Guild Wars 2

I am WM-GW2 lead officer, “Jang Gun”.

It appears that ANet seem to not realize the seriousness of the situcation. When the game first came out, GW2 has surprised us with the great quality it had. But that was it. GW2 now has become a game that people find boring after a 2 month play time. Also a PvE centric game.

The problem is much larger in the WvW area (not even going to talk about sPvP since it is frustrating). A WvW game that gives no motivation to the players will not give any fun to them. However, the most recent patch was more towards the PvE contents. We see this as a big problem. As an example, War Machine had about 1,000 players in GW2 when we first joined the game, but with the boring repetitive non-rewarding WvW, we are now down to 50 players. I can assure everyone that with no changes to the WvW area, the remaining WvW players will mostly abandon the game within this year. I, also, feel that “Why should I do this boring thing?”.

I have no idea what ANet’s WvW director has in mind. Is he/she thinking that we are some mindless herds of sheep that plays the same thing on the same map every single day? I should’ve noticed it when there were 3 maps that were identical to one another… My loyalty to ANet is hitting the floor these days.

As we are waiting for months for some patches that can be done in a few days, I will be suggesting some ideas here.
1. A unique reward only for WvW (seems like PvE and sPvP has some, but why not WvW)?
2. Raid UI (the most basic thing that was supposed to be implemented, this is nonsense)
3. Motivaction to WvW (something like a buff to all server members – increase drop rate in dungeons?)
4. Guild cape system (the current GUILD system is total crap, I feel sympathy for it)
5. Implement a temple type mechanism on the center island of each borderlands (simliar to orbs but can be fought over constantly)
6. New MAP (How do we even have 3 out of 4 maps to be exactly the same)
7. 20v20 structured PvP (2 towers, 2 supplies, and a center flag)
8. Give points based on player kills (not just capping objectives)
9. Rankings of players and/or guilds for WvW

Currently in WvW, the most important factor in playing is “Why do I have to WvW?”. This is very important.

When you think about it, there are simple ideas to give motivation and fun and ANet can give fast updates in new contents. But is the reason that they are not providing such is because they lack the skills or they don’t try hard enough or they aren’t motivated themselves? Rather wait for a PC game expansion.
I never seen WvW update that new idea or new version during many big PvE update.

last, i will believe ArenaNet.

##. don’t delete this writing.

It is indeed growing old.

Definately need something more than a flag on towers for guilds. Guild capes would be a good start.

Having the borderlands the same makes sense due to balance issues (just look at all the crying Alterac Valley had), but it definately does get old playing on the same two maps. Borderlands are fun, but there’s not as much incentive to invade someone else’s territory. Eternal Battlegrounds is just waaaaay too cramped and everything revolves around who is in control of stonemist. There’s not enough room for smaller groups to accomplish much.

Downed state was given a HP nerf for sPvP. Same needs to happen for WvW.

Some type of recognition for kills similar to DaoC.

Then perhaps if someone goes on for a while without getting killed, and has earned a certain number of kills, they are now worth X amount of gold if you kill them.

More dynamic events. Hyleks, etc are just annoying. Give them an actual purpose. Perhaps once every hour or two hours you can hire a super champ / boss minion who can help you assault towers / keeps. Maybe make it so whoever controls stonemist can’t get it. Or whoever controls the least amount of towers has access to it. Teams getting beat need more incentive than loot drops and exp.

Ranks – Not sure why these haven’t been added. They could just be fluff and there could be unique armor sets at each “rank”. Make them take time to get, but dont make them insanely hard like the titles are currently.

Titles….currently ridiculous to get. I’ve played a vast amount of WvW and I’m not even 1/4th of the way to vanquisher title at like 14,000 kills.

More unique traps for towers / keeps. How about archer towers. Traps for when the enemy breaks through the doors.

Just some ideas, but my time in WvW is definately getting shorter. So is my time in Guild Wars 2 for that matter. I’ll be checking out the Christmas stuff for sure, but I doubt it’ll be keeping my interest for long.

While WvW isn’t a completely new concept, the implementation of it into this style of game with the professions and unique combat system IS new.

They could have BETA tested WvW for years and still not known what it was going to be like when the game was actually launched. My guild is a fairly casual guild and I think that has allowed us to still enjoy WvW as it is because we are only in there around 10 hours a week for events but I certainly understand that for a guild who spends all day every day in there, it could get stale quite quickly.

I think we just need to have faith that the devs are reading the forums and taking notes. WvW has sooooo much potential and quite frankly, i’m glad they are actually spending a substantial amount of time working on it rather than just releasing little things here and there just to keep people happy.

There needs to be a progression system as well as some effect on playing wvw. Some things I would like:

Capturing points should give tokens that you can spend on gear or buffs in WvW and PvE. Not just drop from kills. Ascended gear in WvW.

Heres how my server population is divided in WvW, our borderlands = full, all other borderlands = empty, eternal battlegrounds is full.

