Guild Wars 2

Hey folks !

An idea for a new elite spec came to me, and I thought a bit about it, so here’re my suggestions. It’s still a draft, lots of figures and things are missing and need to be tweaked and thought of.

Some general facts :

• The name is the prodigy and the legend is Scarlet Briar ;
  Lots of players know of Scarlet and remember her in good or bad. She’s no unknown obscure character, and she’s got actual lore and gimmicks, as well as a sharp tongue.
• Scarlet Legend is a troll legend, focused on energy management and CC ; Her main function is support, through foes’ impairing ; it should work better when foes are packed ;
  Rev’s legends are mostly focused in one or two specific game mechanic. Yet no legend uses theses two.
• The new weapon is the rifle ; it’s damage output is low to moderate and includes some CC ;
  Rifle is Scarlet’s iconic weapon. Moreover, it’s quite an unused weapon (only war and engis have it) so it’d give it more spotlight. Also, rev can use a little more long range.
• The utilities revolve around holograms ;
  Holograms are designed more or less like ranger’s spirits, or GW1 ritualist’s ones.

More details are given in posts below. Feel free to comment. I’m positive some aspects are powerful, yet, it’s ideas and it can be tweaked.

I’m honestly not sure DBL are bigger than ABL. When you look at the 3 maps (just call maps and de-zoom, you’ll see), I’d say they’re slightly broader (W-E direction), and clearly shorter (N-S direction) than ABL.
Yet, I admit they’re clearly more intricate than ABL, because of verticality. The patch just before they put back ABL fixed the most of it. For now, I still think that the area around Air keep may be not so easy, but it’s also the part I’m the less familiar with.
Anyway, the map isn’t so hard. Having a look at minimap is really helpful, and you can read most of paths. Of course, you can’t really do it well when running away from a blob, but it helps for “explore and learn” part.

Mammon.9508:

• Fire Keep: I still think Fire keep is a disaster, even after the improvements that Anet made to Desert BLs. The biggest flaw of Fire keep, I think, is the area just outside of the inner gates and walls. The design of all other keeps/garrisons/smc allow many angles of attack for the attackers and many ways for defenders to slip by the attacking zerg into the inner. Fire keep, however, has only ONE way for anyone to access the inner gates/walls, which is the big open area in front of the supply depot. Attackers and defenders eventually have to funnel into that small opening, not to mention the annoying little pillars which you have to jump through for passage. I suggest that Anet adds more ways to enter Lord’s Room. That’s my biggest complaint about Fire keep, but there are a few others, like the stairs being too narrow.

There’re many entrances at the outer wall, but indeed far less in the inner wall, and most of the fights are in that courtyard. A possible solution would be to provide an underground access, somehow like ABL’s garrison’s southern gate you enter at lake level. Could be some kind of tunnel linking the two camps (north and south from fire keep) with a gate leading to inner fire keep and some room below lord’s room, and another gate leading to staircases climbing up to lord’s room (south and north of the catwalk thing).

Mammon.9508:

• Map Navigation: The multi-level design of the map had everyone complain about the map being too big (or at least feeling too big) since the release of Desert BLs. I personally never had any issues with the size of the map, but rather the path from any Point A to Point B was always too round-about. In Alpine BLs, if I want to get from Southwest spawn to Northeast camp, I could probably figure it out all on my own even if were my first day in WvW. In Desert BLs, however, with that same situation, I would either end up underground next to Fire keep or next to the Skysplitter (R. I. P. in Peace 2015-2016) looking for a ramp up a sheer cliff Northwest of Air keep. My suggestion would be to make the entrances to every camps/towers/keeps easily accessible with wide pathways. Why do I say “wide”? It’s because “mini jumping puzzles” seems to have been the theme when Desert BLs were being designed. For example, if I want to get from North gate of Fire keep to the Northwest camp, I have to jump up 3 or 4 small ledges. Why? Why is that even there? Just make it a wide pathway. The wooden bridges leading to South Air keep were definitely improved, but they could still use more. The bolded statement is what I think could save Desert BLs. People complain about Desert BLs because the time it takes to get to a place is ridiculous: the map’s not big, it’s just that the Desert BLs were designed with the phrases “Narrow pathways”, “Sheer cliffs”, and “small cliffs you have to jump over”.

I’m not sure making it plainer will make it more interesting. I’d suggest, for a beginning, to improve the minimap. Have a better outline of pathes, and add “ramp up/ramp down” icons like in HoT PvE maps. Also, why not put icons like “safe jump spot” near some clives ?
To me, going from A to B isn’t a matter of turning the character to the appropriate compass direction, and then press “autorun”. There’s a learn and experiment part, and also a landscape and minimap reading.

Dawdler.8521:

• NW and NE towers are too far from garri and doesnt offer any home defense in terms of movement.
• SW and SE towers are too far from east/west keeps.

Towers are indeed a big problem. Solutions have been suggested in old topics I’m too lazy to dig. Roughly, ideas were :

• Have towers provide their specific guards (which are more powerful than camp ones) to guard camps, keeps and supply dollies ;
• Implant in towers a network of skritt holes for fast travel from one tower to another.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m not really for providing towers with a tactical interest like in ABL (i.e. treb keeps from towers) for two reasons : it’s too hard to move towers from the map in its current state, and DBL shouldn’t be “ABL with a different landscape”. Let’s invent something new and cool !

Jana.6831:

Yeah, I didn’t know that poll – maybe that was the time when I avoided the forums – or maybe didn’t play wvw.
I should’ve asked someone to inform me about the most crucial polls so I can vote. Too late now *sigh

Or: Wait a second: did that poll come after the 1 DBL, 2 ABL or… poll?

It has been a huge mess. First, there was a poll with 3 options, that has eventually been cancelled, then they ran the poll I told you, and afterwards, a poll to choose between : “1DBL + 2ABL” or “3 ABL then 3DBL in a 3 months rotation”.

Jana.6831:

If so you should remember the poll correctly: There was no option to vote for NO DBL. We had no choice

Well, maybe you were just distracted from this poll and its outcome : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Poll-14-June-Desert-Borderlands-Closed/page/4#post6212591

Just to help you, here’s a quote :

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The poll has ended! After removing all votes for “Don’t Count My Vote” the final results are:

65.5% No: The Desert Borderland map should continue to be supported.
34.5% Yes: The Desert Borderland map should be permanently disabled.

This means that the Desert Borderlands map will continue to be supported. Next, the Mixed Borderlands poll will be re-run to determine how the Desert Borderlands map will re-enter play. Thank you to everyone who voted!

As I stated, an area system is close to the tier-sensitive points-per-objective system they’re working on.

Yet, an area system provides more room for side mechanics that would push the tactical part of WvW forward.

Hello,

I’ve came up with an idea of a new scoring system. It doesn’t involve big mess in mechanics or maps or whatever, but may provide more incentive to defend and allow objectives to grow.

