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Why commanding has gotten less enjoyable over expansions


Riba.3271

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This guy used to tag up all the time in the past, why not anymore? Guilds don't do open raids anymore? Guilds complain about recruiting but find open raids so painful that they don't utilize them for recruiting? Why do all commanders stack on same server?

Well here are the answers

Winning isn't just about skill and wits anymore: Defending advantages can't be played around. Map feels extremely small.

Before if enemy had ACs, you could take them down with smart ballista/treb placement. Even take the wall down from far away and portal bomb them.

Then came claim buff, stat buff that attacker can't play around. 400 stats from tower or camp is outplayable, but still not enjoyable. 800 stats is just adding 13% damage and 20% defence on one side, needless to say these stats lead into 20 v 20 turning into 20 v 25. But it still feels like you lost 20v20. Your crits feel small, you sustain feels small, you just feel a few inches smaller than the enemy near enemy objectives, not a man but a boy.

Obviously if the stat advantage was constant, you could play around it by getting stronger but it changes between every camp, every tower, randomly on open field, leading to 800 and 1600 stat differences between almost every spot across map. The spots you can have a good fight in, are so limited. Incombat gliding is also another issue because it move with superspeed speed but it only comes into play like once a day per player so while it should be fixed, it isn't as urgent.

Any moment you feel like tagging up in WvW, you will tag up and go hit enemy objectives. Now enemy can sometimes defend without commander due to the stats, the other times they get a commander there is no guarantee he is willing to leave his claim buffs. So often it can just become thumb twiddling competition, which is just boring. Not everyone leads due to their egos, but for the thrill of good combat.

Keeps and castles upgrading several times faster than pre-HoT also leads to big issues in upgraded mapstates. This combined with scoring change means that even if you reset enemy keeps and such, they will upgrade back up in less than 3 hours. The reward for the effort just isn't worth it. Also not like there will be great enjoyable fights while doing it due to claim buff giving weaker players that aren't smart enough to place siege, a massively higher chance.

Relinkings: Server loyalty dead and fighting against experienced-player stackers

The reasons for stacking itself links with the defender advantages because the necessity arose for server communities to get strong to attack things and have fun. No one just wants to sit at their keep waiting for enemy to show up, sometimes they just want blood. So they attack, and to do this you stack with guild commanders and players.

Relinkings also removed any hope for community building because you put in just a little bit effort and your server is set permafull. The players transfer around to links with 500 gems but rarely stick around. These days commanding has very few long-term benefits so leading through the bad times just doesn't feel worth it. And this doesn't just affect commanders, the players will also log out easier if things go south, so chances of things getting better unless you're on a stacked server if you keep going is very very small.

Now out there are a few servers that adapted to the misery caused by massive defending powers by building themselves extremely strong. Every open tag is basically has a base formed out of same 3-4 active guild players. For normal servers to win a fight against them without at least 15 player guild core, is just impossible. There should be some people out there that find pleasure banging their head to a wall, but most commanders already realised this is a wall their head can't break. So they joined them. Then most quit the game because they realised gameplay thrills weren't that great, just boring, even on the other side. Enjoying winning without challenge just isn't for most people.

Firebrand, Minstrel, Cooldowns and superspeed

Compositions have become very one dimensional: spellbreaker, scrapper, firebrand, revenant, scourge/reaper. Everyone needs superspeed and any control over the battlefield with pulsing fields is gone with everyone moving so fast. So it is just 1-dimensional stacking meta, you don't only stack because you want superspeed but because superspeed itself makes any other strats less effective. Creativity regarding compositions or playstyle is dead. Simplest way to describe it is that faster movement speed made ranges and fields too small.

Commanders are usually firebrands as it is best for it and firebrand can't focus on just leading but also has to be skillful at the game. Firebrand is found rather boring in this often one sided superspeed meta so there is a lack of them also. Lose a few fights? Firebrands log out first. There are not many thrills for firebrands in the combat system. Regular open leading often only exists for egoistic or social reasons, since community building reasons are minimal these days.. In addition the skill limit and mapstate analysis knowledge to be a commander became a turn-off for lot of old commanders that just turned their brain off and liked run around.

