Guild Wars 2

Right now, there’s such a silence from WvW team. Over the past year there has been ideas, suggestions, feedbacks, a lot of random stuff thrown out by the players in the hope WvW could be refined into something they love, and potentially bring new players. (this is a reddit post I made yesterday)

WvW is a big beast, and there’s no simple solution for practically everything because it’s massive, it’s a big scale mode and arguably much harder to balance than PvP or PvE. However, once things are properly in place you will gather a lot of players at once and that will hopefully help the company revenues? WvW-exclusive things?

Aside from all the pros and cons, I just feel… like WvW shouldn’t die. It has much bigger potential than PvE and PvP combined, and see I’m not an avid WvW player but truth has to be said.

Ben, from the fractals team, is a great example of communication. We need more development devs speaking to us. Ben reads through some posts every now and then, at least once a week, and talk to us, and he doesn’t do empty promises but he chats with us occasionally while he’s not too busy, and while he may end up not doing anything based on our feedback (because devs know better what to do with the game anyways) he at least make us feel heard. Ben is a single person in the whole company that does make the community feel at least heard, and he doesn’t have to but he does read and reply at least once in a week.

WvW has been so much abandoned, and I just… I don’t want it to die. Please, do something, anything. This may sound like an emotional post, and perhaps it is from a certain extent, I just don’t know what else can be done. I’m not good with graphics and charts stuff, but I do some strawpolls sometimes to see what picks player attention, though it doesn’t feel as accurate as I’d hope.

There are so many assumptions in your question that it’s hard to give a response that will help you see what’s going on.

WvW is, as you say, a big beast. There are dozens of posts and reddit threads that make it clear that those passionate about the game mode can’t even agree about what the mode is, never mind what needs to be fixed, let alone what would be a good way to address them.

Comparing anything about fractals to WvW is like comparing Apple Computers to Oranges: fractals are small-group, instanced content. Most changes have zero impact on other game modes, adding a new fractal has no impact on anyone’s enjoyment of any other fractal, and so on.

I love Ben’s level of communication, but it’s a horrid model for WvW — first, he does it on his own time, not ANet’s. Second, his communication is reactive, i.e. he responds to specific issues of concern to us, but he rarely offers any insight to the overall direction. Thirdly, there’s very little discussion: we post, he tells us what he thinks is going on. Only when the fractal team can’t decide does he ask what we think. That wouldn’t fly at all for WvW fans.

Finally, it’s unfair to say that WvW has been abandoned. It gets just as little (or as much) attention these days as it ever did. Change comes slowly to a complicated game mode, as it needs to.

The biggest problem with WvW is that, like any other part of any MMO, players evolve their gameplay faster than the developers can grow the mode. We’ve been playing largely the same version of WvW for 4.5 years and the full-timers have gotten bored or disgusted with the drama (that is inevitable after playing that long with the same people) and moved on. The mode is still a lot of fun for folks who don’t play all the time or who are new; they haven’t learned to be jaded.

If it were easy to do something to please WvW fans, ANet would have done it already. It’s a hugely complicated mess.

(All that said, I think ANet could do a lot better, both with how they tackle WvW and with what & how often they share about that. I just don’t think that’s going to end up satisfying many of us.)

Hmm…I read the Dev Tracker, and it seems there are posts regarding WvW there.

Maybe if you perused and posted in the WvW sub-forum, you and the Devs might see each other’s posts.

Good luck.

They have said they’re working on phase 2 of scoring changes.

The bigger issue is that the development team for wvw is very small. The game mode itself appears to be near the bottom of Anets priority list. Unless the company as a whole decides to commit resources to the game mode, we’ll see changes very infrequently.

Its to bad the desert BL was such a crappy design. The vast majority of players do not like it (easy to verify just by looking at what maps are queued day after day). Had it been a hit, maybe Anet would have kept more of the wvw players around and then put more resources in to keep it going. Its sad to think that they only commit resources to things they see as working as opposed to committing resources to building something that will be successful (as it pertains to wvw).

There’s a ton of problems (and I feel many are self-inflicted) that no one entity is going to save things. Which is fine. I generally dislike targeting specific individuals especially when they’re trying to help matters that may or may not be in their control.

