Guild Wars 2

I’ve been away long enough to be overwhelmed by the changes to WvW. I’ve given myself some time to take it in. I’ve been running around the maps, watching YouTube videos, and checking the forum responses. I’ve had a brief chance to play with some of the swank new upgrades. Even equipped a med pack for the fun of it.

My assessment is that the new map, the new upgrades, the shrines, and most everything else new that I’ve seen is just trying to add depth and polish to something that still lacked the breadth of gameplay that truly attracts players. I feel it isn’t a wrong assessment for some to call most of the new changes “gimmicks”, because, in truth, I don’t see how any of them can be a draw for a player who isn’t already invested in WvW.

My hope is that the “overhaul” is in fact a rebuilding of WvW from the ground up.

I think that, for the past few years, the priorities of WvW has been misguided by its makers and it own community. I’ve seen people fixate on variety of gameplay. Big fights, small fights, roaming, defending, and so forth.

In the end, none of that matters. As an example, sPvP isn’t required to have as much variety for people to play it. If you, hypothetically speaking, made the content entirely geared toward roaming, people would play it. What kills the gamemode is not being able to meaningfully engage WvW spite the time of day. Furthermore, people need to feel the fruits of their labor in a set amount of time. This time must be consistent and must end in definitive success or failure.

There must be a way to play when you are outnumbered, when you are evenly match, and when you overwhelm your opposition. I’m not saying their needs to be a way to play that is independent of these conditions, but that their needs to be at least one directed activity for each of them, and as I said, each must have a point of known success or failure.

Interesting you think A-net listened to the wvw community? Coverage is the biggest issue in wvw. Suggestion have been posted on how to change that for years. Still coverage is a core problem for wvw so theirs no easy fix. A-net has stated that WvW is one of the major things they are working. Its taking them to long to do anything about it so a lot wvwers I know are not playing wvw or gw2 anymore.

A-net make something for wvw and the wvwer’s gives feedback on how it will not work like A-net thinks it will. A-net puts it in anyway and guess what? The wvwer feedback turns out to be right and A-net starts to nerf the new content. That has been happening for awhile. The current state of wvw is do to A-net not listening to wvwer and having few devs working on wvw content. A-net said they will be something big for wvw after they fix the core issues(coverage) but they will not happen anytime soon(beta at the end of this year :p).

Quaygal.5327 : I like your thoughts about this, and agree. The biggest turn off for most, is to not have something "to do" that feels worthwhile.

Quaygal.5327:

My assessment is that the new map, the new upgrades, the shrines, and most everything else new that I’ve seen is just trying to add depth and polish to something that still lacked the breadth of gameplay that truly attracts players.

Yup. To use a slightly base metaphor, the new borderland was an exercise in polishing a kitten . Now it looks really nice but there’s even less to do than there was before – between the stability change and the specialization power creep, ANet has done a number on the quality of fights. Which sadly was the only thing going for WvW.

I’ll probably be around by the time the WvW changes turn up, but I have no idea what to expect. If it’s not starting from scratch it probably won’t be enough. Like you said, the game mode is missing something fundamental to make the meta-game (as in the WvW match, not player builds) worth participating in on a week-to-week basis.