Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the communication ANET. It’s appreciated.

1st bullet: I like the idea of no auto-upgrades, but is it really limited to only ‘Small Groups’? I mean that would be kind of fun if dolyaks just ran willy-nilly invincible when Large Groups run by.

2nd bullet: Thank YOU! So much nicer when 2 or 3 can build a guild or sup cata. Those multiple runs to solo build on empty towers were killing us.

3rd bullet: I like idea of ppk, please make sure ppk statistics are exportable to the community, at least until we have data to judge if its OP or not.

4th bullet: I’m not sure what this will do. I’ve been in huge battles where rezzing was important for keeping the battle going, but also to keep it fun. And if it’s single character rez, what is that determined by? Proximity? Death bar? Please be careful with this one.

~psyco~

At first blush, these proposed changes look great. Full speed ahead.

Item by item:
Dolyaks: Just about anything that can involve active input is better than automatic upgrades. It is next to impossible to stop someone from killing a dolyak, so in a sense this still favors large-population servers since they are more likely to have dedicated yakslappers, but it’s a good step.

Catapults: Not a tremendous area of concern for me, so I don’t have much to say on the matter. This would seem to be further pushing people toward catapults over rams, which appears to be the intent.

PPK: I can see merit in the argument that suggests restricting this to stomps, but we can see how it goes at first. For those not aware, there is a site or two that lists kills over the course of a match, and totals per server tend to be in the neighborhood of a few thousand for lower tiers up to around twenty-thousand in T1. This means ppk will have an impact, but not a huge one. Folks are free to theorize all they want about what changes this will cause, but it’s just speculation.

Rally and Rez: I’ve always appreciated GW2’s unique down/death and rally system, and I’ve found in my time that cries of rallybotting tend to be overstated (sure, it’s frustrating when it happens, but we sure don’t hear those same people complaining when they are the beneficiaries). Only one rally may be a bit extreme, and others’ suggestion to tie it in some way to the outnumbered buff may not be far off, but it may be just the right number. I would say it depends on what system is used to determine who rallies — proximity? Damage done? Last down? First down? Random? (Please not random.)

No rezzing fully dead in combat: Yes, yes, yes. Particularly since the death of stability, a smaller group must fight defensively and spend a good deal of time maneuvering — like a reset in pvp — during which time blobs can just fully rez all their dead and never lose. With this change, they can still have people drop ooc and accomplish this if strung out long enough, but it should limit the infinitely-renewing army effect. This is a good change.

First, none of these changes is apt to be monumental, but each represents positive incremental progress toward improved gameplay in WvW.

Second, people, please READ before babbling: It says you can still rez downstate in combat, just not full dead. It says only one person can rally off a kill, not that you can only rally one time. If your driver got sniped and full dead, and then you were able to fully hard rez, I’m not sure what to tell you, man, but I think the other side is just toying with you at that point.

Allisondellue.4683:

I don’t really like this “Can’t res in combat” change. You say it’s to give small groups a better chance against bigger groups, but at the same time, it severely hinders the small group. As a thief in wvw, I tend to stealth and go to res people while the larger group is distracted. And since I only go with my guild (5 people at most) if even one of them in dead permanently for the fight it is very hard to fight back

Uhm… if you are fighting a small group then they would bomb the corpse and your thief dies anyway. If you fight a large group thats occupied with another large group… well then get out of combat and ress. If you are a group of thieves fighting a lesser force that kill you easiIy but cant bomb, well then its the cheeziest tactic ever and I wont cry over seeing it gone. I do not really see the problem.

The only change here that I am worried about is the rally change, because it swings both ways. At the same time it can improve outnumbered fights, it assumes equal quality (since rallying is literally 1:1). Even today a 20 man hardcore guild will roflstomp 40 average peeps, this change make it impossible for those 40 to even try to fight back. I fear it will place unecessary demands on the average player, alienate them from WvW and just cause griefing over getting downed.

On the other hand, maybe it will see a shift in the meta with more tanky peeps that can ress downed faster. I wouldnt mind seeing less zerker ranged zergs.

Visiroth.5914:

“Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat.”

Been waiting 3 years for this, finally!

Why exactly?

SkyShroud.2865:

The rally change is interesting and makes blob busting more feasible.
The res in combat change is debatable, while to some it might seems like unfavorable for smaller zerg but to some it is unfavorable to bigger zerg. A bigger zerg will always have a higher chance of ressing a dead than a smaller zerg so I believe it affect the bigger zerg more than the smaller zerg.

I agree, all the larger zerg needs to do is continue to pin snipe the smaller zergs driver like they already do and we’ll have to retreat until he runs back since we can’t hard rez anymore. This is a moronic change by Anet imo.

going to be a whole lot of tears when those rally bot guilds fielding 40-50 people cant rally 15 times per fight.

also more tears from the ppt crowd when gvging at south camp becomes a legitimate strategy.

they are fantastic changes tho, wvw has for too long rewarded second rate players for simply showing up.

RlyOsim.2497:

they are fantastic changes tho, wvw has for too long rewarded second rate players for simply showing up.

