Guild Wars 2

If you can’t afford to upgrade, then you sit with paper gates and walls. Then your opponents have an easier time taking your stuff. If a player sacrifices their Gold to help upgrade your defenses, then you’re rewarded with tougher properties.

You aren’t Entitled to free upgrades. There’s a cost associated with it, as anything else.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you can’t afford to upgrade, then you sit with paper gates and walls. Then your opponents have an easier time taking your stuff. If a player sacrifices their Gold to help upgrade your defenses, then you’re rewarded with tougher properties.

You aren’t Entitled to free upgrades. There’s a cost associated with it, as anything else.

Upgrades without gold costs aren’t without cost. They take time, supply, and hours of people’s time doin defense.

Gold costs for upgraded keeps aren’t paid by nearly everyone playing WvW so I fail to see how it is a cost at all to getting upgrades other than to make that one person poorer.

I really have a hard time seeing what function it serves and “giving a cost” doesn’t strike me as an argument to something that has a lot of other more restrictive costs.

Dont mind Smooth Penguin, his is a trading post player. I would be suprised if he even plays WvW.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you can’t afford to upgrade, then you sit with paper gates and walls. Then your opponents have an easier time taking your stuff. If a player sacrifices their Gold to help upgrade your defenses, then you’re rewarded with tougher properties.

You aren’t Entitled to free upgrades. There’s a cost associated with it, as anything else.

Isn’t it awkward when people come to forums but don’t read before they post…

Here I’ll help…

styx.7294:

-and ultimately, is never a factor in whether an upgrade gets started or not (it’s all a matter of supply)

Quoted from the OP explaining that gold cost is never the issue for starting a upgrade so has very little reason to be there.

@Styx As some one that upgrades stuff a lot personally feel it doesn’t matter, WvW is more profitable then people make it out to be (Or maybe I’m lucky) As you said it doesn’t really need to be there so I would be nice to see it gone.

styx.7294:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you can’t afford to upgrade, then you sit with paper gates and walls. Then your opponents have an easier time taking your stuff. If a player sacrifices their Gold to help upgrade your defenses, then you’re rewarded with tougher properties.

You aren’t Entitled to free upgrades. There’s a cost associated with it, as anything else.

Upgrades without gold costs aren’t without cost. They take time, supply, and hours of people’s time doin defense.

Gold costs for upgraded keeps aren’t paid by nearly everyone playing WvW so I fail to see how it is a cost at all to getting upgrades other than to make that one person poorer.

I really have a hard time seeing what function it serves and “giving a cost” doesn’t strike me as an argument to something that has a lot of other more restrictive costs.

Gold costs serve three purposes. It’s a Gold sink, plus is a COST that needs to be paid in order to make your Towers or Keeps tougher to take. In addition to that, it forces troll players to have to make a payment in order to queue the upgrade.

If the Gold cost wasn’t there, then anyone would be able to upgrade. There’d be no sacrifice except someone taking 1 second to click on a button and draining Supply. WvW takes strategy. There are times when you need the Supply to build defensive siege first.

Malediktus.9250:

Dont mind Smooth Penguin, his is a trading post player. I would be suprised if he even plays WvW.

I’m on Maguuma. The #1 skilled server in all the game. I find time to WvW, and hit the TP at spawn.

I thought the same thing OP, why should I spend my gold on upgrading something that I get nothing out of it, and it will probably just be run over before the upgrade completes anyways. So right now it is basically it is a guild thing if they want to claim it and upgrade it so they can show off their banner.

I agree. Otherwise I expect a percentage of the profit people get from defending an objective I upgraded.

As long as you keep earning gold in WvW (and yes you do, no matter how much you try to deny it) there NEED to be gold-sinks.

I don’t have a problem with the prices per se but I agree the logic doesn’t make sense.

Why does an individual have to pay for a temporary upgrade that benefits all? It seems like an odd design decision for something that’s fundamentally a community effort.

