Improve wvw content by curbing toxic play

[Piney.3076]

Guessing that wvw participation is down. There was that panic wvw patch hoping to fix... something. Feels like that didn't work. 

 

PROBABLE CAUSE: toxic play. "I want them to quit and never play again!" drools one fanatic. Real quote, got an alt on a demented server and read that. That is the intent, and unfortunately it does seem to work. Groups do need a place and some time to form (look at every meta mechanic). Denying that time and place discourages that formation. I know for a fact, my server is split 50/50 on how to avoid a toxic server. It is a terrible long term idea, because participation dries up and then wvw dies. 

MECHANISM: toxic play is accomplished by leveraging superior numbers to take and fully fortify every objective, then using that siege to spawn camp. Every wvw is specifically designed to make this very, very easy. There is no home advantage. Each side does not have a secret entrance to their own home territory. Outnumbered gives no tactical advantage. Siegerazor and Siegecrusher are jokes, they don't last a second. And! The spawn of the struggling team cannot even deploy siege. It is all specifically designed to give an even stronger advantage to greater numbers. There is no point to adding rewards if one of the sides cannot leave spawn to obtain those rewards. That was a pointless change.

SOLUTION: just tone it down a bit. Add a home advantage to literally any, maybe all of the mechanisms of toxic play. Have outnumbered pulse buffs and a damage bonus. Give fk lord level cc abilities to siegecrusher and siege razor. Allow siege deployment in spawn (not so far it can be used to defend). Limit siege deployment in objectives when not owned by their "home" server. Make a secret entrance to garrison and home towers that only the home team can use. 

Basically add "scaling". Add a range of fortification difficulty. Then let the teams naturally move to a more even fight. Make home garrison the toughest. Home ebg keep 2nd toughest. Think fk lord cc, more. Leave the rest, the fight will settle where it may.

With a more even fight and rewards to be had, more should play.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Piney.3076

[neven.3785]

 This sort of behaviour has happened since this game launched in the off hours.  There was such disparity in player bases that some of the servers did just as you describe.   Grab everything and upgrade it, siege camp certain servers spawns and what not.

 

While I don't agree with the griefer mentality of making people quit, what has happened in NA is the fault of the top servers, not a singular one.   They have the population to get to t1 so they are not that outnumbered.  Some groups will be outskilled, outnumbered or simply hard countered by different playstyles.  It is part of WvW and that is healthy.

 

 Them choosing to not log in (or play alt accounts to spite people), is what made it so bad.  When 3-4 maps are going strong, generally only one map may deal with the skill disparity while the other 2-3 actually have a fun night.     When enough groups decide to boycott, they actually ruin it for their teammates more than the opponents since they are forcing a population disparity on them causing them to now be outnumbered.

 

If you are talking about EU, the same holds true.

[Piney.3076]

Intentionally did not mention names. Have seen several servers do this, been on both sides. Sounds like we agree the boycott and lack of wvw content definitely happens. It feels good to "win" at first but slowly you realize there is nothing to do. Some more slowly than others so it takes a while.

Point is, lack of participation isn't desirable in the long term. So mechanics that *cause* lack of participation should be curbed. It is in no one's interest, game or players. So put mechanics in place to encourage fair fights between otherwise mismatched teams.

[Chaba.5410]

48 minutes ago, Piney.3076 said:

"I want them to quit and never play again!" drools one fanatic. Real quote, got an alt on a demented server and read that. That is the intent, and unfortunately it does seem to work.

Really?  You were able to discern intent from one text-based quote on "a demented server" where players routinely engage in ironic banter?  I bet they're having a good laugh reading your post here now.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[Xenesis.6389]

Meh anet doesn't care.

There is no proper mechanic in place to make the two weakest go after the strongest, a decade of snowballing strongest vs weakest.

Outnumbered does nothing but give you a better chance at a loot drop, when you're already struggling to get kills for that loot, because you're /drumroll "outnumbered".

The game is constantly balanced to reward organized blobs. They've nerfed everything from aoes, to boon strips, to siege.

The siege commanders are useless when enemy numbers are present, spawning walmart siege, and haven't been updated in like a decade.

Their balancing has made certain roaming specs overbearing now with mobility out the yahoo, especially gankers, especially from a certain server, love to make use of those.

Stacked server getting a link causing trouble again, shocking.

Toxic play? eh part of the game, nothing is being done illegally, that type of game play has been in the game from the beginning not just from a certain server.

Boatload of bad mechanics that ensure it's harder for you to get back up.

