Guild Wars 2

I like solution one. Alliance names seems like a cool concept. To be fair, I’m not a heavy WvW player.

My two cents: This is too little too late, considering that server identities have been systematically killed off with pve mega server and current world linking.

So, I guess I am saying leave it as it is and not use any development time on it.

Option 1 sounds confusing with the constant name switching. Option 2 is really bad for scouting purposes and trying to read the map. Option 3 seems ok I guess, probably the easier and simplest option. Not sure how important it is to focus on this though…

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Solution 1: Alliance Names Proposal
• Names would be generated from a pool of names that we create.

If this name pool is as bad as the one from the PvP, I would rather not see this one.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Solution 2: Guild Focused Proposal

Instead of having an alliance name, worlds would be referred to by their color.
• The borderlands would now be called Red Desert Borderlands Green Alpine Borderlands, or Blue Alpine Borderlands.
• The color designation would replace the “host” world’s name in almost all areas except within announcements.
• When objectives were captured, the name of the guild that contributed most when capturing the objective would be displayed. For example, “Objective Captured! [Guild Name] has captured [objective name].”

Seems legit. I could almost work with this one, although it would make WvW rather dull fighting only against colours. The guild name thingy could be pretty confusing, since no one knows, which guilds are on which servers. ANd what about meaningless bank guilds?

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Solution 3: Some Guest Names Proposal

In areas where there is more player involvement, such as capturing objectives, guest world names may appear.
• When objectives are captured it would now display the guest world’s name: “Objective Captured! [Guest World Name] has captured [objective name].”
• The map name would remain the host world’s name.
• We would not display guest world names to enemies because we believe that would make fighting enemies more confusing since it would be harder to tell which world you were fighting.

This one seems most interessing. Working with both names simultaneously. But what about Links with 3 or more servers in it?

Altogether all three solutions have more disadvantages than advantages and I would not vote for any of it.
Why not show all server names and put a colour tag infront of it?
Red—-Dzagonur [DE] Bronze Invader

I like the concept of solution 1.

However, having an alliance name puts all (2 or 3) linked servers under 1 name, which is the state we are at now, and does not increase server identify at all, literally makes server identify mean nothing.

However, it does allow the lower server to not feel like they lost their identify to just help the larger server with no reward. Rather solution 1 does make all the servers in a link feel, at face value, as equal contributors

Option 2 also doesnt take into account PvX guilds that have members across servers regarding the capture messages.

Just use the suggestion that has been proposed numerous times since you linked the servers.

Color and server abbreviation. For example this week in T2 you would have Red Gold Soldier AR, or Red Gold Soldier YB.

They are both clearly marked as the red team, if people are still confused by that there is no helping them.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Just use the suggestion that has been proposed numerous times since you linked the servers.

Color and server abbreviation. For example this week in T2 you would have Red Gold Soldier AR, or Red Gold Soldier YB.

They are both clearly marked as the red team, if people are still confused by that there is no helping them.

On that note, all this talk about confusion…

If the name is red, I kill it, if it’s green I investigate what they are up to or go find red names.

No confusion…

Kill red, always kill red names

TBH I’d rather y’all work on something more constructive. Like scoring or balancing or even getting rid of the deployable cannons. Changing names doesn’t really sound like it’d bring any sort of benefit to WvW…. Really.

But if I had to choose, I’d go with Option 2 (with some adjustments)…

• Option 1 sounds like instead of just the guest server(s) losing their server identity, all the servers do! \o/ Not really appealing, especially when we just end up changing pairings every couple months.

• Option 2 sounds the best of the three (despite how boring it’d be to fight colors and to identify as a color) but I have no idea why “the color designation would replace the ‘host’ world’s name in almost all areas except within announcements.” What if there are no guilds? Or it’s a multiserver guild? Or no one recognizes that guild? No one wants to memorize guilds. Actually, can you get rid of the announcements altogether? Or at least make them more transparent and smaller and less likely to impede vision?

• Option 3 just sounds like a mess. “When objectives are captured it would now display the guest world’s name.” So if it’s like a host server group that captured a keep, it’d still show the guest world? Sounds so arbitrary. Like…“hey, guest server! You still have no server identity but we’ll add you to the footnotes to appease you but in the process trod on some host servers’ toes too.”

Edit: Ooh! I really like Jim Hunter’s idea above.

“Color and server abbreviation. For example this week in T2 you would have Red Gold Soldier AR, or Red Gold Soldier YB.”

