From A PvX Guild's Perspective Vanguards Of Ascension [VoA]:

[PseudoOAlias.4279]

 Brief background on us (so you know what perspective you're getting.)
  - 9 Year-old Guild with a more diverse focus on every game mode (PvX)
  - ~ 20% Members: Are at the end-of-endgame (fullclear raids, fotm CMs weekly, At or nearing rank 10,000 in WvW, Many members at or in Plat 3, and/or 40K+ AP, etc.)
  - ~ 80% Members: Are newer or just-starting-out, or more sporadic players. (Sub 10K AP, 1,000 hour playtime etc.)
  - If you'd like more information on us it can be found at: www.VanguardsOfAscension.com

Ideas for WvW (from our perspective ofc):

 

  - Goals: Encourage more interaction & reward between game modes
  - From Our Persepective: WvW As a gamemode was originally conceived, at least somewhat, of as the end-of PvE. A place where you could take some of the gear / experience that you have from

PvE / PvP and translate it into more macro-group play. (Whether that is Solo, Small-Group Roaming, or Zerging.) However WvW has something that the other game-modes lack in our opinion, despite being less rewarding it's much MUCH more FUN for longer periods of time. Partially because you're most likely interacting with your friends in a more dynamic way during it. To this end a lot of our suggestions focus on maximizing the FUN aspect of WvW, as well as facilitating interactions with players across game modes.

Specific Ideas:
  * These will be given as Game Mode Earned to > Game Mode Affected (or where the "resource" or "reward" could be redeemed)

 

 PvE > WvW:
  - What: Have Fractal (e.g. Chunks of The Solid Ocean, etc.) & Raid Tokens (e.g. Cardinal Adina's Token) used to craft single-use, stronger, WvW Tactivators
  - Why (Function):
     Even without added rewards, WvW has immense replay value in it's current itteration. However, somewhat ironically PvE content does not outside of individual weekly clears.
     If such high-end tokens were used to craft single-use tactivators, it would incentivize not only PvE guilds to help guildies outside of their static groups clear Raids & Fractals as well a encourage more WvW-Focused Guilds to recruit PvE players who could contribute in some way. Even if those players never set foot in the WvW game-mode itself.

      For fun we of-course came up with our own suggestions for what some of these tactivators could look like:
       Raids:
        x 30 Dhuum Tokens >> Spawns "Dhuum's Echo" Mob to run around the Boss Room of A Keep for 30 seconds *As a side note, we really want this one & if you can implement literally any of the changes on this list please do this one because it would be hysterical.*
        x 30 Vale Guardian Fragments >> Splits a Keep Lord into 3 seperate colors that take drastically reduced damage from different sources and drastically increased damage from other sources. (i.e. The Red version would be hyper susceptible to condition damage but resistant to physical, the blue one would need boon strip, the green one could have a cc bar that needs to be broken)

        x 50 (Any Raid Tokens) >> 1 of the following:
         - Spawns: The Hands from The Cardinal Adina fight to bombard the zerg
         - Spawns: The Lesser Tornados from The Cardinal Sabir fight to bounce around a tower / keep (The ones that just launch not insta-kill)
         - Spawns: 3 Lesser "Flame Walls" from the Soulless Horror Fight that burns (instead of insta-killing) both allies & enemies whom they pass through
         - Spawns: Sabitha's Flame Wall to rotate around a lord's room (that burns (instead of insta-killing) both allies & enemies whom is passes through
         - Spawns: Gorseval's "Spectral Prison" (Egg) attack to pulse x3 times for enemies in a keep or tower
         - Gives: Everyone near the tactivator a single use "Special Action Sword" from The Conjured Amalgamate fight, useable in that Tower or Keep

       Fractals:
        x 15 Chunks of the Solid Ocean >> Slippery Slope Tactivator for the enemy in Keeps & Towers
        x 3 Norn Holo-Dancers >> "Social Awkwardness" for the Enemy in Keeps
        x 10 Cubes of The Solid Ocean >> Activates a "Random" Instability for the Enemy Zerg in Keeps
        x 5 Chunks of the Solid Ocean >> Adds "Random Mobs" from Fractals to Camps as Guards

 

 WvW > PvE:
   - What: Have best-in-slot PvE food, or at the very least new & different but good, ascended food craftable only with WvW resources.
   - Why: This would encourage PvE players to venture into WvW if for no other reason to get food for clears.

   - What: Make the Warclaw aoe movespeed buff affect allies in PvE as well.
   - Why: Currently there is no incentive to have a Warclaw outside of WvW as it is easily the slowest of the mounts, other than the fact that it can still tag 10 targets with it's small dismount attack. If it still provided the movespeed buff it would at least provide some utility for veterans to use to help new players.

