.

Theres also the 24/7 action and instant action in WvW in the upper Tiers which is very elusive to the casual gamer and hadcore players, both alike. Offcourse some prefer different sorts of action, and for those, i think they might take advantage of the free transfers.

Remember, free transfers to lower tiers was a request by the community. See, Anet listens

If money is not an input into decision making about transfers why does your server and others pay other people’s transfer fees?

Edit: Looked at the poll. 20% of the people who voted are transferring? That seems like a pretty big shift to me.

Do you have AoE loot on?

They expire if you don’t pick them up. In long fights, they’ll disappear before the fight ends.

Last league doubled the WvW population on Gate of Madness. This league is going to boost us, not kill us.

Best of luck with whatever you decide to do.

Jski.6180:

Sirendor.1394:

Colly.4073:

Monsteratic.5487:

I don’t understand why people think it will kill wvw.

ESO won’t kill WvW, WvW is doing a nice job of killing itself.

Unfortunately the Developers of GW2 care too much about PVE and making $$ than they do about the PVP side of the game “Epic World Battles” was one of the BIG selling points of this game yet they are NOT very EPIC at all.

The skill lag is EPIC.
The bugs are EPIC.
The imbalance is EPIC
The Hacking and Exploits are EPIC.

/Thread

Its more on the lines the players are killing wvw. Games that are RvRvR live off of players competitive ways. If the players do not have pride in there world or there realm then there is no point in RvRvR in the first places.

Pride is well and good but I kinda feel like it’s the wrong word to use. I’m not ever going to come in here banging a drum over the fact that Gate of Madness is #19 out of 24 servers this week (nevermind that we’ve in the past lost to each of the servers that happen to rank below us).

I think WvW is good because it gives context. It gives something to fight for that actually means something. And I don’t mean means something in the sense of reward chests or achievement points or loot bags. I mean like actually means something.

That something is community. We’re all real people who are worthwhile. We all have troubles, jobs, and things. We don’t have anything in common that we all bought the same game and want to relax with it. If you can build somethin on the server that gives everyone the safe place where they can relax, be free of whatever prejudice or trouble they got goin on elsewhere, and just let them enjoy connectin with others by workin toward a common goal then that’s good and that’ll give you somethin in WvW to love no matter your rank or coverage. So you show up, be kind, work together, and try hard to kill people and get killed by people doin the same.

Only thing gonna kill this are empty servers.

If you are coming back… not sure you’ll find your experience fighting 20+ zerg busting groups super relevant.

However this works out, I wish Anvil Rock the best =)

Me thinks this be no ordinary WvW’ing duck.

Malediktus.9250:

Nope, the buffs are fine. Perhaps even slightly underpowered for the work it takes to get them.

Is this the right forum section for you if you think playing WvW is work?

Weapon stacking and gaurd buffs aren’t the same. The first you get by missing out on other weapon sigils (which can be a big deal in a close, small man fight) so there is opportunity cost (though I’d say it’s a super annoying mechanic – who thinks opening up inventory and searching for an icon among 50 icons is fun? If your fights are fun and fair, you’ll lose 50/50 of them so in an ideal scenario you’re doin this annoying thing pretty often).

On the other hand, guard buffs aren’t an opportunity cost. Everyone gets them eventually and they help you win fights you shouldn’t have won simply because you played Guild Wars 2 longer than them.

Straegen.2938:

I don’t remember this but that would be a terrible change. Little a defender can do to stop superior rams now aside from the treb/cata defense.

As much as the trebs behind the door don’t make sense… I do feel like they kinda fill a niche. Rams are pretty beastly with the traits.

Gravy.7589:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Gravy.7589:

If DB gets into gold half their population will stop showing up. They have a huge fairweather pop. How exactly is FA bleeding guilds? Please enlighten us. Lol

This is my concern. Looks like a lose lose for DB right now. If we go into silver league we will probably win and have easy boring weeks like we do right now. If we go into gold we will lose so bad guildies and entire guilds will probably quit or transfer like they did when we lost every week on DR back in the first season.

Basically why I am pushing to get more guilds into silver, so it can be somewhat competitive but seems majority want to be carried by the numbers in the top two tiers and sit in queues.