This is just stupid, means the only place with anything is eternal battlegrounds. The borderlands are just the defenders overwhelming any attacking force since they hold the whole map. Anyone on the map can only capture camps. The design of eternal battlegrounds makes it a boring map since you are contained onto your corner most of the time unless you have overwhelming numbers.

The irony is that a lot of missing features was in already Guildwars 1. I can only come to the conclusion that Anet ran out of production bandwidth for PvP.

Pray for the Feb patch to make things alot better, because although the wvw aspect of the game is great it is repetitive, new maps would make things interesting, and i know it can be done because anet was able to make 6 new fractals in about 1-2months i believe. The game is still great but it can’t keep living on past glory if it is suppose to succeed in the long run, i would hate for this game to become a figment of my imagination as i want to play this game for many more years to come.

My concern is that at the current state of the game, WvW will not last until Feb.

Just found some irony here that Arena Net has shown during the AMA last week:

What is your/ANet’s definition of grind?
Repetitive game play that is not fun.

Eh, so WvW is grind? Grinding is Cursed Shore had a meaning to it, since it was a progress towards a legendary item (I gave up after the DR patch). What is the point of grinding in the borderlands when I really get nothing? People can just not play WvW until there is some reward to it or at least it is not “grind” anymore.

Bump

This is kitten essential and complete kittycatshatstorm that WvW has not seen any major updates.

So many people running back to WoW for better “raiding” or even back to DAoC due to boredom

For the Borderlands all being the same with different names. I think we all appreciate how much diversity was added to the Borderlands. Green. Red. Blue.

Indeed, I used to go with the guild every single day to WvW about more than 60 members attended everyday. But after ascended came out, the most I can get to attend WvW is myself. I haven’t even done the new dungeon since I prefer pvp/wvw over PvE, but lately I’ve been thinking to myself. Why should I WvW? Take a keep, sleep come back it’s gone. I used to have to wait 1 to 2 hours all round to be able to get into any WvW map. Now I could jump at any time and 3 out of 4 maps would be outmanned. Now all I can ask is why WvW?

Jabtangs.9251:

My concern is that at the current state of the game, WvW will not last until Feb.

Just found some irony here that Arena Net has shown during the AMA last week:

What is your/ANet’s definition of grind?
Repetitive game play that is not fun.

Eh, so WvW is grind? Grinding is Cursed Shore had a meaning to it, since it was a progress towards a legendary item (I gave up after the DR patch). What is the point of grinding in the borderlands when I really get nothing? People can just not play WvW until there is some reward to it or at least it is not “grind” anymore.

True, i’m sure most wvw players if not all are aware of the population decrease in wvw due to many of these factors, if none of them is address they will lose players, it’s not a qq or anything, i believe it to be a sound fact because even I a devout player in this game will quit eventually, not now but if there’s no change, i will just move on.

i suggest keeping just EB mao for wvw and making more servers where players can free transfer,also let us compete with NA servers.
u would have in the end a one list of 100-150 servers competeing for ranks

I enjoy wvw my only grip is two things.

1. it’s a number game if your server don’t have the number in wvw game over.
2. costs not many ppl upgrade the keeps or garrisons as the cost are to high.
I alone spent over 1 gold within an hour upgrading yet i made 4- 7 silver in the same hour. down 93 silver plus sieges.
that’s not even counting the karma as well.

We need to get better rewards. also prices for upgrading needs to be a lot lower.
otherwise most ppl wont upgrade and just leech what they can.

Couldn’t agree with this post more.

WvW is repetitive and boring at this point, and without the orbs, increasingly so.

I understand the problem the orbs created: extreme advantage to the side with numbers in terms of strength to the point where other teams had no chance. And also the extreme damage to morale of players on servers as a whole when orbs would get hacked.

But keep in mind that the first problem, of orbs creating overpowered servers… could’ve been fixed with an important update that I think ANet could make as easily as tomorrow: let the outmanned buff be a PvP buff like the orbs! Even without the orbs still around… the outmanned buff should give people an actual advantage. Especially now, that WvW population is declining and people find themselves outmanned very often.

Here’s the bigger problem, however, that came from removing orbs:

The borderlands maps lost their significance! Their major significance was that each of them held an orb of power, and had keeps on three sides that could hold said orbs.

Now they’re just large maps that add little to the point tick in comparison to EB.

I like Jang Gun’s idea of creating something in the middle island to fight for. I think instead of an orb, though it should be a keep… because having a waypoint on the middle island would give your team a huge strategic advantage on the Blands map… and thus everyone would fight for it.

I also think that the Garrison should be a castle, since its the major keep near the home turf of the server’s borderlands. If the orb aspect of the borderland’s significance is gone… a castle should be added (like EB), and a few new keeps (center and bottom island perhaps?)… and maybe more towers. A castle on each borderlands (just upgrade garrison on the map)… would create a huge shift in focus for the people there because of the incentive for points.

Because PvP on the borderlands maps right now consists mostly of map hopping to grab undefended areas for point ticks, and to find decent fights.

But I’d be much happier if you just redesigned those maps and made them 3 different maps.

