139 replies to this topic

[Soulstitchmmo]

Full servers, Outmanned Buff in every map.
How is this happening? What is so exciting about grinding cursed shore or dungeons for hours as opposed to WvW?

Edited by Soulstitchmmo, 12 November 2012 - 04:30 AM.

[PvPD00R]

They made a cartoon about it! My girls watch the old Movies (In VHS!) Its called.....The Carebears!

[Carbinedevil]

In every MMORPG, PvPers normally do not outnumber PvEers. Add to the fact that many PvPers do not consider WvW a true form of PvP and the absence of more intense PvP modes (such as GvG), hence a substantial amount of PvPers do not play this game actively anymore.

[Wigsplitta]

Well i try to make WvW fun, but it can be stressful. Your either forced to run as a zerg or you get rolled, theres no skill in it. I try to run small little gank groups for Supply, etc. but it always ends up  with us getting rolled over by 40 people, rolling their heads across the keyboard. Whats even more frustrating is everytime im solo and catch another solo or even 2, they do nothing but run from you refusing to fight till they catch up with a pack of server mates to faceroll you. Im on Blackgate and it seems all SBI and JQ do is run from me when caught alone, maybe they have lost their touch by bieng comforted with huge numbers alot i dunno. Im sure those type of peeps are all on servers so i wont be judgmental.

Point is rolling zergs suck, and even worse are people that say its not a numbers game, plz, like it takes skill to play this game. Usually its just easier to pve for some folks i guess then deal with that.

Edited by Wigsplitta, 12 November 2012 - 04:55 AM.

[Reisa]

Wigsplitta, on 12 November 2012 - 04:54 AM, said:

Whats even more frustrating is everytime im solo and catch another solo or even 2, they do nothing but run from you refusing to fight till they catch up with a pack of server mates to faceroll you. Im on Blackgate and it seems all SBI and JQ do is run from me when caught alone, maybe they have lost their touch by bieng comforted with huge numbers alot i dunno. Im sure those type of peeps are all on servers so i wont be judgmental.

This just isn't true.

Sometimes they just skip the running and log or map out right there.

[Featherman]

Sounds like a general loss of interest oh WvW. It's a downward spiral that results from the loss of WvW coverage and it's happening to my server as well. Due to exodus of players into higher tier servers and general loss of interest in the game (school, work, etc) the my server is left with periods where there are no experienced guilds to lead WvW so PUGs run around like headless chickens. These PUGs often get distracted by pointless skirmishes and our servers lose towers and keeps as a result. Additionally there are PUG commanders that pop in every now and then. These commanders don't hide their commander tags and this causes them to draw zergs to places they don't need to be (like when 20-30 people attacking supply camps when one of our own keeps are under attack!). They sometimes give out the dumbest and most illogical commands and people still follow them. Eventually the battle becomes so pointless that people leave in mass numbers, possibly with a bitter taste in their mouth and their ardor the the activity a bit more damaged.

That said, the commanders from the more dedicated guilds do a wonderful job when they're on, and it can be a rewarding experience coordinating with them. But these commanders have to log off eventually, often with no replacement.

[LavaSquid]

Wigsplitta, on 12 November 2012 - 04:54 AM, said:

Well i try to make WvW fun, but it can be stressful. Your either forced to run as a zerg or you get rolled, theres no skill in it. I try to run small little gank groups for Supply, etc. but it always ends up  with us getting rolled over by 40 people, rolling their heads across the keyboard. Whats even more frustrating is everytime im solo and catch another solo or even 2, they do nothing but run from you refusing to fight till they catch up with a pack of server mates to faceroll you. Im on Blackgate and it seems all SBI and JQ do is run from me when caught alone, maybe they have lost their touch by bieng comforted with huge numbers alot i dunno. Im sure those type of peeps are all on servers so i wont be judgmental.

Point is rolling zergs suck, and even worse are people that say its not a numbers game, plz, like it takes skill to play this game. Usually its just easier to pve for some folks i guess then deal with that.

Small random public party works too. I always join one when my guild commander isn't online.

Just that your party needs to play smart and know how to anticipate where is your opponent's zerg. Use the cross swords and commander icons in your maps.

Avoid taking back supply camps that just captured by your opponent, wait 4mins instead and you can capture a supply camp easily (20 sec?) with a party of 5 members.

Snipe those dolyaks going to keeps/towers that your zerg is planning to capture. Protect your dolyaks (Note: you might engage snipers from other server, sometimes 5 of them, sometimes 10)

Drop by your zerg/tower to unload your supply (build siege). If you have done this, you will have enough sieges in every towers/keeps and your party can defend your tower with sieges and wait for your main force to reinforce.

TL:DR, Just don't solo ): WvW is not designed for solo anyways, if not sieges would only need 10 supply to build.

