WvW thoughts

[Razz.9632]

I was shown WvW by a guild leader that plucked me out of pve as a noob barely two weeks into the game, myself flailing about having innocent fun with no idea what Guild Wars 2 was about. Within a week or so, Guild Wars was WvW only too me, and Pve was "I will, because it will help my WvW.".I was drawn to the Chess/Game of Risk aspect of WvW. I played another game, Battlestar Galactica Online or BGO, that played the same as WvW, in fact it had servers, just two sides to the fight tho, not three like WvW. But I saw parallels and loved WvW for them.
Now direct comparisons will not work, BGO had no Pve, it was, lets call it WvW all the time, with a PVP feel tossed in, because whatever you where doing, you could be jumped at any point. Where WvW has 4 maps tho, BGO had from memory two sides with roughly equal areas, 20 or so each side. Being able to win per say was to control more than 50% of the whole map, and believe me, a balanced server, was so much fun to be in, because a fight in system G might have 100 players per side going for an hour for control of a part of one system, and smaller groups could fast move to other systems to take out lesser targets, or get ballsy and attack at the heart of the enemy, forcing a choice for the main force, stay or go?.

Movement was controlled, smaller classes, needed multiple jumps and maybe 3 mins to go from one side of map to the other, larger ships could do it in a minute or two, but might have to wait until it had enuf smaller ships for backup.The game at its best, was fun even in the PvP feel, and the battles long and glorious. BGO went off the air early this year, and so I am typing this out, because it made mistakes that can be learned from here I think.

It made its biggest strides, when it hyper protected its outposts with auto defences, much like our keeps, it forced invading forces to commit large resources to taking the outpost, fully knowing a prolonged battle might leave something else at risk.

Its moves that killed the game are prolly more than my views, but the obvious ones where invisible strike ships, able to swarm and take out command ships at ease, they sold those too hundreds of people, and in the end nurfed them so hard, they had to give actual rebates to all that bought them. But enuf time had gone by and so many had left in anger, that the playerbase had been fractured, and never recovered. Thief/Mesmer here can be annoying, but with mounts letting one get back to your group, I can't compare those two things.

What strikes me comparing the two game modes, GW2 WvW is too small, or it is too easy to get from A to B, EWP should be gone. Why are we in a game that when we defend something, it can be taken out in minutes? Why do the attackers have more power than the defenders???

If we make garrisons and keeps much stronger, and movement between maps harder, you create jobs for people who would rather defend, or scout, because we will always have groups in discord/TS etc, and so scouting can be an actual thing.Make WvW about the fight and the defend, not about one overpowered zerg being able to control all the maps. If the zerg is on red map, let em try and take a keep, with limited movement they may lose one themselves.

I was involved in many hours long fights for a system in BGO, some we lost some we won, we had 100 ships vs 100 ships for those fights, in GW2, 50 vs 50 fight can last 2-3 mins.

End of the day, even when we lost a fight, we left knowing we gave it our all, and if we won, same thing.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

any semblance of strategy started its way towards the window when they nerfed combo fields and the aoe cap. then the first expac hit. they completely messed up condi damage, stability and the whole boon system really. then they introduced concentration. by now the sheer power of some bunker, condi and power builds was unprecedented. they then in all of their wisdom multiplied this by 100 with the latest expac. then, they introduced mounts. the game at this point was in the window ledge, and mounts god bless em gave strategy a shove and we are now witness to its brains all over the street.

[Calisanna.8732]

I feel frustrated and honestly a bit let down recently. I’ve always supported the game through a lot of the bs in our game mode, WvW being what I exclusively play. Now I haven’t played (3 accounts) in a little over 2 weeks now. I do venture into pve when I wanna add more legs to my account, or grab a quick gemstone.I haven’t found the will to log in. I miss the team play, and my guildies but even looking at world populations is depressing. Last I checked 13 medium servers. I’m hoping after links and their special announcements maybe a little bit of life will come back.I keep reading that many guild left (13-20??), any idea what guilds?

