joneirikb.7506

Curious what do you think WVW should be? My impression from this post is that you only want: * PUG commanders * PUG players And everything else stay away? If so, I'd recommend EotM, that's the one thing it does well.

Aaahh.... now you made me all nostalgic to launch version of Orr... where most of the mobs had CC and condi, and could grab a player, pull them in and ping pong them between 15 other triggering/aggroing mobs, and chain pull you half across the map, leaving you alone, isolated and soon dead. It was glorious. I barely had a chance to experience before the wild PVE hordes cried bloody murder kitten and whine on every relevant social media (ok, and the forum as well...), and it got nerfed into oblivion into the current "hello kitty land" that the rest of OW Tyria already was. So yes, PVE *could* have taught players things like this, and for one very brief moment even did in this specific example. But PVE has always been dumbed down to the lowest skilled, so as to not alienate anyone. I've kept dreaming that they un-nerfed Orr again. And also used the sPvP test-dummy class npc's as enemies in OW, in roaming groups of 2-5. That actually uses simplified but functional pvp builds. Fighting against those would actually teach players some basics for pvp combat. /rant --- Now to add something to the actual topic as well... *whistles* I'm all in favour of letting people pull others into the tower/keep. I'll send 2 gold to whoever can pull someone up over the wall, and then frag them in the air with a ballista!

Both of those came out much later for wvw. I don't remember the exact numbers but something around 1 - 1.5 years after expansion released. So they might even be closer to the next expansion than the one that the feature came with.

I'll admit that my first thought to the topic was: "Why would there be any WvW changes to an Expansion?"

You're in first week/match-up after Re-Link. When all teams are shuffled around, and all match-ups are entirely random. In a couple of weeks, the servers will have won/lost until they're in Tiers with other mostly similar Worlds. It's a bit premature to complain about population balance before the Worlds gotten into somewhat decent tiers. And even then there's so many variables like play time, coverage, fair weathers etc, that you'll probably never see a "fair match" at any given moment.

Pardon the snipping of the quote. Great post btw. I'm trying to imagine what kind of way they would be able to fix the balance around wvw or even pvp at this point, and it just seems hopeless. Like they've dug themselves down so far into the mire of PVE-balance, bloated the system too much, and probably don't have a single Dev left from when they actually designed the original combat system in the first place (when it was still designed for sPvP). The only way I can see them pulling that off, is something as moronic as releasing GW2-classic, which I know they'll never do (even if they where willing to take on all the problems that would cause). And if they did try to actually balance this, I suspect they'd have to start by chopping off the majority of build options, just to be able to reduce things down to small enough a system, that they can handle it. The build system at launch was already complex enough as to be a nightmare to balance. Do you think there is any chance that ANet would even be capable of this? If so would you expect to see all current build option, or would they have to simplify some aspects just to reduce variables to balance around? (To sum up my own opinions: I don't have a problem with Celestial, I have a problem with the builds that can benefit too much from it. I also wouldn't mind removing Expertise/Concentration from it, but I don't think the set is "broken" with them. Also I think Might should be changed as Celestial gains too much from them. I also liked the game much better before 2015/06/23 and the stab change at 2015/03/16)

Which leads us full circle back to: * 2015/03/16 - Stability Change * 2015/06/23 - Hot Build change * 2014 ANet stops balancing around sPvP, and starts preparing for balancing for Raids. So, Roaming been terrible for 8 years ? (I mean, are we really going to say we've been playing this game with terrible roaming for 8 years? Why the kitten haven't we moved on yet?!)

When was the last time roaming wasn't in a terrible state ?

Reading through this thread, the only thing that stood out to me was that it sounds like a lot of people would like EotM better.

I always disliked that reveal was part of specific skills/traits. Always been curious how it would be if reveal was part of the combo system, like for example any combo with Light or Fire fields also reveals players in a certain aoe. Perhaps that's the answer to boons as well? Just make all combos remove enemy boons at the same time. Bring combos back!

As much as I hate necromancers, I can't stop chuckling every time I watch one of those old videos with the fear wall in EotM.... that thing was precious. EotM is definitively a more casual experience than the rest of WvW, for good and bad. The system with a few hours matches, opening and closing maps as population changes and matches runs out of time, actually made it constantly more or less filled. So it was able to basically have constant action, something WvW struggles with. Similarly it's trying to constantly adjust maps to the number of players every couple of hours. In many ways it's like a WvW version of sPvP matches. Combined that with the initial high rewards, and it's clear why it got very popular with the casual players that wanted to try/experience wvw without having to go "try hard". But it's also for those same reasons that EotM mode just didn't fit into WvW proper, and why the majority of veteran WvW players disliked it, because it lacks the thing that ties people together. Having a set community to work/improve/fight/drama/ragequit with. That feeling of progress with rising in racks. Any feeling of continuity, that anything you do matters past loot right here and now. And the longer we go back in GW2 history the more those things mattered to players. So, EotM and the rest of WvW are very much opposites in a lot of ways, even if they seem similar in the basics. I don't think there's any way to really incorporate it that doesn't make it predate on the rest of WvW or visa versa. If ANet added proper rewards to EotM then I'm fairly confident that the majority of pugs/pve players would just go there and ditch normal WvW, which would likely make most server+links struggle to even fill EBG in prime time. (And we'd have a lot of "fight guilds", or perhaps "bag guilds", run after them to EotM for "quality content"). Not to mention that the point system just flat wouldn't work, when each team is 8 or 9 servers mashed together, how the heck would you divide points? Putting EotM into WvW proper, and thus disabling the whole system with dividing servers to the 3 colours, and fill them with with opening/closing maps. And then you're just stuck with a map in WvW that doesn't have most of the things that made it popular in the first place (short matches, filled up as new players from anywhere queue up, constant action). I'd really love to say that GW2 players will play fun content and skip boring content, even if baited with rewards. But the sad truth is that GW2 players in general would sell their own grandmother for some random in-game loot, and do any boring content they can find if there's some shiny behind it. /rant

