Guild Wars 2

If you ever would waste time trying to fix this map, these things I would need:

1. in map view (after pressing M, that’s the default key), I NEED to see lines with arrows on them indicating the direction you can go, at least the major & shortest routes to each objective. If you would ever draw such a mao, you would see what a huge maze and mess it is… but at least I would have an ideea which way to go

2. remove fall damage completely on that map, or allow gliders, or reduce height to similar the alpine map has, with similar elevation smoothing

3. increase move speed 3x times or reduce the map size 3 times (consider the maze pointed out at #1 above, that adds to travel distances)

4. remove all those buffs and annoyances given by shrines and similar, turn them into bloodlust points

5. add more shortcuts to to travel through keeps, place those shortcuts right next to gates… but the keeps still need a complete redesign, height is way to much, see point #2 above

6. remove all those decorations on ground that make teleport evade skills fail or even targeting fail with “no valid path to target”

7. that golem keep lord should stop blocking our own team when defending… really

I likely forgot a few other things, thanks for reading, and don’t worry, I will stay away from desert borderland for now.

No, pointing out flaws (real or subjective) is not a problem, no need to give them what they “really want to hear”… also being civil is related to ones background, not everyone understands that being diplomatic, tactful & considerate leaves the door open for positive answers and reactions.

It’s not specific to these forums at all, the whole internet & “humanity” is mirrored here. Anet also need to read behind emotions and insults, when that is possible, because most things can be improved, including the ways feedback is given and received (or ignored).

This turned into joking thread, understandable…

A WvW leaderboard, for both guilds and individual players would be an extremely useful tool, since server balance could be based on this (also time spent by these players & guilds, contribution into overall skirmish score, and so on, specifics could be discussed if and when Anet decides to consider implementing it, but KDR could be a start)

Beyond the “leaderboard” we also need an “alliance” system (this isn’t about battlegroups), it’s something similar to guilds, but server-wide structure: alliance chat, alliance roles (class & more), rating set to each member by leaders based on commitment and skill separately (faithful scout vs. skilled fighter), i.e. 85/40, 30/90.

One of the greatest failures of WvW system is the idea of being “inclusive”, which sounds great when it’s about accepting new players (less skilled), though even an “exclusive” system would need to welcome new blood; but the current gives no means to separate trolls and leeches, many times the map is full and queued with these, and they can’t do anything else but in the best case spam the chat with toxicity. This is what resulted from making a competitive team game mode that is inclusive towards those who aren’t team players.

WXP rating or even kill numbers are pointless, both can be farmed with no skill at all. WvW game mode never liked skilled players, it’s almost designed against them: any troll can still get on a cannon or AC and destroy a fight, and then wonder about why nobody returns…

There is no way to determine the skill level based on any stats currently in use. KDR could come closer than any other, but certainly isn’t an accurate measurement, both kill & death numbers depends just as much or even more on your team and the teams you were fighting against, as your own skill. A list to be used when balancing servers could still be useful, including one for guilds too.

Serenity.6135:

There is no such thing as population balance because people are not static constructs. Players take breaks, do not all play at the same time, for the same amount of time, leave the game etc. You cannot have actual population balance in a game mode that is based on having 24/7 matches, it is not hard to understand. In PvP it is possible of course because you have small teams in set matches with short timers. WvW is an entirely different creature. There will always be imbalance because it is the nature of this content, plain and simple.

You are missing the point here: it’s not about making it equal, but not having unsurpassable differences, and that is beyond just player numbers: it’s time zone coverage and quality of the players or groups too.

These have to be achieved by systems in place, that are simply missing: rating the value of each and everyone, keeping that rating updated, distributing it evenly. Long term realm loyalty rewards for loyal players and even higher, but short term rewards for those who volunteer in going where they are needed – just like PvP rewards, when you are asked to switch to the other team. There has to be systems in place for all these.

Otherwise is a complete failure. Why do it when the “winner” is already decided? There is no fun playing this way, beyond a certain point, and that is until finding out that “it’s nothing here, move on”. That’s why players do GvG instead, because the fight system is fun, but since the rest is not, this can’t last for long.

