How is WvW nowadays?

[Luthan.5236]

Are there any players that played since back then release 2012? How do you like the WvW nowadays compared to back then?

 

I'm just curious. Personally I played from 2012 release until end 2013. Didn't play GW2 2014-2019. And with WvW I only started again recently - just to unlock the mount. It seems WvW is the game mode with the lowest amount of players. (I mean ... if they even had to link 2 servers and on Friday/reset there is barely any queue a few hours after the reset.)

 

There seems to exist new stuff that got released between 2014 and 2019 which is barely used. (Those shield generators. Barely saw them used.) Edge of the Mists map seems not that populated and the JP (Obsidian Sanctum) also is pretty empty often.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Imo it is not a game mode that can attract new players. Just the experienced ones that like it ... trying to keep it alive.

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. 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.)

 

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.)

 

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.)

 

So - what do the other players think? Players that played back then and that are playing now? (Especially the ones that also experienced WvW from 2014-2019 where I did not play.) And other big changes where the situation had been different in those years? Or just a gradually decreasing and less motivated playerbase with besides that everything staying the same?

[Custodio.6134]

> @"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?".

 

[Custodio.6134]

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.

[K THEN.5162]

I long for the days when the Warclaw **WASN'T** in WvW. The terrible handling of its release with all the bugs/exploits, difficulty to dismount from the free 10k barrier and the snowball advantage it granted to the larger group left a sour taste in my mouth and I have questioned Anet's competence ever since.

 

_Also they recently took away the one thing I liked about the mount which was the insta stomp on downed people because fuck actually having counters to the broken rez mechanic_

[ledernierrempart.6871]

i hope you played in WvW when the no downstaste event was live last week. it sure was a breath of fresh air (and a nightmare for some). but at least it did change significantly battles outcome.

 

i'll talk first about the maps, then about the "major" features that got implemented until now (i may forgot some of them). finally about the state of WvW now compared to 2013-2014.

 

 

_**1/ the maps:**_

**obsidian sanctuary:**

now empty map.

is used as a hub to get all the WvW merchants in one place.

no more duels. no more GvG. (or too rare to ever bump into one randomly)

jumping puzzle dark zone torches are now bugged as they don't light anything except the fireplace alongside the wall.

the arena they created (which was perfect for GvG) never got any more updates. sadly guild halls didn't used an arena like this.

 

**edge of the mist:**

now empty map.

loot and XP must have been nerfed too much. and as WvW overall population is declining only new players sometimes get lost in this map while discovering it.

there is now an arena with merchants and crafting areas you can access with a gem pass. only area where you can duel anyone with WvW balance.

i heard there was some GvG taking place there. never bought the pass anyway so i can't tell.

 

**desert borderland:**

beautifull map. but too big. a blast to explore and get lost in but not very well tailored for competitive play.

was awefull at launch with HOT. so much that arenanet had to temporary remove the map to make some adjustement. (like removing the door killer event in the middle of the map, removing giant barricade that stopped players from roaming and probably other stuff i am not aware of or do not remember)

right now is the least played map, always get queued last unless you are RED and have to defend your home.

(probably because it takes more time to get back to fight and you can easily get lost in a maze and not see the enemy while they are just next to you. also not alot of plains which players seems to favour over canyons. tho when 2 enormous bus fight it can get really epic because of the unique landscape)

 

**alpine borderland:**

they wanted to replace the alpine borderland with the desert one but that backfired.

so we have the exact alpine borderland we had for years (the version with ruins, not the one with the island).

so you can expect the same things from back then on that map.

the only new stuff they added was a hidden success involving cats in the jumping puzzle for a mini.

(spiders can still contest the south camp -.-)

 

**eternal battleground**

as always the most populated map at all time.

same old map with ogrewatch cut area completely changed.

airship bombardment tactic for stone mist castle is epic to look at but not very effective. just a bunch of airship going around stone mist castle for a few seconds bombarding the zone to bump any enemy it touch... it does add to the immersion tho.

