ArenaNet's Mike Ferguson has a Q&A thread going on Reddit, regarding all things 'World vs World'. Being one of the most innovative and most nebulous parts of Guild Wars 2, I assume many of you have just as many questions as I had. The guys over at GameBreaker.tv sifted through the thread and transcribed the most important information minus some redundancies. Additionally - here's a link to all his answers in that reddit thread.
How does the WvW leaderboard work? Is it cumulative for the 2 weeks? How are players rewarded for outstanding contributions, like being first in damage? (e.g., title, HoF)
If by leaderboard you mean the scoreboard, it is updated every few minutes and it is cumulative for the 2 week battle. Scores reset every two weeks and the scoreboard is visible anywhere in the game. We will have some WvW achievements, but we aren’t quite ready to reveal those yet
Can you give us some details on how the score is calculated for the players? For example, how much weight is given to kills vs. resurrecting vs. building a siege? EDIT: I wasn’t referring to the world’s score, but to the individual player’s score in a leaderboard that would show what their contributions have been (healing done, damage done, buildings razed, etc.)
Ahh ok that makes more sense. We already track a large range of values for things just like that, so we just have to get a system in place to track and display them for users.
Could you please explain what a “Squad” is?
Squads are a way for larger groups of people to band together for a common goal. Squads are led by a commander, and that commander has the ability to talk to everyone in their squad in a chat channel that only the commander can talk in. Commanders can also place waypoints on the map that are viewable by all of their squad members. These waypoints tell the squad to do things like’ attack here’, ‘regroup here’, and ‘bring supply here’. Squads are extremely useful in WvW, but they are also useable in PvE and are the perfect thing for taking down our epic world bosses.
What is the size limit for a squad, and how is the commander chosen? How is the squad formed?
The commander is self appointed. We have an item that people purchase for gold that gives the ability to turn on the Commander function. When you become a commander, anyone not in a squad will see the commander icon over your head and can select you, right click on your portrait and select ‘join squad’. Also, when someone is following a commander, you can right click on their portait to join their squad and follow the same commander. I dont believe there is a limit to who can be in a squad, but that might not be true, I’ll have to check with the programmer who implemented the system.
Is it a consumable item or can you use it multiple times?
One time use. You buy the item and use it to enable the ability to become a commander. After that you can select if you want to be a commander at any time!
A point of clarification then: You need to buy 1 of this item for each character, correct? It is not account wide, is it?
It is character based, not account based.
Can we start playing WvW immediately, or do we have to be a certain level? Is the difference in levels noticeable? Do we get exp/loot from WvW?
You can play WvW as soon as you leave the tutorial section. You will gain exp and loot during wvw so you can level up in WvW all the way to 80. The level difference is noticeable as higher level folks have more skills and better gear, but we’ve been working hard to make out so even a lower level person can contribute and not get instantly killed by higher level folks.
1. Is there a way to chat with the other servers in WvW? So you can organise a (temporary) Alliance if you want to call in help? 2. If a guild takes over a keep or tower, is it still possible to enter that keep and help defending it against attackers if you are not in that guild?
1. We will not allow cross server chat in game. 2. Yes, as long as you are on the same team you can always enter a location your team owns.
If cross server chat isn’t happening, what kinda of system is gonna be put in place for server to server alliances?
Trust me, people will find a way to organize backstabb…err..treaties with the other teams
We all saw that enemy players are currently listed as generic invaders, and some are turned off by that. Will there be a toggle option for showing our name if we want to?
There’s been a lot of discussion about seeing enemy names in WvW. While I certainly understand the reasoning behind the request to see enemy names, we are fairly firm about not showing names of the opposing teams. I think of it this way, in a war people dont introduce themselves before trying to kill each other. When you are fighting in the mists for your world, you are in the middle of a giant war against two opposing forces who want nothing more than to take everything you own and kill you as many times as they possibly can. That guy who just shot you is not Bob the Engineer, he’s the enemy.
Not showing enemy names in WvW also helps players that are less pvp-oriented feel less threatened about venturing into the battle because seeing enemies as anonymous ‘invaders’ creates a sense that opponents won’t be able to recognize them and pick on them because of their lack of skill in a fight, so they in turn feel more embolded to go out and fight in the first place. Not showing names also makes it so people can feel as if they can ‘hide’ in a fight if need be, but still be around to help out. That’s a pretty critical part of making WvW feel more inviting for people that would normally never think about playing PvP in any other game.
