Tanking, How Do We Fix It?

[manu.7539]

What do we know about tankers:

1-They dont want to win2-They focus their attacks vs the weakest servers3-They hang around meaningless objectives for hours

Knowing it, what could be done to discourage tanking:

1- Rewards for the winning team. Its probably better to not make it too rewarding, just enough to want to win but not enough to get mad when u dont.2- No rewards (or way less) made agaisnt the weakest server.3- Rewards could decrease over time when you stay around an objective.

[Dawdler.8521]

@manu.7539 said:What do we know about tankers:

1-They dont want to win2-They focus their attacks vs the weakest servers3-They hang around meaningless objectives for hoursWait, you just described every server regardless of whether they win or loose.

[XenesisII.1540]

The only way to push people to play to win is through rewards, so like only give pips out for winning a skirmish, no more 2nd or 3rd place.But then you would force players to be more objective based as that gains you more points.But this game deals with lopsided sides most of the day, so not exactly fair with server stacking as well.But people will also be upset over that and probably force them to go for easy ktraining instead while avoiding fights even more, or stop playing wvw.If there's a sense your side won't win anyways because of less numbers, then might as well not even bother playing.

So... do you really want to take the chance of having people stop playing and make this dead game mode even more dead? Or back to super stacking servers to dominate for rewards? Why is tanking bothering you that much when you can still earn your rewards regardless. Winning in this game has been meaningless since the first year, try not to be so pptstressed and just have fun earning your rewards.

[Chaba.5410]

People not playing every night and day is often mistaken for tanking. But that's to be expected in a game mode where numbers and coverage determine who wins.

[LetoII.3782]

Maybe Anet should come over to my house at 3am and wake me up so you have someone to play against?

[anonymous.7812]

You already made a thread about "tanking"

You're on cooldown.

[manu.7539]

@"anonymous.7812" said:

You already made a thread about "tanking"

You're on cooldown.

I dont see any cooldown?! Anyway, 1st time it was to express my frustration, now its to talk about solutions. I know its a taboo, talking about it coz some drama etc. Tankers claims that everybody thinks as they do but we know its not true. Someone have to put the subject on the table.

@Chaba.5410 said:People not playing every night and day is often mistaken for tanking. But that's to be expected in a game mode where numbers and coverage determine who wins.

Wow, strong argument here.

@LetoII.3782 said:Maybe Anet should come over to my house at 3am and wake me up so you have someone to play against?

Another strong argument, ty for your contribution!

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@manu.7539 said:

What do we know about tankers:

1-They dont want to win2-They focus their attacks vs the weakest servers3-They hang around meaningless objectives for hoursWait, you just described every server regardless of whether they win or loose.

You know its false, like every tankers arguments.

@XenesisII.1540 said:

So... do you really want to take the chance of having people stop playing and make this dead game mode even more dead? Or back to super stacking servers to dominate for rewards? Why is tanking bothering you that much when you can still earn your rewards regardless. Winning in this game has been meaningless since the first year, try not to be so pptstressed and just have fun earning your rewards.

I dont mind at all if tankers go farm in pve and dont come back to WvW. Anyway, I guess most of them would keep on playing WvW. Alot stopped playing WvW because it doesnt make any sense to play with tankers and its not fun to play with them. So, not so sure if in the long term it would be more dead. Tankers are killing it for those who enjoy the game and not that stupid farming vs the weakest. If ppt stress you then dont play a competitive game, head to pve my friends!

[Stand The Wall.6987]

take away their link

[manu.7539]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:take away their link

I'd like our link to stay the same and keep our tankers in t1 as we did since the last 4-5 weeks. For once, they are the one suffering, lets keep it that way :p

[Zikory.6871]

People thought giving more pips to tags that are visible would reduce hidden tags.

Increasing or decreasing rewards isn't going to stop people that don't play for rewards...

[borgs.6103]

Does it need fixing though?

If the majority of the population is doing it to the point that it's achieved regularly, then I don't see the problem. If you're in a server like that and your play style and game objectives clash with the majority of your server, then maybe it's you that must adapt or leave them. I mean, a whole server consists of different people with varying objectives and goals. If a server can regularly keep their status quo despite that, then it means a lot of the regular players want it that way.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@manu.7539 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:take away their link

I'd like our link to stay the same and keep our tankers in t1 as we did since the last 4-5 weeks. For once, they are the one suffering, lets keep it that way :p

staying in t1 isn't a punishment for most since thats where most of the good fights are (at least the type of fights people want in t1), unless ofc they can't field a decent zerg.

