Guild Wars 2

My Story

I’m a total novice to the game in WvW terms, just got to rank 20 on one char and have rank 10 from the rest of my play since the games release, or whenever ranks came out, I really don’t know, I spent most of my time before that in sPvP. So I voice these opinions from a back drop of little experience accepting that many of them have probably been voiced before, and perhaps many of the solutions I’ve though of too.

I have to say, unfortunately, that my overwhelming feeling has been one of disappointment. I play sPvP mostly so coordination and communication are the things I really value and was hoping to find in this game mode. I was hoping to see lots of little organised groups doing different jobs led by different commanders. I was hoping to see advanced commander communication. I can’t believe the lack of import that seems to be placed on structures that we have taken. If you cap a base in sPvP, you either stay on it, or you make as kitten sure as you can that nothing else is coming for it, and that kind of thing just doesn’t happen. I’d like to change that, heres whats happened to me over the past few days, my take on the problems in WvW, and some possibly solutions.

TL;DR
I spent ages upgrading a few keeps. 5 players with 3 golems came and took all 3 of our keeps in 10 minutes.

I can honestly say that I have never felt such an overwhelming sense of disappointment and helplessness. I felt like my efforts that evening were totally trival. I piled time, effort and gold into upgrading those keeps. I called for help on EB and got none. If a 70 man zerg had rolled in and taken them, that would be something else, but the way it happened for me is just unacceptable, all my hard work undone by 5 people doing something very very basic.

Problems and Potential Solutions

Keeps and Towers are weak.
I understand the terminology of the “Paper” fortress, and think its totally accurate. There is literally no defence behind an un upgraded Keep or Tower. They don’t actually feel like a fortress. How different is capturing a Camp to capturing a Tower in terms of the time difference? A tower or keep can be well defended by well placed siege, but I strongly feel the passive defence of Keeps and Towers should be massively improved.

A keep should be a heavily defended garrison that, given no resistance from defenders, should take around 10-15 people to take in around 20 minutes. A Tower should be well defended, perhaps requiring a minimum of 5 taking 10 minutes. This is if everything goes perfectly well and the attackers are uninterrupted.

Golems are too powerful
Despite my inexperience, I’m sure this opinion has been voiced countless times before, so I won’t go over it again. All I will say is that I don’t think players should be able to damage tower doors/walls anymore than I think Siege should be designed to take down players, with the exception of arrow carts and ballistas.

Making the most poweful piece of siege weaponry manoeuvrable is an appalling error in my opinion. It facilitates the small groups of players which screw over the work of hundreds earlier in the day.

The “Blob” is not punished enough
While I already think the Blob is far from the most effective way to play the game, I do feel that there is not enough done to prevent it. I have very grand ideas about lots of little groups of 20 players running round taking keeps, groups of 10 focusing on towers, other groups focusing on the upgrading of keeps, from running Dolyaks and capturing camps to fortifying them with siege. This simply doesn’t happen, because the Blob is where the rewards are.

The problem here I believe is mainly reward based, so I would love to see changes in the reward system, possibly diminishing returns when in a larger group. The issue with this is that its very difficult to prevent the Blob from being effective without feeling the need to punish the players in some way, rather than rewarding other play styles.

The majority of the points are decided by a tiny minority of the playerbase
Again, this is something I’m sure has been voiced before. One of the main reasons I was so aggrieved when my keep was taken was that the points from that keep would likely belong to Deso for most of the day. Calling prime time 6pm – Midnight GMT on most UK based servers, primetime only consists of 1/4 of the points for the matchup (ignoring stomps).

This is I believe the major major flaw with the way WvW works at the moment and will probably be the reason I stop being motivated to play it.

With the introduction of the Edge of the Mists, I really hope that Anet will decide to shutdown WvW in the night hours. You can still earn ranks in the edge of the mists, but lose the ability to help your server.

I would have it that legendary defenders would come out of all garrisons, (making this time the perfect time for jumping puzzles or exploring). Supply camps would sleep, no supply would be mined or run, all upgrades would pause in their current state, etc. I would have this happen between around 2:30am and 7:30am GMT. If you tie this up with American times, then thats 18:30pm to 23:30 pm, which I would consider to be prime time. If you wanted to play at those times, I would imagine that you would be on a US server. Server points would also not be earnt in these times

My perception is that, at the moment, games are won by winning garrisons over night and defending them until primetime. I’ve seen it countless times already and it drives me nuts, the way to win on EU is simply to recruit an active US guild. The problem with putting a pause on WvW is that all that changes is that as soon as it becomes active again, the people that are most active then become the most effective, ie the people capping the bases at the start of the day win. I would implore the devs to implement a weighted scoring system, that rewards significantly less points at the start of the day and slowly ramps up to peak time, before starting to dwindle again as the night goes on. This could be done purely on a time basis or on a basis of player population at different times, and would completely negate the effect of the non primetime tactics.

I would also suggest that Dolyak running and Camp control need to be more strategic and important jobs rather than something the zerg does. I can’t believe that I have run around in a zerg and we have waited minutes at a time for a camp to be contestable, rather than sending scouts and small parties on ahead. Perhaps by having Dolyak routes interrupted by ambushes of wild animals, skritt, whatever, that would perhaps flee at the sight of enemy players, but would have to be guarded by friendly players.

Even if it didn’t happen on every delivery, running Dolyaks would become a necessity and the benefits of upgrading a camp to give more guards and guarded caravans would be far greater. If each delivery required 3 players (2 skilled players with support?) realistically to be made if there was an attack, perhaps reduced by having the guards to 2 and 1 respectively, it would bring a whole new side to the game. Perhaps not one everyone would like, but I believe there is a market for it. I would also have the deliveries being less frequent, possibly with more supply, though possibly not as my next suggestion outlines.

