Maybe it's not all bad

[Shroud.2307]

I used to love solo roaming once upon a time ( pre-HoT ), but since the introduction of passive upgrades, Tactivators, Mounts, more equipment stats, more foods, more runes, etc. etc., doing so has become a lot less rewarding and a lot more rock, paper, scissors.

A lot of people who enjoy doing things on their own have either felt forced in to doing so less, stopped playing, or started playing with groups. And many have made it very clear how much this frustrates them.

As one of those people, I've become less frustrated over the matter as time has gone on. Not because I think WvW has changed for the better, but because I think many of the changes have made WvW more of what it was supposed to be ( many not all ). It is a large scale RvR mode that promotes team play and was never intended to be traversed alone, though it has always been an option. With many of the additions expansions and patches have brought, it has also brought players closer together that once avoided doing so.

I'm still frustrated by many of the failures that WvW has suffered and I'm still impatient with ANet's inability to deliver on their promises. But regarding roaming, I'm starting to see through different eyes. If WvW has always been designed for team play, now is a better time than ever to participate in that. Small groups can be extremely dangerous if well co-ordinated and singular players can have a huge impact in that group.

This isn't a revelation, but I wanted to share my changing perspective on small scale WvW. For conversation and for inspiration. Many groups and guilds have known this for a long time, and many have roamed together successfully for a long time as well. I hope as 2020 goes on that if the community continues to shrink, we at least see more small scale groups forming up to battle. Because in times like these, all we have is each other.

Happy new year. I hope all your goals are met.

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

The problem is that team play existed back pre-HoT, and still exists now, if you disagree with it being better back then than now, fine....The problem is that solo and small scale play has been reduced with more and more disadvantages that disproportionately affect the solo/small scale. Why should one be favored over another? That is not to say that one will not or never have an advantage, the larger group already does in pure numbers to start with, what I am talking about is introducing mechanics that favor the side with greater numbers even more. All that does is force people to play a given way because no balance team (or WvW team at all) existed at the time of it's implementation.

As for small scale never being intended.....What? Yes, it's world vs world, but it is meant to be open world and play how you like. The first WvW team back before HoT also actively talked about how to break up the blob, how to reward scouts and roamers etc etc because they didn't want it to only be about who can field the most people, but who can have the most skill, the best coordination and tactics. Something that really doesn't exist anymore, that is what people are upset about.

While you might not agree, what you stated above is that you had something you loved and wanted to play, while the other aspects didn't really entice you, now you are looking more at team play, not because it has gotten better, but because solo and small scale has been soured so bad that you don't even want to play it anymore and went to the next best thing.

[coro.3176]

I used to solo roam probably 80% or more of my time in the game.. and now I basically don't play any more. Warclaw was part of it. Balance was another. How the community plays WvW was a factor too.

I have a dream that someday WvW could be fixed for both small and large scale with proper incentives. It would go something like:

• Alliance system creates balanced matchups on a regular basis with no need for transfers
• Players are given some incentive to win
• The best way to win is tuned to be small groups doing multiple things simultaneously rather than blobbing up as fat as possible and rolling over everything
• Players learn to split up more, only coming together into large groups for a major keep assault for short periods of time rather than rolling around the map on one tag 24/7

... but that is just a dream.

I'll continue to check back every month or so and be disappointed as nothing has changed.

[Sovereign.1093]

Tournaments. :3

[Infusion.7149]

If you want participation it's almost always better to run grouped , even if you are not on tag but with the scout designation.

I think the most pressing thing for WvW in 2020 is to reduce the damage of Warclaw to near negligible (mount stomp is a different thing), removal of the third leap, and having it more accessible to new players. Right now if you don't have the ranks for gliding and warclaw I don't think you can keep up with people at all. One of my newer guildmates joined WvW I think a month or two ago (on core warrior) and basically we had to get his ranks for gliding and warclaw which made it much better for him, although using siege to its full potential or getting hit for less by guards remains a concern.

Warclaw balance was mentioned on the roadmap so I'm cautiously optimistic. Alliances are unlikely to come to fruition this year I think and even if they did people will try to game the system like they've been doing on links.

For 2019 the best change was probably sand savant finally being nerfed from 10 targets along with the introduction of Lance for dismounting.

