Guild Wars 2

lil devils x.6071:

I disagree. There is no way the new map can work at this point. Anything short of outright removing it and reinstating Alpine would have little to no effect on bringing back players they lost over it.

I doubt those who left will be coming back – but that aside:
You get the Alpine Borderlands back. WPs not working. Ok. Walls at 0% health after an upgrade. Ok. You step outside are hit by a spaceship zerg and rev hammer 2, dragon banners. Ok. You try to roam and are killed by elite specs – and anyway no one is solo roaming anymore anyway as the overall damage is too high. You try to build an AC to defend a tower, but you’re alone and need to run 3 times to get that thing up while the enemies just use their aoe spells to destroy it before you have a chance to get it up.

And yes, by the looks of it wvw is pretty much dead – doesn’t matter what they do, except giving control back to the players = getting all the OP kitten that’s favouring blobs, though was meant to beat them, out and let us play our game. But I don’t think a reroll to the Alpine Borderlands would solve anything. Not saying I’m opposing it, but people think that it’s the new maps that killed wvw and that’s not true.

Edit: Spelling

ETA (on general topic) : We’ve had guild groups of ~20 on our BL before HoT – it worked pretty well. But they had to combine forces from time to time against the enemy blob.
The new maps are designed to break blobs but at the same time: Enemies have only one spawn, so 3 groups of 20 come from the same direction. The map is that complicated that they basically jam and become a blob – and that can’t be solved that easily.

I was talking with a couple of friends yesterday about how interesting it would be if only the green team had its home map changed to the Alpine borderlands. Players would have a second map besides EBG to populate and we might see closer matchups as well.

Spurnshadow.3678:

The BLs are imbalaced and favor the north keep. Since the east and west keeps are different as well, you need three maps for balance.

We need balance, but 3 equal shares isn’t balance in WvW.. It’s how we get snowballing matches.

We need a way to help the losing servers compensate for smaller population, a favorable map is a good way.

Jayne.9251:

It was always my impression that every server got a home map.

If you eliminate the duplicates, who gets the “home”?

They did on alpine. On desert, due to the way the waypoints have changed and the nw/ne towers being pointless for defense (they are easier to cap from bay/hills than from garri), its no longer a home border with advantage to the defender.

So the answer to your question – no one.

Just like now.

Sometimes I wish they would have gone all the way instead of making the kitten half-baked version of alpine. A map like EB (triangle layout) or EoTM (again, triangle layout) would have made an easy transition to a reduction of “borders”.

The real question is why do we even have borderlands?

They have clearly outlived their usefullness. No one want to play on the borders anymore. The population isnt there. The new border is designed with the waypoints as EB so there is no longer any “home” border, just scrap 2 of them, period.

I think the point he’s making is it would have been better if the desert was randomly rotated as one or two of the avaliable borderlands.

I agree. The game would be better if we had non-clone borderlands that rotated out every matchup. preferably with each BL being a different map.
’
Then people would complain about getting the “bad” home BL, but everyone whining about the new BL maps could just go fight over whatever the alpine BL rolled as.

It wouldn’t change anything though. The WvW community as a whole has no idea what it wants. They want it to be better, but also stay the same. They want higher pops but they don’t want to merge/eliminate servers. They want more interesting fights but hate more complex maps.

I think Anet is making the right call by not listening to anyone at this point, and just using internal metrics and player population counts to see what players are really doing versus what players say they are doing.

I really look forward to all the changes! Awesome news!

BL siege change is good, but without any other changes to the layouts, people will still stick to EBG. I hate all the negativity about the new BL’s, because they are gorgeous! But unfortunately, they are just not ideal in a WvW setting. My vote stands right now at having the old BL’s back, even every second week would be AMAZING.

Hmm… off-peak times (that’s 20 or so hours a day) and in the lower tiers (say the lower 5 or 6?) we don’t usually have “large blobs”. So while CrimsonNeonite is right – his post is true only for a small part of the WvW experience new players may meet, and to be honest, if you’ve already got big blobs you don’t need so many new or casual players.

I think Ins got it exactly right: “WvW needs to be easy to get into, fairly easy to learn and compete but hard to master.”

We need to get more people involved in the lower tiers and off-peak times. At the moment I suspect they either don’t see sufficient reward to play WvW or don’t enjoy it (and I suspect imbalance in match ups may play a part here). It’s been said before, and it’s still true – the new casual player is your potential WvW guild mate. If we can mentor them and help them, and they find it fun, we have another dedicated player.

jamesdolla.3954:

Ins.7139:

John Wilson commented on the end of mine earlier. Different game mode dev but atleast someone is watching!

I like how you cry about the rally thing cause it means your blob is gonna get zerg busted.

