Guild Wars 2

Extra CC was added to the game because of all the HoT monsters with breakbars. You can not do kitten in HoT maps without piles of CC and so amount of CC got boosted for every class. The fact that it also ruined some of WvW is unfortunate but we all know PvE content comes first and WvW is last. CC is here and stays here until PvE requires it.

STIHL.2489:

Not in the mood for gimmicks, and that is exactly what this would bring.

I would like to see a simple system in place where the higher rank you were, the more EXP, Wxp, PPK you were worth, and players got better loot for killing you.

Wouldnt that end up players “selling” their deaths? If Diamond Rank gives really good loot, there would be players setting up a spot where their any opponent can kill their chars for 15 minutes if they first pay 5g. Or it could be just your mate who creates new alt in opposing server and then you both farm stuff by killing high rank player and dividing the profits.

I wish we could trust players to play fair and really fight each other.

I thought about loot system while commenting this thread but since my idea would be sort of different, I don’t want to post it in same thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/An-outsider-s-view-on-WvW-suggestions/

Why?

Why I think it needs changing? Well, I don’t think game should reward blobs that run around the map only taking objectives and never fighting enemies. The Oasis event was attempt to push everyone together into smaller area for more frequent fights (it failed because it had other problems). We need more fighting.

Normally you would gather up loots (including items, gold, xp, wxp etc) by taking objectives and killing enemies. The enemies loot remains same but all the loot from NPCs/objectives is removed. You can still capture objectives and kill NPCs but you will not gain any gold/items/xp/wxp from it, it will only increase your server PPT.

Fat Loot in Single Spot

The Loot Event will happen once every 30 minutes after last Loot Event. All the loot that player normally would be able to gather up within 30 minutes of WvW play is hidden in Big Chest Of Loot. The Loot Chest will appear in Lord room of keep or tower held by the server with least players on the map.

If one server has no objectives, no chest will appear.

Phase 1, 30 minutes to Chest

The server currently owning objective where Loot Chest will appear, will get notice with the Chest location. It is marked on their map.

Around the Chest several siege will also appear, ACs, Balli, Treb etc. Players from server owning Chest location should be building more siege to defend the Objective.

Note: if objective is lost during Phase 1, no chest will appear. New chest location is picked after 15 minutes waiting period.

Phase 2, 15 minutes to Chest

Servers who do not own the chest location will get notice where it will appear. It is marked on their map too. They now have 15 minutes to capture that objective and kill the Lord.

The Objective is filled with extra Veteran and Champion tier NPCs based on current player population in the map. The Objective is also upgraded instantly, tier 3 Objective is fully repaired.

NPC creation example: Green has 50 players, Blue has 30 players, Red has 10 players. Chest appears in the Red keep. 50 – 10 = 40 extra Red NPC will spawn to protect the Chest.

Phase 3, THE LOOT CHEST TIME

Chest will appear close to the Lord room. Only players from the server owning this objective can access the chest. The objective could be tagged but players must be out of battle. Chest will remain for 5 minutes and the disappears, starting next Chest cycle after small waiting period.

What you get from chest? Gold. Items. Unique skins. Mats. XP. WXP. Siege Blueprints.

What about players from other 2 servers? They only get loot for killing enemies, same way they currently do.

Wait, isn’t this still same thing where biggest blob takes the whole prize?

Not really. Does not matter how big your blob is, you still have capture this exact objective within certain time limit or your blob gets no loot. Defenders get extra NPCs and siege to protect the Loot Chest, and they only have to protect it until the Chest appears. Even small defending force can keep enemy blob away for some time.

Valtolimor.6230:

So it seems this loot system would be unfair to outnumbered servers, but a lot of WvW is. What if it were coupled with a buff that makes outnumbered teams have stronger players, seige, NPCs, and walls/gates? Could even things up, and make numbers less of a strict advantage.

hm.. what is “outnumbered” and how do apply it without giving unfair advantage?

Lets stick to the current system where “outnumbered” buff is map-based. Problem is, the maps are quite large and several fight could be happening same time, while only 1 of those fights could be about much larger enemy group vs smaller defenders group.

