Guild Wars 2

Y’all are also forgetting the armor, trinkets, and weapons that from HoT. 4 different traits versus 3 can be a big difference.

It hasn’t been that way for a long time. You actually have to do damage to get rewards, just healing never did. If you did get rewards for healing, then there was a bug in the game.

Chiccotot.7296:

wishing you the best of luck, Knob, Xhondoh and everyone else.

my stand will always be: i wont feed anet’s coffers for something they messed up on.
it’s not my fault why servers are so imbalanced.
so, i wont spend a dime when they should be the ones spending to get this fixed.

ANet,
Would it kill you for free server transfers while this mess is getting looked into? cause looking at your track record, it will take years before anything gets done. Stop being cheap penny pinchers.
Geezus friggin christmas tree.

No because unless the game style is changed, transfers would be a small bandage on a gaping hole.

grifflyman.8102:

God please fix stability so I can play my warrior again.

Gunflame warrior = OP. I mean 35K damage that can’t be blocked?

They need to change WvW period. Just changing reset night will not bring people back.

ArchonWing.9480:

Svarty.8019:

CC overall needs a nerf, but they can’t do it because PvE needs it for breakbar play.

The current state is horrible when you add CC to the stability nerf, which by itself seemed to reduce the playerbase by 20%.

And that’s the elephant in the room.

You try to make a one size fits all balancing scheme for 3 very different game modes, and you get something that does all 3 badly. It’s just like why you wouldn’t use the same builds in PvE and WvW. You’ll be very suboptimal somewhere.

They can make any excuse they want. It doesn’t change the results.

In Starcraft II for example, IIRC, the balance changes in multiplayer did not affect the single player mode. It just made sense as such.

Well, they have some skills that are already changed for WvW and PvP. It wouldn’t be that hard. I also think they need to setup AoE so that the rings do not overlap or can be placed on top of one another. When you can’t get trapped by a continual procession of DH traps, is gets ridiculous

Knob.6835:

After trying to keep our server alive ever since HoT came out we have finally reached our limit. We are looking to transfer our whole server. We dont want to leave anyone behind. The community is still important to us & we dont want to leave any of our friends & nor should we have to. This games backbone should revolve around playing with your friends. One by one the people we have shared the glory of murdering hordes of enemys with have left us, spread out across the WvW worlds never to fight beside again. WvW is not fun anymore & i feel that by the time this population imbalance is fixed there will be noone left. I highly doubt its going to happen in the april update cause weve barely hered anything about it. No rewards or anything else is going to bring people back. We have never played this game mode for rewards, our reward was glory. So i propose to drop the last 2 tiers maybe even 3. There are not enough players to fill 8 tiers anymore & as the game gets older it will only get worse. Every tier should have a high population and lets be real….tier 7 & 8 arent medium population they are low population servers. K/D = action. T1 through 5 average over 30000/30000 , T6 15000, T7 & T8 combined 6000. That is beyond pitiful. Server pride is meaningless now. You need a server for that. We are willing to drop all the hard work we have done for this server just to have fun again, cause in the end its all meaningless if your not having fun. So drop at least two tiers and make it free transfers for everyone so we can have population balance, rejoin old friends & play with who we want to. Who else in the low servers is willing to agree with that & if not, then why not?

Why bother transferring when you will get the same problem in every tier of WvW. Unless A.Net does some drastic changes to WvW and soon, WvW will only be PPT’ers and siege humpers (usually one server from each tier).

Knob.6835:

After trying to keep our server alive ever since HoT came out we have finally reached our limit. We are looking to transfer our whole server. We dont want to leave anyone behind. The community is still important to us & we dont want to leave any of our friends & nor should we have to. This games backbone should revolve around playing with your friends. One by one the people we have shared the glory of murdering hordes of enemys with have left us, spread out across the WvW worlds never to fight beside again. WvW is not fun anymore & i feel that by the time this population imbalance is fixed there will be noone left. I highly doubt its going to happen in the april update cause weve barely hered anything about it. No rewards or anything else is going to bring people back. We have never played this game mode for rewards, our reward was glory. So i propose to drop the last 2 tiers maybe even 3. There are not enough players to fill 8 tiers anymore & as the game gets older it will only get worse. Every tier should have a high population and lets be real….tier 7 & 8 arent medium population they are low population servers. K/D = action. T1 through 5 average over 30000/30000 , T6 15000, T7 & T8 combined 6000. That is beyond pitiful. Server pride is meaningless now. You need a server for that. We are willing to drop all the hard work we have done for this server just to have fun again, cause in the end its all meaningless if your not having fun. So drop at least two tiers and make it free transfers for everyone so we can have population balance, rejoin old friends & play with who we want to. Who else in the low servers is willing to agree with that & if not, then why not?

Why bother transferring when you will get the same problem in every tier of WvW. Unless A.Net does some drastic changes to WvW and soon, WvW will only be PPT’ers and siege humpers.

2 condi memsers with perplexity runes. One hit, 25 stacks of confusion and instant death.

Aphs.9528:

lil devils x.6071:

gennyt.3428:

lil devils x.6071:

Caliburn.1845:

These numbers are not accurate. The API data is still not entirely fixed.

Before the PPK went in and borked the API data T1 was averaging between 30-50% more kills per week than T2.

Or do you really believe that T1 is only as active as T3-T4?

T1 in NA is still significantly more active than any other tier in NA, and once the API is back up and fully repaired, the numbers will show that.

