Guild Wars 2

To elaborate on the title, I’ve done some WvW from time to time, but stand at a measly rank 75 for wxp. Some (or many ) of you are going to disregard my opinions because I’m far from super experienced in WvW, but I would argue that my opinion still matters. WvW needs old, new, and returning blood in order to survive.

I used to occasionally hop into WvW because it can be a lot of fun. However, I never really got into it because the plethora of potential tactical options for a team was overshadowed by the effectiveness of teaming up in massive zergs and capping undefended places for loot in a rotation that seemed more like player vs door than a combination of pvp and pve (with castles and siege weapons! both of which are freaking awesome!) with zergs only fighting each other when one could catch the other out for loot. That coupled with the (at the time) complete ineffectiveness of defending against a zerg at your objective with anything less than a good portion of your team meant zerg all day every day.

Let’s talk about the loot. From what I understand (feel free to correct me) it’s far from the best. And sometimes you’re just outmatched and your loot takes a hit. But the largest issue is how it’s distributed; you get the bulk of your gains from taking objectives and killing other players. This means the best thing to do loot-wise is take as much as you can with as little resistance as possible. Seems antithetical to the concept of mixing the best parts of PvE and PvP.

I recently got back into Guild Wars 2 (I found it extremely disappointing that an overall pretty casual game got turned into a hardcore grindfest in HoT) thanks to the SAB, and I find myself wanting to play more after I’m done with the SAB. Problem is that I don’t know how I want to play. Now I knew they buffed defense to be viable when HoT launched, but the desert borderlands are pretty terrible so I never got into it. I hear the alpine borderlands are being brought back and I get excited! A new golden age of WvW could be coming! I checked the forums to get the opinions of the veterans… and my hopes were shot down.

The long list of complaints on this forum are legitimate. I am not questioning the experience of the veterans, just providing a different perspective.

That being said, let’s talk about the current fuss over Arrow Carts. The overall complaint seems to be that they shut down anyone knocking on their gates/walls, thus lending even a small number of defenders a great deal of power. That’s excellent. They counter close-range attack, as was their design. They have their own counters though. They can be killed or simply circumvented using long-range weapons like catapults, ballista(has longer range I THINK?), and trebuchet. Also, if you outnumber the defenders, you’re in a considerably better position supply-wise, as you can build faster and even resupply as you attack.

“But Valt, it doesn’t matter if we take the objective if it takes that long! We lose out on so much potential loot!”

From what I can tell (and again feel free to offer dissenting arguments, I am only a noob) the way the loot is what makes arrow carts so powerful. When you build an arrow cart you are ruining someone else’s loot/day, and being on the receiving end is understandably upsetting. It’s also lose/lose. Either you can’t get in and take the tower/keep for loot, or you waste the time you’d spend on 3-5 other walled objectives stubbornly fighting.

Overall the WvW looting system seems to discourage actual fighting and encourage a “gotta go fast” mentality, where optimally 3 zergs rotate around the map taking objectives for loot as they come off righteous indignation.

Now that I’ve concluded that loot is the source of these problems, let’s collaborate and think of potential fixes. Instead of attacking the arrow cart, let’s attack the underlying issue.

Increase overall loot. It’s not going to break the economy, Silverwastes already does that. This will also make the next idea work far better.

Tie loot to world score instead of offensive strength. Bags dropped from players are fine, and can stay as is. Creatures too. But instead of getting the bulk of loot from killing lords and taking objectives, award piles of loot at the end of the tick based on your world’s overall (in all 4 zones, even if you’re putting effort into a losing borderland you’re still contributing to an overall team) number of controlled castles, keeps, towers, and camps at that time. A looting system like this would encourage not only offense, but defense, roaming, and supply esoirts. Obviously this would have to be coupled with some kind of system that will be able to tell if someone is participating (y/n, not stages like in the jungle) to keep people from getting loot from AFKing and leeching off the team’s effort.

