Guild Wars 2

Looking at <a href=“http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA”>this site</a>, it’s clear to me that there isn’t a single close matchup this week. It’s obvious who the winner is in every single matchup, and has been since Saturday.

My server, Maguuma, has gone about a month without a close matchup at all. We are either dominating, or being dominated, and in my opinion, the orbs are a big part of that. Why is it that the server that is strong enough to hold all 3 orbs rewarded with more strength? The outmanned buff is worthless, as well, and doesn’t encourage anyone.

I’m willing to bet that not a single server is having fun right now in WvW, and that’s really unfortunate. The winning servers have nothing to do, and the losing servers just get spawn camped.

In my opinion, there are a few issues. Free server transfer is probably one of the biggest. Sea of Sorrows, just last week, was a server that Maguuma could have competed against, but now they’re worlds above our level. It’s made the matchmaking system mean nothing, because people just transfer. Henge of Denravi seems to have lost the vast majority of their guilds in a week, and now they’re dropping, so they have 3-4 weeks of beatdowns to look forward to.

The matchmaking system in general is flawed, too, because it doesn’t seem to take into account the points won each week, just the win or loss. So the close matchups get screwed up by the winners moving too high up, and the no question matchups don’t get pushed up enough.

I would love to see the orbs removed, or switched with the outmanned bonus.

Thoughts?

ParaldaWind.4523:

Looking at <a href=“http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA”>this site</a>, it’s clear to me that there isn’t a single close matchup this week. It’s obvious who the winner is in every single matchup, and has been since Saturday.

My server, Maguuma, has gone about a month without a close matchup at all. We are either dominating, or being dominated, and in my opinion, the orbs are a big part of that. Why is it that the server that is strong enough to hold all 3 orbs rewarded with more strength? The outmanned buff is worthless, as well, and doesn’t encourage anyone.

I’m willing to bet that not a single server is having fun right now in WvW, and that’s really unfortunate. The winning servers have nothing to do, and the losing servers just get spawn camped.

In my opinion, there are a few issues. Free server transfer is probably one of the biggest. Sea of Sorrows, just last week, was a server that Maguuma could have competed against, but now they’re worlds above our level. It’s made the matchmaking system mean nothing, because people just transfer. Henge of Denravi seems to have lost the vast majority of their guilds in a week, and now they’re dropping, so they have 3-4 weeks of beatdowns to look forward to.

The matchmaking system in general is flawed, too, because it doesn’t seem to take into account the points won each week, just the win or loss. So the close matchups get screwed up by the winners moving too high up, and the no question matchups don’t get pushed up enough.

I would love to see the orbs removed, or switched with the outmanned bonus.

Thoughts?

I am from HOD and can’t wait til we drop down to tier 4 or worse since that’s where we belong. But whatever happens, I will not transfer off this server and am going to stay on it.

My thoughts are this…. You are just going to have to wait it out like we will because at the moment, Anet is not going to stop the transfers, and won’t manually pick the next matches, and so we got weeks of agony to endure which I won’t be on… I will be back on Aion until we drop down to where we belong.

The major thing’s that need to stop is the week matches and go back to 24 hour matches to 3 days max, and the transfers but other than that.. Just wait it out… I am sure Kaineng will beat us but hopefully we get some actually good people over to HOD and some good guilds come over tho I doubt anyone wants to be on a losing server and low populated server and that has been proven with Kaineng(forgive me if I spelled their server name wrong).

Not only is the outmanned bonus insufficient motivation, it is way too stingy. You need to be severely outnumbered before it shows up, even 2:1 doesn’t seem to do it.

The orb question is a tricky one. You want something that brings relevance to the border maps, and I’m not sure swapping orb/outmanned bonuses would achieve that.

If we did swap the bonuses (with scaling of the XP/karma bonus with number of orbs held), it might work if that bonus also applied to PvE on the server. This would be a two-fold advantage …

1. it would encourage more PvE people to come in to try for the orb when we don’t have it.
2. when a server does have all the orbs it might bleed those people away from WvW to take advantage of the bonuses in a PvE zone.

