Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing the WvWvW for a few months now and have found it relatively enjoyable overall. However, I’m surprised at the overall lack of any discernible strategic acumen exhibited by any group. I’ve asked before “do we have any strategy here?”, and consistently I’m told that if I’m not on mumble then I have no position to talk. So I get on mumble and all it boils down to is “I’m going here, you go there” with the occasional, “we need more help at…” That’s NOT strategy. That’s simply communicating movements.

So many times after taking a camp I see it change back to another server’s control within minutes. So I decide to pull out of the zerg and observe and there are actually only a half a dozen of the other server retaking a camp that we used 60+ people to take. So I suggest let’s reverse course or keep some folks back to defend, but the commander always seems to just ignore and the herd just follows.

My favorite example is when we all left the siege weapons and attacked the structure to only get wiped…I realized while we were “storming the castle” that not a single person (including me, so I’m equally to blame) stayed on siege to provide any support…augh! However, shouldn’t the commander have said, “so-and-so, form a group to stay on siege the rest of us will advance on structure.”??

Those are just a few examples. Are there any servers out there that actually use strategy to have a committed plan of attack that employs tactical movements along with measured resources etc?

It’s simple: good commanders have a strategy, bad ones don’t. Any yahoo can say “stack on me, buff up, push in, hook left” etc etc but having and executing an actual map strategy is what makes good commanders.

For example, if I’m in EB and we have SMC usually the first thing I’ll do when I tag up (if the castle is defensible, e.g. it has upgraded walls/doors and I have a healthy zerg) is set up trebs for the enemy’s outer towers. My strategy, then, is to pressure the outer towers and draw “aggro” to the center of the map, while my zerg runs around and harasses both teams somewhere between their spawns and SMC. In this way, I force both teams to react to me in their own thirds—this lets us run supplies to our home towers and SMC.

Outside from defending a “castle”, there’s really no room for strategy. You can place sieges in strategical locations inside the “castle”, but outside, it’s either a “zerg tactic” or “guerrilla tactic”.

It’s not like everyone will form a strategic line facing an enemy horde and go at it when the the trumpet sounds. But that would be a nice screenshot if/when it happens.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Outside from defending a “castle”, there’s really no room for strategy. You can place sieges in strategical locations inside the “castle”, but outside, it’s either a “zerg tactic” or “guerrilla tactic”.

Zerg and Guerrilla are strategies, not tactics.

It’s not like everyone will form a strategic line facing an enemy horde and go at it when the the trumpet sounds. But that would be a nice screenshot if/when it happens.

Again, you’re confusing the two. What you are describing here is a tactical maneuver. Roughly speaking, strategy is your overall plan; tactics is how you maneuver during battles.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Outside from defending a “castle”, there’s really no room for strategy. You can place sieges in strategical locations inside the “castle”, but outside, it’s either a “zerg tactic” or “guerrilla tactic”.

This is something I hope ANet will address when they get around to making new maps. They could add a ton of strategic elements to the maps beyond keeps considering the engine already supports the idea of destroying bridges or blocking off / opening up passages, etc…

One of the reasons Zerg’ing works so well is because the maps play fast and it is very easy to move a lot of people fairly quickly. If there were elements on the map that you could use to impede that it could force the groups to spread out a bit more.

The problem is, you get punished for having good strategies as you’ll end up in higher tiers. The ideal is to wipe enemy groups without accumulating too many points, the best way to do this is let them break through a tower wall or gate so you can catch them unawares. Occasionally you’ll have to ninja back some towers when you fail to kill them all before they cap it, but that’s the best strategy I see so far.

multivira.7925:

The problem is, you get punished for having good strategies as you’ll end up in higher tiers.

Glicko does a pretty good job of preventing that…

No one in this game has enough control over their “units”, or enough agency over the state of the battlefield and coordination with fellow commanders to enact any deep strategic maneuvers. This is of course assuming they even think about them. If you’re looking for strategy, I’d suggest a different game (maybe Age of Empires II: Forgotten Empires), because you won’t find it here.

Ruin.3461:

No one in this game has enough control over their “units”, or enough agency over the state of the battlefield and coordination with fellow commanders to enact any deep strategic maneuvers. This is of course assuming they even think about them. If you’re looking for strategy, I’d suggest a different game (maybe Age of Empires II: Forgotten Empires), because you won’t find it here.

I disagree. That kind of control does exist, it’s just extremely difficult and time-consuming to cultivate. The only way you’re going to get it is by being a consistently good commander who plays during the same timeframe each day; if you’re good enough over time people will actually start doing what you tell them to in /m or /t chat. It’s a little less definite than RTS games, to be sure, but that’s half the fun!

Most just want to have fun because the score doesn’t matter that much due to population imbalance so easily wrecking it. Anet appears content to let it be just uber casual WxP trains and blowing off steam gibbing a few folks for a while. Not really a atmosphere for advanced strategy to develop.

Ruin.3461:

No one in this game has enough control over their “units”, or enough agency over the state of the battlefield and coordination with fellow commanders to enact any deep strategic maneuvers. This is of course assuming they even think about them. If you’re looking for strategy, I’d suggest a different game (maybe Age of Empires II: Forgotten Empires), because you won’t find it here.

There is a degree of strategy, in that you can aim to force a 2v1 on a third faction, stave a map in the aim of eventually taking garrison, force a server to overinvest in one map or to overextend as so you can ninja assets with a smaller guild/force. In the RTS mindset, yeah you don’t have control over “units”, but what you do have is the ability to offer incentives for doing something and therefore manipulate the map to whatever fits the strategy via using tactics.

A good commander has the ability to balance the micro (field tactical play, buffing etc) with the macro (map awareness, ability to form a coherent plan on how to make the map work for you). I’ve probably played too much starcraft lol, but in faction war-type games there is definitely a RTS element to it – whether or not a commander recognizes this is what differentiates one who can hold a map and one that dominates it.

Gaviston,
The real problem seems to be the amount of people who understand the difference between tactics and strategy; their numbers are small. Even less is the number who can apply the differences.

I go with the saying “strategy is made out of tactics.” Also the commander is not going to tell you what his whole strategy is. That is very time consuming.

Ruin.3461:

No one in this game has enough control over their “units”, or enough agency over the state of the battlefield and coordination with fellow commanders to enact any deep strategic maneuvers. This is of course assuming they even think about them. If you’re looking for strategy, I’d suggest a different game (maybe Age of Empires II: Forgotten Empires), because you won’t find it here.

I kindly disagree, I’ve now run quite a few of hte Oceanic timeslot nights as the commander running the strategy for the night, the key to be able to do this though is building up the rapport and trust with the other commanders (and of course them building up the rapport and trust with their squads)

There is alot of strategic possibilities in wvw if you look at the battlefiled as the 4 maps and not at the individual map level. (sure there are still strats at the individual map level, but due to the flow of the game your more likely to have a more detailed strat work at the higher 4 map level than at the single map level.

The big problem that I’ve seen for example in NA time, is that there is just too many people commanding, the advantage in Oceanic on my server is that there is 2-6 commanders total running the night, which makes communication easier, and less confusing, and on the flip side also allows for cleaner strategies since your not dealing with as many variables.

Is there possibilities for Strategy in GW2? I say, yes there is. Is it easy to achieve? That really depends on your community and how well you work with the other commanders out there.
Is it frustrating when someone gets Tactics mixed up with Strategy (And the other way around) heck ya :P

p.s. I also do a Commander Podcast, for anyone keen to hear my thoughts
Podcast1
Podcast2

(Podcast 3 Strategy Vs Tactics? sounds like a winner!)