WvW March 14, 2023 update

[Gailena.5021]

Quote

World vs. World

General

• Repairing walls and gates will no longer award event participation. This alleviates the behavior we've seen in farming Objective Scaling Rewards and "wasting" supply while defending. However, an additional side effect of this is that repairing alone will not progress achievements that require event participation, such as Keep Keeper, Nice View, or Stay Out.
• Adjusted Objective Scaling Rewards on certain keep defense events.

For me WvW is about strategy, that’s what I like about it.  It appears things are changing, and for me, not in a good way.

For others WvW is standing in a field where 2 or 3 blobs attack each other.  Perhaps a map is needed for those blobs to go and fight each other, where there are no camps, towers or keeps.  Just make terrain and have a go at each other in the fields.  Call that special map Guild vs Guild challenge map.  Those “fight” guilds don’t defend towers and keeps and they take up room on the map where defenders could be of use.

 

If you defend the camp and the person runs away you don’t get credit for defense?  If you defend a tower, destroy the enemy siege, the enemy runs away and then repair the wall you don’t get credit for defense?

 

I love WvW and have had the final rank of 10k for some time now.  I have all the WvW achievements completed and am working on the last tier of Avenger 250,000 kills.  That tells you how much I play WvW.  With that in mind I will sometimes run with a zerg but I prefer havoc or roaming.  I am the one that will build siege in the keeps, towers, and camps to defend them.   I am the person who will often call out where the enemy is and will likely be the first in a Keep defending and calling out to our team.  I will use the siege that I have built and take out the enemy siege, then repair the wall or gate.  The interesting thing is that according to your new WvW reward system that is not counted as participation nor as defense of the tower or keep.  Why is that?  What do I need to do get credit for defense?  1 versus 10 attackers, how many do you think I can kill?  You have weakened siege damage.  Destroying their siege is the defense.  Repairing the wall doesn't give it, killing their siege while they are attacking does not give it . . .  Evidently I am not participating in WvW?!  What?!  Seriously the system is seemingly more and more broken as you decide who is participating and who does not get credit for participating in WvW.  I still push yaks into our towers and keeps even though that does not give me credit for participation, you took that away. 

 

This is making me seriously question this part of the game.  I lose participation while I repair our objectives, I lose participation when I build siege to defend objectives and when I defend our yaks to upgrade our towers and keeps, I do not get participation.  Do you know that the yaks must get to the keep or tower to upgrade?  Why would getting a yak to a tower or keep not be participating?  Those upgrades are very important for our defense, the walls get stronger, we get more defensive siege and finally a waypoint in keeps.

 

What I would like fixed in WvW is a system that calls out who pulled the tactics in a tower or keep.  That player then is announced, just like when I claim an objective with my guild is announced.  If it is a spy then a vote of the population to kick them for that day or at least an ability to report them as griefing in WvW.  We have too many spies from other “worlds” griefing. One match they used all the supply building trebs by the supply huts, that could hit nothing.  That problem is more serious to fair play than people actually repairing a wall!  I was thrilled when there was credit for repairing given because I would not have to spend 15 or more minutes running to supply camps to repair a tier 3 keep outer and inner while the zerg went off to another objective.  Please reconsider your decision, there must be a better solution.

[Xenesis.6389]

5 minutes ago, Gailena.5021 said:

Just make terrain and have a go at each other in the fields.  Call that special map Guild vs Guild challenge map. Those “fight” guilds don’t defend towers and keeps and they take up room on the map where defenders could be of use.

But then what good is any of your defenses if they're also not attacking your towers and keeps?

[Gailena.5021]

Quote

But then what good is any of your defenses if they're also not attacking your towers and keeps?

Quote

The point I was making are those blobs which only fight in the field, they do not attack our objectives.  The other zergs hit our objectives and that fight only guild plugs up our map so that fewer can come to defend the called out objective.  I don't have a problem with blob vs blob, I do have issue when they refuse to defend called out objectives, because they rather guild vs guild in the field and do not defend the map objectives.  I enjoy epic fights in our keeps and the castle, red blob, blue blob and green blob fighting for an objective.  During those times the defenses are critical to being able to defend and retain the objective.

