Guild Wars 2

+1

Like the OP said it’s been suggested before. I 100% support this. Hopefully Anet still reads these forums.

Xillllix.3485:

Could we have a Scoreboard to see the PPK score independently from the PPT score?
Could you then make it so that it stays on the screen beside the PPT?

Proper implementation of the PPK feature would be much more interesting than having PPK as a hidden feature.

And please don’t remove the best thing you’ve done for WvW in a year, keep PPK in.

An in-game scoreboard for PPK would be cool.

TheDivineMissC.7413:

On our lower-tier server we have a problem with “trolling” guilds. When a major keep like Garrison is recapped the keep is often claimed by a guild that is not known to the WVW players on our server and no buffs are implemented. So, when the keep is attacked we have no buffs to help us defend or repair. After some discussion, I would like to suggest that claims should “expire” after an hour with no buffs. We only have a few active WVW guilds and we must move our claims around so just claiming and sitting on a site to prevent this is not an option.
Any thoughts?

I also play on a lower/mid tier server and we get this problem a lot. Half the time the person claims without understanding how they work, the rest of the time they claim and intentionally put up bad buffs or no buffs at all.

It would be great if Anet addressed this problem.

Baldrick.8967:

What wvw team? Ahhh, the coffee maker, cleaner, post boy and the general dogsbody?

Not my words. Read the text. It was a direct quote. I’m just as skeptical as are you.

Baldrick.8967:

This and many other issues have been mentioned since day one, nothing has changed.

Yes, I know.

Baldrick.8967:

Learn not to hold your breath on these things.

I’m not, never said I was.

aspirine.6852:

An hour without buff started I hope? And after the first is finished, what about then?

That would work. It might also be useful to have an option to remove a claim.

Offair.2563:

Tekyn.5376:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Tekyn.5376:

Lord Kuru.3685:

You still have hope?

Yup, I do. You should too.

And for the record I clearly stated in my post that the idea for claim improvements had already been mentioned so I don’t know why you feel the need to respond to me with links.

I’m sure there are better places for you to troll.

Good day sir.

Oh wow, upon rereading your post, I now realize that I was mistaken. John Corpening himself(!) told you that your thread was being circulated amongst the WvW team! I now agree, there is no doubt we’ll be seeing some results soon™.

The two years where they did nothing about this very well known issue — yeah it doesn’t indicate any trend at all about dev attention towards WvW. After all, John Corpening told you it was being circulated, right?

Right.

Look at the picture and stop trolling.

And yeah, I’m just as skeptical as you are about it actually happening, but I still have hope that it might. I wouldn’t bother playing the game if I didn’t.

Oh and thank you for that sarcasm in your post. I’m sure your 3800 posts on the forums will get you an in-game achievement one day.

He is not trolling you but pointing out this issue has been around since launch and yet to this day nothing happened. So please dont hold your breath on this cause you may end up dead anytime soon.

Just saying.

I clearly pointed out in the earlier post that I knew this issue has been around since launch. Read the thread. He’s trolling. I responded to the OP with my post. He responded to me with irrelevant links and ridicule.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Tekyn.5376:

Lord Kuru.3685:

You still have hope?

Yup, I do. You should too.

And for the record I clearly stated in my post that the idea for claim improvements had already been mentioned so I don’t know why you feel the need to respond to me with links.

I’m sure there are better places for you to troll.

Good day sir.

Oh wow, upon rereading your post, I now realize that I was mistaken. John Corpening himself(!) told you that your thread was being circulated amongst the WvW team! I now agree, there is no doubt we’ll be seeing some results soon™.

The two years where they did nothing about this very well known issue — yeah it doesn’t indicate any trend at all about dev attention towards WvW. After all, John Corpening told you it was being circulated, right?

Right.

Look at the picture and stop trolling.

And yeah, I’m just as skeptical as you are about it actually happening, but I still have hope that it might. I wouldn’t bother playing the game if I didn’t.

Oh and thank you for that sarcasm in your post. I’m sure your 3800 posts on the forums will get you an in-game achievement one day.

Lord Kuru.3685:

You still have hope?

Yup, I do. You should too.

And for the record I clearly stated in my post that the idea for claim improvements had already been mentioned so I don’t know why you feel the need to respond to me with links.

I’m sure there are better places for you to troll.

Good day sir.

TheDivineMissC.7413:

I have not found anything regarding this problem in the forums, so I would like some suggestions regarding this issue.

This idea was suggested already three months ago:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Feature-Request-Automatic-Claim-Removal/4436887

John Corpening from ArenaNet told me directly that this was an “interesting idea” and that my thread was being circulated amongst the WvW team.

That was three months ago, I still have hope.

-Tekyn

100% agree. I posted about this a few weeks back.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Feature-Request-Automatic-Claim-Removal/

Filovirus.6258:

Tekyn.5376:

EOTM…..

waste of such a beautifully designed map.

EotM isn’t “beautifully designed” it’s one of the worst possible mess for a WvW/RvR map ever designed, with everything that shouldn’t exist in those kinds of maps there.