I will make an example with some made-up numbers here: suppose you have 30 players in the map, defending 3 keeps with 10 players in each keep. Enemy has 60 players so you get “outnumbered” buff and all kind of bonuses are activated. Enemy has a zerg of 40 players attacking one keep, your 10 defenders get boost, its good! Another smaller enemy group attacks second keep with 15 players, your 10 defenders also get bonus, but they really did not need it anyway. Third group of enemies goes to take third keep with just 5 players, your 10 defenders crush them instantly because of map-wide bonuses. Now, in this example would result be any different with good “outnumber” bonus? Not really, you probably lose 1 keep to that large enemy blob and defend successfully 2 other keeps. Just like now.

Also, if you start to change walls/gates/players HP/damage based on the outnumber buff, how long does it stay on when people enter and leave the map constantly. In the matches where we had it, it usually flickered on and off pretty fast.

X T D.6458:

The ideal solution would be to have specific skill balancing for certain things. For example confusion and retaliation scale differently in damage in pvp/wvw then they do in pve. This needs to be done with wvw in regards to stability. WvW is an entirely different gamemode then the other 2 and for certain things cannot be treated the same way. A one way fix all approach is simply idiotic and out dated. This doesnt mean there needs to be complete seperation of skill balancing for each gamemode. But for certain things like conditions, cc’s, boons, damage mechanics need to be treated differently.

There could be need for completely separate WvW skills. Thing is, this gets more and more complicated with each xpax/LS. Anet will create new elite specs, new classes, new weapons, new condis, new boons to keep players paying for the new stuff. They all become more and more difficult to balance up properly, even in PvE or in very small PvP fights. They are already impossibly difficult to balance up for large scale WvW fights.

But many skills did work differently in PvE and PvP and Anet has spent a lot of effort to make everything work exactly same way no matter which gamemode you play. It is unlikely they want to turn back again and start to split back skills/stats/condi between PvE and WvW. If you remember, we used to have underwater combat too with special underwater skills and underwater weapons, but over the time it became so difficult to manage those extra underwater skills and extra weapons within ever-expanding complex skill/condi/boons system that Anet just gave up on underwater combat (yeah, I know, underwater combat is boring and confusing too but the extra micro-managing every skill is also more work).

I would not personally mind some simpler system for WvW as long it can be kept balanced properly. We could perhaps have only 1 utility skill slot. Or only 2 active specs. Or special WvW condition that increases every cooldown 4 times. What these changes would basically do would make balancing easier with less variables to consider. Also, these would reduce damage and cc output.

DeceiverX.8361:

Merged servers is frankly be the worst possible way to handle the WvW population issue as it only solves symptoms and not the actual underlying problems.

It does not have to be “merge”, could be some other way, but number of servers HAS to be reduced dramatically. And I am in one of the dead servers, which I always love and will never transfer away, but it’s still dead. Sure there are other stuff that needs to be fixed too, but the last servers were dying even before HoT.

We do not know what changes Anet has planned for WvW April update. There is suppose to be live beta test so once it goes alive we will see if/what population balance system is there.

Sviel.7493:

I think it’s interesting (and worthwhile) that you tie the K-Train problem to loot. I think a solution to that could be helpful—but I don’t think that’s the real problem.

The current WvW crowd isn’t motivated to K-Train by loot. Honestly, I don’t think anyone is playing for loot when they do anything. Still…I’d love to see your proposed solution explored.

Well, why do people ktrain? I am sure the loot you gather over time is part of the reason. You also gather xp, wxp, gold?, proof of heroics, somethingelsetoo… It’s not even what you gain from 1 battle or taking 1 keep, it’s about how much you gain per hour. SW trains work on same idea – stuff you get is all rubbish but over time you get so much rubbish that you sell/salvage those into hefty pile of gold.

Also, we should perhaps separate EotM trains and WvW trains, while being similar are not always same thing.