 

 

[Johje Holan.4607]

Anet definitely needs to include more ways to get the defense credit beyond killing a player.  If they're going to take away repair credit, then replace it with something.  Like damage to another player.  I wonder if that would be technically feasible for them to program?

I personally get annoyed by people simply repairing walls.  But I'm willing to live with them if it means legit scouts/siege builders/grunt work defenders get credit for something.  Anet, you went too far with this change.  Please put back the wall repair credit or replace it with credit for damaging players.  Having to kill another player is too restrictive and going to cause people to stop defending again.  Nobody wants that.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Johje Holan.4607

[Xenesis.6389]

22 minutes ago, Gailena.5021 said:

The point I was making are those blobs which only fight in the field, they do not attack our objectives.  The other zergs hit our objectives and that fight only guild plugs up our map so that fewer can come to defend the called out objective.  I don't have a problem with blob vs blob, I do have issue when they refuse to defend called out objectives, because they rather guild vs guild in the field and do not defend the map objectives.  I enjoy epic fights in our keeps and the castle, red blob, blue blob and green blob fighting for an objective.  During those times the defenses are critical to being able to defend and retain the objective.

But they do respond to objectives, as long as there's something actually there to fight. What they don't respond to is lazy calls of objective linking and giving no description of who and what and how many are there, which is usually 90% of the scout calls these days.

Also if they're on another part of the map, fighting another fight guild in open field, isn't that them keeping the enemy busy and away from your objectives?

There's a couple guilds who absolutely don't give a kitten about your server or map, sure, but there's plenty that do and will respond if there's actual enemies to fight and proper call out are made in time.

 

21 minutes ago, Johje Holan.4607 said:

Anet definitely needs to include more ways to get the defense credit beyond killing a player.  If they're going to take away repair credit, then replace it with something.  Like damage to another player.  I wonder if that would be technically feasible for them to program?

Yeah I'm sure that won't get abused like everything else in wvw. Just sit on an ac and fire away for infinite participation and defense rewards.

[subversiontwo.7501]

2 hours ago, Gailena.5021 said:

For me WvW is about strategy, that’s what I like about it.  It appears things are changing, and for me, not in a good way.

For others WvW is standing in a field where 2 or 3 blobs attack each other.  Perhaps a map is needed for those blobs to go and fight each other, where there are no camps, towers or keeps.

For many of us (including Grouch), WvW is all of these things at the same time. Any attempt to drive that down just one path goes against the idea of WvW.

As always, reading these forums you get the impression that people are very entrenched in just doing one thing. They have an identity as a solo roamer or a scout or whatever. Most veteran player that I know tend to dip into everything or at least every typical scale of things (1, 5, 15, 25, 50 or so).

[Custodio.6134]

55 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

But they do respond to objectives, as long as there's something actually there to fight. What they don't respond to is lazy calls of objective linking and giving no description of who and what and how many are there, which is usually 90% of the scout calls these days.

Also if they're on another part of the map, fighting another fight guild in open field, isn't that them keeping the enemy busy and away from your objectives?

There's a couple guilds who absolutely don't give a kitten about your server or map, sure, but there's plenty that do and will respond if there's actual enemies to fight and proper call out are made in time.

 

Yeah I'm sure that won't get abused like everything else in wvw. Just sit on an ac and fire away for infinite participation and defense rewards.

100% this. As someone that is part of a fight-oriented guild (pls don´t confuse that with GvG, this is a totally different thing btw), we basically NEVER encountered a guild that calls itself "fighting guild" or something similar, that intentionally ignores objective defense. 

In fact: all of those guilds are fully aware, that defending an objective creates conflict (should be obvious), and is in fact the perfect ground to fight on outside of organized scrims. 

What you probably see if ppl say "mimimi those kitten fight guilds dont defend stuff and dont do sh*t on the map" is in the vast majority of cases something entirely different. 