It didn’t become a leveling/ktrain place because people took over, it become that way because it’s the only way to use it, PERIOD.

Sure it is. If you don’t see it that way that’s your opinion, I think you’re wrong.

The detail that EOTM has far surpasses what you see in the borderland maps. The multiple routes and paths you can take in EOTM outnumbers the paths in the borderlands and EB map. The complexity of the events and the mechanics of EOTM are more interesting then the other WvW maps. I mean seriously, Air Strikes, Sentry Turrets, Wurm tunnels? what compares to those on the normal WvW maps?

And for the record I didn’t say anything about how it was or was not a karma train. Don’t troll my post with nonsense that I didn’t bring up. I was only talking about the design of the map, not the way it gets used.

EOTM…..

waste of such a beautifully designed map.

Zaxares.5419:

Oh, and to hire the Giant, they need lots and lots of Badges of Honor.

Adding some sort of defensive ‘Break Out’ event sounds like a great idea. 50k Karma + 1000 badges and Siegerazer will spawn inside your keep for 10 minutes.

Sube Dai.8496:

Tekyn.5376:

Scaling PPT based on time held would allow outpopulated servers to ‘bunker’ inside the objectives they already control and still gain enough War Score points to be competitive.

Scaling the PPT would also add a new dynamic to the match in that objectives that have been held for a long time become ‘high value’ targets. To lose one could significantly alter the outcome of the match.

If you are bunkering inside your own keep, then so are your enemies. Except they are also holding your other objectives and scoring off them as well.

Your solution would create a larger point gap than is possible now…

Doing the opposite could work though. The longer an objective is held by your enemy, the more points you can earn from taking it back.

So whilst an enemy gains a point advantage by scoring more points, they put themselves at risk if their coverage drops.

The point I was making was in response to John’s question regarding 24 coverage. A server could defend/bunker when their numbers are low then push out and capture when their numbers are high.

Obviously, it could create large point gaps but it could also reduce them as well.

As I stated at the end of my post it is not the end all suggestion to fix everything in WvW. It is simply a suggestion to fix the mechanics of PvD that feed the population problem.

A simple suggestion in regard to scoring:

The longer you hold an objective (camp, tower, keep, SM) the more PPT you get for it.

As it stands now no added points are given to a tower that is held for 15 hours compared to 15 minutes. Nobody bothers to defend because it’s easier to recapture right before the tick.

WvW is supposed to be a battle for control of the 61 objectives on the map, but as it stands now these objectives are more of a sideshow. Some people would love it if WvW was just an open field zerg fight, but I believe they are the minority. Most WvW’ers play because they enjoy the mix of PvP, strategy, and cooperative gameplay.

-

Thoughts on some of the specifics you mentioned:

John Corpening.9847:

• 24 hour coverage
  • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?
• Snowballing
  • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?
• Stagnation
  • How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
  • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

Scaling PPT based on time held would allow outpopulated servers to ‘bunker’ inside the objectives they already control and still gain enough War Score points to be competitive.

Scaling the PPT would also add a new dynamic to the match in that objectives that have been held for a long time become ‘high value’ targets. To lose one could significantly alter the outcome of the match.

John Corpening.9847:

• Some sort of point scaling based on population or prime time hours

I think this would dull the enjoyment and pride people feel from being part of a server. A server’s ability to rally it’s troops and work together towards a common goal is part of the fun of WvW. If the points we get are dependent on how few people are in the zone the matches would get ugly very fast. (e.g. “All uplevels please go back to Queensdale so our PPT goes up”)

John Corpening.9847:

• Consider score for taking objectives either in conjunction with or in place of PPT

Without any other changes this would do nothing but encourage karma trains that flip objectives non-stop. Maybe I’m wrong here, but don’t we want to move away from PvDoor mechanics?

John Corpening.9847:

• Adjust score of objectives based on upgrade level

This could work too. PPT based on upgrade level or PPT based on time held are somewhat identical ideas. If this is the direction you’re going then you should take another look at the upgrade system. For instance, additional currency types for upgrade purchases would be nice.

-

For the record I’m not advocating that a change to the scoring system alone would fix all the problems with WvW. I believe my suggestion would push WvW in the right direction, but it almost goes without saying that WvW has A LOT of balance issues that need to be addressed, scoring is only one of them.

Regards,

Tekyn

John Corpening.9847:

Anyway, this discussion made it clear it is who you play with that’s important and a number of ideas in this thread preserved that without restricting the number of people who could play at a time. These have had a number of names but for the sake of discussion I’ll go with Alliances. The idea that I liked for Alliances is that it is a group of guilds and people that are guaranteed to stay together no matter how things are rearranged. There would probably need to be a size limit on Alliances and several of you pointed out that whatever limits are put in place it should be based on WvW participation.

The idea of alliances sounds cool and I think it could work but i’m skeptical because I don’t see how it addresses the underlying problems in WvW. I see coverage still being a huge issue, i.e. one alliance could out-populate another alliance during off hours making this entire endeavor useless.

