Guild Wars 2

Reading this forum and trying to have a reasoned discussion (not possible in any forum of this type) about some of the issues uncovered by this season of WvW achievements, I feel that the big issue isn’t the lag or the long queue lines, it’s giving incentive to a farming mentality and not giving incentive to skill.

This really is the issue that isn’t being addressed. I’m from SoR and haven’t had substantive issues with queues or lag since we’ve been on that server… until last week’s patch dropped. Now everyone is yelling about insane queues and unbearable skill lag.

Those are not the issues, they are the symptoms of a bigger, long standing issue: WvW incentives are based on a PvE system and not a PvP system

These incentives all revolve around PvE concepts – Farming – and farming does not require skill. We all want epic WvW where anyone who wants to participate can. Zergs are stupid and only exist to maximize farming objectives. Create a system that rewards skill and diminishes returns on the blunt force of the zerg.

How do you propose that happens? You aren’t wrong but the issue is actually incentivizing skill. It’s difficult if not impossible to do.

WvWvW is about a show of force so numbers will win out at the end of the day so it won’t ever, ever be about skill. If Anet wants to cull farming they need to really stop implementing bullkitten vertical progression via ascended gear and stat boosts hidden behind ranks and probably think about revisiting structure defense against the ever increasing strength and availability of siege weapons.

Also, zergs aren’t stupid per se they just provide a sheltered and forgiving way to play, because someone is in the blob doesn’t automatically mean they are a terrible player.

gennyt.3428:

WvWvW is about a show of force so numbers will win out at the end of the day so it won’t ever, ever be about skill.

Not at all true. I can take 10 people into a zone and by judiciously picking targets and avoiding the zerg, we will take points more efficiently than larger groups.

gennyt.3428:

If Anet wants to cull farming they need to really stop implementing bullkitten vertical progression via ascended gear and stat boosts hidden behind ranks and probably think about revisiting structure defense against the ever increasing strength and availability of siege weapons.

The key here is that WvW is linked to your PvE toon and not your sPvP toon. If you want WvW to be seamless and associated with PvE zones, then the rewards and ranks need to come from kills and a progressive zone control, where your rewards increase based on the more area you control.

gennyt.3428:

Also, zergs aren’t stupid per se they just provide a sheltered and forgiving way to play, because someone is in the blob doesn’t automatically mean they are a terrible player.

No, zerglings are not terrible players per se, they just are not using their abilities to be anything other than a rampaging cudgel. If you have bigger zones, with points that need to be held in order to get more ‘points’ the bigger your area grows, then you encourage strategy over rapid objective turnover.

For instance, if we own our spawn point and you capture vale, then briar, you would get ‘points’ for capturing those points and then ‘points’ for holding those points and more when you add Bay to the mix. You make it progressive and give incentive to have an actual battle plan, where you actually have to defend spots and run supply, rather than just a constant exchange of points with no meaning other than who racks up the most points overall.

If by objectives you mean camps that take all of 20 seconds to flip then sure, but one scout can but a kibosh on a small man team taking even a paper tower because the maps are small enough to allow the zerg to show up in seconds if they want to. Population is the deciding factor in the PPT game.

Hastur.4937:

No, zerglings are not terrible players per se, they just are not using their abilities to be anything other than a rampaging cudgel.

I like to zerg on my guardian because I get to satisfy my inner healer, and people actually appreciate you healbotting. No cleric gear/Tome of Courage hate in the blob! lmao.

Well you would need to break the pve reward system, its a great system for pve and one I encourage to be used from now on in mmos. But wvw is not pve and because of this rewards need to be handled differently, say we change the system and make kills worth more wxp then objectives in most cases (sliding scale of your rank vs enemies) then make all objectives worth a set amount. This then gets divided by the amount of participants involved. You then male wvw ranks a progressively more larger amount of exp to acquire, so when you first enter wvw zerging is a safe and effective way to gain ranks but as you progress the system will gently nudge you into wanting to do things with a smaller group to try and keep you wxp gains around the same.

since player kills would be the most wxp you could acquire things like defending against attackers becomes a strategy since the enemies you want to kill are coming to you.

now say we remove PPT and add points per capture and points per kill (bonus points for a stomp well you have bloodlust and you get a debuff that makes you worth no points in recently killed or severally out manned on that map). This would make an objective only worth points when you captured it, so again defending is important because it denies the capture points to enemies well also gaining points for kills. Make hills, bay and gari hard to take so only a large force will do but male them worth a large amount of capture points and you will still see very large and epic battles, what you want see is coverage wars, because once you own it your now making more points off of it and servers that lack coverage will not take more then they can defend and will have a chance to close the gap on points from defending those points and the kills they get well doing so.

of course this goes against the everyone gets a cookie reward system we have now but hey….i can live with that. Can you?

