Guild Wars 2

DeWolfe.2174:

Right now I’m hopeful, yes hopeful, that polishing and fixing of the Alpine maps is underway. That they’ll get it rotated back in soon.

Why would you think that the people who brought you the Desert BL are going to do anything positive with the Alpine map? Talk about wishful thinking.

Thought it might be interesting to see some week-over-week stats on total number of kills and deaths.

Take the data for what you will, but I think it gives a rough big-picture of WvW activity. Two weeks is not much, but you gotta start somewhere… it’ll be interesting to see these numbers change over the course of a few weeks.

Note that this week’s stats consists of about 15 more hours of gameplay.

Last Friday (6:00pm pacific time):

T8: total number of deaths (sum of all three servers): ~6000 (total kills: ~5000)
T4: total number of deaths: ~33,000 (total kills: ~31,000)
T1: total number of deaths: ~83,000 (total kills: ~79,000)

Today (Saturday, Jan 9, 9:30am pacific time):

T8: ~6000 deaths, ~5,700 kills
T4: ~30,000 deaths, ~28,000 deaths
T1: ~94,000 deaths, ~91,000 kills

Jana.6831:

Wvw is broken right now due to multiple reasons – population issues might have been a thing a year ago, now we face different stuff.
Megaservers would be the end of wvw, yes.

This.

Fixing population was something they should have done in 2015.
Fixing rallies off kills and introducing PPK was something that would have been great in 2013.

It’s 2016, the game mode is such a disastrous shape right now, there’s no point in fixing problems from a bygone era.

Tspatula.9086:

The changes are all trival, none of them requires any real programing, with the minor exception of the Rally mechanism, and that can’t be all that difficult to change from 5 to 1. This is more of the same from Anet, this isn’t a priority, if it was a priority it would have be announced and get released on Tuesday. And if, in fact, it does get released on Tuesday then then should fire their PR team… Zero Kittens given.

They don’t seem to have any sense of urgency. Either they don’t realize the gravity of the situation, or they do… and knowing it’s all over they’re now just stringing people along for as long as possible.

Dawdler.8521:

gavyne.6847:

Dawdler.8521:

Ironically, its a test that many hardcore WvWers wanted – no limitation on AoE.

Sensible people knew it would be disastrous but nope, many has been adamant that specific players are supposed to wreck a zerg (be it a meteor storm with no AoE cap or a banner). Bet they are celebrating now. Well, until they are on the recieving end.

Nobody asked to test uncapped AOE with such high damage. When you remove player caps on AOE, you’re supposed to lower the damage, not quadruple it. Having played DAOC and know exactly what players asked for, nobody asked for these overpowered offensive & defensive banners that do not even utilize player/class skills.

GG Anet logic & “balance”.

I cant recall anybody ever suggesting lowered damage in conjunction with unlimited AoE. It was pretty much only the latter discussed, because they wanted 10 peeps to own 50 man zergs.

_Everyone_knows that to to increase AOE caps you have to decrease damage. It’s so obvious no one feels the need to mention it.

Everyone except maybe you and Anet.

Sinbold.8723:

Please mention your server when making statements that seem to include everyone in the game. I’m on Ehmry Bay, and I can tell you that GoM and NSP are EXTREMELY active on our desert borderland, and we on theirs. We’ve had some great fights over the oasis (like last night where we lost by one core), some great defending of our Undercroft by our enemies, making it difficult but fun for us to take it back. Once you get used to the map its as easy to navigate as Alpine was. Getting used to it is the thing- and some of you don’t want to take the time to do that. That’s not Anet’s fault, that’s your fault.

What you don’t seem to get is that people don’t enjoy the map. Why get used to it if you don’t enjoy it? This isn’t a job. People are here for fun. The map is not fun. And it’s Anet who is in charge of making it fun. So yes, it is indeed Anet’s fault.

Osu.6307:

My question is, where did all the wvw’ers go? As far as I know, no other game has a decent WvW gamemode. Are they all just playing Civ?

Actually, no game has a decent WvW gamemode, including GW2. So there’s no reason not to quit.

Everyone didn’t quit just because rewards were nerfed. It was what the killing of rewards implied: that dungeons are officially abandoned content. Before that, people were just barely holding on, hoping that maybe Anet would do something with dungeons, but once the rewards nerf was announced, it was clear there was no more reason to stick around.

