Guild Wars 2

So my guild has gotten better at taxiing people for Guild Missions, but it is still a huge pain. I’m just happy we no longer need to complete a bounty, getting everyone on the same map to kill just one target is hard enough…

Community

Coverage is only temporary if the community collapses. A good community attracts more coverage.

I think the Norn scaling it the worst. I think it just has a “one size fits all” scaling for race. On a min height Norn female, the hobosack is much larger than the torso.

spaces count

Come on Anet.

This is not in the WvW sub-forum, so I actually do expect a response at some point…

Just a simple “We acknowledge the problems and will work on a solution” would go pretty far. Its not that hard, honest.

T1 problems…

Perhaps its time for BG to ask all those guilds they stole from the lower tiers how guerrilla tactics work.

I totally didn’t take my guild to EotM and farm the karma train as a direct result of this thread.

Well dang, that blog post amounts to a pretty epic face slap.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

titanlectro.5029:

I follow the dev tracker pretty closely. The last week has been roughly

• 80% Account issues (lots of people getting hacked lately, and refunds)
• 10% Bugs
• 10% sPvP

There are several HUGE threads in the PvE areas about megaservers which have also been completely ignored. All of this is to say, there has been an unusual silence across the entire forum. There could be a number of factors for this:

• Anet getting close to releasing in China
• Allie taking another job
• They just finished a major push for the Apr 15th patch
• Vacations (Easter/Spring Break/Post Apr 15th patch)

Regardless of the reasons, this silence is bigger than just the WvW forum at the moment. We have a very valid complaint here, but there might be more going on than just WvW getting the shaft again.

These are very sound possibilities; how dare you bring reason into a forum discussion.

Just kidding

Regardless of how valid your list is, it’s very telling that even in the face of legitimate rationales for the lack of dev responses, it seems like any other day on the WvW forum.

Does this mean when all of the above is wrapped up and the devs can return to responding to the concerns expressed on the forum by the player base, that we’ll suddenly see a flood of red posts here? I wouldn’t hold my breath over it.

I think that’s our chief complaint; not just the recent silence but the chronic historical silence. It’s just poor customer service and there’s no sugar coating that.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with you, WvW has been getting the shaft for the entire duration of the game. They never prioritized the game mode, like they have PvP and Living Story. Then to make things worse, they have repeatedly damage the WvW community that we built ourselves, by closing the match-up forum and eroding server identity with megaservers.

My only point is that for the duration of this thread, there has been more going on than just the usual “WvW getting the shaft.”

Wow… I had assumed this was a troll post, until people started piling on…

Shouldn’t the complaining go the other way?

EotM is supposed to be REAL WvW. We should be complaining that there are not MORE guild groups in EotM, and that it has devolved into nothing more than a karma train. We should be cheering for guild groups who are trying to reclaim the game mode as true WvW.

Or we can flame them for ruining the karma train… why not…

I follow the dev tracker pretty closely. The last week has been roughly

• 80% Account issues (lots of people getting hacked lately, and refunds)
• 10% Bugs
• 10% sPvP

There are several HUGE threads in the PvE areas about megaservers which have also been completely ignored. All of this is to say, there has been an unusual silence across the entire forum. There could be a number of factors for this:

• Anet getting close to releasing in China
• Allie taking another job
• They just finished a major push for the Apr 15th patch
• Vacations (Easter/Spring Break/Post Apr 15th patch)

Regardless of the reasons, this silence is bigger than just the WvW forum at the moment. We have a very valid complaint here, but there might be more going on than just WvW getting the shaft again.

culturespy.1324:

I’d like to revise and amend my remarks regarding difficulties imposed on large guilds by Megaserver.

Others have proposed solutions to the server community / identity, RP, and language issues. The following should not be incompatible with any of those ideas.

Problem

Because Megaserver is trying to keep instances as full as possible, a large guild that could max out an instance by itself will have a hard time getting together. Guilds have been trying to solve the problem themselves by using the party system to ferry people into one instance, but for popular content the instances become hard capped quickly. It’s also very inconvenient and time consuming.

Even with the “sorting hat” features – it’s unclear if those have been added yet – Megaserver can never know ahead of time whether a member of such a guild is just there to solo, or if the rest of the guild will be on their way shortly. It can’t read minds. What we need is some way to tell it when we’re ready to be grouped together.

