What is Anet's Vision for WvW?

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 9/12/2021 at 7:41 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

The fact of the matter is the "fights" guilds that GvG in a corner of the map and don't do anything else have the EotM arena. In addition , if they deliver on the  15v15 PvP format that could satisfy some but not all GvG players.

I'm not sure if I am taking your qoute a bit out of context here, however, I feel it is pertinent to point out that players tend to differentiate between GvG and what they call Skirmishes. The latter is usually what transpires around the duelling areas on map and it is usually something that happens quite organically on the map. It is usually the result of somewhat evenly matched groups fighting each other across the map, exchanging words and wins, until one side challenges the other to "pistols at dawn" to settle the score.

After the skirmish the groups usually return to the map and play the objectives again. During the skirmish they also tie each other up on the map so it's not like they "don't do anything else" for map content. People who whine and complain about these things are usually more upset about not being allowed to join those tags than they are upset about not being able to play the objectives on the map meanwhile. They seem to believe that the closed tag some how takes from public tags going up or takes from the map objectives being played, which tend not to be the case.

It's usually jealousy masked as content concerns.

Edited September 14, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I'm not sure if I am taking your qoute a bit out of context here, however, I feel it is pertinent to point out that players tend to differentiate between GvG and what they call Skirmishes. The latter is usually what transpires around the duelling areas on map and it is usually something that happens quite organically on the map. It is usually the result of somewhat evenly matched groups fighting each other across the map, exchanging words and wins, until one side challenges the other to "pistols at dawn" to settle the score.

After the skirmish the groups usually return to the map and play the objectives again. During the skirmish they also tie each other up on the map so it's not like they "don't do anything else" for map content. People who whine and complain about these things are usually more upset about not being allowed to join those tags than they are upset about not being able to play the objectives on the map meanwhile. They seem to believe that the closed tag some how takes from public tags going up or takes from the map objectives being played, which tend not to be the case.

It's usually jealousy masked as content concerns.

There was a guild that did that which quit the game a few years ago and no they did not support the objectives at all. It was incredibly annoying when you have T3 objectives being hit and they are taking up queue space. That's the difference between GvG in a corner of the map and actually having fights happen "organically" as you put it. EoTM arena cut down on the number of people that just do that sort of thing so it was a good step in the right direction.

The overarching problem is people that become jaded with objectives end up doing this because there's very little reason to work on objectives once you max out all the titles for hitting or defending keeps/towers/camps/SMC while Ultimate Dominator takes far longer.

[Sviel.7493]

8 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Just as an aside: This is why the pips system, despite its flaws and detractors, is a far superior system for WvW.

I 100% agree with this.  Pips were a massive improvement for WvW and should definitely form the basis of any upgraded system.  The reward tracks are good as well, though I wish there was one that just gave me siege and traps so I didn't have to stop playing and clear nigh useless equipment drops and overflowing materials out of my inventory.

 

I think the next step is going to focus on rewards based on placement since they said the goal is to incentivize players to win. 

[joneirikb.7506]

On 9/14/2021 at 11:29 PM, Sviel.7493 said:

I 100% agree with this.  Pips were a massive improvement for WvW and should definitely form the basis of any upgraded system.  The reward tracks are good as well, though I wish there was one that just gave me siege and traps so I didn't have to stop playing and clear nigh useless equipment drops and overflowing materials out of my inventory.

 

I think the next step is going to focus on rewards based on placement since they said the goal is to incentivize players to win. 

Been thinking for a while that they should make more specialised reward tracks, so you can focus on what you want to get. Like one that focuses on siege like you said, another for various materials, one even more focused on gear, or badges, marks, etc. Instead of most of them giving a mix of everything.

[Zephyrus.9680]

I think, and hope they have changed the whole vision statement approach.  I disagree with many of the points from their 2013 statements and am glad some of them didn't pan out.  They have signaled they are more into iterative testing now which hopefully means they will be more able to modify or reject their ideas based on what players want, not what top-down management wants the game to be. 

