Guild Wars 2

I’m tired of zerging being the primary tactical of Meta of GW2, after nearly a thousand hours spent in WvW I’m tired of it. The bigger zerg usually(not always) wins, the lag is horrible, and culling effects are at their worst. But worse, it promotes a stagnant boring type of gameplay that is not conducive to making people enjoy WvW.

So lets break the zerg Meta. Let’s give Anet some easy workable solutions to start to push the Meta away from the zerg. Simple stuff that doesn’t require much coding or new content. Just tweaks of existing mechanics and content.

Here’s is the sort of stuff I would like to see,

-Take away orange swords on the map.
-Take away contested swords on the map.
-Add a true day/night cycle(like really, really dark).
-Add severe weather. Thick fog banks, or blizzards(like in certain Fractals).
-When hit by a catapult, players are instantly downed(not just knocked down).
-When hit by a trebuchet, players are killed instantly(no downed state).
-When hit by a siege weapon while in a downed state, players are instantly killed.
-No 5 target cap for siege weapon damage(Arrowcarts especially).
-No 5 target cap for AoE player spells.

Just these minor changes would radically change the tactical aspects of WvW for the better.

What do you guys think? I’m sure some of you have even better suggestions to help improve the tactical stagnation in WvW.

How would this improve things? 20 people with well placed siege could stop both sides with full armie. That would be 20 people for a whole map stopping 330 people with.

Stonemist would be sooooooo easy to hold if these changes went in… we wouldn’t even be required to hold the walls anymore.

Zerging will always be the preferred way of play in open combat, and zergers will always make up the majority of the playerbase. Instead of making the game worse for zergers, you should be looking at ways that’d make things a little easier for smaller groups without hurting the biggest part of the playerbase in a significant way.

When hit by a catapult, players are instantly downed(not just knocked down).
When hit by a trebuchet, players are killed instantly(no downed state).

So if you are hit by a Golem do you get kicked from the game?

dreztina.4820:

Zerging will always be the preferred way of play in open combat, and zergers will always make up the majority of the playerbase. Instead of making the game worse for zergers, you should be looking at ways that’d make things a little easier for smaller groups without hurting the biggest part of the playerbase in a significant way.

Agreed. Unfortunately this is the same reason small groups are unlikely to receive attention.

The weather changes you propose will only exacerbate the culling and rendering issue, but I like the idea.

Weather and day-night cycle affect visibility of orange swords, commanders, disallow ballista and arrowcart (not to mention harder trebs and catas) targeting, hide dolyaks, in heavy rain make swamps very hard to cross, maybe rivers rise.
All could work for nice tactical diversity.

A good small group would not complain, they would in most cases fight higher numbers and probably come out on top or manage to effectively bust up the zerg.

This has been the case in all games that havea World PvP zone, and has most definately started to show its face in GW2. I applaud these small mans, they don’t complain or QQ they just go out, find larger groups, and proceed to smack them around.

Zergs have and always will be a part of World PvP, its just the way it has always been. If you Don’t want to run with the zerg, form a 5-10 man group and learn to combat superior numbers. Not only will you enjoy the fights if you manage to be effective but you will also be doing your server a service by roaming and taking out supplies.

These are very poor ideas haha. And all this “Zerg” talk is a cop out. Wvw is large armies fighting large armies. just case you have less people on at a time it should not punish a server with lots. this is war, not “moooooom tommy has more toys then me, punish him!”

There is only one way to reduce zergi in the game….. BIGER MAPS ..like 50% bigger.
end EB ..100% BIGGER. Also…each map ..different ….like
server 1 …snow
server 2 …desert
server 3… jungle
EB …twilight
Us of now maps are just to small end one zerg can cover prety match everything .
If the maps are 2 times bigger zerg have to spread end that will bring 10 – 15- 20 people PvP

Making siege weaponry more deadly as I suggested would make defending easier. Which is why it would need to be offset by weather, darkness, and taking swords off the map, all changes that would favor the attacker.

