Guild Wars 2

+1

The combat system is the best part of this game. Getting to use it is always a joy. Please incentivize players using it in a PvP game mode.

Also just throwing this out there, I know the engine for the game is ancient at this point, and the lag is bad as it is, but removing the AoE cap on abilities would really go a long way to discourage players from grouping up into one giant zerg. It would also not affect sPvP, and positively impact PvE.

You’ve laid it out really well OP

Thanks for writing all this up, Fozzik

Great post. Not going to quote the whole thing, but want to touch on objective cascading.

One of the most important parts of the old Alpine maps was to try and try to take either the NW or NE towers. Obviously these were important to take to start the siege on garrison. Fights abounded around both of these towers all the time as the home force knew that keeping that tower out of the hands of the attacker was paramount.

You knew that people would respond to any attack on this area. So if you wanted fights you went there. Where on the new maps can you go that you know the enemy will respond? Nowhere. Population is the biggest issue, but the fact that there are no tactical or strategic points needed is another problem.

+1 excellent write up

This should be the new wvw guiding principles, outstanding post.

I recommend checking out this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Constructive-Features-for-a-good-BL-map/first#post5800985

We’ve taken to writing up a blueprint for them to follow, even including a picture of what the basic map layout should look like. The more input we can get, the better it will be. Will they actually make use of it? I don’t know. But if we as a community come up with a comprehensive plan of exactly what we’d like, and even include pictures to be absolutely clear on everything, then we’ll have everything we possibly can. And with any potential future CDI’s, we can just link the thread for them.

Excellent summary of design principles that can guide a revitalization of WvW!

The fix is within your grasp Anet – please implement suggestions as outlined by Fozzik.

Great post. I agree with pretty much everything OP says.

Good post, but just like the other 5000 posts over the last 3 years it will be looked at for which direction not to go with WvW.

I was same spot as OP in terms of WvW play hours (6,500 hours), now I don’t touch WvW. And many people saw WvW going this direction from the day they put golems on the trading post.

You make some good points here, though there are also some that seem less solid. At least, they don’t seem to accurately portray the desert BLs.

Fozzik.1742:

-You need to be able to get to the fights.
-You need to be able to get BACK to the fights.

This is true, but it shouldn’t be so easy that one force can rush back into the fight so fast that they might as well not be dying. When a player goes down in a fight, it needs to mean something. If both sides can spawn near the battle, the whole thing becomes a farce.

That said, 2 or 3 minutes is probably a good enough time for running back. If you can’t make it to any part of the map in 2 or 3 minutes then refer to this post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Guide-to-Desert-Borderlands-Towers-Keeps/first#post5745810

Those routes are all sufficient, though they vary in availability based on which towers/keeps you own.

As for getting to the fights in the first place, the sentries should be plenty to let you track large enemy movements, even without scouts in place. If that fails, it is not the map’s fault. Later on, when towers can potentially mark huge areas like sentries, it should be even easier provided you have defended your towers.

Fozzik.1742:

- Defending needs to be a thing.

You’re right in pointing out the irony of the killboxes—the safest place to be is in the killing zone. It goes right back to how the safest part of the wall is at the bottom, not the top.

Still, getting the Cannons/Oil automatically and having so many of them has made defending far more successful for me. I use a build specifically made to be able to get a few shots of siege off and escape to reset my health (or stay on the siege if pressure isn’t massive) and it’s been paying off. It needs more tweaks, yes, but it’s better than the old system where getting gate siege was a huge setback to defenses and then it was useless half the time anyway.

I imagine this will be slightly improved with Hardened Siege and Shield Generators, but the base state should also be better.

Fozzik.1742:

- Objective cascades.

Notice how many times I’ve said ‘this is a good thing—if you’ve defended your towers?’ The previous form of cascading was as hamhanded as the Siegerazor breakout events. It was great for a smaller force attacking a larger one, but it was even better for a larger force attacking a smaller one. If the enemy blobbed one of your towers, there was nothing you could do to save Garrison, almost.

Now, owning the towers allows you to cross the map quicker and, eventually, keep tabs on enemies better. With the new scoring mechanic (+3 points when yaks finish their journey) towers are also essentially to getting your points up. For reference, with just the northern keep and the two northern towers, north camp will generate over 50 PPT if all the yaks get through safely.

