Guild Wars 2

I had my very first key drop for me yesterday from a mob.

I was very surprised.

Just a note: My character is level 80 and has killed tons. The drop rate is very very low.

Icey, you’re leaving one significant element from your pricing perspective: Total amount of gold in the system.

A month ago, if I had 2g I was comparatively rich.
Today, if I have 2g then I am well within line with everyone else. I may even be considered poor.

Given that, it only makes sense that people would be willing to spend more gold for gems than before. After all, they have more gold available to use.

ravic, that’s not fair or true – the majority of CD players when they are trying are extremely strong. Tonight’s festivities in Eternal are a sign (to me) of servers accepting, more or less, where they are.

CD couldn’t break through TC’s defenses so, instead, they took over DB. hahaha

DB players – it’s true what others have said about TC’s attitude towards WvW. The majority (vast?) of our players play WvW to have fun and for ~good fights. We love the struggle of all sides being at full strength and battling it out.

We also have pride in our accomplishments and we love our team. We love our players. We love our RPers. Heck, even our ‘primary’ WvW guilds are starting to become infected by casual RPing. It’s really amusing and entertaining – and it makes WvW that much more enjoyable.

From what I saw tonight of DB, I think the majority (vast?) of DB players have given up on this match. You can try to blame whomever you want and point fingers but, at the end of the day, it’s all about server morale and participation.

Good morale = good participation.

The moment bickering breaks out that team will likely lose. Not to mention the blame game or the excuses.

Even in second place (heck, even when we were in third place) the /team chats of TC were remarkably clear of bickering, name calling, and finger pointing. The players of TC are a mature and incredible bunch.

We had some morale bumps this week – orb hacking early on was a big one but we managed to overcome and pull it together.

Anyway, all that to write: Good match CD!! It’s been a total honor and a pleasure battling it out with you all. Hopefully, we’ll be able to put what we’ve learnt from you to good use next week.

I think that the assumption that gems are not being sold for RL money needs to be re-examined.

It should clear from the number of posts by players on the forums who are trying to buy gems and running into payment issues that there is a sizeable population of players who -are- buying them. Those who run into troubles with payment would be a small percentage of the whole.

I doubt ArenaNet will release the numbers as to how many gems are being bought for real money but I would guess that the number is fairly significant.

I suspect that there is an even larger number of people who have or are buying gold from gold sellers as well. The only good way for ArenaNet to compete against the gold sellers is to ban all gold selling accounts and gold purchasing accounts. Or, they could do what CCP does (company behind EVE) which is to take away all bought in-game currency from the player’s account and let them be.

In other words, if someone bought 100gold and used it all up, when ArenaNet figures out that they bought the gold, they would just subtract 100g from the player’s account even if it puts them into negative territory. So, conceivably, someone could wind up with -100g.

Sharpclaw.7510:

Well, I’d be cautious about getting overconfident. Either for this match still or, especially, for whatever next week holds. I think we have server pride. I think assuming we’re “one of the better” only goes so far. DB and CD are good. SoS was good. Mag’s getting better. I mean, as time goes on, the level of competency only goes up for everyone.

Agreed. I think that we, as TC, have a lot more to learn and to aspire to.

I love our WvW matches when they are against evenly matched opponents when it comes to population. When everyone has full queues that makes for the best times.

I think we’re learning an awful lot from CD. They are forcing us to up our game (which is a good thing) and to evolve to try and match them. This week is a good one for us – we may be in second place (and, yes, DB could rise up and take that back) but we have good morale and good times.

ArmageddonAsh – it’s probably the camera angles that are tripping you up.

Asura can jump the same distance as the other races but the ‘feel’ of it is far more epic (and, therefore, different so there are adjustments to be made as to when to jump.)

Yep, DB beat us. (and our pals over at Maguuma). Badly.

So, it’s pay back.

I don’t know if it is hate as such but more like satisfaction and proving to ourselves that we’ve gotten better. DB was our measuring stick.

We beat a few teams and went up in brackets but there’s always a suspicion that it is more because of zerging than strategy / tactics. Being matched against DB shows that we have, indeed, grown (not only population wise) as a server and gotten better.

With our awesome aussie crew that joined in when we were playing SoS there is a general feel to our server that we’re one of the better ones out there. Since we’re in the top half of servers that’s a true enough statement for me.

