What is wrong with WvW in 2020?

[Riba.3271]

Here are my 10 cents on changes that long overdue. Overall they're my personal opinion, which I obviously find to be the perfect direction to take WvW towards, or backwards, however you want to see it. I played WvW quite a lot before HoT, when most WvW framework was reformed, and am logical thinking type that is part of core server community meaning I most likely care about certain flaws on how the game plays out more than others. The way I see it, you shouldn't balance the game around people who don't care anyways.

Guild Tactics and Improvements balanceDragon banner: Every server has a few players that are "dragon banner mains". And this tactic is so strong that it twists fights around it.How to fix: Either nerf damage of dragon banner skills or reduce range of them. They deal too much damage for the fact that the banner user is quite impossible to kill if they run certain builds/comp. The banner user also shouldn't get increased movement speed. Dragon banner 2 should also have increased cooldown.

Packed dolyaks: Well, they're just superior tactic to speedy dolyaks. They count as 2 for upgrade and carry twice as much supplies. So you can speed them up with permasuperspeed build and upgrade things 4 times faster instead of intended 2 times.How to fix: Make them count only 1 for upgrade but carry 3 times as much supply as normal dolyak. This would make them perfect dolyaks for objectives that are already upgraded.

Presence of the keep: Combined with current claim buff, it is strongest tactic in the game. As soon as keep has Presence of the keep, it has solidified its position as "a farm spot", meaning defender can just cloud attacker down provided they're not completely outclassed. 800 extra stats, +5 supply and 25% movement speed. Destroys roaming, ganking while making small groups struggle against even smaller groups. Biggest offender of passive defences taking over the active ones.How to fix: Nerf claim buff combat stats, it will also balance presence of the keep. Part of later comment.

Iron guards: Another passive defense that makes defenders not have to be active. SM cloud, passive scouting, are all possible due to lord being impossible to rush down. This combined with the fact that lord has weird scaling (is fast to kill with 20-24 people, slow with 25-40 and fast again with a zoneblob) makes the balance benefit blobs over small groups and guilds.How to fix: Fix lord health scaling to scale linearly instead of instantly jumping up at 25 attackers and make it only 35% damage reduction to make it equal to hardened siege.

Watchtower: Limits small groups, as soon as tower is owned 1 hour, it limits small groups to long range catapults or trebs. Also shuts down most roaming routes and stealth builds.How to fix: Make watchtower only activate when tower is contested. This would allow roamers to pass it safely quite often and run stealth on upgraded maps. Would also allow small group to setup catapults on hard to cap towers like Jerri, langor and dawns/cragtop.

Cloaking waters: Allows defenders free access to lord room and cloud down enemies at inner gate with stealth every 30 seconds.How to fix: Move it to 2nd floor of sm and increase duration by 10 seconds. Make people actually have to go to it actively to abuse it. Attackers can play around it better

Other mentionsEmergency Waypoint/Invulnerable walls/Airship: Little bit too strong. Could reduce durations of all of them by a bit.

Armored Dolyaks/Autoturrets: Could use a rework. Useless.

Upgrade times and supply balanceSince HoT things have been upgraded even up to 10 times as fast as before while being full of supply. Close your eyes for an hour and you might wake up to see enemy have t3 bay. Are objective supposed to be near impossible to capture while being easy to upgrade? Where is the tradeoff? Where is the challenge? Is defending really supposed to require such little coordination that every dolly doesn't matter?How to fix: Upgrading keeps should require 25/50/100 dolyaks instead of 20/40/80. This combined with Packed dolyaks nerf will be able to make mapstates much more tolerable to groups. More things to do for small groups of defenders and attackers. Upgrading Stonemist Castle should require 30/60/120 dolyaks. SM is keypoint on most popular map, and T3 sm is activity killer for not just group fights but also roaming and smaller groups, having it just T2 should be impressive feat from any server.andEach dolyak should carry less supply. 10 less for keeps and SM, 5 less for towers. This would make supply draining enemies a real strategy.

Offense/Defence strategies being too monotonousBuild trebs/catas? Enemy builds shield gensBuild ACs? Enemy builds shield gensUse omegas? Enemy builds shield gensUse mortars/cannons/ballistas?.... Oh, shield gens...

Now as you see, attacker can ignore any defending siege. In return they can't use trebs, omegas or catas because enemy might use their most powerful tool, shield gen, then against them. This obviously hurts fights a lot because catapults and trebs usually offers you possiblity to pull a fight from safety of their siege.

So if defender is being stripped of their passive defences in form of tactics, upgrade times, supply and claim buff, they need more active defences: Siege.

Simple solution: Make shield gen not work on siege fire. Attacker can already use Golems, treb range and cata bubbles to their advantage to bypass any defender strategies. In return shield gen bubble would pulse 30% damage reduction allowing it to not only be better combat tool but also increase amount of shots required to take down siege. Maybe it could also repair siege with slow rate.

This would return 2 guaranteed attacker strategies with obvious drawbacks: Trebutchets and Omega golems. Both which drain ton of supply from attacker and can be timeconsuming to setup. Defender could cover other spots with ACs and trebs for catas. Trebs behind gates for rams. These wouldn't be negated by Shield generators. Meaningful siegeplay, similar to Pre-HoT except with shield gens being able to give damage reduction that would also affect other siege.

