Guild Wars 2

RoterMantel.4395:

This is always the danger for polls with 75%-hurdle. Trolls can manipulate it.

It is strange that we never get a date for closing the poll. I have also the impression that the polls have different lifespans.

As far as I know it is typically a week’ish long poll, the only exception so far that I know of was the previous version of this poll… which they likely closed early because of two reasons.. one they knew they were going to re-do it most likely and two the results split in such a way that reaching the supermajority would have never happened in the time that was presumably left on it.

Tweekin.1349:

Any time I try and get some buddies into GW2, they are always appalled by the fact that there 3 game modes, 2 of which have 1 map.

I would say you are being overly generous to Courtyard there… that is not a game mode more of an outlier (if we take game mode to require to allow you to queue specifically for it we only have Conquest and Stronghold).

As for potential alternative game modes… original Spirit Watch was the closest thing to CTF that we have seen, I would have loved to see that turn into a proper game mode with some iteration and removal of capture points as they were.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

Aeolus.3615:

Stilk.6312:

So the new poll about “the future of WvW” is basically about bringing us to the past once again? Trying to shove us the desert borderlands in our throats ?

77% + it means something right?? players voted…. mixed bl’s

And how many of those players voted for this simply to not have 6 months a year fully unplayable BLs? I know I did…

The reason why people vote the way they vote is irrelevant, or should I say the reason why an individual votes a certain way can’t be relevant when considering the results of these polls because as a blind poll no-one, and I mean no-one, can say how many or how few people voted one way or another because of reason X.

If we, when looking at the results, start to think things like “surely, the majority of people who voted Y did so because of X” we are right back at making completely unsubstantiated claims based on something as vague as a feeling.

Ultimately, we know what the WvW team thinks on this matter because of Tyler’s post when the previous poll was running… and frankly that is good enough for me at least. We are not game designers, while they are people who do this for a living.

lil devils x.6071:

No ship has sailed. If massive amounts of players leave the game over it again, they will have to rethink that idea or let the game die. The end goal should be to increase population, player satisfaction and game longevity. If an update deceases population, player satisfaction and game longevity, they have to rethink it or let the game mode die.

Well, I fail to see them rethinking this matter the third time… community having been involved in both previous instances. The WvW team is small… their time is no doubt better spent than going over the same debate ad nauseam when they now have actual hard number that are good enough for them apparently.

Sure, there is always a remote possibility of a mass exodus, however, until that actually happens they should focus on moving forward. If they try and keep addressing something that might happen they are forever stuck on this matter.

TL;DR: no, the ship has definitely sailed for the foreseeable future at any rate.

Stilk.6312:

that moment when anet changes the order of the answers of the poll – if that is not trying to influence the result my name is trump

The order is supposed to be random each time, sans the “don’t count my vote” option which is always last. However, on a poll with two answers it can sometimes be hard to see. I don’t know if the answer order is randomized for each logged in session or each page load as there has been some inconsistencies in regards to this in the previous polls.

That being said, if the order is changing it is likely done as a measure to make the poll order neutral or hinder the impact of votes that do not read the options (ie. bots f.ex.).

Dawdler.8521:

Still… The schadenfreude of mixed getting 70-74% would amuse me immensly.

True that, to tell the truth I misinterpreted your original post so sorry for that and thanks for clarifying what you meant.

First, it isn’t a new poll… it is a re-run, because everyone and their mother asked for it on both sides of the fence and those that wanted it got the discontinue supporting Desert Borderlands poll that ran last week.

You got your “get rid of the desert borderlands” poll last week, that poll and that poll alone was to determine whether Desert Borderlands come back at all, and since that ended with the map coming back (removing it completely did not even reach majority let alone the required supermajority) this poll is just about how and/or when, the ship on the if has already sailed.

Relevant: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Poll-14-June-Desert-Borderlands-Closed/page/4#post6212591

Leaa.2943:

Because it is a punishment to get the desert border and the server that has to play it for 3 months will have a empty border, whilst those with alpine wont.

I have no intention of getting more into the argument of whether it is a punishment or not, however, I would like to point out one key mistake here. While they have no way to frequently switch maps, as in shuffle the order of them in the actual game, presumably.

This does not mean that one out of three serves is stuck with DBL when the rest “enjoy” ABL. Why, because while the maps themselves are static the color association between maps or maps and servers doesn’t have to be tied to a three month cycle.

