Etheri.5406

lul. 5 years of bullying everything that isn't casual. 5 years of next to no content for anything that isn't casual. 5 years of being told you're elitist the moment you aren't casual. And you're suprised that now - now players are mostly casual? surely you grasp how this works. That's my entire point. You get how this works. "No there are no problems - anet has perfect measurements, you're not a majority and your feedback isn't relevant!" Problems don't get resolved, feedback isn't even welcome until players who face the issues get fed up and leave. And you continue to pretend there are no issues; yet the state of the game doesn't improve. Not sure if serious.introduction of fractals during vanilla and the constant rework needed to make them widely acceptable and played (larger difficulty tiers, better rewards, etc.)The outrage after HoTs release and the subsequent nerfs for that open world content across the board multiple times.introduction of raids with HoTdifficulty of story content starting HoT versus vanilla (and the subsequent nerfs to said content to make it complete-able) Was all done to add some diverse content. It always was a fraction of the total content. Logical conclusion: the vast majority of players was/is casual. You are taking assumptions, mix them with questionable facts and then deliver painful conclusions. I never said Arenanets approach or metrix are perfect. I am not as arrogant though to assume they are wrong on everything all the time (which is essentially what you would have to prove if you want to show that the game was not designed as casual MMO). Nobody was bullied into leaving the game. People left because they did not find what they were looking for in GW2. That's not being bullied out of a game, that's realizing the game is not to ones liking. I could go over to the WoW boards, start complaining that WoW could be such a great game without gear progression, show how gear progression was slower during vanilla, complain and demand that Blizzard stop devaluing gear and stick to 1 final max rank tier. I would get laughed out of the forums. Blizzard designs their game around their player bases demands. Similar to Arenanet. You are part of a niche segment, so am I. I have accepted this in GW2 and knowing the game would suffer if the focus were put on only stuff I want, I'm happy with knowing the game is quite casual.Everything that isn't casual is niche now; this was far from true on release. The tendencies have shifted very heavily towards casuals; and ultimately it mostly makes the game worse. I do remember HoT being "too difficult". By this I mean appearantly that was a bigger problem than various gamemodes including S1 pvp and WvW as a whole being literally unplayable. Guess what was fixed first? ;) And i'm sorry but stating concerns aren't valid because you're not a target group is bullying. It's literally the majority / stronger group saying "we do not care about your concerns". Then again, you actually believe gw2's community is "friendliest mmo community"- I'm out.

The question is, how did hardcore pve players not see it coming? I remember asking for wvw and being told this is a pve game with some pvp balancing. More and more wvw players - especially hardcore oriented ones - quit as it's clear there is little to no love for them and the same players say "see, everyone loves pve!".Then the exact same happened to PvP. And we lost those players too. And now everyone goes "pvp is very awful and toxic" as we replaced the original community that enjoyed the mode with players who mostly do it for rewards; and matchmaking struggles more than ever with a lack of players. I mean obviously raids is the next step; what else is there? There is no other hardcore content that has been the focus - ever - and GW2 has become super casual and carebear oriented in the last 5 years. You make a thread about more difficult content and you'll get a LOT of players saying no, this content is too hard and most players aren't interested in challenging content. Each time, we use the argument that "a majority of players doesn't do this content" to invalidate the opinions of a (large) minority of our population...Which makes the majority bigger and the minority smaller - something used as "proof" by the majority for their statements.But the overall group? The overall group lost a niche and diversity. But hey, who cares about those right? Toxic elitists anyways! The game is hardcore casual, and anything that isn't will eventually get bullied out. I mean they're "toxic elitists that make the game worse". (Not really, the game becomes more toxic and elitist with less hardcore players, as it's harder for hardcore players to find appropriate people to play with and the overall skill level drops.) You should have seen it coming. You should be more pragmatic like WvW or PvP players. You expect to get NOTHING, and if you get something you're happily suprised. Then again, most pvp and wvw players quit too ;) I know that but those players had hope since new raid and fractal was announced. Then they said that new raid will be relesade next patch (so there are fewer time between new content) and fractal wasnt what they were looking for. That means that they will return once new raid wing is here (next patch). And anet showed us that they can make easy fractals with "dungeon feel" like many fractal players that dont enjoy new fractals wanted and still make it entertaining for hardcore players. Example can be reworked molten boss. This fractal is pretty easy with no hard mechanics and bosses but it is still entertaining to hardcore players. The reason is that you actualy can make huge time diference with good strategy and skipping. On the other hand there are not that many options to make deepstone faster and there is basicaly not any danger. Basicaly deepstone is almost solid ocean that takes longer time (but i have to say it looks beautiful). GW2 was always casual. There was always some harder content but the majority was casual. Why did they ever assume that raids would be a focus? It was pretty clear from the beginning that raids will be a side project. GOOD. This is exactly what I needed. This is why GW2 won't retain veterans and hardcore players. You know on release, WvW had a huge population. And PvP did too. And they also both had some issues ... Yet casuals already stated "hey we're slightly bigger and you should cater to us first!". It tooks YEARS to adress the issues with these modes, and many players quit.And then the casuals go "HEY LOOK, we're more see we're right GW2 is a casual game!"But the result was losing lots of players and a diverse community. And you've kept it up for 5 years. Everyone, anyone, that asks content you'll say "hahaha no we've always been casual". Yeah, no. Open world pve was always casual, which was... one aspect of the game. PvP's design is WAY too difficult for a "casual" game. And WvW's design? For casuals? Some aspects, maybe. Yet it's drastically worse when only casuals play it. And fractals and raids are the same. The toxicity only increases. First off, the pvp scene was never big, it was barely alive except for 1-2 months after vanilla release. So there goes that out the window. Second, yes WvW was bigger in the past and yes WvW needs more love. WvW also was never hardcore but a mix of casual mass zerging and organized groups. The same WvW for over 6 years will lose out on players. I have firends in their 3-4k WvW ranks. Most of them did not quit due to how easy or hard WvW is but due to lack of content. This has nothing to do with casual or hardcore content development. Third, there was only open world pve up until HoT. Even dungeons were never hard. People were simply under geared the first 3 months after release. PvP was much, much bigger than it is now. But yes, it has pretty clear issues with balance and no matchmaking back then. Still, PvP's issues are only getting worse as the game gets more casual. Yes, WvW needs more love. WvW was a healthy mix of hardcore and casual. And who quit? Everyone half hardcore. All the organised groups. Half the pugmanders that lead those mass zergs. The same WvW for 6 years is perfectly fine if it's not designed for casuals and completely ignored, but it was. And you know what PvE players said? Screw WvW, it's not important there's more pve players anyways. And here we are. You see WvW did not need "content" in terms of new fluffy stuff, maps, gliding, mounts, all that casual stuff. It did need balance, support, improved coverage / ppt fix. So when we get casual oriented stuff like ... a wonderful looking desert bl that they demand, that doesn't function, that ruins PPT balance and is impossible to fight for objectives at an even scale then yeah, i'd say it's catered and demanded by casuals. If wvw gets gliding and reward updates, which are then further updated to promote afk-ing, low level gameplay and not winning, active or good gameplay then i'd say yeah catered to casuals rather than the veterans issues which -still- aren't fixed. It's almost as if EU was telling anet coverage-based PPT couldn't work 5 years ago. Alliances coming soon and they still won't consider fixing it ;) I'm not comparing toxicity in GW2 to other games. I'm comparing toxicity in non-openworld PVE. The elitism in WvW between casuals and vets has definitely increased drastically. Similar for raids and fractals in my book. Most definitely for PvP. lul. 5 years of bullying everything that isn't casual. 5 years of next to no content for anything that isn't casual. 5 years of being told you're elitist the moment you aren't casual. And you're suprised that now - now players are mostly casual? surely you grasp how this works. That's my entire point. You get how this works. "No there are no problems - anet has perfect measurements, you're not a majority and your feedback isn't relevant!" Problems don't get resolved, feedback isn't even welcome until players who face the issues get fed up and leave. And you continue to pretend there are no issues; yet the state of the game doesn't improve.

