Guild Wars 2

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ENDURING: The key ingredient of building relationships, reputations, and the feeling of walking into a familiar place (think “Cheers” or “Friends”, but with a healthy dose of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Lord of the Rings”—that’s the sweet spot) as opposed to something awkward, faceless, and random. Trying to extract a sense of community from sPvP (without setting up a special private server ahead of time, which is a totally separate issue) is, well, like trying to have a meaningful heart-to-heart with a stranger on a social networking site. It… just doesn’t work. There is no substitute for creating that sort of emotional, familiar connection with a place and a community than having a place for that community to exist.

Rather than running a “race to the bottom” and equalizing the community experience across all servers by removing the community experience, an integral ingredient of what defines WvW, altogether the focus should be on trying to find ways to create, foster, and enable that community on lower-pop and other servers where the play experience is currently broken.

It’s difficult to imagine “World versus World” without the World part, but the underlying issue is that there needs to be a way for players to repeatedly interact with the same players (though, preferably, not always the same enemies) again and again. You can get comfortable, recognize names, and (for many players, most importantly) be recognized on a server only if you have the chance to get to know the community out there, and the community has a chance to get to know you.

With a randomized, “color-only”, there is no ENDURING component to the play experience. Interactions are arms-length at best. It’s incredibly easy to go from pleasant to hostile because you’ll probably never see the other people again.

A second issue with the “enduring” component is the importance of having an enduring community that exists outside of WvW as well. On Blackgate, one of the reasons I honestly think we were able to do as well as we did is because we had an inclusive, welcoming PvE culture in the open world on our server during release. I think a lot of that culture transferred into creating the culture and setting the stage in WvW. Yes, there were other factors, and as a GM of a guild that was on BG at head start when our rank looked pretty terrible, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what they are, but that inclusiveness moving out into WvW helped not only give us coverage, but create a fun place where people want to play. Personally, if Blackgate fell to T6 next month, I know every single member of my guild would still be here for that community.

This is the crux of my concern about removing “worlds” and switching to a purely “pick a color” scheme. When you join EoTM, you’re a color. It’s predefined for you, and it matters just about as much as joining a particular side (red or blue, who cares?) in sPvP. The color has no meaning except as a temporary identifier of which side you are, and which side they are.

INCLUSIVE: One of the ideas that’s gotten traction on this thread is to replace “worlds” with voluntary “alliances.” Let’s assume for the moment that this is actually feasible, and that every guild serious about winning S2, S3, or S9 for that matter wouldn’t all just try to band together and that there was a way to solve the “alliance hopping” problem in an equitable, reasonable, sane way. Okay. The next problem is that switching to this model of “World” association is that it is by definition exclusive, not inclusive.

With Worlds, you have to join one to play. It’s a mechanical process with no pressure at all. Hey, this server has a cool name (that’s how our guild picked it back around Head Start), let’s play there! Or, far more often, hey, my friends/guild/significant other plays on X, so I’m going to go play there too! No pressure, and voila, you’ve got a home.

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DevonCarver.5370:

Malchior.5042:

Nike.2631:

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to pivot to something that Luna mentioned early in the thread, the idea of a more complex fight for Stonemist.

Would it make Stonemist feel too difficult to capture if the assaulting team had to capture and hold 3 capture points?
…
Do any of you think this version of Stonemist would be an improvement or does it not really make any positive changes in your mind?

It’s almost there.

What I would do is continue to have one critical point – the Lord’s Room. That location solely determines the outcome of the attack. But then I would add two (possibly 3) substantial defenses to the lord’s room. First, a Legendary creature that helps in the defense of the room. The second, a bunch of fixed, player-operable high quality siege equipment.

For each of these defenses you add another control point elsewhere in the castle. Seizing them removes the matching defenses from the room.

The point will always be to cotrol the Lord’s room, and an assaulting realm can choose to go directly for the throat. But doing so means eating a bunch of siege in the face and having to deal with something on the scale of a Giant, or maybe a High Priest of the Mists with an annoying tendency to rez the Lord up to once a minute until the Priest is wiped off the field.

Or the assaulting group can go contest these points and remove the additional obstacles for as long as they hold them. Hold the Chapel and the Priest de-spawns. Hold the Armory and the Seige Weapons become inert.

With the Priest/Giant/What-have-you being an NPC, it will present a challenge even if no defenders are present. While the siege weapons specifically require the defending server be present to use them.

Nike’s got the right idea!

Having different defenses in the Lord Room (or perhaps throughout all of Stonemist) that can be disabled by controlling the Armory, or controlling the Barracks, etc…

These kinds of elements introduce choice and conflict into the battle, so commanders can adapt the battle plan dynamically to accomplish the final goal of capturing Stonemist.

Also…as a sort of balancing factor to these extra objectives…what if they costed supply to build/maintain within SM? Now, the castle is more vulnerable when it’s a 2000+ supply depository that can treb any adjacent tower.

There are a number of ways to approach the issue, but I definitely feel Nike’s design of linking defenses to a key objective (similar to EotM defenses) is a good start for mixing up the battles inside Stonemist (heck, perhaps inside any keep).

What if, instead of NPC defenders, you couldn’t put siege down in Stonemist, but there were specific defensive siege pieces in critical areas that the defending team could build? Would that serve the same purpose?

It’s on the right track.
Honestly I would rather take a few pages from SPvP as others have pointed out.

Say once the Keep Lord is down, five capture points (in a keep, 7 in SM, 3 in towers, and only the one in camps) appear in separate sub areas of the building.
Capturing each garners points every second, first side to 500 points flip it in their favor.
Defenders if they cap it they get a buff, maybe some supply, and the Keep Lord respawns.

The idea being is it’s something that forces the attacking force to split up a coordinate to capture the individual locations, rather then just zerg rush and over power with numbers only. By splitting the forces you would get several smaller battles which would be much more engaging for everyone, then just two big zergs smashing up against each other. Combat in this game is much more fun in small numbers then large.

And drawing out the capture would reduce the ‘fly by night’ nature of capture, where you zerg rush each and every objective, hoping to catch your opponent off guard.
You’d actually have to plan out your assault.

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When you go out to WvW, you’re a valuable resource. Every server (even BG) needs every incremental player we can get in order to be successful out there. That scarcity and the player owning the supply—like a really nice job market—enhances both the value and play experience of the player. Inclusiveness is a key ingredient to creating a positive play experience. This is the part of the recipe that made DAoC so great. I remember way, way back in the classic days when Level 50s (max level in DAoC in 2001-2004 glory days) would run around lowbie zones welcoming new players to the game—I’m not kidding, by the way, even though this probably sounds insane in the MMORPG world post-WoW—and handing out gold and the occasionally semi-rare but pretty sweet looking piece of armor or weapon because they hoped that level 1 running around in ragged cloth and getting killed by a water beetle because they were having a hard time figuring out which key to punch to start swinging would grow up to be one more decked 50 out on the field when it counted.

The best part is that that inclusion is automatic: it just happens. You can’t not be included and benefit from inclusion, by game design. With an alliance system, there are additional barriers erected to inclusion. And if that doesn’t sound like much, it’s the difference between the LFG tool and map chat in Lion’s Arch. Yes, the determined and more socially-minded players will always have a home. But what about the people that play to get away from having to deal with all of that in real life, or who don’t have the time or emotional bandwidth to deal with yet more social situations like that? It’s really important to keep an eye on the new player experience when contemplating massive game design changes like this, not just on the jaded old vets who’ve been here for a while, because having the right mixture of old-timers and infusions of new players is the key to getting to celebrate the game’s ten-year anniversary.

COMMUNITY: This goes without saying. There needs to be a community for WvW to continue to be the experience that appeals to the players it does. Without community, WvW is just expensive, long-match PvP that happens in your PvE armor with a few doors and stuff in the way. With community, WvW is an explosive, heart-pumping, adrenaline-running and nail-bitingly epic experience. When S1 came down to the death match between JQ and BG and JQ was pulling ahead for the first three days of that week, I can’t remember seeing the players come together and fight side by side since 2002. WvW is intrinsically linked to community. For some, yes, the rewards and the EoTM experience are enough, granted. I’m actually very glad that the folks that love that kind of arms-length play have found a happy home. But for many of us, you can’t take the “World” from World v. World.

To put it simply: you’re just not going to get a video like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdecWAAJcMQ with the title “Blue Worlds Win Season 4.” Not going to happen. Personally I’d rather try to figure out ways to deliver this kind of experience to T2 and T3 and T4 servers, rather than reduce everything to generic colors that you can pick at will.

© Right now, without the ability to form alliances, Worlds and Servers are the only vehicle through which that enduring, inclusive community exists in GW2. Shifting the focus to Guilds and Alliances, as some posters have suggested, is probably the next best bet.

(D) Even if an Alliance system were substituted, this would be an enduring, but not necessarily inclusive community. I’ve already described my concerns with the inclusiveness versus inherent exclusiveness issue above, but I could in all seriousness see using guilds as a next-best platform. It would be a little bit like reducing the international system from relations between nations to a global patchwork of city-states (where some will be huge and powerful, your Londons, Singapores, New York Cities, and some will be tiny little Fresno, CA’s) but with alliances, it might be possible. I think a better solution would be to continue using worlds and building in an alliance system (with “alliance chat” and possibly some other in-game features) to cement, help create, sustain, support, and energize world communities. The more opportunities players have to put down roots, the more fun social players have, the more fellow kitten -kickers killer-style players have beside them in WvW, and the longer everyone plays, has a good time (and buys gems).

