The Future of Gw2 in WVW

[xan.8549]

Alright, put some thought into this one. I know most of this will fall on deaf ears bc 99.99% of the community omni blobs with a map que or doesnt play at all so here goes. The future of WVW will be greated with MORE dmg nerfs i know its hard to believe but its coming u can bank on it. This game was initially created on the idea that you would heal yourself. That is and has not been the case since April of 2014 the official date the game went full woke. Now all u will have are advocates that state dmg is fine, learn to play all that jazz. Also, it will fall on deaf ears because most of the player base that "would be" at or above the 8 year mark are virtually non existent. Most players are new and dont know how things once where. So now the current state of things is group up with tons of "friends" and cc spam the ever loving hell out of some dude and condi nuke him. Conditions used to not be a spec it wasnt something u would run into very often about the only condi you would encounter is an Engineer or a Necro. Everything else was so bad at it it wasnt even worth attempting in favor of something that took more skill. Now that monetization is an issue as the loyalist playerbase has left or is leaving you have the newer ultra defensive casual gamer dads coming in, perhaps due to unforseen circumstances or perhaps Covid related.In may of 2014 ranked pvp the minstrel amulet was added to pvp. A BAD all caps druid was quite literally un-killable. This has stayed the course, if u are a competent veteran who knows what their doing u can troll an enemy in berserker gear indefinitely. Toughness has never been balanced and never will be so its scaling is out of control and people know this. If a subpar tank with say 2700+ toughness fights a rank 1 pvp god in berserker amulet the better player isnt just going to lose, hes going to get absolutely ruined. Ive seen the evidence in players that are infinately better than I am. So instead of just complaining like a big baby and getting nothing accomplished i have a proposal.WVW Map vote poling.

• I am almost certain across the playerbase everyones favorite map by quite a bit is EBG. The distance u travel to get from one place to another or to rejoin the fight is the shortest.Create a clone of EBG except give it a new name and make it the que map for waiting for the main ebg, instead of a castle in the center just make it a keep.
  • Now, since toughness auto invuln procs and builds with 100% uptime on protection will NEVER be touched because of how hard it carries , I propose an Elite EBG with better rewards!
  • The elite EBG would have the same setup as the one we have now except the player will be met with a choice of the CURRENT pvp amulets - Devastator or whatever the tanky one is called. They will earn pips at a higher rate, and the downstate HP will be 66% less.
  • If met with limited toughness and lower downstate hp the fights will be much faster and more fun. And it can be a choice! wanna stay terrible and get carried by passive invulns and infinate protection coupled with 3000+ armor and duel ppl to bm them??? u can!! You could just join the Vanilla EBG. The likelihood of this proposal is coming to life is -5000% chance but atleast its a thought that was put out there. The only people who are complaining about the game state as far as I can tell are veterans, the newer folks advocate for more tankiness, more passives and more Map que size friendly changes, Im simply proposing a new way of thinking that would be more appealing to people at the higher skill level that dont need rediculously high tankiness and passives to save them to enjoy the game. Do i wish desperately this conversation would go somewhere? Absolutely, will it? More than likely no.
  • I appreciate anyone who plays alot because if we all didn't play Gw2 there would be no Gw2 to play. Im simply trying to incentivise bettering oneself as a player rather than betgging Anet for more automatic carrie type abilities and infinate Dmg reductions that have gone a little out of control.
  • If you choose to slander my post based on your current experience its very unlikely you played Vanilla Gw2 - Pre carry.
  • • Side not, Adding to the topic of the elite EBG the conditions would be reverted to thier original state and would not be stacking.
  • I hope we can get some thoughtful contributions to the conversation rather than no scoping literal bots in blue and greens that have no idea what thier doing. <3

[Curt.7963]

I'm confident in saying that the WvW playerbase is the most consistent and loyal playerbase since the launch of GW2 in 2012, despite the very limited updated to freshen up the gameplay experience. That's because the core gameplay is just so good, and the combat system is perfect for open world PvP combat.

With that said, I will be very mad if my server blob that plays every day starts getting farmed because we lose our minstrels stat in WvW. I know we aren't the best players, but I think having something as simple as a stat that you can pre-plan to prevent you from dying indefinitely is a very good way on keeping the game fair for the less skilled players. It's better to favor the new people over the veterans who have proven they will stick around, so the new people are encouraged to continue playing.It also increases the fight times. We can have a slow benign buildup for up to 10 minutes, before it cumulates into one intense decisive moment! This wouldn't happen if we couldn't heal our friends endlessly like we can in the current meta. If we were all forced to have high damage we would be killing each other constantly and having to run back all the time! The only way we can capture objectives against better servers is by tanking the damage while standing in the lords room. If we were all squishy we would just get killed and have to spend too much time running back to ever win. Same goes with lower down state health.

