Guild Wars 2

“- Anet has put a lot of work into the wvw”

Ok when ? They gave us an Map after 3y that no one really likes, then they saw it wasnt well receieved and changed it yet the most annoying elements still remains.

There is no reward or love like the 2 other game-modes includeing the newly revamped PvP.

WvW is still only game-mode without a Legendary backpiece, yet it was promised a year ago…

the list goes on and on but whatever

SkylightMoon.2098:

The server linking was a big change, and so were skirmishes, but those only happened recently. They are good changes and Tyler has done a good job so far, I like the direction he’s taking it.

Tyler is no longer on the WvW team he was moved to work on the xpac months ago.

The only hope to save WvW now is to merge servers, bring EU down to 12 server max, I don’t care if they use the current top 12 for the names or make new names, just merge and lets start again. I have semi retired from WvW now until they do exactly what I just suggested, because at some point they will, because it the only solution that has a chance of working.

it’s the holidays and spvp is kinda nice fad atm.

joneirikb.7506:

The main reason they eventually linked them is because the bottom half of wvw was a ghost town. T1 right now, even with server linking has the same activity level of t4 or t5 did 2 years ago from my memory.

Might be time zone related, but anyways, I think they did have a solution for this, which was then rejected by the community (EOTM). The more I look back and think about it, I think they meant EOTM to be how they originally envisioned WvW, and it would solve “most” of those logistic problems (population and coverage), and they could theoretically shift the teams around in the same way they do linking now.

Naturally that didn’t sit well with most of the dedicated WvW players, as most of those want WvW to be a competitive game mode.

The more I look at WvW, I really can’t say it is designed to be competitive at all. All the mechanics and ways things are set up screams casual. I keep wondering what would have happened if ANet actually had included the EOTM setup from the start instead of WvW as is, and how people would react to it, and what the player base would look like (In terms of Casual vs Competitive etc).

/rant

I agree, despite how negatively the community reacted. Four hour matches would have allowed guilds to pick a timeframe that suited them and compete against guilds that played during the same time without ‘losing’ all of their work. Long enough to be an epic battle, short enough to finish and move on in one sitting.

SkylightMoon.2098:

The server linking was a big change, and so were skirmishes, but those only happened recently. They are good changes and Tyler has done a good job so far, I like the direction he’s taking it.

However, this should have been done a long time ago by people capable like Tyler. Even though the changes are a step in the right direction, this is very little progress for 4 years.

There are only 4 tiers in wvw right now and all of them are quite empty relative to what they used to be.

The main reason they eventually linked them is because the bottom half of wvw was a ghost town. T1 right now, even with server linking has the same activity level of t4 or t5 did 2 years ago from my memory.

The core problems have never been fixed. Score, population, and rewards. Its a mode that has been flawed from its inception because there has never been any incentive to win a match, because population dictates match. That also means you cant reward winners of the match.

If that could be fixed it would also be good.

If they want to save this mode they need to do something drastic and announce big PR for it as well. No covering stuff up. Whether it be completely redoing the mode or something, its the only chance theyd have at bringing back players.

I sort of doubt theyd do it though, because there may not be as much profit incentive even if a large amount of previous wvw players came back.

I totally disagree – the changes, skirmishes and linking were wrong.

What they should have done was shut down WvW on the lower servers and make the upper servers WvW capable – forcing those who DO play WvW into servers who DO care and DO play consistently.

Guess WvW will be on a lifeline until someone ‘gets’ that WvW is the end game and it is still four years on, being neglected on a grand scale.

Our tournament were ripped from us – no explanation – ever and then the changes started people talking about and moving to other game modes for longer and longer times.

Without tournaments and real WvW servers, WvW will die a slow death that will be painful for all those who put so much into it in time and gold.

the tournaments killed wvw. skirmishes and linkings have rejuvenated wvw. guilds are now more of a focus point than servers. as now guilds just worry about the skirmishes during their raids. the linkings have allowed variety of fights up and down tiers to smash the assumption that higher tiers=higher skilled guilds. all it had was better coverage and others to nuthug. but if all you care about as a guild are epic fights take a guest server. really all higher tiers was the congregation of all the guilds that couldn’t hack it in wvw. same kittenters new name plate tag, ded guilds in <1month.