No one has to suffer to sit in queues anymore. We have Edge of the Mists now.

DevonCarver.5370:

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

DevonCarver.5370:

It ultimately comes down to a similar issue to that with the dolyaks, which is that the game isn’t able to track who is escorting a dolyak unless they do something like kill another player which doesn’t usually happen. Until we fix that gap in the game’s knowledge of what is going on, we can’t accurately reward players.

This statement is confusing. At launch, an “Escort the Dolyak” event existed which rewarded karma on successful completion. That reward/event was removed from the game because bots were scripted to farm the event by following the yaks. The bots received the reward without having to engage in combat.

It was great fun while it lasted because real players could farm the farmers who either didn’t fight back or fought poorly. Was hilarious to watch 12 bots slowly walking along beside a yak only to be mowed down by real players.

Of course, this had to be removed from the game. However, historically, it appears the game is capable of tracking who is escorting a dolyak.

I think if you examine more closely what you just said, you can see the problem. The progress was being given to anyone standing around near the dolyak when it ended its path. That is hardly accurately tracking who helped it out. Without a good way to know who actually helped, we can’t provide adequate rewards.

We’d be less hungry for rewards if things weren’t so expensive. You can help defensive players by cutting their costs, not just increasing their rewards. Defensive play is the most expensive, it includes the most siege placed (attackers place less siege per location, I’d say) and it includes upgrades.

I right now don’t at all see what use upgrade gold costs are. Maybe you can explain to me why they’re in the game ‘cause I don’t see it? It’s not a sink for almost everyone but it’s just a drag on a very few people. The very few people are the defensive players who need more rewards in WvW. If we can’t give them rewards for walking a dolyak, just make sure they aren’t punished when the dolyak successfully gets to its location.

Bash.7291:

However, it really is not the zerker meta that is the issue though, it is the elitist attitude that people take in regards to dungeons and needing to clear it as fast as possible. This happens in every game though, and just comes down to finding people to run at what speed you like.

Basically this.

I don’t often do PvE with my guardian but when I do, I do it in cleric’s ‘cause the people I run with don’t care.

Gravy.7589:

You’re reason for wanting to transfering up tiers is to get more gold in wvw? Ugh.

Haha, no, I don’t wanna transfer. Probably no one thinks “I’m going to transfer up so I get richer” but.. you do earn more money (more kills is more loot + more WvW XP is also more loot) on higher tiers. It’s why I often rail against people who want more rewards per kill.

My point is it’s just another ingame incentive that rewards for people for being on higher tiers than lower tiers. This is on top of gettin new transfers instead of just losin people to transfers (’cause basically no one transfers down). And on top of not having times in the day where maps are empty.

Most people transfer probably ‘cause they want a better community and unless you know a server very well, it’s hard to know if a smaller community is better. Usually you have a safer bet with a larger crowd.

All of these are reasons to transfer up and the game doesn’t help by making people on higher tiers richer (there’s so many ways the game doesn’t help.. the transfer fee was another big mind boggling one).

The game seriously needs systems that reward transferring down tiers to offset all this. Otherwise we’ll just keep going the way we’re going, smaller servers get smaller and bigger servers get bigger (until they’re so big it’s annoying, in which case people quit – they rarely transfer down). It’s a cycle that’s destroying the game.

Used to be 3 big servers + 1 sorta large server. But Sanctum of Rall is gone and I don’t think there is now that tier 1.5 server. How many months before there are only 2 big servers and the 3rd server in tier 1 is too feeble to compete?\

At least that’s my impression of it.

Sirendor.1394:

styx.7294:

Sirendor.1394:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I thought elder scrolls wvw was pretty bad. Wouldnt pay 15 bucks a month for it when gw2 is free after u buy the game.

Someone used the analogy already…

Some people will pay a subscription for playing AvA.
Zero people would ever pay a subscription for playing WvW.

I think that’s true.

That does not square with the fact that lots of people put money into Guild Wars 2 regularly that are WvW players.

Haven’t met those yet… oh wait you mean pugs?

