Guild Wars 2

new develop team
the curent one ether they dont lisen the players ..ether they dont have any ideas to fix the wvwvw ether they dont know what they doing

having develop team atm or not is the one and the same…vwvwvw is loosing players day by day

Hello is anybody out there?
Just wondering if any of the WvW development team is still alive.
This whole WvW thing is starting to look like a zombie movie.

-Loads of zombies chasing one person " who clearly looks to them like dinner" why else would a horde chase him around.
-No new concept always the same story: Get to this point to “escape” of course noone really escapes.
-Like most zombie movies the story and events in wvw are unimaginitive.
-It’s getting deader every day and the number of zombies rises steadily.
-As everyone loves the genre we still go see “all the new stuff” hoping something new and exciting is introduced to the genre.
-After watching the movie every day the flaws become more apparent, cables in the frame, the boom getting into the shot and characters messing up lines (ever changed sex with the makeover kit?).
-The horde always shows up when you are alone trying to find some supplies for your group of survivors, because that is what we are atm. wvw survivors.
-Just like the movies, the scenery hardly ever changes.
-Like the movie nowadays wvw is PG13.
-Like the movies the dead get up as soon as the horde arrives.
-Even a headshot can’t put wvw out of it’s misery.

;)

I know the feeling

http://youtu.be/3F3479jRrno

That’s exactly right. As soon as you get hit, you lose it. There are two main schools of thought that I’m aware of for Unscathed Contender – One is to use it in tandem with burst skills like Whirling Wrath, i.e. pop Retreat or your virtue immediately before Whirling Wrath for a 20% bonus. So, you might be a Berserker burst PvP guardian who uses Judge’s Intervention, Focus 5 and Whirling Wrath in a very short timeframe and be able to get all of the abilities off at the 20% bonus before you get hit.

The other is to use it without intending to get hit at all, i.e. pop it right before a long chain of blinds, knockbacks, and so forth. Using it from range with a Scepter is also another option.

Matches like this should be played home and away like football, there is a definate home advantage due to ping, I also think the crowds should be removed as we saw in this stream people got Moa’ed by memebers of the crowd. Imho GvG needs a 20 v 20 custom OS arena that has spectator mode, so the teams can fight without players interfering or causing more lag.

You can cap a tower on EotM with 0 resistance.

Krumbotor.9064:

Spurnshadow.3678:

Alright, so to summerize (by all means, if i’m forgetting something, correct me):

THESE THINGS ARE NOT UPDATES, THEY ARE FIXES TO THE GAME:

Culling
Skill lag
Orbs (putting this in both)

THESE ARE THINGS THAT YOU THINK ARE UPDATES, BUT REALLY ARE NOT

EotM

THESE ARE UPDATES

Orbs
Que interface
Badges Vendor (Worthless now)
Tournaments
Obsidium Sanctum (super minor)
Arena (small, but an update, none the less)
WvW Progression
Siege Abilities

So, looking at that list above, seems pretty paltry, huh? Now, compare that to Living story updates. Think about the effort and money that goes into that. Voice acting (there’s a lot to that). Programming all this stuff. Dungeons that were only out a month or less. Tons of instances. Major, huge, map updates. Tons of new skins. Writers. Lots of new monsters with brand new mechanics. It’s just really hard for me to imagine all the time, effort, money, personell, etc. that goes into all that, compared to orbs, que interface, and badges of honor vendor.

Updates.

That’s an absolutely valid point. I think nobody can claim that developing new content is easy, although many do in this thread. But if you for once compare the effort put in Living Story updates and the effort put in WvW updates you just don’t feel taken serious as a WvW player. Especially if you realise, how much living story content is only temporarily available.
Probably Anet underestimated from the start how many players were attracted by WvW since this game mode was pretty unique back then. Hence they never planned the resources for WvW. And now they keep loosing those WvW players every day.

ofc they dint expect the success of the wvwvw and for sure they r unable to handle this issue now
but if you also see the players dont ask any big dramatick changes
they ask from the develops to use what they have now on tha game and change a bit the maps
dont tell that nothing that ppl have say on ther posts here is imposible or that way hard to happen

but the excuse of them is something that they need to have balance on the maps bla bla bla..we all know that this iss allready imposible when high servers facing low… +on EU hardly we have players at night
so forget the balnce excuse..

but i thing the one that the most players/customers hate is that anet dont give any clear answer about the wvwvvw issue
we see every week only upadates about pve continent or spvp

personal i will prefer 1 answer sayng “we dont care about wvwvw atm..our prioritys is the pve/spvp and the release on china and maybe and if wee feel that vwvwv is something that we need to deal will do that” so every of us will know what exactly hapens and we stop coming here and spam and spam over and over again complains

we kinda dont expect that something will realy change and somtimes im wonder why we even visit the forum

Hi Devon.. i have a question for you sir…..

How you going to feel if you eat burger every day for 2 years?…..

DevonCarver.5370:

WvW has added a great deal of content and rewards over just the last calendar year.

