what being new to WvW feels like

[Danikat.8537]

I think WvW can be rewarding, but you have to know what to expect. It's the only place I've gotten ascended drops (I've done very little raiding and only up to level 20 Fractals) and also the source of 2 of my 3 randomly dropped Black Lion keys. I've also got lots of different skins, some minis and other stuff from reward tracks, purchased with badges and skirmish tickets and possibly other sources. Plus various random drops I sold or turned into materials. So from my perspective as someone who doesn't have a meta-event farming routine or whatever it's not that different to PvE.

But I do find some aspects frustrating, including the skirmish reward tracks, which I've never been able to finish. This week I played WvW for about 16 hours (2-3 hours per day, except Tuesday when I was working all day and evening) and got up to the 4th mithril chest. But because I couldn't put in the extra time to finish mithril and diamond I was still missing about 1/3 of the skirmish tickets and today it will all reset and I'll be back to the start again. It sometimes feels like the game telling me I'm not putting enough time in, but since I can't do more (due to a combination of real-life commitments and RSI acting up if I'm on the computer for more than about 2 hours) it feels like WvW is just not right for me.

Yes I could forget about rewards and focus on playing but that runs into a similar problem. At the end of each week everything my server has achieved is wiped and reset. We go round and round the maps attacking and defending the same handful of objectives and in the short-term it can get repetitive but at least the things you take, the time you hold them and the players you kill count towards your server's score. But then it's all gone and you start over.

PvE can have a similar problem; enemies respawn, meta-events reset and permanent changes are only when Anet choose to make them, but at least you keep your own progress through the content. When it starts feeling like the only thing I get out of WvW is the brief periods when there's an interesting battle (like the one evening this week I mainly spent defending our garrison) and they're too few and far between, and very very slow progress towards something I might want I start re-evaluating how I spend my free time.

That's the point I'm at now - planning to take next week off from WvW (and possibly GW2) and come back for the world restructuring beta.

It's not necessarily the skirmish rewards that need to be changed (although either letting progress carry over from one week to the next if you haven't finished it, or spacing the tickets out more evenly would be a big help for players like me). I'm very curious about Anet's vaguely stated plans to make winning more important in WvW. I have no idea what they intend to do, I'm not even sure what I think they should do, but some acknowledgement of the result beyond maybe going up or down a tier would be a big improvement.

The other thing which could help is more friendly and sociable players. While writing this I started thinking about other 'pointless' things I do for fun and board games were the obvious example. I can spend hours playing board games and have nothing to show for it because nothing carries over once the game is finished and (at least among my group) there's no prize for winning beyond maybe other people saying well done. But when I think about time spend playing board games what I remember is the social aspect - the conversations we had about the game and about all kinds of other things while playing.

That can and does happen in WvW (we had a whole conversation the other day about Bucky O'Hare because of the Righteous Indignation effect) but again it seems relatively rare and from what I've heard (having only ever played on Desolation) varies hugely between servers. It's even rarer if you're new and don't know how to get into a group or you're afraid of asking stupid questions and getting kicked or yelled at.

[Zikory.6871]

5 hours ago, Brandon Uzumaki.1524 said:

WvW players are weird lol, most constant complain that the game mode is not rewarding enough compared to  the others, but when someone says WvW need more rewards they are against the idea of having more rewards, i can never understand lmao.

Its pretty simple. The uptick in complaints is because of Legendary armory and the time it takes to obtain WvW legendries. Some people don't want WvW to be a game mode you farm for rewards but rather a game mode you get rewarded for playing. How is something that has always been a struggle but has been highlighted by the Armory and the 3 year content drought. 

The new WvW player experience is bad, any veteran that has kitted out a alt account knows this. As a veteran, of coarse I want more rewards but imo focus on the new player experience would be better for the health of the game mode. They can already reward veterans by simply adding something to do with Legendary spikes and the emblems. 

 

[ArchonWing.9480]

53 minutes ago, Zikory.6871 said:

The new WvW player experience is bad, any veteran that has kitted out a alt account knows this. As a veteran, of coarse I want more rewards but imo focus on the new player experience would be better for the health of the game mode. They can already reward veterans by simply adding something to do with Legendary spikes and the emblems. 

 

It really is. Having to grind for a warclaw and having it cost 166 points is also quite a nuisance. Lance should have been one of the first few abilities and not the last. It's a basic concept in the game that masteries are frontloaded so most WvW masteries are insanely backwards.  8 hours for any reward track for about a grand total of what someone can earn in 2-3 hours of pve is >.>

I mean I had 80+ potions ready when mount came out, so no problem for me personally (have 700 stored up for whatever nonsense lies ahead) but still seems annoying.

Also, locking basic stuff like autoloot like that which should have been baseline is pretty lame. And yea emblems are crap too. It's useless trash to most actual players.

