Guild Wars 2

every team has a WP. WP has ridiculous amount of health and can be carried by players around the map to any structure they own. if it gets hit in open field it gets contested for 3 min. if it gets destroyed it respowns. if a structure with WP gets fliped, it respownes, unless a player picks it up.

+1 from me too!
Please, Anet, please do take in this feedback and rescue the game I’ve been in love with for 3 years!

Fozzik.1742:

Viable defense for a tower or keep needs to account for a small number of players defending against a zerg…because this is what happens the vast majority of the time. Because joining a giant blob and karma training around the maps is so heavily encouraged and incentivized by the game design (most rewards, easiest play, safest play), very few people defend. In order for defense to be viable, the defender needs to be able to hit the enemy without being hit themselves. Very basic…but it’s the central design of all defenses since tribes started building huts thousands of years ago. I have to be able to hit you without you hitting me.

Why not add a factor/buff that grants the defenders inside the towers a chance to evade ranged and aoe attacks? Make it so it only happens when you are in some strategic places inside the structres, and only if the gate/walls are still intact. I believe this can bring more options to people defeding, and can be adjustable, (50% chance, 33% chance, etc), so it can be balanced further depending on the initial feedbacks. This seems logical to me, since its harder to hit someone from down below. Currently we already have the obstruction factor, but it doesnt really matter for a blob casting everything in those walls, so I believe some sort of mechanic like this one I mentioned can help solve those problems.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

every team has a WP. WP has ridiculous amount of health and can be carried by players around the map to any structure they own. if it gets hit in open field it gets contested for 3 min. if it gets destroyed it respowns. if a structure with WP gets fliped, it respownes, unless a player picks it up.

Actually, there are some options around this that have the same effect. One is consumables that work like WPs, but are bounded to parties or squads. This can improve such thing as roamming and dueling, and even incourage defensive groups that can use their consumables near the objective they want to defend. This can be tweked around giving more options, like making those not spawnable inside objetives, but rather right outside them, or near sentries, and limiting the number of people that can bind to each of those, in case of squads for example, make options for squads with a certain max amount of people to be able to use those consumables. As it is a consumable, make the price fair, something around gold and badges of honor, or use the same options as blueprints, have one standard version (for parties) and one that can be upgraded (for squads) costing something around the current golem blueprint prices, and also having around the same supply requirement.

+100 spot on. Can’t give enough support for this thread.

+1 from me. I usually don’t comment on the forums, but WvW is too much of an issue for me to ignore.

Just to make it clear, I’m not a WvW player, but I have dabbled in it a few times. My favourite memory of WvW was way back before they added ranks to it. I think I was on Eredon Terrace at the time, and we were holding Stonemist against both enemy zergs. We had a decently sized group – probably about 15 guys, against two zergs of around 30 each. Of course those zergs clashed regularly, but a lot of the time they were coming in at the same time from opposite sides. I just kept on raining meteor showers in the corridor choke points and having a huge amount of fun doing it.

That kind of fierce, against-the-odds defense is what I love about WvW, and I would love for it to come back.

Some great ideas here.

One thing though. Breaking up blobs is a good idea but I don’t want to see them totally eliminated. Some of the best fun I’ve had is being in an organized group that turns a corner into a massive red blob and somehow we manage to win. Amazing stuff. Thrilling. The laughter on the server TS is great then.

There are some very good commanders out there now who are pretty good at the blob stuff. 3 years of practice has sharpened them up. So there is a place for it.

The problem isn’t that there are blobs but that the game just doesn’t promote any other style very well. Most of my guild left GW2 early because they couldn’t do their single group stuff (they came from DAoC). And they hated PvD.

Trenthor.2563:

Fozzik.1742:

Viable defense for a tower or keep needs to account for a small number of players defending against a zerg…because this is what happens the vast majority of the time. Because joining a giant blob and karma training around the maps is so heavily encouraged and incentivized by the game design (most rewards, easiest play, safest play), very few people defend. In order for defense to be viable, the defender needs to be able to hit the enemy without being hit themselves. Very basic…but it’s the central design of all defenses since tribes started building huts thousands of years ago. I have to be able to hit you without you hitting me.

