[Poll: New WvW vs Old WvW system]

12 minutes ago, Cameirus.8407 said:

this is the worst kind of elitist rubbish I've ever seen posted here.

no. people were not free rides. people maybe had reasons for not wanting to be in a guild (like maybe your attitude and those like it for a start), but still contributed. joined tags, joined discords, had commanders friended, discords saved on their server and the common links. I knew a lot of players who were not in guilds who put in significant time, who ran in groups, in "proper" builds, who joined discord, and most of the time were the best players to run with as the attitude was generally more relaxed, and tolerant of setbacks. I've spent many an evening with your so called "free ride" players running against teams that outmatch us in numbers and organisation, sneaking what we can, clouding enemy boon balls down gradually, and when the opportunity presents itself, making a daring, though quite often successful, quick strike on stonemist whilst the bigger teams are distracted. Nothing like a group of pugs sneaking a cap from the tryhards, a great community feeling as we celebrate in mapchat (then run from the angry blue/green/red retaliation!).

thats the fun of WvW, and WR destroys it. If anet want to make GvG, make it. but stop trying to make WvW that.

The problem with your attitude is it caters to the smaller number of  more extreme players, and positively excludes new or casual players. new players are needed to replace those that drop out, or the game dies. casual players, much as you may not believe it, make up the majority of players by far.

 

1 minute ago, Hesione.9412 said:

The small guilds who didn't want to join a larger guild, because that put one person in charge of all guilds and they lost their identity, are leechers?

Wow. Just wow.

Thankyou both for sharing your personal opinions and for putting your words in my mouth rather than make an attempt to consider an alternate perspective. We'll have to agree to disagree as I feel this has ceased to become a discussion and has become, instead, a focus for personal attacks. I will not be responding to future posts until a more rationed, reasoned approach is offered. 

[There is no counter to boonball meta due to the nerf to boon removal skills.]

27 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

We don't get defence credit or kill credit because we don't generate kills. If you don't kill an attacking player, then you don't get defence credit. All that happens is that camps near our spawn, and maybe the tower, are taken. That is why we stop playing.

Outnumbered sides are at a massive disadvantage when it comes to doing anything. We get run over and the enemy zergs go hunting us because we are their "content". I've had an enemy zerg jump on us because they hid inside a t1 tower before we got there.

A lot of this advice seems to be coming from people who don't routinely play as outnumbered. This is why I suggested invincibility of the outnumbered players - it would give us more time to nibble at the blob. Currently, we can't get near without being pulled and killed. We can't use defensive siege without being pulled and killed. Five people on arrow carts does nothing against an enemy zerg. You can't fight it. It's logoff for the night and do something else.

And the ones to blame are the players. If you create an alliance that blobs in off-hours, you are generating no content for yourself. You are also creating a downwards spiral effect because

1. no new players are going to stay in WvW if they enter via the low pop server

2. existing players on the low pop server are going to leave.

If you're going to insist on fighting the blob head-on with vastly fewer players... yes, this is what you can expect. You're not going to kill the entire blob, and you're certainly not going to wipe them over and over to wrack up defender credits. Defense events are bugged badly enough right now that I wouldn't rely on them for participation even if I wasn't outnumbered on a map. Why is this the focus of your argument? Do you do anything else in WvW except look for blobs to lose to? Seriously, you're staring at a wall and complaining about how to get inside without realizing there might be a window or a door. Look for other avenues. 

Do you know hat also gets you participation? Killing guards. Killing yaks. Flipping camps. Ninja'ing towers or hiding thieves inside keeps to portal in a lord-room rush. You don't have to fight the blob to win, and when you're outnumbered there's very little reason to. Make a game of stripping them of their supply. Drop traps on their paths to camps. Get a pull-gank build off of metabattle and vulture the tail for stragglers with a few friends. You can build your own content without smashing your head against a wall, and you can do it and still maintain your pips if you think just a little more about what you're doing. Your success here creates additional success; when other folks see you're generating your own content they'll join in. It's a social game, make it a social occasion. 

I should also state, bluntly, that the blob isn't there to chase 5 people across the map for hours all because of the paltry bags they might offer up. It's not there to oppress you, shame you, ruin your day. They're there just to flip objectives, get their PPT rewards, and maybe fight something if it shows up. Or run; plenty of zergs do that too as soon as anything of equal size shows up. . 

I agree with you that blobs kill their own content. Mostly. Highly successful and overindulgent blobs kill their content, which is the kind of toxic ego-driven experience I imagine most people come here to complain about. Better managed groups don't tend to PPT any more than is necessary to attract the kind of content they DO want. They'll take time attacking a keep to summon a defense force, and they'll peel if the amount of siege-hate becomes unpalatable. It's not about  'winning' for them, it's about having fun. The moment a siege stops being fun the group goes somewhere else. If 'winning' matters, make the siege unpalatable for the boonball. If you don't have the resources to do that directly, you can do it by simply not being there or sabotaging supply. No opposition on a map can be just as unpalatable for a zerg as a fight where they never get to fight back. My point: there is more than one way to play the game outnumbered. Maintaining a defeatist attitude and demanding change that hand you wins rather than exploring alternate strategies takes a lot of the fun out of a competitive game. 

 

[There is no counter to boonball meta due to the nerf to boon removal skills.]

27 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

I think you're confused.

The outnumbered buff only exists to warn you that you are going to be farmed and can do nothing about it. Anet does not want to give "noobs" any advantage over their precious boon ball friends.

... I shouldn't have to explain that this was a suggestion, but perhaps I'm mistaken and you're not making a serious statement at all. Sarcasm can be hard to recognize at times, even in a place like this. 

[Poll: New WvW vs Old WvW system]

6 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

Most players got a "free ride". If you want WvW to end up with three shards/alliances of elitists per EU/NA, then this is the attitude to have.

The ones who stayed after getting a gift of battle and then only play when their server is 'winning' and there's an open tag to k-train with? Yes, they were the ones getting a 'free ride'. Most of them aren't on these forums though and many never will be. For them, there was little interest in engaging with the WvW community to begin with and regardless of the structuring or balance in WvW the only thing that matters is whether there's a open, visible tag on the map and whether it's winning. 

