Is WvW in trouble?

[Sentinel]

The only thing wrong with WvW is that, right now, the first team to zerg the fields usually leads the game. I logged on this afternoon and the score was some Darkhaven or something had 80,000 score. We and the other team both had 10,000. We held about 15% of the assets and the other team about 15% as well, but I remember that when it first started up, Darkhaven had about 95% of the assests, and kept that for quite a bit. I assume this will be balanced over the course of two weeks if we had two weeks to play, but I'm not sure any team could recover a 70,000 point loss, unless the team with 80,000 points somehow loses ALL their territory for an entire 24 hours. Plus, games only last ~24 hours right now.

So, yeah, A little "grace period" (or at least start the thing in the afternoon and not 2 AM) would be nice.

[kwakwa]

Until the Populations settle on servers WvWvW isnt going to be much fun for people on the lower pop realms, I went to a medium pop realm and both days we controlled maybe 1 or 2 towers or supply posts. Just something that is going to be fun in the long run but not on launch

[Lucky_]

Yup no skill at all, exactly why the siege on the main keep on my realm succeeded because you know, not like me and a hand full of others cut off all supply routs going into the keep, or hitting from multiple fronts... Or using arrow karts to slaughter their wall defenders, cause there's no skill or strategy AT ALL in WvW *rolls eyes*

Btw the air elementalist I was talking about with DAT BURST has 15 points in air, 25 in earth 15 in water and 15 in fire

I remember the loltastic moment on desolation where enemy did everything right at the tower defense: heavy supply, arrow carts on the hill where they can slaughter everything in front of the game without being killed and so on.

We didn't even have supply with us. No siege weapons. Did they manage to kill us? Sure. Did we cap tower anyway? Of course. Why? We outnumbered them and just bashed the gate down eventually while ressing those who died.

One thing that most of the "no skill" screamers need to understand: death in WvW doesn't matter if there's someone to resurrect you. This is why numbers in WvW > everything, including but not limited to skill, supply, gear, level and so on.

[Jimusmc]

it'll be different on release where it will rotate servers based on performance level

[grandpab]

I think one of the best things they could at release is to rematch up the servers every night for a week or so, like they do every night during the BWEs. It'll just take too long to get it balanced otherwise. They might even need to work on whatever system they use to match servers up against each other.

I think the way it matches up servers right now doesn't even have to do with scores, just basing that on what I saw this weekend. The server I was on won the first game. Then we lost the 2nd game, but it was close, like 60k vs 50k vs 40k, so it was fairly balanced. For the next game though since we lost though it just seems like it matched us up with other servers that lost too, because in the next game we owned every keep, tower, and supply within 4 and a half hours after the reset, and 12 hours later we're still dominating all the maps.

Our server was a losing server, but we weren't losing that much, so it set us up against a couple other random losing servers, but they must have been servers that didn't do well at all in their last game, so when they got matched up against us they didn't stand a chance.

[Durzlla]

I think one of the best things they could at release is to rematch up the servers every night for a week or so, like they do every night during the BWEs. It'll just take too long to get it balanced otherwise. They might even need to work on whatever system they use to match servers up against each other.

I think the way it matches up servers right now doesn't even have to do with scores, just basing that on what I saw this weekend. The server I was on won the first game. Then we lost the 2nd game, but it was close, like 60k vs 50k vs 40k, so it was fairly balanced. For the next game though since we lost though it just seems like it matched us up with other servers that lost too, because in the next game we owned every keep, tower, and supply within 4 and a half hours after the reset, and 12 hours later we're still dominating all the maps.

Our server was a losing server, but we weren't losing that much, so it set us up against a couple other random losing servers, but they must have been servers that didn't do well at all in their last game, so when they got matched up against us they didn't stand a chance.

Like i said, it's going to be completely unbalanced matches for a while before it is figured out on where they belong, not to mention that people can also transfer from server to server freely, i know i swapped to a server where all my friends were playing in this beta (due to them not being in BWE1 and me not remembering my server name).

[Deleted]

I just don't think you can have tactical play in WvW games.

