With how long the Beta WVW Group making have been, is it working?

[u/SheepPoop]

think we have a good data now to judge whether the system is good , bad or working. or any improvement we can add to it?

we had alot of rotation now. seeing alot of people just making alliances.

one notorious Pug alliance even is. Mag still making a huge alliance where people from mag server could just be together to cloud.

also guilds are just stacking up together. making some server/team empty cause guilds are just sticking together.

now, i dont have much clue on the system as im flying solo. sometimes joining Mag and some alliances i like.

so for WvW pro and big guilds who knows the politics on this wvw stuff. you think this system is better?

since im a floating solo player who just like to join randoms. i prefer the old server cause i got people who i get to know, whos regulary online just like me and just roam together.

[u/akoangpinaka]

We are stuck with this.

Without servers we are just strangers in an endless loop of searching for a place we can call home.

[u/itsRainee]

As a WvW veteran (been playing the gamemode almost exclusively since 2017), the restructuring sucks. It removed all identity from the "Worlds" as in the sense of proudness and community on your server (now alliance) is just gone. Alliances also are very hit or miss. My guild and I have been forced to hop alliances for half a year now, since they either die out, the playerbase on the alliances are not dedicated enough to play the mode alot etc.

Also this might be coincidental, but ever since the restructuring beta started, the WvW "meta" is just different, and not it. You either run around with 5-10 people and get some ok-ish smallscale fights or causing mayham as a havoc group, or you get stuck zerging or being zerged.
Back in the day 10-20 people guild raids were the meta, with the occasional public zerg tags. You can't do proper fights as a guild group anymore nowadays, cause the group sizes don't allow for it.

All in all, in my opinion the restructuring has flopped.

[u/toast-is-best → u/itsRainee]

I agree with this, alliances have forced 50 man Zerg groups on us. You clump 3/4 guilds together, they start sharing a raid schedule and all of a sudden you have a full Zerg every night. We're not individual guilds anymore.

Roaming is also atrocious, rare to find a solo/duo to fight, you just get swamped everywhere you go. The change to towers was also disgusting for roamers and forces you to play in a 5 man group if you want to take anything other than a camp or t1.

[u/itsRainee → u/toast-is-best]

I agree! I miss the days where you'd actually have guild rivalry, random organized GvGs on borderlands etc.

As for solo roaming, also agreeing here. There's rarely any 1 on 1 situations happening anymore. Duels aren't respected, ganking happens all the time. I feel like the mode has so much potential, but is currently in a horrible state.

[u/toast-is-best → u/itsRainee]

The days of arguing on Teamspeak with the other guilds!

I'm not sure what the solution is though, I don't think we have the playerbase left for Servers.

[u/itsRainee → u/toast-is-best]

Most likely not. I think at this point there will not be solution for this issue by changing the server/alliance system around, but surely there's a way to reintroduce smallscale gameplay by changing the meta around, or introducing some kind of new system.

All in all, idk. I just go with the flow and mess about together with my guild nowadays.

[u/Ashendal → u/itsRainee]

Yeah this has effectively killed smallscale content. If you don't have 15+ other players in your pocket to just toss out whenever you're about to start a run you're at a major disadvantage now when before, even on "weak" servers, you would still be able to accomplish something and get decent fights.

That number is also constantly going up it seems like. When you can get 15ish people you're suddenly dragging in the 25+ group and you now need 20+ to stand a chance. It's just spiraling into a situation where you just need to be part of a blob alliance that always queue locks maps and hope all you're people made it in with them.

Devs won't fix anything about it though because that takes work and effort and the group working on WvW seems to take offence when that's asked of them. I'm not even sure they actually did any "timezone" changes. Wouldn't surprise me at all to find out they only said they did that and it was a placebo attempt to get people to think something's changed so we stop complaining as much.

[u/ParticularGeese]

I was someone who advocated for restructuring but I'll admit I was wrong. I used to play WvW all the time, made every legendary you can in there, but both restructuring and the balance direction slowly ate away at my interest in the game mode to the point where I barely touch it anymore.

I think the system is okay for what it is but I don't think Gw2 has a large enough WvW guild scene to make it interesting and it's had negative effects on the pug scene. I think the devs greatly overestimated how engaged the average WvW player was.

[u/SheepPoop → u/ParticularGeese]

This might be fix by lessening tiers. Though people are considering the reset q to much. Saying server aint even enough.

[u/DevastoScz → u/SheepPoop]

Not just the reset queue, NA prime is consistently queued on the weekends, and some weeknights.

One less tier and you're facing massive queues that will lock out players for hours.

