Dark.7235

Most WvW centric guilds I know have already completely phased Scourge out of team comps based on the previous and these anticipated nerfs. lol.

Figured out the Caps issue. Also, sorry that's kind of hard to read, just not feeling well today. I did go through and spell check but It was sloppy. LOL. Apologies! If you read through that wall of text good on ya and thanks for entertaining my Ideas as sloppy and poorly as that was written out.

All of this is fine and fluffy. It makes very little difference. The different modes need sweeping massive changes with regular at least quarterly balances.My thoughts are more WvW oriented as over the years I have shifted from PvE and PvP more to WvW. But I have enjoyed all modes over time some to lesser degrees. 1: Make the skill separation between all 3 game modes. Keeping skills static across all 3 game modes have been the balance noose around your neck for 7 years now. Players aren't stupid enough to be confused, give us some credit. You can put minimal effort into explaining the Skill splits between game modes. You have done it with Gear in PvP its really not that much of a difference. 2: Do the same thing in WvW that you have done with Gear in PvP. Stop making players who don't want to PvE do so. Masteries and the reward tracks are a HUGE missed opportunity. You could set up the masteries in a tiered system the Novice track and mastery that complement each other, The Veteran Mastery and Reward tack, the Commander mastery and reward track. Put everything you need and want to unlock in there. This only makes sense! It's an opportunity to introduce new players and to teach and guide them in each game mode. You guys have laid the groundwork and missed the opportunity to do this in EVERY GAME MODE IN THE GAME! Novice masteries and reward tracks unlock Veteran and so forth however far you want to take it. 3: A dedicated WvW dev team and a Dedicated PvP dev team. This is their jobs creating and balancing for the game modes. You have to let go of the 1 game format mindset and break them into what they are and let players enjoy what they enjoy! Quit restricting players into certain places. It's not healthy for the game! Let it be fluid. Let each format be what it's going to be. Nurture and help them grow and develop. Make the game players will enjoy, not what you think they want. 4: Eotm vs WvW. There are 2 different play styles in WvW. K-train and Siege. You have 2 venues for WvW now. Use them. Turn Eotm as the K-train map. Give it all of the same rewards and Pips WvW has, Make Eotm provide supply to Standard WvW just like it does now. Also, allow it to provide DEFENSIVE buffs to Keep and towers and such in regular WvW, Everything done in EOTM is for Open field battles and Karma Training keeps and such. They sky is the limit. The winners in EOTM provides buffs to their counterparts in WvW. On the other side of that coin. In Standard WvW set it up to be a proper Siege war format. Harden Keeps and castles. Balance siege properly. Example, Arrow carts only damage players and not siege. Fix the walls so it's just as easy to defend as it is to assault. Fix the LOS off the edge of the walls. Assign specific roles to classes when defending and attacking. Allow small groups special access and attack on towers and keeps. In the same way that Eotm provides defensive buffs to WvW, Standard WvW should contribute Offensive buffs to Eotm. It should be symbiotic in relationship with buffs, materials, supply, rewards etc. In standard WvW the areas directly around keep towers and camps should have extra tiered PK points. Example standard open field battle sin WvW provide a 1-1 PK. Where at a camp its 1-2 pk. Towers 1-3 PK, and Keeps its 1-4 PK. Where its the opposite in Eotm. Open field zones are PK 1-4, Camps 1-3, Towers 1-2 pk, and Keeps 1-1 PK. This is not the perfect answer maybe just one solution out of many. In other words, reward the players who want to participate in a certain style for playing in that style while allowing players playing a different way to be rewarded too. At times on Each map there should be special buffs put on Keeps that will make enemy teams want to take your keeps. That's where the specific buffs come into play for each mode. Eotm players have an Offensive buff for a set period of time. They can use that buff to hop into WvW and Assault a Keep with extra offense ability for a set period of time, say 15 mins. Vice versa, there is a buff on Eotm keeps that make you want to defend it. That's where your home WvW team comes in with their defensive buff, they can come in and defend and it will provide increased defenses to the keep. This will allow both sets of players to participate in the total war across both sets of maps, doing exactly what they like and it will create a more rewarding dynamic WvW experience for all. The zones are already in WvW for ownership and flying. Assign them PK. Let's talk about adding siege and balancing siege. Siege each needs to have a rock, paper, scissors effect. New siege needs to be brought into the game. Like SIEGE TOWERS. Some siege should have to be built on-site and then carried to the assault site and reassembled. While other types can be flash built as it is now. Assign a group of NPCs' like we have with Siegrazer and allow the player to assign where to carry the equipment and supplies to, now they have to defend the caravan while it travels. This may be another spot you need your EOTM assault team or your WvW Defensive team. Pretty much all walls on towers and keeps should be destructible allowing any angle of assault. If defending is fixed with LOS off the walls and classes have buffs it will balance out. Classes being buffed for WvW, each profession and class