No, but perhaps you could widen your circle of acquaintances. I have no trouble puttin $10 into the game every couple months. It’s quality enough that I’d like to see it continue and I know other people that feel the same way. WvW guild people who mostly WvW (I suppose that needs pointing out).

Elder Scrolls Online has a rather high end subscription. I think it remains to be seen whether it’s model is viable and it manages to stick with it. I wish it well. Maybe it will have the crowd it needs to keep going and I think that would be great.

But I’ve seen people spend tens of thousands of dollars on shallow, buggy games that are actually terrible and only getting worse with every patch. People have given hundreds of dollars to private servers where the admin only uses it to buy stuff like cars for himself. That you can find examples of people that are willing to drop $15/month on something does not speak to its quality, I think.

Sirendor.1394:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I thought elder scrolls wvw was pretty bad. Wouldnt pay 15 bucks a month for it when gw2 is free after u buy the game.

Someone used the analogy already…

Some people will pay a subscription for playing AvA.
Zero people would ever pay a subscription for playing WvW.

I think that’s true.

That does not square with the fact that lots of people put money into Guild Wars 2 regularly that are WvW players.

Sororita.3465:

bokkieskitten.8023:

styx.7294:

my roaming squad.

Ahahaha, that IS funny!
Oh my! Nearly spit out my tea! Good one!

i think by roaming squad, he meant a party trying to rejoin the zerg and killing an uplevel they ran into dear.

RH: legendary zerg guild?

Gravy.7589:

Seriously, NA guilds stop tranfering to tier 1/2. Their NA’s are all stacked with many having queues. This is before all the achievement hunters come out for season. A 50+ guild just tranfered to TC, who welcomed them and then asked why they came to TC as their NA already has a huge queue. Stay where you are or look at tier 3 or lower.

Transferring up tiers is what this game is about. People can go broke playin WvW in the low tiers but earn tons of gold playin in the top tiers. It literally pays you gold to transfer up, on top of everything else. It always has, for over a year and a half now.

The transfer fee changes are a start and we’ll see how that changes things. Along with the WvW population boost that comes with the season, I’m willing to wait ‘till after the league to see how things are. I think too many things that we know now won’t be relevant in a month.

Moopy.7908:

To make 50 superior rams, one has to double click 4 times per ram + 1 click for craft + 1 click for accept.
That’s 18 clicks per ram or 900 clicks…
If we could just set a ‘craft-all’ button, this would be reduced to 16 initial clicks + 1 click for craft all + 1 click for accept.

900 clicks reduced to 18. WHY ARE WE NOT FUNDING THIS!?
Seriously though Anet, this would be really really really really really sweet.

+50 clicks for buying 50 books. Seriously, where’s the “I want to buy 50 of this thing” option? Pretty basic functionality, if you ask me.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

styx.7294:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I am still a little confused about this new tourny set up. So It looks like my server DB is probably gonna be ranked 6th going into the tourny. Does that mean we will face 2 other gold league servers who have much greater coverage then us the first week and lose. Then the second week we face 2 more gold league servers who lost the first week and lose again cus they still have much greater coverage then us and so on and so forth for 9 weeks. Or will at some point we will get to face a silver or bronze league server and get a win?

You stay in gold league for the entire season. If you’re the smallest server in the league, you probably will lose a lot.

The transfers may change up who is smaller and who is bigger.

Thanks for the clerification. Well looks like league will be the same as last time for me when I was on DR and we lost every week.

Kinda shows that to transfer away ’cause you lose every week is pointless?

ghost.3208:

Slyfer.6478:

Inexperienced players should really stop with the “NERF THIS GUY’S PROFESSION BECAUSE I SUCK AT COUNTERING A ZERKER”. Don’t make a balance requesting thread unless you have a minimum of 8k AP or something.

I have 10k achievement points and I still can’t get an actual useful strategy for pets, specially that bear, only one who tried to do something is that “Offair” dude but I believe he’s trolling since most of his replies have been really negative on the thread.

Do we unlock some sort of advantage by having those points? Why is that a requirement?

Well at least the devs have now seen the post and hopefully in the future balance patch this pet madness will end.