Which unfortunetly is one of the main reasons WvW is even played as WvW, instead of GvG.

Anyway, now we only need reset to be moved back to friday too…

Dawdler.8521:

RlyOsim.2497:

they are fantastic changes tho, wvw has for too long rewarded second rate players for simply showing up.

Which unfortunetly is one of the main reasons WvW is even played as WvW, instead of GvG.

Anyway, now we only need reset to be moved back to friday too…

to take off my negatron hat, its a good thing the low skilled players have a place where they can feel accomplished but its a bad thing they have no reason to get better. they do now tho!

and 100% agree on moving reset.

Unless the original borderland comes back, WvWvW will remain to be half-dead. And the more time goes with the new borderland forced upon the players, the old players might never make a come back. Thus this forcing of the new map is one of the key reasons which is killing the game mode. This is way too little, way too late. Period.

Points per Kills (PPK) might actually lead to less fights as players might safely hide inside their towers and keeps or lead to more zerging since it is safer to be part of a large group than solo roam. In fact this change is seriously detrimental towards solo roaming without stealth or teleports. Does Arenanet really want to kill solo roaming for anything else than thieves, mesmers, stealth trappers and stealth gyro engineers? This change will also favor larger group over smaller ones. If you have 5 players and enemy has 20, what are you supposed to do?

I am sad and angry of Arenanet addressing the many other serious issues now plaguing WvWvW:
- rewards still suck compared to any other game mode. I have countless of times suggested copying spvp reward tracks to WvWvW and make them so that normal 2 hours of play would lead to a completion of 1 reward track. Also make WvWvW rank chests give a guaranteed rare and increase the rate of ascended drops, which happen now extremely rarely, like once per half a year!
- experience points gained in WvWvW don’t count for anything! Let players pool their exp for HoT or Tyria masteries!
- revenant hammer #2 (CoR) still needs to be toned down, general profession/specialization balance is bad for WvWvW. You can do these changes without affecting other game modes, in other words make WvWvW specific changes, which don’t affect pve or spvp.
- tons of bugs introduced by HoT (players hitting through the gates, keeps and towers being contested by pve creatures)
- reset night on Saturday is lacking players, Friday was much better time for reset
- the new Desert BL is NOT fun at all, Alpine BL was way superior

Time is ticking. Next Spring WvWvW will die.

I really like these changes, cant believe it myself
But the “no revive while in combat” might have a bigger downside since it makes commander focussing more rewarding. On the other hand, ressing a dead commander is impossible in most occasions, so yes I like these changes. Please keep listenening to those WvW peeps! PS: How about giving us back old reset night next?

@rewards
I know rewards suck BUT think about the sort of people who get attrackted and cause queues when there are big rewards. I wouldnt want to play side by side with them, just saying.

alain.1659:

Well if the balance in the game was settled, these changes would be great. Except the ressimg part, it needs a clarification whether or not getting attack and cancellation of res is used.

However with the latest pvp problems I think these changes will force bunker meta into wvw. And the difference between new and core specs will be a huge issue. Also player numbers and mega blobs vs smaller zergs will be back.

All in all these changes were made with good intentions and should be reviewed and criticised with the same attitude.

agreed, these sound like great changes for the most part and things one might wish the game had been balanced around for awhile now but given where things are today I am not so sure the rally nerf is going to have the effect most seem to think it will. It is going to hurt the smaller team more than you might realize. Try think back on how often you get downed in battle and what percentage of the time you are back up from rally as opposed to rez. Smaller teams have fewer bodies to dedicate to picking up the downs but a well placed stomp can do so much more while zergs are rarely so strategic with it.

I’d be in favor of decreasing DPS across the board, PPK on stomp instead to prevent extreme turtling, and some stability nerf fixes to accompany these changes for better balance but they will be interesting to test regardless. Looking forward to something different sooner rather than later.

If they balance cats to the fail BL, that’ll unbalance them in EB.

But EB is the only place where people play now, so this will actually hurt the game.

I like the First three points, the’re good changes and I look forward to them.

The last two points about the rallying one person only and unable to rez hard downs. I’m on the fence with these two as we’ll have to see how these play out.

Also Please re set, re set to Friday evening’s. Most of the community seems to want it overwhelmingly in any public poll.

The Desert borderlands need to be removed as the’re just flat out not fun. I enjoy WvW for the massive fights and having to run 15 minutes in any direction for a fight, then another 15 for the next just isn’t worth it to me. I flat out refuse to play on them.

I appreciate the effort and look forward to future changes (hopefully)

First of, thanks for giving us sneak peek to the changes before you implement them.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Objectives upgrades will no longer be automatic based on time. They will upgrade based on dolyaks that reach them. Smaller groups can now prevent an objective from upgrading by preventing dolyaks from reaching that objective.

Yes, very nice. This should help getting people back on the wvw, as there is now point being there. Either defending your camps/dollies so your structures get upgraded or killing enemy dollies so their structures stay in low tier.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Supply cost for all catapults are being reduced by ten supply. The layout of the Desert Borderlands map has increased the number of catapults required to take some objectives. We agree with your feedback that also increasing the cost of catapults pushed the balance too far towards defense so we are tuning that more towards offense.

