Charlock Holmes on case to solve WvWs current issues.

Charlock Holmes is on the case and is tracing back the footsteps of a cruelsome murderer that killed its gamemode. The first traces of his investigation start from location dating 5 years back, when a happy household had a cruesome act directed towards them. As he searches through the dusty remnants of once vibrant living room, he finds a diary. He can't exactly pin point whose handwriting it is but closely scrolls through it to find a story about what happened written in third person perspective

It was a rainy day, but as the visitor approached sun started blazing deserts heat leading slowly into the living, not only plantlife drying away but also fauna being replaced with treacherous lizards. These were truly the first signs of the upcoming doom that no one expected, at first it was a blizz for weather to change but no one predicted snow would be less seen again.

Within a household, a couple everyone had deemed old seniles, felt a chill in the their spines and they had given their best effort to keep household safe and within good respectful manners that also cared about wellbeing of their enemies throught the years. They raised their conserns about the future, needless to say, the couple was ignored as ramblings of people past their expiration date. But in this case, young should have listened to the old.

Doorbell rang. Someone went to open it and soon there was a man and woman standing in the living room, strangers. The man was so perfect on the outside that he emitted a feeling that we had known him for years. And we had, in our dreams of a perfect being. The hunk started his salepitch:

"You seem to have a happy household here and here I am offering you what every person was ment to seek: Comfort! A highly trained servant that upgrades your household devices faster without additional fees, protects you from invaders, offers battle combat training and makes you less reliant on asking help from neighbors. Perfect deal!" His voice was so perfect and dreamy, had a deep echo in it. Very convincing, one could describe it as hypnotizing. The offer seemed perfect on the surface, no need to do chores around the household anymore, anyone wanting harm for our family would be easily fended off and our household could be stronger.

The sale was completed, the man exited happily with well-earned money in his pocket, he had managed to sell a great product to a soon-to-be happy customers. However even he didn't know, that the maid had a thorny heart. This man sold perfect-on-the-surface maids to every household to regions both sides of atlantic, a godlike salesman they say.

The maid brought exactly what was promised: she did even the dirtiest tasks on the left and right. Even when no one else was around. But as people had less and less to do due to maid doing nearly everything from them the result was that what once was lively household from dawn to dusk, became a retirement home for even young people. They got taken care, but they had no one to take care of. Teamwork died. Soon they grew lazy and knew very little about what effort was. Yes there was comfort, but it took away from the purpose, the chores were gone, the defences were so strong that no one even attempted malicious deeds. The life has lost its light. On surface it was perfect product but had taken away the meaning.

After a year of comfort, some people within the household started being discontent with nothing to do. The ex-leader of the household, a true alpha lioness conforted the maid to have more to do. The maids mouth smiled but eyes were glaring deep into her soul. She didn't speak. Soon night fell... and passed... But with one soul less to see the morning sun... The maid had taken purpose of staying within the household from one person. And she wasn't the only one throughout years. People had either left to seek their purpose at also being ruined households or retracted to their solitude after 5 years, only a few souls remained within the mansion, and they had very little humanity left within them.

A crime had truly occured: Lives were taken. A comfort had overtaken purpose. And the salesman never returned to fix his product.

Summary: Upgrades are too fast, claim buff is too strong and teamwork isn't necessary anymore as objectives matter less. Transferring is rampant but also pointless.

List of what is needed:

1. Shield gens: Bubble shouldn't block siege fire, instead pulse damage reduction that affects siege also. Helps both attackers (long range catas, trebs become option again) and defenders
2. Golems: Guilds ones should cost more supply (80) and all golems shouldn't be affected by boons
3. Siege vs siege: Siege HP got doubled with the condi change but their damage to each other siege wasn't. Increase siege damage to siege by 50-100% . Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.
4. Defending: Nerf claim buff to ground and buff wall/gate HP. Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.
5. Upgrading: Increase upgrade times of keeps (50%) and castles (100%) so there is more to do for both attackers and defenders. Make packed dollies count only as 1 dolly for upgrade. Fully T3 home bl , offensive map waypoint and SM should require more effort, T3 SM shouldn't be daily occurance in every matchup.
6. Movement speed: Superspeed is too strong/abudant, speed runes need nerf to 66% for both PvP and WvW. Claim buff movement speed needs reduction. The range of skills and size of objectives wasn't designed around this amount of movement speed.
7. Tactivators: Rework useless ones
8. Maps: Remove/rework desert, work on new map that can be tested as EotM . Rework old ones. Replace EB NPCs and borderlands with new objectives to make maps less cramped
9. Supply: Make it less abundant, dolyaks should carry less supply now that upgrades don't take any of it. Instead packed dollies should carry 3 times as much supply so you can cut the supply off if you want.
10. Relinks: Not needed so frequently, maybe once or twice a year
11. Pop status and transfer costs: Pop status should be combined population of main and link, transferring cost should be based on this total.
12. Amount of tiers: EU has 2 ded servers in T5 while only 1 or 2 servers have 4 maps queued on reset. only 4 tiers are needed
13. Content: Need more events, like gain burst of superspeed every 10 seconds or camps provide double points
14. Skins: Add siege skins to gemstore. Fireball shooting dank treb, a frozen ram, catapult shooting asuras. Its gonna be sick. Stop milking transfers while ruining the gamemode, milk skins.
15. Story: It was weird to write and read, I admit. Not completely satisfied with it. I wanted to make it a murder story with suicides and everything but as it went by, I just figured it would be removed.

I expected something elementary, instead it's just extravagantly over the top.

And what about WvW Alliances? Why anybody think in WvW Alliances!?

@vier.1327 said:And what about WvW Alliances? Why anybody think in WvW Alliances!?

At this point it makes more sense to believe stories about the Loch Ness monster destroying Edinburgh. We've had about the same level of proof that they both exist, after all.

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@"vier.1327" said:And what about WvW Alliances? Why anybody think in WvW Alliances!?

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Its true, this mythical land of "Edinburgh" definetly dont exist. I mean just look at the name, its just a play on eatingburger.

Thread /done. Hadn't even gotten to scroll up yet to fully read this thread and know I don't now. One should know truth when it's illuminated. Next forum thread.

Anet says they want people to fight over structures, yet every change encourage people to avoid fighting or only fight a handful of defenders with a map que.Some things just need to be changed.

1. Remove all siege but oil and rams, limit rams to 3 on a gate. If you want it, take your lazy butt out of SMC and go get it.
2. Guild aura buffs need reduced or just removed.
3. SMC needs the supply depots removed. It should still take yaks to upgrade. Allows greater counterplay and makes yaks more important.
4. Walls need revisited. It's silly that attackers can spam the walls with aoes while the defender usually has to avoid them or just respawn. Making most weapon skills require line of sight to cast would also fix that, but that is another issue altogether.
5. Barrage hitting over walls needs to be addressed. If they remove all siege but rams and oil, it may be a non-issue. It may be either way. /shrug

@Threather.9354 said:Summary: Upgrades are too fast, claim buff is too strong and teamwork isn't necessary anymore as objectives matter less. Transferring is rampant but also pointless.

Unless someone has statistics that could be proven I am not sure I would say that upgrade speed on average has changed that much. Does it feel more automated yes. The current system allows everyone to be greedy and not focus on upgrades where in the past a limited number of players would focus on upgrades. Which would translate to less fights for them and more busy work. Some of us might have enjoyed it but it also increased our game frustration when we spent time doing things to see it wiped away because those not upgrading would just be off breaking down the other's defenders time and effort and not want to come back and defend since they gain more from just retaking.

You have made plenty of discussion threads about claim buff so will leave that mostly to the other threads.

Transferring, don't have numbers and don't do it, but would tend to believe the same.

Objectives could use more value, teamwork feels the same now and then.

@Threather.9354 said:List of what is needed:

1. Shield gens: Bubble shouldn't block siege fire, instead pulse damage reduction that affects siege also. Helps both attackers (long range catas, trebs become option again) and defenders

This is one of those times I could side with just remove them. I say this even as one that tends to saw we need more options for defense. But would prefer to see seige buffed and gens removed.

