Guild Wars 2

This problem contributes to why so many matches end up so unbalanced. Once your server has a small population advantage, it’s quick to sweep the map.

It also helps encourage “zergs”. 30 people can sack a fully upgraded tower in literally about 3 minutes unless there are defenders already inside, already manning siege engines positioned to deal a beating to rams and golems. If nobody is home: 3 minutes.

Keeps and even Stonemist will fall in just a handful of minutes unless defenders are posted there 24/7. Keep lords die to 30 players in…what…about 15 seconds? This is not hyperbole. I’m pretty sure we could time it at 15 seconds or less.

.

• Doors need more health.
• Rams should cost more supplies (dropping 4 rams should be a rare sight).
• Lords and supervisors should have their hit points increased by roughly 20×. No exaggeration. 20x for starters and see how that feels.
• NPC guards should be like Lords are now.
• Guard upgrades, in particular, should be exceedingly nasty. Currently, since regular NPC guards are worthless against more than a small group, the upgrades are not worthwhile.
• Lord room control point: current timer is….15 seconds again? What about if it was 2 minutes? (In Planetside it was either 10 or 15 minutes, I forget.)

By slowing down “zerg caps” and “off-hour caps” I think we’d stabilize the game a lot. Give defenders a chance to respond to attacks.

Currently it’s just way too easy to assemble a zerg and sweep through an area.

NPCs should not guard a keep for you. They are there to prevent a single enemy from taking it out alone, not be a hindrance for a large army.

I could agree to changing the control timer a bit, but that would necessitate a mechanic change from the current 1 enemy inside stops it to needing to have equal numbers inside to stop.

The only thing I agree with the OP is that siege should cost way more. Everyone lays it everywhere because its stupid cheap. Hell I bought a few golems just to run around with. They should cost 10g min.

I think they are precisely meant to be a hindrance. The walls, doors and guards are meant to prevent late-night capping by small groups (they fail at this; I’m pretty sure you could cap a keep with 5 people — possibly 2 nicely geared people could do it if they were careful. I could solo a supply camp were it not for the blinds).

They are also meant to be a slow-down — or they should be. I just don’t think a fully upgraded keep is meant to fall so fast. Yesterday my server did a literal pug zerg and took down a fully upgraded borderlands keep in what couldn’t have been more than 5 minutes. This was by no means an elite attack by the best of the best. It was a zerg of various small guilds that just grouped up, ran over and kicked the place down faster than the enemy could respond. Reinforced doors, reinforced walls, cannons, mortars, upgraded NPCs, orb, poof.

i think they should be buffed, but 20x is pretty extreme. all that would do is just be rather irritating.

You have to be careful about making Lords too powerful or the best way to defend a structure would be to sit on top of them and spam AoE and such while he deals big dmg and tanks the enemy zerg for you. It’s already semi effective.

What they could do though is make more NPC’s spawn at keeps and towers for a side who is severely undermanned. Then despawn them if more numbers show up. They wouldn’t be as good as players, but could at least diminish night capping and rolling up the map so fast when numbers are low.

WvW is good as it is now. 5 people can already hold back 30 with little trouble. There’s no need to boost the defensive advantage even more.

I think the Lords and their personal guard should be on par with a dungeon boss from PvE if not stronger, not only in health pool, they need far better scripting unique to thier lord. For example, a tower champion should have a full range of utility skills and an elite that works in cohesion with his personal bodyguard. I want to see champions scale to the amount of attackers & defenders, if there are more attackers than defenders the champions and bodyguard get a “last stand” buff. The NPCs guarding the wall should remain the same though.

VakarisJ.5619:

WvW is good as it is now. 5 people can already hold back 30 with little trouble. There’s no need to boost the defensive advantage even more.

And how often do you see 5 people sitting in a tower 24/7? I almost never see that and I do it a lot.

Against 30 good attackers (who understand siege), 5 can delay them long enough for help to arrive.

30 good attackers against a fully upgraded keep with nobody home will sack it in about 3 minutes. You won’t have time to get 5 people there.

I’ve seen one guy solo a supply camp. Also my friend and I duo supply camps easy if no one is there defending it.

VakarisJ.5619:

WvW is good as it is now. 5 people can already hold back 30 who are using no siege weapons with little trouble.

There, I fixed it.

Slamz.5376:

This problem contributes to why so many matches end up so unbalanced. Once your server has a small population advantage, it’s quick to sweep the map.

