Guild Wars 2

I want to start by saying I love GW2’s WvW when it “works.” However, it’s rare when WvW is actually functioning the way it was “intended.”

I’ve spent a large portion of my GW2 playtime in WvW (over 3,000 WvW kills). Here is my list of things currently wrong with WvW:

- Insanely long queue times. ANet started a huge thread dedicated to discussing this problem, so I won’t talk about it too much. Something needs to be done ASAP because this #1 issue with WvW is making people not want to even play 1/3 of GW2’s game mode (and my personal reason for playing the game).

- Enemy zergs phasing in / taking 15-20 seconds to load on-screen is terrible. Having to face an enemy zerg is tough enough. Having to face an entire invisible zerg because the game prioritizes your teammates’ character models instead of enemy models is a bad game design decision and bad network optimization. I have to constantly tab target because I’m afraid I’ll run into invisible enemy players.

- Skill activation lag. This seems to happen more often in Eternal Battlegrounds than the other 3 server Battlegrounds. It sucks to have to spam a skill over and over and not have it activate. Takes all the fun out of WvW when your skills don’t work when you want it to work.

- Zerg v Zerg. Curently, WvWvW should be renamed ZvZvZ. This game rewards the side with the most numbers, not more skill or better tactics. Sure, an organized, better-geared team with more siege weapons and voice communication will usually win against a team with larger numbers that lacks in other departments. However, more often than not, the larger-sized zerg will win the fight simply due to the downed mechanic. Downed state should not exist in WvW. It encourages the zerg menality where people can be careless, die over and over, as long as they have 10 people nearby to insta-rez them.

- Low levels should not be in WvW. It was fine to allow sub-level 30 players to tryout and XP in WvW the first few weeks of release. But now, they’re just cannon fodder taking up space of level 80 players with good gear. It may sound a bit elitist, but it’s true. They make the already terrible queue times even more unbearable and ridiculous. Personally, I wouldn’t allow players under level 70 to queue for WvW, but I’d be fine if ANet disallow players under level 30 to queue for WvW.

- Guilds without “Art of War” boosts activated should not be able to claim keeps and towers. At least make keep / tower claiming expire so another guild can claim it if they have (more) active AoW boosts running. I hate it when some random guild spams the Guild Claiming NPC and claim a keep / tower for no reason. It’s then permanently claimed until it’s overtaken by an enemy team. Make absolutely no sense.

- Game crashes / disconnects should not make you have to re-queue for WvW when you log back on. We should be given a grace period of let’s say, 2 – 5 minutes if the game crashes or we get disconnected. Making us have to sit through another multi-hour queue simply because of game crashes or disconnects makes me want to give up GW2 WvW all together.

- Players “hacking,” exploiting, and using third party programs to cheat. I’ve never seen someone obviously cheating in WvW yet. Then again, it’s tough to tell with so much chaos, zerging, and invisible enemies. More and more reports of players cheating in WvW are popping up on forums and in videos everyday. ANet needs to stop this garbage before it becomes a major problem. Many games have failed because the developer could not stop cheaters from taking over the game.

- It’d be nice if each server Battleground map were unique, instead of being the same exact copy of each other. I know it’s tough to design and balance such large maps for PvP, but it’s boring to play the same map on each Battleground. Only Eternal Battleground is unique and different.

- Finally, give us a true reason to COMPETE in WvW, not just run around in zergs killing random people. Give us guild (not server) rankings and personal rankings (not just titles), available to the public to view. Other character / guild enhancements are also needed so we can feel like WvW is worthwhile. Killing people is really fun, but it will eventually run its course and people will get bored with WvW without great incentives. I understand and respect ANet’s philosophy on overall game balance and fair play, but the lackluster server-wide buffs are not enough to encourage us to do well in WvW.

GW2 WvW is the main reason why I play this game. The basic foundation of WvW is amazing, but due to all of these issues, it’s not nearly as fun as it can / should be.

