Guild Wars 2

hi,

i am here since the alpha, i spent most of the years on Wvw but now i do not go in WvW anymore now. There is something essential to me in it is that you have to build a reason to continue doing the very same thing over and over for years. That thing is the competition for your “realm”/“race”/“whatever” against an everlasting enemy you build against.

Now we have no more an enemy to hate and build against. The servers are switching so one day your friend is your enemy of the next day. You cannot have vocal , forums etc build for that as there is no more a single unit against another one.

The fights are meaningless as you figth with the “strangers of the day”.

Dark Age of camelott understand that. You had the “hairy” vickings against the “girly” arthurian etc.. you had someone to be proud and someone to gamely hate and compete against and show them ! This is key incentive you have to have a good vilain in a movie to have real meaning of the fight of the “good guys”.

I really hope you will rethink this and not mainly mecanics and lags but as primary target the psychology of WvW. Without anything at stake this is just a flat terrain with open group unbalanced pvp. And WvW could be so much more.

What i think it really need : a clear enemy to hate and figth. Community will build with ease around this Roleplayed “hate”/“competition”.

Server pride was not a real good one but it was one. We lost it so there is nothing left. There is no stake at winning anything or capturing anything.

Just my 2 cents …

I get what you are saying but people get turned off by the same matchups every week. If strm fights rdrm I’m going to be worried about losing. If strm fights slap I’m going to go all in. And it comes to the point where people see guild tags and then just hide in towers because many times the outcome does not vary. That’s what is called a stale matchup, where everyone knows everyone and will avoid fights to save face.

yeh here in Baruch have had same server for the last 3 weeks. I mean common, that server is never a joy to play against but three weeks straight maybe is pushing it a bit.

The flaw with this design is that there isn’t anything to fight for. It doesn’t have to be a villain but the game mode has always been missing that driving force… killer loot, fantastic enemy or any sense of permanence that players contribute to. It is a fine game mode but doesn’t truly engage its player base.

But WvW does have villains.

That group of players hiding in a paper tower sieging it up with superior ACs who won’t come out to fight equal numbers?

That zerg spawncamping your server for hours?

The enemy commander running a zerg of 40 against your squad of 12 .. while streaming?

They are the villains. It’s immensely satisfying to beat them.

albarinos.6135:

hi,

i am here since the alpha, i spent most of the years on Wvw but now i do not go in WvW anymore now. There is something essential to me in it is that you have to build a reason to continue doing the very same thing over and over for years. That thing is the competition for your “realm”/“race”/“whatever” against an everlasting enemy you build against.

Now we have no more an enemy to hate and build against. The servers are switching so one day your friend is your enemy of the next day. You cannot have vocal , forums etc build for that as there is no more a single unit against another one.

The fights are meaningless as you figth with the “strangers of the day”.

Dark Age of camelott understand that. You had the “hairy” vickings against the “girly” arthurian etc.. you had someone to be proud and someone to gamely hate and compete against and show them ! This is key incentive you have to have a good vilain in a movie to have real meaning of the fight of the “good guys”.

I really hope you will rethink this and not mainly mecanics and lags but as primary target the psychology of WvW. Without anything at stake this is just a flat terrain with open group unbalanced pvp. And WvW could be so much more.

What i think it really need : a clear enemy to hate and figth. Community will build with ease around this Roleplayed “hate”/“competition”.

Server pride was not a real good one but it was one. We lost it so there is nothing left. There is no stake at winning anything or capturing anything.

Just my 2 cents …

I pitched this year 1 in the form of “we should have death-spam” and the response I got from devs was “why?”. I didnt have to respond, dozens of people piled in to say “well having an enemy you recognize makes you want to get back out there, because rivalry.”

But it never happened.

Lots of people pitched “We should have a mechanic like Darkness falls, where whoever is currently leading ppt gets access to a new higher-value map.” And the response from devs, again, was “why?”. And of course, everyone explained: It takes the dominant force off the main maps, which promotes balance and turnover. It gets PvE’rs interested in the outcome of WvW, even if they arent willing to fight for it. Never mind that clearing enemies off of the bonus map when you first win control is epic.

But it never happened.

