Guild Wars 2

SO….After reviewing the majority of this thread I see 4 main types of choices.

1. DO nothing (lol…mostly suggested by upper-tier servers)
2. Mergers, whether permanently or temporarily (Battlegroups, Alliances, Mergers)
3. Map Caps (limit player #s on a map by population size)
4. Scaling Bonuses based on server population bigger=less (Wxp,MF,PPT,Bonuses….ect)

I think future posts should compare and contrast all these basic types because this thread is becoming rather splintered.
Personally:

1. Doing nothing is how we got here. If 900 posts in a few days suggests something is broken, that might be it.

2. MESSY, Can-of-Worms, Pandora’s Box. Same Problem..Alliance Stacking…ect. Solutions shouldn’t potentially create more problems than they fix.

3. Limits, scaling or not certainly solve the fairness problem, but to me its a potentially crippling limitation to even low population serves. That ONE opportunity they get to rush and smash the Green server’s keep because they FINALLY have enough people to carry enough supply and then….sorry level cap….go back to defending with your already limited resources and continue to be forced into a battle of attrition which we are more likely to lose anyway….Haha..rage quit.

4. Simple (meaning least complex) solution, scaling by population to increase buffs, Wxp, MF, defense, PPT…ect seems far Easier to implement, easier to adjust, and far more transparent. And of course this was the concept I also suggested so of course Im biased but that’s because being a biologist, I tend to work with balance, whether enzymatic reactions, chemistry, ecology, evolution, or WvW. Balance requires a continuously dynamic adjustment by 2 opposing forces i.e Supply/Demand, Cost/Befefit, Risk/Reward, Positive/Negative…I could go on and on. Currently there is Only one force in WvW regarding population…More = Better…. So until an opposing force is applied to get people to lower population servers, the stacking will continue.

5. Kinda related….Global GvG (not requiring them to be in your match-up) would seriously reduce SO much stacking and population polarization. Pls give these people the means to compete whenever wherever. It will be better for everyone.

Apparently, there aren’t any ecologists that play/program in this game.

The slow polarization of WvW servers is inevitable because the system doesn’t mimic reality and is being played by real people. There is NO incentive to move to lower populated areas because right now More Population = More Kills = More Rewards. Its not rocket science…….its ecology.

Scale Magic Find, Drop Rates and Experience based on simulating a limited resource (Bags) rather than an infinite one (because its computer game) and the problem solves itself.

The result would be that high population servers have a severely impaired Magic Find, Drop rate, and Experience bonus in WvW. WHY?….Because in reality bags don’t drop out of thin air, they are a limited resource. So if there’s only a thousand bags to be had, I would much rather be after them with only 50 ppl rather than 2000. Making these stat bonuses inversely proportional to population mimics the reality that when you have lots and lots of people good stuff is harder to find. Exp would scale also because fighting on lower populations is simply more challenging. If it wasn’t people wouldn’t be leaving. If yer always the underdog why shouldn’t their efforts be considered more difficult? Isnt experience related to the difficulty of the task…ect.

So….the solution is really simple. Limit rewards in a way that mimics the consequences of actual population size.

The details of this idea were already submitted via Adopt-A-Dev. Would welcome some criticism.

Sounds to me like y’all need to find some new tactics to counter the disabler instead of complaining about it.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This man has it@!!!!!!!!

I despise what the megaservers did to PvE, so much so that I took a month off from the game when they were implemented. I’m not the only one on my server who feels that way. I don’t want to endure the same thing in WvW, because then I’d likely quit the game. I have no desire to play a visually beautiful game at 1-2 frames per second (or with settings dialed down so that everything looks awful) with a screen full of chaotic flashes and skills that don’t work. I might was well watch a screen saver at that point. I’m fine rarely running into that during a large battle for a keep or Stonemist Castle, but I have no desire to see that as the norm.

Yes, before megaservers, it was sometimes annoying that a lot of events were difficult or impossible to complete on a low-population server, but I consider the cure worse. Events that used to work great, where I used to have fun struggling to complete with a dozen people (e.g., the Frozen Maw or the Shadow Behemoth) are now mobbed with zergs and commanders, the pre-events are over in seconds and I never see loot from the defeated Champion anymore in the Frozen Maw because there are too many people doing it. I’d hate to be a new player with a low-level character running into that and being unable to tag anything with enough damage to even get credit for the event. Seriously, the near-empty maps were far more enjoyable.