It also helps encourage “zergs”. 30 people can sack a fully upgraded tower in literally about 3 minutes unless there are defenders already inside, already manning siege engines positioned to deal a beating to rams and golems. If nobody is home: 3 minutes.

Keeps and even Stonemist will fall in just a handful of minutes unless defenders are posted there 24/7. Keep lords die to 30 players in…what…about 15 seconds? This is not hyperbole. I’m pretty sure we could time it at 15 seconds or less.

.

• Doors need more health.
• Rams should cost more supplies (dropping 4 rams should be a rare sight).
• Lords and supervisors should have their hit points increased by roughly 20×. No exaggeration. 20x for starters and see how that feels.
• NPC guards should be like Lords are now.
• Guard upgrades, in particular, should be exceedingly nasty. Currently, since regular NPC guards are worthless against more than a small group, the upgrades are not worthwhile.
• Lord room control point: current timer is….15 seconds again? What about if it was 2 minutes? (In Planetside it was either 10 or 15 minutes, I forget.)

By slowing down “zerg caps” and “off-hour caps” I think we’d stabilize the game a lot. Give defenders a chance to respond to attacks.

Currently it’s just way too easy to assemble a zerg and sweep through an area.

You are trolling right?

IMO, the only changes WvW needs regarding Siege is:

1. Arrow Carts should either do less dmg, be more expensive, or have a smaller AoE.

2. An upgrade that can be purchased in keeps/towers/camps that allow NPCs to respawn 50% faster.

3. Rams should require 50 supply to build, instead of 40.

4. Control timer should be vastly increased. Anywhere from 2-5 minutes AT LEAST imo.

Those are the most needed changes regarding sieges as of now, i think.

I don’t agree that objectives should be able to defend themselves for any length of time. Nothing would change hands if it were that hard to take things. That would make the game incredibly boring.

The only issue I see is this:

Siege in general is far too cheap in terms of supplies for how powerful it is. Any supplies funneled into upgrades like oil or cannons would be far better off put towards siege. You can put up 7 arrow carts for what it costs to build cannons. It isn’t a tough decision between those two. The cannons will be the first thing gone if anyone comes along to attack. The arrow carts can be placed so that they are unreachable to anything but siege. And even if you lose siege they are cheap enough it doesn’t even matter. You can have a new one built in less than 10 seconds. All the siege prices (in terms of supply) probably have to be tripled at least.

Guards shouldnt be like lords. But there is a huge problem with guards and lords. Some people can even solo 3-4 veteran guards alone.

I think some of the chance should be to let guards be lvl82 as default (The current upgraded level.) and level 85 as upgraded. Added to that should be some kind of semi champion at the gates. Also more guards added around the keeps and towers. Maybe more kinds as well. Finally the lord needs a good beefup.

The problem as I see it is 5 people can basicly wipe a fully upgraded keep. That number needs to be higher.

Pwnage Engage.9780:

4. Control timer should be vastly increased. Anywhere from 2-5 minutes AT LEAST imo.

I don’t think so, once the attackers are inside you Keep taking control of it should be rather easy.

Slamz.5376:

VakarisJ.5619:

WvW is good as it is now. 5 people can already hold back 30 with little trouble. There’s no need to boost the defensive advantage even more.

And how often do you see 5 people sitting in a tower 24/7? I almost never see that and I do it a lot.

Against 30 good attackers (who understand siege), 5 can delay them long enough for help to arrive.

30 good attackers against a fully upgraded keep with nobody home will sack it in about 3 minutes. You won’t have time to get 5 people there.

This is WvW, you aren’t supposed to sit in a stronghold doing kittenall. You’re supposed to be where you’re needed, and if you’re putting siege into the equation – it needs time to be set up and the defenders will likely have ballistas, catapults, cannons and arrowcarts on their walls if they saw 30 were anywhere near a stronghold.
No good, organised group of people will assault a stronghold head-on without taking over the nearby supply camp. That gives the defenders more then enough time to muster a defense.
Also, 30 “good attackers” are hard to come by. Usually clans run in low numbers – 5-10 people. Larger groups tend to be mindless zerg, with no plan other then to nibble at the gate with their toothpicks, while some guy urges everyone to help build his catapult.