 

 

_**2/major feature and content**_

**events:**

we had some few events on summer time where arenanet could test some things out. like the ability to repair siege, build canons anywhere, golem spam event(didn't participated in this one), no downstate and maybe some more i don't remember,...

only no downstate came back again. it was very fun but also quite controversial ill speak about it at the end.

 

**rally bot nerf:**

only one player will be revived when downed if an enemy player dies instead of 5.

good change. not enough in my opinion but better than nothing.

also rally bot has been disabled for sentinels and some camp mobs (if my memories is right.)

you can still get rally bot by destroying siege...

 

**glider and territory:**

the best major update they made until now. it made navigating through desert borderland so much better and added a few cool possibilities.

you can now use a glider when you are in your own territory. territory are just zone that show off what structure you possess in WvW.

sadly territories didn't got any more use other than gliding area restriction.

 

**mounts:**

they made a unique mount specifically for WvW. it gives any build the ability to run fast on long travel without the need to swiftness spam.

but with them you can easily run away or catch an enemy in fight, unable to activate the mount.

you could auto stomp with the mount attack but they got rid of that as too many people were complaining about it...

there is a mount ability to make your target fall off their mount. it is neat but has a big CD.

only thieves can escape mounts now making it hard for any other class to escape from it with a swarm of mounted players are coming for you and you are in battle.

the only positive thing about them is the move speed (that they nerfed because it was unfair for players without a mount.)

but i don't know if i like them or not.

 

**sentinels:**

do not rally bot anymore.

can cast a reveal spell around it to reveal stealthed foes.

highlight any close enemy on the minimap with orange dots.

 

**overall CC and damage nerf:**

all damaging ability of all class got a damage nerf of around 33%.

any CC does 2 digit damage now.

nearly all passive ability you got from the archetype that granted stab or invulnerability got a 300s CD increase.

 

**tactics:**

bonus weapons and fort/camps abilities a guild can create to use in WvW. some of them can change the tide of a battle. even make a fort walls and doors temporarly undestroyable.

the most used ones are:

the radar ballon which reveal any nearby stealthed enemy and mark all ofes around the fort like a snetinel does.

the chill drones which apply chill to any foes inside and outside the fort for a limited time.

the dragon banner. a banner that grant a breakbar to its holder and powerfull AOE buff and damage ability.

the wall and door invulnerability.

the emergency TP.

and the stone mist airship bombardment (which is more impressive to look at than effective)

there is more (like driving a charr minitank or other banners, invulnerable dolyack, defensive auto crossbow on doors and stuff) but they are rarely used.

 

 

_**3/state of WvW:**_

overall WvW has less players. still enough on most server or fusionned servers to make at least a queue on EB on prime time.

less fighting guilds than before. alot of past GvG guilds disapeared.

population is still a problem and kinda unbalanced most matchup.

you will still get one server as the first and staying at that position until the end of the week.

same goes for the 2nd and 3rd place. no WvW tournament. winning or loosing still doesn't mean anything.

 

balance aside, the meta isn't funny. hordes of AOE spam necro and bunker guards with a boon spam meta. i call it the boonball. (it was made popular with HOT mesmer boonshare but got nerfed so guards replaced mesmer.)

 

as for classes, mesmer is hardly played anymore. ranger became usefull. engineer became op, warrior became average and elem is a wierd spot.

there is still unlikeable roaming guild insulting everyone around but less than before as roaming is nearly dead. most players run in bus nowerdays and it is very very very hard to find duel partners compared to before where you would stumble upon one at every corner.

 

the overall damage nerf make it harder to kill a downed player with dps. also the bunker meta isn't helping with ountumbered. downing someone in a group often mean him getting revived fast.

no downstate event fixed some of those problems (like making outnumbered fights possible and rewarded experienced players for their effort by being able to win against the odd of 1v5 scenarios.) but created new ones. (no duels, no finisher animation,less new player friendly, promoted glass canon builds and ganks... but most of them are just players whining because they can't be carried away by their mates anymore but that's just my opinion. go and check those threads about no downstate event to get more info. the event is over anyway and i doubt anrenanet will use their ressources for balancing WvW around a new gamechanging feature like no donwstate.)

