Guild Wars 2

First off,, sorry to those other threads that I’ve not read/visited but these three are I think the most relevant (view and comment wise) to date.

Who plays WvW only? – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Who-plays-WvW-only/first

The state of WvW (as I see it) – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/The-state-of-WvW-as-I-see-it

[A cry for help] look at your wvw forums – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/A-cry-for-help-look-at-your-wvw-forums

Yeah let’s face it, WvW is a niche. People who play only WvW is a lot lot fewer. It kinda makes sense that a company like Anet will tend to look over a small percentage of people. Heck, even we do it all over the internet when we almost always look at the most viewed/shared/upped stuff.

I believe that WvW players shouting and screaming cannot achieve anything. Saying stuff like WvW players are the most hardcore of the hardcore GW2 players don’t mean anything when you have thousands of other players silverwasting tens of hours per day.

We’ll just get tagged as the vocal minority. The lack of dev posts/updates in WvW thread is almost a confirmation of that, though I’d like to think that the “WvW devs” are busy working on WvW stuff.

So what can our niche community do? First, less/no negativity and anger and shouting. Second, be nice and inviting to new players which there are probably a bunch of them at the moment. Most importantly, try to show Anet how valuable WvW players are.

The most valuable commodity in the MMO space right now is player retention. I think most of the negativity is from the fact that a lot of WvW players have stuck it out for 2 years or more.

Being in a pve focused guild, I’ve seen people go hardcore in pve and then stop playing within the year. We’ve had over 500 members and out of those only 50 can be considered active, and mostly only during the guild missions. That is with all the pve updates, contents, events, marketing, hype, and pve people still stop playing,, granted that they still have more people and I guess new players.

The WvW players kept on playing without any major update on the game mode. Yes almost no one plays WvW exclusively since a lot of us needs to visit pve for gold or just to hang out.

Random thoughts, tried to organize but breakfast is done and I’ll eat now.

Thanks for reading o/

But still, a nicer community is simply not enough to attract more players. You need Anet to spend more resource on the game mode to attract players. It won’t work the other way around(getting more players into the game mode ourselves so that Anet can pay attention)

From the get go anet stated they made game that people can play the way they wanted but it seems thats not the case considering how much more gold/achievements are in pve compared to wvw. I think there is quite a few people who only ever get on for wvw once they are geared.
although i know more people generally do pve but i fully believe its because of the gold/achievements
Personally i only ever get on to wvw and nothing else. I used to fractals but no longer have a need to do that but having to do that to get the gear i needed to compete in wvw is another thing entirely
I’m not so big about the updates for wvw considering eotm(if you can call that wvw update) one but wish gold was balanced out better and better drops since you know player drops are terrible.

At this point it isn’t so much about getting new players into WvW, it’s about stopping the bleeding of veteran WvW leaving GW2.

dtzy.5901:

I believe that WvW players shouting and screaming cannot achieve anything. Saying stuff like WvW players are the most hardcore of the hardcore GW2 players don’t mean anything when you have thousands of other players silverwasting tens of hours per day.

And yet it’s got a track record of working with ANet. For example, look back at the feature patch that introduced the account-bound multi colored commander tags. When they were originally going to release them, they were going to make it so you had to buy each color individually. Needless to say people weren’t very happy with this and complained about it… a lot. ANet responded and it was fixed within a few days before the patch. That’s not even mentioning the recent HoT pre-order fiasco.

dtzy.5901:

So what can our niche community do? First, less/no negativity and anger and shouting.

That’s very unlikely to happen. You’re dealing with people in a competitive environment. That alone is bound to draw in some degrees of anger. Then you tack on all the annoying problems that are still plaguing WvW (almost 3 years into the game), with Devs that have communication issues and can’t even give people hope. It’s just a pressure cooking ready to blow.

dtzy.5901:

Second, be nice and inviting to new players which there are probably a bunch of them at the moment.

To be perfectly honest, I think if you look around you’ll see that WvW is a lot more welcoming than most give it credit for. I’ve yet to see a server that doesn’t have some form of pubic voice coms and forum that they spam in mapchat and are willing to help new players through.

dtzy.5901:

Most importantly, try to show Anet how valuable WvW players are.

The thing is, the only way to really show it is via sales, which I think a fair bit of WvW are doing, or by ANet actually paying attention to WvWers.

Anet doesn’t pay attention to WvW because WvW players doesn’t spend their money on gems. WvW players don’t spend money on gems because believe that Anet don’t deserve it for the work they do on our game mode. As simple as that.

Anet want to make money from an expansion? We, WvW players don’t need to get the expansion to have the new maps, so tbh (and after 3 years of playing -not every day ofc and with some breaks-, and some money spent on gems) i’ll pass on getting the expansion, they don’t deserve my money, unless they show me that i’m wrong and then i’ll get that expansion.

