Guild Wars 2

Jayne.9251:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Jayne.9251:

Well take a look at the forum and the hundreds of threads about any change. People love this game mode. So much so they are very vocal when things shift. That’s the core base, and, after three years, they’re still quite passionate about this mode.

If you add rewards, you get the constant map agro if things aren’t ktrain, instead of strategy. We saw it during season one. There was a great hope the tourney would bring in fresh blood, but in the end those folks just got their quotas and disappeared, never even bothering to learn the mechanics or be any meaningful contribution to the team.

Yeah they left when there were no more rewards. If WvW stayed rewarding for them a lot more might have stuck around. At that point they are pretty much forced to learn the mechanics and strategies or they become free loot bags for the rest of us. Sounds like a win win to me.

Naw. Those who mindlessly ktrain will continue to mindlessly ktrain without learning the mechanics. There’s an awful lot of lazy players out there who only care about the digital loot tables — which is so bizarre to me, lol, it’s just pixels on a screen. It doesn’t matter how long the rewards are there. We saw it in replicated season two and three for example — same deal, get the quest track rewards, disappear.

And if it did happen it will be a trade off of either become a loot bag or not get a reward. And guess what happens if they’re constantly loot bags and no rewards? They’ll get better? Nope. They’ll head back to pve-land.

Some will, some won’t. As terrible as the tournaments were we did manage to pick up some players during the first 2 and they became WvW regulars.

I’m sure a lot of them will end up being fairweather players who hop into the pug blob when there server is winning and pve’ing when they are losing, but that is one of our main sources of recruits. You get them in the guild, give them some builds and train them, and they will start showing up whether you are winning or losing.

apharma.3741:

The event in the middle may be a collection event but you are still fighting players. Collection events are also nothing new to PvP, ever played spirit watch? Been there for a long time, some like it some don’t but to claim it’s a PvE event because it has an NPC there to dump the shines into is just silly.

I personally like the way shrines work. No longer can you jump into a map with 50 people and golem rush garri, you have to think, take shrines, weaken the fortress and then attack. If map and situational awareness is too much for the “WvW is my whole game” people then I dunno what to say, I guess face rubbing doors has really affected the die hard WvW fans more than we thought.

Also please don’t pretend like the vocal minority here is indicative of the whole population or those you feel WvW is the entire game. I’ve seen many of my friends enjoying these changes and maps who fit into your category. Likewise of my friends list I have roughly 20 people who primarily play WvW. Upon asking most of them why they aren’t there it’s because they’re doing PvE to get guild upgrades, lag in WvW and because the only maps they can get into, the borders, there’s no-one. To clarify a lot of them do not mind the map either.

So out of your list of primary WvW friends none of them are playing it…..

”I don’t mind the new map but I can’t get into EB so I’m just going to pve instead.”

k.

Also, there is a reason why spirit watch is one of the most hated maps and it was never included in ranked.

Jayne.9251:

Well take a look at the forum and the hundreds of threads about any change. People love this game mode. So much so they are very vocal when things shift. That’s the core base, and, after three years, they’re still quite passionate about this mode.

If you add rewards, you get the constant map agro if things aren’t ktrain, instead of strategy. We saw it during season one. There was a great hope the tourney would bring in fresh blood, but in the end those folks just got their quotas and disappeared, never even bothering to learn the mechanics or be any meaningful contribution to the team.

Yeah they left when there were no more rewards. If WvW stayed rewarding for them a lot more might have stuck around. At that point they are pretty much forced to learn the mechanics and strategies or they become free loot bags for the rest of us. Sounds like a win win to me.

apharma.3741:

I asked my friend why she didn’t like the new borderland, this was her response: “Too much PvE”

I then pointed out to her there were maybe a few more guards than normal but that hasn’t really changed. I asked where specifically the problem was. She then fell back on the big central oasis event calling it a PvE event.

I then pointed out that if people bothered to give the maps a try she would be fighting players in that event not dinosaurs.

The problem is in some part the players stigmatising the new maps and shooting down anyone who likes it. The other problem to me is WvW is end game content. I play it when I’m done with everything else and between guild upgrades, achievements, mapping, soon new legendary journeys, raids and all these new stat combos, which require grind for, I don’t have the time for the same stale boring servers that run from fights even before HoT.

This is a player driven problem.

Too much pve doesn’t mean the number of npc’s on the map. It means how much the game is affected by the pve gimmicks.

If you run a collection event in the center of the map you simultaneously attack every structure on the map.

The shrines offer ridiculous buffs around keeps that discourage fighting.

You have invisible zergs in sand storms. You have walls shooting you and burning you. You have constant cripple and random earth barricades popping out of the ground. The map randomly knocks you off of cliffs.

WvW isn’t my ”endgame”, it’s my entire game. I have a lot of characters with 0 map completion because I leveled them through pvp and solo roaming. I play this game to fight other players, not the environment.

You seem to enjoy it because you like pve, but a lot of us don’t. Adding an oversized dungeon map as the bl’s alienates players like me, but at the same time it’s not enough to entice pure pve players into the game mode.

That’s why it fails. It’s driving away players on the far sides of the spectrum and the only players that are ”okay” with the map are people like you who are more middle ground. But the middle ground people were already playing both game modes, so the map is just driving people away without bringing anyone new in.