 

as for arenanet, there is atm no one working on WvW full time. its mostly being worked on by one or a few people on their free work time when they don't have to work on some PvE feature. it was and still is the least updated gamemode. so much that if you come back to WvW now you will feel as like nothing has really changed apart from some cool gliding, mounts everywhere and a new map to explore...

 

[Luthan.5236]

> @"Custodio.6134" said:

>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.

+

> 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?

Well ... it is actually boring. But this has already been a problem back then in 2012/13 when I played WvW more than PvP at the beginning - cause it seemed "cool" with the big matches and the big amount of numbers each server has on the map.

 

Later I noticed that the PvP with small teams and maps is more fun. You immediately get your win or loss - that's something worth fighting for. For the PvP ... you can just defend and defend ... and while you are offline stuff might get capped by others. Points just ticking in the background. It is more about invidivudally wanting to win some specific fight that just happens when you are logged in. Not about the overall server rankings. (Especially now that servers are linked. Not even "my server" which I'm fighting for. But some combination of 2 servers.)

 

Not a fan of losing for tactical reasons. But as for WvW and when I am logged in ... it is just "oh nevermind we juts recap it" when losing something. Only the WPs at the main keeps are bigger thing. You don't want to lose that keep because it is inconvenient. You still want to fight a fun fight when defenging some keep, tower, etc. But when it's lost ... it doesn't feel l ike a huge loss. (Loss of 5 vs. 5 PvP match feels bigger to me.) We can just recap it. And in the times when I'm offline it probably gets flipped a lot of times.

 

When looking at the borderlands and EB ... I wished there wre 1 vs. 1 server matchups. At least for the borderlands this could be possible. (Still would fit into 3 maps - if it was A vs. B, A vs. C and B vs. C.) And a more linear map ... like from left to right with big castle in the mid and you having to cap to get forward spawn points to ultimately cap/attack the enemy spawn - getting points when destroying them there. :D

 

(I really like mid-sized team fights. Games like the shooter games where you can spawn at capped positions where team modes with team sizes of 10-20 each team happen in some games. Sad that ArenaNet didn't manage anything in this direction. Also PvP nothing happened in this direction. And I guess alliance battle stuff also will be "huge". But I hope for the next expansion since Cantha seemed to have focus on PvP in GW1 and this expansion will bring Cantha to GW2.)

 

As for the blueprints: Yeah I noticed everything seems easier to obtain. Also gold and stuff is easier to obtain. I thought more of the resources/materials in the keep, etc.

Seems like they get emptied quickly if the zerg resupplies there or repairs are needed after an attack. (Not a lot of people are trying to empty nearby full towers a bit instead to leave a few supplies everywhere. Attacked structure gets emptied fully and quickly. :D ) If it is full and dolyaks still arriving ... wouldn't be a bad idea to place 1 or 2 sieges to defend I guess (while using supplies from there that are at full 1-2 dolyaks later).

 

---

 

Edit: Thanks @ledernierrempart.6871

 

Nice overview. I noticed the gliding is fun when going from citatel in alpin borderlands down to own keep. (Back then you had do "fall" and now they also removed fall damage reduction traits.)

 

I didn't play in the "no downstate" event recently. Too much else to do. Boss rush and festival. I can imagine rallying is annoying in WvW. But no downed ... might make it a lot harder if the zerg rushes. Though I noticed that it is not that hard to stay alive as long as you are not hugely outnumbered. (I'm not playing super-bunker-ish but using engineer and elixir for invulnerability helps a bit in emergencies.) Also solo capping camps seems easier to me. (I'm a bit of a noob here. :D Felt easier to me nowadays than backin 2013 though. Maybe because of the overall "power creep" with expansions)

[Threather.9354]

#Siege

Obsolete as they:

* doubled hp of siege but didnt double damage of siege to siege meaning you need twice as many defensive siege and no1 can bother/manning building all that

* shield gens counter every other siege except rams and alphas -> Means no long range tactics, acs or trebs behind gate anymore: Just golem/ram rushes with no counterplay.