Most of those solutions won't do much, when players don't want to play against the server that shall not be named, regardless, numbers win, always did, always have, always will.

[Piney.3076]

56 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

"I want them to quit and never play again!" drools one fanatic.

If you take offence at this, if you identify with this, that says more about you. Most will eventually realize that this kind of play leads to boycotts and lack of content. There will be short term gains from server transfers, then a dead game mode.

Relax, not saying to *remove* all toxic elements. Just to curb them so they don't actually strangle the content and mode dead. As I and others have noted

35 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Boatload of bad mechanics that ensure it's harder for you to get back up.

Every single meta includes a "gathering" phase where players group up. This is what makes an mmo interesting. What's the point otherwise, go play Zelda. Actively discouraging that phase discourages participation and ruins the whole mode. 

Even the toxic players actually want this long term. If no one plays, who will you be toxic at?

Edited February 7, 2023 by Piney.3076

[Chaba.5410]

22 minutes ago, Piney.3076 said:

If you take offence at this, if you identify with this, that says more about you. Most will eventually realize that this kind of play leads to boycotts and lack of content. There will be short term gains from server transfers, then a dead game mode.

Yea, *if* I take offense at it, what you said would be true.  But I didn't, so now what?  What does that have to do with my question about how you are able to discern intent from text chat?  I don't see text chat as proof of anything.  You believe everything that people type in chat?

The spawncamping, the "mechanism", on the other hand, is a far more useful discussion to be had and can be identified as a form of play that can be considered to disincentivize players.  I don't think it is necessary to seek some sort of cause in chat for it.  It's something the game allows given current mechanics.

[oatsnjuices.1698]

My block button works pretty good. It's better just to block and forget. 

[Dieselface.5193]

2 hours ago, Piney.3076 said:

Every single meta includes a "gathering" phase where players group up. This is what makes an mmo interesting. What's the point otherwise, go play Zelda. Actively discouraging that phase discourages participation and ruins the whole mode. 

Even the toxic players actually want this long term. If no one plays, who will you be toxic at?

Why do you need a "gathering" phase to perform well? On the servers I play on people just leave spawn and look for fights. Even when forming groups you don't need to all gather up in a keep. It sounds like treating WvW only as a game mode where you're supposed to follow a commander is what's really killing the game for you. 

[neven.3785]

We gather in guild hall.   What else would it be used for otherwise 

[Piney.3076]

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

The spawncamping, the "mechanism", on the other hand, is a far more useful discussion to be had and can be identified as a form of play that can be considered to disincentivize players.  I don't think it is necessary to seek some sort of cause in chat for it.  It's something the game allows given current mechanics.

That's us agreeing then. I care about a solution that does not discourage wvw play. I don't care about the cause, just speculating. 

 

24 minutes ago, Dieselface.5193 said:

Why do you need a "gathering" phase to perform well?

When facing a vastly larger force camping a heavily fortified spawn, yes, you need a gathering phase. Guy logs on, sees insurmountable odds, logs off. Even numbers never gather. And in fact better numbers are required because the mechanics heavily punish the less numerous side. If the mechanics did not do that, less of a gathering phase would required.

It's part of every meta. Think silverwastes fortification. Dragon's end. Always a gathering phase. So the mmo is actually massive and not just single player. 

[Heibi.4251]

Well, you currently have an active multiple server action of avoiding going up to a certain tier due to the toxicity of the green server in that tier. In the lower servers it is "how can we make another sever go up while we stay down without dropping".  It is happening right now. That is one reason that you can see population drops on over 16 of 24 servers. Everyone is tired of a certain server's actions and toxic play. But as we have seen ANET really and truly doesn't care. Instead they increased the attacking server's ability to take objectives. Anyway, this does not bode well for the NA servers. Action must be taken.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Heibi.4251

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Really?  You were able to discern intent from one text-based quote on "a demented server" where players routinely engage in ironic banter?  I bet they're having a good laugh reading your post here now.

 

Yes, it's pretty easy to discern the intent of Mag without even text quotes.  The only fighting when they outnumber and still throwing siege tells you that, no words needed.

In general though, anet proved this last patch they are on a hot path to just toxic k-train land.  It was probably easier just to give up balancing WvW altogether and attempt to cover it with 8g then actually fixing the root cause.  

And no, the root cause isn't Mag, they are just enabled by it.  The cause being rampant ignoring of boonballs, rampant ignoring of smallscale balance, and buffing offense so t3 keep caps only take 3 minutes instead of 4.  

