Guild Wars 2

How are people finding this? Good, bag, “interesting”, a mistake? I’m wondering if Anet needs some good feedback on this. Have anything constructive to say? Pros’ Cons’ etc.

To be quiet honest, I don’t understand Anet in this…If you change the orange sword to such a high number, how come 1 person can walk past a gate and contest the waypoint or tower? It should be changed so, that only if a gate takes at least 1k dmg per hit, it goes contested.
Also, I think 25(which is for a lot of servers a zerg), is too high and shoud be adjusted to 15.

bad, a mistake

for as long as they refuse to balance wvw populations they need to implement a dynamic scaling for the threshold to create orange x’s. a low threshold is bad for high pop servers, and a high threshold is worse for low pop servers.

My gut tells me they made this change to assist with the amount of data being processed to the client, to help with lag/etc.
Would be good to understand if there was a benefit behind this change!

I like it. It encourages organization, higher level play and strategy. It is not PvDoor if you fool the enemy into being somewhere you aren’t and take their objective without resistance. Scouting is now a must. Guilds can also have better control over “silent running” instead of getting orange swords because some player who missed the memo wanted to hit the guards too.

To be honest, orange swords anywhere there was 5+ people completely destroyed opportunity for small group play. Alternatively, this discourages mega-zerging of 60+ players that is common in higher tiers. Run with 25 or less or have a huge target over your head everywhere you go. This is an update that actually BENEFITS smaller groups, which people have been demanding for months.

This is likely also designed to reduce strain on the system. Encouraging fewer players in an area should improve both lag and culling. I mean, people had to realize that ANet did not foresee huge culling problems because WvW was never intended to have the entire population of a map in a single murder ball. Larger maps would mitigate this effect naturally, but, until then, no orange swords for sub-25 groups should encourage people to communicate more, be more organized, utilize scouting, and have a much larger toolbox of tactics without a huge neon sign getting thrown over your head with only 10 people trying to take something.

White swords still tell you when something is contested. It is up to your server’s infrastructure to do the rest.

fine for openfield battles not fine for keep/castle

24 people can zerg any keep in seconds so orange >white

esoteric organisation? you would sit solo and guard watch towers and keeps with not getting any benefit while the rest has fun/loot/badges.
pretty sure i dont

oruma.4092:

fine for openfield battles not fine for keep/castle

24 people can zerg any keep in seconds so orange >white

esoteric organisation? you would sit solo and guard watch towers and keeps with not getting any benefit while the rest has fun/loot/badges.
pretty sure i dont

My guild rotates players watching towers and keeps. We even have guard duty assignments to watch after other borderlands late at night when we have to start switching maps to keep our points up. I am the guild leader and I spend my share of time on guard duty as well. We take turns scouting white swords on the map. Being in VoIP is always fun talking to your guild mates or server mates. I don’t mind guarding something at all because after 15-30 minutes, we’ll swap someone else in to guard it. It’s about organization. You can’t expect everyone else to always scout for you or call out enemy positions for you. Take initiative.

Think about the organization it takes for ONLY 24 people to hit a keep so as not to make swords. I also think the swords count 25 total and not per side, but I’m not positive. Your server needs to match them with equal organization. I’ve seen forces of 40+ wipe repeatedly at a tower to about 15-20 people. It happens all the time because of coordination, siege, and communication to respond to threats. Orange swords are the lazy player’s method for map awareness. The proactive player with initiative, scouts objectives for their team and players that are selfless are willing to guard a castle while their team takes a tower, then someone switches with them. WvW is about teamwork on a large scale, not individual rewards. The loot, badges, and event rewards are laughable compared to anything else in the game if you wanted individual rewards.

Most of the forum posts I’ve seen seem to dislike the change. Most of the chat and TS3 comments I’ve seen/heard have been in favor of it. I don’t think there is any sort of consensus on it.

Personally, I like it. I don’t think a WvW style of play should simply point you to all the battles. You wouldn’t have that in any real life equivalent conflict, so why here? Uncertainty adds a layer to the game play that requires you to actually scout/report … and maybe even defend.