Dawdler.8521:

If mixed borderlands fail to win with something like 74% and all the people that voted yes to desert border just assumed this would be how it was implemented if they voted to keep it I will laugh.

Why throw a percentage out of thin air there… when all you have to support that is a little more than a feeling. There is a chance you are onto something, but why make it out to be something more than it actually is, when in reality you have no way to know for sure whatsoever.

Bigsexy.8302:

How about no desert borderland at all ???
I’m not voting, my choice is not represented. Great polls as usual.

Your choice had its own poll last week or so… and it didn’t even get a majority let alone the required supermajority of 75% that is the status quo for major game changes (as is with this poll).

At this point, not voting at all is only going to reinforce the current situation this present poll is at (that is the current majority opinion). Of course you are free to do as you wish, but it isn’t going to matter anymore… since it is no longer a matter of if, just when and how.

So no matter how much you despise the desert borderlands the logical choice would be to vote which situation would you rather live with because it will be one or the other this time… the only reason not to vote at all would be if you intend to leave WvW or the game because of this.

This bears repeating here as well…

If we were to stick to rotation as a strategy, as unlikely as that seems looking at the results right now, the most frequent interval maps will be switched in the foreseeable future will be once per quarter.

This was clarified with the previous (now voided) poll on rotation vs mixed borderlands. The reasons given being that switching map is manual process that always requires a new build, for the time being, and is disruptive of normal match flow as such.

If the community once again decides to stick to a rotation strategy it was stated that then they would be interested in automatic map switching eventually, but that this would likely not happen until bulk of the changes we prioritized already would have already been implemented or are well on their way.

Personally, I think that if handled correctly map asymmetry will not lead to imbalance… on the contrary if they do it really well (ie. weighting the maps based on server population and activity) it can even become one more tool in their kitten nal to offset imbalances in factors that are harder for them to control otherwise. In short asymmetry doesn’t automatically mean imbalanced, it can also function as a balancing tool.

Cindas.6149:

I do not want Simultaneous Borderlands, I do not want Rotating borderlands, I do not want Desert Borderlands with my eggs and ham.

You are either late to the party or don’t know when to give up, no offense. That poll was last week and you (as in the people who hate the map, enough to get rid of it) lost.

Leaa.2943:

Both options are kitten. If one home border is the desert border it means that one server will have a very kittenty 3 months and their rank can even be effected by it.

That is then the choice that server is free to make, or not make… it is ultimately up to the players to decide what they do with this map once it is in. These polls are merely about if and how it were to be in, the if part having been concluded already, so the map will be in and now it is just about the how.

Spicyhash.7605:

the whole point of there being an aoe cap is because having to calculate boon/condition duration and damage for a higher number of players would bog down the server. this has been discussed pretty much since the game came out and anet hasn’t show any interest in changing it

I think this deserves additional attention… it is not that they won’t change it… more than likely it is because they realistically can’t. With todays computers calculation speed is still ultimately a problem that can only be solved with money or breaking the problem into trivial problems.

However, the damage caps are already problems that can not be realistically divided because they are specific to every character. Even if they theoretically could be divided it would be such a cost prohibitive measure in a game of this scale that they will likely never completely address it. Every time they even slightly increase an ability’s target cap that has an exponential ripple effect when that ability starts to proc different effects on more people (sigils, runes, traits etc.) for every packet of incoming or outgoing damage and healing (or pretty much any effect at all, take knockback for example that has to reposition a character which could move the character to a position where even more procs get triggered on it everything is connected).

I am certain some pretty kitten smart people spend a non-trivial amount of time and effort running math to find the best cost to performance ratio at the time… and the only reason to go through that again is in the event of a complete and significant hardware swap on the backend (and this is entirely ignoring client side bottlenecks of people running this game on toasters, although vast majority of calculations are I am sure done on the server side). They have no reason to refresh their entire hardware stack just to have a chance to tweak some damage caps a bit.

McWolfy.5924:

Wvw needs new and playable contents (desert borders was a disaster). Easy but interesting maps, pvp events (1 random event in every half hour, king of the hill, escort, capture the flag etc) rotating weekly events (you can damage walls, no points for objectives, no upgrades, no downed state etc…)

Erm, we essentially had capture the flag… but that got axed, just replace flag with orb.