First off, balance. As WvW involves player to player combat typically, skill balance is a difficult issues because combat fundamentally changes as numbers changes. However balance is decided by a single team in this game that does it for 3 game modes. This would be bad enough, but given the lack of splits, changes intended for other game modes also affected WvW. It’s only recently that we started seeing more skill splitting but this is going to require a ton of work.

Secondly, WvW is left in an awkward place after the controversial HoT changes. It seems to me that the plans were scrapped due to numerous complaints about HoT content, including sky high WvW upgrade costs, a unpopular map, and other new mechanics that introduced expensive power creep to the game mode.

Third, is the WvW has or had great diversity in its population. It is very difficult to cater to it all, and some of it is even contradictory and at odds with each other. As a single example, consider the group that wants variety in their matchups, and then consider the group that finds it outrageous that a 4th place and a 11th place could be in the same matchup.

Fourth, related to the second issue, the issue of community or identity has been pretty much abandoned. Not just talking about the server links, but the megaserver system has pretty much rendered the existence of servers irrelevant outside of WvW. I remember both Roleplayers and WvW’ers suggesting that the cities remain some kind of community hub, but these concerns were completely ignored. The guild upgrades in HoT inherently favored large guilds, and small groups that used to help their servers found buffs they had were taken away and placed behind very high paywalls. Guild halls seem to be quite the failure as well, being too small and keeping broken confusion/retal mechanics that really ruin fights.

And of course this isn’t just WvW. The problem with guilds is across the games, and the game has done a poor job of making sure guilds stay healthy. Look at Guild Missions, which really haven’t had much attention paid to. They basically made a bunch of ones, some good, some not so good, locked some ascended equipment behind its gates, and called it a day.

Fifth, the reward system has always been in a difficult spot, though improved over time. It is very difficult to find a balance between rewarding participation and curbing freeloading. WvW’ers generally have to spend the most gold playing their game mode, and make the least, which again simply puts in more disincentive.

And finally, population. It’s really a symptom of the above problems. You have a smaller, more insular player base that continually shrinks, resulting in more imbalance as the remaining crowds converge on places to play out their last days of this game because of low morale. This results in little more than a never ending cycle of decay, and not an environment that can keep or gain players.

To be fair, as with HoT maps, WvW has seen some improvements as some of these issues were addressed, but I think the damage has largely been done as some will never come back. HoT was just a perfect storm of numerous failings about this game just came to the forefront all it once. At this point in its lifespan, I think it has squandered a lot of its potential, and that’s not going to change. To be fair, I never thought that it would have succeeded in content with compeititive potential anyways (lol espots), and it’s honestly quite impressive that it got so far to begin with. But it still can remain a decent game despite all these issues as long as it manages to address these issues as well as it can.

If the ‘vast majority’ of players do not like the Desert Borderlands, I wonder why it was voted to stay…

I mean, the playerbase did get to choose whether to keep it, or have it removed permanently.

At least, WvW gets polls for the playerbase to choose what to add/change/remove; and more than any other game mode, it seems.

There are no wvw devs. Hence the lack of action. There are dedicated fractals devs, raid devs (spot how quickly ghost thief was nerfed after it solo’d one), maybe even a pve focused balance team. But no wvw devs.

There is one guy who occasionally does something on wvw.

Every few months when they have nothing better to work on (like, say, an NPC’kitten colour needs changing) they do a couple hours work on wvw scoring update phase 2. It’s only taken over 5 months so far.

It’s a shame really, as it could have been a real success and a long term crowd puller, but instead they decided to concentrate on the failed spvp e-sports and create raids for a small minority and fractals (as they are easy to create, being self contained).

Maybe one day someone will wake up and see the potential, but I suspect it’s too late for most players who have already moved on.

Oh, and in before they move this post to the wvw forum graveyard.

Anet have basically abandoned WvW.

If they allocated the resources needed they could still save it.
If WvW had a revamp right now, I believe that a lot of former players would at least give it a go.
But there are other RvR games upcoming, time is running out.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If the ‘vast majority’ of players do not like the Desert Borderlands, I wonder why it was voted to stay…

I mean, the playerbase did get to choose whether to keep it, or have it removed permanently.