Nobody denies that but it's still too less content for a lot of players in their niches. Btw. it's the same with other MMOs. Developers cannot deliver content in a pace that can keep up with players playing it and not getting burned out due to hardcore playing. We just need to take a look at the few known raid streamers. They raid out-and-out, no wonder ppl getting bored and leave the game. Has nothing to do with impressing someone. It just means that some of us (probably you as well) have killed most of the bosses more than hundred times now and that's what makes them boring after playing that often. See, and that's more a subjective thing and not objective since I find VG so freaking boring no matter what tactic I have played or seen so far. He was cool when he was introduced but not any longer years after.Also, pugging raids is aids for me in non-high-kp groups while fractals "can" be fun (they must not). Just an attitude thing. Again subjective, for me raiding is mostly for rewards and a lot other people as well. They do their daily clear (most often with fun) and then don't touch them again till next week. @Vinceman.4572 said: Nobody denies that but it's still too less content for a lot of players in their niches. Btw. it's the same with other MMOs. Developers cannot deliver content in a pace that can keep up with players playing it and not getting burned out due to hardcore playing. We just need to take a look at the few known raid streamers. They raid out-and-out, no wonder ppl getting bored and leave the game. I don't belong to that group, of course I want to play challenging content but I also play the things at festivals, doing achievements and crafting stuff like legendaries etc. And since I'm not online for about 12+ hours a day (like some of the above mentioned player) I don't burn out that fast on distinct content. My niche is "ANY COMBAT" that is challenging. I've gotten 0 challenging content other than W5. WvW has gotten nothing. PvP has gotten nothing. In fact they get drastically worse as veterans and guilds quit in both modes. PvE is as you stated, new fractals aren't challenging. That leaves W5... I'm not saying "there isn't enough pure raid content". I'm literally saying there is almost NOTHING except for pure casual content in the last year +.I get it, if you grind 12 hours a day obviously you'll be repeating stuff. I'm not grinding 12 hours a day, and i haven't seen much "new" stuff. Have you? I've seen W5. Nothing WvW. Nothing PvP. Nothing difficult anywhere else. It's not like i've done W5 three times daily for the last months. There just really hasn't been any challenging content in a really long time. And there won't be more.

If you don't think overall content-cadence has decreased over the games lifespan then I think we've been playing a different game. I think the quality of PvE updates has gone up, and overall quality, direction and amount of content has drastically gone down. Well, it's rather obvious that you just haven't played enough raids till now and are just not burned out there compared to fracs. I have over 1k LIs and almost all of the wings are just boring stuff like repeating T4 fracs. Be honest with yourself, there's no challenge at beating VG, Gorse or KC than doing TO, SO or others.When pugging raids it's the same with T4s. Either you pick high LI/KP raid groups (equalized to t4 meta pugs) or you'll struggle a lot as well with trash chronos, trash druid/healers and abysmal dmg numbers.And to be fair: Raids got easier as well... Yes and no. I'm near 1k li too; i'm not impressed. Content gets "grindy" a lot less quickly if i'm not full AFK. I don't repeat escort and trio 100 times. In fact, I think i did escort once (?) since PoF. I'll pay for a KC opener rather than do escort. But trying out new strats, tactics or classes on bosses can be fun. I'm not pretending VG or KC are difficult. I am saying VG is still more entertaining than literally any non-cm fractal. I'm saying i'm the kind of person that has done dhuum cm several times after having done the achievement to help others / out of boreddom / ... Also, the player quality at high LI is still drastically better than anything in non-cm fractals too. I agree raids are too easy and got far easier with insane powercreep and ignoring every mechanic in the game, etc. But I can't solo them. Well, except river. And honestly, solo'ing river was good entertainment ;). Meanwhile T4 fractals are ... solo carrying 4 players if you join pugs. Decent but mostly grindy if you join CMs + T4s. So really, the only thing that exists is CMs. I do stuff for fun, not the rewards, and frankly can't stand redoing regular T4's with how dull they have become. If I want to grind dailies to look pretty, I've got a long list of well-suited asian MMO's.

The question is, how did hardcore pve players not see it coming? I remember asking for wvw and being told this is a pve game with some pvp balancing. More and more wvw players - especially hardcore oriented ones - quit as it's clear there is little to no love for them and the same players say "see, everyone loves pve!".Then the exact same happened to PvP. And we lost those players too. And now everyone goes "pvp is very awful and toxic" as we replaced the original community that enjoyed the mode with players who mostly do it for rewards; and matchmaking struggles more than ever with a lack of players. I mean obviously raids is the next step; what else is there? There is no other hardcore content that has been the focus - ever - and GW2 has become super casual and carebear oriented in the last 5 years. You make a thread about more difficult content and you'll get a LOT of players saying no, this content is too hard and most players aren't interested in challenging content. Each time, we use the argument that "a majority of players doesn't do this content" to invalidate the opinions of a (large) minority of our population...Which makes the majority bigger and the minority smaller - something used as "proof" by the majority for their statements.But the overall group? The overall group lost a niche and diversity. But hey, who cares about those right? Toxic elitists anyways! The game is hardcore casual, and anything that isn't will eventually get bullied out. I mean they're "toxic elitists that make the game worse". (Not really, the game becomes more toxic and elitist with less hardcore players, as it's harder for hardcore players to find appropriate people to play with and the overall skill level drops.) You should have seen it coming. You should be more pragmatic like WvW or PvP players. You expect to get NOTHING, and if you get something you're happily suprised. Then again, most pvp and wvw players quit too ;) I know that but those players had hope since new raid and fractal was announced. Then they said that new raid will be relesade next patch (so there are fewer time between new content) and fractal wasnt what they were looking for. That means that they will return once new raid wing is here (next patch). And anet showed us that they can make easy fractals with "dungeon feel" like many fractal players that dont enjoy new fractals wanted and still make it entertaining for hardcore players. Example can be reworked molten boss. This fractal is pretty easy with no hard mechanics and bosses but it is still entertaining to hardcore players. The reason is that you actualy can make huge time diference with good strategy and skipping. On the other hand there are not that many options to make deepstone faster and there is basicaly not any danger. Basicaly deepstone is almost solid ocean that takes longer time (but i have to say it looks beautiful). GW2 was always casual. There was always some harder content but the majority was casual. Why did they ever assume that raids would be a focus? It was pretty clear from the beginning that raids will be a side project.GOOD. This is exactly what I needed. This is why GW2 won't retain veterans and hardcore players. You know on release, WvW had a huge population. And PvP did too. And they also both had some issues ... Yet casuals already stated "hey we're slightly bigger and you should cater to us first!". It tooks YEARS to adress the issues with these modes, and many players quit.And then the casuals go "HEY LOOK, we're more see we're right GW2 is a casual game!"But the result was losing lots of players and a diverse community. And you've kept it up for 5 years. Everyone, anyone, that asks content you'll say "hahaha no we've always been casual". Yeah, no. Open world pve was always casual, which was... one aspect of the game. PvP's design is WAY too difficult for a "casual" game. And WvW's design? For casuals? Some aspects, maybe. Yet it's drastically worse when only casuals play it. And fractals and raids are the same. The toxicity only increases. So your argument does NOTHING but alienate and indirectly flame everyone non-casual in this game. "This game is for casuals and everyone else is a negligible minority" has been repeated for years. And the result? Toxicity and a drastic decrease in playerbase and diversity. Keep up shouting the game is for casual players. Keep implying others are irrelevant, it'll help you I swear. It'll totally make gw2 the greatest game ever :astonished: I don't expect raids to be a focus. I know that the non-casual aspect of GW2 is dying in all gamemodes (well, truth is many aspects are honestly full dead) and many of the issues the game faces with these contents are because of that. Most of the issues in WvW, PvP, raids and fractals nowadays are just issues that arrised because of the veteran population leaving. This thread is proof of it. I don't expect a "raid focus". I do wish that I wouldn't get random casuals attacking everything that isn't their prefered content telling us we shouldn't get it, because the game is for them. :)

The question is, how did hardcore pve players not see it coming? I remember asking for wvw and being told this is a pve game with some pvp balancing. More and more wvw players - especially hardcore oriented ones - quit as it's clear there is little to no love for them and the same players say "see, everyone loves pve!".Then the exact same happened to PvP. And we lost those players too. And now everyone goes "pvp is very awful and toxic" as we replaced the original community that enjoyed the mode with players who mostly do it for rewards; and matchmaking struggles more than ever with a lack of players. I mean obviously raids is the next step; what else is there? There is no other hardcore content that has been the focus - ever - and GW2 has become super casual and carebear oriented in the last 5 years. You make a thread about more difficult content and you'll get a LOT of players saying no, this content is too hard and most players aren't interested in challenging content. Each time, we use the argument that "a majority of players doesn't do this content" to invalidate the opinions of a (large) minority of our population...Which makes the majority bigger and the minority smaller - something used as "proof" by the majority for their statements.But the overall group? The overall group lost a niche and diversity. But hey, who cares about those right? Toxic elitists anyways! The game is hardcore casual, and anything that isn't will eventually get bullied out. I mean they're "toxic elitists that make the game worse". (Not really, the game becomes more toxic and elitist with less hardcore players, as it's harder for hardcore players to find appropriate people to play with and the overall skill level drops.) You should have seen it coming. You should be more pragmatic like WvW or PvP players. You expect to get NOTHING, and if you get something you're happily suprised. Then again, most pvp and wvw players quit too ;) Well, to be fair the fractals released before Deepstone was actually nice for hardcore players. Nightmare, Shattered Observatory and Twilight Oasis are all on the "challenging" side of the spectrum (when it comes to fractals), even without counting the CM the first two offered. Also Hall of Chains features pretty solid bosses, if only two of them. So I don't think ANet have been neglecting the their hardcore playerbase. At least not yet. If the next raid wing turns out to be a joke and if the new fractal releases are all similar to Deepstone, then I'll agree. Currently, I don't see a real reason to complain. I mean, sure, I'd like it better if DS was another cool fractal with good bosses that you actually had to pay attention to. But it's OK to release less hardcore content as well. There are players seeking that, too.Give it time, it'll sink in ;) I agree W5 was nice. I think the fractals are high level content but their difficulty across the board, even the newer ones, is lower than doing fractals when they were released in the vanilla game. Don't forget people ALWAYS struggle with new content before they figure it out. I'm not saying anet doesn't care at all. I'm sure they do. I just dont' think it'll be enough to keep most veterans entertained. In fact, sorting my guilds on "time since last login" tells me it isn't.