[MedievalThings.5417]

Simple, remove PPT. Make kills the only thing that matters. That way, stacked servers can't hide in fully fortified, siege capped SMC every week AND still lose the match to stay in lower tiers. The stacked servers will be forced to move to higher tiers or be forced to feed kills to smaller servers (giving them loot and ranks) just to keep their easy matches.

[manu.7539]

@Ubi.4136 said:Simple, remove PPT. Make kills the only thing that matters. That way, stacked servers can't hide in fully fortified, siege capped SMC every week AND still lose the match to stay in lower tiers. The stacked servers will be forced to move to higher tiers or be forced to feed kills to smaller servers (giving them loot and ranks) just to keep their easy matches.

To me PPT is the essence of the game. Your proposal is totally at the opposite of how I'd like WvW but I'm trying with an open mind to see if it does make sense ... hmm tough one! 10 minutes later... yeah maybe there is something there... another 10 mins later... anyway I'd like to try it!

Maybe after each relink we could have 4 weeks of no PPT rewards then 4 weeks of only PPT rewards. Maybe it could reconciliate the 2 points of view and force each other to play as one! Could be fun to change the game experience also :)

[Chaba.5410]

@manu.7539 said:

@Ubi.4136 said:Simple, remove PPT. Make kills the only thing that matters. That way, stacked servers can't hide in fully fortified, siege capped SMC every week AND still lose the match to stay in lower tiers. The stacked servers will be forced to move to higher tiers or be forced to feed kills to smaller servers (giving them loot and ranks) just to keep their easy matches.

To me PPT is the essence of the game. Your proposal is totally at the opposite of how I'd like WvW but I'm trying with an open mind to see if it does make sense ... hmm tough one! 10 minutes later... yeah maybe there is something there... another 10 mins later... anyway I'd like to try it!

Maybe after each relink we could have 4 weeks of no PPT rewards then 4 weeks of only PPT rewards. Maybe it could reconciliate the 2 points of view and force each other to play as one! Could be fun to change the game experience also :)

At launch there was a mechanic called Orbs of Power. The Orbs were the real essence, not PPT. They are what WvW was originally designed for = fights for control over an object in and around buildings. You had to break into a keep and steal the Orb then bring it back to your keep and protect it. It got removed because of hacking. There was also a mechanic called Power of the Mists that gave PvE bonuses depending upon how well a server was doing in WvW. It was meant to be a bridge to bring PvE players into WvW. It was so poorly understood and advertised that PvE players were completely confused when it finally got removed.

The biggest mistake so many WvW players make is not understanding that WvW was not designed for just capturing and holding keeps and towers. It was designed for fights that tied into keeps and towers and there was an incentive to attack keeps. Because PPT is basically a hold-over scoring system for a different game, Anet's tried to make modifications to it, including adding in PPK and using Victory Points instead of Warscore. Success has been mixed. There's still very little incentive to fight over well defended keeps.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Ubi.4136 said:Simple, remove PPT. Make kills the only thing that matters. That way, stacked servers can't hide in fully fortified, siege capped SMC every week AND still lose the match to stay in lower tiers. The stacked servers will be forced to move to higher tiers or be forced to feed kills to smaller servers (giving them loot and ranks) just to keep their easy matches.So all you have to do to drop is not play the game because no kills is no points, just let pugs feed the enemy. Just as easy as now. WvW is surely at its best when no one plays it.

[manu.7539]

@Chaba.5410 said:

@manu.7539 said:

@Ubi.4136 said:Simple, remove PPT. Make kills the only thing that matters. That way, stacked servers can't hide in fully fortified, siege capped SMC every week AND still lose the match to stay in lower tiers. The stacked servers will be forced to move to higher tiers or be forced to feed kills to smaller servers (giving them loot and ranks) just to keep their easy matches.

To me PPT is the essence of the game. Your proposal is totally at the opposite of how I'd like WvW but I'm trying with an open mind to see if it does make sense ... hmm tough one! 10 minutes later... yeah maybe there is something there... another 10 mins later... anyway I'd like to try it!

