Why did Anet kill off WvW with the 9/11/21 patch?

[Xenesis.6389]

9 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

we did already have a thread addressing this: 

Cause yes, wvw is objectively worse now since the update, active players lost two sources of active Grace time and afk players are un-affected. Defenders, roamers and scouts need to use the K-training zergs slots to keep up participation essentially. Cause all this update helps is mindless zerging K-training. Eventually wvw will die off if they keep updates like this up, no matter how many people try and defend bad actions. 

 

Yeah keep spinning it.

Meanwhile the dev already stated that play times have been going up before and after the change....

Afker's no longer have an easy source for participation, they are the ones most affected by this change...

Active players feel nothing because they were already active and gaining participation easily, you don't even need to be in a zerg....

Edited November 25, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[Master of Piglets.4015]

It comes down to monetization and greed, theres a reason the boonball blob stuff is so popular and why the old days of being able to kill it will never return. Theres a reason why dmg was nerfed into the ground and mount stomp was removed. Anet realizes the majority of its open world, and wvw playerbase aka the bulk of the community, just wants to auto attack and never die and watch cat videos on youtube and not proactively play there game. This game is now basically a phone game but on the PC. 99% of the actual talent is now gone, has been gone for a while. The remaining playerbase that can actually compitently play and control there character is only still in Gw2 because there simply is no other game to play YET! Anet will NEVER return to the skill-based support yourself model it was originally sold as. Those days are gone and are not coming back. They are simply making too much money off the w key auto attacking bots to go back to the more engaging version of what the game once was. We are all just patiently waiting for a game that actually punishes you for being bad at it rather than a "Everyones a winner" wackamole farmville, candy crush PC simluator with cute skins. Money rules all at the end of the day and greed is King, its just the times we're in and its not just Gw2 but the transformation of Gw2 has been heart breaking none the less. 

Also, check out the stats you get when u boost an 80! Proves my point.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Master of Piglets.4015

[X T D.6458]

21 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Lots of interesting discussion here. I'd like to reiterate, as we mentioned prior to the Nov 9 update, we're keeping a close eye on the pip/repair changes. If the changes don't achieve our goals, we'll make additional adjustments. I don't anticipate any adjustments in the near-term, but that could change as we continue to get more data.

 

I did want to note that WvW playtime (average time spent per player on a WvW map) has been on an upward climb since the beginning of November - both before and after the changes. The number of active WvW players is also pretty much inline with typical week-to-week fluctuations. There's been some "gaem mode is ded" talk here, so I just wanted to clear that up.

 

-j

I have always favored encouraging active participation when it comes to rewards. There should be a sense of progression whether it's rewards or map design or whatever. These changes were a step in the right direction. I think a way to help newer players could be to increase the committed pip bonus to give players more pips each week for each tier that they finished the previous week.

 

For example-

Wood-1

Bronze-2

Silver-3

Gold-4

[ArchonWing.9480]

17 hours ago, Chariote Moonchild.1058 said:

Josh Davis.7865

I think I've been misunderstood. The lack of defense participation has hurt. I dont sit in a tower and wait for participation. i dont just wait and repair a wall... here is a scenario from last night.

So here is an example of repair/siege changes that have impacted
Join Red BL at t6 participation... only 2 of you so we decide to take a tower.
it takes 50 supps to make a sup cata... so have to run to get supply why building
participation timer ticks down
cata built. Use cata... no participation given whilst using cata (wall has to be brought down before participation is given)
group of 5 enemy descend on you... you die
participation still ticking away
try again hoping the group of enemy have left
have to rebuild cata as they destroyed it
run to camp to get supply or change bl to get supply from camp owned
run supply back and build cata
hit tower again
takes 14 hits to get tower down with max skill and max power
only get participation when wall drops.. participation now t5
get into tower only to realize that you need more peeps to take it
call out for assistance... no one comes
run towards camp or sentry to take it to keep participation up... call out to defend bay on home bl
forget sentry and head to home bl
participation dropping again
help defend by building siege and running supps to walls
participation now red
our zerg comes and pushes enemy the out but I dont get any hits on enemy so kills dont count, participation still dropping
repair wall back to 100
participation still dropping and now hills needs defenders... no time to take a camp or sentry.. you spawn at garry and run to hills
help build siege again and defend but still get no kills
participation now t4 and dropping faster

So you did a whole lot of nothing and managed to type this post and were still earning pips**. So what's the problem again?

