Guild Wars 2

One of the major problems facing WvWvW right now is that there is very little in the way of reward structure for playing and succeeding in WvWvW. I believe that the core of a working system will accomplish the following:

*Make WvWvW a viable path to obtain endgame gear
*Create an incentive for winning that does not result in a power imbalance
*Rewards players in a way that encourages legitimate play rather than gimmicky strategies such as keep flipping

I humbly suggest the following changes as a way of accomplishing these goals:

1. Replace the current Badge system with three or four types of tokens: Bronze, Silver and Gold badges. At the end of each match, the server that won will be the Gold server, the server that came in second will be Silver and the third place server will be Bronze. Additionally, Anet may wish to introduce a Platinum level for the winning server in the top tier.

In the following match, players will be eligible to get the tokens based on their server’s performance. So if a server wins one matchup, in their next matchup players will get Gold Tokens at any time they would receive a Badge under the current system. This can be set up such that it persists through transfer so that players can’t simply transfer to the server that won last week to reap the rewards.

Players can turn in Bronze tokens for plain looking exotic gear and the same types of consumables that are available for Badges now.

Players can turn in Silver tokens for more attractive exotic gear and a wider range of consumables, including some things that might be useful in PvE as well.

Players can turn in Gold tokens for exotic gear with special skins that are exclusive to this tier and the widest range of consumables/convenience items. Note that this might also include special skins for siege weapons and such.

If Platinum tokens are included, then they will give access to some really sweet skins!

For convenience, any token can be exchanged for a token of lower value.

2. Taking a tower, keep or castle will give the attackers a reward chest. This chest will have a chance of dropping tokens and other useful things. To discourage keep flipping, the loot table will start off pretty crappy and increase in value depending on how long the objective has been held by the enemy. Long held objectives will make very juicy targets.

3. Reinstate orbs of power, but with a bonus to exp, karma, gold find and magic find rather than stats. Basically, a version of the current outmanned buff will be given to those who have the orbs.

4. Change the outmanned buff to give combat stats. The specific amounts will need to be carefully considered by the balance team. This should help alleviate some of the problems resulting from numerical/coverage imbalances.

5. Players will have a decent chance of dropping loot bags similar to the moldy sacks and such dropped by PvE monsters. These bags will have a chance of dropping coin or crafting materials including top tier materials of all rarities. The idea here is to give WvWvW players similar access to crafting and mystic forge materials as PvE players.

I think that these changes would result in a much more robust WvWvW experience and should be relatively implementable.

If I were an MMO developer these days I’d feel pretty backed into a corner. On the one hand you get a substantial crowd of players who become disinterested in any game that does not have substantial vertical progression in the endgame. On the other hand you have an equally substantial crowd of players who are offended by the idea of even having vertical progression in a game.

One group of players wants to have access (through effort, ideally) to things that other players do not have access to, while the other group does not want any content to exist that everyone can’t access. It’s almost impossible to design a game that will satisfy both of these crowds, and it is increasingly common for individuals to completely lose interest in a game if the devs move in a direction that isn’t in line with their personal stance on this issue.

Personally, I think player attitudes about this kind of thing is poisoning our experience of games. In the gaming community at large there is a real nostalgia for the golden age of gaming (8-16bit era). In my opinion, one of the major reasons for this is that we fundamentally experienced those games in a different way.

Many classic games featured elements of progression. All of the Legend of Zelda games, the Doom series, Metroid type games… heck even straightforward games like the early Mario games and shooters like Contra and Gradius had progression elements. You would collect items to empower your character (better weapons, more lives etc.)

The main difference in these games is that nobody really sees the progression elements as an end in itself. You don’t get the best sword in Legend of Zelda just to have it — you get it because it helps you beat Gannon. You want bigger and better guns in Contra/Gradius/Doom/etc. not because getting a certain gun is a goal, but because they help you achieve those goals.

In our early experiences with games progression was a tool.

For many gamers today, however, the opposite is true. Progression is the goal and the game itself is the end. The objective has nothing to do with the story of the game or even the actual gameplay but rather entirely with attaining a certain level of power.

