Guild Wars 2

These are the changes we’ve made to the WvW upgrade system:

• We’ve removed the supply cost for upgrades.
• Supply holds and supply shipments will be smaller.
• We’ve removed the gold cost for upgrades.
• Individual upgrades are now grouped into upgrade tiers.
• Upgrading to the next tier now happens automatically over time.
• There are two tiers for camps and three tiers for all other objectives.
• Higher tiers take longer to upgrade than lower tiers.
• Each shipment from a dolyak caravan will reduce the remaining time by a set amount.
• The time it takes to fully upgrade an objective should still be roughly the same as it was before these changes.

As an example scenario, let’s say the red team captures a tower. A timer on the “Defend the tower” event immediately begins. Each time an allied dolyak caravan arrives at the tower, the timer will decrease by five minutes. The Tier 1 upgrades will automatically occur sometime between 20 and 40 minutes as long as the red team can maintain control of the tower. The time depends on how many caravans safely make it to the objective. When Tier 1 completes, the tower immediately gains stone walls, an oil pot, a merchant, and a supply-hold increase. This process repeats until all the tiers are obtained and the objective is fully upgraded.

Along with this change will come an improvement to sentries. Sentries will greatly slow down enemy dolyak caravans and thus slow down objective upgrades. This will make the payoff for controlling the route between supply camps and objectives and ensuring a successful caravan more important, further enhancing the strategic objectives in WvW.

all i can really say is YAY!!!!

Gone…

• “Who the hell started fortify???”
• Running around kicking-off upgrades
• Selfless people spending their own gold for upgrades.
• Keeps never upgrading because yaks don’t get in.
• “Plz don’t take supply, I’m upgrading”
• Empty maps full of paper stuff
• Waypointed paper keeps.

What’s coming…

• Upgrade Timers
• New Rewards for 20-40 minute “Defend the Tower” events?
• Supply in towers can be used exclusively for siege (happy birthday YB!)

So if you are on a server without a night crew look forward to waking up to your bl being fully upgraded by an enemy server…. Yay!

If they are going to do this they really need to bring back the “no white swords” thing or make upgrades take twice as long in enemy bl’s during off hours.

I like this update to the upgrades. Makes the game more enjoyable without taking anything strategic away.

Jim Hunter.6821:

So if you are on a server without a night crew look forward to waking up to your bl being fully upgraded by an enemy server…. Yay!

True. What if the rewards for taking the objective scaled off the tier?

Double, triple.

Xanoris.2379:

I like this update to the upgrades. Makes the game more enjoyable without taking anything strategic away.

Jim Hunter.6821:

So if you are on a server without a night crew look forward to waking up to your bl being fully upgraded by an enemy server…. Yay!

Xanoris.2379:

I like this update to the upgrades. Makes the game more enjoyable without taking anything strategic away.

What? Deciding when and in what order to upgrade structures is always a strategic decision. Depending on the strategies of the servers you are fighting and what kind of defense your own server is using you might choose to rush the WP before upgrading doors or walls.

This was another kitten decision. They should have just given us an option to purchase upgrades with karma or badges.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Xanoris.2379:

I like this update to the upgrades. Makes the game more enjoyable without taking anything strategic away.

What? Deciding when and in what order to upgrade structures is always a strategic decision.

A strategy that could easily not be executed at the right time if a fellow player does not listen to you and takes supply/spends supply.

On the fence here. Does it remove people with conflicting ideas on what to upgrade, yes. Does it then put that upgrade path into a pattern everyone uses, no. Is the same upgrade path always a good idea? Being predictable is not a good strategy. It also starts to remove the feeling of ownership. We need to see more ways that a single player can impact the environment, in this case structure and WvW objectives like sentries, camp, towers, keeps. I am working towards this is a brief and therefore limited share of information and that there is more to the bigger picture.

Edit:spelling

We shall wait and see how the meta will shift from there.

Say hello to total and utter dominance of nightcapping, once you get into the game you will always find all structures put to t3 by the 10 guys on the most perstistent nightcrew.

This is utter BS and shows again that the devs have no idea what is actually happening in their game. Metrics are all nice and shiny but you need competent people to interpret then and the again competent people to act on that interpretation. Guess what the key factor here is…

Jim Hunter.6821:

So if you are on a server without a night crew look forward to waking up to your bl being fully upgraded by an enemy server…. Yay!

You mean more or less exactly like it is now?
The blog even say that the upgrade times will still be about the same as the current ones, so if you would have that problem after the update, you would already have them now.

