Cael.3960

Yeah, that sounds about right. Sorry, but I don't have the time to explain myself a third time if all you're interested is an echo chamber that supports your position. I've tried to expand this discussion beyond this need of yours to have 50-man target caps to enhance your preferred playstyle so you can see the wider impact it will have on players who also play something different. I've offered perspectives from multiple playstyles and squad sizes to try and give you the fullest idea of what this change would mean to them and why it's important to have choice and strategy rather than a meta that removes choice. At some point you have to step back and understand that this game is bigger than yourself and if you want a healthy meta is has to include players with different wants/needs and priorities. I get it, I really do. You feel you can't beat a blob unless you have a blob of your own and you've chosen not to see any other way to do this but to buff your particular playstyle sufficient to make it happen. I'm telling you there are other ways to win, if winning is the only thing that matters to you. I'm telling you that there's a community to think about and a social structure that exists beyond the sweaty need for domination. I'm telling you that player choice is a consideration that goes hand in hand with balance and taking away choice isn't healthy. Blobs aren't the be-all-end-all expression of how players play this game. It's just one way to play. There are many different kinds of 'blobs' and many different skill levels and coordination within each. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to devote more time to a discussion that won't meet halfway. I've tried.

I don't know where to even begin with this. There's a great deal of unspoken assumptions and selective bias here which is going to feel like a personal attack when I try to explain my own perspective and why I feel this would be disastrous for the future of this game mode. I'm not arguing at you, I'm not slamming you for wanting the game to appeal more to your particular playstyle even if I feel it comes without an understanding of what other kinds of players want from the game. I'm not questioning your understanding of the situation or your awareness of mechanics and playstyles that aren't something you personally play or have significant experience with. My intent is to create an open-minded dialogue to explore both sides of the situation so a reasonable compromise, if it exists, can be found. My position on this issue isn't rooted in stone, nor is it based on knee-jerk outrage or a preference for a particular style of gameplay. I'm trying to see the broadest possible interpretation of these changes as it would effect not just how I play, but how a wide variety of players of varying levels of skill and coordination are likely to experience it. So please, understand that I'm responding out of a desire for expansive discussion not to 'win' an argument. There's a difference. Hitting more targets doesn't mean an individual player is doing more damage to a single target. At best you're assuming that by having a higher target cap there's more overlap so that multiple squadmates can tag the same enemy player. Yes, this has the potential to generate more kills because you're more likely to land damage on glass targets or those who don't have defensive procs, passive mitigation or enough situational awareness for active mitigation. That's the obvious value of a limitless target cap, anything that can take damage will take damage and thus the odds of generating a down are highest. But it also makes the assumption that you're running nothing but DPS players on high-spike builds who always get to strike first. That means your 50 man target isn't running reflects, aoe denial, pulls, strips or spike damage of their own. You're basically assuming they sit there and eat your best alpha-strike with zero pushback, awareness or personal initiative. You're also assuming that they just let you smash them for followup damage while they stand in your bomb and try to heal through it. What exactly are their own DPS doing? Or do you just assume they all died on the first hit? Did you strip all their boons, apply vulnerability and CC on your mega-spike DPS burst so they never had a chance to escape as well? Groups like this DO exist in the game right now. They get farmed by groups half their size because most of them aren't good enough at the game to carry their own weight, let alone punch back at anything of equal numbers. Increasing the target cap to deal with groups like this is basically asking for the ability to farm casuals en-masse. That's not a healthy place to put a competitive meta, especially not one where participation numbers are declining. Sustain is so strong in this current meta because coordinated groups of high-quality DPS players working together are rare. Squads who possess that kind of talent can easily burn through squads of 4-support parties already. They don't need the crutch of increased target caps to fight bigger groups, they have the proper builds and enough coordination to get the job done without them. Those who blob up without that kind of punch usually can't succeed against a tiered up keep in the first place. They don't have the confidence to win a real fight so the only advantage their numbers have is to sustain through siege and/or carry enough supply to burn through walls quickly to ninja an objective before they're farmed by defense responders. Increased target caps would collapse these casual groups and either drive them from the game mode altogether or scatter their population amongst the broader base of ineffective defenders. That means less bags for you because now your competition is mostly other solos/roamers who aren't easy meat, casuals who won't play without something to defend, or the kind of highly organized and capable squads whom you won't be able to one-shot wipe without more at least half their number in the first place. At that point it's just a blob-vs-blob with a different meta. Your problem remains but now you've lost the easy bags. Makes for great youtube videos while it lasts though. I admire the cloud, truly. On an individual level they represent the level of skill a better-than-average squad with compted parties would usually have. Being better than average, they don't need buffs to dominate weaker opponents. They just need more time because fragmented coordination requires individuals to recognize opportunities and act on them without direction. In a quality cloud most will hunt the tail, prioritize targets without stab who can be pulled away from their supports and resist the urge to clump up to land damage when they know it'll make them a target for the full blob. You're already better than your opponents, why do you need to increase the gap? For a healthy game to exist even it's most skilled, most talented members need a challenge. When the game gets easy people get bored and stop playing. The smart play is to leave yourself with enough challenge that the game never gets boring. Victories don't create personal growth, overcoming disadvantage does that. I think a 50-target cap takes away a lot of the challenge in this game. Veteran players shouldn't be looking for a way to farm casuals, the casuals farm themselves enough already. I get the impression you don't run with squads that have effective leadership, strategy, or a style of engagement that requires critical thinking. More to the point, I don't feel you have experience with large squads who also have these traits. To someone who's never run in a quality group or been in the voice coms of one I can understand how it looks like two big blobs just circle each other until one just rolls over the other. You don't see how one tag baits damage from the other, how the bigger a group becomes the greater the relationship between degrees of attrition have on party cohesion and squad effectiveness. The playmaking abilities of individual players who manage to pull targets, secure downs in the skirmish, and the general level of play and attention to detail required to remain tight on tag so you're not an opportunistic kill. That mindless orbit you describe? That's one commander paring the wheat from the chaff until they can line up a decsive blow on the core of a group--the only real threat in the fight. That orbit? That's one commander getting a feel for bomb timings, the advantages and disadvantages of their differing comps, defensive cooldowns, gaps in boon coverage, the effective level of sustain in that other group and how reactive they are to a push. All the magic you ascribe to that disorganized 20v20 that 'ebbs and flows' where individual players have an impact. It's easy to miss when you see the forest and not the trees, but it's there. Making the assumption that 50 means casual and incompetent (but still too much for skilled veterans to handle) is a disservice to everyone. The cloud absolutely drives away new/inexperienced members. You see this everytime someone in chat/forums/reddit mentions the latest Mag matchup and how they're not going to play. It's no different at all from those who say the same about BG or whatever bandwagon server has all the boonblob fight guilds. 