World vs. World: January 31 Update Preview

[Sugar Min.5834]

I like the kitty chain pull damage buff. And, it would be great if ANet could bring back the kitty speedier movements on own territories. Now that you are going to buff assaulter functions at least let the defenders have a better chance to run away alive 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️ That's what my server do most of the time. Run!

Edited January 27, 2023 by Min Min.9368

[SFShinigami.1572]

The only people that ever use the warclaw pull are the ones doing it for achievement points. It is a colossal waste of supplies and most people understand that.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

suggestions in no particular order:

 

1) Alpine needs more non-scoring objectives... like the shrines available around the desert map's keeps...

2) after 1 above is solved, then those shrines that are non-scoring could be enhanced to reward warscore upon capture

3) the mercenaries in the upper corners of the bordeland maps need to be counted as mercenaries

4) rewards need to be given to encourage fights in the mercenary zones, including the upper corners of the borderland maps, because (especially on alpine) these zones are practically wasted space

5) bridges need to be updated to be destructible / repairable

6) more masteries should be added (such as Nuhoch Wallows for "fast travel"), could be tied to control of existing objectives, or new objectives could be added for control of the Wallows.

7) when a team (red, blue, green) receives the outnumbered buff, the team should be able to spawn a legendary champion (this could be a special golem suit unable to siege objectives, but with increased telegraphed damage, pulsing stability, and maybe even large AoE CCs) obviously this would be overpowered as soon as a large squad enters the map to balance numbers, so there would be a timer of de-spawn as soon as the buff disappears, such as the suit de-spawns after 1 minute of the buff disappearing, i'm thinking 5 minutes maximum de-spawn timer

8) ruins / bloodlust needs to be tweaked. as the ruins are meaningful objectives but reward very little participation, and capturing bloodlust rewards zero participation (its a separate timer), while capturing either rewards zero warscore.

9) GUILD MISSIONS: i find it rediculous that all WvW missions (except rank) require at least 3 guild participants, when a) camp capture and escorting dolyaks can be accomplished solo, and b) PvE missions such as challenge and race, which recommend 15 participants, can be completed without requiring 3 participants of the same guild

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Rubi Bayer.8493, thank you for sharing this. As always pass along to Cecil and Floyd my gratitude for their work and their effort.

Some commentary on what they have in the article:

• Conceptually I like the weekly achievement, but I think they lowballed the rewards here.  WvW is already not very rewarding for the time spent playing. They could easily make it 8g per achievement in the list of 10 and WvW would still lag behind the other game modes in wealth/hour.
• I like the addition of an extra source of skirmish tickets but this did not address the need for a sink for them for long term players, nor did it address the need for a sink for the Emblems that have been accruing. A daily/weekly merchant to exchange these items for others would solve this problem. There is a lovely thread on the forums with ideas that they can use freely.
• The Siege changes are a great start. Please also buff Arrow Carts and Cannons. Defending ALSO needs to be rewarding.
• The Warclaw changes will do nothing. For the Warclaw please consider revoking some of the nerfs that it has suffered since release. Things like adding bleed back to it's engage, and adding the third evade back.

Thanks for listening and I hope Cecil and Floyd listen to some of the constructive feedback and make some needed adjustments after this goes live.

[Pagan Highlander.5948]

     Unfortunately, they don't address two issues with WvW. Emblem of the Conquerer and Emblem of the Avenger are worthless! You only need them to make Conflux, yet we keep getting the dang things. Make it where you can either sell them like junk or where we can exchange them for something useful like Memories of Battle.

   Second, Skirmish tickets become basically useless after making your Legendary Armor, Backpiece, and confluxes. Please Give us other stuff to purchase with Skirmish Tickets, be it Guild Siege, Blue Siege, Weapon and Armor Skins, or possibly exchange them for Statuettes, Badges of tribute. Something please (I currently have like 60,000 Skirmish tickets and everything legendary). 

    Give us a decent WvW economy please!

