Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of people blaming the way ppt system works killing WvW no it isn’t. Is it part of killing it? Yes it is but is it as major as other things? No. What actually killed WvW or is killing WvW? Here’s my list
#1 being the major issue and #10 being the least
#1. Arena Net not caring for WvW 3-4 years go when it actually has population.
#2. Not giving GvG scene any representation or making it a scene. (One of the devs even interrupted a gvg and try shutting down)
#3. HoT and gimmicks
#4. Stab changes.
#5. Introducing transfers and server stacking
#6. Match ups getting locked and becoming pale
#7. PPT system.
#8. Server politics and Tier politics
#9. Waiting 6 months before started making any changes (WvW population probably dropped like Snoop Dogg dropping like it’s hot)
#10. Server links.

LOL

Did you spend any time playing the game or just haunt forums?
Also please tell me when you GVG’d and for whom.

Thinking you might be telling tales….

I had to hunt for it, but this list gave a pretty insightful picture of the rise and fall of this mode. No doubt it needs to be expanded to include the last 3 months https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Timeline-Situation-Explained/first#post6085890

CrimeMaker.8612:

#2. Not giving GvG scene any representation or making it a scene. (One of the devs even interrupted a gvg and try shutting down)

Wat. Is there a link to the story or something?

Curiously the story of the GM was used on our TS as well.
I would love to hear where that came from. The pugmanders and pugs on my server are very anti fight guild and hunt down gvgs. In TS it was, while the pug crushed a GVG repetedly that the guild time was over and should the guilds complain they would be banned by a GM, as that had happened before. When i asked repetedly who said that guilds would be banned the statement was adjusted to no its not bannable. So where does the story come from that GMs vor even devs are anti fight guild?

ANET allowing servers to stack overwhelming numbers is the main reason WvW didn’t succeed like it could have. The biggest blob wins, just ask BlobGate.

They could fix the issue by penalizing the people who stack, but ANET has never had the gumption to do that. So WvW continues to suffer while ANET makes bandaid fixes to things that matter very little compared to the stacking issue.

Silberfederling.9302:

Curiously the story of the GM was used on our TS as well.
I would love to hear where that came from. The pugmanders and pugs on my server are very anti fight guild and hunt down gvgs. In TS it was, while the pug crushed a GVG repetedly that the guild time was over and should the guilds complain they would be banned by a GM, as that had happened before. When i asked repetedly who said that guilds would be banned the statement was adjusted to no its not bannable. So where does the story come from that GMs vor even devs are anti fight guild?

It was a long time ago but there was an ANET dev who trashed talked some GvGers. It should be noted though that the ANET Dev was disciplined for his actions. While some of what you said above is not what happened, an incident did occur with the same basic idea. But that’s how stories change and history is rewritten, people tell the story over and over again eventually the facts get changed and people have misinformation. Bottom line there once was an ANET dev that trashed GvGers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Some-ANET-interfered-with-our-GvG/first

daoc is the perfect example, it was the best rvr game but after they got their hands on warhammer ip they gave up on it. U can only play the same crap over and over everyday for so long, eventually ppl will move to another game.

You guys seriously didn’t remember the “violating my game mode incident”?

Good list, I’d bump #9 up a few spots though. A lot of people came back for HoT, if they had been willing to fix the problems right away they could have kept that momentum going. It’s probably to late now to save WvW now, the best we can hope for is to get us back to the point where it will slowly die over the next year or 2.

Arena Net not supporting the GvG scene did hurt WvW.

Urge to feed troll rising…

Really bringing up that dev incident now… as for GvG the whole guild hall arena is basically a love letter to “GvG” blobs of people can kill each other in there fine, not to mention about OS arena.

While what the dev did was unquestionably unprofessional, GvG as it exists in this game (It should really be called “Blob vs Blob” from the few videos I have seen of it), was not playing WvW as it was intended to be played. Which is why they gave you a corner to use, and now even a fancy arena.

hmsgoddess.3869:

Silberfederling.9302:

Curiously the story of the GM was used on our TS as well.
I would love to hear where that came from. The pugmanders and pugs on my server are very anti fight guild and hunt down gvgs. In TS it was, while the pug crushed a GVG repetedly that the guild time was over and should the guilds complain they would be banned by a GM, as that had happened before. When i asked repetedly who said that guilds would be banned the statement was adjusted to no its not bannable. So where does the story come from that GMs vor even devs are anti fight guild?

