Guild Wars 2

atheria.2837:

I agree, Lion’s Arch should be THE city that is “server specific” and would not be hard to implement at all.

Seems an obvious choice but I don’t know enough about how they implemented their mega server tech to say how easy it would be to disconnect. The more important point is atm we don’t even really have a Lions Arch.

I think ANET should make a World AP pool (all the AP earned by players on a given world) that has some effect on how the Living Story events progress so lower population worlds can take their time with LS if they choose. Seems like rebuilding Lions Arch will be the next step in the Living Story and could be done on a world by world basis so different worlds could maybe all have their own flavor of LA sort of the like the voting thing did last year but this time it is a choice which parts and services to rebuild first or something. Would be a way for a World to build up some community outside of WvW and maybe a source of world pride.

Still holding out hope that some of kind of World wide chat (think of it like Alliance chat) is possible but it did not sound like something ANET could do back in the BWE’s when we first started asking for something similar. Hopefully that has changed.

I made a thread in the Guild Wars 2 Discussion forum on some ideas for ways to enhance world communities in this post Mega-server era but since the WvW community basically is the main reason for world server identities now I figure frequent visitors to this sub forum would be the most interested and have the most to add to the discussion. I am thinking this needs to be ANET’s next CDI and am hoping some of their staff take notice if we post such topics where red tags are more often seen. I would love to hear more ideas from the WvW community on how to best maintain world connections post Mega-servers. Cheers,

World Communities in the face of Mega-Servers

Didn’t have room for one of the longer points about living story above so adding it here. It is probably way too complicated to ever see the light of day but the direction I think ANET needs to be thinking, ways to tie the world community more tightly together and give us reasons to get involved in making those connections more solid.

• Living Story elements tied to world achievements; a way to involve the PvE crowd in the world community not by bringing more LS into WvW but making the rate at which world members earn LS AP affect how that story plays out in a zone. This would mean finding a way to disconnect a zone from the Mega-server temporarily at times so LS events could to be more limited to the world community (with the overflows brought into the Mega-server) and progress at different speeds depending on how focused a particular world was at working through the story elements. For some world less interested in LS AP the story arc could take longer but give everyone there more time to participate. This is probably way too much pie in the sky and more than the LS team could handle but it would be a neat way to gather people more interested in progressing the Living Story together while others could take it more slowly. For a casual player who tends to focus on WvW first, two weeks is rarely enough time to participate in all of the Living Story events. The rebuilding of Lions Arch could be a great first test of something like that especially if the Lions Arch zone itself was removed from the Mega-server and then the worlds who spent more time and resources on the rebuilding events could have their city done sooner. And if LS events were going to be in WvW (not a fan of them there but maybe if done right it would be ok) then make them have an effect on how the LS on that world progresses as well so that winning WvW matches could also impact (not in any drastic way) how the LS unfolded for your world. Visions of “Chose your own adventure” books are coming to mind which could be rather messy but very interesting. Maybe sort of like how the election stuff from last years LS played out?

I think ideas for how to address community building by worlds in this post Mega-server atmosphere should be ANET’s next CDI so lets save them a little time and get started on the list now. What are some changes you would like to see implemented that could help foster world identities and build more closely knit communities to enhance players enjoyment of the game? I realize right now the WvW community is the only one that is strongly linked to their world and that Mega-servers were a step in the right directly for a lot of the PvE zones but I feel there is a lot more that could be done to make this a better experience for everyone.

Some random ideas I think might help address the problems of community building for WvW in a Mega-server driven PvE climate in no particular order are:

• World chat; a chat tab for server (world) limited communication. Both pros and cons to this idea and wasn’t possible when the game launched from what I remember but maybe things have changed.

• World selection panel identity; a way to express world personality from the world selection screen in game to help new players make better choices about where they want to call home. I was a fan of adding something like world mascots or battle cries chosen by the world community back before launch that would show up on the world selection panel but I realize that would take a lot of effort from ANET to put together. It still could be fun to have some world polls on the forums for those sorts of things and a way to bring the community together while making the choices. Maybe something as simple as links the world communities fan webpages from the world selection screen would be enough if the other stuff is too complicated.

• One free world transfer to new accounts; new accounts should receive one free world transfer token as it is not fair to punish them for not knowing where they would most happily find a home before they even create a character and then throw them into PvE maps with players and guilds from all worlds. I imagine a lot of guilds will use paying for your world transfer as a recruiting tool but I don’t think ANET needs all of that gem sale cash, just ease up a bit on the new accounts and then raise the prices of transfers most of the time since it is already way too easy to jump around worlds.

• No Mega-server city hubs; rebuilt Lions Arch zone at least and possibly all cities should be disconnected from the Mega-server to serve as gathering places for the community, this seems to be a rather popular request and hopefully something ANET is already working on.