Edited February 7, 2023 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Atticus.7194]

8 hours ago, Piney.3076 said:

Guessing that wvw participation is down. There was that panic wvw patch hoping to fix... something. Feels like that didn't work. 

 

PROBABLE CAUSE: toxic play. "I want them to quit and never play again!" drools one fanatic. Real quote, got an alt on a demented server and read that. That is the intent, and unfortunately it does seem to work. Groups do need a place and some time to form (look at every meta mechanic). Denying that time and place discourages that formation. I know for a fact, my server is split 50/50 on how to avoid a toxic server. It is a terrible long term idea, because participation dries up and then wvw dies. 

MECHANISM: toxic play is accomplished by leveraging superior numbers to take and fully fortify every objective, then using that siege to spawn camp. Every wvw is specifically designed to make this very, very easy. There is no home advantage. Each side does not have a secret entrance to their own home territory. Outnumbered gives no tactical advantage. Siegerazor and Siegecrusher are jokes, they don't last a second. And! The spawn of the struggling team cannot even deploy siege. It is all specifically designed to give an even stronger advantage to greater numbers. There is no point to adding rewards if one of the sides cannot leave spawn to obtain those rewards. That was a pointless change.

SOLUTION: just tone it down a bit. Add a home advantage to literally any, maybe all of the mechanisms of toxic play. Have outnumbered pulse buffs and a damage bonus. Give fk lord level cc abilities to siegecrusher and siege razor. Allow siege deployment in spawn (not so far it can be used to defend). Limit siege deployment in objectives when not owned by their "home" server. Make a secret entrance to garrison and home towers that only the home team can use. 

Basically add "scaling". Add a range of fortification difficulty. Then let the teams naturally move to a more even fight. Make home garrison the toughest. Home ebg keep 2nd toughest. Think fk lord cc, more. Leave the rest, the fight will settle where it may.

With a more even fight and rewards to be had, more should play.

While you are onto something and better ways to unseat entrenched servers would be fantastic it ultimately wouldn't be needed if ArenaNet had a better mechanism of balancing the absolutely absurd population participation imbalances. How some of these servers get matched against each other is beyond me.  If we had proper match making so things never got to the point where one server is blowing out the others (not just talking about Mag this seems to happen to at least one server in every matchup each week) none of this would even need to be fixed.

 

Honestly hope ArenaNet gets a better way to survey who is playing when so they can actually balance things out properly. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Atticus.7194

[Kirevey.5079]

All the posts about how to fix WvW and the many issues forget something really important: WvW is not even in the radar for ANET and won't be for a while. How many years now that they announced alliances ? How many more you think would take them to redesign aspects of WvW that would incentive people to come back and zergs to split ? ANET is prolly full on working on new pve encounters/living story or a new expa at this point. Stop wasting text (like I'm doing right now) and just hope for the best. Otherwise you just keep making yourself miserable over a video game.

[Nikola.3841]

Main problem is Anet definition of "winning"...if you set goal of not dropping from tier, you'll always get two stronger servers gang up on weakest one.

Anet copied idea of 3 instead 2 teams/sides from another MMO, the best ever regarding PVP.

Now they have to copy one more thing from that game...give #1 server something that both #2 and #3 desire and

we will get healthy situation where 2 weaker servers fight top one, and not another way around.

Also, that other superb MMO had another genius idea...top server had weakest keeps and towers, with weaker and smaller number

of guards (and guards in said game could actually 1-shot you in their strongest form)

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

Guild buffs which grant stat points should be removed entirely from castles, keeps and towers.  This is IMHO the #1 factor disincentivizing fights at walled objectives.

 

Iron Guards should be dropped from 50% to 10-20%.

 

SMC should not be upgradeable beyond T1.

If you take and hold an enemy garrison, it should not upgrade beyond T1.

If you take and hold an enemy ebg keep, it should not upgrade beyond T1.

 

You could also slow down or even eliminate supply deliveries to the above keeps when held by any other than the closest side.

 

 

If you want to really go for the heart:

The first place server can not gain PPK, especially if it has a significant numerical advantage in the current skirmish.

Alternatively 3rd place gets 4 points per kill, 2nd place gets 3 points per kill, with 1st remaining at 2 points per kill.

[Chaba.5410]

10 hours ago, Piney.3076 said:

That's us agreeing then. I care about a solution that does not discourage wvw play. I don't care about the cause, just speculating.

Anet already gives players tools for culling the chat at least with the block feature.

