Guild Wars 2

1. Population imbalance (night capping/ afterhours/no opponent capping). No factions/alliances.

2. Eliminate passive point gains.

3. Revisit stability

4. Fix the side waypoints – earned by whatever server owns the keep, tied to T3 upgrade with towers strategic to taking keeps and garrison.

5. Thwart the blobs/ktrains – encourage skill – bring back roamers, small ops

6. Redo Guild Hall for WvW and cost of EVERYTHING. Make guild siege cost effective and worthwhile to produce or get rid of it altogether.

7. Unique rewards, skins, etc. (PvP tracks). Seasons with amazing rewards. For WvW – not EOTM. Separate these modes by rewards, ranks & titles. Encourage people into the true WvW.

8. Fix all the stuff needing fixing.

9. Autoloot

10. Play WvW more. Play different tiers and different size/playstyle guilds. Listen to WvW-committed players more.

I previously stated this;
“the new maps DO NOT require flattening or being made simpler.”

I think I was right, but I would add the caveat that simplicity is the key with WvW. Let the players create the situations, the devs don’t have to put as much effort into this as I think they are trying to. Be selective with what you create – I don’t think it should be the gargantuan workload it seems to be turning it into.

Gaile Gray,
consider this post as well.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Want-the-old-maps-back-172-Signs/first

1 – close down some servers with low populations and have those players filter to other servers or if possible combine US and EU servers to be able to have full time coverage. 2 – bring back the old bl maps. for most players the maps are to big and to complex, wvw players just want fights with some terrain advantages for seige warfare like the previous map had, the new maps feel like pve and is a big turn off for almost all wvw players especially those in low populated servers because they ARE too big, many people i know stopped wvw and eventually the game after the expansion came out because of the new maps 3 – many wvw players have reached max rank points and have alot of spare points, perhaps and idea to this would be class specific wvw skills for example : warriors could have wvw skill that gives def while on ram and it doesnt have to be that much something like rank 1 in this skill gives + 1% def on ram and can go up to rank 3 or 5 or something like that just to have more options to be able to spend these on and the fact that class specific wvw exist it can slightly give a more diverse experience to wvw 4 – add some sort of official GvG to the game like a 15 v 15 or 20 v 20 that can be related to wvw 5 – add specific rewards that can only be attained through wvw like the previous weapon skins from past tournaments as well as addning some sort of tournament schedule to the game

1 – have larger blob servers broken down to lower servers to ease server stress for more stability, force them to be fair. – that’s about as reasonable as forcing lower tier communities to merge. lower tiers think of blobbing the game as cheating, weak meaningless pvp, easy play, else we would have moved.

i suppose a few lower tier servers might consider teaching them real pvp if it was absolutely necessary.

Ricky.4706:

1 – have larger blob servers broken down to lower servers to ease server stress for more stability, force them to be fair. – that’s about as reasonable as forcing lower tier communities to merge. lower tiers think of blobbing the game as cheating, weak meaningless pvp, easy play, else we would have moved.

i suppose a few lower tier servers might consider teaching them real pvp if it was absolutely necessary.

+1, I’ve been biting my tongue….

serious, if my free spirited wvw mode gets replaced by some snob that says i should have showed up on time for the nightshift to avoid 3 hour ques , it would be game over for me.

anet could always lock tier 1 in a perpetual battle and work things out for the rest of us lol.

DocHoliday.9218:

Gaile Gray,
consider this post as well.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Want-the-old-maps-back-172-Signs/first

Subtle. Me likey.

@Ricky: can’t +1 enough.

1. Bring in mechanics that ENCOURAGE FIGHTS, including outnumbered fights.
ex) Bloodlust stomps for PPT
ex) Bonus loot/rank/something for winning outnumbered fights. Calculated per fight not via outnumbered buff.
ex) Outnumbered killing spree buff or something that makes me want to fight outnumbered

2. Bring in mechanics that make scouting useful.
ex) An aura buff given by a objective lord that allows players to mark enemy players or siege. The buff goes away if you move too far away from the objective
ex) Rewards for having that scouting buff, much like defense event but the buff goes away if you are idle/running into a wall for 5 mins.

3. Make towers/structures relevant. The north towers are so far away from the keep there is almost no reason to bother with them. Perhaps make owning them open up a new route to attack the keep. No the barricades are not making it relevant.

4. Make a new WvW map. Make Red BL Alpine, Blue BL the Desert, and Green BL something new. Make it not so terrible either. Everyone should WANT to be Green to defend their Gari on reset. Right now, everyone avoids it like the plague. No one wants to be on their home borderlands because the natural 2v1 is such a… pain. Also, level out some of the crap on the desert BL. 10 minutes of running to get to a fight is a serious demotivator. Getting stuck on a 8 inch tree or stairs is just BAD.

5. Alliances. Make the change. I love my server but for the health of the game we need to break the stale game mode and bring back real rivalries. Make alliances compete to be worthy of those precious off hours guilds.

Edit: Bonus: Someone needs to make an addon that will play killstreak sounds from Unreal Tournament. I miss hearing double kill, triple kill, M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!

What about implementing something somewhat similar to Heroes from the first game, but for WvW?

I can only guess when it comes to technical limitations, but if I am commanding late oceanic time, there’s 30 or so (example) Kaineng and literally 3 Borlis around to defend against that, it would be nice to have 27 additional ‘anonymous hero’ NPCs spawn and come to my tag. That way, the matchups would always be even. The server system wouldn’t have to be changed at all. It would eliminate nightcapping.

In the day when, say, Gate of Madness is crushing them, I’m sure they would also appreciate bots to fight the GoM zerg with.

