Jump to content
  • Sign Up

meerfunkuhtron.9725

Members
  • Posts

    104
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by meerfunkuhtron.9725

  1. Uh, yes, I actually would. Because I never played this gamemode for the sake of winning. I belong to a tiny guild of roamers, within a server that stayed in the lowest set of tiers for years. Never once thought of leaving, because playing tower-defense with people that I liked was what made me enjoy it in the first place and had kept me playing for years. What this system is doing, as shown by this current beta, is that the way I've enjoyed the game is being disrupted. Why do I care that we're constantly getting swarmed by enemy zergs? Because I enjoy roaming. Why do I care that we're constantly outnumbered? Because I enjoy defending, and defense is thrown out the window when you're fighting numbers too large for you to make a difference. That was what motivated me to make this post, on top of the glaringly obvious reason of: WR is supposed to balance populations. My match-up shows otherwise. It's therefore important to provide feedback that shows their system isn't bringing about the expected outcome of more balanced populations.
  2. I can't speak for everyone of course, but I come from a very community oriented server who hasn't gotten together a server guild, so I might be able to add something here. For one, a lot of our guilds died when server linking became permanent. So when Alliances got announced, our community was already a bit weakened with the loss of a lot of active voices. As for the server guild, essentially some of our major guild leaders couldn't agree on a solution (i.e. one of the guilds offered themselves as leaders of sorts of this new server guild, while others disagreed because it no longer felt like a "server guild" if done that way). It led to even more disagreements, and so, here we are without a shared guild to speak of. Plus, there's the general confusion with what Anet's doing in the first place. Some people still think Alliances would be a thing, so they don't think making a server guild is all that necessary. Some of us obviously don't have that kind of hope. But here's the thing. We, as a server, knew that not all of our guilds got along perfectly, but it worked out for us anyway because we didn't have to agree on everything in order to play on the same server. As long as we had similar objectives and we agreed on some key things, we were able to enjoy playing together. With this new system, we don't really have the freedom to do that. Come together as a guild or bust, as if being in a guild meant the same thing as being in a server that contained different guilds and sometimes even guildless people. That in-between that allowed for the growth of our community in the first place is what's being lost here, so it's understandable to me why people are apprehensive to move into this new guild-centered system. I'm actually going to try and convince our leaders one more time to create a server guild. I think there's a way for us to be in the same guild while maintaining the freedom of each of our actual respective guilds. I've been inactive for years though so my efforts may not mean much, but I feel it's worth the shot. Just thought I'd give an insight as to why making a giant guild hasn't worked for some of us, and that it's not simply because people don't have enough guild slots.
  3. I... Ok. First off, no one's asking for an absolutely perfect balance. Sometimes I feel like you read these posts and honestly think people are just stupid? I made this feedback based on several days of gameplay, not just during reset when things are already typically chaotic as expected. What was not expected was how, all the way up to now, it continues to be extremely and perfectly clear to everyone involved in this match-up that the populations are heavily unbalanced. And since population balance is the entire point of this beta (and WR as a whole), it might be important to let them know that the system isn't giving the expected results, no? ^All of this. WR doesn't prevent the things that've lead to our current issues in the first place, while making the system even more convoluted. Is there truly no possible way to rebalance populations while keeping the servers system? I mean, we can still have a restructuring. An idea I've had is to decouple everyone from their current servers, scrapping said old servers and introduce new ones. They should have a good idea how many servers are needed per region, right? So if they do it correctly, we'll end up with enough servers to accommodate current populations with room for newcomers. We all choose the server we want like we used to back then, including being able to see info on how high or low each server's population is. Servers are closed as they become full. Pretty similar to what we've done before. However, once this is all done and all servers meet proper population thresholds, they are all then closed from any transfers, then the match-ups begin. Once a month, servers can be opened up so people can move to other servers if they want to (with a fee?) while keeping the full servers closed from any incoming transfers. Since populations tend to fluctuate, this type of restructuring would need to be done again when populations start becoming heavily skewed (sans having to introduce completely new servers unless needed), but I doubt it's something we'd have to do on a monthly basis. It might feel less chaotic than what they plan to do with WR, which would be a constant reshuffling of guilds to new teams.
