Guild Wars 2

I don’t care if I’m not being polite, plenty of people have asked to have this fixed and I’ve asked more than once myself.

The problem: If you place an AC (arrow cart) in the right spot and set your field of view (FOV) to max, you can hit all players and siege inside a tower or keep.

Using this “method” completely eliminates the attacker and defender roles and just leaves the attackers with an unfair advantage. It is absolutely game breaking, a waste of time and money for the people who build and buy the siege and nothing short of frustrating. I am so beyond tired of spending hours upgrading a structure, adding siege and making all preparations for an attack just to have it all become irrelevant when a zerg puts down 1 or 2 AC’s outside, kills all my siege and chases me around inside the tower with the AC’s.

For anyone who wants to say “well go outside and fight”, that’s not always an option. There’s a reason for building defensive siege and most times it’s just to slow the enemy down until your own zerg can arrive to help defend. But you can’t do anything when the enemy builds these stupid AC’s. I am trying so hard not to curse and make juvenile threats but it’s so infuriating to have this happen on a regular basis.

PLEASE FIX IT. I know you, ANet, are busy with the expansion and other things but this has been happening for a long while now and seriously needs some attention. It’s not something that “occasionally” happens it’s something that happens on a daily basis. WvW is not supposed to be a karma train, it’s a strategic war game. These FOV exploit arrow carts used to be called “zoom hacking” and now it’s a “feature.”

I just spent 2 hours upgrading Quentin Lake in Eternal Battlegrounds, sieged it right to the teeth, and Dragonbrand comes by, drops 6 rams and 1 arrowcart, clears all the siege and kills some of the defenders inside the tower with the arrowcart. I was so angry I was about to throw my computer across the room.

So one last time,
PLEASE
FIX
IT
NOW.

I’m with you.

/15 chars

Are you aware there is a bugs forum on these boards?

You must not know how artillery works if you think this is an exploit.

You’d really hate it if ANet limited the FOV and an experienced fire team (You know, a team trained with military artillery) using team speak or ventrillo for a spotter team to call down fire on your heads without needing to pan out the FOV. Though that might work better with trebuchets and catapults.

This is clearly a “Learn to Adapt and Play” issue.

Arrow cart rains down arrows. So yes, I feel the arrow cart should be able to fire everything inside a tower or a small keep.
It’d be great if the objects that they had no LOS would be hidden tho, but overall I like the new functionality better.
Not to mention that the defender can do the same.

What the actual kitten are those who are defending this behavior talking about… WvW is not a kittening karma train it’s a strategic war and fighting game. Using arrow carts to clean everything inside structures eliminates important roles in WvW to favor greater numbers while crippling the smaller numbers.

You don’t go “oh, this tower is well sieged, guess we should build an arrowcart, stack around it, kill all their siege then take it.” You come up with a different strategy to take the structure by range attacking it (using a catapult or trebuchet for example) or you wait for a more opportune moment to attack it such as when it’s left un-defended.

I’m really tired of people wanting to always take the easy way out by abusing broken “features” like this. It is not at all fun to just steamroll maps all day. People complain that WvW is stale and “dying” for exactly this reason. Because people are ruining the dynamics of it by refusing to think outside the box.

I will NOT build cheese arrowcarts when/if my commander places one. People need to stop breaking WvW then complaining that Anet doesn’t care about it.

Absolutely agree with you SpellOfIniquity (Even if you left Kaineng).

Suspect this thread will be moved back to WvW though.

What? This isn’t an exploit. The devs were well aware of it when the increased the FoV. It’s working as intended.

That is not an exploit.

Working as intended. Kind of.

The devs wanted to improve FOV overall (particularly for PvE) so they made the FOV change. That it now allows you to see into every tower is a side-effect that they no doubt didn’t forsee because they just don’t care much about WvW (see total lack of action and even response to golem-week-exploit debacle for example).

Im my mind a few options appear.