I believe it. The game mode is hemorrhaging out the top. No one wants to play anymore, and Anet will not listen to fix it. I see fellow T1 core players here saying the same thing I have been for ages and no one will listen. When we all go silent, that means we all gave up /uninstall and stop waiting. There will come a point that it was too little too late and they waited too long to do as we asked and they will never consider coming back after that point. MANY T1 players and guilds are setting up house on other games atm. BDO getting most of them for the time being. The same T1 guild rivalries on here are being carried over there. XD

See, this is something that Anet has failed to capitalize on in a major way. The rivalry and camaraderie that WvWvW creates. Instead they try to shoehorn people into 5 man sPvP teams and have at one point actually considered churning out PvE content every 2 weeks (those are nightmarish deadlines) to keep PvErs. All those tiers and queues to the point where they made EotM to alleviate it, but those players just weren’t enough to be worth real, active and continued development? Meanwhile, they had to introduce megaservers and gut dungeon rewards (which I’m sure was at least partially influenced by gem sales) to save empty PvE maps. It just seems off to me.

In the end, it’s people who make the MMO experience worth anything. Even guilds from Archeage are playing BDO. That game will have to seriously mess up for those players to leave their established communities and accounts, castle sieges and GvGs to come back to GW2 in a meaningful capacity and not just log in for dailies. T1 NA is so bad right now that its comical. YB has a map blob in EBG yet they’re managing to flip all the other maps and siege up paper towers. The chilling fog + air strikes in an already sieged up SMC (like seriously, having some of these upgrades should decrease the siege cap, shouldn’t have both).

YB apparently is entertained by sieging up towers, the thing is no one else was, and got bored and left. The players coming on don’t care about PPT, they just want fights.

You mean something like this ?

That is TC in a nutshell also.

Most FA guilds have left the game, probably never to return. The way WvW is setup now, the only players that will still play are the ones that siege hump.

On this last reset, there were so many TC on, that they actually had every single tower in every single BL and all sieged up too.

DeceiverX.8361:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Liston.9708:

T2 is closer in ppt and that keeps it relevant for some if not many. I know I know who cares about ppt – the casuals – fair weathers do.

Last week YB won by more than 110k and 130k. YB leads by 70k this week – meanwhile, t2 was 25k last week and 3k this week.

Our guild leader has mentioned these numbers the last few days, but I don’t even trust those numbers tbh. do they include npcs? Is higher kill count faster pvd door train flipping BLs back and forth?

On the other hand, would it really hurt to increase the matchup variance at this point? I don’t think so….

Closer, I don’t think so. FA is currently 100K behind TC and DB. That is not close. FA is the smallest of the T2 servers as far as population and lost a whole bunch of players due to the current state of WvW.

T1 is closer than T2 as there is more around the clock coverage. In T2, FA does not have any SEA coverage so DB and TC just come along and K-train everything.

TC lost its OCX coverage as well, and during EU prime it’s often running the Outnumbered buff.

FA’s NA presence is what basically died and what’s keeping it behind. An array of PPT hackers being banned last week (see reddit) had led to DB and TC to hold objectives longer than normal; T3 towers are no longer being flipped instantly by random people flying over walls, and subsequently no longer needing to put people in towers to defend them from people flying over walls has led more people into playing aggressively.

Massive negligence to WvW as a format by ANet is the real culprit, though. There’s no denying the decisions made with HoT have led the format and WvW participation as a whole to be substantially lower than before.

I think not, with the outnumbered. I play in EU, against TC currently, and the TC EU blob is real – I mean they outnumber us like 3-4 to 1. If you have an outmanned buff, then the server I am on should have it too and most times we do not.

Serious.7083:

xev.9476:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Sorry XEV – I am not saying an AoE nerf, just prevent the AoE rings from overlapping – it is that simple. I mean stacking 5-10 AoE rings on top of each other is ridiculous.

The DH traps should be situational not an ALWAYS USE.

Sorry blob’s were always an issue in WvW. Was on TC when they were in T1 and the JQ and BG blobs were just that – mindless swarms. No thought, not coordination, no nothing. RvR is supposed to be coordinated, not just massive blobs.

Now, with the HoT update, blobs only want to PPT, no fighting is seen.

You wrote, “If an AoE is down in an area, another AoE cannot be put down on top of or overlapping it.” If that’s actually what you meant, then that is a massive nerf to AoE’s – it renders them useless because the strength of AoEs is that they can overlap. One AoE is unlikely to down anyone; it’s the overlap of many that makes them worth using. If you’re specifically saying that 10+ invisible DH traps in one location is awful and needs to be nerfed/tweaked for WvW, then, yes, absolutely I agree; HoT abilities absolutely need to be balanced in some way for WvW. But, again, if you’re asking for a blanket nerf to ALL AoEs, well then I think you’re clueless.

I think it is specifically trap AoEs, not other ones like Ranger Barrage or Ele firestorm

I ran into a team of 4 trap guards and a mesmer. A stack of 12 traps then the mesmer wells when I was instantly downed.

The stacked traps can also mean a very difficult time for melee fighters trying to get in range of a bow equipped trap guard.*

Exactly Serious. Those and necro wells/marks (since marks and wells can be made unblockable) stacked the guard traps make for a huge amount of condi/physical damage. The DH traps extend far longer than any stabo skills used.