Main issue with current split of minstrel players and DPS dealers is that if you're full minstrel and there isn't much happening, hitting the lord hard or ganking the few enemy around isn't as fun as in the old cele meta. So while the good moments have gotten worse, the bad moments have gotten worse also. So most people on pug servers opt to play DPS instead which leads to compositional issues as playing an unfun build on a server that doesn't win almost every fight just isn't fun.

Cooldowns have also gotten ridiculously low, commander doesn't need to wait 40 seconds for well bomb anymore to break enemy melee. Just axe 3s, scepter 3s, dps guardian symbols, lava fonts, revenant hammer skills etc are enough to break them. So bombs are naturally up almost always, every 10 seconds. This is also issue with superspeed, it is almost always up. One of the hardest things to be a good commander was learning to keep track of cooldowns and not wasting them, now the fight just plays out itself with commander being another player out there.

Playerbase stagnant and compassionate dedicated smart people are gone

Current system with relinkings, claim buffs, weird siege balance and extremely fast upgrade times is very illogical and doesn't promote one-persons contribution so most of the smart people reduced the hours they play to minimum which for most was zero. With extinct long-term sieges, removal of server projects and very linear superspeed meta they just didn't get the thrill their brain needed. So they stopped.

So we are left with people that either have something to prove, are on nostalgia spree or don't put any effort in the game. Needless to say this leads into players being silent and also uncreative in the rare cases they communicate. But commanders communicate and put in the effort. So they feel misplaced whenever they tag up, like a cat in a pack of sheep. Prove is in that your own servers old commanders came back to the game for a week or two multiple times, but never sticked around despite having big plans to do so at the start.

Afterwords

The games balance just doesn't support new players, solo players, fair fighting, dueling, sieging or community building anymore. The meta is very one dimensional and increased movement speed ruined any creativity within the combat system.

Most fixes however are very easy, just tuning down claim buff, fixing shield gen balance, removing link servers from population equation, increasing upgrade times of keeps/castles, reducing power of short cooldown skills and tuning down superspeed effectiveness would suffice. Simple changes that all take together a few days work. It worries me that Anet hasn't spotted these obvious mishaps of the system yet, do they even play WvW?

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what you say is true but honestly the most important thing to fix is the lag. amazon servers are complete garbage. since they won't or can't fix this the mode is doomed. a lot of players seem to be unaffected by lag but i think enough players are and it is a huge thing holding wvw back. they might be able to address lag by reworking aoe on all skills but thats a big fix and i doubt anet is that interested in something like that.

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I don't know enough about commanding to weigh in on everything. There needs to be something else to help defenders in place of the claim buff though, kinda feel funneled into lanes unless you can link up with a few other floaters who can work together without a lot of chatter or you can lure your map queue over to something. I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing at this point though since there's nothing to do really on most of a map aside from cycling small objectives along those lanes anyway. There's no new story stuff going on when those come out to create new fights in new spots so those lanes are pretty much where we all want to end up with current WvW.

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:what you say is true but honestly the most important thing to fix is the lag. amazon servers are complete garbage. since they won't or can't fix this the mode is doomed. a lot of players seem to be unaffected by lag but i think enough players are and it is a huge thing holding wvw back. they might be able to address lag by reworking aoe on all skills but thats a big fix and i doubt anet is that interested in something like that.

Yea, it is true that lag is bad and should be fixed. Overall I support them adding 5th map and reducing map caps a bit as 60v60 fights are not very enjoyable (the combat system breaks the more players there are). This would alleviate the lag also.

The servers were pretty bad before amazon servers too, at least there haven't been big issues in EU with them. Not sure about NA amazon servers.