Reasons why guilds may not respond to calls for defending: 

1. They are busy taking a different objective (often being the same or higher tier than the objective that needs defense)
2. they are in combat because they´re fighting off other guilds (which btw also binds enemies to their position, enemies that would attack an objective otherwise)
3. your calls suck (for example calls like "Quentin inc" with no more intel)
4. Your objective is not upgraded at all
5. You call came WAY too late (calls like "25 green at bay, lord down" is like.... 10 minutes too late)

3 hours ago, Gailena.5021 said:

What I would like fixed in WvW is a system that calls out who pulled the tactics in a tower or keep.  That player then is announced, just like when I claim an objective with my guild is announced. 

if you have someone trolling your tactics, where´s the problem to deactivate public tactivators? Just keep a closer eye that you can pull them when needed yourself and set it public again when you leave (or even just if there´s an enemy attack called and you cannot respond in time). This tool is ALREADY in the game, you just have to utilize it. Announcing a troll won´t change anything, they don´t care. 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Custodio.6134

[Gailena.5021]

2 minutes ago, Custodio.6134 said:

 

if you have someone trolling your tactics, where´s the problem to deactivate public tactivators? Just keep a closer eye that you can pull them when needed yourself and set it public again when you leave (or even just if there´s an enemy attack called and you cannot respond in time). This tool is ALREADY in the game, you just have to utilize it. Announcing a troll won´t change anything, they don´t care. 

 

People who claim an objective do not have to stay on that map nor in the objective they have claimed.  They can deactivate public tactivators and then you can not use the tactivators, only the guild who claimed can.  I have requested a guild please come and pull the tactivator for more supply, they got annoyed to continually have to have a guild member come to pull it, and changed it to public.  They do not "keep a closer eye so they can pull them," or "change it before you leave." I'm thinking if they forget to pull the supply drop, will they remember to make that public "before they leave?"  Most likely not.

 

Where's the problem?  That guild who claimed the objective was on in a different time zone.  Those guild members are not available to make the tactivators private and to "keep a closer eye" to "pull them when needed."

 

My point is that it's a spy and I do not appreciate that a spy can freely sabotage wvw.  In the military if you caught a spy they would be killed, or put away in detainment, in wvw they are rewarded by their server they are causing trouble for, often times being paid gold.  I think that is crazy and I would like a way to combat a spy in wvw.  I think it would be fun if their character turned red and could be killed when spied out.  Now that would be some fun game play in my opinion.

 

I see your point, hopefully you see mine.  Announcing a troll would hopefully cause that spy to be flushed out and put a stop to this behavior.  If the very least is a reporting of that player as griefing or sabotaging in wvw, I think would be a great new tool.  After so many reports that account is not allowed in that world's wvw for a period of time, that day?  that week?  that match?

[Gailena.5021]

1 hour ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

For many of us (including Grouch), WvW is all of these things at the same time. Any attempt to drive that down just one path goes against the idea of WvW.

As always, reading these forums you get the impression that people are very entrenched in just doing one thing. They have an identity as a solo roamer or a scout or whatever. Most veteran player that I know tend to dip into everything or at least every typical scale of things (1, 5, 15, 25, 50 or so).

Yes, if you read my post you know I'm a veteran player and play all of that (1, 5, 15, 25, 50 or so).

[Rebuke.3176]

• WvW is about the numbers -- you have a challenge if you are evenly matched.

Please read this as a ten year Veteran -- but try to see it the way a new person would also, we 

can't do this much longer with guilds that do pve and other content and avoid WvW like the plague, coming in, many of them, to get the Warclaw and not much else.

•  
• If you are outnumbered and being spied on by alts -- a huge practice now -- the game changes into hiding tags, watching as people dump your supply so you lose any incursion, infighting in team chat, abuse in team chat so much so that players, again leaving so we are losing people to strikes, raids and even fractals  impacts our ability to have our own guilds in Prime Time or any time if unevenly matched. -- so the focus on numbers and matching servers of better of 'timing'  so as not blobbed at one time zone by two other servers who are twice as big as you are no matter how many players you have, just plain needs to be addressed.
•  
• No matter how you change WvW, you still haven't addressed servers; our identity for over ten years which has been all but stripped from us now, we don't claim a thing our host server does. 
•  
• And it's much worse to see it in beta as a huge amount of people who don't know one another are stuck in a beta that destroys morale more than any other WvW experience to date for many. Every claim in beta was proof that we didn't know any of these players and couldn't trust many.
•  
• This is the most irrational to date:
  • Very high marked servers are paired with very high servers
  • and yet they are matched with medium X2 servers
• and  Anet expects us to accept this forever without a bit of why?
•  
• Lastly, please and thanks you,  release the links -- the promise made to WvW players needs to be honored, to undo them if they didn't stop the queueing, is here, it's bad and it's losing us guildies who go to other modes while we are blobbed into depression and fighting for every single player to go into WvW at all.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Rebuke.3176
.

