From “Cornerstone” to ghost town. What happened ?

[subversiontwo.7501]

16 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

If I'm on a map and a guild asks for room so they can get people in then I'll switch. If they're trying to get bodies I'll float near and back them up. If they throw an invite I'll join squad and do what I know what to do with my build. I know what to do with my build and I know how to respond to actions in a team, I don't need to be on their discord to get kittened up by bad calls or get caught in bad positions after they face plant a blob and get most of their squad wiped. I'm talking to my own guildies or half watching tv while I vibe on a map anyway.

If some smaller team was actually doing stuff that really did require voice comms then I'd probably jump on their server for a minute but large squads rarely need more than in game tools to ping a map and Alert to Target. What they need is for everyone who's with them (especially their own guildies) and knows their build to agree to be present and alert for the hour or two they're raiding. They wouldn't even need the whole map right on them at that point and would benefit more from more teams running around a map or working loosely with other groups. People complain about the tagless squads running around but while they're usually smaller, they're also usually pretty solid and effective. 

Just take your guild out and perform and a map will roll up on you. Some people are aloof and don't want to hear you. Some people are chill and sane and will watch for your calls but don't want to hear you. Some people want to hear you so take them out for a ride regardless of how many are with you.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say here (possibly beyond that public squads just need to ping maps to function, because this is a PvP mode and, whatever group you play with, the expectation is to match the content of your opponents), but I don't see how any of it has to do with the post you qouted.

Just to make sure we're not talking around each other: The tagless squads people complain about are not guild raids. It is a recent-ish trend of having public (server-wide) squads that are passworded, invite-only on demands of joining voice. Either with visible or invisible tag. We are seeing those type of squads become more common than simple visible pickups and the post you qouted is talking about why that is. I don't see that as a good thing. Overall, in player behaviour we are seeing a consolidation around the middle with many larger casual guilds and gatekept publics ending up rather similar in terms of content, organisation and demand.

What's mentioned in the parenthesis above helps explain what drives that behaviour, but it is nontheless problematic for the mode and its content. In fact, most of the things you say here describe good things that have gone missing or become rare as fewer players organise in guilds or other forms of static groups of varying size and cross-scale content.

I'm not even chastising the public tags for doing these things as I tried to describe why they do it (with that rather spicy take), but again, I'd consider all of the things ultimately described as problematic when looked at from above.

Edited April 8, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[enkidu.5937]

16 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

 public (server-wide) squads that are passworded, invite-only on demands of joining voice. Either with visible or invisible tag.

This basically sums the whole imo problem Anet faces for a decade now. Developing the game mode, providing content, but for whom, and in which direction?

 

“Public” squads that are invisible, password-restricted, voice-chat-only, cookie-cutter-build-only, stack-on-tag-only . . . truly “public” lul. And the weird claim that teamplay wouldn’t be possible without. So, the self-entitled “team players” kick the leechers out of content. 🤪

 

So, how could Anet successfully develop this game mode when ppl isolate themselves from the team, to play their very own game mode in private, sry “public” groups? Where building waypoints and ppt is regarded as “useless”, and the word “team” just includes “everyone that plays our style”.

 

Anet would have to overhaul the whole concept from the scratch (or re-introduce GvG from GW1).

[subversiontwo.7501]

49 minutes ago, enkidu.5937 said:

This basically sums the whole imo problem Anet faces for a decade now. Developing the game mode, providing content, but for whom, and in which direction?

“Public” squads that are invisible, password-restricted, voice-chat-only, cookie-cutter-build-only, stack-on-tag-only . . . truly “public” lul. And the weird claim that teamplay wouldn’t be possible without. So, the self-entitled “team players” kick the leechers out of content. 🤪

So, how could Anet successfully develop this game mode when ppl isolate themselves from the team, to play their very own game mode in private, sry “public” groups? Where building waypoints and ppt is regarded as “useless”, and the word “team” just includes “everyone that plays our style”.

Anet would have to overhaul the whole concept from the scratch (or re-introduce GvG from GW1).

