Guild Wars 2

Since Alpine maps are delayed till atleast summer and we have to live with HoT mechanics on DBL/EBG please provide specifics they can remove/adjust so it’s bearable for few months.

Following helpful HoT mechanics should be kept:
1) Sentry displaying enemy on mini map is a nice way to give defenders information on enemy movement and increases the value of sentry
2) Watchtower upgrade allows server to free up some scouts so people don’t have to stand at structure, and instead can fight/play other roles. I would hate for someone to have to stand at watergate keeping eye for golem rush.
3) Commander UI – Keep it and add more functionality if possible

Please remove following HoT mechanics from Alpine BLs before revert.
In meantime please remove or tone down the following:

1) Turtle Banner- Banners like turtle etc need significant nerf or removed entirely
2) SMC Airship Defense – remove entirely or reduce how long it lasts & increase cd
3) SMC Cloaking Waters – Stealth from fountains that lasts way too long and ridiculously OP. It’s like legitimizing culling from launch.
4) Chilling Fog – Increase CD & reduce duration of how long it lasts
5) War room – Make it easier to unlock war room and reduce costs to upgrade it so that even small guilds can unlock WvW upgrades significantly faster. Things like +5 supply camp should be available easily.
6) Remove auto upgrades to structures – Don’t auto upgrade structure and instead remove gold cost from upgrades and allow people to select what upgrade to do like before. This will bring back the importance of defending and losing structures will actually mean something. This also gave some strategy to supply, chosing between building more siege vs repairing walls vs upgrading etc.
7) Reduce health of keep bosses including SMC

Problem is anet dug themselves into a corner with the gimmicky garbage because its part of guild upgrades. Basically removing them gets rid of nearly all the effort devoted to unlocking those items in the guild hall, and wastes peoples time/gold/materials. Nerfing them to the point of being unusable makes it pointless to ever bother with them and leaves a bunch of useless items guilds wont bother trying to unlock, and for those that already have them unlocked/stored up they essentially become worthless.

This is just typical anet not having any concept of consequences or anticipation. How did they ever possibly think that throwing in a bunch of untested, unbalanced garbage like this and leaving themselves little room to make much needed changes would ever be a good idea. This was just terrible planning, and poor strategy. Any dev knows that they must always leave themselves the option of reworking/removing something for a variety of reasons without it messing everything up.

Add waypoint change for keeps to.

I think 1-3 are solid ideas. I don’t have enough experience with Chilling Fog to weigh in on 4, but I imagine it’s also a solid idea.

With 5, I like the part about making the war room less of a grind and also wish that it could be done mainly or completely in WvW. I disagree with the part about making +5 supply easily available, though. The extra supply is extremely powerful and merits being one of the crowning achievements of the war room.

I completely disagree with 6. As the person that was often popping those upgrades, I greatly appreciate not only the lack of a gold cost but also the tiered upgrades rather than one thing at a time. I’d be sort of ok with having to give a ‘go ahead’ for each tier, but I don’t think that reverting the system will suddenly make people excited about defending.

Sviel.7493:

I think 1-3 are solid ideas. I don’t have enough experience with Chilling Fog to weigh in on 4, but I imagine it’s also a solid idea.

With 5, I like the part about making the war room less of a grind and also wish that it could be done mainly or completely in WvW. I disagree with the part about making +5 supply easily available, though. The extra supply is extremely powerful and merits being one of the crowning achievements of the war room.

I completely disagree with 6. As the person that was often popping those upgrades, I greatly appreciate not only the lack of a gold cost but also the tiered upgrades rather than one thing at a time. I’d be sort of ok with having to give a ‘go ahead’ for each tier, but I don’t think that reverting the system will suddenly make people excited about defending.

1. autoupgrades give you no pride in defending upgraded stuff is my main point. defending t3 garry on alpine was the most fun because server was invested in the ugprades and losing garry was considered major. Now kitten gets flipped and upgraded on it’s own.

Honestly at this point, I just want alpine back, the desert bl is the main reason I have spent less and less time in wvw to the point of having no desire whatsoever for it. I can at least live with the hot crap, much as I hate it, but for me the map is the biggest issue.

At least 3 of the gimmicks are unique to just SMC, guess thats a silver lining. I usually spent my time in a bl anyways, eb was always to laggy for me, and now with the queues constantly, it hasnt been easy getting inside during active times.

1+2+3+4: Remove them all. Rethink the entire upgrades and replace them with something else that will actually be fun to play against.

5: Just make all the WvW upgrades/war room require only wvw stuff (badges, Spikes, loot bags etc), and put hte +5 supply at least early enough that even small guilds can get hold of it. They’re the ones that need it the most. And yes make them cheaper.

