The 3 big reasons WvW Players left the game. (Personal experience)

[Stand The Wall.6987]

the biggest exodus i witnessed was after hot dropped. once anet let it be known that their design philosophy was a bunch of bs, and any clown could jump into your zerg and do 5x the damage of a core class, or any noob could join the enemy zerg and do 5x the heals, man so many ppl were let down and wvw was such a mess. it was the biggest exodus of the best wvw guilds in the game and it hurt.

[Burnfall.9573]

“In the end, as a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: what you create and what you allow.”

Anet is at fault for  WvW players leaving the game.

[Burnfall.9573]

repost

Edited June 23, 2023 by Burnfall.9573

[WeightTrainer.3219]

On 6/17/2023 at 8:41 AM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Disclaimer: These are the 3 big reasons people left WvW and Gw2 from personal experience. 

 

1. Specialization and Stab rework. 

Before the change, it was common for us to have 20+ Warriors in our daily 40+ guild zergs. People LOVED  to play that class and scream HAMMERSTUN over TS in unison. 

The reworks killed Warrior outright and created a pure Pirate Ship meta. 

I have seen so many people quit because the fun they had was gone. 

 

2. HoT gear. 

Before HoT, you could simply play Wvw and use your Tokens to buy gear. 

With Hot, we got Marauder, Minstrel and Trailblazer stats. Crazy strong Sigils and runes. Even OP food. 

And all of it required to play hundred of hours of PvE. Be it the mastery grind, currency grind or just money grind. 

It was also inconvenient For example. Having to craft your own food for every raid instead of just buying it cheap from the tp. 

Recruitment was a massiv pain in the butt. 

Having to tell new players that having them around is a negativ without them Grinding for 2-3 weeks in pve for gear. 

Wvw players want to play Wvw. Not being forced to play PvE. 

That was the biggest quit wave I have seen. 

 

3. The Meta. 

Not only brought HoT insane powercreep to the game and reinforced the pirate ship meta. *cough* Release CoR *cough*

It was also sheer aids throughout. 

The condi meta. 

Remember old Condi Reaper and old epidemic? 

Add stealth Bugs to it, where the enemy zerg could kill you before they unstealth. 

People hated it. So much so that it was the last big wave of people quitting that I personally witnessed. 

Anet even once nerfed the only counter to the condi meta. That was the last straw for many people I knew. 

 

 

What are the reasons you witnessed that made people quit? 

 

 

I still remember when entire zergs were invisible due to servers or something when Guild Wars 2 came out. You could be running in an open field and then splat your dead and no enemies around xD

[evlover.6270]

I've seen lots of valid reasons so far, but they are all personal ones. Some depending on which server you're on, what builds are currently meta or not, what time of the day you play, rewards not being good enough overall and everything else. I haven't seen the main problems of WvW being mentioned yet though, the reasons why WvW is broken to its core and why it doesn't matter at all what people are doing, what build they are running or how many people there are playing.

1) I can't say how due to the rules, but thieves are able to get in at least all of the following objectives from outside to lord by performing an action that allows them to get on top of the walls: all 3 alpine keeps, all 3 desert keeps, both bottom towers in alpine border and from outside sm to inner gate (not lord). By placing shadow portal and just getting 1-4 other people inside, you can literally flip any keep in under less than a minute because the lord literally melts against just a few people. By the time anyone spots that it's contested, it's already capped. The only way you can prevent it is by spotting the thief before he lays the portal because no one else will make it if there's no EWP and they have to run from some uncontested waypoint.
So whatever time you spend on upgrading any objective, all of that is in vain if there's a thief playing on the other server that knows how to get in.

2) There's no incentive at all to play for 1st or 2nd place instead of 3rd (leaving the pips aside as the difference is meaningless). If there would be meaningfull rewards, people would care more about doing what's best for the server, instead of what's best for themselves. Because at this point in time, the goals of personal interest and the server's interest, are often not the same. For example: why on earth would you defend keeps, if you can get the new wvw infusion from defeating keep lord, but not from defending the keeps? Letting the keeps getting capped and just flip them back to have a chance at the infusion is more worth it for your personal gain than defending it and getting absolutely nothing.

