Guild Wars 2

a) Horrible idea. Who is going to accept to be a lower rank? Just use color
b) No thx you. I don’t want spam message
c) Cool concept.

DevonCarver.5370:

There are some updates coming soon, quite soon even, that hopefully will dispel this. Say bye-bye to the Quaggan.

.

ANet: “We’re aware of the problems and are working towards ideas that may potentially work to resolve them in the future.”
WvW Player: “Really!? Like what?”
ANet: “Not prepared to say at this time…in the meanwhile check out this living story, it’s got loads of new content.”

Yep that was spot on.

How about you start a day long forum discussion where you, Devon, fully participate about the problems that plague WvW. The REAL problems. Like the utterly crap matchup system. The failed design of WvW as a whole due to not thinking the set up through. How skill is not rewarded, but PvDoor is massively rewarded.

Oh I know you will never do that though as that would show an inkling of caring about the issues.

Expect more pvdooring and server stacking once they start rewarding winning servers.

yesfourme.8906:

a) Horrible idea. Who is going to accept to be a lower rank? Just use color
b) No thx you. I don’t want spam message
c) Cool concept.

So small minded. On an organised server, it will help a lot.

If I was being whiny, I’d say “ANet doesn’t care about roamers”.

Devon, could you mention to us something about roaming? Not everyone is fan of zerging play-style and ANet mentioned few times big changes on this matter, yet nothing happened so far.
It’s pretty understandable that 5man group shouldn’t be able to do, what 30man group does, or do way less and being over-rewarded for that. But still, “roamers could use some love”. I’d love to see increasing AoE cap to 7, which would help in outnumbered small scale fights.
And thanks for your previous answers. Can’t wait for water area to by dryed (tho it could stay on ~3k radius) to see new interesting place to fight on.

Speaking of spam messaging, is there any way of changing how often someone, this is mostly for commanders, can speak without getting suppressed? Often I lose fights because I can’t communicate with the infantry I am leading; communication = organisation. I try to reduce it and always type different messages so I’m not targeted by the suppression filter, but still it occurs sometimes and kinda cripples our group, I have to rely on my guildies on TS typing for me, which is many times too slow and not ideally placed. If maybe there was some way to ease it for commanders in WvW, or just in WvW or something, it’s just rather useless atm, thnx in advance if I get an answer

What is this sorcery? Dev feedback

Go hijack a living world team to your WvW team. We do not need a new festival of fluff and shallow drama every two weeks. We need WvW and GvG content that leave a impression!

In short, all the things we asked for months ago are going to take many more months to implement.

Get comfortable people, 2013 is not the year for wvw it seems.

yesfourme.8906:

a) Horrible idea. Who is going to accept to be a lower rank?

do you think, say, U.S. army is composed only by Commanders?
organization requires a formal order: we are in critical need of flexibility, and the current system is way to rigid.

While on the subject of what’s being worked on, are there any plans to even out matches? My server (Maguuma) is getting stomped most weeks, I think there have been 3 or 4 weeks since the matching change that haven’t been complete blowouts (where the top team has more than twice the points we do). All these changes sound interesting, but if WvW isn’t fun, I’m not going to see them because I’m going to do something that is.

Rookni.2469:

What is this sorcery? Dev feedback

Go hijack a living world team to your WvW team. We do not need a new festival of fluff and shallow drama every two weeks. We need WvW and GvG content that leave a impression!

Leave GvG content for s/tPvP only, not WvW.

DevonCarver.5370:

Hope that is informative.

It is, thank you. But,

DevonCarver.5370:

There are some updates coming soon, quite soon even, that hopefully will dispel this. Say bye-bye to the Quaggan.

Sad panda. You do NOT have nice teeth.

One of the few things in the BL that a solo player could do to feel like they had an effect on the entire map.

Lert.6287:

If I was being whiny, I’d say “ANet doesn’t care about roamers”.

Devon, could you mention to us something about roaming? Not everyone is fan of zerging play-style and ANet mentioned few times big changes on this matter, yet nothing happened so far.
It’s pretty understandable that 5man group shouldn’t be able to do, what 30man group does, or do way less and being over-rewarded for that. But still, “roamers could use some love”. I’d love to see increasing AoE cap to 7, which would help in outnumbered small scale fights.
And thanks for your previous answers. Can’t wait for water area to by dryed (tho it could stay on ~3k radius) to see new interesting place to fight on.

Why would they do anything to improve the life of roamers? They make up 1% of WvW population, if even that.

I mean, you don’t think that introducing WXP ranks was to appeal to the hard core WvW players right? :S

DevonCarver.5370:

Knightmare.8634:

2. WvW Abilities – All in all I have to admit, they are just boring. Passives blah, some of the siege abilities are ok. I know you have to be careful with balance… but I would really like to see more creativity here.