Proposal

Guild officers should be given a button that instructs Megaserver to begin a consolidation process. This would create a new instance of the officer’s current map and offer each guild member from other instances a ferry to the new guild instance. The guild instance should be exclusive to guild members for a short period of time – just long enough to accept the ferry and port in. After that, the guild instance joins Megaserver’s pool of available instances for anyone to join according to the whims of the sorting hat. Guild members who are late to the event would either be sorted in by the sorting hat or would have to ask to be ferried in by party, but the bulk of the guild would be united quickly and easily.

I would hope that if there has to be a price tag on accessing the guild-instance button it would be a one time cost. It can’t have a long cooldown or a high price tag per use or it would be useless.

In case the creation of extra instances really is a problem from a server cost standpoint, note that it’s likely a net gain of zero instances. By consolidating a guild onto their own instance, you vacate the other instances that probably would have become hard capped anyway.

This would fix a lot of my gripes! I hope Anet notices this idea.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Districts would mean showing everyone exactly how many instances of each map exists and thus giving everyone a good indication of how many people play the game. I don’t think that’s information that Anet wants to share.

They could obscure that information somewhat, but that is an interesting concern.

Rangersix.1754:

titanlectro.5029:

ok, so we now have 19 pages of mostly negative feedback.

Not only is it negative, but the people most negative are the guild/server community leaders! These are the people who make GW2 a success.

Its time for Anet to do what they claim they do best: Iterate

I’d say we now have 19 pages of (mostly the same) people overreacting and forgetting the flaws of the game from less than 2 weeks ago. Megaservers aren’t perfect, but I’d take it any day over the situation from 2 weeks ago.

Why is it better now? What have I forgotten? How is it an overreaction?

I can’t run temples anymore. My servers metatrain, which I really enjoyed, is dead. Guild missions are a giant pain now. Rata Sum has newly installed lag generators in the bank area. I don’t RP myself, but I’ve watched the tragedy of RPers getting trolled off a map.

What benefit did Megaservers bring which outweighed all of that?

Yes to this!

ok, so we now have 19 pages of mostly negative feedback.

Not only is it negative, but the people most negative are the guild/server community leaders! These are the people who make GW2 a success.

Its time for Anet to do what they claim they do best: Iterate

For the lower tiers, CoSa is pretty awesome.

What we need is a dedicated WvW community liason, like they have for PvP.

There are toxic people everywhere on this forum, and some of those PvE threads are more toxic anything I’ve seen in the WvW threads.

The truth is, WvW is seen as “toxic” because when problems become serious in WvW, the devs are silent. The “silent treatment” has a powerful effect, just look at how well it works on your family. OF COURSE it bred more toxicity. This same problem happened in PvP and PvE at different times, then people at Anet stepped up and turned it around.

Hire someone with thick skin and good people skills, and let them salvage this. It is entirely possible to turn this around, you just need make it happen.

Not only are we being ignored, but Anet keeps making other changes that hurt WvW Community (killing the match-up threads, megaservers).

WvW needs dedicated community liason, who will listen to us and push for the things we care about.

It would be really nice to get some developer comments on this thread…

Clearly they are reading it because they released a language hotfix. We have dozens of questions and suggestions in this thread, we could use some feedback too.

Clearly, Anet dramatically overestimated the effectiveness of the automatic system. We need a manual control secondary system in place ASAP.

It is pretty obvious it is not intended, they made these changes to prevent the “stacking weapon swap out” thing.

The real question is, will they do something to prevent this?

I’m sure this is not intended.

They made the changes so that you could NOT have a “stacking” weapon which you switch out.

zoejo.2317:

Cactus Brawler.7415:

zoejo.2317:

eleshazar.6902:

Thanks Anet for ignoring our feedback and continuing to roll out the thing that none of us want…

Or maybe the feedback asking for fuller maps was significantly bigger than feedback asking for quieter ones. Probably even more than the feedback asking for empty maps because some computers can’t handle it.

What’s the point in a fuller map, if the Megaserver decides you’re going to one where everyone speaks a language you do not?

You know, like how the different languages of Europe picked out different servers to play on, with people who speak their language?

Only now you might be a Spanish speaker on a map that speaks French, or an English speaker on a German speaking map, or a French person on a map that speaks Lithuanian.

