Guild Wars 2

(Moderator: This is not a thread on arrow carts.)

OK, here we are, a week or so into the patch with the changes being live, played with, etc. Let’s forget the forecasts of gloom and doom and take a look at the actual effects of the changes now that we’ve played them. A couple observations:

30 second delay before “X”. This one I’m still not too fond of, but it’s not as game-breaking as I initially over-reacted about. I have seen camps flip before an “X” showed up, which can be frustrating. I’ve seen tower gates down before or just as people get there to respond. BUT… this simply requires a change in how you defend. As suspected, you’re effectively required to keep scouts in places you wish to defend for your early warning system instead of that being automated. Probably the main issue I have is this… it isn’t fun. ANet can check the logs if they like, but I think I easily spent 12 to 16 hours collectively this weekend in Dawns as the scout, with the occasional jump down to kill a yak or something. It was boring, and I got crap for wxp. But it needed to be done. I was told in chat by someone that scouting wasn’t rewarding which is why it was hard to keep things covered. This effectively punishes the guilds that are more dedicated to “good” WvW and rewards the pugs that only want to frolic though the blood-stained grasses. Maybe something could be done to make scouts more rewarding? I dunno.

Arrow carts. Yes, they hit hard enough that you notice and we can no longer giggle at the tickling effects they once had. If you have a structure guarded and sieged up you have a good chance at defending against larger groups. Let’s be honest… this reflect reality. You’re in a defensible position and should be able to hold off larger forces.

30 minute hard despawn siege timer. My opinion, this one blows. No sense going into it, in a different thread Devon had mentioned they were looking at the timers. Hopefully, if possible, I’d like to see the following:
5 – 10 minutes despawn on all rams.
1 hr despawn for non-superior, non-rams.
2 hr despawn for superior, non-rams.
That would make life easier I think.
Anyhow, how about some honest opinions based on actual experience now that we’re a week into the patch and have seen it live through a reset?

I’m right with you Volk. It’s really frustrating having to keep a team at a tower bored out of there mind because of this. I understand that it is necessary, but there needs to be rewards for doing so.

Here’s my idea. I would like to see the amount of supply to either double or triple in WvW. Hold your questions and follow me for a few second and I’ll get to my reason. Where are the increases needed?
-Camps
-Dolyaks
-Siege upgrades
-Repairs
-Carrying amount

Why?
In order to make WvW more fun I would like to see the amount of supply increased so that players can partake in the construction/upgrading of towers/keeps themselves and be rewarded handsomely for it. Right now many towers don’t really get a enough supply to keep the worker working, let alone enough if 2-5 players want to put in the effort and build it up. It would also force the server who took something to leave a bunch of people there to upgrade/construct it and defend it. Players will need to be rewarded in karma and badges.

Just an idea.

The question is who benefits from these changes? I am referring to the changes implemented by aranet.

My guess is, it is the PVE side. Because now that WVW is difficult and sometimes no longer fun, most WVW players end up doing PVE stuff like dungeons and other.

Simply, the hardcore remain and endure the pain.

Although the changes does make the game more challenging and requires great community work, and is still engaging as ever. The fun factor decreased slightly, at least for me, because the community I’m at are troubled and confused at what to do. Give or take, time will amend adjustments, but players might be lost.

The solution is simple.

I agree with the above that siege ticks should be longer and shorter depending on the siege. Because not everyone wishes to spend their time on a tower etc. And not everyone is as organized in having rotations.

This is a glorified role playing end game content of GW2. It just needs more attention.

Sovereign.1093:

The question is who benefits from these changes? I am referring to the changes implemented by aranet.

The smaller groups of players that roam. It makes their work much more valid when smaller groups can flip camps/take towers punishing the larger roaming zerg with no scouts. I see these changes all done in order to break up the larger zergs although it is certainly a work in progress.

Break up the zergs, everyone is happier. You have more individualized battles instead of spamming skills, less skill lag without a code/hardware overhaul, and allows for a more engaging meta imo.