Because right now 3/4 of the maps we’re using are not only identical… their main purpose has been destroyed, and thus their layout is obsolete. (whats the point of a giant, spread out map that gives advantage to the people in either corner if there isn’t some object like an orb to fight over that’s involved?).

Without orbs… borderlands maps should at least resemble EB more in that they have a castle like Stonemist, and other ways to fill in the empty space that divides the servers into zones and makes everything predictable.

I think map updates, commander/raid UI, and fixing the issue with the outmanned buff giving no benefit to PvP… are the 3 biggest issues making WvW boring as hell for many players.

All guilds on all servers are suffering losses in numbers right now. It’s not just the holidays… its the fact that 1/3 of Guild Wars 2’s gameplay focus… one of the most heavily advertised aspects of the game before launch… has had no updates since beta except for removing orbs and fixing the AoE heals having no maximum. Meanwhile many complaints for updates to obvious problems in the functionality of the game have been ignored.

As such… many players feel that their requests and wishes are falling on deaf ears. ANet seems more concerned with damage control (AoE, orb fixes) than actively enhancing the game (commander UI complaints, outmanned buff having no benefit).

We may not be as numerous as the PvE players… but pound for pound, we’re more dedicated. WvW players usually play for 3-4 hours at minimum. Sometimes 7+ (kitten can get crazy sometimes. 3 hours bay defenses… holding off 2v1s, etc..) …

And the first update, of which we’re hearing no details about… is happening in February?! Seriously?? 5 months after the launch, you add some new things… and they’re sounding to be likely either gear related or just fixes to problems.

To the player… it sounds like you’re saying “thanks for putting many hours of your day, many times a week and in some cases everyday… consistently into this game. We’ll check in on you twice every year to maybe add a couple of things. Thanks for the cash. Peace.”

I know arenanet of course -does- care about this game. Logic tells us this. But no objective evidence of any kind seems to point to the fact that they do… and I -want- to believe in this game. I want to believe that WvW is going to be viable long-term.

But in order for that to happen… we need you guys to throw us a bone now. Not in February. Not next year — now.

Otherwise, you’ll be making an update for 1/3 or less of the players who dedicated themselves to the part of the game you’re ‘updating’. You’ll be playing for a half empty arena.

Once again I think the biggest issues that need fixing in order to both keep and grow the WvW population are:

1.) Commander/raid group UI
2.)outmanned buff being PvP related
3.)revamping of the obsolete, orbless borderlands maps (diversity… 3 different maps. Please!!)
4.) a ranking system for guilds within a WvW match-up (contribution to points, amount of dolyaks sniped, contribution to defense, kills, etc.) to motivate people to play for reasons other than the point total.

These are 4 things that would fundamentally change WvW completely and for the better… and they are 4 things people across the board have been asking for since launch (the borderlands maps being the same was a complaint even before orbs were taken out… now we want them to at least have more incentive to create fights if they’re going to remain identical).

Please, Arenanet… don’t abandon us. We didn’t sign up to play WoW. Most of us still here hate that game. We don’t care about more gear, more drops from mobs, or any of that.

We just want to have fun killing eachother in ways that don’t feel like you’re consistently playing the same level on Mario again and again. Is that so much to ask?

I enjoy WvW. PvE seems much less challenging in comparison. I would like to see new maps, though. I think EB is broke. Stonemist is critical and can counter treb every position (except one that I know of). The concentration of towers and keep on green in addition to the water gives them an unfair advantage. Blue and red are easy to take in comparison.

The BL is worse. If you take SW tower, you can take the whole west side yet SE tower is useless. East keep is hard to take and easy to defend. West is a joke. It was designed to fall. West can’t counter Trebs in garrison or SW.

The outmanned buff is not helpful for the player receiving it and only tips off the opponent that they can start squashing them. Give the outmanned person something of value. Make rewards for capping and defending double with the outman. Make their attacks do more damage or something. The outmanned buff seems like a PvE perk in a WvW environment.

There needs to be a mechanic to level player counts. If a server rolls in with huge numbers they can easily squash other teams with low numbers. I can’t imagine that is fun for either side. There is a scaling mechanic with bosses and champions, why not use a similar mechanic in WvW? Making a tougher gate or wall would not be fun, but maybe there can be some other fun mechanic? Keep lord rage (becomes champion boss) or some other type of thing? Maybe a random boss shows up on their side of the map and starts stomping stuff. Who knows? But there is stuff that could be added and changed to make if more fun.

Different maps and some outmanned leveling would be a nice start…

The lack of any rewards for WvW is certainly an issue. There is only one armor/jewelry set, why? Something unique for PvP would be nice, give us something to spend our badges on. Not to mention ascension level gear needs to be purchasable via badges.

Sorry to hear people are bored with WvW, Ive played WvW since day 1 or so and still find it extremely interesting and fun to do.

Hope that a brief break will rekindle your enthuisiasm. Perhaps a new class/server/tactic might help?

It’s as if no game designer heard of or played Daoc.

