Guild Wars 2

1- WvW Population Balance, how basing transfers off Server population instead of rank is making it worse.
2- Leagues, and the reason the community was ignored (T1 should have its own leagues for the millionth time)
3- Alt Friendliness
^

1. Power creeping in WvW (looking at ascended armor)
2. Orbs
3. Commander system

Coverage.
Arrow Cart Hacks.
Class Balance (Rangers in particular).

1. The issue of server population disparity. (eliminating it, making it less impactful to the match)

2. Commander system (addressing lack of player valued benefits for one in charge of the zerg)

3. WXP and alt unfriendliness (……sometimes I dont want to bring my guardian to WvW)

1.) new things to do which benefit the server
2.) make defending more fun (not necessarily more rewarding)

@1.) Giving different kinds of roles more things to do e.g. as solo-roamer: you automatically send map-markers of spotted zergs when targetting (ctrl + t) enemies from any distance.
@2.) e.g. give players something to do while they stay back in a tower. NPCs now sound alarm at incoming enemies while someone is defending that tower and doing activities that make sense (collecting stones to increase defense of walls, train npcs to become stronger npc-defenders,… events like these)

1. Population coverage – PvE server does not have to equal WvW server. I’d like to see 24 population balanced servers.
2. Player progression – Make titles account bound. Make rank points a currency that can be spent on any alt
3. New maps – I’d like to see some 2 server maps to keep things exciting. Just please not a gimmicky map (think skyhammer/spirit watch). We need good places to fight.

1. Server Active WvW Population Imbalance
2. Party for more than 5 integrated with the UI
3. WvW Rewards/Achievements

Precisions point 2: i.e. unlike current Commander system
Precisions point 3: For example, Ascended/Legendary unlock/availability, titles with attainable achievements, dungeons skins availability, fun goals to work towards with no stat boosts, etc… strictly through WvW.

1. Population/Coverage as it relates to Matchup balance
2. Alt un-friendly architecture
3. WvW Rewards that generate 99.999% trash

1) reward imbalance between PvE and WvW, even thou wvw is considered a sub set of pve.

2) class balance separation between wvw and spvp, what works or is op or up in a conquest mode spvp match is vastly different then what works in wvw.

3) PPT, and how to change scoring to spread out populations on servers and maps

I have one I missed:

7. Class balance changes to make Thief, Ranger, and Engineer more viable to a large scale combat (zerg if you will) situation.

1) Population balance
Effectively predetermined match outcomes don’t make for inspiring competition.

2) Defending vs attacking rewards and time investment
Defenders spend hours to fully upgrade a keep, do tedious work, get no rewards and negligible WXP, and have to pay gold for upgrades out of their own pocket.
Attackers can golem rush a fully upgraded keep in less than a minute, have more fun playing, get rewards and WXP, and their only possible cost is siege equipment which is bought for badges not gold.

3) WvW class balance
Completely ignored by an sPvP-centric balance team

WvW

Maps

• Will we be seeing more maps in the future? Maybe have a bank of maps that get selected from at random at the beginning of each map? Probably reaching out here a bit, but what about procedurally generated, destructible maps? The destruction wouldn’t matter so much, since there’ll be a new map the next match anyway
• The possibility of giving players tools to create WvW maps? Exploiting could be combated by only allowing players to create the map; devs would do the placing of the structures or point locations (in reference to my next point), and the beginning of each match would have the world map completely misted over

Sandbox

• Possibly removing a lot of the pre-constructed elements in favour of player-created constructions (keeps, towers ect)?

1. Map Population Imbalance:
Want to know if it’s total map limit or server limit, and hope its server limit, as this would help to curb overwhelming enemy forces.

2. Commander Tag Functionality:
Have tags that are either Guild/Everyone. The tags could have more functions like a map popup (similar to the game letting us know there is a new build), or a drop down menu as the commander to check supply without a type command that has a long grocery list of people in the squad. Maybe increase the radius of /supplyinfo? And last if a commander places siege an announcer yells the type of siege, like is PvP when the announcer yells “Trebuchet!!!”