If more specifics were given as to how alliances would work then perhaps folks could get behind it but until then this sounds like an idea that would hurt WvW.

John Corpening.9847:

One note though, I really feel that scoring is a separate issue that needs to be addressed on it’s own. We will discuss that one after we wrap this one up. Even if we were to overhaul the scoring system population imbalance will still be an issue.

With respect, I disagree here.

Population and Coverage are the two biggest factors that control who wins a weekly matchup. That’s why this thread exists. The scoring system is partly to blame for that because no added points are given to a tower that is held for 15 hours compared to 15 minutes. Nobody bothers to defend because it’s easier to recapture right before the tick. That tactic is derived and encouraged by having a population advantage. In essence, the most efficient path to winning a match is steamrolling through zones capturing everything you can as quick as you can with as many people as you can while giving no regard for defending what you capture and holding the territory that you control. Why bother to defend when it’s easier to recapture. Essentially, population imbalance is affecting the outcome of the match because of zerging and PvD tactics.

If you eliminate the effect population imbalance has on the outcome of the match you eliminate it from being a problem. A battle where you are outmanned but can still achieve victory is possible with the right tactics but when it comes to the War Score it’s still the PvD and zerg tactics that win. Shouldn’t teamwork and strategy be the more prevalent approach to winning then PvD and zerging?

Yes, in a perfect game all the servers would have equal populations at all times of the day, but that is never going to happen. The trick here and what I believe your goal should be is to diminish the impact population has on the outcome of the match as much as possible. Alliances is a good idea, but it doesn’t do that.

And for the record I’m not advocating that a change to the scoring system alone would fix things. Many things contribute to the effect population imbalance has on the outcome of a match, ideally we would address all of them.

Regards,

-Tekyn

John Corpening.9847:

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”.

Wow, well this is a big issue. Any change is likely to have a huge impact on WvW, which I think most veteran players would find welcoming.

Just some ideas off the top of my head:

Give a higher “War Score” the longer an objective is held
For example, If you capture a tower you get 10 points every 15 minutes. After 30 minutes the PPT for that tower would go up to 20, after 60 minutes up to 40.

The idea here would be that a server that is outmanned or suffers a population disadvantage can ‘bunker’ inside what they already control and still be competitive in the War Score for the week. This would also discourage a server with a population advantage from ‘spreading out too thinly’, i.e. if you can hold a single tower for an hour then you get the same PPT as if you were constantly flipping multiple towers.

Increase the hitpoints of all walls & gates
As it relates to population the speed at which a medium sized group can completely flip an undefended borderlands is shocking. If capturing objectives became harder then the value of holding and defending those objectives increases. What also increases is the opportunity for big battles to take place. If a battle for Briar takes 30 minutes instead of 3 minutes then more people have a chance to show up and take part in the action.

It’s also worth mentioning that the offensive WvW abilities that were added make capturing go quicker (e.g. Catapult/Ram Mastery), but no abilities were added for defense. Maybe we could take a look at that in another brainstorming thread.

-

Lastly, just to weigh in on the issue of population caps and server merging. I think at this point both of those ideas should be tabled for later discussion. I believe the mechanics of WvW are what allow population and coverage to have such an influence on the outcome of the weekly matchups. If we can fix the mechanics such that an under-populated server has an equal chance at victory then we can start to look at the distribution of players on the servers.

-Tekyn

The interesting thing is; there are dozens of possible WvW items that they could add to the gem store. If we brainstormed a list I’m sure we could come up with a few that would work.

Just off the top of my head:

Name: Deployable Siege Pile
Cost: 400 gems
Uses: 3x
Description: Deploy a siege pile with 200 supply that lasts for 5 minutes. Supply does not respawn and the pile is destroyed once all supply is taken.

Would people buy something like that? yes. Would it unbalance WvW? probably. Is WvW already unbalanced? yes.

tl;dr – 2 minute automatic claim removal of any objective where no guild buffs are running.

-

First off, I can’t take credit for this suggestion as I have seen it posted in these forums many times before.

The two examples where this would apply are:

(1) A guild claims something without any active WvW buffs running, the claim is automatically removed after 2 minutes unless buffs are turned on.

(2) A guild claims something and puts up 12 hours of buffs but at the end of those 12 hours nobody from that guild is online to start new buffs. The claim is automatically removed after 2 minutes once the buffs expire.

From my point of view these are common sense changes that would benefit everyone. However, I would love to hear of any possible scenario where this change would hurt the game.

+1 / bumps appreciated.

-Tekyn

John Corpening.9847:

A general note, when we are kicking around ideas like this we try not to get bogged down with numbers. 5 minutes, stacks, players etc. can easily be 1, 10, 100. That’s all balance and tuning as Tekyn pointed out. The question is if there is any number that would make it work. If there isn’t we can eliminate that idea.

What I’m really looking for is if the concept works and if there are other ideas, thoughts or perspectives that can spark or refine other ideas and that has certainly happened a few times already in this discussion. Many times you follow a path of thinking that then spawns a completely different idea that works out great.