It involves the PPT system, and changes the way points you earn are calculated. Points wouldn’t be directly linked to the objectives you own. Instead of this, each objectives (including sentinels) would create an area of influence around them. The highest tier your objective is, the biggest its area is. Then, points would be calculated as a function of area units a server owns.

By now, there isn’t much change compared to the current system indeed (providing they eventually implement the score per tier thing). Yet, the area system provides more functionnality. Here are some exemples (I’ll suppose I play for red server for examples purposes) :

Contiguous bonus
Supposing the whole home BL is red with all T0 objectives, the map would show red spots all around, but none would connect. Then, with increasing tiers, some would connect. Contiguous bonus makes the broadest area’s income double (map-wide). This would be an incentive for tactical take over of maps : defenders would try to make the biggest area to get max PPT, while attackers could try to “cut the bond” between areas. But it shouldn’t be so easy…

Disputed areas
Still on red map, we own bay, but green have briar. A red and a green area would come to collide. The result would be a “mixed” area that provides less points to red and green server.
Likewise, if in home BL, red owns garrison, towers and hills, making a nice connected area, and then green flips sawmill. That sawmill would be surronded by disputed area, hence providing less to score than a T0 camp surrounded by nothing.

Safe paths
If a camp and a tower’s area of influence are connected, then automatic speedy-dollies pop.

I’m sure there can be many more little things and mechanics to be imagined. It wouldn’t be a big revolution, but that surely would provide more tactics to think about, and things to do instead of blobfesting.

When you look at the 3 maps together, red one is the middle one. Putting red as DBL makes things more symertrical. That may be an easy reason why red gets DBL.

Still, the arguement of which map is easier to defend is interesting.

ArchonWing.9480:

I sort of regret doing the dungeon tracks. The rewards are neat no doubt and very profitable but having to pick out of a list can get very tiresome. Not sure what can be done.

• Step 1 : allow dungeon boxes to stack
• Step 2 : apply the select stats system to dungeon boxes content (no need to even change the final choices). It’ll reduce the list to a third.

That would be a nice beginning !

Jack Skywalker.5674:

Personaly I believe that Condi Cleansing should have been Ventari’s job and not Malyx’s. The act of martyrizing myself by drowning in my team mate’s condition feels very odd.

That oddity comes from the last minute change they made with Mallyx during beta. At first, every Mallyx utilites self-inflicted conditions, and the elite would transfer them to foes. Traits related to sustain while under heavy conditions made sense, as well as that pulling skill with resistance.

Then people pointed that all this mechanic dropped when allies use massive cleanse, so they removed self-inflict and we’re more or less at the current state.

serj.8214:

ThomasC.1056:

As far as I’m concerned, I like to play staff with Mallyx as a support. Mallyx allows me to transfer friends’ conditions on me, then have a big heal, and I also can cleanse with staff4.

In the meanwhile I can also do a fair amount of damage with AA, and break bars with 5.

Cleanse condi when you have resist?)

Just in case resistance comes too short. I don’t cleanse when resistance is up of course !

To me, Ventari is a really good idea, but it really has drawbacks that make it not so good in the “I’m a healer” area. Especially against tempest and druids which I both play, and which provide big bursts of heal. The main issues is the idea is flawed : current damages are either delt as bursts or as condis. Ventari doesn’t heal so much, yet it heals often. So it’s useless against bursts. It theoretically may tuned against condis but suffers 2 things :

• Regeneration can’t overthrow all the condis by itself ;
• No Ventari skill provides resistance (which is predictable, considering Glint is the boon legend).

So my first suggestion would be to drastically raise the effectiveness of the overall healing stat, and the regeneration status.

Then, here’re suggestion on Ventari’s utilities. They’re really strong on purpose ; exaggeration is a way to show the trend.
6. Projet Tranquility : increase passive healing, rate and intensity ;
6. Ventari’s Will : add a healing burst (~2000 HP) in the area around the tablet, when it’s arrived.
7. Protective solace : add a stability pulse (like Hallowed Ground) and a condi cleanse pulse (like Null field, without the boon cleanse part). Now, this exceedingly expensive utility gets useful
8. Natural harmony : increase effectiveness (roughly Wash the pain away! levels) + stun breaker + specific “Natural harmony” boon that can’t be shared, consisting in stab+resistance for a short amount of time.
9. Purifying essence : Remove the heal for each removed condi. Turn the skill to a “convert conditions into boons” one. Reduce the energy cost and CD.
10. Energy expulsion : In its current status, that skill doesn’t provide anything worthier than using the tablet. Yet, it destroys it. So it has to be significantly buffed :

1. Upon activation, cleanse every conditions and break stun ;
2. MASSIVE healing. Like 10,000 HP ;
3. Energy fragments would be useful with a buff and a 1-condi cleanse.

Alternative suggestion for Energy Expulsion :

1. Cleanse all condis and break sun
2. Create a “Lingering presence” field. Friends in the area get moderate decreasing healing over time. Foes and projectiles can’t enter the field (like the Sanctuary skill).

To conclude, I underline that as much as my suggestions are strong, I tried not to give too many figures. They also reflect the huge energy cost of using Ventari’s tablet : if it’s that expensive, then I want it to be really effective. Anyway, the overall effectiveness of it depends on CD, activation time, energy costs, so it can be tweaked. Feel free to comment…

As far as I’m concerned, I like to play staff with Mallyx as a support. Mallyx allows me to transfer friends’ conditions on me, then have a big heal, and I also can cleanse with staff4.

In the meanwhile I can also do a fair amount of damage with AA, and break bars with 5.

zinkz.7045:

Aury.1367:

But remove it from WvW, its so kitten toxic…..

Everything in WvW is ‘so kitten toxic’, whether it be insane power damage, laughable levels of disengage of certain builds, boon spam / duration, damage mitigation, perplexity runes, durability runes, draining sigil, etc.

Are you actually deluded enough to believe that everything is fine other than dire/perplexity, newsflash – WvW is a low skilled cheesefest (even by the low standards of a game that is already a low skilled cheesefest) that is terrible for roaming, it always has been, and it only got worse with the powercreep from HoT / 3 full traitlines, most players realised that long ago and either left the game or left WvW.

Evade and stunfest put apart, if everything is toxic, then nothing is toxic. Because if any build you can imagine was cheesy and effective, then fights would be far more interesting, because it’d be a matter time management, surprise effect ; in a nutshell : skill.

Yet, at this moment, we’re more into :

1. Get input on what the current meta is (and there can be a few of them)
2. Learn and train the appropriate fighting script
3. Go into WvW, engage, use script, if fails, disengage and run.

The issue GW2 always had is any tweak and balance ANet tries always lead to new metas everyone starts to run, then learn how to counter, then run the new meta rol until new big balance changes.

Solving this needs a huge balance work . To me, the 2 top priorities should be :

• HUGE healing buff.
• Strong rework of useless weapons and utilities.

The point is to get more variety of builds for each profession, and have them effective. The point is to get rid of “If you play insert profession here, then you won’t do anything unless you run insert meta here.” current trend.