Although it’s a bit disappointing, having 3 similar maps in WvW is the easiest way to ensure balance. If you played WoW just think about how often Blizzard had to change Alterac Valley, a map that always looked quite similar on both ends but small differences had a huge impact on balance. A total of 4 different maps would be nice, but I’d rather have everything else made “fun” first. I’ll gladly PvP in a dirty cellar if the system is tuned well.

For every change to the game there is an effect. Sometimes that effect is negative at times positive. Look at portals for example. They changed WvW from chess to checkers. I doubt the developers saw that one coming.

Just saying

Edit: It would be nice if all the WvW zones were one zone with the eternal battles grounds in the center and all three boarderlands connecting at the foot with the walls blocking the way to our main bases. And the WvW battles ends when someones base is taken after which all servers are randomly matched up.

Peace again,

I’m never very effective at articulating my ideas.

I think something truely amazing would be to offer up some World Sets.

In the end the msits are huge, they compose the building blocks of all reality and magic. Its a little carzy to think thats there only 4 maps and 3 are exactly the same physicaly.

They could design 2-3 More “map sets”. These maps follow the similerness of the original Stone Mist Map set, but have diffrent layouts of keeps and the castle, diffrent puzzles, diffrent caraven routes. These maps sets could even have special mechanics in areas and stuff.

One Map set could be the “Misty Peaks” 3 of the borderlands could be passed on dangerous Moutnain Passes and etc. Maybe some Cavernous undergounds. These massive mountain-valley complexes would all cumulate to the Center map. Which is one Massive Spiral Mountain leading up to a massive Castle at the top of the mountain. Keeps would equally be situationed at points along the treck up the mountain. Camps at the base. All of this trying to reach us up to the pinicle of the map.

To me that sounds exciting rather then just plain out war. WvW needs so maps to really liven it up, and these new maps will really “encourage” play. Every new match would have a new Map set, and new map sets mean new tactics, and new battles. This keeps the scene fresh and alive, and lets the community as a whole grow.

Another Map set could be the “Eternity Seas”. This set is largly based on Navel and ship and beach battles. The Borderlands are largly composed of large expanses of sea, with Islands dotting them. Capture places are either located on beaches, or ships, or under the waves. These Undersea Keeps are diffrent to take. They do not allow one to simply Sit on the top of the wall and blast forever down on the foe. To defend it one must man undersea turrets, and fight through series of ruins. The Big map is pretty much nothing but un-ending sea. The Entire world is underwater. Though under the water there are Sea caves that hold keeps and air. But otherwise is a lot of water combat.

These new map sets also introduce new types of Seige, and new rules of combat. For example Underwater thigns Like catapults dont work, but torpedo subs do. These subs are like Golems and allow one to swim slightly faster as well. Imagine a battle against one of those things!

On the mountain we can introduce “Snow Machines” and “rock trenches” Snow machines act similar to oil pots. They drop heavy “avalanches” of snow onto the foes beneath them chilling them and immobalizing them. Rock Trenches are held by the keeps and castle, and have massive cooldowns going up to 10-20 mins. Rock trenches allow the Keeps, or castle, or tower to drop a 10 or so large boulders down the mountain onto foes beneath them. These boulders bounce and fall down to the bottom of the mountain striking foes in its pathe. The Line of the Boulder’s always fall the same way and require upgrades to get them(like cannons). The boulder’s have caves near them in every location allowing situationaly aware groups to “slip into the mountain side” and stay out of danger from the large boulder that will kill them if they don’t pay attention.

My two cents, and a suggestion. Ill probably draw up crude maps later to illustrate better. But just as a base idea. I think some flavour from new maps would do wonders to the wvw scene.

I think a can of worms was opened once we started making suggestions at all… as everyone wants to add their own…

It would be better to stand in solidarity with one simple concept:

That Anet addresses the WvW issue NOW… not waiting for 5 months after launch to start making the first, even minor fixes.

I mean… don’t we have an entire dev team dedicated to this area of the game?

Would they please make some goals for some more minor changes, prior to whatever major ones they have planned in February… and release them sooner rather than later?

Some of the T1 servers are now to the point of not having queues in Eternal Battlegrounds on a saturday during primetime. Its absurd — the population has dropped severely and much of it isn’t coming back.

Just give us SOMETHING! anything! At all! We need some changes right now.

There’s literally been nothing. Removal of orbs. And a max on AoE heals. Those aren’t additions… they’re subtractions. And though they helped stabilize the matchups and outrage for the respective weeks they were implemented…

this game (WvW) hasn’t had any changes since beta. Its just plain absurd. Why not just sell us the software for WvW and let us make our own private matches with it. If you’re not going to update it… what’s the point of playing it like an MMO?

Please just… add something. That’s all.