It was a long time ago but there was an ANET dev who trashed talked some GvGers. It should be noted though that the ANET Dev was disciplined for his actions. While some of what you said above is not what happened, an incident did occur with the same basic idea. But that’s how stories change and history is rewritten, people tell the story over and over again eventually the facts get changed and people have misinformation. Bottom line there once was an ANET dev that trashed GvGers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Some-ANET-interfered-with-our-GvG/first

Thank you for the link. The strange thing is that they do not say GvG is reportable behavior, but still players feel the need to Quote this event.

Crise.9401:

Urge to feed troll rising…

Really bringing up that dev incident now… as for GvG the whole guild hall arena is basically a love letter to “GvG” blobs of people can kill each other in there fine, not to mention about OS arena.

While what the dev did was unquestionably unprofessional, GvG as it exists in this game (It should really be called “Blob vs Blob” from the few videos I have seen of it), was not playing WvW as it was intended to be played. Which is why they gave you a corner to use, and now even a fancy arena.

That the arena is intended for GvG holds true. But fit for fights larger than 10v10? Hardly.
First of it is fiddely to geht they other guild into your arena.
Secondly if you try to fight 20v20 in the arena you realize that:
- the layout of the arena lacks simply the room for many manuevers.
-a GvG is seldom 2 groups clashing frontal or even circling each other.
-most GvGs are not GvGs, they are scrims that happen once guilds realized that there is another guild of equal size or skills.
-these scrims rarely take long and happen during the guilds normal raid time, so there is little reason for the guilds to leave the map, especially if the pug zerg just jumped on this BL and clogs the map with queues.
-should there be a pug zerg (my experience) the guild will be in communication with the pugmander, announce a GVG and might even clear the pugs back by binding another guild.

From my experience (on a server that has loads of pug zerg guilds and whose commanders and players hate on fight guilds) the players that take offense are generally pug players, unable or unwilling to command themselves, unwilling to adjust their gear, players that are part of TS communities outside of any fresh Intel or ideas only doing their thing blissfully ignorant to what else happens in wvw.

The fact that many fight guilds lost players, the increase in overall dmg from pug zergs with superior numbers and the stabil change pushed power away from “zerg hinter guilds” and empowered random pug zergs, whose players congratulate each other for busting guilds 50v20. This schadenfreude of a majority of the community against fightguilds, whose commanders and players lead and reinforce pugs outside of their raid time is what damages the game mode.
Yes many pugs screem blissfully the age of zergbusting is over.
But what die you gain? The guild commanders and players wont just join your pvd train. They leave and what remains are more places on the k Train.
This leads to bloated scores and large parts of the wvw population only playing every two weeks.

And before you say i talk out of my kitten and exaggerate.
Make a f2p ACC and join drakkar lake EU (DE) for 3 weeks. No need to understand german, just join the TS and maps at prime for k train week and for “omg they are all blobbing” week and compare the numbers.

Right now the problem is that anet is working on fixing ppt system which shouldn’t be their first goal. Should it be a goal? Yes but it should be long term goal. Changing ppt system isn’t going to bring all the experienced players and Guilda that have quit the game. Major priority for arena net should be is bring people into WvW. The thing that can really help is short quarterly WvW season with op rewards and create new trailer just for WvW and advertise it showing everything you could do in WvW. I also they should just do kaboom and spread everyone out. Yes people will moan and kitten but hey give those people one or two free transfers and the only transfer they will be allowed to use just to get on the same server as their guild/friends/family or just faction this kitten.

CrimeMaker.8612:

#1. Arena Net not caring for WvW 3-4 years go when it actually has population.

I can agree that they did not express really any interest in WvW up until a few months ago when Tyler came out of the wood work and started actually making changes the people wanted. But lets not dwell on the past, they care now.

#2. Not giving GvG scene any representation or making it a scene. (One of the devs even interrupted a gvg and try shutting down)

GvG was a run away scene that created itself from WvW. The arena area of OS was created to try to help accommodate and people have been doing GvG’s from behind the wind mill and at zerg island in Alpine for quite some time as well. Yeah it would be nice for them to create a GvG system, but it was never a game mode in GW2, users created this. You can’t blame ANet for not implementing something they had no intentions of adding lol. That is like blaming a car manufacturer for not adding a turbo to a car when you bought it so you added it yourself. You bought the game without GvG, why do you feel you’re owed it? I always liked doing GvG’s also, so I agree it would be a cool feature – but stop blaming the people who made the game for not adding it in when they had no intention to do so from the get-go.

