Guild Wars 2

There was little reason to do it when WvWvW was reset every day. But for week long and two week long games, there is no excuse not to include such kind of rules.

There’s an issue both for when a side controls most of the map making it extremely difficult capping back the forts, and for when a side gets a big lead.

Slippery slope rules are bad for games that stretch for so long. In this case, there’s two factors in place :

- the team that gets more forts to the point of total map dominance makes it hard for the other team to even get out. In particular, it means this team got all orbs and placed them in fully upgraded forts while the opposing teams need to fight and hold ground in completely unupgraded forts they retook.

- a big score lead advantage causes players to quit, which only serves to deepen the score lead to the point it’s then completely impossible to overturn. And even if we forget the scoring issue, the quitting causes a particular day to be hopeless.

This isn’t some tricky new behaviors never seen before. I’m amazed that game devs still dare release a game without counter measures to this day, especially one that planned two week long fights. The outmanned buff is a joke btw. Although a nice idea by itself, it needs more.

I agree. The last place team should never feel as if it is pointless and futile to fight. WvWvW breaks down when there aren’t three teams playing of similar strength.

this is actually called “snowball mechanics”.
“slippery slope” is where something creeps little by little untill it passes a point that would have never been accepted back when it 1st started slipping, but is now, because it’s only slightly worse then it’s last state and doesnt seem like a big problem.

Maybe some kind of buff that slowly adds up the longer a side goes without controlling much of the map? That way over the course of the week, an underdog server that’s being dominated can get back into the fight. It might cause people to give up until later in the week tho, or specifically avoid recapping buildings in favor of open field kill farming.

I’m not a game designer. The idea might need some work.

I think there needs to be some kind of upkeep cost that increases the more you hold and the longer you hold it. Much like the real world, expanding and holding your empire would become more and more difficult. This would make it easier for a server that’s behind to make a comeback.

For examples in history, see the British, French, Roman, and now American empires.

That has potential. Make it cost more and more supply for defenders to fix gates and put up siege weapons based on how long they’ve held a point?

Lethminite.7912:

this is actually called “snowball mechanics”.
“slippery slope” is where something creeps little by little untill it passes a point that would have never been accepted back when it 1st started slipping, but is now, because it’s only slightly worse then it’s last state and doesnt seem like a big problem.

Thanks for the info, I’ll edit the post topic to use that term too.

DAoC had something like this. They had realm-captureable relics that were kept in attackable forts. There were 3 and when one realm owned all of them, it made their own relic vulnerable somehow (I’m sorry, I don’t recall how).

They do have snowball mechanics.

Just that the snowball mechanics help the winners win more, orbs.

he missunderstood me, it should just say “no anti-snowball mechanics”

One of the biggest problems that I’ve noticed in WvW is the snowball effect.

The winning team goes from strength to strength as they acquire the orbs, gain more supply, gain more gold and gain more badges as they gain more map control (from the jumping puzzles and supply camps to the keeps and castle) and more kills than the opposition (not to mention that they die less). All of these benefits have the effect of further establishing their dominance. Worse, the buffs from WvW also boost their health, healing and gold from kills which further exacerbate the imbalance.

Meanwhile, the losing teams go from weakness to weakness. They die more, so they spend more gold on repairs. They can’t hold supply so they can’t build as much seige, or fortify as much, hat they do manage to build and fortify gets captured by opponents with more money, supply and buffs so the losers have to throw away more and more supply and gold.

What this means is that during the week or longer battles, the weaker teams will simply be starved out of existence and grow weaker over time, from gold, supply and orbs plus WvW buff differences, whilst the winning teams gain more and more supply and gold.

Anet needs to reconsider how both gold and supply are spent and earned and how the orbs and WvW buffs should function, especially as they make the push towards the 2week battles.

I don’t see the relevance of the above logic. The orbs do have an impact but the main limiting factor in WvW is participation and organization. If you form a single WvW guild on your server to get the ball rolling and keep thing organized you can easily zerg outwards from spawn steamrolling the opposition.

On borderlands you want to head north, not east/west towards the 3rd server. You want to push the home server and grab one of the side keeps. That’s where organization comes in. Without it you’ll grab your first tower then people will disperses waging war on two fronts or more.

You need that WvW guild to get people organized and joining the map together. Otherwise, you’ll have small groups of 8 people getting camped at spawn before heading back to lion’s arch.

Don’t ask arena net to balance WvW or design it around solo players. You have to get your WvW organized. Since you can join more than a single guild there is zero excuse not to have a server WvW guild.

They need to prevent spawn camping because that’s what happens now when one side completely owns all maps,if the dominating side wants to spawn camp then the losing side which isn’t able to leave the citadal should be able to temporarily be able to build siege or get temporarily massive dmg while near the radius of the Legendary defenders but get no points,I mean there should be a penalty for camping entrances to the cidatals.