As much as I agree with you that we’re very bitter atm. It’s important that your realize that it’s after 2 years of ignorance and poor/none updates. The anger/bitterness are pretty much last resort means to try and get some attention here to a game-mode STILL played by a lot of players (pretending the contrary is bogus) who love the mode and just want some interaction with developers like the other game-modes get.

And no if we can be sure of something after those 2 years, it’s that there ar no WvW devs at all (anymore at least). May I remind you that golem week is an idea of Grouch spvp shoutcaster.

majos.8503:

Anet doesn’t pay attention to WvW because WvW players doesn’t spend their money on gems. WvW players don’t spend money on gems because believe that Anet don’t deserve it for the work they do on our game mode. As simple as that.

Have you ever wondered how T1 servers get flow of new players and lower tier servers are loosing their WvW players? Standard Transfer fee to Very High population server is 1800 gem. That fee is only for WvW players and has to be there in current system to at least somewhat protect match balance.

When it comes to your presumption that WvW players don’t use gems we are left without facts. Might be, but there is also guilds running Chars with nuke hairstyles and Mist Herald Back Item skins. We are not sure how this truly is, but seems that showing off is part of any PvP in all games and gemstore is great part of this in GW2.

dtzy.5901:

Yeah let’s face it, WvW is a niche. People who play only WvW is a lot lot fewer. It kinda makes sense that a company like Anet will tend to look over a small percentage of people.

Most players are a “niche”, PvP players are a niche, those than speed run dungeons and want decent PvE are a niche, RP players are a niche, etc, you know one of the reasons WoW actually grew its playerbase for years, it catered far better to the different “niches” of players who played the game, than the vast majority of other MMOs, who tend to short-sightedly concentrate on their biggest niche at the expense of everything else and which all suffer from a playerbase in continual decline bar the odd bump for an expansion or going F2P (including this game) rather than actually growing it, which in real industry would be considered a failure.

If you think ignoring swathes of customers is how successful businesses work and basically not having the level of resources to provide a fit for purpose product, then I suggest you look outside the amateurish, tinpot little industry that is gaming.

zinkz.7045:

dtzy.5901:

Yeah let’s face it, WvW is a niche. People who play only WvW is a lot lot fewer. It kinda makes sense that a company like Anet will tend to look over a small percentage of people.

Most players are a “niche”, PvP players are a niche, those than speed run dungeons and want decent PvE are a niche, RP players are a niche, etc, you know one of the reasons WoW actually grew its playerbase for years, it catered far better to the different “niches” of players who played the game, than the vast majority of other MMOs, who tend to short-sightedly concentrate on their biggest niche at the expense of everything else and which all suffer from a playerbase in continual decline bar the odd bump for an expansion or going F2P (including this game) rather than actually growing it, which in real industry would be considered a failure.

If you think ignoring swathes of customers is how successful businesses work and basically not having the level of resources to provide a fit for purpose product, then I suggest you look outside the amateurish, tinpot little industry that is gaming.

WoW is the best example I could think of as well. They did cater to all of their markets, and by doing so they still have a huge playerbase so many years later. The difference is that WoW employed enough people to take care of their obligations. ANet doesn’t seem to have enough people to cater to all of their niche players.

PvP in MMORPG’s are not niche anymore, they represent a large chunk of the overall MMO playerbase. WoW is a good clear indication of that, just look at the amount of PvP servers they have, popularity of battlegrounds, and arenas. Most popular top 5 MMORPG’s these days in the U.S. have PvP servers or optional PvP game modes.

So if GW2’s WvW is niche (and there’s no proof anywhere as everybody is speculating), then it’s an issue with GW2’s WvW. There’s no reason WvW should be niche. It’s only niche because the company fails to expand on it, fails to reward players properly, and fails to bring the competitive edge to this particular game mode.

There are a lot of things Anet can still learn from DAOC, the grandfather of RvR. DAOC had monthly player/guild stats, these things bring the competitive edge and drives PvP players to login and play. That competitive edge is missing in GW2’s WvW. DAOC also had relic raids, which is equivalent to having a large scale capture the flag game built-in. It’s like combining the largest PvE raids with PvP capture the flag gameplay. You can imagine why that would be fun. WvW simply needs more carrot in order for the game mode to not become stale. It needs something that drives that competitive edge in people, so people want to login and play.

The good news is GW2 has a lot of good things going for it. It has smooth animation and active combat controls that feel good. This is something that was always a key aspect of WoW’s combat, as most other MMO’s still struggle with bad character animations and awkward combat controls. It’s very hard to enjoy PvP when controls feel awkward and clunky (one of the issues I have with ESO). GW2’s engine is also fairly solid, you can have a lot more players clashing in WvW before skill lag becomes bad enough, where as games like WoW still struggle with lag issues when there are over 60 players on screeen. Lastly unlike WoW’s PvP, there aren’t a million of bots running around and auto following, and that’s a huge positive to GW2’s WvW.