I agree with you! Even though I made a suggestion. I agree that anything to turn wvw into a more robust system would be greatly appreciated. I think for one there needs to be less nerfing of Wvw Systems, and more replacements and additions. I agree that part of the system is that they sort of seemed to expect “chaos” to keep wvw alive. But It won’t on it’s own. There needs to be additions as well as subtraction. In the end this is a mode of pvp and none of it’s scores have real bareing at this point. I think it’s ok if anet did some expirimental things, or tested out some new seige equipment types for a day. Or added diffrent map-types, or changes some of the basics of score getting. Things that would improve WvW and make it a robust and full system, rather then suffering and withering one.

Edit; Also where is this idea steming from that they are waiting till Febuary to do amazing things to wvw? Did they post something!? I’m not on the forums all the time, and I would love to know!

A naval map would be awesome but that would never happen. Would require a whole new battle engine etc. Maybe when an expansion comes out.

I am confused. There is already incentive to do WvWvW. It is the +10% crafting bonus, or the +8% gathering bonus the ENTIRE SERVER gets for a successful accomplishment of said bonus. Everyday bonuses are given out, but it seems we just have grown accustomed to the bonuses.

Instead of saying “WHAT ELSE CAN THIS GIVE ME” i think that Anet should instead decrease the benefits of what is given from WvWvW. Lets actually see the real world acknowledgement of such a thing.

Keep giving people everything, they WILLLLLLLL always beg for more. It is proven throughout the entire world civilization.

Declare what is available to everyone, and they will appreciate what is given to them.

Saying that it is difficult to add more maps because of ‘balance’ is silly. The current maps are horribly balanced. One keep has 5 entrances (supposed to be main defenders keep) while one has two, etc, etc. They are not balanced in difficulty at all and being a specific color on EB map can give you great advantage or disadvantage. Could it be worse yes, but to say they need time to make it balanced, they never were balanced in the first place.

As to the topic in general I agree very much with the OP we have been putting up topics like this for months now and they have fallen on deaf ears by Anet and other players. Now the game is losing players as was predicted a couple of months ago. I’ve seen to many games die because of this kind of developer attitude. They dont even announce this crap on their own sites you have to find GW 2 info from other sites how stupid is that?

How long would it take for one single dev to create a forum post and say ‘Here is what we are thinking about doing, what do you think?’ or ‘This is our current focus of WvW development’ or ‘Where would you like us to focus or development on: vote’. Not long and not only would it give them great customer feedback but also a lot of good will in the community.

I’m sure A-Net will figure something out. I doubt they aren’t aware of this WvW issue and will definitely have something planned in the future patches… I just hope it won’t be too little too late.

We are promised substantial changes in February.

Roll on I say

I love just about all of the ideas here, and I believe they should be used.
I also have the same concerns.

I suspect that when WvW gets stale people will leave the game rather than move to sPvP or PvE. They may pop in from time to time but they will not risk dropping cash on a stale product. They may PvE with their friends but still wont risk dropping the cash.
In other words – stale product = stale cash flow, fresh product = fresh cash flow.

As WvW is not as casual as was first thought, and more competitive than envisioned…

{Pause for reflection and viewing of comments elsewhere in various forums}

After 3 weeks of zerging here and zerging there, and seeing some of the more recent comments here, there, and everywhere, and the idea of the individual having an impact outside of the zerg is not a well received idea, it is time to see if PvE can hold my interest for another map completion (unlikely).

Best of luck.

Jang Gun nailed it for myself and my guild as well. And we started with less than 20 people. There are only a few of us playing much now.

The only thing I’ll add is that if there are any WvW rewards added for player kills, or even points from objectives, that those points should be SPLIT among the people that participated in the kill or cap. Why? Because this would help to discourage zerging.

Problem with the current bonus system that is server wide is that most of the people benefiting are not even putting time into wvw.
It’s all the pve farmers getting the bonuses because wvw drops pale in comparison to orr etc…

General.7803:

I am WM-GW2 lead officer, “Jang Gun”

LoL @ Door Machine complaining the WvW isn’t fun. Maybe if you actually fought people the game would be enjoyable.

kanikani.2430:

Saying that it is difficult to add more maps because of ‘balance’ is silly. The current maps are horribly balanced.

That’s why three maps are identical with rotating spawn points. The tactics you use on each borderlands are different. You play differently on your home borderlands than you do on enemy borderlands. You even play differently on each of the enemy borderlands depending on where you spawn. Each server has a map with a spawn point in each of the possible spawn locations.

The only map which has imbalance is EB and the spawn points are based on server rankings and there is no alternative map to balance it out.

Personally I would like to see new siege options and new maps. More maps with sneaky tricks and pathways, more mesmer hiding spots, more ninja catapult spots, maybe even a new mechanic similair to supply or orbs if it’s properly implemented (or something additional for people do when besieging, currently it’s hit or miss depending on your class and whether you are on siege or not, a lot of WvW design results in people standing around or auto-attacking a gate while we wait for siege to do its job). WvW is fun as it is, but it can grow to be better. I don’t want them to jump the shark or add in too much, but new maps, even if just for a change of environment, would go a long way to making the game more fun and freshen up the experience.

Also, make the quggan useful. They suck.

