Panicbutton.9426

I think the massive frustration here is that even us non-technical muppets understand this problem. Pushing more stuff through the same size pipe = problems.Solutions = Two, huzzah!Solution One = Get a bigger fucking pipe.Solution Two = Put less fucking stuff through the pipe. The rumour is that you had good pipes, but then traded them in for shit pipes and now wonder why you have a problem. Then your solution is to ask less customers to use the pipes (which is just fucking mindboggling for a company that provides a service like you do).

It's really hard to respond to this message with a comment that isn't just a polite way of saying "learn to play". Of all the issues with WvW this is a) not an issue and b) would be FAR down the priority list to fix even if it was.

Look, there's very very little good will left towards Anet from WvW players at all, like close to zero for many of us. Telling us "this may take a while" is triggering as **** because of ALLIANCES. So, are we talking a few months here or should we start planning for our children to benefit from this investigation? As a company you have completely trashed our trust that you can deliver anything WvW related in a reasonable timeline. So you tell me how we should receive that information if not with a huge amount of skepticism? Telling us something may "take a while" is tantamount to telling us it will never happen because of Alliances. So address that issue please.I can absolutely guarantee that most WvW players will NOT want a reduction in the number of people on a map -> on the contrary if it were possible we'd want more. This is a terrible place to start if you wish to build bridges with the most frustrated section of your playerbase. ESPECIALLY if you cannot tell us why you think it might be worth investigating - if you said "this is the fastest way to test if a reduction in boons/condis impacts performance" then we could perhaps receive the experiment more favourably - instead this feels like you're going for the fastest, lowest effort fix, that has huge collateral damage consequences for the players i.e. play with less people we want to, more queues (reset will be a shit show with +7 to queues per map for some servers), less targets etc. There is NOTHING good about reducing the number of players on a map from our perspective.This feels like a missfire against a backdrop of exceedingly poor relations and catastrophic neglect of this game mode - everything you do needs to be in the context that you have destroyed our trust over the past five years. For god's sake get a communications or change management consultant on board for a few months, you lot have zero idea of how to interact with your player base.

Still a great guild full of great people, if you're looking for a really fun and friendly WvW focused guild you won't go wrong talking to MAS. Their longevity speaks for itself.

Three big issues facing WvW at the moment. 1) Content and rewards. 2) Stagnant meta a.k.a. too long with terrible balance. 3) Server performance i.e. lag. The consequence of those three issues being we have a declining population which is becoming more concentrated by default. Thanks to these issues, and particularly point 3, we need to distribute the players not concentrate them all in one place. Also, because of damage scaling more players nearly always beats less players when you adjust for skill. So, in order to prevent the correct answer to solving nearly all challenges in WvW be "bring more people" the design should make it harder to coordinate large groups and not easier. From a balance and health of the game mode perspective, forcing 75 players into 3 x 25 man squads is better than having 75 players in one squad even when they're all in the same voice comms with one real commander.

Unfortunately I personally think we've passed the tipping point now, it would take something so radical we'd all think it was actual magic to restore the WvW player base. For Anet to deliver on such a change would require apparently massive shifts in mindset and culture. The only events I can think of that would inspire an action so drastic are a new CEO coming in who actually sees the value in WvW or Anet being sold to a company that similarly sees the value in WvW. Based on their track record there is a vanishingly small chance that Anet will all of a sudden have a eureka moment regarding WvW and do something about it. It's sad but the likelihood is that even if they invest a ton of effort into alliances and class balance and rewards (and all the other things we've been asking for, in some cases literally screaming for it until blue in the face) it's too late. A lack of commitment to the game mode, a lack of understanding (of both the game mode and the players that enjoy it) and a general neglect have all led us to this point. In my mind Anet simply do not understand or know how to run a WvW game. If they announced GW3 tomorrow and it was 100% WvW I wouldn't play it, they can't be trusted to develop and run these kind of games. I guess that's ok, everyone should play to their strengths and have a niche they fit in comfortably - for Anet that niche is not PvP or WvW, it's PvE in the format of a living world with episodic updates. The only thing that has stopped the game mode hemorrhaging players faster (and the only reason that I personally still play at all) is the fact that there's no good alternatives out there (unless you like spaceships). If another good WvW game was available all of the borderlands would be ghost towns 24/7 and not just 22/6.75. There's another game in development (you all know of that which I speak!) and there must be a 1000+ ex-GW2 WvW nerds sitting on their discord server every day 'actively waiting' for that game to come out and there's nothing to play yet! The market is there. That's what makes this whole fiasco so frustrating - there was a great initial product (pre-HoT WvW was pretty good), there is a really passionate player base just waiting to throw their money at this kind of product, and Anet basically pooped the bed on it. They could have cornered the market and been "the" WvW game for a decade if anyone sat at the decision making table had even half a clue about WvW. It's difficult to say for sure whether that's an accidental ommission because they never had the knowledge and understanding - or if it was a deliberate choice based on metrics we can't see or personal preferences of their execs or what - I'm choosing to believe it was accidental based on ignorance. I wish they'd have sacrificed just one episode of living story per year, just one episode, and spent that time and money on WvW instead. It wouldn't have taken much, but investing next to nothing at all was always going to kill it.

Would love to know what the justification was for removing all the Scrapper elite skill toolbelt skills from F5. That's giving up a lot of stuff for an improved function gyro. Doesn't seem like a good trade to me and takes away a couple of really key abilities, not least of which is detection pulse, as mentioned a couple of times in this thread already. Too many of these changes just seem like change for changes sake. Also, once again, it seems like WvW was not considered in the slightest when making some of these changes.

MAS was such a great find for me when I was looking for a guild and it's been an awesome home ever since. I really love coordinated and competitive PvP/WvW with larger groups, have done throughout a long history of MMOs. There's a stereotype of behaviour in those kind of guilds which can put a lot of people off who are more than capable of playing at a higher level (it's a stereotype, there are plenty of exceptions but there's also no smoke without fire!). I'm very happy to attest to the fact that MAS is not only really competitive and structured but is not the stereotypical high performing PvP/WvW guild in terms of culture and behaviour - it's grown up, welcoming and friendly whilst also being focused and effective. I may be biased but if you talk to us I think you'll find my comments are validated. Looking forward to hearing from some of you and ultimately playing with some of you, reach out!