Stop Treating WvW like a GvG environment

[Charall.4710]

I am making this post as a followup to what I said in the WvW in the restructuring beta, Alliances are a very very bad idea. It's encouraging the behavior that severely unbalanced WvW season 1, stacking guilds.

During WvW Competitive Season 1 all the major WvW guilds moved to Black Gate and it caused them to win 100% of the time.

Anet you need to stop this alliance beta because all its doing is encouraging all the major guilds to band together with one another and severely unbalance WvW yet again, I have said this for almost two years now.

[Kate.3679]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of alliances either. Despite how stacked BG was at the time they were annihilated the next tourney whenever they played the TC/JQ matchup since the established communities on TC and JQ allowed them to communicate and effectively double team the biggest server (like how WvW is meant to be played). Alliances robs us of this fun dynamic (well, maybe not so fun for the BG players at the time.)

[Dawdler.8521]

All major guilds in entire EU/NA can fit within a 500 man guild? 

Not sure if impressive or sad.

[Anov.4237]

Remove guilds from WvW its not GvG. Big guilds only destroys all the fun. They log in for raids and then out again. They dont play the gamemode.

[urd.8306]

The changes in WvW just made #1 and 2# run over #3 because there is still no reason to win a week and running over the smallest server is the best gold/hour ratio.

[One more for the road.8950]

27 minutes ago, Anov.4237 said:

Remove guilds from WvW its not GvG. Big guilds only destroys all the fun. They log in for raids and then out again. They dont play the gamemode.

So, what's the gamemode? Is killing each other not a part of that?

[Shadow.2097]

Organized comped guilds and Anet's neglect of any other form of play is killing this game mode. As an above poster suggests, these guilds only play for 2 hours a day and don't engage with the mode outside of it. WvW is quickly becoming a baron wasteland for most of the day, then you get 2 hours of getting absolutely rekt by a great big sustain ball you can't even damage. Haven't had a single good matchup since WR, it's always like this. Dead, dead, dead, 60+ cele bots out of nowhere flip all your stuff, dead, dead repeat. 

[One more for the road.8950]

Just now, Shadow.2097 said:

Organized comped guilds and Anet's neglect of any other form of play is killing this game mode. As an above poster suggests, these guilds only play for 2 hours a day and don't engage with the mode outside of it. WvW is quickly becoming a baron wasteland for most of the day, then you get 2 hours of getting absolutely rekt by a great big sustain ball you can't even damage. Haven't had a single good matchup since WR, it's always like this. Dead, dead, dead, 60+ cele bots out of nowhere flip all your stuff, dead, dead repeat. 

So, again, what's the game mode? Killing each other is not a part of that? Or is the two hours a day you have a problem with? Do they have to be in game longer? Not kill people?

[Shadow.2097]

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

So, again, what's the game mode? Killing each other is not a part of that? Or is the two hours a day you have a problem with? Do they have to be in game longer? Not kill people?

Well it's hardly team deathmatch is it? What i want is a level playing field, there will always be skirmishes you win, and skirmishes that you lose, but there's no winning vs 60 sustain tanks unless you bring the same, and that style of play is far too mundane and spammy for me. Bring them back in line. 

[Anov.4237]

The gamemode is much more. Defending putting up/reset seige etc . Its not only a bag feast. Im all in for a GvG mode like PvP.

[One more for the road.8950]

21 minutes ago, Shadow.2097 said:

Well it's hardly team deathmatch is it? What i want is a level playing field, there will always be skirmishes you win, and skirmishes that you lose, but there's no winning vs 60 sustain tanks unless you bring the same, and that style of play is far too mundane and spammy for me. Bring them back in line. 

Back in line to do what?

[One more for the road.8950]

15 minutes ago, Anov.4237 said:

The gamemode is much more. Defending putting up/reset seige etc . Its not only a bag feast. Im all in for a GvG mode like PvP.

So what about the ones putting up and resetting siege, escorting dollies, taking sentries and camps but avoid fighting other players, are they not playing the game mode either if they don't do everything?

It's not a PvE mode either.

Edited September 2 by One more for the road.8950

[Shadow.2097]

10 minutes ago, One more for the road.8950 said:

Back in line to do what?

To make the state of play healthier for all players. I'm sure you're well aware the forums are full to brim of non-comped players unhappy with it's current state. You seem to have a lot of questions, and strike me as somebody who disagrees and possibly advocates WvW becoming more GvG centric, care to share some of your thoughts on the topic? 