I’ve read about T1 play. I’ve talked to people in T1. I have zero interest in T1-type play. I actually enjoy the pay on ET, down at the very bottom of T8, during prime time. No queues. Lag is rare. Skills work when activated. I get a decent frame rate even with the detail dialed up. If I wanted T1 play, I could afford to transfer, and I’ve been asked. I don’t want to play WvW like that. Similarly, there are players who hate T8 and transfer up because they get bored or want something bigger and it sounds like plenty of people on T1 love what they’ve got. So instead of trying to make WvW a uniform experience, especially a uniform T1 experience like we’ve been reamed with in PvE, how about preserving the different levels of play so players who want huge zergs smashing into each other can have that and they players wanting small scrappy groups can have that, instead?

Think about it like housing. People can choose to live in areas that are rural, suburban, and urban and each has trade-offs. Jut because rural or suburban people have problems doesn’t mean that they all secretly want to live in a city and people who live in cities don’t want to be forcibly relocated to the suburbs or out into the country. People have different tastes. Whatever solution you choose to pick the scoring and population imbalance problems, please do not implement a solution that assumes everyone wants to play on Blackgate or Jade Quarry. I don’t. If I did, I’d have transferred already. And if people on Blackgate or Jade Quarry wanted an Eredon Terrace experience, they’ve had plenty of opportunity to transfer cheap or for free.

titanlectro.5029:

John Corpening.9847:

Alliances would provide continuity for the community. I see the server pride of today becoming Alliance pride because of that continuity. But I also see the off season as a time for the newly formed world of alliances to develop their own identity as they head into the tournament. Keep in mind that if an alliance was big enough to fill a world that mapping becomes one to one. If that became the case maybe the world could just take the alliance name. It’s interesting because that time together gives everyone involved a chance to see if they all want to ally together to truly solidify into a world. If not, you are still playing with your community for the glory of your alliance in the next restructure. But your community would be playing with other communities new to you and maybe this new bunch is a better fit for you and an opportunity for your alliance to grow.

This alliance idea will certainly help with keeping communities intact, but it also causes issues with coordination.

Currently, servers are CONSTANTLY trying to get their members to coordinate, communicate, and use the server TS. If every few months the server structure is rearranged, this work will be undone over and over.

Whose TS should we use? How should we protect against spies? What sort of conduct is allowed on the TS? Who is leading that large zerg in EB and how I can coordinate with them? I just spotted 50 XYZ headed for Bay, who should I send the call-out to?

Every server has had to answer these questions, and any community leaders know how much of a pain it can be to get these all squared away. Under the new system, these kind of questions “reset” every few months. We will be constantly trying to coordinate with our team, and never making any permanent progress.

Eventually, everyone might get to the point where people no longer try to communicate or coordinate on a server level, because it is wasted effort. Everyone would just talk to the members of their own alliance, and ignore everyone else. That would be a really sad day for WvW.

TL;DR
Frequently rearranging server structures causes a nightmare for server communication and coordination, which might end with people not coordinating at all.

THIS and so much this!

For me, spending a lot of time for server orga, this would be pure horror. How should you cooperate in an adequate way, if the others you are playing with are changing every week? The only way is to build an alliance (=community) as big as a world. So we would have new servers. Why do this then?

And many other questions:
What should public players do? Could you even play wvw anymore without being part of an alliance? (I understood “No”)
How can you join an alliance? Does there have to be an alliance leader if its build like guilds (who in hell should do that kitten job?) or would it just be like chosing a server?
Will alliances be limited? (“Hey guys, we have new guild members, who want to join our alliance!” – “Sry, its full already.”) And if not, what, if they become too big? (“Oh, this week 200 players decided to join our alliance because we win so often. Sry for the queues!”)
___________
All in all, for me alliances are not the way to go. Better bring new content. Enlarge maps, bring new objects to hold, reward splitting of zergs by giving players many more things to do with the same number of players as before. Strengthen defense in lower numbers by making objects harder to capture (no more damage against gates per hand, plz). Stop rewarding blobbing up so much and reward splitting instead. Then people might start to spread over the maps automatically.
Maybe use the idea of making shorter intervals for points, as it was already said before (6 hours per interval, winner gets 5 points, second 3 points, third 2 points -> 4 intervals per day, 28 per week.), so nightcapping wouldnt count that much.
But please don’t destroy all the work we did in the last two years, building up communities with their own ways to play, to communicate and to coordinate. Communities with more or less “server pride” (i dont really like the word, but its the best to describe the “feelings” of many people), which keeps people fighting side by side and which keeps them playing gw2 wvw as well.