Thanks a ton for your continued input!

Hats off to you for your continued involvement in this thread and the process as a whole. It is really good to see!

-Tekyn

Crapgame.6519:

If you are on a higher server, say 6 and above, maybe considering moving down if you are that frustrated.

I’m not frustrated. I play on T6 and siege trolls aren’t much of a problem. Our community takes care of itself.

Crapgame.6519:

Negative. There is a thing called time and distance. Any form of exhaustion is going to disrupt tiers 7 and below and small havoc squads

That makes no sense. How would an exhaustion duration of 30 seconds or 60 seconds change what you’re doing? Give an example please.

Crapgame.6519:

You still haven’t addressed the cross server party / groups, guild reps, comm, or spies.

I did address this in my other post where I said Anet needs to take another look at limiting server transfers. Please don’t tell me what I didn’t address if you haven’t read the entire thread.

John Corpening.9847:

I was about to toss out the exhaustion idea altogether because of the legitimate concerns of small groups that a good number of you have brought up but this post gave me another perspective on it. I’m going to merge some of the ideas you guys have put forth into a new iteration on the design you and I have been working out.

Here is the new proposal based on your ideas:

• Siege Dismantling
  • You DO NOT get exhaustion from placing siege
  • If you own a piece of siege:
    • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Dismantle” that will drop the timer down to one minute

I think your original idea for Exhaustion was fine the way it was so long as you adjust the stacks and duration to accommodate small groups. Exhaustion alone can not solve the siege troll problem but it can stop the more egregious instances of it.

John Corpening.9847:

• If you do not own a piece of siege:
  • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Vote Dismantle”
  • If a piece of siege gets 5 votes:
    • The timer on the siege drops to 5 minutes
    • The player who placed the siege gets a stack of exhaustion
      • In this proposal this is the only way to get exhaustion
• When a siege timer is reduced to 0 it is dismantled
  • All siege that is dismantled drops 25% of the supply it took to construct

Under no circumstances should players be able to give other players Exhaustion. This will lead to griefing. As per your original idea Exhaustion should only come from a player placing siege.

Also, getting supply back from a dismantle seems to be irrelevant to the siege troll issue. I think we should leave that out for the time being while we focus on solving the main problem.

John Corpening.9847:

• Exhaustion
  • A player who has 5 stacks of exhaustion can no longer place siege until they have 0 stacks of exhaustion
  • A stack of exhaustion is removed:
    • After 5 minutes
      • For commanders this time is reduced by 2 minutes for each member of your squad for up to 20 minutes
    • For each enemy player defeated
    • For each objective taken

No special treatment for commanders please. For “Exhaustion” to be fair it needs to be implemented equally across the board. If a zerg needs to place siege and the commander has exhaustion then another person can drop it. No special reduction for taking objectives or killing enemies.

Your original idea of having Exhaustion expire over time makes sense. However, the key to that system working is the duration and the number of stacks. Given any size group from 2 to 100 people there is a reasonable number of siege that they will need to place within a reasonable number of minutes. Figuring out those numbers and developing a scale that works for all size groups is completely feasible.

-Tekyn

John Corpening.9847:

Let’s talk about Siege Trolls and what we can do about them. The problems that have been brought up are:

• Creating Siege to hit the siege cap
• Creating the wrong type of siege to hit area siege caps
• Spending supply on needless siege to drain supply depots
• Dropping siege on top of legitimate siege build sites

Here are some parameters and questions we should consider:

• Can we come up with a system that doesn’t involve constant policing from GMs?
• What are the characteristics of bad behavior that are different than good behavior?
• How do we prevent bad behavior without making too big of an impact on good behavior?
• What restrictions might we be able to live with as good players in order to prevent bad behavior?

To kick off the brainstorm I’ll throw out this idea:

1. When a player places a piece of siege they receive a stack of “Exhaustion”
2. A stack of “Exhaustion” expires after three minutes
3. If a player has three stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege

We are just brainstorming here so I’d love to hear alternative suggestion or whether or not this would work for you.

I know there are other threads on this but I want to start with a clean discussion and focus on how we can realistically address this issue. Let’s keep this constructive and focused.

Thanks,
John

John,

My two cents:

(1) The “Exhaustion” idea sounds good however the duration and stacking need to be more finely tuned. I would suggest something closer to a maximum of five stacks where the first stack expires after 1.5 minutes, two stacks would expire after 3 minutes, three stacks after 5 minutes, four stacks after 7 minutes, and five stacks after 10 minutes. If you decide to implement this system it is critical that you get player feedback after implementation and adjust the timing & stacking as needed.

However “Exhaustion” alone cannot fix this problem.

(2) The targeting of siege placements needs to be improved. Even when a troll is not intended there are many instances where multiple build sites get placed on top of one another causing lots of problems.

(3) Allow siege owners (the person who places it) to destroy their siege at will.