I think ANet is missing the forest for the trees here. Sure a few trees are different but the forest is the pretty much the same.

There has been virtually no significant change to game play in WvW since launch. Same PPT maps, same classes, almost the same skills/traits and the same overall game system.

We have seen balancing changes, a handful of new traits/skills, EotM (which doesn’t really effect WvW), seasons that are effectively the same old WvW play, minor changes to BL/Sanctum maps, culling fixes and WvW levels. The latter is probably the most successful change.

After nearly two years WvW looks almost identical to its release state. A player returning wouldn’t notice many changes in WvW and would still find several bugs that were in WvW on release.

while on wvw subject. Can we get new wvw exclusive Legendaries only? Ofcourse it can sellable and can use it in pvp and pve.

We all know the WvW team is understaffed and underfunded, I just wish the leadership (who made their feelings clear when they put Scarlett material in WvW during the first Season) could recognize that they are frittering away a truly unique game style.

Team based combat that accommodates group combat from numbers of 3 up to 80 per a side, I don’t know of anything on this scale. The game industry is all aflutter over Titanfall with it’s 6 on 6.

Where else can you get literally hundreds of people to work cooperatively (more or less, depending on the server LOL)?

I love the PvE in this game, but I have gotten bored of it long ago. The unwillingness and/or inability to add new, lasting content has let the game get stale in the last 2 years. Can you imagine GW1 without expansions. $5 Steam sale says hello, but good luck on finding a party.

There are competing MMO options, there are more immersive RPG options. The one competing WvW / RvR product suffers even more under aimless direction.

Own this gamemode before someone else (Camelot, unknown project, etc) comes and takes the crown and runs with it.

PvE can be found anywhere, often with better storytelling to be honest. WvW, on this level, is unique.

Hamster.4861:

Reborn.2934:

X T D.6458:

new maps might stretch out the wvw player base too much and demand more coverage, which is already to stressful for many servers

definitely new and EXTRA maps will create huge problems now …. all are asking for replacement maps of the existent with new design and game mechanisms .

personal i asked for merge of the existent home borders to one like eb in my old thread 4 months ago

check this map : https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/138329/new_map11.JPG

and i full agree of chris’s post under mine

As much as one map would be nice, Anet has made it clear that LARGER maps are not possible with current technologies.

First off the technology for huge maps has been there for well over decade. SWG maps are very big and take forever to cross with a swoop let alone on foot and have player cities. WoW vanilla had 2 large maps that were broken into zones that are still probably bigger than the WvW maps. There are tons of other MMO’s with far bigger maps so technology is not the problem, it’s been there for years.

The problem I am guessing is their engine. If I had to guess, they decided when building the engine that it was easier to just build separate zones connected by loading screens instead of coding a gradual loading system and dealing with the networking of having all the zones connected. It definitely has it’s positives as far as population management, less work, and simplicity. The map sizes are also probably a limitation of computer specs they are aiming for(Lower end) since the game will have to load all the terrain/texture, which is why Eotm can be a bigger map yet since it doesn’t have all the extra terrain that a ground based map has. The negatives to this system are very apparent though since the world isn’t seamless and maps are too small.

I’m sure there are a lot more technical and financial reasons for why they picked the route they took, but make no mistake that the technology is there. ArenaNet just doesn’t want to invest a lot of time/money, it would be a big undertaking, redoing the system for what would probably be no real return on investment. The options we have of course are A. Wait for a engine upgrade(unlikely) B. GW3 C. Another MMO to do it right.

TLDR: It’s not that ArenaNet can’t, they won’t.

ok..from the moment like you have allready say that making new maps for WvWvW is hard and take long why dont you try to change a bit the curent maps?
many ppl have say lots of ideas..so here my 2 cents worth ideas

1) how is posible reinforce tower have the almost simmilar def with a fortify tower

2)how hard is to bring something from the eotm on wvwvv maps???items like sentry turets that will help some servers with the scouts
low tier servers allready have issues with scouts..sentry turets will help the comander to wach beter what hapens on the map
also make the champions on the towers stronger or scaled

3)you have make the 2 tournaments..why some players that spend all the day only on wvwvwv they will take worst reword from a pve player that will go on the tournament only for the achivments?
also how is posible a winer/winers on spvp tournaments to get beter reword -legendary- from a person that spend toons of hours on tournament?
i dont say to give them legendary but why not 1 ascendet item?
why you dont make a system that players will gather points inside the wvwvwv depenting on the time they play..the more points the beter reword

4)why you dont change the system of the xp/wxp/karma/gold whenyou take or defend a tower?the lower tier tower the less reword on capture and higher on defendind -the higher tier tower less reword on defending and higher on capture

5)why you dont implement diferent collors for comander tag?why a comander on guild raid dont have -lets say red tag- so he can tag up on a map and make guild raid and dont get involve with the zerg/pug/bloob comander?