Maybe after each relink we could have 4 weeks of no PPT rewards then 4 weeks of only PPT rewards. Maybe it could reconciliate the 2 points of view and force each other to play as one! Could be fun to change the game experience also :)

At launch there was a mechanic called Orbs of Power. The Orbs were the real essence, not PPT. They are what WvW was originally designed for = fights for control over an object in and around buildings. You had to break into a keep and steal the Orb then bring it back to your keep and protect it. It got removed because of hacking. There was also a mechanic called Power of the Mists that gave PvE bonuses depending upon how well a server was doing in WvW. It was meant to be a bridge to bring PvE players into WvW. It was so poorly understood and advertised that PvE players were completely confused when it finally got removed.

The biggest mistake so many WvW players make is not understanding that WvW was not designed for just capturing and holding keeps and towers. It was designed for fights that tied into keeps and towers and there was an incentive to attack keeps. Because PPT is basically a hold-over scoring system for a different game, Anet's tried to make modifications to it, including adding in PPK and using Victory Points instead of Warscore. Success has been mixed. There's still very little incentive to fight over well defended keeps.

I play since about 4 years and nerver heard of this historic of WvW so ty!

[nthmetal.9652]

Increasing or decreasing rewards isn't going to stop people that don't play for rewards...

That's true. But with meaningful rewards, WvW could possibly actually pull people. I mean, one hour of Silver Wastes still nets you what? 20 gold? 18? And that's not even new content.How much do you make again in an hour of WvW?How much do you make in an hour of WvW on a weak server?

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@nthmetal.9652 said:

Increasing or decreasing rewards isn't going to stop people that don't play for rewards...

That's true. But with meaningful rewards, WvW could possibly actually pull people. I mean, one hour of Silver Wastes still nets you what? 20 gold? 18? And that's not even new content.How much do you make again in an hour of WvW?How much do you make in an hour of WvW on a weak server?

gold farms bring bots. maybe tie it to kills and not participation.

[TheOneWhoSighs.7513]

@"manu.7539" said:What do we know about tankers:

1-They dont want to win2-They focus their attacks vs the weakest servers3-They hang around meaningless objectives for hours

Knowing it, what could be done to discourage tanking:

1- Rewards for the winning team. Its probably better to not make it too rewarding, just enough to want to win but not enough to get mad when u dont.2- No rewards (or way less) made agaisnt the weakest server.3- Rewards could decrease over time when you stay around an objective.

Have you ever considered that the reason servers tank, is because the higher tiers are full of PPT-focused groups that run away from any fight until they eventually outnumber the enemy?

Have you ever considered that what many consider "winning" is different from what you consider "winning"? That many people do not care, at all, about being in the high tiers. That they don't consider being "tier 1" to be a goal they should strive for. And that instead, they just want to kill other players in a game mode that revolves around PvP.

If you want to "solve" this issue, the simplest solution is to get rid of what you consider winning in the first place. Merge all the servers down to like, 4. And don't put the servers against each other. Instead, release 3 factions that fight each other on each server. It won't solve the stacking problem. But it will completely get rid of tanking since there's no longer a tier to fight over.

Edit: I should probably note that I'm not actually advocating for that "solution". Having played Planetside for ages, and quite a bit of ESO's Alliance Wars (people complaining about skill lag in this game have no idea how bad it can actually be), I can't say that their approach would actually change anything up for the better for GW2. Both of those games suffer very, very heavily from the stacking problem.

No, rather the real problem here is that there is no solution. This is simply how the game mode is, and how the game mode will continue to be. Perhaps adding something like WoW Battlegrounds will give people that just want fights a game mode of their own, but I kinda doubt it. Worth a shot though, if the devs ever wanted to try it.

Or you know, they could add actual rewards to EOTM again, and make it a good leveling option for new players like it used to be.

[Sleepwalker.1398]

Tanking, How Do We Fix It?

Answer: Wait for that server to open. Create an account. Go do PPT for them.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

pepenap ppl and put them in ppt goolag, where they are forced to ppt for your server 24/7 tbh

the orbs of power is a good example for a mechanic that just got removed without real replacement :S

btw pips only for winning skirmishes would be weird. and idk, pips aren't the greatest reward after all. the participation stuff isn't prestigous either way, many would just don't go for it this way, i guess. like u get what, 3-4 grandmaster mark shards per week. and even with that u need a ton of skirmish claim tickets and memories of battle for each mistforged ascended armor or weapon. that would just timegate the skins 10 times more than it has been sofar.

[manu.7539]

@Ubi.4136 said:Simple, remove PPT. Make kills the only thing that matters. That way, stacked servers can't hide in fully fortified, siege capped SMC every week AND still lose the match to stay in lower tiers. The stacked servers will be forced to move to higher tiers or be forced to feed kills to smaller servers (giving them loot and ranks) just to keep their easy matches.