I know the OP had a problem with a camp flipping before the swords pop, but to a small roaming group, those swords were the bane of their existence in terms of trying to “ninja” objectives. If they sneak past scouts and find a nice nook to siege from, they would typically be thwarted by the white swords. Now that is less of an issue allowing for a new meta to emerge.

However, like stated by the OP, this places undue pressure on people to scout endlessly at objectives which is boring and unrewarding. Not sure how to reward this, but I did have an interesting idea that I wonder if anyone has implemented yet. What about patrol paths? I mean, there are already small groups of roamers running around, why not have a patrol path for maybe 4-5 small groups that is essentially scouting objectives and preventing other small groups?

Just a thought, but maybe the community just needs a little more time to adjust than just a week. Could be wrong though :P

The worst thing, resulting from the arrow cart change in particular, is the fact that you can go hours without a single decent sized fight anymore.

People defending a keep don’t even attempt to push out to you anymore because they can simply sit inside on the siege, which is completely understandable given their power currently. Even when the assaulting force is outnumbered by defenders you don’t get a fight.

IMO – This is going to be the death of WvW – people of all flavors have made statements as to the ‘fun factor’ dropping in WvW and it won’t take long before those people start looking for something else to do, or maybe even another game.

Sure, no one liked getting facerolled by a 60 man zerg when you had less than half of their numbers. However, there are some guilds out there (including mine) that truly enjoyed taking on a 40 man zerg with 20 people, and we can no longer find this fight thanks to the changes.

The change has resulted in both sides lobbing siege at each other for hours until one runs out of siege, then finally you get to the PVP.

Certainly has made getting into an upgraded hills an excercize in frustration. I don’t mind the personell melting, but rams? Arrows should be adding to the mass of a battering ram, not whittling it into toothpicks before ya get in 5 whacks. Also seen a lot of build sites vanish as they’re being built around that area.. My poor superior trebs Never had a chance to evildo

Goloith.6349:

In order to make WvW more fun I would like to see the amount of supply increased so that players can partake in the construction/upgrading of towers/keeps themselves and be rewarded handsomely for it. Right now many towers don’t really get a enough supply to keep the worker working, let alone enough if 2-5 players want to put in the effort and build it up. It would also force the server who took something to leave a bunch of people there to upgrade/construct it and defend it. Players will need to be rewarded in karma and badges.

Just an idea.

I say we get rid of the workers and let players do the upgrading. It would be interesting to add skills of a crafting nature to let players have construction skills. Instead of increasing the amount of supply at camps, get rid of the silly Skrit and Centaur camps and turn them into additional supply camps. I like the delay on the X’s, gives scouts more of a role, but I don’t like the siege timers, way too short.

As I stated in another thread, “arrowcartmageddon” did not occur in North-American T1. I’ve seen plenty of “standard” attacks flounder, and that is as it should be. I’ve seen just as many attacks succeed; this seems to indicate that yes, it is more difficult than before to capture objectives…but not impossible. Keeps and garrisons have all been flipped, multiple times.

In truth, I’m not even seeing extensive usage of ACs as expected; there’s more of them used in open field battles, too, but sadly…they have not had the effect their users hoped for. =)

EDIT: I am still waiting for 2 more changes to make sieging more enjoyable as is; ACs must not damage other siege weapons, and try- somehow – to make z-axis targeting work, i.e. AoE classes cannot use their AoE abilities on a target 1000 feet up a cliff. That…that’s some serious nasty stuff right there.

LetoII.3782:

Certainly has made getting into an upgraded hills an excercize in frustration. I don’t mind the personell melting, but rams? Arrows should be adding to the mass of a battering ram, not whittling it into toothpicks before ya get in 5 whacks. Also seen a lot of build sites vanish as they’re being built around that area.. My poor superior trebs Never had a chance to evildo

I believe Devon stated in the AC thread that AC damage to other siege was not intended and that they were working on a fix for that. I believe his words were “anti-personnel only, not siege”

one week in, wvw has turned from fast paced fun, to slow paced boredom.