This game is great for competitive players. Now it’s really just up to the company to realize WvW could be so much more, and it could draw so many more players to not just the game mode itself, but to the GW2 game as a whole. Ignoring this part of the game, this segment of the playerbase, is only hurting the game in the long run.

Competitive players by industry standards have always been considered an entire demograph or “market” never in my MMo history have I ever heard them referred to as just a “niche community”.

FYI Anet does not have controlling interest anymore. Nexon does. Which explains alot with what has gone terribly wrong with the game…

Part of the provlem here, as I see it, is this awful mentality here,, that keeps assuming that because I play the game primarily for WvW, that I do not enjoy or play other aspects of the game.

As well, the dishonest claims here that WvW players do not buy gems. There is not a poster here, that has any proof of that. Yet they claim it as fact. In my experience, most WvW players I know, state that they buy gems. This is evident by seeing gem store skins in WvW regularly as well.

The other odd thing, is the dishonest claims that Anet doesn’t care about WvW, yet they have made plenty of changes based on player feedback for it. They are creating entirely new maps for it. They created overflows with entirely new maps, At player request, that is also one of the fastest forms of leveling in the game.

Sometimes the level of dishonest claims in the WvW subforums is down right embarrassing. The other aspect of that, are the amount of players who make those dishonest claims andaccusations, then demand be in specifically catered to after making those claims and accusations.

So… They cared so much about WvW they made a map (EOTM) completely irrelevant so people can better K train on.

Making sure our veteran players in general don’t leave should be the goal that ANET should focus on. WvW is a huge topic for discussion when it comes down to addressing flaws and issues. As many have stated over and over, WvW hasn’t gotten a serious update or change at all for who knows how long.

I wouldn’t say the WvW players that solely play WvW is negative. I feel that WvW veterans should be open to venting out their opinions, whether it’s constructive or negative.

The golem event created a mix of emotions. This week, many daily WvW players were angered to the point that they stopped caring to play this week. While some enjoy the time, I can tell you alot of players in my server that I’d normally see on a normal week stopped playing for the week.

One thing that WvW gives that I find lacks a bit in other aspects of the game is a nice, group play gamemode. When I talk about group play, I’m talking like more than just a party of 5. Aside from doing guild missions and maybe world bosses, I don’t see any other parts of the game where we work as a guild and be challenged. Because of WvW’s larger group style of play, I believe that ANET should really pull their attention to WvW, because this game doesn’t really offer more things that you can do with more than 5.

the community and the company both share fault. when both act like moody children nobody wins. a community is filled with people of all ages. companies are filled with adults that should understand how the world works and have exp in dealing with issues and situations. if they dont there is a management problem from the top to bottom.

when companies display emotions and feelings like a community they have failed. lots of college courses teach this sort of thing LOL

I have to disagree that this is an excessively negative community. It is not any more negative than any other mmo or gaming community.

Now, if you want to argue that gaming communities are negative and toxic in general, well, I am not going to argue against that.

Dealing with your customers is a, sometimes, unfortunate aspect of the business, especially when they are irate. It is completely understandable to want to craft your message carefully.

However, I don’t think it is unrealistic to expect an official response to the reaction to this event. Perhaps they made one and I just missed it.

WvW wasn’t such a small Niche when the game first came out, and for around the first year of the game. It was populated and full of awesome times, all the way from the lowest tiers to the top.

I understand that over the life of a game populations will drop off, but thanks to such harsh neglect of WvW it has become a virtual dead zone on those low tier servers as people moved up to higher tier servers just so they could find other people to WvW with.

There has been hundreds of suggestions on things to help fix WvW, but A-Net completely ignores them, gives its player base the finger, and then creates some unwanted bullkitten (Looking at you EoTM.)

Maybe the community would seem less toxic if we weren’t straight up neglected from jump street. Also gargle my effin’ Ball Bag.

dtzy.5901:

So what can our niche community do? First, less/no negativity and anger and shouting. Second, be nice and inviting to new players which there are probably a bunch of them at the moment. Most importantly, try to show Anet how valuable WvW players are.

This week at least its deserved and if the devs had an ounce of empathy they would know it.

Cinders.3201:

So… They cared so much about WvW they made a map (EOTM) completely irrelevant so people can better K train on.

The good news is that I have seen quite alot more fighting in EotM. The even better news is that if you have a guild group of around 20 the EotM KTrain can be brought to a complete standstill, and fights will be had.

Seriously, take guild group in, 20 or so is a good number. Look for swords, go to swords, wait for the wall/gate to be breached, Run in and destroy everyone who is focusing so kitten the boss that they don’t even fight you, finish boss and take structure. The opposing colors will have to fight you then, or else they never have a chance at any loot.