Why not add a factor/buff that grants the defenders inside the towers a chance to evade ranged and aoe attacks? Make it so it only happens when you are in some strategic places inside the structres, and only if the gate/walls are still intact. I believe this can bring more options to people defeding, and can be adjustable, (50% chance, 33% chance, etc), so it can be balanced further depending on the initial feedbacks. This seems logical to me, since its harder to hit someone from down below. Currently we already have the obstruction factor, but it doesnt really matter for a blob casting everything in those walls, so I believe some sort of mechanic like this one I mentioned can help solve those problems.

If they raised the walls of towers/keeps to about double their current height, they’d be too high for people on the ground to AoE up onto them, and would also stop the cannons and oils from being deathtraps. Carts would be needed to attack down from the walls, and carts/catas/trebs would be needed to clear the internal siege. Trebs would be needed inside to protect the defensive siege, but a couple offensive ones set up in different positions, attacking from different angles, would be able to take the defensive ones down. A smart group would just set up the offensive trebs first, then the defenders would have to push out to take them down. Which would be a lot easier because everyone would either be on the siege or on the tag, instead of spread out on the walls trying to drop AoE onto attacking groups and getting melted.

I have spent a ton of hours in WvW as well. Mostly 3-7 man grps. Have done some zerging and some larger guild group fights. The number one thing for me is being able to find other groups, preferably being able to see a long distance to find them. We use the sentries for sure (although I don’t think they should prevent stealth). One of the biggest problems with the new maps are all the obstructions that block viewing distance. On the old maps most fights happened in areas that were unobstructed but were on the edge on LOS options. The new maps make it very difficult to find people and then when you do find them, it is very easy for them to break line of sight and disappear. The verticality exacerbates this issue (not to mention there are many drops that will kill you rather than allowing stairstep drops).

Population wise, I think they need to merge servers big time (maybe 6 servers) and then have map iterations like in EOTM and just combine the score

Absolutely agree with OP +1

WvW was my favorite aspect of GW2 until the constant blobs and repetitive exchanges of points imo, turned a potentially deeply strategic game-mode into a “gather massive group, exchange towers (since blobs only have any sort of resistance from similiarly sized blobs), rinse repeat”.

I’d like to add a few of my own suggestions:

1. Just like OP mentioned; I think that getting back into fights, whether attacking or defending, tends to be too much of a struggle. I can’t remember how many times I’ve died in a siege fight, only to have to run a ~10min course to participate at all again, whether attacking or defending. Of course staying alive to keep the fight moving is a priority, but dying is sometimes unavoidable. Why does it seem like I’m getting punished again, having to run miles upon miles to get back into any sort of action?

I propose some sort of spawning locations be added to the map, which can be sacked or defended by players to help assist in getting back to key locations in times of need. I feel like these locations would provide a much needed strategic resource for both attacking and defending players in the map.

Example: Fort A is being sieged with few defending players inside, the defending players know they are greatly outnumbered. Instead of spamming chat or TS with requests for help (which more often than not come way to late to make any sort of difference), a small group of players could jump from the towers, and attempt an escape to “sack” and then capture one of these nearby respawn locations to help additional (further away) players flank the attacking army faster. Thus, the attacking army would have more to worry about while having to keep an eye on surrounding strategic locations to ensure they aren’t ambushed to successfully take Fort A, while the defending team inside has more in their deck than just twidling their thumbs, stacking AC or waiting for a greater friendly army to come assist.

2. I also agree that the forts and towers in WvW are ridiculously hard to defend from a strategic standpoint. Walls always seem like a gamble to try and defend from with AoE spam and piercing attacks able to hit defending players while they’re supposed to have some sort of refuge atop towers or walls. Granted, this is a fantasy game with wildly varying military mechanics, but to me it doesn’t make much sense to me why the walls are so low, and the “kill boxes” are more of a boon for attackers. Shouldn’t the people building these walls take random firestorms and armor piercing arrows into the engineering equation?

The defenders should actually have a worthwhile means of DEFENSE. I feel like taking a keep should be more about strategic positioning and operating of the many well made siege engines in this game, rather than gathering a blob and autoattacking down the door. Both the defenders AND attackers should be more focused on placing AC, Cata, Ballista and Trebs effectively to take a keep, rather than relying on just their character’s skills to do the job. I mean, these are literally castles, why should we even be able to punch reinforced doors down with our bare fists/swords/fireballs respectively…

The only solution I can think of would be more protective walls, whether that is via increasing the height, adding barriers atop the walls that are a more useful refuge or possibly adding some sort of buff to wall defenders/defending siege which lessens the impact of AoE/long range skills.

