Time vs return is certainly an explanation. I’m an animator, say some one offers me a contract for work that pays $500,000. That sounds great! That’s some serious bank but lets say that the scope of the contract would involve 500,000 hours of work. Sounds bad, I’m making $1 an hour. I’d decline the contract simply because the return wouldn’t be worth the investment regardless of how exciting the work might be.
So yes saying the development time wouldn’t be worth the return is a valid position. If the change takes one dev 100 hours of work and the effective return is zero then from a business perspective you are operating at a loss. You could have put that dev on a project during those hours that would return revenue to the company.
Now Anet seems to have a great many passionate developers that I would suspect dedicate down hours or free time to pet projects. Which is why I suspect we do get so many great quality of life changes. So I suspect suggestions are always welcome but be aware “no” is a valid answer.
100 words is sort of a tight limit for 9 classes so I’ll limit my impressions to Soulbeast where I think I gathered the most playtime:
dagger main hand was exceptionally weak, slow and unrewarding. It feels like its having an identity crisis much like main hand axe but main hand axe is still superior in every way.
Merging has a lot of potential and feels alright, varies playstyle so that’s a plus. Sadly all it has right now is potential.
Pet swap in merge would be extremely beneficial to the spec
traits, stances and attributes gained in beastmode all felt weak and unrewarding, stances need an increase in duration, a reduction in cool down or both, traits don’t synergize, are poorly placed in the trait line and feel very weak in comparison to other professions.
very little clarity as to what pet boons, shouts that affect pets and pet buffs carry over to ranger, are supposed to carry over to ranger and why. Much of the skill interactions I enjoyed such as sic ’ems 40% damage buff may be a bug or oversight. If that is the case it really hurts soulbeast to the point of almost non viability.
That’s already too long so that will be the end for me. As an aside would it be more beneficial to create an impression/ feedback for each individual spec in the respective professions forums? Feedback in 100 words on 9 professions is double tough.
(edited by Mr Pin.6728)
Nope. I see where you are coming from.
As to your play I find it refreshing to see your thoughts on engagements. Its exactly what you did to me a while back, some months ago. I was defending Hills with my guild, I burst you to 5 ish % you buffed smokescale, burst me while I was in skill deficit and I screwed up by portal dancing at north gate while you reset. You kept pressure on me and pet swapped to put your pet outside and forced me in or out. The result didn’t work out in my favor.
The reason I remember it other then checking your name afterwards was that I examined what you did and used the same strategy on someone else a few weeks later. So I’ve always remembered simply because you taught me a different way to approach an encounter. I like getting views from people who think sideways from me.
I had a question for you Shadelang. I know from first hand experience you can dish out a considerable amount of damage in a short span but I was wondering if you thought the soulbeast would be as attractive if things like the sic ‘em buff affecting rangers or maul consuming its own AOO are removed from play. I like the concept of the soulbeast. ( I really do, I like how it could potentially allow build diversity and playstyle enhancements to players who like core ranger through pet synergies) but I feel the current execution of the spec is exceedingly weak. In short I feel I’d have more flexibility in builds if I drop soulbeast for, say wilderness survival, which would free up rune choices to allocate more stat points then soulbeast provides.
I’m trying to get a feel for players who have had success with the spec to fully understand how its working for their builds and playstyles. Mainly because I haven’t found a sweet spot for playing aggressively. I always feel like I’m missing… something. Although I’m primarily in WvW and the loss of the new pets and the fact some stances aren’t working as intended right now may be coloring my perceptions a bit. That and all the new icons and tells is a bit much to digest in a weekend.
Yes that was it, I was using sword no offhand with BM, only potent ally traited, Soulbeast and skirmishing with no traits. So the might that would be applied to my pet from sword 3 was applied to the ranger in beast mode it seems. Thank you very much.
