Guild Wars 2

Swamurabi.7890:

3. Change from server bases WvWvW to faction based WvWvW, with “overflow” instances added for more players.

This wouldn’t fix anything. Just look at PS2 (or for a more contemporary example within the same venue, WAR, and recall just how out of whack the factions were in terms of balance). There will be a “popular” faction, and the moment you start dividing people based on factional choices, you will definitely make this an apparent issue. Servers means that no matter where you play, you are at the very least identical and do not have to worry or pick “your favorite thing” aside from exactly where you want to play.

Moreover factions bring in the possibility of factional bonuses which just beg for even more bullkitten imbalance.

PariahX.6970:

Swamurabi.7890:

The game is headed in the direction of a re-balance.

1. change map population cap to force players away from top servers

Anet has already made changes to player cap and said they can change this at any time.

2. Stat buff for outmanned AND outpointed servers as well as stat de-buff for high population AND high PPT servers

I don’t see any way of making the game “balanced” and FUN for everyone without this.

3. Change from server bases WvWvW to faction based WvWvW, with “overflow” instances added for more players.

We already have 3 factions in GW2, Vigil, Priory and Order of Wispers.

I agree strongly with the first 2 and seriously hope ANET is already long since working on this. They cannot lower WvW map population caps significantly without doing something to both fix and improve the queue system and finding a way to make the players want to spread our populations out more evenly between the worlds.

I am not so sure about your 3rd point but do see the merits in it. It just does not sound like something that could done quickly or easily and making that big of a change in direction is usually something game company’s do not like to do until they are desperate.

But yes, the first 2 points need to happen as soon as possible and I dare say if we don’t get communication along those lines before the one year anniversary there are a lot of folks who are going to be beyond frustrated with how long things have been allowed to degrade with those simple changes that would make such a huge and immediate impact not having been implemented. Once those simple changes are in place ANET can re-evaluate the new meta that results to determine what additional changes are still needed to improve the quality of WvW overall across servers.

In my opinion its foolish to impose a lower population cap on maps. It will not change anything. Ive played on Seafarers in its eminence as the top EU server, and I am currently playing on Ruins of Surmia… a total opposite server., in the 2nd from bottom EU tier.

The fundamental fact remains…even outmanned on RoS, zergs happen, skill lag happens. A population cap will not solve the problem, It may ease it somewhat, but forcing players to spend either rl money or in game money to be able to transfer is not good.

I believe the the only way to prevent the blobs/skill lag and queues is to promote and incentivise smaller group play through in game mechanics. The issue Anet have is getting the correct balance between enabling casual players to come into WvW and find a group and enjoy some soft pvp and also providing the harder core guilds good fights.

As someone said a while ago. WvW is about pvp … all types of pvp from solo/duo/5mans – the 30 man guild/pug groups.

The commuinity is putting out ideas… Anet just need the time to implement them. It would be nice to hear some ideas of theirs about it and for them to seek feedback from us rather than just springing it on us.

In the time being its in the communities power to help alleviate these things. Realise that there really isnt any point in the ppt game. Stick only with your guild… challenge yourselves to solo a supply camp and any enemies guarding it,instead of looking for the nearest friendly zerg.

As for SM, just make it worth no points and have it as a playground for fights. We the commuinity should just for the love of the game, forget about it being worth anything and walk away and try to kill the players reinforcing it.

Swamurabi.7890:

1. change map population cap to force players away from top servers

No.

For a simple reason: while it might be on paper a good way to deal with stacked servers, it would just crush communityes like a card castles.

It’s already incredibly difficult to get some social structure in this game built for casuals, and to grow some attachement to a community, a server, and it’s people.

And you want to crush that?

Just no.

It would be worse than the problem.

(and, god, NO free transfers. that’s even worse.)

AndrewSX.3794:

Swamurabi.7890:

1. change map population cap to force players away from top servers

No.

For a simple reason: while it might be on paper a good way to deal with stacked servers, it would just crush communityes like a card castles.

It’s already incredibly difficult to get some social structure in this game built for casuals, and to grow some attachement to a community, a server, and it’s people.

And you want to crush that?

Just no.

It would be worse than the problem.

(and, god, NO free transfers. that’s even worse.)

I can think of several ways that ANET could implement lower WvW map population caps that would not “crush” world communities starting with things that make world transfers guild based instead and I think you are wrong suggest those communities are so fragile as to fall apart with any little change. Now I would not argue that ANET did a horrible job in the beginning of giving us the tools needed in order to build strong healthy WvW community cores from the ground up and there is a ton of work they could do to improve that experience now but it is unproductive for us to just throw our hands up in the air and say it is too late to try and improve the situation and we just have to stick with the mess we’ve got ourselves into.

Sure there are a bunch things we need from the games design mechanics to help us make this a better game but there is plenty we can do as players on our side to improve things on our own. The biggest thing we have control over were we decide to play and we should all be working together to spread out the WvW population more evenly between servers instead of stacking on the top 3 servers and making the skill lag blobbing problems even worse.

I think that lower cap limits is going to happen just to stop the 100 man zerg from firing off 100 skills causing up to 500 damage calculations with the added conditions they apply.

I’m not positive about this but didn’t Anet say the reason for the AoE limit of 5 was to prevent lag?

