Guild Wars 2

Reverence.6915:

displayname.8315:

New map too BIG!!!! Why you make so biiiig! New content not working cuz too big! Shrink da map!

The Alpine borderlands was bigger. 2/3 of the Alpine borderlands was never used, making it feel smaller. It is unfamiliarity with the map that makes you think it’s bigger.

That being said, the Desert Borderlands are still absolute poop. There’s absolutely no incentive to PvP on that map.

When talking about relative size you have to take into account the verticality of the new map as well. Sort of like looking at a 2-story house versus a 1-story house.

I’ve gone to the new maps, and run around them just to check it out. They are much larger when verticality is taken into account. But it’s more than that. The old Alpine maps were far easier to navigate than the new maps. Most people don’t like having 1/2 their playtime spent navigating, they just want to play.

displayname.8315:

Swagger.1459:

Who said anything about grinding maps or gold?….

Rewards mean a lot of things…. Are you anti-reward structure?

So if there were, for example, ways to earn ascended armor and weapons with badges of honor would you complain?

Maybe the devs are going to make ascended runes and sigils for earned rewards.

Maybe the devs will make a set of special legendary armor for wvw players…

It’s called incentivized gameplay… Most players want rewards. You want more peeps in wvw? Give out better rewards…

Sigh…

First off not sure why your trying to make this thread about loot, its about wanting dynamic servers.

Second if you want the mats to make ascended, WvW gives those just fine. Just open the heavy loot bags from player kills. Or the exotic loot bags from champ kills. Or salvage the gear dropped by everything else. Myself I just put it all on the vendor now that I’m equipped, not like it took long.

WvW only legendary gear?? You used to have to WvW a little to get legendary, they removed that because of player complaints. I don’t like that there is fractal only loot but whatever. Its not going to be a good thing changing rewards. You see how well mist skins and tornament tickets went over with loot hounds.

Not true at all. They introduced a new grouping of ascended gear(power creep), which is in no way, shape, or form achievable in WvW. Also mist skins, etc were only earned during a very limited time frame, and thus resulted in many problems. If they would restructure rewards to awards based on participation and activity rather than simply overwhelming numbers you wouldn’t see as much disruption.

Sviel.7493:

morrolan.9608:

They aren’t strategically placed at all, the separation that has been put between them has completely removed the strategic ‘flow’ of the map. Look at EBG and how the towers ‘protect’ the keeps, thats strategic placement.

Strategy is not limited to being able to treb other objectives from their position.

No, this is true, but on the old Alpine maps if you wanted to attack garrison from North you were pretty much tied to taking either NET or NWT otherwise you got cross-fired from both garrison and tower. The Southern towers could more easily be bypassed, but they provided other, strategic uses.

Towers on the desert BLs might as well not be there for any strategic value. They are purely for PPT, and that’s a shame.

Melanion.4892:

So far that’s 2 people on the thread that say they’ve been on the map when it’s been queued or closer to full. Of everyone complaining, that’s 2.

I don’t think everyone would ignore WvW if they took out EBG, by the way. And I didn’t say take it out forever, just take it out for a week to see. There’s really no harm in trying these things. People didn’t quit for golem week any quicker than they’re quitting for the current state of WvW.

I’ve been on the map when it has people on it.

First problem was simply getting to the enemy to engage them with the extreme multi-tiers there it wasn’t fun.

Second problem was that once you got to them they simply port, or if they’re close enough run into a structure. They have almost no incentive to come out to fight us, and with the tower/keep already fortified it would take forever and a day just to get in.

Third problem was that when they would engage us there was an extreme amount of PvE elements around to interfere with the fight.

GL calls it “immersion”, I call it disappointing.

I kind of wonder that when this “Big Revamp” hits if they will make the proofs account bound. Would make sense to do so, and then make them the currency for any new items in WvW(hopefully ascended gear).

Swagger.1459:

Most common players want rewards, hence all the reward systems in game. Wvw can’t survive without a decent reward system to cater to folk. Just because some of you can scout or stand on a tower for 12hrs without some type of actual reward and be happy, most don’t share that same feeling…

Wvw lacks a decent reward system…

I honestly believe this is the core of the issue. Everything else in game is so much more rewarding than WvW atm. It used to be that eventually, even if you never left WvW, you would be “on par” with everyone else. Then power creep started to inch its way into the game. Now, that goal is unattainable.

