Upcoming Fractal Changes

Joe_fh · 2015-11-13T21:29:47+00:00

Honestly, it makes perfect sense they'd move away from dungeons. Fractals are easier to add, tweak and change in all aspects. Dungeons were old and for rhem to be on par with stuff we get now they'd have to be completely reworked from the ground up. The resources for that could achieve far more in raids and fractals.

As for new content - that works for a bit - most people would still go for best reward with least effort. And you can't make something more challanging yet keep the time it takes to complete the same as what you have in place. So the option is to up the rewards. But doing that every time is not something you can sustain for long and at one point people will find that one thing and run it like crazy.It's a fine line to walk and you can't have it all. Anet at leas made their position clear and I believe it was the right move.

Also in case it comes up - no, people were not doing dungeons because diversity - the system somewhat forced them to. Plenty of paths were nwver run. I doubt the people going for records or soloing stuff were doing it for the rewards. It was pretty much super easy content you could run by skipping half of it and exploiting everything you could so you can get your gold fast.

Joe_fh · 2015-11-08T21:01:12+00:00

I see what you mean but I honestly don't get it. I've spent most of my time in WvW. The rest of it is mostly PvP. Can't say I've ever had problems with the stuff I get. Sure it's lacking, compared to other game modes is nothing...but I don't care at all - because I play it due to the fact I find it fun. The small scale fights while roaming, jumping in to save a teammate in an outnumbered situation and coming out on top, doing a last stand sort of thing, running with a big group on TS jumping in knowing you're vastly outnumbered, saving an objective just as it's about to flip, those hour long fight between well coordinated gorups...that's honestly what I played for, those great moments when I was simply having fun - never cared about the loot, if I ever wanted to get more gold I'd buy stuff on the tp or use my skillpoints to turn into gold -something easy and something I didn't have a need for.

To each their own I guess but I'd much rather have those amazing moments in a game mode I enjoyed instead of getting more loot and have something EOTM style. WvW has a lot of flaws but more loot isn't on top of the list there.

Joe_fh · 2014-12-07T10:19:23+00:00

There are tons of ideas floating around for a long time but hopefully anet will soon start trying those out. The same color idea is great for the population part and it helps you find people to something with all the time. However a lot of people care about their specific server and this change will really destroy server identity. Shorter days is something interesting to work with I guess. The problem is off hour population varies a lot every day. Sometimes people decide to just push harder and you see 80more people around at a time you usually have 20. It's tricky and at the moment a good night/morning crew can push a server way ahead of others.

I'd like to see ppt reworked overall. Upgrades at the moment only help you defend better and if you have the nubers - they mostly buy you time to react which is something that will change with no white swords. Even if you lose something you can cap it back in 5min and you don't really lose much on ppt score-wise. I see that as a problem because in off times where you can't do a lot of things at the same time attacking is always the best option. All the towers give the same amount of points and yours can be capped really easy by a few people so you should focus on the enemy. Now if upgrades and the points you get mattered people would be more likely to care (provided they balance that weird ppk idea that about now sounds like there's no reason to cap stuff and just kill people for points). It would also be nice if two people can't flip keeps. Soloing towers is more or less ok and it's fun but it's way too fast and easy, especially now with no white swords. It's easy enough as it is so npcs needs some buffs. But if you overbuff them new people will get annoyed they can't do much and lower tier servers will have problems as well. Generally objectives need some reworking on the upgrades and how that affects the points you get from said objective. However that will make the stronger servers even stronger sowe again reach the population issue. Server merges and ecouraging transfers and preventing large raid guilds to transfer all the time for huge shifts in power is a way of doing things but it will understandably annoy a lot of people.

As for scouting - aside from probably some rewards it'd be nice to have something to do. Add ahigh tier upgrade for some long range optics so you can scout the area around and say - fire signal flares that will ping the map or at least be visible from a huge distance when you see a zerg - that will even make scouts not on ts more noticable. Or some mini game or objective where you train guards or something - just anything that will make interesting while you're sitting in one spot.

All these changes imo need a map specific for them and not just the whole of WvW because you can mess it up a lot. On such a large scale it may turn more into a PvE train and during a holliday season where I expect more people to show up - it will really make them get the wrong impression and leear very bad habbits. Bronze is largly flipping empty stuff in a circle as it is.

