Guild Wars 2

Scilly.9315:

My guess is they cant fix it and they are hoping people stop playing to make it fix it self.. but even that isnt working

my guess is it costs them less to lose all their w3 players than it costs them to upgrade their hardware to a point that it can run the w3 part of the game decently.

My guess is that they’ve already decided to fund the necessary extra cost on their side:

This post outlines those things

I actually completely agree with you. WvW, the idea is magnificent, but the actual game play.. well is a little mindless imho.

What is a “commander” I mean REALLY! Some ding dong could easily cash out and buy that title on his first day playing guild wars. And I am expected to follow him around?

I propose WvW be a little more structured, in that sense “commander” is now Commander experienced and respected. Make this title not impossible, but obviously not as easy to get as it now, furthermore, give titles to everyone in WvW.

With the amount of points you rack up contribute to your title in say a week’s time, and you either ascend or descend in rank, depending if you did nothing or did something that week. This of course is only cosmetic and in no way shape or form make your character better, just the chance to receive a respectable title, and make WvW that much more rewarding.

Special dyes ( account AND character bound ). If you see someone with Abyss or Celestial dyed armor, either you think he payed a boat load of gold or just got lucky. Why not the same thing with WvW special hued dyes. These could be some special militarized dyes, or just whatever that upon seen from other characters is automatic recognition that WHOEVER that IS a PvPer! ( comes with rank )

Special armor/weapon skins. In no way shape or form better than a casual player’s gear. Purely cosmetic that could encourage a casual player to play more, specifically.. WvW. ( comes with rank )

There are many, many MANY cosmetic things you could add to WvW to improve player’s interest, and make them feel like they aren’t just running around in a zerg mindlessly.. giving them a sense of reward.

This would not only improve interest but also boost moral and motivate players to, well, play and enjoy WvW. A lot of people will go to extraordinary lengths for flashy things, take legendary for example.

Lastly, adding cosmetic effects would be huge. There is absolutely no negative effects from it ( it would NOT make this player ELITE ) other than the “cool” factor he presents.

This game should not be gear based, you should not reward a player with being better than everyone else because he has more time devoted to play than a casual player. I hate to bring this up, but take WoW for example. PvP is NOT skill based for casual players, a guy who plays 10 hours a day will FACEROLL a casual player because of his GEAR ONLY.

I truly think Guild Wars 2 has potential.

This is just my two cents, sorry if someone suggested it already, I was fixing to read all the post.

@Sorrow:

Let me be the first to disagree with the “everyone would love that” assumption!

I think your needs could be -much- better served by ANet introducing an actual GvG mode akin to the Guild Wars 1 one, rather than reshaping WvW into a “no need to participate unless you’re in a large guild” thing. And yes, elevating members of large guilds over smaller ones or guildless players by giving them more recognition and more reward would have exactly that effect. On TC, the -majority- of all WvWers is NOT in one of the larger WvW guilds. WvW is a community effort carried by the whole server. By all means, I will support GvG coming to this game despite I am guildless myself. But in WvW, the only leaderboard that matters is the server ranking list. A guildless person who runs supply or escorts yaks is just as vital to the server’s success as the member of a big WvW guild running with their zerg. I can’t see any good reason to treat players differently just because one is in a big guild and the other one isn’t. That doesn’t make the slightest sense for WvW as a game mode. Like I said, what you’re really looking for is a GvG mode.

Sureshot.6725:

You got me. I enjoyed DAoC back in the day until they added the ability grind that is RR, …"

RR’s were in DAoC since day 1 and RR’s are what kept me playing for 7 years

Sureshot.6725:

I’m done with continuous grinds of any kind =)

for me a grind means doing something i don’t want to do because it has rewards i want. i’ll NEVER grind in a game. the moment i get the feeling i am not enjoying the thing i do in a game and i only do it because i want the rewards, that’s the moment i stop doing that action. it kinda beats the purpose of being a game. my day time job is a grind and i do it because i need the cash. going to rr 11l8 on my main and to rr 10l8 on my buffbot (yes, rr 10l8 on my buffbot) was a joy from start to finnish. at this moment i still have ZERO laurels because it requires me to do stuff i’m not interested in (like craft 10 things, i refuse to craft, crafting is no fun). i’ll probably have to wait untill Anet offers purple gear that can be bought with badges before i’ll have my first purple item. and i’ll NEVER have a legendary, i refuse to spend sooooo much time on rediculous and no-fun time sinks for an item that doesn’t add anything but shiny pixels.

JaironKalach.4938:

My guess is that they’ve already decided to fund the necessary extra cost on their side:

This post outlines those things

talk is cheap. i’ll believe it and praise them for it (and still curse them for having taken that long) when there are 500 people on a map and there is no culling.

muylaetrix.2096:

talk is cheap.

Here is something that you and I can completely agree on. :-)

I went through and +1 posts I found had substance in them and contributed to the conversation.

I started the post because I wanted a conversation to begin and it is starting. Please add your own thoughts and keep the thread alive and maybe, just maaaaybe 1 or 2 points on my list might get some attention.