And rework WvW vendors. 12 silver or 3 laurels for paper siege? 5 memories of battle for canned food? And why can't the WvW laurel vendor sell normal laurel stuff? It just makes the one in Armistice Bastion kinda weak and people have to pay out gems for it.

Edited November 26, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[GoldenPants.1870]

On 11/25/2021 at 9:19 AM, Namikazeminato.9348 said:

everyone just down with the ridiculous grind this game mode forces people into

Oh sweet summer child, WvW is not played for the rewards, it’s for playing WvW, literally any other activity is better for getting rewards, yes that also includes PvP. And it’s been like that for a loooooong time, the most rewarding thing in WvW is the Gift of Battle, other than that you’re better off doing Drizzlewood coast if you want rewards.

[Avatara.1042]

WvW is very punishing for new players.

[Norbe.7630]

16 minutes ago, Avatara.1042 said:

WvW is very punishing for new players.

Yes. I've experienced it firsthand.

To be honest it's much more forgiving this time than before.

I saw firsthand a solo guardian decimate a guild group of 10 few years ago when I was new.

Just think of WvW as end game of GW2 where you take your PvE skills to the next level.

Challenge yourself to do it. WvW is not for faint hearted or sugar and spice and everything nice.

Even the most elites PvE raiding guild who can kill Dhuum CM within 3 minutes wouldn't last a second in a WvW guild fight

[Banto.8761]

Guess you can be glad that you didn't play WvW back then 2012. No reward-shower from WxP, Rewardtracks nor PiPs but a hefty repair bill at the end of the day. Back then you had to pay for repairs, had to pay for upgraded keeps/towers and camps.

After a couple hours you easily could run into 10-20g for repairing your equip and a handful gold more to upgrade a keep to t3.
Think about that please before you start a forum tsunami. You're like that fat kiddo with a mouth full of chocolate on Halloween, holding open your sack full of candies in the expectation of getting more.
People like you make me wish back the old times just to see folks like you suffer.

And now enjoy your reward-shower without having any costs.
Oh btw i haven't even spoken of Gift of Exploration. Back then you sometimes even had to wait weeks if not months to get that one last Poi in some enemies keep.
Somestimes i spent good 100g a day for playing WvW but barely getting any loot/reward.

[captrowdy.9561]

New player here. Isn’t wvw for the fun of pvp? It’s nice getting rewards to pop up but I’m here for the action bros. Rewards are good to get players in who normally wouldn’t pvp and they might just find they like it. If your not gonna make any effort to learn how to fight other players and just want to “grind” I’ll just pew pew ya with my longbow. 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Nice to see the Stockholm is real in the WvW forums--please never change.

Anyway, I've been playing since launch and also think it's ridiculous how WvW is undertuned in terms of reward structure.  In fact, they often go out of their way to make it WORSE, such as 'normalizing' pip gain through outnumbered bonus elimination or removing participation from repairing non-active structures, etc. etc.

Also, yes, WvW used to be different--how is this applicable to OPs concerns? Could get on my soapbox all day about how we used to have to RUN down paths instead of glide, or how we used to have to WALK places using swiftness instead of warclaws...that doesn't change anything.  Like, guys, remember orbz? Or the giant lake in alpine?! *sigh*

Some good changes they really need are to at least normalize pips to like 10 base and then go from there on rank / placement etc. and also do something with reward tracks or vendors to equalize what you can do in PvE.  Meaning something like Bjora marches vendor exchanging for LWS3 currencies...we should have something in WvW like this.  

Also finally, ignore all talk of 'git gud' in terms of WvW.  That's nonsense, as almost all WvW is either a gank fest (i.e. Xv1), blob fest, or playing peek a boo in structures.  Or I guess if you're a 'fight guild' standing around in spawn until enough of you show up to actually leave it when you are getting EBG farmed 😂

Edited November 29, 2021 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Custodio.6134]

4 hours ago, captrowdy.9561 said:

New player here. Isn’t wvw for the fun of pvp? It’s nice getting rewards to pop up but I’m here for the action bros. Rewards are good to get players in who normally wouldn’t pvp and they might just find they like it. If your not gonna make any effort to learn how to fight other players and just want to “grind” I’ll just pew pew ya with my longbow. 

Depends on how you define "fun", because that is subjective for every player. Some have fun with siege and flipping stuff, others want to go more into the dueling direction (roaming). Another set of people have fun defending stuff. Next group has fun with winning medium-scaled fights, others like to run in big blobs and fighting. And then there are the people, that want to dive deeper into the game and start raiding progressive as guilds, putting much more effort into their gameplay (e.g. much more theorycrafting on builds, setups, gameplay mechanics and minmaxing wherever you can). Heck, some people even have fun running around as unorganized cloud and being annoying to organized zergs. 

