Anet, can we have a (constructive) comparison of your vision/goal of WWW in the near future?

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 hour ago, Alsandar.7420 said:

Reading through Grimm’s explanation I don’t think I want alliances. I like being in a BIG guild and I like fighting other guilds. I don’t like fighting servers. Severs can be dead. Servers can also be mag 🤮 I don’t mind if the other guild wipes us a lot, although my mates hate it. I also prefer fighting over objectives vs in a field, but I’d fight anywhere my commander led me. 
 

Just my subjective opinions 

Something to consider, they have been far and in-between in details so don't take my statements as still current since they might have changed the underlining system and not provided those details, which is why I post last factors hoping that it encourages them to update older info.

One detail we need more info on is whether or not time of play has been added as a factor. Without it we still have not only coverage wars but also the chance that sorts might lead to larger queues at certain time frames. Example based on playtime factors it may link multiple guilds together that all would have normally played the same time of day and time zone creating larger queues for those that are linked while still leaving other time zones & play times empty and thereby under populated. Alliances may have covered some of that since players would have needed to make sure they had coverage but also didn't over stack a time period creating queues. Which was something that made the algorithm not manage time zone less of an issue. By separating these two aspects we run the risk of more stacked time zones or smaller servers with more tiers meaning more dead spots in the 24 hr clock.

[disForm.2837]

7 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Something to consider, they have been far and in-between in details so don't take my statements as still current since they might have changed the underlining system and not provided those details, which is why I post last factors hoping that it encourages them to update older info.

One detail we need more info on is whether or not time of play has been added as a factor. Without it we still have not only coverage wars but also the chance that sorts might lead to larger queues at certain time frames. Example based on playtime factors it may link multiple guilds together that all would have normally played the same time of day and time zone creating larger queues for those that are linked while still leaving other time zones & play times empty and thereby under populated. Alliances may have covered some of that since players would have needed to make sure they had coverage but also didn't over stack a time period creating queues. Which was something that made the algorithm not manage time zone less of an issue. By separating these two aspects we run the risk of more stacked time zones or smaller servers with more tiers meaning more dead spots in the 24 hr clock.

Time of play should be a factor, but it's not required. Just like today, where OCE guilds are coveted for the coverage they offer outside main timezones.  The most successful Alliances won't be the ones with over stacked primetime players, but better spread. Given the granularity Alliances offer to Anet, balance should be easier than having static 12 worlds. They can use "non-allied" players to help with balance.

Let the players sort themselves. You wanna be on the top? You need guilds on every timezone.

 

[devastoscz.9851]

2 hours ago, disForm.2837 said:

Time of play should be a factor, but it's not required. Just like today, where OCE guilds are coveted for the coverage they offer outside main timezones.  The most successful Alliances won't be the ones with over stacked primetime players, but better spread. Given the granularity Alliances offer to Anet, balance should be easier than having static 12 worlds. They can use "non-allied" players to help with balance.

Let the players sort themselves. You wanna be on the top? You need guilds on every timezone.

 

Sure if you want to win the matchup, but... what for? You get nothing if you do and you're risking being weak during YOUR playtime. So the way Alliances was being taken by competitive guilds was "kitten the matchup, how do I maximize my group's winrate in the time that we are playing".

In any case, Alliances are dead in the water by Anet's admission. And if you're familiar with their track record for WvW development, "delayed" and "soon" means there's two concrete blocks attached to the feet at that project and its in the bottom of the deepest river available.

WR is what's happening, so no player input into placement. Not necessarily a bad thing considering what I explained of the player approach to grouping. And yeah it'd be nice if they could spread things out due to time zones, but I highly doubt that is manageable at this point. Guilds and players have already merged into megaguilds in expectation of alliances that arent going to happen... unglueing that for balance is gonna be extremely difficult if not outright impossible. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

3 hours ago, disForm.2837 said:

Time of play should be a factor, but it's not required. Just like today, where OCE guilds are coveted for the coverage they offer outside main timezones.  The most successful Alliances won't be the ones with over stacked primetime players, but better spread.

