Guild Wars 2

Re: server population

I’ve read rumors in various places the you may be thinking of disbanding servers in WvW in favor of guild alliances v guild alliance.

Even if that rumor is 100% wrong it is vital you don’t turn WvW into “Join a huge guild or guild alliance or gtfo”. With the scribed banners and the airship, etc. It is already going too far down that path.

I belong a small guild of real life friends. Intentionally. I really don’t want to join a big, impersonal guild. Even though I could belong to both guilds at once. I know many people in similar situations with similar opinions.

Huge guilds often require you represent them 24/7 or insist you play a certain way or certain spec to fit in with their style. Similarly, if you require guild alliances then peer pressure comes into play. “You’re only have a couple hours to play and you want to play PvE or work on your crafting? Too bad! Our alliance needs you in WvW. Now!” People already have jobs. Most won’t tolerate being ordered around in a game.

My 5 Priorities:
1- CC Revamp for Stability change
2- Add GvG game mode and tournament for larger groups
3- Redesign DBL with strategic value or revert
4- Host WvW seasons with added REWARDS
5- Auto-loot

Population and scoring will fix itself if you can make these changes worthy of our attention.

1 : Stability fix – main reason I do not play anymore myself the stab changes made large scale WvW un-enjoyable. I get the reason why it was done, it just hasn’t solved the issue they had simply taken the old meta out and made everything about the pirate ship (standing back and dropping range AoEs)

2. A good none-EOTM inspired map or Alpine BL back. Its not that the desert BL is terrible it’s just an EOTM map not a borderlands map. When I WvW I hated eotm and stayed in WvW because of that. When you made desert BL you took that away and forced everyone into a crap map or EB, which is why EB in most tiers is always qued. SO when designing your next map think EB and Alpine NOT Edge of the mist.

3. Rewards – Either reward people for placing 1st, 2nd and 3rd or just reward participation but currently the lack of rewards well sucks. I could PvP or PvE farm for the same period of time as I WvW and would be much more rewarded. Add something similar to the PvP rewards track that rewards people toward a choosen goal as they WvW, or just add rewards for weekly ranking, make the PPT mean something. There should also be greater rewards depending on the length of the siege (for both sides), so a group who spent 4-5 hours straight taking a keep should be rewarded much higher than a karma train who just rolled it over. Same goes for the defenders in both situations the ones defending for 4-5 hours should be rewarded much higher over the few minutes they defended from the K-train.

4. GvG scene – Now I know obsidian was suppose to be this but well it sucks, there should be a system similar to GW1. Where guilds can setup times in which to compete with each-other in GvG settings. Whether its 10, 15 or 20 mans you should rooms setup for this and the capability for people to watch and stream these fights. You want people interested in PvP of GW2 this is the way to do it. This alone could do wonders to revive GW2 interest and get guilds back in game that have ‘retired’.

5. Scoring – The current PPT model sucks, it forces a constant siege creep and siege camping from servers who want to push PPT and a complaint from servers who want fights that there aren’t any. I would recommend a switch from this model of ‘point per tick’, to a more relevant points per cap and kill. While I don’t think the PPT mechanic should go I think it should be accompanied by a few other mechanics. First is there should be a base number of points for capping a structure, based on a number of variables; what is the structure? (camp, castle, keep…) and how long the structure is held, so a keep held for 2 days would be worth more than one held for 5 mins. Second is in addition to things being worth more as a capture when held longer, their ticks should go up. This will give you a purpose to smash into that keep that has been held since reset, or to go toe to toe at a fully upgraded SMC. Third would be to have variables attached to the points per kill mechanics, for example if you are fighting for SMC or any keep that is fully sieged the defenders have an advantage, so give the attackers an extra half a point per kill in a fully defensively sieged keep. This will give more incentive to fight against these siege behemoths rather than passing them over for less defended targets.

1. Revert DBL- This is one of the most important things you could possibly do to bring the WvW population back. As a commander since launch, I have personally watched the WvW population drop at an alarming rate due to the size of the desert maps and gimmicky stuff added to WvW with these maps. While the desert BL maps are shiny and beautiful, they don’t promote large scale PvP at all, which is why most of us play WvW. I’m sure most of the people posting in favor of keeping those DBL maps are the same folks that like to sit in fire/air keep on an unkillable siege and somehow stop 25-30 people from even getting close enough to think about breaching the wall. That’s the majority, trust me. We dont wanna fight siege, we wanna fight people. Make that a thing again please.

2. Stability & skill balance- Skill balance is somewhat important but can honestly wait. Reverting Stability back to what it once was is a tad more important in my opinion. I want be able to adequately use the hammer train again. Wall of reflections have replaced stability in this current meta, which is sad. Pew Pew Pew huh? It’s been turned into CC Wars 2 sadly.

3. Rewards- Would be nice to gain better rewards for playing WvW, but killing people is enough reward for me. Consider the reward track ideas some have posted.

4. Population balance- Reverting back to the old WvW system and maps will fix a lot of this imbalance. But until that happens you can’t really work on it.

5. Scoring- I am not really concerned with a “score”. I go to WvW to break into structures to lure the enemy there to kill them. Thats my fun. Do with scoring what you will.

yav.4952:

1. Population Balance
2. Revert Stability/Skill Balance – (Reverting stab has a huge asterix next to it, please, please, please take caution. Old stability used to be susceptible to immobilise, thus hammer trains, however this was also before the introduction of resistance. Resistance/boon/damage reduction stacking still exists in WvW, even after nerfs to bunker Mesmer and Rev in Pvp. On a large scale these comps are.. aids, but are weakened by the current implementation of stab; prone to lots of hard CC. Stab would need to go up in corruption priority)
   Needs to be assessed: Signet of Inspiration/Dwarf Stance/Frost Aura/Superior Sigil of Concentration/Plate of Mussels Gnashblade, this list goes on…
   Needs to be changed: A visible aoe circle for Hunter’s Ward.
3. Scoring
4. (Defensive) Siege Reworks – (Reduce Arrow Cart damage by ~15%. Revert the arc of Omega projectiles back to being able to hit siege placed on the inner edges of walls. Increase Shield Gen cooldowns, Force Dome needs to be 10-15 seconds longer. Can take up to 5 minutes to kill an SMC lord with Iron Guard active, but less than 10 seconds to revive it)
5. Rewards – (Something akin to the PvP rewards tracks would be nice. Also that WvW Legendary Backpiece.)

-1. Reverting back to Alpine: number one herpa kitten band aid fix for WvW. Rework the new Desert BL instead.

Thank you for your post, I agree with everything you’ve said; here are my suggestions I wanted to add.

1. a. Hunter’s Ward. I can’t see it, strips too much stab: FIX IT.

And bout the DBL improvements:

• Rework the shrines gimmick flavors. Buffs to dmg through incoming/outgoing and critical chance feel cheap. You took out guard stacks because it was an unfair advantage (more specifically to newer players but my point still stands) and this feels like it simply goes against that philosophy. I understand wanting to make the Shrines worth fighting for but I think they should complement the keep in a defense/offense scenario instead by focusing on thematic improvement to movement/navigation and some offensive/defensive bonuses for each.

a) Shrine of Air 1 = Blessing of Air: Movement speed increase % inside Air Keep only.
Shrine of Air 2 = Jump pads regardless of who owns the keep.
Shrine of Air 3 = Knockback Turrets.

b) Shrine of Earth 1 = – Chill/Cripple % effectiveness inside Earth Keep only.
Shrine of Earth 2 = Floating platforms become available around the Earth keep for defense. Siege cannot be placed on those platforms. (this idea I think is the one I’m the least confident about but I couldn’t find a way to recycle the rock walls, they’re a complete annoyance so could easily be replaced by a better idea )
Shrine of Earth 3 = temporary stealth in area that pulses. for the sake of example something like: every 15 seconds pulse 7 seconds of stealth. Numbers are just for the sake of example. Keep them BALANCED though.

c) Shrine of Fire 1 = – Burn % effectiveness inside Fire Keep only.
Shrine of Fire 2 = Access to Lava Portal and walking on lava.
Shrine of Fire 3 = Inferno Hound transformation at Shrine (think of eotm scorpions). If needed, rebalancing of the skills.

I feel those would be still giving an advantage to owning the shrines thus a meaning to them and fighting for them while reducing the amount of imbalances it creates for combat with other players.