Well… You see, the main problem with supply is not so much cost of one single siege, as the incredibly stupid cost of getting your +5 bonus. You really should be changing the way wvw guild upgrades are unlocked.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Points per kill will be turned on and kept on. This is to more directly recognize the contribution that fighting other players adds to the success of the world.

Yes! The score should be based on active stuff you do in wvw (kill enemy, take structure) and not something you just get over time for doing nothing (passive tick for “holding” stuff).

Without actually knowing how many points and how are awarded, it is tough to say how much impact this change will have. Lets suppose every time enemy is killed, your server gains 1 point. When average match ends with 300k per server, and you manage to kill 100 enemies per day, that is 700 extra points. Or about 0,2%

This could mean more populated servers with huge zergs killing each other by thousands all the time, gain much more points then servers in last tier where main problem is lack of enemies. Will this change in score affect the rating? We could end up with even more locked matches because less populated servers never actually manage to score enough points to raise their rating high enough for next tier.

One thing that worries me about this change, it how new wvw players will be welcomed. Being a rallybot was bad enough but now new players, who will die a lot, will give opponent points too. Possibly the wvw chat turns into toxic spitbowl where everyone who has not done wvw for last 3 years gets pushed off. happens a lot even now, this would just give another reason for veterans to behave like assh*.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• The number of players who can rally off a single kill has been reduced from five to one. Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat. You still will be able to revive downed players while in combat. Both of these changes are designed to help fights resolve and to give smaller, more skilled groups a better chance against larger groups.

Being in a guild that usually fights larger groups I can only welcome this change. In many fights we kill half of enemies and then while we fight remaining players they start to revive the ones we already killed.

I think these are an excellent start. I do not think the boarderlands are bad they just need to have the pve taken out and wp put back to the way it use to be. If you hold a keep to T3 you fought harder to keep it and the attackers fought to keep you from upgrading it for the stratigic advantage it gave to you. So yes, I think these are all a step in the right direction. Would just like to see the other stuff looked at also.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Unless the original borderland comes back, WvWvW will remain to be half-dead. And the more time goes with the new borderland forced upon the players, the old players might never make a come back. Thus this forcing of the new map is one of the key reasons which is killing the game mode. This is way too little, way too late. Period.

Points per Kills (PPK) might actually lead to less fights as players might safely hide inside their towers and keeps or lead to more zerging since it is safer to be part of a large group than solo roam. In fact this change is seriously detrimental towards solo roaming without stealth or teleports. Does Arenanet really want to kill solo roaming for anything else than thieves, mesmers, stealth trappers and stealth gyro engineers? This change will also favor larger group over smaller ones. If you have 5 players and enemy has 20, what are you supposed to do?

I am sad and angry of Arenanet addressing the many other serious issues now plaguing WvWvW:
- rewards still suck compared to any other game mode. I have countless of times suggested copying spvp reward tracks to WvWvW and make them so that normal 2 hours of play would lead to a completion of 1 reward track. Also make WvWvW rank chests give a guaranteed rare and increase the rate of ascended drops, which happen now extremely rarely, like once per half a year!
- experience points gained in WvWvW don’t count for anything! Let players pool their exp for HoT or Tyria masteries!
- revenant hammer #2 (CoR) still needs to be toned down, general profession/specialization balance is bad for WvWvW. You can do these changes without affecting other game modes, in other words make WvWvW specific changes, which don’t affect pve or spvp.
- tons of bugs introduced by HoT (players hitting through the gates, keeps and towers being contested by pve creatures)
- reset night on Saturday is lacking players, Friday was much better time for reset
- the new Desert BL is NOT fun at all, Alpine BL was way superior

Time is ticking. Next Spring WvWvW will die.

Thanks for those words. So no need for me to type all this again. Just +1

These changes regarding ppk, rallying etc have been discussed for years by the community with no action from anet bar a one off ppk trial that was rapidly forgotten. In fact I think most people assumed that the rallying mechanics wouldn’t be changed because hey if not in 3 years will never happen right? The fact that they are being changed now with wvw on life support is pretty funny. Does anet have a functioning wvw team now? A little late don’t you think?

The number of players who can rally off a single kill has been reduced from five to one. <I like this one

Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat. < I would want the one above to be implemented first for a month to see what effect it had on fights before introducing this. when considering treb cow fire can keep people in combat then this could be a little too much..

Hell, it’s about time.

Personally, probably too late for me, but good to see things that have been asked for years will finally be implemented soon’ish.

Also, regarding the wvw overhaul and ‘not ready to talk about it yet’. You guys never learn do you. Are we going to get a blog post sometime next year on an overhaul that is already developed way beyond the point where fundamental changes can be made following input from players? Is it going to be another epic fail like the new map? Please have an open discussion with players regarding the overhaul BEFORE it is too late to prevent another disaster.

Thanks Anet, good changes and I hope to see them soon.

About auto upgrade: removing timer is good, but please reintroduce human interaction just in the form of approval.

