Guild Wars 2

So, some people like linking, some people want merges, some people want what we already had, and some people just don’t care (just here for the fights I guess). Does that sum up the current state of the WVW discussion? We asked ANET to listen to us and they responded with polls…which some people liked, some thought ridiculous, and some didn’t care enough about to cast a vote. ANET will never be able to keep all of us happy…whatever they do will offend some percentage of the WVW player base. So, what are they to do?

Not that my opinion counts, but I believe ANET should go nuclear and “blow it up” then rebuild smartly. Reset the whole thing but build it back in a way that keeps the majority of the player base happy while inciting new players (if possible). I offer the framework below as a starting point to develop a rebuild strategy. It’s my thought on how ANET could balance populations over time zones and keep everything competitive while providing stability for worlds to rebuild identity/community. It also incorporates a more involved, two way Developer presence in our communities.

I’m not touting it as a final solution, only as a potential framework the player base can offer up to help ANET fix what we see as wrong with WVW. So I ask you, is this worthy of building on or should the Devs just lock the thread now?

FRAMEWORK:

- Develop a rank ordered list of all guilds based on average # members in WVW over a period of time by time zone
— NOTE: WVW guilds only.to qualify, guild must have XX% of members playing WVW on an average of XX% of play time over the same period of time
- Contact guild leaders of top 12 and incentivize each to move guild to one of the 12 new worlds.example: #1 NA guild goes to world A and # 2 NA guild goes to B, etc.; #1 SEA/OCX guild goes to #12 and #2 SEA/OCX guild goes to #11.rinse repeat until all WVW guilds are placed
-- Increase drop rate for ascended stuff
— Easier path to legendary
-- Faster siege crafting
— You figure it out…people like free stuff
- Contact guild leaders of next 12 and, in reverse order, incentivize each to move guild to one of the 12 new worlds
-- Guild leaders sign a contract with the world to stay 12 months…breach of contract results in repossession of incentives
—- If guild disbands, moving rewards repossessed
—- If individuals move, incentives are repossessed
—- If guild WVW activity falls below a predetermined level, incentives are repossessed
- Contact guild leaders of “small” guilds and incentivize them to “round out” the population of each world
- Players opting not to move with their guild are to be removed from the guild and enter “New Player” status as explained below
- Players can belong to only one guild at a time
— Players seeking to move between guilds must obtain approval from both
the losing and the gaining guild leadership or petition the Overseer for approval
-- Players may retain “bank guilds” but bank guilds will be limited to one player only (this needs work)
- ANET must assign a Dev as World Overseer to each world
— Arbitrate disputes between guilds…GVG in an arena as a possibility to settle disputes with losing guild loses something to winning guild…might need to develop a penalty schedule
-- Adjudicate individual requests to move between guilds on a specific world, if needed
— Keep guild leaders informed of contract progress
-- Keep guild leaders informed of game developments and changes
— Seek input from guild leaders on health of the world
-- Work with other overseers to coordinate guild transfers between worlds to maintain population balance
—- This may include overseers “incentivizing” a guild/guilds to move once again
—- Overseers will coordinate with guild leaders to try and place guilds desiring move to worlds that exhibit similar, or needed, play styles (e.g.: move a “hardcore” guild to a world lacking such; a roaming guild to a world lacking such, etc)
- NEW PLAYERS: allow new players, or players who have spent less than XX% of
a significant period of time in WVW an opportunity to guest into each of the worlds for 1 week before declaring a home world
— World Overseer will, weekly before each reset, post a list of “new players” on the world for guild leaders to contact and, hopefully, recruit
--- Players can remain as PUGS on their declared home world if they so choose
— Players opting to not declare a home world after 12 weeks will be locked from WVW until they choose to declare
-- PVE guilds can “try out” WVW under the “new player” rules to declare a home world

Anyone see anything that could be used as a starting point in these thoughts?

sigh I hate to say it but it doesn’t matter what we say… we all should know that by now. They don’t even respond in any way to much of the thoughtful stuff that people say in here… and you can find some gems amongst the rubble.

Sorry but I didn’t read this because at the end of the day it’s another in a long list of suggestions and experience has shown that ANet is going to do what they decide in their meeting rooms… not what we suggest… except maybe by fluke…

krmatth.3904:

So, some people like linking, some people want merges, some people want what we already had, and some people just don’t care (just here for the fights I guess). Does that sum up the current state of the WVW discussion? We asked ANET to listen to us and they responded with polls…which some people liked, some thought ridiculous, and some didn’t care enough about to cast a vote. ANET will never be able to keep all of us happy…whatever they do will offend some percentage of the WVW player base. So, what are they to do?

