[Beta 1 Feedback] Roamer Perspective

[saerni.2584]

4 hours ago, enkidu.5937 said:

Right, no point in fighting for your team to go up a tier. But you’re wrong when you think that this issue is caused just because its a beta. This will constantly be the case when Alliances hit. Because there is no “team” anymore. Your world will constantly be mixed up with no long-time perspective. Only a few highly active alliances will be able to influence their destiny and climb tiers up.

 

 I'd say that's where rewards come in. Sure we don't fight for server pride (although maybe our own) but we should have been able to fight over rewards from the start (even if those rewards are just some pips and some small chance at a nice infusion or other unique rewards). 

[saerni.2584]

7 hours ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

1) I do not know what my category is in WvW, I clean up stuffs no one is doing mostly, flip all camps, kill all sentry, soloing WvW, drop siege when my instinct tells me an attack is about to happen,  stay in an objectives if I suspect sneaky happening. Roam to look for enemy squads.  That's me. with this alliance change. non of what i like to do in this game mode matters anymore.

2) You are probably on the match up with all the big guilds .
I have 2 accounts, one accounts was throw to the bottom of the chain, no one is doing anything. Its kitten.

3) other account is okay, at a certain time only. 

Fight on the "bottom of the chain" account is DEFINITELY NOT FAIR. We are outnumbered on all maps. It is a nightmare.

I also have an alt (one is on Skrittsburgh and other is on Seven Pines). Seven Pines is losing badly (last I saw). It's still more players to play with than in some match ups. People were around (but something may have happened to tip the scales in that time zone balance wise) so it wasn't as even as the Skrittsburgh match up. 
 

I think the beta is a valid opportunity to ask "why did some servers end up so outnumbered?" Anet might say "that was a bug" or "that was an unintended side effect" or "overall the playtimes balanced out over the course of the beta." 
 

I'm assuming those macro level disparities are something that can be addressed with iteration. I'm not so worried that an early beta like this one didn't produce perfect results. We had "900" players mismatched. However, those are the ones Anet knew about and other problems could have arisen that made some teams not work as intended. 
 

But the population was there. That is my experience in two match ups at least (maybe fewer players were willing to play after being outnumbered in certain time zones and feeling like it wasn't worth it to play for various other reasons too decided to not play wvw). 

[enkidu.5937]

9 minutes ago, saerni.2584 said:

 I'd say that's where rewards come in. Sure we don't fight for server pride (although maybe our own) but we should have been able to fight over rewards from the start (even if those rewards are just some pips and some small chance at a nice infusion or other unique rewards). 

Sure. In other games, its rewards that drive you to make your team win. In other small scale PvP games (7 vs. 7, 15 mins) its the thrill that your actions make your team win or lose. But in WvW none of this applies. For me it was always to be part of a server, like a football fan, supporting his club. 

 

5 minutes ago, saerni.2584 said:

I think the beta is a valid opportunity to ask "why did some servers end up so outnumbered?"

The simple answer: deleting the old servers doesnt help at all.

 

It might be an honorable attempt to try to make world-matchmaking more balanced, to create tight matches. But there are so many aspects coming together, that the deleting of the old servers will not help. So why the fuuk delete the old servers?!?

 

The problems we can solve without deleting the old servers

 

- massive transfers directly after re-link:

-> just disable the “transfer server” option for several weeks after re-link, problem solved, no need to delete the old servers

 

- more smaller puzzle pieces for a more balanced linking:

-> just assign the “I don’t care about my server” ppl randomly or as a guild / alliance, no need to delete the old servers

 

The problems we cannot solve, even with deleting the old servers

 

- population might be better balanced in population and play hours, but the few people of the night watch will still make the score difference

 

- highly organized meta players will translate their play hours much more efficiently into war score than others

 

- ppl with twink accounts will group as alliance, playing on their main accounts / main alliance, while doing daylies on their second, then after re-linking, they switch to their twink alliance and manipulate their link-population

 

- organized big guilds dominate a specific time window

 

etc.