Without raiding, character / gear progression, and other “endgame” activities, WvW is the only reason why “hardcore” players (and guilds) like me will stick around and purchase future expansions. ANet has to make sure WvW PvP is the main reason why people buy and play GW2. I really hope Arena Net is working hard to fix most, if not all of these problems plaguing WvW. In my opinion, this game mode can keep people playing GW2 for years to come if ANet makes it great. Thanks for reading.

The problem with the queue is that it’s not a queue. It’s more like a giant mob of people who all keep cutting in line.

The longer you’re in the queue, the lower your chances actually are to get into a WvW zone.

What they need to do first is to actually make the queue into a queue. Then they need to need to give you a counter that updates every few seconds and shows you the size of the queue and your current position. Maybe even an estimate to how long it will take.

Good post.

- Insanely long queue times. True, a small incremental rise in population cap might help this.

- Enemy zergs phasing in / taking 15-20 seconds to load on-screen is terrible. This for me is by far the most annoying feature.

- Skill activation lag. Also incredibly annoying.

- Zerg v Zerg. Curently, WvWvW should be renamed ZvZvZ. I disagree with this strongly a coordinated group can overcome being outnumbered by clever play and use of terrain. I actually think they have done quite well in making a coordinated force as strong as a larger force.

- Low levels should not be in WvW. I jave seen many lower level players contribute well in WvW. It is a great feature that they can get in at any level.

- Guilds without “Art of War” boosts activated should not be able to claim keeps and towers. Perhaps we need a means of prioritising who claims a keep?

- Game crashes / disconnects should not make you have to re-queue for WvW when you log back on. Great Idea

- Players “hacking,” exploiting, and using third party programs to cheat. I have seen no evidence of this yet but stopping cheating is important.

- It’d be nice if each server Battleground map were unique, Maybe, it’s a apin to call targets when they all have similar yet different names. Also mirrored maps mean there is no advantage to one side.

- Finally, give us a true reason to COMPETE in WvW, They have its called winning.

I agree, getting disconnected shouldn’t force you back in queue.

Banning low levels from WvW is silly. The PVE is monotonous for some of us, we’d quit the game before we spent 70 levels progressing that way, and SPvP won’t level you. Crafting and gathering is okay, but it’s definitely not something I’ll spend 70 levels doing, either.

I’ve only once noticed invisible enemies, and something you could possibly do is to install GW2 on a SSD, seems to make difference for me. In general its recommended to have MMOs on SSDs.

I think the reason why everyone runs from that mesmer grouped with a Minion necro is simply because of those red names and the fear of the invisiable zerg that they may be with.

I wouldn’t call it Zerg or Zerging at the moment. Just a lot of people staying together to achieve something. How can you actually talk about a Zerg when you can’t have 200+ from one server on the same map.

As for the Zerg whiners
This game, W vs W, is designed to have this kind of behaviour and I wish Anet good luck to try to break the Zerg. Also it’s W vs W and not 5 man kitten highest skill stuff.
As everyone in the mists should know.
Whatever works and whatever it takes to win.

This problem still happens with an SSD.

The issue is with how the rendering was coded.

There are a lot of servers with no queue time at all. Several of these issues could be resolved if people would just transfer to these servers and stop transfering to over-pop servers.

I don’t agree with banning low level players from WvW. Some people do not have as much time to commit to the game as others and hence have not yet reached 80; I don’t think they should be punished for this fact.

I do think however that the difference in power between a well-geared lvl 80 and a well geared low lvl character is too large. There should be some difference, yes, but not to the point where they can 2- shot you while you are stun-locked; this is just boring and frustrating.

WvW que problems can be solved with something I know people won’t like. If they forced Guild & people to other servers to balance them out. Than every server would not have a que problem or at least not as bad as one. Now if they made more Servers and split lets say minor league servers and major league servers up. It would also help to allow more players into WvW. The thing is they need to balance out how many people can be in based on how many people are in from another server.