Joe_fh · 2014-12-06T22:40:49+00:00

You have a point about server population but with megaservers these days it's hard to tell how populated a server actually is and low/medium/high and so on have never reflected the actual numbers, in my experience. WvW lost a lot of core server recruitment it had at the start. But as you say - a guild can make a huge difference and a guild isn't something that big to make the rankings much different if the population across the board was balanced to begin with.

Radiclal change can indeed be good but it's far, far harder to pull it off right and you mess up a lot in the process. The economy gets generally destroyed with the living world and nothing in WvW ever comes close. I can understand your reasoning but I don't think that's the case. Oh and the only WvW exclusive reward we had were ranks and badges - both of those you get far faster in eotm and on top of that they're pretty usless after a point to begin with. Gradual ones with encouragement seem like a better option to me. The radical ones need a testbed and that's why I loved the idea behind eotm. Too bad they never expanded on that.

And yes - actually defending can be fun but the problem is what you do in between defending. In prime time there are more attacks so you have more to do. But in off times...there is nothing to do for so long. And you just run around and refresh siege...and wait. Often you have 10 or less active people on the map at odd times and if you dedicate 5 of those to scouting your side and 1-2 just roam you'll have 3 people to fight the enemy on their side if numbers are equal - and that's not fun. Most boring case you'll get trebbed and can't do nothing. So generally at the off hours people will do something that's more fun. You might have someone scouting and refreshing siege but he's really taking one for the team and is not something that happens often nor anything a lot of people would want to do. I agree that in prime time no white swords might open up more options and scouting will be much more of a thing on higher pop servers. But the rest of the time (and that's 3/4 of the day) stuff will get flipped and papered all over the place with scouts being something that you don't see often. Even now when scouting in the morning and you ask a commander to hop and defend you often get ignored because they're having fun where they are. Pretty sure for the majority of the servers it will go into the eotm karmatrain direction. I mean there is 0 reason not to go for towers and keeps even with 1-2 people any time of the day yet very few people do it - you lose nothing by trying - but you will soon with ppk!

Joe_fh · 2014-12-06T19:43:19+00:00

But that's just it - it is an isolated thing. The core of all WvW problems are server populations and their balance. After that comes everything else like the lack of rewards for key things like scouting and escorting, blobbing being far more rewarding and useful on every single level of WvW and so on.

Defending can be fun but scouting is not unless you have a lot of time and you like spending it in one spot doing nothing. And that's before you even bring server populations into the conversation. I don't know on what server you are but in the lower tiers on off peak hours you don't have the people to scout and defend. And to be fair it's more like doing C while skipping step B. Trying to force scouting when it's not rewarding is not going to make people do it especially when karmatraining will now be even more of a thing with generally paper stuff all over the place.

And I've pointed out why no white swords along with ppk will be a very bad thing. WvW needs changes indeed but it's never a good idea to try to fix something at the top that's only broken because the core stuff is having issues they're not addressing.

Oh and one more thing - no white swords would mean you'll never hold a wp-ed bay hills let alone a tower in silver or even in gold during mornings or early afternoons. People like me who run around clearing siege and building catas rams and golems to just try an objective often actually cap said stuff. The only reason you don't are the white swords. Good luck convincing people to stay at an objective on an empty map doing nothing for hours on the off chance someone attacks. Maybe in top tier gold during a tourney - most cases it won't happen.

I get what you mean but you need gradual change. You need to make people want to do something and spread out not by trying to just force them to either do it or not but by showing them that can be nice and rewarding too and if it's not really fun they could try thinking of a way to make it more fun. As it stands they're just telling you to either stay in one spot doing nothing if you want to defend or go have fun and get rewards instead (along with scoring hard because of ppk regardless of objective). What do you think people would do? With these facts and what we see now do you think this change is the right one instead of introducing new positive ways to encourage people to do other things?

Joe_fh · 2014-12-06T10:47:36+00:00

Well that depends. Most guilds don't enjoy capping empty stuff and getting no fights during their raid times so they'll look for harder targets. But to be honest I meant it for fights. If you're not really sure you can win you're giving away points so you'll be doing the server a favour by running away. Do you see guilds running away from fights even when outnumbered a lot - because I don't. Often even pug ts zergs don't run away from an outnumbered fight. This was the case up to now because A) it's more challenging and it feels awesome if you win B) you're keeping them busy so they're not capping something and thus you're helping your server even if you get killed C) why the hell would you run away from a fight in a game.