Without quoting someone specific – many people say this comes down to organization and/or participation.

That’s true, but I don’t think you realize the situation.

After the snowball gets going, and the two losing servers get camped in their spawn area, the following things are generally true:

1) Because they have no supply, they can not construct siege equipment.
2) Because the dominator has ALL supply, they fully upgrade all objectives and start building siege to further clamp down on the spawn camp. Their keeps and castles fill up with supply, so if they needed in the future they would have massive stores.
3) Because the dominator has such map control, they have full participation and queues.
4) Because the losers have such a pitiful fight, they quit playing altogether.

All of these things combined means that after one or two days of dominance the game is basically over. There is no way to get back into the fight, because you can’t even break their siege lines without supply of your own. There is no way to sneak out and capture anything that would make a difference – or that you wouldn’t lose moments later.

Several of us tried to warn that without some sort of mechanic to prevent these landslides, WvW 1 week or 2 week matches would become this way.

Some servers will have multiple hour queues and full map control, while some servers have instant queues and are spawn camped (or fighting for their last keep).

Yea, organization and blah blah – all sounds great in theory. In reality, even one 6 or 8 hour period of dominance pretty much ends the game altogether. Doesn’t matter what time of day it happens, once it does there is very little chance to get back in the fight.

We already have an anti-snowball mechanic. It is WvWvW. So if one server is winning, it will be forced to fight both 2 servers. It works if all 3 servers fill up the cap. But again it has been said in here 100 times, the only snowball effect is that most of the players/guilds like waiting in 4 hours queue in a winning server and doing supply camp ping-pong rather than actually fighting and earning rewards in low-pop server. You can never balance a game if all players only care to win and it is almost free to switch side.

Xia.3485:

I don’t see the relevance of the above logic. The orbs do have an impact but the main limiting factor in WvW is participation and organization. If you form a single WvW guild on your server to get the ball rolling and keep thing organized you can easily zerg outwards from spawn steamrolling the opposition.

On borderlands you want to head north, not east/west towards the 3rd server. You want to push the home server and grab one of the side keeps. That’s where organization comes in. Without it you’ll grab your first tower then people will disperses waging war on two fronts or more.

You need that WvW guild to get people organized and joining the map together. Otherwise, you’ll have small groups of 8 people getting camped at spawn before heading back to lion’s arch.

Don’t ask arena net to balance WvW or design it around solo players. You have to get your WvW organized. Since you can join more than a single guild there is zero excuse not to have a server WvW guild.

You are missing the point. Friday when the week long battles began, it was great as no server held an advantage. Fights were mostly even and hard fought. Then the off peak hours hit. Generally one server in each grouping has a huge advantage in the number of off peak players they can field. This allows this one server to cap everything on the map, and hold it long enough to be fully upgraded.

Now on Saturday when peak hours hit again, the match is no longer even. One team starts with everything capped and all keeps and towers upgraded to maximum. The other teams must spend far more time taking back fully upgraded and defended keeps. Then they wake up Sunday and see that any gains they made during Saturday peak hours are gone, and once again one team has the full map with everything upgraded a sense of futility sets in. Sunday peak time hits and the other two servers are no longer filling zone population caps during prime time. Repeat this for a week. What began as a fairly even match in the first peak time turns into a slaughter. In many cases being dominated by the team who was doing the WORST during the first peak time.

The goal is how to extend the fun of the first peak time after match resets to the full week. The easy way is for players to voluntarily spread themselves out among the servers. (Honestly can someone from one of the heavy off peak population servers explain this? Why would you not want a fair fight? And yes if you play off peak hours and your server caps the full map then YOU are the main problem with wvw right now.) Sadly, we know that will not happen. So that leaves it up to Arena Net to somehow find a way to keep matches from spiraling out of control.

Sky.9347:

1) Because they have no supply, they can not construct siege equipment.
2) Because the dominator has ALL supply, they fully upgrade all objectives and start building siege to further clamp down on the spawn camp. Their keeps and castles fill up with supply, so if they needed in the future they would have massive stores.
3) Because the dominator has such map control, they have full participation and queues.
4) Because the losers have such a pitiful fight, they quit playing altogether.

Lets begin with an IRL example. I get home from work, we are getting steamrolled in WvW. Guild chat is all a flutter about it, there is a guildie in the spawn of each map giving us the scoop. We wait for more members before joining so I continue my story quest. Once we have a sizable mob we join an enemy server’s borderlands. there is no queue since the lone wolves can’t survive in WvW. We form up at the gates then cream the small group that were camping the solo players. We bypass the first tower and head for supply. Steal the supply depot, deplete it of supply then run back to the tower. It doesn’t last long. If the gate is reinforced we use a ram, if not we burn it ourselves. We leave a small number to build up the tower and the zerg heads north towards the first keep. Taking back the orb is more difficult, but with an organized army its hella fun.

