Guild Wars 2

There are a lot of things in the game design at present that encourage players/servers to stack the heck out of one server/time zone and ktrain rather than encouraging balanced sides and tougher competition.

It is a universal truth that people like to “win”, and in most cases in GW2, by assembling the largest blob in town players are able to have their way with the other servers with very little risk. Nothing can be done about this, it’s human nature, but, in my opinion, there are two key game issues that not only fail to prevent this type of behavior, but actually encourage it.

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Greater individual reward for capturing objectives than defending them. Assigning greater value (PPT) to upgraded objectives was a good start, but does nothing to reward each individual so they are incentivized to do anything other than zerg, kill helpless foes, and ktrain their objectives. In addition to this, the current skirmish system nullifies a great deal of the value of holding upgraded objectives since winning a skirmish rewards your server with a set number of points, no matter how much you won the skirmish by. If your server has the biggest blob, typically you are able to capture enough objectives and kill enough people to win the skirmish, regardless of the level of upgrades on the other server’s side.

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The second, and perhaps most glaring issue in my mind is the introduction of Shield Generators to the game. These devices, when used offensively, completely ruin any chance at staging a defense of your structures using counter siege. Optimal offensive siege placement locations are now well known, and a series of rams/catas/trebs covered by 3+ shield gens is essentially immune to defensive siege, and provided that the attackers have the superior force, there is little the defenders can do but stand and watch.

I fully understand that population imbalance will always be an issue in WvW, and that’s fine, but when game mechanics further incentivize stacking servers/time zones, and/or make it impossible for a smaller defending force to do anything meaningful in game, that is a serious problem.

For the good of WvW, please look into this issue, and make the game fun again for the players/servers who DO NOT choose to join the bandwagon!

The key to good defence is to be prepared. Why would you stand and watch? Activate your shield generator, fire off your defensive trebs, catapults, ACs, laugh as the blob runs through the spaced out supply traps into the poison supply removing field of your treb. A small force can very easily make a blob have a bad day.

If you find the other side has a bigger blob, split up. Slow their blob by stripping it of supplies, have your defences ready and instead of waving like a wallflower on the wall watching it go down, go back cap and split team them so their zerg is useless.

Smaller defending forces can do plenty- just be mobile, be prepared to die quite a bit and suicide their siege. I’ve lost count of the number of times a couple of us have managed to wipe a blob’s siege by suiciding it.

Baldrick.8967:

The key to good defence is to be prepared. Why would you stand and watch? Activate your shield generator, fire off your defensive trebs, catapults, ACs, laugh as the blob runs through the spaced out supply traps into the poison supply removing field of your treb. A small force can very easily make a blob have a bad day.

If you find the other side has a bigger blob, split up. Slow their blob by stripping it of supplies, have your defences ready and instead of waving like a wallflower on the wall watching it go down, go back cap and split team them so their zerg is useless.

Smaller defending forces can do plenty- just be mobile, be prepared to die quite a bit and suicide their siege. I’ve lost count of the number of times a couple of us have managed to wipe a blob’s siege by suiciding it.

signs

By the way, off-hour caps also allow to recap your home border, when you’ve lost it. Better allow flipping stuff back than being stuck in the same sad state for the whole week.

Who cares about off hour k trains. Like, does the score even matter? I mean, you need a big blob to take some of these t3 structures as well. If you took away the shield gens i don’t think it would be possible to take anything tbh. Do you really think wvw would be better if everything was t3 and fully sieged up? It kills the fights, it kills the game.

Baldrick, no offense intended, but I don’t know that you’ve encountered what I’m describing, or maybe you don’t play during NA off-hours.

If an enemy zerg runs up to your objective, the first thing they build is a shield gen, followed by two other shield gens, followed by two or more rams/catas, there’s not much you can do. Siege you build on the wall gets AOE’d down by Eles, or the siege operator gets Mesmer Focus pulled and killed.

Since a single person can only deploy one supply trap, covering every objective, or all the possible spots of one is nearly impossible. If you’re cowing one area, the zerg will go to another. Once they’ve built one Shield Gen, it’s game over since they can build two more while the first bubble is up, and provide full coverage after that. If well placed, the bubble will cover all the deployed siege, including the Shield Generators themselves.

I’m not saying that no group of people can ever defend against a zerg…all I’m saying is that a zerg with a driver that knows what they are doing is heavily favored over a group of defenders to the point that defense becomes trivial.

Suiciding on siege is an option, but when the numbers are 2, 3, or even 4 to one, it’s not a good one.

Only NA Prime should be allowed to play WvW, problem solved.

Next!

Not at all, what’s fair for one TZ is fair for the others.

There tends to be less of a problem during NA prime though since most servers have a decent population. Even if one server has better guilds or whatever, they at least have warm bodies to carry out tasks.

During OCX/SEA through to EU there tends to be a lot of 40+ vs <10 ktraining which is a horrible experience for the <10 side and usually leads in those people either being miserable and eventually quitting the game entirely, or transferring to the 40+ server so they can “win”.

The real question is, what else are they supposed to do?

Split up their group and karmatrain twice as fast?

aarias.4016:

Not at all, what’s fair for one TZ is fair for the others.

There tends to be less of a problem during NA prime though since most servers have a decent population. Even if one server has better guilds or whatever, they at least have warm bodies to carry out tasks.

During OCX/SEA through to EU there tends to be a lot of 40+ vs <10 ktraining which is a horrible experience for the <10 side and usually leads in those people either being miserable and eventually quitting the game entirely, or transferring to the 40+ server so they can “win”.

You mean not fun for the 40 dudes cause k training is a snooze. Most k train because there’s nothing to fight. That’s not their problem.

