GW2: Marking Time

This is my third attempt to form something readable since the last time I posted.

In the middle of last week, when Isle of Janthir was in their first T1 matchup ever, I wrote a little rant about how boring certain key tasks in WvW were, but why it was necessary to do them anyway – like supply running and defending (or at least leaving a scout in a tower or keep.)

Pretty much all I was staring at the whole week.

Seeing as I could count the number of people doing abovementioned jobs in the map on one hand,  me being one of them with only NPC guards to keep the dolyak and me company, I had a sudden attack of enlightened self-interest and decided not to report on the weaknesses of my server in an ongoing matchup – I was already getting steamrolled by an organized guild or two as it was, though now and then, a helpful militia member or two would wander by to assist in staving off the solo yak gankers.

I also rather enjoyed the delicious irony of my last post being one about if players had sufficient long term patience.

A week later, distance has made me largely indifferent. Halloween has been a good excuse to cut back on WvW time this week and go back to my PvE roots for a while. Probably a whole lot of IoJ folks are doing the same, if our current abysmal score versus Sea of Sorrows is anything to go by. I’m just going to wait it out and see if the organization improves the following week.

I was already burning out by voluntarily doing all the not-fun things last week (including putting a personal fortune into the supply camps to keep them upgraded, despite regular flipping and the lack of any structured, organized defence) and frustrated at the lack of visible support from the majority – who were far more keen to rush headlong into offensive charges, and usually wipe with insufficient siege, feeding the defending side points.

I only took time out to screen cap this extravagant insanity.

Long story short, there was a plan to build 10 golems to attack some place. Map crashed. All 10 golems lost. In a fit of high spirits (but not terribly wise tactical sense), someone contributed 20 golem blueprints and nearly everyone enthusiastically rushed to build them. (Using bay keep’s entire supply, mind you, which made me wince a little since I’d been the one shoving nearly every scrap of the 1300 supply in there, one dolyak at a time, and I’d have to begin all over again. But what the heck, it is sort of one of the reasons why we run supply, to provide a stockpile for offensive pushes, though it was no doubt serious overkill and most of the golems wiped after a keep and a tower or two.)

This week, it is officially Halloween break week for me. I’ve even essentially switched my guild channels off for a couple days by swapping into a personal guild. It’s been rather relaxing to roam around in normal-for-me MMO solo mode and immerse into the maps and the world.

I’d write about Halloween, but who hasn’t done the same things already? I’m enjoying sampling them all, the two PvP game modes, the clock tower, the Halloween events (when they aren’t broken, which ain’t saying much) and the Mad King specific maps. I’m relieved that the dungeon is both soloable and groupable, which is the perfect balance to strike, imo. It takes around 20-30 minutes for a level 80 to solo it, and 10-15 minutes in a group – which can accomodate lower levels. Fair enough.

I’d write about my thief alt, who has made it to level 42, exploring parts of the world I purposefully left blank on my Charr, so that my alts have new stuff to see. But I’m still trying to get to grips with him, the immense mobility and need for evasion and active mitigation in order to stay alive is quite different from the tanky self-healing blocking and reflecting guardian. Perhaps another post later.

I think what I’ll do is just leave you with some screenshots from the best bug ever in GW2. After doing the Mad King dungeon, you can zoom your camera back quite a bit more than usual.

I really wanted all the statues with the black citadel in the background, but alas, couldn’t manage it.

Glorious view of all the tanks, chuggers and so on in the Iron Legion’s vehicle park.

I’d do more running around the world taking screenies, except I tend to crash out of memory after loading a zone without mininum settings alas. And on crashing and relogging, it gets set back to its normal view, which is like having horse blinders on.

Divinity’s Reach is on the to-do list, fer sure.

GW2: Do Players Have the Patience for Long Term Strategy?

This week, I had another one of those small revelations. Natural Selection 2 is launching on October 31, in case you didn’t know, and it suddenly hit me that there are some significant similarities between it and GW2’s WvW format. (But there are also some big differences.)

What is Natural Selection 2? Well, it’s an FPS mixed with an RTS basically. It’s the long awaited sequel to a now-very-old Half Life mod which I used to play very heavily. It’s human Marines with guns and armor versus bitey, clawy, flappy, spitty, goring aliens known as the Kharaa.

I’m not going to talk about NS2 any further, though I’ve bought it long ago to support it. I’ve had too much fun with the free NS1 to regret it.

You see, I do have to admit that I am disappointed that I can’t seem to run it very well. Like 1-3 FPS on a self-created map, then crash. I can’t even join a server without stalling and hanging. Part of it may be that the beta has not yet been graphics optimized, or maybe it’s just poor coding, or most likely, it is the first reason colliding with my ailing ancient computer – I’ve mentioned I crash out of GW2 WvW habitually if I’m not on the rock bottom graphics settings, right? Other people get like 80 FPS in WvW while FRAPSing, the lucky bastards. Still got to wait until my budget stabilizes some, alas.

Instead I’ll talk about Natural Selection 1. The first game had a Marine commander calling the shots, placing structures for his fellow players to build, supporting them with medpacks and ammo dumps and basically giving them a set strategy to focus on and move toward taking out all alien hives on the map. Sound a bit familiar? That sort of coincides with WvW commanders in the sense of pointing out the long term strategy and giving direction. And yes, if the commander was bad, it made for a fairly short game, though folks would give some leeway to commanders still trying to learn the ropes.