Valtolimor.6230:

Tie loot to world score instead of offensive strength. Bags dropped from players are fine, and can stay as is. Creatures too. But instead of getting the bulk of loot from killing lords and taking objectives, award piles of loot at the end of the tick based on your world’s overall (in all 4 zones, even if you’re putting effort into a losing borderland you’re still contributing to an overall team) number of controlled castles, keeps, towers, and camps at that time. A looting system like this would encourage not only offense, but defense, roaming, and supply esoirts. Obviously this would have to be coupled with some kind of system that will be able to tell if someone is participating (y/n, not stages like in the jungle) to keep people from getting loot from AFKing and leeching off the team’s effort.

I am not basically against the idea you proposed. But I am not sure how it would change the zerging-up. I mean to have higher world score you still have to capture objectives same way, you just don’t gain rewards at the exact moment of capture, but some time later. I guess there would be less reason to run around in circle, capturing stuff and then losing it all to enemy zerg moment later.

Then there is a big problem of how to reward defending objective. Is being inside the keep enough to be “participating”? Is building troll siege in stupid places and wasting sups something you should be rewarded with? How do you measure contribution of someone who waypoints and runs back to bring last missing sup to finish your defensive siege that another player uses to destroy enemy siege? If you are simply visible on the wall and enemy turns back without even tagging the objective, did you actually “save” it by being at guard?

Dayra.7405:

Do you really believe that anyone playing EotM for PvE-rewards would play WvW? So should your pre-justice be true, no one from EotM would go to WvW.

Again, I do agree with you in some ways. If EotM would be shut, many EotM players would not go to WvW. They would go to SW or some other PvE farming map. And that is fine, as they would probably not enjoy WvW anyway.

But some would still go to WvW, and we need everyone back

Also, if the only way to gather some items required for legendaries, or to finish map completion, or to gain some title, would be only by playing WvW, I will assure you – players will play WvW. Same way many WvW players are forced to grind through PvE maps just to get guild upgrades.

And, if you think keeping EotM, and shutting down WvW, is good plan, consider how many WvW players will go to new and fancy EotM-only gamemode. I mean, these are the same players who have avoided EotM all the time it has been available so far. These are the players who have sticked to their OWN server even when it is losing, these players have been building communities around the server identity literally years. Not sure if you know the feeling but the server is more then just name, it is our own thing, players spend time and money taking care of it, helping it, defending it. It could be small and weak but its OURS.

And that is missing from EotM. It belongs to nobody. Noone cares if one side wins or loses.

Dayra.7405:

WvW will not be able to fill its 36 (EU) + 32 (NA) Maps with or without EotM-player.

So yes there aren’t enough players for WvW anymore, but my conclusion is give up WvW it’s time has passed by. Do not touch the only halfway working game mode, where you can find enemies to fight due to it’s superior design, namely the dynamic number of maps. EoM works better than WvW, not because has many more player, but because it only has as many maps as are needed to fit the players.

I absolutely agree, there are too many servers for the number of players who currently play WvW. But the WvW does not have to have those EXACT number of servers, it could be less when there are less players and hopefully more when players swarm back into WvW because it go fixed up (I can hope). In best system I think number of servers should change fairly quickly, new servers could be formed or old ones divided.

I also do not think WvW requires exactly 4 maps in every match. Lower tiers could do very well with just 1 single maps. Or the maps could be opening/closing based on time and number players currently logging into match. Having less maps means servers with lower population find more fights.

These changes do not require closing WvW and they are not specific to EotM.

dubstax.9102:

That website mentioned earlier has some of the most toxic people I have ever seen that frequent it. I just wanted to point that out.

I know several players who post there and they are all actually very nice guys. The site and those posts there are just for fun, sort of lets-try-to-create-even-more-insult-against-opponent-metagame. Anyway, thats how I read those reactions from enemies, good for laughs.

I don’t know how to explain the situation to players blindly defending EotM. But I will try once more…

WvW makes sense only if there is enough players to fight in all 3 servers, in most times, in every map. Without enemies its boring and even those who log in to check it will leave soon. All the players in EotM are potential WvW players who have not only left their own server empty but have also ruined the WvW for other 2 servers because they chose to not fight opponents and instead join mindless karma train in huge blob in amap that has no other purpose except to endlessly farm stuff.