It would make much more sense if you could use Badges of Honor to pay for upgrades rather than Gold.

It’s pretty much the same with siege and I don’t see people complaining about that. When no enemies are at a tower and you pre-place defensive siege, it’s the exact same concept as buying an upgrade. That is, one person paying for siege and it benefits the server as a whole, just like buying upgrades. You can kind of see this with offensive siege too, for example, a commander spending 10g on an omega golem rush or 6g on a guild catapult rush where the commander is the one that pays and the whole group benefits.

I agree about removing gold and karma from buying upgrades.

Only suggestion I can think of though is to make it a bit more co-op for all players and maybe remove yaks all together and have people themselves pick up supplies from a camp and have to chose between taking it with them or running to a tower and putting supplies into the towers, obviously remake some camp upgrades but it would mean a lot more team work would be needed and could involve some very nice clutch tactics where a zerg drops that last 30 supplies into a tower for an upgrade to finish essentially reinforcing the tower and repairing everything again.

…. Although, everyone uses 5+ omegas on paper towers anyway so probably won’t accomplish much.

But the workers need their salaries!

In all seriousness, I always thought it’d have been fair if there was a system that would allow you to share the costs, like a chest where you could deposit your money.

Radian.2478:

It’s pretty much the same with siege and I don’t see people complaining about that. When no enemies are at a tower and you pre-place defensive siege, it’s the exact same concept as buying an upgrade. That is, one person paying for siege and it benefits the server as a whole, just like buying upgrades. You can kind of see this with offensive siege too, for example, a commander spending 10g on an omega golem rush or 6g on a guild catapult rush where the commander is the one that pays and the whole group benefits.

I think the cost on siege works to keep it from just being spammed everywhere. People’ll find it funny to just toss free siege everywhere they go. There isn’t the same problem with upgrades.

lordkrall.7241:

As long as you keep earning gold in WvW (and yes you do, no matter how much you try to deny it) there NEED to be gold-sinks.

Like I said, there are lots of WvW gold sinks. Upgrades aren’t a gold sink to most every WvW player already.

Well being from GoM too, I don’t know if gold sinks really are our problem regarding upgrades. It’s like you mentioned, the extremely small number of us regularly doing the upgrades and running the yaks.

I’m lucky enough to play when other defenders are on, so some of us can join the zerg for cash and then switch. But I know some defenders have gone kind of broke with upgrading because they are the only ones willing to sit around and upgrade towers (towers that some commanders don’t care about sacrificing, but that’s another debate).

I find this gold sink to be so tiny it doesn’t bother me too much, but I do find it a bit pointless as a gold sink. I guess the only good thing is that some players are less inclined to buy random upgrades at inappropriate times (but from experience, even that isn’t really true).

If upgrades were free, I think we would have a lot of players starting them at bad times, or starting too many upgrades at once. Having to pay makes you think about which upgrade, when, and whether it’s worth gambling your money at that time.

If upgrade costs are gold sinks, it should draw gold from all players from the server when upgrading, even PvE. Not just one person. Everyone on the server benifits from upgrading. Yes, even PvE players, every point earned gives them buffs too.

I agree with OP, this is poor game design. Ive been thinking the same thing everytime I spend 3 golds on a WvW evening on upgrades.

Trolling with upgrading? Seriously, just build rams on walls if you wanna troll your own server.

styx.7294:

Like I said, there are lots of WvW gold sinks. Upgrades aren’t a gold sink to most every WvW player already.

Hm?
There is currently 2 gold sinks in WvW.
Repair-cost and Upgrades.
Removing half of them will effect the economy.
Sure not many people are effected by said gold-sink, but the amount of gold removed is still quite much.
There is after all several golds removed for every keep upgraded and so on.

Vaugh.7193:

Trolling with upgrading? Seriously, just build rams on walls if you wanna troll your own server.

Some people aren’t trolling, they just don’t know (or care). Such as launching a fortify upgrade when the tower has no supplies and no oil.
Or a second worker when one worker is more than enough to take care of the supplies.