All of this is a matter of trends, and it changes in a matter of weeks. I’m a roamer/small group player, and what I saw is :

1. Roughly 1 month ago, massive condi spammers (revs, chronos…) were all around the place and very effective.
2. Yet, since several weeks, ultra-bunker builds that can gather a lot of resistance and a tremendous regeneration made the condi build helpless.
3. Now, power builds are back in the game… which are often more vulnerable to condis.

There’re actually two things that I still see, that don’t change, and that I think should be thought about :

• Stunlock builds (scrappers, mesmers/chronos, berserkers, thieves/daredevils etc.) : lame and unintersting to fight ;
• Heavy bunker + dmg (condi or physical) at the same time : either you don’t run that build too and you lose, or you run that kind of build, and you engage in a 200 years fight.

So that’s not only a matter of “dire”…

Skynet.7201:

I’m already picturing a line of 3-4 cannons along a wall, with ACs and/or ballis to protect them and repair hammers on standby.

It seems nightmarish.

I’m not quite sure that would be such a nightmare. It would just need more elaborate tactics to get a wall down (or is this a nightmare ?)

Actually, just imagine 3-4 cannons in line along a wall that a blob is trying to take down. If the blob is wiped, then the cannons served their purpose because I don’t think WvW should just be about blobs playing rolling pin against walls.
Now, it takes like 2 eles and meteor shower to wipe aformentioned cannons in barely 2mn. I blame this, yet if the blob doesn’t have those to spare, then it’s not taking things seriously enough.

So, imagine it’s not a blob then : cannons are not very effective against single targets, especially when they can move (and if they can’t, they get what they deserve). Players will most likely let the cannons and jump into the battle : that would be probably as effective, and more fun.

Whichever way I put it, I can’t honestly see a big problem, unless I come to think like a crybaby wanting to play the spam-1-steamroll. So that’s why I think those are nice things to try : they may provide new mechanics and some more creativity.

I can’t even imagine a, say, 20 cannons row in an open field ! You’ll need 20 ppl to handle them, so you’re close to be a blob. Why bother then ?

• Build saver is a must have. Remember traits, utilities and gear. Name and Save. Recall using the hero menu while off combat. I’m not for a hotkey to switch between gear. I don’t want power-evade thieves (or mesmers or whatever) to be able to switch gear in the middle of a fight just because they can disengage easily.
• Overall merge of WvW currencies : 3 of them is too much. Either merge them into only one, or allow to buy one currency with any other. (maybe the way the Converter works)

These are easily QoL changes that don’t involve any change in the ingame mechanics.

Swagger.1459:

The Condition and Control system works well in pve, but not in pvp (wvw and spvp) modes. This has to change, and I’m going to lay out the problems and possible solutions. The CC issues in pvp modes have been around long enough so I hope these suggestions are taken with a bit more seriousness.

I know we can go into tons of variables here, but I’m going to stick to the core issues outside of individual professions and team make ups and focus on the general CC system as a whole.

Problem

Some Conditions are damage over time (dot) damage that have status effects tied to them correct? Yes, so what’s the problem here? Well, players are hit with direct damage, critical damage, Condition dot damage PLUS all the status effects from CC skills… Those are way too much when combined from one player, let alone multiple players.

Solution

The Toughness stat should reduce “soft” Condition dot damage and status effect duration as well.

Other solution : reduce the amount of condis and CC to a selected few, or switch them to a pip mechanic lik GW1 had. In a nutshell : simplify.
Same for CC’s.

Swagger.1459:

Problem

Individual builds are capable of applying multiple different “soft” Conditions and status effects over and over and over… and that is too much.

Solution

Add more and improve current Condition removal skills, and tie in immunity timers to Condition removal skills.

I disagree with immunity timers for condis. There’re roughly 2 ways of dealing damage : direct and condis. It’s not easy to have both of these ways efficient at the same time. A solution would be to fuse protection and resistance, or have resistance work the same (30% reduce of condi damage). In the current status, resistance is lame because there’s no way to mitigate direct damage that much (regardless of profession specific mechanics).

A second solution would be to drastically boost the healing stat, so that regeneration could effectively compensate for condi damage.

Swagger.1459:

Problem

The rate at which you can be hit by “hard” Control skills vastly outweighs resistances and Stun Breaks.

Solution

Add more and improve “hard” Control resistance skills. Add immunity timers after you manually Stun Break and also when the effect ends naturally if you were not able to use a Stun Break.

I totally agree on this one. Stunlocks should strongly nerfed. Fights are about skills, and tactics. Not about handcuffing your opponent to his chair while you strike him down. I actually would totally remove CC’s and add more interrupts mechanics (like, on the fly, or “your next action fails” status etc.)

Swagger.1459:

Balancing Damage

Condition damage and status effects will be reduced following these suggestions, so I would like to suggest increasing direct damage from weapons designed more for condition application.

Recap

Have Toughness reduce condition damage and duration. Improve Condition removal. Improve Control resistance. Add immunity timers after being hit with CC. Increase direct damage to compensate for the changes.

I’ll have some edits…

I disagree on this one. Direct damage and Condi damage should work in a parallal fashion like :

• Direct damage : Stat : toughness ; Boon : protection ; Heal : direct heal (skill 6 etc.)
• Condi damage : Stat : vitality ; Boon : resistance ; heal : regeneration

Something like this…

Hello,

With all that ruckus about sieges, I got ideas about a improved way of making siege work, which would help balance things (if correctly tweaked of course).

The core idea is to have sieges use supply to shoot :

• The supply would depend on the siege : AC < cannon/ballistas < mortar/catapults < shield generator < treb ;
• No supply = no shoot at all.
• Siege weapons that automatically spawn in a tower or a keep, as well as siege dropped inside them by defenders would draw their supply 1 – from the structure 2 – from the user and party/squad members in its vicinity (1200 range) ;
• Siege weapons dropped anywhere else, as well as siege dropped in a tower/keep by attackers would draw their supply from the user and party/squad members in its vicinity (1200 range) ;
• To prevent siege trolls from using sieges to consume supply, only the successful use of sieges would use supply.

Side-effects for siege weapons :

• The build costs of siege weapons could be lowered ;
• When destroyed, they’d be put in a “destroyed” status, that’d be less expensive to remove than to build a new siege weapon.
• Siege weapons could be more or less buffed, to compensate for this more difficult aspect of managing them.

The expected advantages are :

• Camps get more valuable in the sense of “supply providers” ;
• Outnumbered keep defenders would have a way to prevent treb endless bombing from towers : snap the supply => disable the treb ;
• Incentive for attackers to blob’n’drop 5 superior catapults/rams at once would drastically fall, because attackers would have a much harder time to manage their supply than defenders.

To help with supply management, supply dollys can be added in squads :

• Squad captains and lieutenants could hire supply dollys in camps (or towers ?) ;
• Supply dollys are like usual dollys : they’re worth 30 supply, walk the same, get the same protection boon ;
• Those ones would follow the commander (who could assign a lieutenant for the dolly), instead of walking a predefinite path ;
• The dolly’s supply would add to the squad’s ;
• The dolly can be refilled at any camp.

scott.5391:

(…) I sware you guys either know what youre trying to do and don’t like the style of play that a lot of players enjoy or you just dont have a kitten clue whats enjoyable in WvW.

