Guild Wars 2

I have seen this problem happen consistently in tiers 3-5 at the least, not just from my own server, but also our opponents for a long time now.

You get a great match starting on reset and through the first few days, but one team slowly starts building a small lead each day. Suddenly by Monday or Tuesday the losing team(s) populations start falling way off and you are seeing half the number of players in primetime than you did the first few days.

People stop playing, stop upgrading, it turns into a vicious cycle.

Every server has their die hards I think that will play regardless and keep showing up, they just like fighting other players in this environment. But you have a much bigger majority of we’ll say casual players who are entirely fairweather and stop showing up.

Right now either the matches are too long causing this to happen, hopelessness sets in, or else you really need strong incentives to keep players coming out in WvW even if it looks like their server might not win at the end.

I think Anet tried to do this with the outmanned buff but it just didn’t accomplish the objective. Besides which, if the idea is to get enough out to remove the outmanned, you lose the benefits anyway, but still might not be able to win the match, if your server flat out isn’t playing well enough.

Is Anet’s WvW passive reward system going to solve this? I think it has some potential. But one thing I think that could help as well, if they aren’t going to shorten matches, is make gold much more earnable in WvW. Who wants to come out for what is sure to be a losing end week effort, only to actually lose money at the same time, which a lot of WvWers end up at, nearly broke, or barely striking even.

I would also like to see far more cosmetic reward options for playing WvW only. A lot of WvW players don’t want to grind dungeons for cool gear, they would rather be playing the mode they vastly prefer. But WvW badges only buy two measley sets of gear, the invader pre 80 and exoctic sets, and to put it kindly, they are kind of homely.

WvW should have at least 5 sets of its own unique looking gear (how about one for each BL, and one for EB?), which would be another great way to denote effort and dedication in the game mode, without granting excessive power upgrades and further imbalancing the field.

Better drop rates maybe?

God forbid!!!

To put it bluntly – the less the gear rewards WvW offers, the less the grinders on battlefields.

WvW community has more than enough problems with ppl coming for JPs and map completion. We don’t need the gear obsessed maniacs as well. WvW has number restrictions, it is not CoF p1.

The reward of WvW is the fun obtained by coordinated play, large scale battles…the camaraderie, the sense of community.

We don’t need item rewards to be there

Isaac.6041:

Better outmanned buffs. LOL ^^

I think the current outmanned buff was designed to bring more people to the map without offering them an advantage on stats.

The buffs it gives shows that the idea was more to be like “hey, no one is on that map, if I go there I can get more coin/karma/loot!”.

Many people suggest a different buff, giving raw stat increases to those with smaller numbers. Although I agree that the current one is not really bringing people to the maps to fight back (sometimes brings lowbies to the map to get some extra xp), I dont think just changing to raw stats would make it better.
What you would mostly likely have is some people looking for outmanned buff to improve their builds to extremes… outmanned shatter/confusion Mes? outmanned BS thief? outmanned hammer warrior?

I think the breaking event is more on the right direction. Some events with free siege, free supply, some protection, etc. What it needs is a bit of work to be more customizable by who is starting it, and some different events…

anytime there isn’t a queue in a WvW map, the incentives, rewards, buffs, etc for entering WvW should be so high, essentially most people will join WvW to accomplish their personal goals.

(and you are absolutely correct, 7 day matches are too long)

fingers crossed anet fixes just enough of these real issues next month.

-g

Isaac.6041:

Better outmanned buffs. LOL ^^

WHY??? we love 33% more exp and karma when it is 5 against 40….win rating is zero with the outmannend buff…..sounds awesome to me

Why would better loot bring people into it? If you want to know why people give up, it’s because they’re quitters, and they only want to play when their team has a huge lead. Honestly, this is one thing that ticks me off about people, they give up to easily.

Gismor.8407:

Why would better loot bring people into it? If you want to know why people give up, it’s because they’re quitters, and they only want to play when their team has a huge lead. Honestly, this is one thing that ticks me off about people, they give up to easily.

