Guild Wars 2

saturn.4810:

Calista.1975:

Well this is at least some contact and direction tho why no ones said anything on THIS forum I dont understand its like they are all afraid to comment in here or something.. >.<

Seems the devs are afraid of their own forum.

This makes me chuckle. Here we have an “official” ANet supported forum, and the devs post everything on Reddit. It does seem they avoid this place.

MithranArkanere.8957:

World matching has to go. We need factions instead.

And alliances for guilds.

Guilds join in alliances to do content together in all 3 modes, alliances join factions in WvW, factions compete for world control.

Changing factions would be possible once a week, never during seasons (there would be warnings before so people prepare and join the faction they want), it’ll be easier to join ‘underdog’ factions with less population and score, and there should be some measure to encourage joining those ‘underdog’ factions and spread skill and population among all factions evenly.

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.

I’ve noticed in T1 NA even the EBG queues are getting shorter and shorter. Generally it’s near 50 when you try to get in. Last night the largest I saw was 14, and it went fast. I don’t know that the ultimate answer is for WvW populations and vitality, but whatever it is ANet needs to find it soon.

Notsoperky.2348:

VladR.9827:

they wont, they’ve got pvp league now with 200k in rewards ;d – wvw? pff obsolete

They were going to pay a team of devs to work on wvw, but then someone suggested they should spend the money on their ‘e-sport’…

This is something that bugs me as well. Take money that they could spend marketing the game to a wider audience to market it to a tiny audience.

If they don’t want to spend that money on marketing then hire a concept guy to get WvW back on track. The numbers that a fun, working WvW mode can bring/bring back to the game are huge.

Bubi.5237:

Yup, it’s pretty sad.
https://www.reddit.com/user/DevonCarver
A few post-shards:
“I haven’t been working on WvW since March of this year.”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you. I was working on the expansion, specifically building content.”
“It’s generally the case that there will be no comments about internal stuff like this. For a variety of reasons, but, that’s just the reality of things. WvW will continue to be an important part of the game.”
“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I think the hope is to solve some of the larger, underlying problems as soon as possible. But I haven’t been directly involved in WvW decisions for some time, so that’s really just an understanding from the outside.”

If that’s what the WvW Lead Designer can tell to us, it’s pretty sad…
And… understanding from the outside… as the Lead Designer?

Dark Side:This statement fills me with dread. Essentially we have no dev in there fighting for us, and it’s quite possible that our old lead dev was trying to fight for us, and got canned for it, or quit in disgust.

Bright Side: ANet decided that Devon wasn’t doing enough on the WvW front, and decided to go another way.

Generally I am an optimist, but I can’t help but lean dark side here.

Swift.1930:

Kaiser.9873:

Okay, so this is my opinion and should only be construed as such.

A good BL map for this game should have:
1. Three equidistant spawn points
2. A central keep with a moat(think SMC but larger), and a waypoint.
3. Two towers near each spawn point(home towers)
4. 4 towers nearer the central keep(preferably within treb range)
4a. These towers would “guard” bridges over the moat.
5. 1 supply camp feeding each tower with all supply camps ending at the central keep
6. Plenty of open space for open field near the towers/supply camps(think rolling hills)

This is all that would be needed to supply any and all WvW players with their chosen form of excitement. Now we all know that Anet would want to throw in some PvE mechanics as well even if not needed. I propose that they be minimized to the following.

1. A jumping puzzle that would be within range to shoot treb shots at the keep
2. A “Gigacannon” that could be captured(like the EotM statue cannon) by beating 3 Champion rabid Charr
3. A wyvern lair that was capturable, and the server that owned it could call the wyvern once per tick to drop wyvern breath on an area(area denial attack with lots of burning damage)

Some very curious ideas. The jumping puzzle would have to be quite tricky, or… perhaps there could be a few parts that can be destroyed (by defenders) and require supply to repair before trebbers can get to the top. Not overly sure about the cannon or wyvern, but they might work. Not a big fan of wedging PvE in, myself.

When you say equidistant spawn points, do you mean primary points or keep waypoints? And further; if you mean keep waypoints, do you mean one per server or the way it used to be – the owner of the keep decided the owner of the WP?

The rest of your suggestions sound a lot like the alpine map (except the moat on the central keep). That’s a plus in my books, haha. xD

Alpine map thematically, but think more Spain than Germany.

