Guild Wars 2

Good they unlinked BG, though I am still not sure there are any servers that can realistically compete.

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

The score is not even determined by the players. In sandbox games we had player created tourneys with our own brackets and rewards. We determined who the winners and losers were, had our our " refs" and determined how the score was kept, not the Dev’s.

Two quick things:

1- You’ve apparently missed out completely on when there was a GvG scene that did exactly what you describe with regards to player-created tournaments with rewards and our own refs. The scene even had a few websites for tracking leaderboards! WvW enabled that. Guilds chose to move to a server based on which guilds they could fight against, not to win a Dev-defined WvW score. Anet attempted to unofficially support it through the arena in OS and guild halls.

2- Considering that guilds know they can stack a server to exploit the scoring system…

You thinking that driving backwards on a racing game somehow makes it a sandbox, it doesn’t. That is just doing something different in a structured game mode, but doesn’t change that it is still a structured game mode.

See, if this was sandbox WvW, You could choose what server you get to fight at will or any guild on it, you don’t get to do that unless you change teams. You cannot just up and decide to go take over another server, like BG deciding to declare war on FA and take them over and force them to live under their rule.. you cannot even kill players on your own team… You don’t even get to determine the structure because of the limitations not being minimal as required to be a sandbox game. GvG is like two opposing payers kicking the ball back and forth on a soccer game and keeping their own score in their head. That doesn’t make the soccer game a sandbox.

You can stack the team on any sports game. That doesn’t make it a sandbox. I am not ignoring any of it, I am viewing it within it’s context. Changing teams/ stacking teams/ kicking the ball back and forth( GvG) doesn;t change that the game mode has a structured scoring system that is determined by the developers, just like soccer is scored by goals, and not by kicking the ball back and forth. No matter how many times you kick the ball back and forth, it isn’t going to change how the game itself is scored.

Them adding PPK makes GvG add points, but that was still determined by the developers, not the players. If the developers didn’t choose to add PPK, it wouldn’t matter. Players trying to do what they can to gain what little freedoms they do have in a very structured game mode doesn’t change the fact that it is still a structured game mode.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

lil devils x.6071:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

fishball.7204:

Free XFers don’t work and HoD historically showed that. T1 never destacked to move to HoD for free tourney win, it was always the other servers in lower tiers that shuffled into HoD to stack it big.

There is no incentive to leave T1 unless your entire guild moves off and you like them more than the server. Or you hate the queues (which once again, are almost non existent again).

Instead of trying to destack T1, they should get more people into WvW so that T2/3 are also T1 competitive. T1 is basically the last place with somewhat 24/7 WvW action on NA and trying to gut that seems like a poorly thought idea.

I sorta agree, that’s why I think they should have just merged servers to create what you’re talking about. However, the counter argument is that people don’t like “Tier 1 playstyle”.

I agree. What players don’t realize it isn’t actually a " tier 1 playstyle", it is called a healthy and active large scale PvP arena instead. For a massively multiplayer game mode to be healthy and successful, it needs to have massive amounts of people enjoying it together. They do not seem to want it to be a large scale PvP battlefield arena at all.

You suggest that healthy means crowded. Yet players and guilds leave when there is a crowd and they can’t get through a queue. A true healthy WvW is when there is a mix of styles to attract a wide variety of player because WvW is a sandbox arena. People leave the lower tiers when the population gets too low to support large scale battles. People leave T1 when the population gets too crowded to support guilds who want to run on their own without being nothing more than a 15-man “havoc” or “gank” for a pugmander blob. Everyone has their own reasons for playing and seek different goals out of the sandbox. Crowds have a habit of enforcing/imposing only one goal on a sandbox.

Healthy =\= overcrowded though. Queues are a technical problem that could actually be solved, not one that is a problem that has to actually exist. WvW isn’t actually a “sandbox arena” due to their being an actual score. A sandbox PvP mode is open world PvP, like they have on some other games, which if implemented in this game means you could attack people in the PvE parts of the game world, but you cannot. WvW is a battlefield arena due to there being a score kept and actual objectives. In real “sandbox”
PvP zones, you can even build your own forts, there is no score and the players create their own methods of scoring against one another.

You do have different playstyles within though and all playstyles work together on coordinated servers. The Roamers, havoc scouts, and zergs all work together on the more coordinated servers as they should as they all perform different roles that are beneficial to each other if they are good at their positions on the field. They are all communicating and helping one another work towards common goals. often on the lower servers, players left because the guilds there would not do that. JQ, for example, had many groups of 15- 20 all working together and were coming in 1st place every week for a looong time.

The only ones who are not beneficial to the team are the player who ignore their teammates and just do whatever they want instead of try and play as a team. It is like you are standing in left field and they are screaming at you to throw the ball in and you are saying " but but I wanna to catch this butterfly instead" so when that happens of course people are going to start yelling wondering WTH ?!! they are doing. LOL

On coordinated servers they still have Roamers, havoc, scouts, and zergs , and all of those playstyles are done quite well, just those groups have to work together rather than just do their own thing and ignore the rest of their team. What is misunderstood is that it being a large scale battlefield arena means that there are not numerous types of playstyles within. Of course there are, just like there are different positions on a baseball field. Just because there is a large scale battle going on does not mean there are not havoc battles, roamer battles, and scouting going on as well. Of course there is because that is all apart of the mode. That being part of the mode does not change that it is still a large scale PvP arena with a score.

None of what you said really matters because the past three years of WvW have shown that WvW is in fact a sandbox. You can say “ideally”, but it just doesn’t reflect practice or history. Even what OnS/TW have done with their alliance stuff and going back to WM and the first great stacking of Kaineng fits a sandbox model.

Sandboxish =\= Sandbox. That is like trying to compare World of Warcraft to Wurm.

Definition – What does Sandbox mean?

A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/3952/sandbox-gaming

Simply because it has some things in common does not mean that is what it is. GW2 and WOW are both known as Casual Theme Park MMORPG’s, not sandboxes. There are WvW score limitations, Players do not determine how that score is determined. Not only does it have score, it has segmented areas AND numbered levels. It has defined classes and levels. WvW rank levels, combat levels, armor levels, mastery levels .. SOOO many levels at that. The player does not have access to the world from start to finish. Players do not create the content, build the structures, determine the score and are restricted by levels to even be able to utilize the siege.

Players team up in both theme park and sandbox MMO’s that isn’t what makes it a sandbox .. “Alliances” happen in numerous types of games. LOL

Saying “None of what you say matters” does not suddenly change the definition. Even in Theme park mmos or RTS games, players can often change servers and decide who they want to play the game with. Choosing who you play with and having different playstyles in a game mode that has a playing field and a score does not suddenly turn it into a sandbox.

I don’t particularly find it useful towards your argument for you to link a website that gives a definition of sandbox that perfectly describes WvW here and then say something about how the score has to be player-determined to truly be sandbox.

“A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game."

WvW is not a progression-style game by any means. One can argue that masteries and now WvW reward tracks provide a progression, but players are still allowed to play WvW however they want in order to earn those progressions.

But don’t just take it from me. Read the reddit thread I posted earlier about whether GW2 is sandbox or theme park. PvE is theme park. WvW is sandbox. There’s many more similar discussions if you google it.

TLDR; you’re seeking a narrow definition of sandbox that doesn’t exist in your link.

Chaba is right. When my alliance decided to do it’s thing, we simply decided to treat the game more like an sand box game. Because in actuality it is and because of the mechanics we are all interlinked. What you’re describing lil devil, is not the case but it’s perceived that way, and it’s actually the thing that caused a lot of hostility towards OnS/TW. People believed we were playing something like a sport and the servers are the teams. So when we made alt accounts people had a real big problem with it. But we never thought of server communities like a team. For that matter just because you are on the same server doesn’t mean you are apart of a grand scheme or a team. When you start thinking about the game as a sandbox game then, you can start to understand actions like this. One of the opposing views to us cross repping was the comparison between GW2 servers and sport teams.

Ideally you want an environment where all types of play can exist. Sadly some of those types step on the toes of other play types. The compromise is in between Tier 1 and the lower Tiers but that is only simply if you ignore the fact that WVW is 24/7 and you have other timezones.

See, that is still what I consider ~ish, but not quite because you can do that exact thing on Themeparks as teaming up with other players and deciding to what team you play is not actually a sandbox element, it is juts picking out a ride together.

After playing actual Sandbox PvP modes, WVW is far too Developer limited for me to consider it a sandbox in any way. The score is not even determined by the players. In sandbox games we had player created tourneys with our own brackets and rewards. We determined who the winners and losers were, had our our " refs" and determined how the score was kept, not the Dev’s. I have to agree with the those who consider Gw2 themepark including WvW because the players have so little say in so much of the structure of the game mode. Having a little freedom, like where you choose to play and whether you group up or not is not enough " player freedom" for me to think it to be a sandbox game. There are plenty of PvP sandbox games out there that offer MUCH more in terms of freedom of combat, movement between servers or alliances, freedom to determine score and rewards, freedom of setting your own battlefield.. this game just has too many limitations. I don’t consider the limitations placed on the player by the developer minimal in any way for WvW in gw2, it is very restricted compared to Sandbox games.

When we move a server up and down and effect their overall standings and everyone else around it, we’ve made a persistent change within WvW community simply because this game has sandbox elements that enable you to play where you want and how you want.

Just because another game has something greater doesn’t mean it’s not of that game type. The things you describe are the things that I’ve personally done because the game simply allows me to do so. That’s intended by design of the game.

The scores are determined by the players. I can’t see how you can say they aren’t. In GW2 we have player created tournaments and rewards just the same. Look at the GvG scene. It’s self created and has rules of it’s own. We even make terms to go along with the rules. This isn’t bound by the walls of the servers or the tiers.

If GW2 WvW were themepark there would be no way to change the tier of a server. There would be more restrictions on doing just that, and the score wouldn’t reflect coverage in that system. People disregard the fact that this game is sandbox so, when we treat it as such it’s normally viewed negative. Not just talking about the actions of my alliance but you can also see this when you look at the GvG scene. Or recently, a popular commander of BG went on a rant about roamers. All of these are examples of why GW2 WvW is indeed a sandbox or “living World” in it’s own.

Furthermore, rules to govern doesn’t depict if a game is sandbox or a theme park. All games have rules to govern.

You do change the tiers in Themeparks. Themparks can have structured tiers and ranks made by the developer, just as they do in GW2. You can have winners and losers, but the players are not the ones who determine how that is scored. GW2 has Developer structured tiers., same any any sports game. You can determine who wins or loses by changing who is on the team, and stack a team with good players,like any sports game. WvW is no more a Sandbox than DAoC ( which is not a sandbox either). None of what you are discussing makes it a sandbox, that is just forming teams. The developers still determine how the game is scored. Players don’t get to say " oh we won this GvG", now we get to go to T2.

On racing games I can turn around and run all the cars off the tracks, that doesn’t make it a sandbox. On soccer games We can just kick the ball back and forth and never score, that doesn’t make it a sandbox. Simply being able to do things that are not how it is supposed to be played doesn’t make it a sandbox game.