Zanther Deathbringer.4762:

Mitz.5741:

Xillllix.3485:

The lack of players is due in great part to the server system, the old Alpine maps were also empty before the update. Even if they did added waypoint to the new map there is not enough players around to fill them.

Excuse me whaaaaaaat ?

I had plenty of players to fight in the old borders, even in the last week before HoT !

And im in T9 EU

I fought like…3-4 guys TOTAL in the new borders (yeah, total…as in, since HoT came out)

The server system is not the problem here !
Its the completly automated upgrades and no WP’s in the side keeps that are hurting us the most ! Both of which are really easy to fix (hell, just slapping an “Upgrade” button on the quartermasters that a player has to press for the tower/keep/camp to upgrade would be enough)

Thats a lie. I say so because on t1, even months before HoT, the BL were empty 90% of the time on the weekdays aside from the random zergblob ktrain from whichever server was bored. The problem is theres to many servers, plain and simple.

How can you say that’s a lie when you weren’t with him? Hell you weren’t even in the same tier.

Xillllix.3485:

Timelord.8190:

The new map sucks. That’s the reason there arent alot players on them. This should be clear for most people.

I completely disagree with that. The new map is fine minus a lack of waypoints. It needs waypoints in towers as soon as you cap them.

The problems are core WvW problems that have been there WAY before the release of HoT.

WP’s in the towers as soon as you cap them!? That suggestion is just….. horrible.

Having WP’s in the keeps that players had to spend hours building made them valuable. The majority of the fights on the Alpine bl revolved around attacking and defending those wp’s. Even taking camps and sniping dolyaks was an indirect way of attacking those wp’s because you were starving the keeps supply and preventing them from being built or making the keeps a little more vulnerable by denying them supply for siege and repairs.

By removing the WP’s entirely or just handing them to the server as soon as they flip a structure they remove their value , and they remove the motivation to attack or defend them.

Forgot to mention. The shrines in the desert bl would need to be removed. Their effects discourage fighting.

Xillllix.3485:

Chaba.5410:

Xillllix.3485:

Quote from the review:
“There’s also a sprawling, beautiful new world-versus-world battleground called the Desert Borderlands that grants powerful bonuses for holding keeps, but two weeks on, there were never enough people playing it for me to truly see it in action. "

Even IGN recognizes the outdated WvW server system that leaves us with 3 empty copies of the new map (which we all agree is beautiful).

I see nothing in that IGN quote about the server system, only about lack of players. Come on. There’s a lot of problems regarding WvW right now and they need good discussion, not weird logic.

The lack of players is due in great part to the server system, the old Alpine maps were also empty before the update. Even if they did added waypoint to the new map there is not enough players around to fill them.

I spent 90% of my WvW time on the alpine map, usually on my bronze league account. It was never empty.
Sometimes it was hard to get players off of the wall after killing them a few times and they would only respond with 6+ players if I was solo, 10+ if I had 1 or 2 with me, etc.

In those situations I would take advantage of the well thought out map and mechanics. I would keep camps flipped to prevent upgrades, or I might set up a treb in a tower to force them out of the keep.
Either way there was always someone to fight and people were motivated to come and defend their structures. Not like now.

Nedus.6952:

With merged servers/alliances any sense of server community/identity etc would go into the toilet. Not to mention that apart for some bottom rank servers merging servers is simply impossible due to too big populations.

And btw i can’t believe that after all the hell left behind by the WvW mechanics changes you consider this useless thing as the “first step to fix WvW”. Dem priorities.

Have to agree with this. The only thing that mergers would do is destroy a lot of communities, create longer prime time queues on EB and drive a lot of other players away.

What you are looking for already exists in the form of eotm and the majority of the WvW community agrees that eotm was a complete failure.

RlyOsim.2497:

The auto-upgrades are a really poor design decision, just makes the maps a ‘zerg or go home’ place. Extremely frustrating as a roamer/havok player, I mean, why even bother going to the bl’s to spend 40 minutes flipping 2 towers (with zero resistance)? Nonsense.

Possible fix:
3 players must press a button/pull a lever in the objective in order to start an upgrade.

Wait…. what? That’s the weirdest solution for this problem that I have heard so far… Who would that benefit?

20% across the board. Starting at 0 is pretty rough.

Diku.2546:

Jack of all Trades…Master of None.

Too many game modes…I would prefer that they don’t do another game mode.

WvW will bleed even more troops to this game mode imho.

I still want to WvW & think ANet needs to fix the Base Map Mechanic for WvW.

---

If ANet does take your suggestion & creates a new game mode…will you next ask for the Old Alpine Maps back for the WvW game mode?

---

I liked the Old Alpine Maps…but ANet is trying to move us forward on a new map that needs to integrate with all the new game mechanics. Using the old maps will lock us into developing on that map into the foreseeable future.

New maps aren’t really liked at the moment….but I think once a critical mass of WvW players fills it…then the fun will begin. Also, the jumping puzzles…I’m not a huge fan of it…will get learned or not…the newer PvE players that come & join WvW will have these skills…so over time…the old Veterans of WvW will get replaced by PvE players that grew up on it…sorry for that rant…I’m an old Veteran of WvW…and lately it’s been a hard pill to swallow…but I think I’ll adjust.

I’m pretty sure I said it somewhere in this thread already, but yeah, they should return the alpine map and use the desert one for the new game mode.

The desert map isn’t a bad map but it is a bad map for WvWs.
In the “War” game mode the population won’t be spread out across 4 maps, the scoring promotes fighting but also encourages players to spread out on the map so there would still be skirmishing fights.