You missed this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Guild-World-Events-Megaservers-WvW/page/5#post3915670

Obviously the language mess isn’t how it was intended to work – they actually stated the opposite.

I’m not so sure.

They said Megaservers were supposed to prioritize people with the same language. What if there are not enough people with the same language to constitute their own map? In order to maintain full maps, it would start dumping the different languages together.

From https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-megaserver-system/

This new system takes your party, guild, language, home world, and other factors into account to match you to a version of the map you’re entering. This will increase the odds that you’ll see the same people more often and play with people of similar interests.

So if there are a ton of people on a given map, it will probably sort language ok. However if it is a relatively barren map, it will actually accomplish the opposite and put more people with different languages together.

I’m very surprised that Anet is still rolling this out, given all the serious concerns brought up here.

Based on the feedback here, Anet should stop progress, and make the following changes:

• Exclude cities from Megaservers (this addresses many Server Identity, RP, and WvW concerns)
• Create a UI for manual instance control (e.g. Everyone gather in Cursed Shore 7)
• Create a hard instance division between languages

Being very frank, if Anet does not have a manual instance control UI ready to go, then I’m genuinely disappointed. They should have anticipated this problem, and hopefully they have.

Evan Lesh.3295:

There is a reward track progression cap in custom arenas, but none in solo or team arena. Unfortunately this isn’t clearly messaged. We’re discussing ways to resolve the confusion.

But why is there a cap?

There are several solutions to this problem:

1) Allow karma/badge equipment to be salvaged, but only for the rune/sigil (could add a pop-up warning)
2) Dramatically decrease the price of the Upgrade Extractor (should be aiming for 5g per use).
3) Dramatically increase the supply of expensive sigils and runes, forcing the price down.

At the very least, Karma and Badge armor should come with a warning on it, saying “cannot be salvaged.”

We need a manual instance selection menu, complete with indicators as to the numbers of guild members/server-mates/friends on any given instance, and how full the instance is.

Anything less than this will just generate a mess when trying to coordinate with friends. The automatic system is good, but it cannot predict every scenario. Give us the tools for when “auto” is not good enough.

So Anet finally rolled out a system which really highlights that appearance is very important.

Please finish what you started and end Hobosacks!

I hope getting moved to linksville doesn’t kill the thread

Hermes.7014:

Why the mummy tonic and not the spooky zombie though? I’m guessing it was just for the dance?

We did the mummy tonic because you can buy them on the TP.

WrckAHoe.9827:

This is clever. Guild orchestrated RP that relates to current fad’s. I have to give much credit to the people who did this. This is what true guild management is about, having your players join along and assist.

Credit goes to the awesome guildies in ASH. I surprised them with the basic idea and gave a few directions, and they ran with it and added a lot of great ideas (like using the puke to infect people). Then Jarros found the perfect music for it, and the end result was 10x better than I thought it would be.

Wow… the response from everyone is overwhelming!

Speaking on behalf on ASH, thanks for all the praise. We are glad that you all enjoyed it so much. We certainly enjoyed doing it (as you can hear in the background).

cheese.4739:

If you want healing, you need blast finishers – there’s no point in speccing so heavily for healing power otherwise.

I’d recommend swapping out heal and a signet for Arcane Brilliance and Arcane Wave… maybe chucking the Conjured Flame Axe on your utility bar, too (since its #2 is yet another blast).
Arcane Mastery is probably more useful than Blasting Staff in this case – your blast finisher effects’ ranges aren’t increased by the trait, and you’re going to be doing buggerall damage so won’t really need it for hitting foes with.

At this point… yeah you need to decide if you want to keep the earth trait line, or shift 20 of those points to Arcana for Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana.
If sticking to Earth, I guess Diamond Skin (largely for anti-snare when retreating), or you could play with the new Stone Heart – but as a Master trait I’d definitely take Rock Solid because yey stability.
However, Evasive Arcana gives you TWO more sources of healing – the dodge in Water Attunement, and the blast finisher from Earth. Chucking an Energy Sigil on your weapon (if they’re still worth taking) would complement that well.

^^^ This is good advice.

Although I would keep both blasting staff and arcane mastery and drop elemental attunement, because the water auto attack does good AoE healing with the radius boost and scales well with all the healing power.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_Blast

On a max healing power build with 25 stacks, you will have roughly 2k healing power. That translates to 870 AoE healing on the water auto attacking.