Now do we want WvW to be about mindless zergs and lone wolfs with all sorts of balance buffs, balancing queues and weirdness like wintergrasp in WoW? Or do we want to get organized, GET SOCIAL in a social game? You tell me.

Yshyr.8709:

You are missing the point.

No I am not. You are missing the point. Form a server WvW guild. Find players who are on at all hours.

Besides, WvW is about fun its not about winning. Even if every evening I have to start from scratch, taking those towers, those forts and especially the Garison yield such high rewards that its worth it. Its also fun to play in an organized team. If you’re running around trying to get organized with other lone wolves in /map, then yes, I expect you to get frustrated fast.

Xia.3485:

Sky.9347:

1) Because they have no supply, they can not construct siege equipment.
2) Because the dominator has ALL supply, they fully upgrade all objectives and start building siege to further clamp down on the spawn camp. Their keeps and castles fill up with supply, so if they needed in the future they would have massive stores.
3) Because the dominator has such map control, they have full participation and queues.
4) Because the losers have such a pitiful fight, they quit playing altogether.

Lets begin with an IRL example. I get home from work, we are getting steamrolled in WvW. Guild chat is all a flutter about it, there is a guildie in the spawn of each map giving us the scoop. We wait for more members before joining so I continue my story quest. Once we have a sizable mob we join an enemy server’s borderlands. there is no queue since the lone wolves can’t survive in WvW. We form up at the gates then cream the small group that were camping the solo players. We bypass the first tower and head for supply. Steal the supply depot, deplete it of supply then run back to the tower. It doesn’t last long. If the gate is reinforced we use a ram, if not we burn it ourselves. We leave a small number to build up the tower and the zerg heads north towards the first keep. Taking back the orb is more difficult, but with an organized army its hella fun.

Now do we want WvW to be about mindless zergs and lone wolfs with all sorts of balance buffs, balancing queues and weirdness like wintergrasp in WoW? Or do we want to get organized, GET SOCIAL in a social game? You tell me.

That sounds great, but honestly… it also sounds like your enemy wasn’t fielding much of an army either.

I temporarily switched to Eredon Terrace this weekend (to join a friend who couldn’t get on my server yet), and in their WvW maps they had 20 or so people at each spawn camping, and everyone else ran around the map doing whatever – but also recapping any stray supply camps and wiping out enemy zergs before they were able to even put a dent in the massively upgraded keeps.

I’m glad your guild managed to get a large enough group to make some headway during your enemies downtime – but how are those captured objectives looking now? What if you had not been able to clean up the “small group” camping your server’s spawn? What if that group had been 70 players with siege machines?

Your experience is not the most common. Perhaps eventually the server rankings will sort this out, but the fact remains that 6 or 8 hours of dominance is practically impossible to undo.

I think the most simple solution is some kind of mechanic that allows a server a chance at a comeback.

That’s why we need counter measures for such situations. One example is the full map dominance for a server. When that happens, it becomes very hard to push back. So we can try stuff like :

- Stacking Revenge of the Mists buff. 100% more damage to siege structures (door, walls and siege equipment) per stack. 10% less damage from players per stack and 10% more damage dealt to players pet stack. 10% less resource cost to build and repair items per stack. You gain one stack per hour once your map control falls under 10%. Stacks cap at 1 when under 10% control, 2 at 8%, 3 at 4%, 4 at 2% and 5 at 0%. Extra stacks decay at the rate of one per hour. Player size is visually scaled a little based on stack amount.

- For total score advantage, we can work based on the amount of points one can expect to win per day when you do Great. Which I’d define as definitively owning the map but not that much. Which can be seen as owning 80% of the map since if you go farther than that, it would fall into the previous mechanic mentioned. So, once a side gets a total score lead from the second that would be too high to counter in a day if the second suddenly controlled 80% of the map for a whole day, the winning side will get a “Weariness of the Mist” debuff. The effect should be a lot more subtle than the revenge one so something like a 20% higher resource cost for all buildings per stack could work. Same trick as before, for each “expected cap of reasonable points per day” advantage at the score, the debuff gets a new stack and those stacks take a full day to expire once the server goes under a threshold.

Once again, such mechanics aren’t here to make the winner lose. We don’t exactly want a Mario Kart blue turtle shell power up so numbers might need some tweaking. The Revenge buff is harsh but it only servers to undo the worse case of full map dominance. It won’t give back all the points lost during the time it was going on. The Weariness is a tool used to make it harder and harder to increase a lead and nothing more. Hopefully, the last days of a cycle will see the harshest fights for dominance because every server will think it still has a chance of victory instead of just giving up all hope and doing pure PvE until the reset.