Now you get megablobs all firing off skill 1 causing lag. It has to change. Maybe reducing the visual effects will reduce the lag, maybe not.

The current state of NA WvW isn’t fun when you have one server playing against another server thats 1 or more levels below them. How much fun is it to wait at a breakout tower hoping something happens? Probably just as much fun it is knowing that after your 10 man group starts a breakout, even if you happen to take a tower, you will lose that tower before the next point tick. And you have to do it all over again, and again, and again……

As for the argument of breaking up communities, in NA, how do you think JQ, BG and SoR got stacked? Somebody had to leave one server to join T1. There’s already a long list of servers that were at the top of the WvW ladder only to fall several tiers. There is no lasting WvW community and there never will be one.

The problem with this game is that it’s way too easy. Anet even stated that they want the game to be friendly for newcomers. They think that everyone should be able to go to any part of the game and achieve something. What they fail to understand is that that is why we got PvE. PvE is suppose to be the place you learn your profession and how the mechanics of the game work. A player completely new to MMORPG’s should not be able to go to WvW and just steamroll everything. A newcomer should not be able to join sPvP and manage to kill someone the first time.

And the fun part? Anet want this game to be an esport… If they mean that they’ll have to heighten the skill level drastically and make all professions viable at their role, balance out weapon sets so that each profession can choose any weapon set and find it fun and actually achieve something with it. If you really want a game to be an esport you can’t say that you want it to be noob friendly, that’s not how it works.

The way WvW works now is who got the bigger force. Tactics are something that’s obsolete unless its two smaller groups. I’m sick of being run down by a zergball with 50-100 players pressing 111111111 – skill, yeah. The only one that need to think is the commander, all else is just following his icon and pressing 1. I would love for Anet to make it so that smaller skirmish teams that play really organized should be able to take down a zerg. But what can 10 good players do against 100 guys spamming all their skills at random? Run or die pretty much.

Oh, it should also be possible for a small group to capture and hold a resource camp. That’s just impossible right now. Choke pointing doesn’t work in this game because the stupid 5 limit on AoE. That need to change, and it would heighten the skill level since Zergs actually would die if they all were just hugging their commander.

If you drop a bomb everyone should get hit. Putting limits on AoE is what killed small man groups. I’m sorry but if their zerg are all in a circle you can’t say well these 5 will get hit and the other 60 won’t. Also, please come to FC there is no wait time on BL’s and the zergs are much smaller, which watching the video i’m sure you could handle the zergs that we have to fight.

larger maps would maybe solve the whole problem.
The main issue in GW2 is that there are just 4 different maps (unfortunately just 2 different maps and one exist three times) and all maps are too tiny and the towers/keeps are too close. This encourage people to stack up on one single commander.

Why? Here an example.

I roam with 10 guild mates and start to siege a tower. Most times there are scouts or people who see us by happenstance and inform the main zerg.
30 sec has been elapsed
The main zerg has the possibility to port to a keep or to their spawn and group up again.
maybe another 20 sec has been elapsed
Up to now it depends on the tower how long the zerg needs to reach the sieged tower. In case of the keep is contested and the farthermost tower is getting sieged the zerg need just 30 seconds to arrive and wipe a minor number of people.

This is just ridiculous. You shouldn’t have so much mobility with a brainless blob.

How to solve it ?
Either you make the maps bigger or (in case of it’s too much work) you add the same maps again.

Another idea. Remove the wp from the keeps and just make porting possible if you are dead.
I know this is not very well thought out but the main issue is

too much mobility in wvw for zergs!
please nerf it :/

Jackie.1829 makes some great points and I think any experienced WvW’er would agree that there are some serious design flaws with WvW. A few months after launch ArenaNet openly admitted that they were surprised with how popular WvW had become which leads me to think they did not put much effort into designing a good system to begin with.

With that being said I think there are some easy fixes that could make WvW better:

1) Double the number of WvW maps. It baffles me that ArenaNet is putting more resources into their Living Story content but not their WvW content. In my opinion the only meaningful endgame that exists is WvW. If they want the game to survive they need to make it a priority.

2) Remove commander tags. I suspect most people will disagree with me here but I would argue that the commander tag mechanic is what allows most of these zergs to operate. I think large open field battles should include a high degree of chaos that requires advanced tactics and coordination to counter. The fact that any noob can follow around a blue icon and spam their 1 key is ridiculous.

Lastly, Someone above mentioned the idea of ‘adapting’. This is just a computer game and adapting for most players will mean finding a new game to play, not changing their playstyle to accommodate the flaws of a bad game. If ArenaNet doesn’t get their kitten together I suspect this game will be dead in a year.

Anet clearly meant WvW to be a bit like alliance battles in GW1 so supercasual.

They did wvw like it is now either knowingly or they just simply refused to listen any very good visions how it will be like this what it is now.

It is pretty much unrealistic to expect that the current WvW game mode will ever be anything else, even though we can put up suggestions and wishes how it could be less blobby and such so you could casually go pvp there and actually have fun instead of getting rolled over by karmatrain.