Ranks
Cutting the Siege + Upgrade costs in half
4 different maps

-Give the Red(lowest matchup rating) a map with a sizable advantage.
-Give the Blue(middle matchup rating) a map with a decent advantage.
-Give the Green(highest matchup rating) a map with a very minimal advantage.

Throw in EB and you have 4 maps. Obviously that might be difficult balance wise and how it might effect ratings and 2v1 scenarios, but that’s something I came up with 1 minute of thought. I have faith in ANet whether I should or not. Actually, it’s more like hope. I really HOPE the February update is awesome. I really HOPE it’s on 1st week of February instead of the last week. I hope it’s not a letdown like the November 15th “Ranger Update” lol!

-you need ranks (why they are not in the game yet is crazy)
-achievements (kill x attackers, x defenders, survive a fight with below 10% health…) just strange achievements to spice things up a bit.
- new areas to explore and use.
- new siege to build
- better commander UI (I used to like the commander screen in battlefield 2, commanders to deploy units, send out commands)
- better squad management options
- better player visability on the map (large groups of players should be seen not just commander tags, and commander tags should have different colours)

plenty more can be done.

Furyos.9538:

General.7803:

I am WM-GW2 lead officer, “Jang Gun”

LoL @ Door Machine complaining the WvW isn’t fun. Maybe if you actually fought people the game would be enjoyable.

you haven fought the full force of WM have you?

I too agree about the matchup locations. I think if red and green switch places in Eternal it would be a step in the right direction and improve WvW significantly. Les face it, green spawn in EB has it made. And usually the green server has the best coverage and red the worst. Simply by switching these spawn locations I think tiers could become more balanced, at least as far as Eternal Battleground PPT gain.

+ 80% badge rate drop if your server won the previous week
+20% badge rate drop if your server came second the previous week

Make badges obtainable through events like capturing a keep.

Badges can buy:
- Ascended level gear
- New Skins
- New Dyes
- Precursors
(all account bound)

Limit badges obtained per day from kills to 50? to prevent farming friends on other servers.
Badges reset upon server transfer.

New maps on rotation. Auto loot. Fixes to commander. New Siege. Better guild involvement.

Simple.

Rewards the winning server. Rewards people who actively participate in WvW. Makes people interested in WvW. Makes people actually want to stay on their server. Makes the battle for second worth something. Etc. etc.

Suun.2856:

I love just about all of the ideas here, and I believe they should be used.
I also have the same concerns.

I suspect that when WvW gets stale people will leave the game rather than move to sPvP or PvE. They may pop in from time to time but they will not risk dropping cash on a stale product. They may PvE with their friends but still wont risk dropping the cash.
In other words – stale product = stale cash flow, fresh product = fresh cash flow.

As WvW is not as casual as was first thought, and more competitive than envisioned…

{Pause for reflection and viewing of comments elsewhere in various forums}

After 3 weeks of zerging here and zerging there, and seeing some of the more recent comments here, there, and everywhere, and the idea of the individual having an impact outside of the zerg is not a well received idea, it is time to see if PvE can hold my interest for another map completion (unlikely).

Best of luck.

I have some concerns as well.

WvW feels like a stale product. Prior to the Karka event people that were not totally vested in WvW started spending less time there. That was medium impact because sometimes it could be countered by other WvW casuals that occasionally joined. But the fact that we have had three PvE updates ( with rewards ) and WvW is pretty much in its original state was very telling. The attrition accelerated after the Fractals came out. The funny thing is if you have a guild that is mixed PvE / WvW you would notice many players just don’t play much anymore or play at all. However now a vicious cycle has formed and its affecting even the most stalwart pure WvW holdouts. The overall situation also impacts players that WvW for the sake of it.

It would be naive to think overall population trends do not affect everyone. Eventually it will affect who you get to fight and length of competition you encounter. Once the novelty factor wears off …. many will experience reality of what others have already gone through.

There are many ideas here but the gist it Arena-net needs to act faster then February. Even some intermittent fix might kick-start interest. Rewards and Fresh Features seem to be the two main areas that usually resonate with players.

Most other MMO have never been able to recover once players start leaving in large numbers. At that point even offering something for free has only turned those games into niche products. GW2 had an amazing launch product …. they really need to rectify this misstep ASAP.

Looks like most of the top WvW Guild Leaders have spoken here.

Anet, WvW is the only thing that will keep your game alive without major monetary investment. PVP, which is naturally dynamic by nature because we are playing against other people, with other people.

Instead you are only focusing on PVE content, which gets old with 48 hours.

I continue to love WvW and I’m not saying I will quit, but guess what? Core guild member status are all turning into Unknown meaning they haven’t logged on for a long time and everyday I am spending time recruiting to replace them, and THAT I am getting sick of.

Guild system is horrible, it’s like you haven’t taken any of the good things from guild management systems from other games in the past 15 years.

Multi-Guild system sounds great on paper but infact it’s probably the thing that’s killing the game right now, PVE and WvW. Members can basically leave or rejoin whenever they like so no loyalty is built. Without loyalty and representation to see guild chat, there is no communication between guild members and the community breaks apart when key members log off. Guild communication is like Lions Arch map chat. You see it when you’re there, you don’t when you aren’t. That’s not a guild.

