Guild Wars 2

that will never happen. Old bl were pretty empty to begin with the new map just popped the finisher so to speak with mostly roamers unless a zerg was going for the ppt. Why replace EB and kill the only map that sees any action?

The server system has proven to just not work in the long run. Anet now has more than enough playtime data to create alliances based on a cluster of a few servers. Basically take One Tier 1, one Tier 2 and two Tier 3 servers, combine them into an alliance and give them a name. Base these server clusters off of the performance data/coverage over the past few years to try and create balanced alliances. Likely should also reset/re-organize the alliances every 6 months based on the data to optimize skill/coverage balancing as people play more/play less per server.

Yeah, I know the whole: play for your server thing (which, in a sense you would STILL be doing, but you would be a part of a larger system), but WvW is waaaay too set in stone at this point. There are 2, maybe 3 servers that ever duke it out at the top, with no real surprises/interesting turn of events because of the current system. Also, those on lower pop servers just have a bad WvW experience when they fight servers with better coverage. An Alliance system like I described that is constantly balancing every few months should, in theory, have a better chance at creating more equal playing fields and thus, more interesting and lively WvW.

Merging servers is pretty pointless unless they fix some of the underlying problems. WvW is bleeding players like never before, merging servers right now would be like jumping from a sinking ship into a sinking lifeboat.

I remember a comment from ANet when they released Eotm that the map was not only to solve the queue problems but they were also testing some concepts. I do believe one of those concepts was to group servers on a match just as Eotm doeas based on the color the server is representing in the moment.

Megaserver worked pretty well for PvE, I belive they will do something similar in WvW, maybe creating random alliances high tiers and low tiers servers.

I think merging is a need right now, but I also understand that losing server identity is not cool, if we had a solution that kept this identity would be nice, thats why I would vote for creating alliances and keep people on their original servers.

EvilSardine.9635:

Seriously. Just delete the bottom half of all the servers. It has ZERO effect on PvE and will help with the DEAD WvW maps.

Sadly, I’m pretty sure Anet will not do this because it will just be admitting that their game is “losing players.”

Why not just close all the severs? Start 3 new ones, rename them. When it hits their cap, close it. Open 3 more servers, same scenario. Rinse and repeat. Any mergers shouldn’t affect just the lower tiers. Flame on!!!

in the past many lower tier communities were against the idea of server mergers for the damage it would do their identities and because of a lot people played on the lower tiers for a reason. Even if a lot of those vocal posters no longer play the game I expect ANET would have to hear from a large percentage of low tiers players that their feelings on this issue have changed (with consensus on how it be handled which was even harder to come by previously) before they might even consider the idea.

Even then I have a feeling their upcoming WvW “fixes” might already be going to address this somehow so lets just hope it is in a way that will foster strong world identities rather than tearing communities apart. It certainly does feel like the new map was designed for larger numbers of players than even the middle tiers are fielding right now during weekday prime times so something is going to have to change and sooner might be for the best.

deso pug commander feedback on new desert bl:

first of all, best thing in wvw in a long time, ty anet.

usually i have a privilege and opportunity to enjoy the wvw with a small number of players. i run with 10-15 guys that know me and like what i do. so this is in a way a feedback from a small havoc squad.

i read a lot complaints on forum about too much pve (i think ppl refer here to shrines mostly). i try to look at it as an additional layer to the wvw mechanics. for me it is not a problem to flip a shrine before i try to go for a keep. this gives enemy additional signal about the next possible target. also if i am defending it gives me the same signal. so there is actually a new layer of tactics involved with the shrines. previously we only had the camps flipping as an indication to enemy movement. this shrine thing kinda balances the response time for defenders in regards to how much bigger the maps are.

middle event is laggy and atm unplayable. but it always gets me excited because i know all the players from across the map will be there and usually it turns into an epic brawl of many roamers, havoc squads and blobs trying to finish it. this is due to the fact that it is “OP” in the best possible way. i mean, nobody wants other server to actually get it. also, since it is a three-way there is a tactical approach to this also. maybe the server that has the least structures wants to help the second server to finish the event (depending on number of players that each server has). or you can look at the server that has the least upgraded structures to get hit for fast splitting over the map and attacking multiple targets at once… at least, that’s what i do. all in all, fix lag, DO NOT nerf.