[Sviel.7493]

I think your diagnosis is a bit off the mark.

There was a time where scouting and defending were respectable occupations in WvW. That died despite Keeps becoming stronger and maps taking longer to traverse (see: DBL). You were right about the root problem: the Blob.

WvW was dying pre-HoT due to stagnation, a sense of pointlessness over the outcome of matches and the ever-present population imbalance. It was being held together by the possibility of beating a group of superior numbers with superior skill, but even this was slipping away as the blobs swelled and veteran defenders who could actually be relied on in a pinch disappeared faster than they could be replaced.

HoT caused myriad problems, not the least of which is that entire guilds left WvW for PvE in order to get their guild halls built up so that they can get their usual buffs and bonus back. For those that tried to play at this time, it was chaos. On one hand, keeps were stronger and, in the initial version of the map, traversal times were higher...but most of the playerbase was in the Blob since defenders had largely disappeared, so reception to this was not positive. They weren't looking to fight over territory--they just wanted results or, failing that, a good open-field fight with minimal relevance to the actual game.

Say what you want about DBL--it is designed to make 8 5-man teams more effective than one 40-man zerg and it, at first, did a decent job of that. But the candidates who were most likely to organize these teams were either working on guild halls or had already given up on the game. The new map didn't even have (and still doesn't have?) the barebones tutorial of the first. Thus, the influx of new people all flocked to commander tags and expected to roll over everything like in PvE or pre-HoT WvW. They encountered difficulty because they were supposed to encounter difficulty. And they threw a fit. Meanwhile, most of the remaining veterans were GvG or GvG-lite guilds that cared mostly for fights instead of objectives. They also weren't keen to adjust to the larger role terrain played in these fights. Finally, HoT drastically changed combat for the worse and forced people to leave WvW to get the new cancer builds that were needed to stay afloat.

In short, DBL was made for a population that didn't survive long enough to see it. There was a bit of a scouting resurgence for a while, but bunker builds and offensive shield gens killed it. No point scouting unless you have a zerg handy--unlike the old days, a rag-tag group of veteran defenders no longer stands a chance of prolonging a capture or defeating an assault.

---

I recall an early DBL time in Firekeep before my guild left the server (and subsequently died). About twenty enemies showed up and starting giving our keep nasty looks. I had two folks with me, neither of whom was all that hardcore, but they were capable enough and very tough to discourage. We pulled out all the stops to defend the keep and, fortunately, the attackers stayed in one group and employed minimal strategy. We harassed their build sites, dropped supply traps, cowed them at every opportunity and backcapped the nearest supply camps and kept them drained of supply in case they did flip. We worked together to pull off a chain of disabler hijinks and repaired the wall as they cata'd it to buy time...even though no backup was coming. At one point, we even made use of a ballista built behind enemy lines to destroy a cata. Ultimately, the enemy group (which was a guild) sent a few salty whispers, threatened to quit the game entirely and withdrew.

This is clearly not ideal gameplay. It would have been better for everyone if that zerg had split up to attack from multiple points or at least done something not utterly predictable. It stands out to me because this is what should happen when a zero-effort group butts up against a handful of desperate scouts. The scouts should lose, but it shouldn't be a foregone conclusion. Unfortunately, shield generators and the eventual proliferation of one-shot or bunker builds made this kind of save much more difficult. Not to mention the later doubling of siege health and boost to cata damage. Now, in the same situation, it's wiser to just drain supply out of the keep and try to cut your losses.

[Sovereign.1093]

@"Razz.9632" said:I was shown WvW by a guild leader that plucked me out of pve as a noob barely two weeks into the game, myself flailing about having innocent fun with no idea what Guild Wars 2 was about. Within a week or so, Guild Wars was WvW only too me, and Pve was "I will, because it will help my WvW.".I was drawn to the Chess/Game of Risk aspect of WvW. I played another game, Battlestar Galactica Online or BGO, that played the same as WvW, in fact it had servers, just two sides to the fight tho, not three like WvW. But I saw parallels and loved WvW for them.