There has to be a better way, unless the target of this product are new players only. This could have been more fun than anything in GW2, but was anything but fun (except the somehow even fights), and was even more frustrating because of the lack of explanation; that what is this game mode? I thought this was a competitive game mode:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/competitive-play/

But it isn’t. Again, not because all sides aren’t having the same “rating”, but because the rating difference is so huge that there is no competition at all. Can this be solved? Are the problems unsurmountable, because varied reasons? If not, let us know, so we can move on. Thank You!

Straegen.2938:

CU is far too old school for my liking and still fairly buggy in the betas.

There is no CU yet, it’s just a game project in development, currently in Alpha state, close to first Beta, so can’t be put on this list – yet. About bugs in a project that is not even in beta… that’s… no comment. But it’s the only real upcoming competitor to WvW, though WvW could still have it’s own niche: converting PvE players to a fun, team based PvP. More games is better, it’s not like there can be only “One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all…”

New system is needed, more than everything. By far the highest priority. Expansion will bring even more imbalance, solves nothing.

When one side can’t fight back: the game is over. It’s just as boring and pointless winning easily, than being wiped, with no chance to last a while. No CHALLENGE at all.

And that is what’s happening, and good fights, that can last a while, are extremely scarce. The skill balance doesn’t helping either. The whole system needs to become competitive. It is not. It’s very one-sided.

Delete, reform, change, doesn’t matter how: CHANGE is needed. But there is no answer, so what we can do? Play something else, right? Don’t be surprised if WvW loses players constantly.

Concisely: competitiveness was let to die & even “killed”.

The game mode gradually devolved into something casual & pointless activity: take empty objectives for a PPT, that affects nothing:
1. there are no player or guild rankings, nothing to win or lose
2. realms means nothing, transfers and multiple accounts eroded and slowly wiped away any community identity: fighting for your world is no longer a thing, it’s a team based game with… no teams you can belong
3. glicko and the way was used, in the above context, made it impossible for worlds to compete
4. the fight system was diluted and made unimportant by siege vs. players, where unskilled players could just use a high damage AOE from safety – this was even buffed, and more such things added: airships, chilling fog, other PvE tricks & traps – instead of rewarding the PvP skills, both small scale and large, encouraging the players to become better – what was done is quite the opposite: no skills are required to “play” WvW
5. huge class skill imbalances introduced and not fixed for months or years: stealth, stability, confusion, passive traits
6. requirement to leave the WvW game mode, to go into PvE – for gear, skills, traits, gold, and so on

Could go on, but there’s no point. WvW is done, unless there will be at least a reason to compete, where skill and contribution matters, and there will be something worth fighting for.

Raymond Lukes.6305:

I’d like to start off by saying the WvW team works hard to keep up with forums and also reddit. Your feed back and discussion is awesome and we love reading what you guys have to say. The unfortunate reality is we cannot reply to every post and so it may seem as though we aren’t reading things.

I’ve stated in a previous thread that deleting worlds and letting players choose a new world is something we have considered in many forms. At this time we do not have a solution that we feel solves enough of the issues with population balance while also hitting enough of our requirements for a change to be made.

As I said above we love the discussions and suggestions you guys have for WvW this particular problem is tricky as you guys don’t have all the details we are working from. A lot of the ideas we’ve seen have been well thought out and detailed they fall short because you guys are working from a limited perspective and not solving the whole issue.

We can’t help then and your post is very useful clearing that up. We can stop trying to propose solutions.

What we still can do, is to communicate our piece of the puzzle, and it’s up to you to find ways to assemble it into a whole.

Here is mine: WvW in my view is a competition, that is so one-sided at the moment, that there is no more competition – so it’s pointless. There has to be a challenge in acquiring a win, otherwise it’s not fun. That challenge has to be achievable for all teams. “Taking on achievable challenges is a secret of happiness”, let’s say fun. Of course just watching the in-game landscape can be “fun” too, but this is about the fun of improving, becoming better player, improving teamwork – these all need achievable challenges, including content for newbies, advanced up to highest levels.

