Guild Wars 2

A lot of people who upgrade towers, camps, and escort dolyaks and scout, are going to be burned out and might simply give up after this change.

Svarty.8019:

Filovirus.6258:

Svarty.8019:

I believe this is the right direction, with a tweak. Only remove white swords for whoever is leading the scores at any one time. Done.

This incentivises the other two teams to attack the strongest side as was suggested a very long time ago.

Not really.
It just make said server being forced to play defensively, avoid fights, and never get out of objectives to keep their lead, hence burning out people out of boredom and killing WvW some more.

Encouraging people to avoid fights by hiding possibility of those, should NEVER happen in WvW.
You wand MORE ways of detecting/following ennemy players to confront them, not ways for them to go undetected, PvD some objective before defense can come, and then leave without a fight.

Why not just show their dots on the map, then, if this is your vision of WvW?

It’s not mine.

There is a vast difference between “hiding info about ennemies” and “making it visible at all times for no reason”.
You know it, you are just being hypocrit and dishonest….

But showing on the map all your allies positions, and showing ennemies that are seen by any of your allies would be a good thing actually (it would limit the need to resort to third party communications that shouldn’t be nearly mandatory for WvW).

Same with sentries consumable from EotM, they would be great in WvW (with limitations about the distance of each other you can put them down, a limit to the number anyone can have up at a given time, places you can’t put them down, a total limit on how much you can have at a time and so on).

I like this change, ppk and no w.swords make sense together. If enemy got bigger blob there is no point run in big group cos every wipe will cost lots of points. So smaller server should split in smaller groups and try ninja cap objectives and no w.swords should help with that.
Anyway on t1 keeps and garri are contested 24/7 so its not big change for as anyway

Worst change imaginable.

If this comes out it only goes to show that all the hours played by devs during the tournament were for not. Nobody in their right mind suggested this, to make it even remotely close to being considered for a live build is ludicrously dumb.

shuuuuure ill handle also the gate keys to the enemy, i also leave a note at gate “please keep keys in place for next group attacking tower”.

This do not promote defense, this promotes people stop caring about the game even more.

This do not make sense and i doubt Anet being that bad to adopt this just out of no where.

elkirin.8534:

The removal of white swords is a striking change. It may either decrease or increase participation in WvW.

- The white swords are information. Information that you can use to make your decision. A beacon of light in the fog of war. Take away white swords and players will be even more clueless what’s happening around them. We need more information, not less.

We don’t know where enemies are going.
We don’t know where own own guys are going.
We don’t know how many supplies our structures have without visiting them.
We don’t know how many supplies enemy structures have without being near them.
We don’t know how many supplies our own guys have.
We don’t know what’s the upgrade status of our buildings.
We don’t know what’s the upgrade status of enemy buildings.
We don’t know what places have Determined buff without visiting external website.

All this leads to a very restricted non-tactical gameplay of forming huge blob of players around commander and overpowering everyone that comes across its way.

Outside of primetime, the people I know who scout are the vigilant few who do all the jobs that need to be done when the zerg isn’t around:

• Scouting
• Running around keeping Upgrades going
• Building/refreshing siege
• Calling out sentry/dolyak deaths
• Repairing everything
• Defending camps
• Manning cannons/oils to drive off small groups
• Disabling siege until reinforcements come.
• Running to check on swords (and being able to slip safely through a zerg into a tower to defend it)

They can do this because swords give them a heads up when things need their attention. They can step outside and know when they need to step back in. Human scouts in every objective can call attention when it is attacked but on most servers it isn’t going to happen because it is boring and anti-rewarding. Without swords these vigilant few will either get burnt out or frustrated trying to still do everything… or they will sit in one building and be bored out of their minds.

Then 4-9 months later they will eventually add “rewards” for scouting/defending, but the people scouting today are not likely to still be scouting then.

Bad idea! / Good Idea!

From someone on a server that at one point had enough people where 1 person could babysit every structure on the home BL, but even then didn’t, because not many people like to. Now, not even enough people to mount a good havoc squad capable of papering and retaining 50% of another BLs structures before the tic, before being discoveted or before one of the other servers clean up after us before the tic.

