Guild Wars 2

To me, it kinda boils down to location. If people are dueling off in the corner of a map, who cares? Let them have their fun. But if they’re at an objective, or along one of the roads, they’re sort of asking for people to jump it. It’s like playing in the middle of the street, eventually a bus is going to come by and run you over. If it’s just roamers bumping into each other randomly, that’s not a duel, that’s a fight. The possibility of jump ins should be expected, both sides are fair game. However, if there’s 5 people standing around watching, that’s a duel, go off to an isolated corner somewhere. Then it’s dirty pool to interrupt you. Both sides of the equation need to have situational awareness, and adjust themselves accordingly.

It looks like most of the basics have been cover, but there’s some things I haven’t seen mentioned yet. You’re going to want to have “Turn Around” and “Look Behind” bound as well. “Turn around” is pretty handy against backstab thieves. “Look Behind” is great for a quick peak to see if someone’s coming or if that zerg’s still chasing you. You’ll also want to keep right click held in, and use the mouse to turn. It’s waaaaaay faster than trying to turn with the keyboard, so you’ll find yourself a lot more nimble. Oh, and once you get comfortable with the combat, I’d suggest getting comfortable with marking targets and targetting marked targets. It makes fighting in a small group a lot more effective.

You might also ask around to see if your server has a community forums. A lot of servers have those, and they tend to have a lot of handy info on them too.

Absconditus.6804:

I imagined that most decent servers were capable of color coding their Commander tags. On our server, the following system seems to work fairly well;

Blue – Come join us at your own leisure, we welcome anyone, regardless of your PvP prowess. Come have fun. We want to help you become a better PvP player.
Purple – Guild group, avoid us unless we swallow our nonsensical pride and ask for backup should we require it to avoid our foes steaming over us.
Red – Small Objective Assault group of roamers that runs around taking camps, towers and so on forth. Depending on size, you may be welcomed to roam along.
Yellow – Objective scout looking for enemy forces, though these are excessively rare over the past year(s) I guess. There’s no need to gather at these guys, for obvious reasons.

I sure don’t miss the days of invisible call-target-“Commanders” (though some still do it that way), where you’d end up having a couple groups deciding to detour to the same objective, around the same time, and for one of these then to have wasted their time as they need to split off to find somewhere else to go. That’s the honorable thing to do in such a situation of course. That’s the unwritten World vs. Bro code. You don’t double dip. It’s been this way since ancient times. But.. hey, it’s annoying to find yourself in that situation. It’s unquestionably unorganized. Who likes wasting time? Kittenfurball me, it’s annoying as a solo roamer going for, e.g., a camp as well, because even then, you can be told to go away by some tense, worked up, hormonal (little) (wo)man that can’t even give you the chance to move elsewhere before they start firing their machine gun of virtual saliva, letting you know how unwelcome you are.

Now, I do of course understand that there are elitist Guilds out there that don’t wish for any other players to ever invade within their 9001 range vicinity. They wish to play solely together, for pride(!) and honor(!).. and renown(!)… uhm.. and reasons(!), thinking everyone who don’t bear their prestigious Punny Guild Name and [Tag] is a rally bot, and that their (frequent) losses are inevitably only caused because there was that one allied outsider (who perhaps didn’t even die) that happened to dare come near them as they were fighting their arch-nemesisesesesyllable-eh—ses and wiped. I get it, in that situation, it could perhaps have been nice to have invisible tags, because people will never stumble within your vicinity if you have invisi- oh, right. Well, at least there’d be no reason to verbally make people feel excluded.. wait, no, that would still happen.. there’d be.. I mean.. there are- there must be reasons… to have invisible tags, just give me a moment. I’ll think of some good ones.

Well, actually no.. I see no real reason for them. We have the ability to organize our maps now. And yes, there will of course be new players from time to time that has no knowledge of the color coded system, who start running alongside your precious Guild groups. But you know, sometimes someone just wish to jog alongside you because they are going to the same location as you, so.. you can perhaps wait a bit before you calmly explain the situation of the color coded system to them? If they in fact are following you, most players you explain things to calmly, are likely going to respect your wishes, listen and leave WvW if there are nobody else to follow. Because really now, why would we ever want more WvW players. It’s not as if a rise in popularity would actually make ArenaNet more interested in providing content for the game mode, right? Less players interested in partaking in an oft perceived elitist player environment, is probably the better path to pursue. We need invisible tags. We need less organization. We need more elitism!

Ok, I am being a bit hostile in my way of presenting the average WvW Guild. I do get it, we just want to run with our Guilds, and I see that as something perfectly respectable in all honesty. But still, if perhaps a few more Guilds would be interested in showing how good they really are at PvP, by changing their tag color to Blue if there are no “free-for-all” Commanders around, to allow these seemingly detrimental weights that are other players to tag along, the game mode could flourish a bit more. Asking for invisible tags is not in line with making the game mode attractive to develop for (beyond whatever they are doing to it in the coming months). Player interest will push for that, and people stop going into WvW if there are nobody to run around with. sPvP is more attractive than trying to solo roam since the WXP patch that made WvW into a zerg zone.

While that is an amusing read, there are a couple of things you’ve overlooked. You said you can’t think of any benefit of private tags, aside from keeping people away. Here’s two benefits. People running private groups would be able to actually use the CTRL + T targetting system to actually target enemy players. They also wouldn’t have to keep turning the private tag back on any time they waypointed.

And as far as "making the game mode attractive to develop for? At this point….. they need to worry about making the game mode attractive to play. So far, they’ve managed to chase most of their playerbase off. How attractive would they find developing a game mode that they’ve killed off due to their consistent bad decisions for it?

Hexalot.8194:

Phantom.8130:

Hexalot.8194:

Phantom.8130:

Hexalot.8194:

gennyt.3428:

Hexalot.8194:

gennyt.3428:

@ Hexalot

This topic is a request for private tags, which you are against because open raids are drying up. You’d deny people organizational tools for activities that they will do anyway. It just seems so bitter and mean spirited lawl.

Well… when I first posted in this thread, I did state that I wouldn’t have objected to private tags in the early days when the Servers were still full. But now WvW is a dying mode (and yes ANET is fully to blame here) and I fully understand and agree with ANET taking whatever measures they can to stop the ship from sinking further. And like it or not, a commander tag on the maps is the one thing that will stop Pugs from giving up completely. Furthermore I honestly don’t see the big deal about not tagging up when you want to run private. Yes I understand it’s a QoL thing in not having to “control t” all the time, but at this point I can’t agree with helping send WvW to the bottom over “quality of life”.

I have been in zergs where a Guild commander running tag suddenly takes it down while telling everyone they are now running a private raid thus whoever is not a member, “thanks for following and good bye”. In a case like that, all us pugs had no problem going our merry way.

I don’t get your logic. The tag in your story chose to have an open raid then later switched to private and you had no issue with that. It wouldn’t be any different than now, except that when that commander closed his raid, he’d have a tag that select people can see and “ctrl+t” could serve other purposes, it takes nothing from you. A private tag isn’t going to magically change what people want out of their play time some like pugmanding.

Anet giving the middle finger to guild folks is just another reason why commander tags will continue to disappear as pugmanders tend to have their guild behind them (that’s how some got started and thats why some still play). All this is quite entertaining though, given that pug and guild groups are equally part of the WvWvW experience and have always been. Just gonna sit here, sip this wine and bask in the glow of the flames from this wreck of a game mode.

You want to know why ANET is so dead set against allowing people to run private tags ?

Because in “my story” ANET is deathly afraid that the commander would never have bothered to run a public tag in the first place if they already had the majority of their guild following the tag already. They are afraid that WvW will turn into Maps where you have giant Guild blobs running around unseen by the lowly pugs whose only wish is to enjoy part of what makes wvw so much fun.

So it’s basically a case of them… right or wrong… discouraging anti-social behavior on the part of guilds. The Dev reply in this thread practically screams what I just said.

Here’s the major flaw in your logic, though. Commanders don’t tag up and pick up their guild along the way. They start off with the majority of their guild already gathered before they even start, and pick up pugs along the way. If they didn’t want to run a public raid, they wouldn’t. But since the commander in your example ran a public raid first, he obviously chose to run that public raid. He didn’t do it as a matter of necessity to gather his guild. He ran a public raid before his guild raid started. Having a private tag wouldn’t have changed that, whatsoever. All a private tag would have done would have made the private raid after the public raid a bit less of a hassle. It would not have prevented the public raid.

See? This is the problem with WvW. The complete 180 degrees of difference between what Anet thinks, and what actually happens. It’s not that they don’t have a clue. It’s that they see the reality, and then go in the exact opposite direction of it. It’s self sabotage. From the end result, all the way down to the mental process that got them to that end result, it’s always the exact opposite. Every. Single. Time. It was disturbing to watch this phenomenon one or two years ago. It’s just outright pathetic and embarrassing to watch it still going on. And right now, they’re getting exactly what they deserve for it, their game mode is collapsing on their heads.

But your own logic falls down due to the reality of human nature, which is that of taking the easiest path. Guilds have already stated that targeting the commander when coordinating runs is a lot more of a hassle than having a permanent tag on. So I suspect many of them run the tag anyway and just tolerate pugs for the time being while whining about people not being in TS and so on.

Now imagine giving those same comanders… with their guild already gathered around them… the ability to run private tag from the start. You honestly believe that the majority, outside of a few die hard pugmanders, won’t choose “option A” ?

Then WvW truly becomes GvG. A wet dream for some sure, but a nightmare for everyone else.

Here’s the problem, though. You’re theory crafting, based on what you think and feel. I’m telling you what’s actually happening. You act as though it’s only GvG guild members who are for this. I’m a pure pugmander. You think that we’re leaving the game because of guilds running private raids. I’m telling you we’re leaving the game because of the horrible design decisions Anet’s made since launch.

Stop spouting theories and opinions, and start listening to actual facts. Facts. That can easily be confirmed just by going in and taking a look around. Not opinions, which are based purely in “what if” scenarios. Countless guilds run privately, and countless guilds run publicly. They running public because they want to, not because of anything to do with the tags. That’s laughable, at best. They’re running privately, quite often. Not having a tag doesn’t change that. Having a private tag would just make it less of a hassle, but they’re NOT going to stop running privately if they don’t get a tag. They’ll just continue to run using CTRL + T, until they get fed up and leave the game with everyone else.

You can claim to know “human nature” all you want, but when it doesn’t match up to what people are actually doing, your claim doesn’t mean squat. Look at reality, not some BS pop psychology. The reality is simple to verify. All you need to do is actually talk to any commander and they’ll be glad to tell you that you’re wrong.

Rather than keep going on and on in a circular argument, let me summarize for you. I believe that introducing private tags is unhealthy for the game at the moment (it would have made more sense to do it back in the day when servers were full of people) as it makes it too easy to exclude pugs and other casuals who don’t have the time or ability to dedicate themselves to a decent WvW guild. This is particularly so with WvW so sparsely populated right now. ANET apparently believes the same thing.

YES we all know that plenty of guilds already run private raids, so people say… what’s the difference ?

The difference is that ANET fears that by making it even easier than before to run private raids (no hassles with dealing with target icon, etc) the temptation will be there to run with less and less public tags… thus again excluding a large segment of the WvW population. This fear is justified in my opinion.

Finally, you and others ask why doesn’t ANET just speak to the commanders on the ground and get their opinion in how private tags can work and even improve the game !

Well thats certainly a good idea and Anet should do that. But at the same time the Devs also have to bear in mind that people say one thing when they truly believe and are sincere in their heart that a particular change will improve their lives and the lives of those around them. But time and time again we have seen when that “change” gets implemented, how long it takes before people start abusing it. How long before commanders who were otherwise dedicated pugmanders start to get tired of the stress involved with trying to herd a bunch of pugs, half of whom refuse to get into TS, and succumb to the temptation of running more and more dedicated private guild raids ?

You can call it theory crafting all you want but that’s the way the world works. You have to weigh the hypothetical first before you jump head first into the unknown.

Anyway I’m done. Have good night dude. :-)

I’ll summarize for you. If people didn’t want to run public groups, they wouldn’t. If they wanted to run 100% private groups, they would. Tags have zero bearing on that. Commanders don’t say “Well, I would only run private groups, if private tags were available” They talk to the other commanders on the server, and say “Ok, I’ll lead a public group today, you lead one tomorrow.” There isn’t a commander in the game that isn’t aware of CTRL + T.

Basing decisions on flawed logic and imaginary hypotheticals, while ignoring what’s actually going on already isn’t the way the world works. It’s the way catastrophic failures happen. Judging by the state of the game, Anet needs to stop basing their decisions on flawed logic and imaginary hypotheticals, and start basing them on the reality of the situations. Opinions, theories and hypotheticals don’t mean a kitten thing at this point. The reality is that they’re failing, and failing miserably, and it’s because every single step of their mental process is flawed and in direct opposition to the reality of the matter. Literally every single step is the exact opposite of helpful. Every piece of it. The logic their using, the assumptions they’re under, their implementation, and the end result they crap out onto all of us. They couldn’t possibly be more wrong about all of it if they were actively trying to. And it shows. WvW is on life support, and they just keep punching it in the face.

