How it started, how it's going, two years later, Wvw is still in shambles.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

20 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Never said it did and never expect it to for a mmo built around pve, doesn't mean it should be 99.9% pve development, wvw was an endgame feature from day one and I would even say draws more people than raids which was added 3 years later to attract that crowd of players from other games.

While they spaz out with catch phrases of how it's a cornerstone but then treat it like the outhouse. If you don't invest in an area of the game, don't expect it's players to invest back into the game. 🤷‍♂️

I don't disagree--I just think the outlook has changed.

Guild Wars 1 and early Guild Wars 2 were built around competitive ironically enough; that is until the balancing and general neglect backburnered it.  I do think if they could have kept the structured competitive alive then the WvW balance would be in a better place too--like when they were actively trying around the 2014-2015 WvW seasons.

I think to them that WvW is cornerstone, just not one that needs attention over incoming expansion releases.  

I guess to put it another way, I can't see them making an expansion entirely around WvW because most people don't like to die / get griefed / etc.  This is not unlike PvE where SoTO isn't based around raids or content where people could feel harmed--it is based around open world with incoming legendary armor to suppor that.

Point being, if they won't frame an expansion around it then it isn't priority over what they will frame expansion around. 

If we ever hope for them to give priority then I believe we should lobby more towards systems that include new players first (like tutorials).  No new player is going to care about alliance vs linked server system, that's all backend to them.  As they progress, they could care more about alliance if they make friends with guilds, but if they never do the experience for them doesn't change.  

They started this path a little bit with the weekly wvw rewards and continue it with infusion vendor and now wizard rewards--again all systems that had to take priority over alliance.  Since these are up and functional I see more alliance news coming mid-quarter--late September into October depending on if they put Halloween festival on autopilot again.  

[XenesisII.1540]

6 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Spending gems is not a factor of game mode. Many people buy gems just to support the game. But even so, WvW players spend significant amount of gems on world transfers, and are also prone to buy the new expansions to get an advantage with new specs or whatnot.  WvW players also can have some high inventory demands that pve players don't like siege and tools-- it's arguably the most expensive game mode.

Also even if you don't spend actual money on gems, the gems don't just appear out of thin air-- someone had to purchase those gems with money first.

And so I think I probably have contributed quite a bit to the game economy.

https://i.imgur.com/YzrwJeW.png

No way that's accurate. Mines has a 4k gem jump in one day lol.

https://i.imgur.com/Gr0tLrc.jpg

[Gotejjeken.1267]

9 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

And so I think I probably have contributed quite a bit to the game economy.

https://i.imgur.com/YzrwJeW.png

Comparative to what though? I'm at 100k in theoretically spent gems, with actual acct value of ~5k gems (which according to GW2Efficiency is higher than 98% of the 500k accts) and my WvW rank is less than 2k.

It is the blunt fact but if all WvW players left the game would be fine--they could make up for it on PvE content alone.  The Raid / Strike / instanced model is really the way to attract and retain new players, because this has been set out by competitors like WoW and FFXIV.

This matters greatly because the inverse is untrue--if they stop making new PvE content, the game dies.  If the game dies, WvW dies...

[Solvar.7953]

Not to be too much of a cynic here, but how much do you think is the fact Anet has seen that they have spent relatively little on WvW for the past many years, and yet still has a decent number of players?  So they can basically think "We can do nothing, but WvW will still have players".

I'm pretty sure there were noticeable drops in revenue when there was no new PvE content, which is one reason why they keep putting something out there for that game mode.  I suspect a lot of people PvE people buying stuff is that there is perceived future content in that game mode - if at some point, Anet announce that GW2 has wrapped up and there won't be any new content as they are working on something new, I would expect player count, and money, to drop considerably.

