[What consequences would antistacking mechanics bring?]

This again? 

Why not ask for a tactical-nuke trap that deals 50k damage to an unlimited number of targets with a 3000 range that leaves walls and gates undamaged? You can mine every approach to a defensive objective and then complain on the forums about how wall repairs should grant participation because it's too hard to maintain pips without it. 

[World Restructuring Perma beta - Coming soon]

Considering that the restructured realms are all likely to be 'full' by default, what we're really looking at are tiers without linked servers. That means less servers over all regardless of how many tiers are present. 

That extra tier on launch is just to accommodate the influx of players who want to see what the fuss is all about. It's also there to make sure that populations can be distributed evenly from top to bottom. Think about it, if you have 3 tiers and 8 full servers, that 9th server is going to be absolute trash to play on. Better to have 9 mostly full servers or 12 moderately full servers instead.

[What numbers should Offence vs Defence be balanced for/against? And why?]

I think designing objectives around an expected numbers of players for the purposes of balance is a terrible concept. It penalizes small groups considerably more than larger ones where major objectives are concerned, and ultimately removes much of the incentive to play tight and mobile for prolonged periods of time.  Getting 3-5 players to defend a keep is very manageable for even low-population, low-coverage servers. If an attacking group needs a 5:1 advantage to be  successful that means you can only attack with 15-25 players at a minimum. This design philosophy would only encourage groups to ball up into map ques if they want to attack a variety of content. Especially tiered up keeps where a larger defensive response is more likely.

 

Besides, what is an attacking group going to do when there's a call for defenders and a 30+ organized group waypoints onto the map? Where will they find the 150+ people they need to take the objective? The answer is: they can't, and they won't bother trying so long as that overwhelming advantage makes success impossible. . Both groups will run at the first sign of major resistance or take their fights to the places where success has a reasonable chance of happening for both. So what you have left are a map full of t0 camps and towers, and t3 keeps punched full of holes where the only gameplay is to rush the lord as fast as possible so you don't get smashed like a bug by the oppressive balance. 

 

We're already seeing something similar in many matchups with the current balance. There's a progressive movement in the game mode right now where players don't engage with challenging content, they either ball up to be unassailable or run small and dodge any fight that comes their way. What we need aren't buffs to hand wins to players who engage in only one form of content. What we need are incentives to get more people on the map in general, with a variety of rewards to encourage them to experience as many different aspects of WvW as possible. We need players to spend more time fighting and less time PvE'ing everything. Combat needs to be fun and engaging and the focus of players who decided to come into WvW in the first place.

 

There's much less of a difference between 'boonballs' and 'defenders' than you seem to think. In many cases now neither of them actually want an enemy who can fight back. They just want free kills from a place of safety and the pleasure of taking/holding something from someone else who never had a chance in the first place. The first step to fixing the issues in WvW is to cultivate a community where players WANT player-vs-player combat, where they PREFER a large map and the unique combat situations it provides which differs from what we already have in PvP. 

 

If you want to fix this game mode, cut the PvE. 

[Future exciting battles with the lords of the fortress]

Replacing keep lords or SMC legendary with a random, scaled, world boss for a week could be a lot of fun. Obviously super-huge bosses like Tequatl/Triple Worm wouldn't work within the limited space of a lord room, but humanoid world bosses/event bosses/bounties or a scaled down version of Fire Elemental, Golem Mk2 etc would make for an interesting experience. Balance would be impossible, but that's kind of the point. Would make for some interesting defender events with that kind of chaos going on, and it would certainly encourage more keep fights just to experience the content. 

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

10 hours ago, Intrudjeeer.1570 said:

Exactly that is the problem. Nobody cares about skill anymore. Put 5 boon providers/ group, kill everything with auto attack as long as perma boons were up.

If I put my 7yo kid in a squad, and tell him stick to this guy with a tag and press these 3 buttons to spit boons, you are good to go.

.... guess I didn't TLDR early enough. Maybe take a re-read first before responding next time, you missed the point entirely. 