* AC damage got nerfed in attempt to make up for all the other defensive buffs with HoT

* Not needed as hard objectives get hit max 2 times a day and you can just faceroll enemy with defensive strats

#Objective activity

Dead as:

- Claim buff got introduced, defenders having up to 12%+ damage AND survivability compared to pre-HoT makes combat itself boring. Superspeed also makes objectives too small for fights.

- Scouts have no activity because no1 is willing to attack due to superstrong objectives

- Much sturdier lords and watchtowers means everything is hard to rush.

- Keep and SM upgrade times are 4-6 times faster than before. Meaning if you log in, get ready to bash your head against T3 objectives every time. Towers require same amount of dollies as keeps which makes WvW simpler but broken. SM is almost always T3 for 1 server.

- Failed taking objective? Well at least you drained supply.... Before you would try again but right now long-term sieges just don't work ever

- Guilds never fight each other around objectives anymore. Pre-HoT guilds foughts on top of garri walls, bay walls etc. each other. These days guilds only hit objectives out of boredom and if they fail, they never come back again.

#Roaming/Dueling

- Well with introduction of gliding (can't gank people on high ground), mounts (need extra damage) and claim buff making defenders much sturdier, there is no ganking within or near objectives. So better stick with the commander, you won't be useful elsewhere.

- Dueling dead, partly because claim buff (5+% damage and survivability break balance), partly because objectives are almost always upgraded so more people are adding in fights around them

- Watchtower shuts down most routes for roamers and makes it often so that even if you hit a tower, too many defenders will show up

#People still playing game

- Well needless to say, people still in the game enjoy easymode defending against newbies or avoid objectives. Peoples motives are often just nostalgia .

- Attacking requires a stacked group against casuals. Decent group will never beat decent group in a fight attacking in a keep with all the defender advantages. But sitting around is not option either, so people stack on chosen few servers.

#Population

- Anet forcefully relinks servers every 2 months now, which in theory is a good thing to keep population balanced but _ultimately it means that fun servers will have equal amount of people as unfun ones._ So more people suffer finding their place and get punished for putting effort in. And there is no "preferred" type of server, either you like current mishmash or you transfer to similar kind of mishmash: _There is no choosing between higher and lower tiers expecting different kind of WvW._

- As already mentioned, experienced players are centered around ~4 servers in each region. And those people enjoy farming and onepushing inexperienced players a lot. The ones who played for close fights are already gone because such things can't exist around objectives which are main way to force enemy to get a group.

- Transferring is supercheap now, 500 gems to almost any server of your choosing (link). But servers also get full too easy. Population status and relink system are quite... Cash milking and punishing at the same time..

#Patches

There are almost none, same problems have existed since HoT. They tried fix things but instead of touching added balance-breaking things, they ruined already functioning ones. Only time they fix some superficial things is if some popular streamers bring it up, and those streamers don't even play WvW more than maybe once a week. Its an issue, they added things that made WvW unfun for the developers but never fixed it so theyre not playing the gamemode themselves anymore.

#Fights

Theyre almost always decided in a few seconds. There is no such concept as ranged with introduction of near permanent superspeed. Whole blob just swooshed on top of you in a sec while your AoEs get less pulses off because they're basically sonic incarnated. So you need to stack up as well. And if there is no ranged, there is no focus party either.