The whole alliances thing is just a (poor) attempt at fixing some minor wvw issues, some of that which can't even be fixed whatever they do. Alliances is an attempt at making balanced teams, but you can't balance teams as you never know how much a person is going the play the next week. You might put 5 maxed rank wvw people who are great commanders in an alliance, and 5 in the other one, but if the next week on one alliance 4 out of 5 of them play a lot, and in the other alliance there's only 1 and the other 4 decide to jump on some new PvE content, that server won't stand a chance with constant coverage of great commanders VS the alliance that only has one. That's only by picking out the commanders, but the same goes for entire alliances, some might play heavily one week but go on hiatus the next week etc, the point is that you just can't predict how much people will play the next matchup so you also can't balance a matchup based on previous activity/ranks.
They could try look into at what times people play to balance day and night coverage, but you can never predict who will play how much the next week. And let's not forget that in WvW, the best times you have are when your server is farming the other two in SM, but that also means that one server their "good time" means two other servers are having a crappy time just constantly wiping. Those are just things that are inherent to WvW, any attempt to balance it is silly cause you simply can't. But what can be done, is give players an incentive somehow, to play for the benefit of the server and go flip things on borders instead of just running into a better zerg and wiping in a fool's man attempt because "what does it matter anyways if we're feeding kills or not".

Edited June 23, 2023 by evlover.6270
pressed enter too soon xD

[eyelogix.1654]

On 6/23/2023 at 2:30 AM, adammantium.8031 said:

Lack of support for guild vs guild combat. The days long ago of zerg busting and community-driven gvg events were glorious, but short-lived. A lot of serious players lost interest when that didn't go anywhere.

Disappointment over alliances delay. Saw a good number of people come back and get hyped for alliances years ago, but just lose patience (obviously) and left again.

That said, I'm not down with the doom-mongering premise of this post. There are still plenty of players as the game is doing well as a whole. And I am broadly hopeful that alliances will solve population problems.

WvW was never intended for the GvG scene.

[TheGrimm.5624]

People I have lost;

* Lack of changes keeping things fresh (maps, skills, tactics, siege, strategy options)

* Class/elite build nukes that left non alt-o-holics with mass rebuilds or ideas to just leave

* No reasons to win, why fight if there is no end goal, no reason to defend if winning means nothing

Each person will vary, but that is what I saw when losing peeps. Still happy to see fellow Warhammer peeps out there. This Choppa still sends a 'WAAAGH!' to you all! Good hunting, as always.

[Thomas.2564]

On 6/17/2023 at 3:41 PM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Disclaimer: These are the 3 big reasons people left WvW and Gw2 from personal experience. 

 

1. Specialization and Stab rework. 

Before the change, it was common for us to have 20+ Warriors in our daily 40+ guild zergs. People LOVED  to play that class and scream HAMMERSTUN over TS in unison. 

The reworks killed Warrior outright and created a pure Pirate Ship meta. 

I have seen so many people quit because the fun they had was gone. 

 

2. HoT gear. 

Before HoT, you could simply play Wvw and use your Tokens to buy gear. 

With Hot, we got Marauder, Minstrel and Trailblazer stats. Crazy strong Sigils and runes. Even OP food. 

And all of it required to play hundred of hours of PvE. Be it the mastery grind, currency grind or just money grind. 

It was also inconvenient For example. Having to craft your own food for every raid instead of just buying it cheap from the tp. 

Recruitment was a massiv pain in the butt. 

Having to tell new players that having them around is a negativ without them Grinding for 2-3 weeks in pve for gear. 

Wvw players want to play Wvw. Not being forced to play PvE. 

That was the biggest quit wave I have seen. 

 

3. The Meta. 

Not only brought HoT insane powercreep to the game and reinforced the pirate ship meta. *cough* Release CoR *cough*

It was also sheer aids throughout. 

The condi meta. 

Remember old Condi Reaper and old epidemic? 

Add stealth Bugs to it, where the enemy zerg could kill you before they unstealth. 

People hated it. So much so that it was the last big wave of people quitting that I personally witnessed. 

Anet even once nerfed the only counter to the condi meta. That was the last straw for many people I knew. 

 

 

What are the reasons you witnessed that made people quit? 

 

 

What is this so called ONLY counter to condi meta? 🤔

Cause there are plenty of ways to counter condi. Unless ur one of those players, playing full zerker glasscanon with 0 cleanses. Then whining about condi builds being OP!!! 😅

[Dadnir.5038]

From my perspective, in chronological order:

1. Introduction of karma in WvW reward. It brought people but at the same time it made other leave.
2. Change to stab and beginning of the pirateship era.
3. HoT: Introduction of revenant in the game. This profession just cemented the pirateship era.
4. WvW masteries making walls and door paper thin to the greatest pleasure of the karma train.
5. PoF: Scourge 1st impact: Barrier, conditions and boon hate vomit.
6. Scourge 2nd impact: Orange circle visual vomit.
7. The Warclaw.
8. The feb 2020 patch: The patch that brought us from one shoting left and right to tickling our foes 'till boredom.
9. Scourge 3rd impact: When barely anything but scourges was left in zergs, Scourge shades nerfed to no longer proc'd around the caster. A true killing blow even if it was a short lived one.
10. Which bring us to EoD's madness.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Because defense is dead. When players ask for defense at a certain objective part of the players don't even bother anymore because defending hardly ever gives any reward or participation. They just say that they rather recap 5 min later or just leave when greatly outnumbered.