• In game world message panel; a way to advertise world community events in game to server mates using maybe some combination from the lfg panel and guild message tech to better allow cross map community communication and organization as a way to limit cross-server spying paranoia.

• In game server-wide recognition messages; in GW1 messages were broadcast when individual players reached certain major milestones or teams won certain tournaments. You would only see messages from players on your world and could of course turn off the achievement notifications messages in the chat UI for more choice but this would help the community better recognize each other and probably be a bit of fun for the big AP hunters who are proud of their accomplishments.

I am pretty sure the RP community has a ton of other suggestions on ways to improve the Mega-server experience for them on the PvE maps and I have a feeling a lot of ANET’s “you’ll be on the same map as your friends” tech didn’t work out as intended (yet?) but these are a few of the things I think could help the WvW community continue to thrive under the new Mega-server system. What are some others?

Keep seasons (no more than 2 a year, spring and fall tournaments is plenty) for the AP hunters and as a way to maybe convert some PvEers into WvW junkies but make them shorter and make the matches during seasons shorter as well, like two or three days. Maybe even go so far as to only have the weekend matches count for the season score and have regular match-ups during the weekdays. Of course also adjust the AP tracks accordingly but this way people can have a choice and enjoy some non season influenced WvW in between or get it over with more quickly.

I don’t particularly care for Seasons myself but some seem to get excited over it so there has to be some compromise in the middle there. Of course they are pretty darned meaningless unless population imbalances and nutty scoring methods can be addressed but I am pretty sure ANET is very well aware of those issues and likely trying (so far unsuccessfully) to find some fixes.

It’s disheartening to see how many people seem to think this would be a good idea. There are a lot of much better ways to fix the imbalance issues but who ever said life is suppose to be fair anyways? It’s almost like some of you all never really had the chance to play WvW the way it was meant to be.

I have the feeling a lot of people who never had the experience of world oriented communities in MMO’s before came to this game and made community building more difficult by their blind ignorance of what it is or could be. Not going to defend ANET and say they didn’t make matters 10X worse with the early guesting fail and free transfer world hopping precedent but the players were the ones who decided winning was everything (even before there were any temptation of rewards for it!) and stacking worlds full to the gills was the only way to play.

Jade Quarry has often times been a bandwagon destination and yet manged to keep a core sense of community going through it all simply because a lot of smaller loyalist WvW oriented guilds decided to make it home from day one. PvE mega-servers are already doing enough damage to my enjoyment of the game and I tend to avoid EotM so I know exactly what would happen if a similar mechanic were introduced to WvW. There are already plenty of games with PvP that work that way so play one of those instead of trying to bring GW2 down to that level of meaningless combat for purely personal glory.

goldenwing.8473:

I’m at the point where I am philosophically resigned to what exists in GW2 currently, and am curiously watching to see where it will go without any expectations that ANet will actually implement improvements

Pretty much this, its the best thing out there for this kind of three way play. Unlike a lot of others, I don’t think ANET is especially neglectful of WvW, just woefully unprepared to devote the level of resources it needed when it most needed them. Too many bridges got burnt at exactly the wrong times for a lot of players which leaves a bad taste. Mark Jacobs and DAoC made a lot more serious of mistakes imo and makes it especially hard for me to have any hope when it comes to CU either. I actually trust ANET more to think through implications but I get why many don’t have the patience for it.

DeadlySynz.3471:

This shouldn’t be a case of allowing us to run 100 on a map simply because we can, it should be a case of reducing the numbers because it’s better for the overall health of the game. Health meaning both skill lag and coverage.

Quoted for truth. I still don’t really understand why guilds of 50+ all need to be in the same map anyways. And how many 50+ active-in-WvW-at-the-same-time guilds are there left in this game? No offense, but ANET hasn’t really done all that much to encourage the larger guild minded folks so I have a feeling a lot of them have left in search of better supported pastures. Maybe GW2 isn’t the game for mega-guilds in WvW. Would that be so terrible?

lower the server cap in stages starting right after season 2 ends with free transfers back open to the bottom ranked works and at the same time slowly lower the WvW map population caps a little bit a time to let guilds adjust while the megaserver makes guilds cross worlds.

loquacious.2915:

This is a horrible idea. The t1 servers have high queue times. If you change anything, keep the cap the same but make the maps far larger.

Pretty sure ANET can’t make the maps larger without serious skill lag problems due to limitations of their tech. It would be a different kind of skill lag (too much map load time instead of players firing skills in one spot) but it was mentioned early in beta that they could not make bigger maps without sacrificing performance and we need all the performance we can get.