Bazzoong.7145:

Say hello to total and utter dominance of nightcapping, once you get into the game you will always find all structures put to t3 by the 10 guys on the most perstistent nightcrew.

This is utter BS and shows again that the devs have no idea what is actually happening in their game. Metrics are all nice and shiny but you need competent people to interpret then and the again competent people to act on that interpretation. Guess what the key factor here is…

So, the problem I see with this argument is how could it be any different than it really is now specifically with regard to “who is the most persistent”? Are there groups of servers where one of the three is constantly building and attacking all night long while the other two are doing literally nothing? I find this hard to believe. The entire point of WvWvW is about which world is the most persistent, because even an “unskilled” world can get more points if they’re on when the other worlds aren’t.

the difference is that upgrading now requires supply camps and cash, so people aren’t eager to spend 20g a night just to try to upgrade stuff, now not only the money gate is gone, but small strike teams won’t be able to stall upgrades anymore (since it will upgrade even when there are no dollies coming in)

Actually night blob don’t upgrade ennemy border land…. They keep all in paper, they just want to make karma train. Now with the auto upgrade those tower / keep will be more difficult to take back.

For me it’s a big issue to not being able to stall upgrade with killing doly ! Now we need people to hold the camp, escort doly… And you can slow down ennemy upgrade, even stop them completly. Now you just have to site in your tower and wait….

the krytan assassin.9235:

the difference is that upgrading now requires supply camps and cash, so people aren’t eager to spend 20g a night just to try to upgrade stuff, now not only the money gate is gone, but small strike teams won’t be able to stall upgrades anymore (since it will upgrade even when there are no dollies coming in)

^ someone gets it.

That “small strike team” is legit crap. Ive had countless scenarios where even if we out number the enemy they just suicide themselves to kill a yak and we cant really do anything but watch. Until they add the dolyak escort buff I like these changes.

About the strategic element complaint:
I fully agree here. This change takes away the ability to choose a certain upgrade path. Having to choose between supplying the zerg or upgrading an objective will reward the more coordinated server, though this concept can be screwed up by a single roaming group, that doesn’t cooperate or trolls.

Night capping complaint:
As lordkrall already said. These days night crews can easily upgrade a whole border, if they are alone there. But of course, with this change, they don’t even need to. It will upgrade on its own. But then again, this issue with night crews being unopposed has deep roots withing the bandwagoning of the community (in combination with no encouragement to not bandwagon by the transfer system). ANet simply chooses to ignore what happens in unbalanced match ups. This change, I guess, is more aimed at the more closely balanced matches.

My impression:
For me as roamer and “upgrader” those changes are welcome. It means I can focus more on roaming and only need to setup siege for an object to defend. It makes defending easier I guess. Now when a wall is damaged from the last attack, you simply repair it with the available supply and don’t need to worry that your supply is enough for the upgrade. On the other hand, it removes the ability for siege and containment warfare. Although the objective might run out of supply for siege engines, the upgrades will proceed, even if the keep is under heavy siege, unless without dollies the upgrade doesn’t proceed at all (not sure, if that’s the case).

Over all I am not sure what to think of this change. I’ll suggest to wait and see how it plays out. Maybe they’ll implement the system before HoT, so we can test it out and give feedback.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

That “small strike team” is legit crap. Ive had countless scenarios where even if we out number the enemy they just suicide themselves to kill a yak and we cant really do anything but watch. Until they add the dolyak escort buff I like these changes.

So because players that you outnumber outplayed you the game should be dumbed down and made easier for the server with more numbers and better coverage….

Manimarco Devil.1790:

That “small strike team” is legit crap. Ive had countless scenarios where even if we out number the enemy they just suicide themselves to kill a yak and we cant really do anything but watch. Until they add the dolyak escort buff I like these changes.

that’s exactly what i was saying, it was possible to stall upgrades by killing yaks, but with the patch the objectives don’t need yaks to upgrade. that means that small strike teams who have insufficient ppl to cap towers/keeps won’t be able to hold back the upgrading process. Forums have been QQing about PPT not being fair because of nightcap having to much influence, now they made the nightcrew even more important because this will also heavily influence the morning crew.

This is probably my favorite change to the game ANet has made. Although that’s obviously because 4 of my 5k hours have been spent in WvW and at least 2 – 3 of that has been spent solo roaming and scouting… I feel it’s really going to help certain servers/people by doing what they cannot or neglect to do. I’m very excited to meet the dedicated scouts that rarely leave their towers while roaming. I can only imagine how much more active the battlefield will become. Sometimes you don’t realize how many people it takes to get your stuff sieged and upgraded!