@Threather.9354 said:

2. Golems: Guilds ones should cost more supply (80) and all golems shouldn't be affected by boons

Guild price is fine, agree remove the boons and remove their ability to contest capture points.

@Threather.9354 said:

3. Siege vs siege: Siege HP got doubled with the condi change but their damage to each other siege wasn't. Increase siege damage to siege by 50-100% . Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.

Agree. Siege should counter siege. Siege damage to players should also be increased. If you want to counter wall siege place more counter siege.

@Threather.9354 said:

4. Defending: Nerf claim buff to ground and buff wall/gate HP. Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.

I don't think this would help defenders. If there is no claim buff then people on the walls should be granted with something like pulsing stability and protection to replace the buff. Being on siege should increase that pulse's ability. That and/or add collision around the wall areas so that players could tank wall a breach.

@Threather.9354 said:

5. Upgrading: Increase upgrade times of keeps (50%) and castles (100%) so there is more to do for both attackers and defenders. Make packed dollies count only as 1 dolly for upgrade. Fully T3 home bl , offensive map waypoint and SM should require more effort, T3 SM shouldn't be daily occurance in every matchup.

Isn't this more an issue of server balance versus upgrade time? At least on the servers I play on and against a T3 just means its more of a target today and its no guarantee of anything.

@Threather.9354 said:

6. Movement speed: Superspeed is too strong/abudant, speed runes need nerf to 66% for both PvP and WvW. Claim buff movement speed needs reduction. The range of skills and size of objectives wasn't designed around this amount of movement speed.

No, this is the point of the mount. Upgrade its speed and decrease its health.

@Threather.9354 said:

7. Tactivators: Rework useless ones

And add more variety. If everyone is using the same set on the same objectives than we don't have enough diversity.

@Threather.9354 said:

8. Maps: Remove/rework desert, work on new map that can be tested as EotM . Rework old ones. Replace EB NPCs and borderlands with new objectives to make maps less cramped

Your numbers will vary. We will quite often see EB and RDL queued while queues to ABL are gone. We need either a ABL changed out or a fifth map like EoTM brought into the mix.

@Threather.9354 said:

9. Supply: Make it less abundant, dolyaks should carry less supply now that upgrades don't take any of it. Instead packed dollies should carry 3 times as much supply so you can cut the supply off if you want.

Again this seems like your mileage will vary. Secondary objectives are taken out enough and T3's are drawned quiet often before flipped. This isn't an issue.

@Threather.9354 said:

10. Relinks: Not needed so frequently, maybe once or twice a year

The problem here is if you get a bad link, you will either lose more players to other games or encourage more transfers. This is either get alliances out there, or pony up and close down lower pop servers and allow them 2 free transfers.

@Threather.9354 said:

11. Pop status and transfer costs: Pop status should be combined population of main and link, transferring cost should be based on this total.

If this isn't in place, totally agree.

@Threather.9354 said:

12. Amount of tiers: EU has 2 ded servers in T5 while only 1 or 2 servers have 4 maps queued on reset. only 4 tiers are needed

NA, so no opinion.

@Threather.9354 said:

13. Content: Need more events, like gain burst of superspeed every 10 seconds or camps provide double points

Event should be used to test mechanic changes as well.

@Threather.9354 said:

14. Skins: Add siege skins to gemstore. Fireball shooting dank treb, a frozen ram, catapult shooting asuras. Its gonna be sick. Stop milking transfers while ruining the gamemode, milk skins.

Cosmetics for gem store are fine.

Would also add in more that can obtained and traded in game from drops. Add in more custom items for WvW players to acquire from various forms of gameplay in WvW. Example more rare infusion drops from killing players, different ones from killing SMC lord and Keep lords, siege skin drops from taking out targets (players, walls, doors, siege) using siege. Weapon and armor drops that can only be found in WvW.

@Threather.9354 said:

15. Story: It was weird to write and read, I admit. Not completely satisfied with it. I wanted to make it a murder story with suicides and everything but as it went by, I just figured it would be removed.

