Guild Wars 2

ATM WvW is all about who has the biggest zergs , you have more numbers you win its that simple and you know it.

But to be honest WvW needs to add strategic aspects, I remember playing other WvW games which I will not mention the name here , where if your castle was being invaded by 40 people you could hold it with only 30 people (you would eventually lose the castle but you would be able to hold and defend the gate for quite a long time) this was because the guards were actually usefull and all classes balanced and coordination , but right now its all about having the higher numbers and spamming AoE’s that will kill you in 1 hit if you go out, so just relax and enjoy while you can’t defend yourself.

it needs to add a strategic aspect to the game , I’m not saying 30 people should be able to win vs 40 in keep/tower but they should give them a hell of a hard time since its a freaking keep/tower not an open field battle where higher numbrs really should win

I was thinking about this topic the other day, but not in the way you have posted it. From my experience a 30 man zerg has every chance of beating a 40 man zerg – there are lots of tactics for zerg vs zerg atm.
I was thinking more along the lines that wvw needs more tactics for taking keeps etc.

At the moment there are only really 3 ways to get into a keep:
a lucky mesmer inside;
ram on door; or
trebe/cat from a distance.

It just makes it very easy to guess what people will do. I’d love there to be another few ways to get into a keep and also new ways to defend a keep (secret tunnels that lead to the outer wall etc.)

You know, just add a few more layers to the overall tactics for depth, as long as they are balanced).

I don’t know…I’ve defeated bigger zergs with smaller ones. It depends on how well coordinated they are. I’ve defeated zergs of 30-40 people with about 20 people.

So I don’t necessarily agree it’s all about the size of the zerg. I will say this though.

If two unskilled or unled zergs meet, then its’ probably about the size of the zerg.

30 man zerg has the abilities to repel even 50ish zerg as long as there are Sieges inside like cannon, Ac, ballista, trebs(shoot siege on sight or switch to the poison cow), Mortar, Cata. its not even hard. but i do agree that capping a Keep or even castles should be longer, and I was thinking maybe Like stonemist castle: they should made Like a maze inside the castle after the door is breached! like cmon, every castle have a maze and is pretty huge. so before capping SM castle the invader should breach like several part of castle that is guarded by legendary npc and then in the end it will reach the lord room. Even the castle at Amnesia game is bigger. look

There’s a lot more to it than the size of the zerg, you (or your commander) just doesn’t appear to use any. Try flanking with a group, build siege in the middle of the field to help you out, portal bomb, veil bomb when flanking, turtle with the zerg.
In towers place your siege tactically, use the gates to flank at the right time, sneak behind them with a few people and build siege there.

There are plenty of tactics, just open your eyes to them

yea.. numbers aint the important thing in any situation, ofcourse, being totally outnumbered is another thing..

yea.. numbers aint the important thing in any situation, ofcourse, being totally outnumbered is another thing..Come to Deso and fight with us, we will show you how its done

There are very subtle advantages for an invading force that frustrate me regarding structure defense.

1) A little ledge on top of the the walls (not even knee high) prevents my characters with a bow from being able to hit a large number of the attackers.

2) Several casting classes have massively powerful aoe skills that can not only make that wall the least safe place to be, but also destroy siege within seconds unless it is placed in some awkward and almost useless place.

3) People are cheap. How many times have you been at a tower defending and see seven or eight people firing away with a staff or a bow? Why didn’t they build an arrow cart or two? Naive might be the answer but the more probable explanation is they don’t carry siege and never buy any. They might lovingly donate their JP siege to a commander but rarely do they keep a few on hand for making a stand.

4) T1 towers and keeps are way too easy for 30 people to overrun unless there is an equal number of defenders. Three catapults or three rams can drop gates and walls of those places before most defenders can get there. Therefore most people don’t see the point of defending the structure.

5) The ability for guilds to claim a structure is a very cool but not fully realized concept. Most guilds will not burn guild buffs on a tower that could be flipped in a couple minutes while unattended. If this system was revamped and designed to make it lucrative for guilds to defend the structures they claim, and moreover if they wanted to claim the structure for a very rewarding purpose, defense in WvW would become a priority. As it stands now claiming anything outside of SM and the keeps is more of a vanity feature.

I could do a whole feature piece on #5 and have elaborated on this feature in another thread that was moved and will most likely go unnoticed by most people forever.

chefdiablo.6791:

There are very subtle advantages for an invading force that frustrate me regarding structure defense.

1) A little ledge on top of the the walls (not even knee high) prevents my characters with a bow from being able to hit a large number of the attackers.

2) Several casting classes have massively powerful aoe skills that can not only make that wall the least safe place to be, but also destroy siege within seconds unless it is placed in some awkward and almost useless place.

3) People are cheap. How many times have you been at a tower defending and see seven or eight people firing away with a staff or a bow? Why didn’t they build an arrow cart or two? Naive might be the answer but the more probable explanation is they don’t carry siege and never buy any. They might lovingly donate their JP siege to a commander but rarely do they keep a few on hand for making a stand.