[rune.9572]

Rank 3k exclusive roamer here, my experience: I'm matched with bad players against bad players who hug objectives and camp siege 99% time unless they have 20+ people.

Everyone runs away from 1v1/2v2 etc. and all fights are just 5x ganks.

Just as I expected, allinaces suck and promote braindead zerg ktrain gameplay.

Edited December 5, 2021 by rune.9572

[saerni.2584]

7 minutes ago, enkidu.5937 said:

Sure. In other games, its rewards that drive you to make your team win. In other small scale PvP games (7 vs. 7, 15 mins) its the thrill that your actions make your team win or lose. But in WvW none of this applies. For me it was always to be part of a server, like a football fan, supporting his club. 

 

The simple answer: deleting the old servers doesnt help at all.

 

It might be an honorable attempt to try to make world-matchmaking more balanced, to create tight matches. But there are so many aspects coming together, that the deleting of the old servers will not help. So why the fuuk delete the old servers?!?

 

 

 

The problems we can solve without deleting the old servers

 

 

 

- massive transfers directly after re-link:

 

-> just disable the “transfer server” option for several weeks after re-link, problem solved, no need to delete the old servers

 

 

 

- more smaller puzzle pieces for a more balanced linking:

 

-> just assign the “I don’t care about my server” ppl randomly or as a guild / alliance, no need to delete the old servers

 

 

 

The problems we cannot solve, even with deleting the old servers

 

 

 

- population might be better balanced in population and play hours, but the few people of the night watch will still make the score difference

 

 

 

- highly organized meta players will translate their play hours much more efficiently into war score than others

 

 

 

- ppl with twink accounts will group as alliance, playing on their main accounts / main alliance, while doing daylies on their second, then after re-linking, they switch to their twink alliance and manipulate their link-population

 

 

 

- organized big guilds dominate a specific time window

 

 

 

etc.

 

To answer your "why" question I think it has a lot to do with how servers today make it hard to play with your friends, actually. 
 

In theory, you can just transfer to play with your friends. However, transfers 1) cost money and 2) may not always be available to you because the server may be "full." 
 

Repeated match making not only tries to solve the overall player activity balance (not population directly but an attempt at it) but also this "play with friends" issue where you can select the same guild or select guilds in the same alliance (or make your own alliance as you like). 
 

I've been on Northern Shiverpeaks my entire time. I've never transferred. I remember "NSPride" and the excitement of the wvw tournament. I also recognize that NSP has consistently been outnumbered and outmanned in many matchups and suffered from very very low overall playtime activity across many time zones (even in supposedly prime time zones). Pride in my servers tenacity and the quality of some of its players (many of whom I'm playing with in the beta because I joined their main guild) doesn't justify sticking to the status quo in my opinion. 
 

Sometimes you need to accept that things won't stay they same. I'd like a title for my long service on Northern Shiverpeaks but that's all I can really ask for. I won't deny this weekend has been better quality due to overall enemy players on the field than in a long time. Maybe my experience will change after today but right now it's been fun.
 

 

[saerni.2584]

1 minute ago, rune.9572 said:

Rank 3k exclusive roamer here, my experience: I'm matched with bad players against bad players who hug objectives and camp siege 99% time unless they have 20+ people.

Just as I expected, allinaces suck and promote braindead zerg ktrain gameplay.

But more brain dead zombies are better. More opportunities for skilled players to make kills and more fights overall. 
 

Siege humping aside (we could use a siege revamp for wvw) I am happy we have more players (some might have joined wvw for the first time because they wanted to check out the beta). 

[captrowdy.9561]

11 hours ago, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

Yet WvW fundamentally isn't about 1v1ing. To most of the players, you're just a nuisance that has specced himself completely to winning 1v1s vs people who haven't, because you refuse to play the game mode, instead looking to get easy feel-good kills on people who never intended to fight your low-counterplay class in the first place.

You don't want population because you're not fighting for objectives and WvW play. You just want easy targets to pick on, and Alliances makes that easier because there is fewer organisation and fewer commanders. I get that, but that makes it especially salient that you point that out this way. The annoying pest nobody wants in WvW likes the changes, because it means less WvW and more of whatever he thinks he's doing while refusing to just queue PvP because that would require actual skill vs people who have specced to beat you.