Liston.9708:

T2 is closer in ppt and that keeps it relevant for some if not many. I know I know who cares about ppt – the casuals – fair weathers do.

Last week YB won by more than 110k and 130k. YB leads by 70k this week – meanwhile, t2 was 25k last week and 3k this week.

Our guild leader has mentioned these numbers the last few days, but I don’t even trust those numbers tbh. do they include npcs? Is higher kill count faster pvd door train flipping BLs back and forth?

On the other hand, would it really hurt to increase the matchup variance at this point? I don’t think so….

Closer, I don’t think so. FA is currently 100K behind TC and DB. That is not close. FA is the smallest of the T2 servers as far as population and lost a whole bunch of players due to the current state of WvW.

T1 is closer than T2 as there is more around the clock coverage. In T2, FA does not have any SEA coverage so DB and TC just come along and K-train everything.

Serious.7083:

lobo fett.4705:

Chase.2798:

Terrible idea, first off i dont know exactly what u r saying but any limiting on siege placement for one side removes any chance of competitive fights against sieged enemies. I think they should only allow siege placed within 3000 range of a wall tho remove open field siege and siege at camps a lil bit

yes cause when a server is badly outmanned during off hours, all their stuff has been taken, and 30 arrow carts are in everything, there is such a good chance of competitive fighting…..

I think you missed the bit about the keeps being claimed by guilds with every Aura buff available in game. This makes it virtually impossible to recapture, especially for a weaker server.

So true. With freezing fog, emergency WP, Dragon Banners, etc. it is almost impossible to capture a keep.

adoslaw.7091:

From a perspective of a player who gave GW2 up just before HoT was released and came back today;
The borderland maps are awful, I explored them and I don’t feel like returning there, It’s just unfriendly there, confusing and terribly designed, especially towers and keeps. Moving around them is a real pain; earlier it was simple, you had outer walls and inner walls. You could have moved around the keep entirely on walls, having great overview of what was happening and was able to react. Now by the time you find the enemy, the walls or gate is alredy breached…
And the terrain… My first thought was, that all the cliffs and long falls were supposed to make you buy the expansion in order to move easier using a glide but that turned out to be impossible even with DLC.
I used to spend 95% of my time in the borderlands, it had great battlefields, mini arenas, and even though i hate “siege wars”, a keep under siege was a great sight to see.
I really don’t understand why you implemented so much PvE in WvW even if every player of the latter gamemode was saying that they do NOT want any of it…
And even though I tried to avoid Eternal Battlegrounds because of type of playerbase concetrated there, I felt a great relief discovering, that you left it untouched…

peace

Well, since you JUST came back, take a while and tour the new BL’s. They are not that confusing and are actually pretty easy to get around once you understand them. I like the height aspect of these new BL’s as I feel that is something that was missing entirely in EBG and the Alpine BL maps.

T2 IS NOT MORE ACTIVE – it is just there are more roamers on T2 and that is where the deaths come from. The T1 blobs mostly PPT and avoid each other, it seems. So, kill count is not useful either.

sparc.3649:

I do tend to ignore anything anyone says about any game when it comes to “lag”. Since I have a very very high end gaming PC, and an internet connection to boot – lag is never an issue for me, and if it WAS – then I’d KNOW it wasn’t anything I could do anything about…

Was this “lag” something that WAS ANets fault, or most players problem for attempting to play on a PC that’s too low end? I have to ask because 99.999% of the time I hear something about “lag” it’s coming from someone trying to play on a friggin laptop with an integrated Intel gfx chipset (on dial up to boot >.>) ROFLCOPTER!

Only partially true – there are many causes of lag. 1. Your PC. 2. Your Connection. 3. A.Net and the most ignored part 4. YOUR ISP. If your ISP has many jumps to A.Net, then one of those jumps can cause lag and lag spikes. I feel 4 is one of the biggest problems and ignored the most by players.

xev.9476:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Players will not come back until:

2. Blob mechanics (making sure that blobs are max 20 people – from one guild or a mix is less). If 2 or more groups of 20 merge, debuff them.

3. decreasing AoE overlap – this is huge right now especially due to DH traps – I was in WvW with my guild and was trapped by 25 DH traps that overlapped. If an AoE is down in an area, another AoE cannot be put down on top of or overlapping it.

2 is nonsense and 3 would only empty WvW further.

2: WvW needs to cater to RvR fans who favor large, epic battles. Until stability was gutted taking out map queues with a much smaller force was doable provided you were highly organized. The problem now isn’t blob size, it’s that the only counter to the massive amounts of ranged CC is to either bring greater numbers or babysit siege. Post-HoT map blobs are a total kitten show, but who doesn’t fondly remember epic 3-way blob fights(when lag was manageable) over garri or bay when stability was still useful?

3: New abilities like DH traps definitely need to be tweaked and balanced in some way for WvW, but a blanket nerf to all AoE would make them largely unviable. The very strength of AoE is that you can overlap it; barring this, there’s no reason to use them. I suspect the meta (provided people stuck around for such awfulness) would shift to cleaving melee professions or swarms of LB rangers with piercing arrows. No thanks.

Sorry XEV – I am not saying an AoE nerf, just prevent the AoE rings from overlapping – it is that simple. I mean stacking 5-10 AoE rings on top of each other is ridiculous.

The DH traps should be situational not an ALWAYS USE.