Aliens had no commander in NS1, but they will have one in NS2, so it’ll be interesting to see how that develops. The alien hivemind in the first game was pretty much a sum total of the general intelligence of all the players in the field. Hopefully, some people would contribute their resources to building necessary structures and new hives (by turning into a builder alien, called the gorge) and at the same time, you needed some people who were very good at killing Marines to keep them occupied, reap resource, and eventually change into a hit-and-run assassin alien known as the Fade. Generally, if the aliens lasted long enough to have two good Fades, that meant the backline was doing well enough to have 2 or 3 hives and the aliens would be on their way to victory.

If insufficient players worked together well, or ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, the aliens would be massacred in short order. Sound like certain PUG zergs in WvW, perhaps?

NS1 had some interesting evolutions through its lifetime. In the patch version that I first joined in, it held at a fantastic balance point that could see 2h+ long games. This was a massive human versus aliens war that would rage on and on, with humans ending up bottlenecked at their last base, guarded by so many turrets the aliens couldn’t get in to seal the deal. Humans could have fun playing “Last Stand” for a long time, mowing down lots of aliens, holding out, while desperately guarding and waiting for their one last lone resource collector to earn enough to buy one or two jetpacks, for the most skilled of the team to sneak out of the vents and try and blow up the alien hives as quickly as they could with upgraded shotguns (aka a ninja.) It was tremendously exciting to watch your guys on the map and win as the underdog like this.

However, I’m not sure how fun it was from the alien perspective. On one hand, they are undoubtedly winning the strategic game. If they stayed on guard to end the ninjas, and kept pushing and pushing relentlessly, eventually, through sheer attrition, they might take down enough turrets and bleed the other side dry of resource long enough to break through and end the game by mauling the base and the commander’s chair (aka the victory objective.)

WvW arguments for giving underdogs a chance and hope for victory sound a lot like the above scenario, actually. I’m not sure if this would be a good or bad thing. Certainly it would get more people in fighting if they had more hope, there would be longer protracted raging battles (which some people really like, and I’m one of them, to a point) but if the battle rages on for too long, people also hit a certain satiation point and get bored. Then the next round of complaints would be, “Oh, it’s a perpetual draw. We can never really win. Why bother?”

Eventually, NS1 decided to move away from the huge tableau of unending perfectly stalemated battles. (I do kind of miss them, to be honest.) Instead, they took a larger page from RTSes and made resource point control more important and the higher tier upgrades slightly more game-changing. What this meant was that if one side played better than the other, and capped more resources, they would steadily accrue a larger and larger tech advantage. Past a certain point in the mid-game, eg. one or two Fades for the aliens or zero Fades for the aliens, it was possible to predict with nigh 98% accuracy which side was going to win.  The losing team could only hope to hold out as long as possible, if they were honorable, or they would quit or jump sides.

Does that also sound familiar from a WvW perspective?

Yes, it’s morale draining and heart breaking to be on the losing team, but quite a number of strategy games seem to have this period where the winning side is obvious, but they still have a “finish the cleanup” phase and the loser just has to sit there and take the lumps and wince as everything of theirs is demolished.

Perhaps the biggest difference between games is how long this cleanup phase lasts, and the next match begins.

In the later incarnation of Natural Selection, cleanup was methodical, but it was also fairly quick and over shortly. The marines would move in, upgraded shotguns blowing up barely evolved skulks (with no resource left) in one hit, and smash the hive to smithereens. The aliens would rampage in with all their number, maybe a celebratory massive Onos or two, and wipe everything and everyone out of existence. Match over. GG. Back to lobby. New map.

A reset happens quickly, and the losers forget their low morale by looking forward to the next game where they might have a chance. (However, if a team or guild was obviously stacking into one side, causing a skill imbalance, people would jump ship and leave the server very quickly.)

WvW at the moment lacks this quick game, match, reset. I think the keyword here is “persistence.” They’re going for what makes them an MMO, rather than a lobby game. (They’ve got structured PvP for the lobby lovers.)

I have a feeling that a lot of the people protesting on the forums haven’t quite grasped just how long term ArenaNet may be aiming for here. They may not be looking for their Alterac Valley fix, but there seems to be this hope for 3 or 4 day matches.

On one hand, it’ll certainly make stuff more exciting in the short term. It’ll give those who primarily WvW and don’t PvE or do structured PvP a reason to keep logging on, instead of being bored for a couple days if there’s a blow out victory. But how many people have the earning power to spend so much gold on siege and upgrades that last so short a time? Even I’m not sure how long the hardcore can keep up that kind of pace before getting bored and burning out. Certainly, the employed cannot. The weekend battle is perfect for them.

To me, and I’m speaking directly from first hand experience here, as the Isle of Janthir is experiencing one of those blow out victories for the moment (who knows, maybe the other servers might organize a push later in the week,) yes, it is kind of  boring to have a quiet battleground after so long an exciting battle, but maybe we kinda need these quiet breaks, the slow moments, the changes in pace.