Sky.9347:

That sounds great, but honestly… it also sounds like your enemy wasn’t fielding much of an army either. … in their WvW maps they had 20 or so people at each spawn camping, and everyone else ran around the map doing whatever …

When you are 80+ peeps forming up at spawn, those spawn camping don’t last long. By the time the other server gets organized you’ve already taken your tower and the fort. Steamrolling an opponent isn’t fun. The moment they get organized is when the fun starts.

Sky.9347:

I’m glad your guild managed to get a large enough group to make some headway during your enemies downtime – but how are those captured objectives looking now? What if you had not been able to clean up the “small group” camping your server’s spawn? What if that group had been 70 players with siege machines?

You put too much importance on siege machines… they die so fast when the gates are assaulted by a flood of players. Also, it doesn’t matter if they retake it all during the night, we’ll retake it next prime time. You need a guild to get people formed up. Otherwise people trickle in, get camped at spawn then trickle out. I’ve played on both sides of the story. When we dominate the entire map (like right now) it gets boring fast.. people trickle in, they stay around the un-kill-able NPCsthen trickle out. No action, no fun. Get organized!

Sky.9347:

Your experience is not the most common. Perhaps eventually the server rankings will sort this out, but the fact remains that 6 or 8 hours of dominance is practically impossible to undo.

NO! Stop waiting for arena net to hold your hand and pet you on the head. YOU have to get organized.

Sky.9347:

I think the most simple solution is some kind of mechanic that allows a server a chance at a comeback.

Its called a guild. We formed ours in Lion’s Arch. Get the ball rolling on your server.

There is a perfect counter.

The 2 losing servers should always only attack the server in the lead, not each other. That’s a massive 2-1 advantage.

But if people want to be foolish and be quiters … well nothing you can do, and tbo this game already rewards losing and bad play waaay to much.

I’m pretty Xia is either a troll or plays on a low-ranked server and thinks that they magically solved their problems by forming a single WvW guild.

Once the loss is great enough, people leave.

When the reward for capturing anything is less than the cost to repair 1 piece of armor, there is no point risking it. The winning team gets bold when they know “nothing we do can cause us to lose”. They charge into everything. They can zerg to counter the repairs they incurred from being so recklessly aggressive.

The losers? They can die trying to get something back, finally succeed, then realize they only covered 1/3 the repair bill. Then look at the map, and realize there are still 6-8 points to retake just to have “their” stuff back. Not even counting pushing into enemy territory to recover the score (too late at this point, only fighting for second place now).

I was naive thinking we’d have balance for the week long matches. Nope, still as one-sided as ever.

Sky.9347:

Xia.3485:

Sky.9347:

1) Because they have no supply, they can not construct siege equipment.
2) Because the dominator has ALL supply, they fully upgrade all objectives and start building siege to further clamp down on the spawn camp. Their keeps and castles fill up with supply, so if they needed in the future they would have massive stores.
3) Because the dominator has such map control, they have full participation and queues.
4) Because the losers have such a pitiful fight, they quit playing altogether.

Lets begin with an IRL example. I get home from work, we are getting steamrolled in WvW. Guild chat is all a flutter about it, there is a guildie in the spawn of each map giving us the scoop. We wait for more members before joining so I continue my story quest. Once we have a sizable mob we join an enemy server’s borderlands. there is no queue since the lone wolves can’t survive in WvW. We form up at the gates then cream the small group that were camping the solo players. We bypass the first tower and head for supply. Steal the supply depot, deplete it of supply then run back to the tower. It doesn’t last long. If the gate is reinforced we use a ram, if not we burn it ourselves. We leave a small number to build up the tower and the zerg heads north towards the first keep. Taking back the orb is more difficult, but with an organized army its hella fun.

Now do we want WvW to be about mindless zergs and lone wolfs with all sorts of balance buffs, balancing queues and weirdness like wintergrasp in WoW? Or do we want to get organized, GET SOCIAL in a social game? You tell me.

That sounds great, but honestly… it also sounds like your enemy wasn’t fielding much of an army either.

I temporarily switched to Eredon Terrace this weekend (to join a friend who couldn’t get on my server yet), and in their WvW maps they had 20 or so people at each spawn camping, and everyone else ran around the map doing whatever – but also recapping any stray supply camps and wiping out enemy zergs before they were able to even put a dent in the massively upgraded keeps.

I’m glad your guild managed to get a large enough group to make some headway during your enemies downtime – but how are those captured objectives looking now? What if you had not been able to clean up the “small group” camping your server’s spawn? What if that group had been 70 players with siege machines?

Your experience is not the most common. Perhaps eventually the server rankings will sort this out, but the fact remains that 6 or 8 hours of dominance is practically impossible to undo.

I think the most simple solution is some kind of mechanic that allows a server a chance at a comeback.