Has AV ever been tactiful - ever? No, it hasn't been. What about IoC? It has a modicum of tactics, but there's very little player skill. Remember, in a WvW game a team of 5-10 co-ordinated players wont be able to turn the tide of a game if there's a load of players present, and this is why AoE will just be the best type of damage dealer: lack of/non-existent co-ordination and the desire to deal DAT HUGE DEEPZ

[grandpab]

in a WvW game a team of 5-10 co-ordinated players wont be able to turn the tide of a game if there's a load of players present

With a few balistas and/or arrow carts it's definitely possible for a small group of players to defend against a larger group. I saw it happen several times

Once there was about 15 players defending a keep, with the couple balistas and the 1 arrow cart they had we couldn't even get passed the front door. We even had a wall and a door on a different wall knocked down, but we couldn't take a step into the keep without dying.

There was another time 3 players set up 3 balistas at the top of some stairs in a keep. Once we got inside they killed a good amount of us. I died fearing them away from the balistas for a second so I don't know how they failed afterwards.

The first time I saw something like this happen was in a keep where the only way to get to the lord was down a narrow bridge. They set up their siege weapons right next to the lord, so when everyone was gathered on the bridge they wiped everyone out. A couple players on my server even tried to set up a trebuchet to clear them out, but they had a small group of just a couple players come from behind and kill it. I think we actually gave up on that keep for a while and went somewhere else.

Our failing was pretty much due to a lack of blue prints for our own siege weapons though, I think.

[Deleted]

the issue there is the siege weapons though, not the players

and i don't consider using a vehicle to eliminate people skill, not in a game at least.

[Squirrelbanes]

The only "trouble" I had in WvW was that Desolation so overwhelmed the other servers that by the time I decided to look at it...like half way through Saturday...100% of the map was controlled and I left bored and disappointed soon after.
Think it's the first thing I'll do next time.

[terrahero]

keep in mind that those 40ppl struggling to break through 5 ppl are not somewhere else. Sometimes it all comes down to time, holding out long enough to clock in the points or keeping the attackers/defenders busy long enough to hit somewhere else.

[Herecius]

WvW is more about those big, chaotic battles than it is the minutia of one-on-one fights. There'll be small scale arena fighting for that if you're looking for it, but WvW will be about reveling in the chaos.

That said, I really hope ANet makes use of a great (and hopefully self-improving) algorithm to match servers for WvW, as believe me when I say, being on Crystal Desert and absolutely stomping the opposition, controlling the entire map with ease, was not actually very fun. The best fun was when we spent a good three hours assaulting the final holdout for another server, who were doing an extremely effective job of holding the place down.

[Wynn]

Maybe the problem OP is that you were on Whiteside Ridge. Having played you all weekend as Petrified Forest, the only way to take down the mass zerg surges your server sent forth was to spam AoE like crazy because, against 50 people smashing your gate, it's rather effective!

[Deleted]

chaotic battles are fine, and i do enjoy them - i'm just concerned that (as of right now) the AoE spells of the elementalist are doing more damage to single targets than the ... single target spells

A-Net could do a better job of balancing, cut down the current AoE power to 75%~ of it's current value and scale up single target spells by 25% of their current power so the two are entirely different and you need to make a choice: assist getting a certain kill or debuff a group of players in the hope that the healing will be sparsely weak across all players leading to a more effective damage output.

i'm sure A-Net can balance, but as it's beta I feel that (as of right now) there are a lot of issues with AoE. people are saying though it's just elementalists in particular so perhaps they need more tuning? chaos can be achieved without needing everyone casting a myriad of aoe spells and basically "firing and forgetting" imo.

[terrahero]

chaotic battles are fine, and i do enjoy them - i'm just concerned that (as of right now) the AoE spells of the elementalist are doing more damage to single targets than the ... single target spells

A-Net could do a better job of balancing, cut down the current AoE power to 75%~ of it's current value and scale up single target spells by 25% of their current power so the two are entirely different and you need to make a choice: assist getting a certain kill or debuff a group of players in the hope that the healing will be sparsely weak across all players leading to a more effective damage output.

i'm sure A-Net can balance, but as it's beta I feel that (as of right now) there are a lot of issues with AoE. people are saying though it's just elementalists in particular so perhaps they need more tuning? chaos can be achieved without needing everyone casting a myriad of aoe spells and basically "firing and forgetting" imo.