CrimeMaker.8612:

#3. HoT and gimmicks

HoT killed WvW for me with DBL, but once Alpine returned, all is well for me. I like the elite specs, they’re fun to play. New gear is fun to use, new runes/sigils are nice, new food is amazing. There is more build versatility now because of HoT too, not as much cookie cutter builds out there as before because there are so many more good viable options to be played now.

CrimeMaker.8612:

#4. Stab changes.

I agree, stability being made to stack is crap. I don’t like that change at all and I miss the old stability, but they did make it to where stacks getting stripped has an internal cooldown of 0.75s which has been a big help and has been a major game changer. Stability and having a front line is actually viable again, but it still of course is not as good as it was.

CrimeMaker.8612:

#5. Introducing transfers and server stacking

This isn’t really ANets fault either. Ability to transfer is a good thing, you meet new people. New friends, new enemies and you’re not trapped with the same people forever. Server stacking is the fault of the people. ANet can only do so much to say “server is full” once there are so many active WvW players on it, even then people complain because they wanted to stack further. Tell me a situation where ANet can make this right and make everyone happy – because there isn’t one. People inherently complain no matter what. So many people (including myself) screamed to bring back Alpine, then now that we have it back, some of the same people who were screaming for it to return cried that it was stale and boring and wanted to change it lol.. I personally don’t want to ever see DBL again, but I’ll be forced to of course…

CrimeMaker.8612:

#6. Match ups getting locked and becoming pale

So transfer, no one is forcing you to stay on a server in a boring match up. You can literally farm for a day and have enough gold to transfer to another low pop server.

CrimeMaker.8612:

#7. PPT system.

PPT system is improving, however since there are no real rewards for winning matches, I don’t care about PPT and a lot of other people don’t either. The only reason I care about keeping our Keeps in our maps is so that I can quickly get around the map to get to the fights faster. If it wasn’t for waypoints, I wouldn’t even bother defending keeps lol.

CrimeMaker.8612:

#8. Server politics and Tier politics

Not sure what you’re on about here. Every server is different, all have unique communities. Every tier is also different. You should spend more time in different servers it sounds like, I think you might be speaking only of your experience in one server that probably doesn’t have a community that works well with you.

CrimeMaker.8612:

#9. Waiting 6 months before started making any changes (WvW population probably dropped like Snoop Dogg dropping like it’s hot)

Yeah, I am still a little sore it took them so long to even respond to our cries for fixing WvW after HoT release, but at least something is being done finally.

CrimeMaker.8612:

#10. Server links.

Server links were one of the best things ANet has done for WvW. It really brought a lot of life back in to the game because it put people closer together and gave more people a chance to experience other servers communities. I have to strongly disagree with you about this being an issue at all.

WvW lack real reward. They axed 2 buffs to bring more pvers in and guess what pvers dont care about wvw so its time to give out real reward.

Taxidriver.2043:

WvW lack real reward. They axed 2 buffs to bring more pvers in and guess what pvers dont care about wvw so its time to give out real reward.

Should they though?
The hate that a net and wvw recieved over the last week shows how little interest in wvw exists from the pve side of the game. Fortune vale was most likely scrapped because anet realized how little tollerance for either game mode exists in the different camps.

I would suggest to complete the overhaul, create a solid Basis and Start a massive advertizement campaign to draw in new players. Right now there is no other big rvr game (don’t even Start with ESO, that is just Staff wars 2), but there are competitors in the making.
Better they start now and get the media on it before the focus drifts to the new kid in town.

The scoring system is a symptom not a problem. The population imbalance issues and the reward system being completely divorced from scoring are the primary reasons WvW has been shedding users faster than it should.

Prior to HoT, neglect clearly played a significant role as well but I still believe it has more to do with the population and reward systems that are still broken.

Silberfederling.9302:

Taxidriver.2043:

WvW lack real reward. They axed 2 buffs to bring more pvers in and guess what pvers dont care about wvw so its time to give out real reward.

Should they though?
The hate that a net and wvw recieved over the last week shows how little interest in wvw exists from the pve side of the game. Fortune vale was most likely scrapped because anet realized how little tollerance for either game mode exists in the different camps.