Sorry blob’s were always an issue in WvW. Was on TC when they were in T1 and the JQ and BG blobs were just that – mindless swarms. No thought, not coordination, no nothing. RvR is supposed to be coordinated, not just massive blobs.

Now, with the HoT update, blobs only want to PPT, no fighting is seen.

TorquedSoul.8097:

My understanding was that the server transfer fees where intended to help maintain some population balance. I don’t believe that anyone thinks that is working.

Given that WvW is considered completely broken as a result of the population imbalance and that most of us expect the “server” model to disappear, it makes little sense to keep us locked on a particular server.

I have been considering looking at other wvw communities to search for guilds. I expect whatever change is made to WvW to fix the population problem will be guild centric and as such I want to find a guild that is a good fit for me. However I am limited to the server that I am on and unless I want to pay $50-$100 in transfer fees while looking I am stuck where I am.

The population balance is broken. It doesn’t matter know if players stack servers because they do it regardless of the fees. And given the uncertainty of the game mode and the lack of information, some of may want to explore our options … and not pay through the nose to do it.

No the server fees were there to PREVENT SERVER STACKING. We had no server transfer fees for 6 months of the game and everyone moved to the top tier servers and left the other tier servers

No – the server fees are there to block people from all being on the top 3 servers only. No server transfer fees are what caused the destacking of the lower tier servers in the first place. All it would do is recreate the same issue.

Players will not come back until:

1. Siege is fixed (1. removing all together or lowering ARC distance and get rid of peek over shots; 2. Removing Shield Gens; make trebs, catas and rams more powerful or decrease the wall/door HP).

2. Blob mechanics (making sure that blobs are max 20 people – from one guild or a mix is less). If 2 or more groups of 20 merge, debuff them.

3. decreasing AoE overlap – this is huge right now especially due to DH traps – I was in WvW with my guild and was trapped by 25 DH traps that overlapped. If an AoE is down in an area, another AoE cannot be put down on top of or overlapping it.

4. Decrease some of the condi’s – such as confusion. A Confusion Mesmer should not be able to stack up 25 stacks of confusion at once – it needs to be nerfed big time or nerf perplexity runes. This build is a huge crutch for mesmers who really can’t play any other type.

5. No stomping while in stealth and movement in stealth should be decreased by 25-50%).

Gaile,

I thought of another idea. Is there a way to limit the size of blobs and limit how many people there are (by using the squad UI). Say limit to 20 if they are from one guild then lower the amount if they are not. This way no mass blobs will be on one commander and if 2 or more blobs merge and move as one – debuff them.

This way the blob mentality will be fought and allow more even fights.

sparc.3649:

WvW to me was SUPPOSED to be about “siege wars”, it never was supposed to be blob/zerg wars. I for one am happy if they do more to make it about the “war” (“siege war”) that it is supposed to be!

Anything they do to ‘combat’ the “zerg wars” is welcomed, at least by me!

It was not about siege (catas, trebs and rams for getting in and using trebs , catas and ballistas to protect), other than using it to get into a tower. There is too much siege (arrow carts and shield gens) used in this game and many use it as a crutch because they cannot or will not fight against an opposing force.

I do not like the mindless blobs either but using siege (mostly arrow carts) is what most of the mindless blobs use not a small, coordinated group. So, make sure there is a max of people that the blob can have and maybe limit the amount of non-guildies that can join and blob. The way the squad UI is built it shouldn’t be hard to do.

erKo.9586:

SM lord is just lame to kill, so much hp when you are a zerge 50+ takes like forever…

Dynamic scaling. The more players around the Lord, the more HP he has. Don’t take a 50 man zerg to kill the lord. Also, if you can’t do it fast, your builds/equipment are just wrong.

erKo.9586:

Nice! its one way in the right direction!!! now just get rid of the new maps aswell

Nothing wrong with the new maps actually, once you know how to get around.

sparc.3649:

Exactly, what the last two posts have said.

If defended (actual players there to defend) there’s NO way that small of a group should EVER be able to take a keep!

Now, if nobody shows up to defend that’s another story. Sure you should be able to eventually get it. But that’s the key (word) – EVENTUALLY. Keeps SHOULD be VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY difficult to get into. They’re KEEPS for heck’s sake!

Why not? Then what you are saying is that if you blob, you should ALWAYS win WvW also?

In the Apline BL’s you could take keeps with a havoc group. If Defenders were there, then it took longer. That prevented the PPT mentality by just blobbing up. Currently, that is all servers really do. They don’t even remove enemies siege, they place theirs down take the keep and move on. That is EotM not WvW.

In the Alpine BL’s a havoc group could Ninja an enemies Gari, if they were stealthy and didn’t get seen. That is why you needed defenders. Now it is impossible unless you have a blob and on T2, the blob only comes when they know they can K-train a whole BL because your server does not have coverage. Then they go away and not return. Hard to fight a shadow.

This is what WvW has come to PPT and siege wars not actually fighting.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I have been tracking this thread with a lot of hope, thinking that this is a good premise for a conversation, something I could spotlight for the dev team. Forum members like Dayra, Stand The Wall, Dusty Moon, Norbe, and several others have made a solid effort over a few weeks to contribute constructive ideas. Thank you!

I believe this is can continue to be a very productive exercise, even if the moderators had to do some “housekeeping” to remove the unconstructive, non-contributory comments.