The question is, how did hardcore pve players not see it coming? I remember asking for wvw and being told this is a pve game with some pvp balancing. More and more wvw players - especially hardcore oriented ones - quit as it's clear there is little to no love for them and the same players say "see, everyone loves pve!".Then the exact same happened to PvP. And we lost those players too. And now everyone goes "pvp is very awful and toxic" as we replaced the original community that enjoyed the mode with players who mostly do it for rewards; and matchmaking struggles more than ever with a lack of players. I mean obviously raids is the next step; what else is there? There is no other hardcore content that has been the focus - ever - and GW2 has become super casual and carebear oriented in the last 5 years. You make a thread about more difficult content and you'll get a LOT of players saying no, this content is too hard and most players aren't interested in challenging content. Each time, we use the argument that "a majority of players doesn't do this content" to invalidate the opinions of a (large) minority of our population...Which makes the majority bigger and the minority smaller - something used as "proof" by the majority for their statements.But the overall group? The overall group lost a niche and diversity. But hey, who cares about those right? Toxic elitists anyways! The game is hardcore casual, and anything that isn't will eventually get bullied out. I mean they're "toxic elitists that make the game worse". (Not really, the game becomes more toxic and elitist with less hardcore players, as it's harder for hardcore players to find appropriate people to play with and the overall skill level drops.) You should have seen it coming. You should be more pragmatic like WvW or PvP players. You expect to get NOTHING, and if you get something you're happily suprised. Then again, most pvp and wvw players quit too ;) I know that but those players had hope since new raid and fractal was announced. Then they said that new raid will be relesade next patch (so there are fewer time between new content) and fractal wasnt what they were looking for. That means that they will return once new raid wing is here (next patch). And anet showed us that they can make easy fractals with "dungeon feel" like many fractal players that dont enjoy new fractals wanted and still make it entertaining for hardcore players. Example can be reworked molten boss. This fractal is pretty easy with no hard mechanics and bosses but it is still entertaining to hardcore players. The reason is that you actualy can make huge time diference with good strategy and skipping. On the other hand there are not that many options to make deepstone faster and there is basicaly not any danger. Basicaly deepstone is almost solid ocean that takes longer time (but i have to say it looks beautiful).Fractals were more difficult when they were released with a maximum level of 50 than they are now. All content in GW2 must progressively become easier. Even without gear progression, through insane powercreep and nerfs to allow casuals to "progress" without getting better at the game. This isn't really a design point of view, but it's a clear common demand on both reddit and the forums. I think many aspects of fractals have drastically improved (See : new swamp) and the quality of the encounters is much better than it used to be... Fractals are nowadays mostly a daily geargrind full of players who do it for the rewards with little to no interest in the challenge, fun or the rest of the group. The exact same issue we have in WvW, PvP and many open world events. Players prefer to do istan because the rewards. SW because the rewards. Afk pipfarming in wvw and pvp because the rewards. Meanwhile negatively impacting the fun and enjoyment of the game. I enjoyed GW2 as a game where I could focus on being competitive and improving rather than grinding better gear. Yet... the longer the game goes on the more players demand repetitive grinds over fun content because "muh rewards" and "fashionwars2". Nowadays fractals are mostly a daily geargrind full of players who do it for that - the rewards - with little to no interest in the challenge or the fun. As a result, i've long given up on them. I'd rather redo raids for the 6th time or sit in pvp queue for 10 minutes than do non-cm fractals. I can live with repeating content. I can't live with constantly repeating content that is only getting easier, with players who only get worse as the content gets easier, only to see what was once organised and fun become a daily clownfiesta and frankly frustrating to do.

The question is, how did hardcore pve players not see it coming? I remember asking for wvw and being told this is a pve game with some pvp balancing. More and more wvw players - especially hardcore oriented ones - quit as it's clear there is little to no love for them and the same players say "see, everyone loves pve!".Then the exact same happened to PvP. And we lost those players too. And now everyone goes "pvp is very awful and toxic" as we replaced the original community that enjoyed the mode with players who mostly do it for rewards; and matchmaking struggles more than ever with a lack of players. I mean obviously raids is the next step; what else is there? There is no other hardcore content that has been the focus - ever - and GW2 has become super casual and carebear oriented in the last 5 years. You make a thread about more difficult content and you'll get a LOT of players saying no, this content is too hard and most players aren't interested in challenging content. Each time, we use the argument that "a majority of players doesn't do this content" to invalidate the opinions of a (large) minority of our population...Which makes the majority bigger and the minority smaller - something used as "proof" by the majority for their statements.But the overall group? The overall group lost a niche and diversity. But hey, who cares about those right? Toxic elitists anyways! The game is hardcore casual, and anything that isn't will eventually get bullied out. I mean they're "toxic elitists that make the game worse". (Not really, the game becomes more toxic and elitist with less hardcore players, as it's harder for hardcore players to find appropriate people to play with and the overall skill level drops.) You should have seen it coming. You should be more pragmatic like WvW or PvP players. You expect to get NOTHING, and if you get something you're happily suprised. Then again, most pvp and wvw players quit too ;)

Meta comp plus lots of experience. Supports breaking the CC bars instantly, excellent boon coverage, strikers focusing entirely on dps. The shocking part isn't how much difference does that make, the shocking part is non-meta parties are trying to do the same without understanding even a tiny bit how and why it works. On point. Unfortunately many players are used to copy pasting builds (just like in other MMOs) and using those in all the game modes. Few understand that this simply does not work in GW2 most of the time, definitely not when playing specialized builds which are designed to synergyze with the team composition. @Cyninja.2954 said: Meta comp plus lots of experience. Supports breaking the CC bars instantly, excellent boon coverage, strikers focusing entirely on dps. The shocking part isn't how much difference does that make, the shocking part is non-meta parties are trying to do the same without understanding even a tiny bit how and why it works. On point. Unfortunately many players are used to copy pasting builds (just like in other MMOs) and using those in all the game modes. Few understand that this simply does not work in GW2 most of the time, definitely not when playing specialized builds which are designed to synergyze with the team composition.Fortunately even the cookie cutter standards without understanding are typically better than almost any "non-meta" fun build you see around.copy pasting builds >> self-invented longbow ranger, signet warrior and minion master reaper. Especially since it links to a different attitude. One of players valuing how good they do versus one of players valuing fun and how they personally feel without regard for their effectiveness. Why should a group care about players who don't care for the group? Why would players with no interest in being effective be likely to be good? I think there is a significant drop in high-end raiders playing the game currently. EU raid LFG has been exceptionally inactive lately. Sure, mondays and tuesdays have plenty of clears... Yet during the weekend even at prime times the amount of LFGs have dropped significantly. Also all of my raid groups are struggling with player retention. It's probably something to do with the hardcore PvE population being bored and feeling ignored. I doubt it will get better, more and more will quit or take breaks. And as they do, the elitism and skillgap will increase further rather than decrease. A new raid wing that's good would fix some of those issues tho.

Oh, this is a great idea. Let's unlink servers (thereby drastically exacerbating the already-problematic world balance issue) and then on top of that throw in a tournament that will only serve to make the problem even worse as people rapidly bandwagon to the few top servers. This is precisely the opposite of what needs to happen. All these "solutions" looking for ways to keep current servers intact are avoiding the issue -- the very existence of permanent entire-world populations is what is at the very root of the population imbalance now that makes the game uncompetitive in the first place. Correct. Correct. Correct. You are again, correct.Yet here I am, hardcore player, saying there will not be a place for many casuals. Most players who lead raids aren't "casual". Managing an alliance isn't super casual. Yet most casuals still want commanders to be able to join and follow. Most casuals still want leaders. Most casuals; even more than hardcore players; need people to guide them. And this isn't something other casual players do much. There are plenty of casuals who will find a place, especially if they put some effort into it. But the amount of casuals and the amount of casuals willing to put in the effort required to make good, fun groups to play with is way out of proportion. It is already out of proportion now; and this only increases. The truth is the quality of play casual players in WvW are used to was based on the ability to join better players who show them the ropes whenever they desire. Having many active groups playing on different levels, and being able to join various groups at any time. This is what they demand; and could do many times in the past because we had the veteran population to support it. Now we don't, and I doubt we'll ever return to it. As a result, the demands which were in the past reasonable aren't nowadays. I don't think there are enough "casual oriented" comms or raidleads in the game for the amount of players that want them. The casuals are getting more casual over time too; what used to be acceptable is now too much effort. Joining a guild? Talking to other players? Playing with your own group? That isn't casual. Casual is "log whatever spec you desire, join whatever map you desire and expect a group where you can do what you please, how you please to be there and ready". It's genuinely quite close to that. Nobody has time for talking to other players and being part of guilds or communities - they won't even if you beg them. And these players? Goodluck have fun ;) The gamemode is dying and will continue to die. Not in terms of not having players quite yet. But it certainly has most of its dedicated population, which had huge negative effects on the enjoyability of the gamemode - now overrun mostly by loothungry players with no real interest in the enjoyment WvW can offer - which will accelerate its death. I think anyone who's willing to put in "basic effort" will be able to find a place in a group, guild or community. Even for casual players. But I do think there will be a shortage of groups who can meet the demands of the casual players; probably because these demands are out of proportion.