When I say equidistant what I mean is home in the far north, red SE corner, and blue SW corner. No home keep at all. One keep per BL that’s it. This serves a couple of purposes. One, it makes the towers far more important, especially the “inner” towers. Two it makes whoever takes the keep need to control the keep. It also promotes more of a three-way battle rather than the old; “You take that side, we take this side, and try to keep the home team in the top third.”

Ideally there would be plenty of open field action going on as well, since in my vision PPK is a real thing again. Also unlike the current EBG model home towers would be a bit more spread allowing more “used” space rather than all the unused space in the corners of the map. The moat should act like a real barrier. Not many places to get out once you are in. Control of the inner towers would be a huge boon for people trying to cross the moat, or to exit the moat.

Terrain would be flatter than the old Alpine maps, but not flat. There could easily be ravines, river beds, and other low spots that would allow a force to move relatively stealthily without the amount of terrain disadvantages that were present in the Alpine maps, and are even more present in the Desert maps.

Believe me those PvE options were completely spur of the moment thoughts. We all know Anet wouldn’t design a map without some kind of PvE elements, and so I tried to think like a dev for a moment.

Okay, so this is my opinion and should only be construed as such.

A good BL map for this game should have:
1. Three equidistant spawn points
2. A central keep with a moat(think SMC but larger), and a waypoint.
3. Two towers near each spawn point(home towers)
4. 4 towers nearer the central keep(preferably within treb range)
4a. These towers would “guard” bridges over the moat.
5. 1 supply camp feeding each tower with all supply camps ending at the central keep
6. Plenty of open space for open field near the towers/supply camps(think rolling hills)

This is all that would be needed to supply any and all WvW players with their chosen form of excitement. Now we all know that Anet would want to throw in some PvE mechanics as well even if not needed. I propose that they be minimized to the following.

1. A jumping puzzle that would be within range to shoot treb shots at the keep
2. A “Gigacannon” that could be captured(like the EotM statue cannon) by beating 3 Champion rabid Charr
3. A wyvern lair that was capturable, and the server that owned it could call the wyvern once per tick to drop wyvern breath on an area(area denial attack with lots of burning damage)

Nury.3062:

I always see the “make the Guild Hall Upgrades scale with the number of members the guild has” FIX. What can stop me from kicking all my guild members,get the mats i need from them,get the upgrade and then invite them again…?!

It might be hard for small guilds to do stuff…but as many people said if you create a guild and you are 2-3 members…let’s be honest,how can you expect to do any content with that guild?
I am a guild leader since 14 november 2013 we had many members now we don’t …let’s say 10-15 daily online members,that is a small guild,yet we don’t complain about the upgrades and we work hard to get our amazing guild hall in a nice shape.
We got all the buildings (tents for now) available and many of the upgrades.
And we are working constantly on it.

Why do we always focus on the extremes? 300? 2-3? What about the normal guild of 50-100ish on roster with 20-30 active players(active as being defined as logging in more than a couple time a week)?

It would’ve been easy enough to make separate sizes of guild halls, each with separate mat cost. Don’t get me wrong I love the big halls, but I would’ve been content with a smaller hall as well that allowed the guild I am in to upgrade sometime in the next 5 years. The mat cost may not be excessive for a guild of 500, or even 300 for that matter, but for a mid-sized guild of 40-50 it is extreme, especially if that guild is WvW focused.

vana.5467:

A lot of people have left because they dislike the new borderland. I don’t like it either but I don’t really mind sticking to EB. As I see it, a bigger problem is that the meta is absolute dogkitten right now.
Between the June patch and HoT, overall damage output has become absurd. They’ve just piled both hard and soft CC onto the elite specs. Frontlines are in a terrible state. Backline and focus builds are one-shotting eachother left and right.
It’s just not particularly fun to play at the moment.

I have to agree the meta is not very fun right now. Frontline melts too fast. Gank squads are having a field day. Active defenses aren’t up to par right now let alone passive defense. Combine all that with auto-upgrades and giant maps and you have a recipe for the disaster we are seeing right now.

Used to be able to roll around frontline with around 3K armor, and be just fine with judicious dodge and other active defenses, but now that isn’t even in the ballpark. I don’t think it’s that damage has spiked as much as CC has spiked. You get hit with constant CC and can’t clean it as fast as it’s getting applied. Combine that with damage spikes and it means death as far as the eye can see.

