How has the restructure changed your GW2 life?

[Chaba.5410]

3 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

But what effort are we talking about? Until June 14, this was a large-scale PvP game. Choose a team and you'll find yourself in a format of competition and confrontation. About what? of teams/servers. I strain myself when I go to the toilet. When I get into a game, I have fun. if the game is well done.

I feel like you asking me this question is willful ignorance, perhaps for the sake of argument (?), on the well worn trope of the past about overstacking servers for numbers and coverage.  Players who face such servers have to play longer hours to counter the coverage or get better organized and strategic to counter the numbers in order to be competitive.  Surely you, as a long time WvW player, understand what effort this is.  This is still a large-scale PvP game and like any PvP game, players get a sense of who carries and who leeches.

What WR does is now limit and frustrate the player stacking.  The degree of stacking is kept within defined parameters - a guild of 500 players rather than how many can fit in an entire server.  The game creates the teams now.  The more casual players who are too used to playing on old stacked servers may find difficulty adjusting to this change because they perhaps now need to put in more effort.  They don't get to just run up and get a tag on the poor dude getting zerged down anymore.  They might actually have to down the opponent themselves.

[TheGrimm.5624]

4 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

Dear The Grimm, when you come back from vacation, and you realize this half-finished job, let us know. Holidays always come to an end. It won't save you long to be on vacation.

Mabi. 🙂

Vacation as in I am floating and wanted to see how the sorts are working out. Seeing how many are getting scrambled along the way as well. I have to admit, fighting aside, outside of a server using voice or not, is banter. In the linkings part of mis-mashing was how soon server cultures would banter. Noticing that post linking its taking a lot longer. Now odds are good that this is moving to voice or to guild chat but it is visible in how it impacts players just getting used to each other outside of their own groups.

I hear you, I am just using the time to see more that I may not have during linkings even. Don't take my posts as a counter but more, seeing what can be done in the maelstrom. 

Edited June 29 by TheGrimm.5624
Edit spelling and added ramble for context

[ArchonWing.9480]

8 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

Doing nothing or doing something about what? It's not up to you or me. Anet is changing things at WVW, and it's doing it halfway. You can't delete servers and maintain a server-based game design. But is it possible not to see it? What do you want a player to do in reference to this?  Does he take over the coding of this game and set about fixing it on his own?

Doing something to ensure you can play with people that you want to play with. That's one of the things people have control over.

As for fixing the game, that's not my job  nor was that what I was talking about.

 

Edited June 29 by ArchonWing.9480

[Atoclone.4810]

since wr, regular sunday runs with my guild it's fantastic. always content. map chat seems less full of people constantly complaining and sniping at each other than before. the only place i'm seeing shouts of "omg its ded y u kil wvw" is in the forums

[Mistwraithe.3106]

Our first matchup/week was terrible. The second one was poor, but improved towards the end of the week. This one might be reasonable. So the one up / one down has improved things. People getting to know each other a bit better has also improve things. Team chat is no longer completely dead, there is now a non negligible chance that if you say a leveled tower or keep is under attack then you will get some sort of response.

So, maybe there is potential?

It all comes down to balance though. Anet need to deliver balanced teams. Ideally from the first week, not the third or later.

[Gop.8713]

I've played more, but probably only because it's new. I imagine I'll revert to my old habits over time . . .

I prefer the new system . . .

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 6/29/2024 at 8:18 AM, Mabi black.1824 said:

Dear The Grimm, when you come back from vacation, and you realize this half-finished job, let us know. Holidays always come to an end. It won't save you long to be on vacation.

🙂 Posting less has meant more vendetta instead of posting. I admit when grumpy roaming or havocing, it means more grumpy pugamnding. That is just me. Vendetta is valid. 

[Mabi black.1824]

On 6/29/2024 at 6:13 PM, Chaba.5410 said:

What WR does is now limit and frustrate the player stacking.

It's much more appropriate to use the conditional here. Because I assure you that in the EU I have been playing these last three weeks scraping the bottom of the barrel. In the early evening put together 25 players with a single tag on the map and on the entry, while playing against a red blob of 50+. And at the same time they call for help because a red blob of 50+ on another map? And then on a third? while you don't have men to defend 1? crazy.

But let's forget about that. What I want to tell you is that I'm fine with a mechanic that prevents stacking and provides servers of similar size and activity to each other. What I dispute is that the way it is thought out, at the same time makes the server container useless, and consequently renders useless our scoring system, such as comparison and competition because they are server-based. So if you choose this way to improve your balance, I expect development to fix everything else as well. If it doesn't have to be the server anymore, because the guild has to be the new reference, then let's make sure that it really is. Give me a way to compare myself and to compete with my 200-man guild against your 500-man guild. In a PvP format, the only thing players want is confrontation and competition. These are the things that build purpose/motivation on in participating in a PvP game. If we make them useless or impossible, it will be a big problem for everyone. If you don't care about anything anymore (win, lose, capture, defend, victory points, leaderboard) you will see the hours of play decrease and then stop. I have the impression that we are neglecting something that you cannot overlook.