I welcome all discussion on my perspective

Playing WvW is a gold sink anyway or at least you don’t make much money out of it. Our best reward (so far) is by having great fights, successful defenses and smart tactical game play.
There will be soon (19th or 26th april) a live beta on a new reward system. Let’s see what we will get.
If you don’t know “how you want to play” I suggest you get in touch with your server community. The game mode is much more fun in an organized group and a friendly environment.

Aezyr.5304:

If you don’t know “how you want to play” I suggest you get in touch with your server community. The game mode is much more fun in an organized group and a friendly environment.

That was probably a poor choice of words on my part. I found a friendly guild that does a little of everything, I was just asking myself if I should finally get myself into WvW.

You’ve got the problem in a nutshell, in my opinion, but tying loot to world score is just going to make world score more important, which is going to be a kick in the teeth for outnumbered servers.

Valtolimor.6230:

Aezyr.5304:

If you don’t know “how you want to play” I suggest you get in touch with your server community. The game mode is much more fun in an organized group and a friendly environment.

That was probably a poor choice of words on my part. I found a friendly guild that does a little of everything, I was just asking myself if I should finally get myself into WvW.

It’s a sandbox with a lot of different methods on how to enjoy the game mode.
Soloing, roaming in small groups, havoc groups, fighting guild groups, gvg and everything in between.
Just try it out it doesn’t cost you anything
Ask in map chat in WvW after the link to your community website and Team Speak. It will make it easier to see whats going on.

Valtolimor.6230:

Tie loot to world score instead of offensive strength. Bags dropped from players are fine, and can stay as is. Creatures too. But instead of getting the bulk of loot from killing lords and taking objectives, award piles of loot at the end of the tick based on your world’s overall (in all 4 zones, even if you’re putting effort into a losing borderland you’re still contributing to an overall team) number of controlled castles, keeps, towers, and camps at that time. A looting system like this would encourage not only offense, but defense, roaming, and supply esoirts. Obviously this would have to be coupled with some kind of system that will be able to tell if someone is participating (y/n, not stages like in the jungle) to keep people from getting loot from AFKing and leeching off the team’s effort.

I welcome all discussion on my perspective

This is a pretty radical idea. Not sure if I like it, but it’s radical none the less that means it has the potential to be great!

Valtolimor.6230:

To elaborate on the title, I’ve done some WvW from time to time, but stand at a measly rank 75 for wxp. Some (or many ) of you are going to disregard my opinions because I’m far from super experienced in WvW, but I would argue that my opinion still matters. WvW needs old, new, and returning blood in order to survive.

I used to occasionally hop into WvW because it can be a lot of fun. However, I never really got into it because the plethora of potential tactical options for a team was overshadowed by the effectiveness of teaming up in massive zergs and capping undefended places for loot in a rotation that seemed more like player vs door than a combination of pvp and pve (with castles and siege weapons! both of which are freaking awesome!) with zergs only fighting each other when one could catch the other out for loot. That coupled with the (at the time) complete ineffectiveness of defending against a zerg at your objective with anything less than a good portion of your team meant zerg all day every day.

Let’s talk about the loot. From what I understand (feel free to correct me) it’s far from the best. And sometimes you’re just outmatched and your loot takes a hit. But the largest issue is how it’s distributed; you get the bulk of your gains from taking objectives and killing other players. This means the best thing to do loot-wise is take as much as you can with as little resistance as possible. Seems antithetical to the concept of mixing the best parts of PvE and PvP.

I recently got back into Guild Wars 2 (I found it extremely disappointing that an overall pretty casual game got turned into a hardcore grindfest in HoT) thanks to the SAB, and I find myself wanting to play more after I’m done with the SAB. Problem is that I don’t know how I want to play. Now I knew they buffed defense to be viable when HoT launched, but the desert borderlands are pretty terrible so I never got into it. I hear the alpine borderlands are being brought back and I get excited! A new golden age of WvW could be coming! I checked the forums to get the opinions of the veterans… and my hopes were shot down.