should be assigned a defensive or offensive role Via buffs. Example. Rangers and Eles casting off of walls get a 15% "high ground" damage buff to made assaulters jobs tougher. While in assault revenants can have a 15% "Low ground" bonus while attacking a wall. Warriors can provide a 15% damage reduction for up to 10 allied players when assaulting a wall. Make party comp matter. Make each class/profession useful. Remove all NPC enemies from WvW (other than keep guards etc.), Hostile wildlife is ok and should be there. Just no Skritt and Horsemen. There are a lot of innovations being missed, Give each keep a special "Guardian" that can be obtained through advanced upgrades kind of like an ascended upgrade for a keep that is double tier 3 like t6 but it will replace the lord with a very tough legendary champion with special drops, weapons, and armor. This is an opportunity to provide WvW players access to Raid skins and rewards. The incentive to protect and incentive to assault. Reward WvW players for playing WvW instead of punishing them for playing WvW. This would be acknowledging that not all players play all 3 game types, but so what! In the same respect allow access to the PvP and WvW skins to PvE player though world events that simulate WvW and PvP through combat with NPCs. Share it all with everyone. Yes, it should be harder and more time consuming for WvW people to earn Raid skins, Just as PvE players it should be harder to gain those WvW Skins through PvE play. This would allow a natural progression from the PvE aspect of the game to teach and transition players to competitive formats. Go ahead and take the leap and make the 3rd borderland map. Yeah people hated the Desert BL. But a lot of people have grown used to it. Make a 3rd Jungle map with its own caveats just like the Desert Bl. Upgrade the keeps and resize the Alpine map as well. Next. War claw. The war claw I think is a great tool, implemented poorly. Make it work more like a glider. In your own areas you can travel twice as fast and have double the HP. In enemy territory no speed boost with only a skill on the bar that provides swiftness like a bungle with a recharge and a lower base health with another skill on the bar that will give a temporary HP boost or a Break Bar. While working on the maps, the Alpine should have some major updates to reflect the newer style of Alpine/snowy maps with higher peaks and such. Same format they are in just more in line with the newer maps to use gliding effective and slow travel on the maps a little bit. People will hate it for a while but will get used to it. It will have to flow more naturally than the Desert BL. Somewhere between desert and Alpine. It should be this way. The 3 WvW maps should reflect the correct defense and assault difficulty for each Tier. The lowest ranking team getting the most easily defendable while the highest-ranking team gets the hardest to defend map. Tournaments: We need to get back to having tournaments. Not full season tournaments, mini tournaments with special rewards. the rewards are already noted above a lot of the rewards are already in the game. All you simply need to do is what you did before and reward tickets and such for participation. Just something like a quarterly 2-week tournament for each tier of WvW. Coverage. As much as people cry about night time and off hour coverage and back capping you can't remove or lessen rewards for this. It's not fair to the players who can only participate during these times. They need to matter too and be able to fully participate. Hopefully the alliance system or whatever you have in the works will satisfy coverage to some degree. The fact is the players who play in the off time being invalidated or lessened in any way will drive them away from playing, make them salty, and angry towards Anet and your game. It's up to anet to come up with a night time coverage solution that supplies enough players during NA off time to provide an equal level of coverage and participation. I bring this up because due to my current work schedule I am one of those players. I come on about 10pm eastern and play until about 4 Am eastern time. Its possibly time to Merge EU and NA. We all get along in PvE and PvP why is world V World Segregated? Is it a server only issue? You guys are on Amazon servers now. Is it possible to overcome this now? Even if we have to do a megaserver / Multi-server type situation where there can be multiple instances of a borderland or EBG in a given time to accommodate player population dynamically. It might be time for Megaservers in WvW and Eotm. This is just thoughts I have had over the years. I have forgotten many, it's enough to start a discussion. We need real sweeping changes that change the mechanics of WvW and the way players think about it. This also comes a little more back in like where everyone's important and contributing to the war cause. What Anet has with WvW is truly unique and they are missing out on owning the greatest mass battle system in all of MMORPGs currently available. You can't go anywhere else and get the same experience. Some are close, but none are as good or as fun. 5: WvW alliances: Its important how this is implemented. You will still need to provide an overall faction to support. Set up in PvE already is the pact Factions, A good place to start. Who are you fighting for? Create some lore, why is the Pact infighting? Or set it up as the Dragons pacts, create some lore behind that, Jormag Faction, Kralk faction. The alliances have to come together under a banner for a common cause. Just allowing players to create alliances with no common thread or theme is not going to help the game. Can it affect the type of rewards and skins you get? New reward tracks? Different Keep and tower skins? Different siege skins and armor/outfit skins? It has to be tied into the game and the lore to keep it healthy and make sense and most of all for ANET TO MONETIZE WvW and make it PROFITABLE! Anet is missing the boat HUGE on monetizing WvW with WvW orient weapons, and skins, gliders etc.! The point is Anet needs to take some small things and take a chance, then just tell us hey we are discontinuing this item its sales performed very poorly, we will let you keep what you have but moving forward we will be looking at other options. Thanks for your support. 