[Rebuke.3176]

• To those of you who think removing Public Activation is a fix, it isn't.
•  
• The trolls are usually very quick to have really good builds, even a few of them on the Lord, THEY get the claim and the very people who need to be locked out put all the wrong and sabotaging tactics on any keep or the castle. 
•  
• There's no fix for those who are determined to match manipulate their way.

 

Even if you manage get your clean claim, most guilds will not take off the public activation check mark -- far too many do not have the permission to touch the thing and that is another thing that must end -- if you rep a guild you need to be able to change public activation -- period.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Rebuke.3176

[solemn.9670]

I'm sorry if I missed the point bc I skim read for about 10 seconds before I felt like I got the gist.

I have never, ever struggled with getting participation. Play the game for like 15 minutes as you normally would - take camps, kill roamers, follow a tag, defend/attack ..........

And if after you have tier 6 participation you want to do us all a solid and repair walls, thanks that's awesome you're a champ.

You'll live without getting participation from it lol, and we will hopefully have far less morons repairing walls that get trebbed again 2 minutes later...

[Matty.1234]

31 minutes ago, solemn.9670 said:

I'm sorry if I missed the point bc I skim read for about 10 seconds before I felt like I got the gist.

I have never, ever struggled with getting participation. Play the game for like 15 minutes as you normally would - take camps, kill roamers, follow a tag, defend/attack ..........

And if after you have tier 6 participation you want to do us all a solid and repair walls, thanks that's awesome you're a champ.

You'll live without getting participation from it lol, and we will hopefully have far less morons repairing walls that get trebbed again 2 minutes later...

It really depends on your server and time zone though. Servers are most active at about 4am my time, while I'm usually asleep or getting ready for work. When I get on, there often is no tag. Day 1 after the patch, I logged in and our keep was under attack. 5 defenders vs a zerg of about 40. We had no hope. I did a repair and tried to slow do some damage but was dead the instant the gate came down.

I was surprised I didn't get any participation. A few of us went to try and cap a tower, we had the gate to about 30% before the/a zerg flattened us in seconds again. I did try to find a camp, but they were either ours, on the far side of the map, capped just before I arrived or had about 5 minutes of cooldown left.

Went for another tower, got zerged again. There were no tags, there weren't enough people. I tried to find a sentry, but they were either dead or ours, I guess I wasn't the only one struggling. There was no hope. I logged off with participation at low 4 or high 3.

The moral of the story for me is that defending is no longer worth it unless we have tons of people. You can't defend against a zerg, and small groups run if their HP gets low. It seems the only reliable way for me to keep participation up now is to just sit near a camp and hope the opponent flips it regularly. No more running around, I could miss it by being seconds late if I'm not nearby.

I used to be able to try and defend, hope more came, give it a go, throw a couple of supplies in the gate to guarantee my participation, do what I can. Now the cost and risk of trying to defend is too high. It's not worth even trying if there's not a guaranteed amount of people who will arrive to defend.

All they had to do is reduce the rewards to prevent people farming WXP through supplies, but they pretty much killed WvW for me. I'm essentially penalised for even attempting to defend. For every action I take now, I have to consider how it will affect the participation clock. Only camps give sort of reliable results for me now.

If killing a guard didn't cap out at 2 minutes, maybe at least I could top it up a bit by running around and killing a few.

Participation doesn't measure participation. It measures success. This is a problem if all the factors are stacked against you when you play. It doesn't measure how much I'm doing or trying.

 

Tried to defend that keep with 3 other people? Couldn't kill any of the 40 tightly grouped opponents?
You... Didn't... Participate!