Straegen.2938:

Eclipses.7152:

1. Commander is an absolute mess
2. The roles/rewards/recognition of Guilds in a game called ‘Guild Wars’ is lacking
3. WvW has devolved into ZvZ (ZergvZerg)
4. The lack of Rewards/Progression/Depth/Consequence
5. The devs, their implementation of and lack of commitment to Wvw

1. Welcome to war. Most generals are picked by politics or money. Few are picked from within the ranks. Besides a good fighter often makes a poor commander. After a week or so, players tend to find the good commanders anyway.

2. “Guild Wars” is from lore and not in game guilds. That said, guilds are rewarded for points which can be spent on upgrades. I am also sure over time the devs will build out this system a lot more.

3. Depends on the tier. T4+ has mob fights but not really zergs. Sometimes population imbalances herd people into those mobs so they can find fights but I get plenty of small skirmish action after leaving T3. Besides a lot of people actually enjoy zerg fights (not me).

4. Not sure what people are looking for here. I get to kill other players and take objectives. I get badges, karma, xp, etc. I think they will improve the system over time though.

5. Game isn’t even close to a year old yet and it shipped with a pretty amazing WvWvW system. Does it have problems, absolutely but they already said they have a big patch in the works and will continue to improve the system.

You clearly didn’t read my post at all. Not to sound egotistical but your points are pretty ridiculous. “Generals are picked by politics or money”. Dude, this is a game. That invalidates your whole schtick right there.

I don’t need to be told the lore argument of the game’s name again, I even said in the post to spare me it. The game’s name is freakin Guild Wars and the Guild portion of the game shouldn’t suck. There’s nothing else you can say.

Yes the game isn’t a year old yet, but PvE has seen how many content additions? WvW has seen how many? How many content removals has WvW seen?

Just posting to say I completely agree with the OP. I sincerily hope A-net will take a good look at this topic.

Sureshot.6725:

Anyway I’m up for considering other MMOs with open world PvP as long the following apply.

- They do not require a subscription
- Do not feature a continuous gear grind where gear is king and skill/build is second.
- Does not require macro/3rd party utilities to be competitive.

I’d love to hear of one that meets those simple requirements. I’d even be willing to waive the subscription requirement.

Well you got 2 out of 3 that guild wars has.

You need a 3rd party VoIP to be competitive in WvW for GW2. There is no other way to effectively organize 5 or more players efficiently in GW2. The commander and squad system is simply a “zerg magnet” and completely useless for most guilds that run together with multiple groups. GW2 needs support for multiple groups running together that don’t want to lead the zone with the “Blue Zerg Beacon”.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

I wish I had written this, but I couldn’t have said it better.

I completely agree the OP and his points.

“Only a WvW player has 10g in the bank and thinks he’s rich”.

I thought I was rich when I had 10g from wvw then pve players said they had 2 legendary and spare 200g from the same play time.

This is just a rinse repeat of what tor was. They say there is great combat system with awesome rewards and ever evolving. When it is actually flawed, lacks reward and all round fail. The only reason people are still he is that it’s free. I would like to see wvw only achievable gear/items then pve get them 3-4 months later.

Remember to up vote the OP. Because even the forums gets a content update before wvw

For all of it’s flaws, I think GW2 could take a page out of Warhammer Online’s book and look for ideas. I personally thought that Warhammer had very good incentive to participate in PvP (rewards for raiding participation in city events along with a token system for gear).

It was great that you could make huge raids of people rather than only being able to stick in 5-man groups like here. It made for much better coordination than what the current commander tag gives us.

Kimyrielle.3826:

@Sorrow:

Let me be the first to disagree with the “everyone would love that” assumption!

That’s definitely why I used a smiley face at the end of it; it’s a rarity that anyone will ever 100% agree with anyone else. ;-)

Kimyrielle.3826:

I think your needs could be -much- better served by ANet introducing an actual GvG mode akin to the Guild Wars 1 one, rather than reshaping WvW into a “no need to participate unless you’re in a large guild” thing. And yes, elevating members of large guilds over smaller ones or guildless players by giving them more recognition and more reward would have exactly that effect. On TC, the -majority- of all WvWers is NOT in one of the larger WvW guilds. WvW is a community effort carried by the whole server. By all means, I will support GvG coming to this game despite I am guildless myself. But in WvW, the only leaderboard that matters is the server ranking list. A guildless person who runs supply or escorts yaks is just as vital to the server’s success as the member of a big WvW guild running with their zerg. I can’t see any good reason to treat players differently just because one is in a big guild and the other one isn’t. That doesn’t make the slightest sense for WvW as a game mode. Like I said, what you’re really looking for is a GvG mode.

Great response and thanks for the input. I understand what you’re saying, but you also have to take into account that every single player is already different and is already treated differently. I’m sure if you look into a breakdown of players, you’d find that in “Guild Wars”, the majority of people are in a “Guild”, thus leaving the players who aren’t in a Guild as the lowest common denominator. What brings in the money to aNet and who has the biggest say in the community? It’s most certainly not the LCD.

Also, let’s take a look at the type of players we have: pre-casual, casual, semi-casual, semi-hardcore, hardcore, extreme-hardcore, raider, wvwer, pvper, professional gamer, farmer, pve-only, explorer, crafter, auction houser, social, etc.. etc.. The list of types of gamer is just about endless and there is content in the game for every single type of player out there — to an extent. Based upon the content of the game, all players are treated differently, based upon what type of player they are.

