Guild Wars 2

First of all I wrote this post on my own website: https://eylanae.wordpress.com/2015/11/17/wvw-after-hot/
I explained in there in what way Heart of Thorns has affected WvW imo. It’s not just about the map, but mostly about how WvW players in general are affected by the changes to the mechanics of WvW. It’s a long read, so I’ll try to explain some of my main concerns in here. It’s also not my intention to be negative about WvW, but I do want to share the concerns I’m having at this moment. I also posted this in the constructive feedback sticky, because I really think it’s important the core problems of WvW after HoT gets solved.

In WvW before HoT I was usually raiding with my guild, 10-20 people, mostly fighting other even sized or larger groups either in open field or scrims. If needed we would go help defend, cap or switch borders. When not running with my guild I was either following a commander doing the same or sometimes just roaming or scouting a bit. Never really went to EB, to blobby, or EotM, to much EotM. I really had a lot of fun in the borders. Running around looking for open field fights, scrims or fights to defend structures. Sometimes just roaming with a small group, capping camps, scouting a bit and always joined in the fights over a Bay, Hills or Garri with a waypoint.

With the Desert borderland and the changes in game mechanis the way we used to play WvW has changed massively. I basically just run to places where might be some people to fight (and I basically mean running because they are hard to find), getting walls pop up in my face, searching for routes to go up or down, and most important, fighting against the lag). Commanders are hard to find and usually it takes to long to get there, so I just leave.

There is less room for open field fights, less need to cap, defend or scout, less random encounters. The only thing that hasn’t changed that much is karmatraining a border with a full zone blob. Also something that really is a problem atm is the lag. The game is absolutely laggy when fighting, if the Oasis event is up its even impossible to just run around without lagging insanely.
The map is to large, design flawed, structures to far apart, no reason to defend T3 keeps with waypoints, and if Garri is contested you can just recap instead of defending. That Oasis event in the middle requires you to kill PvE creatures, just so you can grab that thing and give it to a NPC, all of this in the middle of to much lag. It’s also way to overpowered at the moment. A large group will have no problem doing the event, but they won’t have any problem capping all the structures anyways. The smaller groups (I really do see potential in there for small scale fights in the center) won’t benifit at all from the laser thing.

There is no need to defend a T3 Bay or Hills for a commander to tag up (especially outside of prime time), people jumping in looking for some action will leave because of no commander, so even less need for a commander to tag up. Roamers will have to much time searching for other roamers, so they will play less as well. Scouting and upgrading basically has been removed because there is no need to anymore (besides who should a scout ask for help when there’s no one running on the maps?)
There is no need to cap camps or escort dollies, cause the structures will get upgraded anyways. There is also no need to cap them to stop an enemy objective from getting upgraded. So roaming around is not so much fun after this.

The buffs usefull in WvW are locked behind upgrading the guild, which involves a lot of time and gold, and is basically impossible to achieve for smaller guilds within a reasonable timespan (and don’t forget the smaller guilds are the ones benefitting most of these upgrades).
I never played WvW te expect loot or wxp, the best rewards have been the fights and the thrill of (almost) winning a seemingly impossible battle like outnumbered fights or a threeway at Garri. It would have been nice if the rewards were buffed a bit, and maybe even special WvW only skins or drops.
I really don’t like how the elite specs are working within WvW, the only way to get them is by ranking up, wich again means the best way is to start karmatraining and capping things (not by doing what I like to do, which is fighting). Those chests you can switch out to your other characters, but the proofs are soulbound. Both my main characters already have the elite specs fully unlocked, with the others I’m forced to run around in either PvE or WvW (and hoping that I will rank up enough again). This also goes for the double classes I have, all of my guards need to endlessly grind them.

So what will I be doing if it stays like this? I’ll probably still go to the borders (because I still don’t really like EB) but not for as long or as often as I did before. I already find myself playing more PvE than before but I also tend to AFK in Lion’s Arch or just not be in game at all.