I understand your concern that this would split the player base but I think by putting this in place of eotm you would be returning a lot of those players back into WvW. If they made WvW more rewarding than this game mode I bet the pug blob would grow pretty fast.

joneirikb.7506:

Wolfric.9380:

What about this?

No more home map. Two maps (alpine + desert) with three starting points each.
So ist not 3 Maps per Server its two and these are diffrent.

Both maps exist. A small redesign seting a new start point at the top, one less selection bar and off we go. Ranking deside start positions on the two maps.

Effect more players on one map, both maps used.

Do like, been advocating this for a while. But must agree that it is off-topic :p

Jim Hunter.6821:

That would require completely redesigning both maps. It took 3 years to get the numbers tweaked on WvW achievements, how long do you think it would take to redesign 2 maps?

That’s why I suggested this game mode should be a 2 way fight instead of 3 way. Start the teams in the southern corners and no one ends up with the home field advantage. No redesign required.

To be fair, the main change needed would be either eliminating the advantages of citadel (mostly services) or share those with the other starting positions. Place red in north so they get the “advantage” since most of the time they’re the weakest team (all modes).

Dawdler.8521:

No redesign required, except well, you know, the entire code base for WvW, the matchup system and it would also rebalance all WvW maps from scratch including EoTM.

Anet has several ways forward but I seriously doubt they would ever consider such an option. Then again they have a tendancy to throw curveballs at us. Wouldnt surprise me the slightest if they announce the complete closure of WvW next week, EoTM and desert will run alternating 3 hour 3 way instanced matchups from now on.

I have no idea how much work it would be to change the internal work code for WvW, but I’m not sure if they even need to change it, save reduce the number of maps by one. They could probably just rename “Red Home Borderland” to “Desert” and nobody would notice the difference.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I already said this isn’t a replacement for WvW. This game mode would be a replacement for eotm.
WvW should have the alpine map returned and the new map should be used for the “War” game mode.

It will basically be the hotjoin version of WvW, that should end up working better than eotm currently does since the sides will be better balanced. If they balance PPK and rewards well enough it will promote fighting over karma training.

Maybe make each player kill worth 3 points (5 if stomped), 5 points for camps, 10 for towers, 25 for keeps. Give bags for player kills but increase the odds on getting gold/exotic/ascended drops. Reward players with tricks, traps, or siege from camps towers and keeps. The bonus for winning could be something simple like a chunk of wxp. Ideally they will add reward tracks to WvW and this could benefit from the reward track as well.

I think some of this sounds fun, and something I’d love to try. I’m not sold on making it red vs blue, and think this could work just as well with 3 teams as we have it now. I like the way you suggest the points work, as it would actively discourage zerging for one thing, and work best if people split up and take multiple thing (and fights). Though, I don’t see any reason or reward to defending, is this intentional wit this being a “hot-join” ?

If you kept it 3 side, with the same rules for joining etc, you could cycle all the existing maps with no problems (ebg, eotm, alpine, desert).

I honestly can’t say how important defending would end up being. I think it would depend on how the meta evolved. You might end up seeing small groups running to the enemy side to harass the groups they have over there attacking structures. I doubt anyone would try to push a structure that you had already capped and were actively defending from the inside due to the short time limit for the games. But you also couldn’t just camp 1 person in every structure without sacrificing bodies on the field, this is the advantage of having a game mode with relatively equal numbers.

A solution to this could be to add points for every structure your team has at the end of the game instead of rewarding the points when you flip them. Or possibly keep the points per flip and add bonus points for what you hold at the end.

I’m also thinking the skysplitter might need to be manually fired at one target at a time so that players fight over it instead of just letting the other team open the doors for them and capping whatever they can.

As far as making it a 3 way fight instead of 2 teams…… it still just seems like the desert map design doesn’t give the same fair chance to all 3 sides.

3 teams might work on the eotm map but I think the 3rd keep would be the perfect place to put the flag. At the start of the match you would likely have some small groups trying to snag structures for points, some running to the enemy side to try and slow them down, and probably 2 or 3 fights at the flag keep. The fights would be centered around where each team is trying to break in. And the 3rd keep is far enough away from each teams spawn that dying would have a huge impact on the match.

Honestly they both take so long that I don’t take that into consideration when hitting something.

If I’m solo or with a couple people I’m going to cata so I don’t have to deal with oil/cannons/guards.

If the gate is low from the dino laser I’ll hit a gate.

If I can hit multiple walls with 1 cata I’ll do that.

Cata is usually the way to go unless you have a good sized group that can bomb walls and prevent anyone from getting in, but I generally just play it by ear.

MasterD.4790:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Edited the opening post to include more info. Would love to hear suggestions or arguments as to why this wouldn’t work.

I’ll throw one out there…..how do you handle people leaving? The idea works well on capping people going in, but what happens when 20 people log out of the red team? Does it boot 15 people from the blue team? If so what criteria do you use to choose who gets booted or who doesn’t? If you don’t boot people then you still have an overstacking situation that will happen…

Jim Hunter.6821:

So say red and blue have 30 players each, then blue has 10 log off, this means no one can join red until blue gets back up to 26, at that point red will have 1 open spot and blue will still have 9 spots.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Dawdler.8521:

albotelho.2931:

No more population inbalance, nightcappting would be more balanced too… and we would have 24 hours of action. At least it is my first impression did not thought a lot of possible drawbacks.

