Most important WvW changes since March 2015 highlighted with commentary

[Riba.3271]

Hey, Everyone!

You might have spotted me in other treads ranting about how lot of WvW changes don't make sense since HoT, and so I decided to take a peek into patch notes of the past and highlight changes that actually mattered so you know where I am coming from. Focus will be mainly behind infrastructure behind WvW (Siege, Upgrade times, Squads, Camera, Defensive/offensive buffs) rather than combat changes. So here are the changes, lets hope my point gets across this time.

March 2015

• Camera settings added: Very important feature that allowed people to look on top of walls, have better vision of battlefield and buffed AC usage for people not using external programs for this.
• Essentially meant ACs can only be taken down by meteor showers and omega golems

  October 2015 (Heart of Thorns)

  

• Desert map added in its initial form. Many characters are still in lost in the maze that is that map
• Guild claiming added with intention of making guilds more important but every Larry and Jenny can claim objectives with full buffs. Claim buff combined with presence of keep = 12+% extra damage and survivability => Balance is gone, no point fighting inside objectives. Never adjusted later.
• Upgrading happening automatically and you can check upgrade status even from other maps. Removes some small tasks.
• Shield generator was intended to full support and control role but instead it blocks every projectile siege and AC fire. Long range siege, ACs and trebs behind gate made obsolete against group with shield gens.
• Lord HP was massively buffed. Note it also scales on defenders meaning small group can never snipe a keep when there is large group in vicinity. Nerf to small groups.
• Sentries and recently captured keeps mark enemies + watchtower. Hide-n-seek tasks gone. Buffs stronger servers as takes options away from smaller groups. Nerf to small groups.
• EotM rewards reduced

  January 2016

  

• Adds improved coordination for groups with squad markers and lieutenants. Convenient, but lowered skillcap a bit: less practice necessary to be on same page with allies. Some social interaction removed from making parties.
• Removed time restrictions from upgrades: Made required dollies the same for all objectives breaking WvW upgrade speed balance completely. Never fixed later, keeps and castles still upgrade several times faster than before. SM was never T3 pre-HoT, now its basically every day.
• Kills grant more score, objectives matter less
• No more 1 pug rallying multiple people. Welcome change. When is it coming to sPvP?

  April 2016

  

• World linking added, server loyalty dead. Very bad change as fun servers tended to have more people playing WvW (in higher tiers) but that isn't possible anymore with relinkings every 2 months. Transferring dropped from 1800 or 1000 gems to 500 gems.
• WvW got reward tracks. Nice, players have much more money to transfer for cheaper. Maybe overkill to reduce transfer costs to less than half and buff income in same patch.
• Autoloot added, great change. Everyone also has access to siege anywhere.
• Multistack stability became basically old stability: CC can be ignored. Damage was still high at this point so pushing wasn't that easy without dwarf elite.
• CC caps reduced to 10 people, decent change balancewise but does benefit running larger groups like lot of the other changes here.
• Effect LOD added to game. You can actually tell what combo field you're on now. Very good changes.

  July 2016

  

• Siege weapons are now affected by conditions and critical strikes but have double health. What about siege vs siege damage?? Siege doesn't do enough damage to siege. Now you need twice as many trebs and treb manners behind gate to kill a ram.. And enemy can just have shield gens to block that treb fire. Very large overlook by anet. Still not fixed...

  August 2016

  

• 2 Alpine borderlands added back. Welcome change. Why does red side still have desert though? Seems like one border must be less popular or be easier to defend giving 1 or 2 sides advantages towards outcome of matchup. There are lot of empiristic data of some servers not playing at all on desert map which would be fine if all borders were desert.

  July 2017

  

• Not much here, makes active scouting against larger smart groups impossible as they can just hop to map right after tick and have almost 5 min to setup their sieges. But pip balance over proper gamebalance, am I rite?

  August 2017

  

• Territory overlay added meaning one can finally tell where claim buff extends to
• Gliding added, still superstrong tool incombat that gives you OOC movement speed. Should be limited out of combat or slowed down incombat.
• Ballista damage to siege rebuffed, it seems after a year they realised siege doesn't do enough damage to siege anymore. But only ballistas that are mostly useless?
• Catapults and trebs can charge for more damage. Walls can be cut through like a butter now.
• Added Legendary WvW armor. Cool.
• Skirmish ticket income basically doubled.

  March, April and August 2019

  

• Warclaw added, making optimal combat strategy at the time camping warclaw and finishing downstates. Go down = you're dead.
• Scrapper gyro mechanic changed. Permasuperspeed scrapper introduced. Everyone gets superspeed! Very troublesome as increasing movement speed of everyone makes old ranges and radiuses too small. Conditions made obsolete with this patch and scrapper cleanse.
• Upgraded walls and gates effective HP reduced even further. From butter to water.
• Private squads introduced. Great idea to let guilds get rid of following pugs but it also removed the need for interaction between friendly groups. The last tool needed for elitism to take over, no way for newer players to reach out to experienced pop that runs invisible squads discord only. Made also borderhopping troublesome because you never knew if you can fit on the map with everyone. At this point guilds stopped caring about open tags on any map and just hop there with invisible tag and no remorse.

  February and July 2020

  

• After a year, Warclaw finally nerfed a bit. Followed by removal of downstate stomp 5 months later. Very reasonable changes.
• Reduced AC and Cannon damage further. Even against siege.
• Some map changes, gave very fresh feeling on those maps.
• WvW and PvP balancing finally completely split from PvE. Defensive traits nerfed and skills buffed. Damage nerfed across the board overall and CC skills deal no damage anymore. I feel like cutting down the CC damage completely was overkill.