This is why you have tournaments on hold – which is good decision by the way – until solving “team balancing”. This is the most important problem, by far.

Israel.7056:

So I was around when Onslaught and TW decided to take YB to t1. I kinda got the motive then. Seemed like a combination of spite and curiosity.

Right now I’m just confused. What is the reason for taking TC back to t1 after working so hard to kick them out in the first place?

They are just bored. Plain simple: boredom.

They are even willing to accept the role of “villains”, just to spice up things a bit. It’s not just one player, but at least two leaders. It’s not the first time, already was done with YB… and that adventure led to a far less fun T1 than the one before, and an obliterated T2. But the intention was “noble”; creating multiple T1 servers, so there will be competition (which means FUN) at top… that plan failed, it’s not possible without ArenaNet support. Lessons learned? Yes and no. They know that it’s not possible, but also that trying (and creating chaos), is more fun, for a while at least, than not doing anything.

I’m really not defending them (I moved to DB to fight them), but also can’t accuse them: because this game became so stale, while at the same time both abandoned & ruined by the devs with their multiple failed attempts… that even pure craziness like these “locust movements, to destroy whatever left” seems justified… or not quite, but logical, expectable. What else these two leaders (or more) and their followers could do? Other than stop playing or just play the same mindless-stale-maddening (go on, describe in your mind) what WvW became.

WvW needs to regain it’s lost soul: COMPETITION. This extremely boring, braindead, zerg vs. empty building capture, must go now.

Main problems to be solved:

1. Population imbalance:
server linking and so on. We know that is still far from being “balanced”, and I don’t mean equal forces, but at least giving every side a “chance” to last long enough. Not to win, but at least be able to fight back.

2. Reason for improvement:
there is none at moment. One can just press buttons mindlessly for years and be carried by others. WvW want to be “inclusive” and that sounds great, but should never encourage complacency and parasitic behavior. This is the main reason why we are losing good players and it’s unacceptable: we should lose bad players, those who don’t care about learning, don’t care about their teams need — in a “team game”.

3. Meta, balanced for WvW – not made for PvE and in the best case – slightly tweaked. Though asking for skills designed around WvW would be too much, so slightly more tweaks would be still a huge step forward.

How to solve 1 & 2:

I don’t care if you came up with any other ideea, just NEEDS to be solved.

My ideea would be, based on current state – to create NEW worlds, NEW system, though just the way of picking players and “balance” these teams will be NEW, at least at start. WvW would look like this:
Tier 1 – Top Competitive Scene: Best Guilds (treat guilds as a whole, with a single rating), with non-guild “Best Players” filling empty spots
Tier 2 – Advanced Tier: those who couldn’t fit into the top, and advanced enough to not be in newbie tier
Tier 3 – Newbie Tier: you should get it…
You need a rating system, but for the start use anything. Players & Guilds can drop to lower tier, based on their performance. Or advance. Give far better rewards at top, so everyone is encouraged to improve.

Or just do anything else, but make reward effort and performance only, not parasitic “participation”.

Option is fine. Disabling for everyone is not, because sometimes we need to talk with the “enemy” to arrange a GvG, something ad-hoc, and discuss details. Also during GvG to send the “gg” message or something.
Also the “Block” you mention: those who whisper in that manner deserve at least to be blocked and it’s not up to me, but they should be further punished, actions should have proper consequences. Maybe one day. One can hope.

All I care is having good fights, that is open field with no siege involved and where both sides can last a while, doesn’t matter which side wins. But the score is based on capturing objectives mostly, and I can’t stand that boring build siege, stay there doing nothing until wall/gate/etc goes down, then kill those NPC, though it’s fun if there are even numbers and both sides are fighting — without siege, or at least just very few siege…
That’s how many or most?! players feel, so the “score” means nothing – because the FUN is in good fights, the boredom is in capture & siege play.

