Guild Wars 2

I’ve been chatting to people on my server and to people in places like Lion’s Arch and have reached the following conclusions:
1) A fair proportion of players started playing WvW when doing map completion, found they liked it and continued to play WvW even after getting map completion. Removing WvW from map completion has deprived WvW of a major recruitment tool.
2) Although replacing Servers with Alliances will solve Map population issues in the short term, it will also loose WvW players and discourage new players in the long term which means the “Cons” far outweigh the “Pros” on this idea.
3) Past easy server hopping by guilds has shed a lot of players from WvW. Every time a guild hops servers there will be a few that stay behind and some of these will stop playing and after hopping some that did hop will also stop playing WvW within a month or two unless they have the gems to hop back to their previous server.
4) A fair amount of people are now “OK” with the new borderlands, however there are people who still won’t even try them. There needs to be an incentive to get these people to at least try them. However everyone generally agrees that it would be nice to have the alpine ones back on occasion.
It should be remembered that there were similar reactions to previous borderland changes such as the removal of the orbs of power and the replacement of the krait & quagans with the ruins.
5) Most people believe that re-acquiring the +5 supply claim for their guilds was far too difficult.

There were others – but this seemed highly prominent in the discussions.

1) although map completion did encourage those making precursors into WvW it wasn’t a good method. Far too many people ended up stuck needing one interest point for weeks on end. I do agree with you that WvW needs publicity and unique rewards which it does not have at the moment. Perhaps Legendary armor pieces and back items can be earned through WvW rewards as well as raids and fractals?
2) Alliances won’t cure WvW’s problems, we agre on that. I would prefer reducing map numbers, at least temporarily.

3) There needs to be a free server transfer option, along with Loyalty rewards for remaining on your present server. Also some way to encourage players to spread out a bit between servers.

4) The new desert borderlands need improving, they are too complex, time consuming and difficult to get around. Anet have stated they are examining the problem and will be trying to fix it.

The Orbs were removed because of people cheating. I miss the quaggan lake but this was done because guild groups generally avoided crossing it. The ruins, once they were adjusted, did add more than they subtracted.

5)+5? I have +3 on one toon, which means I should get 18 supply from a buffed camp or tower. Sometimes when picking up supply I get 23…. Is this a bug or something else?

Don’t forget what Megasever did to each server for rallying and recruitment. That in itself was a major blow.

Serious.7083:

5)+5? I have +3 on one toon, which means I should get 18 supply from a buffed camp or tower. Sometimes when picking up supply I get 23…. Is this a bug or something else?

I was talking about Guild Buffs (not Character WvW masteries) – under the old system a guild could “build” a +5 supply capacity buff which when activated allowed anyone who collected supply from a location claimed by that guild to pick up an extra 5 supply.
This has been replaced by guild aura 8 which does the same thing but has a ton of pre-requisites that the guild has to upgrade first including a minimum guild level of 37.

Nidome.1365:

1) A fair proportion of players started playing WvW when doing map completion, found they liked it and continued to play WvW even after getting map completion. Removing WvW from map completion has deprived WvW of a major recruitment tool.

At the time I got map completion there was free transfers and everyone then just transferred to the server ticking 600+ points to get the last few points and then transferred back. Players also did this in PvE when some events were bugged. With HoT, WvW players can unlock elite specializations in WvW, it just takes a long time. Bring back WvW map completion but make PvE players have the option to unlock WvW locations through a PvE method that takes just as long.

Nidome.1365:

2) Although replacing Servers with Alliances will solve Map population issues in the short term, it will also loose WvW players and discourage new players in the long term which means the “Cons” far outweigh the “Pros” on this idea.

In NA, it’s both the players and Anet that have caused the population problem. Players bandwagon. They want the easy win. Anet hasn’t taken a more forceful hand in balancing player population distribution. Gems for transfer didn’t stop overstacking. In some cases, gems for transfer is the same as pay to play. If you replace servers with alliances or megaservers you still need a way to balance population so WvW doesn’t turn into the equivalent of a 4v5 sPvP match.

Nidome.1365:

3) Past easy server hopping by guilds has shed a lot of players from WvW. Every time a guild hops servers there will be a few that stay behind and some of these will stop playing and after hopping some that did hop will also stop playing WvW within a month or two unless they have the gems to hop back to their previous server.

Guilds have more resources to send scouts before transferring, single players don’t. Even though commanders also talk to each other, it doesn’t always mean that when a guild hops servers that there will be a good fit. Last week was my guild leader’s last week in WvW, they might come back after overhaul, they might not. We usually ran 25-30 on reset. Last night there were 6 online, only 3 in WvW maps.

Nidome.1365:

4) A fair amount of people are now “OK” with the new borderlands, however there are people who still won’t even try them. There needs to be an incentive to get these people to at least try them. However everyone generally agrees that it would be nice to have the alpine ones back on occasion.

