Guild Wars 2

Visiroth.5914:

Reverence.6915:

Eh, we don’t flip structures for wxp/karma. We flip it because it adds to our PPT.

In the early days of WvW, people would try to defend captured objectives, for PPT. You rarely see that happen now. The invaders just leave and let the other side recap so they can take it again later for more WXP.

What server are you on? We leave scouts in every single objective we own on a map and we defend them unless they’re no longer strategic objectives and our focus is better spent elsewhere. Ie, if we own N Camp on a map that isn’t ours and it gets attacked while we’re busy trying to take a tower we’ll let the camp go but we always defend natural tower(s), natural keep, and natural camp(s).

There also seems to be a confusion about terms in this thread overall. A karma train is an unspoken agreement between servers to run the map in a circle without defense. That is, one server attacks bay while the other hills and both servers move in a circle around the map in the same direction.

When a karma train is running neither server will encounter the other because they should always be on opposite sides of the map. Karma trains generally occur in the higher tiers on Fridays when the match is decided already and there is no way 3rd place could over take 2nd and no way 2nd could overtake 1st. (Note: there are lots of commanders. guilds, and players who hate the karma train even when the match is decided and work to kill it.) The zerg meta is not “karma training;” the karma train is the WvW version of the champion train.

Hmmm. During season 1 I really despised the karma train aspect of the game, but perhaps, just perhaps there is something here that might reinvigorate W3. Maybe Anet should look at making the rewards of W3 on par with the rewards of PvE. This will cause a SWELL of W3 activity allowing the lower tier servers to rise a couple of ways.
1. Players that were, to this point PvX or PvE in nature would come to W3 much more often. This gives all servers a huge rise in W3 population. Sure they aren’t the normal W3 players, but they would give manpower to lesser populated servers. (hopefully they would learn the W3 mechanic)
1a. This would also make W3 in T1 and T2 NA nearly unplayable for many W3-oriented guilds. The frustration with queues during season 1 T1 NA would return. Some, maybe quite a few, long term W3 guilds would abandon the current T1/T2 servers for lower tier servers where they would be able to actually get into the borderlands. This would give the lower-tier W3 servers a much needed boost in established W3 guilds.(Anet would need to decrease gem costs to move down tiers)
2. W3 players would actually need to be able to impact the game to a larger extent. Many W3 players feel like that ignored kid at Christmas. Sitting in the corner opening socks and underwear while the more favored kids get game consoles. Make W3 bonuses to servers be larger. The larger the bonus the more impact W3 players will have. W3 players would actually look at alternative servers in order to maximize their gaming experiences, and contribution to the server. Being stuck in queue versus being able to impact a server’s future. Which of those options would you pick?
2a. Server pride would pick up. Lower-tier servers would be able to attract W3 guilds through lack of queues.
2b. This dispersal of W3 guilds through the servers would serve to balance the entire game instead of the arms race that T1 has become.

Making the rewards for W3 greater would also go a long way to ending the current karma train as we know it. If the rewards for defending are on par with the rewards for taking structures then you will have defenders. If the overall rewards are on par with PvE rewards you could integrate armor types for the different keeps. Take/Defend Bay tokens that allow for access to certain armor/weapon types. Same for hills and garrison. SMC would get yet another token system.
—-> This would require Anet to acknowledge that there is something going wrong in W3(and the game in general)
—-> This would require significant manpower on Anets part to design new armor/weapon/rewards for each Keep
—-> I have zero idea of the amount of extra work required to do this, but I do know that if they are interested in keeping the game going strong and fresh they need to do something. A balanced game is a strong game.

Adahilia.3678:

If you really want to get your point across to any company; you the customer can do one thing that speaks louder than any words you can write or speak – Don’t play.

Great point, but there is one tiny problem. The wvw population is so tiny that if we quit playing it would hardly impact Anet at all.