Anet, you understand that even Blizzard doesnt churn out content as fast or good as you, but why is it that people never seem to get bored of WoW? Because we can chat and talk and have fun with our guild! In GW2….there’s no one to talk to….over 60% of my guild members are repping a guild with their 5 friends who they see every day at school/work already anyways. The online guild community can not help YOU keep them in the game. I can’t convince or help them have fun as a guild leader if I can’t even talk to them! This is especially detrimental to something like WvW because it requires a large number of coordinated players.

WvW has no rewards. Some people like me enjoy the thrill of PVP fights and the joy of commanding. But every commander knows, people need rewards to continue. When all the rewards for playing is clearly in dungeons, people will leave. When we don’t have troops, it’s over, even us hardcore WvW players will be forced to stop playing.

Also….badges, we have to pick them up? WTF? Do you know how much I’m doing especially as a commander? I estimate I have foregone at least 70% of my WvW bag drops for the sake of commanding. I don’t see sPVP players having to pick up their glory in bags do they?

Anet, refocus onto Guild and WvW and make immediate improvements. It’s the only way to save your sinking ship.

Suun.2856:

As WvW is not as casual as was first thought, and more competitive than envisioned…

{Pause for reflection and viewing of comments elsewhere in various forums}

After 3 weeks of zerging here and zerging there, and seeing some of the more recent comments here, there, and everywhere, and the idea of the individual having an impact outside of the zerg is not a well received idea, it is time to see if PvE can hold my interest for another map completion (unlikely).

Best of luck.

I cut your quote to this point because the line about WvWvW not being as casual as thought highlights perhaps the heart of the issue with PVP in the game right now.

ArenaNet has treated Guild Wars 2 with many compromises. By this, I mean compromises between differing focuses in design based on different types of players or audiences. You can see this with Fractals and Ascended gear, and their following responses to the outrage over their reveal. It’s an attempt to appeal vertical progression types without alienating those that don’t want to grind or those that prefer horizontal progression. Their failure or success on this attempt on this is not the point, but rather the company’s insistence that there can be a happy compromise between opposed types.

sPVP is very heavily influenced by this. Conquest mode was a mode chosen due to its familiarity, the ease of reading a scoreboard, the small skirmishes it creates that are easier to broadcast for e-sports, and the ability to scale the design to different amounts of players. They could introduce the maps via Hot Join and 8v8 matches and then separate competitive games to 5v5 with no change in rules or maps. Conquest mode tries to appease a great many different people, but compromises quite a lot. I could go over what its cost the game, but you could probably read the sPVP forum for that sort of info. The point again is the idea that they can appease opposite types with the same thing. The e-sports and the casual, the hardcore and the casual, the hardcore and the esport guy, and the esport business and the regular customer are all divergent couplings. that Conquest Mode tries to appease at the same time.

WvWvW then has the issue as stated by the quoted user. Is it casual PVP or is it serious PVP? On some level, its being treated as both. Its not intended to be balanced on the level sPVP is, but if it was just casual fun then it lacks the bumpers versus lopsided matches that a casual mode normally has. As in, you don’t see servers autobalanced or rematched against others if a fight gets out of hand. You also have various reminders that this is a serious mode with the point score system and ANet revealing server rankings. If WvWvW was casual warfare then you’d probably see the scoreboard removed and maps reset more often. Yet if it was serious then there would be a more balanced way of keeping score that accounted for the realities of a 24/7 online battle rather than the somewhat basic, mundane rules of victory the game currently has.

So, WvWvW began housing the hardcore in addition to the more casual audience that saw it was a PVE/PVP compromise. It gained perhaps most of the talk in PVP communities post-launch, but its state was never fully intended for hardcore so it couldn’t keep up with that attention.

It may be time to stop compromising for ANet.

I agree with you Jang. WvWvW is the reason I play GW2 and each coming day I feel less and less motivated to play. Lots of ppl have already stopped playing WvWvW, evidence is Tier 1 servers having outmanned buffs during various times.

ArenaNet please release new content and challenges for WvWvW. I want GW2 to succeed even more and a revitalized WvWvW will help in that. (infact I want every mmo to be great, so at any given time I have lots of options on which game to play).

There’s very little “open” terrain, objectives are 15-30 seconds between each other. Largely no point in actively defending objectives because you can get back to the keep faster then the enemy can take it, unless they’re packing 5-6 golems.

Existing WvW maps could benefit from some redesign. New maps would be welcome as we currently only have 2 real maps with rotating spawns. Culling is a constant gamble as you’re always 50-50 if those 20 guys you see on screen are 20 guys or 100 guys.

Too much PvE focus atm. Vertical gear progression with very little horizontal (out of 100 people 70-75 in cookie-cutter Cathedral gear, other 25-30 didn’t figure it out and wasted money buying on TP).