  My final thoughts

  On vacuum these changes might seem reasonable but there are some patterns you can notice:

• Siege gameplay: Siege does not only deal less damage but also has twice as much health against siege, which obviously broke siege vs siege balance. Shield gens made lot of forms of sieging obsolete. There is no siege counterplay against multiple rams + shield gens.
• Claim buff and superfast upgrade times were introduced with HoT. This made defending overpowered so instead of tuning them down, they reduced siege damage and time it takes to get into objectives. They should instead buff objectives and siege while nerfing claim buff and upgrade times.
• Gliding, cleansing and superspeed all still need tuning down for sake of healthier combat system
• While EB sides aren't same for each server, one server having desert map can lead to competitive advantages
• Gold income for WvW players was introduced in same patch as transfer costs were reduced. Still not fixed. My view on relinking system is that it goes against how humans work: people tend to deviate towards places they enjoy being at and thus you shouldn't forcefully try to balance populations every 2 months. Some people like large cities, some like smaller villages, so every server having same pop isn't even what people generally look for: This is what the tier and 1-up-down systems are for. Current system punishes effort to make your server comfy place too much.
• Lot of things that smaller groups could do were straight up removed. Siege useless vs siege, can't hide in keeps, can't keep track of outnumbered buff, usually limited to 1 spot vs watchtowers, lot more objectives are upgraded making hard to breach.
• Squad system allowed organisation, even in combat, to shift towards very few people. Some of the social interaction removed. invisible squads cause queues without explanation. Overall squad changes were good outside private squad.
• Counterplay to stability is still just removing it, the stacks don't really matter with as large cooldown as 0.75 secs between losing stab stacks.
• Lord scales on number of players in promixity, both defenders and attackers. It should scale on number of players in combat with it.
• Not many changes since 2017, year 2018 completely empty.

Overall I liked GW2 WvW for what it was in the past: with smaller groups mattering, siege being relevant and defenders not having massive combat advantages. I am done with the gamemode until next expansion unless they fix these problems and even then won't stick around for long in a game with such glaring balance issues.

Thank you for reading until the end. If you want to know how I would suggest to fix all these issues: You can find the multiple other treads and posts I have made throught past years!

Bye bye! Was fun!Riformed, former Ri Ba

[Klypto.1703]

Once they allowed one server to completely outnumber every other server combined and then eliminate min maxing potential along with not seriously developing the game mode the result is what we have now. Plus only players who are really bad at this game enjoy wvw right now because all they ever could do is condi spam people and think that is what it means to have skill in this game when really is just toxic gameplay meant to carry them.

[saerni.2584]

A nice summary.

IMO, Anet should remake EBG from scratch and implement alliances simultaneously. That can come with rebalancing siege, rebalancing upgrade times, rebalancing NPCs, rebalancing rewards, etc.

It may seem like more work, but actually what we need is a WvW refresh and not just cosmetic changes that only address one or two minor issues.

Siege damage is very easy to change. HP scaling is very easy to change.

And, with a third expansion coming, now is the time to be asking for bigger stuff that takes expansion levels of funding to support.

[Dinas Dragonbane.2978]

This is a very interesting post, thank you for spending the time! They should sticky this as it is a fairly short summary of the big WvW changes that have happened over the last few years.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

i started playing in early 2019... kinda fun how few was added there & shortly before... kinda understandable that the old players get sick of it... Anet really invests only a minimalistic amount of time in Wvw.

[LetoII.3782]

@"saerni.2584" said:A nice summary.

IMO, Anet should remake EBG from scratch and implement alliances simultaneously. That can come with rebalancing siege, rebalancing upgrade times, rebalancing NPCs, rebalancing rewards, etc.

If they're going to tinker, why would you suggest they risk their top map first?

Seems to me leaving ebg entirely alone until the tinkerer has proven capable on a lesser map would be prudent.

Bear in mind our current team took a functional ballista #3 and "improved" it into an arcing shot that only successfully hits it's target in around 20% of placements.. I'd rather that guy stick to DBL or EoTM.

[Super Hayes.6890]

Thank you for doing this! I don't have time to read this atm but I will be coming back to it later with a nice hot cup o tea ? We should probably keep bumping this one with the alliance threads...

[saerni.2584]

@LetoII.3782 said:

@"saerni.2584" said:A nice summary.

IMO, Anet should remake EBG from scratch and implement alliances simultaneously. That can come with rebalancing siege, rebalancing upgrade times, rebalancing NPCs, rebalancing rewards, etc.

If they're going to tinker, why would you suggest they risk their top map first?

Seems to me leaving ebg entirely alone until the tinkerer has proven capable on a lesser map would be prudent.

Bear in mind our current team took a functional ballista #3 and "improved" it into an arcing shot that only successfully hits it's target in around 20% of placements.. I'd rather that guy stick to DBL or EoTM.

I’m not suggesting that the map isn’t decent. I’d suggest that the map could use some visual upgrades.

This could also include updates to the map design. Personally, SM should be a fortress that doesn’t upgrade but also doesn’t repair itself. A map update is an opportunity to make those major balance changes.

[Svarty.8019]

@Threather.9354 said:

My final thoughts

On vacuum these changes might seem reasonable but there are some patterns you can notice:

• Siege gameplay: Siege does not only deal less damage but also has twice as much health against siege, which obviously broke siege vs siege balance. Shield gens made lot of forms of sieging obsolete. There is no siege counterplay against multiple rams + shield gens.Shield generators are a massive SNOWBALL amplifier. They make powerful, dominant sides stronger still and were a huge mistake. I'm sorry to say it, because I like to bounce the balls off the top of flagpoles, but they should be removed from the game.
• Claim buff and superfast upgrade times were introduced with HoT. This made defending overpowered so instead of tuning them down, they reduced siege damage and time it takes to get into objectives. They should instead buff objectives and siege while nerfing claim buff and upgrade times.The thing about Upgrading is;
• that it's very slow and difficult if you're a weak side - your camps are always getting capped and the enemy harass the keep itself so you can't go and defend the camps.
• On the other hand, if you're strong, the enemy are too busy defending their stuff to come and harass your keep and flip your camps, so strong sides upgrade super-quickly because they can put speedy/packed yaks in their untouched camps. SNOWBALL again. It results in weak sides being disincentivised to consider attacking T3 stuff which is SNOWBALL yet again.

The whole thing leads to off-peak PvD zergs. This isn't the epic battles we're here for.

• Gold income for WvW players was introduced in same patch as transfer costs were reduced. Still not fixed. My view on relinking system is that it goes against how humans work: people tend to deviate towards places they enjoy being at and thus you shouldn't forcefully try to balance populations every 2 months. Some people like large cities, some like smaller villages, so every server having same pop isn't even what people generally look for: This is what the tier and 1-up-down systems are for. Current system punishes effort to make your server comfy place too much.The linking duration is too short. The ladder never has time enough to self-correct, but players would just transfer MORE if the link period was longer.
• Lot of things that smaller groups could do were straight up removed. Siege useless vs siege, can't hide in keeps, can't keep track of outnumbered buff, usually limited to 1 spot vs watchtowers, lot more objectives are upgraded making hard to breach.I concur with this. It would be great to get rid of the watchtowers, but NOT sentries, since they can be tactically subverted (flipped).
• Squad system allowed organisation, even in combat, to shift towards very few people. Some of the social interaction removed. invisible squads cause queues without explanation. Overall squad changes were good outside private squad.Squads are too big, giant zergs are encouraged by large squad caps.
• Lord scales on number of players in promixity, both defenders and attackers. It should scale on number of players in combat with it.That makes no sense. If that happened, attackers would send one or two people to the lord and block people trying to get to him/her with a zerg.