That's not an elitist statement, that's a statement from a former server mentor who spent hundreds of hours training militia and recognized that most militia players fell into three categories: the zergling waiting for a tag, the keep defender, and the solo/roamer chasing OJ's for content. Almost all of those who became accomplished players did the same thing: they joined a guild. Not because guilds are better, not because the game forced them to. But because the part of the community they enjoyed the most distilled themselves into regular parties that eventually became guilds. They cared about the game mode, their performance, and sought out those who could enhance both as well as their personal enjoyment. 

When WR landed they had a guild, and if they chose, an alliance to go with it. For most of them that meant their 'community' remained intact even as servers made the transition through matchmaking into teams. Those who complain that WR destroyed their community and their enjoyment of WvW.... they cared more about being carried along by a powerful server than to help build the one they were with. I totally understand why players might be upset that their map has fewer than 15 players total when they were accustomed to fighting a que just to swarm outnumbered content, but I also don't hold sympathy for them. It's easy to be part of a community, you just have to care and make an effort. 

[What kind of group size is your primary reason for coming to WvW?]

2 hours ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

What is the poll option for I log in by myself and look/wait for another group of any size to join up with?

If you have a preferred tag at your regular hours of play, I would select the option that represents how large a squad they tend to collect. That would, I feel, reflect the spirit of the poll best. 

It's not a particularly serious poll, most of us who don't exclusively roam/solo will play with a variety of squad sizes. I created it mostly out of curiosity and to see what the play habits of the subforum's most active members tend to be. Knowing how many are engaged here relative to the game's total account size, and what their preferred playstyle might be, lends some perspective  on the general dynamic of the current conversations. 

[Poll: New WvW vs Old WvW system]

I feel a lot of the discontent with WR is that many players were happily surrounded by a large (often stacked) community with familiar commanders and timetables they could easily join/quit at their leisure without having to make any other form of commitment. Why join a guild when there was always an open tag? Why join a tag when there are always 5-10 other players hanging out in SMC at all times? Why join discord or voice coms if they were just going to get all sweaty about builds/gear and ask that you swap to a different class? Why give your personal wealth to a guild for tactics/tactivators/food/utilities when they'll usually drop it in a keep for everyone? Nothing was asked, no contributions were required, you could happily log onto a bl at almost any hour and play with your 'community' with no strings attached. 

WR sucks for folks who got a free ride for years. It sucks less for recognized faces who were renowned scouts, roamers or pugmanders as they're welcomed no matter where they go. It sucks the least for those in guilds, in many respects WR is no different than relinks. They played mostly within their guild community before WR and now their alliance just makes it easier to extend that guild community to players who were on different servers. 

As someone who was on a link server for almost the entire time that system was in WvW there hasn't been much change where militia is concerned. Same flavor of pugs no matter which host we had back then and expectations are roughly the same now. One thing I do enjoy is seeing different tags on a more regular basis, both for and against. As a link we were shackled to the success (or lack thereof) of our host server. In most cases this meant sleeping in the basement for 4-5 weeks where familiarity becomes enmity for everyone involved, or getting pushed to T1 for weeks where nothing happened without taking a hundred arrowcarts to the face. WR, if nothing else, feels like I could see a different force on a map no matter what tier we're in. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm seeing a lot more arrowcarts to the face now than ever before thanks to the defensive meta where PPT blobs bunker behind walls and treb everything in reach rather than take the risk of doing anything outside, but at the very lest I'm seeing more flavors of defensive siege-spam now than I used to. Even learning a few new tricks myself to pass on to the random collection of pugs who will happily off themselves on a wall until someone builds siege for them and drags them over to use it. 

[There is no counter to boonball meta due to the nerf to boon removal skills.]

Counters definitely exist. The problem is the need (real or imagined) for a group half, or even a quarter, of the boon ball's size to reliably beat it with a minimum of strategy, risk, and resources. At some point a question needs to be asked: should the number of people on a map, friendly or hostile, have any impact on the game at all? 

Because if the answer is no, then there's no actual player agency involved in the outcome of a match. If map population means nothing, than a single player's contributions also mean nothing. 

If the answer is yes, then there's an implicit understanding that more numbers mean a greater advantage. The question then becomes: should players be punished for seeking this advantage when the game allows it? 

This creates some very muddy waters. It makes sense, strategically, to mass one's strength where an enemy is weakest. You want a favorable matchup of advantages/disadvantages to increase the odds of success. The balance, and counterplay, to this strategy is to create a field of opportunity where equal gains can be found without contesting on your enemy's terms. This creates a moment of choice between attacker and defender: do I value this specific location and objective more than the collective distribution of reward across the entire map? And also a secondary choice: if I choose to fight, do I feel I can win with the distribution of resources at my disposal? 

 

I feel that rather than nerf the ability of a large groups of players there should be greater incentive for overwhelmed forces to seek equal gains elsewhere. The Outnumbered buff, for example, could reward significantly higher warscore and PPK for successful events and player kills. If flipping a t-0 camp rewards as much warscore as a t1 tower you begin to see a value in nibbling at the edges of a superior force's control of the map rather than face them directly. You also highly reward the rarer ninja-captures of tiered objectives, a situation which is much more likely when a map blob refuses to break apart to maintain what it's kept. I would also increase the supply cap for outnumbered teams across all friendly objectives and institute sabotage supply-depot as a standard tactic across all friendly objectives while outnumbered. This would improve an outnumbered teams ability to quickly supply up, build defensive siege/traps, and throw down siege on hostile objectives while forcing attacking groups to convoy between their objectives just to maintain momentum. 

 

For players who insist upon combat advantages to even the odds against significantly larger forces... I feel like a 'balanced' game mode probably isn't for you. That kind of out-sized single player impact really belongs in something like Dynasty Warriors or some kind of tower defense game where your opponents are trivialized as part of the power fantasy. . Significant personal challenges do exist in GW2, but they come with the caveat of specific, min/maxed builds and substantial player knowledge and ability. Soloing Raid bosses and dungeons, for example. Players who do this don't demand the devs nerf the content so they can clear it easier, they engage with it and find efficient (and sometimes bizarre) strategies for success. Maybe instead of asking for a bigger hammer to smash that blob, you think about how a different tool might do the job instead. 