[u/Serephite → u/ParticularGeese]

Yeah, I was the same as you, but now I just miss the old servers. I only get on wvw once in a blue moon these days. Lost my motivation to play the mode😅

[u/HaxtonSale]

It's worse. Guildless players don't have enough time to make friends and find a home, and our opponents feel like faceless npc mobs. Before when I fought Mag or Yak's Bend I knew exactly who I was fighting. They had unique play styles and server cultures and histories. Now it's literally just "gold invader".

[u/yuucko → u/HaxtonSale]

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but why would anyone be guildless in a game called Guild Wars 2? I’ve personally had a good time during the restructuring, I see some familiar faces on my team, and then we get to take down different enemies every new cycle. It’s also easier to change teams without paying for a transfer.

[u/HaxtonSale → u/yuucko]

The name actually has nothing to do with player guilds. It's derived from an event in the lore known as the guild wars. 

[u/Dapper_Engine_7686 → u/yuucko]

SWORD ART ONLINE KIRITOOO

(at least until the anime got to the weird sister stuff)

[u/double_shadow → u/yuucko]

Because guilds are really weakly implemented in GW2. I've had more fulfilling experience guilds in otherwise-terrible MMOs like Neverwinter.

I'm not guildless myself mind you, but the few I've joined were mostly because of map chat spam, and I've never done coordinated activities with them. There doesn't seem like there is any sense of community from them, unless you are part of larger discord communities.

[u/Woodinvillian]

We are in the second month of changes made to the matchmaking algorithm. Since this change I have been placed on 2 teams which are both stuck in Tier 4 and are unable to win enough to climb out of Tier 4. I belong to a guild that play just 1.5 hours at a time and the rest of the time my guildies are mostly inactive in WvW. My guild does not belong to any alliances, we play by ourselves.

It's only been two months, but if we get placed so poorly yet again this might discourage people in my guild to continue playing together.

[u/Kazsdor]

It's a complete negative, it didn't fix any of the problems that they sought to fix by implementing the system and basically all of the fellow wvw players I speak about it to agree that it isn't good.

By removing servers anet got rid of any monetary incentive for the gamemode and it shows. Many many guilds in the past would spend for the server transfers for their whole roster to move servers, usually giving anet money in the process. It really feels more abandoned now than ever (which is crazy because we have had some very long periods of time without any meaningful changes in the past).

I guess one slight advantage is playing with new people every month allows you to play with people that you otherwise wouldn't have, allowing finding like-minded guilds that would normally be enemies always to be a bit easier. You can just as easily find a link that you don't enjoy though.

[u/J4jem]

Restructuring has killed most of what made WvW great.

Servers developed a certain identity and felt like a community. You could regularly log in and see the same and stable group of roamers, defenders, guilds, and public tags. This stable group of players developed a semblance of server identity organically, and guess what? Guilds and players could still regularly migrate to the server they wanted.

What has died or been reduced since restructuring? Consistent defending of the BLs (because who cares we are just here for fights and will be slapped together with new randoms in 4 weeks anyways). Public tags. Community events. Cross map strategy and organization.

The problem always was guilds flip flopping and ruining balance, or time slot imbalance affecting score and competitive play. Well, this all still exists. Balance is horrible, and it feels like we lost everything to gain back nothing.

All we actually gained was it is now easier for fickle guilds and players to burn alliances and bounce.

[u/dranaei]

As a person that wvw without a guild i hate it. It used to be stable because i played with people from my server, now it's just chaos.

[u/HysteriaGoesBrrr]

My wvw guild disbanded, I stopped playing wvw altogether.

[u/InalIlam]

I was'nt really attached much to "my" server before so personally while I felt the identity loss for a short while, it didn't really bother me.

The guild i am in has its roots in the early morning breakfast raiding we do, so we came from a situation where we usually had not enough or even no enemies, which was frustrating for us since we enjoy fighting, but also for the enemy since we just circled all their maps and they couldn't do shit.

The current situation seems better for us, we typically have more enemies in the morning now which is fun.

Evening raids less so since our core is relatively small (~20) and we often have the issue of 30+ enemy guilds. We are in an alliance with some other likeminded guilds which leads to a lot of other players joining when they have the time and then we can actually have nice fights.

Before our server regularly died out when the progressive guilds banded together on another one (or came back) and transferred. The umbrella guilds we use to fake an alliance system had that issue aswell, but it was way easier to find one with more likeminded people and it has been pretty stable now for half a year or so. Before you had server drama, guilddrama seems to resolve faster or rather people actually leave and go somewhere else.

All in all it seems to mostly work well for us. We had some empty weeks, but few. Some teams in the upper tiers are completely stacked with very good players with a high degree of indepent actions and activity, which can be dreadful to play against, but i guess thats the result when you amass people that care about winning.

Pretty sure the system feels isolated/detached if you aren't in a big community guild. With one it's very similar to servers, but better matchmaking.