In my opinion there are few things to consider like for example:
- less supply and supply camps really should have 0 supply when flipped, really.
- towers and such less easy to flip but more other small objectives to cap. Currently you can only cap camps when you don’t have enough ppl to even build a ram.
- cap for how many blasts you can put on combo field, i’d say 1.
- less aoe, not to say remove all sensible aoe but for example melee cleaves or whatanot so you actually need to pick one target and hit him instead of lol #1
- change loot mechanics for wvw. zerging should not be rewarded in particular. make money grinders go in dungeons.
- remove ability to use waypoint unless dead. magical teleporting is way too fast.

currently wvw maps are almost empty when not prime time cos everyone checks in but goes away when they cannot even cap a camp alone since upped guards are so insanely strong against single guy.

ETC.

also now when mobility mentioned wvw builds are way too dependent on having permaswiftness as it is. give everyone wvw swiftness skill which applies a boon what can be removed or whatever. because unless you have swiftness you get rolled over with permaswiftness INVISIBLE zerg when roaming. Or random thief in that matter, not even going that closer to stealth topics here.

@supernovae I believe the larger map thing would work, but IIRC, I read somewhere someone saying the maps as they are now are as big as they will ever get. I believe it was a dev. Could be wrong tho.

Another “fix” would be to remove the downed mechanic in WvW. Sure I can see it’s place in PvE but definitely not in WvW. It’s yet another example of things that favors the zerg/larger group versus a smaller one since they can res their fallen while still applying an ample of pressure on a smaller group.

If a player is defeated, he should stay defeated without being able to get ressed at all alternatively have a downed timer, for example 30-60 secs, until he could get ressed and back up on his feet.

Erastmus.3785:

Another “fix” would be to remove the downed mechanic in WvW. Sure I can see it’s place in PvE but definitely not in WvW. It’s yet another example of things that favors the zerg/larger group versus a smaller one since they can res their fallen while still applying an ample of pressure on a smaller group.

If a player is defeated, he should stay defeated without being able to get ressed at all alternatively have a downed timer, for example 30-60 secs, until he could get ressed and back up on his feet.

In my opinion the down state mechanic is not such a big problem. You get a 2nd chance to fight. The weird thing is that you still can be ressed after you are completely dead. They should disable the res mechaninc for completely dead people. But I don’t think it support zerging that much. We need a major wvw patch.

Not a drop in the ocean like traps (which give actually small groups a bigger disadvantage than big zergs) or wvw ranks (which are not really that motivating anymore).
We need big changes like the cullung patch which actually was the only good patch imho.
A big part of the community wants less zerging. That should be the #1 priority for the WvW team of Anet. Please don’t waste any time with more traps or something like that. No one yelled for traps in WvW, right?
The last thing which WvW needs is another guild leaving gw2.

Thrumdi.9216:

Don’t know where GW2 is going. But I know where I am…ESO.

But seriously, it appears Anet has made the decision that WvW is a casual game mode. The emphasis on siege and zerging supports this.

We knew GW2 PvE was aimed at the casual market. But on the otherhand, sPvP was not (it has esport aspirations). It was never clear where they thought WvW fit, but it appears they are thinking “casual” now

I think this is a big mistake on Anet’s part. All the dedicated guilds that make PvP a living thing are going to leave when other games come out. This will leave WvW as a stagnant game mode for part-timers.

Now, maybe Anet has run the math, and financially, casual WvW makes the most sense for them. Sure opens up an opportunity for other games though.

I think you are probably correct, except that I think it shows (once again) that ANet doesn’t understand their own game. WvW by its nature is a large scale activity … it loses a lot of scope and appeal if it deteriorates to the point of merely being sPvP on a really large map. Without a core base of dedicated WvW guilds and players, the casuals aren’t going to find much to latch on to when they log in. I’m not just talking about zergs, either. If there isn’t any leadership or strategic focus occurring on the map, the casuals aren’t going to be able to tap into the grander scheme that made WvW attractive in the first place.

One of three things seems to be at play here. Either ANet really doesn’t care about WvW … or they can’t afford to fix/maintain it … or they are really clueless. I’ve been trying to stick with GW2 until ESO came out, but WvW has become so disappointing that I’m thinking of going back to Rift in the meantime. Conquest was unbearably stupid, but Rift’s warfronts were mostly pretty well done … albeit too limited in number.

Personal thoughts:
1) An official stance on the current and future wvw goals, i.e. What is it they want wvw to be exactly.
2) stop balancing wvw around spvp and pve
3) Proper representation of the wvw community in the sotg from guilds dedicated to wvw.
4) an aoe debuff for groups over 30-40 with keeps/towers being an exemption. The higher the numbers in the given area the stronger the debuff.
5) Same principle as 4 but instead remove rally from the larger groups thus adding incentive to smaller organized groups and removing a large saftynet from the “blob”.

I know a lot of wvw focused players and guilds are already planning their exit from the game if the have not already. While there are many issues my personal belief is that it stems from a lack of attention from the powers that be. With no representation and no clear goals (is a casual playground the intent?) it doesn’t feel like people that spend majority of their gameplay in wvw are the ones with the dev’s ear.

It would help if “Outmanned” didnt SUCK, it is SO useless in the situation. It should be buffing USEFUL stats not bloody Magic Find :/

IMHO. As players in NA the only thing we can do is go more towards the EU meta. Break your groups up into 15-20 and spread out across the map. I know it doesn’t help defend against a giant zerg attacking a particular keep/tower, but it does have the effect of breaking up the other teams zerg a little to defend multiple attacks. Rally to defend spread out to attack. All we can do if ANET doesn’t change things.