• Reduce amount of wild life (PvE) involved. There is just too much of it.
• LAYOUT:

a) Squish the map vertically OR eliminate at least one vertical level but do something to lesser the thin spreading of population. Eliminating map space when it comes to the height ratio (not map levels) can help with navigation like going back to the fights but it can also make the map feel more cramped and less open field so this one needs very careful adjusting but something needs to be done about this overall.

b) Destroy some pointless corners (the wyvern area per example) and demolish some walls to open up the place.

c) Break up some structuring in the middle of the map to make it THE OPEN FIELD FIGHTS PLACE.

d) Make the keeps entrances easier to access.

e) Widen some choke points but not ALL.

f) look into siege placements. I firmly believe that counter-siege is crucial to both defense and offense and by having areas of siege unattainable for the offense creates an uneven scenario. This one I think would benefit from real interaction with the community, especially with the siege nuts who know all about this stuff

That’s all I can think of at the moment.

• Look into the Guild Upgrades, rebalance them. Banners should just go. Airstrike nerfed. Prices reduced. Many things to look back at for the WvW side of Guild Upgrades.

1) Revert to alpine maps
2) Rewards
3) Population balance
4) Stability balance
5) Remove marking in keeps

The stability change is an interesting thing to focus on that I think highlights a major problem that’s never been addressed in WvW gameplay, the rift between small scale and super large scale combat. Old stab is completely broken in small fights, but new stab isn’t viable in huge combat.

Instead of veering between both sides Anet should balance to both. Just create a “fog of war” radius or something around orange/white swords (the indicator for large scale combat) that toggles the new stab to the old. They could then introduce other mechanics when fighting in such an area (such as downstate/rally tweaking).

Anyway my 5 priorities would be:

1) Populating imbalance – sides that win by pvdooring while the other side sleeps is just no fun, and being stuck in a low activity tier is also super unfun, I dont want to spend hundreds of gold just to transfer and then witness the server I transfer to also die.

2) PPT changes to encourage defending. It’s very easy to things to fall into a musical chair situation where blobs just avoid eachother and back cap, PvDoor is no fun. Adding more PVE elements that interfere with the PVP is also super unfun (like all the extra guards you guys added, if anything they should be reduced by a lot and the PVE areas in EB like the Hylek converted to shrines)

3) Rewards – WvW needs a sPvP reward track overhaul. I want more stuff to spend badges of honor on too. Rewards should be equal between zerging/small scale (maybe like a reward track for capping camps vs capping big structures)

4) Skill balance – This should address all the different playstyles of WvW, from large to small scale. For example conditions, they are worthless in large scale and a little too strong in small. Changing things based on whether you are fighting in an orange swords area could open new things

5) Risk/Reward tweaking – The pips system in PvP leagues is great IMO, where individual players risk something and get rewarded for success. WvW needs something like that. Making shrine buffs go away on death instead of timer could also alter the way people play, giving players something to lose if they aren’t careful.

please fix squads you get much less loot as if when you are in a party and when the squad is full you dont get any loot at all if all are hitting one target

we need sand drops for scribe for wvw upgrades or give us an npc to exchange badges for sand

also as we dont get any crafting mats for ascended crafting what about exchange of badges for ascended armor and weapons

merge dead wvw servers (everything below medium)
merge medium servers after talking with there wvw community

Mike O Brien.4613:

We’re investigating whether to fix or revert DBL. They’re both a lot of work. These next couple days will be your last chance to give feedback before we make a decision, so speak now or forever hold your peace.

waits for hate incoming

If you can not get Alpine and Desert BL into a rotation, I am in favour of fixing the Desert BL.
e.g. by making tactics & improvements cheaper to use (so claiming is worth doing and PVE doe snot have to finance WvW by 99%).
I am not a fan of the bigger numbers of “ambient wild life”, so I would reduce that.
With all the extra stuff of the map compared to Alpine BL, we need a better messaging/information system to see what is going on (e.g. stuff like Overwolf is offering, with RI times.
Smaller guilds need to be lured back into WvW, e.g. by making the land claim & dolly escort guild missions doable by one person for each event (and not 3). You have alienated a lot of small guilds and you have to bring them back.

Why no total revert to Alpine BL? I have played home defense for three years there. It is fair to see and experience something new (if it is working within the parameters of providing fun fights and skirmishes).

1. just turn clock back 6 months…and all will be fine…

Rewards please. Rewards for server victory, rewards for account activity in wvw and points taken, rewards for kill other players.
And wvw way to get asc equipment with new stats too.
Gw was a skin grind lategame, now is a sort of newstat grind lategame…

Finalfreefall.8247:

Vissarion.6509:

So you want to revive WvW and bring more people into it….

My suggestions:

3<bonus>)Add EPIC Gigantic Robots/Siege machines to the game.

If you haven’t felt the iching when you where sieged by Siege Golems at L2 you didn’t feel anything!
Now with the guild halls there should be new epic siege gear added to the game, more siege machines to make siegeing a castle more awesome.

As someone who doesn’t WvW, this would get me to try out the game mode. They would have to be balanced around specific weaknesses (extremely long visibility + breakbars would work, that would force a team to rally around their giant robot and give the other team forewarning on where their enemies are) Actually, this could open up some new strategies too.

PS. you could totally use the Risen Giant rigs to make a believable looking Clockwork Tyrian mech. Massive bonus points if the player character is visible xD

You guys would play it one, maybe two days, and then forget it even existed back to your PvE daily activities. Then WvW players would be left with another probably stupid OP piece of siege that would do more harm than good to lower/outnumbered servers.

WvW needs more player vs player interaction instead of siege wars that is one of the reasons this game mode is as dead and boring as it is today.

My list:

-Skill balance (stability reverted and fix DH bow 5 ASAP).
-Rework the new DBL (make it easy to navigate) or bring back ABL.
-Add some WvW reward tracks with exclusive weapon/armor skins and consumables (like recipes for new armor/weapon stats and new food recipes from HoT).

i think most important after 1. stability revert and 2. old map backs are 2 things

Rewards
I Don´t want to get rich like sw farm or other things in wvw but i want a solid income maybe 70% per h compared to pve so no pve bots come in wvw to farm g
but more important gear you need for wvw should be easy farmable in wvw. this includes new hot statcombos and all runes/sigils foods. Plz don´t force wvw players with 0 interest in pve to farm pve maps for this stuff

siege
1. make ppl hit by siege not worth ppk for next 30s so siegebunkering isn´t rewarding with ppk
2. increase so siege aoe limit for ac´s massiv ! with the latest los changes there are many spots where 4-6 ac´s that you cannot clear with aoe can hit a gate
3.it´s atm impossible to take down any t3 gate when there more than 5 defenders 1-2 trebs behind the gate and they have this gate only get siege dmg buff active. the combination defending terbs behind gate and this buff + the imense hp of the t3 gates make it impossible to open it even with 70 ppl outside vss 10 defenders.
atm not that big deal becasue no tournament and nobody care about ppt and defend tryharding but with all this new siege/buffs and maps atm it would be impossible to take any t3 keeps from any server as long there more than 10 defenders
defending and bunkering is 1. to easy and 2. too rewarding.

Make one desert map end 2 alpine maps! …that will solve your problem….

1. Bring Alpine Borderlands back and get rid of the Desert Borderlands. I know you guys put a lot of work into the new borderlands and granted they are really appealing to the eye, but that’s pretty much it, the layout, the mechanics, boss fights introduced alongside with the Desert Borderlands are just horrible and have nothing to do with the original WvW experience anymore. I don’t see any point in putting the maps into some kind of rotation, because it’s clear that most players don’t want to play on the new borderlands. You’ll just end up with people playing when it’s Alpine Borderlands week and no one playing or hopping to EB when Desert Borderlands are up. Currently there’s always a queue on EB on prime time, whilst there’s nothing going on the Borderlands and to be honest new borderlands are so unfun that I sometimes go to EotM to wait for the EB queue (funnily enough back in the day when EotM was introduced I thought it couldn’t get any worse ..)

2. Get rid off Chilling Fog, Airship Bombardement, Cloaking Waters, Dragon Banner, Watchtowers and so and so forth. I know you wanted to incorporate guild upgrades into wvw, but putting these ridiculous upgrades into the game completely destroys actual skilled play, scouting, roaming and makes defense way too easy. There’s no actual need to make defending that much easier, it’s actually much better that Keeps/SM/Tower flip more frequently, more running aorund on the map, more things to do for everyone instead of just trebbing stuff from afar because getting close is too dangerous or merely impossible. So actually, whilst your on it, rethink the whole guild wvw scribing, it seems completely out of place.

3. Understand that WvW is not just about huge blob/zerg fests, the most dedicated WvW players are roamers and small groups, that run around the map to scout, take unguarded objectives etc.. Yes, fights between big groups are also part of WvW, but so far all you’ve done is making blobbing more attractive whilst doing the opposite for roaming.