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@kash.9213 said:I don't know enough about commanding to weigh in on everything. There needs to be something else to help defenders in place of the claim buff though, kinda feel funneled into lanes unless you can link up with a few other floaters who can work together without a lot of chatter or you can lure your map queue over to something. I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing at this point though since there's nothing to do really on most of a map aside from cycling small objectives along those lanes anyway. There's no new story stuff going on when those come out to create new fights in new spots so those lanes are pretty much where we all want to end up with current WvW.

In the old days, the siege balance was good so you could hold off the attackers longer with defending siege and such. So you had more time to gather more players or find a commander. Now the defending siege is useless with shield gens blocking everything and rams taking half damage from trebs.

Overall there was also more small groups to defend against throughout the day so things were more presieged. Now stuff is so non-combatish to take that it is barely attempted and defensive siege is useless against larger groups, so objectives are rarely presieged.

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@"Stand The Wall.6987" said:what you say is true but honestly the most important thing to fix is the lag. amazon servers are complete garbage. since they won't or can't fix this the mode is doomed. a lot of players seem to be unaffected by lag but i think enough players are and it is a huge thing holding wvw back. they might be able to address lag by reworking aoe on all skills but thats a big fix and i doubt anet is that interested in something like that.

It's largely due to instant AoE damage, AoE boon application, and rapid AoE and condition application. All these timers at once are what cause server issues more than anything. There was an obscure dev post about it a while ago basically saying "sorry, there's really not much we can do except find ways to reduce these from happening (AKA reduce number of players)." Yet again, the issue points to the systems team. Unfortunately the expansions have been really bad at powercreeping the latter two.

For FPS Lag, which is worse than ever, I point to the use of excess particle effects on character models, mounts, and minis. ANet used to have a pretty rustic fantasy look in its earlier days and has basically just put the pedal to the floor on visual clutter these days. I wish we had a non-standard model with no visual effects option.

I don't think this is ever going to get fixed, sadly. Unless they totally overhauled their tech infrastructure, which is a tremendously expensive project for a game that's going to be entering maintenance mode soon, I expect it to continuously get worse unless major tech breakthroughs happen.

But yeah, the way the new stuff is designed, and what a lot of WvW/sPvP players predicted would happen with the introduction of dedicated role strengths across professions and the massive buffing of sustain builds, is that build diversity would be obliterated and the creativity behind large-scale combat be limited to just some hours/days after our rare balance notes should anything significant at all change. Gone are the days of dedicated periphery groups when everything, even DPS, just has long-range CC/pulls and more sustain than can be bursted down by individual players.

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As always, people tend to tunnel vision on their pet issues, but really aren't applicable to most players outside of their bubble and nostalgia. Running over blobs of players running 14/14/14/14/14 with your uncc'able hammer train was never impressive. Despite repeated nerfs to siege and this forum hilariously oscillating between "attacking is too hard" and "why can't I stand on this wall without getting killed", I think it is clear that the issues with the game mode go far beyond stats or even skill balance.

WvW started dying slowly because Anet had pretty much nuked the concept of a "world" with megaservers. Back then you had stuff like servers wanting to be the 1st to kill Teq. Server communities would make sure all members would succeed in every game mode. But the focus got shifted to pve. With the atrocity that is guild halls, and pretty much every guild mechanic is now an abandoned feature on top of the dozens of constantly abandoned features in this game like raids, dungeons, or alliances you get a game that simply has no future.

The game as a whole does not really push people to improve. The reward system in about 95%* of content promotes leeching and doing as little as you can. In WvW, some of the hardest working contributors are often rewarded the least. Reward tracks have by and far mitigated this, but there is no doubt that everything in this game comes down to the skinner box of press 1 and get rewarded. The very few areas of the game that did punish players for being screw up were met with constant cries for nerfs and "gimme gimme gimme". They caved and this is the community at large in all aspects of the game-- a ton of deadweight expecting to be carried.

And without a doubt, many backs were broken. Commanders desperately trying to pull together some semblance of organization are shut down by the legions of toxic casuals that bring objectively useless builds** that contribute absolutely nothing. It was probably acceptable in 2013 to run something useless, but with the wealth of information accessible with about 3 minutes of google, there is none.