So please post constructively to share your thoughts on this subject. If there’s an off-topic or a unconstructive post, please flag it so we can keep the thread on track. The substantive ideas shared so far are good and we’d welcome more. If you want to share greater details or link to other threads — that would be fine, too. This thread in no way replaces other constructive commentary on the subject of WvW, but it could be one valuable high-level gathering point for feedback that helps in the overall review of the subject.

TL;dr: Please post on topic and let’s make this really useful!

Gaile – one thing you can say about WvW players is they are passionate about this game. It would be ashame to lose that passion.

Can you even give us any inklings about what is planned and when?

Serious.7083:

All other things being equal you are more likely to do better with HoT than without in WvW.

Some do not get as much benefit than others though and many warriors are better off without the elite spec.

Most professions gain over a similarly equipped and skilled opponent without HoT. For this reason Elite Specs should not have been introduced into WvW or PvP at all.

Right – they have them in PvP but not WvW? How would you do that?

A.Net can’t even fix the most basic things (like arrow carts being used even w/o line of sight) and you want them to do something complicated?

Xillllix.3485:

Dawdler.8521:

Xillllix.3485:

Still in the top selling mmo. They’ve fixed a tons of issues and their server system is far from a disaster, it’s perfect for WvW.

And at the same time impossible for WvW. The smaller amount of generated campaigns (effectivly a server choice) worked as a system because the map supported like 1800 players.

Ironically, the last time I read about AvA their “fix” was to reduce player cap to a third or something, lol.

Really, Anet already have the system sitting in front of them. On left hand side you got server based WvW with a population that no longer fill (or bother with) 4 maps. On right hand side you got instanced 3-faction WvW. Clap your hands hands together and make it one WvW – server based EBs with instanced borders. 24/7 PPT is only generated on EB while borders are 3h matchup that give your color a stacking boon (as in something like extra supplies, ppt bonus, etc, not a player boon) when a border is won.

At this point I think that even if they merged all the tier they wouldn’t fill all the maps. The only problem it would create is a huge queue for EBG which they could fix by adding multiple instances of it or bringing the EotM map to real WvW.

It depends on the time of day and at what time in the match. Try T1 – T3 and try to get in EBG when the matches start – we always have queues there and in T1 you get queues in every map. So, no, server merges will not do anything.

The problem is, who can you fills the off times on an NA server, let’s say. How can that be done? To most WvW player’s thinking, it is too Onerous to do. Alliances? NO. GW1 had Alliances and they ended up being OP because the big guilds only aligned with big guilds. A.Net will not be able to force which guilds go into which alliances because that takes away choice from the players and they will end up losing players.

The point being is, they should have worked on this at the same time as PvE and PvP but they did not. Now they are reaping what they sowed, which is player discontent.

DeWolfe.2174:

Rocketmist.5436:

The most played class before HoT was warrior, and its at the point where I think weapons like hammer could be buffed 100% and still be not viable. So they took the most played class and made it more or less unviable in big fights.

Then there is what most people consider the most fun class, thief. Thief is also pretty close to unviable in wvw with all the random aoe skills that can legit 1-hit kill a thief. D/D ele which is another build that a lot of people think is super fun is also not very viable. So basically all the “fun” builds and the most played builds are super bad at fighting.

No, wrong, and wrong.

Warrior in PvE yes, not in WvW. The most played were either Necro or Ele followed by Thief. Only when there was a buff to PI and condi’s, did mesmers become the cancer of WvW. Now you see people who never played a Mesmer in their life, play this one trick pony.

TheHeretic.3529:

1. ELIMINATION of tactics. They completely ruin everything.
2. Timezone coverage
3. Maps that I don’t get lost in
4. Maps that don’t take excessive time to move across

That’s all.

Tactics are important in a game, especially WvW. It is called ‘Map Politics’.

As far as coverage, I do not know how A.Net can deal with that.

Maps are easy, once you learn them., especially the Desert BL’s

4. If your on you desert BL and you have Gari – it is easy to get across the map. Not on your onw BL, it should take a while, need to take things, eh? Again ‘Map Politics’

Ricky.4706:

ouch, so many incorrect perceptions to your post…

it’s one thing to defy traditional design, it’s quite another trying to make a square wheel.

open world pvp – is simply an open world where people can fight each other. That does not make a game competitive, structure does.

when people complain about mobs, is because there is no systematic way for a smaller server to counter them. There are no rules to balancing the fight, such as a homefield advantage. Bragging rights would be using those rules to have a smaller server conquer a bigger one. But there is no brain over brawn strategy to win wvw.

and if pve fire creates an scoring imbalance on the field, it will just be a visual prop. So that comment is incorrect. it’s known in wargaming that some things have to be fictitiously adapted – because it’s still a game. That’s why we don’t drown in GW after spending hours underwater without an air tank. In real life, People don’t shoot lazers out of greatswords like a mesmer, you won’t get cut and in need of stitches if you run into a tree – so things will get adapted, and your character doesn’t risk being fried by a torch hanging on the wall in a tower.

Wargaming, is exactly that ….making a game out of war. Nothing more, nothing less.

the problem is open world pvp without rules is the equivalent of a riot, and I don’t lol riot, I mean senseless fighting, anything goes, and you don’t score it.

to say wargaming has no part of esports is to wonder why I’m even debating ? lol

I’ve not only lived this and watched it evolve first hand, I’ve played in some of the first player organized online tournaments… but there are game design articles on the topic that specifically discuss this as well. It’s not a new concept.

it’s the design specifically for strategic game play. intelligent pvp, not just whack a mole.