Ironically, the towers used to be better at this in the beta. They had walls instead of barricades and blocked both sides of the tower instead of one, I think. If that were the case, enemies would be at a massive disadvantage in terms of moving around the map. This was toned down to appease roamers, I think.

At any rate, the objective cascading is there, perhaps stronger. It’s just not as obnoxious. It doesn’t invalidate other desirable efforts, like sieging up garrison.

Fozzik.1742:

- Real, actually fun and worthwhile play for any size group, including individuals.

I thought the changes that made yaks/camps so important to scoring helped with this. It’s harder for small groups to flip things with walls, but it’s more rewarding for them when they flip things without walls as it has an even higher impact on score than flipping towers/keeps. If they can’t manage to flip camps, they can at least kill yaks to still have a great impact.

Of course, that means something needs to be implemented so that people care about the scoring, actually. Some of us do, but many do not. If they did, there would be more incentive to split up and guard even the camps and towers.

It seems like you’re discussing what could or should be. I’m really trying to deal with what is. Guild upgrades? Yaks for PPT? Those things aren’t going to fill up a BL map with people, and both are examples of how little of an identity WvW has in the minds of the ArenaNet devs.

They need to figure out who the players are who enjoy this game mode, and start designing it to be about fights. Guild upgrades are far too expensive to make any impact, and very few players are going to play WvW long-term if all there is to do is cap camps and kill yaks whenever you don’t have a blob, and 3 of the 4 maps are wasted. Might as well do PvE in that case…same play but much more rewarding.

Should there be PPT? Should there be objectives and upgrading and supply, etc? Sure. But again, everything should be designed through the filter of the central premise. This is a pvp game mode, and it should be about supporting, incentivizing, and facilitating fights between players.

What about having players carry supply from camps to towers / keeps instead of mobs? The player would move at half speed and be unable to attack while carrying the supply bundle. Think of all the PvP game play that could emerge around that one idea. Fighting yaks is lame…fighting a player who could set down the supply and attack you back? The five people escorting him? Better.

Should it take a bit of time to run to a fight or run back to a fight? Of course. But ArenaNet needs to look closely at how long is too long and players start getting reluctant to engage or giving up entirely. There are plenty of other ways to make death meaningful…like my suggestion of allowing supply to be lootable from dead players.

Objective cascades are better game play. Fixing the issue of zergs being the path of least resistance and breaking all the good game play is a separate problem. Moving objectives farther apart does nothing to fix zerging.

I don’t think the problem is a lack of identity so much as one that differs from what you want. Also, I didn’t mention anything that isn’t in the game, did I? Or are you referring to my saying that as players adjust that the maps will work better?

I think that the problem is that players don’t consider objectives worth fighting over. Only keeps really generate the sort of fights you’re looking for. I contend that towers, and some camps even, are worth the same level of fight response—and if that were a more common sentiment we’d see more fights. Perhaps if the points weren’t so invisible? Perhaps if there was greater fanfare over a yak getting through or some drop that only appeared when taking camps or killing enemies near yaks? Preferably, something to do with guild upgrades.

The escort idea is only fun if enemies are there to attack you. Otherwise, it’s even less enthralling than walking yaks alone.

Lots of good ideas. Please read it devs.

Start with removing auto upgrades so value of supply would be important again. Also having supplies as a drops from dead foes sounds very reasonable.

They could make “no BL” event. Until BL overhaul/rollback would occur.

This might actually be the single best post I’ve ever seen on these forums.

+1 OP

no +1000!

+1 Fozzik, no idea if this will even be read by devs, but excellent post I hope they listen

Fozzik.1742:

(…)
Right now, the game design heavily favors joining a map queue blob and karma training around knocking over objectives with no resistance…never meeting or even seeing any enemy forces except for the occasional blob verses blob press 1 festival of lag. Builds don’t really matter, levels don’t matter…you just stick to the zerg like glue and profit. This needs to change. So here’s how.
(…)
.

Well that is what WvW was always about, not only now, stacked blob A atack empty tower, blob B comes, push blob A that gets pushed to nearby owned tower and then A pushes blob B to their close tower/keep and we stay with this redundancy for a while… , game design was never good to start with, it fitted AB in GW1 but here we need something to add value in it, not just redundancy for ppt, th eonly diference now it that is mostly AOE spam intead of stability melee group.
Also besides the awfull events and keep boons in the new BL’s are keeps design, for some reason eotm is a joke.

