Guild Wars 2

Siege decay …

Relatively new to the game(rank 45 in WvW) but have spent much of my time in WvW using, building, and refreshing siege.

The “grindy” nature of refreshing is at odds with Anet’s attempts to make the game not require player attention to the busywork other games have. Neither having siege poof sometimes and have to be completely rebuilt or refreshed several times within a few minutes is a good use of player time …

Some possibilities for changes-(please don’t take the ideas or numbers used in the examples as anything more than starting points for discussion. )

Siege never poofs but it’s effectiveness decays with time unless maintained but can be destroyed or degraded by enemy damage or salvaged to recover some of the supply used to build it-

As an example, over a 10 hours siege will decay to 10% health(reduced damage and more vulnerable to destruction through enemy damage) where it stays until supply is used to maintain/refurb it
1 supply per 10% to repair

Siege unit health determines the percent of the initial damage that the the does:
100% Health 100% Damage
10% Health 50% damage

Siege destroyed by an enemy poofs

Siege can be salvaged to recover some of the supply used to build it so that poorly placed or unneeded units do not affect the placement of new needed siege (given the map cap of 100 non-ram, non-golem siege units). Salvage will likely need some kind of limit on as it could be used by a saboteur

The map would have an option to display the total number of capped siege units- so no more untimely surprises that the cap has been reached when trying to defend (I haven’t experienced this but it must be happening at times)

“Salvage will likely need some kind of limit on as it could be used by a saboteur”

OR have it that only the server that put the siege down are the only ones that can salvage that siege. Enemy servers would still have to destroy a siege to remove it from play.

While I kind of like the idea of being able to re-salvage out siege already deployed, there are reasons for siege decay, and whether you realized it or not, it has always been in wvw (the recent changes only put in a visible timer on the decay)
Reasons for siege decay:

• helps put a cap on how much siege can be deployed across the map, which, believe it or not, is a good thing not only for counter strategy-wise, but server load and demand.
• Makes players be responsible for maintaining their own defenses rather than simply" drop and forget" playstyle which, besides being lazy playing, is counter-intuitive to strategy play.
• (this one isn’t really a reason per-se but more a note that should be taken into consideration)- decay doesn’t expire for a whole hour. It only takes one single person to hit up the siege to refresh it for an entire hour. That is hardly grindy. If only 1 person hit up 1 tower/keep/camp, ect each hour there would be no reason siege would expire. That responsibility shouldn’t lie with a single individual.

Now, all that being said, back to your idea of salvaging out siege.
I like it, I think it has good potential,. but also too much chance for abuse unless:

• put a cap on how many siege machines can be done in a certain amount of time
• only the original creator of the siege can salvage it out to prevent griefers/spies/ ect from destroying an entire supply of siege weapons.
• should the original creator log out or change maps, the siege is unsalvageable and goes back to what we originally have now.
  As for what you actually get when you salvage it out, idk. I have plenty of ideas about it but most of them start to require too complex of systems and I don’t think we need a whole new system of salvaging and siege manipulation in the game right now.

I’m certainly not opposed to siege decay- there are valid reasons for having some form of it in game. It’s the “all-or-nothing” nature of siege decay that I think interferes with thoughtful siege usage.

Reducing the effectiveness over time is a way to require effort to keep your siege in good shape.

Many times siege is placed in a hurry where it’s easily destroyed by attackers and I think that non-poofing siege would provide an incentive to place it well the first time and not have to do a quick placement by 3 or more players while the structure is under attack because no one refreshed the first piece.

Not only are lower-tiered servers at a disadvantage in matches directly due to the number of players in pvp battles but they also have the burden of refreshing their siege every hour with a smaller number of players or lose it making structure defense harder and negating the advantages of having sufficient siege weapons when the zerg arrives.

Spending 10-15 minutes refreshing siege in a place like Stonemist get’s really old….really fast.

The example I’m thinking of here is an arrow cart so numbers could be tweaked for other siege. I like the idea of the siege decaying over time as in actually decaying where it does less damage. If that were the case I’d prefer it with something along the lines of 3.25 hours before it gets down to 10% damage done (basically ineffective) but can be repaired by 10 supply (what one person could carry by default) and the decay doesn’t start until the first hour is up. So it’d be 0-1 hrs basically as is now, 1-3.25 hours decays at 10% every 15 minutes, and 3.25 hrs-(insert long time here 12 hrs, a day maybe?) it would remain at the 10% effectiveness before it poofs. Then if a person comes to use it it’s still there but they have to pay the supply penalty for having neglected it in order for it to be really useful. That way there’s still some negative for not taking care of your siege (and even more negative if you don’t keep supply on you) but it’s not as costly as having to build new siege (which can’t necessarily be done alone).