Also, siege used in a counter-battery role would be extremely important. A properly aimed treb or two could sweep walls clear of defenders.

And finally, well placed siege in open field battles between zergs should have the power to actually effect the outcome of said battles significantly.

As it is currently, siege equipment kills walls and gates, and other siege equipment. While players, even the glassiest cannons laugh at being hit by it most of the time.

By turning siege weapons into true force multipliers, and making the terrain more complex and dense(via weather, darkness, or bigger maps) you make the smaller forces who operate asymetrically more viable and WvW far more tactically diverse and interesting.

I agree with the siege.

All a catapult does is knocks you back, and all you do is regen HP and get back up. A Treb does the exact same thing, arrow carts are easily dodgeable, and ballistas even more so.

There should be more incentive to have well placed siege in WvW, to make it more tactical, instead if playing a numbers game.

Zergs are good for entry-level players who need to learn how things work. Zergs are specifically required to counter heavily fortified keeps and towers. Irrespective of the method for eliminating zergs, the only way to do it while retaining dynamism would be to overturn the entire defense mechanic of WvW. In other words, it’s not a small tweak.

Actually I think he is on to something with the weather thing. This is an ideas thread so just because you can’t see how something might work doesn’t mean it can’t be the start of something worthwhile.

People zerg because it is the most effort effective method of taking a map, that’s really all there is to it. Can a zerg be countered? Yes, obviously but the problem is that the strategic and tactical coordination required to defeat a zerg is a fair bit higher than the strategic and tactical coordination required to put one together.

If you had true darkness/snow/rain that really obscured visibility beyond 20m then it would allow small groups to move much more effectively. Combine this with some element of limiting Swords and zergs might be forced to expend more manpower covering the map. It would also allow the smaller force to escape more easily and then remain in the local area like guerillas. The zerg would then have to commit actual manpower to guarding/hunting.

How to make the current ways of zerging less effective or not as encouraged:

SLOW THEM DOWN.

That’s all Anet has to do. The speed/size of the zerg is what makes them so dominant compared to any other crappy tactic you can think of. It makes matters worst that a zerg uses culling to its advantage.

Increase siege AoE cap or make them hit much harder. Make The Burning Oil Instant death. As it has a very short range and anyone foolish enough to not take it down should be punished accordingly. Also, both Burning Oil and Cannon users should be protected from damage until it is destroyed. A zerg mass AoE completely shuts these down and make them useless.

Remove the cross swords from the map. Which forces zerg commanders to rely more on intel from others spread across the map and not the M button.

how realistic is it for orange swords to pop up on a map if 10 people are doing something mundane like killing a polar bear out of site of an enemy. might as well put locations of groups of 5+ on the map. to me its more of a built in radar hack.

the AoE cap limit negates the whole point of AoE. half the time you can feel free to run into red rings because of the said limit.

as akumu pointed out the lack of protection when on cannons/burning oil make them pretty much useless unless you are defending against people that just bought the game 10 seconds ago.

Akumu.7238:

Also, both Burning Oil and Cannon users should be protected from damage until it is destroyed. A zerg mass AoE completely shuts these down and make them useless.

This is a HUGE oversight in WvW and I can’t imagine why they did not do it. Would help defend vs zerg for a much longer time.

Mian.1945:

Akumu.7238:

Also, both Burning Oil and Cannon users should be protected from damage until it is destroyed. A zerg mass AoE completely shuts these down and make them useless.

This is a HUGE oversight in WvW and I can’t imagine why they did not do it. Would help defend vs zerg for a much longer time.

I agree with the oil pot, give them a booth or somethings. As for the cannons, considering how much of a dent they can make in a zerg once you get two or more, I think they’re fine.

well some of the ideas here are good, others not so much. making siege as powerful as suggested by OP is just crazy though…that would completely ruin the game. i do agree with taking away the 5 target cap on aoe siege and attacks though because that just contributes to the zerg mindset. the whole point in aoe is to do mass damage to enemies clumped up and make them pay attention to whats going on. remember back during the early days of gw1 when npc enemies ignored aoe and would just stand in it? that was not fun and that is what we have going on here. if i use barrage and 20 people are standing in the circle, 20 people should be taking damage, if they don’t like it, don’t stand in the red circles.