Great post Fozzik.1742, one of the best post i ever readed on gw2 forum.

For population coverage i would suggest building a combined EU/NA tier list. A server mix without any country or timezone mark. So server relaunche with one free move.

Sviel.7493:

The escort idea is only fun if enemies are there to attack you. Otherwise, it’s even less enthralling than walking yaks alone.

The players carrying supply idea was a quick concept to demonstrate a few of the points I was trying to make. It’s not a fully fleshed-out system, obviously.

1) It shows what I mean when I say design with pvp as the central element.
2) It’s an example of making something worthwhile and meaningful for individuals or small groups to do. If you also make upgrading manual, and make upgrades more significant (i.e. an upgraded structure could be defended by 1-5 players against an attacking zerg for significant time), the movement of supply and upgrades become a significant pvp activity.
3) It’s an example of the “if you built it, they will come” concept. If I’m an individual or small group and I want fights, I know that supply lines are a place where other individuals or small groups will be. It’s a self-fulfilling thing…people will be there because people will be there, and if it’s not too far from a spawn point, people are going to mix it up and fight.

I say that WvW has little identity right now because the elements being added / changed don’t make sense for WvW as a unique PvP game mode. A game mode which is largely PvE with worse loot and the occasional blob running you over is not what they should be shooting for to retain a sustainable population.

Please for the love of the game we all enjoy, please hire this guy!!!!

+1

Well written, Fozzik.

This hits the nail on the head. We finally did a guild run in the new BL last Saturday and I missed half the fights because:

a) I could not find a route to the commander (if I died or was selling stuff and had to catch up)
b) I fell to my death while looking at my map to find a route to the commander

I suppose it will get better with a little more knowledge of the “proper” routes but I’m not sure I’ll be spending much time in the BLs to learn them.

Good post, Fozzik.

I’ll preface this by saying I’m leader of a guild, Violent Tendency [vT], that has been in every tier but 1, running small-man squads (Anvil Rock, Borlis Pass, Crystal Desert, Ferguson’s Crossing, Yak’s Bend, Henge of Denravi and currently Maguuma). We moved up through the tiers as the tiers slowly, achingly, basically died off. We’ve put in thousands and thousands of hours into WvW, probably much more than your intended audience for the gamemode. We have seen every bit of a vibrant and pseudo-hostile WvW community during the “good times” and the terrible, demoralizing atmosphere that comes from the drying up of players from matchups.

The current state of WvW is far, far beyond that.

Right now, there’s very little reason to run an organized 5-man in WvW, because the new Borderlands are desolate and perpetuated more and more the less people encounter people. AoE cap has always been a thing, that will never change and those of us who like to run in small man squads have accepted that. What we haven’t accepted, though, is the constant creep towards making everything more and more frustrating to deal with for small groups.

We already have dealt with enough flack over the years from players telling us to just go spvp if we want to have small-scale fights, we don’t need the questionable design choices of WvW developers trying to do the same. You won’t find the rush of killing off a group of 10-20 with 5-6 in pvp, so let’s please stop trying to force us there. We don’t want to do it, and we won’t.

We want to fight in WvW, either through objectives or open-field; it feels like that part seems to be completely forgotten.

I still try to go out in WvW nightly and find those fights, but as a solo I don’t even bother doing half of the things I did before, and in groups we don’t even bother with objectives because there’s literally no point. You either get no response or, rarely, a 60-person karma train a few minutes later. Most roamers, small-man squads and even some havoc groups that I know have started picking up and going to EotM, because at least there we can find fights.

We want to be able to play WvW and be rewarded in the same sort of way that all of the other gamemodes are rewarded for their time investment. Right now, the only incentive is for us to fight and enjoy fighting (if you can find fights); with that being slowly taken away, what’s left of the gamemode?

Fozzik, well said. Particularly ’re: the concept of the kill box. Whoever thought a defender would actually design something like that…

This guy totally gets it Anet. If your wvw overhaul doesn’t fall in line with Fozzik has laid out here it will go over poorly.