But I don’t think removing the gold cost would make things worst.

paying gold for upgrades is fine for me, i pay alot for them and it keeps people who wanna troll / or dont know what to order away from draining supply ( think hire merchants when WP or fortify is going on)

Agree 100%. Eliminate the gold cost. The cost is the supply and the strategy of that supply usage.

I’ve always thought if you put money towards an upgrade, you should at least get some sort of “vested interest” buff while on the map. Even if it’s a 10% increase in gold for an hour or so on all activities that acquire gold. Either way I don’t care, I make enough moolah in WvW anyway so the upgrade costs are negligible.

With Siege at least you get to use it if you paid for it.

But upgrades…..those are purely a community service.

If you are too poor to pay for upgrades, then don’t. You let the Commanders take care of that. The more serious WvW players are the ones who care about the competition. Having stronger Gates and Walls = more defense.

A combination of less gold and some Badges would be good. I’m richer in badges than gold.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you are too poor to pay for upgrades, then don’t. You let the Commanders take care of that. The more serious WvW players are the ones who care about the competition. Having stronger Gates and Walls = more defense.

Obviously you still don’t understand the point of the thread….It’s not about people being able to afford it or not…It about the fact that the gold cost makes little difference in if the upgrade gets started or not. Upgrades cost between 2s50c to 1g50s (excluding SM) the most common upgrades cost less then 75s, troll or serious WvW player, its not a major cost…

Johje Holan.4607:

A combination of less gold and some Badges would be good. I’m richer in badges than gold.

I think that adding a badge cost to upgrades will just make the problem worse. Here’s why:
1. It does nothing to spread out the burden of upgrading, it will still just be the same people upgrading
2. The upgraders spend more time sieging/sentrying/upgrading than other people and therefore have a much lower badge income rate. They would then have to use their relatively scarce badges on upgrades. While people generally don’t care about having badges, you can get armor sets with them, and Anet can still add more things at any time.
3. Badges are not tradeable, making it impossible for server or guild communities to donate to people that are upgrading.

I could get behind the costs changing with the tier, but the coding for that would take too much development time and wouldn’t equal the reward.

The original idea was more in-line with how it was during the first 1-2 months of the game, where most people didn’t have a lot of money to spend on upgrades and often would require donations and coordination on the map to upgrade locations.

Zikory.6871:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you are too poor to pay for upgrades, then don’t. You let the Commanders take care of that. The more serious WvW players are the ones who care about the competition. Having stronger Gates and Walls = more defense.

Obviously you still don’t understand the point of the thread….It’s not about people being able to afford it or not…It about the fact that the gold cost makes little difference in if the upgrade gets started or not. Upgrades cost between 2s50c to 1g50s (excluding SM) the most common upgrades cost less then 75s, troll or serious WvW player, its not a major cost…

What point? There’s a cost associated with upgrading your WvW holdings. Gold is the main fee along with Supply. If you’re willing to toss 2+ Gold to upgrade something, then you make that choice. It benefits your server as a whole if done properly. If you can’t afford it, that’s fine. Commanders usually take care of it, so you don’t have to spend any money.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Zikory.6871:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you are too poor to pay for upgrades, then don’t. You let the Commanders take care of that. The more serious WvW players are the ones who care about the competition. Having stronger Gates and Walls = more defense.

Obviously you still don’t understand the point of the thread….It’s not about people being able to afford it or not…It about the fact that the gold cost makes little difference in if the upgrade gets started or not. Upgrades cost between 2s50c to 1g50s (excluding SM) the most common upgrades cost less then 75s, troll or serious WvW player, its not a major cost…

What point? There’s a cost associated with upgrading your WvW holdings. Gold is the main fee along with Supply. If you’re willing to toss 2+ Gold to upgrade something, then you make that choice. It benefits your server as a whole if done properly. If you can’t afford it, that’s fine. Commanders usually take care of it, so you don’t have to spend any money.