What you EotM-lovers misunderstand is the cause and effect. You claim people go to EotM because WvW is boring, meaning boring and empty WvW is the cause and so many players in EotM is the effect. Which is completely wrong. People go to EotM because it offers same rewards for much less work, and so having easy way to avoid any real WvW is the cause. Empty and boring WvW is the effect of having EotM because players in EotM are not in WvW.

Game provides 2 very similar game systems that have same rewards but one requires you to fight many skillful enemies who are very tough to kill and often kill you first. While the other system only asks for simple tag-following, providing same rewards in much faster rate, and without any fair of ever bumping into those pesky enemy players. Yes, many players will choose the easy way. Yes, they will like it very much. Of course they will jump out and shout loudly at everyone asking to nerf their unfair rewards. It still must be nerfed. Every game must constantly cut off farming spots with way too good reward/effort/time rate and EotM is just one big fat farming spot. Its popularity is not the reason to keep it in the game, but good indication of just how much damage it does to the game.

Maybe people are putting out overpriced items in the hope someone buys them accidentially, or to look what makes them special. Nothing prevents you trying to sell normal item for huge pile of gold, normally it does not sell but sometimes it could.

Gigiobalt.7625:

• SIEGE

Outnumbered buff based on objective instead of whole map could perhaps work. In very simplistic way you could draw circle around the keep lord and count attackers/defenders in the circle. There are of course smaller problems with it, like exact numbers when it activates (1 attacker? 10 attackers? 50 attackers) or how long it stays on (or defending groups start to stay behind the walls to make sure buff goes on, siege is activated and then everyone rushes in to save the keep) and so on.

Gigiobalt.7625:

• Annoyance vs Challenge

I guess you are mostly annoyed about desert BL maps. I am not sure what would be perfect map design for most players, make it too simple and bland and you end up players complaining about how boring and simple it is. I also think desert maps could be fun place to fight if there was ever any enemies to fight.

Do you consider structured PvP maps interesting enough or also having too much annoyance?

Gigiobalt.7625:

• Builds

I am not sure what you mean by that comment. The class balance? Skill balance? Asking to create separate skills for large scale GvG fights? WvW-specific builds?

Modern games are pretty complicated, for example they include hundreds of pieces of code for game engine that are included in ready-made packages. There could be some silly divide-by-zero error in the physics module that happens very rarely and only with certain GPU/CPU configuration. (I am making up stuff, don’t start huge thread in Reddit about broken physics module! But i have also written lenghty tutorial about vector physics in simple games and struggled with that stupid divide-by-zero error for months).

I am also sure there is already lots of checks in the game that try to detect and fix such errors. But hackers have endless time and constantly find new ways to break the game. The live GMs are implemented in most game just because they can act against all kind of different bad stuff – hacking, insulting, gold selling etc etc. GM system has been working on online games for decades and GW2 would benefit from it too.

LilBiM.3581:

What I am trying to say is that is sending an email to x address really the optimal way to solve this issue?

The optimal way would be adding real GMs to the game who actually monitor all activities and insta-ban all such people.

We had many of these threads about year ago when hackers were active in lower EU tiers. It took several months to get rid of them, and even then the quickest way looked to be having lots of noise in Reddit. Most threads about hackers in specific servers, with links to proofs, videos and screenshots, got deleted from these forums anyway.

EB keeps are good example where the change has made game better, dominating server can not so easily take over whole map now, and then hold it forever, spawncamping smaller servers. It was big problem before HoT. I honestly do not think old system was “fine”, it had problems too and Anet tried to address those with the new system. It’s not perfect either but it can be adjusted without returning to the old broken system.

dubstax.9102:

I agree more or less. I think Edge of the Mist could have been implemented better and with more consideration for the World vs. World population.

The ONLY reason for EotM to be in the game would be major queues in every map for every server. As it stands now, we don’t have queues anywhere so it basically keeps draining last remaining players away from WvW, being easy and lazy way out of fighting larger enemy zerg or recapping objectives. The overall population of WvW players have decreased too much from the early days when EotM was added, it has become part of problem by now.

This is test post only because thread shows up empty for me.