Eredon is doing exactly what Xia is saying. And they are the one with a massive lead over IoJ and SoS. 180k to 40k and 40k.

If IoJ or SoS do the same, they still must deal with ET always coming back to reclaim anything. It is not a battle of organization. It is a battle of numbers, still, even when organized groups enter.

ET is able to move around the map. They have a huge lead, so it is exciting to hear which place on which map to go to, to get some free kills. If they need to work for it, great! More fun for them. They been winning, so a good fight is thrilling.

For IoJ or SoS? Not so fun. They finally started having balance, only to now fight an uphill battle for hours straight, just to forcibly reclaim their sections of the map. To them, it is about wasted upgrades (tons of gold funneled away into an Abyss of losing), repair bills, needing to split members to fight multiple fronts, needing to pool members to fight any front….

Meanwhile, the ET server is having totally full numbers. The others? They’re waiting until this week is done and hoping the match making works, just once.

Hsinimod.5784:

Sky.9347:

That sounds great, but honestly… it also sounds like your enemy wasn’t fielding much of an army either.

I temporarily switched to Eredon Terrace this weekend (to join a friend who couldn’t get on my server yet), and in their WvW maps they had 20 or so people at each spawn camping, and everyone else ran around the map doing whatever – but also recapping any stray supply camps and wiping out enemy zergs before they were able to even put a dent in the massively upgraded keeps.

I’m glad your guild managed to get a large enough group to make some headway during your enemies downtime – but how are those captured objectives looking now? What if you had not been able to clean up the “small group” camping your server’s spawn? What if that group had been 70 players with siege machines?

Your experience is not the most common. Perhaps eventually the server rankings will sort this out, but the fact remains that 6 or 8 hours of dominance is practically impossible to undo.

I think the most simple solution is some kind of mechanic that allows a server a chance at a comeback.

Eredon is doing exactly what Xia is saying. And they are the one with a massive lead over IoJ and SoS. 180k to 40k and 40k.

If IoJ or SoS do the same, they still must deal with ET always coming back to reclaim anything. It is not a battle of organization. It is a battle of numbers, still, even when organized groups enter.

ET is able to move around the map. They have a huge lead, so it is exciting to hear which place on which map to go to, to get some free kills. If they need to work for it, great! More fun for them. They been winning, so a good fight is thrilling.

For IoJ or SoS? Not so fun. They finally started having balance, only to now fight an uphill battle for hours straight, just to forcibly reclaim their sections of the map. To them, it is about wasted upgrades (tons of gold funneled away into an Abyss of losing), repair bills, needing to split members to fight multiple fronts, needing to pool members to fight any front….

Meanwhile, the ET server is having totally full numbers. The others? They’re waiting until this week is done and hoping the match making works, just once.

From my perspective, it isn’t fun on ET either. It was cool for a little while to explore the map without any chance of reprisal. At one point, standing OUTSIDE of one of the opponent’s main keep (which ET owned), I got up and went to make myself a whiskey. Came back and still lived. Very peaceful and all that.

But when I realized I was in a group that was covering the same 100 yards back and forth – right outside their spawn – I quickly got bored. There was nothing to do except these two large field fights where we would push them back to their stairs, they would rally up and push us back to the stairs of their main keep (where we had siege set up), back and forth.

I can’t imagine this is fun for anyone. I will be heading back to my server soon, where we get stomped a lot but usually we can hold 1 keep and fight over a supply camp.

People can say this is all about organization and skill and whatever, but the longer the matches go on the worse this gets, and the less motivation people have to go play WvW.

The only real downside I can concede is gold costs for repairs and keep upgrades. Since I don’t only WvW, I get a steady income from world events and haven’t felt the costs were prohibitive.

As for balance its all about organization and participation. Should they add a buff to the loosing team they would conquer objectives relying on the buff more than strategy. Defending against a mindless buffed enemy zerg wouldn’t be appealing or fair. And then those with the buff would get pushed back quickly once the buff is removed (either by taking objectives if its point based, or by people joining if its pop based).

Again, it comes down to organisation and participation. Arena net could either work on the queue system, or people could learn to join forces with the third server (which they never do btw) or they can get organised before entering WvW.

Just a side question, but how many of you have seen a commander in WvW?

Xia.3485:

The only real downside I can concede is gold costs for repairs and keep upgrades. Since I don’t only WvW, I get a steady income from world events and haven’t felt the costs were prohibitive.

As for balance its all about organization and participation. Should they add a buff to the loosing team they would conquer objectives relying on the buff more than strategy. Defending against a mindless buffed enemy zerg wouldn’t be appealing or fair. And then those with the buff would get pushed back quickly once the buff is removed (either by taking objectives if its point based, or by people joining if its pop based).

Again, it comes down to organisation and participation. Arena net could either work on the queue system, or people could learn to join forces with the third server (which they never do btw) or they can get organised before entering WvW.