It is especially egregious after HoT with gated materials that are in no way, shape, or form obtainable through WvW. The time has come to revamp the rewards in WvW. The stat combinations(for the most part) for WvW are different enough from PvE meta stat combinations to introduce better gear through WvW currencies. Make this new generation of gear attainable through a mixture of proofs, badges, and gold. Gate availability by WvW ranks( ie you can’t begin purchasing the “new” gear until rank whatever). Make the new generation of gear stat combinations that are more geared towards WvW. This way you truly have some equivalency between PvE and WvW without making it “easier” to gear up through one or the other.

Heh, “The Community Can’t Handle Change” is such a poor title.

How about, “The Community Doesn’t Like This Change.”?

Now to be perfectly honest it’s more like, “Many in the Community Don’t Like This Change.”, but that’s beside the point.

My only real beefs with the new map are that
1. it seems too big, because there’s alot of emptiness.
2. taking structures really doesn’t put you in a strategically stronger position on the map so everything feels very separated from everything else.
3. we certainly didn’t need so much PvE.

What would make this map better, imo, is really pretty simple.
1. put something tangible in treb range of the keeps to have some strategy to the siege warfare. Something that the home team would really really hate to have the opposing servers in control of.
2. Put the shrines inside of towers so that the towers are actually valuable for more than simple PPT.
3. If we have to have an event in the middle make it less of a collect this to do that, and make it like a super cannon similar to the statuary cannon in EotM. Something that people can and will fight over.

It’s not that hard to placate most WvWers. Give us something to fight over, give us a good reason to PPT, and give us the tools to make it meaningful.

*WvW reward track similar to the achievements during season 1.
*HoT mat drops in heavy bags.
*Legendary backpack WvW equivalent.
*Unique armor AND weapon skins for the ranks in WvW. ie Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc
>Problem being EotM empty ranks, but it’s all whatever.
*Boost ascended and exotic droprates.
*Existing WvW currencies/ranks being useful for purchasing things other than outmoded armors/weapons/siege.(especially ranks. WTH is with 1000s of rank points more than are usable)

Xenesis.6389:

Dayra.7405:

4) Alliances do only make sense, if all alliance members are places together onto the same maps such that they can fight together. That may be complicated and I’ve no idea how ANet will do it (but some ideas how it could be done) and is likely the reason why ANet needs over a year to implement it.

What they’ll probably do is give alliances their own maps for the week, in matchups of 3 alliances. Alliance members will probably have a certain amount of space reserved for them on in the maps (300 members over 4 maps = 75 each, or lower if map caps are only 100 players or less). While the rest of the space is filled out with randoms who are not part of the alliances, this is how they will keep those maps populated at all times.

How they will place players is no different than the current megaserver/eotm tech, match player alliance, then guilds, then friends, then server mates, etc. If any alliance members can’t be placed on a specific map because they already hit the 75 alliance player cap and map cap, then then they are placed in the queue, or they can choose another map which has space reserved for them.

So let’s split up guilds if they can’t find room in the alliance du jour. Not enough players? No problem just let randoms in from here and there where they have no loyalty, no coordination, and no motivation. Shared Teamspeak? We don’t need no stinking Teamspeak.

This “Alliance” idea is stupid for true, competitive RvR, and if it’s such a great idea why is EotM so despised by real WvW guilds?

The real solution is to encapsulate the remaining WvW players in the top 3 brackets, and then let them fight.

Jayne.9251:

I just came up with a solution!

Since the whole mega server thing in wvw is essentially just to fix the NA mess, why not move forward with that for NA and leave EU the way it is?

EU has its issues, but nowhere near the problems of NA.

Then people who prefer community-based wvw can go to EU and then the rest can stay with NA.

Win-win.

And over a period of time we can see which type is more robust.

Oh hell no. None of the NA I’ve talked to wants megaservers either. It’s just that people on lower populated servers don’t want to pay to move so they’d rather have megaservers. And yet they lose their minds every time server merges are mentioned. Megaservers are server merges, but poorly done server merges.

PopeUrban.2578:

That’s all well and good for the chosen few that sit in the upper echelons of the leaderboard. What about the rest of us?

What about the people that log in to WvW and are lucky to see five enemies all day?

What about their inability to transfer to a higher pop WvW server? What about what happens to people when their server empties out for the week because of tier population imbalances?

What about the fact that removing servers does not dismantle communities. Communities choosing to dismantle themselves does

If you need the game to tell you who is on your team, then your team isn’t as strong as you thought it was.

WvW might seem fine from the perpective of the top. I used to run on TC, and it looked fine from that vantage point.

However, more than half of all servers don’t have the ability to fight competitive WvW matches, and exhorbitant server transfer fees shouldn’t be a permanent requirement for guilds to reorganize in to and out of larger armies.

It’s easy to forget how horrible WvW is as a game mode when you’re not at the top. This is unlike any other part of the game. Even in complete noob tier pvp you are still getting good matches. Even in completely screwed PvE maps you still have events adjusted to solo.

