Guild Wars 2

When GW2 was released I really was a huge fan of WvW. I liked the slow capture-and-defend war game on the maps.
Unfortunatly it turned into a run-cap-forget-the-rest game. You just gain much more reward compared to the defense of your locations.
So I thought about some possible rewards to make defending more profitable.

I came up with some events that could be yielded multiple times during a fight for a castle, tower or supply station. Their rewards during a long, well organized defense should be equivalent to an organized capture-train.

Important: these rewards are ment as hidden events. Don’t show it on screen until they are achieved.
Players participate in all of these events by participating in a fight on attacker or defender side for a castle/tower/supply station.
Events 1 and 2 are triggered for both sides, 3 and up only for the defenders.

1. Stir up
   10 enemies killed in 60 seconds

1. Death to the leaders
   Killed an enemy commander or officer

1. Position secured
   Repaired a destroyed wall or door to 95% (during the fight)

1. Push them back
   Banished all enemies from the lord room / cap cycle for 60 seconds (at least 5 entered before)
   or
   Banished all enemies from the inner/outer Fortress ring and repaired all walls and doors (at least 5 entered before, no matter how much structures are repaired)

1. Siege breaker
   Destroyed 3 active siege weapons (used in last 15 seconds)

Additional Suggestion for Tower/Fortress Upgrades:
Because you cannot use fortress waypoint during defense, maybe a last-tier expensive upgrade could add some healers/protectors to fortress that heal allies and revive dead players nearby.

Small addition:
Another reward for holding a keep (not for the towers).
Rewarded every 60 minutes for all active players on the map, as long as your server holds that keep. The longer your server holds the keep, the better the reward becomes.
(e.g. 100%, 102%, 110%, 130%, 150%, 200% for the first 6 hours)

I’m perfectly fine with more rewards, but your suggestion doesn’t say what the actual rewards are? Also I’m not sure how I feel about NPCs auto ressing players

The last thing we need is to reward players sitting on siege in keeps. If anything, they need incentives to come out and fight.

coro.3176:

The last thing we need is to reward players sitting on siege in keeps. If anything, they need incentives to come out and fight.

What if you’re there with a full map queue and they have 10 dudes inside?

I’m sure they’d love to come and fight if you dropped those extra 60 dudes from your tag.

coro.3176:

The last thing we need is to reward players sitting on siege in keeps. If anything, they need incentives to come out and fight.

Every time anyone posts anything at all about improving siege or defending in this game mode, somebody feels the need to “contribute” like this. Go play CSGO or something. Stop cluttering up forum threads with your toxic, knuckle dragging, Alpa Male drivel. I saw a vid, when the game was first launched, of a quadroplegic guy playing GW by blowing in a tube. Bless him. You want him to give you a square go? Defending and siege, scouting and Yak escorts, repairing and refreshing…these things give some people a way to contribute to and enjoy WvW. If you don’t like it…kitten, kitten, kitten the kitten off!

coro.3176:

The last thing we need is to reward players sitting on siege in keeps. If anything, they need incentives to come out and fight.

From a pure tactical point of view, that’s pure nonsense. It’s far safer to defend while in the structure, behind walls, and using siege. I only wish sieges were even more powerful, so that monkeys jumping around and yelling “Hey ! Come spar with me !” were one-shot.

Now, from a gaming point of view, what’s the point of jumping down ? Get laglocked stunned and melted ? The only rational reason I can imagine from not standing on walls using siege is to avoid AoE…

Here’s one:

This is a game. If you die in the game, you don’t die in real life! In fact, you don’t even have to pay to repair armour or waypoint.
The point of jumping down and engaging is to have fun testing your skill against your enemies’ skill. It’s an exciting confrontation between groups of players! It’s (I assume) why people play WvW.

Now, I understand not wanting to go 1v20, but that’s why you just throw a disabler or two and call backup.

Example of what I’m talking about: 5 players hiding in a keep won’t come out to fight 2 players bored and wanting some action on Desert Borderlands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN6fNrfuvjY

So break into the keep.

Sometimes you have to pry open the shell to get to the omnomnoms inside.

If they want to fight to defend, they will.
If they don’t want to fight you, they won’t.

