Guild Wars 2

So, it seems to me like the biggest problem with WvW is that you siege keeps… in minutes.

Taking a keep should be a lot more impressive feeling than it is. This is a giant castle you’re attacking, protected by a Lord and his men. And yet you can get a ragtag group of random heroes and smash your way in like the walls are made of sand.

So I tried to imagine something that would make taking a keep feel impressive. I wish Anet would add a map that has more of an actual siege scenario. Make it so one team Defends a Keep, and that is their main and only goal to win. The other teams are racing to be the first to actually take the keep.

So basically, team A is defending in a giant fortress, with walls that are incredibly difficult to take down and don’t go down in minutes, limited supply that’s replenished by the EotM supply drops, with two attacking teams on either side.

The two attacking teams each have a small staging ground defended by strong NPC’s to store supply and build Trebuchet’s etc. in. To get more supply for their siege equipment they have to escort supply caravans in to their staging ground. With Team C being able to attack Team B’s staging ground and supply caravans to hinder them, (and vice versa of course.)

This may not be the best possible implementation, but I have to admit I’d enjoy it a lot more then the current WvW, where Keeps are apparently made of sand.

Keeps, Castles, and Garrisons all require breaching 2 separate layers of fortifications to access the Lord and his guard. If you’re playing against low pop servers where every siege is PVD, then yes, I could understand your frustration. If you crave serious competition, I would look into transferring to a higher tiered server where this sort of sandpaper sieging doesn’t happen often.

All it takes to stop a small-medium sized pug zerg is about 3-5 arrow carts, and some healthy AOE spam to watch that zerg run and regroup/retreat. After the first few minutes of a solid defense with losing people and supply, most pugmanders will take their zerg somewhere with no resistance like a tower or a few camps and leave you to your devices. Remember the smaller the zerg the smaller the supply, they may have to leave just to resupply if they want to fight you proper and that’s a waste of a pugmander’s time.

Oh and if the walls are too much like sand you can reinforce those walls you know. The gate too! The difference in upgraded structures is very significant.

The smaller towers and camps are meant to be flipped often. This is designed to allow a coordinated guild or zerg to build up enough supply locally to take down a bigger Keep/Garri/Castle. While granted the time it takes to do this isn’t a real-life representation of a months/years long siege, there’s quick action there for Havoc Squads to make an impact, and capacity for longer battles where entire zergs clash over fortifications for sometimes well over an hour to gain access to that prized location.

After spending over an hour in a see-saw battle between Black Gate and Tarnished coast over the weekend, it was amazing for us (Jade Quarry) to not only push them off our keep, but take the castle in the same fight… which we subsequently lost almost immediately, but for that one moment, it was ours.

It depends on playtime and matchup.
Some days you run around and do pvd, before you’ll sleep brainafk…
But then… there are some days, where you notice a 60vs60vs60 Fight in a keep over decades of minutes with a lot of rezzing or respawning.
But,
tactics are rare these days. Commanders, Pugs even Guildzergs won’t spent time for using trebs or anything else, which “wastes” time. Epic siege-tactics, fights and so on are rare!

But there are possible and they happen!

Depends on Commander, Pugs, Zergs, Matchups & Playtime.

Play more WvW. Test different Commanders, etc.
May you have to change the server for better fights.

The two commenters above me got it right. But Ykfox, I really like your idea ! How cool would it be to have three more borderlands, in which two servers would team up to siege a big castle held by the third ?

I think you should actually need more than 5 to take a Keep, I know it’s rare to have them flip to lower numbers but it happens a lot on lower populated servers.

honestly, I never understood why the Lord in SM is not on the 3rd floor. Now that would make a real fight!

Siting in trebs and catas is not fun. Sieging an abandoned paper tower with a full zerg is just 2 minutes but try to take a t3 keep fully sieged and defended by a zoneblob. 1-2 hours of facerubing what is boring too.
And if you want epic siege against lord and minions (what is pve) go and play fractals, there is a siege map.

WvW should be redesigned, defending should be more rewarding, siege atack from building to building gets old, disablers need to be worked, there should be a brainstorm CDI also for WvW modifications.