Ina sandbox game, the Kingdom of Blackgate could declare war on Devona’s Rest, take them over and force them to be under their rule… In a themepark MMO, Blackgate doesn’t get to pick and choose who they fight at will.

BOA smid.1783:

Like I said…I know it wasn’t you who said it. But the rationale still stands. And no tier is balanced like you stated. We drop down, we’d be too big for T4 most likely. Same place as before all this started…and nothing done to fix it. Linking has done little to solve the problems that existed…just gave T1 more places to fit people.

I agree. They are not viewing pairings as way to balance servers out and are still using rank as a determine factor , not how many hours played on each sever and what time they are played. if they used how many hours played and when then paired servers who lacking coverage during those times together and not paired the heaviest coveraged servers at all, and pairing as many as it takes to balance others, they could have competitive match and make WvW more entertaining. As is, most pairings are not even noticeable to the larger server they are paired with as it is not a significant enough impact to notice anything other than a few new people running around. here and there.

BOA smid.1783:

lil devils x.6071:

Mag isn’t going to stay up past bed time to stop them from PvD. If they are going to PvD, no one is going to care if it is 4 am. LOL

And yet we’re supposed to tank to let you move to a tier that you can’t stay in because you won’t put the effort in to get there. Sure makes sense to me. I know it wasn’t you that said it….but that’s kinda the rationale in the end isn’kitten People will play how they want when they want and if no one is there to stop them, it is what it is…right?

I didn’t ask you to tank. If you guys are tired of fighting us, what you do is up to you. I don’t see it getting better for you guys no matter who drops down when we move up as this tier is not balanced.. I don’t think any NA tier is balanced atm from looking at the scores. EU servers seem a bit more even, but the way they have been doing the NA pairings, I don’t see it resolved either unless they completely change how they are choosing to link servers.

Astraea.6075:

@lil devils x: I misunderstand nothing and was simply stating my situation to explain how potential restrictions on who can vote in these polls that have been suggested in this thread would impact my attitude to the game mode.

Basing your argument on the minimum limit of the range of WvW activity the poll respondents is completely spurious. I doubt the number of “hour per week or less” players voting in the poll had any significant impact on the final results and in my opinion, restricting the polls could make newer players feel discouraged from becoming more dedicated to the game mode.

I understand and appreciate the dedication of veteran WwW players and I know I owe a lot of the fun I’ve had playing WvW to them, but they are also able (and more likely) to participate in the polls. The polls are not the only place for dedicated players to give feedback either, as the subject of the latest poll proves, the devs are paying attention to the forums, where the majority of nuanced feedback would be provided by dedicated players.

It only impacts your opinion of the game mode if you know about the vote. How did you feel about the HOT surveys they emailed out to only certain players after Hot Came out? Why should they have to treat this any different? Most players didn’t even get HoT surveys, yet I didn’t see people saying " that makes me feel worse about the game mode". if they sent you a notice, then wouldn’t let you vote, that would be entirely different than just treating it as invite only from the beginning as they have repeatedly with other surveys.

Sylvyn.4750:

BOA smid.1783:

One thing SoS will never do is tank. We play to play whatever the outcome. And I’m not sure what timezone you are talking about, but I’ve never seen that playstyle from SoS. We take things and move on. If people want to be trolly and try to farm someone they might exhibit the behavior you mention, or if it’s our own BL and people want to try to get upgrades to take. But on enemy BLs, no one is going to respond to defend something on an enemy BL unless it’s a guild looking for a fight.

You fail to understand that whoever takes Mag’s place will have just as much a population discrepancy as we face now. The outnumbered buff will still exist and we’ll still be fighting the same uphill battle. You want outta the tier, get there yourself. No one is going to give it to you.

Exactly…Mag needs to quit letting SBI PPT them, too, if they want to move up, it’s not just SoS. In fact, it looks like SBI will come out ahead of SoS this week by about 10k points.

Mag isn’t going to stay up past bed time to stop them from PvD. If they are going to PvD, no one is going to care if it is 4 am. LOL

BOA smid.1783:

We know Mag lost KEK. There was a rumor going around that VR was moving with them, but as I was involved in a scrim against them last night on SBI BL, I know that to be false. I also have heard of many offers being made to KILL, but T1 loves to throw money around as we all know, doesn’t mean they are accepted. Chris is probably working off the rumor that KEK/VR left Mag which I believe was posted on the cancer forums, of which we know only to be half true.

Edit: People also had been wondering where CCCP and TIE were as neither had been seen running the same numbers they used too, but I think we’ve started to see both guilds in larger numbers of late.

[Kill] Always has offers, that doesn’t mean anything. We play where want to and are happy where we are at currently. As usual, people are just talking about things they know nothing about.

Hexinx.1872:

I’ve only played … Everquest, FF11, DAoC, WoW, FF:ARR, Warhammer, LotrO, GW2 (and 1 but its not mmo, and we only gvg’d), EVE:Online .

There are a lot of limits in all those games, but the game mode was made more an RvR style from inception so I wasn’t expecting an empty map to build up from scratch completely. Just an open avenue map that offers individuals, small teams, and large war scale sieges. The closest I can compare this mode to is the RvR style of DAoC

They admittedly used DAoC to base this game mode on, but DAoC was never meant to be called a Sandbox game either.

SkyShroud.2865:

It might be late but there are indeed two different meanings of sandbox.

In the older days, openworld indeed was referred to as sandbox. At the same time, there also a thing called sandbox mode for city building games.

As MMO evolved, the sandbox mode that exist for city building games are being bought over to MMO. So, nowadays, most up-to-date gamers usually refer sandbox as allowing players to leave persistent changes to the world, things like building and terraforming and so on. Likewise, open-world as open-world instead of using the old sandbox term.

ANd for GW2 PvP to be open world sandbox I would be able to attack people in the Kessex Hills and take over a fort there. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensure if WvW players could suddenly start killing people in PvE .. XD

Hexinx.1872:

What I read is your sandbox is a vision of just a pile of sand and let the players do with as they will… while the other argument is that it’s a pile of sand in a box with walls to keep the sand in. Both have buckets and rakes you can play with, just one is slightly limited.

There is a finite amount of points that can be capped. Depending on how many times each structure is flipped, it can vary from a lower total score (of all 3 servers combined) to a higher total score. Less deviation will lead to lower total score, but in the end… its the players who control that aspect. While they are limited in there potential to change the total scores, it’s still in our control.

Have you ever played Wurm? Darkfall? You can build your own structures.

GW2 is more structured.. more like a mini game like Runescape’s castle wars where you go into a portal and the rules are set for you instead. You cannot even attack your own players on GW2.

Sarrs.4831:

lil devils x.6071:

The ABL was never the " savior" it was supposed to be the " first step" just a place to wait while they made a new map because players considered the DBL unplayable at all.

how long exactly do you think it takes to build a wvw map

I was told they had one they have been working on, so there was one started.. 6 month wait was approximately what players were expecting.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

fishball.7204:

Free XFers don’t work and HoD historically showed that. T1 never destacked to move to HoD for free tourney win, it was always the other servers in lower tiers that shuffled into HoD to stack it big.

There is no incentive to leave T1 unless your entire guild moves off and you like them more than the server. Or you hate the queues (which once again, are almost non existent again).

Instead of trying to destack T1, they should get more people into WvW so that T2/3 are also T1 competitive. T1 is basically the last place with somewhat 24/7 WvW action on NA and trying to gut that seems like a poorly thought idea.

I sorta agree, that’s why I think they should have just merged servers to create what you’re talking about. However, the counter argument is that people don’t like “Tier 1 playstyle”.

I agree. What players don’t realize it isn’t actually a " tier 1 playstyle", it is called a healthy and active large scale PvP arena instead. For a massively multiplayer game mode to be healthy and successful, it needs to have massive amounts of people enjoying it together. They do not seem to want it to be a large scale PvP battlefield arena at all.

You suggest that healthy means crowded. Yet players and guilds leave when there is a crowd and they can’t get through a queue. A true healthy WvW is when there is a mix of styles to attract a wide variety of player because WvW is a sandbox arena. People leave the lower tiers when the population gets too low to support large scale battles. People leave T1 when the population gets too crowded to support guilds who want to run on their own without being nothing more than a 15-man “havoc” or “gank” for a pugmander blob. Everyone has their own reasons for playing and seek different goals out of the sandbox. Crowds have a habit of enforcing/imposing only one goal on a sandbox.

Healthy =\= overcrowded though. Queues are a technical problem that could actually be solved, not one that is a problem that has to actually exist. WvW isn’t actually a “sandbox arena” due to their being an actual score. A sandbox PvP mode is open world PvP, like they have on some other games, which if implemented in this game means you could attack people in the PvE parts of the game world, but you cannot. WvW is a battlefield arena due to there being a score kept and actual objectives. In real “sandbox”
PvP zones, you can even build your own forts, there is no score and the players create their own methods of scoring against one another.

You do have different playstyles within though and all playstyles work together on coordinated servers. The Roamers, havoc scouts, and zergs all work together on the more coordinated servers as they should as they all perform different roles that are beneficial to each other if they are good at their positions on the field. They are all communicating and helping one another work towards common goals. often on the lower servers, players left because the guilds there would not do that. JQ, for example, had many groups of 15- 20 all working together and were coming in 1st place every week for a looong time.

The only ones who are not beneficial to the team are the player who ignore their teammates and just do whatever they want instead of try and play as a team. It is like you are standing in left field and they are screaming at you to throw the ball in and you are saying " but but I wanna to catch this butterfly instead" so when that happens of course people are going to start yelling wondering WTH ?!! they are doing. LOL

On coordinated servers they still have Roamers, havoc, scouts, and zergs , and all of those playstyles are done quite well, just those groups have to work together rather than just do their own thing and ignore the rest of their team. What is misunderstood is that it being a large scale battlefield arena means that there are not numerous types of playstyles within. Of course there are, just like there are different positions on a baseball field. Just because there is a large scale battle going on does not mean there are not havoc battles, roamer battles, and scouting going on as well. Of course there is because that is all apart of the mode. That being part of the mode does not change that it is still a large scale PvP arena with a score.

None of what you said really matters because the past three years of WvW have shown that WvW is in fact a sandbox. You can say “ideally”, but it just doesn’t reflect practice or history. Even what OnS/TW have done with their alliance stuff and going back to WM and the first great stacking of Kaineng fits a sandbox model.

Sandboxish =\= Sandbox. That is like trying to compare World of Warcraft to Wurm.

Definition – What does Sandbox mean?

A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/3952/sandbox-gaming

Simply because it has some things in common does not mean that is what it is. GW2 and WOW are both known as Casual Theme Park MMORPG’s, not sandboxes. There are WvW score limitations, Players do not determine how that score is determined. Not only does it have score, it has segmented areas AND numbered levels. It has defined classes and levels. WvW rank levels, combat levels, armor levels, mastery levels .. SOOO many levels at that. The player does not have access to the world from start to finish. Players do not create the content, build the structures, determine the score and are restricted by levels to even be able to utilize the siege.

