A Chat w/ Roy and Cecil About WvW Development Goals

[Skub.8240]

30 minutes ago, Sheff.4851 said:

Yes, because the roamer is one player playing for an hour, and the zerg is 50 people playing for an hour. Your score should reflect the number of people on your team actively playing, so that your tier placement reflects the activity of your server overall. The old scoring changes allowed small groups in dead timezones to have an outsized effect on VP, which is why all the servers at the top tiers were coverage servers that we relatively dead in NA prime.

How does playing with more people make you inherently worth more? Why is the guy spamming his best tagging skill in a boonball for an hour worth more than the people playing off-hours in identical, or even more active, ways but with less people? And if off-hours play is just somehow worthless, why not just erase it? Why not lock down wvw so only the master race is even allowed to play?

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

7 minutes ago, Skub.8240 said:

How does playing with more people make you inherently worth more?

It is not playing with more people that make it worth more roamers that play during active hours vs non active hours also have different percentage of value. The change is to make equal representation of playtime to impact the score.

[Sheff.4851]

11 minutes ago, Skub.8240 said:

How does playing with more people make you inherently worth more? Why is the guy spamming his best tagging skill in a boonball for an hour worth more than the people playing off-hours in identical, or even more active, ways but with less people? And if off-hours play is just somehow worthless, why not just erase it? Why not lock down wvw so only the master race is even allowed to play?

Because the one guy spamming his best tagging skill in a boon ball has 49 other people next to him, and they all count for activity too. It's your own example -- you're asking for one player to be worth the same as 50 players. Look at some of the kills/deaths in an off-hours skirmish. Why should a two hour period where there were 40 total kills be worth the same as a two hour period where there were 4000?

[Dawdler.8521]

5 minutes ago, ChrisWhitey.9076 said:

It is not playing with more people that make it worth more roamers that play during active hours vs non active hours also have different percentage of value. The change is to make equal representation of playtime to impact the score.

So would you say that if 5 players take a keep to get 20 points for their team, 50 people taking the same keep should get 200 points for their team? 

That the keep is not worth the same based on the amount of players standing in the circle?

[Sheff.4851]

1 minute ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

So would you say that if 5 players take a keep to get 20 points for their team, 50 people taking the same keep should get 200 points for their team? 

That the keep is not worth the same based on the amount of players standing in the circle?

You're conflating two things. "20 points" and "200 points" is warscore. Warscore is not balanced around timezones. Victory points are. But VP isn't earned for capturing and defending objectives and generating raw score. VP is earned for generating more score than an enemy group, which is why it's awarded based on 1st/2nd/3rd placement hierarchies.

A keep should be worth the same whether 5 players take it or 50 players do. But if 50 people are working together to take an objective, their efforts should be worth more than 5 people working together to take an objective, in terms of the amount of VP that they are awarded at the end of two hours, because there were more people contributing to the former.

In other words, VP should be proportional to the level of activity used to generate warscore, rather than attempting to do that via warscore itself.

[obastable.5231]

3 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

This does not only apply to no downstate, but to many other changes too (such as increased offensive aoe caps). Winning outnumbered is and always should be about playing better than the opponents. But the game needs to allow and require active counterplay for that to be possible instead of adding more and more fail safe mechanics for larger numbers.

Nobody thinks that. Everyone knows that boons have been in the game since release and that they were always important for grp play. But number, access and uptime of boons has gone way up across the board, while at the same time counterplay has gone down significantly. That means there is no effective counterplay to boon spam anymore, (unless outnumbering you opponent ofc), while at the same time boon spam reduces or even straight up removes the neccessity for active counterplay from larger numbers, because boons alone passively counter many combat mechanics.

Boon balls are pretty much the opposite of the original combat design, that is a lot about a large variety of active and reactive counterplay, movement and positioning, timing, combos and so on. Boons are part of the original game design, yes, but current "boon balls" are not and complaining about them is not the same as complaining about the mere existence of boons ...

True. And therefore the game should cater to a variety of playstyles, instead of pushing everyone into a single (and for many unfun) playstyle, while actively discouraging everything else.

But if one gets continuosly buffed and the other one continuously nerfed, there's a lot less to "think about and interact / plan around / make decisions about".

