GvBvR is a way to have more balanced matches than the current T1 only balance NA has.
There are too many Tx.5 servers in NA.
When you do find an balanced match like what’s in T4 YB/SbI/BP, you don’t know if it’s because of population balance or if it’s an inbalance in coverage that leads to scoring balance.
As someone from BG, if you’ve been with them from the beginning you must remember the T5 days, eventually becoming the T1.5 server.
Which was more fun for you, the T1.5 days where you rolled over TC/FA every week?
Was it Season 1 where you got the transfers to dominate JQ/SoR?
Was it post season 1 where you faced JQ/SoR and eventually JQ/TC in mostly equal matches?
Was it season 2 where you got 2v1 by JQ/TC?
Most of the other NA tiers resemble the T1.5 match, where one team dominates every week.
I play for PPT=I’m on a winning server=My server has more coverage=We have a great WvW community
I play for fights=I’m on a losing server=My server has less coverage=We’re trying to keep our people from being recruited by higher servers.
Welcome to WvW
All this is true and fair EXCEPT that you seem to believe that having a large population = “a great WvW community”
I would argue that the smaller populations have a tighter community, which is valued by many who actually merits this as the reason to stay T8 = “a great WvW community”
I’ll use this analogy… people enjoy living in big cities because there are lots of people, but people also value living in hick towns because they know all the people well. They can argue which is the better community, and they are all correct (measured by their own priorities)
I’m just commenting about all the time I see posts by someone from a T1 server saying how “great their WvW comminity” is. It starts to sound like political talking points. I’m beginning to wonder if T1 war council meetings have a point where they say “whenever you post on GW2 forums about our server, make sure you mention how great our community is”
I play for PPT=I’m on a winning server=My server has more coverage=We have a great WvW community
I play for fights=I’m on a losing server=My server has less coverage=We’re trying to keep our people from being recruited by higher servers.
Welcome to WvW
I think this was one of the things Anet decided to do on their own (well I know there was 1 suggestion for it, but it wasn’t very popular). However, unlike all the other previous “we decided, we know best” changes, this one is actually pretty nice. I like.
It was suggested multiple times, but it was usually mentioned in tandem with other changes or simply fell off the front page without sufficient fanfare.
EDIT: A brief list of threads that asked for a similar change. Courtesy of google.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Dead-player-name-tag-color
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/dead-player-name-tag-color-need-change
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Change-name-downed-player-to-grey-color
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Its-time-color-dead-player-names-gray
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Display-Options-to-Hide-titles-Dead-Names
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Names-of-players-that-are-dead
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Dead-bodies-suggestion-gray-out-names
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Gray-Out-Dead-Players-in-WvW
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Corpses-different-nameplate-color-pls
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Suggestion-nametags-off-for-dead-players
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Dead-players-nameplate-color
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Enemy-name-plates-red-when-dead
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/WvW-Removing-dead-enemies-names
As you can see, a good number of the threads just died in obscurity in the now archived suggestion subforum.
Really makes you wonder if Anet reads forum posts like they say they do…….
My guess is that they do…At this point I envision them having a “whiteboard” (or some electronic equivalent) with ideas they have approved of from the forums/feedback, etc. And they implement those that make the most sense in terms of time, effectiveness, and overall risk/reward. I am sure a lot of the factors are manpower and time constraints, we all have heard the stories about how little WvW help they have.
Inclined to agree with your assessment. The team, such as it is, must pick and choose their battles.
Hopefully the upcoming CDI will do a decent job of laying out what changes might be feasible in the short term.
Necros can use new healing skill to tag gates. Fortified gates melt in seconds. Bug fixed quickly.
Mesmers with damage from fall traited cause instadeath when jumping off walls. Bug fixed quickly.
Mesmers can blink through gates…………..takes months to fix.
Gari watergate inner didn’t upgrade like outer gate, also didn’t register swords when attacked……..takes months to fix
New map (EoTM), with new achievements associated with the map. Months to develop but how close are you to getting any “WvW” achievements?