Hardly cry about it, just means when I’m fighting an organised guild I’ll just piratekitten them until they lose a few melee, rotations are screwed and then train them instead of going in melee range and having fun.

Everything is moving everything more towards piratekitten and catering to the hardcore groups in WvW. Yet people fail to see new players joining need to have fun and stand a chance, and these new players will be the new recruits your hardcore guilds are trying to recruit 6 months down the line.

WvW needs to be easy to get into, fairly easy to learn and compete but hard to master. That way a steady influx of players will keep the game mode active 24/7 instead of prime time. Over complicate or raise the skill bar for trying to compete and you alienate some of the population and thus people go play something more rewarding.

I couldn’t care if I fight a 1 push enemy or an enemy that wipes me over and over, as long as I always have people to play with, and against. WvW is dying and I gave my input, what have you done?

And I quite happily fight 2-4 guilds at once, never been rekt by 1 guild when running over 40, and if you knew me, I never run with under 40 nowadays. If anything these changes would make it harder for the guilds fighting my blob. I want balance for the grand scheme of things.

I’d really like to believe Zen Later, I really would. Unfortunately I’m old and cynical and have seen too much of human nature. I look forward to being proven wrong!

I can accept the idea of throwing away a match up every five or six weeks, although I would prefer to have fun every week of course. Unfortunately if you look at the glicko spread in NA you can see some clear gaps:
T1 and T2 are pretty close.
T3 and T4 are 170 000 glicko behind… that’s a massive gap.
T6 in NA has 100 000 glicko spread between the three servers, so does T7.
T8 starts at less than half the T1 glicko scores.

Matches across pairs of tiers may be viable but top to bottom differences are just too big. You can’t pitch a T1 server against a T8 server and expect the T8 players to suddenly improve (hint – it’s not player skill that has the major impact on glicko score). You also can’t expect T1 players to say “Hey, I paid for this game and want to enjoy it but you know what, let’s just have a week where only 10% of us play to make this fairer”.

I’ve seen what long term unbalanced match ups do to server pride. It’s not nice close up. Short term – say a week – that’s survivable, yes.

As for “And you never know, “lower tier” servers could end up learning a thing or two from better competition and get…better.” I can say from experience that yes, I did learn new things, new places to put siege for example. But the thing I learned most is outmanned 6 or more to one means you’re going to lose. I’m not sure how I could have “got better” learning this but I’m open to suggestions, even a year on… although I suppose I could have switched to PU mesmer?!

I would suggest that for NA servers (sorry – I have no experience on EU ones and can’t comment there) “this staleness has driven people to the top 3 servers” is in fact the reason why some match ups are so stale at the moment. Not sure how this is for the better though.

So here’s a positive and different thought. If you are on a higher tier NA server and you are fed up with the same match up over and over again – pick a server in the lower tiers (T5 to T8) and transfer. Bring a small number of people with you. Start commanding. Teach people. You get new match ups, new players and guilds to fight, and the satisfaction of watching your efforts bring a server up the ranks. What do you stand to lose? Just more stale and boring weeks…

And if a few of the guilds that band-wagoned up the tiers did this, moving to different servers, we’d have better population balance and probably a lot of fun too.

For NA, that’s sort of pointless. All it really means is that the names of the doors will change.

At this point if you’re actually having a stable matchup and merely complaining about boredom, well I hate to say it, but that’s a First World Problem.

Whilst I have sympathy for the OP I am absolutely certain that random match ups are not the way to go. Let me recount a bit of history to explain…

Disclaimer: I’m on IoJ and can only comment from the point of view of my experience on my server.
A while back now we spent over 6 months facing pretty much the same servers in T3 NA so I understand the problems of repetitive match ups. The situation we faced back then was 4 servers with T2 glicko scores but only 3 spaces in T2. So one server was always put down in T3 and would spend the week absolutely flattening the other two servers there. I believe they did this to get a high enough score to get back into T2, it can’t have been that enjoyable for them and it certainly wasn’t for the rest of us.

The IoJ WvW guilds did the best they could for the first couple of months.
Then we did our best and complained a bit. You can read the forum posts if you look back far enough.
Then some of our WvW guilds and players transferred out to escape the boredom and frustration. It was, they felt, their only solution.

Finally we moved down the league and into lower tiers, dropping to T8 for a while before picking back up a bit. We’re still fairly low now just bobbing around in T6-T8 NA.

So back to the present day:

Having random match ups is a really bad idea. You’ll end up with top tier servers stomping lower tier servers for a week, or the top tier players will need to take time out to allow a more even match up and who is going to choose to do that?! Either way there’s no real fun for either side.

So while I sympathise with the OP, I have no sympathy with the situation itself since it is the result of the past actions of the servers involved.