6) also what guild is the beter wvwvw guild…meny guilds on NA/EU claim that title but how we realy know?
why not everytime that guilds fight dont gather some points and we all can see who is the best?
why NA guilds cant fight EU guilds??why not also guild tournament like spvp tournament?
if i remember the name of the game is GW2 no SERVER WARS 2
we can see who have the most achivments ..we can see the N1-2-3 etc server on ranks but we cant se the top guilds
give the change to the guilds to fight eachother even if the r on same server (ikn that have nothing to do with the wvwvw)

looking all those posts i see many ideas that you can work on then and make the wvwvvw even beter…but i dont realy see any aswer
is more bla bla bla
the only that players ask is a clear answer
a)yes we do changes-no we dont do any changes
b)yes we can do changes in xxx time -no we cant do changes

ikn i ask tou much and i dont expect any answer coose im sure you have read the same again and again and if you realy like to aswer you have do that long time ago and you wouldn’t let ppl come here and complain/asking for changes

actions shows that you care more about the pve/spvp and less about the wvwvw
but also wvwvw comunity is big and we dont realy ask that big changes….just some fixes on what we have allready

I like dogs better! they are cuddly and mans best friend :>

I actually started leveling a warrior when I saw just how awesome their Offensive support skills are. For instance, where a Guardian gives toughness to nearby allies, a Warrior gives -power-! Now -that’s- cool.. I wish Guardians did something else besides toughness, as you’re not so tough when condition damage ignores your armor.

The BEST one I saw so far for a warrior was called Phalanx Strength!

Phalanx Strength – When you grant yourself might, grant it to nearby allies as well. A range of 600, and so far.. I don’t see a cooldown. This is AMAZING support…

Guardians actually have something like this, and in my opinion the skill in general is PERFECT for a guardian.. we have Communal Defenses.

Communal Defenses – Grant Aegis to allies when you block an attack. A range of 360 with a 20 second cooldown. Great skill right? Until you see the range of it.. why is it so low? Our “Retreat” shout gives allies an Aegis at a range of 600, so shouldn’t this skill provide 600 range as well to make it like a double-save? It’s a Grandmaster skill for goodness sake, it should act like it to work with “Retreat” or Virtue of Courage!

I agree with the cooldown though, judging by how much block abilities we do have, but that range.. ouch.

Moving on, I am actually quite confused why Guardians even have the trait Battle Presence which basically causes our allies to gain our Virtue of Resolve. To put it simply, they gain regeneration at a range of 600… but, we already give our allies regeneration with symbols, Virtue of Resolve activation, and “Hold the Line!”

Shouldn’t Battle Presence become more like.. oh, I’m only throwing this out there but why not have nearby allies gain ALL THREE of the virtues? Sure, they get that Resolve, but now they burn enemies with every 4 hits and they gain an Aegis every 30-40 seconds? It’s not like they can activate them.. in a way, we just give more support if they are near us. Shouldn’t that be a Guardian? If you’re around a Guardian, then that person performs things that -GUARD- you.

On my final note, I will bring up Power of the Virtuous which basically increases our damage by 1% for each boon we have. This is my problem… Warriors have the same thing can it’s called Empowered.

Power of the Virtuous for Guardians requires 5 trait points in the Virtues tree.

Empowered for the Warriors requires 2 trait points in the Tactics tree.

Now of course this may seem unfair… but for one, Guardians do have ways to grant themselves more boons then Warriors. However, both of those tree lines improve Boon Duration. So if a Guardian who spent 5 points in Virtues to get that trait is partnered with a Warrior who only spent 2 points, and due to the Guardian gaining his boons which he also grants his allies, thus being the Warrior.. they are gaining the same increase in damage, but now the warrior is doing more damage with those 3 extra trait points.

So far, my only opinion on this would be to simply make Power of the Virtuous for Guardians give +2% dmg per boon -OR- give +1% dmg AND +1% dmg reduction.

Add your input to this idea.

That’s all I got for now guys, thank you for reading and I do hope, as fellow Guardians, to get plenty of advice, criticism, and even your own ideas to see if these improvements would really make the Guardian into a -GUARDIAN-.

List begins good but near the end, the reasoning behind it falls a bit short. I do agree that guardians have a lot of absolutely useless traits. I mean we have a trait that increases damage down while downed by 50% If you’re down, you’re out in most cases, and this trait doesn’t even help us survive, it increases damage done? O_o

I’d love to see a revamp of many minor traits and several mayor ones. Some of the traits that have good synergy compete with eachother too, allas.

Some complaints to Anet:

After this last “feature patch” I believe offering people that had divinity runes and celestial gear the opportunity to replace those items would have been the right thing to do, considering that:
1- Celestial and Divinity runes do not fufill the same function as they did when we paid for them
2- Some of us spent real money on gems in order to accelerate the speed of acquisition of that gear
3- Some of us spent months crafting celestial ascended gear (I didn’t fortunately) or acquiring laurels for celestial trinkets (that I did)
4- We spent in average 60g on divinity runes, celestial ascended mats cost well over 200g
5- To those of us who had the gear match the build for precise stats our characters are totally broken (~40% critical damage reduction on a character using full celestial gear and divinity runes)

All in all I had to spend about 80g to re-gear my character to be playable again and I’m still not done yet.