  4. That may be for you and your guilds. But that hasn't been my experience with a ton of them over the years. More often than not, I play with/against guilds that are more interested in easy wins. The amount of times I've scared off a large zerg by simply being there, or when they run as soon as an EWP shows up, is too numerous. The problem with what Anet is doing in this restructuring is removing options for people who want to play differently. Players are forced to consolidate themselves into one guild, just so they can get some semblance of organization to be effective. That may not spell out anything negative for you, but it does to people who are in different circumstances than you are. @A Hamster.2580 People aren't anti-social just because they don't want to join specific guilds or use discord. Where'd you get this idea? In terms of not wanting to join guilds: Some people simply don't have a spot left for an additional guild. I'm part of 4 guilds that are all WvW-focused, and each one is scattered to the four winds because we couldn't make one giant guild for ourselves for multiple reasons. I have a spot for one, while a good number of people in my server don't. On the other hand, I've played with a lot of guild-less folks who freely interact with other players around them. Having a guild isn't a requirement for social interaction. In terms of not joining discord: If you're playing in a zerg or organized group, I get the need for discord. But some people don't enjoy playing in zergs or organized groups. Roamers are a thing in WvW. Communication through the in-game chat is more than sufficient for the types of messages I'd like to share with my team while I'm roaming, and joining discord is unnecessary for that purpose. Notice that none of the reasons provided above is correlated to anti-social behavior. People are just different and are in different circumstances. This kind of diversity has not been an issue within the server system, yet it is in this system we're testing. In fact, a lot of the people who are not having fun with this beta are people who put value in communities, which are going to get blown apart by the current iteration of WR. Edit: What part of this is confusing. Please actually engage instead of just leaving your confused faces 'cause I want to get an idea of what people are actually thinking.
  5. Not fun. The community aspect that was naturally brought forth by servers has been historically under-appreciated, and the results of its removal has been consistently negative. I'm in a server with what seems to be made up of smaller guilds or left-over people (those who didn't choose particular guilds). We are unsurprisingly getting overpowered by enemy teams who have much larger guilds at their disposal, due to them being far more organized than we are, on top of them having much higher numbers in general. Chat is more toxic. We are outnumbered in all maps more often than not. It typically isn't that much of a negative for me, but because I'm playing with others who either don't know how to defend properly or just simply don't care, then it's just more stressful than fun. A lot of people just standing around at spawn. I want this experiment done, but we've got more weeks of this. And the worst part is that they want this as a permanent thing for WvW. Sure, it might help with population balance (currently, that's a no) but it won't solve the issue of being placed in a team that makes WvW more of a negative experience.
  6. Coming back here to add since it's been more days since my initial feedback. I can only say that my thoughts have grown worse, as I've noticed more issues with this type of system. On top of populations not being balanced at all, there's an issue in terms of gameplay. People play WvW in different ways: you've got people who just likes to zerg with big numbers, there are those who like to defend while others do not, etc. etc. I want to emphasize that I feel this is fine. It's nice to give people options so they're able to find what suits them most. What worked with having servers is that people are able to find a place wherein their playstyle is complementary to the way others played. This guild/teams system gets rid of that because, even though my guild matches my playstyle in general, the rest of the people in our team do not. My guild (as well as most others out there, I imagine) can't be on 24/7. When they're not on, my enjoyment of the game decreases drastically as the people I'm playing with feel like they're playing a different game mode altogether. Obviously this wasn't an issue with servers, since the server naturally fostered a certain kind of understanding between its players. My gameplay wasn't hampered by the absence of my guild in the way that this WR system does. An easy example is the difference between players who care about defending and those who do not - I belong to the former group. Regardless of the number of people I'm surrounded with, if they quite literally won't respond/help with defense because it's not how they play, then what am I left with? (A bad time, is what.) We saw this happen already with the world linking. Some servers or guilds would literally stop playing for the duration of their match up because they're paired with another that they don't get along with for a variety of reasons - an important one being a mismatch in playstyles. Or, they just leave the match-up to find a better one. Removing our abilities to choose our own teams really makes this gamemode unenjoyable for a lot of people. Which, I mean, what's the point of a game if not foremost for the sake of enjoyment? I don't think this system works without alliances.