Why hasnt this thread been closed/deleted. I reported it ages ago as being what it has become, a Matchup Thread!

Matchup Threads are no longer allowed!

You know what hurts ?

That devs are actively discussing MATCH UPS and according to forum rules this is strictly FORBIDDEN.

We lost more bothers and sisters to moderators killing our posts than we lost in battlefield because of this rule.

This is just a reminder how pathetic is the NO MU discussion rule.

It’s rather disappointing that the most commonly proposed solution to “there aren’t enough people on some servers” is “limit the number of players who can play the game mode.”

This thead will go NOWHERE

Everyone is throwing out there ideas without reading any previous threads or building on the topics

Reminds me of the failure known as CDI

incentivize players to destack.

population caps dont do that, they only disincentivize stacking by making the experience frustrating. but there is no incentive to destack, you still win for being the zergiest.

mergers dont do that, mergers just eliminate the sense of community a lot of players have and dont want to give up.

screwing around with ppt and underdog buffs affects the mechanics of matchups, but does not really incentivize transfers to underdogs, although its sort of closer. (basically the solution to this whole other problem will lie in making it worth it to 2v1 the leader instead of fighting for 2nd, for example enforce green and red allies when blue is the leader, and make allies earn a combined ppt. matches should then gravitate towards being close all week instead of runaway wins. the issue with enforcing a solution is that its not the choice of the players to self moderate. if it isnt something we want to do, you really cant make us do it unless you force the issue to be outside of the ruleset.)

heres something that could actually address the issue:
hold the transfer cost gems as a security deposit, and after a long while, return them along with a gift if you transferred to a server in… say bronze. numbers dont really matter, except that the gift needs to be substantial (either an incomparable or much bigger than the transfer cost). at the same time, implement changes to ppt similar to what i just outlined above to truly eliminate snowballed match scores and drive matches into a back-and-forth.

You have servers out there who have invested a lot of time and energy to build tight-knit wvw communities. So how do you keep those server communities intact if they are negatively impacted by population caps or just getting rid of their server identities? A solution that would work should also consider existing communities and give them an opportunity to stay together.

Please, not something like we currently have in EotM.

Oh lord, here we go.

Just give it some time. Let the dust settle, let people change their strategies against these builds. People are so used to 99% of longbow rangers being free kills that they’re flustered that they now have to use a few brain cells to kill them.

I think you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s fair to judge the change already. It’s obviously a big buff, and in WvW there are currently 10 times the number of ranger there usually are so it’s particularly noticable.

Give it a week or two till people are used to dealing with Rangers within the new parameters and we’ll see.

McFribble.2349:

Sube Dai.8496:

So a build that can 1-2 shot and gets 1 shot itself is op?

Sounds balanced to me.

Ignoring the fact that the Ranger has the advantage of…well…RANGE, it certainly isn’t balanced in the least.

You know what melee glass cannons have as a setback to their squishiness? Having to close the gap.

So tell me, what does this new Cheese build have as a setback? It certainly isn’t long windup animations like Warrior skills. It sure isn’t condition stacking. And it sure isn’t defensive issues or the ability to “miss” your target through bad positioning like melee classes can. So, what’s the trade off?

Hate to say it, but the Ranger class has become more cheesy than Thief or Warrior ever was. Now they have a mobile/ranged Hundred Blades pre-nerf, and a stealth field. Just….lol

You are ignoring every skill the other classes have other than dodges lol, no one is forcing you to stay still and suck all the damages at 1500+ range.

Warrior has endure pain and gap closer
Thief has gap closer, stealth, blind
Guardian has gap closer, refelction, retaliation
Mesmer has gap closer, stealth, reflection
Ele has gap closer, invulnerable, blocks
Engi… lol don’t even get me started, the ranger just dies.

Every classes can counter LB ranger very easly, the only problem is that we are not used to fear the LB ranger, now learn how to counter it and stop QQing for nothing.

While the OP may have a point (I don’t think so, but I’m not a master of balance), I hope ANet waits long enough for counterplay to develop. Already people have mentioned that dodging can mitigate the entire burst.

Also, the 15k bursts that people have been complaining about require triggering several different skills that each have a minute long cool down. In contrast, 100 blades can do 15k every 5 seconds.

