Guild Wars 2

Yes, we had bandwagoners, spies, achievement hunters, hackers and wvw griefers. This is even in the bronze league where the population isn’t that high (more chance to bandwagon though looks at RoS. They went bronze league for “fun fights”)

I disagree. While there are things that should have been different about it – no toxic yada yada dumped in half way through the league, no achievement points etc, I thought it was ok.

The single biggest change I would make would be to the final matchup. Leave that one open to be the top 3 scorers from the prior six weeks. That match-up finale would be the final positions 1-2-3. Do the same for the other matchups and that gives a server who may have had an off week or two a chance to jump up a couple places.

Many guilds on my server left because they didn’t want to be the last one of the league (being rolled over).
Many guilds are discussing about leaving, because their players have no fun – many players of my own guild just stopped playing the game.
Seasons brought a crappy ambiance on my server, just this week, two more guilds left – because some wants to be competitive, even if we can’t win any (and get angry at PvEers for not playing the game – which leads to insults where before, they would just have made fun of it) – and some just want to try and keep the fun going, but they are made to feel bad by those who wants to play the competition…

Some more guilds intends to leave if we fall in the lower tier for next season – because they see no challenge in it…

Leagues are killing my server… They encourage staking up on servers that have better chances of winning, they are not funny.

There’s lots of work to do to balance the leagues, if they want to redo them.

I reckon it ignited the interest of many players that stopped playing for a while… but the losses have been greater…

So, Though I hate leagues, if they want to redo them
1) balance opposing servers according to presence at X time – do not put 24h full servers againts a server that has only coverage at prime timeà
2) balance the lines – That a server might get 80 people on while another have the inferio buff and there are lines up everywhere shouldn’t happen
3) Stop transfers a few weeks before leagues, and all through the leagues (anyone sees sport teams exchanging players during the competition, or mid-way though a game?)
4) No success in leagues! Maybe use dailies to measure participation, with the more one does, the more one gets, if you have to measure participation.

Forgot to mention : They should have made it a real competition where the winning servers keep in the competition, the losing one is eliminated and gets to play normally…

I have to agree…mostly because WvW server transfers were not blocked during the season. That alone would have stopped bandwagoners and spies. The other part was that the rankings WERE NOT FINALIZED AT THE ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE LEAGUE’S START! Because of that, you had servers purposefully lose to get into a lower tier where they could just steamroll everybody else. This season was a failure, and I hope Anet does better for season 2…WvW shouldn’t be this annoying.

Vimtor.5483:

“The Season 1 is a failure overall”. Do you agree?

Yes. Servers are completely unbalanced and victory is pretty much assured because certain servers have more players, others have less. The ones with more population win, end of story, no competition. On that note, some servers are marked as high population, but a big percentage of their players have stopped playing and still count for high population. Transfers are broken. The worst thing is that the servers with more blobs will be rewarded more than servers with organized small scale teams, because blobs overpower anything.

it had pluses and minuses. it could have had mostly pluses. it was a success compared to having no season at all. it was a failure compared to what the season could have done for wvw.

I think the leagues have been a success.

SoR, TC, FA, DB have all shrunk since the announcement of leagues two and a half months ago meanwhile SBI, EB, HoD, FC have grown in size. The bottom is growing stronger meanwhile the top is getting weaker. This is a step in the right direction.

I know SoR is losing a few guilds once the leagues end in 2 weeks. It’s sad to see many players that I consider friends leave to go elsewhere but it’s probably better for the longevity of the game.

I know emotions are running high on BG right now and rightfully they should. They were the underdog of the big three entering the league and they prevailed. Good for them. But at some point their players are going to realize that the servers they once considered to be competition are not competition anymore. Hopefully some of their vested guilds will take that as a sign to move off and balance the leagues even more.

It’s a slow process and it has its growing pains, but I do think it’s been a success.