Another thought: Guild golems are also kind of busted. 50 Supply for a ram that you can give quickness to? Yes, please! Considering they're identical to alphas, they should only cost 80 supplies. We are already seeing 10 guild golem rushes with shield gens to keeps. Rushing to T3 keep lord room within a minute with only 500 supply shouldn't be a thing. And you shouldn't be able to give boons to golems, it was fine back when it was added because Mesmer/Guardian had to use elite skill for it but right now they're too strong with firebrands quickness upkeep.

Claim buffPassive defence, very annoying. Combined with presence of keep become overwhelmingly strong buffs. Just the 25% movement speed and gliding give lot of mobility when swiftness is corrupted.

How to fix: Make claim buff +30 stats and +15% movement speed instead of +100 and +25%. This would be fairer balance and wouldn't decide fights by itself. Do note that claim buff can become 4 times as potent when comparing fighting at friendly and enemy keep. This is currently making it so that groups that are so weak that they can't even look at enemy keeps during daytime, are only defending. And for attacker that can be quite a boring cliff to climb, 800 stats and all the siege... The effect is even worse when servers fare against each other equally regarding strength, they just can't go to enemy keep without dying 100% of the time in very onesided fight. There are no miracles, mouse can't beat an elephant.

Mount balanceFrom what I see there are 3 faults within mounts currently:

• Lance skill has too long of a cooldown making dismounting enemies hard (kills roaming and disallows respawning attackers from stopping respawning defenders)
• Mount stomping being so strong that it is actually better to have a few players mounted at start of fight
• Endurance not being shared with unmounted form making it "free" way to get through chokes or to backline.

How to fix: Remove mount stomping, make endurance shared with unmounted form (2 bars, remaining goes to unmounted form so mirage can use 1 dodge on mount for free, not sure how it would work with DD), reduce Lance cooldown to 15 seconds.

Bandvagoning and server population caps:Well while above changes will alleviate the reasons of bandvagoning: Keep fights won't be as hard meaning too strong of servers will get more boring wins in straight on fights and equally strong servers can have some long-lasting epic sieges against similar servers, it ultimately doesn't fix the problem of people, and especially guilds, transferring around every 2 months for greener pastries.

Currently there are very few guilds on main servers, at least on EU, which pushes the average of main servers down and lowers the population cap to become full to quite low. Where a server could have 6 or 7 guilds before becoming full in the past, now only 2 active guilds can be enough to make it full with active playerbase. This is purely caused by such a high population preferring transferring from links to links instead of settling on a server they like the most.

From what I see there are 2 potential solutions:Transferring to medium servers should cost more (700 gems?) and to Very high servers less (1500 gems?).orNew linking system1) Links would change very rarely, like once per year (min. 6 months)2) Transfer cost to links would be same as main server3) Population status would be population of main + link-> Wouldn't allow 2 stacked servers together, would allow less frequent "population balancing"/tier changes and keep server friends still together

Skill lag and rubberbanding:Well this is caused by quite a simple thing: Too many players in same map. Now there is the possibility to reduce mapcaps by around 15 people per server which would remove 45 people in total from map. This will alleviate lot of the skillag but make queues little intolerable on pretty much all servers.

Solution: Simply, add a new map. It is time for 2nd neutral map, EB with differently designed middle castle, with none of the desert map PvE gimmicks. Most people agree that fights with 3 guilds vs 3 is more enjoyable than 4 v 4 fiesta, and that 45v45 fights are more exhillarating than 60v60. More maps, less mapcap = More objectives, more groups, less lags. More brain and coordination required to keep everything safe also.

Having bad time on Eternal Battlegrounds? Go to Everlasting Fightfields! :3

Balance changes are too rare and too ambitious...We have seen from popular competitive games that frequent patches every 2 weeks to spice things up are good way to keep people interested in the game. Simple numerical changes instead of ambitious trait reworks. Buffing skills, traits, objectives, siege and tactics here and there to allow people explore things out, then reverting them partly if they don't feel quite right.

Overall the bigger balances and traitworks are great and in right direction but almost always touch just skills and traits while dsregarding siege, supply and tactics.

Now I am not saying more frequent numerical balance changes to boonrips, cleanses, damage, sustain, boons, supplies, siege, objectives and tactics are the only ways to make the game less statics. Frequent events would also work but require bit more resources.

MapsThere are matchups where one server completely abandons their home desert map, making them automatically lose. There are others where 2 servers ignore it and it is a free win. Overall Desert map has 4 flaws in having the map around alongside 2 alpines:

• People don't like it, making it the map you only go for PPT, most of us prefer fights alongside WvW so it leaves us only 3 map options which sometimes isn't enough considering all guilds and other commanders wanna be on those 3 maps too.
• The north towers there upgrade too fast. They're fed by 2 camps with relatively short distance dolyaks. North towers on alpine bls can often be T2 after 10 hours. Desert maps can be T3 within 2 hours. This makes it perfect map to defend for PPT and gives the owner advantage where they can have weak timezones and instantly get it upgraded again as soon as they pick it up while alpine borders struggle with north towers losing easily 2 towers worth of PPT
• It is quite bad for roamers, only roamers I meet there are ones that are happy flipping camps without fights. And this is very rarely. Meaning north camps on that map keep packed/speedy dollies more longer allowing faster upgrades.
• Most ACs are so high up you can't reach them, all lord rooms are terrible choke points you can't really play around with annoying lord. EWPs are too far from lord room. The inner design is terrible for attacker.