  7. I understand that reset nights on home bl's tend to suck for reasons you mentioned. I included that part to emphasize that it didn't change even in the following days (including up to now).
  8. I waited to play through the whole weekend to get a better feel of the population. I played at different hours of the day as well for this purpose. And I can say that, so far, it seems like population between teams are not balanced correctly. I'm in a Red team. On reset night, we had queues galore (as expected) yet we had the outnumbered state the whole time. We essentially couldn't hold any of our structures in our home BL until one of the enemy teams stopped fighting us. Saturday was close to the same, on all maps. Sunday was the calmest day and we were able to tier up all our keeps, which we lost in less than hour (save for Stoic/Garri). Essentially, based on our experience so far, our population is far lower than the others. The one time we were able to actually defend our borderlands or even fight back was when our enemy's zergs were about the same size as ours, and it's because it was 10 AM on a Sunday morning in NA. What seems to be the enemy's LOWEST point in their population... was the only time we found ourselves at an equal footing. Which to me says that your system for balancing population isn't working well, at least for the match-up I'm on. Other feedback: -The time you provided for choosing WvW teams did not specify whether it's 11:59 AM or PM. If it was AM, then other people who thought otherwise probably chose their guild too late. -It's probably good to have an in-game notification that people should choose their preferred guild within a set time frame. People who don't visit other sites and just play the game wouldn't have known to do this crucial thing. -I am not convinced this is a good way to cultivate community in this game mode. Obviously time can change that perspective, but how this is set up and implemented has so far only fragmented the communities we've had. If you plan on reshuffling team composition every X interval, then I'm definitely far less convinced this WR will fulfill what you say it will (especially since the ability to choose who you can be teamed up with outside of creating a mega guild is out of the question at this time). -Lag and connection issues. I am not sure your environments can handle the high populations. That's my feedback for now. I think I'll just edit this post if I can think of more as the beta continues.
  9. I do think the rewards are a bit lackluster. And it was far worse back then lol! For me, I make sure I go in there with a reward track guild bonus, plus magic find. I get various ascended gear and valuable materials. You can gear up characters pretty nicely through drops or using WvW currency. But, even so, your thoughts on the rewards has merit. In terms of your overall experience... it just honestly varies. As others have said, it's more like a sandbox and the activity changes depending on time and other factors. One key thing is knowing why certain things are being done or why they're even important. If you have keeps and towers that need to be tiered up, then keeping camps (flipping them and defending them) is also incredibly important. You can't tier up a structure without them. Players will often put buffs on camps in order to tier up structures faster, and thus making it even more important to defend that camp. Why is it important to tier up a structure? To make them more defensible, as lower tiered ones tend to be made out of "paper", as we like to call it. We also get waypoints in keeps that are at maxed tiers, which is useful for convenience and also defense. Why is it important to defend? The answer to this can vary. Some people don't care, while others do. I'm pretty sure that we get more points from structures we've held the longest, but not sure if that's been changed. If it's still the case, then people may find value in defense for that reason. Other people like to defend simply because they don't want to lose, and the less structures you hold, the sadder your team looks. For me, I enjoy defending. I like being able to keep the structures in our home borderlands, so I focus my energy and game time on defending them. I'm a roamer and a scout, so I let others know if I see something contested, and I do my best to defend those areas by fighting off players or using siege (depending on what I'm actually facing). Some of us spend our time literally building up siege to use as counter defense. At the end of the day, it all depends on what you find important and enjoyable. If you can't find any of that in WvW, then it's definitely ok not to be active in the game mode 🙂
  10. Thank you for this. What I'm getting from your and other people's answers is that, they're trying to give themselves the ability to move things around better for population balance purposes. Honestly, part of my actual confusion is less on the process, but rather how all this can actually be conducive for building communities (though your explanation definitely helps regardless). We have communities now, due to the server system, not merely the guild system. Nixing the server system obviously fragments these communities. To use my server as an example: we have a number of guilds that are mainly on the medium-large size. For various reasons, we're not able to make a server wide guild. So during this beta, I may see some of my server mates, but won't be able to play with 75% of them. And if this is how it's going to work in WvW when they finally release WR fully, then this obviously spells out negatively for those of us who actually wanted to stick together but couldn't. The other part of my confusion is whether or not teams (or the alliance of guilds) continue to get reshuffled whenever that "redistribution" phase happens. I don't think that was answered by your post (if you did, I'm sorry that I'm missing it). To elaborate: If we fast forward to when WR is fully implemented, and my guild gets placed in a team wherein we're working well together. With the current iteration of WR, does it mean that when redistribution happens, my guild will be taken from that team to form a new one again? And if that's the case, how is this conducive for forming long lasting communities, when guilds are the only source of consistency while the overall team composition is random each time? Edit: I just read another user's response that teams themselves should stay intact. Feel free to add other info on it though if you're feeling like it. Much appreciated to you folks giving extra information.
