Guild Wars 2

[TLDR at bottom of Part 2]

I’ll start by saying that ever since I stopped playing DAoC many years ago, I am constantly on the lookout for the next game that can bring me the same level of enjoyment that I had in RvR. I compare every new game against DAoC, and thus far I have been disappointed by every MMO. It seems that no one really understands what made it so good. I suspect there are a lot of former DAoC players that feel the same way.

So without further ado:

No Real Reason to WvW
Right now, the reasons to WvW in GW2 are all focused around acquiring gear. If you’re like me, wearing all exotics, there isn’t much to gain. Karma, Tokens, Cash, none of it will really advance me in any meaningful way. There is always the quest for legendary weapons, but to be honest the bar is set so high that only the most obsessive people have their sights set on it. I wrote it off already as Not Gonna Happen. World bonuses are nice temporary rewards, but they’re too transparent and more of a product of the whole World’s performance, not my personal performance.

There is a serious lack of permanence to WvW. One of the main driving forces for going out to RVR in DAoC was that you could constantly gain Realm Points for yourself. The more realm points you had, the more realm abilities you could buy, by achieving higher realm ranks. These abilities were passive bonuses and active skills that make you a stronger fighter. This was in addition to your quest for the best gear.

Lack of Community Building
The lack of community building in recent MMO’s has really been unfortunate. It’s a difficult problem, which is likely why every MMO seems to fail so hard at it. Communities form organically, they can’t be forced. All you can do is provide the opportunities for those communities to form organically. Maybe DAoC had such a great community because the player base was smaller and that type of thing isn’t possible anymore. But here are some of the things I can say for sure had a positive impact on building its community.

In DAoC, enemy players are masked as Invader/Defender like this game, but unlike this game, when I clicked on a player it registered their name in my combat log. When I damage them, I see their name in my log. When a player death occurred in the zone, everyone got a broadcast of who killed who, by name.

In addition to Invader/Defender, the player’s Realm Rank name appears as well, so you can get a sense of the type of fight you’re about to have. This gives people notoriety. I still remember my early days of RVR in DAoC and getting steamrolled by a group of high ranked Alb’s. I remember the combat log spam from that group killing tons of people. This got people talking to each other. “Where was that?” “Which way are they heading?” “kitten you guys got killed quick!” “Wow, nice job guys, you got em”. Notoriety and communication breeds leadership. Leaders and followers breed communities.

The current GW2 model doesn’t foster any of this. Servers are rotated, so you can’t develop a fear or respect for the enemy. Everything is anonymous. It’s a glorified Battleground. Anyone who participated in RvR in DAoC can tell you, Battlegrounds fun for a little while, but have no real long term appeal.

In addition, DAoC had VNBoards message boards where the players could interact, both out of game, and while gaming. You could trash talk someone for arsejamming a good fight, or give praise for a good fight. This let the enemy player get to know each other, and even when it was negative interaction, still built a stronger community.

Lastly there was the Camelot Herald where you could track Realm Point progress vs. others. Being able to actively track yourself vs. others kept it interesting. With weekly sub totals so if people had a good week, they could achieve some level of notoriety.

(Part 2 continues)

Too Hard to Kill People
This one is the most aggravating problems I’ve encountered so far. Due to the removal of healers, classes have been given excessive survival abilities. I understand why it was done and what was trying to be accomplished, but right now fights are way too long and drawn out. Escaping with less than 5% HP happens far too often. I don’t just say that from the killing side, but from the escaping side. My warrior has escaped far too many situations where I really should have been dead. I think there needs to be some balancing work done here.

Two features DAoC had that I think would help here are 1) slowed by low health, and 2) resurrection sickness. The slow as you get lower and lower health would help the situation where people escape at low health when they really should have been dead. Resurrection sickness would help solve the problem, that as I perceive it, larger numbers will almost always win, due to more people to resurrect the dead back to full effectiveness. A superior skilled force should be able to take down a larger but less skilled force. Right now I don’t see that as really possible.

Finally, water fights are simply broken. I’m not sure what the plan was here, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to finish someone off in the water, without continuing to damage them through downed state. Trying to truly kill someone in the water results in a solid minute of chasing after a downed body that bobs to and from the surface.

Conclusion
There are other minor issues that I’ll only mention, such as there being such a thing as too much misdirection (think clones, vanishing). Keep defense being too skewed in favor of defenders. Queues (not such a minor issue, but a known quantity). Fair-weather free transfers to winning realms.