When there isn’t a population that is roughly equivalent for all teams involved there is no WvW and the current server model does not support, and can not support enough teams to make that happen due to the effect of server stacking and basic human desire to win

Okay so merge the low end servers. Then all is good again, no? Bottom line is we have way too many servers for the number of players we have.

Liston.9708:

Bad move changing reset nights from a NA perspective. YB used to have queues so bad I didn’t bother. This last weekend there was barely 1 que.

Aside from the sad state of affairs in wvw, Friday offered little in tv fare if you didn’t go out. Saturday, in the fall, often offers up some of the biggest ncaa football games. If my choice is football of gw2, football wins. I know not everyone is in the us or even a fan, but football is huge…..

Agreed. I have made one reset since the change, and there was no queue, even on EB, for quite awhile. Silly, unnecessary changes are killing this game for me.

Vieux P.1238:

Kaiser.9873. It dont matter how high level you are. You scale down on lower maps. So it’s better then WoW cuz when you get trolled by a player, you get trolled at same level.
Xenesis.6389, whoes talking about creating 32 empty maps. you dont see it do you or get it. ???

Scaling is and has been broken. A true 80 is always going to have more tools than an uplevel, or downlevel for that matter.

Apolo.5942:

-A pain in the kitten to navigate.
-Full of powerful and bothersome yet irrelevant mobs
-Required for hero points that are necessary yet a pain in the kitten to get.

I actually kind of like VB compared to TD. VB is at least navigable, TD is atrocious.

AnomalyTea.1850:

Sadly, yes, it might. I play the game almost exclusively for WvW. Sure, I venture into PvE sometimes because rewards in WvW are lacking, but the removal of WvW very well might cause my departure despite having been in GW2 since launch.

And for clarification, the proposed changes are indeed the REMOVAL of WvW. The maps may be re-used, and many of the mechanics as well, but WvW will be removed and replaced with GvG. I have no interest in GvG. I do have an interest in WvW. GvG is not fun for me, WvW is. If a game does not provide fun for me, I have no reason to play or spend money on it.

I agree with this. I GvGed with my old guild for about a year pretty casually(as casually as you can GvG and still try to win), and it was okay, but no it isn’t what I would choose to do day in and day out.

Buuuuut I think that those changes on Reddit were not the real changes. If they were then yeah probably done, but I hold out hope that ANet is less reckless than I believe them to be.

I’ll give it a try, but honestly the best times were not just had within my guild, but sharing with server mates.

Great a legendary backpiece that you have to grind PvE content for weeks to complete. /s Just what I want./s

ArchonWing.9480:

It’s unfortunately consistent with pretty much the entire game. It seems to be an attempt to grab people’s attention but just gives all the signs of a rushjob.

But HoT itself seemed to have a rushed date as well. The lack of polish has been a longstanding issue with the game in practically every aspect.

Yeah I knew there were some issues when they popped HoT at the same time as the Halloween event. Why? People actually like the Halloween event, and their attention was split by the expac dropping at the exact same time? Silly choices, weird timing, and very, very poor public relations.

Yeah it’s far less simple than the available choices in the poll.

>Guild upgrades for WvW need to be on par with the normal WvW play.
>WvW has been lacking any kind of unique rewards forever, and the modes they want to hype get rewards tracks, special skins, tournaments, raids, etc.
>They backed the wrong horse in the eSportz category. Should’ve gone with GvG instead.
>WvW needs to be brought into the fold by allowing WvW players to actually acquire gear that is equivalent to the other game modes while playing WvW.
>We actually need a seat at the table on their meetings when ideas are tossed around, rather than being outside looking in every….single…time.
>They added the new maps, but forgot to add a way to get the new mats in any kind of consistent basis. It’s the desert, and we can’t get any sand over here?
>Making WvW players go to PvE for everything they need all the time is getting super old.

There are very few ways to resurrect WvW right now. They have got to address it soon, or they will lose even more players.

Did they increase the proof of heroic drops with the chests?

I used to get 2-4, and Saturday night I was getting 8 per chest on the three chests I opened. This would have been nice prior to jungling my way through getting my elite specs.

Utterly against open world PvP being installed in this game. WoW open world was a bunch of high levels camping Stranglethorn to grief lowbies.

Something I would not be against though is creating a new type of WvW. How about a 50v50v50 4-hour campaign-style map that reset itself 6 times daily? Kick everyone at the 4 hour mark, reset whatever upgrades were there, and then let players back in. Give each time segment a value, and add that up at the end of the day/week/month to crown the champion. Make rewards based upon participation/activity during the week, and not purely on KTraining around the map.

morrolan.9608:

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

I don’t understand how Tyler honest can justify in his head that it’s ok to get to just about to level, log out, log in the character you want the chest on, and accept it there. Rather than just throw it in the bank for the character.

