Sviel.7493

While I won't reply to everything at once due to length, here are a few points that have changed since you last played: Melee Catapults: are even worse now. Anet updated siege to deal increased damage the longer you charge it. I think the idea was that players might use siege at range if they weren't taking a damage loss. Unfortunately, as you said, the primary reason for melee catapults is that they are safer than ranged catapults so players now just fully charge shots right next to the wall. And, for reasons I cannot explain, due to the charge bonus damage compared to the cooldown, there is a slight DPS gain for charging shots. In short, Anet attempted to solve the issue (maybe?) and instead just buffed siege damage across the board. On a related note, wall health/defense was nerfed to try and encourage fights inside of objectives. Obviously, this just led to more things being flipped before sufficient defenders showed up. I cannot believe the person who came up with that change ever played outside of EBG. --- Desert Map: where do you have to go north in order to go south? Just like the Alpine map, there is a clearly marked road on the ground that will take you straight from one objective to a neighboring objective. There are multiple roads between objectives so you can zig zag if you wish, but it isn't necessary. There is also, ironically, less verticality on the main roads than ABL (see: NET switchbacks) though more verticality on alternate paths. This could be, as you said, the difference between someone new to the map and someone who has a lot of time on it, but I'm curious to know what parts specifically are causing issues.

Siegerazor seems like a well-intentioned but sloppy attempt at encouraging people to play while outnumbered. It has failed to accomplish that goal. Probably best to just let it die.

That was a fun read--thanks for sharing it xD You definitely saw some of the worst of WvW, but I wouldn't say it was too atypical. There's a solution in the works for big-picture population balance but a general rework of siege and new player guidance is also sorely needed. I wish I could personally help you out but I'm on SoS.

I do not believe conditions were ever intended to function as a primary DPS. Back in the day, there was a cap of 25 bleed stacks. They couldn't do a More Stacks = More Damage thing with a cap on max stacks. Later, as condis were pushed as an alternative damage source, the cap was removed. Reworking them to have a flat damage per stack (perhaps with the final stack being partial to avoid forcing flat numbers) would improve clarity somewhat but...it can still swing a fight if you have to spend the opening exchanges figuring out if you need to dodge the attack that applies bleed and immob or if you can just cleanse the immob.

I strongly agree with @Sahne.6950. The visual clutter is indecipherable and, worse, the ever-increasing importance of boons makes very small elements of the UI extremely critical to understanding a fight. On top of that, skills that have the same animation may or may not do this or that thing depending on traits/runes/etc. and that feels like a much bigger deal in GW2 because boons and condis are so huge. To truly understand PvP you have to really study it...and I just don't think the payoff is really there. Thus, IMO, GW2 combat is great for PvE but not what I'd hope for in terms of PvP. Depth is good, but it requires clarity. GW2 depth feels hollow anyway.

Nowadays I don't think about dailies, but my initial foray into WvW was because reset was near and I needed a quick daily. I'm not confident that removing them would have any positive effect that would outweigh luring people into the game mode. Some could certainly be changed, but I don't think they necessarily need to get more difficult.

This is it. This is the thing I most want Anet to acknowledge because that means there is some reason to have hope. To be clear, I think alliances are a positive step in that direction as they allow for significantly better long-term population balance, but they don't solve the short-term population imbalance and aren't meant to. Since that is an issue that cannot be changed in the WvW format, it must be designed around--the game must be fun even with temporary population imbalance.