Most open world PvP have no rules and hence always end that way they do. I can name ones that are like that, if needed but the post will be erased by A.Net.

SkyShroud.2865:

you are indeed thinking too much

gw2 has been trying to defy some of the traditional approach to mmorpg
this include removal of pvp from open-world, wvw is gw2’s answer to that, you can check one of their old interviews about wvw concept. so, as a matter of fact, when people are complaining about mobs in wvw, they simple do not understand that wvw is the result of gw2 separating pvp from open-world while mixing in castle siege concept into it

wargaming is never ancestor to open world pvp, it is the other way round. if you look at humanity history, open world pvp already exist in ancient era where human can be doing fist fight in the wild. wargaming is simply a war game to simulate the evolved stage of human conflict where strategy comes into play.

also removing pve rules from pvp rules is like saying in reality, you expect fire not to produce heat.

do u wanna know why so many ppl went over to pvp mmorpg and didnt stay there for long? because they r not as pvp as they think they are.

lastly, to say that esport r successful because of wargame is too far fetch. they are only successful because of their focused gameplay, they only do one thing and it did it good which appeal to the majority. furthermore, those games do not require long hours of play unlike mmorpg.

There is a difference between and area that has Open World PvP, like WvW does, and doing PvE and PvP at the same time. I have played games like that and they are full of griefers and PK’ers., the regular players leave once they have had enough of it.

WvW is designed for groups on down, but in a coordinated way. Open World PvP does not have that as every player is for themselves.

Xillllix.3485:

Yuffi.2430:

There’s been a lot of talk about megaservers in WvW. I’ll make no secret of the fact that I’m very much against the idea, but it would probably help increase the number of players per map.

However before megaserver is implemented in WvW there are a number of issues that would need to be addressed. Here are a few that spring to mind:

1 A guild group decide to play WvW. The first 4 get into instance A and the others into instance B.
The current megaserver system in PvE tries (sometimes successfully) to put guildies together, but the odds are higher than it may put your whole group into a new instance in order to do so. Whether that instance then fills up depends on other players joining. In PvE this doesn’t matter because you have events to do and stuff to kill, in WvW it would matter – a lot.

2. You’re enjoying a good game in WvW and some of the opponents leave. The map is now below the population threshold so you get a “map closing” message and the chance to move to a more populated map.
You either stay and do what all the “night capping” complaints are about or you take a chance on the megaserver putting you into a map that has other players that will stay too (look at all the threads about lost progress in HoT maps). If you move all your gains in the current map instance become void as the map closes. Any megaserver system for WvW would have much more trouble balancing the player population across three teams, and map closures would have much more impact on players than it already does in PvE.

3. You join a WvW map to cap stuff, for example for a daily achievement and find the commanders on the map are leading groups in PPK. Or conversely you join for the fights and find that map is PPT based and the commanders are more interested in capping stuff. Both sorts of play styles are valid and are currently catered for, albeit badly at times.
WvW megaserver would need at least a specific LFG system to try to put like minded players together, or perhaps a dedicated PPK map and a PPT map – but this would be moving away from the way megaserver works. As a minimum players should have some sort of choice as to the instance they join.

In short, as things stand at the moment all a megaserver system is likely to do is turn WvW into EotM 2 (across 4 maps instead of one).

We want something better than this that caters for fights and capping, with small parties and larger groups. I’m not at all convinced that megaservers can do this.

TESO has done it. They just have to copy their server system.

It is hard to cut and paste anything into code as complex as a game. I do not want them to COPY TESO, that game is a disaster.

screen cap and report – they need proof.

Well, based on A.Net’s past behavior and patches, which is a good predictor of future patches, I expect MORE PvE in WvW and that part of the game will collapse.

I do not see a good future. The WvW players have given their opinions and with out any communication, from A.Net, expect nothing to change or get worse.

Sorry to be a ‘Negative Nancy’ on this but that is the way have done things.

Otay Ranchero.5487:

Just had a thought… you know how EotM shuts down every three hours and resets, right? What if all the WvW maps were on the same schedule…? Award points for winning these little “micro-weeks”. Servers get 3 points for winning the PPT in the “micro-week” three hour window, 2 points for second place, and 1 point for third. The final weekly winner would be the server that collected the most 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place points, instead of the raw PPT total score.

That would make off-hours ticks of 500+ worth the same as prime ticks of 270… it wouldn’t matter how much you win your time slot by, only the fact that you won, or came in second or third, would contribute to your server’s overall weekly score. All those hours your opponent is putting in to milk easy uncontested PPT wouldn’t count for anything more than the hours you put in doing work, defending and taking. Points Per Kill could be expressed as “the bonus point” for your window, whichever server carried the best Kills to Deaths ratio would be awarded one extra point for that time slot.

You really wouldn’t need to reset the maps, either, simply include a scorekeeping/countdown panel that tracked the current scoring vs the total weekly score.

Maybe 3 hour scoring windows are too small… Maybe 4 or 6 or 8 hour windows?

1 Week is plenty and Megaservers would only ruin the idea of Sever pride (which is what WvW is and does).

Please DO NOT PUT MEGASERVER INTO WvW.

As bad as A.Net has done, nothing compares to what others have done to their games. The thing is, people really like GW2 for WvW. It is just, initially, it needed a few tweaks here and there. Now, with the HoT updates, it needs a reboot.