6: Like the current version of auto-upgrade, wouldn’t want to see the old return. Nor am I a fan of the "click this button to upgrade objective". A more interesting option would probably to have the Yak protection bubble also give swift, so scouts can help dolyaks go faster, to upgrade things.

And another option, remove the "reinforced" at tier 3, and make those into tactivators instead. So you have to use up tactivator slots for that, one for each door/walls.

Regarding the "defenders pride", I think they planned to solve that with walking dolyaks and tactivators + guild claims. Can’t say they did a too good job off that. Honestly don’t know what would encourage "Defenders Pride" again, but seriously doubt adding the "Mash this button to upgrade" would do it.

7: Hmm, kinda like them as they are. Got bored with how easy they where before.

Luvpie.8350:

1. autoupgrades give you no pride in defending upgraded stuff is my main point. defending t3 garry on alpine was the most fun because server was invested in the ugprades and losing garry was considered major. Now kitten gets flipped and upgraded on it’s own.

I’m familiar with that argument—it’s been trolled out ad nauseum. I acknowledge that there’s less pride in it but reject the idea that there’s not ample reason to defend it. The only time it takes no investment is when there’s no pressure on camps and no one attacks it mid-upgrade—not a situation that happens often.

It’s not like you, as a commander (if you are who I recall), had any direct role in upgrading old-style Garri that you don’t still have for Ramparts. I simply can’t believe that the gold/karma of some other player was such a huge part of the motivation to defend it.

A better argument talks about the WP changes, though I think the good outweighs the bad there.

I support removing or at least tweaking autoupgrades. Removing gold cost was definately a good thing, few will argue about that. One of the issues is how little manual player involvement it requires. What is wrong with someone actually being at a structure to order upgrades, the old system was confusing to many, but now its all grouped into tiers making it a lot more simpler. Simply allowing every structure to upgrade by itself with little to no player involvement basically encourages more ktrain/blobbing because you want to constantly keep stuff paper so it doesnt upgrade fully. Combined with all the defensive additions implemented with hot, it makes people avoid t3 keeps like the plague. Whereas before attacking one might take you all night to try to capture it, but you got so many great fights with it, therefore it was not about the keeps, it was about the fights and fun. Now you just have people sitting with siege everywhere, bunkering up, in fully fortified keeps that they had little involvement in. Not to mention what a nightmare it is for small groups. And what is wrong with having scouts, dolyak escorters, etc on a map. That kind of great coordination and teamwork is what many people enjoy about wvw.

Sviel.7493:

As the person that was often popping those upgrades

Oh…. you did not just try to level yourself in the conversation? If that be the case Jr., then you obvious have a lot left to learn about the benefits of manual upgrades.

I agree with all 1-7 of the proposed changes.

Sviel.7493:

Luvpie.8350:

1. autoupgrades give you no pride in defending upgraded stuff is my main point. defending t3 garry on alpine was the most fun because server was invested in the ugprades and losing garry was considered major. Now kitten gets flipped and upgraded on it’s own.

I’m familiar with that argument—it’s been trolled out ad nauseum. I acknowledge that there’s less pride in it but reject the idea that there’s not ample reason to defend it. The only time it takes no investment is when there’s no pressure on camps and no one attacks it mid-upgrade—not a situation that happens often.

It’s not like you, as a commander (if you are who I recall), had any direct role in upgrading old-style Garri that you don’t still have for Ramparts. I simply can’t believe that the gold/karma of some other player was such a huge part of the motivation to defend it.

A better argument talks about the WP changes, though I think the good outweighs the bad there.

taking aside the argument that investment leads to more defense, manual upgrades was more fun because if no one took the time to upgrade towers they weren’t, so that lead to small teams constantly flipping camps, towers as havoc causing irritation. Now upgrades happen automatically to camps, towers, keeps so T3 is harder for small teams to flip so havoc team size is more. I am not saying get rid of scout mechanic from hot or re-introduce gold to cost of manual upgrade but having someone chose next upgrade from tiers is something simple enough to use.

Started recommendations on what can be kept. Only thing I can think of are things that help free scouts up.

Following helpful HoT mechanics should be kept:
1) Sentry displaying enemy on mini map is a nice way to give defenders information on enemy movement and increases the value of sentry
2) Watchtower upgrade allows server to free up some scouts so people don’t have to stand at structure, and instead can fight/play other roles. I would hate for someone to have to stand at watergate keeping eye for golem rush.

@ X T D
I’m not totally opposed to an upgrade button, though I think it’s just going to institute a bunch of busywork. Sure, the Karma Train will appreciate fewer upgraded structures but that’s only happening because it was too annoying to push a button in all of them.

