Monoblobs kill the game

[Bunny.9834]

It’s starting to get better after they nerf the FB and Scourges. It’s not a complete deathball anymore. They just have to tame down Spellbreakers and their WoD.

[Trajan.4953]

Tonight I saw something beautiful, am on GoM currently linked with SoS. A ton of small group guild gameplay between us and HoD. Guilds like WING and rQm, RED and even CALM fighting each other like champs all the while BG blobs trying to AJ. Was pretty awesome to be honest, haven't seen that kind of thing in a while and it gave me hope again.

[hamtits.8297]

Well before i became a pvp junky my most favorite thing to do was haraaas the zerg because roamers have one advantage over a zerg. And that was mobility. Causing some people to stray off and fight me(kill them) and return back to harassing the zerg. And if the whole zerg turn and try to kill me i would run away, and when they turn back to what they were doing i would just come back to haraass again. Obviously u need a loNg range weapon for such haraasment. But o it was soo satisfying slowing down that zerg. ?

[Sovereign.1093]

@hamtits.8297 said:Well before i became a pvp junky my most favorite thing to do was haraaas the zerg because roamers have one advantage over a zerg. And that was mobility. Causing some people to stray off and fight me(kill them) and return back to harassing the zerg. And if the whole zerg turn and try to kill me i would run away, and when they turn back to what they were doing i would just come back to haraass again. Obviously u need a loNg range weapon for such haraasment. But o it was soo satisfying slowing down that zerg. ?

thats actually smart. keep it up

[Nate.3927]

I have not read every post in this thread, but if nobody else has suggested it, I've been talking on map chat and with some guildies that Anet should introduce a version of the Social Awkwardness effect from fractals (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mistlock_Instability:_Social_Awkwardness) to WvW. Even if only temporarily just to see how it goes. It won't be the exact same effect as the fractal one of course. In my head I have it worked out this way so far:

• The Debuff/Effect does not damage player health, but rather it reduces the outgoing damage, condition damage and condition duration that those players can inflict/apply on other players (NPCs not included)
• The area of effect would be changed to perhaps 4500 radius range.
• The Debuff/Effect should scale in a linear fashion from 0% to 75% between two player numbers X and Y and then further scale in a linear fashion from 75% - 95% between another two player numbers Y and Z
• The numbers X, Y and Z should be determined by a simple formula that includes a Tier Multiplier variable so that higher tiers can have more generous numbers than lower tiers
• For example, perhaps the formulas can be as simple as below:
• X = 10 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• Y = 20 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• Z = 30 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• So with the above formula, T4 players have X = 10 + (4 - 4) * 5 = 10, Y = 20, Z = 30 while T1 players would have X = 25, Y = 35, Z = 45

1. The debuff is on outgoing damage/condi dmg/condi duration but not applied to healing/boon duration, that way suppose two groups of roughly equal size A and B are fighting and a third group C belonging to the same side as A decides to aj the fight, A can have the opportunity to decide to back off and let B and C fight it out, rather than instantly melting because now their healing has been cut by 95%.
2. 4500 radius range is because I believe rangers with the right build can reach 1900 range(not sure on this, don't play pew pew much). So this should prevent two or more separate groups of ranged specialists from ganging up on a single group placed between them.
3. X, Y and Z scales by tier because some people do really enjoy massive fights and they should have those, but keep it in the higher tiers.
4. This doesn't actually take away the advantage bigger servers have over smaller ones in the overall matchup, it simply takes away their advantage within the context of a single fight. So in the lower tiers for example, instead of one server having a blob of 30 go from objective to objective ktraining a BL while a small group of 10 defenders gets run over again and again at each objective. Now the bigger group has to split into 2-3 groups and hit 2-3 objectives at once. So the fight at each objective is only 10 v 15 instead of 10 v 30.

[Taboo.3625]

That being said...in the name of "fairness & socialism" just put us all on the same server/map so we can do nothing, have nothing & earn nothing. Hell, why bother even trying ?

[Subversion.2580]

Look, friends, it's a simple circle-of-life thing. The mode is at its healthiest when all walks of life are present on the maps.