How many Yakslapper titles are out there?
I thought dead bodies are what ballista prints were for.
I think this was one of the things Anet decided to do on their own (well I know there was 1 suggestion for it, but it wasn’t very popular). However, unlike all the other previous “we decided, we know best” changes, this one is actually pretty nice. I like.
It was suggested multiple times, but it was usually mentioned in tandem with other changes or simply fell off the front page without sufficient fanfare.
EDIT: A brief list of threads that asked for a similar change. Courtesy of google.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Dead-player-name-tag-color
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/dead-player-name-tag-color-need-change
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Change-name-downed-player-to-grey-color
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Its-time-color-dead-player-names-gray
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Display-Options-to-Hide-titles-Dead-Names
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Names-of-players-that-are-dead
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Dead-bodies-suggestion-gray-out-names
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Gray-Out-Dead-Players-in-WvW
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Corpses-different-nameplate-color-pls
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Suggestion-nametags-off-for-dead-players
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Dead-players-nameplate-color
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Enemy-name-plates-red-when-dead
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/WvW-Removing-dead-enemies-names
As you can see, a good number of the threads just died in obscurity in the now archived suggestion subforum.
Really makes you wonder if Anet reads forum posts like they say they do…….
It’s an example of a great skill.
Great because of it’s versatility.
1. It grants swiftness
2. It causes cripple
3. It creates a field
4. You can pull enemies
5. If traited it can reflect projectiles
I wish other skills had the versatility like this.
The problem you have is with the wall design that lets the skill pull defenders off the wall.
Fix the wall, not the skill
During Ready Up there was a very quick mention of competitive. Almost too quick for me to register. Also I heard again that there were more people in S2 than in S1.
I think Anet should change their metric to measure success or failure of a change.
Sure you can go with the overall player participation but to measure the base population acceptance, measure player participation from Wednesday to Friday.
When will skill be the dominating factor in winning? And I don’t mean skill in getting better coverage/population.
One would hope that there will be an update on CDI status, especially after you seem to be rather chatty today.
It would be interesting to see the server information from people that post how great their community is. Then find out how many times that server finished first in a match.
Map caps violate Anet’s Design Philosophy.
Lack of community in EoTM made it into a karma train. Anet should learn something from this (but won’t).
You said it before I could.
All of you people who have been pushing for servers to be abolished, you need to take a good hard look at EotM. How will you like it when your favorite game mode turns into that…
It is really amazing actually. No one told everyone in GW2, “Hey guys, here is this plan to farm EotM for craploads of karma and XP, all you have to do is stop fighting each other.” It happened naturally and organically. Now there is NOTHING LEFT of the original purpose of EotM.
Do you really want the rest of WvW to go this way? Yes WvW has problems now, but that does not mean that every idea to change it will change it for the better. Every WvWer should learn from what happened to EotM, and defend server communities to the bitter end.
Players want to abolish servers as a step to achieve a better WvW balance. As a player who has spent the vast majority of my WvW time on a losing server, one grows tired of the entering WvW to find all your towers are paper and all the enemies towers T3. I can only remember a couple of matches where I looked back on a match and felt that it was great. Sure, there’s been good raids and battles, but rarely has there been a good WvW match.
As early as Sundays, I can see that I’ll be doing the same thing over and over again, just like I’ve done the past year. That’s why EoTM is looking better and better to me. I’ve even used a different Necro build in EoTM, fearing zerglings off the cliffs.
Changing EoTM from karma train to competitive is a lot easier than changing WvW from imbalanced to balanced
Players from GW1 stacked servers before release date. I remember chatting in GW1 which server to go to. WvW was imbalanced from the first second.
JQ, SoR, and BG were 1st, 2nd and 3rd before free transfers stopped.
Anet’s biggest failure was in thinking that the players would balance WvW on their own.
Why isn’t server transfer fees related to WvW population? Make it based on a 30 day player-hour average so a server would have to vanish for weeks to get their fees lowered.