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

2 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

The mag cloud use to do this, was that wrong? should that never happen? should that not exist?

40 Organized have: 1) Organized into proper comp groups, 2) Voice commands, 3) Meta builds, 4) Makes the most use of team skills like revive skills, and heals, and stability, and max boons, and cleanses.

40 Unorganized have: 1) Not in squads and rely on themselves to survive, 2) No voice and have to read the movement of both their teammates and enemies, 3) Not much meta support, more likely meta roamer/havoc dps builds, 4) Don't make much use of revive, support, boon spam builds on each other, and going over to f on downed is asking to be bombed on. 

If your organized group can't get by on just voice and using positioning/movement to kill those type of enemies, then that's on the commander or group. Additional game mechanics like support spam becomes a carry for that group through situations where the other side isn't relying on that as much, but still managing to put up a fight with them. So who here has the real skill and being rewarded for it, the group of 40 being told what to do from one person every step of the way carried by additional bonus game mechanics that groups that size can make full use of, or the 40 who rely on themselves mostly, maybe using clever tactics and positioning and instincts to whittle that group to get through those situations to win?

Just because you play with 49 other people in a squad doesn't mean the game should give you an additional level of protection from everyone else. Anet has dumbed down the game so much so 50 squad go around thinking they should be gods and only other gods can touch them, walk through objectives with barely a scratch. Anet forgot this is primarily a pvp game mode, not a pve raid. If they are only going to make those boon balls "feel good" about playing while they slow roll their population balance process, then I guess the rest of might as well quit as soon they get on the map and wait for them to get bored and leave.

You raised a few quality points here. The mag cloud did used to do this, their success hinged on 40 individuals all making the right decisions independant of each other. Each using their ability to read the movements of a larger group so as to keep themselves alive and have as great an impact as possible. Each individual player recognizing that they can't kill the entire group on their own, but instead must create opportunities via pulls and targeting the weak or out-of-position elements of that squad so nearby allies could finish targets together. An 'unorganized' group can beat an organized group with equal numbers, this is still very much true. However, it also requires a much higher baseline of skill and personal awareness to manage this. 

Then you ruined it completely with the assumption that no individual member of a 40-man squad can think for themself. 

Do you honestly think a commander is telling each and every member of his squad when to use every button on his skill bar? When to weapon swap, when to dodge and how to face their camera when they're doing it? Is he aware, down to the milisecond, when each skill squad-wide is off cooldown or has enough ammo/energy/resource so it can be used?  

Dude. I don't know if you're just hopelessly ignorant or are proclaiming a godlike level ability to that one player who spent 300g on a commander tag. Maybe if every roamer on your server bought a commander tag we wouldn't be having this discussion. For a certainty a map-que of solo god-tags should be able to beat anything. 

It's a different mentality altogether, and one you're obviously not experienced with. A member of a squad has to work within the needs and expectations of the squad. A support has to assess the condition of their party and do what needs to be done to keep them alive and free to perform their functions. A DPS needs positional and situational awareness so as not to over-stress their support. A hybrid class has even more decisions to juggle; they need to know when to use their unique balance of utility to the greatest effect. 

And, in addition to all these individual considerations, a squadmember needs to know when the commander is WRONG and to take the appropriate actions when their commander can't read the situation or is unfamiliar with the builds/comp he's trying to coordinate. This happens far more often than you'd think, especially as squads become less and less comped. It's why squads have Lt's, and why the best inside it will provide their commander with feedback and theorycraft when the comp needs adjusting or a strategy is proving ineffective. 

Your 40-man cloud isn't clever. Some within it might be. Some might even be using tactics. But the level of player ability in a cloud is often just as varied as within a squad. You have your heroes, your elites, your quality and your average. Plenty of new/inexperienced/poor in both as well. The difference is that being a 'bad' player can be corrected when you have someone with more knowledge and awareness to guide you. Squads make this easy because voice coms are the most efficient form of communication and offer instantaneous feedback and instruction for those who need it. It's rare to see solo players mentoring others, mostly they just do what solo players do: their own thing. That and complain about everything in mapchat. 