And it’s pretty obvious that fractals are now bumped down to the position that dungeons previously held… pretty soon, they’re going to be abandoned also.

So really, there’s no point in going for records (unless for your own enjoymen), because everyone who cared has already quit.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fellfoot.8156:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Fellfoot.8156:

Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.
Thank you.

I’m very hesitant to support something like that, because it is part of what killed City of Heroes.

It was a very big problem, in that skills in PVP didn’t work the same as in PVE, which created a jarring disconnect between the two game modes. Instead of having to learn a new game from scratch, most players opted out of doing PVP.

It was separated in Guild Wars. People played both without any problems. Also, a lot of the player base already in this game tend to prefer playing one game mode over others. Of course there are some folks that play all, and there are some folks that play two out of three. I’m not suggesting to separate every single skill. Only suggesting that there are always certain skills that need to have different (but similar) uses.

This is debatable. The thing with City of Heroes was that it wasn’t always split. That came down to the most infamous update in CoH history: Issue 6. When this split happened, the PVP community that existed hated it and left, and the PVE community remained forever reluctant to set foot into PVP, due to how different everything was. The end result was that, without a dedicated PVP community driving the game, its popularity severely plummeted.

Because of this, I wonder exactly how “fine” players were with it in GW1. If there isn’t a lot of exchange between the two camps, then you wouldn’t get much feedback with what problems players have transitioning. If everything was “fine”, then why is it the same developers are spending so much time and effort trying to do just the opposite in this game?

PVP is important, because it draws a rather large crowd, and is more entertaining than regular ole PVE. The transition between the two game modes needs to be as seamless as possible. Having different skill sets between the game modes will add friction that doesn’t need to exist.

GW2 shouldn’t 3 entirely different modes of play. The whole point of having same balancing is to make sure that doesn’t happen. GW2 has one mode of play, but 3 different primary objectives. Its all the same movements, the same skills, the same mechanics. The only change is the goal.

The way it is now, people are leaving PvP and WvW in droves. Due to inaction, it’s probably too late for WvW at this point, but PvP can possibly be saved — though definitely not with 2 balances a year.

Apparently, no server is full anymore.

Soon.5240:

Unfortunately, whatever changes to come have been in the pipeline for the last 6 months and are by the same development team that gave us dumpster fire, PvE centric mess that is WvW today.

I doubt that the development team had an “ah ha” moment where they NOW finally get WvW…..

People don’t/can’t or just refuse to believe this. The people who brought you the ruins, EotM, and the Deserted BL aren’t going to suddenly make a 180 and start producing successes.

KayCee.4653:

I don’t think even if they added much to WvW now, that many would come back to WvW play…

Every day they wait, the less chance people will come back.

The B2P “feature” where people easily return to the game after quitting doesn’t actually work. If sufficient time passes after someone quits, it’s too late.. they’ve already forgotten about the game. (Basically what they said in Swingers.)

Humphrey Bear.2698:

No one plays Desert Borderlands and no one cares about it so why is it so hard to give back Alpine Borderlands for now before everyone eventually quits ? And then perhaps tweak Alpine Borderlands by like replacing ruins with something else . If it’s not hard bringing back events like Winstersday then why would Alpine Borderlands be an issue bringing back ?

Great idea. Perhaps replace the fail ruins with a big lake that has an island in the middle. Perhaps put some krait on that island. Maybe some small PvE event there as well? Something to do with Quaggans might be good?

Looking at Gaile Gray’s reply in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/We-need-balance-patch/first#post5898988

and her reply to this post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/We-need-balance-patch/first#post5899008

in the same thread…

I think it’s safe to say there isn’t going to be a balance patch anytime soon.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m all for the balance patch, but I’d like to note that it has come to my attention, moreso now than ever, that much of the community doesn’t know what it wants in regards to global, widely-accepted balancing that affects one, several, or the relationships between classes and the cascading changes that those balances make to pvp, pve, and the components thereof.

I don’t know how much of our input the devs value and accept for these changes, or what format this input has to be in to be considered fair and valid (and, perhaps, that could be a topic of discussion so we can tailor our posting regarding this topic appropriately), but I’d rather:

• not rush this patch
• continue to vocalize the aspects of the game I am familiar enough with to see as strong or weak

And hope that the patch either provides a happy medium or the beginnings of one with iterations close behind to smoothen the transition.