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(E) Many players have suggested that game-wide communities can be established. But how much community is there on sPvP or EoTM? This is one of my biggest concerns about removing the “world” from World v. World. We have a simple test case: in sPvP, you have short-duration set matches composed of players that will overwhelmingly never see each other again. This allows players to get into the game and play it very quickly and easy—great! But it’s important to let people who like to eat pizza to order pizza at the restaurant, and people who like steak dinners to order steak dinners. sPvP is a market niche. It’s great for players who are killing-oriented, enjoy fast-paced very small-group combat. Typically strategic play like you see in WvW is minimal. (Disclosure: I have played sPvP since release. To illustrate the point: sPvP is what I do when I’m solo and want to go “shoot some hoops”, blow off some steam, or shake up my daily laurel routine. WvW is what I do when I’m dead serious about kicking some kitten at a strategic level out with my guild. They are two totally different games, like Halo and Starcraft.)

(F) Game environments that are not anchored by community quickly stagnate and turn into cesspools. This is a blight, and leads to a blighted experience that drives away more serious and mature customers. Furthermore, the customers driven away are those that are more likely to be (A) loyal and (B) able and willing to pay more at the gem store to support the game.[/u] Suffice to say the transition from DAoC to WoW was a very kittene for my guild when DAoC’s developers decided to put a quiver of arrows through their golden hen. The culture in WoW, which has been the subject of more than a few dissertations at high-level universities, was for a very long time ranked highly among internet cesspools. The overwhelming majority of incentives were zero-sum and oriented strictly towards personal gain. Many incentives were such that the only way to personally advance was to do harm to others (guild hop upon gear acquisition in raiding). The opportunities to create, support, or contribute to a larger community were virtually nonexistent. Many other games that have followed have encountered similar problems. WoW managed to attract tremendous subscriber bases in spite of its player community, not because of or alongside it.

One of the things that attracted my guild so strongly to GW2 as soon as we started watching Colin’s videos back in early 2012 was because not only of the incredible community of old GW1 players that were coming over, but because the game world created incentives for players to cooperate and help each other out, with WvW as the epitome of those incentives. It was an incredibly refreshing change of pace, and the closest we’ve ever come to the old DAoC glory days. GW2 has the staying power and fundamentals to prove that the genre of community-oriented MMOs can compete with the big boys and deliver a far more fulfilling community experience. I would hate to see a major part of that brand, WvW, harmed. I think a great many players share that sentiment.

(G) Many customers, like myself and every single one of my guildmates, both enjoy WvW and continue to play GW2 for two things: epic dragon fights and something larger than ourselves. Since we’re currently fresh out of dragons, and given the current, er, direction of the so-called Living Story, there is not a single member of my guild that expects to see any more of the content we actually keep hoping for in the next year, if not two. The only thing keeping us actively playing and purchasing from the Gem Store today is the feeling that we are contributing to our home server. We do not like to play anonymously. We like having a home. We like defending it. We like taking things and pulling off impossible feats for the sake of it. Our playstyle often has us blowing enormous amounts of guild catapults, which are expensive to manufacture (and once we even bought gems to replenish our stockpile of them off the TP in the middle of a fierce match during S1 when things got heated up). There is no way we would ever consider spending real life money on gems for an anonymous match that didn’t matter, and we definitely wouldn’t go bragging to old DAoC comrades about how amazing GW2 was if there was no sense of community that we could belong to and contribute to. Absolutely no way. I doubt we would continue playing for more than maybe a month if community was abolished.

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SUMMARY: I am deeply concerned about the prospect of removing the “World” from World v. World not because of an irrational attachment to that particular model, but because the presence of an enduring, inclusive community is a crucial element of WvW, and I can’t envision a suitable alternative to the World model. Alliances come close, but I believe they would be better suited as an addition to worlds, rather than a replacement for them. I am concerned that moving towards an “EotM” model will devastate and drive off many players, like us, who derive the majority of our interest in the game from being a part of a community.

To analogize: what would the Super Bowl be if it was just Red versus Blue? That’s what WvW would be like without Worlds. Trying to take the enduring, inclusive communities out of WvW is like trying to do modern sports… without teams.

2: Comments on Revitalizing Stonemist

There are a number of really interesting ideas about how to revitalize Stonemist that are floating around. These are fascinating, and I’d be really interested to see how they pan out. However, before I dive in and help out (honestly, as a GM that’s been WvW active since long before Blackgate was anywhere near an interesting server, haha, this sounds like it could be a lot of fun!) I do want to toss out one quick concern:

Whatever changes go through, new players who still need the Stonemist Vista and Stonemist Point of Interest HAVE to have a way to still reasonably be able to get them on low-pop servers. If there is ever a WvW season/tournament achievement for a certain number of Stonemist captures again, this becomes an even more salient point! Because we often play at really odd off-hours (I suspect many of the top commanders on our server wouldn’t even recognize us) two of my guildmates were almost unable to get credit for capturing Stonemist enough times to get the WvW achievement, and we were hardly slouching off during the season. Eventually we had to concoct a hair-brained scheme to get one last SM capture in involving a large number of Omegas, a handful of mesmers, and a few dozen lucky rabbits’ feet. While epic, I’m concerned that whatever change is made to SM has got to make sure new players can get their Map Completion—be it for their Gift of Exploration/Legendary, the principle of Map Complete, and achievements—and the best way to accomplish this might be to make it easier to access both the Vista and PoI if SM becomes harder to capture. For example, expand the radius of the SM PoI to include anyone that manages to make it inside the courtyard (past the first wall), and place the vista on a nearby hill outside of SM (leaving the existing vista as a legacy, of course, since it’s an awesome view, but not one that counts). Or reduce the number of vistas necessary for map completion on EB by one.

With that preliminary concern for new players out of the way, the idea of breaking Stonemist up into several different capturable objectives is really interesting.

An alternative to towers/citadels: stages

Just to toss this one out: an aesthetically and possibly much easier to code alternative to adding a series of 2, 3, or 4 towers inside SM (which would entail artwork and engineering redesign) might be to break SM up into a series of separately capturable stages. For example: SM right now is worth 35 points/tick, central lord pad in the bottom.

An alternative might be to break SM into three objectives:
- SM Courtyard (outer ring) (breach the first wall and occupy the ring) – worth 10 points, with a reduced re-capture timer (say, 2 minutes instead of the usual 4).
- Lower SM (breach first wall, breach inner, capture current lord pad) – worth 10 points with a 4-minute timer.
- Upper SM (breach first wall, breach inner, storm up from the lord pad and fight through a third, single door to take a lord, say, somewhere in the upper area of SM.

Personally, I could almost see the chat: “Inc outer SM, retreat to lower” – “Just took lower SM, get to upper” – etc.

The key to this system would be to devise a way to capture a large, awkwardly sized objective like the outer ring. I would suggest drawing a large “O”, including the entire courtyard. Have three roaming “Elite Stone Sentries”—equivalent to standard tower lords—that respawn every 3 minutes. Once all three are dead, a progress bar emerges. Here, instead of driving every single player from such a huge area (I’m thinking virtually the entire area consisting of the ground inside SM, from inner wall to the inside of the outer wall) allow the attacking realm to begin slowly progressing the bar as soon as they have either 400% or 500% (4:1, 5:1) of the current enemy players in the ring.

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To illustrate: The Tale of an Epic Stonemist Fight at 8:48 on a Random Wednesday Night: Sea of Sorrows and Jade Quarry each have 3 and 7 players roaming around the SM Courtyard. Henge of Denravi, who opened up the wall, bring a group of 25 players in, and proceed to massacre all three Stone Sentries. The event display reads “3 of 3 Stone Sentries Killed” and displays a progress bar. Because there are 10 enemy players to Denravi’s 25 players in the ring, Denravi only has 250% (2.5:1) of the players in the courtyard, and aren’t allowed to begin capturing. This provides a serious incentive to both fight and to not run away in the outer ring. It also encourages double-teaming…and then the double-teaming worlds to duke it out for final capping rights. Suppose two of the JQ players, upon seeing the Denravi zerg, port out, taking it to 25 to 8, and then two of the Sea of Sorrows players run into the zerg and are killed off. Now it’s down to 25 to 6. Under a lenient setting (400% or 4:1 threshold) Denravi begins to capture the courtyard. Under a strict setting, Denravi would have to split up and hunt down the holdouts in SM, at which point they can begin capping.

Once Denravi caps, they own the outer walls, and the porting rights through the gates/walls. Suddenly SoS, which still owns SM lower and SM upper, is in trouble. They have a few players up in the citadel, who are now trapped by the oncoming army, and have to do their best to defend it. Their main force meanwhile loads up rams, catapults, and omegas to try to break down the door of their own fortress to try to reclaim it. Meanwhile, the Denravi force inside has a few minutes’ breathing room try to push through and open inner, take lower, and then fight up to Upper.