Finally, to go along with Keeps and Towers being harder to take initially, I would like to see the upgrades take far longer. To build a fully upgraded Keep shouldn’t be doable within a few hours, but should take long hours of focused play, around a day in total to fully upgrade, perhaps 8 hours minimum to reach fortified walls and a WP. I would then like for these keeps to be impregnable, without a concerted push on numerous fronts, rather than just attacking one gate. Perhaps it should take double the number of people and roughly twice the amount of time to take a fully upgraded keep. Bear in mind that even with the changes to the scoring system, upgrading would still be possible and would become very effective if this were to happen.

jonnis.2946:

My Story

I’m a total novice to the game in WvW terms, just got to rank 20 on one char and have rank 10 from the rest of my play since the games release, or whenever ranks came out, I really don’t know, I spent most of my time before that in sPvP. So I voice these opinions from a back drop of little experience accepting that many of them have probably been voiced before, and perhaps many of the solutions I’ve though of too.

Rant

hide spoiler

I’ve been playing for about 3 days, and got home late after the reset. I started working on Garrison and Bay, both keeps that we held but that we’re in relatively early stages. As a team effort we pushed Garrison through to T3. I was running Dolyaks mostly, and also invested a lot in the upgrades. I also retook and upgraded camps and at times scouted enemy zergs.

We got the waypoint up at Garrison and most people went to bed, it was late. I got fortified walls started before turning most of my attention to bay. I pushed bay through reinforced walls, gates and cannons and was halfway through mortars. In that time, I ran a tonne of Dolyaks, endlessly recaptured the south camp and held it for lengthy periods of time, and warded off two zergs with the help of some other players on my server.

Having just got into WvW this was what I found myself really wanting to do, making the fortresses that our Zergs had built impenetrable. I was sure that we could hold GG, and hoped to have Bay up to a similar standard.

Then five kittens from a rival server turned up. They had two Omega Golems and one Alpha golem, that was it. 5 people, 3 pieces of Siege. As soon as they appeared on the map I sieged up Bay, feeling sure that Garrison would hold. I had arrow carts and a ballista set up on the inner wall, as much as I could manage before they got to me.

This 5 man force managed to take first Garrison, fully upgraded, then paper Hills, then Bay, within the space of about 10 minutes. I didn’t receive any support from my team mates, and I put up a hard fight, but I was left empty handed as eventually they got in, got me downed, and killed my lord

TL;DR
I spent ages upgrading a few keeps. 5 players with 3 golems came and took all 3 of our keeps in 10 minutes.

I can honestly say that I have never felt such an overwhelming sense of disappointment and helplessness. I felt like my efforts that evening were totally trival. I piled time, effort and gold into upgrading those keeps. I called for help on EB and got none. If a 70 man zerg had rolled in and taken them, that would be something else, but the way it happened for me is just unacceptable, all my hard work undone by 5 people doing something very very basic.

Working as intended. I’ve done things like this before (but used only 2 alphas and it was a T2 keep, and we were 4 people, 3 of us were mesmers lol) and it’s incredibly funny.
I can say that the pleasure YOU had in upgrading all that stuff was way less than the pleasure those 5 guys had when taking those keeps.

Hello Jonnis,

Sorry to hear that the upgraded keep was lost to 5 pax. A few things about WvW, knowing your WvW community is essential for peace of mind:

a. Does your community care about upgrading stuff?
b. What timezones are dead zones? Will your server lose everything in the dead zones?
c. Does your community have folks that will jump maps to defended T3 stuff.
d. Which structure have priority? (eg, home garrison)

You have to consider these 4 points before you decide to upgrade. Spend 1-2 weeks in WvW, hang out with your server mates and commanders and see what they do. If you have a hardcore attitude (which is great) about making sure your structures are fortified then make sure this is what the community is looking at or else you will lose stuff.

Lastly if you feel that your community goals are not aligned with yours you might want to switch servers with another one that’s close to your goals.

FW

jonnis.2946:

My Story

I’m a total novice to the game in WvW terms, just got to rank 20 on one char and have rank 10 from the rest of my play since the games release, or whenever ranks came out, I really don’t know, I spent most of my time before that in sPvP. So I voice these opinions from a back drop of little experience accepting that many of them have probably been voiced before, and perhaps many of the solutions I’ve though of too.

Rant

hide spoiler

I’ve been playing for about 3 days, and got home late after the reset. I started working on Garrison and Bay, both keeps that we held but that we’re in relatively early stages. As a team effort we pushed Garrison through to T3. I was running Dolyaks mostly, and also invested a lot in the upgrades. I also retook and upgraded camps and at times scouted enemy zergs.

We got the waypoint up at Garrison and most people went to bed, it was late. I got fortified walls started before turning most of my attention to bay. I pushed bay through reinforced walls, gates and cannons and was halfway through mortars. In that time, I ran a tonne of Dolyaks, endlessly recaptured the south camp and held it for lengthy periods of time, and warded off two zergs with the help of some other players on my server.

Having just got into WvW this was what I found myself really wanting to do, making the fortresses that our Zergs had built impenetrable. I was sure that we could hold GG, and hoped to have Bay up to a similar standard.