'I hate this garbage meta and this trash matchup. I'm just going to PvE this week.' The funny thing is that instead of solo players complaining about boonblobs, it's small-midsize attack groups who complain about unbeatable magclouds. It's the same problem but from a different perspective. In both cases it's typically the newer, less skilled and less experienced players who are upset about being farmed by those who know the game much better. Boonblobs are built around theorycrafted comps and the guilds who train a member to fill them. That degree of skill and coordination is going to outclass casual players without organization. Magclouds are filled by veteran solo/roamers who have spent enough time fighting outnumbered that they can intuit opportunity and quickly move to strike. That level of individual skill is going to outclass a lack of game understanding and poor organization/coordination. Both versions of casual are getting farmed and neither veteran perspective requires a buff to make that farming easier. The casuals who might abandon the game because they have no chance of winning? They do need the help, but what help they get shouldn't be something those with extensive game knowledge can exploit to even greater benefit. I'm not an advocate for dumbing down the game. That should be more than clear from this post and others I've made; I prefer new players take it on the nose and learn to grow rather than play with the training wheels perpetually on. Numbers are an advantage, but numbers aren't an 'I-Win' button that trumps higher quality play. Choosing to believe you can't win under any circumstance unless the game devs nerf or buff a particular strategy is defeatist. Worse, it removes the impetus to theorycraft and generate player-driven evolution within the game. You can overcome greater numbers. You can overcome significant greater numbers. But each additional player is an additional advantage and overcoming them requires more out of you and your team each time. Eventually every strategy has a breaking point; when one fails it's time to create another. Or combine multiple so that they have a greater net benefit. Ultimately you're part of a team and a team has many different tools at it's disposal, there's more than one path to victory. In the first year or two of launch 'zerg-busting' groups were common, yes. They were established guilds who transferred from other large-scale competitive games like DAoC and Warhammer Online. They were among the first to overcome the limits of the game mode by expanding their group sizes by coordinating 5-man parties in voice coms. Many were also elitist and exclusive, and with no weak links a 15-man could punch far harder than an unorganized mob with numbers and litterally nothing else. Squads were also smaller in general back then as there were much higher ques and activity across all servers so squeezing in a comp group was more difficult. Boonballs existed back then too, but unlike today it could take half-a-day for many of them to form and once they were rolling on a map they could exist in perpetuity so long as there was another commander to tag in. Even then much of the 'ball' were just floaters who glommed onto a rolling mass of people, the real success was always in that voice-com core. WvW was a much different beast back then, however. PvP was the esport scene and WvW was more of a hilarious group combat experience than a serious meta. Balance was rarely a consideration back then, and it wouldn't become one until the competitive skill split divided WvW from PvP. As for zergs being forced to disperse as a way to adapt to a higher target cap... I don't feel you understand the reasons why a group bands together. In many cases it has nothing at all to do with winning a fight. People like friends, people like running together while laughing about random junk in voice coms. It's a shared activity. Enforcing a skill balance that tells these players they can't play with each other and have a good time will simply cause them to abandon the game and go somewhere else. You need to understand that the social context of the game mode is just as important as the mechanical balance of it. People will want to play together, regardless of whether or not it's optimal. Creating an environment where they're harshly punished for doing so does not improve the health or longevity of the game. Relish the fact that many of these people are easy bags or the kind of difficult challenge that keeps the game interesting for those with skill. You don't have to win all the time to enjoy something. Strangely enough, casual players understand this far more readily than veterans do. Their silent majority is a voice worth paying attention to, even if it means the training wheels still have to come off. As for skill lag... I don't know what to tell you. Server stability has suffered with the switch to Amazon and all the expansions which were added to the game. There's just more going on with less server resources to handle it. If enough people on a map are using their skills, you're going to see lag no matter where you are on the map. When two blobs fight in hills, I've seen lag in bay while all I'm doing is harvesting resource nodes. If your dream of WvW is that there are no groups bigger than 10 anywhere on the map, everyone has a chosen objective to attack or defend and there are no large-scale engagements at all to generate lag.... What's the point? One reason many people play GW2 is because large scale pvp is such a niche form of gameplay there aren't a lot of games that do it. There might be a dozen games that offer 5v5 and 10v10 competitive experiences from an MMO perspective. Very, very few offer 70+ players on the same screen trying to kill each other. And unfortunantely... most of them are terrible. If not unplayable, than so poorly balanced that players have all but abandoned the game mode altogether. People play WvW because it offers them the possibility of true, large scale conflict in a satisfying fashion. I don't feel you'll see zergs 'adapt' and shrink down to 15s and 20s just because they're a target if they get any bigger than that. People will want to play together as a social experience. People will want to play a game that allows them to engage in large-scale combat. You're forgetting that zergs usually seek other zergs. They don't care about the 10-man group who got upset they they were steamrolled by 5 times their number. They'd much rather spend their time 'circling' another 50 man group for the kind of content GW2 offers that no other game does. You need to understand the downstream effects of raising target caps beyond your specific need to have a competitive edge to beat down one form of gameplay. Please don't respond to this in another giant blockquote. It was as exhausting for me to read your cut-up of mine as I'm sure this has been for you to read this. If there's something in here that really aggravates you, focus on that and we can talk about it in greater detail and cycle back to the rest if it's still something that you feel needs to be addressed.