Yeah, 10k achievement points are when pets really take off. You unlock further bonuses every 5k achievement points thereafter.

insanemaniac.2456:

omg you guys trolled allie

I think she just trolled us!

+1 this.

It’s a very big bother.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I am still a little confused about this new tourny set up. So It looks like my server DB is probably gonna be ranked 6th going into the tourny. Does that mean we will face 2 other gold league servers who have much greater coverage then us the first week and lose. Then the second week we face 2 more gold league servers who lost the first week and lose again cus they still have much greater coverage then us and so on and so forth for 9 weeks. Or will at some point we will get to face a silver or bronze league server and get a win?

You stay in gold league for the entire season. If you’re the smallest server in the league, you probably will lose a lot.

The transfers may change up who is smaller and who is bigger.

Sleepybyz.5432:

I can top all these post’s and not because of pride of the server but because of a Broken Heart My sister bought this game for $64 to play with me PVE PVP and WVW She bought this game then my homeworld server Blackgate was Full everytime it opened she tried to transfer she deleted her lvl 20 Character 3 times To try to get in but when she got to the transfer screen every time it was full SO THERE WENT FREE so then she paid $20 to get in when she saw it was open one day right after buying the gems and logging out to transfer it was full Talk about a pain in the kitten . So I was like you know what I will leave my Guild in Blackgate and just join Jade Quarry Because it’s always Open I have no interest in joining Jade Quarry really seeing is how Blackgate and Jade Quarry are enemies, However playing this game with my sister which I know in REAL LIFE not just a game is more important to me. So I spent $20 to transfer and Turned 66 Gold into 800 Gems to make 2400 gems I didn’t realize I would have that much ha ha not so good at math ANYWAYS when I went back to transfer Of Course it was full And has been ever sense I have been logging on all night and My sister has been watching all day since we both bought the The gems neither has opened now I sent a ticket a private message and This post you see before you In hopes that one day I can join my sister on Jade Quarry and Play WvW with her for now I just have been Guesting Jade Quarry everyday and doing Dungeons with her and PVP with her. LOL and all these people are trying to Switch back and forth into servers for FREE.

Man, that’s rough luck.

My brother and I are on a server that isn’t near full, heh.

A solo’s lightning fast /surprised + /sleep response to my roaming squad.

Slyfer.6478:

Inexperienced players should really stop with the “NERF THIS GUY’S PROFESSION BECAUSE I SUCK AT COUNTERING A ZERKER”. Don’t make a balance requesting thread unless you have a minimum of 8k AP or something.

That’s right! Everyone knows achievement points only come from experiences in WvW!

Which brings me to another point, it’s still not fair that rangers get achievement points for things they do and the things their pets do, giving them twice as much effective achievement points as everyone else. ArenaNet, when are you going to fix this? Am tired of SEEING the achievement leader boards populated by rangers.

Zodiac armour can pass for magey, I guess.

Straegen.2938:

Marsares.2053:

1) Business Model A (i.e GW2): your players have paid up-front (i.e. box sales) and little revenue is derived from them further on (i.e. in-game store).

2) Business Model B: you get major revenue from box-sales at launch, followed by significant revenue streams through ongoing subscriptions. Your main costs are likely to be recouperated at launch, thereby allowing you to utilise your ongoing revenue streams for major development and frequent patches,

Except the inverse happens most of the time. F2P model has saved several MMOs including DDO, DCUO, LotRO, SWToR, etc. If Model B worked, games would actually switch TO it rather than FROM it.

Even the concept that Model B offers better patches isn’t true. GW2 has a really good rate of content patches compared to other MMOs. SWToR when it was P2P had virtually none. WoW doesn’t really do frequent content patches and instead charges for expansion packs. Even those paid expansion packs are spaced several months (years) apart and have fallen flat.

The theory of P2P might sound great but the reality is it fails far more than it succeeds. Even when it works, the content and patches are no better and usually worse than GW2’s track record.

I’ll add that in Model A you can get players who want to pay $15/month and those who don’t. With a lot of games in the past that are free to pay I just give himself $10-15 a month to buy somethin shiny from the cash shop.