Not a failure
Servers were unbalanced before league, guilds jumped ship before league, weekly matches were a mess before league, etc etc.
What league did do is bring way more people out even if in a lot of cases it was temporary. It gave some new achievments, some slightly new chest rewards, the final reward of course at the end which we still speculate about. In short it gave us some new rewards, definetey more people, something to follow.
It did not change anything that was happening previous to league. Sure, the top 3 servers were going to win (we don’t know what they won yet) but those top 3 servers were going to stomp everyone else weekly anyway
The hope is that they learn from the first league, take feedback, etc. so future attempts make WvW better.
I really like the one idea about the final week having the top 3 of each bracket, compete together. take it step further and have every 3 ranks of each bracket fight during the final week. Even if you are not going to win top 3, likely it would be a closer match up and bragging rights is everything

was “make wvw more competitive” really an issue we wanted dealt with asap? i dont think so, because itll naturally become more competitive if we have close matches between all servers almost all the time.

so to answer, yes its a disappointment… its a solution to a problem that i dont think needed to be given priority over server population imbalances, which is closely related and has a huge impact on competitiveness. i am disappointed that the game is still about who has off hour coverage or who significantly outnumbers whom. i am disappointed that matchmaking is predetermined.

however, the achieve points are definitely a step in the right direction. the old ones are silly. the rewards remain to be seen… but the revamp of the system is a whole lot nicer and doable and definitely not a disappointment. it does still need work pending a revamp of defense event accreditation/rewards (only 1 achieve is not offense based, and it doesnt make a distinction between well-used and wasted supplies).

Good idea, bad execution

No, not a failure.

Most of the problems people have mentioned in this thread are WvW problems, not seasonal league tournament problems. Just the fact that you have all these angry people who suddenly care about their WvW status when they didn’t give a kitten before is a huge success.

Yes it’s a failure because I’ve gone broke from the subscription fees Anet charges me for the boatloads of hours and enjoyment I extract from WvW. Also I don’t appreciate the pay to play aspect of the game where I’m forced to buy in-game items to get a competitive edge.

You know what, even if I didn’t pay for these things, I’d still be unhappy coz I’m an unappreciative, insatiable gamer.

On NSP. Still having a blast despite PPT. Good fights, little lag now that the PVE bandwagon is over. Great people to play with.

Season 1 has been a huge success for me!

GvG is what Guild Wars 2 need. Smaller maps with similar objectives, 12 vs 12 or 25 vs 25.

No failure but there is much room for improvement.

I agree they were terrible. I’ve never been so unmotivated to WvW since launch. I’m probably not even going to get the meta-achievement done and I used to WvW all the time.

The core problems with WvW are still present but the league system is a step up from both of the previous matchup systems we had before. The random matchup system was a mess and the stagnant ranked matchup system before that was very boring. So this has been improved upon.

However, there’s much improvement to be made within the league system. For example, each server needs to face every other server in their league the same amount. At present it doesn’t matter how well your server did struggling against the most dominant server(s) in your league, because other servers will be able to outscore you safe in the knowledge that they won’t have to face the most dominant server(s) as frequently as you do.

If each server in a league faces every other server say, twice and no more, then this would eliminate the scenario I described above and provide a truer ppt representation of each server’s strength (err, coverage) relative to every other server in the league. If this means that subsequent leagues need to be extended, then so be it.

if anything, it’s made me numb to wvw – I play it now like another quest – I don’t feel inclined to get excited about it anymore ….which in the end is better for me because I don’t want to feel like “I HAVE TO” anything in this game. You can’t take it serious else it goes against why we buy games ….to have fun.

Disempower the game and you will have more fun and play however, whenever and don’t feel bad when you miss a week or month. The security and game flow just isn’t strong enough to build on.

I actually have more fun chatting on forum now than in game lol

I dont think it was a bad idea.

However, I dont believe it was a good idea with all your ducks not in a row. This definately feels like we are beta testing wvw.

1. PPT shouldnt declare a winner with current population balance issues
2. Some classes still need work to give them a proper place in WVW
3. Toxic or any other event that effects the purpose of wvw shouldnt be there.
4. Commander colored tags would be great

And lastly, when it comes to meta, it should have included daily wvw tasks.

Also, I believe Edge of the Mist is going to create a new problem. To me it feels more like it is a diversion that used up talent, time and resources that couldve been used to tackle the real issues of wvw. So now instead of sacrificing my time because I choose not to leave an over wvw populated server, I get to gain wvw experience without worrying about helping my community. I understand its to lure PVE players to WVW, but face it, the jumping puzzles and regular events havent brought them, therefore chances are, this wont either.