A lot of the little jobs people used to do got taken over by guild upgrades or straight up automated. That's not fun. If Anet ever want to redo WvW, they should reintroduce little tasks (subtly) so that players get to do things individually that contribute to the whole and not cater to the GvG-style fighting or 1v1 ganker rubbish we endure today.

[Apokriphos.7042]

As many above posters have said, the ideal change would be a complete rework of WvW, bottom to top.

However, if we are limited to small meaningful changes, Anet should reverse its benefit large group philosophy and instead incentivize players to fight in small, spaced out groups of even skill and number.

To do this Anet needs to address the main issues with wvw under the goal of achieving epic interesting fights we all want.

Problem: large and small organized guild groups exploit group boonshare, superspeed, stealth and condi cleanse, boosting the snowball effect of organized groups who exploit these mechanics.

Four Quick Simple Solutions:1). Add social awkwardness effect to prevent stack abuse2). Increase AoE target caps on certain damage skills from 3 to 10 to incentivize small groups3). Reduce duration of shared boons/superspeed/condi cleanse by doing splits where the benefits are greater to the PC using ability then to allies to incentivize smaller groups and less optimal class synergies that large grps can take advantage of (they have begun this change recently). This would reduce power of pure support classes most players complain about.4). Limit Squad size to 5 grps of 5 or 25 total to prevent mindless megablobbing as the most optimal state.

Bonus Suggestion:Friendly Fire WvW Event Week

[Svarty.8019]

@Apokriphos.7042 said:Problem: large and small organized guild groups exploit group boonshare, superspeed, stealth and condi cleanse, boosting the snowball effect of organized groups who exploit these mechanics.

Four Quick Simple Solutions:1). Add social awkwardness effect to prevent stack abuseToo weird IMO.2). Increase AoE target caps on certain damage skills from 3 to 10 to incentivize small groupsHow would that incentivise small groups? It would benefit larger groups more.3). Reduce duration of shared boons/superspeed/condi cleanse by doing splits where the benefits are greater to the PC using ability then to allies to incentivize smaller groups and less optimal class synergies that large grps can take advantage of.How would that incentivise small groups?4). Limit Squad size to 5 grps of 5 or 25 total to prevent mindless megablobbing as the most optimal state.Agree. Smaller squad caps would help to split the players up and and the very least necessitate more coordination.

[God.2708]

@"Svarty.8019" said:Agree. Smaller squad caps would help to split the players up and and the very least necessitate more coordination.

wat.

Squads weren't a thing for the first 3-ish years of the game and map blobs still existed, and were in fact the go to thing.https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/zerging-is-getting-out-of-controlLiterally two weeks after the game came out.

A whole lot of people dancing around the subject, but don't seem to actually grasp what it takes to achieve what they want. If you want to shrink big zergs, stop making changes to elements of fighting.

[kash.9213]

I would rather WvW be designed more as an open world pvp game than install gimmick changes to try to reduce numbers or force people to spread out.

@saerni.2584 said:

@LetoII.3782 said:

@saerni.2584 said:A nice summary.

IMO, Anet should remake EBG from scratch and implement alliances simultaneously. That can come with rebalancing siege, rebalancing upgrade times, rebalancing NPCs, rebalancing rewards, etc.

If they're going to tinker, why would you suggest they risk their top map first?

Seems to me leaving ebg entirely alone until the tinkerer has proven capable on a lesser map would be prudent.

Bear in mind our current team took a functional ballista #3 and "improved" it into an arcing shot that only successfully hits it's target in around 20% of placements.. I'd rather that guy stick to DBL or EoTM.

I’m not suggesting that the map isn’t decent. I’d suggest that the map could use some visual upgrades.

This could also include updates to the map design. Personally, SM should be a fortress that doesn’t upgrade but also doesn’t repair itself. A map update is an opportunity to make those major balance changes.

Most of the maps should take on the aesthetic of current Living stories and expansions and I agree, it would be a good chance for a tuneup.Your SM version sounds like that persistent battle ruins in Starwars Galaxies shortly after the NGE update but I forget which planet or moon it was on. It was a good source of action that didn't have to be constantly babysat and dominance in that map fluctuated enough.

@Svarty.8019 said:

@Apokriphos.7042 said:2). Increase AoE target caps on certain damage skills from 3 to 10 to incentivize small groupsHow would that incentivise small groups? It would benefit larger groups more.

Large groups are nearly capping out where they can already, it would give smaller groups the chance capitalize on opportunities. Larger groups would still have the advantage in numbers but also in mitigation. We'd be kind of cycling back to early game and face any reasons those changes were made in the first place, but then we've had some balancing and updates since then so who knows.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@Threather.9354 said:

My final thoughts

On vacuum these changes might seem reasonable but there are some patterns you can notice:

• Siege gameplay: Siege does not only deal less damage but also has twice as much health against siege, which obviously broke siege vs siege balance. Shield gens made lot of forms of sieging obsolete. There is no siege counterplay against multiple rams + shield gens.
• Claim buff and superfast upgrade times were introduced with HoT. This made defending overpowered so instead of tuning them down, they reduced siege damage and time it takes to get into objectives. They should instead buff objectives and siege while nerfing claim buff and upgrade times.
• Gliding, cleansing and superspeed all still need tuning down for sake of healthier combat system
• While EB sides aren't same for each server, one server having desert map can lead to competitive advantages
• Gold income for WvW players was introduced in same patch as transfer costs were reduced. Still not fixed. My view on relinking system is that it goes against how humans work: people tend to deviate towards places they enjoy being at and thus you shouldn't forcefully try to balance populations every 2 months. Some people like large cities, some like smaller villages, so every server having same pop isn't even what people generally look for: This is what the tier and 1-up-down systems are for. Current system punishes effort to make your server comfy place too much.
• Lot of things that smaller groups could do were straight up removed. Siege useless vs siege, can't hide in keeps, can't keep track of outnumbered buff, usually limited to 1 spot vs watchtowers, lot more objectives are upgraded making hard to breach.
• Squad system allowed organisation, even in combat, to shift towards very few people. Some of the social interaction removed. invisible squads cause queues without explanation. Overall squad changes were good outside private squad.Overall I liked GW2 WvW for what it was in the past: with smaller groups mattering, siege being relevant and defenders not having massive combat advantages. I am done with the gamemode until next expansion unless they fix these problems and even then won't stick around for long in a game with such glaring balance issues.First up, good post! I'm adding some counterpoints to what you're saying to broaden the discussion rather than pooping on your thread.