6 Monetizing WvW making its own Viable self-monetizing format. (the same applies to PvP in different application.): First off using the game lore and setting up actual in game lore and factions will allow monetization. Weather is Kurzick and Luzon, or pact, Or Dragons, or Mist wars work WHATEVER you choose. Each faction starts with the base skins. Plain base armor and plain base outfits. (reward tracks to provide) Each tier will provide some visual upgrade to skins (How about new WvW Cultural skin set?) Through tracks and masteries, you can unlock more. Now. This is where you can sell a special Tower "Appearance" upgrades. Special siege "Appearance upgrades" Guild/ alliance uniforms for players. Those dragon Siege skins were amazing! I miss them. Sell Dolyak sinks to represent the guild that owns them etc. Keep selling and making what works and if something doesn't sell then scrap it and try something else. It's not required you represent your in-game faction but if you want to buy the Kurzick appearance pack today for exclusive use in WvW! Or the Order of whispers Appearance pack! Or whatever. 7: Alternate ways to monetize the game not yet explored or barely scratched the surface. Auras. Sell Gem shop auras, Sell them for individual things like mount auras, Mining pick auras, Great sword auras. Make them completely different from Legendary auras. Lesser than Legendary auras. Sell footstep auras, sell dodge auras. Add more hairstyles and more faces. Add lesser make over kits just for faces, skin and eye colors. Anet needs to be a little more adventurous when it comes to monetization. You try it once or twice and if it's a no go you scrap it and try another thing. Players may not want to purchase a total makeover kit so why not give them a smaller change? Combat animation packs for PvE only. If you split the game modes like I said you can take advantage of things like this you have restricted yourself from. You can't sell animation packs when you have WvW and PvP to consider in a game where animation tells define combat. But that doesn't matter in PvE. Lost opportunity. When you sell an appearance pack, for 2000 gems you should throw in a makeover kit free btw, so the consumer can have the opportunity to theme the whole character. Some of your current packages are too pricey. Instead of going for the big bucks break them into smaller bites as well. Give both options. You have done better this but it's something that needs to be done more. Make sure for each holiday there is a new outfit ion the gem shop. Bonus mission packs. Like GW1 had. Go ahead and port some GW1 missions over to GW2 and sell them as a "Historical" Bonus mission pack? Relive the mighty assault on thunderhead keep for $5.00! Relive Master Togo and Mhenlo's battle for Vizunah square! Experience the final battle in Hells precipice with the Evil Litch! Put special weapon or armor skins as rewards. Put them in bundles of 4 for $20$! This game can be monetized to sustain itself for years. I am certain there are tons of things I am missing here! A season pass. Another great Idea! Spend $40.00 for a season pass and for 1 year or 6 months or whatever you want to set it up as, you get all of the New gem shop skins free! Include something like 2 outfits, 1 black lion key a week, 1 appearance pack, one set of mount skins, one set of black lion weapons. Players can still buy them individually, nothing is exclusive. But it's a sub fee without having a real sub. This is a no brainer and a huge missed opportunity. BE GENEROUS with it though. Don't be stingy, Give it real value in exchange for sustained income! I can't justify paying for every Item you drop all year long, but I sure could justify paying 40 or 60 bucks a year for access to all of that new stuff you give a bit more than you would on an item per item basis and you get some sustained income. Its sustained income for anet and a pile of loot and value for the consumer. Break them into smaller chunks by the week or by the month that players can pay a lesser fee, say $10 bucks and they get a small taste of the bundle. You get extra money and players get a little extra value! Does this work Of course, Look at the Borderlands franchise, Fallout, many, many other games. Keep pumping out the living story or Sagas, but make armor, weapon, outfits, mount skins, gliders etc. and put it in that Black lion season pass! Why is Anet missing the boat? What is the marketing team doing? Seriously. WHAT IS YOUR MARKETING TEAM DOING? 