But no matter the way you play, in the end it is (most of the time) about winning in a certain way (be it successfully being annoying as cloud, winning 1v1´s as roamer, or fighting GvG / Zerg v Zerg).

And btw: WvW is per Definition a competetive game-mode. people often tend to forget that unchangeable fact (reminder: the definition of "competetive gaming" is roughly: a PvP-mode, that has a ranking which is defined by certain rules and victory/loss-conditions. It usually has a ranked leaderboard)

[Gibson.4036]

It is kinda funny that players who play a lot end up with bonuses so they don't have to play so much.

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Anyway, I've been playing since launch and also think it's ridiculous how WvW is undertuned in terms of reward structure.  In fact, they often go out of their way to make it WORSE, such as 'normalizing' pip gain through outnumbered

A little hypocritical to complain about something that gives 99% of players more rewards as WORSE, dont you think...

[Stand The Wall.6987]

to be a true wvw'er, you must feel at home being neglected and find joy in the misery of others. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

3 hours ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

to be a true wvw'er, you must feel at home being neglected and find joy in the misery of others. 

 

Tooooooo true. +10, and plan on PvEing to fund your WvW habits. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by TheGrimm.5624

[Yellow Rainbow.6142]

On 11/27/2021 at 11:56 PM, Banto.8761 said:

Guess you can be glad that you didn't play WvW back then 2012. No reward-shower from WxP, Rewardtracks nor PiPs but a hefty repair bill at the end of the day. Back then you had to pay for repairs, had to pay for upgraded keeps/towers and camps.

After a couple hours you easily could run into 10-20g for repairing your equip and a handful gold more to upgrade a keep to t3.
Think about that please before you start a forum tsunami. You're like that fat kiddo with a mouth full of chocolate on Halloween, holding open your sack full of candies in the expectation of getting more.
People like you make me wish back the old times just to see folks like you suffer.

And now enjoy your reward-shower without having any costs.
Oh btw i haven't even spoken of Gift of Exploration. Back then you sometimes even had to wait weeks if not months to get that one last Poi in some enemies keep.
Somestimes i spent good 100g a day for playing WvW but barely getting any loot/reward.

back then I used to ride bicycle to get groceries now I take car and complain about traffic. May be we should all go back to horse, so, people like you don't have to hear about traffic 🙂

[SweetPotato.7456]

2 hours ago, Yellow Rainbow.6142 said:

back then I used to ride bicycle to get groceries now I take car and complain about traffic. May be we should all go back to horse, so, people like you don't have to hear about traffic 🙂

Animal Cruelty! 

[ASP.8093]

For the most part, my advice to you is: Just play!

Don't sweat the weekly chest track. Don't worry about completing it, getting your big ol' diamond chests or whatever.

Within a two or three weeks you should have a very easy time keeping participation maxed out without ever looking at it.

Play as much or as little as you want every week, do the dailies if they're easy (for the potions and the 2 gold + spirit shard reward for completing 3).

 

Ok, but how do you turn that into "rewards?"

1. Short term: stash your warlord boxes and use them when you need stat-selectable armor (e.g. Viper's, Trailblazer's, Celestial, Minstrel's); use the wvw laurel merchant instead of the vanilla laurel merchant to get cheaper amulets/rings. Try to keep your Memories of Battle for later, but it's ok to TP a few here and there if you're hungry for immediate spending money.

2. Complete a reward tracks gives you skins. Some of the skins are very expensive to get otherwise.

3. Making money: WvW slowly feeds you Mystic Clovers. The first time you go through a reward track (i.e. when you do the "non-repeatable" version), you often get a sizable bonus as well. Together with doing the "Return To" events in PvE, you can get a ton without ever having to burn Mystic Coins to create them. This will save you a ton of resources when creating legendaries later.

ORRRR… You can sell the Mystic Coins you get from various game activities (including a bunch free every month from log-in rewards) since you already have Clovers directly. (You will still want 250 Mystic Coins for any legendary that requires a Mystic Tribute.)

ORRRRRRRRRRR… You can sell the Mystic Coins and use those account-bound Mystic Clovers to make "gen 1" legendary weapons, and sell those weapons on the TP for significant profit.

4. WvW legendary armor is very reachable. If you think you want it, just stash your Memories of Battle and avoid burning Skirmish Tickets, and work on the Triumphant Armor track to unlock the basic pieces. Check back like six months later to see how far along you are.

 

(Also, you can use Tomes of Knowledge + Proofs of Heroics to speed-level other characters. Which doesn't translate into any gold income but it does save you time.)

Edited November 30, 2021 by ASP.8093

[Creativity.3816]

Play wvw if you enjoy it. People like me play lots and are still trash. you are bad too, so who cares about rewards when you can get better, improve at the game.

