Guild Wars 2

Anet…first off let’s not use the terms WVW Population or WVW Community. There is NO WVW Population. At any given time anyone can be in WVW just like all the other areas of the game. It’s a SERVER Population. The WVW Community is the vast number of players who want to play WVW. Let’s see who is voting in the POLLS. At spawn there are 2 ppl in the corner practicing their emotes, 3 by the Laurel vendor talking about Game of Thrones, then the 4 ppl crafting and the others zipping in and out to use the bank/trader and finally, you have the boat load of ppl who really dont play WVW or know too much about it. They just come in to get their dailies and are gone. Sometimes leaving at a bad time to let other ppl die in fights. I wonder how many ppl just bought the game and are voting and possibly changing the future of WVW for the rest of us after they leave the game to go play DOOM or any other title of the month. WVW has been in a downward spiral since HOT. You have no idea how many ppl you chased away by just perm contesting the wp’s in the home desert bls. That was a bonehead move! Your quick fixes after the fact seem lazy to me. This forced “merger” called being linked has not accomplished a thing. The week AFTER the spring update was great. I saw more ppl coming back talking up WVW and it was a pretty fun week. You didn’t give it enough time. Then came the linking, then came the q’s, then came the zerg/blob fighting on most maps. Not too many nails left to be driven into this WVW coffin. Hire a full time admin person, give them a computer with a survey email address. You have all our email addresses. Send out REAL surveys to ALL the ppl. Yeah you are gonna get some stupid responses but i’m pretty sure you are gonna get some constructive stuff also. Not everyone uses the forums. Not everyone responds to the polls. I even know some avid WVW players who knew nothing about the polls. If you are gonna Dictate what is good for us like the link/merge just do it. Our opinion’s won’t really matter. I hope all the ppl who voted to keep the linking are enjoying DOOM after they log out of GW2 after a mindless zerg/blobbing romp for 20 minutes.. You could have left the servers alone and intact by using a map limit number. You know exactly when to shut off miniatures. Why couldn’t you do this with players on a map, oh wait…that’s already being done? Well how about adjusting the numbers then? Anyone who didn’t like the play was always open to transfer, instead half of us ALL got transferred whether we liked it or not!

Wolfvox.7854:

Anet…first off let’s not use the terms WVW Population or WVW Community. There is NO WVW Population. At any given time anyone can be in WVW just like all the other areas of the game. It’s a SERVER Population. The WVW Community is the vast number of players who want to play WVW. Let’s see who is voting in the POLLS. At spawn there are 2 ppl in the corner practicing their emotes, 3 by the Laurel vendor talking about Game of Thrones, then the 4 ppl crafting and the others zipping in and out to use the bank/trader and finally, you have the boat load of ppl who really dont play WVW or know too much about it. They just come in to get their dailies and are gone. Sometimes leaving at a bad time to let other ppl die in fights. I wonder how many ppl just bought the game and are voting and possibly changing the future of WVW for the rest of us after they leave the game to go play DOOM or any other title of the month. WVW has been in a downward spiral since HOT. You have no idea how many ppl you chased away by just perm contesting the wp’s in the home desert bls. That was a bonehead move! Your quick fixes after the fact seem lazy to me. This forced “merger” called being linked has not accomplished a thing. The week AFTER the spring update was great. I saw more ppl coming back talking up WVW and it was a pretty fun week. You didn’t give it enough time. Then came the linking, then came the q’s, then came the zerg/blob fighting on most maps. Not too many nails left to be driven into this WVW coffin. Hire a full time admin person, give them a computer with a survey email address. You have all our email addresses. Send out REAL surveys to ALL the ppl. Yeah you are gonna get some stupid responses but i’m pretty sure you are gonna get some constructive stuff also. Not everyone uses the forums. Not everyone responds to the polls. I even know some avid WVW players who knew nothing about the polls. If you are gonna Dictate what is good for us like the link/merge just do it. Our opinion’s won’t really matter. I hope all the ppl who voted to keep the linking are enjoying DOOM after they log out of GW2 after a mindless zerg/blobbing romp for 20 minutes.. You could have left the servers alone and intact by using a map limit number. You know exactly when to shut off miniatures. Why couldn’t you do this with players on a map, oh wait…that’s already being done? Well how about adjusting the numbers then? Anyone who didn’t like the play was always open to transfer, instead half of us ALL got transferred whether we liked it or not!