If you have say 50 taking on 20 than it is an obvious end to that WvW.
Again, I know people won’t like the idea, but it would make WvW a lot better.

If you cut low levels from WvW(which I don’t think ANet will do), it should be a level 30 cut off. By that time you have had enough pve time to get decent gear and your skills up. At that point you are not useless. That being said, I would hate it if I were cut off from WvW.

My favorite part of this is when it phases people out as im standing in front of them! I was shocked when it happened.

Click.5123:

- Zerg v Zerg. Curently, WvWvW should be renamed ZvZvZ. This game rewards the side with the most numbers, not more skill or better tactics. Sure, an organized, better-geared team with more siege weapons and voice communication will usually win against a team with larger numbers that lacks in other departments. However, more often than not, the larger-sized zerg will win the fight simply due to the downed mechanic. Downed state should not exist in WvW. It encourages the zerg menality where people can be careless, die over and over, as long as they have 10 people nearby to insta-rez them.

- Low levels should not be in WvW. It was fine to allow sub-level 30 players to tryout and XP in WvW the first few weeks of release. But now, they’re just cannon fodder taking up space of level 80 players with good gear. It may sound a bit elitist, but it’s true. They make the already terrible queue times even more unbearable and ridiculous. Personally, I wouldn’t allow players under level 70 to queue for WvW, but I’d be fine if ANet disallow players under level 30 to queue for WvW.

These two points make me wanna cry, both are so untrue that its painfull to read them.

I personally held off 30-35 players SOLO on one well defended keep running from a Cat, to arrow carts, to balista. They even attempted to set up a balista and cat while there and I repelled them. They managed to get a ram up and get the door to 50%. The keep had plenty of siege ready and was full of supply. Took about 10 minutes for back up to arrive by then all they did was clean up the trash.

It is not the Low level players taking up space, its the people out there grinding for Exp and crafting mats on trash mobs, and running gathering loops. Honestly we should get away from this mentality now. Lets stop making the lowies feel bad about joining us now, so that they will still wanna join us when are 80! Find a new gripe cause these are terrible.

The above post is absolutely correct. There’s no need to bash on the lowbies for coming in and joining in on the fun. It’s the eople that are not in WvW to participate in WvW. ANet got rid of some of the farmers when they killed the Dolyak rewards, but it’s not enough. I’ve seen groups of 10-15 people just doing the jumping puzzles and farming PvE. It’s inane, and I see no point. WvW is for open world based PvP.. not open world PvE with the possibility of fighting some enemies here and there.

Daedalus.3954:

The above post is absolutely correct. There’s no need to bash on the lowbies for coming in and joining in on the fun. It’s the eople that are not in WvW to participate in WvW. ANet got rid of some of the farmers when they killed the Dolyak rewards, but it’s not enough. I’ve seen groups of 10-15 people just doing the jumping puzzles and farming PvE. It’s inane, and I see no point. WvW is for open world based PvP.. not open world PvE with the possibility of fighting some enemies here and there.

The jumping puzzle has pretty solid PvP if you arent rushing through the place.

Melphina.9035:

Daedalus.3954:

The above post is absolutely correct. There’s no need to bash on the lowbies for coming in and joining in on the fun. It’s the eople that are not in WvW to participate in WvW. ANet got rid of some of the farmers when they killed the Dolyak rewards, but it’s not enough. I’ve seen groups of 10-15 people just doing the jumping puzzles and farming PvE. It’s inane, and I see no point. WvW is for open world based PvP.. not open world PvE with the possibility of fighting some enemies here and there.

The jumping puzzle has pretty solid PvP if you arent rushing through the place.

That’s great, but when 30 people are doing it that’s 30 slots of people who could be in the heat of the WvW battle changing the tide of a fight. I’m on HoD, we haven’t had any issues with winning, but it’s awful to see groups of people who have no desire to fight just wasting slots and time on PvE and puzzles.