Let the players sort themselves. You wanna be on the top? You need guilds on every timezone.

 

Agree on the WR project was already assuming players will handle coverage themselves. And agree as well that the most organized and thereby probably being more successful will be those that consider the 24hr clock on their own.

44 minutes ago, devastoscz.9851 said:

WR is what's happening, so no player input into placement. Not necessarily a bad thing considering what I explained of the player approach to grouping. 

Partially agree. I see the difference here being now instead of guilds remaining whole while grouping into an Alliance, if people will want to group and handle coverage they will need to join larger guilds and its unclear if you have to rep that mega guild while in WvW or just during restructuring. If its the later than we have a solution for Alliance else its a mater of less smaller guilds which then impacts other game mechanics like claiming and upgrading and also impacts guild identity to some aspects. But the more mega guilds we have the less lego pieces the sorting logic has to balance server/world rebuilds. Hence more details on how the WR handles things without the Alliance logic.

[Teknomancer.4895]

On 9/19/2023 at 2:31 PM, TheGrimm.5624 said:

It's worth trying if you want a game mode that changes minute by minute. You never know what you will encounter each time you enter the mists. If you are into open world PvP sandboxes, its addictive. Had a returning player try it and after havocing some (small scale play) they were hooked and asked themselves why they didn't tried this before they took 8 years off from the game. Take the subforum activity more as people wouldn't post and complain if they didn't care. And then others will also reply to counter reply and then the peanut gallery effect occurs. 

WR if anything is meant to help new players with more balanced worlds.

TBH I used to spend most of my time roaming in WvW back in the day (up until I left with the HoT Exodus). I've only been back in-game like 2 or 3 months, and it's mostly been/still is a long catch-up on masteries, mounts, especs and more. I even have a commander tag from way back when but I wouldn't dare pop it up now, that's just asking for grief. 🤣 Mercifully my gear is still mostly relevant even after all this time. I'm still not where I want to be on any of it, and I haven't even really looked at masteries for WvW. I've mostly only focused on my Mesmer main and my OW gathering tank; my other characters are seriously underdeveloped by current standards. I presume warclaw is probably the one to start with just for mobility's sake; good choice or is there better? 

On 9/19/2023 at 2:42 PM, XenesisII.1540 said:

Wvw is fine and fun if you play within your own bubble or your own guild. If you play sweating about ppting and holding stuff to win skirmishes and the match, and tier positioning and all that stuff it's pointless these days. Most people play for the rewards anyways at this point, using the easiest methods they can find, which is the same for any content people play really. Oh and class balance is another, well, just pointless thing to talk about anymore.

 I seem to have trouble finding a guild that A) bothers with WvW at all and B) is willing to train a player who has no idea how the maps are laid out anymore and is so rusty he might as well be a n00b. 😛 I'm unsure if I should bother to try and change servers (currently Kaineng) and if so to which one, or if servers will even matter anymore. I mostly did roaming towers, camps and random 1vX encounters, so I tended to leave the matches and rankings and so on to people who cared about that stuff, just not my thing.

As for balance, this game has never been balanced and it never will be. Nor should it, I mean there has to be something to distinguish player classes from each other that's more than just surface & style. Class identity/fantasy shouldn't be so flattened that everyone can do the same stuff as everyone else. But that's covered in a whole other bunch of other threads so it doesn't need to happen here, too.

[XenesisII.1540]

2 minutes ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

I'm unsure if I should bother to try and change servers (currently Kaineng) and if so to which one, or if servers will even matter anymore. I mostly did roaming towers, camps and random 1vX encounters, so I tended to leave the matches and rankings and so on to people who cared about that stuff, just not my thing.

TheGrimm, ArchonWing, and I are currently on SBI linked with Kaineng. 😁

There's a few guild groups that run in private a lot. There's a couple zerg groups, FTL, Indo's group, sometimes CL, there's a couple pug tags you can find, this is all NA, have no clue in the other times cause I don't really play any others anymore.