People aren’t leaving because of tag issues. People are leaving because the game mode sucks, due to the consistently and thoroughly flawed direction they keep trying to force onto the playerbase, while completely ignoring anything the playerbase has to say about it. “People will like what we tell them to like, because we say so” should be their new manifesto. And they can use it to hype the flaming trainwreck their game has become, all the way to their bankruptcy hearing.

If they manage to pull their heads out of their backsides and take a healthy whiff of reality, and start going in the complete opposite direction as they have been, they might have a chance to save it. But as long as they keep trying to get to the destination by running the opposite direction, around the entire planet, they’re doomed for failure. And it’s all coming due as we speak. People have been trying to warn them for years, as the playerbase consistently dropped. And white knights always tried to blame anyone or anything else for the playerbase shrinking. But HoT put it front and center, with a magnifying glass on it so everyone could see. The reason WvW has been suffering since launch is Anet. Anet is Anet’s worst enemy when it comes to WvW. And even after 3 months, and countless threads pointing out all of the problems, with countless solutions (some even with pictures), what is their response? “Soon”. The same lie we’ve been getting fed for 3 years. “Soon”. Resulting in even more people abandoning this burning, sinking ship.

They need to stop “thinking” and start listening. They need to actually learn what they’re dealing with. They need to adjust their entire thought process. They need to turn 180 degrees and run as fast as they can in the opposite direction of everything they’ve been doing for the past 3 years. Either that, or they need to just come to terms with the fact that they’re in well over their heads, and shut WvW down entirely as a mercy killing.

Otherwise, they’re going to find themselves in bankruptcy court and unemployment lines. THAT’S how the world works. You don’t tapdance around in fairytale land, hiding from the “what if” monsters. You focus on facts and reality, and do the job properly. Or you fail miserably, and lose that job. And they’re hurtling at the speed of light towards the latter.

Hexalot.8194:

Phantom.8130:

Hexalot.8194:

gennyt.3428:

Hexalot.8194:

gennyt.3428:

@ Hexalot

This topic is a request for private tags, which you are against because open raids are drying up. You’d deny people organizational tools for activities that they will do anyway. It just seems so bitter and mean spirited lawl.

Well… when I first posted in this thread, I did state that I wouldn’t have objected to private tags in the early days when the Servers were still full. But now WvW is a dying mode (and yes ANET is fully to blame here) and I fully understand and agree with ANET taking whatever measures they can to stop the ship from sinking further. And like it or not, a commander tag on the maps is the one thing that will stop Pugs from giving up completely. Furthermore I honestly don’t see the big deal about not tagging up when you want to run private. Yes I understand it’s a QoL thing in not having to “control t” all the time, but at this point I can’t agree with helping send WvW to the bottom over “quality of life”.

I have been in zergs where a Guild commander running tag suddenly takes it down while telling everyone they are now running a private raid thus whoever is not a member, “thanks for following and good bye”. In a case like that, all us pugs had no problem going our merry way.

I don’t get your logic. The tag in your story chose to have an open raid then later switched to private and you had no issue with that. It wouldn’t be any different than now, except that when that commander closed his raid, he’d have a tag that select people can see and “ctrl+t” could serve other purposes, it takes nothing from you. A private tag isn’t going to magically change what people want out of their play time some like pugmanding.

Anet giving the middle finger to guild folks is just another reason why commander tags will continue to disappear as pugmanders tend to have their guild behind them (that’s how some got started and thats why some still play). All this is quite entertaining though, given that pug and guild groups are equally part of the WvWvW experience and have always been. Just gonna sit here, sip this wine and bask in the glow of the flames from this wreck of a game mode.

You want to know why ANET is so dead set against allowing people to run private tags ?

Because in “my story” ANET is deathly afraid that the commander would never have bothered to run a public tag in the first place if they already had the majority of their guild following the tag already. They are afraid that WvW will turn into Maps where you have giant Guild blobs running around unseen by the lowly pugs whose only wish is to enjoy part of what makes wvw so much fun.

So it’s basically a case of them… right or wrong… discouraging anti-social behavior on the part of guilds. The Dev reply in this thread practically screams what I just said.

Here’s the major flaw in your logic, though. Commanders don’t tag up and pick up their guild along the way. They start off with the majority of their guild already gathered before they even start, and pick up pugs along the way. If they didn’t want to run a public raid, they wouldn’t. But since the commander in your example ran a public raid first, he obviously chose to run that public raid. He didn’t do it as a matter of necessity to gather his guild. He ran a public raid before his guild raid started. Having a private tag wouldn’t have changed that, whatsoever. All a private tag would have done would have made the private raid after the public raid a bit less of a hassle. It would not have prevented the public raid.

See? This is the problem with WvW. The complete 180 degrees of difference between what Anet thinks, and what actually happens. It’s not that they don’t have a clue. It’s that they see the reality, and then go in the exact opposite direction of it. It’s self sabotage. From the end result, all the way down to the mental process that got them to that end result, it’s always the exact opposite. Every. Single. Time. It was disturbing to watch this phenomenon one or two years ago. It’s just outright pathetic and embarrassing to watch it still going on. And right now, they’re getting exactly what they deserve for it, their game mode is collapsing on their heads.

But your own logic falls down due to the reality of human nature, which is that of taking the easiest path. Guilds have already stated that targeting the commander when coordinating runs is a lot more of a hassle than having a permanent tag on. So I suspect many of them run the tag anyway and just tolerate pugs for the time being while whining about people not being in TS and so on.

Now imagine giving those same comanders… with their guild already gathered around them… the ability to run private tag from the start. You honestly believe that the majority, outside of a few die hard pugmanders, won’t choose “option A” ?

Then WvW truly becomes GvG. A wet dream for some sure, but a nightmare for everyone else.

Here’s the problem, though. You’re theory crafting, based on what you think and feel. I’m telling you what’s actually happening. You act as though it’s only GvG guild members who are for this. I’m a pure pugmander. You think that we’re leaving the game because of guilds running private raids. I’m telling you we’re leaving the game because of the horrible design decisions Anet’s made since launch.

Stop spouting theories and opinions, and start listening to actual facts. Facts. That can easily be confirmed just by going in and taking a look around. Not opinions, which are based purely in “what if” scenarios. Countless guilds run privately, and countless guilds run publicly. They running public because they want to, not because of anything to do with the tags. That’s laughable, at best. They’re running privately, quite often. Not having a tag doesn’t change that. Having a private tag would just make it less of a hassle, but they’re NOT going to stop running privately if they don’t get a tag. They’ll just continue to run using CTRL + T, until they get fed up and leave the game with everyone else.

You can claim to know “human nature” all you want, but when it doesn’t match up to what people are actually doing, your claim doesn’t mean squat. Look at reality, not some BS pop psychology. The reality is simple to verify. All you need to do is actually talk to any commander and they’ll be glad to tell you that you’re wrong.

Hexalot.8194:

gennyt.3428:

Hexalot.8194:

gennyt.3428:

@ Hexalot

This topic is a request for private tags, which you are against because open raids are drying up. You’d deny people organizational tools for activities that they will do anyway. It just seems so bitter and mean spirited lawl.

Well… when I first posted in this thread, I did state that I wouldn’t have objected to private tags in the early days when the Servers were still full. But now WvW is a dying mode (and yes ANET is fully to blame here) and I fully understand and agree with ANET taking whatever measures they can to stop the ship from sinking further. And like it or not, a commander tag on the maps is the one thing that will stop Pugs from giving up completely. Furthermore I honestly don’t see the big deal about not tagging up when you want to run private. Yes I understand it’s a QoL thing in not having to “control t” all the time, but at this point I can’t agree with helping send WvW to the bottom over “quality of life”.

I have been in zergs where a Guild commander running tag suddenly takes it down while telling everyone they are now running a private raid thus whoever is not a member, “thanks for following and good bye”. In a case like that, all us pugs had no problem going our merry way.

I don’t get your logic. The tag in your story chose to have an open raid then later switched to private and you had no issue with that. It wouldn’t be any different than now, except that when that commander closed his raid, he’d have a tag that select people can see and “ctrl+t” could serve other purposes, it takes nothing from you. A private tag isn’t going to magically change what people want out of their play time some like pugmanding.

Anet giving the middle finger to guild folks is just another reason why commander tags will continue to disappear as pugmanders tend to have their guild behind them (that’s how some got started and thats why some still play). All this is quite entertaining though, given that pug and guild groups are equally part of the WvWvW experience and have always been. Just gonna sit here, sip this wine and bask in the glow of the flames from this wreck of a game mode.

You want to know why ANET is so dead set against allowing people to run private tags ?

Because in “my story” ANET is deathly afraid that the commander would never have bothered to run a public tag in the first place if they already had the majority of their guild following the tag already. They are afraid that WvW will turn into Maps where you have giant Guild blobs running around unseen by the lowly pugs whose only wish is to enjoy part of what makes wvw so much fun.

So it’s basically a case of them… right or wrong… discouraging anti-social behavior on the part of guilds. The Dev reply in this thread practically screams what I just said.

Here’s the major flaw in your logic, though. Commanders don’t tag up and pick up their guild along the way. They start off with the majority of their guild already gathered before they even start, and pick up pugs along the way. If they didn’t want to run a public raid, they wouldn’t. But since the commander in your example ran a public raid first, he obviously chose to run that public raid. He didn’t do it as a matter of necessity to gather his guild. He ran a public raid before his guild raid started. Having a private tag wouldn’t have changed that, whatsoever. All a private tag would have done would have made the private raid after the public raid a bit less of a hassle. It would not have prevented the public raid.

See? This is the problem with WvW. The complete 180 degrees of difference between what Anet thinks, and what actually happens. It’s not that they don’t have a clue. It’s that they see the reality, and then go in the exact opposite direction of it. It’s self sabotage. From the end result, all the way down to the mental process that got them to that end result, it’s always the exact opposite. Every. Single. Time. It was disturbing to watch this phenomenon one or two years ago. It’s just outright pathetic and embarrassing to watch it still going on. And right now, they’re getting exactly what they deserve for it, their game mode is collapsing on their heads.

Ok, let’s put this in perspective here. Imagine you were at an amusement park. You see a family of about 10 people going from ride to ride as a group. Do you go and just randomly start following that group? I mean, you all paid to get into the amusement park, and that family doesn’t own it, after all. Of course you don’t, because that would be rude and a little bit creepy. You might go up and strike up a conversation with them, and possibly get invited to go from ride to ride with their group, but you certainly don’t have the right to just invite yourself to their group.

The same concept applies in WvW. There are commanders that do tag up and run public groups. There are also groups that prefer to run private. Chances are, it’s the same groups. They might be public one day, and private another when a different commander is running a public group. All that’s being requested is a tag to be used when running a private group. That’s not an unreasonable or self entitled request.

Furthermore, guilds running private groups isn’t something that would suddenly happen if private tags were introduced. Guilds have been running private groups for years, and it’s actually pretty commonplace.

Believe me, as someone that’s primarily led public groups, there’s no real need to act as though all pugs can handle is being treated like a hamster on a wheel. To act as though all they can comprehend is “follow the blue dorito” is pretty insulting and degrading.

The reason people are logging out has very little to do with any tags, public or private. People are logging out because they’re unsatisfied customers, and are frustrated and fed up with the state the product is in. It’s a bit disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

Malkom.5607:

Thank you everyone for the fantastic advice and details – its made the game much more interesting for me and given me somethings to aim for. By the way, I’ve died about a 1200 times with this Guardian over 668 hours – nearly all in WvW.

There is definitely no more mouse clicking for me – just keyboard – I’ll be ordering a gaming mouse in a couple of days – just got to research then choose one within my price range. Anyhow tonight and for a while I’ll be in EB, going after camps or perhaps just fighting NPCs by myself if I’m truly useless, but will see how the keyboard training goes.

Next is the builds, need to understand how they work and what role I’’m aiming for. Guess a lot to learn here as I still don’t understand things like condition damage etc. Need to think a lot more about bursts and defence than just damage and toughness.

Once I’m more comfortable with the keyboard and builds then I’ll try PvP – really looking forward to that. Only went in once, rezzed someone, then came back out.

In the mean time I need to identify what class my opponents are, what we can both do, and how to spot what they are going to do next – probably the hardest thing for me – I’ll try to start watching particular classes in our parties and see what they do.

Think i need to make a logbook as easy to forget this stuff – i’m also saving this thread to disk.

P.S. so glad I asked for help – last year when our guild went, then Alpine Borderlands went, it seems like a depression set in – now something to aim for. Perhaps might even look for a guild.

As far as a gaming mouse goes, this is the one I use and I HIGHLY recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Tt-eSPORTS-Thermaltake-Gaming-MO-VLS-WDLOBK-01/dp/B00EVVNMWW

It has plenty of buttons all over it, so you can pick the buttons that are most comfortable for you to use, and just leave the rest blank. It also has 10 different profiles, so you can set up different combinations for different games. It’ll take a little bit to get used to it, but it’s fairly cheap as far as a good gaming mouse is concerned, and definitely worth the price. Combine it with a few keybinds to your keyboard, and you should see a very noticable improvement after a bit of practice with it.