[cannibalkitteh.8376]

I've been playing a lot less WvW for a couple reasons. There have been other events that have occupied my ingame time, and as I find myself increasingly separated from the folks I'd like to play WvW with, I've been getting into content where I don't have to worry about if someone selected the same WvW guild.

Overall, I preferred the server system because it felt easier to build a community. Transfers let you move folks into an existing team. You could run with and join multiple guilds that were on your server. Now, additional guilds are only really practical if the other guild is in your wider alliance.

[SweetPotato.7456]

It didn't change anything. 
My leaving my old server and joining the now awesome guild changed the way I play the game some time ago, saves me a lot of time, I no longer see the message "You have been playing for 12 hours" on my screen,  I no longer have to work X5 harder to catch up on my pips. Bags are streaming into my backpack faster than ever. I don't care what system there are, I am going where my people go. 

The only thing different is, now that everything is easier, I no longer am able to kill keep/tower lord by myself, But I learnt how to / still learning , to better contribute in a community/squad/etc. instead of hoping someone would come help and get frustrated when help was not available. 

[Nomad.4301]

I can't speak for others but personally I've pretty much just stopped playing altogether. The various blob-oriented changes made prior to this were more what killed it for me then anything to do with these 'alliances'. Though the alliances were probably the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak.

I have two accounts that I played and one (WvW rank 1100 something) was thrown into probably the worst balanced mess I've ever seen in over a decade of playing wvw, we're talking 24/7 boon blobs spawn camping every single exit on every map but Desert BL. My other (main) account was over rank 7000 and was given the option(?) of picking whatever server I wanted for some reason. I never bothered even picking a server because as far as I could tell from looking at the scoreboards they ALL sucked for roaming either from having too many allies swarming the maps and too few enemies to fight or the opposite.

I can say that out of the 10'ish people I regularly played with prior to this in havoc and roaming I think maybe 1 of them has logged in since this went live (they were all active in the months prior), we were all roamers and in different guilds/no guilds etc, not to mention being split up in a half-dozen different 'alliances'.

I guess it's my fault for not bandwagon'ing on some mega-guild blob alliance somewhere? But TBH that's really not how I play WvW, and if that's the only way to do things going forwards then I don't see a reason to keep playing this game-mode or even game sadly as WvW was probably 90% of my playtime since launch.

Maybe I'll check back in a few months when the 'relink' happens because the people huffing copium seem to believe that this is all due to a perceived lack of 'data' and that it will all be magically fixed and perfectly balanced once the system has all the 'data' it needs to properly re-balance the teams. I don't recall Anet ever saying that they were planning on balancing servers based on empirical datasets, rather just seeking to balance overall numbers and total # of combined play-hours per team (more than they were able too in the old server system anyway), in fact I recall them saying specifically that they couldn't balance teams around things like timezones.

Maybe they did say somewhere that they're gathering all this data (this is a beta after all) and that it's going to be amazing once the system has it all right, but I wonder how good this data is going to be if half your player-base quits after 2 weeks because of the terrible matchmaking and total lack of teamwork 🤔. 

[One more for the road.8950]

16 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

It's much more appropriate to use the conditional here. Because I assure you that in the EU I have been playing these last three weeks scraping the bottom of the barrel. In the early evening put together 25 players with a single tag on the map and on the entry, while playing against a red blob of 50+. And at the same time they call for help because a red blob of 50+ on another map? And then on a third? while you don't have men to defend 1? crazy.

But let's forget about that. What I want to tell you is that I'm fine with a mechanic that prevents stacking and provides servers of similar size and activity to each other. What I dispute is that the way it is thought out, at the same time makes the server container useless, and consequently renders useless our scoring system, such as comparison and competition because they are server-based. So if you choose this way to improve your balance, I expect development to fix everything else as well. If it doesn't have to be the server anymore, because the guild has to be the new reference, then let's make sure that it really is. Give me a way to compare myself and to compete with my 200-man guild against your 500-man guild. In a PvP format, the only thing players want is confrontation and competition. These are the things that build purpose/motivation on in participating in a PvP game. If we make them useless or impossible, it will be a big problem for everyone. If you don't care about anything anymore (win, lose, capture, defend, victory points, leaderboard) you will see the hours of play decrease and then stop. I have the impression that we are neglecting something that you cannot overlook.