2) We will continue to work on these abilities in the hopes of making them more fun and providing more variety. We are however quite set on not adding power creep, at least not much, which makes them fairly constrained. We have yet to unleash our craziest ideas.

Why does siege get excluded from ANET’s definition of power creep? Increasing damage and range of siege weapons in a game with so much siege use, is power creep.

I want to thank Devon for responding to at least some of our WvW concerns and most importantly verifying a key player suspicion, that Arenanet places a very low priority on WvW and they have committed minimal resources to it.

WvW is where I spend most of my time online. I do along with many other WvWers buy gems on a regular basis, and as such do provide a significant revenue stream. I don’t buy the argument that the WvW neglect is do to a lack of revenue.

I was hoping to get a response that showed that Arenanet has a substantial vision for WvW that includes a long term plan to significantly improve and expand this game mode.

Instead we are getting company feedback that verifies what we have suspected; WvW is getting the short end of the stick in terms of development resources and there really is not a long term plan to significantly improve/expand this part of the game.

What puzzles me the most is the discrepancy between my experience, which is that WvW participation is high and far outshines sPVP or PVE dungeons. With the last 6 months of temporary content influxes to everything except WvW, Areanet seems to be doing everything they can to entice players out of WvW.

It is as if WvW was only added in the first place as a requirement put forth by marketing, and once that checkbox is filled, that is the end of the story. It as though Arenanet has consciously set out to discourage WvW participation by only putting significant rewards and priority development effort into PVE.

Given the official response so far to this thread, things do not look promising for WvW in the long term. There are several upcoming MMO launches in coming year(s) and I will be very interested in the large scale PvP modes they will offer as Arenanet’s WvW effort seems to have ground to a halt and is limping along with a skeleton development crew.

Grevender.9235:

yesfourme.8906:

a) Horrible idea. Who is going to accept to be a lower rank?

do you think, say, U.S. army is composed only by Commanders?
organization requires a formal order: we are in critical need of flexibility, and the current system is way to rigid.

Organization? A lot of players in my server (DB) don’t care about even about following the commander. All they care is making cheap points and quit when it gets hard.
Like someone else wrote, commander color is a much better choice.

I’d like to dispel the thought that organized roamers are only 1% of any players in WvW. I know I’ve done my part more than zergs hung up at a tower while I’ve captured every single camp in a BL.

There’s more fun in roaming, and I can confirm MANY people do it. It should be developed and supported.

Devon, your responses here were reassuring. I’m glad for your time.

If you have time for a lowly roamer’s question: Will your team be bringing anything to help roaming/discourage 100-man-zergs?
Also are you going to implement a map/area for dueling/GvG?

Two things I’d kill to know.

Thanks.

LightningBlaze.4913:

I’m surprise one of the Dev keep replying to this section of the forums after being bashed so many times by rude uneducated players. It goes to show the great level of professionalism Devon possesses. Nevertheless, players that behave this way towards a dev that kindly replies to our threads (when they don’t have to) should be punished with temporary or permanent ban from posting on the forums.

Being “rude” comes from being frustrated, and your use of the term “uneducated” is subjective, mostly inaccurate, and generally ignorant. I have at least some background in computer systems and software, and I watched ANet’s one-hour video presentation prior to launch that described how the game was set up and how the devs worked with it. I wouldn’t classify myself as educated, but I’ll bet a have a far better understanding of things than you do.

Many of us who have complained in these forums have complained not only about missing improvements and outright flaws in the game (like the total fail matchmaking system), but also about the general lack of response and information from the devs in general. Devon has been better than most, but even he will go weeks without commenting and when he does the feedback is still woefully vague. We still don’t have the slightest frame of reference when these things will be addressed, and “soon” has little meaning when we been hearing that exact same word for the last eleven months without result.

Overall, the general impression I still get from Devon’s recent comments is that GW2 was poorly designed on many fronts … a game engine with limited performance and peripheral coding with limited flexibility. He also is crippled with insufficient resources to address many of the user complaints and suggestions, but many of those items would be trivial to fix if the system was designed properly from the start. I agree that it is invalid to personalize our frustrations and heap them on Devon as an individual, but as ANet’s face of WvW it comes with the territory.

3 questions for Devs (Devon) that haven’t been mentioned so far:

1) Mechanics overhaul to allow more variety and counters to the hammer-stun-train in open field; for an example retool retaliation so ranged could actually punish a stack without getting so much retal damage the ranged have to stack up for some healing, thus just making them an easy target for the hammer-stun-train to roll over.

2) Anytime the class skills balance team are interviewed, they talk about the 2 game modes, PvP and PvE and what’s needed, emphasising they have no kittening clue that WvW even exists. This shows in how often skill balances are completely unsuited to WvW (also things like new equipment runes etc, have any of these guys even played all game modes?).