The maps already count how many people are on them to assign the Outnumbered buff or calculate queues.

Noia.9413:

What about implementing something somewhat similar to Heroes from the first game, but for WvW?

I can only guess when it comes to technical limitations, but if I am commanding late oceanic time, there’s 30 or so (example) Kaineng and literally 3 Borlis around to defend against that, it would be nice to have 27 additional ‘anonymous hero’ NPCs spawn and come to my tag. That way, the matchups would always be even. The server system wouldn’t have to be changed at all. It would eliminate nightcapping.

In the day when, say, Gate of Madness is crushing them, I’m sure they would also appreciate bots to fight the GoM zerg with.

The maps already count how many people are on them to assign the Outnumbered buff or calculate queues.

The AI in this game is terrible. All you would do is feed the enemy kills.

1.) Guild WVW upgrades should be tied to WVW and not PVE (how many times can this be said?)
2.) Fights should weigh heavier in scoring than passive PPT. I.e. PPK is good. Point per Capture could be better if Karma training was not an incentive/outcome.
3.) Rewards. I don’t want to step out of WVW to make gold. WVW should be just as profitable and give just the same high level tier rewards as fracs, dungeons, raids, pvp rewards tracks (WVW reward tracks… there’s an idea!), et al.
4.) PERFORMACE. Please optimize WVW. I’m tired of lag fest. My guild is tired of lag fest. WVW is tired of lag fest.
5.) Gilding, no gliding. I can go either way. I favor gliding for new combat dimensions and to make the DBLs interesting. However, I understand that EBG and the Alpines wouldn’t fit the gliding mold as well. Nonetheless, PVP combat needs to be spiced up in WVW.

Fix stab and remove venomshare on thieves.

I’d like Land, Sea, and Air combat in WvW. Thus, bring back Alpine with the Quaggans and include Gliding.

shoot…I said I wasn’t going to post here until I seen some positive go-go pouring into WvW from the company…yet here I am again after reading what some of you are suggesting.

People a server merger does not guarantee a healthy WvW population, or a well rounded server for that matter.

WvW is distinct and very different from all other game play in GW2 in the sense that it needs healthy numbers fielded 24/7 or it is quickly exploited and becomes a series of demoralizing face-rolls which don’t encourage people to keep playing.

2: No siege? o.O??? I guess those who are defending will just stand there and look pretty while the enemy gnaws on the gate with their teeth? Both sides of the coin need siege or you will have solo’s popping gates before anyone can respond and the last thing needed is to make it easier for a zerg to plow thru a keep.

Proposals are good, but think hard on your ideas, and look at it from every side to know if it will work in every situation. Every server is different, and while some of you may not like the auto upgrades I recall day in and day out that just a few took the time to babysit those upgrades while everyone else ran off to find more fights. It wasn’t very fun for them and it was also very costly. /hats off to those that put their fun aside for their teams back then. /respect.

BeerMan.3028:

Kamara.4187:

2: No siege? o.O??? I guess those who are defending will just stand there and look pretty while the enemy gnaws on the gate with their teeth? Both sides of the coin need siege or you will have solo’s popping gates before anyone can respond and the last thing needed is to make it easier for a zerg to plow thru a keep.

I am assuming you haven’t faced a server that goes by the name Yaksbend. They have a blob of 70 people but still hug their arrow carts,ballistas and cannons. Also they insta build openfield arrow carts and ballistas lol. The only siege that should be allowed in the game are rams and catapults so people actually come out and fight for the objectives. That makes the game more interesting rather than fighting a blob of 70+ people under their siege fire.

Here is the problem Anet have to address. Play styles from server to server and even within the server community have to be taken into account when making changes. While you have a problem with siege in the types of fights and populations that you have I don’t. I can’t remember the last time I died to siege damage or felt like it took too long to cap something. In my experience if you want to clear siege or draw a fight you build an open field treb but that might not be possible in your tier/type of fight/whatever.

agreed, wvw is truly like an open world pvp sandbox / olympics – there are a ton of ways different groups adapted to their local environments. The tier 1 servers think that because lower populations don’t have massive fights, we don’t have fun….nothing can be further from the truth- it’s just a different strategy – one that we’d probably miss if we were involved in blob fight. – when i transferred to a high rank server for a few weeks long ago, it was night and day, and i really didn’t enjoy it – everything was so militant, inpersonal and “this is not just a game” – it felt more like a job than fun.

Maybe tiers should be made weight divisions ? – you can join either a maxed out blob fight, a midrange fight or a small emptier fight which allows for a variety of strategies – making everything one way is bound to kill some of the cultures we’ve developed adapting to this system.

if a blob wants to stay a blob, fine – and if a smaller tier players want to play roamer style fine too – but maybe give everyone an option to join the fight of their choice without having to do an all out transfer, maybe this week i want to see what blobbing is all about, and next weeks match, i just want to roam solo

also note , the larger the server population, the less personal the chat becomes – in my server sometimes we talk builds or even roleplay, and it’s not always about taking the enemy down.

1 -5: Listen and work with the community to make WvW better.

1. Remove Desert BL and bring back Alpine BL
2. Balance professions
3. Bring back the old auto upgrade system
4. bring back Alpine BL
5. bring back Alpine BL

Gaile Gray.6029:

I have been tracking this thread with a lot of hope, thinking that this is a good premise for a conversation, something I could spotlight for the dev team. Forum members like Dayra, Stand The Wall, Dusty Moon, Norbe, and several others have made a solid effort over a few weeks to contribute constructive ideas. Thank you!