The long list of complaints on this forum are legitimate. I am not questioning the experience of the veterans, just providing a different perspective.

That being said, let’s talk about the current fuss over Arrow Carts. The overall complaint seems to be that they shut down anyone knocking on their gates/walls, thus lending even a small number of defenders a great deal of power. That’s excellent. They counter close-range attack, as was their design. They have their own counters though. They can be killed or simply circumvented using long-range weapons like catapults, ballista(has longer range I THINK?), and trebuchet. Also, if you outnumber the defenders, you’re in a considerably better position supply-wise, as you can build faster and even resupply as you attack.

“But Valt, it doesn’t matter if we take the objective if it takes that long! We lose out on so much potential loot!”

From what I can tell (and again feel free to offer dissenting arguments, I am only a noob) the way the loot is what makes arrow carts so powerful. When you build an arrow cart you are ruining someone else’s loot/day, and being on the receiving end is understandably upsetting. It’s also lose/lose. Either you can’t get in and take the tower/keep for loot, or you waste the time you’d spend on 3-5 other walled objectives stubbornly fighting.

Overall the WvW looting system seems to discourage actual fighting and encourage a “gotta go fast” mentality, where optimally 3 zergs rotate around the map taking objectives for loot as they come off righteous indignation.

Now that I’ve concluded that loot is the source of these problems, let’s collaborate and think of potential fixes. Instead of attacking the arrow cart, let’s attack the underlying issue.

Increase overall loot. It’s not going to break the economy, Silverwastes already does that. This will also make the next idea work far better.

Tie loot to world score instead of offensive strength. Bags dropped from players are fine, and can stay as is. Creatures too. But instead of getting the bulk of loot from killing lords and taking objectives, award piles of loot at the end of the tick based on your world’s overall (in all 4 zones, even if you’re putting effort into a losing borderland you’re still contributing to an overall team) number of controlled castles, keeps, towers, and camps at that time. A looting system like this would encourage not only offense, but defense, roaming, and supply esoirts. Obviously this would have to be coupled with some kind of system that will be able to tell if someone is participating (y/n, not stages like in the jungle) to keep people from getting loot from AFKing and leeching off the team’s effort.

I welcome all discussion on my perspective

I believe you have a pretty balanced view of some of the problems and like what you are proposing. If other problems like vast population imbalances and scoring where brought into line it doesn’t seem like it would break anything.

I think it’s interesting (and worthwhile) that you tie the K-Train problem to loot. I think a solution to that could be helpful—but I don’t think that’s the real problem.

The current WvW crowd isn’t motivated to K-Train by loot. Honestly, I don’t think anyone is playing for loot when they do anything. Still…I’d love to see your proposed solution explored.

Sviel.7493:

I think it’s interesting (and worthwhile) that you tie the K-Train problem to loot. I think a solution to that could be helpful—but I don’t think that’s the real problem.

The current WvW crowd isn’t motivated to K-Train by loot. Honestly, I don’t think anyone is playing for loot when they do anything. Still…I’d love to see your proposed solution explored.

Well, why do people ktrain? I am sure the loot you gather over time is part of the reason. You also gather xp, wxp, gold?, proof of heroics, somethingelsetoo… It’s not even what you gain from 1 battle or taking 1 keep, it’s about how much you gain per hour. SW trains work on same idea – stuff you get is all rubbish but over time you get so much rubbish that you sell/salvage those into hefty pile of gold.

Also, we should perhaps separate EotM trains and WvW trains, while being similar are not always same thing.

