Do Anet even care about WvW? (From Today's stream with WvW Devs on Twitch)

[Svarty.8019]

@Ahnlok.3897 said:I was waiting more than an hour just to hear any of these questions about improving WvW.

An hour? I've been waiting for FIVE YEARS!

The fact is this: There is no money in WvW, and the only reason to maintain it is that some WvW players buy gems.

It's sad, I love WvW and what it could have been,

My take is this:With the release of HoT, the players gave them confused feedback because WvW is so many different things to so many different players, the devs didn't see any potential in expanding the WvW system because to meet all these varying demands would be inordinately expensive in terms of manpower (especially with NC Soft making demands on the studio) and thought that they'd be better off secretly shoving WvW into maintenance mode and put nearly all the energy into story and gem store.

BUT there's a tiny chance something might happen to WvW in the expac, but it's far more likely to be getting nothing significant. Again.

Ironically, they could improve WvW by rowing back on some of the crap changes they made back in the day, namely;Banner the Lord nerf, which should, at the very least, be reversed as week-long event, andThe introduction of Shield Generators, which make the life of big groups far easier against small groups - a SNOWBALL effect enhancer. They make the strong stronger. Bad move and I'd like to see these removed in a week-long event, too. So the players can say whether this was better or worse than when the shield generators are in the game. Ofc the majority of ppl will say shield generators are good because they are the aforementioned big group.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:I still don't understand the resistance to removing dire/TB gear."Remove" how? There's no way to remove a stat combination from WvW without removing it from the game as a whole, and they're not going to do that.

[JTGuevara.9018]

....sigh.....

I used to be like most people on these forums, constantly blaming ANet for the state of gw2, but as time goes on I find that the community is more at fault for the state of the game then they let on. I look at the situation like this: the wvw community has made their bed, now they need to lie in it. I've played since the release, the big ET, HoT, etc alliance, the tournaments. The community has done more to ruin wvw than ANet EVER did. The guild politics, the server stacking, the griefing, the culture, you name it. Looking back, I give ANet the benefit of the doubt because they at least made an attempt to keep it alive as opposed to say spvp. There they pretty much catered to the "elite" bunch who sucked off conquest for 8 years.

There used to be roamers, who were the heart of this whole thing. Where are they? Here on DB, only a handful of us roam. The rest of us just stack on EB to ride the bag train. Instead, people just troll on both team/map chat all night where communication gets lost and just creates a bad atmosphere for everyone else.

Now about this stream, I don't think it's that much different than previous ones. Balance is the usual conversation of these, I don't even see what the big fuss is.

[reddie.5861]

@Blocki.4931 said:

@Jabronee.9465 said:

@"XenesisII.1540" said:They've already mentioned it a couple times alliance news will not come from the stream, but more likely in a forum post or blog.Obviously server balancing to them will be addressed with alliances.Lag can't be addressed with wvw devs that much is obvious, what do you want them to say yes they know about lag? mention the skill lag that has existed for 8 years? then what? Maybe they just need to use the amazon batphone hotline?