“WvW needs some serious redesign”.

… reads post …

Remove orbs… matching making needs to be improved… close free transfers… Outmanned is useless.

Hmm, you’re right, this is indeed a serious and much needed redesign of the entire WvW system.

Or, put another way, your title misrepresents your thread and Anet already know this stuff.

scoobymode.1942:

I am from HOD and can’t wait til we drop down to tier 4 or worse since that’s where we belong. But whatever happens, I will not transfer off this server and am going to stay on it.

My thoughts are this…. You are just going to have to wait it out like we will because at the moment, Anet is not going to stop the transfers, and won’t manually pick the next matches, and so we got weeks of agony to endure which I won’t be on… I will be back on Aion until we drop down to where we belong.

The major thing’s that need to stop is the week matches and go back to 24 hour matches to 3 days max, and the transfers but other than that.. Just wait it out… I am sure Kaineng will beat us but hopefully we get some actually good people over to HOD and some good guilds come over tho I doubt anyone wants to be on a losing server and low populated server and that has been proven with Kaineng(forgive me if I spelled their server name wrong).

I agree with you about the 1-3 day matchups. Servers are becoming good or bad overnight, and one week matchups don’t represent balance. Being stomped for a month straight just isn’t fun for anyone.

Nabrok.9023:

Not only is the outmanned bonus insufficient motivation, it is way too stingy. You need to be severely outnumbered before it shows up, even 2:1 doesn’t seem to do it.

The orb question is a tricky one. You want something that brings relevance to the border maps, and I’m not sure swapping orb/outmanned bonuses would achieve that.

If we did swap the bonuses (with scaling of the XP/karma bonus with number of orbs held), it might work if that bonus also applied to PvE on the server. This would be a two-fold advantage …

1. it would encourage more PvE people to come in to try for the orb when we don’t have it.
2. when a server does have all the orbs it might bleed those people away from WvW to take advantage of the bonuses in a PvE zone.

This is what I was thinking. Switch the orb bonuses with outmanned, and then have it apply to PvE as well. If some of the Cursed Shore/Straits of Devastation zergs came to borderlands once in awhile maybe we wouldn’t have instant queues. I just feel like rewarding the winning team with more strength is a bit of an MLB approach, when we should try to have WvW be more like the NFL to keep the teams somewhat balanced so that all of the matches are fun for everyone.

I mean, that’s what this is supposed to be, fun, and seeing as its the longest lasting end-game we’re going to have, we need it to be fun for this game to be successful. Unfortunately, right now, getting stomped is not fun.

To me Anet should never have segregated the US and EU servers for WvW. Home servers should have been global servers. The servers then would have had a global community, which means 24/7 conflict in WvW. Nightcapping would never have become a problem and the fight results would reflect the truly stronger servers
For PvE they could have used EU and US based servers to keep the PvE relatively lag free.
They can still easily do this by rebooting the homeservers. The WvW gates in LA would no longer go to homeserver specific zones, but have a red, blue, green and eternal designation. The player using the gate woudl be then transported to the appropriate homeserver matchup.

ParaldaWind.4523:

Nabrok.9023:

Not only is the outmanned bonus insufficient motivation, it is way too stingy. You need to be severely outnumbered before it shows up, even 2:1 doesn’t seem to do it.

The orb question is a tricky one. You want something that brings relevance to the border maps, and I’m not sure swapping orb/outmanned bonuses would achieve that.

If we did swap the bonuses (with scaling of the XP/karma bonus with number of orbs held), it might work if that bonus also applied to PvE on the server. This would be a two-fold advantage …

1. it would encourage more PvE people to come in to try for the orb when we don’t have it.
2. when a server does have all the orbs it might bleed those people away from WvW to take advantage of the bonuses in a PvE zone.