There are a lot of players who agree with you. You can simply make non-meta groups with them. You'll see they wipe a LOT more than the meta-oriented groups most of the time. That's why meta groups are around - they tend to work better, hence meta. And non-meta groups are more and more rare - because it's frustrating to struggle for hours on simple bosses because players are convinced they're helping yet refuse to listen to reason. I've seen fractals where the opening burst of a weaver or DH does more damage than other players during the entire fight. A long time ago; most players in T4's were reasonably decent and played reasonably effective builds. You didn't need to be as elitist, most things went relatively smooth. But players kept going "hey, you can play whatever you want and it doesnt matter if you're good enough". That's almost true if you're good enough - which most players really are not. Now there's so many players who think they're helping and doing great - who can do the bosses, too- but do them so slowly and badly it's frustrating for better players to do daily. So they don't; and that's OK. The elitist barriers aren't a barrier to do T4. It's a barrier to playing with elitists; something you clearly rather not do as your style is completely different. It doesn't stop you from doing the content; it just means you'll have to find an appropriate group (or make your own) and carry your own weight. If your playstyle is effective then that shouldn't be a problem.

He mentioned PvE because it does matter. All of you complaining about too much damage refuse to account for the trait set up that Rev requires for it. Revenant in PvP uses the glassiest build it can use traitwise, no kitten it hurts. Do you expect a DA CS deadeye to not hit you with 11k DJ? Or a Dueling Domination Mesmer to not one shot you? I expect my weaver to get literally 100-0'd if I run the same level of glassy traits; yet still do less damage overall.It's funny how the ability to self-buff and be relatively sturdy despite having full DPS traits are usually negative in PvE (reaper, rev, ...) due to a lack of stacking modifiers; and positives in PvP where the defensive / offensive aspects of the class both shine.

Unpopular opinion : RIFLE deadeye should never be competitive at high level PvP. Given its nature of skills, it's still insanely oppressive where it either shuts down people completely or is borderline useless. It's hard to find a middle ground in between. And if it can do this competitively at high level pvp; then it'll be beyond oppresive at lower ratings. I fail to see how it provides healthy playmaking and counterplay. It's either bursty enough to near one shot players with high stealth and mobility; or it fails at killing players and can never outrotate more mobile thief builds. There's little in between. At least for rifle DPS / +1 / spike builds.I'd rather deal with thieves which have a little more counterplay; d/p s/d even P/P has less burst.

Firstly, I'm sure we'd all like objective proof of you actually outskilling top players. Secondly, where did you get these damage figures from? PVE raid hero’s. Ask any of them. They will tell you rev power damage is the lowest by far.Reaper PvE DPS is always crap; yet in PvP reaper ends up doing huge damage. ?!?!? it's almost like the ability to selfbuff, mobility and selfsustain are more useful in PvP than in PvE; and classes which have these innate perks end up doing better in gamemodes where these perks are useful. Rev is strong but does not yet need nerfs in the current meta. But if condi mirage gets nerfed; which is its main counter, then rev probably does need nerfs. Then again; from my point of view EVERYTHING needs nerfs. Pretty much every meta class could use some toning down.

Putting it in the same WvW worlds is bad; it only adds difficulty balancing populations to create healthy gameplay rather than trying to solve the issue. Say you add a third ktrain map, that only makes it more difficult to balance PPT and more likely to have servers with distinctly different playstyles face off and play their respective prefered maps, which leads to the issues we already have. One server goes to dodge and ktrain on red avoiding fights at all cost; the other sits in sm in EBG and despite both sides having ~50 players, both sides prefer to play 40v10. That's already the reality right now; but the game promotes it as defense is insanely OP and PPT is irrelevant, in my opinion even BAD for server health. So you add a third map that needs to be balanced; and you don't immediately fix any issues. Please explain the goal / advantage. In my opinion IDEALLY you want genuine balanced groups. I think this can be done by balancing PPT a bit better. Each aspect of the game is helpful and required for "hardcore" ppt. Roamers blobs guilds fights pugs scouts and coverage is ALL required for hardcore PPT. But you need incentives to put everyone on board with this plan; and not having bandwaggoners go to the winners is a basic requirement for that. I've written posts here before on how I think it can be done by making the mode competitive as this makes PPT mean something more than 2 blues, a green and the death of your own server. At the moment, if vabbi ppt'd to T1 and stayed there for 1 full relink; it would gain hundreds of players and lose most of its quality. The moment we're in T1 too long our core will actively make sure we LOSE just to not become the next sfr / deso / fsp as quickly. To get better fights we don't necessarily PPT either; we just snipe a certain matchup. PPT is a means to an end rather than a goal; and if these goals don't allign we get conflict with our teammates. That's one of the main issues in WvW right now. There is no real "team", only selfinterst. Pugs just want entertainment and bags for no effort. Others want PPT no matter what. Others want fights no matter what. Others want to roam or defend stuff or just chill and roleplay. And I don't /mind/ all these; I just also want to play my style in an enjoyable way just like everyone else. The biggest problem with WvW right now is that /every/ server is fighting their own team 24/7. Communities are very limited on most servers. You struggle more with getting your pugs organised and on the same page than you do fighting enemies. Roamers, ppters, fight guilds, pugs all want different things. I want them to rebalance both worlds / matchmaking and PPT to make the entire mode competitive. So that everyone on a server really wants their server to win. When it comes down to it, it is possible to balance PPT so all aspects of WvW (except perhaps the RP...) is required. Roamers, pugs, coverage, fighters, ... can all be benefits to PPT. See tournaments with guilds being bought, sold, coverage being fixed by recruiting and paying tons of golds to commanders and guilds just to ensure WvW is alive almost 24/7. But bandwaggoning freely to any server MUST be removed. WvW can NEVER be competitive as long as anyone can pay 5-20 euro to transfer to the winning side. That was the main issue from my point of view. You need ability to transfer to balance things out... but free transfers especially (or during times / timezones where) activity declines directly "promote" stacking. Lets say mag needs more EU timezone pugs. Why would EU pugs move to mag if they won't have comms or an enjoyable experience ever? They don't. Instead they join a side which has nice EU time comms and groups running around, and increase the inbalance. Bad overall, but that's because their interests don't directly allign with those that promote the health of the game. Walls of text are maybe too long but required to explain why I think these things. I find unexplained ideas about things as complex as WvW very triggering. I'll compare to anet's post : it's very clear and understandable what they try to do, but I have absolutely NO IDEA how or why they expect these changes to have a positive effect. The only advantage I've seen specifically mentioned is the lower population for alliances / cap making it easier to form servers balanced based on population. That's true, and nice, and entirely misses the problem with population inbalance. I'd rather write a wall of text that actually explains why things are problematic and how to solve them than write one liners that sound nice but lack the detail to be constructive; as is common on social media. "Raids are not difficult enough" - That's just a sentimental statement. "Raids are not difficult enough because we can skip or ignore the majority of the mechanics trivially, see gorseval without updrafts or VG without greens. By buffing raid bosses or nerfing player strength, these mechanics would become relevant." That's a lot longer but actually supports your opinion turning your sentimental statement into a constructive argument. Back to your suggestion : I don't want to "lock servers to a certain style of play". I'm saying that's what players like me WILL organise / aim for if anet doesn't create an environment where each of the playstyles of WvW can happily coexist; and so far I don't see the alliance update adressing enough issues considering the size and work going into it. 3-4 years ago, T1-T2 servers had fight guilds, PPT blobs and roamers in between. Lower end servers were roam heavy with occasional bad zergs and guilds duking it out, and a smooth transition in between. Because the game promoted it. You weren't going to T1 unless you had massive coverage advantage or a huge advantage in terms of fighting strength. I don't want to hard split up players into categories and not have them play together; that is not healthy. I want to have the game / matchmaking naturally create servers where fight guilds can fight other fight guilds or small blobs, weak blobs of casuals fight other weak blobs of casuals and stacked zoneblobs fight other stacked zoneblobs. Right now I'd say the strongest blobs on EU are in T1, T3 and T5. They did not reach eachother ONCE in the last two months.Right now I'd say the strongest GvG guilds are spread across tiers and most did not face eachother during regular matchups much. Same for roam heavy servers. T1 is roam heavy gandara against group-fight heavy WSR, and neither enjoy fighting eachother. This should NEVER be the result of anet measuring and intentionally putting players together accordingly. This should be the result of PPT / gameplay / matchmaking; just like how in PvP you put high rated and low rated players together based off their results. Casuals and veterans can enjoy fighting in PvP because they fight players of their own rating. One of the first problems PvP had at the start of the game was "lobbies" where a few good players would farm the entire enemy team rather than matchmaking. Nowadays virtually every game uses matchmaking for that exact reason.... Except WvW. WvW uses matchmaking yet truthfully; anyone can choose to join any team they like as with lobbies which results in "no matchmaking at all".