3) Force living story teams to make content for all of the game, including WvW. LS include PvP games, jumping puzzles, crafting, broker/trading opportunities, lore, mini-games, PvE events but never ever anything positive for WvW. Living Story is actually the enemy of WvW, every 2 weeks its yet more opportunities only available from from PvE/crafting that affect WvW balance, with zero obtainability inside WvW.

P.S. character bound WXP as a vertical power grind is stupid, and also lowers A-net revenue, by punishing alt play (and alts gem needs), and stifles general “free to choose” game play, you must grind wxp only, or fall far far behind – eventually people choke on ‘forced to play’ mechanics, burn-out and de-install.

Since a dev is watching I’ll get some questions out too:

1) What is up with the trap system? We have seen 2 traps introduced and that is it. It is considered a failed experiment because it is seldom used? (I have never seen it) Or are there still ideas to work with it/change they way it works in the future with more options? Or is the idea canned and do the current 2 traps just stay in?

2) With the recent introduction of the permanent finisher chooser, will we also see finishers exclusive to WvW, bot unlimited and as drops(x time use). It is not used as frequently as in PvP but at least it gives some rewards + u can show off.

3) As someone has mentioned, special skins for gaining WvW ranks, and other rewards, perhaps build out a system like we have for AP and HoM for the skins? Have system for personal rewards and perhaps something for server rewards, although that can’t be too much since people who have never helped also get it so doesn’t seem fair to give them big rewards too, so I think its better to put those in personal WxP ranks.

4) it has been said, will say so again achievements. A huge system with great rewards has been rolled out for achievement points, however for WvW the achievement points are few and U need a ridiculous amount. Putting WvW players at a great disadvantage if they wish to require the skins from that. I do think this is something that can be done on a relative short term, once U find good ideas to make achievements (ask the players?).

5) Changes to loot, its an old one but I do believe it poses some problems. Often in zerg fights u keep moving around, parts get flooded with enemies so U cannot go and get the bags that dropped there, focussing on has a bag dropped is bad for the focus of the fight so this is IMO an issue that needs to be resolved, the loot is already not that great and the one we get can easily be missed. My idea would be to put a chest at spawn and everything that drops gets put in that chest, if u access it it gives your items in a fifo manner so U cant abuse it for extra space and of course your gold.

6) More buy options with badges of honour, apart from siege and one time ascended there isn’t that much interesting to buy with the tons of badges u get. Perhaps make it possible to buy crafting materials and such to make it easier to grind for specific gear?

Indeed, I think that another think we need is for WvW ranks to be account bound not character bound.

You need so many points in each mastery that you end up having to stick to one single character! This takes away the fun and variation of the game!

Urrid.4593:

DevonCarver.5370:

Hope that is informative.

It was. Thank you.

You seriously need a bigger team. But I am sure you know that. Back to waiting, but at least I can pretend these issues are on some list somewhere and not buried under the proverbial “golem mastery” monthly wvw update.

If it was me I would focus 100% of my efforts to overhaul the guild/commander tag system. New methods in how we play = lots of content that you don’t have to make.

Just want to second and reiterate this point. A more sophisticated and flexible commander system would tide players over a long time while you work on the other stuff.

And speaking of other stuff, one more request – please make defending more rewarding. An easy way to do it would be simply by trippling the Karma/XP/WXP/silver of defensive DEs – successfully defending yaks and defending keeps namely.

That would make scouting, sentrying, and sieging and the general strategic play that goes with them financially viable alternatives to karma train zerging. Combined with a better Commander tag system, those two changes alone would go a long way toward changing the whole dynamic of WvW and turning into an entirely different game, keeping it fresh and fun while you work on the other stuff.

kurtosis.9526:

Urrid.4593:

DevonCarver.5370:

Hope that is informative.

It was. Thank you.

You seriously need a bigger team. But I am sure you know that. Back to waiting, but at least I can pretend these issues are on some list somewhere and not buried under the proverbial “golem mastery” monthly wvw update.

If it was me I would focus 100% of my efforts to overhaul the guild/commander tag system. New methods in how we play = lots of content that you don’t have to make.

Just want to second and reiterate this point. A more sophisticated and flexible commander system would tide players over a long time while you work on the other stuff.

And speaking of other stuff, one more request – please make defending more rewarding. An easy way to do it would be simply by trippling the Karma/XP/WXP/silver of defensive DEs – successfully defending yaks and defending keeps namely.

That would make scouting, sentrying, and sieging and the general strategic play that goes with them financially viable alternatives to karma train zerging. Combined with a better Commander tag system, those two changes alone would go a long way toward changing the whole dynamic of WvW and turning into an entirely different game, keeping it fresh and fun while you work on the other stuff.

i agree 100% on everything that’s in both of these quotes

DevonCarver.5370:

Knightmare.8634:

DevonCarver.5370:

Magnetron.5823:

Devon, we should say bye bye to you, cause in 11 months nothing has changed.