 

So fights are weird with this stacking meta, basically stronger server farms enemy for an hour and talks "how they're epic fights with nice loot" while weaker one thinks it the effort and improvement from wiping will lead to better fights despite having worst time one can imagine. But the meta is just... Ball up and permasuperspeed things down. Hide behind corners if low on CDs and then onepush enemy with scrapper stealth. Doesnt help that some classes like flamethrower engi that spams 11111 outDPSes pretty much all classes outside DPS guardian that is also quite onedimensional 900 range build. So the meta is definitely not giving advantage to smarter group, buildwise or gameplaywise.

 

Also in the meta you played in: you had only one chance to break enemy melee which was when your wells were up but now everyone has 10-15 second cooldowns on bursts. So we went from 40 second cooldown to kill enemy strongest players to around 10 seconds with plenty of skills to spare for another one. So baiting the bomb is not really a thing anymore. Its just constant damage and burst output.

 

#Some positives

Overall they had lot of nice QoL over the years:

- Autoupgrades

- Autoloot

- Build templates

- Action camera

- Camera options

- Standard models

- Reward tracks, Pips, legendary armor

- Reducing amount of tiers

 

But ruined the infrastructure by making scouting and defending so dull, cheesy and easy that no1 ever experiences _strong emotions_ while making attacking so hard combatwise and one dimensional siegewise that no1 bothers unless its for easy farm. Fixes are 5 years overdue, lets stay hopeful though :confused:

[Fat Disgrace.4275]

So, in a way. You haven't really played gw2 at all lol.

 

Most of the fun in wvw is the chit chat on discord/ts theres days

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

@"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...?

 

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..

 

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"

 

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?

 

the player who skipped 4 years understands that funnily better than you there... says enough. i only play for 2,5ish years now, but even i'd have warclaw rather gone... it was less problematic to get proper fights before, despite i was trash geared before it came mostly.

 

@"Luthan.5236"

* 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.)

 

yeah, exactly. its superstale and dry. events randomly happening would make it way more dynamic to play. it's maybe not about splitting players up, that happens constantly on their own with todays pugs, but to keep everyone entertained.

 

the small npc mobs should get just removed and replace by hardhitting permaggro strong ones as well (on suiting spots and less quantitywise tho) for example, thats kinda quality of life changes which'd be severly needed to make fights better, but just don't happen.

 

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.

 

about EOTM: its just dead since u get no pips or any other real rewards for playing there. Anet let it die and refuses to do anything about it. it didn't get changed for years i think, nearly no map did. and the changes that happened were most random and pointless. (stonemist wall changes, ebg red side tower hittable wall target change..)

[subversiontwo.7501]

> @"Luthan.5236" said:

> Are there any players that played since back then release 2012? How do you like the WvW nowadays compared to back then?

Hi, have another multi-citational swath of responses to your questions. WvW is worse today than it was back then. Not that the gameplay is necessarily worse but rather that people are an important factor in PvP modes. There are fewer players, there is much less organisation among players (guilds, variety of tags, presence of guild tags within pickup content etc.) and players that are friends have become far more scattered. All of this leads to less of an experience.

> And with WvW I only started again recently - just to unlock the mount. It seems WvW is the game mode with the lowest amount of players. (I mean ... if they even had to link 2 servers and on Friday/reset there is barely any queue a few hours after the reset.)

I'd say that these two things are interconnected. You need to keep in mind that WvW as a mode has been locked behind issues with paid transfers, full servers and the like for all these 8 years and that has still not been addressed. It is likely that more than 50% of the game mode's population today is locked behind full servers. That makes bringing new players in from outside the game quite a problem. We also have those issues of whatever little attention is given to the mode is given in the form of such one-off and inorganic appeal as unlocking a mount or a skin. The organic progression within the mode is still helplessly behind all the other modes, so existing players are driven out of the mode to a much higher degree than they are driven into the mode. That creates issues for WvW both within the existing playerbase and the potential additions to the playerbase from outside the game.

> There seems to exist new stuff that got released between 2014 and 2019 which is barely used. (Those shield generators. Barely saw them used.) Edge of the Mists map seems not that populated and the JP (Obsidian Sanctum) also is pretty empty often.