If the borderlands jumping puzzles weren’t broken, we could be reaping a little more rewards of that hard won fight. There’s still the jumping puzzle in the Eternal Battlegrounds, and the Champion mobs that are like mini-raid bosses on an open world map.

And if the server and guilds were smart and organized enough, perhaps this would be a good time to teach fellow servermates where to place siege, or indeed, how to fire siege, or practice trebuchet shots and get ranges for such-and-such a place.

Certainly for myself, I’m exploring the Red Overlook Keep of the Eternal Battlegrounds from the inside for one of the first times ever, and marveling at how defensive its structure looks – like a real castle, tbh. I don’t envy someone trying to break in here.

Problem is, a lot of people don’t seem to have that kind of long term patience. You see ’em roaming around, looking for a fight, looking for excitement, the next victory, the next kill, deathmatchdeatchmatch, and the next thing you know, there are 20-30 people hovering around some poor demoralized bugger’s spawn, hoping to find a red name target.

My last story about Natural Selection 1 is a sad one. A while after the patch incarnation I talked about, they introduced a new mode for NS called “Combat” mode. This essentially took out much of the strategy and commander-ing from the equation, and made it a team deatchmatch. The better you killed the opposing team, the more resource you would get, the more upgrades and so on you could make for yourself.

The idea perhaps was to ostensibly help people become familiar with the more upgraded lifeforms and tech that they might not see in Strategy mode games except for short bursts of time, so that their play could improve. Instead, it turned out that many players, given the choice, would much rather go for the short term deathmatch kills all night and aim to become the pros of ganking and leaderboard champion, rather than work as a team, fight for resource, and follow a coordinated strategy to eventual victory. Combat mode took over the majority of NS servers, leaving Strategic mode fans mostly high and dry.

That was the death knell of NS for me, and I moved on shortly after – while combat mode was fun in short term spurts, it just didn’t give me the satisfaction of a real team victory. I enjoyed the buildup, the cooperation, and how people gelled together and supported each other. (I also missed the protracted wars.)

(Also, one always had the sneaky suspicion that some players on the top scoreboards were abusing hacks, and without team-based objectives and the attrition aspect of resources/upgraded tech, there was no way to best these guys – whereas in Strategy mode, no matter how well you aim, if you’re just one person, ramboing it alone, you’ll get mowed down eventually by the combination of all those factors that push one team towards victory.)

I don’t know what the fate of GW2’s WvW is going to be.

At the moment, I am just adapting to how it is.

If I get too depressed at being endlessly slaughtered, and can’t find it in me to do guerilla warfare, I’ll bow to the force of morale and stay out for the week. I’m human, after all. I’ll confess to taking a break last week to do some PvEing on an alt – had a mild infection that set me on antibiotics, no willpower to try and face two very alert teams without a stealth class, and it was refreshing to just quit worrying about the score or all things WvW for a while. This will allow the victors their map, their rewards, their quiet time to use or misuse as they will, and if others on my side want to practice their guerilla tactics or stay out also, all power to them.

If I feel like jumping into WvW, then I will. Possibly that’s what caused the massive onslaught of Janthir on the weekend, lots of people all spoiling for a new match after a loss, plus the regulars that play consistently.

When it’s too quiet when we’re winning, then I’ll do my jumping puzzles, PvE champion mobs, fool around with siege on innocent bunnies, and then zone out to PvE again, leaving the map in the hands of the fairer-weather players who come out to gank only when their server is dominating (but are fairly disorganized and can be run around) and the consistent players who will be in WvW rain or shine.

I think I’m basically lucky in that I don’t mind most of the activities in Guild Wars 2. (The only thing I’m scared of and won’t venture into alone is paid PvP tournaments, because I’m sure I cannot match that level of build/team cooperation by my lonesome, who knows how the metagame has evolved by now?

As such, this gives me a wide range of choices for stuff to do at any one time. And I know I’ll be playing this game on a long term basis (just like in GW1, I might take a couple months’ break at a time, but I can always pop in again when I feel like it, hooray, no sub) so I can afford a good amount of patience.

I only wonder if other players feel the same way. Or if they’ll be off chasing after the next shiny.

GW2: Fun Need Not Necessarily Come From Winning

No doubt in my last post, you could tell that I was trying to shake off a significant self-inflicted “demoralized” debuff.

Most of it prompted by possibly too optimistic expectations. Guild War 2’s WvW scoreboard is extremely easy to pull up, and crystal clear on how many points exactly are being accrued by each server, and how much of a lead each one has.

When you play with a goal to try and nudge your server to the top of that lead, there’s a fairly high level strategy that has to be thought about – on how to best take points away from the other servers, how to keep your points, and how, if at all possible, to do this with the force you have available to you and can bring to bear.

When you’re playing solo, the typical state of affairs of an MMO player, sans those already with a regular play partner or group of friends, this can make you feel exceedingly helpless to affect anything on the scoreboard. Mostly you can’t, unless you’re really lucky and patiently try to wear down a supply camp that is unwatched by anybody (and how likely is that?)