I want to make it clear that the reason I invested so much time in this analysis is not because I’m some kid with too much time on my hands. I’m an adult, I work full-time (as a senior software engineer, hire me ANet), and I’ve had many iterations of new MMO’s coming out and disappointing me to reflect on what it was about DAoC that I’m trying to find again. I think there is great potential in this game to find what I’m looking for. It’s the best attempt yet, but still not there.

Thanks for reading,

Phlow – Pellinor’s Descendants – Sanctum of Rall

[TLDR]

• Former DAoC player continually disappointed by MMO’s
• No real reason to WvW
• No Community Building
• Too hard to kill people.
• GW2 has potential

As a former 8 1/2 year DAoC vet leading a group of many DAoC vets, I support these ideas. +1

I have my own issue with WvW ( as seen here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Less-Battlefield-more-RvR/first#post222271 ) but I don’t share your concerns.

The lack of reward is debatable. WvW is just another alternate form of achieving exotic gear. It’s highly inefficient (why does only every 3rd or 4th enemy award Badges of Honor?) but still possible.

Character progression is always going to be an issue with GW2 since beyond unlocking skills, there really isn’t any. This will probably be an ongoing debate and isn’t specifically a WvW issue.

As for community building, it’s far too early to say. In fact, I’ve already observed the opposite…at least in its early stages. My realm…so far dissapointed with their WvW performance has already called for guild summits to coordinate WvW events. Once the match-making system has stabilized we will also see cross-server rivalries evolve. Once the big guilds with the big egos start facing off in WvW I’m sure there’ll be plenty of drama.

The downed-state truly is a bane in PvP. It’s far more annoying in sPvP though and only a minor issue on WvW. I’m sure eventually ANet will reconsider a lot of the “downed-state” abilities and make finishing someone more reliable.

Yes, GW2 has potential and it seems to me like you’ve judged it too early.

As a former DAOC player, I feel like this post is no different than complaining about why GW2 isn’t WoW. I don’t want to play WoW, and if I want a DAOC clone, I’ll play DAOC instead. They haven’t even locked the servers down yet – let it evolve.

I can’t agree as a long time DAOC player. Jade Quarry has a large Daoc population and we have been growing the community and the cooperation that we did not see as much of in Daoc. Why? Cause in Daoc the more you rvr’d the more isolated you became into little cliches. What started as a great community and realm pride became diluted into a chase for the most spam, fast rr, and just general kill farming.

I’m still undecided about the anonimity. The trash talk specifically is what usually makes me shy away from most forms of PvP so I do enjoy the anonimity of WvW. Regardless, I think yours is a valid argument.

As for community building, I think we’re seeing it happen here on the forums as well as other places. Several home worlds have gained a certain… notoriety over the past few weeks. Internal community building is something left to the guilds themselves. I’d like to see a strong community on Sanctum of Rall.

Another DAOC vet making an appearance…. this will be my first post (and probably only unless on this subject matter) on anet forums as i’m typically more of a lurker on MMO boards. I second all of the above, in fact, I would be overwhelmingly addicted to this game should SOME of the above be added/implemented in some fashion into GW2.

Serashen – you sir, are not fit to call yourself a DAOC vet. I have no evidence of this beyond the tone of your above comment, but yeah, keep your comments to yourself.

I’m not fit to say that I played the game, because I don’t want this to be a DAOC clone? lol. Dude, not everything about DAOC was bliss. Why can’t this game be its own game? They’ve obviously tried to take a little bit of everything and put it into play. Why do you want realm ranks and the like? So we can have bridge campers feeding off new players again? lol. DAOC killed itself by turning the game into something that required MONTHS of work to have a viable character in RvR if you were just starting. Don’t be naive.

Von.2790:

[TLDR]

• Former DAoC player continually disappointed by MMO’s
• No real reason to WvW
• No Community Building
• Too hard to kill people.
• GW2 has potential

Just using this list so it will be easier to respond.

No real reason to WvW:

I disagree here, but it’s likely because I am not a gear chaser. I WvW for the sake of doing it. Also, there is the whole “allied and enemy guilds” thing, but I will get to that later. There are rewards in WvW.

No community building:

Again, I disagree here. So much is anonymous – but GUILD tags aren’t. Also the fact that for those of us who W3 often, we spend a lot of time with the same core group and we get to know one another.

Too hard to kill people:

Once more we disagree. There are certain burst builds that kill quickly and die quickly. Otherwise it seems just right. I prefer my fights to last longer than 10 seconds.

GW2 has potential:

Finally, common ground!

Played Daoc for 3 years. I can see where you are coming from with these, but I dont exactly agree with them 100%.