It is amusing, on BG everybody skips and jumps around with decent numbers the last couple hours but these people were no where around in T1 a month ago when we had a handful trying to hold onto our last tower on the map from Monday-Friday AM. What you say is so true, lose a few battles and off they go to……….wherever they disappear to

They(Anet) said WvWvW isn’t meant to be balanced so making that attractive for the average player to stay through the rough patches is going to be hard. As it stands, assuming they aren’t there solely for map completion, the rewards don’t justify the repair bills, blueprints, and upgrades that can be lost in a matter of minutes.

It’s especially bad for people who are new and broke or don’t grind dungeons/TP or have gold that “fell off the back of a truck”. Money sinks already permeate the game. Having to deal with thieves, invisible zergs and other issues just compound the problem for many.

Put “Current Rating Change” where the score is.
Put the score in much smaller numbers below this.

People don’t understand that there’s a big difference in “3rd place by 10,000 points” and “3rd place by 50,000 points”. It’s possible to be in 3rd place and still GAIN RATING. Thursday really is just as important as Friday or Saturday when it comes to rating change. First place by 10,000 isn’t as good as first place by 50,000 either, because it’s also easily possible to be in first place and LOSE RATING.

I think the problem is the huge majority of players don’t understand this or simply lose sight of it when the only thing they see is a giant scorecard with no indication of rating or rating change.

It’s sad when players have to go to a 3rd party website to get the real data. It should be in the in-game interface.

I honestly think you should be able to steal a portion of your opponents score by taking Keeps.

Ayestes.1273:

I honestly think you should be able to steal a portion of your opponents score by taking Keeps.

That’s….not a bad idea at all. That would certainly put a lot of pressure to hold a keep defense.

The only problem I see with it is that right now the way to take keeps is “surprise golem rushes”. Show up with 12 golems on a dead map and bam, it’s yours. It’s too easy. Really, they should implement your idea but also remove golems from the game and increase the supply cost of rams. We really need time for defense to show up so that these keep contests won’t just be about a sudden rush.

Pendragon.8735:

You get a great match starting on reset and through the first few days, but one team slowly starts building a small lead each day. Suddenly by Monday or Tuesday the losing team(s) populations start falling way off and you are seeing half the number of players in primetime than you did the first few days.

A huge part of that is also simply due to players’ weekend vs weekday availabilities.

Slamz.5376:

Ayestes.1273:

I honestly think you should be able to steal a portion of your opponents score by taking Keeps.

That’s….not a bad idea at all. That would certainly put a lot of pressure to hold a keep defense.

The only problem I see with it is that right now the way to take keeps is “surprise golem rushes”. Show up with 12 golems on a dead map and bam, it’s yours. It’s too easy. Really, they should implement your idea but also remove golems from the game and increase the supply cost of rams. We really need time for defense to show up so that these keep contests won’t just be about a sudden rush.

Golem rushes wouldn’t be so bad if the Garrison gate wasn’t so bugged up, and gates didn’t drop so easily to zerg damage. Or at least that’s what we did you guys last night, Watergate is so bugged and it feels so dirty. I don’t think they need to remove golems, because they are quite the investment and create a unique type of attack. They just need to fix that bug, and make Reinforced Doors almost impervious to “small-arms fire”.

Even if it was left in the game, if people just traded the keeps with sneak attacks it would only serve to balance out the score. It would also prove to be a huge incentive to attack whoever is on top for the biggest rewards.

If you die or are downed you lose outmanned regardless of how outnumbered you are.

I think the outmanned buff is one thing and its own discussion, but I also think there should be something like a “Breakout” buff. Basically, if your team has the fewest PPT on a given map, you have the Breakout Buff on that map, which doubles (triples?) the event rewards for that map. This would encourage the players who ARE there to really go after points to bring themselves on the board. This sort of increased rewards is also liable to bring more players to the map in general.