I’m missing a few configuration options for the action camera. It’s fun in PvE but imo placing AoE is a pain and could be improved upon.
1) New option: Toggle action camera while ground targeting.
While placing an AoE circle (fast with range indicator) the game toggles out of action mode to let you place it freely without turning your camera wildly.
2) New option: Slider to move up the reticle dot in action mode.
So you can play a bit more out of a bird’s eye view.
3) New keybind: Activate free camera to look around conveniently without affecting movement direction.
There needs to be a tell added to sigil of revelation to bring it in line imo. I’m thinking of a short delay of 0.5 or 0.75 sec after swap before the reveal happens. Adding a small visual effect to the weapon swap would then serve as tell. Like a light emanating briefly from the character on weapon swap indicating the reveal to happen shortly.
That it has no tell at all is what sets it apart from sigil of greater nullification, as with that you still need to hit your next attack. Though I’d like a visible swap effect on that one as well. Or did I get it wrong and you can’t actually evade it?
You could think about changing sigil of cleansing to 2 conditions cleared on a 18 sec cooldown in order to set it apart from sigil of purity. That way classes with a normal weapon swap will profit more from equipping one. Especially for thiefs that would be a very strong shortbow sigil! Well, it’s probably a bit too powerful that way…
Btw I like a lot this sigil that MithranArkanere suggested (though the others not as much)
Sigil of Grace
Gain Aegis (1 second) when you swap to this weapon while in combat.
(Cooldown: 18 seconds)
I don’t see any advantage in 5 / 4 / 3 over 3 / 2 / 1.
I’m definitely not the first to suggest this…
3 / 2 / 1 in the night and morning
6 / 4 / 2 in the afternoon and late evening
9 / 6 / 3 in the evening when matches are most active
That would be a change bringing better match-up quality as it balances match-ups more on what is most important to the majority of players : the active hours. It would reduce the importance of coverage a bit further and add to fairness. It’s hard to tell if matches will be closer, however I’m convinced they will be better at the busy times of day.
The major disadvantage is that people will be salty no matter how they may set the time frames.
Also I really like that notion of giving some bonus points to the losing server once they win a skirmish.
I really like solution 3! Additionally you should rework the UI so the linked worlds will be represented more clearly in the WvW menu. When do you ever hover over a server name to show the linking partners?
Balancing the populations between servers would be the next step. The smallest servers just feel worthless when their linked to ones that are 10 times their size. They should at least have the numbers for a zerg that stands a chance during prime time.
I’m sure more worlds could improve the match-up quality, and I support it. Though I also see an issue. There’s already a lot of complaining by smaller servers about their identity and the main cause of the problem is their small impact on the match-up overall. Some just aren’t real linking partners but minor assets. And more tiny worlds won’t solve that, but balancing populations between servers could.
In my opinion before introducing new worlds you should try to optimize transfer rules first. If you were to introduce free transfers from servers with full or very high population to those with medium or low ones, I believe it would help improving link quality as well. There could also be some kind of reward for transferring down.
Btw why don’t you make a poll on it?
Edit:
I’m very interested in your idea! And I am completely for giving it a try, I’m persuaded that it will improve the current situation.
But imo you still need to put some more thought in transferring rules. Try to encourage the destacking of the biggest servers in some way and also promote the small servers that already exist.
I liked their ideas of the victory points being adjusted depending on daytime and a Last Stand event.
What happened to them?
Rewards are a great thing though. I just don’t think they accomplished their prior goals with skirmishes alone.
Okay, so 4-3-2 is actually just as bad as 3-2-1 when it comes to keeping matches exciting all over the week. Makes a lot of sense on second thought!
Last Stand will help with that to some extent but finding a balance between promoting exciting matches all week and making the longest part of the match-up feel less valuable will be a problem. Especially because match-ups often aren’t balanced decently, sometimes however they are quite close! Therefore basing it all solely on Last Stand doesn’t seem that sensible to me.
I guess that the multiplication via Action Level ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Let-s-Talk-Scoring/first#post6145749 ) actually is a necessary addition. As match-ups tend to be the most balanced when they are most active it will probably increase scoring quality, favoring servers with worse coverage but decent prime time, in which they have a “fighting chance”. While being pretty fair, because more players fight for more Victory Points. Though an additional factor reflecting population imbalance could be added to the calculation of the Action Level to counter times when one server has huge zergs while the others are weak. But maybe that would be easily cheatable.
To sum it up, I think Skirmishes can only help making closer and more exciting match-ups with the addition of Last Stand and Action Levels. With both of it though there is a chance.
But the upcoming live test of Skirmishes will only suffice for gathering feedback on the Skirmish structure as a basis. As overall the matches will probably be decided earlier in the week. They will be less balanced and exciting. At least for now.
Well it is mathematically simple. The new system avoids score imbalances that are bigger than:
1 server average of 126 points (3/6),
one average 84 (2/6) points and
one average 42 (1/6) points
But all the times the actual imbalance is smaller than this it sets it to that imbalance. In NA all the matchups have smaller average differences in scores than this, thus the new system actually increases the gaps in score.
I calculated it for all the current NA matchups. The gaps are bigger. check here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Where-are-the-promised-scoring-changes/first#post6317807
Your calculations are great!
So if I get it right the new scoring may give incentive to the losing servers to still win some skirmishes and it may reduce the impact of blowouts (that do generally happen in the night). But it will probably make match-up scores more imbalanced and it will render winning impossible earlier in the match to the previously weaker servers.