What is currently gone from the maps? Guilds.What kills blobs? (Zerg-busting-) Guilds.What makes monoblobs split over maps? Commanders.Where do most commanders come from? Guilds.

Without them there is a big gap between roamers and blobs with the eco-system getting stale rather quickly.

The vast majority of guilds are currently on hiatus, waiting for alliances to come and balance to change.

This is the end result of 6 months of condi/pirateship meta leading up to PoF and 6 months of new condi/pirateship meta after PoF. A meta that was even worse inside the guild hall mechanics than on the WvW maps. There was some re-ignition early autumn as guilds were preparing and building up for PoF but that fizzled out rather quick after people had tested their new professions with nothing comming to either guild halls or WvW in terms of both balance and design. At this point it is really all about trying to find what little fun you can and waiting for alliances. Alliances will bring people back but has to be good to make people stay. Let's hope it is and keeps being so.

[iKeostuKen.2738]

Alliances may bring people back for a short term. They honestly need to work on killing what makes the pvp unfun in this game and hand out much deserved nerfs for PoF classes. Its way past the honeymoon for PoF and its time the classes start to fall in line with others. Redesign the TTK so no one blows up in half a second from 1 player is also a much needed change. Bring back the want for different focuses of gameplay. We need bunkers, we need dps, we need support, and cc focused builds. Get rid of this everyone needs to be able to do everything philosophy and go back to hitting core design aspects of each class. Elite specs need to feel like a option, not an improvement in all aspects. This is honestly where the game started its biggest flop, introduction of elite specs. While its cool to have more skills, anet already poorly worked on balancing what we had before and completely dropped the ball on overtuning all abilities.

This is fortified by the fact that a monoblob of a larger size completely snowballs smaller blobs with equal level of communication. The one with the most powercreeped PoF classes + numbers wins the engagments over 50% of the time. That should not be the case.

[snarfrificus.4230]

In the past there were monoblobs on all maps 24/7 this is simply how top tier is played, the roamers keep killing slow people behind, annoying blobs etc etc. WvW is a social experience, not an individualistic one.

The origin of WvW is also to bring casual and hardcore players together in a PvP like setting. Seeing an enemy blob attacking your things, shout on team chat for help if nobody comes, nobody comes you cannot help it.

But what you can do is tagging up, get people together and build a community if there are not many players.

Nothing else you can do, you want improvement start tagging up and getting people in.

What actually ruins WvW is the current meta, it is very boring compared to the many meta's in the past, like with HoT many did not really change much, cause the HoT builds etc were quite equal in their own rights in WvW, but with PoF the new skills became extremely overpowered compared to the older ones, which is ridiculous and all of those things should be nerfed till they are equal to basic classes again to actually bring some creative change in wvw.

[oOStaticOo.9467]

Really only three classes became OP with PoF. Scourge, Spellbreaker, and Firebrand, and I saw that coming a mile away. Majority of all zergs run these three classes with a few Revs, Eles, and Engis tossed in for flavor. Mesmer, while once in a blue moon you'll see a Chrono in a zerg, has been reduced to a Mirage roamer and they are over tuned. Thieves have always been roamers. Rangers are roamers as Druid got nerfed into the ground like Rangers always do, I swear Anet hates Rangers the most. Improper balance is definitely killing off WvW. I really don't expect it to get much better though. They will probably release another Elite spec that will overbalance professions once again and rinse and repeat.

[XenesisII.1540]

Just take away commander tags, problem solved.Just don't come back and complain about the lack of people to fight and how boring wvw is.

[Player.9621]

i often wonder if the people who post in this forum are even playing the same game

[Etheri.5406]

@"Subversion.2580" said:Look, friends, it's a simple circle-of-life thing. The mode is at its healthiest when all walks of life are present on the maps.

What is currently gone from the maps? Guilds.What kills blobs? (Zerg-busting-) Guilds.What makes monoblobs split over maps? Commanders.Where do most commanders come from? Guilds.