Well… Suppose they don’t play so much WvW (which is clearly doubtful), and they mostly read forums to get feedback. What do they honestly read ?

• Lots of complains, not so many things positive ;
• Ppl who like to roam are gankers and mostly play noob metas that should be nerfed as fast as possible ;
• Ppl who scout or defend are siege huggers and must be discouraged ;
• The overwhelming majority of players are taking part in blobs, zerging and spamming 11111 which should be strongly discouraged ;
• Some self-proclaimed veterans have very accurate ideas about how tings should be : mainly what it was 2,5 years ago when the hype was still big, and friends were around.

And you actually wonder why they “don’t like the style of play that a lot of players enjoy” ?

Offair.2563:

I have 3.5 years of experience with wvw beta as it never hitted alpha. Most if not all changes benefits the blobs.

This is the way most (and maybe every) changes work in GW2. There’s a meta, things are tweaked, some are buffed, some are nerfed, and then the next opti build with the outstanding synergy comes, and everyone plays it.

Same for blobs : as long as things will add and/or stack, then blobs will be encouraged, because players will look for the quick and easy way.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

We need to do as much as possible to discourage siege turtling.

We do not need to buff siege turtles.

In some fights we have found YB or FA (can’t remember) had 10+ arrow carts in one paper tower.

We should NOT encourage this siege mentality by buffing it.

Three players should never be able to stop a map blob, it’s as simple as that.

Walls and siege are there to delay the blob, not stop the blob.

The walls gave your reinforcements more than enough time to arrive and show their PvP skills to the JQ map blob.

What kind of nonsense is that ?

A map blob can spread ! Towers have 1 gate and 2 destructible walls. This is more than 3 ppl with sieges can handle. If it’s brainless enough to let itself be killed by 3 guys with siege, then it truly deserves it.

Sieges encourage tactics, and those aren’t so hard to understand or think out.

Brainless blobs humping doors and walls to flip objectives must strongly be discouraged, and if that could happen through severly buffing sieges so that one single cannon shot can down 10 bloblings, then so be it !

chefdiablo.6791:

This has to be by design. Anet must believe that allowing the attackers to have such an advantage encourages tower flipping and combat. I can’t think or any other rational answer as to why they would allow the walls to remain a death trap for so many years otherwise.

Not sure about this one. Didn’t they speak about how they wish objectives to be kept ? They want higher tiers of objectives to be more rewarding in tick and in flip : this goes against the fast flipping.

Reverence.6915:

It was nerfed to improve the situation. People need to get off siege and fight if possible. If you’re outnumbered by a significant amount, you shouldn’t be allowed to keep the structure (…)

Nonsense. There’s nothing epic in being a blob and taking a tower by the sole power of over-numbered fights. WvW is also supposed to be a tactical and strategic game, and players who are lazy and stupid enough to run a blob to take a structure should be severly punished by siege and defenders.

Brutal Augus.5917:

Xeno.4610:

As a fan of fights instead of watching one guy pressing 2 on cata, I have one ultimate solution: remove the walls!

I’m actually all for this. To be completely honest, I’d be okay if they made an entirely seperate game mode. One where instead of putting caps on how many players could be on a map they instead give you the option to que for fights against groups similar to how many players are in your squad when you que. Three teams of 10,15,20 etc….but no objectives with walls or gates or siege, just a big kitten capture ring in the middle of an open field.

… And they’d call that “The Obsidian Sanctum’s Courtyard”.

Walls, as well as whatever siege is on them, are deadly traps. If you want to attack below, you need to stand on the very edge, and become exceedingly vulnerable.

There truly should be a revamp of the projectile and view system that’d :

• Allow defendres to aim attackers below, and remove the “out of sight” issue ;
• Prevent attackers’ AOE from covering too much space on walls, especially in places where defenders can hide ;
• Set the height of walls to 1500 minimum ;
• Provide defenders a higher range, thanks to the higher spot they’re standing on.

Something working more or less like http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Favor_of_the_Gods ?

Even if I’m supposing it’d be for the winning world of each matchup, it still has a major flaw : if that elite zone dropping a lot is (roughly) a PvE zone, then one may not be able to run it with friends, because PvE doesn’t work with worlds anymore. :-/

Cybil Song.2359:

What we have here as a discussion, is about a lost convenience for people that use GW2 for WvW and PVE. For those using only WvW, they impose their selfishness on a service that was not really affecting them, This is a myth., to be consumed by fools.
The real reason for the change is that ANet wants to make more money with their inconvenient airpass system.
For those WvW that only do WvW, you will get this, as a thank you note from many of those that play both worlds, we’ll come less often or stop coming.
What is your benefit: Guild crowds that will ravage your maps and much less peoples to defend and scout.
Scouting and fixing camp problems, killing Dolyaks, guards etc is a thankless job and is done often by people hopping in to clean the maps and restore services. This is what is being degraded here. So, full time WvW, let me tell you this: You will suffer from being so obtuse, sooner or later and I hope you enjoy your empty maps.
WvW is up for the Slow Death, as simple as that. Anybody doing PVE, knows very well that we can make far more gold and having far more interesting drops in PVE than in WvW. Anybody running any outfit needing traffic knows this basic truth: ‘you need to attract peoples for success, not make their life more miserable’. It is easy to understand that if one is in a spot, waiting for a dragon to appear for example and having some free time , that they use in WvW to clean their bags, to clean up a few camps and maybe a tower and go back to the dragon fight, as an example, they won’t bother to come anymore, this is what the short-sighted get. Same applies to commanders whispering for help, they will be much more likely to be ignored.

You perfectly summed it up. Low tier servers didn’t have that much of an issue with queues, and there was a significant amount of people that jumped in WvW after a world boss, emptied bags, used bank, crafted some things, and then made themselves useful by doing things like flipping camps, sentries, getting towers etc. Of course, that’s not “epic PvP fights”, yet it’s useful for server tactics and PPT. Now, instead of this, they’ll just hop in WvW (or HoTM) and then take the direct gate to LA. So great for population issues !

And I must say I’m a bit disappointed by this move ANet. Wasn’t there a poll making you focus on scoring changes, instead of quality of life ones ?

I don’t see what could be wrong from the OP’s questions and the “don’t” list. When you have no idea about what could bring you to something, you may have some ideas about what wouldn’t.

Anyway, I won’t endorse ppl saying “try not to make your server fail”, because if you’re new, you’re here to learn, and if so, you’re expected and allowed to sometimes fail. Especially in PvP fights that are mostly far more difficult than PvE ones.

So, to me, the first thing to learn is where you are. Explore the area around home. Learn how to travel fast, learn where you can leap off cliffs without dying. In the meantime, try to make yourself useful : take camps, take sentries, kill enemy yaks. In organized servers, you can do both by spending some time scouting towers or keeps : you’ll learn a keep layout, and see from where enemies usually attack.

