Kranlor Greyhelm.8417

I was happily dropping an effective sub fee in the cash shop every month. I was happy to contribute to a company geared towards making quality content for me to enjoy. I've now stopped that, because what I'm seeing in terms of content delivery screams a company that is, at best, taking their customers for granted. At worst, they are taking them for mugs. This patch is a giant middle finger to everyone. For me it says "we're busy working on the next paid expansion, so here's what little our interns could churn out to keep you busy". Nothing I've seen suggests they can maintain the pace of content delivery they've CHOSEN to do. I won't be pre-ordering the next one. Hell, I may not be ordering it at all. Not until I see improvements.

That was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Barely more than an hour of "story", much of which was filling yet another bar with old map content. A final boss fight for which "underwhelming" would be the polite version. If this is the best that the new ANET can manage, they won't be getting any more of my money for these "expansions".

FOW for the last 11 years. Through all the ups and downs. Be a badge I'll be proud to wear in the future. Assuming ANET manage to unpick the complete pigs ear they've made of WvW recently.

So they're introducing the thing they've been working on for years that doesn't really fix any of the actual problems of WvW, especially all the ones they've introduced recently. They've rolled back their defending nerfs a bit, but not enough to actually make a difference. Can't upset all those boonballers, can we? And they are increasing the number of tiers at the very point their changes are driving people away. Can't see that going badly. Are we supposed to be excited about this?

Feel free to share those methods of defeating boonballs with the rest of us. Assuming that your answer isn't "get a bigger or better composed boonball". It isn't a cloud, because that doesn't work. It isn't defensive siege, that's literally worthless. So what is this simple way of defeating boonballs that players are using to "enjoy the game in its current state"?

And what about the boonball? What if 30% of them are just mashing buttons on a support class? What if 35% of them are running classes that are providing boons virtually passively? What if 10% of them are barely producing half of the dps they should? In that case the cloud should win, right? But it doesn't. You can pull numbers out of your kitten as much as you like, we've got a fundamental problem with the gamemode where scissors have been buffed and buffed and rock has been driven out of the game. Anyone playing paper because that's what they like are just getting steamrollered, and quitting the game as a result. If that's what ANET wants, then good luck to them. But from their panicked attempt to gather "feedback" on this forum, I'd say they've already recognised the mess they've made and are taking steps to fix it. Or at least I'd hope so.

Should they though? I know that this is clearly what ANET think, but should 20 organised and less skillful players have an advantage over 40 more skillful players that don't happen to be in a meta composition? Because as it stands at the moment, group composition outweighs ALL other factors, and it isn't even close. Everything should have some weight in the outcome of a fight. Composition. Tactics. Skill. Numbers. Organisation. As it stands ANET have decided that only organisation and composition matter. Get those right and the other side can be tactically better, with more skill and greater numbers and if they aren't meta organised they'll lose. Every. Single. Time. I'm out until this changes. To be honest, if it doesn't change pretty soon I may be out for good. Sure, I'm just one player, but I'm pretty sure that there are others feeling the same way, Then the boonballs can cycle around undefended structures to their hearts content. Just as ANET appears to want it.

It's already been broken. When the answer to every question of tactics is "boonball", it's kittening broken. What's best for taking objectives? Boonball. What's best for defending objectives? Boonball. What's the counter to a boonball? Boonball. The fact you don't see that as broken just reinforces that you are perfectly happy with one solution to all problems. You're looking out on what you perceive to be a sea of nails, and chittering happily about how good your hammer is. The rest of us don't see it that way.

Are you a ktrain boonballer? If so, your rewards are there to take. Just play the game, everything will be handed on a plate to you. If you aren't a ktrain boonballer, then that's your mistake. You're playing the gamemode wrong, and that's why you aren't getting any rewards. You aren't supposed to get any if you play this game any other way. You're just bags for the boonballers as they steamroll around the map. Just don't dare put up too much of a defence, otherwise they'll nerf anything that isn't a boonball again. Or just give up and stop playing it. Which seems to be what the devs want, based on their recent decision making.