Finally, the game doesn't give people who play in a squad an additional level of protection. The players in the squad give each other that protection. You're confusing the benefit of people helping each other with a system that doesn't care whether you play alone or not. The cloud used to help each other. You don't need to be in a squad to be large and organized, you just need to recognize the potential to contribute to your allies' success instead of thinking just for yourself. Right now a lot of 'solo' players treat enemy groups like a DPS dummy and have no game plan for how to actually take it down. They don't think of their allies and how they can work together, all they're thinking about is how to hit as many targets as possible to maximize DPSs numbers and potential bags while not getting close enough to be blown up. A minimal level of coordination would be enough to take down most groups, but we rarely see even this. You're fighting against your own adopted identity just as much as your enemy, it's not wonder you've having problems succeeding. Cut the handicap and learn to work together; you don't have to join a squad, you just have to be aware allies exist and to make use of them instead of trying to do everything yourself.  

[Allow 5-10 minutes before losing the spot on a qued map and or returning to map]

The only complication I can see with a grace period would be swapping maps. If the game can't differentiate someone disconnecting or  swapping characters from someone hopping maps, then the que could be artificially inflated and lengthened as it tries to resolve the grace periods of multiple players moving from instance to instance at the same time. This could make hopping maps to put out hotspots almost impossible

[Riddle me this....]

8 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Saw Rawr fighting Indo, Apex/Hate fighting SE open field this past week, usual boring predictable conveyor belt fighting, with complaints of moa and having a hard time getting downs not enough spike damage. 🤭 Also saw Indo trying to actually pug command actual pugs and get destroyed twice by other pugs and log off, guess it is a challenge if you bother to step down to the level of the people you're farming. 🤭

Interesting. It's almost like you're saying skill and organization are responsible for winning fights. Clearly that's not the case, there must be something more at play here. 

I can only assume Indo wasn't running a boonball. Perhaps it was a pugball? Is pugball a thing? How big does a pugball have to be before it becomes a boonball? Is a pugball-evolved-boonball better or worse than your 'regular' boonball? Does it have less boons or more? Does it have more players or less? Does the average level of play increase with numbers like skritt, or get worse? 

Skritt=boonballs. Clearly this is the takeaway from the discussion. We should nerf skritt. 

[Riddle me this....]

Difficulty is a reflection of what your groups priority is. Is it player kills or PPT? Is it engaging in fights against other large groups or some form of community-wide achievement hunting? Is it a training run for new commanders? Is it about getting the warclaw for new members who just got the expansion? How 'big' is 'big' for your group? How sweaty are your players and what content is challenging enough to satisfy them? Are you testing a new group build or bringing members up to speed with an existing one?

Once again you're making assumptions about group play from the perspective of someone who doesn't play it, doesn't understand it, and ultimately doesn't want it in the game at all. 

Why ask questions when all you really want to do is whinge about content that's too tough for your self-made handicap? Honestly, I don't get it. If you hate the game mode so much why not play Helldivers or something instead?

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

50% to repair walls is too high. A large number of allied defenders can handle this easily, but solo players of 10 or less are unlikely to ever patch a wall in time for it to be an effective tactic at this percentage. 25% would bring the supply required to patch a wall within range of a 5-man squad with 1-2 supply runs. A 10-man could reliably patch one wall in a single repair with some personal risk, allowing the possibility of splitting an enemy group and having sufficient numbers to fight (and win) the split. I think this percentage offers the most counterplay without creating a constant wall-repair slog where the objective's supply must first be fully drained before any further attack can be continued. 

On a side note, I feel objectives which have supply while attackers have breached the walls is advantageous for gameplay. It gives defenders the option to either patch walls or build siege according to their needs without abandoning the objective to get more supply. It also encourages smaller groups of attackers if they could resupply while attacking, as being 'walled out' after a push often means the failure of their attack. I would suggest some kind of passive supply generation where player kills within an objective trickle supply back into the fight. If it was expanded into a gameplay mechanic, than kills could drop supply much like Convergence drops essence, allowing anyone (friendly or hostile to the objective) to pick them up and use as they see fit.  