Tbh, they could just as well just remove the entire runes, and just give us the 6th effect as "relic". Would make an already overly-complex build system, with way too many different sources of stats and bloat, and clean it up a little bit. Not like things haven't been slowly powercrept constantly as it is, needs to get slapped back down every now and then.

It's honestly very difficult to make maps designed around making it harder for more players, And one of the main reasons for that is no collision detection. And THAT has too many other issues, that it's just no way ANet would even consider it. So it would be mostly up to debuffs, mechanics and incentives. Examples: * "Stampede" "Effect", -1% speed per player past 5 within range X (600-1200 somewhere). * Divide the loot/rewards per number of players. 10 players is 1/10 rewards on each player. * Make a "pve mechanic" that discourages group from gathering up. Example have something happen when more than 5 players are within X range of each others (start a alarm of some sort, then drop a bomb that blows them up, have a gigantic T-rex/Godzilla come and gobble people up that's too strong to beat, have natural disasters like earthquakes or floods wash people away and destroy roads etc) * Also liked the above idea of supply, have an effect that reduces supply limit per number of player nearby. So yeah, these would largely not be very popular with most players, because no one likes debuffs, no one likes less of stuff for themselves, and all the veterans get allergic reactions and starts screaming when they smell anything "pve". Also, ANet's "care bear rule", "You should always be happy to see another player (on your team)", so anything that even smells off "No! Get away! You'll ruin my experience if you get close!!!" is out of the picture on a philosophy level. So, nope, they'll never make this game about anything but zerging.

I think a thread (not poll, want reasons, not just a click the favourite) about players listing things they think where fun or unfun with the different maps (as unbiased as they can) by themselves could be interesting. There's a lot of varied opinions on these forums about it, but as usual we tend to have 1 or 2 vocal groups that because they're loud, a lot of people think are the majorities. I honestly expect EBG to be the favourite because it's a mostly flat circle that you can just go around in and find action. That for most players will just be no thinking, no running, closer to instant gratification. But in terms of new maps, I've always expected that the most popular new map they could make, would just be a ring, with all keeps, tower, camps lined up around this ring in an even pattern, with tower/keep walls roadblocking so you need to capture/break walls to go past to the next objective. So you'd have a constant action, 2 front map, where you can basically just see where your swords are on either side and go straight to the action. The majority of veterans and roamers would likely hate it, but the pugs would likely think it was the best thing ever. So be careful what you ask for, ANet might just give it 😛 Personally I've been arguing for years that they should change the way maps works in WvW. Instead of EBG+3 borders, they should focus on making different maps for different play styles. Blob, Zerg (organised), Havoc, Roam, Scout etc. Make different maps targeted at 2-3 of these groups at a time, so people can go to a map that plays the way they want to (instead of the old, transfer to a server that plays the way you wanted, just goes to show how long I've argued about this) /overly verbose

Said this for years, all the players saying they want "Aerial combat, flying, 3d combat, it will be great!" And I've just said "You'd get UW/swimming combat, just in air." And people just go "No!" “SWG is the game where I learned players KNOW what they hate but only THINK they know what they want” -Corwyn Kalenda, SWG

This has been an ongoing "discussion" on these forums over the years. There's a fairly large group that likes downed state, and another fairly large group that is against it. About once a year or so, the devs remember that WvW exists, and flip the switch for the "No downed state event". Which does exactly that, disables downed state for a week. Some love it, others hate it and boycott WvW that week. Like many things in life, it's one of those things you'll never get most people to agree on. Downed State is however a very iconic aspect of GW2, and taking it entirely away feels weird to some. On the other hand, downed state health hasn't been nerfed together with other damage sources. There's also been suggestions about making limits to the number of times you can be raised back up, health penalty for each time for example. Or set a max cap of X to the number that can raise.