Suppose Denravi manages to open up inner before SoS is able to take down outer. (Recall, right now, SoS owns SM lower, SM upper, while Denravi owns the Courtyard). The PPT timer ticks; SoS gets +25, Denravi gets +10.

The timer restarts again, and Denravi manages to take Lower: they kill the lord and then claim the pad. Suddenly the inner doors reset to full health, belonging to Denravi. SoS breaches outer, and claims the courtyard. The pressure is on and it’s getting tight. The five SoS holdout defenders now in upper are sweating bullets, and two jump down to join the main zerg now racing to bust through inner. Denravi manages to crack the last door into Upper—they had to PvD because they were out of supply—at the same time that SoS manages to bust through inner. Just as Denravi is working on the Upper SM lord, SoS smashes into them with a zerg of 15. An epic fight on the upper floor of SM ensues, with bodies flying off the balconies and blood splattered everywhere. Somebody wins, but since it was a hell of a lot more fun than two realms just racing through two different doors to the lower lord pad (SM has an upstairs?) a good time is had by all no matter who wins.

(Alternatively, there could be three small citadels or open-space “lords”, sentries, or whatever we want to call them, at three points inside the SM courtyard, and as others have suggested, maybe set it up so that all 3 pads must be taken—possibly in sequence, like a classic outdoor event—before the courtyard flips.)

And with that, I’m probably about to burn dinner. Fascinating thread, and I hope these posts are useful.

Apologies for the broken post. Wish there was a way to up the character limit for serious threads like this. Since Devon has been kind enough to take the players seriously, I figured I would return the favor and go all-out in this analysis. Thanks again for hosting the thread.

Best,
Matipzieu KyA

Proposal Overview

• Sentry Turrets (that reveal enemies on EotM) and/or the Observatory should be on every WvW map.

Goal of Proposal

• Helps players scout for enemies attacking their structures – replacing the need for a player to stand in a tower all day being bored out of their mind as a lookout.

Proposal Functionality

• There should be an Observatory on every map that can be captured.
• When captured, players on the server that captured it may place Sentry Turrets to track enemies on the mini-map. Or, the Observatory itself could track enemies within its area of effect.
• Perhaps place multiple Observatories; each one would allow coverage for a different part of the map. A good number would be 3 to 12 per map, so that one doesn’t cover too much of the map by itself.
• Observatories should be places that are easy to capture; likely without walls or gates. This would help players quickly take them out to sneak around and capture more important locations.

Associated Risks

• It may become very hard to sneak around to capture places with small groups.
• Even with a large zerg, an enemy may always be ready to counter if they can see you on their map at all times.

Proposal Overview
Redesign WvW’s Terrain to take into account more verticality, give it more shape, with fewer direct open paths, more choke points, ledges and high ground.
Also rework structures to have more then simply to open areas separated by walls, but have a series of smaller rooms with their own doors.
Add area effect buffs/debuffs to certain areas.

Goal of Proposal
To make death and travel more punishing and require more planning.
To open up new paths for defense and attack by small, well organized forces vs large unorganized zergs.
Split up both attacking and defending forces in buildings, so that you have a series of smaller engagement rather then single large battles where numbers are the prime dictator of.
Raise the quality of battles as to require a greater level of tactics and strategy, rather then simply force in numbers.

Proposal Functionality
The current WvW terrain is very wide and very flat, and traveling between two points is often times a straight line.
By adding for terrain features, such as chasms and fissures, twisting cliff lines and hills, and other obstacles such as swamps that reduce movement speed of anyone in it, of icy caverns that have falling debris like the Tribulation Caverns jumping puzzle.
Even adding more pseudo jumping puzzle like elements to reach high ground.
Other effects could be chilling winds in the frozen wastes that deal damage over time if you stay in the open, forcing you to seek shelter. Underground caves with dark rooms and traps. Or fog surrounding a lake that obscures vision. Esp if these effects come and go, or are dependent on weather.
It would make combat around such effects more dynamic and unpredictable at times.

This would have the effect making the travel between points require some level of planning, take more time to traverse, allow more well organised smaller forces a means to fight back against larger zergs by utilizing the terrain, and subsequent deaths become more punishing. (as currently death isn’t a punishment since you can get back any location in a matter of minutes)

And buildings much of the same approach should be taken. Instead of two large rooms separated by walls, how about outer wall followed by a series of smaller rooms that each have their own mechanic or buff within the building.
Such as an Armory that buffs the NPC’s, or Siege Workshop the improves siege, a Barracks that buffs players, Servants Quarters that auto-repair walls and doors (without the need of supply) within the building, etc.
Each with their own door, that requires some effort to knock down.

Perhaps in keeps you could also have a couple of Scout Towers that have high ground advantage and are a good place for siege. If invaders were to ignore these rooms and go straight for the Lords Room, they might find they would have a very difficult time doing so.
So splitting up a coordinating is the key to victory, in both defense and offense.

In addition they could utilize more verticality and narrow choke points.
All to make combat around such terrain and structures more drawn out, in smaller numbers, and require more tactics and strategy, which in turn should make it a more engaging affair for everyone involved.

Associated Risks
Some terrain could be exploited for cheesy or harassment gameplay, esp if there are not a lot of options to get to a location. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem so long as they are always multiple routes to your destination.
Death could be seen as too punishing to some.

DevonCarver.5370:

A short recap of the first few pages of discussion.

I just want to go ahead and say… Please, please. Be daring, be bold.

Make changes, don’t sit and deliberate whether it fits this ‘vision’ or that ‘vision’. Whilst I’m 1000% appreciative of the iteration process as a designer, you’ve got a digital canvas to work with.

If a change is received negatively, it can be reverted. If everything is left to hypothetical scenarios and what-ifs, nothing will ever get done to improve this game. A little bit of trial and error never hurt. Additionally, testing things in-game gives the players a sense of involvement and contribution, something that we sort of get in these threads… but not really.

+1 to Matipzieu’s statement on enduring, inclusive communities. It enriches the game experience so much more to have familiar faces, guild, commanders when you enter WvW.

My experience is very different from Matipzieu’s, I play on a mid-tier EU server and started out as an uplevel looking for map completion and trying to do jumping puzzles. I followed blue tags, represented a tiny guild of friends from outside the game, auto-attacked doors and didn’t have VOIP software installed. Thanks to seeing the same friendly people on my server I took more of an interest in WvW and I’ve now been a leader of a WvW guild for a year as well as a commander and community leader for my server.

Server drain has been pointed to time and time again on these servers as something that needs to be addressed for the long-term health of WvW. Without a functioning WvW community it is harder to get new players involved in the game mode and there is little incentive for existing WvW players to stay.

Can alliances fix the issue? I doubt it, the issue is a downward spiral that will keep feeding back on itself, there is nothing to keep that grouping of servers from dropping to the bottom of the ladder, or even if they do win their matches, there is nothing to keep that success going after the alliance is dissolved. Unless you can encourage people to move to and stay on those servers I think that drain will persist.

Much of the problem is that almost every aspect of this game mode encourages players to transfer up the ladder rather than down it. Material rewards in this game are really set against, well, trying to hold together a community that might be falling apart already. With the introduction of EotM, queues are no longer a strong incentive to move down.

I think the Season 1 rewards were appropriate, if inappropriately advertised, but it seems to me that the improved rewards hinted at for the upcoming “tournament” will just encourage players to stack servers even more. It’s unfortunate that the ambiguous communication in advance of Season 1 led to a short-sighted community outcry and now this knee-jerk response which will simply undermine efforts to balance the servers.

With all do respect Devon, server or world pride has been gone for a long time now. Sure there is a few people still clinging onto it but Anet really dropped the ball when nothing was done a year ago to encourage transfering down vs. up. It STILL costs the same to transfer to a T1 server as it does to transfer to a T8 server, it was further damaged by not locking transfers for Season 1.

If you learned only one thing from Season 1 it should have been server pride is long gone.

Its really sad watching some servers drop so low in WvW population that they literally have next to no one out there playing the game mode. We’ve played vs Kain a few times now and to be perfectly honest, its like they are not even there, its a 2 server fight. You have a better chance at seeing bigfoot then a Kain invader, and with the way transfer costs are, I don’t ever see servers in that position truly recovering. I don’t even know if reducing costs would help at this point, the damage is to far gone.

That is the only reason I think color matchup would be a good idea, I see no other way for the bottom servers to survive, and with the release of new games and what not, its only going to get worse.

From a design angle, it seems to me that we have an interesting force that we can leverage: if we can get server populations stable and spread reasonably well, and create environments where most people want to stay put, that will go a long way towards allowing the community and realm pride to heal. Agreed full with Nuzt and Bertrand above (+1 to both) that on low pop and up-transferring servers undergoing guild flight, we’ve got a hemorrhaging situation that needs a swift fix ( +1 to Baels.)

I respectfully disagree, however, that the only way to do this is by switching to a color versus color scheme. I think there are other options. The key here is to create incentives that match and ideally overcome the pressure to move upwards. If incentives to move downwards can be implemented, many entrepreneurial guilds will do just that.

It occurs to me that one option to do this is to leverage individual incentives (getting prizes, bonuses, winning stuff) and align them with community incentives (want to encourage down-transfers and then stability closer to the bottom).

Right now, we have tons of folks flocking to the major T1 servers. This is hurting everyone. A lot of that flocking is now being driven by the proposed very high rewards for S2.

