Feedback from a smaller guild leader perspective

[Tibbs.6508]

To Anet developers and the GW2 community,

 

My name is Tibbs, (the real Tibbs ;) I am from the Crystal Desert server. I don't think I've ever actually posted in here before but this is something I'm starting to feel too strongly about. I have played Guildwars since GW1 first came out. Infact the only reason I ever bought GW2 was because GW1 was the gem that everybody loved. You had PvP in every levelling stage, GvG, good quality open world PvE and even the missions were better. The alliances weren't perfect but they were functional (2 teams fighting for territory in PvE in instanced maps) 

 

I was originally hyped for alliance beta, I thought that it would bring a bit of spice of life to WvW. Instead we are greeted with alliances of single guilds (not a alliance of guilds a SINGLE guild) running full map q's 3 timezones of the day. The counter you'd think would be balanced matchups, but instead it was a good idea to have a stacked NA alliance with small guilds in late NA/OCX/SEA and nothing in EU. Ultimately, the big bad guilds just run and log off and come back when they are gauranteed to win fights. FUN AMIRITE???

 

Some of you will probably say without even reading the full post "Well you should've joined an alliance so you'd have fun in your timezone!" and this ideollogy that we should just stack our play times is the most toxic garbage I've ever witnessed. I considered joining an alliance, and I did have plans for a possible alliance after seeing what the first beta was all about. And I can gaurantee you it wouldn't change a thing because even as an alliance we would just be 2 guilds running 2 timezones with 30max. What people don't realize is that the same thing that we already currently have is going to happen. The blob alliances will end up in T1 to blob down and PPT timezones that their enemies don't have the same numbers in, and in the lower tiers will be the smaller guilds/guilds who don't effectively PPT/ or sit at spawn on a BL with a map q pretending to farm an enemy map q. Same crap, different week. I DO believe that if beta went on for a couple weeks, the matchups might balance out a bit, but there is still imbalance. This isn't diverse matchups, it's the same thing we get every 2 months.

 

Arenanet has to decide what direction the want WvW to go in, if you want to bring PvE to WvW you are on the right track...keep screwing it up. If you want it to be a competitive large scale PvP game mode, (wasn't that the intention?) than these alliances are too big. 500 is too big. If you reduced the number to 150, or even 200 (still big imo) you force people to think about their rosters, which lets smaller guilds be relevant in this current meta and balance. The issue with smaller guilds is 50% of smaller guilds ARE casual but make up half or slightly less of a map queue. When that's your only team mate on the server and they dont want to get better, nor do they want to listen, nor do they want to learn basic game mechanics. And all you have to fight is a map q with pin snipe. I'm sorry but thats not the game for me. And it's not like you're pve content is thrilling (sitting through pointless dialouge that you can't skip yawn). 

Point is, if we are giving up on 15s-30s sized fights and focusing on blobbing any timezone we can regardless of content available or not there without proactively thinking about how we can fix it because we as a society are too kitten lazy. This game is dead. GG anet. 

 

Now to a solution???? Shorten map caps on bls to 50 max (there isnt even enough ppl in the game for that to matter) and give rewards to eotm and make the eotm map cap 80-90. Back in the day when eotm had rewards it was a great place for people to go and PPT or find mindless things to do. There was no obligation for holding objectives because its a 2hr instance and when WvW was dead it was a fun place to go try to beat a blob. This would allow WvW to have roamers again, this would allow 10man havoc groups to do things, and 15-30 man groups to enjoy fights. Other option, alliance capped at 100-150 people. If you need more friends then that to enjoy a game than you have issues. 

Everybody is tilted this week except for the ones blobbing their timezone then logging off to play with the next blob on an alt account. But what I miss is my roaming friends who also wanted to float around servers. Rolling the dice on playing with people who can use their heads feels painful, although i dont know the fix without having to be a large alliance and defeating the purpose of alliances. In a game mode where community has for a long time focused on guild fights, where there was lots of guilds within 15-40 man size. And the fight potential was always there and the few blob guilds out there were breakable. Where do we go from here? Where does this end? Have we given up on what WvW has been about? 

