Custodio.6134

I think some very important points (not gameplay-wise, but learning-wise) are missing here.

(Note:This section is especially focused on zerk-gameplay, as roaming and smallscale are kind of a thing you need to learn/gather expierience by yourself)

1. If you see a commander on the map, try joining their squad. If it is open, it is usually a public lead (or the commander forgot to close the squad) that usually sits in some kind of voice-chat with an organized Zerk.

2. in any case: just should ask if there is a public lead, and if there is one: where they organize. like i said in 1., there is surely a TeamSpeak/Discord etc where the server community is organizing.

3. (maybe one of the most important points): if you don´t understand the calls of the commander: ASK what that means. Commanders usually don´t assume to have new players. But, from my expierience, if you tell the commander that you are new, they usually will adapt their lead a bit, explain a lot more than usual and take that into account (for example, that you perhaps don´t have war gliding, or the warclaw unlocked).

4. look for WvW-builds for your class, and make sure that you at least understand what your "task" is with that respective class. WvW differs heavily from PvE/sPvP in terms of builds and gameplay. You can usually get them from the bigger guilds on your server. Also, like said above, you may want to adapt your gear more towards defense to begin with, because dying in a fight does more harm to your teammates than dealing too low damage.

5. If you think you are getting a bit into it and have fun: consider joining a WvW-Guild. Don´t be too afraid, because some guilds have a very progressive style, there are lots of guilds out there, some looking for progressive, expierienced players, and some that welcome every new player and teach them even the basics of basics. This is imo the best way to learn about WvW

6. Don´t throw siege by yourself. The commander can see the amount of supplies inside of his squad, and he will calculate with that amount. Random people throwing siege can screw that up if people build up siege that hasn´t been placed by the commander, screwing up the calculation of his available resources.

Well, i wouldn´t instantly dislike the idea of bringing some "kind of PvE"-mechanics into the WvW.

--> as long as it results in something the PvP-aspect from WvW is profiting from it.

There would be various ways of implementing something like that.

Just as an example: An event, that occurs frequently on a specific/all maps, that any party can participate in. The winning of the 3 contesting sides gets some sort of advantage for a set amount of time, and/or the losing side (for example, the team whose home-bl the event currently takes place) gets some sort of disadvantage for a set amount of time.

The result will be the following: in basis, this event can technically occur automated and the event itself could lead the path how it goes on. In this case, even unorganized players ("clouds") are able to hold the line in the event. Of course, the team with better organization will mostly be victorious in the event, so there should be some kind of "twist"/downside here. What i am thinking of is, that for being successful in the event, you will have to gather your forces on said place. The downside could be, that you will need to weaken your defenses on other points, opening possibilities for the team with fewer participants to flip upgraded structures.

There are multiple possible scenarios on how the players will actually organize.

* They form one or more organized squads in order to complete the event

* They form multiple squads, to complete the event while doing other actions on other weakened defenses at the same time

* they don´t form any squad at all, but still compete in the event

* they completely ignore the event (and giving up the objective), allowing to act on other locations as well

Of course: there should be some kind of reward in it, but that shouldnt affect the gameplay too much and/or not for a too long period of time.

Also, even though this should occur frequently, the times should be set very carefully (that´s the big problem with it, as servers play in different timezones and have different prime-/off-times). That would result in a very VERY difficult (if not impossible) task to balance and also requires a proper, working balancing system (especially population management) which tbh: doesn´t work at all in the current state of the game.

Note: this is just a very very basic of an idea and neither worked out or completely thought through. There are way more relevant factors than i stated there, making this very difficult to create, if not making it impossible to do. i am aware of that.

I have the same problem...

> I believe also with the current state of balance the game is in a worse, if not the WORST place for PvP right now... some classes/specs are good and some just aren't and it is even more noticeable as we've only had "Half the balance patch."

>

> We need actual content, and meat for the mode... hopefully they can deliver soon... (Doubtful, likely its on a table somewhere.)

About the point with some classes just not being good in WvW:

at least in roaming and guild-groups, every class has a place to be. Although they are restricted to certain builds, and some are valued higher than others.

In Zerking, this is correct. Not every spec is good in zerking, and some classes are even less effective than the worst possible build of others.