When you’re playing within an aimless, unorganized pug zerg (or militia, if you’re feeling kind,) there’s the distinct sense of every man for himself, morale is shaky, and everyone is liable to either stay locked in combat (or spawn camped) for hours or wipe themselves attempting to autoattack a door down while defenders indulge in a happy shower of arrows from carts. I apparently learn faster than some other folk, because the futility of such a tactic becomes too obvious to me, and I end up hiding behind a wall sighing, wondering what now, or breaking off and ending up alone again.

When you’re running with a guild zerg, things get better, but can become just as frustrating if the communication isn’t clear, or if the strategy is poor or ill-chosen, leading to multiple wipes or failed attempts or even counter-productively affecting the scoreboard.

I bet members of raiding guilds would recognize similar problems, I’ve just never really been into the whole raiding scene.

Solutions apparently range from working patiently with the entire guild, teaching and hoping practice makes things improve, dumping them and jumping ship somewhere else, instigating conflict and drama through violent disagreement and anti-social actions, giving up and accepting that one’s guild is simply out of that league, etc.

Of course, the typical suggestion to an individual to make the effort, read guides and strategies, work on oneself, become good, get into a good well-organized guild (that somehow matches your play times exactly), get voicecomms, get a mic, etc. etc. so that one can achieve one’s goals and all that.

I had the luck to listen in on a very decisive leader running a small team out in WvW (he was bringing in pugs because he needed the numbers) and was very impressed with the organization and the plans and strategies. Not all of them worked out, but there was always a goal placed on the table and folks were doing their best to keep newbies up to speed, out of trouble, rescue men down, and basically, it was exciting and purposeful. It was fun.

If only it wasn’t an NA guild 12 hours transposed from my timezone… So attempting to join that on a permanent basis is out of the question.

Then again, I’m not sure I have or want to make that sort of commitment either. I avoided raiding because I didn’t want to be locked into a weekly schedule, and it’ll seem more than a little daft to aim for trying to be a hardcore professional on a WvW squad when it may involve much deeper commitment than I’m willing to make.

So… am I screwed? Doomed to an eternity of horribly, depressing losing and getting thrashed by people with more numbers on their side, more timezone than thou or whatever else the whiners claim?

It took some deep thinking to work through this, but a revelation eventually hit me. All I really need to do is work on reframing my perspective.

It’s useless to be upset by the actions of other people or how circumstances turn out, especially if you did your part in trying to make things better.

If you didn’t, and were casting blame elsewhere, then um, time to take a harder look at yourself and figure out what you can do.

Since I can’t affect the scoreboard very much at all by myself, I need to be more focused on the moment and improving my own play in that moment. I win when I do better than the last time, based on my own gameplay. It’s far better than trying to hang my ego on a combined score that changes like the wind beyond my control.

With this perspective, I’ve been having a much better time in WvW.

I asked myself, in the worse possible situation, what can a soloer do in WvW?

Hit and run attacks on dolyaks – better if they were due at some place where supply was needed, but even if not, it is personal practice for how quick you can kill one and be out of there. (Because the organized guilds / zergs will come to check on it eventually.)

Or assassinate a lone reinforcing straggler or two, better if in a spot where reinforcements someplace were needed, but again, practice, and some people like ganking.

Some PvE dynamic events and if you’re really lucky, a supply camp that is unwatched by anybody (barely ever happens.)

I proceeded to amuse myself for a good hour or so in a Borderlands with the Outmanned buff. It mostly consisted of farming nearby PvE mobs (with magic find gear, lol!) while waiting for a dolyak to pop and ninja offing it in between the camp and sentry, and quickly teleporting back to waypoint if things looked too scary (like a horde coming to check on the camp.) Once or twice, I even met a friend and we flipped the supply camp momentarily.

Why not? I’m not blocking anyone from queuing with my random playing around, the outmanned buff said loud and clear no one wanted in, and it was kinda thrilling. Like PvEing on an open world PvP server, where you have to constantly stay on alert. And it was useful for curing my fear and sense of demoralization, sort of like taking some power and control back.

I even made plans to get a more suitable profession, likely thief or mesmer, to do such things more easily when I feel like it. But hey, my chunky Charr Guardian with humongous spikes on his shoulders and a -flaming- sword while fighting managed well enough – talk about the epitome of unstealthy.

Now what about group fighting? Well, it is possible to focus on playing better as an individual even within one.

Yes, the strategy sucks. Yes, we are all going to die in horrible ways. Yes, some (a lot of) people won’t listen and will do stupid things and go off and rambo somewhere. Yes, the score won’t move worth a damn in the direction you really want it to move, and will probably go the other way.

But well, if you’re committed in some fashion, let’s say as part of a group action, why not work on performing your best while you’re there?

This can involve listening to orders better, doing them as quickly as possible, fighting better, dodging better, controlling better, identifying squishier targets and focusing better, not running into enemy AoE better, using friendly AoE fields better, weaving in and out of combat better, trying not to die better, and perhaps even flanking and pushing better (it’s fascinating how effective flanking can be sometimes, people tend to panic when getting hit from an unexpected direction and give ground.)