On the other hand, this will create complete chaos for roaming zergs from every server trying to figure out the movement of the other 2 roaming zergs. Everyone’s BL could be a bag of skittles if this is played right, and you won’t see green garri held for a week while blue garri has been flipped 20 times.

In a way, it makes everyone vunerable, and no one feel as if they are being ganged up on. But, it also eliminates the need to put time, effort and money into upgrading anything short of keeps.

Now, if you’re lucky enough to get your keeps wp’d removing white swords should also remove contested status, allowing players to quickly get there if needed. But, most likely, you will have 1 person watching all entrances of the keep (easier to do from inner) so outer falling will become a nonchalant occurance.

I imagine there will probably be an overlay program that will tell people when an objective is contested, so that people who play without the overlay will be completely in the dark (thanks anet), but people with the overlay will not be affected by the removal of white swords whatsoever (thanks 3rd party).

Just how many 3rd party programs are we supposed to need to play this game?

There is no API for the contested nor for the upgrade status.
No 3rd party app/overlay is going to offer it.

No swords = no def = no upgrades beside EB and main keep = more karma train.

Scouting is not only unrewarding, it’s also boring, and a single scout quite often fails to notice a keep attack before outer doors broke.

Zenith.6403:

All this leads to a very restricted non-tactical gameplay of forming huge blob of players around commander and overpowering everyone that comes across its way.

Sounds a bit like EotM.

Ynot.8397:

lordkrall.7241:

So a change that will force groups to split up and have scouts checking out towers and keeps in order to make sure that they can be defended?

Isn’t that basically what people have been demanding since release? A way to stop the zerg form just going from place to place and take stuff unopposed?

I for one think this will be a good change. Serious WvW guilds already have people scouting towers and keep so won’t really be that much of a difference.

Given enough time and patience I can solo a keep. It takes a lot of time but if no one is around it can be done. Take away white swords and I can take your garri and not have any issues. Give me 4 more people and this can be done easily. Off hours I could cap keeps that are full upgraded all the time.

If you think that this will make it harder for zergs then you haven’t thought this through. I can have the outer walls down without a defender knowing any better, and call in the zerg. Boom, t3 tower/keep taken. Stopping the zerg? Nah.

Some serious wvw guilds. Very few in lower tier servers (not t1/2) and even less in off horus. Any server with an advantage in off hours would steamroll even more.

Bad idea. Do not want.

oh, good point.

i, too, can solo anything but sm.

i will start predictable patterns and take a couple objectives and when i see a single person i will break the pattern and run away to somewhere where there is no one and take that instead and my enemies will not be able to keep their morale high enough to keep people on the map. because i can take every single objective on a borderland solo, guaranteed 100% with any amount of upgrades, and the only thing that would ever stop me from taking keeps is a contested waypoint. 1 zergling cannot stop me, 2 can, and 1 roamer will, but 0 is a guarantee for me. they will not know where i am. they will know where i was by capped objectives.

nobody likes sitting around in an objective for their entire playtime out of necessity. when a server is able to coerce players into doing so map chat becomes riddled with complaints if those players must endure tribulations.

misterdevious.6482:

Outside of primetime, the people I know who scout are the vigilant few who do all the jobs that need to be done when the zerg isn’t around:

• Scouting
• Running around keeping Upgrades going
• Building/refreshing siege
• Calling out sentry/dolyak deaths
• Repairing everything
• Defending camps
• Manning cannons/oils to drive off small groups
• Disabling siege until reinforcements come.
• Running to check on swords (and being able to slip safely through a zerg into a tower to defend it)

They can do this because swords give them a heads up when things need their attention. They can step outside and know when they need to step back in. Human scouts in every objective can call attention when it is attacked but on most servers it isn’t going to happen because it is boring and anti-rewarding. Without swords these vigilant few will either get burnt out or frustrated trying to still do everything… or they will sit in one building and be bored out of their minds.

Then 4-9 months later they will eventually add “rewards” for scouting/defending, but the people scouting today are not likely to still be scouting then.