Our favorite map is not EBG, it's desert BL because there are a lot less players there, and its so big that you can move around without getting attacked often. Also, when you finally kill an enemy on wet-noodle builds they don't come back super fast like they do in EBG.*

[TheOneWhoSighs.7513]

@xan.8549 said:Conditions used to not be a spec it wasnt something u would run into very often about the only condi you would encounter is an Engineer or a Necro. Everything else was so bad at it it wasnt even worth attempting in favor of something that took more skill.Toughness has never been balanced and never will be so its scaling is out of control and people know this.

These 2 are related.Condition damage isn't mitigated by armor. And toughness is 1:1 with armor.

This is actually part of why conditions feel so strong against squishier builds. Your natural armor does nothing against it, unlike every power build. And why despite having high access to armor, players still need support scrappers and the like.

To put it bluntly, conditions were the attempt to balance armor. And it was done in a way that there's still counterplay for large amounts of conditions.

Is it perfect? No. But the problem you describe with toughness is kinda meh. As your armor gets higher and higher, adding more onto it does less and less.

I'll keep this very simple.Zerker Rev auto attack: (1,100 2630 0.633) / 2 = 915,634.5

Literally, having 2 armor halves how much damage an attack does to you.

Now lets do 4 armor: (1,100 2630 0.633) / 4 = 457,817.25

Now it's 75% mitigation. But 2 armor gave us 50% mitigation. And now you know basic math.

Lets use that for an actual calculation. Lets hit a Zerker Revenant.(1,100 2630 0.633) / 2211 = 828.25

Now lets hit a Minstrel Guardian.(1,100 2630 0.633) / 3443 = 531.88

Yeah, safe to say I don't think 300 damage is as big of a difference as you think it is.

And just for fun, lets calculate the actual damage mitigation each gives you:828.25 / (1,100 2630 0.633) = 0.00045228199That is the percentage of your original damage you were doing. So it's over a 99% damage mitigation.531.88 / (1,100 2630 0.633) = 0.0002904434

Ah yup, still over 99% mitigation.

Man, lets try hitting something even squishier. Lets hit a full zerker ele. 1967 armor. Let's skip to the end.930.99 / (1,100 2630 0.633) = 0.00050838516

Yeah, still over 99% mitigation. But now the difference between an ele and a guardian is almost 400 damage! OP OP!

Look, I wrote all of this to say. The oversimplifications with the problems of WvW are just silly. Even if you removed every tanky stat in the game, barrier would still have more impact than toughness does. And there is a lot of access to barrier. As well, considering conditions ignore armor, high access to condition clearing also plays a huge factor in the whole balance of things.

The biggest issues WvW has and has had for quite a while now. Is how powerful elite specializations are. That's also the issue SPvP has had.

No amount of ditching stats is actually going to balance issues inherent to classes themselves.

[xan.8549]

Yes, this is why I made a troll ele build that was able to serf a 30 man blob indefinitely until I got bored and got tired of getting rage PMs. Bc toughness is balanced. Thank you for removing the veil from my ignorance and showing me the light.

[SteepledHat.1345]

The future is two rocks hitting each other for hours while you play merry go round around a tower and the thieves/mes just watch with their kittens in their hands.

[TheOneWhoSighs.7513]

@"xan.8549" said:Yes, this is why I made a troll ele build that was able to serf a 30 man blob indefinitely until I got bored and got tired of getting rage PMs. Bc toughness is balanced. Thank you for removing the veil from my ignorance and showing me the light.

Pfft, go back in the day and it would've just been plague form necro. Didn't even have to run tank stats. Because that's how stacked plague form used to be relative to the rest of the game.

And now to your "troll ele" build, which I'm sure totally isn't a Tempest build and is genuinely a core elementalist build. Because it's not like tempest is absolutely stacked or anything.

So what?

So you build entirely for survivability. Hit like a wet noodle. And surfed what was probably a cloud rather than a zerg.

And anyone you fight, just has to roleplay walk away from you, because you literally do less DPS than they can heal.

It's not the freaking stats that are the problem. It's the things that use the stats.

If toughness is OP, then a 10k+ HP barrier on top of that toughness is just multiplying the effect. Or 10k+ heals + tons of condition cleanses is just further multiply the effect.

If conditions, which aren't affected by armor, can't stick to a character thanks to 1 particular freaking class. Do you not see how that's a problem? Do you not see how that's just further stacking the supposed "issue".

Do you not see how nothing has actually changed in SPvP after the latest amulet removal. Everyone just swapped to Avatar WHICH DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TOUGHNESS.