Without them there is a big gap between roamers and blobs with the eco-system getting stale rather quickly.

The vast majority of guilds are currently on hiatus, waiting for alliances to come and balance to change.

This is the end result of 6 months of condi/pirateship meta leading up to PoF and 6 months of new condi/pirateship meta after PoF. A meta that was even worse inside the guild hall mechanics than on the WvW maps. There was some re-ignition early autumn as guilds were preparing and building up for PoF but that fizzled out rather quick after people had tested their new professions with nothing comming to either guild halls or WvW in terms of both balance and design. At this point it is really all about trying to find what little fun you can and waiting for alliances. Alliances will bring people back but has to be good to make people stay. Let's hope it is and keeps being so.

Exactly this. But there's another thing. For PPT, having several small groups capable of doing their own thing is still far stronger than a monoblob. But that requires getting several capable groups which have fun and want to fight eachother. That might still exist on NA, but on EU it's pretty rare. If the groups work together, they tend to be able to kill monoblobs too. But it requires organisation and several groups capable and willing to play on their own.

Aka guilds + commanders + hardcore wvw players willing to do their own thing. Not 90% casual players looking for a group to follow. Aka HEALTHY wvw which is... entirely DEAD.

Group size is a direct result of supply and demand, especially with fairweather pugs. Imagine you have 500 pugs and 1 commander. Obviously he'll have a zoneblob, as there are simply too many pugs looking to play in group compared to the amount of commanders. And even if you have 4 commanders... Almost all the pugs naturally flock to the strongest groups. If we have a public comm and a guild on the same map most of the pugs will still follow the guild despite explicitly being told not to as long as the guild is considerably stronger than the pug zerg.

And there aren't enough guilds or commanders left. As far as I know, there's currently ONE gvg guild actively raiding on EU. There are several "blob busting" / larger raiding guilds and frankly, their guild raids are almost open tags with the amount of pugs that follow anyways. No small 15-20 man guilds want to fight them because with pugs they're 35-40+. And the pugs are impossible to get rid of unless hiding your tag and toxicity, because asking nicely doesn't do it and there's no (succesful / not enough) other tags for them to follow.

NA mght still have maps with 3-4 guilds on it, but on EU unless you QUEUE a map with several guilds so the pugs can't get in you're going to have pugs flocking to whatever group performs best. And most servers don't even have 3-4 guilds raiding actively to be able to queue a map. And if there's only one or two groups that perform well in a certain timezone or at a certain level, then it's going to be a monoblob pretty quickly no matter if you're "open" or "closed" or "guild raid" or god knows what. Pugs gunna pugger.

The fewer comms left in the game, the fewer guilds left in the game, the more WvW becomes forced to be hypercasual... The more it's either no group or monoblob. Because the moment you tag, there's hundreds of players lining up to join you. They might not be the players you want. Hell you might not want a monoblob at all, but it's what you'll get. And if you don't want that? Well if you quit the problem only gets worse.

Just like PvP wvw is suffering from the effects of an unhealthy gamemode. As players get fed up / leave and the population further divides, problems become worse and new problems arise, which further makes the gamemode unhealthy and makes the problems worse in turn. Let's see if alliances fixes it. It might make things better as players give the game another chance. Will they be dissapointed and leave again? Stay tuned to find out ;)

[phokus.8934]

@"Nate.3927" said:I have not read every post in this thread, but if nobody else has suggested it, I've been talking on map chat and with some guildies that Anet should introduce a version of the Social Awkwardness effect from fractals (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mistlock_Instability:_Social_Awkwardness) to WvW. Even if only temporarily just to see how it goes. It won't be the exact same effect as the fractal one of course. In my head I have it worked out this way so far:

• The Debuff/Effect does not damage player health, but rather it reduces the outgoing damage, condition damage and condition duration that those players can inflict/apply on other players (NPCs not included)
• The area of effect would be changed to perhaps 4500 radius range.
• The Debuff/Effect should scale in a linear fashion from 0% to 75% between two player numbers X and Y and then further scale in a linear fashion from 75% - 95% between another two player numbers Y and Z
• The numbers X, Y and Z should be determined by a simple formula that includes a Tier Multiplier variable so that higher tiers can have more generous numbers than lower tiers
• For example, perhaps the formulas can be as simple as below:
• X = 10 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• Y = 20 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• Z = 30 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• So with the above formula, T4 players have X = 10 + (4 - 4) * 5 = 10, Y = 20, Z = 30 while T1 players would have X = 25, Y = 35, Z = 45

1. The debuff is on outgoing damage/condi dmg/condi duration but not applied to healing/boon duration, that way suppose two groups of roughly equal size A and B are fighting and a third group C belonging to the same side as A decides to aj the fight, A can have the opportunity to decide to back off and let B and C fight it out, rather than instantly melting because now their healing has been cut by 95%.
2. 4500 radius range is because I believe rangers with the right build can reach 1900 range(not sure on this, don't play pew pew much). So this should prevent two or more separate groups of ranged specialists from ganging up on a single group placed between them.
3. X, Y and Z scales by tier because some people do really enjoy massive fights and they should have those, but keep it in the higher tiers.
4. This doesn't actually take away the advantage bigger servers have over smaller ones in the overall matchup, it simply takes away their advantage within the context of a single fight. So in the lower tiers for example, instead of one server having a blob of 30 go from objective to objective ktraining a BL while a small group of 10 defenders gets run over again and again at each objective. Now the bigger group has to split into 2-3 groups and hit 2-3 objectives at once. So the fight at each objective is only 10 v 15 instead of 10 v 30.

Quoting for visibility. This is almost identical to what I had in mind.

[Etheri.5406]

@phokus.8934 said:

@"Nate.3927" said:I have not read every post in this thread, but if nobody else has suggested it, I've been talking on map chat and with some guildies that Anet should introduce a version of the Social Awkwardness effect from fractals (

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mistlock_Instability:_Social_Awkwardness

) to WvW. Even if only temporarily just to see how it goes. It won't be the exact same effect as the fractal one of course. In my head I have it worked out this way so far:

• The Debuff/Effect does not damage player health, but rather it reduces the outgoing damage, condition damage and condition duration that those players can inflict/apply
  on other players
  (NPCs not included)
• The area of effect would be changed to perhaps 4500
  radius
  range.
• The Debuff/Effect should scale in a linear fashion from 0% to 75% between two player numbers X and Y and then further scale in a linear fashion from 75% - 95% between another two player numbers Y and Z
• The numbers X, Y and Z should be determined by a simple formula that includes a Tier Multiplier variable so that higher tiers can have more generous numbers than lower tiers
• For example, perhaps the formulas can be as simple as below:
• X = 10 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• Y = 20 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• Z = 30 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• So with the above formula, T4 players have X = 10 + (4 - 4) * 5 = 10, Y = 20, Z = 30 while T1 players would have X = 25, Y = 35, Z = 45

1. The debuff is on outgoing damage/condi dmg/condi duration but not applied to healing/boon duration, that way suppose two groups of roughly equal size A and B are fighting and a third group C belonging to the same side as A decides to aj the fight, A can have the opportunity to decide to back off and let B and C fight it out, rather than instantly melting because now their healing has been cut by 95%.
2. 4500 radius range is because I believe rangers with the right build can reach 1900 range(not sure on this, don't play pew pew much). So this should prevent two or more separate groups of ranged specialists from ganging up on a single group placed between them.
3. X, Y and Z scales by tier because some people do really enjoy massive fights and they should have those, but keep it in the higher tiers.
4. This doesn't actually take away the advantage bigger servers have over smaller ones in the overall matchup, it simply takes away their advantage within the context of a single fight. So in the lower tiers for example, instead of one server having a blob of 30 go from objective to objective ktraining a BL while a small group of 10 defenders gets run over again and again at each objective. Now the bigger group has to split into 2-3 groups and hit 2-3 objectives at once. So the fight at each objective is only 10 v 15 instead of 10 v 30.

Quoting for visibility. This is almost identical to what I had in mind.