No; I just think the idea that WvW and PvP need to be as casual as PvE is absurd. If you expect to win or have nice gameplay; I expect you put the effort in that it requires. This isn't elitist nor makes me the founder of WvW; it's simply realistic. I play and occasionally lead on vabbi with the group that moved there from piken when we got sick and tired of piken carebears griefing. This is also why I have clear opinions on why players rather move to "dead" link servers together than to existing "communities" in EU. We've discussed several server moves to enable our core to have more "fights". I know the opinions of the veterans I play with, because we've discussed them at length several times. That sounds like having an opinion; and most opinions are nuanced rather than "agree" or "disagree". Not sure how having your own points / opinion is misdirection. Make no mistake; if this rework fails miserably you can safely assume WvW is done. Or at least the way I and many others enjoyed playing WvW. If this rework is done well then WvW might actually end up getting the attention most of us want it to have. I rather not stay around another 5 years praying for an update and arguing with RPers about the direction of WvW reforms (?????). Many guilds will, especially if it seems good, come back and revitalize WvW if it's good. And these guilds will leave as quickly as they came if it's inherently flawed. And current iteration which anet suggested? Unless coverage data included it's a minor improvement. Now I'm ALL GAME for minor improvements; but it will not be enough. Absolutely no solution to coverage issues, and the resulting population inbalance. No taking into account skill, meaning even less population balance... Minor improvements are great for small, regular updates and patches. Not for a complete overhaul that is still in early design phases and will be our main "content" for years.

I completely agree. However, the raiders in GW2 PvE deal with the exact same issue. They ask for all these requirements just to keep the casuals out. The moment you don't ask any requirements your group is instantly full with random players hoping to get carried yet they can't kill a single boss; and after 2 wipes 3 players leave. OH HEY THAT'S LIKE WORLD V WORLD NOWADAYS. It's extra funny, because everyone who isn't hyper casual is doing their very best at this point to just get rid of them. PvE'ers ask whatever demands required and kick who won't adapt. WvWers use tactics as you describe everywhere. Many guilds and comms are trying to, any way possible, get rid of the casuals chasing them. And these casuals? They want nothing more than to play with you! But only on their terms, doing their stuff and if you don't like that you're a toxic elitist. @"Dawdler.8521" this is very relevant to the update. It's a huge reason why population balance in WvW cannot work right now; and why it will continue to fail after the rework when done as announced here. Nothing in anet's system to promote coverage or skill devision or balancing. Neither through matchmaking, alliance sorting or anything to make players do it themselves. Why would it improve? The more casual WvW becomes; the more "population balance" is an issue. When two blobs fight they don't fight 50v50. They fight 10v10 with 40 players on both sides hoping they'll get free wins; then as soon as they know who's stronger the losing side leaves; the winning side gains some extra and the fights are done. 90% of WvW isn't interested in competition, balance or fights. They're casuals who want to be rewarded for winning; nothing else. But their playstyle is literally what promotes inbalance - they won't try when they lose; they'll just make you lose more. And they'll stalk you when you win even tho you don't need or want them; because they demand loot! This change is supposed to what? Fix matchmaking? Fix balance issues? I'm seeing minor improvements yet NOTHING about coverage. Nothing about creating a healthy environment. How does this improve things if they won't adress our basic concerns? Just give EOTM bigger rewards and full pips so they go play there then. If anet doesn't adress the issues described; and obviously it's more than just voice comms but it's a pretty big part of it; then I predict the veterans will continue to avoid them like the plague they are. It's not enjoyable for either side. I don't even like flaming casuals; but they simply won't listen to nice requests. Nobody cares about a few players; but a majority of every group is too much to manage. Anet clearly has no intention to balance PPT / coverage / skill at this time; and I assure you an alliance of 200-300 veterans is more than enough to beat 2.000 casual players consistently. And you know what? Those 2.000 players will cry about population inbalance, but there's only three solutions for their bullshit that I can think of. 1) Predominantly veteran scene; nobody minds carrying 10% casuals or 20% casuals. It's 60% casuals that is a problem. Except you can't just magically get enough veterans back; so forget about this one.2) Splitting these groups all together. Can be done multiple ways. e.g. veterans enjoy competition more than loot; generally casuals enjoy loot and ingame rewards more than competition. Give EOTM high rewards again; BYE PLEBS AND PIPFARMERS. Or make WvW competition favor one or the other; so hardcore groups end up fighting eachother in T1 or T5; and mass casual alliances end up playing in the opposite with gradual changes in between.3) Let players FULLY control the alliances; same as instanced content and normal guilds. WvW is currently like raidselling. If you're trash you can just pay some gems and go any strong server you like. Instead make it a two way contract. Alliances NEED and WANT players; and players NEED and WANT alliances to play with. Make alliances capable of inviting and kicking whoever they please. You'll suddenly see plenty of players willing to put in more effort; and those who do not will simply join less skilled alliances with less expectations. It creates a natural ranking of more casual towards more hardcore, which you can have fight eachother too. This avoids the stacking of hardcore players onto a few servers and the use of millions of tactics to try and avoid casuals; and instead promotes players on the same alliance to actually play TOGETHER. You know; I think that's the goal of this discussion. Fix major issues in balancing the populations and different desires of groups in WvW. But what the fuck do I know; I'm just a toxic elitist.

Having enemies worth fighting, is even more important than having allies. Stacking one side, to farm baddies on the other side, is the least fun form of WvW. Still, I agree with your overall ideeas about how to fix the system and the problems presented are very accurate. While it's risky giving player alliances the power to recruit and kick, it's the only way making WvW competitive - by letting them manage the world they are in, raise or fall together with the comunity they build. This is the only way to make WvW meaningful. Having enemies worth fighting... yeah that'd be nice. Howmany players do you think we'd need to send to gandara to turn it into a server worth fighting? If we spread the good players over all servers, do you think we'd have much more enemies worth fighting? It won't just turn the water into wine magically. Most pugs want to get carried, not to get good. And as long as that's their main drive, they're just walking bags to be honest. Let's see; you got a 20 man guild and you want to not stack on vabbi or wsr. Where do you go? Right, T5 is germans and they're increasingly less active. Very little guilds to fight but overall better fights than T3 and T4 if they happen. T4 there is, right now, not a single good group to fight. Absolutely no point to go there. (And for the record - we went SFR for 3 weeks first time vabbi got a major influx of bandwagon players from FSP. Took 3 weeks to get permanent EBG queues and dedicated clowns following our comms 24/7.) So truthfully, you need a T1 or T2 server to be able to reach the other guilds / fight worthy opponents right now. Which are your options? WSR and vabbi are presumably not; which leaves gandara, FSP and deso. You could go gankdara. This gives you no openfield, no coordinated gameplay out of guildraids, a lot of pugs adding permanently to every fight and nice queues. Pugmanding is impossible if you want to organise rather than chatmand around. You will never be able to drop from T1 or control matchups. Compared to the amount of players, there's fairly little community interaction / teamplay but a lot of carebearism. If you go there it takes a month before half your guild ragequits out of boreddom. You could go FSP. In my opinion this used to be the best option assuming you don't want WSR and vabbi; but truthfully it's still incredibly bad. Let's start by the beginning : FSP used to be a stacked server with considerably more guilds than either vabbi or WSR and many, many comms. They had a stable core community for several years, and kept growing in pugs. Nowadays FSP gets 3-4 queues almost every prime. Kill, Amp and a huge majority of pugs left to WSR. RT, Kale and Gang stayed at that point. Even after half the core of FSP left; they managed to get 4 queues virtually every prime; altho linked with AG (quite high pop link). RT and Gang have now also left. I don't know a single pugmander left on FSP that will provide some kind of fight. My alt has been on FSP for a while considering it a better option than gankdara. Literally moved it off wsr as most of FSP core moved there to a weaker server. So how is playing on FSP? last time I tagged up there on my alt (admittedly EBG) the map was queue'd, players were asking for commander, I got 50+ around my tag, never more than 25 in squad and it took more than one hour to get 10 players into their TS. Wasn't able to organise a single thing. No point calling any skills; there was less than 5 players listening throughout most. If I tag on vabbi, I can get 20-30 players willing to play at start and you make a few groups so you can do things. You don't have a massive group, but you have some players who are playing together. If I tag on FSP without bringing my own players, I'm literally alone. Except there's 50 players following you around, happy that there's a dorito to follow. They just dont' give a flying fuck about what the dorito says or does, or about anyone else. Then they have the audacity to cry when they get rolled over. The time before then was desert bl. Again managed to get queues and fights for a quite long time. Never managed to get more than 1/3rd on ts. FSP was a STACKED incredibly strong server. When vabbi was formed; FSP had MORE guilds (and a lot more pugs) there than vabbi did; altho in my opinion vabbi's guilds were more "hardcore". So what happened? Oh right, so many bandwaggoners that pretty much every single one of these guilds and almost all pugmanders left. Bandwaggoners by which I mean "casual entitled leechers". Now FSP has 4 maps full of pugs yet it can only be competitive with fairly weak wsr / vabbi blobs. The exact same happens on gankdara and deso. Two servers which have had... all their fight guilds leave. So a few misnomers.1) bringing 15-20 fight players to a server with 200+ pugs active every prime does not make them a worthy opponent. It means that rather than one pushing 60 plebs that spread and run, you one push a guild of 15 players while their pugs spread and try to 45v5 a few of your pugs in the back. That's gankdara. Then they'll complain about blobbing despite "ganking" with 50 players on a queue'd map...2) Spreading out doesn't create more enemies worth fighting. You aren't really "teaching" your pugs, you can't get them to listen or care about anything you have to say. You don't have enough players to influence server culture either. You have only few choices : tag up yourself, roam, guildraid, don't play. You can go tag up on piken or sfr or FSP or gandara and "fight" for them but it won't turn them into a fight server. No matter howmuch you try, if you manage to get any kind of players in the first place after losing a few fights half the players will just afk in keep or do something else anyways rather than listening and trying to improve. These players want commanders but they have absolutely no interest in following the commanders ideas or calls. The commander is expected to know how to get loot, and if not he's just a bad commander. So how exactly does spreading over 15 servers give more fights than spreading over 2-3? By all means it would if the ones willing to fight weren't... 15% of the population. If players were interested in improving without... making a server dedicated to not playing a teamgame as if you're single player. Spreading out doesn't make things even and doesnt make pugs worth fighting. It means you have 30-40 players that die on engage and 20 players worth fighting who don't stand a chance. It means you still have the 50v30 for the winning side; permanently, because pugs are fairweather and have no interest in fights. They are interested in using you for bags you can provide. It means you can't do 15v15's between guilds because... Oh right, pugs respecting guildraids? OmegaLUL. So yeah... The reason not a single guild stays on these servers is because the players can't actually play on these servers. Casuals are too demanding and insanely toxic towards their style of play. That's reality. If you're bad at the game, you're going to get farmed. You can run and port to spawn a lot to avoid it, but nothing and nobody will save or carry your ass. Just try and improve, it's not that hard. What anet needs to do is ADD COVERAGE to their metrics or this system fails regardless. Then in my opinion, PPT has to be rebalanced to allow skilled players to outppt unskilled ones far more easily. Currently it takes hours to flip defended objectives due to siege and tactics; despite never engaging in combat. This promotes having massive no-skill pug servers in high tiers complaining about wiping 24/7. At some point it's just better to use rankings as skill / style divide so more fight-oriented servers gravitate towards the same tiers; and more PPT oriented servers gravitate towards the same tiers too. It seems "logical" that PPT oriented servers would end up highest in PPT. The issue is twofold. 1) PPT servers ragequit insanely hard if you farm them. Most PPT servers are "PPT servers" because they're too bad to fight; and thus mostly avoid fights to try and karma train or defend stuff (the most advantageous fights). Not because they're good at PPT. The second issue is that you can never have influence of skill on tiers as long as siege is vastly more powerful than players. If pressing 1 2 3 on acs and using tactics is effective enough to delay or stall most assaults significantly then it won't happen. I hope the new world system improves things. The community has to do it; because it's clear from anet's description that their new system will NOT fix population balance in any meaningful way. In order to fix it; it will require community organisation. And it's the same as with stacked servers now - you ask organisation but 80% of the players in this game have 0 interest in organising, only in their personal interests.