If you’re a hardcore player in PvP, WvW, or PvE, your experience is going to be much different in any one of those areas compared to that of a casual player, thus you are already being treated differently from the word go.

All I’m saying is that it would be cool to see where your guild stands in relative comparison to the other guilds on your server. Which guild is putting in the time, the effort, and the virtual blood and tears to see their server succeed. If you just so happen to be guildless or in a small guild, then the leader board won’t matter to you; if it happens to matter to you, then you’ll change your type of play and either join a bigger guild or create a new guild and begin working on it to get on the board.

The LCD shouldn’t expect the flow and the content of the game to be built up around them, they should expect the game to be focused on the masses and how to build up motivation for those masses to stay in the game and keep them excited and give them something to strive towards and for.

-sorrow

Eclipses.7152:

You clearly didn’t read my post at all. Not to sound egotistical but your points are pretty ridiculous. “Generals are picked by politics or money”. Dude, this is a game. That invalidates your whole schtick right there.

The commander system works well enough. Players quickly learn the good commanders from the bad ones. Who cares about the rest… because it is a game. My original post was referencing that I have never seen any real world or fantasy system pick generals based on competence.

Eclipses.7152:

I don’t need to be told the lore argument of the game’s name again, I even said in the post to spare me it. The game’s name is freakin Guild Wars and the Guild portion of the game shouldn’t suck. There’s nothing else you can say.

I don’t think it sucks. There is always room for improvement but as a recently released MMO it has a decent guild system with guild bonuses. You are the one that put Guild Wars in quotes to try and make a point.

Eclipses.7152:

Yes the game isn’t a year old yet, but PvE has seen how many content additions? WvW has seen how many? How many content removals has WvW seen?

Not that many actually. They have only done a handful of major patches to the game so far and the next one is WvW. Strange you are getting exactly what you asked for here and still complaining about updates.

IMO your posts sound more like griping about fairly innocuous issues rather than constructive criticism. Just my opinion though.

Straegen.2938:

5. Game isn’t even close to a year old yet and it shipped with a pretty amazing WvWvW system. Does it have problems, absolutely but they already said they have a big patch in the works and will continue to improve the system.

6 months is sufficient time these days for an mmo to make these essential improvements, games like swtor didn’t even get that.

The issues that the OP is talking about like better grouping options, culling and progression and reward options should have been in the game when it launched. The games this mode is based on all had progression and reward options and better grouping, and culling is an issue that no game should ever have launched with.

Its pretty said that an overall inferior game like swtor launched with say far better and easier to use grouping and guild options than gw2

morrolan.9608:

6 months is sufficient time these days for an mmo to make these essential improvements, games like swtor didn’t even get that.

Trying to think of an MMO that made successful substantially large scale PvP changes six months in. Maybe I missed one? Most AAA MMOs at this point are trying to figure out if they should go free-to-play right now because of all the problems and player exodus.

morrolan.9608:

The issues that the OP is talking about like better grouping options, culling and progression and reward options should have been in the game when it launched. The games this mode is based on all had progression and reward options and better grouping, and culling is an issue that no game should ever have launched with.

Most of the issues raised here are either minor at best, rehashes from other threads or just looking for something complain about. The OP wrote a post so long it needed a table of contents and contributed nothing significant or new (IMO) to the existing WvWvW issues.

morrolan.9608:

Its pretty said that an overall inferior game like swtor launched with say far better and easier to use grouping and guild options than gw2

Yeah the umtenth thousand game of hutball was GREAT! What guild bonuses did SWToR have that were worth anything? SWToR had really flawed light/dark PvP system and it didn’t even offer anything of significant scale with the exception of Illum which was… a complete disaster. Even though its budget was substantially larger. I love Bioware (especially pre-EA) but SWToR was a hot mess.

Straegen.2938:

snip

“The Commander system works well enough.”

- It works to an end, true, but what is that end? I can tell you didn’t read my post at all just probably skimmed it. You’re also an apologist. Simply because a system FUNCTIONS doesn’t mean that the system functions correctly, optimally or ideally. You should not have to grind PvE or buy gems to afford Commander. WvW guilds who would be notoriously strapped for cash due to their players playing primarily WvW shouldn’t have to ask their players to grind PvE to be able to attain it. WvW guilds shouldn’t be forced into purchasing Commander for want of better mid-large group size management tools.

Even more so, as it is simply a huge beacon that draws everyone on the server to its banner, it only encourages zerging. It’s not just about good Commander/bad Commander and the fact that you cannot or will not see past that is very telling.

“Not that many actually”

- Are we playing the same game? Have we played it for the same length of time? WvW is at a net loss as far as content goes. They have removed both dolyaks and orbs while only adding in the breakout events.

Meanwhile, in PvE they have gotten an entirely new zone, at least 2 new jumping puzzles, new gear and weapon additions totally skewed to PvE attainment (i.e. it would have been very hard to impossible to gain those same items in WvW), new bosses, new dungeons and now a new Living Story.