Lack of Community building – Daoc suffered from this early on too. After the game was out for a bit, and most people had hit max level, guilds began to organize a lot more, alliances between guilds formed, etc etc. I think GW2 just needs some time, or rather, players in the game need time, for this aspect to evolve.

Too Hard to Kill People – I think this is a mixed bag. Ive sat there for 15 minutes spamming my aoe and ranged attacks at keep defenders (or attackers) with very few of them ever dying. Ive fired siege weapons and people, seeing large numbers pop up, and then “Evade, evade, evade” as they avoid death (some of them). Ive felt the frustration of feeling like no matter how much my group attacks, no one is really thinning the enemy numbers. But this is just siege defense/offense. Out in the open world, when people clash head to head, deaths are quick. Very quick. Even 1 v 1 fights can be over in under 10 seconds. So perhaps tweaks do need to be made, primarily when it comes to siege defense/offense. I dont think there is an issue though when you dont have keep walls to hide behind.

No reason to WvW – I agree with you a bit more on this than your other issues you have. One thing Daoc had was realm rank, and rewards you could purchase that granted you permanent character bonuses. Things like bonuses to stats, new skills and abilities, etc etc. The gave people something to strive for, and further character development. GW2 seems to lack ANYTHING like this.

It seems that the only real reason to do WvW, is just for the fun of doing WvW. You get badges… very… very… slowly, and often not at all. So using wvw as a way to grind out gear, is probably the least effective method in the game.

I do think Anet needs to add some sort of character progression/reward system for WvW. Perhaps unlockable new abilities that can only be used in WvW? Or even character bonuses that only apply in WvW. Like being able to buy ranks of Power, Precision, etc with special WvW xp you earn. Very similar to Daoc’s system. Id love to have an F5 and F6 ability for WvW only abilities you could earn as well. Something that wouldnt take away from your current build, but add to it while doing WvW.

There are SOOO many ways they could add incentive and character progression to WvW, its just a matter of if they will or not. People need incentive. Even games like BF3 allow you to earn new things as you play. Even fluff works. Customized “Finish them” banners, for example.

One small problem with being able to see your name is that they can /send you. (not sure if this works vs enemy server, but it definitely works across servers… and I have a feeling there are no checks)

I do miss the @ posts though. :P

In regards to server rotation, it seems they had to do this because there’s only one realm… server… then they made up a point system for some reason… so they are sort of in a box.

Titles would be nice.

WvW is an extremely dumbed down version of daoc and its not funny
small zones
no personal presence
no rp/ra
no reason to roam instead of zerg surfing
Its not really a battlefield i hoped, just a stupid aoe spam.

Aakek.8760:

I can’t agree as a long time DAOC player. Jade Quarry has a large Daoc population and we have been growing the community and the cooperation that we did not see as much of in Daoc. Why? Cause in Daoc the more you rvr’d the more isolated you became into little cliches. What started as a great community and realm pride became diluted into a chase for the most spam, fast rr, and just general kill farming.

I’m glad to hear there is a community forming. That being said, let’s be fair here, you’re offering evidence of a GW2 community forming that actually IS a DAoC community, and became a GW2 community before the game had even released.

[Edit]
Also, as far as cliques forming, sure. That was part of the community. Over the years I played DAoC, I ran in several different “gank group” cliques. That was some of the best time’s I’ve had in video gaming.

I laughed out loud when I read one of the problems is, “Keep defense being too skewed in favor of defenders.” I guess defenses are supposed to be skewed more in the middle, favoring offense a little more? lol

And play for fun, not for a gear grind such as in Panda Warrior. There is a good community building in pretty much every server. My server is coming together very nicely. I’ve met some new folks who have joined my group, and we’re kicking kitten our own style.

I would be extremely surprised if ArenaNet added anything remotely resembling Realm Rank, because it cuts completely against the core of their design mentality. The power curve is very flat, and it’s meant to be that way. It’s not meant to be difficult or time consuming to get to the point where you’ve maxed out your character’s abilities.

The things that are meant to take a lot of time are almost, if not entirely, cosmetic, and this is a very deliberate design choice. It’s central to what defines Guild Wars as a franchise, and I wouldn’t anticipate them changing that. Now, some more cosmetic stuff besides the armor and weapons would be awesome; I would love to have more titles and even some unique emotes that’re tied to WvW participation. Better ways of keeping track of stats would also be great. Ranking and leader boards are kinda important, though I’m sure they already know that.