If you're looking to move, maybe wait until next friday 29th, since it's relinks and they announce the new links around noon est, so you would have about 10 hours to transfer if the next link with kaineng isn't looking good. Make sure it's a friday before reset that you transfer so you only lose a week of skirmish track rewards.

Good luck.

[Teknomancer.4895]

6 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

If you're looking to move, maybe wait until next friday 29th, since it's relinks and they announce the new links around noon est, so you would have about 10 hours to transfer if the next link with kaineng isn't looking good.

See, that's just it. I wouldn't know what a good server link looked like if I saw it. It's been a long time.

[XenesisII.1540]

1 minute ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

See, that's just it. I wouldn't know what a good server link looked like if I saw it. It's been a long time.

Other than a couple hallmarks like BG Mag FA SOS, for various reasons, it's hard to tell anyways with the amount of times guilds tend to move these days, servers in the middle tend to yoyo with bandwagons.

Personally I would keep an eye on ET, it's the only medium server right now, cost 500gems to move, it will most likely be matched up with one of those others I mentioned since they are full. ET also has a couple guilds on it still SHLD and TFOR, (a couple other big ones moved last relink to the next server I will mention), usually run open for meta classes. Sorrow's furnace is another good one to look at they have JADE, FAIL, POP, AQUA.

If you're looking for zerg action anyways, if not and more for roaming, well... practically any server is fine for that these days.

[Teknomancer.4895]

Just to link this back to the topic, I speak for myself of course but I can't be the only returning or new player who's looking at the mode as it is, plus the ANet info, and hesitating. I might be an outlier due to the length of absence, but I've made heavy use of the wiki, forums as well as playing PvE to try and get back up to speed. That's what all this stuff is for, right? There are parts of HoT that are still no-go zones for me because I don't have the poison mastery yet! 😛 

Then when I see the WvW forums are full of issues, and the official ANet information is let's say less than informative, I wonder if I'd even stand a chance at my stage of "catch-up." And yes, I get it that everyone is nothing more than loot on legs, but if I'm so far behind that I'd be curbstomped the second I left the safe zone, that to me doesn't seem like much fun. 🤣

ANet really does need to do everything about WvW better, but first and foremost communication. WvW was the best part of the game back in the day, and it could be again.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Teknomancer.4895
typos

[XenesisII.1540]

16 minutes ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Just to link this back to the topic, I speak for myself of course but I can't be the only returning or new player who's looking at the mode as it is, plus the ANet info, and hesitating. I might be an outlier due to the length of absence, but I've made heavy use of the wiki, forums as well as playing PvE to try and get back up to speed. That's what all this stuff is for, right? There are parts of HoT that are still no-go zones for me because I don't have the poison mastery yet! 😛 

Then when I see the WvW forums are full of issues, and the official ANet information is let's say less than informative, I wonder if I'd even stand a chance at my stage of "catch-up." And yes, I get it that everyone is nothing more than loot on legs, but if I'm so far behind that I'd be curbstomped the second I left the safe zone, that to me doesn't seem like much fun. 🤣

ANet really does need to do everything about WvW better, but first and foremost communication. WvW was the best part of the game back in the day, and it could be again.

Doesn't take much to catchup to be honest. The mount would be the first priority, wvw masteries are nice, but it's not like pve you couldn't function without them, half of them is siege mastery which doesn't really matter, there's always someone to fill in those. You can function without the mount, use movement skills or stealth, play on ebg where objectives are much closer together. Gear wise you can function on exotics until you start getting ascended in whatever ways, buying some stats would be expensive like cele and mara, but you can get the free exotic gear boxes in wvw, from the skirmish track and triumphant rewards track. Combat obviously has changed a lot since 2015, and some specs are better than others for whatever roles just have to get use to it.

