Guild Wars 2

You’re still arguing against reality. I bet a quick survey of any server would reveal many towers and several keeps that have nobody in them. Get 30 people together and they are yours in less than 5 minutes.

You can say you have people in your guild willing to defend. I, myself, log more than my fair share of hours on defense, ready to jump on the siege the moment the enemy attacks. And 99% of the time I’m there by myself or else with people from my own guild.

The vast majority of the population does not sit on defense.

We agree that NPCs and gates should be “speed bumps” but currently NPCs, even Lords, are not even that. Keep Lords die in ~10 seconds. Guards we don’t even stop for because they die if everyone hits them once on the way by. My idea of a speed bump is something that slows you down dramatically. Not something you run over at full speed and don’t really notice.

Slamz.5376:

You’re still arguing against reality. I bet a quick survey of any server would reveal many towers and several keeps that have nobody in them. Get 30 people together and they are yours in less than 5 minutes.

You can say you have people in your guild willing to defend. I, myself, log more than my fair share of hours on defense, ready to jump on the siege the moment the enemy attacks. And 99% of the time I’m there by myself or else with people from my own guild.

The vast majority of the population does not sit on defense.

Which server are you playing in?

EDIT: I guess I’m arguing against your reality. That’s something we do and we play. Didn’t have an issue on that. I’m against any feature promoting more zerging.

EDIT2: Consider a keep lord tanking 30 man by himself. How do you plan to capture it when 30 guys from other server sitting in his throne room with already set up seige engines?

Tell me seriously how would you capture a keep, where it’s keep lord can tank half of your zerg and other server’s zerg attack you behind as they have a lot of time to gather up?

How will any keep change hands except one server is outmanning the other (aka night capping)?

@enji
What are you talking about. Nobody said anything about building glass cannon and dieing to aoe.

Agree that NPCs need to be buffed, by a LOT- both Lord and Guards.

Dont agree with supply cost change for rams. But the NPCs are a joke right now.

edit:
about soloing supply camps – i am playing glass canon engineer and i regularly solo fully upgraded supply camps, even if they have NPC guards. Not that hard. Damage from berserker gear is good enought to nuke down groups of NPCs quckly, while Asura defencive golem tanks for me.

Really need something to make supply 4-5 man content, not 1 man as it is with Doyliaks and Sentries.

I don’t entirely disagree, defences could do with a buff.

But, they should be available as more options in the upgrade panel, and cost supplies to acquire. Want your keep lord to act as if hes been pumping iron and taking steroids for the last 12 months? Gotta pay for it.

Maybe there just needs to be some creative thinking to make defense more interesting or rewarding. I don’t think it should be a free AFK source of income, but perhaps there are ways to make it more appealing to some section of the player base. Maybe boost the faction reward to attract the people who are trying to collect legendary weapons. Maybe make NPCs attack regularly, so that undefended points are lost to any and all sides. Maybe put some dynamic events at defense that are rewarding and require at least as much effort as a normal PVE event, so you aren’t just waiting idly for an attack.

This would also give servers a strategic method to attack heavily-defended points. Time your offensive push against the castle to coincide with an Uber Giant attack event against the castle. More reason for defense and offense to be there, more players fighting players, even if NPCs drew both sides to the same area.

Kazim.2043:

Tell me seriously how would you capture a keep, where it’s keep lord can tank half of your zerg and other server’s zerg attack you behind as they have a lot of time to gather up?

That’s easy. As I said, give him 20x health. Not 20x damage, just health.

Keep Lord DPS is already negligible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone downed by him as long as the attackers had at least 10 people. I’ve never seen a tower lord or a supervisor down anyone without having the invincible buff (that also buffs their DPS by about 5x).

So you’d have to wipe the enemy players and then kill the Lord. Currently everyone does it the other way around because you can kill the Lord in under 10 seconds and then you just have to sweep up.

How will any keep change hands except one server is outmanning the other (aka night capping)?

Same way every single battle in the game eventually goes one way or another. One team fights better than the other, or has them outnumbered, or plops down siege.

DAOC has massively stronger NPC defenses, and keep attacks are automatically broadcast server-wide, with people in PvE having time to run all the way there, yet keeps did change hands frequently enough. But you had to expect a fight. You couldn’t just ninja them away without defenders having a chance to show up.