Also keep in mind that there is also a pretty big set of buffs that apply to your entire server, including the people playing PvE, that’s tied to how many points you’re pulling in for your side. Those buffs are prettykittennice too, especially if they’re allowed to build up. That’s maybe not a reason for an individual to play, but it’s a good reason for a server to.

But the biggest reason to play WvW is because WvW is fun. And that’s kinda how the rest of the game is set up too. If you’re not finding it fun, taking a break and letting the game evolve a bit more is probably not a bad idea. They will continually add to and improve things as time goes on, and it’s not like you’re paying a sub fee in the mean time.

As to the rest of your post: smaller forces most definitely can kill larger forces, I have had it happen to groups I’ve been in multiple times, and there are some tactics that may be borderline broken that can be done with fairly small groups right now; about 20 or 30 people on Maguuma wiped a group of us trying to hold a Keep that was twice their size, and took almost no losses, because we didn’t know how to deal with the particular tactic they were using. I’ve seen highly coordinated groups of 5 wipe groups of 10 players by spiking intelligently, and retreating properly.

So it can absolutely be done. I think part of the problem is that GW2’s combat is still something people aren’t fully used to, and the trait and skill interactions still aren’t fully appreciated, so we’re not really playing with the level of skill that we can be expecting to see a few months down the line. We’re still working out tactics and counters, and how best to set up builds, and which skills work best for which situations. Give that a bit more time before saying people are too hard to kill.

I won’t directly address your comments on community building other than to say that it’s not been that way in my experience, but this is probably going to be somewhat world dependent. TC’s got a community growing inside itself, and a rivalry growing with Maguuma.

There are a few things that make the system behave a little differently than you’re implying in practice: while worlds are matched with different servers, they’re also matched to near ranked worlds, so over time it’s likely that you’ll mostly be seeing the same small set of worlds on rotation; the matchmaking system doesn’t have a lot of options if it’s pulling people from within a similar ranking range, you’re maybe looking at 5 or 6 servers that’ll come up frequently. So you’ll rotate into the same set of people often enough to get a sense for them.

Also, as people have mentioned, you can see Guild tags, and I have a healthy respect for SFD at the moment, especially if there’s a moderately sized group of them. But if your world is fluctuating in the rankings more, or has just had worse luck in getting paired with the same people, and you’ve got less guilds running around in your matchups, I can see how it’d kinda suck.

80% of the people went to do RvR to get realmranks and realmabilites, anything else is just BS.

Character progression, that is what drives people to keep on playing.
WvW has nothing of that, its quite meanigless fighting week after with week with no rewards, exactly as i knew it would be, and what was said during the beta stage.

ANet did really think that sPvP would be the kind ov PvP most people would want to do, thats quite hillarious.

Hopefully ANet will reevaluate WvW and bring something more rewarding into the game.
People can say “just do it for fun” all they want, but it wont hold.
Ive been in WAY to many mmos to know this by now.

*Realm ranks you could actually see on your enemy
*Realmabilites for character progression
*Skills based on sieging
*A more thrilling way to defend/take relics/orbs
*Keeps with guards that actually had your guilds name if you claimed it, and gave your guild warnings when it was under attack.
*Realmpoints for your guild holding a keep as long as possible
*Join when you want, no queues, hundred of player at same area.

WvW has alot of things going for it, but it can become so much better.

Right now, the reasons to WvW in GW2 are all focused around acquiring gear.

I dunno about everyone else, but I WvW because smashing down walls of a keep, getting killed, changing tactics and eventually taking the place after an hour of back and forth is awesome. It somewhat annoys me that I have to take time off from this to improve my gear as I’m all in yellows.

Selo.1250:

80% of the people went to do RvR to get realmranks and realmabilites, anything else is just BS.

Character progression, that is what drives people to keep on playing.
WvW has nothing of that, its quite meanigless fighting week after with week with no rewards, exactly as i knew it would be, and what was said during the beta stage.

ANet did really think that sPvP would be the kind ov PvP most people would want to do, thats quite hillarious.

Hopefully ANet will reevaluate WvW and bring something more rewarding into the game.
People can say “just do it for fun” all they want, but it wont hold.
Ive been in WAY to many mmos to know this by now.

*Realm ranks you could actually see on your enemy
*Realmabilites for character progression
*Skills based on sieging
*A more thrilling way to defend/take relics/orbs
*Keeps with guards that actually had your guilds name if you claimed it, and gave your guild warnings when it was under attack.
*Realmpoints for your guild holding a keep as long as possible
*Join when you want, no queues, hundred of player at same area.

WvW has alot of things going for it, but it can become so much better.

I think W3 would only benefit from more middle and long term goals.