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/627995009

Playing on SBI. Not playing during prime time so obviously they won't get prime time lag.Raymonds stream is lagging, spends 10 mins tweaking it, figures out backup process was lagging his system.8:28 - Balance update, can't really say when next large update, few tweaks next week with condi thief and bird pets.10:15 - Starts talking about getting tweaks in through patches.13:08 - Mentions again next week patch tweaks on condi thief and bird pets on ranger.19:12 - Raymond taking forever to load into ebg.21:02 - Mentions pvp season starts next week, forum post went up for it.22:45 - No alliance update, not expected to happen on a stream, but in a forum post or blog.24:00 - Mentions again tweaks for condi thief and bird pets. More changes for every class in the larger balance updates, small changes they get in when they can to tune things that are over performing.25:35 - Game play that happens on stream factors very little into balance considerations for wvw, not taking it seriously, playing to hang with chat, follow commander, not a true experience to gather feedback from, not the point of the stream.27:10 - Tweaks next week primarily for pvp, pvp tends to mirror roaming more closely, but not completely the same. The condi thief and bird tweaks are primarily pvp changes but worthwhile to adjust in wvw at the same time. Damage on bird pets oversight from large update, the damage over performing in relative to what they want.28:35 - Cal mentions getting crazy lag but thinks it's his pc doing something.29:15 - Starts talking about pvp season, forum post.35:00 - Talks about conditions in terms of organized team play, not a priority to look at because of feedback from the organized groups which don't have a problem with it. Obviously affect small scale more but it's the biggest difficulty to balance small and large scale at the same time. Cases potentially too problematic in small scale so may adjust even if not a problem for large scale, and let large scale adapt. But a lot more involved. Might happen during small tweak patches than large balance update.37:48 - Siege and banners hot topics, they're looking at, can't say when for changes.39:23 - GOT US moment.41:00 - Raymond talks about balance patches. Long discussion starts about balance and goals.43:42 - Cal talks about balance patches, thinks done good job with more frequent patches in general, definitely less opportunity to tune things in wvw, obviously not all wvw focused, wvw problems generally more complicated.47:09 - Cal still talking about balance. GOT US moment.48:00 - Raymond talking about balance goals and metas.48:35 - Cal personal goal with balance to provide as much viable options as possible, obviously going to have a dominate strategy. Goal is to provide as much options players will figure out the best to use.56:00 - Mentions again no update on alliances and again will most likely be in a forum post or blog post first.56:35 - Pvp format gearing and stats in wvw, Raymond brought up to the team and community ages ago, team said community was not excited about it at the time. Doesn't know if sentiment is still true. Wants to figure out if there's a way to provide an easier build play for wvw, which is great for pvp for experimenting with builds. Thinks it would be unfair to ask people to get an entire set of legendary to do that. It's something they want to figure out.1:01:15 - Doesn't think making a separately zone to test builds would really work because of different group sizes needed to test it. They don't control what's in the gem store.1:06:26 - Cal doesn't do any real work on pve balance, doesn't know when a large balance update will be.1:16:15 - Talks about funny bug with thick healthbars which were bugged on mesmer clones. Funny enough with the dodge nerf they got rid of most mesmers in wvw anyways.

Bird Pets?? What about Bird Pets! There's nothing wrong with Bird Pets!! This game is getting ridiculous!!!

Yeah, keep telling yourself that 4k auto attacks from AI on top of your entire class is perfectly fine when every other damage got nerfed.

in WvW the pets are rather useless unless we talking about roaming thing which again pets arent anywhere as good as in sPvP most roaming is fast stuff people dont have to stand on point or be near it.not saying the pet is okay, just saying comparing sPvP problems to WvW isnt really gonna help for me in WvW soulbeast isnt that much of a big deal when comes to balance problems.

[XenesisII.1540]

Well if the pets were already useless then a damage nerf isn't doing much anyways.Let us know when they get to the depths of nerfing a dodge, otherwise meh.

[Zepoolpe.9217]

@"JTGuevara.9018" said:....sigh.....

I used to be like most people on these forums, constantly blaming ANet for the state of gw2, but as time goes on I find that the community is more at fault for the state of the game then they let on. I look at the situation like this: the wvw community has made their bed, now they need to lie in it. I've played since the release, the big ET, HoT, etc alliance, the tournaments. The community has done more to ruin wvw than ANet EVER did. The guild politics, the server stacking, the griefing, the culture, you name it. Looking back, I give ANet the benefit of the doubt because they at least made an attempt to keep it alive as opposed to say spvp. There they pretty much catered to the "elite" bunch who sucked off conquest for 8 years.

There used to be roamers, who were the heart of this whole thing. Where are they? Here on DB, only a handful of us roam. The rest of us just stack on EB to ride the bag train. Instead, people just troll on both team/map chat all night where communication gets lost and just creates a bad atmosphere for everyone else.