In lower tiers night cap is devastating now because after you fully capture a border, now one is there to prevent dollies from getting into objectives, so you’ll still wake up to full T3 objectives.

I suggest to require someone to speak to quartermaster to “approve the upgrade”. Until someone approves, no progress on the upgrade line is made and extra dollies don’t count (like the old days).

That could make people more willing to scout and defend, as it was in the old days.

I think the event should be taken off the oasis event in the center of the map … players WVW not like to do that event, and reduce the size of the desert boarderland, they are too big, and put it on the waypoint in the palace and keep those who take the point and do the upgrade, as in the old bay and hills.

Maybe there could be a month long trial period to actually see how it all shakes out and feedback from the community might help even more. However, most of this looks like what has been asked for over time.

Battle Rifles.2965:

Well, sadly it’s too little, too late for many players and guilds, but this is the first time I’ve ever read a list of changes from Anet and agreed completely with each of them.

The only thing I’d add is that the new borderlands look nice, but regardless of siege requirements and autoupgrade changes, most players will not play on them.

They are too large, the terrain is not conducive to fighting (which is why we’re in WvW to begin with), there’s PvE and chokes and fall damage everywhere, on top of the map gimmicks that just aren’t fun…

If you guys did a poll asking WvW players if they’d just rather have the old borderlands back, I’d wager you’d get a resounding ‘Yes’.

Even so, these proposed changes look great. Wish it was being rolled out tomorrow.

Community issues factor in why people are not playing the new borderlands. Most WvW players from 2014-present are mostly pve focused players. Let’s be honest none of you people want to break the mindless, non skill “zerg” meta.

Desert Borderlands promote splitting your brainless zerg into smaller groups in order to progress. Which means you have to use your brain and have knowledge of your class and how to react when outnumbered or in a smaller group fight vs being brainless sheep mashing your head on the keyboard in a large zerg.

Desert Borderlands would be great if certain features were re-worked, rest is up to the WvW community to learn to adapt. I hear all this BS from Wvw players on how competitive they are yet they refuse to adept and fight in non zerg environments, just shows how non competitive people in WVW really are.

I like all the changes. There HAVE to be more changes to the borderlands though, namely:

• The PvE content affecting fights needs to go away (crippling cubes, knockbacks)
• The Oasis event needs to be fixed: it currently makes the whole map lags. Servers actually cooperate with each others to get the event done as quickly as possible, no matter which server does it first.
• Barricades are still more harmful for roamers than for zergs: the amount of time taken by a zerg to breach the barricade is 10s, while a roamer takes 2-3m.

Balance wise:
Revenants are literally gods walking amongst mere mortals: they can currently fit every single role, from being a member in a melee train, to FP to ele party.

• Coalescense of Ruin needs to be nerfed: the modifier is simply to high, and the 5 targets limit change is a fix, not a balance change. The absurdely low CD, huge range, huge DPS and horribly hight modifier thanks to the trait (+50% damage) are some of the things that need to be looked at.
• Rite of the Great Dwarf combined with protection and the dwarf stance makes the damage reduction modifier so high that wells crit for 100 damage, and yes, I did not forget one zero, it’s 100 (one hundred).

Guilds now have a limit to how many revenants can be used in a GvG. If this is not an indicator of how broken it is, I don’t know what would be.

This is how I felt reading the post though, for real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMK_xpIq2a0

Lucifer.7289:

Community issues factor in why people are not playing the new borderlands. Most WvW players from 2014-present are mostly pve focused players. Let’s be honest none of you people want to break the mindless, non skill “zerg” meta.

Desert Borderlands promote splitting your brainless zerg into smaller groups in order to progress. Which means you have to use your brain and have knowledge of your class and how to react when outnumbered or in a smaller group fight vs being brainless sheep mashing your head on the keyboard in a large zerg.

Desert Borderlands would be great if certain features were re-worked, rest is up to the WvW community to learn to adapt. I hear all this BS from Wvw players on how competitive they are yet they refuse to adept and fight in non zerg environments, just shows how non competitive people in WVW really are.

This is dishonest and disrespectful towards the player base. Your analysis that majority of the 2014-present player base being pve oriented maybe holds true for your server, but not for servers like Desolation. I can see that the same old core players, which have been on Desolation (some might have been on other servers but came back) are still there, while some simply quit the game entirely (don’t play pve or spvp anymore either). I am talking about hard core gamers, who play for Points per Tick or do WvWvW zerging and roaming every single day. The only big difference is that most of the players now migrated to EBG, because that is the only map worth playing which remains. I personally used to play on home borderland before HoT. I very rarely commanded or played on EBG. Now I am a EBG player as there is simply way too little action on the borderlands.

The two EU servers which are probably best adapted to the new maps are Desolation and Baruch Bay. At Desolation we use split team tactics, at least when I am playing. Nevertheless it doesn’t change the fact that the new Desert borderland maps are unsuited for WvWvW and no small changes will fix this issue. The old maps made much more sense both defense and attack wise and it too less time from A to B, meaning faster paced overall, which is what most players like (the new maps are a bit slower to flip objectives and travel). The new keeps are way too big. The old Alpine borderlands had much more fun fights and epic defenses, even 3-way fights.