At least, WvW gets polls for the playerbase to choose what to add/change/remove; and more than any other game mode, it seems.

I believe it required a 75% vote, and that’s a pretty high threshold.

That being said, there is a great dissonance between what you read on the forums and what seems to actually happen. For example, if you read WvW threads enough, you would never assume things like mobile cannons and focus on scoring to count because lol PPT ALL ABOUT THE FIGHTS, but then they do. And this is frequently reflected in actual gameplay, so that is why I brought up that there’s a much more diverse population in WvW who have very different interests and this is quite difficult to reconcile.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If the ‘vast majority’ of players do not like the Desert Borderlands, I wonder why it was voted to stay…

I mean, the playerbase did get to choose whether to keep it, or have it removed permanently.

At least, WvW gets polls for the playerbase to choose what to add/change/remove; and more than any other game mode, it seems.

Recall, it was a vote to see if people wanted to keep it around, not if they liked it or not.

I despise the desert BL – absolutely hate it! However, I voted to keep it. There are players out there who do like it and I did not want to see it removed so they could still enjoy it. Having 2 of the 3 be alpine BLs along with EB give the rest of us refuge from that horrendous excuse of a BL.

ArchonWing.9480:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If the ‘vast majority’ of players do not like the Desert Borderlands, I wonder why it was voted to stay…

I mean, the playerbase did get to choose whether to keep it, or have it removed permanently.

At least, WvW gets polls for the playerbase to choose what to add/change/remove; and more than any other game mode, it seems.

I believe it required a 75% vote, and that’s a pretty high threshold.

The problem there is it is only 75% of the people who are aware of the vote, meaning only those who visit the forums or Reddit.
Anet long ago dropped the ball when dealing with this sort of thing. A voting system should have been implemented in the client launcher that rewarded some sort of in game item for voting, along with an option to disable surveys. Only then would they have accurate information on what the player base wants, as they would not only have the votes from all players interested, they’d have the IP addresses to determine when 10 votes came from 10 accounts owned by the same person.
A great example of the difference between the internet community and the in game community is the vote between Evon and Ellen.
Here on the forum and on Reddit, you’d have thought that a win for Evon Gnashblade was going to give everyone a free precursor of their choice, plus 80,000gems in their account and a Lamborghini delivered to their house the next day, yet when it came down to it, Ellen won. The vote was taken via the use of support tokens in game, not via Reddit or the official forum.
There are a lot of people who play GW2 that aren’t involved with the forum or reddit. Some don’t even know the two are used for things as important as voting on the direction of the game.

Hmm…I thought notification of the polls were sent to WvW players, and only those who played a specific amount.

They do listen and read, they cant do much, game is what was ment to be, a game where players were suposed to get stuff but just do something, it was mostly designed for players that never could accomplish nothing or always fail to acomplish things in games.

Reason pools questions and pools results were always extremely weak or useless, they cant devianate from what gw2 was ment to be.

Pitty that they prefered to sacrifice all the pvp for pve ugly spamway, droppign ESL probably just confirms they dont want to success at pvp, at least is how ic it.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Hmm…I thought notification of the polls were sent to WvW players, and only those who played a specific amount.

This is correct. If memory serves it requires you to have ranked up twice since the last poll for it to come to your in-game mailbox.

Neural.1824:

ArchonWing.9480:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If the ‘vast majority’ of players do not like the Desert Borderlands, I wonder why it was voted to stay…

I mean, the playerbase did get to choose whether to keep it, or have it removed permanently.

At least, WvW gets polls for the playerbase to choose what to add/change/remove; and more than any other game mode, it seems.

I believe it required a 75% vote, and that’s a pretty high threshold.

The problem there is it is only 75% of the people who are aware of the vote, meaning only those who visit the forums or Reddit.
Anet long ago dropped the ball when dealing with this sort of thing. A voting system should have been implemented in the client launcher that rewarded some sort of in game item for voting, along with an option to disable surveys. Only then would they have accurate information on what the player base wants, as they would not only have the votes from all players interested, they’d have the IP addresses to determine when 10 votes came from 10 accounts owned by the same person.
A great example of the difference between the internet community and the in game community is the vote between Evon and Ellen.
Here on the forum and on Reddit, you’d have thought that a win for Evon Gnashblade was going to give everyone a free precursor of their choice, plus 80,000gems in their account and a Lamborghini delivered to their house the next day, yet when it came down to it, Ellen won. The vote was taken via the use of support tokens in game, not via Reddit or the official forum.
There are a lot of people who play GW2 that aren’t involved with the forum or reddit. Some don’t even know the two are used for things as important as voting on the direction of the game.