But insisting they play your way is just as wrong as them insisting you play their way.

Yeah. If you watch the end of the video, we tried that. They pulled emergency waypoint and ran us over with a 40-person zerg.

Some people are scared of even remotely fair fights. I’m just saying, it’s boring. If they enjoy it, more power to them, but I don’t think hiding in keeps defending is good for the game.

This is a siege warfare game. Understand that.

coro.3176:

Yeah. If you watch the end of the video, we tried that. They pulled emergency waypoint and ran us over with a 40-person zerg.

Some people are scared of even remotely fair fights. I’m just saying, it’s boring. If they enjoy it, more power to them, but I don’t think hiding in keeps defending is good for the game.

All I’m getting from this is that you want an easy keep.

Riveting.

Defense cant be profitable cause game does not support it out of the box, changes to the game are needed to create a structure that would survive with decent gameplay besides farm where player arent, cause no matter how many defenders there are, 1 servber will full stack 1 blob a tower to make it easy cap, meanwhile they dont care if loose anythign sicne it can be reccaped back a few minutes later and drop more freebies.

WvW needs actuallya overhoul beside INCREASE rewards, wich is a dumb way to nonfix wvw.
This IMO is something that i feel it needs to be tweaked to get defensive more rewarding in several ways(and improve WvW gameplay while at it).

-Remove rewards when capping structure

-Remove nodes from structures

-Guild Rank and point system, offense and deffense, support if they mostly attend to support other guilds

-give each structure its own/unique type of rewards so guilds/groups really need to take and defend that structure (to players that are defending and guild that claimes the structre has access to a treasure chest every 1h) plus the defense rewards.
since its a 24/7 game maybe server or alliaces in case Anet drops the server system to access those chests.

-give to guilds that claim the keep can open havok quests for players to select/queue and be rewarded if succesfull.

-end the pseudo tactical treb wards, make players actually put effort to battle for structures and gaining offensive points.

-create a ladder system for WvW registered guilds.

What I want is a fight.

What I get is arrow cart spam and 5 players firing a catapult at 2 players (who haven’t even set up siege on the walls) because they’re afraid to engage.

This is why WvW is so empty..

coro.3176:

Yeah. If you watch the end of the video, we tried that. They pulled emergency waypoint and ran us over with a 40-person zerg.

Some people are scared of even remotely fair fights. I’m just saying, it’s boring. If they enjoy it, more power to them, but I don’t think hiding in keeps defending is good for the game.

If they are enjoying it, then they are active, and it’s good for their game. They may not be scared… they may just not be interested in participating in the same version of the game you are.

There are plenty of other people to fight than the five that were bunkered in that keep.

Aeolus.3615:

-Remove nodes from structures

Hahaha.

No.

coro.3176:

What I want is a fight.

What I get is arrow cart spam and 5 players firing a catapult at 2 players (who haven’t even set up siege on the walls) because they’re afraid to engage.

This is why WvW is so empty..

Son, the point is to keep (heh) the other team from even touching the wall. If you want a fight bring more people and try to use this thing called strategy, you might have heard of it somewhere… or not.

Cascabel.5806:

Aeolus.3615:

-Remove nodes from structures

Hahaha.

No.

(…).

I found a Skrit!!! >:}

The nodes would be phisicly removed from maps, but there would be other ways to include those items on the game.

;)

nodes actually feel a very sad way to trick players, besides artwork its another thing that Anet excells.
oh.. and nodes are very slacky to code as well.

I need my shinies kitten! >:(

humm gw2 needs to be more like war of the emperium form RO(as example of map strucure)… less castles per map, more important castles with strong rewards(shinnies ._. ) and more maps :\ the actual system is almot impossible to make it pleasent or make it work on very long term.

guilds/ alliances and havock groups figthing for rewards and supplies that would be a good game :|

meanwhile there were no trebs wars so players would end invading stuff more on open field insted of hide and use macro on seconds account with treb hitting empty structure or red keep, while ktraining empty structure with main account..

I think your heart’s in the right place, but I don’t see this idea working out. If these events counted as participation to the existing defense event, it might be ok. As standalones, they’re just boosting rewards in a situation where rewards would already be given out—so we might as well just bump up the base reward, no?