Because there is such a hugh difference from TC/JQ/BG to SoS to MaG/DB, justify why is the transfer price the same for each?
Server affiliation and transfer fees need to end and WvW needs to be completely re-balanced. This needs to be actively managed by Anet because allowing players/guilds to be bought is wrong for WvW. Not logging in to lower server population status to allow transfers is wrong for WvW. Having a season 2 before fixing the problems exposed in season 1 is wrong for WvW.
The free transfers was a neat idea for re-balance, but when they allow servers to go from bottom 3 to first it’s just too much.
I can just see what is going to happen to season 3. Even more match fixing from NA T1. I wouldn’t be surprised if match fixing becomes common in all leagues.
Obsidian City
Each side starts on different side of the city, following a Little Maze of Twisting Passages, or was it a Twisty Little Maze of Passages….all alike, or different, or both.
Each “path” intersects the other two paths many times and at the center is an arena, where if you manage to stay alive for a minute, you get a shiny blue or green object and are teleported to a random spot in the city.
Stagnation is killing WvW
Everyone knows where to drop siege, offensive and defensive.
Everyone knows who’s going to win the matches, with few exceptions.
Everyone knows population and coverage beat skill.
WvW builds for each profession are mostly stagnant.
Just curious. If organized teams specifically target Necros with chain CC with damage spikes, and you give Necros a one time stability on a signet, what’s the counter for Necros if the rotation switches to….
CC Necro
Necro pops stability
Strip/Steal Necros stability
Chain CC Necro
Damage Spike Necro
Stomp Necro
Soon
The swiss style tournament eventually settles into “one up, one down” matchups.
3 and 4 switch, 6 and 7 switch, everyone gets 6 points every 2 weeks from 2nd to 8th, 1st gets 5 pt/wk and 9th gets 1pt/wk.Not entirely. As outliers get further ahead or behind, if they suddenly explode or collapse they have quite a buffer to go through before they start moving towards the position they fit better.
After 7 weeks where green always wins, blue is second and red is third, the point distribution would be:
1st 35
2nd 23
3rd 23
4th 21
5th 21
6th 21
7th 19
8th 19
9th 7
Which looks very similar to what you see in the 9 team leagues right now.
Only the match fixing in Gold NA strayed from what would be expected.
The swiss style tournament eventually settles into “one up, one down” matchups.
3 and 4 switch, 6 and 7 switch, everyone gets 6 points every 2 weeks from 2nd to 8th, 1st gets 5 pt/wk and 9th gets 1pt/wk.
Your choices are:
1. Same uneven boring matches knowing who is going to come in 1st, 2nd and 3rd
2. Random matches which are even more lopsided and STILL knowing who is going to come in 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
I’d rather level my Ranger in EoTM than play for 9 weeks in lopsided matchups. The last of 8 to 80.
There are only three things that made season 2 interesting in NA.
1) Achievements drawing in PvE players the first 2-3 weeks
2) HoD’s free transfers are enough to win silver
3) The 2v1 match fixing going on in T1
What should make any tournament interesting?
On any given matchup, anyone can win.
WvW community is built by VOIP and Guilds, the two things not usually found in EoTM.
The EoTM intensity you have is multiplied a hundred times in the WvW borderlands, when you have groups of equal size on VOIP.
The next level in your commanding should be to talk while you are commanding, even if nobody can hear you. When you finally take the step to be on VOIP, you’ll be more comfortable with playing and talking.
I use EoTM to bring my lower level toons to 80, to practice builds and tactics on my lvl 80s. I still want to necro spectral wall fear a zerg off a bridge. I’ve even sieged up a tower or two just to slow down or even repulse the enemy zerg.
As a long time WvW player, you realize that score doesn’t matter unless you are on one of the superstacked servers. I’ve been on servers that place third more than second or first. Coverage and population are too big to overcome in a majority of WvW matches.
If you’re a commander, especially in EoTM, you should already know that there are multiple reasons why players enter the map, some may agree with you and be silent. Others will armchair command and criticize everything you do or don’t do.