STIHL.2489:

To the people that say we could close all the other forms of WvW and just do EotM.

You know, we could. And it would be the Stuff of Legend.

Every WvW Fight Guild, and anyone and everyone who is just looking to kill, will suddenly arrive in EotM, ready to slaughter indiscriminately anyone not of their team, taking I would imagine heightened levels of glee to crush under their boot any Quasi-PvE player, Up-tick, or Anyone Looking to K-Train. The bodies would litter the fields like rivers across the map.

All the Bunker and Turtle players would Siege up the Fortifications to insane levels, the likes that people that only played EotM have never seen, nor could even fathom could exist.

8 Tiers of some some of the hardest hardcore core WvW players will suddenly move to EotM, filled with vitriol and embitterment, looking to make sure that every up-level, or quasi-pve player pays a dear price for their lost beloved ‘real’ WvW experience.

That was brilliant post, thank you!

I think main reason developers do not want to include very good rewards in WvW is possible foul play. It is very easy to agree with enemy player or enemy guild to “farm” them in WvW for possible legendary reward.

Players do it in PvP, if there is enough rewards they will do it in WvW too.

Isn’t that what the open beta testing is for? Everyone can try and see what it is about? There is little point to try explain every detail before the actual beta because most people misunderstand everything and start some stupid campaign against changes.

Wait for it to go live. Try it. Then decide if it’s good or bad.

It makes no sense to reverse waypoint system but keep the new upgrade mechanics. Let me explain:

• old system – you got WP in any keep as long you managed to upgrade it to Tier 3. Upgrading cost gold and required a lot of sups from the nearby camps. All the sups could also be spent by any troll to build pointless siege. It was also horrible against nightcapping servers who had tier 3 keeps with WP in every map and could defend them easily during the day.

• new system – you get 1 WP in every BL map if you capture that specific keep. Does not require upgrades. Yes, I do prefer this as it does not allow one server dominate over every map as easily.

X T D.6458:

This will be a nice change, I also hope there will be more uses for them and since they will become account bound, will they be part of the wallet currency as well. For those like me that have all their toons leveled and have elite specs fully unlocked, it would be nice to have something else to spend them on aside from siege.

Me too.

This is complicated issue and not only about solo roaming. If implemented properly rewards based on players on both sides could help to avoid forming zergs and running around in big blobs only.

However, even the technical aspects can be challenging. For example, what is “near by”? If your large allies group draw away half the enemy group and fight them behind the wall, while you kill some solo enemies, is that solo fight or was it part of larger battle?

There is also problem that once your allies “reduce” rewards you potentially gain, you may start to actively hush away allied players. It is easy to forget in GW2, where even in PvE anyone running by can help you fight monsters, there is still pile of games using mob-tagging and in those games all other players are to be avoided.

The fact that they don’t show damage circles is a bug. It looks like a bug. Feels like a bug. Weird that it has not been fixed.

We should not have to complain about it, it should have been fixed a long time ago.

joneirikb.7506:

“Real WvW” is the minority. If we had a voting system for servers vs megaserver system with everyone that plays the game, I would be very surprised if the player base selected servers.

It is minority because EotM exists. If you ask players to choose between dumb karma training system, easy loots and loads of xp for doing nothing and fun, interesting, exciting fights that basically give you no rewards, many players pick first option. Because they are lazy.

Because of EotM many players think that is how WvW works. They think farming loot and xp in EotM is what EVRYONE does. Of course they would be upset if that would become less profitable, but it still has to be done if we want any future for WvW.

You can not post anything about hacking in forum, mods will remove it. Use report botting in game, record the video and post in in youtube and reddit.

Yes, WvW guild upgrades should be available from within WvW. Same way HoT should not have wiped away all guild upgrades. But reason for guild/scribing requires so much grind in HoT PvE maps is simple – Anet needs players in those PvE maps, these maps are dead boring without enough players doing the meta.

I never really liked to play Revenant. I did play it for some time when they ruled the WvW group fights with Coalescence of Ruin but it got nerfed eventually. The best build for PvE I had most fun with was pure condi rev – all condi equipment, Mace+Axe, Demon Stance.