Now about this stream, I don't think it's that much different than previous ones. Balance is the usual conversation of these, I don't even see what the big fuss is.

I was surprised to see this thread without at least one post going "Bad bad WvWers, you are the problem, no aNet which is sooo wonderful and did absolutly nothing wrong so now stop complaining".Pheeewww... we came close, but disaster averted: you can sleep safer tonight!

[XenesisII.1540]

Also ran into the condi thieves today... wow... and people thought cmirage was bad lmao.

[Burnfall.9573]

@"XenesisII.1540" said:Also ran into the condi thieves today... wow... and people thought cmirage was bad lmao.

8 Years of Endless Consecutive Bad Design

Toxicity/Stealth-not a single drop of health-

[Zepoolpe.9217]

@XenesisII.1540 said:Also ran into the condi thieves today... wow... and people thought cmirage was bad lmao.

Don't forget condi druid.. Bad Seed is absolutly not broken... no way! :p

[Faenar.8036]

@"Strider.7849" said:

They listen to really the most uneducated QQ from really bad players. I mean, these people are losing fights with AI that are often weaker than and lose fights to a regular PvE mob.

I heard sometimes about these situations a players died when fighting against a mob, but is it actually a real thing, not just something like an "urban legend"? I mean, I can understand when someone just have to go AFK in a hurry for 4 or 5 minutes and when he came back, he finds himself dead. Thats reasonably understandable if you are AFK for 5 minutes. But are there actually players which are losing against a normal regular PvE mob when they are actively fighting with that mob?

I remember situations few years ago, where that risen gorilla champion at the temple of Lyssa means insta-kill for half the zerg there, even if you played Warrior with 30k HP and 3k + armor. But that was a meta map event with intentionaly hard epic Boss fight. Swarms of zerglings or some champions in HoT/PoF maps can be dangerous too in solo play. But ppl dying against regular PvE mobs, even if they arent AFK and actively fighting them? These things can really happen? I thought its actually not possible even with green lvl 40 gear.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:I still don't understand the resistance to removing dire/TB gear. It'd make condi bunkers way less durable and less-appealing to run with how selfish their defenses are while normalizing small-scale, because power coefficients are too low to effectively kill off these builds as a whole.

Because in sPvP they can delete an amulet and then refund the gold cost (if any) to each player using the mail system. You're deluding yourself if you think it would be that simple to just remove any gear set from WvW.

[hobotnicax.7918]

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:I still don't understand the resistance to removing dire/TB gear. It'd make condi bunkers way less durable and less-appealing to run with how selfish their defenses are while normalizing small-scale, because power coefficients are too low to effectively kill off these builds as a whole.

Because in sPvP they can delete an amulet and then refund the gold cost (if any) to each player using the mail system. You're deluding yourself if you think it would be that simple to just remove any gear set from WvW.

They can set all the gear that uses certain stat combos to reset to no stats with stat selection, they did it before.I agree with dire/TB being removed from WvW, it just offers too much at this point and the last big "balance" patch.

[JTGuevara.9018]

@Zepoolpe.9217 said:

@"JTGuevara.9018" said:....sigh.....

I used to be like most people on these forums, constantly blaming ANet for the state of gw2, but as time goes on I find that the

community

is more at fault for the state of the game then they let on. I look at the situation like this:

the wvw community has made their bed, now they need to lie in it

. I've played since the release, the big ET, HoT, etc alliance, the tournaments. The community has done more to ruin wvw than ANet EVER did. The guild politics, the server stacking, the griefing, the culture, you name it. Looking back, I give ANet the benefit of the doubt because they at least made an attempt to keep it alive as opposed to say spvp. There they pretty much catered to the "elite" bunch who sucked off conquest for 8 years.

There used to be roamers, who were the heart of this whole thing. Where are they? Here on DB, only a handful of us roam. The rest of us just stack on EB to ride the bag train. Instead, people just troll on both team/map chat all night where communication gets lost and just creates a bad atmosphere for everyone else.

