Lorx.8507

+1. the backend of this game, especially in server stability, needs heavy work.

opinions of somebody who's run guilds and been server leadership and shit over the years; it's like late af though so it'll be ramble-y. Kind of shotgunning, but re: the above, and the suggestion bits about voice in game, arc in game, etc: This is not an inherently bad kind of suggestion but I don't think it'd actually do a whole lot. Joining a discord is something that is like, really, really not hard. And if people really want to learn how to play (builds/guides/etc) they are likely the kind of person who is smart enough to like, reach out. Metabattle builds are a great source of information definitely, but they're only really useful to people who understand what's going on, ie: aren't new. For the people who need the ground level basics, pub commanders and guild recruitment are generally the way to go atm, as most servers to my knowledge have stopped doing general public training events outside of "raid with the pub tag and learn to not die from experience". To that end there's already systems in-game (wvw lfg) and out-game (discord @here) which people commonly use to communicate and rally. To short it, the kinds of people who would need a suggestion of putting things like metabattle builds, or voice (discord) into GW2 natively, are the kinds of people who likely wouldn't use those resources anyway. I feel you in that WvW needs to be mindful of it's entry-experience and how it treats new players, but from training hundreds/thousands of new kids to the mode over the years, these are features which would not have helped me get people battle ready over that time period. Giving arc to a new player is like giving a gold/min chart to somebody who's in their first 10 games of LoL/DotA. They'll look at it, look back at you, and say "well I know this means things important, a better number is better, but that doesn't change that I don't know how to get there". And it's also not what you should want that player to be focusing on either at that point. They should be focusing on learning what their abilities do, how to not die, where the shop is, etc. Relating back to WvW, this is a whole lot of positioning and learning to value your own life, while learning to work as a team member willing to risk that life for the team. Aka: Learning how to position in a way which lets you support allies/bomb enemies, while not dying, and also being able to follow through on commander's calls to keep with the group and keep doing your job (while still not dying!). There are tricks to this which can be taught in guides, but a lot of where people actually figure this out, especially in 2019, is from learning via experience and feedback from veteran players around them. For people who have watched any WvW vids with commander comms, or maybe that Noody video of famous WvW people, they've probably heard the various styles commanders use to try and influence the players following them to be better. MOBAs need built-in systems to train new players because there's no real way for players to effectively teach each other in games, there's no time to set up voice to each other in a match, it's fast paced, it's action. WvW is not that. There is always time to reflect, to learn, and grow with other players around you. Leveraging the strengths of what makes MMOs unique is what makes them special, and it's what WvW has, that MOBAs don't. The GvG scene is largely dead, again. EU has some going on I think, but most of the NA guilds have retired. It'd be like trying to matchmake LoL 5man groups but only allowing half of NA LCS teams to queue into it, it'd be THAT bad, if not worse. At that point, simply manually organizing scrims, is actually better for those players. This will likely be the case through to next spring, when Roy or somebody tries kicking up something again. If we can even manage that as a community, due to the constant shrinkage. At this point not only is the GvG guild scene dropping off (again), but normal WvW guilds are now dropping in fairly horrific numbers as well. Which is incredibly alarming and I'm hoping Arenanet's announcements this week towards WvW are them realizing just how in danger their mode is, and that they actually put in the effort to deal with it. What the GvG community has wanted since 2012 is really simple: A reliable place to fight. Guild Hall uses PvE ruleset which means the balance is poo (it's also small). EotM/OS only work depending on your relative server colors. OS is actually amazing when you're in the same tier, and if Anet just plopped that arena into a space where it could be accessed for GvG openly across tiers/colors/etc, that's like, solid gold. That's all that's wanted. It has built in stands already for spectators to watch and doesn't have those stupid cannons/brush that the EotM normal fight spot has. These kinds of stats mean largely nothing in a grand scheme. The WvW meta is stale af, but there's just enough build diversity to where (example) strips/damage can vary enough between necro builds, and (example2) healing vs boon application vary enough between guardian playstyles, where these stats can't cross over guild boundaries. Or even necessarily beyond specific rounds. When Fort Aspenwood and Crystal Desert fought each other by bringing everybody they could find on their respective servers who cared to scrim into EotM for a few hours, they changed builds between rounds. To adjust strips v damage, heals v boons, etc, to better suit their needs for that fight. Different guilds will have different start points in this way, with different guilds valuing different things more, depending on what they feel they need. So there's no real good benchmark to try to cross-compare over time. LoL/etc get away with it because builds are all within the game and effectively comparable. you can't choose Ezreal's abilities. He's just always a girl. How you use those abilities gives you better/worse performance. Not only do builds influence heavily what you're doing and to what numbers, but it's also worth noting that WvW is so much more of an...'army' style than a MOBA like LoL/DotA, that individual stats don't always matter to a victory. Aka, while we praise battle heroes of war for sometimes heroic efforts, it's not one guy shooting a billion dudes that wins a fight, its how well his unit actually worked to accomplish their goals through teamwork. And teamwork is not something that shows in stats. If people worked enough as a team to not stand in enemy bombs, do you penalize them by judging their cleanses as inferior to the group which ate that shit and had to cleanse it off? Am I a worse scrapper than somebody running the meme mortar build because he had 6x the cleanses I did, even though that build depends upon not having key functionality (stealth) expected of scrapper in the current meta, which does not graph at all in a way which matters? Ezreal always shoots the same laser bolt, and while it's purpose can change he's always doing the same tasks, to the same ends, thus playing him can be rated against how effective others were at the tasks that are Ezreal. That's not how GW2 works, and it's not how WvW works.

Suggestion: Allow guild ranks with member editing permissions (kick/role moving/etc) to manually toggle somebody's "wvw flag" off. So if a guild wants to use a slot for a new player, and has a quit/less than wonderful current player they would want to trade out, it's possible without kicking the old member or trying to talk/force them into de-flagging themselves. Suggestion: Use metrics like closed/open squad status in addition to squad size and how much of the squad is on the commander's guild/alliance rosters to determine and seperate pubmanders from guildmanders/fightmanders/etc. Having a healthy mix of commanders which want to have a solid small core, vs ones which want to hoover up pubs, is important for both commanders/areas of their respective communities to have what they want. A server with only guildmanders leaves nowhere for pubs, and a server with only pubmanders has no forces other guildmanders would want to actually fight. Heavy difference of kind.

With roles like healing and boon support being so key to be near party members and provide them with what they need while also not being able to specifically target any particular allies, it seems like a huge QoL improvement to be able to see party members in a different color so they're always able to tell where their core party is. Something which would benefit the game system on a core level without much effort.