[StrangerDanger.3496]

I actually really like the multitude of battle pass style progression reward tracks, but like most have said here, the reward theme is sort of all over the place.  Most of this games boxes contain forgettable mats, and many materials that the game considers good, are in fact blowing out my material storages i get so many, and i just delete 250 stacks otherwise.  Way too much forgettable rewards that come in cooler looking boxes than the materials inside are.  Even the real loot is boring, stacks of unidentified vendor trash of blue/green/yellow type, all the same vendor trash.

 

I do like the skins.  But realize its how they make their money and realistically they wont be putting lots of skins in the game for free.

 

I think there should be more stuff thats actually usable in WvW given out.  More skins and cool stuff, and less material pile up, especially the useless pink tier mats i never use and destroy by the 250 stack every couple days.  Food and Banners are both sought after in WvW, I want WvW specific recipes, food items, food materials. Maybe make bannercrafting a WvW exclusive, so people can pop a buff banner on their own, that they made, with mats they got only in WvW by playing.  Maybe seige equipment skins.  Id like a repair hammer as an item, since repairing and building is a thing in WvW, something to chase and improve beyond the WvW skill points.  Stuff like that. On top of all the PvE stuff you should be able to get as well.

 

 

Edited September 17, 2021 by StrangerDanger.3496

[Sviel.7493]

Today, Grouch and Ray were asked about Arenanet's vision for WvW on stream at 1:10:00 in this video:

Grouch answered.  He noted that it was tricky to do so as people were going to dissect his every word so...let's not let him down?

He mentions that he's spent 90% of his play time in WvW since returning to Arenanet to better understand the game mode.  He's played on multiple servers in diverse groups with varying playstyles.  He specifically mentions, in order:

 

-A fight guild with a rigid rally time.

-Pugging with open tag commanders.  He refers to these as PPT trains and Karma trains.

-On Maguuma, where he had to roll a ranger or thief.  He says it's a world unto its own.

-In a havoc squad...though it had 20 people, possibly due to his presence?  I don't think 20 people counts as havoc...

 

He says the future of the gamemode is to support all of those experiences for all of those different player types.  I think, to be fair, we should assume he means all player types in general.  He states that he doesn't want to fundamentally shift what the gamemode is and make it into something that it isn't today.

Finally, he says that if Boon Blobbing were the only viable strategy, that would be an issue.  He would be sad if that happened or if havoc was no longer viable or if everyone was just roamers.
---

First off, I definitely appreciate his commitment.  I don't doubt that he's trying his honest best to deliver a WvW experience that works as best it can for everyone.  I wish him the best of luck.

 

At the same time, I don't think there's any path to success with this approach.  The current WvW playstyles have largely evolved in an environment that does not care about the score.  If we assume that WvW will eventually have some purpose to match-ups as seems to be the plan, then we have to judge the viability of those playstyles by how they contribute to the score while acknowledging that scoring is another thing that can be changed.  With that in mind, let's try to envision a world where blobbing and havoc are both viable full-time pursuits.  We'll consider viability under PPT and PPK focused scoring systems.

For a blob to be viable in a PPT-focused system, it must be able to quickly capture objectives that it swarms up to because it can only capture one thing at a time.  If the blob can be delayed too much, then it will lose to havoc squads every time because they can capture multiple objectives in the time the blob can take one.  This is assuming that the havoc squads can overcome minor resistance.  They may not always succeed, but if the blob has 60 people, then only a few of the equivalent 12 5-man squads needs to actually flip something. 

 

In order to hit a sweet spot where blobs and havoc are equally viable in a PPT system...what has to happen?  The blob server needs to have a significantly higher population at that moment so that it isn't competing against too many havoc groups and it must be able to steamroll any defenders so that it doesn't lose too much time at each objective.  Note, in this scenario, there is almost no PvP happening on the map.  If any exists, it is between individual havoc squads and rouge defenders from the blob server.  The blob itself does not generate PvP because it cannot be meaningful interacted with by anything except another blob--if it can, then it can be delayed and isn't viable.  It helps the blob if the map can be made small enough that the blob can capture an objective and still have time to defend a different objective from a havoc group.  If havoc groups can be spotted easily, all the better.