Bro chill. The guy is giving legit feedback and you are just bashing him. Maybe you should go outside. 

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

14 hours ago, ZeroTheRuler.7415 said:

> Alliances aren't vital to a majority of the playerbase though, that's made up

False

Actually getting everyone in a guild to the same server is quite the struggle. My guild runs a small event once a week 5-10 people and we sometimes run public tags. Many of those in my guild including myself had to pay gems to switch to the same one. Please note that our guild doesn't focus just on WvW, but also in regular raids, and other high end game content where most can play multiple classes or builds.

We chose a less populated server (I think it was almost last at some point), but somehow the gem transfer price kept going up and last week Ehmery Bay was on it's own and wasn't pared with a stronger server so 🤷‍♂️. Honestly I was a little proud that Ehmery Bay got more status, but that isn't what matters to me as much. My guild is more important.

There are a bunch more who could join WvW our guild, but don't because of the world transfer gem barrier. I am sure if those limitations went away they would be a whole lot more open to joining in. Almost everyone I know is excited for the alliances change.

Note: I am not saying things are perfect either. Some tuning will have to happen in order to make it better, but seriously it is still a 'beta'. I hope you know what 'betas' are for. I would think this might be more of a basic one given the complexity of even assigning teams to all of those in the same guild. Be patient. I am sure proper matchups will come as things are more stable and alliances are finally added in.

Also I have to ask... what made you so bitter?

Everything you're saying here could just be fixxed by adressing or revamping gem transfer rates though.

If you don't already have a dedicated WvW guild, Alliances is a pure nightmare. There is no one to pick you up or organize, no World discord with open training or tags, nothing. You're either in a guild already or WvW is not for you anymore. What does that result in? Less players joining and staying in WvW. What does that result in? A dried up player pool with no new people that can stay because of a completely hostile environment designed actively against them.

One thing nice for you though, Alliances will turn WvW in GvG because the rest of the people will mostly just leave.

[saerni.2584]

1 hour ago, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

Everything you're saying here could just be fixxed by adressing or revamping gem transfer rates though.

If you don't already have a dedicated WvW guild, Alliances is a pure nightmare. There is no one to pick you up or organize, no World discord with open training or tags, nothing. You're either in a guild already or WvW is not for you anymore. What does that result in? Less players joining and staying in WvW. What does that result in? A dried up player pool with no new people that can stay because of a completely hostile environment designed actively against them.

One thing nice for you though, Alliances will turn WvW in GvG because the rest of the people will mostly just leave.

It's almost like this is a beta of an unfinished feature and all the worries you have about being able to maintain communities are unfounded speculation based on a hysterical description of how the system (that hasn't been built yet) will work. 

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

2 hours ago, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

Everything you're saying here could just be fixxed by adressing or revamping gem transfer rates though.

If you don't already have a dedicated WvW guild, Alliances is a pure nightmare. There is no one to pick you up or organize, no World discord with open training or tags, nothing. You're either in a guild already or WvW is not for you anymore. What does that result in? Less players joining and staying in WvW. What does that result in? A dried up player pool with no new people that can stay because of a completely hostile environment designed actively against them.

One thing nice for you though, Alliances will turn WvW in GvG because the rest of the people will mostly just leave.

> Everything you're saying here could just be fixxed by adressing or revamping gem transfer rates though.

Actually that would introduce a new problem. The whole gem transfer is a deterrent is to stop people from flocking to the most popular or higher rated servers. I had thought it was overtly obvious, but I apologize, I did not point that out directly.

1 hour ago, saerni.2584 said:

It's almost like this is a beta of an unfinished feature and all the worries you have about being able to maintain communities are unfounded speculation based on a hysterical description of how the system (that hasn't been built yet) will work. 

This is exactly what I was I was trying to point out in my last post 🙂

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

10 minutes ago, ZeroTheRuler.7415 said:

> Everything you're saying here could just be fixxed by adressing or revamping gem transfer rates though.

