This has been brough up before most likely but i feel the need to mention this again by my own initiative and hopefully get some discussion going before the next W³ update and how it will develop this part of the game into the future to come.
I’ve been away from the game a few times now but check it regularly through forums, news, patch notes and log in every few months to check in. First i left back in early November, returned for a few weeks in April and again in August till now and can’t help to feel this part of the game (WvWvW) is becoming increasingly stale and similar to the state of PvE when it comes to… farming.
With the addon of progression, abilities, WxP and now with more ascended gear, it becomes obvious the mentality at work behind many current W³’ers (including some long time running commanders) boiling down to… farming.
While the Zerg/Blob mentality about capping and dare i say, “fighting” was always here, it is currently more evident to me that this form of grouping is, like in PvE events farm, the most effective way to farm W³ rewards, by only caring about flipping objectives and not caring about regularly defending or even set up strategies since they’ll flip them again soon for the rewards.
I see these big groups, led by a blue tag, zipping around the maps with almost no downtime, to flip as much they can until border hop and do the same and regularly bragging about how much “loot” they acquired so far. Tag followers seem to only care about where the commander is and where he/she is going next to maximize rewards leaving most of the time no room to make other decisions themselves such as looking at the map and identify issues, take action and whatnot.
Even with current limited tag/chat tools to setup more and better group options, i usually only see 1 tag on the map, knowing there are more people there capable of putting another tag up and setup more strategical combat / defensive stances.
I applaud those “GvG” guilds and groups that search for challenging gameplay and bring some more varied gameplay to this part of the game and plead to W³ players and ultimately Anet to think about what’s the fun purpose of this… farming.
I understand the need players have to get some rewards doing some content but i’d prefer to have the content being the main attraction rather than the rewards. With the upcoming “changes” to W³ i wonder if the “problems” will go away or if the game will simply build up on the flaws until the real fun part is nothing more than afterthought waiting to happen.