Is it just me? Or is this hard to read? Seriously, my eyes lose focus trying to read the block of text.

Dude come on. Paragraphs are a thing.

Polls are great for CYA but I’m not sure if there’s a “vision” in terms of design unless each poll choice is a potential vision but it all circles back to “if in doubt, CYA.”

The amount of communication and what feels like a ton of time and dev investment here compared to perceived drought prior though, all welcome.

Eternalight.4708:

Is it just me? Or is this hard to read? Seriously, my eyes lose focus trying to read the block of text.

I often wonder if people even bother to re-read what they wrote, and if they’re able to read a block of text like that.

Not reading that block, but good luck with the argument op. Polls should in part determine WvW’s future. It’s a form of feedback, and customer feedback is something every developer should always keep an eye on, overall Anet still has the final decisions on wvw.

Wolfvox.7854:

Anet…first off let’s not use the terms WVW Population or WVW Community. There is NO WVW Population. At any given time anyone can be in WVW just like all the other areas of the game. It’s a SERVER Population. The WVW Community is the vast number of players who want to play WVW. Let’s see who is voting in the POLLS. At spawn there are 2 ppl in the corner practicing their emotes, 3 by the Laurel vendor talking about Game of Thrones, then the 4 ppl crafting and the others zipping in and out to use the bank/trader and finally, you have the boat load of ppl who really dont play WVW or know too much about it. They just come in to get their dailies and are gone. Sometimes leaving at a bad time to let other ppl die in fights. I wonder how many ppl just bought the game and are voting and possibly changing the future of WVW for the rest of us after they leave the game to go play DOOM or any other title of the month. WVW has been in a downward spiral since HOT. You have no idea how many ppl you chased away by just perm contesting the wp’s in the home desert bls. That was a bonehead move! Your quick fixes after the fact seem lazy to me. This forced “merger” called being linked has not accomplished a thing. The week AFTER the spring update was great. I saw more ppl coming back talking up WVW and it was a pretty fun week. You didn’t give it enough time. Then came the linking, then came the q’s, then came the zerg/blob fighting on most maps. Not too many nails left to be driven into this WVW coffin. Hire a full time admin person, give them a computer with a survey email address. You have all our email addresses. Send out REAL surveys to ALL the ppl. Yeah you are gonna get some stupid responses but i’m pretty sure you are gonna get some constructive stuff also. Not everyone uses the forums. Not everyone responds to the polls. I even know some avid WVW players who knew nothing about the polls. If you are gonna Dictate what is good for us like the link/merge just do it. Our opinion’s won’t really matter. I hope all the ppl who voted to keep the linking are enjoying DOOM after they log out of GW2 after a mindless zerg/blobbing romp for 20 minutes.. You could have left the servers alone and intact by using a map limit number. You know exactly when to shut off miniatures. Why couldn’t you do this with players on a map, oh wait…that’s already being done? Well how about adjusting the numbers then? Anyone who didn’t like the play was always open to transfer, instead half of us ALL got transferred whether we liked it or not!

If they didn’t know about the polls that is THEIR fault…especially if they are “avid” players… Like you actually get in game mail from Anet when you gain a WvW rank giving you a link to the polls… It is their fault if they don’t read them and just delete them. It is also their fault for not being aware and informed of what is going on.

I read the wall of text because I was bored.

OP’s main argument, as far as I can tell, is that polls are skewed because non-serious players cause poll responses to be non-representative of the real wvw population. The alleged non-serious players include: those who use wvw for crafting, laurel vendors, mystic forge, practicing emotes, chat rooms (specifically discussing game of thrones), trading posts/merchant, dailies, etc.

OP suggests that ANet hire an “admin” to email all the “real” wvw players with a survey instead.