Carried to an extreme, we could have the map tell us which server and how many enemy are triggering the orange swords, what each of the enemy wall/gate strengths/upgrades are, how much supply is in each and every camp, and display all the enemy defensive siege everywhere. If we had never had the orange swords at all I don’t think anyone would be any more likely to be griping about it than they are now about the absence of any of my other examples.

If you see orange swords in T8, run away… They will overwhelm you. (Unless you’re on SF)

I like that they increased the numbers before they appear. I don’t like how high they moved it. At least in T6 and T7, the 25 in combat can easily be >50% of an entire server’s force depending on map and time. I think 15 or 20 would be a better number.

selan.8354:

To be quiet honest, I don’t understand Anet in this…If you change the orange sword to such a high number, how come 1 person can walk past a gate and contest the waypoint or tower? It should be changed so, that only if a gate takes at least 1k dmg per hit, it goes contested.
Also, I think 25(which is for a lot of servers a zerg), is too high and shoud be adjusted to 15.

Completely agree with this. 15 is the perfect number, just the right middle ground between servers of all sizes.

And definitely need to up the threshold on contesting WP’s. Such a tactically valuable action should require more than just a single player. At least 5, or something equivalent.

I agree that for lower tier WvW, 25 is just too high of a threshold. I think 15 might still be too high, but it would, I think, address what Anet was trying to solve.

But the ability for a single person to be able to contest a waypoint, by cloaking and daggering a wall is absurd, and I agree that the threshold for WP contesting should be significantly higher than that.

That said; if wishes were ponies; I wish that we had an ability to see where all the other team players are from the map view. I think it was WoW that had something similar; so that you could tell where teammates were; so you could glance at the map and know where you could help the most.

I also wish that the game had some sort of internal voice communication hook/server; it’s almost impossible to run/fight/type at the same time.

kylia.4813:

My gut tells me they made this change to assist with the amount of data being processed to the client, to help with lag/etc.
Would be good to understand if there was a benefit behind this change!

Anet as been very sneaky since beta with numerous Ninja style stealth patches from
class changes to wvw coding. Anet should be upfront about their patch changes, no matter how minute. imho

It’s simple. Orange swords used to show up for everything (5 players hitting guards).

ANet has stated publicly that they do not like the fact that “zerging” is the current meta because it is not what they foresaw for WvW.

The institution of Orange swords for groups of 25 or more directly benefits smaller scale warfare, splitting forces, stealth, and hitting multiple targets simultaneously. A single force cannot cover 4+ objectives under attack without losing at least 1-2, even with a waypoint. Orange swords going away effectively discourages zerging. Guilds and servers will still try to get away with it, but the sooner forces wake up and run in smaller groups, the sooner those zergs find themselves being pretty ineffectual. Also, I realize this may be a bit extreme for T7/8, but it is honestly a good thing for the rest of the game.

I imagine undermanned servers love this change, though, as it lets them move and ninja keeps with a lot more tact and stealth instead of getting steamrolled every time they proc orange swords with 5 people at a camp.

Esoteric.5490:

oruma.4092:

fine for openfield battles not fine for keep/castle

24 people can zerg any keep in seconds so orange >white

esoteric organisation? you would sit solo and guard watch towers and keeps with not getting any benefit while the rest has fun/loot/badges.
pretty sure i dont

My guild rotates players watching towers and keeps. We even have guard duty assignments to watch after other borderlands late at night when we have to start switching maps to keep our points up. I am the guild leader and I spend my share of time on guard duty as well. We take turns scouting white swords on the map. Being in VoIP is always fun talking to your guild mates or server mates. I don’t mind guarding something at all because after 15-30 minutes, we’ll swap someone else in to guard it. It’s about organization. You can’t expect everyone else to always scout for you or call out enemy positions for you. Take initiative.