Actually that would introduce a new problem. The whole gem transfer is a deterrent is to stop people from flocking to the most popular or higher rated servers. I had thought it was overtly obvious, but I apologize, I did not point that out directly.

This is exactly what I was I was trying to point out in my last post 🙂

There are ways you can address that in the fix though. You don't have to just lower or remove those transfer fees as a fix, you can redesign how they work or put a replacement system in place.

As to what the troll claims and you requote, it's simply not true. Alliances is unfinished, sure, but it's not speculation at all. The system has been largely fleshed out and built, this is after all, a beta. He is reacting to the very system that is there right now, don't you think it's over the top hypocritical to refute other's critisism of that system with "it's not built yet, it's all speculation" but think he can praise it in the same topic while according to him, again, it doesn't exist yet?
You don't run a beta to then expect to make huge changes after usually, it's just to iron out small problems and bugs during live large scale testing. You're not going to be redesigning the whole thing after, unless maybe it's as bad as it is right now and you decide that shelfing it is probably in the best interested of the larger playerbase.

What we see right now in the beta is a ton of system bugs making maps unplayable because objectives bug or total maps show two team pairings depending on which one you map to, or people getting lost in faulty team assignments, but beyond those errors that could be fixed in the code base we see one thing very clearly; communities collapsing and people feeling lost or left alone. That is how the system is designed. If you're not playing WvW primarily in a guild and as a GvG gamemode, Alliances is not for you. And we're seeing that live, right now. And a lot of people aren't liking it.

[Infernvs.6189]

3 hours ago, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

One thing nice for you though, Alliances will turn WvW in GvG because the rest of the people will mostly just leave.

This is the key,in my new team i dont know anyone and when the 2 or 3 big tags go to sleep maps are empty,before was world now is an scenary for gvgs 

[Savoren.3910]

10 hours ago, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

Everything you're saying here could just be fixxed by adressing or revamping gem transfer rates though.

If you don't already have a dedicated WvW guild, Alliances is a pure nightmare. There is no one to pick you up or organize, no World discord with open training or tags, nothing. You're either in a guild already or WvW is not for you anymore. What does that result in? Less players joining and staying in WvW. What does that result in? A dried up player pool with no new people that can stay because of a completely hostile environment designed actively against them.

One thing nice for you though, Alliances will turn WvW in GvG because the rest of the people will mostly just leave.

That's the biggest problem. No open tags means players in smaller guilds, players without guilds, players in PvE guilds and casual players won't have any option to experience even semi-organized WvW. Another issue is the damage this'll do to server community. Logging into a team of random players without any familiar names wasn't exactly encouraging. Overall, Alliances completely screw over pretty much anyone who isn't already in a dedicated WvW guild with medium/high population. It won't be good for the health of the game mode in the long run.

[saerni.2584]

5 hours ago, Savoren.3910 said:

That's the biggest problem. No open tags means players in smaller guilds, players without guilds, players in PvE guilds and casual players won't have any option to experience even semi-organized WvW. Another issue is the damage this'll do to server community. Logging into a team of random players without any familiar names wasn't exactly encouraging. Overall, Alliances completely screw over pretty much anyone who isn't already in a dedicated WvW guild with medium/high population. It won't be good for the health of the game mode in the long run.

If casual players want to play with their guild mates then all they will need to do is select that PvE guild or join a community Alliance. Or they can float, but that depends on if they really care about their server in the first place. A "casual" player doesn't "know" many people and won't lose that much under an Alliance system by floating (other than an identity with a specific server name, which I don't think is what motivates people to play). 
 

Alliances, when implemented, allow any group of guilds up to the maximum to associate together into an Alliance for match making. Meaning you just need to join an Alliance with whatever guild (even a personal guild) to play with a large community (there will be plenty of opportunities to build those Alliance communities before/during/after this part of the feature is developed). Many communities have been laying the groundwork for that for years in anticipation of Alliances. 
 

I do think we need more guild slots. That will help a lot of players who want to play WvW but also will improve things for everyone else who have asked over the years for more slots. That seems likely to happen given how important joining guilds or Alliances will be for organized WvW. 
 