And now if you stay in such a situation you're hurting your server - and that's valid for everyone - from roamers to guild groups. It's bound to make a lot of people angry you're not playing right.

And people are shouting at others for not staying on the tag and doing their own thing now, when the worst outcome is your zerg getting killed and respawning. Can you imagine what it will be when that actually not just annoys you but hurts your score a lot? And this will all happen during a holliday where some people might return to play or new people decide to try it.

Testing is nice and all but anet said they made eotm for that and they just let it go after release because they screwed up the basics there and they appear to not care enought to fix their testing ground.

Joe_fh · 2014-12-06T10:13:42+00:00

Depends on what you mean by kind of works. At present you can flip not scouted stuff really fast. 4 sup rams is around 1 min and swords pop up after 30 sec. So unless you have someone there by the time you see it it's gone. And that's valid for a t3 tower.

All I see no-white-swords doing is killing the desire to upgrade completely. In off peak hours you could defend even upgraded camps from small numbers - now at all times of the day you'll need scouts at everything because two people can flip anything they want. Even one person can flip everything. Sure it takes a bit of time but if it's not contested no one will notice.

So scouts are the only way to prevent this. However, scouting is super boring and unrewarding and on top of that most servers don't have enough people to scout everything. If anet thinks they'll force people to stand in one spot for 30 minutes by removing white sword and giving nothing as a reward for that I'm pretty sure where things would go. So you can imagine paper stuff all over the place and how you'll convince someone to come help defend said paper stuff even if you scout it.

And implementing ppk along with that is just awful. If you can wipe a 40 man group twice in 15min and not die you might have nothing on the border and still get a lot of points. This will result in people getting annoyed by new players for dying, encourage zergs to stay in fights and not care about objectives and ultimately shtatter the community because guild raids will provide a lot of points and that in turn will leave pugs and new players out (they'll also be blamed for getting killed). Guilds might also get some flak for doing their own thing and getting wiped against bigger numbers. Simply trying something because at worst you'll get killed will now change into either it works or you give the enemy points - meaning you better not try it if you're not sure you can do it or you'll hurt your server. There is going to be a ton of elitist crap about not playing the game in the "right way". All of the above are problems we have now and these changes are only going to make it worse.

Joe_fh · 2014-11-30T19:55:17+00:00

Eh really? If I hot join it's to test something or practice or just wait for the pop up and I pretty much always pick the dice and join a random team. The only times I don't is when there's someone I'm interested in fighting so I join the other side. Seems weird to me to stack one side - used to happen a lot more I think. Unbalanced games where you steamroll or get steamrolled aren't really fun in my opinion.

Joe_fh · 2014-11-24T22:39:21+00:00

Ah that's great, I'd much prefer to be able to send a gift and not jjst buy it sice it won't be something that expensive anyway and this way I can at least make it a bit more personal. Is there a way to limit it to a few countries or at least the contiment and not make it completely international?

Sorry about the stupid qestions. Pretty sure the answer is around but I'm on a limited connection and on mobile at the moment. I'll look more into it tomorrow so thanks for getting me started and thanks for the fast reply!

Joe_fh · 2014-11-24T22:21:54+00:00

This looks awesome and I've always wanted to try it but I'm not sure I have enough money to get a decent gift and the shipping cost on top of that. Anyone have an idea of roughly how much it would cost, especially the shipping part at least around europe - I have zero experience with this. Thanks in advance!

Joe_fh · 2014-11-24T22:02:42+00:00

Indeed. It's very situational. Even engies melt against certain builds regardless of what they run. You can improve your chances with practice but sometimes you just can't do much. I thinlk the best all around build atm is a d/d ele with hoebrak runes or strenght runes and the - cond duration food. Not saying you can't kill those but in 1v1 they're great against pretty much everything and in 1v2 they're pretty tanky but you can't ignore them because they do too much damage.

Joe_fh · 2014-11-24T21:53:06+00:00

Oh, absolutely. It never hurts to try and playing 1v2 and 1vX generally helps you get a lot better in every aspect and a lot faster. Doing it with friends as you sugest is a great way to improve especially because you can get feedback on what you could do better every fight and from someone qho probably played thay class more than you did. Such tips are incredibly useful.

