Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,

I’m posting this topic here because I’d like to discuss it, not merely suggest it in the suggestion forums and have it dwindle down rainbow road within minutes by the next nerf this, nerf that, mounts here, mounts there topic! (sorry, no TL;DR)

I’d like to discuss: Remove World versus World.

Now woaah!? Before you go all “What the hell! How dare you! I bought this game for this feature you lil insignificant ****!” I didn’t really mean remove, just an alternative, a drastic change to the core mechanics.

Hope I got your attention, here goes. Most people know, WvW is a great feature with a lot of potential. But it has its flaws. Now some would argue the biggest one are the blobs running around, or perhaps some are extremely bothered by some unbalance among classes. However, I believe the largest concern for the most fervent WvW players and casuals alike is; the unbalance among Worlds.

I’m a WvW casual, I do a little bit of everything but don’t play that much. I just finished my adventure along the US worlds and have recently returned to my EU home (Piken Square). The Tier 1 worlds seem okay right? Apart from the massive amount of players, they often are on pretty equal footing. But when they meet lower ranked Worlds, they just steamroll over everything and not much fun is gained there. We all know the problems and annoyance.

But to be honest, I’m at a point where I look at WvW and think “nothing is going to fix this imbalance, it’s just the way it is and it’s how a World versus World would look like”. This is why I thought of the following, which I’d like to share with the community.

• Remove the concept of World versus World.
• Introduce Alliances

In every WvW round, there’s 3 sides (Red, Green, Blue). These will be the factions (sound familiar yet GW1 players?). Conveniently enough, the lore of GW presents us with 3 sides as well. Red will be the Order of Whispers, Green will be the Vigil, Blue will be the Durmand Priory.

Players can choose to represent one of the three Orders in the WvW battlegrounds. This is done on all Worlds. Rather than representing your World, you will be representing and fighting for the Faction you choose.

• Single players choose one of the three Orders to represent (not tied to the one in your story-line, this is the Mists man, anything possible!)
• Guild (leader) choose to represent one of the three Orders (all members in the Guild automatically represent that Order)
• Alliance (leader) choose to represent one of the three Orders (all Guilds, and therefore all members of the Alliance automatically represent that Order)

[READ ON IN NEXT POST]

Now ideally, this would work great if WvW had dozens of different maps, where the Orders can fight for dominion on each of them. However, we currently only have EB and the three identical copies of the Borderlands, so we will work with that.
Depending on how many Players/Guilds/Alliances fight for their Order, a fixed number of Districts/Zones/Overflows or whatever you want to call it, are created (I’m sure ArenaNet can figure out how many zones are needed to accommodate everyone). Players/Guilds/Alliances can move freely across these districts, to help support the war effort of their chosen Order.

So for example, we have in the US leaderboards 9 different districts.

• Each district contains its own copy of EB and the three Borderlands.
• The three Orders fight for dominion of these lands.
• All the other concepts that you are used to from the original WvW remain, points, claiming lands, siege weapons etc.
• You can use your WvW window to see what district is in need of your help (much like currently seeing the status of the different zones your World fights for)
• Guild/Alliance leaders can set a default District for their Guild/Alliance, meaning when any of the players within that Guild/Alliance goes to WvW without pre-selecting a district, they are send there.
• At the end of the round, we have 1 single score for each of the 3 Orders.

Benefits:

• It no longer matters at what World you play.
• You can play WvW (or should I call it Order vs Order or Faction vs Faction by now?) with any friends playing at different Worlds, as long as you both represent the same Guild/Alliance or choose the same faction.
• Easier to balance the sides, from both player/Guild perspective and from ArenaNet’s perspective (e.g. ArenaNet can choose to close registration for a particular faction or use particular “prop-agenda” to lure players to that faction.
• Retains a type of “attachment” to the faction you fight for.
• Great incentive for new Maps, as this will create more diversity among districts.
• Possibility to add extra sides (Hello Yellow, Yes you, Zaishen Order)
• Possible tie-in with Lore (heck, it’s the Mists, I’m sure you can think of something!)