Yes, they need to change some thing on the doly. Like the need to kill the guard before you can kill the doly. Or yes, dolly buff when player are near. But this should be enough. This automatic crap will just reduce a little more the job for the scout. Scouting is not just siting in the keep and wait the ennemy…
And for the gold needed to upgrade, in good server the community help the scouts. On my server the community provide siege and gold to upgrade and defend.
It’s not because some server don’t care about the scout that you should just remove the job…

I’m interested to hear how long it takes to get larger structures to T2 & T3. If T3 can happen in under 6(?) hours with zero dolyak caravans, we may see more lock-outs on the bottom tier matches when one server manages to sweep a Borderlands for the night, or something.

For me the good upgrade should be earning more PPT if the keep is upgraded. More PPT if you hold the keep more time, etc… Remove the need of doly and make all the upgrade without human intervention is just a new way to make the scouting job more boring.

Hmm I guess I won’t be able to troll the enemy nightcapping blob by upgrading the camp just as they come to cap it to starve them out anymore xD

Jim Hunter.6821:

Manimarco Devil.1790:

That “small strike team” is legit crap. Ive had countless scenarios where even if we out number the enemy they just suicide themselves to kill a yak and we cant really do anything but watch. Until they add the dolyak escort buff I like these changes.

So because players that you outnumber outplayed you the game should be dumbed down and made easier for the server with more numbers and better coverage….

This kid thinks you legit get outplayed if they can kill squishy yak from you. You have jokes.

An upgraded SMC tends to kill fights on EBG. This will be unfortunate.

Yak Slapping is heavily nerfed:

• Instead of preventing upgrades, it will merely slow them.
• Instead of current amount of supply prevented, future supply shipments will be “smaller.”
• Defenders will be able to grant Protected Caravan buff to yak, and get a free kit to speed up, cure, and heal it.
• Sentries will be able to severely slow-down yaks.

Hopefully they won’t also nerf the slab of meat drop rate.

misterdevious.6482:

Yak Slapping is heavily nerfed:

• Instead of preventing upgrades, it will merely slow them.
• Instead of current amount of supply prevented, future supply shipments will be “smaller.”
• Defenders will be able to grant Protected Caravan buff to yak, and get a free kit to speed up, cure, and heal it.
• Sentries will be able to severely slow-down yaks.

Hopefully they won’t also nerf the slab of meat drop rate.

• Dolyaks will no longer drop useful loot. Dolyaks will have a small chance to drop the trophy item ‘Dung,’ which only has use as part of the new ‘What WvW is Becoming’ collection.

DomAltares.8651:

• Dolyaks will no longer drop useful loot. Dolyaks will have a small chance to drop the trophy item ‘Dung,’ which only has use as part of the new ‘What WvW is Becoming’ collection.

Dung is an important source of fuel on the steppes.

Jim Hunter.6821:

So if you are on a server without a night crew look forward to waking up to your bl being fully upgraded by an enemy server…. Yay!

If they are going to do this they really need to bring back the “no white swords” thing or make upgrades take twice as long in enemy bl’s during off hours.

Yep exactly. And I can’t think of anything more fun than sitting around 2 or 3 times longer on a ram, cata or golem taking stuff back in an empty bl in the morning. This will greatly lower the reward rate in WVW by taking longer to re-flip.

This change has so much potential. Removing the gold cost of upgrading is huge and sorely needed. Same with separating objective supply from upgrading and streamlining the upgrading process; this is a lot simpler, and there’s no more worries about trolls taking supply from objectives and stalling upgrades. Also I’m a big fan of reducing the total supply count available at objectives and carried by yaks, this should tone down the crazy amount of golem rushes that happen at higher tiers.

But…why make upgrading inevitable? This new change essentially means that killing yaks will only delay the upgrade process, not actually stall it. Why not just say, in order to upgrade a tower to T1, you need to successfully escort 10 yaks into it? Making the upgrade process inevitable, to me, even if a yak never successfully reaches the objective, seems to seriously diminish the role of yak slapping, which in turn seriously diminishes the role of yak escorting too.

This is clearly a simplification. Another instance where the developers have “simplified” the game by removing choice.

I completely agree with removing the gold cost for upgrades but I’m less a fan of the rest of it.

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

Jim Hunter.6821:

So if you are on a server without a night crew look forward to waking up to your bl being fully upgraded by an enemy server…. Yay!

If they are going to do this they really need to bring back the “no white swords” thing or make upgrades take twice as long in enemy bl’s during off hours.

