Guild Wars 2

Strang.8170:

Just take a look at EB. It´s asymmetric and as a result some teams have noticeable advantage over other 2 according to many anyhow. They propably spent a lot of time polishing, designing and polishing that map, and still it´s not balanced good enough for some of us. If you can´t see what happens if they just throw up 3 maps for borderlands there´s really no hleping you aguess.

That’s why each server has rankings. The only unbalanced thing about EB is the fact that blue spawn belongs to anything but 1st place.

-We have talked about population issues but don’t design for it

makes sense since the screwed few people on the underpopulated server are only few and thus have no weight anyways. so anet’s actual philosophy is if you want good WvW transfer up to higher tiers coz we aint doint nothing for the servers that lost their WvWers to free transfers.

also tried to watch the vid but cant skip blabla in the beginning so skipped the movie instead.

This makes me genuinely sad. I dont want to quit but if WvW dies i have no choice but to move on to the next game. Its a shame because they got so many things right in gw2. Their post launch performance doesnt even seem like the same passionate innovative company that sold me on the game years ago. I will overlook quite a bit and remain happy, but seeing how out of touch they are just kills it for me.

Hello Kanikani,

I can confirm this. Even in T1, all 3 servers are losing population drastically in WvW. Some more severely than others. PvE esp Fotm are still doing very well.

FW

kanikani.2430:

WvW is already dieing the populations are down mostly across the board. I have spoken to people on many servers who see this trend, and I know many hardcore players that have left. This kind of interview and attitude is what kills MMO’s that is just what it is. If you really think this is good enough see what happens to GW2 in the future. This interview confirms they wvw is very low priority.

I’ve worked out what the big update is :

Added new jump puzzles to every map, now you can have twice as many people not helping in wvw as you currently have, and even less chances of entering and playing wvw at busy times as the pve’rs (with commander badges on) dominating numbers while you lose all your upgraded towers and keeps! oh and placing their siege on top of the reward box in the puzzle and spamming chat asking for mesmers to portal them in the jump puzzle.

Any more jump puzzles and this game should be ‘jump puzzle 2’.

Victory.2879:

I’ve worked out what the big update is :

Added new jump puzzles to every map, now you can have twice as many people not helping in wvw as you currently have, and even less chances of entering and playing wvw at busy times as the pve’rs (with commander badges on) dominating numbers while you lose all your upgraded towers and keeps! oh and placing their siege on top of the reward box in the puzzle and spamming chat asking for mesmers to portal them in the jump puzzle.

Any more jump puzzles and this game should be ‘jump puzzle 2’.

I love jumping puzzles. I want more of them.

I don’t want more of them in World vs World, pretty much for the exact reasons you’ve stated. It would just be so much easier to have a WvW daily achievement hand out siege and it would instantly make everything better.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Never saw this end up on the forums so figured I’d share ->

http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/2012/12/18/guildcenter-121712-special-guests-habib-loew-matt-witter-anet-wvw-devs/

Interview section starts about 25 minutes in, some useful info looking ahead for all of you in there who love WvW. Don’t (or do?) miss the song at the start!

Habib and Matt in the interview pretty much states it – character progression and rewards (to keep players WvW’ing). In the Feb patch.

While not changing anything how the map layouts are.
Working on the culling – which was stated a few weeks after launch as well.

So the news is pretty much wait for the febuary patch – to get ascended gear? While we keep playing in zones where culling is a constant issue…?

Oh and no changes for a commander – while it could be useful with a small window as your friendlist. And having an option to make the icon only visable to guild members?
Maybe change the colour of icons of guildies and friends on the minimap? Instead of having the same green dots … ?

My 2 cents

Yep posting this was a bad decision, though in the long run it won’t matter. What matters is the February patch, I hope it’s some great stuff cuz if not, WvW population might just take a big hit…

Veldan.4637:

Yep posting this was a bad decision, though in the long run it won’t matter. What matters is the February patch, I hope it’s some great stuff cuz if not, WvW population might just take a big hit…

Have any of their patches had great stuff?

So far their patches have been a bunch of pumpkins and snow men and frivolous crap. Everything meaningful they have put off or done nothing about or ignored.

kanikani.2430:

The reason people are mad is because they promised a ‘big’ update in Feb and everyone said oh wait till Feb they will fix all these problems. Then we basically come to find out they aren’t even thinking about starting to work on the issues that are important to the community.