We’ve heard “I usually dont PvP, but I love WvW” again and again from people in our beta, so even though showing names might make for a more competitive pvp environment, we’d much rather create a game that is more welcoming for people that don’t normally play the more hardcore PvP games. If you want to see enemy names and get to know the community of people you are fighting against, competitive PvP is the place to get that sort of thing in Guild Wars 2. WvW is the place where you fight with your friends and show your might against a faceless never-ending horde of enemies. It’s not about taking names, it’s about taking back that tower and claiming it for your guild so it can wave your flag right in the enemies face!
Will the game engine be able to support hundreds of players in the same area?
We’ve had hundreds of players in the same area already, and even as we speak our programmers are hard at work on making that experience even better!
To what extent can a player dodge another players skills? Most of us, are probably used to the homing missiles, seen in most mmo’s, so could we expect to see at lot of missed skills-shots?
Dodging is a critical part of GW2 combat. Dodging allows you to avoid almost all skills so being able to notice a big attack coming and rolling out of the way will be a big part of staying alive in the game.
Given that WorldvWorld will be active from the start, will it be available on overflow servers for the inevitable server congestion?
No it will not, world versus world is not available on overflow shards. Overflow shards for world versus world don’t really work since world versus world has a number of bonuses that apply to your world, and there is no sense of a larger community in an overflow shard.
1. Has there been any consideration of the group vs. group sub-game in WvW? 8v8 was very popular in DAoC. Groups of 8 skilled, well-coordinated people ran around fighting other such groups. They also fought larger groups of less coordinated people. 2. Any plans to implement something similar to Darkness Falls (a large open pvp area that has mostly pve content, and can be locked for your own pilfering by success in the RvR overworld)? 3. In DAoC a cool aspect of RvR was the ability of someone with high Stealth to climb walls. Is there going to be a similar skill for say, a Thief, to infiltrate WvW structures and harass/gather information? Stonemist for example looks big enough for this to be really viable.
1. Absolutely, we are building the objectives to try and give our 5 man groups something to do as well as accommodating larger assault forces. 2. Not currently. 3. We don’t have the ability to climb walls. We’ve talked about possibly allowing thief the ability to steal something that could let them through the teleporter gates, but we haven’t decided if we actually want to add that yet. It is obviously something that we’d have to be very careful about so we don’t want to just add it and have it break the game.
and how does the guild system work with the guild i read that guilds can own keeps etc but there gonna be a lot of guilds so how can you obtain a keep.
Each guild can only claim one location, and if you’ve seen the map of WvW, you can see that we have a lot of locations you can capture and claim. When you assault a location, we track how many people are participating in that assault and the guild with the largest participation gets a minute after the capture where they are the only guild that can claim that objective.
With the largest participation, is it just the number or the most percentage of the guild participating?
it’s based on active participation. If you bring all of your 20 member guild and another 1000 person guild only brings 15 people to the fight, as long as all 20 of your people kill guards or help take the location in some fashion, you will get first priority for the claim.
Are there pets to tame in WvW? If so, are all the pets available in PvE available in WvW?
Yes rangers will be able to find pets to tame in WvW.
This “home server transfer” fee – is it ingame currency or real world money?
We haven’t finalized our plans for what that fee will be, if there will be any ‘amnesty’ period for new accounts, or what currency that fee will require, but I can assure you that we are examining and discussing all possible options and as soon as we have a firm plan in place we’ll let you know more!
Does WvW have any systems in place to deal with the leaching in PvP that occurs in other games?
Our event system is being used all over wvw and if you don’t do something that counts towards that event you dont get any rewards for it.
That’s nice but what about people that are just sitting afk and filling a spot in the server. Would they be kicked out so someone who will actually play would have the chance to join?
We have idle timeouts so anyone just afking will eventually get booted, i dont know what the length of that timer is though.
Hey Mike! CAn Siege weapons be moved after they’ve been built?
Most siege weapons cannot be moved, with the exception of siege golems.
is it possible in WvW to wear a cloak with guild emblen?
We dont have cloaks, but you can put a guild emblem on your armor and weapons!
Will you guys test WxW during every march/april beta weekend?
Yes.
Server stability, What can you tell us about the power of the servers that will help with hundreds of people firing off skills?
Over the past weekend we had many fights where large groups of all three teams were fighting each other and we didnt have any server crashes!
I remember someone saying that in WvW there are PvE elements to it so can we expect to see mobs or even bosses making problems for each of the servers?
There are definitly mobs, and there will be some Bosses and PvE events out in WvW.
Also, for the record: Will all four maps be different? Or are the maps which we currently saw the final composition?
Those are the maps we will launch with, the borderlands will be the same map for all three worlds.
Official term: WvW or WvWvW?
Internally it’s always WvW
I think WvW sounds great, a true spiritual successor to DAoC of old. My only big concern is this: How are the red/blue/green teams decided? Followup questions: if my world is “blue” this week and then the 2-week resuffle happens, will we be blue again in the following round? Is it random? Won’t it be difficult for many players to remember which color they are “this time” if they are switching around every two weeks? Or will there be some very obvious way to tell which team you are on “today”?