 

[XenesisII.1540]

7 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

It is the blunt fact but if all WvW players left the game would be fine

Fact is if all raiders or fractal runners or dungeon runners or strike runners left the game it would be fine too. But that isn't the point. If you introduce content into your game, continue to support it, or declare it dead (like dungeons, or spvp when they pulled it out of esports) and move on. It doesn't matter what percentage of players play whatever in it, if you go by that stat then no mmo needs to have any content beyond open world which will always have the biggest group of players.

You produce content to give your players options and keep your players happy, and therefore have them stay with your game and continue to invest in it. No one is asking for an entire expansion dedicated to wvw, that would be ridiculous, but how about 5% of their time to develop the other content, why did it take 5 years for them to update wvw rewards? Why do we have bugs and exploits in wvw that have been around for years?

Lastly, if wvw is as dead as people think it is, why would they come out to call it a "cornerstone" after almost 10 years of the game? why continue with this WR alliance farce and not just completely drop it? Why do balance updates to wvw to cater to it's group players? I'm not asking for priority development, I'm asking for a fair share of it.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

14 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Fact is if all raiders or fractal runners or dungeon runners or strike runners left the game it would be fine too. But that isn't the point.

In a way it is, because the expansion introduced no new raids or strikes of any kind, and only one fractal was introduced just before the expansion (Silent Surf), so they probably are in the same boat wondering where the new content is.

WvW though as I mentioned before HAS had updates in the forms of reward system rehaul and an infusion / misc. item vendor that a lot of people wanted.  It's not a ton but it is 100% more than sPvP has gotten.  So, there is probably 5% priority there as opposed to to 1% or less that sPvP and festivals get.

Alliances though will always be less priority because as you and others have pointed out, server transfer money keeps them going for one.  So, since revenue stream is there probably not the biggest rush to cut that out and have to find a replacement.  

In the end, I don't disagree that it is unfortunate competitive is stagnating or on maintenance mode for the most part, as it's mainly what I play.  I think the overall balance leaves a lot to be desired and also would love a new borderlands map and some new sPvP maps.

Realistically, we're probably SoL for another year on major content as they've already laid out the roadmap through mid next-year.  

[ArchonWing.9480]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

It is the blunt fact but if all WvW players left the game would be fine--they could make up for it on PvE content alone.  The Raid / Strike / instanced model is really the way to attract and retain new players, because this has been set out by competitors like WoW and FFXIV.

This matters greatly because the inverse is untrue--if they stop making new PvE content, the game dies.  If the game dies, WvW dies...

Well yea, I'm not even arguing that this isn't  a pve dominant game. There are very few people that only do WvW. A lot of people are a mix of game modes. I mean I could play this game without WvW too.

But I don't really get the point of this binary. They could probably many aspects of the game, like jumping puzzles and raids, and this game would be fine too. It would still make this game worse. It's not just a binary between making up from it and not making up for it.

I would argue WvW is more important than raids though. And in terms of instanced content release rate, it gets trashed by the opposition anyways. (even less than WvW!). And there are those graveyards like dungeons. It's very clear when things aren't a priority.

Edited September 7, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

But I don't really get the point of this binary. They could probably many aspects of the game, like jumping puzzles and raids, and this game would be fine too. It would still make this game worse. It's not just a binary between making up from it and not making up for it.

In terms of priority and software development it is.  Something has to take less priority and that needs to be a binary--you can't have something 'sort of' take less or more priority than something else or nothing gets done.  Business loves this 'grey priority' and will try to make everything top priority, but us devs do not like that as we get pulled everywhere for no gain.  

Speaking of jumping puzzles, I don't even know if there is a new one with the expansion--so that would kind of reinforce the point of raids and puzzles not getting priority.  Dungeons too, those died when fractals came out much like MTV and radio.

In terms of WvW vs. Raids, unsure--because I'm guessing they could make a new SoTO raid and hype it to the media and people would come try it if it looked cool enough--not sure they could do that with WvW unless they introduced mount combat or something. 

But yeah, they used to be clearer about what gets priority or status of things when we had community managers, but those kind of got trashed by the forums and all left.  There seems to be a shift back to no communication and less than zero transparency.  