I believe we have some amazing Euros as well on our server and, hopefully, we’ll get some of the Euro RP guilds coming over.

Anyway, for many on Tarnished Coast Dragonbrand was our measuring stick to prove that we have gotten better. Since we’re beating them, that’s enough proof for me!

Down with DB!!

Edited to add: Kelo, I believe that. A lot of times during prime there is no queue to the borderlands other than our own. We’re the unOfficial RP server so we have a lot of folk who tavern RP and share a few drinks. (Seriously, this happens a lot on TC but it’s great and fun.)

Alodar, now all we have to do is distract CD somehow and sneak in a few solid hours of total map domination to grab first.

If only CD would stop doing that to us!

CD – well played this go around. We’re still hoping your early morning crew (eastern time that is) will give up and get bored so our much smaller crew can take some objectives.

Heojaua, if I were to guess, I would think that CD doesn’t have full queues during ‘off-peak’ times. It’s just that CD’s off-peak WvW population is significantly larger than TC’s off-peak population. Yesterday I went through the borderlands and in every one of them we were outnumbered by CD. Buuuut… I think in one of them (or more – it’s tough to tell how many players are actually in a zone) we had less than 10 players. So, that doesn’t necessarily mean that CD has a huge off-peak population.

I am glad we’re beating DB. That makes me a happy kitten.

On our server (tarnished coast) we usually have a couple small bands striking out behind enemy lines.

We have noticed that CD have even -more- small teams that do this. Their teams, at the start of the match, were better at it than our teams. I like to pretend that we’ve caught up in effectiveness / ability. I know we have beat a few of their small teams (by small, I’m talking under 10 on each side) a few times of late. Course, that also means we’ve been beaten as well.

To the OP: What you are basically describing is SPVP. Small teams, small maps, no ‘zerg’ as such.

If you tried the same thing in WvW people would just band together and zerg up anyway. That’s what we do. We’re social creatures and if we see a group of five people then it’ll become six. That six becomes ten in short order. That ten becomes twenty…

When playing in a small team it can be tough to shed extra players who begin to tag along.

I can tell who plays a thief here….

Mablung, does that include RUN? (totally tongue in cheek)

This match-up seems fairly good overall. In the times that I’ve been in WvW the fighting has been intense.

CD – you guys are definitely better than us over at TC. I believe we’re learning something though so keep it up! Respect to you and all your WvWers (except any evil and despicable hackers). It is a joy to fight with ya’ll and to learn from what you are doing.

Just to update the score since we’re now Tuesday, Oct 09 at 1:40pm Eastern. The short of it:

CD – ~151k
TC: ~93k
DB: ~93k

Yeah, it’s that close for second place.

Could you post screenshots to show what you are talking about?

Seras.5702:

Also, the dyes you get from the Green & Orange Dye kits are exclusive to those kits. You can’t get those particular shades/hues from in-game.

Could you source this please? Like screenshots or dye names or something?

Youko.1475:

Foreword: This thread is intended for entertainment only.

1. Strut about like you know more than everyone else, whether you actually do doesn’t matter.

Incorrect statement.

The fallacy of your elucidation is in the contention that there is even an insignificant probability of being incorrect while interacting with the lesser races. This is, of course,
completely erroneous.

Excelsior.

Is it possible that you typoed the amount of gold you were willing to spend?

I’ve done that a few times when I was just checking on the price of gems. I’d think I was putting in 1g and, instead, I put in 2 or 10g.

NinjaKnight.1340:

But, assuming you are right, the BIGGEST problem is that ther is nothing much worthwhile in the Gem store at present. OMG their latest idea of new items were 2 packs of overpriced dyes.

I would suggest that you find that the biggest problem is that -you- do not find anything worthwhile in the Gem store.

Some other people do.

I happen to agree with you. There isn’t anything in the gem store that I find interesting. But, that being said, I did spend some gems on an extra bank slot so gems have had a value to me.

There are plenty of stories of people who have spent a fair amount of RL cash on gems for things like boosters or black lion keys. I have seen a lot of people wandering around in the gem purchased outfits as well. As such, there is clearly some demand for what is on the trading house.