If anything, anet should promote achievements or rewards for skirmish wins. Like a guild leader/officer can activate a reward track for a guild if they win during that skirmish. max it out at like 3 skirmish activations a day? or 6, that covers 12 hours. don’t know of too many guilds that have 12 hour coverage though. maybe get some wvw wings/gliders if you win like 100 skirmishes.

Time and Time again ……havn’t played gw2 about a year now still no change in wvw
I’ve said take out the borderland maps…! A SIMPLE SOLUTION AND STILL THEY KEEP ON PURSUING USELESS BORDERLAND GHOST MAPS.Take out all borderland maps make a new eternal map…..problem solved.

SkylightMoon.2098:

The server linking was a big change, and so were skirmishes, but those only happened recently. They are good changes and Tyler has done a good job so far, I like the direction he’s taking it.

However, this should have been done a long time ago by people capable like Tyler. Even though the changes are a step in the right direction, this is very little progress for 4 years.

There are only 4 tiers in wvw right now and all of them are quite empty relative to what they used to be.

The main reason they eventually linked them is because the bottom half of wvw was a ghost town. T1 right now, even with server linking has the same activity level of t4 or t5 did 2 years ago from my memory.

The core problems have never been fixed. Score, population, and rewards. Its a mode that has been flawed from its inception because there has never been any incentive to win a match, because population dictates match. That also means you cant reward winners of the match.

If that could be fixed it would also be good.

If they want to save this mode they need to do something drastic and announce big PR for it as well. No covering stuff up. Whether it be completely redoing the mode or something, its the only chance theyd have at bringing back players.

I sort of doubt theyd do it though, because there may not be as much profit incentive even if a large amount of previous wvw players came back.

I totally disagree – the changes, skirmishes and linking were wrong.

What they should have done was shut down WvW on the lower servers and make the upper servers WvW capable – forcing those who DO play WvW into servers who DO care and DO play consistently.

Guess WvW will be on a lifeline until someone ‘gets’ that WvW is the end game and it is still four years on, being neglected on a grand scale.

Our tournament were ripped from us – no explanation – ever and then the changes started people talking about and moving to other game modes for longer and longer times.

Without tournaments and real WvW servers, WvW will die a slow death that will be painful for all those who put so much into it in time and gold.

ezue.6513:

Time and Time again ……havn’t played gw2 about a year now still no change in wvw
I’ve said take out the borderland maps…! A SIMPLE SOLUTION AND STILL THEY KEEP ON PURSUING USELESS BORDERLAND GHOST MAPS.Take out all borderland maps make a new eternal map…..problem solved.

Problem solved for 1 spamming zerglings…
Just because their isn’t a tag up doesn’t mean the bl’s are empty. I have no problem finding fights on the alpine bl.

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

They are just milking spvp for what it is worth and leaving wvw in the dumps, funny thing is that each season of their pvp has been worse than the previous one and that is with them “Working to improve it”

Gw 2 is like a ship that is taking on water, they keep plugging up some holes and leaving other ones to increase but they end up making cracks in the holes they actually do work on fixing.

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

+1

Good points, worth highlighting. If the experience itself is boring, no matter what they patch on top (rewards, points, QoL, pink quaggans or fleeing npcs) will ever fix it. Combat has become more boring after HOT.

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

+1
boring meta is boring

Pretty much every MMO experiences declining populations particularly in PvP. GW2 WvW has gone longer than most with this level of population.

That said, there is nothing in WvW that attracts new players and the learning curve in WvW is pretty steep these days. Not sure how to fix the problem but seems nobody else has really figured it out either.

Straegen.2938:

Pretty much every MMO experiences declining populations particularly in PvP. GW2 WvW has gone longer than most with this level of population.

That said, there is nothing in WvW that attracts new players and the learning curve in WvW is pretty steep these days. Not sure how to fix the problem but seems nobody else has really figured it out either.

We seriously need to fix the broken base map mechanics & deal directly with the problems of population in-balances & outnumbered match-ups first.

If we don’t Deal with the Source creating this Decline…then anything else that we do to fix anything will never be right.

All the game mechanics are in place & being daily used….they just need to be re-purposed into a solution.

There’s a solution. Just Google search for WvG.

Attracting new players is easy…imho…I’ve got mechanics already envisioned, but it wouldn’t make any sense to discuss them without first fixing the broken base map mechanics that doesn’t allow for healthy competitive game play since GW2 first launched.

