Some thoughts on WvW design and player mentalities

[Silinsar.6298]

Disclaimer: my perspective comes from playing in the early (like "everyone was still leveling and we did it in WvW, so whoever already got his elite was OP" - early) days, I started out focusing on server community & score, playing GvG somewhat competitively for 1-2 years but played mostly solo and small scale for the last couple of years, with big breaks in-between. Also, EU.

 

WvW and its multiple facets have always been fun and intriguing to me, and it kept me playing and coming back to GW2 like no other game mode. However, I guess I am not the only one feeling it has become kinda stagnant and / or less enjoyable for a while now, and it seems you meet more and more people playing the mode that might still like it, but become tired of it. I'll try to explain my understanding of some aspects of WvW. Anyway, I'll simply get going:

 

One game mode to rule them all

Players don't play a multi-faceted game mode anymore, they play multiple game modes that intersect. Zergs want to farm, guilds want to GvG / zergbust, roamers want to roam... this dates way back, but I miss the days when someone would put up a fight on a raid build, or you practiced to hold your own vs thieves on staff ele, just so you could stay alive vs focus groups in GvG. Builds have become more specialized with the expansions. And players know what they are good / bad at, so they tend to avoid taking fights outside their specialty.

 

Why?

Players care for different things, and PPT is getting less and less popular. And as a note, with PPT I don't mean just zerging to take a tower or defending one. My fondest memory of actually playing the game mode as a whole (and the way I still think was intended originally) where the reset nights where you had multiple guild groups, havoc squads etc. coordinating and arranging resources / "manpower" across maps, static and mobile scouts / roamers taking care of upgrades, supply and siege, etc...

 

Anyway, I'd split the WvW motivations into 4 categories:

• Community / server / PPT: No matter the role and what you ("have to") do, in the end you try to contribute to the server's success. What I described above.
• Personal / competitive: you play to improve, perform and have interesting encounters (balanced or unbalanced). GvGs and duels are the best examples. But also "fishing" for fights in open field.
• Rewards: You are here for some item, achievement, daily and/or low-effort participation. Ever camped a veteran's spawn point?
• Drama / trolling: You are here for human interaction (outside the game's mechanics), the good and / or the bad. Don't tell me you never took any part in this.

 

Group sizes != playstyles

Zergs or roaming groups aren't homogeneous playstyles. Players do stuff in differnet group sizes for different reasons. Some join a zerg for the karmatrain, some for the fights and some to take a well defended objective. And some only want to one-up the group that killed them. This is the point where you might realize WvW has even more nuance to it than you thought, because every size of group built do excel at what they try to do can be something different entirely. There are roles, there are motivations and there are group sizes.

This is what I would like people (and ANet) to recognize. Even in a zerg, there are multiple ways to play WvW. And quite a few more outside of it.

 

Unity Discord

So we all stand together... in different places... sometimes. At least when it comes to what WvW players want from WvW. And why we don't get along with each other occasionally. I dare say many in-game hostilities (and the sometimes earned reputation of WvW'ers being toxic) aren't caused by the game pitting us against each other, but because we approach WvW differently and want other things from our encounters. The simplest example: You run around looking for a fight, you meet someone just trying to get back to their group. What should happen? Should one be able to force / avoid this fight? My guess: different opinions. Design-wise, ANet gave us a mount which allows players to avoid many encounters they don't want to engage in (unless you are in the bigger group where it actually makes it easier to force a fight).

This is not really something to be solved by ANet, but to be recognized. There isn't "one" coherent WvW playerbase, there's a lot of people wanting different things. And whatever they do to update / revitalize WvW has to take into account multiple playstyles and not just one.

 

Alliances

... won't be the savior of WvW, unless they can actually restore the community aspect and make players more interested in PPT again. What do they address / balance around? Average PPT / participation. Nothing else (to my knowledge). Currently, match-ups are sometimes quite balanced in regards to overall score, but outside of a few hours in prime time, map participation still differs a lot on most maps. And maps become stagnant when short-term participation of one server heavily outweighs the others. I don't see how this is supposed to change with alliances.

 

Making WvW more enjoyable again

So, while long-term PPT and participation might be better balanced, short term player numbers on maps are not. And while most players aggregate in zergs, the issue with focusing on those is that they quickly establish which side has the upper hand. We need incentives to join and keep playing on maps we are outnumbered on (the removal of the extra pips for the outnumbered buff was the exact opposite of that). We need better rewards for playing in smaller groups. Instead of more overall numerical balance, we need changes to make unbalanced participation more fun & worth our time. Instead of trying to give us a zerg which numbers match the others', reward activities that don't rely on having a matching number of players on the map. Nerf mechanics that favor the bigger zerg, introduce ones that dampen the number advantage. If WvW relies on having similar numbers on the map at all times to be fun, it won't be most of the time.