On topic: The only time I don't WvW is when I need to clear my daily and clear my first run of dungeons of the day.

[AngryTom]

I do WvW but several of my guildies don't because they, "Don't like PvP."

Is WvW very much like PvP? Not in my book, but for some the very idea that another human is controlling an enemy conjures images of ganking, imbalance, hate, discrimination and other emotional baggage.

This isn't the case though, the anonymity of not revealing player names is huge. Its not "Damned the xsfugi!" its "Damn that Rogue from HOD" (or whatever the guild tag is). Also the zerg functions like a DE zerg but instead of controlled by AIs needing an escort, there is a human in charge coordinating over the map or just leading randos.

I usually only WvW with my guild and a reason I don't do it outside of that is I like to be part of smaller groups, but to not be with complete idiots.

Edited by AngryTom, 12 November 2012 - 07:20 AM.

[Zippor]

It's not a skill based per se, but it does take skill to have different guild groups working together for whatever objective they need to deal with. WvW is about worlds fighting against each other, you have guilds managing their own small army and trying to work with other groups like that. You can get so much more done in a 20-30 man group than with just 5 man, of course numbers win, but it's not the only thing going on there. When you learn to use siege weapons effectively (I'm 100% sure you don't, yet), you will see how easy it is to break those so largely feared zergs.

[kook]

The higher up you go the more annoying I find it to be. Sometimes I like highly coordinated play over VOIP. Most of the time however I want to be able to just hop on and have some fun.

Being in T1 I feel obligated to beg a bunch of my guildies to make a group and get on TS so we're not useless

[cthulhuazathoth]

I do play WvW but much less recently. For me the the biggest problme is effort vs reward. At least I get decent loot and coins If I do another boring dugeon run or farm at Orr. I played at least 5 hrs of WvW today and all I got was some junks.  I know this is a game and we are suppose to have fun.... but GW2 WvW is not very attractive to general player.

I think Anet need to somehow tie the WvW aspect with PVE. May be the leading server will get some big bonus in the PVE side, maybe some high end areas/dugeons will only be open up when the server is winning in WvW... etc.

[Plasticblanket]

I stopped playing WvW because of the lack of a reward when you win.

[Jayaballard]

Theres not much reason to do WvW besides for fun...and it has been for a month now getting kinda stale. WvW needs some new rewards,

[Own Age Myname]

I only play GW2 for WvW...but the rewards just aren't there for me.

[Ritualist]

I am not 80 yet.

[Reikou]

Because its just zerging.

I really only go into WvW for the EBG Jump Puzzle where there's small scale fights.  Zergs are boring.

TBQH they also tried to make WvW far too "sterile" and "carebear friendly" with the whole hidden names, no cross-server chat, etc.  Its really quite lame.

Aion-style open world PvP would be much better.  

Where I could just gank a player looking for world complete over and over and over and grief them until they want to quit the game, and they know its you.  

Where you as a player could become famous/infamous because of your exploits because your enemies know exactly who is screwing them over (And they post on forums etc.)

Where you gain/lose points/rank based on who you kill/who you get killed by, and when you've accumulated enough points, you could spend it on special gear (or in this game, skins) not acquirable anywhere else.

Where, if you wanted, you could sit down and chat with the opposing factions if you absolutely wanted to... or talk shit over /say... if you wanted to.

A WvW system that's more down and dirty would be much more fun, one that rewards good play and punishes bad play.  Right now WvW is just boring, lacks drama, and has a lack of incentives.

Edited by Reikou, 12 November 2012 - 09:43 AM.

[AstralPhoenix777]

There are six main reasons I don't play WvW anymore for anything other than getting the world completion on my characters:

1) Dull gameplay - zero strategy; all matches are won by zergs, where the team with the most plebs wins
2) Crap netcode and client rendering means I'm always getting killed by invisible zergs
3) Nightcapping - mainly US players deliberately exploiting EU servers for easy caps, which I consider an indirect form of griefing
4) Shoddy rewards - no unique loot, and if I want money I can farm almost 1g in half an hour in PvE
5) Armour repair costs - what the hell are these doing in WvW? It sure would encourage me to play more if I knew I wasn't going to lose 10-15s for every hour I played in WvW...
6) My server (Far Shiverpeaks) is dead in WvW anyway; all our good guilds left after we were night-capped into oblivion by Vizunah Square and Desolation, and we're now totally uncompetitive

Basically, the whole thing is a dull and unbalanced affair with little reward and much annoyance. Not to mention the whole matchmaking/tier system is rendered farcical by the night-capping issue. So basically it's the same problem as RvR had in Warhammer Online, which is no surprise given that half this game is a clone of WAR anyway. ANet clearly didn't do their market research when it came to open-world PvP - it's not like it hadn't been done before. And they even had the nerve to put world completion, an inherently PvE-orientated title, in these areas. Not ANet's finest hour.

