Non technical feedback for the beta

[Myu Lae.8750]

So I have some feedback for the WvW beta. I tried to group it a little bit, I hope it's readable.

 

a) Bad times for casuals. I love playing WvW, playing with people and commanders I know, but I don’t have the time to play multiple guild raids a week and I like other game modes as well. That’s why I didn’t join a WvW guild again (used to be a hardcore WvW player). I’m not a roamer as well so I’m dependant on public commanders. That’s gone now. I got matched with nobody I know, commanders aren’t there or if they are, they don’t speak at all (language barriers) or only write in chat which is awful for coordinated fights.

“But WvW is for guilds.” No, it’s not just for guilds. A guild plays for maybe 3 days a week for some hours and usually during the evening. All other days and times are covered by public commanders. We established night shifts, early morning shifts and stuff like that. All gone.

“But there will be alliances.” Yeah, for up to 500 people. So you have five guilds teaming up and casuals are left behind. Either they are lucky and teamed up with their known guilds or are placed somewhere.

 

b) Languages once again. WvW is a mode needing lots of communication. You can mix all players for NA where everyone speaks one language (sorry French Canadians), but this doesn’t work for Europe. When asking what language a raid is in you get some kitten answers like “universal language” “get some IQ and learn English” and such. Not only do you have to deal with “English is the superior language”-people but what about the ones who don’t know English for different reasons? Some just have a hard time learning languages, others never had the chances to learn it (people over 40 had a different language education than people in their 20s) and others, like me, know English but don’t want to translate everything in their head when all they want is to relax.

Getting rid of the server based map chat in PvE and mixing all players was the death of PvE map chat. I don’t want this to happen in WvW as well where the chat is way more important. Scouts really are a thing and they are the ones guiding guilds and public raids.

 

c) Community feeling is gone. Yes, there is something like server identification. Some great fights happened because we didn’t want this other sever to get a stronghold. Servers have set up teamspeaks for the whole server so everyone knows where to find others to play with. Where public commanders are to find. We have server wide build recommendations so even public zergs are organised. There are server events, commander rotations (like mentioned above), regular meetings about what is planned and what to organize, guilds and public raids are on one ts for their raids so they can communicate and fight together. All this is obsolete with the new system.

You get a new team every few months, so no incentive for long time organisation. What to identify with? Some people you don’t know and won’t meet again after three months? A lot of the appeal of WvW is gone.

 

d) The plan to even out matchups and getting more coverage doesn’t work. After reset/during prime time were usually commanders on all maps, guilds as well. Now only one commander on EBG and I saw maybe two guilds. Nothing gets defended because people are split up and know they can just turn it again.

 

I have the feeling the whole system is planned with only NA in mind. If it gets implemented the way it is planned now, it will be a disaster for European players.

 

Some suggestions:

a) If it’s about guilds: Implement a real GvG mode and leave WvW alone. I know many guilds organize their own GvG but why not offering a mode similar to PvP where guilds can play against each other no matter how servers are matched.

 

b) Don’t mix up languages. If you want to get rid of servers, make language based alliances without a 500 people cap. Time zones aren’t a thing in Europe so the way the new system is planned doesn’t change the coverage over the day.

 

Cheers.

[Anteia.4062]

I agree 100%. I like the idea of a new GvG mode while leaving WvW alone.

[ascii.1369]

100% disagree! The restructuring isn't about Guilds or GvG, it's about incredibly uneven matchups and many servers being basically dead.

 

Also I genuinely don't understand what all the fuss is about. Yes, right now people are being scattered across matchups, both due to a bug that missplaces people and because alliances aren't implemented yet. But this is a beta people, eventuelly you can just link your community together in an alliance.

 

Sure, at the end of the day there will be some players losing their community due to one reason or another, but sum total restructuring + alliances (which aren't part of this beta) is a big positive.

Edited December 4, 2021 by ascii.1369

[Custodio.6134]

well, that you didn´t at least choose one guild is your own fault. you could at least have chosen any guild to make sure to have at least one opportunity for weekly raids. But you actively chose not to do, so it´s not ANet´s or the system´s fault, but nothing than your own choice.
About community-feeling: i partially aggree. but communities can organize in guilds (jsut as our server did) so the only change is, that we swapped from "server-identity" to "guild-identity". practically, nothing changed. 
also aggree on languages, but on the other hand, language restrictions limit the active timeframes and prevent the creation of matchups, where the active times of the teams mismatch (e.g. 1 team primarily plays from 1am-9am, second one from 9am-5pm and third team 5pm-11pm) because of regional times and activity.  At least a little bit. 
 

