WvW is what it was intended to be?

Hi guys!

Coming from a Ultima Online background, with open world pvp (literally, only some cities were safe), full loot drop when dead and a lot of heart-beating- spikes during mass pvp's what really brought me to GW2 was WvW. I tought that i would be able to experience that same feeling again, even without the loot drop (don't make any sense here), but then i realized that zerg/ blob thing is the real shit and it was a massive disappointment.

I see that a lot of people likes to run on that zergs, farm pips, but... Do you really like the gameplay experience you are having? I'm not trying to impose nothing here, it's a legitimate question. From my pov, zergs are a thing just because it's more efficient, you run like a train, crash other trains, take objectives, profit.

So i've started with the roaming thing and it was so much fun. Much more tactic combat (GW2 combat is great, say whatever you want about balance, but the action combat here is the best of all mmos imho)! But you obviuosly can't take SMC, ie, with a small roaming group, you can't keep up on getting smaller objectives too when there's a zerg of enemy server running around, etc. So, zergs will always be "meta" on this game mode the way it is.

What are your thoughts about this?

Roaming is my first love, although I do not roam very often anymore since it has pretty much died in the last couple of years, HoT was one of the final nails in its coffin. Don't get me wrong you can still roam and have fun but its nothing like the old days. For the first 3 years of GW2 all I did was solo roam, never touched the zergs, but then I looked at my 40k kills after 3 years roaming and was a bit sad, although all those kills came from 1 v x fights, I felt it was time to really try some zerging, and to my surprise I liked it for a change of pace, long story short I joined the ranks of Ultimate Dominator about a year later after following all the big name coms out there causing some chaos, these days I do a bit of both, I need to get my fix of both lets say, sometimes I just want to roam and get 1 v 1's with my thief and sometimes I just want to go yolo frontline in a zerg on my necro, I enjoy both aspects and it's what's kept me playin the game for 5+ years.

Wvw was built to be like dark age of camelot not ultima online.It was intended for group play since you aren't suppose to solo structures (but it's possble).

Roaming has been dying out because of changes to the game.Not every class has a good roaming spec, a couple classes excel at it and you tend to run into them more often than not. Classes usually good for roaming are ones that can stealth, have a lot of mobility, or can "one shot" or condi dump like a mofo, and they can beat up on most group zerging specs. Personally I'm very tired of fighting thieves and mesmers, so I don't bother to roam anymore, they also broke some stuff for small group play with HoT so I also don't do havoc stuff much anymore either.

So better to just run in groups, as you stated it's more efficient if you're going to take stuff, and get access to things your class might not have like more healing boons and cleanses. Easier for participation and rewards.

There are 2 problems with your expectations. The first is confusing large scale PvP to equate to open world PvP; These are very different things due to motivation and focus, as WvW has distinct objectives, while Open World PvP is more oriented toward "targets of opportunity".
The second "do we like it?" is a loaded question. For the most part, WvW players like the concept, but take issue with a LOT of specifics of the implementation. The structure of the Objectives, the way Siege is integrated, how the PPT system works, and open field battles are usually in such opposition to each other, that each system makes sense in a Vacuum, but start to have glaring issues where they interact with each other.

What you're complaining about is a lack of small scale agency, because you lack the mindset needed to operate a zerg. This isn't "a bad thing", but the lack of perspective, and the unclear interaction on a strategic level, leads to a lot of roamers displaying unfounded egotism in their game play. Its the same egotism that plagues many commanders, and has lead to political in-fighting on multiple servers both past and present.