Things that are important: Exploits, Hacks, Staleness of repeat matches, boring maps, lack of variety of siege, lack of variety of upgrades, rewards, broken mechanics, populations, transfers, zerging, night capping, pve issues, downed mechanics, rankings, commander issues, UI, and I am sure there are more.

Things they are working on: rewards, culling

Does anyone see how these lists don’t match?

The interviewers didn’t ask about most of these issues. So we don’t know if there are any other adjustments in the works.

Several of these complaints are not even WvW specific.

Populations: assuming you’re talking about servers with plummeting player numbers. If new people don’t join them, server merges are the only answer. Added breakout to try to help a little.

Transfers: they will not stop until guesting is implemented. They already increased the CD to 7 days because of complaints.

Zerging: what do you want ANet to do about this, have lightning strike from the heavens to kill zergs? This is a player issue.

Night capping: I guess WvW should only be active during prime time. People will always complain about night capping, morning capping, or afternoon capping. I have a solution, towers and keeps should go invulnerable unless a certain amount of players are in them!!!!!!!! /sarcasm.

Urrid.4593:

I couldn’t skip the “song” so I closed it. My brain is thanking me…

i came here to say exactly this lol, upload your videos to youtube with proper functionality and then ill watch the good parts

in my opinion, the biggest problems are free transfers and nightcapping!!

But it’s still an amazing game!!!

Thanks for posting the video! With it I’m finally all done with WvW. The lack of real rewards, the ridiculous requirements for titles, culling, thieves, etc. etc. I’m tired of it all and none of it will get addressed. So, thanks! I can finally feel okay about giving up what was my most anticipated piece of this game.

I read the topic and noticed the devs mentioned server transfers aren’t an issue. I decided not to bother even listening to the interview after reading that.

shadowsoul.2134:

in my opinion, the biggest problems are free transfers and nightcapping!!

But it’s still an amazing game!!!

It’s a worldwide game – it’s always night somewhere. How ya gonna fix that?

I don’t get the doom and gloom here. They are looking at culling. What else do you want? They are adding some sort of progression. Great! That is a huge thing for a lot of players. We know they are working on making at least the stat only version of Ascended items available via WvW as well. All they would need is to allow toggles for show names and stuff and we are good to go. New maps are great but this is a new game, we should be able to wait a bit for that. You also can’t just throw in new maps and not screw everything up. You don’t want to fragment the WvW population so much it’s hard to find good fights.

Evalana.5480:

Whoever sang that song … needs to hire a professional if they decide to write another one… My ears bled. and bled, and bled….

Good thing bleeds are capped at 25 stacks then!

On topic: what we (the community) expect from you (the developers) in regards to WvWvW is: FIX THE CULLING ISSUES.

I dont cre about much else,but not working on the only real end game content you have ( wvwvw ) is not a good thing At all.YOu must keep this interesting for players to keep on playing,you mut continue to work on it,change it and improve it.If this will not happen kittenloads of people Will leave,trust me on this.And no im normally not a negative person At all.But leaving wvwvw where it stands now will be crushing for gw2.

They should start working GvG. That could actually bring serious PvP players back.

More please.

This is NOT enough.

Finally listened to the audio – I think the Feb patch will be a make or break moment for ANet. I hope they get it right. I really hope it’s a step in the right direction and at this point, it needs to be a sizeable step.

Fixing/adding rewards is nice but that’s it? All this time we wait just for that? I was really hoping for another map or two to rotate in each week.

That song is perhaps the greatest MMO parody song since MC raiders back in WoW.

As disappointing as this is, it isn’t really a surprise. Over time every game dev loses touch with their player base, and does themselves in in the process. The astounding thing here though is just how fast this has occurred. This game is only a few months old and players are building websites to provide functionality that should be in game.

They aren’t listening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

I wonder why it seems the people who make these videos have never heard of this marvel of modern science.

They both play Ele’s mainly, big surprise. WvW gonna be just Thieves, Ele’s, and Mesmer’s soon.

“No new maps anytime soon” is the worst news of all.

WE HAVE TWO MAPS.

Is WvW supposed to be a major feature or not? If it’s a major feature, why are there only two maps??

Fleshing out WvW with more map variety should be their top priority. I mean if I were king, I would make 1 unique map for each server’s borderland. If we fight Crystal Desert, their borderland will be a desert with crystals in it. If we fight Fort Aspenwood I expect there to be a really big fort. Ehmry Bay would have a bay in it.