Why zergs are so popular ?
Because the actual meta game leads to just care about offensive actions and rarely cares of defence.
What happens 90% of times now is zerg rush a camp grab supplies, takes a tower then takes a keep and repeat the same somewhere else.
Its not important to hold a keep/tower/camp, but its only important to have it when the tick happens. This is the real bad aspect of WvW as it is now, cause lets suppose the extreme case in which there is a server A with not really big numbers, holding the whole map for 90% of the time, the other server B with big numbers just let them do, then right before the tick they bring up 2 zergs and rush east and west side of the map, getting almost everything.
Result, server A did all the work of holding and upgrading, and at the end of the day they got 20 points, server B just rush and dont care and they got all the points.

At the beginning Devs said that who better manage supplies wins WvW, actually thats not so true… but i think it really should be.

So here there are my suggestions (not all come from me, but good ideas must be repeated):

Point system review
+ Some points should be earned on succesfull capture of a point.
+ Points per tick given by any structure should increase over time. Such as camps starting at 0 points first tick (but still you get 5 points for the cap), then 5 more points second tick, 7 points third, 4th – 10pt, 5th – 14pt and stops there.
Same goes for keeps, 2nd – 25pt, 3rd – 30pt, 4th – 35pt, 5th – 40pt.
This way just capping something for the tick will be lot less rewarding than holding it.

Supply system review
+ When they get capped their depot should be empty, so there is no use for a zerg to rush to a camp and flip it just for the tick and resupply. Supplies will go to whom defend the camp.
+ Dolyaks should be a lot harder to kill, at the moment is useless to escort them cause any burst built toon can just suicide on it and take it down in 3 skills. I’d say they should have like 4000armor and 50k hp.
+ Dolyaks should have one additional upgrade to carry more supply, like 75 – 125 – 250.
+ There should always be 2 guards defending a dolyak, and 3 more should come with the upgrade. Yaks shouldnt be something that you kill passing by…. they should be really something to care more, by both sides.

General changes
+ A little damage increase to Siege Weapons (20% more dmg).
+ 5 targets cap removed on aoe, BUT some skills would then need to be adjusted with such a change, for example barrage and elementalist storms, they should have their radius reduced a little. This would promote strategy, like the use of choke points to hold zergs, and will greatly discourage stuff like turtling.
+ Let karma be a currency for structures upgrades.

Social connotations of “zerg” make a negative thing, but in reality, we all know zerging is probably the best tactic in war.

Note that WvW is a 24/7 non stop affair. A player can play high level tactics for say 2-3 hours, on the ball, highly attentive, pro skills and will be completely burnt out.

Meanwhile, anyone can zerg mindlessly for 12 hours a day.

In the end, guess who wins.

When Anet put in game guilds vs guilds? This game is called guild wars so make some GvG content.

Yea WvW is only zerg, wins not the player skills or coordination, wins who have big numbers.

What the OP suggest is a bit extreme. Instakilled by a treb? Come on, i can think of so many ways to abuse this is ridiculous. Getting instakilled is never a good idea, only builds frustration. How the hell would you even attack a door, when one siege kills everyone?

cuge.5398:

Point system review
+ Some points should be earned on succesfull capture of a point.
+ Points per tick given by any structure should increase over time. Such as camps starting at 0 points first tick (but still you get 5 points for the cap), then 5 more points second tick, 7 points third, 4th – 10pt, 5th – 14pt and stops there.
Same goes for keeps, 2nd – 25pt, 3rd – 30pt, 4th – 35pt, 5th – 40pt.
This way just capping something for the tick will be lot less rewarding than holding it.