You’re missing the point. It was 75 % to remove, meaning a majority could dislike it yet it could remain. Thus these two things aren’t exclusive.

As for actually voting. Excuses. If you were active that week, they sent a poll. In this day and age, information travels freely. If people cared so strongly yet dont bother to keep an effort, then it is on them.

Did the OP even bother too check the actual WvW section of the forums?

This was posted a couple days ago. Someone asked for more communication and they got it. It isn’t much, but it is something.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Can-we-have-some-communication-please/first#post6545964

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The WvW team is currently working on Scoring Improvements Phase 2, which was determined in the last priority poll. This involves adding rewards to Skirmishes and improving the Skirmish UI.

The 2 expansion… A legend writen in the stonemist walls, the dreams and hopes of every WvWers… they are expecting the chosen one, the one who will bring balance to the classes, and destroy the lord SIegeTHS. Until then… they will have tl wait…preserving the population.

Charrbeque.8729:

Did the OP even bother too check the actual WvW section of the forums?

This was posted a couple days ago. Someone asked for more communication and they got it. It isn’t much, but it is something.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Can-we-have-some-communication-please/first#post6545964

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The WvW team is currently working on Scoring Improvements Phase 2, which was determined in the last priority poll. This involves adding rewards to Skirmishes and improving the Skirmish UI.

It’s only taken over five months…

And they failed to address any of the current issues.

And now the thread has been consigned to the dustbin that is the wvw forums.

Baldrick.8967:

Charrbeque.8729:

Did the OP even bother too check the actual WvW section of the forums?

This was posted a couple days ago. Someone asked for more communication and they got it. It isn’t much, but it is something.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Can-we-have-some-communication-please/first#post6545964

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The WvW team is currently working on Scoring Improvements Phase 2, which was determined in the last priority poll. This involves adding rewards to Skirmishes and improving the Skirmish UI.

It’s only taken over five months…

And they failed to address any of the current issues.

And now the thread has been consigned to the dustbin that is the wvw forums.

Exactly. I don’t get why so many white knights try to fake proper communication, it’s beyond unbelievable.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There are so many assumptions in your question that it’s hard to give a response that will help you see what’s going on.

WvW is, as you say, a big beast. There are dozens of posts and reddit threads that make it clear that those passionate about the game mode can’t even agree about what the mode is, never mind what needs to be fixed, let alone what would be a good way to address them.

Comparing anything about fractals to WvW is like comparing Apple Computers to Oranges: fractals are small-group, instanced content. Most changes have zero impact on other game modes, adding a new fractal has no impact on anyone’s enjoyment of any other fractal, and so on.

I love Ben’s level of communication, but it’s a horrid model for WvW — first, he does it on his own time, not ANet’s. Second, his communication is reactive, i.e. he responds to specific issues of concern to us, but he rarely offers any insight to the overall direction. Thirdly, there’s very little discussion: we post, he tells us what he thinks is going on. Only when the fractal team can’t decide does he ask what we think. That wouldn’t fly at all for WvW fans.

Finally, it’s unfair to say that WvW has been abandoned. It gets just as little (or as much) attention these days as it ever did. Change comes slowly to a complicated game mode, as it needs to.

The biggest problem with WvW is that, like any other part of any MMO, players evolve their gameplay faster than the developers can grow the mode. We’ve been playing largely the same version of WvW for 4.5 years and the full-timers have gotten bored or disgusted with the drama (that is inevitable after playing that long with the same people) and moved on. The mode is still a lot of fun for folks who don’t play all the time or who are new; they haven’t learned to be jaded.

If it were easy to do something to please WvW fans, ANet would have done it already. It’s a hugely complicated mess.

(All that said, I think ANet could do a lot better, both with how they tackle WvW and with what & how often they share about that. I just don’t think that’s going to end up satisfying many of us.)