 

For a blob to be viable in a PPK-focused system, it needs to be either bigger or better organized than other blobs.  Havoc is simply not viable unless they voltron into a bigger/more organized blob.  In the end, the solution to being on the losing side in a PPK system is to log off--if you're consistently losing fights, your team's best bet is to leave and hope the enemies get bored.  It might be more fun to stay, but that won't win you any matches.

 

In a mixed PPT/PPK system, the blob's viability is basically the same as under a PPT system.  If PPK is high enough to matter, then non-blob teams will avoid the blob and cap around them.  The higher PPK gets, the more incentive people have to run from fights.

 

To summarize, there is no situation where blobs and havoc will both be viable winning solo strategies in a week-long match-up.  Furthermore, when blobs are the viable strategy, player interaction plummets unless all servers have blobs.  If Anet plans to incentivize players to win in WvW, that alone will fundamentally shift what the game mode is.  Their current vision doesn't seem to have a plan to deal with that reality.  On the bright side, they may be open to revising their plan when this eventually becomes obvious.

*I don't mean to imply that blobs are 100% not allowed.  There will be times in a havoc-viable world, especially around keeps and Stonemist, where a blob makes a lot of sense as a finisher.  This should be after the objectives defenses have been significantly weakened so that the parameters for blob viability are met--a quick finish with few delays.  How each server handles this is up to them, but the general play pattern is that both blobs and havoc have their strengths and servers must be able to switch between the two at some point to find optimal success.  Everything starts with havoc and blobs can pop up when certain conditions are met.

Edited September 18, 2021 by Sviel.7493

[Xenesis.6389]

21 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

He says the future of the gamemode is to support all of those experiences for all of those different player types.  I think, to be fair, we should assume he means all player types in general.  He states that he doesn't want to fundamentally shift what the gamemode is and make it into something that it isn't today.

Finally, he says that if Boon Blobbing were the only viable strategy, that would be an issue.  He would be sad if that happened or if havoc was no longer viable or if everyone was just roamers.

Support all those experiences, lol, more like fill all those experiences with support.

Because support have already completely taken over groups, right down to roaming where people are going out in 2-5 man groups carrying a support or two around, because they make that much of a difference in fights against other groups. You have commanders calling to fill more than half their zergs with support, I even saw one commander raging over pug dps to switch to support classes last night. They've already changed the game at the fight level, to the worse imo, but for the better in their eyes and the zergers I suppose.

Next we're going to have more movement than ever before with the amount of mobility being added to the new specs, I mean when the expansion lands I picture it as the circus coming to town, and the acrobats come flying out the clown car, and the bladesworn comes rolling out a cannon to one shot a clown to it's death, and the vindicator fires off it's rail gun to ping off some deadeye off in the distance they thought they were safe in.

Oh sorry he meant game play of the game mode? so we're just going to stick with the ppt one we have right now that most people don't give two kittens about? I mean It's not like if the map blob isn't on that everything is completely dead and people aren't doing the small stuff, so I dunno about the concern about the different groups in that regard to game play.

But in this game it's always better to go bigger, and bring as much support as possible. With the game being dead for like I dunno 16 hours of the day for some servers, who wouldn't run around with a map blob if possible, there's no real reason to break up when the defenders have much less to defend against you with. With 5 mins ri and mounts and movement skills and ewp plenty of time to go back and defend whatever as a blob.

If they don't plan on doing any fundamental shifts to game play, then what are they planning to do to incentivize winning after alliances? cause most players don't give a kitten about ppt anymore, and they continue to break and destroy rules for combat, idiotic how much some of these classes have been given access to.

P.S I see his beautiful vision in action tonight, where you have the supersonic blob train running over scraps in garrison for an hour, 100% uptime on superspeed and 12 boons, that's really great game play there.