Sorry for speaking my mind, back to wvw I go.

BlazeQ.1095:

On NSP. Still having a blast despite PPT. Good fights, little lag now that the PVE bandwagon is over. Great people to play with.

Season 1 has been a huge success for me!

I’m from NSP as well, and the way I see it, if you play the way Anet intends you to play (for PPT), the season has been a total and absolute failure.

However, if you play to get in fights and take loot bags, (i.e., “violating the game mode”) then it’s been more or less the same as before.

I don’t know about the other tiers and servers, but things have gone super boring in FA (silver tier) since the third week.

So yeah it is a disappointment. But I’m still waiting for the genius who invented it to prove me wrong.

Vimtor.5483:

I find no fun in running around hoping that the zerg I encounter is smaller than mine because numbers are the only thing that actually matters in Guild Wars 2 WvW.

I am sorry but I often run with a zerg that wipes larger zergs, and have many times been wiped by a smaller zerg. Numbers is not the only factor. Good battle tactics and the element of surprise are immensely important. running tight and stacked on the commander is a massive benefit. I have been involved with 30 man zergs that have wiped 50 man zergs because we just played better. I have also been on the flip side. There are advanced moves and tactics that make an incredible difference (mostly Mesmer based)

As for the season, yes I am incredibly satisfied and had a great time. yes I think it could be better, but it was fun and many a good battle was had.

My fun this season – not a complete failure but no where near a success. Anet learning anything from it – we will see. The only success this season has been that the server I’m on has gotten more organized and is using better tactics.

I’m not sure why they had League in the first place, honestly. It’s an inherently imbalanced game, and giving it the trappings of actual, legitimate competition is kinda absurd to me, just in concept. But someone asked for this, so here we are.

Whether it’s a failure or not? That’s a question of what it set out to do in the first place.

If the intent was to add a sense of competition between servers… well, that worked for a short term period, depending on what server you’re on. First couple of weeks may have been interesting, but the issue of coverage has only been magnified by League existing, and we’ve seen a number of demoralized servers choosing to do other things with their time.

If the intent was to attract new blood, that worked, certainly. Numbers are up as a whole, even if the dedicated WvW set hates it. It probably would have been a good idea to throw the achievement bait sometime when everyone wasn’t so hypercompetitive. It would’ve helped the new kids integrate better, which is important to keep the whole thing going.

If it was to get people to have fun? Nnngh… Well, I can only speak for my own server, but I’ve seen the general mood sour incredibly in chat. I know I’ve seen a few threads basically asking people to come back and play with them, because they’re getting lonely. I’ve seen an awful lot of complaining about an awful lot of things, and some of that is just the nature of internet forums, but I get the sense there are more dissatisfied people out there than happy ones in regards to the season.

So is this a failure? Maybe, but hopefully they’ve learned from this, and we’ll have a good long while to let the tension levels drop while they work out Season 2. Which is inevitable.

(P.S.: Toxic stuff in the zone can get bent. I’ve seen no one happy that that kitten is there.)

Serkz.3140:

Yes it’s a failure because I’ve gone broke from the subscription fees Anet charges me for the boatloads of hours and enjoyment I extract from WvW. Also I don’t appreciate the pay to play aspect of the game where I’m forced to buy in-game items to get a competitive edge.

You know what, even if I didn’t pay for these things, I’d still be unhappy coz I’m an unappreciative, insatiable gamer.

Subscription fees? I always make money in WvW, although its no champ farming. What in-game items are you being “forced” to buy?

No.

Here’s why. I could care less about anything outside of my own server and this season has done nothing but good things to the server itself.

1. Player improvements, communication improvements
2. New players have stepped through the portal. New players have got there butt kicked, new players took an accelerated WvW 101 course and caught up to speed witnessing some of the most memorable and challenging tasks any get to experience. In short, they now became vets because of this experience.
3. The overall server has had some come some leave, and the player base supporting WvW still stood strong and carried the server upwards. This was never expected, and one of the greatest testaments to the players who stayed and carried on.
4. Season made for some great cross server rivalry, even made some new friends
5. I made a wider network of friends (personally I feel this as a single player, is great)

In terms of balance, there is still glaring issues, but this season can highlight and show those with facts in a competitive area where they are indeed collecting data.