Hastur.4937:

Reading this forum and trying to have a reasoned discussion (not possible in any forum of this type) about some of the issues uncovered by this season of WvW achievements, I feel that the big issue isn’t the lag or the long queue lines, it’s giving incentive to a farming mentality and not giving incentive to skill.

This really is the issue that isn’t being addressed. I’m from SoR and haven’t had substantive issues with queues or lag since we’ve been on that server… until last week’s patch dropped. Now everyone is yelling about insane queues and unbearable skill lag.

Those are not the issues, they are the symptoms of a bigger, long standing issue: WvW incentives are based on a PvE system and not a PvP system

These incentives all revolve around PvE concepts – Farming – and farming does not require skill. We all want epic WvW where anyone who wants to participate can. Zergs are stupid and only exist to maximize farming objectives. Create a system that rewards skill and diminishes returns on the blunt force of the zerg.

I agree, but it’s hardly possible, except if you do it purely for fun.

On Vabbi we have a small guild going (~5 guys in WvW at all times) and FoW (other server in match-up) just got a mass transfer from a few big guilds. Point being, those guys are farmers, grinders and blobbers. BUT they are also brainless morons. They are part of the first category, those who play for farming.

So we went into their BL (that was completely their colours) and started the havoc.
One of ours went to lure big groups (usually around 10-15) and we killed them all without a lot of effort, since they were total idiots. I was playing on a totally new level 2 engineer… one of our guys went down, I rushed in, killed one of their squishies, stomped and we got on. Just the fact that I, with 3 skills unlocked, could kill one of them was a great show of their skill.

In this instance we won, we got loot, and we had a great time. Sure, rewards weren’t anything compared to 60 people zergs farming eachother, but the fun we had doing this… no blob can ever have that.

Sirendor.1394:

I agree, but it’s hardly possible, except if you do it purely for fun.

On Vabbi we have a small guild going (~5 guys in WvW at all times) and FoW (other sIn this instance we won, we got loot, and we had a great time. Sure, rewards weren’t anything compared to 60 people zergs farming eachother, but the fun we had doing this… no blob can ever have that.

and this proves that skill >> numbers…

to a point, but smart players will avoid the zerg.

The key points made here (and, yes, Samhayn, you did fix WvW in your post above) is that the current system is essentially broken.

Therefore, what makes WvW fun for me?

- objective based group play where the outcome is different every time you try it
- matching your group’s skill versus the skills of like minded opponents
- a competitive outcome that has ramifications in the greater context of the game

HOWEVER, the server limitations and the capacity of large groups to game the reward system through ‘zerging’ objectives, diminishes the viability of WvW for smaller groups who want a challenge (there is no challenge for small groups on dead servers) but don’t want to game the system through zerging.

That’s where things have to change. We need larger maps to decrease the impact of the zerg and have incentives that reward skill (base the reward on group size if possible).

If they dynamically incentivise attacking the leading side, things will change dramatically.

Svarty.8019:

If they dynamically incentivise attacking the leading side, things will change dramatically.

How would you reach this goal? (purely out of interest) ;p

Sirendor.1394:

Svarty.8019:

If they dynamically incentivise attacking the leading side, things will change dramatically.

How would you reach this goal? (purely out of interest) ;p

By weighing rewards with a coefficient based on the current PPT and total score of the server being attacked. And while they’re at it, make the level of upgrades matter for the PPT and also capture/defense reward.

It would stop 2v1s on the weakest side, take out karma trains as legitimate tactics, add some strategic depth to WvW, and reward epic sieges with more than just the same WXP as a karma train.

Sounds magical.

Only wish Arenanet could actually do it.

Bigger numbers always win as long as the absurd AOE cap is there. Skill doesnt matter that much as you can see currently in Season 1 with all those PVEers running around.

There was a game back in history where skill could actually win over numbers:

(8 vs 60 @ 2:50)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFZ7NeSgYwY

You will never see something like that in GW2 because game engines in 2013 cannot handle it any more. lol

daoc used a fall off aoe system that I really enjoyed, the farther from the point of origin the less damage you took. Best way ever to make people spread out. Of course daoc also used a reward system that split the points amongst the whole group. This also lead to people breaking away from zergs.

I like the idea of awarding strategy over brute force. For me it seems that the simplistic scoring system makes zerging the obvious strategy for maximizing score. If more variables were introduced into how scores are calculated it would create new options for alternate yet affective strategies.

Something as simple as calculating end of round scores biased by what you own in you BL and your section of EB. For example I own 6 towers but do not own 3 of my own towers so I get awarded for 3 towers (same logic for other camps, keeps,…). You now have a choice of how you balance defense over offense.

Other ideas along this line are found in prior posts. I like the idea of biasing awards based on upgrades, duration of ownership, successful defends, … Anything to make the outcome of a round less predictable.

I think there are plenty of opportunities here for tweaking and such changes can be incrementally introduced into WvW to judge the affect.