@Sviel.7493 reward increase by itself.. wont do nothing while game lacks a structure, and ppt and cap n leave isnt a structure.
So offcourse any improvement on defense the pasticipation needs to count.

Still i think theres should be factor or strategie and to avoid overstaking siege in defense towers and castles should have some certain places to build siege where players could select from several tipes of siege like arrow slits(place bow classes shooting), cannons ports, turret, that can be damage with long range siege.

Wait. Defense was profitable at some point?!!

Well I’ve been doing it wrong. ><

coro.3176:

Yeah. If you watch the end of the video, we tried that. They pulled emergency waypoint and ran us over with a 40-person zerg.

Some people are scared of even remotely fair fights. I’m just saying, it’s boring. If they enjoy it, more power to them, but I don’t think hiding in keeps defending is good for the game.

>complains about the enemy not fighting them
>complains about the enemy fighting them

ok

My complaint was that they won’t fight even when they have a 5vs2 advantage. It’s boring.

Calling in a zerg for 2 people is funny, but it’s not a fight.

that happens because they dont loose anything if they loose keep or tower… that in fact will make them ktrain back what they lost have have a few more drops.

as i said lack of structure.

I hate to break it to you but defense is the gamemode,. I wouldn’t call sitting on a piece of siege a gamemode itself, but rather a small piece of the puzzle that is map defense. Idling away in keeps, repairing from within structures and sitting on siege is what i call passive map defense. Going out recapping camps and sentries, escorting yaks and defending objectives is active map defense. Which mode is more engaging and promotes wvw play more? Even arenanet will agree it’s active gameplay, that is why participation is so heavily tied to those actions. It doesn’t take much to hop out of a keep and escort the yak to keep your participation up, but I’m afraid that you might die if an enemy shows up. Arenanet should never promote the increase of rewards for avoiding engagements. The rate of decay participation has is perfect right now, some may abuse repairing in smc, but that is a very small number compared to what would happen is passive defense had increased rewards.

I would agree with what has been said prior that participation as a whole could be tweaked a bit higher but I’d go further and say that player kill experience and rewards should be tweaked lower to compensate. I personally have little issues with killing people and rarely find myself i a situation where Im being farmed, but i feel that it takes greater effort to work an active map then to blob up and run over people.

As for trying to to redirect the trend in player culture towards passive defense, arenanet could do a little, but the end result would still be these people standing in the wall looking out afraid of dying. It’s a tricky thing to fix kitten many justify it by ignoring the fact the game is supposed to be a blend of siege and pvp.

Possible tweaks arenanet could do would be locked in Siege build locations for arrowcarts, rams, shield generators and leave ballistas catas and trebs to be placed anywhere. They can tweak down AC damage and balance that out with the removal of them taking damage from passive traits and runes to balance it.

Sure i look biased since i was in that video, but CTH is not known as a fight guild or even one of those roaming gank squads. The guild is based off of map defenders across all hours, causal roamers and a havoc group when they run in prime time. We believe that a good night of wvw involves both fights and objective based play. I think we are the only ones left from old Maguuma with this outlook :/

I think the reason defense isn’t “profitable” is because of how much easier (but not easy) it is to defend. The risk is super low with siege turtle strategies, so of course there can never be a high reward.

That’s why turtling and zerging need to go, then everyone can get more rewards (offense and defense).

Solutions may vary, I prefer making larger maps with more camps that have waypoints. Holding objectives means more mobility! Make them within treb range of keeps and they also become excellent staging areas for sieges. I made a post in a different thread but supply control should become more important, fighting over camps and yaks should be the key to any siege. We should assign at a minimum 4 camps per keep, paired with upkeep on siege (spend supply to use, with different siege costing different amounts of supply to use). Now you can’t turtle inside an objective as you will eventually burn out of supply. Even zergs on offense cant turtle a single camp, as they will run out of supply compared to the defender (since they have 3 to resupply at). This means assaulting multiple areas is the key, thus breaking up zergs. If the defense refused to secure multiple camps, they will starve and all of their siege/walls will become useless against the better supplied attacker.