Battlefield 3 has the “spot” button to tag targets for friendlies. Then it gives you a spotter bonus when that target gets killed. Something similar could be implemented here like a hotkey to spot a target that’s not in combat. That with an audio queue shouting Enemy Spotted would be great so that you don’t need to type “INCOMING” in map chat hurriedly.

luwe.1496:

Battlefield 3 has the “spot” button to tag targets for friendlies. Then it gives you a spotter bonus when that target gets killed. Something similar could be implemented here like a hotkey to spot a target that’s not in combat. That with an audio queue shouting Enemy Spotted would be great so that you don’t need to type “INCOMING” in map chat hurriedly.

TY for reiterating this game feature. It’s been suggested multiple times, I just have a feeling there’s some back end issue preventing such a thing from happening.

Snorcha.7586:

one week in, wvw has turned from fast paced fun, to slow paced boredom.

Well, not entirely, but I’m seeing a slow shift in the meta. Sieges seem to be becoming more siege-like. I’m seeing trebs built to take down enemy siege before rams go up, I’m seeing solid defenses having a realistic chance to hold out from an attack my superior numbers (as they should). More and more I’m seeing the “rush the gate and drop five rams” tactic of old fail. Scouts are critical. Last night I was in Dawns when BG attacked with a split group. One dropped a treb north to take out siege, the other dropped a couple rams. I was able to hop on a treb and take theirs down before they got our siege and call in reinforcements in time to stop them with the gate at maybe 10% or something. Fortunately being near our Citadel waypoint allowed reinforcements to arrive just in time, but they’re having me think that maybe one scout isn’t enough in a structure if you can spare the people with the patience.

By the way BG, that was actually a very nice attack. Kudos to whomever thought it up. We dodged a bullet on that one.

Personally I like all the new changes.

Sieges are now alot more tactical than the old kitten the gate down style. When attacking/defending it is alot more vital to control and hold the supply camps and supply routes into a keep. Sure taking a T3 hills in a full frontal assault is now almost impossible but I’m sure other ways will present themselves.

Another positive I’ve noticed that as a low tier player it is much easier to get a foothold in an enemy borderland without sending your entire force there. Once you’ve got a keep you can defend it and hold off the enemy with a small enough number to give your main force a chance to do other things and still get back. For example there is a definite difference in server strength at EU prime time between AS and GH yet they managed to hold our bay for a fair few hours before we could get it back.

Personally i’d like to see the swords removed entirely. Scouting should be a fundamental part of the game… we just don’t have any real scouting tools at the moment.

There’s no way of tracking enemy movements at map level. What if we could build siege units, just like those Molten Alliance sonar things that reported enemy movements based on proximity? That one thing alone would add huge strategic gameplay; groups running ahead clearing paths for zergs, etc etc. Players could invest their (frankly pointless) WXP points on a WubWub ability that can ‘spot’ enemy players, like in games like Battlefield… and so on.

Point is, there are no player tools for this other than map chat, and map chat is of questionable valuable and entirely at the mercy of the people typing into it. Or not. If players got WXP for spotting, they’d spot.

Suddenly everyone’s a scout.

WubWub right now is whackamole, and no amount of balancing will remove that feeling; you see white swords, go there. You see Orange swords, go there. Meh.

WarriorOfJah.7861:

The worst thing, resulting from the arrow cart change in particular, is the fact that you can go hours without a single decent sized fight anymore.

People defending a keep don’t even attempt to push out to you anymore because they can simply sit inside on the siege, which is completely understandable given their power currently. Even when the assaulting force is outnumbered by defenders you don’t get a fight.

IMO – This is going to be the death of WvW – people of all flavors have made statements as to the ‘fun factor’ dropping in WvW and it won’t take long before those people start looking for something else to do, or maybe even another game.

Sure, no one liked getting facerolled by a 60 man zerg when you had less than half of their numbers. However, there are some guilds out there (including mine) that truly enjoyed taking on a 40 man zerg with 20 people, and we can no longer find this fight thanks to the changes.