[Myu Lae.8750]

Yes, this is a beta and that's why I give some feedback and make suggestions instead of just saying all is bad. As I already mentioned: alliances are capped at 500 members (look at a-nets own blog posts). That's extremely small compared to a whole server, meaning only a few guilds can make up a whole alliance. And in the end you will have strong alliances consisting only of guilds and then the rest. So instead of having active/dead servers you will have active/dead alliances.

If the whole thing is about dead servers, integrate these dead ones into non dead ones. This ways you can keep communities together and avoid all the problems.

 

40 minutes ago, Custodio.6134 said:

well, that you didn´t at least choose one guild is your own fault. you could at least have chosen any guild to make sure to have at least one opportunity for weekly raids

You know that it's not this easy to get into a WvW guild and that you have requirements to meet to stay in there? Like participating a certain number of raids each week with set time frames, parttaking in meetings and such. I just can't have a guild dictate my schedule because I work different hours from week to week. So my chances to get into a real WvW guild are like zero. And I disagree that guild identity and server identity are interchangable. A server is open for everyone, you are just part of it, while guilds are closed communities and you have to apply to get into. Esp. new players prefer to take a look at a mode before commiting to a guild.

As I said, time zones aren't a thing in Europe. We differ for maybe 2 hours, what time differences do you want to balance there?

[Custodio.6134]

4 minutes ago, Myu Lae.8750 said:

You know that it's not this easy to get into a WvW guild and that you have requirements to meet to stay in there?

Hmm, then i assume your server doesn´t have any community-guild anyways? because the majority of servers does at least have a community-guild (e.g. Rising River [Side] for Riverside, Far Shiverpeaks Guild [FSPG] for Far Shiverpeaks etc). Getting into these guilds is usually the easiest thing you could imagine, because (as the name "community-guild" implies) they are made for the respective server community and NOT progressive raid-guilds. 

[Myu Lae.8750]

We have community guilds that are for all game modes but mostly focused on PvE. I'm not aware that there's one for the WvW community but maybe I have to look into it more. Thanks

Edited December 4, 2021 by Myu Lae.8750

[ascii.1369]

32 minutes ago, Myu Lae.8750 said:

Yes, this is a beta and that's why I give some feedback and make suggestions instead of just saying all is bad. As I already mentioned: alliances are capped at 500 members (look at a-nets own blog posts). That's extremely small compared to a whole server, meaning only a few guilds can make up a whole alliance. And in the end you will have strong alliances consisting only of guilds and then the rest. So instead of having active/dead servers you will have active/dead alliances.

I'm sorry but maybe you should heed your own advice and actually read the anet post. Alliances are not the same as teams and since the teams will be created precicly to prevent this you won't have dead teams. And pls don't act as if you have a community of over 500 close friends you can't live without in WvW. 500 people are more than enough to stay with the people you actually play with and aren't just random players whose name you recognize.

The issue really seems to be more that change is scary.

 

32 minutes ago, Myu Lae.8750 said:

If the whole thing is about dead servers, integrate these dead ones into non dead ones. This ways you can keep communities together and avoid all the problems.

That would solve the dead sever problem, but not the uneven matchup issue, which is arguably the bigger one.

Edited December 4, 2021 by ascii.1369

[Zikory.6871]

I'm not sure why people keep talking like this is alliances. These betas are just world restructuring, they haven't implemented any of the Guild/Alliance features yet. We don't even know what features they are planning to add. 

This beta, with some hiccups, did exactly what they said it would do. 

Edited December 4, 2021 by Zikory.6871

[desu.2514]

splitting up the player base of guild's is what they said they would do?

[Rose Solane.1027]

18 minutes ago, ascii.1369 said:

I'm sorry but maybe you should heed your own advice and actually read the anet post. Alliances are not the same as teams and since the teams will be created precicly to prevent this you won't have dead teams. And pls don't act as if you have a community of over 500 close friends you can't live without in WvW. 500 people are more than enough to stay with the people you actually play with and aren't just random players whose name you recognize.