The current population imbalance in the NA servers is the result of player choices and transfers. The persistent match ups are a result of the way scores are calculated and in particular the big differences that have opened up between some servers/tiers.

Perhaps one way to solve this is to reset the scores annually and start again. This might reduce the number of stale match ups and prevent six month long fixtures .
Another possible solution is to remove all the servers, create new ones with new names and effectively have a fresh start for both scores and population. Again, I suspect these would need resetting every year to prevent the situation we see today.

Random match ups are not the solution however since each server needs to face opponents of around the same level in order to get a decent challenge and maximum enjoyment. We are currently too spread out in NA for this to work.

There are NA servers, and the majority of the players on them are from NA. There are EU servers, and the majority of the players on them are from EU. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. The bulk of the players on these servers play during their servers respective primetimes. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. Tier 1 is the only tier with round the clock coverage, and it’s not even as complete as it used to be. There are still still times during OCX and SEA primetimes that even tier 1 servers get out numbered. Which affects the scores in not so insignificant ways. The affects it has on the scores becomes even greater the lower your tier is down to the middle tiers. Outcomes are solely decided by a larger group going against a skeleton crew during OCX and SEA. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. To then claim that your contributions shouldn’t count for less, when they’re currently the sole deciding factor, and nothing anyone else does matters, is outright self entitled hypocritical, disingenuous insanity. Stop it. Look at the reality of the situation. Beyond what affects you, beyond what affects your timezone. Look at common trend in every single matchup over the past 3 years, as a whole. It’s blatantly obvious to see, and to deny it is akin to a toddler throwing a tantrum because they want 2 pieces of cake when everyone else only gets none.

This situation has been a massive problem with WvW since launch. To say otherwise is flat out lying. The mountain of evidence speaks for itself. You can’t live in denial, while pointing accusing fingers at everyone who points it out. Have you no honor? Have you no integrity? Have to no dignity? It’s time to put on your big boy and big girl pants and do the right thing, instead of throwing giant indignant hissy fits every time this gets pointed out. Grow up, and stop acting like spoiled, selfish children.

Dawdler – you really don’t get it do you. There is no such thing as “night capping”. Players cap stuff when they are playing. Period. I accept that scoring based entirely on PPT can make your own efforts seem worth less.

Whilst I agree that it seems wrong for a small number of players to take an undefended objective, it’s the same result when a big blob to steam-rollers a smaller defending force. So the issue is that at times stuff doesn’t get flipped back soon enough…

So your real complaint is that no-one from your server is on to take it back.
The fact that people insist this must be a game wide problem and demand that it needs fixing is laughable.

Who said WvW had to be fair? Try talking to Eradon Terrace about fair (they’ve been stomped at the bottom of NA T8 for a very long time). Let’s face it, life isn’t fair either but we live with that fact.

One of the ideas Dayra linked to was based on objectives returning to neutral if not refreshed. This would be fairer, and tbh I’ve suggested something similar in the past myself ( link here. ) This would at least require player interaction to maintain possession of an objective although a sensible refresh time period would be needed. It’s not been popular as an idea so far, but it would help avoid unattended tick scoring.

I don’t know what the solution is for encouraging more players (at any times). However I suspect that WvW needs an image upgrade so it noticeably offers more rewards and more fun to new and casual players – both of these issues are outside the scope of this thread.

At the end of the day (pun intended) there is no such thing as “night capping”, there are only players on line playing when they can.

If you want to fix time imbalance you need to recruit more players into WvW – ideas for this are welcome. A return-to-neutral timer might also help.

Population issues are the result of three years of player choices. There are players who chose not to be in highly populated servers, and those who preferred the more populated servers. They are both valid points of view and neither should be more important than the other.

What we need are ideas that positively seek to encourage players to defend in the quieter times rather than requesting Anet penalise those who play at a time we don’t.

Logistically the original post is a really awkward idea. To work, you’d have to try to get your guild(s) and other friends to select the same time-servers you select – that would be complex to say the least. You’d end up with the same situation anyway, just on fewer servers total. Then you have the whole – stop, save the score and who owns what, then virtual-shutdown (real servers don’t turn off) then start a new instance and everyone loads in at once… ouch.
I understand the point of the idea but it would be way harder to implement than megaserver, and that’s an awful idea too (EotM everyone?).

Every server has the same global player base to recruit from. Any time based population imbalance is caused by player choice. This happens. Anasau had it right in his post – most of WvW play time is NOT what gets labelled as Prime Time. So why should this count for less? Is it because there are fewer people on or because it seems unfair that those who do play for what is actually most of the game time have an impact that is directly related to the duration of this time?

