Guild Wars 2

Who said WvW players wanted to remove white swords? Did Anet just decide this themselves, or did players who plays WvW regularly really want this change?

Because, I haven’t spoken to one single WvW player who want this to happen …

I personally do not even see a benefit of such a change, how will commander’s/drivers/guilds know where the enemies are. I rely on white swords to indicate to me that an enemy group is at a structure and that the enemy numbers are likely below 25, as such can take a five man group and respond accordingly. Without white swords I basically have to guess where enemies will be? If i hit a structure enemies would not know where I am if I skip the sentry. This will lead to a lack of response and as such a lack of fights simply promoting karma train mentality.

Anet just makes stuff up and uses the line ‘working as intended’ if they don’t want to fix it

all the whiners that wanted to make defense meaningful wanted this. now they can sit in their towers behind those ridiculously op ac’s and have their defensive play.

Falx.8427:

Who said WvW players wanted to remove white swords? Did Anet just decide this themselves, or did players who plays WvW regularly really want this change?

Because, I haven’t spoken to one single WvW player who want this to happen …

I did. I said it and I meant it and I still mean it.

Svarty.8019:

Falx.8427:

Who said WvW players wanted to remove white swords? Did Anet just decide this themselves, or did players who plays WvW regularly really want this change?

Because, I haven’t spoken to one single WvW player who want this to happen …

I did. I said it and I meant it and I still mean it.

why?

honest question. i want your justification. i want your thought process. because i have discarded all thought processes i have related to thinking this change could be somehow good.

To be fair earlier in WvW people made sure to avoid directly hitting gates and such in order to avoid swords (I seem to recall white swords not appearing if you only hit with rams) as that would give away their position. So clearly people did want to avoid being found-out due to the swords.

They are going to test it out. Lets see how the testing goes before we decide that it is the worst idea ever, shall we?

Straegen.2938:

Some dev playing the game probably got his panties in a wad over white swords popping giving away his position. Next day, change nobody asked for gets escalated. Meanwhile a few dozen other bugs still persist in the game that a hoard of users have been asking to get fixed 2.5 years now.

This. It was one of the things mentioned in the adopt-a-dev results thread.

You can forgive a noob dev who never played WvW before for coming up with such a terrible idea. But the fact that this idea progressed all the way to being announced as coming in a future update is pretty sad. It tells us how little the devs understand/care about WvW.

Worst idea ever.

lordkrall.7241:

To be fair earlier in WvW people made sure to avoid directly hitting gates and such in order to avoid swords (I seem to recall white swords not appearing if you only hit with rams) as that would give away their position. So clearly people did want to avoid being found-out due to the swords.

They are going to test it out. Lets see how the testing goes before we decide that it is the worst idea ever, shall we?

Scouting is already a boring and unrewarding job. Removing the white swords will only add more boredom to it and people will have harder times to find the fights.

Or do people want to turn WvW into Eotm ktrain where people trying to avoid eachother and pvd only?

I absolutely hate this idea in every way imaginable. But I cannot tell you how much easier it will be to solo towers. As is, I like to YOLO cap but rarely succeed. I’ll often get the wall or gate nearly down or get inside but get caught before I can take it. Sometimes I manage though. Without white swords… Lol. I’m going to have fun with this stupid idea until it’s removed. Inb4solocappingT3keep.

Removing white swords will only encourage employing more stationary scouts.
Stationary scouting is awful.
Ergo, removing white swords is awful. It won’t do anything to servers with a high population / active community.

I cannot see one single benefit drawn from it. And no, promoting pug groups to ninja keeps via watergate isn’t fun, it’s painful for the people who are going to have to scout it on a regular basis.

Anet prefers fixing things that aren’t broken over actually fixing broken things.

lordkrall.7241:

To be fair earlier in WvW people made sure to avoid directly hitting gates and such in order to avoid swords (I seem to recall white swords not appearing if you only hit with rams) as that would give away their position. So clearly people did want to avoid being found-out due to the swords.

They are going to test it out. Lets see how the testing goes before we decide that it is the worst idea ever, shall we?

Do you work for Anet? Never seen someone agreeing more with what Anet does than you.