[vectorfox.6894]

Very happy to see rewards being looked at before alliances come out since it will atleast occasionally bring in more people. I wonder though if there was a simpler and better way of implementing them than weeklies. Now obviously i know nothing of what the code looks like or what you can easily implement but can you track the number of objectives and their tiers?

If so tie a reward to both holding an objective and improve the reward based on its tier, the more you own and is tiered up the more rewards you get every tick, this could be liquid gold, memories of battle or some other reward. If you did implement this you could heavily incentivize proper play and give comparable PvE hourly gold for whatever threshold you see fit whether that for owning everything or just being moderately ahead.

The issue with weeklies is that once someone does them why would they continue killing yaks or going out of there way to take a keep if lets say they are a roamer. Again very happy you are taking a look but please continue to build on this and find better alternatives BEFORE alliances come out.

[Metzie.9083]

4 hours ago, Beorne.9248 said:

New Weekly Achievements

We’re ADDING a set of weekly achievements that reward players for active and positive contribution to World vs. World—for example, capturing objectives, taking down dolyaks, and defeating enemy players. Completing these achievements each week will reward players with 8 gold and up to 35 additional WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets (a ~10% increase in max weekly tickets). The weekly gold reward will only require completion of six out of seven of the achievements to give players flexibility in how they complete the weekly meta-achievement. These achievements will reset every Sunday at 11:30 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8).

Ok so now we are losing gold per week. Allow me to explain. Under the current system we complete 3 daily wvw objectives and earn 2 gold/day.  2 gold/day x  7 days=14 gold. Under the new system we will earn 8 gold for completing 6 of 7 weekly objectives? That is a loss of 6 gold/week. If anything the weekly amount needs to be increased(especially since you can earn more in the other 2 game modes) rather than decreased

The information contains the word ADD, not REPLACE. 

What result, after the new knowledge and recalculation, do you come to?

Edited January 28, 2023 by Metzie.9083

[Metzie.9083]

8 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Learn about the latest in WvW development from the Guild Wars 2 team!

 

I would welcome it if the standard models (option) also included the warclaw. This was probably not taken into account when it was introduced. In any case, it would help ... not to go completely blind at some point. 😑😎

[SlateSloan.3654]

I want to point herewith towards the EoD reward track.

To improve rewards in wvw the EoD reward track shall contain an antique summoning stone in the last chest of the reward track.

100 of these stones are needed to craft a legendary gen3 weapon.

Considering a pve player can obtain one stone per day by doing an 1,5-2 hours meta the 8 hours wvw EoD reward track should even reward 4 stones in it‘s endchest.

such essential material to make an legendary weapon must be obtainable in wvw.

[Alsandar.7420]

Dear Devs,

Sorry all the comments are so negative. Thank you for for giving WvW some tlc. 
Best wishes,

A former WvW player

[Lys.1396]

As mentioned by others, please find a way to balance WvW rewards so that healers get credits for kills. This has been an issue for years. My guild has played for 10 years (WANG) and despite similar playing time to other guildmates, their rankings are much higher than our healers, including myself. The new weekly WvW achievements further alienates healers, as the 8g reward will be harder for us to receive.

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

that is a nice step in the right direction, not game changing but it is ok. now it would be nice if you target to get new players into wvw by considering the pvp stats and equipment rules for wvw.

So many newer players leave rapidly because to be effective in roaming you have so many things as a pre requirement or to consider like buff food or the right equipment just make it as easy to enter as spvp and bring fresh blood into the mode

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Not sure about some of the changes, but its a step in the right direction (and atleast it's an actual WvW update). I really hope the supplies in towers/keeps wont be nerfed to much. As soon as you get double teamed and are not able to insta kill the enemies you can only survive by draining your sups. I also highly doubt people will suddenly start sieging up towers now. Also there are enough ways to properly drain supplies right now anyways. The dominant WvW server will still have more then enough supply due to their higher amount of camps/towers/keeps that are relatively well guarded while a weaker server will lose their base alot faster if its being properly pushed. 

 

Also can you please increase the mount speed by like ~50% in the desert Borderlands? The main reason the map is barely used is a lack of fights due to map size & verticality. I understand reducing the map size will be difficult, but increasing player movement speed is definitely doable id say. 