4. Improve the WvW rewards, easier accessible ascended gear for example. Gaining more gold would also be good, because the relation between time put in and money that you get out of is probably the worst in all game modes. Also bring back a way to unlock more of the Mistforged/Hero wvw weapon skins and maybe some new skins also only accessible via WvW

5. Learn from your mistakes (EotM, DBL just to name a few) and keep up the communication with the community, not just in terms of WvW, but in every aspect of the game, you want players to care about your game, show them you care about them and their issues.

@Mike O’Brien and Karl McClain

I threw this together and will have some edits, but I wanted to drop it in sooner than later.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Hi all,

This is a great thread. It’s constructive. We’re all reading it and referring to it in team discussions.

As we said in the AMA, our top internal priorities have been population balance and rewards. From this thread, your top five priorities are, in order:
1. Stability & skill balance
2. Fix or revert DBL
3. Rewards
4. Population balance
5. Scoring

Yes, we will take the feedback and make stability, general skill balance, and fixing/reverting DBL our top priorities. We’re not currently working on scoring and that has to be a longer-term project.

Karl is working specifically on WvW-focused skill balance. He’s looking for the wins for WvW that don’t screw the rest of the game.

We’re investigating whether to fix or revert DBL. They’re both a lot of work. These next couple days will be your last chance to give feedback before we make a decision, so speak now or forever hold your peace.

I want to reiterate that everything we work on either ships in April or starts beta-testing on Live servers in April. We’re locking down dev work for the April release soon — next up is localization, QA, integration and regression testing — but we’ll extend the deadline for WvW skill balance.

There is one thing that doesn’t need to get wrapped up into the April release: Friday night resets. That doesn’t require a Live build. We’ll do it.

Mo

Map Stuff

I vote for the alpine map being brought back.

In the future I would like to see 4 unique active maps to play on for wvw… Give EB and Alpine a visual makeover. Rework DBL to be more open, less vertical and less maze-like. Create an Arctic map. Again, with all four in play. Also, I would like to see tunnel systems in WvW like the ones implemented in EotM.

Rewards

I know rewards are being worked on, but I would like to see ascended gear offered in wvw. Also, please finally unlock those Mistforged Hero weapons to be purchased with badges of honor and gold. They have been completely unobtainable for 2 years now. Paths to Legendary gear as well, see below.

Since the PvE side of the game offers both ascended and legendary gear, I would like to see ascended gear offered as purchasable rewards.

Create ascended runes, sigils and infusions. Offer these as rewards in WvW and EotM. Add them to crafting professions as well. Also, don’t forget about ascended trinket crafting.

Paths to Legendary runes and sigils and infusions and trinkets!

Combat “Stuff”

Base Health

Elementalist, Guardian and Thief- 15k

Engineer, Mesmer, Ranger, Revenant- 17K

Necromancer and Warrior- 19K

Nameplates in PvP

Player nameplates- Please finally use acronyms for server names and a small icon for rank. Please? The unnecessarily long red nameplate is very visually distracting from opponent animations and skill effects, and very often the screen is just flooded with red names and red circles… Players want to see and react to what the other player is doing, not to have a screen full of red clutter to sort through.

“Pet” nameplates- Pets, minions and yes, illusions and clones, should just have an icon, no nameplate. There has to be a quick visual differentiation between players and their “pets” among the mobs of players.

NPC nameplates- Use a different color font.

*Doing these will also help these who suffer from color blindness.

Player Movement

For the love of freedom of movement that the game was built on, please loosen the reigns on combat travel suppression big time. Please increase strafe and reverse speed. I don’t care if you have to increase the radius on aoe circles of death, just do it please.

25% base movement at level 80. This will open up build diversity more with regard to traits, runes and utility skills. Change all movement enhancers to 33% movement. Super speed enhancers remain unchanged.

I’ll mention this again in the conditions part of my post, but you are killing one of the top features for combat with such strict combat movement suppression rules. This is also made much worse by the constant movement imparing conditions players are hit with.

Pets

Pets need a lot of work, but I won’t go into a ton of stuff now.

I have a post pending that talks about trait line revamps and included I will bring up making Ranger pets optional. This would be done by unlocking them via the Beastmaster trait line. Until such a thing happens, let’s get a couple things about Ranger pets in order. Pets need to be more of a threat by putting pressure on moving targets. Simply speed them up to stick like glue to their targets and cut out the long animation attacks. There are only a few decent pet choices in pvp and this needs to change.

Necro minions are in the same boat too against moving targets so speed them up as well.

Skills and Balance

I’m not really sure what I can provide as input considering April is weeks away, and balancing skills will not be separated between pvp and pve currently (I will make a case for making the separation soon), but I’ll toss some thoughts out there.

I was just working on a post about profession and combat stuff, so I’ll take a few things from it that I feel could work for both sides of the game.

Support Roles and Mechanics

I’m going to provide a link to posts I’ve made on this subject for Druid healing, but the “spirit” of it could be applied to support and healing skills in general when you break it down.

Target reticle support and healing in movement heavy combat encounters are not a good design. Gating healing skills behind resource management is not a good design because the job of a healer is to heal when needed. Not having healing skills that can target players directly is not a good design.

This game needs to work on support roles and skill delivery mechanics. Please refer to how City of Heroes had deigned these for their movement heavy game. Support and heal roles there had some great toggle skills and pboa skills and ranged aoe skills and ranged ground target skills and player targetable skills… so please look into it.

If any of you at Anet have played a Empathy Defender or Force Field Controller or Sonic Resonance Corruptor or Pain Domination Mastermind… in City of Heroes, you will know that these power sets provided area heals and buffs, and player targetable heals and buffs.

In general, this game need a healthy dose of more defined roles per profession, and I believe there are good elements that could be taken from City of Heroes to make this happen. As you release Elite Specializations you could create some very nice Tank, Heal, Buff, Debuff and Disruption roles and builds within professions going forward. *More on this stuff in a future post.

Back to Druid healing…

We were told at Twitchcon that Druids would be able to support zergs in pvp, but so far all we see are self healing bunker and dps builds in pvp. The Druid was clearly designed for stationary boss encounters in PvE and this needs to change.

The example of changes I would like to see…

Considering Celestial Avatar does very little in terms of damage, just make it an on-demand form that is removed on downed state or when manually exited. Remove the Astral Force gating mechanics and just put it on a cooldown timer to enter the form again.

As mentioned above about the types of skills that are possible, let’s look at what we can do with Druid skills.

Take Cosmic Ray and Seeds of life and make them player targetable skills not reticle skills.

Change Lunar Impact to an enemy target skill, not a reticle skill.

Leave Rejuvenating Tides as is.

Allow a player to move and cast Natural Convergence.

Honestly, I would love to see Druid and Celestial Avatar two different Elite Specializations because I think you could do a lot of really cool things to define both better. I will never hold my breath over it, though.

More thoughts on Druid stuff…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Druid-CA-Overhaul-Needed/first#post6039723

Condition and Control Effects

I would like to see immunity timers implemented on Condition and Control effects.

Condition and Control effects are manageable in core Tyria PvE. The higher difficulty mobs in HoT zones bring a lot more Condition use, and while manageable, still at times we are affected by Conditions a bit too much. In PvP (WvW and SPvP), though, players are continuously hit with these CC effects over and over and over… There are individual profession builds that can put out way too much CC on their own, now multiply that “way too much” by multiple players… The way the CC attacks and effects were designed were heavy handed, and it is overdone when you combine some big direct and burst damage numbers, along with unending Condition DoT and status effects. In addition to continuous movement impairing effects from CC, we are also forced into combat movement suppression as well… All of these put together really kill the fun of combat.

What I’m proposing below is to NOT give immunity to the direct/immediate damage component from weapons and skills that produce CC, I’m saying that the status effects need to be more manageable for players in this CC heavy game.

The below quote is about the immunity timers that City of Heroes implemented in pvp…

“Every time a character recovers from a Hold, Immobilize, Disorient, Sleep, or Fear status, that character becomes immune to all five of those effects from other players for 15 seconds. Every time a character suffers a Knockdown, Knockback, or Knockup effect, that character becomes immune to all three of those effects from other players for 10 seconds. These two timers are independent. It should be noted that Confuse effects, while technically mezzes, are on a separate 15-second timer than the other mezzes listed above.”

So let’s tailor the above quote for GW2… the basic gist is that a character goes on an immunity timer to all “hard” Control effects after the effect ends or the player uses a Stun Breaker. Moa must finally go into this “hard” Control category as well.

For “soft” Conditions there are two ways to do it…

First is an immunity timer on a 1 cleanse-1 condition basis.

Or

Immunity timers to groups of “soft” Conditions. Some grouping examples below…

Group 1… Blind, confusion, vulnerability and weakness.

Group 2… Chilled, crippled, immobilize and slow.