"Here's how you introduce in-server griefing"

The only thing this does is make commanders even more elitist towards players who don't contribute, and make non-performing players even less desirable. I'm sure that's a great idea for a hypercasual game like GW2, where the moment you say "no" to someone who wants to join your group you're already a toxic elitist.

I find it hilarious there's players who think this is actually a good idea. What effect do you think it'll have? Remove blobs? What will all the zerglings do... Go out on their own and become a sick roamur?

Oh wait no, it makes 70 man cloud groups instead... Cloud groups that can't and won't actually push objectives because they can't appropriately deal with siege and the limited space of objectives. Further stalemates and pewpew wars already seen very frequently during off-hours between sm & keeps, except hard-forced by the game.

[Ni In.6578]

This is too much reading for my limited intelligence.

I actually like 'the blob'. I get to play with friends, have a general good time. We encounter other server's 'the blob' and fun is had by all. Find a couple of roamers and run over them? Find some one-v-one on GvG hill or by SMC? Just run over them -- it's good for a laugh, and you know you do it too.

Of course, from a tactical perspective, having two groups is a lot of fun, as well.

[shiri.4257]

@"Nate.3927" said:I have not read every post in this thread, but if nobody else has suggested it, I've been talking on map chat and with some guildies that Anet should introduce a version of the Social Awkwardness effect from fractals (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mistlock_Instability:_Social_Awkwardness) to WvW. Even if only temporarily just to see how it goes. It won't be the exact same effect as the fractal one of course. In my head I have it worked out this way so far:

• The Debuff/Effect does not damage player health, but rather it reduces the outgoing damage, condition damage and condition duration that those players can inflict/apply on other players (NPCs not included)
• The area of effect would be changed to perhaps 4500 radius range.
• The Debuff/Effect should scale in a linear fashion from 0% to 75% between two player numbers X and Y and then further scale in a linear fashion from 75% - 95% between another two player numbers Y and Z
• The numbers X, Y and Z should be determined by a simple formula that includes a Tier Multiplier variable so that higher tiers can have more generous numbers than lower tiers
• For example, perhaps the formulas can be as simple as below:
• X = 10 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• Y = 20 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• Z = 30 + ( MaxTiers - TierNo ) * 5
• So with the above formula, T4 players have X = 10 + (4 - 4) * 5 = 10, Y = 20, Z = 30 while T1 players would have X = 25, Y = 35, Z = 45

1. The debuff is on outgoing damage/condi dmg/condi duration but not applied to healing/boon duration, that way suppose two groups of roughly equal size A and B are fighting and a third group C belonging to the same side as A decides to aj the fight, A can have the opportunity to decide to back off and let B and C fight it out, rather than instantly melting because now their healing has been cut by 95%.
2. 4500 radius range is because I believe rangers with the right build can reach 1900 range(not sure on this, don't play pew pew much). So this should prevent two or more separate groups of ranged specialists from ganging up on a single group placed between them.
3. X, Y and Z scales by tier because some people do really enjoy massive fights and they should have those, but keep it in the higher tiers.
4. This doesn't actually take away the advantage bigger servers have over smaller ones in the overall matchup, it simply takes away their advantage within the context of a single fight. So in the lower tiers for example, instead of one server having a blob of 30 go from objective to objective ktraining a BL while a small group of 10 defenders gets run over again and again at each objective. Now the bigger group has to split into 2-3 groups and hit 2-3 objectives at once. So the fight at each objective is only 10 v 15 instead of 10 v 30.

No debuffs or buffs could make up the number differential for dumb builds, dumb pugs, and dumber tags. Did you want supporting evidence?1) Dumb pugs and Dumb builds refer to WvW l2P issue thread.2) Dumb Tags- the ones that go on voice com that are great at commands like "take that camp." But when a fight shows up, the only command that comes out of their mouth is "Bomb Bomb Bomb for 15s" before they get 1 pushed on their zerg busting thief.