Again not the point of the thread. But gold in not the “main fee” supply would be as it is time gated and take up a majority of the cost…Gold is just a annoyance at best. Anyone that upgrades and is likely aware of it can afford 2s50c-75s, any one that can not is most likely unaware of the upgrades or wouldn’t consider doing it, there for the cost wouldn’t matter.

Out side of SMC, only 1 thing cost over a gold which is fortify keep. Which is a drop in the bucket compared to the time gated 2000 supply needed…

I agree with this. The time and supply it requires to upgrade should be all it takes. Given that the opposing team can immediately know the status a structure’s upgrade, that should be the incentive to take it over as quickly as possible. The onus is on the enemy to strike quickly.

Zikory.6871:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Zikory.6871:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you are too poor to pay for upgrades, then don’t. You let the Commanders take care of that. The more serious WvW players are the ones who care about the competition. Having stronger Gates and Walls = more defense.

Obviously you still don’t understand the point of the thread….It’s not about people being able to afford it or not…It about the fact that the gold cost makes little difference in if the upgrade gets started or not. Upgrades cost between 2s50c to 1g50s (excluding SM) the most common upgrades cost less then 75s, troll or serious WvW player, its not a major cost…

What point? There’s a cost associated with upgrading your WvW holdings. Gold is the main fee along with Supply. If you’re willing to toss 2+ Gold to upgrade something, then you make that choice. It benefits your server as a whole if done properly. If you can’t afford it, that’s fine. Commanders usually take care of it, so you don’t have to spend any money.

Again not the point of the thread. But gold in not the “main fee” supply would be as it is time gated and take up a majority of the cost…Gold is just a annoyance at best. Anyone that upgrades and is likely aware of it can afford 2s50c-75s, any one that can not is most likely unaware of the upgrades or wouldn’t consider doing it, there for the cost wouldn’t matter.

Out side of SMC, only 1 thing cost over a gold which is fortify keep. Which is a drop in the bucket compared to the time gated 2000 supply needed…

Again, what point? It’s a fee. If you can’t afford to pay the fee, regardless if it’s a Tower or SM, then don’t pay it. If the amount is trivial at best, perhaps we can suggest Anet increase the costs? Using the real world as an example, it’s like complaining that you need to pay for the gas that runs your car, where the gas is gated by OPEC.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Zikory.6871:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Zikory.6871:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you are too poor to pay for upgrades, then don’t. You let the Commanders take care of that. The more serious WvW players are the ones who care about the competition. Having stronger Gates and Walls = more defense.

Obviously you still don’t understand the point of the thread….It’s not about people being able to afford it or not…It about the fact that the gold cost makes little difference in if the upgrade gets started or not. Upgrades cost between 2s50c to 1g50s (excluding SM) the most common upgrades cost less then 75s, troll or serious WvW player, its not a major cost…

What point? There’s a cost associated with upgrading your WvW holdings. Gold is the main fee along with Supply. If you’re willing to toss 2+ Gold to upgrade something, then you make that choice. It benefits your server as a whole if done properly. If you can’t afford it, that’s fine. Commanders usually take care of it, so you don’t have to spend any money.

Again not the point of the thread. But gold in not the “main fee” supply would be as it is time gated and take up a majority of the cost…Gold is just a annoyance at best. Anyone that upgrades and is likely aware of it can afford 2s50c-75s, any one that can not is most likely unaware of the upgrades or wouldn’t consider doing it, there for the cost wouldn’t matter.

Out side of SMC, only 1 thing cost over a gold which is fortify keep. Which is a drop in the bucket compared to the time gated 2000 supply needed…

Again, what point? It’s a fee. If you can’t afford to pay the fee, regardless if it’s a Tower or SM, then don’t pay it. If the amount is trivial at best, perhaps we can suggest Anet increase the costs? Using the real world as an example, it’s like complaining that you need to pay for the gas that runs your car, where the gas is gated by OPEC.