[Curt.7963]

@TheOneWhoSighs.7513Ah yup, still over 99% mitigation.

your math is flawed though. Sure the damage is mitigated by 99% plus some decimal percent, but the original power calculation before armor is still in the millions, so that decimal percent still has the potential to be massive, considering the health pool a player has. The difference between full berserker, and full minstrels is around 1200 armor or a 54% increase in armor, or a 54% increase in damage mitigated.

@TheOneWhoSighs.7513Lets use that for an actual calculation. Lets hit a Zerker Revenant.(1,100 2630 0.633) / 2211 = 828.25

Now lets hit a Minstrel Guardian.(1,100 2630 0.633) / 3443 = 531.88

Yeah, safe to say I don't think 300 damage is as big of a difference as you think it is.

That's default damage right? If you smack anything with a wet noodle the damage is going to be close no matter who you hit sure.Now imagine instead of doing 828 damage, you land a Churning Earth on a full zerk weaver with bloodlust stacks, and it crits.then the calculation is more like:

Zerk -> (1,100 weapon damage 4001 power 3.5 skill coefficient) / 2211 armor = 4,473 damage x (2.52 crit) = 17,556 damageMinstrel-> (1,100 4001 3.5) / 2211 (1,100 4001 3.5) / 3443 = 4,473 x (2.52 crit) = 11,274 damage.

The difference isn't 300 anymore. Its 6282 damage.

To get these kinds of numbers, players have to use high damage skills, paired with THREE stat investments, power, precision, and ferocity plus the inevitable channeling time investment. Just to have it reduced by such a massive margin by a single passive armor stat. The lesson here is toughness has diminishing returns. Power has diminishing returns because toughness exists. Condition damage has no diminishing returns because it ignores armor so it became a broken stat the day they buffed burning/poison/torment stacking to make condi builds comparable in average dps.

Therefore, toughness is overtuned in an environment where condition damage is negligible (when a class or group has near unlimited condition clearing, i.e. literally all of WvW).

[Dawdler.8521]

@Curt.7963 said:Condition damage has no diminishing returnsExcept, you know, any number of targets above 1.

[xan.8549]

I love how your trying to move the conversation in another direction cause u got math'd, "oh crap! losing the argument better change subjects!"

[TheOneWhoSighs.7513]

@Curt.7963 said:

@TheOneWhoSighs.7513Ah yup, still over 99% mitigation.

your math is flawed though. Sure the damage is mitigated by 99% plus some decimal percent, but the original power calculation before armor is still in the millions, so that decimal percent still has the potential to be massive, considering the health pool a player has. The difference between full berserker, and full minstrels is around 1200 armor or a 54% increase in armor, or a 54% increase in damage mitigated.

@TheOneWhoSighs.7513Lets use that for an actual calculation. Lets hit a Zerker Revenant.(1,100

2630

0.633) / 2211 = 828.25

Now lets hit a Minstrel Guardian.(1,100

2630

0.633) / 3443 = 531.88

Yeah, safe to say I don't think 300 damage is as big of a difference as you think it is.

That's default damage right? If you smack anything with a wet noodle the damage is going to be close no matter who you hit sure.Now imagine instead of doing 828 damage, you land a Churning Earth on a full zerk weaver with bloodlust stacks, and it crits.then the calculation is more like:

Zerk -> (1,100 weapon damage

4001 power

3.5 skill coefficient) / 2211 armor = 4,473 damage x (2.52 crit) = 17,556 damageMinstrel-> (1,100

4001

3.5) / 2211 (1,100

4001

3.5) / 3443 = 4,473 x (2.52 crit) = 11,274 damage.

The difference isn't 300 anymore. Its 6282 damage.

To get these kinds of numbers, players have to use high damage skills, paired with THREE stat investments, power, precision, and ferocity plus the inevitable channeling time investment. Just to have it reduced by such a massive margin by a single passive armor stat. The lesson here is toughness has diminishing returns. Power has diminishing returns because toughness exists. Condition damage has no diminishing returns because it ignores armor so it became a broken stat the day they buffed burning/poison/torment stacking to make condi builds comparable in average dps.

Therefore, toughness is overtuned in an environment where condition damage is negligible (when a class or group has near unlimited condition clearing, i.e. literally all of WvW).

Yeah, fair. I went full derp there. (I'm still amazed at the words the forum filters with "kitten")

Still, the highest damaging classes in a Zerg are a power weaver, a power DH, a power Herald, and a power Scourge. Even in this full minstrel's world of ours. Because the access to condition cleanses is way too high. Even if you nerf scrapper into the ground, tempest will just rise up to replace it again.

The whole game mode needs some pretty serious blanket nerfs to sustain & boon generation, and conditions need to be looked at again.