PPT should not be the only score system – I agree with this. Points per stomp should count too. I’m happy with PPK instead of PPS if it awards one set of server points on the defeat of a player, but not if it gives points for everyone who tapped the downed player.

Scaling PPT to population is not a good idea. There are fewer players at non prime times so rather than encouraging more people into WvW let’s tell them they are less important and give them less reason to play…. If you think that players will come to believe they should log in more to make a difference then you need to look at the number of players who don’t WvW on Saturday anymore “because there’s no point, the match is already decided”.

Then there’s the problem of scaling. If you scale according to individual map population you simply reward the servers that blob up to outnumber and raize a whole map. Or are you proposing this on a total population of all maps and all servers within the match up… so when we’re outnumbered that’s fine but when the stampeding hoard logs off those of us left shouldn’t have full credit for retaking stuff.

I’m with Dewolfe on this one. Players contribute equally all of the time. If a player isn’t there for my server, whatever the time is, then the opponents would have, and should have, an advantage. I may not like this, but that’s life.

Ultimately, the hardcore WvW players will play until they quit GW2. What we need for WvW population is to attract more of the casual players, pugs and PvE and PvP players. They need a reason to play WvW whatever time they are on. At present they don’t want to for whatever reasons, so we can’t encourage them and train them and invite them to our guilds. To me addressing this is far more important than complaining that you play while I’m asleep.

I think the only way to deal with nightcapping is to change the scoring system completely. And well lets be honest its needs an overhaul anyways. With PPK being turned on that should bring scores more closer. Changing it to diminish the contributions of players from another timezone is not a positive step, as someone who is on a server with many sea/ocx players I would never want them to feel as though they are being marginalized because they play their hearts out for our server.

I don’t understand the argument about passive VS active upgrades.

The system does it for you automatically, fixed so that it now is based on incoming supply so it’s not deterministic and time-bound

vs

Some guy is standing in a tower queuing them when the supply is ready. He’s bored, but cares for the PPT.

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the reasoning here. People were complaining about the cost of upgrades, so they made them automatic, but erroneously made time-based. People were complaining about supply trolling to prevent upgrades, so they removed the need for supply to be used as a resource. Now they make the upgrades supply-delivery-based again, AND this can’t be trolled with wasted siege, and people are all up in arms about not pressing the button.

If they made WvW actually competitive and the matchups good, there’s no reason to have some guy sit there and wait to queue and upgrade. There wouldn’t be nightcapping. Hell, these systems explicitly prevent nightcapping by making upgrades occur automatically such that one guy doesn’t ram down a t1 keep at four in the morning when nobody’s playing.

A structure won’t get upgraded without supply deliveries, or will be taken over again by another server if not enough get there fast enough. It’s still absolutely about the players, because players are denying those yaks.

Instead of a guy pressing a button to get an upgrade, a guy is going to be able to single-handedly hold back the upgrade from even occurring. That’s awesome. It promotes the use of havoc squads but also punishes servers that let opposing havoc run rampant. We’re back to where we were with this system in regards to player actions deciding what gets upgraded, except instead of someone camping a structure waiting for supplies to come to lose 10-15 silver and press a button, or a server’s negligence to care to do so because the ktrain is strong, it’s done regardless.

Players complained that defense was too difficult, ktraining structures was too common, and havoc/small group/solo player didn’t matter.

Now they’re listening to those complaints by making changes to fix them, and people are complaining again because of arbitration in the user experience. I’m rarely one to favor ANet’s decisions; to put it bluntly, I’m distrustful of them as a company and was extremely vocal about the HoT blunder, but come on folks, keep complaining for no reason and they’ll just stop bothering.

There just doesn’t seem to be an actual argument against this change that promotes healthy gameplay and a sustainable future for the format. This is objectively an improvement.

For the rally cap limit and OOC resurrecting, I’ve spoken my mind already; I think it’ll have the reverse affect they think it will for small groups. I hope they pay this heed, and I am absolutely concerned about it.

Noob.5908:

1.)Capping a camp Perspective… With auto upgrades chances are smaller that I will encounter and enemy while capping it because there isn’t much reason for them to be in their 1/3. Might be some escorting yaks but honestly very few people even do this. So the excitement the enemy will probably be inc soon has dwindled down to boring camp capping. The number of fun fights I’ve had fighting players trying to upgrade a supply camp has been very frequent. Nowadays there isn’t anyone even close by because they have no reason to be and nothing invested in the upgrade. If a player has put the effort to run out and start an upgrade at a camp they usually want to defend it. If I run to a camp and see no upgrades going I see a boring cap and move on, but if it’s been upgraded to say t1 then I know someone has been there and I will watch for them with excitement. Auto upgrades completely removes this entire dynamic and makes the game boring. So basically with the proposed changes its now all about yaks and players fighting each other over yaks, but seeing how that is incredibly boring and barely anyone ever wants to escorts yaks ANET feels they can turn what people don’t like doing into a fun. LOL this falls into the realm of stupidity. The focus should be on the camps not the yaks. Yes I’ve had some good fights over a yak but mostly because an enemy was running by and saw me killing the yak and engaged me. Maybe 1 out of 100 yaks I encounter a player actually escorting a yak. But hey ANET if you think you can turn yak escorting into something exciting and bring more people into WVW… go for it lol. /cry