Why do melandru + lemongrass + ether renewal?

Either you are going to clear your conditions or reduce the duration, doing both seems redundant. Since you also get a condi clear from water 5 and water dodge, I’d suggest switching melandru + lemongrass to something else.

style.6173:

@OP:

Bad idea. The issue currently is this fail of a swiss tournament system. It is causing a lot of bad matchups this week.

The Swiss Style Tournament is always going to have an unbalanced week 2. The other 8 weeks should be pretty good however.

With the way the Swiss style tournament works, week 2 will always be the most unbalanced week. It should stabilize more every week after this one.

ManaCraft.5630:

Come on now, you have to allow people to express their point of view, regardless of their situation.

How was I telling people that they were not allowed to express their their opinion? Perhaps you should have quoted more of my post because this is what I actually said:

titanlectro.5029:

To reject these communities because you deem them to be failures is your prerogative, but don’t expect the members of these communities to agree with you.

Some communities have put a lot of hard work over many months into their communities, and don’t want to see that work threatened. Other servers have fallen apart and literally anything else would be an improvement.

Everyone is always biased, it is a fact of life. However we still try to communicate and make arguments. My argument is simple: Some of us have over a year of hard work that could be lost due to this change, and therefore we are against it. We like our community, yes that is a bias, but that does not make it invalid.

ManaCraft.5630:

I also don’t accept the premise that existing communities would be destroyed wholesale if a “serverless” system was implemented. Or that there are no compromises between that and the current system. That, essentially, is an assumption on your part. It’s easy to get attention by shouting that the sky is falling, but it doesn’t make for a good argument.

When did I say that no compromises would be possible? In fact that is what I was arguing for!

titanlectro.5029:

Now, Anet could keep Megaservers AND maintain server identity in PvE. They just need to design some systems to do such (like server mates get a different color tag, or PvE goals that servers work towards together). I just hope they are willing to make the effort to do that.

It is easy to call things nonsense if you misrepresent them.

electronvolt.7541:

zortek.9607:

Good on you, CD. But the demographic that contributes a large dose of “pride” to your server is neither unique to the GW2 ecosystem (not contingent on server selection) nor dependent on game design.

An acknowledgement and a tip of the hat to the healthy (and well meaning) pride communities on Crystal Desert, but c’mon, very little of it has to do with the server, WvW, or anything remotely connected with the architecture or meta.

I agree completely that it isn’t unique or a special snowflake of a community. I think most other servers probably have something similar, especially the smaller ones.

However: communities exist in the ecosystem that they form in. You can’t make the claim, online /or/ offline, that a community exists separate of the architecture it forms around. They exist /because of/ the server system. As a counterpoint: my first MMO used a fluid server system (you chose every time you logged in), and there was nothing even remotely similar. Communities formed around external guide-sharing/discussion/etc. sites, guilds, and groups of friends.

With a server system, you basically are ensuring that people are interacting with the same group of people regularly. The megaserver system apparently will be pushing that, so I think ANet understands that fact: but I think the point people are making is that the current setup could cause a disconnect between the PvE community of a server and its WvW community. It doesn’t hurt PvE much because outside of very limited amounts of content, PvE doesn’t require a lot of consistent coordination of groups of more than 5. (Teq. and wurm are the exceptions) However, it hurts WvW because the communities are no longer 1-1: so a person can’t necessarily WvW with the people they PvE with, and WvW can’t draw on a larger community of people who don’t WvW much, but like doing it sometimes.

This^^

I realize that a lot of you are calling for the end of servers all together. I’ve also noticed a reoccurring theme with these people: they don’t like the community they are in (AKA they have nothing to lose.)

If you feel like the current communities are invalid or failures, then sure, why not destroy them?

I believe quite the opposite. There are many servers that have built up strong communities, that bridge PvE and WvW. To reject these communities because you deem them to be failures is your prerogative, but don’t expect the members of these communities to agree with you.

These communities have a very legitimate gripe. The thing that brings them together (server identity across PvE and WvW) is getting damaged. Megaservers will encourage PvE to develop in a way incompatible with WvW, and incompatible with the existing server communities.

Now, Anet could keep Megaservers AND maintain server identity in PvE. They just need to design some systems to do such (like server mates get a different color tag, or PvE goals that servers work towards together). I just hope they are willing to make the effort to do that.