All good +10 for creativity.

@TheGrimm.5624 said:

@"Threather.9354" said:

Summary:

Upgrades are too fast, claim buff is too strong and teamwork isn't necessary anymore as objectives matter less. Transferring is rampant but also pointless.

2. Golems:
   Guilds ones should cost more supply (80) and all golems shouldn't be affected by boons

Ment only guild golems, they cost 50 supply atm and can be used for multiple gates across map while being better than rams just for 1.

@"Threather.9354" said:

4. Defending:
   Nerf claim buff to ground and buff wall/gate HP. Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.

Having higher HP walls and gates would mean you have more time to gather numbers, borderhop or take down offensive siege. In the end it should come down to if attackers have enough supply if you can't kill them to fend off. And stronger walls will help with this.

@"Threather.9354" said:

5. Upgrading:
   Increase upgrade times of keeps (50%) and castles (100%) so there is more to do for both attackers and defenders. Make packed dollies count only as 1 dolly for upgrade. Fully T3 home bl , offensive map waypoint and SM should require more effort, T3 SM shouldn't be daily occurance
   in every matchup
   .

Nah, there have been proven statistics that upgrade times are several times faster now outside northern towers on alpine bls. For example you can upgrade bay T3 speeding packed dolyaks in under 1 hour now, which would have taken 4h+ before. SM took whole day, over 10 hours, to upgrade beforehands. Towers are kind of fine, north towers upgrade about as fast as before. Do note that the speed of the workers limited the upgradespeed pre-HoT even if you had supply.

Enemy having pretty much everything upgraded is also very limiting to smaller groups and newer commanders as you don't need many defenders to fend them off.

The meta where only your north towers, garri, inner eb towers and eb keep were usually upgraded was much more healthier for keeping up activity as no matter ones skillevel, they could get a group going for something else than flipping south towers on borderlands. Of course the suggested changes wouldn't go that far because 50-100% increase in upgrade times still won't bring it even close to old upgrade times.

You can also approach it from different view: it doesn't make sense that towers require same amount of dolyaks than camps, keeps and castles. They have different importance and less dolyaks involved. They just wanted to make WvW infrastructure too simple by standardizing amount of dolyaks, but it frankly it just isn't balanced and keeps/castles should require much more.

@"Threather.9354" said:

6. Movement speed:
   Superspeed is too strong/abudant, speed runes need nerf to 66% for both PvP and WvW. Claim buff movement speed needs reduction. The range of skills and size of objectives wasn't designed around this amount of movement speed.

This was about incombat movement speed. Pre-HoT no1 was using superspeed. Like small bursts of superspeed like tempest shout and rev elite facet together combined is fine so you can make strong coordinated pushes for a few seconds but right now everyone has massive superspeed uptime with scrappers and whatever. Speed runes are also another offender with speed rune reaper (and other classes soon) being in meta.

@"Threather.9354" said:

9. Supply:
   Make it less abundant, dolyaks should carry less supply now that upgrades don't take any of it. Instead packed dollies should carry 3 times as much supply so you can cut the supply off if you want.

Overall supply being important is a thing for people to log in for even when there isn't a commander: Draining enemy keeps/groups or filling up friendly objectives. After all camps are where WvW starts from.

@"Threather.9354" said:

10. Relinks:
    Not needed so frequently, maybe once or twice a year

I agree with 90% of what the op wrote. We have many issues in WvW and multiple past changes did not make WvW better (rather worse). I personally would go one step further. I see 2 main issues:1) What is WvW?In anet's definition, wvw is way too much. It is large scale open fights, small scale fights, fights around structures, ppt,... If anet could narrow down the definition and it would make life a lot easier for them. They could focus on the issues for their target playerbase. E.g. if anet defines WvW as mainly ppt, then the shield generators are a good idea and should be made even stronger. If they want to have large scale fights, they should remove all the structures (or nerf their importance). Like now, it is a bit of both and nobody is happy.