Various other tangents in there. I don’t agree with any of it, but shrug

I read it and it has many valid points. I’ve done wvw pretty much every day for the last few years. When the new wvw maps came out with the h.o.t release, many of us wvw players were unhappy. We were given a much bigger map, awful terrain, and it was just a big pain. The laser event lagged, classes we more unbalanced and no one wanted on the new maps. BUT Anet making some changes recently to wvw did help some. They added wvw tracks, slightly balanced some stuff and gave us back old maps. Anet seems to be trying so that’s a good thing.

( I just wished the top 6 servers weren’t “full” because in t1 BG is way too overpopulated, TC has almost as many players as BG but not quite and YB is barely hanging on and have lost people. in T2 JQ has a crap ton of SEA population but nothing else really. DB about as much people as JQ and FA still seems to be missing some people even though it says its “full” a few days back FA wasn’t full and some people were going to come here but now it’s locked. )

I don’t know how they are deciding the population, but the people in 3rd in t1 and t2 seem to not have as many people as the other servers.

I am glad that anet started to care about wvw, and they can’t make everyone happy and fix everything, but i’m glad they have been trying. Balancing some things could help, and tweaking the population a bit. Also better reward tracks with more siege from them, foods, and stones. Also random nice weapon or armor exotic drops. =)

Another thing would be to add an additional wvw option where you can queue up with 15-25 people and face another group for 20 mins for a grudge match on any server. It’d be a lot of fun =)

Mushin.3928:

OP’s main argument, as far as I can tell, is that polls are skewed because non-serious players cause poll responses to be non-representative of the real wvw population. The alleged non-serious players include: those who use wvw for crafting, laurel vendors, mystic forge, practicing emotes, chat rooms (specifically discussing game of thrones), trading posts/merchant, dailies, etc.

He doesn’t have to worry then cause the notifications only goes to those that have at least 10 ranks and gained a rank that week. It was purposely done like that to avoid notifying the casuals who only pop in for dailies and crafting.

I doubt there’s that many of those players around to make that significant of a swing in the votes.

After radio silence for so many years, I’m quite encouraged by all the willingness to get feedback. It establishes a registered (democratic) history and squashes the “if I yell loud enough I’ll get my way” crowd that has wreaked havoc in so many MMOs.

I’m a fan.

I wrote in another thread that there should be a Reward Track for each poll we’re voting on. That you have to finish a certain amount of time in WvW before voting on each poll. That at least assures a player has some experience in WvW to formulate an opinion before voting.

I agree.

ANet should listen to me only. Who cares about the majority. Only I know what is good for WvW.

And I say, MORE PVE!

The wvw development team has done a complete 180. They communicate better than ever. They listen to our feedback. They repost a lot of their reddit posts here. We even get to vote on which updates we want or don’t want. They are gauging what the community wants in the best possible way they can and still you ask for more. *sigh some people will never be satisfied.

This is pure gold.

The wvw team is finally focusing on wvw and you are mad because they are asking the opinions of the players because in your mind, the only people that vote are…. I don’t even know.

Fairly sure there is some kind of metric they have in place for whom they send the polls to, as in having played X number of hours WvW per week etc.

/popcorn

(yes I’ll take the next infraction, but really????)

I’ve been very hard on Anet over the years, very hard on them, due to the lack of attention they had shown WvW, the lack of understand of how WvW operates and needs to operate, and the disconnect between them and the playerbase. That being said, I’m very happy with the way they’ve been approaching things recently, the attention they’ve been giving to WvW, and for how they’re reaching out to the community to get real feedback.

In my opinion, WvW has certainly improved since they began with their current efforts, and it looks like it will get even better as they continue. This was the dramatic shift that’s been so desperately needed to pull WvW out of the tailspin it was in, and while it’s not a “wave of a magic wand, poof, everything’s perfect” situation, there have been gradual steady improvements.

Hopefully, this greater understanding will lead to more pronounced improvements in the future, such as a new map that actually is functional for WvW and is designed around strategic layout rather than a thematic landscape. And hopefully they’ll continue getting community feedback every step of the way to ensure that it will be a map people will enjoy playing.