If we go back to Pre-HoT it was mostly reliant on coordination (blasting water fields and coordinated lightning fields, anyone?) and now we have overtuned heals and damage with 10-man perma-fury+might that doesn't mind being stripped due to 3s reapplication. There's also the introduction of marauder which makes fully damage slanted builds more survivable (see spellbreaker, weaver, frontline revenants, DPS gyro scrapper, staff daredevils, the occasional dragonhunters, etc). For smallscale I think perma-stealth builds will be looked at and scrutinized as well. It's been mentioned that skills that do high damage and CC simultaneously will be reevaluated , so I'm guessing this will include Phase Smash / Drop the Hammer and such.

As far as omni-blobbing goes, the only way that will be counteracted is if warclaw mobility is toned down (triple leap and the speed in owned territory) , because a main force can respond ridiculously quickly when anything on alpine borderlands is in contention. That's especially true when keep bonuses are as large as they are compounded with bloodlust bonuses and ascended food.

Unless someone is in it for Gift of Battle, there really needs to be incentive for someone to start WvW in 2020 as the newcomer experience is really poor now. Right now the incentive for doing well in a skirmish is mainly an added pip or two in skirmish reward tracks.

[EremiteAngel.9765]

For myself, the lack of new elite specs after 2 years was a major factor in my gradual decline in roaming.There is no new 'challenge' for me without new elite specs to train and compete against.

I am more a 'challenge' hunting type of player.I like to hunt strong roamers, especially those using specs that got major advantages against Necros in open field.Usually it takes me many many tries and many many deaths.But when I steal that 1 win, I'm like super happy.

I think when it comes to WvW roaming, I've beaten at least once, some of the more iconic and experienced roamers in NA across all the different types of specs from Core to HOT to POF.

Some of my more memorable wins against each of the spec includes:

• Thief: Core Thief from Ferocious Arsenal of Resolve [FEAR]
• Daredevil: Joshdangit from Dark Cloud [DC]
• Deadeye: Aikijinx (Youtuber)
• Ranger: Gladomer from Over Powered People [OPP]
• Druid: Kiritsugu from Happy Children Meal [HCM]
• Soulbeast: Shamanlord (Boonbeast) & Legend (LB/GS)
• Guardian: None that was particularly memorable
• Dragonhunter: Darckwind (LB DH)
• Firebrand: None that was particularly memorable
• Engineer: None that was particularly memorable
• Scrapper: None that was particularly memorable
• Holosmith: Xan from Violent Tendency [vT]
• Warrior: Hadi from I will make you [QQ]
• Berserker: Wilson Storm (Streamer)
• Spellbreaker: None that was particularly memorable
• Revenant: None that was particularly memorable
• Herald: No Challenge (Power Herald)
• Renegade: None that was particularly memorable
• Mesmer: Core Mesmer from Black Lion Hunters [HUNT]
• Chronomancer: Aria on the Planetes (Streamer)
• Mirage: Andy Pickles from Eternal Vigil [EV]
• Elementalist: Core Elementalist from Glorious Dapper (CAPS/HATS)
• Tempest: Tempest from Hairless Kitties Riding Duckies (JOY)
• Weaver: Weaver from Ninja Tactics (OP)

And this feeling of having achieved my goal has put me into semi-retirement mode.I still roam from time to time, but that 'I must do my best to win' feeling is gone because I had already proven I can beat some of the best.

Having a small scale guild to be a part of is definitely fun.I used to duo with a friend but he has moved on to other stuff and rarely plays now.I've not gone looking to join a roaming guild as I dislike getting tied down XDI prefer the freedom to do what I want, change maps as I please, take breaks, troll, jump around.

It is definitely another type of challenge and achievement to do well in a group and have a sense of belonging to that group.The damage/mobility power creep may have gone out of whacks for solo roaming/fights, but group roaming is still doing rather fine and can be pretty fun imo.Personally I blob more than I roam now but maybe one day, if WvW is still around, I may find a group to belong to =)

[Opal.9324]

It's pretty sucky to try and remove a playstyle that a lot of people have enjoyed for years, even if that playstyle isn't the main focus. Instead of making me team more, this is making me play less.

[Svarty.8019]

@"coro.3176" said:

• Players learn to split up more, only coming together into large groups for a major keep assault for short periods of time rather than rolling around the map on one tag 24/7

Without the intervention of Arenanet, this won't happen while there are commanders of varying ability and charisma.

What is required, and has always been needed but never implemented is incentives/rewards for doing unnatural things;

• It's not natural to punch up, incentivise it! (everybody punches down, atm WvW comes down to, "who can batter the weak side most?")
• it's not natural to split into smaller groups, incentivise it!
• it's not natural to keep trying when you're being smashed left, right and centre, incentivise it (Clearly, the outnumbered buff isn't cutting the mustard)!