4) T1 towers and keeps are way too easy for 30 people to overrun unless there is an equal number of defenders. Three catapults or three rams can drop gates and walls of those places before most defenders can get there. Therefore most people don’t see the point of defending the structure.

5) The ability for guilds to claim a structure is a very cool but not fully realized concept. Most guilds will not burn guild buffs on a tower that could be flipped in a couple minutes while unattended. If this system was revamped and designed to make it lucrative for guilds to defend the structures they claim, and moreover if they wanted to claim the structure for a very rewarding purpose, defense in WvW would become a priority. As it stands now claiming anything outside of SM and the keeps is more of a vanity feature.

I could do a whole feature piece on #5 and have elaborated on this feature in another thread that was moved and will most likely go unnoticed by most people forever.

So freaking true I’d love WvW with all that stuff implemented

Mein.5076:

30 man zerg has the abilities to repel even 50ish zerg as long as there are Sieges inside like cannon, Ac, ballista, trebs(shoot siege on sight or switch to the poison cow), Mortar, Cata. its not even hard.

I beg to differ. Defenders during a siege are at a tremendous *dis*advantage.

1- The game’s z-axis and “collision detection” as it were, are broken. Ninety percent of all siege weaponry in a keep can be destroyed with ease by AoE spamming the walls, arrow carts shooting through the gap between gate and wall, etc.

Siege weaponry is a minor irritant to a large zerg, not a deterrent.

2- I can stand on the very edge of the wall , look down at someone who is right there, pull my rifle’s trigger; “Obscured…obscured…obscured….”. Meanwhile, I’ve been shot, AoE’d. and pulled off the wall by the attackers outside.

Pretty much every game mechanic and every line of poor coding favors the attackers.

A zerg with 25 people can beat a zerg with 50 people in open field battle today. The 25 person zerg just needs a good commander and the other 24 people need to listen to the commander

IMO, they need to make one zone about four times in size, each server has a sub area leading to a central area, thus four times the size. If you die, teammates have 30 seconds to rezz you or you immediately respawn at your starting zone, one waypoint. Each zone is littered with high level kitten mobs that you have to build faction by doing factions points back in pve to get by them, roads in each servers zone is constantly patrolled by elites. Castles have 4 keeps surrounding them, keeps have 4 towers surrounding them, number of guards depends on towers and keeps still held by your server.

While I think the mechanics can be improved.

Your assertion that 30 defenders cant beat 40 attackers is way off base, it happens more often than not currently. Ive seen defenders hold off attackers while being less than half the attacking force.

The one thing ive noticed is that its hard for an outnumbered force to sally. So often the larger force will break a wall/door before they can be routed. This in of itself isn’t a problem. I would like to see defenders having an easier time firing from walls. One thing to fix is the ability for attackers to pull down defenders by abusing a multipull trick that will get the enemy up and over a defensive ledge.
The second is to allow shooting but not walking through that defensive lip.

If you’re 30 defending a keep from 40 then it really shouldn’t be a big problem unless:

1. There are other enemy groups holding down your camps and you have zero supplies.
2. You’re unlucky enough to be on a server where people run around w/o supplies in the first place.
4. Horrible siege placement.
5. You’re unlucky enough to be on a server where people think using their character weapons to defend instead of siege is a good idea.
6. You’re unlucky enough to be on a server where people are too cheap/lazy/new to get blueprints.

chefdiablo.6791:

….
5) The ability for guilds to claim a structure is a very cool but not fully realized concept. Most guilds will not burn guild buffs on a tower that could be flipped in a couple minutes while unattended. If this system was revamped and designed to make it lucrative for guilds to defend the structures they claim, and moreover if they wanted to claim the structure for a very rewarding purpose, defense in WvW would become a priority. As it stands now claiming anything outside of SM and the keeps is more of a vanity feature.

…

I know that’s why I will never do it. These days I don’t even find myself making as much superior siege blueprints even. As handy as it may be, I’m not blaming anyone for not wanting to sit around in a tower(is it really a game at that point?) and when there are 30 enemies blocking the one entrance to said tower then this just compounds the problem.

Agreed, it’s incredibly stupid how easy it is to keep defenders off a wall.

One thing I would like to see changed alittle is the ease it is for players to destroy siege on the wall without using siege. Due to the width of the walls, Ele/Necro just destroy any well placed siege setup at a tower. I don’t know how many superior arrow carts I’ve just just destroyed because the tactical placements to try and keep players themselves off the doors is too easily destroyed by Ele/Necro. Plus players themselves can’t defend over walls with their abilities due to the same fact.

Being able to do dmg and such at towers/keeps is great. It’s good for players to need to watch the walls to make sure people aren’t raining down death and destruction below, I just would like to see some more help for the players that are making the efforts to defend to be able to defend.