JQ has only had annoyingly long queues across maps since Season 2 started on reset night, a little bit over the weekend and then on EB and where ever the TS zerg is during prime time which leaves plenty of other places to play most of the time. Before Season 2 queues were pretty much unheard of in 2014 and most borderlands were outmanned. I think you might be overestimating how many people are still into WvW these days with EotM being the karma train destination. I don’t think queues will be as bad as people are thinking and everyone will have a lot more enjoyable experience giving WvW a chance to recover some population slowly while we spread ourselves out and create more dynamic tiers.

As for the concern of forcing some large communities or guilds to spread out, given how the new Megaserver is going to work, is that really going to be an issue for anything other than WvW? And wouldn’t it be sort of fun to battling against some of your former allies at times? I think it would make the game a heck of a lot more interesting in the long run.

You don’t think a ton of players are quitting every week because of the problems this sort of easy solution could quickly address? Many of us have been waiting over a year a now for ANET to address the problems of lag and population imbalance and EotM was suppose to be the first step. I think after Season 2 is over would be the perfect time to do something quick and easy like lowering WvW map caps and which would give us plenty of time to rebalance things well before season 3 starts but ANET is going to be scared of the idea if we continue to be so selfish about change. Some of you need to stop being so short sighted but that is a human nature problem considering all the awful things we as a species are now facing due to that sort of failure.

mango.9267:

I realize this sounds viscerally unappealing at first, and I don’t pretend there are no cons to it. But after thinking about it, it would help with many of the recurring issues. Thought I’d open the thought for discussion here.

Many have been asking for this for all the reasons listed in the OP for a long time but before EotM people would throw a hissy fit over the mere suggestion. I was hoping things might be different now but I haven’t seen it catch on yet. There is still a lot of people who seem to think 50v50v50 battles are not big enough. I can’t even get near Garri during a regular battle lately. Skill lag has just been stupid for some reason.

azizul.8469:

i have proposed lowering map cap a loooonnggg looongg time ago, but everytime there will be people saying “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” , and ANET also too afraid to experiment.

lowering map cap per server per map will make the map queues for the stacked servers, and will force people to spread to more servers in order to be able to play WvW.

sometimes you have to give a kick in the butt to get people moving.

Hear hear! Been beating on that dead horse for quite some time myself and anything that makes lag better is a good thing imo. Now that we have EotM it should be easier to do without starting a Tier 1 riot.

As to WvW map caps it’s been long assumed the Borderlands where in the range of 70 to 80 while EB is closer to 100 cap per side from previous commander testing using /supply info. ANET has also admitting to changing those caps in the past, they’ve been both higher and lower early on. I would propose they change them to closer 50 to 60 for the Borderlands and 70 to 80 for EB. I understand people want to enjoy massive battles from time to time but isn’t 50×50×50 really big enough?

Berk.8561:

Reverence.6915:

It’s terrible news for WvW. So many of us go to LA or Gendarran Fields to ask for help in WvW when it’s needed. Just going to screw a lot of PvE heavy servers over

This problem could be mitigated if we were provided with a “server chat” option that would only go out to people on our home server for things like this and guild recruiting, since that will still be server-based, too.

A server wide chat tab was asked for early on in the BWE’s and there was some reason then it wasn’t feasible (think it had something to do with WvW and PvE maps being on different servers) but I really hope it has changed and is possible now because that always seemed like a very good idea to me. Not just for WvW purposes either, it would have a multitude of uses to help keep the community tight in the face of megaservers and be easy enough to filter out for those who do not want to participate.

goldenwing.8473:

Old school DAoC players. Love RvR and have been looking for that community-oriented, small-group can make a contribution, group player vs player style of play in every game we’ve tried since then. GW2 WvW, complete with its flaws, still has a vestige of that.

ditto, WvW feeds my small scale combat bloodlust and allows me to enjoy myself as just an average player with limited playtime.

looks like ya all had fun gotta love SBI <3

ANET always rocks April Fools! Gender Bender and stick people were fun too but Commando will always take the cake

You get use to it in WvW just fine so enjoy the silly for a day.

Now that EotM is out and the transfer pricing fix going on maybe it is time to get back on the “Lower the WvW map Population Caps!” bandwagon. Sadly I’ve become a bit paranoid that the size of the queue and the number of EotM instances is also somehow attributing to lag lately or else I would be banging the kitten out of that “Lower the WvW map Population Caps!” drum. Lag has always been a problem for this game when 3 large size clumps clash and there is nothing in the gameplay to discourage such clumping so regular lag happens pretty often but for whatever reason, it got a lot worse over the last month so if at least ANET can narrow that issue down from their stats gathering thread it would be a start.

So yeah . . . maybe it is finally time to lower those WvW map population caps for a longer term fix?

not just you, this week has been weird for lag. It gets better, then gets worse again. I’ve sort of come to expect lag the day of a new patch but yeah something is more funky than typical lately.

