Guild Wars 2

Although a lot of people have complained about removal of white swords for the “Sneak Attack” experiment, it seems to me that it has some advantages in encouraging attacking of multiple objectives, by smaller groups. Problem is, it still doesn’t disadvantage a zerg.

If Anet decide to keep this change, I suggest a further buffing to upgraded walls and doors, to ensure that keeps that have been upgraded by players spending a lot of time and effort (and coin) are harder to take by a 30+ zerg.

This would reward a server for spending effort on defence, and make it a bit harder for those door/wall melting blobs to get a foothold before a scout can call for help. At the moment.. there is simply little time to respond, even if a call goes out immediately from a scout.

That would discourage smaller groups from attacking.

I’m most concerned with a blob being able to melt 2 doors of a T3 structure in about 2 mins flat. They are simply going down too fast. Even if the keep is fully sieged, it can’t be saved.

Servers seem to have taken different strategies with this change. One strategy is to turn wvw into one big pvd flipping game. Get one huge zerg and just reset everything. Result? Server with highest numbers wins every single time. The defence game becomes completely pointless. The alternative strategy is to break into smaller groups and try multiple objectives at once, but what’s the point if it’s all destined to be paper forever? No need to worry about dolyaks at all, cos the only place to get supply is freshly flipped camps.. ^yawn^

I’m asking for this kind of buff, or something to mitigate the absence of white swords, otherwise, I might as well go play EotM ….. :/

Maybe WP’s need to remain open, or something.. the whole business is putting me off wanting to play wvw.

I dunno.. I see the potential in no white swords, but it’s (more) unbalanced right now imho.

Maybe make something “if orange swords pop door HP goes up” and for walls. So to not discourage smaller groups, but make it harder for larger ones.

That could work… but commanders would simply request their zerg not to hit doors.

Well the white swords gone (temp) promotes havoc squads into attacking without having a blob run them down, so if only upping the walls/gates then that would take away from havoc squads attacking as much.

The idea is a very double edged sword to be honest, because even if the defense was increased, commanders would just throw more rams/cata’s/golems.

Right now the best way to combat a blob sieging a location is to use siege disablers till your force arrives to back you up.

I can see the obvious benefit of no white swords helping small groups but in all honesty promoting gameplay that favors the minority over the majority is just impractical. What incentive would I have to put in gold, and time to upgrade anything if it can be taken by 2 people? It is exactly as Mishi states a double edged sword. And again the server with the most will have the advantage as it can afford to have more scouts and havok teams so it does nothing to hurt larger servers, it does have some benefit sure for smaller servers, but not enough to really justify it being implemented.

Terrier.8732:

I’m most concerned with a blob being able to melt 2 doors of a T3 structure in about 2 mins flat. They are simply going down too fast. Even if the keep is fully sieged, it can’t be saved.

Servers seem to have taken different strategies with this change. One strategy is to turn wvw into one big pvd flipping game. Get one huge zerg and just reset everything. Result? Server with highest numbers wins every single time. The defence game becomes completely pointless. The alternative strategy is to break into smaller groups and try multiple objectives at once, but what’s the point if it’s all destined to be paper forever? No need to worry about dolyaks at all, cos the only place to get supply is freshly flipped camps.. ^yawn^

This has already happened a long time ago in the TOP tiers of EU. The recent change just made it worse. Now almost nobody scouts as it offers no rewards and zone wide blob flips everything in 1 map, then ports to another map does the same and so on.

In other words, this ill-planned change, turned WvWvW into more blobby and more into player vs door (PvD).

I don’t think a permanent removal of white swords is a good idea, because even if the defending gets some increased rewards, they would still be way below the rewards of playing EotM, latest pve farm or joining the pvd zerg. Outside the prime time, even some of the top servers have just 1-3 players on the entire map. In other words there are not enough to scout the objectives outside the busiest hours.

The white swords served an important purpose by giving away information about enemy information. I would have went further into this direction and make any enemy group, which is larger than 15/20 players always appear as moving swords in the map. This would encourage enemy blob to split up, not to reveal their movements to enemy.

I have finally come around to the truth that you can’t discourage mediocre players from zerging together. The “baddie light bulb” turns on and the moths gather.

Though I actually really like the new changes, roaming skill groups have more incentive to help their server.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but low pop servers have a harder time to find fights and a harder time to capture structures because the servers with higher numbers have people in most of their towers+keeps upgrading them, while low pop servers don’t have the numbers to have scouts everywhere. Removal of white swords actually helps the higher population servers.

IF white swords permanently removed, then …

welcome to eotm mk 2 because that is what it has become this last week.

It actually encourages blobbing far from working against .

Maybe lower the amount of ppl required for orange swords down to 11, that will ensure that most zergs are well visible on the map, only small groups like 5 or 10 won’t be noticable.

how about white swords are dependent on score?
1st place server doesn’t get white swords
2nd place server gets white swords in their bl but nowhere else
3rd place gets white swords on everything they own

Flyphish.6398:

I have finally come around to the truth that you can’t discourage mediocre players from zerging together. The “baddie light bulb” turns on and the moths gather.

Though I actually really like the new changes, roaming skill groups have more incentive to help their server.

lol. Just because you are not good enough to run with a larger group, don’t insult others. You probably think it is about running around pressing 1. lol.

This may come as a surprise to you, but some people… wait for it…. wait for it…. actually enjoy large scale open field fights.

A small group takes nearly 10 mins to take down a t3 door or wall that was the main point removing white swords so these small groups can do this and have real effect on the over all week. It has for the most part worked BUT ppl feel that they should be able to hold keeps and towers forever during a wvw week so they hate when the ninja happens.

Stronger walls and doors will push ppl back to zerg size to take any thing. The real chose is to remove T3 or even T2 from towers and make T1 a bit stronger if they want to keep white swords in. You MUST be able to with a group of 3 or more be able to take a tower with in 5 mins or less to have any hope of keeping a wvw match hit a stagnate mood.