And even when you’re giving ground, there’s always choosing the next spot to retreat to better. Even as an all out rout, it can be a sort of moral victory if you pull five guys away from their main objective just to freaking hunt you down. Who knows, one day, it could be those crucial few seconds for your team hold out elsewhere because the reinforcements didn’t get where they were supposed to in time because they practiced the habit of ‘chase blindly into everything, omgz0rs, so many krait!’

There’s experimenting with different weapons or skills and learning how to use them best, and playing around with builds and traits in one’s spare time, or steadily upgrading one’s gear.

And when I think like that, I feel happier that I’m getting more personal practice in, even if it has to end up with me faceup on the ground eventually with nothing to show for it on the scoreboard.

Of course, it’ll be better once more folks get smarter, but that takes time and practice. And one can always begin with making oneself smarter through consistent play.

P.S. Karma count is now at 95k. If only that exotic armor karma vendor I’m eyeing wasn’t bugged this particular patch…

GW2: How Fair is Fair – Player Versus Door in WvW?

Every time I idly browse the Guild Wars 2 Guru and official GW2 forums, I am deeply amused by all the entitled whining going on – the mood is hysterical, tinged with more than a touch of xenophobia. Let’s disregard the PvE dungeon reward complaints and the “his class is more OP than mine” complaints for a time and just check out the WvW ones.

According to these people, those dirty Oceanics are PvPing against door and NPCs, turning entire maps one color with zero resistance and sitting back to accrue score uninterrupted for hours at a time while decent folks are asleep. Why, everyone knows that when real Americans wake up and start fighting, that’s when those silly Australians melt away to the might of the superpower!

What do you mean, they need sleep too, Down Under? Don’t be absurd. We’re winning because we’re so good.

No, hang on, I got it confused. We’re -not- winning during our prime time too. Because all the North Americans are fighting on NA servers in a three way battle, and thus our efforts are diminished, and unimportant, and it’s so unfair, and I’m really depressed and I RAGEQUIT this stupid game – if only it had a sub, I’d throw it in your face, ArenaNet!

But then, that wouldn’t help me with my original goal of winning and dominating and feeling supremely important… So I know! I’ll sit here and theorycraft an immensely complicated scheme of scoring that would take into account what I imagine populations are like at different timezones. In essence, 95% of people are on at the same time that I play, and those dirty 5% are having too easy a time and should only get scoring worth 5%, reflecting that lack of effort.

—

Sorry, I can’t continue in this vein any further. I’m trying not to bust my sides laughing. It’s a supreme effort of will to resist rolling on the floor already.

You see, I’m one of those dirty Oceanics. (Or I play in their timezone anyway. I’m really South East Asian, but you can call me a Chinese Gold Farmer, no problems.)

And here we are, PvPing intently against Door!

I must have got the wrong picture. That door’s so far away…

What we have here is an intense three-way battle between IoJ, ET and CD at 2.48am server time. Or 5.48pm my local time, and about 1-3 hours later, 6.48pm-8.48pm for the real Aussies.

Oh here, I found a door! What do you mean, we’re facing the wrong way?

Actually, we’re lined up at the behest of ND (a Korean guild, Never Die) around 3.am server time, to make an extreme zerg rush for Eredon Terrace’s orb up north – after they spent the better part of 3 hours or so walking supply dolyaks and fortifying the hills keep.

Trust me, there were lots of Eredon Terrace people still awake and still doing their best to get in the way. There’s a big Thai alliance on that server now, I hear.

Oh. But you only managed this because you naturally had more people than us online! *stamps feet* So unfair!

Duh. What part of PvP attempts to be fair?

Structured PvP is over that way – try not to get too uptight about gear not mattering except for cosmetic looks and everyone having the same stats. (Apparently, it is only desirable to have better stats than thou and thus steamroll one’s opponent if you “worked” for that gear.) Or wonky team balancing and people jumping ship and sides looking for the easy wins.

PvP is never going to be 100% fair. It’s called strategy. It’s looking for a temporary weakness or a chink in your opponent’s armor. Of adjusting the odds in your favor to be better than a coin toss. It’s 2 vs 1 having a better chance of winning than 1 vs 1. That’s normal.

But what makes things really interesting and keeps hope alive and creates opportunities for epicness is how you adjust this situation to give the underdog a chance of biting back.

On a minute scale, take one moment on the battlefield I experienced last night. A group of 5 opponents were beating up on a fellow guildie (a very tough mesmer to fight in sPvP) and had him downed when another guildie and I arrived on scene. They had him downed, and alas, managed to finish him off before we could get him up. So essentially, 2 vs 5. Horrible odds.

A great deal of desperate sword slashing, dodging, sword teleporting, wall of reflecting and self-healing later, I was downed… then miraculously up again as the other guildie finished off one opponent, then downed again, and up, and once more as I pumped that self-heal and healing/aegis virtues for all they were worth. We looked up, and oh my, all of the opponents were dead/down and we finished them off, marveling at our sheer incredible luck. Obviously, we beat the odds with good luck and no doubt, momentarily poor judgement/play on the other five’s part, they picked the sturdier lower-damage output target to hit first, rather the guildie thief who was built to kill things.

ArenaNet’s hand in the design though, was the downed mechanic, that allowed for such a situation to occur.