I would suggest anet tread carefully. These major changes would need input from people who have been around a long time and have put a lot into wvw. A mixture of solution 1 and 2 could be interesting.
On a side note what was gw1 wvw like it was so long ago I can’t remember it….

IMO, none of these options are viable. BG, Mag, JQ, TC, Yaks, and FA are all established server communities with server pride. Taking away their name would be a game mode death move.

Stick to the primary server in a linkage to show their server name.

aandiarie.7195:

I would suggest anet tread carefully. These major changes would need input from people who have been around a long time and have put a lot into wvw. What was gw1 wvw like it was so long ago I can’t remember it….

I am sure you mean gw2 :p, and it was really good, until seasons

My encompassing idea…

We have to clear up the excessive red name plates because it’s too messy and visually distracting, so I would like to suggest cutting out as much text as possible and going with something like this…

Enemy names… (Server Icon or Server Initials in a plain icon) Optional Guild Initials in the center (Color Coded WvW Rank Icon with Roman Numerals)

Will looks like this… ANET (XV) or (YB) ANET (XV) with guild tag up.

No guild displayed would be… (XV) or (YB) (XV)

Server icons would be unique to each server and match the name… So take Yak’s Bend and make the icon a Yak head. Sea of Sorrows would be a tear icon… and so on.

Ranks 1-120 Icons- Plain icon with Roman Numerals up to 15 for each rank milestone.

Ranks 150 – 570 Icons- Bronze icon with Roman Numerals up to 15 for each rank milestone.

… and so on following the rank chart

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_Experience

All pets, minions, illusions… are only given a server icon.

NPC names do not change.

Here’s a solution: Abbreviate the server names ex “JQ Gold Invader [Guild Tag]”. Do that for anyone on a linked server as well. That helps keep names short for the enemy servers so they can guesstimate numbers better and it keeps the server pride people happy that they can rep their server again. Win/win.

I think anet would keep the servers around they want to add new ones too.

Telemin.7380:

My two cents: This is too little too late, considering that server identities have been systematically killed off with pve mega server and current world linking.

So, I guess I am saying leave it as it is and not use any development time on it.

I agree with this guy here. Lets all face it outside of BG, maybe TC and JQ there is not a single ounce of server pride in WvW these days. Only reason BG kept there’s is because ANet slept while BG guilds and players hibernated time to time to trick the ANet’s population counter into believing they was not full when they was beyond full. I don’t know much about JQ’s situation. But TC almost full in the same verse as BG.

But if you must have a vote ANet. Then I vote for the option of guilds.

This is the problem with presenting options, we will always come up with more and will probably complain when the one we liked or suggested didn’t get picked.

PLEASE don’t put this to a final vote, just give us the option that works best under the constraits of the system and if at all possible somehow represents hosts as well as their guests. Who cares if names change every 2 months, colors and guilds tend to change week to week.

Solution1. No, seems to much like taking away server identity. There are still established server communities.
Solution 2. No, sounds like EOTM
Solution 3. No, leave capturing as it is now, but add which guild has captured objective.

I like Jim Hunter’s suggestion, keeps server identity;

Just use the suggestion that has been proposed numerous times since you linked the servers.
Color and server abbreviation. For example this week in T2 you would have Red Gold Soldier AR, or Red Gold Soldier YB.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

IMO, none of these options are viable. BG, Mag, JQ, TC, Yaks, and FA are all established server communities with server pride. Taking away their name would be a game mode death move.

Stick to the primary server in a linkage to show their server name.

Completely agree.

Any solution has to retain the identity many of us have adopted and lived with for the past four years. I could see blowing up ALL server names and starting again from scratch but the idea that you could either replace server identity with a random name drawn from a hat that changes every couple of months or Red/Blue/Green is ludicrous and the third option is just even more confusing that what we have already.

On the subject of confusion I have no idea why it’s supposed to be confusing to see, for example, both Stormbluff Isle Invader and Gates of Madness Invader displayed when those worlds are linked. The links last eight weeks. How stupid would we have to be not to learn the names of each of the teams we are fighting by the end of the first match? Most people are going to know which servers are on which team by the end of the first session they play. You’re making it sound way more difficult and complicated than it actually is.

Option 1 :
Advantages : leads towards server merging. Easy to read. Guest server wouldn’t feel neutered.
Drawbacks : new names might not be so good. Potentially new names at each linking make anticipation harder.