3. Guild Buffs:
Make them more interesting. Currently they only benifit a close radius to what that is claimed. However if the guild buffs only effect stats of allies. What if there were debuffs for enemies like, slower attack speed or build times for siege? Also how about an added functionality for guild buffs, that extends further based on the senteries nearby?

1. Matchup imbalance – Most matchups should involve servers with relatively balanced coverage.
2. Stats imbalance – Ascended, World Abilities (esp. Guard Leech, Applied Fortitude), Bloodlust stats.

1. Population of servers
2. Rewarding more for defense
3. Why is this required for Map Completion?

First…as one of the you team’s biggest critics……let me say a BIG THANK YOU for taking this in the RIGHT direction that being said.

1.) Commander/Larger grouping system (I can deal with being outnumbered so long as I can run properly with my friends/guildies and really organize something)

2.) Server population imbalance (Self-explanatory…huge blow-outs eventually lead to loss of fun/excitement…people stop playing)

3.) Not sure…those are the big two would pretty much bring WvW back to life for me…probably Account Bound WxP skills or at least lower the amount needed to max out…

1. population imbalance (reduce)
2. power creep (reduce)
3. zerging/blobbing (reduce)

For me, the most important 3 topics for WvW are:

1. Point system (sub-topic: Population problems)

2. Reward system (sub-topic: grade of correlation between PvE and WvW)

3. Commander system

1: Defence/offence balance
2: DR removal from WvW.
3: Commander squad tweaking and better tools.

WVW:

1) Defense, as in a reason why zerging is rewarded more
2) Badges, as in making them buy more of a variety of items
3) Commander tag abilities, as in they need more

1) Lag
2) Commander Functions
3) Rewards for non-DPS, i.e. healing, scouting, defending, escorting

1. More active skills/rotations which allows skilled players to excel
2. Anti Zerg
3. Holy Trinity roles as optimal but not mandatory

1) Alt friendliness
2) GvG
3) PvE/WWW rewards imbalance

1- Scoring system
2- Lack of any risk/reward mechanic, especially the risk.
3- Reward imbalance between WvW and PvE

WvW:

1) Server imbalance. It’s freaking ridiculous. Need sooome kind of comeback system.
2)Alt-friendliness. Why do you hate my alts…
3)Rewards/WvW achieves (Sorry I’m torn on this one, but both could use a re-hash)

1. Reward System (support roles in combat, defensive roles, over-emphasis on aoe tagging)
2. WvW Manifesto (let’s collaborate)
3. Power Creep

1. Going away from siege & zerg wars and power creep.
2. More maps (unique borderland maps?).
3. Commander tools, squad/raid UI etc.

I think GvG should be a part of sPvP, but in case if Devs disagree then it’s No.1 on this list.

1) Population balance between tiers.
Ex: T1 US has 2-3x numbers of WvW players then #4 ranked server and 4-5x numbers of 5-8 ranked servers. Transfer costs to transfer to T1 is same as T2-6 because of PVE population is considered so WvW players will never move to Tiers 2-6 because of cost being 1 factor.
2) WvW map limit
Since you can’t fix skill lag yet please lower map limits for each server. T1 US population will spread to lower tiers if they have 1-2 hr queues all the time. I suggest 25-30% low limit for each server on a map to get started.
3) Commander ui/squad system.
we need to have a raid type ui for commander with atleast supply/class info.

edited:
1)Commander and party UI
2)bugs
3)usefullness of many classes in wvw

1) Better incentive for two losing servers to gang up on the winner server rather than each other.
2) Equalizing rewards for defending with attacking so players don’t feel they have to attack/take towers, keeps, etc to be rewarded
3) Some sort of buff/better rewards should be applied to any server who is drastically losing to other servers in a match up. (underdog bonus perhaps?)

1: Population imbalance between servers (I’m noticing a trend with almost everyone on this one)
2: unique rewards for WvW (make me WANT to play WvW for something cool and unique)
3: Debuff for large groups, buff for small groups, maybe better rewards for small groups accomplishing an objective…get rid of the zerg! zerg = boring.

1. Improving competitiveness when the three servers are mismatched, e.g. in NA, the top three servers always beat #4 and #4 always outscores #5 & 6.
2. Improving the relative efficiency of non-zerg tactics compared to zerg-vs-zerg.