I absolutly agree with the OP.
It is much too easy to get inside a keep. Guards are to few and to weak. When i remember a lvl 10 keep in DAoC…. or just a lvl 10 tower. Relicguards were 2hitting mages and so on. Also Siegeweapons are really too cheap. A ram should cost at least 200 supply or 100 supply, something in that range. trebs should cost 1k supply. at the moment its just terrible. i play on a german server against an european and a french (with all the canadians) server. all we can do is hide in a keep until 100 people are rolling onto us with 6 trebs destroying a wall in notime. and while we sleep they cap all our fortified keeps because it really takes only 3min.
also there is way too much groundtarget aoe. its just aoe vs. aoe. no skill involved at all.

It’s fine as it is now when populations are balanced, however I’m sure ArenaNet said at some point that NPCs would scale in some way.

Buff lords and guards when populations are imbalanced, to the extent that they are, and make upgrading them have much more of an impact. Maybe even make a “night-watch” upgrade, which gives keeps/towers extra guards relative to how outnumbered a server is. If a server fights hard enough throughout the day to acquire such an upgrade, but happens to lack night-time players, then the night-watch guards should do a decent job of defending for them, but then de-spawn as soon as populations normalise.

Night-capping has obviously been the reason for a lot of complaints, so maybe this would be a step towards solving it.

In daoc there also was something like nightcapping when some groups wanted to go for the relic. but even with only a few defenders it took up to 1 hour for a keep. good defended keeps were even harder to caputre. there is no epicness and no fun to know that we will lose everything we worked for the whole evening in 30min after we go offline. and at this point i dont even talk about the size of the maps and the playernumbers on it…..

Guys are you out of your mind?

When a server leading and fully upgraded a keep, if there are some players inside, it’skittenhard and expensive to capture it back. Stronger walls, stronger upgrades, more expensive siege weapons only help the winning side. There are already a lot of threads whining about winning side opening the gap too much.

If you don’t want to loose a keep, tower build up some siege weapons inside (ballistas/arrow carts/catapults even trebs) and leave 2-3 guys behind when rushing forward.

If you’re playing like a bunch of not organized zerg, don’t come here and whine as NPCs don’t protect the keep/tower you should have been protecting. If you find attacking is more fun, go attack but don’t whine when you loose the fort you captured 10 min ago

If you’re buying gold by RMT, or making alot of gold by PvE please don’t come here and troll. Siege equipment are NOT cheap. If you spend your whole day on WvW, repair costs and siege equipment costs (both defensive and offensive) drains your wallet. What you gain from WvW hardly compensates for it.

More supplies for siege weapons, and increased tower/keep lord timer only help mindless zergs. It means if you have more people you can carry more supplies and you win. It makes small/organized teams less valuable (actually useless) as they can carry less supplies . It makes impossible to make ninja attack behind to places which is not protected. It kills the strategic variety game presents and turns it Zerg vs Zerg head crashes.

I guess you’re same people suggesting faster travel times on WvW. Because you lack the organization or patience to defend structures it doesn’t mean that everyone is. Don’t kitten the game and turn it to SWTOR: Illum.

All the things you suggest promotes being a zerg, not leaving room to 5/10/15 man groups.

Please first play the game properly then come whine here. Learn to defend before attacking the next goal.

Don’t come here and whine if you play WvW on weekend for a few hours each week.
Don’t come here and whine if you play WvW as an individual following the zerg not a part of a proper organization.

Changing costs, structure strength or NPC strenght will not change night capping. As in all night cappings one server moves as one zerg, so they will cap anything on their path as long as it’s possible. And if it’s not possible it will never be possible in day time so game will be un-playable.

I don’t know your experience but I haven’t seen 5 guys capping a map on night. What happens more is 30-100 players cap the map (depending on the server) in less than an hour. Changes you suggest won’t help it.