Agreed. This is the way WvW should be developed or a fail is imminent.

I won’t quote because it will take a while trying to find the spot where it was mentioned but while I agree with 90% I disagree on a couple points.

You are all the time making points of what could avoid forming blobs without other blob to fight (aka, discouraging PVD) which I agree but then you make it a point when you say things like “siege must have some placements where attackers can’t hit it because there is a blob attacking and few ppl defending”. I disagree with this in case they don’t balance things in the gamemode. For example, having 6-7 acs on aspots where they can’t be hit and there is a blob inside a keep, there will be no way for the attacker to enter it, simply because AC’s can melt players and then there will sitll be a blob inside.

Having a 50 man aoe cap on AC’s and hurting a lot, even more if they fire all together it’s not any kind of balance (or any kind of skill for any player/server since it only takes 1 guy spamming 1234 on a certain surface to use). My suggestion to avoid this is some of the following:
a) Make acs much more expensive, so it’s harder to build (this won’t prevent siegeing T3 but will make much harder to do so, at least make sieging a thing)
b) Nerf AOE cap of ACS, make it 10-15 so even if they do the same damage, they won’t hurt the 80% of the blob as they are doing atm
c) Nerf damage of AC, make it a 25% of its current value
d) More strict limit on the number of acs that can be placed within a range, and of course, investigate on this and allow to place a reasonable amount of them covering the same place (reasonable amount of acs means reasonable amout of damage dealt by them, not only the quantity of them)

Fozzik.1742:

Populations / coverage need to be more balanced across servers. I’m not sure how you do this, but it needs to happen. Some sort of megaserver implementation that allows guilds or servers to play together? Merging lower-tier servers into higher-tier? Something.

Each guild could join an alliance with other guilds in-game. Servers would consist of a grouping of these alliances. This would bring us much closer to the name-sake of this game “Guild Wars”.

Idea for defenders
Defensive siege which is only place able when your “world” owns the objective .

But great write,the best write up on ive I’ve seen
Brilliantly done

This is absolutely spot on. +1

Some serious attention needs to be paid to the state of WvW right now.

Those at Anet responsible for this supposed WvW overhaul which has apparently been in the works for some time now need to have their attention drawn to this post by Fozzik.

He’s giving you the answers right here.

At the time of me writing this, Desolation is currently the ONLY full server in Europe.

America has NO FULL SERVERS whatsoever.

If that isn’t a clear enough signal that WvW is in need of serious attention then I don’t know what is.

WvW is the reason I play GW2. No, I am not ‘really in to PvE’, as Colin recently put it. I am in to hard, long-lasting, and intense fights. Being able to overcome my enemy with skill and strategy. This post highlights the fact that most people playing WvW are roamers, seeking good fights, and not just zerglings. Thank you for taking the time to elaborate on many of the concerns the core WvW community are having.

At the very least, WvW players need incentives like reward tracks for now.

+1

About 1,300 hours of WvW since the start of the game here (and like 1,500 hours total play, not a lot just showing the percentage I spend in WvW), and this post mimics my opinions, and the opinions of everyone I know, perfectly.

This needs attention. Hopefully the devs will see it through reddit and recognize that creating a game does not mean that you understand it, hence why game testers are even a thing.

Anet should also think about a reward system that encourages fights and discourages blobbing. Why is it that every single event reward you get in wvw has to do with an objective? You only get rewards for taking or defending property. Why can’t we have the same thing for fights? Shouldn’t winning a 40 v 40 battle earn you the same rewards as a tower capture at least? Also, mindlessly blobbing and taking every tower and keep on a map with no resistance should earn less experience.

+1 also, great post!

Agriope.4523:

We want to fight in WvW, either through objectives or open-field; it feels like that part seems to be completely forgotten.

the only incentive is for us to fight and enjoy fighting (if you can find fights); with that being slowly taken away, what’s left of the gamemode?

And therein really lies the heart of the dev/player disconnect.
Not all devs I’m sure, but the people making decisions at Anet seem to be of the opinion WvW is siege based, but it’s not. The structures are safe zones for the weaker side, there to give the few a small amount of relief from the many so they can still do things beside be overwhelmed constantly… And also provide changing terrain.

But the terrain is not the goal, the goal is defeating the players making use of those structures.