Yah Elementalist Meteor Shower or something like that deals huge damage. Buffed up from himself and allies ive seen pvp footage of whole groups being wiped out in seconds as the meteors crash down doing 4-5k dmg per impact. Thats ONE elementalist, now imagine running with several.
But profession balance is off anyway right now, something they still have to do.

[Merendel]

chaotic battles are fine, and i do enjoy them - i'm just concerned that (as of right now) the AoE spells of the elementalist are doing more damage to single targets than the ... single target spells

A-Net could do a better job of balancing, cut down the current AoE power to 75%~ of it's current value and scale up single target spells by 25% of their current power so the two are entirely different and you need to make a choice: assist getting a certain kill or debuff a group of players in the hope that the healing will be sparsely weak across all players leading to a more effective damage output.

i'm sure A-Net can balance, but as it's beta I feel that (as of right now) there are a lot of issues with AoE. people are saying though it's just elementalists in particular so perhaps they need more tuning? chaos can be achieved without needing everyone casting a myriad of aoe spells and basically "firing and forgetting" imo.

I do think its more elementalists being a bit OP in the aoe department than anything else. On most of the other classes I played AOE came in the following flavors. High damage long CD, Low damage low CD, or Moderate-high damage lowCD but point blank effect. My engineer for example I could do a ton of damage with the bomb kit, however if a large pack just let me waltz into them and bomb them to hell they deserve it. Point blank effects are balanced by the fact that you are going to die if you try it on a large pack. Long CD variants are balanced by the fact that you can only use them so often. If the folks you hit dont run out and heal its their fault. Likewise on the low damage no CD ones you need alot of people concentrating AOE to do significant damage and folks have time to move before it kills them.

Aside from a few choke points where zergs colided I mostly only saw AOE provideing a massive effect during keep sieges. In particular AOE on the doors. I never could understand the facination with beating on the gates by hand but it plays right into the AOE playstyle if theres a tone of folks there. Heck I even once saw half of my servers zerg trying to break down the second door in the outer wall of a keep by hand from the inside. We breached the first wall and were bombarding the main keep and defenders from afar with trebs and half the group decided to wail on the other door as well. One guy out there summed the event up perfectly "Thats some weapons grade stupid right there"

If AOE is too much trouble at the doors of a keep the solution is to set up siege outside the range of that AOE and bombard them from afar. Even in the situation someone else discribed about arrow carts guarding the lone bridge in. They had the right idea, set up siege to smash the defenders but they should have kept their force back to defend the trebs.

[PACOX]

People are just derping around. People are seeing what works, what doesn't. Intentionally doing odd things to determine the outcomes, etc. The 2-3 days in a BWE aren't enough to do anything effective in WvWs when match ups are slated to last for 2 weeks (I expect this number to be cut down by a lot). Expect the meta-game to shift rapidly when the game launches. There will probably be less frantic zerg rushes and more strategic gameplay.

[Delias]

Btw the air elementalist I was talking about with DAT BURST has 15 points in air, 25 in earth 15 in water and 15 in fire

.. you knew a level 80? >.>

Oh you weren't talking about WvW there. Don't mind me, this convo is all over the place.

[Deleted]

Yes, that is what they told us in Sw:Tor

Ever played PvP in TOR... AE AE AE AE AE AE-Heal AE AE AE... normal PvP was only possible in BGs... and here we will have the same, because you need an interrupt system like in DAoC to avoid this kind of gameplay

And I hate these "omg it is beta"-comments... basic systems won't change anymore before release. A bit of numbertweaking here and there, a few new / updated skills... but certainly not the interrupsystem, CD-system or whatever.

[Delias]

AE AE AE AE AE AE-Heal AE AE AE

We have healers now? :O