  11. Right, I get that if you have a guild consisting of 500 players already, that you won't have to worry about it. My questions were for people who do not belong to a guild that already has 500 members. What I'm understanding from this is, if I'm a player that's part of a small WvW guild, we'll be paired with other guilds until we form a team of 500 players? Is that correct? And, when the scheduled "redistribution" happens, does that mean that the process I said above restarts (your guild will be paired with another group of guilds to form 500) OR do we continue stay with the same general group of people/guilds unless some heavy rebalancing has to occur? Sorry if I'm having you repeat yourself. I've been getting different explanations about this over the years, and have only taken part in one beta event that I don't remember. So the confusion is real.
  12. If someone would like to help me just understand this whole thing, that would be great. And just to clarify - I understand the concept of WR, but I'm finding contradictions within Anet's own announcements that's leaving me with question marks in terms of what to expect. They said: "[WR will] also give players more agency in choosing who they want to play with on an ongoing basis and allows long-standing communities to continue playing together." But, they also said: "[WR introduces] a team-building system to the game mode in which players and guilds are programmatically redistributed to new teams (previously known as shards) on a set schedule." So we can choose our own communities that we can play with long-term, yet the teams we'll be in are programmatically redistributed on a set schedule. My question is, how can we actually choose to continue playing together if our own teams get redistributed from each other anyway? I guess this is where the whole "you all need to be in the same guild in order to play together" thing comes into play. But here are my concerns with that: -what if you're part of a guild that doesn't constitute 500 players? I'm assuming that means your guild will be paired with other guilds to complete that 500 player count, essentially similar to how the world linking works now? If so, that to me means that "playing within the community you choose" goes sideways when you're consistently teamed with others who are not of your own choosing. Again, essentially like how it is now. When our server gets paired with another that we don't do well with, a lot of our players become inactive for that duration. It is a constant consequence of Anet deciding who plays with who, instead of giving players full agency here. Is there anything in this system that addresses this? -how is team distribution affected by guilds with inactive players? For example: a guild starts out strong with a good amount of players, but then half of its population drops from WvW (which happens for a myriad of reasons). Won't this end up in a similar issue that we've already been having, in which players end up in servers/teams that are not populated, especially if the system just bases its team composition on what's on the guild rosters? Unless of course I'm missing some crucial info here. -connected to the above point, what happens to players who are part of guilds that become inactive in WvW, but with whom they'd like to continue being a part of? Will we have an expanded slot for guilds specifically for WvW teams, or will these players be left with no good choices? (If some of my questions don't sound right, I'm sorry. I typed this all up in a hurry as I'm supposed to ...well be doing something else heh). Thank you for any info that can help me understand what they're trying to do here!