I'd say you're wrong about the first assumption. Shield generators get used quite alot. They are however primarily used when there are larger and prolonged sieges, so you have to experience a matchup that is populated and even enough for that to appear. For example, when people commit 4+ catapults they also tend to commit shield generators. If the siege is smaller then generators are generally not used.

 

EotM was built with a bunch of islands interconnected by bridges on the idea that chokepoints would facilitate outmanned content, however it also discourages the more normative forms of balanced content, creating very defensive scenarios when no side wants to push. So, the map was quickly abandoned by any groups that wanted relatively balanced fights. After a while it was also abandoned by smaller groups who were into zerg busting because the zergs left and the groups that remained were too easy to beat even for the smaller ambush groups that choke ambushes quickly became stale. K-trains, basically playing musical chairs with the objectives without any fights, persisted for a while as EotM awarded a higher amount of WXP than the normal game mode but when that oversight was addressed with the new reward systems the K-trains too disappeared and the map emptied out.

 

Obsidian Sanctum is still used on occassion to house GvG skirmishes and these days even BvB (where two pickup groups play GvG fights). It still however, like all the other GvG spots, does not allow for any sustainable GvG tournament or league effort to be made since the map lets trolls interfere from the stands, so trolls will interfere from the stands if someone spends the effort to create a tournament. That was done to the last somewhat ambitious attempt at a tournament. The Guild Hall introduced in 2015 offered an alternative to that with PvE physics which, despite bugs, was passable until skillsplitting became more and more of a balance thing.

 

So OS is still occassionally used to house GvG-style content and EotM too (either the arena, or the old midpoint spot) is used to house occassional GvG-style content but none of them can house any content that people can attribute any form of value to or effort into because it will just be spoiled by the interference and lack of systems to help govern whatever rules are put into place.

>

> 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.

Again, I would chalk this up to the level of organisation just dropping because the developer provide no stimulation to organizers and organizing, only to consumers of dwindling existing content. People who chat tend to be people who have identities and relationships. While the population as a whole may have seen some drop, the population of organized players with WvW identities has dropped significantly. It has dropped down to the scale of where single guilds can be the lifeblood of an entire server.

 

> 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.

I think most commanders use Discord rather than Teamspeak today. They are both communication tools of course but Discord come with the benefit of not requiring as rigid installation and authentication processes. Players can be dragged onto server with simple weblinks and choose to install a client later if they wish.

 

> Imo it is not a game mode that can attract new players. Just the experienced ones that like it ... trying to keep it alive.

Well, yes, but that is more so a question of things like servers being full, no reasonable alternative being presented and that never getting addressed rather than what the mode is or how it is played. There are plenty of players out there who enjoys RvR style content. One indication would be that almost every MMO out there has an RvR mode or that RvR modes even have their own subgenres among other online games of other genres (like RvR shooters and so).

 

> 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. 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.)

Well yeah, you and everyone else who plays this game mode. This is still apart of the #1 problem with WvW and the reason why people keep pointing out that the mode never gets its due attention. Scoring- and Population balance is the #1 issue 2012-2020, it stops the mode from functioning as designed and it makes players quit the game.

 

 

 

[Justine.6351]

Wasn't the greatest in 2012 and it's not so great now.

[Balthazzarr.1349]

I’ve played since 2012. I used to play 5-7 days a week. Averaged 4-5 hours a day. Yup no life... Now I play 1 or two days a week, 2-4 hours at most each time.

 

I go in on Wednesday nights for a regular run with some friends. Other than that I might pop in out of boredom but I get bored with wvw shortly after.

 

It’s sad because I really did love this game a lot before wvw simply became what seems to be an after thought.

[Klypto.1703]

People have always said its a dead game but its not dead its on maintenance mode.

[xZombieTaco.5809]

Anet removed a lot of things that I personally enjoyed.