I have a radical off the wall idea: would it be possible to implement and publicly advertise “underdog rewards”?

In effect, when you go to place a bet (say, horse racing, not that I have much experience with it) you get odds. The less likely you are to win, supply and demand say you have to get a big payout if it actually happens. Same works with investment. Interest rates on losing propositions are really high, etc, etc.

If the goal is to get some competitive feisty-oriented leaders to transfer down, there are a few tools that I would propose implementing:

(1) Identify hemorrhaging servers. Find some metric (and frankly, the best bet will probably be a combination of population, coverage, overall WvW score, and community assessment) and then target those servers for receiving large bonuses.

(2) Provide some baseline reward, or better yet guarantee of a reward, for playing a season/just playing weekly on low-pop servers. Ensure that there is lock-in so that players on high-tier servers can’t just “hop down” when it looks like they might lose. This needs to be a very real reward; an extra 20s chest every week is not going to do it. Extra shots at season end rewards, or guaranteed increase in end-season rewards (example: an extra ascended) I’m definitely willing to bet would. An example here would be in low-pop hemorrhaging servers to guarantee an extra 10-20% loot (say, one bonus ascended item would be enough to make a huge splash) for those that fight exclusively on these low-pop servers whether they win or lose. This will attract a lot of people, especially if it’s heavily advertised. While this would be messy as all hell at the beginning of the season, by sending a clear signal that this will be repeated in the future for all low-pop/hemorrhaging servers into the future, it will create a “reverse pressure” that helps stabilize population shifts upward. (Ideally, upward and downward movement would reach equilibrium and then stabilize.)

(3) There should be increased rewards for winning in a low pop/hemorrhaging bracket that are above and beyond those available in higher tiers. The idea is to equalize the risk/reward curve between playing on a T1 server and playing on a T5 server. I believe the bulk of extra rewards should occur here, in the “extra win award” space. Many players will attempt to maximize wins, and this could revitalize competitive guilds moving into low-pop spaces. Rather than use a one-size-fits-all hammer approach here, the more dire straits a server is in, the bigger the reward should be to help stabilize it.

To reiterate, however: this is a Band-Aid. A very ugly, messy Band-Aid. There is ultimately no substitute for building a strong community; these changes would just be designed to get people onto the ground on these low pop servers, a core requirement for beginning design changes and revamps that encourage people to stay on their home servers.

Longer-term solutions should ultimately reward server loyalty. The sorts of decisions that support and strengthen community building should be supported by in game incentives, though not so much that people that have real reasons to leave servers feel trapped. Incentives like extra rewards for low-pop/underdog servers (measured by objective indicators of how the server is doing) are a great first step, but they should be tied to dedicated play on that server to prevent abuse. The goal is to reward revitalization of the servers, not hot-dropping in at the last minute to pick up some extra loot.

Best,
Matipzieu KyA

Long posts there.

I’m glad to see some consideration of the bandwagoning issues faced by lower-tier servers – one of the things that often grates about posts on server community from those based on JQ or BG is that they can seem oblivious to how badly a server’s WvW community is wrecked by a player exodus. So far, only 4 out of 24 servers on NA have yet to find themselves in that position – it’s no coincidence that three are T1 and the other is T2.

At the launch of the game, fighting for the server seemed to mean something, but when 80% of the server upped stakes for JQ, BG, SoR and Kaineng, the few of us left behind were left with few illusions about how far community gets you when you’re losing.

+1 to everything Matipzieu KyA wrote. Read it, A-Net!!!!

i have to admit, that i changed server once, from Whiteside to Drakkar (but this was due to language contraints on my part, 3 months after release). But this is my home now, i have my guild here, there are the others who suffered with us through the highs and lows of our server and there is a familiarity with most commanders and guilds that would be lost in a RBG matchup.

Matipzieu KyA.9613:

(E) Many players have suggested that game-wide communities can be established. But how much community is there on sPvP or EoTM? This is one of my biggest concerns about removing the “world” from World v. World. We have a simple test case: in sPvP, you have short-duration set matches composed of players that will overwhelmingly never see each other again. This allows players to get into the game and play it very quickly and easy—great!

EOTM and sPvP actively obstruct communities by forcing constant, random churn between “sides.” That’s why EOTM-style random server mash ups won’t work.

There are, however, two counter-examples that prove why, although some stable frame of reference is needed, the current “servers” or “worlds” that we happen to have today are not integral either to building or keeping the communities we have. In fact it’s clear that the setup we have today is actively destroying communities, not keeping them alive or helping them thrive.

Look at single-shard or server-less games

First, look at any single-server (server-less) game that has strong communities. EvE is the most obvious example, where all communities are player formed, and range in scale from small 5-man corps up to 5,000-man mega corps, corp alliances with 10s of 1,000s, and “coalitions” formed from loose, constantly shifting informal cooperation between alliances (coalitions are purely a creature of player behavior, because the game has no features at all to make any in-game tangible connections between alliances). EvE is arguably the most community-driven game in existence today, and not a server in sight.

There are other server-less games as well where players have no problems forming and maintaining strong communities. TSW and STO never had servers or shards or anything like that to segregate players. TESO, when it comes out also will be a singe-shard game. “Single-shard universe” is even a buzzword and a selling point today, and it’s because it obliterates the obstacles to community that come from any architecture that segregates and separates players.

Servers in fact have, when poorly managed, been more often the instrument of death and destruction of communities in games that rely on them. The disastrous crash and burn of SWTOR in the first year was due in very large part to Bioware refusing to wake up and confront the utter collapse of the population, which left players stranded on graveyard servers for months on end until they finally did forced merges down to just three NA servers from what had been dozens.

A similar toxic mechanic has taken hold here in the narrow world of WvW, where almost the entire active population of WvW players has wound up on just three servers. In the absence of any action by ANet to address the population balancing problems, players have addressed it themselves by just reducing the number of worlds where WvW actually happens to a minimum, ensuring that all those worlds have a high and reasonably balanced population.

If people want to play WvW with any reasonable semblance of balance, they have no choice. They have to stack, because it’s what works. The alternative is clinging to graveyard servers with empty maps, hoping maybe someday things will change and people will come back. But even if they do, the communities that were ripped apart by the exodus will be long gone, forgotten even by many who were a part of them.

What if we had only three servers instead of twenty-four to start with?

Second, just imagine for a minute that ANet made some sort of revolutionary change to their back end load balancing code that allowed them to host eight times as many players on a server as they can support today. So ANet decides to merge servers from twenty-four NA shards down to just three.

Would our communities fall apart overnight because now they’re on servers with three or five or eight times the population? No. Your guilds and friends and groups of friends would go right on doing what they do every day now, with the same people they do those things with today. You would just see some more new faces around for a while (until you get to know them). You might even make some new friends.

Server alliances would basically be that; making a few bigger cities out of what are now a lot of mostly small, isolated, and in many cases deserted neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods would still exist. They just would be part of something bigger and better as well, and they would have a chance at least to thrive and grow, rather than being left to wither and die.

The problem with alliances etc. is, that they have to be static to build up a Community. But whenever you have a static system the ppl will always join the winning Team, you got the same problem then before.

As much as I like to see a system that balance out players it has to be dynamic and so wont create a Community.
The balance has to come from the players themselves not through a dynamic system. Like the above mentioned possibility of “Underdog-Rewards”.

greetz

Baels.3469:

Make changes, don’t sit and deliberate whether it fits this ‘vision’ or that ‘vision’. Whilst I’m 1000% appreciative of the iteration process as a designer, you’ve got a digital canvas to work with.

If a change is received negatively, it can be reverted. If everything is left to hypothetical scenarios and what-ifs, nothing will ever get done to improve this game. A little bit of trial and error never hurt. Additionally, testing things in-game gives the players a sense of involvement and contribution, something that we sort of get in these threads… but not really.

This ^^

I must also address the speed of changes should be faster. For example when perplexity runes were added to the game, there was immediately lots of relevant threads in the WvWvW discussion forums of them being overpowered (easily putting over 20 stacks of confusion on target and confusion lasting over 15 seconds!), but it took many months until anything happened. Players really hate to wait 3+ months to get simple things fixed, because really the required fix was nothing but added cooldowns. Similarly if some consumable, siege weapon etc. is brokenly good in the game, it should be fixed within 1 week of time.

Reverting changes back to the original state should also be relatively easy compared to making something totally new. History of computer & video games is one of my special expertise and I don’t know about any game, which has died because of reverting back an ill-fated design choice, but I think everybody knows several games which have died because of really slow development speed or bad game design choices never got reverted and the communication between the core players and devs has been bad.

Right now it is obvious that the borderlands ruins and bloodlust buffs were not a success. There is a separate thread about it, so I won’t go in deeper:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Ruins-Bloodlust-5-months-on/

I know all developers love their own “babies” and killing them is difficult. I would like to see EotM as a test ground, a test bed for new ideas. In the real world 90% ideas are bad, 9% are unrefined and neither should never see daylight outside the company doors. I hope similar strict discipline, good taste and experience & wisdom is used to when selecting what features to copy from EotM to other WvWvW areas. If something like 50% of the EotM new ideas will be copied to WvWvW, it is going to lead to massive mess and lots of hard core gamers quitting WvWvW part of this game. Hard core gamers don’t seem to be that important from first glance to such “casual” game mode as WvWvW, but some WvWvW players really take this more seriously than pvp and their number is many times larger than all active tpvp players combined. The core players is what holds some servers at their position even when the situation gets grim. If the core goes away, there is really nothing to stop the downward spiral. Seeing communities crashed is always sad.