the map!!! wow, just beautiful. and i do not mean how it looks (also great). i mean the map design. i mean, i cant remember any part of the map that wasn’t carefully designed for fights. we are not talking here about usual open field gvg kind of meta. we are talking about awesome move, hit take the choke, turn around bomb, get up the stairs, refresh, bomb from above, jump on them, push through, hold the stairs etc etc etc etc!!! whoever designed the maps did a great job and i can already see i will enjoy wvw for a long time.

personally i like the new supply mechanics also. for me in a way, the supply that is available in structures atm is great to have. i have a feeling that it balances the buffed defense. i am not sure still if the balance is right. but i can see that buffed defense and structural upgrades could be countered with more supply availability. the problem i have is definitely with auto upgrades. great idea and i don’t personally think it should be changed. with the shrines and all, there is more then enough work for the people that enjoy scouting, but it will need balancing. in my feeling, cannons are up way too fast (maybe 1 hour?). need to take in account smaller groups here also. i still didn’t have opportunity to see blob defending upgraded keep against a blob attacking it, but i doubt that would be much fun due to defense being too strong imo. in short, attackers having more supply available vs defending buffs balance needs to be looked at still.

for end, an invitation to all the wvw players to actually try out new map to the point of knowing all the mechanics and the actual map layout before making a judgement. not appreciating the whole new world of strategy and tactics on many new levels of what wvw has to offer now, because you are used to the old thing is not the way to go. im having a blast, idk whats your problem:P

Dynamic # – EBG + 1. If the +1 hits some sort of threshold, then another +1 up to the current configuration of EBG +3……

With the current amount of WvW players and the size of the new BL map wouldnt it be better to just have two maps? EB+ just 1BL map.

The new BL is already big enough, but would need some changes to balance it out for all sides.

Even on T1 servers Ive noticed the BLs are often empty except for when the ppt trains roll by quick-capping everything then jumping back on to EB again. So if nothing else at least the trains would collide every now and then and bring some fights into the map.

I solo roam on the TP. There’s an awful lot more PvP with people undercutting and stuff to take advantage of.

I would like to see an event where an elder dragon spawns, decimates your enemies, and wrecks their stuff. The “Dragon’s Wrath” event would trigger if a server didn’t control any structures on their home BL and had 4 or less players remaining. The dragon is not taking sides, it is simply angry at karma training, night capping, and population imbalances. A victory chest containing ley line sparks and flax would be mailed to the last 25 players to have seen action on the BL.

Pretty sure all the current changes and the new map came from threads like these.

Anyway what I’d like to see is mobs attacking objectives in the new BL since players refuse to go to them. Might as well throw hordes of mobs at stuff to make the map playable. If players do not want to change, adapt, learn new tactics might as well turn it into Silverwastes and be done with it.

If they were smart, they’d kill the door siege first. It takes just one extra trip to the supply camp but makes it much, much harder for a lone defender to ruin their day. If they fail to do that, they were betting on taking the objective uncontested…and I’ll be kitten ed if anyone in WvW gets away with that on my watch.

Jim Hunter.6821:

[…]

So killing other players in WvW is griefing and we should have more npc’s to fight……

Are you sure you wouldn’t just be happier in pve?

Don’t start one of those void ‘PvE scrub’ arguments. WvW is both PvE and PvP. We have PvE gear instead the standard PvP gear. There’s NPCs to fight. That won’t change anytime soon no matter hot much anyone may dislike that. Why is that? Because of the same reason I already explained: There’s no way to make sure there will always be players. So there must always be something else to fight or instead PvE it’ll be PvFreaking doors and walls. So, right now the only solution is NPCs. Unless some genius comes with a better thing.

So, what I’m saying is not “we need more PvE”.