Whenever i watch some boon blob gameplay, most (boon) buttons are just pressed on cd. So much managing of resources, wow.

No. 

Not to be impolite but you are wrong. The game design is based on boons as the primary source of support. The entire combat system is designed around one boon in particular - stability - and everything else is play/counterplay focused from there. 

The game design is fundamentally centered around cooperative play, in the sense that you can cooperative and coordinate with others and gain bonuses for doing so without having to join their group to share experience. Parties and squads aren't used to gatekeep participation. 

Yes we 100% used and relied on comped parties at launch, whether it was 2 people or 5 people or 20 people.  We absolutely ran comped 5 man groups, we absolutely ran purposefully paired 2 man groups, and the meta party base of  2 guardians, 1 Necro has existed since the game launched because that was the only way to have consistent stability uptime, and if you didn't know then that stability was the most important boon in the game, much like it still is, then you were probably not actually playing the game and were just enjoying it casually.

This is what separated the winning groups from the losing ones back then - either you understood the game, used it's mechanics, and actively played the game or you were a casual player enjoying the game. This is what I reference when I say the game was not better back then, it was just easier to kill people because more people were much less informed about how the game worked and the game lacked access to easy to use specs for those players. Coincidentally this is still the same method that separates the good players from the bad ones. Either you are actually playing the game or you just enjoy the game casually. 

The entire combat system is designed to use boons as primary sources of support. Each class has access to opportunities for receiving boons to boost their performance, for specific boons to synergize between different specs, to boost other players through synergistic interactions. This is not new. This is foundational design that existed in the betas and has been built upon year over year. 

If you aren't approaching the conversation from the understanding and acceptance of that very clear and well advertised, heavily promoted by Anet fact that boons = primary support mechanics in the game then you aren't participating in a conversation based in reality. 

It is perfectly fine to have a preference for how you enjoy the game, but it's not fine to substitute the history of the game and it's design methodology with that preference and expect people to engage with it as fact. That isn't going to happen. 

Nothing wrong with not liking a design aspect that interferes with how you enjoy the game. If you want something to happen about it though you gotta approach that feedback and problem from an angle that actually works with how the game is designed and intended to be played. 

"I don't like boons they ruin my game!" What is Anet supposed to do with that? Delete the whole game?

[Zyreva.1078]

42 minutes ago, obastable.5231 said:

The entire combat system is designed around one boon in particular - stability - and everything else is play/counterplay focused from there.

That's nonsense. You are strictly talking about zerg play - while completely disregarding that the combat system itself was not designed for that sort of gameplay to begin with. The overreliance on stability at larger scales is a mere symptom of players being unable to fully utilize every aspect of the combat system. At smaller scales up to 5vs5 - which is exactly what the combat system was designed for - playing without stability is perfectly reasonable and perma uptime is detrimental for the "quality" of engagements, because cc is actually an important aspect of this games' combat system and not something players are supposed to simply render useless and ignore.

But yea, because i'm not running arround in a boon blob, i'm not actually playing the game. Just casually winning my fights without having to get carried by 30+ others spamming boons ...

Edited July 23 by Zyreva.1078

[obastable.5231]

1 hour ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

That's nonsense. You are strictly talking about zerg play - while completely disregarding that the combat system itself was not designed for that sort of gameplay to begin with. The overreliance on stability at larger scales is a mere symptom of players being unable to fully utilize every aspect of the combat system. At smaller scales up to 5vs5 - which is exactly what the combat system was designed for - playing without stability is perfectly reasonable and perma uptime is detrimental for the "quality" of engagements, because cc is actually an important aspect of this games' combat system and not something players are supposed to simply render useless and ignore.

But yea, because i'm not running arround in a boon blob, i'm not actually playing the game. Just casually winning my fights without having to get carried by 30+ others spamming boons ...

 

No. 

You are wrong. You can be wrong, but that doesn't mean Anet is obligated to change its game design to fit your wrong narrative. 

The combat system is designed around cooperative gameplay. 

The combat system is designed around giving and receiving boons. 

This is independent of group size, in other words:

It has nothing at all to do with group size.

I am not talking about zerg play, I am talking about the game and it's foundational design. 