The best solution would be dynamic handicapping based on current score, but for unexplained reasons Arenanet seem extremely resistant to this.

[Doug.4930]

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:I am more a 'challenge' hunting type of player.I like to hunt strong roamers, especially those using specs that got major advantages against Necros in open field.

And this feeling of having achieved my goal has put me into semi-retirement mode.I still roam from time to time, but that 'I must do my best to win' feeling is gone because I had already proven I can beat some of the best.

I'd be careful saying you beat them however. Killing someone in WvW does not equate to you beating them. I could walk up behind a samurai and cut their head off while they're having a drink. Doesn't mean I beat them.

“Just because you shot Jesse James don’t make you Jesse James.”

[Svarty.8019]

@Doug.4930 said:I'd be careful saying you beat them however. Killing someone in WvW does not equate to you beating them. I could walk up behind a samurai and cut their head off while they're having a drink. Doesn't mean I beat them.Yes, it does.

Yesterday, on desert map, a group of enemies waypointed from a position close to the gate. Two of us saw the first few disappear and piled onto the rest, killing three while they were clicking a waypoint on a map. We BEAT them!

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I think alot of it has to do with the fact that ArenaNet wants small scale to stay in PvP so it doesn't die out. Every roamer you have in WvW is another player who isn't participating in a PvP match, and on top of that, roamers often get conflated with gankers (even by me), which has somewhat damaged the reputation of roamers in ANet's eyes I imagine, since that's what they hear about the most.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@Hannelore.8153 said:roamers often get conflated with gankers (even by me), which has somewhat damaged the reputation of roamersThat isn't without good reason. I think you are looking at it too categorically. They are not two distinctly different things. Sure there may be some extremes of players that go to lengths to just gank but those are extremes. In the vast majority of cases someone's roamer is someone else's ganker. There is no official definition of what makes a roamer either beyond the rather broad one (to wander around to spontaneously discover content often in a smaller scale setting as larger scales inherently means organisation that usually has some sort of more direct purpose). That's why you will see a bunch of different people who try to define roaming in more narrow but conflicting ways. The problem they have is the same, they are being too categorical.

That is problematic because WvW is a mode that is all about scalability, flexibility and coexistence in the context of WvW. Most of the very active players I know tend to do everything even if other people may be looking to label them as one thing. They will duel, solo roam, pair roam, tripple-roam, roam as a party, roam as two parties, havoc-capture stuff, be ganked, get ganked, do fair group duels both impromptu and organized, look to punch above their weight alone or havoc-party around a tag, play both sPvP and WvW, etc. Everyone may not do that but most people do more than just one thing and the mode is both designed to house all of that content in one while it is being supported (lol) by a team combined for that.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@coro.3176 said:I have a dream that someday WvW could be fixed for both small and large scale with proper incentives. It would go something like:

• Alliance system creates balanced matchups on a regular basis with no need for transfers
• Players are given some incentive to win
• The best way to win is tuned to be small groups doing multiple things simultaneously rather than blobbing up as fat as possible and rolling over everything
• Players learn to split up more, only coming together into large groups for a major keep assault for short periods of time rather than rolling around the map on one tag 24/7I 100% agree with that.

The biggest problem these days though is that the playerbase have as much problems to connect the dots as the developers do. Even looking at these forums it is evident that the majority of people writing posts do not understand that this is why people who are in guilds, are stacking servers, are active and experienced keep talking about things like population balance, Alliances and guild content.

All of those points you raise are interconnected and the sad thing is that they already exist to some degree there are just breaks in the links of that chain.

Incentive to win:There is a direct correlation between population balance, the alliance system and an incentive to win as the imbalances are removing the incentive and shaping player behaviour or attitudes towards playing (how they play) and winning. The population imbalance is causing the PPT and PPK divide. The imbalance is why the players who create that content do not value the ladder. The ladder clearly states who is #1 but no one has attributed sufficient value to that since 2013. So it is not that the design or incentive isn't there it is just that the looming imbalance that has never been adressed ruins it.

Splitting up on maps:The same goes for splitting up. It is still by far the best method for winning. Make no mistake. There are still servers that PPT their way up the ladder by havoc-capping and back-capping in small parties across the maps even though they lack the population to sustain themselves in the high tiers. The prevalence of blobs is more a result of how the population imbalance, PPT/PPK splits and loss of perceived incentive leads the good groups and driving forces to not care about objectives or winning matchups. If you look at WvW there are plenty of differently sized groups on the maps, they simply don't feel a sense or purpose or garner any attention across the different scales. Blobs are not good, they are convenient and they exist because they don't have to fight guild groups for every objective anymore as there are not enough such groups and certainly not enough groups that care about objectives.