Haha no. None of your ideas would work. There is no way entire EU or NA would fit on 4 maps. It would also do nothing against nightcapping. Instead of a server being stacked, a color will be stacked – which already happen in EOTM where certain servers dominate coverage.

That’s why I suggested the flexible player cap and the relatively short matches. There would be no reasonable way to stack 1 side.
The only way you could would be to coordinate 2 large groups to queue up together, hope they get the same instance, and then have 1 of the groups instantly quit, sacrificing all rewards for themselves so that the remaining group could PvD for an hour.
Not saying it would never happen but it seems unlikely that anyone would go through the trouble, especially since once the first group leaves there is nothing to stop another group from taking their place and rebalancing the sides.

Rell.8395:

princode.2750:

if u still cant kill a druid 2 v 1…its must be a l2p issue….druid before nerf they are kitten OP but now they are tanky but killable

Lol. This is the worst argument ever given. You think only I can “l2p” and the druid can’t? By using sword as a weapon they get 2 evades along with their vigor buffs plus sigils they can practically dodge any amount of “cc” you throw at them. Just because they’ve very few stun break choices doesn’t mean they’re susceptible to stun because by default GW2 gives everybody the ability to dodge cc’s. It doesn’t help that most hard cc’s have their own cast times and animations which makes it even worse. It’s not a learn to play issue, it’s a kittenin kittened design issue.

And the issues I brought up were not 2v1 or 1v1 issues but team fights 3v3 2v3 up to 5v5. Druids simply brought unbalanced mechanics that require a druid on opposite team to compete due to the share amount of healing they bring. The worst case I’ve ever seen was 2 druids + a thief on a conquest point. There’s literally no way to contest even with 5 people because the 2 druids keep each other alive along with thief. Thief goes in and out as he pleases while dealing damage. If your team doesn’t have a druid for the sustain, you’re toast! And don’t say, just switch to another conquest point, well Mr captain obvious, they’re going to switch to another conquest point too!!!

If they have 2 druids on 1 point why are you throwing your whole team at 2 bunkers instead of taking the other points?

I’ve full capped points in numerous games that had a druid on them by forcing them off point and cc’ing them to keep them off until I could get the cap. If I couldn’t kill them once the point was capped I would just jump around on point, and maybe throw in a shrug or 2, because they didn’t have the damage to kill me and take it back.

They make such mediocre bunkers with all the cc’s that DH’s, chrono’s and pretty much everyone is throwing around.

Edited the opening post to include more info. Would love to hear suggestions or arguments as to why this wouldn’t work.

briggah.7910:

Swift.1930:

briggah.7910:

I’m still waiting for all the f2p account spies to take over wvw and populate the maps.. When f2p was announced people said it was the end of wvw because 1000 of spies would impact the scores.

:P

I mean… easy fix (theoretically) – take F2P out of WvW. Make them pay for such (previously) epic content! Or let them only go into Edge of the Mists. One or the other.

The point was it didn’t happen yet the rage in the forums about f2p did happen.

I actually did notice an increase of spies and trolls but I had no way of knowing if they were f2p accounts or just people using the alt accounts they already had for that purpose.

DeWolfe.2174:

Jim Hunter.6821:

I already said this isn’t a replacement for WvW. This game mode would be a replacement for eotm.

And for those that genuinely like EotM? Especially those that like EotM and dislike the new desert map??? So how about no and no and then maybe another no.

You like eotm?….. gross….

I did already address that though.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m not suggesting this as a replacement for WvW, just as another game mode to make use of the map. I’d suggest removing eotm, reworking that map a bit and then adding it in with this one in the “War” game mode. Let people queue up for both maps, or select them individually if they prefer.

Eotm can be added back into it. The rework could be something as simple as disabling the WP in the 3rd keep and adding something there that makes it valuable to fight over. Maybe make that map a large scale capture the flag map and you have to grab the flag from the 3rd keep and return it to your home keep.

That would be a thousand times better than the karma train that has been occurring on that map since its release.

Jayne.9251:

Yes but nobody seems to be listening when people respond and say the maps are empty because people are doing other things, and to wait a bit to see the full effect.

It could very well be that the new maps cause a permanent mass exodus. But one week after launch of an expansion I think is too early to claim utter failure.

In the meantime, look for bugs, things you’d like to change/could live with if tweaked (assuming the new maps are here to stay) and add to the dialogue.

Well then this would be the perfect way to prove that the new bl isn’t a failure and people are too busy right now for WvW right?

I mean why would anyone give up on their PvE grind to play the old bl that they have already spent countless hours on, when they won’t give it up to check out the shiny new bl?

Firelysm.4967:

They should make F2 smoke field, swap skills around done, damage of assault was already nerfed to the ground, why would one need to nerf that even further…

Because ranger

Dawdler.8521:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Wolfric.9380:

What about this?

No more home map. Two maps (alpine + desert) with three starting points each.
So ist not 3 Maps per Server its two and these are diffrent.

Both maps exist. A small redesign seting a new start point at the top, one less selection bar and off we go. Ranking deside start positions on the two maps.

Effect more players on one map, both maps used.

That would require completely redesigning both maps. It took 3 years to get the numbers tweaked on WvW achievements, how long do you think it would take to redesign 2 maps?