Once you Can Have Healthy Competitive Game play that systematically encourages birth, growth, and rebirth of large scale & unique player based communities…it will naturally attract players…imho

there shouldnt even be a score, pppl should just play it for fun like Daoc.

I have to strongly agree with OP that wvw is at its worst at the moment…AND this has been the state for the past month and more not just over Christmas as some of you are saying.

I wvw almost exclusively in NA, late NA, early OCX and belong to a smallish wvw guild running 15-20…though fewer these days cos people are not logging on. I love wvw and fights but I am struggling to be engaged with what is offered currently in this blob meta. Where are the even number fights that are the most fun? And the importance of siege has been way overdone…

I have played in T1 thru to T3 recently. T1 mentality of blob or be blobbed is sad but this is not even happening in the prime time of NA except in the weekends. Weekdays are pretty dead outside of prime time. And the population balance is out of whack.
T2 again weekends have good activity but after that…don’t bother logging cos it’s dead. and the pop balance/coverage is not good.
T3 population balance is poor and activity is less than T1 & T2….
There was some semblance of population balance and server rotation before Anet opened BG and continued to leave Mag open…now that is gone and matches are stale again. They seriously need to look at population, coverage, profession balance and to a lesser extent rewards, exclusive skins an so on. There have been some good improvements in the past year but Anet needs to go much further to keep wvw alive.

Seriously, if steps aren’t taken and as soon as possible there won’t be anything left of wvw to play. I’m not the only person who feels this way…most of my guild and friends feel exactly the same.

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

There’s only one thing that’s more important than fights, though. That’s POPULATION. In the end, population has never truly been addressed. If you have no population, you have no fights! Population has to be first priority.

Population and fights are the two most important issues.

I don’t know how it went downhill so fast with HoT considering how much fun it was at launch and the following year. The only skill that could hit more than 10k back then was Backstab, and it was justified being on a light class and single target. Now heavy class do 10-15k+ aoe burst and you spend half the time cleansing an insane amount of condi spam.

The dev team need to take a look at what they’ve done and be self-critical. They’ve literally ruined their own game by breaking stability, balance, condi-cap, gear, trait system, and the simple concepts of reward/learning curve or light/medium/heavy class advantages. They’ve even destroyed their main idea of having no trinity.

It’s as if a new team of developers having no clue what the previous team did took over.

JTGuevara “There’s only one thing that’s more important than fights, though. That’s POPULATION. In the end, population has never truly been addressed. If you have no population, you have no fights! Population has to be first priority.
Population and fights are the two most important issues.”

Very true, population is key.

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

So much this. Even though WvW has always suffered from a flawed population system, the battles used to be awesome enough to make participation in WvW desirable even when you had no chance of winning a matchup because you had less people/coverage. But when Specialisations were introduced and then with the release of HoT, the battles in WvW became a horror to participate in. Too much easily deliverable damage, too many active sustain options, traits with too many effects, skills with too many effects and far too many entirely passive traits with massive effects. I understand that WvW is supposed to be PvP with PvE, but I don’t think they realise how integral the PvP experience in WvW is for player enjoyment.

So what’s the point in participating in WvW now? Matchups are almost entirely decided on population/coverage disparity so there’s not much point trying to win and the battles are a frustrating mess so there’s no point bothering with those. The new upgrade system is completely automated now so there’s nothing for players to do other than…escort dolyaks – so not much point playing for that either. It’s only real draw now is siege weaponry use which is still fun (except arrowcarts – they’re still boring).

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

This is the nail on the head for me.

All I face is the same builds, same comps, same boring passive gameplay. Classes have way to much of everything & oodles of passive effects to go along side that. I don’t blame players for playing the mind numbing condi mesmer, or the “this class plays it’s self” guardian or “Chaccaron Maccaron” warrior, I blame anet for allowing this non sense to continue.

When I heard there was big wvw changes coming over a year ago, my initial thought was, wow they are finally going to do a wvw centered balance patch. Nope. Were still playing the same stuff we were a year ago. With the exact same bad gameplay patterns that make fighting an untactical, drawn out, snorefest.

Newsflash! It’s almost 2017. This game is over 4 years old. WvW is declining because population is declining. Anet has at least done more for WvW this year than they have the past 2 years combined. If you don’t like a particular change, there’s a 100% chance that there are people who do like it. Because WvW accommodates many different play styles. You may not like the linking cos it’s killing your server but I’m 99% certain your server would be dying regardless because this game is aging and people are moving on to other things. If you aren’t already in the few lucky servers, then time is your enemy. Your server will eventually die out too. Circle of life boys and girls.