You do realize that with all the different types of guilds that has been created for WR, a more casual community guild with 500 members can easily have a lot less players on at most times than a dedicated guild with 50-100 members?

[Gazrul.3086]

I don't play GW2 less, but I switched to PvE. Maybe I'll be back in WvW once the next teams shuffle happens. Right now I'm just not having fun. Which is a shame as WvW is my favourite content.

[Bunny.9834]

bittersweet. 

I miss playing with my "server" even though we were sort of a meme server. 
I've played with those guys for 10 years. 🥲

[Mabi black.1824]

3 hours ago, One more for the road.8950 said:

You do realize that with all the different types of guilds that has been created for WR, a more casual community guild with 500 members can easily have a lot less players on at most times than a dedicated guild with 50-100 members?

Yes, and Anet explained to us that the guilds will be put together by WR in reference to their hours of play. If I have an alliance of 500 players and only 10 players play, I expect this alliance to be matched appropriately with others, resulting in servers with similar activity to each other. it's just not working. i think.

[Dawdler.8521]

37 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

Yes, and Anet explained to us that the guilds will be put together by WR in reference to their hours of play. If I have an alliance of 500 players and only 10 players play, I expect this alliance to be matched appropriately with others, resulting in servers with similar activity to each other. it's just not working. i think.

Yet no one seems to be able to explain what the objective criteria for "it's not working" is compared to worlds. 

Edited July 2 by Dawdler.8521

[Mabi black.1824]

6 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Yet no one seems to be able to explain what the objective criteria for "it's not working" is compared to worlds. 

That Anel has some difficulty in counting players and their repetitive activity, I would say has been known for a long time. We have often justified this with respect to the large number of players who transfer the next day. But at this point, looking at this permanent beta, I say maybe it's not just about that.

[ArchonWing.9480]

7 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Yet no one seems to be able to explain what the objective criteria for "it's not working" is compared to worlds. 

"I'm getting farmed!" is not a good enough metric for you?

[Jski.6180]

About the same prime times are full and not prime times only ebg is full. There a bit less random 1v1 i must say maybe eotm should cover for that though that not realty random any more. Though some ppl hate it when other ppl 1v1 so its a bit of an odd things to lose out on.

[Chaba.5410]

13 hours ago, Nomad.4301 said:

we're talking 24/7 boon blobs spawn camping every single exit

You've never had that happen before?  I have.  All we had left was our garrison and everyone who was online playing was there defending it tooth and nail.  I certainly wouldn't advocate playing in such a situation, but it does remain one of the more memorable events to me in over a decade of playing.  We stayed online many hours longer than normal to defend.

Edited July 2 by Chaba.5410

[Mabi black.1824]

41 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

You've never had that happen before?  I have.  All we had left was our garrison and everyone who was online playing was there defending it tooth and nail.  I certainly wouldn't advocate playing in such a situation, but it does remain one of the more memorable events to me in over a decade of playing.  We stayed online many hours longer than normal to defend.

For this kind of gaming experience (really engaging) you need feelings of belonging or team spirit. stuff like that. or we'll never see them again. 

[DeWolfe.2174]

I basically quit WvW and set my weeklies to PvE only. A 6 week Beta was too long as it's more than sufficient to alter behavior, habits, and relationships.

If they wanted less people playing, it looks like they succeeded.

[Chaba.5410]

49 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

For this kind of gaming experience (really engaging) you need feelings of belonging or team spirit. stuff like that. or we'll never see them again. 

It was a sense of belonging to that moment only, which happens all the time today too.  It was a moment of being essentially hopelessly outnumbered and double-teamed and testing how far we could take that with our craziness - not backing down just because of that.  We were getting fights and bags and were having fun in spite of that.  It's not like we did that the next night and then the next night out of a sense of belonging to a server because that's not sustainable no matter how much sense of server belonging one has.

Some of those players are no longer playing for many years.  Some are in the community alliance guild.  Others chose to go with other alliances or had transferred to other servers years ago.  In fact, all the players there at that moment would have fit into a single guild with plenty of room to spare.

Edited July 2 by Chaba.5410

[TheGrimm.5624]

4 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

For this kind of gaming experience (really engaging) you need feelings of belonging or team spirit. stuff like that. or we'll never see them again. 

Mabi, they closed down our pubs. We can still get back there but that route is thru the community guilds for now. Team spirit outside of that needs to be in a guild or as a player. We still need to go with them down, friends, up. It just may not be name you are used to seeing any longer that needs that hand up.

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Mabi, they closed down our pubs.

Now it's a farmer's market.