Sviel.7493

It's probably not exactly what you wanted, but they were aiming to get the Alliances info blog out today. Generally, I agree that they have been awful in the communication department, but there's been a huge shift lately so I'm trying to give them a chance. Worst that can happen is I get disappointed again.

@Xenesis.6389Like Tyler said, players wanted ABL back immediately and with minimal changes. As a result, they abandoned the planned changes and instead just implemented the bare minimum to allow the map to work with the guild updates and such that came with HoT. He mentions that a change to the layout of Citadel would have delayed the return by 2 weeks--imagine how long changes to Hills, Bay and Garrison would have taken. If we look at forum threads from that time, we can see that some players were similarly confused as to why ABL returned without more changes: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Why-AB-wasn-t-fixed-before-releasing-it And here's a few threads referencing their plan to update ABL and re-introduce it somehow: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Would-arenanet-ever-bring-the-alpines-back https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/What-will-happen-to-the-old-borderland

Sorry, I was a little imprecise there. It was going to be updated prior to entering a rotation. ABL as we know it was meant to be permanently removed. While they never went into specifics on their planned updates, my conjecture is that they didn't remove all double walls purely by accident--thus, if all had gone as planned, I think the updated version of ABL (which never came to be) would have also removed double walls.

I agree that this is an issue, but reducing splash range on catapults/trebs will have multiple knock-on effects that may lead to other issues. The way they planned to address this was through map updates, as you mentioned. DBL, on release, had 0 places where two walls could be hit at once and only 2 places where walls took damage from siege hitting well below them. The latter is the result of a bug where walls placed on a diagonal have a larger-than-intended hitbox according to a red post, but we never got any follow-up on if the bug was being worked on or not. ABL, on the other hand, has multiple such places at every keep and maybe 1 at SET (I don't remember...). That's part of the reason ABL was intended to be scrapped. Since it was brought back prior to planned updates, the problems persist. It is probably too much work to address the issue on ABL since it would involve redesigning every keep. Inevitably, people would get super mad about it too. Simply put, the most vocal part of the playerbase is not interested in healthy siege design. Any change that makes sieges more interactive is going to ruffle their feathers.

It won't be possible for players to stack alliances like they do servers. Even if they swap to one of the guilds in that alliance, they won't be moved until the end of the match-up and alliances are re-made. That means if they try to stack one by swapping guilds, it gets re-balanced before the swap goes into effect.

With the release of DBL, Waypoints were removed from upgrade trees and instead enabled immediately upon capture of an objective--but only for the team that spawned nearest it. Waypoints were moved from the side keeps to the southern towers both to cement the home team advantage and to shorten the time it took for players to get back into the fight. The devs also mentioned wanting to cut down on the ability of one team to control the whole map by getting Waypoints in distant keeps. The change was met with significant backlash--almost entirely because players felt that Waypoints were a thing they worked for and upgrades felt lackluster now that they came free. So the Waypoint change was reverted and, immediately, players began to complain that it took too long to get back into fights. Personally, I think Anet over-reacted to the criticism. Of course, it's easy for me to say this as I wasn't the one under pressure at the time...But a better idea may have been to keep the instant Waypoints in the southern towers and middle keep (or push them to T1), while adding the T3 Waypoints back to the side keeps but only for the keep you spawn closest too. This would both allow players to get back in the fight more quickly and give them something to earn at T3 without running into the dominant team problem where they can teleport all over the map. They could also create a mid-sized, non-walled objective outside of keeps/towers that could temporarily disable the Waypoint inside. It wouldn't matter much in a siege since that already contests the waypoint, but it would reduce enemy mobility for a time.

The traps now also disappear if you die, so you can't place a supply trap on a gate and then scout ahead because it poofs if the zerg catches you off guard.

Nothing can be done about them unless Anet decides they want to do it. As far as I can tell, they haven't decided as such. There's not really anything we can do as players beyond sending reports into the void.

This is a pretty bad situation that is also quite common. Your best shot is to run up and kill a guard of the keep they are taking before it flips. They'll spend some time knocking down the walls and killing the lord so, even without Warclaw, you should be able to make it in time. That will give you credit for flipping the keep. Most likely, this will be a side keep on one of the borderlands. You spawn pretty close to it so it's not far to run.

No, but I'd rather remove all obstacles to it being fixed at least.

It would be nice to see those areas marked on a map. I've somehow never encountered them despite spending almost all of my time on DBL, so we'd need them pinpointed if they're ever to be fixed.

I don't think your solutions are great, but I do agree that the reapplication rate vs. cleanse rate balance is not great either. There's huge discrepancies between classes and builds in terms of both and that makes it basically impossible to have any semblance of balance. In certain match-ups, the condi build will feel op. In others, it will feel like it accomplishes nothing. There's no fixing this without a full redesign that accounts for such things from the beginning. Otherwise, balanced or not, condis will continue to be controversial because they do not fit well into the base combat system.

Even if they were going to fix it, you'd have to post in the actual class forum and try to convince them WvW is a thing that exists. The WvW specific team doesn't seem to have much to do with skill balancing.

I don't want to have to make a specific class and/or buy an expac just to WvW. It might be funny for a little bit, but definitely not a whole week.

You fiend.

I need to know this now.