Group 3… Bleeding, burning, poison and torment.

And again, the direct/immediate damage components from weapons and skills that produce these Control and Condition effects remain unchanged.

Doing it these ways allows for multiple CC skills to still be used, but allows for some much needed breathing room. All “hard” CC is either put on a timer naturally when ended or when manually broken. Individual or group “soft” CC are put on a timer once actively cleansed by the player or another player, or when the effect ends. Visual indicators can be assigned to the UI so both player(s) and attacker(s) know what immunity timers are in effect.

There are other factors that we can look at too, but I believe this would be a good start.

Stealth

Layering stealth over and over and over… needs to go period. Not only for combat reasons, but to also help develop and take certain professions in a better direction.

Mid combat stealth needs to be toned down period. Individual players should not be able to go into stealth continuously. Thief stealth builds and PU Mesmers are the biggest offenders. Sneaky Gyro stealth duration is a bit long. Trapper runes exacerbate stealth issues as well, and would like to see the stealth component removed from them.

There is zero need or reason for an individual be able to stealth over and over in PvE. For PvP, Thief “super stealth” builds are universally needed to survive, but it also gives those builds a complete advantage to control combat. PU Mesmers are next in line for this issue. In high survivability Scrapper builds the Sneaky Gyro increases their survivability three fold, and now we see packs of them roaming in WvW…

These stealth heavy builds are one on one nightmares in combat situations and outcomes are extremely predictable. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen these ultimate stealth builds whack around multiple attackers or just simply escape. I’ve seen skilled players completely controlling fights against multiple opponents and killing them individually as well.

The current stealth mechanics are just not healthy for PvP and just not needed in PvE. And again, If combat stealth is fixed up, it would open the door to make some better profession improvements. I understand some changes to professions would need to be made to accommodate stealth changes, but I believe it should be looked at seriously.

Also, common counters to stealth are anemic in PvP. Players are basically limited to tossing a random ground aoe (if available in the build) or swinging a melee weapon randomly if one is equipped. The stealth removal traps are not a realistic counter at all.

The hardest hit by stealth changes would be Thief, so here are some suggestions. Make Thief a “heartier” combatant via better HP and better condition resistance and removal (the condition proposal will help too). I would like to see stealth and blindness removed from weapon skills and removed from traits. Add stealth to a couple more heal skills and limit stealth and blindness skills to utilities and elites with long cool downs.

Follow this utility bar format to gain access to stealth and blindness for all professions.

I also had another idea to change stealth skills to a translucent form or shroud that reduces damage from all sources when active. This would allow all current stealth mechanics to remain in place while still providing advantages during combat.

Thanks for reading!

Here are my two cents – I’d wish to see the old Alpine maps back, that being said, I also believe if population issue were to be fixed, and if the GW2 infrastructure allowed it, if you were to increase the player cap on the Desert BL, to say 150+ (each side), maybe that could temporary ‘’fix ’’ the inherit map issues.

Meadfreek.6789:

Re: server population

I’ve read rumors in various places the you may be thinking of disbanding servers in WvW in favor of guild alliances v guild alliance.

Even if that rumor is 100% wrong it is vital you don’t turn WvW into “Join a huge guild or guild alliance or gtfo”. With the scribed banners and the airship, etc. It is already going too far down that path.

I belong a small guild of real life friends. Intentionally. I really don’t want to join a big, impersonal guild. Even though I could belong to both guilds at once. I know many people in similar situations with similar opinions.

Huge guilds often require you represent them 24/7 or insist you play a certain way or certain spec to fit in with their style. Similarly, if you require guild alliances then peer pressure comes into play. “You’re only have a couple hours to play and you want to play PvE or work on your crafting? Too bad! Our alliance needs you in WvW. Now!” People already have jobs. Most won’t tolerate being ordered around in a game.

The implementation of alliances that I referenced made accommodations for small guilds and individuals that were not a part of a formal alliances. They would could be used a reserves and could be recruited by guilds on a as needed basis. I would expect the higher ranked alliances to not need this support but there would be plenty of middle and lower tier activity for militia.

Mike O Brien.4613:

…From this thread, your top five priorities are, in order:
1. Stability & skill balance
2. Fix or revert DBL
3. Rewards
4. Population balance
5. Scoring…

Thank you Mike for taking the time to read this and commenting. If we’re shifting the talking points to these five, I’d like to offer my voice as well, having been in GW2 since the original open beta and having played exclusively WvW during the S1 and S2 tournaments, PvX in S3, then taking a break to play PvE until HoT, when we shifted back to PvX in our guild. In fact there are many on our server whom our guild has taught the mechanics and guild integration needed for the DBL maps.

1.) Stability & Skill Balance
Having talked with a few in our guild who have played PvP, skill balance has always been imbalanced, just depending on which iteration we’re in, one profession is more favored than others. It always has come down to figuring out how to shut down your opponent to get the advantage. Perhaps implement a system for gear like what we have in PvP, where it is amulet-based and our actual PvE gear is just aesthetic clothing. I always see new players struggle to get decent gear for WvW, which causes more imbalances. Get rid of that imbalance and make it so that the PvP portion of WvW no longer has the variable of “gear,” and that will help to balance things out.

2.) Fix or Revert DBL:
There was talk at one point of having the DBL and ABL on a rotation with a third map. Could we move to that and then possibly have each map up for each BL somehow? I know the original reason of having every BL be identical was so that no server would have an advantage. Honestly, I love the new maps, they are more detailed to see, especially if/when you’re spending a LOT of time in them. Part of why I stopped playing WvW when I did, and why I avoid EB, is because the map became boring. If we went back to ABL exclusively, honestly, I’d probably no longer have incentive to play in WvW.

As for complaints of PvE being in WvW, those complaints have always been there. Anyone else remember the quaggans in the lake? Seems that there has always been a challenge in WvW as to what exactly to do with the largely ignored center of the map. I will admit that the oasis event did give some instability to the maps, but, it also followed the trend of needing something to happen in that area of the map so it was not ignored. Perhaps if some sort of a citadel was placed there instead that we could fight over, similar to a miniature version of SMC, it would help. Then, make said objective give some sort of buff if/when held over time.

The size of the DBL is a little big, but with the layout, I also don’t see how it could be condensed down without 6 months or more of overhaul at the developer level. And going back to ABL I do not think is a solution either, unless it is in rotation with a third BL map (and if you really want to make most players scream, underwater BL, though it would make the DBL look a lot better in comparison).

If the solution to WvW came down to fixing the DBL maps, the only real suggestions I can see are to set it up so trebuchets are useful mechanics again for taking towers/keeps, and perhaps make it so the cliffs in the map are lower. Or bring in gliders so when one team on top of a cliff is running next to an opposing team at the bottom of it, an actual fight can occur.

3.) Rewards
I really think rewards are dependent on population balance. If you’re on a server/tier that does not use the BLs, then there are fewer players and less flipping of objectives to generate reward. A few weeks into HoT I had criticized aNet for lack of reward in the DBL. I was incorrect. I needed to criticize at that time a lack of people. But, as guilds built up and more were willing to explore/learn the map, it balanced back. Now, perhaps if there were reward tracks similar to PvP implemented into WvW we’d be able to get more rewards the way PvP has (which seems higher than PvE even to me).

4.) Population Balance
I am on a T3/4 server, and have had guildies transfer into us from T1/2 who say that the BLs up there are dead as everyone is doing massive zergs in EB. For T3/4, the BLs are FUN! We focus mainly on small group havoc tactics, whether it be splitting up and taking multiple camps at the same time (camps, shrines, and sentries are all soloable), or staying together to hold or claim areas of the map. I can only imagine what anything under T5/6 is like with the even smaller servers.

Perhaps addressing the servers as gold, silver, and bronze leagues again will make the dialogue with the players easier to discuss, as tactics differ widely between the population sizes. T3/4 right now seems just right – we have activity in our BLs, we have activity in EB, and we have guilds using the guild hall based tactics as well within it all. T1/2 from what I understand, the BL maps are dead and everyone plays in EB in massive zergs and have queues to get in. And I will guess that T7/8 are probably dead in the BL just because those servers are that much smaller. Bring back “low” as a definition for server population, open up very low cost transfers to them (but not free – that will ruin a server, look at HoD).

Another idea too is to allow in PvE the ability to have a server-specific district of the map in the main cities. Our WvW shifted drastically when we went to megaservers, and we went from winning in the leagues to losing. We planned and met in PvE cities, knew everyone on our server from that. Allow us to choose to be in a megaserver map or our main server map, as opposed to full blown districts from GW1 or the current system of megaservers only. Make people who have come since the implementation of megaservers see why WvW matters to the server.