It is decided by which server you choose to play on. You will not always be on the same color. We will however make it clear which color you are.
I imagine being defeated in PvP is going to be a lot more frequent, will you allowed PvP gear to be damaged as well?
Yes, it is important to remember that WvW is a PvE area where it just so happens that three servers meet and can fight for territory control. This is our open world PvP so the rules must be the same because it is all part of the same game economy. Items and gold can be looted from players so if you die you will have to repair, but you will also be earning currency to offset those repair costs. You will not be looting actual items from enemy inventory, rather getting drops from a loot table like you would from a mob.
What kind of loot do we get for killing other players?
The same loot you get from killing mobs. I’ve gotten quite a few rare drops from players in the beta already
Will certain abilities be restricted or altered while participating in WvW game play?
Hopefully not, but we always reserve the right to change things for balance reasons.
I’ve always liked how in Ragnarok Online the guild banners were displayed in the cities whenever a guild managed to hold one of the castles, will there be a similar feature for WvW in Guild Wars 2?
Yes, you will be able to display your guilds emblem on banners in objectives you hold.
Kind of like the Factions PvE/P areas your guild could hold in GW1? Just more detailed and in-game rather than on the map?
We have big banners hanging from the walls and standards all around each objective that can show the color of the team that owns that objective and will also show the guild emblem if it’s claimed.
If i kill a player in WvW then will i gain some points like in aion pvp points ? Or hot i gain the points to buy pvp armor or weapons ?
When you kill someone you get gold or even sometimes items. There is no PvP armor in WvW, its just armor.
How did you integrate underwater sections in WvW? I really want to fight people underwater, but I want to make sure there will be other people there.
There is a quaggan mercenary camp in each borderland map that can play a pretty cirical part of assaulting or defending the keeps in that map as gaining favor with the quaggans lets them build weather control stations that shower the nearest keep with healing rain for your allies or zaps your enemies with bolts of lighting. I assume that’s enough to make people want to fight there
What will the nature of PVP (WvW) loot? Assuming normal PvE mob loot is, say, an item, armor, or weapon, will WvW loot be similarly randomized? Or will there be an award of a piece of special currency (medal?) that you will use to purchase loot of your choice?
We actually have both! You can get regular loot drops and tokens that can be turned in at level 80 for gear.
Besides cross class combos what else is in WvW that would give a small organized group an advantage against an unorganized zerg?
A smaller group can fan out and take objective on other maps or in areas that the zerg isnt covering. Zerg are great for facerolling people, but WvW is won by having more objectives, so while the zerg is baning away on one keep, your smaller groups can fan out and take all the resource camps to keep the zerg from having any supply sources.
I am concerned about the experience coming from WvWvW. Will I be able to get the same type of experience flow to level up my toon like in PvE, for instance, if there is not enough people to kill (especially during odd hours in the night) or I am alone playing?
Our goal is for the rate of XP, and loot gain to be similar in WvW and PvE. It will never be exactly the same but it should be close enough that you don’t feel disadvantaged by playing one vs the other.
Quick question, will there be dynamic events inside WvW? And for how long will each match last? Just on an average value?
They are persistent battles that people can join and leave and join again. They cycle every 2 weeks as servers are matched up against new servers. Yes there will be dynamic events. There are events for taking and defending the objectives (keeps, towers, caravans) as well as some PvE events.
Is there alternative way to attack a fort? Like accessing a fort from underwater. And is there any underwater forts/outposts or anything like that?
Every objective has multiple ways in. Some of many different gates, while others have a single gate, but each objective has multiple walls that can also be knocked down to break into them.
Are the UI related elements for supplies still a WIP? The current display of a small piece of white text doesn’t look good at all, and is very out of place compared to the rest of the map elements.
Yes.
Can you earn skill points to unlock new skills in wvw?
Yes, you can progress any aspects of your character through WvW.
My question regarding WvWvW is, is the battle area instanced off? Is this something you have to queue up for, or is it an area you can physically run to? I would hope that it is an area that feels integrated into the whole map so that it feels like your world is being invaded, rather than feeling like a mini-game with no particular impact on the world.
You have to take an asura gate into the maps. The maps aren’t instances, so unfortunately if they reach capacity you will need to queue up to enter that map.
When dodging, do you have to roll out of the way of the incoming attack? i.e. roll left or right to avoid an arrow, or would it be sufficient to simply roll backwards due to any dodge action simply negating the incoming attack? What I am trying to say is, is dodging about avoiding collision or simply knowing WHEN to dodge and not WHERE to?