And the 10 people might manage 3 kills instead of 1 out of 50 before being annihilated. Because that 50 man group has dedicated healers in minstrel gear (often 50% or more) and most small groups are lucky to have 1 heal and 1 support per party. Even with no target cap they're still able to outheal the damage. The extra kills? They're the ones in poorly organized parties without support ie., the map randos who joined an open tag like it's a PvE meta. Your 10-man group isn't going to zerg bust unless they run all damage, all glass, and manage an an ambush from stealth or a walled objective or some other LoS. That means your 10-man group is already more coordinated, more skilled, and more composed than most groups in the game. Which basically means... you're giving highly skilled players a buff against lesser skilled players. And a 50-man group of highly skilled players will be untouchable with that kind of advantage. I feel what you're looking for is really a way for a 1v50 to be effective, particularly as a part of some kind of cloud where a zerg is limited to a very small number of targets whereas solos scattered around the edges have a maximum number of targets and the highest possible damage. The cloud meta is one of the most effective, and universally despised, metas in the game. When done right it's so oppressive to new and inexperienced players that they refuse to play. When done poorly it creates a stagnant, prolonged engagement where rewards are few on both sides and a lot of time is wasted to achieve a minimum of warscore on both sides. Far worse, if 2 50 man squads can create map-wide lag on a borderland with most skills having target caps of 10 or less, just how much lag will 50 man target caps create with those numbers? I don't even want to think about it. Back when GW2 wasn't running on Amazon discount servers performance was good enough that you could sometimes get away with this. Now? No chance one side even manages a single skill cast with that much going on. It's even possible that most of your cloud gets nothing to go off either, meanwhile that boonblob's passive sustain might just be enough to come out on top anyway. Higher target caps aren't the answer. They would look absolutely amazing as youtube content though.

Yes. - Capture locations now have a more consistent combat area and reward players for fighting over the objective instead of ignoring combat altogether to delay the capture mechanic as long as possible. Open Field - More accurately the areas outside of walled objectives because it's now far more important to destroy siege than it used to be and most of the groups I've fought this week refuse to place siege within 1200 range of a wall. A close second would be towers because most of the groups I've fought this week will build their siege inside to attack keeps/smc on EBG and the garrison on Alpine BL. Turns out some servers have a crippling fear of doing anything within range of an enemy wall.

It depends on what you want out of the game. Many of us have jobs, kids, post-secondary opportunities and/or other responsibilities. We don't have the luxury of playing this game like it's a career or an extended summer vacation. If I have 60 minutes of free time and I want to spend it getting fights in WvW I'm not going to spend it flipping paper objectives because it's tactically sound for the server's PPT strategy. I'm going where the OJ's are. Or where there's a camp that's not on RI where I can assume other roamers are headed. If it's a guild night and I'm with a group looking for a fights, we're going to go where other groups are likely to be. If that means punching a hole in a wall to get at what's hiding inside, we'll build siege and punch a hole. If an enemy group wants to come out and fight on the open field where my guild will spend 60 minutes contributing nothing to the matchup's PPT I'm also fine with that. For those who care about the PPT and who wins a tier my guild's play is stupid. By not taking things when we have a group that can achieve it we're "actively dragging the server down". But I'm having fun, my guild is having fun, and even if the rewards are significantly less than what we'd get by k-training paper objectives I'd rather do this instead. There's also not much point in retracing a havoc squad's k-train if you want fights and they don't. You're just giving them more objectives to re-paper while they continue to ignore you. When they've got nothing left to flip and their remaining options are to fight you or move maps, most will flock to whatever is under attack and call in reinforcements if they can't handle it. It may not be the fight you want, but at least it's content you came online to get. And by ignoring all the superfluous PPT you're getting more of it in your limited time than you would by doing the 'smart' thing that's in your 'best interest'. As for those who suggest taking it to a guild hall if you want fights; you don't get pips, bags or wiggle chests in the guild hall. In fact, if you want food and utility buffs or the ability to change gear and test new builds you're going to need at least a little income to make that happen. WvW doesn't pay well at all and it pays even less if you don't k-train. But if you find PvE tedious and don't have the time to grind it for cash, WvW at least offers you the gameplay of a guild arena with enough gold incentive that you're not making yourself poorer by playing it.

I think it would be better to remove player stat buffs altogether and alter Guild Objective Auras to improve the actual objective instead. I.e, Aura 1 improves supply capacity. Aura 2 improves fixed-siege damage. Aura 3 increases HP to structures. Etc. The point of spending resources on an objective should be to buff the objective, not the people inside it. This way you get your PvE advantage and clashes that occur outside the walls but inside friendly territory don't punish groups who want to fight each other on equal terms. I imagine it might also help server calculations as structures that can only be damaged by siege represent far fewer targets to make calculations. It would also help address the outcry from those who feel the latest nerfs are too damaging for them to want to continue playing. An aura or guild tactic that reduces the % required to patch a wall to 25% for example.. Much like hardened defenses or EWP, some options are more valuable on some objectives than others and this would at least give guild claimants a choice on how they want to defend their objective.

That's an excellent point, and something which really should be made more visible so people are aware of it.

That's right, skill is a bigger advantage than numbers. Skill is built upon knowledge of the game, personal ability, and the situational awareness required to think critically and create effective strategies. That's why there's a difference between a squad composed mostly of guild members and an open tag filled with whatever is on the map. Guilds by their very nature imply a higher degree of coordination and leadership. Casual players who don't possess these qualities benefit from having it on loan from someone who does, that's why you see them join squads. It's also why many guild groups run invisible or with a closed tag, they know casual players expect to be carried by them and don't want that weakness introduced into their comp. Guilds cultivate skill because it synergizes well with organization and coordination. A highly skilled group is a requirement for virtually every difficult aspect of the game, in all three game modes. But a blob is a blob to people who don't know any better and can't be bothered to understand the difference. And because numbers mean boonball and nothing else, boonballs/boonblobs are the defacto title for any half-squad or larger that disorganized or unskilled pugs can't PvE a win over. Anet isn't responsible for some MMO players wanting to play in groups while others want to play alone. How anyone can think a game company "forces" social interaction in a social gaming experience makes no sense to me. It's like going to a music festival and getting upset about the fact that people want to dance with each other. If you want to dance alone that's your business; but plenty of people are there for the experience of dancing together and it's unreasonable to get angry at them (and the festival) for letting them do it. Large groups can be challenged by smaller groups and stymied by the efforts of just a couple people. It takes more skill and effort to do this, but it's still done regularly enough that it makes a difference. And those who are particularly good at it are well known on their servers for this reason. Getting mad because your server can't field enough numbers or skill to counter another server's numbers or skill is justified, but it's also a choice. It sucks but when people have the ability to band together to achieve mutual success it makes perfect sense for them to do so. Society does this all the time, it's why cities are a thing. It's normal for people to come together to do something greater than what they can achieve on their own and in a social game it should be expected that they will also do this. In a competitive setting it makes even more sense, which is why you see people transferring to full servers whenever they open. It's also why we have ques, to help prevent the bandwagonning of everyone onto a single stacked server. Recognize that you're putting a handicap on yourself and then demanding the game devs balance around it. They're not pushing everyone toward boonballs/boonblobs, people are doing that all on their own without their help. You're angry because you don't want to be a part of something other people enjoy and because it's a competitive scene and your choice is less successful than theirs, it's making you frustrated. There are strategies to beat bigger numbers, you just need to try them and find one that works for you. Grow as a player and learn to use what skills you have to have the greatest effect, everyone will respect you more for putting in the effort rather than demanding someone else do it for you.

