Guild Wars 2

So after free transfers and all those WTJ created a huge imbalance, Anet tries to rebalance with…NPCs.

/facepalm

oh wait, lets just give those depopulated servers NPCs to fill up the missing people, matching the steamrolling servers population in WvW at any given time.

No balance issues, problem solved.

Ireniicus.2167:

Iove.3902:

!THIS EVENT IS USELESS AND COMPLETELY POINTLESS!

If a World does this event that’ll cause the other world to do the event then the other world to do the same. Essentially all that happens is that you basically traded towers and the scores remain the same.

Uhh… what? How’s that helping anything?

I’m glad that ANet is working on developing content for WvWvW, but there’s no point to this addition to the game.

You are welcome to your point of view however I had about 7 hours of WvW since reset and enjoyed the change immensely. It is not perfect but definitely created more dynamics and people moved maps more often and the dozen or so with me agreed.

If I want to do pve then i’ll go do it in the pve part of the game. Give outmanned teams a proper buff, but keep it pvp.

The pvp competitiveness of wvw has just gone out of the window. They keep free transfers for a reason so people who like wvw can join wvw dedicated servers. This change makes it pointless taking the last tower in a border – its so pointless and has nothing to do with skill, organisation and communiocation.

Well, just as predicted, after 2 breakouts in RB by our server (Ehmry Bay), the opposing team(s) learned to let us occupy the tower and now controls the entire map (they also let the other team have 1 tower). Ergo, no more breakouts can occur while their 50+ hold sway all night….again, as usual.

This has been the pattern for 5 weeks now; it appears the opposing teams rarely engage one another, but focus on keeping our server in the spawn area. Nothing can really be done about that except to quit playing in WvW and let our rankings drop , as far as I can see, since the population imbalance is staggering at night (or so it seems from my constant out manned buff). Taking supply camps just to be face-rolled in the next 2-5 minutes is getting real old quite fast. But, perhaps we have the numbers but they just do not bother with WvW, especially at night eh?

Good try though AN.

The only thing that bothers me about breakout is that if you assemble enough people, you can flash build golems on zero supply camps. As a defender you cannot estimate an opponent’s siege capability based on the number of supply camps they own. You can get golem rushed out of nowhere. We can handle it if one attacker does it during off peak I guess? But when both attackers do it at the same time?

An attacker just scouts an enemy borderland during off peak hours, assembles enough to trigger a breakout event and flash build 2 golems. Then you leave the champ to wail on the south tower, get one person to tag the gate of every keep every 3 minutes to contest them and stealth rush garrison instead.

Furry Fury.9036:

Victim.3016:

Well if it rallied 60 people onto the map then it served its purpose?

If 60 can muster why do they require an NPC event?

Victim.3016:

They don’t want one side to have total control, I think map control doesn’t mean what you think it means. Map control is owning the higher % of objectives not total lock out.

WvW is designed to not be balanced, therefore complete control of a map is completely acceptable.

All this will do is encourage zerging. I’m usually careful to put ideas across in a constructive way, but this is so diabolically incompetent I can’t be bothered.

Worst. Idea. To. Date.

[Edit: but this is so diabolically incompetent I can’t be bothered <- “this” refers to the Breakout event itself]

The system already greatly encourages zerging with or without this event, this event just helps players actually play for a little bit before they are slaughtered by who ever has the bigger zerg on the map at that time. In WvWvW Zergs wins matches, the bigger the zergs the better chance you have of winning.

Visiroth.5914:

It’s odd to me that some people seem to be against more fighting in WvW. Seems like they’d just rather the enemy stayed off their BL and it was a ghost town. I don’t really get it, but to each their own I guess.

This exactly. And I dont get it either. Ideally to encourage more fighting no one server should hold 100% of any map ever.

To the comments that say oh you can just retake it. That is the point, it draws the overwhelmingly winning servers manpower across the maps, making them less overwhelming. If matches or times are fairly even, this event doesn’t even come into effect.

I will be glad to see the BL’s not all one constant color anymore that was stupid. Isolation is not > conflict in WvW or have we forgotten the point?

Just put a longer cooldown on the NPC commander…

Unlimited supply is bad. You should only get 10 per player. Having it drop siege that only needs 10 supply or less is bad right now, unless you get 10 free max. They need some quick overhauls to this first release. It’s not a big deal, though.

Yep unlimited supply is bad, just have the commander himself build his own siege to full, dont give free supply to players.