What is WvW getting? Progression rank WvW only abilities and I suppose a pathway to Ascended gear. That is great and I commended them for it in my post, which you would have saw if you read it. Nevertheless they still have a host of other issues that they need to face. Adding in special skills will hold some for a time, but it won’t fix the kitten drop rate of badges, it won’t fix the metagame, it won’t fix commander, it won’t fix the lack of depth or consequence of the game type at all.

These are not simply hollow points and mere griping for the sake of griping. You can call these issues I have detailed and explained in my OP innocuous if you like, but I was here at the start of the very first BWE, remembering when everyone was huddled at the WvW portals pressing FFFFFFFFF every 10 seconds to get in. I was a guild leader of a very competitive and thriving WvW guild and I was a member of the most dedicated and celebrated WvW alliance in the Game.

And you know what? I’m still here, remembering that but seeing WvW dying out, my guild and alliance are both dead, almost all of them having left the game to the points I laid out, watching WvW stagnate and the divide between PvE and WvW get worse and worse.

Pretty innocuous huh?

Straegen.2938:

Trying to think of an MMO that made successful substantially large scale PvP changes six months in. Maybe I missed one? Most AAA MMOs at this point are trying to figure out if they should go free-to-play right now because of all the problems and player exodus.

How large scale are they really? Culling perhaps but then again it should never have launched in that state. If they had actually shown they were working on these issues and given some changes as they went along like they have done with PvE then it might have been a different story but my perception is that they didn’t start to work seriously on the progression stuff and culling itself until months after the game released, and they’re clearly not working on improving grouping options or the commander functionality at all.

Straegen.2938:

morrolan.9608:

Its pretty said that an overall inferior game like swtor launched with say far better and easier to use grouping and guild options than gw2

Yeah the umtenth thousand game of hutball was GREAT! What guild bonuses did SWToR have that were worth anything? SWToR had really flawed light/dark PvP system and it didn’t even offer anything of significant scale with the exception of Illum which was… a complete disaster. Even though its budget was substantially larger. I love Bioware (especially pre-EA) but SWToR was a hot mess.

Thats pretty much a strawman, you;re arguing things that I’m not talking about. But to answer 1 thing, guild management tools were better in swtor than they are in GW2 even now.

I completely agree with the OP on this. All I do pretty much is wvw but I have to stop and do pve to make gold to so I can participate.

Not many games today have open world PvP anymore. Its very sad that all these new MMO’s are zone based. People who didn’t play MMO’s 10-15 years ago now have no idea what a non-zone based MMO even is and its sad. Developers today design their games now around PvE players or also known as carebears. Sadly WoW started this trend. If you want open world PvP go play Asheron’s Call, or Darkfall or some other old game because those are the only games that have open world pvp these days.

Nice post OP, agree with all your points.

WvW is the only thing I enjoy in this game and it’s definitely lacking in a lot of areas. This supposed WvW patch that was pushed back to March is going to be the decider for me, whether I persist with this game or not.

At the moment, I can’t play for longer than 20 mins and that’s pretty disappointing.

kidbs.8920:

For all of it’s flaws, I think GW2 could take a page out of Warhammer Online’s book and look for ideas. I personally thought that Warhammer had very good incentive to participate in PvP (rewards for raiding participation in city events along with a token system for gear).

It was great that you could make huge raids of people rather than only being able to stick in 5-man groups like here. It made for much better coordination than what the current commander tag gives us.

The warhammer “Warband” system was one of the best systems I’ve used for multiple groups. Extremely flexible and great for PvP. This is what is needed in GW2.

Good commanders from bad ones? SBI has mostly bad ones.

I agree with basically every thing the OP said but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that needs to be addressed in WvW.

This game, not just WvW, is so deeply flawed i see GW2 only as a stop gap until the next best thing comes around. It’s just a bad game and the only thing it has going for it is that it is free to play. There is so much that needs to be fixed / addressed and given what i have seen of Anet i have 0 faith they can turn it around. I have even less faith that the player base will stick around long enough for them to do it.

I hate to say it, i have been waiting for this game to come out for years. I heard talk about GW2 while GW 1 was only a year old lol ! But sadly it’s yet another MMO that will go into the ever growing pile of failed MMO’s i have sitting around my computer room. Maybe Anet will prove me wrong but after playing MMO’s going all the way back to LOK on AOL… I have seen more then my fair share of over hyped junk and empty promises.

Ya a lot needs to be done to fix WvW also a lot of depth needs to be put in place to allow for a more dynamic experience that feels closer to an actual on going battle.

