World Restructuring Beta Update

[Josh Davis.7865]

On 10/7/2021 at 5:28 AM, Pulsefire Jayce.4753 said:

Are we gonna get a recap / explanation this week?  This is just a friendly reminder. 🙂

Posting my reply from another thread:

Hey folks,

 

Thanks for your patience. The process took a bit longer than I anticipated - that's on me. We wrapped up the draft of the blog post today and it's now being routed through our editing team and localization (for DE/FR/ES players). It was over 1,500 words last I looked, so it'll take a few days for that to get processed. Early next week is a safe bet.

-j

[primatos.5413]

thx josh ❤️

 

[subversiontwo.7501]

On 10/14/2021 at 2:44 AM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Posting my reply from another thread:

Hey folks,

 

Thanks for your patience. The process took a bit longer than I anticipated - that's on me. We wrapped up the draft of the blog post today and it's now being routed through our editing team and localization (for DE/FR/ES players). It was over 1,500 words last I looked, so it'll take a few days for that to get processed. Early next week is a safe bet.

-j

So, what of the delay to the delay of the delay? 🥺

[Chichimec.9364]

On 10/13/2021 at 7:44 PM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Posting my reply from another thread:

Hey folks...Early next week is a safe bet.

-j

Not such a safe bet after all as it is no longer "early next week". It is now "mid-week". Tomorrow, Thursday, will be the start of "later in the week." I understand things taking longer than expected. We've all been through that. A simple, "Folks, it's taking longer than I thought" would have been transparent communication though, rather than just leaving things hanging after the failure of this "safe bet".

[primatos.5413]

Where will this update be in? Reddit? Twitter?

[Josh Davis.7865]

Quick update: it's coming tomorrow. We had some additional QoL details that got finalized late last week (unrelated to World Restructuring) that we wanted to include in the post. Thanks for your patience!

[Vanejah.4230]

Happy to hear... let's wait then!!!

[primatos.5413]

Hope for round 2 testing this friday?!

[Jong.5937]

Not sure where you want feedback on your update, so I'll put it here!

Thanks for the detailed story of the 2 hours of the 1st beta 🙂. An entertaining read!

Good to hear things are progressing and a new beta is not that far away.

One negative comment though. As a sometimes defender/scout, I'm not happy with the plan to remove participation from repairing gates and walls.

Off-peak there are rarely commanders to share participation. Repairing is already a thankless task that tends to get done by only a few dedicated souls. Removing participation will make it just about impossible for 1 or 2 people to repair a T2 or T3 structure without losing participation. People will feel the need to run around flipping sentries instead.

This was already a bit of a problem when building fixed siege, which already does not reward participation. It can take quite some time when a T2/3 keep has had all its canons and mortars removed in a fight! But, I understood that repairing those was not always a good way to use supplies, especially by pip farmers! Although there is a danger of valuable supplies being used on wall/gate repairs I personally think that is well outweighed by the danger of them never getting repaired, even when supplies are abundant, if you are expecting someone to lose all their participation in the process!!

I fully expect this to spark some debate and I'm sure some will disagree but I, for one, very much want wall/gate repairs to keep participation!!

Edited October 21, 2021 by Jong.5937
Formatting

[Ben K.6238]

Removing participation refresh sources is going to be a bit of a problem in the population deadzone when you can quite easily go 5 minutes without any successful actions against the opposing teams.

[daninumbers.4036]

Not a fan of removing the participation refresh on repair as if you can't get to kill someone it's a race to keep it up. I'd also mention that using offensive siege will refresh your participation up to 2 minutes, 5 if destroying a wall/gate. But if it's defensive siege you get nothing. That's why using a shield gen at a tower to block the classic guy at SMC with a treb, probably with a weight on their key, is not rewarding at all. If they manage to hit something, refresh. You stay there 5 - 10 mins blocking or more until you can clear it? you get nothing back. So who wants to use a shield gen if it's not during an assault that you can almost guarantee some kill or a cap?

 

And we also have the no participation if you get in a fight but just you die or the ones you tagged get away. A small reset like 2 minutes like siege does would be nice, make it you need to hit so you can't (supposedly) afk. That would incentive even newbie players to try to fight higher rank players not feeling like they'll die and get nothing anyway, so why jump to defend a camp from 2 platinum roamers?