Norbe.7630:

Phantom.8130:

How about if you’re outnumbered, all of your supplies are twice as effective? So you’d double your ability to build siege and repair, and your yaks would effectively double the speed of the upgrades. Someone suggested something similar to this years ago, and it sounded like a decent idea to me. Though, personally, I would have been happy if they just swapped the outmanned buff for the orb buff, and left the orbs in. Of course, they would have actually had to fix the exploits and ban the hackers for that to work, so it was little more than a pipe dream.

sounds ok, but, that is a “passive” outnumbered buff, meaning when your outnumbered your brain tells you to defend every last remaining territory you have till every towers/keep/camp you own are captured by enemy, that change only slows the capping time for an enemy.
try to change that to an “active” one meaning you have a chance to make a decision whether to defend every stronghold you have or kill every one that takes your land and get good points to it.
your suggestion is good one though

Well, it kind of works both ways. Because you’d be able to build offensive siege at half the supply cost too, so you’d essentially be able to get double the amount built in the same time frame, and that would give an advantage for taking areas as well. If the areas on the new maps were still within treb range of each other, being able to set up a treb for 50 in a tower, and 2 superior catapults for 25 each (or omegas for 55 each) would definitely make things a lot easier to retake your northern keep.

Couple in the defensive factor, and you should at least be able to hold/retake your northern third on your home BL, and your third in EB. Looking a bit deeper, that would give a fair amount of PPT, so matchups would, in theory, end up being a bit closer overall. At least as far as the score is concerned. That would help bring back the competitive factor. It certainly wouldn’t be enough on its own, but it would serve as a piece of the overall puzzle.

How about if you’re outnumbered, all of your supplies are twice as effective? So you’d double your ability to build siege and repair, and your yaks would effectively double the speed of the upgrades. Someone suggested something similar to this years ago, and it sounded like a decent idea to me. Though, personally, I would have been happy if they just swapped the outmanned buff for the orb buff, and left the orbs in. Of course, they would have actually had to fix the exploits and ban the hackers for that to work, so it was little more than a pipe dream.

I agree with what’s been posted here. Unfortunately, Anet has a “vision” of what they want WvW to be, which is really more like a hazy hallucination. There’s no real coherent overall design, just a bunch of things seemingly thrown in at random. From all accounts, the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing, and everything gets tossed into a giant stew pot. Instead of using the beta tests to get real feedback and fix things, they just use them as free advertising opportunities and ignore anyone saying “hey, there’s a problem here”. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if the “Big WvW Update” will just be them tacking the attached plaque over the Asura gates in LA.

Considering that the beta for the new maps was basically just a publicity stunt, and they ignored all of the feedback from the beta testers, this doesn’t bode well for the future of WvW.

Having to make superior blueprints at the mystic toilet one at a time. A slider bar that goes up to, say, 99 would be greatly appreciated.

Hostile Veteran guards/scouts that spawn inside your own areas that keep them constantly contested. I don’t know if this has been fixed, but if it hasn’t…… seriously, fix this.

Veteran Guards/scouts that go running after hostile mobs….. and keep the area constantly contested. Seriously, fix this too.

Keep Lords spawning outside of the keep. You had this fixed years ago….. then you broke it again. Fix this again.

The Skritt on the Borderlands. We didn’t want them on the Alpine maps, what in the blue hell made you think we wanted them on the new map? Get rid of them. Don’t just move them to a smaller area. Don’t put them in at all. The same with the centaur and whatever replaced them.

The repair merchant. What exactly is the purpose with this anymore? Repair costs have been removed. So why have any gear damage at all? Get rid of him and get rid of gear damage in WvW. It’s a pointless waste of time.

Another thing that should be mentioned is that when if you buy HoT, you’re voting with your wallet. They absolutely suck when it comes to interpreting metrics. So if they see people are buying HoT, they’ll assume it’s good and come out with more of the same. If their sales numbers are drastically low, they should be able to figure out that means that people aren’t happy with their product. Well… hopefully. Knowing Anet, they could very well just assume it means people want more LS stuff, especially in WvW, because “If you’re into WvW, you’re really into PvE” rather than the reality of “If you’re into WvW, you’re forced to grind in PvE or be dead broke.”

As it stands, I can’t honestly recommend coming back to WvW, or GW2 in general. And I certainly don’t recommend giving Anet any money. They’ve said they plan on releasing some sort of big WvW update “soon”. But….. we’ve heard that for years. They really need to pick a new lie, because that one’s lost even the novelty value it had. If they do end up releasing some sort of big update, expect it to steer directly into the HOT trainwreck and finish WvW off for good. It’s just downright pathetic at this point.

As Lord Kuru said, Don’t waste your money.

I think the best thing they can do is go old school. Push the button in the attachment. Pop out the cartridge, blow in it, pop it back in and go in the complete opposite direction as they have been over the past 3 years. And they need to stop relying on gimmick mechanics. They’re pretty much Anet’s crutch at this point, and they’re not helping anything at all, ever. The maps need to have a strategic flow to them, and the areas need to have some form of synergy. They need to get rid of their failed attempts at a center area replacement, and bring back the orbs. Change the buffs on them so they don’t cause snowballing, and ban the hackers.

All WvW really needed at launch was a tiny bit of tinkering and then just regular maintenance. They didn’t do the necessary tinkering. They ignored what was broken, and broke what was fine. And never bothered with any of the maintenance. So we went from having a shiny new sports car, to having a broken down, rust bucket.

For reference, here’s the Wiki pages on all 3 of them.

Mike O’Brien: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_O%27Brien_

Patrick Wyatt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Wyatt

Jeff Strain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Strain

I think EotM was the turning point. When that got released, there wasn’t really any reason for new PvE players to come into WvW. They could just go karma train in EotM to get their badges for their legendaries, to farm WvW ranks, to get piles of gold. There was no more WvW map completion to pull them into WvW either, so many just…. stopped coming in at all.

They can make more gold in PvE, they can get the badges for the legendaries in EotM. There’s also not a whole lot of risk involved in either of those. One thing I’ve learned is that PvE absolutely hate getting killed. One of the main rules of WvW is “You’re gonna die, a lot. It’s just gonna happen. Get used to it.”

So…. basically, they would need to revert things back to how it was at launch, and bump up WvW rewards. Anything else is trying to patch a sinking ship with a cork and duct tape. It’s doomed for failure.

Now, from the player side of things, WvW players need to be inviting and friendly. None of this “screaming like a lunatic because your raid wiped” crap, no bad attitudes, no kitten waving. It’s a video game, not a military boot camp. A basic level of politeness and respect needs to be shown, and those who are so socially dysfunction to be unable to show even that need to dealt with. You’ll lose a small number of toxic players, but gain a larger number of positive players, a better overall atmosphere and a healthier environment. Guilds will be able to recruit a lot of these new players, and they’ll blossom as well. You’ll have a good sized pug/militia force to work with. And generally, a greatly improved overall experience. I know there are people who think they have the right to scream at random strangers for dying in a video game, these people need punched in the face. Their parents are failures, and raised a spoiled monster. Those monsters are simply unable to be decent human beings until they’re bleeding from their nose and mouth. Go to any bar on the planet, and once last call hits, you’ll see several of these same types of people picking fights. They’re usually the guys who weren’t able to pick up a girl, and are unable to accept that it’s because they’re so obnoxious. Once they’re bleeding, they’re far more respectful. Unfortunately, you can’t actually punch someone in the face over the internet, which is why the worst of the worst behavior tends to go on here. So you have to have a unified group to handle it verbally. It’s up to the server communities to police itself, through whatever legitimate means are available to them. If that isn’t done, new players will just go somewhere else when they get harassed. WvW wasn’t something that was important to them the day before, and it won’t be something that’s important to them the day after. They can take it or leave it. So the communities have to make sure there’s nothing pushing their decision in the direction of “leave it”, even if that means dealing with a few obnoxious regulars.

Your best bet would be to check your server’s community forums. That’s generally where the bulk of the guides are kept.

PopeUrban.2578:

I think the point he’s making is it would have been better if the desert was randomly rotated as one or two of the avaliable borderlands.

I agree. The game would be better if we had non-clone borderlands that rotated out every matchup. preferably with each BL being a different map.
’
Then people would complain about getting the “bad” home BL, but everyone whining about the new BL maps could just go fight over whatever the alpine BL rolled as.

It wouldn’t change anything though. The WvW community as a whole has no idea what it wants. They want it to be better, but also stay the same. They want higher pops but they don’t want to merge/eliminate servers. They want more interesting fights but hate more complex maps.

I think Anet is making the right call by not listening to anyone at this point, and just using internal metrics and player population counts to see what players are really doing versus what players say they are doing.

No…. see, they never listened to the players. They always blindly relied on their misinterpreted internal metrics, and that’s what got them in this mess to begin with. If they actually listened to the players, none of the changes they made to WvW over the past 3 years would have happened. See, while there’s a wide variety of playstyles and preferences, there are certain issues where the WvW community pretty much universally unites on. Take the commander and squad system. That was something that was pretty much universally agreed on by everyone who said anything about it. There was never anyone that said that it should just be a blue dot over someone’s head, but that was all we got for years. They finally managed to make a concession and gave us different colors…… at three times the cost, after we bumped the thread about it for weeks….. with zero Dev response….. and they seem to have actually deleted that thread entirely. Yet it still didn’t come until about a year later. A year, to add 3 colors. Let that sink in for a minute. A chimpanzee could have done it in a single afternoon. An average human with a functional brain could have done it in 20 minutes. A team of game developers should have been able to get it done in less than 3 minutes. Yet it took t least 365 days, to add….. three….. colors…. of dots. And when they did finally manage to roll out the squad system that should have been in since day 1, and certainly didn’t take 3 full years to create, it was only because raids in their hideous expansion needed it. If it wasn’t for raids, we never would have gotten it.

No one asked for the WvW masteries, people asked for some form of progression and achivement. No one asked for the bloodlust ruins, people asked for the orb mechanics and exploits to be fixed. No one asked to have all of their guild upgrades taken away and locked behind a massive grind, because that would be insane. No one asked for the Deserted borderland, people asked for an improved map. Yet this is what we got. Multiple CDIs, countless threads with extremely good suggestions (some even with frickin’ pictures so Anet couldn’t possibly screw it up), the Adopt-A-Dev Program, and…… this is what we got. Ignored, while they blindly relied on their misinterpreted internal metric. And now they’re dealing with the consequences of their choices. Pride and greed over a quality product, and it went from being the most promising MMO on the market that was absolutely overflowing with players to being on life support. And Anet deserves it. They screwed up, severely, and they don’t even have the balls to face people about it. They’re hiding away, and making one post every 3 months, doing nothing but making more empty promises, and reverting a couple things back to how they used to be and labeling them as “updates”.

This literally is their last chance and they will blow this one too. Because they have no idea what they’re doing, and have entirely too much hubris to admit it. They deserve to fail at this point. They’ve had so many opportunities and second chances, and wasted every single one of them. Because they’ve ignored their customers, and blindly relied on their misinterpreted internal metrics.

We wanted the game to function properly. We wanted cheaters removed. We wanted basic tools. We got dinosaurs and lasers, and a lot of empty promises. Because they didn’t listen to the players, they blindly relied on their misinterpreted internal metrics.

Fellfoot.8156:

Phantom.8130:

The guild upgrades was…… well…. there’s no other way to say it, shady as hell.

… At this point, if it dies, it would be a mercy killing.

+87 but the thought of this game mode disappearing makes me sad… it’s actually been quite fun in T5 NA the past couple of weeks.

Edit: by couple of weeks, I meant before my holiday break

Yeah. I’ve had a lot of fun playing WvW over the past few years, but…. it’s been more in spite of the game rather than because of it. Each new “improvement” Anet’s come out with has been a serious downgrade, with a resulting playerbase shrinkage. With HoT, it was just too much of an “improvement” at once, and the overall massive downgrade took too heavy of a toll on everyone. The most fun I had in WvW because of the game itself came in 2012, and since then the primary source of my enjoyment has been the community on my server.

If they reverted everything to how it was at launch, and made a few strategic alterations, and a TON of bug fixes, removed the exploits and brought in actual GMs to referee the matches, I think the playerbase would come back. I think there’d be an immediate small influx of players, then a gradual increase over time. But….. that won’t be what they do. They’ll ride this disaster into the ground and while trying to pimp their failure esport. Pride goes before the fall. They’ve shown an overabundance of hubris, so the fall really is inevitable.

I doubt they’ll make any sort of replacement maps for WvW any time soon. They just came out with a new map, and while it was a complete failure for numerous reasons, it was still a lot of developer time, energy and money. Anet’s never really been one to backtrack on their mistakes, so they’ll probably just focus on making a bunch of small changes to avoid fixing their giant deserted mistake. Polishing the proverbial kitten , so to speak. Which will only lead to further player attrition, to the point where all they’ll need is a single instance of EB, because that’s all they’ll be able to fill.

They crapped the bed pretty bad here. They had a window to recover, and they missed it entirely. They didn’t even so much as acknowledge it. With the new RvR coming out, it’s going to be a very fast ride downhill from here on out. If you neglect your girlfriend for long enough, she’s gonna be someone else’s girlfriend and she’ll never come back. The same concept applies here. Only not only was there the neglect, but then they gave us our own shoes for our birthday, and stuck us with the bill for having them polished. There’s plenty of other games out there where the developers will actually value their customers, and treat them with respect. Anet’s been given countless second chances, and has failed with pretty much every single one of them. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this is going to end up.