It’s absolutely pointless looking at (mostly) PPT based score anymore. That part of the game died long time ago, when realm identity was dissolved with transfers, and later annihilated with megaserver… not even talking about the linking farce that is going on lately – there is no — insert server name here — anymore. RIP.

This is just an example suggestion, but something must be done and should be the first priority

Full, High, Low and similar server (or any future WvW Team) status should be set based on a Rating System that gives a real fighting chance to every team. What we have now seems based on total number of players that go into WvW and spend some time there, even if they don’t contribute.

This could have two parts:
1. Current Rating: balance servers based on this
- based on contibution into PPK, PPT, etc. Gathering nodes, being afk, having a higher death than kills ratio, means not contributing to your team
- similar to PvP mode, giving more track rewards to higher ranks, but one must keep contributing in order to keep it

2. Total Accumulated Rating
- give ascended item tracks, legendaries, traits and more based on this
- shown on a “Scoreboard” web page, with Current and Total contributions, or at least an API

Crafting just prevents those who don’t like it, to obtain anything from this pip-system. Too much PvE everywhere, way too much…

It is very simple: when there is no chance to fight back, the game is over

Scoring, rewards, and whatnot doesn’t matter at all.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

ProDecius.2609:

“So unless you actually have any constructive advice on “how to handle conditions” I suggest you try another thread.”

Your just a TROLL , a complete and utter troll that’s the only explanation how can you defend this meta? why do you defend this meta? is someone paying you ?

going to make this pretty obvious why this is a rude and pointless post only meant to troll and irritate people. . .

IT’ IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CLEANSE AFTER BEING HIT BY AN EPI BOMB, ANY SKILL WILL KILL YOU FROM CONFUSION!!!! GOOD LUCK EVEN HAVING A SINGLE FRAME TO ACTIVATE SKILLS OR EVEN SEE THE CONDITIONS. It’s UTTERLY unbelievable how people think epidemic is a “fair skill” please kitten you are completely and utterly wrong.

Step 1) deal with condi before epi.
step 2) oh look, you aren’t dead.
Step 3) victory cheer. You successfully learnt to play. Take a bow.

Try the “L2P” option before throwing around insults.
However if you know someone willing to pay me for wearing a captain obvious hat, please dont send me their names.

PS. drink some water. You look like you’re at risk of death by salt overdose.

Ignoring insulting parts, you are wrong Artemis. Do you even play WvW? Anyway, doesn’t matter. Our voices won’t be heard, unless the Balance Team of what this game has comes in WvW and see for themselves.

Condi bombing works by overwhelming a focused target or area with condition, and the more coordinated it is, the more difficult is to “avoid it”. By avoid I mean either kill them before they can condi bomb you, keep them in CC or whatever pressure to prevent them to do it, but these will only delay the moment. So basically kill them or you will be hit sooner or later.

The problem is that after you are hit, there is no counterplay. It’s over.

How to prevent it? By clearing condis constantly? That helps, but when a focused attack is initiated, they will corrupt those nice, clean boons on you, and then spread it with epi. That’s not really preventing…

The ONLY “counterplay” is to kill them before they can do it… which isn’t counter at all. Should be a way to react after, to remove those condis. But there isn’t. Despite the “nerf” to epi. Just die and respawn.

Svarty.8019:

… more points through PPK than their opponents can muster in PPT.

This is why PPK is bad. It makes dominant servers more dominant.

PPK is the ONLY that is result of active play, vs players, and not vs NPC’s. Sitting on siege in T3 objectives must go: make siege do damage only against buildings, not players.

No ideea what “dominant” means to you in a game where most servers desperately work to avoid getting into the top tier – T1. The time of dominant servers are gone, all we have now a massive migration, of almost everyone:
1. either because looking to find fights, since action is almost inexistent in a 24/7 game, except some short periods of time
2. these groups are followed by those who want bags, they go where the gold rush it is
3. then lastly those who don’t care about anything above just sick of empty maps
The rest just give up on game, stop playing it for a while or forever, or just log in and afk on siege.