Obviously, camp waypoints would not be active during RI and can be contested by killing any of the npcs. Havoc crews can hurt the enemy more effectively by contesting camps and killing yaks if they are unguarded by a defense that is too afraid to split up.

More objectives to flip means more bags for everyone after the fight so yay! Additionally, increase rewards for protracted sieges, so there’s a large payout for defense and offense if the fights go long, perhaps using the kill streak system that cashes out when the defense event ends. For both, it would be based on players killed and siege destroyed, but offense would gain bonuses for structure damage, and defense would get extra bonuses for yak escorts (extra multipliers if you kill someone while protecting a yak) during the defense.

Ok, I think we agree in the point that defense is not really profitable what results in boring farming groups instead of sieges and warfare.

Aeolus.3615:

that happens because they dont loose anything if they loose keep or tower… that in fact will make them ktrain back what they lost have have a few more drops.

Kiroshima.8497:

I think the reason defense isn’t “profitable” is because of how much easier (but not easy) it is to defend. The risk is super low with siege turtle strategies, so of course there can never be a high reward.

That was exactly the thought beneath my additional comment.
It might be a lot harder fight for attackers than for defenders, but usually there are no defenders. Compared to the cap reward, there is nearly no reward for defense.
If you only use the castle, you can recap it later.

So, what can be offered to make it profitable to defend the castles?
What about the idea to give rewards to active players (activity system like in EotM) that raises for every castle your server owns and with the time the castle is owned?
In the first tick you will gain a moderate reward, but after some hours you have a huge chance e.g. for exotics.

Quest.4071, that is the problem.

it isnt a problem with rewards, that is the cheapest way to pretend to fix stuff.

Defending is boring, that’s why barely anyone does it. No one cares about ppt. Maybe if you built the tower or keep you would want to defend it but it’s been the same for almost 5 years. No one cares about these towers and keeps for the most part.

jamesdolla.3954:

Defending is boring, that’s why barely anyone does it. No one cares about ppt. Maybe if you built the tower or keep you would want to defend it but it’s been the same for almost 5 years. No one cares about these towers and keeps for the most part.

For every time you post that “nobody cares about x”, there is someone out there who does actually care about it. WwW has a split personality if you look at the player base. And interestingly, the game was far more alive when the PPT crews were out there in force, defending and protecting “their stuff”.

Just maybe we should consider that moving in a direction pushed for by the subset that only wants fights all the time may have done damage, and bringing back strategic value and a reason to hold your stuff just might be the right direction to go.

Sarika.3756:

jamesdolla.3954:

Defending is boring, that’s why barely anyone does it. No one cares about ppt. Maybe if you built the tower or keep you would want to defend it but it’s been the same for almost 5 years. No one cares about these towers and keeps for the most part.

For every time you post that “nobody cares about x”, there is someone out there who does actually care about it. WwW has a split personality if you look at the player base. And interestingly, the game was far more alive when the PPT crews were out there in force, defending and protecting “their stuff”.

Just maybe we should consider that moving in a direction pushed for by the subset that only wants fights all the time may have done damage, and bringing back strategic value and a reason to hold your stuff just might be the right direction to go.

OP suggested adding rewards to “defensive activities.” Yes, it is true, rewards aren’t going to change game play on their own. Playing for objectives only (the PPT) has been a below average experience in my opinion. Playing for combat only (PPK or KDR stuff) has also been a below average experience as I have done so far. Probably because neither received enough attention when it comes to balance or polish.

The glaring problem with the current WvW community is division. However, the current WvW tries a mixture of the two. If you only wanted just PPT or PPK I doubt you will ever be entirely pleased with WvW. Having a few interacting with siege, and a dozen waiting around is boring. Throwing bodies at each other in a flat field gets meaningless real quick.

I think all we can agree on is the desire for balance, and to encounter one another more frequently. Skewing to one figurative side or the other when it comes to balance can be detrimental to the other half of WvW. Perhaps WvW was doomed from the start, and no amount of feature creep (like rewards) will fix that.

jamesdolla.3954:

Defending is boring, that’s why barely anyone does it. No one cares about ppt. Maybe if you built the tower or keep you would want to defend it but it’s been the same for almost 5 years. No one cares about these towers and keeps for the most part.

Cue their music!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhXOVQprYxk