Why we think WvW is not going well [Merged]

[PrinceKhaled.5104]

I see both points, I think you guys still have common ground there, more or less. I all for sharing our concerns, specially if multiple players are reporting the same issue.... which is WvW is loosing its fun element, despite of my love to this game mode!

[MuscleBobBuffPants.1406]

> @"MUDse.7623" said:

> > @"MuscleBobBuffPants.1406" said:

> > > @"MUDse.7623" said:

> > > > @"MuscleBobBuffPants.1406" said:

> > > > > @"MUDse.7623" said:

> > > > > > @"MuscleBobBuffPants.1406" said:

> > > > > > > @"MUDse.7623" said:

> > > > > > > > @"MuscleBobBuffPants.1406" said:

> > > > > > > > To me this post really sums up what goes wrong when developers lose communication / touch with their playerbase. You can see what happens when that occurs when looking at the diablo immortal fiasco. I often wonder if we could ever get in touch with Gaile to create some kind of biweekly or monthly feedback poll/direct communication/Q&A session with the development team just to keep everyone in the loop and keep the development team in terms of feedback. Is there anyway to contact Gaile directly about that?

> > > > > > >

> > > > > > > i dont think that actually asking the players on a forum will provide more accurate information, than they can get out of their logs and statistics. while i personally would like to see them sharing more statistics etc. with their community, its also risky it can cause as much issues as not providing any info.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > Logs and statistics of damage and log in numbers are not necessarily what I am after. I am more interested in hearing people's feelings and concerns. There is a reason they have those feelings and concerns because of experiences they have had in the game, in working with WvW, playing it etc. Its clear something is causing them to feel that way and providing a way to address those feelings and concerns, a way for the community to express those feelings and concerns, provides them with a way dealing with those issues and maintaining a healthy game and community. Otherwise I generally feel many people's reaction would be to leave the game, but I think a healthier alternative would be to provide that feedback to the developers so they can improve the experience and maintain that community.

> > > > > their feelings and concerns tho can be seen through their actions long before they leave. gw2 has a huge playerbase, so whatever anet does someone will complain about it. even if its just a QoL change, that everyone benefits from... someone will say that it was wasted developmet time and now the game is lacking elsewhere. as said providing more info on what is actually going on in the game (because many complain threads are based on personal perception) as well as giving more insight on the reasoning behind some changes (mostly balance and rewards as those are the main tools to shape player behaviour).would be really nice. but i still would like them to base their changes mainly on their data and not because a few people on a forum got a feeling. you wont make everyone happy and that is fine, the question is tho if providing more info would help people understands anets reasoning. so many times in this forum i have read that anet doesnt know what they are doing, but gw2 is doing fairly good for a 6 year old MMORPG:

> > > >

> > > > Actions are an external effect from the result of an internal thought. What we really want to nail down is the internal thought, where did the action come from. Of course we cant please everyone, but that is kind of purpose of a poll is to provide those major concerns, those major points of contention. The points in which the majority of the playerbase feels is important, which is good because we cant play a game by ourselves, we have to interact with other people and gamers.

> > > >

> > > > In terms of the time investment, absolutely we cant bring forth and absolute dedication of time, but at the moment, based on my experience, we seem to be lacking that point of contact, those points of communication. Even if that communication is brief in the form of a poll, that means alot to people and its very important to maintaining that connection with the playerbase. We can surely find that balance so that development time is also connecting with the playerbase, even if its just for an hour every 2 weeks or month, that is surely better than nothing.

> > > >

> > > > Again this data does not take into the concerns the internal thoughts and feelings of players and the community. If it is a matter of sample size, you could even let the WvW players know through in game polling and/or response etc, there are definitely ways getting to as many people as possible and hearing their feedback so to speak.

> > > >

> > > > I think people are here because they like the game, they want to see it succeed, they are here because they want to see it improve. I definitely think people would make those suggestions because they would want to continue spending time with the game and community.

> > >

> > > if they make a poll, people will expect them to do what the poll says. even if anet just wants an opinion. you can tell make an ingame mail and tell people that there is a poll and a huge group still wont bother. do their opinions not matter ? sure they do, but they might not be willing to take the time to vote, then we have people complaining that 'casuals' were allowed to vote that do not have enough impact on the mode etc. etc.

> > > i am not against them communicating, i just dont want them to just change because a bunch of people on the forums demand it.