5.) Scoring
I do like that player deaths now count towards the score, but it also seems that it can be a tactic that can be exploited, and possibly one that becomes harmful on the servers where people use WvW as a place to duel between each other (always happens in our EB outside of SMC). Perhaps balance it so that deaths are awarded at time of PPT as well: 5 points for most kills, 3 points for second place, 1 point for fewest kills/most deaths, or have it weighted better.

Another “problem” where people have complained comes to overnight scores, or scoring that happens during times where one server may have more population than others. S2 of the tournament, we often talked on HoD about having the overnight advantage – because we had a guild who would come through overnight and cap objectives. Our server has always aimed to have an overnight guild do this, point being, when our opponents go to bed, we then have 8 hours of PPT shifted in our favor before they come back online to fight. Perhaps weighing the algorithm to take in account number of players present in WvW will assist with this as well, but given that the players do not know the population, it is a algorithm that will have to be looked at by aNet. So if Green has 20 players, Blue has 10, and Red has 5, the weighting of the scoring would balance so that 10 points is larger to Red than to Green.

Though really, population balance, scoring, and rewards all will balance each other out if the population can be better balanced. Population leads to activity, activity leads to rewards, and rewards are incentive to push for scoring, which lead back to incentive to get a population into WvW.

1. Stability & skill balance. you could potentially increase the stab from 5 to 8 stacks in the guardian shout or make skills like dragon hunter LB 5 less effective. The idea of having WvW specific skills is better cause it introduces a more competitive environment and shows commitment to make it work. Currently conditions are imo too strong since there is a limited amount of condition cleanse you have but the sources of conditions are way too much with the reduced cds for boon corruptions.

2. Fix or revert DBL. DBL needs some rework to be more approachable. Its way too big and takes a huge amount of time to traverse it and get to an objective or to the enemy you end up running in circles from one point to the other. Alpine was better however it also needed some rework for example the middle space was never used and the areas there were not favourable to fight on (please no more pve events in maps and ty for removing oasis event)

3. Rewards
Definitely requires some rework since the badges are useless since everyone uses the heroic currency to get the siege they want. The rank up chests are just greens and blues and I think rewards could be better if structured as seasons and some sort of currency (like the previous season currency) when you do achievements during the season to redeem for something. Currently PvP for example plays a major role to getting a legendary back piece. Pve has the fractal one. There could be a potential WvW one or better yet make ascended easier to actually get if the player is only playing WvW.

4. Population balance
One of the major issues in wvw is that there is a lot of servers and people are spread all over however imo you will get a boost when you put back on alpine maps it will start to decline a couple of weeks after and then we will need something more permanent. An alliance system would work but with it you would potentially lose a lot of competitiveness cause right now there is some sort of rivalry between servers and some kind of passion regarding your server. Best approach to this is probably kill off the last 5-6 Servers and give the people enough gems to transfer again in the lower tiers so we don’t overpopulate the top tier.

5. Scoring
The night capping is a major major cause of the leader boards something needs to be done about the late hours we currently have people from outside of EU in the servers for example and they just go around flipping everything because there is simply no opposition. Either make the tick worth less during like 02:00am-08:00am GMT or increase the tick from like 15 mins to 30. I understand that people like to win the match-ups and they want to PPT for it but doing it while everyone else is sleeping is frowned upon. PPK is good it gives people better incentive to fight but at the end of the day it really doesn’t affect the end score too much most of the scoring occurs outside of Prime Time (19:00-22:00 GMT)

NOTE Please make wvw abilities account bound

First of all, I want to thank you to take the time to read all the feedback of the still active WvW-players. I actually quit the game after stability changes and the release of the new maps. Since I really loved the old WvW-System and spent thousands of ingame hours leading public- and guildraids I also want to give my feedback here (still hoping that you gonna bring the old system back).

1. Stability & skill balance
As I already mentioned, the old stability system would be the best thing to bring back to the game. The new stack-system completely changed the gameplay – in a pretty boring way for everyone, who played melee or used to lead the first two years after release. With equal groups, it’s more like waiting for minutes until one groups makes a mistake. With unequal groups, the bigger group most likely wins (more cc -> gg). Since you wanted smaller groups having more chances – the old stabi system was way better. If you are really going to change that, I would suggest to wait a couple of weeks for some player feedback, before starting other balances.

2. Fix or revert DBL
I am sure you really put a lot of effort in developing the new maps, they really look quiet beautiful tho. But they are more like PvE maps or EOTM. They are way too huge, contain too much PvE content and towers and keeps are not what they used to be on alpine borders – a nice place to fight and defend. Even tho we got told, that there are no WvW-only-players – trust me, there is a huge number of palyers who mainly did this – playing WvW only. And those people did not play that because of some strange PvE-mechanics, doing events to get adavntages or huge, impressive maps. They played it for fighting other zergs and defending their objectives. For all other purposes, there are loads of PvE-maps or EOTM. So please: Bring back the Alpine Borders!

3. Rewards
I can not really add something useful there since I never really cared about rewards. The only thing you might change is to slightly increase the loot

4. Population balance
Same as the skill balance changes – If you really bring back the old stability and alpine borders I would suggest to wait with that for a couple of weeks. It will most likely bring back many players who quit the game and it would probably be helpful to wait for that population chages.

I am looking forward to see the changes!

Regards,
Enefes

1: old borderlands
2: old borderlands
3: old borderlands
4: old borderlands
5: old borderlands

1. Bring back Alpine Maps.
2. Get rid of defensive buffs like fog, air ship….. way too overpowering.
3. limit siege placement
4. limit the power of siege damage on players.

Basically we need to get the players back that have left the game because of the WvW changes that have taken place. This game has become a battle of siege and has taken the speed/action of the game to mechanics.

Comparatively it takes no real skill to throw down siege and hide behind walls. It’s WvW not siege wars.

WvW will continue to fail if you don’t revert back some of the changes that have pushed players to other games.

1. Stability: revert stability to old mechanics. In PvP it makes sense because there is not enough CC to strip all stacks of stability, but when you include over 60 players casting abilities, no amounts of stacked stability is ever enough. In addition, new stability changes made the game very laggy since it take the serves longer to register. Either remove stacking, add more stacks, or decrease amount of stacks that can be removed at one time.
2. Maps: it is a fact that the dessert borderland have no strategic advantage. Other than the middle event, which was extremely laggy, no WvW player wanted to do a pve event. Scoring wise, even undefended it can take over an hour to flip the whole map, usually players don’t have the time to do nothing for extended periods of time, they want to come in and see action immediately. Alpine Borderlands played faster, better fights, terrain, and every tower and keep had strategic position.
3. Population: consolidate lower tier servers and reduce the amount of gems necessary to transfer, since only wvw players will need to transfer servers (don’t make it a penalty to play wvw with your friends). Going with the previous point about the maps, take the EOTM model and rotate it with the Desert Borderland, but instead of 3 hour match ups, do a whole week match up with only one map, where players have to queue for the map when it gets full. This will insure that servers or tiers with lower population always have something fun to do and players to fight against. This is especially true on off times.
4. Rewards: use a reward track identical to PvP into WvW points. Similarly how winning or losing a pvp match give you rewards, fill the WvW bar with reward similar to PvP. If needed extend the number of WvW points needed to rank up in order to add rewards
5. Scoring will fix itself if above changes are made because it will balance the servers and increase the player base.

1. Skill balance was one thing I know have been a problem since a long time ago. It would be nice to have some classes being good in long range and some better in melee range. These changed need to change once every 4 months to make it not so stale.

2. I vote for the old Borderlands I found that to be more fun defending then the new borderlands where some areas are harder to defend and some areas way to easy to defend .

3. For the rewards. I admit that it would be nice to have a vendor that can trade(sell) you things depending on your rank in WvW. If this is to happen all ranks have to be reset to everyone and WvW exp. removed from EOTM.

I wanted to state that since HoT came out I have tried the new WvW and still play it a bit till these days. I relay haven’t enjoyed it at all and end going back to play Age of Empires 2 cause of it. All I can say I am more of an Old RTS person my self.

I liked the old WvW how it was and a played it a lot like crazy before HoT came out and was my main focus in the game more then anything.

For rewards,

Whatever you do, don’t reset WvW rankings. I’d be pretty upset (as would many other veteran WvWers) if my 3000 ranks disappeared.

If anything, you need to implement better rewards based on wvw rank, or at least take in account those of us who have thousands of ranks with little to show for it (other than platinum rank status)

1. DBL is not fun. While many people want the simple fix of bringing Alpine back. I think if you just simply give us gliding on DBL only (not EB), that would fix a lot of complaints with DBL regarding map size and ease of travel. Also, remove the gimmicky effects of the map – they are just annoying and not fun for either side.