Solution: Just remove it. heh. We could use new maps though but ones that stay within design of EB/Alpine with none of the "unkillable ACs and overly complex 10 000 chokepoints and AC spots" design. Only NE tower there is truly fun place to assault because the lord room isn't that easy to hold and the boss isn't stacked with CC.

Player vs Dev CommunicationWe could use a little more communication from the Devs. They should make more comments on their opinions how the gamemodes future looks like. Some mundane sounding comments like "we will be looking into it" and "We will look into adjusting Dragon banner in future patches" are good enough because they have more obligation to look into things already mentioned.

Afterwords: Thank you for reading it to the end! I am sure I didn't manage to collect all my thoughts regarding where WvW has gone wrong in past years but I am fairly confident these are changes that would make the gamemode feel much better. What is your idea for better WvW balance? Meet you on the battlefields!

[jul.7602]

Good list of changes. However here a few points that I would touch on.

Lord Health vs presence of the keep

I think the lord HP scaling is incredibly broken and feels like something that I'd find in a raid, not in pvp. Even without Iron Guards it is too strong. Keep/SMC Lord HP scaling should be drastically reduced, and only marginally harder than the HP of a tower lord. The clouding problem in keeps that you address is more related to the fact that the attackers have focus all of their damage on a raid boss, while standing in the center, which gives the defenders ample room to bomb them from 360 degrees.

Wall/gatesGates/walls that are broken are too easily resealed and often make it dis-proportionally harder for the attacker to reinforce the objective. A broken wall/gate should only be resealed when it has been repaired above 30%.

Some of the more deeper disagreements is how the "Defenders advantage" should be manifested.You seem to be more of the opinion that the defenders advantage should be promoted more by using siege weapons. Frankly I would rather have siege be greatly weakened, but in return give a very strong passive attribute boost to players around the tower. This way people will be encouraged to fight each other more so than standing on walls.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Basically IMO most the tacitvators added in HoT were a blight on WvW. Except the Dune Roller. That's still funny. They should also buff auto turrets since some jerk keeps putting them on our keep.

I would actually restrict banners to be tied to the structure itself but have its cooldown reduced.

6 Months between links I just don't think will work. It's ages in our modern era of gaming.

[Riba.3271]

@"jul.7602" said:Good list of changes. However here a few points that I would touch on.

Lord Health vs presence of the keep

I think the lord HP scaling is incredibly broken and feels like something that I'd find in a raid, not in pvp. Even without Iron Guards it is too strong. Keep/SMC Lord HP scaling should be drastically reduced, and only marginally harder than the HP of a tower lord. The clouding problem in keeps that you address is more related to the fact that the attackers have focus all of their damage on a raid boss, while standing in the center, which gives the defenders ample room to bomb them from 360 degrees.

Wall/gatesGates/walls that are broken are too easily resealed and often make it dis-proportionally harder for the attacker to reinforce the objective. A broken wall/gate should only be resealed when it has been repaired above 30%.

Some of the more deeper disagreements is how the "Defenders advantage" should be manifested.You seem to be more of the opinion that the defenders advantage should be promoted more by using siege weapons. Frankly I would rather have siege be greatly weakened, but in return give a very strong passive attribute boost to players around the tower. This way people will be encouraged to fight each other more so than standing on walls.

I do agree walls and gates get closed little too easily and 25% or 30% might be a good threshhold.

You can take siege weapons down with trebs and ballistas as long as you take your time as attacker. Attacker is the proactive side and shouldn't be feeling like attacking makes them wipe to worse enemies skills rather than just amount siege. Overall I am not suggesting any siege buffs, just removal of shield gens blocking all siege so more siege can be used. More ways to attack and more to defend. Little bit more brain involved. Attacker can maybe even use the new shield gen 30% damage reduction to push through some hard siege-infested chokes.

Do note that most towers and keeps can be trebbed down as long as shield gens are nerfed so defenders indeed would have to come out more than currently.

[WastedYears.8934]

Lack of updates? No matter how fun the game mode is, if there isn't any changes people eventually get bored of it.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"Threather.9354" said:Iron guards: Another passive defense that makes defenders not have to be active. SM cloud, passive scouting, are all possible due to lord being impossible to rush down. This combined with the fact that lord has weird scaling (is fast to kill with 20-24 people, slow with 25-40 and fast again with a zoneblob) makes the balance benefit blobs over small groups and guilds.How to fix: Fix lord health scaling to scale linearly instead of instantly jumping up at 25 attackers and make it only 35% damage reduction to make it equal to hardened siege.The "weird scaling" more than likely does not exist as you think. The reason you are seeing this is because of players, not the lord. Wouldnt surprise me if it already is linear scaling.