I must suck I play all of my alts regardless of their WXP rank. TBH there are a lot more serious issues in this game right now and some of those have been caused by the shortsighted whining of the player-base so I have a hard time feeling much sympathy for those who’ve been told something is already in the works but can’t take the wait.

I think this will be a popular question for all of the Free destination servers. Having never played with or against any of those servers I can’t say anything more than outdated rumors, especially now that the match-up forums are dead. Wish I knew more myself, it would make a lot of soon to be had discussions easier.

EmoDevo.3209:

Quick everyone transfer to TC before price go up from 1800 to 2400 gems.
They have highest chance to win Season 2 and server not even full, what a good deal!

Actually I think people from TC should be railing against this idea. The soul of their RP server is getting greatly diluted and while more fair-weather transfers do not guarantee a win, they most definitely will bring a more fractured community.

Snowreap.5174:

I don’t see how free transfers are going to help. are there a lot of players out there on higher-ranked servers who aren’t having fun in WvW, who think that WvW would be more fun on a server with largely empty maps, and for whom the gem cost was the big thing preventing them from moving?

-ken

Casual smaller guilds, yeah it would not surprise me and it’s not that there isn’t plenty of fun to be had in the top tiers, but it is exhausting and the communities suffer greatly every time there is huge influx of players only there to win or take revenge on some other world at the top. You know there are still some people who play this game to enjoy the company of others in a semi relaxed yet competitive fun environment and if I can find where all those dudes are hanging out I would be home.

zen.6091:

Regardless, the chance to avoid gold league blobs, queues, and lag for 0 gems is intriguing.

Color me intrigued indeed If TW had stayed on SoR with the loyalists I would even have considered paying to transfer there to what will now undoubtedly be a very tight community. Wish I knew more about some of the lower tiers competition and community personalities but I guess that is what we suddenly have all these world type threads for.

goldenwing.8473:

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d say there is a pretty strong sentiment against the idea of collapsing all of WvW into 3 colors, rather than the current world set up. Which I agree with. I think world pride and association is an important part of the way that WvW works currently.

Thank you. That retains GW2’s unique WvW offering and more importantly retains community.

I am concerned about the 8 hour matches. Given that the current system is based on the aggregate of an entire week, I believe that system does a better job of capturing the community’s overall contribution than a series of 8 hour matches. There are players who cannot play except on weekends, those that can only play on off hours, those that can only play on weeknights. Segregating those out impacts the overall community feel and could end up further measuring population coverage, which might exacerbate this (current) issue.

If a change needs to be made, please consider the suggestion for 2 resets per week. One mid-week, one after the weekend. Or consider a 24 or 48 hour match for a better representative / more inclusive measurement.

Agreed, 8hr matches seems a bit extreme and would require a lot of changes to the current WvW format to work well so I think it would be a lot easier and more useful to test the effects of shorter matches by maybe starting with something like 2 per week. Friday/Monday split mentioned before seems reasonable and might actually help make the Glicko ratings more dynamic. There are some 3rd place worlds in current match-ups who could work their kitten off once in awhile to actually take gold on the Weekend Wars.

Thank you for the assurance Devon that your feel world pride is important to the way WvW works but I just have to point out that it seems to thrive without any help from ANET which just goes to show how much stronger it could be if used to tie things together and with the right incentives.

Fuzzion.2504:

Coarr.3286:

Fuzzion.2504:

Should we have our own mounts i.e. Horses, or even rideable dragon ? *Like in DAoC *

daoc had mounts?

Yup. It was released in the later years.

Yeah after New Frontiers when DAoC turned to total kitten. No thank you, I don’t think we need anything like that in GW2 and I am pretty sure ANET will never add them given what was said on the subject over the years during the games development, thank goodness.

styx.7294:

Should we care about Edge of the Mists?

apparently we should because ANET is considering ways to make WvW more like EotM which for the most part I think would be a huge a mistake.

Deniara Devious.3948:

1. scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs and unique bosses at each objective
- No need. This is NOT pve. You already have too much of this in Living Story. Please don’t make WvWvW more into pve-like experience.

2. Increased emphasis on verticality
Please no. This was one of the big design mistakes of the EotM map and Skyhammer, which is the least favorite spvp map.

3. More chokepoints
While every map needs a good balance of open places, some hills, cliffs, water and chokepoints, EotM has way too many chokepoints. Please use current Eternal Battlegrounds as your standard of map design, not EotM.

4. A much shorter match time
This could be considered, but I feel that EotM completely lacks the community aspect of the game and rapidly changing opponents make guild rivalries from opposing servers more difficult. EotM is nothing but just a big karma train and eventually it will get very boring, just like the ruins of power first had players, because of the achievements attached to it. When the novelty runs out, what then? WvWvW should be designed better to cater guilds and EotM is simple going to the wrong direction with that.