With that said:

1. Siege: I'm sure there can be discussion about the siege-siege balance but in my experience it tends to matter little as most larger sieges are decided by fights anyway. You tend to end up in a situation where the sides are either very different or they are similar enough to force a decisive fight either outside or inside the objective anyway. Siege has always had this issue where it affects different builds/roles (eg., AC vs. support or ranged damage) and scales (eg., mattering less no matter how much you put up once scale/organisation push past a certain size while it can be very advantageous managing the resources to defensively siege against an attacker at smaller scale) differently. So it ends up in this weird situation where it is both inherently difficult to balance with the existing mechanics and where it doesn't necessarily matter that much no matter what and that isn't necessarily a bad thing either.

2. Auto upgrades: I'll come back to this later on as well, but you need to remember how people felt back before it was introduced and what behaviours were taking shape. The old system, while more engaging and fun, was also far more punished by the scoring/coverage dilemma. People and groups that were actively running upgrades were already dropping out from the game because spending a bunch of gold on things lost while sleeping was very obviously getting to them. In that sense the auto upgrade system is a system that can be compared to the relinking system: It was something that was positive back then but wasn't necessarily built to last for 5 years without any form of iteration or attention. It was good then, better than the situation its predecessor found itself in back then and it is bad now. It has less to do with the system and more to do with the overall lack of attention to the mode from the developer and that it simply shouldn't exist or look the same in 2020. It isn't as easy as just going back though, what broke the old system is still broken.

3. Less spammable CC counters would make healthier combat: This is the only point you raise that I vehemently disagree with. It is mindnumbingly boring to be bogged down by spammable CC in a game with a combat system that is meant to be responsive and action-oriented. This is pretty much the same discussion as the ramped up value of stability. The best way to reduce the importance of cleanses and superspeed would be to reduce what makes them important: The CC spam. We've had enough of bad pirate ship experiences to know what it leads to and recent years tells us that there are more issues with control than the counters to control. Pirate ships are objectively not healthier combat. They have made more players quit and while ranged builds have a role in melee-dominated environments, melee builds tend not to have a role in range-dominated environments. Pirate ships = worse balance.

Now, I like everyone else understands that it can feel pretty futile to run a loosely organized small-medium pickup group against an organized group with eg., a guild core. A balance that is more movement, tank and melee friendly tends to make guilds more powerful - thus give the impression to some players that the groups are only pushing forward and rolling over everything. However, it is perfectly possible to stop them even as a predominantly ranged group or a lower-tanked more bursty group. The difference lies in the organisation. Your group is simply less organized and does not play as close to its potential. That isn't a problem. That is natural. If the ladder worked, a server with alot of organisation would climb that ladder and end up matching up against other servers that has a similar level of organisation. The less organized server would drop to find content between themselves and other less organized servers. That isn't a problem, that's how it should be and any player who has been apart of some decently organized player group knows that it is perfectly possible and even quite simple to break these run-of-the-mill groups that only seem to buff and push from side to side. For even a decently organized party, getting to focus burst that is a loot-piñata.

4. Having differently sized servers is good: The problem with this and a not negligable part of why links were introduced was that as servers shrank back then, the ladder became very segmented and the number of possible matchups fewer and fewer. In fact, with the linking system since long having shown its age we could argue that were are already back there now with the entire region being very segmented into a large, medium and small subset of server pairs. That is in spite of the links that look to shake things up a little bit. It simply doesn't shake things up enough and it is very clear that we have some remaining organized servers, some less organized servers and some emptied out servers where you see more and more of the same matchups because its almost always the same servers pinging up and down. Now, the one-up/one-down system is built like that at its core so it isn't surprising and nore does it have to be an issue. However, that comes with the notion that servers are similar enough to let spurts of organisation reshape where a server belongs, right?

So, while there isn't necessarily an issue that some servers are smaller or more casual and thus belong further down on the ladder, it is important that things are not so wildly different that a server can change if they decide to put in the work. Again, while links were made to make more possible matchups available, what is really needed is a system that encourages organisation and gives players a chance to (re-)build a community if they want to push up the ladder. This is why Alliances are so important or why it is so important to address anomalies on the ladder (such as night-cap inflation). It's to create good matchups that relfects the content each server produces and to make sure that there is possible mobility on the ladder. If some players then prefer to drop low, that's fine I guess. It doesn't even have to be smaller, it can simply be more loosely organized. It will feel smaller if that is what you want. Alliances won't ruin that, I'm sure there will be some casually composed alliances out there or possibly even some entities that has no alliances at all at the bottom, given how much player organisation has crumbled.

5. Small groups have nothing to do: Again, this comes back to the core gameplay concept with the ladder being broken. Small groups of well organized players is still the most effective way to PPT across the maps. The issue here is rather that with scoring being broken since inception, there has just grown a larger divide between PPT and PPK and the players that remain primarily do other things than competing over the ladder. That's why bag-farming, roaming and GvG still lives to some degree while restocking, havoc-captures and whatnot has died off. It's the nightcapping that ruins everything. Nightcapping stopped manual upgrading, it began creating bad matchups, it made daytime PPT mostly being allowed to persist because no one really cares if a server runs daytime PPT unless it interferes with the server's match manipulation, right? The only time servers care about PPT is if they are looking to avoid some particularily bad matchups for the comming weeks. It's why it has almost always been the most coveted to be in T2 or T3 because that is where the best matchups are. This has been the same ever since servers tanked to silver league during the 2013-2014 tournaments. The reality is that no one has anything to do that can be credited to ArenaNet. The content that still exists, it exists in spite of ArenaNet. That's why GvG lives and restocking is dead.

While the topics differ wildly here, it is so simple that almost everything in this mode is rooted in: Deliver on Alliances, fix scoring, provide content- or stimulation for player-organisation and player organisations. It's pointless discussing siege, small groups and PPT as long as nightcapping and population imbalance exists so the best servers do not want to be in T1 because it does not have the best matchups or content.

