Sviel.7493

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...

There are, technically, mechanics that allow underpopulated servers to at least play the game. For example, the siege system theoretically allows a small group of defenders to slow down a large enemy group. They can't stop them entirely because defense is limited by Supply, but the idea is that they slow them down long enough that their allies elsewhere can take objectives or show up to reinforce them. The effectiveness of these mechanics varies depending on the map you're playing. On Eternal BattleGrounds (EBG) or Alpine BorderLand (ABL), they were very poorly implemented. The newest map, Desert BorderLands (DBL) allows for much more robust defensive play. No matter how large a group of enemies is, they aren't breaking anything quickly if their Supply has been drained and they can't build siege. However, due to things I won't talk your ear off about unprompted, there's been a steady shift towards intensifying the inevitablity of zergs. Even some things that were intended as defensive advantages, like Shield Generators, are primarily used offensively instead. Anet then saw fit to increase siege vs. wall damage, decrease siege vs. siege damage and nerf the health/defense of walls and gates. It's still possible to harass a common zerg to the point where you can occasionally defend things while outnumbered. This is more or less all I do when I log on. It only really works on DBL, at this point, but could work a bit on ABL if half a dozen people or so really tried to make it happen. Anet will likely make some changes (for better or worse) in this area eventually, but they're currently holding off on almost everything until the Alliance update is finished.

Was there ever a post mortem on the last beta? edit: there was not Maybe there's going to be a blog or something that drops a week before and gives us some idea of what's happening. I do like seeing WvW beta events, but if there's no matchmaking then it's going to be a pain for whoever goes up against the server guilds. They called the Aug '22 beta #4 so...maybe they're counting differently this time?

The tutorial NPCs haven't been updated since they appeared, I think. I haven't checked them in a while...and there never was one on DBL to begin with. I think Anet knows that the new player experience is awful, but they plan to first update everything else and then hit the new player stuff so they only have to do it once. Typically, that's how WvW development goes. Grand schemes that take years to accomplish with promises of QoL basics once that's finished. At this point, it may be the only path forward so I can't even knock them for that particular thing anymore. That said, I do think that WvW has a dedicated fart-sniffing crew. It's a 24/7 game mode with extremely open possibilities--naturally, there will be people that spend embarrassing amounts of time fiddling with the details. I know I do. It follows that such people are over-represented on the forums, but a casual player can pretty safely ignore all of that.

The only true answer is that none of this was planned. There weren't supposed to be 2 BLs, 1up1down was implemented way late in the game's life, etc. It's all just the result of myriad, unplanned actions or short-term fixes with long-term consequences. More interesting, to me at least, is the idea that DBL is more difficult to defend. It does take slightly longer for a zerg to tele onto the map and run to the lord room of a keep so, if that's your plan, defense is definitely harder. However, there is much more opportunity for scouts to hinder opposing zergs on DBL, the side keeps require multiple siege points, and so on. Thus, for the type of defense I do, DBL is much, much better. I'm almost completely ineffective on ABL due to the open map, camp placements, cheese siege spots and so on. In short, I think the idea that DBL is harder to defend is just the zerglings and zerg captains complaining. Wait a few days and they'll complain that DBL also gives defenders too much advantage. That said, I don't think it would be a bad idea to ensure that the sides got switched around more often. Personally, I'd love the idea of being red every week, but I imagine other players feel quite differently.

The reason this works better in Planetside is because the battles themselves are usually slower paced and heavily rely on momentum. You can't just rush up to a point and overwhelm a slightly smaller force because defensive force multipliers actually exist. You also can't stack 50 deep and rely on AoE target caps to mitigate incoming damage. You largely push in small cells, sometimes comprising a large overall force, and die in small cells then return to the push. Distance in WvW is extremely important to the game's balance. This is why, on their newest map, they were careful to mirror walking distances between objectives. It's also why the addition of the Warclaw was akin to shooting themselves in the foot, but there's no going back on that now. If players can re-enter the fight too quickly, you end up with stalemates that are epic if you're into that sort of thing but exhausting if you're not. Battles are won not because of strength or strategy, but simply endurance. Still, your feeling that fights in WvW are the RvR equivalent of minute-men is not wrong. Sieges are a lot of waiting around followed by the possibility of a one-sided fight and that isn't a whole lot fun. We could use a fix for this that works for GW2, but we can't just import the Planetside version. I think the best solution is to make the siege part more active by toning down the inevitability of large groups. There's already a huge advantage to splitting up an assault, but players don't bother because it's easier to just sit a fat zerg down on some proxy catas and wait a minute or two. The zerg fight at the climax doesn't have to be the only part anyone enjoys. This would require a bunch of changes and could be implemented in myriad ways, but the general idea is that the whole siege should be a fun and legendary event.

The reason they're waiting to address rewards is that they're hoping player's will change how they play the game when their latent incentives change. In theory, if matches aren't literally impossible to win, they suggest that players will approach things differently. I am not personally so optimistic. It's been a very, very long time. The players who would respond to changes in their environment have largely burned out. Those that remain are the people who enjoy the funk. Any changes in the funk will simply be met with backlash, warranted or not, until Anet backs down. Anet may succeed in creating more balanced match-ups and it is critical to the health of WvW that they do, but they won't be thanked for it by the people who are currently thriving in WvW. Thus, either they need to find the backbone to work toward the health of the game despite what their most hardcore players want, or they need to find the creativity to deliver something different from current WvW that their players want. What the reward structure looks like will have to reflect which choice Anet makes. If they try to go middle of the road again, it won't work as some players are trying to get the goods and get out while others are looking for a long-term system of inexhaustible rewards. They can't please them both with the pieces they have in place. However, it's very difficult to make meaningful suggestions on what they should do in this new World they're hoping to create inhabited by players who act differently that the people we're currently surrounded by. It is fair to say they aren't addressing rewards now because there's not much more that they can do. They have done a lot and have more or less reached the limit of problems that can be solved in that way. That said, I do like the idea of a monthly shop or whatever. It would require a bunch of new content, though, so I'm not sure how feasible it is.

I'm also in this match up. It seems that Green has a full guild of active players (from MAG I hear). Even if they technically don't have more bodies, they get a lot more activity out of those bodies. Due to this, Blue has largely focused on hitting Red and Red has become demoralized leading to many people just not bothering to fight for a temporary alliance. It's pretty bad, but probably not the result of basic population imbalance.

There isn't any matchmaking going on so it's unlikely to be an improvement on that front. There should be a similar number of accounts on each side, but some will be more active and massive guilds of active players can really make that imbalance hurt. It does feel bad that the test is mostly backend stuff, but I'm still glad it happened because I got to just choose the team with RBL I look forward to when it launches for real. WvW has more or less broken me. I wag my tail when they pay me any attention at all.