Further, with respect to game balance, yes I know that making the walls higher or making certain areas on the walls un-attackable by ground forces can cause a TON of balance problems. However, limiting the amount of siege that can be placed on walls could be a good idea to stop things like untargetable AC spam or ballista stacking. It makes a vague sort of sense, considering that Cata’s and Ballista probably weigh quite a bit and might mess with the structural integrity of the walls considering they’re already made of some high grade paper mache. The amount of siege available to be placed by defenders could fluctuate on how fortified the fort is (within reason). Additionally, having the attackers be able to “counter-siege” suddenly becomes a realization, and defending the attacking siege weapons instead of just waiting for the doors to get knocked down, becomes another interesting and strategic siege mechanic.

3. I feel like there should be more incentive to participate in events outside of sieging as well. Escort missions, taking npc camps and taking/holding strategic locations should all have some sort of benefit outside of just plain and simple victory. We come into WvW games for an engaging PvP atmosphere, and I feel that atmosphere should be preserved even if were working on taking down npc camps, or completing escort missions. Possibly having those NPC camps actually do something worthwhile instead of static patrols and sitting in their camp waiting for the next blob to clear them out. Make them have meaning. Why should I take this camp, and why should I hold it? What will it give me, and how does it help my world?

I propose having the NPC camps you take actually assist whoever they’re allied with in various tasks. Like spending supply to call in a horde of hyleks to help you siege/defend a tower, or having taken NPC camps cause random events to occur during enemy escort missions where they attack/hinder the escort’s progress. Scaling these events on active players would be a must, since we shouldn’t need a blob to perform simple scouting and event tasks. However, these events could quickly become large skirmishes depending on how actively players in a world participate in them. I feel this could give an interesting bit of purpose (and another strategic source of conflict) to players who want to engage in more than just siege warfare.

4. Blobs is probably the perfect way to describe the majority of fights in WvW for the past 3 years. To me, I feel this is a cheap way to attack/defend anything. More numbers = more win. Granted, in any military situation having more numbers is a great advantage, but it shouldn’t be the “be all end all” of how WvW should is played imo. Why do we even have forts, and why would we even attempt defending when you see a horde of players coming to siege your fort with only a handful of players inside. As above, having capturable spawn locations that can assist in the attacking/defending of towers could help allieviate this burden. Another possible solution would be to give buffs/debuffs to small and large groups of players retroactively.

Consider a combination buff/debuff for a large group of players that reduces their movement speed by, say 20%, and makes their speed unable to increase. However, the buff side of travelling in a large army would be a 20% damage mitigation. I.E. Harder to hit individual targets. Of course this is just a suggestion, I don’t know if something like this would work or would be well recieved. I just feel that 50 or so players travelling at fully buffed speed, lightning fast around the battlefield sort of diminishes the immersion of travelling in an army in WvW.

Smaller groups of players could recieve a buff/debuff of additional supplies carried or faster capping of smaller strategic points of interest, like respawn locations (from above), faster escorting, and camps.

Again, these are just my two cents. Im sure I’ll still be playing WvW, I just want a little more out of it. Also, feedback is absolutely appreciated! I’m sure that my suggestions have issues, these are just some things I’ve been thinking about over the past few years while playing WvW and enjoying this game.

I have a radical idea

1. Remove the Glicko Rating System. According to Guild Wars 2 Official Wiki, The Glicko rating system is used “so that high-ranked worlds will battle other high-ranked worlds, and low-ranked worlds will battle other low-ranked worlds. This attempts to ensure that every world has a fair chance of winning matches despite differing levels of player participation or skill”. In a perfect world, all things should balance out. Unfortunately, Guild Wars isn’t a perfect world. Regardless of players skills, the team with the best overall coverage usually wins. After all, how hard is it to keep the PPT flowing when you’re the only team on the map. This isn’t helpful to anyone. It generates less fights (or should I say, more uneven fights) and creates less PPT deflection. Therefore, unless you recruit players to fill the gaps in your time zone, the final score will generally remain the same week after week and your chances in moving up in tier is slim.