[eXruina.4956]

thank you for the extra 8g a week, but please sir, may we have some more. 🥺💰💕

 

*tiny violin plays in the background 🎻🎶

[vrauns.3215]

14 hours ago, SFShinigami.1572 said:

The only people that ever use the warclaw pull are the ones doing it for achievement points. It is a colossal waste of supplies and most people understand that.

Did you not read the post, they said they want people using it more.

[Gehenna.3625]

20 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Learn about the latest in WvW development from the Guild Wars 2 team!

 

Hi Rubi,

Some of these changes will have to prove themselves though I'm saddened that the focus is still on offense. The reason I say that is becauses defending is not really rewarded at all and it's an aspect that I and others really enjoy. However, none of the defensive stuff gets rewarded with participation and that makes it a thankless job.

Now, the ram bug fix is nice, but there are so many other things that I would like to see addressed and I don't feel they're even on your radar. There are way too many exploits in WvW.

I mean things like player aoe's being centered on top of walls as far as the back of the walls and a week ago I saw something new: player aoe's behind walls in the middle of the ground floor of the tower.

And then there's the catapult exploit. You may not see it as an exploit and say it's working as intended, but I respectfully disagree. What I'm talking about is catapults being put up right against the walls. This has two advantages for the attacking team: more damage per second and reduced ability for defenders to hit the catapults. This is an exploit that you allow imo, because catapults are ranged weapons normally and they hit with an aoe (which can be exploited in other ways). But putting them so close to the wall means they actually hit and SHOULD damage themselves because of the aoe. Of course there's no friendly fire in GW2 but that is what makes this an exploit as I see it.

And I think that the damage for just tapping the skill button to fire is way too high for that. Catapults need to build up tension to be able to hit with any power at all. Sure, I get that this is a game, but come on..

I mentioned the aoe of cata's being exploited themselves. For example, you can hit Langor Gulch from below by just hitting it with a cata at against the cliff by the south wall. This will actually do damage to the wall.  Jerrifer's Slough can be damaged by cata's from the west side in a niche. It shouldn'be able to hit the damageable parts of the west wall from there but you can.

All in all, I submit to you that your physics are sloppy at best in WvW and are easily exploited. People are standing inside corners like those of Mendon's Gap and from there they can drop aoe's where they shouldn't really be able to. I mean why use defensive siege at all, if exploits make them useless?

So I ask you to please consider these exploits as I see them. Why give all the advantages to the attacker? What's the point of objectives then? You might as well just fight in the open field.

And I'll give you one good reason for bolstering the defense side: server imbalances. A lot of the time the attackers outnumbers the defenders. That has to do with various reasons but that's the reality I see. And so the defenders really should have a chance against the attackers, if indeed they prepared their defenses.

But with all the benefits being on the side of the attackers, it's impossible to defend against boonballs. Especially when they outnumber you. Now I'm not saying that defenders should be able to hold against a zerg of 50 when they number 10. But I do think it would be more fair to at least be able to hold and fend off up to double their numbers. 

When that's not possible, and again, with having enough siege prepared, it shouldn't be easy, people give up. Why would they try to defend? And why would they go on the offense when they know that they're outnumbered anyways? 

For me, this is one of the reasons why WvW is failing its population. 

Thanks for reading this, if you did.

[Doggie.3184]

1 hour ago, eXruina.4956 said:

thank you for the extra 8g a week, but please sir, may we have some more. 🥺💰💕

 

*tiny violin plays in the background 🎻🎶

Surprised it doesn't match other activities to = 2g a day, thus 14g a week.

Also why not just uncap the Diamond Chest like it is for Spvp Pip chests and allow repeating it for Tickets? 

[MuscleBobBuffPants.1406]

1 hour ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Hi Rubi,

Some of these changes will have to prove themselves though I'm saddened that the focus is still on offense. The reason I say that is becauses defending is not really rewarded at all and it's an aspect that I and others really enjoy. However, none of the defensive stuff gets rewarded with participation and that makes it a thankless job.