We only get them twice a year. I can wait longer for one if it gives the game as a whole six months of relative peace between classes.

So yes, we need it. But let’s not hasten it.

You would be ok waiting longer than 6 months for balance patches? Are you a PvE-only player?

Because balance every 6 months is really really bad for PvP. And to make it worse, the current state of balance is an absolute disaster (again, I’m talking PvP). You have pro teams rage-quitting live during tournaments (mid-game no less) because of the lack of balance.

Of course WvW is being hit just as bad (or worse) by the current state of balance, but it’s got even more serious problems at the moment (Deserted BL).

Is this a trick question? Did you lose a pip?

This is what the game mode has become. Either grin and bear it or quit because it’s certainly not going to change for the better.

tym.3791:

I honestly don’t blame ANET this time. How long did everyone scream they wanted new maps??? So they finally give in, give new maps, now everyone is hollering we want the old back.

So if someone goes in for surgery for some medical issue and the doctors incompetently perform the wrong operation, it’s the patient’s fault for wanting to correct that medical issue?

style.6173:

The biggest problem is that ANET doesn’t know the difference between a feature release and a balance patch. That is scary.

They do. They just didn’t do a balance patch before leagues (as promised) and retconned the feature release into a balance patch. Pretty sad.

Callouts into Lions Arch was a really important way WvW recruited new players. That’s long gone.

When your expansion can’t sell on its own merits, this is what happens.

Well, with golem rush week, they went completely silent, did absolutely nothing, and just waited for the event to end.

So maybe the same here?

Another measure: wvwintel shows current number of kills (and deaths) per server in its current matchup.

Looking at T8 yesterday (friday) night, for example there were only 6000 deaths through the entire matchup!

It was 33,000 for T4 and 83,000 for T1. If anyone has the numbers pre-HoT, it’d be really interesting to compare.

Daddar.5971:

When you’re sailing on the Titanic, rearranging the deck chairs makes it look like you’re doing something….

Oh! that’s a really good one.

Royale.5863:

The disinterest in WvW prompted a lot of these changes. Also obviously they’ve been watching Reyanas twitch interviews. The thing that gets me is that a lot of these changes which most people agree with have been suggested for years. Years. Only now at the very lowest ebb of this game mode do they actually make some of these logical changes? What happened to the adopt a dev program? What happened to the countless CDI’s? It isn’t new maps which has killed off WvW. Its the inaction which causes players to depart the game mode because what history can they draw upon to make them think things will change?

100% this.

You might complain about potholes in the roads on your way to work. You ask the city to fill them in, but they never do. Not a huge deal, but it would have improved your quality of life a bit.

Then there’s a massive earthquake and everything has crumbled into ruins! At this point, the city says “Hey, we’m going to fix your pothole sometime soon, isn’t that great news?”

Anet’s promising to fix potholes right now while we’re all standing in the ruins of what WvW used to be.

Aezyr.5304:

Daddar.5971:

Suppose that A-Net gave us a choice (they won’t), and we could have either EotM map or desert BL map for WvW. Which would you choose and why?

I’d take EotM over DBL simply because there is much better opportunity for fights on that map. Both maps have annoying PvE spam slapped into them, but at least EotM is better laid out for actual RvR combat.

What do you think?

My honest opinion? Delete both or use them for PvE or something.

This. And also delete the bloodlust ruins area in the old BL (assuming the old BL hasn’t been deleted already).

Of course, this would remove almost the entirety of development on WvW since GW2 launched. (Not a bad thing.)

Did you read the justification for their changes to cat supply? They’re obviously sticking with the Desert BL.

bear.3894:

…and the most reoccurring element has been concern/pessimism for the future of the game. I know similar things happen for every MMO in varying degrees, but I noticed it seemingly everywhere I looked; regardless of the website over the course of the last few week(s). I know Anet does not talk about content updates much before hand, but from what I am seeing a large number of people need something to give them hope. A hope that what could potentially be their favorite game is not slowly dying away. I am not posting this to start anything; I have just recently returned for HoT myself, and am curious as to whether the community is really that lacking/in a bad way. I noticed a definite drop in the server populations (from full to high, and high to low, etc.). I just want to know if something occurred to warrant it, or if I am just not aware of changes that have been made that would cause at least the appearance of such a population shift. I am hoping for a number of positive changes/additions that spell a bright future in Tyria as we move into this new year.