For all the Rangers asking for self nerfs, please get a grip. Thieves never ask for nerfs to their class, they just take what they get and enjoy it. Look at what happened to mesmers. They asked for the torment on scepter autoattack to be nerfed, and they got a PU nerf instead.

Learn 2 dodge, like you have to dodge every other burst class that people QQ about.

Warrior QQ
Thief QQ
Mesmer QQ
Ele QQ
Necro QQ
Engi QQ
Guardian QQ

and now, finally, rangers have QQ too. Looks balanced to me.

Oh, pro tip, strafe autoattacks at max range, which is still as easy as any other projectile. Dodges regenerate fast enough to be able to mitigate rapid fire multiple times and either get out of range or close in on the ranger, both of which are direct counter to the glass longbow.

Before the patch, Rapid Fire wasn’t even a DPS increase over the autoattack unless you were facetanking with the longbow. Just because you don’t like our Quality of Life improvements doesn’t mean that they weren’t needed.

However, ANet has taken the liberty of giving every class the ability to play effectively and outplay the ranger longbow. Go to a start zone and look closely at your map. You’ll see a dodge roll trainer. Get yourself through the tutorial, practice a few times (we know it’s a difficult concept or you wouldn’t be QQing), and then reevaluate your mindset.

I think you’ll come to the conclusion that this is just a kneejerk reaction because a different class you like didn’t get the changes you want, while the ranger class got changes it desperately needed and opened up viability in what is arguably the classes thematically staple weapon, and that can leave a person salty, we get it.

Just calm down, take a few seconds, and remember, improvements to active gameplay are a good thing. It could have been another turret engi buff.

Roe.3679:

Funny how there are concurrent threads complaining about thieves and condi bunkers when roaming.

The moderators should roll together these and all similar future threads into a “I should win all the time and anything that beats me is cheese!” mega thread.

Brutal Augus.5917:

step one: “Level mesmer to 80”

step two: “Max condition damage and duration”

step three: “Equip scepter with superior sigil of torment”

step four: “Spam one and back pedal”

step five: “Eat Tacos”

Step Six: “get rekt by glassbow ranger”

All professions are OP according to all other professions. Nothing can be countered. All is vain.

smithkt.8062:

Why is this topic even still open? It’s a ridiculous complaint and just plain rude.

Karl gets me the info I need. I don’t need a professional actor to do it. Keep up the good work Karl.

^

Why is this topic even still open? It’s a ridiculous complaint and just plain rude.

Karl gets me the info I need. I don’t need a professional actor to do it. Keep up the good work Karl.

Dude, it’s a HUGE buff. It changes a ton for the Elementalist. We can actually use on-elite runes now, with these new activated elite abilities for Elemental pets.

Let’s not undervalue good buffs because “lazy players exist”. Active skills are more healthy to this game, specially for the competitive side (pvp and wvw) than mindless passive procs and pets that play the game for you.

Being able to trigger a 6k heal whenever you want, every 15 seconds, will be simply great.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Before the strong negative feedback received after the interview at gamescom, every intention was for each color to cost 300g. Pending QA, that version was ready to ship for the feature pack.

When the flood of feedback came in, there was a flurry of emails working out the best course of action, and in the end Zach and Tyler worked the weekend to make sure this change could be made on time for 9/9.

While I’m glad to see that the community feedback was listened to and that it was changed, I’m still a bit disturbed that it ever made it so far in the first place. All the way to “ready to ship”? That means someone or several someones thought the per-color pricing was a good idea. And to me that’s an indication that at least some of the developers and/or decision makers have been rather out of touch with the community for WvW.

This incident is a great example of why communication is import – and thus why the community has been concerned at the lack of it. It’s not just about players feeling entitled to information. When done right, communication could help ensure or at least double-check that new development is going in a direction that makes sense for this game mode. Even just some posts of high-level long-term visions, or perhaps some non-committal “what if” discussions, would go a long way towards that.

In this case, if months ago there had been a post from someone at ANet asking “what if commander tag colors were added but you had to pay 300g for each?” then the same kind of feedback would have come up. However that could have been done before any development time was spent, and thus would have saved everyone some stress and wasted effort.

Anyone thinking 300g isn’t a metric bleep ton of gold isn’t a WvW player. I’ve never had 300g in my bank, ever! Bleeping dungeon runners and flippers are skewing the economy to the Nth degree. JS better stop staring at spread sheets and start playing!!!!! Because he’s obviously clueless on what the actual rewards are per game mode.