 

With the outnumbered pips removal that will make it really hard to finish the chest if you aren't very high ranked. It basically halves the time needed, you won't get them for the whole time but it's a great help you be farming pips or roaming. Say an average of 2nd place with commitment pip, a plain player takes ~4 hours everyday of the week to finish it. And the higher, the more skirmish tickets you get, the main timegate for crafting wvw items. If you remove it it'll be like with the last big patch, very newbie unfriendly and still not as good for the average player. The high end will barely notice it.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[InspectorCaracal.2970]

I don't really have any opinions about the "QoL" changes, mostly because I'm... confused? I want to know why they're being done, because a lot of them, as described in the post, don't make sense.

Removing participation from repairs is one. There's already a marked dearth of ways to gain participation when trying to play defense, making it a lot harder to get other players invested in defending points. There's not much of a bonus if you win, and there's even less if you lose, so a lot of players just don't want to bother. Not that I ever wind up using repairs to refresh, which honestly makes it even more strange that it's being removed. What's the problem being solved? What part of the game experience is being improved?

I'm also a little confused what the rationale is behind removing the outnumbered pip bonus, specifically because it's said in tandem with "it's too hard for players to get pips". Why remove the most tangible reward from playing on an Outnumbered map, especially if you know it's a reward that's already hard to get? I can sort of get if the two extra baseline pips are supposed to balance it out, but that only makes sense if it's balancing out removing the bonus, not addressing the stated problem of skirmish tracks take too long.

I have some opinions about how it might change the way the game plays, but mostly I'm just confused what the problems are that the removal of repair participation and Outnumbered pips are supposed to be fixing.

 

P.S. I did find the post-mortem really interesting and informative - it was especially good to hear that the system itself worked and a lot of the trouble was, to oversimplify, Database Shenanigans ™️ - so thanks for sharing that!

Edited October 22, 2021 by Inventrix.3158

[Sernius Alathar.6538]

"In the short term, we will be experimenting with removing incentives from some unintended gameplay, and we’ll be removing the “participation grace time” granted by repairing structures in WvW. We’ll also be removing the outnumbered pip bonus, though the outnumbered stat enhancement will remain."

You literally talked about making defence as viable as offence, then remove being able to maintain participation through repairs, which is kinda important while your setting up other seige. And removing the pip bonus for outnumbered, is legit stupid, without the capacity to counter large numbers, you have trouble capping towers/keeps etc, or even holding onto your points, so there needs to be a semblance of balance there, removing outnumbered pips just makes even less incentive to bother playing. It's like you add some decent QoL, then remove the ones we actually appreciate *facepalm*.

[crepuscular.9047]

On 10/21/2021 at 5:29 AM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Quick update: it's coming tomorrow. We had some additional QoL details that got finalized late last week (unrelated to World Restructuring) that we wanted to include in the post. Thanks for your patience!

 

I'm looking forward to a day where I no longer have to keep this spreadsheet
https://imgur.com/a/S3VMt4G

 

another QoL is removing the weekly caps on skirmish tickets

1. why skirmish tickets are still hard capped when ascended glory shards can be farmed indefinitely?

2. it gives WvWer more reason to continue to play WvW after finishing Diamond; yes, i'm one of those who sometimes spent stupid amount of time in WvW on weekend and not really engage in game mode on other days because I have capped out

 

another inherit problem players find WvW is unrewarding, i think one of the underlying problem is the items you can obtain from wvw mostly limited to wvw use, so most players just have mountains of wvw currencies piled up unused; I don't know whether if your team have any data on player item purchases with wvw currencies, my guess is Testimony of Heroics is probably the most bought item since it gives QoL to players in both WvW and PvE game mode

but if players can trading in their wvw currencies into LWS3 and LWS4 bundles and crates, most players would find the game mode instantly more rewarding as it provide an alternative to meta farm

[KearaRuna.8061]

I'm not sure about the outnumbered thingie. I play on riverside, and this server since month is in T5 and always the "loser-server". At reset we are at approx nine o clock on ubuff on eternal (the map i play mostly at).

 

Although everyone is saying that our opponents are weak every week, they still left us behind. Not sure if riverside IS that bad in wvw, but we are only good with commanders. And even if the population here is always High/Full, we always get our butts kicked. 😜

 

I hope this will change with the alliance-system a bit, because since we are most of the time in outnumbered state (at least when i play), i'm sure  i miss the 5 pips.

 

And yes...remove the hard cap for skirmish tickets. Or at least raise them to 600 or kinda something. It feels unrewarding playing the game and not getting THE currencie in wvw-

[DoctorOverlord.8620]

Very cool read on the behind the scenes of the beta test.  This kind of transparency is amazing, thank you for posting it

I was not upset at all about the WvW beta ending early (esp. when you kept the bonuses going🙂 ).  It was a beta afterall and the whole point to testing is that unexpected things can happen.  The article was interesting to hear about the causes behind early end and it is terrific to hear that useful data came out of the test - which was the whole point.