Get devs with RvR experience and/or knowledge onto the WvW team and develop the mode as needed not according to entirely player driven polls.

They’ve been working on a huge WvW overhaul for well over a year. That’s what they said when HoT came out and it’s been a while.

It was delayed a bit but I think they should release it soon.
I just wished they could give us more information about everything that will be included.

I’m quite certain it will have GvG and skirmishes integrated in new WvW maps and new types of combo fields for group fights. Perhaps they’ll have mutators to make the maps more dynamics, the orbs should come back but redesigned. It’s going to be so good it will feel like a completely new game. No word yet on community mod support.

Xillllix.3485:

They’ve been working on a huge WvW overhaul for well over a year. That’s what they said when HoT came out and it’s been a while.

It was delayed a bit but I think they should release it soon.
I just wished they could give us more information about everything that will be included.

Uh, they did tell us sort of. It was battlegroups that could be formed into teams, of which server links is a poorman’s version.

Xillllix.3485:

They’ve been working on a huge WvW overhaul for well over a year. That’s what they said when HoT came out and it’s been a while.

It was delayed a bit but I think they should release it soon.
I just wished they could give us more information about everything that will be included.

I’m quite certain it will have GvG and skirmishes integrated in new WvW maps and new types of combo fields for group fights. Perhaps they’ll have mutators to make the maps more dynamics, the orbs should come back but redesigned. It’s going to be so good it will feel like a completely new game. No word yet on community mod support.

Where the hell did you get this craziness?

The “wvw overhaul” was the alliance/battlegroups and the skirmish/scoring changes. Pretty sure they haven’t been working on it since they decided to strip parts and release what they could, skirmish, and went with another populations solution, links.

Dunno where you got the other craziness of gvg and skirmishes integrated in new wvw maps and new combo fields, wtf. And drop the orbs already, they gave us ruins and bloodlust as it’s replacements because of fly hacking.

So what happens if Anet blows it all up?
Probably still lose players, there are other problems that won’t be addressed by a blow up.

Xenesis.6389:

Xillllix.3485:

They’ve been working on a huge WvW overhaul for well over a year. That’s what they said when HoT came out and it’s been a while.

It was delayed a bit but I think they should release it soon.
I just wished they could give us more information about everything that will be included.

I’m quite certain it will have GvG and skirmishes integrated in new WvW maps and new types of combo fields for group fights. Perhaps they’ll have mutators to make the maps more dynamics, the orbs should come back but redesigned. It’s going to be so good it will feel like a completely new game. No word yet on community mod support.

Where the hell did you get this craziness?

The “wvw overhaul” was the alliance/battlegroups and the skirmish/scoring changes. Pretty sure they haven’t been working on it since they decided to strip parts and release what they could, skirmish, and went with another populations solution, links.

Dunno where you got the other craziness of gvg and skirmishes integrated in new wvw maps and new combo fields, wtf. And drop the orbs already, they gave us ruins and bloodlust as it’s replacements because of fly hacking.

So what happens if Anet blows it all up?
Probably still lose players, there are other problems that won’t be addressed by a blow up.

You forgot to turn on your sarcasm detector…

I can’t tell if it’s sarcasm from you, this is like the 3rd or 4th time you’ve come in here talking about the wvw overhaul and orbs, it’s a bad joke at this point.

It’s reasonable to assume virtually all devs are working on either new LS episodes or the next expansion. There is no way they’re gonna put in the time for something like the OP is suggesting.

It will continue along the lines of
“Hey, you four stop what you’re doing for two days and work on whatever was voted for in the last wvw poll. Oh, and give no thought to polish, just get it done and get back to something that matters.”

I hope they don’t, not because I don’t want change but they never do what the community asks, what we’ll get is some kittenized version of what they thought we wanted and not what we asked for that is more suited for PvE then WvW. I have no faith that the end result would be healthy, they’ve dropped the ball far to many times.

Make WvW into Eotm style so population is no longer a problem , have the borderland maps and possibly EBG with guilds/alliances competing in a Tier/League style with actual decent rewards for winning their matchups……

morrolan.9608:

Get devs with RvR experience and/or knowledge onto the WvW team and develop the mode as needed not according to entirely player driven polls.

That doesn’t really exist beyond the team they already have. Every RvR game out there has (had) the exact same balance and coverage problems (sometimes worse). Some had better lag issues but those were old school static combat engines. Even the vaunted DAoC imploded after the first few years.

Some games like SWToR with a much larger budget had their large scale combat completely fail and never recover. ESO was mostly a balance disaster centered around near endless grinding for months on end (WAY worse than anything in GW2).

I cannot think of a single better WvW or RvR game and that includes the upcoming CU which is a throwback of games built 10+ years ago. If you are looking for an expert, sad to say GW2 has them.

To be fair, it wasn’t the RvR model that damaged DAoC, is was the abomination known as ToA with its ML’s and Arti’s that did the damage. Even then they were still doing fine, then WoW came into the picture and killed pretty much every MMO on the market.

The DAoC wiki is surprisingly accurate.

Xillllix.3485:

They’ve been working on a huge WvW overhaul for well over a year. That’s what they said when HoT came out and it’s been a while.

Dont forget that this is during the same year Devon left.

And when he left he said he hadnt done anything for WvW for over 8 months!

So if they had been working on it for a year, yet the WvW Team Leader said he hadnt done jack kitten, what does that tell you?

Nuzt.7894:

To be fair, it wasn’t the RvR model that damaged DAoC, is was the abomination known as ToA with its ML’s and Arti’s that did the damage. Even then they were still doing fine, then WoW came into the picture and killed pretty much every MMO on the market.

After a couple years RvR in DAoC was empty most of the day and this was before WoW. Players were already asking for server merges, ways to attract more players and transfers. Sure WoW took a big chunk of its players but ultimately DAoC was an RvR game without serious competition until GW2 came along.

I would also point out that DAoC had a large monthly fee. Even if we consider HoT a must have, it is still cheaper than a few months of DAoC.

Back to my point… if there is an RvR or WvW expert out there it probably is working or has worked on GW2 at some point. CU sounds good until you play it and realize the game is already 15 years old before it is even released.

Straegen.2938:

Some games like SWToR with a much larger budget had their large scale combat completely fail and never recover. ESO was mostly a balance disaster centered around near endless grinding for months on end (WAY worse than anything in GW2).

I cannot think of a single better WvW or RvR game and that includes the upcoming CU which is a throwback of games built 10+ years ago. If you are looking for an expert, sad to say GW2 has them.

GW2 devs working on WvW have no expertise at all that is the problem. ESO’s issues were exactly as you say, not around the RvR aspect of the game, same with DAOC. The issues with WvW are around the implementation of the RvR aspecst as well as some balance issues.

Straegen.2938:

Back to my point… if there is an RvR or WvW expert out there it probably is working or has worked on GW2 at some point. CU sounds good until you play it and realize the game is already 15 years old before it is even released.

The game is not even in beta yet and is a long long way from a polished product.

I would like the Devs to respond to these posts. People give feedback. I am sure some is positive and some is negative. They need to communicate better if Gw2 WvW is to survive and be healthy. But at this point it does not seem they are to concerned with the veterans of WvW and what we have to say.

Mylerian.9176:

I would like the Devs to respond to these posts. People give feedback. I am sure some is positive and some is negative.

Oh they have mods for that, and they have responded.
They have responded in the same way they have for 4 years.

For example there was a thread here this morning, now it’s gone.
Just gone, not closed, but deleted. Without informing any of the posters in that thread that that thread was being removed!

Anet want WvW to die, but they still want your money from gem purchases so pretend to be doing something to keep players here!

A total overhaul would be really cool, but it literaly needs to be executed perfectly. If people can find a few things that suck, the community will hate it.

Cecilia.5179:

A total overhaul would be really cool, but it literaly needs to be executed perfectly. If people can find a few things that suck, the community will hate it.

Even if they did listen to the community, people will still find things that suck, what one person likes does not represent what everyone likes. We are all special snowflakes.

it would actually likely suck less if ANET didn’t listen to the community and picked a vision for what they wanted WvW to be to stick with instead of all these garbled together pieces of what they thought players asked for, what players said they wanted but didn’t work and how they originally thought WvW was going to be for the long term. Sadly I don’t think many of the ANET devs who had a clue about WvW are left to provide a grand unified plan to do the “blow it up & start over” option justice so be careful what you ask for.

At this point I would have liked to see what the nuclear option looked like but since they scrapped it to go with linking I don’t think we ever will and they certainly don’t have time or staff to start again from scratch right now.

