World Restructuring Beta Event Feedback

[Stonemist.4680]

Greetings from the Mists! 

Floyd Grubb here, Senior Game Designer on World vs World. On behalf of the entire WvW team, thank you for participating in our most recent World Restructuring Beta test. This was my first beta event as a member of the team, and I learned a lot in the process! Overall, the event ran smoothly, but there were a few issues that I wanted to take some time to address.

The two most reported issues were 1/ players being placed on the wrong team, and 2/ players being reassigned to a different team during map transitions. We were able to identify some of the root causes behind the issues and are currently working on addressing them. We have reason to believe that there are other code issues at play here that we haven’t identified yet, so our investigation is ongoing. Another common issue we observed was that some players had insufficient data (i.e., recent playtime in WvW) for the matchmaking process to place the player properly on a team. We’ll be putting in some safeguards to cover those edge cases, which should mitigate the issue in the next beta. 

We’ve also seen your feedback about how these beta events are communicated – some players were taken by surprise. For this beta, we relied on the GuildWars2.com blog and our social media accounts to broadcast the message. We’ll be looking into ways of improving the communication of these events without making it a nuisance for players.

While I'm here, I want to acknowledge your feedback regarding the August 23 profession balance update and the lack of changes for World vs World. This update was focused on addressing lingering PvE issues stemming from the June 28 update, but that doesn’t mean that WvW shouldn’t get some attention.

As a team, we’ve been reassessing how we approach profession balance for all game modes, and World vs World is no exception. As the Senior Game Designer for World vs World, one of my new responsibilities will be to ensure that WvW balance concerns are represented in our internal discussions. WvW is a complicated game mode that’s played in a number of different ways, and we want to make sure that any single change doesn’t overly reward one playstyle at the cost of others. That’s a tricky problem to solve for, and I expect we’ll learn a lot as we work through it. As an example, due to your feedback, we pulled the Mantra of Liberation WvW change from the August 23 update, and it forced us to reassess how we want to achieve our goal of improving support profession representation in WvW (more details from Cal here).

We’ll have a better sense of concrete timing for the next beta after we finish investigating the issues we saw last week, but we’re currently looking at late September or early October. Something to look forward to: we should have the new WvW-exclusive weapon set ready to dole out as rewards for beta participation.

Thank you for your feedback and your passion!

-Floyd and the World vs World team

Edited August 29, 2022 by Stonemist.4680

[Rakotia.5812]

Thanks a lot for taking time to communicate with us. Really looking forward the changes that are coming to WvW, including balance and beta tests. One can hope that maybe one day we will see more new features like a new map, ways to play, engines, etc. Let's dream!

[Rider.6024]

Would be so nice for something, anything, to be on the horizon for pvp, but at least WvW is getting attention, fingers crossed for balance updates soon!

[Telgum.6071]

29 minutes ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

We’ve also seen your feedback about how these beta events are communicated – some players were taken by surprise. For this beta, we relied on the GuildWars2.com blog and our social media accounts to broadcast the message.

I don't think most players follow the news page or even twitter. If you really want people to notice your events then you have to announce them INGAME. A mail, an interface message, small advertisement that disappears when the beta starts (like the one you use with free accounts to "remind" them to buy the expansions).

And do something with celestial harbinger and engi rifle.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Telgum.6071
Typo

[Treize.3578]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I was set to the wrong team even so I choose the right guild before hand. So I didn't played at all

[Elrey.5472]

1 hour ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

We’ve also seen your feedback about how these beta events are communicated – some players were taken by surprise. For this beta, we relied on the GuildWars2.com blog and our social media accounts to broadcast the message. We’ll be looking into ways of improving the communication of these events without making it a nuisance for players.

The game could desperately need an in-game browser. You already have it half-way with the way the trading post is created. Just drop a new icon top for "News" and drop there the information. Most of the time people won't read external sources but if it's inside the game (AND IMPORTANT: it has a red dot like when we have a new item in the trading post) we will read it. 

Such a News system could be very helpful for everything in the game. Patchnotes specially would be great to be able to read them in-game. And let's not forget, having the wiki embedded as another icon would make the experience a lot better as well. 

Just my 2cents.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Elrey.5472

[Foeclan.1698]

I was pinging everyone in our Discord server daily for the couple of weeks prior (for this and prior betas) and _still_ had people fail to select their guild.  People just don't read unless you make them.  You'd probably need to force a selection on them when they log in.

[Dreggon.6598]

I'm one of those "single issue" players and my single issue is this: when the beta started and ended, it was hard to get into WvW at reset because the interface to enter WvW was doing weird stuff. I couldn't even try to join EBG until a bunch of people had already gotten in, so there was a queue.