As for the weekly events there, if disabling and altering mechanics in the laziest way possible constitutes an interesting event then I would be very concerned about the state of WvW beyond a lot of the things discussed here.

Edit: as for no points for objectives specifically, so basically disable the main mechanic of the entire game type… right, that would pan out well with the majority I am sure. WvW is after all just a glorified capture point map (or 4 maps, but still).

shrek.1046:

Guild Hall arena came too late and was put in at a time when many many players were turned off WvW by the HOT issues. Plus it is manifestly unsuitable for GvG in terms of size.

While I agree that it may have come too late… the size of it can be augmented relatively easily with some effort. There have been several practical examples I have seen were the arena’s total playable surface has been increased by quite a lot.

Either way, GvG as it manifested in this game was essentially given not one but two options for a venue and the community rejected both. Not to mention one of them having the distinct advantage of not being tied to the WvW matchup. So whatever the shortcomings with Guild Hall instancing for the time being… it has advantages too, besides with 50 man squads juggling instances is trivial to the old days.

For an ad-hoc game type, in the end, it received more support than I would have expected albeit all of it was indirect in the sense that both places are generally usable for any player created events.

Never mind, I see the futility of this discussion. Erasing original post and adding something, hopefully, generally useful in its place.

At the end of the day ArenaNet are the sole judge of whether the poll depicts the actual opinion… they have way more data than is exposed to us to make that judgement call. And yes it is always a judgement call this is not something that they can’t interpret as best they see fit if it is necessary (ie. it is not a vote mandated by a contract or a law).

Not a single person has enough hard impartial statistics that can be considered anything more than anecdotal, compared to the amount of data ArenaNet has.

Bottom line, by not voting you can only hurt yourself…. boycotting a poll because you feel it is not valid is not going to achieve anything.

lil devils x.6071:

Stop looking for excuses for them not to solve a problem. We have evidence. They can be provided with the account names of a few of those who voted multiple times if they really want them. That doesn’t solve it for the next poll though now does it?

Since you are all about solutions why not propose some… if it was a trivial thing to do they would have addressed it.

While I am not a game developer, I have enough general software development background for both traditional and web applications (as is relevant in these polls), I can tell you, without knowing anything about their specific backend solutions per se, that the only semi reliable way to detect duplicate accounts is based on payment information and even that has a change of false positives (I f.ex. bought two copies of the game but the second copy is not mine… I have also bought gems for that second account and been given cash back as compensation… the account in question belongs to a minor).

Then there is free to play accounts, with those all they can do is quite literally make a best guess and that is simply down to how most of today’s internet operates.

TL;DR: How would you detect duplicates? The best common factor between paid account duplicates is payment information (if they have that) and for free accounts there is no alternative to making a random guess (the accuracy of which decreases the less active some the compared accounts are).

Hexinx.1872:

I think they should base it on ranks earned in WvW maps , and remove ranks earned in eotm. Then set a low bar threshold say rank 50 or so.

This should eliminate a high cap rank req farmed outside of WvW, allowing access to newer players who have invested a decent amount of time to have their voices heard, or the solo / roamers who collect points and rank much less frequently than say a commander. Includes everyone, gets rid of eotm ranks

Or do something like sending the mail to all players who earned 2 ranks that week

Raising the requirement of ranks per week before sending the mail is the most realistic suggestion so far for the desired results.

As for kill counts and ranks, without ranks earned in eotm (or any more complex criteria that isn’t covered by achievements, I highly doubt they can pull that kind of historical data for very long periods of time. Sure they keep a ton of data as has been apparent from some posts in these very forums but there is no reason to keep historical data you are unlikely to need access to (such as in which map and how much WXP was earned over time per player).

Xenesis.6389:

lil devils x.6071:

Yea, that was why I was thinking kill count might be a better measure.

Obsidian… Sanctum… Kill… Farm…

Or Alpine ruins farm from the PvE players popping in for their daily.

Urge to feed troll rising…

Really bringing up that dev incident now… as for GvG the whole guild hall arena is basically a love letter to “GvG” blobs of people can kill each other in there fine, not to mention about OS arena.