I also said “we should have guild banners prominently displayed at claimed posts and the death of the guards should warn the sponsering guild, just like DAoC.” That got no response, but certainly the reasoning is “to help build the reputation among guilds who defend, and to foster community between guilds”. Example: My keep is attacked but I am the only guildy online. If i reach out for help and another guild helps, I will remind my guildies to cover their bases when they need assistance. Without this, guild relationships are fickle and its all just a WvW Karma train.

But…

I get wanting to be different than other games. GW2 is different in PvE in a lot of fantastic ways, and their combat is above and beyond what just about any MMO is doing, but the systems behind WvW are really lacking.

GW2 could have been the game that borrowed and improved upon the best aspects of RvR combat and they just didn’t care too.

I know the PC crowd is often no fan of console players but the console population is keeping ESO going very strong after all these years. Would’ve been cool to see Anet try to pull in those groups too; and it especially might’ve helped kick open their e-sports ambitions.

But living story once every few weeks keeps lights on i guess.

Edit: and Hibernia were the sissies. Everyone knows that. I ate my Lurikeens off toothpicks.

Raven.9603:

the reasoning is “to help build the reputation among guilds who defend, and to foster community between guilds”.
…
Without this, guild relationships are fickle and its all just a WvW Karma train.

The game does very little to promote the differentiation of guild play from non-guild play, agreed. And when you try to talk about it, other posters think you are asking for “gvg battlegrounds”.

The problem with “things to fight for” is band-wagoning. If you offer superior loot for victory, people flock to that side. Same with permanent bonuses. Honestly, they have done a really good job balancing out rewards for participation and victory as well as competitive parity with the cost being that temporary rush of motivation you get for fighting your “hated” opponents.

Basically, for every one highly motivated individual there are several go with the flow types who just want to play for a bit. They will flock to the easiest experience which inherently imbalances things as quantity has a quality all its own.

There is a reason why things are at the current (sometimes boring) equilibrium and that is because of systems put in place to keep the players from blowing it all up.

Sounds like the community needs another evil empire to fight, and the ragtag band of rebels that stand up it.

If we want villain, then maybe all Anet employees should make their own server, and randomly place them as Red BL in a weekly matchup. I think WvW would grow again if this happens.

Often these will go beyond roleplay into real personal hatred.

> Often these will go beyond roleplay into real personal > hatred.

Well this happen on daily basis in Pvp and this does not serve the goal of creating community. Each time you do competition it drive this as human nature is what is it, simple animals pretending to be more

Anyway i understand the argument of stalling if the enemy was more uniquely defined. Also my feeling is perhaps narrow because mid/high level servers just see the same guys over and over and one time with you, the next against you. This prevents all commmunity buildup for me and i completly lost any love to play. TS wisper lists are dead, each server of the 3 that fight along side are using different means of communication.. etc…Rigth now i am simply lost.

Straegen.2938:

The flaw with this design is that there isn’t anything to fight for. It doesn’t have to be a villain but the game mode has always been missing that driving force… killer loot, fantastic enemy or any sense of permanence that players contribute to. It is a fine game mode but doesn’t truly engage its player base.

Yeah villain is a subjective thing, it does not need to exist… peopel should leave that word for pve only….
One of the great flaws is the ppt race than actually guild and groups having objectives for structures or antyhing else, gw2 is a bit of meaningless due the lack of features and game “objectives”.

WvW as a evolution of AB:
Alliance battles on gw1 was good(as in fitted well the game) cause u could farm faction stuff and control some cities and outpost with your guild, even with the short duration matches it had an objective to aquire amber/jadite that could be used for armors and factions point.
WvW offers no reason other than ktrain like EOTM and farm nodes/chests.