5. Destructible terrain
Doesn’t seem to add much.

Few things to add: I think the added new game mechanisms (player based buffs) and traps, turrets etc were BAD in EotM and I wish to see none of them outside that map. Rule of design: Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS), but keep refining the existing rules to perfection. A chess wouldn’t become a better game by adding more pieces and chokepoints to the board.

I think Arenanet is concentrating on wrong aspects. The biggest problems of WvWvW are none of the above. Some of them are difficult to solve and some easy:

1. More balanced match ups and more fair scoring
Now coverage and numbers decide the winner. Some matches are very imbalanced, making them boring for both parties and really desperate to those who have just few players on a map vs enemy zergs which spawn camp them outside their spawn point. Rewards are based on who manages to tag the most amount of opponents who die by the karma train. If only one the killers would get a reward (decided randomly) this would make karma train much less feasible. Of course the individual loot bag rewards should be adjusted upwards accordingly.

2. Better class balance and balancing WXP abilities
Hammer melee train has been the meta since Autumn 2012 and it has been buffed multiple times in the “balance” updates, which are entirely based on spvp/tpvp. Look at the profession distribution of WvWvW. Surely you can see it is not balanced at all!
Some WXP traits were uncalled for and further make things more imbalanced (massive buffs to siege damage, area, skills, guard leech and applied fortitude). Add to this power of the mists and bloodlust border buffs, which should both also be removed.

3. Better commander UI
This has been asked since launch! We need an open to have the commander tag visible to your own guild members only. Ability to select different colored commander tags. Easier graphical user interface to check supply info.

I am just going to quote this one because I agree with every word said. I am surprised and frankly more than a bit concerned that so many people seem to think changing WvW into Red vs Green vs Blue is actually a good idea. . . You think the communities are messed up now? That would just put the final nail in the coffin for a lot of Realm Pride folks who are still hanging on and some of the communities we’ve managed to cobble together are actually quite lovely. I like having an identity to fight for.

check out the recruitment forum and maybe go from there? I would say people will ask EU or NA first and then want to more about you are looking to get out of the experience. It is better to find a guild first imo and since you can guest all around in PvE use the opportunity to get to know some guilds before taking the transfer plunge. Most importantly, don’t give up on your outmanned world so easily, especially if this a rather recently formed opinion since this last month has been a lousy time to make any snap judgements about WvW populations and attitudes.

Hope you find what you are looking for out there. WvW can be a lovely addiction if you don’t require strong rewards other than fun times and smashing face with your buds. Cheers,

EotM on paper made total sense if it had been inserted into the game around the time they probably started designing it (early last year) but things changed . . . as they often do and by the time details on EotM were released it had a lot of us scratching our heads wondering the same things as the OP. Of course it is easy for us to say this now looking back in hindsight but considering the problems WvW was facing at the time it was a logical first step that had to be taken to address the rest of the most pressing issues of that first wave WvW era.

Now, maybe not so much, but who knows, maybe it can still be used to do some amazing desperately needed things like drastically lower the WvW map population caps to the point ANET can do something to address AoE caps and zergs or world population balance without facing huge backlash from the community. It might ofter tech helpful in condensing some of the lower tiers while maintaining that sense of community they thrive on.

I still hold out hope for some of that but personally choose not to play on EtoM not because I don’t like the map or enjoy the overflowing rewards, but because I know the game needs a strong WvW population to remain the kind of MMO I enjoy playing. It is also the same reason I run around solo sometimes even though I am not a very a good player and die a lot. I like games that offer a variety experiences and the best way to encourage that sort of atmosphere is participate is all the game play formats you most enjoy regardless of the results. In other words, have fun playing a game which is why we all play these things right?

I think this month is a horrible time to try and judge the active WvW population of worlds across time zones for multiple reasons. Please try again after a few more weeks of gathering evidence before trying to draw any sound conclusions. “Now, don’t be hasty”.

Same goes for the rest of us trying to describe what things are currently like in our match-ups. Everyone knows these last few weeks have been highly irregular so lets stop pretending this will be the new norm because it is only going to encourage more ill thought out transfers. Give things more time to settle before screaming about being outnumbered in certain time zones and for goodness sake, please don’t all transfer to JQ just yet.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Instead of new maps and new overpowered features, please give us:
- more balanced match ups
- improved commander UI
- less lag and disconnects

+1 to that, it is not the maps that are boring, it is what people chose to do on them that makes it a boring experience for you. If the above three were addressed that would go a long way to making the match ups more interesting and dynamic.

People whined for a year for a new map and we got EotM without seeing much improvement in the above big 3 (well culling was fixed and lag was improved before EotM made it worse again so they did some work in that department, I’ll give them that).