What I say is that there should be fun reasons to stick at certain locations and defend them. And that I can’t think of anything else other than events. Why? Because, again, there’s no way to make sure players will always want to go to every specific location at all times, so AI will have to do.

So, you could do things having supply camps that look like farms, quarries or lumbermills start an event next to them in which some NPCs do something like mining some ore, chopping some trees, harvest some crops or slaughter some cows. And they will be attacked by other NPCs in the meantime, like wild animals, bandits, skirtt, ogre and centaur raiders, etc. If the NPCs finish their thing, the location gets a bit extra supply, and the current upgrade get a little progress bump. If they are killed and can’t finish, the location goes slower for a little while.

So what would players do? After capturing the spot, 1-2 player stay behind, and help the NPCs. While they guard the spot, they won’t get bored as there’s something else to do. And if enemy players come, the ‘Help NPCs’ event is interrupted, and the ‘defend the location’ event starts right away. Defend the spot, the NPC event goes on. Fail, the enemy takes over.

Players will always have to be careful, because they may get distracted with the NPC event. And enemies may take advantage of that to do surpirse attacks. Surprise attacks are cool.

If done right, when you roam, you’ll encounter players more often on every location, as it’ll be more likely for each supply line to have at least a few players sticking around doing the events between the camps and the towers and keeps, instead going with the rest of the zergs mindlessly flipping locations.

To be clear, there are really 3 distinct Ideas that people are talking about in this thread (including just keeping the current system). What we have is:
——————————————————————————
Current system (Server v Server v Server)
Pros:
- Strong sense of server community and culture
- Tier system develops stable (although not always balanced) matches
- Tiers each have a distinct style of play (zerging vs small group vs medium group)
Cons:
- Matchups often become stale
- moving around to face different servers and play with different people is expensive
- currently there are too few players, and too many tiers
———————————————————————————————————
Server Alliances (Server + Server v Server + Server etc…)
Pros:
- Keeps server communities intact
- Allows different communities to interact without completely dissolving them
- Should fill out population some
- Is not technically a “server merge” but has a similar effect
Cons:
- Might force some conflicting communities together (language servers, servers with different WvW culture)
- System possibly easy to manipulate (tanking for a week to get a stronger ally)
—————————————————————————————————————————————————
Player Driven Alliances (Guild + Guild v Guild + Guild OR red v green v blue)
Pros:
- Should provide consistently full matches
- Gives players more control and agency over matches (this is PvP after all)
- would effectively delete server boundaries, making transfers meaningless
Cons:
- Complete dissolution of current server communties (new communities would form)
- System could be easily gamed by one or a few influential players
- Matchups would be fluid and unstable
- With guild system solo or small guild players would be effectively nomads
————————————————————————————————————————————————

Some of this stuff (and whether it became a pro or a con) is clearly subjective, but I tried to keep things as general and overarching as possible. Also all but the first system, we don’t really know exactly how things would turn out, so I just put down what I though would be likely to happen.

Personally i’m in favor of the second system (the server alliance one) because it provides a middle ground between what some people have proposed, and what we have currently.

Well, the guild hall seems to have taken account that people would be farming pve for them, which would prove to be a nightmare in WvW.

People are deliberately pricing it high despite there being so many because they know there are those that want it now. You shouldn’t be buying flax seeds for 5s30c a piece— the price is really more like 5s if you match the highest buyer. But even buying it at that price is only like a wait of an hour or two if even, so does it have to be that price of which you buy it at? And if you think about it, why wouldn’t they? You’re just going to have to wait in line until those people who are rushing it stop placing those high buy orders. These people absolutely don’t care about anything but getting it first, and they will take you down with them, even if it makes 0 sense. So what’s the point in playing that kind of game with them?

Time is the greatest premium, and so close to release, it’ll be brutal.

Seems there’s 2 Phantoms now. We’re gonna have to have a dance off at the rec center to see who gets the crown.