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Can someone help me understand how potent ally is applying might in beast form? I start an attack with no might, no sigils equipped and already in beastform. Might application will generally go 1 stack 3 stacks 4,5, 7, etc. Is it applying might for you and your pet or is boon duration affecting my stacks?
Are you taking lesser signet of stone? The reason I ask is I wonder if there is a conflict with the cool downs. Or if you accidently activate one while the other is active they both go into cool down or expire early. Has anyone tested to see if that could be the case?
From what I was told by a dev that raids with my guild its not that Ranger was picked last per say, its just that their original idea didn’t work. Originally I was told the rangers became their pet and you controlled the pet and their skills. The animations were too buggy and it never came together.
Soulbeast was a “crap we got to get this out the door” response as the dreaded deadline doom approached I think. Which is fine if you approach the spec with purity of purpose. If its a dps spec give it some punch. Otherwise what are they even doing.
Kind of reminds me of Christmas morning. Only rangers didn’t get any presents, and they have to watch all the other classes open theirs.
The sad part is with 4ish weeks to go this is probably how the soul beast ships. They are probably in bug squash mode so there wont be any substantial changes. I’m really beginning to consider refund.
Oh I wouldn’t say every profession hates their elite spec, holosmiths seem really happy. Mainly because their damage is absolute bonkers right now.
Soulbeast isn’t bad conceptually, its just lacking pet swap in beast mode and has some really under tuned skills. Its also really NOT a condi spec. There are some nice dps pets and combinations in there though. (I’m looking at you stone gazelle and sic ’em).
Oddly enough I found soul beast better for power specs then condi specs. Its REALLY hard to tell right now though. I wish I could bring the beta character into the raid golem testing area to really test numbers and interactions with other professions. It got some flexibility but also the potential for going off the rails. I’m not sure it will be meta in any wvw or pve raid as it seems pretty under tuned to some of the other specs I tested. Dagger was… odd. lots of low damage hits that may add up to ok damage. felt clunky though and I don’t really see it having a place.
Basically right now the soul beast is the perma stow spec with potential but not much else.
On the bright side at least it isn’t the weekend before launch like it was before we got to toy around with druid (which was altered from the beta preview on launch regardless…) So at the very least we can collect well thought out and intelligent discussions on what needs to be improved with the spec.
I tend to agree pets should re enter the world as they left. I do find it of that all of the ranger’s mechanics which should synergize are usually antagonistic to the pet or the player. I also slightly ill at ease about the damage that is being reported being put out. If the pet comes back boon “naked” AND the damage is low the spec doesn’t really seem like it will function synergistically with the rest of our trait lines. I’m concerned that while other classes power creep we will still be left 30 to 40% behind.
The ascended armor is bought with tickets, which are gained through pip acquisition. Pip acquisition is gained through skirmish participation (at least T3) which is in turn earned through accomplishing WvW objectives. Taking towers, flipping camps, killing invaders, etc. Therefor tickets and the armor itself is gained through “winining” stuff or accomplishing objectives in the game mode.
Given that Ranger’s elite spec seems to be condi focused its almost a guarantee that condi will be nerfed into the ground.
I hope Mistism is right but eternal bond has a unique per game mode tag. Even though those skills were captured in the pvp lobby I’m dubious that its representative of the pvp gm at launch. I hope so as every thing else looks lackluster in comparison to the other specs we seen details on.
New map was good. New mastery was a bit confusing, I’m not sure I understand all the functionality even now. Release was a bit buggy, had to repeat final battle a number of times due to boss bugging out. new node was missing for me until yesterday. The opening acts didn’t lend themselves to going through with a group of friends. Watching one person struggle with aspect of self doubt without being able to help was a bummer. Watching asura friend crushed by boulders to allow my norn ranger access to the blades was priceless. Good work little asura, well done. A solid B+
I cannot buy the node as well. I don’t have all the living story nodes (I didn’t purchase the petrified tree I think) but I do have a number of them.