There are NA servers, and the majority of the players on them are from NA. There are EU servers, and the majority of the players on them are from EU. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. The bulk of the players on these servers play during their servers respective primetimes. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. Tier 1 is the only tier with round the clock coverage, and it’s not even as complete as it used to be. There are still still times during OCX and SEA primetimes that even tier 1 servers get out numbered. Which affects the scores in not so insignificant ways. The affects it has on the scores becomes even greater the lower your tier is down to the middle tiers. Outcomes are solely decided by a larger group going against a skeleton crew during OCX and SEA. To claim otherwise is flat out lying. To then claim that your contributions shouldn’t count for less, when they’re currently the sole deciding factor, and nothing anyone else does matters, is outright self entitled hypocritical, disingenuous insanity. Stop it. Look at the reality of the situation. Beyond what affects you, beyond what affects your timezone. Look at common trend in every single matchup over the past 3 years, as a whole. It’s blatantly obvious to see, and to deny it is akin to a toddler throwing a tantrum because they want 2 pieces of cake when everyone else only gets none.

This situation has been a massive problem with WvW since launch. To say otherwise is flat out lying. The mountain of evidence speaks for itself. You can’t live in denial, while pointing accusing fingers at everyone who points it out. Have you no honor? Have you no integrity? Have to no dignity? It’s time to put on your big boy and big girl pants and do the right thing, instead of throwing giant indignant hissy fits every time this gets pointed out. Grow up, and stop acting like spoiled, selfish children.

DrMatt.9408:

Need old BL back, just do it ANET plssss.
As Ins said on Reyana’s stream – alpine was fine.
The main issues with wvw had nothing to do with the maps, in fact you could argue that the maps were wvw strengths as they allowed great fights/sieges and strategic use of objectives with minimal pve interference.

Pre HOT issues were:
1. Coverage imbalance invalidating PPT during prime time due to nightcap/morning cap by certain servers.
2. Serverside lag in big fights, with 5+ sec skill delay making anything but 111111 impossible.
3. Boring, imbalanced meta with ineffective melee post stability change and OP cc + ranged damage aka pirate ship. HOT has only made this worse with Rev Hammer etc
4. Abysmal gold/item rewards compared to pve, pointless wvw rank progression for veteran players, no wvw specific legendary etc etc

None of these have been addressed by HOT, rather new issues have introduced:
5. Terrible BL maps – as described by Ins. WAS 3 YEARS OF FEEDBACK REGARDING US WANTING LESS PVE IN WVW IGNORED?
6. Broken wvw guild upgrade system, requiring massive grind in pve to unlock essential wvw specific upgrades e.g. +5. SERIOUSLY HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE THOUGHT THIS WAS GOOD FOR WVW GUILDS??

If they took the old maps, and swapped the locations of the north camp and the garrison, and moved the spawn from the citadel up to where the orb alters used to be, the old maps would have been fine. That was pretty much the only major change that needed to be done to them. Or eve shift the garrison up to where the citadel was, shift the spawn points up to where the orb alter was, and shift the north camp down to where the garrison was. Not a whole lot was really needed beyond that. That would put the northern towers in strategic position around the garrison, while still keeping options open. While bloodlust wasn’t jawdroppingly amazing, it was at least something to keep roamers active. Granted, I’d prefer the original orb dynamic, though I’d change the stat buffs to anything else, and ya know, would have banned the people hacking/glitching into the keeps to get them. But I liked them because they added an extra element, a real incentive to fight over, and a reason to try to hold at least 1 keep on each borderland. Which promoted more action overall.

The new maps are just….. overkill in the completely wrong direction, and they’ll need to pull off a miracle to recover from all of the bad changes from HoT. Hell, they’re already reverting things (and labeling it as “updates”), they could have save a lot of time, money, effort, frustration, and not lost a giant chunk of the population by just making the few necessary changes to the Alpine map and putting in the tier system for the area upgrades and calling it a day.

The guild upgrades was…… well…. there’s no other way to say it, shady as hell. That’s like graduating college and then waking up one day to find out you have to repeat from 7th grade on up. It’s just plain soulless and deceptive of them. New upgrades should have been exactly that, new upgrades. Not taking away the existing upgrades, locking them behind massive grinds, and calling them new. That’s a scam. When any other company in any other industry tries pulling that crap, they end up having to pay out millions of dollars from the inevitable class action lawsuits, or get shut down outright for deceptive business practices. At the very least, whoever was in charge would get fired, and made the scapegoat for the public. But….. none of that’s happening here, so it’s just going to be a roller coaster ride down to rock bottom from here. It’s sad, the game that had the most potential out of any game on the market when it was released was absolutely brutalized by consistent horrible design decisions post launch. At this point, if it dies, it would be a mercy killing.

Jana, a few posts back, you were asking how to go about handling manual upgrades, while making sure trolls couldn’t grief by ordering it at the worst possible times or by ordering the wrong upgrades on purpose. There’s a very very simple way to go about handling that.

Here’s how it works. You have three tiers. 1, 2, and 3. You tower starts off at tier 1, with paper walls and gates. You talk to the quartermaster and click “Upgrade”. Now all of the yaks coming in work towards upgrading it to tier 2. Tier 2 is reinforced gates and walls, just like how tier 2 is currently. Once it’s tier 2, you can talk to the quartermaster to upgrade it to tier 3. There’s no need to have the guard/merchant upgrades be separate. Just include them in the tiers, as they currently are, and keep them free. Or at least make them use Karma, since that’s pretty much a completely useless currency anymore.

And here’s why that’s important. With manual upgrades, yes it’s a chore, but it’s a chore that at least some people do. Their job isn’t just doing the chores, their job is maintaining the territory. This includes upgrades and building siege, yes, but also controlling the camps, and scouting enemy movement. If the enemy zerg shows up on the map, and there’s no one maintaining the third, there’s no first responders and no one to call for reinforcements. Meaning, the enemy zerg has a free map to take, with no resistance. Which steers into the karma train skid. There’s already plenty about WvW that promotes the karma trains, taking away a key foundation piece to counteracting them only makes the game mode less enjoyable for anyone other than farmers. However, since you can make more gold in 20 minutes of PvE than you can in a day of WvW, not even the farmers will come in there to karma train. They’ll just go to one of the PvE maps, leaving WvW empty.

Everything must be in balance. If you want offence, you need defense. If you want defense, you need offence. If you want fights, you need the workers. If you automate the defense, it stops becoming a strategic game of players versus players, and becomes a mechanical game of players versus the environment. PvE. If a PvP based game mode is already struggling, the answer is never to remove PvP elements and replacing them with more PvE. That’s a surefire way to drive the people interested in the PvP elements out of the game entirely. Which is exactly what we’re seeing now. Don’t get me wrong, the upgrade system isn’t the only reason it’s happening, but it’s a significant contributing factor to it. The layout of the maps, the pathing on the maps, the insane costs for guild upgrades, the oasis event and the shrines, the lag, and the class balance are all contributing factors.

Furthermore, if you’re on a server that doesn’t have 24/7 coverage, an off peak group can take an entire borderland without resistance, and with auto upgrades, there’s a good possibility that the entire thing could be fully upgraded by morning. That group only needs to go through once, and never needs to come back, except to flip back the few areas that have been reclaimed by the skeleton crew, in what would just be a giant karma train. With manual upgrades, if they wanted upgraded areas, they’d have to actually put in the effort to make it happen. They wouldn’t get a free pass, and it wouldn’t compound the off peak coverage problems that are already existent.

Also, when a player or small group spends their day defending and upgrading an area, they get something absolutely priceless from it. Satisfaction,and the feeling of accomplishment. They took an empty paper tower, and turned it into a fortified, siege filled, bunker. That’s something they can be proud of. They feel invested into the area, as though they own it. They actually care about it. That’s not something that can be measured in metrics, or gold, or kill count, or PPT. But that’s something absolutely crucial the overall enjoyment factor those players get. The more they enjoy it, the more likely they are to do. Take that away entirely, and you’ve removed their incentive. Not everyone is driven by shinies, or by the deeply flawed scoring system, or by ego measuring contests. Some people enjoy the nurturing aspect of developing an area from scratch up to its full potential. The only way to keep that is to give them a measure of control over the development process. Escorting yaks just isn’t going to cut it. Not everyone has ADHD, and needs a constant stream of stimulation 24/7. Some people are perfectly capable of sitting still for a while, and some people actually prefer a more mellow experience. If these people don’t have that option, they’ll go play something else.

So there are several reasons why manual upgrades are just plain healthier for the game mode overall, and auto upgrades are outright detrimental to it.

Daddar.5971:

WvW is like a bar with no customers. When people walk in and see nothing happening, they leave to find something else to do. Most of my friends have moved down the street to a bar called Fallout 4, and they’re having a blast. Fallout 4 isn’t for me, but neither is this empty GW2 WvW dive.

Ok, let’s stick with your bar analogy for a minute here. At the grand opening, the bar was packed. The place was jumping, but after ever initial spike in customers, things eventually began returning towards a baseline. However, then the owners started handing out coupons for other bars, watering down the booze, putting cheap booze in the premium bottles and charging full price for it. They never bothered cleaning anything, not even so much as sweeping the floor. That big spike in customers that they once had, realized that this place was being hideously mismanaged, so less and less people came back each night. And what was the response to this? They put in a disco floor, and pin in the seats so everyone would have to get up and go do the hustle. Since the 70’s are loooooong over, those that couldn’t fit at the bar all decided to go to Burger King.

Now, sure, going up and down the street and grabbing people from all of the businesses there and giving them free drinks will make it look like it’s back at the Grand Opening again, but it’s an illusion. These aren’t the regulars. No one’s going to want to stick around to listen to Stayin’ Alive, while dealing with the blood coming out of the puncture wound they got when they tried to sit down. They’re all going to leave just as quickly, and will never come back. And all of the potential patrons will have been driven off.

So….. to make things crystal clear, putting in a megaserver will not help WvW, at all. People HATE the new borderlands. Removing the communities, and jamming everyone into giant anonymous blobs, and forcing them to either play on the new borderlands or leave, will just cause them to leave even faster. Megaservers will just escalate the death of WvW. There are severe core problems, and no amount of makeup will cover that black eye. Until the problems themselves are fixed, WvW will continue to bleed players. If you fix all of the bugs and exploits, and ban all of the hackers, and fix the maps, and the class balance, you’ll have a game people will actually want to play. And the maps will fill back up, because old players will come back, and new players will join. I saw plenty of that happening just before HoT came out. However, when HOT came out, those players threw up their hands in disgust when they saw the unmitigated disasters Anet calls the Desert Borderlands and Guild “Upgrades”. And they all left again, with a horrible taste in their mouths for anything Anet related.

And before anyone says “Oh, they’ll make sure everyone can still play with who they want”, just how well that lie worked out for the RP community when they put in the PvE megaservers. Instead of being on the same maps as their guild, friends, or even people in their party, they have taxi people onto the same map just to do anything together. And this is just a group of 5 people. For events, it takes an hour to get everyone onto the same map, when it used to happen automatically. Half of the community is in one instance, half of the community is in another, and it’s a crap shoot as to who will be where on any given day. It’s a horrible system, for everything, and they’ve failed miserably at the most basic levels of implementing it. Asking them to do it again, is flat out masochistic. If you don’t believe me, go back and look through this 22 page thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-and-RP/first

It’s just one of several threads that popped up to point out how flawed the megaservers were when they introduced them, and very little was ever done to fix any of it, and most of those same problems still exist. They’re not going to magically do a better job with a WvW megaserver system. Given their track record for WvW updates as a whole, it will be an even bigger disaster. Combined with the core problems, it will flat our murder WvW. You might as well get rid of all the servers except tier 1. It will have the exact same effect, only the few remaining people left will be tossed on random teams instead of being able to play with their friends and guilds.

It’s a BAD idea. For numerous reasons.

These are all good changes and steps in the right direction. I’d be the first to nitpick something to chew you guys out about, but…. you didn’t leave me any room to do so. Good work, and please keep working in this direction, towards the community. And thank you for the update.

I’d just like to point out that it doesn’t take a year to make a map. I don’t have a link to back this up, but I’m pretty sure Anet’s saidnew maps have an 8 week development cycle. I’m pretty sure they said it either during one of the CDI’s, or mentioned it when they were pumping out LS story updates every 2 weeks. Either way, the time invested isn’t nearly a year or a year and a half.

One thing I had thought of, and have seen suggested on these forums, is to have EB be the central hub, then have the borderlands connect to it. What I’m thinking, though, is a series of areas. Ok, there’s be 3 asura gates in EB. Each one connected to a unique pass area, that then connects to the corresponding borderlandkinda like a hallway connects rooms. So if you were in EB, you’d have to take the gate to the pass, and then go through the pass to get to another gate that would take you to near the spawn area in that borderland. If you wanted to jump from one borderland to another, you’d have to go through a pass to get to EB, then travel across EB to get to the pass to that borderland, travel the pass and then get to the borderland.

It would have a similar effect, in delaying response times, to limit map hopping, but it wouldn’t result in people just kinda…. sitting there looking at their screen for x amount of time. They’d still be mobile, so they wouldn’t get too bored by it. Hopefully people would realize that they’d be better off breaking up their 80 man map queue blob, into 2-4 smaller groups and spread those out for better response times.

Jayne.9251:

I was wondering how many of you, over the years, have witnessed this phenomena?

I’ve seen it happen with at least five or six games that have sputtered out and died because of this social media tool.