@DeWolfe
You didn’t make any arguments and thus did not merit a response. I didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you, though.

@Luvpie
It takes 1.5 hours for T2 and 4 for T3. If there’s any pressure on the BL, T3 is easily a 7 hours journey or, sometimes, impossible unless a server concentrates on a small part of the map. The only time the new system is really hard on a havoc group is when WvW has very low population for long periods of time. Even then, ‘hard’ on a havoc group means they have to spend about 2 minutes longer on it. That’s less time than it would require to push upgrade buttons everywhere.

@Luvpie (second post)
Sentries are great~

I don’t think they replace scouts since you need a first responder in place quickly to save anything, but they are invaluable in helping players get to objectives before all the walls are down.

@sviel, I do not see why manually triggering free upgrades would be a problem. I mean if you want to build siege, you dont throw it down and have it instantly built right, there has to be some kind of player involvement. The main issue with the old upgrade system was the gold costs, which most will agree was stupid. The other main issue was how confusing it was for many people, this would often lead to unfortunate name calling against people who accidently queued the wrong upgrade. But anet did a good job getting rid of these problems by removing the gold costs, and grouping upgrades into a few tiers making it much more simpler. So it wouldnt be like before where a person had to stand around the whole time going through basically a puzzle of upgrades to queue up wasting their own gold. For a keep there is only 3 tiers, thats only 3 upgrades to order, there are only 3 keeps on a map, is that really such a tall order?

There are 3 keeps, 4 towers and 6 camps. The keeps would still be upgraded pretty regularly but keeping up with the rest would be annoying. At least, I haven’t seen any convincing reason to impose that on players. With no cost, it’s not going to bring back the ‘pride’ thing. It will make Karma Training/Havoc easier if players don’t want to run about queuing upgrades, but that seems like a poor reason to impose such inconvenience. I’d rather be defending something or roaming than running in circles around the map.

Also, camp upgrades aren’t even worth the trouble.

That said, it’s a concession I’d be willing to make—I just don’t think it’s a worthwhile idea.

It’s interesting XTD that you point out removing upgrades that guilds have invested time and money in would sour people. That’s exactly what happened with the introduction of guild hall/wvw claiming. The guilds that invested time and money in claiming upgrades were left without those purchased upgrades after the release. Yes, if you’ve invested you shouldn’t have your stuff taken away, but it happened once. Perhaps a compromise where upgrades earned with DBL are kept, but stiff like +5 isn’t as hard to reearn for smaller guilds that had it before.

Now I can see it being an issue on lower tiers that might not have the manpower to assign scouts and escorters. But it is important to promote and not neglect the importance of small team play, in the past a small team could hold down an entire bl while in communications with a zerg on another map, now there is just to much incentive to use a zerg everywhere, for things that small ops/havok teams used to do so well. I personally have great respect for what small teams do, I have seen some amazing work from them, and I really hate how they were marginalized by HoT.

HazyDaisy.4107:

It’s interesting XTD that you point out removing upgrades that guilds have invested time and money in would sour people. That’s exactly what happened with the introduction of guild hall/wvw claiming. The guilds that invested time and money in claiming upgrades were left without those purchased upgrades after the release. Yes, if you’ve invested you shouldn’t have your stuff taken away, but it happened once. Perhaps a compromise where upgrades earned with DBL are kept, but stiff like +5 isn’t as hard to reearn for smaller guilds that had it before.

The way I see it, is that the main problem with guild upgrades is more to do with the gimmicks that were added, they basically left little room for themselves as I commented to make meaningful changes or even remove anything because they are tied to guild hall progression. Something like +5 supply definitely needs to be unlockable at an earlier level with a far smaller cost, its just a basic for any wvw guild. A refund of mats/gold might be possible, I dont know anything about the coding. I will say that at least they did do a good job with changing the way upgrades/claims are prioritized, in the past a guild with nothing built could claim something, even if there was 1 person on the map and another guild had 40 for example. So that was changed for the better, to give priority to guilds with the most people on the map and if they have upgrades available.

The other major issue with the guild upgrades/unlocks is that it was poorly thought out, not necessarily the concept but the process. Unlocks your guild already had were taken away and gated behind a gold/pve grind. While at the same time telling us we cant have things like autoloot because it would cause people to spend less time in wvw to grind pve…./facepalm….

They’re too proud to get rid of them. Maybe in 6 months they’ll shave another 10 seconds off the stealth fountain?