Both. Dodging does make you 100% evade attacks while you are doing it, however because positioning is so important in the game it is crucial to make informed decisions about the direction you dodge as well.
Will be some WvsW rank/title?
We have WvW achievements. No ranks as of yet, titles are a possibility but we don’t have those in the game yet.
Will particles animations be reduced as mass skill usage in massive fights would be a maelstrom of confusion!
Our graphics programmers and tech art team are working on that issue right now! We’re well aware of the effect soup that can happen in large fights and it’s something we’re going to do our best to address.
Given that WvW is based on your original server, how hard will it be for a guild to get everyone on the server? Will we have to distribute a server name/number before game launch to make sure everyone’s on the same page? How regional are these servers, could our euro members choose to home in a US server?
We will do our best to provide tools that help people find the same server so they can play together, but it’s inevitable that someone will have friends that end up on a different server. We want you to be able to play with those friends as well as the ones you know from your day to day adventures in Tyria, which is why we allow people to visit other servers but to fight in the mists together everyone has to be fighting for the same world.
Will WvW have any system to prevent “deathmatches” (mass mindless PvP fights) to make players focus in the objectives?
if you’re just deathmatching you aren’t gaining any score for your team. Score is only gained by holding objectives, capturing orbs, and killing dolyaks. So sure, you can deathmatch if you really want to, it just doesn’t help your world’s standing in the battle at all.
Don’t you think World vs World pvp would be better with Ritualists? No? Can you bring back the Ritualist class anyway? Please?
You could always imagine that Ritualists figured out a way to contain their sprits within turrets and play an engineer!
If players are instantly able to teleport to any objective they control, wouldn’t that make it near impossible to capture any new objectives if the enemy team is constanly spawning in?
you cant instantly teleport to every objective. The only waypoints that exist in the map are at the safe areas and at keeps that have been upgraded to have a waypoint.
Could you elaborate or point towards an article that explains the two week process? From what I understand, you are locked with two other servers for those two weeks and after that time period, you are given a different, random two servers to compete with for the next two weeks, so on and so forth? So, will this process actually be random, or is there a list “Server A will fight B and C this cycle, then D and E next,” so on and so forth? And, is there ever a possibility of getting the same server twice in a row? Thanks, very excited for Guild Wars 2! Necromancers unite >:)
We have a scoring system based loosely on elo that will rank each server based on how well they did in the match. Once the battle ends we look at final scores, adjust each servers ranking accordingly and then rematch servers to place team with similar ranking together. My necro (Ferginomicon) approves this message!
Any chance of adding the “Player A was killed by Player B!” zone wide announcement in the WvW zones as it was in DAOC? Always like knowing which enemies were knocking about (and friends)!
We’ve talked about it, but it’s not in the game right now.
Someone suggested it could be a good idea to give some different textures for each map (e.g., one is summer/green, another is autumn/yellowish, third one is winter/white). Was there any discussion in that aspect?
yeah it’s almost as much work as building an entirely new map so we just can’t do that unfortunately
Can colorblind people easily differentiate between colors?
Not right now as we use Red/green for team colors but it’s a topic we discuss regularly because we know there are a lot of red/green colorblind people in our community and we want them to have as much fun as everybody else!
I’ve heard that any/all loot you get is scaled for your level. Confirm/Deny?
Confirm
Not a question, but imo WvW Rewards shouldn’t be as good as PVE awards, because that would lead to empty PVE-Areas when the game is out for a few months and people see the most efficient way to play the game.
We are aiming for pve and wvw advancement to be paced somewhat similarly. We definitely do not want there to be a place that is more efficient to level in as that obviously would negatively impact the other areas of the game.
Question:Will enemy PVP-players in WvWw drop Bosslike-gear?
I dont believe you will get ‘boss’ gear, as most of that is specific to the boss.
Like in GW1, will you add seasonal objectives and/or designs and events around the holidays specific to WvW?
We are working mainly on finishing WvW. Discussions about holiday events haven’t taken place.
If a guild owns a keep in WvW, will they be alerted if their keep is under attack? Also, will there be a mechanism in the game to quickly travel to your own keep to defend?
We will be adding alerts to game that will communicate when an objective your guild owns is under attack. There is no quick travel though, you have to hoof it there and hopefully make it before the enemy breaks through and captures it!
Can you craft in WvW, or do you have to leave the mists?
We are aiming for WvW to function much like PvE. You will be able to gather and craft.
Do various locations, yield different levels of rewards? ie: taking a hutt vs taking a hall/keep?
Different objective types are worth different amounts of points toward the overall score. It’s setup so Stonemist Castle>Keeps>Towers>Camps
will there be underwater entrances to the castle or keeps?