Just a side question, but how many of you have seen a commander in WvW?

You don’t understand well the point of such loser buff. You give them hope, you give them fun even if short lived. Still, you should not really give them victory when it happens because then losing is more effective than winning. The goal of such system is to ensure the losing side doesn’t lose hope and desert because this is NOT what you want. Whatever lead in score you got during the time you had full control isn’t lost either.

About repair costs, I think it’s another venue to consider. When a side is losing somewhat, any player that was really participating in WvWvW fights for some time would get access to free repairs in those maps. You might even see PvE players join up and help their server a moment just to get that freebie, thus attracting some people to try again and giving you more PvP.

stof.9341:

About repair costs, I think it’s another venue to consider. When a side is losing somewhat, any player that was really participating in WvWvW fights for some time would get access to free repairs in those maps. You might even see PvE players join up and help their server a moment just to get that freebie, thus attracting some people to try again and giving you more PvP.

I think death in WvW shouldn’t damage your gear period. Remove all wealth gains and wealth costs in WvW. It should all be about supply.

I’ve been on the loosing side. Honestly it was more fun than being on the side with 100% map control. Why? Because you form up with your guildies at spawn, you build your forces… and then when you are ready you stretch out your arm and conquer blitzkrieg style. Its mad experience and karma.

Of course, if your server only has lone wolves.. then you never EVER get past the campers at your spawn. Thus the need for WvW guild to prepare a battle.

I think the real question here should be: are there any matches that are staying relatively even?

Is this snowball issue because the servers are wildly mismatched, or is it because of the nature of supply dynamics + human psychology.

If it is because the servers are mismatched, eventually high pop servers will rise in the ranks and fight each other. The problem might just solve itself.

If however this is going on in every match, it may be a sign that the game design needs some work.

Good question Sky.

From my perspective on Emhry Bay it seems the two other servers aren’t organized at all. There was one night where the blue server (forgot its name) manage to retake a large portion of the map when they got organized. We even lost the Garrison. We took it all back later in the evening. I guess they only have one PvP guild or something.

Is there a thread were people are posting their WvW standing?

Xia.3485:

Good question Sky.

From my perspective on Emhry Bay it seems the two other servers aren’t organized at all. There was one night where the blue server (forgot its name) manage to retake a large portion of the map when they got organized. We even lost the Garrison. We took it all back later in the evening. I guess they only have one PvP guild or something.

Is there a thread were people are posting their WvW standing?

That may be your perspective, and it may even be accurate.

Every single matchup I have read about thus far seems to have 1 dominant server and 2 spawn camped (or close to it) servers.

So saying “we are just better WvWers than they are” might be plausible in one or two matchups, but when it is every single matchup across all ranks… then it is a system problem.

Sky.9347:

Every single matchup I have read about thus far seems to have 1 dominant server and 2 spawn camped (or close to it) servers.

Generally happy players don’t post on the forums. Anyway, I’ve made a thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Post-your-server-WvW-standing-here-plese

Lets see what information we can gleam from it.

From nearly 8 years in DAoC and a little over 3 in Eve, the biggest problem is organization. Right now it is extremely difficult to organize much of anything due to queues. When 70% of my guild is sitting in queues, the fact we have a ton of experience, leadership, and voice comms is irrelevent. Basically, you cannot organize when the people who can, and will, cannot even get into WvWvW.

The second problem is the scoring system. Why there is an incremental score I have no idea. This leaves too many people with the mindset that these are just two week long matches to “win” or “lose”. If ANet wants an active WvWvW community, they need to change the focus from meaningless points to server bonuses/buffs based on control of map locations and orbs. Make them significant enough to be worth taking and defending. Give people a reason to look at the map and say “holy crap, I need to get out there”. As it is now, bonuses are so lackluster that people don’t even care if they sit in overflow (where bonuses do not apply) for ever and even requested the option (and had it implemented) to leave the queue to get out of overflow. That alone should have set off alarm bells at ANet.

Change those two things (lose the queues, and removing the scoring system to focus instead on server wide bonuses/buffs) and watch most of these other issues correct themselves.

No need to be rude vrgadin, it weakens the message in your post.

switch orbs and outmaned buff, it makes more sense too. Those that are outmaned should be getting combat bonuses while those that are dominant should be reaping a greater gold income.

vrgadin.1943:

Uhgg more of these whiny threads asking for help and safety nets, sung by the same old casual gamers who obviously never bothred to research what wvwvw is about. Gw2 wvw is not supposed to be fair and balanced. You sink or swim, sh$$ or get off the pot.