If you knew you couldn't solo the tower lord, you could have at least killed some tower guards in the meantime. Or gone somewhere else. That is just one example of poor planning and would have given you no participation in the old system.

And when you were defending, no arrow carts? No cannons? No Mortar? You had all the time to hit something before the zerg came.  If you're not on any siege, you need to jump out the moment your allied zerg makes contact with the enemy because there is no point in staying inside.

**Only level 3 is required to earn pips. Above that only impacts reward track.

Edited November 25, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Xenesis.6389]

4 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

So you did a whole lot of nothing and managed to type this post and were still earning pips. So what's the problem again?

Their fatal mistake was not pushing one attack button to tag anything in multiple fights.

They're apparently building a whole lot of siege and not even using it either.

[ArchonWing.9480]

9 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Their fatal mistake was not pushing one attack button to tag anything in multiple fights.

They're apparently building a whole lot of siege and not even using it either.

Not very surprising. I've seen a lot of keeps fall or take way too much damage when a single person on a cannon or mortar or oil could have stopped the attack indefinitely. Nobody uses the freaking oil ever. Or they build stuff like gate catas which cannot destroy rams.

On my alt account, one of our keeps were under massive attack, so I waypointed an Omega (ewp was pulled so I had to grab anything) to help contest but didn't get into it because I had no mastery. It just got wasted along with the masses of other siege that was built.  😑 For me, at least I managed to use the 1 siege disabler I could afford lol.

But I'm the annoying person that builds golems to defend camps so I don't expect that from everyone.

Edited November 25, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Xenesis.6389]

26 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Not very surprising. I've seen a lot of keeps fall or take way too much damage when a single person on a cannon or mortar or oil could have stopped the attack indefinitely. Nobody uses the freaking oil ever. Or they build stuff like gate catas which cannot destroy rams.

On my alt account, one of our keeps were under massive attack, so I waypointed an Omega (ewp was pulled so I had to grab anything) to help contest but didn't get into it because I had no mastery. It just got wasted along with the masses of other siege that was built.  😑 For me, at least I managed to use the 1 siege disabler I could afford lol.

But I'm the annoying person that builds golems to defend camps so I don't expect that from everyone.

Yeah it's quite annoying to see people make scout calls at places but standing around on the wall not even using the siege. I use oil as soon as I can but half the time I'm dead by the time I get off it cause of all the aoes lol. Can't count the amount of times I've helped save an objective with just the cannon, because half the time enemies are too lazy to kill them, even for a place like watergate there's a cannon and mortar to help defend it and so many times I see them empty by the time I get to them.

 

Not to mention inner cannons that can hit outer gates like in hills and garrison and blue ebg keep, mortar from garri that can hit NeT, or the mortar in ebg red keep that can hit watergate. Don't even get me started on people that use siege to pewpew random players instead of the enemy siege... If you're gonna hang around the objectives so much at least be the first ones on them and use them properly before the enemy gets a foot hold.

[godfat.2604]

On 11/25/2021 at 6:22 AM, Josh Davis.7865 said:

I did want to note that WvW playtime (average time spent per player on a WvW map) has been on an upward climb since the beginning of November - both before and after the changes. The number of active WvW players is also pretty much inline with typical week-to-week fluctuations. There's been some "gaem mode is ded" talk here, so I just wanted to clear that up.

I appreciate the response and especially the data, which is important to understand the full story, and I would fully trust it because I don't have any way to verify that. However, I would like to remind a few things for a data-driven approach. I know you must have known it already, but I don't expect everyone reading the forum understand it, so here I am.

It's important to understand while data/numbers won't cheat, how we interpret the data is very important, and can be easily misleading at times. For example, if we only look at the player activities as a whole, we don't know what exactly those activities are. It could be possible that zerg play has 1.2 times activities while scouting and defending drop to 0.5 times, and zerg is likely to be the majority of activities because by definition, it requires a lot of activities to form a zerg, therefore overall this will still be increasing the activities overall.

