Guild Wars 2

As someone who has been a WvW veteran for a while (mostly playing in Tier 1 and recently moving to Tier 2 and 3), I wanted to address some points and offer some suggestions for improvement.

REWARDS

The first thing I want to address is rewards. The recent addition of a reward track is a nice touch, and I really don’t have many complaints about it, but there are some other things that need to be addressed.

1. My main is a water/tempest elementalist. I’ve fought in T1/T2/T3 WvW. My job for most fights is largely just healing and crowd control. This puts me at a significant disadvantage when it comes to collecting bags from large fights. I may get 2 bags from a fight while a warrior or well necro gets 10-20, even though I was the reason he stayed alive long enough to collect those bags. What is my motivation to continue being heal spec, other than it being a guild or squad requirement? I think this aspect needs to be addressed such that support roles can collect bags based on their participation in the fight, and not just from damage dealt.

2. The amount of ascended mats received from killing lords is either too high or needs to be addressed in some way. I have thousands of these mats just taking up valuable bank space with no way to get rid of them other than to craft them or destroy them. Adding Princess was a nice touch, but it only eats one type of ascended mats. Perhaps ANet could look into adding a way to trade in a stack of 250 of these mats for currency that can be used towards purchasing Ascended gear from a vendor?

KEEPS, TOWERS, SMC

I think most of the lords in towers and keeps are fairly balanced (in terms of difficulty) at this point compared to what they were before HoT. However, they currently do not provide much motivation to defend or capture, other than becoming a strategic position.

1. In terms of defense, I think there should be increasing buffs for periods of time that each are held. For example, for every hour that a tower is held, it will apply a stacking +5 to all stats buff (including % magic find), with a maximum of +50. For every hour that a keep is held, it will apply a stacking +10 to all stats buff (including % magic find), with a maximum of +100. For every hour that SMC is held, it will apply a stacking +10 to all stats buff, with no maximum.

2. In terms of offense, the magic drop rate for the attackers should increase as well. +10% per hour (capped at 100% for towers and keeps, no cap on SMC) should see some really engaged offensives. In addition, if a keep or SMC is held for longer than 12-24 hours, the points awarded for kills and war stomps doubles. This will allow a greater chance for a server grouping to come back from a deficit when they lack coverage during off-hours.

These buffs listed in 1 and 2 would apply regardless of whether someone has claimed a tower or keep (and could potentially stack, if ANet can balance it).

3. The “tactivators” look terrible and make little sense as levers attached to the ground. I would rather see interactive pads/stones on the ground with glowing runes that change color when they are activated or on cooldown.

4. SMC’s cloaking waters buff needs to be nerfed. Ideally, cut the stealth time down to 20-30 seconds, and don’t let it be reapplied for like 3-5 minutes.

MAPS

1. While I am excited that the Alpine Borderlands are coming back, I am hoping that it has received some improvements in terms of both visuals and gameplay. When you say “alpine”, you generally think of lots of trees, mountains, snow, and glacier blue lakes/rivers. Ditch the farms (and maybe the quarry) since WvW no longer uses the multiple types of supply. Mines inside the mountains, fishing docks, and logging camps are better suited for this map theme.

2. Desert Borderlands still needs some work, specifically the parts that are not very consistent with a desert theme. That includes the northern towers and the west keep. I think others have posted their concerns/complaints with regard to these borderlands, and I agree with most of them.

3. A third borderland type should be added, which would mostly be hills and farms with fewer line of sight obstacles. Many people enjoy open-field battles, and they don’t want to have to traverse difficult terrain while they are fighting. This unique type could include siege and support elements that each realm could capture to support these battles, as opposed to ruins/shrines/etc.

Ideally, all three of these borderlands would eventually be active at the same time (Alpine – Blue BL, Desert – Red BL, Plains/Countryside – Green BL), bringing diversity and various different tactics depending on the borderlands you are fighting in.

TIERS

The tier and glicko system itself has become the biggest source of server stacking lately. Entire guilds are moving servers just to break up the monotony of facing the same servers every week. I think the glicko system needs to be removed, and the tier groupings should be based on the servers that end up scoring the highest and lowest number of points each week. For example, the server grouping with the lowest score in Tier 1 at the end of the week drops down to Tier 2, while the server grouping with the highest score in Tier 2 moves up to Tier 1. The people that want to stay in Tier 1 must put in the solid effort every week to stay there.

BATTLEGROUNDS?

One of the main things I think many are frustrated with is a lack of PvP/GvG content to fill the gap between 5v5 and large-scale WvW battles. If you could implement some squad-scale PvP/GvG for 10v10 or 15v15 fights on maps slightly larger than PvP maps, that would definitely bridge the gap and provide relief for some of the WvW queues. Some people go to WvW just to participate in these GvG fights instead of attacking objectives and engaging in large-scale battles.