A random 20 man group coming to cap something by map call out will probably have alot more dpsers relative to support and a fair amount of roamers. In contrast, a 50 man blob have a metric ton of supports that are completely useless at killing a lord, yet they still scale it up the eqvivalent of a dps.

And thats before we start goimg into the fact a 50 man blob will probably attract 50+ defenders. Lords scale to all players.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

nice list. agree with all.

[Virdo.1540]

What is wrong with WvW in 2020?

Performance is badeveryone plays condi tank, which many people dont like. Many fights are just endlessServer-performance is bad

Emergency Waypoints - need a fix. Cuz if the whole army ports, they have such a long loading screen that they get ported to vanilla spawn and ewp is gone.

Permastealth almost inside the lord, even though the keeps should "mark and reveal" invisible players - terrible... either permastealth or portal, not both

too many people for having Teams. over the half of the servers are more than capable of fighting on their own (at least here in EU). Too many & too big queues.

i could go on, but u get the point.

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@"Threather.9354" said:Guild Tactics and Improvements balanceDragon banner: Every server has a few players that are "dragon banner mains". And this tactic is so strong that it twists fights around it.How to fix: Either nerf damage of dragon banner skills or reduce range of them. They deal too much damage for the fact that the banner user is quite impossible to kill if they run certain builds/comp. The banner user also shouldn't get increased movement speed. Dragon banner 2 should also have increased cooldown.

I main DB when I am drinking, as it's so OP I can be half drunk and still wipe groups almost solo with one.

[Bish.8627]

Not a fan of lance, I agree it has a huge CD but right now its broken. Its range is too far, with some lag that range seems unlimited and it will hit you in towers, around corners and whether you dodged or not. Also right now some small scale fights are not fun due to rather toxic gank builds. Lance favours these, has probably promted them because they can sit between your keep and somewhere, and they know lance is almost always going to work, especially if you have more than 1. Key words there being not fun. The shorter the CD the shorter the range. Hell its a lance, it should be melee anyway. It was easier to avoid engagements pre mounts than it is now.

[bambi.6214]

EWP tactivator should be a channeled process (like a skill point place) that speeds up the more ppl start channeling it.

[mindcircus.1506]

@jul.7602 said:I think the lord HP scaling is incredibly broken and feels like something that I'd find in a raidNot gonna lie. I actually laughed out loud.

[XenesisII.1540]

@"Bish.8627" said:Not a fan of lance, I agree it has a huge CD but right now its broken. Its range is too far, with some lag that range seems unlimited and it will hit you in towers, around corners and whether you dodged or not. Also right now some small scale fights are not fun due to rather toxic gank builds. Lance favours these, has probably promted them because they can sit between your keep and somewhere, and they know lance is almost always going to work, especially if you have more than 1. Key words there being not fun. The shorter the CD the shorter the range. Hell its a lance, it should be melee anyway. It was easier to avoid engagements pre mounts than it is now.

Yeah 1500 range on the lance that you "throw", you mount up and suddenly you're an olympic god at javelin throwing lol.Meanwhile we have pistols and rifle shots that only go 900-1200 range, garbage asuran tech!

---

Whats wrong with wvw in 2020? Oh I dunno, bunker boon balls, bunker boon builds, bunker condi builds, immob spamming, on top of everyone holding hands in groups because before you needed help from one shots now you need help to break bunker boon specs. Oh and of course I have to mention my favorite class being neutered to the ground because people forget they have a dodge so mirage gets one removed in compensation!

Sure, the feb balance patch was great, damage came down, a little bit of sustain came down, longer ttks, but they forgot to address the one problem we've been mentioning since 2015, the god kitten boons/corruption cycle.

Then we have people complaining about making walls and gates weaker, making siege weaker, making camps weaker, making upgrades weaker, make banners weaker, make tactics weaker, because hey small groups forgot how to be sneaky, how to deny supply, and can't figure out how to use ranged siege but they also deserve to break all T3 stuff! but yeah lets make it all weaker so the boon balling zergs can just run over everything then sit in a keep and camp it till they're bored. I don't fully disagree with some stuff like watch tower or presence of the keep, but stop taking a narrow point of view of small groups and think of the bigger picture.

At this point anet should just put pips in eotm and call it a day, much better than having to tinker with all that other kitten or alliances, everyone gets what they want an easy ktrain of places that don't upgrade, and your rewards with a pip cherry on top.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

WarclawCondi carpets by the 100's each blobWarclawTo much boon spamCondi carpets for milesAny real melee fights are pointless cuz........Condi carpets by the 100'sOh and warclaw, dont wanna forget the mistake that is warclaw.I honestly dont give a $hit if melee heavy blob fights take way looker the engagements would be far more entertaining, skillful than the garbage that is blob fights now where everyone brainlessly spams their condis and aoe ranged attacks while a few brave souls tread into the lava floor for some melee action for a few secs of actual fun before having to disengage outa the condi spam if they dont melt from them first. So fun right there, weird it's not more popular.And let's not forget the try hard attempts at being or seemingly being tactical at the first engagement just to result in the above for remainder of the battle while each other takes turns pushing with their ranged condi aoe lol.

