Slow Lightning.4592

its great that you are atlast taking skill lag seriously - its only taken 7 years of players compalining that this is their #1 issue.

I kinda get the keep hardcore's in 1 mode and casuals in another - its not a terrible idea if a format can be found. But the challenge would be a.) how do you define what a hardcore player is (what makes them worthy of being in that tier) b.) are there really enough hardcore players to warrant the tech investment in seperating them...... with a.) the main problem is there a lot of players who think they are better than they are and also there are some casual players who are actually pretty decent..... so the system could not be a voluntary thing... with b. I suspect not. I did often wonder what would happen if they made a 2nd version of EB, one where only rank say 1500 plus could join. Obviously this isnt a 100% indicator of skill (proably not even a 50% indicator) but it would alteast burn off most of the EB dross. but anyways, like I said, WvW cant be designed around the 5% of hardcore players... it needs to be accessible and fun for the other casuals and worse.

Also just to add, If you remove the WSR/Vabbi from the equation - the fights between most of the other servers are actually quite competitive... yes thats because they are less skilled, but the other servers (not all but most) can all put out blobs there are fairly evenly matched. So perhaps the argument is not so much about how to deal with those maybe 5% of 'hardcore' players... its how best to cater for the other 50-70% of players who log in regularly, know what they are doing, but are not 'hardcore'. The other lost % is the dross that cant be helped any which way.

On the Voice coms - im more talking on the practical side.... no one really wants to have to join a different voice coms everytime a different commander or alliance tags up. It just wont happen. And no one is going to go to the effort of setting up a new World voice coms every time the worlds are recast.. maybe the first couple of times but after that no way (unless someone wants to do a business with this along the lines of the wvwintel etc i.e. a centralised world voicecoms hub). So this will lead to yet more skill degradation and widen the gap between larger alliances that can get x people on thier own TS/Dsicord and those that can't. And yes this is bad for 'pro' alliances too - because they will have even less challenge than they do now! Once again im talking about this from a practical POV. I mean say I tag up on World X, what TS do I even use? I have to invent my own or maybe my guilds (less than 60 people)... how do i then convince other people to join it? And then have to do it all over again when ever I want to tag up.... the reality is I wont be able to convince enough people to join that TS and I wont have the patience either and that will mean I wont tag up since I won't be able to create a group that challenges me or the enemy. My point is, voice coms is critical and if we want to promote strong gameplay (whether its casuals or hardcore) it aboslutely needs to be as easy as possible to organise - what i would expect is Anet to acknowledge this and preferrably provide some kind of voice coms platform per world. On server skill, i just think there are definately stats out there beyond just playtime hours that can help them balance the Worlds 'better' i.e. Total Kills / WvW Ranks. Of course you can have bad players with a high kill count etc but its atleast better than nothing. I just think there are basic things that can be done to try and create a balanced field beyond just telling everyone to 'l2p'. There is no fun for anyone in completly one sided fights.

Thanks for your update. I'm curious about two things: Voice Communication. This is currently integral to organised public WvW and the overall gaming experience - currently most servers have thier own TS and/or Discord. In the alliance system, where presumably the Worlds will be re-configured on a fairly regular basis, how will it be possible for all players on a World to have access to a central voice communication system? Worlds with single large alliance(s) may simply impose thier own voice communication on the rest of the World..... this would already put them at a significant advantage to other Worlds who cant organise that or have no sizeable alliance (i.e. fragamented worlds). The setting up / moderation / admin of a TS/discord is not a small task. Has Anet given thought to this.Its mentioned the idea is to create balanced worlds with no skill bias. I play in EU and I can tell you there is already 2 very strong existing alliances who are already fairly organised for this change and who have a high concentration of experienced and skilled players. I dont have a problem with this and credit to these people for caring enough to organise this already.... but my point is there is no way to create a level playing field when its possible to stack an alliance with the best players. Will Anet be looking at a system to somehow ensure that 'pro' alliances are balanced with lesser skilled players on a single world? How will bandwagoining be prevented where 'try-hards' who are not in these alliances simply transfer to that world to leech success of the pro alliance?