What happens, is that a group bands together and those who yell the loudest and longest, tend to get their way — regardless of whether it benefits the game or not. Developers of various games have reinforced this behaviour by caving to demands, often just to get players to quiet down. Over the years, players have been conditioned that if you don’t yell, you get nothing. It’s endemic in most MMO gaming forums.

So we are left with this kind of abrasive mode of communication, where the developer turtles and the playerbase gets more angry. To the point that any kind of interaction winds up being antagonistic, regardless.

What’s concerning about this, and as I’ve said, I’ve watched it happen on multiple MMO forums over the years is the fallout from what I call the “appeasement plan.”

Players yell and scream for X change. The developer assesses the largest volume of voice on a forum and makes a decision based on X demand. Over the years, players have learned that you don’t have to be in the majority, you just have to be loud — and pushy. The squeaky wheel and all that.

The worst part? After the changes are implemented, the ones who were yelling the loudest usually bail for other games once they see the plan fail. And the game ultimately suffers because the devs were trying to “listen to its playerbase.”

It’s no skin off the teeth of those who were yelling if they leave the game for somewhere else. They only care if they get their way. And if it fails, no big, there’s always another game out there.

TL;DR: I would highly recommend that while the forums are great to get feedback from the most ardent fans of the game, that Anet actually offers an in-game poll by game mail, asking each player to give input to what they’d like to see in changes. (And be prepared to alter existing plans if the data goes against current programming changes). Any time a player logs in, they are given this poll about potential changes, and can click off multiple choice radio buttons of what they prefer. This absolves the company of reacting (stomping out fires) to vocal manipulation and social engineering on forums. It also gives them an accurate head count of interest to proposed changes.

It just seems to me to be the more sensible thing to do.

Oh, this is part of a bigger trend, actually. A while back, someone did a write up on the “MMO Locust Cloud”. There’s a couple million players that jump from one game to another, any time a new one launches, and spend the first 6 months after launch demanding change as loud as they possibly can. Typically, what they’re asking for pretty much breaks down to just “make it like WoW!”. Even though WoW is usually the game they had left to come ruin whatever game’s launch. So this locust cloud goes around demanding a general WoWization of every AAA MMO that ever launches. The developers cave (usually due to pressure from pulishes trying to “chase dat Wow money”), and end up stripping away what made their game special and enjoyable, and are left with a shallow WoW clone, that sadly pales in comparison to the original, and pales in comparison to the game that was originally launched. This is also where the nerf cycles usually originate from. it basically boils down to “I got killed by an x, weaken them so I can kill them.”

What we’re seeing now is a version of that. A new expansion came out, which is like crack to the Locust Cloud, and now we’re seeing several people that are basically brand new to the game forcefully pushing for changes, that basically boil down to “make it like WoW.”

The whole cycle is thoroughly destructive. Not just for the individual games, but for the industry as a whole. It destroys variety, creativity and options, and pigeonholes both players and developers into single repeated template. And if players don’t particularly like that template, they’re left with nothing. It suffocates the entire industry, and is one of the main reasons for some of the current, horrible, trends we’re seeing in modern games. Lack of challenge, hand holding, removal of communities, removal of options, removal of RP from the RPGs, blatant funneling to the cash shops, removal of the fun factor, etc. It doesn’t lead down a good path, but… I don’t know if there’s anything that can really stop it at this point.

Given what we’ve seen from Anet, my guess is that they’ll gradually make the maps one giant circle of areas, with arrows painted on the roads to show zergs which direction to ktrain in. It’ll be a megaserver system, identical to EotM, because they think that a bunch of strangers silently standing next to each other is “a social experience”, while actual communities are “irrelevant”. The areas will continue to upgrade by themselves, and NPC mobs will fill in on the Ktrain rotation if there isn’t a busload of players ready to ride the loop. Defenders will leave, anyone looking for actual fights will leave afterwards, and then….. BLAM! sPvP Esport, baby! No more competition, anyone that wants to do any PvP at all will have to go into sPvP. They’ll eventually disable combat in guild halls, citing that it “violates their game mode” and probably hand out a few bans in the process too. EotM will be shrink down into a much smaller ktrain circle, and used to test out new, bad, ideas for sPvP. And in a year, they’ll put out another expansion, and take everyone’s gear and levels away, and make them grind 10 times harder just to get it back, and call that “exciting new content!”.

I wish I was joking, I really do. But I’ve been paying attention for too long to be able to ignore the path they’ve been going down for quite some time now. While I was greatly disappointed at the changed HoT brought, I wasn’t surprised in the least. And if any of the horrible ideas I listed above actually happen, I won’t be surprised in the least by those either. You can only watch someone running towards the edge of a cliff for so long before you realize they’re dead set on plummeting off of it.

lil devils x.6071:

Phantom.8130:

snip

Trying to force square pegs into round holes is a problem, the players have to want to work as a team but if you have an entire team that all wants to do their own thing.. they will not be very good no matter what you do with them. Yes… we know much about TC’s Typemanders.. we have seen their videos. so beautiful you just cannot help but cry. LOL

Our commander that is on TC is not a typemander, and is still there honestly trying to help " the underdog" the best he can… besides I think he has an affinity for the RP. You couldn’t get a nicer guy trying to help. HAHA!

You don’t blame the militia.. you help the militia. But in the end you can lead a horse to water, but it is up to them whether or not they will drink. We took the scrubs of the server what others called the “garbage pugs” and pulled them together into proper parties classes and builds on JQ and it worked great for us forming one of the more difficult guilds to push into. It is just a matter of if the players on the server want to improve or get rolled.

You do not yell at people.. you talk to them and figure out what they enjoy doing and help them improve. when they see the difference themselves, they appreciate the help. Sometimes a good defense is a good offense, and you are incorrect about not leaving the keep to take tower.. we do it all the time and keep both, you just have to have people competent enough to troll the keep enough to keep them from capping it to do so. You have to have players you can count on.

Every server gets bad commanders, people figure out real quick though why they are running around pinned up with no one following them ..

Oh, I am one of TC’s Typemanders as well. Well, I retired during season 2, but I was pretty active for a long while, and still contribute to strategy discussions. I also primarily led the militia as well, and I absolutely agree with what you’re saying. A lot of people tend to view pugs as inferior, simply because they’re not in a well known big guild, but I’ve always vehemently disagreed with that sentiment. With the proper leadership and guidance, they’re able to perform just as well as any guild group. What I learned is you have to work within the standards they set, not try to force them into working within your own standards. You have to spend each day earning their respect, and not demanding they earn your. Because at the end of the day, they follow you because they choose to, and they can just as easily choose to not follow you. I’ve always held TC’s militia in high esteem, and worked for them instead of expecting them to work for me. When I was actively commanding every day, TC’s militia was an absolutely dominant force. Because I and several others took the time to train them and work with them, and adjust our methods to what worked best for them. I’ve always wished we could get back to that point, because it was truly a sight to behold.

Anyway, about my point about the keep and tower. I don’t think I was very clear in my meaning. What I meant was, if I’m an attacker, and the defenders are all in the garrison, I can go attack a different spot and have a higher chance of success. But if I’m a defender, and the attackers are all in the garrison, I can’t go to defend a different spot, because then the garrison is lost with no resistance. As a defender, I have to respond to where the attackers are. The attackers get to pick and choose, and dictate the location, ferocity and duration of the attack, while the defenders can only prepare and try to be ready to respond to whatever’s thrown at them, anywhere it gets thrown, and for however long the throwing is going on. That gives the attackers flexibility that the defenders just don’t have, because they simply can’t afford to have it.

lil devils x.6071:

From what I gathered from TC…
TC’s problem wasn’t siege placement but it was filled with RPers trying to sneak up on yaks.. J/k… Really though, TC lost keeps due to failure to push out properly moreso than anything. else I saw. Siege humping only helps so far.. they have to actually push out, have proper parties, classes and builds in your core of the zerg ( which TC did not have). We actually have a commander in our guild who has an account on TC that commands on TC as well.. People would not run proper builds, buy proper armor/ runes weapons or play their classes properly and if you told them to, they called you a " Try hard". Siege only goes so far.. you have to actually have a force that has a solid core group, not just a random blob with necros running soldiers ( before tanky necros were even viable) and no serious DPS. You could stand there all day in TC DPS and not worrying about dying. ( of course there were individual guilds that were the exception to this, but this applied to the pug blob in general).

That was why they would get one pushed while even fighting under their own siege (which they had ton of). They did not have proper party/ class build comps, and many did not know how to play the classes they were on properly. We actually had a guildie write a song for TC.. You may like it XD

https://soundcloud.com/hohotron/bag-space/s-smNu9

Both offense and defense has he option to respawn, and defense has the closer spawn giving defense the upper hand and more supply as well.. Defense has choice of targets as well. You can force your opponents hand just as much as they are forcing yours by making them choosel. If they are hitting one of your targets, make them pay for it. If they hit your gari, you hit their’s so that if they do not pull off to save their gari, they will lose theirs if they continue to hit yours.. You have to push back when pushed, just defense has the upper hand when doing so.

Ironically, TC was actually a lot tougher when we had more RPers in there. When a few people decided to “take things pro”, it actually weakened the server overall. It ruined the overall framework that everything was built around, and drove countless people out entirely. What’s worse, is when those few people got their wish, they bailed. There was a lot of destruction left behind, but things were finally starting to recover….. then HOT dropped and basically killed WvW entirely. However, if TC had never veered from from the path it was on by the end of tier 3, most of the problems that it’s had would have been avoided entirely. But…. people come in and don’t understand exactly what they’re dealing with, and try to force square pegs into round holes, turn toxic when it just…. doesn’t work, then drive the square pegs out and just…. make carbon copies of servers that previously imploded, magically expecting a different result. To further the irony, a lot of the people that transferred in and tried to “teach the TC yokels how to be good” were people that used to get farmed by TC’s militia being led by typing commanders. They couldn’t accept that they weren’t as good as they thought they were, so they started flexing ego, and blaming the militia for their shortcomings. Which drove off most of the militia, then they bailed too. Fortunately, the core of TC’s community has been strong enough to hold things together so as to not plummet through the ranks like so many other servers that have gone through the same ordeal.

Anyway, we’re getting off topic. What you’re describing is a counter offensive, not defense. It’s yet another option offense has, that actual defense doesn’t. If they’re hitting the garrison, we can’t move our defenders to the NE tower. That just doesn’t work. If they hit our garrison, our defenders have to respond to our garrison. A counter offensive force can be dispatched, but that’s not defense. Defense is the group in the area that’s being attacked, actively fending off the attackers. And while yes, both offense and defense can respawn, the dynamics are entirely different. If a offensive group wipes and respawns, they can just resupply and come right back to plugging away. If a defensive group wipes, they lose the area. The best they can do is set up mesmer ports and/or try to spam the waypoint in a desperate attempt to get back there to contest the area before it flips. That in itself is a heavy advantage to the offense.

As far as pushing out to deal with the attackers, that’s a timing thing. While you can just rush right out to meet them, it’s basically a coin flip situation, and if you lose you lose everything, but if you win they lose virtually nothing. You have to make sure they’re softened up enough to be able to wipe them when you push out, or else you’ve sacrificed defense for a gambit. And if your gambit doesn’t pay off, you lose the area entirely. It’s a high risk, low reward proposal. however, the more you soften it up, the more that shifts. The risk becomes less, and the chance of wiping them increases. Once the odds are in your favor, then you push out and clear them. Though, your best bet is a combination of 3 things. Static defense, dynamic defense, and counter offense. A group inside the tower/keep to work the siege, a zerg to meet the attackers in the field, and another zerg to push one of their priority areas. At that point, defense actually does gain the advantage, however that requires some coordination, trust and teamwork. It’s a lot easier to just run an omniblob and blame failures on pugs. Because, let’s be real here, there’s no real qualifications to become a commander. If you give a chimpanzee 300 gold, he can become a commander too. That doesn’t mean he’ll be a good commander, just that he’ll be out there leading groups to there deaths over and over. Unfortunately, what happens is that a lot of people think they’re the reincarnation of Sun Tzu because they have a dorito over their head, even if they don’t actually know anything beyond the very basics. They let ego get in the way of their judgement, they make bad strategic and tactical decisions, then look for scapegoats to blame it on. All while assuming they know more than anyone else. While the good commanders are constant students, studying everything they can, and always looking to improve. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell which is which just at a glance. They both get the same doritos.

lil devils x.6071:

Phantom.8130:

lil devils x.6071:

Defending has always been too easy, now not only did they make it even easier, they made no point in doing so. The defending team has their siege already built, they knock down the offensive siege before they ever get it built.. In Alpine you can treb like mad from the 2nd and 3rd floor in gari so it is definitely harder to take than to defend if your team is properly prepared. Defending is easy, just there is no point in doing so since the rewards are not there and it is still boring to siege hump. Usually you just push out and wipe the offensive team anyhow if you do not ant to be bored to tears, so not only do you get to fight under siege from your keep you have walls protecting it, and to run back to to reset to wipe the opposing force.

Yes, they do get that stale. I have been doing this a LONG time..been there done linear chokepoints to death, need something a bit more interesting because that greatly limits options. Players fighting payers does not create as much variety as you may think.. I have played many tier against many guilds and do not really see that at all. You get to the point you do not even have to think to know what the enemy is going to do and how to wreck them after so many. There is a best way to do it. Everything in the game is math.. Everything in every game is math… To make it better you add more ways to attack, what to attack,when and from where to control the battlefield and force your opponents hand otherwise it does get old fast.