Play how you want to play. Command how you want to command. But most of all, have fun.
When I see “community” used in WvW forums, I immediately think it’s about a server with high population and coverage. Usually preceded by the word “great”.
As far as a forum community, one that is made up of players and devs, discussing ideas to improve the game……that image died a long time ago.
A 2v1 match alliance is something Anet expected to happen in WvW. However, losing to win and trading wins is going to bring about changes like Red Resign Day from GW1.
You might not like the changes Anet imposes after season 2.
Just bring out your uplevels on Thursday and Friday pre reset during Karma train time. If you don’t like PvE you can always gain levels in WvW doing PvD.
Not everyone plays the way YOU want them to play.
Anet design philosophy… Play the way you want to play.
Remember the thread about “violating my game mode”? It’s one of the highest thread count and most looked at topics in WvW forum.
Don’t violate Anet’s design philosophy.
Don’t stress over something you have no control over. Have fun and let others have their fun.
Don’t let PPT take the fun out of the game.
I would like to see them add server chat so people could still coordinate things for WVW in PVE.
Yeah a lot of people are nervous about doing map calls in LA (or wherever) when the possibility exists that there are 20 people from the opposing server there. This would be an easy solution.
Even if you had /m go to everyone in the map and /t go to everyone in your “server”, there’s plenty of conversations now that one person is in map chat and the other in team chat, we’ve all gotten used to the fact that /m and /t do the same thing in PvE and WvW
When my guild, which recently transferred servers to avoid the boredom of silver league, runs in WvW, we don’t talk about the other servers playstyle and how to counter it. We talk about the other servers’ GUILDS and how to beat them, at least those that don’t hide behind walls.
Introducing the Megaserver System
by Colin Johanson and Samuel Loretan on April 2, 2014
What about World Bosses, Guilds, and WvW?
Later this week, we’ll be discussing how our transition to the megaserver system will affect the timing of world bosses and some changes we’re making to support this. We’ll also be discussing the long-term plan for guilds and WvW in relation to our megaserver system, so check back each day this week for more information!
The Megaserver System: Guilds and the Future
by Colin Johanson on April 3, 2014
The Megaserver System and the Future of WvW
Though we are moving to our new megaserver model in PvE, it’s extremely important to us that we maintain the level of identity and competition in WvW that we’ve established since the release of Guild Wars 2. The entire game mode is based on battles between different players aligned to the named worlds, and as such we have no plans to remove this concept from WvW.
It doesn’t really sound to me like there’s anything that’s going to change for WvW, except that maybe guilds that transfer worlds won’t lose their influence and guild upgrades.
This doesn’t sound like there’s any real news with respect to WvW.
Guild Wars>Alliance Wars>Server Wars>Pug Wars
So this is how they want to solve problem with wvw coverage. And it will obviously kill wvw for me and for many others. I need a clear membership (i need to represent my server) to have fun otherwise fight will become meaningless…
There is no way that they will do it right by gathering guilds together in some way on some set rules. So looking forward what they want bring to us, to kill server pride.
If they prioritize your team based on
1. Guild
2. World
3. Language
4. Time of Day
You’d still likely play with the same people you already do. Key word is likely.
eh, the ones that stay alive?
Rumor has it HoD is getting stacked by transfers so they can win Silver from the bottom.
All I know is the bandwagon players who jump just for a new season are really not that good anyways, they need numbers to win which is why they are jumping. The people that jump servers for seasons have zero integrity or else they would stay on their home world and do their own work to make it a good server. Honestly, I would not want those types of folks on my server, as soon as the season ends they will leave and try to take more people with them than they came with.
HoD has no chance to beat FA, Mag, or DB (whichever ends up 7th). They might beat us (SBI) to get 2nd, but, even with the people who transfered there, they have no hope at 1st in silver.
You can expect a SoR type meltdown from FA starting in the next few days as guilds that prefer T2 fights to silver league domination leave.