It’s all about options for the customer. Also I feel like games that are subscription based just end up giving me treadmills to run on to keep me paying that subscription. I feel less like they have the money to give me quality content and more like they feel obliged to give me quantity of content. I hated the World of Warcraft dailies, for example. Sure, it was making me log in and play every day but it was miserable.

rchu.8945:

Easterbunny.6170:

I was in the beta. If you want to play Skyrim with random people running around that you feel no reason to group with, go for it.

As if GW2 promotes “grouping” in most of its content? LOL.

I do most of Guild Wars 2 content in a group, even PvE content. When was the last Living Story stuff you did alone? Even the hearts you did beside people workin with you to the same goal (of making Farmer whatever happy) – you could even kill the same mobs to get the same credit. There’s not much reason to party up formally that’s true but that’s not the same thing as grouping up.

There might be something to ESO, I didn’t really see it in the half hour I saw it but I kinda feel like $60 + subscription is way too much for something that hasn’t demonstrated it’s any better. When it comes to me, spending that money on gettin the permanent gathering tools would probably add more to my overall happiness.

Incentives are needed, for sure.

Who are the people in ArenaNet who have been looking at WvW population numbers and goin “Yeah, what we need is a fix for queues. Let’s reward the winning servers some more, they totally earned it. Transfer status quo is totally OK and no on needs to be in a hurry to change it. Just carry on like we’ve done. Do you got enough people on Living Story? Good, ‘cause we don’t need anymore here. Nope, so far 18+ months of smooth sailing. WvW basically runs itself”.

Oozo.7856:

foofad.5162:

Oozo.7856:

foofad.5162:

I don’t even know where to start. This kind of hypersensitive criticism is unnecessary and unwarranted. He misspoke. Get over it. This is not front page news. People misspeak all the time. All the time. If you can speak at all, you have misspoken before and will again. This doesn’t warrant a thread, much less discussion.

Did you even read the post above yours before you launched into your own hypersensitive criticism?

It was supposed to be a joke :[ I thought the italics nailed it.

The hypersensitive criticism in this thread is approaching dangerous levels.

Do what you always do, plague form and spam blinds until it passes.

Martrim.1078:

Oozo.7856:

Martrim.1078:

Oozo.7856:

Martrim.1078:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Ulion.5476:

RyuDragnier.9476:

They just need to give the players a form of defiance (immunity to CC, which immobilize seems to be a part of), and this nonsense would stop.

Hum I wonder what stability is used for?

I dont understand what is this “Stability” you speak of?

~Necros

I might be a bit late to the party, but realy?

My necro has a 50% Stability uptime, maybe u should double check the build u use in larger fights.

One of the benefits of being a zergling that runs with 20+ people is that you don’t have to worry as much about your damage output.

Disregarding plague form (where most good groups will strip your stability), even if you have the lowered deathshroud trait and go into deathshroud on cooldown (whether it makes sense to do so or not) and you still won’t reach 50% uptime on stability. And, I’m sure it’s really sustainable to just flip into deathshroud on cooldown whenever it is up.

Oke, 45% (give or take a % or 2)

DS is used to reposition yourself, there is realy no excuse to get cought by the enemy frontline as a back liner.

Stability or not, if u die to the frontline as a back liner it had nothing to do with your stability

You realize that you can be rooted and/or stunned from long range, right? You might not since you are getting a ton of stability and cleanses from your many guardians.

wait.. as a backliner u are blobbed up with your guardians? no wonder u get hammerd down

You can see Oozo’s videos and his playstyle for yourself. I am guessing you travel with bigger groups than he does.

Oozo.7856:

styx.7294:

Dynnen.6405:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Bash.7291:

“After it takes a few blocks, then it explodes” …no… no it doesn’t work like that. You would THINK that someone that works at Anet that posts a guide would actually KNOW WHAT THE CLASS SKILLS DO.

You forget that Anet doesn’t play Guardians.

Checkmate!

Guys, if that’s the only slip up you’ve found in his 20+ min video things may not be as bad as you’re makin it out to be.

I’d guess he just got it confused with arcane shield which does work the way he described.