As for the spawncamping, this is a tough one.  On the surface it seems like doing things like buffing siegerazer or outnumbered buff would help.  Like you wrote though, it's basically an end result of having superior numbers.  Anet can't dictate player choices in this regard.  They can't force one side to rally enough players to push back a spawncamp if those players don't want to, like we have been seeing with the purposeful avoidance.  Would reward incentives work for that?  Tough call.  Certain groups/teams develop reputations and it's the reputation one is fighting against, not the reality.

[Xenesis.6389]

6 hours ago, Kirevey.5079 said:

All the posts about how to fix WvW and the many issues forget something really important: WvW is not even in the radar for ANET and won't be for a while. How many years now that they announced alliances ? How many more you think would take them to redesign aspects of WvW that would incentive people to come back and zergs to split ? ANET is prolly full on working on new pve encounters/living story or a new expa at this point. Stop wasting text (like I'm doing right now) and just hope for the best. Otherwise you just keep making yourself miserable over a video game.

I dunno what you talking about, they just put in weeklies and buffed rams....

so miracles can still happen!

just saying!

praying with text still works!

🙏

 

[lotus.5672]

3 hours ago, Arya Whitefire.8423 said:

Guild buffs which grant stat points should be removed entirely from castles, keeps and towers.  This is IMHO the #1 factor disincentivizing fights at walled objectives.

 

Iron Guards should be dropped from 50% to 10-20%.

 

SMC should not be upgradeable beyond T1.

If you take and hold an enemy garrison, it should not upgrade beyond T1.

If you take and hold an enemy ebg keep, it should not upgrade beyond T1.

 

You could also slow down or even eliminate supply deliveries to the above keeps when held by any other than the closest side.

 

 

If you want to really go for the heart:

The first place server can not gain PPK, especially if it has a significant numerical advantage in the current skirmish.

Alternatively 3rd place gets 4 points per kill, 2nd place gets 3 points per kill, with 1st remaining at 2 points per kill.

You think mag spawncamp people for points???

 

[Dieselface.5193]

The funny thing is that clearly this strategy of WvW guilds not playing to punish "a certain server" hasn't worked at all. They've been doing this for months and as a result "a certain server" has become the most popular server for transfers on NA. It doesn't even really punish that "certain server" because there's still people to fight against, it's just all the poor pugs who have been abandoned by the comp guilds which carried their servers to T1 in the first place and are the ones doing the "boycotting." 

[Chaba.5410]

38 minutes ago, Dieselface.5193 said:

The funny thing is that clearly this strategy of WvW guilds not playing to punish "a certain server" hasn't worked at all. They've been doing this for months and as a result "a certain server" has become the most popular server for transfers on NA. It doesn't even really punish that "certain server" because there's still people to fight against, it's just all the poor pugs who have been abandoned by the comp guilds which carried their servers to T1 in the first place and are the ones doing the "boycotting." 

I think there's a bit more to it and it has nothing to do with "a certain server".

Most guilds I know don't go into EBG for two main reasons: the map is queued with pugs and guilds favor borderlands for fights because that's where they are more likely to find other guilds of roughly equal size to fight.  And it's been that way for a long time even before my server got a turn against "a certain server".

[Chaos God.1639]

10 hours ago, Kirevey.5079 said:

All the posts about how to fix WvW and the many issues forget something really important: WvW is not even in the radar for ANET and won't be for a while. How many years now that they announced alliances ? How many more you think would take them to redesign aspects of WvW that would incentive people to come back and zergs to split ? ANET is prolly full on working on new pve encounters/living story or a new expa at this point. Stop wasting text (like I'm doing right now) and just hope for the best. Otherwise you just keep making yourself miserable over a video game.

Blame the players for that. It's not the first time I see that gamers destroy the game themselves. If ANET sees that gamers are getting angry, negative and emotional about controversial topics, like pvp balance, then ofc they aren't going to spend money and time on these modes.

Looks like it's hard for some people to give feedback without being hostile.

[Chips.7968]

Remember, it's a game you're supposed to be playing to have fun. If you're not having fun, whether due to balance, other players, or whatever - log off. Do something else you do enjoy. Stop stressing.

There's no alternative; posting here demonstrably does nothing. 

But people keep on playing things that make them mad 😄 Enjoy 🙂

[Swagger.1459]

21 hours ago, Piney.3076 said:

With a more even fight

WvW is a 24/7 mode that will never be "even", and it's unrealistic of you to think the devs can make it "even" at any/every given moment. If you want "even fights", why not just participate in spvp?