(4) Allow non-siege owners to destroy siege with a majority vote. Based on the number of people voting the siege should be destroyed within a range of minutes (e.g. 1 to 10 minutes). If the siege owner is still in zone they should get a notification that their siege is pending for destruction. A siege owner should be allowed to veto a vote but can be overridden if the number of voters is significant (i.e. 5 or more people voting).

(5) Lastly, and I realize this suggestion is a long shot, Anet needs to seriously consider ending server transfers. The majority of siege trolls are doing what they do to help their home server. If you are not willing to end transfers then at least increase the penalty so people cannot transfer back and forth between servers.

I believe all of these ideas together will solve the siege troll problem, particularly the voting idea.

-Tekyn

Gate of Madness

Still getting horrible lag in game. Has been going on for weeks now. All traceroutes show the latency spikes along the Level3 network.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

WvW: What aspects of Edge of The Mists do you think could carry over to the rest of WvW and how? – Owner- Devon Carver

Is this a joke?

With all due respect Chris please re-read the first CDI thread before starting a new one. There are already SO MANY good ideas on these forums that it’s shocking that you would ask the community to provide additional feedback before the design team responds to what’s already out there. The level of communication the WvW community receives from you guys is horrible. If you don’t like what the community is suggesting then tell us that, and tell us why. Share with us what your vision is for the future of WvW so that we know what issues are still up for debate and what’s already been decided. Not everyone will like the end result but at least you’ll get some genuine feedback.

The more you keep the wvw community in the dark the more we feel that WvW is dying and that you guys have no idea how to fix it.

Sincerely,

-Tekyn

The game continues to be unplayable due to the lag. Multiple traceroutes show the lag is on the Level3 network.

Still getting horrible lag in game. Has been going on since last patch.

Just to give an example… I accidently clicked ‘Craft All" on a stack of Orichalcum Plated Dowel’s that I did NOT intend to craft. I IMMEDATELY clicked cancel. Lag spike hits and thus the crafting did not cancel and they all got built.

still getting horrible lag since the last patch. It seems to be a lot worse during the afternoon/late afternoon hours (US time). WvW is completely unplayable. Skill lag and not being able to see what’s going on in a battle is really not fun.

Lots of people in my guild from all across the country are also experiencing this problem.

If indeed the problem is EoTM and the server’s capacity to handle the load then maybe you should take down EoTM. Just an idea.

As an Engineer with a Grenadier build I find myself getting almost insta-killed sometimes when I throw a chain of grenades on a stack of enemy players. I take sometimes 10-15k of damage just from the retaliation and have to stop to heal myself even though no enemy has actually engaged me.

So I pose the question. In terms of a gameplay mechanic how does it make sense for a weapon that attacks at 1500 range to have its damage reflected back at the attacker? For instance, my warrior has a trait called Spiked Armor that grants retaliation. Is the concept with that trait that the spikes in the armor are so fantastic that a grenade bounces off at 1500 range back to the engineer that threw it? I know that’s somewhat of a silly way of looking at it, but it begs the question what is the point of the Grenadier build if you can’t attack at long range.

A simple solution, limit the range on retaliation to melee.

I also play on GoM so I know exactly what Styx is talking about. Bottom line: the cost/benefit of upgrades does not make sense. Having one person pay for an upgrade that an entire zone gets the benefit of does not make sense.

They should either remove the cost altogether or add in some sort of personal reward for spending gold (like granting WXP).

+1 to the OP for bringing this up.

Vimtor.5483:

And here’s the bottomline: “The Season 1 is a failure overall”. Do you agree?

Yes, I believe season 1 was a failure. The same problems that plagued WvW before season 1 were present during season 1, and they look to still be there next week when the season ends.

Stark.1350:

I really enjoy WvW and I really like it when there’s some epic battle for a tower, keep, or massive open field battle between two big groups of people.

But those are rare times.

And most times it’s just independent zergs running around and capping towers and keeps without even blinking an eye.

In short, it’s just too easy.

No one plays defense, because there are no rewards for it. So I’m willing to bet no one has put their points into cannon mastery or oil mastery. Likely arrow cart or ballista, but even the former gets nullified from ram mastery. So I’d hedge my bets that most people are focused offense – so you have superior blueprints now, with bonus to offensive points and guard killer and everything else, and towers and keeps fold like paper, even fully upgraded.

What’s the point in upgrading anything? Guards are completely useless. Won’t even slow down a zerg one second. Reinforced doors are completely useless – superior blueprints and ram mastery still melts them like nothing. Fortified walls, if you can get them when you’re not the dominating server in the matchup, are nice, but take forever to get to. Sure, you can dump seige everywhere for defense, but unless someone is there refreshing the timer (and not getting any rewards for doing so), it gets boring and old.

TL;DR – It’s too easy to flip camps, towers and keeps.

1.) Doors need to be looked at. Fortified doors maybe?

2.) Guards clearly have no point at all. Upgrade them further perhaps?

