Guild Wars 2

While WvW is great, many people only attack and go with the zerg for the system is rewarding this behavior. Capturing Tower/Keeps rewards people with Exp/Karma while defending/upgrading is much less rewarding and even costs money.

So I cannot even blame people when i try to rally them into a defense for saying “let them have it, we will recapture it in 5 minutes when the enemy is gone…”

I think a great way to counter this behavior would be a timer, shown on the map to encurage realm-pride and a slighty different solution for getting realm-points.

1. Link the points for the realm to the upgrade-status of the Tower-Keep, so the more upgraded it is, the more points it generates. this way people would see more reason to upgrade and defend points and not simply recapture it after the enemy zerg moved on to the next point. Reward only very few points to fresh captured Points!!

2. show a “timer” on the map/points, counting how long a realm holds this point.
maybe this encurages even “realm-pride” when a keep/tower is under attack (“we got this one for 22 hours, lets defend it now to reach 24 hours!”). Give a litte bonus for certain periods of time (1,6,12,24,48 etc…)

See you on the Battlefield!

I think these are both good suggestions and valid incentives for players to defend a keep, instead of letting the enemy capture it on purpose.

I would also like to add a suggestion:
Lower the XP/Karma rewards for tower/camp/keep capturing, and increase it for defending.
Maybe the amount of supplies present in a tower/keep can also be a factor in this. If there are fewer or no supplies: a smaller reward for capturing. And the more supplies present, the more reward for the conquerers. The defending team should get a reward not based on the supplies, since supplies themselves already give an advantage for the defenders.

i am not sure on the supply thing for reward….. could encurage players to “burn” supplies to lower the reward for enemies

Ideally the enemy should not be able to take a keep that still has supply right? So that can’t really be a measure. Making upgraded keeps worth more makes them more attractive to attack doesn’t it? I think the situation is that people don’t realize how powerful reinforced doors and well placed siege weapons are. Its completely possible to defend a keep with 5 guys against an attacking force of 30 with enough supply and upgrades to the keep.

I maintain that the problem is keeps and especially towers are simply too weak. With a force of 30 attackers, a fully upgraded tower with reinforced doors, cannons, mortars, upgraded guards, etc, will fall faster than any defenders can get in there. In some cases you’re lucky to even get a warning that a tower is under attack before it falls. I’ve seen back-line garrisons get sacked with almost no warning, especially if they come up from the water entrance, because who wants to stand there staring at a gate for 4 hours waiting to see if enemies are coming? By the time anyone shouts a warning, the inner door is halfway down.

5 clued people can significantly slow down 30 zerg-tactic attackers but only if they’re already inside the tower when the zerg shows up.

Tegatana.2035:

1. Link the points for the realm to the upgrade-status of the Tower-Keep, so the more upgraded it is, the more points it generates. this way people would see more reason to upgrade and defend points and not simply recapture it after the enemy zerg moved on to the next point. Reward only very few points to fresh captured Points!!

Even though I’m all for promoting “defending” compared to “zerg attacking” this solution has some problems. It will make two already existent problems in game even more worse

1. Winning server wins more: If a server is winning with your suggestion it will continue to open the gap even more rapidly as winning servers keep their forts longer than others.

2. Night capping: Night capping servers will have even more advantage as they will start day time with forts they already keep for sometime and they will gain more points as they hold on to them.

Here are my suggestions:

Attacking/capturing benefits should be reduced significantly.

1. Karma/XP gain should have diminishing results. So that if you capture so many forts/camps in short time your benefit should be less
2. Karma/XP gain should reduce due to number of participants. If you’re capturing a supply camp with 40 man you should not gain full karma/XP

Defending a keep should benefit player more. However to gain defensive benefits a player should contribute to defensive action by:

1. Killing opponents.
2. Planting siege weapons.
3. Building siege weapons.
4. Repairing.
5. Upgrading.

If you’re sitting inside doing nothing you shouldn’t gain any benefit.\

This is just a raw idea from me, there might be some flaws in my idea also.

Slamz.5376:

I maintain that the problem is keeps and especially towers are simply too weak. With a force of 30 attackers, a fully upgraded tower with reinforced doors, cannons, mortars, upgraded guards, etc, will fall faster than any defenders can get in there. In some cases you’re lucky to even get a warning that a tower is under attack before it falls. I’ve seen back-line garrisons get sacked with almost no warning, especially if they come up from the water entrance, because who wants to stand there staring at a gate for 4 hours waiting to see if enemies are coming? By the time anyone shouts a warning, the inner door is halfway down.

5 clued people can significantly slow down 30 zerg-tactic attackers but only if they’re already inside the tower when the zerg shows up.

You should be there to defend it. If you’re already occupying all the map, there should be a room/way for other servers to even the odds with ninja attack. Otherwise it’s gonna turn to zerg fest, spawn camping.

Hux.8739:

Ideally the enemy should not be able to take a keep that still has supply right? So that can’t really be a measure. Making upgraded keeps worth more makes them more attractive to attack doesn’t it? I think the situation is that people don’t realize how powerful reinforced doors and well placed siege weapons are. Its completely possible to defend a keep with 5 guys against an attacking force of 30 with enough supply and upgrades to the keep.