Make a ballista and shoot it while it’s being build? Yes there are corners where you cannot hit them I know. That’s also the experience and skill of the commanders/ players…

If they put it close to the wall you should be able to hit it with normal AOE’s, and if you’re not completely glass you could hit and susain yourself enough to kill it

You could disable it? get 20 supply on you and you could disable twice, while calling the zerg/ defsquad… If you have no other players, you should understand you are in a bad spot if you are alone…

Making all siege unhittable will make for 6 or 8 ac’s above each door again not allowing any caps in the last 6 days of play and or have people just treb the map to their color. it will make the game just waiting till the trebs killed the wall and moving in. completely destroying any PvP involvement, as defenders would most likely give up when the wall goes down.

I do not consider it an exploit tbh. I have done a lot of scouting and scouting ONLY works when the supports comes running, from your map, some maps or all maps depending on the importance of the guarded object this needs to be communicated well.

Siege is a deterrant, and a time waster… you try to make it soi they need to spend time to clean it, so your zerg has more time. If the defending zerg is there at a fully sieged up towerr/keep/castle it will really help, and the attacking AC’s wil be way to busy just to kill siege around the walls.. also showing 1 man defending is important for the warning, but no longer enough for a complete defence.

This isn’t an exploit. They even specifically said that a benefit of this change means that they don’t have to deal with the AC exploiters before the patch because it puts everyone on a level playing field. There have been suggestions to fix the field of view automatically when you wield an AC etc though.

best thing a gw2 player can do is not to take care or worry about anything.

i dont make suggestions or reports to these “pay for comfort”-mmo hosters anymore.

if another game comes out with better realm vs realm id say good bye.

we have the problem with gw2 that it got not enough serious competitors for realm vs realm. its only the market that would make them move, posts on the forums they dont care about, the gemstore skin sales are there so from their sight “game is successful” “players like the game otherswise they not buy in store”.

how many times people have reported stuff and made suggestions for functions or content anet could easy create cause they can.

its not that everything is sooooo complex. they dont want to work on it.

for the AC thing:
show me one single arrow cart in the real world that can shoot in a way the gw2 acs do.

you wont find any ac irl which can just be fired infront of a wall and hit something inside the building…. the angle alone makes it impossible to hit over the wall.

i sincerely whish that community complete stops to buy on the gemstore for half year. you will be suprised how fast you see game updates flying in which fix all that crap and deliver content.

Possibly a zone/keep/tower/wall/etc based LOS fog of war might be best? Keep the idea of being able to look in (we all know the layout anyway) but fog it so you can’t see where people or siege are.

One of the reasons devs introduced the new FOV was to do this, since before only zoomboters and people who know the trick with windowed mode could do it. Now everybody can take advantage of this method.

Embrace it, this behavior with the AC is here to stay (it’s not an exploit).

The person operating the AC should have their camera automatically locked in first person mode for more immersion.

Defending is a freaking joke now. Just lost a fully upgraded Hills when a blob melted the gates within a minute with golems and standing on siege is suicide thanks to golems and elementalists hitting everything up there. Thanks for encouraging pvdooring and blobbing, Anet. I logged off GW2.

Limit FoV back to default when using siege and try to prevent an annoying auto zoom that would come of this change. Done.

Also, stop moving my camera to face where the siege is facing. That’s so annoying, Anet.

“i want people to stop doing this”

“Let me explain how to do this so more people know how to do this”

Envy.1679:

“i want people to stop doing this”

“Let me explain how to do this so more people know how to do this”

ikr, lmao, the irony here

Would just be better if they made AC’s not deal damage to siege or deal very minimal damage to siege.

Seriously, why is an AC dealing substantial structural damage to a massive battering ram? They were designed as anti-personnel and should stay that way.