X T D.6458:

Now I can see it being an issue on lower tiers that might not have the manpower to assign scouts and escorters. But it is important to promote and not neglect the importance of small team play, in the past a small team could hold down an entire bl while in communications with a zerg on another map, now there is just to much incentive to use a zerg everywhere, for things that small ops/havok teams used to do so well. I personally have great respect for what small teams do, I have seen some amazing work from them, and I really hate how they were marginalized by HoT.

It’s not a matter of manpower, it’s a matter of making the necessary tasks worthwhile. Giving us busywork isn’t going to make scouting feel rewarding, just tiresome. If you want to promote small-team play, give scouts the tools to impact the match besides calling in a zerg.

Also, I disagree about the incentive to use a zerg everywhere. Just yesterday I heard a guild talking about how much better splitting into 3 groups was rather than being all together. The way I see it, people are zerging because they want to knock down walls faster or they want to force the enemies to zerg in response (usually when they can’t field one). That’s not going to change with an upgrade button unless no one considers it worthwhile to press.

I doubt it would be productive to go into how HoT was better for small teams (but population decline was not) as we’ve beaten that horse thoroughly in other threads. I do want to note my disagreement, though.

X T D.6458:

Problem is anet dug themselves into a corner with the gimmicky garbage because its part of guild upgrades. Basically removing them gets rid of nearly all the effort devoted to unlocking those items in the guild hall, and wastes peoples time/gold/materials. Nerfing them to the point of being unusable makes it pointless to ever bother with them and leaves a bunch of useless items guilds wont bother trying to unlock, and for those that already have them unlocked/stored up they essentially become worthless.

Exactly.

I will start from even further. When they designed PvE maps for HoT, whole content requires A LOT of players swarming into those maps, completely different from all the old Tyria maps where you can wonder around solo and do whatever you like whenever you like. So, success of HoT and how much players can do on those new PvE maps demands the players to be present there, all the time, every day. What they noticed was that large part of playerbase was sitting whole day in the WvW maps instead, contributing nothing to the success of PvE maps of HoT.

So, the solution was to force WvW players into new PvE HoT maps by stripping away all the guild upgrades and making WvW guilds grind for specific materials in specific PvE maps to get upgrades back. For now, many guilds have done that already. I very much doubt they will be happy to basically lose everything again within 6 months.

There will be obviously demands for compensation for huge scribing costs, some guilds have thrown tons of gold and mats into scribing to get better in WvW. If the scribing becomes much easier and cheaper, these guilds should get the wasted mats/gold back.

Same way, if all the guild upgrades get removed/nerfed, there should be compensation for the players who have already unlocked these. Even when guild upgrades were overpowered and badly designed, players still had to unlock them by pouring gold away and wasting time in PvE grind.

FogLeg.9354:

X T D.6458:

Problem is anet dug themselves into a corner with the gimmicky garbage because its part of guild upgrades. Basically removing them gets rid of nearly all the effort devoted to unlocking those items in the guild hall, and wastes peoples time/gold/materials. Nerfing them to the point of being unusable makes it pointless to ever bother with them and leaves a bunch of useless items guilds wont bother trying to unlock, and for those that already have them unlocked/stored up they essentially become worthless.

Exactly.

I will start from even further. When they designed PvE maps for HoT, whole content requires A LOT of players swarming into those maps, completely different from all the old Tyria maps where you can wonder around solo and do whatever you like whenever you like. So, success of HoT and how much players can do on those new PvE maps demands the players to be present there, all the time, every day. What they noticed was that large part of playerbase was sitting whole day in the WvW maps instead, contributing nothing to the success of PvE maps of HoT.

So, the solution was to force WvW players into new PvE HoT maps by stripping away all the guild upgrades and making WvW guilds grind for specific materials in specific PvE maps to get upgrades back. For now, many guilds have done that already. I very much doubt they will be happy to basically lose everything again within 6 months.

There will be obviously demands for compensation for huge scribing costs, some guilds have thrown tons of gold and mats into scribing to get better in WvW. If the scribing becomes much easier and cheaper, these guilds should get the wasted mats/gold back.

Same way, if all the guild upgrades get removed/nerfed, there should be compensation for the players who have already unlocked these. Even when guild upgrades were overpowered and badly designed, players still had to unlock them by pouring gold away and wasting time in PvE grind.

are you telling me that getting these wvw upgrades (that we unlocked previous) unlocked again through more grinding wasn’t fun? /end s

If the only thing keeping these bad mechanics in game is the fact that people invested time/gold into it already … well sorry but keeping kittenty mechanics in game that aren’t fun just because you had to get them is no reason to keep them. As far as compensation.. I doubt anet can refund. maybe they can give you pretty title or something

I was scout on the Alpine BL. Generally defending Hills…
I loved to make this, yeah… The main job was defending the south camp.
Manual upgrade cost some gold yes, but this was not a issue because we have a big community guild who provided gold and siege for the scout. And I prefer cost to upgrade (at least ennemy won’t upgrade something that he will not defend) that huge grind wall for guild upgrade !