Here we go with great excitement for the future feature pack being completely nuked by Anet being way too greedy.

A lot of you guys are missing the point.
300g account bound tag— This is GOOD. A great Change
300g/Color— This is a BAD change.

The whole purpose around colored tags that the WvW— and PvE community, Was to provide organization.

Red is havoc
blue is zerging
yellow is x guild.

Blue is cobalt
Red is crimson

etc etc etc.

5-6 tags of different colors.

Blue costs 100 gold
Yellow costs 5000 WvW badges
Green costs 1000 dungeon tokens or 1000 fractal relics
Red costs 300 gold and must be rank 30 PvP
Purple costs 800 gems
Orange costs 2 million karma
etc.

Everyone wins, more fun and encourages cross-game type play (yes, gem store too).

We haven’t even gotten to “guild” tags (a shield with your guild logo) that would cost guild influence for one use.

My self-summary

29-year old guild leader. Played GW since GW1 BWEs (though took a long break after Nightfall until GW2 BWEs). Played GW2 with tons of real-life friends until they quit 3 months after launch, only a few left. Spend more time in GW2 with girlfriend than we see each other outside of the game. Have made many new friends thanks to GW2 and am heavily invested in its future.

What I’m doing with my life

Working for a software company. Have a background in software engineering, though not specifically game development. Understand the limitations of resource prioritization, development challenges, mixing overall strategy with tactical changes to please userbase.

I’m really good at

Going between the customer and the engineers. Office Space had it right, you can’t just let the engineers talk to the customer.

The first things people usually notice about me

Altaholic. (Up to 10 toons now).

The six things I could not do without

Mesmer bug fixes.
Improved progression systems.
Regularly-scheduled additional permanent content.
More reasons to form guilds/communities.
Better balance of rewards across game modes.
Grumble cakes.

I spend a lot of time thinking about

Why doesn’t ArenaNet form a Players’ Council – a set of representatives from the community who actively play the game. Sign them to an NDA and get first-hand feedback about designs and plans. Not to necessarily guide long-term strategies (though it could serve that purpose as well), but to get a quick “design check” from the community on plans when there is still time to change them.

You know, so we don’t keep getting 300g/color commander tags.

On a typical Friday night I am

WvW server reset meeting. Playing Fractals with my guild. Doing some WvW. Spending my time ignoring my real life friends and hanging with my guildies.

The most private thing I am willing to admit

I play this game like a second job. I put in my 40+ hours of regular work and about the same in GW2.

I’m looking for

Developers Aged 18-99

You should message me if

There’s anything I can do to help. Programmers know that it’s helpful to get a second pair of eyes to look at your code; sometimes the mistake will be instantly obvious to somebody else even if you’ve spent hours looking at it. This is why real news sources have editors: you need that second perspective.

I know the CDI was supposed to be this initiative, but opening it up to everybody presents two problems: too much feedback and the inability for developers to openly discuss potential future plans. This is why you need small groups and NDAs.

tl;dr

This is an extension of some thoughts I had over on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2dvw7g/guild_wars_2_interview_part_1_general_game_living/cjtl2pg

I got enough upvotes over there that I figured I’d try posting here as well.

I love you, ArenaNet, but please start to get feedback directly from players in a more detailed, responsive, iterative manner instead of having community managers read through the forums and try to sum it up for you. (That is simply an impossible job and I have a lot of sympathy for the poor folks who are responsible for going through all the nonsense here.)

I feel like you’re missing the mark on some of these updates by simply not understanding why people want feature X and it’s depressing. At the very least, pilot this idea with a single new feature and see how it goes.

I can understand raising the price of a tag to 300 gold if that unlocks it for the entire account. This is fine.

But to charge another 300 gold for a different color!? This is outrageous. The point of different color tags is to facilitate the splitting of zergs and objectives in WvW and PvE coordinated events (Teq,Wurm) without confusion. Divide and conquer. “Follow blue tag for main zerg, red tag is havoc, etc.”

By gating the system behind 300g per color, the vast majority of people will stay blue, thus defeating the whole point of implementing the change. The color of commander tag shouldn’t be a vanity issue. “Oh, I like purple, so I will only command in purple.” It should be purposeful and useful. This cannot happen if no one is able (or willing) to spend extra money for a different color.