When I’ve been working on WvW for 11 months, then we’ll talk. I’ve been here for 5, so I still have 6 more before you boot me for someone else. Also, the orb mechanic is coming back.

Devon,

A few questions/suggestions hopefully you can chime in on.

1. Any news/updates on making winning the match up more rewarding? There is very little fanfare or even acknowledgement that your server won. The passives are ok I guess, but at the end of the day it just feels hollow.

2. WvW Abilities – All in all I have to admit, they are just boring. Passives blah, some of the siege abilities are ok. I know you have to be careful with balance… but I would really like to see more creativity here.

3. Any chance of getting WvW Rank locked unique skins? Maybe an Aura around you? Something/anything unique to WvW to show off??? ( Same for SPVP, but thats a different topic)

4. Guild Claiming really needs to mean more. Defending in general needs to mean more.

5. I honestly think with the modest size of your maps and how many people are crammed into them. The waypoints upgrades should be removed.

6. Commander System – That is all the needs to be said.

7. How about DAOC style killspam? Just throwing that out there. I know a lot of people that loved it. At the end of the day we all want to be the hero!

Ok this is turning into a wall of text so I’ll stop here.

1) There should be some movement on this in the very near future. And that version will not be the final version either, but we wanted to make some changes quickly.

2) We will continue to work on these abilities in the hopes of making them more fun and providing more variety. We are however quite set on not adding power creep, at least not much, which makes them fairly constrained. We have yet to unleash our craziest ideas.

3)That is not something I had thought of, but I think it’s a good idea and I’ll at least start the ball rolling. Skins take forever and a day to be made though, so it won’t be for months if we do it at all.

4) We will update guild claiming in the future, but there are other tasks we are focused on at the moment. It’s also something that we want to do a very serious overhaul to, so it isn’t something that can happen in bits an pieces.

5) I agree and we will likely remove them at some point in the future. However, to do so requires additional work because of the complexities of the upgrade system. It’s not as simple to do as it should be. But we have to work with the tools we have.

6) We are in the process of figuring out just what we’ll need to do to the commander system to make it what it should be. Much like guild claiming it is not a small overhaul though and it won’t be in place for quite some time.

7) It is on our list of things to do, but it is not going to happen until we’ve handled some other, more serious things. Like the commander system. While I certainly wish I had a legion of designers and programmers at my disposal, we have a finite amount of resources to be put to work and we have to prioritize them according to what is necessary for the game. Sometimes that means doing things that have seemingly little impact to y’all, but eventually pay dividends in other ways.

Hope that is informative.

1. One day
2. Maybe
3. Soon
4. One day
5. Not sure, maybe
6. Soon
7. Maybe

Very informative. Thank you sir.

:/ Will change my sig.

One day.

Troop.1369:

1. One day
2. Maybe
3. Soon
4. One day
5. Not sure, maybe
6. Soon
7. Maybe

Very informative. Thank you sir.

So you would rather have them say outright when something will be released and then whine when something comes up that makes a release of it impossible?

As Devon himself have said he don’t give dates because dates are not set.

It is funny how people demand the devs tell us stuff, even if it is only: “We are working on it” and when they do people complain about them not telling us exactly what they are doing.
And it would most likely be people complaining about them doing the wrong things if they told us exactly what they were doing as well.

Thanks Devon, hopefully the tech guys listen to you and we can get it fixed! Appreciate the response

Hate to take advantage of you Devon but you seem to be on a roll here on the forum (which I’m hoping means you’re coming out of a big crunch and you have something shiny for us in the next update) so I’d like to ask you two things.

1. Have you ever considered making it so players can’t damage doors without siege? Would greatly favour defence, which imo towers and keeps SHOULD do, and force an attacking group to play smart instead of just force doors down – particularly when it’s a group of 40. It sucks sitting in a keep but being helpless against the zerg that’s pummelling the gates to splinters.

2. Permanent finishers and being able to use them in WvW is great, but are there any plans to let us unlock them through WvW? Perhaps permanent ones based on World Ranks and temporary ones as rare loot from the champ bags?

Thanks!

eremos.8142:

Hate to take advantage of you Devon but you seem to be on a roll here on the forum (which I’m hoping means you’re coming out of a big crunch and you have something shiny for us in the next update) so I’d like to ask you two things.

1. Have you ever considered making it so players can’t damage doors without siege? Would greatly favour defence, which imo towers and keeps SHOULD do, and force an attacking group to play smart instead of just force doors down – particularly when it’s a group of 40. It sucks sitting in a keep but being helpless against the zerg that’s pummelling the gates to splinters.

2. Permanent finishers and being able to use them in WvW is great, but are there any plans to let us unlock them through WvW? Perhaps permanent ones based on World Ranks and temporary ones as rare loot from the champ bags?