Good post. This all pretty much sums up my concerns of removing them, especially when you are with a handful running over the border outside prime time etc. White swords just give us some information about stuff going on. I scout/roam loads of my wvw time like 95% and with no swords i cannot afford to get 3feet away from a structure scared i would lose it then.

Offair.2563:

I scout/roam loads of my wvw time like 95% and with no swords i cannot afford to get 3feet away from a structure scared i would lose it then.

Even with swords, I’ve seen objective get captured a few minutes after I checked them and refreshed the siege in them, especially if they are not upgraded yet.

Just thought of another point. They lowered the requirements for a breakout to 5 people, they introduce golem mastery and now they are going to nerf the siege disablers and remove the white swords.

Something tells me they would rather do away with WvWvW altogether and just run the EotM karma train. With just two omegas I could sweep an enemy BL!

Stick a fork in it, game is done.

Why is everyone raging here?! This is a good change. it encourages groups to go scout stuff, and not everyone sticking to 1 commander mindlessly following. You can still do that but don’t complain if they ninja keeps from you…

There’s also always the chat.. you know.. This is an MMO…

First good WvW change I’ve seen in a LONG time!

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Why is everyone raging here?! This is a good change. it encourages groups to go scout stuff, and not everyone sticking to 1 commander mindlessly following. You can still do that but don’t complain if they ninja keeps from you…

There’s also always the chat.. you know.. This is an MMO…

First good WvW change I’ve seen in a LONG time!

Care to share what server you play on?

Theftwind.8976:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Why is everyone raging here?! This is a good change. it encourages groups to go scout stuff, and not everyone sticking to 1 commander mindlessly following. You can still do that but don’t complain if they ninja keeps from you…

There’s also always the chat.. you know.. This is an MMO…

First good WvW change I’ve seen in a LONG time!

Care to share what server you play on?

Aurora Glade EU

I actually think this change makes a lot of sense, but we’ll have to see how it plays out.

Without such easy access to where attacks are coming from, a single mega-blob can’t simultaneously attack and defend against a bunch of small groups attacking their structures. If small groups coordinate, they will be more nimble and be able to out-maneuver the single blob. Unless you have scouts at every major gate (which you won’t b/c its boring), you will be able to mind-game servers. If you know there are scouts patrolling the towers, you can run distractions to the outer towers while hitting water-gate undetected. In a borderland, where it even less likely for there to be scouts, you can run all kinds of havoc by running groups all over the place.

This empowers small, coordinated groups to hit many objectives at the same time without a large mega-blob knowing exactly what is hitting them. To defend properly, you will need small groups roaming the map hunting the small attack groups, thus resulting in more fights and greater coordination.

However, when coverage is very sparse, I can see how this will make defense even harder. Regardless, this change absolutely favors smaller groups, as it is much harder to keep tabs on many small groups than it is to keep track of a single mega-blob that is usually predictable anyway.

We’ll have to see how it works out, but it might actually be awesome.

While this may encourage small groups the effect will be that this will encourage blobs.
Small group is dependant on supply to build few rams to get down gate.
Blob will come to keep, build 5 rams, gate will go down fast and all this without any alert.
For populated servers like SFR or Gandara its not a problem because most the time they have people almost everywhere.
But for lower populated servers where is a problem to gather 40 man blob to counter enemy blob, and then those players wont scout, it will be a problem.
Big problem.

I see sometimes keep contested, ask for info, and reply is that someone is running there. Its not that lower populated servers have scouts in every keep,every tower, running every doly. Most the time there are 2-3 scouts that are willing to run fast to contested structure.

Hule.8794:

While this may encourage small groups the effect will be that this will encourage blobs.
Small group is dependant on supply to build few rams to get down gate.
Blob will come to keep, build 5 rams, gate will go down fast and all this without any alert.
For populated servers like SFR or Gandara its not a problem because most the time they have people almost everywhere.
But for lower populated servers where is a problem to gather 40 man blob to counter enemy blob, and then those players wont scout, it will be a problem.
Big problem.

I see sometimes keep contested, ask for info, and reply is that someone is running there. Its not that lower populated servers have scouts in every keep,every tower, running every doly. Most the time there are 2-3 scouts that are willing to run fast to contested structure.