Hammer all but got deleted from WvW except for Revs and Engis

Warrior got butchered

Thief is forced to play build 1 2 or 3 with no room for experimentation like back in the day

Game revolves around boon removal and condition output instead of raw utility management and dodge mechanics/player skill - I hopped on a scourge out of curiosity and just destroyed people because they don't press the V key anymore

Condition output by certain classes is unbelievably unbalanced and unfair - Condition mirage is still an issue from when PoF came out I've just learned today - scourge/rev torment is still ungodly. Watched a rev single handedly put 35 stacks of torment on someone - great.

 

Honestly, I don't see myself playing this game much longer. I just came back from a year long break, and I'm already bored. Did the new content and there's nothing left. WvW is boring. SPvP is exactly the same as it was before. What is there? No end game content at all and the community (at least from a wvw standpoint) is exhausted and don't care anymore.

[Inoki.6048]

I'll give you a TL:DR; version:

 

It's very stale, quite imbalanced, and not enticing.

 

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, which the company leverages only to keep the game alive as a cash shop.

[Custodio.6134]

> @"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).

[Custodio.6134]

> @"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.

[Svarty.8019]

> @"Luthan.5236" said:

> Are there any players that played since back then release 2012? How do you like the WvW nowadays compared to back then?

>

> I'm just curious. Personally I played from 2012 release until end 2013. Didn't play GW2 2014-2019. And with WvW I only started again recently - just to unlock the mount. It seems WvW is the game mode with the lowest amount of players. (I mean ... if they even had to link 2 servers and on Friday/reset there is barely any queue a few hours after the reset.)

>

> There seems to exist new stuff that got released between 2014 and 2019 which is barely used. (Those shield generators. Barely saw them used.) Edge of the Mists map seems not that populated and the JP (Obsidian Sanctum) also is pretty empty often.

>

> 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.

>

> 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.

>

> 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. I noticed it is still fun to defend and attack keeps.

> 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.)

 

Sadly, the prospect of improving these aspects of the game fell away looooong ago. The emphasis of the game is Story, new maps and gem store items. The skills are occasionally tweaked to try to keep PvP fresh, but otherwise, WvW is in maintenance mode.

 

Sure, we'd all love to see those things changed, and sure, it wouldn't take much. But that's the problem. As we saw with HoT, Anet just point ALL their resources at things, get it wrong, then move on and [~~never~~ barely ever refine the thing they did](

). It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.

 

Ultimately, it was an ok game. I enjoyed socialising with the same people for many years, but now we only talk once a week, if that. And even then it's only briefly. It's just sad that the mode was not embraced by the company that owns it. They broke so many hearts.

[Helicity.3416]

> @"K THEN.5162" said:

> I long for the days when the Warclaw **WASN'T** in WvW. The terrible handling of its release with all the bugs/exploits, difficulty to dismount from the free 10k barrier and the snowball advantage it granted to the larger group left a sour taste in my mouth and I have questioned Anet's competence ever since.

>

> _Also they recently took away the one thing I liked about the mount which was the insta stomp on downed people because kitten actually having counters to the broken rez mechanic_

 

This man is correct.

The following was not healthy (CW explicit language on team Comms):

[Luthan.5236]

The weird thing I noticed is: 1 week later there seemed to be more siege in use. Almost seemed as if the guilds and major players on the servers decide based on the matchup. (Maybe if some favorite enemy servers are matched against us they decide to play more seriously.) With the German server linked with Underworld it seems they like to fight against other German servers. Also slightly more queue.

 

Then this week: Huge queue and almost everything captured by use. Some said it was because or relinking in 2 weeks and people transferring servers. (And other servers empty and for us a lot of players.)

 

If this really is the issue becaues of linking and server transfers before re-linking ... then ArenaNet should fix this as soon as possible I guess.

 

Just make 1-2 weeks without WvW. (Like in PvP where there were breaks between the conquest seasons before they introduced mini seasons.) Then let people transfer. Then close the transfers and relink based on that population. But disallow server transfers until the next phase. (1-2 weeks break for transfering, then re-linking again.)

