WTF is Anet doing to WvW?

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

Walks into a Keep, sees 50-man boon zombies banging gate... looks around.... 15 of us defending... turns around... walks away... Nah, not worth loosing my participation over... Ow it was t3? My point still stands: NOT worth loosing my participation over.

Against a 50-man boonball you deleted ANY opportunity for me to actively defend AND get credit for doing so.

Zergs will now find less resistance.... wait for it.... Zerg cries: "Where did our bags go!!!!!!!!"

Called it first! 

 

[Chaba.5410]

4 hours ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

Walks into a Keep, sees 50-man boon zombies banging gate... looks around.... 15 of us defending... turns around... walks away... Nah, not worth loosing my participation over... Ow it was t3? My point still stands: NOT worth loosing my participation over.

Against a 50-man boonball you deleted ANY opportunity for me to actively defend AND get credit for doing so.

Zergs will now find less resistance.... wait for it.... Zerg cries: "Where did our bags go!!!!!!!!"

Called it first! 

 

Defense event has it's own problem related to getting credit for it, sure, but are you saying defenders should be able to defend against 3x their numbers?  That seems a little excessive, no?

[Kunzaito.8169]

On 5/7/2024 at 8:21 PM, Chaba.5410 said:

I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say.

Let me rewrite your sentence to illustrate where my confusion lies.
When smaller, unorganized groups can even the odds against the big blobs, it incentivizes the blobs to shrink or magically get more people to play on the outnumbered side.
I'm sure that's not what you intended to say.  It's kind of the corollary of your statement.

Additional thoughts:
- What if taking away all the mechanisms wasn't meant to incentive getting big blobs to shrink?  I never saw where this was the intent of the recent changes.
- What would incentivize blobs to shrink?
 

I'm not sure what was unclear about what I said, but rewriting my sentence into some sort of straw-man inverse of the original doesn't help.

On your additional thoughts:

1. Some users here have expressed the idea that the main reason we have a problem with server stacking and blobbing is because since HoT defense has been overpowered and created some kind of natural necessity for larger and larger groups to attack objectives, and the recent (or any) changes swinging power back to offense will somehow in a Magical Christmas Land way reinvent WvW back to 2014 when multiple tags ran on maps with groups of different sizes playing various different ways. I think it's obvious that human nature + population decline as the game ages are the real causes, and either way there's no going back.

2. I think it would be rather difficult at this point to "incentivize" blobs to shrink. In the earlier days, the main reason to not play as a huge blob was because people wanted to play with their guild - there were a lot of guilds, most of them were smaller, and they all wanted to be in their own comms with their own builds doing their own thing. Again, player and guild attrition has led to huge guilds and/or pugs congealing when popular commanders run. So if you can think of a way to incentivize and reward smaller guild play, that would be it, but I promise people would find ways to cheese and exploit that too. 😄

 In reality, all they could realistically do is punish blob behavior so that non-blobs can offer some resistance and maybe even win out for a fight or two. Let people blob, just make it more competitive. Any of these things would help:

• Take away large group sustain/res power. Believe it or not it wasn't always possible for large groups to absorb a nearly infinite amount of siege damage, res all their downs, and turtle their way out of the fight if it ever looked like the tide might turn. We could have that again.
• Dare I say it - remove down state.
• Buff defensive siege

The kind of changes that would actually incentivize blobs to break up would be too radical for ANet to actually do. But if you wanna just throw everything out there:

• Creating a negative/debuff mechanic for grouping (which goes against the main design principles of this game and would create problems of its own). Perhaps something like fractal instabilities could work, where they rotate and sometimes it's best to play different ways. (PvP in GW1 had something like this)
• Totally rework the scoring and reward structure in a way that incentivizes PPT, capping, and defenses. (Possibly even eliminating the effect of kills/stomps). Not saying this would be a good move, but once upon a time WvW was run that way. XD
   

10 hours ago, Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341 said:

The changes;

The May 21 update also brings some quality-of-life and balance adjustments, largely in response to the feedback we’ve been monitoring since our last round of changes on April 16. We’re continuing to observe the impact of recent changes and expect to iterate more on WvW systems in future updates.

• The health bar for objective lords will now be displayed in the event UI, making their status much easier to track. Pro tip: clicking the lord’s health bar in the event UI will make them your active target. Works for PvE events, too!
• Siege disruptors will now be unblockable.
• We’re increasing the base-level and tier 3 supply capacities for keeps by 50 and increasing the amount of supply granted by the Supply Drop tactic by 100 to add some power back to defending.
• The Chilling Fog tactivator now heals allied players every few seconds for its duration instead of chilling enemy players.
  