Also, to all those "confused" reaction people: try joining the conversation. Understanding why some people like or don't like the beta requires more than a emoticon reaction. I don't fully agree with the person I just quoted (for the reasons I stated) but I'm responding and not using the reaction feature because it doesn't foster a conversation. Give it a try.

[ASP.8093]

13 hours ago, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

If you're not playing WvW primarily in a guild and as a GvG gamemode, Alliances is not for you.

Sure it is.

I run solo ~80% of the time. My main group guild (fielding ~10 people on reset) is just as likely to just go free-range as join an alliance, once that feature drops. Novelty and matchup balance are exactly what I want.

I'm not scared of unfamiliar people because the combination of PvE, SPvP, relinks, varying my schedule, and other players moving around even when I stay put have given me ample opportunity to learn how to coordinate with and build familiarity with strangers. Also, if you've bounced around tiers (playing on a link server, for instance), you probably know a lot more than just the people on one server already — some from teaming with them, some from fighting them. We're not *actually* going to be swimming in a sea of strangers, even if we go maximum-solo-mode with your guild/alliance teaming choices.

Edited December 6, 2021 by ASP.8093

[Prophet of Flames.2783]

3 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

Sure it is.

I run solo ~80% of the time. My main group guild (fielding ~10 people on reset) is just as likely to just go free-range as join an alliance, once that feature drops. Novelty and matchup balance are exactly what I want.

I'm not scared of unfamiliar people because the combination of PvE, SPvP, relinks, varying my schedule, and other players moving around even when I stay put have given me ample opportunity to learn how to coordinate with and build familiarity with strangers. Also, if you've bounced around tiers (playing on a link server, for instance), you probably know a lot more than just the people on one server already — some from teaming with them, some from fighting them. We're not *actually* going to be swimming in a sea of strangers, even if we go maximum-solo-mode with your guild/alliance teaming choices.

They lose a lot and they gain nothing. There is no plus side to Alliances for them at all. Nothing.

It isn't for those players. They lose the server and people they know.
The system forces them to join a guild to keep a part of those people close, but for many there is a good reason they're not in a committed WvW guild, it's not their playstyle, they only play the mode occasionally, they don't want to 'schedule' WvW playtime or GW playtime in general etc. Forcing those players into guilds is in its very core a bad decision that hurts them.

[ASP.8093]

10 minutes ago, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

They lose a lot and they gain nothing. There is no plus side to Alliances for them at all. Nothing.

It isn't for those players. They lose the server and people they know.
The system forces them to join a guild to keep a part of those people close, but for many there is a good reason they're not in a committed WvW guild, it's not their playstyle, they only play the mode occasionally, they don't want to 'schedule' WvW playtime or GW playtime in general etc. Forcing those players into guilds is in its very core a bad decision that hurts them.

Who is "they."

With all due respect, you all keep saying "roamers" but you're not really describing roaming. Just… floundering around without any vision of how what you all do actually fits into the bigger picture. Complete with a page-long meltdown about how someone dared to have an opinion about WvW while playing thief.

[ASP.8093]

Then allow me to repeat myself:

6 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

Novelty and matchup balance are exactly what I want.

You absolutely cannot do finer-grained matchup balance without some kind of system for allocating people into smaller "puzzle pieces" than simply host+link. And the proposed Alliances system does give you some flexibility to decide how much novelty you actually want — join a big alliance or community group for some stability, or stick with a smaller group and enjoy more variety from month to month. All with fewer transfers and bandwagons than the current setup.

 

You know what else I'm hoping to get out of this new system? A much easier way to introduce new friends to the game without making them jump through the dumb hoops to get into the same server.

[saerni.2584]

I don't think it's a bad thing. I have 3 guilds I use for WvW claiming as a 95% solo player. By your argument I should be sad to see Alliances. 
 