There are a few sneaky entrances to keeps, but I don’t want to spoil it for everyone! You will need to go out exploring.
Is it possible to destroy a whole outpost, rather than to capture it?
It is possible to destroy walls that protect that outpost, or the gates. It is not possible to raze the tower to completely nothing.
When an opposing world captures one of your worlds strongholds will they have access to any siege weapons you had at that stronghold or will they reset?
You are not able to use enemy siege at any time.
I had hoped to level up from 1 – 80 in WvW but after watching some beta videos I am not sure that is feasible. I watched a player fighting in the mist for 45 mins and he did not gain a single point of exp. He was assaulting a keep with a group and it was being defended. Since they had not managed to get through the front gate even he received no exp. He would have gained way more experience leveling in PvE during that time than being in the mist. I think killing a player should provide some XP so you do progress even if the fighting is a stale mate. Same hold true if you were defending.
This almost makes WvW a level 80 activity(end-game’ish). Players will get less XP by spending time in the mist at lower levels than PvE’ing. They are less effective at lower levels as well too. It entices them to level up to 80 in PvE so they can then begin to WvW.
Rewards for WvW where not balanced prior to our recent test. This is why rewards seemed slim, to none.
From what ive seen on the recent press beta videos, frequently it takes a lot of time to get a player kill, do you have any backup plan to either increase xp gain/money drop per kill in order to balance it out how much you get from doing WvW or just go PvE.
Rewards are currently not balanced at all for WvW. This is something we will be balancing in the future.
When first entering WvW how will we be able to tell where the actions is?
Pulling up your map will give indications as to where some of the hots spots are.
[In response to one player's mega-question post]:
Ok gonna try and hit as many that I personally know about..thought the camelot questions were an entirely different post (boo early morning grogginess!)
- Is there any in game support for voice chat? – not currently
- Can you queue and enter your server’s WvW from an overflow server? I’m not certain as we haven’t finished implementing the wvw part of that system, but I would guess that is going to be possible.
- What kind of name recognition will there be between worlds? Are names reserved across worlds? Don’t know, sorry!
- Does the winning server get additional bonuses at the end of the 2 weeks? Possibly, but we aren’t quite ready to reveal that.
- How long do bonuses last? As long as the battle is going on. When a battle resets, so do your world bonuses.
- Any info on the iOS/Android apps that will related to WvW? Sorry, I dont have any info on that.
- How does vision work on the battle map? Does a player from that server need to be present for vision of a fight occurring or is it universal? You can see the scoreboard from anywhere in the game and the scoreboard has a chart that shows who owns what, but for exact breakdowns you have to be in WvW to look at the map.
- Are there limits to obtaining certain types of equipment you receive from supply? For example could a server slowly stockpile siege golems in a base until they have one for everyone? You have to have the supply to build all those golems, but if you can stockpile that much supply and want to build a rampaging army of golems, go for it! Isaiah has done it a few times in beta already, and while it looks awesome, it’s surprisingly not that effective since golems are super slow.
- Internally, what tactics were more common when testing WvWvW? Well people almost always starts out in a zerg when they first enter the game, and as they gradually learn more they start breaking off and taking side obejctives to choke supply out of keeps and towers. We’ve seen flanking maneuvers, massive assaults with quick building of siege , small squads raiding camps, it’s really been quite amazing seeing what people are coming up with!
Whew…hope that covers it!
Does each of your characters have a home server? Or is it account-based?
Home server is account based.
What will be the population cap for WvW ?
We are still doing tests to see just how far we can push the numbers for WvW. We have pushed over 300 on our last test.
can you turn spell effects completely off so large wvw fights can be playable for people with slow pcs?
Our programmers and artists are working on the effect spam problem now so hopefully you wont have to turn all those effects off, but I don’t know anything more than that
what will happen if one server conquers the entire map?
The other two servers need to work together to beat them back.. We saw that very thing happen this weekend when green took the entire map. We were red and we decided that blue was not who we should be fighting. Within hours we has fought back and recaptured a large portion of the map.
Also, since servers get rematched every two weeks, that server will get matched up with other servers when the battle ends.
Will some of the items be limited to drop only in PvE or PvP?
We will have some PvE uniques that wont be obtainable in WvW.
I’m a sponsored WoW player (for PvP) and I was wondering how much weight you guys are putting into PvP vs PvE balance? This is one of the most important things in MMOs like this and its a big factor for many of my friends for the upcoming gw2. Thanks for doing this ama!
A LOT of time is spent talking about getting the balance between all our gametpyes to feel just right. We are very aware how a slight imbalance can destroy a community so we’re doing our best to avoid any major imbalances.