I would suggest to complete the overhaul, create a solid Basis and Start a massive advertizement campaign to draw in new players. Right now there is no other big rvr game (don’t even Start with ESO, that is just Staff wars 2), but there are competitors in the making.
Better they start now and get the media on it before the focus drifts to the new kid in town.

i agree anet seriously needs to start advertising WvW a lot more. I can guarantee there are a lot of people out there who don’t even there is a game with mode like WvW.

I think we should run a poll on this list………

Crise.9401:

Urge to feed troll rising…

Really bringing up that dev incident now… as for GvG the whole guild hall arena is basically a love letter to “GvG” blobs of people can kill each other in there fine, not to mention about OS arena.

Guild Hall arena came too late and was put in at a time when many many players were turned off WvW by the HOT issues. Plus it is manifestly unsuitable for GvG in terms of size.

Straegen.2938:

The scoring system is a symptom not a problem. The population imbalance issues and the reward system being completely divorced from scoring are the primary reasons WvW has been shedding users faster than it should.

Prior to HoT, neglect clearly played a significant role as well but I still believe it has more to do with the population and reward systems that are still broken.

Population and reward are definitely a problem. But so is the scoring system.

The main problem with the scoring system is that it encourages attacking undefended structures. It encourages leaving a fun fight over an objective to go cap something that is not being defended.

It also encourages attacking the weaker server instead of the stronger. Instead of a proper 2v1 against the strong server you end up with 1st and 2nd attacking 3rd place.

I think Anet should stop working on the population problem and start working on the scoring problem. The population problem is unsolvable, they can try forever and its not going to be balanced. Scoring would be much easier to fix. And fixing the scoring problem will help to naturally alleviate some of the issues due to population.

GvG was never meant to be a “thing” in WvW. WvW is still a mode designed around the War Score and PPT’ing. The Dev’s made the arena in OS which is really nice in size at about 4k units across. Then they made the Guild Hall Arenas too! Though admittedly, at under 3k units, it’s just not big enough for GvG. The south of a BL by the windmill where GvG’s were held is about 3,600 units long and about 1,200 units wide in comparison.

CrimeMaker.8612:

Right now the problem is that anet is working on fixing ppt system which shouldn’t be their first goal. Should it be a goal? Yes but it should be long term goal. Changing ppt system isn’t going to bring all the experienced players and Guilda that have quit the game. Major priority for arena net should be is bring people into WvW. The thing that can really help is short quarterly WvW season with op rewards and create new trailer just for WvW and advertise it showing everything you could do in WvW. I also they should just do kaboom and spread everyone out. Yes people will moan and kitten but hey give those people one or two free transfers and the only transfer they will be allowed to use just to get on the same server as their guild/friends/family or just faction this kitten.

Absolutely not! The amount of OT required for a 12 week season would burn out the last cares anyone has for WvW.

shrek.1046:

Guild Hall arena came too late and was put in at a time when many many players were turned off WvW by the HOT issues. Plus it is manifestly unsuitable for GvG in terms of size.

While I agree that it may have come too late… the size of it can be augmented relatively easily with some effort. There have been several practical examples I have seen were the arena’s total playable surface has been increased by quite a lot.

Either way, GvG as it manifested in this game was essentially given not one but two options for a venue and the community rejected both. Not to mention one of them having the distinct advantage of not being tied to the WvW matchup. So whatever the shortcomings with Guild Hall instancing for the time being… it has advantages too, besides with 50 man squads juggling instances is trivial to the old days.

For an ad-hoc game type, in the end, it received more support than I would have expected albeit all of it was indirect in the sense that both places are generally usable for any player created events.

Wvw needs new and playable contents (desert borders was a disaster). Easy but interesting maps, pvp events (1 random event in every half hour, king of the hill, escort, capture the flag etc) rotating weekly events (you can damage walls, no points for objectives, no upgrades, no downed state etc…)

McWolfy.5924:

Wvw needs new and playable contents (desert borders was a disaster). Easy but interesting maps, pvp events (1 random event in every half hour, king of the hill, escort, capture the flag etc) rotating weekly events (you can damage walls, no points for objectives, no upgrades, no downed state etc…)

Erm, we essentially had capture the flag… but that got axed, just replace flag with orb.

As for the weekly events there, if disabling and altering mechanics in the laziest way possible constitutes an interesting event then I would be very concerned about the state of WvW beyond a lot of the things discussed here.

Edit: as for no points for objectives specifically, so basically disable the main mechanic of the entire game type… right, that would pan out well with the majority I am sure. WvW is after all just a glorified capture point map (or 4 maps, but still).