I think you’ll still see many guilds transfer pre season, but the combination of EoTM and the Swiss matchup system will cause the players to make WvW matches more imbalanced.
Since you can now get your season achievement in EoTM, you’ll see more PvE players flock there and season 1 taught us all that unbalanced matchups get boring quickly. If the second weeks matchups are T1/T2/T3 winners, T1/T2/T3 second, and then T1/T2/T3 third, we all know who is going to win those matches and the T3 players will instead move en masse to EoTM, followed by the T2 players a couple days later. It could end up that there will be more players in EoTM Monday-Friday than in WvW for season 2.
Even though EoTM was created as a way for queued players to play WvW, it will end up being used by players looking for a more balanced matchup. If only there was an easy way to get your entire guild on the same EoTM instance.
What’s the point of giving feedback and bug reports if that get ignored over and over again, and the patches are featuring completely different/random stuff. Let’s just hope that these leaked patchnotes aren’t complete and missing bugfixes. T_T
Necros, I feel you now.
I guess this thread can be locked now.
From a Necro, you’ll have to go through several phases to really know what it’s like being a Necro.
1. Exitedly report bugs. No response. Anet must be busy.
2. See the same topic several times over 3 months. Your posts become more negative because you expect more from the “community”
3. Watch a few “State of the Game”, read game updates waiting for something good only to see things remain the same. “What??? Another warrior buff!!!”
4. See the same topic, now it’s 6 months to a year. Don’t even bother to post. Not worth wasting energy.
5. Update notes says the skill your community has complained about for a year is just incorrect text on the tooltip, and the tooltip has been adjusted to reflect how the skill has worked all along.
6. Try other professions, only to realize that you’re so behind all the other players’ skill level that you end up going back to your main.
7. Find an area where you have fun, even though you’d like to try other areas.
My Necro’s happy place is WvW, and has been for over a year.
I seem to remember the number one issue with WvW players was population and coverage, not how to better recruit from within.
I play for both PPT and Bags. They go hand in hand.
High PPT means no enemies. (PvD)
Low PPT means no allies. (Outmanned)
Balanced PPT means lots of fights. Just right.
Too bad just right doesn’t happen much outside reset.
the problem here is you don’t hold veloka or ogrewatch. once those are gone, the keep is very vulnerable. under your control you could easily take out their siege from there.
also they are in a vulnerable spot. 2 mesmers and a few friends could wipe 10-15 of them off the cliff easily with a couple null fields and pulls/fears/etc.
The real problem is that they’re out-resourced. If the enemy can take OW and Veloka, treb down Overlook’s south wall from SMC or the hill between Overlook and Anz, wipe all the siege on the inner wall, then put catas on the east inner then they were going to lose Overlook anyway. They could have trebbed from OW hill or even Veloka and you wouldn’t have been able to stop them. That’s a lot of time to do all that. If you didn’t or couldn’t counter by getting reinforcements, then you should lose the keep.
If you want a game where 20 can defend against 80 then no keep/tower would ever be taken.
Last night we had two trebs next to each other. The treb next to me was firing flaming spheres of death while I was lobbing freezing blobs of destruction.
Anet could make siege that fired different elemental projectiles which then could be used in some combo field way to do even more damage, either to players, siege, structures.
You know what’s the biggest condi spam culprit in a giant zerg fight around keeps and towers? Necro epidemic on the lord/champion, who will have every condition in the game stacked up on him, killing everyone the epidemic hits around him. It’s one little skill, on a relatively short cooldown, which is deadly even on an upleveled character.
I’ve rarely seen epidemic used in WvW after the patch that changed it to LOS.
Wells however…….
If you’re in a PvD karma train zerg you don’t need TS.
If you don’t mind repairing your armor a lot you don’t need TS.
When I was a more casual WvW player I used TS to determine which guilds/leaders were the best to run with. Just as important, you can use TS to determint which commanders NOT to follow. Some of the bad commanders when I first got on TS have improved to the point now that they are worth following. However, there are a few that are still bad and I will follow their tag ONLY if it’s a PvD karma train.