That’s why I suggested this game mode should be a 2 way fight instead of 3 way. Start the teams in the southern corners and no one ends up with the home field advantage. No redesign required.

No redesign required, except well, you know, the entire code base for WvW, the matchup system and it would also rebalance all WvW maps from scratch including EoTM.

Anet has several ways forward but I seriously doubt they would ever consider such an option. Then again they have a tendancy to throw curveballs at us. Wouldnt surprise me the slightest if they announce the complete closure of WvW next week, EoTM and desert will run alternating 3 hour 3 way instanced matchups from now on.

I already said this isn’t a replacement for WvW. This game mode would be a replacement for eotm.
WvW should have the alpine map returned and the new map should be used for the “War” game mode.

It will basically be the hotjoin version of WvW, that should end up working better than eotm currently does since the sides will be better balanced. If they balance PPK and rewards well enough it will promote fighting over karma training.

Maybe make each player kill worth 3 points (5 if stomped), 5 points for camps, 10 for towers, 25 for keeps. Give bags for player kills but increase the odds on getting gold/exotic/ascended drops. Reward players with tricks, traps, or siege from camps towers and keeps. The bonus for winning could be something simple like a chunk of wxp. Ideally they will add reward tracks to WvW and this could benefit from the reward track as well.

CooloutAC.3451:

Jim Hunter.6821:

I can give 1 example that supports the argument that it’s p2w..

Ranger pets are the profession mechanic, they have nothing to do with druid. In pvp rangers are supposed to have access to all of their pets, including the GW1 HoM pets, to keep the playing field level.

In HoT the dev’s created new pets whose abilities allow them to work around the broken AI and land their hits. They are simply better pets because of this and anet locked them behind a pay wall.

You can argue the elite specs are simply a different way to play, but preventing rangers from having full access to their profession mechanic unless they pay money is p2w.

Its funny you should say that, my ranger has had me wondering the same thing. In fact i posted a bug report this week on website in game, asking why i can’t select the tiger or smokescale pet, not realizing they are only for hot.(smokescale is now most popular and i wanted to try tiger for the fury buff) and I also complained that my pets were not always attacking even when full health and right next to enemy when pressing f1. Also that Juvenile tiger pet says its amphibious lol, I thought my account was bugged .

Now i realize, after a guildy finally told me, its I need HOT, wow. No wonder I didn’t get a reply back on my bug report lmao.

Also, its easy to argue gw2 is now p2w, when the dominating toons by far now are DH guardian, revenant, and reaper necro when played by decent players. To say that we just need to learn how to play against them is a far stretch. I love when people tell me that i shouldn’t step into the guardian traps, as if its something I needed to be told lol. Hopefully they get balanced. out.

Besides thinking my ranger was hacked and bugged (ignorantly), I’m also a little disappointing i can’t use the rune of ogre on my warrior anymore. It seems since they had to remove a rune druids were using, they removed similar ones other toons commonly use too so the druid users dont’ feel bad… I think thats wrong.

I still enjoy playing my ranger and warrior. I just now use a straight meta builds from metabattle.com, instead of the unique builds i once used. Want to make a necro but think it will be kitten compared to reaper. But that being said, I’m still having alot of fun in the game and having good matches.

I am 100% convinced they removed the ogre and pirate rune because the summoned pet would trigger DH traps and help mitigate the damage from a rev’s UA.
They have to make sure their new and shiny specs are OP compared to the base class so people will buy HoT.

Wolfric.9380:

What about this?

No more home map. Two maps (alpine + desert) with three starting points each.
So ist not 3 Maps per Server its two and these are diffrent.

Both maps exist. A small redesign seting a new start point at the top, one less selection bar and off we go. Ranking deside start positions on the two maps.

Effect more players on one map, both maps used.

That would require completely redesigning both maps. It took 3 years to get the numbers tweaked on WvW achievements, how long do you think it would take to redesign 2 maps?

That’s why I suggested this game mode should be a 2 way fight instead of 3 way. Start the teams in the southern corners and no one ends up with the home field advantage. No redesign required.

Dawdler.8521:

Jim Hunter.6821:

That’s why I suggested the flexible player cap

GW2 lag apart with current caps. Theres no way the engine will ever support more unless they replace it.

I also said red vs blue, up to a hundred per side and see how the server handles it. With only 2 sides instead of 3 that should be less players on the map than the current pop cap allows.

If they remove the barricades and have the dino event run every match there should be a good amount of open field fighting in the center of the map.
As terrible as the dino event is for WvW, it wouldn’t be bad in this mode since the sides would be relatively even.

albotelho.2931:

Dawdler.8521:

albotelho.2931:

No more population inbalance, nightcappting would be more balanced too… and we would have 24 hours of action. At least it is my first impression did not thought a lot of possible drawbacks.

Haha no. None of your ideas would work. There is no way entire EU or NA would fit on 4 maps. It would also do nothing against nightcapping. Instead of a server being stacked, a color will be stacked – which already happen in EOTM where certain servers dominate coverage.

Maybe… so create more than 1 match… keep the tiers and merge some servers… I dont know… but something must change. There is no way we need 8 tiers now, 3 tiers may be enough.

This isn’t a “merge the tiers” thread. There are plenty of those on the forum, let’s try to stay on topic.

Dawdler.8521:

albotelho.2931:

No more population inbalance, nightcappting would be more balanced too… and we would have 24 hours of action. At least it is my first impression did not thought a lot of possible drawbacks.

