Guild Wars 2

WvW feedback / suggestions… or… Why pretty much nobody plays on your new map.

Having spent considerable time on the new desert borderlands map, I feel an uncontrollable need to provide some feedback. I’ve heard rumors that a major WvW overhaul is under way, perhaps some of this might help those designers to better understand things from a player’s perspective.

A short background – I play WvW a lot. More than most people. Definitely more than the current intended audience that ArenaNet seems to be designing for. I play with an organized guild / skill group. I’ve commanded guilds and pugs. I follow blobs sometimes. I roam in small groups and solo. I used to even take over a tower or keep and just upgrade and defend it for hours sometimes. I play every profession and every imaginable build and role. I have thousands of hours invested in WvW, thousands of WvW ranks, and WvW has been, for the last couple years, the only aspect of GW2 that has kept me playing. I’ve played in both NA T1 and T4 since the expansion, and seen much the same issues in both.

So, for those at Anet or on these forums who might have a limited understanding of the game mode, let me lay out a few things which I feel are crucial to WvW “working”…being fun to play and worthwhile and fulfilling for those of us who primarily enjoy it over other game modes. These may also give a bit of a clue why so few people play on the new map…I believe its design displays an unbelievable lack of understanding about the game mode.

Let me start with a very basic premise that I believe should be true to make WvW a fun open-world large-scale PvP game mode.

My premise is this: It should be about fights. Mixing it up with your opponents. Clashing with red names.

The whole design should start and end with this. Everything about the game mode should encourage, incentivize, and streamline people fighting in large groups, small groups, and duels. Period. Dueling isn’t a dirty word. I have no idea why ArenaNet has always made that so hard. Yes, there’s PPT…but PPT should be about fights, too. Want to take an objective or hold one? It should be a fight!

This idea that WvW is just a place for people who love PvE to dabble in the safest, lowest skill PvP is totally wrong. You should be designing ANY game mode for the people who want to play it well, and be rewarded for doing so. I’m in WvW because I want to play large-scale open world unbalanced PvP battles with attacking / defending objectives as an incentive/focus/variable to the action. I want that freedom to develop builds, comps, and tactics and use them to defeat opponents, so I need opponents readily available along with friends.

Right now, the game design heavily favors joining a map queue blob and karma training around knocking over objectives with no resistance…never meeting or even seeing any enemy forces except for the occasional blob verses blob press 1 festival of lag. Builds don’t really matter, levels don’t matter…you just stick to the zerg like glue and profit. This needs to change. So here’s how.

-You need to be able to get to the fights.

There are several parts to this, but it really should be a given (for some reason it seems that it’s not). First of all, through scouting or skilled reading of the map, I need to be able to FIND the fights. I need clear ways to see and follow an enemy’s movements. The change to sentries is a step in this direction, and one of the few positive things about the expansion for WvW.

Once I know where the enemy is, I need to be able to get there. Either by myself, with a small group, or with a large group…players need to be able to get to where the action is in a timely fashion. If I have to run a 10 minute obstacle course to get to where the action is, the action will be over. There is little more frustrating in WvW than being late to a fight. This is a PvP game mode and the idea is to be able to mix it up with opponents, and decide things based on attackers and defenders both being present and one side outplaying the other (ideally). Should attackers be able to “surprise” cap an undefended objective? Sure! But that should come due to good strategy, not because the defenders are running 500 miles of stairs to get there.

This is an area where the new map falls down big time. Want to know why few are using the map? Because a large percentage of the time, it’s painful or even impossible to get to where the action is happening. By the time you get there, it’s often over. If the objective of the new map design was to provide a safe way for PvE players to run around and PvDoor objectives, than this is exactly the map for that. It’s totally wrong for PvP. The “verticality” BS that you’re using in PvE maps to make them seem larger than they are because it takes half an hour to go five feet…does NOT lend itself to any type of PvP other than the kind where nobody fights each other. Yeah, that makes no sense.

-You need to be able to get BACK to the fights.

This should also be a given…but perhaps the totally obvious emergent behavior in WvW isn’t obvious to people who don’t play the game mode very much. The behavior is this…fights tend to happen near to waypoints. Why do you think that is?

If you want people to be willing to mix it up and actually engage against other players, it cannot be super painful and time consuming to get back to the fight if you die. If dying creates too much of a penalty (I can’t enjoy fighting for several minutes simply because I got slightly out of position for a second), people won’t fight. This is displayed quite clearly, all the time, in WvW on every map. Fights may start over an objective, but they just about always migrate towards the respawn points. Smaller-scale fighting, dueling, etc…these things happen where both sides have a nearby waypoint. Constant ongoing fighting happens when both sides can easily return if they die.

The new map again is an example of what not to do in this respect. Basically any death on the new map incurs a huge time penalty. It’s too hard and slow to get back to wherever the fight was, so people don’t fight (or fights are fewer and farther between). The new waypoint system is terrible. Most of the time nobody has a reasonably close waypoint to any fight. Things are always contested…it’s just WAY too hard to get back to a fight, so very few people are willing to engage unless they have an overwhelming force. The new map absolutely killed roaming / dueling on the borderlands, in large part due to this problem.

- Defending needs to be a thing.

Anet paid some lip service to this idea, but really misfired with the design. It’s way too hard to get to objectives to defend them (see the two points above), and when you do manage to get there…the new objectives are harder to defend instead of easier. Whoever designed the “kill boxes” around the doors on towers and keeps has obviously played very little WvW, or only plays as part of a blob. A Defensive position is completely worthless if it’s a thin walkway directly above the opposing zerg…because they can just cast all their AoE right under you and murder anyone or anything up there. The “kill boxes” are death for defenders, rather than attackers. Why?

