Guild Wars 2

A SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) analysis is a very effective tool to set focus and identify areas that needs immediate attention in whatever the subject matter is that is being analyzed. It can be done on an individual bases, but becomes quite powerful when it is based on feedback, cooperation and involvement of a larger group of people with a vested interest in the subject matter.
I thought it could be interesting to put such an analysis to the community and see what we can come up with and dotted down a list just to get the ball rolling.

How a SWOT works:
It is simple, you think on the key statements (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat), and using those statements as guidelines, you add your views in the appropriate area of concern in a short statement. To clarify your statement, add a short description to what exactly you mean.

It is possible for the same criteria to be in multiple categories. For example (and I am only using it because it has been brought up numerously by myself for one), Character Ranks could be seen as a weakness (due to it being character bound and not account wide), but could also be an opportunity (it can be improved by reflecting the awards or making it account-wide).

Now, one thing to keep in mind with a SWOT is that not all weaknesses or threats can be addressed even if they are identified. In the same breath, nor can all opportunities be cashed in on. Sometimes, things are just the way they are and nothing can be done about them. However, what the SWOT does is identify such aspects and perhaps through a combination of opportunities and strengths, such negative aspects can be mitigated significantly.

As for the SWOT, I ask to keep it meaningful and insightful. Base your statements on strong and logical arguments without getting emotionally involved or argumentative. Dialogue is constructive, arguments are not.

Why participate?
There is no real reason other than to see what the rest of the community perceive about WvW. I have my own perceptions and I am curious to see how they differ or agree with the wider community.

To make this a collaborative effort, I will edit the SWOT as views are presented. Thus, things could be added, taken away, changed, reworded… whatever. Whenever a controversial subject is raised or a statement already on the list becomes disputed, I will list/move it into the “Discussion Post” until a consensus is reached. Rules for this in the post below.

TL;DR: SWOT. Add to it if you want/can. Be nice.

Strengths

• Strong and enjoyable concept: The idea behind WvW is rock-solid and makes for really enjoyable battles when all the elements are balanced.
• Arena size: The WvW arenas are small, but this is a good thing as it makes it easy to respond to threats, encourage fast paced and continuous action, and facilitate a sense of urgency and danger, yet big enough to enable players to be sneaky at the same time, avoiding other players and capturing objectives secretly.
• Team work and collaborative effort: WvW is not a fractal run, but it takes a lot of team work and collaboration to pull things off in tight matches. Especially if there are main-force zergs and havoc squads operating to achieve the same goal.
• Breach racial/language barriers: LA map chat is rampant with people screaming and demanding person XYZ chat in language ABC for no other reason than arrogance. Although present in WvW, it is by no means as disruptive and blatantly disrespectful as in other areas, and is usually dealt with fairly strongly by most on the map.
• Community: The WvW community is a dysfunctional family at best, but it is a community, and anyone who regularly plays WvW feels that sense of belonging.
• Sense of achievement: Nothing feels better then capping SMC after a 2 hour back and forth battle. It. Is. Awesome.
  Strong back-end:* Although frustrating to be kicked from the game at crucial moments, the game is fairly stable as far as on-line games go, and updates continue to improve things such as skill-lag etc.
• Fun: Well… it’s fun. If you play WvW, then there really can’t be anything else you can say to this.

