Gotejjeken.1267

I actually play WvW so I know what guilds are organized / fight and which are random no-name....how is that hard?

What's wrong with axes? Seems like an RP topic.

If they'd actually implement alliances, I could agree with this. Right now, they've just replaced servers with mega guilds and (as far as I know) we have no way how all that is actually put together. For instance, my guild has 4-5 active people running at a time, and some of them try to tag once in a while--is that why we're stuck with mostly random no-name PvE guilds vs. organized guilds, twice in a row now? Aside from that, the server was an independent identity, even if the guilds on it fluctuated. Now that's gone and replaced with an anonymous team name for a certain amount of time, with anonymous teammates--other than the ones in your selected guild--I have no idea how they thought that would make the community stronger. For me, they need to scrap this until alliances can be implemented. If they cannot be implemented, then just scrap it and let WvW live out the rest of its lifespan as a server-based mode. I'd rather they pull a sPvP and leave the whole thing on autopilot than do drastic changes like this which benefit no one.

Bring double barrage to sPvP!

You blast my smokecales field right now mister!

*something about DH* *listens for true shot* *runs...into a trap*

Would see this as highly disputable. I play WvW nightly for ~2 hours at same general time and population swing has been huge. This past weekend was 64 Q on EBG, but once the rush event ended, we are left with basically nothing and now 20+ points behind. This tells me the algo linked a bunch of PvE guilds together, which I have no idea how we see as 'working'. This I also know to be true as no one defends, no one engages anything that isn't an NPC, and there are a lot more questions about really simple things in WvW / fighting in team chat than would be typical on my server (such as the difference between team and map chat being a big one). So, how is it better designed for population swings, when it hasn't even been a week and it's a chore to play as seemingly all that is left now are 1-2 small roaming guilds and a bunch of clueless new people? Can say 'oh but week 2+', however I for one most likely am just going to go out of WvW as the novelty has worn off for me too, and carrying PvE players is not on my new year's wish list.

We have no idea if players repping other guilds after affects things--as we still have bugs where players are split off from the guild they chose to begin with. For the rest, think you agree with me as different play behavior, language barriers, and lack of commanders would all cause activity to drop after the first week. There is no better metric than the first week; least of all here when in addition to novelty you have events going on to bring players in and really test the matchmaking. This is literal speculation lol. You see it as doing well, and others see it as the Q times have dropped massively after the world rush ended, so we really have no clue. Probably won't either as they messed up with rush events in week one...should have waited to week 2 or 3 for that....

I've said it elsewhere, but the beta is tainted because of rush events and bonus xp events, so population is going to be very weird. But overall, I don't understand how they thought introducing a system with more entropy than the last would make more stable matchups. To me, basing around guilds themselves instead of merely active population / time zones is asking for trouble. Mostly for reasons OP mentions, but also becaus if this whole thing fails--they probably will just blame the players for not organizing themselves enough. That's...kind of icky to me.

Be careful what you wish for...knowing anet we'd get a signet of renewal type relic that just auto-kills the pet based on any number of factors: You get 2 stacks of stability, but your pet takes 50% more damage for 10 sec Three condis are transferred from you to your pet, your pet gets 1s of resistance All damage from three people around you goes directly to the pet, however pet health is reduced by 25%

Unsure, DH works in a combo effect. That is, if you have a DH and a DE against you, probably are going to be in for a rough time. Just a DE or DH though, not super problematic outside lower ELO / unranked from my experience. DH just combos too well with other classes and since area denial / ground spam is so prevalent now it becomes a bigger issue. DE nerfs are just left field for me. DH, Reaper, Scrapper / Holo / sometimes Core Engi, Mirage/Virt are all far more oppressive for me at the moment. All beside probably the non-scrapper Engi variants are also low skill floor too which doesn't help.