Can you convince my wife, who normally has no interest in pvp, to take part in WvW?
We’ve heard “I usually dont PvP, but I love WvW” again and again from people in our beta, so there’s a vgood chance she might just like it with no convincing required
are there gonna be mobs in WvW? if so, will they be aligned to any of the factions? because a good example of how this could make for a terrible PVP experience is LOTRO, where one side could easily take refuge inside friendly mob clusters that were all over the place, making it too easy for people to avoid and/or escape fights, encouraging zerging
There are mercenary camps that you can befriend to have them support your war efforts for a short amount of time. Other then that and the standard WvW objectives PvE mobs are neutral or hostile to everyone.
is there any objectives underwater for underwater pvp?
There are currently no underwater objectives. This is not to say they wont make their way in later.
Is there an observe mode for WvW pvp?
No there will be no observe mode for WvW.
Mike, as to further clarify please, do you mean 300 per server or 300 for each map (1200 max).
Each map, and we’re doing our best to push that number higher!
Is there anything in place to allow a guild to take control of a large keep from another guild that is from their own server?
Nope, you cannot claim something that another guild has claimed.
How much can lower level players realistically contribute in WvW?
Lower level players are bumped to 80. While going toe to toe with a level 80 will be difficult, you will still be able to compete.
How is the melee vs ranged being handled? I plan to play a Thief and I’m interested to know if melee will be at a ranged disadvantage and be just kited around?
Ranged will have an advantage if they can keep their distance from you. However it is very easy for the melee to switch to a ranged weapon, or to use one of their abilities to close the gap.
I’ve heard that it was quite laggy in the beta, so I have a few questions:
1: Is this just part of the rumor mill, or is it actually pretty laggy in WvW?
2: If it’s true, do you see it improving upon commercial release?
it really depends on your hardware. I have a dell xps17 laptop that’s about a month old and I almost never lagged all weekend, but i know a lot of people were having trouble. Optimizing the performance of the game is something our programming team is concentrating on right now!
Under water entrances into keeps. Lead an assault through the sewers and surprise attack! Obviously, befriending the locals would be a huge help in defending this weakness.
Oh you mean like the ones we have in some of the keeps already?
We’re still debating about whether or not we should allow assaulting underwater doors as we don’t have any underwater siege apparatus and bashing doors down with your weapons just isnt very fun, but in the last beta it was totally possible to go underwater, bash down a door and take a secret path into a keep. I actually was part of a raid that did just that this weekend.
If there is not much of a population on one world, due to timezones/etc. Will it still be a challenge to overtake their bases without players defending, or is it crucial that there is some group to defend the area?
Defenders are needed in order to have a better chance of pushing attackers back. However, Each objective does have guards, and is able to be upgraded to make it more difficult to assault.
I have seen you have a quick change weapon icon on the user face, Is there a way to add more then 2 sets of weapons to that and can you change the rotation?
You can only swap between weapon set A and weapon set B. If you want to use weapon C you will need to replace A or B with it.
Will Siege weapons have limited access points or will they be craftable ‘nearly’ anywhere? If 1 or even 2 server(s) are drastically ahead in points will there be a type of “Handicap” system in place to help out the underdog server(s). Will Guilds have advantages for queing up in WvW together? Additionally, will static groups have some advantages as well? If so, what will these advantages be?
Siege weapons can be placed anywhere in the world.
We do have an underdog buff that applies when a team is drastically outnumbered. We’re still playing with what the buff should do, right now it’s a fairly decent magic find boost.
Dont think I understand the queueing question..The only time you would queue for a map is if it’s full, and in that case, we dont have any special advantages for guilds queueing together.
As I watched the videos featuring WvW, I saw the importance of siege engines and structures when it came to bringing down gates and such. However they seemed fairly easy to take down, and the opposite team did not seem to have to change their strategy in order to bring it down, they felt in a good position in the ramparts.
Question: Do you think siege units should impose a bigger threat? Enough for the opposite to actually go in and destroy the structure while it is being built to avoid losing their defensive advantage? I say so because I fear that it would turn into a defensive camping habit otherwise, and so I figure bulkier siege units would break the line between the two if they can impose a much bigger threat.
Siege weapons are very important right now, and cater to different types of assaults. My personal favorite is the Trebuchet. Being able to assault an objective from very far distance makes it difficult for the assaulting team to stop us. I think what played a big part was we had a lot of new players, just learning how to play the game. Some don’t realize you can rain fiery death down onto your enemies, without even having to see them.
Are there any home server restrictions for competitive PvP? Am I able to team up with friends I may have on other servers to play conquest, or am I limited to people on my home server?
I don’t believe there are restrictions for comp PVP.