Not to mention phantom damage that takes you from 20K health to nada in less time than it takes to dodge one time. Thursday night was running Reaper around EBG with the zerg, and had just left a clash. No condis, no red circles, 20K health left, and then none. It was the fastest and most unexplainable deaths I’ve had. Checked combat log and there were a couple 500s and a 1400, but that was it. Still dunno what happened there.

Wolfric.9380:

EB map away is fine. Reuse the map.

Realm 1: Alpine
Realm 2: Reworked EB as homeland.
Realm 3: Desert

Woot. Off we go.

From what I’ve seen NA prime in T1 I really think EB and one reworked desert map would fit all the players comfortably.

What I’ve seen in my WvW guild is that all the players that have PvE guilds are repping those to the exclusion of the WvW guild. Why? Because they know that the PvE guild will finish the guild hall off long before the WvW guild will. This is due to the focus of the PvE guilds and the sheer numbers they bring to the table.

At one time we had 85ish players with 20+ repping us constantly(sometimes quite a few more). Now I log on and see maybe 5 others repping the WvW guild.

This is a disaster for the guild. It’s dead, and I am almost to the point of heading for new pastures. People I’ve played with for over a year, and talked to every day through that year are gone now. Not gone, as in quit game, but gone as in repping other guilds, being in other guild’s TS, doing PvE instead of WvW. I come from the school of 100% rep guilds, but those are few and far between anymore. These are people that were in WvW every single day, and I never see them there anymore.

Guild halls are killing guilds unless the guild is willing to do nothing but farm PvE.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I think everyones freaking out about how people are playing the new content (big surprise) thus making the maps empty, and that the new maps arent as suited for zerging as the old ones are. Dont forget that GvG arenas are probably taking away people that would otherwise be zerging.

Except the jungle maps are pretty slow too. Sure there are people trying out the new raids, but the jungle maps slowed down before that, and WvW far before that.

I would be very interested to see a population chart that showed logins over time just to see. I suspect it would validate that their total logins have dropped like a rock.

Valky.2574:

Trust me it’s not dead do to raids and it’s not just VB it’s all H.O.T zones

Yeah I don’t know if HoT had exactly the opposite effect they intended. Seems like there were far more people playing the beta weekends than there are now. Perhaps some questionable choices on ANet’s part soured the experience for many, and they are taking a break/quit. Perhaps people are too spread out now doing different things, but it isn’t good to get the empty world message in new maps.

Grim West.3194:

There were plenty of percs for guilds before guild halls. Small guilds worked very hard for them and they were all taken away.

Agree with this. Pretty silly to have a guild with X amount of things unlocked, and then take it away. Kinda like buying a fully loaded car, and then halfway through your payments they come and take out the platinum package that you’ve been enjoying for 3 years.

There are enough new things associated with the guild hall that they could’ve left guilds that had unlocked X keep X, and work for the new stuff imo.

abclemons.7093:

Sviel.7493:

If the complaints were reasonable, this might work. Instead, people are using hyperbolic statements that are easy to ignore due to being demonstrably untrue.

For example, people say that yaks don’t matter anymore. The truth is that yaks make upgrades go 3x faster. Thus, the real complaint, that yaks are no longer essential, goes unheard. Instead, the speaker just looks like an idiot and gets brushed off.

For a real-world example, look up the student protests in France circa 1970. There was a ton of hullabaloo and they accomplished just about nothing because they were brushed off as not to be taken seriously.

We need less shouting and more calm, nuanced analysis. Less protesting and more willingness to try adjusting and report what things are difficult to swallow.

This. And yet again, I think the issue is that ppl logged to the new BLs, played for 10 mins, and then just went crazy that it wasn’t exactly the same.

I agree that calm and nuanced should work, but it doesn’t seem to work at all. Also to address the old versus new.

Perhaps if they had not launched the new borders along with Halloween event and HoT, and instead waited a month or two to introduce the new maps then things might be less strident. Perhaps had they made it so that WvW upgrades could’ve been earned through WvW things would have been less strident. Perhaps, just perhaps a company that made, what is admittedly, a fun game on a huge scale should’ve foreseen some of the issues that might have cropped up.

The fact that they didn’t foresee some of these issues has cemented many WvW players perceptions that ANet couldn’t care less for them. In truth I whiteknighted many decisions ANet made for a long while, but I just can’t anymore. I expect to be disappointed with their decisions, and have little to no faith in any direction they choose to take WvW.