 

Isn't really fun to big queue on 1-2 maps and other maps are all captured by your own team and barely any other players fighting back. This way ... ArenaNet won't get people to play WvW. The die hard fans still might play.

 

Well ... meanwhile I play other stuff. :P

 

(Last week was good though. Where more siege was in used. Slightly bigger queue than usual - which was small for us - and other servers strong enough to fight back and attack.)

 

I guess before developing any further - which is important as well - they need to fix these population issues.

Try imagining yourself playing conquest PvP and every single match is 5 vs. 3 ... wouldn't be fun. Similar and worse (you can't just try quickly for another match) in WvW if the population is unbalanced.

[Archangel.3508]

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.

 

At launch there was no cap on the number of targets that could be hit by many of the aoes and, whilst it was undoubtedly massively OP, it did rule out such boring and predictable tactics. Personally what I want to see is friendly fire - drop an aoe and if your allies charge into it, they should suffer - unfortunately it would require a full rework of skill lines and I can't see Anet doing that. SImilarly if you drop a healing spell and an enemy charges into it, it makes sense that he should heal as well - the current situation is just pretty shoddy imo.

[Threather.9354]

> @"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.

>

> At launch there was no cap on the number of targets that could be hit by many of the aoes and, whilst it was undoubtedly massively OP, it did rule out such boring and predictable tactics. Personally what I want to see is friendly fire - drop an aoe and if your allies charge into it, they should suffer - unfortunately it would require a full rework of skill lines and I can't see Anet doing that. SImilarly if you drop a healing spell and an enemy charges into it, it makes sense that he should heal as well - the current situation is just pretty shoddy imo.

 

Issue is upkeep of superspeed making range and radius of skills too low compared to movement speed. So pulsing AoEs can get maximum 1 tick off now while in the past getting 3 or so was completely feasible on same target. Combat system was fineish before scrapper came mainstream.

 

Also objective fights are dead due to claim buff, shield gens and lowered siege vs siege damage so that needs to be still balanced out to sustain longer-term sieges. Else its just gonna be open-field fiesta because no1 will willingly suicide in enemy keeps. Before HoT if you were equally strong as enemy on the map, you didn't farm them nonstop at camps and easy towers, but rather pushed their keeps with more well-tuned siege balance leading into extended up-to-several-hour assaults which both sides enjoyed.

 

But defenders and scouts cried killing meaningful WvW but are still fearful of defence nerfs with their home maps having 0 action 99% of the day. Attacker brings the action so if you want more action, you should make things more fun for them.

[Svarty.8019]

> @"Threather.9354" said:

> But defenders and scouts cried killing meaningful WvW but are still fearful of defence nerfs with their home maps having 0 action 99% of the day. Attacker brings the action so if you want more action, you should make things more fun for them.

 

Now _that's_ an interesting topic.

 

What we've learnt;

 

There are two types of defending: I will call them Defending1 and Defending2.

 

* Defending1 is where you defend with whatever you have to hand, nobody comes to the rescue, it's just a straight up defense with no surprises.

* This type of defending progressively got kicked from pillar to post by the developers until they abandoned WvW altogether.

* Defending2 is where the defenders call in a zerg (via Emergency Waypoint or not) from another map.

* Defending1 is useless as long as the enemy has enough players to mitigate whatever damage the defenders can produce.

* So that leaves Defending2. Which only happens when the defenders have a zerg to call in. As soon as that person (the defender's zerg commander) logs off for the night, it's a karma-train for the attackers, which is no fun for either side, really. Sure there are holdouts that can occur and if you've got enough randoms you can block the zerg here and there - at best forcing the attacking commander to lose such morale that they give up and then nobody is attacking at all. Even worse!

 

How can this mess be fixed?

 

[edited to clarify who "that person" is]

[Stand The Wall.6987]

have people noticed less overall pugmander activity?

[aspirine.6852]

It is mostly morning national server karma training...