BUT: ANet already stated long ago and multiple times, that they have no intention to make every class 100% perfectly balanced and worth playing in every part of wvw (roaming/smallscale/Zerking...). Because, balancing every single spec of every single class, for every type of gameplay that work totally different, with skills that interact with each other so much... it is literally impossible to bring perfect balance to everyone. No matter what you do, if do the slightes change to one single skill/trait, it WILL influence other skills/traits as well. At that point, as a balancing team, you will have to abandon some types of gameplay in specific areas, in order to not break too much in other ones.

long story short: "perfect balance" is neither possible, nor intended to ever happen.

> @"Archangel.3508" said:

> I would say that the state of wvw is pretty dull nowadays. The guild groups stack and wait for cooldowns to recharge and then just all charge together, cast, restack and recharge... its not exactly rocket science and makes the experience pretty dull for everyone concerned. It is a direct response to the limited number of targets that can be hit by aoes - if the max number of targets is 5 and there are 50 in your zerg all bunching together, only another large group can hurt you, otherwise you are pretty much invincible and the whole game is no more than a procession.

This is not 100% true. The guild groups basically don´t have a much different gameplay than a public zerk. The big difference is the way guild-players play together in an internal raid, compared to "random" players playing together in a public squad. Guilds very often have a specific setup of their party, where every member always plays the same class with the same build. So, let´s say, you have 30ppl in a guild-squad, everyone of them:

- is expierienced in their class (most of the time)

-is in voice-chat

-plays together with the same people of their subgroup in almost every guild-raid

-knows exactly what build the other members play

Other differences between a "normal" and a guild-internal lead often depend on the commander too. The tactical decisions are made different as a guild. For examples:

-faster calls in voice (in public, commanders often leave som short time after calls for the players to react, this time often gets cut short or gets dropped completely in guild-groups)

-different tactics, especially on skill-usage (example: smoke-blasts, but you increase the resulting stealth duration by swapping weapons and skills while blasting to get more smoke-fields/blasts per player)

This is basically the difference between a guild squad and a public zerk (there is more ofc, but these are the ones i think that stand out). And guild fights most of the time prove, that quality>quantity. I have already seen (as well as done with my guild) stuff before, that you cannot even imagine to do with a "random" public squad.

Stuff like: buffing up-->stealth-->engaging 15vs50 and winning the fight.

yeah, i totally forgot that the drop-mechanic already exists in drizzlewood coast. that´s why i added my last comment.

Your suggestion with the animations also kinda fits well into that scenario. You can see from outside if airdrop is active (just like with the "airstrike" that already exists) and makes it look less weird with people spawning in the middle of nowhere (sky).

EDIT: of course, the point of making a guaranteed port into the ewp regardless of loading-screens becomes obsolete, if there is no waypoint anymore that can despawn. The game just has to handle it as a "teleport", rather than a "travel to a wp/ewp"

oh, my last point: ofc it is assuming, that an "actual" airship spawns with an ewp on it. just dropping people from the sky would maybe fix the "camping"-problem, but tbh: people just spawning in the sky will look weird.

Also, spawning an actual airship gives another tactical element: Just like the airship-tactics that already exists (you know, that one that bombs the whole area when pulled) you can see from very far away when it is active. That would be very useful information for people that randomly pass by that area (yeah, i know you can actually open the objective window and check)

oh, i just completely missed the suggestion with replacing the ewp-port with an airship-drop.

This mechanic sounds kinda interesting. It would ensure, that people will at least arrive alive near the objective, but the enemy is still able to react on that. I mean, yes. You cannot bomb the ewp directly anymore. BUT: the people will need to come down from the airship. This is actually a much bigger distance to cover, and actually gives some additional options to react to the ewp.

there are some important points that have to be considered, and that may not be easy to decide how to do it:

* Distance of the airship from the gound: this also determines the way, porting players can travel away, before being in range to get hit by ranged-attacks/ballistas.

* Position of the airship: where does it actually spawn? also here again: what points in the objective are you able to reach from the airship? inner ring? outer ring? even gliding completely outside the objective? This would need very careful decisions

* granted "parachute"-Skill for players, that have not skilled wargliding yet.

* should the airship just spawn when ewp is pulled? this would again create problems with long loading screens.

So, assuming the airship is always there, you would need to prevent people from camping up there (essentially, it spawns only when ewp is pulled, but takes a reasonable amount of time to despawn, in order to "catch" people with late port and/or long loading screen times). This timeframe must be taken into account.

about the automatic message:

this is something i kind of disaggree with. The players still can do that, if they don´t, well bad luck. That is not the system´s fault, it´s the players fault. Not a mechanic that is needed imo, because the system should not fix any mistakes made by players.