And therein is the bombshell: it’s our fault. We can keep blaming developers for designing progression systems that aren’t to our liking, but I don’t think we will ever be satisfied until we shift our perspective back to focusing on story and gameplay rather than progression as the main goal. It’s not like developers aren’t providing a virtual world with it’s own story. They are putting the content out there, it’s up to us to enjoy it (or not, and to decide to play a different game because it has a more compelling story or better gameplay).

It’s deeply sad to me that players are so demoralized and disenchanted by a game — indeed that they feel a game has been ruined — because of some minor progression element or lack thereof. Perhaps it’s time for us to remember that tools are just tools and get back to actually enjoying games for the game.

Hi all — I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different classes recently with the goal of understanding what the most prevalent specs for each class. So far I’ve covered Warrior and Necro and have done some work with Guardian and Mesmer. Thief is next up on the list for me to play around with. What do you all think are the staple specs that I should definitely try out and learn how to play in order to understand the class in sPvP?

Weird. Maybe I am misinterpreting the UI? I am in the US but like you said it’s hard to imagine it being THAT different.

I generally enjoy sPvP quite a bit but the new monthly achievements have been nettling me. I just don’t see how I’m going to manage to win three tournament matches when tournaments don’t seem to launch. Is there a particular time of day that tournaments actually tend to happen? So far when I’ve looked I’ve seen a maximum of one to two teams registered and more often zero. I also rarely if ever see people LFG for free tournaments anymore. This problem is, of course, self perpetuating in that when it seems hopeless that a tournament will fire you are less likely to invest the effort needed to put a team together, sign up and wait.

Unfortunately this puts ANet in a bit of a bind — the monthly achievements should incentivize people to play tournaments, but at the same time if those achievements seem unattainable it will really frustrate people.

Wow. I did the first two events and ended up with nothing to show for it, in part due to the lack of rewards and in part due to the fact that I had trouble getting credit for any of the veteran or champion mobs (I’d hit the mob often 10+ times and still not even qualify to get experience).

I had some other things to do today so I figured I’d sit out the final event given that none of the other events had worthwhile rewards. Looks like I was wrong ><

Thanks a bunch! That wiki page is what I had been looking for but couldn’t find. Looks like I’ll be hoarding glory for quite a while!

I’ve been playing a bit more SPvP recently and am up to rank 10. At this point it’s starting to take a little bit of time for each rank up.

I’m curious about the best strategies for getting decent looking armor skins for SPvP. I’ve gotten quite a few basic weapon skins (although at least half of what I got from my “free” chests for the first 10 levels were repeats), but the armor seems to be hard to come by. As of yet I have not spent any glory as I have no idea what to expect out of the copper/silver/gold rank chests.

Is there a list of what armor drops from what chests? Are there reliable ways of getting specific skins? I’m a bit nervous about dumping a bunch of glory when I have no idea what I’ll be getting for it. I looked up the rank chests on the wiki but didn’t see anything about contents.

It also doesn’t help matters that I’m not a fan of most plate skins. I like my PvE/WvWvW setup (which is gladiator chest, norn t2 culture legs (would like t3 but they are waaaay too expensive to be able to justify the purchase), whatever boots/gloves, hide shoulders and helm) .. but other than that I haven’t seen many plate outfits that I like.

I’ve been thinking about rolling a Mesmer as they seem really fun for PvP. I have a Warrior and Necro at 80 and have also messed around with Guardian and Ranger. Most classes are relatively straightforward. I can easily pick out the broad strokes of most classes and builds by just fighting against them. Mesmers, however, are a lot more confusing. I have a basic understanding of some of the class mechanics (ie: I get the difference between illusions and phantasms) but beyond that I’m lost.

Can anyone point to some of the most generally accepted PvP Mesmer builds, particularly SPvP? I want to learn the class by playing with some good builds before branching out and experimenting.

Any advice is appreciated.

(cont. from previous)

3. Fear Me is incredibly valuable in spvp. There are MANY situations where you can use it to much greater effect than just the ability itself. It’s obviously useful for buying time to escape, turning the tide of a large group battle, etc. But you can also do all kinds of neat tricks with it:

• Use it to steal Forest Spirit kills — wait until the spirit is close to death, hit fear and then finish it off with your rifle spike abilities. I had a match yesterday where I stole three kills from the enemy team in this way including one at the very start of the match where they had nearly their entire team on the spirit.