Find youself a group of friends to play with. Try various things, from small group to blob, and find what you like, from k-train to tactics.

Concerning PvP part… Expect the vast majority of your opponent to run the current metas that change like every 3 months. There’re plenty of meta builds around so you may try and find one that you like, and that works too. In PvP lobby, you can try for free various stats combinaisons. It’s not as tweakable as WvW, hence it won’t be exactly the same, yet it can be enough to give you a taste of a build, and see whether you’d like to explore it any further.

Yet, don’t expect much strategy from a WvW fight. Sadly, the motto has been “the faster the better” from ages. You won’t have any tactic. Just a bunch of skills cast at you, and the opponent fleeing as fast as he can if it didn’t kill you the first time. You can also have the stunlock, or things like these, because tons of WvWers like it easy, and kindly ask you to keep your hands under your seat while they kill you ^^.

Anyway, just try and have fun ! There’re many things to do in WvW.

Fatal.1347:

I think the people who do not vote cuz they do not have opinion should count as they do not care.
so if the vote ends like
2 alp 1 dbl 70%
3 dbl 3 alp 25%
do not care 5%
then people happy with results would be
2alp 1 dbl 75%
3 dbl 3alp 30%.
So in this case 2 alp 1 dbl is obviously more favorable. At least the percentage should be accounted somehow because it makes the option that requires higher percentage (this time 2alp 1 dbl) harder to acquire even though they have no opinion. f/e: If 25% vote that they do not care which option, and 5% vote for 3dbl 3 alp and the rest 70% vote for 2 alp 1 dbl, it would mean 2 alp 1 dbl CANT happen.

So reasonable decision is to account it somehow.

Even if the “I don’t care” score is displayed, they’ll eventually remove it for the final calculations and the outcome, so you don’t have to worry about this

Bigsexy.8302:

How about no desert borderland at all ???
I’m not voting, my choice is not represented. Great polls as usual.

That one was last week, and 65% players wanted to keep DBL so you’ll have to cope with it. Anyway, should simultaneous maps win, you’ll be able to avoid DBL.

100% agree too.

Once upon a time, there was a reset vendor for traits, and they eventually removed it, and revamped the whole system twice ; it’s free now.

So I think that wouldn’t be a bad thing they put a free reset button for these too… Well… Some day ?

CrimeMaker.8612:

Taking surveys of people rank 10 and above is bs because people who are below rank 500 don’t know anything about WvW or how it used to be. You should just send mails to people with rank 500 and above or 1000 and above because they actually know how WvW should be and how to fix it. With DBL poll I bet those 35% people who said completely remove it were rank 1000 above and people with rank 10 amd above prolly only voted for bring it back just bcz “another map”.

The bolded part is accurately the reason why rank 10 is fair. Polls are not about what WW “used to be”, and they wouldn’t make any sense if the point was to keep WvW how it “used to be”. Moreover, when you read the forums, you learn that WvW is stale, unbalaned, boring etc. etc. so I guess that would be a bad idea to keep WvW how it “used to be”.

If you want WvW to actually evolve, you must ask ppl who are not stuck to what it “used to be”, hence new somehow experienced players that have a guess what WvW is about, and ideas on what they want it to be.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

2. Whether they play 1 hour a week, or dozens of hours a week, the breakdown between people who voted ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ remains very constant around the 65/35 split.

It’s safe to think one’s rank (let’s even add ranks for multi-account players) is somehow related to the amount of time spent. And as stated by the devs, the 65/35 split is constant whatever the rank.

Obivously, ANet has and uses more data than we have, do people should really chill down. This poll was not a tie, even if you take activity into account.

Now, about making “above rank 1000” vote, it has a severe bias : most of these players have their fondest memories in ABL and as such may not be really honest towards their “hate” of DBL. Moreover, the “hardcore” players are the population that’s the most likely to go down, given then time they’ve already spent on the game – it’s plain and normal to become tired of something after so much play. And new players should also have their word about the way the expect the game to be.

DBL, and rewards tracks, may (possibily) bring new players to WvW : players that just came there to do little things, and come to like this game mode. That can only be good for the overall population, because I’m also reading that WvW population going down is an issue. Here’s a solution. I understand there can be a “feeling of being replaced”, yet that’s the circle of the life too.

Sarrs.4831:

So basically

The people who disagree with you are going to massive efforts to buy votes, and use extra accounts to make extra votes to make themselves seem bigger

And the people who agree with you are tired and apathetic and couldn’t be bothered expending the effort to vote in the poll.

…Huh?

For more “…Huh?” effect, just wonder whether this whole topic and conversation would happen should the results be inverted.

CrimeMaker.8612:

Let’s start of with rewards, first thing comes in everyone’s mind now is reward track. Currently reward track is purely based on tick timer. The score which you get towards you rewards is purely based on the tick timer. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because it makes people play more and ita bad because it’s a little slow and people tend to just afk while they are getting rewards for doing nothing.

That’s a fair point. The system that sinks your reward participation when you’re idle is supposed to solve this, but it has a major flaw. Imagine you’re in your green, and at your home BL. And now, everything more or less turns green, so if you don’t want to lose your participation, you need to go in another BL and it’s queued… And yes, it happened to me !

CrimeMaker.8612:

Arena should keep it that way but additionally they should also make people earn it. If you are active and following a tag ktraining then suddenly there is a fight the amount of damage you do should be accumulated into score and added towardsome your rewards.

That may not be the best exemple. Lots of ppl in ktrains just spam skills randomly, just to hit the target, with no concern on how much dmg they make.

CrimeMaker.8612:

Now to keep the score balanced you want to make sure that the scales off of amount players you did damage to not the keep/tower lord and Guard but the actual players.

(…)

If the enemy player is sitting inside the tower using the arrow cart or any siege and damaging almost every single one of enemy players should NOT be taken into consideration because that will just promote siege wars and you definitely want to AVOID that because it already exist to extreme. Damaging gates, walls, siege, keep/tower lord and Guard will should NOT count that will only promote pvd a lot more and you definitely definitely want to AVOID that. If you are enemy map solo or roaming with friends, let’s say you are capping tower or a camp the only time you will get the score towards your reward track is if there is or are enemy contesting and trying to defend it and you managed to kill the enemy and cap the tower or a camp then yes you will get the score towards your reward track because you earned it but you also don’t want to kitten off defender so they will also get some score towards their reward track for trying and trust this will actually make some people contest camps and towers even they have no chance of defending just because fasterror reward track completion(this idea will only apply to towers, camps and keeps on Enemy borderlands and enemy side of eternal battlegrounds).

I strongly disagree on these ones. PvP is part of WvW but it’s not and has never been the main focus. The main focus of WvW is claiming, upgrading, defending and holding points (camps, towers, keeps…). That’s the main idea of the game mode, and this idea leads to some PvP. Playing what the game mode is about should be rewarding even if it’s boring PvD. And I could even say that fighting random ppl in the field in the middle of nowhere and for no reason (GvG ppl ?) should not lead to any kind of reward. OS is all for that. Not BL.