No, it isn't. Fixing the problem of support players not getting credit meant that it's easier to get people to play support, but the reason that the meta is 3-4 support for each 1-2 dps is because the end result is an unkillable blob of players that barely need to use their brains. A commander isn't thinking "I have to get more support so that they can get more bags". He's focused purely on the benefits that setup gives his group. If you took away the rewards for support players, they'd still be trying to build a squad the same way. It might be harder to persuade enough people to fill the roles, but they'd still be trying to do it. It won't be fixed until boonballing has some degree of disadvantage to it. At the moment it's all pluses and no downside. ANET needs to be sorting out a rock for the boonball scissors, otherwise they can't fix this.

I would hope they don't, considering that hasn't even been possible for.....years now? Hard to take any other points seriously when this either suggests you haven't been playing WvW for some time, or if you have you REALLY haven't been paying attention.

Or do what I've suggested elsewhere; every player in WvW has an aura, and every friendly player in range of that aura gets a stacking debuff that lowers speed, damage and healing by 1%. Stacks up to 50 times. You want to run a blob? It's slow, does less damage and can take less damage. Suddenly 10 groups of 5 players can jump in and out damaging the blob. Suddenly positioning and tactics come into play. Suddenly there are genuine choices to be made. We need to come up with ideas to make it so that a boonblob isn't the best choice in every circumstance and in every way. There needs to be downsides to it that others can exploit. There needs to be a rock to their scissors, otherwise everything stays paper (see what I did there?)

The fact ANET have responded in this thread is interesting. Especially with it being pretty quick after the last set of changes. I suspect they've seen the participation numbers and realised that a LOT of people have either stopped playing or are playing significantly less. Personally I've been logging in to finish wood each week, then noped out for the remainder. Where I've been finishing diamond every week for a pretty long time prior to that. I just don't find the current setup fun, and I'm not going to force myself to do something I don't enjoy.

FTFY

So that people use the EWP when it's too late and provide extra bags for the great Boonball god. All must go to feed the great boonball god Pee-Pi-Tee.

Tactics now give their benefits to attackers instead of defenders. For ease, activators for tactics are now outside the structures. All tactics have been buffed.

"If it doesn't look like an intern came up with it, we probably put too much effort into it".

Translation; "The boonball blobs that our ANET devs like to run in wasn't immediately winning every fight, so we had to make changes so that they would". When the best setup to attack a structure is a boonball, and the best setup to defend a structure is a boonball and the best setup for an open world fight is a boonball, sensible people would start to question whether they've made a mistake in balancing things. ANET look at their stats, see that 5% of the time the attacking boonball doesn't win, and nerf defending into the ground. This is an objectively terrible change for anyone that doesn't play boonball. If they carry on with this they are going to drive a lot of people away from WvW.

I'm angry because ANET have decided that there is a "right" way to play WvW and are nerfing anything that might oppose it. Just because you are happy with that way of playing doesn't mean it doesn't cause a problem weighting a competitive game towards one way of playing with no alternative counter. But don't worry, if it stays like this you'll get your wish and it will only be large organised "skillful" groups left. Because the rest of us would have left, as ANET apparently wants. Then you can have fun playing "hunt the opponent" when you suddenly realise there aren't as many people happy to play your way as you thought there were.

Skill and leadership have an impact, sure. As do numbers. But the impact of ALL of those things is way less than the one ANET god of composition. You get a skilled, well led group of 50 with a composition of random classes and specs and put it up against a poorly led, less skilled group of 30 with a perfect meta composition and there is only going to be one outcome. And it will be the same fight after fight after fight. ANET have decided that their boonball can only be challenged by another boonball that's equally well composed. Only when the compositions are both equally good will skill, tactics and numbers start to have an impact on the result. In the meantime, anyone that doesn't want to play boonball is just food for the boonball. I've logged out of WvW for the week after getting wood on Friday. Because WSR isn't fun to play, and facing a massive boonball on every map that we now have zero chance to stop is just painful. If this is what ANET want WvW to be, then I just won't be playing it. I suspect I won't be alone.