That you clearly do not understand that design and how these elements work together at every level of group size is not a reason for Anet to change the foundations of the game, although it is very clearly the hill you're standing on as a reality and expecting others to buy into. 

Boons are not permanent. Uptime and reapplication rates are tied with strips. Play/counterplay.

Stability is not permanent, it can be removed just like every other boon. That you aren't capable of translating what a group of 5 does into being the same thing a squad of 20 or 40 can also do is, again, not a reason for Anet to change the foundations of the game, although once again it's very clearly the hill you're standing on as a reality and expecting others to buy into.  After all, that squad is simply repeated groups of 5. It is the exact same thing as a small group replicated to scale. 

I understand you have an idea that small scale has more room for skill expression, and in some cases this is true but against the more skilled larger groups it isn't true at all. A competitive skilled group of 30 has much higher standards than any roaming group I've ever played with, some are more demanding than the GvG groups I've played with, and many of your top PvP players play in these groups. 

I don't know how you could convince yourself it isn't skilled play or competitive unless you genuinely have zero clue or insight and have based your entire view strictly on your highly subjective observations and never actually tried to talk to any of these people. 

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Sheff.4851 said:

You're conflating two things. "20 points" and "200 points" is warscore. Warscore is not balanced around timezones. Victory points are. But VP isn't earned for capturing and defending objectives and generating raw score. VP is earned for generating more score than an enemy group, which is why it's awarded based on 1st/2nd/3rd placement hierarchies.

A keep should be worth the same whether 5 players take it or 50 players do. But if 50 people are working together to take an objective, their efforts should be worth more than 5 people working together to take an objective, in terms of the amount of VP that they are awarded at the end of two hours, because there were more people contributing to the former.

In other words, VP should be proportional to the level of activity used to generate warscore, rather than attempting to do that via warscore itself.

This is contradicting. Yes I know what VPs are. 

You are saying that a keep should be worth the same whether 5 or 50 take it but at the same time bring in a measuring stick with "level of activity" to claim that 50 people have more worth in the end.

Both groups has to put down siege. Both groups has to get through outer. Both groups has to get through inner. Both groups have to kill the lord. Both groups has to cap the circle. 

Where is the difference in level of activity?

[Chaba.5410]

5 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

A player at 03:00 used to be worth exactly the same as a player playing at 20:00. Literally 1:1 score no matter the time of day. The amount of players online never mattered.

The amount of players online always mattered.  If you get score simply because the other team didn't show up, you are worth more than those players.  It's cheap.  It's like winning by forfeit or ktraining a bl without any defenders responding.  Always feels cheap.

Edited July 23 by Chaba.5410

[Sheff.4851]

2 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

This is contradicting. Yes I know what VPs are. 

You are saying that a keep should be worth the same whether 5 or 50 take it but at the same time bring in a measuring stick with "level of activity" to claim that 50 people have more worth in the end.

Both groups has to put down siege. Both groups has to get through outer. Both groups has to get through inner. Both groups have to kill the lord. Both groups has to cap the circle. 

Where is the difference in level of activity?

Let's say, just to make the math easy, that 100 players on each team contribute to a skirmish in NA prime, and 10 players on each team contribute to a skirmish during off-hours. What they do doesn't matter. All that matters is that they are active players. For the 100 players on the team that wins the NA prime skirmish, each of those players 'earned' (5/100) or 0.05 victory points for their team. For the 10 players on the team that wins the NA off-hours skirmish, each of those players 'earned' (5/10) or 0.5 victory points for their team. Each of the ten players in the off-hours skirmish were worth ten times as much victory points as the one hundred players who played during NA prime, and as a result, their activity is ten times as valuable for the overall performance of the team. That's a massive advantage for off-hours players, and a massive disadvantage for primetime players.

[Chaba.5410]

2 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

So would you say that if 5 players take a keep to get 20 points for their team, 50 people taking the same keep should get 200 points for their team? 

No because it's a bad analogy.  The VP is based on population averages across all teams, based on the potential numbers that each team has an equal chance at fielding.  In your scenario, you're basing the score around actual point-in-time numbers, which makes it extremely sensitive to being gamed by players.