Think about the organization it takes for ONLY 24 people to hit a keep so as not to make swords. I also think the swords count 25 total and not per side, but I’m not positive. Your server needs to match them with equal organization. I’ve seen forces of 40+ wipe repeatedly at a tower to about 15-20 people. It happens all the time because of coordination, siege, and communication to respond to threats. Orange swords are the lazy player’s method for map awareness. The proactive player with initiative, scouts objectives for their team and players that are selfless are willing to guard a castle while their team takes a tower, then someone switches with them. WvW is about teamwork on a large scale, not individual rewards. The loot, badges, and event rewards are laughable compared to anything else in the game if you wanted individual rewards.

Please don’t take any of this the wrong way, It’s just for discussion and not intended as an insult/smack talk, nor meant to be condescending.

To me this shows the mentality of some one on a large zerg server. However, the dev’s have stated in the past that they want the individual players to feel more important in WvW. They don’t like all of the current zerging. Hopefully the upcoming WvW patch will move us more in that direction.

The sword limit… it really should be lowered to something like 10 imo. I would agree that 5 is too low… but at 25 it’s set too high. Large zerg forces being able to have 24 people go bang on a door and not get picked up means that you need to leave people to just sit and watch… everything… while not being rewarded for their time. Watching a tower is boring and sucks.

Even the person who I quoted who says they like doing it… does other things to pass the time… despite only doing it for 15mins at a time. Other servers who don’t just have a few large guilds can get stuck doing it for much much longer. It’s not fun, it’s just a chore. The dev’s did say they would start rewarding players for watching areas… so we’ll see what happens with that.

I also disagree that telling 24 people to go attack something requires a lot of organization… esp. for servers that have guilds set aside to go and do certain missions/maps. It’s literally hey you, you, you, and you… your parties go try to take that thing over there. (We’ve done it on my server as well and that’s all it is)

If it was set to 10 or so… smaller hit teams would still have value, but large groups will still get picked up with orange swords. A team of 9 can easily take down a tower, but for something like a garrison it would take more… and at the least that should spawn swords for such an offensive force. As it is now with 25… why bother with anything small anymore? Just have a few people sit around and then have a 24 man zerg go take stuff… To me that’s far less interesting/fun/dynamic gameplay.

Someone said that it is 25 total (from all sides) that will trigger the swords, but the old rule was just 5 from one team to draw swords.

Anyone know which it is for sure?

25 from one team or 25 total from all teams?

24 is not a small group. Not even slightly.

I’m afraid the system will never work for all servers. The top tiers will probably be more than fine with 25. But the lower ones will usually have less numbers hitting stuff.

I do like the idea to change the contested white swords though. They are just a constant sign on the map right now. I think they should only show up if more than 5 ppl are actively attacking a tower/keep.

Anet should realize: even though they change the number how orange sword will behave, zerg will always be used. The change to 25 will give benefit to attacker, but not to defender.

Does this change implement new strategy ? No. A zerg strategy will always be used, and with this system Anet encourage it more.
Does this change implement will force people to organize ? A big No. 25 man zerg (group) does not need to organize if they attack something (as they remain undetected). In addition, there is no consequence if you do careless “attack”. This is different from 5 man threshold. Just only because 1 man attack the door, all your ninja plan is screwed.)

But why in the past we want a change in how orange sword is behaved ?
5 man threshold is too small. A party is consist of 5 man. Orange sword should not appear if only 1 party attacking a NPC or door.

Thus, I think the threshold should be lowered to 10 man. With 25 threshold, it does not discourage a zerg but it encourage more zerg.

It forces you to leave scouts and actually keep an eye on things you have taken. We rotate people in and out of objectives (keeps and towers) during our raids, so no one person has to sit there all night.

For me it’s a huge game changer, I’m in wvw 90% of the time. I spend about $20 a month on gems, just to upgrade keeps, towers and SM and throw down Catapults, arrow carts, ballisticas. I won’t be doing this any more and it’s simple, Your towers, keeps and Sm are gone before you even have time to react. Why update much less throw down siege equipment , It’s a big waste of money and resources.
Those who defend this move are certainly not the ones standing around looking for the enemy to show up and when you call it in they may show up or they may not. 5 was a good number. There were ways to seige with 25 people without showing the gold swords, if you knew how.