CrimeMaker.8612:

The upgrade system. Anet you should seriously just take a poll on this one and see for yourself if the community wants the old upgrade system back. I can guarantee that most of the community does want the old upgrade system back. If you believe it or not it made get involved a lot. Now with the reward tracks out even if you bring the old upgrade system back where you have to spend gold to upgrade I think a lot of people would not mind and it will just promote them showimg interest and attachment towards because it would be something they worked on for hours and for fully upgraded. With the current upgrade system yes you make people run yaks but seriously tho nobody really cares about running yaks to keep the only time people care is when they need supplies in keeps or towers. It also made defending a lot more necessary and I remember how people would get mad if you didn’t respond to their call for defending a tower or a keep hell sometimes even camps. That shows player involvement with the game mode and I just don’t see that anymore.

Not sure it’d be effective. The former upgrade system led to “I’m holding the tower, I don’t care about camps” bahaviour. The actual one actually gives more purpose to camps and yaks. Of course, that purpose makes sense only if you consider WvW as a tactical game mode focused on objectives. And as you perfectly underlines it : players have to care. Which they mostly do not.

I think it’s very disappointing, considering how BOH are getting less and less useful. A way to sort this out would consist in using BOH as a currency to buy potions of WvW rewards track. That wouldn’t solve, but that’d somehow help a bit.

As much as I’m positive about issues and flaws DBL may have, I’m truly not sure that an option basically telling “Just take ABL layout and mechanics, and turn them into desert” would be a good option, for it ruins the purpose of having a “new” map. If we enventually come to the point of having 3 different BL, I sincerly hope they won’t work the same, with slight differences on each one : that’d make things spicy, and give an overall balance.

Effects around keeps are precisely intended to be annoying and for defensive purpose. From the point of view of the 4-5 ppl trying to hold a keep, they’re very useful, and shouldn’t be removed. Your sole post proves they work perfectly as intended. If you don’t like these effects, just flip one or two shrines, it’s a matter of a 5mn detour.

As for towers, there were posts opened with very interesting ideas of new mechanics, for tactics and attack. Unfortunately, lots of people are lacking creativity, and incentive to do more than “just ABL with another landscape”.

Maybe it’s the ones that work for your reward track ? These fill the bar attached to the minimap.

Arcaedus.7290:

My beef with DBL was the fact that it takes far too long to get from point A to point B in certain areas than you would think just from their distances on the map. Example: going from the southeastern-most camp to the shrine just north of it. Looks like it would take 30 seconds right? HAHA NOPE. Have fun snaking your way down an unnecessarily elaborate scaffolding for 2-3 minutes. Even if there is a way to strategically fall down and cut minutes off of this trip, that route is not obvious enough and perhaps not even intended.

Actually, if you follow the cliff to the northeast, you’ll find convenient stairs, leading you straight to the shrine you’re looking for in a direct trip. They’ve been put there in the last update.

That’s the big point with DBL : ppl thinking it’s tedious running from A to B actually haven’t explored it thoroughly, and found all the shortcuts there’re everywhere. And it’s especially sad about the last issue of DBL which is far easier.

I actually think the trip from Citadel to, say, bottom middle camp feel far longer in ABL than DBL. Maybe it takes less time, but it’s so boring !

That’s an interesting idea that could actually be broadened. One could consume part of the camp supply to trigger dolyak bombs, and maybe aim them at supply or damage gates.

Likewise, DBL towers could find kittene by having a similar “mercenaries” device that’d allow players to hire npc’s and put them in a “gard camp” duty or “gard keep”, or patrol… Considering each one of these towers have a specific kind of npc’s, that’d make an interesting blend. It still needs to have them far more powerful than usual automatic guards.

Or it could be a guild thing.

OriOri.8724:

This wouldn’t work. All it would do is encourage the stacked servers to vote for the smallest servers so that the little competition they already receive is completely wiped out

An alternative would be some question like : “Did you enjoy your fight against current opponent server ?”, which solves the problem you’re underlining.

Mere figures can’t accurately tell if things are balanced or not. Nor can they tell if a server is looking for big challenges or more casual things. This could be a way to tweak matchups.

I’d also say that reducing the tick will also help with the issue of players waiting more or less idle for tick to score before leaving.

Orpheal.8263:

4. Make a complete overwork of all the Boons, merge Boons where it fits, redesign Boon Effects where needed, remove Boons where possible. Goal of this should be it to basicalyl HALF the amount of Boons in this Game. (example: change Weakness into a direct Might Conuter that reduces Power and Condition Damage!!!, Remove Stability, Rework Resistance, merge Swiftness with Quickness, change Vigor, remove Retaliation)
5. Same as above, just with Conditions

I’m not sure “less boons” and “less condis” are a good idea. When you see how easy it is for some builds to spam them all for a long time, having less of them will only make things easier.
GW1 system was far richer with enchantments, hexes, chants, shouts, ashes, spirits…. It was maybe too much, but it had various effects triggering on various conditions So maybe it eventually became too intricate, but there’re lots of things, like “trigger on activation” that I’m missing.

Orpheal.8263:

6. Fix finally Toughness to make it work efficiently in reducing direct Damage, fihgtign a high defensive player with direct damage should feel like fightign a Mordrem Husk, you should deal significantly lesser damage, so that you need to switch to Condition Damage, due to them dealign more Damage.

Defensive builds are indeed not really well balanced. When over-exaggerating, I’d say that someone running full nomad/minstrel should be more or less invulnerable…Yet wouldn’t do any damage. That should be the idea. It’s far from it now.

Orpheal.8263:

7. Nerf Conditions by reducing the complete Armor ignorance down to just 50% Armor Ignorance.

I disagree on this one. They should have conditions work in a more consistent way, with like 3 “standard” health degenerations values, and maybe an additionnal effect. Like poison is “damage + reduced health”. Bleeding would be “same dmg as poison + weakness”. Burning “more dmg and that’s all” etc. Still, they should keep conditions ignoring armor.

These points apart, I mostly agree with what you said. To me, the main issue is they wanted all classes to be able to do anything, and remove the old dps/tank/buff/debuff/heal classes system… They wanted to make an easier system, and it’s eventually a nice mess to keep balanced.

Chinchilla.1785:

This is more of a symptom of not using past experience to alleviate potential problems of balance (e.g. in GW 1).

For the topic at hand: “block, evade, invulns, immunity (e.g. endure pain, resistance).”

1. In GW1 there used to be “Blocking” and “Evading” to avoid damage from physical attacks. Eventually it was determined they would only use “Blocking” for easier balance (e.g. they could just have unblockable hits instead of including unavoidable hits) That being said. there were still healing/enchantment spells to negate damage.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Evade

In Guild Wars 2 there are more ways to avoid damage: block, evade (by ability), evade (by dodge), invulns (by abilities), immunity (by resistance, stability, and abilities), reflects, projectile destruction. Am I missing things?

