Boring WvW
If it were not for the economics of the Prisoner’s Dilemma [collaboration is dominated by betrayal] and/or Nash Equilibrium [no player has anything to gain by changing only his own strategy unilaterally], I’d be inclined to suggest a Game-Wide (all server) boycott.
But the reality of human nature makes any effort towards consumer solidarity an epic fail from conception.
The truth is that exasperation will accomplish what solidarity cannot.
The truth is that no one cares about server bonuses — they are not an incentive with material value to the PvE constituency.
The truth is that no one cares about server ranking (other than the hard core wvw/pvp community) — rankings are not an incentive for the casual gamer or the PvE community.
For my part, I’m inclined to implicate NCsoft for their failure (again) as an overseer. Seems like every title NCsoft touches wallows in a quagmire “milking the cash cow” decay.
NCsoft approaches business management from a “killing the golden goose” perspective and fails to adequately drive sustainability in their partners and products.
That said, perhaps it is time we simply accepted that the game is all about the PvE.
If we accept that, then the game moves from a top level competative action combat fps style game to a second rate shot at wow.
The truth is, the pve is duller than the wvw. The publisher wants to make money, always. So does Anet, don’t kid yourself and point the sole finger to ncsoft. But they have in place a system that can accommodate both.
Just using it poorly. They are still testing the waters on many things, and I think its too early to judge one way or the other. It’s funny how patience wears thin, and thinner with numbers.
An all out boycott basically concedes the game to a second rate pve b2p. Do you really want to concede or have your voice heard? Suggesting threat tactics like that is childish. I know we’d rather work with them to have things implemented.
Commander Jang, if I’m not mistaken has a deep background with Anet since GW1 beta, and his team winning a global tourney there. Hell there’s employees working at Anet that wouldn’t even know him because he pre-dates them.
The best suggestion is not to go to Anet and say fix ‘x, y, or z’ but to suggest options where they can accommodate the perceived cash cow of a publisher, make money, and tie it back to wvw development. The black lion keys are not a bad shot … only to increase wvw pop, however … they need something more.
Something where it says that investing in this aspect will equate to bottom line revenue, whether boxed or digital sales … or some form of micro-transactions (all while refraining from a p2win model). I’ll think more on it and hopefully contribute useful, but I think wvw doesn’t get much attention because of this ^^^
Christ, adding armor ‘skins’ & weapon ‘skins’ to buy would be a small tiny start in that direction. Small team developing something we can cull out and carve our legends with? WvW Capes can be implemented similarly, these can actually go across the board, but the direction was away from capes – instead using some weird tankini with your logo on it.
I kept thinking surely theres somthing Im missing about WvW? surely its not running miles, having no pvp, knocking on doors for hours, and spending all my gold on repairs and receiving no reward.
And then I realised im not missing anything at all thats exactly what WvW is.
So many good and obvious suggestions in these threads. They got my money when I bought the box. As soon as they put in more content and updates for the part of the game I enjoy playing, they can have more of my money.
I try and keep hope for the future of WvW, but they still haven’t even address easy things fixes like the Out-Manned buff. Something anyone should quickly realize is a weak attempt at a balancing buff and update.
Elementalist Corndog General
bump
I hope some of these points gets implemented on the coming 12/14 patch just to restore our WvW players’ trust on Anet.
As many already stated what is missing now is an incentive to single players and to guilds as whole to take active part to WvW, and i think its not even hard at all to get there since there are already really good basis.
There are some crappy games f2p not-even-comparable-to GW2 that has been played for years and years doing the same old pvp action every day, and yet ppl are there still doing the same…. why ? ….for pvp rank.
Why is there a pvp rank in gw2 ?
People playing online games need a way to show off their toons, this happens with cool skins, but for now thats pve or spvp stuff, the same should be in WvW.
Just put in a pvp rank displayed aside of the name and many ppl will go play WvW to increase that.
To this you can add some rank-related gears with some cool skins based on pvp rank. I mean skins as cool as those you get from dungeons, but some you can buy with badges and also need a specific rank to be bought.
This pvp rank could be calculated based on the existing WvW achievements, something like this:
+ 1 point for each dolyak killed (ah…. dolyak should be harder to kill, and those useless caravan guards should be really much more worth it)
+ 2 points for each player kills
+ 5 points for each supply camp
+ 15 points for each tower captured
+ 20 points for each keep
+ 35 for castles
so then you could have ranks like:
500 – soldier
1500 – “somethign better than soldier”
3000 – “insert cool name here”
5000 – “much more cool name here”
.
.
.
xxx – “Army General”
(xxx – ) – “High Commander” ? with it maybe granting a commander book without spending gold…
And this was the part for personal reward, then something should be done for guilds…
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.
I really hate to point out the obvious on this one… but the buffs we get each week for winning are beneficial almost entirely to PvErs. In WvW, we dish out tons of gold for upgrades and siege, while racking up armor repair costs and barely making any back of what we’re spending to do all of this. Meanwhile, someone farming in Cursed Shore is benefiting quite happily from all our hard work while reaping the benefits of a huge buffed up zerg fighting completely non-strategic NPC mobs. WvW players are literally throwing their money at PvErs with no compensation for it. Tell me why the buffs that WvWers work so hard to get only really benefit the people who barely, if at all WvW? So no, there really aren’t any WvW incentives… at least not for WvWers.