EDIT: On the contrary stronger structures help night capping servers, and they have more time and resources to upgrade forts until morning. So they will easily cap everything on their path till morning and protected them even easier as they are fully upgraded.

and when the nightcappers go to sleep the other servers get stuff back. as long everybody has the same time zone its not that of a problem. but dont get me started of thosekittencanadians running around with playercap at 5am…..
WvW comes close to the kittens that happend in WAR. Keeptraiding all the time. There is nothing like “YEAH! Finally we got a new keep!”, its more like yey karma and cash. lets head on to the next and hope that the others cap the keep so we can retake it for more karma and cash so we can get more exotic gear for twinks we dont play on wvw maps we cant join because of queues…

Hamsta.5719:

and when the nightcappers go to sleep the other servers get stuff back. as long everybody has the same time zone its not that of a problem. but dont get me started of thosekittencanadians running around with playercap at 5am…..
WvW comes close to the kittens that happend in WAR. Keeptraiding all the time. There is nothing like “YEAH! Finally we got a new keep!”, its more like yey karma and cash. lets head on to the next and hope that the others cap the keep so we can retake it for more karma and cash so we can get more exotic gear for twinks we dont play on wvw maps we cant join because of queues…

Don’t expect more from the zerg, if you want to keep what you have, either stay behind and protect it, or join an organized guild with voice comm.

EDIT: About night capping and canadians, I know what you mean. But suggestions here will help them not stop.

A supply camp commander lasts 10x longer than a lord

Sora Aoi.3461:

A supply camp commander lasts 10x longer than a lord

He does “only” if he’s in 5 min immunity

I’m being serious when I say this, “I usually go around and solo supply camps.” They’re not that hard. If there’s an enemy player, I won’t go for it, but if no one’s there, it’s easy pickings.

Umm how to stop an empty keep being taken so quickly? I’m right in reading the title of this thread arent i?

Because there is a really simple answer…. Defend it.

what Kazim said.

Slamz.5376:

• Doors need more health.
• Rams should cost more supplies (dropping 4 rams should be a rare sight).
• Lords and supervisors should have their hit points increased by roughly 20×. No exaggeration. 20x for starters and see how that feels.
• NPC guards should be like Lords are now.
• Guard upgrades, in particular, should be exceedingly nasty. Currently, since regular NPC guards are worthless against more than a small group, the upgrades are not worthwhile.
• Lord room control point: current timer is….15 seconds again? What about if it was 2 minutes? (In Planetside it was either 10 or 15 minutes, I forget.)

By slowing down “zerg caps” and “off-hour caps” I think we’d stabilize the game a lot. Give defenders a chance to respond to attacks.

Currently it’s just way too easy to assemble a zerg and sweep through an area.

I agree with your general sentiment and the problem you’re trying to address. I share the same concerns and have voiced by opinion about it (to little avail) in the past. Keep capping definitely needs to slow down or made harder.

Doors could use more health, but not a huge amount. The problem seems to be more related to stacking of Siege weapons and swarming with regular attacks.

I’d suggest:

1. Further reduce the power of regular attacks vs. a gate. Not by much, but ranged weapons especially should be made less effective. Melees tend to be at a high risk (hot oil) so that risk should be rewarded. In fact, maybe ranged attacks should be completely ineffective against gates. Just a thought…

2. Every Siege weapon places a brief, 2 second boon on the gate that reduces the damage taken by siege weapons by 10%. This would discourage the excessive stacking of siege weapons and reduce their effectiveness without hampering “normal scale” sieges.

As for the rest, I agree with those points wholeheartedly.

The problem is many people seem to enjoy this rug-tug style of WvW. ANets stance is unclear so we’ll have to see if they consider this an issue or not.

Make the Lord a Grub.
LORD GRUB….

Door/wall hitpoints are good as it is. It’s not NPCs’ or doors’ fault if your response time is slow, as you’re NOT organized. More hitpoints on doors/walls will destroy the value of organized 10/15 man groups as they can’t carry enough supplies to bring down an objective before “mindless zerg” responds.

Please don’t bring ideas that will promote “mindless zerging”, don’t bring ideas that promote “all server running to where action is”.

WvW should honor fast-movement, better organization, better communication, better tactics. Not a zerg of 100 man, running from one fort to the other and able to save the day.

Faster travel, longer response times only help zergs, not organized teams, with shared objectives. If you’re having struggle to defend forts while pushing forward do these

1. Form up guilds/alliances, share the objectives
2. Use voice communication, rather than typing.
3. Use scouts both front and back (swap them from time to time so they don’t get bored)
4. Use dedicated defensive/offensive teams.
5. Plant defensive siege weapons before charging to next objective. If you captured a keep first plant a few arrowcarts, catapults, ballistas (even trebs) on good positions THEN move to next tower.
6. Don’t take supplies within keeps/towers as they are used for upgrades. Tell people again and again until they learn it also.

First learn how to play WvW then come here and talk about improvements GW2 needs.