Deli.1302:

Newsflash! It’s almost 2017. This game is over 4 years old. WvW is declining because population is declining. Anet has at least done more for WvW this year than they have the past 2 years combined. If you don’t like a particular change, there’s a 100% chance that there are people who do like it. Because WvW accommodates many different play styles. You may not like the linking cos it’s killing your server but I’m 99% certain your server would be dying regardless because this game is aging and people are moving on to other things. If you aren’t already in the few lucky servers, then time is your enemy. Your server will eventually die out too. Circle of life boys and girls.

I disagree.

WvW seriously has the potential to evolve into something truly epic…similar in scope to the Super Bowl or World Series Franchises…which only gets bigger & better from my perspective…imho

Providing a Healthy Competitive game mode is the fuel & desire that would motivate players to sign-up & serve their tour of duty.

The fix isn’t that complex & uses existing game mechanics that’s already being used daily in GW2…we just need to re-purposed & tailor it for WvW to use.

The game mode also needs to be re-designed to systematically allow All Player based Communities to be Recycled for whatever reason… over time… by individual Player’s decisions to stay or leave on their own accord… without any developer interference:

Birth -> Growth -> Death -> Rebirth

Yours truly,
Diku

For a Better Long Term Solution to WvW – Try a Google Search for – wvg world vs globes

Next relink is 6th January, Arenanet has to think about reducing the servers that are in Europe. At the moment we have 15 servers + relinks so as a start they have to retouch the last tier.

It’s time to merge servers currently useless, the population in this game mode is ALL, if there is no equality of population this is doomed to failure. It’s time to merge some German and International servers, only 2 or 3 are decent the rest completely expendable.

Personally in 2 years I’ve been playing I’ve never seen the gametype so badly, you have to do something and do it now. There is no rebirth if the main people that only play at this gametype leaves the game.

Greetings !

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

^This should become a sticky imho. Good points Gutter Rat.

hypehype.9047:

Spurnshadow.3678:

The 211 scoring system has been a huge step in the wrong direction.

no, 2 1 1 scoring is a great idea, it stops servers fighting for second place while the “top” server runs away in points because they are being ignored.

But this doesn’t work as expected: Typically the server with the highest population wins because they have players online 24/7. The only way to catch up, is to make some points when this server has not that many people online. This has now become completely impossible due to the 2 1 1 change. As a result of this, on my server there’s only a handful of players in wvw after 10pm.
Take it back!

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

Hope Anet reads this thread and in particular this post.

To be honest, I don’t think the even read it

Yah think you are right

I’ve seen some good times and some trying times in WvW. Is this the worst it’s been in 4 years? I’m not sure that’s quite a fair question. My personal experience over the last year has been going from the No.1 spot all the way down to No. 16 tier 4.

I’m not particularly happy with the way WvW yet I continue to participate. I would like to see some improvements made in the very near future.

Maecks.2918:

hypehype.9047:

Spurnshadow.3678:

The 211 scoring system has been a huge step in the wrong direction.

no, 2 1 1 scoring is a great idea, it stops servers fighting for second place while the “top” server runs away in points because they are being ignored.

But this doesn’t work as expected: Typically the server with the highest population wins because they have players online 24/7. The only way to catch up, is to make some points when this server has not that many people online. This has now become completely impossible due to the 2 1 1 change. As a result of this, on my server there’s only a handful of players in wvw after 10pm.
Take it back!

I find few people who are willing to form a small team of 4-5 and try and back cap or sneaky cap enemy stuff to alter the score- most no longer care, just wanting to join the maximum rewards/minimum effort of blobbing or mindlessly following the main comm.

Wvw is in a terrible state as it’s been more or less completely neglected for years, then balance was abandoned in H0T and the current metas are awful to face.

Whether Anet cares enough to do something about it and whether it wants to devote sufficient resources to it are entirely different questions. My suspicion is that they will do neither.

If anyone think people play less because of scoring, linking, or maps, then you really are out of touch with the people who quit.

It’s because game balance went to hell with HoT leading to REALLY dumb and boring roaming, GvG, and zerg metas. People that still play propose even dumber ideas like nerfing condies which are only going to make this issue worse, because then we get even more tanky and sustain, yay!!