9: Guild Wars. The original. Huge missed opportunity. Players are crying for GW remaster or GW 1.5 as some call it. you could resell the whole original game for $60.00. Give it as a free upgrade for people who already own it and slap in the same gem shop stuff you have already made for GW2. Bring GW1 to the GW2 engine. Don't change anything but the textures and models. Keep the engine mechanics EXACTLY the same. Especially with the nostalgia of WOW classic Vanilla. Anet again misses the boat. You might have to hire a whole team to do it and manage it, as long as you monetize it you are good. You can advertise events back and forth. When there is down time in GW2 there could be events in GW remastered. You could probably turn all of GW1 into a mobile game at this point. Again, you would have to hire a team for it. I understand these are likely not possible in the current Anet environment. I just hate to see Anet missing opportunities. Nostalgia in games is a pretty big thing right now. 10: Game mode promotion. Its time anet starts "Hosting" some streamers again. Anet doesn't have to pay streamers, just help support them and promote them along the way. Pick popular WvW commanders and host their fight streams. WvW assaults and big battles. PvE raid teams, and Even Top PvPrs. Create them a little place and showcase, support their websites, videos, blog posts, and streams. Many players are already doing it and have been for a long time. But the Devs could take some time and step in with them and alongside them to help promote the game on social media outlets. The mysterious posters they put out around towns a while back IMO was great! they need to provide them at Gamescons and Comicon's and all kinds of similar outlets. They have clothes, now, they have books, they have sound tracks, they have POPs, get some figures and such out there into the community. Have some models converted to 3D prints etc.? It's easy to get stuff out there today with minimal effort. Heck players are doing it for them! Edit:*I forgot this part.Profession/Class/Elite spec balance team.The profession balance idea was pretty good in the beging, over the years powercreep etc. has muddied the waters. There needs a to be a team for WvW, PvE, and PvP who are dedicated to Balance for that mode. The Rock, Ppaer, Scissors Has fallen into Rock , Paper, Spock instead. I feel it might be a good Idea at this point to have a nonbiased outside entity come in and evaluate the balance in All game modes and make balance suggestions to try and get proper balance back into all of the game modes, making each profession just as valuable in its own way. It might mean drastic overhauls of some professions buit its what is needed in a bad way. The eleite specs should also be a rock paperscisors but it should give a strength agains another class you were previously weak too, but provide weaknes to another profession you were previously strong too. The elite specs have to avoid power creep but keep the chess game moving. The planning I think going into elite specs had more focus on PvE aspects and Lesser on the WvW and PvP sides of things. They filled PvE weakness roles but that created power creep in competative modes. HEXES: Conditions Vs Power.: This has been a HUGE problem since always, Creeping back and forth in competative modes. What is missing is Hexes. At least in a balance role for Competative modes. Hexes is where the gap between power and condi can be bridged. Hexes could be implimented as debuffs for resistence aganst Condi and resistences agaents power and vice versa, Friendly hexes provide buffs against power/condi, while Malicious hexes increase the effectiveness in various ways, or change them in various ways, or apply different conditions. Cracked armor could be brougght in GW2 it help break the power builds while hexes that cast damage per tick back on the caster can control the condi meta. Stealth in competitive modes: Stealth is a very powerful tool in GW2. Its kind of OP with very little drawback and very little counter play. There needs to be a huge balance done to stealth and some way to counter it. Stealth has to have a major drawback to its use. a Heafty speed debufff, a heafty armor debuff, a damage debuff something. Reveal must be viable for all professions to some degree, at this point the only way to balance it is include some bit of reveal in traits. STealth needs to have counters to provide that rock paper scissors play. Right now stealth is just flat OP in competitive modes. Whatever is deciced something MUST change with stealth in WvW and PvP. Its simply far too unbalanced. There is just no viable way to deal with it. Second EditSo I would also love to see something Akin to Alliance battles from Guild Wars brought into guild wars 2. Something between WvW and PvP. Some type of a rush/ king of the hill with capture points but on a larger scale than PvP. PvP has the basic layout Alliance battles did it just needs to be like 18vs 10 with defended and held capture points around a much larger map than PvP has. Somthing to bridge the two competative modes. It could contribute to WvW and Contribute to PvP. It would be amazing!My final thoughts, 7 years in this is one of the best MMOs out there. I am not sure what the block is for Anet, Management, Marketing team, Social team, IDK. They need to step aside from all of that, step away from the way they have done things in the past and become transparent. Let the players know what is going on. Don't set times and releases on things. But let us know what they are trying, let us know what they are testing, when they announce we are testing this, later down the line when it doesn't work just come right out and say, hey, we tried this and it doesn't work because of X reasons. We will move on to another Idea, here is what we are working on now. Go ahead with a Road map. Not a detailed these are all of the things we will do and when exactly you are getting them, more of a quarterly outline of 2020 Quarter 1: Living world Saga 1! The exciting new Saga step will be released, we will be working to include QOL changes to the crafting system, more information as time goes by! If it doesn't make it into the release. Come out a couple of weeks ahead of time and say. Hey folks, we know how you have been looking forward to the QOL crafting update, unfortunately because of time constraints we