So, how do you react? Do you scream UNFAIR, we ought to win, 5 vs 2, dead is dead, this downed thing sucks balls, CHANGE IT NAO! (Never mind that 5 vs 2 wasn’t fair to begin with.) Or do you say, hey, this is as it should be, give the underdog a chance at winning? (And add, “in fact, that’s what we’re arguing, that night-capping makes things unfair for the underdog who is asleep! That’s why we must change the scoring mechanic nao!”)

Or, as it is never a simple dichotomy, do you just accept that in this game, such a mechanic exists, and adapt your tactics around it and learn and adjust accordingly?

There is no way in hell I’m getting in between there. (That’s the fun of a three-corner fight, though. It gives strategy, opportunity, and unpredictable twists that a two realm fight cannot.)

I never really participated in Guild Wars 1 PvP. But even as an outsider, I can appreciate that it always had some manner of changing metagame. Some guilds would find builds and strategies that seemed overpowering and would win everything in sight and sweep all before them. Cue lots of forums screaming. Then some clever guy somewhere would find the counter, and before you know it, there was a new uber powerful team in town. Until the next counter. With some minor adjustment from ArenaNet here and there as they deemed necessary.

If there’s one thing I’m extremely fond of in WvW and what ArenaNet has achieved with this format in Guild Wars 2, it is the removal of stress on FFA PvP and killing anything in sight and  deathmatching each other, and correspondingly placing importance on strategies and organization of people on a large scale – objective-based goals and siege and supply uber alles.

The distance you are forced to run from a respawn point to get to a place means good play and survival is important, creates opportunities for reinforcement and cutting off reinforcement, of some places being more easy to take than others due to how reinforcing points and supply lines are laid out. There are chances for guerilla actions and large scale scene actions of an immensely epic nature.

An immense fight for Dreaming Bay. Isle of Janthir broke through the north gate and set up siege shop on the outer wall ridge, rebuffing Crystal Desert’s ferocious assaults to push us off position and out of their keep. Eredon Terrace, not to be left out, was enmeshed in a furious fight with CD from the south. IoJ and ET even managed to collide once or twice in the middle of CD’s keep, which was nerve-rackingly tense. CD might feel that we were colluding, being the unfortunate one this time to be smushed in the middle, but no, everyone just wanted the same objective at the same time. ET and IoJ were just as busy trying to wipe each other out in the middle of someone else’s home ground. 🙂 And despite exhortations to the public to leave the south keep door alone so ET cannot get in, the uncontrollable pug zerg opened it anyway, apparently. Because PvDoor holds too fascinating a temptation.

But look at the beauty of what’s going on at a more strategic level. Eredon Terrace’s spawn crosses Crystal Desert’s. Knowing how most people run from place to place, they were no doubt colliding into each other near the south and the supply camp, doing horrible things to CD’s attempts to reinforce DB and maintain a supply line. IoJ’s respawn at garrison and Godslore supply is a shorter run in comparison – props to CD for making attempts to take out north supply too, but it’s hard in the face of such pressure to hold out.

Supply running and defending/holding a position are meant to be activities just as important as assaulting. If there’s one current flaw in WvW, it’s as Jon Peters acknowledged, these activities may need to be a little more rewarded or encouraged – right now, it’s pretty much only folk who have a grasp of the strategic importance of these things doing it (usually guilds), along with server pride and sheer stubborness being the rewards.

On the other hand, clumsy adjustments might bring on even weirder behavior. I’m sure we all remember the happy dolyak trains of people doing absolutely nothing but trotting from place to place behind the front lines. Perhaps it is better to let things shake out for a bit and let the meta reveal itself.

It’s obvious that 24/7 servers have an advantage over servers who cannot field a good number into the maps at various timezones. Working as intended, I’d say. As Ausj3w3l points out, ArenaNet agrees.

Oh noes, the blamestrewers decry, this is so unfair! (See above caveat about all’s fair in love and war and PvP.)

Good lord, people, if this is so important to you, it’s about time to consider moving servers to one that fits you WvW-wise then. Or building up your own.

I know I picked my server very very carefully because I wanted an exceedingly active WvW server that would fight well and have crowds in my timezone. It’s fortunate that enough Oceanics love this server and represent it well and got organized enough to attract a very respectable cohort of NA guilds to balance out our initially weak showing in the NA timezone. A second tier server hoping to break into the first tier is a perfect match for me – not too organized to the point of getting trounced by overly clever opposition, hence I avoided the tier 1 servers (the queues must also be hell) and organized and crowded enough to create opportunities for participating in large scale actions.

Haven’t we all learned playing MMOs by now? Crowded server = longer lived, more interesting things happening. People make an MMO. Community.

If you’re a little less hardcore than I in terms of how much WvW blood is desired, a third tier server is a good option. More middle of road.

If you have NO interest in WvW, period, and don’t want any queues or indeed, even people getting in the way of your collecting PvE nodes and points of interest, then I would suggest the servers significantly lower in the rankings – with the caveat that due diligence must be done on how crowded PvE-wise the server is for your interests – don’t come to me crying later that the place is completely deserted.