 

[Sansar.1302]

 

10 minutes ago, Silinsar.6298 said:

Players don't play a multi-faceted game mode anymore, they play multiple game modes that intersect. Zergs want to farm, guilds want to GvG / zergbust, roamers want to roam... this dates way back, but I miss the days when someone would put up a fight on a raid build, or you practiced to hold your own vs thieves on staff ele, just so you could stay alive vs focus groups in GvG. Builds have become more specialized with the expansions. And players know what they are good / bad at, so they tend to avoid taking fights outside their specialty.

 

This is the big flaw in wvw

 

[kash.9213]

There's no character or social development or lived in quality in WvW unless you can log in at a time where the maps are lit up and people are tuned into their builds and team movement. I'm not sure what level of reward will keep people in WvW outside of that window when there's a spectrum of activity and energy. We don't get the rich and ambient setting and interaction or exploration of the rest of the game and it would take a serious amount of funds gained in WvW to make up for that. Yes, there are people who are totally into some focused aspect of WvW who are fine continuing to do that forever, but they need people to engage with perpetually. Fights need to be engaging and have some cinematic quality and be multifaceted so the maps feel alive if WvW is going to continue as a side game and as a match mode. 

Edited November 20, 2022 by kash.9213

[Dawdler.8521]

10 hours ago, Silinsar.6298 said:

I don't see how this is supposed to change with alliances.

World restructure is meant to even out world populations by increasing the resolution of the link system, thats it. Alliances is meant to give us the ability to organize under a "guild" banner without being forced to leave our existing guilds. Thats it.

The final undertone of therefor alliances bad in the post is weird since it has little to do with the improvements desired. Your post can be summed up in two lines:

We need incentives to join and keep playing on maps we are outnumbered on. We need better rewards for playing in smaller groups. 

I agree. I have no idea how to do that without the same old issues of "I dont want you on my border, mah pips!" which is not good encouragement for team gameplay, or how on earth you define the rules of "playing in smaller groups" vs a "large" group (does 4 qualify and then at least 5 you're a zerg?) in order to actually grant those better rewards, but I guess thats another matter.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[SleepyBat.9034]

Roaming died when celestial stats became mainstream and supports became unkillable.

[roederich.2716]

11 minutes ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

Roaming died when celestial stats became mainstream and supports became unkillable.

yes, though the problem is not really celestial but rather the easyness of how some classes can just apply and stack a silly amount of boons onto themselfes within seconds.

Its so easy to ramp up boons that neglecting the defense that celestial provides doesnt make sense.

so you play celestial not because it exists but because you have the total package carried by boons and hybrid damage capability of your class.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

Roaming died when celestial stats became mainstream and supports became unkillable.

Insanely powercreeped elites designed to actually be both power+condi doesnt help either.

[Gorani.7205]

I want to reply to the "multifaceted game mode" part of @Silinsar.6298

Does WvW really support this idea any more? Lets look at the status quo and have a look back in time (and ahead, should we get Alliances any time in the future)
=> Zergs are currently benefiting from boon stacking (as balance does not look to nerf that back down a lot), an abundance of  supply (due to the lack of use of that) and they create both game play impact (via PPK and PPT, because eventually a zerg will have conquered lot of big structures quickly) and individual rewards (flipping the big reward structures more often and killing players more often). Zerg players have always been strong and are necessary for the mode, they don't feel the "drought" like other types though.
=> competitive roamers / duelists are surfing on a wave of over tuned elite specs, that can do too much with hardly little effort (best example is the Mechanist right now, but that one is not the first, Firebrand and Condi Scourge took a similar spot in the past). Playing outside of those specs puts you at a disadvantage that is dis encouraging to most of the players that like roaming, but are not in the top echelons of skill.
=> Other aspects of the "multifaceted game" are either not supported, have been replaced/removed or cut you off from the sub par individual rewards or impact to contribute to your server's score that they are hardly played: static scouts & siege care bears will not earn enough participation if detached from a squad to keep an eye on map areas that are under your control. Speeding up dollies has become a task of an upgrade, not a person. Deciding how and when to upgrade a structure has been replaced by time and not by a player's / commander's vote. Keeping a core of "server friends" has been increasingly difficult by matchmaking with different servers and will very likely reduced to your "core alliance" in the future, because the last "server veterans" will be cut off then. Any meaningful contribution to your server's success outside of "fighting" does not exist (e.g. like harvesting nodes inside a structure also contributes to supply, an ability to poison supply of enemy dolyaks, Skritt/Centaur etc. having an impact on anything when you finish their events etc.). Guild missions are hard to access (even the easy ones require 3 participants) and don't contribute to your score (e.g. like when a guild successfully finishes a build mission, it also adds to the war score)

What kind "multifaceted parts" WvW once had or promised to have is largely gone or has never bloomed.