About restricting the activating of EWP to contested-state of the objective: this is one good point i totally aggree with. Although it doesn´t prevent people from pulling ewp as troll, it reduces the "risk" of a troll doing that. In the end, if the objective is in "attacked-state", a troll can still pull it. This is actually a thing, only the claiming guild can prevent, at least if there are people of the respective guild on the map (deactivating public tactics-usage and the open it back up if they leave).

About additional/extended invul after porting: i don´t think it is necessary. At first: an ewp that is pulled that late (when the enemy is already in the inner area and able to bomb the ewp) should not grant an additional advantage (well, it already does with double-port, but this is enough. no additional buff needed here imo). It is a tactical decision when to pull ewp (opinions on that are very different from player to player). Just to tell you what i think: an EWP should be pulled, if the enemy is already opening the inner gate/wall, but has not breached in yet. If they are able to bomb it, it is already way too late. Exception: you already have been defending inside, but got wiped out. Then, ofc it is worth pulling ewp although the enemy is in the inner ring.

About the idea to "guarantee" a port into the ewp: this is a very good suggestion. It would ensure, that everyone that uses it, can at least port once to it. It would negate disadvantages coming from lower-spec PC´s and/or bad connection (loading screens can sometimes be ridiculous) while not granting any overpowered advantages. In some cases, players with long loading screens can still end up dying, because the enemy either bombs the ewp, or the positioning of enemy and allied players changed for a disadvantage of the porting player that comes in late.

> @"Inoki.6048" said:

> The company continues to show neglect towards its player base for whom likely the only reason to stick around is because there aren't many games with a similar combat system

This is sadly true. I think ANet would care (at least a bit) more about WvW, if they would have to beat another company in competion with that specific game mode. WvW is unique to GW2, so far. And even if players (like me) that heavily enjoy playing WvW would consider moving to another game with compareable mechanics, they just can´t, because GW2 is, until now, the only MMO that supports such a game mode. The only concurring game i can (kind of) see on the horizon could be amazon´s "New World", but even that doesn´t seem to be that possible alternative to WvW as it looked like in the first articles i read when it was announced.

But unless ANet doesn´t invest more time and interest into WvW, we won´t see much or faster improvement here.

> @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:

> @"Custodio.6134"

> acutally as wrong as can be. YOU have the wrong mindset. you fight for a aim (win ppt) which gives u l i t e r a l l y / n o t h i n g .. and u don't even realize...?

what if i told you, that the most satisfying thing on WvW is successfully wiping an enemy zerk/guild or capturing an upgraded objective is what i like most? I still care about winning a matchup, and also dislike losing it, but that´s not the element that is most important to me with the currently available rewards. Sure, i also dislike that you technically don´t get anything for winning a matchup, but that doesn´t mean that i don´t care about it.

> you don't fight as a team with the whole server, not at all. i realized that the eight past months, when i ran with a fighting guild. that's real teamfighting, but even there u could only count on like few hands full of players outside your 20 man squad..

even if you don´t fight "as a team" (considering a team to be containing every player of the server-link) you still are part of the same side of the matchup (red/blue/green). And within these teams, there are different "organizations", where each one play a different part. Zerk, Guilds, smallscale groups and solo roamers. Everyone contributes to the side of the matchup, in a different way.

> most random players, which make by now usually 90% of the server population, just play uncoordinated, uninformed and selfish. 80% of my deathcount is dying while trying to save others' booty at silly and overly ballsy engages on their parts; "mimimi i don't want to play meta"

this is, to some extent, sadly true, and also the reason why i point out the "mindset" for playing WvWvW. But you cannot completely force a player to get into the squad+voice and play specific builds directly. The only thing you can do as commander is to close the squad and invite people that are at least in voice. But that´s the commander´s decision. And don´t complain about dying while trying to save them because of their stupid actions. Just, dont save them. You will not die, and the other one may learn a lesson to not do that stupid actions (maybe, maybe not, that´s up to that player, not you). Most of the time, rezzing a player that made a stupid mistake even deals more damage to you (or the zerk) than actually helping, so in this regard you should know better and just not do it.

> in opentags, these people don't understand when to bomb, when to sustain, when to dodge, when to push and cleave, when to "leave it for now" (necessary draw back and gather up since freaking cooldowns got way longer time to cd... and ppl play as if that would not be a thing)

> and you really talk about TEAMPLAY?

this is the problem of individual players, not WvW itself. And, to repeat myself, this is a player-created issue that is getting worse over time. It doesn´t even take very much effort to at least look for a class build and join the commander in voice. But when i look at how many players technically are playing WvW (based on player numbers i can roughly see because of map queues) and how many players are actually interested and want to get better (based on players that are either in a progressive WvW-Guild, or joining organized training events for classes and mechanics) this numbers have heavily dropped over time. Although there still are a lot of new players that join WvW for the first time. And it is still a fact, that almost every organized zerk has at least one or two guilds as core part (in most cases at least the guild members of the commander, as most, not all, public commanders are also guild players).