Valtolimor.6230:

Tie loot to world score instead of offensive strength. Bags dropped from players are fine, and can stay as is. Creatures too. But instead of getting the bulk of loot from killing lords and taking objectives, award piles of loot at the end of the tick based on your world’s overall (in all 4 zones, even if you’re putting effort into a losing borderland you’re still contributing to an overall team) number of controlled castles, keeps, towers, and camps at that time. A looting system like this would encourage not only offense, but defense, roaming, and supply esoirts. Obviously this would have to be coupled with some kind of system that will be able to tell if someone is participating (y/n, not stages like in the jungle) to keep people from getting loot from AFKing and leeching off the team’s effort.

I am not basically against the idea you proposed. But I am not sure how it would change the zerging-up. I mean to have higher world score you still have to capture objectives same way, you just don’t gain rewards at the exact moment of capture, but some time later. I guess there would be less reason to run around in circle, capturing stuff and then losing it all to enemy zerg moment later.

Then there is a big problem of how to reward defending objective. Is being inside the keep enough to be “participating”? Is building troll siege in stupid places and wasting sups something you should be rewarded with? How do you measure contribution of someone who waypoints and runs back to bring last missing sup to finish your defensive siege that another player uses to destroy enemy siege? If you are simply visible on the wall and enemy turns back without even tagging the objective, did you actually “save” it by being at guard?

I was referring solely to WvW K-Trains—I’m sure loot is a factor in EotM. There may be more loot focused players than I allowed for, too. However, I think that even if loot accounts for some of it, the heart of the problem lies elsewhere.

Loot based on tick is pretty interesting if we could solve some of the population and coverage issues. The only ktraining I see on my server is when the other server night caps everything every night and gradually pulls 50k to 100k ahead by end of week.

I try to tell myself I don’t care about ppt but I hate losing.

Reh.5986:

Loot based on tick is pretty interesting if we could solve some of the population and coverage issues. The only ktraining I see on my server is when the other server night caps everything every night and gradually pulls 50k to 100k ahead by end of week.

I try to tell myself I don’t care about ppt but I hate losing.

No it would exacerbate the issue currently. The reason I say this is, PPT is everything in glicko (if done right) and it would make doing PPT against servers with no population during certain times (like night capping) even more extreme.

Until glicko is fixed, nothing should be done like this.

OP has a solid perspective as someone so new to the format, and I appreciate his efforts to make this post. It’s good to see people really thinking about the format in-depth. I would like to make a few clarifications, though.

The AC issue is problematic only because AC’s due to their placement are often not vulnerable to ballistae. The only way to really take down an enemy AC tends to be large-radius AOE’s like meteor shower, or simply, another AC. And often building an AC under AC fire is particularly difficult, considering it requires players to soak damage and the build site/friendly AC itself to also soak damage. This makes counterplay just strictly overly-difficult without just massive numbers.

Small group play was flourishing before HoT released. That said, since guild upgrades and the ability to claim objectives (ones which previously were available for very low entry costs, notably +5 supply) for WvW are so deeply locked away behind guild halls which costs several thousand gold to attain, small guild presence in WvW has effectively been removed entirely. Since guild upgrades are only feasibly obtained by large numbers of players or those with big resources, the only survivors are pretty much just blob guilds. The new BL’s also killed small group play through a disinterest of players and over-difficulty of offense.

Tick-based rewards would be a great idea if matchups were fair and if it was contribution-based. I feel like many would just enter WvW for the minute of a tick, take the loot, and then leave to whatever they were doing prior for free loot. Frankly, this would be very easy to bot/exploit. With these concerns, it may still be the best to keep it kill/objective based, though it absolutely does have its problems, as again, the biggest groups get the best rewards since they wrack up the most kills and most objective flips.

The only thing I can think of is if rewards improved based on the inverse of the number of nearby players and the difficulty of an objective. This way, small groups get their fair share if they can perform well.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Reh.5986:

Loot based on tick is pretty interesting if we could solve some of the population and coverage issues. The only ktraining I see on my server is when the other server night caps everything every night and gradually pulls 50k to 100k ahead by end of week.

I try to tell myself I don’t care about ppt but I hate losing.