 

 WvW > PvP:
  - What: Give bonus PvP reward track progress if you queue from a WvW map if your participation is Tier 5 or higher.
  - Why: PvP as it is is quite a rewarding game-mode (in terms of gold.) However as the game mode takes you out of your current WvW map and cannon feasibly place you back where your queue pops from, it severely de-incentivizes people to queue from a WvW map. A meaningful rewards bonus would go a long way to incentivizing players to interact across the two game modes that are supposed to be the most ubiquitous.

 

 Other Ideas:
  - What: ADD NEW WvW GUILD MISSIONS WITH MEANINGFUL REWARDS
  - Why: We cannot stress enough how under-utilized the current Guild Mission system is. Even 9 years-later with no new rewards added, guild missions remain a regular weekly event for us. If new missions were added, with different rewards (other than those purchasable with guild comms,) for example adding +10% HP to all structures claimed by your guild if you did the missions that week, we would most definitely do them weekly as well.

  - What: Make Guild Siege buyable with guild comms and PvP ascended shards (this has to be cheap as these are limited) or a new PvP account-bound resource, / Fix Guild Omega Siege Golems being worse than non-Guild Ones. (The current siege is not placeable.)
  - Why: Guild Siege is invaluable, especially in small-group roaming because of it's lower siege build cost. As such we feel that it should be more readily obtainable, either through actions such as taking objectives with low-man groups, or from other game modes.

  - What: Add better rewards for defending objectives & either succeeding or failing.
  - Why: This would incentivize more skirmishes, even if the people defending something were drastically outnumbered.

  - What: Unlimit the 10,000 Rank Cap
  - Why: Why is it limited in the first place? Just let it keep going forever without increased rewards above 10,000. Big numbers are fun! :D  

  - What: Give Warclaws 2 Charges of aegis & 1 health (effectively 3 packets of damage to dismount) and slightly increase their movement speed
  - Why: Warclaws should be primarily a movement utility and not a means of effectively having extra health so you can kite or troll

  - What: Nerf the stats that Celestial Gear gives by about 20%.
  - Why: It's wayyy too good right now. Compared to 3-stat gear which gives around 3200 total stat points (when you use similar food) celestial gear + food gives 6200 stat points, which is ridiculous. The addition of concentration & expertise, while making lots of builds viable, also pretty much nullified build crafting. It's no longer min-maxing the clear answer on anything that's not specialized for zerging is now "just run celestial" which pretty much ruined build crafting.

  - What: Once the DX11 rollout is complete, if it is no-longer causing drastic lag, re-enable the central cannon meta-event on the Desert Borderland
  - Why: It was a fun event that added importance to grouping across maps for a single-important fight & could be quite fun with the alliance rollout.

  - What: Add a new map (to replace one of the existing forested maps)
  - Why: Variety is fun.

   Possible Map Contents:
    1 Keep that's underwater based on time of day. Tide/Ocean Themed
     > Would facilitate actually knowing / using underwater builds
    Camps that give no score by themselves, but triple score if most or all of them are held
     > Would more meaningfully reward roamers who do not like to play in larger groups
    Events on the map the yield war-score or that give WvW-relevant drops (e.g. account-bound Guild Catapults) (other than vet creatures that spawn)
     > Again would more meaningfully reward roamers who do not like to play in larger groups

Anyway that's about it. We didn't want to make the list too exhaustive because words are easy & work's hard after all. Our genuine thanks going out to everyone working on the WvW update, DX11 implementation, & at ArenaNet in general. We're hugely looking forward to EoD and can't wait to see what the future holds for Guild Wars 2!
See you all in Tyria,

 Pseudo & The [VoA] Team

Edited September 28, 2021 by PseudoOAlias.4279

[Zape.2094]

Hey PseudO, 

 

I really like the inovative ideas in a way, but I feel like most of them arent really in the interest of the majority. At least thats my assumption. From a player who plays WvW exclusively, I can tell you that one of the definite largest reasons for the lack of satisfaction amongst the playerbase, is the fact that PvE players are sometimes "forced" into WvW to get their gifts of battle. 

While originally a very cool thing, it results in people afking at spawn, or moving around solely for the purpose to reset their participation (e.g. kill a sentry every couple of minutes and thats that). Most of your ideas would make this matter even worse. For example:

 

 

 

1 hour ago, PseudoOAlias.4279 said:

  WvW > PvP:
  - What: Give bonus PvP reward track progress if you queue from a WvW map if your participation is Tier 5 or higher.
  - Why: PvP as it is is quite a rewarding game-mode (in terms of gold.) However as the game mode takes you out of your current WvW map and cannon feasibly place you back where your queue pops from, it severely de-incentivizes people to queue from a WvW map. A meaningful rewards bonus would go a long way to incentivizing players to interact across the two game modes that are supposed to be the most ubiquitous.