 

To close, if this is the direction we end up going in..my guild of majority new players who I have been teaching to fight outnumbered/gvg/roaming/havoc and enjoying the general PvP content the game mode was intended to be will likely not touch wvw again. And I can assure you I'm not the only one. Yes we wanted alliances, but blob guilds have been an issue, and skill balancing has not been addressed to counter it nvm your obsession with continually adding more and more specs to the game.

Expand your horizons Anet, there is large playerbase with the same mentality as myself who don't bother coming to the forums anymore or even try to communicate with you, because we've been left for dead too many times. Stop taking your advice from the same ******** that are ruining the game. 

 

TIBBS OUT /GG

[Levinste.5739]

First, you spelled Ideology wrong. Just blob better 4head

[ASP.8093]

48 minutes ago, Daerth Riverstone.3218 said:

Everybody is tilted this week except for the ones blobbing their timezone then logging off to play with the next blob on an alt account.

Nah. I was having fun last week, and I'm having fun this week, doing a bit of roaming and small-guild stuff. Spent a bunch of time yesterday defending garri from some blobs and then slowly losing red-bl Air Keep to a bigger group and it was still fun. WvW is definitely very messy right now but the same familiar action and dynamics are still there.

My sympathies to everyone who's having a crap week but "everyone is tilted" is mostly describing, like, ten people spamming up the forums. In my experience so far, map/team chat have been friendly and upbeat even when people run into some dumb bug or struggle to figure out how to distribute groups across the different maps.

[Tibbs.6508]

some people got god matchups, depends on perspective

[SweetPotato.7456]

Hi Tibbs first of all , you definitely have posted here before, it says you have 16 posts . hehahaha o/ 

Jokes aside, I agreed with most of what you said. It is alwasy why I continuously post when there is a chance, that we need to use pve maps for WvW 

Alliance should not be one big blob fighting another big alliance blob.  

 

[Tibbs.6508]

9 minutes ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

Hi Tibbs first of all , you definitely have posted here before, it says you have 16 posts . hehahaha o/ 

Jokes aside, I agreed with most of what you said. It is alwasy why I continuously post when there is a chance, that we need to use pve maps for WvW 

Alliance should not be one big blob fighting another big alliance blob.  

 

must've been years ago xD

[saerni.2584]

@Daerth Riverstone.3218

 

Can you clarify what beta matchup your guild is in? Also, can you identify a little more detail about the server populations in that matchup?

 

My own match up was fairly balanced early on (although I think populations probably shifted during the week as different players logged on/off). 
 

Im curious because there are a few posts like yours and if there was a population imbalance bug it would be good to know more.

[Halure.2571]

I would formally like to complain about small-scale guilds. Blob vs Blob is the only reason I play gw2. Make more friends stinky.

[Zikory.6871]

You and a lot of people should watch this. You don't even know what you are mad about and are threatening to quit. What a joke. 

They already said it. Balance isn't coming until after EoD. World Restructuring and Alliances are two different things. No one knows how "Alliances" are going to be organized because this isn't Alliances. 

No wonder they hate talking to us.
 

 

[Tibbs.6508]

3 hours ago, saerni.2584 said:

@Daerth Riverstone.3218

 

Can you clarify what beta matchup your guild is in? Also, can you identify a little more detail about the server populations in that matchup?

 

My own match up was fairly balanced early on (although I think populations probably shifted during the week as different players logged on/off). 
 

Im curious because there are a few posts like yours and if there was a population imbalance bug it would be good to know more.

I am Pheonix Dawn, VS Titan's Staircase and Seven Pines

[francois letourneau.5892]

5 hours ago, Zikory.6871 said:

You and a lot of people should watch this. You don't even know what you are mad about and are threatening to quit. What a joke. 

They already said it. Balance isn't coming until after EoD. World Restructuring and Alliances are two different things. No one knows how "Alliances" are going to be organized because this isn't Alliances. 

No wonder they hate talking to us.
 

 

How can we not know why were getting mad even before alliances we were mad people are killing wvw running 50 man in squad and another 10 follow them not to target any one but indo and nic people are tired of both of these players and we thought alliances would fix that but it made it worse. If you had an actual wvw guild youd know people stop playing on weeks where they get indo or nic server and try to avoid them theres no reason that should be a thing.

