Guild Wars 2

John Corpening.9847:

Hello All,

There was quite a lot of discussion around the proposal of removing white swords from objectives in WvW. We understand there are concerns about how this change might work in practice or how player behavior may change as a result of it. We felt like the best way to understand fully the impact, and give players a chance to see for themselves how it directly changes the WvW experience is to let people try it and see what they think.

We have decided to run a special multi-week event in WvW where we’ll be changing some of the “rules” of WvW for a limited time. This event will feature two major rule changes while it is running: we are planning to remove white swords from objectives, and add points per kill in WvW to the over-all score for the duration of this event. We are currently targeting December for this event but will keep you posted when we have dates nailed down for certain. If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.

We look forward to your feedback once the event begins, both on the temporary event only changes, as well as the concept of these special events in WvW.

Thanks,
John

Any idea when this will happen? There are some of us really looking forward to trying this stuff out.

Thanks

No idea, I really hope they do this soon, being on Kaineng, getting points per kill would be great except it deffinetly needs to be scaled to the amount of people on the map. For example, if you are outnumbered 1-10, you should get more points per kill. If a solo roamer 1v5s they get more points per kill.
Best Wishes, Oscuro of Kaineng

LOL, points for kills?! Oh I like that idea very much. Now my bags aren’t only gold they’re points for my server too. If this idea goes live maybe we’ll see the roaming scene start to flourish again. I’m tired of only fighting people who are trying to get back to their zerg and winning because they’re not built for a fight or running from 10-man gank squads.

I think a lot of people would like to try the points per kill but NOT the swords change. The first idea is interesting. The second is just bad.

I doubt it will affect roaming much. Roaming would contribute so little in terms of points compared to two blobs clashing. It would take hours upon hours for one roamer to equal the same number of potential points wiping an enemy blob would give in just a minute or two.

Wow they’re actually trying out points per kill, might come back to the game for a while for this. There’s an obvious problem with a blob tagging 1 guy and all getting points (hence points on stomp up until now) but even so this will definitely be fun even if it does promote unhonourable ganking.

He missed out 2015 when he said December….

Just wondering about the points per kill since we already kind of have that within the Bloodlust Buff in the form of points per stomp. Will the buff get changed to something else or will you score double the points if you stomp someone?

For once, a good idea – PPK! Not so sure about the white sword removal but i understand the idea about testing it out.

More relevant than anything else is the overall attitude this shows. Its good to know they are, effectively, considering changes and they will have trial periods. Im also very happy about the nerf on siege disabler.

Good signs Anet, keep it up!!

They are removing white swords because of the adopt-a-dev program where some devs spent a short period of time in WvW gold league (2014 fall tourney) running with real WvW guilds and got some ideas based on that limited experience. And now, regardless of what the majority of the community is saying, we are going to try time for a couple weeks at a time. Remember, even after 1 hour in WvW, a dev KNOWS more than you’ll ever know about WvW….
On the other hand, it was great to see ANY effort on the part of ANET to do something about WvW. For that I am glad, but again, it seems that when decisions about what is important to WvW are made, we, the actually people doing it, have nothing to contribute… Honestly, we have massive threads, and CDIs about WvW, then the devs spend a couple hours in the top tiers playing with guilds and instead our our suggestions, we simply get their 10 minute brainstorm ideas…

SFShinigami.2015:

I doubt it will affect roaming much. Roaming would contribute so little in terms of points compared to two blobs clashing. It would take hours upon hours for one roamer to equal the same number of potential points wiping an enemy blob would give in just a minute or two.

PPK won’t really help roaming… but the white swords will.

Personally I’m looking forward to being able to solo towers and the like again without getting bulldozed by larger servers.

Dasenthal.6520:

SFShinigami.2015:

I doubt it will affect roaming much. Roaming would contribute so little in terms of points compared to two blobs clashing. It would take hours upon hours for one roamer to equal the same number of potential points wiping an enemy blob would give in just a minute or two.