Haha no. None of your ideas would work. There is no way entire EU or NA would fit on 4 maps. It would also do nothing against nightcapping. Instead of a server being stacked, a color will be stacked – which already happen in EOTM where certain servers dominate coverage.

That’s why I suggested the flexible player cap and the relatively short matches. There would be no reasonable way to stack 1 side.
The only way you could would be to coordinate 2 large groups to queue up together, hope they get the same instance, and then have 1 of the groups instantly quit, sacrificing all rewards for themselves so that the remaining group could PvD for an hour.
Not saying it would never happen but it seems unlikely that anyone would go through the trouble, especially since once the first group leaves there is nothing to stop another group from taking their place and rebalancing the sides.

zinkz.7045:

Catalin.5341:

So saying that WvW is dead because there are a lot of complains here…

Who says that?

WvW is dead due to the level of activity, the reason being as a game mode it is not functional, the basic idea of “winning” a matchup by playing for points is considered so broken due to poor design that means PvDoor > than actual fights in supposed mass scale PvP with “epic battles” by many players that it basically is ignored.

Now the problem has existed for a long time, HoT has just made it worse with the new mechanisms like auto upgrades, to the point it has even tipped many of the few players who still played for PPT and enjoyed things like scouting / upgrading over the edge.

You also have the reality that some players were deluding themselves that WvW would come alive again with the release of HoT, that the all-time-low the population had reached in the months prior to HoT would go away once HoT came out and people / guilds came back, guess what, there isn’t a huge swathe of people coming back, games rarely get a second chance, especially when essentially none of the real problems with the mode have been addressed.

WvW is done, people will go try Warhammer 40k Eternal Crusade, Crowfall, CU, etc when they release.

I know a lot of people who did decide to take a break the last few months, saying they were bored and would be back once they had a new map and new skills.. Then after the expansion hit they tried out the new map, said it was terrible and either quit WvW or just pretty much quit the game.

I’m not suggesting this as a replacement for WvW, just as another game mode to make use of the map. I’d suggest removing eotm, reworking that map a bit and then adding it in with this one in the “War” game mode. Let people queue up for both maps, or select them individually if they prefer.

This idea is not a replacement for WvW, this is an idea for a game mode to replace eotm that utilizes the desert map

Remove the desert map from the bl and stick it in its own megaserver instance as a new game mode.
Call it ”War”, ” Thunderdome”, or whatever you want, but make it a red vs blue game mode that you can instantly join.

Score will be based on capturing objectives and ppk, no ppt. Have it reset once every 60 min.

When you join you are immediately assigned to a team. If you really want to join 1 specific color team to play alongside a friend you can queue up for it, but to keep things fair the game will never allow you to join a team if they have 5 more players than the other team.

So say red and blue have 30 players each, then blue has 10 log off, this means no one can join red until blue gets back up to 26, at that point red will have 1 open spot and blue will still have 9 spots.

The only changes to the map would be the removal of the northern spawn… Or they could leave it there and make it a neutral zone for selling, repairing, accessing the bank.

I figure let in a hundred per side and see how the servers handle it.

edit:

To make this work Eotm should be temporarily removed for a slight rework. The rework could be something as simple as disabling the WP in the 3rd keep and adding something there that makes it valuable to fight over. Maybe make that map a large scale capture the flag map and you have to grab the flag from the 3rd keep and return it to your home keep.
Once that is done they could either rotate the maps or have them both running and allow you to queue up for whichever game mode you prefer.

Glad to see they are focused on the important problems.

Lord Kuru.3685:

It’s almost too late.

Those who are still playing WvW are, for a large part, the hardcore players; they’re the foundation of server communities. They care about PPT, scouting, sieging, defending, etc. They are the people who make WvW WvW and not EotM.

If these players quit out of frustration, then even if large populations from PvE return to WvW, all they’ll see is karma train.

Honestly how many of those PvE players will stick around when there is no one there to tag for them?

Dawdler.8521:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Dawdler.8521:

Jim Hunter.6821:

You just described why it sucks for roaming.
No one is there upgrading the bl since it’s on auto pilot, and since upgrades require no effort and the towers/keeps are completely disconnected, no one cares to defend.

This means the only way you’ll find a fight is if you just happen to run into each other.

True, but you can still roam. The meaning of it is not always the explicit purpose to disrupt dollys… Sometimes I just run around. Most of the time I cap camps without caring of the strategical value.

But as I said, its boring. Yes, the meaning is diminished, so that means less players and less recaps, which in turn mean less to cap and slower gameplay for everyone. WvW would be 1000x more fun with connected towers keeps and X amount of dollys required per manually triggered upgrade, which would no doubt bring back players and give them work to do.

That’s not roaming, that’s….. I don’t know….. exploring?
I mean that’s like saying you can find a ton of fights on the new bl……. you’ll be fighting PvE mobs or doors, but you’ll technically still be fighting.

To be honest, “exploring” has always been 80% of my roaming… Its been like that on alpine too. Most people are afraid to fight unless they can 5v1 you for a certain kill, lol. There is no need to glorify roaming to high heavens, but yes it definetly does suffer with this new design since there is no reason for anyone, roamers or otherwise, to hold the map caps other than for PPT.