I understand this concern, as I have many times been the smaller group getting K-trained while we just hold onto our keep and inner towers b/c they are seiged to the teeth. This change doesn’t hurt that defense group AT ALL, b/c its incredibly easy to keep tabs on the mega-blob. This does help that small group b/c now they can go ninja some stuff from the mega-blob’s side after discouraging them so they go to the other side. The white swords made it really easy for the megablob to defend effectively while keeping the train rolling. Now, the blob either has to split up some, allowing you to get some small fights, or actually lose out in the trade war. Small groups don’t take that much longer to cap towers than megablobs, so it might actually be more efficient to split up now.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Why is everyone raging here?! This is a good change. it encourages groups to go scout stuff, and not everyone sticking to 1 commander mindlessly following. You can still do that but don’t complain if they ninja keeps from you…

There’s also always the chat.. you know.. This is an MMO…

First good WvW change I’ve seen in a LONG time!

Heh. I defended fully upgraded bay yesterday for an hour(I was the only one on the map) outnumbered against 6 ppl. Do you really believe most servers will be able to scout the map when we can’t even gather defenders for fully upgraded keeps? Most low pop servers have very few players on at late hours and this will just make it so that the very few defenders we have on at night time will simply see towers flipping without being able to do anything about it.

I called for the guy who promoted this idea to be fired in another thread, I’ll do it here too. I’m not kidding either. You might find it “harsh” but the blatant favoritism towards large scale servers and greed in general has just reached a sickening point.

During the tournament I was a scout. I mean I was a SCOUT. 5 hour shifts, standing in a tower, doing nothing. Pulled a couple 12-13 hour shifts too. I wanted my side to win, I had the dedication to my server for that. We didn’t have the numbers for many “willing” scouts to rotate from active/scout statuses. Of course it meant nothing in the end, but that’s besides the point. I wasn’t the only one either, several other people subject themselves to this too.

It was the most painfully BORING task I have ever committed to one, one I’d have never attempted without the pride in my server that I have, and one I will NEVER do again. Ever. Because I’m done with WvW. Pretty much done with Anet too. I’m sick of this. I look at these forums and all I see are half hearted attempts to console a part of the playerbase that has reached levels of outright disgust with how things are going.

Now they come out with what is probably the WORST idea they could have possibly even contemplated. No, I’m out.

Oh and before ANYONE gets kittened about this not being “constructive criticism.” Well guess what, constructive criticism has yielded WvW as it is NOW. When you spit in someone’s face enough times, they’re gonna spit back.

Let’s see a Dev respond to THAT.

In order for this change (removal of crossed swords) to be even remotely beneficial, Anet have to deliver a good enough reward system to encourage scouts. Seen a lot on this thread about lack of numbers on low-pop servers, and how boring scouting is. I agree that scouting can be boring and is a huge problem .. but I believe that this goes across the board.. ALL servers have difficulty finding dedicated scouts. It just isn’t worth it.

But it needn’t be that way. If scouting provided a good reward system: achievement points, gold, WEXP and EXP, Karma even, then scouting will become attractive to the low-level WvW player and the PvE achievement hunter. When we refer to low-population servers in this forum, we’re generally referring to the WvW population. Increase the rewards for defensive play (increase the rewards to EotM levels for dolly escorting, defending keeps, towers, and camp; building defensive siege; being in a tower, keep or camp you own at the tick turn-over point), and, crucially, reduce the rewards for kills (or to be precise: increase the threshold at which a kill gives a reward.). These are changes that will encourage people who are low-level to carry out tasks that have a smaller risk attached to them but still pay dividends to the server.

Kungsmurfen.2861:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Why is everyone raging here?! This is a good change. it encourages groups to go scout stuff, and not everyone sticking to 1 commander mindlessly following. You can still do that but don’t complain if they ninja keeps from you…

There’s also always the chat.. you know.. This is an MMO…

First good WvW change I’ve seen in a LONG time!