> >

> > Well lets address your concerns individually.

> >

> > If they make a poll, I think the community would like to know those concerns are being addressed, that would be sort of the purpose of the poll. I would imagine they would even say this takes time, but that is ok, having that form of communication in the first place really alleviates concern, it gives the playerbase a chance to express their concerns and gives the development team time to address those concerns.

> >

> > If it is a matter of collecting votes and sample size, we could take the polling over the period of a week to give people and different schedules time to provide that feedback. Its definitely something we could tinker with to improve over time, like many things!

> >

> > I apologize, but it goes back to that main point, the game is really something for everyone to participate in and enjoy. If there is an element of the game that is causing many people to not enjoy it, it would be good to address those concerns. We cant play games by ourselves, well at least we cant play mmorpgs by ourselves, but having those other players and actors gives us a chance to enjoy the game. Sharing in that enjoyment. So my hope is that we give everyone a chance to enjoy the game and give everyone a chance to voice their concerns, that is important in many aspects of daily life, not just games!

>

> i guess we have to agree to disagree.

> there are not many cases where i would think a poll is a good solution.

 

Well a poll would be one kind of solution, especially when looking through ways of enhancing communication, especially 2 way communication. You could consider live Q&A sessions and other ways. But would be even cooler is to utilize all those options, in different ways, variations etc. I definitely think if we put all our heads together we could come up with many good ways to help everyone communicate their concerns!

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

I solo roam on thief and see what I can achieve, be it flipping structures, defending our stuff or hiding in towers and keeps after a cap to get the quick flip after the timer. Nothing much has changed from that perspective.

 

I don't find zerging fun especially, as if I wanted to follow a commander around just capping objectives for karma I could get better rewards doing dragon stand etc. I find attacking larger groups by myself much more entertaining.

 

> @"Lord of Rings.5371" said:

>

> It demands too much of players' time.

 

Not really sure how WvW demands any more time than it used to tbh. I play as much as I want when I want, and leave it when I'm bored. In that way, the game is very open and flexible with my work schedule, not restrictive.

 

At the end of the day, if it's not fun, either change your playstyle or do something else.

[Blocki.4931]

I agree with the sentiment that it demands too much time of the player. In the last weeks I manage to get my gold chest done because my free time was drastically reduced and it just doesn't feel very enjoyable to simply being unable to finish anything beyond that. This upcoming change where participation will no longer decay when you're outside of WvW will be great for me though, since i usually idle ingame before playing another 15 min here and there. There is still quite an investment for hours to get higher chests however. If I only have 10 hours a week to spare on gaming I may never reach Diamond again except for those times where I no life during a weekend. Doesn't feel very rewarding.

 

That being said, I think that many people only have one idea of how the mode works. There are people who ONLY zerg and people who ONLY roam, with both of these extremes not doing anything else besides that one thing. It would be great if more people also roamed, or bothered to form smaller groups/guild runs instead of hoping that a tag comes along and gets a large group going.

 

I don't think zergs are a problem, not even the blobbing that is happening more and more recently. The problem is people being stupid and narrowminded and getting demotivated too quickly after getting wiped once or twice.

[Dawdler.8521]

"Death by zerg!" is a warcry, not an obituary.

[XenesisII.1540]

The fact they use linking of servers to try and get population levels on half the servers back to what it was in the first few years is proof that wvw has been dying for a while. Anyone who says otherwise is brand new or a fool who doesn't understand what's going on for years now. Every game starts dying after hitting a peak fairly early in the games life, having new content will bring back old players and some new players to stagger that process, but looking at wvw you can see there's not much new blood coming in to replace those leaving.

 

1. Wvw is not new player friendly, from the population moving from server to guild pride, to specs that can absolutely demolish players to just instantly turn them off from wanting to bother pvping ever again. Once upon a time there were many servers and guilds willing to train pugs and commanders, that died off for the most part years ago. Everyone unfairly expects you to be a veteran the moment you first step in there.

2. Lots of guilds left the game over the years, the blob busting guilds are just forming up their alliances now so you tend to see 2+ guilds running close by. Broken specs and meta builds have pushed players to run in bigger than usual groups for safety.

3. Range wars, that's the meta anet built for this expansion. They pushed boon sharing so much the last couple expansions, with corruptions and cc garbage to counter it, ranged countered by spamming warrior bubbles. They built combat for faster kills which is now funny because they're no longer in esports, so why push ttk that far?