Players team up in both theme park and sandbox MMO’s that isn’t what makes it a sandbox .. “Alliances” happen in numerous types of games. LOL

Saying “None of what you say matters” does not suddenly change the definition. Even in Theme park mmos or RTS games, players can often change servers and decide who they want to play the game with. Choosing who you play with and having different playstyles in a game mode that has a playing field and a score does not suddenly turn it into a sandbox.

I don’t particularly find it useful towards your argument for you to link a website that gives a definition of sandbox that perfectly describes WvW here and then say something about how the score has to be player-determined to truly be sandbox.

“A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game."

WvW is not a progression-style game by any means. One can argue that masteries and now WvW reward tracks provide a progression, but players are still allowed to play WvW however they want in order to earn those progressions.

But don’t just take it from me. Read the reddit thread I posted earlier about whether GW2 is sandbox or theme park. PvE is theme park. WvW is sandbox. There’s many more similar discussions if you google it.

TLDR; you’re seeking a narrow definition of sandbox that doesn’t exist in your link.

Chaba is right. When my alliance decided to do it’s thing, we simply decided to treat the game more like an sand box game. Because in actuality it is and because of the mechanics we are all interlinked. What you’re describing lil devil, is not the case but it’s perceived that way, and it’s actually the thing that caused a lot of hostility towards OnS/TW. People believed we were playing something like a sport and the servers are the teams. So when we made alt accounts people had a real big problem with it. But we never thought of server communities like a team. For that matter just because you are on the same server doesn’t mean you are apart of a grand scheme or a team. When you start thinking about the game as a sandbox game then, you can start to understand actions like this. One of the opposing views to us cross repping was the comparison between GW2 servers and sport teams.

Ideally you want an environment where all types of play can exist. Sadly some of those types step on the toes of other play types. The compromise is in between Tier 1 and the lower Tiers but that is only simply if you ignore the fact that WVW is 24/7 and you have other timezones.

See, that is still what I consider ~ish, but not quite because you can do that exact thing on Themeparks as teaming up with other players and deciding to what team you play is not actually a sandbox element, it is juts picking out a ride together.

After playing actual Sandbox PvP modes, WVW is far too Developer limited for me to consider it a sandbox in any way. The score is not even determined by the players. In sandbox games we had player created tourneys with our own brackets and rewards. We determined who the winners and losers were, had our our " refs" and determined how the score was kept, not the Dev’s. I have to agree with the those who consider Gw2 themepark including WvW because the players have so little say in so much of the structure of the game mode. Having a little freedom, like where you choose to play and whether you group up or not is not enough " player freedom" for me to think it to be a sandbox game. There are plenty of PvP sandbox games out there that offer MUCH more in terms of freedom of combat, movement between servers or alliances, freedom to determine score and rewards, freedom of setting your own battlefield.. this game just has too many limitations. I don’t consider the limitations placed on the player by the developer minimal in any way for WvW in gw2, it is very restricted compared to Sandbox games.

Rashagar.8349:

Is it just me, or is lil devils now blaming immigrants?* =P

*to the game mode

LMAO! Not at all silly :P It is just you. I am the one who says people should not be so hard in uplevels since they were all uplevels once themselves. I want to increase popualtion, that means bringing in many new players to the game. The goal should be to make content that keeps old players AND actually brings new player to the game mode. You don’t get that by making content that makes players leave instead . I think they should make sure all game content and items from past and present should be obtainable for new players and not have things that are obsoleted from the game for past players only.

Anet is responsible for the polls being whacked, not new players. I want them to make content that makes the game grow, and that means getting new player perspective as well, but they need to do it right so they do not lose players instead by letting the Veteran players make sure everything works properly in the game mode with the mechanics, the different play styles and the community and not just add stuff for the sake of adding stuff and disregard the consequences.

Blanche Neige.7241:

mbhalo.1547:

1. 2. WvW and PVE should be tightly connected. For example if situation on BLs and EB is bad for your server, you get major debuff in PvE like penalties to gold gain, magic find, higher WP costs, higher TP fees etc.

Then it should works both ways.

For example, if your server fail a PVE event or if a PVE boss is left alive for too long, you get major debuff in WvW like penalities to damage dealt to enemies and ennemies’ structures, reduced drop from enemies slain, blocked waypoints, slower yaks, etc.

Yea.. see why I think people should just be able to play the game mode they enjoy? See.. I only like Fighting Players, I hate NPC’s being in the game and would prefer the game only be filled with players instead. So if I Were to vote on PvE stuff, I would say they should remove all the NPCs from the game an d have players fight each other instead. Not sure that would go over so well if they made PvE so I would enjoy it.. but then again that would not be PvE anymore, it would be PvP.

Astraea.6075:

The hour per week player could describe me some weeks due to RL restrictions. I’m primarily a PvE player and usually join WvW to finish off my dailies, but end up still playing the game mode after they’re completed, often till I need to log off for the evening.

I’m currently just under rank 140 despite playing since headstart and only have about 1.6k player kills. I freely admit that I’m not an expert with the game mode, but I have fun playing it (when time permits) and have voted in every poll.

But if certain posters get their way, my voice will be excluded and my interest in the game mode will be diminished. In my view, all paying customers should have the opportunity to vote if they so wish, otherwise you risk alienating players who have an interest in the game mode but don’t meet whatever eligibility criteria is applied.

Besides, all this arguing over who is allowed to vote is ignoring the fact that ANet have confirmed the split of the recent poll results were consistent across the different levels of player WvW activity.

I think you misunderstand. You see, WvW was dying after HOT, Numerous guilds and massive amounts of players stopped playing all together due to HoT itself. People quit the game over the DBL being in the game and we had to beg them to come back and beg Anet to bring back the ABL so we could wait on this map until they made good WvW maps. IF they want to keep dedicated WvW players in the game at all, they need to start there first because players who do not play the game mode often are not going to know how to glitch into a keep because the map is broken, they are not going to know that certain classes cannot use their skills in many zones, that the keeps are buggy as hell.. Someone who just comes in now in then isn’t going to know what it will take to keep the dedicated wvw player playing at all. IF the players they keep play an hour or less a week, WvW is dead, that isn’t even WvW.

They need to start with what is required to keep dedicated players FIRST. Once that is resolved, they start taking wider information as to what will help draw in more players, but they need to test that with the dedicated players first to make sure it actually works in the mode, because the person playing an hour a week isn’t spending enough time in the mode to understand how all of the new elements work with everything else that exists in the game mode. I am not saying they should exclude your opinion entirely, I am saying they need to make sure they do what keeps the dedicated WvW players first, to ensure they maintain the current population as well as work on bringing player in.

I want new content as much ( if not more) than most. I want to make sure the content works for everyone and doesn’t make people leave instead. I am not saying that new voices should not be heard, I am saying that before it even gets to adding new voices, the old voices should be heard FIRST, because they know more about the subject than someone coming in who does not even understand how to refresh siege. Like I said previously, they need to get things voted on and tested by the dedicated wvw players first before it ever makes it to the wider community just to ensure it will work at all. IF it is a cool sounding idea that PvE players like but when implemented it breaks the game mode and everyone leaves that isn’t good for anyone.

The objective of content added should always be to:

• Increase game population
• Increase player satisfaction
• Increase game longevity

If it isn’t doing those things, it should not be added to the game and it certainly should not be " polled on" by polls given to people who are not even dedicated players to the game mode. If the dedicated players leave, why would the game mode stay running for those players that only play an hour now and then? The goal should be to bring in new players AND keep the ones you have. Not run them off for updates that are not even going to bring in new players? This isn’t how you do that.

You don’t ask someone who plays an hour a week to make a decision about a game mode that will make the player who plays 8+ hours a day of that game mode leave the game entirely.

Without the dedicated players, the game mode dies.

Sarrs.4831:

lil devils x.6071:

I am guessing you didn’t read the posts on reddit… " although I am not a wvw player.." is a sure sign.

the half a dozen guys who posted something along these lines were surely enough to turn a supermajority of Delete voters into a majority of Keep voters :^)

I am not saying that at all, however, this wasn’t just about one poll, I brought this up the very FIRST poll, they have known about the polling issues since the first poll and haven’t made any changes to ensure that the polls are representative of the people who keep WvW alive. Most people never comment, they just vote. SO even if you have half a dozen saying they voted and were not even WvW players, that means MANY more did so as well. That isn;t even getting into people telling me about voting 6 times..

In regards to just this poll, numerous players have already stated they either voted for DBL or didn’t vote at all due to Anet saying they wont get new maps unless they vote for the DBL. There was no point in voting , as people were only waiting on Alpine for Anet to make new maps as they said from the beginning so this was a lose/ lose situation regardless.

As I stated in my thread before they even made this poll, I didn’t want them to even offer the delete option at all , instead I wanted them to offer the " send DBL to Beta and make the needed changes then let players vote on when the map is ready for the live game" option instead.

My vote was for them to fix the map and since they cant fix the topography while it is in the live game, I wanted them to take it to beta and fix it so that it doesn’t stay broken forever… we just thought waiting 4 years to get spawn trebs fixed on ABL was bad… They were making us accept the map " as is" without making the needed repairs to even be able to get new maps at all.

Dhemize.8649:

lil devils x.6071:

Straegen.2938:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Hexinx.1872:

YB + JQ

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

That is what I was thinking… DB might be a better fit in this case. JQ and YB fought too long too recently for that pairing IMO.

Considering JQ hates YB like no other in the game, I can honestly imagine blood would be shed if the players were left alone in a room together for real at this point. Someone would wind up throwing punches like a Taiwan Legislature Fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g10PAsvZFoQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opm3zMscStE
Like that, except YB would try to use Acs.
LOL

If anyone is really that angry over a game it sounds like they need to get a life.

Will be interesting to see if the wagon stays on ET or if they’ll jump to stay paired with BG. Can’t imagine a good matchup for the server that gets paired with an inflated rank ET with no wagon population on it. Inb4 YB+ET. Lol

Have you not been to college parties where guys are playing NCAA football on console with normal smack talk and then before you know it they are throwing down and trying to break the house? Though I have seen best friends fight each other over Cookies, phones, games, beer, shirts, socks, and for no particular reason really, so of course I am not surprised when people who actually dislike each other do so.

Oh and they are not angry over the game.. they are angry at the person who is playing the game, it really has little to do with the game itself…

Straegen.2938:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Hexinx.1872:

YB + JQ

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

That is what I was thinking… DB might be a better fit in this case. JQ and YB fought too long too recently for that pairing IMO.

Considering JQ hates YB like no other in the game, I can honestly imagine blood would be shed if the players were left alone in a room together for real at this point. Someone would wind up throwing punches like a Taiwan Legislature Fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g10PAsvZFoQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opm3zMscStE
Like that, except YB would try to use Acs.
LOL

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Hexinx.1872:

YB + JQ

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

No kidding.. JQ hates YB so much I cannot even imagine how that would go.. really. LOL

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

fishball.7204:

Free XFers don’t work and HoD historically showed that. T1 never destacked to move to HoD for free tourney win, it was always the other servers in lower tiers that shuffled into HoD to stack it big.

There is no incentive to leave T1 unless your entire guild moves off and you like them more than the server. Or you hate the queues (which once again, are almost non existent again).