The description of veterans written is casual to me. You claim that pugs are trash because they don't go voip. However, do those so-called veterans go to voip as well when they pugging? There are a lot of veterans that never ever go voip just because is not their guild raiding or because they don't like that guild playstyle or whatever. Also, veterans are also "pugs" when they outside of your guild raid. Lastly, you claim veteran guilds bandwagon away to empty server which is fine but what if they bandwagon together to the same server, are they not stacking? Furthermore, there are no such thing as empty server, is just means that it is low populated or they all just playing pve until someone come in to command for them. Pugs are always there, blaming pugs for the decisions are just poor justification, act of casuals. Be a man, do the right thing. Maybe my definition of veterans doesn't include the "hardcore casuals" of gw2. Too many players with 5k hours who still have no clue what they're doing. The guilds end up going together because they want to play an actual organised style rather than sitting around a choke spamming random aoe's in eachothers direction because neither side can push. The guilds go to the emptier servers because there aren't 3 queues every prime. Because they won't have 10 pugs adding to every guild fight they do. Pugs are trash because they're too casual to try and play the game. They want to sit around and do their thing without improving; roleplaying around in WvW. Which is fine; except nobody wants to do it with you. Especially not if they're a majority on every server. Overall the general quality of WvW is so low that frankly, playing on most servers isn't enjoyable in any way for most of the players.

Well, ultimately it's a self-perpetuating problem. Worlds with a reputation for being fight servers attract players with that sort of attitude who want to learn their class, interested in meta, who support commanders, etc. Why would commanders want to transfer to Vabbi? Reputation again. Not something that is easy to change either way. Getting back to the original topic. Will alliances change any of this? I suppose if worlds are being remade every 8 weeks there wont be any with a reputation for being one way or the other any more. On the flip side, a hard-core fight alliance could end up spending 8 weeks on a newly formed world with a bunch of unsupportive, cloudy/ off-tag, ppt-addicts. :) At least they'll have something new to complain about. There was a very long time on EU where each server had their fight commanders, their karmatrain commanders, their roamers, their guilds, and so forth. Obviously these weren't all equally strong but it was only some national and very low end servers that were as disorganised as now. The problem is a community issue; pugs expect to "plug and play" and join groups being "winners" and having fun without putting any effort in. Even vabbi and WSR are quite disorganised compared to many servers in the past. I remember having 2-3 maps queue'd with different comms during resets - not getting absolutely massive queues - as you'd have more casual oriented commanders and more hardcore oriented commanders. And the casual oriented commanders? They actually got their players on ts and chilling; trying all the same. The moment the casuals got smashed by the more hardcore enemies? They'd just swap places with their hardcore allies and resume their day. Guilds would raid and be left alone. You'd have pug blobs on EB and guilds on borders during the week, sometimes fight blobs on borders as well. In general the vast MAJORITY of the server would come to TS and actually coordinate; even many roamers. But anet and players stated WvW wasn't worth supporting. So most of these dedicated players left. And the pugs that replaced them were promoted a culture of open world PvE : You join and you're a WINNER no matter what you do. A culture where you just join and play what you like in zergs; it's a zerg it doesn't matter! Yet somehow you expect to win. What I'm trying to say is you NEED a healthy veteran scene if you want this "population balance" where casuals can jump in and play without commitments. Anet didn't create a system that promotes it - veterans supported and allowed it. And now? Well we can't anymore; there's simply not enough of us and it's far from enjoyable. Soon after HoT; one of my past guildleaders quit. A point where our server (deso) would get 4 queues every prime; yet we couldn't gather more than 30 players on tag / ts on ANY map. And 20+ of those were our own players. Gandara is the same; it's pugs that destroyed the communities in WvW by demanding to join them without ever interacting with them as if its PvE. And as long as there's vastly too much casuals for the veteran community to handle? They'll just do whatever it takes to avoid them because they don't have better options. So how does this new system make it better? Well it stops bandwagoning. For one, the main issue is that casual pugs rather chase good players than become good players. As i've said throughout this; the main issue is expecting to win yet refusing to put in any effort. It also screws with server culture. For pugs to have a consistent nice experience; they'll need to join a group and improve or risk not playing on dead servers. Not each server will have convenient leads for you to follow. It makes groups smaller and more easy to balance. It gives more room to players of strong alliances to move around - believe it or not but creating a new server can take quite a bit of work. PPT'ing vabbi from T5 to T1 several times over against 3-4 maps of pugs isn't easy. It resets server cultures. Many server cultures are literally the reason the servers are the way they are. (Reputation, as you say.) Gandara has a server culture of "everyone plays whatever they want" and commanders must be nice to their followers; but followers don't need to listen to commanders. Nice for followers - very toxic for commanders to try and lead. The results are obvious. Vabbi has a server culture of "you play what your group demands or you GTFO". Not nice for casual pugs; pretty nice for veterans who enjoy organised play. Again the results are clear. Piken has a server culture of casual roleplay and being PC carebearism. "If you say we played bad we'll troll you!!!". Yet again, the results are obvious. Alliances will kill these static, slowly established cultures and allow us to create new ones. Hopefully better ones. I'm all in favor of having balanced servers again; but the attitude change that is required lies with the casuals and not with the veteran community. Realistically; I don't think anet will manage to properly balance these issues. What do I think will be the result? I think at the start, guilds will be relatively spread. At that point it depends on how servers are. If they're equally obnoxious to play on as now then over time the guilds will form mega alliances. Once one forms, a second one to contest it can easily be created. But again, this update gives chances to pugs to get themselves out of this cycle. Sorry we don't need 15 competitive servers; I just need one or two and the ability to lock the matchup. Then these servers can duke it out, and whenever casual servers make the mistake of interupting by PPT'ing too hard or too little; you just farm them for a week to then go back to the only mu that can provide a challenge. And if they want to improve and compete with the veterans; they can. If not, then don't. I won't be starting a mass server at the start of alliances. Hell I might even give them casuals a chance. But realistically? I think the main improvements are more control to players and more easy redistribution of players every 2 months. Anet won't be able to prevent "stacking" because 200-300 good players are literally worth more than 1.000 casuals when it comes down to a fight. And if you "fight" them enough, well casuals ragequit hard when you farm them. 1.000 active WvW casuals won't play after you get a 2.0 KDA against them over the weekend and you hold their garri for 2 hours throughout prime... :trollface: They'll just PPT the week after to give you that same matchup again. Keep in mind - in its current state it's IMPOSSIBLE to "fix" gandara. For the reasons I stated; no groups or existing comms will go there. Nobody can really lead how to command there either; you don't have allies or support. You can't form a community - there's an oppresive majority community of players who refuse to interact or commit to improving their own community. You cannot "change" how gandara works. You can't bring in more fighters to fix the problem; it first has to die to a point where enough players have left. That's what's slowly happening to SFR and deso. You just let them sit and stir and hope eventually players leave. Nobody will go there to fix it. So from my point of view; completely deleting servers and their hivemind is pretty healthy.