[Splash.3604]

Really excited to see this moving forward, thanks!

We had quite a few guildies end up on other teams, too. It would be great, sometime in future, to be able to check in the guild roster to see who had not yet checked the box so that we can remind them.

[Kal Durak.2830]

6 hours ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

but there were a few issues that I wanted to take some time to address.

Every time you use but, it cancels everything your previously said... 

6 hours ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

but that doesn’t mean that WvW shouldn’t get some attention.

Yeah, nerf RANGERs and those darn Elementals... with unlimited buffs.  Which you cannot kill.  Or are they hacking?   Have you checked into hacking lately?

6 hours ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

As a team, we’ve been reassessing how we approach profession balance for all game modes, and World vs World is no exception. As the Senior Game Designer for World vs World, one of my new responsibilities will be to ensure that WvW balance concerns are represented in our internal discussions.

Oh wonderful, your new... you have a lot of studying to do.  A lot.

6 hours ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

one of my new responsibilities will be to ensure that WvW balance concerns are represented in our internal discussions.

WE have been waiting years... glad to see Anet is on top of things. /Laugh

 

6 hours ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

We’ll have a better sense of concrete timing for the next beta after we finish investigating the issues we saw last week, but we’re currently looking at late September or early October. Something to look forward to: we should have the new WvW-exclusive weapon set ready to dole out as rewards for beta participation.

Thank you for your feedback and your passion!

-Floyd and the World vs World team

 

This should have happened YEARS ago.  Not next month. 

 

 

[Bunny.9834]

Boonball GvG is not the only game play in WvW.

Please consider reverting that nerf to MS. 

[Trigarta.3841]

12 hours ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

 

We’ll have a better sense of concrete timing for the next beta after we finish investigating the issues we saw last week, but we’re currently looking at late September or early October. Something to look forward to: we should have the new WvW-exclusive weapon set ready to dole out as rewards for beta participation.

 

 

Another beta so soon?! Finally shorter intervalls between them and not like half a year or more. This gives me hope that the team does make more progress than I anticipted.  I just hope we get to see the actual alliance feature some time soon but as world restructuring is still not perfect, probably not.

[Thomas.2564]

I'm hearing a lot of promises, that the wvw community has been hearing for years. Especially the balance part, which never seems to come to fruition, no matter how many times it's brought up. Pvp tends to get the balance that is needed for most classes, which must mean u are aware that this specific skill/trait is OP. But then u only add it to pvp, cause aparently it doesnt matter if it's still broken in wvw. 

And then the wvw community has to listen to the gw2 staff go on and on about how they wanna put more focus on wvw gameplay and "balance". But time and time again we get full pve balance patches or we get some kitten attempt on a balance patch, where all the major issues only affect pvp. I can appreciate the amount of effort it takes to oversee this many platforms and specs in one game. And trying to balance them all is a massiv job. But if u insist on contiously preaching about balance, please start putting some action behind the words u preach. As in, when u can see something isnt working in pvp, this means it almost certainly doesnt work wvw either. 

 

Keep up the great work! Thx for all your efforts. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

18 hours ago, Stonemist.4680 said:

Greetings from the Mists! 

While I'm here, I want to acknowledge your feedback regarding the August 23 profession balance update and the lack of changes for World vs World. This update was focused on addressing lingering PvE issues stemming from the June 28 update, but that doesn’t mean that WvW shouldn’t get some attention.

As a team, we’ve been reassessing how we approach profession balance for all game modes, and World vs World is no exception. As the Senior Game Designer for World vs World, one of my new responsibilities will be to ensure that WvW balance concerns are represented in our internal discussions. WvW is a complicated game mode that’s played in a number of different ways, and we want to make sure that any single change doesn’t overly reward one playstyle at the cost of others. That’s a tricky problem to solve for, and I expect we’ll learn a lot as we work through it. As an example, due to your feedback, we pulled the Mantra of Liberation WvW change from the August 23 update, and it forced us to reassess how we want to achieve our goal of improving support profession representation in WvW (more details from Cal here).

Thank you for your feedback and your passion!

-Floyd and the World vs World team

Floyd, Thanks for all the hard work! For the balance discussions is it at all possible to start backing out some of the Feb2020 balance changes? That patch lumped WvW and PvP into almost the same balance philosophy, but the scale of fights, and even the gear is different in WvW. There were some hard hitting skills that got nerfed hard, and some that got left untouched resulting in a rather lopsided balance between professions.

[Ronin.4501]

11 hours ago, Areoh.7495 said:

Every time you use but, it cancels everything your previously said...

Have some 🧀 to go along with your...