Instead of trying to destack T1, they should get more people into WvW so that T2/3 are also T1 competitive. T1 is basically the last place with somewhat 24/7 WvW action on NA and trying to gut that seems like a poorly thought idea.

I sorta agree, that’s why I think they should have just merged servers to create what you’re talking about. However, the counter argument is that people don’t like “Tier 1 playstyle”.

I agree. What players don’t realize it isn’t actually a " tier 1 playstyle", it is called a healthy and active large scale PvP arena instead. For a massively multiplayer game mode to be healthy and successful, it needs to have massive amounts of people enjoying it together. They do not seem to want it to be a large scale PvP battlefield arena at all.

You suggest that healthy means crowded. Yet players and guilds leave when there is a crowd and they can’t get through a queue. A true healthy WvW is when there is a mix of styles to attract a wide variety of player because WvW is a sandbox arena. People leave the lower tiers when the population gets too low to support large scale battles. People leave T1 when the population gets too crowded to support guilds who want to run on their own without being nothing more than a 15-man “havoc” or “gank” for a pugmander blob. Everyone has their own reasons for playing and seek different goals out of the sandbox. Crowds have a habit of enforcing/imposing only one goal on a sandbox.

Healthy =\= overcrowded though. Queues are a technical problem that could actually be solved, not one that is a problem that has to actually exist. WvW isn’t actually a “sandbox arena” due to their being an actual score. A sandbox PvP mode is open world PvP, like they have on some other games, which if implemented in this game means you could attack people in the PvE parts of the game world, but you cannot. WvW is a battlefield arena due to there being a score kept and actual objectives. In real “sandbox”
PvP zones, you can even build your own forts, there is no score and the players create their own methods of scoring against one another.

You do have different playstyles within though and all playstyles work together on coordinated servers. The Roamers, havoc scouts, and zergs all work together on the more coordinated servers as they should as they all perform different roles that are beneficial to each other if they are good at their positions on the field. They are all communicating and helping one another work towards common goals. often on the lower servers, players left because the guilds there would not do that. JQ, for example, had many groups of 15- 20 all working together and were coming in 1st place every week for a looong time.

The only ones who are not beneficial to the team are the player who ignore their teammates and just do whatever they want instead of try and play as a team. It is like you are standing in left field and they are screaming at you to throw the ball in and you are saying " but but I wanna to catch this butterfly instead" so when that happens of course people are going to start yelling wondering WTH ?!! they are doing. LOL

On coordinated servers they still have Roamers, havoc, scouts, and zergs , and all of those playstyles are done quite well, just those groups have to work together rather than just do their own thing and ignore the rest of their team. What is misunderstood is that it being a large scale battlefield arena means that there are not numerous types of playstyles within. Of course there are, just like there are different positions on a baseball field. Just because there is a large scale battle going on does not mean there are not havoc battles, roamer battles, and scouting going on as well. Of course there is because that is all apart of the mode. That being part of the mode does not change that it is still a large scale PvP arena with a score.

None of what you said really matters because the past three years of WvW have shown that WvW is in fact a sandbox. You can say “ideally”, but it just doesn’t reflect practice or history. Even what OnS/TW have done with their alliance stuff and going back to WM and the first great stacking of Kaineng fits a sandbox model.

Sandboxish =\= Sandbox. That is like trying to compare World of Warcraft to Wurm.

Definition – What does Sandbox mean?

A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/3952/sandbox-gaming

Simply because it has some things in common does not mean that is what it is. GW2 and WOW are both known as Casual Theme Park MMORPG’s, not sandboxes. There are WvW score limitations, Players do not determine how that score is determined. Not only does it have score, it has segmented areas AND numbered levels. It has defined classes and levels. WvW rank levels, combat levels, armor levels, mastery levels .. SOOO many levels at that. The player does not have access to the world from start to finish. Players do not create the content, build the structures, determine the score and are restricted by levels to even be able to utilize the siege.

Players team up in both theme park and sandbox MMO’s that isn’t what makes it a sandbox .. “Alliances” happen in numerous types of games. LOL

Saying “None of what you say matters” does not suddenly change the definition. Even in Theme park mmos or RTS games, players can often change servers and decide who they want to play the game with. Choosing who you play with and having different playstyles in a game mode that has a playing field and a score does not suddenly turn it into a sandbox.

I don’t particularly find it useful towards your argument for you to link a website that gives a definition of sandbox that perfectly describes WvW here and then say something about how the score has to be player-determined to truly be sandbox.

“A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game."

WvW is not a progression-style game by any means. One can argue that masteries and now WvW reward tracks provide a progression, but players are still allowed to play WvW however they want in order to earn those progressions.

But don’t just take it from me. Read the reddit thread I posted earlier about whether GW2 is sandbox or theme park. PvE is theme park. WvW is sandbox. There’s many more similar discussions if you google it.

TLDR; you’re seeking a narrow definition of sandbox that doesn’t exist in your link.

~ish=\= IS. Two different things. you are trying to pick one little thing out and leave the rest. Even in your link you had more people calling it a theme park and saying it was a theme park with sandbox elements. It is called theme park on gaming sites.
You think some guy thinking it is a theme park sandbox mix and others disagreeing with him doesn’t actually make it one.

Have you actually ever played A real sandbox? Players can design and build their own forts.. they create their own brackets and determine who fights each other. WvW rank levels ARE progression silly. Having a developer not player determined score that affects who you play and which tier level you are in not a sandbox. Considering I have played SWG, Linkrealms, A Tale in the desert, EvE online, Darkfall, Wurm and MORE, it is laughable to think someone even suggested this was a sandbox.
Why isn’t it on the list?
http://sandboxer.org/sandbox-list/#.V2zYh_krLcs

Lets see.. like 41 posts on this thread calling it a themepark, 23 calling it a Themepark with sandbox elements mix and then 2 calling it a sandbox. That is more evidence than your link about players calling it a themebox/sandpark..
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/13405-would-you-call-this-game-a-sandbox-or-a-themepark/

Thelgar.7214:

Sagramor.7395:

mbhalo.1547:

5. Commanders should have ability to initiate “Call of the Mists” (on a huge cooldown and maybe some token requirements) – A message that pops up for all players on the server, that invites them to be teleported to BL or EB, and if player agrees, gives a buff similar to Volunteer’s Blessing.

Agree on all except #2 similar to above poster.

In regards to #5, before megaservers this was almost a non-issue. You could just have someone pop out of WvW into a city and send the call out. Considering how often this happened pre-megaserver I don’t think whoever pushed through megaservers considered how they’d affect WvW.

In short you are not the first to recommend this.

Now I want to stand in Lion’s Arch yelling in map chat, “They’re 2v1ing our Garri! Come help!”

The fastest way to Que a map is to have an Anet dev on the opposing team and go to both LA and EotM and say " Anet is attacking <server>! Come spike a dev!!" and maps will Queue really fast. You can still go to LA and EotM and yell that.. though it is not limited to your server, you still have a good deal of players from your server in LA and EotM.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

jamesdolla.3954:

Chris.3290:

SoS will have it’s day again, as it will always have a large casual OCX population.
The situation in NA/EU is unfortunate but T3 contains two other servers that are “broken” in other ways (SBI/CD has no organized guilds, just PuG blobs; Maguuma is losing a lot of guilds ATM, unwilling to push to change it’s situation) so it will likely to remain in that situation unless a large group of NA guilds transfer or they get a few more patient PuGmanders willing to rebuild.

what guilds did maguuma lose m8? can you name em? we lost 1. stop making stuff up please

Lmao, woah. You know that over reacting to something is a good way for people to see that you’re either lying or insecure?

Chill.

Asking someone to “show me don’t tell me” isn’t an overreaction.

If they are going to talk out of their kitten, they need to at least have the kittens to back it up.

Chris.3290:

SoS will have it’s day again, as it will always have a large casual OCX population.
The situation in NA/EU is unfortunate but T3 contains two other servers that are “broken” in other ways (SBI/CD has no organized guilds, just PuG blobs; Maguuma is losing a lot of guilds ATM, unwilling to push to change it’s situation) so it will likely to remain in that situation unless a large group of NA guilds transfer or they get a few more patient PuGmanders willing to rebuild.

MAG isn’t losing guilds, and is currently happy with their situation as far as I can tell. They will continue to get great fights from T2 and T3.

I would love to hear the names of those.. " Alot" of nonsense is more like it.

shrek.1046:

lil devils x.6071:

They don’t have to care about WvW to vote. Voting for the sake of voting is an actual thing when devs tell people to " COME VOTE!! POLL!!" people just do because Anet told them to.

I think you severely overestimate the number of players who would do this if they don’t care much about the mode.

I am guessing you didn’t read the posts on reddit… " although I am not a wvw player.." is a sure sign.

ArchonWing.9480:

lil devils x.6071:

ArchonWing.9480:

lil devils x.6071:

ArchonWing.9480:

And then i remember that time someone achieved Diamond Legend in EOTM and everyone gave him crap for it….

Easy to suddenly emphasize the importance of rank when it’s convenient, right?

Honestly, what is a good rank for 4 years of play? We didn’t have rank for the 1st year so that didn’t get counted. But then again, rank 1000 is a paltry rank for consistent play…. if you’re a zergling. Hmmph. Hit more doors? I know people that show up regularly that have an unusually low rank because they suck at farming wxp. Doesn’t mean they suck at WvW though.

When the majority of MMORPG players do not want players to be able to attack them at all, how do they ensure that they target actual WvW players if they do not use Rank or kills to filter? If it were up to most players, there would be no PvP at all.

Okay. So a lot of MMORPG players don’t want to have a place where other players could attack them. We need to filter them out because they’re going to take interest in a poll involving a game mode which is about being attacked by enemy players, because they like clicking buttons or what?

I’m sorry, but whatever you’re saying is tangential to what I said at best.

No according to the players who said they were only in WvW to do dailies and didn’t really play wvw, they voted because they received a notice to come vote. To them WvW is just another farming node. Less things interfering with them being able to do that the better for them..

For example:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey guys, since I’m seeing this topic pop up a lot, I wanted to step in and clear up some misconceptions.

1. Nearly every player that voted, plays WvW at least somewhat regularly.

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.

3. The in-game poll notification mail is only sent to players who are actively playing WvW. They must be at least rank 10, and have ranked up while the poll was running.

I got an in game mail for a wvw poll. I very rarely do wvw and when I do it is just for a quick daily. I was in there a bit more but just because I was helping the guild collect those new potions for the up grade.

In addition, Anet put it out in the PVE community on Reddit… So you didn’t even have to be playing WvW to find out about it.

What you said was that rank would not help determine whether or not they knew anything about WvW, I was asking what would ? Kill count?

You’re missing the point here. And really, I’d really like to ask why someone that comes into WvW just to do dailies would even care which borderlands it’s on when nodes will just be nodes. [Not to mention most wvw dailies can be done in EOTM anyways, which is where a lot of the people you choose to describe go anyways]

There’s also plenty of complaints on these very forums about people complaining doing pve dailies and they won’t even consider WvW as an option.