Soon.5240:

I truly think that Anet has nerfed WvW for reasons similar to the Dungeons. Money. Or more specifically, the lack of money coming from WvW players.

As a long time, dedicated WvW player, one thing I notice (more so in hindsight) is that most of the people that I’ve played countless hours of WvW with aren’t really the ones who buy skins or knick knacks from the Store. Most of us are have settled on our looks long ago, and don’t really drag a lot of kites, balloons, minatures, etc. around with us when we play WvW.

It’s been ages since I actually bought something from Anet (excepting HoT) and yet I’ve played WvW for thousands of hours. I’m not the kind of customer that Anet needs.

I dunno about this. In my case it is quite the opposite. Quite a few skins and such. Lots of gem store stuff has been purchased by many members of my guild. Not much anymore though, this is true. Mainly due to a huge fall off in active players, and a huge feeling of depression by most of the players I associate with.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

ANET are focusing on Raids for the next few months, it’s important that the 200 people left doing them in a months time have content to play.

Fixing WvW should take priority over raids. As you say raids are not for large audiences. Of course raids = PvE and we should all realize the love affair ANet has with PvE.

ArchonWing.9480:

People are back!

In EB, sadly.

It’s gotten to the point where sometimes a 40 queue is seen in EB and there are requests to the queuers in TS go into homebl, but nobody will do it. They’d rather sit in Lion’s Arch then go into the borderlands. I can’t say I blame them much.

And to be fair, everything in EB third is so close and quick to keep tabs on, it feels more home than the rather large and spaced out actual home.

I think this is the problem. Perhaps they should’ve replaced EB with some version of the desert map, and left the home BLs alone.

Sounds good. Signed.

Swagger.1459:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Swagger.1459:

roxybudgy.8205:

Swagger.1459:

And transfers kill servers too… And transfers are not long term solutions to bigger problems…

Yet a server merge is just another word for forced transfer.

The only difference between a server merge and transfer is that people currently get to choose whether or not they transfer, whereas the merge that some people are begging for takes away that choice.

Server merges are not long term solutions to bigger problems…

Not once did I say server “merging”, I was talking about wvw being like megaserver. You stay on your home server but get zapped to mega red, mega blue or mega green.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Edge_of_the_Mists#Match_Up

Also…

“Edge of the Mists is a World versus World map. Its purpose is to act as an extra map for players who wish to play the World versus World format and continue earning rewards even when the official maps are full and has a separate achievement category. Edge of the Mists serves as a testing ground for the new features that may be introduced to WvW, and already provides a new style of gameplay on the floating islands connected by destructible bridges.”

Things will change, megaservers for wvw are coming and the focus will be on winning rewards for your color and guild stuff…

The focus will be on personal rewards and karma trains just like it is in eotm right now.
Do you really think anyone is saying, “C’mon guys we are the red team! We are so much better than blue and green!”
Right now with the HoT changes we are listening to WvW’s death rattle, switching to a megaserver would be the final nail in the coffin.

Nah, it would condense people better and be more exciting to run around. I mean you peeps can be in denial all you want, but I know these changes will be coming.

eotm is packed for many reasons, of course the devs are going to model wvw after it in ways.

Also, the loot and karma isn’t great, there are much more “lucrative” activities for that stuff.

If they turn EotM into THE WvW it will change. It won’t be nonstop KTrains, and the current EotM KTrainers will flip out. You start putting more, and better organized WvW guilds into the EotM map, and there will be such an outcry that it will crash this forum.

As it stands now if one decent-sized WvW-oriented guild enters map it kills the other two sides and they abandon ship. Imagine if that were far more commonplace. Hmmm kinda sounds fun tbh.

Cogbyrn.7283:

cillard.3986:

Notsoperky.2348:

At least they admitted they released the new maps without really testing them or finishing them Maybe next time they will ask real wvw players to test from an early stage and then listen and act in the feedback.

My worry is that it may be too late.

The absolutely DID invite entire WvW guilds into the beta testing. My guild is one of those that was invited and we perhaps one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent, WvW guilds in NA.