> the commanders who only use teamspeak and not discord are even dinosaurs tbh. discord is way better, more modern. barely anyone even owns teamspeak anymore i think.

that is a thing of preference and resources. And also a matter of what you actually want to use it for. TeamSpeak is a bit more consistent regarding voice quality, while discord is superior in text-based matters. Both have their advantages and downsides. And ofc you barely know people that own a TS-server, because there is no need of much servers, especially for GW2-WvW (as the servers are usually either hosted and paid by a single person, or the community, for everyone on the respective WvW-Server).

oh, and yes, edge of the mists is dead, because it is not worth anything anymore. you get no pips, less reward track progress, while gaining nothing super-special for the main WvW-Borders (besides some supplies for your home-border). The map is extremely huge, without access to warclaw and gliding. It has become (or maybe, always has been) an overflow-map where players can play wvw while waiting in the queue for the main borders. And yes, WvW is quite low in amount of players compared to PvE, but this is nothing special. PvP-Modes in MMO´s generally have less players than PvE. And also: Server populations and map player amounts are limited. Theoretically, if every player of every server would try to join WvW, all together, most of them will be stuck in queue. Because there is not enough space on the maps to fit them in. This is also a matter of player balancing and server performance. Especially the servers already cannot keep up when 3 full squads fight each other, which results in heavy lags, that sometimes can occur everywhere on the map, even if no players are directly around.

> @"Luthan.5236" said:

> There seems to exist new stuff that got released between 2014 and 2019 which is barely used. (Those shield generators. Barely saw them used.)

Well, Using shield-gens is very, very situational. It depends not only on what enemy siege is present, but also on how much siege (arrow carts, trebs and catas) has been built from the enemy, how many players you have in your squad and how the class distribution in your squad looks like. For example: if your squad is quite low on players overall, but your sustain is superior (because you have many heal-firebrands and heal-auramancers) it could be more cost-efficient to not build a shield-gen, because you can quite easy outsustain the damage coming from enemy siege. These mats, not used on shield-gens can then be used to place an additional 1 or 2 rams/catas, speeding up damaging the wall/gate. It´s a matter of efficiency, not purpose and as i said, very situational.

> And in general I didn't notice that many sieges and player chat activity. I remember back then when lord room in the keep and the walls were full of siege to defend. There seem to be "just a few" sieges that get placed.

This is a generic issue commanders have. Communication is the key, but it is getting worse and worse. Also, the main communication is made via teamspeak/discord voice chat because of multiple reasons (gonna go deeper in your next point). Throwing siege to defend is a total player issue. I remember these times too, where players put down defensive siege and even set a reminder for resetting the timer so it doesn´t despawn. But also, nowadays it is not that much important anymore, because blueprints have become extremely cheap (you get them from chests en masse), as long as you don´t use guild-blueprints. You don´t need to save up blueprints anymore, because you just collect so much of it over time.

> Commander using mainly teamspeak ... so I guess it is not very appealing to new players if they come to join and the chat is pretty empty.

This point may be true, but there are various reasons why this is done. Communication is the key, and the faster intel gets submitted, the better the players can react. For zergfights: just try to follow a commander tag without hearing him in voice. You will not be able to be permanently sticky to your commander, no matter how expierienced you are. Commanders are highly limited in options, if they don´t use voice (simple example: try to type in chat, while fighting an enemy zerg, without dying. it´s impossible). You can react way faster to changes of situations, because in a fight, you will barely read chat, as there are many other, more important things you have to focus on.

> I might visit there every now and then for achievements, some fights and loot collecting. But yeah ... points and rankings of the servers - I don't care.

This is the definition of having a wrong mindset in WvW. WvW is a highly competetive mode by definition (btw: one defining part of competetive gaming is ranking and/or a matchmaking system). You are fighting against others as a team, in order to win against them and achieve a higher ranking in a ladder. Even if you try to lose a certain match on purpose, this is most of the time a tactical decision and so part of competetive gaming.