I hope they come out with more skins and / or affects that don’t have any impact other than cosmetic.

lynspottery.6529:

It would be nice to see Anet make some reasonable changes to the TP and the store so that we don’t feel like paupers all the time. I am not adverse to seeing a better and more robust market place environment where folks who farm materials and craft nice items can make a modest profit for their efforts. At present that is missing in this game.

What do you consider to be reasonable changes to the TP?

I know that there are many craftable items in the game that make more than a modest profit. I suppose the question is how many, in your mind, should? Do you want every crafted item to be saleable?

Necrollis.4372:

If you’re not a moderator, you’ve got no business “testing” assertions/claims.. You don’t work for ArenaNet, nor do we have to explain ourselves/concerns/theories to you.

The way I see it: If someone asks for clarification or for the logic that backs up claims and assertions then you should be able to present it. Otherwise, how are you coming to your claims? Just making them up?

I don’t understand why you would get so defensive about it. If you make a statement and someone questions the underlying assumptions or precepts of that statement you should be able to back it up with clear data. Otherwise, your statement will be considered flawed in some manner and ignored / discarded.

In regards to bots: Yes, there are definitely bots in the game. Bots definitely have an impact on the game economy. But, then again, so do players. The question is this: Are bots having a significant impact or is their impact marginal? That’s what I am trying to find out.

One can’t just say, “bots are destroying the economy” and then have no means to back that up. If an example is questioned for validity then the clarity of that example did not exist in the first place – or, put another way, the example didn’t look the same way to 3rd person examiners as it did to the poster.

If you only want to talk to ArenaNet then you can email them. A forum is for public discussion. Once something is posted in a forum then the contents of that post will be viewed and discussed by other people. If statements are made in the post it may be that others will call them into question or request clarification.

Sine the trading post is an in-game web browser, do you have any settings in your browser security that could be limiting the functionality?

I dunno if that helps or not. To get better response I’d suggest you put this question to support and / or in the support forums.

Necrollis, it isn’t a matter of arguing that there is no impact but it is a question of proofs and what the impact actually is. There’s a lot of speculation but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that bots are significantly impacting the economy. My exposure is limited so I am curious if people have seen something else to suggest otherwise.

Obi, using one item that is extremely high value and low quantity isn’t a good example of ‘botting’ behavior. If anything, that’s player behavior. I know many players who do that exact kind of thing – they look for a high value item and speculate that as monetary supply increases the value will go up. Or, they believe that some people would pay far more for the item so they take a chance on buying it and relisting it.

Rastamon, those aren’t necessarily individuals selling that much. The numbers are the total being sold across all servers. Over two million people bought this game. If 3/4 of them have stopped playing those numbers are well within reason. Further, some traders attempt to corner the market. Are they bots? No, they are just players.

I know a few EVE folk who came to GW2 and have been amusing themselves on the trading house. Some have thousands of items up for sale and thousands of buy orders. But, again, they aren’t bots.

We know that bots exist and I hope that ArenaNet finds some way to destroy them all sooner than later. We can all do our part by reporting them (which I do for every bot I see and they typically disappear within a couple of days at most) to help out.

But, one shouldn’t make claims if they can’t back them with facts or, at least, observations.

Obi.9365:

Simply knowing that there are bots out there farming, and selling gold is all the proof you need my friend.. Is it not?

No, it isn’t.

While I dislike bots and want ArenaNet to destroy them completely and severely punish anyone who bots that isn’t the issue in question.

What’s in question is whether or not bots make a significant impact on the economy. You postulate that they do, which is reasonable at first blush, but if the economy has hundreds of thousands of people (potentially over 2 million) involved in it do automated processes really make a significant impact or is their impact irrelevant? Basically, are they a drop in the ocean or a drop in a teacup?

How many bots are there?

What are they generating as saleable goods? Are they using the market?

Are the dedicated market bots ‘destroying’ the economy or are they just ‘noise’ in the economy? Do they affect the market the same way as real world ‘bots’ do in stock markets? Do the automated buy / sell processes exaggerate price fluctuations but don’t create them?

That’s what I’m curious about. You’re making claims that they have a significant impact so I’d like to see the underlying proof of that.

Verdonix.3781:

You do realize that for the average gamer, the one like me, that plays a few hours after work a few days a week and maybe a bit on the weekends….