2. Each server should have a system that records the average number of players from each team during any given time. I believe there is something like this already in use, otherwise, we’d never see the [Outnumbered] indication. During reset, this information could be used to match each team based on player coverage from the previous week. Therefore, regardless of what time zone you’re playing in, each team should have roughly the same number of players.

3. Give PPT more incentive by making it more rewarding and competitive. IMO, most people that play WvW want to fight REAL people. Otherwise, they’d be playing PVE. Make PPT rewarding by giving reward chests after reset. 1st place receives three chests, 2nd receives two and 3rd gets one. Make these chests substantial. After all, you fought an entire week to earn them. People might be more competitive if they know there is a prize at the finish line. More competitive = Better fights.

4. Create a World Participation attribute. Each week, as a player receives World Experience it will be recorded in their World Participation log. During reset, the amount of World Participation you’ve accumulated during the past week will help determine the quality of loot you’ll receive from the Weekly Reward Chests. Each player’s World Participation will return to zero after reset.

Very, very well said, OP.

Me and my guild have barely touched WvW since HoT, and you’ve expressed exactly why that is.

I agree with the OP. Good post!

I’m with you on everything you’ve said except for a couple of points:

Fozzik.1742:

You’ve got to figure out game design ways to break up the blobs.

Breaking blobs was the cause of the current poor design. So let’s not instruct them to break up blobs again. Let’s just stick with what you originally said – we want fights, everywhere. Whether are blobs, havoc or solo.

Fozzik.1742:

Viable defense for a tower or keep needs to account for a small number of players defending against a zerg…because this is what happens the vast majority of the time.

Fozzik.1742:

There should be objective upgrades which over time create defensive positions in the objective where defenders and siege can function to defend and can’t be hit by attackers until the attackers enter the objective. Yeah, you read that right. Don’t worry about the attackers, they’ll figure out ways to succeed, and the game already heavily favors the PvDoor blob.

In my experience (T1 JQ SEA timezone) most defences start with two players and then it grows to a zerg or blob as everyone arrives to defend.

If you allow 2 players on their own to fully defend against a blob then it doesn’t encourage fights. It stops the blob vs blob from occurring because the defensive blob doesn’t need to attend. The key we want in the design is to allow the attacking map blob to win IF the defending map blob doesn’t choose to attend.

We also need to make the objective valuable in some way so they care about defending it.

The design needs to give enough time for the defending blob to attend. So you should allow two players to delay but not defend, two players should never be able to stop 50 players for a long time.

The goal is to encourage that epic lord room battle between the two groups and the only way to get the defending blob there is to let them know that if they don’t attend they won’t retain it.

The other problem is that often in T1, defending blobs will fully turtle. They’ll build 15 ACs and just sit inside the keep and use counter trebs to take out the attackers siege. Zero fights.

This behaviour doesn’t promote fighting at all. The design needs to find a way to pressure them to come outside and either remove the attackers or remove the attacker’s siege.

It is quite often the case in JQ (SEA) that we had an attacking blob (about 40 people) and defending blob (YB with about 40 people).

Basically they were two fairly evenly sized blobs but YB used to just turtle inside rather than fighting us.

For my money, if you’re going to give defenders unreachable areas then you should also grant the same to attackers with the siege positioning (siege that can’t be counter trebbed).

Having attacking siege that can’t be reached requires that defending blob come out of their turtle shell and fight.

I think your objective cascade is a similar idea to this.

Anyway, I think the key design should be trying to delay zergs/blobs to give enough time to respond but forcing a fight once everyone is in attendance.

I don’t think two defenders should be able to fully defend a blob.

Often times the attack is just a solo roamer on a cata or a small havoc group putting up a couple of rams, so giving two defenders extreme blob defending power against these smaller forces also makes WvW worse.

I agree with Fozzik on the maps being too large and MUCH too vertical. The ease of necro fears/push/pulls to death is much more than Alpine Borderlands (especially near air keep).

The cascading objectives are another important point. Right now the towers are so far that losing the northern ones is no big deal except annoying barricades.

I just want to point out that if walls are made higher then the people on the walls still need to be able to hit outside (i.e. <1200 range) and vice versa. If the people outside can hit the person on the wall, then the person on the wall should be able to hit the person outside. If the person on the wall can hit the people outside, then the people outside should be able to hit the person on the wall , provided the attacking person is right next to / close to the wall. Otherwise you will just have people standing on a wall.