Supply system review
+ When they get capped their depot should be empty, so there is no use for a zerg to rush to a camp and flip it just for the tick and resupply. Supplies will go to whom defend the camp.
+ Dolyaks should be a lot harder to kill, at the moment is useless to escort them cause any burst built toon can just suicide on it and take it down in 3 skills. I’d say they should have like 4000armor and 50k hp.
+ Dolyaks should have one additional upgrade to carry more supply, like 75 – 125 – 250.
+ There should always be 2 guards defending a dolyak, and 3 more should come with the upgrade. Yaks shouldnt be something that you kill passing by…. they should be really something to care more, by both sides.

A better quick fix seems to be what cuge suggests, especially the point rewards. Even with large zergs, the server with better tactics would win, not the one with huge numbers.
I personally don’t agree with removing caps for AOE for player skills, way too many imbalances. But the AOE cap on siege is completely unjustified. It should never be there.

I don’t like increasing siege damage to the point where it kills people instantly (getting chopped in your mid-section with a giant sword should kill you too). Superior siege is there for superior damage. Buffing normal siege would comparatively require a buff to superior siege or make it less worthwhile. Superior Arrow Carts can mow down a force, making them a worthwhile upgrade and investment. Sup catas and trebs do substantial damage as well, I worry that a buff to normal siege would make superior siege uneconomical or too powerful. The AoE limit on siege is ludicrous, however, especially non arrowcarts with a slower fire rate.

The weather conditions sound awesome, I’d really like to see that implemented. I also like the map variety. EBG is fine as is, but the borderlands need to all be different, not just different weather. I think we could do away with orange swords, but possibly have NPCs use global chat for certain things or leave the white swords for something being contested while it doesn’t give away size or direction of the force, on keeps especially. Sentries are worthless, maybe it should say that a sentry is being attacked, buff them a bit, and then give the sentry’s location (N, S, E, W, etc.).

Small groups and organized guild groups can also be very effective without being a “zerg”. Tactics still play a larger role in this game than many like to recognize or admit. Take a zerg pug group of 30-35 against a fine tuned guild group of 15-20, you will get rolled almost every time, guaranteed. Just because not many people have put in the time and effort to figure that out yet does not mean zergs are OP. It’s a young game, the meta has a long way to shift still.

Finally, I support removing the AoE cap, but the radius of the AoE or the damage that it deals would need to be reduced. I think the most fair way is a radius reduction because the skill becomes worthless if it’s hitting a single person if you reduce the damage. This would make the skill rely on placement to get max damage rather than making the erroneous assumption that a player is hitting many players with their AoE so their damage needs to be hurt. A fair amount of countering this would be to make heals not obey the cap either and, possibly, reduce their radius as well, although that is debatable. Healing needs to be buffed to the point where stacking Healing Power actually MATTERS to scale well with healing skills instead of giving worthless amounts of extra health. The only reason turtles were successful is you could stack unlimited heals on everyone while the AoE could not stack unlimited damage. If you remove the AoE caps, Healing needs to get buffed.

So one way to fix culling is to make it a legitimate part of the game by turning the sky dark? That’s… an innovative solution I guess.

Miporin.3529:

When Anet put in game guilds vs guilds? This game is called guild wars so make some GvG content.

Yea WvW is only zerg, wins not the player skills or coordination, wins who have big numbers.

Make a form via Thackeray to propose Queen Jennah a tournament between the guilds of Tyria, you might need also to find sponsors.

-No 5 target cap for AoE player spells.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@!!!@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

None of these ideas would break up zergs, and some would even make them more important.

I just want my zerg bombing group back :P.. Just need my insta mez and stun and some SM’s/Elds to PBAOE and we are all good in the hood.

Furgerat.7842:

I just want my zerg bombing group back :P.. Just need my insta mez and stun and some SM’s/Elds to PBAOE and we are all good in the hood.

You sound like a bolt range AoE mez cheating ablie!

Man those were fun times.