[One more for the road.8950]

17 minutes ago, Shadow.2097 said:

To make the state of play healthier for all players. I'm sure you're well aware the forums are full to brim of non-comped players unhappy with it's current state. You seem to have a lot of questions, and strike me as somebody who disagrees and possibly advocates WvW becoming more GvG centric, care to share some of your thoughts on the topic? 

And what do you mean with getting people "back in line"? You didn't explain? The forums are full to the brim of all kinds of players. Is removing the possibility to do comped play how you want to get people "back in line"? Should non-comped players count more than comped players?

I disagree with anyone trying to tell someone else how to play or spend their free hours in a game. And I disagree with anyone trying define a game mode to what they only prefer. WvW is a lot of things. And people see a lot of different things as the "purpose" or the "goal" of it. But barely anyone can explain why something is not "a part of the game mode". Or why or how anyone should be "put back in line". I am still asking, is killing each other not a part of the game mode? It's not sPvP. But it's not PvE either. So, should everyone be forced to do absolutely everything? How should that be accomplished?

Or is it just a general whine that people have different goals or prefer other activities than themselves? Or is it actually a complain about balance, not about what people do in the game mode? I don't know what people are complaining about in this thread, because nobody specifies properly.

Edited September 2 by One more for the road.8950

[apharma.3741]

I'm less bothered by the "GvG" environment and how utterly brain dead stupid the boonball meta is.

Can we give the current WvW balance dev a slap and say reduce every boon duration by half on every zerg meta build?
Oh and making necro and guardian have the most mobility in the game while sacrificing nothing for it, 10/10. Real genius devs at ANet these days.

[Shadow.2097]

49 minutes ago, One more for the road.8950 said:

I disagree with anyone trying to tell someone else how to play or spend their free hours in a game.

Thank you, you have given me much food for thought. I'll expand on my back in line comments shortly, but you are right. WvW is ultimately a sandbox mode, where players can make use any of the tools available to achieve a non-defined end goal. There is no official GvG mode, so players encouraged to do so must do so in WvW. Whereby the space must be shared with players who do not want to engage with this playstyle. But this has always been the case, so why is the topic of organised squad play vs non-organised squad play become so prevelant in recent years? And why do I think organised squads need bringing back in line? Well simply put, I think the state of balance is the ultimate factor. But i will expand on several reasons for this. 

- Massive buffs to sustain following the Feb2020 power coefficient nerfs, -10% dmg food, higher boon uptime in WvW results in perma prot etc. Major buffs to barrier output. Relic of Karakosa. These all favor organized groups. Anet needs to reconsider current power coefficients as they are currently based on a state of balance before huge buffs to sustain. Power damage does nothing to an organised group, whereas years ago, solo Eles and rangers were enough to force organised groups onto the defensive with meteors and barrage etc. Go full glass Weaver and you won't even cut through barrier with Meteor shower now. Underperforming siege also fits into this topic. 

- Nerfs throughout this period have specifically targeted the counters to organized groups, boonstrips, siege defenses and tactics. 

- World restructuring gives organised comped squad players more access to likeminded players, meaning that some worlds have nothing but organised squads now. This has a particular effect on EBG, which has always been home of the pugs, with the old world system pug prescence on EBG kept the largest of groups away as they wouldn't fit in. Now you will see 50+ Organised squads in EBG at prime time, with the current state of balance this is very unenjoyable to fight against with pugs.

- A not fit for purpose reward structure. There is no incentive to win a matchup, and rewards throughout the mode are lacking. The most profitable way to play WvW is currently bag farming. Therefore, we see a lot of organised groups target lesser servers, persistently. This has escalated in recent years due to all the worthwhile purchases from new vendor Dugan being tied to Emblems of the Avenger. You get considerably more of these farming pugs than through any other means.

- Other balance: Reflect and projectile block uptime is way too high, organised groups can have it perma. Perma stability has only been a thing in the last 3 years. Previously there were windows of opportunity, organised groups should have high access to stability, but not perma. There's no counterplay to this. 