2) Increase the number of people working on WvW and/or the efficiencyAnet had in the past many good ideas and I believe that they would love to implement a lot of stuff we all suggest here. However, the day has only 24h and the work day is even shorter. There need to be more people to make a change and the efficiency of the current staff needs to be increased. One way to increase the efficiency is described in 1). If the employees have less to think about everyone and to discuss the different aspects, they will gain time to focus on the task.

1. Shield gens: Bubble shouldn't block siege fire, instead pulse damage reduction that affects siege also. Helps both attackers (long range catas, trebs become option again) and defendersShield gens caused defensive trebuchets to lose most of their relevance. Given how slow trebuchets are , I think that would be a worthwhile change. Maybe the reduction should be based off of the type of siege.

Due to the 22 recharge time on the shield gen force field, 12s is more or less 50% uptime with a single shield gen; using both basic and superior is more or less 100% uptime.

The counterpoint to this is that having 1 or two shield gens is not an easy task to manage if you're the only one manning them and don't have experience with siege. In addition, people might just build catapults for the bubble (3s on 20 cooldown).

2. Golems: Guilds ones should cost more supply (80) and all golems shouldn't be affected by boonsGuild siege golems cost half the supply of normal alpha golems. In all other siege types the supply required is the same as the basic blueprint (in this case 100). Why do you feel it should be 80 supply instead of 100?
3. Siege vs siege: Siege HP got doubled with the condi change but their damage to each other siege wasn't. Increase siege damage to siege by 50-100% . Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.This is a great idea, I think that aimed siege damage to other siege should be increased. People that spend a lot of time and effort to learn siege spots and perfect their trebuchet aim should be rewarded. Not so sure on ballista though , I've never felt it needed much help killing enemy siege.
4. Defending: Nerf claim buff to ground and buff wall/gate HP. Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.The nerf to gates/walls and siege was because fight guilds did not want any resistance when PvDing their way in. I agree though, more wall health would be advantageous but it penalizes smaller attack groups not running multiple catapults or trebuchets at once. The claim buff only helps if you have roughly even numbers or more people.
5. Upgrading: Increase upgrade times of keeps (50%) and castles (100%) so there is more to do for both attackers and defenders. Make packed dollies count only as 1 dolly for upgrade. Fully T3 home bl , offensive map waypoint and SM should require more effort, T3 SM shouldn't be daily occurance in every matchup.Making packed yaks more for supply purposes is an interesting take. On average it takes several hours to T3 something though. I know because I've sometimes been the sole person keeping an eye on it while people goof off on EBG.
6. Movement speed: Superspeed is too strong/abundant, speed runes need nerf to 66% for both PvP and WvW. Claim buff movement speed needs reduction. The range of skills and size of objectives wasn't designed around this amount of movement speed.Superspeed is only from scrappers , heralds (5s on 35s cooldown), and tempests more or less (3s on 35 base cooldown). I think you have more of a problem with scrapper stacking and the rune of speed itself than you have with superspeed in general.
7. Tactivators: Rework useless onesAgreed
8. Maps: Remove/rework desert, work on new map that can be tested as EotM . Rework old ones. Replace EB NPCs and borderlands with new objectives to make maps less crampedDesert has been reworked maybe 5 times. The map isn't as bad as people make it out to be at this point, there's ramps everywhere and hay bales. That's on top of the mobility from the mount which makes slower classes such as guardian/necro less a liability.
9. Supply: Make it less abundant, dolyaks should carry less supply now that upgrades don't take any of it. Instead packed dollies should carry 3 times as much supply so you can cut the supply off if you want.To add to that , they should make defend dolyak a daily mission instead of veteran slayer which does nothing for the matchup at all.
10. Relinks: Not needed so frequently, maybe once or twice a yearThey should just remove links entirely IMO. All it does is add to bandwagoning ; if there isn't enough population they should remove inactive server , especially those named after employees that left the company.
11. Pop status and transfer costs: Pop status should be combined population of main and link, transferring cost should be based on this total.How about just remove links entirely and just remove the smallest servers (do we really need a bunch of french/german/spanish servers)? I don't see why joining a linked server is a thing at all. In addition, the linking of servers with completely different main languages is a problem for the EU players.
12. Amount of tiers: EU has 2 ded servers in T5 while only 1 or 2 servers have 4 maps queued on reset. only 4 tiers are neededThere should just be an elimination of servers outright. Especially when some servers are named after employees that have since left the company.
13. Content: Need more events, like gain burst of superspeed every 10 seconds or camps provide double pointsSome events need some forethought, but something to change it up a bit akin to fractal instabilities would be indeed something to look at.
14. Skins: Add siege skins to gemstore. Fireball shooting dank treb, a frozen ram, catapult shooting asuras. Its gonna be sick. Stop milking transfers while ruining the gamemode, milk skins.This has been suggested so many times it's getting a bit old.