Great, in theory, until you realize that what a 10 man with no target caps can do a 50 man with no target caps can do 3x better. If you want to buff small groups you need to give them something that can't be adopted and exploited to even greater effect by larger numbers. Gotta think outside the box here. Instituting some kind of competitive split based on numbers in squad isn't the answer because groups don't need a squad to abuse it, just voice coms. Back at launch squads didn't exist, you just had an entire map of 5-man parties all in voice coms. Besides, if you thought the lag was bad now just imagine how it'll be if the servers have to calculate how many people are in an area and then adjust skills based on that data on the fly. I'm sure a solution exists to remove the significant disadvantages a small group faces when it fights a larger one, but it's important to understand that having less people should be a disadvantage. You need a way to punch up, something that requires strategy and coordination. Something dependent on player agency. A smaller group shouldn't win because the game handed them a handicap sufficient to overcome a lack of friends. A smaller group should win because their play was simply better..

Interesting that no one considers the time and effort required to assemble and train up a quality guild group. To theorycraft a comp, build up an understanding of how and when to use it, and then execute it effectively in the field. To hear many of people on these forums, all you need is to get 50 people into a squad and they can obliterate anything, anywhere, anytime. I've seen 30-man groups annihilate 60+ with virtually no losses. That disparity of skill, leadership and coordination has a far more significant impact than simple numbers. But clearly players with zero inclination towards improvement or collaboration with their server mates deserve a way to win against something that takes months or even years to build. For all the complaints about 'easymode' blobs, you sure you aren't asking for the exact same thing for anti-social solos?

Again, that's a playstyle of choice. Refusing to partake of a particular piece of content does not mean reality reflects only your choice of play. Though I will agree that many players play exclusively only one style of WvW and it's a significant contributing factor to their public outrage. If a full zerg hides inside a structure waiting to be attacked, and is ignored, while the rest of the borderland flips... it's tactically stupid. But because it's stupid doesn't mean it never happens. You're forgetting that every map has three factions. While those two blobs are fighting in a keep, the other faction flips everything because they DO want to PPT and there's nothing stopping them. Now you have a map where the defenders have one objective and nothing else, a faction that doesn't want blob-vs-blob fights but will happily gank singles and havock squads who try to take back anything they've papered, and one faction that is desperate for a big fight and the only one they can get is hiding inside a keep. Does it happen all the time? No. But in some tiers against particular servers it's a definite possibility. If you've played the game for a while, and I imagine you have, you know some of the servers and tiers where this can happen. Probably some of the guilds that would be involved as well. 'Wins' are subjective in WvW. Some guilds/servers don't care about PPT, they just want KDR and bags. Some don't care about KDR, they just want a challenging fight against equal numbers. Both are mindsets which can feel alien to a group that sees warscore and victory points as the measure of success in a matchup. But the game offers both playstyles and neither group is wrong for wanting what they want. And ultimately if you want a balanced game mode, you have to accept that all of these things need to happen with an equal sense of reward. You can't prioritize any one playstyle over another. Nerfing walls and capture circles doesn't prioritize boonblobs, it encourages attackers of all sizes to try and take an objective. Again, conflating boonblobs vs defenders is ONE of many different kinds of encounters in the game, you need to recognize that other circumstances can and will happen and try to take them into account with your balance. Don't get so fixated on one issue that you lose perspective on how a change in one engagement will impact others in the same game mode.

And they don't. That's why you have walls, defensive buffs, fixed-siege, tactivators and a spawn waypoint with a shorter runback to your garrison than either attacking force. These offer a small handicap which should even an uneven playingfield and become less of a factor when more players are involved on both sides. I'll repeat what I said because I feel you missed the point entirely and it's important to take a moment and consider the wider implications of balancing for unbalance. "Realistically you can't balance a game mode around the assumption that one side will be heavily outnumbered by another. If the system in place presents the opportunity for a massive shift in population from one side to the other at any time you need to be mindful that some advantages given to an outnumbered population are also an advantage given to an overwhelming population. That's why if you're going to buff/nerf something, you want it to be a minor advantage at best. Something that becomes less and less relevant as more players are involved because ultimately you want player agency to be the determining factor in a competitive environment." Please, please, realize that 'defending' doesn't mean 'outnumbered'. These are two different concepts though it's true they often happen together. It's like being thirsty and drinking water. You can drink something else, or you can keep yourself hydrated without feeling thirsty first. They're balancing around equal opportunity for all three servers to put bodies on a map. They have to; you can't just assume a particular server will have 5 players scattered across all four borderlands and another will have 70 on each one. It's why we have server transfers, it's why we have ques. I get it that you're angry that your particular server can't field and organized response to handle a competent 30-man attacking a keep. But that's not a design problem, that's a community problem. Demanding that the game balance itself around your chosen handicap doesn't make sense. It's impossible to balance a game mode for every individual player equally. It's better to design a system that offers equality and let players decide how much of it they want. If a majority don't want it, then you start nudging it toward a place where more choice makes equality a greater possibility. And no, the vocal members on forums aren't a majority. It should be obvious to anyone who's played more than a single MMO in their life that the majority of players ignore reddit/forums altogether and just play the game. They vote with their time and their wallet and the only people who become aware of that vote are the actual game devs when they check their metrics and quarterly earnings months after patches and content drops. I like the changes, I state that for myself. As someone who plays a broad range of WvW situations/classes/roles and can see beyond the outrage to what future possibilities it might bring.