Right now the best ways to defend are still arrowcarts (ACs) and trebuchets (trebs) on the gates for rams.

The thin walkways are completely worthless, anyone with a pull (guardian/mesmer/etc) or fear (necro staff 5) means it is instadeath. You’re better off with an AC , cannon, or mortar.

This is so nailing every aspect of what is wrong and why and how to fix it. If there is any post of all the hundreds that Arena net got fom us players, that i would want them to read, this would be the one.

Please people, read this and up-vote.

This is good positive and constructive feedback presented in a non-combative way. We need more like this.

All Hail Fozzik!

fozzik for new wvw team lead!

Anet, Hire this man pls

amazing post, fozzik!
hope some dev’s at least reads the post

Some good thoughts. Hopefully someone who’s developing a WvW-type game will see this post and consider his ideas (or maybe some player here is a future-dev will remember this post when the time comes).

Good thoughts, but I like large scale fights aka blobs (I don’t press just 1), breaking these, I would quit the game permanently. For many players 30-40 is a blob, for me it has the perfect size for nice fights, if they don’t hide every time in an object, that’s why I went to T1, where these zergs were balanced most of the time. Because, many times you can’t defeat (or in other words roflstomp) them all, and so there is still the challenge that they could surprise you and deny your lootbag or chest. I would miss this kind of flurry and relief afterwards when you conquer an object. But I know how it feels, when only one of three servers is karmatraining.

Perfect write up, we need some serious engagement from Anet now, we all love WvW too much to let it die on “the vine”

Alaric.7628:

I have spent a ton of hours in WvW as well. Mostly 3-7 man grps. Have done some zerging and some larger guild group fights. The number one thing for me is being able to find other groups, preferably being able to see a long distance to find them. We use the sentries for sure (although I don’t think they should prevent stealth). One of the biggest problems with the new maps are all the obstructions that block viewing distance. On the old maps most fights happened in areas that were unobstructed but were on the edge on LOS options. The new maps make it very difficult to find people and then when you do find them, it is very easy for them to break line of sight and disappear. The verticality exacerbates this issue (not to mention there are many drops that will kill you rather than allowing stairstep drops).

Population wise, I think they need to merge servers big time (maybe 6 servers) and then have map iterations like in EOTM and just combine the score

That’s a great observation about the changes in line of sight! (no pun intended) =D

Very good point. It’s true about the keep design as well. Think of the old verses the new east and west keeps on the BL map. The old ones facilitated defense and scouting by having good sight lines and vantage points. The new ones… a map queue could be five feet away and you might not see them.

Menaki.6329:

Good thoughts, but I like large scale fights aka blobs (I don’t press just 1), breaking these, I would quit the game permanently. For many players 30-40 is a blob, for me it has the perfect size for nice fights, if they don’t hide every time in an object, that’s why I went to T1, where these zergs were balanced most of the time. Because, many times you can’t defeat (or in other words roflstomp) them all, and so there is still the challenge that they could surprise you and deny your lootbag or chest. I would miss this kind of flurry and relief afterwards when you conquer an object. But I know how it feels, when only one of three servers is karmatraining.

Breaking up blobs doesn’t mean removing large scale fights. It means making karma training and night capping less profitable and less “path of least resistance”. It’s hard to have any kind of game mode if you can just bring overwhelming numbers and trivialize everything. having a 20 v 40 or a 50 v 50 can be great fun. 80 v 10…running around capping all the upgraded structures with absolutely no way to mount resistance…not good.

That’s why I suggested changing scoring and loot, rather than placing some hard cap on numbers or whatever. Make even or outnumbered fights, defense and upgrades, the most profitable things in terms of personal loot and server score, and the issues will take care of themselves.

People don’t get in a huge blob and run over undefended objectives because it’s fun. They do it for the loot, karma, ppt, etc., or they do it because it’s all there is to do. Fix the population / coverage issues, and put the loot where the fun is, and things will improve.

I think the most effective way to deal with the “coverage wars” issue is to just combine NA, EU and the China servers into one category, and let people spread out from there. The issue about lag is sort of irrelevant at this point, considering people from these areas have been combining into single servers already. In order to compete in T1 you need around the clock coverage, and these players aren’t coming from Mexico. NA, EU , OCX, and SEA are already combining on these servers. NA isn’t just NA. EU isn’t just EU. So why not do what the players themselves are already doing? “Night capping” would disappear, because there wouldn’t be any “night” anything. And while things wouldn’t be 100% even across all servers, things would be a great deal more even than they are now. You’d still have larger and smaller servers, so you’d still have tiers. But there wouldn’t be massive leaps in coverage from one tier to another. After combining the categories, give everyone one free transfer and let people balance things out from the top down. Then keep the caps in place and don’t raise them. There will be some position changes, but after 3 months, most people will be exactly where they want to be, playing the game in a style that they want to play it in. Massive fights in the higher tiers, smaller scale fights in the lower tiers, round the clock coverage so things are at least even.

already said this. Server relaunch with one tier ladder and new names (no more timezone or county server) + one free move for guilds(Leder can take the guild with him) and players. Anet should have the stats how much tiers will make sense. But keep max players on one map low (e.g. 50 per side). At day X all that haven´t moved will be moved acording to their activity and timezone to make a good 24/7 distribution.

Fozzik.1742:

That’s why I suggested changing scoring and loot, rather than placing some hard cap on numbers or whatever. Make even or outnumbered fights, defense and upgrades, the most profitable things in terms of personal loot and server score, and the issues will take care of themselves.

People don’t get in a huge blob and run over undefended objectives because it’s fun. They do it for the loot, karma, ppt, etc., or they do it because it’s all there is to do. Fix the population / coverage issues, and put the loot where the fun is, and things will improve.

Yeah, I know that, but many people say “break blobs” because they are roamers and hate this part of wvw-gameplay. In my eyes, every part of the wvw-community is equal and no one should preferred or punished for just playing one part. A scout should earn his credits like the blobber.

I find the new walls and gates boring and time consuming, during I like the new keeplords, who doesn’t melt anymore. I would find it better to have more “keeplords” on one or different location within keep or tower (depending on the attackers number, both have to die on the same time to split up forces) and therefore less harder walls and gates, which still could get an upgrade with the time.

The population is something which you can’t really influence at all. One thing is the reputation of wvw community. We are known as rude and toxic, sometimes it’s true, most of the time not. We all have names for randomly and inexperienced players, sometimes we shout (in ts, where they aren’t) about them, but if I compare this with what happens on the pve map which event fails, we are better than our reputation. A friendly communication about that is still the key, even with all the frustration we have after the years, so we don’t scare new players.

The other thing is the loot. Personally I never have been played for that, because I always thought that I have no luck with that. Until yesterday I didn’t play long in wvw for a couple of weeks, but I couldn’t complain about the loot I got, which, well, came mostly from the keeplords and rank chests (one exotic, one ascended weapon chest, 32 Proof of heroics), also we were most of the time less than 10 player (na-server). At the same time, my eu server has a queue. For me is was a better loot than I have received in the pve farm events, which I do since weeks.

I had the same thought like phantom. I have an eu and na account, so I see a lot of difference between the two regions. Both could profit from an alliance system together. The strongest server of one region could help the weakest servers in the other region, but for this we need valid numbers and some tests.

Good post Fozzik. I agree with a lot of what you said.

Here are some suggested changes that may help:

A Waypoint At Every Tower – As you said, there needs to be a way to get to/back to a fight quickly, but there does need to be at least some deley to give the attacking force some chance of success. So I propose a waypoint at every tower, that is always built upon capture and ready to use. If the tower is attacked the waypoint is contested, as normal, but having more waypoints available means you do not have to run from one end of the map to the other, yet there will still be a small delay while you run from the nearest uncontested tower.

This will also open up the option for solo players or small groups to split off from the main force and contest nearby towers to reduce the effectiveness of the defending force. It adds more counterplay opportunities.

Spotting – When any enemy is seen by any ally, anywhere on the map, a red dot will appear on the map for everyone, for a set period of time. The benfits of this are pretty obvious, but the main benefit is allowing players to see where the action is. It also gives romaers a stronger tool for scouting areas. I know everyone screams at people to get on TS, but if the game made it easier as well that could only improve things.