Thanks!

You didn’t really ask me but I’d like to answer.

Towers and keeps already greatly favour defence, even before that ridiculous AC patch (that still needs fixing btw) defence was easier than offence. Pummeling down doors can be a tactic too, it cannot be done easily in a well defended tower/keep. Even now you are only helpless if you are incredibly outmanned. If you have x number of people defending the tower you would need at least 40 people to take it. So I don’t think making it harder to take towers would be a good idea.

The problem isn’t that towers are too easy to take it is that they are too rarely defended. I find it hard to see how making towers harder to cap would encourage defending.

I would rather have a counterintuitive solution that might work.
Decrease health on all structures by half. Towers and keeps should be a lot easier to take. Now people can choose to abandon a tower because they’ll be back in time to stop the cap. A tower without any defenders should be very easy to take, so easy that no commander would ever contemplate leaving a tower without leaving a defending team. I understand that this idea could also backfire but I do believe the likelihood of succes is pretty good and it encourages small specialized squads and discourages zerging.

Caliban.3176:

eremos.8142:

Hate to take advantage of you Devon but you seem to be on a roll here on the forum (which I’m hoping means you’re coming out of a big crunch and you have something shiny for us in the next update) so I’d like to ask you two things.

1. Have you ever considered making it so players can’t damage doors without siege? Would greatly favour defence, which imo towers and keeps SHOULD do, and force an attacking group to play smart instead of just force doors down – particularly when it’s a group of 40. It sucks sitting in a keep but being helpless against the zerg that’s pummelling the gates to splinters.

2. Permanent finishers and being able to use them in WvW is great, but are there any plans to let us unlock them through WvW? Perhaps permanent ones based on World Ranks and temporary ones as rare loot from the champ bags?

Thanks!

You didn’t really ask me but I’d like to answer.

Towers and keeps already greatly favour defence, even before that ridiculous AC patch (that still needs fixing btw) defence was easier than offence. Pummeling down doors can be a tactic too, it cannot be done easily in a well defended tower/keep. Even now you are only helpless if you are incredibly outmanned. If you have x number of people defending the tower you would need at least 40 people to take it. So I don’t think making it harder to take towers would be a good idea.

The problem isn’t that towers are too easy to take it is that they are too rarely defended. I find it hard to see how making towers harder to cap would encourage defending.

I would rather have a counterintuitive solution that might work.
Decrease health on all structures by half. Towers and keeps should be a lot easier to take. Now people can choose to abandon a tower because they’ll be back in time to stop the cap. A tower without any defenders should be very easy to take, so easy that no commander would ever contemplate leaving a tower without leaving a defending team. I understand that this idea could also backfire but I do believe the likelihood of succes is pretty good and it encourages small specialized squads and discourages zerging.

I’ve been saying it for a long time, but maps are so much more fun and interesting when every objective is paper.

The nights that have been the most fun is when nothing is upgraded for either side. Take away upgrades from WvW and that makes the coverage disparity less punishing for servers following a coverage gap. There are downsides too I spose I guess for people that care about ppt that fight outmanned and are trying to hold onto their BL…but the most action is had on maps where things are paper. At least, there is definitely less action on triple waypointed borderlands.

The next step would be to take away income scoring, and make it so people only earn points by successfully taking or successfully defending an objective. There are definitely ways of judging “success” that could lead to a more skill based scoring game.

DevonCarver.5370:

There are some updates coming soon, quite soon even, that hopefully will dispel this. Say bye-bye to the Quaggan.

As a former Team Legacy member and commander I have to say that this is a poor design choice. Quaggan have always been the most important aspect of the borderlands and we made it a goal to have everyone farm pearls prior to reset in order to maintain control of the borderlands.

Drigan.7382:

Caliban.3176:

snip

snip

Interesting perspectives, thank you. I guess it largely depends on what you value in the game. I love open field battles, but they’re better when you have something to fight for.

I also just realised I’m contradicting myself slightly since if you could just destroy the enemy’s siege you would never have to go outside, but if the enemy placed siege smartly you would be forced to.

I’d just like to see a bit more strategy in the game than “stand here for a while and autoattack”. If there is defensive siege, you should need to counter it.

For what it’s worth, I approve of the AC buff for that reason. They’d be pointless if you could just ignore them.

Viking Jorun.5413:

DevonCarver.5370:

There are some updates coming soon, quite soon even, that hopefully will dispel this. Say bye-bye to the Quaggan.

As a former Team Legacy member and commander I have to say that this is a poor design choice. Quaggan have always been the most important aspect of the borderlands and we made it a goal to have everyone farm pearls prior to reset in order to maintain control of the borderlands.

I want to point out that very few WvW players [and developers] understand why farming pearls to insta flip quaggan nodes makes a difference in WvW [it does, its a known strategy].