I didn't say it was common, I said it was more common than you think. It's best to take a step back after you read something and consider the perspective before becoming antagonistic because it doesn't reflect your personal bias. It's not common but it does happen. It happens more frequently when there are two large squads on a map. If your entire WvW experience is being outnumbered because you and most of those on your server refuse to join a squad it's very easy to get the impression these events never happen. Something else to consider is the disparity in populations not just between servers but between regions. What holds true for NA can be very different in EU. Just because your experience differs from someone else doesn't mean their perspective doesn't exist. And yes, I can already see the counter-argument rising up the moment those words hit your brain. For context, I don't engage in one form of WvW exclusively. I roam, I solo, I havoc, I half-squad, I rvr, I blob. I run yaks, I build siege, I patch walls. I scout, I supply drain and target paint. The only thing I haven't done is spend significant time in EU (and my experiences there have been wildly different from NA in most respects). Playing multiple roles and styles of play are imporant to having a full understanding of what's going on. But many of the loudest, most beligerant presences on this forum play one thing exclusively and fly into a cynic rage at the mere perception it's not as strong as as it once was or that some other playstyle has gained an advantage with the latest patch. Most of the time it's an extreme overraction when the disparity in player skill is a wider gap than any nerf or buff is going to create from one patch to the next. And yes, the game is pushing easymode, but it's not just for attackers. To be blunt, defending is far more accessible to casuals and new players than attacking is. Attackers need to know where to get siege, how to maintain enough supply to build it, where the best spots are to place it and will need much more supply to do anything than a defender. Attacking requires leadership and experience, defending usually doesn't. People who don't have a community to teach them what they need to know will instinctively flock to the nearest friendly objective and try to defend it because it requires little more than a warm body pushing buttons. If you don't nudge these casuals and new players out of their comfort zone, they won't ever learn to do more than that. That's why I like the changes, it forces players to engage in more than just one style of play. And yes, I can see the argument that the nerfs force one style of play because nothing can be defended anymore. You're wrong. You're flat wrong. It's not a defender problem, it's a population and organization problem and there are tools to improve both of those things. You can build your community. You can change servers. The choice to be chronically outnumbered, complain about it, and demand a handicap because you can't be bothered to put in the effort is why we need WR in the first place. Those who are flexible and can adapt to change should be the ones leading the path forward, not those who are stagnant and get hostile if anything upsets the status quo.

Exactly. People need to learn how to adapt, especially those who are stuck in their own ways and refuse to see any other perspective. I say this not just to the defenders here who apparently never play the game mode without being at a numbers disadvantage, but to those who refuse to play the game unless it's when they're buried inside a blob where their shortcomings can go unnoticed. The zerglings hammering the 1 key are noticed for their poor play just as often as the wall-runners at spawn and the siegemasters throwing rocks at walls that can't take damage. Which is something I find hilarious, because the thought of those ineffective zerglings earning the everlasting hatred of die-hard defenders for being part of a blob whilst being functionally useless at the same time makes no sense at all. Honestly, a boonball full of bad players must be like Christmas for you guys.

This thread and much of discussion surrounding the latest patch is filled with bad-faith examples that fail to adequately explain the full gamut of experiences one can have in WvW. I also spent most of that post focusing on squads of 20 men or less attacking an objective, in case you rolled your eyes and glossed over the more rational part of the discussion. But lets ignore all of that for favor of the far more outlandish and incensing discussion about boonballs, about how it's impossible to find one waiting for another zerg inside a tiered objective and how absurd the whole idea of being outnumbered as an attacker actually is. One boonball facing off against another boonball inside a t3 objective is much more common than you would think. When one boonball realizes they can't beat another boonball what will they do? Either move maps or... that's right... rush to defend an objective where the buffs, environmental advantages, and rando solos on the map will make up the difference. Yes, they can also dodge the other boonball and k-train the t0 objectives... but that's something defenders can (and will) complain about in their own map chat until faces are read and ears are bleeding. The tag that won't help them, and that means they're the one's who are ultimately responsible for losingt a keep they spent hours building up. Anyway, boonball waiting inside keep. Some groups don't want to sit in a tower and treb a wall until there's a clear path straight to a lord. Sometimes that kind of siegeplay just isn't possible. Some boonballs want the challenge of a big fight even if it comes with significant disadvantages, and will siege a T3 keep just to get a fight out of that boonball who can't leave the map but also won't fight anything until the mapchat gets so toxic they worry about their guild losing reputation on the server because of it. So, defenders get a boonball of their own. Maybe it's not as good as the one outside, but if it was... why would they be behind a wall in the first place? And with that boonball, they have equal or greater numbers than the one outside. Equal numbers, defender advantages... so in theory, defenders should win. They don't. Why? Because they're poorly trained, poorly coordinated, aren't running the right builds or possess a strategy that's effective against someone who does all the above. Your defending group, with a numbers advantage, can't do the job because they aren't as good as the other group. A second circumstance, is when a boonball forms up for their raid inside an objective only to have another boonball attack it before their raid starts. Are you suggesting they should leave the keep, let it flip while they k-train undefended objectives? No, map chat would go ballistic on these guys for abandoning a keep they were already sitting in. To answer your immediate question... why form up in a keep instead of at spawn? Because a lot of boonballs don't want to collect random map solos who aren't properly geared or running appropriate builds. They have a plan, a purpose, and more coordination than these randos are prepared to give so there's no reason to pick them up unless there are free spots to give. But they will be constantly, relentlessly, pinged for squad invites if they stay at spawn. So most either hide their tag or form up somewhere else. Plus, keeps have supply and many squads want to fill up before they push out toward their first objective. But you raise a good point, scouts. Why aren't there scouts shadowing enemy forces? Why aren't their more than one in a keep or tower? Why aren't they keeping sentries friendly or challenging for bloodlust superiority or picking off zerglings running back or dropping supply traps or target painters or communicating with their map chat where the enemy zerg is so they can mount a pre-emptive defense? I feel like the kind of player who does these things is an excellent defender, someone who probably doesn't need every possible advantage heaped upon them to fight something that's of equal numbers. And yes, I specifically say EQUAL NUMBERS because the game mode is balanced around the assumption that at any time any faction can have a full map que on their position. If they can't, or won't, gather together to achieve something greater than what they can do on their own... frankly, you deserve to lose everything. A boonblob without something to fight is a boonblob that logs off or moves maps once they've given the other side every opportunity to organize an effort to fight back. Demanding that an outnumbered group with no coordination or player ability should be buffed sufficiently that they can defeat a much better organized, skilled and knowledgeable group with actual leadership is absurd. Honestly, the entitlement on this point is wild. It makes absolutely no sense at all.

