Counterakt.9106

Right now we are having so much fun with TC/AR. They are putting up such a great fight. Shout out to CC guild with their crazy mount pushing for fighting us instead of ducking. I miss BG tho. Blob/doubleteam or not they actually would constantly be attacking smc and flipping it many a time. come back BG!

Lol there it comes out finally. This change is what the boon blob wanted, shilled for in the forums and what they are getting. Unfortunately the silent majority in this game is going to get hurt by this. I am just trying to amplify those voices here. Maybe they will get vocal once it is fully implemented. But it would be too late at that time, the server shards can't be reverted, the damage to the community irrevocable. I fully expect that ANET is not going to read this, and probably gonna go ahead with this half thought out idea, but at least I get to say 'I told you so'.

The vocal minority were the ones who were crying every day in the forums. They were mostly guild leaders. Casuals never asked for alliances in the format that is presented now, which btw, doesn't really help with stacking (my link with indo's guild is repeatedly curb-stomping the other two alliances). So alliances don't help with the very thing that they were supposed to help solve. In addition it destroys the sense of community that players felt when belonging to a server. That is a regression in my opinion. Now are the game designers men enough to admit a mistake and change their roadmap or are the gonna plough through this until the game mode is dead? You belong to different group in my list of categories, let us agree to disagree.

I think guilds will lose relevance and alliances will soon become mega guilds. In my current link, I see massive lagfest boon balls going at each other pretty much through prime time. They even wear the alliance tag instead of their guild tags.

Lol every server has people go on hiatus for months and come back. It all evens out accross servers. Doesn't make sense to me. If I am gone for 6 months, I don't get counted, so technically the server should open up right?

I am not saying these groups are black and white. There are a lot of people people that belong to 2 or more of these categories. The point is alliances design seem to cater to a very small but extremely vocal percentage of the player base. The people that this will affect negatively don't typically read or contribute to the forums. Servers have a sort of permanence. I could go on hiatus for 6 months and come back and it will be there. Alliances are too fluid. You go for a month and come back someone else has taken your place. You will have to start all over again in a totally new community. This is one of the main reasons I avoid joining guilds and the reason I don't like alliances.

I am not sure Anet understands the type of players that play their game. Different groups look at alliances differently from their perspectives. It works for one set and doesn't work for another. They get their alliance feedback from a small subset and have designed the game. Let me try to define them. Roamers: They like to 1v1 or roam with one or two friends. Typically they should be ok with the current changes. Typically play pvp seasons. They don't have to be matched with any alliance they will be ok on their own as long as there is activity in their time zone. Hard core guilds: They like to fight. They comp up, review videos, try new builds. They have passionate players. Typically have drama and occasional. Whenever they lose they convince themselves the enemy had more players. They implode once in a while and try to reform as the comm goes on hiatus. Typically revolves around the availability of one or two commanders who struggles to juggle between irl and game life. They like and want alliances because they think alliances will balance the game population. They keep switching servers, hate the gem cost to transfer. they hate servers getting full. Casual Guild groups: They care about ppt. They care about pips. They typically do fractals and other pvx content as well. They train new people and act as a feeder for hard core guilds. Havoc groups: These are group of 5-10 players who know each other for a long time. They just fight in a cloud or run havoc in bls, typically try to take objectives. If they get into a good alliance it is ok for them. If they are part of a weaker alliance they are going to have a hard time. The current system largely works for them, they might be a little apprehensive about alliances. Server moms: These are people who live and die for server pride. They scout and hold bls. They talk all day in map chat. They repair walls, run supplies, defend camps, tier up keeps. These people keep the content alive between one group logging in and another one logging out. They absolutely hate alliances because their 'home' now is overrun by a bunch of randoms. Typically there is no place for them in any good alliances and they don't want to be part of any alliances. Casuals/PUGs: These people login whenever they want, just take part in whatever content they get. They take it light chat in map chat. They know which pugmanders are decent, which players will push, which players will run away. They play accordingly. Current system works fine for them. They are already in the servers that suit their playstyle and temperament. They don't have the time to record videos, show up on raid times. They don't qualify for being in a hard core alliance. They don't like alliances because of all the randoms that they don't know. Cloud: Slightly different than casuals. They fall between roamers and hard core guilds. They are passionate about the game. They care about kdr. They are typically retired pvpers, gvgers whose real life caught up with them. They typically hate well supported hard core guilds. The don't qualify for attendence requirements of hard core alliances. They like bags. They like to be aware of who is playing around them and hence hate alliances. I may have missed or wrongly characterised some of the groups of players. But I think this a fair representation from my POV playing this game for all these years. There is also some overlap between these groups. But I think ANET gets their feedback for alliance design overwhelmingly from the hard core guild leaders, who are but a minuscule percentage of the population. The very guild/alliance leaders who are known to go on extended hiatus randomly. When guilds imploded the fallout was caught by the server construct, from which rose new guilds. But now, if a hardcore alliance implodes the people in that community will get dispersed. ofc, there will be a few of them who keep in touch through discord, but the rip that is caused in the fabric of that community can't be healed as easily.