Its not a bad idea really. Though its going to run my plans of taking and holding briar keep unless my server has it as its breakout target. Needs a few tweaks.

Thank you ArenaNet for the breakout event. I think I can even forgive you for the several months of painful one sided matches as my server falls in the rankings.

The breakout event is great, gives help to the side that is losing badly so that they have hope of getting some towers back and not get too demoralized. It is also good for the dominating side, because having no one to fight is boring, and the break out event encourages the defenders to come out and keep trying.

Visiroth.5914:

Furry Fury.9036:

I understand the frustration of undermanned servers not being able to, well, breakout. If the players on those servers are playing GW2 for WvW they can transfer to a WvW-centric server. If they’re PvE players they probably don’t feel the frustration too much.

Even in top tier servers not all maps have a presence or the numbers necessary to breakout at all times. Rarely do we ever have a presence on all 4 maps. Usually it is only on 2 BL + EB, sometimes just 1 BL + EB. Even more rarely we are down to a single map.

Yes. Even in top tier servers. Let it be how it is, don’t tilt it.

Deadcell.9052:

Furry Fury.9036:

Victim.3016:

Well if it rallied 60 people onto the map then it served its purpose?

If 60 can muster why do they require an NPC event?

Victim.3016:

They don’t want one side to have total control, I think map control doesn’t mean what you think it means. Map control is owning the higher % of objectives not total lock out.

WvW is designed to not be balanced, therefore complete control of a map is completely acceptable.

All this will do is encourage zerging. I’m usually careful to put ideas across in a constructive way, but this is so diabolically incompetent I can’t be bothered.

Worst. Idea. To. Date.

[Edit: but this is so diabolically incompetent I can’t be bothered <- “this” refers to the Breakout event itself]

The system already greatly encourages zerging with or without this event, this event just helps players actually play for a little bit before they are slaughtered by who ever has the bigger zerg on the map at that time. In WvWvW Zergs wins matches, the bigger the zergs the better chance you have of winning.

Zergs do not win matches, zergs win battles. Points win matches which equals holding installations.

Fishbait.6723:

It should be activated when there is some huge gap between scores.
Say 25k (miniscule) or 50k+

Letting this start when they can have as little as 800 points (that`s what we got hit by) or even possibly one point, is just stupid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VxbzFcV5r0

Be a while until NPC Wars 2 is uploaded.
I`m downloading Aion again at same time lol

Edit: Just had a thought (ouch)
Costs of upgrades, are these being lowered or removed?
Players pay for these to protect places from other players, not OP guards etc

We could have used that Dolyak on our walk the other day. Just sayin’ …

We have one earlier today when a server had the event started it yet zerged the camps before going back to take the tower.
A lock out should include Camps as well if a server is fully of the map that is including the camps then the event starts but once a camp or other point giving thing is taken then the event fails simples.
the other point I’d like to make is the timer between these events.
it is way to short and is open for abuse big time, not only for the Karma farm but also a large zerg could get all the troops fully supplied before heading out to reap havoc without even trying.
Please Anet make it at least 2 hours between events

Well I did my 1st event today.
I liked it myself.
Its nice for servers like mine that have the outmanned buff a lot.

When getting locked out of your foothold tower is basically what holds you out of a map strategically, I like it, and I’ve had more experience with it against us thus far than participating in it. It helps you get a foothold in the map while also being challenging for the opponents to defend against, it seems like a win-win to me.

REMOVE THE EVENT IT’S KILLED WvWvW and all we hold dear to it.
The time between events is way to short, and has just become another way to farm Karma.
This even makes a mockery of the whole aspect of WvWvW and forces players of lesser numbers to hand the larger zerg servers free karma, badges and kills.
The idea was nice but to me it has fully ruined any form of tactical play.
Sorry Anet but you’ve made this player very unhappy indeed

EnoLive.2367:

REMOVE THE EVENT IT’S KILLED WvWvW and all we hold dear to it.
The time between events is way to short, and has just become another way to farm Karma.
This even makes a mockery of the whole aspect of WvWvW and forces players of lesser numbers to hand the larger zerg servers free karma, badges and kills.
The idea was nice but to me it has fully ruined any form of tactical play.
Sorry Anet but you’ve made this player very unhappy indeed

It only serves to augment your forces. If you want to go take a different tower or camp, nothing is stopping you. The intent is to help you get a foothold in the map and the rest is on you. If you choose to be tactical and not use the event at your tower, once again, there is nothing stopping you.