Downside:

• You lose most of the “I fight for MY World”.

Now in addition to this. Since you represent your Order, provide detailed statistics to how well Guilds / Alliances perform in WvW. Captured points; total kills in the round; K/D ratios; longest held objective (after claiming a structure, might give incentive to actually defend it properly); Supply used. I’m sure there are plenty of people that don’t care about those statistics, but I’m sure a lot of competitive players/Guilds out there would like stuff like that.

Now, what do you think? Did I forget something vital? Am I raving mad? Would you like to propose? Hell, let me know!

Thanks for reading.

Too many server pride fanatics will never allow this. Imagine the QQ.. It’d be tasty but wouldn’t happen.

I do agree they need to combine or separate servers. In a population based game, the imbalance will eventually destroy it.

Love this idea it reminds me of the MAG game for PS3 that used three factions. The only problem is the amount of work/development time needed for this. On a positive note I believe ESO is doing this exact thing.

Feed Me Change.6528:

Too many server pride fanatics will never allow this. Imagine the QQ.. It’d be tasty but wouldn’t happen.

I do agree they need to combine or separate servers. In a population based game, the imbalance will eventually destroy it.

I personally never had much of a World “Pride”, maybe because I’ve travelled around quite a bit to see the different Worlds and meet up with friends in EU and US… But then again, I believe you can get the same effect when you’re representing a faction, much like Luxon vs Kurzick in GW1!

Furesy.6935:

Feed Me Change.6528:

Too many server pride fanatics will never allow this. Imagine the QQ.. It’d be tasty but wouldn’t happen.

I do agree they need to combine or separate servers. In a population based game, the imbalance will eventually destroy it.

I personally never had much of a World “Pride”, maybe because I’ve travelled around quite a bit to see the different Worlds and meet up with friends in EU and US… But then again, I believe you can get the same effect when you’re representing a faction, much like Luxon vs Kurzick in GW1!

Agreed. As you can see in my signature, I’ve moved quite a lot. Server pride is a pointless excuse to put in overtime for something that doesn’t really matter in the end.

If ANet wants to tie in the WvW community (which is what is needed) we something BIGGER than “our world” or “our server”.

I’m all for it as long as the community that play it get a say in what gets added to it and not ruined by one developer within six months like the current WvW was.

so you want to change the game because you guys have no loyalty ? lmao – that’s classic.

let me remind you that it’s your kind of thinking that left the game unbalanced to begin with. -the hand-

I have a few problems with this.

1. Server pride – My server is out manned regularly but we still fight. There are other servers who give up when it’s a blow out but most of the time mine won’t. This actually means quite a lot me.

2. Knowing who is who – There are a LOT of commanders now and if I feel like zerging I like to know that the commander that I’m following isn’t a cc or pve commander. If it’s random servers and depends on order that’s a lot more garbage commanders to sort through. The same goes for grunts on my server. If I set up a havok group I would prefer that I know who/how to fight with who is in my group.

3. Orders work together – They may have argued in the story but I just don’t see them going to war in the mists together.

I do agree with your idea for stats though. It would be nice to see guild performance, total kills, total supply used for each server.

Ricky.4706:

so you want to change the game because you guys have no loyalty ? lmao – that’s classic.

let me remind you that it’s your kind of thinking that left the game unbalanced to begin with. -the hand-

Oh get real. There has been SO much server hopping since launch that to base anything in WvW on “server loyalty” is simply idiotic. Bad game design is what created this mess, not player thinking. Players jumped ship because they couldn’t find the style of play they wanted where they were, and that tends to snowball.

I’m all for it. Any sort of change that balances the currently unbalanced system would be great.