I agree with 15 people required for Orange swords. I wanted to raise the amount for white swords but when I really thought about it 1 is the right number. Anything like 5 or higher would make it far too easy to stop ninjas.

Need a rainbow sword for over 50 players, to see them at 7am from the best server xD

I think the better solution would have been to take out all swords period.

selan.8354:

To be quiet honest, I don’t understand Anet in this…If you change the orange sword to such a high number, how come 1 person can walk past a gate and contest the waypoint or tower? It should be changed so, that only if a gate takes at least 1k dmg per hit, it goes contested.

If you make that change, then keeps and towers could easily be completely stealth captured by a group with some ballistas. The 300 or so damage a couple ballistas do to the door would be more than enough to take down a gate since there wouldn’t even be white swords to mark their presence. Or instead of ballistas, a group of 20 could just auto-attack the gate to oblivion without ever raising a warning. Just auto-attack the gate down to 50% while putting up (but not using) rams, then burst down the last bit of the door faster than the opponent can react.

Maybe that system needs to be changed, but you have to remember that if it is changed, people will adjust their tactics to take advantage of those changes. You can’t just think “everything will stay exactly the same, except the thing I don’t like will be fixed.” People will find a way to get the most out of the system (i.e. 5 man ninja cata groups only using 4 people when attacking NPCs) no matter what you change it to.

Set the limit to 20 players but include an NPC labeled Scout, when you upgrade the guards, that uses a rifle and is able to cast a flare lighting up enemies and siege on the map in the vicinity (2000 radius) lasting 3 minutes with a cooldown of 12 minutes. Allies are green dots, just make them red dots. Of course, you can always kill the scout to deter further flares but that leaves you a window of opportunity to get in, drop your siege and get going after the flare ends. What’s respawn timer for guards again?

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Set the limit to 20 players but include an NPC labeled Scout, when you upgrade the guards, that uses a rifle and is able to cast a flare lighting up enemies and siege on the map in the vicinity (2000 radius) lasting 3 minutes with a cooldown of 12 minutes. Allies are green dots, just make them red dots. Of course, you can always kill the scout to deter further flares but that leaves you a window of opportunity to get in, drop your siege and get going after the flare ends. What’s respawn timer for guards again?

A “scout” upgrade to towers or keeps might be a really good way to make the personnel upgrades (other than second worker) actually somewhat meaningful. I don’t know that I’d go with your exact function of the NPC, but having an upgrade that somehow warns people of certain events at towers/keeps automatically is intriguing to say the least.

There are other improvements coming as well. I believe I heard something about notification for your guild if you claimed a location that will tell you when it is contested. Seems like another layer of strategy assigning guilds to certains towers or keeps.

I also agree w/15 20 people can zerg a gate so fast its crazy and alot of worlds w/low population are basically screwed by the time the orange swds come up

Oozo.7856:

Someone said that it is 25 total (from all sides) that will trigger the swords, but the old rule was just 5 from one team to draw swords.

Anyone know which it is for sure?

25 from one team or 25 total from all teams?

Before patch it was 6 people or more from ALL SERVERS in combat created Swords, Npc’s and gates don’t count, if a person on siege hits mobs or people he is also counted as in combat.
Now it is the same but with 26 people or more.

I have noticed the organised guilds leave scouts scattered around to counter the change, congrats to anyone fully organised.

I have also noticed that the potty mouthed trash talkers in team speak complaining about late scout reports or a lack of scouting do NOT tend to do any scouting at all themselves. They have become more prevalent since this change.

I have zero problems with the new system but would either like rewards added for those that scout. OR have guild leaders start dealing with the teamspeak/chat abusers that make people not want to make a scouting announcement in case they amp up the trolls.

elkirin.8534:

I have noticed the organised guilds leave scouts scattered around to counter the change, congrats to anyone fully organised.