Almost 2 days later... finally I'm too bored of the fighting guilds creating no contents. I just dont want to see how boring it could be to remove PPT!

[manu.7539]

@TheOneWhoSighs.7513 said:

@"manu.7539" said:

What do we know about tankers:

1-They dont want to win2-They focus their attacks vs the weakest servers3-They hang around meaningless objectives for hours

Knowing it, what could be done to discourage tanking:

1- Rewards for the winning team. Its probably better to not make it too rewarding, just enough to want to win but not enough to get mad when u dont.2- No rewards (or way less) made agaisnt the weakest server.3- Rewards could decrease over time when you stay around an objective.

Have you ever considered that the reason servers tank, is because the higher tiers are full of PPT-focused groups that run away from any fight until they eventually outnumber the enemy?

There is more than 1 motivation for tankers, like easier fights, more gvg's, less ppt pressure and easier ktrain. but ur right, T1 players play it sometimes too safe and it can get boring. Another way to see it is to accept the challenge and find solutions and there is but it require some better cooperation... and tankers rarely cares about it, they are more cooperative to help the enemy to win!

Have you ever considered that what many consider "winning" is different from what you consider "winning"? That many people do not care, at all, about being in the high tiers. That they don't consider being "tier 1" to be a goal they should strive for. And that instead, they just want to kill other players in a game mode that revolves around PvP.

Well, winning is winning... u can win a fight, a skirmish or a match, the rest is pure imagination!

If you want to "solve" this issue, the simplest solution is to get rid of what you consider winning in the first place. Merge all the servers down to like, 4. And don't put the servers against each other. Instead, release 3 factions that fight each other on each server. It won't solve the stacking problem. But it will completely get rid of tanking since there's no longer a tier to fight over.

Hmm, I doubt it could be fun to fight always the same factions and the same people.

Edit: I should probably note that I'm not actually advocating for that "solution". Having played Planetside for ages, and quite a bit of ESO's Alliance Wars (people complaining about skill lag in this game have no idea how bad it can actually be), I can't say that their approach would actually change anything up for the better for GW2. Both of those games suffer very, very heavily from the stacking problem.

Yeah, I was to talk about lags but you admitted yourself, ty!

No, rather the real problem here is that there is no solution. This is simply how the game mode is, and how the game mode will continue to be. Perhaps adding something like WoW Battlegrounds will give people that just want fights a game mode of their own, but I kinda doubt it. Worth a shot though, if the devs ever wanted to try it.

There is always some solutions, lets be optimistic! I agree that we miss some other game modes (like gvg), a solution is probably there.

[TheOneWhoSighs.7513]

@kamikharzeeh.8016 said:the orbs of power is a good example for a mechanic that just got removed without real replacement :S

half of this game is a good example for a mechanic that just got removed without a real replacement. It often feels like the devs solution to problems is to just hit the delete key. And then proceed to create even more problems when they actually start creating things.

All that said, the orbs wouldn't change much.

@manu.7539 said:Another way to see it is to accept the challenge and find solutions and there is but it require some better cooperation... and tankers rarely cares about it, they are more cooperative to help the enemy to win!

I mean, attacking T3 objectives is just about some of the most unfun content in this game. Between siege disablers, cannons, arrow carts galore, shield generators, and the plethora of tactics to slow the task down. On top of the fact that T3 objectives tend to be closer to one group's spawn than another.

Honestly, if you want to incentivize those types of fights, we need mobile spawn camps. That's the solution both Planetside and ESO deploy, though the spawns are much further away in both cases. So it's easy to see how such a thing could spin out of control quite quickly when in a game like GW2.

@manu.7539 said:Hmm, I doubt it could be fun to fight always the same factions and the same people.

I mean, you're already essentially doing that with the tiers. The only time it really mixes up is on relinking.Honestly, the lack of change would just encourage pugs to get better at the game mode. And create more stable & skilled guilds.

@manu.7539 said:Yeah, I was to talk about lags but you admitted yourself, ty!

I should probably clarify. The skill lag experienced in those games isn't due to being on 1 server. The limitations of GW2 WvW are already well known by the devs, there's no real reason for them to try and push those limitations more than they already are. So the merge & faction system wouldn't result in more lag. You'd keep the same setup, but it would just be 1 world split into 3 on that setup.