Edited July 23 by Chaba.5410

[Dawdler.8521]

3 minutes ago, Sheff.4851 said:

Let's say, just to make the math easy, that 100 players on each team contribute to a skirmish in NA prime, and 10 players on each team contribute to a skirmish during off-hours. What they do doesn't matter. All that matters is that they are active players. For the 100 players on the team that wins the NA prime skirmish, each of those players 'earned' (5/100) or 0.05 victory points for their team. For the 10 players on the team that wins the NA off-hours skirmish, each of those players 'earned' (5/10) or 0.5 victory points for their team. Each of the ten players in the off-hours skirmish were worth ten times as much victory points as the one hundred players who played during NA prime, and as a result, their activity is ten times as valuable for the overall performance of the team. That's a massive advantage for off-hours players, and a massive disadvantage for primetime players.

The implication of this is that you know what people are doing with their time. What if 90 of the 100 are running in circles in spawn?

But here is a more practical scenario in the opposite way:

It's in the beginning of prime. I am on DBL. Literally no one is there outside a few peeps - everyone is just faffing about on EBG. We are 2 people that cap a T3 keep. 
A couple of hours earlier outside prime a 50 man borderhop reset it too. 

Does this go against the level of activity argument or is that still OK? Am I worth more points?

[Sheff.4851]

1 minute ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

The implication of this is that you know what people are doing with their time. What if 90 of the 100 are running in circles in spawn?

But here is a more practical scenario in the opposite way:

It's in the beginning of prime. I am on DBL. Literally no one is there outside a few peeps - everyone is just faffing about on EBG. We are 2 people that cap a T3 keep. 
A couple of hours earlier outside prime a 50 man borderhop reset it too. 

Does this go against the level of activity argument or is that still OK? Am I worth more points?

What they're doing with their time doesn't matter, unless you want to make some kind of argument that a greater proportion of players go afk during prime than during off-hours. If you have actual data on that I'd be interested in seeing it, but I would expect that every timezones experiences afk players at about the same rate.

Your example still doesn't really understand the difference between warscore and victory points, though. Capping a T3 keep is worth like 240 points now with the scoring change. That's worth far, far more score than whatever people on EBG are doing, and the warscore system accounts for that. Your two people have made a much larger contribution to the current skirmish's warscore than whoever is on EBG. And if you, and some other 50 man group, both flipped a T3 keep, then they would count the same. You and your friend's efforts, per player, are worth the same than whatever the 50 man group was doing, because they are both in off-hours.

But the other point this argument misses is that the skirmish weights are based on overall activity, and VP compares the scores generated by all three teams. While there might be a 50 man group running around outside prime, it happens much less often than during prime, because prime activity is higher. I can't link the chart because I'm on vacation currently, but if you go to the video that I did about the scoring changes, there's a chart in there that compares the relative activity of each skirmish to the VP that skirmish is worth, based on activity metrics available within the game itself. It's an easy way to visualize the impact of those changes. If you're unable to find it, I can try and link it myself once I'm back at my desktop later this month.

 

[Dawdler.8521]

16 minutes ago, Sheff.4851 said:

What they're doing with their time doesn't matter, unless you want to make some kind of argument that a greater proportion of players go afk during prime than during off-hours. If you have actual data on that I'd be interested in seeing it, but I would expect that every timezones experiences afk players at about the same rate.

Your example still doesn't really understand the difference between warscore and victory points, though. Capping a T3 keep is worth like 240 points now with the scoring change. That's worth far, far more score than whatever people on EBG are doing, and the warscore system accounts for that. Your two people have made a much larger contribution to the current skirmish's warscore than whoever is on EBG. And if you, and some other 50 man group, both flipped a T3 keep, then they would count the same. You and your friend's efforts, per player, are worth the same than whatever the 50 man group was doing, because they are both in off-hours.

I highly doubt the numbers of AFK in the middle of the night is anywhere close to prime (especially just before raids). But you're right, I dont have any data. 

In my example, I wasnt in off hours. I said I was beginning of prime. In my skirmish we would have gotten 42/28/14 points. That 50 man would have gotten 15/10/5 points if they had the luck of capping it 2h and 1 minute earlier (as opposed to being worth twice that if capping it 2 minutes later). As I learned after having mistaken it, the scoring change doesnt take into account the actual player population doing any level of activity - it's just based on the time it happened.