[Ni Stret.7819]

* FB Nerfs

* Heal Scrapper Nerfs

* Mech Nerfs

[Cuks.8241]

From my perspective as a member of a guild that mostly fought other guilds and didn't care about PPT. 

We never really cared about meta that much. Meta is what it is, it changes over time and we adapt. A shake up of meta from time to time would be refreshing but its not a big deal. Different players also have different preferences but we play what is needed and most of us can fill multiple squad roles.

What basically put our guild on pause from which I am unsure it will ever return is all this waiting for alliances. When alliance restart was announced and first beta came we started recruiting, we transferred to new servers together with guilds we wanted to ally with so we could train together, we set up fights with the good opponent guilds as much as we could. It was great for a few months. But than months became a year and still nothing in sights and now most just went to other games.

[Leger.3724]

The problem was never and should never be framed as "people left". People leave games all the time. It's normal and natural.

The problem is "why aren't new people stepping in to replace the people leaving?" and these new people don't care about a reward for their server placing first. They don't care about the intricacies of the meta or alliances.

They go in, they try it, the experience sucks and they never return. If Arena Net decides to focus on WvW that should be their focus.

Imagine trying out WvW for the first time if you're on Tarnished Coast this week. Outnumbered anywhere from 2-6 to 1 per server. On a Sunday. When Tarnished Coast should have had people playing. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at that point. 

Game mode is not fun to new players -> new players stop playing -> servers get more lopsided -> new experience gets even worse -> repeat

I'll be honest some of these suggestions are kittening awful like rewarding people for their server placing 1st. LMAO. If you want to kill the game mode and then shoot it 50 more times to make sure it's dead that would be a great idea.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Leger.3724

[Zok.4956]

On 6/18/2023 at 3:43 AM, JTGuevara.9018 said:

You forgot the, possibly, biggest quit wave of them all: HoT release and Desert Borderlands

Yes, I agree. The release of the Desert Borderland with HoT was probably the biggest loss of WvW players in a short period of time and nearly killed WvW.

 

On 6/18/2023 at 3:43 AM, JTGuevara.9018 said:

Anet, as a result, took swift action and brought in the server-linking system we know today in order to keep wvw alive.

I love your sarcasm. 😎

[Zok.4956]

On 6/23/2023 at 10:10 PM, evlover.6270 said:

I've seen lots of valid reasons so far, but they are all personal ones.

Maybe because leaving is a personal decision and the question was about personal experience.

 

On 6/23/2023 at 10:10 PM, evlover.6270 said:

I haven't seen the main problems of WvW being mentioned yet though, the reasons why WvW is broken to its core and why it doesn't matter at all what people are doing,

Discussing the "main problems of WvW" is probably off topic here and might be worth discussing in a separate thread.

 

[Burnfall.9573]

47 minutes ago, Leger.3724 said:

The problem was never and should never be framed as "people left". People leave games all the time. It's normal and natural.

The problem is "why aren't new people stepping in to replace the people leaving?" and these new people don't care about a reward for their server placing first. They don't care about the intricacies of the meta or alliances.

They go in, they try it, the experience sucks and they never return. If Arena Net decides to focus on WvW that should be their focus.

Imagine trying out WvW for the first time if you're on Tarnished Coast this week. Outnumbered anywhere from 2-6 to 1 per server. On a Sunday. When Tarnished Coast should have had people playing. It's a self fulfilling prophecy at that point. 

Game mode is not fun to new players -> new players stop playing -> servers get more lopsided -> new experience gets even worse -> repeat

I'll be honest some of these suggestions are kittening awful like rewarding people for their server placing 1st. LMAO. If you want to kill the game mode and then shoot it 50 more times to make sure it's dead that would be a great idea.

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is. It is what consumers tell each other it is.”

Than these new players, share their bad experience with potential Guild Wars 2 new players

[evlover.6270]

5 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

Maybe because leaving is a personal decision and the question was about personal experience.

 

Discussing the "main problems of WvW" is probably off topic here and might be worth discussing in a separate thread.

 

The main problems of WvW are instigating the personal reasons though. The fact that there's no incentive to play for 1st or 2nd place is the reason people don't mind losing keeps anymore once they are behind. The fact that nothing is being done about thief exploits for months is the reason while people stop upgrading objectives against certain servers. The fact that defending keeps give you nothing while defeating the lord gives you a chance at an infusion means defending them becomes meaningless when matchups are already decided in the first 2 days. It never happens anymore that servers are playing together as there is no incentive to do so. Back in the day the 2nd and 3rd server would heavily play together against the 1st one "for honor" and you'd often see one team blocking the defending them from running back from a waypoint while the other was capping, even though they were enemies. I haven't seen this for years now. So I don't think mentioning the biggest reasons why WvW is being played the way it is today, is off topic, quite the contrary..