Anyway, on a more serious note, the overall layout is the core issue. While, yeah, the auto upgrades and laser event and all of the other things that have been mentioned are problems, they’re more along the lines of the flesh, while the layout of the map is the skeleton. If the foundation is built properly, all of those other things can be adjusted to make major improvements. If the foundation itself is faulty, however, those adjustments are like sticking a bandaid on a broken leg.

Int he attachment below, I’ve done a quick draw up of what the overall layout should be like. It’s based around the dimensions of the Alpine maps. The keeps are behind the towers. The towers block the roads. The roads lead to the towers. People are funneled to the objectives. Fights happen either at the objectives or on the way to the objectives. The objectives relate to each other. The towers help defend the keeps, and the camps support the structures. There’s room for roamers to get to the camps, so roamers are not only viable, but important.

Combine this with upgrades needing x amount of yaks to get in, waypoints being in the keeps and only once they’re upgraded, and manual upgrades, and things become even better.

If you notice, I put an Asura gate in the center. This should work very similarly to the old orbs. A server has to go there, and activate an NPC. The NPC then runs to their keep, and the players have to defend him along the way. The other servers can kill him, and if they’re smart, they’ll try to. If the NPC makes it to the keep, he opens an Asura gate to that center area. This acts as a 2 way waypoint between that keep and the center of the map. If the keep is contested, it wouldn’t work. If the keep is taken, the Asura gate is destroyed inside of it, and the center event resets. This event makes holding a keep on each borderland important for sustained presence there.

Now, as far as the breakout event from the old borderlands go, have him go to that server’s keep instead of to a tower. Ideally, servers should be trying to hold their keeps in their thirds. This would also help minimize lopsided scores, since the keeps are worth the most points, and most of what would be getting flipped would be the towers and camps. Which reduces the effects of nightcapping, and people giving up when the scores are out of reach.

The overall design allows servers to minimize the areas they need to assign defenders to, which helps mitigate the effects of population imbalance. It won’t completely negate the effects of nightcapping and population imbalance, but it will lessen them to more manageable levels, and allow matches to remain fairly competitive. Especially since there will be clear areas to fight over, and clear paths to get to those fights, which will lure people to them naturally. All in all, a very positive step forward for all of the various types of WvW players.

Actually I think it is something like a new beginning. Because they finally start working on the important things

I’d say it looked mostly like this: the game released on the 28th August 2012. In the first half year they had to make sure all the existing mechanics are working, created WXP, and fixed culling releasing March 2013. After that they reworked the map with ruins, releasing September 2013. Crossing timescale a bit they created eotm which surely took an insane amout of time, releasing February 2014. And from there on 1 year for the development of the dessert border for the hot announcement early this year and continued beta testing sounds fair. (I’m sure there have been many many alpha versions for new maps)

The new borders is how WvW will be like. Nothing will change about it overall until the next expansion probably. They still need to work on some gimmicks like the PvE events and maybe tweak some things like auto upgrades, but the general WvW will be what we see now.
So after 3 years there isn’t really any more needs for more content (ruins and eotm didn’t work out the best but were a good idea at least), they aren’t beeing pushed by the next expansion and can finally focus on the most complex problems like population balance, nightcap etc.

So yeah, I’m more optimistic than I’ve ever been before in terms of WvW.

Catalin.5341:

The WvW situation right now is basically this: you have k-train supporters, those who want more fights and some roamers. You have those who care about ppt and those who don’t.

There are 3 types of players that engage in the wvw mode: blobers, roamers and ppt/scouts.

My fault. Let’s replace k-trains with blobbers. I’m on sfr myself, and I prefer to fight in small organized groups but I think any of those playstyles is 100% legit. Even though blobs don’t have the best reputation. I don’t care if I fight 5v5, 10v10, 30v30 or 80v80 as long as it’s a fair fight. The difference is k-train with 80 guys.
You have to respect the different preferences and give everyone a fair chance to win their way.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Paying customers have right to complain.

My own full time work gets evaluated, lots of anonymous feedback is gathered and some of it is also negative, maybe even down right harsh. Arenanet developers should be able to handle the same.