With the old system you have to make the good choice about wich upgrade to start… Rush the WP ? Start the wall first ?
And you have to make other choice, like storing supply to be able to repair in case of attack ? Start building siege before starting upgrade ? If you start some upgrade without escorting yaks your keep will stay with 0 supply !
No the old system was fine ! Maybe just allow that only the guild who claimed the keep can start upgrade. But the guild need to reclaim the keep each hours, or maybe 2 hours max. Or be able to start a pool on the map to force unclaim a keep.

The old upgrade system make that the server with good organisation (scout, community guild, roaming guy) will be able to upgrade the keeps. And the “bad” server won’t be able to do that because no one want to do the job.

The only thing that I don’t liked on the Alpine BL was that we don’t have fortified gate… The reinforced gate was too easy to open by a zerg. Then maybe you takes 8H to build your T3, but the ennemy zerg can be in the lord room in less that 3min.

Alpine BL needed some work yes. They have alreasy nerf the dragoon tooth, now there is only the meteor shower who is real threat it can be ok.
Players wanted to have a new map yes, but not the deserted BL… And not the HoT stuff… Too much PVE advantage (guild upgrade, shrine).
I was scout (I don’t play anymore, hate too much the HoT change), but I don’t want to have PVE grindable advantage ! I want to be able to make fair defense and fair fight. WvW is PvP around keep and tower… Not PVE.

Sich.7103:

I was scout on the Alpine BL. Generally defending Hills…
I loved to make this, yeah… The main job was defending the south camp.
Manual upgrade cost some gold yes, but this was not a issue because we have a big community guild who provided gold and siege for the scout. And I prefer cost to upgrade (at least ennemy won’t upgrade something that he will not defend) that huge grind wall for guild upgrade !

With the old system you have to make the good choice about wich upgrade to start… Rush the WP ? Start the wall first ?
And you have to make other choice, like storing supply to be able to repair in case of attack ? Start building siege before starting upgrade ? If you start some upgrade without escorting yaks your keep will stay with 0 supply !
No the old system was fine ! Maybe just allow that only the guild who claimed the keep can start upgrade. But the guild need to reclaim the keep each hours, or maybe 2 hours max. Or be able to start a pool on the map to force unclaim a keep.

The old upgrade system make that the server with good organisation (scout, community guild, roaming guy) will be able to upgrade the keeps. And the “bad” server won’t be able to do that because no one want to do the job.

The only thing that I don’t liked on the Alpine BL was that we don’t have fortified gate… The reinforced gate was too easy to open by a zerg. Then maybe you takes 8H to build your T3, but the ennemy zerg can be in the lord room in less that 3min.

Alpine BL needed some work yes. They have alreasy nerf the dragoon tooth, now there is only the meteor shower who is real threat it can be ok.
Players wanted to have a new map yes, but not the deserted BL… And not the HoT stuff… Too much PVE advantage (guild upgrade, shrine).
I was scout (I don’t play anymore, hate too much the HoT change), but I don’t want to have PVE grindable advantage ! I want to be able to make fair defense and fair fight. WvW is PvP around keep and tower… Not PVE.

well said. I think people forget the fun of managing supply to upgrade certain things manually in certain order as you try to outmaneuver your opponent. Ofcourse trolls/claiming etc was a problem but it had strategy involved.

One of my favorite aspects of wvw, aside from the massive fights of course, is the variety of roles a person can play. You can zerg, scout, do havok/small ops stuff, roam, escort dolyaks. This variety of roles helps foster a tremendous sense of server community, coordination, cooperation, and communication which made wvw fun for so many, and kept many of us coming back. I would like to see more focus on this kind of teamwork, and not a focus on grind and gimmicks.

The main reason that made upgrades really difficult was supply. You had to spend supply on every upgrade. So: We come to EB, all our stuff has been taken, the enemy zerg is still around, we’re maybe 5. We cap a camp, a tower, one of the 5 should stay at the camp to wait for enough supply to upgrade, then go to the tower and order an upgrade: It’s just 4 who can go on capping the next stuff. That’s the main problem I had with the old upgrades. Also that people were often ordering upgrades while we were defending. Or no upgrades at all, because someone else should do it and then everything is paper the entire time.
I suggested that the upgrades should be tied to the outnumbered buff: those servers who have it get auto upgrades.
But in the end the whole thing is a lot more complex: If it were possible to defend paper or reinforced with some acs 5 vs 15, then auto upgrades wouldn’t be neccessary – but since 5 vs 15 always means that those 5 will lose, auto upgrades are kind of nice.
I get the problem that everything is upgrading for everybody equally.
Maybe the return of the ABLs means that we can give better feedback on all the other stuff and probably get back to a state of wvw that makes sense once again.