What changed my mind about TS was when I was in my own BL and the enemy took NW tower. Our side gathered at gari and pushed to the tower, only to get wiped by a zerg that popped out of the portal, moved as a ball of death, melting any in their path. They went back in the tower and waited. Our side decided to build a treb and finally knocked down their wall. The masses rushed to the opening only to have the ball of death chase everyone back to gari, at least those that survived. They went back into the NW tower and waited, did the same tactic 3-4 times and never did repair the wall. Eventually they got serious and built a treb, knocked down the gari outer wall and systematically destroyed all defenses in gari and took it.
All during this there were about 5-10 people screaming in map chat that they had the best plan to beat them and that everyone else should listen to them. It was at this point that I knew that TS>map chat.
TS gives you the opportunity to live longer and collect more loot bags.
If the population imbalance continues I see the only places you’ll find players during M-F is on EotM or on OS doing GvG.
Sure you’re going to have those that like upgrading towers to T3 and escorting yaks but most will be drawn to the more balanced maps and playstyle which doesn’t go against Anet’s design philosophy.
The problem with EotM is that it solves one issue (queues) but does nothing to balance populations.
Think of queues as a metric of players who indicate that they want to have fun but can’t. This goes against Anet’s design philosophy. Sure, you CAN do something else while waiting for the que to pop, but it’s not what you REALLY want to do.
The Population Balance CDI shows that Anet doesn’t want to do any heavy handed fix for population imbalance (map caps). They’d rather look at transfer fees and changing the scoring so players don’t get demoralized and stop playing for the week.
It’s tougher to measure the amount of players in a blowout match that would like to have fun in WvW but choose NOT to enter because it isn’t fun. Most of the players have been in situations where you enter a map and you have half or less the numbers of the enemy.
Until Anet finds a way for 10 to beat 80 or where skill matters more than population and coverage, the lower population servers will continue to have a WvW that isn’t fun, which also violates their design philosophy, but it’s too difficult for them to measure this.
but but.. you only get to enter edge of the mist if you are queued right ?
so no queue no edge of the mist, right ?
No, they said you will be able to enter EotM from the same drop down menu that you can enter any WvW map, or even Obsidium Sanctum.
Best Player:
To any player who has played on the worst EU or NA server from the beginning without jumping servers and STILL PLAYS WvW.
You are a better player than I am.
You could add in a better UI for commander/squad.
There’s also the game mechanic that favors zergs, just like it favors population and coverage.
I saw another thread on here complaining about spys on third party VOIP.
We also need a better reporting UI.
Defenders and scouts don’t get the rewards they’re due.
Three way battles for SMC turn into a auto-attack lagfest.
There’s a large part of each map that is unused. There’s no logic why a BL garrison is at the front, easily attacked before you have to take the NE and NW towers.
I have asked the PVE thread if they want to move ahead with the proposal of 1 topic running at a time with a week of conversation around it. Once 3 topics have concluded (1 for each area) then we would have say 3 days of a single CDI process evolution thread and then back to the next topic.
Do we feel like this is a good cadence to move forward with?
Note this should accelerate our combined experience with the CDI and thus does not preclude us all deciding to change the model should we find that we are at a point to do so.
Chris
Also note that i think if we move forward with this proposal that the first area topic would be in WvW, then PvP and then back to PVE.
Chris
Any chance we can get some meaningful feedback from the first WvW CDI thread before we move on to another one?
I’m also curious about what was learned from the Population Balance CDI.
Do the players wait six months to a year before there’s a patch with Anet’s fix for this?
Is there a time when we CAN expect a patch?
Will the players be informed on the progress(not dates, but stage of development) of a patch?
Do you need more player feedback with the CDI patch you are considering?
Does the player portion of CDI stop when the thread is closed?
I would suggest that in the future, if you plan on having more discussion threads, you do something to keep the thread on the first page. This thread has been all the way down to the middle of the second page twice so far.