This following is a generalization: but I would claim EotM currently caters more the casual needs (non-stop 24h7 karma train), but the old WvWvW maps are more for the hard core gamers.

EotM is currently still popular, but I really doubt its long-term appeal. Will it be still interesting 1.5 years from now?

I did my Master’s thesis about the history and computer video games (over 200 pages in English). Basically no game survives in the long-term without a very vibrant community, but the game necessarily doesn’t need any new rules, mechanisms or contest to remain popular (assuming the original design choices were incredibly well made). If you look at the biggest successes in game history, they are all done with pretty simple, yet perfected game design e.g. Tetris, Angry Birds. Adding more stuff (new mechanisms, gimmicks, mini games) doesn’t make a better game. Why people still play Counterstrike, despite it was launched in 1999? It doesn’t have that many maps and the weapon set is generally very non-exciting? And graphically the game is outdated.

Pve is another story, because there people really need sooner or later some new content. But pvp is about fighting against other humans. Right now wvwvw seems more and more about fighting doors and fighting powerful NPCs in EotM. Humans are unpredictable and well-designed game doesn’t get boring against other human opponents if it offers almost unlimited set of viable strategies. The real reason why WvWvW got boring for many is not because of the old maps, but because the meta has been the same (hammer train since Autumn 2012) and several classes and few very simple strategies (blobbing/zerging, golem rushing etc) dominate. The same kind of fights where people flip the towers and keeps continue month after month with same results.

I have ever hated wvw and i played quite always in mists. Now that i tried edge of the mists i enjoyed it really much. In my opinion the best difference is that the map is not so big and you have not to spend much time “running” but you are quite soon in fight

Proposal Overview

Environmental siege (inspired by EotM cannon statuary)

Goal of Proposal

Introducing new strategic options, to be able to surprise even veteran WvW-ers. And to allow for small groups to take larger objectives if the enemy isn’t paying attention.

Proposal Functionality

Avalanche

In the borderlands an event can be started to find and chime bells that keep ringing as long as you control the bells. After a certain amount of time, the nearby cliff will start to come down and change the terrain. (Oh, and crush everyone underneath) You can now walk over the first wall of garrison. The terrain stays crumbled until the place is cleared by the defenders.

Bowling

In an event, a couple of miners are led up to a treacherous cliff where they carve out a perfectly round boulder. After a few minutes of carving out the perfect path (chosen by players) the boulder can be rolled over the edge to destroy anyone in it’s path and of course the gate of the keep or tower.

Poisoning the well

You travel through the borderlands carrying a kettle. The enemy can easily spot you if they are nearby, because you carry an event marker. After visiting the skritt, the centaurs, the ruins and the garden, you have found all the ingredients you need to create a powerful poison. This poison can be used once as ammunition for a treb or catapult and it will leave a strong, long lasting acid (a couple of minutes) that ticks for quite a bit of damage. It can also poison water, so it will make it impossible for players to travel from inner bay to the outside. (And the other way around for as long as the duration of the poison lasts)

Magical fire

Through the borderlands stalks a mythical creature fire imp. It carries a bright red fire that can be stolen and used to set even a reinforced gate on fire. The process is slow, but it doesn’t require the presence of a player after the fire is first lit.

The underground tunnel

If you befriend the dredge in EB, you can pay them a hefty price to start building a tunnel into stonemist. They’ll stop working as soon as you lose control over the dredge, and the process takes quite a bit of time. The tunnel will cave in after the dredge change allegiance, or stonemist is taken by those who control the dredge .(suffocating anyone inside)

The Hylek assassination squad

These frogs will run all over the map to slay any dolyaks coming into stonemist.

The Ogre rock slingers

These brutes will regularly walk past the walls to take out any npc’s and siege placed there. (Often contesting stonemist)

Well.. you get the idea. The more of these, the better.

Associated Risks

It may become really hard for undermanned servers to keep their objectives if they lack scouts.

These are for a large part based on NPC events (because I believe these are probably easier to implement?) which many of you do not seem to be fond of. Perhaps a more player based version can be created though. (Where players buy an environmental mining pick from the dredge and carve out boulders themselves at suitable locations)

I’ve seen merging servers mentioned a few times. Is this actually workable? Maybe it’s different in NA, but in EU even lower tier T4-7 servers are capable of regularly having queues during primetime, and some higher tier T1-3 servers have no queues in primetime. The difference is really in the off-peak times. Would merging lower ranked servers not simply result in massive primetime queues?

IMO splitting matchups into chunks, whether 8 hours, 24 hours, or 72 hours, is a more workable solution.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d be curious to know if the folks who argue against and world pride feel that way because of being on underperforming worlds or not.

Reading through your comments again, I felt like this needs a response, not to your question, but how you posed it. You might have meant this innocently, but read in the most obvious way, it sounds like you’re saying that you think what we’re talking about is somehow rescuing “underperforming” worlds that aren’t enjoying WvW because they just aren’t very good at it.

It’s important for people to understand, and I think for ANet to acknowledge, that these worlds you’re talking about are not “underperforming”; they are abandoned. And players abandoned them because your game is broken when it comes to maintaining population balance in WvW across all of the current shards.

Active WvW players are on the whole the most dedicated players you have across all servers, those on the “underperforming” worlds who are still doing it most of all. Those people are grossly overperforming when it comes to playing the game, and doing so despite what is a pretty serious and long neglected problem at this point.

What we’re talking about is fixing at a game mechanics level the problem that players have been doing their best to address on their own by just leaving the majority of servers where WvW is broken, and moving to the handful (3-6) where it can be made to work by sheer force of numbers.

Stacking + coverage >>> all else in the current state of WvW, and there is no dynamic map balancing system or other mechanic to counter that. But if all maps are full on all sides all the time (or if things are as close to that as players can make them), then it forces a rough sort of balance, or at least as close as we can get.

Given that the total number of players in WvW across the game is not that large, this is a work around that only works on a handful of worlds, and is no aid to the other 20+ that, at this point, have nobody left to even try it. So people who like WvW just move to where it works, and leave where it doesn’t.

Proposal Overview

www should turn to a strategy siege game mode where www guilds , dedicated roamers and small teams have place and dedicated pve players have no chance to stay alive there or to just join a karma blob train and destroy everything by pressing just the 1 key . ( i really liked everything said Matipzieu KyA.9613 in his 4 posts : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-Edge-of-the-Mists/page/5#post3694082 )

Goal of Proposal

the major problem that have now the www is that there is not any place for any dedicated team to “write” his glory days. where is the guild leaderboard ? who is the better www guild ? the XxXxXxX ( fake guild ) ? who says it ? the Leaderboards is missing one more list . the guild score !!!

everything inside the old www maps is full of anonymity and simplicity

you want claim a camp and lord says that someone else claimed but we don’t know who to say a small thank you or to ask him in chat or in our server forums when he is leaving it without a single buff.

you claim something you upgrade it , you care about it for ages spending your time and you money and you have not a single reward for your/guild actions

now , all the www guilds and the dedictaed roamers have not any real reason ( influence , gold return from taxes or capturing and holding time ) to attack and defend a structure except to kill the lord and earn the loot from the chest.

very simple and it is against the meaning to be part of a strong team small or big ( a strong www guild ) that fights hard , has manage their coverage , their www buffs and protecting their claimed structures

pve causality in www maps now has no place because dedicated pve casuals can go in EotM and enjoy a different www experience anytime they want ( overflow ) without scores and upgrade costs or anyone to deal with them for their actions.

there is not any excuse from anet developers to keep old www maps in this casual mode now .causality can fill EotM with not single minute of queue

as Kraag Deadsoul.2789 ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-Edge-of-the-Mists/first#post3683094 ) said defenders , scouters and people that love to play this role in www maps have no place as it is now. defending is just impossible with all these www masteries . something has really missed in metrics .

i agree to bring better npc in www maps but i want to see more changes like map merging ( as i wrote in my thread ) and changes of the population in www maps to have better performance ( yesterday we had all www maps massive skill and lag delay )

p.s. you capture a t1 sm you take 9 silver , you capture a full upgrade sm you win the same price

Ragnar.4257:

I’ve seen merging servers mentioned a few times. Is this actually workable? Maybe it’s different in NA, but in EU even lower tier T4-7 servers are capable of regularly having queues during primetime, and some higher tier T1-3 servers have no queues in primetime. The difference is really in the off-peak times. Would merging lower ranked servers not simply result in massive primetime queues?

That’s what overflows are for. The idea would be to bring in EOTM-style overflows (but NOT the red-green-blue random server groups) at the same time as any new server alliances, to avoid any excessive queues during prime-time.

Midius.6501:

The problem with alliances etc. is, that they have to be static to build up a Community. But whenever you have a static system the ppl will always join the winning Team, you got the same problem then before.