It would be nice if some of the devs actually responded in threads like this, if nothing else it would confirm that they are reading. With the Devs not posting it massively reduces the potentially positive side of these forums, players feel they are being ignored, become depressed until they can’t take it any more and then leave.

I wonder what the Devs themselves would consider their top 5 priorities in WvW? Perhaps you could organize a straw poll between them?

What does Gaile Gray think the top priorities are? If you haven’t spent much time in WvW I’m sure there are many guilds who would like to adopt you for the day and show you how things go there.

WvW players are highly passionate about their game, note I don’t say anet’s game or your game, this is THEIR game. That means sometimes they are going to be highly critical of something that damages the mode. It also means they can be the most pleasant and helpful of players too.

i find it interesting, that pvp wants their old stuff back, and pve wants new and more content. such a big difference between pvers and pvprs – I do both so I can appreciate both sides of the story …but unfortunately i find the pvers don’t see the pvp side – but it also makes sense in my game flow concept, pvers never got to the next level of pvp – so they assume its the same thing. this isn’t a dis, it’s an observation – pvp just clears the board to have more strategy vs the human opponent. pve fills their board to have more npc opponents. to pvprs its a distraction, to pvers it’s more to do to keep from getting bored doing the same things over and over. In pvp, players are always learning new builds and strategies keeping the fight interesting. in pve – the npcs are pretty much one trick ponies – it’s not like jormag is coming with a new build and landing somewhere else to throw you off.

no, pvprs are not really into pve – it’s more like pvers actually train for pvp – that’s where you learn the game mechanics without being 1 shotted by a human opponent.
I remember in gw1 many advanced pvprs use to suggest playing the game to understand the different mechanics used in pvp. these same guys would run high level strategy games in the hard core dungeons – where you can get 1 shotted very fast. it was more of a simulation of highly customized builds vs a high level pvp team than just a pve adventure – grad school for gvg so to speak.

Anet knows this well too, because in the gw1 pvp area, there were actual simualtions of npc pvp teams, advanced ones too that had healers tanks and nukers. so i’m not running with the anet doesn’t know pvp idea, they do, or someone did know game flow and pvp very well back then.

read the gw1 pvp wiki page – compare how focused and arranged pvp was described there, there was even consideration of how new pvprs trained, compared that to what pvp has become in gw2 …night and day – now i want to research credits to see what changed lol – http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Player_versus_Player

edit – from what i see the core pvp designers are still there…. my next question would have to be why did the focus change ….especially since now esports are so big and even becoming scholarships ( rhetorical question because the answer is becoming apparent to me with the research )

my abstract conclusion – anet needs to go for what wow cant go for – high school / college strategists looking for an esports scholarship. which you had in gw1.

wow pvprs are into pve – gw1 pvprs had their own pvp only characters. again, anet knows this very well. there was no way a gw1 pvp character was into pve – because a gw1 pvp only character wasn’t allowed into pve at all

hence the problem with wvw is it’s catering to the wow pvprs , not gw1 pvprs. don’t do that…..those kids grew up and need an esports scholarship lol

1) Autoloot
2) old borderlands or maybe new old boarderlands (smaller and flatter than the actual ones)
3) merge servers
4) nerf banners
5) give theoretically the whole map acces to the squad not only 50 ppl

what would bring me back to wvw and gw2…

1. no pve content in wvw. bring back the sandbox aspect of wvw( lords should not have pve raid mechanics f.e)

2. balance . split wvw and spvp balance apart again, buff stability, remove 1 shot cheese abilities, make each class viable and strong for group pvp fights and stop nerfing because of spvp imbalances

3. rework guildhalls and remove all the stupid buffsand banners they give from wvw. bring back old achievements that guilds already had worked for for the past years…….

4. make wvw only gear that pve farmers cant use in pve but that can be used in wvw. also make legendary wvw armor and weapons too

5. remove desert bl and bring a real wvw map without pve gimmicks without shrines without weird mechanics, with real keeps not mazes with less vertical chaos, without all the invis areas….like the oposite of desert bl and opposite of the horrible eotm map u know the one we hated the moment u brought it out……
like the old maps but reworked, without bloodlust….

1. Remove PvE (Environment effects, shrines, etc) to encourage fights
2. Flat maps (bring back old bl, or change desert maps) to encourage fights
3. Nerf siege placement to stop servers bunkering down and encourage fights
4. Greatly increase rewards, particularly for people who scout and build.
5. Have outnumber maps award less points to reduce population imbalance

From most-important to least-important:

1.) Reversion from Desert(ed) BL’s to Alpine or identical design. An overwhelming majority of players straight up hate the maps and would rather just not play. The keeps are too large and too convoluted, over-emphasis on chokes leads to stagnant fights where nobody engages, map gimmicks such as zerg stealth, barricades, etc. inhibit fighting and slow down movement too much, especially for small groups. Keep and tower lords are overly-difficult for small groups to take, even if uncontested. The difficulty and slow speed of movement/accomplishment of frankly anything makes small group play and solo scouting play next to pointless.

2.) Previously-existing Guild upgrades reverted in cost and the new upgrades removed. The new WvW upgrades are absurd, ill-thought-out, and frankly, almost universally disliked. The extensive gating of significant buffs such as +5 supply (essential for small groups) and absurd gimmicks such as banners, airships, etc., have even further fractured small group play. A majority of small guild have disbanded or quit the game entirely with these changes. They need to be much more accessible as to promote more players getting involved in WvW with their own communities. Titanic blobs are fun, but small group play is necessary to PPT and prior to HoT contributed heavily to a server’s success. This empowered more players to enjoy the game mode at whatever speed they wanted to.