Kaiser.9873:

Seriously, take guild group in, 20 or so is a good number. Look for swords, go to swords, wait for the wall/gate to be breached, Run in and destroy everyone who is focusing so kitten the boss that they don’t even fight you, finish boss and take structure. The opposing colors will have to fight you then, or else they never have a chance at any loot.

But that’s just fighting disorganized groups of pugs and uplevels. You have the advantage. Your group is experienced, geared, and communicating. That’s not even remotely why I joined the WvW community.

I joined because players are more challenging to play against than NPCs. WvW will be dead to me if it fails to give me challenges. The best fights, for me, are the fights when you barely succeed or fail. Running that razor edge is so thrilling.

Im glad to see these posts rejecting the myth the WvW is underpopulated, niche or doesn’t spend money on gems. That’s rubbish. We just don’t have the numbers to prove it and wont get them.

If you want to see toxic chat / forums, try free to play .. this is nothing. THIS community is awesome and deserves.. has earned, the right to respect which its not being shown.

The ppl who stay in WvW are their core customers and the longer we stay the more money they make out of us. The fact that so many of us stay and play for no rewards has made us put our hands in our pockets to pay for the bling that the PvE farmers would never need to.

WvW was their End-game, it didn’t work as conceived, but we played it anyway, because we found something different which we could enjoy.

Don’t run this community down .. were kittened off .. were tired and were trying to understand whats happening to us.

dtzy.5901:

—original post—

I gotta say, the opening message is condescending. There have been numerous threads since launch filled with constructive feedback. People have spent time participating in CDIs and even waiting around for other CDIs that were supposed to happen but never did. Do you really think you’re the first to think of this approach? The answer is no. You’re essentially asking people to keep bowing their heads with hat in hand and make requests of those who are quite content to ignore them. That tends to get you a token here and there with little meaningful change. Kinda like what we’ve been getting so far!

And here’s the thing. In a world saturated with electronic entertainment, people still care enough about this mode to be frustrated and continually voice their opinion. Even at its height when community organized GvGs were getting more attention than sponsored sPvP events, Anet still didn’t capitalize on it. Even when you have commanders queuing maps and hordes of people running around, nope still clawing at that MOBA pie. People getting mad about the neglect in comparison with other modes is understandable. I think its dismissive to label this as just being “negative.” Still, I doubt we’re such a scary bunch, I’m quicker to believe we haven’t heard much about big WvWvW changes since launch simply because their business model makes WvWvW a low priority.

“Show Anet how valuable WvWvW players are.”

What do you think the people who stream raids, roaming and those who edit together great videos that manage to make WvWvW (a mode riddled with problems) look fun are doing? The players themselves have put so much in place for WvWvW, things like voice communications for the various servers and even sites for current scoring and match up trash talk, GvGs and some have created add ons for objective timers/live maps etc. The raw materials and passion were there for an eSports scene, it just needed fostering. They tossed aside many teams of 15 and 20 to focus on teams of 5, lol, talk about a missed opportunity. At this moment Runescape has 5x more viewers on Twitch TV. Rune—->scape. But even as far as GW2 goes, most times I’ve seen, the channel with most views is raiding in WvWvW. I’ll see what HoT brings to WvWvW and the GvG scene but I’m not pre-ordering.

I don’t have the time and aptitude to read all, so will just try to clear some stuff

About negativity,, should have made it clear that I don’t believe that the wvw community is excessively toxic, at least I don’t think so as long as you stay away from the match up thread or just go there for lol’s . It also depends on whichever servers people play, there are servers that are generally nicer and more accommodating to pugs and new people than others

If I have to describe the people who hung around wvw it will be jaded and cynical, which is to be expected I think.

I’m referring to the air of negativity and anger in the forums and other places that anet people may be looking at. Just imagine being the poor dude/lady that was tasked to read through all the angry crap posted in the internets and you’ll also avoid responding. The last time I was reading through here was the time when some dev guy was asking us for feedback and suggestions, which were good at first then the thread dissolved to a sheet-storm.

As for being a niche,, well Anet themselves consider wvw niche and they have the numbers so there. I don’t know why they love spvp that much, when it is also probably a small percentage of players (probably because spvp is moba-like in some key areas and moba games are the hotness atm). I don’t think anyone will argue that compared to the game’s pve, everything else can be considered niche. Maybe not RP’ers, there are a freakin lot of those people.

Well we can always just type and complain in the internet about stuff, it’s free and it kills time

Anyway, the top tier wvw communities are moving to improve their wvw. We’ll find out soon if those efforts will really be an improvement, but it’s time to play now.

> yeah golem week is dumb. make sure to keep dumb events to the weekends or friday if you really like those dumb stuff anet. thanks

> I watch totalbiscuit so I don’t pre-order!