4. Stealth is terrible in this game, one of the worse ever implemented in competitive pvp. Won't say more because multiple topics already on why, it won't be changed in any case. It's one of the reasons I don't play this game much anymore, and I played a mesmer for years...

5. Actually most people did care what tier they were in. Tier 1 always about having the biggest population in the game, the most guilds the most commanders the most coverage thus the most fights and action. Tier 2 for a long period of time was mostly about fighting, many fight guilds moved there over the years, the war between 4 servers trying to stay in tier 2 was probably the highlight. Entire guilds that got tired of not being challenged, or lower population moved up eventually to get their challenge, a lot went to t1 or 2 for this. Some people enjoyed being in lesser populated tiers too.

 

Linking is not about luck, it's building server sizes through player activity. The thing it needed was a way to also balance the coverage populations, difficult to do this with a few servers with lopsided off hours coverage. The alliance system could fix this if they do take player time zones into account when creating the worlds, but they've already stated they won't be doing this to start with just player activity just as it is now, so I expect worlds will still end up with messy coverage. It's difficult to build equal server sizes using servers as the pieces, but using individual players as the pieces will give them a lot of room for closer numbers, and also being able to reset it when players decide to take advantage and move to break that balance.

 

The alliance system of creating worlds is about the best solution they could use if they want to keep using multiple 3 server system of matches, they just need to also account for play times in different time zones.

[hunkamania.7561]

Too much zerging killing wvw is lol worthy. The bigger your zerg the worse the player quality is. It's about quality not quantity my friend.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Honestly WvW is just as appealing for me as it always was. Maybe if people are bored with running in murder blobs that force the other side to either blob up and play range wars or avoid them altogether, they should just stop blobbing?

 

I'm serious tho, 90% of the issues listed are caused by people playing mindlessly to karma train the map. Do something different, roam in small groups or defend an objective, and don't blame the mode for problems the players create.

[XenesisII.1540]

I heard there's this thing called spvp, not sure what it's about though...

[geist.4126]

The only thing killing wvw is the "lul oneshot power meta"

[steki.1478]

Why bother with wvw if you can do small scale fights in pvp? Why attack objectives with 5 people when it's much faster with 30? Why attack anything with 5 when 1 person on siege can just spam aoes on you and stop you with ease? How are maps empty if there's people flipping camps?

 

Average gw2 (not just wvw) player cant grasp the game because he/she doesn't have to. Everything about gw2 is "casual" and braindead so you don't have to put effort into anything, you'll get carried by numbers or people who do care. People who care in wvw are zerg players and ppt players; with no zerg players you get karma trains like EotM which is dead and with no ppt players you get only prime times active since gvg players dont bother about playing the game during day. There's something for everyone in wvw at the moment since there's still a fair amount of both types.

 

Just because your class/playstyle doesnt fit large scale fights, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't exist. Meta builds cant be years behind because last expac is just a year old. Meta cant be years behind because meta is the most effective build/composition available at current point. If it's years behind it's no longer considered meta. Just because you/your server doesn't understand meta, doesnt mean it's not effective. Just because you killed bad enemy players using non meta composition, doesn't mean that meta is not effective, player skill is involved as well.

[Swagger.1459]

> @"JayAction.9056" said:

> You guys all play the game wrong.

>

> -Too much Zerging

>

> There is no need to Zerg 24/7. WvW is an open world pvp. All the objectives require 1-5 people to capture at most unless defending numbers are greater.

>

> 99% of these open world maps are empty because everybody is located in one place flipping camps or chassing 2-3 enemy while the enemy Zerg is on a completely different map.

>

> The combat system is ruined with more than 10- 15 people. It becomes a game of luck and all the intricacies of the game are removed. It severely dumbs down the game and creates shallow game play.

>

> This is also why the average WvW player barely grasps the game and WvW Meta builds are “YEARS” behind and are not honestly effective.

>

> This has been the trend since 2015.

 

I’m sorry, but you are wrong.

 

Zergs are what the mode was primarily built for. The devs used the RvR design from Dark Age of Camelot as inspiration for our WvW.

[hunkamania.7561]

> @"Jugglemonkey.8741" said:

> Honestly WvW is just as appealing for me as it always was. Maybe if people are bored with running in murder blobs that force the other side to either blob up and play range wars or avoid them altogether, they should just stop blobbing?