PPK won’t really help roaming… but the white swords will.

Personally I’m looking forward to being able to solo towers and the like again without getting bulldozed by larger servers.

If larger population servers are smart, they will have people constantly checking towers while their zergs are running rampant everywhere else. I highly doubt this will benefit roamers when you are facing a huge server population. Will help with more evenly matched, am sure.

This will not in any way help revive the decaying WvW environment. It matters little in the overall longevity of the mode.

Tspatula.9086:

They are removing white swords because of the adopt-a-dev program where some devs spent a short period of time in WvW gold league (2014 fall tourney) running with real WvW guilds and got some ideas based on that limited experience. And now, regardless of what the majority of the community is saying, we are going to try time for a couple weeks at a time. Remember, even after 1 hour in WvW, a dev KNOWS more than you’ll ever know about WvW….
On the other hand, it was great to see ANY effort on the part of ANET to do something about WvW. For that I am glad, but again, it seems that when decisions about what is important to WvW are made, we, the actually people doing it, have nothing to contribute… Honestly, we have massive threads, and CDIs about WvW, then the devs spend a couple hours in the top tiers playing with guilds and instead our our suggestions, we simply get their 10 minute brainstorm ideas…

pokes spoon

Will you put a nice effect player-side icon like the Call of the Mists effect for players within the mists as a remainder of the rule changes?

And if so, will its name include the word “Flux”?

Great. Now we’ll have more karma trains than we already have. No scout incentives. No point in defending. It’ll be EoTM version 2 with GvG’s.

Words cannot sufficiently express just how mindbogglingly, pants-on-head kittened this is. There is literally no reason for this change other than Anet hates its own game.

Oh well, I needed a break from WvW anyway.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Kitiara.2706:

John Corpening.9847:

Hello All,

There was quite a lot of discussion around the proposal of removing white swords from objectives in WvW. We understand there are concerns about how this change might work in practice or how player behavior may change as a result of it. We felt like the best way to understand fully the impact, and give players a chance to see for themselves how it directly changes the WvW experience is to let people try it and see what they think.

We have decided to run a special multi-week event in WvW where we’ll be changing some of the “rules” of WvW for a limited time. This event will feature two major rule changes while it is running: we are planning to remove white swords from objectives, and add points per kill in WvW to the over-all score for the duration of this event. We are currently targeting December for this event but will keep you posted when we have dates nailed down for certain. If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.

We look forward to your feedback once the event begins, both on the temporary event only changes, as well as the concept of these special events in WvW.

Thanks,
John

Any idea when this will happen? There are some of us really looking forward to trying this stuff out.

Thanks

The temporary rule changes will be implemented with the release on December 16 and will last until the first release of the new year.

How about not implementing rules changes mid match-up and you know doing them during a RESET ? It’s better to get accurate information than none at all.

Yay! Will it be named “The Zerg Month”? (cause a couple zerg wipes will provide more points than owning all keeps on that borderland)

Hopefully they’ve had the foresight to separate EoTM and WvW proper for this test. Having my servers’ score affected by all those uplevels not even from my tier dying in EoTM will not be a good test of the system.

John Corpening.9847:

If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.

Anet is the kid with the magnifier glass and we’re all the ants. Fun indeed. This is just a half-hearted pretension of care for the WvW population. Like a crappy skin that’s given a new effect and presented as a brand new thing.

Yeah, I would go to work every day making a game not fun on purpose.

Sooo… Note to self, find some dungeons to do starting December 16th. Because WvW is about to become who can wipe who the hardest and most often.

An idea to further these changes (I like them):

• Make scouts available as a keep/tower upgrade. but, they have a specific material used for it, “Available Master Scout”. See below. Once built, the scout will patrol the walls (so it can be killed from the outside!), but as long as it is alive, the tower/keep will display swords again. It will also be marked with “scout was killed” for 15 minutes once this happens.
• Scouts are only available in the home borderlands of a realm. They wait in the garrison until used, up to 3 can be waiting here.
• Scouts are gained from Edge of the Mists. Apply points-per-kill to EotM, and enhance it so that there’s “tiers” to fill in points, with some requirements. Gaining enough points + X kills total unlocks that scouts are added to the supply sent to the home garrison, up to 3 total.

