Guild Wars 2

style.6173:

@OP: I get it. You were promised an easy mode ride to a win when the server bought you.

I had not intended to bring up server names at all in this thread because they really are not relevant — who does what to whom changes on a daily or weekly basis. However, since there seem to be a number of people, like yourself, behaving in a dismissive fashion I will put some details on the record so that future posters have fewer things to become needlessly worked up over.

I’m from Jade Quarry. I’ve been WvW-ing there for over a year and a half. You can verify this for yourself in the usual way.

What that means is that:

1. I’m not from Blackgate
2. My server is currently part of the 2 in the 2v1 against Blackgate
3. I have experienced the 2v1 from both sides in recent history

Also for the record, I have little interest in who did what to whom or when they did it or how much they paid for it. I really don’t.

What prompted my original post is an event that occurred earlier today: ‘the 2’ managed to get ‘the 1’ to 0 (zero) PPT.

Was this a cause of celebration on our server?

Well, on EB a couple of people pointed it out, and said that they had screen captured the scoreboard for <whatever reason>. But there weren’t many of those… perhaps two or three in each of /m and TeamSpeak. About five people altogether.

The entire map was a sea of blue and red and no green was to be seen… and yet the vast majority of players did not seem to care. Or even if they did care they did not care enough to bother expressing it — not even with emotes.

The majority of players (certainly the majority of forum posters) seem to fixate on what 2v1 does to ‘the 1’… but I don’t see too many postings about what it does to the bulk of the players who make up ‘the 2’. So to fill that void, let me tell you what I saw and heard via /w /s /p /m /t and TeamSpeak: boredom.

When your map is half red and half blue, and the self-appointed ‘leaders’ of your server have cut a deal not to attack each other, and their lackeys (for want of a better word) jump down the throats of everyone who does not religiously tow the line, then there is nothing to do.

Your zerg spends virtually all of its time spawn camping ‘the 1’ and, as a result, only the odd roamer makes it past to kill a few yaks and flip the odd supply camp — which are all flipped back by friendly roamers and defenders the moment RI fades on the supervisor.

Unless you get your kicks from spawn-camping in a swamp, there are no thrills, there is no excitement — there is no fun. The fun fades away… and it fades quickly.

A successfully implemented 2v1 campaign results in a large number of players on ‘the 2’ side getting bored and a large number of players on ‘the 1’ side getting demoralised. It is, in effect, a lose-lose strategy.

How many players (especially consider new players) will want to play WvW when, regardless of whether they win or lose, they are not going to have fun anymore? Who, seriously, will spawn camp for weeks or even months on end if this ‘winning strategy’ becomes the default strategy used in tournament matches? What will it do to the long-term health of the WvW format? I fear the effect will be bad — very bad.

I don’t want WvW to die a slow, horrible death. I don’t want new players to be turned off by spawn-camping ‘veterans’ who gloat about how bad they are making ‘the 1’ feel for real (or imagined) events in the past.

Are 50 extra tickets a season really worth doing that much damage to the WvW format? What will those tickets be worth if the WvW population collapses? Is ‘win at all costs’ really justified?

I, personally, don’t think so.

I believe that Rule 22 of the Rules of Conduct exists to encourage ‘sportsmanlike conduct’ and to minimise meta-gaming. I believe that coming in first at the end of the season means nothing if you had to rig matches along the way to get there. I believe that collusion and rigging matches is a lose-lose strategy for the majority of players and will do permanent harm to the WvW format.

I started this thread to see if ANet believes the same thing as I do… or as others do. Sometimes a person asking a simple question is just looking for a simple answer.

roxybudgy.8205:

You will always have two servers against one. That is the very nature of WvW where there are three servers fighting each other.

Red and blue can attack green. 2v1
Blue and green can attack red. 2v1
Green and red can attack blue. 2v1

WvW is one big “2v1” fight.

I would like to point out that you have missed the following permutations:

Red vs Green; Green vs Blue; Blue vs Red. 1v1v1
Red vs Blue; Blue vs Green; Green vs Red. 1v1v1

Perhaps most importantly, you missed out the one that is the most simple, obvious and intended:

Red vs Green vs Blue. 1v1v1

A three team format, whilst it enables the possibility of 2v1 collusion and match fixing, does not mandate 2v1 collusion and match fixing. Correlation does not imply causation, as they say.

And the way the rules are worded can be open to interpretation, and should probably be reworded to clarify its intentions.

I think you are correct.

RoChan.1926:

But for argument’s sake, let’s say that holds true. How are you going to prove there is a 2v1 occurring through mutual agreement and not through circumstances? What would be the evidence to accept? Verbal recording without the consent of the parties (though in some states that’s illegal)? Written proof (that isn’t a pair of troll players)?