How many players will be allowed into the W v W instance at a time from each server?How many players will be allowed on a server at a time? Just rough numbers are fine. I’m trying to get a feel for what % of people on the server will be able to join in on W v W. What happens when the W v W instance is full? Is there some sort of queue sort of like what RIFT does with its PvP instances?
Each map will be able to hold at least a hundred people from each server and we’re working to push that number even higher. We havent decided that yet. Yeah you’ll have to queue for that map or select a different one. We have four to choose from so hopefully queues wont be too heinous.
I saw a vid on youtube where a mesmer was fighting with about 3-4 mirror images. How will the mesmer itself play out in pvp and is the use of mesmer distractions an option?
I didnt play a mesmer myself, but lots of people in the office did. Using your clones as a distraction is definitely a pretty effective strategy!
What kind of invulnerable period is there when taking an Asura gate? Can you take a gate if you are being attacked?
Everyone is invulnerable inside their safe area and that’s where the asura gates are located.
A few years ago I bought WAR for the open RvR. The problem was that they had these choke points in keeps where all of the players would need to gather and every time there was afight the server would crash. Can you say something that will reassure me that this game engine and servers will be able to handle scenarios where upwards of 100 players are in the same location?
Having played my fair share of War, I can say we do have bottle necks in some locations, but they are not stressed. We also do not have mechanics that take you out of the action as the area is to busy. There are multiple ways to assault 1 objective, and the way objectives are balanced it is better tactically to split your forces.
If I gather a resource node in WvW will someone from another server be able to come along 10s later and gather from the same node or will servers have to compete for crafting resources?
Resource nodes in wvw will work exactly like they do in PvE. They are instanced per player so you aren’t competing with other players for resources.
When your Guild is in posession of a keep or tower, will the guild members be informed when someone is assaulting it? or do you need to have a spy in WvW to inform guild mates to log in to defend it?
We plan to have guild announcements for when a location you own is under attack, they aren’t in the game yet though.
When the Wuv Wuh map resets do all the keeps, towers ect. default to neutrally controlled? If not how is control decided?
Also a suggestion that I feel will get buried in another post, but people were asking about ranks/titles. IMO there should be something similar to the fame system from GW1 where some ranks get a cool emote.
At the start of a Wuvly match (see what I did there?) all objectives will be reset to a neutral state. Suggestion noted!
I assume players will be teleported to their starting areas as well?
Players will be able to chose what map they would like to go to, but yes, They will be in their start areas of that map.
in wuv-wuh can we see character names from our own server?
Indeed you can!
I’ve watched literally every PVP video currently available. It feels like it takes quite a long time to kill someone. Would you say that this game is balanced around WvW? Or, do you intend to balance small scale PVP as well? What takes priority when it comes to balance, arena or WvW?
We balance the game as a whole, but we do have the ability to re-balance certain skills for PvP if they prove to be too strong for that format. And let me assure you, it doesn’t really take that long to kill someone depending on the circumstances
how many ppl will there be on 1 server ? if you have like 10.000 your WvWvW is always full with 300 ppl (if that will be the max)
We haven’t determined the max server population numbers yet, but we’ll try to make sure it’s high enough that the world feels populated but low enough so WvW doesnt have a constant queue.
What’s the maximum number of players that I can see on my screen in one battle? I’ve seen other games trying to do massive open world pvp areas where the game client (not the server) just crashes trying to render hundreds of characters and spell fx. Is this a problem for GW2?
We are still working on optimization, so i’m not able to give an accurate number at all.
What professions are currently the most popular in WvW? Is there any particular reason, and is there anything you guys are doing about it? What’re your favorite builds/team set-ups for keep capturing?
I’m not sure on the numbers of professions right now. My build of choice would probably be a dagger dagger Elementalist. I love getting right in someones face, and setting them on fire. In the game, just thought i’d say that. In the game.
What’s the aura in the office now that “private beta” is going into effect? Are you all as giddy as I am?
Probably more so. We’re totally honored by the reception the game has gotten. It’s been a fun week watching all the press comments come out
I have been watching what is available on Youtube etc for the press beta that just happened. I have come to fear that, although I love the scaling and events etc, some people might be able to troll by simply getting close to an area in order to make it scale…. but then just sit idle and not actually help. Even if they aren’t going to get any rewards… to a troll…that may not be enough just to make your boss fight like…. it should have 4 people dealing damage… when in fact there are only 2 or 3…anything on this?
It’s actually really hard to do that. One person trolling an event area isn’t going to have that much of an impact. It might make the event slightly harder, but if that person is in the event area, they’re probably not going to be able to just stand there as our events cover big areas and mobs can come in from all directions.
how much does gear play a part in PvP? would a healer and dps with full best-in-slot gear be able to sit on an objective and hold off a zerg of players in low-level gear indefinitely?