[What kind of group size is your primary reason for coming to WvW?]

It's been a week and the results are quite interesting. 

 

~41.9% of total responders play in groups of 5 or less. Of those responders 67.7% reported themselves as solo or roamers. 

~32.44% of total responders play in groups of 10-35. Of those responders 54.16% reported themselves as playing with small zergs or guilds of 15-25

~3.05% of total responders play in groups of 35 or higher. A roughly even split between those who prefer maximum sized zergs and those who play with groups between 35-45.

 

Even more intriguing are the additional subsets of data, in particular votes per country and what those responders chose as their preferential form of group content. USA had the majority of responders, with more than a third playing solo/roam while ~50% play in a maximum group size of 5. With far fewer votes the EU and UK responders also tend to prefer solo/roaming over groups larger than 15. Australia represented most of the SEA/OCX core with a relatively even split between playstyles, though 75% still preferred to play in groups of fewer than 10.  50% of those who play in the largest groups possible (2/4 votes) were the only responders from their respective regions.  

 

While far from official in any capacity, the results do suggest that a heavy majority of players who respond on this subforum prefer small-scale or solo/roaming play as their playstyle of choice. 

(Data taken as of this minute, roughly 1 week from the original poll. Tap the three dots on the top right of the result page for the vote analytics)

[What kind of group size is your primary reason for coming to WvW?]

In addition to this poll, I'm also really curious as to what the spared might be like when compared between EU and NA among the active members on this forum. My understanding is that small-scale groups (<10)  and solo/roamers tend to be more highly represented in NA than they are in EU, but as I've never played on EU I generally take that with a grain of salt. 

[ANet's engagement rate with the WvW community through the official forum]

It's important t o recognize that "engagement" doesn't require the devs to be actionable with regards to the demands made of them on this or any other forum. Community interactions are a form of outsourcing for novel ideas, criticism, and general player sentiment. There are good ideas, bad ideas, and ideas that simply can't be realized with the systems which are currently in place. Players may not realize, or understand, that some requests are not just impractical from a design perspective but may be impossible with regards to the greater financial realities of the developer. Similarly, developers may have an internalized design vision that has lost touch with their consumers (we are a fickle bunch and change in taste quickly outpaces development in most respects) and need to recognize when greater flexibility/transparency is necessary to maintain a quality relationship. 

We also live in an age where social sensitivities place a considerable weight on all official discourse between developer and the player. This sensitivity often extends to one's personal opinions and sentiments as well, so it's very difficult for individuals with employment responsibilities to speak their mind without being cognizant of what the impact might be. Especially on officially sanctioned platforms where they WILL be held to account for what is said. This requires every response to be carefully considered, carefully written, and often noncommittal unless explicitly signed-off by someone with the authority to do so. Understandably this can hurt the speed of response, and depth, of any discussion by individual devs on an official platform. You are being heard, make no mistake, but that response is slow and measured for good reason.  

Ideally a safe, accepting space exists where players and devs can speak freely without fear of judgement or bias and solicit contrasting perspectives to create a more cohesive and satisfying experience for everyone. The reality is that places like these are often found only in unofficial channels where there is an explicit understanding among it's members that no one shall be attacked for expressing their opinions, and that all discussions are to be had in an 'unofficial' capacity with no expectation that it will be actionable. A forum for ideas, criticism and general player sentiment. From places like that, devs are free to take this advice and do with it what they will. Whether that's to adjust or enhance their systems/design philosophy or ignore it (for now) because the current state of implementation must be finished before anything else can be done with it.

Considering the official nature of this forum, that's unlikely to ever happen here. But I feel you'll see more engagement, more discussion, and more dev insight when the atmosphere is less combative/cynical and more reasoned with it's approach.

[What kind of group size is your primary reason for coming to WvW?]

https://strawpoll.com/wAg3QA79oy8

I recognize that many players play with a wide range of groups, but for this poll please answer with the choice that reflects the majority of your time spent in WvW. 

For myself, while I solo/roam during off-hours and frequently drop in with squads of 10-15 and 15-25, a slim majority of my hours spent in a given week are with alliance guild runs of 35-45. Sometimes less if it's a closed squad of only alliance members. 

[A Chat w/ Roy and Cecil About WvW Development Goals]

5 hours ago, Hesione.9412 said:

I routinely play where there are few people in WvW, on my side. I have made this clear in every post I have done. We face boonballs, or recognised fight guilds with fewer people than 50, we leave WvW for the night. A blob does not die to 6 people, even if we are all on arrow carts. We can't generate any deaths, even if we can get downs. Even if we fend them off for a while. Because we are not getting deaths, participation starts to decay, a second reason to leave WvW for the night.

You have ignored my point, consistently made, that a small group of people, thrown together by the fact they play at the same time, cannot fend off a blob. Even if that blob is not comp'd. After they break in, because our defensive siege is useless against them, they will run towards one player at a time killing them.

Because there are so few of us, the blob lacks "content". They've taken everything except t0 towers and some camps. It's not that we "can't hold everything". We can't hold *anything*. We go to a map to try to flip a tower, and get run over by the blob. Being so small, we can get little siege up even if everyone has max supply. We cannot, on keeps, get both outer and inner down without running supply back and forth. The blob goes to the objective and jumps on us.

The blob and boonball, when facing a small number of players, requires no skill. The boonball compensates for low-skill players because their mistakes are covered by the supports. The challenge for skill would be if there were no boons at all. Theory crafting doesn't apply because it's a very large group against a very small group. In a blob that is not comp'd, which group do you think is going to win? Even when the small group works together, they get run over.

Facing blobs when earlier in the week a comm managed to scrape together a squad of 20, and being run over, means that players log out for the week. Some will never return. Eventually WvW will just be blob versus blob.