While what the dev did was unquestionably unprofessional, GvG as it exists in this game (It should really be called “Blob vs Blob” from the few videos I have seen of it), was not playing WvW as it was intended to be played. Which is why they gave you a corner to use, and now even a fancy arena.

In my opinion they should either stick with division based matchmaking or MMR based matchmaking. Not this fusion of both. The reason being that because of how the pips work up to ruby the MMR range of players in early divisions is not stable. (which means in some divisions it is too narrow, resulting in lopsided games, and in some too wide).

Also, ranked MMR should not tank if I decide to skip a season, if I play in a season and then decide to quit maybe, and it definitely should not decay off-season. If I decide to skip a season entirely my ranked MMR should not hit a rock bottom or to put it another way it should not be worse than the ranked MMR of a brand new account at PvP rank 20.

Ithilwen.1529:

It’s not right to demand division crossings, then do your best to prevent them. This is more or less what the matchmaker is doing.

If you put it like that then I can agree with you, however, that still doesn’t remove the problem with the system in general.

I have a feeling yours is an unpopular opinion…. I hate the current matchmaking with a fiery passion, however, those players that struggled through it are going to shoot this idea down.

lil devils x.6071:

So this means:
1) Past and present WvW players over a certain rank were not notified via email. If players were unable to log into the game this week for whatever reason ( for example: the hospital I have been at most of the time has GW2 blocked) they do not know the poll is happening at all.

2)There is no restriction on the poll itself to limit voting of non WvW players or multiple accounts.

3) WvW rank 10 would never be high enough to impact multiple accounts. Rank 1000 would be a much more appropriate measure.

1) I believe it was either Tyler or McKenna that said that they are deliberately targeting players who stick around which is why notifications through actual email are probably not a thing. In short if you leave their game for three months they don’t believe you automatically have the right to impact the play experience of the players that stick with the game through those three months. The people who stick around have the advantage here, by design.

2) I agree on multiple accounts thing, but the truth is there is no foolproof way to restrict that in any web based polling system… even if the poll was entirely conducted in-game (which it should be) different accounts are deliberately separate entities and detecting potential duplicate accounts is always prone to false positives (this is because of how internet works under the hood, most people do not have real identifiable IP addresses for example). As for non-WvW players what McKenna said addresses that, besides any active player, with at least some WvW activity, should have a vote with the justification that they may get more into WvW if a poll goes a certain way.

3) Rank 10 restriction is obviously there to make it more likely the person has spend at least some reasonable time in WvW, it is not in itself meant as a system to limit multiple accounts. Also your suggestion on rank 1000 is way too high… that excludes way to many players who vary things up in the way they play the game. Rank 50 or 100 maybe, but 1000 is serious overcompensation. I have played the game since launch and I am not even rank 1000 yet (well ranks weren’t even a thing at launch so that is potentially countless unaccounted WvW hours), despite being fairly active in WvW whenever I feel like it (ie. mostly during the summer time when I actually have more time to play the game and I don’t have to pick and choose).

shrek.1046:

No ruins are fine IMO, in fact they should be transplanted to the centre of the DBL.

The ruins are fine, because you can completely ignore them as a mechanic? Or because they are actually fine.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Interestingly they all fail for very similar reasons. And Anet had plenty of time to learn from one fail to the next, they just didn’t. All three should be deleted from the game.

While I agree that the mid sections of borderlands maps certainly failed mechanically… care to elaborate what those common reasons are.

People complained about the original lake 1. being underwater content 2. being PvE. So ArenaNet responds by adding sPvP like capture points with no PvE elements whatsoever. Still not good enough, playerbase keeps ignoring it as non-mechanic.

Can’t say this or that about the center of DBL as we have yet to see a proposed replacement mechanic. However, one thing that is clear to me is that ArenNet’s design goals for the mid sections of the maps have not changed from the beginning at all. What I mean by this is that all three mechanics still fill similar role as a potential turnaround or a comeback mechanic.

The idea for the center of the borderlands maps seems to be a mechanic that is supposed to allow a team to force the other two teams to react, in similar vein as the long lost orb mechanic from Alpine.

lil devils x.6071:

With the rotation, they only have to leave the game for 3 months at a time instead of not come back at all.

You are assuming that none of those people are willing to compromise… I think it is a safer bet to count on the fact that majority of the DBL hating minority will be satisfied with mixed borderlands (I would say the previous, no void, poll on the subject is at least some indication to that effect).