Then five kittens from a rival server turned up. They had two Omega Golems and one Alpha golem, that was it. 5 people, 3 pieces of Siege. As soon as they appeared on the map I sieged up Bay, feeling sure that Garrison would hold. I had arrow carts and a ballista set up on the inner wall, as much as I could manage before they got to me.

This 5 man force managed to take first Garrison, fully upgraded, then paper Hills, then Bay, within the space of about 10 minutes. I didn’t receive any support from my team mates, and I put up a hard fight, but I was left empty handed as eventually they got in, got me downed, and killed my lord

TL;DR
I spent ages upgrading a few keeps. 5 players with 3 golems came and took all 3 of our keeps in 10 minutes.

I can honestly say that I have never felt such an overwhelming sense of disappointment and helplessness. I felt like my efforts that evening were totally trival. I piled time, effort and gold into upgrading those keeps. I called for help on EB and got none. If a 70 man zerg had rolled in and taken them, that would be something else, but the way it happened for me is just unacceptable, all my hard work undone by 5 people doing something very very basic.

hihey.1075:

Working as intended. I’ve done things like this before (but used only 2 alphas and it was a T2 keep, and we were 4 people, 3 of us were mesmers lol) and it’s incredibly funny.
I can say that the pleasure YOU had in upgrading all that stuff was way less than the pleasure those 5 guys had when taking those keeps.

I understand that this is the way Anet have designed it to be. I just think they have designed it completely wrong. All the pleasure I took from upgrading that keep completely vanished after the frustration of losing it to such a small player base. The value to my team of me upgrading that keep also totally vanished, as had it been held, the points we would have got overnight would have been significant.

Fannwong.3059

Hello Jonnis,
Sorry to hear that the upgraded keep was lost to 5 pax. A few things about WvW, knowing your WvW community is essential for peace of mind:
a. Does your community care about upgrading stuff?
b. What timezones are dead zones? Will your server lose everything in the dead zones?
c. Does your community have folks that will jump maps to defended T3 stuff.
d. Which structure have priority? (eg, home garrison)
You have to consider these 4 points before you decide to upgrade. Spend 1-2 weeks in WvW, hang out with your server mates and commanders and see what they do. If you have a hardcore attitude (which is great) about making sure your structures are fortified then make sure this is what the community is looking at or else you will lose stuff.
Lastly if you feel that your community goals are not aligned with yours you might want to switch servers with another one that’s close to your goals.
FW

When I joined WvW the other day I was asking some relatively beginner questions. I got talking to someone who was giving me quite a bit of advice and I started asking about what guilds were around. I said that my main interest was in defending and upgrading keeps and towers to ensure we keep them.

They recommended a particular guild to me that I have been playing with since. These guys try to carry out the exact playstyle I’m after and I had great fun holding the hills side tower (dawns eyrie I think?)on our BL against a massive zerg who had brought along a tonne of omega golems. With a lot of well placed siege, a team of about 15 of us held out against the zerg for a good two hours, culminating in them PvEing the door down, and simply outnumbering us eventually.

However, they seem to be the only guild that actively defend stuff (bearing in mind I’m talking from a very inexperienced stand point here) and I can’t believe that that doesnt happen more. I’m still imagining these split groups of 20 man teams working across other parts of the map, a couple coming together for keep captures and blob takedowns, the blob being scouted, the camps, supply routes and upgrades being overseen by one commander, and so on and so forth, but I digress.

Our deadzones are after about 3am, until about 6am, from what I can work out. The server we are playing against this week and were playing against last week do not have a particularly active community in this time, but it is active enough that it decided the game last week, despite us beating them well in primetime play.

I have seen us defend T3 stuff, but that only happens with good commanders and in prime time. From what I understand we priorities the two north towers and the garrison on our borderlands.

From where I see it I was doing a good thing trying to build a fortress that would be untakeable by a small force, and would not be able to be taken until morning, thats where I was really disappointed. I’m on an upper Silver league server, so I imagine the coordination isn’t bad.

But I don’t want WvW to be about who has the numbers to play 24/7, I want it to focus on much better coordination in the prime time. I accept that maybe I’m a bit of a fool to expect such a thing, because it would require incredible coordination, but I’d always rather see skillful play done well rewarded.

I just got really excited about this game mode at first, I saw so much potential, and feel its all completely and totally wasted because of a couple of glaring errors in the design. Its really got an epic feel to it, while I dont feel that my own actions are epic the scope of the battle is. I’d love to be involved in smaller groups where I really could see the difference I was making and thats what I got by upgrading that keep solo, but there we go, I’m rabbling now. All together these haven’t been the best constructed forum posts, I’m very tired and frustrated at the state of the game, but perhaps I’ll come back and try to be more constructive tomorrow.

Fannwong.3059:

Hello Jonnis,

Sorry to hear that the upgraded keep was lost to 5 pax. A few things about WvW, knowing your WvW community is essential for peace of mind:

a. Does your community care about upgrading stuff?
b. What timezones are dead zones? Will your server lose everything in the dead zones?
c. Does your community have folks that will jump maps to defended T3 stuff.
d. Which structure have priority? (eg, home garrison)

You have to consider these 4 points before you decide to upgrade. Spend 1-2 weeks in WvW, hang out with your server mates and commanders and see what they do. If you have a hardcore attitude (which is great) about making sure your structures are fortified then make sure this is what the community is looking at or else you will lose stuff.

Lastly if you feel that your community goals are not aligned with yours you might want to switch servers with another one that’s close to your goals.

FW

Quoted for truth.

Don’t be too hasty to judge, it sounds like you just haven’t found the right home or you are yet to really settle in to your community.

Take Fannwongs advice in my opinion.