Weaknesses

• Uneven/ blow-out matchmaking: This needs no explanation. It is what it is.
• Over reliance on server coverage: As the first Season has proven, the winners are: Numbers. Coverage wins. Unless a way can be found to spread coverage or limit it somehow to “lowest number”, it will always be an issue.
• Server ranking system: The only thing the ranking system reflects at the moment, is coverage.
• Unrealistic and unbalanced achievement system: One million babies… um, dolyaks.
• Class balancing: Seems (and this is only a perception) that balancing is aimed at sPvP, and secondarily at PvE. WvW does not seem to be on the meeting agenda when balancing is discussed. (Again, only a perception)
• Equipment balance: Perplexing, isn’t it. (Same as above.)
• Season schedule: In silver league for example, a server played the top 2 servers in its league 4 times, twice individually, and twice against both those servers in the same matchup (essentially, a guaranteed 3rd place), while most of the other server at most faces the top 2 only 3 individual times, giving them the opportunity to nab a second place in their matchup. Basically, said server never had a realistic chance to get anywhere in the league. It is an unfortunate blunder.
• Stagnant: WvW is incredibly stale right now. Three borderlands that all look the same and EB. We need more variety. -BAITness.1083
• RNG in Matchups: RnG is ok but has too great a variation at times (as much as 600 rank point between opponents in extreme cases) – Chris.3290
• Transfer Costs: They need to base server transfer costs on WvW population not total home population. – Chris.3290
• Reporting UI: The reporting UI has significant gaps, and a lack of feedback in regards to action taken from reported issues damage the amount of trust that is invested into the system. – Swamurabi.7890
• Zerging: The game mechanic favors zerging and capping objectives by rewarding those actions. – Swamurabi.7890

Opportunities

• Character/Personal ranking system: This can be so much more than it is right now, and strides have already been made in it. I am tempted to list this as a strength as well, simply because it is mana from the heavens for WvW players. However, as an opportunity, this could bridge the disparity between PvE and WvW and give us WvW’erd something to brag about as well.
• World balancing: Finding a way to balance population active in WvW over either all of the worlds, or (on a micro level) across the 3 worlds in a match, will go a LONG way to make playing WvW a lot more fun.
• Community involvement: There is a strong impression hat Anet simply does not involve the players in anything that is done in WvW.
• Community trust: There is a general lack of trust that Anet has the community at heart when making decisions.
• Character/Personal ranking system: It really should be account-wide and in line with the rest of the game (including now; Fractals)
• Season: It’s a good idea over all, but the schedule needs some serious consideration and care must be taken to reward based on effort and not numbers, even if it is on an individual basis.
• Edge of the Mist: There is a new wvw map that exists purely for having fun, which is clearly necessary since people get very stuck on who wins which match. – BAITness.1083
• Comander UI: I think we all know more than enough about this discussion. – Swamurabi.7890
• Map Design: There’s a large part of each map that is unused. There’s no logic why a BL garrison is at the front, easily attacked before you have to take the NE and NW towers. – Swamurabi.7890
• Rewarding: Defenders and scouts don’t get the rewards they’re due. – Swamurabi.7890

Threats

• Cheating: A lot of it has been reported of late. Although eliminating it may be quite hard if not outright impossible, a few VISIBLE moderators/ adjudicators/ refs… (and not just on high-pop servers) would go a long way to curb this. Additional reporting functionality may also help.
• Matchmaking: We have all seen the threads asking why XYZ server is playing dead. Nobody likes getting stomped every time they set foot out of their spawn.
• Rewards based on server coverage: Rewarding players simply for being on a high-coverage server (as it seems will be the case at the end of season one), will decimate the lower pop servers. People will continuously stream to where rewards are guaranteed and a vacuum will ensue, especially if those rewards are “significant” as was stated in a Dev-Post not too long ago. This system of rewarding will hurt WvW. Be fair. Consider this carefully. Very, very carefully.
• Lack of meaningful feedback: WvW does not enjoy the feedback that other aspects of the game enjoy. Perhaps it is a perception, but it is one that is persistent throughout the community. That creates the impression that there is no support either.
• Apparent lack of support: As above.
• Population disparity: ANY league, #1, #2 and #3 servers, VS. The Rest. Do I really need to go on? Matter of fact, ANY league, #1 server VS. #3…
• Forcing players to do things they do not want to do: Most of us PvE as well… we just like WvW more. Please don’t force us to choose.
• Competitors launching products: Just google it.

Discussion Post:
For all those sensitive and/or disputed subjects.
The idea is to reach consensus on these subjects first before moving them to the SWOT. In terms of numbers, (acknowledging the fact that I doubt we will all agree on everything, every time) the rules of a greater majority will apply. IE, 66%. Of the votes = consensus.