In conclusion, to bring organised groups "back in line", I would like to see meaningful buffs to counterplay, mostly through siege and stability duration reductions. I would like to see barrier and boon duration nerfed. Organised groups need windows in which they don't have all the boons. Organised groups would be fine, but they are more or less bulletproof when played correctly at the moment. I would like to see all WvW rewards untied to kills, Emblem of the Avenger is an unfair currency which incentivises organised groups away from competing with other organised groups. 

 

 

 

Edited September 2 by Shadow.2097

[XenesisII.1540]

🍿🥤

[One more for the road.8950]

1 hour ago, Shadow.2097 said:

(...)

 

So it's actually not this that's the problem:

2 hours ago, Shadow.2097 said:

(...) these guilds only play for 2 hours a day and don't engage with the mode outside of it (...)

... but the balance, both regular balance and balance between the different activities. Not so much a matter of getting anyone "back in line", but rather the mode being balanced differently.

Then we agree.

There have been quite a number of changes I don't like at all, but trying to force people to play content that doesn't interest them has never been the answer to anything. If you say they're not getting A if they're not doing B, they just won't get A.

[Cyninja.2954]

Small reality check for some people here:

Unlike the common theme which some forum regulars who are unhappy like to believe: numbers in WvW are not down. Activity is about where it was before WR was added (this week up because of the anniversary event).

If you expect for the developers to do a 180 here, they will certainly not do that based around WR having "failed'. The limited numbers we can see just do not paint that bleak a picture. In fact I am pretty sure that overall teams are far better balanced now compared to before. The outliers are smaller.

The best thing you will or might see is further improvements to the system, ideally some which mitigate some of the "new" issues.

So where does that leave you? You can keep complaining, give constructive suggestions, adapt, or leave. I'd say the chances of WvW going BACK to a server system are very slim to none at the moment.

Edited September 2 by Cyninja.2954

[Charall.4710]

3 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I'd say the chances of WvW going BACK to a server system are very slim to none at the moment.

I'd dare to say that chance is growing much much larger as time goes on, people are severely unhappy with the guild system and the feedback has been insanely negative for pretty much all of the restructuring beta. Guilds are quitting, players are quitting, people are getting into the wrong matchups even though they selected the same guild together, the system is horribly broken and pressure is mounting on Anet to either fix it or return to how things were.

Based on the consistency though of peoples responses, reverting back to the server based WvW is likely going to be the eventual move.

[thatNEWguy.8192]

The game is called guild wars so ughhh hmm

[XenesisII.1540]

1 minute ago, thatNEWguy.8192 said:

The game is called guild wars so ughhh hmm

Yeah but the game mode is called World vs World vs World.

🤷‍♂️☕

[Charall.4710]

3 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Yeah but the game mode is called World vs World vs World.

I think people honestly would have preferred they give us actual GvG on top of WvW remaining as it was because GvG was a thing in gw1 and is still popular in the game to this very day.

[igmolicious.5986]

Overall moving from servers to guild-based matchmaking has been a better experience for me, with only 1 (MAYBE 2 links, if just counting part of that link) having very bad population balance, where server-based matchmaking had much more imbalance, and was especially bad when linked with a server that was heavily populated only in OCX time (since that was before prime time score weighting, and often forced us into tiers that we couldn't handle with prime time population). Is the new matchmaking perfect? Absolutely not, and I very much feel like whatever maths anet is using to create links needs desperately to take into consideration not only guild populations, but average play time during week, average kills-to-deaths, and also balance out general time slots that people are USUALLY playing in to get closer to something well balanced. That said, I will still definitely take what we have now over the old server matchmaking.

edit: something that I think might be a "general" way to look at it would be: guild population * avg k/d * (avg. play hours/hours in week)

Edited September 2 by igmolicious.5986

[Visirale.6097]

35 minutes ago, Charall.4710 said:

I'd dare to say that chance is growing much much larger as time goes on, people are severely unhappy with the guild system and the feedback has been insanely negative for pretty much all of the restructuring beta. Guilds are quitting, players are quitting, people are getting into the wrong matchups even though they selected the same guild together, the system is horribly broken and pressure is mounting on Anet to either fix it or return to how things were.

Based on the consistency though of peoples responses, reverting back to the server based WvW is likely going to be the eventual move.

Only if this echo chamber is your only consumption of information on how people feel about wvw. The thoughts that get parroted here (for example roaming balance) are problems that affect a very small portion of the actual active wvw playerbase. These forums are not representative of all of the actively playing wvw population. Most alliances I know were glad to move to a post-server version of wvw.