We took our time to test their game, because we care about it that much, and spent our time writing up feedback about the glaring issues we found with the new maps. For the most part, they were completely ignored. Whether it was due to lack of resources or lack of importance, who can say….. but those people still defending ANET at this point need to get a grip. These forums are getting spammed with complaints about the very issues we raised to ANET literally months and months ago. They chose to ignore them and implement the maps as is.

(read this before it automagically disappears, as criticism usually does)

Good lord, you have the privilege to help mold a game mode by providing feedback, for a game you supposedly love, and you act like it’s this huge chore that ANet should grovel at your feet for you even thinking about doing. You must have expected that every piece of anything you submitted would be immediately changed, but that isn’t how feedback works.

What was your feedback? You spent your time writing it up, what sorts of things did it involve? What do you feel is a reasonable timeframe for those issues to be resolved? What feedback did ANet receive from other guilds? What feedback resulted in changes (since you said “mostly”)?

I think ANet made a mistake with the Desert BL design, but I’m still giving it a shot. Regardless, this spoiled child attitude is something I’ll never agree with.

I would have loved to have been part of the feedback process, regardless of what they did with said feedback. It’s an honor to be brought in to be a part of any sort of feedback process for any product you love/enjoy.

I think your reading comprehension is poor. Your response smacks of cronyism towards Anet. He not once said that he felt ANet should, “grovel” at his feet. What he said was that ANet invited WvW players to get their feedback, and that very little of the feedback was taken to heart. That smacks of ANet being disingenuous with their testers. It’s not an honor to be part of feedback groups. It’s often a chore to work on/play on unfinished projects, and when you give credible feedback you expect some kind of response to it.

They were getting negative feedback on the desert BLs as soon as they started testing them, and most of what was said then made it to live launch. That tells you how much credibility they gave their testers.

The desert map is a great map, it’s just not a very good WvW map. There are great facets to it, and really with very little tweaking it could be a very good WvW map, but it isn’t there yet.

ArchonWing.9480:

Swagger.1459:

ArchonWing.9480:

Oh god, put it away before it gets taken seriously.

Just wondering, what’s more important, a healthy and thriving wvw environment where 4 maps are packed more regularly or server pride?

I pick the later.

Personally, I would suggest to provide for free transfer off low activity servers, but do it so voluntarily. This gives almost the same effect. Oh, by the way, since 3 of the maps are desert BL, I’m afraid that’s not really going to help the situation.

The problem I see is where exactly do you draw the line on what to close, and who decides it? If someone thought everything below tier 2 should be closed, I’d tell them to kitten off. I mean, why would I change the nature of my WvW just to satisify someone else’s idea of balance? But if people see that WvW is not suitable here and the server is not worth staying on, then they will take the chance to leave and there you go, servers merged.

It only costs 500-1000 gems per person to “merge” tiers, honestly.

Inversely fold the bottom 12 servers into the top 12 servers. BAM, problem solved. No gem cost, no options given. It’s not like with megaservers that PvEers would be inconvenienced at all, and if those worlds are such wastelands anyway then you’d think a large percentage of the players left would be happy.

Hadn’t missed more than a handful of reset since launch. Haven’t made one since HoT launched. Used to spend 3-5 hours per day in WvW. Haven’t spent 3 hours per week in WvW since HoT launched.

Yeah pretty well quit.

Swift.1930:

Kaiser.9873:

style.6173:

ANET knows they failed. Not really sure why they would post something to just validate the obvious.

Funny reset story: I am in NA T2. On reset night there was a 50+ queue for EB and the BL maps had no queue,

Sounds like T1 at this point.

Not to mention that most of the borderlands are actually empty (not just lacking queue).

Yeah it’s really sad. You can go to home BL, and unless it’s just the map jumpers flipping stuff there will be absolutely no one there.

Mitz.5741:

Its hard enough to take keeps with noone defending said keep

Now defending a keep feels like pouring salt on an open wound

Before flipping things was far too easy, but now it’s ridiculously difficult. They need to figure out a way to balance it out somewhat, but that’s likely too much trouble for an understaffed company that doesn’t even understand what a large(but steadily shrinking) chunk of their playerbase desires.

Swagger.1459:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Merging servers is pretty pointless unless they fix some of the underlying problems. WvW is bleeding players like never before, merging servers right now would be like jumping from a sinking ship into a sinking lifeboat.