I think lack of map variety will kill WvW quicker than lack of rewards. Who cares about rewards when we’re bored of the same two maps over and over?

Hey, a zerg is walking past/ This is crazy / I can’t escape them…so cull me, maybe?

Thank you for at least posting the link to interview here. This is one way you can improve the communication. You’re catching kitten for it though because the news is depressing. I’d rather have the depressing news than no news though. So +1 for posting.

Now lets look at the cliff notes provided bu KaniKani.

kanikani.2430:

Cliff notes:
-So no new maps in the near future
-1 week cycles for matches will continue
-Culling is being worked on
-We have talked about population issues but don’t design for it
-Paid transfers at some point in the future, but transfers are not that big of an issue
-Progression/rewards in Feb patch
-Live scoring no time soon (via website)
-Nothing major till feb patch.
-No UI changes (raid tools etc.)
-No changes to commander system

Did I miss anything?

So basically nothing until Feb, even then the only interesting thing I see is that there will be some sense of progression/rewards added. The rest is disappointing to be honest. Better hope the rewards are worthwhile, else I can see a lot of the WvW people dropping GW2 for the next game out there.

Listen to what they say instead off making up stuff, they want to make ranking system better rewards and so on but they need to figure out how to do it and it is better to say nothing then say we will do this and that and then it takes them 10month to get it to work, or like Funcom never get it to work.

Fun and WvWvW in the same sentence should be:
WvWvW would become fun (ex like DAoC was)
Guys, can you just copy some ideas from that game?
We don’t need a lot of things…an herald, some title/ranks that we can achieve by doing things (killing peeps, taking keep/garrison/tower/supply camp or even doing escort mission with dolyaks). That would be FUN.
Bring back the Orbs, changing the boost they give (like old DAoC relics), take away that crappy altar from up north and place there the Garrison as a Orb Keep, with better guards/door/walls… so taking it (and claiming the Orb) would be a real siege; and make that they works if you have your borderland Orb.
And i don’t know how to explain, sometimes culling seems better, sometime it get worse… Why???
Fix that and do this changes to the WvWvW, so that would be an end game with something to achieve…
I apologize for my English, i’m italian and atm i’m ill… :P

ps: and oh yeah…i’m still waiting to get my ascended gear through WvWvW instead of doing everyday fractals…

Pendragon.8735:

They both play Ele’s mainly, big surprise. WvW gonna be just Thieves, Ele’s, and Mesmer’s soon.

If Anet actually listen to people like you then no wonder they make alot of mistakes in the developemtn of wvw.

Have you even played wvw?

Slamz.5376:

“No new maps anytime soon” is the worst news of all.

WE HAVE TWO MAPS.

Is WvW supposed to be a major feature or not? If it’s a major feature, why are there only two maps??

Fleshing out WvW with more map variety should be their top priority. I mean if I were king, I would make 1 unique map for each server’s borderland. If we fight Crystal Desert, their borderland will be a desert with crystals in it. If we fight Fort Aspenwood I expect there to be a really big fort. Ehmry Bay would have a bay in it.

I think lack of map variety will kill WvW quicker than lack of rewards. Who cares about rewards when we’re bored of the same two maps over and over?

Yeah, right. Other games, like, say, league of legends would never have survived a week if they would have had ONLY TWO MAPS!!!1!

(irony off)

As much as new content is appreciated, I would rather prefer improving the gameplay on the existing maps over adding new ones. Beyond the technical problems (culling, exploits, you know what i mean) I would pretty much like to see additinal (WvW-meaningful) content that makes the maps more lively. Break-out events were a great addition, I’d like to see more dynamic elements to shake things up.

And since queue times have been gone down significantly, there is no longer an immediate need for more maps. At this point, new maps would only spread out the population and lead to more imbalanced populations on each map.

Also, I have to say that I very much like like the asymmetrical layout of each individual Borderland (by this I mean that two teams are in an attacking position, while one is the defender). This leads to some pretty interesting situations, like battles between the attackers over the control of the small Island between the south keeps, while the defender has different roles to play. Such a setup is only viable if you let every team be the defender somewhere (hence three “copies”).

~MRA

Ok this is crazy now. Time for action.

One thing we have to remember… we’ve already bought the game. Any more profit Anet can expect to make off of us is from the gem store… and us WvWers tend not to care about that sort of stuff as much. If Anet is concerned at all about profit they’ll spend most of their energy on the PvE “collector” type players… It’s plain business sense, disappointing though it may be.

shadowsoul.2134:

in my opinion, the biggest problems are free transfers and nightcapping!!