DeceiverX, the issue is they hit both siege and characters. If you remove the arrowcart damage then how do you destroy rams hitting the gate? Catapults for one no longer damage rams through gates which leaves ballistas, which often have to be put in precarious positions to damage rams. Ballistas are also direct line of sight, so any ram in a recessed gate may be impossible to hit with one. Trebuchets can still damage rams through gates but take quite a lot of effort to build.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Arrow cart rains down arrows. So yes, I feel the arrow cart should be able to fire everything inside a tower or a small keep.
It’d be great if the objects that they had no LOS would be hidden tho, but overall I like the new functionality better.
Not to mention that the defender can do the same.

In that case a ranger rains down arrows too, and an elementalist rains down fire in the form of AoE attacks like meteor storm. These are mostly stopped from use in these situations so your argument is flawed.

And no, the defender cannot always do the same. Attackers build arrowcarts right by the wall, in select position making it difficult or impossible to see from inside. This may not seem an issue but someone using an arrowcart on top of a wall often cannot see the base of the wall outside while someone outside using the new visual options can see all of the top of the wall and usually far beyond.

The problem is it would be very difficult to cure this issue.

Serious.7083:

The problem is it would be very difficult to cure this issue.

Disable first person view in wvw = problem solved

Didnt some one from Anet stated they were fine by players improving their skills trying to do this trick, (w/o hacks ofcourse), becouse this is possible in some spots by just streching the X resolutions and decreasing on Y.

I’m going to start renting myself out to servers to teach how to counter this stuff, lol.

You can’t really call this an exploit, when the developers plainly state that it’s intended.

…I don’t agree with it either, for the record.

I don’t think I’d mind it so much if they had to build the AC a bit away from the wall so the arrows would actually obey some real physical laws. Of course then you get into the pickle of why defenders on walls are just as exposed as the attackers are.

For the record since so many people are saying it… Yes, I know it’s not an exploit but it feels like one anyway. It’s incredibly hard to prevent it when the offending zerg is much larger than the defending force.

Just this morning DB were attacking Bravost tower. They built 2 AC’s about halfway up the wall outside the tower. We disabled them, destroyed them, they built 2 more, we disabled and destroyed and they built MORE. We were low on supplies and most of our siege was dead at this point so they overcame us. All of this took less than 3minutes. If they weren’t able to use the max FOV “cheese”, is what I’ll call it instead of exploit, they would have been repelled.

Yes, as an attacking force it can be frustrating trying to capture something only to get wiped by a million arrowcarts. But guess what? As an attacking force, especially if you’re larger than the defending force, you always have the advantage of time. You drain their supplies, weaken their structure, build catapults, trebuchets, etc. That’s how WvW is supposed to be. It’s a lot more fun trying to devise a way to conquer something than just facesmashing it and insta-gibbing everyone inside with cheese AC’s.

I know ANet intended this as a feature but it’s just so awful on the defender’s part. It’s hard enough to use any defensive siege as it is with Elementalists constantly pelting you with Meteor Showers, Mesmers trying to pull you off the wall every 10 seconds, Rangers perma-crippling you with Barrage and Necro’s Fearing you as soon as a Mesmer pulls you in to their marks. Now we have AC’s to worry about that can chase us any where we go inside the tower. Like how are you supposed to save something if you don’t have the numbers to fight back open field? I just really wish the players as a community would agree to not use this “feature” to prevent WvW from going totally stale. I know I do and a commander can kiss my well rounded @ss if they think I’m going to spend any of my supplies on their cheese AC’s. I want a fight for that tower, I play WvW for the action not for the karma.

Envy.1679:

“i want people to stop doing this”

“Let me explain how to do this so more people know how to do this”

Seeing as Anet has zero chance of responding unless this becomes a completely game-ruining thing, spreading it so that it becomes such might be the only solution.

Of course, chances are even if it is a completely game-ruining issue, they might not do anything either.

Solution:

Make Arrow Carts like Cannons. They can only be built in the keep in designated locations. No more attackers with AC’s or open field AC fights.