Bottom line, WvW has constantly evolved since game release as players/servers developed new tactics/strategies, ANet hasn’t kept up the pace with the players who are outplaying the game development and running out of content.

ANet needs to make money. There’s nothing in WvW that makes money, its the PvE stuff on TP gem store that makes money. That’s where the focus is, either we deal with it or find another game.

Darkfall Unholy Wars is released on 12/12/12 which is a dedicated Full Loot PVP single instanced game.

http://darkfallonline.com/uw/

I can see WvWvW becoming even sparser without any type of meaningful objectives in WvW being introduced.

The name of the game = Guild Wars. I am in a guild and do not have any wars with any other guild, I do not fight for my guild, I do not search for specific guild to fight and I certainly do not have any real enthusiasm to play WvWvW right now. I still do but in a more casual manner, in other words I could not give two cents if I capture or lose a holding.

Jolt

Pinkus.2860:

I think we just need to have faith that the devs are reading the forums and taking notes.

Having faith in the devs is starting to seem like waiting for Godot. I had the highest rated response in the reddit AMA that received no response from the devs… Obviously it was about WvW.

Signed,
Yet another bored commander

I would be curious to see which servers most people that are complaining that wvwvw has lost it’s edge are from. I see quite a few from dominant tier 1 servers, maybe it’s a lack of competition?

Anet needs to make money sure.

But what in pve makes them money?

Halloween does not have to be a pve event. They could simply put seasonal costumes up and people would buy them.

You know what’s a huge money sink? commander icons and siege weapons. You have no idea how much money I gave to anet to buy commander icons for core guild members when the game was still fresh. I’m sure my account should have VIP status next to it if they keep track.

More importantly these one time event will attract some old players back but wvw is naturally dyamic and ongoing so it keeps players constantly hooked. Right now I don’t wanna buy new costumes cause it feels that soon there will be no one left to show off to

WvW updates need to happen sooner than latter. JQ [SWG]

There need to be some sort of negativity playing in a huge zerg. At the moment, w3 is nothing more than who can raise the biggest zerg, and cover 24/7. This gets boring (too boring) both for the lower ranks (who dont stand a chance) and the upper ranks, who get bored and maybe ask themself if this really is the challenge expected (how much skill dopes it take to make 60 people run same direction).

The zerg mentality, must be busted, so, there need to be implemented zerg busting options. Firstly, the downed state as of now, is very pro zerg. A team of 10 might be able to stop a brainless zerg, but not to stop the ress-chains, so they will nevertheless lose in the end.
Another pro-zerg, is the map design. The maps, are probably too small, making it easy for a full zerg running around stopping any attempts at capping waypoints. Said waypoits should also be uncappable, for a specific period of time, lets say 10 minutes. As it is now, again the zerg wins. Either they just zergrush to the swordmark, or they recap any point in excessive speed. The supervisor buff, is only negative to small groups, hence favours zergs yet again.
The xp-loot system favours the zerg. If you just make sure you are there, tossing in some aoe at times, you get loot, gold and xp. To get these said items as fast as possible, the zerg is the better way. A small group will have harder time getting these items, because of being caught up with the zerg when trying, and taking longer time capping anything. Again pro-zerg. Solution would be to divide into contribution, meaning huger groups=less xp and less gold. Simple as.
I get back to the maps again. Small group, has no chance to sustain the same speed as the zerg, Speedbuffs favours huger grouyps, as there are more dishing them out, making it impossible (almost) for a small group to play the ambush game. If the zerg wants to get you, it will. Period. Wheres the skirmish options? What about diminishing returns? Instead, speed portals stack, benefiting the group with the more speed auras (aka the zerg).
The whole 5 man limit aoe favours the zerg. Why? Because it means having to spread out to avoid aoe damage is really no issue if you are many. Spreading out ambush style, or even small group bombing is impossible for a small team. Coordinated zerg bombing just doesnt work with Anets game, as theres only a specific number who can be targeted. Hence braindead bots will easily survive any small ambush attempts. Why an aoe cap? Anti-zerg, would be to give some smart aoe classes the chance to actually hurt and split up the zerg. Me, as a lb ranger see zergs standing in my barrage, shaking it off. I couldnt kill anyone in a zerg if I tried for an hour with my barrage. Again very pro zerg and anti tactical play.

As it is now, theres plenty of really small guilds, with only 2-3 members active running around zerging, and being successful in the game that way. There is no need to join a well orgfanized guild, because zerging does the same job, so its hopeless to try to explain to less organized players the benefits of joining coordinated guilds, because, quite frankly, there is no such benefit. New players see the biggest zerg wins. Hence they want to join that zerg, and will leave up the ladders until they find a zerg big enough to accomodate their personal needs (which is why the gap between the tiers will never change, as the upper tiers will always get fresh blood from zergligs replacing those leaving the game due to bore, which eventually wil hit anyone only running in a zerg).

My problem is the reward system. I’ve got more karma than I know what to do with and badges just don’t drop unless you are a high DPS character, which I am not.

I just feel like WvW is a gold sink for me with little in the way of decent rewards.