They will do the eotm megaservers to fix all the problems

Evidence is not overwhelming, but lack of action on ANet’s part seems to point this way. This would be beyond tragic imo, but they have done so much damage to the game mode that it feels the plug has already been pulled, and they’re just waiting for us to die.

style.6173:

ANET knows they failed. Not really sure why they would post something to just validate the obvious.

Funny reset story: I am in NA T2. On reset night there was a 50+ queue for EB and the BL maps had no queue,

Sounds like T1 at this point.

DeWolfe.2174:

Exciton.8942:

3 years, they show absolutely zero love and zero support to this game mode. It deserves to die.

As much as I may not prefer the new BL for WvW purposes, someone put A LOT of love and effort into creating it. We should consider that while presenting our opinions on it.

It’s a great map. It’s just not a great WvW map. I don’t know why they reversed course from alpine maps to; first EotM, and now the desert BLs. The alpine map, while far from perfect, at least was situated so that players could more easily find one another. I don’t want to navigate too much while also looking for foes to fight, watching out for gankers, and otherwise doing WvW activities.

It’s not that hard. Three spawns, 2-3 towers per spawn, 2-3 supply camps per spawn, and a central keep. For all I care toss in some strategic areas to control along with the basic structures, but make it small enough to find some fights, and to promote some action.

It’s like they still think there are tons of 300+ member WvW guilds out and about able to farm for flax and shovels all the while making sure the BLs are hopping. There aren’t, and it looks like there won’t be ever again.

coglin.1867:

Taking camps is not useless. It takes literally twice as long to upgrade if you get no yaks in. I hardly call that useless.

Taking the shrines benefits you by removing thier benefits to the enemy that they can use against you.

What I would like to see them do, if they are going to keep auto-upgrade in the game, is to make it dependent on how many camps you control.

The more camps you control the faster(current speed if you control all camps) it upgrades, and then trending down from there. If you control zero camps there is no more auto-upgrade.

Also, considering how powerful the new fortifications seem to be, it would seem that guild siege should be at least 10% more powerful than superior siege.

tluv.5821:

Straegen.2938:

Almost nobody complained about the previous system and everything was attainable from inside of WvW. There are four of us left in our once ten man guild and we had almost everything unlocked for our guild because we all put in thousands of WvW hours.

Basically we lost it all with the new system and no way to get it back without starting over, expanding our guild and grinding in PvE which none of us currently play. That is just a horrible design decision.

It truly is. Forcing WvW players to go do PvE is completely stupid in my opinion. If you play a certain gamemode, I thing everything should be attainable in that gamemode. Sure you could get everything across the board and make it more fun, but if you strictly play WvW or PvP, then you should be able to attain the same rewards and benefits those in PvE gain.

Agreed. The WvW portions of the guild hall experience should be gained through WvW content. Some of the mats are so PvE-oriented that a true WvW guild would/should never be able to attain them without spending massive coin.

Of course this makes the ANet guy’s statement about WvW players really liking PvE out to look very true. One of these days ANet might figure out the cash cow WvW could be, but they should’ve already figured out the drawing card they had with WvW and apparently they haven’t.

EU would be an issue, but for NA I would simply fold the bottom 12 into the top 12. 1 & 24, 2&23, 3 & 22, etc etc. There are simply not enough players anymore for 24 NA servers.

This would give the lower tier players much more action than what they have now, and boost the middle tiers quite a lot. For purely NA coverage it would allow for a much more balanced situation across all tiers. Non-NA would still be weighted towards the top end tiers, but otherwise the action would increase everywhere.

zhonnika.1784:

On JQ, BL maps usually empty and can be k-trained. EB will have a queue. You’ll often be outmanned on the borderland maps, and I’d wager that the same is true for YB/BG.

It is, and you see it with wild fluctuations in scoring. JQ will hold a giant tick, then later BG will tick huge, and still later you see YB ticking large. Rinse, repeat.

Firebaall.5127:

Dawdler.8521:

You got it all backwards.

Its WvW that has outlived its usefulness.

Bingo.

EotM is where it’s at. The old WvW is tired and old, which is why it’s dying. It’s also why the hardcore “real WvWers” are starting to play EotM. lol

Cannot tell if sarcastic or not.
When the “real WvWers” go to EotM it’s to level an alt or to farm HP. If EotM actually became THE map that “real WvW” happened on, the KTrains would end almost immediately.

You already see this sometimes as there will be the occasional instance where one side dominates, and the other two sides are essentially bottled up, and hunted until they leave the map. This is almost always due to an organized guild deciding to raid in EotM for the night.