While I do agree than a well informed opinion is far more valuable than an uniformed opinion, customer feedback on all levels is crucial for success. Will every step of the way be perfect? No, there will still be misteps here and there, but overall the general direction of the game mode will be moving towards a much better state. One that will bring a few old players back, and help attract new players as well. I can’t really complain about that.

Just because the poll doesn’t get the answer YOU want, doesn’t mean it doesn’t get the answer WE want. Your opinion differs from that of others. Polls do work, and they are actively pushing these polls in game to encourage people to vote.

I personally liked the desert borderland when we were Tier 6, and I LOVE the desert borderlands now that we’re Tier 2. Population made the world of difference on those maps. I miss them and can’t wait to be back in the desert. Just because I enjoy the Desert BL map doesn’t mean we should have ONLY the desert bl map. There are others that love the Alpine Map. I believe we should have a mix of both. Then everyone wins.

What nonsense. Anets vision for WvW differed to the vision the players had and it led to the slow demise of the game mode and very few updates.

They’re now reaching out and letting us have some input via the polls and beta testing and so far it’s been going well.

The polls are slowly but surely leading us towards a WvW that the majority of players want, if you or others feel like your preferred choices aren’t being picked then actively vote.

It’s worth noting that it shouldn’t just be WvW only players voting, the game mode is for everyone and if someone feels like voting may make the game mode playable for them then they should be able to do so. Although I’d imagine it’s still WvW players that are making up the majority of votes on the polls.

Polls accomplish a couple things:

1) It gives the active dev team some insight into what players want
2) It indicates to the players that the dev team is active and trying to listen to them
3) It takes the hot air out of the vocal minority on issues complaining about… whatever, and shows they don’t represent the population in general

I’m happy with the polls. The system in which feedback is solicited in secret from specially identified people in the community seemed to result in changes that weren’t representative of what a wide spectrum of the population wanted.

Soliciting opinions is GREAT and I absolutely commend Anet for all the attention and improvements that we have seen in WvW recently. Listening to our opinions and acting on them, through feedback on the forums, polls, etc gets them the buy-in they need from we wvw’ers and we get to drive a lot of the changes.

With that being said, sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves so my hope is that if we get too far off the track, Anet can put the brakes on something that may be too crazy.

Currently, I’m way more cautiously optimistic than I am worried.

Knob.6835:

The wvw development team has done a complete 180. They communicate better than ever. They listen to our feedback. They repost a lot of their reddit posts here. We even get to vote on which updates we want or don’t want. They are gauging what the community wants in the best possible way they can and still you ask for more. *sigh some people will never be satisfied.

This is exactly right!

We kittened and moaned for years that ANet never listened. Now they listen more than I can believe, and people say they aren’t listening to the right people? Jeez

lolol… there is NO way you will avoid the people that just live to complain… Regardless of how you slice it someone will find a way to say you are doing it wrong. ah yes… popcorn mode on… chillin… and waiting for DBL’s to come back to make me smile more.. hehe..

Wolfvox.7854:

Not everyone uses the forums. Not everyone responds to the polls. I even know some avid WVW players who knew nothing about the polls.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

We chose to target active players for polls, because they are actually playing WvW and thus have the largest stake in the result. Many inactive players may never come back, or come back only briefly. We don’t think it would be fair to let the votes of those who have quit playing shape the result for those that are still playing.

Dunno about you man, but I’ve been getting in-game mails about these polls. And if people are too lazy or stubborn to sign up to the forum to cast their vote, then that’s just too kitten bad. Evidently they don’t care about WvW as much as they say they do.

Just seems to me that there are far too many people kittening about these polls when this is the most communication we’ve had from the Devs ever. Just cast your vote using the polls and take part in re-shaping WvW, or don’t vote at all and keep on kittening from the sidelines.

If anything self selection would bias the polls towards the people that are most serious about wvw.

Ohh yes,pools are voice of community,not a vocal minority made of 20 people that keeps spaming forums about something they dont like.