I mean, why won’t they give us something the majority really asked for, instead of “trying out” something 1 person wanted?

lordkrall.7241:

To be fair earlier in WvW people made sure to avoid directly hitting gates and such in order to avoid swords (I seem to recall white swords not appearing if you only hit with rams) as that would give away their position. So clearly people did want to avoid being found-out due to the swords.

They are going to test it out. Lets see how the testing goes before we decide that it is the worst idea ever, shall we?

i fear it wont be a test. i fear they call it a test, and then never end the test, despite me and many others showing them it will be impossible to hold anything in not-t1.

I am actually really looking forward to December to see how the play dynamic will change with this. This will require scouts to be on maps, in towers, in keeps. I am sure it will still have a timer and contested on the inside, just no white swords. I think it will be tons of fun, and a totally different play style, with just one change.

No reason to complain about something you havent tried, yet. You might actually enjoy it like this, once you experience it

I say BRAVO and PROPS to anet for letting us try things differently!

insanemaniac.2456:

i fear it wont be a test. i fear they call it a test, and then never end the test, despite me and many others showing them it will be impossible to hold anything in not-t1.

This game mode is so broken that I don’t fear anything…

Kitiara.2706:

I am actually really looking forward to December to see how the play dynamic will change with this. This will require scouts to be on maps, in towers, in keeps.

You realize that there are 4, maybe 5 servers that can actually do this, population-wise? That’s out of 24. Not the majority.

Anyway, this change was decided upon after the adopt-a-dev devs had a meeting. It was not something that was asked for by the majority of players.

Probably the same dev that wanted to charge us 300g per color of commander tag.

See, this is what happens when the devs join busy servers in large guilds in a season- they get a totally distorted view of what wvw is really like for the vast majority, then start saying they are going to implement some of the worst bad ideas they got from their rose tinted view of wvw.

Of course, we all know it’s a bad idea, the forum’s biggest white knight has ridden in to try and justify it:-)

@Kitiara.2706, “This will require scouts to be on maps, in towers, in keeps” you realize how boring and unrewarding it is? Consider the following scenario, you are outmanned during a specific timezone the enemy server decides to send a 10man to flip your upgraded structure. You are a guild that plays during those outmanned hours looking to have engaging fights as well as provide for your server by defending against those enemy forces. Your enemy force decides to avoid the sentry point or even flipping the camp and there are no white swords that pop. To me, it seems more like that outmanned guild will be running around aimlessly.

As players and technically the prime investors in this game, I too would like to know how the devs came to this most absurd conclusion from their time in WvW!!!

Has this change actually gone in? I ask because over the weekend I capped a few Camps while getting my Daily dolyak kills, and I noticed the white swords still popped up on the Camp while I was doing it.

Or is the white swords only visible to YOU if you’re the one attacking it?

Zaxares.5419:

Has this change actually gone in? I ask because over the weekend I capped a few Camps while getting my Daily dolyak kills, and I noticed the white swords still popped up on the Camp while I was doing it.

Or is the white swords only visible to YOU if you’re the one attacking it?

It’s been mentioned that the change will likely appear in December.

1. Its just a test, and is worth trying in case it DOES work.

2. The question as to whether this helps split up a zerg is determined by answer the following question: who uses the information provided by white-swords to greater effect – smaller groups or larger groups? I would argue larger groups (mega blobs) rely on the swords to wipe up any enemy groups trying to ninja their towers, and thus don’t need to split up to attack defend. This increases the value of stationary or roaming scouts, or even small-groups roaming to defend and fight other small groups attacking. If that is the case, isn’t that what everyone wants?

I can’t guarantee that is how it will play out, but its worth a try.

BlackBeard.2873:

1. Its just a test, and is worth trying in case it DOES work.

Nope. There’s opportunity cost. The time spent on implementing this awful idea could have gone to better use… maybe fixing the stuck bug that has once again returned. Or maybe implementing some less-awful idea.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Nope. There’s opportunity cost. The time spent on implementing this awful idea could have gone to better use… maybe fixing the stuck bug that has once again returned. Or maybe implementing some less-awful idea.

To be fair it is most likely very easy to remove the white swords. Much easier than fixing bugs and such, since bugs are stuff not working as intended and as such they need to find the cause and so on.

lordkrall.7241:

To be fair earlier in WvW people made sure to avoid directly hitting gates and such in order to avoid swords (I seem to recall white swords not appearing if you only hit with rams) as that would give away their position. So clearly people did want to avoid being found-out due to the swords.