-Increased distance between objectives
-Seamless Travel between BGs
-Orbs need to come back with a point tick and the outmanned buff but golems should be the only thing that can move them
-Their should be a treaty system to allow servers to ally against a dominant server or a server that has constantly won(maybe a perk to the commander is you have the ability to talk to other commanders and can do things with this commanders that other players couldn’t)
-A system combat this treaty system be it the one who isn’t in a treaty has to go into the keep holding the treaty(should be choosable by the server commanders) and kill both enemies npc treaty holders and rip both apart to break the treaty. Should also make it so only one treaty can be formed each week.(also any land taken once the treaty is started become a both servers areas and once the treaty is broken the first server to not be in combat and claim the keep gets it)
-Randomized matching build around a higher chance to fight servers of similar population
-Varied Objectives example- Tower of Storm causes random weather effects around the map some causing damage(lighning, hail, heavy winds) some helping out (rain, fog, snow for a limited view
-Guild representation that actually matters
-An upgrade System for the Hylek, Quaggan, Ogres and Dredge
- More Random Dynamic activities for the above factions(outfitting bases, defending more than just camps, attacking more than just camps, Defending supply dolyaks, Bringing their own supplies to towers/keeps/camps etc)
-The ability to place towers/keeps/camps as we please making a more dynamic combat zone sure their will be screw ups but what war in history doesn’t have those it will just cause you as a community to learn
- Commander UI when they bring up their map showing all their squads/squad leaders and objectives in a nice fashion making them less of a solider that everyone follows and more of a commander that tells people were to go
-(not entirely sure about this one)waypoints need to go and they need to be replaced with a fast form of travel.(if map size isn’t increased or opened up then this can’t happen) I have never seen a war were 100% of the soldiers traveled by foot when they had options to use animals or vehicles to move units around the battlefield way faster.
-a better tower upgrade system were the upgrades all feel a little more even that also makes you choose which upgrades you want and not just “lets get all of them in X order”so towers can feel different from each other even when fully upgraded and it allows for different minds to create equally effective outcomes.
- Progression system
-Defensive only siege or more defensive heavy siege(Mobile Walls, Portals that take certain number of shots till they break and redirect the shot back in a direction, Magical Siege that has specific effects be it a smoke screen that blocks damage numbers from showing up and vision or a fire field that does heavy damage to people who cross a certain area for a small amount of time)
-A better tier system for walls and doors
-A white Flag mechanic allowing a server wide vote to surrender saying “hey you won and get to advance(unless they choose random server selection)but lets reset the map so this losing server can have a chance to have some fun again” should probably only reset once 2 out of the 3 have white flagged

-(future idea)make it so each server has a special environment so each match up the bgs will look and feel different from each other and these 3 different environments clash in EBG to make a whole new and crazy awesome battlefield in the middle each week(the random match up system would help make this even more interesting).
-human catapults that cause players to take damage and become slowed when they land the further the more intense this effect is
-Jumping puzzle population not being apart of the WvW population and maybe a reason to go into the jumping puzzle besides free siege and Badges of honor how about you make a crazy jumping section that leads into a back door to each servers keep. It will make the jumping puzzle a part of WvW and not something mostly for people who don’t feel like doing WvW but still want badges and/or siege.
-Sabotage mechanics and Siege Breaking and then causing tons of kits to be dropped on the ground adding a ton of weapons to the battlefield that might not be meant for doing damage but are great for CC.
-Better CC(overall not just in WvW)
-The ability to direct dolyaks
-outmanned buff needs to be switched with the orb buff(although i haven’t seen the buff in a long long time so it might already be that way)and it needs to scale with how little of a population they have compared to BOTH factions not just one(treaty system should take into effect both teams server side average it(as the point of a treaty is to have more numbers to fight a stronger force) then decide if they need an out manned buff).

nekos.2584:

This game, not just WvW, is so deeply flawed i see GW2 only as a stop gap until the next best thing comes around. It’s just a bad game and the only thing it has going for it is that it is free to play. There is so much that needs to be fixed / addressed and given what i have seen of Anet i have 0 faith they can turn it around. I have even less faith that the player base will stick around long enough for them to do it.

I have some concerns but overall it’s a good game. It’s what the devs do now, and in the immediate future that will determine GW2 staying power. GW2 WvW is the best I’ve played since DAOC, but it could be so much better.

The biggest disappointment I feel from WvW is that not only has it cost me the positive impression I had of Arenanet but that it’s cost me my guild.

I put a lot on the line banking that this game type would be sustainable, fun and interesting for the long haul. More than just my money – I put my time into forming a guild, recruiting, personally interviewing every single one of my members to make sure they were the type we were looking for, created a website, images, youtube, twitter, twitch, facebook – all of that.

I guess I took that gamble when creating a guild but kitten if I didn’t think that this game was the one and that Arenanet actually had commitment to their product. This game type’s failure has cost me some friends and that is the biggest disappointment.

Ahmrill.7512:

Sureshot.6725:

Anyway I’m up for considering other MMOs with open world PvP as long the following apply.

- They do not require a subscription
- Do not feature a continuous gear grind where gear is king and skill/build is second.
- Does not require macro/3rd party utilities to be competitive.

I’d love to hear of one that meets those simple requirements. I’d even be willing to waive the subscription requirement.

Well you got 2 out of 3 that guild wars has.

You need a 3rd party VoIP to be competitive in WvW for GW2. There is no other way to effectively organize 5 or more players efficiently in GW2.

As you said, you need it for 5 or more players to be competitive, but it’s not necessary for everyone. I run solo as a scout all the time and map chat is all I need for that. In WvW gathering intel on the enemy is just as valuable as an organized fighting unit, so I’m able to contribute to my server without any 3rd party programs.

Eclipses.7152:

I guess I took that gamble when creating a guild but kitten if I didn’t think that this game was the one and that Arenanet actually had commitment to their product. This game type’s failure has cost me some friends and that is the biggest disappointment.