Yes and no.
You pay for the product you get, not for what you want it to be. If you don’t like it you don’t need to pay for it.
And complaining doesn’t involve personal insults, but constructive feedback.

Your personal story basically desribes the current situation. Do you feel any duty to have a dialogue about the negative feedback? No. You gather it and try to improve it the way your company thinks is the best. And I assume you also don’t share any progress until it’s finished or at least ready to be shown.

Deniara Devious.3948:

The big problem of WvWvW is that Arenanet developers simply don’t know the game mode well enough. They also went too far with the changes. A lot of players complained about EotM, Skyhammer etc. What did Arenanet give us, more of that!!!

Agreed. But it is relatively easily possible to change these small things if they want.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Let’s compare with Counter Strike, Many of it’s map have remained more or less the same already for over a decade and people still flock to CS! Now imagine if the favorite CS maps would be removed and replaced with something different. CS gamers would be rightfully aggravated and beg to reinstate their old favorite maps and have simpler game mechanisms which favor player-vs-player, not pve.

You mean like they destroyed the beautiful GW1 PvP (which existed almost 8 years) for this so called “espoarts” thing that will never happen? I am angry about it, and will always be. But I’m still playing PvP and try to make the best out of it. And I manage to have fun as well. I didn’t fully boycot PvP and made 400 QQ threads in the forums. I told them I don’t like it, how it can be improved in my eyes and at some point it may be heard. But if the majority of players don’t think like that there is hardly something I can do about it. I also liked Courtyard because it had none of those stupid circles.
But I simply don’t see a point in raging around like that. I can try to have fun, if I don’t I give the feedback and if it doesn’t work at all I go and have fun somewhere else. I don’t want to spend all my free time crying about changes instead of simply having fun. Even if it’s in another game.

msalakka.4653:

Maybe the OP gets free gems for each of these garbage posts. It’s the only explanation.

That would be great since I’m always low on money as a WvW player

GROMIT.7829:

Not gonna lie but WvW is not a complex gametype and most certainly isn’t hard to fix if you actually pay attention to your community and put the effort in, funny how most other games can achieve a considerably better balance than this company.

What games are you referring to if I might ask? The only actual game which could be comparable is ESO. And we all know the stories…

So please tell me who does better or where from you know how complex WvW is if there are no real examples out there. Guess why Camelot Unchained takes an eternity to be finished – because it’s an insane amout of time you need to create an almost perfect huge scale PvP mode. Time developers of a casual MMO that are beeing pushed to a release simply don’t have.

Once again: I’m not very happy with WvW overall either. But I give my constructive feedback (which you don’t see on this account) and try to have fun with what is left until something changes. I don’t spend 12hrs per day spamming the same QQ over and over again in this section and threaten to leave Guild Wars 2 for months while still talking here all the time.
And neither would I get even close to the idea of insulting the people who delivered me 3 years and thousands of hours of fun in WvW for far less money than I would have payed for 99.9% of the games out there.

The WvW situation right now is basically this: you have k-train supporters, those who want more fights and some roamers. You have those who care about ppt and those who don’t.

Satisfying everyone requires an insanely complex system which keeps a balance of all these different playstyles, gives them equal importance, fixes nightcap, doesn’t make k-train too attractive yet keeps the rewards high enaugh, has many different rewards so that every playstyle gets enaugh, makes things hard enaugh so that it’s a challenge for big groups yet easy enaugh that low pop servers can achieve something but not too easy for very small roaming parties, gives smaller servers a working comeback system and keeps a good balance between attackers and defenders.
Or to sum it up: everything people have been asking for in the past.

But many people in these forums don’t understand that only picking the things that will encourage their playstyle and asking for updates on this only won’t “fix WvW” as every second thread nowadays claims. Building a system like this is an enormous project and making all these ideas work together takes a hell lot of time. Yes one could say they had 3 years until now and I guess they should just admit that their previous ideas didn’t work out very well. But you can’t deny they worked on something. I don’t know how many devs they have for WvW, but they don’t get payed for laughing at the forums even if it’s hard to believe for some of you.