WvW lived on the basis of the game being fun to play, not score. Maybe an expansion that drastically changes balance can change direction, but small changes are worthless for regaining a playerbase.

The problem IS population but not in the way most people think. Over the past 4 years I’ve seen players come and go (mostly go), but what stands out most for me at the moment is how few players are joining WvW – in this sense I definitely agree with the OP title..

It’s natural to have the populations change, and we could cope if new players come into WvW and stay to play.

Ins once said, and I agree with him, that “WvW should be easy to get into and hard to master”. Getting in and getting started gets you hooked on the game mode. Trying to master it should take many many WvW ranks and probably the help of Guild mates and advice.

Currently for a new player:

• You get to lvl 60 and get a message saying you can go to WvW. You try it and get ganked within seconds.
• You decide to gain some experience and go to EotM where you run with the train until you know what’s supposed to happen.
• You come back into WvW and get confused and steamrolled – it’s different! You pluck up the courage to ask for help and someone recommends Metabattle.
• You look on metabattle, see some highly rated builds and decide to try one.
• You go to PvE to farm the stuff you need for your meta build WvW character…. and forget to come back.
• You spend your time in fractals rapidly gaining ascended loot you wish you could sell to the poor souls in WvW (who can also use the infusion slots).

We need more new players who stay. We can welcome them, but they need a reason to come in (it used to be for map completion or because they saw a request for help on map chat in a server based town – both have gone). Make WvW fun for new players again.

We need more new players who stay. We can welcome them, but they need a reason to come in (it used to be for map completion or because they saw a request for help on map chat in a server based town – both have gone). Make WvW fun for new players again.

Just a comment. WvW also used to have a steady stream of players coming in to do crafting. PvE players used to tell other PvE players to go to WvW for this reason. Once there players could see it’s a whole another set of maps, explore and try WvW out. No one in PvE recommends going to WvW anymore. I used to suggest going to WvW in map chat to new players all the time and give instructions on how to get there. I haven’t done it once since crafting was removed and I never see it in chat anymore from anyone else.

Removing crafting shut down a steady inflow of fresh, new players and it also removed a reason to even think about WvW unless you’re a PvP player. And before you say, but… queues!! Crafting was in the borderlands and how often does the borderlands have queues.

Pinko.2076:

If anyone think people play less because of scoring, linking, or maps, then you really are out of touch with the people who quit.

It’s because game balance went to hell with HoT leading to REALLY dumb and boring roaming, GvG, and zerg metas. People that still play propose even dumber ideas like nerfing condies which are only going to make this issue worse, because then we get even more tanky and sustain, yay!!

WvW lived on the basis of the game being fun to play, not score. Maybe an expansion that drastically changes balance can change direction, but small changes are worthless for regaining a playerbase.

100% right. The boring meta made almost all the GvG guilds leave within a few months following HoT’s release. When you have your most hardcore dedicated players leaving the game in a mass exodus because of how kittening terrible the gameplay has become your game has serious problems.

You can well add deployable canons and reward tracks, these are just gimmicks; it won’t make me or my friends reinstall the game. The gameplay itself is worse than ever, not even a server merge will fix that.

Xillllix.3485:

Pinko.2076:

If anyone think people play less because of scoring, linking, or maps, then you really are out of touch with the people who quit.

It’s because game balance went to hell with HoT leading to REALLY dumb and boring roaming, GvG, and zerg metas. People that still play propose even dumber ideas like nerfing condies which are only going to make this issue worse, because then we get even more tanky and sustain, yay!!

WvW lived on the basis of the game being fun to play, not score. Maybe an expansion that drastically changes balance can change direction, but small changes are worthless for regaining a playerbase.

100% right. The boring meta made almost all the GvG guilds leave within a few months following HoT’s release. When you have your most hardcore dedicated players leaving the game in a mass exodus because of how kittening terrible the gameplay has become your game has serious problems.

You can well add deployable canons and reward tracks, these are just gimmicks; it won’t make me or my friends reinstall the game. The gameplay itself is worse than ever, not even a server merge will fix that.

Completely agree, this meta is boring. Not just wvw, the whole game mode is boring. Fights just are not what they use to be, it’s mindless colors flying all over the place and over the top damage + condi bs.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Removing crafting shut down a steady inflow of fresh, new players and it also removed a reason to even think about WvW unless you’re a PvP player. And before you say, but… queues!! Crafting was in the borderlands and how often does the borderlands have queues.