3.) More responsive matchmaking, and a smart, data-driven AI to look at ways to merge servers between weeks to invoke better matchups across all tiers using individual server data points contributing to the success of the server/color’s performance the past week. This way top-tier communities and those of similar play patterns stay together while server integrity is preserved, and low-tier and desolate servers can get some help to improve their coverage hours and overall bolster population between weeks. These also help mitigate server-stacking which typically damage the communities which get left behind.

4.) Better rewards across the board through reward tracks, reworked defense objectives, and more affordable superior siege. Reward tracks would allow for players defending structures to get nice rewards over time by completing defense events, while not just handing out loot. Defense participation should have more meaningful scaling, be it through refreshing siege, building siege, killing attackers, and repairing structures. Players contributing to fortifications and maintaining them should be rewarded substantially due to the nature of the job, but not simply get free stuff for AFK’ing in a tower. Reward tracks would allow for this to be done with each track featuring a different defensive goal achievement, and for offensive players, rewards tracks could be used to gain more siege and more consistent rewards for a lot of fighting/capturing success. Superior siege should be easier to acquire and be purchasable via BoH. Superior siege is used in all environments, and again, the bigger the group, the more affordable it becomes. Normal siege has its uses in supply-constrained scenarios, and deciding between which to build should be a strategic choice. Supply cost reductions on normal siege may also be worth investigating to promote its use.

5.) Autoloot. In large and small fights, there’s nothing more irritating than needing to either spam the loot key the entire fight, or simply take a gamble on winning the fight and then run over the battlefield to collect loot, or simply lose all of the spoils on a wipe.

BeerMan.3028:

Kamara.4187:

2: No siege? o.O??? I guess those who are defending will just stand there and look pretty while the enemy gnaws on the gate with their teeth? Both sides of the coin need siege or you will have solo’s popping gates before anyone can respond and the last thing needed is to make it easier for a zerg to plow thru a keep.

I am assuming you haven’t faced a server that goes by the name Yaksbend. They have a blob of 70 people but still hug their arrow carts,ballistas and cannons. Also they insta build openfield arrow carts and ballistas lol. The only siege that should be allowed in the game are rams and catapults so people actually come out and fight for the objectives. That makes the game more interesting rather than fighting a blob of 70+ people under their siege fire.

Yes I faced YB when I was on a lower tier server, and you brought up a valid point. I recall them trying to siege hump us when we had near equal numbers and that didn’t work out so well for them when we replied in kind with siege. It was also a tough and fun fight that went on for quite some time.

But true enough it wasn’t so fun when they did that and we were not able to field enough players to answer them. Which is why I believe the key to this problem is to address team numbers for 24/7 play. Thank you for the reply BTW /respect.

((Edited for typos, bad spellz and generally trying to make a point before having coffee. ))

I severely doubt any of this will fly, but what the heck. It’s just ideas, not set in stone.

1. Remove all guards and make supply camps, towers, keeps and castle be player based. Instead of having a champion you have to kill, have it be a position a player must take responsibility for. All previous guard spots will be vacated by NPCs and can be filled with players, or remain empty. Give them a salary for holding these points as well as wxp per time interval, be it five minutes or a full scoring tick while fulfilling a position as an actual defender. Add bonuses to health, stats and/or new abilities to use. If a player goes outside the sphere of influence of one of these objective, the player forfeits their position and becomes a roamer.

2. With the above, make supply camps defensibly upgradeable.

3. Keep the new map, but not really sure what to do with monuments. I found the alpine map to be so freaking boring. I enjoy that the towers and keeps take time to get across. With point 1, this would not be much of an issue with wall patrols keeping an eye on things. Expand the towers and keeps of the alpine map and put it in a random, not alternate, rotation.

4. Or, complete disregard the above points and go with an integrated WvW, sort of like Edge of the Mist, where all green/blue/red servers fight to hold Battleground and the Borderlands. Create another map or two for Battleground and have those and the alpine and desert borderlands active at the same time. How servers will be placed or gain points no idea.

lil devils x.6071:

1)Nerf DBLs ( bring back pre Hot or earlier ALpine)
2)Nerf PVE and Environmental content in WvW
3) Focus on reducing lag for allowing more players in zone for PvP combat
4)Nerf Gliding idea for WvW
5) Create smaller, flatter, maps with the primary focus on keeping players engaged in challenging, fun, strategic PvP the majority of the time on the map.
6) Nerf idea of replacing EBG
7) Create More EBGs to be in use during prime time hours for overflow that are temporary timed maps that count for actual match score.
8) Close servers that do not have 24/7 coverage, and give free transfer to remaining servers.
9) Reinstate stabs
10) Reduce guild costs for WvW
I have more… due to them messing up too much to fit into 5.
11. Remove Banners.
12. Reinstate pre HoT guild upgrades/ buying influence ( or other way to pay instead of grind upgrades) and convert HoT upgrades into something equally nice ( for example + 5 Hot upgrade = charge + 5 for free forever instead). That makes everyone happy.
13. increase PPK for defending objectives increase rare loot for defending ( give ascended items, precursors, legendary crafting materials) ( only at hands of players not siege)
14.Remove PPK and loot from siege damage.
15.make PPK more valuable

100% agree with you.
Point 7) is hard to balance if one server has low population vs high. To fix this, Anet must eliminate the current server match system, and bring the old “faction” system into play. A player can choose a predefined faction (not a server) to fight for a limited time ( tournament ), like few weeks, and get rewarded accordingly of the faction evolution. It is very easy to create more instances for factions, and choose between, this will eliminate the wvw queue. If a faction is full, you can’t join it ( the guild master choose the faction to allow all guild mebers to be in the same faction), autobalance is very easy. I trust more on faction identity rather than current server identity.

keep/tower/camp taping. NPCs should NOT! be able to tap anything, maybe just the dredge and ogre mobs but that’s it, if even that.