Edited September 19, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[Talindra.4958]

as a player that play basically everything.. i find ppt totally boring in wvw. 

fighting in a small guild around 20 people is more fun and i can see possibility of me doing wvw more often. i dont really like going into a squad of 50 people and then gang out of others. or squad of 50 going almost ppt or squad of 50 camp at enemy keep in EB for 2 hours.. 

i hope this new alliance do not kill the small wvw guild that has around 15-20 players that come and play few times a week to have fun. 

Edited September 19, 2021 by Talindra.4958

[Knighthonor.4061]

The game mode rewards zeroing over all else. Taking stuff gets the most WxP for ranking. Defenders and siege builders get nothing.  You have to pretty much beg the commanders on the map to share participation with the SMC builders/Defenders. I have taken a large role in doing this for my server and its usually go unrewarded. I get no participation.  Yet I have to manually run supply from the keep to SMC and then build up all the defensive sieges with pretty much no rewards. The game doesn't even recognize my contribution to the gameplay. I can see why nobody wants to do that job. 

Lord Joko forbid,  the squad be a private stealth squad running.  You definitely not getting shared participation then. 

[Sviel.7493]

On 9/19/2021 at 7:13 PM, Knighthonor.4061 said:

The game mode rewards zeroing over all else. Taking stuff gets the most WxP for ranking. Defenders and siege builders get nothing.

The WXP imbalance was pretty much untouched by the last improvement to the rewards system.  I'd love to see that improve--especially on the 'being rewarded for defending' end.  If I rebuff several assaults over an hour, I get next to no exp.  If I let them break in and then kill them with some friends, I get exp and bags.

[Zyreva.1078]

52 minutes ago, Sviel.7493 said:

The WXP imbalance was pretty much untouched by the last improvement to the rewards system.  I'd love to see that improve--especially on the 'being rewarded for defending' end.  If I rebuff several assaults over an hour, I get next to no exp.  If I let them break in and then kill them with some friends, I get exp and bags.

You don't have to wait for the enemies to break in to kill them and get rewards. Just go outside and fight before whatever you are defending gets breached.

There are some things that could get improved about defense (such as contested capture points not triggering the defense event or single-handedly killing multiple enemies only resulting in bronze participation for the defense), but getting rewarded for the mere act of pew pewing from a wall is not something that should ever happen (same for placing siege - just use it to kill enemies if you want to get rewards/participation).

Edited September 21, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Sviel.7493]

@UmbraNoctis.1907If it's one person, I'd definitely hop out and fight them.  Usually, it's multiple people and it takes time for others to arrive to even the odds.  During that time, I can just watch the wall go down or I can attempt to delay.  I get the same rewards either way--in terms of WXP, it's actually better to let the wall drop so that I can repair it.

 

I don't think that defensive rewards need to be on par with offensive stuff.  But in terms of WXP specifically, they're nearly non-existent.  There's no reason why two actively participating players should have such a huge gap in WXP gain simply because one is attacking and the other is defending.  Both things need to happen to keep the conflict going, but only one gives relevant WXP rewards.

 

There are people who I helped acclimate to the game mode that are now four times my WXP level.

[Zyreva.1078]

45 minutes ago, Sviel.7493 said:

@UmbraNoctis.1907If it's one person, I'd definitely hop out and fight them.  Usually, it's multiple people and it takes time for others to arrive to even the odds.  During that time, I can just watch the wall go down or I can attempt to delay.  I get the same rewards either way--in terms of WXP, it's actually better to let the wall drop so that I can repair it.

 

I don't think that defensive rewards need to be on par with offensive stuff.  But in terms of WXP specifically, they're nearly non-existent.  There's no reason why two actively participating players should have such a huge gap in WXP gain simply because one is attacking and the other is defending.  Both things need to happen to keep the conflict going, but only one gives relevant WXP rewards.