Event centric maps have been tried. Early on there were the orbs of power, but they had to be removed in part due to rampant hacking and in part because they were a Win More mechanic that didn't add enough positive action to the game to offset the snowballing. Later, they tried again with the Oasis event on DBL. Even if we give them a pass on the lag, it was another Win More mechanic that didn't add much positive action. It was an improvement over orbs since you could, theoretically, take advantage of the largest zerg going there by immediately sieging something important to them...but it still wound up a failure because WvW has to exist with no guarantee of population balance. The largest server could zerg the event and still defend. To be clear, I think the event structure and WvW structure are both ok in these respects, but they simply did not mesh well. Personally, I want maps to focus on the fundamentals of WvW. I want them to enable people to do interesting things that make victory possible in the long term even when outnumbered in the short term, provided relatively even populations in the long-term. DBL made several important steps in that direction...but then Anet backed down from that direction, laid off many of the people responsible for the map design (though that was likely unrelated to performance), and started making changes that stressed the weakest parts of WvW. Just like the Oasis and Orb events failed because the biggest zerg dominated them, WvW in general falls apart whenever a dominant zerg appears. If you can't beat a zerg with your zerg, then you can't hold a single objective. You might take some stuff here and there, but only by avoiding direct player interaction and only temporarily. Part of the issue is that the players that continue to put up with WvW as it is grow accustomed to what exists. For example, people go on and on about how important it is for objectives to lead into each other. If you can't siege a keep from a tower, what's the point of the tower? However, being able to siege a keep from a tower is, like the Orbs and Oasis, a Win More mechanic. It doesn't let small groups apply pressure to large groups, but it does make it even easier for large groups to negate small groups. If the point of WvW was conquest--that is, if the point was a one-time capture of a certain location, then such a mechanic would fit. It would reward one team for making progress. However, the point of WvW (from a mechanical perspective) is to hold valuable territory. Thus, checkpoints that turn into protected siege areas aren't integral to the design. If siege checkpoints are detrimental, they should be removed. I believe this is why they were eliminated in DBL. Instead, towers were intended to have the potential to restrict enemy pathing to make them easier to track. Taking a tower was still a checkpoint of sorts, but instead of knocking down a wall for free, you now put a larger chunk of the map into play. This wasn't a huge boon for zergs as walls don't mean much to them, but it allowed for small teams to get up to all sorts of mischief. In short, it was a mechanic that allowed a server with fewer people to have some agency without giving a huge advantage to the server with the most people. But, long-story short, Anet seems to have run away from all that. How they plan to fix the fundamental issues with WvW is unclear--it doesn't seem like they have a plan beyond fixing long-term population imbalances. Unfortunately, the key issue is short-term population imbalance so... So, as I said in my first post, how can they possibly make a new map? They replaced ABL in an attempt to fix various fundamental issues, but now they seem to have backed off from making any changes in that area. Every event they've centered a map around has failed due to short-term population imbalance, but they seem reluctant to do anything to address short-term population imbalance. The primary reason they made a new map was because further changes to the old map would not fix the problems they faced. It wasn't for variety. They're not going to make a third map unless it is necessary to fix some fundamental issue...but they no longer seem to have the will to fix them. Thus, WvW flounders on without any clear direction. ABL came back and will remain even if the game mode slowly chokes to death. They can't replace it and can't update it, but they realized long ago that they can't fix the game's primary issues without getting rid of it. Sucks to be them, I guess.

To release new maps, Anet has to decide on a direction for WvW. They have been extremely cagey on this. I would not expect any movement on this front anytime soon. ABL is a zerg-centric mess, but this is what some people want. DBL made a huge number of changes with mixed results, but overall accomplished its goal of creating a less zerg-centric map. Any map they release in the future will or will not include certain features that influence how zerg-centric it is. If they lean into the zerg, WvW will continue to stagnate as that's a major factor in myriad issues with the game mode. If they move away from the zerg, they will alienate the people who have grown to love the current mess with no guarantee of better new player retention. It's not a great position to be in. What they will do remains to be seen, but it seems as if the pro-zerg group has more support based on the changes they've made since HoT. With that being the case...what's the point of a new map? You can't really go more zerg-centric than ABL and still have a game mode. You could simply reskin it, but is that worth the resources? Anyway, this is something that definitely won't see any movement until after the alliances update is done. I don't know if anything will happen then, but I'm certain it won't happen right now.

It's not great, but changing it to siege damage only is probably going too far in the other direction. Honestly, the system should probably be reworked from scratch. There should be a way to declare a false alarm that doesn't allow people to just open waypoints at will--Perhaps if no/few guards are dead and there are no breaches or recent siege damage? Perhaps there should be more information available than just white swords, even if it has to be player generated. I'm all for scouting, but no one should be condemned to run in circles around a keep just to constantly reassure everyone that it is not under attack. In a full tilt setting where everyone is trying their hardest to win, this is going to burn scouts out with unceasing and pointless work instead of anything approaching engaging gameplay.

Mostly I pop a scout tag when trailing a zerg, but rarely I'll tag up when the border is wiped and recapture the northern section. In general, I strongly dislike the tendency for the whole map to lump up in one place, so I don't use my tag often.

This is good communication. I'm so happy to see it that I'm temporarily not worried about all the actual gameplay updates that are on hold until this is all finished.

It was nice that they acknowledged that they're only considering zerg fights in WvW, but I don't understand why none of the rest of it is worthy of attention. Is it just not their area?

@Riba.3271 I definitely like the idea of swapping claim bonuses to non-PvP things. The stat buffs are only useful in defense if you already have a zerg...which is just not the life I live.