Meh I don’t think having crafting stations really affected how many “fresh new players” we had coming into wvw. Wvw population was in decline way before that was even taken out this year. But yes it was a minor way to get players into wvw, although they either learned about it from other players telling them, or they stumbled on it while already actually trying out wvw. I really only think it affected a handful of players these days anyways, mostly the ones looking to skip a loading screen apparently.

Wvw needs something to replace tournaments to get players to try it out. Golem week actually would have been fine if they had just got on the bugs and exploits, instead they choose to ignore it completely like it never happened.

Even an event once a month for a weekend to bring some players in would be fine, I mean they even do those mini weekend pve events now, do the same for wvw, earn some tickets and over a couple months get to buy a wvw skin. Put up an achievement to visit all the camps in every map and hand out some tickets or something. I don’t care about k-trains, we got blobs in t1 that halfway do the same thing anyways, small event to bring players to try out wvw is not a bad thing.

There is just little to no effort from anet to try and attract players into wvw.

Xenesis.6389:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Removing crafting shut down a steady inflow of fresh, new players and it also removed a reason to even think about WvW unless you’re a PvP player. And before you say, but… queues!! Crafting was in the borderlands and how often does the borderlands have queues.

Meh I don’t think having crafting stations really affected how many “fresh new players” we had coming into wvw. Wvw population was in decline way before that was even taken out this year. But yes it was a minor way to get players into wvw, although they either learned about it from other players telling them, or they stumbled on it while already actually trying out wvw. I really only think it affected a handful of players these days anyways, mostly the ones looking to skip a loading screen apparently.

Wvw needs something to replace tournaments to get players to try it out. Golem week actually would have been fine if they had just got on the bugs and exploits, instead they choose to ignore it completely like it never happened.

Even an event once a month for a weekend to bring some players in would be fine, I mean they even do those mini weekend pve events now, do the same for wvw, earn some tickets and over a couple months get to buy a wvw skin. Put up an achievement to visit all the camps in every map and hand out some tickets or something. I don’t care about k-trains, we got blobs in t1 that halfway do the same thing anyways, small event to bring players to try out wvw is not a bad thing.

There is just little to no effort from anet to try and attract players into wvw.

The thing is, the game started with multiple hooks to pull people into WvW. Three important ones were map completion, calling out for help in LA and the ability to craft and return to site. One by one these hooks to pull in fresh new players were removed. All that’s left really is WvW dailies, which can be easily ignored by PvE players.

It’s not just the numbers of people crafting who stayed to play. It was the advertising of WvW and telling people to go to WvW in PvE by PvE players. I don’t think you should discount the importance of direct player to player recommendations. It’s far more powerful than the game saying ‘try this out’. PvEers used to frequently recommend WvW in map chat as somewhere to go. That is gone now and nothing has taken its place. A player can get to 80 now and barely know that there is a WvW, as it’s rarely mentioned in PvE and unless he likes PvP he has no reason to go there.

God, Country, Family…

New players that come into WvW are attracted by gimmicks or sheer chance, but it’s the Family they find on a server that encourages them to continue to play.

It’s Critical to create a WvW universe that allows the possibility to create a ton of places for “Communities” to form.

The more places you provide to exist…the more chances a ton of “Families” will be born.

Reduce the places for Communities to exist & this reduces the opportunities.

World linking strips away the purpose & sense of Community that lower tier servers had previously.

It’s true that lower tier servers didn’t have a lot of players, but they had a close knit group of individuals that where “Family”.

New players that started playing in the lower tiers…found this “Family” & learned to play WvW….then grew up & matured…and then would move to the upper tiers to play.

Home towns are now linked directly to the Front Line of Battle…and can’t cope with the Battle stress. It’s no wonder that Homeland Communities are dying out, or struggling to survive.

Development efforts have been on providing Short Term fixes without a solid vision to guide it properly & then end up having Long Term negative ripple effects…imho

Development Focus needs to be on creating a WvW Universe that really encourages Long Term Communities to be nurtured & Healthy Competitive game play that naturally attracts new players to fight for their “Family”…imho

Yours truly,
Diku

For a Better Long Term Solution to WvW – Try a Google Search for – wvg world vs globes

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

+1, and something major players (when they have been leaving) keep saying.

Almost all of GW2’s existing problems can be traced to objectively terrible profession design. ANet’s not willing to own up to it is the saddest part.