I have also noticed that the potty mouthed trash talkers in team speak complaining about late scout reports or a lack of scouting do NOT tend to do any scouting at all themselves. They have become more prevalent since this change.

I have zero problems with the new system but would either like rewards added for those that scout. OR have guild leaders start dealing with the teamspeak/chat abusers that make people not want to make a scouting announcement in case they amp up the trolls.

I’d love to see ways for scouting to be rewarded, but that’s unfortunately not very feasible. There’s really no way for Anet to know whether someone is actually scouting and contributing rather than just sitting around semi-afk or even feeding false information. If someone can come up with a rewards system that’s not going to be an easy target for abuse, please share it because it would be great to have a way to make scouting worthwhile to the individual doing the scouting.

I wonder if the values of orange swords couldn’t be different for different areas. So 25 men in open fields, but around keeps/towers it be reduced to 5 or 10.

As for white swords, how about moving the swords away from the centre icon and on to the gate being attacked. That way, for the individual, it still needs to be checked but the mission is streamlined.

Do you guys not check on towers/keeps when you see white swords up?

My theory is that if it only takes ten players to mobilise the bot, I mean npc commander, then it should be the same for orange swords.

Truebanana.5936:

Need a rainbow sword for over 50 players, to see them at 7am from the best server xD

I would be amiable to a red set of swords.

White Sword = 1+

Orange Swords = 15+

Red Swords = 30+

Syeria.4812:

elkirin.8534:

I have noticed the organised guilds leave scouts scattered around to counter the change, congrats to anyone fully organised.

I have also noticed that the potty mouthed trash talkers in team speak complaining about late scout reports or a lack of scouting do NOT tend to do any scouting at all themselves. They have become more prevalent since this change.

I have zero problems with the new system but would either like rewards added for those that scout. OR have guild leaders start dealing with the teamspeak/chat abusers that make people not want to make a scouting announcement in case they amp up the trolls.

I’d love to see ways for scouting to be rewarded, but that’s unfortunately not very feasible. There’s really no way for Anet to know whether someone is actually scouting and contributing rather than just sitting around semi-afk or even feeding false information. If someone can come up with a rewards system that’s not going to be an easy target for abuse, please share it because it would be great to have a way to make scouting worthwhile to the individual doing the scouting.

Actually there is. Add an NPC that you can talk to that will “raise an alarm”. This alarm would give approximate enemy numbers based on the surrounding area. Alarm is conditional and the reward/alarm message is based upon whether or not the objective is being attacked, how many are in the area, and damage done to the tower.

More enemies worth more than few.
Under attack is worth more than in the area.
A less damaged objective is worth more than a heavily damaged one. (early callout)

Also messages would be something like:

Quentin tower reports many Ehmry Bay nearby, tower secure.
Quentin tower is under siege by a horde of Ehmry Bay and is heavily damaged.
Qunetin Tower is all clear for the moment.

If you leave the actual callout in the hands of a quickly run NPC calculation then the incorrect information would be hard to plan. You’d literally have to use a spy to ring the all clear and then bum rush it with a zerg.

To prevent spamming there would be like a 3 minute cooldown on the npc callouts, with the exception of major state changes. Example being All Clear >>>> under attack would instantly recharge the callout ability.

FYI I want to stay away from giving exact numbers. Players will figure it out but generalizations broken down by few (1-15), many (15-30), and a horde (30+) allows for more flexibility for the attackers.

In lower tier this is a bad change. A 10/15 person threshold could have been a better plan.

If I ever have the opportunity to attack a keep again, I might well think its a good idea. But we’re having to put scouts everywhere now. Instead of being actively fighting other players, we’re sacrificing group members to make sure we don’t lose everything to ninja caps, which makes stalemates at towers or losing minor objectives on our own border an inevitability with a lack of numbers.

Think they went abit to fare, 15 would be better and then count Golem as 5players so 3golem = yellow swords.

Shadow.3475:

Think they went abit to fare, 15 would be better and then count Golem as 5players so 3golem = yellow swords.

This.