Caliburn.1845:

I’m tired of zerging being the primary tactical of Meta of GW2, after nearly a thousand hours spent in WvW I’m tired of it. The bigger zerg usually(not always) wins, the lag is horrible, and culling effects are at their worst. But worse, it promotes a stagnant boring type of gameplay that is not conducive to making people enjoy WvW.

So lets break the zerg Meta. Let’s give Anet some easy workable solutions to start to push the Meta away from the zerg. Simple stuff that doesn’t require much coding or new content. Just tweaks of existing mechanics and content.

Here’s is the sort of stuff I would like to see,

-Take away orange swords on the map.
-Take away contested swords on the map.
-Add a true day/night cycle(like really, really dark).
-Add severe weather. Thick fog banks, or blizzards(like in certain Fractals).
-When hit by a catapult, players are instantly downed(not just knocked down).
-When hit by a trebuchet, players are killed instantly(no downed state).
-When hit by a siege weapon while in a downed state, players are instantly killed.
-No 5 target cap for siege weapon damage(Arrowcarts especially).
-No 5 target cap for AoE player spells.

Just these minor changes would radically change the tactical aspects of WvW for the better.

What do you guys think? I’m sure some of you have even better suggestions to help improve the tactical stagnation in WvW.

WTH!?

“-Take away orange swords on the map.”
“-Take away contested swords on the map.#

so a zerg of 50 players can get a keep full up without any warning ?
with 10 golems, and no warning, it need like what to take the doors and the lord? 5 mins? how this will help!?

“-When hit by a catapult, players are instantly downed(not just knocked down).
-When hit by a trebuchet, players are killed instantly(no downed state).”

so we night cap, get every keep/tower yp, place cata/treb everywhere, and come try to get us?

“-No 5 target cap for siege weapon damage(Arrowcarts especially).
-No 5 target cap for AoE player spells.”

and here come again the turtule mode? the bigger zerg win? no thx!

Any well placed siege, can stop a zerg.

Aeolus.3615:

Any well placed siege, can stop a zerg.

yeh…good luck with an arrow cart against 50 ppl, you’ll be doing 200 dmg and cripple on 5 of them and the other 45 will run over your body….a little bit before those 5. XD

cuge.5398:

Point system review
+ Some points should be earned on succesfull capture of a point.
+ Points per tick given by any structure should increase over time. Such as camps starting at 0 points first tick (but still you get 5 points for the cap), then 5 more points second tick, 7 points third, 4th – 10pt, 5th – 14pt and stops there.
Same goes for keeps, 2nd – 25pt, 3rd – 30pt, 4th – 35pt, 5th – 40pt.
This way just capping something for the tick will be lot less rewarding than holding it.

Supply system review
+ When they get capped their depot should be empty, so there is no use for a zerg to rush to a camp and flip it just for the tick and resupply. Supplies will go to whom defend the camp.
+ Dolyaks should be a lot harder to kill, at the moment is useless to escort them cause any burst built toon can just suicide on it and take it down in 3 skills. I’d say they should have like 4000armor and 50k hp.
+ Dolyaks should have one additional upgrade to carry more supply, like 75 – 125 – 250.
+ There should always be 2 guards defending a dolyak, and 3 more should come with the upgrade. Yaks shouldnt be something that you kill passing by…. they should be really something to care more, by both sides.

The specific numbers would be different, but I like these ideas in principle.

What I would like even more, is the ability for players to dynamically effect supplies and points per tick while playing defensively.

For example,

You hold a supply camp and a nearby tower or keep. You can then trigger giant dolyaks to spawn at your supply camp and move to your building, and if they reach their destination they give your server instant points. If they are killed enroute the enemy gets instant points(more than the 3 they currently can get).

But here is the fun part. When you trigger point dolyaks, it flags the event on the map for all servers to see, AND more important it opens the gates of your destination building so the dolyaks can get inside. So it gives the players the choices to make make their buildings much more vulnerable, but also the option of making more points.