Well, I'm not really presenting any suggestions in the posts above, but I am in some part alluding to it. It's not like I think it was gold and green pastures before. We, as any game, have always had elitists, gatekeepers and whatever else. However, we've also had alot of groups that enjoyed sharing content and building community. Much of that also sits on the level of guilds. It is also a not-so-well-kept secret that whoever is "elite" are rarely the same who are "elitist" or who are gatekeepers. It doesn't matter if it is WvW or PvE or if it is GW2 or other games. It doesn't matter from what angle of the "meta" you approach it (whether builds, or comps or squads). The gatekeepers tend to be mediocre. The good tend not to be competetive in casual content or have their own means to circumvent issues.

So, I think alot of the more toxic or problematic things we see today is mostly the result of low ambition and mediocrity. That of course reflects ArenaNet's low ambitions for the mode. However, turning that around is far from impossible and this mode has proven its stability many times over as well. We can talk about how much it has lost. However, it has also been impressively stable based on how little it has gotten. When Grouch came back he showed an understanding for that. Where he is now is a big question though and things currently feels eerily familiar with silence, vaugeness, no commitment or resource-allocation and nothing real to show for it.

So, they do not really have to overhaul the concept from scratch, they just have to deliver with quality on most things unfinished and allocate resources to continue improving the many things that made players create player-groups, communities and content. Nothing has changed from what Jon Peters said 2011. ArenaNet the studio has changed more than the players or the fundamentals of the game has changed in that regard. This game still fundamentally is- and shines at what it was designed to be: If people read into what it was designed to be and what players has asked for since 2011. The GvG you mention at the end is part of that. If we had actual tools to create good player-made tournaments with some developer support that could splash over onto many things that ultimately helps public squads as well. Most of the problems we see is everybody just going through the motions and the path of least resistance, that too splashes out over everything. The passworded public groups is public commanders sharing content but not wanting too much crap to deal with alone. The options are no public squads or better support. Better support comes from ambition, community-building and education and such a culture.

Edited April 8, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Valisha.8650]

I guess people dont like unbalanced horde-pvp game modes that you need dedicated gear set / build for.

[subversiontwo.7501]

7 minutes ago, Valisha.8650 said:

I guess people dont like unbalanced horde-pvp game modes that you need dedicated gear set / build for.

I think people do like that as they choose to play an MMO. They like the added complexity of gear, account progression, organisation, tactics and strategy implied. Much of the things that are downplayed by people who don't understand it and can't see it. If you want Fortnite, you can go play Fortnite. If you want to be solo, there are plenty of other games and genres to play solo. The MMO industry does not have to bow to be the most popular genre to still remain profitable. You just need good product to turn profit and secure the jobs of your employees over time.

Edited April 8, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Valisha.8650]

6 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I think people do like that as they choose to play an MMO.

Um, no. One is not related to the other at all. I doubt anyone ever read about WvW and said "O wow what a great thing, I will buy GW2 just for it!". I do not have any statistics to back up my claim, but I guess most people joined GW2 for open world or instanced end game content.

8 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

They like the added complexity of gear, account progression, organisation, tactics and strategy implied. Much of the things that are downplayed by people who don't understand it and can't see it. 

Citation needed for first and ending part. About "organization, tactics and strategy", it doesn't really apply to WvW for the most part. Unless you count WW2 Soviet human wave tactic (represented in game as "follow-the-commander zerg" as a legit strategic thought, then I guess you might have a point.

11 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

If you want Fortnite, you can go play Fortnite. If you want to be solo, there are plenty of other games and genres to play solo.

No one talks about Fortnite here, so idk where you took that from. And speaking of solo, GW2 so far is quite friendly for solo players.

13 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

The MMO industry does not have to bow to be the most popular genre to still remain profitable. You just need good product to turn profit and secure the jobs of your employees over time.

Yes, you are 100% right on that one. However, it does not prove WvW to be a good game mode. Hell, it doesn't even prove it to be a good concept of a mode either.

[enkidu.5937]

46 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

We, as any game, have always had elitists, gatekeepers and whatever else.

Yeah but, this is not just about elitism. This is about ppl that invent their completly own interpretation of the game, and then claim that they are playing “THE meta”. A zerg that refuses to defend their keep at reset, and instead does spawn fights for an hour, is in any definition playing “meta”. No matter if they all have the top cookie cutter builds, voice chat, tight movement, timed spikes etc. Its not meta to let your keep fall at reset sry 😉 (just my personal taste ofc^^)

 

53 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

This game still fundamentally is- and shines at what it was designed to be: If people read into what it was designed to be and what players has asked for since 2011.

