Thank you for opening up discussion to the community. I have a lot of things to say, so I’ll try to lay them out as cleanly and clearly as possible (and tastefully edit them to be forum-appropriate). I feel some areas of improvement exist that aren’t really listed there under the poll choices, that are nonetheless very important to be addressed – I’ve posted these items in what I believe to be order of highest-to-lowest importance, though I consider them all important.
Firstly, I feel very strongly that the #1 PRIORITY must be moving back to the alpine maps as QUICKLY as possible. The desert borderlands, while they may appear neat from a PvE perspective, are NOT conducive to proper, enjoyable WvW play and have massively reduced the interest of career-WvW players in the game, in some cases driving them off entirely. A return to the alpine maps would bolster interest of those who prefer to spend most or all of their time in WvW and are uninterested or even disdainful of PvE play.
Secondly, something to consider for revising of EBG and the bringing back of the alpine maps – the PvE-like mechanics brought into WvW with the expansion HURT WvW. The tactivators, the surprise-boulders that close off passages in the desert BL, and the Cloaking Waters all introduce unwanted PvE mechanics that interfere with healthy WvW play. I urge you to NOT introduce tactivators to the alpine maps when you bring them back.
Furthermore, I urge you to reconsider your “will-not-remove” stance on the newly-introduced mechanics in EBG, and consider HEAVILY reducing the impact of many or all of them, and even remove the worst offenders (airship, cloaking waters, chilling fog). I know it looks and feels bad to remove things that you worked on, and I can emphathize with that, but these mechanics have made WvW worse, not better. I know you’ve said these mechanics have been intertwined with the scribing system, and again I can emphathize with that, but it really rings hollow when you say that you can’t remove these things you’ve added, because the end result is that it becomes the players’ problem that the developers made this mistake. I also know you plan to nerf these in the near future – I REALLY hope this nerf is a stopgap so that you have time to more strongly change these mechanics or ultimately remove them, and that you aren’t assuming it will be a permanent solution.
Thirdly, I couldn’t help but notice that the “Scoring Improvements” subsections did NOT include increasing the value of winning fights (fights against other players, not mobs/NPCs) and decreasing the value of Point-Per-Tick and “Player-Versus-Door”. Large battles are the heart of WvW, what draws hardened WvW players to the game, and placing more scoring emphasis on fighting (especially if its weighted for respective army sizes) would go a long way towards rewarding the play that WvW players come for.
Fourthly, I want to note that there are still issues of balance that differ from balance issues in sPvP and PvE – You cannot balance for all three using the exact same numbers, and WvW has had some issues due to certain things being A-OK in the other modes but troublesome in WvW. I highly encourage returning to having split-skills between WvW and other modes, and using this option more frequently, to address certain troublesome player mechanics (the greatest offender being, in my opinion, the long-standing issue of lone thieves abusing stealth to harass groups, then immediately cower back into stealth for extended periods, posing an un-ignorable threat which the group has no reasonable recourse to address properly).
Finally, I want to note that there are still many problems with rewards and item availability for those players who only play WvW. Many players want to spend as little time outside of WvW as possible (as stated above, many such players despise PvE). Most of the items in the game that actually affect your stats and build are available either through WvW, or on the Trading Post (for gold you can get playing WvW). This being possible should be a design goal – it fits with the original play-how-you-want philosophy, and it’s important that anything that directly impacts your play in WvW should be attainable in WvW. However, certain build-affecting items are still unobtainable through pure WvW play.
The longest-standing example is the Ascended Back Item – These provide stat boosts over exotic that are useful in WvW, but only some stat combos are available without PvE. While many of the original quivers and tomes can be crafted now using bloodstone dust, the select-your-stats versions (Thousand arrows and there-with-yakkington) still require a random drop from playing fractals (meaning many stat combinations are unavailable). The spinal blades required participation in a PvE event (current methods of acquisition require endless farming of PvE mobs for blade shards). Mawdrey, the so-and-so’s pack, Sabetha’s Crucibles, and the fractal pieces all require PvE. The human god backpieces are all EXCEEDINGLY expensive (because you’re paying for the skin, and the less-expensive-but-still-very-expensive ones require PvE masteries). Making it possible to craft the Thousand Arrows quiver or There With Yakkington using the bloodstone-dust version of the recipe would be a simple solution to this (and frankly I’m not sure why that option wasn’t made available when it was for the other quivers and tomes).
Other examples are more recent, with the expansion – while it makes sense to restrict the new stat combinations to people who bought the expansion, it does NOT make sense to force WvW players who bought the expansion to play through PvE to gain access to those new stat combos. Additionally, HoT exacerbated the existing problem of Rangers needing to play PvE to gain access to certain pets by introducing the Juvenile Electric Wyvern, a neat new pet that makes WvW players sit through the DS event to get – I understand it’s been moved to only require PART of the DS event, but still forces players to sit through some of DS for something they want only for WvW.
I think I’ve laid out all the things I have to say, and I’m pretty sure I’ve successfully edited the whole thing to be forum-appropriate. Thank you again to Anet for opening discussion up to the community; I hope someone gets a chance to read this and all the other thoughtful posts people have made regarding WvW.