About 6 weeks ago I spent all my karma on armor, orrian boxes, etc. Had about 350k. I just checked and as of this morning I have over 400k. I’ve never karma trained, just played the game. I’m of the opinion that you’d have to work to not get karma. So why anyone needs to karma train I’ve no idea.

Karma/Zerg Trains are big social events, they bring together Casual/Hardcore players and it’s not like those “lootbag hunters” can get away being badly geared, or by wandering away from the group.

They happen when there are big differences in coverage/population between servers in their matchups, or to maximize the PPT in a close matchup.
There is of course little reward towards Defenders, Dolly Escorts, Scouts etc who spend alot of time and money: these are the truly dedicated wvwers who do their bit for their community.

They may not be among the big social Zerg but they make a sacrifice everyday, that they deserve a break now and again and it often happens that the only thing running is the Karma or Zerg train.
Because there is no faster way to take down a T3 keep and you can get around fast with an army of golems, if you don’t have the numbers or scouts to defend your structures then you have no chance.
It’s easy Karma, Mats, Points, XP and WXP.

If you don’t like karma trains, just find a commander that also doesn’t like them. There are always a few good commanders that do everything they can to avoid pvedoor.

May I just express my infinite disgust to this idea… you clearly are not on a high populated server. My server recently came first place in silver league and we did NOT win by kittening about zergs and less rewards, just yesterday I spent the best part of 5 hours zerging around with my commander getting double teamed while trying to put ourselves ahead by points, which we achieved by the way. WvW is about the community, being a roamer, scouter or zerg you all take part in your servers success, if I want gold or karma I will hit pve. VERY rarely is my server able to run these “karma trains” because we always have someone to fight and when we do, you know what I think when I partake? “Oh, yes this will set the opposing server back for the next day.” – the only time we ever take objectives freely is at night when there is no opossing force, before you go ahead with crap ideas, think of high populated servers. Being an ex-roamer I only roamed to destroy people, not for rewards – go to pve for rewards. The fact is WvW does not reward players ENOUGH, but all of that can be dismissed for the satisfaction of helping your server out. To anyone that wants to start tearing through what I’ve said, it’s most likely because you’re a roamer and I’m afraid if you agree with “less rewards” you seriously need to reconsider why you’re playing guild wars in the first place.

KarlusDavius.1024:

Love it how people are still on the WvW is dying bandwagon. With no knowledge about anything. Just plain stupid.

It is dying. Same old match ups EVERY kitten week gets very boring. No new content gets VERY boring as well. All it will take is one that MMO to come out, that one MMO that does something different and the population in GW2 will drop.

The only reason it is still going “strong” is we don’t have anything else that is new or fresh. Once Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online and others start rolling out then we will see what the state of the game is in.

You can bet just around that time Anet will be doing something like adding new maps, new weapon options to classes and other things just to try and keep people playing.

Hell with the new WoW expansion i can see A LOT of people going back to that, BC was by far the best expansion WoW has offered so with the new content and everything they are adding i can see quite a few going back.

WvW IS dying at the moment. Since end of leagues, I think there’s only 1/2 WvW guild left on Vabbi (out of 7-10), that still actually do WvW. My guild has stopped playing WvW altogether, mostly doing TPvP now, some people have transferred, others stop playing the game.

I’ve never seen a Karma train on our server. Seen we can’t get there fast enough it’s paper. Seen they are on so and so let’s take bay. The people I’m normally running around with want to fight. The more people to fight/kill the better. How many people is a zerg anyway? Got to be at lest 30+.

Sirendor.1394:

WvW IS dying at the moment. Since end of leagues, I think there’s only 1/2 WvW guild left on Vabbi (out of 7-10), that still actually do WvW. My guild has stopped playing WvW altogether, mostly doing TPvP now, some people have transferred, others stop playing the game.

This. This new map wont solve ANYTHING, well by the time it is released WvW will be dead anyway. It has become SO steale with the same match week after week and nothing new added.

All this love PvE gets hell even S/TPvP has gotten new maps and what about WvW? Ignored. Great way to keep your player base is to totally ignore them…