[subversiontwo.7501]

I'm going to group your headers together a add some comments on them. As per usual, I'm going into this thinking that I'll keep each response brief, but I know that I won't so be forewarned that some of this stuff has discussion, explanation and examples so it will get lengthy.

@"Threather.9354" said:Guild Tactics and Improvements balanceUpgrade times and supply balanceOffense/Defence strategies being too monotonousClaim buffMount balanceAll of these are true but in the greater scheme of things they are completely unimportant. They are not things you can address instead of the other things and even if they are smaller and easier to address their impact on the game mode is far too small to divert any form of resources to (however small or temporary) that will delay the important points further. These do not make or break the mode. Addressing them will not turn things around to make us go forward instead of backwards. They are however things that once served a purpose but are crude or outdated and they are things that could be replaced with better systems to sharpen other changes when those have been made. Adding things to guilds for example was not a bad idea and the implementation at the time wasn't necessarily bad but these features serve little purpose now and are pretty pointless to iterate upon or work on alone. They are annoying at worst and could get better at best.

Balance changes are too rare and too ambitious...This is the only thing I do not really agree with. Working with balance is a process that requires experimentation and adjustment. As long as they keep working on it and are not directly incompetent I don't mind if changes take different ambitions and time. It is about keeping things tolerable. A six-month slump is tolerable but a two-year slump is not. An ambitious project that causes imbalances for six months is tolerable but consecutive re-imbalancing that is never allowed to settle or projects that won't reach tolerable balances over longer periods of time is not okay.

MapsThis falls in with the first category but with a bit of an addition: Maps could be a very efficient way to keep the game mode better attended. However, to do so does not really mean changing the maps but rather changing your entire development approach to maps. It may seem like splitting hairs but it's an important difference. Most of the maps we have now are good. The maps are not bad and the oldest maps have proven to have much better replayability than the newer maps. The only thing that would be better is a better approach to maps. I've written about it at length before, I will not do that here. It might be in my signature, unsure.

Player vs Dev CommunicationI'm sneaking in some market-talk here because it's difficult to mention communication without mentioning what makes a company communicate or not; or reaching voices that matter when communicating. It is also a good topic but a huge topic so it is difficult to navigate, especially when not on its own. So, it will take alot fo space here and I've babbled about iut before but meh, it suffices to repeat.

Communication, development and marketing (in a broad "money" sense) are intertwined. The F2P/B2P+MTX model impacts communication strategies and development derived from customer data as a result. The MTX model has create a situation that is more about gathering data than communicating. Other models, both older like subscriptions or buy-in models (that could be really cool for GW2 and WvW, the way you see in player-run events now or how late 90's pre-retail MMO often worked and could easily be monetized since the developer can create prizes but sell the content) as well as resurging trends like opt-in models are all much more rooted in communication. The MTX models are about gathering data which means that it is less about communication and more about information and feedback (in behaviour and message; but not communication as in a two-way negotiation of meaning). It is an important difference as it is outgoing and incomming information but never communication. It is just information.

You see this when players ask about communication, suggest other income models like subscriptions or seasons or even something as simple as monetizing what you spend resources on (like the story). They could monetize that stuff but it only works if you are in good standing with your playerbase, if you have a reason or infrastructure to communicate and if feedback has reached someone who has a voice that matters and can facilitate change.

With the existing non-communication strategies developers are spared the strain of dealing with the community, may not have the mandate to talk about their work or put feedback into their work, there is not much of a CM-function to support or mediate communication in a meaningful or corporately useful way and there seem to be little interest in exploring other things among marketing, publishing or product-owner levels. We can only conclude that they seem to be doing rather poorly in all these areas but also seem very resistant to change despite the odd mea culpa (roadmaps that are not roadmaps etc.). It surprises me because we've had years of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" now.

Anyway, it is the big stuff that affects the end of a Dev communicating with players. That may seem obvious to point out but it is important because a Dev (as in a game designer or programmer etc.) may not really have anything of value to communicate with us about. They may like to talk to us because they're interested privately but that is not the same as it being valuable. Talking to a Dev or even to a CM (should they exist) is only really valuable if there is an internal structure that lets communication flow in a meaningful way. With subscriptions in particular this was a necessity but regardless if we're talking expansion content, subscription content, seasonal buy-in content or opt-in development or even better targeted mtx, you can do alot of different things, they all require a better relationship than ArenaNet has with the WvW playerbase and they may need further communication.

At the end of the day, they should obviously monetize the content they develop, the story, to get healthy (ie., sell it as mini expansions like Total War does) and repair their relationship with the other modes so they can look into better adapted forms of monetization on those modes down the road (whether that is mtx for mode-specific stuff, buy-in for pvp-leagues or anything else). That leads to things to develop and monetize, as a result things to communicate with the customers about. They could have a WvW-team then. That of course requires alot more than selling empty promises which is lucrative until the scam is exposed but hard to come back from. Short and sweet it is all about repairing the relationship by fixing the obvious and long-standing issues (that have essentially already been paid for as they have been dangled since forever), then you have a working foundation from which to develop (improve, expand) and then you have a place to monetize and communicate from.