And that still exists. Camps have always been a problem because they have always been absolutely trivial to take over. The game isn’t built around people camping objectives, and it never was, but for some reason they still refuse to allow camps to upgrades to harder defensive structures. With walls. That actually give people a chance to respond to a camp under attack. What you’re complaining about is a lack of free and easy intelligence to find fights. Fact of the matter is, people care about camps when they care about the objectives those camps feed. just because the camp does basic upgrades doesn’t mean the camps aren’t important to people. If I slot tactics in to a camp because I need that camp to upgrade a nearby tower, you can be sure I’m worried about defending that camp.

Camps have always been too easy to flip. That’s why there are never very good fights over camps. it has nothing to do with making someone click a button. Give a T2 camp an actual wall, which creates an inidcator that it’s under attack, and you fix this problem immediately.

Noob.5908:

2.) Upgrading a Camp Perspective… this entire dynamic has been removed from game along with the players that enjoyed trying to get a camp upgraded. Sure I can go stand around a camp in hopes an enemy will show up, but seeing how I have no time invested in the upgrade I don’t really care, I have been made as useless as kittens on a maggot. Besides if it gets capped I just recap it and move on who cares about defending camps its rather pointless 90% of the time. Before HoT upgrading a camp was an active player participation thingy now its not… enough said!

See point 1. Camps have always been too easy to flip. They are still too easy to flip. This has nothing to do with how the upgrades are acquired, and much more to do with the fact that the upgrades are worthless from a defensive perspective.

Noob.5908:

3.)Gawd forbid people defending have busy work, its way more exciting to stand around in a tower(brings tower humping to a whole new level). Hey if ANET implements a few more automatic type stuff we can all stand at the spawn and watch the game and see who wins. /cry

Literally all making people have to go click a button to do is creates more instances where you have to go visit objectives that are in not danger, on your back line, far away from enemy engagements. How does forcing people to run to a tower halfway across the map to click an upgrade button in stead of allowing that same player to remain on the front line, defending assets actively under attack, or attacking enemy assets create more exiting game play>

Noob.5908:

4.)Placement/Refreshing siege Perspective… Here on earth refreshing siege has become such a thrilling experience you have to stand inline to get the opportunity. Now lets be real, siege doesn’t get refreshed anymore and siege refresh timers is the ultimate in boring busy work. In my opinion siege timers should be increased to 3 hours before we lose more players that are tired of running around refreshing siege, they must of died from boredom because here on SBI most of the siege refreshers have vanished. Probably did what I did, they stopped doing it because they were the only one doing it and gave up. Siege timers was a good idea but 60 minute timers was a terrible implementation. Maybe defending stuff might become a national sport if there were actually some siege in the towers when you got there. Furthermore with enemies placing 3-4-5-6-7-10 rams at the gate and bringing down gates so fast who has time to build siege much-less defend.

I completely agree. Siege refreshing is the same pointless, boring, stupid busy work as manually clicking upgrade buttons. it forces people to break off of active play to go click arbitrary buttons. Manually upgrading things and refreshing siege are the exact same problem in that they make you go do pointless busywork just to keep or rank up stuff you’re already fighting to maintain by holding your front line and keeping the enemy away from those siege emplacements or objectives.

Noob.5908:

5.) Scouting Perspective… I use to enjoy doing this but running around refreshing siege burned me out and now that everything automatically upgrades there really isn’t much for me to do except escort yaks which 99% of players find incredibly boring. Oh wait ANET has some magical fix that is going to make yak escorting exciting, silly me! /cry

Escorting yaks that nobody is harassing is just as pointless as sitting in a tower nobody is attacking. What you should be doing is killing their yaks to prevent their upgrades and disrupt their operations if you’re scouting. This is simple logic. Disrupting yaks actively prevents upgrades. Especially now that the only way upgrades actually happen is when yaks get through.