Thread after thread has pointed out population imbalances. This problem is, of course, created by players because it is their organising that is creating the blobs. Say, for example, in a time zone there are 2500 active WvW players. In NA, that's 2500 players split across 15 shards (3 teams, 5 tiers). What sounds like a large number of players suddenly isn't. Of those 2500 people, 1000 are in two large guilds, and they are on two different shards. The other 1500 people are spread across 13 shards. That's the problem. Large alliances, because people want to play in a blob, creating small pockets of other players spread across shards. And then the large guilds complain there's no-one to fight.

Sounds like you have a problem with engagement on your team/server. Or you're simply unfortunate to be playing during a timezone when there isn't much population to go around. There are solutions to this problem; alliance guilds exist that do not have a boonball focus, just a large community of singles and havoc squads. But if, for whatever reason, joining a more active community isn't suitable you may have to adjust your expectations or explore other ways to play the game mode. 

Yes, it sucks to be constantly outnumbered and overwhelmed with no commanders or organization rally the few people you have to mount a defense. Or push out and attack something. But in these situations the boonball doesn't care about collecting your bags, you're not big enough content to warrant the attention. If there's no response by your team to an attack, their choices are to continue flipping objectives for PPT (if that's what they like) or log off because there's no player-vs-player interaction. Also participation doesn't require enemy kills to keep ticking. It just means you have to flip more camps, kill more guards, and generally be a more active player instead. Which is what an outnumbered team should be doing anyway; spreading out to contest as many objectives at the same time as their strained logistics can allow. You won't be able to fight something 5X your size so there's no reason to try. Just wait 5 mins after the flip, take your stuff back, and watch your participation be maintained. 

I didn't ignore your point. I simply don't agree with you. I acknowledge that your preferred way to play the game is heavily countered by large-scale groups and I'm suggesting there are alternatives to explore rather than demand a handicap which may have consequences for the game mode beyond your specific satisfaction. I'm also encouraging you to consider the perspective of enemy groups as communities with their own goals rather than hostile and oppressive force that's determined to ruin your day. They get bored too. I'm sure for many of them their matchup against a vastly underpopulated server is every bit as boring and unsatisfying as your own feeling. 

It's a very common assertion by players who don't play in comped parties to assume large squads are filled with unskilled players. That's a perspective based more in egotism and ignorance than practice. Large squads have more unskilled players AND more skilled players. This happens when you have a larger sampling size; you get more outliers. I would add that large groups composed primarily of a single guild also tend to theorycraft, train, and equip meta builds/gear more often than unafilliated players. These groups, skilled or not, have much more practice working with one another and this cooperative ability allows individual players to perform at a greater level than they would on their own. That's why 'boonballs' succeed. Not simply because they spit out endless boons (any 5 man havoc squad can be a boonball by this logic. So too can many roaming builds) but because they compliment each other's strengths. 

Larger groups tend to beat smaller ones, yes. But high-skilled groups will regularly dominate weaker skilled ones. That's why a 35-man of skilled players in meta-comp parties will w-key a map que of pugs. I recognize that in your timezome you may not ever see two map ques squaring off against one another, but in NA prime I see this almost every night. My experience doesn't invalidate yours, but it is another perspective which is reasonable to consider. 

I would argue that a legacy of PvE content where new players are strongly encouraged to seek out a commander tag on any map they have no experience with is also to blame. That's why you frequently see players hanging out at spawn or the nearest friendly keep. They're waiting for a commander tag to rally around so someone with more experience can guide them to whatever rewards are found in the game mode. They're not wrong about this. Commanders are a focus for content/conflict on any map and if you want to go where the action is... it's usually wherever a commander ends up. Many of these tags don't need these players, but they include them in the squad not just for more numbers but because their friends or new players they want to encourage in what is very clearly a diminishing population base. 

I disagree on your estimates with regards to player activity across NA servers. I would argue that there are at least that many active players per tier. Gw2mists currently has over 2100 players with at least 1 kill in this past matchup in NA. As many of the players registered to gw2mists are veterans with a particular interest in WvW, it's safe to assume the casual playerbase is equal or substantially larger than this. It's even more active on the EU side. One problem here is that guild-cohesive tags often run invisible on maps because they can't fit their squad (sometimes as small as 25) because of the existing ques. This perceived lack of commanders CAN drive many of these casual players away from the game because there's no one to guide them in their inexperience. That is a problem. But entitlement is also a problem with new players and at some point one must put the needs of their guild over the expectations of unaligned players. 

From my experience, I don't complain about maps where there's nothing to fight. I complain about equal-sized groups who bunker behind walls, build tons of siege and refuse any fight except one where they take minimal risk. I complain about the trebuchet meta where nothing happens until an objective has been mouse-holed from extreme long range (well outside the ability of most defenders to effect any defense at all) and it's a race to rush the lord room and burn it down before any kind of counter-group can scare them off. I complain about a game mode which is becoming more of a tower-defense style game than a large-scale battle simulator. I think a push toward indomitable defenses to appease the masses on this forum would create a stagnant, repellant style of gameplay where there is no progression of capture on any maps and most groups avoid fights entirely because they don't want to engage without the overwhelming advantage of a defensive structure at their back. I see watchers on the walls and no war at all, and that is what ultimately kills WvW. 

[A Chat w/ Roy and Cecil About WvW Development Goals]

1 hour ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

This is mathematically impossible due to target caps.

Hold off. Not 'win', hold off. When an enemy group has no siege, no supply, and no ability to sustain PvD on a gate due to the siege and supply inside, they have been held off. This can be achieved with as few as 10 players when planned well and skillfully executed. In most cases you only need to prolong a siege for a couple minutes in this fashion before the group abandons their attack to resupply.

 

Is is possible against all groups? No. Some groups are better than others. And this strategy is indeed 'mathematically possible' even with target caps, though inexperienced or uncoordinated players are unlikely to achieve this on their own. And it certainly helps when your opponent is a pugmanded squad that isn't particularly effective at anything beyond being a better version of a dolyak. 