 

This brings all sorts of issues. First off, you're encouraging people to afk in WvW. Giving people better loot just because they afk in WvW while they wait for a ranked game is a horrible idea. We do NOT want to turn WvW into a PvP lobby. Honestly this is one of the worst ideas I've seen on the forums in ages. It promotes AFKing for one. Secondly, you never know when your queue pops. So I am defending an objective with 5 others and they all disappear all of a sudden because they got placed into a PvP arena? Yeah, just what I need. People disappearing mid-fight because their arena popped.... Third, as you have already realised, there's queues in WvW (map caps). You said you wanted the people who enter PvP to reappear in the same map they were before. That could drastically impact map caps and is just horrible overall. Can be abused aswell. Imagine everybody enters EB and immediately queues for arena. By the time the first team finishes (lets say about 10 minutes) there could be at least 100 people in various arenas. So, that would mean that within 20 minutes of time, 100 people will apear in EB from nowhere. Effectively leaving 170 people on your team of the map. Do you see the problem yet? As an alternative, if you'd "reserve" the spot in a WvW map for these people, that would mean EB could potentially be a ghost town. 20 people in the map, 50 people in PvP clogging up spots, and a 30 man queue for people who actually want to play WvW.

Im pretty sure you can see how bad this idea is at this point right? 🙂

 

1 hour ago, PseudoOAlias.4279 said:

 PvE > WvW:
  - What: Have Fractal (e.g. Chunks of The Solid Ocean, etc.) & Raid Tokens (e.g. Cardinal Adina's Token) used to craft single-use, stronger, WvW Tactivators
  - Why (Function):
     Even without added rewards, WvW has immense replay value in it's current itteration. However, somewhat ironically PvE content does not outside of individual weekly clears.
     If such high-end tokens were used to craft single-use tactivators, it would incentivize not only PvE guilds to help guildies outside of their static groups clear Raids & Fractals as well a encourage more WvW-Focused Guilds to recruit PvE players who could contribute in some way. Even if those players never set foot in the WvW game-mode itself.

      For fun we of-course came up with our own suggestions for what some of these tactivators could look like:
               
                                         ....... I removed some content from your quote to not make too large of a post......

 

I actually like this idea a fair bit, and it seems pretty fun, but I dont think most WvW players would. Its awesome for PvX guilds, but it discourages people from having WvW only guilds, or playing only WvW, which frankly is a problem, since a lot of us are only interested in this gamemode. Please consider the difficulty in WvW players recruiting PvE people, or preparing them for raids, since most of us arent very experienced in that.... This could turn the strongest WvW guilds currently into memeguilds, and Im not sure many would like this change. But I do love your tactivator ideas lol, they seem like a lot of fun. I just dont think forcing people into PvE to be good at end-game WvW is the way to go.

 

1 hour ago, PseudoOAlias.4279 said:

  WvW > PvE:
   - What: Have best-in-slot PvE food, or at the very least new & different but good, ascended food craftable only with WvW resources.
   - Why: This would encourage PvE players to venture into WvW if for no other reason to get food for clears.

   - What: Make the Warclaw aoe movespeed buff affect allies in PvE as well.
   - Why: Currently there is no incentive to have a Warclaw outside of WvW as it is easily the slowest of the mounts, other than the fact that it can still tag 10 targets with it's small dismount attack. If it still provided the movespeed buff it would at least provide some utility for veterans to use to help new players.

 

 

Kinda same as above - just as we dont want to force WvW players to PvE, we dont want to force PvE players to WvW. This ends up in people afking in content cause they're forced to do it but have no interest in doing it, eventually ruining experience for others. For the Warclaw, I agree though. Its a kitten mount in PvE; literally every single mount does better. But again, its not designed for PvE so its not that bad as far as Im concerned. Would be nice to at least give it the raptor leap length in PvE I guess, so we could flex our Warclaw? Idk honestly.

 

1 hour ago, PseudoOAlias.4279 said:

  Other Ideas:
  - What: ADD NEW WvW GUILD MISSIONS WITH MEANINGFUL REWARDS
  - Why: We cannot stress enough how under-utilized the current Guild Mission system is. Even 9 years-later with no new rewards added, guild missions remain a regular weekly event for us. If new missions were added, with different rewards (other than those purchasable with guild comms,) for example adding +10% HP to all structures claimed by your guild if you did the missions that week, we would most definitely do them weekly as well.