This is what I was thinking. Switch the orb bonuses with outmanned, and then have it apply to PvE as well. If some of the Cursed Shore/Straits of Devastation zergs came to borderlands once in awhile maybe we wouldn’t have instant queues. I just feel like rewarding the winning team with more strength is a bit of an MLB approach, when we should try to have WvW be more like the NFL to keep the teams somewhat balanced so that all of the matches are fun for everyone.

I mean, that’s what this is supposed to be, fun, and seeing as its the longest lasting end-game we’re going to have, we need it to be fun for this game to be successful. Unfortunately, right now, getting stomped is not fun.

The more I think about this, the more I like it. It would be nice if when somebody said “The orb is under attack, we need defenders” in guild chat it actually had meaning to people. There is some PvE relevance to WvW with the bonuses, but that’s not anything that will motivate people to come and defend, or come and attack when we’re 50k points down.

Nabrok.9023:

The orb question is a tricky one. You want something that brings relevance to the border maps, and I’m not sure swapping orb/outmanned bonuses would achieve that.

Yes just swapping them would be pointless as there would be no real point in getting them unless they just happened to where you were attacking anyway

Giving massive bonus’s outside of WvW would not be recommend either as that would just cause economy inflation for dominating servers

If it was me i would swap the bonus, give points for having them and to make things really interesting would make it so they could also be placed in towers as well and then scale the accumulation depending where you kept the orb. ie: keep it in the garrison on your home borderland, lowest point accumulation, keep it in a tower get the highest point accumulation.. Maybe even grade it depending on which tower you placed (ie: how far from your base)

I’d like it if the orbs gave some motivation to WvW outside of who is winning or losing on the scoreboard.

I’ve noticed a pattern on CD. Friday nights, we invariably take the early lead. Sometimes it’s gone by the next morning. this current match we held it until sometime on Saturday afternoon I think. Sunday morning we’re a distant second and often last in potential points.

We have the people, they’re just not motived to WvW, especially after another server picks up a large point lead.

If there was an objective in WvW that gave an immediate advantage to everybody on the server, in WvW or PvE, this is something that could be used to help bring people in. On the flip side, once those objectives are achieved it could also help reduce the numbers on the winning side as they leave to take advantage in other areas of the game.

This is the “Darkness Falls” mechanism, but without a Darkness Falls.

I think they need to change the design of the trebs. The whole “I safely sit in my treb on my rooftop or SM 3rd floor and press ‘2’ repeated for hours” is seriously a design flaw.

Maybe Anet needs to start ranking individuals… add that number up to establish a new match. If enough high-end folks transfer… then an individual score would matter and effect the eventual match.

Keep track of the top 10000 players… and where-ever they are at turn-over be a factor…if not the determining factor.

It’s funny, because the three sided warfare was supposed to prevent this type of imbalance from happening, but unfortunately due to a variety of reasons, the two underdog servers never end up teaming up against the dominating server. If people see an invader, they kill them. I almost wish that they would change it so that you always fought the same two servers, and there never any changes in matchups. It’s not like these server rankings have any meaning anyways other than determining next weeks matchup. If you stop the whole weekly/biweekly rotation thing, then it will allow the 3 servers that are paired together to develop some true rivalries, and make it much more likely than when one server is dominating, that the other two will work together to even things out. I think the changing matchups just makes people take the attitude that if things are going bad, they can just wait til the next matchup.

I think A-NET is too proud, and protective of their vision, to ever make the needed changes to WvW, even though they are desperately needed.

Trimethicon.7405:

I think A-NET is too proud, and protective of their vision, to ever make the needed changes to WvW, even though they are desperately needed.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s an intricate game mode with many, many moving parts that require considered and careful changes over a period of time that allows for true statistical analysis… as opposed to brash, mindless changes blurted out by an over-eager, under-educated forum mob?

Pride doesn’t come into it. Care does, and they clearly care about the world they’ve crafted… which tells you changes will come, and you’ll know about them when they’re ready for you to know.