It’s too late now to change anything, but I’ve said it before the patch and now a week after the patch I still think the same: You should have been able to chose the stats of your choice on your celestial items.

By the way, I’m still waiting for my special dyes replacements (especially my 3 charred dyes duplicates), customer support is really slow.

I don’t think the downed state or the ability to combat rez (which can easily be punished) is an issue to be honest. And you shouldn’t be able to take on a group of 30 with your 2-man roaming group. Rally mechanics on the other hand can really turn the tides – one uplevel can rez a whole zerg. I think if anything, this should be changed to a one for one ratio.

Hello!
I always love to support or heal players but in GW2 I play sd engineer/pu mes. I really tried to be support but it’s not rewarding. What’s the point of stacking might, casting reflection, stability or healing if I can get rewards only for killing? Class with many AoE skills win (if we’re talking about reward).
I’m asking because in next update we’ll get more support traits but I don’t see any point of supporting zerg (buffs, healing) in WvW if I can only get reward for killing.

@Drakma.1549
I’m very surprised because this comment is about 2 hours too late. I expected it earlier.

No, it’s sad if for you “game life” and “real life” are equal.

And yes, I’m expecting the prize because instead of spamming aoe and rushing I try to heal and rez downed players.

And if you’re talking about real life:
If someone have won because I helped him, I expect “thank you” instead of “I’ve done this alone”.

Stop being rude and stop talking about my life, it’s not your business.

@Ptolemy.5086
Oh my, I want prize for winning. I’m so bad. I’ll go to the hell.

(continued from above)
To illustrate: The Tale of an Epic Stonemist Fight at 8:48 on a Random Wednesday Night: Sea of Sorrows and Jade Quarry each have 3 and 7 players roaming around the SM Courtyard. Henge of Denravi, who opened up the wall, bring a group of 25 players in, and proceed to massacre all three Stone Sentries. The event display reads “3 of 3 Stone Sentries Killed” and displays a progress bar. Because there are 10 enemy players to Denravi’s 25 players in the ring, Denravi only has 250% (2.5:1) of the players in the courtyard, and aren’t allowed to begin capturing. This provides a serious incentive to both fight and to not run away in the outer ring. It also encourages double-teaming…and then the double-teaming worlds to duke it out for final capping rights. Suppose two of the JQ players, upon seeing the Denravi zerg, port out, taking it to 25 to 8, and then two of the Sea of Sorrows players run into the zerg and are killed off. Now it’s down to 25 to 6. Under a lenient setting (400% or 4:1 threshold) Denravi begins to capture the courtyard. Under a strict setting, Denravi would have to split up and hunt down the holdouts in SM, at which point they can begin capping.

Once Denravi caps, they own the outer walls, and the porting rights through the gates/walls. Suddenly SoS, which still owns SM lower and SM upper, is in trouble. They have a few players up in the citadel, who are now trapped by the oncoming army, and have to do their best to defend it. Their main force meanwhile loads up rams, catapults, and omegas to try to break down the door of their own fortress to try to reclaim it. Meanwhile, the Denravi force inside has a few minutes’ breathing room try to push through and open inner, take lower, and then fight up to Upper.

Suppose Denravi manages to open up inner before SoS is able to take down outer. (Recall, right now, SoS owns SM lower, SM upper, while Denravi owns the Courtyard). The PPT timer ticks; SoS gets +25, Denravi gets +10.

The timer restarts again, and Denravi manages to take Lower: they kill the lord and then claim the pad. Suddenly the inner doors reset to full health, belonging to Denravi. SoS breaches outer, and claims the courtyard. The pressure is on and it’s getting tight. The five SoS holdout defenders now in upper are sweating bullets, and two jump down to join the main zerg now racing to bust through inner. Denravi manages to crack the last door into Upper—they had to PvD because they were out of supply—at the same time that SoS manages to bust through inner. Just as Denravi is working on the Upper SM lord, SoS smashes into them with a zerg of 15. An epic fight on the upper floor of SM ensues, with bodies flying off the balconies and blood splattered everywhere. Somebody wins, but since it was a hell of a lot more fun than two realms just racing through two different doors to the lower lord pad (SM has an upstairs?) a good time is had by all no matter who wins.

(Alternatively, there could be three small citadels or open-space “lords”, sentries, or whatever we want to call them, at three points inside the SM courtyard, and as others have suggested, maybe set it up so that all 3 pads must be taken—possibly in sequence, like a classic outdoor event—before the courtyard flips.)

And with that, I’m probably about to burn dinner. Fascinating thread, and I hope these posts are useful.

Apologies for the broken post. Wish there was a way to up the character limit for serious threads like this. Since Devon has been kind enough to take the players seriously, I figured I would return the favor and go all-out in this analysis. Thanks again for hosting the thread.