This has a few benefits. For one, it adds incentive to fight for kills in EotM, not just pass the other zerg and keep taking towers.
It also enhances the defensive aspects of the home borderlands, adds another keep/tower upgrade to deepen the customization and adds a custom element to scouting and scout-denial.

I had an idea to improve wvw- instead of having $25,000 and $50,000 prizes for the e-sport no one watches, use that money to pay a dev or two and a few interns for a year and actually spend some money on developing new maps, new mechanics, etc for wvw.

Doing these rules changes through the holiday season doesn’t seem like the best idea to me- but it might pull in a nice pile of pve zerk builds for us to collect loot from so might not be all bad:-)

I really think removing white swords is a bad idea…

• On FoW we use this to actually find fights, it’s the most reliable way to find enemy players and have some fun.
• On top white swords stimulate defending: you’re warned of people attacking your claims and lots of players actually go there on purpose.

“points per kill in WvW” doesmean what? really just per kill or do I have to stomp?

suprNovae.5410:

“points per kill in WvW” doesmean what? really just per kill or do I have to stomp?

Aparently this one is jus for killing. There is the stomp bonus from bloodlust which remain unchanged tho.

oscuro.9720:

No idea, I really hope they do this soon, being on Kaineng, getting points per kill would be great except it deffinetly needs to be scaled to the amount of people on the map. For example, if you are outnumbered 1-10, you should get more points per kill. If a solo roamer 1v5s they get more points per kill.
Best Wishes, Oscuro of Kaineng

I’m also looking forward to a point per kill test but like you I hope this scales or it will get ugly fast.

Lol at all the people that are being over dramatic about this. It’s a test. “Temporary rule changes.” It doesn’t mean it’s permanent. Relax. If enough people hate the removal of white swords, which I’m pretty sure just about everyone will, they won’t go through with the change. I’m honestly not that concerned as I really don’t think any of the serious WvW community would want this change. Just use the week of the test to ktrain and relax until it’s over with. One week of total chaos and disorganization isn’t the end of the world (v world).

Sorry you guys have to deal with so many complaints about simply trying something to see the real effects it will have. Every single person that actually plays wvw daily that I’ve talked to is excited about this and is looking forward to the change…any change really. Of course people have concerns about how this could potentially go wrong. But let’s see how it actually plays out and take it from there.

I am personally concerned that 1 specific server that plays the PPT game like it’s life or death will use the points per kill as a reason to absolutely never fight anyone, as opposed to the current situation in which they will actually fight once or twice a week. I envision them having full map blobs sitting inside towers surrounded by more AC’s than people for days on end.

The lack of white swords will reward servers that have people willing to scout. I don’t see how that’s a bad thing. However, it would be nice (regardless of any potential rule changes) for scouts to be rewarded.

Scouting is lonely and boring, and the only current reward for scouting is pride and the occasional compliment or thank you from fellow players. People on every server take useless sentry points because there is a tiny reward for doing so. If Anet is going to emphasize scouting, they should reward it.

Well the populations are fragile, if they had chosen to not have the white sword function since beginning it could have worked, but with less population (at least in EU) it seems to only damage the situation. Same with point per kill, it will encourage bunkering and simply people logging out instead of playing, so they don’t give points to enemy, at least with stomp it’s hard to get point for every kill in huge fights.

In my opinion ANET should work on evening the populations, from EU perspective somehow merging/giving free move to rank 10-15 from 15-27, simply too many servers for the populations, if we somehow fixed it could have a very healthy and competitive 10 servers.
Should be more resources in monitoring server population and communities, I never saw once an arenanet tag on EU (when I was on BG I saw), since EU are moving into having a very nice top5 with 3 international servers (so bandwagoners will spread out), changes like this could potential hurt the balance.