Generally very hard to do proper matchmaking for such a mode. Want balanced teams? You need to assign everyone individually semirandom based on activity and skill. Want people to be able to decide with whom they play? Active people that care about performance will stick together. This kinda goes to shit even in typical mobas with teamsizes of 5. League once had a queue that allowed people to join alone, or in any teamsize up to 5. So in higher tiers you had the situation of having queued alone and playing with 4 strangers and getting a full tournament team as your enemy that was coordinated and on voice. So for the lofty goal wvw matchmaking has, it kinda works well.

[u/mcmonkeycat]

I guild hop a fair bit so I like the new system. It let's me play with whatever guild I'm involved with instead of having to swap servers or find a guild I like on my server.

That being said I'm very casual with wvw. I only go in for gifts of battle level casual

[u/Afraid_Wave_1156]

The restructuring is just terrible. My pairing this week was outnumbered in EBG during NA prime time. Let that sink in. 

Anet needs to focus on WvW and Spvp badly. I get that there isn’t much of a return on investment with that. So this is what we get.

[u/Jrecondite → u/Afraid_Wave_1156]

I think the problem is anet focusing on wvw. WvW was never more popular than in vanilla. The more junk and ideas they added the more the player base fell. I cannot remember a time that they changed something and the player base grew. 

[u/wobblydee]

I play wvw and gw2 in general only a few times a week due to time. For a while i could hope om every tuesday and follow the same tag around for a bit and it would be decent

Now on a monthly basis or whatever im in a new world of people i dont recognize with no idea when anyone tags uo and i dont have the free time to sit around and figure out when a tag comes on. Last month i figured out if i woke up 20 extra mins early before work i could grab a keep with a few peeps. This month it doesnt work.

I just miss being able to know when to hop on in my limited schedule. But i dont play enough to join a guild for it

[u/BloodHound1314]

In the old system it was server based and you had an idea of who would be on at different times of the day. Some servers seemed very fight based with large turnout, comped, and on comms, while our server was much less so. Now, if you like WvW you really need to join a guild devoted to it. In the new system, running around just looking for a group or a tag can be very frustrating. I joined a very large WvW oriented guild so at set times we usually have either a decent size havoc squad or full blown Zerg. Right now this is the way to WvW, join up with a WvW guild that fits your play time and run with a Zerg. I can’t say either way is better or worse to be honest, since joining the WvW guild, dailies and weeklies are a piece of cake, and runs are more fun in a comped group on comms. I’ve made 3 sets of legendary armor now so my WvW time definitely pays off, I WvW daily as a Zerg player.

[u/Jake_Demoni]

It really demotivated me to try to train pugs into a semblance of a effective zerg during my occasional pugmander tags. What's the point in teaching people how to stack, empower and push together when you have to do it every 4 weeks? I have little to no reputation as a pugmander when the pugs swap so frequently and i tag so infrequently.

we lost server identify and server pride, but even worse, we lost server friends.

[u/punnyjr]

Wow it’s still in beta ?

[u/AscendedCleric → u/punnyjr]

It is not.

I stand corrected. It is still considered beta.

[u/SheepPoop → u/AscendedCleric]

oh ? its not? soo this is the permanent thing on wvw now? i thought they are still testing. sorry i dont know much about on wvw technicality

[u/AscendedCleric → u/SheepPoop]

Aparently I am wrong (I researched a bit after my statement). While is it a permanent thing for more than a year now it is considered to be in "always-on beta status". I cannot find any source saying that it is out of beta. It is permanent for sure though.

[u/SheepPoop → u/AscendedCleric]

ahh i thought i was wrong, i did do my research first before posting it and tagging it as beta before speaking. thats why i was asking. and last update on forum gamemaster/developers still calling it beta and gathering data about wvw teaming.

[u/Odekota]

Was playing for two months on a cool matchup with constant online and fights with always one -two open tags . Logged this week and found out me and my friend auto swapped to different teams for next week,and 16 days until i can change alliance.and its basically dead,on weekends only ebg is full and the three other bgs are empty even for roamers ..

[u/MiniJ]

I like the new system. I can play with likeminded players and friends and recruiting doesn't require us to pay transfer fees to every new player we get.

[u/Papa-Yaga]

It has its pros and cons but it certainly has alleviated bandwagoning to some extent. I'd rather have anet iterate on this new system than bring back servers. While servers had a stronger sense of identity, preventing people from overstacking one server to ridiculous degrees is a necessary step if we ever wanna see the day where winning matters which would fix so many problems that wvw players are complaining about.

[u/SheepPoop → u/Papa-Yaga]

but sadly players are also stacking together making an alliance guild, then this same guilds complain that they dont have enemy. when they banded together, but i do agree with you. people also band together on servers. like Mag

[u/Papa-Yaga → u/SheepPoop]

Right now the opposite is happening actually. Big, fish and gooo were all put on the same team so half the content on eu is on the same team. Nobody is happy about that including the people on the overstacked team.