I’m going to leave you with an anecdote from this weeks’ battles. In the last one or two days, Isle of Janthir has been giving a stronger showing during NA night times than Oceanic night times. I suspect the key is organization. We’ve been running around at my nights sans siege sans many leaders sans much organization at all. There also seems to be a little fear left over in the general pugs from the last time we got trounced by ET, which has not yet successfully converted over into rivalry and hope. (It’s getting there, I hope.) Conversely, the NA guilds on IoJ are out in concerted force and it is showing in the points scoring and the people directing each other around on team chat.

Things can change in the blink of an eye, of course. It’s way too close to call at this point, any server can make a comeback or a push. One thing’s for sure, though I sense some people (aka whiners) are a little discouraged by not having easy wins or getting squished by two parties on occasion, there’s plenty of people who aren’t giving up without a fight yet, a lot of people are hellbent on demonstrating that they aren’t going to be walked all over by ET again, win or lose, and there’s going to be at least a few good fights left this week.

As a forums goer mentioned, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

Rowr.

GW2: No Endgame, Who Are They Kidding?

Obviously, this is subjective. If the game doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t. Move on and go play with your pandas or your spaceships or your tanks or what have you.

That said, I’ve been spending the whole week involved with essentially endgame activities in Guild Wars 2. And I’m still not bored.

Hell, I’ve been saving a ton on waypoint fees because I’ve barely moved my level 80 character from one PvE zone to another like he was doing when he was gathering and crafting and working on zone completions and doing dungeons and popping in on the Claw of Jormag.

So what have I been doing instead?

1) WvWvW

Plenty of it. The best fights were nearer the start of the week, when everyone was jockeying for points and position. No one had given up yet so there were still plenty of opposing zergs forcing ‘must-react-to’ situations, and guilds on your side trying out various strategies, lots of siege being used and siege blown up, etc.

2) WvW Completion and Jumping Puzzles

As the week progressed, and our server started to dominate, the furious fights started to die off a little. Now they’ve slowed to the point where it’s become clear most are saving and preparing for the next titanic clash of servers on the weekend. In fact, they’ve slowed to the point where Isle of Janthir has become able to cover the entire map zones with pretty much a sea of green.

Thank goodness for a reset. I’m a big fan of resets. The victor of this round is obvious. Now let’s bring in a new round and wipe clean the slate.

BEFORE that though, it is a perfect time to indulge in the victor’s rewards. I’ve been running around all the zones, fairly unmolested, collecting POIs, Vistas and Skill Points and trying to get all the zones complete. 2/4 done, 2 more to go. Sooner or later when my next alt is ready, they’ll want to do it too, but I can wait for the next opportunity to open up.

I have some beautiful green-tinged vista shots. Alas, I can’t identify a single guild emblem as I’ve been mostly WvWing in the Borderlands, and it looks like the Eternal Battlegrounds crew is made up of different folks.

I like how the top of it glows green…

This vista was evil. Jumping from wooden beam to beam around a tight spiral is one of the worse things for a Charr to attempt… Feet…too… big… and widely spaced…

Also, jumping puzzles. The Borderlands jumping puzzle is still relatively doable even if opposing teams are running around the map, but it’s so much less stressful when they aren’t, and when you know your server is likely to have a majority in there. Our guild has been running in there the last few days, showing those new to the puzzle around, and it’s so much easier for them to manage/learn without needing to fight off people trying to knock you down or worse, facing entrenched siege positions.

Fear of that last has been why I haven’t once stepped into the Eternal Battlegrounds jumping puzzle since beta, having calculated that it would be likely suicidal to venture in solo while three way battles were raging aboveground.

However, just yesterday, I noticed that Eternal Battlegrounds had been turned completely green, which struck me as a perfect time to zone complete the place. Also, when your server owns all three keeps, well duh. No one else can get in!

YES!

So I jumped in there, along with pretty much half the servers’ folks in the zone, all thinking the same way, no doubt.

Booyah, obsidian sanctum, done.

Fortunately, I remembered much of the solution that I slowly explored/learned in beta, but for new folks, this would have been the best undisturbed time to explore and learn it. All I can say is, the dark room is still evil, still sucks, and that I can’t imagine myself successfully managing it while under fire from two or more enemies or a siege weapon. One guy might be ok, I’d prolly have a 75% chance of killing him or chasing him off. But all these folks come in packs of two or more anyway, so… moot point.

Far more enjoyable and doable to manage without interference. And judging by the number of people falling off jumps I was managing by the skin of my teeth (not to mention, much gnashing of teeth and twisting of the camera – Charr jumps can get pretty tricky, though I’m used to it by now), I’m not the only one.

There was also a helpful mesmer or two offering portals for those too frustrated to continue. Good social time for the server. And siege stocking up for the next fight.

3) More WvW

It’s not like they gave up completely. Fort Aspenwood in particular seems to have a pretty stubborn cohort. And it’s easy for them to do sneak attacks and rush a tower here and there when most of the dominating server has very little interest in defending the less important outposts and are playing around with jumping puzzles rather than concentrating fully on the ebb and flow of the map. Besides, a little tower and camp trading here and there is profitable in terms of karma/silver earned.

We’ll look up 30 minutes later after the jump puzzle, go oh, such and such is taken, let’s zerg it all back for a while, in a lazy disorganized fashion (the casual zerg is hanging out now, y’know, the pros are resting and prepping for next week). Meanwhile, on the opposing side, only the hardcore stalwarts would still be going into WvW and are trying out all kinds of siege attack/defence tactics against not-very-clever zerg targets. It’s a funny sort of balance.