This is a big reason games fail, when devs start listening to the ”have nots” and start cheapening the original design. You dont get breaks here, its competitve….people take these matches seriously,.stick to spvp if u want carebear pvp an st fu already

Super Street Fighter IV is competitive and it has the Ultra bar which charges when you get hit. It’s essential a super attack given to the player that loses to help him turn back the situation to his advantage.

If so many people on the winning servers are finding it boring, because there’s nothing do , why aren’t they transferring to the losing servers to have some fun?

buzzkapow.8465:

If so many people on the winning servers are finding it boring, because there’s nothing do , why aren’t they transferring to the losing servers to have some fun?

Because we just got organized ourselves (Ehrmy Bay). Waiting for our competition to do the same.

What the poster was commenting about DAOC if translated to GW2 would mean the more Orbs you hold the weaker your keep/guards/etc would be.

Basically by the end of the first 24 hours is almost surely going to decide the match in their favor unless the match is a very close one. Changing how long the ticks are only changes how big the numbers become.

Another common fallacy is people will assume the 2 weaker servers will gang up on the stronger one. The reality is (and years of daoc showed this to be true) the opposite is more often the case.

People saying there needs to be anti-snowball measures needs to wake up. Your server is getting stomped for one of the 2 reasons:
1) You are outnumbered
2) The enemy is better (more organized)

If 1, no buff will help you, you will still get stomped and can just hope for better match up in the next rotation. Anet dropped the ball on this one, but what can you do.

If 2, you are then asking for an unfair advantage for your server because you are bad. That is the most ridiculous and stupid idea I’ve ever heard. Intsead of getting organized, forming a WvW guild(s) and actually playing well and deploying more developed strategies than “lets rush out with 5 ppl, we surely break the siege at our spawn”, you want Anet to hold your hand so you can just run out of your spawn like a mindless drones and capture kitten. Well guess what, that’s not how WvW works.
If you lose all your stuff to a superior server, you better get your kitten together and start working together.
Running out in small groups or even alone and dying immediately, then coming to a forum and demand a buff for your sorrykitten is pathetic. You got yourselves into that situation, you get yourselves out of there. If you can’t, you dont deserve any objectives.

And no, I’m not form the server that usually stomps everyone. We are actually getting ourkitten handed to us atm. But if we get out of it, it will be because we started playing better, not because the game felt sorry for us and gave us a buff.

I really cant come up with an explanation on how servers get spawn camped in the borderlands other than pure ignorance on their part. I’ve seen spawn camping in action from both sides. It always revolves around the winning side pushing south from the closest tower and bottling up the ramp from spawn to tower. The thing is that only bottles up the invaders if they keep runing down the ramp like lemmings.

In case this excaped notice there are paths from the spawn point leading off to either side. One leads to the closest supply camp to your spawn and the other leads roughly to the middle one. Either way provides multipule places to drop down for an effective breakout and the spawn campers can not mass enough forces to prevent a breakout at all the potential places one could happen at the same time. Only if you run down the main ramp into the teath of the grinder can they keep you locked up.

It all comes down to organization. Instead of mindlessly zergin the ramp form 2 groups and push off the sides. steamroll each camp and push north ASAP. One team or the other might run into the spawn camping zerg if they pay attention and react but most likely you’ll only run into a smallish force. Either way both teams steal all the supply’s and move on to the next camp north. Again smash the camps and take more supply’s. From there its up to your own judgement where to hit but I’d recommend a tower you have the numbers to defend. No mater what you decided to do you’ve accomplished 3 things. 1 you broke out of the spawncamp, 2 you now have plenty of supply, 3 you split up the zerg at your spawn point as they try to react. note if 3 didnt happen and the whole team is still there rejoice as they are ceding their Territory to you for being dumb. If they break off and come north to deal with you you can now take all that supply you gathered in the north and strike the closest tower hard and fast and gain a foothold before they can run south agian.

nemeth.4196:

People saying there needs to be anti-snowball measures needs to wake up. Your server is getting stomped for one of the 2 reasons:
1) You are outnumbered
2) The enemy is better (more organized)

If 1, no buff will help you, you will still get stomped and can just hope for better match up in the next rotation. Anet dropped the ball on this one, but what can you do.

If 2, you are then asking for an unfair advantage for your server because you are bad. That is the most ridiculous and stupid idea I’ve ever heard. Intsead of getting organized, forming a WvW guild(s) and actually playing well and deploying more developed strategies than “lets rush out with 5 ppl, we surely break the siege at our spawn”, you want Anet to hold your hand so you can just run out of your spawn like a mindless drones and capture kitten. Well guess what, that’s not how WvW works.
If you lose all your stuff to a superior server, you better get your kitten together and start working together.
Running out in small groups or even alone and dying immediately, then coming to a forum and demand a buff for your sorrykitten is pathetic. You got yourselves into that situation, you get yourselves out of there. If you can’t, you dont deserve any objectives.