But it’s still an amazing game!!!

my reasoning why they are not problems.

a) free servers allow w3 players to leave dead servers or servers with a mainly pve crowd that can’t offer the kind of w3 experience they want without having to pay for it. it would suck to make a character, invest time in it, and then find yourself severely limited in your play options because you chose the wrong server at start and had to make a new character on a different server or had to pay for transfer. but i’m sure it has a lot of bad effects as well.

b) the moment you leave a tower / keep / camp, you forfeit everything you did there. you do a one time investment to buy an upgrade and it stays there as long as you defend it, and if you are lucky it might even stay there for some time. if you are not willing/unable to defend them, that’s it, simple. i upgrade stuff that i know i will defend untill i log or get kicked out. if i upgrade something and move away from there for whatever reason, i forfeit my upgrades in my opinion.

muylaetrix.2096:

shadowsoul.2134:

in my opinion, the biggest problems are free transfers and nightcapping!!

But it’s still an amazing game!!!

my reasoning why they are not problems.

a) free servers allow w3 players to leave dead servers or servers with a mainly pve crowd that can’t offer the kind of w3 experience they want without having to pay for it. it would suck to make a character, invest time in it, and then find yourself severely limited in your play options because you chose the wrong server at start and had to make a new character on a different server or had to pay for transfer. but i’m sure it has a lot of bad effects as well.

b) the moment you leave a tower / keep / camp, you forfeit everything you did there. you do a one time investment to buy an upgrade and it stays there as long as you defend it, and if you are lucky it might even stay there for some time. if you are not willing/unable to defend them, that’s it, simple. i upgrade stuff that i know i will defend untill i log or get kicked out. if i upgrade something and move away from there for whatever reason, i forfeit my upgrades in my opinion.

It’s a problem, because a large number of people say it’s a problem and leave because of it. I’m not talking forums. I’m talking the hundreds of hours I’ve spent playing WvW to see people I have gotten to know vanish left and right for various reasons: population balance issues, culling, lack of rewards and playing the same teams week in and week out.

I doubt the issue is the devs aren’t aware, to the contrary, it’s not a secret what the issues are. It’s likely a matter of money, budgeting and where they can take the game with limited resources. Over time if the game continues to be decently profitable, these known issues might be addressed, or compensated for with new features.

Also, regarding the upcoming WvW changes, the number one rule is miracle patches do not exist. February might introduce some new features, but I sincerely doubt it’s going to completely change WvW overnight.

I thought the interview was pretty good and looking forward to what they will introduce in the future. My biggest issue is being in a match up where our team is getting beat by almost 500,000 points. (oh and maybe drop the price of siege)

Well, Anet don’t care about WvW player, that’s not a big news, sokittenANET.

Only thing I really would want are new maps on a one week rotation. So in week one there are 3x BL1 and EB1, week two would be different versions of borderlands and EB, etc. And exploits like keep jumping/gate glitching or attacking from under the map.

Character progression, I am not even sure what this is. So not important.
Culling is not that big of an issue for me, but i can see how it would be for people who play on a toaster with a potato for a connection.

Better rewards, I can understand this. While, playing WvW w/ people I like is reward enough, I agree you should get something for upgrading so more people would take the time to do so. Or maybe make it if you take an upgraded fort you get more gold. And add something back in for escorting the dolyaks. Or make something useful in WvW I can spend all that karma I have. Maybe let us buy siege or upgrades with it.

kanikani.2430:

Cliff notes:
-So no new maps in the near future
-1 week cycles for matches will continue
-Culling is being worked on
-We have talked about population issues but don’t design for it
-Paid transfers at some point in the future, but transfers are not that big of an issue
-Progression/rewards in Feb patch
-Live scoring no time soon (via website)
-Nothing major till feb patch.
-No UI changes (raid tools etc.)
-No changes to commander system

Did I miss anything?

Disappointment just about sums this up, most WvW only guilds won’t stay for this.

Gondram.8365:

One thing we have to remember… we’ve already bought the game. Any more profit Anet can expect to make off of us is from the gem store… and us WvWers tend not to care about that sort of stuff as much. If Anet is concerned at all about profit they’ll spend most of their energy on the PvE “collector” type players… It’s plain business sense, disappointing though it may be.

I really feel like the game could be better if it just went subscription. Having the gem store creates some wierd incentives in general not just what is mentioned above.