[The Current Boon Ball Meta and Balancing Suggestions]

2 hours ago, Sheff.4851 said:

If you made both these changes, what's the point of running a comped squad, versus having a collection of 50 people running individually powerful Celestial builds? Coordination and comp are tools that players use to give them an advantage when fighting outnumbered against a larger, uncoordinated enemy force. These changes sound like they would turn the gamemode into "whoever has more bodies wins", which I don't think is the intended outcome here.

Exactly. Nerf the blob, but the population imbalance remains. I feel like the 'boonball' discussion is like complaining about the snow on the peak of a mountain while ignoring the mountain it's sitting on. Boonball or not, more people mean more damage soak and more damage going out. 50 individually powerful builds linked via voice coms is still going to stomp 30 individually powerful builds with nothing but map-chat to tie them together. This was the case back at launch, long before comps and the interdependent synergy of today's meta became a thing. Guilds have had almost 12 years to adapt, evolve and min/max since then. Gamers are excellent at finding the most efficient path to greatest rewards; the boonball is an extension of that efficiency. 

Is it a good efficiency? That's a subject of debate. It certainly isn't where raw PPT is concerned, but where player-vs-player interactions are concerned it's very obviously achieved a dominance that's upsetting for those who refuse to engage in that gameplay. 

[A Chat w/ Roy and Cecil About WvW Development Goals]

1 hour ago, Hesione.9412 said:

I've had a blob go on siege even though there were about 10 of us trying to get into the structure to get onto the lord. And a small group on arrow carts and ballistae cannot break a boon ball. The support is too strong. And now you seem to be arguing that defensive siege will be removed.

I have never seen a 10-person group hold off a blob. When the blob sees what is happening, the reapers, mesmers, and guardians in the blob go close to do pulls, and the rangers and elementalists put damage pressure on the wall, and just behind it. And everyone murders the people who got pulled off. The defenders end up with one treb, if that.

A 40-person cloud building half a dozen arrowcarts, a couple of catapults, and a treb in less than 10 seconds in open field? I've not seen that. I've only ever been hit by siege that has been insta-built inside the objective.

Again, you are in support of the status quo. You seem to be anti any changes that might support small groups. We have been saying that small groups was more fun years ago - anet could go back through their changes and discover reasons why that was so. And then revert some changes they made since that time, which have made it horrible for small groups.

It's always the same complaints because the boonball is being improved with every patch. Those in the boonball have nothing to complain about. Those of us who do not play in boonballs - I am one and there is no boonball on when I play because there aren't enough players - are the ones that feel the brunt of these changes. You seem to feel we should just shut up. Well, that seems to be the attitude of the devs as well. People shut up when they stop playing, either WvW or the entire game. Anet should be more worried when the complaints stop.

It's pretty clear either you haven't seen much or you've been playing with servers/teams who don't engage with most of the game's tools and mechanics. Either that or you've chosen to ignore these cases entirely because they don't fit your preconceived bias. 

I have, as recently as last night in fact, seen a 40-man cloud build that much siege within seconds. By the way, a sincere 'well done' offered to SILK on Mithric Cliffs, I was with the Ruined Cathedral of Blood tag who watched your very impressive super-speed-siege tactics at Klovan Gully and the repeated use of trebs from inside nearby towers to spend as little time at risk of a fight as possible... even if you had 20-30 more players than our tag. The fights weren't bad when you gave them, you should really try it more often. 

I've also seen a 10 person group hold off a blob. I've commanded for such a group in the past, though expectations and your personal strategy need to be paired with the encounter you're facing. You're not going to kill that group. You're not even going to get more than a few downs if you try. Recognizing that your real target is the siege and the supply those players are carrying is the first step to assembling a viable strategy. From there it's important to understand that the real resource isn't damage or numbers (you don't have either of those things) it's your ability to prey upon over-confident players, exploit gaps in player knowledge and awareness, and to buy time for a larger response. If the attacking blob is garbage at using their siege bubbles to mitigate damage (and so, so many of them are) and their members squirrel off tag easily, half the battle is won for you already. The problem with many small groups or solo players is that they treat the blob as a PvE raid boss and feel they can bring it down if only they throw enough damage and boonstrips at it. Recognizing what your group can and can't do is a part of being an effective leader, not many ever grow beyond this. That's why 'blobs' wipe to smaller, better comp'd and organized groups all the time. Numbers matter only when everyone is pushing toward a common goal. 

I never stated I was for, or against, the status quo. This was an assumption on your part, and not the first I should add. In fact I encouraged players to seek as wide a variety of gameplay as possible before drawing their own conclusions on the current meta. To state it more clearly for you: I'm against broad-sweeping buffs to specific gameplay without first analyzing it's impact on the interlinked systems of the game mode. I'm against introducing force-multipliers as a solution for small-scale engagements when those multipliers can go on to create significantly deeper imbalances for large-scale engagements. 

A solution exists to improve the satisfaction of players who refuse to interact with the larger community but insist upon being the balance priority within the game mode. But it's also important to recognize that this game mode IS a community effort. You can't do everything yourself, nor should you. There's a role for every size of squad, from the solo roamer to the 'boonblob'. No specific way of playing the game is best, they all have their place. Persisting with the belief that your particular hammer is the best solution for all WvW problems is naive. Boonballs are not an effective strategy for winning victory points in a match. They ARE effective for resetting tiered objectives, but that strength comes at the cost of little-to-no representation across the rest of the map. If the enemy wants to put all their eggs in one basket, let 'em. If you can't summon a group of your own to smash them on the field, the collective PPT of the rest of the map can easily survive the loss of a tiered objective. Complaining that you should be able to hold EVERYTHING all at once with significantly fewer numbers is unreasonable. You're approaching the situation from a perspective that doesn't make sense given the limitations of individual players and the available resources at your disposal. Sometimes you fight, sometimes you ninja everything that's not bolted down. It's on you to recognize when each is appropriate and when the gains are the greatest, rather than apply one viewpoint to every situation. 