@Esoteric
I agree with you.
Think people are getting their kittens in a knott because they like to lock the map down and camp the respawn all week.

The problem with being outmanned and incapable of gaining a foothold in WvW is because there is no incentives for people to transfer to servers who are afflicted by low server populations or low WvW turnouts.

Right now there is absolutely no reason for someone to transfer to the lowest tier and the lowest server on that tier. Instead we get people transferring to middle and upper tier servers which only harms lower tiers.

If Anet wanted to do something that was truly of the order to restore some semblance of fairness they would make incentives to transfer to servers that aren’t doing so hot in terms of WvW.

I haven’t put much thought about how you would urge players to go from a middle server or top tiered server to a lower tier server. But one thought that came across my mind is reworking the point system. And rewarding those servers who move up a tier one week. Obviously the lower tiered servers have more opportunities to get a reward rather than T1 who can move nowhere.

What would ideas do you guys have for making lower tiered attractive places for players?

Breakout events have nothing to do with high and low tier server populations.

To get people to transfer you simply put in a dynamic cap on the maps forcing people on high pop servers to sit in a really huge queue. If you don’t like waiting then transfer.

Firmly in support of this. Getting people to spread to all 4 maps makes things more interesting and promotes more battles. Great addition.

Ethose.5694:

Breakout events have nothing to do with high and low tier server populations.

Yes it does.

The concept for break out I can understand. However, it definately makes WvW feel like less of an achievement because it’s like giving away 2 free southern towers (1 to each opposing team).

The implementation needs some further tweaking.

1) The siege + players already get free buffs from the commander. Please get rid of those silly defensive bubbles.

2) Break out events shouldn’t trigger so frequently. There should be a cool down of at least 1 hour. This prevents constant ping-ponging of southern towers.

Those 2 points are the only ones that I can think of at the moment. I’m sure that there are a lot more but I can see the break outs annoying a lot of wvw players.

I did the event today and enjoyed it. Might need tweaks but that is the way of game mechanics. Overall well done Anet.

Today we defeated more than 20 Break Outs with a 25-30man behind it.It still doesn’t matter if it’s with a NPC Commander or not.If you are good/crowded enough to cap all over the map , you can easily defence the wave of this event.

Does that champion even take damage? Hell i spammed arrow cart like mad man and hp bar was full whole time.

They could just stream line the whole event.
After 10 ppl stand by the champion, we spawn in the keep and its ours.
Just trying to save time here because that all it does.

Lame EVENT needs to be removed every fin 10 min they can insta takekeeps its BULLsh*& . Why not add Orbs on top of it again?

Besetment.9187:

The only thing that bothers me about breakout is that if you assemble enough people, you can flash build golems on zero supply camps. As a defender you cannot estimate an opponent’s siege capability based on the number of supply camps they own. You can get golem rushed out of nowhere. We can handle it if one attacker does it during off peak I guess? But when both attackers do it at the same time?

You realize this could already be accomplished by people entering the map with supply on them, right? Furthermore, they could go to another map to resupply then come back. This makes it easier and that’s not a good thing, but it’s not like this couldn’t have happened before.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Ethose.5694:

Breakout events have nothing to do with high and low tier server populations.

Yes it does.

No it doesn’t. I’m on a top tier server with full population and yesterday we had the breakout event occur in all 3 BL. I guess people have this myth that top tier servers have full queues across four maps, and presence on all maps at all times of the day, it isn’t like that at all.

LOL seems like all this did way draw more ppl on the dominating side in hopes that the losers will start this event so they can get some kills instead of just running around an empty map doing the JP over and over.

All Anet did was make food for the already fat and full team.

Since Anet Devs are obviously in somekind of strange cyber love affair with LoL to the point that they made an entire MMO to mask their true passion of tPvP they might as well just go all in and make WvW one big MOBA.

Why just have a breakout event that is so easily countered decimated?
Just make it so there is a constant stream of mob waves that are sent out from your bases. Where Towers will spawn better mobs and Keeps will spawn siege mobs.

You know thats what ANET wants to do anyways and if that make it one big stupid MOBA maybe they will actually start putting some effort into it.

@Visiroth
Well your information is interesting….
However with low end servers its a very different world.
We get steamrolled, map locked in 1-2 days and no one wants to join PVP for the week due to the fact there is usually so few people who will do anything.
So having supplies has nothing to do with it. Its lack of numbers. Also with guilds leaving the low end servers really makes it even harder to do anything but hang out.