ANET need to get past this notion that boonballs should be the only way to play. Some people like to roam. As it stands, roamers just get in the way of any possible defence against a boonball, unless they are willing and able to switch to a boonball spec and join the throng in defence. Some people like to run in smaller groups, but again unless they are willing to lead a larger group, or subsume themselves in one and pass control to someone else, they also get in the way of a possible boonball defence. Watching a boonball wreck your stuff and knowing there is zero chance of stopping it is not fun. Having to switch your way of playing to have ANY chance of defending is not fun. Especially when the chances are it STILL won't work, because the boonball has been carefully crafted to be meta. While we're at it, spending extended time getting smacked around by both opposition servers who are BOTH stronger than yours individually isn't fun either. There needs to be something in place to mitigate that too. Because if people can't enjoy their time in WvW, they are going to give up. If the choice is "play the way you want and screw your side over, or play the way ANET wants and hate it" then personally that will be me gone. Maybe I'm the only one, but I doubt it. There needs to be legitimate choice in WvW, there needs to be room for different playstyles. And the changes need to stop catering to one group of players. Don't get me wrong, I've played in some boonballs and it can be fun for a while. But not if it's the only game in town. Punching down might feel great for the one doing the punching, but it's kitten for those being punched. That's true for those on the receiving end of an unstoppable boonball, or a server pair up. If those people start to quit, pretty soon there will be nothing to punch down on, then will the people punching quit as well? It's well past time for a change of course for WvW. Because if we carry on like this ANET are going to kill it.

So basically, if a full map of players on a single upgraded and sieged position decide to defend, it is difficult to remove? And you think that somehow negates the complaints on here? And let's be honest, if you had a full squad on an upgraded, fully sieged target and it was attacked by a boonball group, there is still ZERO chance for the defenders unless they are in a comparable boonball. Because all that defensive siege will do nothing, and as soon as you try and engage they will kill you while you pointlessly bang your head against them. And once they are inside its game over. It's a joke at the moment, and not a very good one.

That wasn't the point they were making. They were saying that the attacker can decide WHERE to attack, and WHEN. Sure, once they've committed to a target then the defenders can respond, and assuming they've got there before the 30 seconds needed to get a wall down these days, they can choose when to engage. But if they are up against one of ANETs pet boonballs, what does that matter? They've basically got 3 choices; sit back and let them take whatever they want, then flip it when they've got bored and left the map, try and defend as a cloud and just feed them bags until they get bored and cap, or make a boonball of your own and hope that you've got a composition closer to the meta, because if you haven't you will STILL be just feeding them bags. Just in bigger clumps. Until we get a proper rock, paper, scissors setup, where boonball actually has a counter that isn't another kittening boonball, this is going to be a kitten form of so called gameplay. But every indication we get from each successive patch is that they think the fix is to make boonballs stronger. Which is just mind blowing. Until they understand the problem they are creating, there is zero chance they will fix it.

Clearly it isn't just PvE where ANET appear to have zero idea how their game works. The very last thing WvW needed was making PPT boonballs even harder to stop. Unless of course you've decided that PPT boonballs are the only way that anyone is supposed to play the game, in which case well done. Mission accomplished. So we now have two choices for how to play; get into a boonball of your own, and hope that your group composition is better than the boonball you're going up against (if it is worse, you are going to lose every single time). Or get one of the meme roamer specs that lets you dip in and out of combat at will and spend your time trying to one shot people before flying halfway across the map to reset your cooldowns. Sharpening the knife wasn't enough. They've now decided that paper needs to be dunked in water and rock needs to be permanently banished from the game. Can't bear the thought that their precious boonball doesn't work as perfectly as possible. What next? A boonball logs onto a map, gets inspected by an ANET dev and if it passes the meta test the whole map instantly flips? If they want us to stop playing this mode of the game, they should just tell us.

There was a point where we were a fairly strong second place. So if Vabbi wanted to go for the "weaker" opponent, they could have hit green and knocked them down. Instead both blue and green were exclusively hitting us on multiple maps. This is Vabbi wanting a "vassal" server to be with them on T1 to make their position stronger. Whoever has just been promoted to T1 best watch their back, because they'll almost certainly be doing it again.