• Be objective.
• Don’t take things personal.
• Don’t make things personal.
• Don’t focus on just the bad. If everything is so terrible, why on earth are you still playing?
• Be constructive.

Very nice post and I think you’ve summed it up excellently!

Nice posts. I think coverage is the biggest issue. Leagues imply a competition, and usually being competetive means trying to be the ‘best’ at something. But WvW right now is not a competitive gamemode at all. Having a really strong primetime that outplays enemy servers pales in comparison to having an early morning PvD zerg for contribution to the score. You can outplay your opponents in the evening and have maybe 50-100 PPT more than your enemy for a few hours, but that isn’t going to matter at all when that enemy server can just tick 400+ for many hours late at night/early in the morning. On the one hand you have an intense battle for a keep that lasts hours, and on the other hand you have people flipping that very same keep in a matter of minutes late at night, gaining way more points for it. This only illustrates that playing during primetime is far less rewarding for getting points than playing at off hours, and it’s silly it works this way.

I’m not saying players shouldn’t be able to contribute at all during the night, but there should be some change to the scoring system to greatly reduce the importance of coverage. People should be able to play whenever they want, but I think it’s wrong to have a relatively small amount of people impact a matchup so drastically just because they can effortlessly capture a lot of objectives late at night. Right now your league reward reflect nothing more than being on a high population, high coverage server and actual effort or skill don’t see any rewards whatsoever. As such having WvW ‘leagues’ is nothing short of a poor joke.

Having said all that, I personally don’t care much for the rewards or for the score as long as I’m having fun when I’m playing. But it doesn’t seem fair for the people who do care about the score and can’t stay up all night to have a much bigger impact on the matchup.

People that get upset about capping happening when they are asleep have never made sense to me. The game clearly does not stop when you log off, it is an MMORPG. The people playing on off hours have as much right to make an impact as the people on na primetime.

This is not a game of teams playing each other, but entire communities. You cannot say that only one small fraction of the community counts. This season several people try to credit BG’s strong win with them getting ZDs in week 2. If you go back and look though, BG’s NA won the majority of days in each matchup. People just do not like losing, and scratch for any reason why it was not their fault. How about this reason: The other server did a good job.

Lots of individual players or guilds put forth excellent efforts and performance in WvW without winning. It is a a community competition, your individual success is not as important as your server organization. This is always going to be central to WvW, and I think it is one of it’s strengths.

The biggest weakness I think WvW has is how incredibly stale it has become. Three borderlands that all look the same and EB. We need more variety. If it is taking too much development time just start throwing towers in pve maps and let us fight for them.

I am somewhat optimistic though, Anet finally fixed the lag problem that was the biggest issue for a long time. There is a new wvw map that exists purely for having fun, which is clearly necessary since people get very stuck on who wins which match. I hope WvW continues to see more updates, because fighting over the same large flat spaces just gets old.

You see, this is how you foster good discussion.

I’m a LSS Black Belt—nicely done MAGpie!

+1 to OP. Really hope a dev reads this!

Though some communication has improved constructively as late, there does need to be some more active back and forth.
They have made four moves that have drastically upset any chance at balance in this game.
They should not have announced the end of free transfers as it created a rush to stack.
They need to base server transfer costs on WvW population not total home population.
RnG is ok but has too great a variation at times (as much as 600 rank point between opponents in extreme cases)
Lastly the season in NA,was a disaster from most points of view. Bronze was decided by sandbagging, Silver was decided by sandbagging and the destruction of a previously growing and resurgent WvW community, and Gold was settled by EU players that were not here before the season.

With viable competition the device team is the only thing that can keep their product ( sole product for their company and only successful product the broader parent company has) viable and successful for years to come.

Thanks for the positive and constructive comments so far guys. Lets keep this discussion as objective as it has been and see if we can draw some attention to it.

I have incorporated some comments into the posts (and will continue to do so as time goes on), but in doing so realized a critical error… I posted 2 categories in 1 post.

I do believe I am going to run out of space.

BAITness.1083:

People that get upset about capping happening when they are asleep have never made sense to me. The game clearly does not stop when you log off, it is an MMORPG. The people playing on off hours have as much right to make an impact as the people on na primetime.