Gear is very important to your effeciency in PvP. The class description healer and DPS don’t really exist in GW2. Regardless of that though, 2 coordinated players could hold off an army depending on the gear, levels and play style, of the attackers. It would be very difficult though, do to everyone being able to resurrect.
What professions are currently the most popular in WvW? Is there any particular reason, and is there anything you guys are doing about it? What’re your favorite builds/team set-ups for keep capturing?
Our profession spread was actually really close over the weekend. We didnt have any one profession that was made substantially less or more over the weekend, which was a nice thing to see! Personally I ran a necro and engineer over the weekend and they both seemed really effective, pets and turrets come in REALLY handy (ironically enough those two professions were tied for lowest number of total characters made)
Are there NPC raiders in WvW to give you something to dynamically defend against/ attack with?
Yes! you can befriend mercenaries to charge to nearby objectives, and assault, or defend them.
As you already have “Invader” tags for enemy players, why did you stop there instead of expanding on this system and using it for ranks like DAoC did?
Mostly because of time. We want to ship the game at some point (honestly we do!) and we’ve been focused on getting the core mechanics in and working before working on things like that.
Is there any collision detection for pvp? Is it also possible to use the environment to ‘block’ certain attacks. For example, a caster may have an ability that takes 3 seconds to finish. That caster starts the attack on me, but I decide to move behind a pillar. Will the ability finish?
there is some collision in WvW and you can also use the terrain to your advantage. Knocking players off cliffs, using a tree as cover, jumping into water from a very high cliff, these are just some of the things you can do!
From what you’ve seen from beta testing, can a smaller group of people successfully defend themselves (in a keep for example) from a larger attacking force? Are there any tactical advantages to defending a keep?
Defenders do have the advantage, and we have seen situations where a coordinated small group is able to decimate the enemy. These situations are hard to come by though, as it depends on the builds and the coordination of the players defending, as well as the builds and the coordination (or lack there of) of the attackers.
World vs World pvp is supposed to be a large scale war, but, in numbers, how much people you’re expecting to join the war? Also, how will this event impact the game enviroment? We’ll see the world changing due to the results of the war?
We want to get as many people in as we can! We’re targeting somewhere on the order of a few hundred people in each map, but we’re still optimizing and trying to get that number as high as possible.
WvW will give world bonuses to your PvE buddies as well, so while it doesn’t have a direct impact on the world as far as creating new events or such, it can help your PvE friends complete some of the harder events in the world! The extra bonuses to healing and endurance regen (endurance is what limits dodging) can be REALLY helpful when doing one of our world boss events!
if WvW doesnt have underwater pvp yet where can we have underwater PvP?
WvW will have areas that you can swim under and fight in.
Keeps are things that can be claimed by a single guild. Is there any mechanism in place that prevents a guild from ninja-claiming a keep after another guild has worked so hard to claim it?
Indeed there are. We track each persons participation in the event to capture the keep, and once it’s taken the guild with the largest participation gets a minute to claim it before anyone else can.
If I havent played guild wars 1 will this be a hard game to learn how to play or will this be a game where I can just start up and grasp the basics pretty well?
You can very easily pick up GW2 and have a strong understanding of what is going on.
So Are siege engines locked to the player who bought them once they’ve been given enough supply? or can anyone in their party/team use them?
Anyone on the same team can use them
are there other forms of pvp viable other than zerging? like soloing,duo / small group or fg vs fg.
Yes! There are objectives that are very easy for a small amount players to assault, I often find smaller groups around these objectives. And die to them.
can you jump in this game? i tried guild wars 1 for like two seconds and i was like… you can’t jump? f this!
Yes! Jump away!
You mentioned a Quaggan camp that builds a weather machine to help out. Are you able to talk about anything similar to that?
The Quaggan camp is one of our mercenary camps that we have in WvW. You can befriend these camps to send out reinforcements to assault or defend objectives.
I noticed in the beta that the amount of XP a player received from killing a hostile mob was equivalent to the amount of XP a player receives for killing a normal creature around their level. Is this intentional? If so, is WvW expected to take a player much, much longer to reach true max level as opposed to playing the PvE content?
It is intentional. We scale the rewards that you receive in WvW on the level your character would be in PvE. You can see your current level at all times in WvW, our level adjustment formula may bump you to 80, but you’ll always get gear that’s around your actual level. Our goal is to try and make leveling speeds be roughly equivalent for wvw and pve.
Why are you guys so awesome? x3
Just lucky I guess
Enjoy! Btw. this informations are best viewed on gamebreaker.tv. It pops more on a white background.
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