@gloflop.3510 said:I agree with 90% of what the op wrote. We have many issues in WvW and multiple past changes did not make WvW better (rather worse). I personally would go one step further. I see 2 main issues:1) What is WvW?In anet's definition, wvw is way too much. It is large scale open fights, small scale fights, fights around structures, ppt,... If anet could narrow down the definition and it would make life a lot easier for them. They could focus on the issues for their target playerbase. E.g. if anet defines WvW as mainly ppt, then the shield generators are a good idea and should be made even stronger. If they want to have large scale fights, they should remove all the structures (or nerf their importance). Like now, it is a bit of both and nobody is happy.

2) Increase the number of people working on WvW and/or the efficiencyAnet had in the past many good ideas and I believe that they would love to implement a lot of stuff we all suggest here. However, the day has only 24h and the work day is even shorter. There need to be more people to make a change and the efficiency of the current staff needs to be increased. One way to increase the efficiency is described in 1). If the employees have less to think about everyone and to discuss the different aspects, they will gain time to focus on the task.

point 1 -- WvW has always been about map control (capturing and defending structures) , despite what fight guilds that don't do that while taking queue space and bandwagoners would lead you to believe.point 2 -- More people working on WvW likely won't happen.

@"Infusion.7149" said:

1. Shield gens: Bubble shouldn't block siege fire, instead pulse damage reduction that affects siege also. Helps both attackers (long range catas, trebs become option again) and defendersShield gens caused defensive trebuchets to lose most of their relevance. Given how slow trebuchets are , I think that would be a worthwhile change. Maybe the reduction should be based off of the type of siege.

I would add that shield gens also block offensive trebs and catas. Long range cataing or trebing against competent scouts is dead, with it (and claim buff) also died long-term sieges. Trebbing and draining supply is just waste of time, behind or above the gates. Also since shield gen bubble pulses stability, it could also maybe pulse resistance or protection. Being a combat tool instead of ultimate counter to every siege mankind can build.

2. Golems: Guilds ones should cost more supply (80) and all golems shouldn't be affected by boonsGuild siege golems cost half the supply of normal alpha golems. In all other siege types the supply required is the same as the basic blueprint (in this case 100). Why do you feel it should be 80 supply instead of 100?

Well guild golems are alpha golems, not omega golems. So they should cost less than alpha golem. Other guild siege is superior siege or even better (gens).

3. Siege vs siege: Siege HP got doubled with the condi change but their damage to each other siege wasn't. Increase siege damage to siege by 50-100% . Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.This is a great idea, I think that aimed siege damage to other siege should be increased. People that spend a lot of time and effort to learn siege spots and perfect their trebuchet aim should be rewarded. Not so sure on ballista though , I've never felt it needed much help killing enemy siege.

Pretty sure they buffed ballista damage specifically post-HoT when they added the reworked 4 projectile and something. So thats why ballistas feel fine against other siege but everything else feels like they tickle.

4. Defending: Nerf claim buff to ground and buff wall/gate HP. Helps outnumbered defenders more than passive stats.The nerf to gates/walls and siege was because fight guilds did not want any resistance when PvDing their way in. I agree though, more wall health would be advantageous but it penalizes smaller attack groups not running multiple catapults or trebuchets at once. The claim buff only helps if you have roughly even numbers or more people.