Night capping is a problem, but promoting zergs won’t solve that problem.

No good, organised group of people will assault a stronghold head-on without taking over the nearby supply camp. That gives the defenders more then enough time to muster a defense.

On the contrary, “good, organized groups” AVOID the supply camp precisely for that reason.

Even our pug zerg avoided the supply camp. That’s why we were halfway through the inner door before the first defenders managed to get in. Not that it did them much good. Too late.

Slamz.5376:

Even our pug zerg avoided the supply camp. That’s why we were halfway through the inner door before the first defenders managed to get in. Not that it did them much good. Too late.

It’s their fault if they didn’t left a few guys to scout your zerg’s movements. This is how WvW should be.

Kazim.2043

:More hitpoints on doors/walls will destroy the value of organized 10/15 man groups as they can’t carry enough supplies to bring down an objective before “mindless zerg” responds.

So basically your vision of WvW is small groups avoiding each other and wiping through keeps before anyone can notice them or do anything about it.

That’s not PvP.

That’s PvE.

It’s an XP farm, which I guess is your goal, but I prefer fights between warring groups of players. This “capture-recapture-capture-recapture” see-saw action is the result of the current design with weak doors, weak lords and weak guards.

Let’s get back to having a war, not a PvE farm.

Your impressive ability to ignore my points is worth respect at least, I give it to you. I’m saying “defend your forts if you don’t want them to get recaptured”. It’s nothing about XP. It’s not about small groups “avoiding” but but “out-maneuvering” each other.

If from WvW you understand 100 players of one server bashing to 100 players of other server continuously it’s not the game you’re looking for. Try Starwars Illum. Perfect place for you. Or if you want to stick with this game but swing your sword more, try sPvP. WvW is not about killing eachother, it’s about “capturing the objectives” and “defending the objectives”. if you fail on the part “defending the objectives” you deserve to loose.

WvW is not only swinging swords and casting spells. It’s about tactics / movements / getting prepared / hitting on the spot which is weak / defending your weak spots. Learn to organize, learn to communicate and win.

If you like fighting against the same zerg on the same fort or at the spawn camp back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth….. it’s your choice. I don’t like it. I prefer using maneuvers, flank my enemy, bypass them and attack the unprotected spot behind, confuse them. I value communication and organization, not a one and only one mindless zerg running to where action is.

And NO it’s not PvE. If you’re facing a similar organized server, you never find a fort undefended, not scouted. And their response times are fast enough to get their force back in time to save the day. If your server lacks that ability either help forming some organization there, or join to a guild/server which has such organization. Don’t kitten up the game due to your incompetency.

I don’t want it to take forts to capture 20-30 minutes even they are not defended. I don’t want forts to be easy to defend by “mindless zergs”. People should learn to defend targets. People should learn to communicate. People should learn to scout. People should learn to move fast to the objective rather than chasing one target.

To all those who compare GW2 to DAoC:
Yes, it took you longer to take a Keep in DAoC, but on the other hand RvR in DAoC is bigger than WvW in GW2. The distance between keeps and spawn points are higher, you don’t get there in a minute or less. It also takes way more time to get a keep completly upgraded.

I agree with kazim. For the HoD vs SBI vs ET fight, there is definitely a big focus on defense and scouting, and the current system feels perfectly balanced and fun for me. But I guess at that level a lot more people are willing to do the boring work of sitting in towers/keeps/supply camps or scouting solo.

Got to agree with the OP, Forts do fall to fast. Once your in you spend your time upgrading them to the full with your guild banner fluttering in the breeze, you then log off and once you log back in the next day you find out that your upgraded fort has changed hands several times already…What is the point of upgrading them?

WVW upgrades need a bigger tech tree for forts than they currently have. The npc guards are laughable, I can take three of them on my own. My suggestions would be simillar to the Op guards need a huge buff, more guards are needed, give upgraded options to include special abilities for guards like knockbacks, knockdowns and more aoe options.

Doors could maybe se a slight increase in health, same for walls.

In general makes keeps and forts harder to take then they currently are and maybe we will see more people staying to upgrade and defend them more becuase the are WORTH holding on to.

While a deeper/more interesting tech tree might be nice, with the current design of WvWvW, NPCs should never be a counter for significant player action. They’re designed to be speedbumps; a supplement to help defend a position and tip the tide in the favor of the outnumbered defenders, not fight the battle for you.