 

The real reward is killing enemies then running away or dying, then repeating that until you are satisfied. If you are looking to be rewarded for monotony rather than enjoying the game you are playing I would suggest Amazon's new brilliant mmo

[Flow.2947]

On 11/25/2021 at 9:19 AM, Namikazeminato.9348 said:

It feels like I am being severely punished when playing WvW for being new, at first, it was kinda fun, I made it my goal to get a keep fully upgraded after capturing it with a random group when they left and I was left outnumbered and it felt rewarding after I spent the whole night doing that and managed to get it upgraded, but after that stuff started going downhill, and it was after I checked the rewards for playing the mode.

I was getting around 5 pips each tick during my first week and then 6 the next one and it felt like I would have to force myself to play for several hours a day to be able to get all the chest rewards which was fine during the first week because not knowing how the mode worked I thought that the more tiers I finished the more pips per tick I would get next week, but I found out it was just 1 extra pip for finishing the wood chest...

It was demoralizing to find out that even after putting so many hours into the mode the previous week to finish the rewards I was just getting a pat on the back and then told to put nearly the same amount of hours into it, and then seeing that I was not even remotely close to the next level tier for the extra pip at level 150, which would be fine if I got a couple more pips from the "commitment" thing(it is absolutely ridiculous to call finishing wood division commitment) it honestly feels like the game mode is kicking me while I am down.

I need to know if I am the only one experiencing something like this, are any other newcomers to WvW feeling this way, or is everyone just down with the ridiculous grind this game mode forces people into?

Dont give up i remember that feeling all to well! Rewards are a nice to have. A goody in my opinion. In the first years of the game i needet to do pve to be able to particepate in wvw. I played solo and died a lot. Gear repairs where not for free and sige was expensive. Dont force your self join your community in discord and have fun thats all what matters

[Gotejjeken.1267]

19 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

A little hypocritical to complain about something that gives 99% of players more rewards as WORSE, dont you think...

 

Removing outnumbered pips do not give 99% of players more rewards.  

[Zikory.6871]

8 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Removing outnumbered pips do not give 99% of players more rewards.  

I don't about 99% of players but I went from having to play 5 days a week to 3 to finish diamond. So I do get more rewards if I still play they same amount.

 

But I also think chasing outnumbered for pips was dumb so w/e. 

[Xenesis.6389]

9 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Removing outnumbered pips do not give 99% of players more rewards.  

 

I mean.. everyone gets 2 pips extra per tick. If you, lets say, played the same 20 hours a week you would technically get more rewards as you progress the skirmish track faster. The 1% would be the ones who played 20 hours purely in outnumbered and got the extra 5 pips. Would have to wonder how much activity did they put in those outnumbered maps, did they even bother to go to other maps for defense calls? or just sat in outnumbered maps where nothing was going on for their side?

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 

I mean.. everyone gets 2 pips extra per tick. If you, lets say, played the same 20 hours a week you would technically get more rewards as you progress the skirmish track faster. The 1% would be the ones who played 20 hours purely in outnumbered and got the extra 5 pips. Would have to wonder how much activity did they put in those outnumbered maps, did they even bother to go to other maps for defense calls? or just sat in outnumbered maps where nothing was going on for their side?

 

If only it worked like that--for instance, I'm in the DH/MAG link and as we know MAG only does EBG.  So trying to defend home borderland am outnumbered all night, and even in either of the other two maps that are not EBG.  So lost a LOT of pips.  

 

Would make most sense to leave the outnumbered stuff alone until they can actually get Alliances to run without it setting their offices on fire.  Then tune that later...but nope....

[Dawdler.8521]

9 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

If only it worked like that--for instance, I'm in the DH/MAG link and as we know MAG only does EBG.  So trying to defend home borderland am outnumbered all night, and even in either of the other two maps that are not EBG.  So lost a LOT of pips.  

Kind of funny argument because you're saying when MAG only does EB while you are on the border... doesnt that mean 99% are on EB getting more pips than they otherwise would? You're the 1%. Gratz.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[Gotejjeken.1267]

5 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Kind of funny argument because you're saying when MAG only does EB while you are on the border... doesnt that mean 99% are on EB getting more pips than they otherwise would? You're the 1%. Gratz.

 

That's not how outnumbered works at all.  MAG doesn't even own EB anymore since they had their shakeups, so could be outnumbered there as well for all I know, I don't like EB so I don't do it.  

 

Even if EB is never in outnumbered status and is the only map to do so, and you have to go there to get 'normal' pips (as you are losing 2 pips in outnumber maps no matter how you cut it)--you just created an inverse problem to where you have to seek out non-outnumbered to get normal pip gain.  Gratz.