I really think there should be swords specific for golems. If there’s, say, more than 3 golems banging at a gate, golem swords should appear. As it stands, it’s far to easy to quickly plonk 8 golems at a gate (using portals) and then swiftly obliterate the gate (using timewarp). In an ideal WvW we’d have people guarding everything, so we wouldn’t need any swords. But in reality, nobody wants to be on guard duty, especially when there’s little to no reward for doing so.

There should be lots and lots of swords appearing to encourage as much PvP and as little PvD as possible.

Esoteric.5490:

It’s simple. Orange swords used to show up for everything (5 players hitting guards).

ANet has stated publicly that they do not like the fact that “zerging” is the current meta because it is not what they foresaw for WvW.

The institution of Orange swords for groups of 25 or more directly benefits smaller scale warfare, splitting forces, stealth, and hitting multiple targets simultaneously. A single force cannot cover 4+ objectives under attack without losing at least 1-2, even with a waypoint. Orange swords going away effectively discourages zerging. Guilds and servers will still try to get away with it, but the sooner forces wake up and run in smaller groups, the sooner those zergs find themselves being pretty ineffectual. Also, I realize this may be a bit extreme for T7/8, but it is honestly a good thing for the rest of the game.

I imagine undermanned servers love this change, though, as it lets them move and ninja keeps with a lot more tact and stealth instead of getting steamrolled every time they proc orange swords with 5 people at a camp.

You’d like to think that’s true, but to be honest I’ve seen larger zergs this weekend than I’ve seen in a long time (Hi Blackgate! ). Now… after playing the weekend I’m still of a split opinion on this. But then again, that’s an opinion based on being on a T1 server, so take it with a grain of salt. Basically, in T1, I see this:

• No effect on the size of zergs. Larger groups than ever are flipping camps.
• The change to guild dudes at camps makes timing on flipping them more critical than ever. Zerg a camp at the three to six minute mark and you’re golden.
• More players are required to camp areas to serve as eyes… for many of them, not fun. Granted, sometimes I’m happy to chill out in a keep, but for many it sucks the fun factor out of things. At least… until the zerg arrives at your door.

I like it, you do feel like nothing is safe anymore which makes for a frenetic hour or six.

I agree with what VOLKON said about scouting and camping though.

I wonder what it would be like if in the upcoming WvW changes they gave each class a unique mechanic for WvW…

thieves and rangers could “tag” opponents for a limited time and have them show up on the map

engineers and guards could buff keep and tower defenses for a short time

warriors and mesmers could buff NPC offense for a short period of time

Put some kind of reward mechanic around that to give scouts and campers some kind of reward beyond server appreciation for their contribution.

necros could rund around in circles!

It takes less than a second to hit M, look at your map, and see white or orange swords. It is easy to do it even while leading. If you can’t do that you pretty much suck as a commander; if you can’t do it as someone in a zerg who has very little to actually think about and do outside of immediate combat you are pretty bad.

The orange swords at 25 lets you know about what size of force you are facing or going to run into now. It provides a much better scale of what a commander should do to try and combat a tower/keep siege.

My vote is for keeping it exactly as it is now, wtf do you all opposed care, apparently you don’t watch the map anyway.

the biggest problem is something like golems. before if you had 5 + golems and had oil to take out etc. it was pretty difficult to do it quickly without raising a flag. with the new system you can rock 10 golems up to a door and rinse it without the map markers barely batting an eye lid. it also sends people chasing shadows a lot which delays the ammount of time spent in pvp combat. I’d prefer them to revert back to make getting into decent fights quicker.

I don’t mind it.

While sitting in the tower I was able to observe what the others were doing and learn from it.

It is a good move for T1. Not sure about lower pop servers but this change is good for T1. People complain about zergs, well this reduces the forces to hit some areas since teams can go in with any number of people hitting camps and towers. I’ve seen the other side using 10 to 15 teams for camps and breaking up to do a couple of camps. I’ve even seen 2 people hitting them. Without scouts, we have to decide to send a few or several to deal with the problem.