To be fair there are two things to note:
(1.) This happens anyway no matter the scenario, people move around and, in this case in particular, there’s no figurative leash on their necks (the sub fee).
(2.) When the game was in development, WvW was not really shipped or intended or even seen as what it has become (they spoke of it, if you really dig through their interviews, as a place for open world PvP, for PvErs to do some thing for their server, and for servers to have a passive buff. Its like an extended, expanded version of HoH from Guild Wars 1). I doubt ANet expected its explosive popularity, its large waves of praise, and, in many ways, they were caught unawares to what good they had made.

You can even see this in how it was developed and manned post release, with a paltry three developers on the specific team, its clear that they didn’t expect what they got. Largely, the competitive side of this game is a complete woop, they expended a lot more from their sPvP and for a competitive scene to form but ended up with an explosively popular and competitive WvW.

Whats important is what we get moving forward. If they have wised up then we should expect good things. (And, honestly, I think they actually realized this in November when they first started talking about new mechanics like “beacons” but when they got around to making it they found two things that seem to be becoming rather apparent: understaffed so development takes time or is buggy to all hell, and that their ideas need to really be thought out better for this game type because it really is their golden goose.) If they can put even a 1/10 of the meticulous planning and design they put into the original maps, I’m going to be very happy.

This is really for another thread and I should get around to writing one, but we need to organize an AMA with the new hires, talk with them, learn from them and what they are going to be doing, because Habib has talked and he’s a great guy and programmer but we need to speak more with the creative staff than we do now.

I agree on all accounts. I am very disappointed with ANet and WvW. For PvE, I think that GW2 stood up to it’s hype. With that said, for any type of Player v Player, GW2 falls flat on it’s face. WvW had had the same problems since betas and the planned fixes don’t actually fix any of the glaringly obvious problems with the game format. sPvP remains boring and unimaginative with it’s single game type. There is no dueling in this game. What’s the last successful MMO that didn’t have dueling?

OutspokenAardvark.9781:

What’s the last successful MMO that didn’t have dueling?

GW1? :P (Though its not really an MMO.)

Vena.8436:

Eclipses.7152:

I guess I took that gamble when creating a guild but kitten if I didn’t think that this game was the one and that Arenanet actually had commitment to their product. This game type’s failure has cost me some friends and that is the biggest disappointment.

(2.) When the game was in development, WvW was not really shipped or intended or even seen as what it has become (they spoke of it, if you really dig through their interviews, as a place for open world PvP, for PvErs to do some thing for their server, and for servers to have a passive buff. Its like an extended, expanded version of HoH from Guild Wars 1). I doubt ANet expected its explosive popularity, its large waves of praise, and, in many ways, they were caught unawares to what good they had made.

I don’t buy this argument for a second, even though ANet is extremely fond of repeating it ad nauseum.

Pre-launch, the VAST majority of guilds were WvW guilds. As a guild leader who created a guild and scoped other guilds for ideas, inspiration and structure, I know this. I saw most guilds were either WvW oriented, or PvX with a WvW focus. WvW was talked about constantly by everybody pre-release.

There is no basis for them to believe they had no idea that it was going to be as popular as it was going to be. Furthermore, this is the same bullkitten excuse they were giving back in September when WvW was suffering due to queues.

So what is it?

Did you really not know it was going to be popular pre-release even though all the evidence pointed to it?

Did you really not know in September is was going to be popular? and if you didn’t and you found out it was

Why are you still giving us the same bullkitten excuse in February!!! that you didn’t know how popular it was going to be?

At some point, we have to stop giving ANet a free pass and begin to hold them accountable for their handling of the product they sold to us with an expectation of timely, quality service.

silkysoft.6749:

The only reason people are still here is that it’s free.

i think the ‘free’ aspect doesn’t apply to a lot of players, i’ll gladly pay my 12.99 €/£/$ to get rid of culling ! and the only reason i play this game is because DAoC is dead (development and updates stopped yeaaars ago) and warhammer isn’t in much better condition. no other game with a decent player base offers a DAoCesque experience.

Eclipses.7152:

You can even see this in how it was developed and manned post release, with a paltry three developers on the specific team, its clear that they didn’t expect what they got. Largely, the competitive side of this game is a complete woop, they expended a lot more from their sPvP and for a competitive scene to form but ended up with an explosively popular and competitive WvW.

very nice point to which i would like to add something. it seems Anet wants/expected everyone to huddle into a 5 man (resource friendly for their servers) instance (and drool over legendaries) and want everyone to pay gems for payed tournaments. it seems indeed like they completely miscalculated (or were blind) about what a great number of players didn’t see as ‘a diversion between dungeons and spvp’ or ‘the endgame’ but as ‘the only game’.

i haven’t seen half of the dungeons yet ingame and the ones i’ve seen i’ve gotten dragged into (mostly against my wishes, but hey, taking a blow for the guild…) cause they couldn’t fill up the group at that moment. and i’ve spend less that 10 minutes in totall in spvp yet.

w3 is not the endgame, it’s the only game (for me). and it’s flawed and broken. and Anet sure creates the impression they would rather have us quit the game than fix it’s flaws.

style.6173:

1. Agree completely. Commander needs to be earned in some way. At the very least, we should be able to vote to remove a commander’s icon for some period of time.