Noob.5908:

6.)Night capping… Lets have automatic upgrades so everything is fully upgraded during off periods so we can discourage all this night capping. Gawd forbid people actually want to play WVW during off hours and if they do lets make it hard for them. Realm of the stupidity again!
During off time we need things to be easier or the few new players they do decide to come check out WVW will just see a map that’s a hassle. Well if the like staring at a gate for 10 minutes while someone runs a ram I guess ANET has hit the mark with auto upgrades. Fully fortified structures is not going to stop night capping on servers with the population but it will stop the low population servers from even trying. But hey who needs people in WVW during off peak times. /cry

No, upgraded structures because nobody was around to defend them consolidates fights during off peak hours. it incentivizes the defenders to bring more people and siege, and incentivizes the defenders to actually defend assets because they’re in less danger of losing another random objective while they defend the first. My favorite off peak experiences have been fighting over fully upgraded objectives when there are ~5 attackers and defenders simply because it consolidates fights to a single objective in stead of spreading out an already sparse population all over the map so they can easily pvdoor towers in a huge cowardly ring of not fighting each other.

Those upgrades weren’t automatic. They happenned because nobody bothered to cap a supply camp that was sending yaks to them, and nobody bothered to kill yaks. That’s a tactical failure. The automatic upgrade system was stupid because it made the upgrades inevitable. The yak-required system means that you can stop every upgrade by actually taking objectives in stead of repeatedly ganking the same guy over and over in a cycle that will never end

Noob.5908:

Conclusion

Auto upgrades is one of the things killing the game. All changes to WVW should be first and foremost to encourage more players in WVW not discourage them. Furthermore if a couple friends capping your stuff in the middle of the night needs to be discouraged then why not just close WVW except during prime-time and run off even more players. Your not going to stop the servers like SBI night-shift which has a decent night-shift thanks to a commander that spent months building it up (Djixie). This is about match balance not auto upgrades. Shallow thinking and seat of your pants, knee jerk implementations is not bringing players to WVW its running them off.

People should be capping stuff in the night. However, five people shouldn’t be capping half the map just because it’s easy to spam rams on a t1 gate. People want to have fights in WvW. Making it take actual effort to prevent upgrades and take objectives at all hours of the day creates fights. It does not discourage them. What it prevents is people running all over the map quickly PvDooring down more objectives than a small force should be able to just because there are less defenders.

Tofu.1978:

The only thing that scares me is PPK. Everyone seems to think that it will encourage fights but I worry that it discourages fights by making people less willing to engage with smaller numbers and give up points. If it does end up encouraging fights I’m all for it I just know way to many commanders who are unwilling to engage larger groups just based on giving the enemies bags and having to regather their group at spawn. If they also know they are going to lose net points I fear they will get even more cautious. I’m sure this isn’t an original thought but I didn’t see it in the 6 or so pages I read.

That’s why they need:
1 PPK for winning team
2 PPK for mid team
3 PPK for losing team
2 extra PPT when outnumbered

A losing server that is also outnumbered would at least be able to score good points off kills.

Noob.5908:

Didn’t say I couldn’t cap a fully upgraded camp sure any class can, but some classes its a pain. Personally if I am gonna go on a camp capping run I prefer my guard it kills faster and has speed to get there.

You did say it and the class doesn’t really matter but I guess necros can do it the fastest.

Noob.5908:

Jana if your on a lower tier server with fewer players and having a problem getting upgrades done its not the upgrade system that’s the problem it’s the server population imbalance that Anet has ignore to the point that most people quit playing.

I have been from deep bronze to highest gold – so I kind of guess it’s a problem to every server. Also wvw is “sick” – throwing more people in won’t solve anything and in my opinion anet should work on that before considering megaservers.

Noob.5908:

If your saying you want auto upgrades because your server doesn’t have enough players I would be more concern about getting players into WVW and I telling you that on a server that had players they all quit and auto upgrades is one of the reasons.

See above also: EU has got dead times – NA has been different when I have been there (I also was on SBI who were moaning about too few people (in general) a year ago – it’s the same on every server I’ve been to).

No idea what the rest of what you wrote has got to do with anything

No offense but it really sounds as if all you want to do is standing around in towers clicking upgrades – and that’s not what most people want. And the automated upgrades do have their benefits.

PopeUrban.2578:

Tspatula.9086:

zhonnika.1784:

I don’t wish to derail this thread, but since I was addressed specifically, I’m not actually a wvw forum specialist, and haven’t been since early October. They just haven’t fixed my forum title yet

To keep this on topic, I say HELL NO to manual upgrades in any form. Too much abuse, too many people who don’t understand upgrade order, too many ways that it can and has gone wrong. Auto upgrades are fine with the change. I do not wish to go back to the days of someone starting fortify before anything else because they clicked wrong or just wanted to keep you from having anything else. Sorry, no.

Manual upgrading for the camps, keeps, and towers would not be able to be abused. It would be a simple change that would require a player to manually activate available upgrades, rather than having them automatically activate when available as they are now. They would be the same upgrades that happen now, only the structure would sit at the “upgrades ready to activate” state until a player essentially pushes the button.