You don't seem to grasp bandwagoning. Veteran guilds have 2 choices : they can run mostly closed raids on trash servers or form a "stacked" server and keep their guild alive outside of guild raids. Most veterans have 0 interest in playing with trash servers; it's incredibly unfun. "Alive outside of guild raids." What does that mean? Guilds doing GvG is fun healthy competition, but if you roam about farming pug squads eventually they will stop playing and their commanders will stop tagging up for pugs. That is pretty much what has happened on Gandara after 2 months of pug squads getting farmed by KISS, Kill and other squads that seem to be roaming all day. Last couple of resets there have been hardly any map queues and only 1 open tag for 4 maps. Maybe if some of those guilds that like to play all day transferred to FSP and Gandara link servers you'd get some healthy competition in T1. Crazy idea, I know. Stacking on WSR must be so much more "fun", especially now that FSP and Gandara are turning into ghost worlds.What I mean is if I took 15 guildies to gankdara today, we'd have no issue to farm KISS even with 15. Here are the downsides : We'd have hundreds of gankdara "roamers" adding to every fight we did.We'd have queues to every map during prime time; we'd not be able to jump and play anywhere.Whenever we aren't doing a guildraid, despite having 3-4 queues during prime, you do not have a single coordinated group which is enjoyable for my players to join. The level of play on gandara is so low and disorganised there are literally no commanders that my guildies would enjoy following left on the server. This means that outside of guildraids, most players would simply log off.If we went open to fight something like KILL; we'd get huge amounts of pugs yet very very limited amounts of players willing to come discord, change off roam classes, fight them with us. For my guildies and our type of players, playing on gankdara is not fun. The only fun they could have is guild raids, occasionally, and even those are kinda meh because we'd have more pugs chasing us than our own players. So there is 0 point, to ever go to gandara. We were debating on where to move our alts; and gandara isn't even an option we consider. You don't get healthy competition by going to gandara; you just kill your guild. Crazy idea, I know.Gankdara is a "ghost world" that still manages to stay in T1 through PPT. FSP is a "ghost world" that still sits in T1 and truthfully; I can kill them all day but I cannot outPPT 3 maps of clowns and roamers. So; what exactly do you want us to do? Go to gankdara? I'm sorry no sane commander will ever do that; the server culture is insanely toxic towards commanders. If gankdara can't compete and is becoming a ghost world, they should stop ppt'ing and drop tiers. I'd rather have had vabbi in T1 so we could have fought WSR, but elona, FSP and gankdara were all too busy trying to PPT while avoiding getting farmed by WSR and vabbi. Your commanders stopped tagging because they got farmed by "GvG guild" KISS? I see. Sorry but 2 of your main pugmanders asked if they could come to vabbi BEFORE those 2 months of WSR. RT, kazo, entire vabbi, entire WSR, several deso groups, ... all moved servers and NOT ONE of them wanted to go to gankdara. Why is it that every single GvG guild moved to T1 yet not one of them went to gandara? Do you think this is some kind of magic coincidence? Playing on gankdara is NOT fun for organised / veteran guilds and moving there means your guild will die. Because the guildraids aren't even guild raids; they're "open raids" because gandara gankers will follow you no matter what. And outside of guildraids, you can't even play the way veterans / experienced players enjoy playing because everyone who played this style has already left years ago.I'd rather lead riverside in T5 despite not even speaking german than move my alt to gandara. TL DR : It's not the enemies fault that KISS farms you despite having players to queue 4 maps. It's gandara's fault for; despite having hundreds of players, not being able to make a single group that can support their commander adequately. And this is nothing new; gandara has been screwing over their commanders by playing random classes and comps and incredibly cloudy / off tag in every single zerg for years.

It should never be a "hard" devide. You can't really select players on skill; you can't even measure skill. Anet cannot create a system which can properly divide players into groups which are challenging to fight for eachother; the skill difference is too massive and there are way too many variables to account for. That said there are two solutions that can be done : The first is the good old EOTM stategies. You increase EOTM rewars above WvWs. This lures reward-driven fairweather players to EOTM, where they can karma train rotate and do random wonky stuff without interfering with WvW. This more or less splits the WvW and EOTM communities based on desires and lets you balance each more easily focussed on one group. The second is what I really want for WvW. You make ENTIRE WvW a competitive mode. You give FULL power to the alliance over a world (in the long run, at least). They can invite whoever they like, and kick whoever they like, from their world. However; the lowest rated alliances are continuously reformed (relegated) and new alliances take their place. This forces alliances to recruit and balance themselves. You will have hardcore servers, and these servers will want good fight guilds; good roamers, good scouts, good PPT, ... and pugs. Because coverage and pugs is pretty important. And if they get spies, trolls, afkers or griefers? Well they can kick them from their world; and these players will have to join another world. The problem with coverage differences over timezones? PLAYERS can solve these by recruiting proper guilds / commanders / pugs playing in those timezones which they NEED for ppt coverage. Problems with designing a system that works for zergs, defenders, scouts, roamers, casuals, commanders, guilds, ...? On a balanced server, you need ALL of these to PPT. And they can slightly adjust PPT to create a healthier environment for this through siege and structure adjustments. Meanwhile anet trying to measure this stuff and fix it for us? Never going to work; they're not even measuring WHEN we play; only HOWMUCH we play. Servers get too full on a certain timezone? Some of their players will look to move / leave. Servers are too empty to keep their stuff on certain timezones? They will recruit more players in this timezone to fix it. One alliance blobbing everyone else? A second blob alliance will form and just blob down the first.And all these players? The roamers and and blobbers and defenders? They actually have a real goal; winning matchups with real incentives. All of these players need to work towards a common goal; beacuse if they drop too low they are no longer an alliance. Previously; that just got them more bandwagonners. But in this system; the alliance controls anyone who comes into the world. Winning can not only be meaningful; it can also be rewarding as players can't just transfer to the winning side. Take EU; we currently have various national servers making the balance even more difficult. It's impossible to properly link the german servers. One is too small, two is too big and their sizes make proper links impossible. But in this system; you don't create national servers. Players create the environment they want to. Want a german alliance? Make one! Always wanted a chinese-finnish server on EU? Well if you can create a competitive alliance for it; do it. It also allows relatively easy scale up (and down) by adding and removing tiers (at the bottom) if there are too much (too little) players.Maybe there are spanish speaking players on NA servers, who'd like their own alliance. They can just make it. Maybe it turns out there's not enough spanish players - then the alliance ends up getting relegated. You want a high skill alliance? Make one! But keep in mind you need to find enough players to PPT; which isn't that easy with hardcore fight veterans only. In reality, you'll get blobs, roamers, guilds, scouts and defenders working towards winning matchups the way you did in the past. And if one server has a strong blob that keeps bullying the enemy group; they'll have to recruit more blobbers or adjust accordingly to deal with it. Give actual rewards for winning and players will do it. And you will have in-between servers which are more laid back, casual and focussed on community. Players can create whatever they desire as long as the alliance can do better than other alliances and survive. You get actual teamwork and communities as they now have a real, common goal. No need for crazy measurements and metrics; no need for anet fixing the groups. What you need is to give communities the power to form and police themselves; and an incentive to WIN. Then they themselves will form COMPETITIVE alliances which fight each other. The reason this cannot work at the moment is the bandwagon issue seen during tournaments. It's easier to move to the winning team than it is to help your team to win. However; if joining a high-end group requires you to be INVITED and can get you kicked; you can't just join a winning alliance. It's not just "I want to join so I join", it's "I want to join and here's why you should take me". But as long as numbers are incredibly important for coverage and PPT; and coverage and PPT are required to win, there will be a place for everyone. TL DR : Anet you can't make a metric that balances WvW population; but the WvW population CAN fix itself if you give it the right incentives and you DON'T LET THE SYSTEM DESTABILIZE THROUGH PAY TO WIN TRANSFERS.Transfering players is essential to WvW. It's required that players can move so these things can balance themselves out. But if players can move to the winning world without limitation; then the winning world can NEVER remain stable.