And if people want easy dailies without opposition, the harder to navigate desert borderlands aren’t exactly a good choice for that.

I honestly think you’re seriously overestimating the amount of people that actually care about WvW beyond actual WvW’ers, much less want to vote on it, considering there’s quite a few people in WvW (actual players in WvW I have encountered) that can’t be kitten d to vote on it either.

Not to mention that I also know people that are pve focused and only come mostly to dailies, but they still once in a while do play in good faith still… So, I really don’t care for abstract generalizations.

As for kill count, it suffers the same trouble as world rank— easier to farm in higher tiers and in EOTM. It also doesn’t really give much credit to those people that are into refreshing siege and stuff like that. Not to mention that certain classes are better at receiving kill credit than others.

This isn’t to say that their current way of selecting doesn’t have trouble. Clearly rank 10 is too low. Also I dunno what they were doing with Reddit.

They don’t have to care about WvW to vote. Voting for the sake of voting is an actual thing when devs tell people to " COME VOTE!! POLL!!" people just do because Anet told them to.

Maybe Dolyak kills would do it? HAHAHA.. Who would have ever thunk that Dolyak kills could determine who is a WvW player.. Though that might get protests from People for the Ethical Treatment of Dolyaks.

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

fishball.7204:

Free XFers don’t work and HoD historically showed that. T1 never destacked to move to HoD for free tourney win, it was always the other servers in lower tiers that shuffled into HoD to stack it big.

There is no incentive to leave T1 unless your entire guild moves off and you like them more than the server. Or you hate the queues (which once again, are almost non existent again).

Instead of trying to destack T1, they should get more people into WvW so that T2/3 are also T1 competitive. T1 is basically the last place with somewhat 24/7 WvW action on NA and trying to gut that seems like a poorly thought idea.

I sorta agree, that’s why I think they should have just merged servers to create what you’re talking about. However, the counter argument is that people don’t like “Tier 1 playstyle”.

I agree. What players don’t realize it isn’t actually a " tier 1 playstyle", it is called a healthy and active large scale PvP arena instead. For a massively multiplayer game mode to be healthy and successful, it needs to have massive amounts of people enjoying it together. They do not seem to want it to be a large scale PvP battlefield arena at all.

You suggest that healthy means crowded. Yet players and guilds leave when there is a crowd and they can’t get through a queue. A true healthy WvW is when there is a mix of styles to attract a wide variety of player because WvW is a sandbox arena. People leave the lower tiers when the population gets too low to support large scale battles. People leave T1 when the population gets too crowded to support guilds who want to run on their own without being nothing more than a 15-man “havoc” or “gank” for a pugmander blob. Everyone has their own reasons for playing and seek different goals out of the sandbox. Crowds have a habit of enforcing/imposing only one goal on a sandbox.

Healthy =\= overcrowded though. Queues are a technical problem that could actually be solved, not one that is a problem that has to actually exist. WvW isn’t actually a “sandbox arena” due to their being an actual score. A sandbox PvP mode is open world PvP, like they have on some other games, which if implemented in this game means you could attack people in the PvE parts of the game world, but you cannot. WvW is a battlefield arena due to there being a score kept and actual objectives. In real “sandbox”
PvP zones, you can even build your own forts, there is no score and the players create their own methods of scoring against one another.

You do have different playstyles within though and all playstyles work together on coordinated servers. The Roamers, havoc scouts, and zergs all work together on the more coordinated servers as they should as they all perform different roles that are beneficial to each other if they are good at their positions on the field. They are all communicating and helping one another work towards common goals. often on the lower servers, players left because the guilds there would not do that. JQ, for example, had many groups of 15- 20 all working together and were coming in 1st place every week for a looong time.

The only ones who are not beneficial to the team are the player who ignore their teammates and just do whatever they want instead of try and play as a team. It is like you are standing in left field and they are screaming at you to throw the ball in and you are saying " but but I wanna to catch this butterfly instead" so when that happens of course people are going to start yelling wondering WTH ?!! they are doing. LOL

On coordinated servers they still have Roamers, havoc, scouts, and zergs , and all of those playstyles are done quite well, just those groups have to work together rather than just do their own thing and ignore the rest of their team. What is misunderstood is that it being a large scale battlefield arena means that there are not numerous types of playstyles within. Of course there are, just like there are different positions on a baseball field. Just because there is a large scale battle going on does not mean there are not havoc battles, roamer battles, and scouting going on as well. Of course there is because that is all apart of the mode. That being part of the mode does not change that it is still a large scale PvP arena with a score.

None of what you said really matters because the past three years of WvW have shown that WvW is in fact a sandbox. You can say “ideally”, but it just doesn’t reflect practice or history. Even what OnS/TW have done with their alliance stuff and going back to WM and the first great stacking of Kaineng fits a sandbox model.

Sandboxish =\= Sandbox. That is like trying to compare World of Warcraft to Wurm.

Definition – What does Sandbox mean?

A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks. Instead of featuring segmented areas or numbered levels, a sandbox game usually occurs in a “world” to which the gamer has full access from start to finish.

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/3952/sandbox-gaming

Simply because it has some things in common does not mean that is what it is. GW2 and WOW are both known as Casual Theme Park MMORPG’s, not sandboxes. There are WvW score limitations, Players do not determine how that score is determined. Not only does it have score, it has segmented areas AND numbered levels. It has defined classes and levels. WvW rank levels, combat levels, armor levels, mastery levels .. SOOO many levels at that. The player does not have access to the world from start to finish. Players do not create the content, build the structures, determine the score and are restricted by levels to even be able to utilize the siege.

Players team up in both theme park and sandbox MMO’s that isn’t what makes it a sandbox .. “Alliances” happen in numerous types of games. LOL

Saying “None of what you say matters” does not suddenly change the definition. Even in Theme park mmos or RTS games, players can often change servers and decide who they want to play the game with. Choosing who you play with and having different playstyles in a game mode that has a playing field and a score does not suddenly turn it into a sandbox.

I wish they would make enemy players messaging me easier. I have made great friends that way! I have had more players message me to tell me it was a good fight than be obnoxious, though I have had people message me all angry at first and then turn it around by the end of the conversatuon to have them transferring servers to come play with us and join our guild instead.

ArchonWing.9480:

lil devils x.6071:

ArchonWing.9480:

And then i remember that time someone achieved Diamond Legend in EOTM and everyone gave him crap for it….

Easy to suddenly emphasize the importance of rank when it’s convenient, right?

Honestly, what is a good rank for 4 years of play? We didn’t have rank for the 1st year so that didn’t get counted. But then again, rank 1000 is a paltry rank for consistent play…. if you’re a zergling. Hmmph. Hit more doors? I know people that show up regularly that have an unusually low rank because they suck at farming wxp. Doesn’t mean they suck at WvW though.

When the majority of MMORPG players do not want players to be able to attack them at all, how do they ensure that they target actual WvW players if they do not use Rank or kills to filter? If it were up to most players, there would be no PvP at all.

Okay. So a lot of MMORPG players don’t want to have a place where other players could attack them. We need to filter them out because they’re going to take interest in a poll involving a game mode which is about being attacked by enemy players, because they like clicking buttons or what?

I’m sorry, but whatever you’re saying is tangential to what I said at best.

No according to the players who said they were only in WvW to do dailies and didn’t really play wvw, they voted because they received a notice to come vote. To them WvW is just another farming node. Less things interfering with them being able to do that the better for them..

For example:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey guys, since I’m seeing this topic pop up a lot, I wanted to step in and clear up some misconceptions.

1. Nearly every player that voted, plays WvW at least somewhat regularly.

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.

3. The in-game poll notification mail is only sent to players who are actively playing WvW. They must be at least rank 10, and have ranked up while the poll was running.

I got an in game mail for a wvw poll. I very rarely do wvw and when I do it is just for a quick daily. I was in there a bit more but just because I was helping the guild collect those new potions for the up grade.

In addition, Anet put it out in the PVE community on Reddit… So you didn’t even have to be playing WvW to find out about it.

What you said was that rank would not help determine whether or not they knew anything about WvW, I was asking what would ? Kill count?

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

fishball.7204:

Free XFers don’t work and HoD historically showed that. T1 never destacked to move to HoD for free tourney win, it was always the other servers in lower tiers that shuffled into HoD to stack it big.

There is no incentive to leave T1 unless your entire guild moves off and you like them more than the server. Or you hate the queues (which once again, are almost non existent again).

Instead of trying to destack T1, they should get more people into WvW so that T2/3 are also T1 competitive. T1 is basically the last place with somewhat 24/7 WvW action on NA and trying to gut that seems like a poorly thought idea.

I sorta agree, that’s why I think they should have just merged servers to create what you’re talking about. However, the counter argument is that people don’t like “Tier 1 playstyle”.

I agree. What players don’t realize it isn’t actually a " tier 1 playstyle", it is called a healthy and active large scale PvP arena instead. For a massively multiplayer game mode to be healthy and successful, it needs to have massive amounts of people enjoying it together. They do not seem to want it to be a large scale PvP battlefield arena at all.

You suggest that healthy means crowded. Yet players and guilds leave when there is a crowd and they can’t get through a queue. A true healthy WvW is when there is a mix of styles to attract a wide variety of player because WvW is a sandbox arena. People leave the lower tiers when the population gets too low to support large scale battles. People leave T1 when the population gets too crowded to support guilds who want to run on their own without being nothing more than a 15-man “havoc” or “gank” for a pugmander blob. Everyone has their own reasons for playing and seek different goals out of the sandbox. Crowds have a habit of enforcing/imposing only one goal on a sandbox.

Healthy =\= overcrowded though. Queues are a technical problem that could actually be solved, not one that is a problem that has to actually exist. WvW isn’t actually a “sandbox arena” due to their being an actual score. A sandbox PvP mode is open world PvP, like they have on some other games, which if implemented in this game means you could attack people in the PvE parts of the game world, but you cannot. WvW is a battlefield arena due to there being a score kept and actual objectives. In real “sandbox”
PvP zones, you can even build your own forts, there is no score and the players create their own methods of scoring against one another.

You do have different playstyles within though and all playstyles work together on coordinated servers. The Roamers, havoc scouts, and zergs all work together on the more coordinated servers as they should as they all perform different roles that are beneficial to each other if they are good at their positions on the field. They are all communicating and helping one another work towards common goals. often on the lower servers, players left because the guilds there would not do that. JQ, for example, had many groups of 15- 20 all working together and were coming in 1st place every week for a looong time.

The only ones who are not beneficial to the team are the player who ignore their teammates and just do whatever they want instead of try and play as a team. It is like you are standing in left field and they are screaming at you to throw the ball in and you are saying " but but I wanna to catch this butterfly instead" so when that happens of course people are going to start yelling wondering WTH ?!! they are doing. LOL

On coordinated servers they still have Roamers, havoc, scouts, and zergs , and all of those playstyles are done quite well, just those groups have to work together rather than just do their own thing and ignore the rest of their team. What is misunderstood is that it being a large scale battlefield arena means that there are not numerous types of playstyles within. Of course there are, just like there are different positions on a baseball field. Just because there is a large scale battle going on does not mean there are not havoc battles, roamer battles, and scouting going on as well. Of course there is because that is all apart of the mode. That being part of the mode does not change that it is still a large scale PvP arena with a score.

joneirikb.7506:

lil devils x.6071”

snip

(Hey, I was just helping translating a post!)

