WvW Alpha Post 5 month before release of GW2.

Post from Alpha 5 months before releasing showing them all problems we still have.

have been playing now for 5 month. So now with my experience of WvW and in past games. I looking for few answers to few points from devs if possible. Probably gonna be a long one so strap in.

Servers And Size

So to start the WvW maps where capped at 500 per map. 166 per side/server. However last few weeks they went down to 300 per map. 100 per side. This area still seems very up and down until Anet finds right number, fitting correct with server issues etc. So that is my first question as to what is happening here.

Reason i ask is because some guilds have more than 200-300 people let alone 100. Seems very small. which leads me to my next questions.

Server wise regarding size. i am just guessing it will be few 1000s give or take. So 1000s on each servers. with WvW pop cap at 100 as it stands.

I by then just expected to myself there will be 100s of servers come live. Thinking maybe 300 or so as multiple of 3 will be needed because of WvW. To spread the population etc.

However i breached this question and was told along lines “We are thinking of keeping number of servers lower, to avoid unpopulated servers”.

Which i agree is another area which needs to be looked at carefully in the planning phase as you are doing. You don’t want to send the wrong message if say one server is unpoped because of too many servers. Then in turn the people on that server thinking game is dead. Or when people see a server has been merged and the same thing put into the minds that game is slowly dieing.

However this got me thinking is this not a little short sighted or Anet is not understanding how much people will want WvW, or how big apart of game it is and will become.

Trust me after playing a brief summary of things that kill games of this sort and annoy people. The fact a server looks unpoped is least of your problems.

In no specific order its Queues, LAG, balance —-——? lack of people. Of course this is all relative to when in time you would be playing gw2. This would change in first month to say 2-3 months after release.

From my own personal view. People have been crying out for a game like this since daoc/war. The wvw model you have is basically Daoc and war mixed together. The market is gonna be massive let alone from all the other games. Most these communities moved to Rift, Swtor and found pve crap with pvp slapped on. This brings me back to Anet and problems with server size and WvW cap size.

If you stick with your plan to keep less servers the ques will be insane. So you must up the cap from start or have a lot more servers. This is also something you should be making public once you have figured it out.

Reason i say is because server alliance initiatives are being formed all over in different communities. With 1000s of people. Little do they know or have had no info on this to guide them. That because of this they will be in queues for weeks. This i am talking about is just random servers with casual/general players. Before we even get to the hardcore WvW alliances it will be complete mayhem.

I say this because i see how it will all go if things stay as they are. I have been apart and setup massive EU top PvP Initiatives for few games now. Karak Eight Peaks on Warhammer with many old excal/daoc guilds. Many world first servers giant ques on launch for months after. Rift Whitefall Server. SWTOR – Tomb of Freedon Naad.

This leads me to the more in depth problems of WvW.

Afking

As above following on. Afking will be ripe because of the Queues experienced by everyone. People running forward with autorun. Then onto Macro/g15 keyboards keeping people in WvW. Then to Autoclickers. A good system needs to be in place from the start.

Eternal Battlegrounds Vs Homelands

I feel Anet is taking to much into account with having 4 maps. where when it comes to it 85% of the time you will probably be in the EB or trying to get in EB. The homelands are important but will mainly be used by the other server to take pressure off EB or for servers to go to homeland to take it back. I can not see them all being the main focal point which comes to play with overall numbers.

Lack of Epeen/Drive

Many people play for fun. But fun comes from winning no matter what people will say. A lot of people are disappointed there is no Kill spam in WvW. Also The Naming situation of only seeing guild tag. Red Invader[RG] etc. Fair enough after time you will get to know What guilds are with what server you come up against. But there may be more than one guild with your Tag.

The Carrot on stick side of the WvW. Your level 80 what now. me personally i only care about fighting many numbers with what we have and kills. However many people need some sustenance when they play. I read the post on beta forum yesterday. Mike i think said about daoc RA system. i agree they covered some broken stuff in game and made big advantage. taking people with rr5 abilities etc. Glory from wvw would help or a different stat to accumulate from kills/playing wvw. So you can buy epic armor. i know you can buy armor already for tokens but this would add another set per 10 levels of rank etc. Adding Top kills like herald on war would also help promote the epeen aspect

Another idea is like i discussed how you want to add anti spike traits and things along these lines. you could make them open up after x amount of ranks in WvW rank. Prices of Siege costing way less. just throwing out some ideas.

However i also found the beta post interesting from mikes post. In answer to the question was Realm pride. this leads me to my next point.

Transfers

With the above being completely negated by a simple transfer which will be open no matter what. For some Gems.

What is to stop a initiative or server alliance going to a server. making it become #1 on list in ranking. All the hard work done. then everyone and granny transferring and screwing it all. As above making ques forever. Making Realm Pride null.