Right now I’d say that since it’s mostly impossible to satisfy everyone it would be pretty much pointless to talk to the players about many (maybe besides 2-3) mechanics because it will always be 50% yes and 50% no. And now it’s pretty much guaranteed that one side would start insulting the devs for not doing what they want.
So instead they do as they think and give us all at least something to work with in the first place. I don’t say the maps are perfect, and they most likely imagined it very differently but it’s something to begin with. If ANet wouldn’t give us the content we’d always be discussing ideas instead of having something to work with.
They did some questionable descisions with this map but many of you agree that it’s mostly the small things like some useless PvE mechanics that keep us from playing and that it could be very possible to play there with some tweaks.

We did tell them what we don’t like about the new map (more or less friendly and constructive…) and now it’s their turn. But opening 20 new QQ threads every day repeating the same kitten over and over again won’t make them work faster or more motivated. Just imagine what it feels like to work on something and no matter what you do thousands of people will insult you and call you incompetent. Would you like to work with that in mind? Those devs that actually read the forums and recieve the insults probably don’t have influence on the design choices/priorites anyways. So just say something nice to them here and there.

And in the meantime just go play the map look for the positive things and tell the devs what you like, not only what you dislike. Everyone complains that the maps are empty. But nobody knows how they’d be played when full. And if everyone keeps thinking it’s pointless to join because the borders are empty they aren’t going to fill up. Find some friends on your enemy server for example, get some fights with them and test the new mechanics with them.

My guild is having 2-3 raids a week with ~10-15 guys and guess what-we have fun. And I know many people who like the new map. Not everyone abandoned WvW and cursed ANet after the HoT release.

Go ahead. Call me a white knight. Tell me that I have no idea, because you know everything 10x better.
Give constructive feedback and try to live with what we have right now or write your QQ threads threatening to leave WvW for ever bla bla bla. If you are not able to work in a constructive environment – there’s the door. Goodbye, this game doesn’t need you. And neither does this community.

OR, you could dramatically alter the wvw situation. Rather than have servers matter whatsoever, one could remove the idea that wvw can function 24/7 and create a number of wvw instances. When one wants to join wvw, a dropdown menu could exist which allows for the joining of a number of instanced wvws (or through the LFG system).

WvW could then run in a number of instances, some which exist for only an hour on one borderland, some which exist for an entire week on all 4 maps, some that only last for a day, maybe some that last a few hours, etc.

You queue as one of the three colors (or you have guild leaders queue their entire guild for that color) and then you’d only be able to be that color for that specific matchup. You’d still have queues, but queues become much more apparent. 1 hour wvw? 100 man cap per server, let’s say. When choosing a color, you can see exactly how many have chosen what colors and the population on each map would be determined by the number of people playing on the least populated team. This should discourage people signing up for the more full servers. Matchup turnover would be frequent enough that in a lopsided matchup, you could wait it out and join a different color the next round.

Furthermore, you could have multiple matches going at once which could help with both queue times and multiple guilds-repping people. If you have multiple guilds signed up as different colors, you choose which color you’ll be repping in that matchup. It’ll be a bit messy until people figure it out, but what isn’t? If you’re queued for one matchup (let’s say a larger matchup that your guild is playing in), you could enter a shorter wvw matchup as whatever color because, and this is key, your color choice for one map would only matter for that one map. Say Guild A is blue team for Matchup A, but that is full atm, so I’m waiting in queue. I immediately enter a different map (similar to going to a borderland while waiting in queue for EB) and help out there in a smaller map where the stakes are less high. You can choose whatever color you want here, so everyone in your guild can queue for this other matchup that’s doing less well for itself as green this time.

It’s a more radical idea, but it solves a lot of things that people seem to care about. Perhaps you could have something similar to the current format where guilds can start a world event on their own, or people can start a matchup on their own and wait for it to queue. Maybe have 1 full-on wvw matchup going on per week, 5 day long, then 10 6 hour ones, 20 1 hour ones (these numbers being flexible when considering the population who do wvw at that particular hour). If the matchup gets too full for you, you can find a different one which is less populated.