  Well, at-least we tried 🙂

So.... the response was:

1. We can see the lord melt in real time 5% easier than before

2. Making the disruptors that no one uses easier for nobody to continue to use.

3. Giving attacking blobs a bit more supply to build their golem armies while still leaving it impossible to slow their return

4. Making another tactic useless. (Really? You think a bit of heal over-time for a few seconds is what's keeping us from pushing that blob out? Especially given the original alternative - being able to actually negatively affect their ability to move and spam skills?)

I... don't even know what to say.

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, Kunzaito.8169 said:

some sort of straw-man inverse of the original doesn't help

Not an inverse or a strawman.  It's a type of logical consequence of your statement, an inference of the logic you seemed to make of what happens when mechanics that "even the odds" against blobs get removed.  My additional questions were based on that inference.
 

 

1 hour ago, Kunzaito.8169 said:

Totally rework the scoring and reward structure in a way that incentivizes PPT, capping, and defenses. (Possibly even eliminating the effect of kills/stomps). Not saying this would be a good move, but once upon a time WvW was run that way. XD

I don't see how that would incentivize blobs to break up.  It's just EOTM capping rotations.

 

[Damian.8127]

6 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Defense event has its own problem related to getting credit for it, sure, but are you saying defenders should be able to defend against 3x their numbers?  That seems a little excessive, no?

I mean, yeah. It’s siege on a keep? Without trickery and outplay (or cheating) it should be at least 5:1. That’s the point of building and maintaining a keep no?

[Chaos God.1639]

12 hours ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

Walks into a Keep, sees 50-man boon zombies banging gate... looks around.... 15 of us defending... turns around... walks away... Nah, not worth loosing my participation over... Ow it was t3? My point still stands: NOT worth loosing my participation over.

Against a 50-man boonball you deleted ANY opportunity for me to actively defend AND get credit for doing so.

Zergs will now find less resistance.... wait for it.... Zerg cries: "Where did our bags go!!!!!!!!"

Called it first! 

 

yea, maybe they should increase the learning curve for the boons, because the big group of zombie players will never learn how to use them correctly and are noobs for the rest of their life, right? and the game is also filled with one shot abilities, like a fps game, right? so if the zombie group is too slow to react, because they are brainless zombies, they will instantly get destroyed by 15 players...

after reading some of the posts here some really think this is a good solution and it will help the defensive side.

I do think they could add some wvw defense abilities that can be used as a last resort, like scorched earth. this is also why i'm using real life examples, so that we at least can predict what can work or not.

Edited May 15 by Chaos God.1639

[Dark Dvid.2906]

 WOW, Anet really does understand our concerns. Chilling Fog will no longer chill enemy,but will heal defenders slightly every couple seconds. Also supply capacity of objective will increase by a whooping 50 and supply drop will double. These are game changers for defense if ever I seen one."Take that you attacking blob, I now have more supply to slowly close the wall/gate, and now you will need one more click to kill me.

[Damian.8127]

Just now, Dark Dvid.2906 said:

 WOW, Anet really does understand our concerns. Chilling Fog will no longer chill enemy,but will heal defenders slightly every couple seconds. Also supply capacity of objective will increase by a whooping 50 and supply drop will double. These are game changers for defense if ever I seen one."Take that you attacking blob, I now have more supply to slowly close the wall/gate, and now you will need one more click to kill me.

“We’ve listened and made changes”….. who suggested taking the weak tactic and making it weaker? 🤣. It shows a complete lack of understanding in how the game is played

[KrHome.1920]

21 minutes ago, Damian.8127 said:

I mean, yeah. It’s siege on a keep? Without trickery and outplay (or cheating) it should be at least 5:1. That’s the point of building and maintaining a keep no?

This is still a game. People play games to make progress in one way or another. It does not make sense to apply real life rules here. Stalled fights are not fun for anyone. Players are getting the  feeling of wasting life time which eventually leads to quitting the game.

[Dark Dvid.2906]

5 minutes ago, Chaos God.1639 said:

yea, maybe they should increase the learning curve for the boons, because the big group of zombie players will never learn how to use them correctly and are noobs for the rest of their life, right? and the game is also filled with one shot abilities, like a fps game, right? so if the zombie group is too slow to react, because they are brainless zombies, they will instantly get destroyed by 15 players...

after reading some of the posts here some really think this is a good solution and it will help the defensive side.

I do think they could add some wvw defense ability that can be used as a last resort, like scorched earth. this is also why i'm using real life examples, so that we at least can predict what can work or not.

Would be nice. But anything like that will not last long, one complaint from a Dev favorite server and it will be nerfed to irrelevance.