Let’s see if the new map’s walls are high enough to fix that.

But I’d really love to have it a bit like TESO. Mark a realistic fly curve from the ac towards your ground target. If an obstacle is in the way you can’t shoot there.

Can’t be that hard to implement.

Yes it is because it is not any way if you calculate Arrows movement, they have to strait up then mid air turn side then down, they need a arc with they cant get when AC is against wall.

Same you shoot underside off a roof and hit what is ontop off the roof.

And if you stand under a roof you should not be hit but you get hit.

Ps if it was on AC but necro, ele, rangers can do same with out ac.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Im my mind a few options appear.

Make a ballista and shoot it while it’s being build? Yes there are corners where you cannot hit them I know.

If an Arrowcart is being built SO FAR away from the edge of a Towers wall, that a ballista can hit it, it won’t be able to clear out much of the Siege anyway (if any at all). The Problem are AC’s which are built in Corners, or in case of some Towers even on the Wall’s “feet” (dunno how to describe it)! An AC built like that can’t be hit even by a ballista built on the edge of a Wall, and neither by the majority of the classes Weapon-based Attacks (due to LoS issues at that angle), unless they are jumping for- and backwards during their attack channels. And don’t forget that this is regularily used by numerically superior attackers against few Defenders Last time i’ve seen it being used, there were like 3 dedicated Defenders in a Tower, with 40+ bad Zerglings rushing at the gates – they didn’t even try taking out the oil/cannons first, lost all their first rams and some people to those and AC Fire, and did what? Exactly! Flashbuilt 2 SAC’s at Places where the Wall absolutely destroys the Defenders LoS, and just destroy the Siege AND the Defenders inside the tower… Defenders couldn’t so much, since they had to get a clear LoS on the Siege, which was hardly possible due to the placement, and outright impossible with a Blobb spamming AoE on the Wall in question. Was really rooting for the Defending Side, but i guess in the End it’s the blobb that’s gonna win – no matter how (in)competent the players composing it are.

That’s also the experience and skill of the commanders/ players…

Considering how even those players managed to do so, i’am not entirely sure if Flashbuilding AC’s on such locations would require any kind of “skill” (it’s not even experience – simply use your brain to find the place that is best Protected by LoS issues and you’re good).

If they put it close to the wall you should be able to hit it with normal AOE’s, and if you’re not completely glass you could hit and susain yourself enough to kill it

You could disable it? get 20 supply on you and you could disable twice, while calling the zerg/ defsquad… If you have no other players, you should understand you are in a bad spot if you are alone…

In a blobb vs few scenario? Nope, not even Soldier Armor is going to save your hide long enough. If your Soldier Ele/Engi even gets to the edge of the wall (through all those Necro Wells, Marks and Meteor Showers), you probably have enough HP left to life for what.. another 1-2 Seconds? And thats just if the Zerg down there is very bad :p

To the Siege disabler thing: Yes, currently the only real way to “counter” this “tactic”

Making all siege unhittable will make for 6 or 8 ac’s above each door again not allowing any caps in the last 6 days of play and or have people just treb the map to their color. it will make the game just waiting till the trebs killed the wall and moving in. completely destroying any PvP involvement, as defenders would most likely give up when the wall goes down.

TBH, i would rather have bad Zerglings wait longer for the Walls to break, than having them abuse the AC to clear out the Defenders. I mean “destroying any PvP involvement”? I don’t think giving up by dying-in-attackers-AC-Fire-covering-the-whole-tower is in any way different than giving up when the Wall breaks – except for the fact that bad zerglings aren’t rewarded with loot in the second case :P

Well, actually there IS a counter to those AC’s, but it requires a rather large Amount of scepter Eles (and a target caller) to work. Although i would really like to see that nerfed as well – there was a reason, why Mesmer Phantasms where nerfed back then, and i still don’t get why they didn’t give Dragons Tooth the same Treatment (cause it is just as Toxic as AC’s when used from the blobb in a blobb vs few Situation)

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

It’s refreshing to see that there are still players out there with that attitude.
In my opinion the real problem is not the ACs but that you can cast through walls (roofs, doors etc. respectively). If you build an AC outside of a keep and clear deff inside, you don’t shoot over the wall, but through the wall. Guardians cast through walls with their staff and kill defensive trebs in this way. That is what makes it absurd. Sadly, most of the players will lightheartedly take advantage of any of the game’s flaws just because it makes it easier.