At least if we see swords, we know that it is more than just a 5 player camp flipping dolyak slapping team and if it is a structure, we will loose it if we don’t respond. Before, we used to send a large force if we saw some orange swords on a structure if we couldn’t get a scout in there fast enough. Most of the time, if we saw swords and waited for the scout, it was too late or if we were in time and it was a small force to begin with, we would just roll right over them.

It should also make us maintain a scout in that tower so we have a small advanced warning as well as getting intel on troop movement when they do go by. You can see a pretty good distance from them towers.

Everyone taking turns watching those towers is what every server just needs to do.

Scaled by the WvW population would be ideal, but we likely will never see this as it would provide an indication of the WvW population which Anet, for some reason, wants to keep secret.
The recent WvW population numbers for the different servers have been requested many times, so I doubt we will see them again or they would have been provided by now.

wyther.8372:

It takes less than a second to hit M, look at your map, and see white or orange swords. It is easy to do it even while leading. If you can’t do that you pretty much suck as a commander; if you can’t do it as someone in a zerg who has very little to actually think about and do outside of immediate combat you are pretty bad.

The orange swords at 25 lets you know about what size of force you are facing or going to run into now. It provides a much better scale of what a commander should do to try and combat a tower/keep siege.

My vote is for keeping it exactly as it is now, wtf do you all opposed care, apparently you don’t watch the map anyway.

I completely agree with this. Why do folks always want things to be so easy? Looking at the map to check status of areas is vital for proper coverage and communication on the map.

Next people will want Asurans to develop unmanned aerial drones to check out their areas for them. “Hey, Faithleap has white swords on it. Instead of actually having to DO something like run there and check it out, lets have the game do our surveillance for us.”

For the record I do not mind zergs (I rarely run with them) but I do have a problem with the notion of claiming that you want less zergging and yet support changes that promote them.

I have addressed this change before it was implemented and in my experience it has been completely true that this has only given more cover to zergging in my current tier. Before the orange sword hand holding as it is called, white swords were not as alarming so people sent scouts to see what was going on. Now when people see white swords they assume it is an attack so they rush their zerg there to smash the opposition. Wait I thought this was supposed to break zergs up? The game mechanics of WvW are not ready for this change without completely doing away with the sword notifications all together which will break up zergs but still cause a lot more structures being lost due to the nature of defensive rewards or lack there of. Where we used to take structures with 12 to 15 guys (without drawing orange swords) now takes over 20 to 30 because you have to push through an opposing zerg. Another idea pushed for and not thought through for WvW. I’m already seeing less and less upgrades for keeps…especially way points. One zerg flips a structure and then another comes along and flips it back. I can’t believe we would think more cover for a zerg would split them up.

/sarcasm over now

At this point if there aren’t a lot more rewards for defense or upgrading structures added this WvW game will lose its focus. Without defensive and upgrade rewards zergs will always be the most effective way to control maps. The best remedy for WvW at this point is to reduce the number it takes to pop orange swords back to what it was until the defensive reward system promotes less zergging or remove white swords too. This halfway stuff will destroy the spirits of over 60% (IMO – outside of the top 3 tiers there isn’t a large enough force to stop the zergging around the clock. 9/24 = 38%) of the servers in WvW. In my opinion incentive is the only way to reduce zergging not harder to kill supply camp supers and more cover for larger groups.

TogoChubb.3984:

At this point if there aren’t a lot more rewards for defense or upgrading structures added this WvW game will lose its focus. Without defensive and upgrade rewards zergs will always be the most effective way to control maps. The best remedy for WvW at this point is to reduce the number it takes to pop orange swords back to what it was until the defensive reward system promotes less zergging or remove white swords too. This halfway stuff will destroy the spirits of over 60% (IMO – outside of the top 3 tiers there isn’t a large enough force to stop the zergging around the clock. 9/24 = 38%) of the servers in WvW. In my opinion incentive is the only way to reduce zergging not harder to kill supply camp supers and more cover for larger groups.

Good points, I agree that since they do not reward for doing the “behind the zerg” work then zerging all the time remains viable for most people.