It is a problem. But with a large enough scale two things happen: (1) the numbers are large enough that stacking becomes harder to pull off, especially if only a small group cares about it; and (2) as long as you have “enough” people on all sides to fill at least one map equally to the top, queues and overflows will discourage stacking any side to any noticeable degree.

The way you counter stacking is enforcing strict numbers balance in each map instance, which means no side can ever get excessive numbers onto a map, no matter how many are sitting in the queues. Those people on the stacked side then get sick of sitting around and change sides so they can play the game instead of waiting all day.

With a working active map balancing system, players will tend early on to seek the side that has the lowest queue times in their preferred time slot, and whatever side that is will become their home. Any attempts to stack any side beyond rough equality will be defeated, because new people just wind up sitting in queues all the time.

Proposal Overview & Goal

• Make fighting more rewarding and give lower population servers a fighting chance.

Proposal Functionality
Place a chained titan (similar in size to Cliffside fractal guy) at the centre of each borderland. The bloodlust nodes are replaced by seals that connect through massive chains to the titan’s feet, arms, and neck. Each server aims to free the titan to fight on their side. Killing players has a chance to drop vials of blood that can be looted and poured onto the seals. Each seal requires a certain amount of blood to be broken. The chance of blood vial drop scales inversely with the server’s current population on the map: higher population gives lower chance. In order to free the titan a server must break all five seals. The same seal can be broken by different servers independently (similar to each player having their own version of the loot). When pouring the blood onto the seals, the player can choose to contribute towards breaking the seal or instead hinder (capped resistance) the efforts of their opponents (indiscriminate). The progress of a server’s attempt at freeing the titan is hidden from their enemies. Once a seal is broken by a server, it remains so for that server until the titan is free. Once the titan is free, it is shown on the map to all servers by a colour coded icon and also all seals are locked for all servers. The state of seals on all servers resets once the titan falls in battle upon which he is chained up again. Once the titan falls, he remains dormant for a period of time before players are allowed to free him again. Blood vials can drop even if the titan is not available for release (can stockpile blood vials and rush titan release).

When the titan is freed, he is invulnerable to all damage for a period of time but susceptible to slow and speed buff. While the titan is invulnerable it can only attack structures. The only valid structures are the three keeps on each borderland. Upon release, the titan can be commanded during a short time window by players from the server that freed him from anywhere on the map (right click on his icon) to attack a valid enemy keep (democratic). Once this window is over, the titan cannot be commanded. If the titan is given a valid keep to attack, he will move towards it and aim to reach the lord of the keep. If no valid target has been given, the titan will pick a keep at random, which could belong to the server that freed him. This is to prevent servers from controlling every keep and preventing their opponents from feeing the titan. They can still slow down the release of the titan as stated above.

The titan is slow moving but EXTREMELY effective at bringing down keep walls/doors. The titan can and will attack all siege weapons in a radius around him while simultaneously attacking walls/doors. If the titan breaches the inner wall/door of the keep OR the invulnerability buff runs out, he becomes susceptible to damage. Once the titan becomes susceptible to damage, he becomes permanently hostile to everyone: NPCs and players from all servers; and ignores the command that he was given. Furthermore, the titan receives permanent movement speed buff, and enrage stacks that refresh periodically. Each damaging attack removes one enrage stack. Make the titan a force to be reckoned with. The titan will not and should not give a free keep to those who released him, they have to earn it.

If the titan is not killed and there are no players around, he will move capture the keep for himself, and after some time, move towards another keep of his choosing. When the titan is ready to move to another keep, he will lock the current keep from being captured until the titan is killed.

The states of the titan are as follows: when released from chain, he is still weak and those who released him can command him. The titan quickly regains enough strength to not accept command from anyone. Once the command that was given to the titan is fulfilled or a certain amount of time passes, the titan regains its free will and full strength. It is quite kittened at being chained up.

Associated Risks
I have tried to remove the possibility of abuse from the implementation of this proposal. However, it is likely that I have missed something. The titan is meant to give servers a helping hand in overcoming their opponents’ siege and not to give a free ticket to capture keeps. By rewarding a little extra the server with the lower map presence, this proposal aims to even out population imbalances to some degree. The chance of blood vial drop has to be implemented rather carefully. A limit on how many times a server can command the titan per day (they can release as many times as they like) may be necessary. The bloodlust nodes do not very actively affect WvW and as such are mostly ignored. The titan cannot be ignored.

Ragnar.4257:

I’ve seen merging servers mentioned a few times. Is this actually workable? Maybe it’s different in NA, but in EU even lower tier T4-7 servers are capable of regularly having queues during primetime, and some higher tier T1-3 servers have no queues in primetime. The difference is really in the off-peak times. Would merging lower ranked servers not simply result in massive primetime queues?

Your statement might hold true for most mid-to-lower EU servers, but not Desolation.

Desolation has no queue to any map even at prime time or during reset. This is very good when LA is under attack. You can do all your crafting at stuff at your BL at any time you want. As good as the flying thing, which costs gems. Almost permanent outnumbered “buff” gives even more WXP. Gotta be positive. I am just amazed how our opposing servers cannot pull a bigger point lead even when they clearly have the number advantage. This has been going on for so many weeks.

I am pretty sure the lowest 3 servers: Vabbi, Fissure and Woe and Whiteside Ridge are not having any queues at the his moment. Can anybody confirm?

EU doesn’t need 27 servers, so merging the servers so that we have just 24 servers like NA has, would make sense. I would give the players of the deleted servers free transfer tickets to transfer to any medium to low tier server they want (to avoid overstacking to the top servers).

Unfortunately, I feel if something isn’t done to spread out the WvW population somewhat evenly fairly soon. Server names like Jade Quarry, Blackgate, and Tarnished Coast will lose their impact and end up just being different words for Red, Blue, and Green, as people will continue to congregate in T1 until there are only three active WvW servers and the rest will be even more depopulated than they are are now.

I don’t have any great ideas on how to accomplish spreading out WvW populations to to give everyone a chance at playing WvW as Anet envisioned it. Perhaps separating T1 from the rest of the tiers and letting the top3 battle it out. While we figure out a way form an even league for the lower tiers, through alliances, etc.

Caveth.3268:

Proposal Overview

• Sentry Turrets (that reveal enemies on EotM) and/or the Observatory should be on every WvW map.

Goal of Proposal

• Helps players scout for enemies attacking their structures – replacing the need for a player to stand in a tower all day being bored out of their mind as a lookout.

Proposal Functionality

• There should be an Observatory on every map that can be captured.
• When captured, players on the server that captured it may place Sentry Turrets to track enemies on the mini-map. Or, the Observatory itself could track enemies within its area of effect.
• Perhaps place multiple Observatories; each one would allow coverage for a different part of the map. A good number would be 3 to 12 per map, so that one doesn’t cover too much of the map by itself.
• Observatories should be places that are easy to capture; likely without walls or gates. This would help players quickly take them out to sneak around and capture more important locations.

Associated Risks

• It may become very hard to sneak around to capture places with small groups.
• Even with a large zerg, an enemy may always be ready to counter if they can see you on their map at all times.

I like the idea of Sentry Turrets, the Southeast Ruins (Carver’s Ascent) would require very little tweaking and it’s a very high point, OR put an observatory up north where the old place of power was, OR re-design the JP entrance to include the observatory.

Making it easy to capture would be a big NO-NO; This functionality is powerful and as such needs to be difficult to achieve.

Proposal Alliance vs Alliance vs Alliance

background (no need for servers in PvE/EotM as well)
I liked the way GW1 handled cities. Instead of Server and Overflow (random-collection, in EU with babylonian language mixture and not easy to join a specific one). You could choose the different language-specific versions that currently existed. I thnk this was better for PvE-maps and also for EotM and Obsidian than the current GW2 system!

Proposal
For WvW I would still prefer the player controlled alliance as the main organization that participate in a Match.

An alliance is a collection of guilds. Where one Guild is the Alliance leader that registers the alliance for a match, determines the name, accepts guilds for the alliance (only before registration for the next weeks match) and may kick guilds (all times).
So two versions of an Alliance exist. The currently played match-alliance and the next-match-alliance in formation. Guilds may be added to the next-match-alliance till the match starts, afterwards no more guilds may be added. (ANet may charge gems for Alliance registration, reregistration of an alliance should be much cheaper to encourage stability, in this case a match win should earn the alliance leader of the winning team some (more than he would pay for a re-registration) gems).

Any alliance has a maximal number of players. This of course depends on match duration and number of maps the match is played on. As an estimate ANet could count how many different players played during a match and take the maximum of all current matches.

Not all players of a guild may want to participate in next weeks WvW and it would be bad if the non-participating players would count against the maximum head-count of the alliance. Therefore it would need a new guild-right “wvw-participation”. This has to exist in 2 versions as well: current-match and next-weeks match. Only people with this right set count towards the alliance limit and only those can enter this alliance wvw-match. It may be set only for the next-week match, it may be revoked for both the current and the next match (e.g. your guild leader can exclude you if you turn out to be a grief-player, of course the right is also turned off if you got kicked from the guild). A player can have the WvW-right mostly once (even if he is member in several guilds) and this right is independent from representing that guild. (You as a working server-community may build a meta-guild with all wvw-players of a server and join an alliance with that meta-guild, still people can represent their normal guild.)