But imbalance indeed IT IS a huge problem, in the top, next to server lag. Not because the scoring – that just reflects the problem, but because ONE side or two out of three can’t fight back. That kills the game for all 3 sides. Giving some siege to fix balance means nothing, scoring means nothing: fun fights are everything, fought over something that results in rewarding experience, like a scoreboard and realm rewards.

Fix metrics first, then do proper balance of numbers & quality of those player numbers. After that competition can begin and scoring can mean something.

Some of you are laughing at “Blackgate”, though that Blackgate doesn’t exist anymore. The migration is so high that server identity means nothing anymore. The players that are on a server or another, that started their account there 4 years ago are a tiny minority.

What is important now, is that it is inevitable, that sooner or later another server will be punished into T1, and there is no fun at all there. T1 must be fixed or removed altogether, it’s a wasteland. Any server that goes there will have to suffer until getting out: all is left in T1 is capturing from NPC’s, or the very rare blob desperately looking for an easy target…

The “hell” should be below, now is above. Being there should be a reward, now it’s a punishment. Balance is needed more than ever and quickly, before all tiers turn into a T1 wasteland.

+1 to OP ideea

Anything would help, and maybe slowly this could be expanded to allow GvG with any guild, regardless their current server. And more. But let’s just keep it at one dream a time.

Creating teams anew it’s a necessity, but recreating the same mess under a new name is pointless: first new metrics needed, a measurement of each player’s worth in contribution value, and then teams balanced using these values.

In fights, numbers can be just walking bags, and could never compete against better players. If it’s about capping, active coverage that is willing to cap things, despite being lower numbers. Every player must have a constantly updating contribution rating (reflecting their cap & fight score), so balancing can be based on something real.

Pensadora.9478:

Or is it the plan to leave this out-of-balance situation to continue for the two month linking period?

Not only the imbalance is kept, but becomes worse as time goes on: there is constant transfer happening, usually into the “winning” side.

It isn’t really balancing, more like a semblance that something it is done, though creating this “illusion” likely takes some effort from Anet’s part. They are at least trying to balance, but just moving around numbers like this can’t work: the quality, willingness, time spent actively in WvW by those numbers, it isn’t accounted for.

I already posted that I love it, but this won’t help repeating it. Instead of focusing of emotions – though those are also very important, we have to focus on reasoning, in order to reach a consensus or compromise. I hope the devs have a summary of the substance posted here, the “whys and wherefores”, and how those can be solved – if needs to be solved.

For example:
Problem: Gliding possible into enemy objectives, in certain circumstances.
Solution(s): Remove boons from player in gliding state, move borders to better spots – or even add neutral zones in-between (no gliding zones) where needed, add high damage & unremovable long debuff to those still entering it, and so on

There are also subjective “problems”, those that conflict with what a player was used to be a norm or at least thought it is, such as:
- there were relatively “safe” zones inside the enemy territory, now they are exposed because gliding… well, that territory belongs to the enemy, or it is close to it, tread carefully
- gliding adds another new escape option, one that cannot be followed, they shouldn’t be able to glide while in fight mode… but it’s an advantage given to those owning the area, so it’s normal to have an advantage – comparable to the objective gates, where the owned can enter only, and more fair “run away” option than stealth, leaps, teleports, and similar. It’s not a glider related problem, though that adds a new way to that “running away” feature – that isn’t forbidden, and should be solved together if ever is considered to be solved (removing escape options). At least a defender now can get away, without specifically having a gank squad to stealth it.

We don’t know what the “majority” thinks, but likely most are neutral about this. Of course there were far more important issues to be solved, but that’s again not a reason to be against a feature. I like if the enemy can respond fast, to any attack we make on their objectives, because I hate taking something without winning a fight there. Gliding reduces the time I always felt as wasted, and adds a far higher percent that is filled with action, not boring walking.

Population balance, competitiveness, WvW focused skill balance and more, are still higher priority than anything – including gliding. But we can’t stop time and undo this decision: it’s way too late. It’s done. I love it, but still disappointed that those more important things aren’t addressed. Still, if we want to be heard, we should behave like intelligent beings, so our voice can be considered as one that cares about this game mode.