[kash.9213]

1 hour ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Just to link this back to the topic, I speak for myself of course but I can't be the only returning or new player who's looking at the mode as it is, plus the ANet info, and hesitating. I might be an outlier due to the length of absence, but I've made heavy use of the wiki, forums as well as playing PvE to try and get back up to speed. That's what all this stuff is for, right? There are parts of HoT that are still no-go zones for me because I don't have the poison mastery yet! 😛 

Then when I see the WvW forums are full of issues, and the official ANet information is let's say less than informative, I wonder if I'd even stand a chance at my stage of "catch-up." And yes, I get it that everyone is nothing more than loot on legs, but if I'm so far behind that I'd be curbstomped the second I left the safe zone, that to me doesn't seem like much fun. 🤣

ANet really does need to do everything about WvW better, but first and foremost communication. WvW was the best part of the game back in the day, and it could be again.

Shouldn't take long to fill out best-in-slot stats and other modifiers like Relics or whatever. After that you can worry more about what times you can log on to catch the most action. 

I still don't have that poison mastery and I'll probably never get it like a lot of other stuff out there. I would love to knock all that out, but I don't have that much time after work, and I'm normally only in the mood to vibe in WvW. But then somehow I stumbled through making a set of legendary armor with a bunch of old kitten laying around in like a day and I didn't expect to get around to that either so who knows. 

[blp.3489]

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Gear wise you can function on exotics until you start getting ascended in whatever ways

You can get three ascended armor and an ascended weapon from the Wizard's Vault for starters.

[blp.3489]

6 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

if people will want to group and handle coverage they will need to join larger guilds and its unclear if you have to rep that mega guild while in WvW or just during restructuring. If its the later than we have a solution for Alliance else its a mater of less smaller guilds which then impacts other game mechanics like claiming and upgrading and also impacts guild identity to some aspects. But the more mega guilds we have the less lego pieces the sorting logic has to balance server/world rebuilds. Hence more details on how the WR handles things without the Alliance logic.

I'm pretty sure that you just need to check your WvW guild in the interface and that what guild you represent is irrelevant.

Objective claiming is an interesting point I hadn't thought of.  Did objective claiming use the guild you were representing or your wvw guild during the betas?  Does anyone remember?

One can't say for sure but I doubt that there will be enough maxed out guilds to make balancing an issue.  If guilds are distributed based on size/hours the maxed out guilds will be spread over all the teams and I just can't see there being enough to not leave significant room for balancing with smaller guilds.  What could be interesting is that every team will likely end up with at least one or two large guilds.  At least if large guilds become common.

[MedievalThings.5417]

Nothing Anet does is going to change wvw in ANY way, except the name of the server you log in as.  Tarnished Coast will be called something else.  Sure, some of the random solos will get redistributed, but literally nothing about wvw will change.  Everyone has a set way of playing, guilds included.  Transfers will still be a thing.  So you are going to get the same map que blobs doing exactly what they do now.  The same havocs doing exactly what they do now.  World restructuring is basically like Twitter calling itself X.  Still the same dumpster fire, but hey, new logo (server name).

[blp.3489]

1 hour ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

Sure, some of the random solos will get redistributed, but literally nothing about wvw will change.  Everyone has a set way of playing, guilds included.  Transfers will still be a thing.

When a team is made up of many guilds with no control over what guilds you are teamed with, it is virtually impossible to get a long term dominant team like Mag as a server.  Even if 500 players from Mag form a guild, they will only be a minority on the team they get assigned to.

I'm not sure if there will be transfers, it could be just: join a guild with the people you want to play with.

[blp.3489]

On 9/19/2023 at 8:47 AM, Mabi black.1824 said:

can we begin to get a countdown of the restructuring of the servers on an annual basis rather than 8 weeks? 

Since players can switch teams by changing their wvw guild if you kept the teams for an entire year it seems likely that the size of the not so great teams would shrink and the size of the better performing teams would swell to the point of having rather unbalanced servers by the end of the year.  And actually guilds will come and go as new guilds will form and guilds will merge into larger guilds or disband.

I suspect that you may have to settle for having up to 500 of your teammates stick with you while having to regularly adapt and learn to work together with the other guilds that you get matched up with each matching period.  As a relative newbie 500 players seems like a sizeable group to hang out with.  And a large enough group to be who you are fighting for.  I only recognize a few dozen players on my server, I don't know whether that is representative.