Invulnerable Defenders – After reading your comments about it being easier to defend, which I completely agree with, I thought it would be a good idea to have towers & keeps provide a defender buff making all defenders invincible while they are inside the tower/keep. However, to keep this a bit more balanced, the buff would only trigger if there are fewer than a set number of players defending. As soon as that number goes above the threshold the buff ends. Also, this buff will only take effect while all walls and doors stand. The moment the tower/keep is breached the buff ends.

Skill Based Rewards – I agree that zerging and only hitting skill 1 should receive the least reward, but when you have two zergs fighting, the zerg who actually uses their skills should be rewarded more, as well as likely winning the fight. So my suggestion here is to add bonus participation rewards, whenever any skill (except skill 1) successfully hits an enemy or helps an ally. So for example, if you lay down a water field and allies make use of it by blasting it, which actually heals an ally, both you and those blasting it will get bonus particapation.

In a non-event scenerio this bonus participation will add to the amount of xp & gold gained and also increase your magic find chance (and maybe extra badges of honor). In an event scenerio you get bonus xp & karma, and bonus badges of honor. The idea is, that mindless skill 1 spamming will not nett you as much reward as skillfully using your skills. And to prevent players simply spamming all their skills, the bonus participation will only be registered if the skill actually does something to someone. So the skill needs to actually damage or CC an opponent, an interrupt skill needs to interupt a target, and healing or boons need to heal or achieve some kind of benefit to an ally (e.g.- protection reduces some damage taken, aegis blocks an attack, etc).

Player Assisted Dolyaks – Supply is a vital part of WvW strategy, yet hardly anyone defends the supply lines. To incentivise both defending and attacking the supply, I propose that dolyaks gain massive benefits when accompanied by allied players. Benefits could include such things as: extra supply dropped off at the destination and faster respawn time of the next dolyak based on how long the dolyak was escorted for (the longer it is escorted the bigger the bonus), and a 33% movement buff while accompanied by allies. And if preventing faster supply wasn’t incentive enough, for the attackers, they could add the option to steal some off of the defeated dolyak.

Another idea I had in regard to dolyaks was instead of attacking and killing the dolyak, the enemy could have the option to capture it instead, and re-route it to one of their own nearby towers.

Anyway, those are some suggestions. Not sure how effective they would be, but something needs to be done, WvW has a ton of potential, I hope Anet can improve things sooner rather than later. I fear the damage may have already been done, but I still have some hope that it can be salvaged.

The timing of today’s “leak” sure is curious.

Community getting a little too unified behind stuff you don’t want to do, ArenaNet?

The trial balloon you just pushed up is going to get shot down badly. It will create a distraction, though…so I guess mission accomplished.

If the rumor is true about guild alliances replacing servers…I don’t envy you. That’s an extremely difficult idea just from a logistical standpoint. If you don’t do it really well, it’ll kill your game mode. Also, just balancing the populations isn’t enough…you’re still going to have to deal with the stuff in this thread. Don’t delay the inevitable.

+1 Fozzik.

Avid WvW, small ops guild member hoping ANet pays attention.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

If you allow 2 players on their own to fully defend against a blob then it doesn’t encourage fights. It stops the blob vs blob from occurring because the defensive blob doesn’t need to attend.

Perfect! These are exactly the words I was struggling to compose when trying to explain in TS last night to my guild about how making defense easier has resulted in no one wanting to defend, how it has destroyed the ability to “PPT for fights”.

You can no longer easily “pull” a zerg to your location. They know they’ll just easily flip it back later since you won’t be defending. They don’t need to come help defend because 2 people can handle the defense.

Let’s talk too about these ridiculous WvW tactics.
Assuming you got through the stupid rock walls on earth keep.. which are just annoying you face…

Dragon banners… Yup – 1 Shotting an entire zerg.. seems fair
Chilling Fog… Yup – Perma chill.. seems balanced.

I have left WvW before because when we are attacking a keep I get perma chilled then Dragon Banner attacked. Where’s the fun in that?

We can all agree the best fights always happened in Fully upgraded Garrison with all 3 Servers colliding.

HAAHO.1276:

We can all agree the best fights always happened in Fully upgraded Garrison with all 3 Servers colliding.

They also happen in a paper SMC. Auto-upgrades are terrible for SMC fights.