Nerf to gate/wall HP + AC damage was a mistake from Anets part. Defending has indeed been too strong after HoT but offenders were claim buff, amount of supply and upgrade times. Like walls and ACs didn't magically become too strong to overcome with HoT, something they actually changed/added in was at the fault.

5. Upgrading: Increase upgrade times of keeps (50%) and castles (100%) so there is more to do for both attackers and defenders. Make packed dollies count only as 1 dolly for upgrade. Fully T3 home bl , offensive map waypoint and SM should require more effort, T3 SM shouldn't be daily occurance in every matchup.Making packed yaks more for supply purposes is an interesting take. On average it takes several hours to T3 something though. I know because I've sometimes been the sole person keeping an eye on it while people goof off on EBG.

Well a few hours is typical downtime between commanders. Back in the day you only needed strong timezone somewhere around morning or midday time to keep enemy side keeps non-waypointed until primetime. Now if you tag up, go watch a movie, you come back and everything is T3 again. WvW didn't have coverage to cover all hours even before HoT. I have nothing against EB keep and garri being T3 but you can't expect to have more than 15 players to attack at off-hours, and if all keeps/SM are T3, higher tier servers will always have enough players to defend, especially if the target in question is SM. But yes, a few hours passively upgrading and losing a few camps is about correct.

Overall keeps and SM will matter more before the doomsday that is T3 so there will be more activity around them, regarding dolyaks and resetting them. It is considerably easier to spot enemy hitting waypointed objective, even when on a different map. Playing around lower tier enemy objectives is just more fun and if there is more enemy activity, defenders will enjoy it too, scouting won't be just a chore if there is actual activity across the map.

6. Movement speed: Superspeed is too strong/abundant, speed runes need nerf to 66% for both PvP and WvW. Claim buff movement speed needs reduction. The range of skills and size of objectives wasn't designed around this amount of movement speed.Superspeed is only from scrappers , heralds (5s on 35s cooldown), and tempests more or less (3s on 35 base cooldown). I think you have more of a problem with scrapper stacking and the rune of speed itself than you have with superspeed in general.Yep, scrappers have too easy of a way to just keep superspeed up. However my point was that its potency could also be tuned down a bit instead of the amount.
7. Maps: Remove/rework desert, work on new map that can be tested as EotM . Rework old ones. Replace EB NPCs and borderlands with new objectives to make maps less crampedDesert has been reworked maybe 5 times. The map isn't as bad as people make it out to be at this point, there's ramps everywhere and hay bales. That's on top of the mobility from the mount which makes slower classes such as guardian/necro less a liability.Yea desert is fine. They should consider making the map more neutral by moving spawns around a bit with maybe adding another alpine map as 3rd home map., so every server can have 1 alpine home bl. Like having 5th map is not a terrible idea.
8. Relinks: Not needed so frequently, maybe once or twice a yearThey should just remove links entirely IMO. All it does is add to bandwagoning ; if there isn't enough population they should remove inactive server , especially those named after employees that left the company.
9. Pop status and transfer costs: Pop status should be combined population of main and link, transferring cost should be based on this total.How about just remove links entirely and just remove the smallest servers (do we really need a bunch of french/german/spanish servers)? I don't see why joining a linked server is a thing at all. In addition, the linking of servers with completely different main languages is a problem for the EU players.

I think removing links is definitely an option they should look into, but there are lot of people that are loyaltists to their current server. Reason I think removing links is fine because it is fine for lower tier matchups to have even considerably less activity to T1. It was always so that some guilds and blobs preferred higher tiers, most guilds midtiers and roamers/laggers lower tiers. There is no reason to make artifically each tier have almost same population as people can just transfer to whichever amount of population they prefer.

Keeping relinkings available like once a year would be countermeasure to the possbility that some megastacked server is given birth. Not that it matters too much. So basically keeping the servers, fixing gem costs but removing regular relinkings might help with some future problems.