That sounds like pointless busywork.

There’s nothing wrong with the upgrades autmatically queing as long as the enemy can actively disrupt the yaks. The problem with the atuo upgrades wasn’t that they upgraded when nobody was watching. it was that they made yaks pointless.

Requiring someone to go to the objective and click a button adds nothing to the game, unless you’re under the assumption that the enemy is going to bother camping the objective to wait for that one guy that’s going to run over and click it when they should be focusing on disrupting yaks.

If enough yak runs ahve already made it through for the objective to upgrade, the enemy has already failed. Making someone click a button doesn’t magically create fights. It just makes it easier to PvDoor, and creates less tanky objectives during off hours, during times they should be tankier to discourage easy night capping and encourage defense even at off hours.

Yea, the only problem I really had with autoupgrades is that it was difficult to starve the structures out of supply. And also making upgrades manual often in my experience just placed more busywork on people defending. Quite a few people I talked to just found it to be busy work as well especially during off hours when only a few people were willing or able to do it, and they would rather deal with more “active” duties such as placing/refreshing siege, scouting, and and of course yak management being one of the few things I actually like doing myself.

I have scouted so much in previous years, and maintained said upgrades. It’s a pain in the kittens to have to worry about it. People (That I know, which is a significant portion of my server :P) want to get out there and play, they don’t want to sit around babysitting upgrades. Leave that for the system to do. This is a game, not a job. Waiting around and watching the upgrades is a job.

Remove tick Points only give Points for capping, defending, and upgrading buildings. That way it mater the least with coverage, if you have no enemy you cant gain any points.

People keep reiterating their desire for “manual upgrades.” Ugh.

The “schmucks” who would go around popping all the manual upgrades people keep asking for are likely the same guys who are currently doing all the jobs on the map when no one else is around… flipping camps, sentries, shrines (usually by himself), sometimes flipping towers (also by himself if need be), killing roamers, doing the oasis event (solo if need be), and repairing all the gates that have been sitting there damaged for hours because no one else bothered.

There’s an awful lot that already needs to be done and not nearly enough people to do it… why does anyone still think we need to assign a “manual upgrade button pushing job” on top of all this? With the proposed changes, a human interaction will be required to upgrade something… the button you have to push is the one that kills the supervisor and gets the camp flipped back to your side.

With yaks being required for upgrades, both sides get a definite say in whether upgrades happen. One side says no by stealing the camps and sniping yaks, the other side says yes by flipping them back and escorting if need be. That’s not just a button to push… that’s something to fight over. Isn’t that what we want?

Welcome to WvW, Zach. May Balthazar protect you!!!

Intriguing information & plans.

• I am content with the changes to upgrades progressing via Dolyaks reaching their required destination; gives more incentive… I am very edgy still about automatic upgrades. I feel this needs more humanly interaction.
• Very happy about the reduction in supply costs in regards to catapults; my gripe was that the maps are too large… running supplies to create such a costly thing fell prone to more dangers and/or it took ages to get going. The cost reduction should ease that pain.
• Glad about PPK being implemented; change is good, however, this may cause some servers/guilds as other’s have stated to shift their gameplay into a more defensive/hermit crab-like fashion so as not to feed the enemy kills thus causing more chickeny fights/pirate shipping. I could be wrong, but I feel it’s moving this way with that change.
• Downed/Defeated changes will deem interesting. It’s time to end these unwavering rallybot shenanigans. I hope it gives an edge to smaller groups as hypothesized. My only concern is the plethora of skills/runes etc that play a small part in the game being rendered near-useless due to the “no rezzing fully dead players” (Mercy runes, traits that grant 10%+ faster rez speed etc).

Overall, happy with these proposed changes, I certainly hope they will be tested beforehand… even a 2 week period of player testing before permanent implementation is welcomed & appreciated.

For God’s sake what the hell are you guys talking about?
Nobody ever said that these changes are going to revive wvw and they especially didn’t say that these are the only changes being made.

I don’t like wvw at the moment and I don’t play it very often anymore, but they did give us a message asking for feedback about the proposed changes.
Nobody cares about your useless negativity. They wanted feedback for these changes so give them godkitten feedback about these changes and not your endless crying about the map or whatever.

You are the reason they are not talking to us.

Do I expect any miracles from them? Not after 3 years in the wasteland they call wvw. But stop putting your negative kitten into all these threads. They asked for feedback for 4 simple changes and you all go crazy again.
You can complain after they implemented stupid things they didn’t ask us for but not when they do actually finally talk to us.
You always say they don’t write anything in this forum but instead of trying to help improve the gamemode you leave your kitten under every red post just to then open the next thread asking why none of them is posting in these forums.