There should be more people in wvw now, trying to get gift of battle, I doubt they are trying to contribute (technicaly GvG never “contributed” either, it was always “private battles in a public area”). It seems that Anets idea of helping wvw by increasing the player numbers is to infuse wvw with a lot of kittened off pve players who dont want to be there, nice.

Crise.9401:

shrek.1046:

Guild Hall arena came too late and was put in at a time when many many players were turned off WvW by the HOT issues. Plus it is manifestly unsuitable for GvG in terms of size.

While I agree that it may have come too late… the size of it can be augmented relatively easily with some effort. There have been several practical examples I have seen were the arena’s total playable surface has been increased by quite a lot.

Either way, GvG as it manifested in this game was essentially given not one but two options for a venue and the community rejected both. Not to mention one of them having the distinct advantage of not being tied to the WvW matchup. So whatever the shortcomings with Guild Hall instancing for the time being… it has advantages too, besides with 50 man squads juggling instances is trivial to the old days.

For an ad-hoc game type, in the end, it received more support than I would have expected albeit all of it was indirect in the sense that both places are generally usable for any player created events.

The guild hall arena is only good for 10v10. GvG scene was something that was created out of WvW did anet had any intention for it? maybe. Arena net made a mode called WvW and I am pretty sure they definitely expected guild groups to fight but i dont think they expected GvG to become such a hit. All GvG players were asking for was an official tournament and some recognition to the top guilds but Anet loves PvP.

DeWolfe.2174:

CrimeMaker.8612:

Right now the problem is that anet is working on fixing ppt system which shouldn’t be their first goal. Should it be a goal? Yes but it should be long term goal. Changing ppt system isn’t going to bring all the experienced players and Guilda that have quit the game. Major priority for arena net should be is bring people into WvW. The thing that can really help is short quarterly WvW season with op rewards and create new trailer just for WvW and advertise it showing everything you could do in WvW. I also they should just do kaboom and spread everyone out. Yes people will moan and kitten but hey give those people one or two free transfers and the only transfer they will be allowed to use just to get on the same server as their guild/friends/family or just faction this kitten.

Absolutely not! The amount of OT required for a 12 week season would burn out the last cares anyone has for WvW.

not 12 week. At most a season now should be 3-4 weeks.

I’d like a return of a season as well. I’d prefer that it involve reward requirements somewhere between S2 which were too high and S3, which were too low. Definitely no longer than a month though.

I liked the GvG in the grass with people on the hillside sitting on their brooms and whatnot. Sticking it away in OS took away some of the community factor. I’d also like to see the toys which don’t provide an actual advantage enabled in WvW.

Taxidriver.2043:

daoc is the perfect example, it was the best rvr game but after they got their hands on warhammer ip they gave up on it. U can only play the same crap over and over everyday for so long, eventually ppl will move to another game.

DAoC technology really didn’t age well. I returned to it for a free week some time ago and it was shockingly primitive. In its heyday I was one of the UI mod developers. As a player I lived for RvR. Keeping my characters on the Herald leaderboards was the chase. I played DAoC from the first month until shortly after WoW came out. I ran with another player as either stealth/stealth or fighter/healer duo.

To be fair, DAoC RvR magic started to fade before Warhammer and WoW. Superweapons from Trials of Atlantis unbalanced RvR fights. The addictive stealth-wars and choke-point skirmishes were nerfed by teleporting. While that made the game more casual-friendly it also exposed more players to the true bane of the Frontier —- radar hackers. Players destroying the game from the inside. The devs got very good at catching them and a lot of forum-famous players got caught. By then new games such as WoW were exposing the game’s dated mechanics and it was over.

I think GW2 does a pretty good job with the RvR concept. I wish they’d come up with something like Darkness Falls dungeon to make it all worthwhile. That place was a hoot.

Johje Holan.4607:

Population and reward are definitely a problem. But so is the scoring system.

The score in WvW means almost nothing. Players are not rewarded based on the score and “winning” or “losing” doesn’t even mean much thanks to Glicko.

What does matter is numbers (to win fights) and flipping objectives (to get rewards). So a server that is stacked wins more fights and gets more rewards. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that a paper objective rewards the same amount as a T3. Players in WvW are incentivized to blob and PvD for loot.

The score… that is a symptom… a visible result of blobbing and PvD. Changing it, as I said before they adjusted it, will do nothing because it is effectively nothing. Sure enough the score changes did squat to fix the underlying problems with WvW.