I appreciate that perhaps I’m judging the community at large harshly. I’m just yet to see much evidence of a willingness to defend from any server. There was one garrison, a keep on our BL that was WP’d by another borderlands that we really struggled to take, and the tower that we held for a long time I have already discussed. I would just love to encourage more of this sort of play and really make the game mode into a battle rather than a game of cat and mouse between commanders, which is what it feels like.

I was confused when I got in that I only ever saw 1 commander in each BL. So I asked, and apparently people found multiple commanders confusing and they didnt know where to go. A simple colour coded system for different commander roles so you knew who to report to to do what you wanted to do would make massive headway on that front, but I was really disappointed in the seeming lack of willingness to try to make that coordination happen.

hihey.1075:

Working as intended. I’ve done things like this before (but used only 2 alphas and it was a T2 keep, and we were 4 people, 3 of us were mesmers lol) and it’s incredibly funny.
I can say that the pleasure YOU had in upgrading all that stuff was way less than the pleasure those 5 guys had when taking those keeps.

You are aware that the game has this whole other huge map full of easy-to-take targets defended by a variety of NPCs called PvE, right? If you find beating up NPC guards a blast, you should find endless entertainment there. They even release new Living Story content there every 2 weeks to keep things fresh. You can even follow endless champion-farming loot trains around several maps in PvE, an experience not unlike doing PvDoor against an outnumbered opponent except that the encounters have a little more variety and may actually be a bit more challenging to defeat with 3-4 players.

not sure what server your on but if you don"t have anything holding you there, you might consider tranfer to Yaks Bend. I’m a recent transfer there, only been here a couple of weeks, but I think their play style might best match the experience your looking for.

jonnis.2946:

I was confused when I got in that I only ever saw 1 commander in each BL. So I asked, and apparently people found multiple commanders confusing and they didnt know where to go. A simple colour coded system for different commander roles so you knew who to report to to do what you wanted to do would make massive headway on that front, but I was really disappointed in the seeming lack of willingness to try to make that coordination happen.

Only T1 servers and maybe some upper T2 guilds can pull off moving with multiple groups across a map. The problem is population – guilded WvW vs pugs. It takes an incredible amount of coordination to pull it off and more often than not, it fails to work due to miscommunication. Commanding militia and pugs is quite a difficult job due to having all kinds of builds and playstyles, trying to get them to work together. Trying to get that to work as a group moving independently to a/nother guilded group is just just takes so much patience that most people just don’t do it.That’s why you generally only see 1 tag, so sheer numbers mask poor composition.

If your server has voice comms, I recommend you join that and ask around in voice comms for help. It’ll be a lot faster than hopping maps asking for help.

Berk.8561:

hihey.1075:

Working as intended. I’ve done things like this before (but used only 2 alphas and it was a T2 keep, and we were 4 people, 3 of us were mesmers lol) and it’s incredibly funny.
I can say that the pleasure YOU had in upgrading all that stuff was way less than the pleasure those 5 guys had when taking those keeps.

You are aware that the game has this whole other huge map full of easy-to-take targets defended by a variety of NPCs called PvE, right? If you find beating up NPC guards a blast, you should find endless entertainment there. They even release new Living Story content there every 2 weeks to keep things fresh. You can even follow endless champion-farming loot trains around several maps in PvE, an experience not unlike doing PvDoor against an outnumbered opponent except that the encounters have a little more variety and may actually be a bit more challenging to defeat with 3-4 players.

Ehm… wut? If you are accusing me of being a pvd lover you picked the wrong user.
Thing is, when you roam at 3 AM and you find no one anywhere, with the exception of a 30+ppl karma train, you are inclined to group up with some other roamers and try something different rather than the occasional sentry or camp.

Was it funnier than a proper duel or an outnumbered fight against 2 bad players and 2 upleveleds? No. But it surely was funnier than going around cappin sentries while fleeing from a zerg.

Anyway, it is not you who decide what people can do and what people cannot do to have fun. If people fight for PvD, let them. I have nothing against it, since I couldn’t care less about points. Sometimes I even follow the night karma train just because I like making fun of other people in TS. Sometimes I troll the guys in Teamchat and throw 20+ ballista blueprints in front of a gate. This is WvW.

Wise One.9321:

not sure what server your on but if you don"t have anything holding you there, you might consider tranfer to Yaks Bend. I’m a recent transfer there, only been here a couple of weeks, but I think their play style might best match the experience your looking for.

I can echo this. It’s been eons since we last played Yak’s, but I do recall their spirited defensive play.

As a general thing, defense just isn’t as rewarding as attack most of the time. If you actually prefer the defensive playstyle I’m sure many servers that are more ppt-oriented would love to have you.

The thing with wvw is that most casual players are more interested in tangible rewards (ranks and loot) than they are with the weeks wvw score. They know they can’t effect the later much, so holding objectives is counter productive – it’s better to lose them and then earn more loot/wxp taking them back afterwards. It’s a similar deal with zergs, the scoring system encourages them.

At the extreme, a friday karma train on a populated server can earn 10-20 ranks over a few hours by cycling captures with a cooperative enemy realm. It would take weeks to earn that playing defensively.

jonnis.2946:

The “Blob” is not punished enough
While I already think the Blob is far from the most effective way to play the game, I do feel that there is not enough done to prevent it. I have very grand ideas about lots of little groups of 20 players running round taking keeps, groups of 10 focusing on towers, other groups focusing on the upgrading of keeps, from running Dolyaks and capturing camps to fortifying them with siege. This simply doesn’t happen, because the Blob is where the rewards are.