There have been almost 8 pages of positive feedback. I hope that’s enough for the devs to not wait with the implementation. So they can go ahead and ask us about the next things.

PS: I never actually recognised any playstyle changes whether ppk was enabled or not so I don’t see to much of a problem there.

For those of you who don’t know or aren’t familiar with this concecpt both gw1 and gw2 are a sideways progression game for endgame content. It’s very different than most other mmo’s so a lot of people don’t really understand it so thought I would make a post defending anet this time on the grind issue (I have other posts criticizing stuff too so I do see both sides on things)

I’ve seen a lot of posts whining about grinding lately, anet you said no grind etc, that sort of thing, and just wanted to explain what grind is and what sideways progression is so as to not confuse the 2. Grind is repetitively doing the same thing over and over again, usually for something marginally better (ie: A very small stat upgrade in a raid from wow, but raiding for hours several days a week for several months, for 1 piece of rare loot) Or farm reputation points forever for a mount that sort of thing. Or killing mobs over and over again for experience.

Then gw2 came along with their amazing manifesto. Yes in some areas they need to go back to their creed but overall its still there. Now nowhere anywhere did they ever say there is no grind in gw2. They said play how you want to play and gave us options. You could pvp at max level right away even at low levels. You could level up in wvw or pve or crafting.

So what exactly is sideways progression then. Sideways progression is progression that goes sideways, not vertically. Say for instance you get to 80, now what? Exotics were max level gear and very easy to get, in a lot of ways (gold, karma, wvw badges, dungeon tokens, and crafting) This is what anet meant when it said no grind and fulfilled their manifesto philosophy (play how you want to play) Now there was still grind in this game. If you wanted that legendary you still had to earn it and farm lots of gold and karma and do your map completion. That’s an example of sideways progression. Skins. This idea goes back to the classic known as Guild Wars. Greens with max stats were easy to get but if you wanted a rare weapon skin with low req requirement you had to be prepared to cough up stacks of ectos for it. But mathematically it gave you no advantage. It just looked nice.

This is both amazing and/or horrible depending on your point of view (mostly if you like or dislike other mmo’s with a strong focus on stats) For pvp purposes this was awesome because it put everyone on a level playing field and skill was all that mattered. Say in wow you had resilience (now pvp gear ilevel, i believe) If you had that stat and you versed someone who just started pvp’ing and had non pvp gear, it was an auto win for you… It didn’t matter how good of a player he was skill wise. Now a new pvp’er can come in and have a decent shot of winning skill wise (unlikely b/c he’s new to pvp but theoritically it could happen) But again its skill not stats that decides the outcome.

Now what confuses people and why so many people cry “no grind” is this new mastery system. If you actually played the beta and read the interviews they said several times it was a new system of progression. To level up so to speak without having to level up and worry about stat balancing and that sort of thing. To me its just another way of sideways progression. Your levels may not go higher, but its still an experience bar that you fill up by doing events just the same as “leveling up” would be. If people leveled up to 90 instead of fulfilling new masteries I’m pretty positive all this no grind feedback wouldn’t have happened. The 2 “big” things that most people were upset about was the misunderstanding of the new elite specialization because people wanted to play it right away and in the beta you could, and the itzel poison mastery for an early mission that didn’t even use it, both of which anet listened to feedback and quickly fixed.

Again I’m not saying gw2 has no grind, it does. But their manifesto about playing how you want is still there and exotics are still easy to get. But if you want nice skins, legendaries etc be prepared to grind a little bit. Just know that skins and the mastery system is a form of sideways progression. Are there things they need to go back to their manifesto and fix, sure they are. Personally I believe ascended weapons/armor should be easy to get in several ways like pve, karma, wvw etc like exotics were to fulfill their manifesto philosophy (playing how u want to play to easily earn max gear for endgame content) since at first ascended was only intended for fractal use and now almost a requirement for raids(endgame content) and i’ve already coughed up the money for it.

Hopefully this helps clear up some of the confusion about grinding and sideways progression. Not saying its perfect but overall its still a very good system especially compared to many other games.

These changes look like a good idea, but may need some adjustments in the way they are implemented to avoid negative side effects. For example the PPK change could lead to people avoiding fights if they don’t think they can win, making it so your death doesn’t provide PPK if your server is outnumbered on a map or doubling the amount of PPK you receive on killing an enemy while outnumbered could help encourage people to keep playing even while losing. Also, to avoid the stale tower humping game-play some servers engage in, disabling PPK from a person who has received siege damage in the 20 seconds prior to their death and doubling the PPK received when spiking someone that was defending a tower or keep would help reward servers that actively try to engage the enemy even if they are unsuccessful in taking an objective.