Edited March 16, 2023 by Matty.1234

[Johje Holan.4607]

On 3/15/2023 at 2:19 PM, Xenesis.6389 said:

Yeah I'm sure that won't get abused like everything else in wvw. Just sit on an ac and fire away for infinite participation and defense rewards.

If there are enemies to be hit with an AC, I have no problem with this.  As long as its the minimum level of credit.  I don't think it should give as much credit as damaging a player with your toons skills.  Maybe something like this:

• Killing players gives a chance for Gold.
• Damaging players with your toons skills gives a chance for Silver.
• Damaging a player with siege gives a chance for Bronze.

Its impossible to know how hard that is to code though.  If Anet can't code it then the point is moot.

[Iniak.9815]

I suggest Anet bring back the wall repair credit and improve the rewards for defending camps and escorting dolyaks.  If the issue is a lack of supply because people are playing the game the way it is designed by repairing damaged walls, then incentivize the in-game mechanics for resupplying those objectives.  This most recent change is moving backward not forwards.

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

I like the fact that theres a guy going around Confuse/Disliking almost every comment on that other post that disagrees with that guy, yet he here is complaining that he is being Confuse/Dislike spammed.

All I see here is a guy who got his defense achieves already and did benefit from said "lazy exploit" prior to the change, who is happy to see the bridge that he already crossed, burned.

[Sjentra.3409]

6 hours ago, Matty.1234 said:

Participation doesn't measure participation. It measures success. This is a problem if all the factors are stacked against you when you play. It doesn't measure how much I'm doing or trying.

This^.

And it's even worse because driving them away doesn't matter unless you happen to also kill a couple who may or may not count towards defense participation. 

Yesterday I took an EWP to a T3 tower and there was a good 30+ wailing on the champion and maybe 8 of us. I walked away out of spite because there was no way we would get any kills and all I would be doing is feeding them while wasting my time and participation.

[Cyninja.2954]

4 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Pretty funny seeing what I get confused emotes on the last few days. I know what type of players are up in these forums lately.

 

Just the recent wave of "WxP farmers" and PvE players who are now salty that their inflated WxP rewards for wasting supply is gone.

At least the overall reward increases have, for a time, increased player numbers which makes the game mode more fun. Unfortunately without some major reworks, we are simply set back a few years play number wise and these numbers won't last.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[TheGrimm.5624]

10 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Just the recent wave of "WxP farmers" and PvE players who are now salty that their inflated WxP rewards for wasting supply is gone.

At least the overall reward increases have, for a time, increased player numbers which makes the game mode more fun. Unfortunately without some major reworks, we are simply set back a few years play number wise and these numbers won't last.

Its easy to paint just one picture. So don't forget us salty defense junkies. Let me give you a story from last night. After 4 gates, and 3 walls were all down at the same time and our inner EBG garrison was wide open to the world, I counted about 13 enemy zerg wipes. Was a good time and good fights so that was all good. However long it was because, was a bit too busy to notice how long the fight stage took, am going to go with around an hour to hour and half of fights. We finally discouraged them enough to stop double teaming us and go discuss among themselves. So event was over and people made sure that the outer gates on either side were tapped closed and then they headed out to attack. That left 4 or so of us about 45 mins of nothing but repairing and running yaks. If we cared about participation we wouldn't being doing it. We did it because you don't leave your stuff to just easily get knocked over again. So from the salty defense junkies, we did appreciated the help for the short bit we could get which meant we also could go out and fight versus taking care of housekeeping like not losing your objectives. 

Now note, I am not faulting myside here and before people say well if your side wanted to repair it they should have, wasn't the case. All 4 of the towers in our third had been taken, the supply camps as well so there was 0 supply. So made sense to move our side to their thirds since there was no supply in our third. That also helped to keep the fight away while a few of us could repair. So for the salty defense peeps the issue lies in the removal of repair motivation for others meaning as predicted on Tuesday camps are losing value to hold and structures are less likely to get repairs meaning paper which as fast to flip even without a zerg. In the end we need ANet to release all 4 events so we can see if they balance themselves out, but right now if they released the failed assault event I think it will just lead to even more karma trains where we were seeing more people spreading out while the defense events were actually encouraging people to defend more. But your mileage will vary.