Now, the ram bug fix is nice, but there are so many other things that I would like to see addressed and I don't feel they're even on your radar. There are way too many exploits in WvW.

I mean things like player aoe's being centered on top of walls as far as the back of the walls and a week ago I saw something new: player aoe's behind walls in the middle of the ground floor of the tower.

And then there's the catapult exploit. You may not see it as an exploit and say it's working as intended, but I respectfully disagree. What I'm talking about is catapults being put up right against the walls. This has two advantages for the attacking team: more damage per second and reduced ability for defenders to hit the catapults. This is an exploit that you allow imo, because catapults are ranged weapons normally and they hit with an aoe (which can be exploited in other ways). But putting them so close to the wall means they actually hit and SHOULD damage themselves because of the aoe. Of course there's no friendly fire in GW2 but that is what makes this an exploit as I see it.

And I think that the damage for just tapping the skill button to fire is way too high for that. Catapults need to build up tension to be able to hit with any power at all. Sure, I get that this is a game, but come on..

I mentioned the aoe of cata's being exploited themselves. For example, you can hit Langor Gulch from below by just hitting it with a cata at against the cliff by the south wall. This will actually do damage to the wall.  Jerrifer's Slough can be damaged by cata's from the west side in a niche. It shouldn'be able to hit the damageable parts of the west wall from there but you can.

All in all, I submit to you that your physics are sloppy at best in WvW and are easily exploited. People are standing inside corners like those of Mendon's Gap and from there they can drop aoe's where they shouldn't really be able to. I mean why use defensive siege at all, if exploits make them useless?

So I ask you to please consider these exploits as I see them. Why give all the advantages to the attacker? What's the point of objectives then? You might as well just fight in the open field.

And I'll give you one good reason for bolstering the defense side: server imbalances. A lot of the time the attackers outnumbers the defenders. That has to do with various reasons but that's the reality I see. And so the defenders really should have a chance against the attackers, if indeed they prepared their defenses.

But with all the benefits being on the side of the attackers, it's impossible to defend against boonballs. Especially when they outnumber you. Now I'm not saying that defenders should be able to hold against a zerg of 50 when they number 10. But I do think it would be more fair to at least be able to hold and fend off up to double their numbers. 

When that's not possible, and again, with having enough siege prepared, it shouldn't be easy, people give up. Why would they try to defend? And why would they go on the offense when they know that they're outnumbered anyways? 

For me, this is one of the reasons why WvW is failing its population. 

Thanks for reading this, if you did.

 

I hope they read your post my friend!  The boon ball question will be the make or break for the WvW team in many ways.  Even when you fix the population balance problem , understanding the dynamics of boon balls, how to create engaging fights and not just people spamming stability until the cows come home.  Creating incentives for people to actually fight over objectives too and not just nascaring around the whole map and avoiding each other.  Encourage people and reward people NOT just for participation but for taking RISKS.  Encourage people to take a keep even if it is dangerous because the high risk/reward situations make WvW FUN.  Those are my best memories of frantically running around using my siege equipment trying to save a keep, calling for reinforcements, fighting people off and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but man is it FUN. 

Encourage actual siege fights and battles,  siege is fun when you actually engage in a battle like you are trying to down a wall but you are fighting people off and dealing with other things.  Instead of just catapulting a wall from nowhere without any fight or engagement.  Encourage people to fight in certain areas or certain objectives.  Maybe every 30 minutes the server can set an objective for people to fight over like keeps or a castle or maybe a certain area that people need to fight to take for extra rewards etc.  Make it like a hot spot for the next hour and encourage people to fight over it.  Heck you can make a camp hot spot, that would be fun to see people massively battling over a hot spot camp.  Or maybe make multiple hot spots at the same time so zergs will need to separate and prioritize things.  When we talk about making WvW rewarding, reward GOOD BEHAVIOR.  Reward that behavior of playing WvW like a battle or siege.  Not just rewarding people nascaring around without fighting people and avoiding each other.

 

Combine all this with skills and class balance, and WvW would be a FANTASTIC game mode. 

 

Let's see if they do listen!