Issue is that if nothing changes what will happen is that ppl on EU will go towards US/Vizuna meta (some laready started to), because afterall that’s what the system suggest atm for maximum effectiveness.

While instead pushing in the opposite direction is what Anet should do/incentive.

Lower map caps combined with an option to guest-WvW on outmanned worlds if all maps on your home world are queued (excluding worlds in the same matchup as home world) would solve many problems.

Larger and/or more complex maps would also help, but will take longer to develop.

Critical mass for zerg blobs seems to be around the 50-60 player range. This is where the massive skill lag kicks in and it becomes possible to crush any smaller force through revive-attrition. Setting the population cap at 50 per team per map would make it much less effective to blob, since it wouldn’t leave anyone to scout or buffer-defend/contest to buy the blob time to defend.

To large guilds this probably sounds horrible, but that’s why it needs the guest/overflow option as well. Casual players aren’t going to want to wait in queues, so they will just guest for their WvW fix. Guildies can queue up like usual to play together and maybe even have shorter queues. Only mega-guilds will be affected, and well, I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for them since they are basically ruining the game for everyone else with their mega-blobs, but I can pretend to, oh yeah, it’ll be okay guys, just learn to blob more maps at once!!!!

Also, there are two distinct ways to play WvW.

1) You either play smart and use tactics, often involving siege equipment, or
2) You get as many people as possible in a blob and smack into opposing blobs.

OP is a number 2.

You can’t complain about the problem when you’re the reason for the problem….

Mif.3471:

If only there was a way to counter huge zergs…

they are just as bad, now siege can be purchased form TP its insane the amount there is now, got a tower finally after getting past NINE Arrow Carts, cats and other siege took ages using Trebs to down as much of the siege as possible

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Mif.3471:

If only there was a way to counter huge zergs…

they are just as bad, now siege can be purchased form TP its insane the amount there is now, got a tower finally after getting past NINE Arrow Carts, cats and other siege took ages using Trebs to down as much of the siege as possible

I agree that siege on the TP is creating issues with excessive siege atm, but defenders need an advantage, or else WvW just becomes a flip-fest. It should takes “ages” to capture a defended, sieged, upgraded tower.

Mif.3471:

If only there was a way to counter huge zergs…

If you;re being serious the changes to ACs actually encouraged bigger blobbing.

morrolan.9608:

Mif.3471:

If only there was a way to counter huge zergs…

If you;re being serious the changes to ACs actually encouraged bigger blobbing.

^

/15chars

Well zoom hack makes ac kind of useless in tower defend. Blob comes and every place inside tower is full of red ac circles.

morrolan.9608:

Mif.3471:

If only there was a way to counter huge zergs…

If you;re being serious the changes to ACs actually encouraged bigger blobbing.

There is a difference between encouraging and having effect, and since 90%+ of people on any given WvW map were already blobbing/zerging, I fail to see how it made blobs larger.

The only actual effect it had, was giving smaller forces greater chance to defend against blobs/zergs.

Super Kruegs.8967:

IMHO. As players in NA the only thing we can do is go more towards the EU meta. Break your groups up into 15-20 and spread out across the map. I know it doesn’t help defend against a giant zerg attacking a particular keep/tower, but it does have the effect of breaking up the other teams zerg a little to defend multiple attacks. Rally to defend spread out to attack. All we can do if ANET doesn’t change things.

I’ve seen this happen in T1 NA as well. It works for a bit. But it always spirals back to the mega zerg. Why? Because that’s what wins. Players want to win. The game design needs to change to give players the incentive to spread out. Unless Anet does something about this fact there is nothing that can be done.

nirvana.8245:

Super Kruegs.8967:

IMHO. As players in NA the only thing we can do is go more towards the EU meta. Break your groups up into 15-20 and spread out across the map. I know it doesn’t help defend against a giant zerg attacking a particular keep/tower, but it does have the effect of breaking up the other teams zerg a little to defend multiple attacks. Rally to defend spread out to attack. All we can do if ANET doesn’t change things.

I’ve seen this happen in T1 NA as well. It works for a bit. But it always spirals back to the mega zerg. Why? Because that’s what wins. Players want to win. The game design needs to change to give players the incentive to spread out. Unless Anet does something about this fact there is nothing that can be done.

And here is a big question mark. Winning what? The matchup? Winning the game? Winning confidence in “ones tactical genius”? There was little to winning but an imaginary gold medal a few months ago. With the change to match ups winning by PPT means absolutely nothing, at least to me. I wish the general mindset would change from how may points one is ticking to care more about the individual skirmishes and battles instead. Yet servers are clinging to the PPT like it was the endgame. Oh, how I’d wish that’d change.

It will never change.

Jackie.1829:

Guess you fall into the american anet fanboy casual player category

The fact that you can’t offer an intelligent argument without name calling says more about you then your petty insults do about me

Jackie.1829:

Guess there is a place for you in the game as well, manning the arrow cart akitten the tower. Must be super fun.

Why would I be ashamed of actually defending my servers towers instead of blobbing around like the average zerging?