Bandvagoning and server population capsSkill lag and rubberbandingOkay, so now that I have bored you with less important noodling: These are the important ones. The organisation of the playerbase is the premise of the entire mode. Nothing is as important as that possibly barring a healthy performance.

However, the skill lag and rubber banding "shouldn't" be a problem. This is an online game so you can never expect it to run perfectly but even if there have been ups and downs, over the course of this game it has likely still been more healthy than not healthy. Performance issues have not been defining. The mode has proven possible to sustain over longer stretches of time and there is nothing in theory to suggest that maintaining a 100v100v100 (or whatever) mode in 2020 should be a problem. It is a relatively safe thing to run. So, the only concern here is that it looks like it is getting worse. They seem less apt at sustaining the mode and at addressing these issues adequately when they appear. That is a concern going forward, if they are budgeting performance or have lost too much competence on the engineering side. There is reason to be concerned but there shouldn't be a reason for it.

How to manage the playerbase is more of an issue though because if you can't organize a W and W and W then you do not have WvW. The premise for the entire mode is broken and sadly it has never received its warranted attention. That's why WvW has never felt anything close to complete and it is sincerely not hard to facilitate something better than what they have. Some systems were already proven (but have not been replicated and expanded properly), other systems in the game has proven very suitable for WvW while other systems have always been underdeveloped.

So for example the DaoC model has proven the test of time. It is still a good way to design MMO PvP in 2020 and there is much to gain from not experimenting with other models that pushes performance requirements etc. The combat systems have proven awesome for WvW (and cooperative PvE) and it is the game's biggest loss that they have not capitalized on that since 2014 in my oppinion. However, their ideas for servers and half-finshed "modes in the mode" with the home-defense maps etc. That stuff was dead on arrival in 2012. It was spoken about as dead on arrival in 2012. It was admitted as unfinished/placeholders in 2012 and it has just proven worse with time. That they have not managed to address this yet is embarrassing and the single most important thing to actually get addressed to go forward into anything in 2020.

[Riba.3271]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:I'm going to group your headers together a add some comments on them. As per usual, I'm going into this thinking that I'll keep each response brief, but I know that I won't so be forewarned that some of this stuff has discussion, explanation and examples so it will get lengthy.

@"Threather.9354" said:

Guild Tactics and Improvements balance

Upgrade times and supply balance

Offense/Defence strategies being too monotonous

Claim buff

Mount balance

All of these are true but in the greater scheme of things they are completely unimportant. They are not things you can address instead of the other things and even if they are smaller and easier to address their impact on the game mode is far too small to divert any form of resources to (however small or temporary) that will delay the important points further. These do not make or break the mode. Addressing them will not turn things around to make us go forward instead of backwards. They are however things that once served a purpose but are crude or outdated and they are things that could be replaced with better systems to sharpen other changes when those have been made. Adding things to guilds for example was not a bad idea and the implementation at the time wasn't necessarily bad but these features serve little purpose now and are pretty pointless to iterate upon or work on alone. They are annoying at worst and could get better at best.

Id say downtalking multiple small seeming changes that literally affect you everytime you go to enemy objective and mapstate when starting the game up in a competitive game as unimportant is not quite what I was expecting. We went from Pre-HoT meta where guilds were fighting other guilds in keeps, everything was pre-sieged and long-term sieges literally being a daily thing into some kind of mish-mash of either rushing down objective or wiping. Ultimately the balance between attackers being so underpowered regarding passive defences to defenders causes not only the need to bandvagon to stronger server for epic attacking moments but also the amount of people willing to tag up when there is no enemy group already. Daily whole-day of fight over Stonemist ownership is gone precisely because strongest server of the matchup can hold it while being unorganised against organised group.

Ultimately current objective/siege balance limits of the options and activity of all guilds, roamers, open tags and tryhard blobs making WvW just run on nostalgia of epic moments that were much more frequent in the past. Defending skillfully actually mattered, it wasn't just about getting right people online.

Balance changes are too rare and too ambitious...

This is the only thing I do not really agree with. Working with balance is a process that requires experimentation and adjustment. As long as they keep working on it and are not directly incompetent I don't mind if changes take different ambitions and time. It is about keeping things tolerable. A six-month slump is tolerable but a two-year slump is not. An ambitious project that causes imbalances for six months is tolerable but consecutive re-imbalancing that is never allowed to settle or projects that won't reach tolerable balances over longer periods of time is not okay.

Keeping the game fresh is very important, Changing numbers of 5 to 10 key/underused/overused skills/traits slightly every 2 weeks will keep the game fresh for people. Give them reason to try things out. HoT threw at us so many changes at once that people struggle telling what made WvW so much unattractive for if not themselves, but for other people. It is better to gradually go towards the direction they want to go to instead of throwing billion changes at once. And this would allow them to come back and readjust things instead of leaving things at broken state for 6 months. Do note that forums are ultimately to point out observed faults in the game for the devs but if they will forget about specifics of anything typed in a few months and make the person reaching out them feel desperation. Currently Dragon banner has been busted for about 4 months, still no change in sight.

We have entered era where gamers expect more frequent changes throughout the year. Anwering this expectation is a pickle for any game developer out there, but it is something anet has to overcome.