Although, for your plan to become reality you would have to convince Anet there is a way to make more $$ then the current way they are milking server transfers.

not if they give out server loyalty bonuses like I’m rallying for……then the perks would fall in the right hands, and allow us to pound justice into server gypsies that unbalanced the game.

I pretty much agree with the OP. There is no way in hell that server-vs-server-vs-server matchups will ever give us fair gameplay, and unfair gameplay generates apathy and disinterest. I’ll bet there are FAR more players who want to participate in a fair match than there are players who primarily play for “server pride”.

I’d take the OP’s proposal a few steps further, though. Here are some concepts I’ve posted before:

My preferred solution would be to totally revamp WVW. I’d make matches instanced (more or less equal populations determined by dynamic queues), possibly shorter (3 days so to bridge weekly RL cycles?) and I’d have matches start on a blank map … terrain features only, no structures. I’d scatter ore deposits randomly around the map (different for each match) so that the first thing each team had to do would be to scout for deposits and secure the surrounding land. Mining the ore would develop the camp, and the ore thus mined would be used to build towers and keeps anywhere on the map that players chose. Towers and keeps would require a blueprint just like siege does now, with each blueprint costing Badges of Honor or some such non-gold currency. Siege (both offensive and defensive) would be pretty much as it is now, with possibly some changes to address current grievances (like backtracking on siege mastery). Towers and keeps could be destroyed, but not captured … they’d have to be rebuilt, either in the same place or somewhere else. Ore locations could be captured and recaptured, but would need to be redeveloped to be productive. Ore could be stockpiled in keeps and towers by players.

I suspect that such a scheme would have some unforeseen (by me) flaws, but I think the general concept would entail much greater strategic play, require better overall coordination (possibly questionable in an instanced setting), and generate some much harder fought battles over key locations.

Ricky.4706:

so you want to change the game because you guys have no loyalty ? lmao – that’s classic.

let me remind you that it’s your kind of thinking that left the game unbalanced to begin with. -the hand-

How is me traveling back and forth between US worlds and EU worlds unbalancing the game? I’ve only visited the Tier 1 worlds on a single occasion and quickly transfered to another Besides, now I’m back where I started the day at Launch, Piken Square.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

I have a few problems with this.

1. Server pride – My server is out manned regularly but we still fight. There are other servers who give up when it’s a blow out but most of the time mine won’t. This actually means quite a lot me.

2. Knowing who is who – There are a LOT of commanders now and if I feel like zerging I like to know that the commander that I’m following isn’t a cc or pve commander. If it’s random servers and depends on order that’s a lot more garbage commanders to sort through. The same goes for grunts on my server. If I set up a havok group I would prefer that I know who/how to fight with who is in my group.

3. Orders work together – They may have argued in the story but I just don’t see them going to war in the mists together.

I do agree with your idea for stats though. It would be nice to see guild performance, total kills, total supply used for each server.

1. Yes, good point. I can understand some people put in a lot of work into putting up a good fight against all odds. On the other hand, with such a system I’m sure you’ll have such fights as well :p

2. It will just take time getting to know the good commanders, as it always does. Sure there might be a lot more all of a sudden, but well, time would tell ^^

3. Well, the mists can be anything. I don’t really see Guilds going to war in the Mists either with Tyria being on the “brink” of destruction from the threat of the Elder Dragons, yet they do. WvW doesn’t really have much lore behind it besides the “World defenders in the Mists”. The Orders can be allies, yet remain competitive, and the Mists would be a much better battleground than Tyria itself. Because hey! It’s the Mists afterall xD

Thanks for your reply

I’m assuming there would be multiple matches going on at once ? If so, would it be random ? Would player A be ported into match #1 while player B would port to Match #2 because #1 is now full, and what if Players A and B were people that wanted to play together ?