2. Give us a reason to win for our world. There is no incentive to win anything other than fights. Which while fun, has no direction. You have done well with giving us an incentive to win PvP with leagues and reward tracks — WvW needs some of that love.

3. In order for #2 to work, there needs to be a system in place to correct for huge population imbalance and ‘night-capping’.

4. Make ranks useful even after you have maxed your masteries. Give us a reward track or something for ranking up.

5. CC too strong

Before you make your decision, here is my top 5 :

1. Revert to old BL. I dislike DBL to the point of almost not playing WvW at all. Without this point, I don’t think I’ll come back
2. Upgrades should be revert as they were : launched manually, one at a time (and not by packages). WP must be a T3 upgrade
3. Get rid of all the gimmicks : monuments, tactics, oasis etc
4. Dev communication. There have been recent efforts of this but it is still immensely needed
5. Revert stability

I know this isn’t a vote but I just wanted to add yet another voice to the chorus: please, if you do nothing else, bring back the Alpine Borderlands.

The Desert BL is a great map – for PvE and gliding. That’s what it looks like it was intended to be used for and it would be very welcome as a new overland PvE map. It isn’t just that the Desert BL doesn’t work well for WvW, though, although self-evidently it doesn’t. It’s almost as much that many of us really loved the original BLs. We had an emotional investment in Hills and Bay and Garrison that just has not carried over to the new structures.

Air and Fire Keep are structurally amazing but they feel alien and strange. There’s a conversation at the spawn between two NPCs where one asks the other where all these keeps and towers came from and gets the reply that “They were just here” – it’s supposed to make the place feel mysterious but actually it emphasizes how dissociated the new map is from any context that would make us, the players, feel it’s a place we want to defend.

So, yes, fix stability and do something about population – although not at the expense of server loyalty which, like the emotional attachment many of us had to the old BLs, is a lot more powerful than you may imagine – but first and foremost, get us back to our homelands.

I said it earlier in the thread, page 2 I believe, and while I agree stab needs a change so It can do its job, I don’t think it should be totally reverted to old stab.
I read in another thread here an idea for a .5 ICD for each stack of stab being stripped. So 5 stability stacks would last at least 2.5 seconds and give you a good window to make use of it. But the full stack should still be corruptible so there’s still solid counter play.

I’ve heard and read a lot of salt about the newer DBLs and I’ve also heard and read from a lot of people who really enjoy them.

I personally enjoy the aesthetics and variety DBL provides, but it is a bit of a maze. I’ve seen feedback suggesting a weekly map rotation between DBL and ABL. I like this decision, though I suspect it will create a split: those who like ABL will play on ABL week, then abstain from playing when its not.

Nevertheless, this may still be a good solution until a new BL map is created to address concerns about both maps (if such a development plan is being considered).

Stability. I was thinking some more about this. The problem with old stability was that once it was stripped, then you couldn’t get it again until skill recharge. The problem with new stability is not enough stacks to counter CC.

Here’s a radical idea. Since GW2 is a casual game anyway, why not just change stability from a boon to a buff that can’t be removed? You could set the maximum duration to 30 seconds or a minute and set it so it can’t be reapplied while in effect. Stability still doesn’t prevent soft CC like cripple or chill. Just an idea.

A lot of stuff could be changed, but I do agree with the stab being reverted.

An idea for the BLs that is not my own, but what to add to this discussion is to work on getting the alpine BLs back first, and use that time while they’re active to work on fixing Desert and working on making them into a weekly rotation. This gives you PLENTY of time to openly test your changes with DBL with the community and gain points with the community by communicating and listening to feedback.

Also don’t put reset time so late, that’s usually dinner time for us PST people, or bedtime for the EST people, that’s just awful. Keep it NA prime, an hour after daily reset.

Weekly rotations for the deserted bl shouldn’t go into effect until after a lot of serious work has been done on them.

The better option would be to return the alpine bl, unchanged by new HoT stuff, and replace eotm with the desert bl. Test out any changes to it there so you can get player feedback without interrupting WvW.

Once The map becomes playable as a WvW map (actually pay attention to player feedback) you can bring it into rotation with the alpine or even EBG. Just make sure you are able to rotate it on a regular basis, don’t just delete a map again for several months and tell us the tech isn’t in place to rotate them.

1. improve comunication with players ( let us know what you do before you do it)
2. promote the players interactions – fights – ( lower hp of tower /keep lord // remove tier 3 upgrades /// decrease arrow cart – cannons – mokittenamage vs players )
3. increase www rewards overall ( add www specific rewards – legendaryes ? )
4. reballance matching in order to improve balance
5. remake desert borderlands ( remove lords specific mechanisms // baricades // radom spawning walls on north side of the map ) in order to promote players interaction and remove pve mechanisms from the map

Good idea to switch out EotM for the new BL and use that for testing. Go back to a non HoT alpine BL.

gennyt.3428:

Good idea to switch out EotM for the new BL and use that for testing. Go back to a non HoT alpine BL.

I mean that was eotm’s supposed purpose right? A testing ground for WvW so they don’t add in a bunch of crap that drives off 3/4’s of the population…..

1) Bring back alpine BLs:
-Desert BLs are simply too big for current population
-Undesirable combat locations almost everywhere (primarily the keeps)
-Defending with full upgrades is too easy (the old maps with new claiming upgrades would offer the extra defendability that was intended without making it close to impossible for attackers)

2) Serious nerfs to guild claiming upgrades, if not complete removal:
-Includes airstrike, dragon/turtle/centaur banners, chilling fog, immortal lords/hardened gates, etc.
-Larger groups/zergs have too much of an advantage with these
-Defending groups have too much of an advantage
-Takes away strategy as well as skill when involving combat/fights

3) Population/server balance:
-This will address the PPT issue; the game is coverage wars now more than it ever was because of the loss of playerbase
-A closer tier structure (which would promote more interesting matchups, and add diversity) would solve a lot of the boring and stale nature currently in place. I’ve read a lot of solutions in previous posts for this i.e. battlegroup systems, or some sort of EOTM-like weekly server matching would be really fun
-Too many guilds that prefer fighting, whether it small scale or large are quitting or playing less because of the lack of combat, which is a combination of 1-3 above.

4) ‘Stability/skill&class balance’:
-Since the stability nerf, combat has gone downhill (pirateshipping is meta). There needs to be a happy medium where groups that still want to pirateship/run heavy range can without having a clear advantage. This could be sensitive though, as we don’t want a group that runs 20+ nomad frontline to be indestructible either.
-Not sure how possible some sort of AoE capping would be in gw2, but it’s an idea. Outnumbered fighting is even harder (sometimes not possible) with stability in its current state. Perhaps slightly nerfing hard CC skills such as statics, hunter’s wards, and lines of warding to hit fewer/set amounts of targets instead of unlimited based on duration would help change this? It would encourage more reliance on soft CC, pure damage, and focus fire.

5) Rewards!:
-Something that has always been an issue or disconnect from the players to the gw2 team. I think most wvwers would agree that we don’t need to be spoiled (or even care about rewards, assuming that the game is still fun to play), but it is definitely incentive and might help repopulate the BLs and may improve the current situation. Wvwers are also generally the poorest of the players, as there’s no real ingame income for long hours of wvw. This is likely where the idea that ‘all players are pvers’ came from, just because of the fact that we need gold from pve to buy anything.
-Rewards likely go hand-in-hand with the server/population issue – it will encourage and potentially even rebuild the competitive nature of wvw, which is currently PPT-to-win and most people can’t be bothered by it. For instance, when your server wins a matchup, logging in to receive 3 chests that contain 2 green items 99% of the time is laughable.
-I saw a post about using the pvp reward track for wvw. This could be a good start. Just keep in mind that most people don’t like walking yaks

Thank you for checking in with the players,

Main priority from me would be to revert to Alpine.

While fixing DBL would be nice it is not guaranteed to succeed in the first iteration and should be done as a public beta with iteration done based on player feedback and observation of player behaviour.

Glad to see interaction regarding WvW from the team at ArenaNet now. Regardless of the changes that are made I look forward to playing WvW again, I have missed the sole game mode that kept me playing Guild Wars 2.