[Riba.3271]

16 hours ago, Silinsar.6298 said:

 

Players care for different things, and PPT is getting less and less popular. And as a note, with PPT I don't mean just zerging to take a tower or defending one. My fondest memory of actually playing the game mode as a whole (and the way I still think was intended originally) where the reset nights where you had multiple guild groups, havoc squads etc. coordinating and arranging resources / "manpower" across maps, static and mobile scouts / roamers taking care of upgrades, supply and siege, etc...

• Back in the day you would win about half of fair fights as agressor, now you just get clouded to death (claim buff, tactics, tankier lord that scales on defender numbers as well)
• Defending siege was useful, meaning you could buy time to get numbers. Now attackers can just rush in lord room with shield gens or basically any other strategy since arrow carts and trebs deal half the damage to siege now.
• Draining supply is pretty irrelevant now that everything gains supply while upgrading, so essentially on EB or Home map, you will have 2 towers and 1-2 keeps full of supply
• Everything is upgraded now as keeps and castles upgrade several times faster, and as things get upgraded you need more and more players. Guilds below 30 just have trouble with tiered up objectives now that servers are bigger and are limited to capping south towers with any resistance present on map.

 

People would still attempt to capture things, if it was fun for the attacker, but it just isn't strategic or fun anymore. All other scales are gone than open fielding. All WvW is about now is whetever you are stronger than the enemy and if enemy is willing to come outside. PPT is just a chore these days: it isn't strategic, fair, competitive or even relevant anymore.

 

Yes, server system plays a role in why people aren't forced to capture objectives anymore. Actually capturing things punished you with less populated link, or no link at all. But it isn't the reason why players and guilds avoid objectives like plague. For example flipping enemy EB keep is impossible unless you bring a coordinated blob much stronger than enemy. It will just be feeding unorganised cloud bags. Not exactly fun, win or not. And tagging up for defending is boring too since you win so easy and once you go on offense, the difficulty ramps up massively.

 

What they need to do is go fully or halfway back to old system where supply was scarcer, objectives upgraded slower, defenders had no stats, walls were stronger and siege did more damage to siege. Rewards or changing server system won't make it more fun, objectives will still be just about farming or suiciding.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Riba.3271

[Fearless.3569]

12 hours ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

Roaming died when celestial stats became mainstream and supports became unkillable.

 

How did celestial stats destroy the roaming scene? I thought the overpowered Elite Specs that was good at everything did that. 

[enkidu.5937]

On 11/20/2022 at 5:36 AM, Silinsar.6298 said:

My fondest memory of actually playing the game mode as a whole (and the way I still think was intended originally) where the reset nights where you had multiple guild groups, havoc squads etc. coordinating and arranging resources / "manpower" across maps, static and mobile scouts / roamers taking care of upgrades, supply and siege, etc...

That was the overall goal of WvW, to build a team where all these important aspects come together. So you win in the long run and enjoy WvW as a team game. Obviously, as a single player or a guild, most players have no noticeable influence on winning a match that lasts 7 x 24 hours and involves several thousand players.

 

Its not about stacking all your friends together (as in alliances), but more like a partnership, where you can decide with whom you want to intensify personal contant or not. 😁

 

Deleting the servers will just completely kill this game mode design . . . and most likely the game mode as a whole.

 

On 11/20/2022 at 5:36 AM, Silinsar.6298 said:

we need changes to make unbalanced participation more fun & worth our time

Agreed, but. With alliances the regular encounters will be "alliance raid vs. totally randoms". There is no reward that can make this fun for the randoms. Currently, its server pride (and bonus pips) that makes people to assemble for a last stand vs. a superior public zerg. Maybe someone even puts on a com tag, "For the server!", and from time to time, the defenders even manage to drive the blob away. Now that Anet wants to delete server pride, we will not even have scouts that tell us our keep is under attack. Would you scout in a "random team vs. random team vs. random team " scenario, where you don't even know who is on your team or the other two? 😏

[Justine.6351]

5 hours ago, Fearless.3569 said:

 

How did celestial stats destroy the roaming scene? I thought the overpowered Elite Specs that was good at everything did that. 

Condi mirage sealed the fate of roaming.