At level 80 it is entirely reasonable to make 2g / hour being focused on it and this is being conservative.

If you do a ‘few hours’ which I will equate to 3 hours a few days a week, again 3, plus another 3 on the weekend that’s 12 hours a week.

12 hours played per week * 2g = 24g per week
500g / 24g per week = 20.3

So, to get your legendary pre-cursor item it would take 20.3 weeks to get. That’s less than half a year.

Is that a long time? Sure is!

But, the reality is that these items are meant to be rare and difficult to achieve.

If you optimize your gold per hour to 3g per hour or higher – it will take significantly less time. But, I think 2g / hour is a reasonable amount since it also allows for doing non-gold generating activities like standing around Lion’s Arch chatting.

You can also make use of your purchasing power of buying gems and converting them to gold. If you spend $10 / month on GW2 that will reduce the time needed to get to 500g.

And, the price of pre-cursor items isn’t at 500g yet if they will ever get there.

Obi, I’m curious, could you provide some sort of proof or observations to back up your claims that it is botting that is driving gem prices and other elements of the economy?

I’d like to try to understand where you are coming from.

I’m from TC.

I am really looking forward to this match-up and seeing how it plays out.

So far, it’s living up to my hopes: a close and hard fought battle with -great- maneuvering and tactical adjustments that mean something.

Both DB and CD have played really well so far. CD – you guys have some really good roaming teams. I was impressed by a few of them when I had the misfortune of stumbling upon them in Eternal earlier tonight.

Keep up the good fights and clean battles and we’ll have a blast this week.

Edited: added the score as of 2:42am Eastern Saturday, Oct 6, 2012.

Azmodyus.6839:

TC needs more than just a nighttime presence, we need the foul mouthed hardcore pvp’rs that most of our server is too thin skinned to handle.

No, TC does not need that at all.

There is a common fallacy that ‘foul mouthed’ means better results when it comes to MMOs. This is so not true. But, that’s a totally off-topic thing.

Please, if you are one of these “foul mouthed hardcore pvpers” stay away from TC. If you are on TC and are unhappy please server transfer off of TC.

TC is a great community with, for the most part, great people. We do not want that changing.

Will TC continue to dominate in WvW – probably not. But, we do well enough and we have fun doing it. That’s what matters at the end of the day.

Team BattleAxe, I was just about to make that point in regards to kill shot. Thieves and warriors are extremely strong which is why they tend to compare themselves to one another most of the time.

Going back to downed state: how much damage does your throw rock do?

This is something that is being left out. I’ve had warriors tossing little rocks at me for more damage than I can do with my weapons. Average damage being done was 900 per hit. But, that may have been an exceptional situation for some reason.

Gem prices are rising so you have to keep that in mind.

If it costs around 10g today it may cost 15g next week (or the week after) so you have to weigh the value of time in versus real money to buy your character slots.

10g at level 80 is still a sizeable amount. Many people do not have 10g. Some have lots of gold and they’ll say that 10g is nothing but, it really is. Even at optimized gold per hour rates 10g is still more than 3 hours worth of game time at level 80 (one can, apparently make, ~3g per hour if done “right” at level 80 – the reality tends to be much less).

So, basically you have the time to level 80 to go, then at level 80 at least another three hours of time devoted to making gold to be able to buy your character slots but there is no guarantee that it’ll still cost 10g to get the slots.

My guess is that the value of gems still continue to rise over time.

Only you can decide if real money is worth that amount of time in the game or not. Personally, I’d do it all in game since I find making gold is a result of having fun in the game.

Oh Fumo, it would be foolish to attempt to use an Asura as a stool.

But, then again, you have already proven yourself to be foolish.

The Asura will be the ruling class of the world. It is only a matter of time.

It is known.

Ajaxx.3157:

Wait a min… did someone just say Warrior downed state was op?

WHAT!

/facedesk

Which class has a better downed state than warrior?

Zynthetic.2954:

Zoula, that’s why TSG transferred to TC. Great community here, even though none of us roleplay (except for the odd guy in a bar while waiting for a WvW queue).

I’d rather lose with friends then win with people I dislike.