No it would exacerbate the issue currently. The reason I say this is, PPT is everything in glicko (if done right) and it would make doing PPT against servers with no population during certain times (like night capping) even more extreme.

Until glicko is fixed, nothing should be done like this.

Agreed
Certain times of the day are already stacked up on just one of three servers in a match for champ bags gained from flipping towers and keeps. Additional rewards for such behavior would only exacerbate imbalances.

For participation, I’d leave that up to the more experienced and Anet to figure out. As long as people cant enter for a few seconds at the end of the tick and get full rewards, or sit in base leeching, that’s ok with me. You all are going to have different preferences though.

So it seems this loot system would be unfair to outnumbered servers, but a lot of WvW is. What if it were coupled with a buff that makes outnumbered teams have stronger players, seige, NPCs, and walls/gates? Could even things up, and make numbers less of a strict advantage.

Expanding a bit on tying loot to world score: what if instead of tying it directly to the number of PPT, we tied it to what objectives are held and what tier they are? A small team could more easily take a tower and upgrade it while holding than they could hold 3 tier one towers.

For arrow carts and line of sight, I think that’s a whole new problem all on its own. If they werent as they are they’d just get staff ele/necro’d down pretty easily. If you changed the way AOE interacted with battlements, that’d cause a new set of problems. And so on.

Loot is a larger factor in WvW participation than many people realize. Day 1 of Gw2, WvW had the highest loot potential over PvE and PvP. Why wander around in a pve map looking for events when you could go to WvW and see every single event on the map at one time and hit them all in succession(a la the Karma Train)? In those days the big stuff was exp, coins, and karma and you got the same amount of that in WvW as you did in PvE. Over time PvE rewards got better with world bosses dropping guaranteed rares and then later on a world boss schedule, when champs dropped bags it helped WvW too but you couldn’t tell much difference. Then of course Eotm came out as a 5th map that had better rewards by far than any of the regular 4 maps. Anyways my point is obvious, but now try to imagine HoT releasing like Day 1 of Gw2….as if you had ways to get Maguuma zone rewards from WvW, do you think the borderland maps would have been so empty? People could’ve gotten the new stuff AND played the new maps, instead they had to make a choice and nobody wants to be left behind on new stuff now do they?

Long ago I’d had a similar idea of your PPT giving rewards though more of a wxp reward based off of ppt. Had to complete an event during the 15 minute timer to get credit, so basically you had to do SOMETHING to get part of that wxp bonus. I also wish Wxp worked more like the reward tracks for pvp. I had a plan for scouts and keep/tower/camp defenders too so they’d get credit but we don’t need this post any longer than it already is!

STIHL.2489:

Valtolimor.6230:

Tie loot to world score instead of offensive strength. Bags dropped from players are fine, and can stay as is. Creatures too. But instead of getting the bulk of loot from killing lords and taking objectives, award piles of loot at the end of the tick based on your world’s overall (in all 4 zones, even if you’re putting effort into a losing borderland you’re still contributing to an overall team) number of controlled castles, keeps, towers, and camps at that time. A looting system like this would encourage not only offense, but defense, roaming, and supply esoirts. Obviously this would have to be coupled with some kind of system that will be able to tell if someone is participating (y/n, not stages like in the jungle) to keep people from getting loot from AFKing and leeching off the team’s effort.

I welcome all discussion on my perspective

This is a pretty radical idea. Not sure if I like it, but it’s radical none the less that means it has the potential to be great!

They did something like that in Vanguard with diplomacy levers. Actually gave incentive.

If the score in WvW affected the loot drops in pve, you’d see a surge.

Jayne.9251:

If the score in WvW affected the loot drops in pve, you’d see a surge.

snickers

“It is the year 2016, and the evil WVW’ers have taken over the PVE’ers homeland of Lootatron!”