I'm pretty sure that we both speak of completely different things here. So "what was the game mode designed to be" ? Anet has designed huge maps with keeps and such, with the abllity to upgrade them with supplies, getting warscore, winning the match, climbing the tiers. And then see my example above 😏

 

Ppl in this game mode seem to have completely opposite interests. So, to whom should Anet cater with the development?

 

36 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

They like the added complexity of gear, account progression, organisation, tactics and strategy implied. Much of the things that are downplayed by people who don't understand it and can't see it.

“Strategy”, “organization”, “complexity of gear”, most of us will come up with different, even opposite definitions.

 

Some prefer mindless blobbing and call it a “fight”. Some fight on highest level, with great movement, unpredictable self-made build ect. and they are called “unorganized”. 

 

Anet recently added new content with EoD, but ppl are urged to use the old builds cause they fit “THE meta” better?

So how could Anet develop this mode.

 

[subversiontwo.7501]

8 hours ago, Valisha.8650 said:

Um, no. One is not related to the other at all. I doubt anyone ever read about WvW and said "O wow what a great thing, I will buy GW2 just for it!". I do not have any statistics to back up my claim, but I guess most people joined GW2 for open world or instanced end game content.

About "organization, tactics and strategy", it doesn't really apply to WvW for the most part. Unless you count WW2 Soviet human wave tactic (represented in game as "follow-the-commander zerg" as a legit strategic thought, then I guess you might have a point. No one talks about Fortnite here, so idk where you took that from. And speaking of solo, GW2 so far is quite friendly for solo players.

Yes, you are 100% right on that one. However, it does not prove WvW to be a good game mode. Hell, it doesn't even prove it to be a good concept of a mode either.

I did and almost everyone I know bought the game for WvW. I'll get back to this in a second because it is the point that permeates my whole post, but I think you are underestimating how much of WvW's original guilds and playerbase came from other games where they had originally taken part in world PvP, battleground and guild-content. All in other games, including GW1.

Furthermore, a quite substantial portion of early guilds in GW2 were PvX. There was more overlap between modes. Instanced endgame did not exist at release. The larger separation has come later and is largely a result of the same thing as everything else: That the different content modes are given such extremely different resources. That has affected guilds. That has affected content creators and partners etc.

The only detriment to those comments is that it refers to ancient things by now. It was an appeal in the game from 2011. It was guilds leaving in 2014. At the same time, the fundamentals of this game are still the same. The game shines when they are built upon. Many of us still here are so because of the potential in that, despite the realisation (both what we have realised and what the studio has realised).

That leads into the comments about tactics and other games too, because smaller GvG style content is at the heart of it but all those other games also shows the width of it. There may be some casual large WvW groups for sure, but at the heart of it there is far more intricate organisation than push all buttons, get all boons and win. GvG is at the heart of it. The demands on a PvE raid group is at the heart of it and so on. The only people who trivialises that are those from the outside looking in. People complained about "boonballs" even in 2016 when the term was coined, but if you look at the eg., top 5 guilds in the 2016 GvG tournament, all of them played different comps and tactics. With some adaption, those guilds played that on maps too, brought those builds to pickups and influenced the meta. Even some things in recent meta harkens back to that period. However, even back then, those GvG comps were assumed to be "meta" or "boonballs" respectively to the people who can either only see "meta" or "boonballs" and what they actually were was considered trash by those same people for another 2 years 😅.

That pertains to whatever snide remarks about blobs or Fortnite. The second you raise ambition in your guild even a little bit you quickly crawl out of bring all things and push all buttons. Things are both more complex and "smaller" with parties being the building blocks of squads and MMO players tend to be older (more keen to blobs than Fortnite). That's the point I wanted to get back to that ties all of this together. MMO players are usually older, likes the complexity and that many of these things are all factors to playing (rather than just skill, just reaction, just execution). In 2022 MMO's does not need to fit into norms of genres popular among younger players or be as successful as WoW was in 2004 to be successful enough. Things like ARPG have their audience despite MMO. Things like CRPG have their audience despite ARPG and so on. What gets ridiculed as mindless blobbing is more complex than at surface value and is apart of what makes MMO, MMO.