That’s how it starts. The odd guy in the bar. Soon it’ll be a couple people who go to the bar to ‘make fun’ of the roleplayers but get caught up in it.

After that, it is over. All will become roleplayers.

What I -love- about Tarnished Coast is the community.

We have an incredible group of people. Sure, we have our bad apples (burnt toast perhaps?) but they are few and far between. As a whole, the server population leans towards a great group of folk.

I think you capture the sentiment of Tarnished Coast really well with the comment of “I’d rather lose with friends then win with people I dislike.”

Sivorick, I would like to see leadership books / abilities that would allow for a group of 10, a group of 20, a group of 30, a group of 40, or a group of 50.

Then each individual group could be organized as a subset of a larger group. So, a group of 50 could have a group of 40 and a group of 10. Buuuut…

I don’t think that’ll have any impact on morale as such.

The biggest morale sap is the scoring system. The moment one server appears to have a huuuuuuuuuuuuge lead on the other servers in the match, people start the process of not logging in while, on the other hand, the server in the lead sees a surge in people joining in on the fight.

On my server, Tarnished Coast, there used to never be a queue at 3am my time. Last night, there was one. I am pretty sure that the other servers in our matching did not have queues. Which means that we were dominating the enemy through overwhelming numbers and that isn’t fun to me.

Morale is based around momentum. The current scoring system does not reflect the reality of the game environment nor does it reflect the efforts of the players involved.

There is almost no way to change the momentum of how the current scoring system works. People who battle it out for hours against even numbers see no return on their struggle when later other people just take over everything with very little effort. That’s demoralizing and leads to people quitting.

Diminishing returns just provides disincentives. That doesn’t help.

It isn’t “fair” to not reward two people equally for the same effort just because they are in the lead. If they are in the lead then they deserve to still get the same reward (being points) that they would get if they were behind in the same situation. If you penalize people for winning just because they are winning…. that will destroy morale of the winning side.

Graill.8596:

@Kracin, you looked foolish doing that, next time take the time to read before you post.

Hmmm….

Range again. We have all seen Anets explanation of units, i am not arguing that, what i am challenging is the perceived and “real” distance values ingame for seige weaponry.

But you -are- arguing- just that. You are trying to change the definition of Guild Wars 2 “units” by trying to link them to meters but you can’t do that. You can’t just change the definition of a unit of measurement and then complain that no one else goes along with you.

A unit in Guild Wars 2 is NOT equal to one meter in the game. If I travel 1 unit in the game then the graphical representation does not have me moving what would appear to be 1 meter.

I don’t think you fully understand how far ten kilometers truly is.

Anyone typing on this thread should have already did their math and got the actual meters, feet, inches, units, or whatever you like to use and then compare them to the actual usage ingame. I figured them out before i posted the first time, maybe some folks need to do the same.

If you figured them out how did you manage to be so very wrong?

For example the Treb has a unit measurement of 254 meters give or take a meter according to Anet, 10000 units, actual distance ingame is far far greater, and the reason i state it looks like 10k meters, because it does.

You make no sense. This isn’t logical. This does not compute.

No one will tell me a Treb firing from a cliff and reaching a keep more than a certain “percieved” distance is correct, anyone playing WvWvW knows what i am referring to, even flat on the ground trebs fire much to far. Even with calculations for height/angle, etc, etc the treb still would not reach the distances it does currently.

If we were to get picky, an arrow cart has a much greater range in seige but is a one shot deal if you are familiar with how they are employed and loaded, the other seiges weapons have their own range and proper use issues.

Okay, so this is your issue: You think trebs have too great a range in game.

I have no idea how you figure that an arrow cart has a greater range. That’s…. I really don’t understand. So I’ll set that aside.

Anyway, if you are going to try and make a case for something, try to do so in a manner that is logical and doesn’t rely on making up stuff.

You think that trebs have too great a range.

You also think that it’s too easy to take out an undefended keep / tower.

Those are your points. Now try to make them.

Hakato, the ‘loser’ of the match-up of TC, SoS, and Madness will be Madness.

They haven’t done well this week at all in the match-up.

TC is well out in front and chances are it won’t lose it’s lead.