Jackie.1829:

Yes, you are right, I tag up and bring the entire zone to me, thats exactly what that video and all votf videos demonstrate. Really constructive input to the thread.

I never said you bring the entire zone, you bring your zerg.

The problem is:
Your 30 man zerg defeats 10 players = “We’re so good”
Your 30 man zerg defeats 20 players = “We’re so good”
Your 30 man zerg defeats 30 players = “That was close, we’re so good”
Your 30 man zerg is defeated by 40 players = “This is unfair kitten BS, FIX IT ARENANET”

Ever stop to consider that the 10 and 20 man groups you stomp think the same thing about you that you think about the 40 man zerg?

Jackie.1829:

Its funny you manage to complain about me not being constructive months ago but you post nonsense here.

Actually I didn’t mention anything about you not being constructive. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about that for some reason.

Jackie.1829:

I am nowhere near the reason for the problem. People running about dropping siege everywhere are the reason for the problem, I believe you fall under this category more than myself.

Wait so is the problem “blobbing” as you complained about in the OP, or are you back to QQ’ing about arrow carts again?

All your post is, is once again, you complaining about anything that gives your guilds specific playstyle a disadvantage in game. You arrogantly expect the game to be tailored to your guilds specific meta game, instead of adapting like every other player and guild in the game. Get over yourself. You’re not special.

Anet sure loves siege and unskilled play, AoE caps really hurts organized small groups trying to kill zergs.

Siege I hate with a passion, they are even adding it to more PvP maps skyhammer super cannon. Who are the people in Anet pushing for more and stronger siege in everysingle game mode? Its just the worst direction I have ever seen a game take with PvP.

I agree completely with the OP.

The first six months, despite the overwhelming number of technical problems with WvW, I was really enthusiastic about it. The last six months I have only played in increasingly sporadic spats, which is disappointing because like you said, there still are some extremely compelling and exciting aspects to the game. Most of the time though it’s only advanced mode trash mob farming with some sort of red blob that hopefully becomes loot bags before you do.

Worst though for me, I feel the more I play, the worse I become skill wise as a player. It becomes boring to do the same thing over and over with very little variety, or feeling that you really outplayed your opponent with skill or better tactics. The ridiculous amount of time and effort it takes to create and correctly gear a character for wvw also plays into the boredom, and I believe it also makes some players less likely to roam in small group combat when they are totally spec’d for zerg clashes.

+1 OP. There are a lot of people upset with the state of WvW right now. It really needs some love. Anet please give us the tools and structure to make this a nice hybrid casual PvP format. The same requests and suggestions have been flowing through the WvW forums for a good 6 months now and we have barely seen any progression. WvW is a massive part of GW2 and needs love. WvW is not a side attraction for PvE. It is its own game format with a large dedicated following and I feel this needs to be more recognized. The game favors the zerg. The format needs structure to break it up. Ive seen guilds and servers try to break this routine in T1 and it just doesn’t work because 120 zerg karma train rolls over things all to quickly.

Remove the aoe cap and then watch your elite 10 man group die to 40 people with retaliation on them while the 40 people spam aoe heals on each other and ignore your damage

Mif.3471:

I never said you bring the entire zone, you bring your zerg.

The problem is:
Your 30 man zerg defeats 10 players = “We’re so good”
Your 30 man zerg defeats 20 players = “We’re so good”
Your 30 man zerg defeats 30 players = “That was close, we’re so good”
Your 30 man zerg is defeated by 40 players = “This is unfair kitten BS, FIX IT ARENANET”

Ever stop to consider that the 10 and 20 man groups you stomp think the same thing about you that you think about the 40 man zerg?

In this video you can see us going up against double if not triple our number. We aren’t complaining about the fact they blobbed up (which you seem to think) we are complaining about the lack of ability for people like us to counter such a blob with playing better than they did, as soon as combat starts the lag kicks in and any player skill is thrown out the window.

Wait so is the problem “blobbing” as you complained about in the OP, or are you back to QQ’ing about arrow carts again?

All your post is, is once again, you complaining about anything that gives your guilds specific playstyle a disadvantage in game. You arrogantly expect the game to be tailored to your guilds specific meta game, instead of adapting like every other player and guild in the game. Get over yourself. You’re not special.

See above… Please stop this narrow-minded line that you seem to want to throw out on the forum, if you don’t understand the OP (which is quite blatant from your responses) then don’t reply, if you reply it gives the impression that you read the OP, you understood it and thus we would expect a well articulated response – when in actual fact all you seem to have done is think we are complaining about blobs when we are attempting to talk about the inability to counter them via skilled play. Hopefully my re-iterance of this will provoke a more thought out response from you (or maybe you don’t want lag fixed! Who knows?!)

I await your response with baited breath… honestly.

Blix.8021:

Remove the aoe cap and then watch your elite 10 man group die to 40 people with retaliation on them while the 40 people spam aoe heals on each other and ignore your damage

The amount of time i have been down or even KILLED by using ONE skill and not getting hit by any skills by players or pets is insane. Guess what that skill is?…Feedback, why they made it that if a player with Retal on uses a skill inside Feedback I am the one that takes Retal damage is stupid, add to thakittens normally spammed on everyone around so i get Retal damage from 10-15+ people while not actually damaging them…

Swamurabi.7890

The game is headed in the direction of a re-balance.
1. change map population cap to force players away from top servers
Anet has already made changes to player cap and said they can change this at any time.
2. Stat buff for outmanned AND outpointed servers as well as stat de-buff for high population AND high PPT servers
I don’t see any way of making the game “balanced” and FUN for everyone without this.