Completely agreed. People should learn how to play and then come here complaining it’s too hard to defend keeps.

its not to hard to defend keeps……. its more rewarding to take another one or just re-take it after it has been invaded! thats the problem!

Kazim.2043:

You should be there to defend it. If you’re already occupying all the map, there should be a room/way for other servers to even the odds with ninja attack. Otherwise it’s gonna turn to zerg fest, spawn camping.

You are under the impression that small groups should be able to ninja a tower as a way of making an elite sneak attack and to enable small group play.

The problem is that by enabling this, you create a situation where that’s all there is.

I guarantee that with no changes to the system, within 2 months WvW will consist of nothing BUT ninja attacks. The only reason it’s not like that now is lack of organization and a lot of new players who don’t understand the system.

The best way to take anything is to gather 30 people and go hit a back door or backline tower. If you can bring 4 golems, that’s nice, but rams will do too. No need to worry about defenses because you just rush in before the defenders can respond.

If you defend a keep 24/7 with 5 people, you can do a lot to slow down these attacks, but nobody mans a keep 24/7. You’re lucky to keep 1-2 people on-hand, much less 5.

Ninja attacks can’t be empowered because by doing so you undermine the entire siege game. It will eventually be nothing but ninja attacks, because that’s the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to take anything.

The better option in my opinion is to increase the rewards for defending, either by increasing the xp/karma reward for a successful defence, or making it easier to gain contribution (as right now you need to actually damage something that is killed or repair the door or similar). Make people want to defend the tower/keep.

Besides, keep defences are some of the most fun fights I’ve had, fending off the combined attacks of 2 servers at once is a great feeling.

Making the towers and keeps stronger would only make the game more imbalanced for lower population servers. Instead of hanging on to a keep and a handful of towers they will probably be left with camps and the occasional tower. It will completely ruin WvWvW beyond hit and run attacks on supply camps.

Question: Can we get exp/ karma by retaking a keep right after it was captured by the enemy? If so what will happen if 2 servers ally up and keep on trading the keeps/ castles for extra fast exp/ karma? I wonder how long it will take for people to do that.

@SiaoLang if this would be really grind based game, it wouldn’t take too long. However I’m already almost full exotic. Why would I do that?

@ Slamz
I made a long post on the previous thread where you accused me with same “ninja attacking”. I’ll repeat that answer here

You got me right there.

One man should be able to capture an undefended sentry point

A group of 3-5 well coordinated people should be able to capture an undefended supply camp

A group of 5-10 well coordinated people should be able to capture an undefended Tower

A group of 15-20 well coordinated people should be able to capture an undefended Keep.

There are different objectives for different group sizes on WvW map. For example for a 10 man group, if it takes 20 minutes to capture a tower, they can never do that as they will get caught by the other servers zerg eventually. So with such a game design 10 man groups loose their usefulness.

Such a design decision turns WvW to a “Zerg Or Nothing” game, as there will be little left to do for below 50 man groups.

So competitive guilds like mine that bring 10-40 man groups to WvW will require either create huge alliances to form up slightly coordinated Zergs, or most probably we just abandon WvW, look for something else that will promote our organizational success.

Competitive guilds that can bring 5-10 people to WvW will obviously abandon WvW, as their organization won’t mean anything.

So WvW becomes “chat coordinated” casual “clash of zergs” with some exception of Huge Alliances and Huge Guilds.

That’s not something I want to see.

I want WvW to present some valid objectives to well coordinated small groups which can “out-maneuver” zergs and do their jobs. And to counter them other servers use well coordinated small groups. And these objectives are Towers.

From what I know Towers never meant to be hard to take. It’s keeps and castles that you hold your line. Towers are medium scale objectives which small-medium scales group defend/capture. If all your server wants to stick with 70 man zerg attacking the next keep, of course they will loose their towers. It’s how it should be.

If WvW becomes “zerg or nothing” or in other words completely casual “lets smash our heads to each other’s until one is broken”, it’s not what I want. I’m pretty certain it’s not what competitive guilds want also.

You might be representing the player base which enters WvW casually, use chat to find out what’s going on, follow the zerg or commander, and bash your head to gate until either your head or gate breaks, and run back only after someone shouts “WE’RE LOOSING DREADFALL BAY WE NEED HELLPPPP!!!!” like for 6-7 times, I understand why you want an easier game which will hold your hand, teleport you to where fight is, and never request you do something “boring” until you get bored of killing/dying and running from respad.

However I’m representing another part of this community, which use voice communication, divide forces to small groups that gather up for big objectives and separate for smaller ones, always send scouts first before moving, carefully planning an attack, avoid unnecessary skirmishes which keeps us from our objectives, kill quickly and effectively and continue for the objective (not pursuing one guy with 15 man) leave scouts on strategic locations to monitor enemy zerg movements, have an eye on the map following which sentry points are lost, which dolyaks are lost, which camps changed hands.

This is how we like to play this game. I’m sad that not everyone enjoys it and some prefer just killing -> dying -> running -> killing -> dying -> running, but it’s their choice. I’m 100% sure that I never lost a tower to a ninja attack last 2 matches whenever I’m in lead, unless I want to loose it. So I’m 100% sure Towers are not weak, it’s the men defending them.

A quote from Eddard (Ned) Stark: “A wall is only as strong as the men who defend it”