The current score is (on Thursday, Oct 4 at 10:08am)

Tarnished Coast: 256k
Sea of Sorrows: 166k
Gate of Madness: 85k

You raise some good questions about morale but I think we need to look at the root cause: the scoring system and why do players become demoralized over it.

Is it because they are losing? Or, is it because they feel powerless about the score?

While it is true that losing a match can be demoralizing there is always the opportunity for hope to regain the lead – the problem with the current scoring system and “night capping” is that there is -no- way to recapture a lead. This is what is causing a lot of people who would otherwise play WvW out of it.

This, in turn, leads to players burning out and leaving the game when they would have otherwise continued to play if they felt that their playing had an impact on the score. The current problem is that they feel powerless.

We need to feel like our actions have an impact on the results. If I rally a band of four companions and the FIVE of us take on twenty – it means nothing. Even if we manage to take over a tower. That one tower does not off-set the rest of the map being held by the vastly superior numbers of the opposing sides.

We aren’t losing because of us being killed. We are losing because we simply don’t have enough -bodies- in the game. No matter what ArenaNet does there will be times when servers do not have enough people entering WvW to fill their side.

This leads to imbalances of population. The score does not reflect this.

The score -needs- to reflect the imbalances of population.

A team who heavily outnumbers its opponents should not be getting full score for their map control. They aren’t winning due to superior strategy, tactics, or individual ability. They are winning due to population. The opposing teams have no possible counter to this.

Instead, if a vastly outnumbered team takes a single tower they should be richly rewarded for doing so against superior numbers. So, if my crew of 5 who is fighting against 20 takes a tower, we should get 4x the points for that one tower. The team with 20 people should get a quarter of the points per control structure.

This would allow the 5 to at least keep their side in the game for when the sides match up evenly and full points are awarded.

In turn, this will lead to more people trying to help their server against higher numbers. This will lead to greater participation which will lead to more balance in the maps with population.

There needs to be a minimum amount of points per borderland given to the team that controls them even if 0 population exists on the opposing teams to prevent abuse.

I would like to the population ratio be fairly forgiving so “pro Pvpers” don’t start screaming at the “bads” for wasting space and messing with their point generation. But, I really believe that points need to be proportional to population ratios.

Any time one side is outnumbered as a total in their WvW arena then that WvW arena should be producing a point value based on the ratio of the teams. So, if all borderlands are empty and Eternal is near even – then the borderlands should produce a minimum point value per tick (perhaps 50 – two keeps) and Eternal should be at full value.

ArenaNet needs to provide incentives to play when outnumbered. Failure to do so bleeds the losing teams of their interest / morale to play. This, in turn, leads to feelings of frustration by the losing side and during peak times people stop playing.

The reason for this is simple: People do not feel that the scoring system is fair.

I’m on a server that is currently winning its match-up. I don’t like it. What used to be a vibrant and robust three-way battle has become quiet. Less and less opposing server players are showing up for WvW.

Since we’re up against a large oceanic presence they feel just like we do – they “win” when they are playing at their peak time and see their wins lost during out peak time.

If the point values reflected population imbalances then the scores would be much closer. Our population superiority would balance out their population superiority. And people would feel like they are able to fight it out and that the scores would be reflective of what is -actually- happening in the battlegrounds.

As it is, the scores don’t and it sucks.

Controlling an arrow cart or a ballista during an out-numbered siege and holding back the onslaught of forces = super fast leveling.

Joining a zerg and taking capture points = good speed leveling. Probably faster than anything you can do PvE except back to back running of your personal story.

Exploring the map and trying to kill people alone = challenging fun. It can be done but you’ll have to pick targets carefully and don’t expect to level fast or win every engagement. Some classes are definitely easier to kill than others so look out for them! You’d be surprised at what a level 30 can beat.

So, in terms of when to get into World versus World – level 1 works.

Well, Drium did post at the start of the TC, EB, and Mag battle that Mag and TC were going to enter into an alliance.

A surprisingly large number of EB players began to post in the TC, EB, and Mag threads about how it was unfair that EB and Mag were allied (which, in reality, they never were) and that people on their server were talking about it regularly in /team and /map.

Many EB players who post here in the forum continue to believe that Mag and TC had an Alliance although some have loosened their belief a little to say that it was “only during the start” of the match-up – which, again, it wasn’t since it never existed.