I know from a business stand point of view, revenue is the end goal, and activities/population is a very good indication to drive revenue. It makes perfect sense to use activities as an KPI (key performance indicator), because it's very easy to observe and it has very direct impact to revenue.

However, if we look further, or closer, we will also know that there are so many ways to play WvW, just like there are so many ways to play Guild Wars 2. There are a lot of different kinds of players. The explorers, the achiever, etc (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types)

The composition and diversity of those players will affect the overall communities, and it will influence how the game can continue to evolve and grow. This data will be much harder to gather, and much harder to predict how it'll evolve. Players come and go, the composition and diversity is changing all the time. I am not saying this community is toxic, but imagine a toxic community, even if it's fully populated, they can hardly welcome more players who don't play like them (less inclusive and can hurt diversity, and overall easier to die as a whole). Of course, fully populated toxic community can still generate a lot of revenue, just like I mentioned in the last post, we need hard core players to keep the game alive. I am also not saying hard core players are toxic, but I do see correlations, so I understand it's really important to appeal those players.

But, it has consequence. I love WvW very much not just because it's fun, but also how it can welcome everyone and everyone can contribute in a way they prefer more. I see no reasons to exclude anyone, unless there's a queue which can prevent other players from playing. I am also not saying that we're excluding players, because again, repairing participation is such a small change, which is likely hard to observe any meaningful direct impact. However, I see that's another straw on a dying camel. Once again, there's so much less scouts and defenders nowadays, comparing to several years ago. This can go in depth analysis but without data to support it it's just fully speculating.

To reiterate my points, because I find myself mixing topics a bit. My most important 2 points are:

* We need to look at player types and activity types, and how each of them can influence the game as a whole. Some types of players can generate more revenue, but some types of players can generate more players which can generate more revenue in a longer run.
* We need a more friendly environment which can welcome the new players more. Try to appeal and attract more friendly players.

Edited November 26, 2021 by godfat.2604
Fix wordings

[Danikat.8537]

I typically don't use siege because I don't have the masteries for it. It's a bit of a vicious circle because I've prioritised other masteries on the basis that I'm usually in a group and therefore someone else will have siege mastery and it would be redundant for me to have it, so then I never use siege and so I avoid training it...but I'll get to it one day. (Still only rank 300-400ish, so I don't have many points in total.)

But even so if I see siege that could be useful and no one else on it I'll use it, because someone without mastery using it is still better than no one using it. (I also let the group know I don't have mastery so they can take it if they do.)

Also it is possible to take a tower with 2 players, you just have to take it a bit slower. Instead of rushing to the lord like you can with a big group you need to clear out the guards first, and use CC on the lord. (I can't remember if they all have breakbars, or only the ones in the desert borderlands, but either way CC helps.)

But even if you think building siege for other people to use and repairing walls are the most important things you could be doing if you care about participation the simple solution is to interspace it with things that give participation - like using that siege rather than hoping someone else will show up to use it, or killing the people attacking a wall/door before repairing it. (Which also wastes less supply, because then it's not being drained as you're building it up.)

I spent about an hour and a half defending our home garrison this week, including repeatedly repairing the door they came through and making my own supply runs out to camps to do it, and I was able to keep up participation throughout because as well as repairing and placing traps I was fighting the enemies who did get in or were trying to knock down doors. I didn't keep track of it exactly but I never noticed the bar going red.

[Zyreva.1078]

2 hours ago, godfat.2604 said:

It's important to understand while data/numbers won't cheat, how we interpret the data is very important, and can be easily misleading at times. For example, if we only look at the player activities as a whole, we don't know what exactly those activities are. It could be possible that zerg play has 1.2 times activities while scouting and defending drop to 0.5 times, and zerg is likely to be the majority of activities because by definition, it requires a lot of activities to form a zerg, therefore overall this will still be increasing the activities overall.

[...]

Once again, there's so much less scouts and defenders nowadays, comparing to several years ago. This can go in depth analysis but without data to support it it's just fully speculating.

While you are right regarding numbers/data and the importance of interpretation, your follow-up is not very conclusive.

