Coverage is a major issue in this game IMO. It leads to server transfers and corrupted players. Is it possible that we could fix this via pre-existing game mechanics? I say yes.
Here is my theory: Towers and keeps are as good as gone if no one is there, and if there is, they can’t often hold a keep alone unless they have a very good knowledge of the. game. Also, the keep and tower lords have become useless in protecting a keep. I have solo’d every objective except SMC, and I can say that it is no challenge anymore, even when i go on my alts.
So what is the reason? I believe that the ease with which tower guards, even Fully upgraded ones, can be killed is absurd. I personally feel camps are in a good place, but these towers and keeps have meaningless archers and soldiers in them that do nothing. This is why I suggest that the archers and guards of towers and keeps get a major buff. They should be much more functioning in terms of survivability and be able to counter siege and other things much more efficiently.
Look at storm callers in EOTM. I have personally single handedly kept them alive so they can destroy rams of the enemy teams (just some fun trolling). Meanwhile, all archers seem good for is knocking people out of South West Tower.
Finally, to get to implementation. Archers should have much more damage than they currently do. They should also have access to the arrow barrage skill which archers have, and this should have fairly high damage. Further more, when a tower/keep is being attacked, the archers should all go to where the enemies are and start to fight them. This would seem to be a nuesense in the archer’s current state, but if they have a function where they avoid red aoe rings. Additionally, they target siege weapons over players, making them more effective in defending an objective before the melee train smacks them to death.
Additionally, soldiers/scouts should have higher health when upgraded, and should switch their targeting from highest armor to highest power, allowing them to actually kill people rather than trying to kill the super tanky guard or warrior
Just an idea…rage away
Coverage solution...possibly?
Inb4 everyone start raging on you saying EotM is PvE and that EotM should never be compared to WvW.
The NPCs are suposed to be only a nuissance and not be able to defend by themselves… Buffing the NPCs too much would completely shut down the ability of small groups to ninja cap towers and keeps. Hell, you said yourself how the storm-callers can wreck people.
Overall it’s a bad idea that will only force people to zerg, which end up helping more the server with more people than the ones with less people.
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Perhaps a better way to buff NPCs would be to give them the same power as the Overgrowth Sentry Turrets from EotM. the main difference between a veteran archer and an average player is that the average player will tell the map that enemies are present.
If you can look at your map and see a big orange cluster of enemy dots, (because they’ve been reported to the map by the NPCs) our small defending teams would be able to do more to intercept other small teams, and would know whether a huge blob is attacking a structure without waiting 2.5 minutes for the first scout to run down there and get EYEBALLS on them.
Also helps to know whether a structure was tapped, or whether there’s a group ramming or cataing.
just my $.02
@Hamster: Yeah…that’s a better idea. Makes more sense too.
Inb4 everyone start raging on you saying EotM is PvE and that EotM should never be compared to WvW.
The NPCs are suposed to be only a nuissance and not be able to defend by themselves… Buffing the NPCs too much would completely shut down the ability of small groups to ninja cap towers and keeps. Hell, you said yourself how the storm-callers can wreck people.
Overall it’s a bad idea that will only force people to zerg, which end up helping more the server with more people than the ones with less people.
You can take pretty much anything in EotM with 5/10 lvl80 with a decent build without problem actually.
Anything under that shouldn’t be able to cap a Tower, even less a T3 Tower, and i don’t even talk about a T3 keep.
It’s been long past time they put similarily strong NPC in WvW than in EotM (but balanced ones, at least per map, so we don’t en up with the EotM situation where the Blue Npcs are by far the strongest and most dangerous and the Red ones the most useless ones).