  13. That's wonderful. I've been running around with turtle lately for the higher health like you folks mentioned, and paired with its bubble plus the slam, it has been pretty nice. I don't use the slam skill much since it takes forever/seems to get stuck on queue the most, but the bubble has been very consistent so it feels nice for defensive moments. Having it dish out a 5k hit that people don't typically expect is a nice plus. I have just been doing my best to time it when the opponent is not paying attention to it, since it's slow and needs a bit of element of surprise IME. I am imagining this happening and I love what I'm seeing in my head. A rolling bear that causes a push/knockdown if you're in the way. I would honestly love skills like that. This idea of a pet traitline makes me think of what they've added for the Soulbeast, in terms of what interactions we get per type of pet. So it doesn't seem out of reach. I definitely agree that this class would have benefited with this kind of system, so that a stronger focus on pets is established right at the onset. Gives them more weight even before we take them out into the battlefield. This also adds into the RP side of things for rangers. I've always liked how we go out in the world and tame the pets we have (albeit sometimes killing their parents in the process, but let's not talk about that...), so something like this just adds to that kind of flavor. At this point in the game, I'm not sure if they'd be open to adding something like this for us though I have a feeling your idea isn't really for that purpose, but rather a "they should have done this" idea, which I agree with. If something like this is in the cards though, then they'll definitely have to polish the pets to make sure boons and actions they're supposed to do work consistently. And scalable defenses would still be needed for scenarios wherein pets are typically nuked into orbit in a few quick seconds. We don't have to go ham, just make the pets useful and balanced according to the changes the game has gone through with each expansion. If players are dealing much beefier damage, for example, then our pets should be upgraded to withstand the damage better as well, etc.
  14. I used to love the GS + sword/warhorn on my ranger, so much so that the GS was my first legendary. But after they changed the animation for the sword, I couldn't get into it again. The original animations were so clunky for me at first, but then I learned to get used to the thing and ended up really liking it. I switched to axe/warhorn after the changes. Then the staff unlocked for us, and I've been having a blast with it alongside the aforementioned pair. The problem is... all the projectile hate lol I just cry inside when I fight a catalyst and I can't make a dent. Let alone when we're facing a boonball 🫠 I never got into the dagger. It looks really fun with Untamed, so I might have to suck it up at some point and try to get used to its animations/attacks. I definitely feel that ranger is very strong with its melee weapons. I guess I just didn't like that the dagger is really similar with thief attacks? Idk why that bothers me but it does. Even though it's known that Anet recycles various animations all the time. Anyway, I'm just on a tangent now. I feel like I can talk about ranger things all day.
  15. Thank you for this, and fair point on the minstrel gear (and I definitely might be mixing up my terms). I did try fighting one of them alone and I still just lost completely. My build could certainly be the culprit, but at this point, I'm finding that I'm ok with losing against these folks since most players I saw fighting them were getting beaten. My minstrel-wearing guildie who was able to at least down one can still put out some high damage along with his various CCs (he's a hammer untamed), which I'm sure helped a lot in this case. But again, still lost 'cause of the bot lol Only happened one time though, as every other time they fought, my guildie lost and sometimes fairly quickly too. Hence this post! Might just have to wait until we go against this particular build again, to try and figure out what exactly is their weakness (outside of probably other bunker builds with the ability to dish out a really good amount of damage). Will have to keep in mind what's been mentioned here so I have a better idea for the next encounters.
  16. Sweet, thanks! I'll most likely get the itch to run SB again, and will definitely try this out when that happens.
  17. This looks pretty fun. I've been having a good time with my power untamed but if I want to try condi, I might look into finally trying out dagger. A tangential question, but do other folks also see very little Untamed players in WvW? My guildie and I both play untamed, can square off against 80% or so of our opponents successfully, so I feel it's not weak (both in damage and sustain). But I rarely see anyone else who's running as one! I see a lot of SBs though.
  18. All this ^. And also why I stopped running SB. I don't like the one and done aspect of it, which I find most SB builds that's worth something to be exactly that.
  19. Something to add is they're most likely using the Fractal relic, which applies burning and torment when hitting an enemy with more than 6 stacks of bleeding. This SB might also have it traited so their bleeding does more damage.