Edited September 21, 2023 by blp.3489

[TheGrimm.5624]

6 hours ago, blp.3489 said:

I'm pretty sure that you just need to check your WvW guild in the interface and that what guild you represent is irrelevant.

Objective claiming is an interesting point I hadn't thought of.  Did objective claiming use the guild you were representing or your wvw guild during the betas?  Does anyone remember?

One can't say for sure but I doubt that there will be enough maxed out guilds to make balancing an issue.  If guilds are distributed based on size/hours the maxed out guilds will be spread over all the teams and I just can't see there being enough to not leave significant room for balancing with smaller guilds.  What could be interesting is that every team will likely end up with at least one or two large guilds.  At least if large guilds become common.

My point was not well made. So where I was going since they decided to split the Alliance from the WR, they could still achieve a lot of Alliance features by allowing disparate guilds to group up under a server or community guild if they allow players to then rep their own guilds after the restructure while in WvW. If someone did form a community guild and marked it as their WvW guild and then played under their normal guild while out and about, let me know if that worked. I did not test that at the time since we were testing the sorting logic so didn't try this option. 

[Mabi black.1824]

11 hours ago, blp.3489 said:

Since players can switch teams by changing their wvw guild if you kept the teams for an entire year it seems likely that the size of the not so great teams would shrink and the size of the better performing teams would swell to the point of having rather unbalanced servers by the end of the year.  And actually guilds will come and go as new guilds will form and guilds will merge into larger guilds or disband.

I suspect that you may have to settle for having up to 500 of your teammates stick with you while having to regularly adapt and learn to work together with the other guilds that you get matched up with each matching period.  As a relative newbie 500 players seems like a sizeable group to hang out with.  And a large enough group to be who you are fighting for.  I only recognize a few dozen players on my server, I don't know whether that is representative.

So, let's see a bit of summarizing the speech.

When you run WR, we are all randomly redistributed. if you consider my hypothesis. After 12 months you will undergo random distribution again and everything starts all over again. During this period, will you be able to move wherever you want with the condition of not influencing the balance of the new teams, hypothetically more than 5% of the population? or something similar?

If, when WR is in motion and rebuilds the new teams, all with a 50% reduction in size for what we now consider as the "full" limit, we get a double number of teams. So when you build the weekly matches it will be 4 teams vs 4 teams vs 4 teams. The pieces to be put together are smaller, maintain a condition of ''Similar'' teams and a credible competition condition, should be simpler.

If, hypothetically, the algorithm that assembles these smaller pieces, takes into account in addition to the number of hours of play, for example, the number of guilds greater than X number, the K/D parameter of the previous period, rather than when a team has won or lost in the last 4 weeks, even the automation that assembles 4 teams should improve the result in terms of "credible competition".

All this would allow you to have WWW still server-based, of course, very different from what you had before, but all of us, we can still feel part of a great team, competing with many other teams. throughout the season of 1 calendar year. In this way we make the impact with WR, softer, switch to an 8-week countdown you can always do, whenever you want, if and when you deem it necessary.

If players can still identify with their seasonal team, they will likely feel that that homeland is indeed ''his'' borderland. That castle we know as Garry, is actually ''his'' Garry. In other words, motivation and content for everyone, or at least we are trying to do so. If that structure were anonymous, because it's random every 8 weeks, it would be quite different, I think. ( See EOTM risk ).

What would be useful here is really what Anet's thoughts are, and what the developmental kids have in mind, for this mode of play.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Mabi black.1824

[Mabi black.1824]

11 hours ago, blp.3489 said:

I suspect that you may have to settle for having up to 500 of your teammates stick with you

My problem / thought is not that of the limit of 500 players to hold hands, while I would like to keep many more, to safeguard the communities we know, for a long time, or because I have to settle or make those 500 enough. My thought is to give a motivation to those 500 players, so that they are transported to participate, to maintain a vision of WWW as broad and inclusive as possible.