Now about this stream, I don't think it's that much different than previous ones. Balance is the usual conversation of these, I don't even see what the big fuss is.

I was surprised to see this thread without at least one post going "Bad bad WvWers, you are the problem, no aNet which is sooo wonderful and did absolutly nothing wrong so now stop complaining".Pheeewww... we came close, but disaster averted: you can sleep safer tonight!

Nice try...but that is not what I said....you're more than welcome to keep pretending though!

An MMO lives and dies with its community, period. No ifs, ands or buts about it. ANet doesn't need my or anyone's protection, they are a multi-billion dollar entity. I could care less.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

22k gunflame, 14k vault, 10k phase smash (on full minstrel target). There are plenty of things that still need to be nerfed. sic em rangers and thiefs need to be hit with the nerf hammer. REALLY hard. So far they have only been tickled.

The balance patches have killed weaver in guilds. In publics they are still viable. Somewhat. Because scrappers outdamage them WHILE giving out support. This is just broken. You could double all staff ele damage and it wouldn't change much.

[Zepoolpe.9217]

@JTGuevara.9018 said:

Nice try...but that is not what I said....you're more than welcome to keep pretending though!

An MMO lives and dies with its community, period. No ifs, ands or buts about it. ANet doesn't need my or anyone's protection, they are a multi-billion dollar entity. I could care less.

Oh yes right ... When something is wrong in a MMO, it's always the community, never the company that makes the game, right .. how could have I missed that! =)

[Celsith.2753]

@RisenHowl.2419 said:It doesn't really matter if they cater to organized groups at this point. There's what, like 15 guilds total for NA that run regularly with 20+ people? With the lag being this bad skillful play goes out the window and the groups that win just have more people that can press 1.

Really, this. Why are they listening to the priorities of the groups that run for a couple hours a few days a week? The majority of the time servers have a pugmander - or none at all - and are trying to play round what the other random people happen to be running. Why balance the game around making the blob happy when they are farming a server who happens to not have a guild on that map to fight them?

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Celsith.2753 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:It doesn't really matter if they cater to organized groups at this point. There's what, like 15 guilds total for NA that run regularly with 20+ people? With the lag being this bad skillful play goes out the window and the groups that win just have more people that can press 1.

Really, this. Why are they listening to the priorities of the groups that run for a couple hours a few days a week? The majority of the time servers have a pugmander - or none at all - and are trying to play round what the other random people happen to be running. Why balance the game around making the blob happy when they are farming a server who happens to not have a guild on that map to fight them?

Because admitting the significance and importance around balancing and maintaining small group gameplay would be conceding they did not know what they were talking about for the past eight years, and that most of the feature updates have, in fact, been bad for the game mode.

Easier to die on the hill and blame people for not liking the format for what it is than it is to admit the format itself was botched from mixtures of arrogance and negligence.It's the same mentality as the meme claiming that those who play WvW are the same people who like to ktrain.

[Senqu.8054]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Celsith.2753 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:It doesn't really matter if they cater to organized groups at this point. There's what, like 15 guilds total for NA that run regularly with 20+ people? With the lag being this bad skillful play goes out the window and the groups that win just have more people that can press 1.

Really, this. Why are they listening to the priorities of the groups that run for a couple hours a few days a week? The majority of the time servers have a pugmander - or none at all - and are trying to play round what the other random people happen to be running. Why balance the game around making the blob happy when they are farming a server who happens to not have a guild on that map to fight them?

Because admitting the significance and importance around balancing and maintaining small group gameplay would be conceding they did not know what they were talking about for the past eight years, and that most of the feature updates have, in fact, been bad for the game mode.

Easier to die on the hill and blame people for not liking the format for what it is than it is to admit the format itself was botched from mixtures of arrogance and negligence.It's the same mentality as the meme claiming that those who play WvW are the same people who like to ktrain.