HOWEVER – I do not think they should offer any mechanical or systemic benefit.

ANet could and should continue to add cosmetic things such as titles, skins, dyes, mini pets, or whatever else.

Selo, given that WvW maps are capped at a few hundred in a game with over 2 million (so far) players, I’m really content with 80% of the players not being interested in it; keeps our queues manageable. There are enough of us that find it fun on it’s own merits.

I agree with you that there is lack of “achievements”, and the realm points system was nice. Though, balancing all of the realm skills was really hard, indeed they were mostly unbalanced.
Also, if the ranks increase player’s effectiveness (as it was in DAOC), you are basically making life much harder for any player willing to being playing in WvW. Having a usable pg will take months of frustration while you’re almost facerolled by the highest ranks players.
So how would you introduce ranks without unbalancing the game and without frustrating WvW newcomers?

I don’t agree on the too hard to kill people, in DAOC when you got a PA from a stealth enemy inside your keep (and this was already bad enough) you basically knew there was no escape in most cases. That was just frustrating, no fun at all. There was also no skill involved, the attacker had just to press a couple buttons to kill you, and you could not do anything. in GW2 if your enemy escapes you made something wrong, or viceversa if he dies he made a mistake. See, there’s skills involved here.

Not commenting on the sickness, the most boring and annoying thing in DAOC, not sure why anyone would like to see it again.

Finally, I think keeps defense is instead too weak, taking a keep in DAOC was quite harder (taking hours sometimes), npcs were stronger than GW2 ones, keeps had many points of defense (bridges, door, towers, keep lord room) where even with the enemy inside the keep you could still win. So far in GW2 I’ve seen people hitting the door, entering and taking the keep, npcs don’t exist, all ways to keep’s lord are straight. Hard to defend. Taking a keep must be hard, probably harder than it is now, imo.

Ive played Daoc since November 2001, it is still the best pvp game out. Von summed up beautifully everything this game lacks and why its stale to a bunch of people.

What I cant figure out is why no one plays it, Im guessing the learning curve is too much? People dont know how to do anything but World of rifthammer2 type pvp where youre just constantly running around pew pewing and waiting for cooldowns and there arent really interrupts.

RE: go play daoc if you want daoc and I hear that, but new games are usually interesting no matter which you love and since all Ive heard about this game was how w3 is the next rvr its just like daoc, so of course I had to check it out.

With everything else the op said I also think that there are way to many camps and towers and too much pve going on. its very cluttered imo.

RE:“Also, if the ranks increase player’s effectiveness (as it was in DAOC), you are basically making life much harder for any player willing to being playing in WvW. Having a usable pg will take months of frustration while you’re almost facerolled by the highest ranks players.”

Not true, for the most part in daoc player skill will trump realm rank, There are tons of bad rr12s out there Its harder but thats what happens in mmos no? Its supposed to be some sort of a progression or else its just an action game with a static character.

“So how would you introduce ranks without unbalancing the game and without frustrating WvW newcomers?”

The same way daoc did which is by rr 1-5 easy to get and then it gets harder and harder to get enough rps to advance to your next rank. To make it easier you could increase the rank between higher levels so the disparity between haves and havenots wouldnt be as much.

“I don’t agree on the too hard to kill people, in DAOC when you got a PA from a stealth enemy inside your keep (and this was already bad enough) you basically knew there was no escape in most cases. That was just frustrating, no fun at all. There was also no skill involved, the attacker had just to press a couple buttons to kill you, and you could not do anything.”

The only case this would be true is if your purge was down and you werent paying attention.

“in GW2 if your enemy escapes you made something wrong, or viceversa if he dies he made a mistake. See, there’s skills involved here.”

I dont agree, mesmers and thieves seem to get away from fights quite easily when they need to. In daoc idk, a tank wouldnt be able to get away from casters with speed but theres 36 classes, theres diffeent ways out of everything depending on class and who youre fighting.

“Not commenting on the sickness, the most boring and annoying thing in DAOC, not sure why anyone would like to see it again.”

Because it makes the game not an insta spawn at the graveyard and fight again in 3 secs game, which sucks. If you play bad and lose you get punished, res sick could be cured, it was like a debuff, and if you had to release, its 5 minutes it would be gone before you were done traveling.

OP, I agree with your ideas and concerns, but I do disagree with “no point to WvW.” Am I the only person who doesn’t give a kitten about getting exotics and just likes fighting other players?

Cant remember really but wasent it also that you could only “equip” a couple of realmabilites, so even if you had enough points, you couldnt use them all?