As for the 'boonball being improved with every patch'... that's what happens when skilled players apply theorycrafting to the meta. The current meta is the most interdependent collection of classes, skills and builds it's ever been. The difference between a comp'd 'boonball' and a collection of pugs acting as a 'boonball' is enormous. One, justifiably given the dedication toward it's creation, is extremely durable and successful in what it does. The other is farmed by far less players with an equal level of ability. You're complaining that dedicated players who work together put players who don't work together at a disadvantage. This is an obvious truth to anyone who looks at the situation objectively. More people working together can get more done than fewer people working independent of each other. If you don't have the people, you're at a disadvantage whether they boonball or not. That's a problem which extends beyond the profession balance of the game... and that population imbalance was the heart of this discussion in the first place. Maybe we should stick to that conversation first since it's precisely where the devs are asking for constructive feedback. Let's try to create a more solid foundation before we get fixated on the flashy details. 

[A Chat w/ Roy and Cecil About WvW Development Goals]

I feel the major divisive point of this discussion is the feeling that being outnumbered in a defensive role makes for an unsatisfying experience.

I should also add that the feeling of being significantly outnumbered/overwhelmed is an unsatisfying experience for all aspects of WvW regardless of the role a player chooses, but this encourages insight outside of many players' narrow focus and thus is not a relevant talking point within an echo chamber. We're not here to talk about ongoing population imbalances among servers, we're here to complain about the state of seige-vs-players and the "unstoppable boonball meta". 

To be honest, this is a situation which is difficult to balance without active player engagement. Being outnumbered on a borderland is as much a community/team issue as it is a game-balancing one. If your community/team doesn't respond to call outs, if there isn't a substantial militia population available to put out fires, or if the general level of experience/skill/coordination of a team is considerably less than the other team what you're really asking for is a developer-implemented handicap to overcome a player-based reluctance to engage with the game mode. The issue with such a handicap is that while some teams/servers may need something like this to even out the win/loss ratio so that both sides feel satisfied, teams/servers that ARE capable will use this same handicap to much greater effect. 

10 defenders with 5 arrowcarts and a comped party capable of pushing enemy groups can handle twice their number on a wall or gate. 10 Defenders manning trebs/shield generators can hold that same stretch of wall or gate almost indefinitely against three times that number if skilled and coordinated. Factor in supply drain via cows/traps, siege use to knock the players off rams so that the rams can be burned fast by DPS and other siege, a 10-man roaming cloud harassing the enemy group or placing defensive siege in blind spots... A defending group that knows what they're doing can make a siege so unpalatable for another group that many casual players will try once, fail, and spend the rest of the night flipping t-0 towers instead. Add in a 40-man defensive boonball to this mix and very quickly the odds of even a quality group taking down a tiered objective become very low. Why bother attacking a fortified position if you know you're going to fight tooth and nail for 3-5 minutes before you even get a sniff of a reward from it?

Plus, all this comes with the understanding that even should they break through the walls and push on the lord... the 'content' might just run and abandon the objective without a fight anyway. This has frequently become the case when fight groups encounter heavy-PPT servers who see siege/walls as the first and only line of defense.  In the time it takes a large attacking group to flip one of these objectives they often lose most of their third on a map. A PPT team doesn't need to 'win' these defensive events to succeed in their matchup, all they need is to occupy a majority of the enemy team for a long enough time so that their teammates can balance the PPT by flipping the rest of the map. Quite often all that's needed to pull a 'boonball' off a keep is just to attack one of their tiered objectives instead. If they can't blow straight through to the lord and kill it in less time than it takes to pop OJ's somewhere else, most will just abandon the siege instead.

I've seen a 40-man cloud build half a dozen arrowcarts, a couple catapults, and a treb  in less than 10s just to pound the lord room of a t-1 tower that was under attack. They didn't even need to enter the tower to defend it, just siege it up on the open field to the point where a comp'd group couldn't sustain long enough to kill the lord. When the attacking group abandoned their attack just to preserve the squad, that 40-man cloud just ran away. No fights given, just siege. A successful defense without actually 'defending' anything. 

Now let's buff arrowcarts so that they strip and deal more damage. Let's make trebs cheaper and reduce the cooldown on shield generators. How about tactics that implement a 'burn' mechanic on any hostile siege within 1200 range of a wall? Let's make catapults and flame rams more susceptible to damage from guards and siege. Let's make operators on cannons immune to CC and take 50% less damage. Why not make it so that attackers dying in the objective funnel their supply into the objective's supply hut? Because defenders need the help and the game devs should acknowledge this and give them anything they ask to keep them playing the game. No, it's not a skill issue. It's not a community issue. It's not a strategy or coordination issue. There are absolutely no drawbacks to improving the defense ability of solo and small-scale groups that much larger groups can abuse in a multiplicative fashion.  Players don't need to learn to use the tools they already have, they should be given more and better tools so they can continue to ignore them while others use them to much greater effect. 

It's always the same complaints. At some point, I feel, even the most community-first developer has to acknowledge that you can't satisfy everyone. Especially those who refuse to engage in any other gameplay except the very narrowly defined one they currently enjoy. I would encourage people to try a variety of WvW experiences before demanding large-scale changes to drastically improve the ease of success for their preferred style of play. There's a pretty good chance that what you want for yourself comes at a cost which is not healthy to your own future enjoyment, you just aren't able to see the repercussions because there's no foundation for any other perspective. 

[Petition to revert the PPK change]

I feel, before we start getting all bent out of shape over the theoretical impact to PPT, we give it a week to see if the changes actually have any meaningful effect on warscore at all. It may turn out that the changes to PPT for tiered objectives--taken across all maps--may continue to make PPK a small factor in the overall matchup. According to gw2mists, PPK currently accounts for 10-15% of total warscore in most matchups. Even if PPK is boosted by 50% and nothing else were to change, it's likely that kills alone may impact only a handful of skirmishes. 