[Arheundel.6451]

@"xan.8549" said:Alright, put some thought into this one. I know most of this will fall on deaf ears bc 99.99% of the community omni blobs with a map que or doesnt play at all so here goes. The future of WVW will be greated with MORE dmg nerfs i know its hard to believe but its coming u can bank on it. This game was initially created on the idea that you would heal yourself. That is and has not been the case since April of 2014 the official date the game went full woke. Now all u will have are advocates that state dmg is fine, learn to play all that jazz. Also, it will fall on deaf ears because most of the player base that "would be" at or above the 8 year mark are virtually non existent. Most players are new and dont know how things once where. So now the current state of things is group up with tons of "friends" and cc spam the ever loving hell out of some dude and condi nuke him. Conditions used to not be a spec it wasnt something u would run into very often about the only condi you would encounter is an Engineer or a Necro. Everything else was so bad at it it wasnt even worth attempting in favor of something that took more skill. Now that monetization is an issue as the loyalist playerbase has left or is leaving you have the newer ultra defensive casual gamer dads coming in, perhaps due to unforseen circumstances or perhaps Covid related.In may of 2014 ranked pvp the minstrel amulet was added to pvp. A BAD all caps druid was quite literally un-killable. This has stayed the course, if u are a competent veteran who knows what their doing u can troll an enemy in berserker gear indefinitely. Toughness has never been balanced and never will be so its scaling is out of control and people know this. If a subpar tank with say 2700+ toughness fights a rank 1 pvp god in berserker amulet the better player isnt just going to lose, hes going to get absolutely ruined. Ive seen the evidence in players that are infinately better than I am. So instead of just complaining like a big baby and getting nothing accomplished i have a proposal.WVW Map vote poling.

• I am almost certain across the playerbase everyones favorite map by quite a bit is EBG. The distance u travel to get from one place to another or to rejoin the fight is the shortest.Create a clone of EBG except give it a new name and make it the que map for waiting for the main ebg, instead of a castle in the center just make it a keep.
  • Now, since toughness auto invuln procs and builds with 100% uptime on protection will NEVER be touched because of how hard it carries , I propose an Elite EBG with better rewards!
  • The elite EBG would have the same setup as the one we have now except the player will be met with a choice of the CURRENT pvp amulets - Devastator or whatever the tanky one is called. They will earn pips at a higher rate, and the downstate HP will be 66% less.
  • If met with limited toughness and lower downstate hp the fights will be much faster and more fun. And it can be a choice! wanna stay terrible and get carried by passive invulns and infinate protection coupled with 3000+ armor and duel ppl to bm them??? u can!! You could just join the Vanilla EBG. The likelihood of this proposal is coming to life is -5000% chance but atleast its a thought that was put out there. The only people who are complaining about the game state as far as I can tell are veterans, the newer folks advocate for more tankiness, more passives and more Map que size friendly changes, Im simply proposing a new way of thinking that would be more appealing to people at the higher skill level that dont need rediculously high tankiness and passives to save them to enjoy the game. Do i wish desperately this conversation would go somewhere? Absolutely, will it? More than likely no.
  • I appreciate anyone who plays alot because if we all didn't play Gw2 there would be no Gw2 to play. Im simply trying to incentivise bettering oneself as a player rather than betgging Anet for more automatic carrie type abilities and infinate Dmg reductions that have gone a little out of control.
  • If you choose to slander my post based on your current experience its very unlikely you played Vanilla Gw2 - Pre carry.
  • • Side not, Adding to the topic of the elite EBG the conditions would be reverted to thier original state and would not be stacking.
  • I hope we can get some thoughtful contributions to the conversation rather than no scoping literal bots in blue and greens that have no idea what thier doing. <3

If you like limited stats, choices...go PvP....simple as that, let new players or whatever play what they want, they'll soon realize that stacking toughness counts for nothing if you can't dodge and btw they are no passive invulnerability and "infinite protection" builds are likely no a threat for vets

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

i think the core of the OP is basically saying, it's messed up. from this point, with cc-spam and heavy condi damage builds, there's no way to go back. they'd have to nerf toughness extremly, so the pdps nerfs get reverted kinda. then nerf everything like block, evades, blindnessspams, shadowsteps, invunlerabilities, stealth in crazily strong amounts.then, u have to nerf alacrity, protection and barrier as well, range and attacking speed.

then, we basically have completely the same thing as the pre 2020 feb nerf-tsunami, just with a lot of unusuable things. that is why nerfing doesn't work, it's no valid form of balancing. make thing better, not everything garbage.