[Xenesis.6389]

1 hour ago, Justine.6351 said:

Condi mirage sealed the fate of roaming.

Pfft that's funny, the only thing condi mirage did was kept thieves in check, or did everyone forget about condi thieves.

Oh and stuff like ghost thieves did more damage to roaming then anything else ever did.

Roaming turned to garbage long before them or even celestial or even before warclaw as some would claim.

[Sviel.7493]

On 11/19/2022 at 10:36 PM, Silinsar.6298 said:

My fondest memory of actually playing the game mode as a whole (and the way I still think was intended originally) where the reset nights where you had multiple guild groups, havoc squads etc. coordinating and arranging resources / "manpower" across maps, static and mobile scouts / roamers taking care of upgrades, supply and siege, etc...

...

Instead of more overall numerical balance, we need changes to make unbalanced participation more fun & worth our time. Instead of trying to give us a zerg which numbers match the others', reward activities that don't rely on having a matching number of players on the map. Nerf mechanics that favor the bigger zerg, introduce ones that dampen the number advantage. If WvW relies on having similar numbers on the map at all times to be fun, it won't be most of the time.

 

 

This is it.  This is the thing I most want Anet to acknowledge because that means there is some reason to have hope.

 

To be clear, I think alliances are a positive step in that direction as they allow for significantly better long-term population balance, but they don't solve the short-term population imbalance and aren't meant to.  Since that is an issue that cannot be changed in the WvW format, it must be designed around--the game must be fun even with temporary population imbalance.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Sviel.7493

[Justine.6351]

1 hour ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Pfft that's funny, the only thing condi mirage did was kept thieves in check, or did everyone forget about condi thieves.

Oh and stuff like ghost thieves did more damage to roaming then anything else ever did.

Roaming turned to garbage long before them or even celestial or even before warclaw as some would claim.

There were 10x more condi mirages than there were ever condi thieves.

[Dreams.3128]

21 hours ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

Roaming died when celestial stats became mainstream and supports became unkillable.

On the flip side though, WvW went through its annoying times where folks were always getting oneshot either by full zerk mesmers and full zerk thieves, so you just had to eat it and move on. Same with condi when scourge and fireband were RAMPANT and fresh off the market. Scourges could basically 1v1 folks and if you even thought of touching one of their AOEs, well you better have at least two or three condi cleanses on your bars.

I think with the update to cele and then folks getting drained from the constant 'oneshot' eras either through power or condi (condi less of a literal one shot and moreso condi dump), folks started to fall back on cele to essentially fight back against those two things. I just believe people didn't anticipate cele would come back stronger than ever now that defensive stats actually mean something something.

[Trebuidoi.4701]

I wouldn't even say Celestial is the real problem for roaming. It's also the specs that just aren't fun to play against. I.e. Tempest, Catalyst, Herald, Dragon Hunter, Willbender, and Untamed. And the fact the number one suggestion for people new to the scene is to bring a buddy. Even Rifle/gs berserker becomes a lot more scary when he is free casting on you while you fight his 50% uptime invuln Catalyst gf. That's probably the real reason people run Cele and Dire.

 

Until Xv1ing stops being fun for the groups, we won't be returning to the old days of just seeing people bow and duel with non-kittenous stats and reset ability. And bystanders actually just observing.

 

So do what you got to do to actually have a chance in 1vx.

[Xenesis.6389]

5 hours ago, Justine.6351 said:

There were 10x more condi mirages than there were ever condi thieves.

Exaggerate much?

Btw thieves were always a hard counter to mesmers, there was always more thieves than mesmers in the roaming scene.

Mirage was a blip on time where they could hard counter a thief.

Ghost thief.

One shot Backstab thief.

Condi spam thief. (I even took it out for a spin for a few months with the double mark confusion spam deadeye, hmmm wonder why that got nerfed to bleed instead)

Heck even ratwell thief.

Wanna know when roaming really started dying? here June 23rd 2015 Boon and Condition major rework

Wanna know when the final nails started hitting the coffin? here Feb 25th 2020 Major Damage reduction pushing Support ahead and here Feb 28th 2022 EoD new mobile condi spam elite specs

Here's the final nail. Oct 28th 2022 WvW Balance philosophy does not even mention Roamer

I expect sad emotes over there -->

Edited November 21, 2022 by Xenesis.6389

[Silinsar.6298]

On 11/20/2022 at 4:09 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

The final undertone of therefor alliances bad in the post is weird since it has little to do with the improvements desired.

 

I'm looking forward to alliances, I hope they change something for the better, but they don't address the core issue imo. That's the point I was trying to make.