If NPCs want to be stronger, then the attackers deserve some NPCs assisting them, similar to a MOBA. It would make WvWvW a very different environment.

Kazim.2043:

I’m saying “defend your forts if you don’t want them to get recaptured”.

You have an unrealistic view of how people play games.

DAOC. Planetside. Battleground Europe. Time and time again games like this have been made and in every game it’s the same result:

People don’t want to just sit on defense, doing nothing but waiting for an attack. They want to go out and participate and enjoy the game and still have enough time to get back to the base to fight on defense.

DAOC provided server-wide warnings of attacks and ample time to get back. The Lords were very strong and the guards were like lords in GW2. Rams were very expensive and heavy and you didn’t plop down 3 of them if you could possibly avoid it.

Planetside had a 10-minute capture timer (might have been 15, I forget) where attackers had to defend before the structure went over to them.

Battleground Europe had multiple capture points within each town and you had to cap them all to claim the place (picture Stonemist with 3 capture points and it’s a little like that).

.

Each of these games had a problem with “nobody wants to defend.”

Each of these games had people like you claiming it wasn’t necessary. It was.

Each of these games set out to solve the problem and came up with something that worked and added to the fun of the game.

GW2 attempted, I think, to mimic the DAOC method but they are way off in their values.

However as we make environment (mobs, structures, capture timers) more stronger, aren’t we making the game more PvE (player vs environment)?

So basicly from your words what I understand “Players doesn’t like to defend so lets Environment defends for them instead. Lets focus on attack”. Doesn’t it will convert the game to where everyone is fighting against walls/mobs rather than eachother?

Won’t it be a game where 1 (or at most 2) zerg moving from one objective to another with the knowledge they have enough time to go back any place on the map when necessary?

I havent’ play DAOC or Planetside. However considering your suggestions (most expensive siege weaponary, stronger walls, stronger NPCS) the picture I see is 3 server each dividing their forces to 2 zergs and fighting at the same location (tower or keep) for hours back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, in such a way that whoever dies will have enough time to come back from respad to join the fight again with little progress, with little change on map, with little room for maneuvers, tactics, strategy.

If that was how DAOC was, where only zergs clash each other and whoever dies has more than enough time to come back from respad to join the fight at the place they left, it sounds like a pretty boring game, which reminds me SWTOR Illum.

I hope ANet don’t convert this game to a “run back from respad and continue fest”.

I think you are misunderstanding Kazim.

Kazin.2043

WvW is not only swinging swords and casting spells. It’s about tactics / movements / getting prepared / hitting on the spot which is weak / defending your weak spots. Learn to organize, learn to communicate and win.

The game play doesn’t work like you describe all the time. In fact for me it hasn’t worked like that ever. The problem is a lot of people just want the fastest Karma / money gain. And so it has spawned a hurry up and take a node playstyle. Regularly I see a “scout” calling for a tower or keep to be taken because no one is home. Then we take it before the opposition can react. While they are taking something of ours that is unguarded.

The logical conclusion is don’t leave your nodes unguarded right? Well I can personally say that I’ve done that with friends. And after 1 hour of seeing other locations changing hands while “scouts” come by only to note our defense when they dropped a ram, then leave and bring no forthcoming army with them made us feel like we were doing nothing at all. Standing on the wall or behind the gate shooting the breeze while we wait for an attack that may not, and likely will not come because we are guarding it… Sounds like real life guard duty. Its unrewarding boring and frankly its not PvP at all

The purpose of DAOC style warnings, guard strength, lord strength and wall HP means that if an invader attacks, the boring guard duty of alerting the troops of the attack is taking over by the NPC. They should not and will not stop an invading army they are just the buffer so that the military (the players) can mobilize on the keep. so when you attack you are attacking players not NPCs. This makes it less PvE because the guards cannot stop the invading force at all. Not even hurt them Just slow them down so that PvP can happen.

This and an increase to anti personnel siege build time at least a 500% increase (to build time not supply needs) would mean that defenders would need to place their siege before the battle started and before they left the keep to the guards. On their end the tactic is placing siege that can be quickly manned in combat in positions where combat is most likely to be joined, on the attackers end its about placing their siege and their plan of attack where they are the least vulnerable from antipersonnel fire. When battle time comes the tactics should be on siege and troop placement. False attacks, flanking and other in battle maneuvers.

