After going through a lot of the posts here, and from my own experience, I’d like to offer up some suggestions and major issues that I think need to be addressed. Please do not turn this thread into a rant fest. Add some solid fact based suggestions or issues if you have them, but try to avoid subjective issues or opinions. Hopefully this will help the devs sort out real game issues from more obtuse issues.
1. Culling and invisible mobs
Problem:- Mobs of players spawn around you all at once, with no advance warning they are coming.
Solution: Obviously there are limits on what the server and our clients can render, so it’s a tough nut to crack. I did see a suggestion that if at least player tags were rendered, we would know something is headed our way, and I would think that should be easier on processor resources, although I could be wrong? Any other ideas from knowledgeable people about what visual queue we could get that wouldn’t be resource heavy? What about an audio queue to indicate the sound of approaching troupes or something?
2. Server populations & queues
Problem:- Some servers have constant huge populations online and are rolling those with lesser numbers. This is mostly a player issue as you can’t force people onto low-pop servers and that’s not an issue I wanted to address here. However, there seems to be a queue issue in these cases. How does one server get twice as many people online playing, and yet I still have to queue for an hour to get into a map? ALos, is there a separate queue for each map, or 1 shared queue? I’ve been trying to queue for all 4 maps at once as I will play on any I can get in, but I notice the last one I queue for is usually the one that comes up.
Solution:- Something for the devs to investigate, as we can’t solve it. Queue lengths and server populations on a map seem to need investigation, as lower population servers in a map should have no queue time I would think. If there is 1 common queue for all WvW maps, I would like to see separate queues for each one, and then then you do get in to any map, pop you from the other queues until you requeue again.
3. Retaliation & Siege
Problem:- Retaliation, if co-ordinated across several people can be kept up almost permanently, and destroys arrow carts very quickly, rendering them almost useless.
Solution:- I know it has already been stated this may be changed to not effect siege. I would just like to re-iterate this is an important change that needs to be done to ensure siege and defense remains viable. I’d also like to consider the long term effect of retaliation on the meta-game, to ensure it doesn’t become a necessity to be competitive.
4. Spawn camping and supply
Problem:- Larger forces owning maps can spawn camp players with multiple siege engines, rendering the competition for the map useless.
Solution:- I thought in Beta we used to get a buff near our spawn point, didn’t we? Also, I would think that spawn points should also be supply camps so incoming forces can load up and if necessary retaliate against spawn campers like this. If necessary, make that supply usable only within the spawn surround. If you aren’t given a home-ground advantage to get out of your camp, then this could become an increasing problem on outmatches servers. Speaking of which…
TBC – message length exceeded