Edited July 23 by Dawdler.8521

[Sheff.4851]

10 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

I highly doubt the numbers of AFK in the middle of the night is anywhere close to prime (especially just before raids). But you're right, I dont have any data. 

In my example, I wasnt in off hours. I said I was beginning of prime. In my skirmish we would have gotten 42/28/14 points. That 50 man would have gotten 15/10/5 points if they had the luck of capping it 2h and 1 minute earlier (as opposed to being worth twice that if capping it 2 minutes later). As I learned after having mistaken it, the scoring change doesnt take into account the actual player population doing any level of activity - it's just based on the time it happened.

Oh, I see what you're saying. It does not account for granularity at that level, no. Instead, it accounts for average activity across an entire region. Yes, totally possible that there's a 50-man group running around in off-hours flipping stuff, but there's a dozen or so 50-man groups doing it in prime, and the skirmish point weightings reflect overall activity for the entire region (NA or EU), not the activities of individual groups on individual teams. I agree with you, that granularity would be nice, and scoring may include it eventually. But it would also lead to some weird situations where skirmishes are worth different amounts of VP depending on what tier you're in, because some teams may have more active off-hours groups than others, and then the VP weighting would need to account for that imbalance as well...it would be a much, much more complicated system than what we currently have.

[Dawdler.8521]

11 minutes ago, Sheff.4851 said:

it would be a much, much more complicated system than what we currently have.

Well... I mean yes that's what people saying it should be with prime vs off-prime. Less players, less activity, less points. 

If T1 has 2000+ active players and T6 has 100+ active players then even if it's the same time of day, it would be the equivalent of prime vs night. So logically T6 should get 15/10/5 and T1 42/28/14. T6 getting the same points as T1 would go against the activity argument.

Edited July 23 by Dawdler.8521

[Zyreva.1078]

12 minutes ago, obastable.5231 said:

The combat system is designed around cooperative gameplay.

I never said it isn't.

13 minutes ago, obastable.5231 said:

The combat system is designed around giving and receiving boons.

I never said it isn't.

But boons and coorperation are just two aspects out of many more. It's not what defines the entire combat system, it's just part of it.

15 minutes ago, obastable.5231 said:

It has nothing at all to do with group size.

That is not true tho. Many key aspects of the combat system can not be (fully) utilized at larger scales. Like how often does a player deliberatly interrupt an enemy heal skill in large scale combat? How often is somebody deliberately bodyblocking a projectile to safe an ally? How often does someone cancel cast their burst to bait out enemy defenses? Or counting dodges? How often is anyone actually reacting to a specific skill/animation in some way? Basically never. The visual clutter alone, as well as the sheer amount of enemy skills that one can be exposed to, makes it impossible to properly read animations and counter skills with the multitude of counters aviable and the bad game performance, that often accompanies big fghts doesn't help either. But reading animations (and not just "red circles") and reacting to skills with a multitude of different counterplay options is a core aspect of the combat system and neccessary to utilize it to it's full extent.

Then there's stuff like aoe cap that is highly relevant at larger scale, but not so much at small scale. Or single target or projectile skills, that make up a large portion of skills in this game, yet are mostly irrelevant for large scale combat.

In the end fight size does make a difference.

26 minutes ago, obastable.5231 said:

Boons are not permanent. Uptime and reapplication rates are tied with strips. Play/counterplay.

If that were true now after massive nerfs to boon strip and continuous buffs to boon application, then players had to run arround completely boonless in the past, because strips would have to exceed boon application back then. And we both know that was never the case.

34 minutes ago, obastable.5231 said:

After all, that squad is simply repeated groups of 5. It is the exact same thing as a small group replicated to scale.

Multiple grps of 5 stacked together massively benefit from aoe caps. A single grp of 5 does not. Multiple grps of 5 stacked together can facetank much more than a single grp of 5 can. Multiple grps of 5 stacked have a lot more offense at their disposal that they can concentrate on a single player/grp than a single grp of 5. Multiple grps of 5 stacked together do not have to worry about getting run over by 10x their numbers. A single player in a grp of 5 does have a lot more impact on the outcome of a fight than a player in a full squad. And so on ... The gameplay of a grp of 5 and a squad of 50 is quite different in many regards, even with similar comps (tho probably not quite as different as it used to be, but still).