Stop kittening around and give us a test client so WvW players can do the hard work [Developers do not know the game better than the players].

eremos.8142:

Drigan.7382:

Caliban.3176:

snip

snip

Interesting perspectives, thank you. I guess it largely depends on what you value in the game. I love open field battles, but they’re better when you have something to fight for.

I also just realised I’m contradicting myself slightly since if you could just destroy the enemy’s siege you would never have to go outside, but if the enemy placed siege smartly you would be forced to.

I’d just like to see a bit more strategy in the game than “stand here for a while and autoattack”. If there is defensive siege, you should need to counter it.

For what it’s worth, I approve of the AC buff for that reason. They’d be pointless if you could just ignore them.

I love open field battles and having them in paper towers and keeps just adds another layer to it.

Hitting the doors with your weapon skills has only ever promoted fights. You can kill people through the gate and you can jump out and kill them there because they are incredibly vulnerable. It is perfect for fights.

Again, there would be more strategy to hitting the gate if there were defenders. Even if they take that out, it will still be void of any strategy to hit 1 on a ram in front of an undefended tower.

You could not ignore the AC’s before, I remember very well from playing against Vizu.
The AC’s weren’t lethal but they put pressure on you and if coordinated with actual players it meant certain death for the attackers. Especially since more than 1 AC can be used.

Caliban.3176:

Hitting the doors with your weapon skills has only ever promoted fights. You can kill people through the gate and you can jump out and kill them there because they are incredibly vulnerable. It is perfect for fights.

That assumes you have enough people inside to kill them if you push out. I’m talking about scenarios where, as defenders of a structure, the only viable option is to port back to spawn to avoid giving the enemy your loot.

If players couldn’t damage gates, you might get a more interesting fight when you do jump out because they might actually be looking around instead of just having tunnel vision on the gate.

DevonCarver.5370:

There are some updates coming soon, quite soon even, that hopefully will dispel this. Say bye-bye to the Quaggan.

I really hope this doesn’t mean that the lake will be replaced by dry land in the Borderland maps.

I never liked the Kraits, but I really love the underwater combat and I think that aspect + places for solo roamers should stay in WvWvW. The pond in Eternal Battlegrounds is way too tiny. How about an underwater fortress for some really nice fights and stuff there to capture and use? Maybe also some underwater tunnels.

eremos.8142:

Caliban.3176:

Hitting the doors with your weapon skills has only ever promoted fights. You can kill people through the gate and you can jump out and kill them there because they are incredibly vulnerable. It is perfect for fights.

That assumes you have enough people inside to kill them if you push out. I’m talking about scenarios where, as defenders of a structure, the only viable option is to port back to spawn to avoid giving the enemy your loot.

If players couldn’t damage gates, you might get a more interesting fight when you do jump out because they might actually be looking around instead of just having tunnel vision on the gate.

How would it be easier to fight if you have less people and they are looking around for you. If you are with less people you use the fact they have tunnel vision to your advantage and you punish them for it. If you truly have to port back because you would certainly die, then you don’t deserve the tower. Stuff should be defended.

Are there any plans to reward smaller organized teams and punish the current zerging mentality ?

Devon I understand you have limited resources and dev’s to do “everything at once”. The changes that players would like to see are the things that FRUSTRATE us on a daily basis. Pet Peeves and annoyances that build daily and cause full blown rage in some people. (I’ve seen it and it wasn’t pretty.)

The lack of being able to group and coordinate in a functional manner is one of those things. It actually feels DIFFICULT to group in gw2 the way we enjoy. Any changes are great, but I really feel that existing systems need to be addressed before adding NEW content.

- Upgrade the Commander and Squad system. Flexible social grouping in GW2 should be a PRIORITY. The commander and squad system needs to be flexible enough to be used for Public or Private/Guild forces. We are unable to group the way we enjoy with only two ways to group in game for GW2. A 5 person group or Zerg are not enough options for players to coordinate.

- Fix the UI group options in WvW. We need the same working “right-click” options in WvW that we have in any other PvE zone. Reforming groups because we can’t remove offline players and typing player invites during WvW combat are frustrating.

I feel whatever limited resources you have should be directed to these basic issues.

Kaleygh.1524:

Are there any plans to reward smaller organized teams and punish the current zerging mentality ?

Dont think punish is the mentality we should take into a discussion about improving wvw.

That said megablobbing is often incredibly boring and stale gameplay, especially if the opposing server cannot muster and equivalent force and it’s a pvd farmfest.

However, megablob vs megablob on the open field can actually be very fun, some of the most epic battles ive been part of are 60+ man fights with both sides running in 20+ man teams to coordinate flanks and pincers on the open field.

100+ players fighting in coordinated teams is really quite a fantastic experience.

Sadly, it’s been weeks since that last happened, as the meta has now moved to largely avoiding open field where possible in t1/2, and spamming golems/omegas on the attack or hiding in towers your off hours coverage has upgraded for you.