Yep. You have your low-effort cynics on both sides of the discussion. Plenty of jaded veterans have spent years watching new players encounter the game mode and bounce off that first wall of competitive difficulty. Back when the game was new and communities were eager to form and grow they'd offer help, guides, and share their own path of improvement. Guilds were a big part of the game back then, now not so much. Most folks kind of play in their own bubble unless a map meta requires a group to achieve success. Even then it's more common to float beside a tag than to actually join the squad. I think people are simply less social now than they used to be in MMO's. I'm in multiple guilds, both WvW and PvE, and training nights are a frequent discussion. When we have them turn out is generally low and most of the people who show up are veterans who really don't need the lessons, they just want to share what they've learned and maybe pick up a new trick they haven't seen before. Those who most need the training and understanding of how everything comes together in a build and how best to play it aren't interested. They expect to be carried on the back of more established players/guilds/servers and as the game is a casual interest at best there's little need to become skilled at it. Once they've experienced the content there's not much point in revisiting it, and if they don't intend to play it again there's no point in learning to improve. It's frustrating, because as someone who's written guides, recorded video, offered one-on-one instruction to guildmates and new players alike watching them leave after a couple months or just ignore the opportunities for improvement makes me question the point of going the extra mile. I still try though, which is why I'm on the forums this week instead of just ignoring the balance patch and the bizarre discussions around it like a sensible person should. Part of me still thinks there's a chance folks will attempt to see the game mode from more than one perspective and take that expanded understanding into consideration before getting angry at the patch notes and reaching for their torch and pitchforks.

Unfortunately there's a huge disconnect in this discussion that centers around being outnumbered vs being a defender. For many it's impossible to equate one without the other and this is the underlying issue preventing meaningful discussion. Boon balls aren't the only groups that attack objectives. If you can't imagine any other circumstance being possible, it makes sense that these changes are especially punishing for defending players. If you recognize that it's also possible for defenders to outnumber their attackers you may begin to see the problems in giving any one side a significant advantage over the other. An entrenched full squad with siege and tiered up walls is almost impossible to remove. They can rain dps down upon attackers and stealth-push/ambush with impunity upon anyone who dares attack a wall or gate. They have reserves of supply to patch walls, build additional siege, and in most cases have an easier time reviving downs along with better access reserve forces streaming in from the nearest waypoint. Very, very few groups have even the most remote chance against groups like this and the situation becomes increasingly difficult the longer a siege continues. Smaller squads ~15 or less, will just run from an objective once they see a similar sized group waiting for them inside. By the time they've managed to punch a hole (if they can punch a hole) attrition will have removed any chance of victory in the upcoming fight. That's why you often see ninja squads of 5-10 constantly building siege and wearing down the walls of objectives over time and then rushing the lord when no one is looking. If a defense response shows up that's as big as they are, they have to decide whether they can quickly win a skirmish and take the objective, or just run out before they're overwhelmed by increasing numbers and attrition. I'm sure even defenders will agree that when the attackers run the moment you show up it's a disappointment. You don't see many talk about that, however. Realistically you can't balance a game mode around the assumption that one side will be heavily outnumbered by another. If the system in place presents the opportunity for a massive shift in population from one side to the other at any time you need to be mindful that some advantages given to an outnumbered population are also an advantage given to an overwhelming population. That's why if you're going to buff/nerf something, you want it to be a minor advantage at best. Something that becomes less and less relevant as more players are involved because ultimately you want player agency to be the determining factor in a competitive environment. The better player/group, strategy, model of efficiency should be what decides the engagement, not PvE advantages/disadvantages. The goal should be a continuous movement toward self-improvement and positive interactions within your server community. Group up, don't group up... doesn't matter. But talk to your server mates, coordinate something, build synergy and strategies that work within your playstyle and skillset. The last thing you should be demanding are buffs/nerfs when you don't have an understanding of the game mode beyond the limited circumstances your preferred playstyle involves.

I think the circles are too small, though I do think consistency in size across all objectives is a better choice than what we had before. One of the strengths of a quality group was being able to hold a large capture circle with multiple points of ingress against clouding defenders. These circles are small enough that a group can mostly stack on point and rotate to clear the ring instead of being required to disperse to cut off access for contesting defenders. Something between what we have now and what we used to have for SMC would be best, I think. I actually think leaving the nodes outside the capture circle is better. Nodes are for the winners, the ones who leave the victory circle.

Sorry, my bad. I shouldn't expect players to do more than the bare minimum necessary to get and maintain participation in WvW. I should also expect them to complain about everything else though. As for other options, why not require anyone who puts down siege to pay 1 gold to whichever guild owns the objective? Friendly or hostile. Whoever was upset about the loss of Mystic Coins due to the nerfed Aura buffs can get his money back.

There's Orcs Must Die (1, 2, 3), Bloons TD 6, Defense Grid 2, Sanctum (1,2). Granted, there's not much of an online economy, but mutiplayer coop is offered for all of them and most feature player-used siege mechanics.

One thing I'm already seeing from both solo/small and large scale groups is an abundant use of supply drain. Doesn't matter how big the enemy group is if they don't have enough supply to build siege. Have a few solos/roamers shadow larger groups and plant supply traps in their path, on the usual siege placement locations, and any choke a group has to pass through. Just a few can drain most groups to the point where they're lucky to have enough for a pair of flame rams/catapults which can easily be destroyed by a handful of defenders and friendly siege.. If they want to attack something bigger than a t2 tower they're forced to knock on the gate, and at that point you can concentrate all your friendly siege on top of them with walls and nearby portals available to sally out at any time for opportunistic clashes. It's even better if you have equal numbers inside the objective because there's literally nothing they can do to break inside and win, anyone foolish enough to attack an objective without hundreds of supply is just a bag waiting to happen. Of course this was always a valid strategy, and abused in particular by a number of guilds and servers. But if there's one thing the most recent patch has done it's force people to evaluate stale tactics and try something that hasn't been done in a while.