PariahX.6970:

it would actually likely suck less if ANET didn’t listen to the community and picked a vision for what they wanted WvW to be to stick with instead of all these garbled together pieces of what they thought players asked for, what players said they wanted but didn’t work and how they originally thought WvW was going to be for the long term. Sadly I don’t think many of the ANET devs who had a clue about WvW are left to provide a grand unified plan to do the “blow it up & start over” option justice so be careful what you ask for.

At this point I would have liked to see what the nuclear option looked like but since they scrapped it to go with linking I don’t think we ever will and they certainly don’t have time or staff to start again from scratch right now.

Desert bl is the product of not taking any feedback. Beta testers stated concerns, and they did nothing.

Cecilia.5179:

PariahX.6970:

it would actually likely suck less if ANET didn’t listen to the community and picked a vision for what they wanted WvW to be to stick with instead of all these garbled together pieces of what they thought players asked for, what players said they wanted but didn’t work and how they originally thought WvW was going to be for the long term. Sadly I don’t think many of the ANET devs who had a clue about WvW are left to provide a grand unified plan to do the “blow it up & start over” option justice so be careful what you ask for.

At this point I would have liked to see what the nuclear option looked like but since they scrapped it to go with linking I don’t think we ever will and they certainly don’t have time or staff to start again from scratch right now.

Desert bl is the product of not taking any feedback. Beta testers stated concerns, and they did nothing.

I’ve recently found out that it wasn’t just beta testers, core testers also expressed the same concerns. At no point did they listen to user feedback at all.

Cecilia.5179:

Desert bl is the product of not taking any feedback. Beta testers stated concerns, and they did nothing.

morrolan.9608:

I’ve recently found out that it wasn’t just beta testers, core testers also expressed the same concerns. At no point did they listen to user feedback at all.

All of the Desert Borderland design ideas came from suggestions on this forum and a lot of different factions of players. Now you can easily argue that once ANET sets down a path they are very slow or unable to adjust course based on real-time feedback but you can’t really say they don’t take ideas from the community. Even the mostly bad stuff like more siege has a vocal segment of the population that supports it.

They do implement a lot of our suggestions, usually just 6 months to a year too late after the idea would actually be useful or the players who asked for it are still around. Just look back over the development cycle & forums of the last 4 years and see those weirdly off set alignments.

PariahX.6970:

Cecilia.5179:

Desert bl is the product of not taking any feedback. Beta testers stated concerns, and they did nothing.

morrolan.9608:

I’ve recently found out that it wasn’t just beta testers, core testers also expressed the same concerns. At no point did they listen to user feedback at all.

All of the Desert Borderland design ideas came from suggestions on this forum and a lot of different factions of players. Now you can easily argue that once ANET sets down a path they are very slow or unable to adjust course based on real-time feedback but you can’t really say they don’t take ideas from the community. Even the mostly bad stuff like more siege has a vocal segment of the population that supports it.

That becomes almost irrelevant if they ignore user feedback at every stage. They are taking broad ideas drawing their own conclusion about what they mean and then completely ignoring any and all feedback prior to implementation. I’ve said it before anet’s software development and project management processes are absolutely woeful for something of this size. I’ve worked on small software development projects with better processes and project management.

PariahX.6970:

Cecilia.5179:

Desert bl is the product of not taking any feedback. Beta testers stated concerns, and they did nothing.

morrolan.9608:

I’ve recently found out that it wasn’t just beta testers, core testers also expressed the same concerns. At no point did they listen to user feedback at all.

All of the Desert Borderland design ideas came from suggestions on this forum and a lot of different factions of players. Now you can easily argue that once ANET sets down a path they are very slow or unable to adjust course based on real-time feedback but you can’t really say they don’t take ideas from the community. Even the mostly bad stuff like more siege has a vocal segment of the population that supports it.

They do implement a lot of our suggestions, usually just 6 months to a year too late after the idea would actually be useful or the players who asked for it are still around. Just look back over the development cycle & forums of the last 4 years and see those weirdly off set alignments.

Meh they took the suggestion of trying to break up zergs and went overboard with it by designing an entire map for doing that. Then they decided to first barely listen to the initial feedback, and then were slow to make changes. They tried to build the map like they would a pve map and went overboard with the clutter and gimmicks, the same thing they did with the eotm map, rather than stick to the concepts that made the original wvw maps successful.

We provide suggestions of things we would like sure, but they should stick to concepts that work and learn and improve from that, not throw it out the window and tried to shove a pve map into a pvp environment.

morrolan.9608:

I’ve recently found out that it wasn’t just beta testers, core testers also expressed the same concerns. At no point did they listen to user feedback at all.