Best,
Matipzieu KyA

(continued from above)

SUMMARY: I am deeply concerned about the prospect of removing the “World” from World v. World not because of an irrational attachment to that particular model, but because the presence of an enduring, inclusive community is a crucial element of WvW, and I can’t envision a suitable alternative to the World model. Alliances come close, but I believe they would be better suited as an addition to worlds, rather than a replacement for them. I am concerned that moving towards an “EotM” model will devastate and drive off many players, like us, who derive the majority of our interest in the game from being a part of a community.

To analogize: what would the Super Bowl be if it was just Red versus Blue? That’s what WvW would be like without Worlds. Trying to take the enduring, inclusive communities out of WvW is like trying to do modern sports… without teams.

2: Comments on Revitalizing Stonemist

There are a number of really interesting ideas about how to revitalize Stonemist that are floating around. These are fascinating, and I’d be really interested to see how they pan out. However, before I dive in and help out (honestly, as a GM that’s been WvW active since long before Blackgate was anywhere near an interesting server, haha, this sounds like it could be a lot of fun!) I do want to toss out one quick concern:

Whatever changes go through, new players who still need the Stonemist Vista and Stonemist Point of Interest HAVE to have a way to still reasonably be able to get them on low-pop servers. If there is ever a WvW season/tournament achievement for a certain number of Stonemist captures again, this becomes an even more salient point! Because we often play at really odd off-hours (I suspect many of the top commanders on our server wouldn’t even recognize us) two of my guildmates were almost unable to get credit for capturing Stonemist enough times to get the WvW achievement, and we were hardly slouching off during the season. Eventually we had to concoct a hair-brained scheme to get one last SM capture in involving a large number of Omegas, a handful of mesmers, and a few dozen lucky rabbits’ feet. While epic, I’m concerned that whatever change is made to SM has got to make sure new players can get their Map Completion—be it for their Gift of Exploration/Legendary, the principle of Map Complete, and achievements—and the best way to accomplish this might be to make it easier to access both the Vista and PoI if SM becomes harder to capture. For example, expand the radius of the SM PoI to include anyone that manages to make it inside the courtyard (past the first wall), and place the vista on a nearby hill outside of SM (leaving the existing vista as a legacy, of course, since it’s an awesome view, but not one that counts). Or reduce the number of vistas necessary for map completion on EB by one.

With that preliminary concern for new players out of the way, the idea of breaking Stonemist up into several different capturable objectives is really interesting.

An alternative to towers/citadels: stages

Just to toss this one out: an aesthetically and possibly much easier to code alternative to adding a series of 2, 3, or 4 towers inside SM (which would entail artwork and engineering redesign) might be to break SM up into a series of separately capturable stages. For example: SM right now is worth 35 points/tick, central lord pad in the bottom.

An alternative might be to break SM into three objectives:
- SM Courtyard (outer ring) (breach the first wall and occupy the ring) – worth 10 points, with a reduced re-capture timer (say, 2 minutes instead of the usual 4).
- Lower SM (breach first wall, breach inner, capture current lord pad) – worth 10 points with a 4-minute timer.
- Upper SM (breach first wall, breach inner, storm up from the lord pad and fight through a third, single door to take a lord, say, somewhere in the upper area of SM.

Personally, I could almost see the chat: “Inc outer SM, retreat to lower” – “Just took lower SM, get to upper” – etc.

The key to this system would be to devise a way to capture a large, awkwardly sized objective like the outer ring. I would suggest drawing a large “O”, including the entire courtyard. Have three roaming “Elite Stone Sentries”—equivalent to standard tower lords—that respawn every 3 minutes. Once all three are dead, a progress bar emerges. Here, instead of driving every single player from such a huge area (I’m thinking virtually the entire area consisting of the ground inside SM, from inner wall to the inside of the outer wall) allow the attacking realm to begin slowly progressing the bar as soon as they have either 400% or 500% (4:1, 5:1) of the current enemy players in the ring.

(post to be continued)

(continued from above)

When you go out to WvW, you’re a valuable resource. Every server (even BG) needs every incremental player we can get in order to be successful out there. That scarcity and the player owning the supply—like a really nice job market—enhances both the value and play experience of the player. Inclusiveness is a key ingredient to creating a positive play experience. This is the part of the recipe that made DAoC so great. I remember way, way back in the classic days when Level 50s (max level in DAoC in 2001-2004 glory days) would run around lowbie zones welcoming new players to the game—I’m not kidding, by the way, even though this probably sounds insane in the MMORPG world post-WoW—and handing out gold and the occasionally semi-rare but pretty sweet looking piece of armor or weapon because they hoped that level 1 running around in ragged cloth and getting killed by a water beetle because they were having a hard time figuring out which key to punch to start swinging would grow up to be one more decked 50 out on the field when it counted.