Even if I still can do it, its not going to be very fun in the long run, no. Especially not when I know that the only ones I will meet out there are explorers like me :p

The difference was you could force people to come fight or they would surrender the upgrades they invested hours into.
That’s why it is so important that upgrades need to be manually started and require supply. And that towers and keeps are within treb range of each other.

It goes to the same place all of our hopes and dreams for a better WvW went to….

Rym.1469:

Jim Hunter.6821:

I can give 1 example that supports the argument that it’s p2w..

Ranger pets are the profession mechanic, they have nothing to do with druid. In pvp rangers are supposed to have access to all of their pets, including the GW1 HoM pets, to keep the playing field level.

In HoT the dev’s created new pets whose abilities allow them to work around the broken AI and land their hits. They are simply better pets because of this and anet locked them behind a pay wall.

You can argue the elite specs are simply a different way to play, but preventing rangers from having full access to their profession mechanic unless they pay money is p2w.

Where, besides PvP, would you even use these pets without HoT? You still use cats in PvE.

Where else would I play besides pvp? Pve is atrocious and they killed WvW.

I can give 1 example that supports the argument that it’s p2w..

Ranger pets are the profession mechanic, they have nothing to do with druid. In pvp rangers are supposed to have access to all of their pets, including the GW1 HoM pets, to keep the playing field level.

In HoT the dev’s created new pets whose abilities allow them to work around the broken AI and land their hits. They are simply better pets because of this and anet locked them behind a pay wall.

You can argue the elite specs are simply a different way to play, but preventing rangers from having full access to their profession mechanic unless they pay money is p2w.

Dawdler.8521:

Jim Hunter.6821:

You just described why it sucks for roaming.
No one is there upgrading the bl since it’s on auto pilot, and since upgrades require no effort and the towers/keeps are completely disconnected, no one cares to defend.

This means the only way you’ll find a fight is if you just happen to run into each other.

True, but you can still roam. The meaning of it is not always the explicit purpose to disrupt dollys… Sometimes I just run around. Most of the time I cap camps without caring of the strategical value.

But as I said, its boring. Yes, the meaning is diminished, so that means less players and less recaps, which in turn mean less to cap and slower gameplay for everyone. WvW would be 1000x more fun with connected towers keeps and X amount of dollys required per manually triggered upgrade, which would no doubt bring back players and give them work to do.

That’s not roaming, that’s….. I don’t know….. exploring?
I mean that’s like saying you can find a ton of fights on the new bl……. you’ll be fighting PvE mobs or doors, but you’ll technically still be fighting.

Dawdler.8521:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Torqbow.2839:

The WvWs just need to learn how to actually play a large scale map, not just zerg around in a blob with no consequence.

It sucks for roaming too…..

To be fair, it works OK for roaming. I am actually finding myself drawn to the earth shrines just to get that buff, which is a good thing.

That said… its still boring as all kitten because towers and keeps have no purpose. They dont even draw defenders.

Heres is my 1.5 hours in the middle of primetime, T2 SFR homeborder.
- Run straight out of spawn, die soon after due to running off a cliff
- Get joined by two buddies, so now we are a 3 man on an outmanned border, yay.
- Cap 2-3 camps and about twice the shrines for an hour, spend 50% of the time being lost. See no enemy from either server, or friends for that matter. Ootmanned went away long ago, probably just a border hop.
- finally find another 3 friends by Academy, decides to ram it.
- Spend about 8 minutes being molested by guards.
- Cap it, still not having seen a single enemy… And we just took SFRs border tower of all things.
- Finally, an enemy 10 man zerg! The 3 of us quickly dispatch it and realize it was a single Necro minion master holding some siege
- Cap our own border tower that had been capped since we got there, of course undefended.
- Roam for another half hour capping a few camps. At the end, we finally met 3 enemies and had a 10 seconds fight (they had an upscale).

I had more fun in 20 minutes on the old borders, at least roaming enemy borders gave a sense of danger. People wanted to protect them. Now… They have no purpose.

You just described why it sucks for roaming.
No one is there upgrading the bl since it’s on auto pilot, and since upgrades require no effort and the towers/keeps are completely disconnected, no one cares to defend.

This means the only way you’ll find a fight is if you just happen to run into each other.

Torqbow.2839:

The WvWs just need to learn how to actually play a large scale map, not just zerg around in a blob with no consequence.

It sucks for roaming too…..

Dadnir.5038:

Well, I’m guessing this nerf happen because there is a ranger that was complaining not long ago that these runes were making condi thief OP.

This nerf won’t fix perma stealth condi thieves, it just hurts rangers.

Towers are broken, ranger nerf incoming…

BrickFurious.7169:

Jim Hunter.6821:

we’ve had a lot of great conversations with our players about what they’d love to see from epic large scale PvP combat

What?!…. Where? …. Someone check twitter.

He’s referring to the WvW CDIs we had about a year ago. Which you participated in, so I have no idea why you’re being snarky about it. I’ll refresh your memory:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Scoring-Discussion/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Siege-Troll-Discussion

Those threads are over a year old…. if a handful of posts every couple years is what they consider a discussion then it is no wonder they keep saying they will fix things “soon”.

Players aren’t playing the new map because it has legitimate problems and they don’t enjoy it.
Removing rewards from the map they enjoy to try and force them into playing a map they dislike is a pretty kittenty move. I’m sure I’ll take a hit for saying this but you are an kitten for suggesting it.

shagwell.1349:

back to 100% spvp. goodbye wvw

That’s where I’ve been spending the majority of my time as well.