Capture circle changes were mostly an improvement, though it's far less about the change in size and more about being able to contest the circle while also remaining out of LoS. Contesting should make you a target, players that opt to break LoS and lob damage into the ring should be free to do so with the understanding that they're risking a loss of the objective in exchange for potential kills. I feel forcing a choice between holding the circle or killing those attacking it is the right direction to move. Shrinking circles to remove LoS obstacles was the right decision, but not all rings needed to be made significantly smaller. A 1200 range radius from the center of the capture circle should be the base consideration, expanded outward to a max of 1500 depending on nearby LoS obstacles. 

Siege Disruptor should be reverted to it's original Siege Disabler state. Fully-disabling siege, both player-placed and fixed-siege, allowed small groups to have a much larger impact than they do now. Incresaed susceptibility to siege damage only matters if siege is available and can be reliably trained on target. Often neither of these things are possible against larger groups or entrenched defenses. Siege disabler offered enough delay on wall-breaches that defenses could be errected on inner walls or reinforcements rushed from friendly waypoints, while attackers could use it on Burning Oil to mitigate damage on a gate-rush. Opting to take the risk of pushing on a gate instead of knocking holes in walls was a benefit to small attacking groups who may not have had sufficient in-house supply to build multiple layers of offensive siege. 

Siege Dampener is fine as is, providing sufficient delay without completely stalling an enemy attack. With 100% damage reduction for 35s attacking groups had little to do but soak damage while protecting their siege once it was pulled. Gameplay that locks out almost all activity from one faction should be sharply discouraged in a competitive game mode. With 66% reduction the attack can still proceed, but also encourages a greater sense of urgency on the part of defenders to organize and entrench before the wall collapses. I feel this change is working as it should. 

I feel Presence of the Keep Aura should be removed entirely and/or 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. Aura 4 increases the effect of Keep Lord skills Etc. This way defenders get the PvE advantages they may need to offset smaller numbers within the objective walls, while fights which occur within the territory of a guild claim but outside of the objective offer equal footing for both parties. As most PvE buffs have little impact on battles which feature a substantial number of players, it benefits small groups and solo-defenders without becoming an obnoxious advantage for large groups camping inside those same objectives. 

Boons and boonstrips are much more difficult to balance. I would prefer to see a cap on boon duration that creates gaps in coverage, forcing players to 'boon up' for a push or defensive stand while leaving them vulnerable to a coordinated effort when caught unaware. Boonstrips are needed to blunt that short-term buff and offer shut-down counterplay, but they too need to operate within a window of effectiveness that requires more player choice and less passive gameplay. 100% boon uptime in competitive modes should not be possible. Alacrity and Quickness are contentious boons which vastly favor skilled and coordinated groups of players as opposed to new and inexperienced players. I would like to see both capped at a maximum of 5s, with reapplications unavailable until the boon has expired. Further, I think opportunities for these boons should be far less common than they are now. Alacrity and Quickness should make an action or series of actions more potent and impactful rather than be a baseline enhancement for the entire group to enjoy for the duration of combat. 

All player-placed siege should be less susceptible to ranged damage, but far more vulnerable to melee damage. This would encourage defenders to push on those positions as opposed to ranging them from a distance with very little risk. Siege vs siege damage should remain unchanged from it's current values as it encourages supply use as part of siege counterplay. Further, Flame Rams should only be buildable within 300 range of a gate to prevent the exploititiave use of Iron Will in non-siege engagements. My apologies for those who enjoy the shame-siege of a gate-ramming device placed on the recently departed, but it never made sense to build these open-field. If defensive options like these are asked for by the community in open-field fights, perhaps adjustments to shield generators are something to think about.