I call BS… Anet is aware of several servers that have tons of hackers… and yet nothing is done.

In the last 3 weeks alone, my team has saw and reported several people hacking through walls, inside keeps, even shooting through solid walls and floors destroying siege from 2000+ range etc… one hacker (at QL tower) got caught by our entire team when he and his buddy hacked through a solid wall and started attacking us inside while the rest of his team were still working on the gate. We all reported the person and added them to block list so we could see if they were removed. No action has been taken yet and the person is playing wvw every day… just hacking to his hearts content.. and anet doesnt give a flying kitten.

This is the problem.

Yes there are stacked servers, and the wvw scoring system is broken… but its Anet’s refusal to ban hackers that is killing the game right now.

Watch the posts on this board… this morning there are already 2 about people not taking any condi damage etc.. This isnt team make up.. this isnt resistance.. this is an example of a hack.

There is also an under map hack that some melee are running where you get “Target Obstructed” until you get right up in their face. It places the character under the map and they arent hittable at all until your right on top of them.

We also have seen people hacking inside the lords room in air palace on red bl… teleporting from supply depot to depot and shooting from the clouds above the lords room and even some standing IN the wall in lords… and they can hit us.. but we cant hit them.

When anet fixes these kinds of hacks, then you will know they care.. At this point.. its obvious Anet doesnt give a kitten about wvw.

Season 2 is up bois
theres even a Gorilla Titan

https://youtu.be/FY17vwF0Bqc

vier.1327:

The 2 expansion… A legend writen in the stonemist walls, the dreams and hopes of every WvWers… they are expecting the chosen one, the one who will bring balance to the classes, and destroy the lord SIegeTHS. Until then… they will have tl wait…preserving the population.

Some quiet dev in the corner of Anet is formulating a plan for world versus world domination…..I have to believe!

Anet devs might listen, but they sure don’t communicate. And because they don’t communicate, the players don’t think that the devs listen.

We never get into a discussion with a back and forth with Anet devs. Do you ever see more than two red posts in a thread? Even the CDI discussion threads seemed to have minimal red posts.

Take the WvW overhaul. It was announced that there was going to be a WvW overhaul. Months go by and then we hear that the overhaul was scrapped because the project continued to get bigger and bigger.

Look at the scoring change history. We’ve had multiple threads, each many pages, where we’ve argued about 3-2-1, 2-1-1, 1-0-0 and 5-4-3 and it seems that all we hear from Anet is an announcement of “Next weeks match we will be changing the scoring format to x-x-x”. We don’t get a comment that says that the scoring was changed because player participation dropped after they switched. There’s nothing about the participation levels of the first, second or third place servers.

Multiple threads about server population, linking and glicko threads. Most of these threads get closed because they devolve into the dreaded “matchup thread” archive. We’ve had months of guesses what “activity level” meant. We knew that server populations and linkings were odd but there was only the final announcement by Anet that they changed how they calculated population levels. Then there’s all those posts where Anet decides to manually change a server’s glicko score. No explanations, just a statement.

Then there’s skill balance. Was ghost thief nerfed because Anet listened to WvW threads or was it nerfed after a PvE player posted a video soloing a raid? If ghost thief was nerfed because of WvW threads why did it take so long? Either way it’s like Anet doesn’t read WvW threads.

And how’s that discussion with Anet about lag going?

Valento.9852:

Right now, there’s such a silence from WvW team. Over the past year there has been ideas, suggestions, feedbacks, a lot of random stuff thrown out by the players in the hope WvW could be refined into something they love, and potentially bring new players. (this is a reddit post I made yesterday)

WvW is a big beast, and there’s no simple solution for practically everything because it’s massive, it’s a big scale mode and arguably much harder to balance than PvP or PvE. However, once things are properly in place you will gather a lot of players at once and that will hopefully help the company revenues? WvW-exclusive things?

Aside from all the pros and cons, I just feel… like WvW shouldn’t die. It has much bigger potential than PvE and PvP combined, and see I’m not an avid WvW player but truth has to be said.

