Guild Wars 2

Playing in earnest through the HoT content, I sometimes find myself alone defending an objective, sometimes bringing supplies in (whether by hand or through caravans) and upgrading the defenses of an area. Seeing a lot of defensive emplacements up makes me feel that perhaps, during the inevitable attack in the next 5 minutes, the outpost will be able to hold off an attack.

But in fact, this never happens. Every time I leave to go do something else, at whatever upgrade level or tier of defense the outpost is, it’s gone when I come back if a player hasn’t been holding it, either through the map rotating into a new day/night cycle (Maguuma) or through constant attacks (Silverwastes).

I thereby suggest to create some permanence to these defensive structures: make a fully upgraded camp able to hold off an attack on its own. Perhaps the upgraded camp will spawn additional defenders during such an event, which take advantage of the increased resources (pots of boiling oil, Arrow Carts, walls, etc) to hold off the attack, but in the course of the attack, these defenses are destroyed (Mordrem Lobbers, etc) so a follow up attack will most certainly destroy the camp.

This is intended as a perk for people who contribute heavily toward such camps but obviously won’t sit in that camp all day long. Maybe the upgrade level will ‘degrade’ after holding off an attack in general (necessitating additional supplies or a new supply caravan to deliver new supplies, which will of course have to be assisted by players).

What do you think?

Supported, I’ve never seen the defenses in VB do anything anyway, the tendrils just aggro onto you and throw poison spit over the barricades, and the guards are much weaker than the mobs are.

I see the defenses as a nice scenery and a way to take aggro from you. Most NPC’s have almost no damage output because they want the players to actually be doing things. I think it works as intended. Organizing a T4 should take some effort with people spreading their efforts.

Day cycle, it seems no one wants to defend anything anymore. Then, even if you do see 1 poor soul doing defense, he/she likely won’t be able to hold out by themselves, as everyone else just runs by awaiting the choppas.

VB in particular has this problem, and it’s not just the outposts. Take the ongoing defense achievement, I let this one slip in the beginning. To complete VB achievements, that one and gold Shooting gallery are all that stand in the way, yet I can’t recall the last time I saw more than 2 people attempt to defend those constructed towers and 5 waves of defense is rough with 2 people, especially when it coincides with another event at the outpost above.

The changes made in the beginning to make night defense more important were better for people wanting an organized meta, but the day cycle fell by the wayside a long time ago.

Well, I found that in the VB camps, the upgrades can’t hold an attack off by themselves, (I really wish they held out longer, though), but I found actually do make it much easier for a single player to hold the point. Then again, it also seems to make enemies spawn in greater numbers.

Frankly, the whole defense events seem badly designed to me, since they immediately spawn in more mordrem once one wave is defeated, for the entire duration of the event, making the optimal defense strategy be “Kill all but 1 or 2 mobs, then kite them around forever”.