>

> I'm serious tho, 90% of the issues listed are caused by people playing mindlessly to karma train the map. Do something different, roam in small groups or defend an objective, and don't blame the mode for problems the players create.

 

Who even karma trains anymore? Sorry but WvW is all about the large scale battles not much about roaming.

[borgs.6103]

This pretty much sums up why I think wvw (and pvp) is not going well.

[subversiontwo.7501]

First up, good threads are few and far apart on these forums. I clicked the link assuming another run-of-the-mill thread but you have prefaced the discussion very well. Thumbs up for that!

 

1) It's hard to say whether it is nice or not considering all the different ways you can play the mode. It does have two points worth factoring in if you are not accustomed to the game mode though: they both have to do with squads. A] Playing with a squad in WvW requires some semblance of order. Organisation is a factor for success. B] It is easy to forget that tags are players who have their own will, style and content. They are not computer-generated content there to cater to you. That is a hotbed for conflict. Often times commanders are pointed at as demanding or unpleasant but few people know the comments and behaviour commanders have to deal with on a regular basis from players who forget that they have no obligation to serve them. Overall though I wouldn't say that WvW is overly toxic or new-player unfriendly given its competetive nature and large-scale organisation or co-existance. It's pretty nice, considering.

 

2) This is all down to meta and balance. When HoT released the new specializations were overtuned and the game fell into rather onesided pirateship battles. However, Anet were reacting decently fast and were actively working on rebalance so for most of the expansion balance was decent (balance was poor early on and at the end but for the vast swath in the middle balance was actually pretty good for most of 2016 and early 2017). With PoF we still, a year in, have issues with the same things that were identified as problematic on day 1 of the expansion. They are very slowly adressing it (in small de/increments which is good) but they have been far more slumbering this expansion and much as with HoT: The real problem is when crowd control overtakes free movement. This is a game designed around relatively free movement (dodges et. al.) and when that balance is thrown everything is thrown from build diversity to fighting undermanned. The #1 reason for the pirateships was never overtuned range damage: It was always overtuned crowd control. Those things impact guild-groups dually since diversity is the lifeblood of guild-guild fights (or GvG) and superior use of free mobility is how smaller (guild-) groups size up to larger (pickup-) groups. If class diversity gets better GvG's will be back and if there is no overabundance of CC more groups will attempt to bust zergs, leading to even more diversity in groups and how they are composed.

 

3) It really depends on how you define "meta" and it ties into everything else. Meta, for me, is simply a basic generally accepted standard. Meta is not the best, it is the best bang for the buck. However, it is important to note that in a situation with less build diversity and guild-groups (who usually play super-meta and impact changes to the meta) being on hiatus: Meta becomes all the more ever-present. Meta itself however is not a problem. The game (mode) has always had meta it's simply that the current meta has been stale for over a year both in terms of mechanics/balance and in terms of groups devising ways to combat and alter the meta. There are certainly ways to do that even in the WoD-shade meta we have now, but it is challenging and many inventive players currently play on low burn. Meta at its core though is (probably to many would-be readers' surprise) actually something that is meant to help new or inexperienced players get into the game mode. Playing off-meta or super-meta is far more difficult and demanding on you than playing in meta.

 

4) To this day we have no receipt that they actually do much of anything. It may sound harsh but very few things are being done, have been done historically or have panned out well. Alot of us are throwing our hopes to that Alliances will not be an EotM- or tactics/upgrades-fiasco or an arena-promise only half delivered. Yet fact remains that we still know very little about both how it will pan out or if it will come to fruition. We only have a promise that they are working on some of the major concerns without really daring to share enough with us on how they are approaching them. We have a part-skeleton of it mentioned in brief twice in a year that looks decent. That is all. The positives they can fix for WvW is in the direction they are heading so at least they are not off on a wild-goose chase (the positives WvW needs is balance and population/scoring-balance, everything else is just lull). It is just that the skeleton we've seen seems skeleton-crewed and even the small iterations to balance seems heavily understaffed or out of scope for WvW.

 

 

 

[HazyDaisy.4107]

Linking's started with the phrase "Wvw is dying". Everything that has happened since is our own faults.

[Balthazzarr.1349]

> @"JayAction.9056" said:

> You guys all play the game wrong.