Ben, from the fractals team, is a great example of communication. We need more development devs speaking to us. Ben reads through some posts every now and then, at least once a week, and talk to us, and he doesn’t do empty promises but he chats with us occasionally while he’s not too busy, and while he may end up not doing anything based on our feedback (because devs know better what to do with the game anyways) he at least make us feel heard. Ben is a single person in the whole company that does make the community feel at least heard, and he doesn’t have to but he does read and reply at least once in a week.

WvW has been so much abandoned, and I just… I don’t want it to die. Please, do something, anything. This may sound like an emotional post, and perhaps it is from a certain extent, I just don’t know what else can be done. I’m not good with graphics and charts stuff, but I do some strawpolls sometimes to see what picks player attention, though it doesn’t feel as accurate as I’d hope.

The answer is a straight and simple “No”.

I can prove it so much but the DEVS are ignoring the fact that god-like-power-hungry GMs run interferrence and dismiss all who ask valid and pertinent questions as well as dismissing and abusing those who seek help in the customer service ticketing process, which is so broken that it should not even exist to pay people.

Customer service abuses people. That should get the owners attention.

Customer service forces people to do test after test but never say anything except ’it’s your machine’s fault’, which to any computer professional is the most ignorant and abusive thing to do to any user that can be don.

This isn’t customer service, not the forums and not the ticketing, this is corralling you into a space where you have no voice and no worth.

The heinousness of customer service (forums and ticketing) is evidenced in a game that can’t even complete a ping or traceroute and no matter how many times you prove it to those at customer service the tests that prove you aren’t a complete idiot are turned back on you again making sure that the person has no where else to turn when their own network is horridly run and heinously abused.

The evidence that the “Devs” never see a thing wrong with the game is apparent when they abuse it as much as any who purport to be ‘customer service’ or forum managers, manually manipulating scores in WvW making impossible games, instead of fixing their algorithm in WvW or finally and with all due common sense release the links to the servers and let us fall where we may.

The links were an idea by the players, but the *implementation of the links is only a money bonanza for Anet in the short term, but in the long run will cost them players and ultimately their jobs as the game dies from abuse from within *and from hacking which they can’t figure out either.*

An abused game is not where people want to be.

We want a game that is managed as well as it looks and right now, GW2 management is at an all time low, to be kind.

Editing is not working at all so I will put another post in.

More proof that the game and website are abused, neglected and just plain mismanaged.

Here is one of many tests that never complete to Anet’s servers.

Even when doing a command line ping, I can get to any website except Anet’s and they refuse to do a thing about this let alone the rest of the game which is in dire shape.

WinMTR statistics |

WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP – Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

Swamurabi.7890:

Anet devs might listen, but they sure don’t communicate. And because they don’t communicate, the players don’t think that the devs listen.

We never get into a discussion with a back and forth with Anet devs. Do you ever see more than two red posts in a thread? Even the CDI discussion threads seemed to have minimal red posts.

Take the WvW overhaul. It was announced that there was going to be a WvW overhaul. Months go by and then we hear that the overhaul was scrapped because the project continued to get bigger and bigger.

Look at the scoring change history. We’ve had multiple threads, each many pages, where we’ve argued about 3-2-1, 2-1-1, 1-0-0 and 5-4-3 and it seems that all we hear from Anet is an announcement of “Next weeks match we will be changing the scoring format to x-x-x”. We don’t get a comment that says that the scoring was changed because player participation dropped after they switched. There’s nothing about the participation levels of the first, second or third place servers.

Multiple threads about server population, linking and glicko threads. Most of these threads get closed because they devolve into the dreaded “matchup thread” archive. We’ve had months of guesses what “activity level” meant. We knew that server populations and linkings were odd but there was only the final announcement by Anet that they changed how they calculated population levels. Then there’s all those posts where Anet decides to manually change a server’s glicko score. No explanations, just a statement.

Then there’s skill balance. Was ghost thief nerfed because Anet listened to WvW threads or was it nerfed after a PvE player posted a video soloing a raid? If ghost thief was nerfed because of WvW threads why did it take so long? Either way it’s like Anet doesn’t read WvW threads.

And how’s that discussion with Anet about lag going?

In WvW the Ghost Thieves aren’t gone – so do Devs listen, again, no, because I have been killed by a “Ghost Thief” since that ‘fix’.