Bingo.

Unfortunately you’ll find no help on this front from Anet. They had a collaborative development thread up here some weeks back which I think yielded soem good debates.

That said they made it very clear that “we do not want to punish people for playing together”. By “together” they seem to think everyone on map clustered into a giant ball. They dont seem to grasp that there can still be a “together” in smaller groups. So I think your post will fall on deaf ears.

jonnis.2946:

With the introduction of the Edge of the Mists, I really hope that Anet will decide to shutdown WvW in the night hours. You can still earn ranks in the edge of the mists, but lose the ability to help your server.

Whos night?
Night for you might not be night for me.
And what about people that are working during the days? Should they not be allowed to play WvW?

Turning off WvW just because you can’t play at a certain time is not really a solution. WvW is a 24/7 battlefield, not a “the 8 hours per day when my people are online”-battlefield.

I had the same experience several times and the mst recent was in our match up against Blacktide and Dzagonur.
It was just about sunrise time when I and 3 other players were upgrading our home borderland to the max. everything was fine until the guys decided to go to sleep and let me oversee the last upgrades of our southern towers. I was about to head off as well until two BT Guardians took over 2 fully upgraded camps and built two alpha golems to take down our southern towers. They almost melted down an upgraded gate but I managed to take them both down with their golems thanks to the AoE potential my necro had. Once I dealt with the danger is went to EB to ask for backup to help restore our upgrades and repair the tower’s gate before more roamers or small grups start invading our deserted borderland. My request for back up was shot down in favor of capturing t1 camps and towers in EB. I returned to our borderland to find that was I had feared actually came true as I was greeted multiple DZ small groups undoing all my and everyone else’s hard that night on our borderland. I returned to EB to send the message that our borderland is in dire need of help. Sadly only a handful of players decided to return and lend a hand. Sadly it was not a force we could deal with alone. I have decided to log off and head to bed as I had a lecture in the afternoon and I needed my rest. By the time I logged in again all the upgrades were destroyed except for one northern tower and our garrison which we lost in couple of hours.

In anycase, I’m sure there were many like me who wasted over 20 gold overnight on upgrades and siege weapons in a ghostly map just to see all their hard work undone by a very small number of players PvDing gates with almighty golems doing the work very effectively but how can we solve this kind of problem? 80% of the population wont be so selfless as to waste time and gold on defense, upgrades, siege placement and scouting when there are commanders leading their golems and zerg to earn easy karma and wxp by taking over t1 towers and keeps on another map. What is needed is an incentive to make defending structures rewarding and worthwhile for players and not just a waste of time effort and gold. We also need to reduce the effectiveness of golems and I’m sure everyone agrees that a tier 9000 keep would not last over 10 mins when faced with the might of Omega Golems that zergs could build large numbers of, guard and escort to the target location with ease. Upgraded structures are plain defenseless when an enemy zerg decides to build the ultimate siege weapon with no counter. Omega golems can be bought on TP with a kitten cheap price tag on and built with only 150 supplies while upgrading just gates and walls of a keep requires 10 times that amount and costs alot more. that does not seem fair right?

I don’t really want to bore you much with a wall of text but I believe my stance on things are clear.

Switching servers to find a server he would like though is a roll of the dice and cost money to do :/ and has the potential to find a worse server then your on..as I have a small guild for me and another friend of mine with tier 3 and tier 4 upgrades moving is not a option unless a net changes the rule about transferring guild upgrades to something like “it transfers with the guild leader” or something so sink or swim im kinda stuck with the server im on

hihey.1075:

Ehm… wut? If you are accusing me of being a pvd lover you picked the wrong user.
Thing is, when you roam at 3 AM and you find no one anywhere, with the exception of a 30+ppl karma train, you are inclined to group up with some other roamers and try something different rather than the occasional sentry or camp.

So you are not a PvDoor lover, but want it kept a viable option for you because you like it more than the alternatives? Maybe the solution isn’t to protect PvDoor as a viable mode to play but to fix the larger problem that’s making it the best option available to you?

hihey.1075:

Anyway, it is not you who decide what people can do and what people cannot do to have fun.

Nor is it you, so please get off that high horse before you get a nosebleed. ANet decides. And, if you haven’t noticed, they change what players can and can’t do with almost every update, at times eliminating the viability of character builds and modes of play to change the way the game is played. They do so based on what the majority of players find fun and not fun and what they think makes for the best game for everyone. Here, you are defending a mode of play you claim you don’t actually like which is a mode of play that makes the game miserable for a lot of other players.

hihey.1075:

If people fight for PvD, let them. I have nothing against it, since I couldn’t care less about points. Sometimes I even follow the night karma train just because I like making fun of other people in TS. Sometimes I troll the guys in Teamchat and throw 20+ ballista blueprints in front of a gate. This is WvW.

The question is not what WvW is, but what it should be. If people really love PvDoor, then admit it and defend it’s value to the game, but even you don’t seem willing to do that. The entire PvE portion of the game provides a better PvE experience than PvDoor, so what’s the value of PvDoor?

And, sure, ANet can craft the rules of WvW to make it a wonderland for trolls and griefers, but I somehow doubt that’s going to be a viable long-term business model for them and seems to run counter to the design philosophy of the rest of the game which, if you also haven’t noticed, is designed to limit trolls and griefers. “Our game is full of players who like to annoy other players and make the game harder to play,” really doesn’t make for great ad copy.

It sucks but you have to think of everything as paper. It will all be taken and there is little reason to put a defense in anything besides keeps. Even then it only makes sense in some circumstances. In no case should you become attached to fortifications. WvW is an open field game with scoring nodes.