The change has resulted in both sides lobbing siege at each other for hours until one runs out of siege, then finally you get to the PVP.

It’s funny how different people experience this change so differently. Because I am finding the exact opposite.

I am finding more fights. More people willing to engage. And the zergs are breaking up into smaller groups.

And I’m not finding it too hard to take a keep. Harder yes, but not even near impossible.

And its fun defending now. You actually have a chance against a larger force.

Methinks what you’re seeing is the Meister Eckhart effect; people who expected the AC change to be game breaking are finding it game breaking. People who felt “Meh” about it are mostly indifferent or even supportive.

All in how you look at it.

Johje Holan.4607:

WarriorOfJah.7861:

The worst thing, resulting from the arrow cart change in particular, is the fact that you can go hours without a single decent sized fight anymore.

People defending a keep don’t even attempt to push out to you anymore because they can simply sit inside on the siege, which is completely understandable given their power currently. Even when the assaulting force is outnumbered by defenders you don’t get a fight.

IMO – This is going to be the death of WvW – people of all flavors have made statements as to the ‘fun factor’ dropping in WvW and it won’t take long before those people start looking for something else to do, or maybe even another game.

Sure, no one liked getting facerolled by a 60 man zerg when you had less than half of their numbers. However, there are some guilds out there (including mine) that truly enjoyed taking on a 40 man zerg with 20 people, and we can no longer find this fight thanks to the changes.

The change has resulted in both sides lobbing siege at each other for hours until one runs out of siege, then finally you get to the PVP.

It’s funny how different people experience this change so differently. Because I am finding the exact opposite.

I am finding more fights. More people willing to engage. And the zergs are breaking up into smaller groups.

And I’m not finding it too hard to take a keep. Harder yes, but not even near impossible.

And its fun defending now. You actually have a chance against a larger force.

Agreed. The fact is now Trebuchets are the most viable siege weapon and because of their range they draw the enemy out of their keep alot more than what I experienced when it was Ram & kitten

I enjoy a long protracted sieges which require more than a few minutes and actual thinking to complete. And any money/badges spent on siege is made up for by the inreased loot from the buffed ACs and open field fights.

I do not know, I have not seen too many bright sides in the last week. When people go to WvW, they want the huge fights that you cannot get in sPvP. This game was advertised on the open WvW and huge fights. The AC change has lessened them.

As for the people that say they love a siege war, that is cool, Unfortunately, GW2 cannot afford to have them for this reason. To take a fully upgraded Bay by trebs (this is saying that you don’t lose you trebs and that you have 3-4 trebs up) will take 1.5 hours just to knock down the walls. To the die-hards that is ok, but to sit at bay and guarding trebs is not what people have in mind when they want to PvP. Also, if the Bay is undefended, well, no PvP there, if it is, then they will probably have 30 ac’s up and once again no PvP there also (do to bag farming since you will be coming in at a choke point).

The odds of finding a zerg outside the walls of anything for open field PvP is low since treb will most likely be placed inside walls. This is not the same WvW that I have enjoyed for the last couple of months. It is all about siege at this point and tactics still take a part in stuff, just not the same way. It also seems that some if not most die-hard PvP guilds have seen a drop in members in WvW (this could be due to the new instance and other stuff like finals, summer being here, and so forth).

Arena Net kind of goofed up the last patch to stop the zerging but what people seem to forget is that for zergs to form, you need players and most players like playing with other players. It takes player to be WvW’ing for zergs to form, so if you do not want zergs, then that means that your WvW player base in dwindling.

This is all just my opinion and no one else

Arrow carts are fine.
30 secs swords are fine.
30 min siege despawn is fine, considering now one can see the actual time remaining

What i hate is very low blueprint despawn rate. If you are trying to build a siege in some tower alone, making supply runs to nearby camps it literally means you have to run on timer and risk weapon despawning before you finish it, if get attacked on the way or be slower for any other reason.