3.) I’d like to see some type of portable seige weapon that can be moved (albeit slowly) around the battlefield whose soul purpose is to destroy zergs. Some kind of asuran lightning cannon, that the closer people are together, the more damage they take and the more the lightning jumps from one person to the next. This weapon won’t do any damage to towers or keeps.

4.) Currently there is ZERO point to upgrading camps beyond possibly the increased supply delivery. I’m not sure what can be done here. More upgrades maybe?

5.) There has GOT to be SOME way to reward defenders more. And I understand the refresh timer on siege, but MAN is it annoying.

Who knows. Maybe I’m way out of left field and maybe one could make the argument that this would just help dominating servers dominate more, but does it matter at this point? It’s just too easy. Thoughts?

+1, completely agree with this. WvW has been on the decline for some time now as zerging has gotten more prevalent. There is a serious imbalance between the speed it takes to capture something versus the speed it takes to organize a defense of something. This phenomenon is shocking to believe simply because ArenaNet has had a year to work on game balance in WvW and we have very little to show for it.

I have serious doubts that anyone at ArenaNet even plays WvW and understands how it works. I really hope GW2 gets its kitten together.

Bhima.9518:

Because SOMEONE has to be in charge if you want to be effective in WvW. The person who spends 100g are, for the most part, interested in making that happen and have shown more dedication to that then most who do not drop the cash for the blue Dorito. Now we can argue about HOW you get the commander tag (100g is not representative of leadership, though those who choose to spend the gold do for the most part, want to lead and want to learn to lead better. Would be better if it was sold with 1000 badges or something instead), but to argue that commander’s shouldn’t take charge in WvW is shooting your server in the foot. It doesn’t mean all commanders are created equal, and you don’t have to listen to them if you don’t want to… just have a little bit of respect for people that tirelessly work to push your server forward.

Yeah, I have to disagree with you on that one. I started doing WvW a couple weeks after launch and back then we had almost no commanders. That experience was amazing, fun, and everything you could ask for from a cooperative PvP experience, and it was all done without commanders. What people did back then was they worked together. They shared intel in team chat and shared knowledge about strategy when it was appropriate. People moved around the map as needed when the enemy was spotted and worked together to coordinate upgrades, escorts, and anything else that needed to be done. Everybody felt like they were playing a vital role in the match.

Now to offer up as fact the notion that ‘SOMEONE has to be in charge’ is a little ignorant. Why does someone have to be in charge inside a computer game? Having a little blue icon to follow around when you want to zerg is useful, but the idea that a commander is ‘In Command’ of a zone and that they are in charge of all the players in that zone is disrespectful to those players. Nobody has the right to tell another player what to do, and a commander tag certainly doesn’t change that.

And the idea that 100g = dedication is nonsense. I have easily spent hundreds of gold on upgrades and blueprints for my server in the 13 months I have been playing WvW, but by your logic I am not a dedicated player because I don’t have a tag? What about the commanders with 1000AP and a commander tag they bought with a credit card, are they more dedicated then I am?

The real people that work tirelessly to push a server forward are the ones that don’t care about seeing their name on the map.

Liquid.9672:

Tekyn.5376:

Agree that it does not make sense.

GoM for the current season is:

Green: 0 times
Blue: 4 times
Red: 3 times

God forbid someone on our server was working on map completion.

Actually, how the colors are determined does make sense. They’re based on final server ranking before the Season started…

Yes, I know that.

My point about them not making sense is that the WvW season was supposed to be a ‘fresh start’ to WvW in that no server would have an advantage over another server based on its history. The fact that GoM won’t be green for the entire season puts us at a disadvantage.

Dasenthal.6520:

Tekyn.5376:

clint.5681:

Nobody.

No one is more important than the other and everyone paid to play the game so they all deserve a fair chance to play WvW. I understand where many of you are coming from with these threads on how to change the queues, but they need to stop. Almost every thread with an idea wouldn’t work and Anet wouldn’t support it.

A queue should simply act like a queue and thats it.

+1, Completely agree. Now if we could only get this principle applied to commander tags and the bullkitten hierarchy that comes with it. Everybody paid to play the game, why does the fool with 100 less gold get to be in charge.

No, this principle shouldn’t be added to commander tags… Yea the way you get one right now is really silly and has no value with in itself. However you need to find commanders worth following and stick to them, people have been complaining about people with tags that don’t really know what to do with them since launch, get over it.
If you’re coming from the perspective that you know a lot about wvw and you want to lead, but don’t have the money/desire to spend it then learn how to make more money and just get the tag so you can show what they’re meant for.
Plus, one last note: Everyone paid to play the game, that doesn’t mean everyone paid to win. I.E. not everyone gets a legendary just for showing up, or ascended gear, and definitely not a commander tag.

There is nothing to ‘get over’ here. I do have the money, I’ve had the money for 12 months now and I do not want a tag. What I want is for people to work together without getting spoon fed orders. What I want is for the casual player to feel like they can engage in WvW without a commander present. Everyday whenever a commander tags down in EB all I see in map chat is people complaining about not knowing what to do. I want them to learn how to play.