If you want to understand whats happening, you need another point of Reference with similar game play. Planetside 1 (defunt) and Planetside 2 (active but wonky) are good examples of both the best and worst aspects of a combined arms format has to offer. I would describe the game play as "Structure in Chaos", where cursory observation would suggest its a total flustercluck of Randos throwing themselves at a meat grinder. And to an extent that true. But when you add an element of Coordination, chaos can be converted into a weapon... which is where Strike teams come in. Strike teams are typically made up of squads of highly coordinated players, who as a group are 3 to 4 times more effective then equal number of zerglings. While large numbers of coordinated groups are obviously more effective, thats not a common expectation due to extremely wide variation in player skill levels, language barriers, and situational awareness (which is developed over time).
In the common prime time configuration, Zerglings operate on a relatively simple principle of "Find nearest fight, and try to kill things.....badly". On its own its not effective, but it is consistent. What the zerging bring to the fight is pressure to the front. They may make progress from time to time, but usually they just stalemate against the opposing zerg at a choke point. What the Strike teams do is take advantage of the distraction the zerg creates, and targets specific vulnerabilities to weaken or break an enemy line. This even includes back line insertions to capture objectives to deny spawn points and logistics. When an enemy line falters, the zerg's pressure will push forward, and let its momentum carry it until the enemy musters a counter defense to dig in.
Now mixed into the Zerg ranks are unlabeled Support players, whose main job (and source of fun) is maintain logistics and keep the front line churning as long as possible. They also do strategic defenses, booby trapping against Strike teams, and countering enemy armor/air pushes with available anti-vehicle weapons. When Output construction was added, those players also took on the role of base building, and enhanced logistics.

So while the game, on the surface level, looks like chaos.... if you dig down a bit, you can find bits of organization acting a major force multipliers to the blobly whole that is the Zerg. Unfortunately WvW lacks a lot of the cohesion elements that ties all the game play together.... so what we end up with is 5 different types of players, all arguing whose more important to "winning" WvW as a game mode.

Thanks all for your understanding on my pov and awesome inputs!As starlingvf said, maybe i need to dig a little more to find that organization behind big zerg fights too.

I just don't like the fact that, with this awesome big maps with a lot of objectives, all i can do is joining a big fat blob and hope everyone does well. Not that i'm the "experienced player", but i want to know where my mistakes impacts my success or failure.

I would love to see like things like "you must hold this 3 camps to get that keep" or "this 5 points around SMC has to be held by that server if the blob wants to take the lord out", you know? I mean, this keeps the world alive, maybe throw some more PvE elements in this and make people that don't usually wvw join this game-mode.

I don't like the saudosism but i'll bring UO again to the table: There was a mob called the "Prisma Lord" that drops the only true black dye in the game. It was hard to kill and the spawn points were always crowded of players, it was so much fun to fight for this loot, SO MUCH FUN. And i'm not saying this would be a good thing here, it's just an example on how you can merge pvp and pve players.

For the fights, i've found an interesting video to show what i think it's fun:

wvw is what you make it to be because wvw as intended is to be a tournament and there is none. so, for now, its just a habit of us players.

@starlinvf.1358 said:

Starlin, that was the most thoughtful breakdown of a zerg I have ever seen. + + + + + + +

@diamondgirl.6315 said:

@starlinvf.1358 said:

Wahtever this has to do with the topic... Back to topic : See .. if Anet would like to be WvW in a different state they would change it ..so for them it seems to work .. lot of Players see things different and are not glad about the state it is in so they will keep leaving the Game after realising that they don´t care about the players opinion

@Malafaia.8903 said:Hi guys!

Coming from a Ultima Online background, with open world pvp (literally, only some cities were safe), full loot drop when dead and a lot of heart-beating- spikes during mass pvp's what really brought me to GW2 was WvW. I tought that i would be able to experience that same feeling again, even without the loot drop (don't make any sense here), but then i realized that zerg/ blob thing is the real kitten and it was a massive disappointment.

I see that a lot of people likes to run on that zergs, farm pips, but... Do you really like the gameplay experience you are having? I'm not trying to impose nothing here, it's a legitimate question. From my pov, zergs are a thing just because it's more efficient, you run like a train, crash other trains, take objectives, profit.

So i've started with the roaming thing and it was so much fun. Much more tactic combat (GW2 combat is great, say whatever you want about balance, but the action combat here is the best of all mmos imho)! But you obviuosly can't take SMC, ie, with a small roaming group, you can't keep up on getting smaller objectives too when there's a zerg of enemy server running around, etc. So, zergs will always be "meta" on this game mode the way it is.

What are your thoughts about this?

I want to be helpful!

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World

“The inspiration for World versus World came from Dark Age of Camelot's realm vs. realm battles.”

Open World PvP is not the same as Large Scale PvP. And Zerging is actually fun and competitive if you do it right in a group where everyone is in voice chat. You time your abilities and it's basically like a classic MMO raid except you're facing another zerg.

WvW was supposed to be very much like DAoC. But they failed and WvW evolved into a train game.