 

On 11/20/2022 at 4:09 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

I agree. I have no idea how to do that without the same old issues of "I dont want you on my border, mah pips!" which is not good encouragement for team gameplay, or how on earth you define the rules of "playing in smaller groups" vs a "large" group (does 4 qualify and then at least 5 you're a zerg?) in order to actually grant those better rewards, but I guess thats another matter.

 

Base rewards for doing events / getting kills in WvW could remain, and scaling extra loot / XP / gold etc. be introduced that you get when there are fewer than X participants (regarding the event / kill, not map-wide). Keeps could provide extra rewards for groups <30, towers for ones <15 , camps and kills for ones <5 etc. (just making some numbers up). It could even be a dynamic system depending on players and enemies on the map.

I know "reducing" rewards for big zergs somewhat goes against the spirit of cooperation, but risk, effort and time required should be taken into account. Mono-zerging being the most rewarding activity by far doesn't facilitate a fun matchup imo. I like that GW2 offers full rewards for everyone in PvE, but there the scaling of enemies matters and ensures the challenge also gets bumped up a bit. In WvW big groups however make things much easier and faster, so the reward system needs adjustment.

[Justine.6351]

6 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Exaggerate much?

Btw thieves were always a hard counter to mesmers, there was always more thieves than mesmers in the roaming scene.

Mirage was a blip on time where they could hard counter a thief.

Ghost thief.

One shot Backstab thief.

Condi spam thief. (I even took it out for a spin for a few months with the double mark confusion spam deadeye, hmmm wonder why that got nerfed to bleed instead)

Heck even ratwell thief.

Wanna know when roaming really started dying? here June 23rd 2015 Boon and Condition major rework

Wanna know when the final nails started hitting the coffin? here Feb 25th 2020 Major Damage reduction pushing Support ahead and here Feb 28th 2022 EoD new mobile condi spam elite specs

Here's the final nail. Oct 28th 2022 WvW Balance philosophy does not even mention Roamer

I expect sad emotes over there -->

Well see I actually roam so I know mirage kitten on roaming so bad and just how many roamers decided to join the condi mirage bandwagon. Condi mirage was a couple year "blip", but that was all it took. People figured out that if you can do moderate damage with high survivability with minimal effort you could do well. And here we are today with celestial everything because that's what celestial is, moderate damage with easy survivability.

[Xenesis.6389]

1 hour ago, Justine.6351 said:

Well see I actually roam so I know mirage kitten on roaming so bad and just how many roamers decided to join the condi mirage bandwagon. Condi mirage was a couple year "blip", but that was all it took. People figured out that if you can do moderate damage with high survivability with minimal effort you could do well. And here we are today with celestial everything because that's what celestial is, moderate damage with easy survivability.

Yeah I roamed too, on mirage both power and condi, did it need toning down? yes, did it need to lose a dodge? no.

Kinda funny, you haven't denied any of my thief statements.

Only that yeah but there were more mirage! - not true, certainly not on the level of like a mechanist you're making it out to be, THAT was 10x more than everyone.

For a couple years! - Pfft if that.

Meanwhile thieves ruled roaming for a much longer time, stealth abuse basically killed roaming, when players got mounts who cried first about it, thieves, I wonder why.

Oh noes mirage had moderate damage with high survivability, meanwhile thieves had high damage with high survivability through stealth abuse fast ttk and mobility.

Roaming was dying before mirage was even created.

[Justine.6351]

4 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Yeah I roamed too, on mirage both power and condi, did it need toning down? yes, did it need to lose a dodge? no.

Kinda funny, you haven't denied any of my thief statements.

Only that yeah but there were more mirage! - not true, certainly not on the level of like a mechanist you're making it out to be, THAT was 10x more than everyone.

For a couple years! - Pfft if that.

Meanwhile thieves ruled roaming for a much longer time, stealth abuse basically killed roaming, when players got mounts who cried first about it, thieves, I wonder why.

Oh noes mirage had moderate damage with high survivability, meanwhile thieves had high damage with high survivability through stealth abuse fast ttk and mobility.

Roaming was dying before mirage was even created.

I ignored your thief comments because I farmed thieves so didn't understand your argument and dismissed you as not knowing what you were talking about.

[Xenesis.6389]

Just now, Justine.6351 said:

I ignored your thief comments because I farmed thieves so didn't understand your argument and dismissed you as not knowing what you were talking about.

Cool same goes for you.

[Justine.6351]

1 minute ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Cool same goes for you.

and stop writing essays while you are at it

[Xenesis.6389]

Just now, Justine.6351 said:

and stop writing essays while you are at it

No