Learning from the past in GW 1, it means things are harder to balance. To counter balance said things you have to put in: Unblockables (can’t be reflected/blocked but can be evaded), Unavoidables (lines and rings that can’t be evaded/blocked but can be passed over with stability), Boon Rips (removes immunity limited to stability and resistance not abilities). No counter for invulns besides loading them up on condis before hand.

2. Regarding condi damage. In GW 1, degeneration (mostly what condi damage is now) is capped, and damage is consistent. This is because it was armor ignoring, and functionally it was suppose to be spread across the party to provide pressure on a group’s healing ability.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Health_degeneration

In GW 2, due to the stacking system of condis to compensate for damage sponge enemies, their function is to “stay on target.” This is probably why people use it for roaming/dueling. This also means some classes still retained burst ability with condi damage alongside beefy-ness provided from some gear stat allocations.

Bear in mind, that degeneration and most of the hex system of GW1 were consolidated into GW2’s condi damage (no doubt with the intention of being easier to balance). This meant you didn’t need a condi cleanse and a hex cleanse.

It’s an interesting thing you wrote here, especially the part about health degen in GW1.

Then, the hex/enchantment system, that has indeed been merged in the condi/boon system, was far richer than the actual system. There were lots of hexes and enchantments that had more or less various effects, triggering on certain conditions. And then, you had chants are shouts and spirits and ashes and… It was indeed a bit more complicated to handle, but the current condi/boon system has a major drawback : there’re too few of them, resulting in a “relative” easiness to get them all and sustain them for a long time (just see all the rants about perma-boons builds or perma-condi builds).

This system was removed to make things easier, and to remove the dps/heal/tank/etc. roles. In another hand, there’re some “effects”, often related to traits, that work as former enchantments…

From what I’m reading here and what I’ve also read in other topics, the main problem is an original misunderstanding about WvW is or should be.

I totally relate to your experience. I’m not so good at PvP, even if I can enjoy a fight that’d feel different of a 25s stunlock+spike and run away if that didn’t work. I like people who play.
I don’t like being in a blob and just running, trying to hit something before it’s destroyed and get some loot and XP.
I like to spend some time to take a camp and a tower, and escort dolyaks to upgrade the tower. I like to use cannons, AC and mortars to give the oh-so-naive blob in front of the door a hint that’s a bad idea to come too close.
I liked to rush to fire keep shrines to switch the fire turrets back on, or swith the wind blowers back on near air keep too, and give the oh-so-naive blob trying to take it a hard time.
I laugh at the pack of players of my own server who naively thought they could take on T3 Bay without even holding the camp and the tower.

Yet, if you read carefully what’s written all around by some ppl, you can see that :

• Ppl enjoying taking, holding and upgrading objectives are more or less considered as PvE players that shouldn’t be in WvW
• Ppl using siege weapons to defend their towers/keeps against blobs (it’s always against blobs…) are called “siege huggers”
• Fire turrets or wind blowers are called “gimmicks” and broadly despised because of the movement impairing they cause.

But, truly, if you think about it… Those things are just plain, and totally normal in a game mode that involves sieges and strategy. Logical devices.

The reason why they’re not liked is because they give blobs (mostly) a hard time, and don’t make taking an objective a casual after-work leisure trip. The reason why they’re not liked is ppl just want to take the highway to “the place where something happens” and do not consider ambushing or shortcuts as viable enjoyable ways of playing, nor do they accept some places to be hazardous for sole defense purposes. The reason why you don’t see what you enjoy is ppl mostly think about attacking objectives. Siege weapons are liked to open doors and walls ; never to defend them (siege huggers).

The reason why WvW doesn’t taste like a tactics and strategy game mode, focused on objectives taking, holding, ugrading is ppl mostly don’t care the slightest about all this. Lots of ppl just want “epic fights” or “large scale PvP”… For actually no other purpose than just fights. If you think in only “epic fights” or “large scale PvP”, then you don’t need objectives for more than excuses for fights. Then you won’t like siege weapons because they’re indeed unbalanced (their purpose is to allow outnumbered ppl to hold a place). Then you won’t like DBL because it has movement impairing places, and it requires you to think to remember the paths.

And this naturally leads to the 2 main things more or less everybody sees : blobs running around, full of “casual after-work players” that just want to gain loot, and not think too much about what’s going on, just out of boredom. And you see guild fighting other guilds, because this can be a reason to fight when everything else feels tasteless.

This is the original sin of WvW. Some ppl consider it’s a game mode that it’s not, and that doesn’t (yet should) exist in GW2. And some of those very same ppl are actually killing it in a “If I don’t enjoy it, then nobody should” behaviour.

Hello,

I’ve read some topics here and there about PvD and ppl wanting to solo things and i’ve came up with an idea. At first, I took it as a joke, and then, I was… Why not ? It could be fun, and a totally different thing than blobbing !

So I’m introducing the all new Sneak O’Matic !

What is it ?
It’s a device that would be sold by the siege merchant, and be an item in the inventory. Upon double-clicking, it’d grant new skills related to sneak and cover operations, that’d allow a single character to strongly interfere with siege and supply mechanics. Utility, healing and elite skills are unavailable while the sneak o’matic is used.
Activating a skill consumes the player’s supply (like 10 units) and the skill should take time (like 4 sec) while being easily interrupted (any damage would do). Activating a skill would also have a 60% chance to destroy the sneak O’matic in the process.
This is intended so that the sneak O’matic would be a powerful tool that has to be used in the shadows. Other limitations are provided so that “many” ppl using it wouldn’t do a proportionnal effect.

And now, for the skills !

1 – Sneak and steal
The sneak and steal effect depends on what it’s used on. Ideas are :

• Used on keeps/towers doors : cross them
• Used on enemy siege : use it as if it were yours
• Used on supply dolyak : empty it (would not bring any supply, but would count for upgrading)
• Used on supply depot : steal some supply as if you were picking from a depot you’re owning

2 – Sabotage
The sabotage effect is a delayed trap that produces a big blast that strongly damages the surrounding whenever an enemy tries to interact with the object. It can be used with :

• Doors and walls (trigger upon repair)
• Supply depots (it’d also lower the supply)
• Siege weapons, even not finished ones (triggers upon interacting)

3 – Undermine
The undermine effect is intended to prepare and facilitate an incoming more conventionnal fight. It’s used on doors and walls, and instantly removes 25% of its HP (meaning it’s less and less effective when the HP are low) and adds like 10 stacks of structural vulnerability.

4 – Disguise
Upon successful activation, disguise turns you into an “ally” (green name, impossible to attack etc.) for the enemy servers. Even if your weapons are displayed, you can’t use them, but you still can use the sneak O’Matic (supposing activating disguise hasn’t destroyed it). Players wouldn’t be able to use map chat, but the “say” chat and whispers. They would also be able to interact with NPC’s in enemies structures.
If a disguised player comes too close of a sentry or a watchtower, the disguised effect is removed, and the player gets marked and revealed for like 20s. Likewise, the disguised effect is temporarely removed when the player uses a sneak o’matic skill. Yet, if that other skill is successfully activated, the disguised effect will be restored.
It’s also impossible to use disguise when being in the invulnerable area near spawn.