 

There are people who I helped acclimate to the game mode that are now four times my WXP level.

Stalling does not grant rewards either way, as it should be. If delaying the enemy results in a successful defense - you'll get rewards at the end (and even if you fail, just need to do anything that grants WXP and if it's just stuffing some supplies into the wall).

Just like you get the rewards for taking an objective or killing a player, but not for just hitting a wall, door or opponent. The reason a lot of "defenders" don't get a whole lot of reward is because most of the time they aren't actually doing much but sitting inside structures that aren't under threat or failing to defend in case there is actually an attack.

General the amount of WXP is more dependent on the numbers someone is running with, not just about what someone is doing (i'm not very high rank too considering my playtime, but that's just because i'm mostly playing solo).

Edited September 21, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Sviel.7493]

@UmbraNoctis.1907My point is that a successful defense does not award much at all--certainly nothing in the way of WXP.  It makes sense that mere stalling isn't rewarded in the same way that poking an enemy isn't rewarded.  But if I kill their siege or defend to the end of the defense event, I should get something.

I don't recognize your characterization of "defenders."  There is never a time where I'm sitting inside a non-threatened structure unless I'm repairing after a successful defense.  The rest of the time is spent maintaining supply lines, chasing down roamers who threaten said supply lines and keeping an eye on zergs.  These things are just as important as offensive play.  In part, I get less WXP due to running mostly solo and not being in as many zerg battles or caps as the average player, but the main culprit is that when enemies are attacking persistently, I don't get to do the things that give me WXP (flipping camps/killing roamers.)  Even if I successfully defend every time, I don't get any WXP.

Contrast this to offense where, even if you ultimately don't cap something, you still get WXP for breaking in.  If you do cap it, you get a huge chunk of exp for that as well.  Both offensive and defensive play get more WXP when they kill players, but offense doesn't require killing players to get most of theirs.

[Zyreva.1078]

Repairing, destroying siege and killing players all grants WXP, so idk how you manage to "successfully" defend stuff without getting credit. Unless all guards are already dead and you kill stuff after defense event runs out, which is an issue i mentioned (mostly happens during camp defense tho, less with towers and keeps). Participation calculation also seems a bit off - which i also mentioned already - that's something that could be improved for sure. But overall i think defense is fine.

If anything the issue is that capping undefended stuff grants too much WXP, however capping stuff often requires more effort/time than getting credit for defense (just repairing once after someone happend to aggro some guards is enough, takes only a few seconds), so that still needs to be taken into consideration.

Overall i feel like the biggest imbalance when it comes to rewards and WXP in particular is the difference between zergs and small scale/solo, because there is no reward split and everyone gets full rewards for just tagging along , even if it is like 50vs1.

Edited September 21, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Custodio.6134]

About the supporter-loot: 
Classes have very (and with very, i mean very VERY) specific roles in the a Zerg. Especially since the changes to healing-reduction that is permanently active in WvW. This is only natural, because every type of gameplay gets more effective, the more you specialize yourself on single tasks, rather than playing a "jack of all trades" (which is ALWAYS ineffective). 

If you want to support the DPS-classes (which these obviously cannot do themselves), you will need to fully focus on your support skills. Any type of Support-Hybrid is not working in 99% of cases. Only exception is "off-Support" that comes naturally with the class-mechanics (looking at you Herald) where you don´t have to actively invest into the supportive stats/skills/traits. 

This is the sole reason, why the support-classes (especially Firebrand, Heal-Scrapper) are so extremely specialized into their support-role. Everything else is too ineffective.

The scrapper is actually on the "better" side in terms of loot-possibilities (because of Elixir-Gun 3 and Hammer 5, which are standard-choices and can hit enemies in considerable numbers), but Guardians are (currently) Boon-Spammers basically. As Support-Firebrand, you won´t automatically hit enemies, in opposition to scrappers with said elixir-gun and hammer 5. 
But even considering this, even the Heal-Scrappers are WAAAY behind in terms of loot compared to DPS-Classes. There is a huge gap between the value of having them in a group, and the rewarded loot for them doing exactly what they are supposed to. 