@Grim West.3194 said:WvW was supposed to be very much like DAoC. But they failed and WvW evolved into a train gamE

Basicly this, they noticed they cant fix nor balance classes due the power creep mentality Anet has to helps bad and new players(gw2 objective), so they made the gamemode something to get ktrained for rewards (it easy to get your bags full in this game) and farm the rewards tracks are alame way to manipulate players as well to AVOID fixed what is happening in WvW.

It is an effortless game made arround the pve players... preciselly what gw2 is suposed to be a 1111 ktrain REWARD FARM game for bad players, for players that dint like mmmo due effort needed.

I always thought it was because the initial designer for WvW and current are different thus the lost of directions.

WvW is what the majority of the players have made of it. The players zerg by preference, stack the servers in their favor whenever given the chance, and so forth.

Anet presumably envisioned a more traditional war with constant fighting over objectives and a tug-of-war over territory, but MMO players are nothing if not good at circumventing developers' intentions.

Players use what's provided.Is it the players fault the whole ppt tiered system was broken from the very beginning?I mean we learned in the first two weeks of the game that coverage was king, and it forever stained wvw by hampering it's development thereafter when they couldn't hold proper tournaments, when they couldn't even provide proper rewards to the game mode. They allowed free transfers for months, when players complained about overnight coverage Anet told us to suck it up. They provided the broken vision, players made do with what was there.

Players zerg because it's easier, players are gravitating more to that these days because of the development of elite specs and where it has taken classes, as well as how much combat has changed over the years. Only reason to fight over an objective is to draw a fight out, because the developers have provided no other mechanics for a reason to fight over them. For points? lol, BG is probably the last server to take that seriously anymore.

I don't realy like wvw anymore, but having a guild and those 20 people that i know can trust and fighting another guild is just soo rewarding. Amount of taught that is put into GvGs is unparalel with normal pug wvw. Now with PoF release we can actuly again fight outnumbered and win as opposed to HoT era.

@SloRules.3560 said:I don't realy like wvw anymore, but having a guild and those 20 people that i know can trust and fighting another guild is just soo rewarding. Amount of taught that is put into GvGs is unparalel with normal pug wvw. Now with PoF release we can actuly again fight outnumbered and win as opposed to HoT era.

Sadly gvg's are just find a way to stack n roll, besides one or two tricks there isnt much about it.

Pitty that Anet didnt continue the balance towards the 8 man team and actually have decent GvG with player skill involved.

@primatos.5413 said:

@diamondgirl.6315 said:

@starlinvf.1358 said:

To be Frank, the vast majority of Players couldn't properly articulate an opinion, even if whats said could control the direction of the entire industry. If theres one thing I've learned over the years, through 5 MMO betas, 10+ early access titles, countless examples of disasters with PvP Survival titles, and even more countless examples of games trying to build for eSports, its that "Players only know "when" they don't like it". Its been evident that games designed by Competitive players are among the most openly hostile, and unimaginative (ie Safe) game modes possible; while trying to design or adjust something by committee/focus groups, usually results in something passable at best, and terrible at worst. This isn't to say Devs always know what they're doing.... if theres any group within this vicious cycle that is prone to perception problems, it would be a Design team. If the job description were any more literal, it would list "Mind Reader" as a required job skill.

With the popularity of Kick Starter and Open development projects, one of the biggest challenges faced by a group of developers is how to process feedback from the public/backers. So while this is anecdotal at best, there does appear to be a threshold of somewhere between 50-200 testers that yield a higher % of useful information then other group sizes. Part of this is self selection bias, as this level of involvement naturally attracts players with certain personality traits; however, its still possible to be large enough to gain a wide range of perspectives, and properly oriented by a common, overarching goal. Below that number, you have a harder time getting diverse perspective, which can fall victim to blind spots. But above that number, the signal to noise ratio drops proportionally with the group size. It also has problems with tribal camps and polarized view points, giving the illusion of topical consensus, but in reality burying the facts under the totem arguments. And don't even get me started on the level of "No True Scottsman" arguments used to prop up, or tear down various demands.

I see that problem pretty rampant within the WvW, PvP and even PvE sections of the forums, because there is not a good enough consensus as to what what the game mode represents. And despite so many people's insistence to the contrary, it is entirely possible to create a cohesive game mode that supports a wide range of player skill levels.... Most people just pretend it isn't, because its an easier argument to defend.