• Use it to neutralize points. If you are assaulting a point and it’s defended by a force that you can’t handle alone, you can often run in and fear them off the circle for long enough to neutralize the point and then escape. This is a small amount of value but it can be a difference maker in close games.

• Capricorn Ruins: when defending, fear gives the sharks more time to damage attackers. When attacking, fearing allows you to neutralize the point while temporarily getting the sharks off of you. It’s really hard to take that point if it’s defended by even one guy, but neutralizing the point makes it a much more even fight (especially if you fear the defender into additional sharks =)

*Battle of Khylo: Fearing enemies in the clock tower is especially effective as it will take them extra time to get back up the stairs. If you are especially tricky you can divide enemy forces up by sending them off opposite sides of the platform, allowing your team to take out half the enemy force while they are divided. Fear Me is also amazing in treb attack or treb defense. The platforms are high up enough that fearing them off the edge will actually damage them. I’ve killed people before by fearing them off the edge when at low health. Even if this doesn’t kill the enemy it buys you extra time for reinforcements to arrive or to allow your cooldowns to reset. When the enemy attacks in overwhelming force, you can fear them all and escape pretty easily. You can usually cap at least one point while they are busy destroying your treb. By the time the enemy gets back into the field you can often already have your repair kit and be well on the way back to base.

Thanks for this build Yojack. I used GS/rifle signet build to level up all the way to 80 (not the most efficient I know but it’s fine) and then switched to something very close to your build. I swapped in Fear Me for On My Mark and use the gain adrenaline on hit trait instead of Turtle’s Defense. I also swap between longbow and rifle in WvWvW.

Anyway, I love your build. I’ve been running it a lot on spvp recently and it works fantastically well for that pug style pvp.

I find that the build is very good in group situations — the shouts and warhorn skills make a real difference — but it also is very good solo. Having swiftness up all the time and tons of dodging/condition removal means that this spec is absolutely excellent for going behind enemy lines and neutralizing/capping. I find that I can win many 1v1s, although I do have trouble with tank engies, good DD elementalists and mesmers. Most other classes are doable and many are just an absolute joke.

The damage on this build is not great but it is respectable. Real glass cannon builds go down fast against you — I’m always shocked at how quickly thieves die if I survive their initial burst. Tanky specs like DD ele and defensive engineer can be really difficult though as they can usually outlast you. The good news though is that they usually take a long time to kill you too, so escape can be an option.

Condition damage specs are an absolute joke, especially ones that rely entirely on bleeds. I ran into a sword/sword warrior yesterday in spvp and he simply could not touch me. Even if I got rooted by a full t3 sword burst I’d just toot my horn and 10-20 stacks of bleed would be instantly gone. Condition necros are a bit more annoying but I’ve had good results against them too.

I’m also endlessly amused by how often my enemies bleed out even if they manage to down me first. Normally I find the warrior downed state to be pretty bad but when enemies bleed down before they can stomp you the number 3 ability really shines. I’ve had several experiences attacking a point defended by one guy where we both downed each other, I then was able to get up with 3, stomp him and cap the point.

A few things I have noticed:

1. Timing your skill use is absolutely critical. It can be easy to blow your cooldowns too early or too late. Sometimes you’ll run out of condition removal and wish you hadn’t used both warhorn skills early in the fight. I think it’ll take practice to get a good sense of this.

2. The sword burst skill is incredibly powerful, especially against stealthers. For some reason I have a knack of timing my burst skill use right when they stealth — the results are often comical as they are rooted for the entire duration of their stealth and come out of it with a massive bleed stack. This ability is also really powerful but really dangerous to use in a big fight. You can sometimes catch and root three enemies with it and do a ton of damage, but at the same time you are also stuck in place so if you are getting focused or position yourself in a lot of AOE you can often get reamed. I’ve found that following up this ability with Fear Me can be extremely effective as it not only allows you a moment to maneuver after finishing the burst but also ensures that your bleeds have a couple of seconds to tick.

(cont.)

I think that this is one of the most reasonable posts on the BLC problem that I’ve read. I’m not that bothered personally by the idea that BLCs are gambling, but I am sympathetic to those who are.