To tie that back to the thread as a whole:

The most foreboding thing about the current ambition, pace and silence is that EoD is just another PoF and little over a year into PoF half the studio got axed. That may have been for production issues before PoF but I've talked about it alot and I firmly believe that GW2 does not survive on story alone. They provide story alone, but they live on everything else. WvW is apart of that but far from all of that. Things like Gerent still has replay value and is social content, no one cares about the story that released around the same time. I also think that players who run world-boss trains (or play WvW) are more likely to buy gems than those who login every second month to "experience" story for free and praise the devs. But what do I know? Perhaps those people buy tons of plushies. I just don't see the logic in it, so I'll stick with what's logical: That the socially active players (the Gerent runners et. al.) are those paying for this game. WvW by its nature sits in that space. That social space where you build gear, groups, guilds and broader communities. If you listen to the release-era communication about GW2, that is all this was built to be about. PvE, WvW, sPvP was all about building community and playing with friends. Playing together, not just next-to each other.

Edited April 8, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501
Snipped this down in size a bit, it was long even for me.

[subversiontwo.7501]

7 hours ago, enkidu.5937 said:

A zerg that refuses to defend their keep at reset, and instead does spawn fights for an hour, is in any definition playing “meta”. No matter if they all have the top cookie cutter builds, voice chat, tight movement, timed spikes etc. Its not meta to let your keep fall at reset sry 😉 (just my personal taste ofc^^)

 

I'm pretty sure that we both speak of completely different things here. So "what was the game mode designed to be" ? Anet has designed huge maps with keeps and such, with the abllity to upgrade them with supplies, getting warscore, winning the match, climbing the tiers. And then see my example above 😏

 

“Strategy”, “organization”, “complexity of gear”, most of us will come up with different, even opposite definitions. Some prefer mindless blobbing and call it a “fight”. Some fight on highest level, with great movement, unpredictable self-made build ect. and they are called “unorganized”. 

The meta simply refers to the most common builds placed into the most common compositions that are recommended by meta-sites. There's confusion about this because people have dragged in definitions of the name from other genres while for our genre the word meta mainly refers to resources that exist outside (or above) the game itself. Things like gw2skills and gw2mists are meta. In a broader definition it refers to information on those sites. That information is usually curated and simplified. I tend to look at it as a traffic light: red, yellow and green (or submeta, meta and supermeta). That can then apply to both builds and compositions, in a pickup group context. If groups just fight open field or whatever else they do that has nothing to do with "meta".

You can also see these differences in perspective when we talk about things like classes where a person arguing about let's say Druids from a meta perspective is going to argue about how it fits into the meta while a person from a supermeta perspective is going to argue about things closer to its potential that the other player do not value.

That simmers down to the whole discussion about the game and its complexity. The game is designed on a factor of 5. People who are all about grrr blobs or grrr boons or whatever do not pay attention to that. Most things in this game whether you play with 5, 15 or 50 is still based around doing things with the 5. Things like meta and its roles is generally an abstraction of that. The meta Breaker and the meta Chrono filled the same role in the simplification of a meta composition. They are interchangable as far as the meta is concerned. They are at the same time different and there are many more ways to compose your groups. Many things that works at 5 still works as 5 among the 50. If you are licking the windows on the outside, looking in, you don't see that. You don't see that more ambitious groups compose their parties and squads wildly differently, and different from the meta.

Taygeta posted a video on Reddit the other day with a Spinzerker and people were amazed and curious about the build. Grogert's video that popularized the same build among GvG guilds is from 2020. It's two years old. It has just recently been listed on Mists. When DH made it into the meta Panqun's video that popularized it among guilds had also been out for 2 years. Most such players are also capable roamers.

That drifts into the discussion about what the mode was supposed to be. Good players tend to be roamers, GvG'ers and pugs all at once. It is things they do, not necessarily things they are or just one thing they do. In some regard you can get an identity in what you do the most, yet that is not always the case and it is still rooted in what you do and not what you are. WvW has always been about doing all these things. The factor of 5 in a party permeates all these things. If you play all of them you understand them. That's why we laugh at players who talk about boon balls or meta as the best. Most good players are not here to talk to you, they are laughing at you. They're also laughing at me for trying to talk to you (this is the plural you, not the personal you).