This is a Quality of Life issue here. WvW Progress is Account Progression. The reward, is personal? This is not logical. This makes no sense. It’s unncessary tedium to have to log out/in to accept a chest when it could just be passed around, or currency.

Please fix this ridiculousness.

I wouldn’t blame Tyler this looks like a decision made further up the chain.

It was. Tyler is just the sacrificial lamb they trotted out this time.

KaporHabakuk.6219:

What you guys mean with too much pve,like there is more guards,or what?I personally dont like those barricades next to towers,but rest seems nice.I think ppl avoid it cause its new and they dont know the paths,but its lovely place to fight at.Also the laser is such a zerg-friendly event,dont understand why its working like it is,against the lower populated server.Thou none of this is really a big deal.Overall a nice map.

Too many PvE elements. The laser event is just the largest, not the most inconvenient. The air jets on the bridges, needing to take shrines left and right, odd “immersion”(my GLers name for the crappola down in the ravines), weird mobs here and there. These are all examples, though not all present, of PvE elements that inhibit the PvP elements of the new maps.

Okay, so here’s an update on my situation, which has changed for the better.

Joined a more active WvW guild recently. There are still guilds that raid more than every blue moon. We’ve been playing the BLs alot more in recent days, and other than inconveniences it hasn’t been terrible. I’m having more fun now than at any other time since HoT launched. This was a last ditch effort on my part to enjoy the game.

The map is still poor for much of what a WvW wants to do, but it can be worked with. The bigger issue would be the intrusive PvE elements.

DeWolfe.2174:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

there IS an overhaul. That Reddit link however is old. It probably changed since then. So the information is close but not really all correct.

5 will get you 10, it tanks the WvW population even further.

Maybe that’s the plan? Get every single WvW players confined to one matchup with one set of maps?

Sviel.7493:

I’ve seen a small influx of new players but nothing like what was expected. Outside of raids by the servers big guilds, I think most of the people I’ve met have been newish to WvW. Some were solo, some came in small guilds.

On the other hand, I think the biggest reason on my server that population has dropped is guild halls. We were already pared down to a dedicated core that was largely willing to stomach the new BLs if we didn’t like them…but we also really want to help gain strength as a server which means tons of guild hall grinding.

The disillusionment with the guild halls has been more crippling than the disillusionment with the new maps.

+1
If players had been able to “play” with stuff right away it would have mitigated the problems to an extent. As it is players began either leaving the game or grinding PvE, and then leaving the game.

As an aside, I also believe that ANet wants WvW to become more casual-friendly than it used to be. “Don’t bother learning the old intricacies of WvW. Just jump in and play.” This thought process, should it be true, is not exactly conducive to keeping people interested. It turns the old guard off, because they’ve put their time in learning siege spots, chokes, and tricks. Without the old guard to show the newbies around the newbies just blob up, and quickly find out that WvW without any strategy or tactics is boring(and unrewarding).

Too hard to find fights, too hard to get to fights, too easy to avoid fights(even when players are in close proximity they may be on different levels), and too much PvE content interfering with fights.

Some of this is due to the fact that I, and many others, don’t really know the map extremely well at this point, but if a map is not fun people don’t put the time into learning it very well.

Junkpile.7439:

So what this so called wvw community even wants? Am i part of wvw community if i think that GvG is joke, rucksacks look stupid and bigger than 20 man blobs should die automatically.

I am a part of the community, and I believe you are too. I do think there’s a very large place in the community, and the meta, for GvG guilds, and I also think that midsized open field groups should be emphasized over massive blobs. I despise blobfights(anything over 30v30), but I also hate solo/small man roaming. Lay off the rucksacks they look good on a few of my characters.

I don’t have any idea why GvG scores cannot be reflected in WvW scoring. PPK needs to be brought back for open field guilds. Make control of yaks/supply camps more important for roamers/havoc teams. Make it easier to get back into fights again, and to find fights in the first place. Make defending more rewarding, hell make everything more rewarding. Make it more important to take upgraded structures over paper structures. These are some of the things I want.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The chest, containing Proofs, being account bound is a bug. Earning specializations (skills and traits) is intended to be character progression. Ex: If you want to fully train up your warrior, you actually need to play your warrior for some amount of time. I say some amount of time since Tomes of Knowledge have allowed players to bypass a lot of existing character progression.

Okay so first, thank you for venturing in here, which is a rarity, to explain something.