I think that there are two excellent suggestions in the original post. I really like the idea of Black Lion Tokens — something that can be saved up to purchase high end items. Most games have moved toward a combination of token and RNG system for loot systems, and it seems logical that something like Black Lion Chests would benefit from similar treatment.

The other issue is the Black Lion Tool issue. These absolutely should be account bound and should stack MUCH higher than they do. I think an argument can be made for the salvage kits stacking as well. My gf has a substantial number of keys saved up from just playing the game and she doesn’t even want to open chests simply because she knows that it will wreck her inventory.

NeoSaigon.4926:

I’m cheap, so will only use them for Orichalcum, Onom berries, and ancient logs =/

It will take a LONG time lol.

I dunno about Omnoms and Ancient Logs but Black Lion tools actually don’t work on Orichalcum nodes. I learned this the other day and was pretty shocked. I’m guessing that they don’t work for Omnoms or Ancient Logs either.

Cool, good to know!

If my understanding is correct, you can get ectos from salvaging level 68+ yellow and orange items. For armor this is straightforward enough, but for weapons you also have the option of putting 4 in the mystic forge to get an upgrade or a legendary precursor.

Does anyone know of any sensible guidelines regarding in what situations it’s better to salvage vs. combine in the forge?

Hah, that’s awesome Narcemus.

Chackan – I’ll admit that I do have some specific ideas in mind but they aren’t the same sort of “claim ownership over an area” thing. I’m really busy with RL stuff at the moment but in a few weeks when I have more time I’m hoping to detail my plans in earnest and start recruiting.

Another option that might work is to allow you to default to displaying your “town clothes” any time you are not in combat and automatically switch to armor as soon as you enter combat. When you leave combat it toggles back to your town clothes.

Of course, you could also set it to display your armor all the time.

Cancer — yes, I think that’s correct. GW2 already has mechanics like this to a degree in that guilds can capture forts in WvWvW (I think).

What I’m more curious about is whether the devs might respond to player involvement in the world outside of specific mechanics that are already programmed into the game. The thing that made the Shadowclan experience in UO so unique is that there was no mechanic in the game for a guild taking over an area of the game that was normally controlled by NPCs. The Devs simply saw what was happening and said "wow, this is cool what those players are doing — lets make it “official” as part of the game world".

I’m interested to know if GW2 Devs are looking for those kinds of opportunities and/or would collaborate with the community in an open ended way. This might involve modifications to how the storyline develops or modifications to the game world itself… or even something else entirely.

This question is directed at the devs in particular.

It seems that player impact on the world is a major theme and selling point of GW2. Right now this mainly takes shape through dynamic events and such, but ANet has promised live events and such that will help move the plot of the game forward in the future.

What I’m wondering is to what extent players will be able to influence the direction the lore and game world develops. I’m not asking for any promises, but if a group of players dedicated to a cause tries hard enough, is there a chance that the writers will take notice and nudge the direction that the world takes in one way or another as a result?

As an aside, I’ve been playing MMOs for well over a decade now and the dev team that I have the most respect for is Ultima Online’s. The reason for this is very simple. That game had no races or classes, but a group of players decided that they wanted to think outside the box. They decided to be orcs. So they made their skin as yellow/green as possible, put on orc armor and took over a random NPC orc fort out in the wilderness. This group of players became the guild Shadowclan, and they basically lived in that fort. They acted as orcs, extracting tribute from players that wandered into their territory etc.

Eventually, the guild grew to the point where the UO team took notice. One of the devs showed up in game and warned that the NPC orcs wanted their fort back. They spawned a massive number of NPC orcs and the ensuing battle lasted for quite a while. I wasn’t there, so I only know the details second hand. At some point Shadowclan was declared victorious and the devs actually changed the game world to reflect this. A treaty was nailed to the table in the fort ceding it to the Shadowclan, banners were placed on the outside of the fort walls and signposts warning travelers of the nearby danger were added to the road that ran close to the fort. The change to the world was subtle, but it just blows me away that a dev team would take notice of such a group of players and actually involve them in the evolution of the game world in this way.

So what say you GW2 devs? Are you looking for groups of players that are trying to make a mark on the game world? Are you open to collaborating with us? Again, I’m not looking for any guarantees but I’d love to hear your general stance on this type of thing.