I'm very glad to hear some QoL improvements for WvW will be implemented so soon, I wasn't expecting them until EoD.  And it's nice to hear I'm not alone in becoming annoyed with the slow rate of getting pips/chests/Skirmish Claim tickets.  The new rates number are very welcome.

But I have to agree with the negative opinions about removing the participation grace time for repairing structures.  I've found myself watching my participation like a a hawk, always worried that it will drop down because skirmish pips are so tedious to get.  Maybe the new rates will help so players won't feel the need to constantly scrounge for any source of grace time to keep up their participation, we'll have to see.  I also was surprised to hear the outnumbered bonus was being removed, that seemed like an intelligent incentive to keep players from abandoning maps.  I'm not sure the reasoning behind it, and again, we'll have to see how that ends up working.

Overall though, this QoL change came at exactly the right time for me.  I was starting to feel rather discouraged with the amount of Skirmish Claim Tickets I had accumulated after dedicating my gametime more to WvW (at the sacrifice of much less Halloween activities this year), and I'm glad to hear ANet knows this an issue for players that is being fixed.

Edited October 22, 2021 by DoctorOverlord.8620

[kurosy.1384]

Thanks for the cool blog insight, now i'm going to imagine anet studios flashing in red lights and alarms everytime something goes wrong xDD
Nice to know that testing was actually good under many aspects even if it didn't look so from a player pow. Keep up the good work :3

[RisingDaewn.8703]

Will there be any update on when the beta guild signups start, or has there been another delay?

Also, is the next relink on the last Friday of this month or early December?

Edited November 8, 2021 by CrimsonNeonite.1048

[primatos.5413]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/inside-arenanet-world-restructuring-beta-1-recap-and-next-steps/

 

Not more than this afaik ...

[RisingDaewn.8703]

I guess we'll have to wait and see for any confirmation, within the next two days.

Edited November 8, 2021 by CrimsonNeonite.1048

[Bristingr.5034]

On 10/13/2021 at 5:44 PM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Posting my reply from another thread:

Hey folks,

 

Thanks for your patience. The process took a bit longer than I anticipated - that's on me. We wrapped up the draft of the blog post today and it's now being routed through our editing team and localization (for DE/FR/ES players). It was over 1,500 words last I looked, so it'll take a few days for that to get processed. Early next week is a safe bet.

-j

Are we not having the Beta this upcoming week then?

[primatos.5413]

22 hours ago, Bristingr.5034 said:

Are we not having the Beta this upcoming week then?

As i read this on friday there is planned the next beta testing .. but they also talked about doing fixes on last tuesday i think .. but .. didn´t mention it again and nothing seemed to happen with those fixes ?  .. further .. one question was about the GUILD SIGNUP for next alliance testing .. but until today .. no choosing alliance guild available afaik 😞

[Custodio.6134]

yeah, that´s what i´m wondering about as well. 
Last message we got was this: 

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/inside-arenanet-world-restructuring-beta-1-recap-and-next-steps/

saying: 

Quote

As of right now, we’re targeting the November 9 release for these fixes, with our next beta week kicking off on November 12.

i don´t recall any update about the next beta since then, and guild signup is not available atm...

Edited November 10, 2021 by Custodio.6134

[AikijinX.6258]

2 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

yeah, that´s what i´m wondering about as well. 
Last message we got was this: 

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/inside-arenanet-world-restructuring-beta-1-recap-and-next-steps/

saying: 

i don´t recall any update about the next beta since then, and guild signup is not available atm...

 

3 hours ago, primatos.5413 said:

As i read this on friday there is planned the next beta testing .. but they also talked about doing fixes on last tuesday i think .. but .. didn´t mention it again and nothing seemed to happen with those fixes ?  .. further .. one question was about the GUILD SIGNUP for next alliance testing .. but until today .. no choosing alliance guild available afaik 😞

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Upcoming_changes_and_features

According to wiki, November 30- December 4 is Beta 4. If it got advanced to November 12th that’ll be cool too. But Wiki’s beta 4 date has not changed for a couple weeks now. 
 

EDIT: I completely misunderstood and took this for Elite Spec beta talk. Whoops. Apologies 

Edited November 10, 2021 by AikijinX.6258

[thisistheway.4301]

I guess the beta project got dropped that's why Fire Attunement unpinned this topic - so much for the hype.