joneirikb.7506

To add some more anecdotal evidence: My own guild seems to be enjoying the WR, they like having more randomness in enemies to fight against. (Personally I've been playing so little lately that I don't really notice much difference as long as I'm with my guild.) I haven't looked closely at the stats as it hasn't interested me that much, but it would be interesting if we actually had the stats all the way back from launch, so we could have seen just how much the game-mode declined over the years. (Hint: Queue's on 8x3 servers on reset to barely queues on 4x3 servers on reset in NA)

It does match up well with how their game felt at launch, like how they didn't bother explaining or give tutorials on much, because the expected/hoped that other players would step in and fill that role, as a way to make people interact with each others. Clearly they overestimated MMO players... Then counter that with the wacky guild system we had initially where people kicked you for not repping them 99-100% of the time. And then changed into the current one which is more or less a glorified version of the FF14 chat-group system. I'd say they've never had a clear goal of how the social part of the game should work, despite having designed a very well working "low-level-social" open world/game. So I'd say it's as much a mix of them aiming for something, not entirely knowing how to hit both targets, rather than the "old style". Trying to figure out how they got the random assortment of things right or wrong is giving me a headache, I can't find much reason or rhyme to it. Edit: Just to actually add something on the topic: How does this original suggestion really vary from a Guild? Something like a guild that just "auto-pickups" all the guild-less players? Or all players in a Team? Would that just be /Team chat then ?

Basically this already exists, it's called EotM. The only thing it lacks is PIPS. But if we add PIPS to EotM, then normal WvW is honestly dead. So the only real question is: Do you want WvW or EotM? It would be trivially easy for ANet to enable full rewards/PIPS in EotM, but they've also seen in the past what happens if EotM has good rewards (Aka, WvW dies). Personally not for or against either of those options, I just wish people where clear in saying what they actually want.

So the reason they stopped with the old seasons was because they found that some people where burning themselves out for the rewards or the server bragging rights. They decided that they where losing players (permanently) on it, so they stopped the seasons. So it's unlikely they're bringing back anything like it until they feel they have a good enough system to make sure players doesn't do that again. Personally I wouldn't assume they come back at all, since I can't imagine them being able to find a good way to add "good" rewards for winning that wouldn't just cause a total kitten-show.

The core design of the WvW mode works against this basically. You'd have to change how WvW actually works to get solutions that actually fills maps, since in order to do that you have to abandon the concept of teams and matches. The simplest solution to it would be to just add rewards/PIPs to EOTM, and replace the map with EBG. Toss in Glider+Mount. But at that point, it's not WvW any longer. If the goal is to just fill maps as good as possible at all times, then the WvW 24/7 team based score system is a hinder. So it's more about "What is the goal/most important thing. And what do we throw under the bus to accomplish that goal?".

Essentially there's not any GOOD solutions to this. ANet could setup a bunch of 3 servers/teams earmarked for AUS, and have people on the NA server somehow mark themselves as AUS, and have those people sorted to those specific servers. Those servers would still be located in NA so ping as usual. And then all of NA and AUS would just have that much less coverage, meaning even less activity in each new sub section's off-time. So if you where playing on the New-AUS and ended up playing in the middle of the night, it would likely be just entirely dead.

Interesting mental images of defenders throwing dead bodies over the walls, so thieves can't revive them inside. Or Monthy Python style loading the bodies on catapults and launching them together with the dead cows at enemies. I approve. Or bay, throw bodies into the water to feed the sharks.

Well, I mean, EOTM is an option. It's designed to fill maps at all times.

Question: Are you talking about: * ANet just setting up a couple of new "servers" on their existing Amazon hosting located in USA, designated for Aus? * ANet investing into a new data center to host servers in Aus to place a couple of servers there? Because those two are very big differences in investment of money. ---- But anyways, you basically want Aus prime time to be full for Aus players, and don't care about off-time ? If ANet made a couple of own "servers" on the NA hosting, or rather let people mark themselves as Aus somehow on the NA servers, I guess that would "work", though it would generally make all servers feel more empty outside of prime. So pretty sure you'd get a lot of different opinions about that. I don't think there are any "easy" fixes to this, and real fixes to this would be a lot of work and probably change the way WvW works as a mode.

Very valid points. Best I can come up with for counter argument, is that it would limit the area of operations to closer around WP's, making upgrading and protecting WP more important, to add something back into the strategic play of the game again. 🤣 That's certainly an argument!

I'll admit, at this point, I think the only way ANet could drag me back to buying gems, is if they gave me an Gemstore option to make all other players appear in basic starter gear on my side or some such. It's the only cosmetics I want, ways to disable all other players "fashion". Disable colours, mount skins, glider skins, whatever the ugly glowing stuff is, outfits, and just override all their skins with basic starter skins. (The competitive mode option goes a little too far and makes everyone look entirely the same. As does the model limit at bottom so everyone looks like walking potato sacks, I'd like to be able to recognize a character without all the glittercrap.)

The way to skip WvW is to buy the legendary of the TP, works for most of them, is generally faster and often times same price or even a bit cheaper.

I personally would be ok with a trade system. As long as the game has all the options for me to hide/disable all those ugly clown-suits/clown-weapons, so I never have to see the ugly attention crying stuff people call "fashion" in this game. But realistically ANet seems dedicated to stick to their current system that players should have to participate in every part of the game (including WvW and PvE map completion) to craft a legendary. And they've already added a way around it by letting you buy/sell most of the legendary weapons on the TP. So I don't expect this to ever change, so sorry to say but I do find the requests for changing this to be futile.

Responding mostly because I hate sports comparisons to WvW. But basically with the shifting population due to timezone activity and player morale, WvW is never going to be able to become "balanced" in that way. So by that definition then "Fairweathers" is a bigger problem than people jumping on alt accounts or even transferring back in ye olde days. As after getting your zerg killed about 2 times, half of the players just leave wvw, that's always going to affect numbers far more than Alt accounts ever will. I do think that organised mass use of alt accounts CAN be a problem, but it's not going to be a systematic problem to the same degree that oldschool transfer "Band-wagon" could be (not talking just single guild transfers here, but a proper band-wagon, when 2-4 organised guilds transferred together and dragged with them other players, and basically took over a server).

He saying that he's fine with classes having some "training wheels builds", as long as they go up to say 7/10 in efficiency. But not when it goes up to 9/10 or 10/10. Once you go into the 8-10/10 range they should take effort and skill, as that is how the combat system was originally designed for/around. Most players, when playing a game enjoys improving themselves, and being able to see themselves get better at things. And skill-based games are built around rewarding that in various ways (not specifically through "rewards", but as self satisfaction and enjoyment of accomplishing things you didn't before etc). GW2 has slowly lost bits of this over the years, as the original vision feels more and more washed out. If you just make the "training wheels build" into the "end of builds", then the remaining players that enjoy the skill based combat system (that separated gw2 from all its competitiors back then) are likely going to just get tired/bored and quit/fade out. That usually includes most commanders, dedicated/organised guilds and players in wvw, as well as most of the people that makes guides for people in pve etc. It's generally a bad thing for the entire playerbase to lose veterans, we've already noticed it a LOT in WvW, where we already have very few of the original and skilled players we used to have. Sad to say, but WvW already feel like a sort of kindergarden compared to what it used to be, and we're never going to get back to that point in time, but further eroding away at any kind of skilled play/disgruntle more veteran players, is just going to make the play worse for everyone that enjoys the mode in any way.