Don’t get me wrong, the idea is good but there is many aspects you have neglected, if everyone chose a faction that participates in WvW as of this time, there is no way we would all fit into one matchup. Now if your talking about having districts (hello GW1) that might work, but you would still have full districts and low population districts. Then we would have to put faith that Anet wouldn’t put district 1 which is full vs. District 7 and 8 which are low pop, I personally don’t have that faith in them.

Also what would happen when matchup 1 started having people jump to different districts to join their friends ? Their now High population matchup becomes lopsided.

I like the idea, and maybe I’m not seeing the full picture your painting but, there is alot of down side to this as well.

i will speak to you, but I want you to understand – 1 – we’ve never met, 2 – Im speaking in general but addressing you ….

The core members in our server are very cool people, very strategic and very friendly – it’s not fair when You ( que – not You you…generically speaking ) bring your guilds into our server – flood our maps with commanders that have no clue what they are doing , and zerglings that start shouting that our server sucks after the confusion you bring in – a few weeks pass – we tolerate that nonsense …..start having a ton of fun ….climb the charts …..and suddenly you and all your brats are gone ……and here we are higher in rank but short handed …..it’s not right …and I’d rather you guys just leave us at the bottom than taking us for this joy ride we never asked for. We love our server, we really enjoy "our’ company ….and are pretty sick of the extreme players that really don’t give a rat’s kitten about our community, only to join an over populated server to once again overwhelm us as the enemy saying we suck …..well …no …..we kick kitten and if you balanced those numbers – we’d trample you with skill in return ….we’ve been tried and tested over and over again – we are a refined team that are just tired of this nonsense.

once again…..this isn’t you….but this is what your traveling represents to us.

so tempted to mention one specific guild that recently pulled that on us, but i wont, because WE are better than them – they learned a few tricks and ran to the top servers.

how I wish one of their members would recognize me and call me on this post – give me a chance to rip them and their garbage self entitled trailer park trash guild a new kitten – and you know why they won’t recognize me ? because they didn’t care at all about our community ….we remembered them and took them in like family – I only hope the next time we find them it will be on the battle field ….I will personally encourage them to post about how rude I was for dancing on their corpses.

Feed Me Change.6528:

Too many server pride fanatics will never allow this. Imagine the QQ.. It’d be tasty but wouldn’t happen.

I do agree they need to combine or separate servers. In a population based game, the imbalance will eventually destroy it.

As a server pride fanatic, I totally endorse this idea. Faction vs Faction would be a great solution to population issues without forcing the player base to have to buy transfers to find an enjoyable playing experience.

The only downfall I can foresee would be collusion to stack a particular faction (such as a bunch of major guilds agreeing to pick “green” this week or whatever), but that’s easily fixable by imposing dynamic limits when choosing a faction (ex: green has 25% more population than the median = green becomes transfer locked until the median adjusts to an acceptable range).

btw, Gom, you guys rule – much love and respect for you and yours – you have heart!!

Ricky.4706:

btw, Gom, you guys rule – much love and respect for you and yours – you have heart!!

Thanks for that. We’re a stubborn bunch, but there’s no other server I’d rather be a part of.

I will always be loyal to the family I was born in. I sort of chose to be born in my server when I signed on, and will not abandon. It’s natural to feel loyal to the family you are born in.

Well, like all good threads this one got shuffled off to the forum of lost souls. I scanned through twenty pages of threads and found exactly one with any kind of response from ANet. How pathetic is that. No wonder most GW2 forums are filled with rancor … the respectful and constructive posts get buried alive here.

awesome suggestion, will feel like good ole Alliance Battles only better!

and to all the people complaining of server loyalty, this new system won’t force you to leave your server, unlike the current imbalanced system which will only over time polarize into the handful of top servers with “real” WvW plus a host of ghost or PvE-only servers.

Doesn’t go with the lore so it won’t happen.

/thread

It would probably be the best thing WvW ever sees, but Anet is too frightened to make such a drastic change, the kitten.

/agree /bump

- Add commander names to the ditrict selection interface.

This needs some attention