Ahmrill.7512:

Devon I understand you have limited resources and dev’s to do “everything at once”. The changes that players would like to see are the things that FRUSTRATE us on a daily basis. Pet Peeves and annoyances that build daily and cause full blown rage in some people. (I’ve seen it and it wasn’t pretty.)

The lack of being able to group and coordinate in a functional manner is one of those things. It actually feels DIFFICULT to group in gw2 the way we enjoy. Any changes are great, but I really feel that existing systems need to be addressed before adding NEW content.

- Upgrade the Commander and Squad system. Flexible social grouping in GW2 should be a PRIORITY. The commander and squad system needs to be flexible enough to be used for Public or Private/Guild forces. We are unable to group the way we enjoy with only two ways to group in game for GW2. A 5 person group or Zerg are not enough options for players to coordinate.

- Fix the UI group options in WvW. We need the same working “right-click” options in WvW that we have in any other PvE zone. Reforming groups because we can’t remove offline players and typing player invites during WvW combat are frustrating.

I feel whatever limited resources you have should be directed to these basic issues.

It is almost blasphemy to support a JQ idea [joking] but I support a focus on these topics Ahmrill.

“5. I honestly think with the modest size of your maps and how many people are crammed into them. The waypoints upgrades should be removed. "

“5) I agree and we will likely remove them at some point in the future. However, to do so requires additional work because of the complexities of the upgrade system. It’s not as simple to do as it should be. But we have to work with the tools we have.”

Not every server is a full server.
I`m on what seems to be a low to medium server where at times we`ve as few as 3 players or other times (reset night…) a queue.

These maps may be small, but it is still tedious to press “W” for several minutes (this isn`t DayZ…;p ), just to see a camp or three south get capped before anyone can even get near.
That combined with SR-tower getting flipped before even marked as in combat.

Think before acting with these.
Same happens re:SR, stick a timer/cd on this mess.

Rawr.5930:

Kaleygh.1524:

Are there any plans to reward smaller organized teams and punish the current zerging mentality ?

Dont think punish is the mentality we should take into a discussion about improving wvw.

That said megablobbing is often incredibly boring and stale gameplay, especially if the opposing server cannot muster and equivalent force and it’s a pvd farmfest.

However, megablob vs megablob on the open field can actually be very fun, some of the most epic battles ive been part of are 60+ man fights with both sides running in 20+ man teams to coordinate flanks and pincers on the open field.

100+ players fighting in coordinated teams is really quite a fantastic experience.

Sadly, it’s been weeks since that last happened, as the meta has now moved to largely avoiding open field where possible in t1/2, and spamming golems/omegas on the attack or hiding in towers your off hours coverage has upgraded for you.

Tier 3 is also using masses [25-30] of golems on the attack [this is a result of the high supply and low expense of golems in the game].

problematic.9623:

Rawr.5930:

Kaleygh.1524:

Are there any plans to reward smaller organized teams and punish the current zerging mentality ?

Dont think punish is the mentality we should take into a discussion about improving wvw.

That said megablobbing is often incredibly boring and stale gameplay, especially if the opposing server cannot muster and equivalent force and it’s a pvd farmfest.

However, megablob vs megablob on the open field can actually be very fun, some of the most epic battles ive been part of are 60+ man fights with both sides running in 20+ man teams to coordinate flanks and pincers on the open field.

100+ players fighting in coordinated teams is really quite a fantastic experience.

Sadly, it’s been weeks since that last happened, as the meta has now moved to largely avoiding open field where possible in t1/2, and spamming golems/omegas on the attack or hiding in towers your off hours coverage has upgraded for you.

Tier 3 is also using masses [25-30] of golems on the attack [this is a result of the high supply and low expense of golems in the game].

The problem is more widespread then lol.

I understand that wvw is objective based and siege is very much integral to that style of play.

Perhaps im a dying breed, but i find it far more fun to have players fight players rather than siege vs siege.

Caliban.3176:

Towers and keeps already greatly favour defence, even before that ridiculous AC patch (that still needs fixing btw) defence was easier than offence. Pummeling down doors can be a tactic too, it cannot be done easily in a well defended tower/keep. Even now you are only helpless if you are incredibly outmanned. If you have x number of people defending the tower you would need at least 40 people to take it. So I don’t think making it harder to take towers would be a good idea.

The problem isn’t that towers are too easy to take it is that they are too rarely defended. I find it hard to see how making towers harder to cap would encourage defending.

I would rather have a counterintuitive solution that might work.
Decrease health on all structures by half. Towers and keeps should be a lot easier to take. Now people can choose to abandon a tower because they’ll be back in time to stop the cap. A tower without any defenders should be very easy to take, so easy that no commander would ever contemplate leaving a tower without leaving a defending team. I understand that this idea could also backfire but I do believe the likelihood of succes is pretty good and it encourages small specialized squads and discourages zerging.