1) More HP for tower and keep gates, especially for reinforced gates.

2) Commander UI/Squad System improvements and new features

3) More rewards from defending objectives in wvw.

1. Server Stacking and little being done to lessen the top heavy populations we have now.
2. Leagues and imbalanced matches (specifically Gold NA).
3. Character vs Account bound WvW ranks.

1) Population imbalance (Force people to spread out, instead of gifting them for bandwagoning on already stacked servers. Lowering the map cap would be a good start.)

2) Account wide ranks

3) Commander system (Including adding a guild-commander icon, so we can actually take use of the targeting function for it’s actual purpose.)

1. Defending Objectives (how to make it more appealing and feasible, esp. against zergs)
2. Unique / worthwhile WvW rewards
3. Zergs

1. Give names to each of the Tower Lords and Keep Lords
2. Give them each a unique skin and scripted voice interactions
3. Make them different classes with difference abilities

1. Coverage Balance

Balance is the #1 topic for me. Here a balance needs to be made in regards how many players of a world in total are on all the maps. Meaning if you just with 10 players in WvW for example and the other worlds with 100 and 50 there needs to be some form of compensation for it. Total playing users, so it cannot be abused be leaving a map empty.

There were tons of discussions and suggestions already in the forums. It can go from stat buffs/debuffs to rewards. But as we are playing more for points with the league from now on (with a short break between season) probably points needs to be adjusted.

Let’s take an extreme example form a current EU matchup (Kodash, Vizunah, Gunnar). In the early morning hours basically no German players are online and only a few Gunnar’s. So Vizunah with a large part of Canadian players just play PvD and reset everything on all maps. No skill needed, no competition. Still same reward. Not playing aginst anything beside doors gets rewarded hugely. Biggest flaw in WvW right now.

An easy way out could go like this 100 players take Stonemist from a server with only 10 people playing. So the 100 player world just gets 10% of points per tick for it. If the 10 players server sneaks SM, they get 10 times the points per tick. OK, this is probably a bit over the top. But points can be balanced easily based on total players playing. And it can be fine tuned BETWEEN the seasons or based on a pre-season ranking. So many options to think about.

To prevent abuse by just logging off before a tick, take the average population during the last number of ticks (maybe 4-8, meaning 1-2 hours). Or go further and take the total average during the full week which balance it a bit smoother. There are so many options. But balance need to take place on a coverage base.

To go even further: same applies to WxP and Karma. If you just to PvD you don’t get much. This does not promote PvD anymore.

Something among these lines more defined with some thought over maths should balance the point system. A 100 man zerg still can stomp 10 players as before.

Bloodlust = stat buff has to go. Getting additional points per finish is OK. All in all trying to get more PvP into WvW did not work as every dedicated WvW would have told you. Face it, this was a waste of time. It is a nice design, but no one really uses it. Was a waste of resources.

Outmanned = basically no repair costs at the moment, which is not enough. If you are clearly outmanned this is where a stat buff should come in. Not much. But something so people can provide a decent fight. Again outmanned must be across all maps, not a single map, so it cannot be abused. Redesign it to really give the underdog some help.

2. Skill Lag

OK here we have a design issue of your Client Server System and how it processes everything. This needs to be redesigned. It is technically absolutely no problem to have thousands of players fighting in SM’s lord room without any skill lag. I am not talking rendering lag! So this needs to be redone.

3. Passive Rewards

People who are scouting needs to get some reward. This is no easy to achieve without promoting to being afk and leeching of others. But something needs to be done here to reward people actively pushing Dolyaks, building defensive siege, or just scouting. Problem here would be AFKers trying to leech something.

Maybe a commander can appoint scouts that get WxP or get stuff per hour? I think some active player control by players could work here. But I am honest, and do not really have an idea here based on what’s currently in the game. But something needs to be done.

4. AoE Cap

This needs to be removed from the game. I know why it is there. Not for balance reasons but to compensate for your client server design. Basically if 100 players keep standing in an AoE circle all should get damage. Same for condition removal. Or just raise it beyond 5 people like to 20 people. This will completly change zerg fights to be be more stategic and instead of blobbing you actually have to properly fight on the field.