> I noticed it is still fun to defend and attack keeps. Especially if the zergs are only medium sized (which seems normal during weekday because of the low population). But I don't really care about upgrading or defending if the structure is upgraded to a higher level. It might get lost anyways during the night. (But that was a problem that was already the same back then years ago I think. Though I liked the system with paying to upgrade a bit more. Makes you wanna defend it harder if someone paid for the upgrade.)

Again: this is the wrong mindset for playing in a competetive game mode. Why would you play a PvP game mode, if you don´t want to win?

> Strategy: Always the same (which gets boring): Super quickly spam some superior/guild sieges to try moving in quickly while the enemy is away - to cap. Besides the home borderland (seems to be most popular map) and EB the own/close keeps it is just that. Only when it comes ot that keep people defended. At least on my server. (Underworld ... atm linked with Drakkar Lake.)

This depends on the commander and to some extend on your server, linking, enemy, current score, upcoming matchups etc. and cannot be used to generalize the WvW. Also, the META (= most efficient tactics available) is defining what happens in WvW (especially how zergfights work).

> I think the maps could profilt from a bit more side events. Acid rain storm or super monster attacking the keeps to destroy the walls a bit - to get players to react and split up. (Only real think when you are in trouble is when both other sides attack you at the same time. Then it gets interesting a bit.)

This element is already implemented in another way. Passive and Active tactics, provided by guilds. Also: the majority of dedicated WvW-Main-Players, dislikes most of the already existing parts of PvE. Except for Karma farming, these events are already ingored anyway. And, many have a mindset like this: "if i want to play WvW, or get something in WvW, i wanna earn it in WvW too. Why should i do something PvE-related in a PvP-Mode?".

Well, it is actually nice to hear, that at least Alliances did not get cancelled (yet).

But how does the "history" about alliances look like right now?

Everyone wished for alliance system for a long time

it took even longer to be annouced it will come

and even even longer to finally get a grasp of the concept

but what we still don´t know:

What will be the timespan for a release? (or at least, when should we expect the transision to the new system?)

how far is development even progressed?

which elements of the system are actually complete?

which ones are in development? for which of those has development even begun and which ones haven´t even been touched yet?

how many years should we wait? (again)

ANet has let us (the WvW-Community) down so long and so many times now, that the trust in the development team is already almost gone. And by development team i mean everyone that just comes in touch with the mode "WvWvW" including for example: Balancing team, programmers for backend and server structure/maintenance, Tech Support etc.

If we would even know how far development of alliances is progressed (maybe not in detail, but at least the most important steps) we could maybe start believing in you. But from User-Side, we currently see: nothing.

no final design, no update on progress, nothing that can make us believe ANet tells the truth.

completely left aside all the other problems WvW currently has in general (Server Performance, Client Performance etc)

>Is it fair to say the balance patches are the 'content' for wvw?

Absolutely no. Balancing in a competetive game/mode is mandatory for healthy gameplay. Content is anything that goes beyond what is absolutely necessary.

For example: no downstate-event or call of war could be considered "content", although it is still basically nothing compared to what is considered "content" in PvE.

The problem is: how do you even want to create more content for a game mode, that is focused on competetive play?

Let´s move away from Guild Wars 2 a bit, comparing on how other games deliver content. Let´s just take League of Legends as an example. A new champion released is kind of content, that also will result in a change of game balance and meta. But the "normal" game mode itself (5v5´s on Summoners Rift or ARAM´s) doesnt change. But this game uses rotating game modes and usually missions related to them or new champion releases to create content. They frequently add (or at least re-use rebalanced) new game-modes with new interpretations of the game mechanics. For example, currently Nexus Blitz is live on the servers, that is basically an altered map based on the removed 3v3-map, using new mechanics (double Junglers) alongside of old known stuff or things that got removed in the past (old items basically). Within this game mode, they also introduced new mechanics to the gameplay (different events happening on the map, with the outcome changing advantages for the winning team either temporary or permanently). THIS is content.

Here comes the problem: how do you want to do something similar in Guild Wars 2 WvW? You can´t just adapt the way content gets delivered in other games, because GW2-WvW works totally different.

Now, my opinion on that: I don´t really think WvW needs more content in its current state. There are bigger issues to address:

Server stability

Client stability

Balancing (both, player population and classes)

short- and long-term rewards, that are heavily focused on WvW

just to name a few

well, if you want to keep your queue-placement or your space on the map when changing characters, there is obviously one thing that must get noticed:

You should only keep your place in queue/map if you stay online (basically in character select). The other problem that comes with that: even if you only keep your place when staying online, people could just afk in character select to keep their queue place. So there definitely needs to be a quite short amount of time granted to you for swiching characters/relogging when dc´d etc. Either way, this will result in queue times getting longer, because dc´d players (including the case that someones internet just died and the player cannot reconnect to the game) will block a place in the queue.