This is the type of tactical fighting we should see, and want to see. Not scouting where no players are so that you can golem rush their keep or drop 6 rams and take it in 2 minutes all without fighting a single player. Correct me if I’m wrong in thinking that this is exactly what you want. See they can screw it up by making this a PvE encounter with strong guards, or they can do it right. Substantially increase the gate/walls HP and make the guards a lot hardier. Sound an alarm, when your keep or towers are under attack. and beef up the supply camps. A small force should be able to take them, a large force should be able to take them quickly.

I think this is what people want. and I think it will cause more tactical PvP gameplay

@ Lokki: Looking from your perspective the correct one but I don’t agree with your solutions.

I don’t want it to be “too easy” for 1 Zerg to attack and to defend at the same time, without proper communication / organization. If everyone groups up in one big bunch they should loose stuff that they left behind. It’s how it should be.

I don’t want it to become “Join the zerg or you’re useless”.

I don’t want zerging to be promoted.

I want 5-15 groups to be useful. I want scouting to be done by players not by game it self with auto-warnings. I want communication and intel being key elements to win not something automatically handled by the game.

From what I’ve seen creating 6 golems (600 supplies) is not an easy job. Bringing them to target without getting noticed is even harder (apart from mesmer portals). If you’re trying to capture an upgraded keep fast and using 5 rams each door you need 10×40 (400 supplies) so at least 40 man (even more considering how randoms don’t carry supplies). For 400 supplies you need to capture at least 3 full supply camps.

Now with all these requirements, I don’t believe it’s easy to quickly capture a keep without getting noticed. If a really well organized group do that I believe they deserve the keep.

If a server didn’t notice 40 man running around and capturing supply camps, or even though they noticed they continue to rush to next objective without sending some scouts back, I believe they deserve to loose that keep. I think it’s OK

If what keeps people rushing for the next objective is Karma, then fix that problem. Reduce Karma gain.

If what helps golems to move fast is Mesmer Portal, then fix that problem, prevent golems to use portals or stealth.

I don’t want WvW to promote being alone and following the zerg, so that the server with most man with better items and with more money wins the day. I want it promote guilding up, using voice communication, sharing intel and scouting. This is Guild Wars, not “Join the random Zerg” Wars.

I understand your point of view, but from my perspective non of those suggestions are needed, on the contrary they will reduce the fun this game presents as they will promote zerging. Right now what is needed are follows:

1. Hacks should be fixed ASAP

2. Orb and Outmanned bonuses should be fixed to encourage loosing server to continue

3. Effect of night capping should be reduced (and I don’t believe suggestions in this thread would help against that as I stated why on one of my previous posts)

4. Ranking system should be fixed so that servers don’t move up/down too much to face other servers which are well below/above their strength

5. Profit of PvE/mining/jumping puzzles should be reduced so that there will be more players on WvW zones to do WvW not other things.

6. Problem of continuous free-transfer from loosing server to winning server should be fixed. Guesting system should start to work and free-transfers should stop so that servers can create permanent WvW communities.

IMO NPC door wall strengths are quite OK as it is. At Sunday I was in a great match against WR and RoF (it’s on middle tiers not top) in WR borderlands and no one could capture anything for a long time as all 3 servers were always having eyes and defensive equipment on their forts. We tried to ninja several times but we couldn’t. So it works as intended if you know how to play.

Maps are already small, in 2 minutes you can reach from one extend to another. If you have just one eye behind, or checking the map continuously it’s really hard for some other server ninja something behind you. If you can’t reach everywhere because your server holds everything it’s OK and working as intended.

This is PvP, YOU should defend your forts not NPCs nor WALLS. If you don’t like to defend it’s your choice but please don’t kitten the game and turn it to a Zerg Fest.

I think making Keeps and Keep Lords tougher will only further separate the strong servers from the weaker ones. By the time you get half way through a gate or wall on what is recommended here, the stronger server’s zerg team has already shown up and you’re looking at the portal instead of the enemy force from within the keep of their’s you just took.

Mother of god, people want it to be HARDER to take keeps/tower? A fully upgraded keep/tower has a huge force multiplier effect. Some things need to be changed like the instant door close on repair (and walls too).

Personally i wish taking a full upgraded keeps was easier so that it would happen more often.

Edit:

The other major difference was that aoe could hold off FAR more people in DAoC. I would love for the limit to go up in WvW from 5 to 10 or 15. This would allow for more door down defence.

kazim4mod

We held Dreaming Bay for 3 days this week. L2repair and defend keeps.