The best part is that that inclusion is automatic: it just happens. You can’t not be included and benefit from inclusion, by game design. With an alliance system, there are additional barriers erected to inclusion. And if that doesn’t sound like much, it’s the difference between the LFG tool and map chat in Lion’s Arch. Yes, the determined and more socially-minded players will always have a home. But what about the people that play to get away from having to deal with all of that in real life, or who don’t have the time or emotional bandwidth to deal with yet more social situations like that? It’s really important to keep an eye on the new player experience when contemplating massive game design changes like this, not just on the jaded old vets who’ve been here for a while, because having the right mixture of old-timers and infusions of new players is the key to getting to celebrate the game’s ten-year anniversary.

COMMUNITY: This goes without saying. There needs to be a community for WvW to continue to be the experience that appeals to the players it does. Without community, WvW is just expensive, long-match PvP that happens in your PvE armor with a few doors and stuff in the way. With community, WvW is an explosive, heart-pumping, adrenaline-running and nail-bitingly epic experience. When S1 came down to the death match between JQ and BG and JQ was pulling ahead for the first three days of that week, I can’t remember seeing the players come together and fight side by side since 2002. WvW is intrinsically linked to community. For some, yes, the rewards and the EoTM experience are enough, granted. I’m actually very glad that the folks that love that kind of arms-length play have found a happy home. But for many of us, you can’t take the “World” from World v. World.

To put it simply: you’re just not going to get a video like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdecWAAJcMQ with the title “Blue Worlds Win Season 4.” Not going to happen. Personally I’d rather try to figure out ways to deliver this kind of experience to T2 and T3 and T4 servers, rather than reduce everything to generic colors that you can pick at will.

© Right now, without the ability to form alliances, Worlds and Servers are the only vehicle through which that enduring, inclusive community exists in GW2. Shifting the focus to Guilds and Alliances, as some posters have suggested, is probably the next best bet.

(D) Even if an Alliance system were substituted, this would be an enduring, but not necessarily inclusive community. I’ve already described my concerns with the inclusiveness versus inherent exclusiveness issue above, but I could in all seriousness see using guilds as a next-best platform. It would be a little bit like reducing the international system from relations between nations to a global patchwork of city-states (where some will be huge and powerful, your Londons, Singapores, New York Cities, and some will be tiny little Fresno, CA’s) but with alliances, it might be possible. I think a better solution would be to continue using worlds and building in an alliance system (with “alliance chat” and possibly some other in-game features) to cement, help create, sustain, support, and energize world communities. The more opportunities players have to put down roots, the more fun social players have, the more fellow kitten -kickers killer-style players have beside them in WvW, and the longer everyone plays, has a good time (and buys gems).

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(continued from above)

(E) Many players have suggested that game-wide communities can be established. But how much community is there on sPvP or EoTM? This is one of my biggest concerns about removing the “world” from World v. World. We have a simple test case: in sPvP, you have short-duration set matches composed of players that will overwhelmingly never see each other again. This allows players to get into the game and play it very quickly and easy—great! But it’s important to let people who like to eat pizza to order pizza at the restaurant, and people who like steak dinners to order steak dinners. sPvP is a market niche. It’s great for players who are killing-oriented, enjoy fast-paced very small-group combat. Typically strategic play like you see in WvW is minimal. (Disclosure: I have played sPvP since release. To illustrate the point: sPvP is what I do when I’m solo and want to go “shoot some hoops”, blow off some steam, or shake up my daily laurel routine. WvW is what I do when I’m dead serious about kicking some kitten at a strategic level out with my guild. They are two totally different games, like Halo and Starcraft.)

(F) Game environments that are not anchored by community quickly stagnate and turn into cesspools. This is a blight, and leads to a blighted experience that drives away more serious and mature customers. Furthermore, the customers driven away are those that are more likely to be (A) loyal and (B) able and willing to pay more at the gem store to support the game.[/u] Suffice to say the transition from DAoC to WoW was a very kittene for my guild when DAoC’s developers decided to put a quiver of arrows through their golden hen. The culture in WoW, which has been the subject of more than a few dissertations at high-level universities, was for a very long time ranked highly among internet cesspools. The overwhelming majority of incentives were zero-sum and oriented strictly towards personal gain. Many incentives were such that the only way to personally advance was to do harm to others (guild hop upon gear acquisition in raiding). The opportunities to create, support, or contribute to a larger community were virtually nonexistent. Many other games that have followed have encountered similar problems. WoW managed to attract tremendous subscriber bases in spite of its player community, not because of or alongside it.

One of the things that attracted my guild so strongly to GW2 as soon as we started watching Colin’s videos back in early 2012 was because not only of the incredible community of old GW1 players that were coming over, but because the game world created incentives for players to cooperate and help each other out, with WvW as the epitome of those incentives. It was an incredibly refreshing change of pace, and the closest we’ve ever come to the old DAoC glory days. GW2 has the staying power and fundamentals to prove that the genre of community-oriented MMOs can compete with the big boys and deliver a far more fulfilling community experience. I would hate to see a major part of that brand, WvW, harmed. I think a great many players share that sentiment.