+1 Fozzik, a great writeup and a lot of points that Anet should certainly be mindful of

I’ve been brainstorming ways to improve WvW in the mechanics, as i’ve pretty much been forced to accept the new maps for the time being. I have many of the same ideas as you with regards to the game mode. For context, i’m in a fights/GvG guild right now that has been hopping between the top 3 tiers of NA (currently on T1). i’ve been in PPT guilds before, and done my fair share of roaming as well.

The most significant point of WvW is, as you pointed out, to encourage players to come in contact with, and fight each other. Just as important (IMO) is that fights must be encouraged whether they involve only one player from each side, or 60 from each side and anything in between.

With that in mind, I’m of the opinion that waypoints should be available on every single walled objective on the BLs (towers and keeps). Maybe it makes sense for the waypoint to come as part of an upgrade tier (eg. only a T1 Secured tower gets a WP), but all in all, i’d err on the side of more waypoints around the map.

Also, I was thinking that it might make sense to change how objective waypoints become contested, either in the BLs only, or in EB as well. What I would propose would be that the waypoint on a Keep (or tower if they get WPs) should only be contested if a part of the structure (either wall or gate) has been destroyed. No players have to be inside, but the structure has to no longer be secure. I would maintain the current system of the waypoint becoming open every 3 minutes during an attack, as I think it adds something of an element of strategy to attack/defense of an objective.

The upside to this would be that waypoints are open far more often and allow players fighting open field near keeps to return to the fight much more quickly. It would accomplish this without creating an effectively infinite stream of defenders when actually inside of a keep. The major downside however, would be that a small group would have a very hard time contesting the respawn of a zerg, and in general I always want to encourage small groups. I’m not exactly sure how this could be implemented, but in general i’m of the opinion that more waypoints are good for making the action feel fast paced and consistent, which the new BLs currently have a hard time with.

Good write up, liked the first half but some disagreements with that later parts.

Responding to OP
I like the pointing out of Objective cascading, particularily the NE&NW towers in the vanilla-BL as a example which was great. There was a certain natural flow you would progress in that map. With the new map it is quite harder to say what is next place to move.

But defending being hard? Perhaps you can make a argument for it in Towers but even in there and especially in the Keeps there are huge tower highgrounds to place catapults and trebs. And there are plenty of places where you can place Arrowcarts that cannot be hit with ground targets BUT can be hit by ranged #1 spam projectiles. That is perfect because the #1 can then be reflected by skills or Deflector shield. Stop thinking there is always a 60 man blob vs 5 defendors. What happens to the 20 attackers vs 20 defendors with uncounterable siege.

I very much love the scaling on the keep lord health, giving alot more time to respond. I do not know however if it keeps scaling against a 50man but it should. And the sentry dots are a huge help.

On giving critisism and improvement
When giving out suggestions everyone should keep in mind what is reasonable and what could be improved with the tools at hand. I like when people actually give out a specific suggestions that are implementable. That is the key to good critisism and improvement – not to point at flaws because that is easy but providing solutions. (something I wanted to point out, OP didn’t make this mistake)

Monoblob and counterattacking
A monoblob is detrimental to the action in the map so any changes should incentivise splitting up to atleast 2 raids and smaller roaming parties that try to disturb the minor objectives / ninjaing.
Though in my opinion it has been incentivised all along. While I encourage Guilds to take all fights they can boldly and accept the challenge and find creative ways to win against the odds. There is a serious lack of simple strategy: Counter attacking, to counter the blobs. Too many times you see 50 man blob attacking say SM, 15 people gather up to defend in order to delay the blob by 10 seconds and then dying. Instead of simply making calculated choise to leave SM and move instantly for counter offencive: Forcing the enemy blob to either 1. Cap SM, loose home tower 2. Split up (awesome!) 3. Abort SM mission.
For pugs to stay and bend over “defending” SM with their 15 man is exactly what the blob wants you to do. Stop doing it and counter attack, atleast then you have a chance and create some gray hairs! And maybe the monoblob will have to rethink its strategy.

Couple of ideas
Couple ideas I’ve had a while back to perhaps help the situation, non map specific. And like the OP said, the map, the PPT and the meta game needs to encourage FIGHTS!