Yep exactly. And I can’t think of anything more fun than sitting around 2 or 3 times longer on a ram, cata or golem taking stuff back in an empty bl in the morning. This will greatly lower the reward rate in WVW by taking longer to re-flip.

Yep for those without the constant zergs to ktrain everything, because that’s what it encourages. Why let enemy objectives auto upgrade when it’s easier to just keep them flipped?

We are introducing new maps a new map that make small group WvW play more attractive but at the same time buffing the importance of staying with a zerg so you can actually capture T3 objectives

- Anet 2015

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Manimarco Devil.1790:

That “small strike team” is legit crap. Ive had countless scenarios where even if we out number the enemy they just suicide themselves to kill a yak and we cant really do anything but watch. Until they add the dolyak escort buff I like these changes.

So because players that you outnumber outplayed you the game should be dumbed down and made easier for the server with more numbers and better coverage….

This kid thinks you legit get outplayed if they can kill squishy yak from you. You have jokes.

This kid doesn’t know how to use superior numbers and cc to stop someone from killing a yak.
Learn that there are more buttons on your skill bar than the auto attack…

Ok how does say a guardian war and ranger magically stop a thief plus mesmer from killing a yak? Or even if its an even fight with identical numbers and classes? The fact is that killing a yak is exceedingly easy and i love how you resort to lolskill when unless you have a large amount of CC the enemies just need to do enough danage to kill the yak, not to kill you.

I just realized im responding to a braindead ranger nvm this argument is going nowhere

Jim Hunter.6821:

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Manimarco Devil.1790:

That “small strike team” is legit crap. Ive had countless scenarios where even if we out number the enemy they just suicide themselves to kill a yak and we cant really do anything but watch. Until they add the dolyak escort buff I like these changes.

So because players that you outnumber outplayed you the game should be dumbed down and made easier for the server with more numbers and better coverage….

This kid thinks you legit get outplayed if they can kill squishy yak from you. You have jokes.

This kid doesn’t know how to use superior numbers and cc to stop someone from killing a yak.
Learn that there are more buttons on your skill bar than the auto attack…

Realistically, you’re often not going to have too many people around a particular yak when the enemy is hankering to kill it. That, and it really doesn’t take a whole lot to take it down, so even if you manage to immobilize them they could still possibly stun-break and kill the yak. They will die in the process, but they know that.

Not saying it’s impossible to do, far from it, but the Yaks should be more like mini-bosses than a random enemy. They are very easy to kill.

More dumbing down of WvW… Like stated above, why not just use Karma or Badges for upgrade currency. This change just gives a huge advantage to the server with a better night crew and scouts. Even if you took away white swords it’s a big advantage.

With the expense of upgrades before, added with dummies forgetting to start or keep upgrades moving, sometimes not all the stuff taken in the night will be fully upgraded. Now it probably almost always will be. And the fact it took away your ability to choose a certain upgrade depending on situation, ugh, just bad all around.

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Ok how does say a guardian war and ranger magically stop a thief plus mesmer from killing a yak?

Ranger slots sic ‘em to reveal either target, and uses PBS, wolf cc, and rapid fire to take out thief while guardian and war bounce the mesmer around with hammers, or if it’s a medi guard he can cc and burst the mesmer down while it’s revealed.

I just realized I’m responding to a braindead zerger, nvm this argument is going nowhere.

MiniEquine.6014:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Manimarco Devil.1790:

That “small strike team” is legit crap. Ive had countless scenarios where even if we out number the enemy they just suicide themselves to kill a yak and we cant really do anything but watch. Until they add the dolyak escort buff I like these changes.

So because players that you outnumber outplayed you the game should be dumbed down and made easier for the server with more numbers and better coverage….

This kid thinks you legit get outplayed if they can kill squishy yak from you. You have jokes.

This kid doesn’t know how to use superior numbers and cc to stop someone from killing a yak.
Learn that there are more buttons on your skill bar than the auto attack…

Realistically, you’re often not going to have too many people around a particular yak when the enemy is hankering to kill it. That, and it really doesn’t take a whole lot to take it down, so even if you manage to immobilize them they could still possibly stun-break and kill the yak. They will die in the process, but they know that.

Not saying it’s impossible to do, far from it, but the Yaks should be more like mini-bosses than a random enemy. They are very easy to kill.

They’ve already said they will be making it tougher to kill yaks, but a yak being defended by a good player isn’t as easy to kill as people try to make it sound. Escorting yaks isn’t fun to do but it is a very important job when you are working on upgrades.