They are going to test it out. Lets see how the testing goes before we decide that it is the worst idea ever, shall we?

Actually white-swords have been always there. The only change they made to them was that 30 second timer before they pop up.

What you remember is the old Orange Sword, which needed only 5+ person to be in combat in the area. Thats why it was rather hard to not pop them as with only 5 people you had to be careful not to be in combat, even in small parties not all could attack the guards and so on.

On the contrary it was a lot easier to make distraction swords in keeps etc. when you could not know if the orange sword was 5 people or 25 people.

Oh, I know about the orange swords, but I also seems to remember people avoiding to actually hitting the gates at all (even with small numbers) due to white swords (sometimes) not popping up unless someone actually attacked it directly.

I might remember incorrectly of course, but I seem to recall shouting about not hitting the gate

BlackBeard.2873:

1. Its just a test, and is worth trying in case it DOES work.

2. The question as to whether this helps split up a zerg is determined by answer the following question: who uses the information provided by white-swords to greater effect – smaller groups or larger groups? I would argue larger groups (mega blobs) rely on the swords to wipe up any enemy groups trying to ninja their towers, and thus don’t need to split up to attack defend. This increases the value of stationary or roaming scouts, or even small-groups roaming to defend and fight other small groups attacking. If that is the case, isn’t that what everyone wants?

I can’t guarantee that is how it will play out, but its worth a try.

Even on silver a lot of scouts rely on the white swords as usually, even on primetime, there is only handful of scouts around so they can’t be in every place at once. This will be a change that will most likely push away the few dedicated scouts we still have and soon we will be just watching map as towers and keeps change colours without ever seeing a fight.

And I doubt mega blobs have much time to check all objectives that get white crossed around the map, the blobs rely on the few scouts that check out the situation once the swords pop out and act according to those reports. There is no need to pull 40+ people from enemy territory to check your own keep just to see that it was only some roamer tapping the gate.

But yes, this white sword change might work on higher tiers where there is constantly a lot of people around, but on lower tiers where there might be maximum of 10 active defenders in home border during prime time I doubt this will be a good change.

My prediction is that on the lower (Silver & Bronze) tiers the fights and “real” WvW will move more towards EB while borderlands will be left as Karma Train areas. It’s a pity as I like the dynamics of Borderlands way more than EB.

lordkrall.7241:

Oh, I know about the orange swords, but I also seems to remember people avoiding to actually hitting the gates at all (even with small numbers) due to white swords (sometimes) not popping up unless someone actually attacked it directly.

I might remember incorrectly of course, but I seem to recall shouting about not hitting the gate

People still avoid hitting the gate if possible as that is the mark when the clock starts ticking. If you can kill the guards and build the siege before tapping the gate / wall at all you get more “luxury free time” to break into the structure. So that meta hasn’t really changed along the time, at least when it comes to ninja caps.

Falx.8427:

Who said WvW players wanted to remove white swords? Did Anet just decide this themselves, or did players who plays WvW regularly really want this change?

Because, I haven’t spoken to one single WvW player who want this to happen …

they prolly heard it from EotM k-trainers because some guild group is wrecking the train.

Paavotar.3971:

Even on silver a lot of scouts rely on the white swords as usually, even on primetime, there is only handful of scouts around so they can’t be in every place at once. This will be a change that will most likely push away the few dedicated scouts we still have and soon we will be just watching map as towers and keeps change colours without ever seeing a fight.

And I doubt mega blobs have much time to check all objectives that get white crossed around the map, the blobs rely on the few scouts that check out the situation once the swords pop out and act according to those reports. There is no need to pull 40+ people from enemy territory to check your own keep just to see that it was only some roamer tapping the gate.

But yes, this white sword change might work on higher tiers where there is constantly a lot of people around, but on lower tiers where there might be maximum of 10 active defenders in home border during prime time I doubt this will be a good change.

My prediction is that on the lower (Silver & Bronze) tiers the fights and “real” WvW will move more towards EB while borderlands will be left as Karma Train areas. It’s a pity as I like the dynamics of Borderlands way more than EB.

My point is that white swords ENABLE a blob moreso than anything else. 1 or 2 people can just check on an objective when white swords show-up, and then your whole blob can just respond because those white swords gave them the information they needed. With white swords, a blob gets all the information it needs to both defend and attack efficiently.