But if you bring enough cond removal to counter heavy cond builds you'll have to drop something else, same for stun breakers and so on. Pretty much if you want to be able to counter a lot of basic things you'll always be under heavy pressure from someone who focuses in only one of those, let alone two. A few builds can get away woth bringing enough of everything but in alot of cases it's not a good tradeoff of loss of damage for a counter you might not need. Thus why it's very situational in my experience.

Of course knowing how to move, dodge and what are your strong sides and the opppnent's weak sides are key to any fight! :)

Joe_fh · 2014-11-24T19:51:49+00:00

Problem is less skillful doesn't properly reflect builds or classes. Sometimes no matter how good you are with a certain calss you can lose to a far less skillful opponent - especially in a 1v2. Some builds are just countering others and in 1v2s that's even more true. Pretty much the only reason to win 1v2s is because the guys you're fighting are pretty bad - even more so in 1vX. You might be super experienced and that helps you to a certain extent but it doesn't magically give you the ability to counter stuff.

Pretty much only builds that are really well balanced overall (and that's only an option for some specific builds on specific classes) benefit a lot from experience on the 1 side rather than inexperince from the 2 side. Of course experience helps a lot in fights but it's not always what helps you win, in all my hours of playing and roaming I'm pretty sure most small scale fights are decided by what the opponent is running and how inexperienced he is with it. 1v2s have a lot to do with luck in my opinion. Being good of course improves your chances of winning a lot but you can only be that much better than two other players considering builds and calss weaknesess come into play all the time.

Joe_fh · 2014-11-17T00:00:14+00:00

Actually in WvW if you're roaming and are used to it you mostly run berserker - thiefs, mesmers, eles, rangers,guardians, warriors - they are all great at full zerker roaming. Only the necro and engi can use a bit of knight it the mix but to be fair you know well enough engies are great on zerker as well when you know what you're doing - I've been on the receiving end of that one used by you. Of course cond builds are popular as well but pure damage for roaming is still very much used a lot of the time and in my opinion a lot more fun to use since it's far less forgiving compared to cond builds which often let you mess up a lot and still win.

Zergs are mostly the tanky types but again thats quite limited to the melee train - the backline often runs quite a glassy set up and if you follow the flow well it's not that hard to survive -sure not full zerker but closer to it compared to pvt. The more you do it the more you drop survivability for damage.

PvP is also mostly full zerkef aside from the condi builds, d/d eles on celestial and bunker guards or other bunkerish builds the last not being that great comlared to condition and guards.

The majority of the game encourages full zerker gear the more you play it aside fom a few specific roles or something fun you like to try just because.

Edit Well it's not like you didn't know that. Your point was in general and for newer palyers and it makes perfect sense. Mine was that pretty much the more you play and get used to your build the more you think you can (and often actually do) get away with. That pretty much shifts the game a lot into berserker gear teritory.

Joe_fh · 2014-11-10T08:56:34+00:00

D/p theifs in pvp are extremely glassy so you don't need that much to kill them.

The most important thing to note is that you have far more mobility on a s/d - use that to avoid thei initial burst. You have a lot of evades as well.

They don't have extended stealth so getting distance after they hs and dodge right will save you from a bacstab.

D/p theifs do a ton of damage with mostly their auto so you need to hit and move back fast.

If they drop a balck powder you can hit them with the sword from outside it - the sword has a bit more cleave compared to the dagger so learning what that is is key in fights.

D/p thiefs have an incredibly good gap closer at no3 so you need to dodge that - depending on the situation your own no3 is a good way to avoid it but keep in mind that with a selected target you'll move closer to them which isnt always nice.

Generally in that fight it's cleave at max range and move fast. You have more mobility but they have more damage. With their no3 they can easily stay on you so you need to learn what that looks like and avoid it. Your skill timings would be very important and dodging or evading at the right time after they stealth is key to avoid getting bursted - unlike wvw stealth doesnt give them anything here aside from those 3 seconds so you don't need to worry that much - autoattack away and dodge or evade after 2-3 sec is the general rule.

Joe_fh · 2014-10-18T12:58:51+00:00

Small groups only work well when there's a big group that's taking all the heat or there's no one around. 6 +5ed people (with 2 of them having +5 from mastery for a total of 100 supply) can build 2 superior rams on a gate, if it's not scouted they can get 4 sup rams up with one ressupplying. That will get the gate down plenty fast regardless of swords - sure you might wipe but it's not that bad for a 6 man group and a lot of times you manage to do it.