1. Zerging and defending are not mutually excusive. In fact, zergs are a very important for defending and often neccessary to do it successfully if the attackers field large numbers too. But zergs aren't affected by the recent changes at all, nor is an increased unwillingness to defend something new. It has been like that for a few years now and i'd even say it has been much worse at times (primarily after legendary armor and warclaw got introduced and many players only cared about farming those and not about actually playing the game mode). So there have to be different reasons, why some players don't care about defending, that have nothing to do with (lack off) "tangible" rewards, when considering those rewards have been non-existent back when players really cared about keeping their structures.

2. Scouting itself never granted any rewards outside of shared participation slots or occasional donations, no change here. It's the things that players did alongside of gathering and passing on information that are resulting in participation, and most of those things did not change either. Only those that were putting in the absolute minimal effort possible while sitting inside safe zones that lost their easymode reward farm. So again, it is highly unlikely that the recent changes had any notable impact on scouting itself, which btw does not (have to) equal sitting inside towers 24/7.

Quote

* We need to look at player types and activity types, and how each of them can influence the game as a whole. Some types of players can generate more revenue, but some types of players can generate more players which can generate more revenue in a longer run.

Since non-stop trebbing or repairing are very uninteractive activities, players doing those things are highly unlikely to "generate more players". Players looking to join a PvP game mode usually do so because they want to interact and engage in combat with other players one way or another, and that's exactly what the devs are incentivising with the recent changes. Seems like a good thing to me.

Quote

* We need a more friendly environment which can welcome the new players more. Try to appeal and attract more friendly players.

Avoiding interaction with opposing sides in a PvP context does not equal being friendly. Fighting and killing each other is not toxic behavior. You didn't explicitly say it, but your post implys it.

Edited November 26, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[godfat.2604]

3 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

1. Zerging and defending are not mutually excusive. In fact, zergs are a very important for defending and often neccessary to do it successfully if the attackers field large numbers too. But zergs aren't affected by the recent changes at all, nor is an increased unwillingness to defend something new. It has been like that for a few years now and i'd even say it has been much worse at times (primarily after legendary armor and warclaw got introduced and many players only cared about farming those and not about actually playing the game mode).

Fully agreed. To clarify, when I said defenders I meant to refer to lone defenders, not all defenders. I'll avoid omitting that "lone" next time.
 

Quote

So there have to be different reasons, why some players don't care about defending, that have nothing to do with (lack off) "tangible" rewards, when considering those rewards have been non-existent back when players really cared about keeping their structures.

I agree, and I would also like to go into this a bit more, even though it's a bit off topic, but if that's not a thing I won't really care about getting participation for repairing. I personally think it's the whole participation system killed it. Back then without participation, wandering around the keep, refreshing sieges, etc, people were only spending their time in the game. They didn't "lose" anything.

Now with the participation system, they "lose" participation and therefore rewards for doing those. Yes we're getting so much more rewards with the participation system, now that we're really earning rewards rather than spending gold on building sieges and upgrading keeps. However, the feeling of "losing" is much different. While everyone is earning rewards, why should I get nothing? But if no one gets anything, I won't really feel I am discouraged to do those activities.

Don't get me wrong, we should definitely get more rewards than nothing, and I also truly believe this is the right direction, and definitely an overall net positive, but we can always improve and iterate. I really miss the days we had siege wars trebbing the keep for an hour, or defended the keep from being trebbed for an hour, with both sides having zergs, of course. I know sometimes it got boring if there's too little actions, but that's more like a war game than groups fighting in a circle. Again don't get me wrong, I also enjoy that as well, and I know it's hard to get back to those days because it just isn't compatible with the participation system. The same applies to scouting as well.

I think my main point is, there were and are a lot of valid game play that the current participation system can hardly reward, which is something that we should keep looking at, and there's no need to worry about leechers too much because liquid rewards from WvW is just bad. Warclaw is a concern, but that did die out already.
 

Quote

Since non-stop trebbing or repairing are very uninteractive activities, players doing those things are highly unlikely to "generate more players". Players looking to join a PvP game mode usually do so because they want to interact and engage in combat with other players one way or another, and that's exactly what the devs are incentivising with the recent changes. Seems like a good thing to me.

I don't disagree with this, but I do think trebbing from afar does still contribute. Like someone mentioned that they would do this before the commander is online, and there's nothing much they can do while waiting anyway. It's also pretty common that when the trebber opened a hole, calling out on the map, then a lot of players will go over there to take the tower, generating a few fights over there. If no one is trebbing, I don't know, a lot of people just don't want to use cata in front of the tower, maybe that's because then it's unlikely to success that the defenders can easily take them out, but when the wall is down it's just easier to get over there and fight it over. It might be similar to that camps are constantly getting flipped.