1 hour ago, obastable.5231 said:

A competitive skilled group of 30 has much higher standards than any roaming group I've ever played with, some are more demanding than the GvG groups I've played with

What standards exactly? Just wondering, because the large zergs that i see running arround do not seem to have an issue bolstering their numbers up with random pugs as long they play the right builds and listen to voice com.

Lastly - if it doesn't make a difference if there is only one grp of 5 or ten grps of 5 and if those players are so highly skilled - why do they always have to send the entire zerg to deal with our 2-5 player grp? Instead of just sending 1 subgrp to match our numbers and then beat us with their superior skill and teamplay? I mean, sometimes we don't even have aoe stab, so we should be unable to even play the game, right?

[Kozumi.5816]

15 hours ago, Sheff.4851 said:

Sounds like you've just followed bad commanders. I've definitely run across commanders on ego trips, but I just stop playing with them. There's others around.

No, it's literally how you lead WvW zergs.

You stack on the commander and move with them, or you instantly die.

Have you actually played GW2 before?

Edited July 23 by Kozumi.5816

[Loke.1429]

57 minutes ago, Sheff.4851 said:

I agree with you, that granularity would be nice, and scoring may include it eventually.

I strongly disagree with this because if it (like now) gives the expected importance of the skirmish up front to all sides, then all can choose to show up to that skirmish with equal expectations. On the other hand, if it instead had that granularity it would mean that players were rewarded for breaking this expectation. In the extreme this would mean that 1) each servers actual live 24h activity profile determined score and that each skirmish was not of equal importance for all servers (which could give very unbalanced skirmishes and less competitiveness for skirmishes on average), and 2) that e.g. huge amounts of players suddenly shifting sleep patterns was rewarded for such unhealthy behavior. Instead it is far better if player activity pattern changes are gradually reflected in the way the score is calculated (which is what I understood as their current intention).

Edited July 23 by Loke.1429

[Sheff.4851]

22 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

No, it's literally how you lead WvW zergs.

You stack on the commander and move with them, or you instantly die.

Have you actually played GW2 before?

Yes, I'm one of the only people on YouTube who makes videos about commanding. You can find the playlist here. Commander Camp updates about once a month.

 

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

48 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

You stack on the commander and move with them, or you instantly die.

This is not only the requirement for WvW but also the requirement for PvP in 3s usually a support such as core guardian. Now you may not die it is also how to play high level pve content. This is also the expected style of play for MOBAs and other MMOs with heavy support. Now this was not always standard of play in GW2 but as support has evolved to be more standard to other games so has WvW evolved which good or bad is expected for a game that has been around this long.

Edit:
Here is a link to why stacking is important because that is just how current support works.

 

Edited July 23 by ChrisWhitey.9076
Edit adding might teapot link as to why stacking is important

[Hesione.9412]

4 hours ago, obastable.5231 said:

 

No. 

You are wrong. You can be wrong, but that doesn't mean Anet is obligated to change its game design to fit your wrong narrative. 

The combat system is designed around cooperative gameplay. 

The combat system is designed around giving and receiving boons. 

This is independent of group size, in other words:

It has nothing at all to do with group size.

I am not talking about zerg play, I am talking about the game and it's foundational design. 

That you clearly do not understand that design and how these elements work together at every level of group size is not a reason for Anet to change the foundations of the game, although it is very clearly the hill you're standing on as a reality and expecting others to buy into. 

Boons are not permanent. Uptime and reapplication rates are tied with strips. Play/counterplay.

Stability is not permanent, it can be removed just like every other boon. That you aren't capable of translating what a group of 5 does into being the same thing a squad of 20 or 40 can also do is, again, not a reason for Anet to change the foundations of the game, although once again it's very clearly the hill you're standing on as a reality and expecting others to buy into.  After all, that squad is simply repeated groups of 5. It is the exact same thing as a small group replicated to scale. 