As you can see that cannot occur in a match that largely deals with numerous amount of people and can only be considered with small scale fights where communication is limited to those specific players during that current match. You can also not prove that 2 servers are not trying to be self serving where as in a match of 2 groups you can as you can watch the way points are capped.

If ANet responds and says that Rule 22 does not apply to WvW then the point is moot.

If, however, ANet deems Rule 22 to apply then methods of detection would need to be considered. I do not want this thread to be derailed by arguments about potential detection and enforcement methods, although I can (off the top of my head) think of a few:

1) Consider A and B engaged in 2v1 against C. A launches an assault on C’s keep whilst B spawn camps. Were it to occur but once, one could simply reason that A might have simply launched an opportunistic ninja attack whilst B was happy farming C. No foul. However, if an hour later the roles are reversed, and B assaults whilst A spawn camps, then we veer sharply away from the realm of coincidence into the realm of collusion.

2) An ANet employee, logged into a regular account, joins A’s zerg. TeamSpeak details are obtained and the employee joins TeamSpeak as well to hear the commander. During manoeuvres the commander says something like “Don’t attack B. We’re not attacking B this week. Only attack C.” When queried in /t why A is not attacking B, the response comes back “We need C to come last so that they will drop down a tier and we will play D next week.” This is quite clearly manipulation of the ladder. A publicly accessible TeamSpeak channel is legally recordable and the company’s own /t chat logs are likewise — sufficient evidence to verify a breach.

3) As far as enforcement of consequences is concerned, this has to fall squarely on the shoulders of the commanders. Whilst the grand strategy may have been devised behind closed doors by parties unknown, the zerg follows the commander almost blindly. It defies belief that a commander would unknowingly or unwillingly lead their zerg repeatedly on manoeuvres over the course of days, week, even months, that are collusive in nature. Perhaps a first warning could be that they lose their badge on the commanding character, a second could be loss of all badges for all characters on the account along with a 3-month prohibition on purchasing another, and the third strike could be an account ban.

As I said, however, let us not get bogged down in ‘what if / how then’ speculation as ANet has not made an official response and such a discussion may end up moot. The above examples are just off the top of my head, so were developers or the community to collectively address this issue I am sure much better methods could be devised. Suffice to say that relatively simple and effective ways to detect collusion of the 2v1 kind, and enforce consequences, exist — if they (‘solutions’ to the ‘problem’) didn’t exist then I would not have bothered posting in the first place.

Thanks again for your continued input into this discussion.

RoChan.1926:

Also WvW is PvE with PvP elements… PvP refers to sPvP and tPvP.

On the Competitive Play page, WvW is described thus:

World vs. World (WvW) is PvP combat that involves hundred of players.
…
World vs. World—it’s PvP combat on an epic scale!

Note the clear and unambiguous use of ‘PvP’ in not only the text but the URI as well? PvE is not mentioned — at all.

An objective reader would almost certainly come to the conclusion (from ANet’s own description) that WvW was a format of PvP gameplay and thus apply Rule 22 of the Rules of Conduct to it.

That said, if ANet’s description on its own website is confusing the issue, then perhaps their response to this thread could clarify that as well?

Thank you for pointing out a potential source of confusion.

To settle this matter for once and for all, and to not start a ‘who did what to whom’ argument, I was hoping ANet could officially just answer the following question:

Rule 22 of the Guild Wars 2 Rules of Conduct states:

While participating in Player-vs-Player (PvP) gameplay, you will not participate in any form of match manipulation. Match manipulation is defined as any action taken to fix or manipulate the outcome of a match or alter or manipulate the rankings or ratings of the ladder.

Given that WvW is clearly PvP gameplay, is the current and widespread practice of “2v1” (i.e. collusion between two teams to the detriment of a third and, it follows, manipulation of the outcome of the match) a violation of the Rules of Conduct?

That’s it. A simple question with hopefully a very simple, one word, answer.

Thank you.

The ideal WvW world would have even player representation from all timezones to allow for structure upgrading, smooth transitions of command and to eliminate periods of time where the numbers are so low that all assets are lost. In other words the ideal world has even coverage.

Most discussion about coverage seems to revolve around recruiting more guilds but rarely do these new guilds neatly fill in a hole in the coverage map. The result is spikes in activity during certain periods which results in massive zergs, queues and lag issues.

One possible solution to this problem is to completely rethink world occupancy by increasing the granularity of the transfer mechanism.

Currently, each world has a population level which results in it being assigned a population rating (e.g. ‘very high’ or ‘high’). Transfer to the highest-population servers is not possible unless a ‘blackout’ is arranged, usually in the form of people being encouraged to log out for an hour so that the population levels are artificially lowered which, in turn, creates a window for some guild to transfer players onto the server.