For full disclosure I play power (zerker) ranger with my guild. I can see why pug drivers kick rangers and thieves. If you are playing a power zerk class like a power ranger or a pick thief the reason you get kicked is simply because you should be self sufficient. I will actually volunteer my spot if the squad is full simply because a). I won’t always be on tag. I SHOULDN’T always be on tag. My job is to get to the backline and harass them and finish downs, snipe or hassle drivers and interfere with resets. b.) I am (or should be) self sufficient. As mentioned I am primarily a pick class in my role. That means I will squirrel off a fair bit, thus I don’t provide or receive boons from being in a party. I will bring my own might, own condi clear, super speed, stealth, etc. It also means I don’t provide much support to a party. I’m not near them. So yeah, squads don’t really benefit that much from me. I also don’t get that much from them. As long as you know how to kite and reset, can reasonably read an enemy zerg’s movements and are in some sort of voice coms so you know what your driver is doing not being in a squad is no big deal.
There is a level of bias against rangers for some players, that’s just the result of Anet allowing the ranger to be so bad for years. (A warrior could literally passively out heal ranger damage) Not much you can do about it. Just do your job, get your bags and be happy.
While I don’t think the game is “dead” I have seen a dramatic drop off lately. My guild usually only wuv wuvs 4 days a week from seven and then only for an hour or so. Guild missions have gone from 40 to 30 man squads down to 6 . There are some hardcore raiders that fracture off into pug groups and that’s about it for visible activity. While this may not be representative of the entire population I hardly think my guild is some sole exception. Depending on what you enjoyed in the game and where you frequently spend your time in the game you’ll no doubt have seen a decline. So is the game dead? naw. But its hardly salad days in this joint either.
I’d be interested in the source for legendary armor in WvW as well. Last I saw on the reddit AMA they confirmed there were no plans for any other sets of legendary armor to be introduced. The raid set was it. I’d be interested if they changed their position. LFG has to be an attempt to solve the problem megaservers introduced. Currently there is an inability to rally people to wvw from cities and the like.
I have to ask, why? I mean I would like the company to succeed but I play the game to have fun with my friends and my guild. We are primarily a wvw guild, that’s what I enjoy. That mode is dying and Anet doesn’t really seem to care. I’m sure in a monetary sense they have some vested interest but they have definitely switched to catering to specific content over others. So I ask why would I bring my friends in to socialize with me while the activity I enjoy is burning down around us? If anything having a buddy spend cash on a product I may abandon shortly after seems cruel.
Some it was common sense. When I got one of the first cats I just tried foods cats would like, poultry and the like and it worked. Later cats gave clues like this spicy cat or whatever and I tried spicy foods, peppers etc. Later on however I needed guides.
Plot point kind of came out of no where in the beginning. Map was difficult to navigate but fun, I enjoyed exploring a bit, liked the shoulder skin, Legendary armor failed to land.
Well to prove mastery and that you are a truly legendary player, a master of the game I could argue the last requirement should be to achieve diamond legend rank in WvW and place in the top 10 on the PvP leader boards. As long as we are dealing with exclusivity and kitten why stop half way? Lets make this armor truly exclusive and legendary, not the hey I can stand in a green circle or buy paths armor.
I tend to agree with Ms. Gray on most things (rangers rule!) however as a counterpoint I’d add that a business wouldn’t run pictures of food (to use her analogy) that made it unappealing. I mean no one would be excited to try it if it looked disgusting. So if the armor is dynamically animated and this animation is what really helps it stand out and sells the design why wasn’t a video created to showcase that? Why present this feature with static images if it doesn’t represent it well at all?
(edit added an “a”)
What I find interesting is that legendary armor should be an interesting addition to the game, a way to engage the player base and get them working towards long terms goals to maintain an active interest in the game and community.