Second, I think that perhaps you people at ANet should understand that, it seems, every time you come in here it’s with some news that players feel is not thought out very well.

Third, it might be a good thing if you people at ANet actually sat down and read what people here post. Not the whiteknights that make you feel fuzzy about what you are trotting out every time you make a post, but the players that are really chapped about things. These threads won’t make you feel fuzzy, but they will give you a much better idea about what your players think about the direction the game mode we enjoy is going.

Swagger.1459:

Jayne.9251:

Catalin.5341:

Once something’s full, it’s full, and a new map/campaign is created. Meaning there was no reliable way to get into the same map as others — and most certainly if it’s guild controlled, those single/random/pugs will be left without the team they worked with the past three years.

So if ESO’s campaign/alliance system doesn’t work, what’s a good solution to merge WvW servers then?

I was personally happy with the server caps and letting the population readjust. Players had started to do that, but too many weren’t willing to wait a couple months to see its benefits.

Most of the current issues with WvW on GW2 are mechanical and easily fixed by Anet. Some simple changes would help get people back onto the maps, but unfortunately it’s not been responded to.

There was a massive loyal WvW following for GW2, mostly because nobody else out there had anything like it. And because of that and longevity Anet captured the loyalty of that part of the market. That’s incredibly hard to do, particularly with an MMO. Only legacy games like EQ1, EQ1, and WoW had managed that prior. People may have left to try out other games, but they always came back to GW2.

Now, I’m not so sure.

Ultimately the main problems HERE are segregated servers causing population disparities. These disparities do not produce a healthy wvw community as a whole.

Next set of problems are incentives to win and lack of meaningful rewards.

Next problem is that you can’t run meaningful and competitive tournaments if you have populations disparities because of segregated servers, zero incentives to win and lack of meaningful rewards.

Next problem is the devs obviously want guilds to be important, provide more reasons to be a part of a guild and to pull individuals and communities together through guilds.

…

…

There are MANY reasons why the rest of this game is mega/cross server, and it’s coming to a wvw zone near us.

Additionally, would it be possible to see some evidence that rvr there failed due to megaserver alliances as you state?

What simple mechanical changes would fill up every wvw instance across all servers?

Pure wvw and server loyalties are obviously not working here, so how do you make the masses loyal enough to participate in wvw consistently?

Most players want to walk away with something to show for effort, so what reward incentives and structures would you put in place to reward guilds, individual players and sides?

We get it. You think “alliances” are the best thing that could possibly happen to GW2 WvW. I happen to disagree, and think it could possibly what finally kills real WvW in the game.

I think alliances will make backbiting, and mercenary-type players very happy, but players that have represented their servers through ups and downs, casuals, and small guild(<30) players very unhappy. Perhaps if we were still in the era of 100+ member WvW guilds it wouldn’t be the blow that I think it will be, but we aren’t. Most WvW guilds are smaller than 60 anymore, and that number is falling. Who chooses the alliance leader? Who gets “assigned” to an alliance? What happens to players not in one of the larger WvW guilds? How do we know the alliances will have any kind of balance? What happens to an alliance member that can’t raid due to illness of themselves or family? What powers will the alliance leader/officers be given?

Perhaps the alliances option is easier, but I don’t think it will be better.

eridani.4158:

Remember ANet, there is a limit to how much straw a camel can carry on its back.

I really wish for that “major WvW overhaul” to be something we (those of us who actually play WvW) asked for.

I don’t think it will be though. I think it’s going to be a watershed moment when they megaserver WvW.

Yeah I’m hoping it has been discredited, because that reddit post was full of fail.

One of the things that is dragging players away from WvW is the fact that there are so many new materials that you cannot get in WvW by any means. To make the new ascended stuff you have to have a LOT of these new mats. To upgrade guild halls you need a LOT of these new mats.

I have wondered how much this has contributed to the departure of players we’ve seen since HoT dropped.

Would putting some of these new mats on the desert borderlands encourage players to come back to the mode, and populate these new maps?

The three main culprits I’ve noticed are airship oil, auric dust, and ley line sparks, but I know there are many many more, such as coarse sand, flax, etc.

They added the ore, dust, and fragments before after much moaning and groaning. Would they add the new materials as well? I know that if I could get these things through WvW I would much rather do that than spend my time running around in PvE-land.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Slowpokeking.8720:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Why even bother?

Some people do not appreciate awesome design on maps, do not appreciate challenging content, do not appreciate having to actually work towards something.

Some people want generic MMO maps where everything could be solo’ed. Some people are here just for the rewards. Give them a super-mario map with a legendary item upon completion and they will take it a hundred times rather than playing HoT.