>

> -Too much Zerging

>

> There is no need to Zerg 24/7. WvW is an open world pvp. All the objectives require 1-5 people to capture at most unless defending numbers are greater.

>

> 99% of these open world maps are empty because everybody is located in one place flipping camps or chassing 2-3 enemy while the enemy Zerg is on a completely different map.

>

> The combat system is ruined with more than 10- 15 people. It becomes a game of luck and all the intricacies of the game are removed. It severely dumbs down the game and creates shallow game play.

>

> This is also why the average WvW player barely grasps the game and WvW Meta builds are “YEARS” behind and are not honestly effective.

>

> This has been the trend since 2015.

 

oh you are sooo right on this. As a vet of WvW over the last 6 years I've reached the point of not even knowing what to tell new people other than go follow the tag and get pips if you can. Other times I'll tag up and run some havoc to help people get some wxp (for whatever that's worth), and pips of course for their tickets.

 

Last night someone said, "hey I'm new here... what's this all about anyway?" ... at the time we were dealing with zergs of enemy 30+ against maybe 15 of us. This person was told... well it's like this... you get run over, you waypoint, you come back... try to get some pips while you're at it.

 

lol frankly I can't figure out why I keep going in WvW except that I have friends in there... the place truly does suck compared to days of old and yes unless you run a group full of necros, firebrands and spellbreakers you might as well prepare to die a lot.... and even then you better have lots of them.. :P

[Israel.7056]

I actually agree with swagger for once.

[Swagger.1459]

> @"Israel.7056" said:

> I actually agree with swagger for once.

 

Totally saving this one! No take backs now buddy! :)

 

I’m even giving you a thumb up too bc you’re being nice!

[Dawdler.8521]

> @"HazyDaisy.4107" said:

> Linking's started with the phrase "Wvw is dying". Everything that has happened since is our own faults.

Started? Fairly sure people have been saying that WvW has been dying from 2013 and that Camelot Unchained would totally kill it once that released in 2015 or whatever it was.

 

[HazyDaisy.4107]

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> > @"HazyDaisy.4107" said:

> > Linking's started with the phrase "Wvw is dying". Everything that has happened since is our own faults.

> Started? Fairly sure people have been saying that WvW has been dying from 2013 and that Camelot Unchained would totally kill it once that released in 2015 or whatever it was.

>

 

"Started" as in linkings were birthed to handle the whole wvw is dying talk that had been circulating.

[Blocki.4931]

It's funny to me that linking has been a thing for many years by now and people still don't understand how it works. If anything, individual servers were/are dying and thus need to be linked together to make up for that. That's just a side effect of having that many servers that for obvious reasons won't hold 100% of their population forever.

[SkyShroud.2865]

A lot of things already made known to dev, either in forms of hate or complains or constructive feedbacks, all of them are made known. Of course, the difficulty of devs when looking at community's post is how do you actually identify what's are legit and what are just exaggeration. Still, it is their job to identify them.

 

Why people blob these days? There were already a recent thread about these, why nobody zerg bust anymore. It is simply because of the meta change, how the skills in the past works so differently from the skills today. The main difference is accessibility to sustain. WvW of the past, we have to access sustain via team play of having to blast water fields. Now, sustain is easily provided via personal skills. The ease of accessibility to sustain simply made zerg busting very difficulty for any average players, in other words, you need to be have good players to pull it off.

 

Anet made powercreep possible and to solve that powercreep, they introduced personal sustain. Or maybe perhaps is the other way round but regardless, this simply change how the entire game works. Now, we made builds base on sustain skills and powercreep. Teamwork now is also narrowed down to fewer things compare to the past. We did adapted to anet's changes but that also driven out some players who dislike this change.

 

People do subconsciously know this thus we have more frequent bandwagoning and stacking. This is obvious if you compare to the number of guilds in the past where they willing to be in outnumbered servers and the number of guilds now who chose not be in outnumbered servers.

[HiImFromNA.3046]

Deng that is a lot of reading in this thread. Would say from the rage whispers i get is from the meta classes "not taking skill" and myself to "play a real class that isnt just a gimmick". How to change the meta from this without completely gimping the expansion elite specs would be a puzzle for sure though. But, is a main issue currently would argue.

[Jski.6180]

That easy pug groups kicking non meta classes. That alone is cause for a lot of alarm. So kick the dev who not playing meta classes or not playing the meta classes "right" giving them the full expert of the avage wvw player who just wants to have fun.