Jana.6831:

The main reason that made upgrades really difficult was supply. You had to spend supply on every upgrade. So: We come to EB, all our stuff has been taken, the enemy zerg is still around, we’re maybe 5. We cap a camp, a tower, one of the 5 should stay at the camp to wait for enough supply to upgrade, then go to the tower and order an upgrade: It’s just 4 who can go on capping the next stuff. That’s the main problem I had with the old upgrades. Also that people were often ordering upgrades while we were defending. Or no upgrades at all, because someone else should do it and then everything is paper the entire time.
I suggested that the upgrades should be tied to the outnumbered buff: those servers who have it get auto upgrades.
But in the end the whole thing is a lot more complex: If it were possible to defend paper or reinforced with some acs 5 vs 15, then auto upgrades wouldn’t be neccessary – but since 5 vs 15 always means that those 5 will lose, auto upgrades are kind of nice.
I get the problem that everything is upgrading for everybody equally.
Maybe the return of the ABLs means that we can give better feedback on all the other stuff and probably get back to a state of wvw that makes sense once again.

well hopefully some form of population balancing will fix the 5v15 situation for most timezones.

Luvpie.8350:

well hopefully some form of population balancing will fix the 5v15 situation for most timezones.

That’s just throwing people at the problems.
I have been around when 5 vs 15 in a tower was still possible – so I know that it works in theory and it would be great to get some of that back.

There’s no mythical population balancing solution that’s going to make the 5v15 situation go away. At best, it won’t be common during primetime, but that’s about as much as can be hoped for.

Sviel.7493:

There’s no mythical population balancing solution that’s going to make the 5v15 situation go away. At best, it won’t be common during primetime, but that’s about as much as can be hoped for.

population isn’t magically going to fix things but more people is better no?

Yes, but a better plan is to ensure the game doesn’t fall apart with such minor population differences.

If you look here: http://coveragewars2.com/timezone/?tab=graph you can see that there isn’t that big a gap, usually. The biggest gaps tend to be when one server peaks because the other servers, if they can’t match the numbers, experience a sharp population decline. I imagine this is because they realize there’s nothing they can do.

Giving people limited tools for damage control during low pop times should precede more hardcore population balance.

X T D.6458:

Problem is anet dug themselves into a corner with the gimmicky garbage because its part of guild upgrades. (…)

Part of that and everything else…… instead of working on good mechanics and improving design they choosed to hide what game lacks with those called mechanics….

IT will be impossible to get out of that hole or change the game that much to give a good player experience overall…. but ill wait to see what they will make.

They also need to change back to the old waypoint system.

For the war room change an easy fix would be to just switch object aura 8: +5 supply at level 37, with object aura 1: 20% magic find at level 6, leave the cost just switch the auras. Guild hall level 6 isn’t hard to get and will make small havoc teams effective again.

Xenesis.6389:

They also need to change back to the old waypoint system.

For the war room change an easy fix would be to just switch object aura 8: +5 supply at level 37, with object aura 1: 20% magic find at level 6, leave the cost just switch the auras. Guild hall level 6 isn’t hard to get and will make small havoc teams effective again.

they need to redesign WvW, how Guild works, not only war room, stop pretending guild exist etc, guild arent important to the game…. i doubt it will happen somethign like that, if not wvw is to simple, and dumbed down based on flip redundancy 24/7 for ppt only, and imo that is lost time playing anything better….. gw2 feels way to old and simple as one of those mmo’s we can play on out android tablet, that is how complex this game is….

X T D.6458:

One of my favorite aspects of wvw, aside from the massive fights of course, is the variety of roles a person can play. You can zerg, scout, do havok/small ops stuff, roam, escort dolyaks. This variety of roles helps foster a tremendous sense of server community, coordination, cooperation, and communication which made wvw fun for so many, and kept many of us coming back. I would like to see more focus on this kind of teamwork, and not a focus on grind and gimmicks.

That’s a nice idea and was a focus early on, but it kind of fell apart because there’s no reward for most of those roles. ‘Scouts’ never scouted properly, because the role lent itself to roamers and most roamers didn’t care who took what. Escorting dolyaks simply didn’t happen because it was so boring. Upgrading things did happen, slowly, but it was a drain on the people who did it because so few cared.