Halcyon.5340:

Having towers and keeps play battleship with trebuchets promotes bad sportsmanship. Who needs ground troops anymore when your keep can just bombard the crap out of a tower and all of its siege placements/supplies? Trebuchets on the premise of a tower or keep should ONLY be capable of defending.

No it promotes smart play.
It never failed to amaze me how zerglings would be standing around freaking out that a keep was being trebbed from a tower, and I would walk over with a couple people, spike build a bali or ac, and take it out in seconds.

BrickFurious.7169:

Per this interview with Colin that was released today:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/10256/Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-One-Week-In-with-Colin-Johanson.html

That being said, I’d also add one of the goals of Heart of Thorns was to address every major game system to ensure they had all the core components we need for the future of the game. Our goal was to ensure we didn’t really need to tweak any major game system again after this expansion and our focus could be entirely on adding new content, and building on top of – rather than expanding outward systemically. WvW is the one major feature I’d say we didn’t end up accomplishing this goal, the project is so large it didn’t end up fitting into the scope of the expansion and we still have work to do to address core fundamental issues like population balance, rewards, scoring, night capping, etc. As always we don’t discuss features in development until they are far enough along to share meaningful details, so for now we’ll just say WvW is the final big game system on our radar – and we’ve had a lot of great conversations with our players about what they’d love to see from epic large scale PvP combat.

And per John Corpening’s statement two months ago:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Invitational-Statement-from-John-Corpening-game-director-for-World-vs-World/first#post5350913

But World vs. World is huge and complex and so is the technology behind it. We’re continuing to work now on developing and building our solutions to the core issues I outlined above, and once we reach a point in development where we are far enough along with them, we look forward to sharing those plans with you. As work on Heart of Thorns wraps up, we’ll be treating resolving the remaining core areas in WvW as our #1 live development feature priority for the game to ensure we deliver on making World vs. World not just the great experience it is today – but the incredible experience we know it can be. As this effort ramps up you will be hearing more from us about the work in progress.

TL;DR: They’re working on it. It’s one of their top development priorities right now. No ETA yet, but they are working on it.

As always we don’t discuss features in development until they are far enough along to share meaningful details

Maybe if they did they wouldn’t spend months working on things that fundamentally fail.

we’ve had a lot of great conversations with our players about what they’d love to see from epic large scale PvP combat

What?!…. Where? …. Someone check twitter.

TL;DR: They’re working on it. It’s one of their top development priorities right now. No ETA yet, but they are working on it.

That’s something new and different than what they have been saying for years….
/s

Knote.2904:

Yasha.5963:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Yasha.5963:

hackks.3687:

Traps need a tell. Period.

They should also need to be triggered before they can begin to recharge, and not as soon as they’re laid. You know… like how every other skill works.

But that would mean no reliable stun break for DH!!

So… like a trapper ranger?

It’s kind of bullkitten they removed the ranger ability to use ground targeted traps because it didn’t thematically fit traps, but it’s okay for a DH to teleport to you and bomb you with insta cast traps.

But this is an ELITE spec, you can’t compare it to mere ranger utilities.

Yeah but that “mere” guardian utility that teleports you isn’t part of DH. =p

Oh I’m sorry, I forgot that DH’s aren’t able to use guardian utility skills.

Justine.6351:

Jim Hunter.6821:

misterdevious.6482:

If you think it is soulless now, wait till people make most of their decisions based on upgrade timers and how soon it is until the next laser event.

“Its difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive Tyrian men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the clocks will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new chronometric overlords.”

Yeah that’s already starting to happen. It used to be we would work with our zerg to keep supply cut off while they assaulted something, now people are just looking at the timer and saying there is no point in attacking that right now.

It’s a shame because if upgrades were still based on supply I could see some pretty epic fights occurring around yaks with the new escort buff.

Oh? I thought the yaks bring supply to upgrade keeps and towers?

Nope, the keeps and towers are on a timer. They will upgrade with or without supply. Yaks coming in takes a chunk of time off the timer to make it go faster but supply isn’t used and they will eventually upgrade even if you stop every yak.

misterdevious.6482:

If you think it is soulless now, wait till people make most of their decisions based on upgrade timers and how soon it is until the next laser event.

“Its difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive Tyrian men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the clocks will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new chronometric overlords.”

Yeah that’s already starting to happen. It used to be we would work with our zerg to keep supply cut off while they assaulted something, now people are just looking at the timer and saying there is no point in attacking that right now.

It’s a shame because if upgrades were still based on supply I could see some pretty epic fights occurring around yaks with the new escort buff.

Catalin.5341:

The keeps especially are hard if not impossible to scout alone. The spots where the enemy can enter are numerous. So the safest way I guess is to scout only the inner but then it would be too late if you spot them there.

Pls check my guide on this forum – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Quick-guide-to-Desert-Borderlands
Bay had 3 outer gates and 3 inner gates all spreaded very far away, now it has only 2 gates at inner. There were ton of walls including underwater walls which were hard to scout, now in undercroft you can protect both walls wityh one cart.

PLEASE LEARN THE MAP AND STOP WINNING LIKE LITTLE KIDS

I’m assuming you meant whining? Because I can’t simply stop winning, it just comes naturally to me.

I like how you completely ignored Dawdler’s post. He pointed out clear design flaws that can’t be changed by “learning the map”.