Although the idea of a "character locker" on the map, letting you switch your character without leaving the map or going back to character select sounds nice, i doubt that this would be easy to implement. Yes, we are now able to change our gear and build templates on the fly, but i guess changing a whole character could prove more complicated to implement than you might think.

well, this idea has both, advantages and downsides. How you actually think about it depends on your attitude (how you prefer to think about WvW as a whole).

IF you think about it being a mode, where you can improve yourself by gear, or even expect it to get rewarded with gear, you will probably will expierience this as a downside.

IF you think about the mode as a competetive mode, where your GAMEPLAY decides over victory or defeat, you will probably like the idea of everyone having the same basis in terms of gear.

I personally think of it as a highly competetive mode, where gameplay/"skill" should be the deciding factor about victory or defeat, not the quality of gear used. In this scenario, in a "perfect" fight, meaning with even numbers, identical perfect squad-compilation and "equalized" gear, the side that plays better will win because you cannot compensate "bad gameplay" with higher quality gear. Also: if the equipment/stat-system from sPvP would be used in WvW, it would make getting into the mode a bit easier for new players (because they won´t have to worry about their gear or build).

The downside of this: if you are a player, that doesn´t play anything else besides WvW, gear rewards won´t matter to you anymore (because it becomes irrelevant in WvW and you won´t have any use for gear you possibly get from rewards). So, if you want to "equalize" all the gear for everyone in WvW, you would need some kind of reward, that compensates at least the loss of currently existing gear advantage (for example people that explicitly crafted ascended/legendary gear for use in WvW only). Finding something that fits in here would be difficult because: gear doesnt matter anymore, so materials and loot lose value in WvW; map currencies lose value in WvW as you don´t need them anymore to buy WvW-relevant gear; legendaries lose value in WvW as the big advantages of higher stats that can be changed on the fly get lost in the system.

Well, as ANet already stated, this is a temporary test, and not even close to a solution. It is more like, putting a band-aid on a cut-off hand. It reduces the symptoms (lag/skill-lag) but does not fix the initial problem(s) causing this behaviour.

There are multiple ways to adress these kind of problems (at least by the thinking of an end-user without programming/server-administration- or any related knowledge). To name a few:

improving the servers overall (processing-power, internet-connection etc)

improving the client (code-optimization, reduction of needed traffic etc)

while reducing the maximum player-count per map, add a new (or maybe multiple new) map(s) in WvW where the people can split up. this would perhaps help for both, reducing server-lags while lowering the queues (if the maps are properly designed and worth playing the same as playing the current borders/ebg).

make Edge of the Mists really worth playing again. This may need a full redesign of EotM though, but some important points to consider in this process would be (imo):

Full PIPs in EotM,

a revamp of the map, to make use of the Warclaw, perhaps gliding too

a better way EotM influences the Mist War other than just dropping some supplies to the borderlands

also: as players we don´t really know how the employees from ANet, that are working on all game-related stuff, (especially WvW) obtain their information of what is going on in WvW. But, as these issues are existing for YEARS now, i conclude they don´t really play the game/mode they are working on very often and/or are understaffed.

Additionally, although this might be a bit off-topic, i consider "WvW-Performance" being more than just lags. The problems are much more profound in the Servers and the Client itself. The Lag-Issues (Rubberbanding and Skill-Lags) are a Server-Sided issue. But the other huge issue is the Client-Performance and Hardware-Utilization. The Game doesn´t even close take advantage of current hardware. This is a state, that already exists since release. I wonder why it took ANet so much time to finally take action.

My assumption: ANet didn´t (or perhaps still doesn´t) really care for the game-mode we (as the people playing WvW as their main game-mode) love so much. And still we play WvW, perhaps because there is no real alternative game ppl could consider to leave GW2 for. And the latter is both, a huge advantage and at the same time a huge risk ANet is taking.

So basically, you gonna neglect the WvW-focused community. Again.

> Chronomancer Shatter Skills: Chronomancer shatter skills can now be activated without clones, and the shatter effect also occurs at the mesmer's location.

finally you re-enabled Chrono-Shatter-Skills in Zergfights. This has been one of the two biggest mistakes (imo) that were made to Mesmer in WvW ever. Well, the other main supportive Skills (esp. Signet of Inspiration) are still basically dead, but now we have at elast a chance to use our specialization-specific mechanic in Zergfights again...