Yes, yes. Buildcraft is very shallow in a game because most options are useless, funneling everyone into a certain meta. The whole nerfbatting of anything fun adds to the mess, and makes people apathetic.

They can spam their discord or teamspeak all they want, but it doesn't matter as it falls on deaf ears. To have any chance of winning against other groups, as a result, even formerly friendly guilds retreat to inner circles, leading to much tears from entitled demanding free labor.

Honestly, while some may call this toxic, I just call it radiation therapy. There is no way to be inclusive with those toxic snowflakes, and veteran WvW players were best served by finding those that share their same mindset. Unfortunately, that kinda just causes the community as a whole to die out.

Our WvW developer (pretty sure it's singular) has made efforts such as removing degenerate elements such as Dragon Banners but most likely due to lack of resources, there is only so much they can do as the company as a whole seems to be putting everything on this new expansion? And as for players like you and me? Well, I doubt there will be a place, but I think people do deserve hope, so let's not ruin that bit for them.

No doubt the shills will take glee in realizing this as they've most likely have and will make themselves feel better with the "you're no longer part of the intended audience" script. But don't let them shout us down, no matter how much they copy and paste.

*This number is obviously made up.

** Edit: Note that this does not mean "non-meta" or "roaming" but literally builds that don't contribute to this game mode in any context by having mismatched or nonexistent synergy/purpose. Even certain PvE builds could possibly see some use, even if a bad idea. If you don't die on inc in most fights, I am not talking about you. Probably.

But you may have no idea what kind of crap people run. For example, once I fixed a friend's gear that had mismatched runes and gear of varying quality from green to yellow. But he still didn't die on inc most of the time. And of course "what traits?"

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@"ArchonWing.9480" said:And without a doubt, many backs were broken. Commanders desperately trying to pull together some semblance of organization are shut down by the legions of toxic casuals that bring objectively useless builds that contribute absolutely nothing. It was probably acceptable in 2013 to run something useless, but with the wealth of information accessible with about 3 minutes of google, there is none.

Worthless toxic casuals: "May we join the squad? You can put us in a specific group so we can mark targets and be more effective, you dont seem to have a full squad anyway."

Friendly desperate commander: "Why the kitten do we only have 25 in squad get the fuck on discord everyone gtfo off the border ONLY FIREBRANDS where the fuck is our dps!?!"

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"ArchonWing.9480" said:And without a doubt, many backs were broken. Commanders desperately trying to pull together some semblance of organization are shut down by the legions of toxic casuals that bring objectively useless builds that contribute absolutely nothing. It was probably acceptable in 2013 to run something useless, but with the wealth of information accessible with about 3 minutes of google, there is none.

Worthless toxic casuals:
"May we join the squad? You can put us in a specific group so we can mark targets and be more effective, you dont seem to have a full squad anyway."

Friendly desperate commander:
"Why the kitten do we only have 25 in squad get the kitten on discord everyone gtfo off the border ONLY FIREBRANDS where the kitten is our dps!?!"

Yea those commanders that think they own a map are also an issue.

Although you really don't need a squad to focus targets, especially in this age of just toss AOE in the same direction.

Edit: Also I went back to clarify what a useless build was. It is not "non-meta" or roaming, but closer to "die on inc without doing anything". Something like Turret Engi maybe. Although to be fair, people on good builds also die on inc. But this is why I said objectively useless, rather than subjectively useless (eg, non-meta)

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Yo it all comes down to drama and bandwagoning.

Some guilds wanna PPT, some just ktrains.Fight guilds don't give a shyt.

PPT guilds hate Fight guilds for not playing the objective game cos all they want is fights, no matter the tier.

Ktrainers just get their karma high and screw off.

People argue, guilds decide their tier is trash and server is trash so they transfer off.

Newbies/Solos are like "lol dead server" they transfer off.

Fight guilds are like "what, no fights in t4?" They transfer off.

Tadaaaa dead server, it closes or becomes a link.

If server transfers are the bullets killing WvW, the players are the gunpowder, the gun, the finger that pulls the trigger.

