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What is on your WvW List?


TheGrimm.5624

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@TheGrimm.5624 said:As @"Kylden Ar.3724" said:

on the "actual problems with WvW" list...

Kylden just using your quote as the creation of the curiosity in the question to people.

I think different people will have different lists. What is on yours? We have used Alliances as the crutch for a while now. So many things kind of got the 'wait till Alliance' flag that was curious where people are now. To all WvW forum goers, what is currently on your WvW list?

Uh oh, now I'm inspiring people. We're all in trouble.

So, my list:

  • A dedicated developer TEAM for the mode. Not one person trying in their free time. A team. AT LEAST 3! Without that, none of the rest will happen.
  • Alliances, or to stop being lied to that they are still on the table. If no Alliances, give warning that they will collapse worlds down to get rid of the linking system, so guilds can talk over what they want to transfer to.
  • Monthly balance passes. Not everything needs to change, but they need to keep an eye on and keep tweaking the offenders.
  • While downstate should NOT go, it does favor the higher numbers (which while a bit accurate to the real world, isn't as fun). Remove rally (they either lose DPS to get you up or you get yourself up with skill 4), limit rub rubbers to 2 max, and only able to go down once in 1 minute. A second time and go straight to dead. And dead means dead, waypoint out and not hang around for 5 minutes hoping for a rez cause it's not coming!
  • And standardize downstate skills in WvW/PvP. (1- Desparete Hit 2- Crawl away (hold), 3 - Screw it! (Self kill, stealing the points if they don't stomp before you do it) 4- bandage.) The unique stuff is neat/ok in PvE, but in competitive some downstate skills are clearly better and some are clearly trash.
  • EotM serves no purpose anymore and either needs to be taken out or merged into full on WvW as a new 3rd borderland with adjustments made for gliding and mounts.
  • For people that miss no downstate, bring back warclaw stomp. But increase the time before remount is allowed outside combat (like, 2-5 minutes). It's to get to the fight, not dart in and out of it!
  • Stealth - As I've said before as a Mesmer main, it's too good to NOT take if you have it in the kit, if only for scouting. It needs to look the same to player enemies as it does allies when you are closer than 300 units. Still breaks targeting, but at least they could cleave/AoE, or know where you were and predict. This idea still leaves it perfectly valid for scouting/havoc team use as you can stay away and still jump NPCs no problem.
  • Walls should not be a death sentence for defenders. Read about crenelations ANet!
  • For newer players to the mode, the Karma vendor should have Exotic weapon and armor options, so PvE players can gear up for the mode with all their Karma from farming Tequatl and other world bosses. For us vets, it makes trying out other build ideas cheaper. It's a win win!
  • Shorter matches. Part of the issue is that by the end of Sunday, the match is pretty much done, and winning doesn't matter anyway so people stop coming back past the weekend (myself included). Even if they can't do new matchups daily, then the week should be scored on a "best of 7" system, where the score resets each 24 hours and the worlds get rewards at the end based on how many of the 7 days they won over the week. The rewards would be for anyone who completed the wood level over the week, so not a ton for the more casuals but encourages at least pitching in a bit at least once a week.

So, there you go. My simple list. Seeing a lot of good ideas scattered over the thread in general though.

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Siege:

  • Reduce sup cost for golems to 80.
  • increase siege weapon damage (siege vs siege and siege vs player)
  • Remove blue siege, just give us the purple one.
  • increase arrow cart and Bali HP by 100%

Maps:

  • Move Anza to the other side of the dredge entrance (toward the sup camp)
  • keep all walls destructible to balance out the fact that it is out of range from SM.
  • Make all the walls in WvW wider and higher - to stop the Aoe SPAM covering whole walls.

Skill balance:

  • Projectiles in WvW should not be neutralized or stopped, all skills that reflect, etc should just reduce projectile damage by 25%
  • All skills that are ranged and do damage (so everything exceeding X range) should be impacted by reflects and etc, damage reduced by 25%
  • This would open up more class builds and would make ele's and necro's still usefull but not at a 200% rate vs some other classes.
  • Make defending fun again, make the attacking teamwork for it! right now defending is not fun and very unbalanced!

ArenaNet:

  • Anet to communicate with its community, at the moment this is not happening at all. Feels like maintenance mode communication aka patch notes posts and that is it.
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I always kind of enjoy these threads. People tend to discuss them in a balance between need and development intensity. However, I've found that, as ArenaNet does not give WvW it's due attention anyway, it is pretty pointless to argue about whether it is worth prioritizing something that takes time and effort over something that requires less.

Instead, I'm taking more of a maslowian approach here and grade my preferences based on needs alone:

1. What is absolutely essential for me to keep playing the game as it is over longer term?

Alliances - my own primary gripe with the game right now is that my friends are scattered, its hard to stay in touch even though we try, I am losing friends over it unecessarily and I can't really bring new/other friends into the game. While I can ride the wave out as anyone else, this is absolutely essential for me to keep playing the game over a longer time and begin to see value in my accounts again. My main account is essentially dead until Alliances arrive and I play in some sort of suspended state, primarily building up an alt account that I delete characters on to ping between friends to play with so I don't lose the frienship. Alliances would return value to all my accounts and let me (re-)connect with friends. The more friends I lose the more likely I am to give up in favour of some other inferior product too. I hate to say it but I have many friends who play other games that they do not like as good simply because they can play them together and they can't reasonably do that here anymore.