Let me see if I'm reading this right. A poorly organized half-map of casuals, wall-runners and inexperienced players sees an approaching blob. For clarification, I'm assuming a 'blob' is anything more than 20 players with some kind of leadership, where'as 'map que' is 35+ because guessing numbers is a significant challenge for most people who can't read enemy groups very well. The enemy group is organized, probably with comped squads and voice coms, isolates a vulnerable gate or wall and throws down siege. They clear nearby fixed-siege, 'heat up' the walls with aoe and pulls to keep defenders from disabling or destroying siege while their full-spec'd players use the available siege to greatest effect. The scout, who can't tell the difference between a tactivator and a resource node, pulls everything once he sees a wall go down (and probably links the EWP in map chat instead of team, thereby wasting valuable seconds while someone with more experience finishes the job for him), succeeding in attracting a competent group which is immediately que'd out by the rush of roamers and milia members knowing there's defence content available. The 'blob' passes through the outer wall and isolates a vulnerable gate or wall and throws down more siege. Because there's a defence presence, they bubble and use anti-projectile hate/pulls to discourage individual defenders from doing insignificant damage to their group from nearby walls, surrounding their siege to ensure it's not disabled and to take advantage of Iron Will should a coordinated response rush their position. Someone who knows what they're doing throws down defensive siege on upper levels or behind walls, knowing these locations are safe and can pressure the entire enemy group while they sit on siege. Also they tag EVERYTHING with their siege volleys, and secure in the knowledge that if any attacker dies they'll get bags and defense rewards they have absolutely zero reason to do anything else in the fight. A few roamers who also know what they're doing join them, one even stealths and hops the wall/exits a portal to disable enemy siege once they see the bubbles dissipate. He's the hero we need, but unfortunately what we have is 30+ idiots, 5-10 wall runners sitting at spawn, and 10 more competent veterans who are hopelessly wrangling the morons on the map to mount an effective defence. Someone calls for a tag or a guild as the situation becomes desperate. The 'blob' knocks down another hole and the keep is wide open to the lord. The idiots try to repair a wall, failing to realize they only brought the 3 supply left over from the last evening they built a catapult at home tower and there isn't enough to tap it shut. They empty their supply and rush to the lord room where they try to range 30x their number and are instantly nuked. The slightly smarter ones are eles who vapor form to safety and once fully recovered, proceed to do the exact same thing over and over again. Meanwhile the half-squad who managed to get on map to defend the objective tries to form up for a push. All they need to do is down/kill half their number to snowball enough attrition to keep the objective. They can duck out at any time to recover numbers from the runbacks and the handful of solo veterans who refuse to join squad but insist on standing in the middle of their group for the push. Ques are in the 20s, no more help is coming. The lord is down to 10% and there isn't enough siege weapons turned on the lord room to pressure the 'blob' to leave. Those who are on the map but not in squad are peppering the 'blob' with everything on their skill bar, getting big numbers and no downs. No one is running supply to fix the walls because there's defence content and the moment someone leaves they're outnumbered and the objective is going to flip. They die and keep running back. Forgetting to grab supply along the way because it's more important to join the fight than to think tanctically. The run back is short, they can die over and over if they have to so long as they grind out the win. The blob has killed the Lord and is now sitting on it's corpse to prevent it from being rez'd. Anti-projectile hate surrounds their group and they watch the glass-rangers off themselves with reflects. Amazingly one of those competent veterans (probably a berserker because they know the subtle benefits of their class with select keep tactics) has grabbed the dragon banner and is absolutely PUMPING damage into that blob. He's targeted for pulls but maintains enough defiance to back off before they hunt him down and eliminate the only real threat outside the guild with a half-squad who's got as much on tag as he can and now pushes in. They die. Because they're outnumbered on the push and can't sustain against bigger numbers. The idiots ringing the lord room pillars and walls stay exactly where they are and launch aoe's into the fight, failing to single out priority targets or secure downs because the biggest concentration of targets is obviously where the damage goes. The defending squad is wiped and tries to run back to regroup. The militia/veterans who remain dance around the columns to stave off the capture circle. But most of them don't bring self-stability or know that aoe can wrap around columns and so they're downed. The 'blob' expands within the circle to push out contestants and the objective starts ticking. Someone managed to repair one of the walls. Two guys are destroying the enemy siege while the keep flips. Another scout announces that the other server is also attacking. He's ignored, except by the ones who were wall-running at spawn and finally realized there was content only to jump into the keep and become fixated on the enemy zerg that's not in the lord room. They start building siege to fight them. The capture circle keeps ticking. Slowly, because some of the defenders actually know what they're doing. Then quickly because those guys are now dead. The casuals who haven't been running into death to contest are running out because they don't want to be a trapped bag (they've already died a couple times so they can't give loot or xp, but they don't know that). The objective quickly flips and the defenders run out. Fortunately, the OTHER enemy 'blob' managed to push in before the flip and has become trapped inside. They see the defenders running out and collect a few corpses (no bags, alas) and have to decide to stay and fight or also leave. Someone gets a look at the lord room and sees that there's roughly the same number they have. They fight, because this group saw the OJ's and chose to rush toward them instead of taking an undefended objective someplace else. It's a quality fight, though the first 'blob' has lost cooldowns and has broken parties due to attrition. It's a toss-up between which of them wins. There's an arrowcart that hasn't been destroyed and one of the defenders is STILL on it. Bags for days. Until someone realizes who the mosquito is and a few people swat him. Oh well, he's got his wiggle chest. Time to call out the idiots in chat for failing to mount a proper defence. The two 'blob's fight and one of them wins. Maybe it's the first one, maybe it's the second one. In any case, it's a T-nothing keep and neither of them decides to stay. 5 minutes later there's swords on the keep. A minute later there's oj's in the lord room. Somewhere else on the map there's another set of Oj's, looks like the two 'blobs' are fighting again at a tower. 5 map defenders, uncontested, have retaken their keep. The half-squad that transferred to defend the keep is bitched out for failing to defend it and has left the map so they can rejoin those who couldn't get in because of the que. They decide it's best just to do their own thing because half a squad having a good time is unfair to the other half. They pick a map, stay there, and ignore future callouts; if there was a que then it means there are enough defenders to manage on their own. Team/map chat gets hostile and abuse is heaped upon whatever tag that showed up because now it's clear THEY were the problem. And by staying on a map instead of responding to future callouts on other maps it's clear they're making the problem even worse. The map is still qued. No, it's a false que. Now it's outnumbered. Hunh. The tag now has a que on his map instead. The two 'blob's fight each other until one side is the clear winner (or one of them gets bored) and one side logs off. Surprisingly, most of the map is defence colors again. Those 5 guys who flipped the keep have been busy while being ignored. In fact, the keep is T1 and in another 10-15 minutes it'll be T2. One blob is gone but the other is still around. They spend 15-20 minutes retaking their third and then make a push toward the now T2 keep. The cycle repeats. And maybe it repeats a second time before a friendly tag with most of a squad shows up to respond and manages to get most, if not all, of their coordinated group on the map. With fewer ineffective players on their side, they manage to hold the T2 keep. With content on the map they stick around. The solo players, recognizing that there's an anchor of stability on their map don't dare leave for a different one. They flip camps and towers and rally to the OJ's on tired objectives because there's a rock they can orbit for protection while collecting bags and defender rewards. It's the good life. Until another map needs help and that tag swaps bl's to respond. Half their squad is que'd out. The cycle repeats.