I think a quick fix to this buff solution, and would work for hardcore and casual players alike…
For every hour you spend in WvW, you get the WvW buffs in PvE for an hour. It’s really a quick simple fix, I think in the interim until the Feb patch release it could at least show more active players willing to fight for a reward.
Leader of Caedas [CDS] : caedas.enjin.com
Sanctum Of Rall
Being one of the more known commanders on SoS, I have a couple things to say about WvW.
1: We need something new. Running the same 2-3 routes in WvW makes things boring. We need to be able to do something different otherwise it just becomes a repetition game.
2: Bags/Badges….. Dear god what were we thinking with this? Being a map commander, fighting in large scale fights, the large amount of AoE that classes can dish out and I still have to manually loot all of my bags? Im sure I have missed a couple precursors or a few hundred gold in loot bags. Make them appear in a chest or just in my bags in general.
3: Map Balance: This has been said before, but I wanted to put it out again. The maps seem very imbalanced. Sure having 3 repeating maps with rotating spawn points seems a logical way to balance things out, but this isnt the case. 5 dedicated people can hold hills for an hour easy. 20 people cant hold bay to save their lives. One keep can be sieged from a near un-counterable position while the other cannot be hit without great risk?
4: Rewards: One armor set per armor type, with the same stats on every set? That doesnt even begin to promote build diversity. You should be able to get every crafted set/dungeon set from Badges and/or Karma without having to go into PvE. I mean granted we get a lot of karma from capping stuff, but people still have to go all of the way to Orr or one of those zones to get their karma gear, and even then they dont all have the stats we want (Where is the Knights/Zerkers/Cleric’s karma sets?)
I love WvW. I love the strategy that it takes to make your side have an advantage if you dont want to run around with just pure numbers, but having nothing new to do in 3 stale zones just makes me not want to play WvW anymore, and im sure as heck not going to PvE for another 7 years.
I just wanted to post that seeing this post by a guy name General reminded me of a hilarious warden who used to lead the zergs back on hib MLF in DAoC……..which comes full circle to remind me of how much more fun this game could be, never-the-less, it’s not so bad, it can only get better (we hope)
Tiglie Wiglie – Oh Bahmaz
Iz U Potato – Absentee Father
I agree Jang, i only do WvW to level up, there’s no fun in any type of PvP in GW.
/applause War Machine
———
Commander of Blacktide
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 WvWCurrently 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.
I fight for the love of the fight, if you need trinkets or rewards to do wvw, go play WoW.
Commander Plok The Original Leader of Shadow of Agony [GOAT]
I fight for the love of the fight, if you need trinkets or rewards to do wvw, go play WoW.
How often are you in WvW?
I haven’t seen this point brought up by anyone yet. WvW is currently a burnout for Upper tier servers due to the match length not having any down time.
Even hardcore raiding was 2-3 days out of the week tops, letting the players rest, recover, and plan before the next run.
The thing missing from WvW is pacing, there really should be an end to a match that’s determined by the skill of the players, and not a fixed length of time.
I haven’t seen this point brought up by anyone yet. WvW is currently a burnout for Upper tier servers due to the match length not having any down time.
Even hardcore raiding was 2-3 days out of the week tops, letting the players rest, recover, and plan before the next run.
The thing missing from WvW is pacing, there really should be an end to a match that’s determined by the skill of the players, and not a fixed length of time.
^^^ qft.
I would add to this that I believe the START time/day, as well as, randomizing the END time/day should be implemented. For example, imagine starting at 5am (GMT) on a Wednesday and/or ending at 5pm (GMT) on a Sunday! This would have a significant impact on match outcome and participation. Further, by randomizing the END time/day, the fighting intensity curve would flatten out.
As it is, there is a HUGH spike of intensity at START and apathy at/near END. A deterministic seven day schedule is too long and 24 hours is too short.
A 3-5 day RANDOMIZED length matches would be optimal (with variable length, no-combat rest periods added and ALL enemy/ally character names enabled in the WvW zones during these periods). I don’t care what you ego maniacal design believes are to the contrary. Reality does not support design expectations.
The Glicko 2 input calculations should be suspended at times of special events. I challenge the suggestion that every server is affected by special events equally. The burden of proof is on GW2 to demonstrate the validity of such a preposterous notion.
Finally, ANet needs to shore up confidence. ANet is mismanaging community expectations. I believe that ANet needs to publicly acknowledge the waning rate of WvW participation. It is a trend so obvious that everyone sees/feels the impact. ANet’s silence on this issue is beginning to look like a combination of ignorance, short-sightedness, and head-in-the-sand denial. People have already begun to vote with their feet and they are taking their money elsewhere. ANet facts are simply not relevant — Community perception IS reality.
This isn’t rocket surgery… ANet has offended the WvW community and some serious amends are necessary. The WvW community now consists of the walking wounded.
TALK TO US. How about ANet starts with some zealous enthusiasm and enhanced, uplifting community outreach/dialog. SPEAK DIRECTLY TO THE WvW AUDIENCE. That would be a great start.
I fight for the love of the fight, if you need trinkets or rewards to do wvw, go play WoW.
He wasn’t speaking about himself requiring trinkets. He was talking about dwindling numbers in WvW due to it, the lack of updates, progressions and why the major focus in pve while WvW is being neglected.
No idea, none at all, how you could even remotely think only about trinkets and wow.