 

2. What is important to re-establish some trust in the developer, will to support them and see a future in games and expansions?

A fully functional GvG arena/mode - I've said it before, but I believe that this is the easiest, best mechanics-adapted way to create community supported PvP events and most player-adapted way to create guild content in this game. I also believe that WvW as a whole stands to gain indirect benefit from it through new guilds forming to produce new commanders that later share their content with the public through pickup groups. I sincerely hope that the ongoing 10-man sPvP project is built to be iterated and expanded upon like this. I wouldn't even mind if WvW guilds were limited to sPvP mechanics and balance if everything else worked and was flexible. Building something unique for WvW shouldn't be too difficult either but would constitute a separate project and take due time. With the ongoing project there is alot of potential for satisfying overlap, so I really hope they don't build the system into a corner. Custom Arenas already has alot of the necessary back-end.

 

3. What would wholeheartedly restore faith in the developer and product, seeing continued value in its gemstore and moving from constructive critique to suggestions?

This would be addressing the scoring system in an effective manner - The game has a matchup and ladder system that has never fully worked. While Alliances over time has become an important groundwork from where to solve the population balance issues, the root of the population balances comes from the kinks in the scoring system. Long before players transfered for content or friendship, players used to transfer to high-scoring servers, active recruitment/transfering of cross-region guilds to fill out off-hours / nightcapping was a thing and that has never been a good thing for the mode. The key to dealing with nightcapping, overall population balance and the potential of having result-based rewards thus lie in the scoring system. Should this come to pass I would be back to being pretty content or even happy with the game and they would have won me back as a supporter.

 

4. What can let me see the product improving, expanding and growing in a positive light yet within its frame?

The big one here would be some sort of map/queue systems rework and a more firm strategy with ongoing bite-sized systems work from a WvW team or a Competetive team with some stable concrete resources behind it (ie., a team that can swing between larger expansive projects and smaller iterative projects on the systems side of PvP). I believe that this game mode would do better with a system more akin to the PvE megaservers with unlimited overflows and a single core map idea of an equal-sided triangle like EBG but having many variations of that map. I've used the game World of Tanks as an example before and how they have built their entire strategy of creating and iterating upon maps (and modes) there. It's a very effective way of maintaining the impression of fresh, new and active development with fewer resources. Smaller things here would be monetizable additions like more rewards and skins etc., opened up by the scoring changes and social changes above (matchup rewards, player-event rewards or even better collaborative-event rewards, rewards from a return of the old seasons, gemstore additions with guild/alliance themes etc.).

 

5. What could be done to take the product beyond its original vision and beyond expectation?

This would be new modes - looking around the industry there are plenty of interesting things that other companies dabble with, have dabbled with or things that are just very under-used across the industry as a whole. One thing that immidiately comes to mind is to have some sort of map-domination mode that could be divided into seasons and actually be monetized through entry. Old amateur MMO games often used this concept of running a season over a couple of months and then having a downtime where things learnt during the season got worked on and implemented while players had to occupy themselves with baseline perpetual gameplay (ie., the standard mode) and plan for the next season, work on recruitment and internal reorganization etc. That sort of ebb and flow worked really well for a myriad of games. It would not be impossible for a game like GW2 to have two modes packed into one like that, one perpetual and one seasonal version where captures were more permanent over a larger map and ownership of structures more regulated. In fact, many of the necessary pieces of tech or mechanics already exists, like invulnurable walls to create attack windows etc. That tech could easily be repurposed to create siege type scenarios that we see with timers in EVE or that are proposed for games like New World.

 

A closing comment

In fact, if there is anything tragic or tragi-comic about my list, it is that most of these suggestions already have tech in place to actualize them. I'm not trying to downplay the time and resources necessary to implement them but in many cases, the core tech has already been developed and it's mostly a question of using it right, finding an effective development between design and programming. Like how OS shows how there can be separate maps in WvW, how GH shows how you can have PvP flags and systems on a separate map with some entry-control or how custom arenas can already be made with spectation, can be monetized etc. All the pieces of the puzzle lie there and no one has just pieced them together in the correct manner. I believe the key to scoring and thus population balance lies in utilizing the outnumbered tech that already exists. I believe the key to a better map-iterative design strategy lies in utilizing the existing megaserver/overflow tech and new modes could be created by just re-appropriating already existing mechanics in WvW to create another "feel" by having a larger map (or using a multiple map overflow system with the same maps) and letting guild-claims be more permanent to lead to some guild-guild siege scenarios etc. So while connecting all these different system can be a challenge to program with spagetthi code, be a sizable project and whatnot, none of it is pulled out of thin air and would require the reinvention of the wheel. Even the fifth point isn't as otherworldly as some ambitions that ArenaNet has had instead of realizing ideas like these.