Instead of the total number of players logged in last hour (or whatever time period is actually used) being the metric limiting transfers, instead:

1) track the amount of WXP earned by each player on an hourly basis (similar to the way guild activity is tracked on an hourly basis)

2) once a week, crunch those numbers to profile the mean times-of-day/days-of-week that the player plays (24*7=168 identifiable periods)

3) track average WvW queue lengths for each world on an hourly basis and aggregate to build a similar weekly profile of congestion

4) if a player wants to transfer to another world, compare the player’s WvW activity profile to the world’s congestion profile and

4a) if the two do not overlap allow the player to instantly transfer to the new world for free

4b) if the two do overlap then determine the degree of overlap and determine a cost accordingly (e.g. 10 gold or 1 gem per hour of overlap)

That’s it.

Such a system would make it easy for players to move to fill in holes in coverage maps, and penalise players (possibly quite severely) if they desire to relocate to a world which is already congested and has queues during their demonstrated play times.

Example 1: A player plays 1700-2200 Mon-Fri and 1200-1600 Sat-Sun. The desired world experiences congestion during 1200, 1300 and 1400 on Saturday only. Three hours of overlap means that the cost to transfer to the world would be (3h*1d*10g=) 30 gold.

Example 2: The same player thinks of transferring to a very popular server with congestion periods 1500-2400 every day of the week. Overlaps for Mon-Fri are 1700, 1800, 1900, 2000, 2100 and 2200 but no overlaps for the weekend. Cost to transfer would be (6h*5d*10g=) 300 gold. He decides against it.

(Of course the cost/hour would need to be fine-tuned and 10g was an arbitrary amount chosen for illustrative purposes only.)

This is not intended as a way for existing guilds, in fixed timezones, to transfer between worlds.

Guilds form because players, on the same world, playing together at the same time, organise themselves in a formal fashion. By having a transfer mechanism which preferentially directs players to fill coverage holes, new guilds will form where none existed before.

Thoughts?

This is a great idea.

If it is guild armour then it makes sense that the guild determines what it looks like – not individual players. That’s the whole point of guild armour – to make its members look the same.

And regardless of whether NCSoft chooses the look, or your guildmaster chooses the look, or your entire guild votes on the look, someone will complain. So what it looks like really doesn’t matter.

If you’re going to join an army then you’d better like green.

I think you’ll find that monetising server transfers was always planned by ArenaNet. Guild migration (for whatever reason) has always happened, is not a problem, is not exclusively a WvW phenomenon, and is unlikely to be the cause of paid server transfers.

In no particular order:

1. Jumping Puzzles. JPs have no place in WvW. Either a) delete them completely or b) move the jumping puzzles out of WvW so that people who are in the JP (and thus are not directly and immediately contributing to the war effort) are not clogging up the queue. This can be implemented simply by relocating the entry points from WvW maps to other locations in the PvE world (possibly into/near existing JPs).

2. Waypoint Contention. I spent 2 hours the other night watching and reporting two different bot scripts involving 4 thieves who kept Hills permanently contested. That simply running up and tapping a wall can disable an expensive upgrade for a long period of time is, by itself, kitten beyond belief. A castle/keep/tower should not be ‘contested’ unless there is a real danger that ownership will be lost. To fix this make it so that players cannot directly damage fortifications (walls and gates) in any way whatsoever – only siege weapons should be able to damage fortifications. Only siege damage against fortifications should contest the waypoint (indicated by solid crossed swords). Any player damage against defensive siege or troops should be classed as harassment (indicated by outlined crossed swords) but would not contest the waypoint.

3. Income. You can’t earn a living in WvW. That means you can’t live there. The income you get from loot bags is insignificant unless you happen to be frontline dps with massive spike damage. Everyone else suffers. Everyone else is forced to muck about in PvE grinding silly instances to get the income they need to keep playing WvW (and do crazy, unexpected things like buy arrow carts, for example). And yes, I know you can use badges to buy those, but they come in the loot bags that you’re not getting anyway. There’s a million and one ways to fix this, but here are three: 1) reduce repair costs significantly or eliminate them entirely, 2) allow players to ‘salvage’ enemy siege weapons instead of destroying them, and 3) give each player a ‘repair allowance’ each time they play or each round – repairs up to this amount are free but beyond that you have to pay.

4. Fairness with Rewards. Which player’s actions are more important, the guardian standing in the green circle when a keep was captured, or the mesmer that ported them in but died in the courtyard? What about the trebuchet operator that spends 2 hours bringing down walls but can’t rejoin his team fast enough for the capture? WvW is littered with examples of unfair rewards. One possible step in the right direction: A guild upgrade which, when enabled, distributes all of the gold, karma and XP earned by every member in a given WvW map amongst every guild member there. Finally, a way for defenders and scouts and support players to get a piece of the action that, up until now, has gone disproportionately to frontline dps. This would generate fresh new guild dynamics and politics.