That’s because they refused to spend any more time and money on it!

This is what I think happened:
The PvE devs hat made it were probably told to make a WvW map.
They went to check which WvW was the most active.
Not knowing what WvW is, they assumed EoTM map was the most liked seeing as it’s always so popular (with PvE players).
So the design of the DBL was based on EoTM map.

But as we all know, EoTM is not WvW!
Well with all the server linking it may as well be now.

But there you have it, they based it on a map we veteran WvWers do not even consider to be WvW, and they were confused why we didnt like it.
But they had spent all that time and money, what little it was, on a new map, they couldnt just trash it. So it was forced on us.

But again, ALL of this could have been avoided if they actually talked to us first!
From what I heard the first testers of this map were streamers and PvE guilds!

But then again, they had the Adopt-a-dev event to listen to players and what they wanted, and somehow came away with things none of us wanted at all! So even when they tried to listen they couldnt! They went to the wrong players!
I still want to know which guilds told them to add that crap!

morrolan.9608:

PariahX.6970:

Cecilia.5179:

Desert bl is the product of not taking any feedback. Beta testers stated concerns, and they did nothing.

morrolan.9608:

I’ve recently found out that it wasn’t just beta testers, core testers also expressed the same concerns. At no point did they listen to user feedback at all.

All of the Desert Borderland design ideas came from suggestions on this forum and a lot of different factions of players. Now you can easily argue that once ANET sets down a path they are very slow or unable to adjust course based on real-time feedback but you can’t really say they don’t take ideas from the community. Even the mostly bad stuff like more siege has a vocal segment of the population that supports it.

That becomes almost irrelevant if they ignore user feedback at every stage. They are taking broad ideas drawing their own conclusion about what they mean and then completely ignoring any and all feedback prior to implementation. I’ve said it before anet’s software development and project management processes are absolutely woeful for something of this size. I’ve worked on small software development projects with better processes and project management.

This is accurate, there is really no point in having testers if you’re just going to ignore the feedback. They basically wasted those testers time.

I don’t know why people want to blow anything up. It will offer a very short term fix, then be back to status quo. And alienate game loyalists in the process.

Until someone comes up with a solution for bandwaggoning, there is no variation on a theme that will work.

And you don’t need to blow up existing communities to gain parity. Simply evict accounts on overpopulated servers by seniority. Problem solved.

Jayne.9251:

I don’t know why people want to blow anything up. It will offer a very short term fix, then be back to status quo. And alienate game loyalists in the process.

Until someone comes up with a solution for bandwaggoning, there is no variation on a theme that will work.

And you don’t need to blow up existing communities to gain parity. Simply evict accounts on overpopulated servers by seniority. Problem solved.

There is only two solutions to bandwagoning.

A.) ANet makes it a bannable offense to bandwagoning. (Super Highly unrealistic option.)

B.) You kill the incentives for people bandwagoning. You can make it so WXP and Reward track progression splits between everyone from said server, in squad or not, killing players(the more people you have attacking players the less bags you get) ( The outnumbered buff is changed into the out-manning debuff ( the most players your server have compared to the other server more the out manning debuff will debuffs members of your server’s character stats. To make this buff fair, it will ultilze a zoning system. It’s calculate players per square or zone however ANet wants to deal with it.)

Other then those two options bandwagoning will always have more incentive then destacking and taking the harder unscripted fights. In order to nerf bandwagoning you have to nerf the profitability for players to stack servers and zerg down the servers can’t defend and become fodder for their hordes to gain effortless bags and reward track progression. As long as players find it more profitable to bandwagon in WvW, nothing will change.

WvWer’s like yourself have to really ask your selves. What do you want out of WvW? Do we want competitive and fun fights, and match ups? Do we want to capitalize on some poor sobs who can’t be asked to switch servers, and just farm them for bags and reward track progression at the expense of a competitive game mode which all players enjoy. I bet most people on these forums just want to causally farm others for bags and couldn’t even care less if the game mode is competitive or not. Since they can’t or will not learn the game well enoth to do sPvP. They rather stack servers for again easy bags and reward track progression because… that is the easiest way to get them with very little effort.

All and all my forum sig. stands.

It’s easy try to make duelers, karma trainers, pointless fighting guilds, scouts, defender, try hard PPT:ers and roamers happy. WvW will never work before every player in map have same goal.