They’re problems that still haven’t been addressed but were glossed over with the HoT systems. We’re walking straight back into them.

All these nice things players can do for their servers – what’s the point? One more bonus chest at the end of the week?

I see what you mean with number 6. As there has been no player interaction in choosing the upgrade route, it can feel like you’re simply competing against a timer rather than a server’s work. It was improved with the introduction of the dolyak count, but I do agree that it needs a little something else to bring back the player participation.

Simonoly.4352:

I see what you mean with number 6. As there has been no player interaction in choosing the upgrade route, it can feel like you’re simply competing against a timer rather than a server’s work. It was improved with the introduction of the dolyak count, but I do agree that it needs a little something else to bring back the player participation.

plus it had strategy involved, choosing what and when to upgrade on the weekend was so much fun.

I remember it as being stressful and rather embittering since the upgrades often got wiped before completing.

I agree with 1-7

Upgrades seems to have generated abit of discussion. One thing that has popped to mind for me is that supply had to be managed before the HOT update and this is possibly contributing to the massive amount of siege that is now able to be built in towers and keeps now. Old upgrade system did put pressure on supply and therefore impacted the siege that could be built…so there definitely is some merit in removing supply via upgrade to generate more siege free fights. The over abundance of supply makes defense of objectives OP with ability to repair gates/walls and build/rebuild siege.

Just one way of looking at it.

The new upgrade system was build for 2 reasons :
– troll upgrade
– upgrade cost

This can be done in other way….

Before upgrade take supply from the keep, this added more value to supply, and need more tactical decision before starting upgrade.

I have other solution….

You need to use WvW rank to unlock ability to claim supply camp / tower / keep.
With WvW rank you can unlock more upgrade. Don’t know if you need WvW rank to unlock basic upgrade, maybe not. But at least for advanced upgrade (maybe like emergency WP, passive upgrade from WvW guild upgrade) or aura bonus. On my opinion we should just remove the bonus from guild upgrade.

Each player (not guild) can claim 1 thing in the map.
Each claim is for 4H max. You can go to the lord to increase your claim time.
Each player can start a poll on the map to force unclaim something.
Once you have claim something, you can choose who can start upgrade / take supply / build siege inside the keep.
You can choose to allow everyone, only ally (guild / players) or only yourself. Maybe something like whitelist / blacklist.
This will protect from supply / upgrade troll and give more control for the scout on the tower.
The upgrade are like the old system, they need supply and time. But no cost at all directly from the player.
You can choose what to upgrade, and you have to start the upgrade yourself.

Something like this allow to involve solo players, protect supply / upgrade troll, remove upgrade cost and give back the feeling that you “own” something.
WvW should not be around guild, but players and server. Guild need true GvG with ladder like PvP, but they should not be mandatory in WvW.

change the mechanics to pre-HoT and bring back the old stability.

The current upgrade system is best, it prevents it from being exploited by siege trolls, also less work for players doing dull tasks, but they should make Waypoints inside the Borderland Air and Fire keeps an upgrade.

I agree with OP 110%. Players spent their $ on an expansion that made the game mode unplayable for them and feel robbed. It took more away from the game mode than it added to it. MANY players have not been able to enjoy WvW since HoT was released due to these very issues , many have not been playing the game at all due to it.

In addition, they should convert the bad HoT guild upgrade system back to the way it was and for those who had to grind their tails off to get the crap they already had back, they should be given something that will make them happier in addition to what they had before. " upgrades" to a game should give you MORE, not take away what you already enjoyed and earned instead. They can resolve this issue easily by converting things like old +5 gets restored, those who earned it again never get charged “Influence” or any other currency for charging it again unless they speed it up. Being able to charge all the upgrades for free would be adequate compensation for those who went through the trouble to earn them back after they were stolen from them.

The key when doing these things to the game and players who have spent their time and money investing in it is to actually THINK about how this affects those players, and be mindful of how the actions will make players feel. taking away what players already have earned isn’t what they paid extra for, it was the lack of thoughtfulness put into the decisions to change the guild upgrade system and how it affects the players who had already earned these things, in addition to how this affects the game play of the actual game mode and the many different play styles within. When you are playing WvW, you have scouts who enjoy doing the upgrades, there are actual players that IS their play style and that is what they enjoyed being able to do and it was taken from them completely. The work they put into it is why the server protected those assets and responded to calls. With HOT there was no reason to defend and the scouts were put out of a reason to play.

when making changes to WvW all things should be considered:

• Zergs vs Zergs: Those who play for the large scale combat hunting down the enemy mobs and battling it out in mass.
• Scouts :those who are the guardians of the towers and keeps. Those are their babies and they build the siege that is within them, upgrade them how they see fit and take watch over them. They defend those objectives and call for back up when back up is needed.
• Havoc: fighting on a smaller scale/ taking objectives/ working and coordinating with the zerg so they can handle many objectives at once while the zerg is engaged in battle with the enemy zerg
• Roamers: Running interference to prevent downed zerglings from making it back to the zerg, killing yaks, taking camps, assisting scouts , zergs and havoc as needed.
• Players that ONLY play WvW and would be happy never stepping foot in PvE ever, Nothing used or is affecting WvW game play should require PvE to obtain it. PvP is a self sustaining game mode, and WvW should be the same way.