(besides, please don't merge spvp and Wvw balance. different level there. )

that to be said, i started playing january 2019. and from what i heard sofar, i really would perfer that i could trade my playing years sofar with the years 2013-2016 rather... game's going in the worst direction possible if u are a Wvw main. i mean compared to a lot of people i don't play for long yet, but i got bored of playing several times. nothing useful happens towards the big wording of "world restructuring" or "balance".

in the first year, i didn't want to seriously get into Wvw since wasn't too fond of pvp-aspects in most games. so basically between 2020 and today, i made 88800 kills and 2200~ ranks in Wvw, learnt to fight, joined a fighting guild. yet, the amount of useful players feels to become worse. make it less for for me personally. i'd be less trouble to myself if i could just do more work alone, which thank to the tons of nerfs, is simply impossible.

not one bad trait got buffed, not one bad weapon got new tweaks. THIS is my problem with the way of "balance patches".

edit: btw i don't think EBG necessarily has the best players on it lol. often it's a pointless map where only skirmishing happens. can be fun for an hour now and then, but this is absolutely no content for me. i'd even be fine to have any tactics added that can wavebreak kinda weird pew pew wars. like "pull tactivator, red borderstyle spawnside elite wyvern spawns and wrecks havoc amongst all the glasscannons". just imagine the beauty of an aoe no-targetcap animation that lets a big bad pvE raidboss spawn into the mid of the lowlands - SM sentry hill, moving towards the castle and oneshotting glass with each second AoEstyle. bit godzillaish i admit, but at least not "oppan turtlestyle whoop whoop whoop"

[mistsim.2748]

Personally, I really enjoy zerg fights, zerg busting, and GvGs. The best fights and the golden age of GvGs were 15v15's. It's a macro type game mode, but there was also room for assassins.

Within this comp you had frontliners, midliners (usually well necros), backliners, and a small gank/focus squad. This was the best meta I've ever experienced in my 4k hours of GW2. Better than spvp, better than 40v40 zerg fests. I wonder if ANet picked up on this at all.

My friends and I were talking and basically we would enjoy a 15v15 mode within the WvW context. Not sure how to do it. Whether a separate map attached to EB or some kind of objective within a map that would only allow 15 people per guild to enter (temporarily).

I heard whispers of ANet experimenting with a 15v15 mode. not sure if anyone can verify this. Might be interesting in a spvp context as well. Conquest really blows and most players are tired of it.

[Jaykay.9641]

@"mistsim.2748" said:I heard whispers of ANet experimenting with a 15v15 mode. not sure if anyone can verify this. Might be interesting in a spvp context as well. Conquest really blows and most players are tired of it.

Read this thread https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1129912#Comment_1129912

The post was in Jan 2020. The 15v15 map is done. Just the UI isn't working for it. If we don't get 15v15 with EoD expansion, it's probably not coming.

[Dawdler.8521]

@mistsim.2748 said:Personally, I really enjoy zerg fights, zerg busting, and GvGs. The best fights and the golden age of GvGs were 15v15's. It's a macro type game mode, but there was also room for assassins.

Within this comp you had frontliners, midliners (usually well necros), backliners, and a small gank/focus squad. This was the best meta I've ever experienced in my 4k hours of GW2. Better than spvp, better than 40v40 zerg fests. I wonder if ANet picked up on this at all.

My friends and I were talking and basically we would enjoy a 15v15 mode within the WvW context. Not sure how to do it. Whether a separate map attached to EB or some kind of objective within a map that would only allow 15 people per guild to enter (temporarily).

I heard whispers of ANet experimenting with a 15v15 mode. not sure if anyone can verify this. Might be interesting in a spvp context as well. Conquest really blows and most players are tired of it.Which means that one of two things will happen:

• It's pretty bad and Anet wasted alot of time they could have spent on actual WvW.

• It's pretty good and you just ensured the death of WvW because guilds are going to leave.

[mistsim.2748]

@Jaykay.9641 said:

@"mistsim.2748" said:I heard whispers of ANet experimenting with a 15v15 mode. not sure if anyone can verify this. Might be interesting in a spvp context as well. Conquest really blows and most players are tired of it.

Read this thread

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1129912#Comment_1129912

The post was in Jan 2020. The 15v15 map is done. Just the UI isn't working for it. If we don't get 15v15 with EoD expansion, it's probably not coming.

Unfortunately it just looks like some failed experiment that they might throw into custom arenas. No hint they'd integrate it into spvp or wvw.

[frareanselm.1925]

WvW is perhaps the most balanced modality. No need to make nerfs. There are questions infinitely more important, for example Kodash served is dead because anet decided to not link them with other servers, the hardcore players left the server and now is constantly outnumbered . Being rapd constatntly is not fun.

[Curt.7963]

Ok going back to the second EB idea after what I've just experienced. We're playing around with YB's keep right, they spawn at spawn, we spawn at SMC, mutual destruction every single fight and quick respawns to get back into it. It's a blast and its very refreshing. Both groups are pugs so there is very minimal minstrel stacking, so people actually die and your damage and positioning matters big time.

