Kranlor Greyhelm.8417

Clearly it isn't just PvE where ANET appear to have zero idea how their game works. The very last thing WvW needed was making PPT boonballs even harder to stop. Unless of course you've decided that PPT boonballs are the only way that anyone is supposed to play the game, in which case well done. Mission accomplished. So we now have two choices for how to play; get into a boonball of your own, and hope that your group composition is better than the boonball you're going up against (if it is worse, you are going to lose every single time). Or get one of the meme roamer specs that lets you dip in and out of combat at will and spend your time trying to one shot people before flying halfway across the map to reset your cooldowns. Sharpening the knife wasn't enough. They've now decided that paper needs to be dunked in water and rock needs to be permanently banished from the game. Can't bear the thought that their precious boonball doesn't work as perfectly as possible. What next? A boonball logs onto a map, gets inspected by an ANET dev and if it passes the meta test the whole map instantly flips? If they want us to stop playing this mode of the game, they should just tell us.

There was a point where we were a fairly strong second place. So if Vabbi wanted to go for the "weaker" opponent, they could have hit green and knocked them down. Instead both blue and green were exclusively hitting us on multiple maps. This is Vabbi wanting a "vassal" server to be with them on T1 to make their position stronger. Whoever has just been promoted to T1 best watch their back, because they'll almost certainly be doing it again.

This is teams 1 and 2 having an informal alliance so that they can effectively double team 3 on any map. Not much you can do to defend when you have two zergs taking your stuff at the same time. If you split, you lose both, if you focus on one you lose the other. Now this does happen from time to time, as normally if you see 1 attacking 3, you might decide to go after them as well. But over a normal week it would balance out with different combinations grouping up. This scenario has 1 and 2 going after 3 ALL the time. It's even had 1 (the dominant server) going mysteriously missing in prime time PPT, to allow 2 to come first and make up two points on 3. For the 3 team setup to work, there has to be a mechanism to balance things when there are teamups like this. Otherwise it's just 2v1 all the time, which is disheartening and unfair.

You know what else needs to be fixed? When two servers blatantly work together for the entire week to ensure they both stay in T1. There is nothing in the way that the 3 way matchup is set up to stop that happening, or to punish it in any way if it does. But what's the point of having a 3 way fight if it always ends up as 2 v 1? Vabbi and Blacktide this week have made the T1 matchup a complete joke in the EU.

Abilities have got to be completely independent from the PvE versions. So that it can be balanced independently as the game mode requires it, without screwing up PvE. Matchmaking has to be improved. This game is hell to try and play in an unbalanced fight, there either has to be mechanics to avoid those imbalances, or to mitigate them so that outnumbered servers/teams have a fighting chance. Every method of playing has to have a counter. Blob might be easily beaten by 10 teams of 5 working together. Teams of 5 might be easily beaten by a cloud. Cloud might be easily beaten by a blob. Something that looks to encourage fluid, intelligent gameplay where the side that can react and adapt has an advantage. Appropriate rewards as well. You should get the same level of rewards as PvE for the same time invested. And unique WvW rewards too, that you can only attain through this mode. Nothing in the rewards that is required in the PvE space. They need to be detached entirely. Damage boost, defence boost, mobility/disengagement boost. Pick one. Just one. You don't get the other two. I'm sure there is more, but that's all that springs to mind.

The ones that were dicks are the ones that are now on WSR. And possibly elsewhere. Don't blame toxicity on particular servers when it's the toxic morons that keep hopping servers that are causing the issue. We've got a lovely bunch of people on FOW. There are just a lot fewer of us now.

I don't think fow is as dead as you think. A lot of people just stopped playing this week due to WSR being complete dicks.

Want to fix one thing? Stop huge numbers of players switching to T5 servers just before reset so that they can pretend to be good players by wailing on smaller servers for a week or two. Or just carry on letting that happen, which will just lead to more and more players giving up and quiting, because it makes for a very kitten gaming experience. It isn't fun spending most of the week with one server camping both spawnpoints on EBG while they hold the entire map, and showing up mob handed if anyone dares to poke their head out. But if the plan is to kill wvw, then keep it up, you're doing a great job.

It very much WASN'T cleared up. This is ANET finally admitting that they changed their minds about something that they had specifically and explicitly explained to the players, and not even bothering to tell players that they'd made that change. I know you are desperate to carry water for ANET for some unknown reason, but suggesting that this is enough to shut down the discussions in this thread is laughable. But given that you've spent a good amount of time blaming the players for the mess that ANET have made of this whole situation, because we have the temerity to complain about it, I shouldn't be surprised. They also aren't suggesting they are going to go back on it; so once again it's a poor decision that goes against a previous decision and works to the detriment of a subset of players. It's starting to become a pattern, and a worrying one at that.