Beside the player formed alliances there are always 3-5 random-alliances. (1 match of 3 random alliances (or more if player can express a demand to participate in a random-alliance), and 0-2 random alliance to fill up the matches of registered alliances)
Players not member of any alliance (have no (longer, i.e. got revoked/kicked) wvw right from a guild) in the current match may join any of these random-alliances (they can choose (!! a non-alliance guild may choose the same) on first join in a match, and are bound to this alliance for the duration of the match.

Any registered alliance (you pay that with your registration) should have 2 forum-threads, 1 public readable/alliance-leader writeable one for recruitment, 1 alliance-member-only read/write for community discussions). Best would be: Each alliance (and only this alliance) has access to voice-communication (a Teamspeak or similar in game), probably best combined with chat-selection and commander-squad. (payed by the registration as well).

Pro:
- WTJ is limited by max alliance size and subject to community control
- Grief-play is solved
- Wise alliance formation may give you good coverage
- An alliance that broke apart can easier reform without transfer costs
- ANets revenue from transfer costs is replaced by Alliance-registration costs.
- It’s far superior (in terms of community building and interest to win) to random assignment as done for EotM
- It’s solves the dead-WvW-servers problem

Contra:
- Alliances may be unstable resulting in inaccurate ratings and imbalanced matches.
- The number of alliances may explode, if everyone may build it’s own very small and not competitive alliance. (However if this stays stable, and is not unique, balanced matches of small alliances may occur as well.)
- No one builds an alliance, but this means: everyone likes to play random-alliances.

I have to ask the Moderators to get this thread back on track. 3 pages of multiple posts that don’t have anything to do with the CDI Topic is killing it.

EoTM proves that the issue of imbalanced server is solvable.
The proposed ideas of factions are good, but 3 factions would not be a good replacement for server identity: too diluted, too flat.
Why not think about something like 9 or 12 factions, so there will be 3 or 4 different matchups (through Glicko scoring) at the same time instead of 1 and factions can have more meaningfull “political” relationships and build “hatred” or “sympathy” in relation of others instead of factionX vs TheRestOfTheWorld. This will help the respective communities to build their identities.

Ben K.6238:

Long posts there.

I’m glad to see some consideration of the bandwagoning issues faced by lower-tier servers – one of the things that often grates about posts on server community from those based on JQ or BG is that they can seem oblivious to how badly a server’s WvW community is wrecked by a player exodus. So far, only 4 out of 24 servers on NA have yet to find themselves in that position – it’s no coincidence that three are T1 and the other is T2.

At the launch of the game, fighting for the server seemed to mean something, but when 80% of the server upped stakes for JQ, BG, SoR and Kaineng, the few of us left behind were left with few illusions about how far community gets you when you’re losing.

We’re not all oblivious to it. I wish there were a way to end it, but until Devon comes out and says “Coverage will never be the best way to win.” this will keep happening. Unless coverage is given the boot in favor of skill, and even matches up and down the tiers, there is no incentive to not leave your server and give up on establishing a long-standing community. This is not the fault of the higher tiers; the blame falls on anet here.

DevonCarver.5370:

I also wanted to continue discussion about changes to Stonemist that might make it a more engaging place to fight over. I think a move to multiple capture points could make it a more difficult place to capture and add some variety to the way the fight plays out.

How about this:

• 1 main capture point (the actual Lord Room).
• 3 side capture points, each one protected by an unique Champion Defender (no champion loot bags, so no farm here).

• If attackers hold 2/3 side capture ponts, defenders have like 5 minutes of time to retake at least one of them. By “holding” I mean that attackers must remain on the circle, otherwise the side capture point will automatically return in defenders’ possession.
• If attackers hold 3/3 side capture points, it’s an instant capture.
• If attackers hold the main capture point (Lord Room), it’s an istant capture. Of course defeating the Legendary Castle Lord should be WAAAY more difficult than now.

Also, each side capture point could provide a buff/debuff to StoneMist defenses, as someone suggested before.

Final note: I think that other keeps, not only SM, could benefit these changes.

I don’t believe that giving Lords different mechanics will do much. Zergs take out most Lords pretty quick regardless of how unique or different they are.

Overview:
More chokepoints and unique terrain for combat. EOTM has a great set of terrain and I’ve found myself having some of my most enjoyable WvW fights there because of the impact this has.

Goal:
- Combat the zerg-train. Most notable, in EOTM, a smaller group of players is able to at least hold of a zerg for a while at certain chokepoints in the map. This really helps balance out the combating sides because a lot of the power of a zerg comes from fast, uninhibited movement from A to B. EOTM is very successful at limiting this, so it would be nice to see it implemented in other maps somehow.
-Less monotonous play. It can be a little dull running from A to B in EB for example. EOTM has such an interesting map to it that I genuinely enjoy getting around the map and it is less of a simple time consuming hobby to return to the commander.

Functionality:
This proposal would probably consist of marginal alterations to existing WvW maps. Although the maps are good, they inevitably would need a small change to accommodate this suggestion.

Associated Risks:
I honestly see very few here, other than the risk of damaging successful maps if not done effectively.

1. Now that we have EOTM as an overflow reduce the maximum number of players each server can field in world vs world. If your server is super stacked either go to EOTM and wait out your que or destack on a lower pop server. Why do this? It will even the playing field.

A. This creates an even playing field for all servers in a match up.
B. This gives players an incentive to destack and servers to balance out.
C. This gives players something to do while they wait.

2. Change the way points are gained a cross between the SPVP system of rewarding points for kills of other players and change Point captures to a 1 time thing. When a tower is captured that is 10 points not 10 points every 10 minutes. This system still rewards you for capturing the point, but prevents players from night capping and things ticking all night long. If you want to keep the old system scale it back to 10 points every hour or so. There are so many good reasons why this is a good idea.

A. This allows people to play for kills and not just points.
B. This prevents matches from becoming run aways with no way to come back.
c. This prevents matches to be decided by coverage. Without penalizing people that play off hours.

3. Stop having Seasons unless you are going to come up with rules. What type of contest that everyone should have a shot at winning is a contest where not everyone has a shot at winning and people can cheat by stacking transferring to other servers to stack and guarantee wins.

A. This creates a sporting environment. Sports have rules you know.

4. Give players a reason to win World vs World. Currently there is not much incentive to win other than to say yeah we won.

5. Please implement a raiding system like found in PVE in other games for World Vs World. And extend LFG to World Vs World.

6. Please Implement more ways to spend badges on things players want ascended and skins and stuff.

7. The maps could use a make over without changing the terrain.

8. Implement GvG but so players can use PVE gear and stats.

9. Implement an Alliance system.

10. Do something about arrow carts they are OP.

DevonCarver.5370:

Topic Goal:

The Edge of the Mists features numerous changes to the standard WvW mechanics.The most notable changes are: Scoring on capture of objectives, scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs, unique bosses at each objective, increased emphasis on verticality, more chokepoints, a much shorter match time, and destructible terrain. Of the changes included, which would you like to see implemented in the standard WvW maps?

Please feel free to mention anything not included in the above list, it is simply intended as a guide. The goal is to take some of the things that worked best in Edge of the Mists and discuss how they could be done in the other maps and what the positives and negatives would be of those changes.

Please see the below suggestion for formatting your proposals.

Proposal Overview
Removing the upgrade options from towers, camps AND keeps in WvW
Make all objectives listed to have the same default defenses to work with as in EotM(INCLUDING SMART NPC’s/Champ Lords)

Proposal Functionality
this simplifies the game, you get cannons oil to build if you want, people can build more of course.

Associated Risks
The risks I don’t see, the walls and gates would have to be toughened up to match EotM and adding extra outjuts to gates so that 2 oils can be properly placed would be nice.

all in all I like how you can just go kill people and not worry about upgrades.
The supply generators ( Yay no more Yaks) would be a huge + also

all the stuff in EotM pretty much makes it to where you have to keep moving, keep up on your area/map in order to keep stuff, you only sit to defend when have the time to get to that objective. otherwise you try to cap something on their side to compensate.

and of course, no more siegerazor on enemy maps would have to be implemented.

Zepher.7803:

I have to ask the Moderators to get this thread back on track. 3 pages of multiple posts that don’t have anything to do with the CDI Topic is killing it.

Yes please

Proposal Overview
NPCs in EOTM have specific points to their placement. In WvWvW, the placement of NPCs seems more for PvE requirements than strategy. Review the purpose of NPCs in WvWvW to ensure that all placement has a purpose to strategy.

Proposal Functionality
Upgrade Skritt and Centaur camps to become more like the ogres and moles in the EB.
Option 1: They are npc’s that attack the northern camp supply depot (Pretty easy to do)
Option 2: They provide a merchant npc who when given 200 supply, will go and attack a fortification type (Skritt sap walls and centaurs take care of gates). This creates a “autoattack” seige weapon if you will.
Upgrade Ghosts to “phase” through walls to harass an enemy tower.

Associated Risks
Creating more karma trains/camps to take.

Side Note
I think the discussion about worlds vs alliances, while not the specific topic of the CDI, is a valid discussion because the underlying issue with WvW is population imbalance and server bleeding. Until you fix those core issues, this CDI will be no more than a quick band aid that will come off in a month or so.