Its very enjoyable, and there's constant action. So i'm thinking a second EB-type map would be amazing, except with NO SMC, the whole map is squished down, and the inner towers are removed or changed to camps (because people rarely fight over them anyways). Additionally, reduce the player count on each side by 10 or 15, to reduce blobs, reduce collateral healing and projectile blocks, reduce lag in a smaller play space, and keep the population more consistently even.

My understanding is that the large maps were designed so that smaller groups could split off and there would be many different things going around the map at the same time. But the meta in EB has always been to stack the entire map queue on one location, so the map size is really a detriment for player interaction and should be condensed.

[mistsim.2748]

@"Curt.7963" said:Ok going back to the second EB idea after what I've just experienced. We're playing around with YB's keep right, they spawn at spawn, we spawn at SMC, mutual destruction every single fight and quick respawns to get back into it. It's a blast and its very refreshing. Both groups are pugs so there is very minimal minstrel stacking, so people actually die and your damage and positioning matters big time.

Its very enjoyable, and there's constant action. So i'm thinking a second EB-type map would be amazing, except with NO SMC, the whole map is squished down, and the inner towers are removed or changed to camps (because people rarely fight over them anyways). Additionally, reduce the player count on each side by 10 or 15, to reduce blobs, reduce collateral healing and projectile blocks, reduce lag in a smaller play space, and keep the population more consistently even.

My understanding is that the large maps were designed so that smaller groups could split off and there would be many different things going around the map at the same time. But the meta in EB has always been to stack the entire map queue on one location, so the map size is really a detriment for player interaction and should be condensed.

Couldn't agree more. I was just talking to some friends about this and we believe condensing maps and reducing the total pop on the map would benefit WvW tremendously. Ideal group size for objectives could be 15 players, but with plenty of smaller stuff for roamers and havoc squads to do.

This goes back to my other post where I said 15v15-ish engagements always felt the most fun to me. And anything above 20v20 feeling kinda bad. Not to mention the poor performance.

It would be simple to implement these limitations. Just give larger groups a bad debuff and call it "upkeep cost", which could be representative of the idea that there's not enough food to feed a larger army. As a result they could be tired and lose stats, or be unable to carry as much supply. So there are lots of easy way to tailor the experience toward this 15v15 format.

[Dawdler.8521]

@mistsim.2748 said:

@"Curt.7963" said:Ok going back to the second EB idea after what I've just experienced. We're playing around with YB's keep right, they spawn at spawn, we spawn at SMC, mutual destruction every single fight and quick respawns to get back into it. It's a blast and its very refreshing. Both groups are pugs so there is very minimal minstrel stacking, so people actually die and your damage and positioning matters big time.

Its very enjoyable, and there's constant action. So i'm thinking a second EB-type map would be amazing, except with NO SMC, the whole map is squished down, and the inner towers are removed or changed to camps (because people rarely fight over them anyways). Additionally, reduce the player count on each side by 10 or 15, to reduce blobs, reduce collateral healing and projectile blocks, reduce lag in a smaller play space, and keep the population more consistently even.

My understanding is that the large maps were designed so that smaller groups could split off and there would be many different things going around the map at the same time. But the meta in EB has always been to stack the entire map queue on one location, so the map size is really a detriment for player interaction and should be condensed.

Couldn't agree more. I was just talking to some friends about this and we believe condensing maps and reducing the total pop on the map would benefit WvW tremendously. Ideal group size for objectives could be 15 players, but with plenty of smaller stuff for roamers and havoc squads to do.

This goes back to my other post where I said 15v15-ish engagements always felt the most fun to me. And anything above 20v20 feeling kinda bad. Not to mention the poor performance.

It would be simple to implement these limitations. Just give larger groups a bad debuff and call it "upkeep cost", which could be representative of the idea that there's not enough food to feed a larger army. As a result they could be tired and lose stats, or be unable to carry as much supply. So there are lots of easy way to tailor the experience toward this 15v15 format.Simple? Thats like saying a car bridge between France and USA is simple. Its just a basic bridge, we've built tons of them already, right?

No. Its actually impossible because there is no way to impose such limitations on WvW without griefing players one way or another. If you reduce map limits, gratz you just played yourself because there will be no one to do anything when 5 is AFK, 5 refuse to join squad and the remaining 5 wont leave spawn until they are 15. If you reduce squadsize, people are just going to run together anyway in multiple squads. If you introduce an "upkeep" based on squadsize, people are just going to run together anyway in no squads. If you make the "upkeep" proximity based... guilds are going to rage because there is no way to avoid randomly being close to each other. If its handled unevenly - guilds avoid this "upkeep" while everyone else get it - you're going to kill WvW for casuals/pug raids.