WvW will actually become more competive. Face it PvP in GW2 will never become esport. But WvW as it is unique has the potential to beome one! You have so much unrealized potential here in the long run.

5. Trait Bookmarks

Gem Store item where you can buy trait slots. So you can easily switch between builds. Price as much as a Bank Slot. This convenience item will be the biggest seller you ever had. Offer at least 3 or 4 per char.

With this the instant trait reset covenience items will get interesting. You can try out new builds while playing but have your current build saved or switch between playstyles. Think of all the stuff you can sell for players doing Fractals, WvW, PvP, PvE. They probably would like to use different traits. But currently do not do so often because of inconvenience. The slots are soulbound, as it is pure convenience.

6. Account Bound WxP

It is stupid to have them soul bound. It does not encourage playing alts. If people play more alts in WvW, they log in more hours and as a result you might have more sales. It’s a Win Win.

7. WxP Trait Resets

Should be possible. To prevent people resetting traits when jumping on an arrow cart, zerging, using trebs just limit it to once a day or even once a week. Basically when WvW shutsdown for reset, the traits get resets as well. Easy as a pie.

8. Guild Commanders

Commanders can choos to have a tag only visibile for people in his guild. Multiple commanders are no issue and do not need multiple colors as people can join a squad.

wonderful surprise to see this thread, thank you!

1 – tools to rally more people from our servers to gather interest in wvw – ie world wide announcements – many people like wvw – but it’s discouraging to walk into an empty BL, or a BL without an experienced commander.

2 – tools that favor pugs – strangers are not going to randomly join each other – a “Join group” button that automatically groups teams of 10 – and keeps queing new players as people quit / get kicked.

3 – game announcements like gw1 – hall of heroes – of current wvw scores to encourage players already in our servers to join us. ie – Darkhaven holds SM – Darkhaven lost SM – and give server wide advantages for holding prime spots in each BL to encourage pver’s to come fight for it. ie – The server that holds SM Spawns certain Bosses more frequently – or has more ascended drops during that time, or triggers a unique events / or opens certain dungeons in the PVE world that only happens when you have SM.

4 – commanders based on stats – If my stats state I was involved in 50 or more sm caps and over 400 towers – grinding for 100 gold in pve does not give me that experience.
Pve commanders and PVP commanders should be 2 different animals.

5 – PVP Rule – you don’t grind for stats, only looks. It should be like chess, you shouldn’t have to play checkers to get a rook or a knight to play chess. – Sell bragging rights with /emotes and /particle effects /finishers – not stats.

6 – Balanced servers imo is moot – you can’t force people to play in any particular server. but you can cap the game so even the lowest server can provide those numbers – you can limit games to Day shift and Night shift so having people on different time zones isn’t an advantage. No server should allow a wvw population that causes skill lag.

7 – each new server transfer should have 1-2 weeks before they can use wvw chat and build siege – to circumvent griefing.

8 – PVE players can grind 100 gold a day with speed dungeon runs – the most I’ve seen in wvw – is 2-3 gold in like 3 hours – especially since I have to recycle items for orichalcum, ecto, dark matter, magic find, and ancient wood – not sell them… – it’s going to take me a very very long time to get 500 dragonite ore and the gold I need to make an ascended weapon just to catch up to the pve noob op warrior build who has the ascended backpack and ascended weapon.

maybe bringing the sPVP locker approach in wvw might be a step in the right direction and allow us to experiment with more organized builds. Only draw back with that – is wvw is Very fashion based , and the look of all the particle effect items in this open world means more, so I’d hate to lose those particle effects – it adds to the adventure and bragging rights.

I admire the initiative Chris. I can see this working out for areas such as the living story, cash shop etc.

However, this thread would be an incredible waste of space on the WvW forums. You are going to see the same topics that were brought up 14 months ago. And if the developer’s have done nothing about them in the past 14 months, just face it, the “vocal minority” on the WvW forums want different things from WvW than the development team. It’s completely evident by now. I compiled a list here with all the different topics that will be brought up (and have been brought up since BWE’s). I have no doubt in my mind that the developer responses or input will change at all just because there’s a fancy new thread.