[Dawdler.8521]

@God.2708 said:

@"Svarty.8019" said:Agree. Smaller squad caps would help to split the players up and and the very least necessitate more coordination.

wat.

Squads weren't a thing for the first 3-ish years of the game and map blobs still existed, and were in fact the go to thing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/zerging-is-getting-out-of-control

Literally two weeks after the game came out.

A whole lot of people dancing around the subject, but don't seem to actually grasp what it takes to achieve what they want. If you want to shrink big zergs, stop making changes to elements of fighting.Yeah the idea of

forcing

people to split is never going to work.

I am still in favor of encouraging it.

Sometimes just tiny changes can make a massive difference. For example, allow us to better customize the tags and add a little ~10 letter description next to the tag on the map. This way we can encourage more tags with a clear purpose.

Imagine if you joined a map and there was 3+ tags there? Today unless its 25+ raiding guilds, thats taboo. Illegal! HERESY!!!. "Tag off and gtfo out of the map so 1 tag can monoblob". But with this tiny, simple little change... you'd instantly see what the tags are doing, what their purpose is. Maybe one just have "Scout" next to it. Another has "Havoc". And the third has "[FTW] Open". Whatever, something similar. It wont stop them from smacktalking ir being idiots, but it will create a "this tag isnt competing with your tag" indication.

Simple and effective to encourage more tags and avoid the clash that exist today.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Imagine if you joined a map and there was 3+ tags there? Today unless its 25+ raiding guilds, thats taboo. Illegal! HERESY!!!. "Tag off and gtfo out of the map so 1 tag can monoblob". But with this tiny, simple little change... you'd instantly see what the tags are doing, what their purpose is. Maybe one just have "Scout" next to it. Another has "Havoc". And the third has "[FTW] Open". Whatever, something similar. It wont stop them from smacktalking ir being idiots, but it will create a "this tag isnt competing with your tag" indication.

Simple and effective to encourage more tags and avoid the clash that exist today.Good suggestion.

[Svarty.8019]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@God.2708 said:

@"Svarty.8019" said:Agree. Smaller squad caps would help to split the players up and and the very least necessitate more coordination.

wat.

Squads weren't a thing for the first 3-ish years of the game and map blobs still existed, and were in fact the go to thing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/zerging-is-getting-out-of-control

Literally two weeks after the game came out.

A whole lot of people dancing around the subject, but don't seem to actually grasp what it takes to achieve what they want. If you want to shrink big zergs, stop making changes to elements of fighting.Yeah the idea of

forcing

people to split is never going to work.

I am still in favor of

encouraging

it.

Smaller squads wouldn't "force" anybody to be/do anything, but they might mean zergs can be flexible, with small groups being "bat-phoned in" for more interesting fights and with more people getting used to having a tag on, even if they're not the main voice comm.

You could still mapblob with the "form giant robot" effect : two [new, smaller cap] squads in the same location. So there's no real detriment to servers who like to do that, except for the monocommanders, who, especially in a MASSIVELY multiplayer online game, don't seem to me to be a particularly desirable entity.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@"Dinas Dragonbane.2978" said:This is a very interesting post, thank you for spending the time! They should sticky this as it is a fairly short summary of the big WvW changes that have happened over the last few years.

Unfortunately this would never be stickied because ANet loves to pretend everything is fine, and perfect, and ignores the fact that they should stop ditching things and actually try to work to improve them instead of trying to move on to some "new" and "shiny" thing every single time something gets a bad reception.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

a fun thought is also to assume that people cannot just be on voice and follow a tag without beeing in a squad. their heal/stab go a bit more random then, but players that know their job won't bother if you have squad caps at all. plus, i think you can still have partires, so they just /p instead of /d lel.

@Dawdler.8521 @"subversiontwo.7501" what does "havoc" and "restock" mean, never stumbled over these terms before. i know of tellings that earlier system was manual upgrading with workers running to the keep etc kinda, but these roles been likely before my time.

about the GvG on maps-thing. Anet should just let guilds at a specific size, maybe 15ish have your server getting a display on which map a tagged up member of that guild runs, so people can see it in preview of /m yet. (not exact location, otherwise trolls could stalk them)

it's also been before my time, but i think unlinked servers + a ladder with rewards would maybe make the whole scenario better, as long as not servers like baruch get their artificial "Open" status forever.

maybe they need to "lock" the nighttime or sth alike if they'd bring a kinda of tournament-system back. so that ppl who can only play nighttime, lets say 2am-9am at least, have to switch to NA etc... wvw really needs some thing that pushes the players towards more organisation.

plus, stuff like gift of battle should be sellable... pve players fill maps having no interest of learning the format sometimes, while wvw players stockpile the gift of battles for nothing.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@kamikharzeeh.8016 said:@Dawdler.8521 @"subversiontwo.7501" what does "havoc" and "restock" mean, never stumbled over these terms before. i know of tellings that earlier system was manual upgrading with workers running to the keep etc kinda, but these roles been likely before my time.Havoc can be one of either two things: Either it is running a small gang party or squad that does offensive captures under your opponents nose, sets up forward outposts from which to roam and harass opponents as they try to backcap or it can also mean to run about a party size outside of the main squad on classes that do a specific thing helping the commander in combat without necessarily being on the commander or in their squad. The most common thing would be to do big focus damage or "damage assist" as it was called by some GvG guilds back in vanilla.

The first terminology comes from the roaming community and the second from the vanilla GvG community (where GvG was often 25 vs 25 and played with parties that were divided into melee, range and havoc or focus). In GvG a havoc party or focus party was more or less the same (the party with Thieves and Mesmers who attacked the opposing Range parties if they were not countered by opposing havoc/focus). The idea for either is simply to cause "havoc" on the map or on the battlefield by creating more attacks.

Restocking is what you assumed it to be, it's essentially manual backcapping, dolyak running, repairing, sieging and upgrading. The term is more general and used in other/older games. It comes from "restocking supplies", so its the same as running supplies or whatever. I guess you can still do it, but it comes from a time when you actually put supplies into objectives, the way you put them into repairs or siege today.