Conclusion

The main idea is to give some other flavour to the game, and to give more role-specific mechanics. If you think about it, mesmer’s portals were really useful, but the marked effect upon flipping a keep/tower ruined it all. Of course, it sounds OP to say you just have to get in and open a portal, but it would also promote back scouts having now to watch for strange behaviours.

Anyway, I had this idea in mind for some time, so I’m just leaving that here with no much hope it’d lead to anything. Yet, dreaming is fun !

DeWolfe.2174:

TorquedSoul.8097:

All things being equal …

But they are not, which nullifies any arguments you could have made. The fact that participation is still above the start of the “Beta” say’s a lot about how much better Alpine is. Also, of course the shiny of the Beta has already worn off. It was gone after the second week and participation has dropped since. OW has and will continue to draw players out of GW2 too.

That may be right. Yet, in my EU server amongst others (I’ve seen another topic about this), the ABL-is-back hype is now really down, and there isn’t that much queue in any border or EBG even in prime time something like 5-12ppl between 9 and 9:30PM.

I’m not sure DBL would change that in any way, nor I am sure that score tweaks could do anything about it, but I take it for certain that if things to change for anything it will only get downer and downer.

I’m not sure this topic is the good place for wishful thinkings and projets about WvW mechanics or even new maps… And it’s mainly because, should DBL be voted out, the devs won’t probably pay much attention to WvW in the forecoming months.

The idea here is to get out of this mess in a positive way for everyone, and that’ll let the game evolve and improve, to make WvW an even more enjoyable place. And as the OP said, this goes by positive and constructive feedback, no extreme “Just burn DBL with fire positions” and careful thinking about what should be voted in the DBL poll.

TallBarr.2184:

Lol EU wvw primetime t1, “desert killed wvw, empty maps hurr durr” lol you guys, this gamemode is to daed its funny and we got the so good alpine map, daed geam

http://imgur.com/7Uo3bYd

No screen for me, and not the same matchup (AR, AG and JS last week) yet the same figures. Never more than 10 ppl on 3/4 maps at 9PM and no queue at all at 10PM.

lil devils x.6071:

AS most already know, Tyler said we will be getting a vote to scrap the DBL from WvW in an upcoming poll. For many, the idea of saving the DBL at all is not really much of a concern, however, it would be bad for everything from that to go to waste and for it to be considered a complete loss.

Although it is expected that the DBL will be voted out entirely, It could be an agreeable option to remove it from the live game and take it back to beta instead and to not release it again the community votes to agree that the map is ready and wanted. If they poll players to see what changes are made, test it, poll again, test it, and not release it until the 75% want it in the game, it gives them the opportunity to make it into a good map and also allows for players to not be forced to play on it until it is ready.

Personally, I think it was way too soon after players returning for Alpine to even attempt to bring up the DBL at all yet and they should have made another map (nothing to do with desert) and test/ poll/test/poll/test/ poll until it is ready to server as a buffer between the negativity attached to the DBL and the positivity that should come from getting a new map to get players excited about new maps again before even trying to address the DBL.

But if they absolutely do not want to work on a buffer map instead right now, and want to risk players not even willing to try it when they do change it, they can at least try to take it back to beta and test/poll/test/poll/test/poll until it is ready and not do away with it all together.

I think for many that would be an agreeable solution that does not remove the option of them at least trying to make the map better for everyone involved.

As much as I think it’s a good idea, I also think it is what was intended from the very beginning. They always said developpement was a dynamic process, and I’m truly not sure they were considering DBL to be finished, carved into stone, and not going to change ever again. Proof it they significatively changed it during its uptime (which clearly was shorter than total ABL uptime).

Somehow, the rotation of maps could have fit perfectly with this idea : one quarter DBL, get some feedback, and work to improve DBL while ABL is on, then improve ABL while new-DBL is on, etc. etc. etc. Seems logical, and predictable.

Then, I’m pessimistic about what I’m saying, and I don’t think what the OP is asking for will ever happen. Because some really noisy people in the community were so radical they could only envision DBL to just be flushed down the sewers, erase all memory of DBL, and re-educate whoever said they enjoyed it to the slightest. (maybe I’m overdoing it a bit )

Such extreme behaviour and extreme positions can only lead to extreme answers, and now, we’re to the point a huge bunch of their work will now be polled out, with the probable outcome WvW will be stuck with ABL and only left with minor upgrades till the end.

Maybe a wiser, cooler, more positive and more patient behaviour would have led things going the OP way, but now we got this path, we have to try and think about what’s best for the whole game, present and future, and for the whole community, whichever way ppl enjoy WvW.

DemonNinja.1602:

@Tyler, I have to admit the action the team is taking based on this polls is not only disappointing but unprofessional. As a game industry veteran myself the weight you are putting on these polls and thier results are disturbing and tells me 1 of 2 things:

1. You’re not empowered to do your job and make effective decisions
2. ANet is now afraid of failure.

Both of these are disturbing to say the least. At the end of the day consumer and player feedback is important but should not be lone driver in critical decisions such as map rotation that are being presented here.

We all understand that WvWvW has been the greatest failure in the game to date over the course of the history of GW2. That being said, I sincerely hope you reconsider the use of these polls, the validity… which there is none… anyone with any level of education understand this… there is ZERO statistical validity in these polls, learn about validity constructs here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity_

Grow up, put your big kid designer pants on, and do you what you know is right for the game mode and the community. Period.

It’s strange how my twisted sleepy mind read, “Grow up, put your big kid designer pants on, and do what you know is right for the game mode and the community you want to enjoy it.”

Yet, I still can’t figure out if it’s a bad or a good thing.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Personally, I voted ‘Yes’ to this, as did the rest of my team. So we are also disappointed with the result. But that was an accepted risk when we decided to poll the community about WvW development rather than just following our own vision.

That’s quite a big evidence of the big flaw in those polls. You devs shouldn’t vote in those polls like every other players does, for the sole reason you’re involved in the process, and thus can’t truly express your opinion. I mean :

• You were working on the “no” option, and made the “no” option default should there not be a super-majority. This should imply you may not vote, because a “default” option should be the one the devs stick to. Then I can understand you ask for a high threshold to change what the plans are
• If you’re allowed to vote against what you’re currently doing, then you should only ask for a qualified majority, since the B-plan is strongly envisionned, and you may treat yourselves with special-votes (that would count twice or somthing like this).

Voting against your own plans shows obviously that you don’t like what you’re doing, and eventually you won’t do something as good as if you truly were enjoying it or for the slightest believing in it.
You had an idea of mixed bordelands, that you liked and voted for, that 70% of the community liked, that you said could lead to further developpement of new maps… What do you need more ?

I just hope the next poll on this topic will put things back to common sense.