If you follow my posts on this forum you can see that I tend to not make friends with either two extremes of the arguments: The clouders or roamers think I'm just about blobs and guild raids, while the pugs or raiders think I'm just about the clouding or roaming. That's what insecure projection tend to end up in. I'm always the other side.

What the game was supposed to be you can look in my signature for. However, the game was supposed to be an MMO and that means development of four dimensions of content: open PvE, closed PvE, open PvP and closed PvP. In GW2 we know closed PvP as sPvP, open PvP as WvW, open PvE as events, world bosses etc., and closed PvE as a smattering of dungeons, fractals, raids, drms, strikes and so on. They all belong to one of those four things. The game was also built to be social and if you look those dimensions the open dimensions are more social. The systems this game has programmed into it shine in open content. For example, WvW's balance and the combat system tend to shine in the 5-25 span. Outside of it there are more issues. How was that programmed into the game? It is the same factor of 5 that I have to keep referring to. Many skills spread to five players and it prioritises the group in your party. That's why a good guild of 15 look at their comp as 5+5+5 and why players extrapolate that to their guilds of 25 or their pickups of 50. That ties back to the complexity bit. It ties back to the good players play everything bit and that the mode was built for this cross-scale group content and the game was built to be "the" social MMO (in the links).

Edited April 8, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[enkidu.5937]

26 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Most good players are not here to talk to you, they are laughing at you. They're also laughing at me for trying to talk to you (this is the plural you, not the personal you).

Currently, I'm the one that's laughing. Anyway, I've seen several ppl during the last decade that didn't understand what a team game is about, being good at it, and how to win. Unfortunatelly, one can't just read the meta pages to get the explanation. 😉

[subversiontwo.7501]

13 minutes ago, enkidu.5937 said:

Currently, I'm the one that's laughing. Anyway, I've seen several ppl during the last decade that didn't understand what a team game is about, being good at it, and how to win. Unfortunatelly, one can't just read the meta pages to get the explanation. 😉

Well, it would be more productive if you talked about it, since you were the one asking questions and the answer to your questions sits in or inbetween those lines.

Different interests are not a problem since there are multiple things that can coexist, assuming all those things do not rot away. That's the main thing to take away from even the same paragraph that you pulled that selected qoute from or from those three bricks I threw in there as a whole 😝.

[kash.9213]

4 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say here (possibly beyond that public squads just need to ping maps to function, because this is a PvP mode and, whatever group you play with, the expectation is to match the content of your opponents), but I don't see how any of it has to do with the post you qouted.

Just to make sure we're not talking around each other: The tagless squads people complain about are not guild raids. It is a recent-ish trend of having public (server-wide) squads that are passworded, invite-only on demands of joining voice. Either with visible or invisible tag. We are seeing those type of squads become more common than simple visible pickups and the post you qouted is talking about why that is. I don't see that as a good thing. Overall, in player behaviour we are seeing a consolidation around the middle with many larger casual guilds and gatekept publics ending up rather similar in terms of content, organisation and demand.

What's mentioned in the parenthesis above helps explain what drives that behaviour, but it is nontheless problematic for the mode and its content. In fact, most of the things you say here describe good things that have gone missing or become rare as fewer players organise in guilds or other forms of static groups of varying size and cross-scale content.

I'm not even chastising the public tags for doing these things as I tried to describe why they do it (with that rather spicy take), but again, I'd consider all of the things ultimately described as problematic when looked at from above.

I know what tagless squads are. 

What you have in parenthesis doesn't explain anything, that's simply your misunderstanding of what this game mode is and who is playing it. Any squad isn't the only squad in this game mode and their time zone isn't the only time of day stuff happens, why should they expect the rest of the population to "match" anything? If I'm communicating to my group or my guildies and we're helping out in a fight, there's no need for us to drop what we're doing to jump in some guilds or squads discord just because they assume they're the main driver. 

If that squad want's numbers, they're going to have scramble with what they have and start moving or get better at not being convoluted with their prep and communication. Otherwise, they can be okay with dragging fewer people.

If those squads consistently proved that everyone absolutely needs to be in their squad and discord to succeed, then you might have a point, but that doesn't happen. But feel free to rage at the map for not joining comms while everyone else on any side is already moving. 

[subversiontwo.7501]

3 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

I know what tagless squads are. 