Setting the Victory Points to +4 / +3 / +2 would probably help with the bigger imbalance of match-up scores (it meant an average of +112 / +84 / +56 over 2h respectively). However I’m not so sure it would increase the chances of turning the match later on. Probably the Last Stand concept of theirs is required to help with that ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Let-s-Talk-Scoring ).
What are your thoughts?
Can you please make some calculations on whether that would make a relevant difference? Especially on chances of turning the match.
I’d really like to see them!
-Add an option to the menu to “Show all Players’ health bars”. You should be able to see all the health bars from just as far away as nameplates currently, as well as distinguish party members from squad members by color, and recognize guild mates.
If you could additionally differentiate between the two enemy servers, by e.g. different shades of red, it’d be nice for threeway fights. (If the shades can be distinguished clearly though.)
-Add an additional option to “Disable nameplates from popping up when hovering the mouse over a Player/NPC”. Now it only shows the name on targeting.
When desactivating nameplates while in a squad you can currently see how it could look and improve clarity! I really want to see this happening.
Anyways, the nameplate clutter definitely needs a solid fix!
I was hoping they’d merge an additional tier in EU. Would have helped with further revitalizing the medium sized servers like Drakkar, RoF, Whiteside etc.
But obviously that’s not as easy as in NA due to the different languages.
Considering the options in order to cut the tiers to 5, they could have made these merges, best I could come up with at least:
Abaddon & Drakkar (DE)
Dzagonur & Miller (DE)
Jade Sea & Fort Ranik (FR)
Augury Rock & Vizunah & Arborstone (FR) bam!
Gunnar’s & Underworld & Ring of Fire (EN)
Aurora & Blacktide & Fissure of Woe (EN)
rest as is
But probably some of these links were at the very least borderline op… After all Anet got the numbers.
Add this to the options please! The health bars will need to show up at about the same distance as names do.
A fast fix for the name plate clutter making zerg fights more enjoyable and clear.
I know the WvW team may be busy working on scoring and QoL did not win the vote, however maybe this doesn’t require a lot of work? And it would definitely be a big thing for me.
I’m sorry if this was asked for a lot already (didn’t bother searching).
Signed. Bring it back, with some new bosses and keep designs, please!
The old map was so much more fun, running around peacefully without an enemy soul to be found in that maze just isn’t the joy of wvw :/
and that abundance of chokepoints and verticality is hampering fights…
though I don’t think the new map is beyond saving. If they just scrapped that terrible waypoint system it’d be way more enjoyable already. Without the southern keeps’ waypoints open on your homeborder there’s no point in defending half of the map, so why give a kitten? Let’s karma train, and even for that the map is subpar!
Just make a king of the hill event in open terrain with slight (and I mean slight elevation in the center with a circle/flag to camp.
Make ppk x5 for 30 minutes every 2-3 hours and let the event rotate borderlands.
This will be more wvw oriented without the gimmicks and without gathering (gathering anything over and over is the bane of all games, why add it to the group pvp area at all?)
That´d be great! The PPK going up for 30 minutes really would be an appropriate and fun reward!
But king of the hill promotes blobbing up I guess, because especially numbers will be deciding who holds the point longest.
Now I came up with this:
The team accomplishing most kills of enemy players in the oasis during the 5 to 10 min duration of the event will earn that 5x PPK buff for the next 30 min.
Killing a player that just left the oasis area will still count towards the event (countdown of 1 min).
The event rotates between the borderlands taking place once an hour.
That would reward skillful play/coordination more than dumb blobbing. A smaller group of more skilled players can still win against the blob having the clear number´s advantage, even if they wipe. The 20 man guild squad just has to kill 21 enemy squishies in the process
Shield doesn’t fit virtues much in my opinion. Consecrations should also stay where they are, they too important for group support. Lastly I still think honour is a better place for hammer, it has zero synergy with valour.
I think shield fits Virtues decently, well or at least hammer doesn´t fit any better :P
That´s why I think the CDR of the consecrations trait should be made baseline.
It´s true hammer would be great in honour. But having mace, staff and shouts in there, that just belong there, there´s no reasonable way fitting it in imo.
I just thought about what to add to a master tier Master of Consecrations and had some ideas, maybe it´s a bit over the top, but whatever, Absolute Resolution really is a strong contender As the consecrations have a huge span of diffrent cooldowns, it would be best to improve them respectively.
Purging Flames: When it ends it applies its passive (-33% Condition duration) to all allies standing within for 5 sec. Maybe some extra burning to foes on expire as well…
Wall of Reflection: Removes conditions from allies passing through. Cooldown per ally 4 sec.
Hallowed Ground: After conjuring, you can command it to move to a new location. Just like the Ventari Tablet on Revenant, but moving much slower.
Sanctuary: Not sure, pulses protection or resistance or whatever.
Having two weapon skill CDR traits in one tier isn´t the best idea imo. It cripples build diversity (giving incentive for not using both of the weapons in one build). Considering this, that´s what I came up with:
Glacial Heart: Move to Valor master tier. (2h CDR should be master)
Stalwart Defender: Move to Virtues adept tier. (offhand CDR in adept tier)
Master of Consecrations: Move to master tier. Make the cooldown reduction baseline so moving this isn´t a big nerf to consecrations and make this trait buff consecrations in some fun way. Although I´m not sure what could be added to it
If Gadgeteer removed a condition (or converted one into a boon) additionally, I´d give it a try. I just can´t imagine it standing a chance against anything but zerkers.