I agree very strongly with these, particularly point 1. The fact is that too many people are piling into too few servers and if the only disincentive Anet can offer is massive queues by having less people per map (also aiding the lag issues), then that’s what they should do.

Swamurabi.7890

3. Change from server bases WvWvW to faction based WvWvW, with “overflow” instances added for more players.
We already have 3 factions in GW2, Vigil, Priory and Order of Wispers.

I would have preferred it if the game was like this to begin with, but Anet designed it to be WvW, so WvW it has to be. This is core to the game.

Mif.3471:

If only there was a way to counter huge zergs…

A screenshot of an AC inside the walls of a keep.

So the only way to counter huge zergs is… to play 10% of the game; defend.

Got to love the blind defenders of this game. I love this game, I want to see improvements to this game, but i’m not ignorant enough to wax lyrical about how huge zergs can be killed with lots of arrow carts… that’s just dumb.

On the note of lag and retaliation. Just a thought that occured to me, but if lag is caused by a lot of calculations (hence the aoe cap), doesnt retaliation add to this problem. For each skill used the game has to calculate the retaliation backlash for multiple players, now its possible that the way the game is coded that retaliation calculation is a trivial point, nobody that is not a developer can answer but it is possible that the removal of retal for wvw may reduce some of the lag.

On a side note, what do people think about the retaliation mechanic for wvw in general. I know it got nerfed recently with a 33% damage reduction and thats cool, I appreciate the change from Anet. But I still cant help but feel I dont like the mechanic. Its good cause it works both ways, if an organized force us under retal than the entire enemy blob is going to take damage which will hurt them, but on the flipside, the organized force needs to hit a lot more players to kill them all so retal hurts this force a lot.

Perhaps a cap on the number of times retal can hit a player per second would benefit the organized force over the zerg since it should have full effect on the zerg but less on the ele casting a lavafont/meteor shower to deter the zerg. I would be worried however that the game would need to calculate more things which may cause more latency issues in those situations.

If retaliation is a source of lag, would people be adverse to having the entire mechanic of the buff changed for wvw?

I think at this point into the culling/lag history developers have (or should have by all standards) pretty firm grasp on what it is exactly in game mechanics that is most expensive and/or doesn’t scale well in terms of CPU cycles.

Personally, If you’d ask me to give a quick off-the-top-of-my-head answer, I’d say I wouldn’t mind too much getting rid of retal alltogether. It may even not be a hard shutdown. Something like internal cooldown or stricter target cap would do that.

When you think about it a bit longer though, all kinds of ugly things start to come to mind, probably the things retal was supposed to counter in the first place. The idea of retal is that you can’t be safely landing H-bombs on arbitrary numbers of enemies, even if they have no way to reach/target you. You HAVE to invest in defence of your character and to have awareness of situation anyway. If that goes away, you’ll have zerk campers all over the place on WvW. And I’m not sure if it is a good thing for game dynamics an balance.

The only way to fix the population imbalance is to introduce a score point system based on attacks/defences of said objectives, instead of awarding points per tally.
If you also get all NPCs guards out of the game and leave players to defend things, instead of zerging around and reduce again the damage of acs, while introducing more objectives on map and redesigning the maps in general, the game will be much better.

I have no hopes though that Anet is going to implement such big changes. This game is more like PvE with some PvP inside. I agree with what you said about the numbers. I tried to rush today a 90 man group of Abbaddon’s Mouth with 20 and i got such a lag spike that my game crashed and for 1 min i could not even see other players moving.

I, moreover, don’t think Anet will try to remove anything introduced into the game for many months to come, so it’s really hard to make any big difference. The wexp points favor the bigger servers that wipe the smaller ones. All players of the said servers will be like rank 300 while yours will be like 150…

Yeah, can’t think of a way to actually make a huge difference in the game towards a more competitive PvP style without removing many things that Anet won’t remove. ;D

I too have lately been finding WvW to be stale. I’m also on Tarnished Coast, which is sort of a T1.5 server that is either going to win massively against T2+ or lose .. semi-massively against T1. I’ve also been playing the game since release and I think I’m just burnt out on GW2 in general at this point.

Regardless, I think these would help make WvW more fun

1) larger/more maps. new maps would help here too
2) remove skill lag in large battles. yeah, it affects everyone, but it’s still the opposite of fun
3) try removing the aoe limit or increasing it, see what happens, if it works, yay, if not, change it back
4) some sort of new condition that causes more damage to targets in a zerg.. like ‘target takes X damage per second for each of their allies that is within X units of them’, or a straight one-hit version.. this might break keep defense though..
5) randomized rules for WvW would be interesting in general, and they could have some of the rules somehow discourage zergs

I generally run in a zerg in WvW myself. In my experience, a decent thief who knows their stuff can 1v1 basically anyone, or just run away if they somehow can’t down them. This discourages me from roaming. There’s also the issue of me running into a zerg or large group, but I can see them coming and can run. I have played a thief and while it is fun, I do feel cheap just stealthing away at the first sign of danger.. but that is what thieves are meant to do in this game. And it works quite well.