My 2 cents – constructive feedback:

1. POPULATION BALANCE

Ranges from various sources but mostly giving your server’s side a meaningful reason to fight/defend their objectives thus keeping people around the clock active/interest for their server’s position. Right now there is no incentive to win; mere numbers on a board, stagnant match-ups, little to no server pride due to megaservers obliterating the good old days of broadcasting call outs for your server in main city hubs, class imbalance regarding game-mode example: Warrior with only 1-2 skill that grant ~10 stacks of stability on a long CD is not adequate enough in the midst of a zerg fight where CC’s are handed out like free candy. This is not small-scale 5-man PvP, this is 50+ man balls deep WvW and class skills should be balanced appropriately/respectively as such.

2. SIMPLICITY IS BEST – MAP DESIGN/LAYOUT

A happy WvW’er is a player who can run into a map, advance the terrain with ease and get to their objective relatively smoothly, fast. Old Alpine map provided strategic placement of certain towers to take advantage of other objectives; relatively flat one level domain to traverse easily. A level, simple map design allows easier access to finding fights, defending/attacking objectives etc. I want to be able to find the action and jump straight into it as soon as possible, not trek through eye-soar inducing monotonous cliffs and be locked out from the fray as such nor do I want to be arriving/stuck in a tower that provides little to no tactical/strategic value to my surroundings.

3. LESS ‘CHEESE’ PVE MECHANICS

Being knocked around by AI is never fun. Plethora of Guild WvW Upgrades such as banners, SMC airship defense, fountain stealth etc encourages lazy AI game-play/implementation and to a degree – over-tuned imbalance. I feel like I’m not fighting people; merely AI support. Annoying passive keep mechanics such as applying cripple whilst trekking through that area. Shrine Buffs we never would have had to bother with if point 2. (simple map design) was dealt with positively/appropriately. Research, encourage & establish humanly active game-play mechanics. Auto-upgrades is an example of anti-social behavior and destroys incentive to defend/attack leaving the player with but a mere thought – “It will reach T3 soon anyway, no need to worry about it.” or “We can flip it back later, let them have it, auto-upgrades will do all the work for us once we get it back.”

4. KEEP IN TOUCH WITH THE WvW COMMUNITY

Ranges from direct & indirect communication. Let us know what is going on. We are here to give our constructive feedback. We want to help shape the WvW game-mode, too. Releasing un-tested content and/or ignoring player’s concerns with zero acknowledgment is what kills a community within a game. A good example of active communication is the recently inquired Possible Reset Time Change thread whereby a dev asked us first for our input and we delivered as best we could. Another form of communication we like to hear about on a consistent basis regards balance changes in the form of class balance, siege weaponry, WvW abilities etc or anything upcoming that may impact our game-mode’s game-play in general. Communicate with us so we’re on the same level – let’s make the game more FUN.

5. REWARDS

Relies heavily on a content WvW’er (see above 4 points) and differs for each individual. Only once a game-mode is at a sound, stable level should rewards be dealt with – never a dev should dangle ‘rewards’ aka carrot on a stick to their player’s; it is parallel to covering up the problems under a rug and hoping/assuming we will drop it and “forget” about the issues at hand. I prefer a fluid, working game-mode first as opposed to rewards. Establish further uses for left over WvW Rank ability points - more siege capabilities, purchase items such as unique armor skins/weapons with them? Reward a set amount of old WvW Tournament Tickets per weekly reset to each green, blue, red server (requires player’s to possibly reach X amount of effort/objectives defended + attacked in order to be eligible for reward) or simply put – bring back WvW Tournaments. People want to be/feel rewarded/recognition for their efforts whilst playing WvW – adjust loot tables to drop items on-par with the PvE/PvP game-mode(s) but appropriately as such so as not to encourage PvE-minded ‘farming’. Rewards need to be tied to accomplishments but also cater to various types of WvW players; zergs, scouts, defenders, roamers, existent for X time/rank etc. Rewards in general may also branch out to having fun in the WvW game mode itself - and it all starts with previously mentioned communication, balance, commitment, results.

…Let’s work together to construct & establish a better WvW game-mode.

Noia.9413:

What about implementing something somewhat similar to Heroes from the first game, but for WvW?

I can only guess when it comes to technical limitations, but if I am commanding late oceanic time, there’s 30 or so (example) Kaineng and literally 3 Borlis around to defend against that, it would be nice to have 27 additional ‘anonymous hero’ NPCs spawn and come to my tag. That way, the matchups would always be even. The server system wouldn’t have to be changed at all. It would eliminate nightcapping.

In the day when, say, Gate of Madness is crushing them, I’m sure they would also appreciate bots to fight the GoM zerg with.