SkylightMoon.2098:

It makes me incredibly sad to see this in WvW. Its always been my main gamemode in this game but Anet is going to have to make a decision very soon to do something very very drastic, I mean big changes to the game mode to fix it, or just call it quits and say we can’t carry on it with it anymore.

I can’t help but say this is completely their fault. They’ve done so little for this gamemode of such massive potential in 4 years.

I’m interested what will happen, too, since the gaming media (DocGotGame on Twitch, MassivelyOP and Zerolives to name three) have been critical of Anet on the topic of WvW.

The game is old. WvW, RvR, and any game that has war going on 24/7 can not last too long. It dies for all of the reasons posted, not just one reason. Usually it is when a meta game takes over that it starts to bleed. Casuals can never just feed “Elite” players. You also can not stop a meta from forming as players find a “best” way.

This game also changed so much in two years that it is like starting a new game against vet geared players. None of my friends wished to take the time to re spec and re learn everything when last we logged on. Most had more than 2 80s. The Blob and PvE in WvW maps sucked.

So now less newbs and casuals, less returning players… Old Game, usual results.

I got to carry an Orb once!! Lol So obviously WvW wasn’t well thought out from the start, but there were a couple years of good fun! Still check in to see if anything is different.

Many of us has warned Anet for ages about some of these issues. But Anet didn’t pay any attention. Now honestly most of the hard core people have left. In fact people that put in the most time and effort into this game are often the VERY FIRST to leave. Why?

Let me say that WvW is actually fun. It is just VERY draining. Why? Because there is no clear victory in this WvW.

For example you take over the whole map. Did you win? Nope. 30 minutes after you log off your enemies will just PvDoor and take back everything and ruin all your upgrades that you guild paid A LOT of money for.

The victor is not who is more skilled. The victor is who can stay awake longer.

In my younger days perhaps I can log those hours. But now I (and many of us) has priorities and we honestly cannot spent that many hours all for NOTHING.

WvW need a clear victory. It need clear rewards for these victories. Not tower flipping and PvDoor.

Honestly the hard core players has posted thousands of ideas on these forums for Anet. If Anet wants they can always go back and look at the threads with the most posts. It is not our job even to tell them how to fix their game. We are here to have fun. We are here to train and win. And we expect to be rewarded and even recognized. And we expect to go to bed without having to worry about all our work and effort go to waste.

Think about it. The #1 contributing guild on a server isn’t even recognized. Even if it doesn’t mean anything, is it asking for too much to have a list that shows the top 20 guilds that donated the MOST money in WvW in the past months (and show how much they donated)? The guild that took over the most towers and fortresses in the past months? The guild that fended off the most enemy sieges in the past months? Where are the rewards and recognition?

This is one of the thousands of suggestions that we players have already given. And tbh I don’t feel this is even that difficult in implement. But it never came. And now must of the hardcore players left. And even if Anet ask for opinions and inputs now, the hardcore players won’t answer.

I can say so much more. I had been playing since the beta of GW1. So I was there when we had like 200 skills for each character to work with. And now we have like 10 skills in GW2, and everyone in WvW runs the same bar. Because there is only 1 skill bar that is effective. I know having 200 skills is hard to balance. But Anet has totally turn 180 degrees in GW2 and KILLED all creativity. It is almost like they are making a DOTA or LOL, which limit your character to 4 skills. This is one of the biggest reason that the game got boring for me. I honestly has been running the same skill bar (same 10 skills) for like the past 2 years. Buffing and nerfing skills DOESN’T fix anything. We just have 10 skills in GW2 compared to like 200 skills back in GW1.

Oh and back in GW1 the mobs (yes now I am getting into PvE) would actually try to fight the players on an even level. Mobs actually have unique skill bars that they know how to use to try to beat the players FAIR AND SQUARE. Now in GW2 we have mobs that is TOTALLY OPed stat wise but TOTALLY MINDLESS. Even the most regular mobs have like 10 times the health of the player, but they do not know how to play the game at all. The mobs just overwhelms the players by higher stats and numbers. Anet you honestly have no idea how disappointed I was, coming from GW1, when I walked into a GW2 dungeon for the first time. Honestly Anet you should have seen a problem with the game when the players feels like they are in a DIFFERENT UNIVERSE from the mobs. When the players have 20k hp, even the most regular mobs often have like 200k hp. When the players hit for 2k damage, the mobs hits for like 8k. etc

I really don’t want to rant. Been there done that. But Anet if you are reading this, I just want you to know the most brutal and honest truth. Forget the PR. Fix your game.