QFT

Eclipses.7152:

I don’t buy this argument for a second, even though ANet is extremely fond of repeating it ad nauseum.

Pre-launch, the VAST majority of guilds were WvW guilds. As a guild leader who created a guild and scoped other guilds for ideas, inspiration and structure, I know this. I saw most guilds were either WvW oriented, or PvX with a WvW focus. WvW was talked about constantly by everybody pre-release.

What relevance does pre-launch have on the overall development cycle and planning that had occurred for years prior? There was a whole internal structure designed and development teams built and readied for what the game had been designed for for years in advance, and inner workings like that don’t change over night.

They first needed to be successful, then they needed to hire where their dominant business lay (PvE), and then they needed to hire everywhere else. This sort of shake up/down takes time. And after you do that, content isn’t some magical creation that gets spit out of a nebulous “GO!” button. Many, many coders and programmers were also likely lost in translation to bug fixes and many other little things all over. (Take for example, if we are to believe the current work on culling then at least one whole developer and his team are completely lost in what is effectively rebuilding the entire engine such that it can properly compress and send data for bigger encounters.) Here’s a more telling example, even, to develop a map for WvW (which is nothing at all like spitting out a pointless map like SSC) would take the whole development team six months of design, testing, and balancing to finalize. That’s one map and its perfectly understandable when you think about just how much detail has to be put into such a map for it to work properly.

I’d love for stuff to come out nice and fast, but I saw what that amounted to in November (Karka) and I think that ANet also saw what that amounted to so… many of the promised features have been pushed back such that we don’t get that same recurrence (be it test of concept, or just a polishing). I want stuff, ya, everyone does, but I want it to work properly more than anything. If they take their time and deliver? I’ll be happy. (Coding has a rule of thumb: on time, on budget, or bug free. Pick two… or, a lot of times, pick one.)

I don’t even know where your statistic on guilds even comes from when I am almost certain that the guilds, at and pre-launch, were: PvE >>>> sPvP/WvW. The former’s population is just so much larger than I cannot even begin to fathom how you’d figure that the majority of guilds would be anything but PvE focused.

Eclipses.7152:

Why are you still giving us the same bullkitten excuse in February!!! that you didn’t know how popular it was going to be?

At some point, we have to stop giving ANet a free pass and begin to hold them accountable for their handling of the product they sold to us with an expectation of timely, quality service.

I’m not giving them a free pass, I’m thinking about this logically and based on how they, as the designers, had foreseen the use and growth of WvW. I don’t like how long its taken for things to get done, I’m not happy with it, but I’m not blinded by rage to understand that businesses and game development are complex entities.

Its also fairly obvious that this game was rushed out, I said this before, and this is likely from the higher command (you can deduce as much from watching NCSoft’s earnings and struggling in the months prior to GW2’s release and then subsequent massive jump). But this is how games are made nowadays, its not on the developers but on time tables as to when things launch. The game came out unfinished, they were in a frenzy to finish it, and many things took second seat to fixing the biggest draw of people: PvE.

(You know what might be a nice surprise? If these guild missions bring about some new WvW related guild things as well.)

OP has good points, but in order to fix the fundamental problems with WvW the entire thing has to be redone from scratch. I don’t think Anet has the resources or motivation to do it. Nevertheless we could still explore some ideas:

Guild Halls
Currently guilds can claim objectives, but this is at most on the level of commitment of getting a shared dorm room with a bunch of classmates in college. It’s low commitment and incurrs some cost (if you then take responsibility of activating buffs and queuing upgrades), and for the most part, pointless. There’s no glory or fame to claiming an objective to speak of, and most guilds only do it because otherwise nobody else would. Contrast this with another idea, say, if guilds have to build their own guild halls in WvW. They devote resources into making it, upgrading it, and consequently they can also call it their own property in the WvW space. People recognize the buildings as properties of their respective guilds and attribute fame towards said guilds. The guild members are also motivated to defend these structures because it is their property. This promotes a more healthy battleground with less or non-existent circle capping, guild specialization (whether you want to be raiders or defenders), and a solid reason to participate without chasing a score point. This leads us to the second issue.

The score
It works in smaller formats, quick join games. Ideally a match should last no more than a couple hours—basically the timeframe of one RTS game match. Anything more than that and people will have to deal with mis-matched schedules and lots of PvDoor. The score is also only indicative of coverage differences, which isn’t even supposed to be a metric. It’s a flaw in the system that is a result of the matches being too long, not actually part of the game. People should play WvW because they enjoy the battle dynamics and the politics and rivalry between guilds, but that part of the game is more or less absent right now and everyone gravitates towards the scoring system (this is observable on this forum). What this does is it encourages people to make gameplay decisions based on the score and consequently about their server’s coverage, rather than on having relatively balanced and interesting rivalry. The free transfer debacle illustrates this point perfectly. While removing the score from WvW as it is will break the game even further. We really need to start looking into ways in providing the tools and encouraging players to build their own communities and make fighting matter. This brings us to the notion of community leaders.