But I'm not and here's why: when the feature comes out I can associate one of my personal guilds into an Alliance with people in my current server I want to keep playing with. I don't have to join anything other than the Alliance of people I like playing with (which is like being asked to make a group of players for an sPvP team only at a larger scale). It makes perfect sense to me and I'm excited to see improvements in the match making that will come from even teams (people are wrong to think even teams means never being outnumbered in a time zone, it just means being able to have even man hours over the whole match).

[Gorem.8104]

The worst class in the entire game that spends it time not helping anyone but itself and just ruining the fun of others while being able to keep up stealth 100% of the time and escape any battle (because that's balanced, sure), is saying that the update is good? Well that is not a good sign. 

 

Honestly i'll never understand why people play Thief. You offer wvw nothing but roaming and winning 1v1's against people not specced for dueling and then pat yourselves on the back for winning a fight you should have won. of course it does make it pleasurable when you beat the thief, but then all that means is that it was a bad thief. 

[ASP.8093]

29 minutes ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Honestly i'll never understand why people play Thief. You offer wvw nothing but roaming and winning 1v1's against people not specced for dueling and then pat yourselves on the back for winning a fight you should have won. of course it does make it pleasurable when you beat the thief, but then all that means is that it was a bad thief. 

Well, you don't want a real answer but here's one anyway:

If you actually know what you're doing you can also win quite a few 1v1s / XvXs against people who are specced for dueling. (That's called "roaming!")

And it's absolutely the best class for scouting since it's the best at evading ganks by "havoc squads" and the best at pulling off any kind of "stall the enemy with siege disablers for 3 minutes until your reinforcements show up" type plays.

Edited December 7, 2021 by ASP.8093

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

On 12/5/2021 at 6:24 PM, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

There are ways you can address that in the fix though. You don't have to just lower or remove those transfer fees as a fix, you can redesign how they work or put a replacement system in place.

As to what the troll claims and you requote, it's simply not true. Alliances is unfinished, sure, but it's not speculation at all. The system has been largely fleshed out and built, this is after all, a beta. He is reacting to the very system that is there right now, don't you think it's over the top hypocritical to refute other's critisism of that system with "it's not built yet, it's all speculation" but think he can praise it in the same topic while according to him, again, it doesn't exist yet?
You don't run a beta to then expect to make huge changes after usually, it's just to iron out small problems and bugs during live large scale testing. You're not going to be redesigning the whole thing after, unless maybe it's as bad as it is right now and you decide that shelfing it is probably in the best interested of the larger playerbase.

What we see right now in the beta is a ton of system bugs making maps unplayable because objectives bug or total maps show two team pairings depending on which one you map to, or people getting lost in faulty team assignments, but beyond those errors that could be fixed in the code base we see one thing very clearly; communities collapsing and people feeling lost or left alone. That is how the system is designed. If you're not playing WvW primarily in a guild and as a GvG gamemode, Alliances is not for you. And we're seeing that live, right now. And a lot of people aren't liking it.

> There are ways you can address that in the fix though

I do not think so... not at least for those who want to play with a singular guild.

> If you're not playing WvW primarily in a guild

This sounds very lonely. I would rather have GvG. It is so much more exciting! Maybe more people need to join a good guild :D.  Let's step back and take a look at the whole picture. I am being patient for time time being.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/studio-update-world-restructuring-and-the-future-of-world-vs-world/

-> The goal for this first phase is to ensure that the system works at scale.

> You don't run a beta to then expect to make huge changes after usually

I agree, however betas look differently for different companies nowadays so 🤷‍♂️. From what I understand more data might be needed to tweak matchup settings as well. I think the lack of tags etc. Will be sorted as bugs are fixed. Also this teatime was very interesting as well.

 

[CrimsonRise.7650]

On 12/5/2021 at 8:45 AM, enkidu.5937 said:

Right, no point in fighting for your team to go up a tier. But you’re wrong when you think that this issue is caused just because its a beta. This will constantly be the case when Alliances hit. Because there is no “team” anymore. Your world will constantly be mixed up with no long-time perspective. Only a few highly active alliances will be able to influence their destiny and climb tiers up.

 

 

There will be a point to win match-ups though. Alliances will still have a ladder, so you will need PPK and PPT players to win match-ups, so you can fight against other servers. Eventually they will bring better rewards and maybe short WvW tournaments to avoid player burnout too, once everything is in place.