Baldrick.8967:

Maecks.2918:

hypehype.9047:

Spurnshadow.3678:

The 211 scoring system has been a huge step in the wrong direction.

no, 2 1 1 scoring is a great idea, it stops servers fighting for second place while the “top” server runs away in points because they are being ignored.

But this doesn’t work as expected: Typically the server with the highest population wins because they have players online 24/7. The only way to catch up, is to make some points when this server has not that many people online. This has now become completely impossible due to the 2 1 1 change. As a result of this, on my server there’s only a handful of players in wvw after 10pm.
Take it back!

I find few people who are willing to form a small team of 4-5 and try and back cap or sneaky cap enemy stuff to alter the score- most no longer care, just wanting to join the maximum rewards/minimum effort of blobbing or mindlessly following the main comm.

Wvw is in a terrible state as it’s been more or less completely neglected for years, then balance was abandoned in H0T and the current metas are awful to face.

Whether Anet cares enough to do something about it and whether it wants to devote sufficient resources to it are entirely different questions. My suspicion is that they will do neither.

With the current population problems and the skirmish point system there is no point in capping back enemy stuff, because the strongest fraction almost always has the most players on any map. As one of the other servers, you’ll not become 1st and if you get 1 point for being second or one point for being third doesn’t matter, so why play at all?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

We need more new players who stay. We can welcome them, but they need a reason to come in (it used to be for map completion or because they saw a request for help on map chat in a server based town – both have gone). Make WvW fun for new players again.

Just a comment. WvW also used to have a steady stream of players coming in to do crafting. PvE players used to tell other PvE players to go to WvW for this reason. Once there players could see it’s a whole another set of maps, explore and try WvW out. No one in PvE recommends going to WvW anymore. I used to suggest going to WvW in map chat to new players all the time and give instructions on how to get there. I haven’t done it once since crafting was removed and I never see it in chat anymore from anyone else.

Removing crafting shut down a steady inflow of fresh, new players and it also removed a reason to even think about WvW unless you’re a PvP player. And before you say, but… queues!! Crafting was in the borderlands and how often does the borderlands have queues.

It was good to remove crafting from wvw: We often faced the problem of being under heavy attack on our map but had a big queue due to so many players crafting and thus blocking slots for others that wanted to to defend the map

Here’s a user story for you:

Today, I logged in to play some WvW.

T1. Home borderlands. Map is empty. I’m just about to leave when I spot someone flipping south camps. Hoping for a fight, I run down to intercept them.

It’s a roaming thief…

They do the usual thief things. Every time I deal some damage or reveal them, they break combat and shortbow to 3000 range. Every time I immobilize them, they instantly clear it with a dodge. Their escapes are on about 3-4x shorter cooldowns than my cc’s, so I’ll never catch them. After about 5 minutes of this, I’m bored.

I leave and go play Overwatch.

For the longest time the main reason to do WvW was for the love of it. And even though Anet has made a lot of great changes and additions to wvw in recent months, they fail constantly to address the largest longstanding issues that causes players to stop playing.

Lag, Lag, and more Lag, nobody can have a good time with ping spikes going up to 5k BUT yet never experiencing that same lag in PvE. Skill lag, freezing up, dc’s, rubberbanding, always and only in WvW.

Class balance which is nonexistant has ruined a lot of the fun with fights in WvW. Unfortunately anets balance department has no clue what WvW is or how to approach it. Their balance philosophy seems to be to add as much X as possible to a class, instead of focusing on actual Counterplay. Conditions, stealth spam, cc spam, power creep, all this garbage has taken the fun right out of fights to what we have now, everyone running the same cheese builds and leaving little room for counter builds.

Now we have this idiotic, and poorly thought out 2/1/1 scoring change which does nothing but encourage less participation in WvW and devalues the efforts of small teams, basically just encouraging more blobbing and ktraining. Little reason for 2/3 servers to fight each other, or even show up now. Because if there is anything WvW needed it’s less people playing…

Hard to find fun with WvW anymore, really only play it because of the community, guild, friends, etc.

Yea the lag and the pathetic optimization needs to be looked at, and yes, before anyone goes “omg look at that complex code” I really don’t care and neither are the players that will alt f4 for the day.