So let me try and get my head around this. ANET decided to change the way runes worked, didn't think it through and significantly irritated anyone with legendary runes. They then decided to fix it with a legendary relic, but they didn't think it through properly and irritated anyone with legendary runes AGAIN because they'd need to craft the legendary relic to get the benefit back that they formally had. So then ANET decided to offer SOME progress towards the relic based on how many runes you had, but didn't make it at all clear. Leaving people to flounder in the dark. Deep breath. Then, at the last minute, they decided that anyone that had one legendary rune would get the relic automatically. Screwing over anyone that had got 6/7 after the relic change, on the basis that it was going to provide progress towards the relic. But they also announced that this new relic wouldn't work the same way as old legendaries, for no reason that they could clearly articulate. Irritating people yet again. Now it turns out that the way that this new process works for unlocking the relics for the legendary works in an entirely different way to how they described it. Meaning that even MORE people are irritated by what they've done. Not sure if I missed anything in there, but the whole process has been a shambles from where I'm sitting. An utter clusterkitten of incompetence. Generally speaking in life, if you make a mistake you make every effort to fix it once, and fix it right. This process has been ANET making ignorant, poorly communicated design decisions one after another. Making them look barely competent to the player base that they rely on for their livelihood. Their best bet would be to revert the legendary relic to work the same way as ALL the other legendaries. Removing any possibility of unintended consequences like this thread. But my expectation at this point is that ANET will make another poorly thought out decision and double down. Probably breaking something else that they haven't thought through properly. It's no way to run a company, sadly.

Heresy! How dare you suggest that anything other than a boonball rolling around doing PPT is the correct way to play this game. ANET have made it very clear; there is only one way to play WvW, and they'll "fix" anything that gets in the way of that. And they don't care how many players they kitten off enough to leave in the meantime.

I'm not sure that describing 2 hours of "story" and a third of a map every 4 months counts as a "constant flow". Maybe if you can explain where the fun is you've been finding? Because I was bored on the new "map" by the end of the first evening of playing it. Recycled content. Lazy storytelling. It all feels to me like they're churning out the bare minimum and expecting us to be excited by it. I'm not, at all.

You have to get a killing blow? So the full achievement for an engineer requires you to get 1000 killing blows with a support/heal weapon? Who designs this ridiculous stuff?

Will I actually get to see both of them this time? Because the last 20 or so convergences I've done have all been Sorrow. Hopefully you'll fix whatever is catastrophically broken in your RNG machine before the next patch.

Sigh. Walk me through where elite specs were tied into legendaries. I'll wait. So yes, they've ALREADY proven that they are happy to push player power behind a paywall. So that makes it even less of a leap to say that they're planning to extend and expand that notion, to make it that much harder for anyone to keep up without buying their new "expansion". And if SOTO is any indication about the quality of actual content in those "expansions", using other tools to get people to buy them is going to be their only option. And if you're going to accuse other people of using the wrong word, feel free to check the different meanings of "there" and "their".

You call that transparent; I would say that what they AREN'T saying is more important. Because in order to "engage" with the new content in their new model, you have to purchase it. Which as I said earlier, gives them a strong incentive to up the "power" of what they're locking behind that paywall. I'm calling it now, that the next expansion will have numerous "must have" relics that you'll only get access to by buying the new expansion. Whereas when they were part of the 6 piece rune bonus, you wouldn't have needed to. So I'm standing by my comment about a lack of transparency, at least as far as intent is concerned.

The changes might be transparent, but the reasons for making that change aren't. There must have been some thought behind altering the way that legendaries operate, but ANET aren't sharing that with us. If it isn't to introduce a form of FOMO by the back door, I don't know what those reasons are.

"I can't argue against the points made, so I'll insult the people making those arguments and flounce out". I said what ANET are doing. I speculated the reasons behind those changes. If you have a better reason for WHY they are making these changes, I'll be happy to hear it. We all want the game to do well, and personally I've sunk plenty of money into it over the years. I don't have an issue with ANET seeking ways to solidify the revenue streams that this game generates. I just want them to do it in a transparent and honest way. What they appear to be doing with legendary changes isn't either of those things.

But we aren't debating what they might "speculatively" do in the future. We're talking about the decision that they have actively taken to change the way that legendary items work. That is a choice they've made, which indicates that they have decided that legendaries in their current form do NOT operate in a way that aligns with their future direction for this game. It tells us that they will probably make any future legendaries (such as a breather) to function the same way. After all, having made this change of direction, why would they go back? And having introduced some legendaries that work this way, they can start to make the argument that it makes sense to revisit ALL the old legendaries in due course, to get them in line. After all, if you're having to do content to unlock some of your legendary armoury, it doesn't make sense that you wouldn't need to do it for the rest, does it? It's pretty clearly a way to force players to buy expansions to get access to choices they used to get automatically. It's probably going to be carried out in conjunction with new options being overpowered, forcing people to buy those expansions to get access to the meta. Anyone that doesn't see which way this slope is sliding, isn't paying attention.