I am not saying this is a significant gameplay, but I think it's something.
 

Quote

Avoiding interaction with opposing sides in a PvP context does not equal being friendly. Fighting and killing each other is not toxic behavior. You didn't explicitly say it, but your post implys it.

Sorry that wasn't clear. I am not saying fighting and killing is toxic. I am referring to being dismissive about how other players enjoy the game, on the forum. You can clearly see now we're equalizing getting participation = playing actively, and not getting participation = not actively playing and being leechers or afkers, I think that's far from the fact, and I understand how people can get that impression. Those activities they enjoy now no longer get rewards, which are discouraged by the game, by the game dev/designers. I think we can give "less" rewards, because contributions are not equal, but completely "zero" is a much different thing.

Edited November 26, 2021 by godfat.2604
Fix typo

[Xenesis.6389]

Before you start trebbing, get the 10 min buff from taking a camp or tower or keep or killing a player, then sit in treb for 10 mins, then repeat.

 

A player constantly earning participation for sitting afk holding down a button on a treb in a safe space, while the active player has to travel the map to flip 2-3 camps and sentries while possibly getting ganked for their participation in the same period of time is ridiculous.

 

Once you get to T6 the roamer can even get less rewarding because they're only doing it to refresh their timer as they can't progress their participation bar anymore. Meanwhile the trebber is getting free refresh in their safe space, and even worse if they're trebbing some objective that's being repaired (smc to quentin lake lets say), so the possibility of the enemy repairing for free participation at no risk too. Even more ridiculous.

 

The only people who are affected are the ones that legit stay around to repair a broken T3 wall or gate after an attack because the defenders ran off not giving a kitten, in which case you shouldn't feel responsible for that, call it out in map chat and most times you will get help repairing something, I do it if I have spare supplies and nearby. But you should be going out and earning participation after that.

[Zyreva.1078]

39 minutes ago, godfat.2604 said:

I think my main point is, there were and are a lot of valid game play that the current participation system can hardly reward, which is something that we should keep looking at, and there's no need to worry about leechers too much because liquid rewards from WvW is just bad. Warclaw is a concern, but that did die out already.

But the reward system is designed in a way that it does allow for a lot of freedom in gameplay (which is why it can be exploited so easily). Participation is trivial to aquire and maintain as long someone is willing to leave their safe zone at least once in while to do something other than pressing the same single button over and over again. Is that really too much to ask for?

 

39 minutes ago, godfat.2604 said:

Those activities they enjoy now no longer get rewards, which are discouraged by the game, by the game dev/designers. I think we can give "less" rewards, because contributions are not equal, but completely "zero" is a much different thing.

Are there really people out there that enjoy stuffing supplies into a wall or gate and nothing else? I mean, i don't recall repairing being considered a "playstyle" when there were no rewards. It was - and still is - done to fix holes in structures as part of the defense. Just like using your heal skill in oder to survive in a fight is part of the fighting process, but nobody expects to get rewarded if it's the only thing they do, right?

[Svarty.8019]

On 11/20/2021 at 8:21 AM, Malice.5867 said:

The patch changes killed off the mode for the people that port around to the outnumbered map and repair something every 10 mins to farm pips.

What do you think people do when they're waiting for a Commander to show up?

Edited November 26, 2021 by Svarty.8019

[Svarty.8019]

On 11/20/2021 at 2:27 AM, Chariote Moonchild.1058 said:

defending or small  group fun is no longer fun at all.

[..]

there is no drive to repair or upgrade anything.

Arenanet have repeatedly nerfed anything remotely associated with defending in WvW.

 

It's meant to be a giant Karma-train with as big a group as you can muster. <- That's the design document, right there. 😞 

 

In seriousness, the original WvW creators would be turning in their graves if they saw what had become of their mode.

[godfat.2604]

2 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

But the reward system is designed in a way that it does allow for a lot of freedom in gameplay (which is why it can be exploited so easily). Participation is trivial to aquire and maintain as long someone is willing to leave their safe zone at least once in while to do something other than pressing the same single button over and over again. Is that really too much to ask for?