The other major difference was that aoe could hold off FAR more people in DAoC. I would love for the limit to go up in WvW from 5 to 10 or 15. This would allow for more door down defence.

haha people are already complaining about the aoe because they build glass cannon and die.

Environmental slow-downs encourage PvP by giving the defending team time to respond.

One fairly simple idea might be to make oil have 20x normal hit points. You’ll want rams for the doors and ballistas for the oil or else risk having an defender slip inside to start dumping oil on your rams.

This will also help encourage “real siege”.

Currently the game is about surprise zerg attacks. If you can simply leave a keep alone for a while, most or all defenders will get bored and do something else. You then organize about 30 people together and you can go knock through the whole place in about 5 minutes. This is easiest if you have your own zerg guild but I’ve seen it work with pugs and Commanders.

The whole objective, at this point, is to smash through things faster than the enemy can respond.

Therefore, the whole objective is to AVOID PvP.

And it totally works.

Sieging is quite boring at moment. I remember spending 30-40 minutes breaking down one gate. This is not a simulation, it’s a game that is made to be fun! Imo attacking the wall with weapons should do nothing, but siege weapons should be alot more effective then they currently are to encourage different styles of gameplay. I think if you have more focus on these siege weapons you will see different styles of gameplay happen more often such as people taking a small party around the back to take out the siege weapons or the defender trying to make a push out of the castle.

Kazim.2043:

Slamz.5376:

Even our pug zerg avoided the supply camp. That’s why we were halfway through the inner door before the first defenders managed to get in. Not that it did them much good. Too late.

It’s their fault if they didn’t left a few guys to scout your zerg’s movements. This is how WvW should be.

The problem is, who wants to be the guy who does this?

Everybody goes off to fight, earn badges, exp, money, karma, and the one guy gets to sit there half the night staring at an empty road. That’s not fun, and the very fact that you consider rotating assignments for a boring aspect of the game should tell you that it has no place in something played for entertainment.

If this was some sort of competitive sport, I’d accept the answer that someone has to take one for the team, that’s part of teamwork. This is not a competitive sport, it’s players fighting each other for fun, and if an important aspect of this is for several players to be bored out of their minds all night, their design for this has failed.

I also thought sentries were supposed to serve as some sort of warning beacon for approaching zergs, but they don’t really do that at all, they’re just an objective for someone to go solo for easy exp/karma/money.

As far as all this goes, I think daoc did a much better job of it, by warning guilds when their keep was under attack, along with the actual number of players in the area so you know how important it is.

In my guild I have no problem to find some guy (or even 5 man parties) to left behind or send front. We regularly change scouts (like in 15 mins ) so they don’t get bored.

Even if you’re not a part of an organized group map always tells a lot, especially Sentries. I never seen a zerg moving through a Sentry Point and leave that pure guy alone. Same for Dolyaks, if you see two Dolyaks left the supply camp but disappeared on the half way, it means something going on.

If you see an attack on a supply camp, be prepared for an attack on the nearest tower/keep. These are easy and pretty early signs for non-competitive servers.

Also game warns when your keep is under attack, you just have to open the map and look at that from time to time. If you’re not using voice communication have an eye on Team Chat, as always there is one guy checking the map at given time.

You don’t need a flashing modal window in your eye in middle of combat to know something is under attack. Though I’m not particularly against that feature as it won’t change anything. If you say people like to attack not defend they will ignore and spend their precious minutes chasing that 3 poor fellows or bashing the next tower’s gate with 30 man, rather than going back to defend what they own. If your server/raid is not organized these features won’t change anything.

If you’re playing competitively, it’s a completely different area. You never have hard time to find people to leave behind or send front. You never lack of intel of enemy movements

For some of you it’s not competitive, for some of us it is. The point is if you remove competitive parts of WvW and turn it to a zerg fest, in such a way that game holds your hand and do the stuff for you, competitive players and guilds will leave WvW (some will leave the game). And I believe you won’t like the result.

I’m completely against for undefended structures taking 30 minutes to capture. This will only promote zerging, and at the end nothing will change hands unless a server is severely getting outnumbered (night cap) or contains completely kitten minded people. Such a change not only ruin competitive WvW but also casual WvW.

WvW should be Player vs Player, and Players should defend forts not Environment.