I’m I bit confused about this — is it still possible to buy blue/green/yellow salvage kits for karma? If so, where? I know that the weaponsmiths in the cities that used to sell kits for karma now sell for coin, but are there other karma vendors out there that sell kits for karma?

You can get Keys in game from a number of methods. There is a chance of getting one as a daily quest reward, and they are always given as a reward for certain personal story missions. I have 3 characters that I play regularly — one is in the low 50s, the other two in the low 30s and I’ve gotten about 10 keys so far. TBH I think this is fairly generous.

But yes, you will almost always have more chests than you have keys unless you buy the keys from the gem shop.

Linsey,

Thanks for watching this thread and participating in the discussion!

I am one of those insane folks who has a crafter of every profession, and so far cooking is my favorite. That said, I think that even with the reductions made so far we still get too much butter/chocolate and not enough fine materials/cloth etc.

I think there are two excellent suggestions in this thread:

1. Allow for food drops to supplement existing drops — ie: you get your butter along with whatever other drop rather than instead.

2. Design separate bags specifically for foodstuffs and add those to the drop table in such a way that crowds out trash loot. These bags should contain staple food items like butter but also have a chance of dropping rarer items like herbs. The price differential between most cooking ingredients and certain herbs like vanilla, rosemary etc. is absurd, and this could do quite a bit to alleviate that. Flavor-wise (pun intended) it might be a good idea to concentrate food bag drops on mobs like bandits, sons of svanir etc. who would be likely to carry food that civilized folk would want to eat while giving the crafting mat bags (with more fine materials etc) to the more primitive humanoids like ogres, grawl, skritt etc. who are more likely to collect those kinds of things and carry them around.

Just a though!

I’ve read in a couple places now that the Asuran Butler Golem has a “Black Lion Chest Opening Service” feature — but no descriptions of exactly how this works or what the limits are. How exactly does this feature work and what limits are placed on it?

As far as I know there is currently no miniature owl griffon available (or any mini owl, for that matter). I’m sure all of us owl lovers out there would be very happy to see these added at some point!

It’s possible that the dungeons are overtuned and have issues. I’ll readily admit that. Keep in mind though that this is the first real attempt an mmo style game has made at not having an overly simple combat system — it’s going to take a while to find the right balance. I think ultimately such a project is worth working on though and worth being patient about.

Keen posted on his blog recently that GW2 dungeons feel like that moment in other MMOs when the tank dies and everyone panics. I think that’s a very fair assessment of how it feels at this point.

Psychologically, GW2 dungeon combat is a lot more like real combat than anything you see in other mmos. If you’ve ever trained a martial art, you probably know how it feels when someone just comes at you and you are unprepared. You panic a bit and your defense is sloppy — and fine details make a huge difference between victory and defeat. A huge part of martial arts training is to get the body used to performing the technique correctly on an unconscious level — so when someone comes after you and you just react, you react well.

Right now, most GW2 players are in that phase where as soon as they see something coming at them they panic and just button mash. It’s going to take training and practice to get to the point where they get used to responding correctly.

Unfortunately, people hate having to learn something from scratch and I think ANet has not figured out the right way of easing people into the content. The initial difficulty/chaos level is a bit too high, but they compensate by allowing people to death zerg encounters and such.

As it is, when designing content it feels like the developers have asked the question “can this content be defeated with brute force even if the players play poorly?” Instead, I would encourage them to create content that requires players to play well but that makes it easier initially for that to happen.

I think they should make the early dungeons’ mechanics much more forgiving — cut down on the number of mobs and 1 shot abilities, but absolutely require players to get some portion of the movement mechanics right or else they don’t progress. So in the first dungeon or two you mostly get fights where you can take some hits but there are certain attacks that must be avoided/blocked/interrupted whatever.

Then eventually they build up to the kind of content that’s in the game now. The difference will be that players will feel a bit less panicky and will have some decent skills to bring to the game. They will feel more competent and have a frame of reference for building strategy etc. Thus there is difficulty but the difficulty feels surmountable. Along with this design philosophy, ANet should emphasize that the later dungeons are much more challenging than the early ones and that the early ones are intended to help you learn how to play the game. Thus, if players skip to the high level dungeons (and lets face it — many MMO players do this), they will be warned that they are in for a real struggle.