Well I think this case/post could just as well refer to “Average WvW player” and “Average GW2 Player” etc, but I do see and agree with where you’re coming from. Have friends that throw a fit at the mere idea of going into a dreaded PvP zone! And wouldn’t be caught dead in a PvP based server in the games that has those.

But on the other hand, ANet said they specifically wanted WvW to be a link between PvE and PvP, to encourage both types of players to find a middle ground that they could learn to enjoy the other/itself. So obviously listening only to the hard-core WvW players are going to scare away the “Non-PvP players”, and that means little to no new blood/recruits.

So where is this golden middle ground, to make WvW skill/strategic enough for the competitive/pvp crowd, while also keeping it interesting/fun/tempting enough for the most casual/pve/carebear/average/(whatever) players to want to come and try this ?

Always been a fan of the idea that higher risk = higher reward, so as you go into continually higher difficulty areas to get higher rewards, you eventually end up in WvW or PvP as the highest difficulty. But I can just imagine the pitchforks and torches at ANet’s office if they made WvW the most lucrative gold-mine in the game.

After all, if new people won’t join WvW, it will die by simple attrition. No matter what changes and updates are done to the game.

(Can just imagine, in 7 years, Puck sitting alone in the last Alpine borderland, vigilantly keeping an eye on the horizon, perhaps this will be the day that a new player will join the map, and not another tumble-weed!)

No rants silly :P

Have this weird feeling inside… not sure if I’m relieved or kind of sad :P

There really isn’t a “middle ground” between PvE and WvW outside of openworld PvP without full loot and no score. And the truth is they cannot compete with the current openworld PvP games as that is not their " niche". Gw2 has different modes instead. PvE for the majority, PvP for small scale PvP and WvW for large scale PvP. The way you make that grow is know your “niche”, and try to be the best on the market for that, not try to be to the " be all" because all the " be all" winds up being is being the “empty” because neither side will be fully happy with that. If they want to grow PvE they make Great PvE. To expand their PvP, you make great PvP, and to make the best RvR you make it the best RvR.

The problem is they are not trying to do that, they are trying to be the " be all" and that means you lose your dedicated WvW players while still having PvE players not coming in and staying. All that results in is neither side being happy and still looking for what they want. If they make it the best large scale PvP on the market and it gets promoted as such, players will come as word gets around. They would have to start over entirely in their direction and undo much of what they have done already to accomplish that though because that would mean listening to dedicated WvW players first and start with that as a base, then bring in ideas from elsewhere and test it out with the dedicated players and see if those new idea work before fully introducing them live. You start with the dedicated players and then improve from there first. They have never done that.

Loosmaster.8263:

Repairs are free

Don’t tell bareclaw that when he’s been drinkin’ .. he doesn’t have enough supplies!! Good times!

OT: I wish they would stop trying to torture players and just let them have fun. I don’t want PvErs in there when they don’t want to be anymore than they want me in PvE where I dont want to be.

Mushin.3928:

Even if that list was accurate as of last week, there is nothing to stop devs from changing it at the last minute to deal with stacking. I.e if you are shopping for a specific pairing, transferring right now seems fairly risky.

There is no reason some of those servers should be paired at all, in addition, some of those servers are so low populated they should be paired 3 ways. I hope you are right and they change it, but actually because they put more thought into it and try to make balanced matchups, Sadly those pairings listed do not do that at all and change nothing.

Scamp.5296:

“It is our pleasure to announce that ArenaNet is partnering with ESL, the world’s largest esports company, to host the Guild Wars 2 World Championship on September 17, 2016, at ESL Studios in Burbank, California. This single-elimination event will bring together three teams from North America and three teams from Europe to battle for a $200,000 USD prize pool—the largest in Guild Wars® franchise history.”

ROFL ok, I am ready for this in WvW!!! Anyone else? ;D

That is only going to be for PvP, they are removing the competitiveness from WvW rather than increasing it. They wont even allow tournaments at all anymore for WvW, because apparently What PvE players think about WvW is more important than what WvW players think about WvW.

Scamp.5296:

Teon.5168:

I think that any player that has paid for the game should be allowed to vote in ANY poll that concerns the game. (like it currently is….you have a paid account, you can get into these forums and vote)

This alone gets rid of any sort of elitist attitude when it comes to the polls.
(Ok, it doesn’t get rid of the elitist attitudes, but it pretty much makes them irrelevant)

Plus, it also irks those people to no end that think they, and they alone know what is best for the game. That’s an added bonus, imo.

So you are saying that someone that knows nothing about the game area being polled about should be able to vote on the questions about gameplay changes to that area? Sounds just like the voting system in the United States, so maybe you’re right!

Yes, that is exactly what he is proposing. Since More MMORPG players do not like PvP at all, they should be able to turn it into a goofy zone where they can run around safely and get their rewards and not be worried about being attacked by those mean WvW veterans.

ArchonWing.9480:

And then i remember that time someone achieved Diamond Legend in EOTM and everyone gave him crap for it….

Easy to suddenly emphasize the importance of rank when it’s convenient, right?

Honestly, what is a good rank for 4 years of play? We didn’t have rank for the 1st year so that didn’t get counted. But then again, rank 1000 is a paltry rank for consistent play…. if you’re a zergling. Hmmph. Hit more doors? I know people that show up regularly that have an unusually low rank because they suck at farming wxp. Doesn’t mean they suck at WvW though.

When the majority of MMORPG players do not want players to be able to attack them at all, how do they ensure that they target actual WvW players if they do not use Rank or kills to filter? If it were up to most players, there would be no PvP at all.

Teon.5168:

Scamp.5296:

Teon.5168:

I think that any player that has paid for the game should be allowed to vote in ANY poll that concerns the game. (like it currently is….you have a paid account, you can get into these forums and vote)

This alone gets rid of any sort of elitist attitude when it comes to the polls.
(Ok, it doesn’t get rid of the elitist attitudes, but it pretty much makes them irrelevant)

Plus, it also irks those people to no end that think they, and they alone know what is best for the game. That’s an added bonus, imo.

So you are saying that someone that knows nothing about the game area being polled about should be able to vote on the questions about gameplay changes to that area? Sounds just like the voting system in the United States, so maybe you’re right!

It’s a game, not some potential politically changing vote. If they have paid for it, then they get to vote. I frankly don’t care if they have never played the part of the game that they’re voting on. Again, it is A GAME…for entertainment purposes. Too many players take mmorpgs way, way too seriously.

Heck, we don’t even have to pay a monthly sub on it.

Of course players who have never played the things that other players enjoy should tell them how to design those areas because they know what those players need to have included for them to enjoy the game right? So if the majority of players do not want players to attack each other at all, they should just remove all PvP from the game eh? BTW MOST MMORPG players do not want to PvP at all.. In order to have PvP in an mmorpg at all, they would have to only get opinions from PvP players to do so because most players do not want to be killed by other players at all.

I have actually played most MMORPGS that have actually been made, beta tested most games out there, wrote numerous articles for gaming sites and been active in the wider gaming community for a very very long time, but of course “experience” = snooty know it all " elitist" in your mind. LOL

Scamp.5296:

“If it were up to me, you could walk to a guy in LA and get it with a Universal currency and never have to step foot in WvW if you didn’t want to. I think many WvW players would like to only be able to play WvW to get what they need and PvE players should be able to access everything they need from PvE as well. There is no point in trying to torture people who obviously do not like the other game modes just to be able to have fun the way they like to.”

I started another thread on this issue, with respect to the Gift of Exploration and the time involved in getting it versus the Gift of Battle for PVE’ers. It’s ridiculous (I know because I did the recent “Gift of Battle” reward track in a couple of hours and got myself yet another one), yet some PVE person (who I have no idea why she/he was even bothering to read these boards, other than to troll us) piped up and told me that Legendaries required components from ALL game modes and to suck it up (which they don’t, since nothing is required from PvP). Regardless, apparently it’s okay that it takes like no time for the PVE’ers to get Gift of Battle, but days (or even weeks) for the WvW’ers to get Gift of Exploration. How that is equitable is beyond me, but apparently most folks think it is because I never got any support behind the complaint – oh well – back to doing mindless, boring map completion. (which literally puts me to sleep – sigh)

The things is though, In PvE, you can go to any sever and there is no population cap to worry about taking up a space on the map. Even if THAT map gets full, you can go to another and still get what you need done. In WvW, you cannot do that. It is a gamemode with a playing field and a score. Bringing anyone in who is not there to play the game at all is like having a basketball game going on but in the middle of the game while they are trying to play, you have a guy come in and start a knitting club (farming nodes) in the middle of the court and for every person that does that, the basketball game going on loses a player, and the basketball player that played that court every day had to go sit in queue instead. Then another guy came into the game and decided to start playing miniature golf (dailies)on the basketball court and so now you have the knitting club and the miniature golf players taking up space and more basketball players that played there every day have to sit in queue instead too then another guy came in and he starts playing hopscotch (dueling) on the court and more basketball players are in queue, then another guy comes in and starts playing 4 square ( gift/ heroics/ badge/ karma farmers) and more basketball players are sitting in queue.. It is not even a Basketball game anymore when you put all this stuff in it and the basketball players are not even allowed to play anymore. That is what has been happening to WvW for a long time now, and they are just making it worse.

If PvE players wanted to come play WvW, they would come play WvW. They don’t, so why try and force them to when they have players waiting to come in that want to actually play the game? Many WvW players don’t want to go to PvE either, nor should they have to to be competitive in WvW. Just like basketball players want to play basketball on their court, WvW players want to pay WvW on theirs.

Teon.5168:

I think that any player that has paid for the game should be allowed to vote in ANY poll that concerns the game. (like it currently is….you have a paid account, you can get into these forums and vote)

This alone gets rid of any sort of elitist attitude when it comes to the polls.
(Ok, it doesn’t get rid of the elitist attitudes, but it pretty much makes them irrelevant)

Plus, it also irks those people to no end that think they, and they alone know what is best for the game. That’s an added bonus, imo.

The reality is though most MMORPG players do not want other players to attack them at all. It makes them feel bad when players can attack them. Safe zones are always far more popular than abandoned PvP zones. Of course if most PvE players vote on a WvW poll, it would be to remove PvP from WvW all together and have a place where you can run around and goof off and get rewards without worrying about being killed by players instead. They want to reduce the player skill involved to make it harder for WvW veterans to kill them and make is safer for them to be able to enjoy. By doing this of course, you will lose all the dedicated WvW players from the game.

Liston.9708:

“IF” ABL brought people back, they have already left or others have left. Tell me again how the ABL was the savior and not a two week trip down nostalgia lane..

The real issue with people leaving isn’t the BL and never was the BL…. Too many other issues involved to blame or credit the population on the BL.