This is just another change that gives even more of an advantage to the servers with better coverage and a higher population.

Don’t you guys get it? This goes hand-in-hand with NPCs attacking structures. The game will literally play itself! We can finally focus on fights only.

• Will people not attack structures when they fear they won’t be able to beat the upgrade clock?
• Will stalling tactics become more prevalent, to run out the upgrade clock?
• How will the “tic” clock and the “upgrade clock” together affect decisions of what to flip and when?
• Will people get into a mentality that they need to flip everything within 20-30 minutes?
• Will people be less likely to run to defend something that no one is personally invested in? (timewise, goldwise)

misterdevious.6482:

• Will people not attack structures when they fear they won’t be able to beat the upgrade clock?
• Will stalling tactics become more prevalent, to run out the upgrade clock?
• How will the “tic” clock and the “upgrade clock” together affect decisions of what to flip and when?
• Will people get into a mentality that they need to flip everything within 20-30 minutes?
• Will people be less likely to run to defend something that no one is personally invested in? (timewise, goldwise)

Well the first few lines can already be the case, but it may make it easier to guess when an upgrade may occur.

The mentality to flip everything within 20-30 minutes will definitely kick in though. Quick ktraining will become more ingrained based on the information we have been given.

JDjitsu.7895:

More dumbing down of WvW…

Maybe its dumbing down WvW… but for individual players its a huuuuuuuuuuuge reduction in the gold spent on WvW, which equal better profits. Which WvW is in dire need of.

The only thing I dont like is perhaps that the upgrades are automatic. IMO they should at least be triggered by players and be in a tree based upgrade tier (ie walls OR gates OR 10x guards). But overall it sounds good, guess we cant have everything.

Dawdler.8521:

JDjitsu.7895:

More dumbing down of WvW…

Maybe its dumbing down WvW… but for individual players its a huuuuuuuuuuuge reduction in the gold spent on WvW, which equal better profits. Which WvW is in dire need of.

The only thing I dont like is perhaps that the upgrades are automatic. IMO they should at least be triggered by players and be in a tree based upgrade tier (ie walls OR gates OR 10x guards). But overall it sounds good, guess we cant have everything.

I totally understand the issue with spending gold on upgrades. I feel everyone’s pain on that subject. And making it so finally a player can profit from WvW is the one good thing in this thread. I just think it’s not even close to an optimal way to do that. I, like most if not all “WvWers” have to grind PVE/PvP just to pay for WvW upgrades and food/oil. So that’s a big plus!

Like I mentioned before, along with someone else above, why not Karma and or Badges for upgrades? I’m not typically a nay-sayer, but this seems to give an unfair advantage for the server who has more “night-time” players. Even a small amount more can make a big difference. The weaker night-time servers are going to have a lot more time just working on getting their BLs and EB corners back when they start logging back in to fully upgraded everything. Which gives quite a ppt advantage over time obviously. In most cases you can use skill to counter other server’s advantages, but this won’t have a counter other than recruiting or ppl putting in serious overtime. Hopefully this will be re-worked.

misterdevious.6482:

What’s coming…

• Who cares if we lose stuff, it’ll upgrade itself anyway.

!

WvW is not some pve map with automatic script starting action….
I want to be part of this world, and this mean to choose to start an upgrade, to choose wich upgrade to start….
I don’t want to see some world runing alone, without any human intervention…
Why not starting siegerazer without players intervention ? With more NPC, then he can attack ennemy tower alone.

And that doly are not required is just stupid, I just don’t understand how they have imagine this….

WvW is not PVE… This game mode should be in human control, not bot or scripts.

Worst idea ever…

form the time iv been in the game in tier 6 i believe. 2 high populated servers vs 1 low populated servers. ioj, sor and ar. 3 weeks running so obvs ppl have got bored of fighting same server over and over SOR barely even attend except from reset night and since ioj dosent have the population to counter either server AR has capped and fully upgraded most of the map including EB and since they are on at a completly diffrent time frame than ioj they cap everything when we are asleep. we are already waking up to fuly fortified eveything over night. and you want to introduce a auto upgrade system… all i can say is that anet clearly didnt think this through and have completly ignored what the wvw player actually wants. we are barely able to get 30-50 man zerg on reset night let along any other time. yet u have ar comign at us with at least 3-4x times that not in just 1 BL but all of them. skill dosent matter when u have 4x ur numbers rolling over you. we are preety much guaranteed outnumbered buff 99% of the time. which btw is totally usless.