(Continued)

Recognition of community leaders
Currently the only mechanic in game that somewhat resembles leadership is the commander tag. The first thing about being a community leader is that you have to be social, and have the ability to rally people to your cause. The commander tag is not social. In fact it’s one of the most anti-social thing in the game. You dump 100g into the toilet, either from farming dynamic events or paying gems. This does not make community leaders. Currently there’s no mechanic inside the GW2 game that can be utilized to find these community leaders. Your only bet is to have existing guilds transfer over from other games. They would have the necessary infrastructure to support a community even before they start playing. However, the lack of tools for community have since turned away many of those guilds. The game desperately need community building tools and this extends beyond WvW. Even PvE suffers from this, as evident in the lack of participation in the open world. There’s plenty to do in GW2 even without the living story. But the world is empty, so no-one is doing those things. If a community is in place and people are properly connected then there will be groups formed up and ready to participate in all those content, without carrots on sticks, because people are supposed to login to play, not login to punch their card on dailies. The game has only been released for only a few months and we’ve already seen a few new currencies being added, because they have to keep refreshing the carrots on the stick. This does not bode well for the future of the game.

Ideally, GW2 WvW should have all of the above. Failing that, people will have to find their own fun. Obsidian sanctum PvP is actually one of the more interesting game modes that are easy on hot-joiners and casuals and provide fast paced, rich game play, both socially and competitively. When the server match ups become more stable, guild rivalry should eventually develop after people started facing each other more (that is, if he score stagnation hasn’t made everyone quit by that time). WvW is also the closest to open world PvP that some people enjoy. Overall I think we can expect a slow decline until only the people who are left playing are the ones that are playing for the right reasons, or the progression patch in March successfully turns WvW into a PvE-like activity. We’ll have to wait and see.

Nomination to have this thread pinned to the top of the forum?

muylaetrix.2096:

silkysoft.6749:

The only reason people are still here is that it’s free.

i think the ‘free’ aspect doesn’t apply to a lot of players, i’ll gladly pay my 12.99 €/£/$ to get rid of culling ! and the only reason i play this game is because DAoC is dead (development and updates stopped yeaaars ago) and warhammer isn’t in much better condition. no other game with a decent player base offers a DAoCesque experience.

I think that’s why many of us are still around. We don’t have any other alternatives unfortunately. Hurry up TESO!

Vena.8436:

They first needed to be successful, then they needed to hire where their dominant business lay (PvE), and then they needed to hire everywhere else. This sort of shake up/down takes time. And after you do that, content isn’t some magical creation that gets spit out of a nebulous “GO!” button. Many, many coders and programmers were also likely lost in translation to bug fixes and many other little things all over. (Take for example, if we are to believe the current work on culling then at least one whole developer and his team are completely lost in what is effectively rebuilding the entire engine such that it can properly compress and send data for bigger encounters.) Here’s a more telling example, even, to develop a map for WvW (which is nothing at all like spitting out a pointless map like SSC) would take the whole development team six months of design, testing, and balancing to finalize. That’s one map and its perfectly understandable when you think about just how much detail has to be put into such a map for it to work properly.

i would settle for a HUGE flat map with patches of trees and towers and keeps randomly sprinkled around the map, creating some places with a lot of scenery and some places that are huge forests and some places that are open waste land, with a new random map generated at every friday turnover. one week you’ll get and advantage, next week you’ll have a disadvantage, i can live with that. the map doesn’t need to be balanced as it changes every week.

maybe Anet should add a 5th map of that nature.

LOCO.1785:

muylaetrix.2096:

silkysoft.6749:

The only reason people are still here is that it’s free.

i think the ‘free’ aspect doesn’t apply to a lot of players, i’ll gladly pay my 12.99 €/£/$ to get rid of culling ! and the only reason i play this game is because DAoC is dead (development and updates stopped yeaaars ago) and warhammer isn’t in much better condition. no other game with a decent player base offers a DAoCesque experience.

I think that’s why many of us are still around. We don’t have any other alternatives unfortunately. Hurry up TESO!

hurry up http://citystateentertainment.com/camelotunchained/ more like it.

OP pretty much summed up my personal opinion of WvW.
The sad thing is: I bought SWTOR for the pve and it turned me from casual pvp into hardcore pvp (not going to argue about the quality of its pvp). I bought GW2 for WvW/PvP and its flaws turned me from hardcore pvp back into casual.

From my personal experience i can say everyone i know bought GW2 mainly for the WvW. My own impression prelaunch was that Anet intended to make an esport of spvp, but considered WvW the “endgame” for the majority of people. The whole design of WvW with its pve ruleset seems to emphasize this.

I wonder if we keep this on the front page if ANet will eventually respond.

I 100% agree with you OP. Let us all hope TESO learns from GW2’s mistakes and gives the proper amount of attention to WvW or RvR PvP.

I totally agree with this post! We have to take action NOW. WvW is already repetitive and boring.

OutspokenAardvark.9781:

I wonder if we keep this on the front page if ANet will eventually respond.

How many other threads have you seen ANet ever respond to? If ANet planned to salvage WvW before TESO comes out I think we would have seen some evidence of that by now.

They rarely respond on the suggestion forums also :’(

Ariel Cor Leonis Inferi.2894:

They rarely respond on the suggestion forums also :’(

The suggestion forum is where Anet moves posts they don’t want anyone else (including their own devs) to read.