Even when playing games like EVE online, combat can become predictable so you have to try very hard to keep it from doing so. Linear is the opposite of that. Trying to find forces that are not one push material to begin with to duke it out with is hard enough as it is, making so they have to attack specific targets just makes them give up even faster since if they cannot take one objective they will just log out since there is nothing else for them to do. Yes, a flat open space even allows for more strategy than linear choke points, that is exactly what I was saying. since you can change movement / direction attack from any angle on the battlefield, unlike choke points and linear game play which removes that.

The Desert borderlands are massive PVE filled Gimmicky abysses.. not strategic maps that encourage PVP game play. There is no point in defending or taking anything there, no point in running around aimlessly looking for nonexistent fights, really.. no point in going there at all…

If you honestly think that defending has always been too easy, then I don’t know what to say. I’ve been doing this a long time as well. I’ve led on offense and I’ve led on defense. I’ve always found offense to be far easier due to the sheer number of options available to me. Send a couple scouts out to scope out the areas and clear out oil, cannons and mortars while you get your group filled up on supplies. Pick the soft targets. Attack from multiple angles, in multiple stages. Have a ninja group coming in from the other side, or attacking a different target. A paper tower shouldn’t take longer than 3 minutes to capture. 15 minutes for fully fortified.

I ended up becoming a defensive specialist because that’s where the need and the challenge was. Setting up counter siege and positioning it in just the right direction (and hoping someone doesn’t come in an turn it towards the gate, so you have to turn it back after they leave). Making sure you had each piece set up to counter each singular attack method. Hoping they didn’t come at you from 2 angles at once. Knowing that the cannons and mortars, and even the walls, were completely useless deathtraps against even a semi-competent attacking group. Watching kitten-60 people just autoattack the gate down, even though you killed all their siege. Knowing that when that gate was down, you had one chance to defend, but they could just keep flinging more bodies and siege at you until they succeeded.

Though I do agree with you completely about the new maps. Now the towers have no more relevance than the skritt and centaur used to. And the sheer number of gimmicks completely overshadow the game mode itself. Though Anet’s always had a bizarre fetish for gimmick mechanics. The class design speaks volumes on that just in itself.

We came up with a map design in this thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Constructive-Features-for-a-good-BL-map/page/2#post5813939 Let me know what you think of it.

It is easy as hell to defend.. If we show up we keep it…If that isn’t happening then you need to rethink what it is you are doing because it is easy as hell. You are fighting under your own siege with your spawn right there, if your team shows up I cannot think of a reason you should lose it. If you lose it at that point you deserve to lose it.

Hopefully you are only building superior siege, multiple trebs for each door, siege on the supply hut, unhittable ACs on the ground ( you can also protect other siege with cata bubbles).. Even when we had TC and BG map queues inside our keep at same time with walls down working together, we only lost it if we made bad calls…

Now if when your commander calls for people to stack on pin and people run around on the walls like a bunch O looney nubs instead, then ye,s the server deserves the loss for not pushing with pin and saving your keeps. In addition, it often helps when fighting a map blob to dual pin and hammer anvil it to take out their backline rather than just blob it up. In addition, your classes and builds for your party composition are not just important for GvG and offense, they are important for your defensive fights as well. Playing classes and using builds that are beneficial for the group pays off in the end. You should have 1 guard per party, front line and back line necros enough healer eles for your group, proper veils from Mesmer ect.. People should not expect to win fights running around on whatever they feel like doing whatever.. They need to actually set these things up proper.

We not only want them to come at us from 2 angles but from both towers, WG, SE gate and Suicide if we want it to be actually fun.

EDIT: also the link is not working for me for some reason, the thread is showing blank. I just hope whatever map they come up with is more like EBG and not a giant, linear, choke pointed, bouncy PVE environmental disaster mess. LOL

I’m on TC. I actually wrote TC’s borderland defensive siege guide. Which was originally designed during the orb era to deal with BG and SOR when they first superstacked and severely outnumbered us, so that we’d at least be able to hold onto some territory while they flung absurd numbers of bodies and siege at us, then respawned and rushed back over and over.

And while, yeah, if you’re just doing a single rush on a single area, things are close to even. But defense isn’t about a single area, it’s about a series of areas. And offense always has the option to respawn and try again if they fail. However, there’s a lot of poor offense that happens, where a zerg thinks that all they need to do is just plop down a few rams and that should be all. Rams were obsolete by the end of 2012. They made a partial come back when they got gate vulnerability for golem rushes, but are only really good as your sole form of offense if there aren’t any defenders. Proper offense starts much further back, with trebs from multiple angles to soften up interior siege, starting at the top with the counter trebs and working your way down from there to the walls. Then catas to finish the walls off. Then you send a mesmer in to port your zerg up onto the wall, you clear any remaining siege and wipe the defenders from there. Though if your mesmer can get right up to the Lord’s room, that’s even better. Of course, there’s always the “10 Omega” rushes, which have their own set of dynamics.

However, it doesn’t change the fact that the walls, oil, and cannons are deathtraps against even a semi-competent offensive group. Offense has options and flexibility, and can pick and choose its target(s). While defense is very strict, and has to cover multiple areas, even when they’re not being attacked, and are at a territorial disadvantage due to the layout. If nothing else, they should at least swap the positions of the garrison and north camp, so that you at least have to run past the towers to get it, even if the towers don’t block off the way to it.

And I definitely agree with you on what new maps should look like, though I’d prefer things spread out a little more than they are on EB, so that there’s more open space between areas, though they should still be within treb range of each other. But I don’t think they’re actually going to make new maps. Anet’s never been good about admitting their mistakes, especially when it comes to WvW. So they’ll probably jockey to put in an EotM megaserver system, so that even though the total population numbers are plummeting, they can show videos of “hundreds of people fighting each other”, even though it would all be smoke and mirrors. Until there’s not enough people left to even fill that up, which I’m guessing would take a year. Sadly, if they didn’t keep tanking their game mode and driving players off in frustration, they wouldn’t need to keep trying to create the illusion of a vibrant, happy playerbase. They’d actually have one.

lil devils x.6071:

Defending has always been too easy, now not only did they make it even easier, they made no point in doing so. The defending team has their siege already built, they knock down the offensive siege before they ever get it built.. In Alpine you can treb like mad from the 2nd and 3rd floor in gari so it is definitely harder to take than to defend if your team is properly prepared. Defending is easy, just there is no point in doing so since the rewards are not there and it is still boring to siege hump. Usually you just push out and wipe the offensive team anyhow if you do not ant to be bored to tears, so not only do you get to fight under siege from your keep you have walls protecting it, and to run back to to reset to wipe the opposing force.

Yes, they do get that stale. I have been doing this a LONG time..been there done linear chokepoints to death, need something a bit more interesting because that greatly limits options. Players fighting payers does not create as much variety as you may think.. I have played many tier against many guilds and do not really see that at all. You get to the point you do not even have to think to know what the enemy is going to do and how to wreck them after so many. There is a best way to do it. Everything in the game is math.. Everything in every game is math… To make it better you add more ways to attack, what to attack,when and from where to control the battlefield and force your opponents hand otherwise it does get old fast.

Even when playing games like EVE online, combat can become predictable so you have to try very hard to keep it from doing so. Linear is the opposite of that. Trying to find forces that are not one push material to begin with to duke it out with is hard enough as it is, making so they have to attack specific targets just makes them give up even faster since if they cannot take one objective they will just log out since there is nothing else for them to do. Yes, a flat open space even allows for more strategy than linear choke points, that is exactly what I was saying. since you can change movement / direction attack from any angle on the battlefield, unlike choke points and linear game play which removes that.

The Desert borderlands are massive PVE filled Gimmicky abysses.. not strategic maps that encourage PVP game play. There is no point in defending or taking anything there, no point in running around aimlessly looking for nonexistent fights, really.. no point in going there at all…

If you honestly think that defending has always been too easy, then I don’t know what to say. I’ve been doing this a long time as well. I’ve led on offense and I’ve led on defense. I’ve always found offense to be far easier due to the sheer number of options available to me. Send a couple scouts out to scope out the areas and clear out oil, cannons and mortars while you get your group filled up on supplies. Pick the soft targets. Attack from multiple angles, in multiple stages. Have a ninja group coming in from the other side, or attacking a different target. A paper tower shouldn’t take longer than 3 minutes to capture. 15 minutes for fully fortified.

I ended up becoming a defensive specialist because that’s where the need and the challenge was. Setting up counter siege and positioning it in just the right direction (and hoping someone doesn’t come in an turn it towards the gate, so you have to turn it back after they leave). Making sure you had each piece set up to counter each singular attack method. Hoping they didn’t come at you from 2 angles at once. Knowing that the cannons and mortars, and even the walls, were completely useless deathtraps against even a semi-competent attacking group. Watching kitten-60 people just autoattack the gate down, even though you killed all their siege. Knowing that when that gate was down, you had one chance to defend, but they could just keep flinging more bodies and siege at you until they succeeded.

Though I do agree with you completely about the new maps. Now the towers have no more relevance than the skritt and centaur used to. And the sheer number of gimmicks completely overshadow the game mode itself. Though Anet’s always had a bizarre fetish for gimmick mechanics. The class design speaks volumes on that just in itself.

We came up with a map design in this thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Constructive-Features-for-a-good-BL-map/page/2#post5813939 Let me know what you think of it.

lil devils x.6071:

Phantom.8130:

lil devils x.6071:

Dal.5872:

All we really wanted changed had they listened was the Alpine Borderland, slightly stretched, so that towers and keeps cannot be trebbed from each other. “LESS PvE” and 2 more towers in the top left and right corners in the unused Centaur and Skritt camps.

New texture and a bit of finetuning here and there, even going so far as redesigning towers and keeps to justify the expansion. But not the current maze like monstrosities we currently have to navigate.

Who wanted that? Being able to treb from towers/ keeps is what makes them strategic objectives giving you an actual reason to defend them. Now there is no reason to defend the towers… or with the auto WP the keeps as well. You should be able to hit targets from other objectives, it makes them more valuable.

Actually, if the towers were in front of the keeps, so that you’d actually have to deal with the towers before being able to advance to the keep, THAT would give them actual strategic relevance. The towers on the old borderlands had minor relevance, because they could treb the keeps. But for actual relevance, they’d need to block the paths to the keeps, and also be able to treb them. But right now, they don’t do either. ~
snip.

No, forcing you to take the towers before the keep would make it too easy. The fact that you can attack anything from any direction and in any order makes it more strategic and challenging. Forcing your opponent to make choices and distracting them with other targets and multiple targets at once is what makes it not as boring. Linear chokepoints or specified order of attack = Predictable boring same ol’ same ol’ monotonous game play. You want to be able to attack all objectives in any way possible, in any order possible, from multiple directions at once forcing people to make choices so that you do not have stale game play. The more you limit which targets can be attacked, by what methods from where the more predictable the gameplay becomes. Instead you need to give a benefit for taking each objective. Like taking the 2 northern towers before assaulting the keep allows you to treb the keep from both sides dividing their forces. Of course all the while you could very well go through water gate at the same time, and the towers could just be a diversion. You want both the offensive and defensive forces to have many ways to attack targets in any order to prevent it from being as stale.

Of course you would have to make a point to winning or taking objectives at all, as currently there really isn’t any point in doing so. You have nothing to really lose/ gain due to the new system. I agree the new DBL’s towers are beyond useless.. along with the rest of the map.

Though making the maps more linear would make them more monotonous, not less.

It goes both ways, though. There has to be viable offensive strategy, but defensively the areas have to be laid out strategically as well. Otherwise, it damages motivation to play defense. If I’m supposed to defend an series of areas, I don’t want to be handicapped from the start by the layout. Offense has always had the bulk of the options open to it, defense has always been hamstringed.

Also, there would still be options for offense. You have two towers to target. You can all push one, split up and hit both to stretch defenders thing, or run a big distraction at one while a small group ninjas the other, or set up a treb and a siege farm counter punch. You don’t lose offensive strategy, you just gain defensive viability. Which balances out the playing field, which makes things more competitive overall.

And to be honest, things wouldn’t get nearly as stale as you think. There would never be a “one best way to do it”. There would always be good and bad ways, and good and bad counters, and all of this counter play would keep things evolving. And the fights would never be stale, because it’s not prescripted PvE mobs, it’s free thinking players. Which in itself creates limitless variety. Hell, look at the entire GvG scene. They’ve been doing that for years, and they just need a flat open space to do it in. Yet, things are always evolving on that front, and always fresh enough to keep people interested, because it’s dynamic by its very nature. Players fighting players creates enough variety, that players shouldn’t have to fight bad map design to artificially try to allow creativity for one side, at the expense of the other.