Option 2:
Advantage : maps named by colour makes things easy to read. Guilds gain acknowledgement.
Drawbacks : who knows which server holds what guild ? (-> the info should be coloured as in the current system).

Option 3 :
Advantage : acknowledges guest worlds
Drawbacks : lack of lisibility.

1. Option 1 or option 2 have my vote, some changes are to be made (see below)

2. Whatever solution is taken, lisibility needs the messages to be written on a coloured background as it is now, so that the colour itself retains the information of who took the objective.

3. System between 2 and 3.

• Guilds should “buy” the right to have its name displayed in WvW, through a guild hall mechanic somehow in a “guild tactics” fashion. If the players who contributed most when capturing don’t belong to such a guild, then default would be their server’s name.
• Alliance name could be colours (meh…) or new names (careful…)

1 and 2 no. If you had read the forum you’d know what the solution is, have the linked name be a combination of the names of the linked servers, and to enemies have players referred to by their home server not the main server name. This should have been the solution form the start given you were apparently so concerned about server identity.

You need to get over this need to poll everything.

Jacion.6302:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Just use the suggestion that has been proposed numerous times since you linked the servers.

Color and server abbreviation. For example this week in T2 you would have Red Gold Soldier AR, or Red Gold Soldier YB.

They are both clearly marked as the red team, if people are still confused by that there is no helping them.

On that note, all this talk about confusion…

If the name is red, I kill it, if it’s green I investigate what they are up to or go find red names.

No confusion…

Kill red, always kill red names

If they’re red and from different servers, they can kill each other too. You can exploit that when fighting them.
If it turns out they’re actually on the same server, that’s where confusion comes in.

X T D.6458:

Option 2 also doesnt take into account PvX guilds that have members across servers regarding the capture messages.

Agreed wholeheartedly. I also think this would also just be more confusing than it needs to be. That random havoc guild that takes a camp would require everyone to look at their map to see what color it just turned.

I realized I misread the OP, so I’ll make the proper edit:
None of the above. None of the proposed solutions work.

Permanent, player-attached server-based identities I think is the best option possible. The simplified enemy naming convention is also critical, and quite frankly, what server you’re from is irrelevant to the enemy. The only truly persistent thing about WvW are servers themselves, and those communities need a lot of help right now, especially considering player population imbalances and potential for growth concerns. Giving them, as allies, back some integrity and a foundation to build on would be pretty huge. A server-specific chat filter would also be pretty major in helping get smaller servers back on their feet to identify persistent allies and go from there.

1. no

2. no

3. no

I want server merges instead of server linkings, so no to all 3

No i would not be interested to move to a new server what so ever. Gandara is my home server and were i been the past years in ups and downs. Our server have server pride still. We have a big comunity that cares, we have a comunity guild that is working very well were new players can join and were we can call for help to defend. We have everything that wvw is for me. Moving to a new server to stack players even more is the last nail in the coffin for me. It is not acceptable, for me.

In fact as it is now i see how you guys are interefering more then you should. You are running the match ups and you are doing this even though you have no clue how EU are working . So half of the servers get matched up with servers that we just do not want to fight. You lift up night capping servers, giving them two links and place them with the other servers in the higher tiers and it is just missereble to meet those servers since noone of us have anything to share. We want to fight and we have to plew our way through siege oceans, and now stupid cannons, and then we need to take the gates down and then when we finally hope to fight them they waypoint or die on the first push. Not fun for us, not fun for them.
And then my server stops and goes to bed, and those two are up all night avoiding eachother capping.

EU was never broken in the way NA was. But you are breaking it to a point were it feels there is no turn around. You can not stack servers. It is not about the percentage of players it is about how the players gain their points. If one server constantly have a kittenty death ratio, but high night cap points then pair them with equal servers that have the same (in EU) Don’t ruin our matches by trying to put together servers with percentage of players. That will not work.
We have our community, our commanders, our everything. Stop making it worse.

So what to do the. Remove linking in EU, and merge a few servers together from the bottom. Give them a month to pick their new server (for freee ofc) and get it over with. Don’t touch our matches in EU, they are not like NA at all.

Ben K.6238:

Jacion.6302:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Just use the suggestion that has been proposed numerous times since you linked the servers.

Color and server abbreviation. For example this week in T2 you would have Red Gold Soldier AR, or Red Gold Soldier YB.