I like the idea of Keep Lords having a unique buff or aura that makes combat on the capture circle area more difficult or unique. In fact, I think offering up options to adjust the aura based on guild claims would make for very interesting strategy possibilities. For example, instead of passive regen/stab generation, how about a no-down-state aura? Or conversely, a full-dead to down-state pulse for defenders on each breakbar?. A pulsing detection radius on 30s cooldown for the entire walled objective would be welcome as a slottable tactic or out-of-combat aura. Another that offers passive boon-strips every 10s or reduces healing down within the capture circle. The danger here would be buffing them to such an extent that defenders stack around the lord and build friendly siege rather than attempt to push out attacking forces. That's why I'd also like to see some kind of no-build zone for friendly siege on the lord room floor. Walls and walkways above and around the lord room could still have siege, but nothing should be buildable within the area affected by a Keep Lord's combat buff. 

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

28 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

But what's really fun is people that stack all these advantages together and think objectives are hard to take still. But you know, many are behaving the same way.

Numbers = Advantage. No, I don't want to play with people outside our squad, and I don't want people stealing our fights.

Organized = Advantage. No, I just ask where the fights are and remain invisible but expect people to help me.

Meta = Advantage. Eh, you got me there. Of course adjusting your play to fight a cloud would also give one, but screw that.

Voice = Advantage. Nah, I need it to talk kitten about other players.

A lot of WvWers of old at any scale realize that the game really breaks down (in some cases literally) when everyone takes these advantages to their logical extent  and usually made concessions for better content. Unfortunately, the posers that got left behind don't comprehend that at all.

But if you ask me the problem with both your random braindead pug and braindead fly by night blob guild is they only treat working together in the context of their own bubble, aka whatever's convieient for them, meaning what's good for them = what's good for the team.

 

It is, which is quite revealing in and of itself. For some players even having all of these advantages isn't enough. I would view that as players who don't want to interact with the competitive aspect of a competitive game mode, they're just here for the unique rewards. Or those who want the experience of PvP from a place which removes almost all possible risk or recognition of failure. But we don't complain about the fights that never happen, just the ones in which we don't win all the time. 

I agree with the perspective of veterans who recognize the advantages these bring and the logical conclusion of adopting all of them. That's what separates the sweaty-try-hards who will push to the absolute max and then burn out, moving on from the game altogether, from the long-view veterans who just want a healthy environment to enjoy with their friends. There's organized and then there's regimented. There's meta and then there's 'good enough for everything that isn't MLG-standard'. Not everyone on a server has the skill, the time, or the social desire to incorporate all these advantages into one experience. But you can raise the raw ability of a community just be encouraging a greater awareness of the game and how to play it within your level of ability. A large aspect of WvW is simple teamwork; map callouts, supply runs, repairs and defensive siege building. Manning said siege, or placing traps to increase map awareness or stymie enemy groups. Things which require no skill at all but are crucial to a server's success in a matchup. But if your pugs can't, or won't, do even that much... complaining about the other competitive advantages is putting the cart in front of the horse. Yes, both things need to be balanced, but it's very hard to see the impact of a nerf/buff if your community isn't engaged enough to provide authentic feedback in the first place. 

 

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

19 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Numbers, organized, voice is working together. I didn't say I don't want them, I said it's an advantage, advantage I am ok with, these are external optional advantages that players can take advantage of.

I'm glad you recognize this. Many of the problems which hurt <5 player gameplay the most involve the advantages which exist external to the game. I would argue that these external factors are a more significant advantage in game than many players realize. 

 

21 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

There's nothing high performance about using 4 support 1 dps to form a group for pvp, if anything that type of groups should be demolished by a 4dps 1 support group.

If 4dps and 1 support could beat it, than 4dps and 1 support would be the meta. Since that isn't the case it means the 4-support meta has higher performance.  For the record, I don't like it either. I think 2 support with a hybrid slot and 2 dps should be the ideal baseline to work a balance around. But I don't play this game like it's a job; those who do have the kind of time to theorycraft all the possible combinations of skills/boon/cooldowns/consumables and gameplay mechanics involved to create a near-perfect 5-man party. I say near-perfect because individual skill can be such a significant variable that it overwhelms an ideal comp and so you usually have to bake in player weaknesses as part of a quality build. 