I don't have specific changes in mind and am by no means qualified to do that. As usual, it's easier to see problems than to fix them.

In the balance philosophy stream earlier, WvW was very briefly mentioned. Per their slides, WvW consists of support and damage dealing roles, though Roy did mention that there is more to WvW than zergfights and said they also look out for that. It was...less than convincing. However, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and help them develop a more robust WvW strategy. Obviously, I can't do this alone as my WvW experience is not representative of all people. I'll mention a few things that are important to me but I will definitely miss plenty that may be important to you. ... Some years back, Ghost Thieves were abundant in WvW. They had permastealth and would apply damaging conditions to kill NPCs and players who weren't specced for much cleansing. It was very difficult to interact with them, much less kill them. They weren't an issue in PvE because their DPS was low and weren't an issue in PvP because they couldn't contest points or duel. In WvW, however, they could take any camp unless you sat in the ring cycling cleanses until they fell asleep. This went on for years. Then, one day, someone soloed a raid boss or something on this build. Within 48 hours, it was hot fixed out of existence. I can't know if Anet thought Ghost Thieves fit their design philosophy back then or if they just weren't watching or didn't care, but I do wonder if they plan to address stealth in WvW today. If players can exit fights freely and reset, defenders are forced to camp rings non-stop. Thus, stealth should be a more expensive part of a class's power budget in WvW as it allows for much greater effectiveness than in other modes. This crops up in other areas too like when the two stealth/portal classes hole up in a keep. The tools we have to attempt to deal with this are woefully insufficient. For another long-standing issue, what are Anet's thoughts concerning certain stat combinations in WvW? Dire has been a consistent issue since its introduction. It was removed from PvP but remains in WvW because...? Granted, it isn't great in zerg fights, but it's very hard to lose a camp duel in that gear. In a similar vein, defensive hybrid gear in general is probably too strong in WvW. Damage just doesn't stick in some fights leading to long, boring stalemates. I don't know if they do siege stuff, so I won't go into that. I don't know who is responsible for the WvW part of WvW rather than just zerg fights. It doesn't seem to be these guys.

Part of the reason the hardcore guilds dominate feedback is because they have organized communities and representatives that can reasonably claim to speak for a bunch of people. Even if the devs made a good faith effort to get feedback, a disproportionate amount of readily available responses will be from that organized group. That said, they do have these forums and other avenues, but that's still just fractions of the playerbase. In the end, they may be best served by seeking less feedback since the little they get tends to be skewed. Either way, I don't think it's a good look that they seem so in the pocket of a few large guilds--especially since those guilds are, ultimately, a small portion of the WvW population and an even smaller portion of what the WvW population needs to be. Catering to them at the expense of everyone else is not the path to growth.

You can't meaningfully interact with stealthed or invulnerable players, but you can kill a golem. If they want to spend a blueprint and a bunch of supply to buy an extra 30 seconds of ring time, so be it.

It's mostly about how the balance changes affected zerg fights, if memory serves. I don't recall if anything was said about rewards.

I got my hopes up that you made this thread to link to some communication I was not aware of. At any rate, the beta has started in EU by this point so I think we can give up hope of anything dropping before the NA start either.

While not a new thing, it is not great. However, like so much other WvW jank, the people that got tired of putting up with it quit the game back when avoiding climate catastrophe was still possible. It's also likely not high on the list of things to fix if it's even on the list at all. If there's even a faint hope of it, it won't be until after alliances drop, are adjusted to Anet's satisfaction and all the other problems in WvW can potentially be looked at.

Since others have gone into specifics, I'll just say that the small QoL stuff all seems cool. On the larger issues, I get the impression that you're trying to solve problems at the surface without a grasp of their roots. For instance, you say you want 5 people to be able to defend against 20 and you want to accomplish this by giving them massive combat power when outnumbered. Say we do this--what happens when they lose the outnumbered buff? Do they yell at people to leave the map because 1 extra person isn't worth losing their godlike buff? Or, taking another tack, why can't 5 people defend against 20 right now? Is it because they don't have enough stats? And say that they could...would anything ever flip again? I think you've correctly identified that WvW has an issue where the team that is currently short on people may as well log off, but this specific solution is a non-starter.

Exhibit A on why I will never take the combat in this game seriously.

It's always good to see more WvW content, even when it's mostly about zerg fights and, thus, incomprehensible to me.

I am only now realizing that the 'J' in OJs doesn't stand for swords. It felt so natural that I failed to question it...