However, the implementation seems to have had an opposite effect, leading some facets of the community to feel excluded from what should be an exciting addition. The 100+ hours adjusting snap points post didn’t help matters considering modes like wvw still don’t have ascended vendors. Or legendary back pieces. Or a way to obtain the prestige version of their exclusive armor skin that has been in the game and been viewable in the wardrobe for almost a year I believe? Just flip the switch on that already. Compound that with pvp’s own internal problems and I wonder where the wisdom was to focus so heavily on raids for so long and then to provide those people with exclusive functionality. It most certainly wasn’t an intentional middle finger to aspects to the community that have little to no interest in raids but I can see why it can feel that way.
Now I should do the seemingly mandatory – I raid, I don’t enjoy raids (I help my guild), I play Wvw, I haven’t reskinned my armor in 3+ years, the legendary armor doesn’t appeal to me (the gating sucks and the payoff is ugly) so my opinions may be – and most certainly are – skewed but I feel the developers could have gotten way more bang for their buck on this by not making it so exclusive. But hey, at least wooden potatoes should make a quick buck off the forging of legendary armor video that will be out in a week so. So there’s that.
I remember running in wvw a while back and getting into a scrap with another ranger. They absolutely destroyed me and I’m thinking what is this guy running? I check the account name to whisper them, its Shadlang. I’m like ohhhhhhhhhhhhh… that explains everything.
On topic, its always baffled me that the developers explain that they want the ranger and their pet to have a synergistic relationship but some of our skills and traits are antagonistic towards our pet. I would like to see our abilities treat the ranger and their pet as one whole. If I cleanse I cleanse my pet for example. It seems logical but its been 4 + years and we still blow up our pets. However as it relates to wvw I think pets need a broader pass to address their survivability in general. Or at the very least a reduction or elimination of the 60 second death penalty.
I’m undecided about having a second boon or condi bar for my pet. It seems like a lot of visual clutter but would be infinitely helpful. I suppose the pet UI could be reworked to make it nice and readable at a glance but the odds of that happening seem slim.
As a ranger and wvw player thank you for the pet changes. They seem to be a good beginning to increasing the synergy between the ranger and the pet by providing more reliable performance against moving opponents. So that’s good, although I would be pleased to see their survivability addressed in wvw at some point. Confused as to why spike trap and lightning reflexes didn’t carry over to all game modes, the changes don’t look all that dangerous or broken. Confused as to the lackluster attention paid to wvw skill balance in general. Buffing ghost thieves. That’s… an odd choice. As to the rest everything that was over tuned in world vs world will now just kill you faster. That’s bad. Although I guess once most of the guild group rage quits and you get the man mode buff you won’t be giving up any points. That’s… good. I guess.
On an ending positive note. I think some of the changes are really going in the right direction, while others my be going in the right direction for certain game modes. With a bit of work and consideration for the remaining game modes (World vs World) I think things could really start cooking.
If I had to guess the question went unanswered simply because they are aware of how poorly the pets perform or aware of how poorly the pets are perceived to perform and simply don’t want to change them at this stage of the game’s life. Why go back and reinvent old systems? They would rather add new systems to market to new players. So it won’t really matter how the question is phrased as no one wants to respond with “They suck. We don’t care.”
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I thought holding a lady by her supple waist was something mens typically enjoyed doing.
To compound the issue the wvw druid build really only works right now because it can sustain with a minimal investment in healing power. Its not like we shoot, oh I don’t know, 10K laser beams. We whittle players down we don’t exactly explode them. If sustain is taken out of the picture and we don’t get any dps pressure to compensate its going to be a bad scene for a year at least. Also other classes are getting dps buffs. In that way its the tried and true anet double nerf. Kill our sustain while allowing players to do more damage against us (and everything really) in general.
My gut tells me that they are nerfing healing even with investment, maybe condi clear on the druidic clarity trait. Six instead of thirteen. Reducing the damage of smokescale and bristleback considerably and nothing else as far as buffs for core ranger. This would be inline for what the community has been screaming for. That’s what I’m expecting to read on Tuesday. I’d be VERY surprised if they actually did anything to re work core ranger or pets.