More players played across ALL servers.

All of this to me highlights a success, and shows there will be more sound data to build from.

When the wright brothers invented flying (won’t go into the legal fluff pls refrain). They did not fly on first run, they tweaked updated and got there over time.

Why is it this so hard to see, since launch … many things have been tested and some dropped, some added, some changed. But … there was once a time, where none of this would have happened.

i look to the future and see they have a vision, whereas before WvW was all but neglected entirely for 6 months straight.

Are there alot to work through like:

- Scoring system to find good balance for scoring without coverage dictating?
- Commander tag improvements, raid system improvements?
-The grunt work – yak walkers, siege builders and the dirty work very little do?
-Map improvements?

Yes, but that has no bounding on the SEASON.

This season brought more players INTO wvw many first timers who now are staying. This SEASON also brought much needed data on pop, battles, coverage, and scoring overall.

This SEASON brought the overall WvW community across all servers closer together.

Just my 2c, this is a success- for 7 weeks it was ‘new’ weekly.

~X [STUN], Tarnished Coast

I don’t even understand half the complaint in your post. PvEers who came to fill the que up should be long gone, whatever is left would augment your force, I don’t see them keeping you in que for more than 15min on reset night. The largest population servers in NA has not complained about this since week 2 of the seasons, so I’m not sure how this is even a real problem in the lower tiers.

You complain about being wiped by larger zergs than you own because of the influx of players. If there is an influx shouldn’t it be on all servers? If the ycna keep their zergs together by using their augmented PvE population why couldn’t your server?

Night time coverage resulting in wins happened before leagues, it’s happened since the start of the game. How does it even matter if a force of 10 guy took all the undefended keeps/towers at night than if it were actually 30-50 guys taking all of it. You’re still asleep in both scenarios and you still wake up to a map full of the enemies colors.

If you’re going to critique the league and what it’s changed, then don’t attribute things that it didn’t usher in. Spies, mass exodus, cheating and even sabatoge has happened way before league started. Saying that these things started with leagues tells me you’ve never participated in WvW or WvW community until leagues started.

My personal feelings on leagues is neutral. It hasn’t brought much positive or negatives from my perspective, the numbers of complaint has remain the same. Instead of the same people asking for change and people telling Anet that if there isn’t big change comming soon GW2 will die because WvW population will die (disregarding PvE has a much larger population). We get people who wants to go back to the pre-league system. So I could only imagine when S1 is over what the forums will be like.

the price of gems are already skyrocketing in anticipation of the mass transfers that lay ahead at the end of the season :P they need to randomly assign a wvw player a server number and then your stuck fighting for that number for the season. no guilds. no organization beforehand. no transfers off till its over.

No, Season 1 has been a blast. Can’t wait for season 2!

Jocksy.3415:

Forgot to mention : They should have made it a real competition where the winning servers keep in the competition, the losing one is eliminated and gets to play normally…

It’s a season, not a playoffs tournament.

Season 1 has been pretty good for TC as a t1.5 server. I think it has improved our game. I know it has improved my play, and I think I can feel it in others, that we have gotten stronger. We are enjoying wins where we expected to loose. Lots of “good job” comments.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

Season 1 has been pretty good for TC as a t1.5 server. I think it has improved our game. I know it has improved my play, and I think I can feel it in others, that we have gotten stronger. We are enjoying wins where we expected to loose. Lots of “good job” comments.

It’s been miserable in Silver League. We have 2-3 servers who really should have been up there with you guys in Gold League, and are instead just steamrolling the rest of us in Silver.

They shouldn’t have done this before they fixed the coverage issues in some way.

Beyond disappointing & I REFUSE TO PAY MY WAY TO A BETTER SERVER.

Since when was Guild Wars PAY TO WIN?

I can only simply say it hasn’t lived up to the Hype:

There are big discrepancies between each servers coverage and population, servers became overstacked whether it’s down to Guilds or the PVE influx; It forced many Guilds to transfer away from their server even if they were attached to their community before or during the Leagues, this is because of increased queue times and the lack of a proper queue system.