-----------

 

About GvG on the borderlands: 
the "typical" WvW-Raid Guilds (not talking about Guilds that exclusively focus on GvG!) spend most of their time on a border, in order to to a variety of "tasks". These "tasks" ofc vary from guild to guild, but are usually a mix of attacking objectives according to their size, defending objectives, assisting the big Zergs on the map, so you can look at them as "task force" with multiple ways of taking influence into the matchup. 

So, why do these Guild do their "GvG" (also called Scrims) on the borderlands, instead of fighting in OS or the Arena? That´s simple: 
Guilds want to be able to react anytime they are needed somewhere. They want to be able to port quickly to defend an objective, if the public-zerg is not enough, or if there is no public squad on the map. This will become extremely difficult to do, if you scrim in OS/EotM, often simply because of queues on the borders. 
Also: for these types of guilds, scrims do not take up a majority of their raid-time. In our case, we usually don´t even pre-plan a scrim at the start of the raid, it comes up if a possibility shows up (certain enemy guilds are raiding at the same time and border, low enemy activity on the map etc). 
Also, don´t forget, that guilds that are currently scrimming against other guilds are NOT "doing nothing" for the server. For every allied guild that does scrim, there is AT LEAST one enemy guild also bound to that spot (if not more, because guilds tend to watch other guilds fighting). This takes away enemy pressure from the rest of the map, making it easier for a public to do stuff (not directly, but indirectly due to the binding of enemies to that spot). 

-------------------------------------------

about PPT vs. Zerg-Fighting: 

i aggree, that fighting is way more fun, and usually rewards more loot compared to PPT. But there is one factor that people tend to forget: 
The enemy will need to respond to a siege. If you siege an objective (especially fortified objectives) the enemy will most likely come to defend. If you manage to get inside, this will sooner or later result in those 2 groups colliding (resulting in a fight squad vs squad in best case). While fighting open field is obviously more comfortable, a fight (and thus, loot) can also be a result of attacking objectives. Of course, i agree that it is boring if you take an objective without any resistance, but in that case you most likely wouldn´t have gotten any open field fights either. 

[Sviel.7493]

1 hour ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Repairing, destroying siege and killing players all grants WXP, so idk how you manage to "successfully" defend stuff without getting credit. Unless all guards are already dead and you kill stuff after defense event runs out, which is an issue i mentioned (mostly happens during camp defense tho, less with towers and keeps). Participation calculation also seems a bit off - which i also mentioned already - that's something that could be improved for sure. But overall i think defense is fine.

If anything the issue is that capping undefended stuff grants too much WXP, however capping stuff often requires more effort/time than getting credit for defense (just repairing once after someone happend to aggro some guards is enough, takes only a few seconds), so that still needs to be taken into consideration.

Overall i feel like the biggest imbalance when it comes to rewards and WXP in particular is the difference between zergs and small scale/solo, because there is no reward split and everyone gets full rewards for just tagging along , even if it is like 50vs1.

 

I never said I didn't get credit.  I said that getting credit does not award significant WXP.  Repairing gives a very small amount, killing siege also gives a tiny bit--in the end, there's no part of a defense event or the qualifying actions that gives decent WXP.  Even if I'm actively playing the game for a full session, I'll get a tenth of the exp of a standard zergling during that same period.  Of course, tagging a non-threatening defense event for WXP is something that probably shouldn't be possible.  But, in that case, there should be significant WXP given for things like disabling or destroying siege, or landing a WvW trap.

[Svarty.8019]

In the stream, the devs understandably sat on the fence when it came to "What's Your Vision?"

 

I think it would be reasonable for them to state that the objectives are there to fight in and around. If players don't want to fight over objectives, that's fine, but they should lose the matchup.

 

If the devs are so wedded to the idea of being all-things-to-all-people that they can't commit to that statement, they're going to find that some people aren't going to want to play.