The idea that TC and Mag were in an alliance is still maintained by many EB players and it did cause many players to not join in the fight. As to the numbers – who knows. Was it 10? Was it 100? Was it 1000? Was it just one? I have no idea and I don’t think we have any real way to quantify that.

All that I can attest to is that this post by Drium did have an impact and continues to have one now – by the fact that many EB posters continue to believe that there was an alliance between TC and Mag.

Kaineng has my support but, alas, not my character.

I’m on Tarnished Coast since it’s the unOfficial RP server and we’re RPers.

If ArenaNet were to change the scoring system so that it was in relation to population ratios I think the smaller servers would find themselves in a much better situation.

What I mean is this: If all sides are at full capacity then the scoring points are as they are now. Or, give that a value of 100%.

If one side has more population than the other sides in a battleground then the points from that battleground are reduced by a % for the high population side and are increased by a % for the smaller population side to reflect the difficulty of fighting against the odds.

This would give incentive to log into WvW even when totally outnumbered. This would also stop the whole “night capping” thing since a team with a full presence against 0 presence would get minimal points (I wouldn’t say 0 since some servers might try to abuse that by somehow coordinating a boycott of WvW once they were in the lead – maybe a minimum of 100 per 15 minute interval).

If a smaller population took a single keep against say, 5 to 1 odds, then they should get something like 5x the points for that one keep in my view. After all, they have to defend it to keep it and that defense should be rewarded.

Anyway, back on topic: GO KAINENG! You gots this!

Your best bet for finding a roleplaying guild is to go to Tarnished Coast.

Tarnished Coast is the unOfficial roleplaying North American server.

There’s a great site that lists a lot of roleplaying guilds:

http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/

The rest of your activities basically everyone enjoys and encourages such. So that part of your list of wants will be easily found. The roleplaying element is the tougher one but on Tarnished Coast there are a -lot- of great guilds who encourage and support roleplay.

My results having just built a magic find set are in line with the reddit findings that CaveSalamander linked.

Magic Find definitely makes an impact when killing mobs.

For the rest: I don’t think it has an affect.

I sure hope you are on the one of the unOfficial roleplaying servers: Tarnished Coast in North America.

Kain, no, there is no charge for placing a buy order.

If you offer 78g and the guy who offered 77g bumps up to 78.01g then you can, in turn, offer 78.02g without loss of coin.

Morale.

Morale is a funny creature. If I were to guess the people who’s servers have active queues that seem to be growing longer are the servers that are either in close fights or are winning.

The servers that are experiencing significant drops in the queue times are the servers that are losing.

The problem with week long matches that involve contests where one server dominates the other two through population domination is that is saps the morale of those servers. This, in turn, leads to less people joining the battle since the question becomes, “Why bother?”

I really hope ArenaNet links points per hour to population. If all sides are at full population then full score is given.

If one side is at full population and the other other sides have a fraction of their population then that side should get a fraction of the score. Conversely, the out-numbered side should get a bonus to whatever they might hold.

I’m sure there’s a solid algorithm that can take care of this.

Anyway, to the OP: Wait until Friday when there is a new opponent. WvW interest will be back. At least the weekends are good for WvW but the way the score is counted it gives population imbalances are too much weight. This leads to all kinds of silliness including, if I were to guess, people quitting the game out of frustration and that isn’t cool.

ArenaNet needs to fix how points are given to reflect population imbalances. They don’t need to cap servers or limit numbers – they just need to set it up so that the points given reflect the ‘difficulty’ of the conditions in the map. There really is no difficulty for one side to destroy their opponents if they outman them.

If people knew that they would get ‘bonus’ points for holding ONE keep against overwhelming odds people would do it. Instead, it’s simpler to just log out and avoid WvW once the population imbalance becomes too great.

The only time this doesn’t hold true is if the match-up is really close and the out-numbered side sees hope and value into holding out in a single map (usually Eternal) against the larger population. If the outnumbered side can maintain say, 130 or so points from a single map and it allows the rest of the timeslots to still compete then they will do so – as evidenced on Tarnished Coast.

Even outnumbered people are still fighting their hearts out in Eternal (no, there is no queue against a server that does have a queue) while giving up all the borderlands – in that people either stop playing WvW during that timeframe or they migrate to where the fight is – Eternal.