[LawlAmgad]

Too busy levelling alts, my level 80s which are geared aren't exactly the best when it comes to WvW. Our server is kind of in a funny place right now. We're having a nice tug-o-war with the other two servers in EB. In our boarderlands it's a faceroll, we completely own everything. The other two boarderlands they completely own everything, when I went there we had 3 people. Prior to the orb removal we had organised guilds, teamspeak, commanders who knew what they were doing on all the boarderlands.

But since orbs are now out of the question, there's less incentive to go to boarderlands. Unfortunately at the current moment I only care about getting 100% map completion on my characters but since no-one cares about boarderlands I have to wait around. EB does sometimes get full at peak time but then everyone else just goes to our boarderlands and sit outside the enemy spawn.

[Velicia]

AstralPhoenix777, on 12 November 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:

1) Dull gameplay - zero strategy; all matches are won by zergs, where the team with the most plebs wins
2) Crap netcode and client rendering means I'm always getting killed by invisible zergs
3) Nightcapping - mainly US players deliberately exploiting EU servers for easy caps
4) Shoddy rewards - no unique loot, and if I want money I can farm almost 1g in half an hour in PvE
5) Armour repair costs - what the hell are these doing in WvW? It sure would encourage me to play more if I knew I wasn't going to lose 10-15s for every hour I played in WvW...

These are my point for why I don't play any more too.

[Killyox]

And why do people play for reward and not for fun? Why do you want to get rewarded and for what?

[Salticus]

Soulstitchmmo, on 12 November 2012 - 04:29 AM, said:

Full servers, Outmanned Buff in every map.
How is this happening? What is so exciting about grinding cursed shore or dungeons for hours as opposed to WvW?

Different strokes for different folks.

[AstralPhoenix777]

Killyox, on 12 November 2012 - 09:44 AM, said:

And why do people play for reward and not for fun? Why do you want to get rewarded and for what?

The whole purpose of the MMORPG genre is the hamster wheel, carrot-on-a-string approach. If your carrot isn't appealing enough, the players stop running on the hamster wheel, and go and find another game that does offer a good enough reward instead.

I'd wager that the release of Mists of Pandaria for WoW in conjunction with GW2's flaws is why the game seems to be losing players at an alarming rate, at least anecdotally. I'd need to see some raw active account data to prove that, but it's just a feeling I'm getting; WvW in its current state is a perfect example of this, with the exception of the top-tier servers.

Most alarmingly perhaps, ANet don't seem bothered enough to do anything about it. Chronic mismanagement by EA Mythic killed Warhammer Online very quickly indeed, and I have an awful feeling GW2 will go the same way, albeit perhaps more slowly due to GW2's superior PvE and more loyal player base compared to WAR.

[ilr]

Quick summary of what I've tried to communicate to the Devs as well:

Zerg takes all. *yawwn*  It's just not conducive to Participation. Imagine how boring PvE would be even for PvE’ers, if the more often you killed mobs, the fewer and fewer would respawn in the area. …or bosses just got incrementally weaker everytime they were defeated. Anet needs to fix this somehow and make severely outmanned players present a challenge somehow.

[swordmagic]

I like PvP, but in my opinion wvwvw had nothing to do with PvP in the state it is in now.

WvWvW is a great zergfest, sadly requiring almost no form of strategy.
Another part is the repair costs, in PvP there should be no repaircosts.
It keeps people from entering PvP.

I would love to see GvG and / or RA/TA return.
Sadly I don't see this happening.

[Killyox]

AstralPhoenix777, on 12 November 2012 - 09:52 AM, said:

The whole purpose of the MMORPG genre is the hamster wheel, carrot-on-a-string approach. If your carrot isn't appealing enough, the players stop running on the hamster wheel, and go and find another game that does offer a good enough reward instead.

I'd wager that the release of Mists of Pandaria for WoW in conjunction with GW2's flaws is why the game seems to be losing players at an alarming rate, at least anecdotally. I'd need to see some raw active account data to prove that, but it's just a feeling I'm getting; WvW in its current state is a perfect example of this, with the exception of the top-tier servers.

Most alarmingly perhaps, ANet don't seem bothered enough to do anything about it. Chronic mismanagement by EA Mythic killed Warhammer Online very quickly indeed, and I have an awful feeling GW2 will go the same way, albeit perhaps more slowly due to GW2's superior PvE and more loyal player base compared to WAR.

That's the issue though. The whole carrot on a stick is artificially created to hold people to the game as long as possible but the one and only reason why people should stick to the game is not artificial rewards but joy of playing the game. If you have fun you don't need more.