Some up of the things I think will be needed to fix WvW:
Get rid of the lag
Focus on fights, take the playstyle of all of the different types of WvW players into consideration (pugs, guilds, roamers and scouts), it’s not a PvE map and people only joining WvW occasionally shouldn’t be the ones WvW is designed for.
Downscale the size of the map, make it so that the towers actually are worth it strategically, less verticality and chockepoints, remove the gimmicks like earth walls and turrets.
Change the auto-upgrading system: Have dollies actually count, player interference needed and waypoints at T3 keeps.
Change the Oasis event rewards: Just have one gate downgraded, a buff like the old Bloodlust or just a big chest in the center.
Redo the guild upgrades, make +5 one of the easiest accesible upgrades.
Change the way the elite specs work. Either have them unlocked completely when entering WvW or at least make those chests stackable or the proof of heroics accountbound.
Redo the reward system, improve the quality of loot (not just blues and greens in rank up chests), have a few seperate skinsets only available in WvW (buyable with badges) or some rare weapon/skins that only drop in WvW.
Having the Desert borderland in rotation with the Alpine border and maybe a new map might help a bit as well (as long as the problems above are also adressed)

I feel the same way especially about the afking-part, I notice I log in less and less

I wrote down some things on my website about WvW again. If you are interested I really can only say read through them, because they are pretty elaborate (it’s also a long read, four articles) and not as one sighted as this short post I’m writing here right now.

The thing that has been lacking from WvW as we know of are the rewards. Just keep in mind that those people that do love WvW, that have been playing for so long already, actually don’t care about rewards to start with. Fighting, scouting, achieving what you want to, have been the rewards for so many people for years already.

The idea I’m having is to improve the way rewards work in WvW, serverbound WvW, so not EotM. Three levels of WvW only skins for armour and weapons, some of them easy to achieve, some on a ascended/legendary level, or close to it (so you will need to play WvW to get them, not farm things or hop in WvW every day). They can be bought or found by playing the game (through random in game drops) or bought from merchants for a lot of Badges of Honor. WvW never had these, the only specific skins or rewards where the ones you could buy after the tournaments (no need to changes those though). What if there would be a reward for playing WvW every week, the rank you server managed to achieve after every matchup. You can have a Bronze, Silver and Golden chest (dependant on your placing). It will contain some RNG but also some chances for WvW only gear/trinkets/weapons/collections/legendary. It won’t make any difference for people that love to play WvW for the game mode, their friends, but maybe it will for people that never have ever touched WvW.

Just take a look at the matchups as we know now. There is actually no reward at all for people playing, sure you won the matchup but that’s it. With a reward system tied to your placing in every matchup, winning the matchups does matter. A lot of new players would drop in as well, end up being 1, 2 or 3 and get some amazing rewards you can’t find in PvE. It won’t take long before those new players will find out why people like to play WvW (without any rewards). People who used to join the server that is always winning (No 1) can now also go to lower level servers, because they can win that matchup as well, with that golden chest as a reward.

As for population balance, I really think improving the rewards would be a solution as well. In the above I explained why rewards and a weekly matchup reward might work in the future, in here I will explain how it could be used for the population balance as well.

Most important is that ArenaNet manages to get the core population of people more or less in balance. There will always be people leaving because they are done with the game, but there also should be plenty of new players joining, weather it’s the next Xpack or just advertising the game in various ways. If this ground layer population is there, so people leaving as well as people joining the game, it’s a good time to look at a way to arange those people evenly on servers. Just bluntly saying you go join this or that server won’t work imo. People will always join that server where their friends are playing and that is the way it should be. You should play the game with people and friends that you like to play the game with. As for new people that don’t know any players in game, guild groups or groups of players that are lookin for a new server or just that single person that wants to join a different community the following could be of some importance and a way to make the best decision possible.