Now there are things ANET can do with the existing maps that could improve things like something besides more PvE in the NE & NW corners of the borderland maps and some element of surprise in the newly improved ruins middle areas to throw more chaos into the mix. “And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey. It’s fair” It all comes down to finding the balance for rewarding defense without making a ton of turtles and rewarding offense without making a bunch more karma trains out there but it is still up to us to play the game for the fun of it or decide to make a chore out of things forcing ourselves to be most efficient. Fun is more fun I hear.

They did up the rewards in WvW somewhat with the EotM map introduction but it is still not comparable. I am torn on the issue tho as I remember quite well the effect of “Yak Walkers” in WvW or what happened in season 1 when more than 50% of the bodies on a given map were just there for the AP.

Enjoyment of the battle should be the main reward for WvW and I would be perfectly happy with that if I also happened to gain enough rewards through regular WvW to craft ascended items without having to take a couple of days off each week to farm in PvE (or now EotM). The problem is more with us and human nature since there ought to be a few places left in game where fun is its own reward but seeing others getting more goodies somewhere else does seem to put a damper ones ability to enjoy themselves.

My answer before last week would have been a firm “NO, needs more time to bake” but now I kinda think they have to do it with everyone overreacting about EotM and its effect no WvW which is quickly sliding into a self fulfilling prophesy. If you say the same thing often enough people will start to believe it when actually EotM still has the potential to make regular WvW maps more fun and less blobby. ><

I hope ANET has at least one more fix patch scheduled before Season 2 starts that will do something to better address population imbalances and insentivize the de-stacking of top tiers because right now better rewards are just going to make that “race-to-the-top” effect so much worse which is really the last thing WvW needs right now. I am pretty sure ANET knows this and they have said EotM was just the first step towards a longer range goal so I will remain cautiously hopeful.

So the list over at Guildex is no longer current I guess? Maybe someone should work on that, do a little purge of sorts. Seems fairly representative of a lot of WvW guild members I still see around on JQ tho many of the smaller ones who started out on JQ rep under a few big names most times and the #’s of active players is likely highly over estimated. A lot of those that faded out over the last year never removed themselves from the list but that is to be expected.

would you all prefer to go back to having no clue how many people are in the “queue” ahead of you? I don’t use the numbers presented to me as anything other than a general idea of which Borderland I should queue up for that will have the shortest wait and just that simplest of thing is a huge improvement over knowing nothing so I am pretty happy with any sort of “approximation” ANET chooses to give me. I love the new UI and all the empowerment it gives me.

To those who find the queue position going up over time I have to wonder if you are changing maps at all while waiting or if this experience is happening while EotM? Would be helpful to know more details of those issues first. These days who is standing around watching their position in queue anyways? So much other stuff you could be doing.

I don’t think transferring to JQ is ever a good idea but my realm mates always hate me for saying that. I was gonna comment in the Balance Tier 3 thread but that one seemed to have gone off the rails. Sorry, but us players have shown time and time again we will not do what is good for the overall health of the game by choice and are just in it for the quick self-satisfaction of rofl-stomping each other.

Here is hoping that now that EotM is here ANET has big plans to make us scream mercy with some rather forceful draconian measures to bring about some semblance of active WvW population balance between the tiers. A girl can dream can’t she?

Lord Kuru.3685:

It’s a bad thing because of the opportunity cost. All that dev time spent on EoTM could have been spent on WvW improvements that are far more important and urgent and a big sPvP-looking map.

I look at EotM as the thing they had to do first before they could even begin to touch any of the other major issues facing WvW. EotM gives ANET the freedom to try different stuff out in a WvW environment without breaking the entire game for those who were enjoying the current meta. Having a map to address the queue problem also allows for more of those long term game breaking issues like population balance and scoring to be addressed and hopefully lets them do so in a more creative fashion. I expect to see EotM used as both a testing ground and a 24/7 entertainment haven while the bigger problems get tinkered with on the other WvW maps.

awesome! I won’t be able to stand to play in EotM very much because falling off the map is so kitten fun that I’ll be doing it on purpose all the time but I love the idea of having more choices about what game mode you want to hit at any given time.

I don’t understand the PvE hate with EotM tho. If this means less PvE on the regular WvW maps and less queues when they introduce the next big AP thing that can be earned with WuvWuv (be it Season 2 or whatever) then how can this be bad thing? If you don’t care for some PvE in your PvP then don’t go to EotM, simple as that and be happy that you wont be seeing queues on the maps you do enjoy.

I think there will be period of population re-balancing again with the introduction of EotM as players figure out what they find most fun and hardcore WvWers return to the regular maps. This will also give ANET the chance to offer some WvW incentives without causing massive queues to kitten off the regular players and a place to put WvW oriented PvE that wont get in the way of people looking to avoid that sort of thing.