Also, there wouldn’t be a fixed number of people allowed to sign up for each map at once, only a fixed number of people on each map per matchup. If too many people sign up to be red (say 300 do, but there’s only room for 100), but only 150 people sign up as blue and 100 as green, only 50 blue have to be queued if they’re playing at that moment, no green would have to queue ever, and a lot of red would have to queue. This would either lead to a bunch of idiots waiting in queue, or people would sort it out themselves. No server transfer needed, really, just either don’t queue for the fullest one the next week or split your guild appropriately. I’d imagine that any guild running more than 50 in wvw at once wouldn’t mind splitting into 2 groups and queuing opposite each other for a matchup or two, then regrouping in a different matchup when they have fewer people.

Just a thought. Consider it.

Except in Eotm, it’s possibly too short and too inconsequential, as well as too map-related.

I’m thinking a complete overhaul of wvw. The only reason eotm is a gongshow is because there is still a regular wvw. If there is no more wvw, there’s a chance that we lose a lot of players, which is a shame, but we’re losing players anyways.

Plus, if the 50 blue are actually getting tired of being outnumbered, it’ll cause them to leave. The servers that do have people will then either get bored or sit on an empty map. It’s self-regulating. How long do you think you’ll stay on a map where you’re rolling over people when rewards are somewhat low and there’s nothing to do. I’d imagine that if you take out the barrier between players moving between sides (for the most part. You’d still have to keep them locked into their chosen color for that matchup), players would rarely choose a side that’s completely winning 100% of the time.

Speaking of rewards, there’s also a possibility that you could alter wvw rewards to retroactively function off of how much you do on a map and then the game calculates it and sends you those rewards at the end of the wvw period. If it’s a week long thing, the game tallies how many events, kills, etc you’ve done that week and rewards you thusly (note that both killing and defending and capturing would be taken into consideration for the rewards, as well as the regular wvw rewards that essentially don’t exist at the moment). Then you could give rewards as a percentage of players. If the top 10% of players in a specific match have killed x number of players and taken x number of objectives, they get marginally better rewards, but you still get a reward no matter how poorly you do (unless maybe you’ve killed 0 people, defended 0 things, captured 0 things, assaulted 0 things, etc). That way there’s an informal sort of loot ladder, but anyone participating gets rewarded for doing so.

This type of rewarding would so prevent people from stacking, theoretically. Killing the same people over and over would give you no rewards, so farming a group wouldn’t help you any after the first time (much like how wxp per kill works. You’ve got to wait like 1 minute between killing someone before they give you anything). Permanently holding towers and keeps would give you few rewards because you would only get rewards from actually playing the map. The best way to get rewards would be to actively play wvw. Defending gets you some rewards and obviously more rewards based on how many times you defend.

You could also change how siege worked to make it so that it costs less supply to build siege in shorter lasting games, maybe?

As far as keeping it unlike EotM, I’d wager that players would find their way around and disrupt things. The K-Train in EotM ends as soon as a group decides to fight, right?

There’s a simple reason I’m not a member of any major wvw guild, and that’s because my RL commitments mean that for 1. I can’t use TS and 2. I can’t guarantee to stick around for any raid. In fact, I can’t even say if I will be on at any particular time. So rather than imposing on a guild which may have it’s own rules (or proscribed builds), I’ll stick to my 2 man guild.

Also, politics and egos. Not really my thing at my age, I’d rather play in peace than listen to some 20 or 30 something spout forth like they know it all about everything and tell everyone how they should play and who they should play with, etc.

As to fixing server imbalance, this would be a lot easier on NA servers than EU ones where language differences mean just making megaservers or combining servers isn’t quite so straight forward.

At the moment though, no amount of tinkering is going to help if their idea of a wvw battlefield is Deserted BL.