Zetsumei.4975:

This isn’t an exploit. They even specifically said that a benefit of this change means that they don’t have to deal with the AC exploiters before the patch because it puts everyone on a level playing field. There have been suggestions to fix the field of view automatically when you wield an AC etc though.

I can’t wait for the patch that lets everyone start flying and teleporting under the map so we can all be on the same level!

Words

“An exploit is the misuse of a software feature or bug in a way that allows a player to generate in-game benefits without the risk or time expected by the game’s designers. It can involve the use of a third-party program and it includes generating currency, experience, or other things of value to players. It also includes actions that allow one player to gain a gameplay advantage over other players ".

http://wiki.guildwars-2.ru/index.php/Exploit

Solutions/Actions ????

OP, until this happens..

" Solutions To A Problem Can Only Be Found, When You Want To Get Rid Of It "
Ankur

There will be no solutions or actions to exploits and unfairness.

That is all.

Puck.9612:

Zetsumei.4975:

This isn’t an exploit. They even specifically said that a benefit of this change means that they don’t have to deal with the AC exploiters before the patch because it puts everyone on a level playing field. There have been suggestions to fix the field of view automatically when you wield an AC etc though.

I can’t wait for the patch that lets everyone start flying and teleporting under the map so we can all be on the same level!

This. Waiting for my 50% runspeed buff.

Instead of doing something about the “zoomhack” they made it universal so now we all can do this lame and cheese “tactic”. I completely agree with you OP. Guess those people defending this method are the ones that never upgrade and siege a keep/tower.

phirefox.2568:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Im my mind a few options appear.

Make a ballista and shoot it while it’s being build? Yes there are corners where you cannot hit them I know.

If an Arrowcart is being built SO FAR away from the edge of a Towers wall, that a ballista can hit it, it won’t be able to clear out much of the Siege anyway (if any at all).

In most cases if a ballista can fire out and hit something then a ranger can hit the ballista and destroy it. Where this is not possible just move around the corner and hit the wall, or build counter ballistas.

To be honest so far the only place I haven’t been able to destroy a ballista with my ranger is at the North East tower.

I am fed up with having to deal with this garbage this is beyond pathetic abuse, JQ uses this hacking cheat everyday to kill all siege and defending players constantly especially during late na times. This is not even tied to the camera changes, this is cheating, no way one ac can fire so often, so far, and do this much damage without some sort of cheat involved. Shame on you jq for your continued pathetic cheating.

While it isn’t a hack or a cheat, it’s still a part of the game that’s idiotic, and further unbalances a mode already in favour of the attacking zerg. Seeing 50 people come to your keep with Omegas and build ACs against your 6 defenders, while a “legit” tactic, is just pathetic, and it’s no wonder it puts people off.

I could be wrong, but I don’t recall ever hearing anyone complain that defensive siege was OP prior to this change being made.

But hey, gotta give the plebs their EZ mode.

No, this is beyond the camera changes. When you see ONE AC spamming MULTIPLE aoe rings at a time, spamming attacks with no cd, doing ridiculously high damage, hitting stuff way beyond its range and ability/los, then there is indeed cheating and abuse going on. I see this abused every night by jq, one ac doing all this impossible stuff.