Low end and high end servers have their own issues.
If Arena Net would just stop the server xfer we could get more stability in WvW, but that looks like it will never happen.

I would say maybe once a month we get a good match up where its very close for all 3 servers.

Dafomen.7892:

So after free transfers and all those WTJ created a huge imbalance, Anet tries to rebalance with…NPCs.

/facepalm

oh wait, lets just give those depopulated servers NPCs to fill up the missing people, matching the steamrolling servers population in WvW at any given time.

No balance issues, problem solved.

I swear I was just sitting here thinking the same thing. If this is an attempt at balance, it is my belief it’s a failure.

The break out event is all very nice, BUT the matchups are still horribly skewed, so any time you DO capture something, the enemy zerg destroys you anyway. The matchups are never even. Some big guild has always transferred every week, so we always get the Pac-Man pie charts.

The problem is still TRANSFERS

It’s kitten.

If you cannot take and hold the tower closest to your spawn on that borderland then by george does your server suck horribly, or more likely you are completely and utterly outnumbered.

so instead of pulling people from an already poorly populated server and stringing them across all maps with break-out events. Let happen what happens, the server got pushed off due to lack of manpower. And these go to other borderlands and actually get a sizeable enough force to get some real fights going on.

Instead now you get small groups constantly triggering pve events every 5min. Yah, thats a lot of fun. Where did this carebear attitude suddenly come from anyway? What happend to Arenanet’s “l2nightcap or go down, this is war!”. Now suddenly theyre throwing in crutches to spoonfeed towers.

Terrahero.9358:

If you cannot take and hold the tower closest to your spawn on that borderland then by george does your server suck horribly, or more likely you are completely and utterly outnumbered.

Outnumbered because of the free transfers. Yes. This happens every single week. By allowing free transfers for so long, Arenanet have failed their WvW community. The ladder system will NEVER stabilise as long as there are free transfers.

My thoughts:

Commander ai needs improving badly. The only useful thing he does after putting siege up is occasionally pull people from walls.

Doylak attacks the gate, why? Shouldn’t he stay by commander?

1v1 this guy is tough, but with a few people he goes down quite fast (think harpy champ) and is easy kitable. If this guy really is to turn the tide he needs more anti zerg skills otherwise he’s just another 10000k hp mob.

This event also gives me the feeling of ping ponging the tower more than usual. I don’t like that, no sense of accomplishment. Maybe the npc commander should continue past the first tower to capture more areas local to the spawn? If he isn’t killed that is.

Quite simply I will no longer be attacking either of the lower towers in home borderlands,
No offense to the weaker servers but the stronger ones have already begun to exploit this event to fully supply a huge zerg.
If anything remove the supply part of it and give them ready made siege and add on the supply camps as well in the off the map.
TBH they might as well make those two towers immune and perma in the hands of the respective server at Teir one.
I stated before when news of this came out that I would have to see it in action before I gave my viewpoint on it.
I have and my viewpoint is of the above.
the other point I’d like to make is that there is no real stop gap between this event and needs a timer of at least 3 hours.

WvW is pointless and really the funnest part about it is actually fighting not running around the empty map you’ve conquered.

So once a map is conquered just have a chest spawn on the little island for the conquers than have all the Dragons spawn and destroy all the NPCs in the bases and replace them with risen.

Then everyone gets a chance to do some PvEvP to get loot and cap things untill the map gets conquered again.

Id play again if that happened.

I was sceptical too but I’m actually quite enjoying the breakout events. Gives defenders something to do, and gives a camped side a pretty good chance to get a foothold back. It makes that “cap your bl then all move to someone elses” scenario a bit more risky.

The justification I have for breakout events is that it doesn’t get progressively difficult to take keeps deeper into enemy’s corner.

My view is that the system should act like a bowl with a ball in the middle. The ball will roll about but it will always try to go back the equilibrium at the centre.

The problem with WvW is that, roll the ball enough and it falls off the edge of the bowl.

Breakout events are a solution to this, it’s not the best solution but better than nothing.

I’m sorry, but I hope you’re not deleting threads that point out the problems with Breakout events, Anet.

I like the idea, but as it stands, it is too far gone in one direction/extreme; bubbles around siege, for instance. I don’t like the fact that you’re now handicapping a team. Having NPCs carry and build siege for them is just lazy. Now, there is little incentive to upgrade southern towers because they are flipping more frequently than before.

Moreover, what is with the spawn time of these events? I just dislike it in its current state at the moment and am disappointed you didn’t put more thought into how it would work in-game.