Due to the reduced transfer costs before Season One started – it gave people the chance to transfer to Servers that they believed could compete best in their League, this has only made matters worse and broken communities.

The positives you can find is that: There has been good small to big scale fights to be found especially against many Guilds in the EU Silver Leagues, this has been a nice challenge to face despite the imbalanced matchups.

Although my own server has been able to be complacent due to our superior coverage, during prime time we’ve often been caught disorganized because it’ sbeen a struggle to organize ourselves and the pugs unless they know what they’re doing, or they are willing to learn due to the lack of wvw Guilds we have.
It’s only ended up with alot of needless flaming and QQ against us, this is all because of Anet’s lack of care to address the wvw metagame.

General Feedback

Yes and no, it did what they wanted… rekindle some peoples interest in WvW, at least for a short while, and address the issue of reasonable achievements and AP rewards for WvW players without invalidating the handful of people who actually have achievements from the old category.

The problem with it is… because it is seasonal and by definition temporary any effects it had are also transient in the long run. Sure the golden dolyak finisher will be neat (for a time), but what for the next season… will they just go through different animals or what?

However, I hold a small fear that when those reward chests are opened at the end of this season there will be an angry mob on the internet thirsting for blood… be it because the rewards are too good and PvE players will feel excluded or they are too bad and both WvW and PvE players (who did not skip the meta) will be up in arms for wasting time on the achievement.

I personally think they should have first made Edge of the Mists and used it as a testing ground for new mechanics then integrate the popular stuff to the existing maps where possible… and then do a season. Chances are they will intend to do just that and the first season was just something to give them time to start that process.

They should have encouraged small group play and tactics but I am guessing the achievement system can’t keep track of more than one metric at a time. So an achievement that has condition take over X towers with Y people would not be possible and it would also cause players to shun others who show up to help uninvited.

Also the problem with people in theory being able to pre-emptively transfer to the predicted winner to flag themselves as participant there and then transferring back to their own server to avoid tier 1 queue is really not something that should have been possible.

The Achievements (as metric of participation, and a tool to drive gameplay)

The achievements themselves had some issues, mainly the most solo friendly of them took the longest (aside from supply camps) so it really fed into the zerg mentality to get them done the quickest. Probably also on tier 1 servers they completed the meta within the firs week. When you see people running in a circle quite literally to do the “Master of Ruins” then that is the sign that either the ruins mechanic is not what it is supposed to be or that the achievement should have been different.

For example here is how I would have reworked the ruins into achievements… a set of three and being awarded for reaching a particular level of bloodlust (minor, major, superior) and perhaps one for capturing the ruins as well but being made optional by three extra achievements that actually drive gameplay.. I didn’t like that fact that you only got to pick and choose what achievements to complete if you did the jumping puzzles. There is no choice for those who do not want to do the puzzles which are something entirely not related to WvW except by their meager loot (and in some cases an exercise on refraining from being a troll). More achievements for choice and ones that do not involve gaming the systems but drive useful gameplay.

The only kind of useful achievement, in my opinion, in terms of gameplay quality was the one about supply on repairs, but then why wasn’t there one for defending different objectives in general they have events in the system for those and I don’t think they hand out rewards without actual attackers.

TL;DR: They need better ways to track participation and encourage actually good gameplay styles and devalue mindless zerging, also rewards are very unclear outside the top three placing worlds for each set.

I am on an EU-Gold Server lots and lots of people have stacked onto.
Did the League bring me any fun I didn’t have before? No.
On the contrary. It brought me absurd queues. It cut my playtime in half. And the remaining playtime is tainted by the queue crippled teamplay and the impact of the achievement hunters.
The League just took lots of fun away from me.
And in my book this is a complete failure.

Imho the wvw overflow map should have come BEFORE the season to make sure everyone can play wvw at any time they want.

Lirra.5410:

Imho the wvw overflow map should have come BEFORE the season to make sure everyone can play wvw at any time they want.

Agreed, would have also been great for people just doing it for the meta and not the server.