 

If you're interested in the vanilla GvG it's essentially the old TA and Agg era so you can just look for it on Youtube (where you can see the different parties using different tags), where melee parties were usually double Guard, Necro and two different kinds of Warriors (one with damage called a "destroyer" and one with CC and support called a "worker"), the range parties were usually just Eles and the havoc was Thieves and Mesmers. Rangers, as tradition has it, was excluded from most comps as core Rangers had none of the support that has been introduced in small and underwhelming amounts on later specialisations. The rucksack-Charr and Asura meta that some people thought was just melee trains actually involved most classes. That later gave way to the Pirate ship meta in late vanilla and that meta was then cemented by early HoT where Revs were just crazy OP and deleted any need for melee or havoc. Then the meta shifted to a more tanky meta (boonball etc.), then it shifted to condi-power hybrid or powerburst cleave comps, then it shifted into the epidemic condi-cleave comps and then ranged condi got cemented again by PoF with the Scourge being stupidly OP at first. Since very little shifted for the first years of PoF that kinda brings us to today.

 

[Riba.3271]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@"Threather.9354" said:

My final thoughts

On vacuum these changes might seem reasonable but there are some patterns you can notice:

• Siege gameplay: Siege does not only deal less damage but also has twice as much health against siege, which obviously broke siege vs siege balance. Shield gens made lot of forms of sieging obsolete. There is no siege counterplay against multiple rams + shield gens.
• Claim buff and superfast upgrade times were introduced with HoT. This made defending overpowered so instead of tuning them down, they reduced siege damage and time it takes to get into objectives. They should instead buff objectives and siege while nerfing claim buff and upgrade times.
• Gliding, cleansing and superspeed all still need tuning down for sake of healthier combat system
• While EB sides aren't same for each server, one server having desert map can lead to competitive advantages
• Gold income for WvW players was introduced in same patch as transfer costs were reduced. Still not fixed. My view on relinking system is that it goes against how humans work: people tend to deviate towards places they enjoy being at and thus you shouldn't forcefully try to balance populations every 2 months. Some people like large cities, some like smaller villages, so every server having same pop isn't even what people generally look for: This is what the tier and 1-up-down systems are for. Current system punishes effort to make your server comfy place too much.
• Lot of things that smaller groups could do were straight up removed. Siege useless vs siege, can't hide in keeps, can't keep track of outnumbered buff, usually limited to 1 spot vs watchtowers, lot more objectives are upgraded making hard to breach.
• Squad system allowed organisation, even in combat, to shift towards very few people. Some of the social interaction removed. invisible squads cause queues without explanation. Overall squad changes were good outside private squad.Overall I liked GW2 WvW for what it was in the past: with smaller groups mattering, siege being relevant and defenders not having massive combat advantages. I am done with the gamemode until next expansion unless they fix these problems and even then won't stick around for long in a game with such glaring balance issues.First up, good post! I'm adding some counterpoints to what you're saying to broaden the discussion rather than pooping on your thread.

With that said:

1. Siege:

I'm sure there can be discussion about the siege-siege balance but in my experience it tends to matter little as most larger sieges are decided by fights anyway. You tend to end up in a situation where the sides are either very different or they are similar enough to force a decisive fight either outside or inside the objective anyway. Siege has always had this issue where it affects different builds/roles (eg., AC vs. support or ranged damage) and scales (eg., mattering less no matter how much you put up once scale/organisation push past a certain size while it can be very advantageous managing the resources to defensively siege against an attacker at smaller scale) differently. So it ends up in this weird situation where it is both inherently difficult to balance with the existing mechanics and where it doesn't necessarily matter that much no matter what and that isn't necessarily a bad thing either.

Siege balance matters because if you're outnumbered and your siege is made irrelevant by shield gens or too tanky siege (Imagine rams so tanky that you couldn't take them down). Point being shield gens make defensive siege (and often long ranged offensive one) useless. Tankier siege also. This affects outnumbered servers a lot because the outnumbered defender is relying on siege while if they were outnumbering, they could just go outside and kill enemies.

Needless to say it is relatively pointless to log in unless there is already commander with 40+ people in such a meta because you can't even buy time against large groups unless you match their numbers. So siege balance is essential for WvW to be primary gamemode for some people, not just "oh theres a queue, I'll go check it out".

However objectives did have less supply in the past due to upgrading taking longer and upgrading itself requiring supply so abundance of supplies is something that is directly linked with amount of siege and repairs available.

2. Auto upgrades: I'll come back to this later on as well, but you need to remember how people felt back before it was introduced and what behaviours were taking shape. The old system, while more engaging and fun, was also far more punished by the scoring/coverage dilemma. People and groups that were actively running upgrades were already dropping out from the game because spending a bunch of gold on things lost while sleeping was very obviously getting to them. In that sense the auto upgrade system is a system that can be compared to the relinking system: It was something that was positive back then but wasn't necessarily built to last for 5 years without any form of iteration or attention. It was good then, better than the situation its predecessor found itself in back then and it is bad now. It has less to do with the system and more to do with the overall lack of attention to the mode from the developer and that it simply shouldn't exist or look the same in 2020. It isn't as easy as just going back though, what broke the old system is still broken.

Autoupgrades themselves aren't bad a bad idea, but the time required to upgrade objectives, Keeps and castles mostly, went down several times. You would imagine if you remove manual upgrading, the upgrade times would stay similar or even be longer but such is not the case. Keeps, Towers and Castles requiring exactly same amount of dollies "for simplicity" was a recipe for very bad balance. Of course Packed dolyaks combined with superspeed is almost 4 times faster upgrading and packed dolyaks should also be reworked to not count as 2, twice as fast upgrading (speedy dolyaks) for being active on the map should be enough.

3. Less spammable CC counters would make healthier combat: This is the only point you raise that I vehemently disagree with. It is mindnumbingly boring to be bogged down by spammable CC in a game with a combat system that is meant to be responsive and action-oriented. This is pretty much the same discussion as the ramped up value of stability. The best way to reduce the importance of cleanses and superspeed would be to reduce what makes them important: The CC spam. We've had enough of bad pirate ship experiences to know what it leads to and recent years tells us that there are more issues with control than the counters to control. Pirate ships are objectively not healthier combat. They have made more players quit and while ranged builds have a role in melee-dominated environments, melee builds tend not to have a role in range-dominated environments. Pirate ships = worse balance.