The maps already count how many people are on them to assign the Outnumbered buff or calculate queues.

you mean NPCs like the ones in the PvP lobby with different classes?
how bout the ppk on the npcs, same as the human points?
the AI of that npc hero, will it just zombified the field?

lastly, you cannot defeat GoM in combat by summoning AIs, even if they are outnumbered, they will still challenge you to an openfield and all hell breaks loose
the only way to defeat them is the Offtime PPT, they lack manpower to do coverage

to see is to believe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmNgz1uwnY8
https://youtu.be/WgF1b1H1lvE?t=576 (best FoV, feels like im playing SC2 with terrans vs protoss)

I only skimmed much of this before I sleep for the evening and sorry for my pessimistic attitude, but:

1. FAR MORE TRANSPARENCY!

Let’s face it. WvW is in a bad state at the moment. But my concern is your caring about the game mode in general. The last post in this thread from any dev was 5 days ago, and that was from Gaile. I understand she is “the communications lead”, but I would have expected to hear from another dev at least on the wvw team. The dev promise of listening to WvW players has been a long, drawn out myth. We want to know you are on here. We want to know the actual people make decisions see these suggestions and take them into account. I want to know these are not being read via 3rd party to the wvw team with the possibility of a “game of telephone” skewing the results.

To go along with this, the fact during the “Colin Leaving AMA” and your response of our new WvW plans were to big for our scope and scrapped is awful. You told us you were on things for a year+ and now you realized it won’t work. Involve us. I would rather hear “These are excellent ideas, but they have a possibility of being a year+ out due to our mechanics in place.” At least players can offer smaller scale suggestions that they would like to see if told that.

2. FIRDAY RESET!

Bring it back. Seriously. It would make Fridays viable again. I know you have another thread on this already, but once again… despite the overwhelming responses it has received… Not one kittening dev post in there besides the OP dev.

3. STAB CHANGE.

Make melee more relevant. Granted in the choke/pirate meta we have, melee does not have a lot of places to go to not get ranged down, but we still do exist as players. The alpine borderlands gave way to great open field fights as there existed a 360 degree range of going which made those amazing veils we received even more amazing. Does front line push after veil, veil and then feint, or veil and go around. Or just go YOLO and stab up and push in and hope you are more organized than the enemy. I know my reference has a lot of mesmer veil… But right now, mesmer veil is meh as there are so many chokes, you can anticipate the enemy and drop bombs anyways. At least before… You could make them waste most of that.

4. Going off #3… BRINK BACK ALPINE ON REGULAR ROTATION FASTER!

We know you, as a company, “do not like to go backwards”… But ANET kittened up with the desert borderlands. This is a high priority in my eyes to get the alpines back into regular rotation. I may have been sick of the map, but it offered the best fights in WvW I ever had. Desert BLs have an advantage over allowing servers to anvil and hammer each other with tactics, but that is an issue that causes fights to become one sided very quickly. A 36- degree range of motion is always far better than 2 small corridors and an open field back to a keep./tower and camp.

5. REMOVE/INCREASE TIMERS ON TACTIVATORS

Fifteen minutes on Chillin fog for a level 1 lever is awful and overpowered. The same goes for Emergency Waypoint, all banners, and pretty much everything else involved. These, if kept in game, should be increased to an hour long reset time. I thought their original purpose was for defense, but they have become more. Now, an organized server having to defend a keep, can pull chilling fog first and chase the enemy till help arrives. Then, since reinforced with help, can hold out for another 10 minutes with siege till they are pushed and someone pulls the emergency waypoint. Now they can rush and achieve downs till that is over and hopefully stall long enough for another chilling fog and push out the enemy with their numbers they have now before this siege even took place. Pulling levers to win is not fun. I’m a hypocrite here as my guild has done it, but it detracts from all servers and makes the game to who has more money to care about slotting upgrades.

1. SINCERE communication: WvW needs a management who cares about the game mode, who cares to communicate each step they have on the “list” – even if 99% of that fails. We can understand failures, we are humans too…
This “CEO” and whoever NCsoft leader allows him in place – must stop deceiving the WvW community – or CHANGE will never come. All will be the same “we know it better”, despite failing over and over and over. Humility over arrogance. It’s already too late, but let us bury at least this dead game mode decently.

2-3-4-5. Implement 1 change, test it, see the results, keep it or cancel it. ONLY then go to change 2… even if takes forever. Or small sets. You did more harm than good with most of your changes… and then you kept them! THEY ARE STILL THERE! Stop that.

stability rework
old maps
no gliding
cc rework (get example of engineer or dragonhunter or reapers)

The Lethe.2953:

3. Make towers/structures relevant. The north towers are so far away from the keep there is almost no reason to bother with them. Perhaps make owning them open up a new route to attack the keep. No the barricades are not making it relevant.

oooh.. good point. i miss when the northern towers could treb garrison. actually gave me a good reason to go defend them or try to retake them..(or take them on an enemy border). now it’s just another dot on the map

I also beg for fix the defend event triggered by bats chasing dolyaks or whatever kitten which makes swords appear or even contest WP.

1. Kill PPT.
2. Bring back Alpine.
3. CC rework/nerf.
4. Remove the ability to use e-waypoint on structures you wouldn’t normally be able to waypoint into. Like enemy garrisons, and EB keeps.
5. Lower the siege cap inside structures to about 1/4th of whatever it is now.

1. Fix class/skill unbalance between elites and vanilla classes
2. Make upgrades a manual action again
3. Bring back Alpine borderlands (unchanged!)
4. Remove all PvE inspired nonsense (banners, air ships, laser event, etc)
5. Undo stability nerf

I would list more but you asked for a top 5. I was having a blast every single day playing WvW right up till HoT got released. HoT sucked all the fun from the game for me. I stopped playing GW2 but if anet fixes the problems in WvW introduced with HoT I may return.

1. Bring back Alpine maps

2.Remove PVE content from WvW

3.Remove autoupgrade

4.Reduce CC or bring back old statbilty system without stacks

5.Better rewards for playing WvW and add smth like reward track in pvp

1. Use a feedback cycle shorter than 5 months. It was the 14th of October when ANet told us that you were moving WvW reset to Saturday. Despite overwhelmingly negative feedback, you persisted. Now you’re apparently gathering feedback on fixing that mistake. That’s not good enough.