It takes a while before that mental adjustment can happen for a lot of players. It feels personal when another server is beating on your door and nobody comes to help. This is particularly bruising when there are enough players on a map to save it. Stings almost as much when it happens to PvDoor overnight. Sadly this is the environment and it is unlikely to change since it is fundamental design.

jonnis.2946:

I’m just yet to see much evidence of a willingness to defend from any server.

Offense wins karma; Defense wins matches. Some servers defend. I know the commanders on mine are borderline obsessive about building siege in anything we intend to keep, and other people are good about keeping it tapped, spying out attacks, etc. Heck, we get forum complaints about Yak’s Bend ‘hiding behind siege’ instead of fighting. Heh.

Servers differ greatly in their approach. Personally, I don’t like the one-giant-blob farming train approach. If you don’t have overwhelming numbers, it won’t work. Even if it does work, it’s not compelling gameplay. It’s rewarding, but boring.

So, find a server where the strategy is more than just blobbing your way to glory. Also, note that map chat is usually not where the important communications happen. You need to be in the appropriate voice chat if you really want to be involved.

Straegen.2938:

WvW is an open field game with scoring nodes.

If that’s the intent, then they should turn the whole map into a bunch of capture circles like the ruins. That people expect fortifications to be defensible is not unreasonable. If that’s not the intent, then ANet should present them as capture points, not fortifications that you can upgrade.

It’s kinda like putting bows in the game and then having the characters swing them at each other like melee weapons instead of shooting arrows. Yes, ANet could do that, but then they shouldn’t be surprised by the endless complaints by players who would like their bows to shoot arrows instead of having to use them to bludgeon their opponents in melee. And they shouldnt’ e surprised if all those players jump to a new MMO if it offers them bows that shoot arrows rather than being absurd melee weapons.

lordkrall.7241:

Whos night?
Night for you might not be night for me.
And what about people that are working during the days? Should they not be allowed to play WvW?

Turning off WvW just because you can’t play at a certain time is not really a solution. WvW is a 24/7 battlefield, not a “the 8 hours per day when my people are online”-battlefield.

I totally appreciate this. In my original posts I detailed what I would consider “Night” to be. Between the hours of 2:30am and 7:30am GMT. As far as I am concerned, regardless of where you are from, if these are your play hours, then you should stick to an NA server. Why would you be on an EU server at times when it is dead in general play?

If you are on WvW during these times, and there is a group of you, you are able to take advantage in a way I deem to be unfair. It is too easy to overwhelm well defended fortifications at these times, and the score provided for your server is very significant. Personally I would love to see time maps across the week of our last match, looking at the average score earnt by each server at different times. I would be very surprised if it did not show a clear correlation between our opponents earning much of their score during the night and early morning.

I am not preventing you from playing the game mode as the Edge of the Mists would still be around, but if you want to play serious WvW, then you should be on an NA server. Its not about not being allowed to play, I wouldn’t be preventing that. Its about not ruining the experience for other people. Its also not that I can’t play at certain times, hell I’m not playing 24/7, but because it puts an unfair weighting on the servers that have an active night time population.

Along with the lack of rewards, this is the main thing that completely ruins the incentive to defend objectives in this game mode, and for me that ruins the game mode. I wanted a game mode that has epic battles, not out on the field but behind closed doors, with strategy, with coordination, and that winning the day. This just doesn’t happen at the moment.

I realise, thats just what I want from WvW, but I’m a long way from being the only one irked by the lack of importance that ends up being placed on the primetime hours, as stuff just gets flipped right back over again.

I’d love to hear everyones thoughts on my other suggestions. Having WvW locked down (possibly just keeps and towers) between 2:30am and 7:30am GMT, having the value of held objectives increase in peak hours. I’d love to hear any ideas that reduce the effectiveness of the Blob without punishing players in it too

I’ll just copy-paste the reason why I think a server lockdown outside primetime not viable.

Timezones
NA has several timezones starting from UTC -11 in the Pacific to UTC -4 in the Atlantic. EU stretches from UTC -1 to UTC +4 (Moscow). If you include Eastern Russia, which is very much a part of Russia and hence Europe, UTC +9 (Irkutsk).

So how do you define primetime? Assuming a 4 hour primetime. In the NA servers, primetime could very well stretch up to 15 hours. Are you going to demand for East, West and Central NA next? EU is worse, with a 19 hour spread.

Denial of service
More importantly, everyone paid the same for the game hence I don’t find it reasonable at all to limit access to any game mode. Remember, these days some people work nights, some only find time to play at odd hours. Are you seriously demanding that the A-net deny players’ access to the service they’ve paid for? Going down this route sets a very bad precedence. You’re basically asking the game company to deny service to a group of players.

Server locations and ping
EU servers or NA servers are IMHO for geographical reasons. This in turn impacts latency to the servers. Hence, it is unreasonable to demand that people move because their playing schedule does not comply to what you think is “primetime”.

Above all, some may be in a server with their guild from GW1. Some with friends that have played together for years. More importantly, there isn’t an Asian or Oceanic server.