In conclusion, these are some of my suggested improvements for the WvW experience. Obviously, the values I have provided for buffs and such are arbitrary and likely would need some balance, but they were meant merely as examples for the concepts I presented. Let me know what you think of these suggestions and any problems they may create.

Why empower PPT blob servers that already cap everything?

Cloaking waters should be taken out of the game completely. Even a 30sec invis on a blob is absurd.

The amount of ascended mats received from killing lords is either too high or needs to be addressed in some way. I have thousands of these mats just taking up valuable bank space with no way to get rid of them other than to craft them or destroy them. Adding Princess was a nice touch, but it only eats one type of ascended mats.

I used to have that problem too, but not anymore. My setup:

Princess uses dragonite ore.
Star of Gratitude uses empyreal fragments.
Herta uses bloodstone dust.

Wish I had not been distracted with HoT and specialisations! Will have to wait until next Xmas to get rid of what will be, by then, several big bags of fragment on my poor neglected dolyak char.

I agree with the OP though, it would be nice if they could be converted, even if the conversion rate is pretty poor, into other ascended/desired items rather than (pretty much) junk.

Rewards point 1. is definitely a concern I think Anet should look more into. They did add that buffing allies will help you get more drops but if the druid in my guild only gets say 30 bags a night and I’m getting 60+, that’s not really fair. He’s doing as much work as I am. Point 2. has already been taken care of. You just have to get the ascended mat converter/eaters via PvE. Most of them take 20 minutes to do.

Keeps, towers, etc.
1. Nah. Its already at a point where the defenders get a buff if the structure is claimed, building upon that even further would make taking structures a real pain in the butt.
2. Magic find won’t keep offenses pushing strong. Magic find can also get tricky because of the impact it has on the economy.
3. I agree. I hope they are just placeholders for now and we see something a little cooler in the future.
4. Anet knows we hate it. Most people want it removed completely.

Maps are tricky. They take a lot of work to balance and polish. I think if you made different maps for each BL, you’d get into a lot of people just wanting to play say a snow map. Then they get sick of it and want to play the desert or farm map and the guilds and players on that map are unwilling to move/trade. What then?

Tiers. I think it really just needs to be broken into categories. Change the population caps for each category so we have true fighting guild, blob, and roaming servers. I don’t know how much this would benefit but its probably better than just linking a bunch of servers and them staying full the entire time. There is just a bit of anger around the WvW community that roaming servers enjoyed their quiet nights and are now faced with queues and blobs. While some hate that, others are loving it. I could go on about fixes for that but I want to touch base on all the OP’s points.

GvG’s won’t be happening anytime soon outside of what we already have. Its not something even on Anet’s radar at this point. They deserve credit here though. While the news might suck, at least they are starting to fix the glaring issues we’ve been facing for years now and that’s a good start.

Dhemize.8649:

Why empower PPT blob servers that already cap everything?

Cloaking waters should be taken out of the game completely. Even a 30sec invis on a blob is absurd.

The point is to encourage more fights… to assault and defend objectives for a reason instead of just karma-training the whole map and letting people back-cap. Currently, people abandon these objectives too easily because they have no real reason to hold onto them when they can just back-cap it several minutes later. By giving them incentives to fight for it and hold it, it increases the likelihood that these servers will have enough points to move up to the next tier at reset (as per my other suggestion in my post).

Blackarps.1974:

Point 2. has already been taken care of. You just have to get the ascended mat converter/eaters via PvE. Most of them take 20 minutes to do.

One of them appears to only be available during Wintersday, and the other is only available for those who purchase HoT. That might be fine for some people, but I would prefer if there were alternative uses for these mats.

Blackarps.1974:

1. Nah. Its already at a point where the defenders get a buff if the structure is claimed, building upon that even further would make taking structures a real pain in the butt.

That’s why I said it would need to be balanced. Either reduce the buffs from claiming or make them apply only to the guild that claimed the objective.

Blackarps.1974:

2. Magic find won’t keep offenses pushing strong. Magic find can also get tricky because of the impact it has on the economy.

I considered the same thing, but I don’t see much of an alternative outside of offering better loot. Originally, my idea was to start rewarding random ascended gear if the SMC boss hadn’t been killed for over 24 hours. But I figured that would be too much, and servers would start collaborating to hold or trade SMC captures at specific times just to get that ascended gear. Increasing the magic find seemed like a much better alternative.

Blackarps.1974:

Maps are tricky. They take a lot of work to balance and polish. I think if you made different maps for each BL, you’d get into a lot of people just wanting to play say a snow map. Then they get sick of it and want to play the desert or farm map and the guilds and players on that map are unwilling to move/trade. What then?

I think that risk is low enough to not be a significant problem. And if it does somehow become a problem to the point people are just fighting on one of the borderlands, then they should start making further adjustments to the other maps to make them more fun to play on.