Solstice.1097:

GoM
DR
SF
DH
kittenN
EB
ET

dat filter, still funny

So… Did you guys catch any of these questions being answered?

[Copied from the Blog post feedback thread]

So essentially, Home World will be a WvW distinction only. Home World will have NO MEANING in PvE what-so-ever.

I see this creating an even greater divide between PvE and WvW. WvW players won’t be able to promote the WvW game mode to the PvE community in an effective way. New PvE players won’t even realize that they are associated with a specific WvW server, and they will not organize their social structures to match server assignments.

This is how that LA recruitment conversation could go:

• GoM player: Hey everyone! GoM is going to run a Stomp the Map event in 30 minutes. It will be a lot of fun and it is a great way for you to get a taste of WvW. We will be starting in XYZ borderland, hope to see you there!
• New player 1: How do I know what server I’m on?
• GoM player: Well, you will have to go to the character select screen and look it up.
• XYZ player: I’m from server XYZ, we will be ready for you, lol
• Experienced PvE player: I want to try WvW with my guild, but they are on a bunch of different servers, will that be a problem?
• GoM player: Yes… yes it will.
• New player 2: Wait a minute, what is a server?

All of this is to illustrate a point. Server identity needs to exist in a meaningful way in both PvE and WvW. If it does not, then WvW will become its own separate little corner of GW2. Social groups will form in PvE that are incompatible with WvW, and serve as a barrier to entry.

I think it will be possible to maintain server identity in PvE in the new system, but it will require additional systems to do this intentionally. Are any such systems in the works?

Will there be any sort of manual control over which instance we join? Or are we limited to partying people and joining their instance?

I recommend that we take our thoughts to the thread linked below, and be vocal about it. They will be collecting/summarizing this feedback and delivering it to the devs.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-The-Megaserver-System-Guilds-and-the-Future/first#post3852882

So essentially, Home World will be a WvW distinction only. Home World will have NO MEANING in PvE what-so-ever.

I see this creating an even greater divide between PvE and WvW. WvW players won’t be able to promote the WvW game mode to the PvE community in an effective way. New PvE players won’t even realize that they are associated with a specific WvW server, and they will not organize their social structures to match server assignments.

This is how that LA conversation could go:

• GoM player: Hey everyone! GoM is going to run a Stomp the Map event in 30 minutes. It will be a lot of fun and it is a great way for you to get a taste of WvW. We will be starting in XYZ borderland, hope to see you there!
• New player 1: How do I know what server I’m on?
• GoM player: Well, you will have to go to the character select screen and look it up.
• XYZ player: I’m from server XYZ, we will be ready for you, lol
• Experienced PvE player: I want to try WvW with my guild, but they are on a bunch of different servers, will that be a problem?
• GoM player: Yes… yes it will.
• New player 2: Wait a minute, what is a server?

All of this is to illustrate a point. Server identity needs to exist in a meaningful way in both PvE and WvW. If it does not, then WvW will become its own separate little corner of GW2.

I think it will be possible to maintain server identity in PvE in the new system, but it will require additional systems to do this intentionally. Are any such systems in the works?

Deli.1302:

Some servers worked hard to create a thriving community.

This!

Distaste.4801:

Karuna.1357:

yanniell.1236:

Factions is the solution for the worst WvW problem: coverage wars. It can’t come soon enough.

If you want to see the collapse of the entire game, then sure.

I’m already watching the game collapse. That’s what puzzles me about the people trying to stand by server pride. Server after server collapsing, people jumping from server to server to stack them, and most matchups being a complete blowout. Yet server pride > the overall WvW health. Let’s continue with server pride though, it’s done a real bang up job so far!

My server only significantly collapsed once since free transfers went away. That collapse turned out the be the catalyst for making an awesome community that a great many people worked very hard to build. We are proud of what we have accomplished.

We are not loyal to some stupid string of characters called “server name.” We love the community we have built. We have built real relationships, and made real sacrifices to make that community a success.

To everyone arguing against server identity, I say this:

Just because YOUR server sucks, does not mean that every server sucks. A great many of us have built communities that are worth fighting for. If the need arises, we will fight to preserve them.

It will probably just be SAB World 3, although I hope that I am wrong.

My only regret is that I have but one +1 to give to this post.

Many thanks Anet