So in summary; should put effort into population (maybe completely restart servers), not risky changes, more ANET players spread into EU and join their communities to see how players think and play.

Right now, in our WvW matchup, our server is ticking +5. We are so out-numbered population-wise, it’s ridiculous. How in the name of all that is holy would removing the white swords be a good thing?

If anything, it gives sadistic servers a greater chance to be sadistic. This, in turn, will probably drive even more players out of WvW…continuing the cycle of mass transfers to other servers or active WvW players totally forgetting all about either WvW specifically or GW2 in general.

All I know is that PPK won’t stop me from yolo outnumbered fights if I feel like it… Score in this game means nothing but superiority on Population+Coverage. So, why should I care about it?

Jeknar.6184:

All I know is that PPK won’t stop me from yolo outnumbered fights if I feel like it… Score in this game means nothing but superiority on Population+Coverage. So, why should I care about it?

Perhaps, but there are people who see the score and won’t bother logging in.

Points per Kill should be a permanent thing. Should have been from the start, objectives are not the only things that matter, especially since a lot of guilds have a full emphasis on being “Fights” guilds and don’t care about the PPT game.

As far as white swords being removed goes, I don’t really care. I think that will promote scouting but ultimately anger the majority of the WvW population.

Josh XT.6053:

As far as white swords being removed goes, I don’t really care. I think that will promote scouting but ultimately anger the majority of the WvW population.

It will problably increase the dificult of finding fights on lower populated servers. Other than that, I don’t see many changes… Swords or no swords, the biggest blob will win anyway.

I’ll be interested to see how the white sword removal goes…. On one hand, it makes it easier to golem a tower – and boy have the prices gone up in anticipation! On the other hand, I guess I won’t triple-keep-tap anymore and watch the ants run around below. I’ll miss that.

Basically PPK it’s good idea, but without PPT, you just can’t have them both at the same time, this is stupid.

Zdain.2169:

I’ll be interested to see how the white sword removal goes…. On one hand, it makes it easier to golem a tower – and boy have the prices gone up in anticipation! On the other hand, I guess I won’t triple-keep-tap anymore and watch the ants run around below. I’ll miss that.

If the keep have a wp, I’m sure people will notice. I doubt waypoint will stay open while the objective is contested.

Firstly, To be fair to Anet, we need to actually play during the test.

A few notes for fellow scouts if you wish to help your server score;

Put away your current fight builds and replace them with full escape builds. You are a scout and dying gives points to the enemy during this test. Constantly check your area, you are now a resource node, stay mobile, keep a wp in your mini map.

If you see a roamer approaching, WP, you are not built to risk points against your server. Call his postion and try to ensure superior numbers engage him.

Do not approach camps by the front gate when scouting, many of us will now be hunting scouts for the free points for our own servers.

Good luck, I hope to see you on the borderlands.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

The temporary rule changes will be implemented with the release on December 16 and will last until the first release of the new year.

In the middle of a match! Really?

Roaming and Scouting are not the same thing.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Kitiara.2706:

John Corpening.9847:

Hello All,

There was quite a lot of discussion around the proposal of removing white swords from objectives in WvW. We understand there are concerns about how this change might work in practice or how player behavior may change as a result of it. We felt like the best way to understand fully the impact, and give players a chance to see for themselves how it directly changes the WvW experience is to let people try it and see what they think.

We have decided to run a special multi-week event in WvW where we’ll be changing some of the “rules” of WvW for a limited time. This event will feature two major rule changes while it is running: we are planning to remove white swords from objectives, and add points per kill in WvW to the over-all score for the duration of this event. We are currently targeting December for this event but will keep you posted when we have dates nailed down for certain. If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.

We look forward to your feedback once the event begins, both on the temporary event only changes, as well as the concept of these special events in WvW.

Thanks,
John

Any idea when this will happen? There are some of us really looking forward to trying this stuff out.

Thanks

The temporary rule changes will be implemented with the release on December 16 and will last until the first release of the new year.