Without white swords, you either need stationary/roaming scouts or scouting parties in high tiers and can keep on blobbing, or you are better off splitting into small parties and hitting multiple objectives while the enemy mega-blob is blind to what is happening.

I have been on silver AND bronze, and been the smaller server (I was on AR for the longest time). It is laughably easy to keep tabs on or predict where the megablob is gonna show up at. White swords don’t actually help the outmanned defenders in that situation. When stuck in that situation, it would have been great to be able to split into 2-3 small teams and just stall our own objectives while capping more of their objectives, effectively outplaying them with smaller numbers. The enemy megablob/ktrain would either have to spread out, or end up losing more than they gain without white swords there to let them respond. The winners in this situation are the smaller server when they don’t have white swords.

Edit: Of Course, this whole line of reasoning could be wrong and it doesn’t work out. However, the very minimal development time (its literally just commenting out a few lines of code probably) and potential positive effect is worth trying.

Everyone, including me has complained about balance issues in WvW. We have complained about it for a very long time. They are FINALLY trying to do something about it, and you are upset about it??

At least Anet is trying to do something to help with the balance issues, Keep complaining about them trying, and sooner or later they will simply go back to ignoring the WvW again.

tym.3791:

Everyone, including me has complained about balance issues in WvW. We have complained about it for a very long time. They are FINALLY trying to do something about it, and you are upset about it??

At least Anet is trying to do something to help with the balance issues, Keep complaining about them trying, and sooner or later they will simply go back to ignoring the WvW again.

Explain to me how this has anything to do with fixing balance issues, please.

^^ As ark said, this will do NOTHING about balance.

Look, we all want changes. The difference is that we want good changes. Why implement a bad idea just to prove that it is bad? That makes no sense. What we need is a WvW team that actually implements some good features. I’d hate to be sitting in their performance review for the year.

How is anyone supposed to defend anything without white swords? You know what, I think Anet is trying to kill off WvWvW, because this is just BEYOND stupid. I, am primarily a defender in WvWvW, and I know how it is doing so. I am normally only 1 of less than 3 usually. So we can never stay in one place long, so we can’t stay in towers or keeps. And WHY WOULD WE? That is possibly the most boring thing and unsatisfying thing to do. Anet, you do this, you kill WvWvW, at that point it will be unplayable. We want changes to population circulation, even out the servers.. But this? Obviously, you want to kill of WvWvW, why? I don’t know, but when you do this, know that you’ll lose at least 20 % of players, which I find funny since Anet seems to be trying hard to get more people to play Gw2, what with their advertisements and discounts on the game.. This was the first, and likely last, mmo I will get to max level and enjoy. I could never get into any other mmos but this one just spoke to me. You can imagine my disappointment.

White swords are being removed because of the disaster that siege disablers have turned out to be (read the original post where they announced the removal of white swords).

It’s now extremely hard for a small group to ninja an upgraded tower … all it takes is one defender with disablers and your siege is chain-disabled until the blob comes to wipe you. Adopt-a-dev devs most certainly saw this so Anet implemented one of their two usual solutions to a bad mechanic: they introduce another mechanic (remove white swords in this case) as an indirect fix. Inevitably, their indirect fix is bad as well, and you end up with two bad mechanics.

(Their other solution to bad mechanics is to do nothing.)

There really is no hope. It’s sad, but the best possible outcome is that Anet does absolutely nothing and you get to ride WvW out until it bleeds completely dry.

This is like every server’s, besides T1, nightmare coming true. I’m willing to bet anything that this idea came from an adopted dev in a T1 server.

Given that scouting is unrewarding already, I don’t see how this helps the overall game play. Even in T1 this won’t go over well, since many guilds are tired of playing the PPT game and just hunt each other across maps for fights now. Anet any mechanic that encourages players to avoid each other and PvD, is bad game play.

But guys!!! They will implement Guild Halls, and a Guild Vs Guild mode! They said it on the CDI.. Or… they mentioned it… Well not directly, but that they were thinking about it… Or was it thinking about thinking about it?

Lets face it, it’s too late. The people interested in the whole WvW scene moved on, or they’re waiting for something else to come along. I’m sure Anet knows this as well, and are just trying to make the best of the situation. The aren’t patching it for the old hardcore WvW’ers, because most of them are gone, and are most likely not coming back.