Not sure why do you think GW2 is losing players at alarming rate. Servers are pretty much medium high with many full. It's normal trend for people to migrate between games especially during xpacks. It's not really all that bad since gw2 has no sub and those people can come back whenever they feel like it.

[AstralPhoenix777]

Killyox, on 12 November 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

That's the issue though. The whole carrot on a stick is artificially created to hold people to the game as long as possible but the one and only reason why people should stick to the game is not artificial rewards but joy of playing the game. If you have fun you don't need more.


Not sure why do you think GW2 is losing players at alarming rate. Servers are pretty much medium high with many full. It's normal trend for people to migrate between games especially during xpacks. It's not really all that bad since gw2 has no sub and those people can come back whenever they feel like it.

It's true that with no subs, GW2 will not lose a player base permanently like WAR, and you're also correct in that people shift around between games and expansions, especially within the MMO genre. However, regarding your point on "full" servers, remember those are based on number of registered accounts, not active players.

Trying to get back on topic in this thread, we had 7 players in EB a few days ago at about 4am GMT, getting stomped by 50+ Baruch Bay peeps, who eventually took the entirety of WvW except for one German camp. This is what's wrong with WvW:

http://i1121.photobu...ndelDiablos.jpg

[Vayra86]

Killyox, on 12 November 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

That's the issue though. The whole carrot on a stick is artificially created to hold people to the game as long as possible but the one and only reason why people should stick to the game is not artificial rewards but joy of playing the game. If you have fun you don't need more.

No no no you got it all twisted.

Since GW2 Devs have been talking about the element of fun above everything else in MMO's. This whole argument seems the new killer of any discussion on whether there should or shouldn't be some form of reward for something.

But if you look back you cannot in your right mind even consider that this mechanic is unique to the MMO. Or unique to WoW. WoW just exploits the mechanic, it has grown on the playerbase and the playerbase comes back for more of it.

The carrot is as old as video games themselves. In Tetris, the carrot is your new high score. In Super Mario, it was defeating Bowser and saving the princess, or watching the end video. It is ridiculous to think that the carrot is not 'part of the fun'. Consider a game like Diablo/Torchlight/Borderlands using random loot tables. There is a carrot for every single enemy kill, right there. In fact for that game genre, its right of existence is the carrot.

I do wonder how long it will take before Anet devs grasp this concept.

Edited by Vayra86, 12 November 2012 - 11:11 AM.

[Formana]

I need to farm.

[Killyox]

AstralPhoenix777, on 12 November 2012 - 10:55 AM, said:

However, regarding your point on "full" servers, remember those are based on number of registered accounts, not active players.

The status changes depending on people currently logged in. That's why for example there are times when desolation is full and times when it's high instead.

Vayra86, on 12 November 2012 - 11:10 AM, said:

No no no you got it all twisted.

Since GW2 Devs have been talking about the element of fun above everything else in MMO's. This whole argument seems the new killer of any discussion on whether there should or shouldn't be some form of reward for something.

But if you look back you cannot in your right mind even consider that this mechanic is unique to the MMO. Or unique to WoW. WoW just exploits the mechanic, it has grown on the playerbase and the playerbase comes back for more of it.

The carrot is as old as video games themselves. In Tetris, the carrot is your new high score. In Super Mario, it was defeating Bowser and saving the princess, or watching the end video. It is ridiculous to think that the carrot is not 'part of the fun'. Consider a game like Diablo/Torchlight/Borderlands using random loot tables. There is a carrot for every single enemy kill, right there. In fact for that game genre, its right of existence is the carrot.

I do wonder how long it will take before Anet devs grasp this concept.

You had high score but often it was just you vs old you. Here you get armor, there you got high score. You can set yourself what is this carrot on a stick by yourself as well. Hell it may even be the "who has the most gold", Who has the msot 80s, who ahs the most achievement points (kinda like high score) etc.

[Vayra86]

Killyox, on 12 November 2012 - 11:25 AM, said:

You had high score but often it was just you vs old you. Here you get armor, there you got high score. You can set yourself what is this carrot on a stick by yourself as well. Hell it may even be the "who has the most gold", Who has the msot 80s, who ahs the most achievement points (kinda like high score) etc.

It is not the same. The game is not built around these carrots you mention - they are loose, optional and do nothing to alter the play experience. Ticking 100 boxes is not a carrot, it is a cost-effective way of creating replay value. Neither is that in any way something you can call content - world completion is not content, achievements are not content. They are not rewards either, because you don't get a single thing from it that you can use to further your character or play experience.

Consider how incredibly lacking a game is where the players have to conjure up their own rewarding experiences, instead of having devs who actually create mechanics that feel rewarding to the majority of the playerbase.