[Aeolus.3615]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

@"Curt.7963" said:Ok going back to the second EB idea after what I've just experienced. We're playing around with YB's keep right, they spawn at spawn, we spawn at SMC, mutual destruction every single fight and quick respawns to get back into it. It's a blast and its very refreshing. Both groups are pugs so there is very minimal minstrel stacking, so people actually die and your damage and positioning matters big time.

Its very enjoyable, and there's constant action. So i'm thinking a second EB-type map would be amazing, except with NO SMC, the whole map is squished down, and the inner towers are removed or changed to camps (because people rarely fight over them anyways). Additionally, reduce the player count on each side by 10 or 15, to reduce blobs, reduce collateral healing and projectile blocks, reduce lag in a smaller play space, and keep the population more consistently even.

My understanding is that the large maps were designed so that smaller groups could split off and there would be many different things going around the map at the same time. But the meta in EB has always been to stack the entire map queue on one location, so the map size is really a detriment for player interaction and should be condensed.

Couldn't agree more. I was just talking to some friends about this and we believe condensing maps and reducing the total pop on the map would benefit WvW tremendously. Ideal group size for objectives could be 15 players, but with plenty of smaller stuff for roamers and havoc squads to do.

This goes back to my other post where I said 15v15-ish engagements always felt the most fun to me. And anything above 20v20 feeling kinda bad. Not to mention the poor performance.

It would be simple to implement these limitations. Just give larger groups a bad debuff and call it "upkeep cost", which could be representative of the idea that there's not enough food to feed a larger army. As a result they could be tired and lose stats, or be unable to carry as much supply. So there are lots of easy way to tailor the experience toward this 15v15 format.Simple? Thats like saying a car bridge between France and USA is simple. Its just a basic bridge, we've built tons of them already, right?

No. Its actually impossible because there is no way to impose such limitations on WvW without griefing players one way or another. If you reduce map limits, gratz you just played yourself because there will be no one to do anything when 5 is AFK, 5 refuse to join squad and the remaining 5 wont leave spawn until they are 15. If you reduce squadsize, people are just going to run together anyway in multiple squads. If you introduce an "upkeep" based on squadsize, people are just going to run together anyway in no squads. If you make the "upkeep" proximity based... guilds are going to rage because there is no way to avoid randomly being close to each other. If its handled unevenly - guilds avoid this "upkeep" while everyone else get it - you're going to kill WvW for casuals/pug raids.

15vs 15 with so many structures to ktrain i bet most would love that -.-# just like Dawdler.8521 said "gratz you just played yourself because there will be no one to do anything when 5 is AFK, 5 refuse to join squad and the remaining 5 wont leave spawn until they are 15".15 vs 15 is ilogical in many many ways for WvW, maps are already to big for the current population gap between servers...... that's a new gamemode build from the ground, i would ask that for a small map with 2 garrisons and some other stutures with new mechanics aka GVG style from Gw1 to happen.

Not in WvW....

[mistsim.2748]

@"Aeolus.3615" said:.. that's a new gamemode build from the ground, i would ask that for a small map with 2 garrisons and some other stutures with new mechanics aka GVG style from Gw1 to happen.

Not in WvW....

I would be good with this.

I fantasized about this game mode being integrated into WvW though. Like, a global "call to arms" for guilds only, over some objective. This would obviously be done in a separate instance. The winner of the objective contributes to the next ppt tick, and gets a decent chest. Then, the 15man squads load back into the larger wvw map. This repeats maybe every hour or so.

My overarching point is that ANet squandered the GvG culture that organically emerged from the WvW game mode. It was very popular and it gave random potatoes something to watch and strive for. I recall ANet having quite a bit of animosity toward GvG'ers years back, which was a huge misstep and this beautiful flower eventually got stomped out. Now we have Minstrel blobs instead, which is a much inferior meta game.

WvW wasn't even designed for 40v40 blobs. The game engine can't take it. Most people run these encounters at 15fps.

Anyway, we'll see what Devon pulls off for EoD. I'll take anything new at this point. For example, even compressing the new maps (to avoid DBL type missteps) would go a long way. That's if there are new maps.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@mistsim.2748 said:I recall ANet having quite a bit of animosity toward GvG'ers years back

that time when some random anet dev during core days said gvg'ers at windmill (thats the place near south camp right?) were ruining his gamemode. i was actually standing right there, dam it made me so mad. i replied well you ruined our mode by not putting gvg in the game. i mean, what the fuck. one of the best things about gw1 was gvg, why not add it in? there were tons of great things in gw1 that were abandoned. so sad. honestly i was hoping for basically a reskin and better combat system of the original game.