Regarding burnout, a more complex selection of skills a la most MMOs would help. This is basically against GW2’s whole casual-friendly focus though, so I doubt it’s going to happen.

Overall, I’ve gotten a lot of fun out of GW2. I find the lore to be expansive and well-done overall. I’m not sure what the human PCs mean when they say ’I’m so good it hurts’. I guess in GW2 humans are just endlessly sarcastic. Did I mention I think I’m just burned out on GW2 in general. It was fun while it lasted. Regardless, I do think my suggestions would help WvW.

I suppose the biggest problem is coming up with a solution that would actively discourage players from balling up. Everything offered here so far has fallen short.

Take siege, for example. Siege can hit a large number of players, but you need a large number of players yourself to build up enough siege to actually matter. The bigger blob has more siege to counterattack with, so siege won’t matter.

You say to reduce player caps, but this won’t change the blobs at all. Sure, enemy blobs will have fewer numbers, but the fact is your team will have fewer numbers, too. Zerging will still be the primary form of offense, even more so now that there isn’t enough numbers to defend towers/keeps anymore. Instead, you are forcing players to abandon their communities, or to abandon WvW because they can no longer get in to WvW.

And so many people don’t suggest things at all. They yell at Anet to fix it somehow, but if you can’t think of a solution, how do you expect anet to think of a solution?

That is where I am stuck. I can’t think of something that would fix the zerg mentality, because everything that doesn’t arbitrarily limit playstyle ends up benefiting the groups that have more supply, more heals, more buffs, and more players in general.

You cannot and you shouldn’t win against much greater numbers even if they were dumb. Numbers should matter to some point. At least in most situtations that is. So any kind of penalties or massive aoe is really really really bad idea and in most cases just creates opposite efffect tbh. Again like usually I’d like to point out titans of mass destruction in eve-o for reference.

However like I think I said earlier it should be good idea to do something else than go around in big groups, it’s like at least 10 times more profitable gold wise to just go with the karmatrain. And so people do. Also there is very little to do than that unless you just happen to like soloing or whatsoever. This should see a change. If you’re good at soloing (other than just loltrolling with a thief) or small group you should see some rewards too. And it should matter to your whole wvw.

In my guild almost all wvw action has vanished, probably since it’s easy to just go and follow karmatrains, not try to be in a skilled group or whatever. Just mindless grinding.

Mif.3471:

Do you realize you just complained about a lack of AoE, then complained about siege weapons… which provide AoE ?

/facepalm

You do realise that ACs don’t have the same cap as player aoes don’t you.

The real problem with WvW is that the players are changing faster than Anet can change the rules.

Players want to play, ahem, WIN the way they want to, which causes/cuased

1. Servers having imbalanced WvW populations.
2. Night Capping, an issue that’s still not been addressed.
3. Zergs taking advantage of AoE cap limits.
4. Zergs using speed boosts to traverse quickly from one side of a map to another, or even from one map to another. Map size is at max, it’s not going to change.
5. Megablobs using skill lag to dominate Zergs.

Also add in siege between towers/keeps and all the “dead” space that’s in the borderland map and you’ve got most of the major issues with WvW.

Night capping would never fully be addressed. They couldn’t do anything extreme without a “curfew” and they can’t do that because the don’t have Asian and/or Oceanic servers. Im from Oceanic and there are a huge amount of players from both Oceanic and Asian timezone. Enough I believe to justify servers. But enough for Anet? I don’t believe so.

My Solutions to GW2 WvW

Combat:

The rally mechanic should only rally 5 players at a time. This is so that if 1 player from an organized force drops they dont rez the entire enemy force that went down. An unlimited rally system favors the zerg because they will have more players go down usually on an engage, organized groups typically die via attrition and very rarely need to rally more than 5 players at a given moment, unlike the zerg.
Rezzing should not be possible until 3 minutes after the player has died. A common strategy for a zerg is to push, kill 3-4 players of an organized guild, lose 15. Then they collapse back to that location and rez their 15 but the organized guild cannot stop them because they need to use terrain and regroup, and simply charging into the enemy zerg is not an option. What this effectively does however is reset the fight in favor of the zerg and the organized group cannot push and rez their downed players. A 3 minute cool down still allows for practical purposes but does not allow for mid combat rezzing from full downed state.
Retaliation should have an internal cool down. The main way for a small force to beat a larger one is via aoe, this is hampered by retaliation. On the flipside the zerg can use single target and win by virtue of numbers, they take less damage from retaliation and achieve almost the same effect. Retaliation is a mechanic that hinders smaller groups. In order to keep it balanced for small scale play and tpvp, retal should ony proc on you a maximum of 5 times per second, allowing for 1100 dps on average as backlash. This way if you combo multiple aoes, you are not hindered, but a single pulsing AoE like lava font still takes the appropriate amount of damage return.
A possible idea is that pets should be invulnerable to all damage in WvW. This may imbalance some of the small scale play, but not by much, very rarely are you required to kill a pet vs a ranger in small scale, however not being able to snare/cc it is an issue. However if we assume WvW is about larger fights, this is a buff to rangers because now the pets survive long enough to use the pet abilities and serve a function which means rangers can actually build around the class function. On the flipside, a disorganized zerg of 80 players running with 10-15 pets will not be able to absorb damage on their pets. The way it works atm is the pets function as meat shields as the zerg pushes and as you cannot hold them off with enough damage due to so many character models, they push through the terrain and kill you, at which point they no longer need the pets anyways if they have won. This is one of my worse suggestions as it doesnt sound like a very elegant solution to the ranger problem in wvw both for viability and zerging, mainly due to the small scale issue.
Finally the most important fix is a buff similar to outmanned but with an actual function. The buff is a quadratic one to power and vitality. The formula would be:
((# of Enemy / # of Allies) ^2) * 100 to both vitality and power
This would cap at a value of 1k vitality and 1.5k power. As a representation, in a situation where you are 80v25, you will get a bonus 10k hp and 1k power. The power is the equivalent of 25 stacks of might, so not a game breaking value, but a very powerful one, that should make an impact. 10K hp is about 50% more for the average raid spec. So 50% more HP when outnumbered by over 3:1. This is a fairly balanced value tbh, it doesnt make a player god mode if they stand in the wrong place, it does however give them a buffer. The radius of the buff calculation should be within 3.5k radius of the location where the orange swords are drawn. The orange swords are used as a reference, because different players could have different enemies with respect to their location in a 3.5k radius, but the orange swords are a precise frame of reference for the game to use for its calculations making it comprehensible.