Selo.1250:

Cant remember really but wasent it also that you could only “equip” a couple of realmabilites, so even if you had enough points, you couldnt use them all?

No, all RAs were able to be used. Don’t forget that many were passives.

I would love to see some version of the RR system, its what kept people playing daoc for over 5 years. Personally i cant see myself doing wvwvw for years to come with zero character progression, its only been a month, and i only need a few hundred badges for my last exotic and im done. I’m not saying wvw is not fun in itself as it is, but people love character progression its the basis behind every role-playing game, mmo or pen and paper game. Remember in DAOC when you saw someone who was RR12 and it showed there full name, something like that also would be cool. wvwvw has the potential to be amazing, and in reality its the only real endgame gw2 has, so they need to make it a viable long term activity.

As a long time Daoc Player myself, seeing a return of Realm Ranks would be nice. You don’t even have to award Realm Points or have Realm Abilities in my opinion. Just keep track of kills and/or Keep Takes and award progressive titles based on that. That would give someone a personal goal to shoot for in wvwvw.
Titles matter in video games to a lot of people. Reaching Lion Knight in Daoc was one of my proudest video game memories. Also, it was a rush when another group would come over a hill and you would see that they were all Emerald Riders or Einherjars…

Think about a game like Call of Duty…. why do people prestige? Because they enjoy going back to having no guns or abilites or because they want that little Icon by their name?

Eolirin.1830:

Selo, given that WvW maps are capped at a few hundred in a game with over 2 million (so far) players, I’m really content with 80% of the players not being interested in it; keeps our queues manageable. There are enough of us that find it fun on it’s own merits.

Thats why you make WvW rewards things that you only use in WvW.

Players who currently have no interesting in doing WvW, because of the lack or rewards, STILL will not be interested. You only get the “honor farmers” who care nothing about pvp, doing pvp, when the rewards are useful outside of pvp.

Do you really think someone who doesnt care about PvP is gonna care about getting a customizable “finish them” banner?

Do you really think someone who doesnt care about PvP is gonna care about a passive ability only usable in PvP that allows them to carry 50% more supply?

Build the rewards around concepts like that, and it keeps those 80% away still. Throw in mini pets, or a nice weapon, and suddenly they will all flock to farm it. (ie: dont add mini pets or uber weapons as rewards)

Serashen.6793:

I’m not fit to say that I played the game, because I don’t want this to be a DAOC clone? lol. Dude, not everything about DAOC was bliss. Why can’t this game be its own game? They’ve obviously tried to take a little bit of everything and put it into play. Why do you want realm ranks and the like? So we can have bridge campers feeding off new players again? lol. DAOC killed itself by turning the game into something that required MONTHS of work to have a viable character in RvR if you were just starting. Don’t be naive.

several months to have a viable character? wat o_O
2 days to lvl → 1-2 weeks till rr7 → done, perfectly viable character

As a former Darkfall, Warhammer, and especially Wotmud (best ever) player, I agree with most of the OP points.

The one I disagree with is the ease of killing, both in and out of water. I have a really easy time, but that probably has to do with my class, the Mesmer.

100% agree with OP

I agree somewhat with too hard to kill people. I personally think they should remove the downed/res feature from WvW. It’s just annoying to kill people off then 5 minutes later a huge zerg appears and resses everything making your killings pretty pointless. It’s just ridiculous when I snipe an enemy and 4 of his allies come to his aid and ress him within seconds. Downed state in pvp just needs to go

There are much more important issues to deal with other than your kitten in wvw at this moment; though it would be nice to see player names so you could see who you kill and who is killing you.

100% agree with OP

We have a few thieves which kill anyone in a few seconds when we mark them. I don’t agree it’s hard to kill people. But people should learn how to use “Call Target”, “Take Targer” key bindings and focus fire as a party. Whenever our party leaders mark an enemy he dies like a fly.

Water combat is broken I agree but on all the other aspects about “To Hard To Kill” I suggest to things

1. Better gear
2. Better party organization.

Sorry but L2P on this side.

Speaking also as DAoC vet:

1. Disagree with point 1. WvW should be its own reward. I don’t want another grind thanks for realm points. I just want to do WvW. I get karma, great. I get money its required as I need money to fund the war efforts. badges are also a bonus. Even if I don’t any of the above I’d still do it because its fun for me. No skinner box buttons required. Getting better at it while having fun should be the goal I don’t need or want extra advantage over people who do it less often than me.

2. Lack of Community tools totally agree. What’s the excuse for for having server based forums so the servers can at least have an easy place to coordinate? kittenthing should be accessible in game! How about some chat rooms where guild leaders can form? Something!