Maybe this is the way it will go. Wouldn’t be too terrible, it is a far more target rich environment right now than the regular BLs.

albotelho.2931:

I can see a sea of tears from ktrain people… lots of “gold” and “platinum” ranked heores.

Eotm became a farm fest and it is a complete separated game mode. I confess that I went there a good number of times to level alts and recently to farm heroe points. But other than the map current state is useless for roamers and defenders.

Talking about the map design I like it, and think it could be fun if it was included in the regular wvw with ppt, it would be nice to have maps with different styles that demands different strategies as desert and eotm does.

I have been talking about having the 4 maps in regular wvw instead of 3 clone borderlands, servers does not need home borderlands, they all could be like EBG or Eotm, just the spawn and a keep with wp close to it. No citadels are needed let us conquer it like we do with SM.

At this point with the population what it is you could almost make EotM map the only map for WvW, even in T1. Take it out of the cross-server situation it exists in right now and make it THE map. OR conversely you could substitute it for EBG. There simply aren’t enough players available for real WvW to have an “Overflow” map.

I feel like this malaise will creep ever higher through the tiers until they are forced to merge servers. They didn’t get the bump that they thought that they would with HoT in WvW presence.

It really isn’t fun right now to even try to WvW. Since HoT launched I’ve attempted to go into the BLs every night during NA prime on T1, and more often than not I have seen almost no one. No one there to attack anything, no one there to defend anything, no orange swords. I realize EBG has action, but so far the new BLs are a massive failure.

Melanion.4892:

I wvw fairly frequently. Rank 2265, mostly roaming in groups of 2-5 or going around with groups of 15-20. I only ktrain when I’m incredibly bored.

I actually like the new map. It’s a welcome change, the only trouble is nobody wants to be there. There are plenty of opportunities to play with the environment to beat people while outnumbered. Worst part is that nobody is there to fight. My roaming buddy and I spent about 2 hours on the borderland last Saturday and Sunday, then again this Friday, each time during NA prime. The fights were actually fun. Terrifying fights on the ledges in the southeast. Only thing I could ask for is more people to play on the map, whether it be a zerg or roamers. It’s a great map for a smart zerg and even better for roaming.

Tl;dr: don’t write off the new map so quickly. Learn the map. Play the map. When there are more people on the map, it’s going to be more fun. As it is, it’s fun when people are playing.

Yeah but this is the exact problem. No one wants to play on that BL. Sure eventually they will trickle back into the mode, but I fear the harm has been done. Last night, NA T1 primetime NA, and our group of 10 took 4 keeps on 3 different BLs, and the only enemy players we saw were a couple rangers trying to keep us off a door. We killed them, and no one else showed up.

That’s not a downward trend, that’s a catastrophe.

henchmen.1856:

Stacked servers crying about being full. WvW is empty because people are still playing HoT stuff. Tough luck for the small minority of guilds that tried to bandwagon while they could.

Anet wants low pop servers to get stronger. Not for already strong servers to get stronger. Balance, do you get it? It will help wvw in the long run.

No, it really won’t. Take a HUGE population and spread it to 24 servers? Sounds great. Take a large population and spread it to 24 servers? Not as good. Take a dwindling population and spread it to 24 servers? Death knell.

Blaeys.3102:

WvW always slows down during holiday events and new PvE content.

Give it time and things will bounce back, no matter what the naysayers say.

While it is true that holiday events, and new PvE content effect WvW populations to an extent, I have never seen it this bad before.

T1 NA no map queues outside of reset, and the occasional EBG map queue. As it stands T1 pops are about the same as T5 CD was at launch during NA, which isn’t terrible, but if this downward trend continues it will tremendously impact WvW.

It wouldn’t be hard for ANet to make a map with a central keep, towers and camps around it at varying distance, spawn points at equidistant points, and open areas for clashes.

Want to make a huge difference on WvW populations? Make it so that if a server doesn’t control their own central keep then their server population; PvE, PvP, and WvW do not have access to Lion’s Arch until they retake it. The portal to LA would instead send the players of that server to their respective racial cities.

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.

Except we did play our warrior, thief, ranger, engi, necro, etc for “some amount of time”. You guys gave us skill points that are shared across characters, and then do this. Said skill points which are now essentially worthless as many WvWers have an abundance of skill points just sitting there collecting dust.