Can you really put any reason to them?

GW1 is one of the most solo friendly MMO ever, and GW2 is very solo-friendly as well. It was never a hardcore focused game.

It is still very solo friendly and still nowhere even close to be considered hardcore. Many players including myself have run ALL the HoT content while solo and have had zero problems. Even a good percentage of hero points can be solo’ed when mechanics and class allows it.

Those complains are from people who expect to run the content (#11111) while also speaking on facebook, while also being on skype call with a friend or two, while also watching Netflix. If it’s too hard focusing and playing a game that requires a bit of thinking, then HoT is not for you. End of story!
We were stuck with a scrub-friendly (there’s a difference between casual friendly and scrub-friendly) content for 3 years. We were sick n’ tired of it. The devs listened to us and made something worth paying and/or playing.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Some people do not appreciate awesome design on maps, do not appreciate challenging content, do not appreciate having to actually work towards something.

Some players who don’t like HoT don’t think the map design is “awesome”, don’t think its very challenging, and don’t think there’s anything worth working toward.

No fun, no goal, no HoT for me.

Then they can stop playing?

We didn’t force you to pre-order HoT. We didn’t force you to buy it. You knew that it was not gonna be scrub-like content. They stated that multiple times.

Don’t like it, don’t buy it, don’t play it.

How long does the game last when all the “scrubs” leave. I would lay money that those same “scrubs” bought the vast majority of gems with cash. Reduced gem sales = less content development.

You guys really have zero understanding of how anything works. There has to be a mix of content, or ANet alienates too many players to keep developing the game.

They have seemingly zero direction or vision of where this game is going. It’s obvious by how they vacillated from too easy vanilla GW2 to what we have now with jungle GW2. It’s not that the content is hard, it isn’t, it’s that the content is too group-or-die driven to make it fun for a HUGE portion of their playerbase.

volpenvieh.3201:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

I still won’t find any enemys (because there are not much and even if there are some, i won’t see them because the wonderful map design is blocking my sight).

Work on your map awareness. You’ve got the “marked” buff from sentries, white swords if an objective is under attack and you can easily guess where your enemy is by using a livemap (or just taking a look at those new pop up messages). If you still can’t find any enemies with all of that then I’m sorry to tell you that the servers you are playing against are apparently dead and switching back to the old borders would change nothing.

T1 NA is dead then, because there are almost never players in the BLs

warbignime.4610:

Kaiser.9873:

Grim West.3194:

Preorder only gave a small window into HoT.

It didn’t warn us that WvW would be decimated, dungeons abandoned, small guilds kicked to the curb, loot nerfed, etc, etc, etc

It also didn’t warn us that EVERYTHING would be gated. Time-gated, PvE-gated, Number-gated, everything is behind a gate of some kind or another. Want to gather ley-line sparks? Better have enough Chak acid. Chak acid that you better complete meta for or spend all your super special currency getting. Want auric dust, again, another gate.

All directly PvE gates as well. There are NO WvW gates, therefore WvW is gutted. All the players who would rather go WvW are forced to PvE for everything. Honestly I feel it’s spite on the part of ANet for all the posts reviling their boss about his “WvW players really like PvE” statement.

If you think these are gate, then you might as well say that to everything. Almost all rpg are level gated, gear gated, story progression gated. And if we go further then Dota is also level gated, item gated, farm gated. If that’s how you look at things everything in video games are gated.

In WoW I could get equivalent gear through PvP and Arenas. Not purely PvE gated. Of course it was more PvP-oriented, but that’s what I did. In Gw2 there is no WvW-oriented equivalency, and that’s ridiculous.

Grim West.3194:

Preorder only gave a small window into HoT.

It didn’t warn us that WvW would be decimated, dungeons abandoned, small guilds kicked to the curb, loot nerfed, etc, etc, etc

It also didn’t warn us that EVERYTHING would be gated. Time-gated, PvE-gated, Number-gated, everything is behind a gate of some kind or another. Want to gather ley-line sparks? Better have enough Chak acid. Chak acid that you better complete meta for or spend all your super special currency getting. Want auric dust, again, another gate.

All directly PvE gates as well. There are NO WvW gates, therefore WvW is gutted. All the players who would rather go WvW are forced to PvE for everything. Honestly I feel it’s spite on the part of ANet for all the posts reviling their boss about his “WvW players really like PvE” statement.

Great post. Not going to quote the whole thing, but want to touch on objective cascading.

One of the most important parts of the old Alpine maps was to try and try to take either the NW or NE towers. Obviously these were important to take to start the siege on garrison. Fights abounded around both of these towers all the time as the home force knew that keeping that tower out of the hands of the attacker was paramount.

You knew that people would respond to any attack on this area. So if you wanted fights you went there. Where on the new maps can you go that you know the enemy will respond? Nowhere. Population is the biggest issue, but the fact that there are no tactical or strategic points needed is another problem.

Xillllix.3485:

Holdyir.2918:

briggah.7910:

Or you can do something productive like learn the maps.

^ This. The new maps are a lot better than what people are giving them credit for.

The new map is actually amazing when you give it a chance, the fights you can get there are really varied. It just needs a better waypoint system and a minimum of 100 players on it.

But it has a terrible waypoint system, and there are never 100 players on it. There are good things about the new maps, but they are not, in their current iteration, good WvW maps.

lil devils x.6071:

Aenaos.8160:

erKo.9586:

Im just wondering how many are like me:
-Played 100% wvw & LOVED IT! before the expansion and new maps.
-Can’t handle the new maps becuase they are to big & messy & pve.
-Just play some EB sometimes but… the fun is gone because the maps are empty & everything about WvW just feels….lost becuase of the changes.
-Have actually tested PvE since the expansion but.. well it aren’t so fun as the old-days-WvW.

If there were enough players to fill the new maps you’d be having fun.
You compare a map you played for 3 years to the new one.
It’s normal that you feel confused and not accustomed to the layout.
Play this map for 3 years and it will look as simple and normal as the
old one.

There are enough players.. They just refuse to go on the New BL maps because they think they suck. They would rather stand in LA at the bank until their 50 man Q pops for EB instead of step foot on them. That is the reality. They know the lay out, they just hate it and are boycotting it. It is as simple as that. No, they will not play something they actively dislike for 3 years.. they will play something they enjoy instead.

I have to say that even though YB has some guilds that do like the new maps enough to go there on occasion that most do not. I won’t go to the new maps at all as a first choice, and will only go there if I know that there are enough players on one to have fun with.

Algreg.3629:

saturn.4810:

Yes, but the elitists will say that PUGs don’t deserve to raid.

complete nonsense, “elitists” say no such thing, raids are pugged in other games all the time. Most of the pre-raid organisation is about roles, which are still mostly missing in GW2 (good thing too), so this should even be easier here. But telling from your agenda, I guess you are a “casual” and hence are talking about things you have no idea about.

Ahhhhh, no this is incorrect. Raids are pugged in other games months after release. They are not pugged the day, week, or a month after release. I raided heavily in WoW, and PuGs had no chance in raids until the “elite” guilds let the secrets out of how to beat encounters. Now it’s true that eventually WoW made raids more casual friendly, but raids have typically been the realm of the elitist.

@Triglavus none of this would be an issue except there are certain things locked behind raid content. It’s not like how ascended drops at a higher rate in fractals, but you can still get the equivalent items eventually in the other game modes. In this situation you will not get equivalent items at any rate.

I personally got burned out on raiding. It was fun for quite a long time, but it stopped being fun for me. My guild had beaten every raid available by the time I burned out. I prefer to spend my time fighting real opponents over scripted opponents now. However even the crafted ascended is PvE-gated. Where are high-end WvW players/guilds to go to get anything even close to equivalent to what you get in raids/PvE?

I’m on the verge. I find myself PvEing for an hour or so a day, and maybe WvW for a few hours per week. I used to WvW multiple hours per day with one or so hour of PvE a week.

Everything is PvE-locked, which is so ridiculous it’s not even worth discussing at this point.

I kind of put the blame on ANet for allowing players to be a part of 5 different guilds. You can really only serve one master. Unfortunately the days of the 100% rep guilds are seemingly over, to the detriment of the game imo.

Best times I’ve had in GW2 was being a part of EK, which was a 100% rep WvW guild. Raiding 5 days a week, and knowing there would be minimum 25 players showing up every single day was awfully nice. It’s pretty bad to login and see so many members on, but repping other guilds.

Astralporing.1957:

warbignime.4610:

Yeah still not seeing why anyone would want run them outside of raid.

You may not see it, but it’s rather obvious that other people do want to do exactly that. Just as before HoT people wanted to run other stats that Berserker.
Anet tried to make content-limited stat sets before, and it has never been met by a poitive reaction. Why would they want to repeat that again, and lock it behind content that is already generating a lot of negative responses in the community, i have no idea.

Anet’s gone whole hog against their initial, “Play as you want” philosophy. It’s really pretty sad.

There could have been a happy medium between old Tyria and new Jungle imo. I play games to have fun. I do not play games to become frustrated or bored. Somehow HoT managed to do both at the same time.