Sounds like a win win to me.

I love the world clouds Grouch! Awesome and might even useful to you guys. I would say it makes pretty clear how much more diversely players feel about the things they dislike about WvW than like, but kitten does that PvE stand out eh?

Likes

• Easy & open access for all, being casual friendly while letting skilled players develop & shine
• Variety, something for everyone from large scale open field to small havoc roamers, solos and siege aficionados
• Beautiful rich environments with terrain that encourages unique encounters, never the same thing twice and always an element of wondering what is around the next corner

Dislikes

• Lack of rewards in general but especially unique shiny goodies for WvWers, rewards that are there favor zerging and avoiding combat
• Lack of commander and guild leader functions, needs more ways for guilds to shine and make a name for themselves
• How the stealth mechanic ended up working out, sounded good on paper but gets way over used, needs more counters

same team does not mean same same map

How many instances of EotM that are out there at at time will depend on how popular it is on any given night. Reset nights might see 20 or more copies EotM out there so yeah, good luck to the larger guilds getting teams together in the same place but it is going to be fun for the small scale crowd if people decide to play the map spread out, which there is no guarantee they will. Personally, as much as I loved falling to my death all over the place (no seriously, I was having too much fun falling off things to actually test the game play properly) I am not sure I’ll be spending all that much time on EotM except when there are queues on my home server.

It is a pretty neat map for sure but there is a lot that remains to be seen about how the masses react to it. Maybe it will be harder to form mega zergs with teams who don’t know each others commanders as well and maybe it will evolve into the place for 5 and 10 man groups to roam around and cause havoc but that isn’t going to fly depending on how rewards are implemented since most will gravitate to efficiency regardless of fun.

No thanks, ask me again in another three months when all the stink from season 1 has fully cleared the air and EotM is out. I might say yes then . . . maybe.

Those of you asking for major raid UI overhauls are going to be sorely disappointed and tbh GW2 was never build with such things in mind so it is no wonder Devon says that would require a step back and rebuild to come up with something that fits into their design esthetic.

While it is true if they spend the time to give us the small much needed fixes sooner it is less likely they will be wiling to go back and dismantle everything they built to make something entirely new, I’ve also seen a lot of more elegant solutions those raid UI wishes that could serve the same purpose without the clutter and maybe a little less functionality. Those are the kinds of solutions ANET should be pursuing for the long term, not something that forces them to reconsider their entire game design. Now if ANETs choices on the main functionality of their game do not work for individuals then there are a lot of other games that do have those types of tools that you can play. Please don’t try to make GW2 into WoW 2.0

Think outside of the box and come up with more of those less than obvious solutions. ANET could help us with this by more clearly presenting their vision for the game when creating these topics to try and keep us focused in one direction but I appreciate their wililngness to discuss all options. I am sure this thread has been very useful to them and I look forward to seeing their summary. Cheers,

DevonCarver.5370:

Would the commander system be functional enough with more markers, guild only tags, less suppression, better supplyinfo, and possibly additional marker shapes?

Yes please smaller changes sooner are always better imo but to be fair, those things should have been included since day 1 to make the commander system functional from launch and then we would now a year + later be talking about ways to improve vastly upon that starter system which is likely why you see some frustration and backlash to sticking with the status quo surrounding this topic.

I would hesitate to wait too long to make any changes even if promising something big in the works because MMO gamers have all become so impatient and jaded that you will be catering to entirely different audience by the time you finish the project. Best of luck and thank you very much for having this discussion with the community. There are a ton of fantastic ideas in this thread that give me hope for where things could go from here.

gennyt.3428:

Been saying this for a while(hey Ahmrill, you still campaigning? lol).

Anet wants us to zerg, so get back to it! Chop chop!

Gah! Another thread for Ahmrill to go off in. Yeah he is still campaigning for a private pin option of some sort but it has been pretty frustrated lately. His latest goal is to see how quickly he can get us kicked out of the EotM beta testing by harping on commander pin fixes the whole time. o.O

I’ve been thinking about this thread for awhile now and I am just going to say see the Realm Pride discussion happening over here because that is the real crux of the matter.

The whole WvW community building exercise failed in the beginning of this game for many reasons, not the least of which was the extended period of free-transfers. The way to successfully rebalance world WvW populations is to offer more community building tools and ways for servers to set themselves and their “personalities” apart from each other so like minded gamers can find each other and build connections within that community that make jumping ship every other week less attractive. It only takes a small core of stability to weather that “rats-on-a-sinking-ship” attitude that some worlds have experienced after losing badly several weeks in a row.

