Guild Wars 2

So I’ve never been too into WvW, but I’ve been getting more into it recently now that I’m in a guild that enjoys it, but I keep seeing people talking about how it’s now bad? I think I’m missing something as I’m not sure what they’re referring to.

So…What’s going on? Honestly curious to see what people have to say.

They changed all the Borderlands to something that most regular players didn’t like and have failed to address some (minor if you don’t play regularly) systemic issues. It has led to a bleeding off of regular players. So if you were someone who played daily you would have noticed a drop off in the amount of players. But if you are just starting out I would imagine you wouldn’t see many “problems” that people discuss here.

2 major changes happened with HoT 6 months ago:

• Borderland maps were replaced with current version. New maps were largely disliked for being too big, too confusing and having too many oasises. A lot of WvW is now only happening in EB and BL maps are left empty.

• Objectives started to auto-upgrade over time. Before you had to pay gold and use supplies in the objective to upgrade, now it all just happened itself if you waited some time. This has been changed by now to system where number of dollies is required to upgrade.

WvW as gamemode is pointless without large number of players, so once people who disliked the changes stopped playing it, it created cascading effect of less and less players finding it interesting. No enemies = no fun. There are now bunch of servers with literally handful of players (still marked incorrectly as medium and not dead as they should be).

Ah, I see! I agree that the new maps seem far too large. The EBG maps seem pretty great, though. Reminds me a lot of EoTM that I’ve always enjoyed. Maybe it’s good that I wasn’t spoiled by the old maps? xD

There are three main problems as I see it:

1) The new bls are much less fun for conflicts and fights; yes they are nice to look at but people are pining for the epic battles out in front of bay like before
2) The pirate ship meta and stab changes, especially with all the cc that HoT has brought to the table have destroyed the battle mode most WvW fight guilds preferred to play (where it was actually possible for a smaller force to defeat a larger one). Now fights have been reduced to a simple numbers game and whoever can lay down the most red circles.
3) Server population imbalances, which were an issue before HoT have become even worse due to #2

If you enjoy EoTM you will like desert borderlands, its as kitten as EoTM.
What changed in WvW.
-Stab changes destroyed great melee engagements.(also introduced a huge amount of lag that was partialy adressed by one dev on easter)
-June specializations patch.(power creep for some classes, destroyed diversity for others)
-Golem event.(acctuly minor thing if you compare it to others, but such a miss that i just had to include it)
-HOT release(elite specs, desert borderland, upgrade sistem, guild upgrades, pve only runes, sigils, materials for war room)

All these things with not 1 good change for a year now. Acctuly only significant change that was good since release was removal of culling, atleast that i can remember.

Ah yes, I totally forgot about guild halls and taking away the WvW upgrades that WvW-centric guilds had already worked for and sticking them behind a huge PVE grind.

I know this destroyed many small havoc and even medium sized fight guilds.

The systematic destruction of small WvW guilds via the guild hall changes has led to a lot of bleedout since HoT, paired with the OP banners and trivialized fights from the elite specs leading to a lot of mass-quitting has led to a lot less people and a lot less fun overall.

Alot of things happened.

- New Maps
- New Class/Specializations
- New WvW upgrade rules
- New PvE Content that drained WvW for a month
- New Meta (Bye, bye GWEN)

None of the above things would have had a negative effect on WvW individually.

Combined though …

Anomaly, what server are you on? The WvW experience varies greatly between tiers.

The biggest difference is that a lot of us remember when there used to be a lot more players. ANET has made bad decision after bad decision when it comes to WvW and what is left is only a fraction of what it used to be.

Anomaly.7612:

So I’ve never been too into WvW, but I’ve been getting more into it recently now that I’m in a guild that enjoys it, but I keep seeing people talking about how it’s now bad? I think I’m missing something as I’m not sure what they’re referring to.

So…What’s going on? Honestly curious to see what people have to say.

This is what I’m disappointed in…

- PvE crap in WvW
- meaningless server competition
- WvW updates, plans and progress securely hidden within the cone of silence
- WvW updates not addressing core issues the player base have been talking about since day 1, instead they “fix” vultures… seriously?!
- HOT expansion was meant to have big things for WvW but there’s been nothing worth mentioning (see vultures)
- no WvW rewards (we did have the season rewards which were great, don’t know why they stopped, maybe PvE’rs complained)
- guild halls interfering with WvW progression (see PvE crap)
- no map rotation as promised (see HOT expansion)
- no seasons (see server competition)
- useless currency with nothing to buy
- lag in DBL (see PvE crap)

One thing i hated the most:
So in the old maps, there would be players that will nag you in TS to defend an objective cause he has upgraded the thing the whole day/night and sieged it up… meaning he spent his gold, badges, time to do it, which in turn gives a sense of ownership… which would have a personal attachment to it, of sorts.
All of that is lost now, since no one has to lift a finger for these objectives to upgrade.