1. New point calculating system for the match up

• Currently:* 1 Week, points ticking every 15minutes, into a single huge point pool
  -> Consequence: A player, a group, a guild feels powerless and insignivicant. We captured a keep, 2 towers and 5 camps today, did we make a difference, did we do well?
  -> While on paper the potential point gain is constant, the time zones are not equal, because it is easier to get 500 ticks in morning cap than prime time.

• Improvement:* Split the day into 6 hour time sections – let’s call it Game.
  EU, UK time: 00-06, 06-12, 12-18, 18-24.
  You calculate PPT normally inside the Game and once the Game ends the servers are given points based to the Weeks total score. At the end of the Game the scores might be 4000/5000/6000 → Which sum to the Weekly score 1/2/3, or +bronze/silver/+gold medal. Give out some lewt for participateing in this event and hell give out some statistics for people to look at once the Game ends!
  -> This makes time zones more equal (contrary to now) because a server can’t run away with the victory just by morning capping. Winning the prime and the morning will give same points.
  -> More immediate results and your contribution feels much more significant. Your contribution is not lost in the 300k points at the end of the week.
  -> You can take pride in always winning the prime time, or the Game you play. You can have a whole plan set for a 6 hour Game with guild movement and so on.
  -> Allows servers to better understand and plan the timezone coverage, -> better action.
  --> Anet can easily implement modifiers how much Weekly tally each Game is worth (prime more for example) – I dont think this is good idea though!!!
  —> Anet could and should implement events and comeback mechanics to happen at the end of the 6 hour Game. To prevent people calling the Game early! Kills worth more in the end, supply gathered for the next Game, what ever. . .
  - You can argue if objectives/siege/upgrades/supply should be reset after the Game to further equalize the match up, but continuity is very important for WvW though so resets can’t be that dramatic.

I think this would be a great way to make WvW PPT feel much more immediate and engaging. I’ve done some spreadsheet calculations on old matches that have been played on this and it had desired effect in equalizing score but at the same time the #123 was often the same in even matches (prime focus) but reduces the servers with 500 tick bursts. The biggest effect should be still felt by the player by being more significant to the outcome.

2. Smaller idea I’ve had about Supply – a risky one but I think the concept is valid. Currently the 40 man blob can and will have 40×20 = 800 supplies very easily. Because supply is easy to get and you don’t need much of it. The 20 defendors will have 20×20 = 400. It is pretty much a default to run around with maxed out supply – what if that wasn’t the case. What if the limiting factor in supply was actually the supply and not how much you can carry it. Making blobs supplies not scale directly with more numbers.
-> Blob 40×10 = 400 and defendors 20×20 = 400! Aka both teams dried out same number of camps -> Same end supply because player cap wasn’t the limiting factor..
- To make this happen you would have to lower the supply camps give instantly 100/100 would become 50/50. Move supply to the dolyaks and by upgrading the cap would increase fast to 150/150 and more.
Hopefully increasing the value in flipping camps, upgradeing them, dolyaks and reducing the supply imbalance in blob vs less because available supply is the same.

This idea is not fully fleshed out and might have quite some counter arguments that I haven’t thinked of.

Sabull.5670:

Monoblob and counterattacking
A monoblob is detrimental to the action in the map so any changes should incentivise splitting up to atleast 2 raids and smaller roaming parties that try to disturb the minor objectives / ninjaing.
Though in my opinion it has been incentivised all along. While I encourage Guilds to take all fights they can boldly and accept the challenge and find creative ways to win against the odds. There is a serious lack of simple strategy: Counter attacking, to counter the blobs. Too many times you see 50 man blob attacking say SM, 15 people gather up to defend in order to delay the blob by 10 seconds and then dying. Instead of simply making calculated choise to leave SM and move instantly for counter offencive: Forcing the enemy blob to either 1. Cap SM, loose home tower 2. Split up (awesome!) 3. Abort SM mission.
For pugs to stay and bend over “defending” SM with their 15 man is exactly what the blob wants you to do. Stop doing it and counter attack, atleast then you have a chance and create some gray hairs! And maybe the monoblob will have to rethink its strategy.