Clearly the solution is to limit borderland population to a 1:1:1 ratio. You don't get on the map until every other server has equal numbers or 1 more extra player. That way the least populated server has the exact same chance to succeed on a map as the server that's over-stacked, better organized and has better coverage. That way everyone has fair content and we discourage map blobs unless there's two other servers with a map presence big enough to fight against them. Hmm. On second thought that would probably lead to three-digit ques for some servers and absolutely empty borderlands if any one server has weak representation in a particular time slot. kitten it, if only people would spread out to have an equal population on all servers instead of just bandwagoning onto the most successful ones. Can't they see that the game is better if we all suck equally? Okay, how about we take this one step further and open up all servers to transfer for free. After 3 months, delete the one with the lowest population and continue to do so until there's a permanent que on all maps at all times. Surely with no population imbalance everyone has an equal chance to enjoy the content they prefer. Eventually the ques will force people onto other servers and everything will equal out. Network error. Que 88. Well, time to run the Dragonfall until my que pops again...

Exactly which part of the build changes upset you the most? The smaller capture circles, the nerfs to walls or the nerfs to stat buffs for friendly defenders? Or was it the use of siege in ways which were not intended? If you take a moment to read further, you'll see a massive list of nerfs to almost all the over-performing aspects of the current 'boon ball'. And yet, apparently, they've gotten even stronger in your opinion. I'm curious as to how you figure that's the case when there's less boons in that boon ball, less damage in that boon ball, less support/barrier in that boon ball whereas the only thing taken away from a defender is fast and easy wall repair and compensatory stat buffs for defenders (which, by the way, also work for that 50 man boon ball you love to hate if they decide to camp a tiered objective as well). That's the big problem with defensive play and defensive players; you have a reliance on force multipliers but have no concept of how it exponential the advantage becomes with equal numbers. Your problem isn't the boon ball, it's not having enough people or organization to mount an effective defense. If the expectation is that a casual militia SHOULD be able to stomp a well organized, better compted enemy group of superior numbers... I think you're seriously misjudging what the game mode needs right now. Further... you describe a story where no one attacked a T3 smc and opted to flip T0 towers instead. Sounds like the attackers realized what a slog it would be to flip a sieged up T3 objective and decided it was more fun to fight something they could actually land a blade on. Which proves my point; when defenders have such an overwhelming advantage that it discourages attack, you see the k-train T0 flip meta because it's the only way to get a fight without taking 600 arrow carts to the face. Honestly, you gotta step out of your tunnel vision and see both sides of the problem here.

Nerfs to skills which took advantage of higher target caps to push overtuned damage, nerfs to Chaos Aura and boon generation, nerfs to barrier generation, nerfs to brain-dead auto-attack chain damage. But man, oh, man, the BOON BALLS WON GUYS! THEY WON! Anet loves BOON BALLS so much they nerfed capture boundaries into the ground. They nerfed walls into the ground. They nerfed Presence of the Keep and Guild Objective Aura into the ground. They nerfed siege golems so they can't hold camps into the ground. They nerfed Flame Ram Iron Will into the ground. THE GAME MODE SUCKS! I can't collect bags by ignoring group content and sitting inside a friendly objective for hours on end. God. They just don't get it, nobody wants to group up in an MMO anymore. Why can't we just have another Drizzlewood map or a proper Tower Defense mode? Step away from the defend-a-wall meta and you'll see that what the game desperately needed was a reason for players to get out of their comfort zone instead of camping inside friendly objectives. Defenders had such an overwhelming advantage with fortifications/buffs/siege that in many cases the only way to flip them was WITH a boon ball because anything else was suicide. With these kind of nerfs you're actually less likely to see boon balls attacking tiered objectives because you don't need massive sustain to punch a hole and survive overwhelming disadvantages. It encourages player-vs-player interactions, which is at the heart of the game mode. It also encourages defenders to organize a defense, jump into coms, rally around leadership and strategize sally's against groups and siege rather than bunker and wait. Maps will see more activity because there's more to do when tiered objectives aren't sieged up to the point of discouraging all but the biggest and best comped squads. Boon balls have never been the problem, the problem was the meta which required them to effect any meaningful change of ownership on a map. I get it, players who prefer to stay safe on/behind a wall and retreat to safety the moment they're vulnerable will be very upset by these changes. Players who rarely, if ever, use their class skills will be upset that they can't just build siege and use it instead. Ultimately it's a PvP mode; the focus should be on players fighting other players with class builds and individual skill rather than the environment or with special actions. Honestly, the nerfs to almost all zerg-meta builds are going to have a significant impact on the game mode as is. People who don't play a wide variety of classes or squad sizes from full 50-to-solo really have no idea what kind of shakeup all of this means. Personally I'd like to see more boonstrip/corrupts and a consistent target cap upon all skills as well, but nerfing the greatest overperforming aspects of the current meta which have entrenched a very stale game mode for half a year is a big step forward.