2. Communicate, discuss (with us), iterate, implement, get feedback. I don’t expect every change to be one that <i>I</i> agree with. But it would be nice to see that WvW changes are things that <i>some</i> WvW players agree with.

3. Let WvW players reasonably access all stat sets of gear, in Ascended quality + all runes and all sigils, from playing WvW.

Server merges will be needed, it is way too many servers for the current population.

they should balance wvw server
not 50 + vs 3

Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but :
Make /t chat server wide (all bl’s can read this chat)
/m chat for the bl you’re on, onviously

Anything that encourages solo players roaming.

I want to be able to help my server when no one is online. I don’t want to wait for my friends to go online so that we can roam around.

Preferably: Sentry points now gives ppt when held just like towers, keeps, camp, and castle. This way, 10 solo players can capture 10 sentry points faster than a 10 man zerg. But solo players can’t capture towers faster than a 10 man zerg.

Just changing 2 things can make a huge difference in WvW and bring players back.

1. Bring Alpine Back. Don’t make adjustments for the new mechanics, keep them disabled on the map, we just want old Alpine to run in.

2. Stab Changes. Revert the stability changes for now until you rework CCs.

I’m not saying this will keep players forever but it will bring WvW players back and make the game enjoyable for many that left. It will allow you time to revise your plans/maps/mechanics.

I like these ideas.

1 – Remove WvW gamemode from the classic dev plan of the game.
2 – Do not allow the marketing section of the company to interfere with any content release.
3 – Listen to this tread, most of it makes sense
4 – Actually have Anet devs who enjoy playing GW2 instead of LoL.
5 – More player vs player content, less bullkitten like the ACs or airstrike.

It seems to me that the biggest problems with WvW, in this order, are population balance between servers, population balance between time zones on servers, animosity between PPT play and fight play, the lack of track rewards similar to pvp and the broken Glicky calculation. Notice I didn’t mention siege or class balancing. Siege is a reality of large scale conflict and class balancing should be fixed in pvp. Maybe there are some tweaks to be made to siege or class skills but those are trivial compared to the problems associated with population and incentives.

1. SERVER POPULATION BALANCE

I have been collecting data from the API and looking at raw activity numbers and while populatin balance may not be as big a problem in the top 2 tiers, in the lower tiers it is depressing. Also the balance in population between the upper tier and the lower tier results in basically two completely different games being played. Top tier being prone epic map blob fights and the lower tier being restricted small scale skirmish fights.

I am a fan of alliances. I know there is a complaint that this will impact pug play but given the alternative of population imbalance this would be a huge improvement. The below link gives ideas on how to implement pugs into alliances also. Of course if an alliance cant reach is population cap for a particular week, recuirting mercenaries (pugs) is a good option. This link gives a pretty good explanation of the need and a possible implementation: https://toughlovecritic.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/putting-guilds-back-into-guild-wars-wvw-alliances-part-1/

And to beat a dead horse, In the interim server transfer fees should be removed (but the 1 week hold should still apply as should the population caps) If a move to alliances is going to happen, having access to multiple WvW communities would be helpful in finding out where you want to end up and who you want align yourself with. This goes for pugs and guilds.

And one more thing, attempts to base population on activity will never work and doesn’t properly reward players for their efforts and can create grind conditions for more competitive players on truly lower population servers.

2. TIMEZONE POPULATION BALANCE

This problem is rampant on all tiers. On NA servers those that have coverage in OCX SEA timezones have a huge advantage as they can cap things in the middle of night and collect a ridiculous PPT for hours. The same is true for EU servers only the NA timezone becomes the problem. Trying to find people for these timezones is a nuisance. You either need off hours players in your own region which are hard to find or you need to recruit from other regions and those players will be playing with a bad ping generally. It is the most common complaint I hear becuase nothing sucks more than that small team capping the entire map while you sleep. All your efforts disintegrate and there is not a kitten thing you can do about it.

How about a global WvW megaserver? If we ditch servers for alliances, the we can ditch the notion of NA and EU. Have them all run on the system. One complaint I hear is that somebody is going to get screwed with a bad ping. I think this can be resolved with regional resets which transfer the the bulk of the load to the server of the region that is in its prime playing time. It will create a little down time which will break the continuity of the game but is better than the alternatives. This will only hurt the ping those middle of the night players. That is unfortunate but it is better than the mess we currently have. If alliances contain both NA and EU guilds ( NA/EU combined guilds) then the timezone coverage will work itself out. Players can even be force to register for a particular timezone for that week meaning that they cant play in other time zones during that match. Essentially enforcing balance among time zones with alliances and filling in with mercs if necessary.

I am not a fan of restricting the play times for WvW as some suggest. Any attempt to bracket WvW between 6pm to 2am destroys the most interesting and important part of WvW, the global community. It makes more sense to encourage NA/EU coordination than it does to simply throw it away. MMO gamers are a global community and the games should continue to evolve into that, not run from it.

3. PPT VS. FIGHT (Give GvG a place to call home)

People complain that PPT is recipe for unhealthy gaming behavior. Sure, and so are competitive attitudes and excessives amounts of caffeine. Gear grinds are also unhealthy but we still see people engaging that to be the first to get item X. Grinding is more a personality thing. I don’t like it but I have friends that do. So lets put to bed the notion that PPT is some how unhealthy (or cancerous). The problem with PPT currently is the off hours capping which was addressed above.