Maps

This falls in with the first category but with a bit of an addition: Maps could be a very efficient way to keep the game mode better attended. However, to do so does not really mean changing the maps but rather changing your entire development approach to maps. It may seem like splitting hairs but it's an important difference. Most of the maps we have now are good. The maps are not bad and the oldest maps have proven to have much better replayability than the newer maps. The only thing that would be better is a better approach to maps. I've written about it at length before, I will not do that here. It might be in my signature, unsure.

Well as I was typing my post to collect my thoughts in a informative channel, it took me several hours, and I actually failed to type out all my thoughts regarding this. Not only they could design a new maps but also experiment on existing maps, replacing bloodlust with some kind of different objective or adding minitowers with no supply instead of EB NPCs would be a good idea to support spreading out in multiple groups (which is what desert map failed to accomplish). They could also make bravost easier to cap by making the jump on the wall for the easiest to break wall little bit easier, while also nerfing one tower on green/red side a bit and see how it affects the game.

Frankly, I am not sure if these particular changes would be good but I would be open to them and they would require less resources than designing a whole new map. And most important, designing and partly redesigning existing towers is fun kind of job for dev so we can expect passionate results out of it. Then devs could collect feedback on them later to either adjust or revert the changes. More professional kind of communication.

Regarding Desert map: Desert map is very underplayed, half deaths of 1 alpine map. EB is the most popular. So maybe trying out 5 map system with another EBlike map would be a good way to go. Removing desert map for 1 alpine would open up more maps for majority of playerbase to play. And no, 2 alpines isn't enough, it isn't about people voting to keep the desert map. Keeping desert map isn't free: by giving small amount of people desert map you're taking away something from large amount of people. I know lot of people like to argue that people voted to keep 1 desert, but no one expected it would be this unpopular. Maybe it was partly because people couldn't compare the maps side by side before and their judgement was clouded.

Player vs Dev Communication

At the end of the day, they should obviously monetize the content they develop, the story, to get healthy (ie., sell it as mini expansions like Total War does) and repair their relationship with the other modes so they can look into better adapted forms of monetization on those modes down the road (whether that is mtx for mode-specific stuff, buy-in for pvp-leagues or anything else). That leads to things to develop and monetize, as a result things to communicate with the customers about. They could have a WvW-team then. That of course requires alot more than selling empty promises which is lucrative until the scam is exposed but hard to come back from.

Short and sweet it is all about repairing the relationship by fixing the obvious and long-standing issues (that have essentially already been paid for as they have been dangled since forever), then you have a working foundation from which to develop (improve, expand) and then you have a place to monetize and communicate from.

From what I heard, they have same sized dev groups as FFXIV and WoW who ultimately only have to focus on PvE as their PvP modes are nonexistant. They are subscription based MMOs though so they should have more steady funding. There are reasons I am mostly trying to keep the requested changes very humble, most of them are just numerical changes that would keep the surround system intact. Overall bigger system changes should come from group of a devs so they can pour some passion in their work.

Overall I don't think I am asking for too much, nor do I think they should respond to all the issues, but lot of these issues have been around for a loooong time. Maybe Devs were also passionate about WvW before, and slightly after, HoT and this post actually touched the reasons they lost most of their passion towards it. Most people like to claim it was the bad community feedback regarding desert map but I am thinking it wasn't the reason as just playing the gamemode would ignite some ideas and passion towards the game if you're a developer.

I don't think they should make massive monetization changes outside maybe some kind of siege skins. Ultimately I like how Guild Wars 2 is regarding monetization, but they could allocate their resources better while working harder instead of being so ambitious with "big traitline changes" that don't ultimately solve existing problems.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@"Threather.9354" said:

All of these are true but in the greater scheme of things they are completely unimportant.It was perhaps a poor phrasing or choice of words on my end. I meant that they were comparatively unimportant. If a tactivator or mount annoys you that is at a completely different level than if you can't play with your friends. It is two completely different levels that can't be compared and no amount of improvement to an irritation makes up for the absolute fundamentals of not having the chance to play together. It doesn't matter if the fundamentals is a 100x more ambitious and consuming project, you fix that first anyway.

Well as I was typing my post to collect my thoughts in a informative channel, it took me several hours, and I actually failed to type out all my thoughts regarding this. Not only they could design a new maps but also experiment on existing maps, replacing bloodlust with some kind of different objective or adding minitowers with no supply instead of EB NPCs would be a good idea to support spreading out in multiple groups (which is what desert map failed to accomplish).I can echo both things, haha. There are so many big topics in one thread here that getting everything out and not completely overwhelming others with it is difficult. I also think that iteration in this way is important. What I meant about it as an approach however is more akin to stealing the idea of how Wargaming approaches maps in their design ideas. They are iterating and reskinning a proven concept (like EBG) but it is part of a larger strategy for how they maintain their game.

Look at this to get an idea and see how many maps they have in rotation without necessarily having major balance issues (they have balance issues and work on them but that is apart of the approach, iterating on the maps and expanding with the iteration to actually have a larger rotation, a much larger variety than GW2 has atm):https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Maps

Player vs Dev Communication

The only point I wanted to make really (however contrived it became) was simply that having a dev communicating with us may not be very useful on its own. There are a number of different things that ultimately leads to company and corporate structure shifts for dev communication to be effective.