The community largely thinks that rangers should be a worthless class and anet largely goes along with the community. Expecting any love at this point is only frustrating.
Anyone else notice that their reasoning for nerfing heals was to promote build diversity but no where in the druid paragraph was a mention of tweaking skills, traits, dps or God forbid pets to give druids the tools to really expand into different roles? I found it interesting that they mentioned dps increase for rev and mesmer but nothing for druid. Smells like all nerfs to take ranger out of rotation again.
Runes of strength will extend the duration of might and make it easier to maintain might stacks. Also as it was noted nature magic is pretty important in the build for the traits fortifying bond and lingering magic. It should be said though that there all a whole bunch of ways to maintain a rolling 25 might stacks. Traited spirits for pulsing might on frost spirit works well in pve in conjunction with warhorn or strength sigils. As you mentioned strength of the pack with any pet that puts a lot of attacks in a short time will work. Smokescale, bristleback, etc. The real keys are nature magic and we heal as one to swap might.
One month re linking won the original vote. It was the choice of the developers to go to two month server pairings.
I tend to disagree in the respect that wvw has never been a driving consideration for balance iterations. However rangers, when they do see favorable changes, generally settle in the same place simply because the other professions benefit from a higher level of power creep. This is mainly due to our profession mechanic being flat out broken and honestly at this stage in the game’s life I don’t believe the pet mechanic will ever be fixed.
Simply put we are where they want us to be.
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I disagree. The stability on Signet of the Wild serves to help the ranger reliably land the damage increase. Removing the stability component would remove some synergy and force the player to blow 2 cool downs to land a burst, not really an ideal solution. Seems a bit of a nerf. Astral force on its own isn’t that difficult to currently generate. I’m locked out of celestial avatar more by the timer rather than the resource.
Besides, aren’t glass cannons supposed to be vulnerable to heavy burst? That’s the draw back of the builds. Focusing on giving them sustain by neutering our damage seems doubly counter productive.
Granted I’m not that heavy in favor of stacking damage buffs on ranger utilities. Seems lazy and narrows build diversity.
Rx would like to thank all of our battle buddies on GOM. you guys are the cat’s Pjs in all the pretty colors with all the really cool patterns.
Wait, are we talking ambient rabbit or the legendary white bunny from the beta weekend? Because I am so on board for the legendary white bunny.
Griffon. I am partial to the owl griffon myself.
I like the idea behind a lot of the changes. I’d put the unblockable attacks maybe in brutish seals, I feel that would allow for more active play, counter play, through activation times of sigils and the cool down could be absorbed into sigils themselves, which tend to have long cool downs. Also theoretically the ranger would give up something to set up something. I like that idea more then passive traits which seem to be a bit askew currently.
I can’t say I liked any of these changes. I understand that they are most likely geared with a very pvp mentality in mind but the steady focus change alone is a straight 10% dps reduction on a class that isn’t exactly a dps powerhouse. Hurts pve unless you add that back in baseline to weapons. I’d rather we have a change in a utility to avoid projectile hate. Or projectile hate on other classes is balanced down as a whole. The rest seem very situational. I mean choking gas could be alright but rangers only have two weapon sets (dagger/ shortbow am I missing any?) to apply poison. Wouldn’t that narrow build/gear diversity? Barbed arrows is confusing, no change in functionality? Why make it compete with spotter? You are losing trait synergy with that move. Also hidden barbs would be a tad over balanced for an adept.
It could be argued that population migration is valuable data to collect if you are investigating whether or not server mergers can fix the population imbalance. But locking transfers at this point after guilds have already moved and stacked would just lock in the imbalance.
I do feel that if they are trying to merge servers they should do so based on population the night of the reset. I have no data to suggest they wont do this or something similar. I also have no data suggesting they will actually merge servers, just rumors. I am going to wait to see what they do and then provide feedback to improve the process. It may be me but it seems to be the best course of action. Sure my server may get the short end of the stick, or it may not. I don’t know what will happen and really at this point its a little late to change what they are going to implement.