[iminxi.8514]

I think addressing WvW accessibility could boost the game mode aswel.

be that through WvW specific gear stats, gear that only is available for WvW. Perhaps an inbetween in terms of power of exotic and ascended gear that is fairly accesible. something in that direction. I can fully understand that as a new player looking up your most optimal gear and seeing the grinds for legendary trinkets/accesories etc seems like a mountain to climb. Hell, it IS a mountain to climb, and not a small one. i'm on my first legendary, Aurora, and it is.. quite something. (i'm a true mmo goof though so i'm enjoying all the tit bits aswel, but you know, not everyone does share that sentiment.)

 

[Valfar.3761]

Got sick of staring at the same maps. You can only spend so many hundreds of hours in the same green plains and beige desert environments before it becomes boring. Anet needed to add more maps and visual variety. Desert map was poorly designed but sometimes I just had to go there because I couldn't take alpine and EBG anymore, and eventually I got sick of desert too and that was it.

[Efar.8153]

abc

Edited July 13, 2023 by Efar.8153
pls delete - too negative

[Kozumi.5816]

Mobility creep, sustain creep, perma stealth thieves(fixed now I think...), CC break creep.

It's nearly impossible to secure a kill and kill someone unless you instantly 1 shot them with 10 people or they let you kill them.

 

[Kozumi.5816]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:14 PM, demonbeetle.2387 said:

I think addressing WvW accessibility could boost the game mode aswel.

be that through WvW specific gear stats, gear that only is available for WvW. Perhaps an inbetween in terms of power of exotic and ascended gear that is fairly accesible. something in that direction. I can fully understand that as a new player looking up your most optimal gear and seeing the grinds for legendary trinkets/accesories etc seems like a mountain to climb. Hell, it IS a mountain to climb, and not a small one. i'm on my first legendary, Aurora, and it is.. quite something. (i'm a true mmo goof though so i'm enjoying all the tit bits aswel, but you know, not everyone does share that sentiment.)

WvW will forever be a terrible game mode until it has it's own gear/sigil/rune balancing like SPvP(Just copy SPvP tbh)

 

[DeceiverX.8361]

Generally:

- Profession/stat imbalance/boonball and powercreep from the expansions.  Marauder/Minstrel/TB/Durability Runes.  HoT was bad, PoF was worse, EoD was the end.  Expansion powercreep and incorporation of increasingly-un-fun mechanics has ruined all offmeta builds with their immensely disparate performance capabilities.

- Server stacking/the JQ/BG controversies.

- Red BL being horrible with no incentive to fight there.

- Passive watchtower buff making sneaks/steals impossible by smaller or outnumbered groups.

- Warclaw making smallscale utterly useless in terms of map agency/disruption because now zergs can always respond and outrun small forces map-wide.  Like, actually killed the entire purpose of smaller groups and made them utterly tactically-non-viable including various professions/builds in those niches.

- Eight years of ever-worsening "balance" patches.

It's just not fun anymore.  Simply put.

 

[iminxi.8514]

10 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

WvW will forever be a terrible game mode until it has it's own gear/sigil/rune balancing like SPvP(Just copy SPvP tbh)

 

Agreed, it needs an overhaul, a big one. Mindless keep trading isn't it. The gear is the identical to pve, etc. I think we can all see the potential it has, though.

 

[Sviel.7493]

On 6/17/2023 at 3:01 PM, Draygo.9473 said:

The number 1 thing was burnout from the early WvW tournaments. Everything else listed while caused some people to leave wasnt anywhere close to the tournament burnout issue. 

I think the core issue is that Anet does not seem to have learned from the problems that led to the tournament burnout.  They never addressed it publicly and the changes to the game have been all over the place.

It's simply not possible to play WvW seriously for any length of time without realizing the gap between your efforts and your results.  You can play a part of it like in a raiding guild, but if you actually try to engage with the scoring system then you will inevitably understand that nothing you do matters if your opponents have a bigger zerg.  You can't really outmaneuver that.  Thus, to win, you must stay online as long as possible to ensure your server has the edge in numbers all for...nothing.  Just a weekly reset and another pointless match.  The game is not fun in the moment and not fun in the big picture.

The people that stick around tend to find something fun in the moment, like raiding or dueling, and try to stick to that content exclusively.  This exacerbates the scoring issues but who can blame them?