The fight guilds are the first to complain about PPT because “fighting is the fun part.” Sorry to say, that WvW is PPT. There is no large scale wargame that is not dependent on territorial control. Because WvW is a weekly match, score is awarded for time of control. There really isn’t any other way to to do it. The real problem isn’t PPT. Its that fight guilds have no place to truly show how awesome they are or how they stack up to other guilds in a “fair” fight.

Anet could alleviate some of its devloping PPT vs Fight community problems simply by giving a structured GvG Arena for Fight guilds. This can be built into WvW as some sort of buff reward mechanic or simply a different game mode. Fight guilds love to develop fight tactics and the open world of WvW and its inherent imbalance in gameplay makes it difficult to kitten which builds and tactics are better. I think the game would benefit from this immensely. It would be a boon to WvW theorycrafting and would help resolve the tension between the strategic PPT players and the tactics oriented fight players.

4. REWARDS

I didn’t realize how much a problem this was until I recently started playing sPvP. There is no reason reward tracks cant be included in WvW. The rewards should not be based strictly on 1st, 2nd, 3rd place. It should be based on objectives and kills (yaks and vets included) inside WvW. And reward for captures should be scaled to the number of people capping the objective. If 5 people capture a keep they should recieve 10 times the reward points of 50 people capping a keep. It would refelct the relative skill and effort in the achievement and discourage blob karma trains (at least for rewards). In addition, the weekly winner should get their reward points earned doubled for the following week. Giving the rewards the same week as the victory might encourage surging so giving the reward the following week evens out the week to week efforts.

As for the type of rewards, I think tracks like PvP are sufficient. It would allow players in WvW who absolutely don’t want to do PvE dungeon grinds or map meta events a way to collect the loot (which is sometimes important to WvW builds). I like to play all three game modes but not everyone does and Anet should accommodate game mode specialist because they become the community backbones of those game modes. Game mode specialist are a tremendous resource for players both new to the game mode and new to the game … and also a valuable resource for game developers when it comes to finding and correcting bugs and problems with mechanics.

5. FIX THE GLICKO

Some people think that rating systems are bad and we should use a simple ladder. And for weekly matchups and with few competitors maybe ladders aren’t so bad. The problem with ladders is that the rankings can be erratic and volatile and also when implementing a system, who starts at the top and who starts at the bottom. Not a big deal if you have ten teams in your league but what if you had 100? Arbitrarily starting someone at the bottom is pretty crappy and could take them a year to get to there rightful place at the top. The beauty of rating system like Elo and Glicko is that they allow every team to start at the same point in the middle and move to there respective (and relative) skill level. This means alliances could be created and destroyed without penalties the to players. They could simply create a new alliance and start at the default ranking if their current alliance is dysfunctional. It would add some volatility but would also allow for interesting revolutions in the field of play.

Another important feature of ratings systems is that when implement properly they always encourage more balanced competition. However, I pointed out previously the current system impacts mobility between tiers which is something that should be fixed. As it is now it is more difficult for a high performing server to break into the next tier than it should be. This is becuase the current scoring system in glicko (using the sin function) underwards strong performances and over rewards weak performances. This results in weakly performing servers being aided by the scoring mechanism and the stronger performing servers being penalized. Here is my original post on the matter: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Error-in-WvW-Glicko-Scoring

Keep it simple – in this case – yes.

1. Add more abilities to spend WvW rank levels on, further depth in character development

• Give players more abilities where they can customize their WvW role
• Add levels to existing abilities and make them deeper
• These do not need to be direct power creep abilities (see older posts)
• It ok to reward players that spend more time in WvW

2. Structure map buffs & importance

• Shrines were a good example where you have objectives that hold value for other objectives, would like to see more of that
• Add map wide bonus for controlling towers
• Allow further upgrades to sentries and allow them to further bulk up and act as roadblocks
• Give shrines secondary bonuses when controlled but keep is not
• Add control bonuses to EB, towers, NPC camps
• Add DBL type sentries to EB
• Allow higher upgraded structures to reward more PPT per tick based on upgrade levels – would also up the base value of PPK and give a bonus for outnumbered forces getting kills while outnumbered

3. Ascended/Legendary armor from WvWing

• Ascended/Legendary gear options should be available from WvW paths
• The difference in PvP and WvW is customization and gear progress, considering that WvW should have a way to acquire these items without having to PvE

4. Reward tracks – allow people to fund WvW activities in WvW

• A lot of people PvE to fund WvW – WvW should generate enough income on its own
• And yes this does mean correct the auto-loot issue as well

5. Add EoTM into the PPT scoring when each side has more than ‘x’ players on the map

• EoTM should be tied into regular WvW and can be done by adding its scoring into WvW points for the servers assigned to those sides for the week. Only instances that have min levels of participation for each side should be scored.

6. Adjust Siege supply cost

• Plan for havoc level play more
• Further reduction in supply costs for higher end seige
• Higher level siege should be more desirable
• The old balance of Regular/Superior/Guild siege made more sense

7. WvW bonuses should apply to server outside of WvW to encourage people to support their server in WvW

• Though this may not be noticed by a lot of players this bonus should be applied outside of WvW and be visible to players so that servers have at least a little more meaning to the world outside of WvW

8. Add more choke points and depth to EB

• On the opposite side here, EB now seems too limited after the new maps

9. Bring back some form of player upgrades

• Removing the ability to allow players to directly contribute to funding of upgrades remove some sense of ownership to that objective
• Players should have some upgrades that they can contribute to upgrade structures

10. Guild Comm Tags

• Guilds should be able to run their own tags that are visible to the guild if desired