I don't think it's too much to ask for, or to put it this way, it's the trade off of the current system, so that's reasonable. However I do think there's a lot of rooms for improvement. There can have more ways to give participation. There might have enough already, which I don't disagree nor agree, but why can't we have more? What about just damaging the enemies without being able to kill them? I know this might be easy to exploit if damaging along can give participation, but trading kills can be exploited under current system as well.

Or maybe put it this way: Killing can give me 10 minutes, but fighting with a never dying thief can give me 0 seconds of participation. I don't think this balances out, and I believe that's also part of the reasons that why a lot of people hate thieves. Perhaps it should not always give 10 minutes for a killing blow? Maybe it should scale with how long the enemy had lived, just like how we're giving WXP? Killing someone lived for so long can give me 250 WXP, but very little if that someone constantly died. Why participation can't work this way? We can also give some participation every time when someone is down? And it can also scale with how long that player has been up. This will much help with a stale fight that no one ever died. (And no grouped attackers will die from a lone defender, I hope this did get back to our topic. Of course again, this can be easily exploited, for someone who constantly just run into enemies... We can try to add a bit more conditions into it, for example, that someone should stay within their own objectives?)

I believe there are likely technical reasons for why those weren't implemented. That's understandable and reasonable, but should not be the excuse for getting stuck here. I know WvW has nearly no updates for so long, and alliance must be the most important things that everything else can just wait. But I think it's really sad that without seeing how we can improve the system first, we remove something before it. That's pretty ANet though, like removing sPvP amulets, removing CC damages, raising cooldown for some traits to 300 seconds and never coming back. Always remove something first without fixing it later.

And I still don't really get what's so bad if we have those who exploit this? Firstly I don't see that's a lot of people, secondly how they affect other people's gameplay? Burning supplies and queues? Those could be addressed with a different mean without hurting valid play.
 

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Are there really people out there that enjoy stuffing supplies into a wall or gate and nothing else? I mean, i don't recall repairing being considered a "playstyle" when there were no rewards. It was - and still is - done to fix holes in structures as part of the defense. Just like using your heal skill in oder to survive in a fight is part of the fighting process, but nobody expects to get rewarded if it's the only thing they do, right?

I am curious what's your take for this gameplay? I think they're valid, but they're dropping participation. Yes, if they do something else, they might not be dropping participation. But why should they? What did they do "wrong"? Repairing participation is just one of the tools to keep this gamepaly. If we can implement something else to help that, sure, as long as it can address it.

 

 

[Cuks.8241]

38 minutes ago, Svarty.8019 said:

What do you think people do when they're waiting for a Commander to show up?

Seek enemies and battle them. 

[Xenesis.6389]

45 minutes ago, godfat.2604 said:

What about just damaging the enemies without being able to kill them? I know this might be easy to exploit if damaging along can give participation, but trading kills can be exploited under current system as well.

Or maybe put it this way: Killing can give me 10 minutes, but fighting with a never dying thief can give me 0 seconds of participation. I don't think this balances out, and I believe that's also part of the reasons that why a lot of people hate thieves.

 

You can get full participation for tagging a person with like 1k damage, you don't need to do the killshot, they just need to die at some point. If you're not good at killing then find or create a group or something, why do you think people roam in groups now? There is no need to give participation every time you hit someone or something, that would be no better than the afk trebbing and people WILL exploit that, right down to equipping minstrel regen builds(hi warrior) and go off to some corner to afk auto attack.

 

You really think people don't like thieves because they're hard to kill for participation? 🤨

Do you really have participation on your mind for every little thing you do in wvw?

What's so hard about capping a camp for 10 min participation?

 

P.S Maybe you should start arguing for more extended participation periods instead, like killing guards or sentries give 10 mins instead of 2 or 5 mins? They're npcs, easy to kill, get extended participation grace period to ease your stress?

P.P.S Your hit for participation will probably help that never dying thief out even more than you.

Edited November 26, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[Zyreva.1078]

Just because the system is exploitable doesn't mean it should be made even easier to exploit. Stalemating in particular tends to be very unfun for many players and should not get encouraged whatsoever. Don't want to waste time "fighting" that perma stealth thief? Move on and do something else instead of giving him rewards for hitting you once in a while inbetween perma stealthing.