There are builds for zerging, roaming, dueling. When the zergling tries to duel, he gets rolled. When a dueler tries to use that build to zerg bust, he gets rolled. When someone makes up a build cuz they feel their build is greater than the wheel and cry imbalance cuz it doesn't work...well Anet can't fix stupid and neither can you.

[Sovereign.1093]

how to deal with enemy blob

1. have your own
2. avoid if your few
3. fight anyway.

these are your only choice that i think has a high chance of success. and in decending order.

just know you dont have to fight the blob

[joneirikb.7506]

@Sovereign.1093 said:how to deal with enemy blob

1. have your own
2. avoid if your few
3. fight anyway.

these are your only choice that i think has a high chance of success. and in decending order.

just know you dont have to fight the blob

You forgot one:

• Whack a Zerg (frustrate them with taking everything around them but never let them catch you)

[Sovereign.1093]

@joneirikb.7506 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:how to deal with enemy blob

1. have your own
2. avoid if your few
3. fight anyway.

these are your only choice that i think has a high chance of success. and in decending order.

just know you dont have to fight the blob

You forgot one:

• Whack a Zerg (frustrate them with taking everything around them but never let them catch you)

mmm could work. if u got nos to spread. that was the strat.that killed the old sor in the tournament

[Victory.2879]

@Etheri.5406 said:

@"Subversion.2580" said:Look, friends, it's a simple circle-of-life thing. The mode is at its healthiest when all walks of life are present on the maps.

What is currently gone from the maps? Guilds.What kills blobs? (Zerg-busting-) Guilds.What makes monoblobs split over maps? Commanders.Where do most commanders come from? Guilds.

Without them there is a big gap between roamers and blobs with the eco-system getting stale rather quickly.

The vast majority of guilds are currently on hiatus, waiting for alliances to come and balance to change.

This is the end result of 6 months of condi/pirateship meta leading up to PoF and 6 months of new condi/pirateship meta after PoF. A meta that was even worse inside the guild hall mechanics than on the WvW maps. There was some re-ignition early autumn as guilds were preparing and building up for PoF but that fizzled out rather quick after people had tested their new professions with nothing comming to either guild halls or WvW in terms of both balance and design. At this point it is really all about trying to find what little fun you can and waiting for alliances. Alliances will bring people back but has to be good to make people stay. Let's hope it is and keeps being so.

Exactly this. But there's another thing. For PPT, having several small groups capable of doing their own thing is still far stronger than a monoblob. But that requires getting several capable groups which have fun and want to fight eachother. That might still exist on NA, but on EU it's pretty rare. If the groups work together, they tend to be able to kill monoblobs too. But it requires organisation and several groups capable and willing to play on their own.

Aka guilds + commanders + hardcore wvw players willing to do their own thing. Not 90% casual players looking for a group to follow. Aka HEALTHY wvw which is... entirely DEAD.

Group size is a direct result of supply and demand, especially with fairweather pugs. Imagine you have 500 pugs and 1 commander. Obviously he'll have a zoneblob, as there are simply too many pugs looking to play in group compared to the amount of commanders. And even if you have 4 commanders... Almost all the pugs naturally flock to the strongest groups. If we have a public comm and a guild on the same map most of the pugs will still follow the guild despite explicitly being told not to as long as the guild is considerably stronger than the pug zerg.

And there aren't enough guilds or commanders left. As far as I know, there's currently ONE gvg guild actively raiding on EU. There are several "blob busting" / larger raiding guilds and frankly, their guild raids are almost open tags with the amount of pugs that follow anyways. No small 15-20 man guilds want to fight them because with pugs they're 35-40+. And the pugs are impossible to get rid of unless hiding your tag and toxicity, because asking nicely doesn't do it and there's no (succesful / not enough) other tags for them to follow.

NA mght still have maps with 3-4 guilds on it, but on EU unless you QUEUE a map with several guilds so the pugs can't get in you're going to have pugs flocking to whatever group performs best. And most servers don't even have 3-4 guilds raiding actively to be able to queue a map. And if there's only one or two groups that perform well in a certain timezone or at a certain level, then it's going to be a monoblob pretty quickly no matter if you're "open" or "closed" or "guild raid" or god knows what. Pugs gunna pugger.