Even if that is not the case, having a three month rotation does not guarantee they will in fact return… staying away from the game for three months every three months makes it in my opinion far more likely that they will not come back, because they find new games whereas with mixed borderlands they will have the option to keep playing on the map they love so much without a need to leave in the first place if they can be reasonable and accept a compromise.

Astralporing.1957:

(not to mention, that with the current system tanking MMR would be a very dumb idea, as it might cause you to lose even more)

I can second and verify this… it took me quite a while to get games that weren’t either a win by a blowout or (most of the time) loss by a blowout. If I had to wager the fact that I didn’t play at all in S2 might have caused my ranked MMR to decay pretty bad (assuming they don’t reset MMR at the start of season, but I have not heard that they do).

AllNightPlayer.1286:

Why does this poll have such a long uptime, while others, which also needed a supermajority (DBL and ABL mixed) didn’t? Seems a bit unfair especially since the poll about the mixed BL was a close one.

The previous poll probably ended early once they decided to re-run it after this poll. Either way, the polls rarely seem to have upsets in the sense that once certain volume of votes has been reached the results mostly stabilize… for a close poll it would have had to be within few tenths of a percentage for an upset to be realistic imo.

lil devils x.6071:

ANY map made for WvW should not be put into the live game until it was properly finished in Beta and tested and corrected until it was made ready for the live game.

I can agree with this statement, however, we have seen time and time again that in order to get realistic inclusive testing done the only way to do it is to put the map on live and force everyone to play it and give feedback.

The way DBL’s were tested either happened two late in production or did not have realistic participation or both. Either way as far as I can see they have no means to properly test WvW maps without putting them on live from time to time. See DBL’s as well as several old incidents related to ABL’s as well.

Loosmaster.8263:

We’re talking about the map structure itself.

There isn’t going to be any intrusive work done… if I recall correctly their methodology for DBL was to make low cost changes with big impact. This was justified by “because it is a live game”.

I’d wager that if we want a larger overhaul, which takes more than a trivial amount of dev time, it will not happen before bulk of the priority changes we voted are well underway, released or close to being released. Even then if they stick to their mantra it would not happen unless there was a poll and it was voted for. Structural overhaul of the map certainly qualifies as a major change.

So, until such a time the kind of changes we will likely see are the sort of stuff we have already seen or already know about.

Teon.5168:

Loosmaster.8263:

I wonder if they have done anything more to the DBL since it’s been in Lala land or if it’s coming back as when it was removed?

Sure would be nice if they had continued to work on it while it was in mothballs.

There have been two sets of changes we have yet to play on live… first with the patch that rotated it out and then with the patch previous to the last raid wing if memory serves —- the changes are in the patch notes

Astralporing.1957:

Hint: not wanting Desert does not mean not wanting a new, good wvw map. If you word the question that way, even people that absolutely hate dbl will think twice before answering.

Well Tyler did say on reddit back when the previous mixed borderlands poll was going on that were mixed borderlands to become a thing it would be more likely that new maps are more feasible because the system that uses mixed maps is more conducive to developing a third (borderlands) map. Although even then a new map would be developed only if put up for a vote and won as a priority.

Manwhile the rotation strategy currently requires manual intervention, which is why rotating more often than once every quarter has not been brought up, for the foreseeable future. That is unless they invest dev time into developing an automated system for it.

Now taking the above statements in context is important, because back when Tyler said this they had no intention of running the “Remove desert borderlands?” poll at all, that we know of.

However, like I said in another topic if we consider that the WvW team is still the one who decides what to poll the community about it is quite reasonable to assume that if DBL were to be entirely removed they would be less likely to put development of a new fresh map up for a vote. I can offer two potential reasons for this, first and foremost developing a brand new map is very costly and secondly if mixed borderlands is not something that happens they would have to once again replace all three maps with the new map until map selection would be re-evaluated.

Also, additionally WvW testing at a realistic scale for them seems to be extremely difficult looking at how past testing was organized and how it apparently failed or did not happen early enough in map development.

“Anything that is anti PvP is pro PvE”

I find it funny you call ruins pro PvE when that is the only incarnation of mid map mechanics for borderlands that is in fact purely reliant on PvP mechanically.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Yeah….. no, sorry. The ruins are way better. I’ve used them to escape from enemy zergs more times than I can count, and I’ve had quite a few great small scale fights in there.