@Daedalus.3954 – The sad part about Anet squashing the Doylak rewards is they didnt sqaush both sides of the coin. You get reward for stopping the Doylak from making it to the keep in two way 1 – Exp, and karma. 2- cutting off supply. The Doylak Rewards need to be brought back the Doylak is vital to supply for keep upgrades we all know this, there MUST be a reward for those of us who put our lives on the line to make sure the Yak gets the needed supplies to keep so we can keep the upgrades flowing!! Anet needs to correct this and bring it back Possibly adding in badges as a rewards for this as well, its VITAL!!

Responding to Click’s points:

Queue times —
This is your fault, not Arenanet’s. There are servers with low queues. The only thing Arenanet is doing wrong here is not providing information. There may be people sitting in hours long queues who don’t realize that with about 3 button clicks, they could be on another server playing WvW right now with no wait. But YOU read the forums, so you must already know this. If you’re in a queue, it’s your own stubborn fault.

The management at the grocery store can open more registers, but they can’t force you to change lanes. If you want to stand in line behind the three old ladies with packed carts while ignoring the empty lane, whose fault is that?

Zerg load times —
This one is a mystery and I’d like to see Arenanet commend on it. How did DAOC and Planetside, which supported even more people in even tighter spaces, avoid this issue? Is it a graphical issue or a network issue? Can they fix it? Will they?

Zerg vs Zerg —
This problem can be largely solved by removing “retaliation” from the game. 5 people can’t do much to slow down 20 people banging on the door because of retaliation damage (and because AE can only hit 5 people at a time anyway). Under the current design, stacking 20 people on the door is an effective exploit of game mechanics.

Low levels in WvW —
Heartily disagree. Part of the reason I quit DAOC was because I got tired of my main character and there was no way I was going to level a new class to 40 before entering RvR again. Ergo, part of the appeal of GW2 is that I can start a new class and enter WvW at level 2. This is a huge win and must be kept.

Guild claiming —
I agree. Guilds with buffs should be able to overwrite the claiming of guilds without buffs. I’m tired of seeing major structures claimed by single-person “guilds” who just wanted to show off their ‘waving beaver’ flag while I’m sitting on Art of War V buffs that I can’t put anywhere.

Grace period for disconnects —
I agree. You should have a place reserved in WvW for at least 2 minutes after a disconnect/crash.

Cheating —
This should be a high priority for Arenanet. I have personally seen EXTREMELY blatant cheating in PvE. Teleport hacks clearly exist. I’ve seen video of speed hackers in WvW and screenshots of flying people in WvW. If Arenanet can’t crack down on this fast, GW2 could end up like APB (that game that went bankrupt and everyone at the company lost their job because most players quit because cheating was so rampant that it wasn’t fun to play).

Reasons to compete in WvW —
I kind of disagree here. Either it’s fun or it’s not fun. If it’s fun, why do you need personal or guild rankings? If it’s not fun, I don’t see where personal or guild rankings will somehow make it fun. If anything, I worry that WvW has too much incentive to it and it’s attracting farmers rather than people who enjoy WvW.

Icehockeyplyr.4723: If you can hold off more than 10 people solo, then those players SUCKED.

The only siege weapon that is even a remote threat to a single player is the cannon, and there are never more than 2 of those at one area of the wall (and only that many by gates).

A single catapault would have defeated your defense.
Just 2 elementalists who knew how to nuke down your siege gear would have beaten you.
A pair of Guardians spamming AoE retal would have eaten up those arrow carts.

One player cannot defend against 10+ players.
Ten players cannot defend against 40 players.

Zerg happens.

I participate in WvW to PvP, not to gain PvE incentives for capping undefended forts in the middle of the night.

The whole scoring/incentive system needs to be reworked to promote PvP again.

