Electes.8642

But I still get the sense from you that you've got this singular conception of EotM being only a farming map. I've tried to say here that it was much more than that. EotM had a healthy competitive scene that wasn't in it for the rewards. Outside of xp and karma, the rewards in EotM never surpassed what you could do in PvE. In my opinion, this was and is by design - unfortunately. I'm just saying that pips symbolized Anet giving up on the game-mode. Morale among players is a very real thing. Even if pips didn't affect the game-mode in and of itself, it sure did get us bemused. Many just stopped playing the game entirely, some moved to PvE, some (like me) moved more fully toward WvW proper. Regardless, EotM is dead and there's nothing that's going to bring back the old populations that played there. It's too late. It might be too late for WvW, where many more players are still playing. True. I think Anet will keep it this way because they want "us" to whore out to PvE as much as possible and just leave WvW to die.

Ah, yes, if only Anet would just cater to the PvE story players, the WvW crowd will...uh...have their needs met, too? Hmm, I'm not too sure about this one, friend. The PvE story people are the ONLY group of players whose wants are even remotely being satisfied right now. I'm tired of every other group of player in this game having to bend over for them. Anet needs to cater to WvW players, who y'know, still actually play the game-mode. Lose us, lose WvW completely. And the PvE story people will continue not caring, mixed in with a hefty dose of gloat, as they always have. TLDR: gimmicky WvW events do nothing for WvW.

I mean now because I would consider some of the "recent" changes in WvW to be attempts to help the game-mode. Obviously they've not been enough. Well, I'm glad we finally agree. Not sure if we ever did disagree, since you've just restated my original thesis.

Tournaments were and are overrated, in my opinion. Good for the game? Yes. Made the game-mode? No. Bringing them back won't revert or even stall the decline that WvW's been experiencing the last several years. Thing is, I'm not sure if there is anything Anet can do that will revive the game-mode. I think the game has hemorrhaged too many players and getting them back with small improvements will likely not be enough. The game can't even keep its PvE crowd together, so yeah.

I recognize that on the surface the two don't compute. I own that. However, I've not been arguing that EotM failed because of pips in and of themselves. Rather, when pips were introduced they represented Anet's true position toward "us" (duelers, ktrainers, fighters, w/e in EotM), which was - and is - "lul, go fuck yourself, play wvw." What fucking infuriates me, as I said earlier, is the fact that Anet is giving WvW the EotM treatment now. Okay, ArenisNet, I started playing WvW. Now you don't want us playing WvW, apparently, but shallow PvE content. I mean, c'mon. Despite some changes, WvW is still suffering from stagnant/underwhelming rewards, pathetic attempts at class balance, an unwillingness from Anet to truly overhaul server population because transfers I guess make them money, and so on. I still remember that cringe moment around HoT's launch when Mo pulled a Blizzard's "don't you guys have phones?" and said, "don't you guys play PvE?" For me, fucking nope. I play fractals with guildies and friends, some festival things, and so on, but I don't enjoy it like I do (did, really) WvW. I'm running out of places to enjoy playing the fucking game in. EotM went out the window for me, now WvW is quickly being shuffled to that very same window and it's only a matter of time before it's falling a couple stories and hitting hard concrete. Good thing we've got ZERO new fractals and raids in development to look forward to + brain-dead story content that has gotten more shallow and anemic with every release. Things are really looking up, herp derp. But, yeah. Pips.

Well, seeing as I was a no-lifer who put in several thousand hours into EotM almost exclusively, I'm pretty confident in my opinions about the game-mode. I don't get the sense from you that you were a dedicated EotM player, at any point, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to pontificate about a game-mode you aren't well-versed in. As a commander, I was still regularly leading at least 30+ people throughout 2016 and into early 2017. Past that period of time, the game-mode laid down on its death bed. For me, the game-mode wasn't dead until I couldn't fight anybody anymore, couldn't lead more than a few people, couldn't cap anything efficiently, and so on. None of those things were wiped off the table completely until pips were introduced. The contrast between the EotM before pips, which was already slowly dying, and the EotM after pips is pretty stark. Did the removal of xp hurt EotM? Yeah, no shit. But the game-mode was still healthy afterwards because not every player who played EotM was in it for the levels, as the misinformed stereotype might lead one to believe. People still capped for karma, people still dueled north of Needle, people (like me and many others) still enjoyed zerging against the other big groups. However, all this gameplay pretty quickly evaporated when pips were introduced in WvW, but not EotM. I think this ought to be very clear to anyone who played the game-mode for more than a few sittings.

As an old EotM player and long term commander, I have to disagree with this. It isn't that pips in and of themselves ruined the game-mode, but it certainly was the last nail in the coffin. No gliding, no mounts, and no pips (which meant no real rewards) all soured a lot of EotM players' views on the game-mode, especially its health moving into the future. EotM, for a good 2 or so years, was a healthy game-mode that was doing its own thing. Somebody like me loved fights and so that's what I did for a long time. But once the natural population decline started speeding up with the above triumvirate of no gliding, no mounts, and no pips coming into play (or not, actually), the game-mode that I, and many others, played for fun rather than rewards, just wasn't fun enough anymore to justify coming back in. Again, did pips in themselves ruin EotM? Yes and no. It's funny because a lot of the old WvW elitists when WvW was perfectly populous and healthy hated EotM and its relative success, treating it like a cancer holding the One True Game-Mode back. Now, WvW is getting the EotM treatment and guess what? Continued player decline, continued decline in player quality and commander acumen, continued bungling of class balance by Anet; the list goes on. In my mind, Anet has systematically amputated almost every major and minor game-mode in GW2. Despite what some others might think, EotM was good for the game and provided a pretty substantial playground for players to play in. The game is worse off without it, and it's not the fault of EotM players or WvW players that both game-modes are now in the gutter. It's Anet's for not realizing what they had in both game-modes and them refusing to take the proper steps in keeping up with the game. Anet didn't, and aren't, doing this, and so now everyone is suffering, including the story-line PvE folks. Nobody's winning right now. At some point it's not about rewards. I will play, despite poor rewards, if the game is still fun. This was the case in the past. It's barely the case now since I've become a "proper" WvW player the last few years. Anyways, cheers. I think we all just want WvW to be better, whether we disagree on the game's history, or its future. Hopefully there is a future, at the very least...