> Shade Skills: These have been changed back to triggering at both the necromancer's location and their shade locations with each use.

so what about the target cap? will this also get changed aligning with the revert? if not, then you basically doubled the amount of targets getting hit in a push, meaning almost double the shade-spike-damage in melee-combat compared to before the change. Assuming the local shade on the necro counts to a separate target cap other than the placed shade, now every player can be hit by both, local and placed shade, not only doubling the potential damage dealt, but also doubling the corrupts and the from this resulting condition-damage afterwards. This would be the beginning to revert the original intended changes to boon-spam vs corrupt-spam you originally wanted to break down (what has been a serious issue over a very long time and imo a good point to begin with)...

Also, this patch looks like ANet wants to revert their initial idea of splitting WvW-/PvP-/PvE-Balance, as this patch overlaps in many points over all 3 game-modes.

This would be the WORST idea and bring back all the old problems that got started to be adressed and fixed in the past.

**You CANNOT balance WvW the same way as PvP, and even less like PvE.** Especially PvE and PvP are entirely different from WvW. Not just a bit, the difference is that huge, that you could call WvW a total different game, that is just using Races and Classes that are coincidentally also present in the rest of the game.

I think one serious issue when it comes to WvW-Balance is the core mindset on how ANet tries to achieve balance.

WvW is a competetive PvP-Game-Mode, with 3 main playstyles that must be taken into account.

--> Roaming (solo-/small groups)

--> Smallscale (organized medium-sized groups and/or Guild groups)

--> Zerging (big scale fights, that also holds most of the WvW-Players in terms of numbers)

Just due to the sheer numbers of players, Zerging is the largest playstyle in WvW. So serving the biggest playerbase in one mode should be the top priority in terms of balance. Due to the different types of play, you cannot balance those three out even, this is technically impossible. If you achieve balance in one area, it is almost guaranteed to break balance at another point; and this cannot be avoided. So rather than trying to even out everything (which is impossible) you should better try to balance out the biggest part of the game in terms of numbers. and this is zerging. Players will always find a way to abuse mechanics and balancing and at this point, everyone that doesnt do that will start crying about the strength of certain builds and how weak their own builds are.

I really suggest (honestly, i know it sounds rude, stupid and foolish) that **everyone**, that is involved in WvW balance, MUST be an active, regular player in WvW and/or be in close contact to various progressive WvW-Guilds. Nobody knows the state of the game better, than the progressive players, especially the progressive guilds. I have seen ArenaNet livestreams in WvW in the past and oh my god, those players had no clue what they were doing. And i really hope, those ones are not in a position to consider/discuss/decide any changes to WvW balance. The way how WvW changes, how balance is made, how bugs get fixed (or, not fixed for ages), how the game performance in wvw is and what often ridiculous balance-changes are made creates an image that says:

"we have no idea what we are doing"

Well, performance-wise the game in its current state is horribly outdated. Even with troubleshooting and trying out everything the support offered me so far, there is no chance to get an acceptable performance in mid- to large-scale fights (talking about 20vs20 or more; obviously the more players involved the worse performance gets).

Intel i7-7700K

RTX 2060 OC

16 GB RAM

win10 64-bit

troubleshooting with support included nearly everything, from disabling every other program other than absolutely essential programs (basically drivers), running as admin, changing PhysX-Processor to GPU, setting hardware-priority to performance, using a new, fresh User-Account on the pc with everything other than essentials disabled.

The result: no noticable increase in FPS.

One of the points that absolutely ruins the feeling about all the troubleshooting is, that the Hardware is not even close to be fully utilized (average of 50% CPU-Usage, peaking at 55% and average of 2% GPU-Usage, peaking at 16%). Note, that these Peak-Values are usually just for split-seconds, not over an at least noticable time.

Also to note: the Game Settings itself are super-low, almost all looks-improving options are either low or disabled, standard player models are active for everyone.

Another expierience i recently made in our raids: the performance of the game varies heavily from player to player. In one fight at Stonemist Castle, our raidlead encountered a freeze frame, while i got around 4 FPS and at the same time, another player kept at least 20 FPS.

This may be kind of okay and acceptable, maybe even not be too noticable at all in PvE/Open World Events, but in a competetive-orientated mode Like WvW this is a huge, unnecessary disadvantage for everyone that gets the problems, although the hardware should provide more than enough power to handle such situations regarding FPS.