The Dragon Banners, Shield Gens, Air ships, etc. are all hampering WvW not helping. A.Net HEAR THE WvW PLAYERS< GET RID OF THEM!!!

briggah.7910:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Leaa.2943:

Dusty Moon.4382:

WvW is so broken. There are no more fights on the BL’s and EBG. People just sit in keeps and kitten on siege.

1. Get rid of the Airships on SMC – it is too OP and you can’t do anything about it (defensively for the group attacking SMC).

2. As keeps upgrade, make the siege cap lower. It is too easy to protect a keep with one or two people against a blob.

3. Get rid of PvE from the BL’s (the Oasis event comes to mind). It makes dealing with other BL’s too hard if you have always come back to your own BL.

4. Get rid of all Shield Generators. They make getting keeps, etc impossible.

5. Fortified Walls and Gates are too hard to break down – it takes 5 min to get through the walls/gates if you are a small havoc group (using one Superior Cata or Treb).

6. Get rid of the Emergency WP’s – it makes getting keeps impossible for the opposing team as the defending team can just WP in at the end and wipe the opposing team.

There are too many siege kitteners now and that makes WvW no longer fun.

WE NEED THE WVW PATCH NOW! You will end up losing more of the WvW population than you already have.

So what you are asking for is a easier way to take keeps and towers? Sorry but i don’t agree at all. Those should be hard to take and at this point it is way to easy to take out siege in towers and keeps so there is absolutely not need to make it even easier. And it do not take to long to take down a gate or wall that is fortified, in my opinion it is way to easy and should be harder.

I don’t know if you are on a low pop server, then i can understand your points, but on top tiers servers you are taking everything way to fast and way to easy, so people do not even care to scout and siege things because it is easier to just retake it.

I want it back to the way it was. There was nothing wrong bofore, except for the testing done by PvE players, who want more PVE in WvW (like EotM). Hence the buffing of the Keep Lord’s etc. They are now just like EotM.

The problem being, now players hide in keeps behind siege and not fight at all. I mean sieging a T1 tower with 6 Superior or guild arrow carts is just ludicrous.

The game has become ‘Siege Wars’ Not Guild Wars.

This is the complaint about siege that I will never understand. First you are talking about a keep. It shouldn’t be an easy thing to take. As a player and a team, you should never want to lose your keep. I never want to lose anything on our side but that is just the way I play. Its like you’d rather not have siege which would let you take the keep faster.

You claim you want to fight players but you are trying to take their keep. If players are hiding in a keep on siege and not coming out, go hit something else to bring them out. There are ways to bring out players and make the fights come to where you are.. You are not going to force anyone to fight if they do not want to fight. Removing or nerfing the tools used to defend won’t bring you the fights if players do not want to fight. It will only make those players that like to defend not defend anymore which removes a certain type of play style that you do not like to play..

When you get into an objective that has siege it should always be focused first. Most focus the lord first as soon as gate/walls go down. Seen it a zillion times as a few people rush the siege and rest are dying to siege on the lord..

Keeps are not easy to take, anymore – period. If a keep is T3, then it is almost a guarantee that you cannot take it with one 5 man havoc group, like you could before the changes. Try trebbing a T3 gari with one superior treb (as an example,) you are guaranteed to take 10 minutes or more just to get through the outer wall. That is ridiculous.

A.Net said they wanted to have people defend keeps, well now they made it TOO EASY to defend keeps and almost impossible for a havoc group to take one.

Mine more than 5

1. Get rid of the Airships on SMC – it is too OP and you can’t do anything about it (defensively for the group attacking SMC).

2. As keeps upgrade, make the siege cap lower. It is too easy to protect a keep with one or two people against a blob.

3. Get rid of PvE from the BL’s (the Oasis event comes to mind). It makes dealing with other BL’s too hard if you have always come back to your own BL.

4. Get rid of all Shield Generators. They make getting keeps, etc impossible.

5. Fortified Walls and Gates are too hard to break down – it takes 5 min to get through the walls/gates if you are a small havoc group (using one Superior Cata or Treb).

6. Get rid of the Emergency WP’s – it makes getting keeps impossible for the opposing team as the defending team can just WP in at the end and wipe the opposing team.

Leaa.2943:

Dusty Moon.4382:

WvW is so broken. There are no more fights on the BL’s and EBG. People just sit in keeps and kitten on siege.

1. Get rid of the Airships on SMC – it is too OP and you can’t do anything about it (defensively for the group attacking SMC).

2. As keeps upgrade, make the siege cap lower. It is too easy to protect a keep with one or two people against a blob.

3. Get rid of PvE from the BL’s (the Oasis event comes to mind). It makes dealing with other BL’s too hard if you have always come back to your own BL.

4. Get rid of all Shield Generators. They make getting keeps, etc impossible.

5. Fortified Walls and Gates are too hard to break down – it takes 5 min to get through the walls/gates if you are a small havoc group (using one Superior Cata or Treb).

6. Get rid of the Emergency WP’s – it makes getting keeps impossible for the opposing team as the defending team can just WP in at the end and wipe the opposing team.

There are too many siege kitteners now and that makes WvW no longer fun.

WE NEED THE WVW PATCH NOW! You will end up losing more of the WvW population than you already have.