The same goes for the aforementioned PPT servers, once they hit tier 1 they will be faced by servers that has the coverage to counter it or that has the players to counter it as those servers and those PPT-ing parties rarely are good enough to deal with opposition. They usually climb through capping things that opposing servers have no coverage or inclination to defend. Once they hit higher tiers with ample supply of both coverage (both in terms of timezone and defensive PPT-players) or servers with things like ample experienced roamers, they usually get hardstuck. Not because of the blobs but excess players.

Splitting up over servers:If we ignore the past few years' growing trends of players to a higher degree migrating to (re-)gain access to friends, commanders and content, migration before that (even as some servers got stacked) was always more about guilds trying to match up with other guilds than anyone trying to build a dominant server. At least in the EU as some people claim that the NA servers were more purposely stacked at times. Guilds have done that for years since there have been few reliable ways to break the server barriers. The resulting problem of course is that things like that contributed to erroding the server cultures and made player groups less notable while the developers did their bit by encouraging anonymous players into the mode, expecting a shrinking population of guild-born players to carry an increasing population of anonymous players. That later resulted in the present migration trends of the guild-born players transfering away from anonymous players instead.

What is done and what is seen (or what is possible and believed possible)Very little of this is the players fault and this is going to sound a bit harsh but I think the reality is that most players do not see these evident things because they are simply not good enough (not experienced enough, not organized enough etc.). That is also why we have people constantly complaining about siege not doing enough damage or walls not being advantageous enough etc. They just do not see the balance that exists. They don't see how walls and siege may not let three anonymous players combat a 50-man pickup group but that those things easily lets a 15-man preorganized group do just that. It's just that there are no 15-man preorganized groups who care about PPT anymore or if a more PPK-leaning group actually does just that around an objective (not because they care about the objective but because they enjoy farming the bags or enjoy being a thorn in the side or whatever reason) very little of that is noticed around the server because the impact is low, winning is not valued and no one cares to celebrate that success. It is just par for the course.

However, none of that is the same as that it doesn't exist. All of that still happens today. I do it on a regular basis, it is just not flaunted, noticed or valued and for quite alot of players it is starting to become a mythical thing because they can't do it themselves and they do not see it being done. If my guild does a 15v50 on an open field or around a camp we may make videos about it but of our personal concern, we post it on our private discord and chuckle at it a bit but it is of no greater interest to the server and we don't see it as landing decisive blows for our server in the matchup (even if it may break the spirit of the main pickup group of an opposing server and potentially be a factor in the outcome of a matchup). It is just that no one cares because of the issues that plague the mode. Issues that are solved by things like alliances, population balance in scoring and reliable matchups for guild-content.

[EremiteAngel.9765]

@Doug.4930 said:

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:I am more a 'challenge' hunting type of player.I like to hunt strong roamers, especially those using specs that got major advantages against Necros in open field.

And this feeling of having achieved my goal has put me into semi-retirement mode.I still roam from time to time, but that 'I must do my best to win' feeling is gone because I had already proven I can beat some of the best.

I'd be careful saying you beat them however. Killing someone in WvW does not equate to you beating them. I could walk up behind a samurai and cut their head off while they're having a drink. Doesn't mean I beat them.

“Just because you shot Jesse James don’t make you Jesse James.”

You're right haha.Short answer is yes, I beat them at least once and that's good enough for me =)

Long answer is yes, they are all 1 vs 1 duels or open field impromptu fights.I like the challenge so...walking behind a player who was afk and then proclaiming my win...isn't a challenge XDI almost always fight them in open field with little obstacles to kite around.I'm also terrible at kiting since I seldom PvP and hardly know anything about juking around obstacles which is rare in WvW.

[RedShark.9548]

Groupplay has also gotten less fun, for me atleast.The amount of dmg flying around is so kitten.Meteor casually hitting for 16k.Phase smash, cor, vaults, and many more, all this kitten has to be toned down big time. Its like rolling a dice.You either get hit by 1 or 2 of those whilst running in a group and die or you dont because target cap or random aegis.

Most fights are over/decided in mere seconds.This is hella boring and imo very unhealthy for the gamemode.