I think alot of it also has to do with players that have alts being a bit upset that the scrolls are soulbound.

We got used to being able to play one player and gain skill points for all our characters. We got spoiled. I know for myself that I made several alts knowing that I wouldn’t have to grind skill points for all of them. Now I’m staring at the grind for HP to enable the elites on my alts. That grind is intimidating, especially for my Rev. I really can’t see doing the story on all my characters, and once I resign myself to this I will happily WvW on my Reaper or Scrapper. Until then I’m beating my head into a wall trying to get a Herald.

WvW is dead in T1 so I cannot imagine what it’s like in lower tiers. Last night we called it after summoning airship and taking 2 garris all right about 7pm CST without a single fight, and only seeing 2 enemy players.

Truly terrible turn of events.

Still stuck. Character select loads, but cannot load into the maps. Says it’s my internet, but we know how that goes don’t we.

Straylight.7529:

I’m playing a reaper myself and all you need is 60 HP to unlock the elite specialization (you get an exotic greatsword plus the associated skin) and another 15 HP to unlock the first minor trait that allows you to go into reaper shroud. That means a total of 75 HP gives you 10 new abilities to play with.

That is enough to feel like a reaper and enjoy playing it. You absolutely don’t need 400 HP to enjoy playing a reaper. Sure, you won’t be the most effective reaper possible due to lack of reaper-traits and utility skills but at least you get a sense of progression once you unlock everything else step by step

Also I suggest trying to change your own behaviour instead of asking arenanet to cater to your self-imposed restrictions (“I don’t want to do PVE content”)

good luck & have fun

So one of your three trait lines has 1 minor trait unlocked? You are gimping yourself something fierce right there. And ANet’s stated mission at the beginning was to create a “play as you want” experience. For some that means avoiding PvE like the plague.

I think a quest should be the “gate” behind which the elites are locked. What kind of ridiculousness makes a core concept of the expansion gated behind essentially finishing the expansion? I will almost certainly have to play through every map before I am able to unlock 1 elite. Why would I play through it again on that elite? Poor design on ANet’s part imo.

I would love for someone to compile a list of non-gated, or at least non-gated by anything higher than gliding 1. I got to a HP yesterday by gliding, and had to have some kind of muddy frog mastery or somesuch.

Veneratio.1980:

Um no. The majority are playing the game and loving it. The very small yet vocal minority are here whingin about it.

Well the vast majority of the people I talked to today both in guild and out were not “loving it”. They were doing it because they had to, not because they wanted to. I liked the map, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t like that of the 6 HP challenges I found 4 wouldn’t let me interact with them due to not having the correct masteries.

Kravick.4906:

I’ve reached several hero points, only to find out I can’t actually get them for some reason. They’re covered in some kind of glowing vines that instantly kill you the minute you touch them. So how the hell are you supposed to even get these hero points?

Yep all the people telling us that, “it will be so easy, just go and get the HP and quit crying.” were wrong. Got to a HP right after getting my gliding mastery, but oh no I needed some frog mastery to be able to interact with it. Spent about 3 hours in the jungle ended up with 2 HP total. Went into WvW and knocked out 16 scrolls in a couple hours. So 5-ish hours and 36 HP. Barely enough to unlock one skill. Not fun.

So HP are a pain in the rear in HoT land. Got to one that I was really happy about, and because I didn’t have some frog mastery I couldn’t get the point.

If I can get there I should be able to get the point.

Ganathar.4956:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

1.) It just doesn’t make sense to punish the more casual players this way

Once you unlock whatever rank of masteries that is required for access to the hero points, it will likely be way easier to get the elite spec with your alts than doing central Tyrian map completion over and over again.

Indeed it will, but that’ still something like 16 million xp. For a person that prefers WvW to PvE that number is cringe-inducing. This will devastate real WvW, as WvW players will play nonstop EotM to get their HP, or shudder, head to PvE-land.

Gotchaz.7865:

That the new map will be empty!!!

I really want the new map to be successful but with all the mobs and pve nonsense I have a bad feeling after a few days the queue for EB will be huge lol

I really hope they listen to the community and make this a success.

I’m more nervous that due to the HP grind more people will play PvE for a longer period of time in order to, more quickly, unlock elite specs. Making the statement that “WvW players really enjoy PvE” out to be true.