Chaba.5410:

You can no longer easily “pull” a zerg to your location. They know they’ll just easily flip it back later since you won’t be defending. They don’t need to come help defend because 2 people can handle the defense.

Yep this is exactly whats happening in T1 as well.

This post needs to not die.

Rin.1046:

Player Assisted Dolyaks – Supply is a vital part of WvW strategy, yet hardly anyone defends the supply lines. To incentivise both defending and attacking the supply, I propose that dolyaks gain massive benefits when accompanied by allied players. Benefits could include such things as: extra supply dropped off at the destination and faster respawn time of the next dolyak based on how long the dolyak was escorted for (the longer it is escorted the bigger the bonus), and a 33% movement buff while accompanied by allies. And if preventing faster supply wasn’t incentive enough, for the attackers, they could add the option to steal some off of the defeated dolyak.

This is already in game. Dolyaks get 90% damage reduction when allies are nearby. They don’t drop off extra supply, but the respawn timer is now only ~3 seconds so there’s no need to reduce it. Also, with a first-aid kit from any sentry post, players can give yaks 50% swiftness uptime without any of their own swiftness skills. Thus, the yak already has the movement buff and since there’s no respawn time, making the yaks move faster means more supply over time.

Finally, attackers already have a chance to steal supply off of a defeated Dolyak. They occasionally get 5 sup when killing a Dolyak.

Chaba.5410:

You can no longer easily “pull” a zerg to your location. They know they’ll just easily flip it back later since you won’t be defending. They don’t need to come help defend because 2 people can handle the defense.

People won’t give up fights to defend waypoints any more either because they know that they can just crack the paper keep back open and get the waypoint back instantly, and they don’t have to worry about it being trained by a havoc group because it takes 14 people to drop 4 pieces of siege now.

No red tags on this post still? K.

It hurts to see the neglect Anet has for such a good post.

^The same neglect they have been showing for about all the good suggestions that have been made here over the years… oh well!

+1, excellent post

Same story different thread, Anet doesn’t deserve our support if they won’t support us. I’m done with Anet, and I’ve stopped logging on for the login reward just so they don’t get my metric for what it’s worth. There are plenty of other companies that are willing to communicate with their player base. Anet can go Jump, I’ve had it.

I think WvWvW need a rework
So +1 from me!

gennyt.3428:

No red tags on this post still? K.

But plenty in the sPvP section announcing and replying on topics related to season 2!

Does any single dev or forum moderator or a single person on ANET’s staff just wanna drop in and say hello?

Thanks-
Your customer

Akkeros.1675:

Does any single dev or forum moderator or a single person on ANET’s staff just wanna drop in and say hello?

Thanks-
Your customer

A friendly bump; and what they said. ^

Great post, Fozzik. We’re of like minds in all of your thoughts and ideas.

If anyone has not yet +1’d the original post, please do. Anet devs look for posts that get a lot of +1’s. I know, because they nerfed something I discussed in my highest rated post. Get your guildies and friends to log in and +1 his post as well.

A quick fix to help a tiny, tiny bit would be to return the WP’s to the way they were on Alpine. Dumbest idea ever in the history of Anet was to only give ONE stinkin’ WP to each home team. Ok, 2 if you count Citadel, but that one can’t be taken. We need our, OUR, WP’s in Undercroft and the Air Keep (forget it’s name). Then we’d at least be able to GET to fights. Heck, if a south tower has swords, it will be capped by the time you run there.

As someone who has recently come back to this game mode I have to say I hate the meta. Getting thrown around, stunned and condied to death because it’s impossible to remove them faster than they are put on with top frontline builds and gear sucks. It’s not fun. It’s my opinion Anet makes class changes based primarily on sPvP and without much if any concern about how it affects WvW.

+1

WvW turned my mates to other games, and I randomly log on now and then to follow a comm if they are on and plop along with them doing nothing. It has become a massive bore and I miss the days of old (and we thought it was bad then).
Fozzik is spot on with most points.

This post deserves a bump and a half because of recent news about the WvWvW maps. Yes I’m bumping not just because of the original post but the responses as well, it’s worth a read.

I think it’s important to get back to the basic premise of WvWvW, which is players battling tooth and nail for dominance using various strategies and not just two (blob and or siege). Get in tune with the diverse playstyles of your playerbase, then you can salvage this mode. A mode that has the potential to best thing since sliced bread.