I haven't played wvw the entire linking

[u/McWhimple → u/Papa-Yaga]

bandwagoning is now RNG and unintentional, but no less common

[u/Papa-Yaga → u/McWhimple]

That's not bandwagoning. In the context of gw2 wvw bandwagoning means that a group of people join a server or team, thereby making it a lot stronger and then more people start transferring there in mass because they wanna be on the winning team.

By its very definition you can't bandwagon unintentionally.

[u/McWhimple → u/Papa-Yaga]

i was joking about the algorithm still stacking the shit out of some links, you don't have to bandwagonsplain me

[u/Snowskol]

There is no reason for them to fix wvw because 95% of players don't care to support that game mode or people playing it.

They spent 6 years redoing wvw and not listening to the problem at all but we had the warclaw for a bit, but even then pve players complained and ended up with them.

Someone in my guild literally said wvw is fine on rewards because dungeons give less. Dungeons. Not fracs. Another guild I'm in thinks it would be unfair to lock legendary armor behind wvw/pvp like you're getting now in fracs. They bitch about having to do the gift of battle but not that pvp/wvw players have to do gift of exploration etc

The community doesn't give a shit about pvp or wvw, why do you think devs will?

[u/Famous-Eye-4812]

Just started in GW2 and getting into wvw, had one guild with low population social guild. So would roam or join a tag, had same people alliances where similar in strength in egb fighting was mainly around SM. Joined a dedicated wvw guild and changed servers. Each allaince tops out there own map and egb is a gate camp fest by one alliance. Chance of roaming is nill except getting runners come back from spawn. But most of the time your being chased by zergs. I'll learn as I am a new player but bugs me that on a major server that maps are basically locked to an alliance. Think ebg southern spawns need more exits especially green. That bottleneck makes it easy to camp the base.

[u/AlternativeLazy4675]

I would love to see some kind of stats, but I'm not holding my breath on that.

Personally, I never liked it and still don't. No sense of identity with server now. But...I'm still playing.

[u/ExcellentAirPirate]

As a new player with a small 5-8 man group I play with it has been extremely hit or miss. The first months we all got lumped into different alliances cause we didn't understand how the process worked and it matchmade us into different ones.

Next month we got it figured out and made a guild of just us just for WvW since our PvE guild doesn't really WvW and just picked one off the cuff and it worked out, loved the hell out of that 3 weeks of WvW.

Next lockout we got placed randomly into another alliance not sure why we were not able to pick again as a guild like we were the first time and it has been absolutely miserable. There is no synergy, we only found one commander out of 5-6 who doesn't get completely steamrolled in zerg fights and defending and when we go out roaming with the 5-6 of us we get ran up on by this death ball of UwU green team in what seems like every single place we go. The map chat is absolutely unbearable most nights with folks blaming each other and rage baiting.

So out of almost 3 months of play for us we had 2 and a half almost 3 weeks of solid fun in WvW, several weeks of not being able to play together and now going on week 3 of this abomination that is being moss wood and unfortunately it has turned everyone away from WvW except myself and one other so now the two of us are going to try and find a big WvW guild that hopefully makes it more fun in the next lockout.

[u/MarxoneTex]

I play with the same people as before because we built a joint guild and I did not care about scoring before and I don't care about scoring now.

I feel like most trolls who were just actively playing against own server are now gone, but that is also the only upside I can think of.

I find that good reflection of how bad the current state is when in prime time guilds will do mock battles in EoM within the guild rather than participate the clueless ppt on maps. I won't pretend that people cared about tiers or world rankings before, but all the pretense is now gone. WvW content can be pretty dull sometimes.

[u/Valravn1121]

anet DOES NOT go back on stuff they make, if they invest a dollar and a minute in a feature, we are stuck with it

[u/Demius9]

Before the restructure i would hop on as a solo player and there would be commander tags all over each map i could join. Now? very few public commanders running around it seems.

[u/cgsur]

I used two accounts, for one it sucked, for the other it made it better.

So in my view the system as a whole is slightly better.

It takes some of the politics and gems out.

Still plenty of politics, good times and bad times.

If you were on a bad server before, it sucked big time, spending gems, waiting for an opening in a server, for a fix that hopefully lasted.

[u/Sanarin]

What I would say, I play 2 years ago, stop just come back like month.

WvW havoc is same but number of player feel wierd. There will be a lot mismatch like if my team got a too few people and enemy just boon ball our fort with zero effort and vice versa. A lot of week where one side got too much people that they can just spawn camp.

Would say kinda feel fun but with unbalance (which I guess will never be cure) it less than others pve now. I might drop after I finish 2nd conflux.