What you have in parenthesis doesn't explain anything, that's simply your misunderstanding of what this game mode is and who is playing it. Any squad isn't the only squad in this game mode and their time zone isn't the only time of day stuff happens, why should they expect the rest of the population to "match" anything? If I'm communicating to my group or my guildies and we're helping out in a fight, there's no need for us to drop what we're doing to jump in some guilds or squads discord just because they assume they're the main driver. 

If that squad want's numbers, they're going to have scramble with what they have and start moving or get better at not being convoluted with their prep and communication. Otherwise, they can be okay with dragging fewer people.

If those squads consistently proved that everyone absolutely needs to be in their squad and discord to succeed, then you might have a point, but that doesn't happen. But feel free to rage at the map for not joining comms while everyone else on any side is already moving. 

That's funny to me since nothing in your posts suggests that you understood what tagless squads the qoute referred to. It's the same thing here, you keep arguing about your own private squads or the wider context of how content coexists but that is not what the qoute talks about. You can't transplant an argument from one place to another and then froth about it.

You're doing the same thing now, taking a comment about what PvP is (matching content to your opponent, to, you know, PvP) and trying to replant it in some other context of people joining squads. You could simply have finished reading the paragraph, that you qouted, to see that it was made in the context of comparing the prevalence of passworded public squads to the large casual guilds' private squads. That they are essentially behaving in the same way and that those things are becomming more and more common. That's the content being matched and the behaviour being mirrored 🙂 . I don't even think it's good and I like to havoc.

It feels like some commander kicked you from some squad or told you to go havoc elsewhere and you are trying to dress me in that now, lol. Read what's being said instead of being angry about what isn't being said.

 

[kash.9213]

50 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

That's funny to me since nothing in your posts suggests that you understood what tagless squads the qoute referred to. It's the same thing here, you keep arguing about your own private squads or the wider context of how content coexists but that is not what the qoute talks about. You can't transplant an argument from one place to another and then froth about it.

You're doing the same thing now, taking a comment about what PvP is (matching content to your opponent, to, you know, PvP) and trying to replant it in some other context of people joining squads. You could simply have finished reading the paragraph, that you qouted, to see that it was made in the context of comparing the prevalence of passworded public squads to the large casual guilds' private squads. That they are essentially behaving in the same way and that those things are becomming more and more common. That's the content being matched and the behaviour being mirrored 🙂 . I don't even think it's good and I like to havoc.

It feels like some commander kicked you from some squad or told you to go havoc elsewhere and you are trying to dress me in that now, lol. Read what's being said instead of being angry about what isn't being said.

 

You're saying I keep arguing about my own private squads, which I don't have, but you're arguing in favor for private squads (who have demands on joining and demand that you join) but also that they should control and dictate an entire game mode. You can claim you're talking about something else but all of your comments lead to that, regardless of how convoluted you make your post to spin it. 

 

[subversiontwo.7501]

Quote

 

If I'm on a map /.../ If they're trying /.../ I'll float /.../ If they /.../ I'll join /.../ I know what to do /.../ I know how to respond /.../ I don't need to be /.../ I'm talking to my own guildies /.../ I vibe /.../ If some smaller team /.../ then I'd probably jump on  etc.

People complain about the tagless squads running around but while they're usually smaller, they're also usually pretty solid and effective.

8 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

• I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say here
• Just to make sure we're not talking around each other: The tagless squads /.../ trend of having public (server-wide) squads that are passworded
• We are seeing those type of squads become more common than simple visible pickups and the post you qouted is talking about why that is.
• I don't see that as a good thing.
• What's mentioned in the parenthesis above helps explain what drives that behaviour
• but it is nontheless problematic for the mode and its content.

Was met by:

2 hours ago, kash.9213 said:

• I know what tagless squads are. 
• simply your misunderstanding of what this game mode is
• I'm communicating to my group or my guildies
• we're helping out
• there's no need for us to drop what we're doing to jump in

Trying to explain it again was met by:

38 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

You're saying I keep arguing about my own private squads, which I don't have, but you're arguing in favor for private squads (who have demands on joining and demand that you join)

Yeah, I mean, clearly, you never said anything about yourself or your own smaller groups.

You also didn't misunderstand the large, casual public squads the qoute referred to when you said small, solid and effective. Clearly, it's me being all mean to you and convolute things and not at all you backpedalling and being all mad here. Dude, it's fine that you misunderstood a post talking about passworded public squads as private roaming or havoc squads. You don't have to double down and be all mad about it when that is kindly pointed out to you 🤣.