While i think this makes sense from an overall tactical point of view, it is very much contingent on structures themselves actually having value beyond PPT (or PPT becoming important again). The issue being that if I simply try and back-cap and circumvent enemy forces every time a larger force comes to take my objective, then I end up with a cycle of just back-capping. Ultimately, like the OP said, WvW should be about the fights, so if the strategy required to succeed in WvW from a score perspective involves me NOT fighting, then there is a disconnect in the system itself.

Fozzik.1742:

My premise is this: It should be about fights. Mixing it up with your opponents. Clashing with red names.

The whole design should start and end with this. Everything about the game mode should encourage, incentivize, and streamline people fighting in large groups, small groups, and duels. Period.

Yeah, not sure I agree entirely.

That’s what it should boil down to. That’s the symptom.

The root cause should be some ulterior motivation to help, promote or defend your realm respectively server.

In DAoC this was done via three things:

• Relics giving up to a 20% damage boost even outside of WvW. The part where it affected PvE was important, giving everyone an incentive to go there and help out at least with relic defense and relic take attempts.
• Darkness Falls, a supreme loot grind zone (at the time) being open only to the realm leading in WvW. But, that’ll naturally drain a lot of their players from the WvW zone into that zone, and on losing it you don’t get kicked out. The zone was giant, so staying alive in it was quite important, especially since deeper in there were really dangerous mobs.
• Open world farming in WvW zones was slightly superior to PvE zones for quite a few materials, getting people into the zones.

Put those three together, and you had lots of fighting, all day long.

But the fighting wasn’t the primary design goal, the motivation to be available to fight was.

Fozzik.1742:

Dueling isn’t a dirty word.

No, but players always act as if it should be, expecting it to show balance between classes. Which is at best naive and if the player has more than two weeks experience with RPGs (of any kind) it is flat out stupid. Period.

If someone doesn’t mind duels decided as much by class and spec than by players, then fair enough. Those happen a lot, and should happen.

But expecting balanced fights on a scale of 10 or less players (even sPvP is really a stretch given 9 classes in the game with hundreds of skills and item combinations) is…really?

+1 op. best post on wvw forums

+1 Great write-up Fozzik!

+1 for true wvw post!

let’s make it visible now !!

Another +1 for the thread. For all disconnect between actual WvW players and our devs, I can still have hope that this will be read! Sums up what WvW needs very nicely.

Though, while I agree that “the few” in outmanned situations (such as overnight defense versus a heavy nightcap server) could use better siege placements or more effective siege in general for outmanned situations, I don’t know that unreachable platforms or areas would be the best option. Still, not a bad suggestion.

+1
would like to see a dev comment on this soon

Good read. Thank you.

All things aside, what’s lacking is players if you ask me.

The new maps have potential. Sure… I dislike the auto-upgrades (I would prefer them manual but free), the distances (though… are they much longer than in EB?), I don’t understand what the gimmicks adds and I feel the oasis event is too frequent.

On the other hand… I like the new sentries, the gathering nodes, I see possibilities for big fights around the fire keep and I see plenty of roaming potential. I’ve had fun zerg fights in EotM with its crazy map. Why not in the new borderlands?

I’m primarily a roamer, been a regular since before the first tournament, seen 3 EU servers and I felt a lacking participation a couple of months /before/ HoT.

New playable PvE content got some players. New scary borderlands chased away some players to good old familiar EB. Some are chasing guild hall upgrades.

Partially map design but not solely, and map design doesn’t explain what we saw before HoT.

Imagine the new maps filled with players and skirmishes. It could work with minor adjustments.

The only thing not minor in my book is stale matchups. Shake up the leaderboards and make the fights matter. That explains more to me than the new maps.

We could make everything right, we could go back to the old borderlands — but the matchups would still be stale.

Nightcapping is not a root cause in my book but a consequence, a red herring. Make the matchups matter and you will solve nightcapping at the same time.
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Edit: spelling

I agree completely. As a roamer, I don’t need fancy map design. I just want open areas that allow for many duels in a short amount of time

I don’t think the ideas of PPT and fights should be mutually exclusive like they seem to be in some people’s minds. To me that points to issues with the game design. Scoring points for your server to help win the match should be more directly tied to actively playing and engaging the opposing players.

I also think all sorts of fights, whether it’s solo, small group, or large group can and should be supported. Each can and should play a worthwhile role in earning points for the server’s success in the match, and all should be able to exist on the same map in concert with each other.