For some reason WvW doesnt promote competition outside of the enjoyment of playing your profession and killing other players just for the sake of doing it. There isn’t any real player stats ranking for wvw or guild ranking system based on stats either. There isn’t any real unique rewards for being #1 each week. You can’t brag on the forums or it quickly becomes match up thread and then it is closed. There isn’t even a real dueling option , not that I am in to dueling really but, the op does seem to be on to something here. I’d like to see a player ranking system and guild ranking system at least. Maybe some rewards for the winners after each week. I also think that closing off any thread where you see 2 or more servers names are mentioned is a bit to oppressive. Cmon, its a wargame Having said that though I still enjoy playing wvw, but it doesn’t feel like there is any real goal that id be interested in trying for. when I go in for a while I generally tell myself ok, get 15-20 stomps, and wipe a zerg a couple of times or if i’m roaming I say get some stomps , make some other roamers not want to come back to where i’m at, then move on to another spot, rinse and repeat. After that I’m ready to log. Just seems that there should be a bit more carrot on the stick for veteran players, might as well since there doesn’t seem to be a steady flow of new players coming in to play wvw.

- The problem started with mega-servers
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Only-a-WvW-player/4006290
- Got worser with guilds/people jumping around
- Got out of hands when people started to have accounts on several worlds (1st the 10$ special actions, then the f2p accounts)
- Admittedly (re-)linking did not made it better, but I can hardly say it made it worser (ok, I am at home on a server that never got linked)

The only reasonable solution I see is still:
Drop the server-concept and make it such that it can be played as guild vs guild, vs guild e.g.:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Proposal-for-a-new-competive-WvW

Anyone not on Maguuma but matched against them already has a villain.

Sartharina.3542:

Anyone not on Maguuma but matched against them already has a villain.

+1

Dayra.7405:

- The problem started with mega-servers
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Only-a-WvW-player/4006290
- Got worser with guilds/people jumping around
- Got out of hands when people started to have accounts on several worlds (1st the 10$ special actions, then the f2p accounts)
- Admittedly (re-)linking did not made it better, but I can hardly say it made it worser (ok, I am at home on a server that never got linked)

The only reasonable solution I see is still:
Drop the server-concept and make it such that it can be played as guild vs guild, vs guild e.g.:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Proposal-for-a-new-competive-WvW

g v g v g would exclude most of the current wvw population. It would also lead to zero people being involved in wvw at certain times of the day. it’s also not going to happen, it’s way too late for Anet to implement that as a replacement for wvw.

Sadly they missed the boat not copying across many of the great features from Guild Wars into GW2, such as alliance battles, HoH, Guild Wars (yes, real gvg). even random arena was fun.

Is this where I can sign up to be a villain of wvw?
I can do a pretty good good bad guy bad guy impersonations.
I even have my own “minions” although they’re not yellow.

Now before I get slapped with “off topic”.

There are many villains in pvp games, as mentioned realm/race/“whatever”, with the whatever mostly being celebrities, either person or guild. They all don’t have to exist but there is one that is common in almost every game, the hatred of individuals or guilds from other sides.

The other players who you run into every day “are” strangers of the day no matter what server you face, and that wouldn’t change unless they had stood out to you in which case you would make a personal note of their name or guild, which in gw2 case their rank and guild. Sure there are server reputations that have been built over the years, we know the famous ones like siegebend and blobgate, mostly based on how they fight as a server, but those reputations can change as well.

One of the biggest mistakes anet made in making wvw was not assigning actual background and common cause for all 3 sides, instead it’s nameless green blue red.
For comparison it’s like..
Green = FA, SoS, SBI, NSP.
Blue = Mag, BG, YB, TC.
Horde = Orc, Troll, Tauren, Undead.
Alliance = Human, Nightelf, Gnome, Dwarf.

They have 3 sides they built into the game Durmand Priory, Order of Whispers, Vigil, they have multiple gods and dragons they could have assigned those to servers instead to create a background identity. There’s nothing for green blue red for you to hate, and so it goes back unto the servers and their players and guilds, but when players and guilds move, servers lose their right to be primary servers in a matchup due to links, that hate that people look for to create a rivalry will disappear.

The game is missing that one big driving force for each side and has left it up to players to create those rivalries instead.

coro.3176:

But WvW does have villains.

That group of players hiding in a paper tower sieging it up with superior ACs who won’t come out to fight equal numbers?

That zerg spawncamping your server for hours?

The enemy commander running a zerg of 40 against your squad of 12 .. while streaming?

They are the villains. It’s immensely satisfying to beat them.

This but usually solo to 5 man groups since my guild is small