A good start would be making the score not 100% dependant on who owns the most forts when the ‘tick’ occurs. Some suggestions

1) Player kills add to server score (points weighted by population balance)
2) No more auto supply / required escort or initiation of supply run
3) Add siege weapon / fort upkeep supply cost

I held off a 10+ player offense and I’ve seen small groups hold off large zergs. It just costs an equal amount of resources. 6 arrow carts will do enough damage to down a player, same as 3 balistas. those are rarely seen as a defense though because you currently have to put them at the edge to hit the enemy. The main issue with siege as a defense is they currently take damage from retaliation (though I hear that is getting fixed so thanks ANet!). One thing that would be awesome is if you got the ‘zoomed’ out camera while manning arrow carts. Then we can place them in spots that can’t be AoE spammed down while still harrassing the attackers. Cata’s and Trebs can be countered by mortars, thats what those are built for.

The zerg teams that is primarily due to a lack of grouping system. I’ve found 4-5 people can do hit and runs on depots and towers (if they have an upgraded ram and its a standard tower). double that if its fortified. The issue is people dont want to wait and group up, its easier to find a (or the) zerg and join that.
Best cure for this is to learn the game and be vocal in chat, calling for small groups with yourself as the lead ‘LF4M, small team for farming X supply depot/sentries’ or ‘whos up for doing some hit and runs against the enemy lines’ (someone mentioned thieves which I think is brilliant)

Putting a level limit on WvW that has merit but is a bad move I think. A smart play would be to restrict EB to a certain level and up and allow the borderlands to be open to everyone. ANet is hinting this by putting high level gathering in EB and low level in borderlands but lowbies dont pick up on this.

One last thing, while I’m sure the ‘pve’ element of WvW is debatable the jumping puzzles are very important to farm. I’ve gotten about 100 siege blueprints not to mention my first badge set from doing those. If you remove that easy tool for getting siege items the game might as well be pay to win.

Oh and I completely agree the Queue is an issue and some transparency wouldn’t hurt if the issue is to hard to resolve. One humble players suggestion is a 5th map if all 3 servers are ‘full queue’ servers or maybe just ‘upper league’ servers?

alot of people whine about zergs. the map is so big and there are sooo many objectives and points to capture. Usually when you see a zerg it means ALL or MOST of the enemies are hitting one spot. You can always go around and let so called keep fall and cap another spot or multiple spots. Siege weapons work good against a zerg too. Well placed siege weapons.

I see all these people on the forums complaining about this and that. WvWvW in this game takes alot of coordination. If your server lacks organization then of course your going to lose. This kind of sucks for the servers that have more of a pve player base. Now if they give some form of perk for leading wvwvw forcing the pve players to do wvwvw to make X available in pve then that would probibly help, Like how Favor of the gods worked back in gw1, Where you couldn’t do Temple of Ages without the favor.

The queue times are kind of rediculous though, There should be some form of indication on how many ppl are in line until you que or something and the whole grace period is a good idea. They should also prioritize the higher levels then the low levels. low levels have there uses (meat shields).

I don’t get how anyone thinks they even remotely have a right to complain about queue times. If you’re going to sit on an overpopulated server so you can “win”, it’s your fault and nobody else’s.

Click.5123:

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- Guilds without “Art of War” boosts activated should not be able to claim keeps and towers. At least make keep / tower claiming expire so another guild can claim it if they have (more) active AoW boosts running. I hate it when some random guild spams the Guild Claiming NPC and claim a keep / tower for no reason. It’s then permanently claimed until it’s overtaken by an enemy team. Make absolutely no sense.

If a guild is able to claim a Keep right after it has been captured, then they were the major contributing factor in capturing it. A small guild will not be able to claim it until 1 or 2 minutes later.

shortcake.8659:

I don’t get how anyone thinks they even remotely have a right to complain about queue times. If you’re going to sit on an overpopulated server so you can “win”, it’s your fault and nobody else’s.

There is only 5 server tagged FR, all full in WvWvW can i complain?

shortcake.8659:

I don’t get how anyone thinks they even remotely have a right to complain about queue times. If you’re going to sit on an overpopulated server so you can “win”, it’s your fault and nobody else’s.