Yes, there are other things that need to be handled in the game too (for example the Class and Skill balancing in WvW, that is currently kinda adressed, as well as Player balancing, talking about the myth of the alliance-system)

BUT: what use is it to us if the game is perfectly balanced, but we are unable to play it in an acceptable way? In this context, an acceptable way would be to have at least constant 35-30 FPS in every fight (on an average gaming pc), without having the server lag too hard. Ofc i am aware, that WvW-fights are an extreme situation, where a high amount of players meet, spamming skills in an extreme. But the current state of overall performance of the game is far from being able to provide fair conditions to the majority of players. Yes, you cannot optimize the game to a state where everyone gets the same performance-wise conditions, but at least a good average should be absolutely possible, considering performance of current mid-range hardware and the age of the game.

fun fact (just for the meme, not necessarily serious comment): the game has an option to enable 144Hz refresh rate. Seems like a useless option at this point.

yes, yes, and again: YES! this will especially save a lot of time for WvW-Players to switch classes and their equipment. It already costs a lot of time to even build the legendary armor for each armor class, so i guess many people won´t build that armor for every character. so switching the pieces into an account-wide armory is a very welcoming feature. but i heavily suggest to separate the runes, sigills and infusions inside the armory, so each character can choose which set exactly want to use, without always throwing the upgrades from character to character when moving the gear around. So, at least everything in the armory should be saved per character, and everything that is put into an account-wide equipment-set should be stored in the armory, including the current stat-configuration for each character. also, just as it has been said before: the skin configuration should also be stored, in best case without using transmutes to keep the unique look for each character.

> @"Faenar.8036" said:

> True. Now even on Border maps server sometimes lag with only 2-blob fighting. No problem with my internet connection, 1111111-fighting works perfectly. Typical server-side problem, any other skills than the first one are activated after 3 or more seconds, sometimes not activated at all. I can literally feel on the gamespeed, if there are big zergs on map, of if a map is not very much populated. Not to mention teleporting or suddenly stopping Dolyaks, and other server-calculated game mechanics.

>

> //edit: By the way, I never experience these lags in any PvE maps, only in WvW maps.

true. if i think of the big pve-events (talking about Tequatl for example) there are no problems. and usually, in tequatl there are at least 3 full squads fighting the same boss, spamming skills, and i cannot remember any bossfight there where i had any lags. So, it seems that theoretically the game/servers could be able to handle that load in PvE, but not even close in WvW. This is even more frustrating for people (like me) that are very dedicated in WvW (it´s literally the only mode i play in GW2), totally ruining their expierience. WvW-players are already in a position, where they feel disadvantaged compared to all other players (in terms of balancing, game mode development etc), and issues like lag (especially if the seem to not hit everyone, but your own server alone; note: that´s heavily subjective) or other problems that have a negative impact on the gameplay that the player cannot do anything about discourages the players from actually playing the game.

Also, regarding the Server-Performance in terms of latency, this is nothing that you could consider as "surprising", as ANet was fully aware that the server-population on every matchup will heavily increase as they closed a whole Tier.

yeah, heavy lags in WvW are a heavy issue at the moment. Especially at reset (well, i guess that´s normal, but currently way more extreme than usual) you sometimes cannot use a single skill infight due to lag. Just right now, our commander for public lead, and most of our public Zerg just quit the game because it´s literally unplayable and is not even close to being fun playing. Also, just as reminder: a whole Tier got closed, and the player population has increased quite heavy on every server-link, resulting on even more players on one map than before; which leads us to even more lags. Unless ANet will upgrade their Potato-Servers and bamboo-connections, this will never get improved. This sadly is not an issue, that players can prevent, it´s a thing ANet has to take action. This is something that is more than overdue to get improved, not an issue that recently came up. It has been this ways since release, but is getting worse and worse in the last few months.

Soo, at least it is nice to see that ArenaNet has plans to address multiple targets and in which order and when this should happen. But: i don´t think the Warclaw balance is something to have priority because there are way more issues to fix and information to give out that are more important than "just" the warclaw balance.

Speaking of the all-time mentioned feature, that has been announced years ago and that we still have nearly zero information about:

--> World Restructuring aka Alliance-System!!!

what we know so far is

-it is in development

yeah, i think that´s it.

what we don´t know is:

-how far is the development?

-is it actually in active development or is it just on hold atm?

-what are the plans for the design of the system? how is it thought to work?

-when can we start looking forward for it to actually be implemented?

-how will the transition to the system work?

-and many more questions that come up with the answers to the just mentioned points?