Viable defense for a tower or keep needs to account for a small number of players defending against a zerg…because this is what happens the vast majority of the time. Because joining a giant blob and karma training around the maps is so heavily encouraged and incentivized by the game design (most rewards, easiest play, safest play), very few people defend. In order for defense to be viable, the defender needs to be able to hit the enemy without being hit themselves. Very basic…but it’s the central design of all defenses since tribes started building huts thousands of years ago. I have to be able to hit you without you hitting me.

Now I know it might seem on the surface that it wouldn’t be “fair”, but again, remember how the game is played. The vast majority of the time, a huge blob is running up and bashing down the door of the tower and one or two guys are frantically trying to stop them. The blob doesn’t need any more help, for heaven’s sake. Help the two defenders so defense might be a little fun and worthwhile and then more people might do it and fights for objectives might require a bit more than just getting in a blob and running over everything.

If a large attacking group and a large defensive group show up at an objective, the defenders should have the advantage. It’s a tower or keep, is it not? Attacking forces should be trying to draw enemies out of defensive positions, rather than just beating the door down and having all fights in the lord’s room. Defenders shouldn’t have to sacrifice their wall or door just to create a choke point and actually fight to defend.

- Objective cascades.

To make the play a little bit about strategy and skill rather than just zerg (and to create more fights), objectives should be set up so that siege from one can hit others, and so that objectives block access completely to areas of the map. I should be able to control an area if I own an objective, and forces should be able to “creep”, taking one thing in order to take another in order to take another. This is possible on EBG and was a little bit possible on the old borderlands map, and that style always provides for more actual conflict. The new map is a mess in this regard as well. There should be more of this, not less.

This idea will focus players into areas of the map…allowing them to find the action and keep fights going. This also incentivizes defense, because the value of objectives is more significant than a bit of PPT for a tick or two. It brings the opposing forces into contact so fights happen, rather than zergs just dodging each other and playing ring around the rosy back-capping for karma.

- Real, actually fun and worthwhile play for any size group, including individuals.

I know this isn’t easy, but the design should strive to achieve it. ArenaNet should constantly be thinking about the solo roamer / dueler, the small havoc / skill group, and the large group. Unbalanced PvP means that all those play styles are going to occur, especially for those of us who play the game mode a ton. How are each of these play styles encouraged and rewarded? How are they supported? All of the above need to be possible and worthwhile to get the maximum number of people playing the game mode 24/7. We don’t always have a zerg, even in tier 1.

I won’t always have my guild online and raiding. Sometimes I might still want to play WvW. If all I can realistically do is run around taking sentries or killing yaks without ever seeing an enemy player, I’m probably going to log off. This is another reason why the new maps are so lonely.

Objectives need to scale better based on attackers. The auto-upgrading system is not good. It further incentivizes getting in a blob and ignoring anything except the door in front of you. At the moment, camps auto-upgrade just by sitting there to a point where soloing them is extremely annoying and takes too long, and defending anything as an individual is worthless and frustrating. You’re leaving roamers with very little to do. There’s absolutely no reason not to cater to multiple play styles, because more people on these maps is better, right?

There needs to be a super easy way to find and play with others, both enemies and friends. If I want a group I should be able to find and join one easily. If I want opponents to mix it up with, I should be able to find them. I know, crazy. Whatever play style I’m in the mood for, I shouldn’t have to spend an hour looking for it.

Some suggestions -

WvW maps should be designed with the above in mind. Getting to the fights, getting back to the fights, objective cascading and area control, and support for solo, small, and large groups.

WvW needs to be more rewarding, in line with PvE and sPvP. Add reward tracks like sPvP if you want…some method where WvW players can earn everything the other game modes can earn, and in comparable amounts of time. It’s fun to play the game the way I enjoy, not be forced into a game mode I hate to get the reward I need / want. You’ve made steps in this direction for other game modes, it needs to come to WvW big time. Steps in this direction have been far too little and too slow. Stop picking at the edges and tear that band-aid off all at once. Make it rewarding.

Objective upgrades need to be manual. Players need to be actively engaged in fortifying / defending, and it needs to be as rewarding (fun and gold) as attacking. How about a system where upgrades require turning in large amounts of supply…allow players to loot supply from their dead opponent players. This way, fights matter more, and a successful defense against a blob will provide resources to better defend next time, rather than the zerg just slowly beating you into the ground with shear numbers.

There should be objective upgrades which over time create defensive positions in the objective where defenders and siege can function to defend and can’t be hit by attackers until the attackers enter the objective. Yeah, you read that right. Don’t worry about the attackers, they’ll figure out ways to succeed, and the game already heavily favors the PvDoor blob.

There should always be places on each map where at least two opposing forces have nearby waypoints which are not contested. Design with the idea of hot zones in mind…creating places conducive to people mixing it up and diving in to try actually fighting without so much penalty for losing. Bring people into contact with their opponents with less formality and effort.

More strategic objectives which can be attacked / defended by small groups or solo players (like camps).

Populations / coverage need to be more balanced across servers. I’m not sure how you do this, but it needs to happen. Some sort of megaserver implementation that allows guilds or servers to play together? Merging lower-tier servers into higher-tier? Something.

You’ve got to figure out game design ways to break up the blobs. You need to incentivize and support smaller forces acting alone or in concert on a map. Just running in a group of 60 and pressing 1 all day should be the LEAST rewarding and effective method of play. I’ve suggested ways of doing this in the past. It needs to happen.

Thanks for reading.