29 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

I'd like the skill of the community to go up, using proper builds and skills, learning to use them in the appropriate times and not just rely on 49 other people to carry them.

Yeah, the problem with that is it requires your community to take personal initiative to find those 'proper' builds and then learn to use them in ways that are effective. Many don't even realize there's a skill-split between what they use in PvE and what those skills do in WvW. That's your first barrier to overcome; a general ignorance that, if not corrected, persists to include every form of WvW gameplay they're likely to encounter.  When players  aren't incentivized enough to learn their build, when it works and when it won't, they'll do what people instinctively do when they feel threatened; flock together. There needs to be enough success to keep players playing without creating an environment where success is only possible in one form of gameplay. 

For the record, 50+ groups of players aren't the only form of successful gameplay. Small squads can flip keeps and towers much faster than a zerg can. Multiple squads can maintain supply lines far better than a single large group can. Solos and roamers can maintain bloodlust bonuses for their entire server (which, by the way, provided stat bonuses almost as potent as Presence of the Keep used to be only across all maps). One person constantly refreshing friendly siege can save an objective hundreds of supply every hour. Roving 20-30 man squads have enough map mobility that they can shift defending populations to such an extent that they can empty a other map of defenders just by being content for them to attack. You don't need a boonball to achieve any of the things a boonball does. And  quite frankly, if winning the PPT score is what matters most, a boonball is far less effective than a swarm of 5-15 man squads. It's funny that so many players here have an issue with 50 players when they're largely ineffective on a map aside from taking tiered-up objectives. Personally, I think tired-up objectives should be important enough to merit a maximum response from your community when they're attacked. If you can't get the numbers and the organization to throw back an attack, that's not a problem with the game balance... that's a problem with server balance. You lost because your community wasn't big enough, skilled enough, or organized enough to beat the 50 players thrown at you. That's a community issue that needs solving, and there are tools to do exactly that. 

On a side note, I feel the reason many defending players are so hyper-fixated on large groups is because it's the only content they can't easily beat. It's unfortunate that so many of them on these forums proclaim 'boonballs' as removing all challenge from the game when removing boonballs would do the exact same thing for their own gameplay. There's a certain willful ignorance about what goes into creating a high-quality boonball as well, but that's a different point to address and I'd rather not complicate this post with an adjacent discussion. Suffice to say, we need a greater effort to understand both sides of the situation here, not knee-jerk outrage and persistent animosity toward different points of view. 

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

No clue where you're getting this.

I think you do, but you don't want to vocalize it because it weakens your position. Solo players, and especially solo defenders, tend to refuse the kind of easily offered advantages that groups take for granted. When you deliberately handicap yourself and then demand buffs to accommodate an engineered weakness it creates an inevitable balance issue. There are limited options to enhance your gameplay without also enhancing those you're playing against. That's why force multipliers need to be handled delicately; things which replace a lack of active players shouldn't become something that can be abused by those with an abundance of players. Defenders aren't always outnumbered. That means situations will inevitably exist where defensive buffs can easily overwhelm attacking groups and discourage that content.

As an example, this used to be the case with Mag and SMC (and perhaps still is, my server hasn't fought them in several months so I can't say for sure). With most of a map population sitting in SMC with tiered walls, fixed siege and placeable siege on every gate, many servers ignored the place altogether. A map-que with a seasoned commander and voice coms could sometimes crack that nut, but more often than not it simply wasn't an enjoyable enough experience for them and so they didn't bother trying. SMC could be held for days in that state, sometimes the entire week, and content on the map evaporated because overcoming a constant map que's worth of players with entrenched defenses wasn't palatable. Hilariously, this is also why many players on that server picked up alternate accounts on different servers. When no one came to you for fights, you had to swap servers to get the same content. 

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Nerf boons, pretty simple. Why are they nerfing strips? that also requires coordination yet they nerf it every patch.

P.S If you think 50 should only be challenged by 50 then the wvw game mode is done, they might as well tell everyone to f off, or go make a separate instance for the 50's.