Server population drop is from pretty much everyone quitting WvW because of the terrible changes to WvW in HoT.

You think they can go from balancing twice a year to once every two weeks? That’s pretty unrealistic.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Its meaningless data – nothing about the deaths/kills has has any indication of what the battles looked like. It could have been 20 vs 3 for all we know.

In fact you can learn a lot. Just look at this:

Right now on wvwintel, at around 6:00pm pacific time on Friday I see these stats:

T8: total number of deaths (sum of all three servers): ~6000 (total kills: ~5000)
T4: total number of deaths: ~33,000 (total kills: ~31,000)
T1: total number of deaths: ~83,000 (total kills: ~79,000)

Does this tell me exactly what the battles looked like? No. Despite these numbers, could there be an active primetime on T8? It’s possible.

But there’s no denying that the difference between the numbers are enormous and something is wrong.

Now imagine if we had this data over time. I’d be very curious to see the numbers from before HoT up to now.

wvwintel gives current matchup kills and deaths, but it doesn’t seem to have graphs for these (by hour, day, or by week)… is there any website (or anyone) that has this data? It’s probably a decent measure of activity so would be really interesting to see.

RubberDougie.2750:

Lord Kuru.3685:

SpandexPudding.6372:

His own quote, “Feeling bullied into buying the expansion.” basically says it all. Its like in order to fully enjoy the game you have to ultimately buy it anyways.

Not just F2P players. But as someone who only has core GW2, I feel exactly the same way. I’m very close to quitting a well.

Okay. Quit then. ANet won’t make an exception and give you the expansion for free. Obligatory “Can I have your stuff?:” question.

Where did I ask for them to give me the expansion for free? Go ahead and reread my post, it’s only two sentences.

I don’t like the product they’re currently putting out, ankitten ot buying; simple as that. As for my stuff: I’m almost exclusively WvW so I don’t have anything to give.

Swagger.1459:

Game is not perfect by any means and I have had lots of gripes, but players had played the core game for 3 years…

This is a personal issue if you don’t want to buy the expansion… Game has no monthly fee and y’all still complain. Sad.

Personally, I highly dislike the switch to the expansion model. But I’d have tolerated it if the WvW and PvP aspects of the game didn’t turn out to be P2W — which, considering the extreme power creep with the elite specializations — they now are.

As for the hackneyed “no monthly fee” argument. “No monthly fee” was not because of Anet’s great generosity Their business strategy was to go B2P in order to reel in customers who would not go for monthly fees. That strategy is what led me, and many others, to buy the game when we otherwise would not have. So “no monthly fee” is nothing to be appreciated but rather something expected given the B2P promise.

That they’re “listening” now with the minor tweaks, supposedly coming up sometime in January, just shows how desperate they are and how bad their WvW metrics must be.

Dawdler.8521:

Straegen.2938:

displayname.8315:

Yeah not impressed by anything coming. Don’t know what the hype with Crowfall is dosent even look very RvR.

CU is being developed by some of the original DAoC crew. It is more of an old school MMO style and not very action driven which is a drawback to me but I am sure others will appreciate a throwback MMO playstyle.

Crowfall has some of the biggest MMO industry legends working on it including Koster of SWG fame. At its core the officers of the company making Crowfall have extensive open world PvP backgrounds and it shows in the way the game works with avatars (toons) effectively being gear and matches having a variety of victory conditions and duration. The game is also action oriented more so than even GW2. IMO Crowfall is VERY ambitious, has some big names that have made some very successful MMOs and is far enough along to believe they can deliver.

Both games are coming from independent studios which could easily run into financing issues down the road but as we have seen with Everquest Next, nobody is immune from that pill.

It doesnt really matter. Neither is a immediete threat to GW2 – AFAIK Crowfall is probably at least 2 years away and CU 8+ months or so, plus they are still going with subscription last I heard – CU is pretty much doomed to failure unless they go against industry standard and set it to a couple of bucks or three a month.

True that they aren’t immediate threats to GW2. Anet is the biggest threat to GW2 right now. And the worse WvW gets, the less it takes to quit without having a replacement in line.

People bought the game because it was B2P. Now you have to pay for the expansion, no option for gem purchase. Bait-and-switch.

Knighthonor.4061:

When Anet gave WvW vets, a chance to test out HoT’s new WvW maps, why didnt you all bring attention to the problems when it was in testing period?