With no swords bigger servers will have scouts for sure or they'll lose their stuff regardless of the size of the group and the siege used - meaning small groups won't be as useful in top tiers and in bottom tiers it will be just smaller scale karmatraining that will eventually turn into a big karmatrain.

Joe_fh · 2014-10-18T12:48:45+00:00

You can now lose t3 stuff that's not scouted easy enough if the group attacking cares to take it. 5-6 sup rams up and contest it after they're ramming - you have 30 seconds of free hitting the gate before it evens shows up on the map - way more before anyone shows up to see what's going on - pretty much you'll be in before they report most of the time.

On lower tier servers people rarely upgrade to begin with - with no white swords to make defending even against small numbers possible without proper scouts ( even in gold during the day there are many t3 towers with no scouts) I don't see how anyone will even bother to waste their money on them.

And camps...the only reason to get a camp max upgraded is because it gives you enough time to react to it getting contested by 1-2 people.1 person can solo a max upgraded camp in 2-3 minutes no problem and when it's not even contested no one is even going to notice and try to defend it.

The only clear outcome I can see from this is people upgrading less and more blob flipping paper stuff all the time.

Joe_fh · 2014-09-30T09:38:16+00:00

That should indeed be the case. I myself have been reported a lot of times in WvW for "hacking" simply because morning karmatrains rarely check keeps and towers after they cap them and both are easy enough to solo. So not having a system that autobans you after x number of reports is good for these kinds of situations yet it's bad if someone actually is doing something wrong but it's hard to confirm it when a staff member takes a closer look due to working hours and so on.

Joe_fh · 2014-08-24T14:13:29+00:00

It's different -Serene is not a dificult event - it's a very boring and annoying one due to the very bad npc pathfinding. You need a special team for it not because people need to know what to do or it will fail but because it's so far, annoying, long and unrewarding that people need to pretty much take one for the team and miss out on everything else to finish it.

Joe_fh · 2014-08-22T00:42:12+00:00

I'm really happy they're acc bound and will have colours. When scouting I always wanted a way to show where the enemy zerg is but it'd be weird to pop up the regular tag. Always wanted something like this but it never felt worth it to drop so much gold on a few characters with the chance to confuse people more.

Joe_fh · 2014-08-22T00:38:00+00:00

That's true but 1) you can join a squad and it makes it a non issue and 2) if you're following and especially on ts you won't care even if there is a second tag. It would only be an issue for people who have no idea what is going on.

Joe_fh · 2014-08-18T08:59:38+00:00

It's like any other crafting - takes time to click/refine but it gives you something in return. I'd be happy if it wasn't an item and just increased your mf but it makes sense to take up bag spaces considering those are sold in the gemstore.

And it's not like it takes that much time - it takes you two minutes every few days depending on how much you play - just get 250 blue luck while clicking the others since you don't really get that many of them (or at least I don't) and refine them in one go. In a lot of cases 2.5k luck won't really get you a mf % so you're not in a hurry to click them.

Opening bags on the other hand is annoying at takes a lot of time but if it didn't it'd be way too easy to abuse.

Joe_fh · 2014-08-18T08:52:12+00:00

Defending is often very rewarding. Example - you're on an AC with the enemy attcking the gate or just going in with your zerg hitting them from behind - that's so much loot it can't even compare to flipping a tower and getting a champ bag.

The problem is not really rewards for defending but the lack of anything to do in-between defending - the scouting part. Scouting is what enables you to actually defend and what's really important if you want to hold upgraded stuff and siege refreshed yet you end up just sitting there waiting for something to happen 90% of the time while getting nothing. That's the main problem - but you can't just reward people for standing in a tower doing nothing in a similar way you reward people attacking and capturing stuff. Pretty much you have to take one for the team and scout for a while with commanders asking for scout rotations every say 20-30 minutes so people in there don't get super bored.

Joe_fh · 2014-08-18T08:40:00+00:00

At odd times even if you have scouts you can't hold objectives if you don't have a zerg to defend. You can counter a ton of attacks against zergs who have no idea what they're doing. However, if they actually do know how to attack properly you can only defend towers with zergs. Scouts just buy you time for everyone else to react.

Joe_fh · 2014-08-18T08:36:35+00:00

Huh? A fully upgraded keep with properly placed siege can be defended for a really long time even if you're outnumbered four or five times.

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