[Damian.8127]

Just now, KrHome.1920 said:

This is still a game. People play games to make progress in one way or another. It does not make sense to apply real life rules here. Stalled fights are not fun for anyone. Players are getting the  feeling of wasting life time which eventually leads to quitting the game.

Fair, which is why it’s not 5:1. It used to be about 2:1. Now it’s about 1:1 with both teams requiring similar numbers and organisation. Doesn’t happen. So now the attackers are having the best fun taking empty keeps!🤣

The focus should be gameplay, which is now afk while 2-5 catas used  to open double walls under non threatening siege that is ignored. There are little to no advantage to high walls, as there is no disadvantage to standing tight to them. With pulls, it’s actually advantage to attackers in many situations.

struggling to get in with catas? Build some trebs🤷‍♂️. But this is too outrageous, I got weeklies to complete and a video to watch while maintaining my APM (outside of W + 1) to 3.

[Gehenna.3625]

53 minutes ago, KrHome.1920 said:

This is still a game. People play games to make progress in one way or another. It does not make sense to apply real life rules here. Stalled fights are not fun for anyone. Players are getting the  feeling of wasting life time which eventually leads to quitting the game.

Then fix the things that make the siege fights stall: boonballs and laziness/need for instant-gratification. Oh yeah, the first thing Anet won't fix and the second thing they can't.

The other side of the coin that you describe is that people hate what WvW has been turning into, leading to quitting the game as well. Why have home borders when you don't defend because it's pointless now? 
 

Perhaps, Anet needs to own up to what they're doing. Admit that most people just want to ppt around the map with as little resistance as possible and change the borderlands into maps with a similar layout to EB. Then all 4 maps can have a castle in the middle. Of course, owning up to things isn't very popular with companies and redoing the maps, even when using existing assets will cost some resources and effort.

But truly I think they should. Home borders are obsolete now because home borders imply defending your land and that's not longer viable or useful even. Plus they're getting rid of servers now with the WR thing becoming permanent so that's also no reason to have a home.

[bq pd.2148]

2 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

This is still a game. People play games to make progress in one way or another. It does not make sense to apply real life rules here. Stalled fights are not fun for anyone. Players are getting the  feeling of wasting life time which eventually leads to quitting the game.

stalling options are the only thing left if anet does not want any/hardly any combat advantage for the defending side in their own keep.

personally i would like a t3 improvement to compete with presence of the keep that disables downed state for opponents within the keep (same area as presence, not object aura). but i don't think we would see that after presence nerf.  i would throw myself much more likely against impossible odds if i can take some of them with me to visit grenth together.
 

Edited May 15 by bq pd.2148

[Chaba.5410]

5 hours ago, Damian.8127 said:

I mean, yeah. It’s siege on a keep? Without trickery and outplay (or cheating) it should be at least 5:1. That’s the point of building and maintaining a keep no?

Try running the numbers on that on. Not even two teams bringing all their queues would be enough players to ever take a keep from one team with their queue at 5:1. It's a three way match, the reason behind 2:1. This is why 3:1 would also be excessive.

[Chaba.5410]

3 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Then fix the things that make the siege fights stall: boonballs and laziness/need for instant-gratification. Oh yeah, the first thing Anet won't fix and the second thing they can't.

The other side of the coin that you describe is that people hate what WvW has been turning into, leading to quitting the game as well. Why have home borders when you don't defend because it's pointless now? 
 

Perhaps, Anet needs to own up to what they're doing. Admit that most people just want to ppt around the map with as little resistance as possible and change the borderlands into maps with a similar layout to EB. Then all 4 maps can have a castle in the middle. Of course, owning up to things isn't very popular with companies and redoing the maps, even when using existing assets will cost some resources and effort.

But truly I think they should. Home borders are obsolete now because home borders imply defending your land and that's not longer viable or useful even. Plus they're getting rid of servers now with the WR thing becoming permanent so that's also no reason to have a home.

What do you mean? When the match resets, borderland side keeps always belong to enemy. You're not intended to hold the entire map. Every team has a third. When teams own their entire borderland, that's indicative of the other teams not having enough players for all maps.

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

I am just trying to imagine the meeting behind closed doors...

Employee A: Well, we have got this 18+ pages of feedback from players and they have really taken their time and given us multiple suggestions...
Employee B: Wait, what? There is some kind of problem?
Employee A: Well, if you would just permit me to go through the feedba...
Employee B: No, don't worry about that, just slap some more supply in their keeps, and make siege disruptor invulnerable, that will fix it!
Employee A: Well, I don't think you have thought about the...
Employee B: Ok, ok, increase the supply drop tactic by 100...
Employee A: I don't think...
Employee B: Must I do everything around here?, just change the chill fog tactivator to heal players and change the scoring system whilst you are at it.

