I have some disorganized thoughts about the most recent changes. Here they are in no particular order.
The stat boost is the most criticised part of the changes, but I believe the point bonus on stomp is also unhealthy. The stat buff just has too much player downside. While WvW is a casual format at heart, there are still tons of players who play(ed) it seriously. I don’t see the gain in alienating your core audience with a new mechanic that doesn’t draw new players in. Devon Carver has publicly stated that the goal for Bloodlust is to create a gameplay mechanic that unifies and impacts all maps. This is a reasonable goal, but it absolutely should not come at the cost of the enjoyment of the players who are most invested.
Do some people who like the buff? Sure. Are there more people joining WvW than leaving? I can only speak for what I see on my home server, but the answer right now seems like an overwhelming “no.” Add the evidence that the buff is actually causing lag, and you have a pretty clear case that Bloodlust has done more harm than good
As for stomp points, I think these are harmful to the game even without stat boosts. From a balance standpoint, the bonus is game-warping on larger servers. From a gameplay standpoint, the bonus creates many unhealthy incentives. First, the balance issue. Let’s compare Bloodlust to Stonemist Castle. Stonemist Castle is worth 35 points every 15 minutes. That’s 2.33 points per minute. You don’t think a T1 server that has queued every map can manage 2.3 stomps a minute, or 0.58 stomps a minute per map? Of course they can. They can often manage well over that. Over 80 stomps per 15 minutes is not unreasonable for T1. Should Bloodlust really be worth twice that of Stonemist? That seems absurd to me. On the other hand, for smaller servers with coverage gaps, the buff can do almost nothing. Between the stat points discouraging play at off-peak hours and there simply not being many players out, the amount of stomps drops off dramatically, rendering the buff more or less inert. This is actually a symptom of an even bigger problem with WvW (the 24/7 week long matchup), but that’s another topic for another day.
The stomp penalty also encourages people to play less. First, small group roaming is discouraged. A group of 2-4 is zerg food unless you’re playing a highly mobile class. You’re also discouraged from running on a map where you’re outnumbered since there’s an inherently higher risk of dying, thus feeding points. You also have unhealthy cases like players logging out when they’re about to be stomped. If a game mechanic encourages you to log out in order to avoid consequences, that is a serious problem because it’s not even a game mechanic. Finally, you have the fights themselves. It’s Stomping during big fights is often suboptimal. That players are faced with an awkward decision: play optimally to win the fight but get fewer points, or play suboptimally to get more points but risk losing the overall fight. Why would you force this decision on us? Having tension in some decisions is good, but not when you’re forcing us to choose between the intrinsic reward of winning a fight and the extrinsic reward of gaining points.
I don’t really see any way to retain the mechanic while fixing the problems. You can’t fix the balance issue unless you want to start rewarding half or even quarter points, which then just makes it even more pointless on lower tier servers. You can’t fix the gameplay inventive problems because even at low values, players are still punished for going for “hero” captures or risky moves. It means that the optimal play is actually very passive, methodical, zerg play, and that’s way less fun.
Finally, though this is of little consequence, I have a serious problem with the name. It’s poor design to use the same word when naming two different game mechanics. The power stacking sigil has always been called “Bloodlust,” and using that word to describe an entirely different game mechanic leads to confusion and a loss of clarity. Seriously, couldn’t it have been called “Spoils of War” or something?
Hopefully this gets some people thinking.