Blackarps.1974:

Tiers. I think it really just needs to be broken into categories. Change the population caps for each category so we have true fighting guild, blob, and roaming servers. I don’t know how much this would benefit but its probably better than just linking a bunch of servers and them staying full the entire time. There is just a bit of anger around the WvW community that roaming servers enjoyed their quiet nights and are now faced with queues and blobs. While some hate that, others are loving it. I could go on about fixes for that but I want to touch base on all the OP’s points.

Servers generally don’t stay full the entire time. They get very busy at reset and then they stabilize going into the weekend. The only map that tends to stay full all the time is EBG.

Blackarps.1974:

GvG’s won’t be happening anytime soon outside of what we already have. Its not something even on Anet’s radar at this point. They deserve credit here though. While the news might suck, at least they are starting to fix the glaring issues we’ve been facing for years now and that’s a good start.

The problem is the current WvW setup forces these GvG players to take up slots in WvW maps (increasing queues) instead of contributing to the ongoing battles. Adding content specific to GvG’s would make queues less of a problem, especially at reset. I don’t think guild claiming objectives did enough to encourage these guilds to actually attack and defend objectives.

guild wars needs a GvG system period not having one is a contridiction to the title of the game anyway should have called it server wars in that case i mean you have a WvW system and you have a PvP system with season tournaments but 0 GvG system of any kind
as for the glicko lose it with linking it doesnt matter this is a way to rotate the match ups every week i mean for some of us being tiered play mostly the same caliber of players over and over sucks i for 1 would love to go up against the top tier servers without having to transfer cause im not gonna do it
desert boderlands lose them they almost completely killed WvW the main selling point of the game in the first place before linking only the top 4 or 5 servers had the participation to even man those maps of that size not to mention caused less actually fighting/defending it was mostly cat and mouse
and as for Mike O’Brien alot of us are still sceptical that you can point this game back in the right direction its nice you are finally listening to the game community and not just ignoring us like you did for so long so please finalize WvW before working on anything else and then PvP should be next even EA can do better with matchmaking then you have done here and thats bad

FogLeg.9354:

I used to have that problem too, but not anymore. My setup:

Princess uses dragonite ore.
Star of Gratitude uses empyreal fragments.
Herta uses bloodstone dust.

Idk about anyone else but I think it would be super cool to see an item which mulches these items which comes from WvW. Possibly from some kind of achievement.

Cap 500 towers, get a Bloodstone Dust mulcher
Cap 500 camps, get a Emp Shard mulcher
Cap 200 keeps, get a Dragonite Ore mulcher

Mawdrey, Princess, Star of Gratitude

Yes the star is only available during Wintersday, and they should probably change that, but you’ve had two Wintersdays to get it and it doesn’t take much effort to get either.

I’m not opposed to more eaters being added. Just saying you can get 2 out of the 3 anytime and missing out on the last one is at least partially your own fault.

Desert != sand sand sand and more sand. I don’t see any issues with the northern parts of the map as far as themes go.

While I do feel Cloaking Waters is OP, any significant nerf to the stealth timer will make it mostly useless.

Your keep/SMC buffs makes no sense. All that will do is let a server that is already the strongest in the matchup to completely roll over their opponents even more because not only do they have a numbers advantage, they will also now have a stat advantage with no cap. It makes even less sense considering you asked Cloaking Waters to be nerfed.

As far as eles go. I would suggest dropping water skill 2/4 on enemies occasionally. That will get you some credit. And you shouldn’t be staying in water attunement 100% of the time anyway.

1. In terms of defense, I think there should be increasing buffs for periods of time that each are held. For example, for every hour that a tower is held, it will apply a stacking +5 to all stats buff (including % magic find), with a maximum of +50. For every hour that a keep is held, it will apply a stacking +10 to all stats buff (including % magic find), with a maximum of +100. For every hour that SMC is held, it will apply a stacking +10 to all stats buff, with no maximum.

As far I can understand this would just have same the effect as upgrading the objective. Tiers do basically same thing, make objective more difficult to capture. We already had objectives upgrading purely based on time and it was complete disaster. Every morning you join the game to see fully upgraded enemy keeps in every map, it was horrible.

Even now, smaller groups avoid higher tier objectives because of time it takes to capture those. You just want to these things even more difficult to take. Why? Why would simply holding SM increase all your stats when even now it is near impossible to take it when someone bothers to defend?

I know, you propose higher drop rate too for attackers, and yet, do you actually care what the drop rate is in WvW? I just ran around for little while yesterday, only to discover my inv was already full (yep, I got ascended armor box!). Stuff already appears from everywhere, reward tracks, ranks, capture and defend events, killing enemies. I honestly do not know what my magic drop rate even is or what it could be.