The whole ArenaNet doesn’t play guardians thing is.. well, I’m not a fan. It harkens to a worse game with a worse class and I don’t know why we have to hijack this particular part of their whining.

Complain about the valid things, criticize the bad decisions, voice dissatisfaction but this sort of nitpicking as validation of the worst doom saying on these forums is just going to bring you down unnecessarily.

Again, we’re still highly desirable in all forms of content (though with limited options on how to build for that content). We are one of the better off classes in this game.

I only watched a few minutes of it, though. :P

I’m sure he knows how the ability works, but just used the wrong wording. Still, though. It’s kind of funny.

It is kind of funny.

Halo.8976:

Jump ship if you feel that way.
Nothing will change on lower tiers, and I’m surprised to find our it has enough people for pvd.

Hey Mr. Bandwagon, good showin you don’t know anything about low tiers while making definite statements about them.

Omnitek.3876:

Matchups get stale, people complain.
Anet adds some randomization, people complain of blow outs.
Anet tones down randomization, people complain about it being stale.

I see the future! There will be more randomized matchups and people will complain!!

It’s like we’re not one person with one opinion at all.

Otokomae.9356:

buckeyecro.9614:

I want to personally invite you to consider looking into the Sanctum of Rall as a possible new home realm for you both. Its named after prospective player Roger “Oldroar” Rall who passed away before the game launched. I encourage you to visit that website to learn more about Roger Rall, the community, and its events. The website provides so much more information than I could give you.

The community’s leaders, founders, and members are committed towards rebuilding its WvW reputation and population such that it’ll be more welcoming and inviting for both Hardcore and Casual players. It will likely stabilize towards the bottom of NA servers. It’s hard to say where it will land for now.

Since you suggested that you may delete a character, I suggest that you consider joining a guild that will help you get the gold to pay for a transfer.

What? I thought Sanctum of Rall was canceled as a server? You can still transfer TO SoR? Interesting…

Yes, it’s a lil’ known fact but you can transfer to any server. Just when it’s not a tier 1 server there’s a slight fee.

What’s the point of having PAXA back without matchup threads?

Is just not the same.

Dynnen.6405:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Bash.7291:

“After it takes a few blocks, then it explodes” …no… no it doesn’t work like that. You would THINK that someone that works at Anet that posts a guide would actually KNOW WHAT THE CLASS SKILLS DO.

You forget that Anet doesn’t play Guardians.

Checkmate!

Guys, if that’s the only slip up you’ve found in his 20+ min video things may not be as bad as you’re makin it out to be.

I’d guess he just got it confused with arcane shield which does work the way he described.

The whole ArenaNet doesn’t play guardians thing is.. well, I’m not a fan. It harkens to a worse game with a worse class and I don’t know why we have to hijack this particular part of their whining.

Complain about the valid things, criticize the bad decisions, voice dissatisfaction but this sort of nitpicking as validation of the worst doom saying on these forums is just going to bring you down unnecessarily.

Again, we’re still highly desirable in all forms of content (though with limited options on how to build for that content). We are one of the better off classes in this game.

DeWolfe.2174:

The individuals whom run such roaming builds are usually playing to grieve by nature. They would have whichever build puts the highest numbers on the screen.

What’s interesting is that Anet chose to reward and empower roamers by creating Fortitude and Leech. Yet, World/Group players would more than likely put their first 100 or so ranks into functional/utility bonuses. Putting world players and especially defenders/builders at a disadvantage when running to camps or trying to regroup, etc. It simply pushes the wedge between the play styles further.

My biggest issue is still how alt and new player unfriendly WvW has become. WvW was supposed to be a balanced area with level scaling. These character empowerment’s created a huge disparity between old and new characters. Take a twink in and see what kind of damage you can do compared to what fully ascended and ranked characters can do. There’s no contest or challenge between them.

I dunno if the highest WvW ranks belong to roamers… but agree with everything else.

The camp buffs aren’t interesting, they’re not a choice, they’re something everyone automatically gets eventually. They don’t add anything ‘cept a grind to make people who play longer feel better about themselves. It’s petty and the game would be better for not having it.

King Amadaeus.8619:

It is only bugged if you care about it.

hug for Amadeus

No.