I’ve also discovered that upgraded keeps are a very comfortable place to hang out and take 5-10 minutes to sort inventory. It’s less crowded than Lion’s Arch (which my computer tends to regard loading with dread), a merchant or armor repairer is available to sell junk and blues/greens to, a bank is there, a guild bank is there, there’s even a Mystic Forge and attendant in the garrison if you need one, and there’s crafting stations/bank in one’s home borderlands spawn and so on. And you’re around to keep an eye on the orb, on the keep, help in defence or just enter the siege weapons once in a while to prevent them despawning (which apparently, some do after a while if not entered. I dunno how far true that is, but it doesn’t hurt for me to just visit them now and then.

And lemme tell you, practising your mortar aiming judgement by trying to one-shot deer and rabbits on the first shot is fairly entertaining. Hey, it’ll help when I need to quickly destroy an enemy siege encampment under extreme pressure! I’m so easily happy…)

4) Structured PvP

I’ve joined pretty much a casual zerg guild on my server. Unreal Aussies is one of those inclusive monster guilds with a leadership core that are nice and welcoming to all and sundry. Currently it works for me. It’s big enough to have activity at most hours, some people doing dungeons now and then, and 20-40 odd people interested in WvW – which is a good sized zerg into the field. Organization of them is still like herding cats, alas, and I gotta give mad props and respect to the leaders for not losing patience (I would, but that’s why I don’t even try to lead.) We can successfully be pointed in one direction and led away from a place with orders, but siege and supply management, welp… All in good time, I figure. Folks will eventually get the hang of it, even if they have to learn by getting rained on with arrow carts…

The other fun thing that the guild does is jump into structured PvP for fun from time to time. I finally got the chance to join them the other day and I haveta say, it’s lot more fun killing friends. *ahem* A twisted way to be social, mebbe, but more fun than just jumping into a PUG and facing strangers all the time. And it’s a good way for guild members to see and recognize and become familiar to each other, since in most modern MMOs these days, apart from raids, everyone is off doing their own thing solo or in small groups.

And hey, win or lose, you’re still working on that glory bar.

5) Alts

Kinda. Sorta. I’m starting to look forward to the next time our server gets utterly thrashed in WvW, because it’s looking like I’m not going to get a chance until then to do PvE properly.

I got on the Asura ranger for about 15 minutes or so. The camera height is exceedingly jarring when I’m used to being a Charr. All my jump timing and estimation of fall survival is off. And his running, bouncing head animation makes me more than a little motion sick. I haven’t got a bow to drop for him yet, and I’m too lazy to go shuffling stuff in the bank for him either. Dual axes feels a bit odd. No doubt it’s workable, but it’s a playstyle I’m not really interested in learning/mastering at the time. So I gave up for the time being, the combined strangeness is too much and I have no goal to learn to play or build up a ranger yet.

I’ve been playing the human elementalist for about 30mins at a time. I’m quite commited to learning proper attunement swapping and pwning with one. But Queensdale is so godawfully huge that I don’t even know where to begin, sometimes. Y’see, when I PvE, I like to immerse into the zone and really explore every nook and cranny. I don’t just rush from heart to heart, DE to DE, grabbing level after level.

This is not the way to hold a glass of wine… Not unless you want to throw it on someone, anyhow. The liquid in there is strangely gravity-defying. Maybe it’s a jello shot.

Nor this. Especially when you’re about to offer it to someone else. Maybe it’s some kind of flirtation technique.

I made it to level 10 playing about with all the weapon skill unlocking, got to the town with the crafting stations, played with cooking and realized what a colossal undertaking that was going to be, tailored up some level 10 armor for myself and got stuck on the level 15 ones, finished the 1-10 personal story and still haven’t even made one iota of progress on Queensdale exploration because I can’t get in the right frame of mind, I keep sneaking peeks at the WvW scoreboard. I keep wanting to be social and run about with people and linked into the guild and representing. I can’t find an uninterrupted two hours of shutting away the rest of the world and pretending to be a human in the GW2 world to talk and interact with NPCs.

I don’t think that’s going to happen until I find no reason to be in the WvW zones for a while.

Until the reset, there’s still jumping puzzles and casual fun to be had in there. Once the reset happens, it will be queuing like crazy, me running around on the 80 waiting for the queue to pop, some desultory mob killing and crafting and zone completion while waiting,  and everyone on tenterhooks for a while. The next fight will be tougher, but the chance of winning is still fairly good.

So in essence, for the next week or so, there’s very little hope for me PvEing on an alt.

There’s always the week after that, or the month after that, I suppose.

(My Norn thief is crying for neglect in the background. The Sylvari necromancer is just sulking in silence.

A day ago, I had this sudden image of a fearsome Norn female Amazon-type warrior in heavy armor that would probably look fantastic, while my beta weekend Charr warrior in potentia is scowling at me, threatening wordlessly if I dare to give a character slot to that race first, so I may have to have two warriors or two guardians down the road at some point…)

So much for no endgame.