@Infusion.7149 said:point 1 -- WvW has always been about map control (capturing and defending structures) , despite what fight guilds that don't do that while taking queue space and bandwagoners would lead you to believe.Would be good if they could say it open and honest. Then they can focus on developping an optimal environment for these players and search for another option for the others.

point 2 -- More people working on WvW likely won't happen.I agree

I disagree.You claim

1. Shield gens: Bubble shouldn't block siege fire, instead pulse damage reduction that affects siege also. Helps both attackers (long range catas, trebs become option again) and defenders

This is what actually happensThe above must be coming from a person never ever uses a Shield generator to defend, especially when the population is very low on your side. Shield gens need targeting, the operator needs to look at the incoming attacks, place the bubble where it is needed, they are not AFK trebbing, which is often the case of a treb hitting the outer towers often there would be 2, sometime 3 trebs hitting at different intervals, the player on the shield generator cannot do anything else and have to be alert all the time to use it (there is no (minute) pip gain for defending on a shield generator FYI).

When facing catapult on wall the person often cannot use it to shield since the bubble needs to be place exactly where the catapult is hitting the wall which means you need to be on the wall, which means you gonna get pull off it by hacking player who can pull you off regardless of where you are standing making the shield useless. So when you say the bubble shouldn't block siege fire and it help defenders....that is 100 and 1 % untrue.

I suggest the cool down needs to be adjusted/scale according to how many players are on each side. Say you are attacking a tower with a 50 players squad dropping 10 rams or 8 catapult (which already have their own bubble, suggest to take away shielding on Catapult) to take enemy objective, your shield generators need to have cool down that is comparatively longer than the one that 1 scout in the tower is using.

Shield generator cannot shield it self << loop hole by placing the bubble in front of the shield needs to be fix, to siege fire can take down shield generators regardless where the bubble is. they just don't get shield, end of story.

tldr:Shield Generator cool down to be scale according to player sizeShield Generator cannot shield itself needs rework so that it will never be shield regardless of where the bubble is placed.Shield Generator should not be able to shield Catapult since Catapult already has it own bubble.Shield Generator bubble needs to be bigger and have a longer range.Shield Generator needs to be rework on all point of view - number of players involved, numbers of catapult/rams/treb that were deployed etc.Shield Generator to have its own bubble like the Catapult with a proper cool down timer.Cool Down timer to be place on individual player not on the Shield Generator, different players using the same shield generator cannot have the same cool down unless you put that on all the other siege as well. It is a cooperative game mode after all.

8. Maps: Remove/rework desert, work on new map that can be tested as EotM . Rework old ones. Replace EB NPCs and borderlands with new objectives to make maps less crampedDesert is the best map, it needs not be removed.

9. Supply: Make it less abundant, dolyaks should carry less supply now that upgrades don't take any of it. Instead packed dollies should carry 3 times as much supply so you can cut the supply off if you want

Amount the dolyaks carry is fine, there are players who dedicate their time solely on defending and killing enemies' dolyaks. Its a cooperative game mode, if the server cannot cooperate to do the necessary objective, than you just don't get the objective done, you can't just change things to suite your play style. just like a lot of your other suggestion ie: time it takes to upgrade the objectives. Some server can Tier 3 SMC in 3-4 hours. It's a shame to say my server cannot because other servers will usually take out our camps if and when we have SMC , some servers don't get waypoint in keep x3 longer than other server does. Because they weren't doing what it takes to make it happens. Don't simply throw out suggestions and break the game even more.

Two years ago the NA Server I am on used to be T1 and T2 constantly but now we are lucky if we can get into T3. From noon PST until early morning we have very few playing and yet our server says full. We don't even bother fighting anymore because we stand no chance against the 40 or 50 in the zergs that take our tower and keeps. We are relegated to just capping and hoping the zerg lets us take it back. Sometimes after the zerg will just sit out front and stop us from getting our keep back. You know the ones "the spawn campers." There is no balance left on our server and many are leaving because it's frustrating not being able to go on the offence or even defend. Why bother playing if you know you have absolutely no chance. In the very early morning we have a guild come on "from Australia i believe"and gets all of our stuff back and tiers everything up but after they leave it's the same old same old. It's really sad that our server has been setup to lose.