If the NPCs are doing all the work for people, how is that a proper reflection of your server’s ability?

I don’t mind Breakout events; it encourages people to defend. But the bubbles have to go and the spawn time has to be lowered. I don’t know what it is, but every 15 minutes is a bit much. And make people build the siege themselves. Make them go to the dolyak, pick up supply and do it themselves.

After getting to see it more than once I have come to the conclusion the only place Breakout should occur is on EB not on home BLs. I just think this makes more sense and would not be as annoying as it is currently.

Visiroth.5914:

Besetment.9187:

The only thing that bothers me about breakout is that if you assemble enough people, you can flash build golems on zero supply camps. As a defender you cannot estimate an opponent’s siege capability based on the number of supply camps they own. You can get golem rushed out of nowhere. We can handle it if one attacker does it during off peak I guess? But when both attackers do it at the same time?

You realize this could already be accomplished by people entering the map with supply on them, right? Furthermore, they could go to another map to resupply then come back. This makes it easier and that’s not a good thing, but it’s not like this couldn’t have happened before.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Ethose.5694:

Breakout events have nothing to do with high and low tier server populations.

Yes it does.

No it doesn’t. I’m on a top tier server with full population and yesterday we had the breakout event occur in all 3 BL. I guess people have this myth that top tier servers have full queues across four maps, and presence on all maps at all times of the day, it isn’t like that at all.

You are ignoring the flipside to that…

I think its good to have these events. before 99% of the time EB in our servers was 100% green. as was their homeworld (not counting supply camps) so all the greens came to places where there still where red/blue towers or keeps to get them as well. This resulted in fighting large numbers on your own border just to keep some places and it got even worse if the other border was also completely green, resulting in full green maps. Which is very boring even for the attackers i would say. Now wit the events, we can send out groups of 10 players to do the events in other maps, so we get towers there. this will result in part of the attackers leaving for those maps to get towers back again (if they don’t the 10 man group will continue after the event to cap more) so if brings more fighting to the game and it is specially good for the underdog servers. because if you only have little and loose a lot, lots of players also leave WVW making it even harder to defend or attack stuff. And changing servers just for WvW is not an solution for everyone.

just deal with the events being there, there will be counters against it i’m sure. I however do feel that the defending team should be rewarded if they manage to stop the event. For example if they manage to hold and kill the commander, they should get their door fixed for free and full supply in tower. (and perhaps some blue prints) in this way even if the event starts strait away again, you don’t have the disadvantage of the half broken gate/wall from the last attack.

all in all i feel that the events support more fighting in WvW specially for the lower servers which is good, it will make more players come for them, and then you have more battle in wvw as a whole. which is a lot better than just those 3-5 man party groups that are taking supply camps back and forth on maps other than their homeworld.

While i see the good intentions, I can’t help but feel changes like this is like having a referee allowing the opposite team using their hands within the penelty zone in soccer.
My biggest gripe is the frequency of the event. But I guess we’ll just leave that last tower alone, problem solved.

Take the kitten PvE out of WvW it’s for PvP.
If you lose you lose there are alternate exits from each spawn for a reason if a server is dump enough to not able to go out of their spawn they deserve to lose. Why do I spend my time and money to capture all map and upgrade it and then some NPC gonna come take it for free without effort. At least if you are adding something like this make it something other server can counter. Siege with bubbles is the worst idea ever…

I think there are two issues here.

1) Why are we fighting an NPC in WvW? I don’t know about anyone else, but I do WvW to fight other humans. If I want to fight NPCs there are many options outside WvW for doing just that, I don’t want to see Anet blurring the boundaries between PvE and WvW by introducing any NPCs who are a far more significant threat than the opposing players.

2) The above point raises the wider issue of consulting the affected players about fundamental changes to their game and working with the affected player base to test any such changes in a realistic way, i.e. with actual players on a public beta test server.

Did a breakout on our main opponent’s BL on Friday night/Saturday morning. We already had around 8-10 people on the map harassing supply camps, doing jumping puzzles, and the like. They called in a friend or two and we took the tower, as well as the two supply camps near it. Seeing this, the opposing server sent a bunch of people to their borderlands to try recapture it fully. A group of 5 of us held the tower for half an hour against a group that started as 15 people and ended as 50. Those players apparently came out of EB to recapture the BL, so our EB forces were able to press deep into their territory there because we actually showed up in their borderlands.

Basically, the breakout events give some small reason to actually go to more maps than just EB and your own BL.