Pretty well written

[Celsith.2753]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Celsith.2753 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:It doesn't really matter if they cater to organized groups at this point. There's what, like 15 guilds total for NA that run regularly with 20+ people? With the lag being this bad skillful play goes out the window and the groups that win just have more people that can press 1.

Really, this. Why are they listening to the priorities of the groups that run for a couple hours a few days a week? The majority of the time servers have a pugmander - or none at all - and are trying to play round what the other random people happen to be running. Why balance the game around making the blob happy when they are farming a server who happens to not have a guild on that map to fight them?

Because admitting the significance and importance around balancing and maintaining small group gameplay would be conceding they did not know what they were talking about for the past eight years, and that most of the feature updates have, in fact, been bad for the game mode.

Easier to die on the hill and blame people for not liking the format for what it is than it is to admit the format itself was botched from mixtures of arrogance and negligence.It's the same mentality as the meme claiming that those who play WvW are the same people who like to ktrain.

It's becoming more and more obvious as time goes on and the population declines. Catering to the blob doesn't work when the blob doesn't have likewise to fight. As the population has waned it's become important to focus on balancing around reducing the effectiveness of a meta comped voip using map queue, because for the majority of the time most servers do not have that. It's incredibly frustrating to have a comped massive squad appear when all your server has is randoms who happen to be dedicated enough to the mode to still be logged on without a map queue to support them. There's very little you can do about it. Damage them? Nope, boon spam. Corrupt those boons? You aren't going to have nearly enough. And the best part, they get rewarded for standing still in damage just spamming boons, because one of those boons is retal and people trying to fight have to quit attacking or die without anyone even aiming a single attack at them.If by some miracle you do down one, well they're right back up again.

That's if you can even fight back at all. Lag has been getting progressively worse and since the large balance patch I've been pretty much unable to play NA prime. I believe that reducing the amount of calculations the server is having to do with all the condi and boon spam would go a long way to helping with this. But I guess as the 'large organized groups' like their boon spam just fine thankyou very much, this isn't going to happen any time soon.

More and more of the long term players that I have seen for many years are logging in less and what they are telling me is that they are tired of the lag and every fight when a compd group turns up feeling like an uphill battle. Catering to the blobs that spam discord for 70 people to log on, lag out the map and fight enemy servers who can't field the same in that time zone, is taking it's toll.

Edited to add grammar and to comment Blackgate have no idea what I'm talking about.

[Ya Ya Yeah.7381]

@"Ahnlok.3897" said:Today Anet's stream on Twitch,The devs only answer to questions regarding PvP, PvE, and Balance.However, they didn't even bother or rather avoiding to answer regarding the current states WvW, such as lag, server balancing, alliance, and so on.I was waiting more than an hour just to hear any of these questions about improving WvW.Seems like people who are assigned to WvW (and its balancing) do not even worry about the game mode is dying out faster than they can possibly imagine.I know many of you probably disagree with me, that is fine since it is my own thought about today's and few previous WvW related streams I watched.It is almost been more than 3 years since we heard about "Alliiance"I am tired to hear "when its ready" from WvW devs both in game or stream.They probably ban my post like they did before on regarding similar issues we had to deal with WvW team and Anet.But Anet, please there are still many people have hope for you guys to bring back the "Golden Days" of WvW few years back.Please re-consider, and be honest with WvW community.

Thank you for reading this trash post.

Have a good one.

It has been my experience regarding business when working for companies that there are usually one or sometimes two people that are in charge. Those 1-2 people usually set goals for the other employees. These goals become the focus of activity in the work place outside of the day to day operations. Sometimes other issues and ideas do arise and can be brought to the attention of the other's as well as those that are in charge but generally get ignored, because, well... those that are in charge have decided that the goals or aforementioned day to day operations are the priority. Btw I agree with your overall point regarding communication and attention to WvW :) It is unfortunate that whoever it was decided to take the game in a more artsy-pve story telling direction instead of a more combat/competitive Pvp direction.TL;DR Probably not the Devs fault, they do what they are told by somebody and probably don't even have much information outside of what they are given to do.