I don’t post much, but find myself reading the forums much more than before. Just an average wvw’er, but I do/did love it. Now, I find myself checking the forum & intel map regularly. The guild upgrades & elites have pulled so many ppl to PVE, it sometimes feels like it is not worth logging in. I spent 98% of my time in wvw before the expansion & never felt like it was enough. Now, it’s like meh-whatever. I don’t care whether my mastery says 2 or 200 next to my name. Eventually, I will cap my elites with the Heroic Scrolls. Everyone has their priorities, though. Mine are different from others I imagine.

And that’s my comment on WvW reward balance. I am confident it is more accurate. Or maybe this if you must literally interpret it more to be nothing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc

EOTM was a horrid idea from the jump, that backwardly addressed the basic incentive to do WvW.

See, in theory, WvW is supposed to be about server wins, teamwork, etc. This used to actually be the case back around launch when holding WvW objectves actually gave your server a buff, and thus serveres mattered outside of WvW.

Anet transitioned away fro this system because the entire thing led to server swapping. Why? WvW was all reward and no risk or cost for the benefits it handed out.

You didn’t have to step foot in to WvW to benefit from its buffs, people got antsy about being “penalized” by rolling on a bad wvw server, and people stacked to better servers, creating a snowballing solution.

The problem with WvW was always giving players the ablity to choose which team they are on, and allowing them to change that team whenever they feel like for a few gems.

WvW quickly became about personal rewards as the entire “goal” of WvW, the points system, awarded people nothing of value or significance for winning, and thus maps quickly emptied once a victory seemed decided.

EOTM was a response to people being unable to que, and thus being unable to get these personal rewards.

WvW is a broken game type from the ground up. EOTM is symptomatic of its design flaws.

Any team game, especially one on the scale of WvW that primarily rewards on an individual performance basis rather than on the merit of winning as a team will be played with a focus on personal rewards rather than team success.

HoT’s meta level and participation mechanics are actually a better system for WvW than how WvW works in the first place. They encourage map wide wins and mass cooperation rather than individual effort and efficiently farming events and objectives to the detriment of the team.

On top of that, upgrades, and now the new tactics system fail to recognize a critical flaw in the ownership scheme of the objectives. You are guaranteed to lose objectives, and thus guaranteed to lose any financial investment in them.

There is no “win” scenario when looking at guild claiming systems. You waste money on a temporary claim that will eventually be taken from you due to everyone going to bed or the map resetting. Owning these objectives doesn’t supploy you with a corresponding economic benefit to offset the cost.

When you put together the fact that the whole move prizes individual rewards more than team wins, and that the concept of ownership is nothing more than an expensive and endless money pit, is it any wonder that nobody cares around the objectives, and would rather flip them so they can reclaim them later?

WvW is broken because there are no rewards for ownership, no way to reliably maintain ownership, and no incentive to play the gametype as intended beyond a meaningless number on a leaderboard.

Why would you waste materials on WvW tactics when you know for a fact you’re not going to make back what you spent by successfully using them to defend an objective or overtake the map? In fact, “winning” a map in WvW is actually less rewarding than losing it on purpose, as it drives the defenders away ensuring less people to kill for bags and less people to re-flip objectives so you can get rewards for re-claiming them.

EOTM is the purest example of what WvW’s reward systems actually encourage players to do.

EOTM isn’t broken. WvW is a broken design from the ground up.

There’s no if or buts about it, they’re going to have to go with these “alliance” or also known as “battlegroup” setup that other games utilize. There’s just not enough population to support all these servers for WvW, no matter the tier. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are already working on it in the background. Because they should see the decline in WvW over the years, and the continuous population imbalance issues.

It’s like having spvp tournaments play 5 v 3 or 5 v 1 every week, or in lower tier cases, 1 v 1 due to lack of WvW population. It just doesn’t work and can’t sustain.

Made a mistake here. EotM´s concept is fine.

I would consider removing borderland concept.
Take the desert map, build a castle in the center and add towers and a third access point.
So make a variant of eternal battleground.
Now we have two diffrent battlegrounds.

I would want Eb . edge of the mist and 1 new borderland in 1 matchup maibe if eotm is no longer buffer map it could be eaven meaningful???

Also 1 matchup will last 3 weeks were every week you get new color but score stays