Funny thing is I play on Blacktide, have since launch and from your post I may be at the bottom of the pile (pretty much) but I have seen very few people even bring up the meta in chat and I have had two or three instances of short queues, on one of the four maps (presumably from PvE players coming into the season).

Last week Blacktide was stomped bad but other than that I think I have had more fun than the people in the gold servers right now because the shifts in population, and very unclear rewards. People wanted to transfer just in case for the reward… dunno what they expect precursors for gold and blues and greens for bronze or what :P.

I’m calling it a failure. Simply for bringing out some truly bad behavior in the community. I’ve never witnessed hacking as prevalently as during the league. The Dev’s should be coming up with game designs that promote cooperation to help bring the fractured community together again. Not thinking about another season.

Fore the execution of Leagues, I believe it could have been better. The achievements should have come out at least 2 weeks in advance. Bring in the new players to WvW and give them a chance to learn the ropes. There was a bit of resentment to be sure from WvW veterans. Also, the extended time would had given the map populations time to settle. This way the servers could better prepare for the season.

The Edge of the Mist should have been released with the achievements. This queue overflow system would have made a huge difference in relieving the anger and resentment felt by many stuck in Queues.

Server tagging…. this was an issue that bothered me. Not only was WvW bombarded with new players, it had players transferring to server’s for only a day or two. There should have been a mechanism to ensure only those that played or at least had an active account on a server for the whole season were rewarded.

The schedule….. putting out the schedule was a very bad idea to me. It created such resentment in players. It also created an opportunity to manipulate the outcome like nothing else. Every week should have been a blind start.

Off the top of my head, this short list alone, diminishes the season to the point of failure. I really do consider this season a beta test.

Yes, another vizunah doenst play impressive, yet wins anyway, wvw theme. This is not how wvw should be. seasons make it even worse cause Anet decide wich server fights who. Theorethically Piken square is third no matter what, we can’t beat sfr/vizu but we can beat any other server. But because the system decided piken must fight vizu x3 and sfr x2 times (and river side also a lot, close contender for third spot), Jade sea will runaway with the price, the only reason is, that they had tons of easy matches, thus ‘free giveaway 3 point’-medals. Does that make Jade sea better? No. It just shows how screwed the system is.

I’m disappointed by the whole thing. Few reasons

It’s not a league unless everybody plays everybody. The ranking you get at the end is meaningless because some matches haven’t happened. Possibly my biggest disappointment of it all.

Hacking has come back to the forefront with a vengeance. I hardly saw it at all before, however it’s becoming a daily thing to observe fly hacking, wall hacking, zoom hacking, ports. Reporting doesn’t work, it’s rampant and destroys the spirit of the game.

Alternative motives for disruption. DDoS on teamspeak servers. Spies following around our people whilst in the same guild as the guys were about to fight, who know our every move. Totally against the ToS yet arena net refuse to be pulled into a debate about it. Much like the hacking.

I feel deflated and exhausted by the sheer amount trolling that happens. By the same people. From the same servers. Most of which is t picked up by the mods here, which can amplify the negativity felt by everyone.

A failure? Probably not, but it’s pretty close considering.

It was a poor call to announce matchups in advance… leave the end result up to what happens in-game not outside of it.

Also there should have been some kind of preliminary matches as well the season brought in more activity so it should have been taken into count with the match ups on the actual season games, and the only way to do that is with some kind of pre-season preliminaries, to test the difference from the norm.

Over 100 accolades & awards.
Thousands of disgruntled customers.
GW2, where you pay to win.

Not a failure. Season was awesome.

Aberrant.6749:

They shouldn’t have done this before they fixed the coverage issues in some way.

Yeah, ppt and the way winners are calculated is the problem and has been since day one. The league system just showed it off more.

Nope, because there was nothing to be disappointed about.

Geniekid.2645:

No, not a failure.

Most of the problems people have mentioned in this thread are WvW problems, not seasonal league tournament problems. Just the fact that you have all these angry people who suddenly care about their WvW status when they didn’t give a kitten before is a huge success.

I agree but it really seems like they are doing this stuff to distract from the fact that they have no idea how to fix some very fundamental problems in wvw. I prefer habib’s method of shutting down everything else till he fixed culling than devons method of doing everything but fixing population imbalance.