Siegeing:

First AC damage should be toned back slighty, 50% damage buff is more than enough, so revert the 80% and apply a 50% buff instead to AC #1.
Disable the ability for a warbanner to rez a keep/tower lord.
Supply and upgrading as a whole needs a very big yet simple revamp. I can live with the points generated via nightcapping, if the enemy server has more players, I cant tell them not to play and QQ about night capping. The issue with it however is one that goes beyond points, its the fun factor and the imbalance that ensues in gameplay as a result of nightcapping. We all know the feeling of waking up to 3 upgraded enemy keeps with waypoints, its happened to us before. Now I can deal with upgraded walls and gates and siege and waypoints. But the thing that really gets to me is the supply. 1700 supply. In 3 keeps. Enough to repair the walls for an hour against trebs, or to build as many arrowcarts as the siege cap will allow in choke points. It is OP, and this extends further. Golem rushes in EB are set up as a result of 1700 supply in keep, and the golem rushes like that are simply OP and free. It takes away from the tactical aspect of WvW. If supply is the resource we as players need to manage, then an infinite amount of that resource takes all the macro-managment out of the game.

My suggestion is incredibly simple. Divide all the values by about 7. The keep starts with a supply cap of 70 instead of 500. The max supply is 240 instead of 1700. Dolyaks now carry 5 supply non upgraded instead of 35. And so on, the values of upgraded dolyaks and keep upgrades can be adjusted accordingly. The result of this is that the upgrades and speed of achieving the upgrades is exactly the same. All values were divided by ~7 so everything is relative. However, the actual supply which a player can withdraw to build siege and repair with is now less. Basically you cannot build an insane advantage overnight that will aid into primetime. The reward for nightcapping should be the points, now also dominating primetime.

Fundamentally I believe players are okay with losing a match up due to night capping, they are not okay with having the gameplay deteriorate as a result of night capping. My suggestion is trivial and would take minutes (tweak a couple of variables, no mechanic changes of any sort) and would greatly improve the quality of life for those experiencing enemy nightcapping. The game should be fun, even when you are loosing.

All in all my suggestions for combat and sieging are simply to make the game more fun in general. Give the outmanned raid a chance, give the outmanned server a chance. The tweaks are all mathematical ones, and require close to no mechanic changes, as such very easy to implement, except possibly the outmanned raid buff, that may require complex coding depending on how the game is designed. But changes like these would improve the game a lot more than world ranks or traps… just saying Anet.

General Fun:

World Ranks were a cool idea but bad implementation. I am of the opinion that people should be rewarded for their play but not by power (aka fortitude) but by recognition. An idea that came to mind is, that in a given wvw play session the progress of a player is tracked. Number of fortifications taken, # of fortifications defended, dolyaks killed, dolyaks escorted, number of player kills. The top 3 highest on a given map in a single play session get a noticeable glowing aura in 1 of 5 colors that corresponds to the event they are leading at.

This is an example of a reward that is cool for those who have it, does not break the game in any way, awards recognition to those excelling at a fundamental aspect of WvW, and is also not something grindy. By grindy I mean take World Ranks, once you fall behind, you have fell behind. It never resets. If I didnt keep grinding from day 1 then I wouldnt be eligible for a cool reward awarded to those at the top, so such a mechanic is not possible with World Ranks. But with what I suggested each time I log into wvw, I have a chance to get some cool recognition by taking part in all aspects of WvW. Its also fairly easy to implement I imagine, just a color glow animation and a comparison of statistics that the achievement panel already tracks.

Interesting ideas Jacke and you’ve gut my thumbs up, especially the suggestion qbout the buff which indeed would be godsend.
Now, I hope the ideas doesn’t fall on deaf ears like so many great suggestions that come up on these forums…