Ah; yeah to clarify on my end, I think it's a tainted beta, so really no conclusive evidence. As I'm not sure they can know if the population balance is working or not when a portion of the overall test population is rewards driven. Basically, most of the frustration seems to come from long time WvW players and this beta isn't about them, not when an event (or multiple events) is going on. I noted in the OP maybe its PR driven so overall it is a win if they get traffic in WvW, but the topic is just more informational 'hey, you are peeing in the pool here' type deal. I can see that--this is the annoying approach they always have used with balancing and such as well. Guessing that boils down to far too late for a test server so we become the testers. It only somewhat makes sense to me in this WvW beta because you need a live population, otherwise they'd have to generate a bunch of bots or something and that's most likely way worse than simple event skewing is.

The better question is, do you just like to hear yourself talk? The post count would suggest yes... In case somehow you are actually confused; the point is when you are testing a system, you should test it with the target audience in mind. That would be the hardcore WvW guilds as those are what the bulk of the matchmaking will be built upon, as theoretically they will be the largest and most consistently active. Having PvE guilds come in because of rewards will throw the week-to-week matchmaking off, assuming they still are re-doing matches every week throughout the beta. Even if they aren't, it will still throw the overall metrics off from a true population amount. tldr; if WvW is dead and they need rush events to make it seem like this restructuring is doing something--then fix WvW.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me--someone is putting guild together and they have metrics. The balance should be as close to perfect as possible the first week, and then may fall off as guilds change and/or people start repping different guilds in WvW, or people simply stop playing as the novelty wears off. From what I understand these 'temporary worlds' are supposed to eventually last 4 weeks or so (might have been longer, can't remember the exact blog); I'd hope the balance is good on week one--would be kind of bad marketing to be like 'well, the system isn't perfect...by week 3 we should have some balanced matches!'.

When testing a balancing system supposedly based on WvW guilds...yes?

All I have to add is, roaming isn't really casual anymore. Every spec now has some access to superspeed or if they don't they have access to the speed relic (or both) and so you are more often than not going to be chased down by 2/3 super speed bunker specs (including your roaming Druids). Support Druid in zerg or power soulbeast in PvE I'd think are probably your LI specs; ranger is harder to be LI because the pet, but only Untamed really suffers from that complexity if you are trying to do everything it has to offer.

This should be obvious but, in case it isn't--your rush event created artificial q's and matchmaking metrics based on PvE players doing only said rush event then leaving WvW until they need their next GoB. Call of War continues to skew metrics for people only playing because of increased rewards. I get PR and all, but maybe run the events after this thing launches?

You know this is beta 5 or so, right?

Rev ok possibly if you don't have cele renes on EU somehow but...seriously you've never met a roaming spellbreaker or willbender? I thought EU was the 'pro' region and you getting wrecked by I'm assuming pistol reapers? As only other option is roaming harb--if you die to a scourge somehow in a 1v1 I don't know what to tell you.

This is all I think of when Giant's Rise comes up in my WvW panel:

If you want to play with the pet then I'd stick with Druid or if you have it, Untamed. Soulbeast is powerful, however as a brief overview, you don't do too much with the pet out--even in competitive you would just use it for say smoke field and merge again. In PvE you pretty much just stay perma-merged.

I think in that second pic you about to get slapped

Only if you are near the skill level of both me and who you are fighting. I'm not 3v3'ing with 2 random pugs who don't know what CC is 11 years in against an organized gank group. Can scale this up to...if it is 10v10 and our 10 is a cloud vs a 10-man guild, I'm leaving 90% of the time. What if I roam after I'm done with sPvP?

I get them and then do things like defend.

You think they actually recoded them into a skill instead of a summoned entity? It'd be way less work to leave the entity rules in place and have them just automatically provide the secondary effect and then disappear then it would be to rework the rules entirely. I say that as they have always been entities, and the rules for them haven't changed since they could walk around. Only things that have changed are being static / destroyable with ability to trigger their 'skill', and now static / indestructible with everything occurring automatically on skill use. It's the only thing to me that explains the buggy interactions, because we have both situations--one where player stats affect the damage output (sun spirit), and the other where they do not (storm spirit), however the spirit is affected by boons such as might and fury.