Why do you keep repeating your self? No one here is talking about not being able to afford the cost. The “point” would be in the OP, which you obviously didn’t read. And as for your “real world example” See the guy above me…(well his post is gone so thats awkward…lol)

Tibstrike.2974:

Your analogy is a poor one I think. Yes, you pay to put gas in your car, but once you pay, you have the gas in your car and you can then drive off.

Paying for an upgrade in WvW is like paying for the gas, and then driving to a petroleum distillery and escorting small canisters of gas to the gas station where it is stored until you have enough to fill the tank. But, if the gas station is taken over by any other company during the escort time, you lose all the gas that has already been escorted and you still have to take the gas station and again pay for the privilege to escort the necessary amount of gas.

People are saying its unnecessary to have this gold-sink. Replace it with Karma+Badges, things that actually make sense lore-wise to be used in an ethereal place like the Mists.

If someone takes over the gas station, retake it, and escort the tanker Yaks to protect the much needed fuel.

As for being lore accurate, if we were all in the Mists, we could just walk through the walls. In reality, we need to pay the workers to build the upgrades. Gold = the worker’s wages. Supply = the materials needed to upgrate. Karma = feeling good about helping your server.

I think the cost at least serves the purpose of giving new players some pause before blindly starting an upgrade, just for the heck of it. It might make them stop and think for a moment, maybe even ask, rather than just doing it to see what happens.

This is a real issue IMO. I agree that this needs to be removed or at least changed.

One change I would be okay with is scaling down the cost for teams with the outnumbered buff. Teams with less players cant pool together enough money to fairly upgrade things; and a reduced cost would lead to more upgrades and is better for the defending outnumbered team.

Emissary Vex.5690:

This is a real issue IMO. I agree that this needs to be removed or at least changed.

One change I would be okay with is scaling down the cost for teams with the outnumbered buff. Teams with less players cant pool together enough money to fairly upgrade things; and a reduced cost would lead to more upgrades and is better for the defending outnumbered team.

No, because then the strategy would be to have all players log out, leaving a few people in Towers and Keeps. Then when the Outmanned buff kicks in, they start upgrades on the cheap. After that, everyone logs back in.

If anything, the costs of upgrading should increase, and with it a slightly higher boost in Reinforced Gate/Wall HP.

My server’s been in situations where it’s expensive (you basically have be tier 8 NA small) and people don’t wanna do it ‘cause it’s too empty but that should be solved in other ways (ways that put people in empty servers).

I would not have minded the costs for those pesky upgrades if upgrading actually rewarded the generous guy/gal who did it with something personally worthwhile like wxp, less damage from guards/siege for x mins, no repair costs for x mins, etc.
Really, this idea of upgrades as a gold sink does not work as intended and is not effective because only a very minor group who are usually dedicated to wvw purchase those upgrades…But if personal benefits rolled in when purchasing upgrades then maybe more people would consider spending their gold on upgrades…until then all we could do is offer a few words to compliment the generous few.

Just give WXP to the person who pays for the upgrade. Because tbh it gets annoying for those commanders, myself included that upgrade a borderland, siege it up, and everything gets lpst next morning pr as soon as you log off

Perhaps they should remove some upgrades completely. It’s a pain to try and defend a paper anything. Make everything take over with stone walls and upgraded gate and not able to upgrade further.
These upgrades are necessary but boring. The walls upgrade is in most cases not worth anything until the gate is upgraded too.
After a rework of them I would also add waypoints to the list, but not in the state they are right now.

Maybe it would be better to convert the upgrades from mainly passive events to active events where the players have to work for it.

I also play on GoM so I know exactly what Styx is talking about. Bottom line: the cost/benefit of upgrades does not make sense. Having one person pay for an upgrade that an entire zone gets the benefit of does not make sense.

They should either remove the cost altogether or add in some sort of personal reward for spending gold (like granting WXP).

+1 to the OP for bringing this up.