Most WvWvW players wanted a simple map, with no gimmicks and they asked for less pve. And more balanced match ups. What did Arenanet give us? More imbalanced match ups. More gimmicks, like turn yourself into fiery hound, become invisible in blowing sand or take no falling damage, more pve (all those shrines, which are very easy to solo, but so boring… sighs). Of course the core player base feels alienated.

-"Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat. "
-“points per kills”
Stuff like this. Keep adding in stuff like this. Give death more meaning, and you will give the game more meaning.

But If you are making catapults cheaper why aren’t you decreasing their damage to walls (esp. fortified and reinforced walls)? They eat through walls so easily currently that it’s arguably just as fast as rams, AND they can be placed away from defenses on the fly…safer and more efficient overall compared to rams. Cheaper costs make setting up 1 catapult position….and then moving slightly away to another position the defender siege doesnt reach (which drains their depot) a much faster process. Given how walls take a ton of supply and time to repair….catapults are too overpowered currently and this only makes them worse when large groups use them.

There have been a lot of pretty terrible changes made to wvw recently and I still think the current skill meta needs a lot of work. Aside from that though I think these proposed updates all seem very good and, I like and agree 100% with them.

Good work anet, it makes a world of difference when you “keep us in the loop” rather than just leave us wondering if anyone is paying any attention. I hope this becomes a more regular thing.

First, thanks for the update, I’m sure the community appreciates it!
Secondly, I’m going to play the devils’ advocate here and mention that there has been posts with constructive suggestions in the past to WvW deleted for whatever reason, but overlooking these I’m sure everyone still wants WvW to live on so here we go…

Gaile Gray.6029:

Objectives upgrades will no longer be automatic based on time. They will upgrade based on dolyaks that reach them. Smaller groups can now prevent an objective from upgrading by preventing dolyaks from reaching that objective.

This was a great feature since 1st game launch that encourages small group play, yes please revert it back

Gaile Gray.6029:

Supply cost for all catapults are being reduced by ten supply. The layout of the Desert Borderlands map has increased the number of catapults required to take some objectives. We agree with your feedback that also increasing the cost of catapults pushed the balance too far towards defense so we are tuning that more towards offense.

Yes please revert it back, though justification would be on statistics of “supply” gathered as well as possibly reverting “1”, just “1” borderland map back to the old one for A/B testing justification (screenshot attached)

Gaile Gray.6029:

Points per kill will be turned on and kept on. This is to more directly recognize the contribution that fighting other players adds to the success of the world.

GW1 alliance battles had this feature, worked very well, but it had a capture point “hold” timer if I remember correctly, and the matches were really short, hence this may/may not need A/B testing with the Bayesian Approach (screenshot attached)

Gaile Gray.6029:

The number of players who can rally off a single kill has been reduced from five to one. Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat. You still will be able to revive downed players while in combat. Both of these changes are designed to help fights resolve and to give smaller, more skilled groups a better chance against larger groups.

Needs A/B testing with the Bayesian Approach (screenshot attached)

The reason I keep mentioning the Bayesian approach is due to the fact that I am unsure how or what took place at the “interview with the commanders”, in order for changes to have positive effects down the road and to deploy them with accurate iterations and not be based on “subjective” data that may create incoherence, a speedy statistical method can be applied in order to improve accuracy.

A/B testing with the Bayesian Approach can be read here at the GDC: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020201/A-B-Testing-for-Game

~Woop S

Deniara Devious.3948:

Unless the original borderland comes back, WvWvW will remain to be half-dead. And the more time goes with the new borderland forced upon the players, the old players might never make a come back. Thus this forcing of the new map is one of the key reasons which is killing the game mode. This is way too little, way too late. Period.

- Amen to that. Alpine maps NEED to be reinstated. They weren’t perfect, but as it stands the new replacement maps are a 100% downgrade from what WvW needed. It was like Anet took the advice from a casual EOTM player that thinks they know what WvW needs because they don’t know any better.

Slomoshun.6317:

Melanion.4892:

The majority of the commanders she interviews (despite their assurances otherwise if you talk to any of them) prefer to run in groups of 25+ people. That’s not the wvw a lot of us enjoy. That’s not the wvw a lot of us outside of t1 and 2 can do.

Couple points.
T1/T2 NA outnumber pretty much any other tier group combined. If you’re going to get your info on how to fix WvW that’s where you ask. I do agree it wouldn’t hurt to collect info from lower tiers and other timezones to kind of find a balance and see where things differ.

25-30 vs 25-30(even numbers scenario)is many peoples sweet spot for fights in WvW. Any more than that and it gets laggy. WvW is meant for large scale fights, it’s not designed around small roaming groups taking camps, occasional towers and the off peak hour Keep or SM. That said, I don’t condone 80man blobs running on the same pin just spamming auto attack on any enemy they see. It’s pathetic and lacks all skill. We need to be able to have large fights but we also need to be able to punish the baddies that run these map blobs.

The thing is, I prefer 15-20 man groups. Not going to criticize someone that runs with 5-10 more than that, but I’m going to criticize the fact that there is only one person I’ve seen an interview from that is on an EU server and 0 from any NA non-t1/2 servers.