So what you are asking for is a easier way to take keeps and towers? Sorry but i don’t agree at all. Those should be hard to take and at this point it is way to easy to take out siege in towers and keeps so there is absolutely not need to make it even easier. And it do not take to long to take down a gate or wall that is fortified, in my opinion it is way to easy and should be harder.

I don’t know if you are on a low pop server, then i can understand your points, but on top tiers servers you are taking everything way to fast and way to easy, so people do not even care to scout and siege things because it is easier to just retake it.

I want it back to the way it was. There was nothing wrong bofore, except for the testing done by PvE players, who want more PVE in WvW (like EotM). Hence the buffing of the Keep Lord’s etc. They are now just like EotM.

The problem being, now players hide in keeps behind siege and not fight at all. I mean sieging a T1 tower with 6 Superior or guild arrow carts is just ludicrous.

The game has become ‘Siege Wars’ Not Guild Wars.

Veles.1405:

Dusty and Kuru – By “right path” I mean that we have commitments to at least some actions that will help us get on track. We are nowhere close and I am not hyped or optimistic that we will get a perfect end result. My point is that for once we need to stop just complaining and yelling “OMG Anet killed WvW” every time they say anything. That behavior forces them to not talk to us and keep hiding what they are doing since someone always reacts negatively.

I don’t think one big update will fix everything, just like I don’t think reverting the changes will fix everything. Look back 6 months or more on the forums and you’ll see threads complaining about a different set of problems. I’m not expecting anything amazing, but this is our last chance as a community to save the game mode so I I’d rather we do it step by step, evaluate what works and doesn’t, and communicate both ways. The dev responses on the AMA suggested that is the general philosophy moving forward with WvW, and that is the first step (of many) in the right direction.

Sorry – they have been talking about WvW changes for 3 years and what do we get? EotM and more PvE in WvW. I will believe it when I see it.

They need to actually do something rather than talk , talk is cheap.

Sorry OP, but we have been promised this before. You know the old adage, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me’.

A.Net, ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.

Veles.1405:

It comes down to what are the key roles that each class can play (dps, cc, condi, boon sharing, healing, etc) and then compare the relative power and complexity of each of those. The new elite specializations and HoT stat combinations are basically the definition of power creep. For most classes the elite spec is simply more powerful than any other 3rd trait line you could pick.

One of the best ways to evaluate based on roles was mentioned above, in looking at the risk/reward balance for each action. That concept is what drives the design of utility and elite skills since they are meant to be a significant power increase at a high cooldown or resource cost.

Most importantly do not drop the nerf hammer like in the past. People sometimes find unique and valuable builds that work great in WvW but are irrelevant to other game modes. I will use the old glamour condi mesmer as an example. It was overpowered in that it could blind and confuse large groups of enemies, but Anet responded not just by tuning the power down a bit but instead by breaking the trait synergies that allowed the build to exist. Since the game launched I have seen many builds smashed like this by the nerf hammer, and that is exactly what we do not want. We want power levels tuned so that we have many different build options available.

Roles? WOW, that comes from the Trinity games. The idea is to be as versatile as possible in this game. Everyone has heals, some have boons (Guards, Ele’s , etc.) but all can add to it. Everyone has to have DPS, unless you are a commander.

The trick in WvW is to have builds that compliment your group, unless you roam solo (then survivability is tatamount).

WOW – if the OP thinks WvW is on the right path, he hasn’t really played WvW.

What this says is that WvW is hard to get right and no one from A.Net wants to take responsibility for it.

The EotM server mechanic is a mistake – period. I doesn’t give good fights, when you blob v blob with uplevels that die so quickly and are clueless to their surroundings.

It would do some good as they are crutches. As soon as a keep is T3, unless the server holding the keep is not on, you can hold the keep indefinitely against anyone. That is not fights, that is just lazy development.

The EotM Server mechanic is a disaster. PERIOD.

If they try to use it for actual WvW, they will kill WvW (as if they haven’t done it with negligence).

Also, why doesn’t A.Net actually ASK the guilds that play WvW what they want and need and have them test what ideas they have, not big, multi-server PvE guilds. If they continue this way, they will lose ALL of the WvW population.

Population imbalance NEEDS to cover all time zones on the servers. How will THAT be done? It is impossible. The only way they can do it is with the EotM mechanic of server blending and that does not work.

They need to:

1. Get rid of Arrow carts or limit to what a player can see (not with this peek over garbage either). Also limit the how far an arrow can be used. This would be easy to do as soon as a player uses a piece of siege, they cannot go to options and change their field of view – lock it to the siege.

2. Siege cap keeps and towers as they get upgraded and actually remove siege that is over the cap. I mean putting in 5 Superior Arrow Carts, 2 trebs and 2 ballistas in a T1 tower is ludicrous.

3. Emergency WP – remove.

4. Air ships on SMC – REMOVE

5. DRAGON BANNER – REMOVE Talk about an OP crutch skill.

6. CHILLING FOG – REMOVE

7. Limit AoE skills so they can’t overlap and lower CC abilities. In crease STABO and give each profession a viable STABO skill.

I will believe it when I see it and not before…..

A.Net promises a lot and delivers nothing.

I would first make sure that AoE skills cannot be placed one on top of another (like necro wells). Then I would reduce the CC abilities and I would make sure that every single Profession has a good Stabo skill.

I would not separate PvP, WvW and PvE as it would make the game impossible for A.Net to deal with. They can’t deal with the game as it is, making it more complicated won’t help.