AC are easy to counter, just attack with cata or treb….
This is made to “force” player to really siege keep, and not only to KT with plenty of rams in front of the door ignoring defender….
Actually the defense is difficult, because with 30+ people you take a T3 keep in less then 3min….
You have to give time to defenser to really defend…. And if you don’t give time to the scout with few ac then we will only have KT all the day…
Actually the blob just need to place 2 acs outside the wall and then clear all the siege..

Acs should be counter with long range attack, not with camera cheat.

Give it a fixed view or make it Line of Sight, this is just terrible.

People would just use the zoom hack and still have an unfair advantage anyway, which is probably why they gave us the FOV change.

Toxicity.5392:

People would just use the zoom hack and still have an unfair advantage anyway, which is probably why they gave us the FOV change.

That means if other player is cheating with 3rd party prog, they dont need to take actions over that player becouse u can do the same w/o a 3rd party programs.

p.s.. Well not really the same effect and effectiveness w/o 3rd party tools, but is a way for the “working as intended” visual effect as the other player were cheating with those.

Toxicity.5392:

People would just use the zoom hack and still have an unfair advantage anyway, which is probably why they gave us the FOV change.

So we are back on the everybody should be able to fly argument? I mean those players clearly have an unfair advantage so why not give it to everyone right? Who cares if they fly into a t3 keep and flip it, you can just fly in and take it back. Let’s keep that karma train rolling!

SlateSloan.3654:

if another game comes out with better realm vs realm id say good bye.

Hopefully: http://camelotunchained.com/v2/ beta announced in September supposedly.

As for the arrow carts. Yep, kind of cheesy and not quite as worthwhile defending, however in most towers you can put an AC on the floor and have it ready to kill theirs.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

What the actual kitten are those who are defending this behavior talking about… WvW is not a kittening karma train it’s a strategic war and fighting game. Using arrow carts to clean everything inside structures eliminates important roles in WvW to favor greater numbers while crippling the smaller numbers.

You don’t go “oh, this tower is well sieged, guess we should build an arrowcart, stack around it, kill all their siege then take it.” You come up with a different strategy to take the structure by range attacking it (using a catapult or trebuchet for example) or you wait for a more opportune moment to attack it such as when it’s left un-defended.

I’m really tired of people wanting to always take the easy way out by abusing broken “features” like this. It is not at all fun to just steamroll maps all day. People complain that WvW is stale and “dying” for exactly this reason. Because people are ruining the dynamics of it by refusing to think outside the box.

I will NOT build cheese arrowcarts when/if my commander places one. People need to stop breaking WvW then complaining that Anet doesn’t care about it.

I agree with much of what you said here, but the new camera view can’t be blamed on the player when it was a dynamic granted by development.

By the same token it doesn’t make sense that attacks can hit behind walls and destroy AC or hit enemy players behind walls when a rangers barrage can’t even fire down on the enemy when they are on the edge of the wall exposed and in view of the enemy.

/salute from anvil rock btw

Kamara.4187:

I agree with much of what you said here, but the new camera view can’t be blamed on the player when it was a dynamic granted by development.

By the same token it doesn’t make sense that attacks can hit behind walls and destroy AC or hit enemy players behind walls when a rangers barrage can’t even fire down on the enemy when they are on the edge of the wall exposed and in view of the enemy.

/salute from anvil rock btw

I agree to an extent but I just wish the WvW community would collectively agree not to use this crap. There is nothing that frustrates me more than hopping on an AC or treb or what ever else I’m trying to use to defend something only to immediately get pelted by an arrowcart from outside which then proceeds to chase me around everywhere I go. Like I understand that it’s frustrating when you attack something that’s well sieged and it sucks to have your zerg get wiped by a bunch of AC’s but as I’d said in another comment in this thread the attacking zerg almost always has the advantage of time. Just build catas or trebs or something instead of dropping cheese AC’s.

Ugh, I could rant about it all day, lol.

And /salute to you as well. I like to be trolly in WvW but it’s all in good fun.. I won’t use unfair advantages so you can expect to never see me building cheese AC’s.