Ok I have thought long and hard about this problem, and retract my previous solution to present a new solution.

Only NA Prime should be allowed to use Shield Generators, problem solved.

Next!

Dawdler.8521:

The real question is, what else are they supposed to do?

Split up their group and karmatrain twice as fast?

De-stack the server they are on, or have not stacked that server in the first place.

Anet a long time ago (a very very long time ago.) (Did i say long time ago?) had a proposition to lower the scores earned on off peak. I mean, wvw has to be a 24/7 thing, you really can’t shut it off or dictate a time for it but this would somewhat help a bit.

I have once again come back to retract my previous statement, to propose a brand new solution!

All servers off hours should have a lower population threshold. If a server has a population threshold of 1000 then off hours should only have 100, plus the map caps should be lowered to 20 during those off hour periods. This way you will force off hour players to move to other servers, to avoid queues on those few servers that have stacked their coverage from the beginning!

Another problem solved with a simple solution.

Next!

aarias.4016

when game mechanics further incentivize stacking servers/time zones, and/or make it impossible for a smaller defending force to do anything meaningful in game, that is a serious problem.

You might like this reply from McKenna:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5svug8/the_head_of_the_snake_devs_here_ask_us_anything/

ANET_McKenna

29 points 1 day ago
The WvW team is currently working on Scoring Improvements Phase 2, which was determined in the last priority poll. This involves adding rewards to Skirmishes and improving the Skirmish UI. A goal for these scoring improvements is to give WvW players a reason to play and win WvW Skirmishes.
Population and bandwagoning issues are something the WvW team is constantly discussing and working on. Currently there are plans to help discourage bandwagoning coming with Phase 2, but we aren’t ready to announce details for everything in that system yet.

i have excellent news for you as there is definitely something you can do to help stop off hour ktrains! its so simple youll smack yourself for not having thought of it! its so elegant youll wish you could trademark it and sell it!

here it is:

quit your job so you can stay up late using arrowcarts.

I can’t help but think that skirmish rewards will further promote bandwagoning – wonder how they will do it without that happening. I just don’t want anything negatively impacting those of us that are already struggling against blob servers – I don’t want to see more people leaving my server but that’s just human nature.

’Murica!

Not to worry, they will implement rewards based on loyalty. The longer you stay on a server the greater the multiplier they will add to your magic find, thus a chance at better rewards. So if you’re a server for one month you will get a x0.01% multiplier, when you’re on a server for six months you will get x0.0000001% multiplier, when you are on a server for twelve months, you will get an extra chest of loyalty for weekly wins, but it only drops blues, level 20 and below, and only if open it on sundays.

aarias.4016:

Dawdler.8521:

The real question is, what else are they supposed to do?

Split up their group and karmatrain twice as fast?

De-stack the server they are on, or have not stacked that server in the first place.

If everyone on a stacked server leaves for another, wouldnt that just stack the next server?

Didn’t the invention of victory points pretty much negate the advantage of off-hour K-training, at least in relation to propping up servers who weren’t going to win anyway?

As for not being sufficiently incentivized to not join the horde, well, I can’t relate. I’m almost never fighting with more than ten allies nearby, and probably 90% of the time I’m either roaming by myself or with one or two friends. That other 10% I’m jsut fighting near allies, not following them around.

I don’t get it.

aarias.4016:

Baldrick, no offense intended, but I don’t know that you’ve encountered what I’m describing, or maybe you don’t play during NA off-hours.

If an enemy zerg runs up to your objective, the first thing they build is a shield gen, followed by two other shield gens, followed by two or more rams/catas, there’s not much you can do. Siege you build on the wall gets AOE’d down by Eles, or the siege operator gets Mesmer Focus pulled and killed.

Since a single person can only deploy one supply trap, covering every objective, or all the possible spots of one is nearly impossible. If you’re cowing one area, the zerg will go to another. Once they’ve built one Shield Gen, it’s game over since they can build two more while the first bubble is up, and provide full coverage after that. If well placed, the bubble will cover all the deployed siege, including the Shield Generators themselves.

I’m not saying that no group of people can ever defend against a zerg…all I’m saying is that a zerg with a driver that knows what they are doing is heavily favored over a group of defenders to the point that defense becomes trivial.

Suiciding on siege is an option, but when the numbers are 2, 3, or even 4 to one, it’s not a good one.

No offence taken.

If they only outnumber you 4 to 1, then if they have 30 you have 7 or 8 people and suiciding is a very viable option by the spare 5 people not on trebs (as the zerg has wiped your ac off the wall, and possibly ballista too. Although if they outnumber you 4 to 1 they are going to win the fight sooner or later anyway. Remember to retrap inside the objective too so they have to divert to find more supplies before moving to next objective- the idea is to make it as slow as possible for them, not to stop them, which you can’t.

Unless you are asleep then you should be aware of where their zerg is heading and that’s 4-5 nicely spaced out supply traps they just ran through on the way to the objective.

If the defence is awake then you should get at least a couple of cows into them before they reach their catapult spot and start building shield generators.

I’ve played at all sorts of hours and in all sots of situations, and the biggest issue I usually see is that a lot of people don’t think or plan at all and need a tag to function at all. Never ceases to amaze me how many ‘wvw players’ don’t carry a set of siege and traps or still use normal siege when superior is available, or won’t think to use it.

In our off hours I wonder off and build catapults against enemy structures and knock down walls whilst I see others milling around doing nothing useful as there is no comm badge for the sheep to follow and they don’t seem to think of even basic things to do, like flips camps, kills dollies, etc.

Sure, the enemy zerg might find me and my pixels get hurt.