What I recommended was that keep the upgrade system as it was, just remove the gold and reduce badge cost. How difficult was it to just remove the gold, why they had to replace it with a (for lack of a better term) stupid system, is beyond me.
Auto upgrades sure sounds nice, but who wants ramming down fortified gates (i didnt even think it was possible to fortify a gate LOL) every single morning? >.<

I still nag people on TS to defend the objectives I’ve spent hours defending. Even so, it’s rare that I get any of my towers (I’m a southern scout) to fortified because solo roamers/small groups love to harass them and my camps.

The only difference is I make a slight bit of gold playing WvW now. Just enough to buy cheap defensive siege.

So, yeah, old players are jilted—and rightfully so. New players in WvW should be fine, though, provided they’re in the top three tiers.

Anomaly.7612:

So I’ve never been too into WvW, but I’ve been getting more into it recently now that I’m in a guild that enjoys it, but I keep seeing people talking about how it’s now bad? I think I’m missing something as I’m not sure what they’re referring to.

So…What’s going on? Honestly curious to see what people have to say.

What went wrong?

For a long time, the amazing combat system kept WvW players happy, even with all the flaws the game mode had (lag, skill/build unbalance, power creep, the “rallybot” mechanic, the completely unfair matchups, nightcapping, etc).

Heart of Thorns struck when WvW was in a very bad situation. After years of staleness, the changes to Stability and then to the Professions had destroyed the old meta and brought “pirateship” in our lives.

That’s when many WvW veterans started not enjoying the fights anymore: the only thing that kept WvW alive for so many years.

Then they changed the Borderlads map. The new map really only “works” if there’s actually three sides constantly fighting for all the objectives, splitting the zergs in smaller groups with less damage going around and the option of playing many different builds. But, as we said, the WvW population was already shrinking, and for the first week or two after the expansion launch a lot of the population was busy in PvE farming their masteries and hero points to unlock their elite specs because it was nearly impossible to get them in WvW.

Launching this new map – requiring a healthy population – in a scenario where we had a terrible combat meta and a very low population was a bad move.

The map felt… empty. Sure, most people needed to learn how to move around, the best routes, but it happened to go around the borderlands for half an hour without finding a fight, so the long paths felt even longer and WvW felt like a long and boring stroll while searching for a fight.

This made the WvW population shrink even more, to the point where finding a single fight in the new, harder to navigate, borderland, was a matter of running around for half an hour.

On top of this came the “revenant meta”, based on insane power creep and unbalanced skills, the new profession, Revenant, literally demolished any chance of fun fights, leaving the game mode in a state of “who strikes first and with the most revenants, wins”.

Another huge point of pain was that while the new borderlands could have worked a lot better using some of the new Guild Upgrades (for example, towers acting as sentries on a huge area, uncontestable waypoints in every tower or keep), those upgrades have been gated behind huge money and time sinks, Guild Halls and Scribing.

When they realized it, many WvW guilds stopped raiding, making the population problems even worse (negative feedback loop). Stragglers congregated around a few pug commanders, making the game even more blobby and the meta even more pirateship, forcing the remaining guilds to run even bigger numbers or to “hand-hold” to tackle bigger groups, making the game even less enjoyable for everyone.

The few guilds that managed to get the upgrades and scribes, are now “abusing” items that were already marked as OP since the Desert Borderland Stress Test, making the fights even more unbalanced and not fun, and ultimately helping to kill the game mode.

They make the game easyer, remove all tactic from the game.

They added a PVE map as borderland map called ravin map.

One of the worst things about wvw now is “the battle of the red rings”.
You can sometimes have 2 big zergs circling eachother and in the middle of it all is a sea of red rings. It’s ridiculous.

And if you try to attack you are chilled, crippled, bled and burned to death.

Playing warrior/berserker.?Tried it for hundreds of hours. You will find youself spending more time trying to survive than hitting people.

Playing frontline guard/DH? Good luck trying to leap through sea of red rings. If you succeed you will find that so few people are with you that you are soon dead anyway. The warriors are all dead and all guardians are now playing bow-wielding Dragonhunters.

I highly doubt that this was Anet’s idea. What we want is a fast paced skill based action packed wvw. But it has been destroyed by too much conditions and pve style borderlands that we honestly don’t want.

We are left with a boring slow pve style wvw, that constantly slow you down, cripple you and chill you.