There would obviously need to be a rather long timer on opening and closing your gate(something in the order of a couple minutes), so that you could not have the best of both worlds. And there would also need to clearly be certain limits on who/when you can open gates, otherwise griefers and spies would become rampant.

cuge.5398:

Why zergs are so popular ?

Point system review
+ Some points should be earned on succesfull capture of a point.
+ Points per tick given by any structure should increase over time. Such as camps starting at 0 points first tick (but still you get 5 points for the cap), then 5 more points second tick, 7 points third, 4th – 10pt, 5th – 14pt and stops there.
Same goes for keeps, 2nd – 25pt, 3rd – 30pt, 4th – 35pt, 5th – 40pt.
This way just capping something for the tick will be lot less rewarding than holding it.

Supply system review
+ When they get capped their depot should be empty, so there is no use for a zerg to rush to a camp and flip it just for the tick and resupply. Supplies will go to whom defend the camp.
+ Dolyaks should be a lot harder to kill, at the moment is useless to escort them cause any burst built toon can just suicide on it and take it down in 3 skills. I’d say they should have like 4000armor and 50k hp.
+ Dolyaks should have one additional upgrade to carry more supply, like 75 – 125 – 250.
+ There should always be 2 guards defending a dolyak, and 3 more should come with the upgrade. Yaks shouldnt be something that you kill passing by…. they should be really something to care more, by both sides.

General changes
+ A little damage increase to Siege Weapons.
+ 5 targets cap removed on aoe, BUT some skills would then need to be adjusted with such a change, for example barrage and elementalist storms, they should have their radius reduced a little. This would promote strategy, like the use of choke points to hold zergs, and will greatly discourage stuff like turtling.
+ Let karma be a currency for structures upgrades.

These are good ideas. Love the idea of giving more points the longer you hold on to something. I’m not fond of the zerg-it + flip-it + abandon-it game.

Regarding the AOE cap, I prefer the idea that it tapers down damage from the middle of the circle towards the edges.

instead of guards you can make them veteran yaks or so. its always 1 or 2 people killing yaks and the guards are usually just ignored.

karma as currency for upgrades or even siege would be sweet for us that arent even thinking of making a legendary.

I don’t get why people want siege weapons to be stronger than it is right now. I like the fact that siege is there to make defending, breaking walls a bit easier…. but I don’t really want to see the game work in such a way that siege is far more important than the players and the class they play.

Jairlyn.1429:

Furgerat.7842:

I just want my zerg bombing group back :P.. Just need my insta mez and stun and some SM’s/Elds to PBAOE and we are all good in the hood.

You sound like a bolt range AoE mez cheating ablie!

Man those were fun times.

Insta mez and stun … I’m going with a middy not a alb. That and the SM/Eld suggest Mid/Hib

I am still a fan of the AoE caps, but I thought the zerg bombing in DAoC was boring and terrible for gameplay. If you want to be able to beat a zerg it should require guerilla warfare, with multiple attacks, traps and retreats. Perhaps a new skill that AoE finishes downed players might be helpful? Hard to balance that with sPvP.

I do think that some changes to increase the incentive for WvW in general and defending, supply runs and other less exciting tasks would be great. In see an opportunity to get reward driven players (mainly PvEers) into the most fun part of game by giving out better rewards for the aspects of WvW that involve less PvP.

Non linear supply, lots of ways to do this. Personally I’d flag a camp as naturally belonging to one server and will not generate supply for another server, but can be pillaged for stored supply.

Remove anything powerful about downed state, no real explanation needed.

More objectives and larger maps.

Redesign fortifications so that siege can’t be trivially destroyed. Seriously, what kind of person would build a fort where all defenses can be destroyed by a guy with a bow.

Buff arrow carts – really, they suck, just buff them.

Variable points for structures depending on how long they’ve been held. Limits the effectiveness of zerging around the map with a flip and leave mentality.

All things that have been suggested multiple times, I don’t think anyone is listening to be honest.