Heh. I defended fully upgraded bay yesterday for an hour(I was the only one on the map) outnumbered against 6 ppl. Do you really believe most servers will be able to scout the map when we can’t even gather defenders for fully upgraded keeps? Most low pop servers have very few players on at late hours and this will just make it so that the very few defenders we have on at night time will simply see towers flipping without being able to do anything about it.

this will hurt the low pop servers, this cant be done w/o a small merge or something like that, some servers have like 15 players at EB commander another 10 spreaded roamming and 1 or 2 upgrading BL, for like 1h to 3h then bl’s go empty and is at that time that servers use to karma train stuff even with a small team that cannon put sword on stuff it is going to be a flip fest.

P.S can anyone give me the link saying this is going to be introduced or quote some dev?

Tank in advance >:|

Aeolus.3615:

P.S can anyone give me the link saying this is going to be introduced or quote some dev?

Tank in advance >:|

John Corpening.9847:

Hello!

The adopted devs got together again earlier this week for a lunch meeting to bring feedback from their guilds and discuss their observations. The team has already begun addressing some of the feedback the devs brought back as well as some of the issues that you have brought up on our forums.

Coming with the build next week, build sites for rams will be trimmed down in size. This is to reduce the visual clutter with build sites, since rams are often built very close to each other, and make it easier to tell a ram apart from other siege when you are building it. There are also changes coming later to label the build interacts with what you are building. So you should see “Build Ram”, “Build Catapult” etc. instead of just “Build”. These were suggestions taken from the discussion on siege trolls.

We are going to make a balance pass on Siege Disablers. This was one of the most common pieces of feedback both from our adopted devs and from the forums. We really believe that Siege Disablers were a great addition to the game. They gave defenders a better chance of holding off attackers, they created new strategies and they created some fun fights outside of objectives by buying some time. But we agree that they need to be adjusted. We will be looking at things like radius, cooldowns and duration of the effect.

There were a handful of other tweaks brought up in our discussions that we are planning. These include reducing the number of people who can rally off of a kill. Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled. We are also going to test out awarding points per kill. PPK was part of the scoring discussion and something we wanted to try. We will be looking for your feedback on that change after it goes live.

Some bigger issues are factoring into longer term work. For example, we have been discussing what we have learned from our conversations on the forums as well as the feedback our adopted devs brought back from their guilds on the topics of population imbalance and scoring. These are bigger changes and are factoring into longer term solutions that the team is working on.

The team has a lot to chew on but some areas that I’d like to discuss more with the community in the near future are rewards and supporting some vital roles like scouting and defending. I’ll kick off some discussions on these areas in the next couple of weeks.

I was happy to hear from the devs that they would all love to do this again and felt it was a very fun and valuable way to spend their free time. Many of them have made some great new friends and they all felt like this was a great way to really connect with the community by playing side by side with new faces and getting new perspectives on Guild Wars 2.

Thanks again to everyone who signed up for or hosted a dev! We had a great time!

John

I’m in silver and while we certainly do have scouts sitting on our stuff when we do primetime raids we generally don’t at other times. There’s not enough organized groups at other times and the rewards are nonexistant.

This change in isolation is bad for silver; it will not encourage more people to sit around in towers for no rewards. It will encourage them to join a zerg and ktrain with less resistance since swords no longer pop. More flipping = more rewards, but less tactical play.

If the change is combined with something like sentry turrets included in upgrades or reward changes to benefit scouting then it might be ok.

GreyWraith.8394:

I’m in silver and while we certainly do have scouts sitting on our stuff when we do primetime raids we generally don’t at other times. There’s not enough organized groups at other times and the rewards are nonexistant.

This change in isolation is bad for silver; it will not encourage more people to sit around in towers for no rewards. It will encourage them to join a zerg and ktrain with less resistance since swords no longer pop. More flipping = more rewards, but less tactical play.

If the change is combined with something like sentry turrets included in upgrades or reward changes to benefit scouting then it might be ok.

Who plays WvW for the rewards? If you wanna join a karma train you got for EotM. Most people i kow that are roaming, they do it for fun because they hate big blobs and zerging in general.

This is horrible. Above all the completely senseless bullkitten that has been done to WvW thus far, this takes the cake. This is even dumber than the ram eraser(I mean siege disabler). How can arena net even possibly think this is a good idea? Good luck to any server that doesn’t have scouts posted on their t3 keeps 24/7. Dumb idea is Dumb.