For PvE Ranger is still easiest I think. I played my Ranger mostly as condi too (dunno why I have 2 condi builds here, usually I avoid condi builds…) with Axe+Torch and Traps. If you got Druid unlocked, its interesting but nothing in PvE requires so much healing.

Danikat.8537:

I know Anet don’t sit and read everything people write in guild chat to decide if it’s acceptable. What I’m wondering is: If someone was reported for verbal abuse for something they said in guild chat would Anet respond the same way as if it was in say or map chat, or do they take the approach that it’s up to the guild to decide what’s acceptable and to enforce that?

Unless Anet decides to respond here we can only guess.

My guess is, it does not matter which channel the verbal abuse is happening. They have to monitor somehow them all in case someone goes crazy and starts to promote terrorists or sexual abuse or racism. But I doubt they will actually look through the logs until another player reports the chat first.

Zephyra.4709:

Long text

Even you, who try to defend EotM can not provide any reason for it to exist. Yes, there was once many players waiting in queues. There is none now. Yes it was suppose to be testing ground. That never happened.

So, what is the reason we have EotM?

I am not really “hating” it. I have been there maybe 3 times, spent most of the time trying to get into same instance with the rest of the guild and then fell off the cliff. I do however think that rewards, being in whatever form – xp, loot, wvw titles – should only be awarded for playing in real WvW against other servers. You can not farm them as easily in real matches, so having same rewards in EotM makes everything feel cheap and pointless. If it would provide different rewards, different loots, xp and no wvw xp, I would not care. It would be another thing I would never want to go again. Like PvE raid. Or dungeon.

But as long you can farm your WvW items in EotM, it will continue to suck players away from actual WvW, making servers even emptier and matches even more boring.

Its not very likely as long servers have hugely different populations.

Simply remove 3 color system from EotM and only leave NPCs to fight. The people who love EotM will love it even more because there wont be any annoying enemy players around and so the loot/xp gain per minute gets even higher. EotM as pure PvE map makes perfect sense, calling it part of WvW is silly.

Or just remove it so all the karma trains move to Silvewaste. Again, its about PvE players running around in mindless blob, does not matter which map they on or who they “fight”.

Not that I think current system is very good, but I strongly believe scoring should be as simple as possible. If the possible points from any event require some lengthy calculation, not many players bother with it in the end. Points depending on which map you in, how long something has been owned, what time it is, how many enemies are around, all these basically just make the scoring more confusing.

Cerby.1069:

-Grow the stuff! As the objective upgrades it gives access to nodes! So right off the bat after you take something there are no nodes to farm! Nothing to worry about! As it upgrades though nodes and stuff to farm appears! This encourages people to ‘visit’ stuff they otherwise ‘wouldnt’ bother visiting (recall the old upgrade system?) creating a sense of population and presence on the maps.

I think that is good idea. It would solve the problem of half your group always running into nodes after capture and other half has to wait for them, wasting time that would be better spent on running to next fight.

We should remember why nodes were created in WvW first place – players kept complaining how WvW is such a huge money sink and to earn any gold you have to play PvE for hours. Well, gathering nodes give you stuff without requiring to leave WvW.

Durzlla.6295:

So, I’m hardly a hardcore WvW player, and I was actually a pretty big fan of most of the desert borderland and HoT changes, but I’m very clearly in the minority of this.

So I was just wondering why you, actual WvWers, like the Alpine Borderlands so much more than the Desert Borderland.

Basically, WvW is boring as hell when there is no enemy to fight. A lot of servers were slowly dying away months before HoT release but people stayed around because HoT was going to change many things anway so there was chance things will get better.

Now the HoT got released and all WvW guilds lost their upgrades. To get upgrades back, all the guild memebrs had to grind in new PvE maps for several months. This meant the time they were wasting in PvE they did not go to WvW. So WvW was empty.

Of course the major WvW problems that were actually causing it to die were not solved with HoT – population balance, nightcapping, scoring etc.