Edited April 8, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[kash.9213]

26 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Was met by:

Trying to explain it again was met by:

Yeah, I mean, clearly, you never said anything about yourself or your own smaller groups.

You also didn't misunderstand the large, casual public squads the qoute referred to when you said small, solid and effective. Clearly, it's me being all mean to you and convolute things and not at all you backpedalling and being all mad here. Dude, it's fine that you misunderstood a post talking about passworded public squads as private roaming or havoc squads. You don't have to double down and be all mad about it when that is kindly pointed out to you 🤣.

I don't run private squads and have no problem joining any other squad. Any other squad has to understand that not everyone will join discord or follow tightly, especially if they know their own build and where they need to be. So, they can be happy with those who do follow, and not be upset about those who don't. That is the entirety of my point. 

You added a lot of other stuff that either wasn't relevant or was skewed to clean up your previous posts. You also assume a lot about what kind of people play WvW but then you're offended by the reality which is why you came out of the gate crying about squads and discord and why you write entire pages raging about details that aren't a factor. 

The two parts in bold highlight how confused and angry you're getting. Those two things were not the same thing in anyone's post. You're kind of spilling your plate all over the table but if you meant something else with that you could try to be more clear. 

[subversiontwo.7501]

1 hour ago, kash.9213 said:

So, they can be happy with those who do follow, and not be upset about those who don't. That is the entirety of my point.

• You added a lot of other stuff that either wasn't relevant...
• You also assume a lot about what kind of people play WvW...
• You came out of the gate crying about squads and discord
• Skewed to clean up your previous posts
• The two parts in bold highlight how confused and angry you're getting.
• Those two things were not the same thing in anyone's post.
• You're kind of spilling your plate all over the table but if you meant something else with that you could try to be more clear. 

I did not start qouting you. The post you qouted had three headers talking about invisible/closed yet public squads' impact on new players, world linking and world restructuring (brought up by Threather, so it was a reply to him).

I merely pointed out that your "entire point" had nothing to do with what you qouted to make it.

All this other "irrelevant" stuff about links and worlds and updates or developer resources pertains to this thread: From cornerstone to ghost-town which is a thread made to discuss those gruesomely irrelevant topics that have nothing to do with your entire point .

I'm trying to clear up what the posts you qouted said and what this thread is about. But if I'm trying to clear it up I am just cleaning up appearantly and its not at all anyone deflecting or projecting 🤡.

Edited April 8, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[enkidu.5937]

13 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Well, it would be more productive if you talked about it, since you were the one asking questions and the answer to your questions sits in or inbetween those lines.

Different interests are not a problem since there are multiple things that can coexist, assuming all those things do not rot away. That's the main thing to take away from even the same paragraph that you pulled that selected qoute from or from those three bricks I threw in there as a whole 😝.

My whole point was that ppl in WvW often have completely opposite oppinions of how to play this game mode. Its not just the usual elitists vs. noobs, not just a question of the usual competitive vs. casual skill level. Not just: some want more skins, others want a new map, others want a GvG arena, others want a 1vs1 arena, and Anet would just have to set priorities what to add first.

 

Ppl have created their own alternative game modes besides WvW.

Where K/D is important and ppt and winning meaningless. Where synchronous fight performance, with cookie cutters micromanaged via voice chat, is more important than winning the fight itself. And so on.

 

Just have a look at the current threads: you want GvG, others want realm vs. realm style. Someone wants clean 1 vs. 1 duels, another one wants non-structured “its red, its dead”. The zerg-busting guy hates the bubble nerf, the brain-afk chooo-chooo guy loves the bubble nerf. And so on.

 

Just have a look at this thread: your definition of meta (to look up commonly used builds on websites) is one of idk how many different definitions that i've heared over the years in WvW. Some want more build diversity cause its a RPG, others want the complete opposite: a handfull of cookie cutters that a com can easily manage and command.

 

So it seems impossible to me that Anet can develop this game mode without a complete overhaul.