3. Too hard to kill people… huh? Only true if you spec, trait and have the right gear to avoid death. Your damage output & team utility is sacrificed for the survivability. On water combat I agree with you 100%.

+1 wont say much more than someone said something about progressing. WvWvW needs RR or something like it its not about beeing the best, or having everything its something to strive for and the RR system in daoc was good and it was not easy to get the highest RR i agree .

Sorry i forgott WvWvW nice best since DaoC but common we get zerged to nothingness with upgrades that takes way to long every time we claim when its on 10% left it gets zerged and we rarely have a chance to get supplies up in the smaller keeps.

If you like the zerg fest that in Daoc you could avoid then just place your behind on the bridges thats where you guys lagging like crazy farming your what is it 30 xp or something stands

I was kinda nodding my head throughout your post in agreement until I got to your subtle call for a warrior surviveability nerf. How about we take a look at Mesmers, Engineers and so on first?

mmo is like drug. ppl keep taking it to have the feel when they tasted it for the first time. guess what? they never will.

GW2 much superior and successful than DAOC.

forget DAOC and accept GW2 as it is. you will enjoy the game better.

My main issue; WvW zones are too small.

With the exception of missing realm ranks, I have much preferred this games RvR over DAoCs. DAoC was great for it’s time but I think your nostalgia goggles are on a little too tight.

And yeah, I agree water fights are terrible in this game.

Ya, the GW2 maps are horrible. So cramped. Its designed so you can really just zerg up and siege. There is almost no place at all for people to roam and try to actually PvP. I see more people running away from fights than I do see groups trying to engage each other. Seems to be all about siege, since every objective is right next to the next objective.

I can’t find a single place in any of the maps where there is a legit open field area to roam. There are a couple spots that look like they might have it, and then you realize theyre completely covered in agro. Mobs are fight ruiners, no one wants a 5v5 or 10v10 with 5 daze spamming eagle raptors in the middle of their fight.

DAOC maps were amazing. They gave the players enough space to actually fight eachother. GW2 maps are terrible. GW2 forces the players to siege, with no real risk for moving from one objective to the next.

Also forgot to mention that the downed mechanic has no place in any PvP setting. It is HORRIBLE in WvW. Just plain HORRIBLE, has to come out or WvW will always have that ugly scar of a bad mechanic stuck in it.

I am not a fan of the whole e-sport wvw thing, changing servers you come up against, daily or weekly or bi-monthly. It is very hard to get the balance right or ensure there are even contests as we have seen.

I think siege plays too large a role in wvw and the layout makes it easy to drop siege where it is obnoxiously hard to get to.

“Not true, for the most part in daoc player skill will trump realm rank, There are tons of bad rr12s out there Its harder but thats what happens in mmos no? Its supposed to be some sort of a progression or else its just an action game with a static character.”

Still the fact newcomers have difficulties until they reached at least 4L1 stays. I played DAOC for a long time as well, and that problem existed, no way to deny that.
Sure you can make the first levels really easy, but this is just going to create unbalancing issues.

“I don’t agree on the too hard to kill people, in DAOC when you got a PA from a stealth enemy inside your keep (and this was already bad enough) you basically knew there was no escape in most cases. ”
“The only case this would be true is if your purge was down and you werent paying attention.”

Sure you basically had 0.5s to react and the only thing you could do was to hope there was a door at hand to escape. Really funny and skillful… Basically 95% of the players were just dying. Maybe they were bad, but this just creates elitism and frustration.

“Not commenting on the sickness, the most boring and annoying thing in DAOC, not sure why anyone would like to see it again.”
“Because it makes the game not an insta spawn at the graveyard and fight again in 3 secs game, which sucks.”

Indeed currently in GW2 you have to walk the entire map, no spawn points. In DAOC I was able most of the times to transfer to the keep under attack and defend it, that was much mosre insta spawn.

I’m in favor of things that give achievements, but I think they should avoid 2 really bad points from DAOC:
1. Elitism, really bad for the community
2. Unbalancing, really bad for the game

To comment on your points.

No Real Reason to WvW

How about for fun? WvW can be a lot of fun if you don’t worry about rewards and just enjoy yourself.

Lack of Community Building

Most server are forming alliances of guilds to take on the enemy. I know Isle of Janthir has forums set up and last weekend there was a big meeting of guild leaders to discuss WvW strategy. Even tonight we were coordinating with other guilds to get our defences in place to counter Sea of Sorrow’s golem rush on our main keep.