That's from the point of someone who enjoys dueling from time to time - something that also does not give any rewards - and i'm perfectly fine with that, because i do it for fun and nothing else.

19 minutes ago, godfat.2604 said:

I

I am curious what's your take for this gameplay? I think they're valid, but they're dropping participation. [...]

 

Even with the help of an ally the player was unable to take an undefended paper tower - which can be solo'd - yet still sieged it anyway, was somehow unable to hit a single player in a zerg fight and also desided to not do anything else inbetween like flipping a sentry or camp, killing some guards, a dolyak, ... which all takes less than a minute or two. And he still got rewards the entire time. Seems like a player issue, not an issue with the reward system tbh.

 

I have actually been in a similar situation yesterday btw. My participation was already low and declining because i spend some time duelling, found a lone half built cata, got it to like 95% with the supplies i had, went to kill a nearby dolyak to gain some more supplies, finished the cata and started sieging the tower. Nobody showed up. While participation was dropping during the siege, it was declining very slowly because you still gain a few seconds when hitting a wall, which resets the "decay speed". Got 5 min on destroying the wall, went in and killed the lord (+5 min again), then a few enemies showed up and killed me right before i could take the tower. Went on to do something else, did not drop participation tier the entire time. Even got credit for taking the tower when someone else from my server took it about an hour later.

If someone cares about keeping participation up - they can do it. I don't and still have it maxed out 99% of the time, without ever joining a zerg. Solo and small scale play only.

[Zyreva.1078]

8 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 

You can get full participation for tagging a person with like 1k damage

Actually it needs a lot less than that. Just "lancing" someone with warclaw while running past (which does like 100 dmg if not less) is enough to get full participation if the target dies. (WXP/ loot bag credit requires a littble bit more, but for participation literally any dmg is enough.)

[Xenesis.6389]

3 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Actually it needs a lot less than that. Just "lancing" someone with warclaw while running past (which does like 100 dmg if not less) is enough to get full participation if the target dies. (WXP/ loot bag credit requires a littble bit more, but for participation literally any dmg is enough.)

Good to know, I never noticed participation from just lancing, I usually follow up with the pounce and whatever attack I can get off before they're dead especially on minstrel scrapper lol. 😆

I say 1k as that's been a consistent baseline amount for tagging for bags for me.

[Barraind.7324]

On 11/20/2021 at 1:11 AM, RageBear.8957 said:

 

Outside SMC, would that even be viable? If not, just modify the SMC walls? It's not like they do anything anyway given they always get trebbed from the towers... If it is, add a lower limit of supply spent to gain participation?

 

Ling.

 

It was viable because of the afk trebbing from smc, when whoever set it up was just a bit off and all they hit was your gate over and over for 5 hours every 15 seconds, instead of your walls. 

 

I mean, when the person actively at the treb who landed every shot in exactly the same spot at exactly he same interval for hours wasnt ever told to move their aim 1 click in the direction of the wall. 

 

You see all sorts of weird stuff when your playtime is many hours hours offset from your worlds prime time. 

[Luthan.5236]

Just for participation I like to stay at corner/spawn in an enemy alpin borderland. Capping/recapping the camps. (That usually almost all the time get flipped as soon as the 5 min timer runs out.)

But yeah: Defensive play does not seem very rewarding. Unfortunately. I prefer it. More rewarding to constantly flip stuff back and forth. (Already for the reward from flipping/capping - the WXP and stuff.)

I guess the supposed/intended way was to have the commanders with the squads and shared participation - to give scouts participation with this. (Scouts + people building siege - those 2 things are other stuff besides repairing that are important.)

Edited November 26, 2021 by Luthan.5236

[Monarc.9726]

Small scale WvW is already mostly dead anyway, along with playing the game mode how it was originally intended. I hope Alliances breathes new life into the mode, but honestly it seems to be more about appeasing the larger guilds than about encouraging smaller groups or new players to jump in and give it a go. Or, maybe Alliances will actually help create servers comprised of roamers and specialized havoc groups, and move those annoying never-ending blob vs blob bag farm battles elsewhere, that's my hope.

[Carbine.4706]

Anet didn't kill off WvW 🙂