They are both clearly marked as the red team, if people are still confused by that there is no helping them.

On that note, all this talk about confusion…

If the name is red, I kill it, if it’s green I investigate what they are up to or go find red names.

No confusion…

Kill red, always kill red names

If they’re red and from different servers, they can kill each other too. You can exploit that when fighting them.
If it turns out they’re actually on the same server, that’s where confusion comes in.

Heaven forbid people make the minimal effort to learn who they are fighting or just read the situation in front of them before yolo 1 spamming in.

But that wouldn’t be a problem anyway with the idea I suggested. Their linked server color would be the first thing that appears. If you see a “Blue Gold Soldier AR” fighting a “Green Bronze Scout TC”, there should be absolutely no confusion about whether they are on the same team or not.

DeceiverX.8361:

Junkpile.7439:

Mikhael.2391:

Class balance IS a problem in wvw since launch. and still ignored with so many posts about it over the years.

Could you explain how it is a problem.

It’s so bad I don’t actually have words right now. Not because one thing is in particular broken, but because the things which have been OP and horrible since launch or near launch have often been repeatedly improved upon and nerfed respectively, since, as though those in profession balance just actually do not know what they are doing, and are unwilling or unaware to do necessary reworks/re-design of poorly-designed skills, abilities, and traits.

+Powercreep from HoT.

Class balance isn’t really the problem. The problem is the HoT power creep/cc spam/passive bullkitten has made the game boring and killed build diversity. It’s basically forced you into grinding for HoT gear so you can run a low skill floor build that is way stronger than it should be in order to stay competitive. To be as effective on a vanilla build you have to play about 10 times better.

I actually like 1 and 2 /shrug

I don’t see any of these proposals as enough of an improvement over the status quo to make it worth the time spent developing them, never mind implementation.

I agree with other folks who would prefer to see one of the player-suggested mechanics: nameplates should include the color + world abbreviation + rank. [Red] YB Scout or [Green] GH Bronze Colonel.

As for class balance: of course, ANet should always be working to balance classes. But that’s a separate group of resources — it won’t go any faster or slower because the devs are also working on balancing other aspects of WvW, including populations, stats/gear, rewards, etc.

I like 2, as it has the possibility of driving people towards a particular guild should they see a lot of action from that guild within the timeframe. This should be balanced towards the commander, though. If a commander is driving a squad, capturing an objective, the commander’s guild should receive a weighted “score” for being named the guild that contributed the most. Many commanders in T4 do command with guildies, but we often pick up an even more significant number of pugs (which can sometimes make up more than 60% of the squad). Otherwise, I’d go for Option 1.

So reducing server identity even further …

Might as well call it EoTM.

And we all know how popular that is with WvW veterans.

Stop this please. You have something good here. Eliminating identity/community will eliminate attachment to the game. Period.

Option 1 would put hosts and links into equal footing, however, it will destroy the ones who still take pride over their world.

Option 2 doesn’t seem appealing to me. There are still players who, even if really small pool, who plays solo and some of them don’t represent any guild. Besides that, giving the information of which guild has taken the objective, gives the perception that it might diminish the efforts of other players who are attacking the objective with such guild at the time, giving only the recognition to the latter.

Option 3: In my opinion it is the best one, however the item 3 saying the link servers will not be displayed, diminishes the value of implementation of such idea. I’d take the idea which players has been giving on the forums since links happened, such as cited by Jim’s post, which consists of server color – world server – wvw rank – guild tag.

Ex: Green ET Silver Soldier [PPK];

Blue BG Veteran [KLF];

Red FA Gold Invader [XSD];

The WvW UI could use some polish, however, even still if players can’t check it and identify or find confusing which color they are and which worlds represents the other 2 colors, not sure if there is much to do to help there. Would be a pity to not implement such idea only because of such players.

If I had to choose between those 3, I’d go with 3. That keeps the identity of the highest scoring worlds and also allows the guest worlds to have some stuff named after them.

I would actually prefer doing away with fixed coloring, and making teams keep colors regardless of hostile status. Names and HP bars would always match the color of the team, the wildlife NPCs would have gray names for critters, white for non-hostile enemies and yellow for hostile enemies. That way it won’t matter what you read over their plates, the color would tell you everything. I would keep team colors in HP bars and names also in PvP.

But I wonder if it’ll be possible something else: making it a part of the rewards.