Employee A looks at the feedback, sees all is lost, and nods and walks slowly out the door not sure what just happened.

Disclaimer: This is a joke, and may not represent reality or what actually happened. We must keep a sense of humour about these things.

Edited May 15 by Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341

[TheGrimm.5624]

8 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

This is still a game. People play games to make progress in one way or another. It does not make sense to apply real life rules here. Stalled fights are not fun for anyone. Players are getting the  feeling of wasting life time which eventually leads to quitting the game.

Were the fights you were seeing stalled? Or were they prolonged fights? Aka were you seeing stuck outside or breached walls and defenders continuously running back blocking a cap? These are not the same. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

First off I love the development time so I hate to create counter posts on changes and especially ones we haven't tested but I can't say thanks either. At times it seems like they do these things backwards. Example we have scoring changes and reasons to win coming down the road so we are making changes to help with 'x' and 'y' to balance out 'a' and 'b'. Versus here is a random change that may not have been anywhere on the radar.

I think at times it would help to understand changes if they provided more whys of a thing to help players understand the intent. Example changing chilling fog to a heal mist, why? Posters made good arguments that for groups running conversions it added alacrity to attackers. Other posts provided examples to change the impact to be something that can not be converted. 

Checking the wiki:

Some effects are considered conditions for some game mechanics so they can be removed with condition removal effects, but are not available in any profession or race skill sets, and cannot be converted into boons. Here are some examples of such conditions:

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/d7/Encumbered.png/20px-Encumbered.png Dwayna's Lament
• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/4/45/Burning.png/20px-Burning.png Burning Pitch
• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/3/3e/Corrosive_Poison_Cloud.png/20px-Corrosive_Poison_Cloud.png Mysterious Plague
• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/7/71/Undead_Camouflage.png/20px-Undead_Camouflage.png Poisoned
• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/7/78/Hamstring.png/20px-Hamstring.png Rend
• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/f/fb/Crippled.png/20px-Crippled.png Wounded

Don't have access to the heal numbers they are thinking but will it really do the same thing? Would it have been better to add a new condition that couldn't be converted or apply one or some of the above? There is where intent comes in. How much heal would it need to do to encourage a player to dive into a ball in the smaller rings to try and block it? And what benefits does it give to the outer fights? Was the prior tactic seen as a slowing tactic, or offensive one? If so why replace it with a heal one that does nothing to an enemy that is not engaged at the time? These do not fit the same goal. Would it have been better to still have it apply a damaging effect on the attacker that just could not be converted to a boon but could still be cleansed?

Take the change to the supply drop. Personally as a scribe and a player that applies a lot of tactics to structures (mine and any claimed ones that are without upgrades) it would be a matter of what is the overall picture. Is there a tag that needs supply to use to reclaim stuff, do a lot of structures need repairs, add supply drops. Are there defenders, are there scouts, are structures standing and holding, add fog. From the blog right now my first thought is just add the supply drop. So the change moves the idea from there is an either or decision to just my choice is now A. Now will I test and check numbers yes, but honestly I doubt they would add a heal buff that was strong enough that would make me say lets go for it and I try and go 1 v 6 if roaming to practice how long till I die tactics and how to plan on getting jumped when not expecting it. 

Take the disabler to disruptor change. To me this moved the tool from its a defensive tool to now its only used when attacking. Unblockable just means more of the same, there is no reason to even think about trying to get to the oil since any smart attacker is going to increase the damage applied to the oil siege to burn it down faster. So this is another one would it have been better to have both disablers and add a disruptor?  Walls are already seen as a death sentence for defenders but the trade off was your death could buy time for more defenders to arrive. Why risk that on the disruptor as an attacker since if you die applying it, you won't be there to apply more damage to said siege that is was applied to., so don't waste the supply on it.

Will need to create a separate thread but I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a preview of the scoring changes. I say this since as I said sometimes it seems they go backwards, we are making these changes since we have these changes coming down the road. Example lets say the end goal is week-end rewards for server placements based on activity. Which could mean scoring means something, which means smarter play means something which means defending and attacking mean something. In that sort of light how do we get servers to play smarter, attack the bigger server or server in first place versus jump the smaller or server in third place. How do we encourage defenders to try and face more attackers. Some of these upcoming scoring changes might be to help this and these are pre-changes, but in a vacuum they just come up as what are these? 

Enough rambling for now, back on this later.

 

[Chaba.5410]

4 hours ago, Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341 said:

I am just trying to imagine the meeting behind closed doors...