The fewer comms left in the game, the fewer guilds left in the game, the more WvW becomes forced to be hypercasual... The more it's either no group or monoblob. Because the moment you tag, there's hundreds of players lining up to join you. They might not be the players you want. Hell you might not want a monoblob at all, but it's what you'll get. And if you don't want that? Well if you quit the problem only gets worse.

Just like PvP wvw is suffering from the effects of an unhealthy gamemode. As players get fed up / leave and the population further divides, problems become worse and new problems arise, which further makes the gamemode unhealthy and makes the problems worse in turn. Let's see if alliances fixes it. It might make things better as players give the game another chance. Will they be dissapointed and leave again? Stay tuned to find out ;)

As in most other games with large scale pvp, the moment most players step into the game mode, they disengage their brain and turn to sheep looking for something to follow, and will mill around aimlessly if they can't see a tag. Almost no one tries to form a group to go cap stuff or flip camps any more - because most people stop functioning the moment there is no tag. This is a direct result of the development of wvw, where people are told what to play, where to go, which class they need and if they aren't in a guild group they are, at best, called 'pugs'. And add in human nature, which is to want to be on the winning side. Most people don't find 'losing' fun and log off.

Add to that is the fact most people still clinging on to their guilds and playing wvw are die hards with toxic behaviour and a sense that they are somehow better because of their farmed rank or hours played- when most of the best players left or just log in occasionally years ago.

And the biggest problem of all- the game design promotes blob play, classes aren't balanced, and some skills can almost instantly down you- which skilled pvp players don't like (huge damage skills= no tactics or skill in fights) and hence have gone.

Overall, it's a mess and it isn't getting fixed. Because alliances won't fix it- because people will still want to join the ones winning more, and unless they introduce a penalty on winners and buffs against them we'll end up with the same problem. Guilds won't say 'let's split up and makes the odds even' when they face a lesser alliance, they will blob 35-50 and then moan about there being 'no fights'.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"Victory.2879" said:And the biggest problem of all- the game design promotes blob play, classes aren't balanced, and some skills can almost instantly down you- which skilled pvp players don't like (huge damage skills= no tactics or skill in fights) and hence have gone.

Which is an argument that doesnt makes any sense at all.

In previous discussions about this - going all the way back to release - it was made quite clear that this is what guilds wanted. Huge damage, unlocked AoE, 20 man crushing 50. They wanted "skill" to matter, not numbers.

But now you are saying that this promotes... Blob play? Eh? I mean sensible people knew that if 20 can roflstomp 50, those 50 can roflstomp 20 even harder. But that wasnt a concern for the "hardcore" fight guilds. They got exactly what they wanted.

[Victory.2879]

It makes perfect sense to me. Bad game design= skilled players leaving.

[tippolit.3591]

@MarkBecks.6453Issue is how WVW design is actually towards monoblocks ktrain stuff more than actually search for fights, it is a design issue since game was made for extreme casuals.

Totally agree. They have dumbed down WvW so much that it is almost an embarrassment to bother playing at this point .... 20 - 30 man zergs all running the same 3-4 builds for the most part … chiefly mobile aoe condition types that require about the same level of skill as one would expect from a trained chimp . No targeting involved in most cases .. just run into people and hope for a kill or drop a shitload of conditions and hope your opponent kills himself. Deeply disappointed in the direction the game has taken.

[Substance E.4852]

@Victory.2879 said:It makes perfect sense to me. Bad game design= skilled players leaving.

It's not even so much that's it's bad design as much as Anet has left the mode to rot in the sun ever since HoT.

They tested the arid map. People told them it was trash. They put it in anyway and then did nothing when HoT classes virtually destroyed what little tactical play the game mode offered.

Thing's have only gotten that much worse after PoF. There wasn't the same massive exodus but that's probably because anyone who cared enough to leave already had.

Whatever actual WvW team there is, is probably just the one guy who's designing the last few obsidian weapons that need to be added to the vendor.