That was oddly chill.

Hmmm, I wonder what might have happened around HoT which would have made it awkward to wear an Anet tag in WvW? The problem wasn't a sudden loss of inspiration but that the changes they made were terribly received. The reasons for this are myriad, but I'll hit the top three. To be clear, part of the reason is that some of the changes were bad, but the reaction we saw far surpassed anything stemming from that reason. 1.) The Intended Audience Had Already Quit The HoT changes to WvW definitely seemed inspired, to me, by people who loved the game mode. Not all of them worked out, but I could at least see what they were trying to do. However, there wasn't any communication about this in the years it was presumably being worked on. This gave the impression that they didn't care. People who grew tired of the various problems plaguing WvW began to quit. Eventually, most of the people that remained prioritized things like open field fights over all of the other parts of WvW. One of the best changes they made was to remove siege positions that could hit outer and inner or hit two walls at once (except the one corner at earthkeep). However, there weren't too many people left who appreciated that and they were drowned out in the ruckus. 2.) Too Many Changes at Once Since they simultaneously changed guild buffs, many organized WvW guilds mostly or wholly abandoned the game mode to try and get their quintessential +5 supply buff back. This, among other factors, caused a huge population drop--far lower than what we see today. Combined with no one knowing the map very well and many commanders slaving away in PvE for their guild hall, there was a significant shift in the flavor of WvW that was then blamed on whatever factors were shouted the loudest. They also changed the upgrade system to one that tended towards fully upgraded maps at low populations instead of fully paper maps. This led to a massive drop in the feasibility of the people on the map being able to threaten objectives which meant that nothing was driving players to fight each other. 3.) Odd Choice of Highlights. The DBL trailer was all about flashy stuff with no mention of how the map actually improved WvW gameplay. They really advertised those airkeep turrets like those were a thing that would make people excited to play the game. In truth, they're positioned on paths that zergs rarely travel and were unlikely to make much of an impact, but since Anet played them up so much, people raged against them as if they were a thing that mattered. Perhaps if they had mentioned that they actually planned yak pathing out so that objectives upgraded at roughly the same times and the northern towers weren't half-orphaned anymore then the conversation would have been different. Instead, they positioned themselves firmly outside of having designed the map with gameplay in mind, even though they clearly did.

From the news post today: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-live-fall-and-winter-2021/ So, about a month assuming all goes well. But this is probably complex stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised if it took an extra week or two.

With HoT, supply delivered by yaks was cut in half. I think this was intended as a compromise between spending supply on upgrades and supply in the keep constantly being at 0--making defense largely impossible. While I think there's room to improve on the system, I don't want to go back to never having supply to defend instead of mostly never having it because a hungry zerg ported in then left the map. I totally missed it. I stopped reading news articles because there wasn't anything relevant to me, but I guess I should get back in the habit.

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There is now one week left in August. That means we should be getting information and dates for Alliances within that time. Or, perhaps, a delay announcement--which would be better than nothing. We did get some information unofficially, at least. Unrelated: Prior to HoT, it took 10,200 supply to upgrade a keep to roughly the equivalent of T3 today. Yaks delivered 80 supply per run back then so it took 128 yaks to get enough supply to upgrade the keep. The actual time depended on the run speed of the workers inside and could be shortened by standing in the keep and giving them swiftness. After HoT and the subsequent upgrade rework, it now takes 140 yaks to upgrade a keep to T3. This can be shortened by going out into the field and giving Yaks swiftness. However, SMC is an entirely different story. It's the only objective fed by 6 camps and thus upgrades starkly faster under the new system rather than the old.

As far as we know, the current plan is for a live test. The idea is precisely to iron out the kinks before it's set in stone. Unrelated: On ABL, the northern towers are fed only by North Camp. The yaks from North Camp have the longest and second-longest travel paths on any borderland. For this reason, these towers take far longer to upgrade than any other objective--over twice as long, in fact. The Northeast Tower takes 653.3 minutes to upgrade assuming North Camp never flips and no yaks are killed or slowed by sentries. That's about 11 hours. The Northwest Tower takes 732.7 minutes to upgrade under the same circumstances. That's just over 12 hours. On DBL, both northern towers are fed by North Camp and either Northwest Camp or Northeast Camp. They still upgrade slower than any other objective on DBL, but are much faster than their ABL counterparts. The Northeast Tower on DBL takes 286.4 minutes to upgrade, or a little under 5 hours. The Northwest Tower on DBL takes 279.4 minutes to upgrade, which is also a little under 5 hours. For this reason, as far as the northern towers are concerned, there is a significant PPT advantage to having DBL as your home borderland as well as a much higher chance of actually seeing the towers hit T3 in general.

The match-up length doesn't seem to be set in stone. Grouch mentioned doing 1 week match-ups to quickly get information on how the matchmaking system was working during the beta, but he seemed to suggest that they would be longer under normal circumstances.

As a scout, I don't get a lot of WvW ranks. If the cost was 20, I'd need over a week to pull a single tactic. That would be awful, and I imagine it would feel even worse for someone still trying to rank skills. I think that the current way tactics work is not ideal, but this is not the solution. An imperfect improvement over the current system might be to allow guilds to have a permission list of non-guildies who could pull the tactics.