In the meantime I’ll continue to enjoy wuv wuv and my fantastic community. No reason to get all bent out of shape over things that haven’t even happened yet.
If the server merge is true its already botched. Assuming that the idea of the leak is that the Anet friendly guilds received information ahead of time and leaked accordingly. And locking the servers will just lead to less player involvement. They aren’t going to play on a server where they don’t enjoy the matchup.
But in all fairness a merger is a band aid at best. People will always transfer from servers they perceive as failing and move to servers where they can be assured of regular wins. Its just the nature of the server system. Unless they break it down to something ridiculous like 2 tiers. Create an artificial shortage to ensure that the maps always remain populated.
I think whatever they are doing its probably not the end game in terms of population balance. Its just a way to retain the population while they hash out a more permanent fix. Of course I could be wrong and they could suddenly bust out a whole new system. Its happened before.
Well to be fair guild upgrades (like supply capacity for WvW) that were available pre HoT were cut from the base game and were re package and heavily gated behind PvE HoT content.
In general the WvW community was hosed by HoT. They got a map that by and large many don’t like. A chasm across skill balance. More PvE content in a mode where many don’t want PvE content. Upgrades that radically unbalanced the game mode and seemed poorly implemented / shoddily tested (hello dragon banner) The laggy Oasis event that slowed gameplay to a crawl. (I had some events where I couldn’t even auto attack) Bugs on objectives that allowed enemy players to simply waypoint in and cap the objective whenever they wanted. This isn’t to mention the stability changes and skill balance that were implemented pre HoT that were leading up to and preparing for HoT. I mean I can see where those players would be disappointed in the expansion. It didn’t do much good for them.
As far as top priorities go I don’t have many.
1 Population balance. This is a bit of a sticky wicket. Many people have transferred up and don’t see the need for it. Some like their smaller communities. But I feel that many players on less populated servers are getting discouraged due to having their face smashed into the dirt and not really being able to do anything about it due to population imbalance. I feel this hurts the mode as much as any of the severe issues facing wuv wuv. It should be addressed sooner rather then later.
2. Skill split or WvW being taken into consideration during skill balance changes. A good example of this would be the stability change that gutted a playstyle many enjoyed. The WvW community saw the implications of this a mile away and addressed their concerns. The change went through and I feel as though many players I spoke to felt marginalized I suppose. That their feedback was irrelevant in preference to other game modes. That is unfortunate if perhaps sometimes unavoidable but it began the wedge I feel persists between the developers and the community.
As an addendum of sorts this extends to classes in a way. Ranger for example which has a large chunk of their personal offensive ability tied up into a pet have no recourse to keep said pet alive during the large dynamic player “interactions” that are the hallmark of WvW. This leaves Ranger, which may be someone’s one true beloved class feeling marginalized by mechanics outside of their control with no real consideration given to the game mode. There are most likely scant few players who enjoy the challenge of stepping into the mode at a 33% disadvantage straight off the bat. This extends to other classes I’m aware but ranger is the most dynamic of these in my mind because they can’t run a non pet build. That damage is always invested there. Class design should probably be addressed with the idea that they should be functional in ALL modes in mind. This would help to reverse what I feel is an exclusionary vibe. That and seeing all the beloved fur friends limping around breaks my heart. Think of the broken paws!
3 rewards. I don’t feel this as much as others as I actually only get good drops in wvw. Can’t get an exo in pve for the life of me but it rains gold for me in wvw. Still I hear its a problem. Just don’t nerf me. That and I don’t really wvw for loot. I like killing people in the face, so there is that.
4. Obstructed. Why does a leaf block all my attacks? Foliage op, please nerf.
5. I hear the new bls are unpopular (like very much so) I actually enjoy them for what they are but I very much see where they could be improved. If they are beyond that I’d be apathetic to the return of alpine borderlands. It doesn’t matter so much to me but I’m sure the return of the old maps would be welcomed be many. Doing guild missions on the new Bls are troublesome (it takes forever to hold anything for the gm) and I would like to see the oasis used a bit more sparingly and the lag of that event addressed or the event disabled all together.