If they remove the whitesword I will….
1: Stop escorting dollies
2:Stop doing upgrades
3: Stop building sieges
4: Stop refreshing sieges if there are any.

What I will do is

1: JOIN THE KARMA TRAIN until I get bored of it.

Plenty of people in my guild talked about this and they feel the same way.

Simply put, we don’t have enough people on our server to scout every location all the time. The only thing this change is going to do is make it even more frustrating when something big flips only because we didn’t have someone squatting in it for hours on end and watching every single gate/wall to see if the enemy is attacking.

It’s hard enough trying to pull people to get across the map when swords pop on a keep to try and make it in time to do something about it. Now, something flips, and there won’t be any warning, notification — nothing.

Out of the 24 servers in NA, this change will have the largest benefit to 5, possibly 6. That is not the majority. Don’t implement it. As Brutal said, Dumb idea is Dumb.

Scouting with no white swords means permanently sitting in a tower hoping for action. This is not just boring, it isn’t even gameplay. People are focussing on rewards, but rewards are not the solution to bad development. This should not even be a situation players find themselves in.

Scouting 2014

This will finally split zerg, will incentive small scale fights or this will turn the usual wvw maps into a eotm: if you can’t manage to defend a structure you stop caring about’em and start farming keep and tower bosses.

Anyway this is a good “shake” to wvw, things will change for sure.

I hope the first 2 option will be adopted, wvw could be fun in the end.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

GreyWraith.8394:

I’m in silver and while we certainly do have scouts sitting on our stuff when we do primetime raids we generally don’t at other times. There’s not enough organized groups at other times and the rewards are nonexistant.

This change in isolation is bad for silver; it will not encourage more people to sit around in towers for no rewards. It will encourage them to join a zerg and ktrain with less resistance since swords no longer pop. More flipping = more rewards, but less tactical play.

If the change is combined with something like sentry turrets included in upgrades or reward changes to benefit scouting then it might be ok.

Who plays WvW for the rewards? If you wanna join a karma train you got for EotM. Most people i kow that are roaming, they do it for fun because they hate big blobs and zerging in general.

The more relevant question is: who plays WvW to camp a tower for hours on end waiting for something to happen? Fun is a reward. Tower camping isn’t.

I smh @ people claiming this is going to break up zergs. No white swords + camping is boring = less defense = offensive play trending up. This will increase roaming and PvD zerging.

GreyWraith.8394:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

GreyWraith.8394:

I’m in silver and while we certainly do have scouts sitting on our stuff when we do primetime raids we generally don’t at other times. There’s not enough organized groups at other times and the rewards are nonexistant.

This change in isolation is bad for silver; it will not encourage more people to sit around in towers for no rewards. It will encourage them to join a zerg and ktrain with less resistance since swords no longer pop. More flipping = more rewards, but less tactical play.

If the change is combined with something like sentry turrets included in upgrades or reward changes to benefit scouting then it might be ok.

Who plays WvW for the rewards? If you wanna join a karma train you got for EotM. Most people i kow that are roaming, they do it for fun because they hate big blobs and zerging in general.

The more relevant question is: who plays WvW to camp a tower for hours on end waiting for something to happen? Fun is a reward. Tower camping isn’t.

I smh @ people claiming this is going to break up zergs. No white swords + camping is boring = less defense = offensive play trending up. This will increase roaming and PvD zerging.

When roaming I expect to fight other players, say attack a tower or keep in order to get some attention and if lucky a fair fight. Now I’ll most probably run around capping stuff without finding anyone cause they still haven’t added any rewards for defending. Therefore no one will stay to make sure things don’t flip

To those who think that this change is a good idea because it will :
- split zergs
- create more scouts

The game is more than 2 years old, during all this time, most players who really enjoyed scouting/upgrading are gone.
A zergling won’t suddenly think “hey I’m going to help my server by standing in a tower for hours hoping to see someone”.