The issue really seems to be more that change is scary.

 Maybe you should read what OP wrote.

Quote

“But there will be alliances.” Yeah, for up to 500 people. So you have five guilds teaming up and casuals are left behind. Either they are lucky and teamed up with their known guilds or are placed somewhere.

OP is worried he can't get into an alliance with the players he knows from his current world because all the hardcore WvW guilds will form alliances with other hardcore guilds. I think that is a valid concern.
 

Quote

 

57 minutes ago, Myu Lae.8750 said:

If the whole thing is about dead servers, integrate these dead ones into non dead ones. This ways you can keep communities together and avoid all the problems.

 

That would solve the dead sever problem, but not the uneven matchup issue, which is arguably the bigger one.

If ArenaNet reduce the amount of servers to the number of active WvW servers they have done what they can do to solve matchup issues. What matchup issues will remain? And I am talking about issues that will be solved with alliances and teams? Due to the nature of WvW you will always have some matchup issues.

[Infusion.7149]

Dunbar's number suggests that it is actually impossible to have 500 close relationships , 150 is more or less the limit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

This is not alliances yet since guilds can't ally with other guilds right now so we only have community/server guilds and WvW guilds.

[Burial.1958]

All i want is a Language Checkbox for EU. So that the Teams are also consider the Languages when they are formed. 

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, desu.2514 said:

splitting up the player base of guild's is what they said they would do?

Yes, thats how you balance stacked worlds. I thought it was obvious?

[subversiontwo.7501]

8 hours ago, Myu Lae.8750 said:

If the whole thing is about dead servers, integrate these dead ones into non dead ones. This ways you can keep communities together and avoid all the problems.

I think that is a brilliant idea! Let's start with your server, let's break that up and divide those players evenly over other servers for better population balance. After all, this about the quality of the system right? Not just about selfishly furthering yourself at the expense of others.

Once we've done that, we may see players moving, quitting, returning and so on to destabilize the system so then we have to repeat breaking your server up with somewhat regularity. What sounds fair? Maybe every 8 weeks or so?

But can we not give people some way to keep in touch with friends that doesn't hurt overall population balance too much? You know, just a little something? Like letting your closest friends who all want to play with each other stay together? or perhaps that circle of friends plus some friends of friends where most people like to play together?

Et voila, you have Alliances.

Edited December 5, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[subversiontwo.7501]

11 hours ago, Myu Lae.8750 said:

I’m not a roamer as well so I’m dependant on public commanders.

/.../
If it’s about guilds: Implement a real GvG mode and leave WvW alone.

It both is about guilds and it isn't. It is more so about public commanders. It is about guilds in a secondary nature because the vast majority of public commanders (that actually do command) come from guilds. Even if they may not have a guild now they most likely had one when they started public commanding. More guilds means more potential public commanders. It isn't about GvG, GvG has not really taken place on the normal WvW maps since 2015 (2015-2017 it took place in Guild Halls, for most of 2017-today it is taking place in EotM). What you mistake for GvG may be spontaneous skirmishes between squads (public or private) on maps. That is part of normal WvW content and anyone who doesn't understand how it fits in does not understand WvW.

Quote

 

Languages once again. WvW is a mode needing lots of communication. You can mix all players for NA where everyone speaks one language (sorry French Canadians), but this doesn’t work for Europe. When asking what language a raid is in you get some kitten answers like “universal language” “get some IQ and learn English” and such.

There are 44 countries in Europe. There are 3 getting privileged language servers (a couple of more populations if you include things like swiss-german, austrian-german, italian-german and so on). There are close to 40 other countries who faces the same issues if they clog chats up with their own tongue who have adapted by learning moderation and basic language skills. This, by the way, also goes the other way around. Any time someone complains about hearing french, german or spanish (in moderation) they are also in the wrong. I have no issues following good french, german or spanish commanders. I have, many times over 9 years. I also have many friends on english servers who are spanish, german and french. I've played with three different guilds that are predominantly spanish, german and french.

Do not get privilege, moderation and respect mixed up.

Edited December 5, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501