Hod.6751:

One thing I would like to see changed alittle is the ease it is for players to destroy siege on the wall without using siege. Due to the width of the walls, Ele/Necro just destroy any well placed siege setup at a tower.

I totally agree with the above point. If you place siege on the walls where it is useful during an attack it is easily destroyed by AoE. If you place the siege further back you are unable to target anyone with that siege. Prime example is the ballista. A ballista is almost useless to place on a wall as the LoS on a ball makes it impossible to shoot over the wall lip to the ground unless the enemy is away from the wall. Well if they are that far back they are not doing much damage are they?

LoS issues have to be fixed. Enemy can shoot me on the wall but my view of the same target that is firing at me is “obstructed”. And that “obstruction” is so inconsistent that it makes it difficult for any new player to WvW to survive until they learn that they can stand “here” but if they move two steps “there” they will get killed.

Walls should be wider, perhaps a wide inside ledge that would allow for siege placement out of AoE range. Remove the outer ledge completely. You stand there and you can easily target ground enemies but you are also fair game yourself. Force attackers to use siege to take down siege and not a zerg ball of AoE artists that can stand in one spot so only 5 can be hit while wiping out any siege that could possibly do them harm.

It should be pretty easy to go check how keeps are done in Dark Age of Camelot, I’m just not sure if that would be easy to implement in GW2.

Making keeps where defenders are at disadvantage is a kind of accomplishment, anyway

Wall fighting the defenders should have the advantage. They don’t in GW2.

I think the issue is that the zergs can get to the size they have. In Tier 1 its not been uncommon to see zergs of 100 players. This means that often you can roll over a tower before the opposing team has a chance to react, even if they got commed early. The maps cater for the sizes we are seeing, but the gameplay seems to only design up to a certain amount of players. I don’t think Anet can fix this with one or two things. I think alot needs to be done to get this balance right. I think a start would be to make a lower cap on map queue.

sostronk.8167:

…. I think alot needs to be done to get this balance right. I think a start would be to make a lower cap on map queue.

That will cause endless gnashing of teeth. I’ve said it a millions times, it was a mistake making WvWvW maps “persistent” with the current mechanics.

sostronk.8167:

I think the issue is that the zergs can get to the size they have. In Tier 1 its not been uncommon to see zergs of 100 players. This means that often you can roll over a tower before the opposing team has a chance to react, even if they got commed early.

True. However, the larger issue remains. Given your scenario, even if you DO react in time;

1- Your defensive siege weapons will be gone in the first minute of a siege.

2- Any new siege you try to build will be destroyed before it can be finished.

3- Any effort to stand and defend on the wall will kill you, not the enemy.

I can understand the difficulty in balancing things so that defenders aren’t invulnerable in their structures and so that attackers get a fair shot at taking objectives.

The balance since launch, unfortunately, has been outrageously against the defenders.

…and of course, giving us better arrow carts was bad idea.
How about making AOE damage relevant like in DAOC, so group of good players can keep choke point and be able to farm zerg rof mindless ushing noobs forever?
Or maybe, just maybe make oil usable…I mean, I often killed 50+ attackers with oil in DAOC, here, only one to die is guy on the oil himself…etc…etc

ANET says zerg or quit and tic tacs are a candy.

BrockMcCleery.9562:

ANET says zerg or quit and tic tacs are a candy.

That was pretty obvious after AOE nerf

Celly.5912:

There’s a lot more to it than the size of the zerg, you (or your commander) just doesn’t appear to use any. Try flanking with a group, build siege in the middle of the field to help you out, portal bomb, veil bomb when flanking, turtle with the zerg.
In towers place your siege tactically, use the gates to flank at the right time, sneak behind them with a few people and build siege there.

There are plenty of tactics, just open your eyes to them

Yep there are lots of tactics to be used in WvW, it’s just hard to pull off these things when the average pug finds it difficult to not drain keep supply, not overextend, shoot the cannons and oil instead of the door… and some even find it hard to follow the commander. There’s a reason why those guild teams with half as many as your pug zerg are slaughtering you almost flawlessly. Put some more effort into your play and learning the game and you might find WvW much more enjoyable.

chefdiablo.6791:

There are very subtle advantages for an invading force that frustrate me regarding structure defense.

1) A little ledge on top of the the walls (not even knee high) prevents my characters with a bow from being able to hit a large number of the attackers.

You do realize this little ledge is also your only defense against getting pulled off the wall and nuked to downstate in 0,1 sec? Although I am with you in hating the limitation it gives to your projectile attacks, it has also saved me countless times.

chefdiablo.6791:

2) Several casting classes have massively powerful aoe skills that can not only make that wall the least safe place to be, but also destroy siege within seconds unless it is placed in some awkward and almost useless place.

This is my biggest problem with defense. It’s just not fun to defend if the whole wall is one big red line pattern of aoe circles. The best thing you can do is pop invulnerability, run in to fire one attack and dodge out again. How is this fun, cause I can’t see it?