You don’t need to see an enemy players name to form a community on your server do you?? Anyway, you can see their guild name. It can be just as satisfying to know you have defeated an enemy guild.

Surely structured PvP can give you plenty of opportunity to defeat players on a more personal level. WvW is well world vs. world, the idea is to defeat the enemy server and you are but one part of the glorious war machine poised to crush those evil Sea of Sorrows scum.

Too Hard to Kill People

I don’t find it hard to kill people in WvW, but most players there seem to be pretty bad and stand still while my beserker kill them. I’ve take down multiple people on the top of keep walls just with my illusionary beserker. I’m also usually the one that escapes on 5% life so I’d like that kept as is thank you very much. Repair costs are quite a lot at level 80 and I’d prefer nights like tonight where I don’t have to repair at all because no one can kill me.

Most of what I read in your suggestions is that you can’t kill people so you need help doing it. That is a you problem, not an issue with the game.

Just my thoughts…

Must say the fun part is i hear alot of NOO dont go daoc i dont want the daoc system
what player most of us that accually played RvR wants is the feeling of small guilds beeing able to face of against other 8 man parties in an open enviroment like a sandbox that emain was. Every MMorpg after Daoc has been zerg if u dont have 210 members in your elite guild and zerg you cant win

Whats the fun in that its not skill i saw a guild 8 man really tight group facing off against us zerging they where good very good but in the end the manpower was just to big and they had no way of escaping.

DoX.1758:

Must say the fun part is i hear alot of NOO dont go daoc i dont want the daoc system
what player most of us that accually played RvR wants is the feeling of small guilds beeing able to face of against other 8 man parties in an open enviroment like a sandbox that emain was. Every MMorpg after Daoc has been zerg if u dont have 210 members in your elite guild and zerg you cant win

Whats the fun in that its not skill i saw a guild 8 man really tight group facing off against us zerging they where good very good but in the end the manpower was just to big and they had no way of escaping.

Millions of people also didn’t play MMOs back in 2001. Games will never be the same as they were “back in the day” simply because it’s impossible when you factor in the number of players on at any given time.

The zone cap clearly is attempting to discourage it, but there’s only so much that can be done.

Von.2790:

No Real Reason to WvW
Right now, the reasons to WvW in GW2 are all focused around acquiring gear.

i read all, but you lost me right here.

you really need a reason to do PvP? you really need a reward?
NO, that’s BS WoW put in everybody mind.
sure daoc have a deep rank system that allow to continue progress while pvping. BUT it also create a HUGE disparity between new player and old player.
Say you wanna start a 8man gang today on daoc… you simple can’t because 11l/12l gang will steamroll you no matter how good you are…
The same happened to WAR… i played 2 year there… from 2008 to 2010, i was pretty much top rank… then i come back this year… my char was useless i cannot enjoy the game because they added some more rank and some more item limited by the rank.

With GW2 you have a well balanced game (getting geared is very easy in this game) that anyway can enjoy if you are good….

TLDR
You play PvP because you like it. Not because they gave you a treat at the end of the trick like a circus animal…

I’m also a long time MMO player and big DAoC fan, and while I agree with some of these points, I disagree with at least one…strongly…and that’s the introduction of anything resembling RP abilities into GW2. Frankly, I hated them in DAoC as well. They made what was already an unbalanced gong show a million times worse. You end up stratifying your players into haves and have nots based on time investment, and the more punitive coming out for PvP becomes, the less you want to do it. No one enjoys being meat for wolves.

I do think some form of cosmetic/rank system would benefit the game tremendously for those people who like to feel like they’re earning SOMETHING for their time, but the moment the game introduces a power treadmill to PvP is the moment I put it down forever. I want the freedom to walk away from the game for a month and not feel like everyone has eclipsed me 5 times over during my absence. Perpetual incremental increases in character power have no place in a competitive PvP environment. The very idea of it is laughable, really, and worthy of the deepest scorn.

Crap like water combat does need some serious work, there’s no question, along with numerous other issues, most particularly player culling. WvWvW is far from perfect in its present incarnation, but it’s also the best large scale PvP we’ve seen since DAoC, and by a fair long shot too. It needs a little time to find its legs. DAoC was a MESS when it launched. I could spend all day detailing the innumerable broken elements and balance nightmares that plagued it.

The one thing I want to see GW2 adopt from DAoC’s PvP system is Darkness Falls. The sooner they can get a Darkness Falls approximate into the game, the better. It was a crucial element when it came to faction balancing, constantly piping a portion of the leader off the field and allowing underdog factions to rally.