  - What: Make Guild Siege buyable with guild comms and PvP ascended shards (this has to be cheap as these are limited) or a new PvP account-bound resource, / Fix Guild Omega Siege Golems being worse than non-Guild Ones. (The current siege is not placeable.)
  - Why: Guild Siege is invaluable, especially in small-group roaming because of it's lower siege build cost. As such we feel that it should be more readily obtainable, either through actions such as taking objectives with low-man groups, or from other game modes.

  - What: Add better rewards for defending objectives & either succeeding or failing.
  - Why: This would incentivize more skirmishes, even if the people defending something were drastically outnumbered.

  - What: Unlimit the 10,000 Rank Cap
  - Why: Why is it limited in the first place? Just let it keep going forever without increased rewards above 10,000. Big numbers are fun! 😄  

 

 

Yeah, I agree with all of the above. I like the ideas - they'd bring a little Quality Of Life change to WvW if you ask me.

 

1 hour ago, PseudoOAlias.4279 said:

  - What: Give Warclaws 2 Charges of aegis & 1 health (effectively 3 packets of damage to dismount) and slightly increase their movement speed
  - Why: Warclaws should be primarily a movement utility and not a means of effectively having extra health so you can kite or troll

 

Nah, a literal tickle would dismount you in this case. Dont forget there are red NPCs in most maps, which could literally dismount you for no reason, and also dont forget about fall damage. I dont think it would work well with having 1 HP. I like warclaws as is. They give a little bit of a boost, but nothing too broken. Giving them more movement speed - I cant get behind this idea. It makes people run across maps too fast.

 

1 hour ago, PseudoOAlias.4279 said:

  - What: Nerf the stats that Celestial Gear gives by about 20%.
  - Why: It's wayyy too good right now. Compared to 3-stat gear which gives around 3200 total stat points (when you use similar food) celestial gear + food gives 6200 stat points, which is ridiculous. The addition of concentration & expertise, while making lots of builds viable, also pretty much nullified build crafting. It's no longer min-maxing the clear answer on anything that's not specialized for zerging is now "just run celestial" which pretty much ruined build crafting.

 

This is a balance issue, and I have no opinion on this honestly as I dont roam. But honestly, there is literally no meta build for large squad play with would include celestial gear, so I dont think its that big of an issue? Idk. I dont play small scale combat much in WvW, so I cant say. Something for the balance team to take a look at I guess 🙂

 

1 hour ago, PseudoOAlias.4279 said:

  - What: Once the DX11 rollout is complete, if it is no-longer causing drastic lag, re-enable the central cannon meta-event on the Desert Borderland
  - Why: It was a fun event that added importance to grouping across maps for a single-important fight & could be quite fun with the alliance rollout.

  - What: Add a new map (to replace one of the existing forested maps)
  - Why: Variety is fun.

   Possible Map Contents:
    1 Keep that's underwater based on time of day. Tide/Ocean Themed
     > Would facilitate actually knowing / using underwater builds
    Camps that give no score by themselves, but triple score if most or all of them are held
     > Would more meaningfully reward roamers who do not like to play in larger groups
    Events on the map the yield war-score or that give WvW-relevant drops (e.g. account-bound Guild Catapults) (other than vet creatures that spawn)
     > Again would more meaningfully reward roamers who do not like to play in larger groups

This is where you lost me again. The desert borderlands was a disaster (it kinda still is) in the eyes of most of the community, and I dont think anybody wants to go back to the central cannon meta-event times, or experimenting with new maps too much. Especially underwater combat. Literally NOBODY wants that from the people I know.

At current state, when people fall into water at Bay you either chase them to the other side, range them, or let them go. Usually the latter. Theres a reason for this. Nobody likes underwater combat. Its clunky and weird, and slow as hell. If anything, I'd like to see changing the "skin" of the map every now and then.... You know, add in some pumpkins and ghosts for halloween.... Cover more of the map in snow and make it a bit more wintery in christmas season.... Stuff like that. Nothing major that would change gameplay drastically, but you'd have a bit of a fresh feel to it 🙂



Anyways, I hope my feedback doesnt disappoint you, but thats just how I perceive things. I feel most of the things will be agreed by the majority of the WvW community, though Im also sure I may have missed some spots here and there. No matter what, best of luck to you and your guild!

See you on the fields one day, when alliances pop! 😉

Best,
Zape 

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, Zape.2094 said:

I really like the inovative ideas in a way, but I feel like most of them arent really in the interest of the majority.

Also this forum is the wrong place for them. It should be under regular WvW.

[PseudoOAlias.4279]

Good suggestion. Reposted there as well. Appreciate the feedback! 😃