The problem with nerfing boons is that most people don't understand what makes a boonball a boonball. The overwhelming majority of player-generated boons cap out at 5 targets, which is one party. A boonball doesn't overflow with boons because it has more numbers, it does because each 5-man component of the group has a self-generated maximum of boons. Parties which don't have the necessary classes and builds can't even generate enough boons on their own to hit these caps even with the overflow from other squads. The floaters and hangers-on who chase after closed tags are probably included in your 'boonball' and they're practically defenseless until those comped parties suffer enough attrition that the surviving support can extend boons to them instead of the dead slots in their group.

When people complain about permanent boons, what they're really complaining about is are 5-man party builds that generate a permanent maximum of boons within that party.  A 5-man squad can have the exact same amount of boons and duration as a boonball. But 5-man squads aren't the perceived problem, it's the 50-man squads full of those 5-man parties that's the problem. Nerfing boons would make collapsing poorly built zergs easier, yes. It would also remove a lot of the self-contained benefits of small groups too. I should also add that there are a few solo-builds which provide full boon coverage and duration as well, so they too would be nerfed. A big hit for some players who prefer duel-style content. That being said, there are too many boons in the game. Too many conditions too, frankly. I'd like to see more skills with no boons or conditions that provide movement or unique effects instead. Boons should enhance key moments in combat or facilitate a burst. Conditions should do the same. The need for every skill to do 4 things at once, along with all the calculations necessary to resolve them, is a bigger issue than 'boons' as a general focus of outrage. 

On a more personal note, I feel you need to separate 'boonball' from 'full-squad' when you're venting your dislike of the high-population meta. Population imbalances are the big issue here and more efforts should be put toward creating a meta where the choice is about how a map uses it's full population rather than which server has a fully-populated map. Also, when making suggestions about how defenders can attain parity with an attacking group despite being outnumbered, consider what your buffs might mean if defenders had equal or greater numbers. Even rare occurences need to be taken into account to create a healthy balance, because competitive players will seek competitive advantages however they can. If a rare occurrence creates a highly favorable position, they will do what they can to make that occurrence happen more often. That's how 'boonballs' became a thing. It was rare for a large group to have sufficient boon coverage to keep everyone topped off without a dedicated support comp to provide it. When it happened it was obvious that those who could maintain these buffs often overwhelmed those they were trying to fight. When a way was found to create this more regularly, it was adopted and became the meta. The fact that it grew to 30+ sized groups is a testament to how those guilds and communities were able to train a core of players to play it and learn to excel in it. 'Casual' boonblobs are the joke no one talks about here, but very few recognize the skill and dedication involved to create truly unbeatable squad comps. And most of the people on here also fail to realize that many of those who play in quality comps aren't interested in PPT at all; PvE isn't a challenge for them, it never was. The nerfs to defenses are for those casual blobs who would have no chance at all against veteran defenders otherwise. If they've gotten more confident as a result of the changes to actually fight you instead of running away, that's a win for you. If you can't beat a group of casuals without significant PvE buffs (which quality groups will steamroll anyway) that's a community issue. 

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

12 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Numbers = Advantage

Organized = Advantage

Meta = Advantage

Voice = Advantage

Target Caps = Advantage as you get more numbers, throw more aoes, mitigate more aoes.

Numbers = Advantage.   I don't want that advantage. 

Organized = Advantage. I don't want that advantage

Meta = Advantage. I don't want that advantage

Voice = Advantage. I don't want that advantage. 

Target Caps = Advantage as you get more numbers, throw more aoes, mitigate more aoes. I don't want that advantage. 

13 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Stop being biased and do your jobs as a developer, and balance the game properly to all players and groups. 

Hmm. So what you're saying is that people who don't want to work together, don't want to play high-performance builds, don't want to organize or improve the skills of their community, and don't want to use voice coms should be buffed so they can get wins against people who do? The game devs should design around the fact that people who refuse competitive advantages should be able to regularly beat those who do? 

From a games-theory perspective, I'm very intrigued at this mindset and even more intrigued to see what the solution that makes it work might be. 