At this point players would rather sit in a queue for EBG then play on a BL. I think the players have spoken on this one. Anet should be listening. It used to be guilds would go to alpine maps and the others would go to EBG. Players have been playing WvW without incentives, adding incentives might not make game experience better.

Nidome.1365:

5) Most people believe that re-acquiring the +5 supply claim for their guilds was far too difficult.

The whole HoT guild hall was poorly thought out with respect to WvW specific guilds.

Swamurabi.7890

At this point players would rather sit in a queue for EBG then play on a BL. I think the players have spoken on this one. Anet should be listening. It used to be guilds would go to alpine maps and the others would go to EBG. Players have been playing WvW without incentives, adding incentives might not make game experience better.

The main issue is getting people to actually try the borders. Most of the people who have given them a proper try are “OK” with them but the problem is the people who “Someone told a friend of mine that the new borders are crap so I’m not even going to consider looking for myself”.
This causes a strange issue where servers in the EU (don’t know about US) which have lesser numbers but are willing to run on borders are sometimes performing better in matchups than you would expect.
Most of the EB oriented groups seem to “lootbag” focussed so maybe if the odds of getting lootbags rather than spikes on borderlands was increased then maybe it would encourage people to at least give them a try.
Alternatively making the oasis a flatter area and removing some of the ambient creatures could make it a more open fight friendly area.

I don’t think the new BL are good for new players. Even if you have played the map a lot it still can be difficult to navigate. I dunno how new players manage it. Because its so convoluted its hard to explain where you are and how to get there. I think this is very user unfriendly and makes it hard to get new people in.

I got into WvW from map completion. I still remember the weeks to get that last vista in the red keep it was a total pain. Forcing people into a mode they do not like tho just sucks. Like with the badges of honour people need. Its cool if its armour or skins or tokens for runes/sigils (many pve maps have that) that is not something people have to have. Its not fun for anyone forcing them into a mode they are not interested in, maybe some will get into the mode but others wont. Its meant to be a game ans fun after all.

Yes the server hopping and guild shedding is a PIA. There should be something for those of us who have been loyal and tried to keep a server going. The fewer people there are on a server the harder u have to work and more hours to put in cos there are less of you. Its very demoralising.

Sever transforms I think are the biggest killer. I have been on the same server playing WvW from Beta. I have seen guilds come and go slowing killing our severs population. a New guild will come from a different sever, they play in a odd time zone when we had few people on. so people welcome the change at first, they recruit like mad. then within a month or 2 they move on to another sever for whatever reason, taking some of what few players we already had in the time zone. This happens again and again, with other guilds, leaving just a skeleton crew left in that odd time zone. To the point that even the hardcore loyal to the sever just give up and stop WvWing because there are just so few of us left to do anything.

So this is what they need to fix or stop somehow. if we are to have any hope for WvW in the future for all the severs.

Nidome.1365:

Swamurabi.7890

At this point players would rather sit in a queue for EBG then play on a BL. I think the players have spoken on this one. Anet should be listening. It used to be guilds would go to alpine maps and the others would go to EBG. Players have been playing WvW without incentives, adding incentives might not make game experience better.

The main issue is getting people to actually try the borders. Most of the people who have given them a proper try are “OK” with them but the problem is the people who “Someone told a friend of mine that the new borders are crap so I’m not even going to consider looking for myself”.
This causes a strange issue where servers in the EU (don’t know about US) which have lesser numbers but are willing to run on borders are sometimes performing better in matchups than you would expect.
Most of the EB oriented groups seem to “lootbag” focussed so maybe if the odds of getting lootbags rather than spikes on borderlands was increased then maybe it would encourage people to at least give them a try.
Alternatively making the oasis a flatter area and removing some of the ambient creatures could make it a more open fight friendly area.

In NA, it was a kind of an honor to be in a guild assigned to a BL, whether it was defend home BL or to attack one of the other two BLs. New players tended to go to EBG, and after learning the WvW ropes, they used to migrate to one of the BLs and find a guild to join.

T2 NA has bled so many players there’s no longer the group of players waiting at the BL portals at reset. Plus there has been in NA for the longest time the imbalance between T1 and T3, something mercifully missing from EU. NA tiers have been locked in stagnation match after match after match. Another NA issue is the fact that there are those that take more pride in winning the week then by being better, so the strategies of overstacking, buying guilds, “blackouts” to allow transfers, and siege humping have cursed the NA WvW experience.

On top of all this you’ve had HoT guild halls, stability nerf, imbalanced elite specializations, banners, chilling fog, airship and all the other upgrades that make playing for PPT easier then playing the skilled PPK “lootbag” version of WvW. It becomes less and less likely for the old NA GvG or fights guilds to even play when they’re faced with opponents that would rather run back to their oversieged castles, keeps and towers.

The solution is < Faction Tournaments >. Eliminate current server match system. Let guilds join a faction (between current 3 wvw colors) for limited time, few weeks (tournament), and give rewards accordingly of the faction evolution.