What happened?

[Medusa.7346]

Reading the notes on the WvW changes is like reading someone's diary from an alternate reality. In the reality of whoever made these changes, one or two defenders can happily stop a zerg by themselves with a well-placed arrowcart (regular, not superior). In this reality, organised groups are facing a constant uphill struggle against the unwashed rabble, and objectives rarely flip if at all.

Of course, in our reality, defending was already next to impossible against any organised group. The only way to beat a boonball is with another, better boonball. Siege does nothing against the insane amount of barrier any boonball can bring, alongside the perma boons. Even if you manage to irritate a boonball with a mortar, your siege weapon will be swiftly destroyed and anyone on the wall with it. As for standing on the wall firing down at the attackers... you'll be melted or pulled before you can stick your head out.

So that was our reality before today, but ArenaNet, in their wisdom, decided to make it HARDER for defenders because... erm, anyone have an answer here? Did a group of boonball guilds write a letter petitioning the removal of any obstacles to their dominance? Did a dev (probably on Mag side) get killed while trying to take a keep? Or is this really a patch from an alternate reality to ours?

By the way, if you want to "encourage players to fight players" why not update the sPvP gamemode? I hear it could use some love...

[Chaba.5410]

11 minutes ago, Medusa.7346 said:

By the way, if you want to "encourage players to fight players" why not update the sPvP gamemode?

Hrm... maybe you ARE onto something?  Just remove walls and gates from WvW entirely so it's more like sPvP.  Go RIBA and Drizzlewood if you want walls and gates.

[XenesisII.1540]

1 hour ago, Medusa.7346 said:

So that was our reality before today, but ArenaNet, in their wisdom, decided to make it HARDER for defenders because... erm, anyone have an answer here? Did a group of boonball guilds write a letter petitioning the removal of any obstacles to their dominance? Did a dev (probably on Mag side) get killed while trying to take a keep? Or is this really a patch from an alternate reality to ours?

By the way, if you want to "encourage players to fight players" why not update the sPvP gamemode? I hear it could use some love...

Most likely the gvg bros on discord.

Suggestions by people who don't want to play WvW for what it is, they want their gvg playground to "mindlessly train track over people for bags".

Don't understand why anet didn't just make a separate battleground for them in the last decade instead of dismantling wvw. 🤷‍♂️

Edited April 16 by XenesisII.1540

[Chaba.5410]

58 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

they want their gvg playground to ktrain bags.

How exactly does one obtain karma from killing other players?  Or have we completely forgone with the meaning of "ktrain" now?

Edited April 16 by Chaba.5410

[kash.9213]

32 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Most likely the gvg bros on discord.

Suggestions by people who don't want to play WvW for what it is, they want their gvg playground to ktrain bags.

Don't understand why anet didn't just make a separate battleground for them in the last decade instead of dismantling wvw. 🤷‍♂️

I agree with that last part. Still, I don't think most of us are going to play WvW for what it is for very long. I can't imagine most people I see a lot in WvW not finding a standup fight somewhere after a few minutes of trying to wait out siege if siege fire and structure destruction happened at a more appropriate pace and boon ball blobs couldn't roll over stuff at breakneck speeds. It's not open world so there's no narrative, setting tone and atmosphere, or actual emergent encounters to make a siege route or even just sieging itself interesting.

Those gvg groups are doing the fighting, plotting, and maneuvering we all actually log in to do but a lot of them made it stale and rigid and requiring everyone on the map to add to the mass or leave so now we're in a rut. If we're going to be motivated to really tune into the sieging mechanics and not find reasons to avoid it as well as avoiding fighting under siege fire entirely, then siege equipment and map mechanics and gimmicks needs to be in service of teams working on formations, positioning, tactics and movement (because again, there's nothing else related to the rest of the game going on in WvW) and not an annoyance or a roadblock to the fun part. 

Edited April 16 by kash.9213

[Chaba.5410]

Also, there's already a rather standard term for what you were attempting to describe: FARMING BAGS

[ZTeamG.4603]

Anyone want to guess at how long before they just remove gates altogether so as not to give defenders "too much of an advantage"?

Seriously Anet, if you only want boonballers to play the mode with two giant zergs slowly circling each other at a snail's pace while skills take 10 seconds to activate, just say so. It'll save the rest of us time hoping that the game mode ever stops getting worse.

Edited April 16 by ZTeamG.4603

[Nomad.4301]

After observing the changes brought to WvW by the last several patches, the only conclusion I can come to is that there is someone on the balance team that is injecting their personal bias into the game-mode. If they encounter something they find annoying or that slows down their boonblob, they make a note to 'change' it for the next patch (nerf).

For example here's a hypothetical: they (the devs) might've been in/leading a zerg attacking a keep, but a few of their zerglings died (from clouding) and they couldn't get back in because the gates were repaired, so eventually (after like 45 minutes of blobbing around the lords room, because boonblobs..) due to defenders constantly contesting by ducking in and out of the large circle, their zerg is picked apart and forced to bail. They/them did not like this and felt like having the walls/gates be near permanently downed would allow them access to permanent reinforcements to farm easier and "help to incentivize more player vs. player interactions" and having the circle be smaller so the defenders have to dive into their boonblob (aka become bags) to contest so they can cap more easily and it'll be less of a "slog" for the attackers.