So you all keep saying, but this is already dead on most servers. Solo players like... SFR? Full of solo players who want to jump in and enjoy the mode. Except there's 0 commanders or groups to follow left. Deso? Going in similar ways. These were THE strong high end pug servers back in the days - now still full of players but virtually every commander has left. And other servers are not much different. Literally every EU server has pugs on EB asking for commanders every hour or so; yet they rarely get them and for good reasons.FSP? Same thing. Gankdara? same thing. Surely, if you go to stacked server vabbi you'll get comms right? Just kidding they're running hidden squads 24/7 to avoid their pugs. The pick up and play quality has drastically decreased and continues to drop. You can't "pick up and play" commanding. You can't "pick up and play" a community out of thin air. You need healthy environments for these to thrive, and frankly the pick up and play pugs created an environment in which this isn't sustainable anymore. We already get reshuffled every 2 months. We already have huge parts of pugs on servers without comms , community or anything to follow. And right now? Well guilds can't really have fun, because their raids are permanently harassed by pugs looking to "jump in" and follow someone because they don't know where to go, what to do or how to succesfully kill players roaming. And they have absolutely no interest in learning it either. If you don't want any interaction with a community; no guilds no talking no organisation no commitment just "jump in and play"; why do you need the same community for months straight? I mean, these players overrunning the communities we had is the reason we have these issues in the first place.

@"aintiarna.1038" You don't seem to grasp bandwagoning. Veteran guilds have 2 choices : they can run mostly closed raids on trash servers or form a "stacked" server and keep their guild alive outside of guild raids. Most veterans have 0 interest in playing with trash servers; it's incredibly unfun. Veteran style of play that used to be standard on many WvW servers is no longer possible. It's not about "hard", it's about literally not possible. Imagine I go do a guildraid with 15-20 players on any server. I'll have more than 20 pugs adding to every fight I do; regardless of numbers. If I want to fight another guild and GvG? Nope, still added by pugs. Ok, go open raid to teach them then? Just kidding, they still won't organise and come do anything. There's still no interest.The better you play, the more entitled bad pugs will chase you around because you are literally a loot machine. You enable them to feel like winners; and that's exactly what they want. So these guilds transfer to DEAD servers. Vabbi and WSR were literally the most empty WvW servers on EU. And they're both full and stacked; because the moment guilds moved there to get away from pugs hundreds of pugs followed. On servers like piken, deso, SFR and even FSP there is genuinely nothing most guilds and communities can do. You do closed raid? Jk you're open leading for casual pugs who won't listen but will stalk you no matter where you go. You do open raid? Well you'll get the same pugs, but they still won't come listen to you; and if you lose fights they'll go afk or leave again. You want to push? Wait no they can't push. You want to push and don't care about your pugs? During guild raids? your players barely have fun. Outside of guild raids? Well dead servers without any organised / coordinated play, so no fun for your veteran players still. Eventually your guild just bleeds players and dies because your players are plain NOT HAVING FUN; almost ever. You CANNOT play on these servers without having a stable raiding guild; or a group that doesn't care about organisation and quality at all. Casual pugs nowadays are insanely toxic. While they're "nice" in small doses, they join and try around some stuff, if every server is 50%+ pugs that do not lead; do not do anything on their own and simply search a group which is doing well to follow around then they destroy the chance for veterans to play the game, ever. There are simply too much casual pugs who won't do an ounce of effort yet still expect to win. Nothing will ever change for these fairweather players; they're bad and they will get farmed whenever matched against better players. And after getting farmed abit, they'll just go back to PVE, afk or go another map. The issue is their attitude and expectations. You can't expect good communities set up, commanders leading, nice fights and to actually win them when the average pug is too lazy for guilds, builds, voice, listening to leader, trying to improve or even willing to play when their side is losing a bunch. I'm sure it's the veterans bandwaggoning to those dead servers to farm T5... We had fun on vabbi before we had the same numbers as other servers; fighting 20v50 against casuals is an actual challenge and fun. But even that is now impossible because the moment we come close to fighting 20v50; oh right, you get +30 pugs most of the time. And well... 50v50 the casuals are chanceless. Veteran guilds bandwagon AWAY from pugs in order to be able to play the game. Anets system won't fix this. Just wanted to make clear that the bandwagoning and farming casuals isn't something fight guilds do to "get fights"; it's something they do to keep their communities alive and a lesser of two evils. Something forced by the huge amount of casual players who joined WvW who stalk these guilds yet are too casual to just cooperate with them. It's not the same 20 players doing this, it's more that the amount of veterans compared to the amount of casuals is so small they can't handle the numbers. And it continues to get worse. This system is not toxic enough. We don't need evenly balanced populations, if you want casuals to be able to fight veterans then the casuals need 2x as much numbers. After all, after a single weekend of farming PPT servers half their players refuse to play for the rest of the MU ;)

The only reason those fights are close to competitive is because players do not know what they're doing. I'm sorry but less than 20-30% of players even plays half organised.This might be toxic elitist, but over 50% might as well be randomly pressing buttons. They are genuinely that bad. They're essentially just a distraction for the enemy team to keep them engaged; but they don't really contribute to any side. Their main contribution is adding numbers. I somewhat regularly play on my alts with a few other bored vabbians. I'm sorry but 2-3 of us can kill "competitive fights". Join a slightly losing group with 3 good players playing together and you will win. You'll be facerolling faster than you know it. Anddd then it's done again. The fights are competitive, yes. But not because players kind of know what they're doing; but the opposite. They're competitive because players have NO FUCKING CLUE what they're doing. I saw commanders who genuinely kill their own blob more than the enemy blob because of their movement. I see 10-20 man half decent players in these zergs at best, with more than 30-40 being almost negative impact. This is the reality on both sides; and the only competitive aspect is the extent to which these bad players rally eachother. And the moment you have a few players who actually grasp the game? These 30-40 bad pugs die like flies... The competitive fights you talk about are so... low level that the balance is broken by a few good players on either side; and they're made to seem competitive because players can't organise and die like flies in this meta. Imagine you have 10 half decent players that will follow your comm on both sides; and then 40 random pugs. That's how these groups work. Most pugs running random builds which are not specced for WvW zergs, and even if they are they don't have the groups, support or knowledge required. The moment you push anything, anywhere, you die because you push 10v50. Bonus points because they end to fight over chokes, sm and structures 24/7 making this even worse. These aren't competitive fights; these are stalemates in which pushing kills yourself because your players cannot and will not follow. In my opinion; there's a difference between having competitive fights and having a prolonged pirateship because neither side is capable of organising more than a fraction of their group; which is required to push. And again, 2-3 decent range players and you just win the pirateship through range damage. And what does the losing server do? Well just use an ac or two and it'll make quick work of the enemy group if they push still. The fights are competitive because the moment they are "not", you instantly create a stalemate. All it requires is a choke, some acs or a structure to defend. Defense is so overpowered the stalemate is instantly reached. Fights aren't competitive because groups are EVEN, they're competitive because you can avoid losing fights entirely whenever you're weaker unless the enemy is organised enough to bully you around despite the massive advantages. Now look at the effect this competition has on WvW. Who ends up leading pugs? Who's the 10 man cores and commanders of half these squads? Still typically more hardcore players. FSP was a strong competitive server? And now? Each and every one of its public leads is ragequitting or refuses to ever lead again. Where are the pugmanders of these "competitive" servers gone to? Howmany pugmanders does EU have left?Monty rq fsp. WSR rq fsp. Dye and friends rq deso. Blue and another gankdara comm showed up on vabbi, got told they should go other servers for now and both ended up not going back and pugleading at all anymore. Rav quit game. Jak ragequit pugmanding. Tpot ragequit pugmanding. Roy rq pugmanding. Nation rq more servers than I can count. Dominate quit game. Ins quit game. Oni quit game. Androuw inactive. I don't know ANY active GvG guild at the moment; LAYS on break entire summer, Ash disband, Amp disband, I guess vI might still be running? The big german comms? Just kidding half of them are stuck on kodash / RS in T5 and also increasingly less and less active. I guess atleast kodash should get out of T5 for now. Every prime on both FSP and vabbi, I see a queue on EB or at least a fairly full map, generally begging for comms and not getting them; yet when they do the vast majority won't follow, organise or play with them. The most active comms on vabbi are still not "fight" players; our most active EB comm is a bane signet guardian followed by a 3x signet momentum sigil druid. Not particularly high end. You can assume you should cater to the masses; just like anet did in the past when ignoring WvW. Here's the truth : most casuals just want to join a fun group and play a bunch. And the only way to have this frequently and sustainable? Veterans that run these groups nearly constantly fighting eachother, allowing them to join. That was WvW in the past, too. But at this point, that isn't possible. There aren't enough vets left to make this sustainable. So what do you get instead? Vets finding ways to avoid being overrun with hundreds of casuals looking for an easy leech and desperately trying to fight eachother; and casuals not having any communities to join. They're just left on their own. It's not healthy for either groups; and it will continue to get worse.