I agree that the current method for acquiring the tag is silly and I agree that following good commanders versus bad one makes sense. My point is that the broader hierarchy of the commander system is hurting the game and should be looked at.

Also, your ‘last note’ makes no sense in the context of this conversation. This is not a situation where play-to-win applies.

Agree that it does not make sense.

GoM for the current season is:

Green: 0 times
Blue: 4 times
Red: 3 times

God forbid someone on our server was working on map completion.

clint.5681:

Nobody.

No one is more important than the other and everyone paid to play the game so they all deserve a fair chance to play WvW. I understand where many of you are coming from with these threads on how to change the queues, but they need to stop. Almost every thread with an idea wouldn’t work and Anet wouldn’t support it.

A queue should simply act like a queue and thats it.

+1, Completely agree. Now if we could only get this principle applied to commander tags and the bullkitten hierarchy that comes with it. Everybody paid to play the game, why does the fool with 100 less gold get to be in charge.

FC down by only 600 points with 90 minutes left. so close!

Inspired.6730:

You said your server was doing good and then the update hit and less players on your world chose to help the fight. That’s a world choice and should be punished. What’s unfair or makes it an unbalanced competition if your world’s players chooses not join the fight? I guess I just take World vs World more literally than you. And clearly you’re not alone, because there are others who want some random teams formed from available players. However, I think anything like that would destroy the strategy of WvW.

World choice should not be punished. Anyone who buys the game and picks a server should be able to have a fun WvW experience. If they want a competitive and highly organized WvW experience then join a top tier server, if they want a casual experience then join a low-tier. It’s not as simple as you are trying to frame it with your choice of ‘join the fight or not’.

And taking World vs World literally has nothing to do with it. If we were to list all the factors that contribute to a win in a weekly match-up server population should be one of many deciding factors, not the sole deciding factor. As I mentioned already, if you read my original suggestion it was to lessen the impact of a population advantage, not to eliminate it altogether. Having more WvW players should be part of the strategy in winning, not the instant ‘I Win’ button that it is now.

One point where we agree, I too, do not think any sort of random teams makes sense. Keep a server together.

Inspired.6730:

Except this an example of why an outmanned server should lose. Not enough of your players are willing to join the battle.

While one can feel bad for servers that have lower population and we can wonder if anything be done to change that, when a world’s population chooses not to fight the options are and should be significantly limited. You were able to compete and then chose not to. This is a group activity and in this regard it cannot successfully be regarded or considered at the individual level.

This is one of the good reasons to switch servers. If WvW is a priority for you, then you should go to a server where there are a significant number of WvW players. Perhaps some servers should just not have a WvW presence. Or maybe the bottom couple servers get combined into one WvW force. It could even be based on number of players who’ve participated in WvW over the prior period.

I think you misread what I said or you do not understanding which issue we are talking about here. I was not making the case that my server should be exempt from losing because we have fewer players. I was using my server’s current situation as an example of how population advantage can have a drastic impact on the score.

Your point that “You were able to compete and chose not to” is a false choice if the competition is unfair and unbalanced. Unfair and unbalanced competition due to population advantages is the point of this discussion.

Lastly, any argument that includes telling people to switch servers makes no sense. The idea that “some servers should just not have a WvW presence” is something I am sure ArenaNet would instantly reject thus I don’t see how it has any bearing on this conversation.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.

Devon,

The reason is that when one server has a population advantage of even 20 people those 20 people can form a zerg and quickly capture towers & keeps that are undefended. The ease to which an offensive zerg can be formed compared with what it takes to assemble a defense is what creates the scoring imbalance.

Case in point look at this week’s match in the bronze league between Darkhaven, Gate of Madness, and Ferguson’s Crossing (http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/map/1093). That match was one of the closest ever until the new patch hit and all of GoM’s PvE players vanished from WvW. If you look at the second graph you can see GoM has not been able to get it’s PPT above 250 for some time now (http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/43). The reason for this is not that GoM suddenly started sucking, but because we cannot match the numbers of the other servers. The other servers have enough people to push us on multiple fronts and our defenders are too few to stop them. A fully upgraded keep means nothing when a 30 man zerg pulls up with 5 Alphas and only a handful of people are defending.

In terms of how WvW could be designed differently I already made suggestions in this thread, but the gist of my opinion is that capturing objectives needs to be made harder and defending an objective needs to be more feasible for small groups. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/page/5#post3111942)

Also, I agree with you that momentum is part of what affects scoring bursts, but I think that is only an after effect of the core problem. Given that most WvW players play for short periods it’s easy to swing momentum as new groups of players sign on. The actual problem is that when one server out populates another repeatedly the disadvantaged server starts to feel disenfranchised to the point where every battle feels lost before it begins.

Regards.

Confirmed. This is still not fixed.

My humble thoughts on the issue of WvW world population.