Now despite all my grievances with communities giving really low quality feedback, there is a caveat that "players also know when they like something, when they see it". Complicating this discussion further is a major quirk in human psychology known as the Anchoring effect. Directly, it influences people's perception of things, based on personal experiences. Where this turns into a problem, and is the ultimate folly of the Focus group approach, is that this leads to feedback being heavy on examples of "things they like" for reference, but extremely light on cognizance as to "why" they like it. This is where feed back tends to drift heavily into "feels", making this vague understanding of experience even more muddy from a design break down perspective. This leads to the saying of "you can give the players exactly what they 'asked' for, and they'll hate even more then what they had before". Theres no stronger proof of this then the Dessert Borderlands.

Which is why I like this picture.....

I issue I take with people saying "Anet could make it work if they wanted to", is how its inherently hard to get a bead on WvW players, who also dislike change, who think the game mode is fundamentally broken, cheese mechanics at every opportunity, yet still expect the Devs to solve all these problems when theres no clear direction in the design, no clear consensus from the players on what they like, and spend just as much time on the forums as PvP players lamenting over how the Devs don't understand them, and the game is rigged to ruin their fun. Dare I point toward all the posts about how unskillful the game mode is, and how their personal skill level as a player is being underminded by the game's design. And the sad part is, with a community of this size, the players believing they have agency in the design process is just as counter productive as not having their feedback in the design process. And thats not even considering all the things that have gone wrong on the Anet side of the fence.

In closing.... to paraphrase something Rick would say..... "its already too late. all thats left is to lower your expectations, and take comfort in knowing your opinions have basically been worthless up to this point."

Well, mods can close the topic.Ty @starlinvf.1358 for the analysis, lol

@Malafaia.8903 said:Well, mods can close the topic.Ty @starlinvf.1358 for the analysis, lol

Don't thank him for his opinion, Primatos thinks thanking him is worthless.

@Malafaia.8903 said:Thanks all for your understanding on my pov and awesome inputs!As starlingvf said, maybe i need to dig a little more to find that organization behind big zerg fights too.

I just don't like the fact that, with this awesome big maps with a lot of objectives, all i can do is joining a big fat blob and hope everyone does well. Not that i'm the "experienced player", but i want to know where my mistakes impacts my success or failure.

I would love to see like things like "you must hold this 3 camps to get that keep" or "this 5 points around SMC has to be held by that server if the blob wants to take the lord out", you know? I mean, this keeps the world alive, maybe throw some more PvE elements in this and make people that don't usually wvw join this game-mode.

I don't like the saudosism but i'll bring UO again to the table: There was a mob called the "Prisma Lord" that drops the only true black dye in the game. It was hard to kill and the spawn points were always crowded of players, it was so much fun to fight for this loot, SO MUCH FUN. And i'm not saying this would be a good thing here, it's just an example on how you can merge pvp and pve players.

For the fights, i've found an interesting video to show what i think it's fun:

If you are looking for this, play sPvP. That is basically what your video link is. The lack of stats like Trailblazer's is the reason you don't see boring battles like this in sPvP as outlined in that video. Condi dump, support condi clears, condi dump, support condi clears, etc.

@Turk.5460 said:

@Malafaia.8903 said:Thanks all for your understanding on my pov and awesome inputs!As starlingvf said, maybe i need to dig a little more to find that organization behind big zerg fights too.

I just don't like the fact that, with this awesome big maps with a lot of objectives, all i can do is joining a big fat blob and hope everyone does well. Not that i'm the "experienced player", but i want to know where my mistakes impacts my success or failure.

I would love to see like things like "you must hold this 3 camps to get that keep" or "this 5 points around SMC has to be held by that server if the blob wants to take the lord out", you know? I mean, this keeps the world alive, maybe throw some more PvE elements in this and make people that don't usually wvw join this game-mode.

I don't like the saudosism but i'll bring UO again to the table: There was a mob called the "Prisma Lord" that drops the only true black dye in the game. It was hard to kill and the spawn points were always crowded of players, it was so much fun to fight for this loot, SO MUCH FUN. And i'm not saying this would be a good thing here, it's just an example on how you can merge pvp and pve players.

For the fights, i've found an interesting video to show what i think it's fun:

Yes, yes, currently it's what i'm playing.I just find that the freedom of WvW is something that sPvP lacks. The fear of death, the sense of acomplishment, etc