Now direct comparisons will not work, BGO had no Pve, it was, lets call it WvW all the time, with a PVP feel tossed in, because whatever you where doing, you could be jumped at any point. Where WvW has 4 maps tho, BGO had from memory two sides with roughly equal areas, 20 or so each side. Being able to win per say was to control more than 50% of the whole map, and believe me, a balanced server, was so much fun to be in, because a fight in system G might have 100 players per side going for an hour for control of a part of one system, and smaller groups could fast move to other systems to take out lesser targets, or get ballsy and attack at the heart of the enemy, forcing a choice for the main force, stay or go?.

Movement was controlled, smaller classes, needed multiple jumps and maybe 3 mins to go from one side of map to the other, larger ships could do it in a minute or two, but might have to wait until it had enuf smaller ships for backup.The game at its best, was fun even in the PvP feel, and the battles long and glorious. BGO went off the air early this year, and so I am typing this out, because it made mistakes that can be learned from here I think.

It made its biggest strides, when it hyper protected its outposts with auto defences, much like our keeps, it forced invading forces to commit large resources to taking the outpost, fully knowing a prolonged battle might leave something else at risk.

Its moves that killed the game are prolly more than my views, but the obvious ones where invisible strike ships, able to swarm and take out command ships at ease, they sold those too hundreds of people, and in the end nurfed them so hard, they had to give actual rebates to all that bought them. But enuf time had gone by and so many had left in anger, that the playerbase had been fractured, and never recovered. Thief/Mesmer here can be annoying, but with mounts letting one get back to your group, I can't compare those two things.

What strikes me comparing the two game modes, GW2 WvW is too small, or it is too easy to get from A to B, EWP should be gone. Why are we in a game that when we defend something, it can be taken out in minutes? Why do the attackers have more power than the defenders???

If we make garrisons and keeps much stronger, and movement between maps harder, you create jobs for people who would rather defend, or scout, because we will always have groups in discord/TS etc, and so scouting can be an actual thing.Make WvW about the fight and the defend, not about one overpowered zerg being able to control all the maps. If the zerg is on red map, let em try and take a keep, with limited movement they may lose one themselves.

I was involved in many hours long fights for a system in BGO, some we lost some we won, we had 100 ships vs 100 ships for those fights, in GW2, 50 vs 50 fight can last 2-3 mins.

End of the day, even when we lost a fight, we left knowing we gave it our all, and if we won, same thing.

wvw kind of went down when others let the oppinion of the loud poison their own opinion of the game.

:/

the other is there is no seasonal reset like diablo 3.

if this game had regular seasons where your toon is booted from a server, so you will have to choose a new one, it would have sustained and therefore active players can stack and havr a more balanced game play.

everything else is because people whine.

[nthmetal.9652]

There is, I think, some truth to what you say. Some, because of course it is possible to defend a keep, if you have a proper number of defenders. You can build tons of siege to stop or slow down enemies, you have tacticts in the objectives, which can be used to great effect (or utterly wasted). You might have to extend your defense to a network. Usually enemies, that take a keep don't go there from their spawn (thouhg it does happen), but they take other objectives first. Camps. towers. If they DO go directly for a keep or garri, you know if you stop them, they probably won't be coming back immediately, because they will have wasted their supplies.If they take camps or towers, you can work onb stopping them before they get to a keep. You need scouts and you need to be mobile; the warclaw helps a lot with that, but enemies have a warclaw, too.

There is some truth, though, as the game somewhat incentivizes taking objectives. You do want action on the maps. You don't want keeps to just defend themselves. Objectives should flip, and IMO these aspects of WvW work just fine.