Message Body length must be at least 15.

Dee Jay.2460:

There’s nothing cool or honorable about playing on a low-population server. It just means you’re constantly outmanned and outgunned and can’t actually engage in PvP.

I just wanted everyone to know what being wrong looked like.

Being on a low population server is super cool. You get to A. not be a tool B. make a difference C. have awesome small man fights

Server merges aren’t going to fix anything ’cause people will still continue to transfer off the lowest tier.

Matipzieu KyA.9613:

Wow, I wasn’t expecting my long posts to generate that much discussion! Glad they were helpful and reasonably well-received. My real underlying goal was to help spark some more rigorously analytical, critical, and thoughtful problem-solving. I was really trying to hone in as best I could on describing a series of things that I’ve seen thousands of posters try to articulate over the years across many games.

Styx, thanks for the opportunity to clarify! I just realized that what was intended to be an off-the-charts Jeff Sachs argument ended up sounding a little bit like William Easterly, haha. (Did I just out my undergrad major? ) I actually don’t think that realm pride is inclusive only to T1, but the opposite: from personal experience I’ve found it’s much more valuable the farther “down” you go. Back in the DAoC days, my guild and I formed on Bors/Hib. Let’s just say we were, uh, not exactly tier one. To put it, um, delicately. I’m not quite prepared to say that Bors/Hib was awful, but we were not tier one. I’ll put it nicely like that because even a decade later I still have a sense of camaraderie with my old server. That’s the thing I’m trying to figure out how to recreate on GW2: not to trickle Blackgate down.

Yes, we have a real problem here:

I also absolutely agree, hands down, that the current situation is problematic, and I agree with Nuzt that there needs to be a well thought out but relatively prompt developer response to it. (Hence, likely, the thread? ) I’m not prepared to say it’s a code blue just yet, but I do think that the situation is very serious, and that the status quo is on track to an emergency room visit if left untouched for a few more months, hence my “underdog rewards” proposal that could be implemented in a relatively lightweight way in the next few weeks. (It probably needs a new name, though. “Underdog rewards” sounds a little too demeaning.)

A design change that increases rewards for dedicated play and wining on lower-tier servers was intended to be a lightweight but impactful fix that, while probably not ideal, we do know is actually effective in a number of real-life situations that resemble this. (Part of my real life job is to come up with solutions for ugly problems like these in international contexts.) A lot of the analogies are imperfect, but I think there’s at least some reasonably sound social science behind using progressive incentive shock design in this case.

I apologize if the post came off a bit Blackgate elitist; that particular video was the fastest thing I knew how to reach for to help make my point. (I was aiming more for “Hey, we’ve got this situation with malnutrition among the majority of Parisian citizens, and that’s a huge problem! How do we improve infrastructure and set economic policy such that the baking industry in Paris improves in the next three weeks?” rather than “The peasants are starving? Bah! Let them eat cake!” )

A relevant story from a DAoC mid/lower tier server:

Having spent time on Bors/Hib back in the DAoC days, I absolutely get many of the problems that happen with regard to server transfers, etc. One particularly instructive story comes to mind. In DAoC, instead of servers fighting each other, the model was that each server had three races/factions (“realms”) that fought each other, Alb, Hib, and Mid. On my guild’s home server back around 2001-2002, Hib was doing relatively well, but Alb and Mid were struggling. We were about the equivalent of a T4-T5 server at best, nowhere near T1. However, an ultrawealthy Midgard player had a clever idea: since you couldn’t transfer, he then publicly announced that he would be handing out the equivalent of around 500-750g in GW2’s economy today per player that rolled a fresh character on Mid/Bors. Word got out, and the population of Mid/Bors exploded (he followed through) and completely upended the balance in RvR. Mid/Bors due to the huge population boom.

The relevant lessons here for all of us in KyA were: (1) individual incentives can definitely impact server balance, (2) community is still what matters most, but (3) community can be jump-started by incentive shocks. These lessons largely formed my analysis above.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Matipzieu KyA

Ah, dang. I am a William Easterly fan. Looking forward to his new book comin out like next week!

Also dang, my rant got deleted.