Each world or member in an alliance would get a ‘war score’ that represents the contributions of their members, and an NPC is added to the Home borderlands base where each player can vote for parts for the names, like “Rebirth”-“of Surmia” or “Gandara’s”-“Aegis”. Those votes would be fixed for each player across matchups until they change them. As they play, they earn participation, and that gives weight to their choices, like when voting with more ballots in Cutthroat politics.

The next time they get matched up, the choices with more weight across all participants in a multi-world team get picked for the name. If two worlds pick the same name, the world with more weight gets preference.

I don’t like any of these solutions. The host server holds the major bulk of the population while the linked server only holds a small amount. With all of these solutions you take AWAY the identity of servers. not fix them..

I think that putting the color names in someone’s full title would hurt server identity more than help it. I would say leave the host server name in front but if the player is from the sister server put the abbreviated server name in parentheses after.

Example: Fort Aspenwood Silver Legend (SoR) [TAG]

I would prefer a mix of 1 and 2. Designate map names with the hosting server. When objectives are captured, announce the server and guild tag. Red, Blue, and Green are bland IMO.

“Server name [Guild Tag] has captured objective!”

This allows players who aren’t on hosting servers to keep some semblance of server identity, and would notify the opposing sides that [X] guild is on the map.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hi,

• The WvW Team is not involved with game balance. Please do not hop on this thread to post salty, negative comments, nor to try to redirect the team to do your bidding.

Please read our thread on Giving Good Feedback for information on how you can provide valuable and constructive feedback, which will help all of us.

All right.. Sorry for bringing it up. Since my post (which also mentioned class balance) was removed, I’ll reply again.

I prefer option 2 or 3.

As an aside, if we do want to have a discussion on class balance as it relates to WvW, could we get some devs to post another thread?

3 is probably the only proposal I’d agree with.

There are many many guilds which have members across many servers so it’ll just end up being confusing if you do the guild thing.

The alliance thing has been considered by many and a lot of people gave feedback on why it is bad. At least there’s some server loyalty, alliances end up feeling like eotm which is bad.

I agree with Swagger.1459, cleaning up the red text clumps would be far more useful. Pets really don’t need long names & a better idea of how many players are with a group makes scouts more powerful.

If it is a group that is a threat in WvW players figure out what server they are on, if you want identity win fights with your guild.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

IMO, none of these options are viable. BG, Mag, JQ, TC, Yaks, and FA are all established server communities with server pride. Taking away their name would be a game mode death move.

Stick to the primary server in a linkage to show their server name.

Yeah…cause server pride only exists on the big servers. Amen to #1…burn ’em all down so they can get a dose of what the slave servers got.

Hugs & kisses AR

I don’t like any of the options but I do like the suggestion to have server and guild tag as an option.
It would be great to cut down on the name clutter but still retain everyone’s identity.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

1. Which proposal is your favorite?

I like the first solution. It seems the most fair and the generated names could be amusing.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

2. What, if anything, would you change about any of the current proposals?

The first solution seems like the best and I can’t think of anything wrong with it.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

3. Is there another proposal you think is better?

I remember someone mentioned adding a title for the player’s server under the achievement title list. It seems like a quick and easy thing to implement, but it wouldn’t improve a server’s identity beyond a few players.

Really appreciate that you guys invite us for advice and opinions!

1. I like the Alliance one, seems really appealing

2. -

3-

I’d like to see a combination of 1 and 2.

Yeah, I too fail to see how giving a linked pair what would basically equate to a unified server name every 2 months would destroy host server pride any more so than linking has destroyed or impaired guest server pride.

Having been on both sides of this coin now, I can say I feel more comfortable in the guest position, but that in no way means that as a guest, I wish to continue having my contributions or those of my server mates go soley to whatever host we’re working for that month. We guests, have been asking for recognition in some way shape or form for months now. Hosts always felt confident that their names were secure and basically blew our concerns off and ridiculed us for even suggesting we had server pride. But a few months back, some rightful T3-T4 hosts were guests for 2 months, so, that should tell you, you can’t count on assumption that your server name will always be represented under the current system regardless of your server rank.

And speaking of the host server pride, and it’s slightly off topic, but, the current poll, should theorically be the biggest way of showing ones server pride, ya know through unity, determination, pulling together and being accountable and such..Yet the results don’t reflect much in the way of any of that.

World Linking made me loose any care for the server i am on to be honest, these options still don’t seem to give me hope.