I agree, as a terrain the ruins are ok, but I doubt you can argue that mechanically they are any better than the rest mid borderland stuff.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I never saw any anet devs say or imply this. I did however see the handful of dbl supporters repeat it constantly to scare people into voting to keep it.

Let’s just clear this up… ArenaNet developer said on the subject that if mixed borderlands were to be a thing that system in itself would be more conducive to developing more maps, however, that new maps would only be developed if a poll and a vote made that a priority at some point. Paraphrasing here, source is reddit… see the mixed borderlands poll topic for links.

However, because they control the polls that are made… it is a safe assumption that if mixed borderlands doesn’t become a thing they are less likely to put a creation of another map up for a vote (also in part because in that scenario they would have to risk another DBL replacing all three borderlands for a time, before map selection is re-evaluated).

Let’s not forget that even the changes that we voted as a priority for them in the initial polls are stuff that the team put up there… it is not like we actually control what happens and doesn’t happen as such we are simply helping them make decisions in the end.

Edit: ninja’ed

Deniara Devious.3948:

This is a good analysis, except I think the ruins were an utter failure. Ruins really don’t lead to interesting fights (unless you count some gankers using condi cancer builds as such). Most zergs even avoid spending any considerable time there.

…

I want the lake area of the Alpine borderland back, but with modifications. The Central island should be made a bit bigger or alternatively it could hold a tower or a keep with underwater portions. Give us a bit more variety compared to the existing towers and keeps.

Yeah… all the mid sections are a failure in the sense that most of the time people didn’t/don’t play them. The ruins are a success in the sense that they are a pure PvP objective, since most people here detest anything even remotely PvE like.

As for your suggestion, I doubt we will ever see underwater keeps again… some of the keeps have underwater gates already, although they haven’t been actual gates since the original BWE’s of vanilla GW2. The reason cited for this back then was the fact that no underwater siege exists.

I mean sure quaggan’s are cute and all, but honestly the center portions of the borderlands seem to be a recurring problem area for arenanet.

I mean their general design philosophy for them seems to be as a comeback or turnaround mechanics. The ruins is probably the most successful and the quaggan weather machine the least successful mechanically.

However, the one common factor between all three we have seen thus far is that they are mostly ignored as non-mechanics by a huge portion of the playerbase. Even the ruins that are pure PvP objectives suffer from this most of the time.

At the end of the day I get why the center of the DBL was the way it was, only it was too much PvE with too big of an impact whereas the quaggan’s were too much PvE for too little of an impact. Yeah, both of them can in theory lead to fights, but only if both sides choose not to ignore them.

About wote stacking… and emails in-game vs actual emails.

There is quite literally no meaningful difference… an account has to have an email associated with it, that afaik has to be unique and free emails are trivial to create. The only difference between this and an email invite poll is that the latter you would have to have pre-existing accounts to vote multiple times for whereas for this one you do not.

The best defense against actual meaningful vote stacking these polls have is the presumed number of votes… ie. even if one person bothers to create dummy accounts to vote say 20 times that is quite likely not going to change the result in a drastic way unless the community is already in a 49/51 situation or in this case 74/26 (which we are not in).

The poll is meaningful, although not exactly scientific… if what some people ellude here, ie. that majority of the “no” votes is from casual PvE players (which very well might be true) then I doubt these casual players have enough interest in WvW to have the incentive to have multiple accounts for it let alone create ones to stack votes in their favour. If there is vote stacking happening, then it is likely to happen on the loosing side assuming the assertions made in this topic about the winning side is true.

I have to say when you put it like that what the OP is saying is sort of true… however, they tried having separate sPvP rewards system etc. and it did not incentivize enough play so they unified it to draw in the crowd that cares to play both PvP and PvE — it is the logical thing for them to have done.

Can’t say it is working as intended especially having played this season, in retrospective I think the matchmaking might be worse that the first season (or then it is just the people playing, can’t say as I skipped the second season entirely), sure it had its own issues… but I can’t say this is all that much better in some places.

I agree with the OP, to a point… the map completion being required in WvW although I wouldn’t necessarily call it entirely positive thing it did, however, get people in there — sure not all of them had fantastic time, which is why I am not exactly for it coming back, but it is not as if that can be said as an universal truth.