It all went downhill after the implementation of EotM, where we saw a serious fall in the casual WvW players. And upon reflection, it was our fault, because we were the ones shouting and telling them to bugger off and to level another place. After they got another place, the whole thing declined and the main WvW maps suffered.

We’ve now become the grumpy ol’ farts at the old peoples home, refusing to give in, and getting angry and upset about everything. “EVERYTHING WAS BETTER IN THE OLD DAYS LADDY, GET OFF OUR LAWNS, QUIT MESSING WITH MY INSULIN”.

Sorry for the rant, and the schizophrenia in my post, but I give up. It’s not for me anymore, and I accept it. Something else will come along eventually and I’ll forget about this.

Edit: words.

I don’t know how it was why and when EOTM got implemented, I know that queue’s were just so often that people couldn’t play WvWvW more often than can in higher populated servers. I don’t think it was the more dedicated to WvWvW players that wanted casuals to leave, I don’t see the reason. It must’ve been the queue times, whether we all demanded or just wanted EOTM implemented, we had the right idea and intentions. But honestly, Anet screwed up with it, and now that I think about it, what has Anet done that has been healthy as of late? Living story? I dislike most of PvE since it is so repetitive, dungeons, definitely, not a challenge.

Did they just drop Gw2 production? Are renewal sales (monthly costs for MMO’s) that important since MMO’s are so expensive to maintain and Anet cannot recover because of all the mistakes on their part? Ultimately, it is their game, what happens to it is their glory or fault. But in the end, I’m an individual, and I honestly love this game, I want to do whatever I can to sustain and improve it, at this point I might recommend them starting donations if they promised particular updates, fixes, etc.

It’s obvious that the majority of WvW players doesn’t want this change.

- Ignore requested features
- Put in stuff nobody wants
???
Profit
:(

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I absolutely hate this idea in every way imaginable. But I cannot tell you how much easier it will be to solo towers. As is, I like to YOLO cap but rarely succeed. I’ll often get the wall or gate nearly down or get inside but get caught before I can take it. Sometimes I manage though. Without white swords… Lol. I’m going to have fun with this stupid idea until it’s removed. Inb4solocappingT3keep.

this is interesting. will this lead to pug zergs getting more fights as defending will become less and less common? or will it lead to more siege bunks and 30 minutes of treb vs ac stalemates?

Stand The Wall.6987:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I absolutely hate this idea in every way imaginable. But I cannot tell you how much easier it will be to solo towers. As is, I like to YOLO cap but rarely succeed. I’ll often get the wall or gate nearly down or get inside but get caught before I can take it. Sometimes I manage though. Without white swords… Lol. I’m going to have fun with this stupid idea until it’s removed. Inb4solocappingT3keep.

this is interesting. will this lead to pug zergs getting more fights as defending will become less and less common? or will it lead to more siege bunks and 30 minutes of treb vs ac stalemates?

No, it will lead to Eotm behaviour with blobs never thinking about returning home to save their corner, they will just continue to cap cap cap while the enemy blobs are doing the exact same thing. Good thing we have guilds that hunt down those filthy blobs though.

Xyppi.8061:

How is anyone supposed to defend anything without white swords? You know what, I think Anet is trying to kill off WvWvW, because this is just BEYOND stupid. I, am primarily a defender in WvWvW, and I know how it is doing so. I am normally only 1 of less than 3 usually. So we can never stay in one place long, so we can’t stay in towers or keeps. And WHY WOULD WE? That is possibly the most boring thing and unsatisfying thing to do. Anet, you do this, you kill WvWvW, at that point it will be unplayable. We want changes to population circulation, even out the servers.. But this? Obviously, you want to kill of WvWvW, why? I don’t know, but when you do this, know that you’ll lose at least 20 % of players, which I find funny since Anet seems to be trying hard to get more people to play Gw2, what with their advertisements and discounts on the game.. This was the first, and likely last, mmo I will get to max level and enjoy. I could never get into any other mmos but this one just spoke to me. You can imagine my disappointment.

The less people they have playing WvW, the easier it is to justify not doing anything to improve it. Make it worse, ppl leave, no reason to improve. Nuff said.