(G) Many customers, like myself and every single one of my guildmates, both enjoy WvW and continue to play GW2 for two things: epic dragon fights and something larger than ourselves. Since we’re currently fresh out of dragons, and given the current, er, direction of the so-called Living Story, there is not a single member of my guild that expects to see any more of the content we actually keep hoping for in the next year, if not two. The only thing keeping us actively playing and purchasing from the Gem Store today is the feeling that we are contributing to our home server. We do not like to play anonymously. We like having a home. We like defending it. We like taking things and pulling off impossible feats for the sake of it. Our playstyle often has us blowing enormous amounts of guild catapults, which are expensive to manufacture (and once we even bought gems to replenish our stockpile of them off the TP in the middle of a fierce match during S1 when things got heated up). There is no way we would ever consider spending real life money on gems for an anonymous match that didn’t matter, and we definitely wouldn’t go bragging to old DAoC comrades about how amazing GW2 was if there was no sense of community that we could belong to and contribute to. Absolutely no way. I doubt we would continue playing for more than maybe a month if community was abolished.

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Proposal Overview
Treat WvW as a collection of four separate sub games, each of which have players which have to be retained separately and probably monetized separately as well

Goal of Proposal
I want to prevent ArenaNet from accidentally breaking the game I play as part of trying to please people with different objectives

Proposal Functionality
Put separate people in charge of (and therefore produce separate subgames for):

1. Players who play for realm success / pride / score
This is the segment for current WvW
Work needed: this is working for the winners, but not for the lower tier servers
I am in this group, but perhaps not the most representative because I play in an intact small guild group (SWAT team taking camps, towers, and undefended keeps as a counter tactic for zergs) and only rarely join the zerg.

2. Players who play for epic scale battles
This segment has been playing WvW but is put off by the current scoring system
Note that the client engine, and server, have limited ability to handle this

Perhaps a variant of the EotM map, or even of one of the PvE maps? Would need something to center the fight on, but not make the scoring PvE centric or karma train-able.

3. Players who play for sub-10-on-10 battles
sPvP isn’t everyone’s choice here, I’m not sure why, but this contingent is out in WvW as well and gets frustrated by the zerg.

4. Players who play for their guild, not for their realm
This is missing from the game, and there is clearly demand for it
The mechanics of sending two guilds someplace special to fight it out, without random PvE’ers or queues or such getting in the way, would need some work, but on the other hand the medallion which launched such an encounter could be monetized

Associated Risks
If the population is spread even further, low pop servers and low tier servers might end up spread so thin they give up on traditional WvW, which would be sad.

On the other hand, the big WvW guilds who are really in it for the fights might shift themselves to the #2 (epic fights) and #4 (guild v guild) above and therefore thin the population on the top tier servers

One of the biggest successes I ever saw in R&D was in a declining business about 20 years ago. Management reorganized the business away from the way R&D had always been done, and instead assigned people to specific groups of customers whose retention (revenue) could be measured. Even though the R&D budget was cut in half, what was left was focused on keeping customers happy — and customer satisfaction went up. People’s continued employment was suddenly aligned to customer satisfaction rather than internal politics…

(continued)

Increased emphasis on verticality

Yes, implement a version of this; but not to the same extent as was done on EotM. A few locations where players can be knocked off the map would be fine, but tone it down compared to EotM. Use the verticality to introduce a greater variety of combat tactics, creative and perhaps less obvious paths to objectives, and alternate escape routes.

Don’t use verticality simply as a means to allow players to knock others off the map. Instead, use it creatively to enhance current strategies and tactics as well as introduce new strategies and tactics.

For example, maybe introduce limited flight capabilities. Control a certain objective and players gain access to a buff or can purchase a consumable which permits them to make short controlled glides when jumping from a height (only once per buff or consumable). This would not be the same as flying mounts (let’s not even go there).

More chokepoints

Yes please. Towers shouldn’t be simply a side detour. They should represent the outer perimeter defenses of a keep which an enemy force must get through to get to the main fortress. Sure, there could still be towers which are on the far edge of a territory which resemble the current towers; lone sentries in the hinterlands. But as you get closer and closer to the main keep, towers should be part of a coordinated network of defenses designed to slow enemies at chokepoints rather than let them just bypass if they wish.

A much shorter match time

No. EotM has been introduced and should satisfy this need already. The week-long matches of main WvWvW are fine as is (provided you can come up with a better match-making algorithm and server balancing system so the match isn’t already decided by Sunday night/Monday morning).

Maybe introduce an intermediate tier where the match lasts 24 hours; but there should still be an option for a week long match.

Destructible terrain

Yes please. But do more than make it destructible for destruction’s sake. It’s cool the first time you watch something go “BOOM!” in the environment; not so much on the thousandth time if it doesn’t actually add anything to the game.

Destructible terrain should grant distinct strategic and tactical advantages (and disadvantages).