Had WvW started with no-white-swords, it wouldn’t be that bad. But now, the gameplay and updates of WvW have slowly taken out scouts and brought more zerglings looking for a tag to stick to, instead of doing something with no reward that may or may not help at all (if you sit in Aldon for 5 hours and no one comes near, you were basically useless).

The proposed removal of white swords is something that won’t help the issues with scouting-jobs at all. It’s often the case that we can only react to an attack by some swords appearing somewhere on the map because we lack the numbers to set up scouts. When there are no swords anymore, that means that you take away an important tool for us small scalers, roamers and off-time forces in the current objective-based gameplay that is WvW.

My suggestion to emphasize active scouting (instead of having to set up humanoid sentries) is, to keep white swords as is and reverting the changes made to orange swords, so that instead of 25 players in combat, the threshold would be set to 5 players in combat. The thought behind this goes as follows: Larger groups will most likely bring up swords if they don’t organize, so that it is easier to scout them over the whole map, while smaller groups would be able to set up several traps and fake attacks if the server-wide communication works out. The opposed realms then have the opportunity to scout groups more easily, which both boosts active communication and agile play on every side, as well as making “mindless zerging” less of an option if you are actually going for PpT and PpK.

tl;dr: Keep white swords (with 30 seconds initial delay, I’m okay with that), reduce orange-sword threshold to 5 again.

As others have said, this will result in PvDoor.

As far as tier 1 goes, there aren’t as many people playing as some of you think. During off hours sometimes late NA/early OCX most people on all servers gravitate towards EB. And during prime time a zerg can run in and put down 5 guild catas or superior rams and take a tier 3 tower in an instant.

This change will also make it pointless to upgrade. So even ignoring the delayed reaction due to no swords, the second this rule is implemented towers and keeps will be easier to take. This is called a “secondary effect”.

Anet doles out rewards in WvW like Ebanezer Scrooge, reserving the loot for dungeons, EOTM, events and Halloween and PvE bosses. And we have to pay for upgrades that selflessly benefit our server at the individuals cost in gold. They will certainly see less of this altruistic behavior.

RedStar.4218:

To those who think that this change is a good idea because it will :
- split zergs
- create more scouts

How it will split zergs? IMO (considering how well organised T1 servers work) this opens an opportunity to exploitlike game play. Let’s imagine that a zerg sends few ppl to build 2 superior rams, let them ram down the doors and rush in after they took care of gates. not that hard to do since the detection area is rather small, like 3-4 seconds of running. IMO after this change it will be possible to “ninja” anything with a zerg.

Hell, I’ve seen pugs in EoTM opening keeps without triggering swords so well organised server can do it at will.

Scouting? We have that already in T1. Be it dedicated scouts or roamers who report enemy presence all over the map. It is common to get reports from other BLs on TS or even map chat.

If anything this change will hit low pop servers hard.

Dancing Face.4695:

This will finally split zerg, will incentive small scale fights or this will turn the usual wvw maps into a eotm: if you can’t manage to defend a structure you stop caring about’em and start farming keep and tower bosses.

Anyway this is a good “shake” to wvw, things will change for sure.

I hope the first 2 option will be adopted, wvw could be fun in the end.

i believe what would happen is this would turn blob even more productive, with no sword, its only a drop plenty of catas near walls (or non visible points when u can cata non keep zones and still damage walls )and no one know keep/tower is under atack, take stuff faster, more ppt, more flipfest, more AB redundancy, more easyer wxp.

Aeolus.3615:

Dancing Face.4695:

This will finally split zerg, will incentive small scale fights or this will turn the usual wvw maps into a eotm: if you can’t manage to defend a structure you stop caring about’em and start farming keep and tower bosses.

Anyway this is a good “shake” to wvw, things will change for sure.

I hope the first 2 option will be adopted, wvw could be fun in the end.

i believe what would happen is this would turn blob even more productive, with no sword, its only a drop plenty of catas near walls (or non visible points when u can cata non keep zones and still damage walls )and no one know keep/tower is under atack, take stuff faster, more ppt, more flipfest, more AB redundancy, more easyer wxp.

How can a Blolb be more productive? Blolb is usually made by pugs not using TS. Blob can pop up orange swords and be spotted. Blob are much more noiser and visually easier to detect.