I’m on Yaks Bend which is VERY near the bottom and unless I get on right after work I will have a queue on ALL four maps. The issue isn’t a ‘winning’ server, its that if the queue is full its hard to get your group of friends/guildies in to do coordinated stuff.

But your second point is valid. I see players ‘sitting’ a lot or just running around. This is a bit of an annoyance but an issue that is hard to solve.

http://i.imgur.com/2e4qU.jpg

>wvw

- I will add the way you get lootbags, it doesnt matter how much you hit an enemy, most of the time its the only that gets the “finisher” on the enemy that gets the lootbag.
This follows with rangers getting most of the bags since they have the longest range, or melee becouse their the first to get to the enemy.

Ive spent loads of time in WvW, hitting loads of enemies with AoE as an elementalist, but i have not had to many bags and only around 50 honor badges.

I laugh at the Zerg comments on the board. Every try to take a keep by yourself? Or with only 5 people when they have 2-3 defenders? It’s siege warfare and it is supposed to take a lot of players to take a fortified position. Do you seriously want towers and keeps to be winnable by 1-5 players?

I do wish they would remove the mobs and the resource nodes though. Makes no sense to have them in WvW and eliminating them might free up some resources to allow more players onto the maps which would be much more fun.

The Orbs make no sense either. I’d just eliminate them completely. The game should be about taking and holding strategic points and having 2-3 Orbs that makes it harder to beat a side that is already ahead makes zero sense.

My last request would be a Forum for each server on here so we could establish a little more community on our servers.

One more thing, when servers are rematched they should use population trends in the criteria for matching servers. In other words, servers that show a strong tendency to have higher pops at “night” should be matched to fight each other. 3 servers that show similar weak night populations should be matched.

A lot of good points and most I agree with…

—crashes in queue or in the map should give you a grace period, at least 2 minutes preferably up to 5.

—phasing, and rendering, total joke. Complete micky mouse crap and totally server side.

—Queues, sure there are low pop servers, but if they want people to move they should let the guild go with all its influence intact, if youre in a smaller guild who has taken weeks on a server to build influence and perks why leave it because people transferred there and built your queues? The never ever should have posted scores while free transfers were open.

—siege weaponry, said a lot about it, needs to be more durable and maybe cost more supplies to build, also HAS to be mobile. If it were then fewer defenders could hold a point easier. Would also give some positives to attackers as well.

—zergs, theyre going to happen but the only way to stop them is to put things in place that almost penalize them or at least make them less relevant.

—Claiming ANYTHING should require at least a level II upgrade in art of war. We didnt have any upgrades and I was able to claim stuff had I wanted. Doesnt make any sense. It should also probably cost supplies or influence or some currency to claim a point on the map. Not simply talking to a guy and then seeing your banner flying.

—lastly and this is on the players…learn how to play the game. Look at the tutorial if you dont understand. Learn how scoring works, and timers, and how things are tabulated. There is a system in place, and while it isnt being ‘exploited’ it is definitely being played like a fiddle by the people who understand the nuances of it all.

—OK maybe that wasnt lastly, scoring, maybe done ona pro rated scale. Holding points for 12 or 13 minutes of a timer only to see the people who know how scoring works take them back right before the tally to pad their scores and then simply abandon them is dumb. If a server takes a depot and holds it or defends it or it just goes untouched for 12 minutes they should get something. I know some people will say “just defend it”. Well why punish the people who have to sit there who ‘waste’ time when the zerglings can walk in with 3 minutes left on the timer and just take it?

Overall it is a decent concept, but it is clearly flawed and has major issues. Some of them are obvious, some of them are opinion based or preferences. But the system is too narrow to reward everyone equally. It now basically rewards the ones who know every little in and out of the ‘rules’. It also should probably incorporate some PvP rewards and buffs and not just PvE ones. because the irony is the ones gaining the buffs for the server dont play enough PvE to take advantage of them anyway.

Thanks for all of your responses, even though I don’t share the views of many who disagreed with me.