 

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by MuscleBobBuffPants.1406

[Dayra.7405]

2 hours ago, eXruina.4956 said:

thank you for the extra 8g a week, but please sir, may we have some more. 🥺💰

 

Yeah it really helps to make WvW income competitive to PvE-income, like

• Dragon Stand around 30g (2 cash + 2.5 Aurene Memories) per week for around 15min a day
• Battle for the Jade-Sea 70g (4 for the Stone, 6 for Aurene Memories) per week for around 50min a day
• Fratals T4+rec 100g (just the NPC-sellable garbage and Chiffres) per Week for around 1-1.5h a day
• non-CM EoD Strikes 12g a week for less than an hour per week
• ...

Edited January 28, 2023 by Dayra.7405

[Zyreva.1078]

14 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

 For the Warclaw please consider revoking some of the nerfs that it has suffered since release. Things like adding bleed back to it's engage, and adding the third evade back.

It got nerfed for a reason and should never get buffed back again.

[DobyCool.3701]

When designing the reward of WvW, pls keep in mind of Glory.  Expectably that we are going to change into guild based matching, so make the Glory part of the reward.  For example, a statue of the winning guild leader in LA or WvW zoom. Some kind of small extra reward to each guild member. 

[Baldrick.8967]

So the solution is to make it even easier to K-train and even more pointless to try and defend?

 

It's high time they changed the whole system within wvw so that the more players a spell touches the stronger it gets to stop boon balling.  All standing in one spot?  Boom you're dead.  Easily coded by adding damage per person the skill hits within a defined area: you can tweak the area so it's not too outrageous.

 

But back to epic siege fights and defences: nope, now you can just charge in and not even bother with rams, just warclaw the gate down in seconds...meanwhile those brave defenders get zero reward so why bother?

[BATMAN.6794]

I like the idea of weekly rewards, but it's going to do nothing if you can log in to wvw for an hour and get them done, doesn't keep any one coming back for the rest of the week.

 

We all know the only true way you're going to get people interested in WvW again is to actually make a good map( desert map was bad). The debatable part is going to be if you remove desert map or keep it and remove 1 of the alpine maps so that there's 3 different maps and EBG. Personally I'd go with the 3 different map strategy.

 

Now I know you aren't going to do a new WvW map until after Alliances which is unfortunate, so you're best strategy should be focused on rewards, then class balance, then probably more tweaks to things like you mentioned, supply at camps, harder to kill yaks, maybe take a look at reducing camp RI time, take a look at cooldowns for tactics, take another look at how much your rank affects how many pips you get and lowering the time it takes to get through your weekly chests, take a look at reducing each tick from 5 mins, there's a lot to experiment with, just start doing any of it.

[Nidome.1365]

I was hoping for an update that would improve WvW and yet again I am disappointed. They were advertised as improvements and upon analysis they appear to be the opposite. I have to ask if the devs responsible for this play WvW regularly outside of mindless blobbing? It seems they understand their players less than WotC understood theirs

The changes to supply and siege to WvW will just promote mindless blobbing even more and punish intelligent and tactical play. They way this is going they may as well remove gates entirely.

An extra 8 gold and extra skirmish tickets do not compensate for the changes. You can earn ten times as much gold in an hour of fractals and the extra skirmish tickets just gets you to the point where they become a virtually worthless currency slightly sooner, a position that most regular players have already reached. I myself have over 60k Skirmish tickets left and nothing worthwhile to spend them on any more except for an ascended salvage kit every couple of months.

 

What we really need is the re-instatement of participation for defending and maybe siege use. More options for the spending of skirmish tickets would also be useful, possibly conversion into other currencies from other game modes maybe?

 

Give us something useful, not the total opposite. But then what do I know? I've only been playing WvW for over 10 years.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Nidome.1365

[Nidome.1365]

2 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

Surprised it doesn't match other activities to = 2g a day, thus 14g a week.

Also why not just uncap the Diamond Chest like it is for Spvp Pip chests and allow repeating it for Tickets? 

 

I would point out that once you reach a certain point that tickets become a virtually worthless currency.