W8… IS IT REAL? All those bans I got for posting what to change with WvW were worth it.
So what I think should be changed…
1. Stabillity and balance!!! Delete stacks of stabillity for WvW(basically bring back old stab) / give us more stacks( like 25 instead of 10). It’s finally time to make WvW totally diffrent gamemode and separate balance from PvP and PvE
2. Buff Warrior and basically rest of meele. Maybe u didn’t realise, but me as active WvW player did that now it is only Pirate Ship and nothing else. Why is that? Mostly due to stabillity changes, but not only. Almost all warriors that used to play this class dropped off from WvW, changed builds to ranged or swapped classes. Why is that? As I wrote 1 reason is stabillity, but the other is balance of warrior for PvP, but at the same time over huge nerf for WvW builds… For what to change check out Warrior forum’s posts from last 1 year… But mostly give us back old healing from shouts and make old worker build possible! Please, just swap some traits and let us again have nice worker warriors that will carry meele. At the same point some buff for meele guardians( old ones, not dragon hunters) would be nice.
3. As for DBL… Here is simple sollution: Make DBL next EOTM map. Like they can rotate… 1 week actuall map and next week DBL. This way u won’t lose all ur hard work. Or make DBL a PvE map! Literally put it into Tyria and make it Tower Defense map( like Silverwastes… guys a lot fo ppl actually loved this tower defense stuff…). And in a place of WvW’s maps bring back ABL
4. Population. For real guys, these days u cna only enjoy WvW out of prime time by playing on servers that are placed 1-6. Lower than 6 only during prime time or roaming…
5. Less PvE… please, we don’t really want to PvE at WvW… Instead support more PvE in Tyria instead of WvW’s maps.
6. More rewards. Acutally all the people play WvW for fun, but if u would add more rewards then ppl that don’t play it for fun might come… more lootbags for us
7. If I mentioned rewards, then what about Achivements? Please give us some brand new WvW themed achivements. Maybe “hit 200 enemy players with cows” or something like that. U have a lot of siege weapons to use for achivements, tons of places, locations etc. etc. U can even make achivement to collect some amount of scalps from enemy players that will drom randomly and could be picked from lords / specific locations( like lost coins)
8. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Friday resets!
9. It isn’t expecially related to WvW, but I think it is part of WvW… Give some rewards for GvGs. Guys please admit it already that GvG is one of major parts of this game( like it was in gw1) and support this gamemode( not with just arena), but rewards, ladders etc. I know there is going to be ESL tournament, but yet it isn’t as much love as should be given to this mode.
10. I need to mention that again, it’s less laggy than used to be, but still need some fixes for this.

P.S. Make some HUGE annoucement( send mails, ask IGN, PC Gamer etc. to post news about it) to bring all those ppl that left back to the game, cos trust me, a lot of veteran WvW players left game due to 2015-2016 changes and they never came back, but if u implement all important changes that we brought up in comments, then they might come back and enjoy the game once again + pay for some nice stuff in gemstore, as WvW players are always poor with gold, but have fancy clothes on

As a long time wvw player there are several things that I would love to see happen to wvw

1. Skills balance- having a specific wvw skills balance and balancing them to make sense for the game mode. eg. stability. It has become a game of who can cc who and its just turned a lot of fights into ridiculous pirate ship ridiculous and people don’t want to play heavy classes because they are getting burned by no stab.

2. WIIFM—— aka Whats in it for me? Currently the WvW game mode is not rewarding to play. As a commander it costs more for me to play the game mode than I actually get back in drops. There are no map bonuses and the only “reward” you get at the end of the week after winning is an extra bonus chest with my blue and a green. Implementing similar reward tracks that mirror parts of the pvp reward track.

3. Population Balance issues. Lets go way back for a moment. It used to be a lot easier to create server pride and bring new players into wvw when we didn’t have mega servers. You could jump into LA or DR and say HEY we need help on our borderlands or eb. Come help your server! Get almost non existent loot but SERVER PRIDE. It used to be a huge thing. Then mega servers happened and that killed that option of pulling people in from your server who may not have tried the game mode before pretty much putting more of a gap between the player base. A lot of players who do specific game modes don’t leave the game mode. There are a lot of wvw players who only did HoT content because they wanted to quickly unlock their specializations. After that was finished it was like oh.. ok done back to wvw. You could also bolster the server populations by just taking edge of the mists out and focusing just on wvw instead of spreading resources too thin to maximize satisfaction with the game mode

4. Seasons.. For the love of god.. Please give us something to do. PvE gets stuff.. PvP gets stuff and WvW is promised the golden lands of fun and stuff and it keeps getting put off. The WvW player base is an important part of your current population. Sadly they have been neglected in the eyes of many players for a long time.

5. DBL. The pitchforks and torches have been raised and there are yes a lot of people who aren’t happy with them, however a lot of players also haven’t taken the time to get to understand them. I think working the old alpine maps (cleaning them up and doing what you need to do to them to make them viable for the new expansion) into a rotation.. This will satisfy the need for new content and being able to experience the game play that pretty much everyone wants with a balance between new and old. Similar to Central Tyria and the Maguuma Jungle.

The main thing that the dev team needs to remember is that a lot of WvW players don’t PvE and if they wanted to PvE they would go do so. I think a lot of the current WvW see this more as a PvP mode on a much larger scale obviously. Is there a way with the feed back you are receiving currently and feedback that will come from the betas that will allow for an experience that the majority of us want?

1. stability fixes
2. Wp’s (put them back to how if you owned the keep you could use that wp(if it was uncontested))
3. population imbalance (haha gl fixing that)
4. outmanned buff is useless
5. rampant amount of dead space in the maps

I also dislike the way stealth is done in this game and I wish it was changed. In another game I play, stealth has no maximum duration, but it ends when you get too close to an enemy. This has implications for WvW and PvP.

Swagger.1459:

Stealth

Layering stealth over and over and over… needs to go period. Not only for the combat reasons, but to also help develop and take certain professions in a better direction.

Mid combat stealth needs to be toned down period. Individual players should not be able to go into stealth continuously. Thief stealth builds and PU Mesmers are the biggest offenders. Sneaky Gyro stealth duration is a bit long. Trapper runes exasperate stealth issues as well, and would like to see the stealth component removed from them.

There is zero need or reason for an individual be able to stealth over and over in PvE. For PvP, Thief “super stealth” builds are universally needed to survive, but also gives those builds a complete advantaged to control combat. PU Mesmers are next in line for this issue. The high survivability Scrapper builds the Sneaky Gyro increases their survivability three fold, and now we see packs of them raining in WvW…

These heavy stealth builds are one on one nightmares in combat situations and outcomes are extremely predictable. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen these ultimate stealth builds whack around multiple attackers or just simply escape. I’ve seen skilled players completely controlling fights against multiple opponents and killing them individually as well.

The current stealth mechanics are just not healthy for PvP and just not needed in PvE. And again, If combat stealth is fixed up, it would open the door to make some better profession improvements. I understand some changes to professions would need to be made to accommodate stealth changes, but I believe it should be looked at seriously.

Also, common counters to stealth are anemic in PvP. Players are basically limited to tossing a random ground aoe (if available in the build) or swinging a melee weapon randomly if one is equipped. The stealth removal traps are not a realistic counter at all.

The hardest hit by stealth changes would be Thief, so here are some suggestions. Make Thief a “heartier” combatant via better HP and and better condition resistance and removal (the condition proposal will help too). I would like to see stealth and blindness removed from weapon skills and removed from traits. Add stealth to a couple more heal skills and limit stealth and blindness skills to utilities and elites with long cool downs.

Follow this utility bar format to gain access to stealth and blindness for all professions.

I also had another idea to change stealth skills to a translucent form or shroud that reduces damage from all sources when active. This would allow all current stealth mechanics to remain in place while still providing advantages during combat.

Thanks for reading!

Okay, first I want to say that I’m really hopeful of this post. You say you’re watching it, I hope so.

1) Maps. I love how the new BLs look. They are awesome. BUT, they’re much larger than they seemed in the beginning. After spending this much time in them, you realize that you really can’t play them as well as you could the Alpine maps. It’s the terrain. For the sake of WvW, maybe it would be best to switch back. Or possible make them smaller? Populations are dying because these maps aren’t conducive. I really don’t want to see all that work you guys put into this map go to waste, they are beautiful. (What happened to the map rotation?)

2) Stability. I agree that something needs to be done with stability. I don’t know what, but something. I actually caught myself telling one of our new guildies when showing him an old WvW video “that’s when WvW was good”. It felt horrible to say that, because I love this game and the expantion, but it’s true. Many people have left the WvW seen just over this. And those that have stayed have left the classes that provided stability as they feel that they can’t provide anything substantially useful. When the stability changes first came, we didn’t have the new skills and traits. So, it wasn’t so bad. There was a difference, but it wasn’t nearly as noticeable. With the addition of these new skills and traits we really cannot have a good balance of classes running around. We have to go hope that we can outlive the opponent’s CCs, rather than out smart/skill them.