[Mabi black.1824]

The ideas that Anet has for the moment only hypothesized, and that will not be anything concrete, until WR goes definitively live (so we still have plenty of time to reason and understand well) plan to redistribute every 8 weeks, randomly. How do we imagine this more believable large-scale PvP game mode? On what basis will the player's or guild's competition have to confront? The server container (guaranteed by ANET) it should be there on purpose, I think. Do we players want this mode to grow and gain a high level of credibility in terms of large-scale competition? Or we all want to give up competition in general because ''content is the rewards and that's it''. Or does the development have something completely different in mind? Please enlighten me.

[Dawdler.8521]

17 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

The ideas that Anet has for the moment only hypothesized, and that will not be anything concrete, until WR goes definitively live (so we still have plenty of time to reason and understand well) plan to redistribute every 8 weeks, randomly. How do we imagine this more believable large-scale PvP game mode? On what basis will the player's or guild's competition have to confront? The server container (guaranteed by ANET) it should be there on purpose, I think. Do we players want this mode to grow and gain a high level of credibility in terms of large-scale competition? Or we all want to give up competition in general because ''content is the rewards and that's it''. Or does the development have something completely different in mind? Please enlighten me.

Not sure what we need to imagine, Anet pretty much stated its gonna be like the WR betas.

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 9/20/2023 at 5:40 PM, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Just to link this back to the topic, I speak for myself of course but I can't be the only returning or new player who's looking at the mode as it is, plus the ANet info, and hesitating. I might be an outlier due to the length of absence, but I've made heavy use of the wiki, forums as well as playing PvE to try and get back up to speed. That's what all this stuff is for, right? There are parts of HoT that are still no-go zones for me because I don't have the poison mastery yet! 😛 

Then when I see the WvW forums are full of issues, and the official ANet information is let's say less than informative, I wonder if I'd even stand a chance at my stage of "catch-up." And yes, I get it that everyone is nothing more than loot on legs, but if I'm so far behind that I'd be curbstomped the second I left the safe zone, that to me doesn't seem like much fun. 🤣

ANet really does need to do everything about WvW better, but first and foremost communication. WvW was the best part of the game back in the day, and it could be again.

Welcome back lol,  a lot of us are still here from forums ago. Like the prior forum versions things haven't changed and the forums will be full of all sorts to issues from large to what did you just ask? kind of topics.

Have a new guildmate that played at the opening of the game and then stopped when other friends stopped playing. They returned to the game since they joined us in Destiny 2 and then found out we played GW2 for WvW. They joined us in WvW as an up-level like a lot of us had done back in the day and it didn't take them long to hit 80 and then start to branch out into alts with all the ToKs. They have also been joining us if we PvE and been working back and fourth thru the various expansions hitting up content and its been going pretty fast. They are also already working on their Leggo armor sets after the process was explained to them and they could skip all of the stuff the rest of us had done prior to the Armory system. I wouldn't worry about getting back up to speed, more find a like minded guild and I think that helps. Wiki is still an outstanding source of info so you are on a good track from there.

Again, welcome back and enjoy your time in the mists!

[Mabi black.1824]

On 9/20/2023 at 11:40 PM, Teknomancer.4895 said:

but I can't be the only returning or new player

Yes, welcome back to this crazy cage.😊

I also recommend going calmly and in company or accompanied by other sociable players. You will arrive everywhere without noticing. Have fun.

[bigmouse.2163]

My entire way of looking at World Restructuring/Alliances seems to be different than most on this thread. Personally, I expect that there WILL be stacked teams (or whatever they end up being called), but I don't see that as a problem unless they all stack on to one place instead of two or three, and there's too many bandwagoners to fit on one team. 

So I envision a top tier that looks much like it does now, but the playerbase has more tools to control who they end up with.

I DO like the idea of WvW as a competitive gamemode where the score matters, and I hope they even go further in that direction.

[Teknomancer.4895]

31 minutes ago, bigmouse.2163 said:

I DO like the idea of WvW as a competitive gamemode where the score matters, and I hope they even go further in that direction.

Even if they try, WvW has always been a mosh pit free for all, I doubt it would change much.