Yes, t1/2 is the majority of the population. How is hearing from them about fixing wvw going to do anything when the rest of the tiers are dead? It really doesn’t give much information with which Anet could attempt to ‘fix’ wvw.

Also, most of Reyana’s commanders are folks who enjoy ppt and 30v30 fights more than anything. If they had their way, every wvw encounter would be something to do with that. Even the ‘fights’ commanders are talking about the necessity of PPT. It’s really not representative. Otherwise, just rename the interviews to reflect that it’s only a small subset of the wvw commanders that you’ll find.

Deniara Devious.3948:

This is dishonest and disrespectful towards the player base…..

[rabble rabble rabble]

There’s a million other threads to complain about desert borderlands on….go educate people there not here. That’s not what this thread is about. Respect the forums.

I would like to mention here that if you do not address the population issue plaguing low tier servers, all the “cool” patches in the world will do nothing to revitalize the game there. Our desert BLs are empty. Our EB hasn’t had a queue in 3 years.

Sure the cheaper catapults will make us go faster when we have to 3-man our entire desert borderland to recap it.
and we might even get a small bonus from PPK.

But it will do NOTHING to the fact that all 3 desert BLs in our matchup are empty and our EB has never that many players online (3 years without a queue; even after the “population” patch).

Plus now that you’ve successfully locked the higher tier servers, there is no way for us to move and get the real experience anymore (we could argue that before we only had to pay to go up there but at least there was a way to.).

So yes once again I am here to plead for the same thing I’ve been ragging about for the past 2 years.
Reyana is doing a great job at highlighting the game mode. But those commanders are all from high tier servers who don’t even have the slightest of the problems we’re facing.

Anet you must realize that you almost have 2 games in 1 here. The WvW we’re playing has nothing to do with the one up there.
So without shouting nonsense like “firstworld problems” I would still like to EMPHASIZE that solving the population problem is still a/THE burning issue you should be focusing IMO on (megaserver much?).

I hope this post has added something to the conversation.
Please please please give it a though.

Yes we mostly play WvW. NO we’re not typically into PvE. And YES grinding PvE to get our elite specs and WvW upgrades is enraging us (Soulbound proof of heroics. GG WP)
But we still have some hope.

DiscoJacen.1590:

Plus now that you’ve successfully locked the higher tier servers, there is no way for us to move and get the real experience anymore (we could argue that before we only had to pay to go up there but at least there was a way to.).

The only locked server is Jade Quarry.

First off, thumbs up for the update, after several months of silence.

Secondly, it is surprising to see the amount of positive feedback these proposals are getting. I am going to be more reserved. Most of the problems seen in the game mode today are the results of haphazard changes implemented by you. The proposed changes raises concerns that you may be repeating the same mistakes. Most of these proposed changes do not adress the issues you have already identified.

If you read John Corpening’s last update you can identify a couple of pressing issues:

• Migration to highly populated servers
• Malbalance of distances and control
• Importance of off-timezone coverage for score
• Little to no rewards or progression

Since then we can add at least two pressing matters:

• Concerns about the size, layout and effects of the new map
• General pressing balance issues (as are to be expected)

That brings us to important short-term solutions

• Roll back the stability nerf
  This gameplay or balance change is what is driving players to migrate to overpopulated servers. The change imbalanced differently sized groups and players are transfering in order to win. It made having more players better. Concerns about overabundant control and range fights leading to stand-offs can be attributed to this as well, but they are secondary concerns, compounded by facing a larger group from a higher populated server with more control, break-cover and ranged classes.

• Roll back to the Alpine Borderlands
  New maps are not a problem. We do not dislike new maps, we dislike the new map. Re-do and do-right. You need to learn how to iterate upon what you have and expanding upon the game mode, rather than completely changing the entire premise of the map and the game mode. Learn from the two mistakes (EoTM and Deserted). Roll back to the Alpine maps, iterate upon them and release new different but similar maps when available.

• Introduce some sort of reward system
  If you can create a system involving both resources and cosmetics (skins, finshers, titles) for sPvP you can do it for WvW too. The concerns about players farming the game mode for rewards are rather misplaced as you can farm any other game mode as easily and it is not impossible to find a reward system for WvW that is balanced to the other two.

• Find a simple way to adress score and timezone coverage before you dabble in killpoints
  A simple short-term solution would be to base tick values off of hostile players on map. Making it fully dynamic to active players. That will give you sufficient leeway to work and properly playtest a more complex (map-access and-) scoring system.

Do not try to reinvent the wheel, that goes for players and developers alike.

Awsome changes. Good first step!
But more important. Keep these threads coming, and get the community involved. Good job Anet.

Here are some other required changes and thoughts:

Forum:

• Are you going to remove the warnings and suspensions on the forums that your moderating team has given out unfairly to censor critical WvW / Anet posts as part of your damage control policies?
• Will you be restoring critical WvW posts that have been removed or hidden unfairly? This should help you get additional feedback if you actually bothered reading them instead of removing them.
• Why should we bother posting here if posts keep getting removed and/or ignored?