Something to bear in mind is that the changes to PPK don't just affect attacking zergs, they reward anyone who gets kills. Defending zergs provide PPK. Roamers picking off zerglings as they traverse the map? PPK. Further, if your team can't provide enough militia or a group to mount a defense... you're not really feeding the PPK anyway. Most players are experienced enough to avoid fights against impossible odds, so that 50-man zerg in the lord room isn't going to collect 100+ kills from the 5-10 defenders funneling themselves into the meat-grinder.

The groups that WILL make your team cringe by piling up corpses? The 'fight' groups getting stomped over and over while they respond to outnumbered situations milita/defenders can't handle. Or those who don't care about warscore at all and will happily full-wipe over and over on scrim island just because they prefer fights to PvE. Feel free to call them out for the 'bad' tags they are. The game obviously doesn't need any kind of organized presence to rally the casual players who aren't at your level of solo-excellence. 

[WvW/PvP Update Preview Stream at Noon Pacific Time Today]

Too early to tell just what the impact of these changes will have on the game mode as a whole. Knee-jerk reaction is that cheaper and more plentiful siege along with higher penalties for losing the PPK battle will encourage an even more risk-averse strategy by teams who avoid fights in the first place. Being able to build more siege does little to solve the problem of under-defended objectives. Changes to scoring... whatever. PPT teams were already winning and they weren't the ones feeding the PPK in the first place. Sucks for fight groups; there's now even more siege-slog to bother with and no guarantee a fight will happen at the end of it. And if you do get one, it's likely to be at an increased disadvantage in tiered objectives and far less satisfying in general. Might as well scrim on the way to south camp. Watch out for the leeches though; now that they get increased warscore for tagging GvG's in progress you'll see a lot more trolling of organized fights. 

Of course, a big assumption with these changes is that players will actually build AND use the siege now that it has a cheaper cost. Most casual players don't carry siege or traps in their inventories and spend whatever supply they have on repairs or on siege dropped by more experienced players. Many don't even use siege even when it's just a few steps away, preferring instead to autoattack from range out of fear of being targeted or trapped while using siege. But the further away from an actual fight you are, the more likely casual players are to use player-placed siege... so I see a lot of trebs in the future. Particularly in any objective which can shell walls from within the relative safety of another walled objective. Safe siege is best siege.  

Amusingly, what many fail to realize is that cheaper siege actually benefits PPT blobs who can now build substantially more of it from further away. There's no point in taking a fight now until you've got a clear rush straight to the lord room and with more siege for the same supply you can get that done even faster. I don't think cheap arrowcarts are going to be an issue for most group; by the time enemies get within range of them there won't be any walls to prevent those positions from being rushed anyway.  It might be a problem for extended lord room fights when a defending blob is also present, but there was little reason for attacking groups to make an outnumbered attempt on an objective in the first place. Even now many groups will just run from a siege if a defending group of a similar size encounters them before they reach the lord room. Easier just to pressure and wait rather than risk attrition to your pug squad by losing a fight.   

Interesting to see this is the direction the gamemode is going. Punch as many holes as possible and wait for a time to ninja when no one is watching. I feel for the defenders sitting on shield generators all day just to hold onto a tiered objective. You're going to be more important than before and the rewards for 'winning' aren't any better. 

[500 person alliance guilds are a mistake]

And also another one, if you're looking for something that's less of an echo-chamber. 
 

 

[500 person alliance guilds are a mistake]

Here, so you can catch up:
 

 

[Guild Cap for WvW is Too Large!]

15 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

Our guild currently has 200 players, but I'd like to understand what you're writing here. Even if I'm in a guild of 20 men who choose to run alone for what reason do you claim I'm going to end up in a dead server? WR should match these 20 men with many other alliances, guilds, and individual players. Wasn't the goal here to get servers with similar activity?

I don't think anyone but the competitive balance team has an accurate idea of what metrics are being used to determine the matchmaking of WR. Speculating on what should or shouldn't be taken into account is exactly that: speculation. People are going to expect a structure that best satisfies their own expectations and playstyle. How do we resolve the disparity between players who 'expect' a competitive environment where small-scale fights are plentiful and frequent compared to those who 'expect' objective-based fights with layered defenses and extensive use of siege/tactivators/logtistics AND those who 'expect' large-scale open-field fights?

You can't satisfy everyone. It's important to understand that instead of giving people what they want the better option is often to give people the tools to create the gameplay they enjoy instead. Dedicated players will find a way to get those small-scale fights, those siege/defend situations, or those large-scale battles that they come to the game mode for. Your community will shape the kind of WvW experience you will find in a matchup. If you don't care to shape that community via Alliances, guilds, visible tags or map-chat... you get whatever the MMR determines you'll get. If you're unhappy with the team you've been bundled with, it's possible you might have had a more satisfying experience by banding together with a larger number of like-minded players. In my opinion WR will reward most those players who group together for a particular gameplay experience as opposed to those seeking simply to 'win' a matchup. An alliance of small-content guilds or roaming players has an equally high chance of creating the gameplay they enjoy as an alliance of large-scale fight groups. And, like all iterative MMR systems, it gets more accurate and more reliable with increased time and data to work off of. Complaining about the situation during it's first generation is premature and displays an incredible degree of impatience and entitlement. 

[Guild Cap for WvW is Too Large!]

17 hours ago, neven.7528 said:

While they may not take into account when people play, they definately take into account how much people play.   Splitting people into more groups will cause the groups who raid nearly daily to be distributed amongst the 15 world's first. As their wxp gain per member will be the highest.  Bag farmers outpace ppt players in wxp gain so they will be distributed first, more casual  guilds will be distributed last regardless of play style.  While we don't know the exact method of their distribution, it should still be distributing the most dedicated first no matter what.  There will still be some groups who just have too many variables in common on some servers just by bad luck, but the impact should be reduced compared to now, especially when time if day is added to the algorithm.

You fail to see the point. Breaking up guilds into small groups may benefit YOU: the solo or exclusively small group player, but it would destroy the large communities of players who want to play together. Is it right to demand that friends should not be able to play with one another just so that you don't feel overwhelmed by a bad matchup? More to the point, do you feel the game would be left in a healthier place if people couldn't play with their friends in this game but they could in a different one? Explain to me how I should tell half the members in my guild that they can't play the game with their friends anymore because someone on the forums is upset about being outnumbered by some sweaty no-life guild in a different matchup? 
 