Take Jade Quarry for example which has had at least two periods of sever losses but always stayed right around Tier 1. Some will say it was our extensive PR recruitment campaign that kept us from hitting free-fall world exodus implosion status but a lot of the guilds that were brought in leave again after a time so it is more that stubborn core of guilds who actually chose to play together on JQ back in BWE1 and encouraged other Realm Pride types to join up and stick together come hell or high water along with a dedicated group of SEA guilds that give us great opportunities at come backs in off peak hours that most worlds don’t get a chance at.

Sometimes I am less than thrilled with what we end up dealing with from all the mass recruiting some are so fond of but having a dedicated webmaster and TS server from Day 1 has been a great boon to JQ along with our Honey Badger mascot to rally around and all worlds should have been able to start out similarly. I would say that was more a failing with ANET than the players and is something they still have the power to affect and improve upon. I still hope to see more better community building tools being offered soon and the more ANET can do to support the WvW community the better. ~cheers

Miraluna.3627:

What about using colors instead of servers to fill out the maps? If we are back to the randomized colors each week we had before leagues, then all the red servers could be allied in Edge of the Mists for that week, all the blue allied, and all the green allied. That would keep server communities together but help with population coverage.

Pretty sure if it is all 24 servers it would have to be that way. Green teams in overflow get the jungle spawn, Blue teams get ice and Red comes in on the desert side. I know the devs said it was currently set up to only have overflows from your own server on it but I am fairly confident that play-testing will show that is not sustainable for lower population worlds who are already having a bear of a time getting coverage in WvW. At least this is something they are willing to be flexible with.

On the EotM overflow map populations caps maybe Devon can simply state whether they plan for it each instance of the map to hold fewer players than a Borderland Map, about the same # as a Borderland Map, about the same as EB or more players than EB and we can take it from there. Just a sense about the expected population size would be very helpful but since we will be in play-testing soon I guess we will have to wait and see.

nirvana.8245:

I suspect and hope that guilds reconsider their servers after this. I play on Blackgate and I am losing motivation to play the game. I logon to a 500PPT tick and 60k lead. Nothing to fight for. Hard to find fights. Im told to be patient, that when we face Jade Quarry I will get a fight. But I have to put up with weeks of nothing before I get that. The WvW mode is in a sad state right now. The so called “Tier 1 servers” need to destack so we can all get a fight and a balanced one at that. I will probably leave my server at the end of season 1. I hope others do too tbh.

Good on ya, in order for Season 2 to even be remotely interesting a major tier 1 destack is going to have to happen. I am hopeful with the introduction of the Overflow map early next year ANET has some other plans in the works that will help guilds pick up and move as well as make them want to spread out and I am guessing lower WvW map caps and much longer queues will be part of that which they cannot start until the new map is in or risk kitten ing off too many dedicated WvWers. I look forward to seeing what else they have in mind to incentivize us all spreading the kitten back out.

jayvux.4128:

It just returned for me, was fixed for me for a bit, short-lived

Same here, and I’ve noticed when it is better for me it is worse for certain other guildies so I am guessing on top of regular tweaks and skill lag issues there are video driver differences to work around. But skill lag was a lot better last week than this week and it is not a huge difference in the size of zergs our opponents can muster up between the two matches either since the only difference has been to swap maguma for SoS.

tluv.5821:

1) Queue Times, should be expected. It just means that a lot of people are in the map and a lot of people are waiting to get in. Something different, and new. PvEr’s are going to check it out. Don’t like the queues, join a lower pop server.

2) Skill Lag, it’s brought on because of lots of things going on in small area.

None of these issues have been brought on SINCE the Season started. Those issues have ALWAYS been a problem.

1) spot on; agree and all the QQ over the queues is distracting from the real problems like #2 & population imbalance issues.

2) not so much; yes skill lag has always been a part of the game in huge 3 way battles around SM and Gari. I can deal with that and avoid those areas or types of fights if I want to use my other 8 skills but it can be extremely frustrating at times. Now though? There is no escape from the lag monster.

1v1 fights in out of the way areas turn into slide shows for no apparent reason. Even sometimes your skills seem to behaving normally so you think to yourself “alright I got this, time to spike this pesky thief” and bam . . . your spike wont fire and suddenly none of your other skills work either so you try to dps them down with the 1 key while they play trickies with their downed skills (if working) until 5 of their friends come along to roll you. Yeah that is not your normal run of the mill skill lag. It comes and goes in waves in odd places and you can’t do anything to avoid it.

Whatever changed there needs to addressed but there are those who theorize it is somehow related to having massive queues, like the number players waiting to get into WvW are some how lagging out the map which would be weird to say the least. We had some random weird skill lag while being outmanned late last nite but I can’t comment on what the other servers queues were like at the time. All I know is something needs to be done to at least get back where skill lag was before the last patch cuz it is getting silly goofy out there. ><