Everyone did. Anet didn’t listen. At all.

You’ve got it wrong OP. Silence is the default. Only when they need to hype/hawk something do they speak.

SpandexPudding.6372:

His own quote, “Feeling bullied into buying the expansion.” basically says it all. Its like in order to fully enjoy the game you have to ultimately buy it anyways.

Not just F2P players. But as someone who only has core GW2, I feel exactly the same way. I’m very close to quitting a well.

Jski.6180:

Bigsexy.8302:

Everyone is busy waiting for CU and Crowfall.
It’s time this game to die after 3 years of suffering.

So what 3 more years down the rode? More like 1 year but still a good bit away you cant always look for the next best thing becuse there will always be something that looks better down the rode. There already some major problems with pure rvr games that are going to show them self with these games at least GW2 has more then just wvw.

WvW is so bad at this point that you don’t need a replacement game to justify leaving.

Anet has changed its strategy (again) and this time, you’re not part of the new target audience.

X T D.6458:

It is amazing what they consider intentional trolling and reportable behavior, regarding some idiot talking about a movie in map chat who could just be blocked or turned off. But of course when it comes to wvw and some kitten deciding to troll an entire server and nothing that we can do about it….No, they cant do anything, they aren’t breaking rules, its not blah blah blah…its really pathetic sometimes…

The excuses of “not breaking the official rules” is just that, an excuse. I’m pretty sure the EULA says Anet has 100% full discretion when it comes to terminating your account.

The real reason is that enforcing something that requires a judgement call (like siege trolling) takes humans, and Anet are simply not willing to put people on it.

This is exactly the reason why we have automatic upgrades: to combat upgrade and supply trolling (look at the old CDI thread).

So as long as you can gather together a group of like-minded trolls/spies, you can wreak havoc on a server .. especially if you’re organizing during low population times (in other words, all the time now)?

The more people complain about siege trolls, the more chance Anet implements the same solution they did for automatic upgrades; this time, that’ll be static/unmovable/unrotatable siege positions.

Teevell.1684:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Luckily the Steam sale is here to support us while WvW is in its death spiral.

I bought, Don’t Starve: Shipwrecked, Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands. Still debating a few other things. Definitely haven’t been playing as much GW2 this month.

Didn’t know there was new Don’t Starve content!

Luckily the Steam sale is here to support us while WvW is in its death spiral.

rager.4963:

It was suppose to be a play style choice. So that choice is to be weak or not?

I can’t support balance like that. It is the reason I am holding off. I am not sure about other classes that have the same issues.

100%. Pay or be weak: pretty unacceptable, especially if you PvP. That’s good enough reason to not support them. Then add the fact they made WvW a ghost town.

Unless HoT goes super cheap, I have zero intentions of getting it… and even when it does, if WvW is totally dead by then (very very likely) I wouldn’t bother.

I’ll probably end up quitting the game. Very close to it already.

Cyninja.2954:

Lord Kuru.3685:

PopeUrban.2578:

Technically that’s not a treadmill as all new stat sets are sidegrades, not upgrades. They’re preventing you from losing a specific amount of one stat to gain a specific amount of another stat, but they’re not actually giving a raw stat increase.

Just like the elite specializations were sidegrades also?

But you’re right, not a treadmill, but rather p2w.

Elite specialisations are not sidegrades. Also this thread is not about elite specialisations.

Pope’s argument still stands, yours on the other hand makes literally no sense.

Also a small hint, stop using p2w as an argument for anything you dislike. It might make people think you have no clue what you are talking about, just as in this case.

LOL. Lack of reasoning/reading comprehension skills FTL.

If you’re thinking of transferring, don’t waste your gems. WvW isn’t going to survive as a playable game mode for much longer (in any tier). And if anyone thinks the same people who brought you the failing progression of Bloodlust Ruins —> EotM —> Desert(ed) BL are going to “fix” WvW… LOL.

Two years ago; a year ago; even five months ago… PPK would have been something worthwhile to debate.

But now, what difference will PPK make to the state of the game — whether good or bad?

At this point, it’s like worrying about a pimple when your cancer has metastasized.

Daddar.5971:

ArchonWing.9480:

Just save your gems.

The question is, for what? I’ve spent way more gems than I care to admit, but no amount of gems will fix the mess this game is becoming.

For nothing. Just don’t buy gems in the first place.