We’re 4 years in and WvW still struggles at being considered a game mode on his own. Some steps have been taken, albeit very late, to fix some of the stuff that is broken, but the most important things are still “in development” after 10 months since the release of the expansion.
Skill balance and power creep
This isn’t the most important, but for me it has been the most annoying problem with WvW for a long time.
Balancing around a 5v5 conquest game mode with nearly entirely different gear is not working very well for WvW. I made a separate thread to discuss this problem more in detail and offer some ideas and possible workarounds.
Population imbalance
This is by far the worst and the hardest to solve. We want lively maps, full of bloodthirsty people killing each other, but we don’t want long queues. Even with server linking, we’re far from this. I made another thread discussing this problem in detail with a few ideas on how it could be solved, but TL;DR: make only 3 factions and map overflows that can scale in number during the day and during the week when the active WvW population grows and shrinks.
Scoring and nightcap
Frankly, I think this is the easiest to solve. I posted a long thread discussing all the details, but TL;DR: remove PPT and make the scoring based on capturing and defending objectives and number of kills.
The WvW guild upgrades system is completely broken
TL;DR: going from starting your guild to dropping your first Guild Catapult it’s gonna cost you around 2500g and a few weeks of your time. No, it’s not funny. I posted all the gory details and a few ideas on how to fix it in another thread.
Siegeing is boring and siege weapons are OP
We play games because it’s fun. Sitting there for half an hour watching trebs firing against a reinforced wall is not. Having your blob killed by a bunch of enemies sitting on arrow carts and cannons is not great fun, either. I posted all the changes I would make to siege in “excruciating details”, as Taimi would say.
Rewards and recognition
Between the reward tracks and the new vendors granting access to HoT gear in WvW, ArenaNet closed most of the gap that kept WvW lagging behind the other game modes. We still lack access to all the stat combinations from the vendors, but what we really need is the recognition of our efforts as WvW players and WvW guilds. We want to brag about our game mode of choice. Yes, we want a ridicolously good looking legendary backpack. We want shiny armors and weapons. We want titles and preposterous finishers to throw in our enemies faces. We want ladders to show our enemies that we’re better than them.
I created a separated thread to discuss this .
Quality of life
QoL comes last in “importance” and “urgency”, but we all know how it could greatly improve the game experience for everyone. I posted a few ideas but these forums are filled with other good ideas to improve our favourite game mode.
It’s done!
Overall, the notes I posted today are something like 40k characters long.
It’s the results of my thinking about WvW over the last months and years.
I hope you’ll enjoy the read, I hope it’ll spark some (constructive) discussion and I really hope ANet will be able to gather some good feedback and ideas from it.
It’s done!
Overall, the notes I posted today are something like 40k characters long.
It’s the results of my thinking about WvW over the last months and years.
I hope you’ll enjoy the read, I hope it’ll spark some (constructive) discussion and I really hope ANet will be able to gather some good feedback and ideas from it.
Anet know the problems, they just refuse to commit the brainpower and manpower to fixing them. Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loves PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
(edited by Svarty.8019)
Great posts, all of them.
Why would you spend your time coming up with suggestions how a company should alter their product? It’s not your property. You don’t own it. People don’t write suggestions what food restaurant should serve or what kind of car General Motors should make next. If you don’t like what you have there’s plenty of other options.
Great series with similar to my vision of wvw.
If customers aren’t happy with a product it would certainly be the problem of the company. Companies providing services to customers are dependent of their customer base. If many customers offer suggestions for change then there is something wrong and the company should consider it. I could write you a book on this but I would rather you stop being an idiot…
If customers aren’t happy with a product it would certainly be the problem of the company. Companies providing services to customers are dependent of their customer base.
What customers? Situation in free-to-play games is that 95%+ customers don’t spend a single dollar on the product. Company’s whole income comes from that 5% of addicts. Game design relies on creating reward systems to keep people playing and poor quality gameplay that becomes easier with cash shop purchases.
Good business decision is to keep the quality at “barely passable” level and avoid spending money on things that give bad returns. This certainly includes customers who come to type wishing well essays on forums that might as well be titled “if I had 50k to spend this is what I would do”.
If you want good WvW go fund a startup that has goal to create such gameplay.
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