 

[Tibbs.6508]

4 hours ago, Zikory.6871 said:

You and a lot of people should watch this. You don't even know what you are mad about and are threatening to quit. What a joke. 

They already said it. Balance isn't coming until after EoD. World Restructuring and Alliances are two different things. No one knows how "Alliances" are going to be organized because this isn't Alliances. 

No wonder they hate talking to us.
 

I originally wasn't gonig to post anything, ended up sitting on it for a couple days and said screw it. I realize that it might not be their "final draft" but there isn't a great track record atm. I did say I was "all for alliances" in the beginning and maybe part of the push for something new. But maybe I just had other things in mind. The current state of game/balance/etc isn't even in a good place, and with an expansion otw it looks no better yet. If the devs can't play their own game then someone with nothing to lose should say something. I'm not a supporter of handing children participation ribbons, and this is the same category. 

 

[nadK.6539]

Tibbs with a 50/50 squad, blobbing everyone down. Everything's fine.

Tibbs with a 50/50 squad, getting wiped by 30. "HELP THE ENEMY IS BLOBBING US. DARN IT NIC AT NITE IN EBG." 

Edited December 8, 2021 by nadK.6539

[QuickRain.4735]

Hello, I'm Quickrain or Purplerain currently from Anvil Rock alliances/whateveryoucallit is fine. This is coming from a guild leader and driver of a smaller guild. Thank you for reading my super important message. Blobs will be blobs cause they are sad alliances or not.  Content across timezones have been incrediblely better overall and this is coming from someone who plays a quieter timezone. Just need commander incentives  so maps can have 2-3 tags spreading the players. Of course it wont be perfect but it would be better then nothing.

[saerni.2584]

8 hours ago, Daerth Riverstone.3218 said:

I am Pheonix Dawn, VS Titan's Staircase and Seven Pines

Yeah early on I notice TS seemed a little stacked (was 1st place over the weekend with a huge lead). I'd suspect it was the outsized presence of a weekend wvw guild(s)...so I wonder if the population overall evened out (my alt account is on Seven Pines for this beta). If not this is useful data for us to ask "did Titan's Staircase have excessive population or did it have lopsided time zone coverage?"

[saerni.2584]

4 hours ago, nadK.6539 said:

Tibbs with a 50/50 squad, blobbing everyone down. Everything's fine.

Tibbs with a 50/50 squad, getting wiped by 30. "HELP THE ENEMY IS BLOBBING US. DARN IT NIC AT NITE IN EBG." 

WvW Restructuring: the forum where matchup threads are allowed and encouraged! 😛

[subversiontwo.7501]

Hi Tibbs, can you tell me if I interpret you right here?

15 hours ago, Daerth Riverstone.3218 said:

The counter you'd think would be balanced matchups, but instead it was a good idea to have a stacked NA alliance with small guilds in late NA/OCX/SEA and nothing in EU. Ultimately, the big bad guilds just run and log off and come back when they are gauranteed to win fights. FUN AMIRITE???

It seems to me that you spend about 7 paragraphs just ventilating about a number of different things that have little to do with each other and little to do with Alliances. Like the qoute, it makes absolutely no sense since you complain about timezones, small guilds and big guilds all at once.

15 hours ago, Daerth Riverstone.3218 said:

If you want it to be a competitive large scale PvP game mode, (wasn't that the intention?) than these alliances are too big. 500 is too big. If you reduced the number

Then you spend about 2 paragraphs arguing for that Alliances should be smaller than 500. That is something that Anet has already said that they may explore in the future since they are designing the caps to be easily movable and that they will follow behaviour over time.

Not that I am the one to tell people that they need to post shorter, but you could easily just have made a thread that said "My experience from the beta is that chunks are still too large and they should look at making Alliances smaller".

Edited December 8, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Baron Oakley.1539]

15 hours ago, Daerth Riverstone.3218 said:

Shorten map caps on bls to 50 max (there isnt even enough ppl in the game for that to matter)

Sorry, this just isn't true. In NA primetime lowering the map cap to 50 would result in absolutely awful queues. Even now queues can be pretty bad, especially on Friday reset and Saturday NA evening.