Now, I like everyone else understands that it can feel pretty futile to run a loosely organized small-medium pickup group against an organized group with eg., a guild core. A balance that is more movement, tank and melee friendly tends to make guilds more powerful - thus give the impression to some players that the groups are only pushing forward and rolling over everything. However, it is perfectly possible to stop them even as a predominantly ranged group or a lower-tanked more bursty group. The difference lies in the organisation. Your group is simply less organized and does not play as close to its potential. That isn't a problem. That is natural. If the ladder worked, a server with alot of organisation would climb that ladder and end up matching up against other servers that has a similar level of organisation. The less organized server would drop to find content between themselves and other less organized servers. That isn't a problem, that's how it should be and any player who has been apart of some decently organized player group knows that it is perfectly possible and even quite simple to break these run-of-the-mill groups that only seem to buff and push from side to side. For even a decently organized party, getting to focus burst that is a loot-piñata.

My post wasn't mostly about CC, it was about cooldowns being too low. Commander literally needs to run one direction for 10 seconds and his team is ready to remove and stack boons again. Pirateship should always exist at lower levels of larger number gameplay. Now as long as you have a scrapper and firebrand, you can just run at things without even paying attention to such things. If you manage to survive enemy push with minimal losses you should be rewarded: their stability (elite mantra, stab roads), condition conversions/removals (f/e alchemy trait) and boon removals should all have longer cooldowns. Cooldown management and tracking is the thing that makes difference of good and bad players.

Overall you can either have meta where weaker players struggle adapting to condis/bursts melee range and there are benefits to becoming a stronger player, or you can have meta similar to this where everyone is capable of going melee with right composition but there are absolutely no condis or CC you need to worry about, just burst damage. Keeping track of cooldowns, condis and boons is one interactive part of the combat system: Current combat system just makes lot of such things granted.

Stab cooldowns should be longer if you're planning on having multiple classes (Herald, Scrapper, Firebrand) all spam long-duration stability. Predetermined stability rotations should be necessary to keep skillcap high enough.

4. Having differently sized servers is good: The problem with this and a not negligable part of why links were introduced was that as servers shrank back then, the ladder became very segmented and the number of possible matchups fewer and fewer. In fact, with the linking system since long having shown its age we could argue that were are already back there now with the entire region being very segmented into a large, medium and small subset of server pairs. That is in spite of the links that look to shake things up a little bit. It simply doesn't shake things up enough and it is very clear that we have some remaining organized servers, some less organized servers and some emptied out servers where you see more and more of the same matchups because its almost always the same servers pinging up and down. Now, the one-up/one-down system is built like that at its core so it isn't surprising and nore does it have to be an issue. However, that comes with the notion that servers are similar enough to let spurts of organisation reshape where a server belongs, right?

So, while there isn't necessarily an issue that some servers are smaller or more casual and thus belong further down on the ladder, it is important that things are not so wildly different that a server can change if they decide to put in the work. Again, while links were made to make more possible matchups available, what is really needed is a system that encourages organisation and gives players a chance to (re-)build a community if they want to push up the ladder. This is why Alliances are so important or why it is so important to address anomalies on the ladder (such as night-cap inflation). It's to create good matchups that relfects the content each server produces and to make sure that there is possible mobility on the ladder. If some players then prefer to drop low, that's fine I guess. It doesn't even have to be smaller, it can simply be more loosely organized. It will feel smaller if that is what you want. Alliances won't ruin that, I'm sure there will be some casually composed alliances out there or possibly even some entities that has no alliances at all at the bottom, given how much player organisation has crumbled.

While people tend to perceive alliances as "perfect way to balance each timezone", the way I see it is that it will kill each off-prime timezone. While off-prime timezones should be active at higher tiers as in the past with 15+ players online where lower tiers have way less. Imagine those 60 or something players spread amongst 4 or 5 tiers, no one will bother logging in with such numbers.

Off-prime capping was already solved with scoring changes (nighttime isn't only thing that decides matchups now), there are other issues with it: it punishes other timezones harshly by making your server full. This is a big issue because servers with decent amount of casual WvW population get full, because all servers must be same population with this current system, and then are reliant on people being on the links. Then those links are used to make each server artificially same population.

While alliances seem great in theory because you I bet can't wait your OCE timezone 5v5s after spreading that timezone equally out. Oh wait, that doesn't seem too fun.. Overall servers with activity, because that activity is there for a reason, should have space for more players and shouldn't be artificially thrown into lower tier activity every 2 months. Like if you consider there are 6 below-average fun servers and 6 above average fun servers, it is natural the fun side having more active population without transfers every 2 months. But all current relinking, population and alliance systems equalize populations out making progression as a server very painful as the more fun you have, the more hours you play and the less players you have.

One-up-down system already fixes the fact that matchups will be too repetitive outside lowest tier.

The way I see it both Alliance and relinking system will be terrible systems as even in real life humans tend to deviate towards actions/locations they have fun at. So artificially balancing populations should never be a thing: Population statuses are already in place for that and should be based on total number of players on the linking. Reducing tiers was fine and I do not care if they remove the extra servers or stop doing relinking all together while making population based on totals, but it should be done.

5. Small groups have nothing to do: Again, this comes back to the core gameplay concept with the ladder being broken. Small groups of well organized players is still the most effective way to PPT across the maps. The issue here is rather that with scoring being broken since inception, there has just grown a larger divide between PPT and PPK and the players that remain primarily do other things than competing over the ladder. That's why bag-farming, roaming and GvG still lives to some degree while restocking, havoc-captures and whatnot has died off. It's the nightcapping that ruins everything. Nightcapping stopped manual upgrading, it began creating bad matchups, it made daytime PPT mostly being allowed to persist because no one really cares if a server runs daytime PPT unless it interferes with the server's match manipulation, right? The only time servers care about PPT is if they are looking to avoid some particularily bad matchups for the comming weeks. It's why it has almost always been the most coveted to be in T2 or T3 because that is where the best matchups are. This has been the same ever since servers tanked to silver league during the 2013-2014 tournaments. The reality is that no one has anything to do that can be credited to ArenaNet. The content that still exists, it exists in spite of ArenaNet. That's why GvG lives and restocking is dead.

While the topics differ wildly here, it is so simple that almost everything in this mode is rooted in: Deliver on Alliances, fix scoring, provide content- or stimulation for player-organisation and player organisations. It's pointless discussing siege, small groups and PPT as long as nightcapping and population imbalance exists so the best servers do not want to be in T1 because it does not have the best matchups or content.