Server Ladders And Locations

Because of time zones what are the plans on EU vs US server ladders. Will there be a separate ladder for both?. I think this is best way to go. Letting EU play on US and visa verse but not in same Ladder fighting each other every 2 weeks on server ladder swap around.

Where Will EU servers be hosted?.

Off Peak Playing/Problems/Suggestions

With above not only playing in different time zones is a major problems for games like this. It is also problems just when people play in itself on EU or US servers.

What i am mainly talking about is having epic battles in Prime time, Server time when most of the population will play. Then come off peak later on a 5-10 man Comes and takes everything by the next morning. So when you come on you think what was the point.

What i suggest is that Doors/Guards get more health/tougher after certain server time in the zone which server is set for. Yea that sucks for a small % of people overall who work night shift or have dodgy times. Also you could make it so keeps can not be damaged by siege other than ram/golum and have to be taken via doors of keep. This would stop a lot of the problems by off peak capping. These are just ideas i am sure some others can add there own.

Servers General

Please Make RUS FIN EN FRA SPA tags on each server. So many Russians whine about never having own server. They then play stupid games how they gonna come destroy and zerg others and causes big community problems this will fix it outright.

I know the reason you might not want to do this with RUS FIN etc is because your only voicing over/text in English, German, French and Spanish. But you should still do this even without just for community sake.

Server Lag

I see after playing in the wvw stress tests and on beta. You have alot of the problems warhammer had with people not showing up and servers melting. Your combo fields specially the Stealth one will be causing hell.

Server having to Register people disappearing for 2-5 seconds and lagging making them invisible way longer then server having to Register it again when they are visible to others. This for sure will conflict with your detection of players just in general showing them on screen. under max numbers in wvw it will be 10 fold.

Balance Around WvW and AoE

First i understand the game is being balanced around conquest mode 5v5. This is all well and good but it will no way filter to WvW. Lets start with all the games ive played like this. They all did not have some sort of Diminishing Returns System for CC. After first month they did. If not because of it all being from WvW problems. So much CC. and no DM. So much dmg in game and not much healing/defensive things which can effect it. Ranger elite/sylvari racial is just insane with this thrown in. then the warrior stuns/guardian kds. having no DM of some form will be magnified by numbers.

Now we move onto AOE. warhammer had the same aoe stacking. 5 targets but stacking. Now in war you had defensive abilities and just as good healing as raw dmg. In this game there is not many heals. And the defensive things are null or ineffective due to your system. What i mean by that is Ele meteor shower cant be blocked at all or charr artillery barrage. As said in previous posts asking to make it projectile so as to be protected by guardians.

So add in all the CC+AOE. – lack of healing/defense. big bada boom

I strongly suggest nerfing all them ranged abilities i have mentioned. As in to making ele go to dagger/dagger for AOE close line melee. Like bright wizards in war. but with great risk. since no guard or support spam healing. making bombing take much more co-ordination than just meteor shower and charr AB after ranger/slyvari elite root.

Grouping And Commander

I am not a big fan of grouping in WvW. i would love it to work like warband in warhammer. 20-30 size. Then having commander to control the 20-30 size groups as maybe just a icon which indicates hes controlling another group of 20-30. then if he clicks the box he gets popup showing all the names in that specific 20-30 warband size.

Commander in general as it stands is totally crap. I being guild leader and WvW leader want to go to WvW my guys on vent. i start a group i invite 20-25 or they /join name. I don’t want to have a commander giant sign over my head telling everyone and their granny. ah look i am over here its RG and Sacrx come join the train.

That is one problem. A option to turn it off showing even though you still leading commander would be great. There then the problem of spys and xrealmers seeing the commander ah they over here send everyone..

I found out last night its now 100g. i can understand you don’t want everyone having it and a special thing. But boy wow i can place 4 markers on the map. It is seriously weak. Some of the people playing your game will just want own guild in 20-25 group hidden to roam. please fix this.

Siege

I still feel some siege is way to powerful and takes away from the action of having a battle. And in some cases people will put down arrow carts to shoot people rather than attack with own character. I am not sure that is right. you want them to be powerful you don’t want them to be necessity to winning.

Death Prices

When i do PvP i dont want to be paying to fix my gear. If you plan to keep this you need to make it cheaper. i understand you want to have some drawback. but why have a drawback to WvW when as it stands there is no actual incentive for some to do bar EXP.

Downed State

The downed state can be very exploited in WvW by people targeting the same person or warriors knockdown chaining. It also makes smaller groups have a very hard time taking on bigger numbers. Maybe there should be modifications made to it like less health. Or removing it all together.

I look forward to hopefully hearing back from WvW devs on these topics.

Cheers.