Adjustment to PPT
I am more in support of PPT limits to owning structures. For example, your server is green in the matchup, and in EB, you gain points from Aldon, Klovan, Jerri and Wildcreek. But if you take Quentin from blue, you do not gain the points but you deny points from blue. This is to counter servers with 24/7 coverage, taking all the objectives and have their PPT snowball out of reach from the other servers. In the current system, you not only deny points, you also gain said points. That’s a double gain.

nikitnq.7143:

Adjustment to PPT
I am more in support of PPT limits to owning structures. For example, your server is green in the matchup, and in EB, you gain points from Aldon, Klovan, Jerri and Wildcreek. But if you take Quentin from blue, you do not gain the points but you deny points from blue. This is to counter servers with 24/7 coverage, taking all the objectives and have their PPT snowball out of reach from the other servers. In the current system, you not only deny points, you also gain said points. That’s a double gain.

I am actually in favor of such a change to PPT if it would ever be considered. It would force people to defend objectives to continue to gain points rather than stay on the offensive 24/7.

Yea, I think you may want to ask around your community to see what they think of defense. On Yaks Bend it’s a pretty big deal. Just the other day FoW, one of the larger guilds on Yaks Bend, was giving tutorials on how to defend a tower from a much larger force with effective use of siege.

Frustration comes in kind with anything involving large groups of people and trying to keep them organized. People just don’t function the same way ants or bees do. And when it comes to video games, you have to remember that there’s a high possibility of having other players, if not many other players, that are young and probably have a short attention span. I agree it’s overwhelmingly depressing when you sink your entire night in to upgrading a tower or keep just to have it taken by a small group, but the longer you play WvW the more you’ll learn it’s not always something you can prevent. People want their WXP and for the majority of them they could care less what is or isn’t being taken as long as it’s they that are taking it.

My best advice would be;
If you’re going to play defense remember to also play scout. While running supplies, upgrading or escorting yaks, what ever it may be you’re doing to protect your servers land, always relay information back to your team. What is or isn’t upgraded, where enemies are, etc. You won’t always have the cavalry come storming through to save the day if you shout out that the keep is under attack. But the times they do they’ll have you to thank for having eyes where they didn’t.
It’s also important to remember that this is a game. And if you’re finding what you’re doing is feeling more like work than fun, you should consider playing something else. I’m not saying that in a a rude manner, just that video games are about having fun not about working. Some of us enjoy defending, some of us enjoy scouting, roaming, zerging. It all depends on the person. And if you feel that losing land you’ve put time in to upgrading hits you hard enough that you no longer want to play. You may be more comfortable filling a different role on the fields.
Most importantly though, is to remember that you can’t always win and you can’t always lose. If a tower falls, it falls. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. What you need to do is prepare for the next attack and the cycle will continue.

Good luck ( :

Straegen.2938:

It sucks but you have to think of everything as paper. It will all be taken and there is little reason to put a defense in anything besides keeps. Even then it only makes sense in some circumstances. In no case should you become attached to fortifications. WvW is an open field game with scoring nodes.

It takes a while before that mental adjustment can happen for a lot of players. It feels personal when another server is beating on your door and nobody comes to help. This is particularly bruising when there are enough players on a map to save it. Stings almost as much when it happens to PvDoor overnight. Sadly this is the environment and it is unlikely to change since it is fundamental design.

This is not the case on all servers.

My server, Yak’s Bend, plays serious defense, even on keeps deep in hostile territory. Our people respond to attacks in upgraded structures and it’s a big deal to us if we lose an upgraded structure without a serious fight.

The Structural/Upgrades tree (Reinforced Walls/Reinforced Doors/Fortified Walls) is not very strong for defense. Offensive siege is very strong. Superior Rams (18 silver + 50 supply each) with Ram Mastery 3 will demolish even Reinforced gates incredibly quickly. Omega Golems (65 silver, 150 supply each) can trash a wall in no time, Guild Catapults (500 Influence, 25 supply each) also destroy walls rapidly. Passive defensive upgrades simply don’t compare.

The Structural/Additions tree (Cannons/Mortars/Waypoint) is good for defense, though it does require player presence. One player on a cannon can halt an assault with Alpha Golems and/or Rams (the trick is knowing which cannons to use for each assault). Mortars can put a serious dent in an attack with Omega Golems and/or Catapults. A well-placed Trebuchet (with 2 ranks in Treb mastery) is invaluable in defending.

Of course, you can’t defend against any & all attacks single-handed, but with a few like-minded server mates and people in voice-comm, it is possible to play very strong defense, even when badly outnumbered.

As some other posters have suggested, Yak’s Bend may be a good fit for you. We typically have some coverage 24/7, but as an NA server, your (UK) prime-time is daytime working/school hours for most of our players, so we would welcome more coverage in that time-period.

The game rewards blobbing and poor play at every opportunity so people will continue to play that way. Frankly most of the good folks/commanders interested in quality game play have left the game.

Valid points, but something Arenanet are aware of.

The evidence says they’d rather make new maps for the queuing people on T1 servers.

nikitnq.7143:

Adjustment to PPT
I am more in support of PPT limits to owning structures. For example, your server is green in the matchup, and in EB, you gain points from Aldon, Klovan, Jerri and Wildcreek. But if you take Quentin from blue, you do not gain the points but you deny points from blue. This is to counter servers with 24/7 coverage, taking all the objectives and have their PPT snowball out of reach from the other servers. In the current system, you not only deny points, you also gain said points. That’s a double gain.

Thats a pretty good idea. Of course that then becomes a question of what to do about the BL’s. Do yo get points for controlling your own BL? Or just the north third? What about Enemy BL’s? Do you get points for controlling your third? Or none at all.

What about SMC? Would SMC offer PPT? I actually think it wouldnt have to, considering the advantage it gives to the holding server, especially if they are given the chance to upgrade it.