I’m not one of the people that gets upset by nightcapping or PPT, but does it make sense for people who nightcap to have a bigger impact than the people who play at primetime? You say they have as much right to contribute, with which I fully agree, but right now they actually have a far bigger impact on the score than all the guilds and players playing during primetime, and this is the problem in my opinion. I think coverage has little to do with organization or skill, you simply make an effort to play when other players can’t (with the exception of those from different timezones), taking objectives without effort while being highly rewarded for your PvDing.

Put a lot of thought into Free server transfers… is that the answer for pop-balance?

You could add in a better UI for commander/squad.

There’s also the game mechanic that favors zergs, just like it favors population and coverage.

I saw another thread on here complaining about spys on third party VOIP.

We also need a better reporting UI.

Defenders and scouts don’t get the rewards they’re due.

Three way battles for SMC turn into a auto-attack lagfest.

There’s a large part of each map that is unused. There’s no logic why a BL garrison is at the front, easily attacked before you have to take the NE and NW towers.

Swamurabi.7890:

You could add in a better UI for commander/squad.

There’s also the game mechanic that favors zergs, just like it favors population and coverage.

I saw another thread on here complaining about spys on third party VOIP.

We also need a better reporting UI.

Defenders and scouts don’t get the rewards they’re due.

Three way battles for SMC turn into a auto-attack lagfest.

There’s a large part of each map that is unused. There’s no logic why a BL garrison is at the front, easily attacked before you have to take the NE and NW towers.

Very valid points. i will incorporate and cluster some. Have a look to see if you agree..

As for the VOIP spies, although extremely annoying and very unsportsmanlike (and I can see those who condone this type of behavior posting “all’s fair in love and war” quotes here), I do not believe that this is something that is within the development teams ability to address. This is a matter that will have to be resolved by VOIP hosts, or by a commitment from commanders to discourage such behavior. As I cannot see this ever happening, I really do not see a solution other that host policing.

Grieving however, I think is a real threat that can be addressed by a better reporting UI and moderators on map.

Seems to me the best way to fix the coverage issue is to have wvw league play set up as alliance vs alliance rather than world vs world. An alliance would be a combination of multiple (2-4) servers. I think if you had 4 servers contributing players, it would not be difficult to have round the clock coverage for all sides. Only drawback I see is it would be difficult to get on the main map during primetime, so often you would be playing on an overflow map.

This is a very good post, however, all these issues have been brought up and discussed already with various solutions in mind. The Colaborative Development post for one has a lot of good ideas in it.

I hope they will implement some of the solutions discussed or at least address the problems brought to light to some extent, but I fear it may be too little too late. Many of the solutions require a lot of time and effort on the part of the dev teams to execute, by which time the competition will be out, or close enough to have a drastic impact on the overall active playerbase.

Main problems as I see them is that the game does not reward effort, but rather population numbers. The greater the disparity, the greater the reward. For example, server A can que 2 maps on Friday reset for 1-2 hours, server B can que 3 maps on Friday reset for 2-3 hours, server C can que 4 maps on Friday reset for 3-4 hours.

The outcome in this scenario is pre-determined even at prime time and sets the tone for the remainder of the week.

In addition, the game rewards complete lack of effort on part of night capping crews far better then those that actually have to play the game, participate in fights and battles. You can literally take a 5-10 man PvE team and auto attack gates and NPCs while AFK much like the old PvE bosses, without even building a single piece of siege and still get better overall rewards via PPT then actually play the game.

While at same time an outmanned server has 2-3 20 man teams struggling and map hopping like crazy, repeatedly wiping zergs 2-3 times their size and getting stressed over the futility of all their efforts just trying to keep some of their stuff.

That is the problem.

Capping an empty objective on an empty map shouldnt give you anything other then personal karma / champ bag, and even that is questionable since there is relatively no risk taken and when you factor risk vs. reward all the rewards should disappear.

The game needs a dynamic score and reward adjustment system based on the amount of players present on each map at any given time period.