Small groups have nothing to do because everything is upgraded and undefendable due to lower upgrade times, supply balance and terrible siege balance. Camps hold almost no importance because you only need to hold them an hour and you got T3 keep which smaller groups can't take against smaller groups (due to claim buff) or defend against larger groups because terrible siege balance. I do not think scoring system itself affects how much fun one side has playing the game, even though old system might have had more highs and lows causing desperation due to off-hours, burn-out, doubleteaming and epic scoring comebacks. Definitely older system provided more memorable moments.

Overall camps and supply need back their relevance and way to return it is increasing upgrade times to increase timeframe for such activity, fixing siege and wall HP to make defending possible with smarter decisions than attacker and nerfing claim buff so smaller scale can be competitive. Reason I believe claim buff affects all scales of fights is that great fun timezones for WvW are usually very equally matched by all servers. But if one side has effectively 12% more combat power (6% offense and 6% defence) at their owned camp which flips sides depending on objective. For keeps this is twice as potent. So while camp fights can lead to 24% variance, keep fights can lead double to that. So equally strong timezones cannot exist with claim buff being strong which depends on mapstate.

[Riba.3271]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@God.2708 said:

@"Svarty.8019" said:Agree. Smaller squad caps would help to split the players up and and the very least necessitate more coordination.

wat.

Squads weren't a thing for the first 3-ish years of the game and map blobs still existed, and were in fact the go to thing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/zerging-is-getting-out-of-control

Literally two weeks after the game came out.

A whole lot of people dancing around the subject, but don't seem to actually grasp what it takes to achieve what they want. If you want to shrink big zergs, stop making changes to elements of fighting.Yeah the idea of

forcing

people to split is never going to work.

I am still in favor of

encouraging

it.

Sometimes just tiny changes can make a massive difference. For example, allow us to

better customize the tags

and

add a little ~10 letter description next to the tag on the map

. This way we can

encourage

more tags with a clear purpose.

Imagine if you joined a map and there was 3+ tags there? Today unless its 25+ raiding guilds, thats

taboo

. Illegal!

HERESY!!!

.

"Tag off and gtfo out of the map so 1 tag can monoblob"

. But with this tiny, simple little change... you'd instantly see what the tags are doing, what their purpose is. Maybe one just have "Scout" next to it. Another has "Havoc". And the third has "[FTW] Open". Whatever, something similar. It wont stop them from smacktalking ir being idiots, but it will create a "this tag isnt competing with your tag" indication.

Simple and effective to encourage more tags and avoid the clash that exist today.

Yea having specialized tags is a great idea. I wouldn't say letters are the way to go but maybe limiting both squad size and tag design based on what you're doing. For example you could have a star shaped tag for maximum 5 squad size that could be used for scouting or havocing.

Overall I do not think tags should be able to go invisible, being closed is fine. If one is causing queues while not being able to work together with other groups on the server: guild raiding and commanding isn't for them. Having people open for cooperation on same map as ones not open for communication just slowly leads to destruction of multigroup WvW while punishing ones open for it.

[Zok.4956]

@Apokriphos.7042 said:As many above posters have said, the ideal change would be a complete rework of WvW, bottom to top.

Be careful what you wish for. Because Anet.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@"Threather.9354" said:My post wasn't mostly about CC, it was about cooldowns being too low /.../ Stab cooldowns should be longer if you're planning on having multiple classes (Herald, Scrapper, Firebrand) all spam long-duration stability.Now it sounds more like you are promoting something akin to the old stability system, which I think quite alot of people would be fine with. However, that's not really how you framed it to begin with and with the game still, even after the ongoing rebalancing efforts, sitting dangerously close to a pirate ship dominance with relatively equal fights mostly being ranged and moving in once dominance has been established - any further changes, however small, that throws balance in favour of range is going to create a hegemony where there is only range again.

To sum it up in short terms: In the balance between range and melee some people seem to be under the impression that melee is dominant (especially if they go up against a far stronger opponent without noticing the gap to them) while in reality range is dominant but melee at least has some slice and options now. Any situation where melee just seems to bulldoze is not a question of game balance but rather a matchup question.

If you had phrased it as there needing to be changes to all forms of CC and anti-CC to create a less spammy environment I don't think anyone would have disagreed with you. I too believe that the vanilla balance where the long up/down baseline of group utilities formed a breakbar of sorts (while personal breaks were the panic buttons) lead to overall more engaging gameplay, including more tactical options to use fields and triggers. The sad part about the expansion-era tug-o-war over boons is that I don't think any experienced players in this mode wanted them to change the original systems, Anet went ahead and did it anyway, opened up a can of worms most likely for rather small PvE benefits and was very slow to adapt with internal design reorganisation and skill splitting. It was one of the many things that showed that they didn't really care about their PvP communities enough to even understand how things affected them. I fear it really was that simple as some designer wanting to create better boon-management for upcomming instanced PvE and there was no one at QA to warn them about it risking to completely unsettle the PvP modes for years to come or no one at a director level left to heed the alarm.

While people tend to perceive alliances as "perfect way to balance each timezone", the way I see it is that it will kill each off-prime timezone.I really don't think anyone sees Alliances as a way to "balance timezones" or even to directly affect population balance at this point. I don't think anyone saw it as "perfect" even from the get-go with ANet even giving the announcement itself the caveat that Alliances was a foundation from which to build further systems that dealt with that stuff. The one big thing that Alliances still will do is deal with the game-breaking problem of not being able to play with your friends. It is the ability to get people together, to form guilds, to recruit, to bring in new players, to bring back old players etc., that is the main appeal of Alliances. Even if the hype of "Alliance politics" has died off a bit the main appeal was always fixing the game-breaking inability to form and re-form communities. That this fundamental and self-explanatory thing does not exist in WvW, or that ArenaNet sees no urgency in fixing it, is just astounding.

Small groups have nothing to do because everything is upgraded and undefendable due to lower upgrade times, supply balance and terrible siege balance.It feels like we're talking beside each other here. There are perhaps things that could be done to improve the supply management side of things. However, as long as we have servers who are stronger at 5AM than they are at 5PM and that propels them up the ladder so servers do not want to go there and no one cares about PPT as a result, as long as it doesn't involve avoiding those bad matchups, then I find that the balance and mechanics of PPT itself is pretty irrelevant. It doesn't solve the issue of people having nothing to do that feels gratifying. Also, then, it doesn't matter if we're talking small- or large groups. No one wants bad matchups whether we talk about your servers or my servers. If matchups are fixed PPT will matter and its mechanics may be relevant.