The ABL was never the " savior" it was supposed to be the " first step" just a place to wait while they made a new map because players considered the DBL unplayable at all. No one ever said much more work wasn’t needing to be done. They just said they need to be able to play WvW while they waited for it to happen. The problem is If Anet doesn’t pull through with good new action packed PvP focused content for WvW that players consider good/ worth playing, they will lose population permanently and the game will continue to decline at a higher pace.

If players are telling you that they left due to the DBL and they came back due to the ABL of course the logical thing to do is to tell them " nu uh it must have been for some other reason?" because you must know what their reasons were more than they do…

Of course some players left for different reasons. I am talking about the ones who left due to the DBL and those that left because they wanted to play with those players. You do not just lose the players who hate the DBL when you run them off, their friends that want to play with them leave too, then their friends.. until eventually you have all those guys playing together on another game instead.

DeceiverX.8361:

DeWolfe.2174:

If we tried to spread out there wouldn’t be enough on the maps. People have been utterly delusional for the past 3 years with this same rhetoric. There wasn’t enough players for 24 NA server’s then and certainly we don’t have enough for the 4 paired now.

This is untrue for 2012 and early 2013. Every server close to launch had queues in pretty much every WvW zone.

People aren’t interested in de-stacking themselves, though. We’ve seen from HoD and overall general player attitude that player-driven free-transfers result in the worst-case scenarios.

Really, everyone’s out for greener pastures because some system implementation or aspect of WvW has failed those interested.

What he stated was true though, 2016- 3 years= 2013. This isn’t 2012. As with all MMORPG’s the population reduces over time and the game has to adjust to the lower population or find ways to massively attract new players. They are not doing that at all, instead the opposite is happening and they are losing even more players at a higher rate due to the direction they chose to take with the game mode.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

fishball.7204:

Free XFers don’t work and HoD historically showed that. T1 never destacked to move to HoD for free tourney win, it was always the other servers in lower tiers that shuffled into HoD to stack it big.

There is no incentive to leave T1 unless your entire guild moves off and you like them more than the server. Or you hate the queues (which once again, are almost non existent again).

Instead of trying to destack T1, they should get more people into WvW so that T2/3 are also T1 competitive. T1 is basically the last place with somewhat 24/7 WvW action on NA and trying to gut that seems like a poorly thought idea.

I sorta agree, that’s why I think they should have just merged servers to create what you’re talking about. However, the counter argument is that people don’t like “Tier 1 playstyle”.

I agree. What players don’t realize it isn’t actually a " tier 1 playstyle", it is called a healthy and active large scale PvP arena instead. For a massively multiplayer game mode to be healthy and successful, it needs to have massive amounts of people enjoying it together. They do not seem to want it to be a large scale PvP battlefield arena at all.

What it seems they are actually asking for is to have their own private server to be able to play the game with less people in it so they can run around and enjoy doing what they want without interruptions so they have more control over what is happening. You don’t get control over what is happening in a large scale server based PvP mode and that seems to be what they want to see happen.

joneirikb.7506:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Lord of Rings.5371:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

DeWolfe.2174:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

we have some staff in our guild and we’ve been in their testing events as you guys saw from Reyanas stream.

And this is why I think the game mode has never evolved for the better. Dev’s should be non partisan and they clearly are not.

Devs should play their own game. I’m not sure what you mean. They are in many many guilds. Some you don’t even know are devs but they could be playing along side you. ArenaNet team is a very nice team and they are gamers. I think if anything exploring their relationships with the GW2 community is helping them greater not hurting.

Sometimes “What You See Is All There Is”.

When developers develops a game based on the experience of gamers with 24/7 participation, they are creating a game for the 24/7 gamers.

So don’t expect mass appear for the game mode and don’t expect the game to be popular.

Even through PR would say otherwise, people would find out the expected participation level quickly and quit.

I’m confused by what you’re saying. “24/7” gamers? What do you mean by this. What do you also mean by “mass appear” and Guild Wars 2 is popular.

They dont expect 24/7 of participation. I’m not sure where you are getting this from when I say Arena Net also plays their game as well.

My reading of this: If the devs listen to people that are “above average dedicated” to the game, they will design a game for the “above average dedicated” crowd. And not appeal to the more average or casual players.

So, the more ANet listen specifically to the most die-hard-core WvW players, the more WvW becomes intimidating and less tempting for the casual/average gamer.

Grabs the “special” popcorn for sitting waiting for LilDev’s rant on this

Your right as well, but you ALSO have to understand that the " average gamer" hates PvP all together is the actual issue. So they will spend less time in that mode regardless and in the end without dedicated players you have an empty non competitive game mode. The reality is most MMOPRG players do not like PvP at all, that is why they made safe zones in games that did not have them before. Even from the earlier days of MMO’s the majority of players avoided areas where other players could attack them. The “safe zones” became popular while the PvP zones became deserted.

Basically, allowing the “average gamer” to determine what happens in a PvP game mode doesn’t " improve" a PvP game mode for PvP game play, it turns it into a safe zone, making it easier to avoid fighting other players instead of keeping them engaged in combat. They want it less player skill based because they don’t want veterans to be able to kill them. By making it less player skilled based and safer for the average gamer not to die, they take the competitiveness out of it that attracted PVp players at all and instead turns it into a goofy run around without the risks and get rewarded place like everywhere else.

When you actually understand that the " average mmorpg gamer" doesn’t want to have other players kill them, you understand that means making it a safe zone rather than an actual PvP zone at all. The goal for PvP games modes instead should be to attract PvP players, not " the avergae gamer" or it will no longer even be a PvP zone at all. PvP players are not the Average gamer at all. No rants silly :P

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

lil devils x.6071:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Lord of Rings.5371:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

DeWolfe.2174:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

we have some staff in our guild and we’ve been in their testing events as you guys saw from Reyanas stream.

And this is why I think the game mode has never evolved for the better. Dev’s should be non partisan and they clearly are not.

Devs should play their own game. I’m not sure what you mean. They are in many many guilds. Some you don’t even know are devs but they could be playing along side you. ArenaNet team is a very nice team and they are gamers. I think if anything exploring their relationships with the GW2 community is helping them greater not hurting.

Sometimes “What You See Is All There Is”.

When developers develops a game based on the experience of gamers with 24/7 participation, they are creating a game for the 24/7 gamers.

So don’t expect mass appear for the game mode and don’t expect the game to be popular.

Even through PR would say otherwise, people would find out the expected participation level quickly and quit.

I’m confused by what you’re saying. “24/7” gamers? What do you mean by this. What do you also mean by “mass appear” and Guild Wars 2 is popular.

They dont expect 24/7 of participation. I’m not sure where you are getting this from when I say Arena Net also plays their game as well.

looks like he meant " Mass appeal".

If a game mode is open 24/7 it should be played 24/7. players should be able to come on at any time they want to play the game mode and be able to have players to play with and against. That makes WvW unpopular because many players from other types of games do not like the other team being able to score and take your stuff while they are not playing. Sad, but true. PvE is popular, but WvW does not appeal to the “masses”.

The truth is the " masses" are carebears that do not want other players to be able to attack them and are happy fighting an NPC that can’t think they suck giant hairy donkey kittens. Most MMORPG players do not want PvP at all. PvP hurts their feelings. They felt good about themselves before they went to PvP zones, and not good after they got there.

Yes, but what does this have to do with Arena Net playing with the community is why im mostly confused.

People drank the “server pride/ Bias/ Corruption” koolaid… Most in the wider gaming community that have been around a while know all devs play the games with and against players as they should.

Here it seems they still have this mindset that if you are on a server you are somehow corrupted/ biased by that server giving them benefits or W/E . If anything I think it would be a disadvantage. I have seen so many of them play, and even worse.. it is so easy to Queue a map in seconds by telling people it is “come spike a dev” time.. That is how ppl wind up spawncamping with balis and trebbin their spawn because a dev dared to show their tag in WvW. People don’t care about taking anything at all, then they see a dev and then they take everything on their side just because…

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Lord of Rings.5371:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

DeWolfe.2174:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

we have some staff in our guild and we’ve been in their testing events as you guys saw from Reyanas stream.

And this is why I think the game mode has never evolved for the better. Dev’s should be non partisan and they clearly are not.

Devs should play their own game. I’m not sure what you mean. They are in many many guilds. Some you don’t even know are devs but they could be playing along side you. ArenaNet team is a very nice team and they are gamers. I think if anything exploring their relationships with the GW2 community is helping them greater not hurting.

Sometimes “What You See Is All There Is”.

When developers develops a game based on the experience of gamers with 24/7 participation, they are creating a game for the 24/7 gamers.

So don’t expect mass appear for the game mode and don’t expect the game to be popular.

Even through PR would say otherwise, people would find out the expected participation level quickly and quit.

I’m confused by what you’re saying. “24/7” gamers? What do you mean by this. What do you also mean by “mass appear” and Guild Wars 2 is popular.

They dont expect 24/7 of participation. I’m not sure where you are getting this from when I say Arena Net also plays their game as well.

looks like he meant " Mass appeal".

If a game mode is open 24/7 it should be played 24/7. players should be able to come on at any time they want to play the game mode and be able to have players to play with and against. That makes WvW unpopular because many players from other types of games do not like the other team being able to score and take your stuff while they are not playing. Sad, but true. PvE is popular, but WvW does not appeal to the “masses”.

The truth is the " masses" are carebears that do not want other players to be able to attack them and are happy fighting an NPC that can’t think they suck giant hairy donkey kittens. Most MMORPG players do not want PvP at all. PvP hurts their feelings. They felt good about themselves before they went to PvP zones, and not good after they got there.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

DeWolfe.2174:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

we have some staff in our guild and we’ve been in their testing events as you guys saw from Reyanas stream.

And this is why I think the game mode has never evolved for the better. Dev’s should be non partisan and they clearly are not.

Devs should play their own game. I’m not sure what you mean. They are in many many guilds. Some you don’t even know are devs but they could be playing along side you. ArenaNet team is a very nice team and they are gamers. I think if anything exploring their relationships with the GW2 community is helping them greater not hurting.

Them playing their own game is why they are preferential to arrow carts :p

SkyShroud.2865:

lil devils x.6071:

SkyShroud.2865:

Incentive to destack a server is really easy to achieve, just a matter if anet want or not. Simply by locking the 6 largest servers and give the bottom 6 lowest server complete free transfer while opening the rest of the servers with 500 or 1k gem transfer cost. Then check the population by weekly basis and adjust accordingly. You can achieve a very simple way to destack. The word “free” itself is powerful enough.

Why would " free" make people leave their server when they already have lower tier servers offering them gold to transfer on top of their transfer fees and they still don’t want to move? ( In addition to the fact many players already have multiple accounts on other severs)

You actually have it backwards. There is not enough population for all the servers left in NA. What needs to happen instead is to have less WvW servers. The only fair way to do this I think is for us to have PvE servers and WvW servers so we do not destroy communities.

What you have to understand is players move off servers because they are unhappy there. When they become unhappy with the server they are on, they have 2 choices, they can transfer or they can quit. If the only open servers only offer what already makes them unhappy ( sub par gameplay), they just leave instead. In the end, you will have ALL low pop servers due to players leaving all together due to unhappiness and the game will die. Players do not keep playing a game if it is making them unhappy.