@atheria, I’ve read some loose reports about that. It seems it’s NCSoft servers freaking out some days.

After 5 years the simple answer you are looking for is : NO

atheria.2837:

Swamurabi.7890:

Anet devs might listen, but they sure don’t communicate. And because they don’t communicate, the players don’t think that the devs listen.

We never get into a discussion with a back and forth with Anet devs. Do you ever see more than two red posts in a thread? Even the CDI discussion threads seemed to have minimal red posts.

Take the WvW overhaul. It was announced that there was going to be a WvW overhaul. Months go by and then we hear that the overhaul was scrapped because the project continued to get bigger and bigger.

Look at the scoring change history. We’ve had multiple threads, each many pages, where we’ve argued about 3-2-1, 2-1-1, 1-0-0 and 5-4-3 and it seems that all we hear from Anet is an announcement of “Next weeks match we will be changing the scoring format to x-x-x”. We don’t get a comment that says that the scoring was changed because player participation dropped after they switched. There’s nothing about the participation levels of the first, second or third place servers.

Multiple threads about server population, linking and glicko threads. Most of these threads get closed because they devolve into the dreaded “matchup thread” archive. We’ve had months of guesses what “activity level” meant. We knew that server populations and linkings were odd but there was only the final announcement by Anet that they changed how they calculated population levels. Then there’s all those posts where Anet decides to manually change a server’s glicko score. No explanations, just a statement.

Then there’s skill balance. Was ghost thief nerfed because Anet listened to WvW threads or was it nerfed after a PvE player posted a video soloing a raid? If ghost thief was nerfed because of WvW threads why did it take so long? Either way it’s like Anet doesn’t read WvW threads.

And how’s that discussion with Anet about lag going?

In WvW the Ghost Thieves aren’t gone – so do Devs listen, again, no, because I have been killed by a “Ghost Thief” since that ‘fix’.

Sorry but removing ghost thief isn’t a solution and the only thing it’s gonna do is get people mad and make them LEAVE.

Tbh if you die from a ghost thief you shouldn’t be in WVW running what you are running.

First, we need to look at the history of WvW and anet approach towards it.

2012 – Launch year

• Removed Temple orb, a few months after launch, you can say they wasted time developing this.

2013

• Culling removed
• WvW rank & masteries added
• Nerf AC damage
• Bug fixes
• OS removed from EBG to its own instance. I see this as initial development oversight
• Stealth / Supply traps added
• Siege blueprints became tradable
• Replaced borderland center water area with bloodlust
• Anet staff trolled gvg activity which reflect badly on anet and suggested anet disapproval of gvg activities. Anet added arena to OS a few months later which assumed to repair the damage.
• First WvW tourny

2014

• EOTM added which is said to be a year worth of development. It was meant as a side map for long queues but also mentioned as a place for new players to try out WvW. EOTM quickly drained a part of wvw populations due to its higher rewards. Short term benefit include less queues for the back then wvw regulars. Long term damage include wvw population drained.
• Second & Third WvW tourny
• Megaserver, server identity lost, recruitment is slightly more troublesome, asking for help in pve became pointless.
• WXP became account bound (aka your wvw rank)
• Siege disabler added
• Banner no longer revive lords

2015

• WvW maps removed from map completions, less reason for new players to try WvW.
• Stability changed, greatly changed how WvW is played. For a short time, pirate meta completely tookover.
• Golem event
• AC now has line of sight
• Anti-condi food nerfed
• HOT launched
  • Desert map added, initially replaced the Alpine.
  • Shield generator added
  • WvW tactivator added
  • WvW claim buff revamped along with guild hall
  • WvW gear (from vendor) is now salvageable
  • EOTM rewards nerfed
  • Waypoints no longer open during contested (aka contested is now seamless)
  • T3 gate added
  • Squad UI
  • Adjusted WP position for desert map
  • Proofs of heroics for HOT stuffs

2016

• PPK added
• Can’t ress dead if combat
• Rally reduced to 1 to 1
• Oasis event in desert disabled
• Updated WvW LFG
• WvW linking added
  • Changed WvW population for host server from collective to subjective
• WvW reward tracks added
• New war score system
• Improved squad UI
• Team cross chat
• Simple name tags
• Polishing
  • Nerf some tactivators durations, cooldowns, effects
  • Proof of heroic now is token
  • Guild claim buff distanced affected in some places adjusted
  • Bugs fix
  • Bulk mystic forge for sieges upgrade
  • and more

Comparing to 2013 and 2014, WvW did have updates, not major updates but many polishing. However, anet did not address the things that really impact the players. To be fair, anet did do more for WvW than used to but it will take a lot more to make up for the time wasted and bad decisions made.

