I think there should be some changes made to the jumping puzzles in WvW. I was attempting Obsidian Sanctum today and the server I am on isn’t as strong as the others. When I took the portal to attempt the puzzle I was dragged down by the Mesmer’s Focus curtain skill and killed by a mob. I re-attempted it at a later time and half-way through was killed without any idea where the enemy was. I understand that the puzzles are in a PvP environment so that fighting players from other servers will happen, but there should be some changes that allow the players, especially from servers that aren’t as strong, some kind of even footing when they enter. Additionally, I feel as though the rewards in these puzzles should be changed as well.
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Before I continue, I am aware some people will suggest doing it with a guild or gathering people to do it with you, but there are two problems with these suggestions. Not everyone will have a guild that is large enough or on enough to simply do it. The rewards, as I stated before, for the jumping puzzles also don’t help the World as a whole and therefore make it difficult to gather people to do them.
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First, I feel that as more players from other servers begin concentrating themselves, and basically camping the entrance and the end of the jumping puzzle, the players from servers with fewer members should get some kind of significant buff. The players with higher concentrations should also get a significant debuff. The buff and debuffs would scale to the number of players and at least allow the players who are greatly outnumbered to stand some kind of chance. Another suggestion would be to provide the ‘determined’ buff on the entrance ledges and a skill lockout so that players could at least leave and not get killed from campers. If none of these sound like a simple solution I feel that players should at least be able to see enemies on the map in the jumping puzzle area so that they don’t just go in to commit suicide. It is rather unfair to have to pay for repair fees when you didn’t even get to fight back.
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Second, I feel that the rewards should be changed. This is because the rewards right now serve to only help the individual player and not the world as a whole. Since the rewards are this way players who don’t care about WvW will come on and not participate as well as contribute to cause a greater disadvantage to their world. This ruins the experience in the end to both the player who came for badges towards their legendary and players who enjoy WvW. The rewards should be changed to be something that will bring about some kind of advantage to their server for completion. This will promote players from all servers to more actively participate in these areas, while removing the players who don’t even want to be there. If the rewards must remain the same then I feel that everyone should have the determined buff and that PvP elements should be removed altogether in these areas as it only promotes badge farming camps and takes away too many slots across all servers from actually participating in WvW. A final suggestion could be to make the jumping puzzle an outpost so servers who control it have some kind of time span to cater to the non WvW players to come in and leave or even participate in WvW to claim the jumping puzzle outpost.
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I personally like that monthly achievements promote people to participate in WvW for WvW, but these jumping puzzles and their rewards are not promoting participation and are causing some terrible habits from players. I hope you will consider changing something in these puzzles that will promote a more fun environment for everyone, even if they aren’t any of my suggestions. Thank you for your time and consideration.
tl;dr JP promotes bad habits from all servers and mechanics or rewards need to be changed imo.