Ingame:

• Revert the waypoint changes so waypoints are accessible by the server that has captured the objective, always.
• Is PPT linked to just kills or is it linked to ratio kills and deaths?
• Revert the WvW upgrade changes so they are accessible by everyone again instead of having to pay thousands of gold for scribing and guild leveling.

Gunner Morton.8340:

Here are some other required changes and thoughts:

Forum:

• Are you going to remove the warnings and suspensions on the forums that your moderating has given out unfairly to censor critical WvW / Anet posts as part of your damage control policies?
• Will you be restoring critical WvW posts that have been removed or hidden unfairly? This should help you give additional feedback if you actually bothered reading them instead of removing them.

This guy

Great changes! Although I still have some feedback about the map, it’s even after this amount of time, that defending and fighting groups off objectives is not as important as before. This because the keeps are still too big in size, and it takes too long for a group to get to an objective. If you would change the travelling times between objectives to the same it was in the Alpine Borderlands, you would get a lot more action and players again, and the change overall would be only improvements.

I’d say there are very good changes. Many thanks especially for bringing the strategic component of upgrading your objectives by protecting your dolyaks back to the game.

As for the changes to the defeated state, I’d say this is a very good one. I’d even encourage you to explore the idea of “no rezzing of defeated players at all” (like in spvp). I know that this may sound like an annoyance at first, but the idea behind this is the following:

There is still no effective attrition mechanic for a “dumb playing but way bigger zerg” in the game. Assume a zerg outnumbers an opponent 2:1. There is a fair chance that the bigger zerg wins and the smaller one wipes, even if the smaller one absolutely killed more players in that process than the bigger one. And once the fight is over, the bigger zerg just simply rezzes all defeated players and is as good as new. If both parties meet again, it is likely that scenario will just repeat itself, and we will eventually see the smaller zerg taking a severe hit to its morale and stop trying, allowing the bigger party to dominate without opposition.

If rezzing of defeated players would be disabled altogether, then there would be a way for smaller squads to do (a somewhat) lasting damage to a bigger one even if they wipe. The bigger squad would have either to waste time and regroup after a tough win, or would eventually be worn down if they keep constantly pressing forward. The underdog however would not really see any difference since the squad has to port and regroup anyways. Hence, the system would open up tactical opportunities even in a severe unbalanced setting, and it would help to push more unbalanced match-ups towards equilibrium, without punishing a stronger server for winning or playing well.

Just my 2 copper,
MRA

These are all amazing changes in my opinion.

However, the no rez while in combat one should be tested on a large scale first to see how it works out, and we’d need to see specifics on that too (will getting hit while rezzing interrupt the rez for example?)

While I appreciate the effort made by Reyana, I also want to point out a mayor issue with it:

I am assuming most of the feedback came from American WvW Commanders. What about the European ones though? Have there been any interviews with these? Because as far as i am concerned, the American and European Communities are using entirely different builds and strategies, so i am quite certain the other half of the community which hasnt been asked for their feedback wouldnt quite appreciate some of these changes. There is a mayor difference between European and American PvP already, and the same goes for World vs World.

I am aware you cant make everyone happy (its sheer impossible) but please, try to find a middle ground, at the very least.

Just bringing it up now to suggest that you try to prevent the inbound kittenstorm that might come from this.

Zord.6457:

These are all amazing changes in my opinion.

However, the no rez while in combat one should be tested on a large scale first to see how it works out, and we’d need to see specifics on that too (will getting hit while rezzing interrupt the rez for example?)

It sounds like you just simply wont have the option of ressing someone that is fully dead, you can however, pick up someone that is downed.

I don’t think too much testing needs done for this, it seems like it’ll solve the issue of having larger groups power ressing all of their downed enemies before their smaller sized opponents get a chance to fight back.

Good changes but it’s not enough to bring me back to the game…

You need to do away with that kittenty bl or at the very least bring the alpine back in a weekly rotation, and the game desperately needs a balance patch.

Objectives upgrades will no longer be automatic based on time. They will upgrade based on dolyaks that reach them. Smaller groups can now prevent an objective from upgrading by preventing dolyaks from reaching that objective.

In my opinion a better solution would been to keep the automatic upgrade on time, and add also dependenncy of how many camps on a map a server has. The more camps you have the faster the timer goes. The less you have the more slow the timer goes. If you have zero camps the the timer stops. In short :

• Keep the Automatic Upgrades with timer.
• Keeps/Towers starts with “Zero” supplies.
• Every upgrade to start will require a specific amount of supplies been present on the objective ( Here comes the Dolyaks dependency system)
• Automatic Upgrade timer runs faster the more “Supply-Camps” you have and runs slower the less supply camps you have. If you have none then the timer completely stops.

Supply cost for all catapults are being reduced by ten supply. The layout of the Desert Borderlands map has increased the number of catapults required to take some objectives. We agree with your feedback that also increasing the cost of catapults pushed the balance too far towards defense so we are tuning that more towards offense.