were unable to have it completed for this release. Instead of releasing it in a rushed buggy state, we have decided to hold it back for 2 weeks or hold it back until Quarter 2 release. Sorry, but hey we will drop everyone a free celebration booster from the gem shop, thanks for understanding folks! Will players be disappointed? Yup, you bet you. Will they understand, Yup most of them will. Most will say hey Anet, boy we were excited for that, but thanks for letting us know it's not going to make it, and thanks for the booster! We will be looking forward to it in the future. Will some rage and get out torches and pitchforks, you. But forget them those are the unhealthy trolls and they aren't helping the community in any way at all. Just don't feed them and move on. The GW2 player community has to be just as supportive as it is negative. Anet has to EARN this though. It not a given. Trust is always earned. The way this Saga announcement was framed was terrible, and it's a mistake Anet should not make again. You have to do a whole lot of reading between the lines to see the value in it. It's exciting, but I have many friends who have been really strong GW2 supporters for years who literally told me, yeah forget that game now after this announcement. The story and mechanics and features of the release needed to have been showcased here. The decision to not move forward with paid expansions should have been addressed. If an expansion is even in the concept phase it should have been mentioned. If elite specs are even remotely on the horizon it should have been mentions. If new weapons for professions are on the drawing board it should have been mentioned. We have known for literally a year that LS season 5 would hit about here. A standard blog post and trailer would have been sufficient. To herald Anets success they should have had a Giant internal appreciation party to pat themselves on the back and waited for the content to drop for the players to pat them on the back. It was organized and put together VERY poorly and provided little to get excited about from the players perspective, simple because so little focus was put on the actual content. You can give generalities and small bites of stuff without giving it all away! If you separate the game modes and develop them independently then there will be constant new content, features, items, something going on all of the time, that alone will create natural constant hype and attention for the game. Anet and NC Soft #1 are businesses and they are here to make money off of us. Separate the individual Devs from that. Just like everyone around you in your ife, some are great and amazing people, some are probably scummy mean people. When criticizing please remember though, separate the devs from the company "A bit" they are employees and have to do what they are told by managers. Agree or disagree, just like all the rest of us. Hold NC Soft and Anet responsible for the short comings and lack of communication and information because the managers and executives are calling the shots. Treat the Devs with respect. This is a business relationship to some degree and it should be treated as such. Respectfully, professionally. On the flipside of that: Message to the Devs. Every player in this community is your customer, each of us should be treated with the same respect you expect and demand. This is a business relationship. I am your customer you are my customer service representative. It's my job to treat you respectfully, it's your job to treat me as your customer. You aren't better than me and I am not better than you. In every business there are bad customers and good customers, there are bad employees and good employees. You aren't any different than any other representative of any other company in any other industry. If we are at Burger King and I and buying a #1 value meal and my order is wrong, in the same respect If you are a salesman at a Lamborghini dealer and I am buying a new Lamborghini. It's a mutually beneficial business relationship. In this case, you are entertaining me, I am paying for you to entertain me. You are building the product I am buying to be entertained. Let's treat each other with respect. You get to work on this game because my money pays for it. I get to enjoy this game because of your work and dedication. Without each other we have nothing here. I dont pretend to know all of the answers, I dont pretend to have the soloutions. What I do for a living is Identify problems and provide possible soloutions. Some work some dont, some should get thrown away some should be put to the head of the list. There is some kind of disconnect here at Anet. they need to work that out. We cant do that for them. I hope they are able to take something I have put here and explore it and make it profitable in some way. Only if its one thing. Some times the best thing is not what the players want. I dont look at things nessicarily from the perspoective of exactly what players want, you have to look at whats good for the game that will support the bottom line and keep it going. Often times the players dont really know what they want. If Anet did every little thing players asked for the game would be an unplayable mess that made little sense, had little balance, and little continuity. On the other hand, they HAVE to get players some oo what they want. Its a very hard balance in some cases. Remember that folks. Thank you for 7 years of Guild Wars 2, Thank you for the 10k+ Hours I have in the first GW game. Thank you for all of that entertainment and fun. You have created a wonderful immersive world that players love, relationships have been built, community's born and died. It's truly a living world in a virtual setting!