PvP in any sense is an end game model that will keep people subscribed and does not require nearly the attention and update resources raiding does.

Finished listening. I think the interview is not hopeful or very enlightening. These guys i have no doubt are good at what they do, and care about their product, but limited resources are limited (their words). No monthly fee, it is what it is.

I also think culling is as some programming people have said it was: a result of poor network design choices and something which might not be easily fixed, if at all. There was way to much silence and not enough optimism on this issue. I don’t anticipate any type of turn around fix in the next few months. Especially considering they just floated a two week, failed workaround—not something you would do if you were expecting to fix the issue any time soon.

Offski.4897:

Pendragon.8735:

They both play Ele’s mainly, big surprise. WvW gonna be just Thieves, Ele’s, and Mesmer’s soon.

If Anet actually listen to people like you then no wonder they make alot of mistakes in the developemtn of wvw.

Have you even played wvw?

Have you? If you did, it would be obvious what I said is true. Because that’s all I play, and an abundance of these professions, more every day vs release when you actually saw variety, is contaminating it. If you are implying these professions aren’t especially great for a lot of WvW, I would agree, yet why is there so many. Because everyone wants in on what they see as individually superior. If there were none seen that way, it wouldn’t happen. When Anet realizes they should balance for the whole game, not just sPVP, this game will improve.

ANet I back you guys quite a bit, but wow this interview left much to be desired. My guild and I don’t sPvP we’re more of a WvW guild and we do feel this mode is being neglected. I hope more and better improvements do come along, I realize the game is still young and there is time for said improvements to be made. But please at least get paid guesting going soon, don’t leave the WvWorlders out we’re supporting you please support us as well.

About the maps on Borderlands – as several people have already mentioned, the “balance” problem could be solved by swapping the maps each week for everyone. The have to be the same for obvious reasons ( servers must have equal chance of defending their homeland ), but the only restriction that implies is that every home border is the same. Swapping them each week (even if you create only 1 new map in half a year) is a huge step.

Culling and rewards are first on the line though. And fixing already existing bugs on these maps (not only the wall / gate jump, there’s a lot of terrain bugs as well).

The Breakouts were not a bad idea, but they happen too quickly. So much so that the first towers just get flipped back and forth a silly amount, like a mere camp. Once a server does a breakout, there should be something like a 2 hour timer for a reset, and in that time its up to the players to actually defend and hold the tower.

They should also tone down the NPC’s they should serve more as a rallying point, rather than winning the fight for you. Providing supply and siege is fine, but let the players do the fighting.

Right now you need to keep 20+ stationed in those south towers to defense properly against a breakout, and most servers don’t have enough dedicated defenders that just want to sit there and wait for it to happen. Obviously it can be a bore. But if you don’t have people there its pretty much an auto loss of the tower as the NPC’s and siege knock the gates out in ridiculously short time.

i dont think i would call this a “fun” interview

maybe “disappointing,” as a person who plays in wvw enough to think about its problems a bit when im not in it.

On the one hand I think it’s comforting that they are at least addressing the “progression” issue. But then it is only a very minor issue, in the grant scheme of things.

People who play WvW because they enjoy WvW, the battle and strategies, do not need “progression”. “Progression” is merely something to grind, a sort of stepping stones to bring you to the fun. The perfect war simulation should have no such thing as “progression”. But maybe that is an unrealistic vision. Expect more PvE’er incoming in February, and no, they’re not here to play the war, they’re here to grind for their legendaries.

That said, can we at least have Fort Aspenwood (from GW1) back as an sPvP mode? That was what I was thinking about at the very beginning when you announced no healers in GW2. Finally no more WoH+AoE+PnH combo hiding behind a wall healing that kurzick elementalist! That game and GW2 is a perfect match!

I love WvW, but seriously this is disappointing. Rewards and progression should have been in on day one. I’m glad they are finally coming, but if that’s all that’s all we can expect, they need to stop patting themselves on the back and be embarrassed.

New maps need to happen. If they aren’t working on these, I have little hope for WvWs long term survival. Balance them as best as you can and get them out ASAP.

Extensive web rankings (individual and guild) need to happen. They’re posting rankings in a forum post kitten What kind of operation is this? They can’t afford a web programmer to get this working?

Adding ascendant gear and titles is easy and should have been done in November. They really better have way more coming if they are making us wait this long and if they want WvW to survive the test of time.