Empty WvW with much less players then before meant pretty much everyone left was able to join one single map now – EB. So the BL maps were left even more empty and boring. There was no enemies so there was no reason to go into BL so many players never bothered to learn those maps. Instead, they simply decided new BL maps were the cause WvW had less players now. WvW players did not “like” Alpine maps, the maps itself were bad too, they just like to fight enemies and because they remember fighting enemies before the HoT they think bringing old maps back will magically bring all the players back too.

Again, most people hanging on these forums are not even playing the game anymore. People who play the game, and enjoy it, have no reason to post in the forum. So, after the current maps are replaced, again, there will be many players who enjoyed current maps, get upset and come to forum to post angrily about this change. So it has to be changed back because “everyone hates Alpine maps”. And the circle continues.

X T D.6458:

Problem is anet dug themselves into a corner with the gimmicky garbage because its part of guild upgrades. Basically removing them gets rid of nearly all the effort devoted to unlocking those items in the guild hall, and wastes peoples time/gold/materials. Nerfing them to the point of being unusable makes it pointless to ever bother with them and leaves a bunch of useless items guilds wont bother trying to unlock, and for those that already have them unlocked/stored up they essentially become worthless.

Exactly.

I will start from even further. When they designed PvE maps for HoT, whole content requires A LOT of players swarming into those maps, completely different from all the old Tyria maps where you can wonder around solo and do whatever you like whenever you like. So, success of HoT and how much players can do on those new PvE maps demands the players to be present there, all the time, every day. What they noticed was that large part of playerbase was sitting whole day in the WvW maps instead, contributing nothing to the success of PvE maps of HoT.

So, the solution was to force WvW players into new PvE HoT maps by stripping away all the guild upgrades and making WvW guilds grind for specific materials in specific PvE maps to get upgrades back. For now, many guilds have done that already. I very much doubt they will be happy to basically lose everything again within 6 months.

There will be obviously demands for compensation for huge scribing costs, some guilds have thrown tons of gold and mats into scribing to get better in WvW. If the scribing becomes much easier and cheaper, these guilds should get the wasted mats/gold back.

Same way, if all the guild upgrades get removed/nerfed, there should be compensation for the players who have already unlocked these. Even when guild upgrades were overpowered and badly designed, players still had to unlock them by pouring gold away and wasting time in PvE grind.

Don’t be silly, many PvE people left after HoT too because the HoT PvE maps are unplayable solo, mobs are stupidly strong and all the map metas require playing several hours at certain timeframe. The stupid whining youtubers are the reason Anet decided to add PvE raids that nobody plays and mess up new PvE maps with extra “difficulty” so most players avoid those.

All the game that you bought in 2014 is still there and can be played without HoT expansion. Specially old PvE maps are very much playable. There could be some problems in competitive modes like PvP and WvW since HoT-owners have access to elite specs and some HoT-specific items.

vier.1327:

What do tou think about factions?

3 Servers -> 1Faction.

Low +mid +High population -> 1Faction.

The server pride is the same, you are playing with the same people. Maybe, the lenguage….like what happen in Baruch Bay, that is the only Spanish server.

I would prefer all servers having high population. If they don’t fix population problems there won’t be any point in WvW.

The Ventari Ele.5812:

Apart from everything, the one most crucial update this game as a whole needs is to finally have DX11 support!

How will DX11 fix any WvW problems?

Obviously there can’t ever be “exact” old versions of alpine Bl maps. Too many things have changed already beside the actual map. I can understand why some people do not enjoy desert maps but seriously, even if they replace the maps, there will be alpine maps WITH everything HoT added/changed/replaced. You may not actually like how it turns out.

Same way, there will never be “good old” stability system. So much non-WvW stuff has changed, they can not put it back the way it was because whole game around WvW has changed.

Perhaps you should also consider what might happen in the future. Suppose Anet creates and releases really great content, for example LS3, and many-many people who have left the game, plus all the new players, all come and start to play it again. And, Anet also fixes some of the problems with WvW, so many-many players now want to play WvW again. If the number of servers have been reduced to fit current small population, more WvW players means there will be endless queues and people can not even log into WvW anymore. Even if this sounds impossible atm, the good system should be able to adapt to all kind of situations.