All of these roles assist with the playing of the game mode itself and should be considered when making these changes. Prior to HOT Even 2 person guilds had +5 supply capabilities and could help support their server and buff keeps. Their guilds were made useless and all the time, money and effort they put into those guilds were just taken from them instead. They paid for an expansion that ruined their game they loved for them.

These things devastated so many players enjoyment of the game entirely and since nothing was done immediately to correct this by ANet for months and not even started to be worked on until recent, many feel completely abandoned by the developers of the game they have enjoyed and been so dedicated to for so long.

Many are still in shock they are still trying to work on the DBL right now instead of bring back Alpine. They should have dropped work on DBLalready and started work on Pre HoT WvW with Alpine MONTHS ago. That decision alone right now is making players walk away from the game and not look back given what has happened since HOT release.

lil devils x.6071:

I agree with OP 110%. Players spent their $ on an expansion that made the game mode unplayable for them and feel robbed. It took more away from the game mode than it added to it. MANY players have not been able to enjoy WvW since HoT was released due to these very issues , many have not been playing the game at all due to it.

In addition, they should convert the bad HoT guild upgrade system back to the way it was and for those who had to grind their tails off to get the crap they already had back, they should be given something that will make them happier in addition to what they had before. " upgrades" to a game should give you MORE, not take away what you already enjoyed and earned instead. They can resolve this issue easily by converting things like old +5 gets restored, those who earned it again never get charged “Influence” or any other currency for charging it again unless they speed it up. Being able to charge all the upgrades for free would be adequate compensation for those who went through the trouble to earn them back after they were stolen from them.

The key when doing these things to the game and players who have spent their time and money investing in it is to actually THINK about how this affects those players, and be mindful of how the actions will make players feel. taking away what players already have earned isn’t what they paid extra for, it was the lack of thoughtfulness put into the decisions to change the guild upgrade system and how it affects the players who had already earned these things, in addition to how this affects the game play of the actual game mode and the many different play styles within. When you are playing WvW, you have scouts who enjoy doing the upgrades, there are actual players that IS their play style and that is what they enjoyed being able to do and it was taken from them completely. The work they put into it is why the server protected those assets and responded to calls. With HOT there was no reason to defend and the scouts were put out of a reason to play.

when making changes to WvW all things should be considered:

• Zergs vs Zergs: Those who play for the large scale combat hunting down the enemy mobs and battling it out in mass.
• Scouts :those who are the guardians of the towers and keeps. Those are their babies and they build the siege that is within them, upgrade them how they see fit and take watch over them. They defend those objectives and call for back up when back up is needed.
• Havoc: fighting on a smaller scale/ taking objectives/ working and coordinating with the zerg so they can handle many objectives at once while the zerg is engaged in battle with the enemy zerg
• Roamers: Running interference to prevent downed zerglings from making it back to the zerg, killing yaks, taking camps, assisting scouts , zergs and havoc as needed.
• Players that ONLY play WvW and would be happy never stepping foot in PvE ever, Nothing used or is affecting WvW game play should require PvE to obtain it. PvP is a self sustaining game mode, and WvW should be the same way.

All of these roles assist with the playing of the game mode itself and should be considered when making these changes. Prior to HOT Even 2 person guilds had +5 supply capabilities and could help support their server and buff keeps. Their guilds were made useless and all the time, money and effort they put into those guilds were just taken from them instead. They paid for an expansion that ruined their game they loved for them.

These things devastated so many players enjoyment of the game entirely and since nothing was done immediately to correct this by ANet for months and not even started to be worked on until recent, many feel completely abandoned by the developers of the game they have enjoyed and been so dedicated to for so long.

Many are still in shock they are still trying to work on the DBL right now instead of bring back Alpine. They should have dropped work on DBLalready and started work on Pre HoT WvW with Alpine MONTHS ago. That decision alone right now is making players walk away from the game and not look back given what has happened since HOT release.

DBL either should have received attention within month of launch to address WvW community concerns but it seems anet started working on exp2 before they fixed any issues exp1 had.