 

[Mabi black.1824]

1 hour ago, enkidu.5937 said:

So it seems impossible to me that Anet can develop this game mode without a complete overhaul

you don't need a complete overhaul.

what you wrote enkidu is all true.

there is no goal;  the skills I use effectively (maybe) may not work with you or for your play/fighting style; you can focus on the fights, you can focus on the structures you can turn in search of a challenger etc etc.

when we say that arenanet has created a really nice product we mean exactly all these things together.

however, for all players who choose to climb the leaderboard and focus/devote themselves to your team/server score, the balance conditions are missing.

so the administrator does not have to review everything, he just has to focus his energies on building a good balance between the teams, there must be no doubt about what arenanet should focus on.

the real problem that I see, is how arenanet is carrying out this correction, this new way of achieving balance.

achieving balance with alliances probably has a good logic (more granularity = easier and numerically more similar matches) the problem is to delete the communities / teams the problem is to cancel the competition in a long-term competitive mode.

it is on this concept that we should have constructive discussions between us players and with our dear arenanet friends.

and finally, returning to the topic of the post, the ghost town we see is already the effect of alliances. as I have already written the players transfer because they know that their team will no longer be there soon, the groups wait, they want to understand, they become invisible etc etc.

[enkidu.5937]

4 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

the real problem that I see, is how arenanet is carrying out this correction, this new way of achieving balance.

achieving balance with alliances probably has a good logic (more granularity = easier and numerically more similar matches) the problem is to delete the communities / teams the problem is to cancel the competition in a long-term competitive mode.

it is on this concept that we should have constructive discussions between us players and with our dear arenanet friends.

Agreed. I think I already wrote a lot in other threads 🤪 Still, imo thats not balance. Red alliance will dominate at 5 pm, blue alliance will dominate at 7 pm, green alliance will dominate at 10 pm. That would make the war scores at the end of the week more even. But at least for me it would take away the incentive to win. Private alliance raids + most ppl will be just a random filling mass in mostly random shuffled teams without identity.

 

Just stealing one of the links of subversiontwo's sig:

Not sure if they talk about sPvP or WvW or PvP in general, but back in 2011 Anets vision was not to have a PvP where we fight faceless ppl in constantly shuffled teams

 

[Mabi black.1824]

hello arenanet, we can have here a kind exchange of views on the subject, it would be really nice. it is true that the one who makes the decisions here is only you as it should be, it is true that you have many players, who think and desire differently.

but having a comparison here would still be nice and could also be useful to you and your development work and could be useful to us to better understand your initiatives and what to expect in the near future. Thank you.

[hugeboss.5432]

When the broken server linking mechanic paired together 2 of the least populated servers, that will break at least 1 tier. You couldn't actually intentionally design a worse server pairing mechanic even if you tried, and that its been going on for this long is nothing but a design tragedy/comedy.

The linking mechanic has been completely outplayed & broken by the community itself, but the responsibility & origin of this laughable balancing mechanic is with the developer. The wvw alliances beta's was already much better than this, should bring it live already!

 

[ugrakarma.9416]

On 4/9/2022 at 5:12 PM, hugeboss.5432 said:

When the broken server linking mechanic paired together 2 of the least populated servers, that will break at least 1 tier. You couldn't actually intentionally design a worse server pairing mechanic even if you tried, and that its been going on for this long is nothing but a design tragedy/comedy.

The linking mechanic has been completely outplayed & broken by the community itself, but the responsibility & origin of this laughable balancing mechanic is with the developer. The wvw alliances beta's was already much better than this, should bring it live already!

 

im completely fine, if the "beta" become permanent.

but i have seen guild transfer, soo as long ppl is using gems, is everything fine, no need they rush.

Edited April 10, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[Exxcalibur.6203]

On 3/18/2022 at 7:02 AM, Gorem.8104 said:

They all stuck at the final zones meta, trapped in an endless loop to try and get a single kill. The 200 writs still takes some time to save up. People are leaving, which will mean less people in wvw even when things calm down. 
Not that wvw seems to matter to Anet, all they say are words, give us action. 3 betas then silence. An update months ago then silence. An update that only works with alliances but was still pushed before its release anyway. Maybe they panicking too hard right now as they have the numbers we will have to restart the Alliance when thread. 

What about a fifth underwater map that all three sides fight on like EBG? Honestly just show us anything, give wvw some new content... and make call to war the new base. Serious on that last one, call to war should be the base just to up the rewards a little bit. 

Cool . Im stuck in queues all day.