It gave people a reason to go outside of their comfort zone and try new things, that is something I can support (although, as stated it coming back now is not something that should be done, it will only create unneeded inertia between different groups of people).

I probably would have never given WvW as much of my time back in the early days as I did if this requirement did not exist back then, though right now I also welcome the fact that it doesn’t anymore… but it did get me to try a game mode I probably wouldn’t have gotten into otherwise.

I hope the OP realizes that the kind of utilization of siege he is talking about constitutes griefing and is as such reportable behavior. If you were to read these posts in a negative way, what you are doing is essentially encourage users to engage in behavior that is not acceptable by the Rules of Conduct (22. PvP — This also includes disrupting other people’s game experience by not actively participating in matches in good faith, a.k.a leeching).

Also, what about the developers original idea of having legendaries express some mastery of the entire game. To me this new acquisition method for Gift of Battle fulfills that original goal way better than the previous one. The item is part of the construction of legendaries for the express purpose of tying part of it to WvW after all, if that was not a goal the item would not exist in the first place.

Bottom line, not necessarily the smartest way to get your point across.

Teon.5168:

Hey, look at it in a positive light. At least one of them finally admitted that they were “foot stomping tantrums”.

Well, as we all know… a happy person seldom a forum post makes. Or if he does, it gets drowned out quickly by the collective unhappiness of most forum posters.

Considering we have dungeon reward tracks why not… that said there should still be things only obtainable through fractals in my opinion. However, this does not exclude the possibility of a fractals reward track entirely in my opinion.

I guess I should chime in here, if you are going to allow queue’s upwards of an hour to exist regardless of the situation… then you must give me something worthwhile to do during that hour and being able to do it should be obvious.

The current system doesn’t put much value to my limited free time now does it.

synergy.5809:

if DBL comes back you kittens better not be queueing into EBG after you see the whole DBL map is empty like before.

Looking at the poll right now, I doubt it is a matter of if at this point assuming the trend holds… rather just a matter of when and how.

People will queue to where there are things happening… what I do, and what I believe a lot of others may do as well is check each map to see if things are happening on it and stick to where something is happening. The only exception to this would be if a commander would ask people to go to a specific map to do something.

Personally the best times in WvW for me have been with groups in the range of 5-10, or at most 20 people. There is no need for a 50 man bloody zerg, and besides on the desert map it would be counter intuitive to move in big groups anyways.

DeWolfe.2174:

How about how poorly and biased the poll’s have been worded?

The poll is worded just fine… in case you haven’t realized the order of the options (sans don’t count my vote) on the page is random every time the poll is loaded. I assume they have a specific reason for this (such as not letting the order options are written out affect the vote as much, doesn’t really matter when the options are yes or no, with the previous poll for example it certainly could have).

The poll is not biased in any way, the reason the options are more verbose is because last time people complained that they weren’t informative enough (also results display was confusing before they “hotfixed” it). The options as they are written out now entirely and accurately depict what each of them means exactly. As for the super majority rule, that is business as usual when it comes to major changes.

DeWolfe.2174:

But, you are voting on keeping it as it is with no alterations!!!!!! The Dev’s have not said anything about altering DBL as you describe. Maybe there should be a poll and not let DBL return until it’s alterations are approved within a public test server.

Correction, there has been two sets of functional changes and/or fixes since the map itself was rotated out that nobody has had a chance to play yet. So in fact it is already coming back with alterations.

As for a public test server, it is quite obviously never going to happen on a scale that would actually be adequate for testing real WvW. The only times they have spun up public test servers for WvW that has been a real hassle and if memory serves only from one of the two data centers. The only way WvW, and maps specifically, seem to be able to get realistic testing done involves them throwing raw changes on to live and quite literally forcing everyone to play them.

This is evident from the past when it comes to any kind of public testing they have done that is WvW related.

ImperialWL.7138:

Who gives a kitten when most of the people who vote are pve kittens who play WvW once a week?

I assume if you can state that as a fact you have something to back it up…

The solution to this conundrum is quite simple, have a separate queue for teams and another for “pugs” like we used to. We used to have Tournament mode that was the closest equivalent to ranked we had at launch… if memory serves that was specifically for 5man teams and worked, for the most part, fine.