As a primary WvW player HoT is even more frustrating as most of the content is PvE locked. Still, they did a good job getting me into PvE since WvW is so empty nowadays. Doing the exact same events day after day are horrifying, but the only methods to gain the materials I need for any of the new ascended recipes. Masteries that require you to gain PvE only experience. Ugh.

Soon.5240:

Merging (i.e., deleting) servers would have too much the “stink of death” attached to it. It would not resonate well across the industry or within the gaming community. Because, frankly, there is no way to hide the fact that deleting servers – or having no full servers – is a sign that the game is on the decline.

I’m sure that they were hoping that they would need to ADD servers, with the release of their fifty dollar expansion — but that obviously is not going to happen.

How do you explain to your investors that you are closing servers after the release of an expensive to produce expansion?

You don’t “close” servers you add “WarWorlds”. 9 new warworlds to condense your WvW population into. Don’t call it merging call it a new feature.

Azure.8670:

as a TC player I casually play wvw (in the past, its all I did) and I havent really touched it since HoT came out. I decided to finally hop on it since I need the tokens anyway… and whoa. the Borderlands look gorgeous, and im completely alone. This has to be the worst thing ive ever seen. Anet, im not exactly sure why people left wvw (not that many played it to begin with) but you guys need to do a major overhaul on rewards (thats been an issue since day 1) and many other things to get people in here. This is so depressing I had to alt tab just to type this. im going back to pvp/pve because this may make me cry

I’d honestly say that they should have made the desert BL something more akin to EBG and left the alpine BLs, but it is what it is.

The Grumpy Optimist Alrighty can’t wait to login for guild raid tonight. Oh, the whole guild is in the jungle repping their PvE guilds. Oh well I’ll go PuG tonight it’ll be great fun. Oh jeez EBg queue sitting at 56. Okay I’ll hope on home BL probably something going on there. Oh there’s not. Grumblegrumblegrumble, maybe tomorrow.

Djamonja.6453:

As far as Anet is concerned, the only question is how to monetize WvW over the reasonably expected lifetime of the game. They don’t make money for people just playing WvW unless they are buying gems (with real $$) or attracting new players to the game who might pay for gems or buy HoT, etc.

Personally, I think they should try to get more people interested in WvW by combining WvW rewards with PvE rewards to get the best gear. Or let people get unique gear from WvW that is superior to PvE gear in WvW.

For the most part WvW is monetized. With servers transfers; that PvE players do not need to do due to megaserver, skins that you see quite a lot in WvW, and all the other various services that WvW players take part in along with their PvE counterparts I would guess that WvW players do not spend too much less than PvE players.

I just do not think ANet as a company understands the mindset and desires of this type of playerbase. I’m sure their lack of interaction is due to their thought that we are all frothing, snarky, doom and gloomers, as opposed to the average PvE players that is more of a sunshine pumper.

With megaservers and whatnot they could do so much for WvW without destroying servers.

I will say right now I am vehemently against any kind of “alliance” system.

That being said there are too many servers and too few players right now for WvW to be a healthy game mode. What I would like to see happen, it won’t, but I would like to see it happen is for there to be 9 new WvW-worlds created.

Each world would have X number of slots in each timezone. More during NA seeing as there are more NA players, and fewer in the TZs that have fewer players. This would keep worlds from having overwhelming non-NA timezone advantages, and give non-NA players some semblance of balance. Players could either pick on their own or have their GM/guild rep pick one of these worlds for them.

Give players X amount of time after announcement before launch to decide what world they wanted to be a part of. Spur of the moment knee jerk decisions have caused us lots ofproblems already, Let them do pre-signups if necessary to allow them to “reserve” a spot on that war world or whatever you wanted to call it. Funnel new players to the lower populated worlds as they join the game to try to help with balance.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Kaiser.9873:

[…]

Factions and alliances amongst WvW guilds already exist. The rush to T1 earlier in the game showed what factions and alliances would do. In a perfect world where everyone cared about competition this would be great. In our world where the only thing that matters is winning this will not work, and will only drive more and more people away.

No. You are talking about match manipulation. That’s not what I’m talking about.

It would be worse due to people not having to pay to transfer. Do you really think for an instant that the top end WvW guilds would spread out evenly? There would be some outliers, and I do think the GvG guilds would probably spread out a bit, but there is almost zero incentive now to spread out except for fights. That would only last until the true top end WvW guilds established some hierarchy among themselves, and then you would see a meeting of like-minded GMs getting together to REALLY manipulate matches.

I wouldn’t mind seeing ANet force three realms similar to DAoC, but their metrics better be spot on. There could not be server transfers in this iteration of the game, and I doubt ANet would go for losing that money maker.