I understand you have an idea that small scale has more room for skill expression, and in some cases this is true but against the more skilled larger groups it isn't true at all. A competitive skilled group of 30 has much higher standards than any roaming group I've ever played with, some are more demanding than the GvG groups I've played with, and many of your top PvP players play in these groups. 

I don't know how you could convince yourself it isn't skilled play or competitive unless you genuinely have zero clue or insight and have based your entire view strictly on your highly subjective observations and never actually tried to talk to any of these people. 

I feel that the devs think this way, hence the changes that have been made to WvW. The devs want highly comp'd skilled blobs fighting each other. And to do this, they keep making changes that mean small groups are becoming pointless in "low pop" hours. Where blob versus blob can't consistently happen due to the small number of players in WvW simultaneously.

If Anet assume that their changes, including the change to scoring, will encourage the roaming players to join large guilds/alliances, two things will happen.

1. People who really hate comp'd squads, who don't like to be told "you can only play this build or you're out of the guild/alliance" will quit. Facing a blob every night is not fun, especially when the blob keeps checking the maps to find where you are.

2. Players who are fine with comp'd squads, and happy to join a large alliance/guild will do so. Making the blob bigger, and the guild/alliance able to blob across multiple maps. It also means that there are fewer players opposing that blob. People can't play blob and non-blob simultaneously. And, in OCX, you will end up with around 3-4 large guilds and nobody else.

3. Players like me will leave.

Which is why I ask: can the GoB be renamed and removed from competitive play. PvP is unbalanced, and the same is happening to WvW. It's Anet's game so they can do what they like. Decisions have consequences, though.

[Sheff.4851]

5 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

2. Players who are fine with comp'd squads, and happy to join a large alliance/guild will do so. Making the blob bigger, and the guild/alliance able to blob across multiple maps. It also means that there are fewer players opposing that blob. People can't play blob and non-blob simultaneously.

Not literally at the same time, no, but you can roam when there's no tag and then join a tag when there is one. It's entirely possible to both roam and zerg in the same night. I also think there's a lack of understanding here about comped squads. Not all comped squads are rolling 50, or even want to roll 50. In fact, most comped groups these days will intentionally limit their squad size to avoid blobbing down fights too heavily, because then enemy groups just give up. Into runs open tag until he hits 30. KnT closes recruitment once we regularly have 25 in squad. Tyrion, with Bomb, runs about 15-20 max. Meanwhile, there are commanders that absolutely run as big as possible. Ryvalia is one, with Flux. Vashot is another, with BANE. Saiga, Nic at Nite, as public tags, will run as big as they want, because they don't lock squads to pugs, and people want to play with those commanders.

The point is, those are deliberate choices that these groups make, and the nuance of deciding how big of a group you want to play with appears to be lost on a lot of people. It's not sufficient to assume that all players wearing a tag, and all players joining a tag, want to be as big as possible.

[Hesione.9412]

7 minutes ago, Sheff.4851 said:

Not literally at the same time, no, but you can roam when there's no tag and then join a tag when there is one. It's entirely possible to both roam and zerg in the same night. I also think there's a lack of understanding here about comped squads. Not all comped squads are rolling 50, or even want to roll 50. In fact, most comped groups these days will intentionally limit their squad size to avoid blobbing down fights too heavily, because then enemy groups just give up. Into runs open tag until he hits 30. KnT closes recruitment once we regularly have 25 in squad. Tyrion, with Bomb, runs about 15-20 max. Meanwhile, there are commanders that absolutely run as big as possible. Ryvalia is one, with Flux. Vashot is another, with BANE. Saiga, Nic at Nite, as public tags, will run as big as they want, because they don't lock squads to pugs, and people want to play with those commanders.

The point is, those are deliberate choices that these groups make, and the nuance of deciding how big of a group you want to play with appears to be lost on a lot of people. It's not sufficient to assume that all players wearing a tag, and all players joining a tag, want to be as big as possible.

Which is why, when people like me see those guild names, we avoid them and sigh that we are unlikely to be playing again that night. If we can scrape together 20 people, so it's even numbers, we're going to get killed very fast. Even a group of 30, scraped together, is not going to kill a comp'd group of 20.

Out of curiosity, how many of those guilds run during OCX and are in the same mega-guild/alliance?

Edited July 23 by Hesione.9412
Only interested in OCX time