[What makes GW2 combat in WvW fun? (and how I feel recent changes go in the wrong direction)]

24 minutes ago, ZTeamG.4603 said:

I feel like you're not hearing what I'm saying--

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. 

[What makes GW2 combat in WvW fun? (and how I feel recent changes go in the wrong direction)]

5 hours ago, ZTeamG.4603 said:

I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from...

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. 

[What makes GW2 combat in WvW fun? (and how I feel recent changes go in the wrong direction)]

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. 

[[POLL] Has the new ring size made an impact on game play?]

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. 

[WvW Changes April 16th 2024]

2 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Yea, but why would you stop your opponent from doing something stupid?

Or one faction sees what is going on, and disengages, so they can simply trace the train of the 3rd server backwards and derail it getting some easy bags. Or (less likely) both servers briefly put things aside to slap the 3rd server for trying to exploit them.

This is completely a player generated issue, but I would say a certain type of player that only cares about farming bags in the short term doesn't ever bother with these tactics because it is beneath them. Also applies to the player base as a whole as the mode degenerates and there is no point considering these factors.

I mean if you're breaking into a keep and farming bads, the bads will always be there even if you take a break. In fact it'll encourage them to regroup. and allow for more kills over the long run. If you're pushing one side so hard in a keep at the expense of all else, then of course the 3rd server is just going to backcap. It's fine to say you don't care about that, but you're still playing a part in enabling this behavior.

So yea it can be frustrating when people do dumb things against their self interest and drag you down with them, but someone's gotta make a concession somewhere. And at the end of the day, it's important to know your enemy and their tendencies. A lot of people in this game  (not you in particular) tend to wax  about skill and strategy but the moment something comes along that actually forces them to use their brain instead of regurgitating it from someone else, they just freak out.

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. 
 

[Outnumbered]

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. 

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

7 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

There's some irony in wanting certain defense nerfs undone, nerfs that effectively delayed the attackers longer.  Delay for whom exactly?  The delay is to give defenders more time for their own boonball to show up of course.

 

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

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

8 hours ago, Kranlor Greyhelm.8417 said:

Skill and leadership have an impact, sure. As do numbers. But the impact of ALL of those things is way less than the one ANET god of composition.

You get a skilled, well led group of 50 with a composition of random classes and specs and put it up against a poorly led, less skilled group of 30 with a perfect meta composition and there is only going to be one outcome. And it will be the same fight after fight after fight.

ANET have decided that their boonball can only be challenged by another boonball that's equally well composed. Only when the compositions are both equally good will skill, tactics and numbers start to have an impact on the result. In the meantime, anyone that doesn't want to play boonball is just food for the boonball.

I've logged out of WvW for the week after getting wood on Friday. Because WSR isn't fun to play, and facing a massive boonball on every map that we now have zero chance to stop is just painful. If this is what ANET want WvW to be, then I just won't be playing it. I suspect I won't be alone.

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. 

[Solution to being outnumbered]

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.. 

[WTF is Anet doing to WvW?]

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?

[WvW Changes April 16th 2024]

9 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

I don't think it has anything to do with a lack of imagination. But rather what the current reality is for many players in GW2.

 

It seems to me that by "meaningful discussion" you mean to theorize without looking at the realities in the game.

If a full Zerg actually hides in a structure waiting to be attacked and then defending it, that is a very rare exception (in my experience), but not the usual. And this passive Zerg cannot then be somewhere else.

It is also the exception (in my experience now) that there are even fights when attacking/defending structures and the better one wins.

In my experience, what happens most often is that a Zerg attacks when there are only a few defenders (and they can't simply become more because there aren't enough players at the time).

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.

[WvW Changes April 16th 2024]

9 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

You shouldn't balance for just that. Just like you shouldn't balance exclusively for your "boonball blob is defending".

You should try to balance for both scenarios, and if that's not possible, then for scenarios that actually occur most often in the current game.

In such a way that both attackers and defenders have fun by balancing to a certain extent based on different numbers of attackers/defenders.

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.