First of all, don’t forbid, but discourage people that want to join high tier servers, make them having to pay gems to transfer, just like we do now (maybe even something similiar for new players joining, somthing that discourages them, but not so much that they can’t join their friends on those servers). Encourage people to join the lower populated servers, no gem costs and actually a reward for joining that server. Maybe even adding some sort of title (ehhh...) for people, especially new players, who join the lowest servers (something like Emergency Aid, Volunteer or First Choiche, just an idea).
Have the rewards vary from some sort of chest (the ones you get from the matchups outcome as well) and some unique skins for transfering to or chosing medium or low populations. These unique skins should be the WvW only skins, but definetly not the highest tier of them. The highest tier ones should be earned on the battle field, not by transfering down (medium tier is questionable as well).

Down below I listed how it could work. The rewards are for both transferring as well as a reward for a new player. There should also be something to prevent players from transfering every week just for the rewards or joining the winning servers (maybe allowing one free server change per month and 1 reward every three months).

Server status: Gem cost: Rewards:
Full 1800 None
Very High 1000 None
High 500 Bronze chest of the Mist
Medium 0 Bronze chest of the Mist + unique skin
Low 0 Silver chest of the Mist + unique skin
Very Low 0 Golden chest of the Mist + unique skin

I really think that this is a solution to the population problem, without doing something rigorous like destroying communities that have been around for years, and just aiming for the players themselves to fix the problem. And rewards.... All of the people that have been playing WvW for a long time know that the reward is in the fight, and not in actual loot, but I also think this is the reason why ArenaNet has underestimated it’s value in WvW. With improving the rewards in WvW you can actually fix some of it’s core issues as well as atrackt new players to this game mode.

Another thing I really think is needed people (and ArenaNet) start to realise is that World vs World is a completely different game mode. It’s not a mixture between PvE and PvP, it’s a third one: WvW. This really has to be one of the main reasons why and how things happen in WvW. The balance of skills and traits shouldn’t be “does it work in PvP? PvE ok? Do it.” No, it should be balanced in all of the three game modes. “If they run with fifteen of those they will wreck everything. Hmmmm, so let’s redo it for WvW only”, just an example. Balance the skills seperately from the other game modes. I know nothing really matters in PvE, but in PvP and WvW it’s important that that core balance is there.

The elite specialisations? I absolutely understand why they implemented it like this. It’s an extra layer of character progression, just as masteries are. I also really don’t mind having to play the characters to unlock their elite.... in PvE.... But for WvW it’s just not the right way. I play some of the classes for one reason only, in WvW, to know how they work, to learn how to counter those classes. I like it, it’s fun finding that way that will work against, knowing their rotations, their positioning, the way they can be implimented in a group setup etc. Right now I can’t do it, unless I spend a lot of time leveling those classes I don’t like to play through PvE, which I don’t mind occasionally but not for a sole reason of understanding how that class works in WvW (and for real, no one will figure out the classes through PvE, the game modes are just to far off). So the trait system including the elite spec just really should be unlocked upon entering WvW.

One thing I actually didn’t write down in my articles is this one. The idea of alliances is not that bad at all, but you have to consider that the servers as we know now are alliances already. People that have chosen to play together in benefit of their server. So many of the great ideas regarding alliances can be implimented in the server system we have already, absolutely, but I don’t think that it would be wise to just break up all of the alliances we have already. A rigorous efford in rebalancing the servers, allowing free transfers every now and then f.i., is an option but there still has to be a reason why people would transfer to lower populated servers. Just changing the name from “Server” to “Alliance” is not something that will adress and solve the core issue of population balance.

https://eylanae.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/some-more-wvw-feedback-1-rewards/
https://eylanae.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/some-more-wvw-feedback-2-poplulation-balance/
https://eylanae.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/some-more-wvw-feedback-3-solution-to-population-balance/
https://eylanae.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/some-more-wvw-feedback-4-elite-specs-and-class-balance/

good write up, but I just think it’s the simple fact that Anet decided to focus on PvE, because it’s the low hanging fruit to attract new and old players. The fact that the ex-WvW lead hasnt worked on ANY WvW content since March (while he’s still employed) speaks volume on what’s important to Anet.