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@"Yasai.3549" said:Yo it all comes down to drama and bandwagoning.

Some guilds wanna PPT, some just ktrains.Fight guilds don't give a kitten.

PPT guilds hate Fight guilds for not playing the objective game cos all they want is fights, no matter the tier.

Ktrainers just get their karma high and screw off.

People argue, guilds decide their tier is trash and server is trash so they transfer off.

Newbies/Solos are like "lol dead server" they transfer off.

Fight guilds are like "what, no fights in t4?" They transfer off.

Tadaaaa dead server, it closes or becomes a link.

If server transfers are the bullets killing WvW, the players are the gunpowder, the gun, the finger that pulls the trigger.

There are no fights to be had within objectives anymore. One side having such a massive stat advantage that you can't play around led the community being split purely to fight/farm or ppt. There is no middle ground, for example fighting for the objectives. That kind of gameplay died with the introcution of claim buff.

Pre-HoT it was normal for guilds to fight each other over and over for an objective, not run around in circles south side of the borders looking for open field fights.

If objectives were involved and were held in some value, the fights would be more epic and the outcome would be more satisfactory, even for people who claim they play purely for fights.

Server linkings don't help PPT mattering either. You do well? You get less players and commanders. You do badly? Great, you still get to same starting point.

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@Threather.9354 said:

There are no fights to be had within objectives anymore. One side having such a massive stat advantage that you can't play around led the community being split purely to fight/farm or ppt. There is no middle ground, for example fighting for the objectives. That kind of gameplay died with the introcution of claim buff.

Massive stat advantage is a overexaggeration.In fact, I would like to say Objective Aura isn't strong enough.

Too many times, the defenders have to face both sides attacking their same keep, and this occurs often just after reset when there are queued maps.

If all 3 sides are full queued and 2 sides are attacking the defender, the defender is always double teamed down first, and the two sides only start fighting each other once lord is down.

Defenders have to actually rely on the two invading forces to fight each other to win, and even then, it's not a guarantee because if yu slaughter one side and lose a few people along the way, the other side actually gets RALLIED, and will turn on the survivor.

And since Defenders are usually double teamed when defending, their forces have to trickle in from spawn or wait out at the gate before pushing en masse, and usually that's too late because, say one of the invading force loses and feels a need to retreat, high chance they will cut the easiest path out of the keep, which is via the backside facing Defender's spawn, killing any Defenders trying to mass up or killing all the trickling Defenders.

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Any attacking force needs Supplies to get into any objective.

Instead of using mechanics to balance objective battles related to any attacking/defending force through buffs or debuffsORTrying to control their numbers that affect player participation...we should manipulate how forces obtain Supplies.

I'd recommend doing 2 simple things as a solution to this discussion on battles over objectives:

  1. Remove Supply when Player Capture Objectives on an Enemy BL, or EBG Enemy Territory
  2. Keep Supply when Player Capture Objectives on their Home BL, or EBG Home Territory

For Full context See - 2019.11.01 - CHAPTER 4https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1064950/#Comment_1064950Found Under - Step 5 - WvG - Counter-Weights


Please Note - Schematic: Sabotage Depothttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Schematic:_Sabotage_Depot

Remove Supply should NOT be coded as a Guild Claiming Tactic, but as an automatic basic Free option for all Home Objectives

Ideas taken out of context can have a negative impact to the game mode than what was originally intended


To make Commanding more enjoyable requires a better Road Map & Vision that offers a complete package & not chaos...imho

Example Road Map:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/89449/wvg-world-vs-globes/p1

Credibility requires critical insight & time.

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@ArchonWing.9480 said:-snip-

Very well put, and weirdly a little moving.