But, that’s an abnormal situation brought about by high morale on Tarnished Coast coupled with there by a clear value to doing this – Tarnished Coast regained the point lead and now holds it through the being outnumbered time. Interestingly, this outnumbered time is becoming smaller and smaller as the opposing server is losing morale and seeing ‘no point’ to ‘bothering’ to log in even during their peak times.

Just to add more confusion and bump RUN’s thread for them:

RUN is currently, as best I can tell, on -both- TC and SoS as of Tuesday, Oct 2nd, 2012.

I would imagine that they are trying to get SoS to win so I’m not sure what to make of that. I don’t fully get the logic of entering battlegrounds when they are transferring over to another server but I suppose it’s part of testing the waters?

I wish RUN all the best on SoS and I hope SoS enjoys their stay. My own experience with RUN was watching one of their people (leader they claimed) in Lion’s Arch chat trying to convince other people to leave TC. I hadn’t ever seen them before in the borderlands but, then again, most of the time (probably two thirds of the time) I play in Eternal.

I don’t think anyone had any serious problems with RUN (although it seems that there may have been clashes in /team in the borderlands they say they were in which is strange for TC since such things are extremely rare to the point of being almost non-existent) as such but the manner in which they are semi-departing and trying to ‘talk’ others into leaving with them is… well, it is what it is.

Good luck RUN! I hope you have a good run of it on SoS.

Don’t cry for help and keep the WvW running.

Gate of Madness in the Tarnished Coast, SoS, Gate of Madness match up has the northern position in Eternal.

During prime time they -tend- to have their keeps. Sometimes they lose them but they typically take them back.

During the off-peak hours either Tarnished Coast or SoS own those keeps. Usually it’s SoS except when intrepid groups of 3 or so TC players sneak out and cap the towers.

What time are you looking to play at? That’ll make a difference since some match-ups are dominated by different servers at different times.

Although, Richard is probably right about Ferguson’s Crossing dominating over Devona’s Rest and Kaineng.

Put rams on the road. It’s really fun to watch a zerg disintegrate because of a flame ram in the middle of nowhere. Half the zerg will split off to KILL THAT RAM! The other half will continue on and get slaughtered because of it. Then the stragglers will come up and die as well.

Randomly placed flame rams across the map = must amusing wins ever.

We have a few aussies already.

I met them this morning (eastern time) as we held off the onslaught that is known as SoS.

We held Eternal (as in had the majority of the map as our’s – not all of it but the majority) all through the oceanic prime time. ’course, we lost all the borderlands but we held Eternal including SM – so, from our perspective, we won.

Jamaz.9837:

As a commander, you treat the player base with respect and act as someone who can teach them overtime how to become better. You don’t claim you’re the reason they won, ever. The victory is theirs unless you fielded 90% of the players. If I suddenly claimed in team chat that I alone was the reason we’re winning while your own guild selflessly helped achieve objectives without spamming team chat, I’d assure you that you’d lose respect for me.

This may be how you are but, realistically, there is 0 reason why anyone should listen to a commander or be ‘taught’ by one. A commander is nothing more than another player like anyone else who happened to obtain 100g somehow and spent it on a book.

Being a commander is a decorative title.

lucied, you would have to claim that EB had an alliance with Mag.

Both EB and Mag assaulted / sieged SM at the -same- time at different gates. Then they both broke through the outer and inner walls. They didn’t fight one another. They pushed the keep.

So, by your logic, clearly there was an Alliance…

…except there wasn’t.

cainejw, an alliance is a formal agreement made between parties to support one another and come to one another’s assistance. There was no such thing between Mag and TC as a whole nor have I heard even a whisper or rumour that would indicate that there was such a thing between individual guilds.

If a team has 95% of the map then the two other teams are going to attack that one team. That’s what happened to EB. If you own all of the map then you will be attacked on that map.

When TC held most of the map we had to fight off Mag and EB constantly.

I find it fascinating and humorous that multiple people from EB keep posting this and that it has even permeated their current match-up.

I bet Mag is totally allied up with Yak’s against EB….

A group of three people can take a tower if it is undefended.

A group of five can do amazing things so long as they don’t try and fight the zerg.

If you see the zerg do not engage.