They only real way to fix server imbalance is to penalize the servers with more people and reward the servers with less people. It’s pretty cut and dry. If you have a period of time where you are holding PPT high, then the reward for holding that objective decreases for the amount of time you hold it. While if you capture something something that has been held for a long time, you gain a bonus to the PPT objective. If holding a Camp nets you 5 points per tick then after 30 ticks it become 4, then 2, then 1. The same for Castles and towers. If a castle or tower has been held for a full day then you gain additional PPT based on the time held when you capture it.

They key will be finding out where there is balance between the PPT burst on capture and the PPT bleed so that either way is a valid form of gaining PPT. Hold Vs Ninja.

Zepher.7803:

I have to ask the Moderators to get this thread back on track. 3 pages of multiple posts that don’t have anything to do with the CDI Topic is killing it.

Devon pointed up the idea of server alliances as interesting, said he thinks it could do some good, and asked for more specific comments about it as a possible solution. He also specifically asked if the idea of “server pride,” or lack of it, is linked to “underperformance” of certain worlds in WvW.

The last several pages contain a good number of posts responding directly to the (collaboratively) revised topic of the thread, and to Devon’s questions.

The current stacking+coverage meta and long standing population balance problems are serious issues, that people have been asking for some work on for a long time. And people care a lot about notions like pride, identity, and community. So they write a lot about these things when asked why they matter, and how to address them.

titanlectro.5029:

Zepher.7803:

I have to ask the Moderators to get this thread back on track. 3 pages of multiple posts that don’t have anything to do with the CDI Topic is killing it.

Yes please

Part of the problem is this particular CDI should not have been brought up until some of the previous issues were addressed. Also many of them very much are on topic in trying to find ways to implement some of the EotM features into WvW and if it would work.

Let me just copy and paste part of Devon’s post you seem to have missed.

“Please feel free to mention anything not included in the above list, it is simply intended as a guide. The goal is to take some of the things that worked best in Edge of the Mists and discuss how they could be done in the other maps and what the positives and negatives would be of those changes”.

Heezdedjim.8902:

EOTM and sPvP actively obstruct communities by forcing constant, random churn between “sides.” That’s why EOTM-style random server mash ups won’t work.

<snip>

There are other server-less games as well where players have no problems forming and maintaining strong communities. TSW and STO never had servers or shards or anything like that to segregate players. TESO, when it comes out also will be a singe-shard game. “Single-shard universe” is even a buzzword and a selling point today, and it’s because it obliterates the obstacles to community that come from any architecture that segregates and separates players.

Servers in fact have, when poorly managed, been more often the instrument of death and destruction of communities in games that rely on them. The disastrous crash and burn of SWTOR in the first year was due in very large part to Bioware refusing to wake up and confront the utter collapse of the population, which left players stranded on graveyard servers for months on end until they finally did forced merges down to just three NA servers from what had been dozens.

A similar toxic mechanic has taken hold here in the narrow world of WvW, where almost the entire active population of WvW players has wound up on just three servers. In the absence of any action by ANet to address the population balancing problems, players have addressed it themselves by just reducing the number of worlds where WvW actually happens to a minimum, ensuring that all those worlds have a high and reasonably balanced population.

<snip>

What if we had only three servers instead of twenty-four to start with?

Second, just imagine for a minute that ANet made some sort of revolutionary change to their back end load balancing code that allowed them to host eight times as many players on a server as they can support today. So ANet decides to merge servers from twenty-four NA shards down to just three.

Would our communities fall apart overnight because now they’re on servers with three or five or eight times the population? No. Your guilds and friends and groups of friends would go right on doing what they do every day now, with the same people they do those things with today. You would just see some more new faces around for a while (until you get to know them). You might even make some new friends.

Server alliances would basically be that; making a few bigger cities out of what are now a lot of mostly small, isolated, and in many cases deserted neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods would still exist. They just would be part of something bigger and better as well, and they would have a chance at least to thrive and grow, rather than being left to wither and die.

Great post! Awesome post, actually.

The problem is that ANet has built so much visual clutter into the combat that I simply don’t think they could handle a three-realm scenario. GW2’s “server” capacity is already a misnomer since ANet leases server capacity in bulk from Akamai for NA (not sure who they use for EU). The concept of “server” is purely artificial so indeed ANet should in theory be able to aggregate players as you propose, but I don’t think their game engine can handle the breadth of abilities and effects that they’ve built into the game and handle large numbers of players at the same time.

Some players have complained that the combat abilities, graphics, and effects in TESO are more constrained than those in GW2 and I’m not surprised that’s the case, but on the other hand TESO runs all player accounts on the same massive realm with virtually zero lag, fps drops, or other stumbles even in huge battles. The two games just seem to have a different focus. The incongruity for me is that ANet has done almost everything imaginable, whether for PvE (most Living World activities are zerg fests) or WvW and whether intentionally or not, to promote a zerg play style even though their game doesn’t handle it very well.

Cactus.2710:

The incongruity for me is that ANet has done almost everything imaginable, whether for PvE (most Living World activities are zerg fests) or WvW and whether intentionally or not, to promote a zerg play style even though their game doesn’t handle it very well.

Quoted for posterity.

I do agree that an “enduring community” is important, but unfortunately WvW in its current state maintains the higher-tier communities by bleeding players from the lower tiers. on my server, there is no community left to draw from. the current system that sacrificed my community to keep someone else’s strong, is a failure for the people left behind.

why does this happen? because coverage is king. as a practical matter, the only way a lower-population server can remain competitive versus a higher one is by working harder. too often, it really is “work” harder rather than the preferred “play” harder.

eventually, working harder leads to burnout, causing players to either quit the game or transfer to higher-population servers where they can play more and work less. this is understandable, and I cannot blame any player for finding a way to make their own gameplay less work and more fun. but it only makes the problem worse for the players who remain, and thus the death spiral begins.

EotM is fun in large part because it solves the population problem. in regular WvW there is nothing I can do as an individual to fix the population problem except to transfer up. I cannot conjure up more players for my side, nor is there anything I can do to reduce the size of an enemy zerg.

-ken

Cactus.2710:

The problem is that ANet has built so much visual clutter into the combat that I simply don’t think they could handle a three-realm scenario. GW2’s “server” capacity is already a misnomer since ANet leases server capacity in bulk from Akamai for NA (not sure who they use for EU). The concept of “server” is purely artificial so indeed ANet should in theory be able to aggregate players as you propose, but I don’t think their game engine can handle the breadth of abilities and effects that they’ve built into the game and handle large numbers of players at the same time.

I believe you are correct that the current back end could not handle substantially more players on a WvW map instance than we see now in T1 battlegrounds (where skill lag does become a real problem regularly).

All of the proposals for rebalancing population by alliances or factions or whatever assume that at the same time we also would have the EOTM-style overflows ported over to the traditional WvW maps as well.

That would be required both to keep queue times manageable at prime time, and to allow larger total populations to be active in the war than what the system can handle in one battlegrounds instance.

The assumption also is that the system would attempt to keep populations within each instance balanced fairly closely between the three sides, and just create and destroy instances as needed to fill as many balanced maps as it could.

The excess from any one side would have to be queued if they could not get in without unbalancing the numbers in an instance (which would of course encourage them to swap to an “outnumbered” side to avoid the queues).

Zepher.7803:

I have to ask the Moderators to get this thread back on track. 3 pages of multiple posts that don’t have anything to do with the CDI Topic is killing it.

Most of those posts have everything to do with this CDI. Aside from the new map, the single biggest difference between EOTM and WvW is the manner in which matchups are created. Posts that reflect on that are entirely relevant.

@ Stupendous Man.4920 no .. just no. You want to make WvW better but making it PVE…

wish there was a down vote button

DevonCarver.5370:

I’m curious what you all think about choke points as strategic ideas. I don’t think we’d ever want a map that was just a bunch of canyons, this isn’t Sparta or Thermopylae, but having areas that make it harder for large groups to get through if they are well-defended creates gameplay. Think of a tower that guards the only pass through a canyon, rather than bridges everywhere. Is that something that, in moderation, could provide for more varied and strategic gameplay?

For the purposes of the question, think in terms of building a new map from scratch, rather than retrofitting the current maps.

I lead a smaller sized guild and there are 2 locations on the current borderland maps that I love using to take out a larger number of players. Those spots are the entrances that lead into Vale and Lowlands camps. What makes them so useful is that they have the single chokepoint, but at the same time, you have options to maneuver around it and go up top or sneak around the back. I think that this has made for some interesting fights and if used correctly, could lead to some very epic situations.

I also agree with the aspect of not just placing canyons everywhere because I think open-field fights are just as fantastic as chokepoints.

Cannot be stressed enough that Alliances (or anything like it) is the solutions for A LOT of WvW problems.

It solves population issues, it evens coverage, and, last but not least, it solves the emptyness feeling that low tiers servers have when in WvW. Serious, I’m in a not so low pop server (Borliss Pass), and I can, often, run around the maps for 10 minutes without find a single enemy soul, especially out of prime time.

GW2 is a game with literally hundreds of thousands players. The world should feel alive 24/7! It’s just ridiculous when you have less than 20 players in an entire map.

Make 3 alliances (groups, factions, whatever) and balances the matchs like EOTM. Goodbye, Coverage Wars, Welcome, GW2.