Hi, I’m posting today the transcript of the statement that John Corpening, game director for World vs. World, made last week at the beginning of the World vs. World Desert Borderlands Invitational. Enjoy!
Hello, my name is John Corpening. I’m the game director for World vs. World in Guild Wars 2.
World vs. World as it is today is an amazing experience where hundreds of players are constantly engaged in epic battles for control of towers, keeps, castles and more. Where players can use an array of siege weaponry to break into their enemy’s holdings or keep the invaders at bay. But, despite being a leader in large team open world battle games and one of the most popular parts of Guild Wars 2, there are some areas that we can improve.
Shortly after I took over the World vs. World team I implemented the Adopt-A-Dev program for our team to investigate fully the state of World vs. World.
World vs. World is probably the largest and most complex aspect of Guild Wars 2 with very different experiences for players across its many tiers, with different play styles, group sizes and motivations.
Many of our developers are dedicated WvW players but for this event they got out of their comfort zones of the worlds, guilds and friends they knew to fight side by side with other players on different worlds, make new friends and see how other guilds operate.
During this time, I conducted several discussions on our public forums about a number of issues related to World vs. World. From this we determined that we needed to focus on a number of core issues.
Our goal is great matches and our core pillars in support of this goal are Strategy, Competition, Collaboration, and rewarding the contributions of both players and guilds who participate in the daring adventures and epic battles that make up a great match. While we do strongly believe World vs. World goes far in giving players this experience we recognize that there are areas that can be made better.
The biggest is population imbalance. The current team structure has led to a number of issues such as low population in some worlds while overpopulation on a few worlds gives them queues on many nights of the week.
We’ve seen a concentration of talent as hardcore players from most worlds have migrated upwards through the tiers looking for new experiences and greater challenge. Because this talent tends to be concentrated at the top, MMR has correctly kept the most dedicated teams locked in near perpetual stand off against the same opponents week after week.
Hand in hand with population imbalance is scoring. The current scoring structure allows scores to run away, a problem that is compounded with night capping where it is possible for a team who has recruited players from different time zones to conquer everything in off-hours leading to one side getting ahead while most players are asleep or at work. Comebacks are difficult and it is hard to make up for that lost time that you spend on your real life needs.
Another area we want to improve is how players are recognized and rewarded for their contributions to their team. Whether you defend, scout, run havoc, zerg bust, roam, conquer or win team fights you should be fairly compensated from the game and not rely on the hope that your team may kick you back some gold at the end of the night for you to feel rewarded for the valuable effort you put into the success of your world.
We want to bring back tournaments and we want to bring them back in the form of seasons where everyone knows well in advance when the next tournament is coming. But until these issues are resolved we don’t want to see players taking days off work or staying up all night expending a huge effort during a time when these issues stand out the most.
After Adopt-A-Dev we spent some time discussing and debating the results. Even though a good portion of the team was already dedicated to working on World vs. World content and features for Heart of Thorns, we assigned people to start tackling these problems and more.
But World vs. World is huge and complex and so is the technology behind it. We’re continuing to work now on developing and building our solutions to the core issues I outlined above, and once we reach a point in development where we are far enough along with them, we look forward to sharing those plans with you. As work on Heart of Thorns wraps up, we’ll be treating resolving the remaining core areas in WvW as our #1 live development feature priority for the game to ensure we deliver on making World vs. World not just the great experience it is today – but the incredible experience we know it can be. As this effort ramps up you will be hearing more from us about the work in progress.
An example of this work in progress is the recent change to how world populations are determined. Going forward worlds will be marked as full or not based on actual World vs. World participation rather than accounting for every player in the game.
While we’re working on more solutions for the areas I have outlined, we’re excited about the updates Heart of Thorns will be bringing to World vs. World as well!
We are eager to see the strategic play that develops from the Desert Borderlands with its new mechanics, unique objectives, astounding beauty and layout that both supports team fights in some areas while breaking up blobs in other areas.
We look forward to putting a greater emphasis on holding objectives through auto-upgrades and on guilds through the guild claiming system, a system that gives players new ways to play the game and tools to defeat their opponents.
We hope you enjoy the live stream of our second stress test coming up next and we will see you on the battlefield.
Thank You.
(edited by Stephane Lo Presti.7258)