5. Thief Stealth. The way that NCSoft ‘imagined’ stealth is the same, broken way that everyone else has ‘imagined’ stealth. Tweaking sprite opacity to achieve invisibility and pretending that that is stealth is completely the wrong way to think about it. Not being able to see a player 1m in front of your face is broken. Not being able to detect a player when they walk through you is broken. Not being able to track a bleeding thief by looking at a trail of blood on the floor is broken. If GW2 is supposed to be an mmoRPg then the class should encourage the player to play a certain way. Players who play thieves completely and utterly ignore playing ‘stealthily’ in favour of in-your-face-suck-my-balls-nyah-nyah-invisibility. If you want to encourage stealthy play then simply do this: turn off the name tag and outline which normally appears when you face towards, mouse over or select a character. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Now an intelligent player could position themselves in terrain which matches their clothing colour and not automatically be seen by passing enemies because of the stupid big red sign above their head. A moving player would be more easily detected than a stationary one. Dark, shadowy areas could be traversed by a player without being seen. Gosh! It’s almost… like… what you would expect a thief to do!

WvW:

1. Jumping Puzzles. JPs have no place in WvW. Either a) delete them completely or b) move the jumping puzzles out of WvW so that people who are in the JP (and thus are not directly and immediately contributing to the war effort) are not clogging up the queue. This can be implemented simply by relocating the entry points from WvW maps to other locations in the PvE world (possibly into/near existing JPs).

2. Waypoint Contention. I spent 2 hours the other night watching and reporting two different bot scripts involving 4 thieves who kept Hills permanently contested. That simply running up and tapping a wall can disable an expensive upgrade for a long period of time is, by itself, kitten beyond belief. A castle/keep/tower should not be ‘contested’ unless there is a real danger that ownership will be lost. To fix this make it so that players cannot directly damage fortifications (walls and gates) in any way whatsoever – only siege weapons should be able to damage fortifications. Only siege damage against fortifications should contest the waypoint (indicated by solid crossed swords). Any player damage against defensive siege or troops should be classed as harassment (indicated by outlined crossed swords) but would not contest the waypoint.

3. Income. You can’t earn a living in WvW. That means you can’t live there. The income you get from loot bags is insignificant unless you happen to be frontline dps with massive spike damage. Everyone else suffers. Everyone else is forced to muck about in PvE grinding silly instances to get the income they need to keep playing WvW (and do crazy, unexpected things like buy arrow carts, for example). And yes, I know you can use badges to buy those, but they come in the loot bags that you’re not getting anyway. There’s a million and one ways to fix this, but here are three: 1) reduce repair costs significantly or eliminate them entirely, 2) allow players to ‘salvage’ enemy siege weapons instead of destroying them, and 3) give each player a ‘repair allowance’ each time they play or each round – repairs up to this amount are free but beyond that you have to pay.

4. Fairness with Rewards. Which player’s actions are more important, the guardian standing in the green circle when a keep was captured, or the mesmer that ported them in but died in the courtyard? What about the trebuchet operator that spends 2 hours bringing down walls but can’t rejoin his team fast enough for the capture? WvW is littered with examples of unfair rewards. One possible step in the right direction: A guild upgrade which, when enabled, distributes all of the gold, karma and XP earned by every member in a given WvW map amongst every guild member there. Finally, a way for defenders and scouts and support players to get a piece of the action that, up until now, has gone disproportionately to frontline dps. This would generate fresh new guild dynamics and politics.

5. Thief Stealth. The way that ArenaNet ‘imagined’ stealth is the same, broken way that everyone else has ‘imagined’ stealth. Tweaking sprite opacity to achieve invisibility and pretending that that is stealth is completely the wrong way to think about it. Not being able to see a player 1m in front of your face is broken. Not being able to detect a player when they walk through you is broken. Not being able to track a bleeding thief by looking at a trail of blood on the floor is broken. If GW2 is supposed to be an mmoRPg then the class should encourage the player to play a certain way. Players who play thieves completely and utterly ignore playing ‘stealthily’ in favour of in-your-face-suck-my-balls-nyah-nyah-invisibility. If you want to encourage stealthy play then simply do this: turn off the name tag and outline which normally appears when you face towards, mouse over or select a character. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Now an intelligent player could position themselves in terrain which matches their clothing colour and not automatically be seen by passing enemies because of the stupid big red sign above their heads. A moving player would be more easily detected than a stationary one. Dark, shadowy areas could be traversed by a player without being seen. Gosh! It’s almost… like… what you would expect a thief to do!