And no, I’m not form the server that usually stomps everyone. We are actually getting ourkitten handed to us atm. But if we get out of it, it will be because we started playing better, not because the game felt sorry for us and gave us a buff.

I’m glad that you can assert that it is either 1 or 2, and no other reason is valid.

But for me, I’m not confident in your answer. It is far more complex. It is grossly oversimplifying to say “you’re just unorganized or outnumbered, nothing else”. You might as well add a L2P at the end, it’s so insulting a generalization.

Our “lone wolf” server has excellent organization. We have grouped together and done exactly as Xia has mentioned. The problem is, we’ve already been buried by the avalanche. Every time we fight back the other organized lead team…. slowly…. it is a drop to the bucket. We already were snowballed.

It is amazing to see people ban together and tactically maneuver to reclaim everything. Calling Camps, and where to put siege, and numbers of inc, and flanking, etc. But what’s the point? We’re dominating second place. No way Sea of Sorrows will catch up to us. They’re stuck at third, cause we’re seeing to that. And no way will we catch up to Eredon. They’re seeing to that.

It is simply frozen as is. Organization won’t help, and maintaining equal numbers (at this point) won’t help either.

Psychologically, there is no reason to do more than what we are. There are no gains, only a cost. We’ve upgraded so many times (thanks to 2 players who did all the upgrading mostly) and lost the points when the balance gets lost. That’s all their actual gold gone for a lost cause. 2% stats buffs in pve to become 8%…. not a big deal. We already can do fine without the buffs.

There is just too much crap to deal with, it isn’t fun.

When we lose to a team that we had to fight it out with, and it was close, that is fun. It isn’t about losing, or winning. It is about the balance of the fight.

Merendel.7128:

I really cant come up with an explanation on how servers get spawn camped in the borderlands other than pure ignorance on their part. I’ve seen spawn camping in action from both sides. It always revolves around the winning side pushing south from the closest tower and bottling up the ramp from spawn to tower. The thing is that only bottles up the invaders if they keep runing down the ramp like lemmings.

In case this excaped notice there are paths from the spawn point leading off to either side. One leads to the closest supply camp to your spawn and the other leads roughly to the middle one. Either way provides multipule places to drop down for an effective breakout and the spawn campers can not mass enough forces to prevent a breakout at all the potential places one could happen at the same time. Only if you run down the main ramp into the teath of the grinder can they keep you locked up.

It all comes down to organization. Instead of mindlessly zergin the ramp form 2 groups and push off the sides. steamroll each camp and push north ASAP. One team or the other might run into the spawn camping zerg if they pay attention and react but most likely you’ll only run into a smallish force. Either way both teams steal all the supply’s and move on to the next camp north. Again smash the camps and take more supply’s. From there its up to your own judgement where to hit but I’d recommend a tower you have the numbers to defend. No mater what you decided to do you’ve accomplished 3 things. 1 you broke out of the spawncamp, 2 you now have plenty of supply, 3 you split up the zerg at your spawn point as they try to react. note if 3 didnt happen and the whole team is still there rejoice as they are ceding their Territory to you for being dumb. If they break off and come north to deal with you you can now take all that supply you gathered in the north and strike the closest tower hard and fast and gain a foothold before they can run south agian.

It is not really spawn camping.

Let me explain.

The ones losing have no reason to break out. If they do, they are known about and hunted down. They took supply? Great, they can carry around 10 supply and lose people in a steady trickle of death. They are not a threat, even if they are a 50 person strong group.

Why? Because the other side steam rolled for a reason. They have more than 50 people. Anything they take is reclaimed in seconds to minutes. They can’t fortify. They can’t do anything to defend. They can throw 10 supply into an arrow cart and hope to live 5 min longer…..

So what option is there besides ninjaing Supply camps? Go outside the spawn point and try to get kills.

They aren’t doing it because they are stupid (not all of them). They are doing it because they are bored and want to fight, and the most “balanced” fight they will get is right outside their spawn. Sad sad day.

It is the only safe spot where you know the enemy can’t get closer. Numbers don’t count, only who gets trapped on the line when dancing. And yes, that is better than running north and taking worthless points that won’t last. Doing all that run around results in no reward, only a bill, and only gives the enemy more crap. At least the worthlessness of the spawn camp fight is something, a fight. And one where they might get some loot back.

When more numbers show up, the “camped” will usually flank the enemy to trap them and get as many kills as possible. It’s the only reason people seem to show up, to farm the campers and leave.

hashinshin.9271:

They do have snowball mechanics.

Just that the snowball mechanics help the winners win more, orbs.

This.

Orbs need a downside, right now they help snowball things too much. When I log on and see that one server has all 3 orbs I say to myself “Well, guess I’m not doing WvW this week”.

I should not at any point feel like I am unable to accomplish anything in WvW.

yup definitely need to add this one in