Components of the issue:

1 – Total Server population
2 – Server population by time zone
3 – Server ratio of WvW players to non-WvW players (PvE’ers)

Now for the sake of discussion let us assume that the total server populations are equal. The real problem then becomes when one server out populates another during off-hours. An example that I am sure everyone is aware of is when three servers with equal populations are up against one another but one of those servers has a large night crew. The server with the night crew will have a significant advantage and thus have a massive PPT (points per turn) boost during those hours.

The third component listed is when one server has a higher percentage of WvW players then their opponent. Any given server’s make-up is something that happens over time and slowly becomes engrained in the fabric of a server as players transfer to and from. For example, the server I play on has gotten a reputation as a ‘PvE’ server. By all accounts this was not a deliberate move on our part, it just happened. I do not see this as something that can be fixed, but it should be accounted for when match-ups are decided for the week.

With those three components in mind I do not believe there are any big picture solutions that ArenaNet can implement to address these issues. ArenaNet is not going to create an Oceanic server to lessen the impact of night crews on US servers and even if they did it would not completely eliminate that problem. I also do not believe the make-up of a server in terms of its WvW player ratio can be addressed any better than it currently is. The current Glicko ranking system is not perfect and could use some adjustments but to a certain extent, it does work. Servers with similar ratios of WvW players are getting matched together.

-

With that being said, I do think there are solutions that ArenaNet can implement that would soften the impact of a population advantage.

A few proposed solutions:

1 – Make Keeps/Towers/Castle harder to capture. Simply put – it is too easy to capture objectives right now. The prevailing strategy in WvW these days (at least in my tier) seems to be to flip everything on a map then move on to another map. This does not seem to be the intended game mode of WvW. This change alone would not fix the population issue but it would make a population advantage less powerful.

2 – New Buff ‘Persistent Defender’. Add a new buff that stacks over time to players who defend an objective (camp/tower/keep/castle). The idea behind this buff is that when a server is at a disadvantage because of population that server can hide inside its towers and defend them with fewer people.

An example of this buff’s implementation would go as follows: every 15 minutes a player remains within range of the defending objective 1 stack of Persistent Defender is applied (max 10 stacks). The buff would give something like +1% siege damage dealt, -1% siege damage received, and +50 vitality per stack.

3 – Hire NPC Champion Defender. Thinking along the same lines as the above-mentioned buff a champion NPC that could be hired at any objective to help defend that objective. The NPC would cost a significant amount of gold, karma, and badges and would only be available for a limited amount of time before vanishing then going on cooldown. The idea behind this NPC is not to stop an attacking zerg from capturing an objective but rather to slow them down and assist any defenders until more help arrives.

4 – Reduce the effectiveness of large zergs. Although this is somewhat of an ambiguous suggestion the idea behind it is that large-scale zerging in WvW is too easy to achieve. In my opinion the real challenge of WvW and the real test of a server should be how well does that server organize itself and how well do they work together to win. Zerg size and server population currently have a direct correlation such that a server with overflowing numbers will use massive zergs to steamroll the enemy. This is only accomplished because zerging is so easy. Essentially anyone with 100g can create an iWin button for WvW. What I would propose is that the tool that allows easymode zerging to happen be removed and that a new system take its place.

I think these solutions if implemented would not only reduce the frustration created by population imbalance but would also make for a more fun WvW experience.

I also did not get credit for “Dawn of the Season” despite logging in tonight and playing. The patch did NOT fix this.

Our server (GoM) it scheduled not to be green in the WvW league for the entire 7 week season. Is this intentional?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvW-Season-1-Schedule

My top three topics for discussion are as follows:

1:
Zergs – Remove the incentive and the usefulness of the blog/zerg strategy in WvW.

2:
The Commander System – The tag should be removed as a purchasable item and a new WvW ability line should be added for creating squads.

3:
WvW Player Rank – Create an icon similar to the ArenaNet guild icon that displays the rank of the player in the name plate for both enemies and allies.

I am also getting lag today/tonight. Skill lag, character position lag, and of course the always TP lag.

Another question on the new policy:
(and I apologize if this was covered already)

10 months ago I received a warning for a post that used the subject line “Question for (ArenaNet staff name)”. In the subject line I used the name of the staff member who had posted the Game Update notes from the previous week because my question was specifically about those update notes. From my point of view I was responding to a post by that person. My post was deleted and the warning I received stated not to use “staff callouts in thread titles”. However for all other purposes my post was constructive and polite. There was no profanity, insults, or any other kind of attack. Since then I have been careful with all my forums posts and have tried hard not to post anything that was directed at ArenaNet.

So my question is if this were to happen again today with the new policy would I be banned for 2 weeks? If I write a post that has the target audience of the ArenaNet developers and the post is 100% constructive and helpful will that post be removed and will I get banned?

Any clarification on the old and new policy would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Here’s an easy solution….

Remove commander tags completely and refund everybody their 100g.

Shocking to read what Devon said.

The people who post on the forums care a lot about what’s going on with the game and what he doesn’t seem to understand is that the canary in the coalmine isn’t a drop in server population but in fact people voicing their concerns on the forums.

If ArenaNet waits until server populations start to drop then they’ve already lost those players to other games.