That’s one of the great things about open-world unbalanced PvP…the potential for everyone to help out by engaging opposing players in the way that works for them. “fights” can and should include open field, small and large scale, siege or no, walls or no… pretty much any way players can engage other players.

What about a much more active system of scoring that’s better exposed to the players? One that rewards the fun and active things you can do in WvW, and provides less reward or none at all for passive activities that don’t involve engaging the opposition. How?

What if matches were decided by active scoring instead of passive old PPT? Players earn “world points” for their server by actively engaging in WvW against opposing forces.

Tie into the NPC scaling system that’s already in the game and use it in a new way. As a fight between players occurs, account for the number of players on each side of the fight. When the fight ends (when a player leaves combat), provide a “world point” reward to that player based on their performance in the fight (healing + damage + CC? + stomps).

The same can be applied when near an objective. Defenders should be rewarded with world points for every 3 minutes they successfully hold an objective against active attack. World points could also be rewarded for people doing active things like escorting / killing yaks (or players carrying supply), and upgrading objectives.

All of these world points would go into one big pool and at the end of the week, the server with the highest world point total wins.

Weight the world point rewards by taking into account:
-The size of the forces on each side (more points for fighting outnumbered, less points for zerging down small force)
-Points for kills
-If an objective is involved, weight the rewards based on how long the objective was held against active attack, and how upgraded the objective is.

Then give a floaty chest or popup on the screen that says something like

“You’ve helped your server win the match! You earned XXXX world points!”

Or do floaty numbers and a cool sound.

Personal rewards of loot and gold and karma could be tied into the same system. Give chests every X amount of world points you earn, or make personal reward tracks like sPvP has which you advance by earning world points. Heck, even WvW masteries could be tied to the same system. Bring it all together and expose it to the player so it feels good and makes players want to engage in good ways, rather than negative, passive ones (like zerging undefended objectives all day).

People would be able to clearly see and understand their contribution, and their contribution to the server’s points would be personally rewarding in a direct and immediate and meaningful way. It would feel more “fair” and common-sense…if I win a tough fight against a larger force, I should get more reward!

Sitting with maps full of undefended and un-upgraded objectives would do nothing for a server. Attacking and capturing undefended and un-upgraded objectives would provide minimum points (or maybe none at all). In this way, people would seek out fights and work to move supply and upgrade because it would directly and obviously reward the server and the player for engaging with the opposition and actually playing the game mode.

Zerging mindlessly around maps would become the least profitable play…both personally and in terms of world points. It would be really hard to earn points with a huge group and no opposing forces. Small forces would be much more encouraged to take part in the match, and would be able to contribute in a real way by playing smart and with skill.

The most possible points for the server, and the fastest personal rewards should come from:
1) Fighting even or larger forces in any form and winning. This is what it’s all about.
2) Successfully upgrading and defending objectives from active attack. Yes, defending objectives should be a bit more rewarding than attacking objectives. defending is harder, takes more time, and is more limited in where it can occur.

Successfully capturing upgraded and defended objectives should be next on the value scale, only slightly less rewarding than the other two.

So there’s an idea. Probably needs some work, but you’ve incentivized positive, skilled play and actively engaging opposing forces, and disincentivized zerging and karma training. You’ve made WvW feel more rewarding directly, and made it about the fights and server score at the same time.

(This all assumes that upgrading goes back to being a manual process of turning in supply (not personal money or karma) in order to “build” upgrades).

+1

Loving just about everything you’ve said so far.

sephiroth.4217:

I was same spot as OP in terms of WvW play hours (6,500 hours), now I don’t touch WvW. And many people saw WvW going this direction from the day they put golems on the trading post.

I saw it back in 2012, as the clearly defined blueprint that must be followed when RvR is continuously and consecutively compromised by blending it with the PvE world constraints. These aren’t new mistakes. They are iterations on an obvious roadmap.

Since I’ve been proven right in that, and already spun my wheels in the corporate communications mud over the whole thing, I didn’t buy HoT, and am unsure how deep the discount needs to be, as Mike and krewe can’t possibly sell me their PvE “experience”, and esports fandom is even more laughable than in real sports.

Good luck. o7