… and removal of crafting stations at Citadel, and addition of banker in their place.

It’s not like they’re doing nothing of course… but the main game play is still suffering under many of the big changes that were made to wvw. My guild was small already and now I have 2 more players that have decided to leave the game due to all the frustration. I know people come and go, but these, (as were the others I know) are long time seasoned players who even played GW1. sigh

misawamitsuharu.7605:

atheria.2837:

Swamurabi.7890:

Anet devs might listen, but they sure don’t communicate. And because they don’t communicate, the players don’t think that the devs listen.

We never get into a discussion with a back and forth with Anet devs. Do you ever see more than two red posts in a thread? Even the CDI discussion threads seemed to have minimal red posts.

Take the WvW overhaul. It was announced that there was going to be a WvW overhaul. Months go by and then we hear that the overhaul was scrapped because the project continued to get bigger and bigger.

Look at the scoring change history. We’ve had multiple threads, each many pages, where we’ve argued about 3-2-1, 2-1-1, 1-0-0 and 5-4-3 and it seems that all we hear from Anet is an announcement of “Next weeks match we will be changing the scoring format to x-x-x”. We don’t get a comment that says that the scoring was changed because player participation dropped after they switched. There’s nothing about the participation levels of the first, second or third place servers.

Multiple threads about server population, linking and glicko threads. Most of these threads get closed because they devolve into the dreaded “matchup thread” archive. We’ve had months of guesses what “activity level” meant. We knew that server populations and linkings were odd but there was only the final announcement by Anet that they changed how they calculated population levels. Then there’s all those posts where Anet decides to manually change a server’s glicko score. No explanations, just a statement.

Then there’s skill balance. Was ghost thief nerfed because Anet listened to WvW threads or was it nerfed after a PvE player posted a video soloing a raid? If ghost thief was nerfed because of WvW threads why did it take so long? Either way it’s like Anet doesn’t read WvW threads.

And how’s that discussion with Anet about lag going?

In WvW the Ghost Thieves aren’t gone – so do Devs listen, again, no, because I have been killed by a “Ghost Thief” since that ‘fix’.

Sorry but removing ghost thief isn’t a solution and the only thing it’s gonna do is get people mad and make them LEAVE.

Tbh if you die from a ghost thief you shouldn’t be in WVW running what you are running.

Getting rid of ghost thiefs was one of the best balance patches ever. Removed a Troll build tjat annoys more people than rewards.

I have to correct myself…

“WvW did have updates, not major updates but many polishing.”

to

“WvW did have updates, not many major updates but many polishing.”

The auto upgrade can be viewed in two ways. One is that it eliminate the arguments over what to upgrade first and also the cost to upgrade it, assumed directing those cost to tactivator instead. Another is that upgrade is made easier to everyone and naturally the bigger coverage get to take better advantage of it.

Yes, I did miss certain things, infact, there are a lot more things I have missed out but the point is there are more wvw updates compare to the past, just not many that really important which means that anet should focus on things that matters to players more.

SkyShroud.2865:

2015

• WvW maps removed from map completions, less reason for new players to try WvW.
• Stability changed, greatly changed how WvW is played. For a short time, pirate meta completely tookover.
• Golem event
• AC now has line of sight
• Anti-condi food nerfed
• HOT launched
  • Desert map added, initially replaced the Alpine.
  • Shield generator added
  • WvW tactivator added
  • WvW claim buff revamped along with guild hall
  • WvW gear (from vendor) is now salvageable
  • EOTM rewards nerfed
  • Waypoints no longer open during contested (aka contested is now seamless)
  • T3 gate added
  • Squad UI
  • Adjusted WP position for desert map
  • Proofs of heroics for HOT stuffs

Those were some dark times.