My server, Maguuma, has gone about a month without a close matchup at all. We are either dominating, or being dominated, and in my opinion, the orbs are a big part of that. Why is it that the server that is strong enough to hold all 3 orbs rewarded with more strength? The outmanned buff is worthless, as well, and doesn’t encourage anyone.

Speaking of Maguuma specifically, we’ve actually had all 3 orbs in this matchup at certain points, even while having the lowest score. I’m not saying there aren’t issues with the orbs in general, but in this particular case I think it’s a different problem.

Sea of Sorrows has historically been a “night capping” server, in the sense that the majority of their WvW population plays during the night. It’s a lot more dramatic than most other servers, as they basically take the entire map during the night, then lose the entire map during the day.

What’s happened in this matchup is apparently Sea of Sorrows has recruited a few extra guilds, making their daytime WvW comparable to us, while still being unstoppable at nighttime. It’s this sudden shift in their WvW strength that’s caused them to dominate the matchup so hard… so the real problem is that the matchup was made based on their previous strength and not their current one.

Interesting that virtually every match is already nearly over (assuming static pops), from a score perspective. While I understand the rational of free xfers, as long as they are available “server” score or the ladder system is kinda pointless – as is clearly evident in this weeks scores. With large portions of the population moving around, a servers past performance has little to do with its current or future performance. We’ll see if this settles in time, but I would imagine that there will always be guilds/alliances breaking up/moving for whatever the reason…..we see new groups forming in mid tier saying they want to get to the top tier, and top tier imploding because they didn’t like it up there – not sure why that would ever change unless there is a cost to moving. Until then I could see the merits in shorter matches.

The issue is magnified atm, due to seemingly low WvW participation -especially in mid/low tier servers. Its been my experience that outside weekend primetime that I rarely encounter a queue anymore on the majority/all maps. As a numbers game, an influx of a large number of WvW participants to these worlds can have a dramatic impact to the servers performance, unbalancing current match-ups fairly easily.

Kyrul.7681:

It’s this sudden shift in their WvW strength that’s caused them to dominate the matchup so hard… so the real problem is that the matchup was made based on their previous strength and not their current one.

This is going to continue until the issue of zero-penalty, low-cooldown server transfers is resolved.

As it stands, the entire ratings system is meaningless because there is a pretty sizeable population of players who are willing to transfer servers to win. When the strength of a server changes dramatically and unpredictably between one week and the next, it’s impossible to have any sort of a balanced system because there is simply no way to judge a server’s current strength and place it accordingly.

redesigning won’t encourage more participation

the problem is the current generation of gamers are inherently anti-social. too many roam wvw alone or in packs of 2-3 and get frustrated/log as soon as they run into the zerg.

if you are alone in wvw, you are doing it wrong. if you are only in a small group you are usually doing it wrong depending on the current battle situations

and lastly, treating it like real battle or trying to institute sun tzu methodology in a game where your enemy just respawns does. not. work.

i’ve been on sea of sorrows since day one of this game. we have a lot of commanders, but only 2-3 that actually command. we have at least three commanders who refuse to actually help, going so far as to tell people to f off my group of buddies will do their own thing while the rest of us would try to take an orb keep. this, again is due to the anti-social and xenophobic-leaning views that are dominating our real lives creeping into social gaming.

wvw is designed very well, even better than vanilla daoc rvr once free transfers are stopped and server communities/pride/ego can be built.

rhonyn.6810:

The issue is magnified atm, due to seemingly low WvW participation -especially in mid/low tier servers. Its been my experience that outside weekend primetime that I rarely encounter a queue anymore on the majority/all maps. As a numbers game, an influx of a large number of WvW participants to these worlds can have a dramatic impact to the servers performance, unbalancing current match-ups fairly easily.

This is really a shame, because WvW is some of the most fun I’ve had in PvP in a long time. The mass-scale combat and keep/capture dynamic is something that is rarely well-done, and GW2 has done a pretty amazing job of it barring a few minor issues (and the major issue of server transfers).