• set off an avalanche to block a path (and maybe push some enemy off a ledge to boot),

• fell some trees to safely float down an otherwise impassable rushing river,

• knock stalactites from a cave’s ceiling to make a safe stepping stone path across a pool of lava,

• collapse a building on top of opponents (in which they now have the ability to hide within) to do a little damage,

• cut the rope bridge, forcing your opponent (and you) to find an alternate path

• melt a frozen lake, forcing those who cross it to swim rather than easily run across. Maybe this reveals an alternate path through a submerged cave accessible only when the lake ice is melted.

• destroy some boulders blocking a volcanic vent, resulting in lava spewing across a path.

Where appropriate, the above then become repairable or naturally regenerate (e.g. a constantly blowing cold wind eventually refreezes the lake).

At NO time will destroying any of the above count towards any kind of reward or achievement. Otherwise we wind up with the fiasco that was destructible bridges when EotM was first introduced. Their only “reward” is allowing for new and deeper strategies and tactics within WvWvW.

Unique buffs based on which keep is controlled

IF this can be kept balanced so as not to give one faction a decided advantage outside their own territory, then this would be worth implementing in regular WvWvW. I think it’s fine if the buff gives a “home team” advantage within a certain perimeter of their own keep(s), for example. But it should not extend globally across all maps.

NPCs repairing damage to fortifications

No or optional. It’s nice to have some NPC minions do the job of effecting repairs on behalf of the players. However, since they pull supply from the same depot used for upgrades, this may not always be desirable.

They mindlessly go about the task of repair, using up supply that may be better spent finishing an upgrade or building siege weapons. Therefore, if this is to be added to regular WvWvW, then it should be optional. Perhaps speaking with the tower or keep lord allows players to toggle this ability on or off.

DevonCarver.5370:

Topic Goal:

The Edge of the Mists features numerous changes to the standard WvW mechanics. The most notable changes are: Scoring on capture of objectives, scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs, unique bosses at each objective, increased emphasis on verticality, more chokepoints, a much shorter match time, and destructible terrain. Of the changes included, which would you like to see implemented in the standard WvW maps?

Devon Carver

Scoring on Capture of Objectives

Yes, but only if there is an associated increase in the points earned from defending an objective. Otherwise, with points awarded on capture, this only reinforces the already zergy meta that currently exists in WvWvW.

All play styles need to be supported and rewarded. I fully appreciate zerging is fun for some portion of the player base and is here to stay. Defense, however, is not being equally rewarded.

If a successful capture event will reward points to put towards the overall score, then a successful defense event should do the same. Furthermore, the points awarded should scale in some fashion. Some suggestions for scaling (either singly or in combination) could be:

1) Scale points awarded the longer an objective is held in overall time.

2) Scale points awarded the more defense events are successfully completed in succession within a limited time frame. For example, if a tower comes under attack, completes a defense event, then comes under attack again within X minutes of the first attack, this second defense event will reward more points than the first. When there is a sufficient lull between siege attempts, the multiplier or bonus reverts to baseline.

3) As a corollary to number two, perhaps scale points based on the number of defenders present during a defense event.

4) Scale points awarded based on the number of upgrades successfully built at the objective. Nothing is more disheartening to the defense-minded than to spend hours and gold patiently upgrading a fortification to see it all undone in less than 5 minutes by a zerg.

5) In-game rewards. Players are rewarded for a successful capture of a fortification with in-game loot. What about rewarding defenders in a similar manner? For the offense, it’s all or nothing; capture the objective to get the loot or get nothing. Therefore, it makes sense their rewards are scaled higher (champion chest for towers and keeps). For defenders the rewards would have to be scaled lower since multiple defense events can be successfully completed during a single siege. But at least they would be rewarded something for their efforts rather than nothing.

6) Reward points for each yak which successfully delivers supply to the objective. One point if the yak makes it to its destination, two points if it makes it to its destination and its home supply camp is still under the control of the owning faction to which the yak makes its delivery. Yak leaves green camp, delivers to green tower, supply camp is still green when the delivery is made = 2 points. Yak leaves green camp, camp flips red during the journey, but yak successfully delivers supply to the tower still controlled by green = 1 point.

Scaling Creatures and new and more difficult NPCs

Yes, implement this.

Unique bosses at each objective

Yes, implement this. Go so far as to add mechanics which require multiple actions be undertaken to effect a successful capture. For example, a boss that can only be defeated if all the braziers surrounding the keep are doused. This forces a group to break up and coordinate effort to keep the braziers extinguished to make the boss vulnerable to attack.

Otherwise, even with the unique mechanics present in EotM, it still amounts to the same shallow ball-up-and-DPS tactic. Grawl champ in EotM is a good example. Sure, he can’t be defeated while the Earth Elementals remain alive. Solution? Ball up, DPS down the Earth Elementals, then ball up and DPS down the Grawl champ. Changing the superficial trappings without changing the underlying fundamentals does not equate to a substantive change.

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Why is it that only people from blackgate are against the nerf of bloodlust which almost everybody complained to be removed/nerfed for so long.

so Cry me a river, get over it and learn to adapt.