In the alliance matchup I am in, after one of the captures, got a notification on screen saying 'Yak's Bend has captured <objective_name>'

Sieges help them to hold both the spawns with very less man power. So they can go into bls to defend. why is that not a valid strategy? Sieges are part of the game too. It might seem unfair for you but Mag justification for this is, it serves you right running around in 50 man unkillable minstrel boon balls killing pugs. If that is fair then this is fair as well.

I have been part of Mag cloud since I started wvw. I am now part of the AR 'cloud' if you can call it that 🙂 . Any server will spawn camp if they don't have better content. The objective of the game is winning. Everyone tries to play to their advantage. One of the ways Mag has figured to win PPT is to take your keep during the dead timezone between SEA and NA prime and spawn camp you until na prime. Because if they don't, you hide from them in the bls. Spawn camping is pretty boring but threads like these make it almost worth it. To all the people who say there are other exits etc., it doesn't work like that. Most good players log off if they are getting spawn camped and are outnumbered. What is left is the casuals who try to get participation for the week. They keep rallybotting until the rest of the good players log off as well if they don't get good content. You never get critical mass to take back your stuff, until a guild group logs in, because people see the state of affairs and log off in 5 minutes or go pve. That is the right thing to do as well in that situation. The few rare times Mag itself has been spawn camped, that is their response as well. They just log off to play other games or alts or go pve. Or get on your teef/ranger/dh and play the pew pew game in spawn try to score a kill with a pull or a snipe. Trust me no better way to hone your stunbreak reflex 🙂 There are kills to be had, some always over push. Don't complain about spawn camping - you get participation, you have the spawn advantage, you don't have to go look for content. Just wait for critical mass before attempting to take back your keep and don't feed. To people who are saying that Mag is coming into bls as well, that seems to be true of late. My guess is that the whole alliancing stuff kinda left the 'cloud' players, server moms and roamers in other servers without a cause to fight for their home servers and made them consolidate in Mag giving it more coverage.

if you are a casual/roamer/yak runner/scout/wall repairer, you don't want to get pitted against a 24x7 blob alliance and get spawn camped all day. There is also full roamer servers like Mag making our own alliances, which means if you are a casual and go against us it is not going to be fun for you. Only way to make this fair is to have all casuals randomly shuffled and balanced and put into their own matchups

Maybe call it casuals match up for people who cant be bothered to join an alliance. All categories you mentioned will fall into it.

The roamer matchup will be randomly shuffled balanced on individual players( based on rank, kills etc). There is no stopping roamers from organizing into into blobs. But if they wanted to do that with random people, they might as well pick an alliance guild at that point instead of a randomized roamer matchup.

I disagree. Rewards/shinies/leggys/achievements are the reason we get fresh blood in wvw. Once they come in only a low percentage of people become die hard wvwers. Any reward increase must accompany ways to prevent cheating. Eg. You don't get rewards for killing the same player twice within 10 minutes. That said there are going to be players who cheat regardless. Instead of punishing 99% of playerbase for a few cheaters, just tolerate cheaters. Tailor rewards so that is not profitable. Gold to gem conversion is the only reason gold farmers cheat in this game. Instead of Gold rewards, make it so that you can build leggy weapons/sigils/accessories (that are currently missing in this game mode) with skirmish tickets + emblems (avengers+conqueror). The weapons should not out shine the pve rewards, in fact don't make them shiny at all. Only people who are competitive will even bother to get non-shiny items. Because building leggys is actually a gold/gem sink there is less likely hood of cheating. Anet can always regulate it with # of skirmish tickets.

Give an option to have a roamer only matchup. All 3 servers should be random roamer/pugs only that will be randomly assigned, for those players that don't enjoy getting blobbed all day long.