This is a weird thing. I once had I boss that told me that “everyone loves one of these characters” and “You are only as good as your last job” when I was doing some gameplay animations for a project early in my career.
I thought that this was sort of a universal wisdom but playing ranger has made me think otherwise. I’m not sure if its lack of any hard and fast math (although the numbers are out there) an active resistance to making the class competitive for whatever reason (the pvp community hates it, weird thoughts that pets do like a billion dps, devs hate the class, or whatever tinfoil hat theory is out here) or just the burden of dealing with the pet AI and class mechanic but the ranger really is the redheaded step child of GW2.
As for making the class better one of the first things that needs to be approached is does the class rely on pet damage or character damage? Its a really mixed message right now. Pets do decent dps (well for pets) that doesn’t even put them near other classes and they get nerfed to being mediocre at best. Heavy handed nerfs, not shaves. But in the same breath the explanation for poor ranger character dps is pet dps, which doesn’t even bring us on par with other classes before you consider class mechanics and skills. Its really odd to me. It seems like an active decision to make the class underperform despite that fact that every class is someone’s favorite. That said I hate to subscribe malice or indifference towards the developers, they’ve shown they can make good classes and a pretty solid core game.
The biggest thing for me is sorting out what does the ranger do best? Right now its die and run into combat with both arms tied behind its back. They need to sort out where the class derives its power, develop that, and then resist calls for nerfs and reversion. The ranger has been so sub par for so long any tiny bit of ability to compete will be met with cries of “OMG! Too stronk! Please nerf!” Sadly it seems that those cries are catered too.
If I had my wish it would be a rule set in place that for every nerf a ranger receives they need 2 buffs, no exceptions. Make them really sit down and look at the numbers not the feels and figure out how badly the ranger underperforms and bring it up to the standard of other classes. There are multiple ways to do this and a variety of great suggestions on the forums but its difficult to get into the nitty gritty of it because after 3 years of playing the class I really don’t know what the developers want it to be. (It isn’t really great at direct damage, it isn’t really great at condi damage, its large heavy attacks like maul are hugely telegraphed, easy to avoid and don’t really hit that hard, pets don’t really do great damage, pets can’t hit moving targets, etc and so forth) Which is the beginning and end of my problem.
To be fair though while players can create population imbalance its really difficult for them to fix the problem they create. To do so you’d need a large number of guilds and unaffiliated people to agree to spread to lower tier servers all going to opposing servers at roughly the same time. That level of coordination will never happen. Heck, there probably aren’t enough players left to populate the servers that exist and maintain a healthy population in all time zones.
At the end of the day players generally want to win, either their match up or their fights. Players also want to log in and jump right into the action regardless of time zone. Its beneficial then to stack servers. Always fights, always karma, always something to do. Trying to break that up voluntarily would be difficult at best.
Its gotten so bad now that the mere rumor of X guild leaving X server will spark mass transfers.
As to the original post WvW is kind of already dead (ish). Sure there will be some good match ups for a while longer but the ability for servers to move through the tiers is rapidly ending. There is just not enough players to go around anymore. The trick will be getting new players to re populate the game mode. I tend to lean towards this being an uphill battle. Long term players won’t suddenly jump into the mode in mass and I suspect the free to play players that will pick up the game mode already have.
The biggest problem they face is that MMO’s are habitual “buys” if you will. They more or less rely on habitual game play or loyalty to the brand. Once players leave, move on to other activities its really difficult to woo them back in any great capacity. I suspect whatever they do it will have to be geared around the remaining player base. So some sort of alliance or server merger to try to engage the population they have left. Or it will heavily be geared to trying to draw PvE players into the mode.
(edited by Mr Pin.6728)