Lets say that they iced or canned Alliances. It would be fair for them to tell us and not scam us about it but what sort of effective communication would we have with, let's say Ray, about it. What would he be able to communicate with us regarding it in any meaningful way? It doesn't mean that he still couldn't be passionate about it or eager to talk to us about it but it wouldn't be effective if it goes nowhere else.

Old dogs like myself often talk about MMO dev communication from a subscription-norm perspective. It was in developers interest to talk to subscribers and that cooperative way of communication and development was defining for MMO. As we have transcended that or expanded out into alternatives that perspective does not become false but it puts the discussion at another level. Subscriptions are not the norm or the only form of monetization but there are still cases to be made for that forms of monetization that stands to gain from communication may still be superior for the MMO genre and that there is no future in the data-gathering of the mtx-era as we know it today or that it always was an industry weakness to let things become so short-sighted and dominated by other industries.

It was something like that I was going for. Communication is likely the best approach when done right but is not inherently good if the lines are not there. We can't assume that they are without talking industry and structure.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"subversiontwo.7501" said:What I meant about it as an approach however is more akin to stealing the idea of how Wargaming approaches maps in their design ideas. They are iterating and reskinning a proven concept (like EBG) but it is part of a larger strategy for how they maintain their game.

Look at this to get an idea and see how many maps they have in rotation without necessarily having major balance issues (they have balance issues and work on them but that is apart of the approach, iterating on the maps and expanding with the iteration to actually have a larger rotation, a much larger variety than GW2 has atm):https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/MapsIf Wargaming assigned just 5% of it's workforce to make maps... that's still more than entire Anet.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@Dawdler.8521 said:If Wargaming assigned just 5% of it's workforce to make maps... that's still more than entire Anet.While a funny true anecdote, is it relevant to what's being said?

You obviously don't need 200 people to make a map (especially not when you're working off a formula and with little to no innovation) or even to maintain a larger map-iteration approach so it's not like it wouldn't be a good idea for Anet. It's a good idea for anyone. In fact, to me it just makes it an even better example because the maps are not innovative or unique in any way but the approach to handling and maintaining them is.

[Mikhael.2391]

Crowd control abilities not having diminishing returns makes people leave the game. 0 fun being bounced around or turned to death and all you can do is watch since interrupts ignore stability and corrupt boons and so on.

Being interrupted by any cc that can be replied in another 2 or 3 s and repeat until dead is something that makes me think can't does not play the game at all. Not wvw at least

[TheBravery.9615]

zero new content.

[Sugar Min.5834]

Leave the mount alone. Please stop bashing a dead mount. If ANet continue to listen to those mount haters and make further nerfs, why do we need a mount in WvW then? Now some professions are already able to run faster than the Warclaw ! This is what haters want, to make the Warclaw useless and eventually remove it from WvW, something they have been slowly working on ever since the intro of the WvW mount a year ago.

The only thing that is wrong with WvW in 2020 is players are still hoping for World Restructuring and Alliances to come.

[Riba.3271]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"Threather.9354" said:

Iron guards:

Another passive defense that makes defenders not have to be active. SM cloud, passive scouting, are all possible due to lord being impossible to rush down. This combined with the fact that lord has weird scaling (is fast to kill with 20-24 people, slow with 25-40 and fast again with a zoneblob) makes the balance benefit blobs over small groups and guilds.

How to fix:

Fix lord health scaling to scale linearly instead of instantly jumping up at 25 attackers and make it only 35% damage reduction to make it equal to hardened siege.The "weird scaling" more than likely does not exist as you think. The reason you are seeing this is because of players, not the lord. Wouldnt surprise me if it already is linear scaling.

A random 20 man group coming to cap something by map call out will probably have alot more dpsers relative to support and a fair amount of roamers. In contrast, a 50 man blob have a metric ton of supports that are completely useless at killing a lord, yet they still scale it up the eqvivalent of a dps.

And thats before we start goimg into the fact a 50 man blob will probably attract 50+ defenders. Lords scale to

all

players.

It does exist, try killing a lord with 5 people, then add 6th DPS in and you notice sudden drop in speed you're killing it. Same happens at 26 players.

It scales weirdly and 50 man group kills the lord twice as fast as 26 man group just purely because they have more players and the lord has same HP.

Now this is the case even if there are no defenders around. But if it does really account for defenders too, doesn't this mean sneaking keeps while enemy is being kept is almost impossible? I feel like that just promotes monoblobbing... You cant keep enemy distracted at NW or NE garri gate while a group sneaks in from watergate and kills the lord. It is quite a disappointment they took such epic moments away from WvW with the super OP lords that take multiple minutes, and decades for small group if there are defenders around, to kill.

[Shiyo.3578]

I don't think anything keep related matters when classes are running around using broken sigils, runes, food, potions and gear stat combinations that don't belong in a PvP game mode.

It's time to force WvWers into locked stat load outs like SPvP if you want any semblance of fun to exist in it.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

What's wrong with WvW in 2020 is that its extremely old and stale. The rest of the game has moved on, WvW hasn't.