[Shadows Creed.3902]

Just remove smc walls. 

[Najten.2418]

Event participation in WvW has always been dodgy at best.. Both when it comes to defending and attacking. Being able to (again) throw a few supplies in a wall or a gate to guarantee I get the defend even if I don't manage to kill a player was a blessing, because a lot of the time attackers are either so overwhelmingly powerful there's no way to get a kill before you get flattened, or they run off mid attack granting you nothing (even though that is technically the very definition of successfully DEFENDING an objective). Sometimes even getting 3-4 kills during a defend event doesn't trigger event participation. Me and another player just killed (the only) 2 people attacking the Lord in a tower, and repaired the 3 broken walls, and I didn't get participation defending that tower... It's so broken atm I'm just about to give up getting Tower Guardian this week.

I fully understand that having people standing around half afk putting supply in a wall every 5 minutes isn't what devs wish to obtain, but taking it away completely just messes things up even more. 
Make it diminishing returns instead; first wall repair full credit, 2nd partial, 3rd minimal, 4th none. Most attacks you won't (legitimately) repair walls/gates more than a few times during an attack before the attackers are either victorious or defeated. I'd rather have it work this way than be completely removed.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Najten.2418

[Gotejjeken.1267]

On 3/15/2023 at 2:39 PM, subversiontwo.7501 said:

For many of us (including Grouch), WvW is all of these things at the same time. Any attempt to drive that down just one path goes against the idea of WvW.

As always, reading these forums you get the impression that people are very entrenched in just doing one thing. They have an identity as a solo roamer or a scout or whatever. Most veteran player that I know tend to dip into everything or at least every typical scale of things (1, 5, 15, 25, 50 or so).

I have NEVER seen an anet dev roaming or defending, or havoc.  They literally do one thing, hide behind a blob.  If you look at the balancing, blob vs. blob IS the only balance, they care less about small scale / dueling.  

So, anet itself drives WvW down one path, blob vs. blob.  They don't care where this takes place, as long as it does.  Which means nerfing defending into the ground as can't have a meaningful blob vs. blob with walls in the way.

Problem for their ideals is population balance.  A lot of times you don't get blob vs. blob because one side has no players to form a blob.  This is ignored with the balance direction (both profession and rewards balance), and thus we rightfully get complaint topics.

Anyway, I'd also love public tact pull callouts but they won't as they are afraid of people getting flamed.  Obviously, they care less about taking care of trolls which is why all the exploits, hacks, etc. still exist 10 years on.  

Edited March 17, 2023 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Dr Meta.3158]

19 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

I have NEVER seen an anet dev roaming or defending, or havoc.  They literally do one thing, hide behind a blob.  If you look at the balancing, blob vs. blob IS the only balance, they care less about small scale / dueling.  

So, anet itself drives WvW down one path, blob vs. blob.  They don't care where this takes place, as long as it does.  Which means nerfing defending into the ground as can't have a meaningful blob vs. blob with walls in the way.

Problem for their ideals is population balance.  A lot of times you don't get blob vs. blob because one side has no players to form a blob.  This is ignored with the balance direction (both profession and rewards balance), and thus we rightfully get complaint topics.

Anyway, I'd also love public tact pull callouts but they won't as they are afraid of people getting flamed.  Obviously, they care less about taking care of trolls which is why all the exploits, hacks, etc. still exist 10 years on.  

WvW would solve that problem if the maps were only open at specific times for an hour or two like castle sieges and territory wars in Lineage 2. During one of those events, no one in Lineage 2 was concerned about dueling people in the middle of no where.

[Cyninja.2954]

13 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Its easy to paint just one picture. So don't forget us salty defense junkies. Let me give you a story from last night. After 4 gates, and 3 walls were all down at the same time and our inner EBG garrison was wide open to the world, I counted about 13 enemy zerg wipes. Was a good time and good fights so that was all good. However long it was because, was a bit too busy to notice how long the fight stage took, am going to go with around an hour to hour and half of fights. We finally discouraged them enough to stop double teaming us and go discuss among themselves. So event was over and people made sure that the outer gates on either side were tapped closed and then they headed out to attack. That left 4 or so of us about 45 mins of nothing but repairing and running yaks. If we cared about participation we wouldn't being doing it. We did it because you don't leave your stuff to just easily get knocked over again. So from the salty defense junkies, we did appreciated the help for the short bit we could get which meant we also could go out and fight versus taking care of housekeeping like not losing your objectives. 