Employee A: Well, we have got this 18+ pages of feedback from players and they have really taken their time and given us multiple suggestions...
Employee B: Wait, what? There is some kind of problem?
Employee A: Well, if you would just permit me to go through the feedba...
Employee B: No, don't worry about that, just slap some more supply in their keeps, and make siege disruptor invulnerable, that will fix it!
Employee A: Well, I don't think you have thought about the...
Employee B: Ok, ok, increase the supply drop tactic by 100...
Employee A: I don't think...
Employee B: Must I do everything around here?, just change the chill fog tactivator to heal players and change the scoring system whilst you are at it.

Employee A looks at the feedback, sees all is lost, and nods and walks slowly out the door not sure what just happened.

Disclaimer: This is a joke, and may not represent reality or what actually happened. We must keep a sense of humour about these things.

Putting more supply in the keeps after it had been nerfed in the past and increasing supply drop tactic WAS player feedback.

So, the way I find your joke funny is for how ironic it is and not for the sarcasm you were going for.

[Anov.4237]

Does Devs play this gamemode?

Im only playing WvW now to get the last Skirmish Tickets for Legendary Armor. Then im off.

[Junkpile.7439]

Only fun parts in defending was disabling siege and fix a wall so last enemies can't get in and anerf ruined both.

[ArchonWing.9480]

6 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

What do you mean? When the match resets, borderland side keeps always belong to enemy. You're not intended to hold the entire map. Every team has a third. When teams own their entire borderland, that's indicative of the other teams not having enough players for all maps.

lol, that is true. Maybe a lot of people don't play reset, and I believe this change was made in HoT where you don't start owning the sidekeeps. But I do sometimes tell people that Bay/Hills isn't ours to begin with anyways. xD

Though it really does show why a lot of people don't handle the borderlands strategically, typically wasting too much time on securing the south on hbl, and more importantly not enough on their side of enemy BLs. They're just prioritizing objectives based on the name of the map. Management of the side keeps works fundamentally different.

I suppose one could argue the difficulty of moving around maps due to queues, and the general difficulty of managing this over different maps. Yea I know some will tell those on another map to push one side, but often people just don't care or understand this because the points system and the concepts behind it are somewhat dead in many players' minds.

Edited May 15 by ArchonWing.9480

[Codename T.2847]

On 5/14/2024 at 6:33 PM, Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341 said:

The changes;

The May 21 update also brings some quality-of-life and balance adjustments, largely in response to the feedback we’ve been monitoring since our last round of changes on April 16. We’re continuing to observe the impact of recent changes and expect to iterate more on WvW systems in future updates.

• The health bar for objective lords will now be displayed in the event UI, making their status much easier to track. Pro tip: clicking the lord’s health bar in the event UI will make them your active target. Works for PvE events, too!
• Siege disruptors will now be unblockable.
• We’re increasing the base-level and tier 3 supply capacities for keeps by 50 and increasing the amount of supply granted by the Supply Drop tactic by 100 to add some power back to defending.
• The Chilling Fog tactivator now heals allied players every few seconds for its duration instead of chilling enemy players.
  
  Well, at-least we tried 🙂

You're trolling

[Reztek.7805]

7 hours ago, Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341 said:

I am just trying to imagine the meeting behind closed doors...

Employee A: Well, we have got this 18+ pages of feedback from players and they have really taken their time and given us multiple suggestions...
Employee B: Wait, what? There is some kind of problem?
Employee A: Well, if you would just permit me to go through the feedba...
Employee B: No, don't worry about that, just slap some more supply in their keeps, and make siege disruptor invulnerable, that will fix it!
Employee A: Well, I don't think you have thought about the...
Employee B: Ok, ok, increase the supply drop tactic by 100...
Employee A: I don't think...
Employee B: Must I do everything around here?, just change the chill fog tactivator to heal players and change the scoring system whilst you are at it.

Employee A looks at the feedback, sees all is lost, and nods and walks slowly out the door not sure what just happened.

Disclaimer: This is a joke, and may not represent reality or what actually happened. We must keep a sense of humour about these things.

Sounds about right! 😄 And afterwards employee A, disguises as a player and fights for his genius changes on the forums! 😉

[Sviel.7493]

5 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Putting more supply in the keeps after it had been nerfed in the past and increasing supply drop tactic WAS player feedback.

This is true.  That change isn't bad in itself, but it is frustrating that it is presented as a response to other bad changes when it will not mitigate the damage done by those changes.  The feedback specific to the recent changes was not calling for more supply because it's already unlikely that you'll be able to stall long enough to use what supply you have.