That’s why I advocate things like stronger doors, stronger walls, more hit points on NPCs. We aren’t necessarily making it more dangerous to attack, but we are giving defenders a chance to show up in time to join the battle.

I think the bottom line is you like sneak attacks and think a group should be able to ninja a tower without resistance if they’re quick enough. I think that’s a huge problem and is a big part of why population imbalances so quickly turn into a full map sweep.

Whoever said 5 people could hold off 30 people in a keep lied. As a member of an organized and skilled guild, I can tell you the amount of aoes and siege weapons coming from 30 people is impossible to keep up. Even a half brain dead zerg of 30 pugs would swarm over a defensive position no matter how upgraded it is (with only 5 defenders).

Slamz.5376:

I think the bottom line is you like sneak attacks and think a group should be able to ninja a tower without resistance if they’re quick enough.

You got me right there.

One man should be able to capture an undefended sentry point

A group of 3-5 well coordinated people should be able to capture an undefended supply camp

A group of 5-10 well coordinated people should be able to capture an undefended Tower

A group of 15-20 well coordinated people should be able to capture an undefended Keep.

There are different objectives for different group sizes on WvW map. For example for a 10 man group, if it takes 20 minutes to capture a tower, they can never do that as they will get caught by the other servers zerg eventually. So with such a game design 10 man groups loose their usefulness.

Such a design decision turns WvW to a “Zerg Or Nothing” game, as there will be little left to do for below 50 man groups.

So competitive guilds like mine that bring 10-40 man groups to WvW will require either create huge alliances to form up slightly coordinated Zergs, or most probably we just abandon WvW, look for something else that will promote our organizational success.

Competitive guilds that can bring 5-10 people to WvW will obviously abandon WvW, as their organization won’t mean anything.

So WvW becomes “chat coordinated” casual “clash of zergs” with some exception of Huge Alliances and Huge Guilds.

That’s not something I want to see.

I want WvW to present some valid objectives to well coordinated small groups which can “out-maneuver” zergs and do their jobs. And to counter them other servers use well coordinated small groups. And these objectives are Towers.

From what I know Towers never meant to be hard to take. It’s keeps and castles that you hold your line. Towers are medium scale objectives which small-medium scales group defend/capture. If all your server wants to stick with 70 man zerg attacking the next keep, of course they will loose their towers. It’s how it should be.

If WvW becomes “zerg or nothing” or in other words completely casual “lets smash our heads to each other’s until one is broken”, it’s not what I want. I’m pretty certain it’s not what competitive guilds want also.

You might be representing the player base which enters WvW casually, use chat to find out what’s going on, follow the zerg or commander, and bash your head to gate until either your head or gate breaks, and run back only after someone shouts “WE’RE LOOSING DREADFALL BAY WE NEED HELLPPPP!!!!” like for 6-7 times, I understand why you want an easier game which will hold your hand, teleport you to where fight is, and never request you do something “boring” until you get bored of killing/dying and running from respad.

However I’m representing another part of this community, which use voice communication, divide forces to small groups that gather up for big objectives and separate for smaller ones, always send scouts first before moving, carefully planning an attack, avoid unnecessary skirmishes which keeps us from our objectives, kill quickly and effectively and continue for the objective (not pursuing one guy with 15 man) leave scouts on strategic locations to monitor enemy zerg movements, have an eye on the map following which sentry points are lost, which dolyaks are lost, which camps changed hands.

This is how we like to play this game. I’m sad that not everyone enjoys it and some prefer just killing -> dying -> running -> killing -> dying -> running, but it’s their choice. I’m 100% sure that I never lost a tower to a ninja attack last 2 matches whenever I’m in lead, unless I want to loose it. So I’m 100% sure Towers are not weak, it’s the men defending them.

A quote from Eddard (Ned) Stark: “A wall is only as strong as the men who defend it”

I soloed a supply camp with my necro, guild claiming lord was at like 50% hp before more people came. However NPC’s are just there as fodder. Lord should not guard your keep/tower, the players should. Also if siege costs a lot, then that makes it unfair because not everyone is rich. If Siege cost like 1g then no 1 will be willing to pay that much to take a keep/tower.

Also take into account how easy it is to destroy siege (especially in the build stage) it won’t make sense to make it really expensive. Also if someone drops 4 rams it’s your fault for not taking them down in build stages. I doubt there was 40 people with supplies ready to insta build.