[mistsim.2748]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@"mistsim.2748" said:I recall ANet having quite a bit of animosity toward GvG'ers years back

that time when some random anet dev during core days said gvg'ers at windmill (thats the place near south camp right?) were ruining his gamemode. i was actually standing right there, dam it made me so mad. i replied well you ruined our mode by not putting gvg in the game. i mean, what the kitten. one of the best things about gw1 was gvg, why not add it in? there were tons of great things in gw1 that were abandoned. so sad. honestly i was hoping for basically a reskin and better combat system of the original game.

Yup. That guy was a clown. Not sure if he's still around. But clearly they had some sense of pride about "their" game mode. Sadly they missed out on an organic, grass roots player movement and chose to stagnate the mode instead. All because of pride. Absolutely infuriating at that time, but I'm over it.

If you look at all the troubles spvp and wvw have had over the years...and if you really pay attention, you'd see that 15v15 is clearly the sweet spot for GW2's combat system. 15v15 GvGs were a golden age of build diversity and fun in wvw. 15 was also a critical mass of people required to bust very large zergs, although now it would be much less likely with every potato sporting Minstrel stats. It's as if ANet actively tried to kill whatever fun people were having organically in WvW.

This is why I was excited to hear about a potential 15v15 map, but you need to design fun objectives around that. Apparently Devon was hired back, and I'm not sure where he stands on all this. Wasn't he the arrow cart guy?

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

@mistsim.2748 said:

@Jaykay.9641 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:I heard whispers of ANet experimenting with a 15v15 mode. not sure if anyone can verify this. Might be interesting in a spvp context as well. Conquest really blows and most players are tired of it.

Read this thread

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1129912#Comment_1129912

The post was in Jan 2020. The 15v15 map is done. Just the UI isn't working for it. If we don't get 15v15 with EoD expansion, it's probably not coming.

Unfortunately it just looks like some failed experiment that they might throw into custom arenas. No hint they'd integrate it into spvp or wvw.

talked with some LAYS guy on stream about this... the expected problem is, 15v15 is a format where the Wvw fighting guilds are very experienced with, so... will be just dominating it, good chance the waiting Q for it will be huge pretty soon, and considering how many ex-hardcore guilds don't even play anymore, might be a rather empty place.

@frareanselm.1925 said:WvW is perhaps the most balanced modality. No need to make nerfs. There are questions infinitely more important, for example Kodash served is dead because anet decided to not link them with other servers, the hardcore players left the server and now is constantly outnumbered . Being rapd constatntly is not fun.

if i may correct u, it has been rather balanced before all the weird nerfs massed up. basically in summer 2019 it still was quite fine. after feb 2020 it just lost a lot of elemental class balance (not ele class meant :P )

@"Curt.7963" said:Ok going back to the second EB idea after what I've just experienced. We're playing around with YB's keep right, they spawn at spawn, we spawn at SMC, mutual destruction every single fight and quick respawns to get back into it. It's a blast and its very refreshing. Both groups are pugs so there is very minimal minstrel stacking, so people actually die and your damage and positioning matters big time.

Its very enjoyable, and there's constant action. So i'm thinking a second EB-type map would be amazing, except with NO SMC, the whole map is squished down, and the inner towers are removed or changed to camps (because people rarely fight over them anyways). Additionally, reduce the player count on each side by 10 or 15, to reduce blobs, reduce collateral healing and projectile blocks, reduce lag in a smaller play space, and keep the population more consistently even.

My understanding is that the large maps were designed so that smaller groups could split off and there would be many different things going around the map at the same time. But the meta in EB has always been to stack the entire map queue on one location, so the map size is really a detriment for player interaction and should be condensed.

what u describe here is basically a rather unhealthy way to play. people did quit gw2 yet bc the increasing of this behaviour is blocking entire maps and leaves servers unable to really play.

like, this skirmishing is fun and games, but it gets really boring while beeing also pretty stressful, since at some point smaller guilds there will stack and stealthpush or thief groups doing the same on flanks. it's basically showing u why uncoordination isn't going anywhere. in the end, this wears you out pretty soon, not matter if u notice it straight away or not ^^

---

about the idea of a 2nd EBG map... eh, rather not. if u remove SM, ppl would just directly camp the keeps. or stealthpush from that empty area in the mid now, that's like a perfect spot for starblasting and then just training through ppl. kinda "forbidden zone" lolSM also acts like a buffer, blocking the straight way.@mistsim.2748 upkeep cost is a pretty toxic idea, sorry no.

@Dawdler.8521 @Aeolus.3615 nearly sure the 15v15 talk was about bringing kinda GvG style sized format into spvp, not Wvw. just like 1v1s and smallscale skirmish happen now in wvw, i kinda doubt this will make all guilds quite their Wvw-raids tho.

@Stand The Wall.6987 wow, that's a crazy anecdote :S hope u reported that dev for harassment lol.