Some initial thoughts: - The majority of players in GW2 hates UW combat - Larger maps also means it's potentially harder to find other players (friendly and enemies) - Generally players tend to flock to the usual/same things (zerg objectives), so unless something UW got incredible rewards, I'd expect them to be mostly abandoned/ignored. - ANet barely balance for WvW at all, and I don't think they balance for UW at-all. - They've already said they'll stop making elite-spez for expansions, so I can't imagine they'd go back on that for WvW of all things. - With how much players hate siege and UW separately, the combination doesn't sound popular. - I think the only group that would appreciate this is roamers/havoc squads, that enjoy more options to sneak around the maps (having more ways to get around the entire map UW thus undetected 99%) - Considering a large group of players are complaining that the maps are too "vertical" as it is, and idolize how flat EBG is, I'd expect those players to dislike this. - Changes to maps is supposedly some of the most time and resource heavy things ANet can do, which seems to be why they hate doing it. That said, personally I think more water-ways on Alpine would be interesting, I always loved sneaking around most of the map through water, since no one ever checks it. Personally I don't think much else would be needed though, the other ideas wouldn't do much to me. Considering how little resources is dedicated to WvW, it seems the ANet leadership thinks there is little return for investment into WvW, or even that returns from WvW doesn't need to be invested into. They've all but swore to never make another WvW map again after EOTM/DBL. And the little resources they do put towards WvW goes mostly toward World Restructure, and some hand-waving toward balance to try to knee-jerk the worst problems but not much more. So the first and foremost thing in most WvW veteran players minds will always be "We're not getting stuff for free, what will this take Time and Money away from?" And the answer to that will usually be the entire World Restructure and any future balance/rewards adjustments. You could say that the WvW forums are "overly cynical" and you'd be right, we've been around too long and burned too often to have any "Hopes and Dreams" left in stock.

They already saw this coming, and nerfed the greatest 1 of all 1's, rest in pieces old Guardian Lootstick!

Suggested in the past that they could fix a lot of things in WvW (specific) by changing up siege functions. Say make one of the skills on the AC with 50 targets remove 5 boons from each player hit, and you'd have a direct counter to boon ball, that would needed to be timed to be effective (cd) or even run 2-3 dedicated AC users to cycle through them. Would also make it possible to setup, bait, and trap boonballs inside objectives into AC traps. etc. Since siege are wvw exclusive, they can be changed around drastically without affecting the other game modes. And they'd likely be much more impactful with next to no damage but with other effects instead. (Say an AC with Slow or Chilled on the basic shot to slow enemies down. Poison on shot 2 to stop healing, big boon rip on 3rd)

Just to confirm/clarify, you don't need to do any story past the very first instance to get into PoF maps (and get the raptor mount). You can get the next 3 mounts just by exploring the maps, doing the relevant hearts, and buy them for steadily increasing cost of gold. (Bunny, Skimmer, and the Jackal which isn't required and is essentially optional). Think the only thing you need is enough mastery points to get long leap on the raptor. Unless you want to be creative and find other ways to get over to the bunny heart.

Rough idea that's been thrown around the forum in the past: Make Boons and Condi direct counters, instead of indirect counters? Instead of condi-cleanse and boon-strip/corrupt, apply vulnerability to remove a stack of might, and opposite? Actually making condi useful in zergs, for removing boons.

If ANet is making sure we can upkeep boons with near 100% uptime, and remove most ways to remove boons. Why not just roll all the boons bonuses into stats baseline, and remove boons? At this point, would it really make much of a difference ? (Obviously not all boons like Aegis/Stability can do that)

Probably not a very popular idea, but on the topic of creating something semi-random with some way to affect/counter. They could make the grub etc into more or less invulnerable, that you can move around by fighting against it (enough damage push away), and have them neutralize control over objectives. That way they serve as localized natural hazards, but that you can gather up people and fight off to push it away from your objectives, or toward enemies. (Would have to be a very slow decap though so people have plenty of time to respond)

Curious, should Boon removal only target Stability and Resistance then ? And make it a tool specifically for that, and ignore all other boons? Or alternatively only defensive boons?

(1) Generally like the King of the Hill idea. One note is that the leading team could just throw away the their home map, and dominate the other 3, while the other 2 servers chase rewards in the leader-home. Even with a 100% PPT bonus, it's still 3 whole maps to 1 map x2 points. More if they get the bonus from 2nd map as well. Extreme case, but still worth considering. I'd be looking forward to the salt when DBL became the hot spot. 😉 (2) Like Overwhelming buff as well. Something I saw suggested once that I really liked, was having some kind of visual que to big zergs, so this could also be tied to this. Making a rumble sound as the get close, or some kind of visual dust cloud or slight shaking of screen etc. To just make it easier to identify zergs to avoid them. I liked the idea of being able to notice/feel an elephant stampede coming towards you. And the obligatory half-joke: Add -1% speed per player within X range of you, to simulate how hard it is to run in groups without stumbling or stepping on toes, even on warclaw. 😉 (3) Unsure about Extra pip in squad. While I think it's a good thing to encourage players organising themselves, I see this is just going to end up with "let me join for the pips!" "No if you join we lose the pips!" "No you're just an toxic that won't give me my pips!" etc. (4) No real opinion about Participation Timers. I don't know enough about the rewards system (I honestly never bothered figuring out how it works). (5) Like it. (6) Can't decide what I think about this one. One option could be to tie it to a tactic, and have it change between various instabilities constantly. (7) Agreed.