Thank you so much for the answer! <3 Have Happy Holidays!

I think giving points to kills in a step in the right direction

A GvG mode will only split the population, so I don’t think its a good idea. Thats what SPVP has become, its a seperate game. Whats the point of GVG mode anyway, when we have OS and a fan made ladder system already. There’s no need to replicate that and its not going to bring back ppl just because its made official

What we need is for guilds to compete another way. Since fighting guilds like to fight, how better to determine who is best guilds but by having each guild compete against each other based on kills in WvW. Anet could tally up all the kills by guilds in real time and post the score of every guild. This score should be as accessible as pressing B

Big guilds will probably kill the most ppl, but smaller guilds could still compete based on efficiency.

One scoring board based on total kills by guild, another score board is based on kill ratio per guild member

p.s if anet could increase the range ppl could see the down icons, it would really help spectators in OS watching a gvg match. Spectators need to be able to see the whole fight from the stand and know what’s happening

morrolan.9608:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

The temporary rule changes will be implemented with the release on December 16 and will last until the first release of the new year.

In the middle of a match! Really?

I thought the same thing. Seems odd this change would drop on a Tuesday. But I’ve given up trying to see logic behind any decision they’ve taken with regards to WvW lately. I mean, if they want to balance things, increase the buffs given with Outnumbered. Forget MF – buff Vitality, Cond Dmg, and Power. Also decrease supply requirements for building siege and repairing walls/cannons/mortars. So simple.

We pretty much know what will happen:

White Sword Removal:
1- Inexperienced players will no longer know where to go.
2- The WvW experience will rely even more on voice chat, something that isn’t even implemented in GW2.
3- Everything will turn into a huge Karma Train like EotM, unless you have a scout in every tower and keeps there will be no way to know where the enemy is. This will literally kill low tier servers where the population is too thin to spread out.

PPK:
1- While good in theory it is a flawed way to fix the broken PPT problem where the outcome of a match can always be known in advance because:
- PPK will make people blob up just even more. The biggest blob will almost always win and be able to res their downs.
- It will give the Warrior class an unfair advantage, because they can always res their allies. Perpare yourself for huge blobs with 50% warriors.
In short to go with the PPK you need to fix the class balance first: Increase AoE limit for light armor classes to discourage blobbing. Or increase AoE Skill damage.

Anyway, it will change the PPT meta certainly but it will not make WvW more interesting, to the contrary.
If your objective is to make WvW more interesting you should make content like improved Stonemist battles, faster and stronger supply doyaks, Keeps with more types of defenses, where outer can be upgraded seperatly from inner, buildable barricades, new maps in rotation (removal of duplcated maps), harmonization of rewards between EotM and normal maps… not do little changes that may make the game worse.

I predict the removal of white swords will weed out all the wvw players who do not care about ppt or helping their server become better.

personally I like to scout, and my server uses voice-chat. I already call out where the enemy is and what structures are under attack. the removal of white swords will only force me to be more quick and intelligent about where to scout. map awareness is key, you dont need white swords to predict where the enemy will strike.

scouting will become more useful, those who say scouting isnt rewarding are just longing for the wrong types of rewards. the greatest reward is helping your server and climbing to the top. if you called out an inc, disabled siege until help arrived and ultimately saved the structure, the ppt and praise from your server is your reward.

SneakyLemon.8461:

I predict the removal of white swords will weed out all the wvw players who do not care about ppt or helping their server become better.

personally I like to scout, and my server uses voice-chat. I already call out where the enemy is and what structures are under attack. the removal of white swords will only force me to be more quick and intelligent about where to scout. map awareness is key, you dont need white swords to predict where the enemy will strike.

scouting will become more useful, those who say scouting isnt rewarding are just longing for the wrong types of rewards. the greatest reward is helping your server and climbing to the top. if you called out an inc, disabled siege until help arrived and ultimately saved the structure, the ppt and praise from your server is your reward.

My hero.