You might want to tune more towards offence, but by reducing the cost by 10 supply will cut it ? I do not see how that can help. Anyway, i think reducing the cost of siege is the wrong approach for more offensive gameplay.

Points per kill will be turned on and kept on. This is to more directly recognize the contribution that fighting other players adds to the success of the world.

That a nice change and solves the dispute among servers whether PPT or PPK. Now you can have both.

The number of players who can rally off a single kill has been reduced from five to one. Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat. You still will be able to revive downed players while in combat. Both of these changes are designed to help fights resolve and to give smaller, more skilled groups a better chance against larger groups.

Very nice change also. Better late than never.

Regards

Seed

Those are all minor changes. All of them seem to be for the better, but you left the core issues of the game out. It seems to me like you never want to focus on the major problems of WvW, which is skill lag, which again have to do with players, NPC’s especially dollyaks getting out of sync. There are also plenty of other several year old bug reports, you should notice them and fix them. Earlier you decided to lower the player population cap to see if we got less skill lag while you tried to solve it. The fights got close to having no skill lag. Then you decided to raise the cap again without giving us a real fix, so the major skill lag we had is back again. You should also design new borderlands or go back to the other alpine borders. Almost none of the players on my server seem to like the maze running simulator style. The defenders advantage is to high with many of these new gimmicks, like perma chill on certain spots with no indication of where it’s coming from or what’s applying it. No counter?

Seed.5467:

Objectives upgrades will no longer be automatic based on time. They will upgrade based on dolyaks that reach them. Smaller groups can now prevent an objective from upgrading by preventing dolyaks from reaching that objective.

In my opinion a better solution would been to keep the automatic upgrade on time, and add also dependenncy of how many camps on a map a server has. The more camps you have the faster the timer goes. The less you have the more slow the timer goes. If you have zero camps the the timer stops. In short :

• Keep the Automatic Upgrades with timer.
• Keeps/Towers starts with “Zero” supplies.
• Every upgrade to start will require a specific amount of supplies been present on the objective ( Here comes the Dolyaks dependency system)
• Automatic Upgrade timer runs faster the more “Supply-Camps” you have and runs slower the less supply camps you have. If you have none then the timer completely stops.

This would create a very static combat model around camps.

Progress per dolly is simply the better way, especially since they solved the weak dollys with the boon while escorting. Controlling a map isnt just about holding a camp – its about holding the route from the camp to the tower/keep.

Coming from a T5 EU server, the last time we had PPK over 50% of our points total came from it and was almost twice a much as the other 2 servers so of course I and quite a few others are in favour of this change.

This will impact on the EU national servers who have always favoured PvD to fighting and should go a long way to balancing out the rankings.

Another benefit should be a change of tactics when it comes to fighting which are 1 dimensional at the moment. It has been the same old, same old for months with little or no imagination.

These changes may not save WvW but they are a positive step to stopping the rot.

In my opinion, very good ideas.

but my main point for WvW would be simple: Recognition.
WvW is a game mode for heroes and guilds of heroes. They want to see their names recognized.

In the spiritual forefather of WvW, RvR in DAOC, there were huge lists of guilds and what they have done for their server with a score. That was pretty glorious in my opinion. And please, refrain from using the 90% score in any ranking! Nothing screams so loud and clear I don`t care for this list as having a percentage replace an actual score.
In GW2, I sadly have no idea who the good guilds for wvw are. I know a few legends from my own server, some from foreign servers but only a handful.

I firmly believe that the majority of serious wvwers are not karma grinders by heart but people who want to fight for a cause. Bandwaggoners come and go, but trust the people here when they say that the idea that a wvwer is automatically also a dedicated pve person is utter nonsense.

• Objectives upgrades will no longer be automatic based on time. They will upgrade based on dolyaks that reach them. Smaller groups can now prevent an objective from upgrading by preventing dolyaks from reaching that objective.

- I don’t see this changing much at all. Most of the time people will still wake up to T3 keeps and towers most of the time due to lack of coverage. It’s more of a lateral move instead of a forwards one. Just to clarify I’m reading this as the system will still be automatic and not a revert to the original system like a lot seem to be doing.

What might help is only giving the automatic upgrades current version or this dolyak one to the hometeam. Opposing teams need to spend money/badges/effort in general to upgrade on enemy territory.

• Supply cost for all catapults are being reduced by ten supply. The layout of the Desert Borderlands map has increased the number of catapults required to take some objectives. We agree with your feedback that also increasing the cost of catapults pushed the balance too far towards defense so we are tuning that more towards offense.

- Was ridiculous to increase the cost in the first place

• Points per kill will be turned on and kept on. This is to more directly recognize the contribution that fighting other players adds to the success of the world.

- As long as coverage problem isn’t semi solved. Making changes to the scoring system is moot. A waste of time and effort.

• The number of players who can rally off a single kill has been reduced from five to one. Players will also no longer be able to revive defeated players while in combat. You still will be able to revive downed players while in combat. Both of these changes are designed to help fights resolve and to give smaller, more skilled groups a better chance against larger groups.

- Have a feeling this will backfire immensely

You guys need to come up with something substantially better if you want to make reparations to WvW though.