 

On 12/5/2021 at 10:46 PM, Prophet of Flames.2783 said:

Everything you're saying here could just be fixxed by adressing or revamping gem transfer rates though.


 

 

That would be just another bandaid over a flawed system, which is something Alliances aims to fix.

Transfer costs haven't stopped people from stacking on servers in the past and other measures in the past, but alot of it has to do with the underlying flaws of the current Linking system, which is likely unfixable at this point.

It's would be better overall to restructure everything, which they planned to since 2018.

 

20 hours ago, Savoren.3910 said:

That's the biggest problem. No open tags means players in smaller guilds, players without guilds, players in PvE guilds and casual players won't have any option to experience even semi-organized WvW. Another issue is the damage this'll do to server community. Logging into a team of random players without any familiar names wasn't exactly encouraging. Overall, Alliances completely screw over pretty much anyone who isn't already in a dedicated WvW guild with medium/high population. It won't be good for the health of the game mode in the long run.

 

This won't change a thing, as there will be Alliances with those kind of Guilds; who will be looking for the right balance of players and guilds to be in their Alliance, who are looking for fights and to give them coverage.. 

 

WvW Guilds usually supply the most open tags, with an requirement to join discord, so they can coordinate things better, whether it would be for fights against other organized groups or even to PPT when it's needed.  So, it's not just your Guilds who run closed raids or GvG in EoTM, there are plenty who want to fight open field or even to PPT with a full squad, on voice aswell. Otherwise, there are plenty of chatmanders actively running around.

 

Edited December 7, 2021 by CrimsonNeonite.1048

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

3 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

The worst class in the entire game that spends it time not helping anyone but itself and just ruining the fun of others while being able to keep up stealth 100% of the time and escape any battle (because that's balanced, sure), is saying that the update is good? Well that is not a good sign. 

 

Honestly i'll never understand why people play Thief. You offer wvw nothing but roaming and winning 1v1's against people not specced for dueling and then pat yourselves on the back for winning a fight you should have won. of course it does make it pleasurable when you beat the thief, but then all that means is that it was a bad thief. 

Most people in WvW do not know how to properly play vs a thief so naturally they are frustrated by it. If you go to ranked PvP that's where people start to have better knowledge. Knowing your enemy or opponent is the key to countering them. Everything else just sounds like whining.

> Honestly i'll never understand why people play Thief.

People play the thief class because of the way it plays out, the idea of how it should play out and the overall skill it takes to become a "good thief". Other classes like "condi dragon hunter" are very easy to play and are more powerful in most content,  however that isn't satisfying for everyone. Personally I started with thief, but I also play ranger and guardian. Thief feels the most fun though.

I disagree to some respect. A good thief can contribute quite a bit to a group in the right hands actually, but that depends on the situation. Once things become a closed down stacked zerg [say in the enemies garrison] it is much harder to do anything as a thief. Maybe the new specter spec will help a more in those situations, but anyhow this thread is about a roamers perspective and not zergs.

Personally I think it is too early to conclude anything. I still want to see what alliances look like.

[Counterakt.9106]

1 hour ago, CrimsonNeonite.1048 said:

 

That would be just another bandaid over a flawed system, which is something Alliances aims to fix.

Transfer costs haven't stopped people from stacking on servers in the past and other measures in the past, but alot of it has to do with the underlying flaws of the current Linking system, which is likely unfixable at this point.

It's would be better overall to restructure everything, which they planned to since 2018.

 

Sorry to break it to you, Alliances are more stacked than servers ever were.

The Guilds that were in my server (Mag) for years already moved, splitting up the community forcing people to pick sides.  Ever since the whole 'alliancing' started happening in Nov, I play just 1/10th of the hours I used to play wvw. Just one week of beta literally changed the face of my server beyond all recognition. Imagine if alliances fail to achieve its goal. We get stuck with a flawed system on top of the broken community. I don't think the game mode will survive this double whammy. 

Edited December 7, 2021 by Counterakt.9106