I feel the issue of megaservers is bigger than some people think. Like you said, servers would push to be the first at things, and servers had pride. Although this can create toxicity and exclusion of its own, it also creates competition, loyalty, and a true community. People get familiar with each other and are willing to help each other to work toward a common goal. These are things that still exist, but because tiers have been condensed and communities are regularly shuffled, it drastically reduces the urgency to coordinate for a desired tier/match up and makes it difficult to maintain a server identity.Winning or losing isn't as rewarding or punishing as it once was, and frequent transfers and relinks have all but erased the personalities each server had.Don't get me wrong, it's not like every server was a snowflake completely unique from one another and with different goals, it's just that differences were a lot more apparent to an experienced eye.

The only thing keeping WvW going anymore is the combat. It's still exciting because it's still some of the best on the market. But a game can only carry itself on that one feature for so long before people get bored. You need a reason to beat the enemy, and you need a place to call home. You can have one without the other, but these things together can sustain a hobby for a life time.- Just look at passionate sports fans to see what I mean.

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@Shroud.2307 said:

@"ArchonWing.9480" said:-snip-

Very well put, and weirdly a little moving.

I feel the issue of megaservers is bigger than some people think. Like you said, servers would push to be the first at things, and servers had pride. Although this can create toxicity and exclusion of its own, it also creates competition, loyalty, and a true community. People get familiar with each other and are willing to help each other to work toward a common goal. These are things that still exist, but because tiers have been condensed and communities are regularly shuffled, it drastically reduces the urgency to coordinate for a desired tier/match up and makes it difficult to maintain a server identity.Winning or losing isn't as rewarding or punishing as it once was, and frequent transfers and relinks have all but erased the personalities each server had.Don't get me wrong, it's not like every server was a snowflake completely unique from one another and with different goals, it's just that differences were a lot more apparent to an experienced eye.

The only thing keeping WvW going anymore is the combat. It's still exciting because it's still some of the best on the market. But a game can only carry itself on that one feature for so long before people get bored. You need a reason to beat the enemy, and you need a place to call home. You can have one without the other, but these things together can sustain a hobby for a life time.- Just look at passionate sports fans to see what I mean.

In the past when I visited other servers, there were some very enthusiastic sever people that would go out of their way to make sure people got on TS and greeted people. They would push for meta classes but would really take anyone with whatever they had. People would get upset over losing stuff, but there were also people that just immediately proceeded to take it back like it was no big deal. And even after megaservers, there was still this thing happening. Nowadays, servers are just really more like motels, with bandwagons and guilds going whichever where there are greener pastures only to find out they're all dried out. The only content is now meeting new people via links for free.

This all died once HoT came out and a lot of those people just seem to be driven off by exhaustion. But actually HoT itself had content and you'd still have efforts in pve. Not even the travesty of guild hall grinds or buggy missions was really the problem. The issue really came with a lack of support. The game has very dated community tools and it's been the same guild missions for how long? I guess you had raids but that only appealed to a small segment of players, and now they're essentially dead too. I bring this up to show that it's a disease endemic to the entire game, and that's not something some number fiddling or "balance" is going to fix. This game could have absolutely garbage balance (lol redundant I suppose) and people would still flock in if it actually had support and care.

I've never really been a stickler from "server pride" but basically the whole concept went away and nothing went to fill it the void. I remember some RP'ers begging to have some kind of organization with maps post-mergaservers but they were just ignored, as well as those that wanted a unified Lion'a Arch as well. A lot of people will stay stuff like guild pride, but you don't actually need WvW (or even this game) really for that. You end up with these isolated cliches and a very insular community. Despite all the pug bashing, I do sometimes feel for those that actually do want to play and not leech.

I've said it a lot but this game loves to create amazing new content and then forget about it forever. And WvW happens to be at the bottom of this graveyard. But then again, I never expected them to nerf Dragon Banners like that either, so there are sometimes good things.

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Bandwagoning, server pride, and hard-core v casual discussions have been around since launch. Has nothing to do with server links nor any other changes Anet made. Some of you act like people are going to have the same server meetings every week, the same "train the pugs" initiatives run by the same commanders for over 8 years and never tire of it and move on to other games. It's a game, not a job. Lots of players, both server pride and fight bandwagoners, have left long before server links were even implemented. And how many pugs still need training after 8 years?

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