Dixa.6017:

redesigning won’t encourage more participation

the problem is the current generation of gamers are inherently anti-social. too many roam wvw alone or in packs of 2-3 and get frustrated/log as soon as they run into the zerg.

if you are alone in wvw, you are doing it wrong. if you are only in a small group you are usually doing it wrong depending on the current battle situations

and lastly, treating it like real battle or trying to institute sun tzu methodology in a game where your enemy just respawns does. not. work.

i’ve been on sea of sorrows since day one of this game. we have a lot of commanders, but only 2-3 that actually command. we have at least three commanders who refuse to actually help, going so far as to tell people to f off my group of buddies will do their own thing while the rest of us would try to take an orb keep. this, again is due to the anti-social and xenophobic-leaning views that are dominating our real lives creeping into social gaming.

wvw is designed very well, even better than vanilla daoc rvr once free transfers are stopped and server communities/pride/ego can be built.

I’d go so far as to say that your issue is server-specific. Try Maguuma, we have some amazing commanders and great teamwork, and plenty of fun times even when we’re losing by a 10:1 margin.

Dixa.6017:

redesigning won’t encourage more participation

the problem is the current generation of gamers are inherently anti-social. too many roam wvw alone or in packs of 2-3 and get frustrated/log as soon as they run into the zerg.

if you are alone in wvw, you are doing it wrong. if you are only in a small group you are usually doing it wrong depending on the current battle situations

and lastly, treating it like real battle or trying to institute sun tzu methodology in a game where your enemy just respawns does. not. work.

i’ve been on sea of sorrows since day one of this game. we have a lot of commanders, but only 2-3 that actually command. we have at least three commanders who refuse to actually help, going so far as to tell people to f off my group of buddies will do their own thing while the rest of us would try to take an orb keep. this, again is due to the anti-social and xenophobic-leaning views that are dominating our real lives creeping into social gaming.

wvw is designed very well, even better than vanilla daoc rvr once free transfers are stopped and server communities/pride/ego can be built.

I disagree with your view. On SBI most people tend to follow the commanders. We have a decent group of players but we are simply outmanned against a server like JQ. There is nothing that we can do to compete with 24/7 coverage.

The entire orb idea needs to be rethought. It does nothing but pour salt in the wounds of the losing servers and make any kind of a comeback even more impossible. Also, the week-long matches are overkill as well. Matches are decided within 24 hours and then become nothing but the victors kicking corpses for 6 more days.

@Lonely – I agree.

@kidbs – the matches are decided within 24hours atm, because server dynamics are changing so much and “like” servers aren’t being paired (or more correctly post xfers are no longer “like”). Personally I would love a close match that lasted a week or longer – that would encourage additional levels of strategy etc, beyond zergvdoor clockwise or counterclockwise today? – and more defence, upgrades etc.

1) Undefended keeps are too quickly and cheaply taken by zergs. You can’t expect players to stand on a wall 24/7. NPCs and gates need to at least give us a chance to get there but for 24 silver you can drop 4 rams and melt right through a reinforced door. The guards might as well not even be there and the Lord dies in literally about 5 seconds, then another, what, 10 seconds for the ring turnover? This setup is why a server can go from “having everything” to “having nothing” in the course of an hour. It’s why relatively small population shifts result in immediate landslides.

To address this, I would increase door HP, make all guards elites, make the Lords have about 10x their current hit points, increase the circle turnover time to 2 minutes, increase golem supply cost to 200 and increase ram supply cost to 80. Then see how that plays out.

2) PUT A LID ON TRANSFERS. Server matchups might as well be randomized every week because there’s no predicting what server will be elite this week. It depends on where people move to.

The overall design of WvW isn’t bad but it needs tweaking and Arenanet has been AWOL on this since release. It shouldn’t take them 2 months to say, “You know, Lords weren’t really meant to die in 5 seconds. Maybe we should adjust something.” That’s not something that takes a developer 80 hours to code up. What’s the hold up? Starting to feel like Arenanet took the money and ran.