Population & coverage imbalance
Development team has stated multiple times that they want population and coverage to determine winner.

Alt friendliness
Development team has stated multiple times that they want individual character progression.

Reward imbalance WvW / PvE, precursors, ascended gear
Development team has stated multiple times that WvW is just a side event in GW2 that should be complemented with PvE, if you want to obtain good items etc.

Anti zerg
The zerg is composed of the largest amounts of WvW players. Why would Arena Net do something to hurt their largest player clique within WvW? Will never happen.

Power creep
Has been described as “cool” and “minor” by the development team. Grinding keeps players playing & paying. Will never be changed.

Commander system
“Takes time”. Has been “taking time” since the first BWE. Will probably never happen.

WvW class balance
Will never take precedence over sPvP balance, and the developers have on multiple occasions stated an unwillingness to separate balance in the two game modes. Will never happen.

New maps
“Takes time”. Has been “taking time” since the first BWE. Will probably never happen.

Arrow cart hacks / griefers / siege spammers
Play the way you want™

Leagues
“If you don’t want to at least try your skill against higher tier servers I don’t know what to say”

GvG…
… is not WvW. Also a case of “it takes time”.

Skill lag / performance issues etc
They will keep optimizing but skill lag will most likely be an ever-present thing in GW2, as stated multiple times already.

Defending vs attacking
Developers think it’s more exciting when stuff flip frequently, and almost every design decision they have made so far is in support of this mentality.

Long term rewards, achievements etc
“Takes time”. Has been “taking time” since BWE’s. Minor improvements with latest patch but in reality just copy-pasted dailies with higher requirements.

Bloodlust
Has been made abundantly clear that it’s staying.

1. Acc Bound WvW ranks
2. Skill Lag
3. Rewards for defending actions

1. Population Imbalance
2. Matching WvW rewards with PvE ( Pretty hard to get ascended weapons and armors purely from WvW)
3. Defending Incentives/Getting rid of the karma train

1: Lag
2: Skilllag
3: Lag

1. Better ways to help in defending towers/keep. (tougher NPCs, more of them for hire)
2. A reason to defend said towers/keep (better gold rewards, getting rewards from killiing players while inside/around the keep/tower)
3.Commander features!

WvW

1) Class Balance (1vs1)
2) active WvW population balance
3) Alt Friendliness

1)Maps {Terrain should be made for military action. Most would love more strategic elements than maneuverability aspects}

2)Commander→ Squad Leader → Scout – UI Display {so a click on the persons picture takes you to thier map section. Have you ever been in an EVE Fleet!}

3)Performance by class {sPvP gives you stats on each class you play. Why not WvW}

4)Server Tithing {Allow guilds buy weekly components that can be used by the server for a week. (A siege vendor that would be used for the week)}

5)Voice comms {Third party companies would love this.}

6) UI layout for WvW

1) Seperate trait load outs for PvE and WvW
2) Remove stat boosts from bloodlust
3) Change matchmaking so it matches servers of equal coverage/population

Chris & Team,

Thanks for this discussion. Here are my thoughts:

1.) WvW: The population issues seem pretty prevalent – as an Anvil Rock player, we’re constantly up against vastly superior numbers in WvW, yet there’s no real option for any kind of dissimilar warfare to impact the larger forces other than momentary inconveniences that are easily remedied (reclaiming a camp we just flipped, for instance). I have some ideas (I’ll spare the details here) wherein WvW can provide opportunity for servers in ways proportionate to the troops they’re able to field, as well as some thoughts on the existing rewards structures.

2.) WvW Rewards: Currently, server players are able to reap the rewards of successes from WvW, which is a fantastic idea. However, there’s no reciprocity – a PvE-only player achieves the same success chances granted by WvW success as does a WvW-only player. That needs remediation – there’s no incentive for a PvE-only to actively participate in WvW, when they’re rewarded the same as those who do.

3.) Let’s break up the swarming hordes. Certainly, there is a time and place for deployment and engagement of such chaotic masses.

Thanks, guys. Looking forward to the discussion!