Guild upgrades are not related to the specific map.

You have to start WvW redesign from even further away – from the very basics of scoring and points and match system. Basically deciding if WvW is place for players to fight each other as mass-PvP or not.

-If you scrap the silly 24 h PPT system you can design much better WvW.
-Points per Capture for example creates completely different gamemode where effects of timezones are greatly reduced.
-You can even avoid all objectives-based points and just increase score from kills.
-Or you can reduce the time WvW is available, for example if WvW will be open for 1 hour only every 6 hours and scores are increased once after the open-hour ends.
-Or you could scrap the static 4-maps system which is horrible for finding an enemy and replace it with dynamic maps based on number players currently logging into WvW.
-Or you could change the number of servers fighting in the matchup, so there wont be only 3 servers but 6 or 9.

joneirikb.7506:

@ FogLeg.9354

I’m an advocate for the Dynamic Map Adjustment myself, but it will not solve everything relating to Population, it is a temp stop-gap measure while they fix other things in the background (that likely will work well with most anything they do decide to do).

One problem is that most lower tier servers are never going to see more than 1 map, ever. My own server can’t queue a single map even on reset, so unless we’re severely outnumbered by an opponent, we would never see another map than EBG for example.

It does have the advantage of also scaling things like PPT to the number of people by adjusting the number of maps. And the biggest advantage is to focus what player remain into a single map, so there is a chance to meet enemies and fight (hopefully).

Yes, I agree.

Do you think it is huge problem if lower tier servers are fighting on single map? I mean very few players go to WvW to see the maps, they probably go there to have fights, and with less space for enemies to get lost there is better chance of having a fight.

Even then the maps could be rotating so its EBG one week and desert BL next week or even alpine BL. The fact that BL maps favour one team is not really that much of a problem, the lowest population server could have that benefit to play as “home” server or the points for holding objectives could be adjusted for home and non-home servers.

The main reason last servers are empty is because there are no enemies to fight so WvW is pointless and boring. By reducing number of maps the population of all 3 servers is pushed into tigher area meaning finding an enemy is easier and players have more reason to log into WvW.

I don’t see how designing legendary armor would be any different from designing any other armor. It does not HAVE TO include anything special other then that it will be rare and hard to get. For example, they can easily take any armor they have already designed but not released and make it available only for WvW xp/badge/mu result, and its legendary right there.

Again, it does not have to work like legendary weapon COLLECTIONS which take huge effort from designers.

black sun empress.7401:

lemme know what u decide to go with im thinking of upgrading as well. pulling med-high on a 1gb HD7850 (i7-4790kcpu)… lookin at gtx970.. only game i play is gw2 tho.. so not sure if overkill..

You don’t have to buy new GPU just because they are being released. For GW2 HD 7850 is already perfectly capable and upgrading to GTX 970 has no real benefits. I normally suggest upgrading CPU but you already got top CPU too so… Are you actually feeling the game lags a lot? Or you just want to spend some money for no good reason?

Only reason for you to upgrade would be if you want to play some other much newer games that are designed to require much more GPU power or use modern standards (4k, DirectX 12 etc).

One solution instead of merging or deleting servers would be dynamically change number of maps available in each matchup. The problem arise when you have high population servers and low population servers all fighting over same amount of objectives. In high population servers there is too many players gathering into one spot, creating the zerg. In low population servers few remaining players never even see enemy because everyone is spread out over 4 different maps.

So, for low population servers there is no real need for 4 maps, they can barely manage one maps, and thats all. Once you move up to higher tier where single map starts to get crowded and sometimes even queue may appear (go, rank 17! tho I am sure even Blacktide has queue once per week for 10 minutes, doesn’t make their server full of players) there will be new map added to the matchup.

It would make sense for high population servers fight over more maps. Nothing demands exactly 4 maps. If there is enough players in all 3 servers (not just 1 domanating server ofc) they could get to fight in 6 or 8 or 12 maps.

Dynamic map access also solves a lot of problems about low population times. Less players available means they are all fighting over single map even when at prime time when zergs roam around there are more maps to fight over.