I'd respond to this the same way I did when my company decided to halve our redundancy terms, and told us not to worry because "they have no intention of making anyone redundant". My response was "if you aren't intending to make anyone redundant, why are you changing the terms? If you aren't going to use them, why even make this change?" With this, I'd ask why ANET have suddenly decided to change the way that legendaries work. What harm would there be in leaving it so that legendary owners get their access immediately? What are they planning to do which would make this change necessary? To me it looks like they're planning to release new and better relics with each expansion. Ones that become "must have", that even legendary owners won't get access to UNLESS THEY BUY THE EXPANSION. A way of forcing long term players to buy their increasingly watered down expansions, even if they own legendaries. It's cheaper than actually making good content, after all. And if we let them get away with this, how long before they start making other legendaries work the same way, to "keep them in line"? So no, this isn't people whining. This is people genuinely concerned at the direction ANET are taking,. and what it might mean in the future. This is our horse armour, and we can see where we're going to end up if we don't nip it in the bud. Because once they have broken the legendary covenant, they can paywall options in the future and have a cheap way of driving customer spending. I don't think that's a good thing to happen. Do you?

I can't believe there are some people in this thread that still don't get it. They've taken the 6 rune bonus, where the legendary ALWAYS gave us access to new options as soon as they were available, and put it on a new legendary that's NOT going to give us access to new options as soon as they are available. It's setting a precedent that they can take away the legendary access that we currently have at any time, if they choose to. It's setting a further precedent that any future legendaries they may introduce are going to work the same way. This isn't how legendaries have worked. And it's a change that it's clear a significant portion of the player base do NOT want. We have 3 choices, basically; we can push back against this and get ANET to change direction (again), that's option 1. We can simply leave the game without saying a thing, option 2. Or option 3, we can carry on playing and silently accept the change in direction that ANET have decided to impose. The move away from the "sanctity" of legendaries to be permanent complete items, regardless of how long you step away from the game for, is not one that I find acceptable, personally. I've taken breaks from this game before, knowing that I can come back to a host of relevant content that I can jump into straight away. Knowing that my legendary armoury will allow me to do that without issue. Suddenly ANET are starting to tell me that if I walk away I'm going to come back to a host of unlocks I need to negotiate. They're telling me I can't walk away for a while without implications. That's not an attitude I want to encourage. So I'm going to continue to shout about this until they change tack. And if they don't, I'll be leaving permanently. And no, you can't have my stuff.

Unranked is being swamped by high skill experienced PvPers squashing any new players that dare to show their face. So don't expect the population to improve any time soon, because it looks like you've got a lot of players that don't want that to happen. Or you have a lot of people unable to recognise cause and effect, who can't see beyond the rush they get from one shotting someone with 10 minutes experience in the game mode.

You want to get more people into PvP? Then ban high ranked players from unranked. Because coming into this when your skills and experience are low and facing people that are clearly miles better than you as they farm you repeatedly just isn't fun. Next time you want to complain about low participation, remember that this great opportunity to introduce the next generation of players to your part of the game was ruined by your own players being jerks. I've gone from having a 50-60% win rate in unranked to losing almost every game by 500-100. Which suggests that not only are a lot of very skilled players playing unranked suddenly this week, but that they are coming in groups as well. Otherwise I'd expect to be on teams with those more skilled players an even amount of time, and my win rate wouldn't change much. No doubt we'll be back to the "PvP is dying and it's all ANETs fault" posts in a weeks time.

The reason people are getting upset about this is the same reason that they've been upset at every stage of this debacle. Because it's pretty clear that ANET didn't think this through properly, didn't communicate properly, and are shifting the goalposts at every stage. It makes people wonder what else they might change. It's also concerning that at every stage that they try and fix the previous mess of their own making, they fix it in a way that introduces new problems. That makes them look less than competent, and again undermines the faith of the players. Someone earlier in this thread clarified why the changed "legendary" functionality of the relic upset me personally. Because part of the benefit of putting the effort and time into getting full legendary was really taking advantage of the lack of FOMO it brings. You could walk away from this game for 5 years, and come back and your gear is ready to go with the latest and best stats. You then have 5 years of relevant content to play that you can pick and choose from, doing what you enjoy. Now, with this change you'll come back and have a relic missing 5 years worth of option that you'll have to unlock. And presumably any other new legendaries that they'll introduce will work the same way as this new one. It's breaking the model they've run with since the start for legendaries, and not in a way that's good for the players. It also wouldn't surprise me to see them walk this back as well, after the backlash. They aren't thinking through the implications of what they're doing properly, they aren't anticipating the impact on players and their likely response. The whole thing feels really amateurish to me, and the more times they compound their initial error, the worse it gets.

Once again ANET don't understand their own game, or their players. Offering us the relic for free is fine, even if it doesn't match what they were telling us a few months ago. But what's coming is NOT a legendary; at least it isn't a legendary as we've come to expect it in the game. The whole point of legendary is that it's one and done, now suddenly we'll have to be doing something to unlock future legendary options? What next? Bring the old legendary items into line and make us grind new options for those too? Sure, they are saying they won't do that now. But given what we've seen from ANET recently, why the hell would we believe a word? Still, at least I've made a nice chunk of change selling the charms I no longer need.