Right now, the new borderlands are the epitome of offensive choices…… and it’s barren, loathed and used primarily just for a ktrain. Put in defensive viability, and strategically important locations, and that changes over night. Especially now that the waypoints are back in the keeps (though they still need to fix those to be unlocked at tier 3 for whatever server holds the keep). The best thing for the game mode is promoted conflict, and the maps have to be designed to do that. Players have to be able to capture territory a little bit at a time, players have to be able to defend several areas within their territory, and players have to have clear avenues to find or create fights. Large groups should focus on the direct approach, while small groups should focus on the indirect approach. Large groups can handle the main avenues, and focus on attacking the towers to push to the keep or defending the towers, or duking it out in the open field on the way to one of the towers as a giant territorial tug of war. And small groups can handle supply denial by capping camps and kill yaks, while pulling off the occasional ninja attack in harmony with the large group, or they can focus on defending a tower and getting it ready to handle the next inevitable attack.

lil devils x.6071:

Dal.5872:

All we really wanted changed had they listened was the Alpine Borderland, slightly stretched, so that towers and keeps cannot be trebbed from each other. “LESS PvE” and 2 more towers in the top left and right corners in the unused Centaur and Skritt camps.

New texture and a bit of finetuning here and there, even going so far as redesigning towers and keeps to justify the expansion. But not the current maze like monstrosities we currently have to navigate.

Who wanted that? Being able to treb from towers/ keeps is what makes them strategic objectives giving you an actual reason to defend them. Now there is no reason to defend the towers… or with the auto WP the keeps as well. You should be able to hit targets from other objectives, it makes them more valuable.

Actually, if the towers were in front of the keeps, so that you’d actually have to deal with the towers before being able to advance to the keep, THAT would give them actual strategic relevance. The towers on the old borderlands had minor relevance, because they could treb the keeps. But for actual relevance, they’d need to block the paths to the keeps, and also be able to treb them. But right now, they don’t do either. They’re isolated areas in the corners of the maps that can be completely ignored and bypassed. There’s no territorial synergy, which results in the maps being much much easier to ktrain. The autoupgrades steer into that skid, removing any sense of investment into the areas that defenders had, resulting in far fewer defenders. No defenders means an easier ktrain.

And to the guy who was saying that people are in EB because they want to ktrain easier, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong. The new borderlands are set up as an easy ktrain from top to bottom, every single aspect of them. If people actually wanted an easier ktrain, the new maps would be flooded. However, people want actual WvW, where they can hold territory, capture other servers’ territory, and fight other players. So they flock to EB, since that’s the last bastion of hope left. At least before Anet decides to “fix” things, and smothers it with a pillow.

xXBAKESXx.6731:

The main point is, does Anet not want gameplay modes in the game they didn’t directly implement themselves?

I point back to Violgate. Where an Anet employee stood in the middle of a GvG fight at the south windmill, popped his Anet tag, and told everyone that they were “Violating his game mode”. So yes. They very much have a control freak issue going on, and what makes it worse is that they have a very limited understanding of, well, the entirety of WvW. They don’t understand the tactics. They don’t understand the strategies. They don’t understand the community. They don’t understand the players. They don’t understand the needs o the game mode. As a result, they’re simply unable to make good changes, because they just plain don’t know what would and would be a good change. Even though the bulk of the regular WvW players can produce a giant list that we all pretty much universally agree on. Sure, there’s some issues where we don’t all agree, but we’re all on the same page for a LOT of the key concepts.

One doesn’t need to even look very far to find evidence that supports this. Look for the thread Fozzik made. The overwhelming majority of the posts were in favor of what he spelled out, almost universally. Look at the thread Yuffi made, where we even did open group brainstorming to come up with a working layout for the map. And to go even further, look at the new squad system. This exact system was proposed years ago, and then again in the CDI. It was overwhelming, universal support for the system. It was not something that would take a year or two to develop, but…. it was a year or two before it was implemented. Why? Now, sure, some may try to spin things and say “oh, they had to make sure it worked right and it’s very complicated and you wouldn’t understand all the technical details and blah blah blah” but that’s complete BS. It’s counting on the lack of knowledge for those excuses to fly. There’s nothing legitimate backing it up.

Actions speak louder than words. When you want to know the truth, you don’t look at what someone says, you look at their actions and establish a behavioral pattern. Everyone has a behavioral pattern, whether they realize it or not, and the pattern always shows the truth of the person/entity in question. What their motivations are, what they general knowledge level is, what they care about, what they prioritize, what they want. And Anet’s behavioral pattern is very distinct at this point. So what do they want? What is their goal? What is their motivation? Well….. they want money, first and foremost. But that has far more to do with NCSoft than Anet themselves. NCSoft has been doing quite a lot to position itself next to EA when it comes to raw, blind, greed. Quality and happy customers mean nothing to NCSoft, just money. NA and EU are just testing beds for them to get their hands on the massive amount of money they can make in Asia. That’s already come to fruition in GW2. However, Anet’s motivation is something much different. See, if you look at the Glasstree reports from employees and former employees, they spell it out in no uncertain terms. Anet cares solely about an ego measuring contest with Blizzard. That’s it, that’s all. Nothing more. So they do everything they can so they can point at their game and say “look at the game we made, look at the systems we created, look at the innovations we made. Look at how great we are.” Anything that speaks counter to that is either ignored entirely, or they attempt to discredit it. Any player suggested changes are handled in one of two ways. Either the “Ignore and Discredit” method, or they wait and wait and wait, and then finally implement it with a line about “how much they care about their customers and really listen to the feedback”. Which is clearly pure PR spin. They couldn’t care less about their customers, and this section of the forum is a testament to how well they actually listen. See, suggestion on improvement implies that they’re not perfect, and they don’t want to accept that. They want their egos to be puffed up. Look at the threads they did respond to. One was blatantly titled with that purpose in mind. They were told something they did was “Great” and they responded to it. And just that. All of the complaints, all of the suggestions for how to fix things, all of the suggestions for how to improve things over the years are subject to the “Ignore and Discredit” treatment, unless there’s overwhelming support, then it’s gotten the “wait and take credit for it” treatment. Because at the end of the day, the highest quality game possible isn’t what’s important to them. They’ve consistently proven that over the years. Money and ego inflation are.

So yeah, they do actively squash good ideas that aren’t theirs, because they can’t claim credit for them, and that doesn’t help them in their Ego War with Blizzard. Even when it’s to the detriment of their product. And I honestly wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of the biggest white knights on these forums are just alt accounts from people in their PR department. Shills aren’t exactly a hidden, or even uncommon, practice with all major companies. It would be extremely naive to think it’s not going on here too.

While I don’t really log in very much anymore due to my disappointment with the new maps guild upgrades, a faction system would sever any ties I have to the game. So that would remove any reason I have to log in at all anymore.

That being said, here’s the problem with a faction system. Aside from Tier 1 and partially Tier 2, the vast majority of the players in NA, are from NA. But that isn’t where matchups are decided. Matchups are decided by OCx, SEA and EU coverage, where it’s a small number of people going against an even smaller number of people. So if you put in a faction system, what would happen would be NA primetime would be completely overflowing, but outside that, you’d only have enough players for 1 or 2 matchups.

It isn’t that servers are massively different during NA primetime. It’s that they’re massively different outside of NA primetime. Factions wouldn’t change that. So Factions would just be destroying communities for zero gain whatsoever.

Bottom line, It’s not a matter of bulk numbers, it’s a matter of round the clock coverage. No matter what sort of grouping system they use, it’s not going to make half of the playerbase nocturnal. The only real solution is to balance out off peak coverage. Either by by merging the NA, EU and China servers, which has its own massive difficulties and complications, or by doing something about the system itself to at least lessen the effects of off peak coverage. Doing anything else isn’t going to help, and will only create more problems.

GROMIT.7829:

Gonna have to agree with OP

I’m from Piken and to be honest our PPT is rubbish but the enemy flat out refuses to fight us and when they do they wipe 9/10 times, i’m struggling to understand why they are so bad at this part of the game (not an insult, just an observation).

We don’t PPT much but we PPT enough to keep our place, but honestly EVERY server we fight can’t fight back or just runs, it’s not fun anymore, what happened to all these servers ?.

I was on Piken for a couple months a couple of years ago, and I got to see your open field groups first hand. The honest truth is that you guys are just….. really really good at it. Don’t get me wrong, there were a couple servers that were just laughably bad, where I watched a group of maybe 20 from Piken take on a group of about 70 with no real problems. But that was also the server I was doing 13k crits to people while wearing full bunker gear, so they seemed all sorts of dysfunctional. But, I think at this point, you guys have built up a pretty solid reputation for being extremely strong in the open field, so I’m guessing other servers have adjusted their tactics to try to avoid engaging you where you’d hold the clear advantage.

Though what I learned while I was over there is that the different language based servers all had different focuses. The English speaking servers focused on the open field fights. The German servers were masters of siege defenses. And the French servers seemed to primarily just get into an omniblob then run away until everyone else was asleep. Which was…. very bizarre to see 70 people run away from 15 for 8 hours a day every day for a week. I still haven’t been able to mentally process that.

It’s all boils down to motivation. With every aspect of WvW, the question “why am I doing this?” needs to be asked.

If things are set up properly, then the conversation would be “Why am I defending this tower?” Because it helps protect our keep. “Why is the keep important?” Because we can get a waypoint in it, that we can use to get closer to where the fighting is. “Ok, cool.” All good.

Right now, it’s “Why am I defending this tower?” Uh….. 10 points… “What do points give us?” We win the match. “What do we get for winning the match?” Uh….. nuthin’…. “So…. everything is entirely irrelevant…?” Yeah….. pretty much…. “Well…. screw that, let’s just go have fun in any way we can.”

Right now, everything about WvW is built on a house of cards that collapses under even minor examination. There’s no motivation to own any of the areas. There’s no motivation to protect any of the areas. There’s no motivation for trying to win the matchup. The only form of motivation is community driven in a “Well, I like these guys, so I’m gonna try to do my best for them” way. The only motivation from the game itself is motivation to run karma trains for loot. Which actually strips away motivation to play to win, because defenders just slow the karma train down and make things harder.

If they fix the maps, properly, the areas themselves will provide the motivation to hold and defend them. If they fix the way matches are calculated, and the rewards for winning matches, that will provide motivation to try to win the matches. Though I should note, the rewards for winning the matches doesn’t necessarily need to come in the form of loot. Though more loot definitely is something needed in WvW. However, early on, before glicko had settled into the rut it’s been in, servers were able to climb the ranks based on how well they did. So that was a form of motivation in itself. Right now, servers are pretty much locked into their matches, barring implosions, and no matter what the result of one match is, it’s just going to be yet another rematch next week. Everyone knows who’s going to win long before the match even starts, and there’s not really anything any of the players involved can do about it.

However, the only ways to address the population imbalances is to either somehow get everyone to agree to spread out, server merges, or a megaserver/alliance system. A megaserver system will remove the community element from the game, so that takes away the only source of motivation people have for bothering to play hard in stale matchups and attack/defend irrelevant areas for PPT. An alliance system screws over smaller guilds and unguilded players, and eventually leads to guild decay and even guild cannibalism. People have proven they’d rather stack onto the top servers than spread out to the lower ranked ones, for various reasons. Some prefer bigger fights, some prefer bigger rewards (from loot from more players), some just prefer being around more people. The only possible resolution would be server merges, but those need to be handled extremely carefully. They needed to be announced a few months ahead of time. Those on the servers being removed need to be given free transfers to a server of their choosing. The direction of the servers people will be moving to need to be established. Some will want to remain small, while others will want to grow. Some people will want to stay on a smaller server, while others will wand to go to larger ones. Some will want to be competitive, while others will want things casual. Then there’s the overall atmosphere of the servers as well. Some will run a tight ship, others will want to be as friendly as possible, and others will want to just sorta…… screw with people. People will need to be able to make educated decisions, so that they know it’s the right one the first time. It would be a hard process, but it would be the only one that doesn’t cut out the heart of WvW itself. However, the off peak coverage would still be an issue. Most of that is concentrated into the upper tiers, though, simply because that’s where those players have the best chance of finding fights. That, however, can be mitigated by changing the scoring system itself. 5 points for successfully capturing an area, 10 points for successfully defending, 1 point per kill, might work, but I’m just spitballing that concept off the top of my head.

So…. the reason WvW evolved the way it did was because at every level, it was inevitable due to the built in motivations, or lack thereof. But if those motivations were changed, and missing ones added in, WvW could evolve into a much healthier place. But one step quick fixes aren’t the solution. It would need to be several smaller steps over an overall gradual process.

The funny part is, there’s enough members of the WvW community that would gladly volunteer for the job to fill out a full WvW development team.

I think it would certainly be possible to bring in a second development studio, but… I don’t think it would be likely for them to actually do it. While I very much agree that WvW needs a LOT more dev attention, I just don’t see Anet releasing control of any part of this game to anyone else.

I think the most effective way to deal with the “coverage wars” issue is to just combine NA, EU and the China servers into one category, and let people spread out from there. The issue about lag is sort of irrelevant at this point, considering people from these areas have been combining into single servers already. In order to compete in T1 you need around the clock coverage, and these players aren’t coming from Mexico. NA, EU , OCX, and SEA are already combining on these servers. NA isn’t just NA. EU isn’t just EU. So why not do what the players themselves are already doing? “Night capping” would disappear, because there wouldn’t be any “night” anything. And while things wouldn’t be 100% even across all servers, things would be a great deal more even than they are now. You’d still have larger and smaller servers, so you’d still have tiers. But there wouldn’t be massive leaps in coverage from one tier to another. After combining the categories, give everyone one free transfer and let people balance things out from the top down. Then keep the caps in place and don’t raise them. There will be some position changes, but after 3 months, most people will be exactly where they want to be, playing the game in a style that they want to play it in. Massive fights in the higher tiers, smaller scale fights in the lower tiers, round the clock coverage so things are at least even.