You need to consider the wide-ranging impacts of getting what you want before you demand other people sacrifice on your behalf. You might realize that a short-term benefit results in a log-term loss for yourself instead. 

 

[Guild Cap for WvW is Too Large!]

12 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I guess you have no idea what's out there from your specific alliance.

 

I prefer not to go into the numbers you indicated. But I can tell you what I've been seeing for the last 2 weeks. If your team queues a map, it's perfectly fine when their opponents queue only 1 map as well. But what we've seen is your team with 1 map in the queue while your opponents queue 3. If you see it happening all the time, morning, afternoon, evening, without ever alternating, then something is not right. I suspect your 500 player pieces somehow don't work as they should.

I can't speak for EU, so your mileage may vary if that's where you play. Maybe there actually are Alliances over there with 500 always-on members with absolutely no life at all beyond the game. That seems not only unlikely but grossly impractical for a number of obvious reasons, but I'm not here to debate outliers or lifestyle choices. The other option is that you could be one of those jaded players who didn't join an alliance and found yourself as filler in a bad shard. Rough stuff for sure, but that's a choice you make by choosing to go solo. Or by not caring enough to choose at all. . 

It seems shameful to point this out as I'm sure you should already be aware of this point, but if none of those players que'ing all 3 maps were members of guilds but were all sorted into the same team anyway.... you'd have exactly the same situation even if alliance guilds were capped at 100 or nonexistent. There's an element of randomness in matchmaking which can create 'stacked' teams with excellent coverage just as easily as alliances built for that same purpose. This often happened with links prior to WR.

 

Something else to bear in mind is that success creates success. If your team is winning the PPT, isn't getting stomped in fights, and has multiple tags on multiple maps instead of just one or two.... casuals will play. The fairweather players who won't play in a hard matchup will swam an easy one for bags and gifts of battle. With full populations across multiple maps even casual players can create the kind of relentless PPT pressure that makes a poor-coverage team in an unwinnable situation. That's why you see PPT teams with atrocious KDR climbing the tiers; their squads might not be able to fight, but they have multiple tags to gathers casual players and with enough supply in squad you can siege down/siege up anything. If you're already losing and the filler players don't want to play... you're left with whatever alliance landed on your team. If you thought winning against the odds was impossible with 500 of them on your team, I can assure you it'll be even harder with 200 or less who may have no interest at all in organizing randoms when they had to cull their friends just to play together. 

[Guild Cap for WvW is Too Large!]

Players who aren't in alliances, who aren't in guilds, who don't want guild-based communities or anything remotely like them have no idea what the population is like in many of these alliances.

In most cases, none of them have reached the 500 account cap they're permitted. One, because the guilds which form those alliances aren't big enough or active enough to have that kind of membership in the first place, but also because many alliances also want space to add other guilds at a future date. That means many run less than 400 just to have the freedom to include other guilds without forcing said guilds to kick players to fit. 
 

For many of these guilds having a 'stacked' WvW roster is less important than simply being big enough to be fully inclusive for the players within the Alliance umbrella. They don't want to tell guild members they can't WvW together because there's no room in the Alliance, so every inactive guild member or barely-active WvW'er is usually included as an active roster in the alliance regardless of how much they play. That often means 100+ members don't WvW every week, or even every month... but they're taking a slot regardless. 

What does this all mean?  Put simply, your 500 account alliance ends up having 200 or less 'regular' players, many of whom belong to multiple guilds within the alliance and that overlap fudges the potential numbers to be even smaller in practice. That's 200ish members who, if the alliance had any kind of planning, are separated among multiple prime-times. That means you might, if it's a particularly heavy stacked timezone, see 100 members online at that hour. Is it enough to que multiple maps? Definitely. Will all 100 of these members be available to play every single night at that hour? No. In practice you end up with 50-60 if they're particularly dedicated. More than enough to que a map, more than enough to put pressure on ques for a second map. But not so many that they'll easily overwhelm a matchup by pure numbers. In fact, the singles and non-aligned guilds who fill in the gaps will have just as many, or more, players when taken across all maps as the dominant alliance. 

 

Ultimately the choice to cut Alliance caps ends up having no practical effect on competitiveness of a matchup, but a significant impact on the wellbeing of the existing communities which keep WvW alive. Many of the complaints come from players who were accustomed to the background support of large, interlinked guilds which formed the backbone of their particular servers. They were dependent on that structure for years; relied on them for a stable population base, for guild claims, tactics, buffs and commander tags to rally around or take pressure off of friendly objectives by striking enemy groups/structures. Servers are gone but most of those communities remain, they simply go by the name of an Alliance. The choice to tear down the communities which supported them in the past because they couldn't be bothered to ask for a spot in the new one is beyond me. Literally a choice to bite the hand that fed them. But entitlement is strong with many of these players and maybe that's a reason Alliances is a bad fit for them. Communities grow when their members make an equal contribution to the greater good, most of these players can't be bothered to be that selfless. 

[From Belonging to Frustration: A GW2 Roamer's Journey]

An unpopular opinion, but it seems very obvious to me that if these roamers/defenders formed an alliance among themselves they'd have no problems finding content on a regular basis. Generally these are the most active players in the game mode, frequently playing every day for several hours at a time. More to the point their interest in this particular style of play encourages off-hours coverage by most individual players so the odds that they'll be outnumbered in any borderland is significantly less than alliances which favor zergs in prime-time coverage alone. 

In other words, the only thing holding yourself back from having a t1 dominant community with 100% coverage at all times is an irrational resistance toward any kind of large-scale organization no matter how shallow the obligations might be. The very fact that you don't have to rep an umbrella guild or even be friends with any of the 499 other members of your allied roaming community--just click the guild join and set it as your WvW guild and then ignore the tab from that moment forward--makes me think that the real issue here isn't the 'loss of server identity' but a recognition that camping a tiered objective is harder and/or more tedious when some other group isn't doing all the work for you.