Valtolimor.6230:

So it seems this loot system would be unfair to outnumbered servers, but a lot of WvW is. What if it were coupled with a buff that makes outnumbered teams have stronger players, seige, NPCs, and walls/gates? Could even things up, and make numbers less of a strict advantage.

hm.. what is “outnumbered” and how do apply it without giving unfair advantage?

Lets stick to the current system where “outnumbered” buff is map-based. Problem is, the maps are quite large and several fight could be happening same time, while only 1 of those fights could be about much larger enemy group vs smaller defenders group.

I will make an example with some made-up numbers here: suppose you have 30 players in the map, defending 3 keeps with 10 players in each keep. Enemy has 60 players so you get “outnumbered” buff and all kind of bonuses are activated. Enemy has a zerg of 40 players attacking one keep, your 10 defenders get boost, its good! Another smaller enemy group attacks second keep with 15 players, your 10 defenders also get bonus, but they really did not need it anyway. Third group of enemies goes to take third keep with just 5 players, your 10 defenders crush them instantly because of map-wide bonuses. Now, in this example would result be any different with good “outnumber” bonus? Not really, you probably lose 1 keep to that large enemy blob and defend successfully 2 other keeps. Just like now.

Also, if you start to change walls/gates/players HP/damage based on the outnumber buff, how long does it stay on when people enter and leave the map constantly. In the matches where we had it, it usually flickered on and off pretty fast.

Basically its nice to see a new face:-)

That’s actually the most important thing your post reflects, we need more players. WvW as opposit to the other other game-formats needs loyal players, that spend some of their valuable time on the borderlands and ebg to get to know the maps and have fun doing the various aspect of the game that WvW offers.

Experience is best gotten in the field, there are some basic builds players use, but most adapt them at their own leisure after a while. Give it some time and effort, if you don’t know don’t panic ask in chat for help, be in a nice guild with players that help you out and soon you will feel part of WvW.

On that not Welcome!

As for your remarks concerning loot and rewards, basically the entire system needs reviewing, like i mentioned in my remark above there is a difference between WvW and the other game-formats like PvP and PVE. Those two last depend on a big form of randomness, their reward-system atm. reward those that sometimes login, not the players who are there on a daily basis. I’m guessing it affects the entire reward-system in WvW, or at least the philosofy behind it, the problem it doesn’t work and basically doesn’t give loyal daily WvW players decent drops and rewards.

Hence in WvW the daily loot-trains (blobs) in EBG comparable with the karma-loot-trains in PVE or the rank-farms in PVP.

A second aspect is the split between rank-farming WvW trough EOTM and WvW. EOTM was created to give players that couldn’t enter the borderlands or EBG an option to be able to do something in WvW whilst they were waiting, this has now grown out to the main rank-farm area which is sucking alot of players from the real WvW to Edge of the Mists, because its quicker to get rank-ups, because there is less stress, no real guild and server loyalty.

Currently there is no motivation for these players to play real WvW on the borderlands.

As for the siege and defences, there is an imbalance in the number of siege that can be put down in a small area, its kinda funny that Arena-net has not been able to solve the one arrow-cart in one location problem. Some servers abuse this turning a keep into a living nightmare with up to 20 arrow-carts in one spot they just need the supplies to do it. The same applies to other siege or defence-weapons

The outnumbered buff which shows wetter you are out-manned (when there are more enemy player than friendly players) son the borderland you play on kinda bugs out alot of times and doesn’t seem to work properly.

Changing the loot-system.

Maybe it would work but its not just the loot. Instead of loot a combination of PPT gotten by your map-coverage, the % of total kills, we’re talking about real rewards payed out in the form of rank-ups, ascendet and legendary items, reward tracks like in, PvP, real meta-event based around fighting.

WoW, Real rewards that give players a sense that their labour is respected by Arenanet and that motivates more players to come back or join WvW to play the game.

Btw all should be willing to use teamspeak cause its your main line of communication to your guild and or server-community.

Good luck and welcome again :-)