Yes, many players are not interested in doing activities in WvW unless they draw a direct benefit from them. That's not how sandbox game modes work though. As seen in this example, introducing specific rewards for specific actions directly messes with a sandbox game mode because it makes certain actions more valuable than others.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't have any illusions that at this point in time, there is any way back to having WvW a full on sandbox competitive game mode. The population for that is not present and the PvE elements and crowd are far to large and in fact necessary to even keep the mode properly populated.

13 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Now note, I am not faulting myside here and before people say well if your side wanted to repair it they should have, wasn't the case.

You don't? Why not? If even 2 or 3 more players (out of the 70 map cap) had shown interest in actually long term holding the objective, the time needed to repair would have been reduced drastically. It absolutely is your teams "fault". Or rather the mindset of the players on your team. Back in "the olden days" where WvW was a net negative reward wise and upgrades to keeps and towers actually cost gold, I guarantee you a lot more players would have been found to repair or defend. Completely without needing reward incentives to encourage them to do so.

13 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

All 4 of the towers in our third had been taken, the supply camps as well so there was 0 supply. So made sense to move our side to their thirds since there was no supply in our third. That also helped to keep the fight away while a few of us could repair. So for the salty defense peeps the issue lies in the removal of repair motivation for others meaning as predicted on Tuesday camps are losing value to hold and structures are less likely to get repairs meaning paper which as fast to flip even without a zerg. In the end we need ANet to release all 4 events so we can see if they balance themselves out, but right now if they released the failed assault event I think it will just lead to even more karma trains where we were seeing more people spreading out while the defense events were actually encouraging people to defend more. But your mileage will vary.

Motivation in this game mode has to be done via indirect incentives. For example: placing the weekly achievements (even if likely unintended) on a later/earlier date than the weekly reset, cause a lot of players to get motivated to play more WvW (on top of increasing rewards).

Attack and defense events are not a bad idea, if designed properly (which again, I doubt the developers can do). Simply slapping on more rewards is no long-term or healthy solution IF the core idea of a sandbox game mode is supposed to prevail.

In essence, every direct reward introduced pushes this mode more towards a PvE centric, rollercoaster "do this, do that, go here, go there" type experience. Great for the PvE crowd coming in needing guidance. Pretty bad at maintaining the sandbox nature and creative experience which emerge from it. Once you have rewards tied to specific things, you immediately get maximization of rewards/time.

Now the alternative to this, as mentioned, are indirect rewards which are derived from reaching specific goals (say winning a skirmish or the matchup) or encouraging player interaction over extended periods of time (skirmish tickets spread over a period of time for example). That allows players to some extent freedom in how they spend their time in WvW (from afk pip farming to active participating. That's a very wide range of possible interaction) while also encouraging them to take beneficial actions in favor of their side (if paired with winning incentives). Now some of these more result centrist approaches are hard to implement right now or even sell to the general player base because they are heavy reliant on population numbers (and we know how those go currently and how little F some players give about balanced match-ups).

In short: unless perfectly balanced, tying specific rewards to parts of a sandbox game modes content will always result in a shift towards those activities. That will most often result in less diversity in activities and more "farming" instead of playing (in some cases to a very unhealthy extent, as seen by the over 16h per day SM defense event farmers).

Edited March 17, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Mabi black.1824]

16 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Now the alternative to this, as mentioned, indirect rewards which are derived from reaching specific goals (say winning a skirmish or the matchup) or encouraging player interaction over extended periods of time. That allows players to some extent freedom in how they spend their time in WvW while also encouraging them to take beneficial actions in favor of their side. Now some of these more result centric approaches are hard to implement right now or even sell to the general player base because they are heavy reliant on population numbers

I really like this consideration. Stimulating the player in the long run and forcing him to interact with everyone else ( common action ) to be rewarded is certainly interesting.