I do think this would be an interesting idea. It turns into a game of denying the enemy points, while holding your own, It would also help run away scores. Rather than a server full capping every map and getting 695 ppt for hours, the best they could hope for is 220 or 255

As for people not coming to the defense of fortifications, I know this all too well.

I have seen cases where we lose a tower, despite have more than the enemy, when my server mates were not 1 minute away when the enemy got to the gate, but decided not to come for some reason.

The main issue is, there is little reward for defending.
Now me personally I love defending. I actually think it can be more rewarding than PVDing. Sure not as efficient as a karma train, but way more fun.
A tower if memory servers gives you 1000 wxp when capped, and defending gives you 300? But you also have to consider the kills. Lets there are 60 people attacking that tower, and you manage to wipe them. Lets say they each yield an average of 30 wxp each, max is 60 wxp but there is a good likely hood they have died recently. So thats a potential of 1800 wxp. Now I realize your not going to kill them all, or tag em all. So even if you only tag and kill 25. That is 750 wxp, on top of the 300 your already getting for defending. Which means by defending you made 100 more wxp more than just taking a tower uncontested.

Then again, I personally dont care too much about rewards. I’d rather get wxp by defending objectives, or taking an fortification while there is an almost equal sized force already inside.
Those few times, when your side had 30 and they have 30 and all that seperates you and them is a little gate that is about to go down. And the gate goes down, and you rush in and wipe em all. That is what I love. Sure you wipe a lot trying to do that, but well worth it, when it goes off successfully.
3 way SMC battles where the bags just keep coming? That is what I love.

If I wanted to karma train, i’d go pve tbh. Or play another game.
I dont understand why people care so much about farming wxp. Most of them dont know how to fight, so whats the point?
Oh you got your applied fortitude maxed out? And then you run at the first sign of combat. WTF.

nikitnq.7143:

Timezones
Denial of service
Server locations and ping
Adjustment to PPT

These are some of the first compelling arguments I’ve seen for not shutting down WvW in night time hours. Thank you for that. I also think your suggestions for amendments to points per turn are a far fairer way of doing things.

My issue as I said is that the majority of the points each week are won by a minority of the population.

Come to JQ where we can solve all your problems

WvW is intended to be useless.
Soon as my server faces a clear defeat we resort to the zergtrain to get some achievements and Wxp.
If we happen to run into an equal group of opponents we are happy to fight /..but that rarely happens..

my advice, don’t upgrade, don’t run dollies, don’t fight for your server, just become the selfish non social drone anet wants you to be doing pve events. while searching for a group of people you can enjoy yourself with then the whole competative stuff won’t matter anymore.. ^^
Any of the actions you do in WvW is a goldsink.. there is literally nothing in rewards for defense that would weigh agains the time /gold spend on siege and upgrading. (unless you want to spend your time hugging an arrowcart.)
so yeah , as anet states without words.. please go pve or join the zergtrain.

None of this is a problem with the WvW format.

The OP’s complaints are purely failings within their server’s community to organize, train, and bring new players into WvW. If your players do not play as a team, then you cannot expect to reap success in a game type that is designed specifically to promote teamwork.

In other words, it’s not the game’s fault, it’s the fault of the people in WvW not playing as a team.

The reward in defense is snubbing your opponent and melting them for loot bags like hay in the fire.

First rant, then advice.

Rant:

Only took two replies for someone from tier 1 to come in and tell him to transfer.

Two.

7 hour queues later, every topic is still a tier 1 recruitment topic but we still can’t tell people from tier 1 to get the kitten of their stacked servers.

Useful advice:

To defend against a handful of golems, cannons were the best call. Arrow carts and ballistas aren’t going to do it anything, nor is attacking from a wall, cannons will hit them pretty hard though. You might need to use the inner cannons after the outer ones go down.

Trebs behind doors would have countered the alphas but not the omegas because they hit for a ton of damage that can outrace the golems.

If they get in, you can use the NPCs to provide a lot of pressure. Unless they’re organized and well built, 5v1 isn’t impossible and having the lord and all the NPCs really help in that sort of fight.

Get to know people on your server or in your timezone! Roam a bunch, make friends. Two people on your friendlist would have made all the difference. It helps you become more effective, would help your server cover a gap, and it’s a lot more fun!

On that point, get in touch with your WvW community. Is there a TS that you could have asked help from? Was there anyone in EB that would have switched over if they knew?

Lastly my advice is don’t get married to keep upgrades. The keeps are designed to be flipped, not to sit at tier 3 impenetrable fortresses. Upgrades will help them defend better but, again, won’t make them invincible.

You need support. 1 guy no matter how good you may be, will never stop 5 guys knocking down your walls. If your the only one who is actively defending it, whether sPvP or WvW your going to lose, unless they are complete meatheads. But they would be farming skelks, griffons or minotaurs then and not strike as they did.

They did that as they knew they could likely get away with it. Paper test first what kinda response your server would give during that time… then proceeding till death, and no response came.

Now… the issue you speak will persevere in every tier, however… and I hate saying this … you have better shots holding things with more people. More people are found ^^ up the tiers.

Even then, I’m on TC, and while we have many valiant defenses, we may have 10 or so defending a t3 ‘x’ and you would think that should hold, but …

toss enough omegas in, and it all comes crumbling down, SoS pulled this off saturday night to us. Tore down a fortified wall via omegas and maybe a sup cata, but little we could have done, they had about 50 or so supporting the 5 or so omegas under cover, yes we had about 6 sup ac’s raining down on them the whole time. End result eventually was Keep lost.

Golems OP, zergs not punished enough … same issue bigger scale, but not alone.