3) Population. We have a few stacked servers in their tiers. And it’s driving the population from other servers either away from the game or to those servers. Now, don’t get me wrong, you should be able to join whatever server you want. But, there should be a better way to limit the amount of people who can play on maps at the same time. I know, people hated the queues in the beginning, but lets be honest… the queues are almost nonexistent for WvW now. T1 and T2 might have some, but I haven’t seen large sized queues like I did 1-3 years ago. We can work as servers to get the people who are queue’d to populate another map. If we can’t get every single person in our queue into a map, then we know that we’re full and we’ll just have to learn how to deal with it as a team.

4) Alliances. I know that as a WvW community, we asked for change. Then when we got it, we didn’t like it. But, we need a revival of some kind. Many people have been talking about alliances in the WvW community. I’d like to give it a shot. However, having an alliance without having the maps and other items that need repair happen first would be pointless. Alliances would die just as servers did within a few months. When we tested the Desert Borderlands, we had 3 servers only. So, the maps were much more populated. If you keep the servers, using these maps won’t work. If you go with alliances and only 3, they could work.

5) Transparency. I know that this has already been touched on by some staff and some players. But, I really want to put my two cents in. I see that we’re having a beta in April. That’s great! But please, be transparent with it. Yes, you all work here and put your time into this. We put our time into this as well. We don’t get paid, in fact, we paid for it. Many of the people in the WvW community feel like we’ve been ignored or shoved in a corner to be talked to later… after the decisions have been made. We want to be part of this great game and help it grow. Arenanet was known for having an actual relationship with their community. And that’s why many of us are here. We aren’t ready to give up on this relationship yet, many of us are still here after feeling like things have fallen apart. So don’t you dare walk out on us. :P

**Additions

6) Scoring & Siege. The way the score works right now needs some work. Maybe if the people who had a hard time capping something due to siege, but could fight like beasts had a bit more to offer their server in PPK it would be helpful. I personally, don’t mind capturing things, it is part of the experience. As well as defending a capture. But I go to WvW mainly for the fights, as do many of our WvWers. I’d like to see PPK points be increased. This is supposed to be a competitive game mode and if the only way to win is to sit in a capture and siege cap it to make it unbreakable well… that’s not very fun for everybody. Which brings me to the siege. It’s gotta have more of a limit somewhere, either the amount you can use or the amount of damage. If you have 60 people hitting your keep and all it takes is 3-4 arrow carts and a ballista to stop them completely, there’s a problem. You should have to fight them and push them out with more than 5 people and some siege. We didn’t gain anything, including population, by adding more PvE/siege type game play.

7) Waypoints. I understand why you changed the waypoints.. okay no, I don’t. Why did you do that? If a server owns something they should be able to use it should they not? I didn’t mind having to wait for a waypoint upgrade. Keeping the auto -upgrade is awesome. You have less room for trolls and you know that if you defend it and get your yaks in, it will upgrade. Why not keep that but make the waypoints on side keeps be something that we have to work for again? I can’t tell you how many times we had fun just breaking or making waypoints on another server’s map. Or even defending our own. Don’t get rid of garrison (Earth) waypoint on this map, for the love of God. These maps are large and take time to get across.

8) Rewards. Right now, there’s really not that much incentive to play WvW. It was new once, and that was incentive enough. It was new and there were people to fight on large scales and castles and towers. Well, it’s been three years of castles and towers and fights. We have ranks a few memories of doing the same thing over and over again and nothing to show for it other than some badges on a website. We also have a ton of points that are sitting in the WvW panel that we can’t use after we’ve ranked up and filled everything in. -I’ve noticed that you made a few changes to give people the option of using things in WvW to get their elite specializations. And in PvP you have reward tracks, titles, and a legendary backpack now. In PvE… well that’s where the gold is and all the shinies like legendaries and precursers and craft items and much more. Maybe, if we could get a little something more than a few boxes of greens and blues here and there?

I did not read through it all but as a veteran wvw player myself I want alpine borders back aswell, I want the population back aswell and I would really like to see the old guildraiding back too. All good guilds from a year ago are gone thanks to wvw dying. Do something to support guilds in wvw please. Also if possible add something to reward small scale roaming in any kind.

1. Revert DBL back to Alpine
2. Reduce Damage from siege by 50%
3. Rewards
4. Population
5. Server Rotations

-BLs have so much going on, huge with so many chokes, too PvEish
-Siege Wars… Just too OP. Can place too many in 1 spot that can just melt players. Makes it frustrating long and boring when fighting over a target. Most players like to fight with skill not with siege IMO.
-Heavy Loot bags are not worth anything now since hot and new Legendary. Rank prizes are 95% of the time green. We need better prizes/loot.
-Server rotations would give us more variety instead of the same 2 servers month after month.

Please revert back to the alpine bl

What is funny is that peole who are complaining about the new BL’s stopped playing in the old BL’s because they were boring and were planning to quit anyway.

I will reiterate:

1. Stabo back in WvW – this is an absolute must.

2. Get rid of the kitten items in WvW – Tactivators, Air Ships, Chilling Fog, Emergency WP’s, etc.

3. Fix siege – ARC’s need to be line of sight only – get rid of the Shield Gens – make sure the superior siege cost less to build.

4. Get rid of all the PvE items in the DBL’s. So that the only time you are seen is when you take a Sentry or Keep.

5. Fix the scoring system so that PPT isn’t everything in the game.

Couple things I can think of off the top of my head.
1. Stab being changed back to how it use to be would be amazing. That on its own would likely bring back so many players.

2. The old BLs. It’s understandable that lots of time was put into the new BLs, but the old BLs just encouraged open field fighting so much more than the new ones do. People don’t play wvw for the siege and the arrow carts, they play it because gw2 has an amazing combat system in large scale fights. It gets people excited when they come across another group their size in open field and you know the best team comes out on top.

3. Personally, I don’t care about rewards. Wvw has never been a place to make gold, and if it became one, we would get pve’rs which I don’t really care for. Maybe an increase in ascended box drops so that way people don’t need to play wvw for 2 years to get a full ascended set.

4. This ties in with skill balance but the damage mitigation in the new specializations is disgusting. A 6 minute round used to be considered a long round in 15v15 gvg. Now 15+ minute rounds happen because the frontline is almost unkillable unless they just sit there in damage. You can’t really time immobs with bombs any more either cuz theres a 90% chance they have resistance from durability runes. At least before there had to be communication to clear the immob. I don’t know how this gets fixed since I don’t really play frontline but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the permanent protection (which mitigates 20% more damage than normal protection) and stupid amounts of healing from the tempests. In my opinion, a fix for this is to make elemental bastion work like altruistic healing and only heal the tempest but heal per aura and make elemental shielding only give yourself protection (this is all in reference to aura share). I worry that if frontline damage mitigation isn’t toned down a bit, that changing stab back to the way it was could actually make things worse.

5. Chill…. Chill was the most OP condition in the game… and that was before it ticked damage. I understand its a grandmaster trait but thats insane.

6. Finally, Lords… It takes two servers, full map blobs, teaming up to flip a t3 SMC and even then, it will take an hour. Either the lord HP needs to be significantly lowered, or emergency wp, chilling fog ect need to be put on a waaaaay longer cooldown.

These are things I have major problems with and most of the community have problems with. If these don’t get changed, I would expect that the wvw population is just going to continue to fall.

robotempire.2451:

lil devils x.6071:

I dont think anyone thinks they are that great, I think you misunderstand. The ONLY way players that left and to stop those about to leave is to bring them back temporarily while they design a new map that is designed from the ground up to keep players engaged in nonstop PvP action the entire time they are on them . It breaks down like this atm:

( Just to be clear we are talking about thousands of players currently)

• Bring back alpine Pre Hot NOW= players come back and agree to wait for them to do other changes.
• Do not bring back ALpine = Guilds waiting for an answer leave for good, and those beckoning them to come with them on other games already NEVER. COME. BACK. the end.

That is the decision being made here. No rosy tinted lens, players are angry the results of beta were ignored and they went ahead anyway. You are asking them to let the guilds leave the game for good. Players do not want them to keep playing on Alpine forever, they just do not consider the game playable at all due to the DBL, and returning Alpine is a show of good faith.

I don’t want players who consider desert BL to be unplayable to come back because I don’t think people who think like that are very good players.

I play a bunch of other games but I still make time for WvW because there is no other game that does RvR combat right now at the scale GW2 does. I don’t think people leaving to go play other games is a big deal. Good, go, have fun doing something else.

I also don’t think a “give me back my ball!”-style temper tantrum about the Alpine maps should be something the devs give two kittens about.

If you have read through the reasons ppl have given as to why the DBL is not a great pvp/wvw map or the ABL is a better one you would realize that nostalgia has little to do with it. All I see from you are empty claims. Can I get just one good argument as to why you disagree and throw all players disagreeing with you in the same “not very good players” basket?