Trenthor.2563:

Fozzik.1742:

Viable defense for a tower or keep needs to account for a small number of players defending against a zerg…because this is what happens the vast majority of the time. Because joining a giant blob and karma training around the maps is so heavily encouraged and incentivized by the game design (most rewards, easiest play, safest play), very few people defend. In order for defense to be viable, the defender needs to be able to hit the enemy without being hit themselves. Very basic…but it’s the central design of all defenses since tribes started building huts thousands of years ago. I have to be able to hit you without you hitting me.

Why not add a factor/buff that grants the defenders inside the towers a chance to evade ranged and aoe attacks? Make it so it only happens when you are in some strategic places inside the structres, and only if the gate/walls are still intact. I believe this can bring more options to people defeding, and can be adjustable, (50% chance, 33% chance, etc), so it can be balanced further depending on the initial feedbacks. This seems logical to me, since its harder to hit someone from down below. Currently we already have the obstruction factor, but it doesnt really matter for a blob casting everything in those walls, so I believe some sort of mechanic like this one I mentioned can help solve those problems.

If they raised the walls of towers/keeps to about double their current height, they’d be too high for people on the ground to AoE up onto them, and would also stop the cannons and oils from being deathtraps. Carts would be needed to attack down from the walls, and carts/catas/trebs would be needed to clear the internal siege. Trebs would be needed inside to protect the defensive siege, but a couple offensive ones set up in different positions, attacking from different angles, would be able to take the defensive ones down. A smart group would just set up the offensive trebs first, then the defenders would have to push out to take them down. Which would be a lot easier because everyone would either be on the siege or on the tag, instead of spread out on the walls trying to drop AoE onto attacking groups and getting melted.

Swagger.1459:

EylanaE.1579:

First of all, for constructive feedback take a look at these links, you’ll find plenty from my perspective:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/How-Heart-of-Thorns-affected-WvW/first#post5809441
https://eylanae.wordpress.com/2015/11/17/wvw-after-hot/

As for this mega servers thing, it’s safe to say it would ruin the way I love to play this game.

What really bothers me is the word “Server Pride”. For the majority of people it hasn’t got anything to do with server pride (and even if it does it’s fine). It has everything to do with a servers community, the people playing. Over the years these communities have grown to be pretty organized, website and ts. When playing on a server you get to know so many people, not just your guildies, but also the pug commanders with the regular players, the guilds, roamers, scouts and you even get to know your opponents.

This is the strength of a server based model imo. Because people know each other they will fight together, not for PPT, but to help each other. And every server needs them all, public commanders, pugs, fighting guilds, ppt guilds, roamers, scouts and new players eager to learn.

Any mega-server like idea will destroy these communities. And to be honest, it’s the only thing left that has some importance for me as it is, WvW wise.

As for population balance? How about fixing the core issues WvW is suffering from first, that way there might be some population left to balance.

You will absolutely love megaservers and come back to these forums praising the devs! You’ll meet more like minded friends, have more peeps to play with regularly, get more rewards, have more fights, run lots of tournaments…

Serious question. Are you Donald Trump?

Swagger.1459:

Phantom.8130:

Swagger.1459:

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

Offair.2563:

Jayne.9251:

Swagger.1459:

It’s funny to see some of you rally for less fights and loot… With megaserver, you’ll always have high participation rates, more battles, more defenders, more scouts, more coverage, more rewards, more xp, more fun…

You peeps don’t really think beyond the current failing systems at all… It’s a shame.

You will lose your defenders, you will lose your scouts, when there’s no team framework to work with. You need to have a reliable team that’s on the SAME map every day in order for that to function.

Without it, it’s just a big blob fight. Like pve maps.

+1000. Nothing to add on this.

I’m not sure you peeps really take the time to think before you post…

Please explain to me how on a megaserver side with more people you would…

“Lose defenders”?

“Lose scouts”?

“Lose team framework”?

More people means more roles filled, am I right or am I wrong?

Do you all know what team speak is? Isn’t it possible to get your megaserver side coordinated through voice communication and map chat?

Getting on the same map is possible and the devs keep working on squad and guild functions. They are continuously developing systems for this stuff and looking at pushing up population caps for maps, but most of you aren’t even paying attention to things that have and are happening right under your noses.

Does anyone defend in EoTM? Does anyone scout in EoTM? The only teamwork in EoTM is sticking to the tag. If you die in EoTM you sit at spawn and ask when the commander is going to wp back so you can re-join the k-train..

Does eotm count toward wvw PPT?

Did eotm count in the tournament we had last year?

Dude, just…. just stop. You’re embarrassing yourself now. I’m not saying this to be a jerk. I’m not saying this to troll you. You’re putting your ignorance on display, and are in danger of becoming a joke at this point. If you honestly think that an arbitrary, artificial, and deeply flawed scoring system is the reason defenders defend, then you need to spend less time in EotM and more time getting involved in your server’s WvW community. And if you think that defenders defend because of shinies, or because of some artificial reward in an abitrary tournament where the winners were decided before it even started, then you need to spend less time in EotM and more time getting involved in your server’s WvW community. You have NO idea what it’s all about. You really should learn before you deem yourself fit to argue about what’s best for it.

Ignorance?

You just compared the coordination required to achieve ppt numbers to eotm that doesn’t count for anything ppt related.

Eotm does not require the coordinator required that wvw does…

You don’t think that a megaserver wvw will be completely different than eotm?

Use your critical thinking more before you use the word ignorance. You just completely embarrassed yourself with these comments and provided nothing constructive in your last two posts.

Edit- and you couldn’t even answer the questions I asked and used some rational thoughts…

Edit 2- judging by your comments, it only reaffirms some of my earlier statements in this thread. You consider yourself a more experienced and knowledgable vet about wvw yet I’m the one who understands more than you.

Well, I tried to warn you. By all means, continue your meltdown. You clearly have nothing other than arrogance and bluster. I AM a more experienced and knowledgeable vet than you. You understand nothing about it. You understand EotM. That’s all.

But, just to make things crystal clear for you, in no uncertain terms. Defenders defend due to server pride. Yes. Server pride. The PPT scoring system is hideously flawed, and the vast majority of matches were decided before they ever began. Everyone knew who was going to come in 1st, 2nd and 3rd, in every tier, ever week. When the scores no longer matter, winning and losing is irrelevant. However, people still scout, people still sentry, and people still do all those little chores that never get done on EotM. If you ever actually ask them why they do it, most say that they do it because it helps their server. Server Pride.

If you remove servers, there’s nothing to be proud of. Everyone loses that identity, and there’s no reason for people to do any of those chores anymore. Not when you’re no longer helping people you know. There’s no sense of community left. Random bodies all standing at the same place like what happens in PvE is NOT community. It isn’t even social. It’s about as much of a community as as NY subway. It’s a bunch of complete strangers who all happen to be going in the same direction. There’s NO sense of loyalty there. There’s no reason to sacrifice your time for a bunch of random people that you probably won’t ever see again.

And I have been using critical thinking. I’ve also been using my wealth of experience at every level and ever job in WvW and my deep ties to my server’s community. You ARE ignorant. There’s just no other word for it. It is the dictionary’s definition of the word. You lack knowledge of the subject matter. Yet you arrogantly blather on and on and on and on, and act like ALL of the people in this thread are morons, and you’re somehow the only one who knows what you’re talking about. The possibility that you’re wrong about something you actually know very little about hasn’t even entered into your mind, has it? You honestly believe that everyone that actually knows what they’re talking about is wrong, and you’re right, don’t you? You don’t even need to answer those questions, because I already know the answer. This entire thread and every single one of your responses is a testament to it. The thought that you’re wrong has never even remotely crossed your mind.

And if irony is so cruel that you actually ARE an Anet dev, then you will achieve nothing but driving the final nail into WvW’s coffin. You should not be allowed to touch anything even remotely related to WvW. You’re NOT qualified for it. At all. Good day sir.

Swagger.1459:

briggah.7910:

Swagger.1459:

Offair.2563:

Jayne.9251:

Swagger.1459:

It’s funny to see some of you rally for less fights and loot… With megaserver, you’ll always have high participation rates, more battles, more defenders, more scouts, more coverage, more rewards, more xp, more fun…

You peeps don’t really think beyond the current failing systems at all… It’s a shame.

You will lose your defenders, you will lose your scouts, when there’s no team framework to work with. You need to have a reliable team that’s on the SAME map every day in order for that to function.

Without it, it’s just a big blob fight. Like pve maps.

+1000. Nothing to add on this.

I’m not sure you peeps really take the time to think before you post…

Please explain to me how on a megaserver side with more people you would…

“Lose defenders”?

“Lose scouts”?

“Lose team framework”?

More people means more roles filled, am I right or am I wrong?

Do you all know what team speak is? Isn’t it possible to get your megaserver side coordinated through voice communication and map chat?

Getting on the same map is possible and the devs keep working on squad and guild functions. They are continuously developing systems for this stuff and looking at pushing up population caps for maps, but most of you aren’t even paying attention to things that have and are happening right under your noses.

Does anyone defend in EoTM? Does anyone scout in EoTM? The only teamwork in EoTM is sticking to the tag. If you die in EoTM you sit at spawn and ask when the commander is going to wp back so you can re-join the k-train..

Does eotm count toward wvw PPT?

Did eotm count in the tournament we had last year?

Dude, just…. just stop. You’re embarrassing yourself now. I’m not saying this to be a jerk. I’m not saying this to troll you. You’re putting your ignorance on display, and are in danger of becoming a joke at this point. If you honestly think that an arbitrary, artificial, and deeply flawed scoring system is the reason defenders defend, then you need to spend less time in EotM and more time getting involved in your server’s WvW community. And if you think that defenders defend because of shinies, or because of some artificial reward in an abitrary tournament where the winners were decided before it even started, then you need to spend less time in EotM and more time getting involved in your server’s WvW community. You have NO idea what it’s all about. You really should learn before you deem yourself fit to argue about what’s best for it.

I recommend checking out this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Constructive-Features-for-a-good-BL-map/first#post5800985

We’ve taken to writing up a blueprint for them to follow, even including a picture of what the basic map layout should look like. The more input we can get, the better it will be. Will they actually make use of it? I don’t know. But if we as a community come up with a comprehensive plan of exactly what we’d like, and even include pictures to be absolutely clear on everything, then we’ll have everything we possibly can. And with any potential future CDI’s, we can just link the thread for them.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Dawdler.8521:

Tzozef.9841:

But what do you think prevents Anet from making this decision, I mean, why not?

Pride.

Reverting to the old borderlands would equal to admitting they made a mistake. Most developers and publishers never admit they are wrong. Now granted, Anet has showed several times that they are willing to listen to the community, but this is already implemented and live since over a month. Most changes they “revert” where only in the early stages, such as commander tag costs, the HoT character slot debacle or completely folding to PvE cries about HoT being too hard within days of release.

So yeah.

Not going to happen.

Some companies have survived similar disasters. Remember New Coke? Coca Cola was smart enough to act really quickly and bring back “Coke Classic.”

Anet could always bring the old BL into rotation, starting every other week, then two weeks out of three, then three weeks out of four, and so on. They’ll even be able to say, “We told you it’d come back into rotation,” (despite the fact that they probably never planned to do that).

That said, I don’t think it’s going to happen in this case. And as each day passes with no action, or even acknowledgement that there’s a problem, it’s getting closer and closer to being too late to act (it might already be, looking at the enormous decrease in population).

It’s like the saying goes, “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it”. Coke realized their error and corrected it. There have been numerous major areas that Anet’s let things slip into the mistake area without even acknowledging the possibility of a problem. Considering they were told during the betas what the problems would be, ignored them, and went ahead anyway, I don’t think they’re really going to do any correcting any time soon. And if they do, it’ll probably be the wrong direction and end up being the final nail in the severely battered coffin.

Zephyron.7081:

Phantom.8130:

The new maps were advertised as having areas with strategic relevance and towers you couldn’t just sidestep or ignore entirely. However, the areas have even less strategic relevance than they did on the old maps, which wasn’t even really a whole lot then either. The towers are in isolated corners of the map, which is something they specifically advertised the exact opposite of.

All of the sudden drop offs, and corridors severely inhibit fights, rather than encouraging them. All of the gimmick mechanics, such as the shrine buffs and the center event cheapen the overall experience as well. The center event also causes a great deal of lag.

I was very excited about the mechanics, bit it is irrelevant if nobody is playing. Could the low population be due to everyone playing the new PvE jungle maps and earning masteries?

Is there gliding in the new WvW maps?

In part, yes, people are playing PvE. See, HoT kinda…. stole the upgrades all of the guilds had unlocked, and relocked them behind a massive PvE grind and paywall. So guilds have been grinding like mad in PvE to get those upgrades back. However, quite a bit of time has passed, and there’s only a slow trickle coming back.

However, that’s only a portion of the issue. If you look across every server, the vast majority of people are in EB, and barely anyone is in the new Borderlands. People were very excited at the prospect of new maps, so logic would denote that if they actually liked the new maps, they would be flooding them right around now. However, most players are trying to cram into EB. So while some of the people are away doing PvE, many more are actively avoiding the new Borderlands like the plague. Because of all the negative changes that occurred. If they had been positive changes, the new borderlands would be overflowing, regardless of the PvE grind for guild upgrades.