 

12 hours ago, Areoh.7495 said:

Yeah, nerf RANGERs and those darn Elementals... with unlimited buffs.  Which you cannot kill.  Or are they hacking?   Have you checked into hacking lately?

He's the Chief Game Designer for WvW. Not a game manager. Have some more 🧀...

12 hours ago, Areoh.7495 said:

Oh wonderful, your new... you have a lot of studying to do.  A lot

And some more 🧀...

12 hours ago, Areoh.7495 said:

WE have been waiting years... glad to see Anet is on top of things. /Laugh

And some more 🧀...

12 hours ago, Areoh.7495 said:

This should have happened YEARS ago.  Not next month.

And once again, some more 🧀...

 

At least we've got someone who's actually responding rather than just keeping us in the dark for years on end. But thank you for all your helpful and constructive criticism. I'm sure they'll make good use of it moving forward.

"Player thinks every class they cannot win against in a fight is hacking". Duly noted.

[EvilMyself.2347]

Glad to see you're looking at issues, but I haven't seen you mention the problem that you can't see squad/party members on the map as a blue dot if they aren't on the same server as you are during the beta. This made it very annoying to coordinate a group of players from different servers and it has been a problem for every single beta event so far.

 

I really hope you are aware of this issue and it's being looked at

[LordHT.8297]

What is the map capacity on those beta events? I feel like we had the old map cap (before warclaw) on those betas and it was affecting the performance of the servers.  

Btw, the cross-machup team chat bug still happening last beta and you still able to see the dots of your guildies/party on the map even when you're in diferent teams. 

[Shadows Creed.3902]

My guild had a blast during Beta and was a great break from what has turned into the exact same matchup virtually every week.   Would love to see more beta's just to shake up who is teamed with who and who is against who.

 

We called raid after like 45 minutes on Sunday cause it was literally only Rawr to fight.  2 maps qued, and no one else to fight sides them and that is what it is like basically every weekend.   The boredom/fatigue is real.   During beta it was great we fought a ton of different groups and it made the game feel fresh.  

[Xenesis.6389]

Don't really want to hear another peep about "balance" unless it's against the boon ball, because everything has only been for that. Repeated yeah balance is important and we're reading feedback, yet it feels like it's completely ignored in the wvw forums, and only the fight guild one sided opinions matter. I hope you guys are at least working on the long term vision for profession balance that was mentioned back in the june backlash, it'll be interesting to see what that even looks like for wvw other than make guard and engineer good at everything....

 

7 hours ago, Shadows Creed.3902 said:

My guild had a blast during Beta and was a great break from what has turned into the exact same matchup virtually every week.   Would love to see more beta's just to shake up who is teamed with who and who is against who.

 

We called raid after like 45 minutes on Sunday cause it was literally only Rawr to fight.  2 maps qued, and no one else to fight sides them and that is what it is like basically every weekend.   The boredom/fatigue is real.   During beta it was great we fought a ton of different groups and it made the game feel fresh.  

Yet there's people who say they don't want to face mag cause they don't have guilds lol.

 

Fought Anet and Brrr week before beta, fought Anet and Brrr during beta, didn't have a guild that could take them on either way, really didn't seem different to me, other than downtimes had some more random people around. Friend got bounced to some other server even though we picked same guild, ran to gold chest and then mostly left for the week. So beta was meh for me.

 

At least the next beta is in a month...

[Shadows Creed.3902]

 

16 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Don't really want to hear another peep about "balance" unless it's against the boon ball, because everything has only been for that. Repeated yeah balance is important and we're reading feedback, yet it feels like it's completely ignored in the wvw forums, and only the fight guild one sided opinions matter. I hope you guys are at least working on the long term vision for profession balance that was mentioned back in the june backlash, it'll be interesting to see what that even looks like for wvw other than make guard and engineer good at everything....

 

Yet there's people who say they don't want to face mag cause they don't have guilds lol.

 

Fought Anet and Brrr week before beta, fought Anet and Brrr during beta, didn't have a guild that could take them on either way, really didn't seem different to me, other than downtimes had some more random people around. Friend got bounced to some other server even though we picked same guild, ran to gold chest and then mostly left for the week. So beta was meh for me.

 

At least the next beta is in a month...

Can't speak for other spots within Mag but CTH runs FRI reset.  Sat/Sun 8:30 east coast - 10:30/11 and then Wed from 9-10:30 pretty consistently.  There always a que on EBG so we are typically on the BL's.  

 

It's not a knock on Rawr persay.  Just after the 100th+ fight against them the interest wanes.   Fighting new peeps was a blast during the Beta that we haven't seen in a long time and even seeing smaller groups clump up together.  I know some of the other matchups people complained on there being omni blobs but the matchup we had.  It was a blast and we were sad to see it end.