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

5 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

No way that's accurate. Mines has a 4k gem jump in one day lol.

https://i.imgur.com/Gr0tLrc.jpg

Those be some rookie numbers

https://imgur.com/a/PwInPm9

I clearly have a problem...

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

In terms of priority and software development it is.  Something has to take less priority and that needs to be a binary--you can't have something 'sort of' take less or more priority than something else or nothing gets done.  Business loves this 'grey priority' and will try to make everything top priority, but us devs do not like that as we get pulled everywhere for no gain.  

And again, there probably nobody that thinks wvw is going to be the highest priority compared to pve open world stuff.  But...

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Speaking of jumping puzzles, I don't even know if there is a new one with the expansion--so that would kind of reinforce the point of raids and puzzles not getting priority.  Dungeons too, those died when fractals came out much like MTV and radio.

In terms of WvW vs. Raids, unsure--because I'm guessing they could make a new SoTO raid and hype it to the media and people would come try it if it looked cool enough--not sure they could do that with WvW unless they introduced mount combat or something. 

The sad part is relatively speaking WvW is probably higher than a lot of these things.

The last raid was like 4 years ago and it takes them 3 years for a new fractal. Hardcore raiders just aren't going to come back for 1 raid, especially at that content release. I really do think the raiding ship has sailed and left. I guess you have these things called Strikes but ehhh. At the end of the day the game doesn't really ramp up the difficulty or prepare players for instanced content but on the other hand maybe people just don't care enough.

Ironically WvW probably comes closer to OW pve due to the low commitment. You can come and go as you wish, and don't have to devote time and be stuck with the same people and be subject to gatekeeping and requirements or whatnot.

Personally I don't actually think there's a hidden bias against WvW in particular, given the state of the game as a whole. The last two expansions just don't have enough content. People are still doing HoT metas en masse to this very day, while a lot of the expansion maps are dead.

Oh yea, and there's PvP; dunno about that.

 

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

But yeah, they used to be clearer about what gets priority or status of things when we had community managers, but those kind of got trashed by the forums and all left.  There seems to be a shift back to no communication and less than zero transparency.  

It's just kinda scarce.

 

 

Edited September 7, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[Solvar.7953]

At least for JPs, they were in the original to show off some of the new features, and because a developer was fond of making them.  That developer has left Anet - I think a while back, so someone else probably did the JPs for EoD.  It is possible that person has since left, so there isn't anyone left that really cares much for JPs, so none in the latest expansion.  Or maybe a decision was made it wasn't worth the dev effort - for a lot of the more recent JPs, they got to the point where I'd do them once, and be thankful/hopeful I never have to do them again - if I'm like most players, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to spend that much effort for one off content.

I honestly have no idea what Anets plan is or who they are trying to market to.  They seemingly keep changing their mind.  It is possible there are no passionate WvW developers left at Anet (and honestly, given state of WvW and Anets lack of commitment to it, if I was a games dev and was told this a position for WvW development for GW2, I might really wonder how much of a future that job holds).  If Anet actually had a small team of passionate WvW devs, I think they could get a lot done, presuming they were free to make the changes they wanted. 

 

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

The longer this goes on, the more people stop playing WvW / people move different servers where we had make shift alliance and/or altogether quit the game while losing faith in the ability of the company to actually pull off the REAL alliance system. we NEED the alliance system from Gw1 with 12 guilds, alliance chat and all. we NEED this...this alliance system, wvw restructuring AND ALLIANCE commander markers...WITHOUT having to buy a fancy new tag mind you...

Ive been told to seek out the WR project because i want to bring my thief community into wvw, where we can excel in ways these annoying, cliche organized fight guild with organized compositions in squads need to understand one thing...you hated thief, now let me make you fear them...

30 thieves vs 6 guilds...who won?   the 30 thieves did... TY [BREW] from [EcK]