The fact that they said "we don't want to swing that advantage completely in favor of attacking groups.." tells me that they feel like defenders SHOULDN'T have an advantage in THEIR OWN objectives, which imo, is ridiculous. Could you imagine if castles IRL were somehow a dis-advantage to the armies defending? What would even be the point of building them then?

I really hope it isn't actually a bias and that they have some kind of internal metrics to back up these ongoing baffling changes, because right now this is the only conclusion I can draw. I just know that as someone who really dislikes boon-blob gameplay this is driving me away from the game-mode and the game in general.

[Chaba.5410]

8 minutes ago, Nomad.4301 said:

and that they have some kind of internal metrics to back up these ongoing baffling changes

I assume they do have internal metrics on this when they make statements like this:   "the defenders' advantage inside their own structures was previously too strong".

Who knows?  The extra stats certainly felt pretty strong in even-numbered fights.  Your zerg would wipe the invader inside your keep then feel bold and go outside the objective to fight the invader again, this time at a camp or some such and then wipe.  Oops?

Edited April 16 by Chaba.5410

[ArchonWing.9480]

5 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Most likely the gvg bros on discord.

Suggestions by people who don't want to play WvW for what it is, they want their gvg playground to "mindlessly train track over people for bags".

Don't understand why anet didn't just make a separate battleground for them in the last decade instead of dismantling wvw. 🤷‍♂️

lol, that's honestly a generous description.

The players you describe don't want a separate deathmatch battlegrounds, because they would probably get stomped in a competitive fight. (Not to mention some are so hated nobody gives them content anyways-- and many hate each other too)  Players that exclusively gvg already have what they want-- they don't care about what happens in WvW proper and have an EOTM arena. While I'd actually appreciate a better and more accessible Arena, That issue was solved a long time ago. The more telling fact is the lack of real balance changes geared towards that kind of fight.

These players used to be bags but because a lot of the good players left they want to secure their place.

What these players want is to reduce the amount of skill expression (aka dumbing down), especially in areas they are weak at. And as much as I hate it myself, laying proper siege to a structure is a skill.

The other reason why I wouldn't call these folks "GvG bros" is because usually they never run alone. They're usually holding someone else's coattails, whether it be another guild or even pugs. Because they cannot be considered a proper unit on their own, it's pretty hard to say anyone fighting then is engaging in GvG, but rather GvG plus another G plus random green dots.

Yes, sometimes your guild is too small to fight a map queue alone, but the amount of times I've seen your garden variety fight group wipe to about even numbers and then cry to their buddies to bring 40 more, makes me think they don't care for fights, but rather the result of them, aka winning.

Of course, I guess their metrics show that your average Firebrand/other support doesn't know what projectile hate is, lol. So you can imagine the level of play we're aiming at.

You only need to see how dumbed down pve is at this point too to get the bigger picture.

Edited April 16 by ArchonWing.9480

[Vasdamas Anklast.1607]

7 hours ago, Medusa.7346 said:

Reading the notes on the WvW changes is like reading someone's diary from an alternate reality. In the reality of whoever made these changes, one or two defenders can happily stop a zerg by themselves with a well-placed arrowcart (regular, not superior). In this reality, organised groups are facing a constant uphill struggle against the unwashed rabble, and objectives rarely flip if at all.

Of course, in our reality, defending was already next to impossible against any organised group. The only way to beat a boonball is with another, better boonball. Siege does nothing against the insane amount of barrier any boonball can bring, alongside the perma boons. Even if you manage to irritate a boonball with a mortar, your siege weapon will be swiftly destroyed and anyone on the wall with it. As for standing on the wall firing down at the attackers... you'll be melted or pulled before you can stick your head out.

So that was our reality before today, but ArenaNet, in their wisdom, decided to make it HARDER for defenders because... erm, anyone have an answer here? Did a group of boonball guilds write a letter petitioning the removal of any obstacles to their dominance? Did a dev (probably on Mag side) get killed while trying to take a keep? Or is this really a patch from an alternate reality to ours?

By the way, if you want to "encourage players to fight players" why not update the sPvP gamemode? I hear it could use some love...

I wonder if their bosses are even aware that the job their employees are doing is pretty bad and contradicts reality.
In both MUs I was in, there was a big imbalance between the populations of the servers, and as a result, my server had to fight outnumbered every time against organized raids that were twice as big. There was a time we were simply camped at spawn for two days.

UPD Heard they hired a person from the community for balance recently. So far they appear pretty biased.

Edited April 17 by Vasdamas Anklast.1607

[Wolfofdivinity.6251]

Anet happened. Just make sure you buy more gems and please pre-order GW3. Thanks! And be happy wvw is even allowed to exist!