Locking servers does not make players play where they are unhappy, they just leave instead.

Because golds are finite and being free itself isn’t, being free itself is a strong incentive to get people to move, either they move because…

• They want to regroup the scattered guild members
• They are looking for a new home
• They want to get out of full server
• They happen to join guilds on those servers
• And more

Then, when you combine with the linking and relinking process, even if you move to a supposedly low populated server, doesn’t necessary means you will end up with bad matches. So, it is not a bad trade for guilds or players that want to do it. What’s more, they are 6 free lowest servers to choose from, if not happy with that one, go another on the next week.

Also, linking is already decided so we will work with what we have now, arguing about merging is pointless. Even if you continue to argue about merging, the incentive to move people downward is still applicable, is just halving the number of servers from 6 to 3.

I have read about that your idea of turning existing wvw servers into pve, then getting people to choose a new wvw server. However, isn’t that itself being deluded? All that ever does is just giving the people a illusion that their server still exist but people know, they know their servers have been converted to PvE. It really is nothing more than a indirect way of deleting servers and creating new ones. You will still end up with issue of people complaining about communities and new servers being full due to the balancing rules set up for it.

No it is not an illusion, the server exists, you can still guest to that server for PvE as they currently do, keep the server community website and pre paid Teamspeak that their server PvX, PvE and WvW players use. This would still remain their " home base".

The most important thing on the WvW server selection menu for wvw server is showing players the current server population and the population cap so they will know ahead of time if they can fit their guild on that server so it is not split. THAT is one of the big issues currently with the server selection, player have no way of knowing if the server can hold 50 or 500 people. Disconnecting wvw from pve allows for only active population to be counted, players to know what they are getting themselves in to ahead of time in terms of population, and allows for the amount of WvW servers in game to be determined by WvW population. If a player doesn’t log in to WvW for a couple of weeks they should be dropped from the population and will have to reselect a new WvW server when they wish to play WvW , making it so there are always opening spaces. The problem currently is often they have inactive players clogging up server spaces that should be used by active players.

Golds are finite… do have any idea how much gets offered at times? These things are often paid for with gemcards, which are less than in game gold. HOWEVER, what you should understand is that low pop servers do not have the things that are most important to many WVW guilds.

• 1) large community guild support. In larger servers, you can call upon numerous other guilds to help out on ccoms and they respond and assist with whatever is needed. Guilds are not left doing all the work themselves and have many other players to help out with that, not just a few.

• 2) larger communities get paired up with bigger more intense fights, more enemies means less PvD. PvD= boring / uninstall.

• 3) Larger communities have more consistent funding from the many in the community. More players = more money to buy siege, food, utilities and to fill the warchest. More players to send you rams, claim keeps and set out feasts and trays when you need them means less money spent by each player to compete. EVEN if lower servers are offering you money to go, if they can’t keep funding you for years of playing it still isn’t worth it.

• 4) Larger communities have more experienced players. More players that are willing to change classes and builds to what is needed for the raids to have proper squad comp and you have more players on voice coms to be able to have a higher level of game play. Lower populated servers have more players not using voice comms, running proper builds and have weird ideas about how to play the game mode. They often lose/ get one pushed/ die on inc because they really do not know how to play the game well and often are too stubborn to learn. They often do not understand the differences between PvE/PvP/ WvW / roaming/ havoc/ and zerg builds and switch as needed according to what they are doing.

• 5)Larger communities have population at all hours so no matter when you come on to play, you have people to play with and against and can have fun. Low population servers turn into ghost towns. When you wake up in the middle of the night and cannot go back to sleep, or during breakfast. lunch or dinner.. you can always find a fight going on and can have good fights even when lower servers are completely dead at that time. Players do not just play at one time, many WvW players play at all times..

• 6)Larger communities have a larger pool of players to recruit from and grow your guild, low pop = less prospects to expand your guild.

• 7.)With linking, the low pop server is going to have a less stable community, as they are overwhelmed and dwarfed by the numbers from the servers they are linked with. The players on the lower server will become frustrated making friends and joining guilds with the higher pop servers then being ripped apart as players have already been posting is happening to their servers. Players don’t want to feel as though they are forced to hop from sever to server to server as they are doing with linking.
  The low pop servers are hardly even noticeable to the high servers they are linked with, the higher population server is not affected by the changing of the links as the low pop server is. For the high pop server, it is pretty indifferent if the low pop server is there or not really because they do not make much of an impact. With the low pop server though, the opposite is true. They are overwhelmed, and it is more like they are just hopping servers repeatedly now than if they are actually on their old server. Even if they changed the names, the big server would still be so dominating it isn’t going to matter.

The truth is many come to WvW to play with and against massive amounts of players, and low population is the opposite of that.

SkyShroud.2865:

Incentive to destack a server is really easy to achieve, just a matter if anet want or not. Simply by locking the 6 largest servers and give the bottom 6 lowest server complete free transfer while opening the rest of the servers with 500 or 1k gem transfer cost. Then check the population by weekly basis and adjust accordingly. You can achieve a very simple way to destack. The word “free” itself is powerful enough.

Why would " free" make people leave their server when they already have lower tier servers offering them gold to transfer on top of their transfer fees and they still don’t want to move? ( In addition to the fact many players already have multiple accounts on other severs)

You actually have it backwards. There is not enough population for all the servers left in NA. What needs to happen instead is to have less WvW servers. The only fair way to do this I think is for us to have PvE servers and WvW servers so we do not destroy communities.

What you have to understand is players move off servers because they are unhappy there. When they become unhappy with the server they are on, they have 2 choices, they can transfer or they can quit. If the only open servers only offer what already makes them unhappy ( sub par gameplay), they just leave instead. In the end, you will have ALL low pop servers due to players leaving all together due to unhappiness and the game will die. Players do not keep playing a game if it is making them unhappy.

Locking servers does not make players play where they are unhappy, they just leave instead.

Jim Hunter.6821:

That kittening horrible map is going to survive for the sole reason that so many people have been fear mongering that voting for it’s removal will mean anet won’t develop new maps.
Just implement 1 dbl, 2abl’s and be done with it. Don’t set some ridiculous 75% threshold. You know if you bring back dbl for 3 months you will fully kill WvW, don’t be kittening stupid for once.

Reverence.6915:

I don’t understand you people. Desert Borderlands danm near killed WvW and so many of you are voting to keep it in. Seems like people have really short term memories or something.

Merlinus.1765:

Reverence.6915:

I don’t understand you people. Desert Borderlands danm near killed WvW and so many of you are voting to keep it in. Seems like people have really short term memories or something.

You are absolutely correct. Alpine borderlands and map queue fixes are the two imminent and major fixes for WvW at the moment. It’s appalling how many people are voting to keep desert borderlands, especially since they nearly killed WvW altogether. What’s more disconcerting is that non-WvW players are looking at this poll without any regard to the population that actually enjoys this gameplay, and are none-the-wiser as to how it nearly wrecked the mechanic.

VOTE ALPINE TODAY! ALPINE ALL THE WAY!

Vova.2640:

Unreal.
DBL basically killed wvw… people finally started coming back… and now this…
I simply cannot understand why people are still voting in for them… they are beyond AWFUL.

Just wait until they rotate the DBLs back and see wvw population drop, then the same people that voted for DBL will start asking what happened and blaming anet.

GG.
You tried Anet, thank you.
But now I see this game mode deserves to die.

Noblehawk.8036:

I bet that most people who actually already left the game (like me) won’t come here to vote on this poll like I did… If I had not stumbled to this forum mostly accidentally to check whats going on couple weeks ago, I wouldn’t even know there was going to be a vote.

However as I’ve mentioned before – desert map and certain other hot updates like automatic upgrades and guild buff nerfs were the reason I bailed from the game. Seeing the current result makes me sad panda, but then again – there are other games to play. Wish u people all the best. Obviously Anet can’t please everyone.

Bury Your Deadgreen.2368:

DBL it is I guess! Finally have the motivation to go play another game

Loosmaster.8263:

Blobs means players!!! Have fun with your Deserted BL.

DeWolfe.2174:

Silverkey.2078:

I am not a hardcore WvW player, so my opinion may not be representative

I’m glad you pointed this out. That’s the issue with this is that anyone can vote. So a player that doesn’t even WvW at all or maybe WvW’s a couple hours a week get’s to force those of us that WvW 30+ hours a week to play the DBL. In small doses maybe that map is ok but, after many hours it sucks the life out of you. Now winning is going to be about who can endure that map the longest.

For having variety, functionally dissimilar maps are simply going to wreck match balancing. Again, if you don’t care about such things as winning each week, I can see why a player wouldn’t care about having balance.

Might as well remove the score….

Just a few of the posts on Pg1.
So even from the beginning of the poll, we had players telling us:

1) They only voted for the DBL due to Anet saying they will not get new maps if they do not. When they were only waiting on Alpine for new maps.

2) That players left the game over the DBL, came back for Alpine and will leave again when it returns.

3) They voted in polls where they felt they were not representative of the population.

4) That many noticed from different servers and tiers that the game mode almost died and credited the DBL for that.

5) That players who have hardly ever played WvW have as much say as players who play it 6+ hours a day.

So what happens if the DBL comes back and players stop playing again? They reduce servers further? ( lets be real here ..linking is due to population reduction because the game mode has been hemorrhaging players for quite some time and will continue to do so with proposed changes)

What is the actual game plan here if many players leave the game again due to this?

msalakka.4653:

1 hour per week? Rank 10? So in other words, these polls are a joke.

This caters to karmatrain zombies, nothing more. DBL is a lot easier for brainless karmatraining, which got already easier and more profitable. I am seeing a continuing degradation of skill among the increasing mass of brainless PvErs who follow a tag around for reward spam. Of course they will vote for DBLs to return since those are the maps they first experienced and karmatraining is not as easy on the Alpines since these maps actually get upgraded and defended. Even just 2 guys can hold off many times their number at Lake because they can see all 3 walls from one spot, so you can’t simply attack a wall or gate and send a guy or two to cata a wall on another side. Sparkplug has, what, 5 walls?

Not everyone who prefers the DBL is a blob mouthbreather, obviously. However the problem is that the results now are skewed by a large number of votes by people who will ditch this game mode the minute something with easier, less-effort-required means of acquiring loot and reward track progress comes along. What you are then left with are only the committed WvW players who are in it for the competitive play, and far too many of those would rather leave WvW than play on the DBL.

When my server got a free transfer for a tournament season, we got a massive influx of PvErs who just wanted to be, for free, on a server that would win its league. We breezed through those boring matches with an overpowering 24/7 force of skillspammers who then promptly vacated the game mode once the tournament was over. That left us in a tier higher than we in reality were built for and we kept getting our teeth kicked in for weeks before Glicko adjusted.

Of course every clown that gets this email will vote on it without the least bit of consideration for the longevity of the game mode.

But c’est la vie. When you refuse to learn from your mistakes, you’ll just continue repeating them.

Well when you only need WvW to be there to get dailies, gift of battle and nodes, they can’t let something like people killing them in a PvP mode get in the way, they should just remove PvP from it so they can get their nodes and dailies done faster.