I think we just need to face the fact that WvW was poorly designed from the start. There is very little chance Anet will put in the money and resources to rebuild it from the ground up and give us the game mode we want. We are basically stuck with this until we get an expansion pack.

That’s what happens when you offer people the ability to transfer off whenever it’s convenient. Just imagine if Dark Age of Camelot had allowed Midgardians to jump over to Albion. I proposed it in a different thread and I’ll propose it here; temporarily disable WvWvW for frequent server hoppers and be done with it.

The entire structure of wvw is in need of severe fixing and reassessing from the ground up, in my view.

The game engine itself can’t even hardly handle it – the culling and invisible players turns the game into blind man’s bluff half the time. The game engine feels like it wasn’t built to handle this many players on this scale at all.

To top it off, based on the imagination at work in the pve side of things, the entire zones of wvw feel very vanilla and ‘been there done that.’ In pve we get awesome steampunk fortresses and mathe-magical asura tech and airships and stuff…what do we get in wvw? Dark age keeps and siege equipment, with the old ‘rams and doors and catapults and boiling oil’ routine. And even THAT doesn’t work as intended in the game engine, with players glitching through the door choke points, and siege on the opposite side of a door knocking down players, etc.

About the only thing in wvw that hints at the possibility of imaginative thinking-outside-the-box are the siege golems. Otherwise the mode barely even qualifies as vanilla in my view – it’s only a hint shy of just being flavorless.

I would be cool with more/smaller and more interesting maps and smaller player poplock counts in those maps. I would also love much more interesting tactical options in those maps. Let’s see more involvement with npc armies, and with options for guerilla warfare. Let’s see megaboss mobs that fight on behalf of each side, and clash together in the field with players supporting them. Let’s see asura factories churning out waves of npc mechanical monstrosities. Let’s see underwater bases and sea cavern routes. Let’s see steampunk charr gear-cannon-castles. C’mon, where’s the vision? The tactical possibilities alone are much more interesting based on the pve setting this is all coming from.

Also I would like to add – if Anet would like to try some radical new ideas for an alternative approach to wvw play and pace, I for one would be very happy to playtest.

My hope is that the present wvw scene and maps will be gradually ‘phased out’ as superior ideas and concepts take shape. I would like to see wvw play 3 years from now as being VERY different from how it is at the moment. Anet took a huge leap forward for their pve gameplay and the core mechanics of how the classes play – I would like to see them apply the same forward thinking in pioneering in re-thinking wvw.

Agree with this.

By Sunday afternoon, even Saturday afternoon in some cases, it feels like a lost cause if you are on the losing side. I often log in Saturday morning to see the whole map has been taken over.

My thoughts:

1. Shorter games – 1/2 days is enough, it can quickly get to the point of no return by Monday. Weaker servers may get a chance at the odd mid-week win.
2. Start the games at 5/6pm local server time when all the servers should be at highest possible pop – would ensure a decent start to the shorter game.
3. Change the Orbs – they just give a massive advantage to the winning team, makes it even harder to catch up.
4. Remove the server transfer nonsense. Its just too easy to just switch to the winning side. Make it a week or something.

I love WvWvW – there is loads that is great about it but it is no fun logging in and knowing you have no chance to win a match for another 5 days.

Shorter scoring periods where the board resets frequently would be nice. I would like it if instead of ‘winning for the week’ the team is ‘winning for the hour.’

The problem I see with WvW is that it is an arcade game-style trying to become a long warfare game. What I mean by arcade is that you log in and conquer stuff with relatively little preparation. If you consider RTS games, they can last a long time because it puts logistics into the hands of the players and it is a very important aspect of the game.

For WvW to be about long 2 week battles, it needs more than just attack and defend stuff. Add elements that let players stage big campaigns lasting days.

No it doesn’t need a redesign. Calm down.