Maybe you can get back in time to defend a t3 tower. However, I have seen t3 structures, including keeps, taken before the server could respond. This includes when we’ve had scouts at a t3 garrison. If people are reluctant to sentry now, I don’t see how making things even easier to take is going to give people more incentive to do it.

I also disagree with the assertion that defense is greatly favored. Defense is generally favored, until you drain the defender’s supply, which is not that hard to do.

Boomstin.3460:

Expect more pvdooring and server stacking once they start rewarding winning servers.

I’m equally weary of this. Servers got stacked without discrete rewards for winners, this needs to be very carefully designed or it will just exacerbate the issue.

Visiroth.5914:

Caliban.3176:

Towers and keeps already greatly favour defence, even before that ridiculous AC patch (that still needs fixing btw) defence was easier than offence. Pummeling down doors can be a tactic too, it cannot be done easily in a well defended tower/keep. Even now you are only helpless if you are incredibly outmanned. If you have x number of people defending the tower you would need at least 40 people to take it. So I don’t think making it harder to take towers would be a good idea.

The problem isn’t that towers are too easy to take it is that they are too rarely defended. I find it hard to see how making towers harder to cap would encourage defending.

I would rather have a counterintuitive solution that might work.
Decrease health on all structures by half. Towers and keeps should be a lot easier to take. Now people can choose to abandon a tower because they’ll be back in time to stop the cap. A tower without any defenders should be very easy to take, so easy that no commander would ever contemplate leaving a tower without leaving a defending team. I understand that this idea could also backfire but I do believe the likelihood of succes is pretty good and it encourages small specialized squads and discourages zerging.

Maybe you can get back in time to defend a t3 tower. However, I have seen t3 structures, including keeps, taken before the server could respond. This includes when we’ve had scouts at a t3 garrison. If people are reluctant to sentry now, I don’t see how making things even easier to take is going to give people more incentive to do it.

I also disagree with the assertion that defense is greatly favored. Defense is generally favored, until you drain the defender’s supply, which is not that hard to do.

I agree on that last part, when there is no supply in the tower the defenders are almost on even footing with the attackers and disadvantaged when the attackers have enough supply.

You are right about the first part as well, it is possible that it does not help, maybe it might even make things “worse”. I just think that the possibility that it will incentivize defence is more likely than for it to create more zerging.

(As a little sidenote, a big reason people don’t defend a lot IMO, is because defending is extremely boring if you are not being attacked)

Caffynated.5713:

DevonCarver.5370:

There are some updates coming soon, quite soon even, that hopefully will dispel this. Say bye-bye to the Quaggan.

How about all that unused skritt/centaur territory?

Skritt/Centaur Mastery are next year’s content.

mjharrison.3209:

Caffynated.5713:

DevonCarver.5370:

There are some updates coming soon, quite soon even, that hopefully will dispel this. Say bye-bye to the Quaggan.

How about all that unused skritt/centaur territory?

Skritt/Centaur Mastery are next year’s content.

Hopefully not before Dolyak Mastery.

Do you have any considerations on making World Versus World Ranks account bound?
At the current state it really demeans the point of switching/playing alts because you will lose your progression and will have to start over again.
In my mind the PvP rank is perfect and is how the WvW ranks should have been implemented. You could make the ability points character point so when you use 15 eg. Then the 15 points wouldn’t be able to use again on another character.

problematic.9623:

Ahmrill.7512:

Devon I understand you have limited resources and dev’s to do “everything at once”. The changes that players would like to see are the things that FRUSTRATE us on a daily basis. Pet Peeves and annoyances that build daily and cause full blown rage in some people. (I’ve seen it and it wasn’t pretty.)

The lack of being able to group and coordinate in a functional manner is one of those things. It actually feels DIFFICULT to group in gw2 the way we enjoy. Any changes are great, but I really feel that existing systems need to be addressed before adding NEW content.

- Upgrade the Commander and Squad system. Flexible social grouping in GW2 should be a PRIORITY. The commander and squad system needs to be flexible enough to be used for Public or Private/Guild forces. We are unable to group the way we enjoy with only two ways to group in game for GW2. A 5 person group or Zerg are not enough options for players to coordinate.

- Fix the UI group options in WvW. We need the same working “right-click” options in WvW that we have in any other PvE zone. Reforming groups because we can’t remove offline players and typing player invites during WvW combat are frustrating.

I feel whatever limited resources you have should be directed to these basic issues.

It is almost blasphemy to support a JQ idea [joking] but I support a focus on these topics Ahmrill.

These are the things that frustrate me every single time I WvW. All this feedback was given in the Beta Weekend forums and it’s still frustrating on a daily basis almost a year later.

We need to get this cleaned up before adding “new content and fluff”.