 

Ps. I haven't spent much time thinking about how to phrase each point or paragraph here for a would-be reader, so I'm just blurting out my thoughts with the possible lack of explanation or examples of some references, but it's a time and effort issue for me too. I doubt that I will go back to this post and improve it but all the necessary information should be there to give an overview or a gist relevant to this thread.

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I'd like to see:more Balance patchesSecond would be alliances. Or some sort of tweaking the bandwagoning.

I think everyone knows what happened to dzago ur and wsr in eu. The "best fight servers" got scared and transfered to other servers, as soon as they knew, that they won't have a link anymore.

And its absolutely no fun to play in eu t5 (luckily I'm not there).So in order to fix this, I'd like to get a system, that makes consecutive transfers more expensive.Like if you transferred in the past half a year, it will cost you double the amount of gems. And if you then transfer again, it will cost 4times.I think this might prevent a lot of the bandwagoning.

But maybe there are some other ideas?

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@"aspirine.6852" said:Would be nice if they made Rangers a bit better so they are not really unwanted in EBG anymore...If that's your only gripe then you have not been paying attention the past few months. Immob soulbeast in group scenarios is far more common than before. The fact is , stanceshare power soulbeast (on greatsword) was always usable even if not meta : it's just that most random players that play ranger do nothing for the group and therefore won't be wanted in squad because they're too busy at 1500 range pewpewing with longbow into reflects and magnetic/shock auras.

see : https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Soulbeast_-_Immobbeast , https://gw2mists.de/builds/ranger/power-soulbeast


Also any suggestions really need to take into account man-hours because the fact is if you watched the dev stream for the new fractal they stated that assets were reused for the fractal to save money on making new models.

Things such as so-called "GvG" not being a thing or players stacking on linked servers are a player-produced problem. I suspect the GvG thing won't be what some here want, because if you aren't going into EoTM / Armistice Bastion (which is cross server) right now when there is an arena already you probably don't want to use the supposed 15v15 custom arenas either (because some consider only 50v50 a GvG or something ludicrous such as that). Not wanting to use the PVE-ruleset Guild arena is understandable. If they develop alliances for example, they need to build in so many edge cases and balancing mediums just because players abuse transfers as well as the server activity monitoring.

Any business is going to operate on ROI and the complexity of any such a match system to deal with players abusing it is probably not even worth the effort unless it can be directly monetized (i.e. via an expansion that focuses on competitive moreso than PVE similar to GW Factions).

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  1. Balance rewards. Not being able to earn even half the gold per hour as literally mashing 1 button in open world PvE is super lame. Add big world boss style chests for taking T3 structures and give them plenty of loot inside that can be auto-looted. Badges of honor could be tied to killing players more which would be used to buy rewards. This would artificially force players to fight more for better rewards instead of hiding in keeps or way-pointing away.
  2. Fix bugs in the game since launch (dolyak paths breaking, stuck in walls, gates not opening, etc.)
  3. Actual GvG support and not just a ring and "here use this".
  4. Lowered siege cap per structure
  5. Level terrain to make better use of GW2's combat system. All ranged skills are actually sent from your feet to other players despite what you see visually. There are way too many instances of "Obstructed", especially on desert BL.
  6. Better reward tracks. Potentially allow us to get legendary gifts needed for legendary weapons even if it requires the track to be completed multiple times. Tracks also need to give more unique rewards.
  7. Tied to point 1, raw gold given in skirmish track.
  8. Balance the layout of some towers and keeps to make them more interesting.
  9. Something more to spend badges of honor and skirmish tickets on
  10. Update trebs to use AOE instead of holding 1 down to prevent bots
  11. Potentially look into anti-pin sniping ideas.
  12. More WvW themed gliders and maybe another mount skin (expensive to make for Anet)
  13. Potentially eliminate T3 structures. There is a reason (multiple reasons actually) everyone loves reset each week.
  14. Alliances
  15. Map changes to keep things interesting. Many companies already do this and it works in keeping games interesting without adding tons of new content. It doesn't have to be much. Rotation of towers, changing terrain, removing SMC outer walls...something
  16. If they want skirmishes to be short, they need to make upgrading structures not take as long and make it more rewarding for each skrimish win. I imagine these kinds of changes will happen after alliances are in place but its something that needs to happen. What's the point of making a tick 4 minutes and a skirmish 120 minutes if it potentially takes hours to fully upgrade a keep?
  17. Bloodlust is boring, remove it or change it up again.
  18. Remove auras that straight buff player stats in or around structures introduced with HoT.
  19. Add more mercenary camps to other maps and make them interesting.
  20. More tactivator upgrades. Maybe add NPCs that auto repair walls for 20 minutes for example. More options would be nice.
  21. Scalable commander tags to make them easier to see in combat.
  22. More WvW centric balance updates
  23. More WvW abilities/masteries
  24. Better communication from developers
  25. A way to earn infusions and other very rare items in the game without leaving WvW plus a few WvW themed ones.

That's all I got for now....

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