Other side are small group, no orange swords at all and nomore white. Hard to catch with eyes and can ninja non scouted structures. A 25 blolb split into 5 groups can , hipotetically, take 5 unscouted and undefended structure while the blob must take those 1 by 1 ecountering the defence of each one becausse of the size of their own number.

This change will give more chances to small grp to take towers of blobs. Now if defender want to keep theese structures must leave the zerg and start spreading the map. 2 zerg split.

Anyway the rewarding system should be changed as well.

Dancing Face.4695:

Aeolus.3615:

Dancing Face.4695:

This will finally split zerg, will incentive small scale fights or this will turn the usual wvw maps into a eotm: if you can’t manage to defend a structure you stop caring about’em and start farming keep and tower bosses.

Anyway this is a good “shake” to wvw, things will change for sure.

I hope the first 2 option will be adopted, wvw could be fun in the end.

i believe what would happen is this would turn blob even more productive, with no sword, its only a drop plenty of catas near walls (or non visible points when u can cata non keep zones and still damage walls )and no one know keep/tower is under atack, take stuff faster, more ppt, more flipfest, more AB redundancy, more easyer wxp.

How can a Blolb be more productive? Blolb is usually made by pugs not using TS. Blob can pop up orange swords and be spotted. Blob are much more noiser and visually easier to detect.

Other side are small group, no orange swords at all and nomore white. Hard to catch with eyes and can ninja non scouted structures. A 25 blolb split into 5 groups can , hipotetically, take 5 unscouted and undefended structure while the blob must take those 1 by 1 ecountering the defence of each one becausse of the size of their own number.

This change will give more chances to small grp to take towers of blobs. Now if defender want to keep theese structures must leave the zerg and start spreading the map. 2 zerg split.

Anyway the rewarding system should be changed as well.

if no one atack gate theres no orange sword u have a blob(large group) just for massive supply drop and plenty of siege that can atack outter and inner wall, in a few seconds, and with this u ddint had the notify on that keep, orange sword pop up when every one tags lord wich stays alive like 5-10 seconds max?

• when i said blob its like in the context of a karma train or a large stacked group, zerg would fit to me more in the context of non TS users but each one to is own.

• i also talk from a server that hardly can have the players to create a large group, usually 2 -5 @ BL.

EDIT: overall with this change will be easier for both large and small groups to take stuff, i can understand now several ways for small man groups take stuff w/o being noticed to.

kitten of cap fest.

At this point, any attention to WvW is welcome, especially an easily reversed change like this.

(Who wants to bet that the white swords eventually after a few patches come back, but only after you’ve upgraded your guards to T3).

I know that we all want 2 new maps so that every borderland isn’t the same (Hell, I’ll take one new map and the krait lake map), but that’s not coming.

nekretaal.6485:

At this point, any attention to WvW is welcome, especially an easily reversed change like this.

(Who wants to bet that the white swords eventually after a few patches come back, but only after you’ve upgraded your guards to T3).

I know that we all want 2 new maps so that every borderland isn’t the same (Hell, I’ll take one new map and the krait lake map), but that’s not coming.

Anet rarely reverts bad changes. What they usually do is make another bad change in an attempt to band-aid the first one.

In fact, I wonder if the removal of white swords was intended to be a “fix” for siege disablers.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet rarely reverts bad changes. What they usually do is make another bad change in an attempt to band-aid the first one.

In fact, I wonder if the removal of white swords was intended to be a “fix” for siege disablers.

From the dev response in the original thread:

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

Remove the white swords and bring back orange swords for either 5 or 10 players (originally it was 5 but I could see 10 working well to allow for ninjas still). Easier to keep track of enemy zergs, harder to catch solo/small group roamers.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Why is everyone raging here?! This is a good change. it encourages groups to go scout stuff, and not everyone sticking to 1 commander mindlessly following. You can still do that but don’t complain if they ninja keeps from you…

Scouts are required now to accurately report on whats causing the swords and/or to pick up attacks before the swords come up. This won’t change that it just makes it easier to take keeps and karma train.