  20. So, I actually have some follow-up questions for you, if you don't mind. Just going back to the things I bolded in your comment. Are the mechs typically not good damage dealers? Because IMO, if something is able to shred people's health down, I feel like that's not dead weight at all and pose an actual threat. Especially if it isn't easy to kill. I've tried focusing on the mechs before, thinking they'd be as easy to kill as ranger pets are, and found out that wasn't the case. I've seen other people suggest stunning the mechs, so I'm wondering if that's still a viable thing to do as if one's taking too much damage from them? In terms of sustain, a friend of mine with minstrel's gear who was able to down the engi still ended up dying from the mech (his health still got really low by the point he was able to down the engi, but the mech pretty much finished him off). I guess I'm just not sure if it's as simple as having higher sustain. For what it's worth, the Mechanists that urged me to make this post in the first place was 2v5-ing folks at various points (aka were not fighting the same players/classes/builds), were able to down several people, and 3 of us was needed to kill the engi when their health finally dipped down to below 25%. Now that I'm thinking about it more, perhaps these guys just aren't your average bunker Mechanists 😆
  21. Just wanted to add to the post that I've experienced this, as well as other people in my server and our opponent's servers (NA, and I'm in Ferg) . At first, it was the opponent's team that kept crashing the moment we were about to meet up. It's very similar to the ones other people have been reporting. Then today, it was my server's turn to crash, and it also kept on happening when we met up with the opposing team but only in areas they controlled. It honestly makes many of us think that the other team or guilds are doing something fishy, but after seeing all the reports on here, I don't think that's the case. When we were crashing earlier, I messaged a person from the other servers and asked if they're experiencing any issues. Some of them weren't having any issues (just like some of our people weren't crashing either), while others were experiencing really heavy lag and rubberbanding around the time that my team was probably crashing.
  22. I do think the stuns are my biggest problem. I typically am able to bounce back from bursts, but I just couldn't with this one. And since they dish out some good condi damage too, then I'm stunned while taking heavy strike damage and getting even more wittled with the condi. This gives me an idea, so thank you.
  23. I've always liked taunt, and whenever I come across that when fiddling with my build, there's this urge of wanting to utilize it somehow. So I'll try this, 'cause I've been working with the shark lately. I know this is in response to someone else but, my issue with using Bears and honestly anything that's melee based, is how slippery most other classes are. I am glad that at least now, quickness is beneficial for our pets and I'll have to test that new change on my melee pets that I haven't used in awhile. And I understand what you're saying with knowing your kit and making sure it synergizes with the pet. Part of what's been brought up in this thread is the bugginess of the AI, however, and how things that they're supposed to be able to do aren't happening. Not sure if this has been fixed but a good example is the bug wherein boons that a beast skill is supposed to apply, is applied inconsistently. Then there's the skill lag issue. And others that have been stated before. I main the ranger class because of the pets. I love the interaction with them and actually theorycrafting builds with them. But with them dying so easily while having so many bugs is the reason why I brought up this topic. I appreciate the ideas you've brought up though. More ways to play around with the pet is always welcome 😄
  24. I agree with your utility statement, but I'm curious. Do you feel the same about the Mechanist, especially since mechs survive things better than ranger pets do and can also dish out much heftier damage? Why do those things exist if Anet doesn't want a situation wherein you have to worry about 2 things in the field instead of just the player? Or how about mesmers? You have to watch where the illusions and phantasms are and evade them so you won't get nuked by their shatters and other conditions they apply, while also dealing with the player themselves. They don't stay in fights long, but you have to worry about them constantly since the mesmer will poop them out like a broken candy machine. Should we get rid of that mechanic too since players should ONLY worry about one thing in the field? You keep repeating the same point but I'm sorry, it's not valid. Because we're NOT asking for an OP version of the pets. We just want them to be active and available for a reasonable duration of our fights, be it small scale or large scale. That's it. Stop acting like we're asking for anything else on this thread.
  25. What Why? To me, just a higher survivability would be good enough. I don't really understand this.
×
×
  • Create New...