[Drathek.8061]

A reduced map cap will destroy any possibility of getting your friends in with you to play. Even with the current limits it's difficult and a lot of coordination has to be done outside of game to schedule days/times certain guilds run and who runs on what map because of how many people are trying to play.

[Bouffle.5719]

I think your experience is specific to the matchup you found yourself in, honestly. I'm Cinis, co-leader of [zAp], a roaming guild on BP; we allied with [VP] and [PUGS] on NA time and [LAG], [TRBO], and [WOLF] on the off hours for the beta. On NA prime, our alliance can queue one map by itself, but not more, and we have runs at just about all hours for people to attend. On the three raid days I've attended from VP and PUGS so far, we've had some of the greatest fights I can remember, against blobs of KING (VR/HoB/IV) and XXXL (SF/Myst/FLUX) in the alpine BLs. Tons of content, super intense fighting (though definitely very large-scale), just an all around great time. I'm hoping that later in the week the fights will get smaller in scale as alliance tags that don't already have 40+ actually run separate, because we've been piloting full squads on NA prime, and that's not really my thing to participate in normally.

 

In that sense, I think Tibbs' concerns about blobbing are at least somewhat accurate. There's a clear difference between our server and the one formed around XXXL. On Saturday NA prime, we had one or two queues for most of it, but green (XXXL, SEAL, and others) had four the entire time, I'm told. That's a big difference, and probably represents the difference between a full alliance that mostly stacks one TZ and our alliance, which intentionally chose not to. I imagine Tibbs is probably fighting something like Indo "no single squad in the history of GW2 has put out multiple full squads on multiple maps" Mir, who did take all 500. The problem is not necessarily the size of an alliance, but instead the incentive to stack a single timezone. This might actually be counterbalanced by PPT of all things. Making PPT a more important aspect of the game incentivizes alliances to snatch up competent off-hours groups to ensure they're able to cover all timezones without relying on pugs, instead of stacking a single timezone and praying. And maybe more needs to be done to disincentivize timezone stacking than that, I don't know. 

[Magnuzone.8395]

Let's not kid ourselves here. This isn't about improving WvW for the players, it's a business decision. "How many hours can we really put into WvW and it's balance, versus how much do we gain from it in terms of revenue". So the plan is to have this easy to manage system where they can just use the players that don't choose an alliance to fill up and balance with them. The only reason they are so hell-bent on implementing Alliances now: Less work.

 

An old irrelevant idea, dressed up and sold to a vocal minority of players that doesn't even realize that they aren't in majority anymore. Sorry to break it but most of the players that wanted this got fed up over the years and moved on.

[Danikat.8537]

I think it's important to remember that this isn't the full system yet. It doesn't matter whether you decided to join an alliance or not because alliances are not actually in the game yet, the only parts of the system which are enabled is players choosing a guild to be grouped with and 'worlds' being built up from those guilds and individuals who didn't choose rather than based on server selection. Even that isn't working properly, a lot of players who picked the same guild ended up on different worlds.

So it's not representative of what we're going to get in the end because a lot of important steps are missing and I don't think it's surprising there's unbalanced matchups as a result.

[morrolan.9608]

1 hour ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I think it's important to remember that this isn't the full system yet. 

 

This needs to be emphasised. Its the first real test of the funtionality. Alliances are missing at this stage except those who have formed alliances and made 1 guild for these tests. So no conclusions can be drawn yet  especially not about drastic changes like lowering map caps.

[Lockette.6834]

14 hours ago, saerni.2584 said:

Yeah early on I notice TS seemed a little stacked (was 1st place over the weekend with a huge lead). I'd suspect it was the outsized presence of a weekend wvw guild(s)...so I wonder if the population overall evened out (my alt account is on Seven Pines for this beta). If not this is useful data for us to ask "did Titan's Staircase have excessive population or did it have lopsided time zone coverage?"

It's because indo has his blob there and 2 other guilds he is allianced with SOX/ROSE

Edited December 9, 2021 by Lockette.6834

[Zedo.5804]

I don't know what to say, except that for me this last week was a tragedy and I didn't enjoy it, I don't like this alliance system that tends to create blobbons against small teams, if this is the future of gw2 I will evaluate 'whether to continue playing or switch to other titles.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Zedo.5804