Weather effects like blizzards (slows movement) and heavy Rain (impares vision distance by 50%) would be a welcome addition intoWvW.
But one area that needs attention is the npc guards that protect supply camps and forts. Currently my level 20 ranger can solo a supply camp, any of my level 80 characters can solo a fully upgraded supply camp, the first thing to die when a group of enemies get to any wvw fort or tower is the npc guards standing outside the front gate, these guards die in a matter of sceonds then do not respawn usually until the gate is almost down or destroyed. The wall guards are also laughable to the amount of damage they do and for the most part end up being ingnored.

My suggestion would be:
To improve the amount of health of all guards by 20%
To improve the amount of damage guards do by 20%
To improve the amount of guards defending keeps and supply camps by at least 20%
and to improve the respawn timer of defeated guards by 25%

Npc guards need some loving as they are not contributing anything to WvW in their current state.

Harbinger.8637:

When hit by a catapult, players are instantly downed(not just knocked down).
When hit by a trebuchet, players are killed instantly(no downed state).

So if you are hit by a Golem do you get kicked from the game?

This made me chuckle.

Remove the aoe cap, add some weather effects, increase damage of burning oil and reduce the damage the siege operators take. Leave the rest as is.

cuge.5398:

Why zergs are so popular ?
Because the actual meta game leads to just care about offensive actions and rarely cares of defence.
What happens 90% of times now is zerg rush a camp grab supplies, takes a tower then takes a keep and repeat the same somewhere else.
Its not important to hold a keep/tower/camp, but its only important to have it when the tick happens. This is the real bad aspect of WvW as it is now, cause lets suppose the extreme case in which there is a server A with not really big numbers, holding the whole map for 90% of the time, the other server B with big numbers just let them do, then right before the tick they bring up 2 zergs and rush east and west side of the map, getting almost everything.
Result, server A did all the work of holding and upgrading, and at the end of the day they got 20 points, server B just rush and dont care and they got all the points.

At the beginning Devs said that who better manage supplies wins WvW, actually thats not so true… but i think it really should be.

So here there are my suggestions (not all come from me, but good ideas must be repeated):

Point system review
+ Some points should be earned on succesfull capture of a point.
+ Points per tick given by any structure should increase over time. Such as camps starting at 0 points first tick (but still you get 5 points for the cap), then 5 more points second tick, 7 points third, 4th – 10pt, 5th – 14pt and stops there.
Same goes for keeps, 2nd – 25pt, 3rd – 30pt, 4th – 35pt, 5th – 40pt.
This way just capping something for the tick will be lot less rewarding than holding it.

Supply system review
+ When they get capped their depot should be empty, so there is no use for a zerg to rush to a camp and flip it just for the tick and resupply. Supplies will go to whom defend the camp.
+ Dolyaks should be a lot harder to kill, at the moment is useless to escort them cause any burst built toon can just suicide on it and take it down in 3 skills. I’d say they should have like 4000armor and 50k hp.
+ Dolyaks should have one additional upgrade to carry more supply, like 75 – 125 – 250.
+ There should always be 2 guards defending a dolyak, and 3 more should come with the upgrade. Yaks shouldnt be something that you kill passing by…. they should be really something to care more, by both sides.

General changes
+ A little damage increase to Siege Weapons.
+ 5 targets cap removed on aoe, BUT some skills would then need to be adjusted with such a change, for example barrage and elementalist storms, they should have their radius reduced a little. This would promote strategy, like the use of choke points to hold zergs, and will greatly discourage stuff like turtling.
+ Let karma be a currency for structures upgrades.

I like most of theses ideas. Need to be more incentive to upgrade and hold onto stuff when you take it. Along with that something needs to be given to the ones who spend money on upgrades. People should be arguing on who gets to claim a keep not avoiding it or having to ask someone to claim.

Not sure I like making siege so powerful. That helps the attackers as much if not more than defenders. Defending needs to be much easier. 20 men with siege in a keep should keep a large zerg busy for a really long time. Not 30 minutes or whatever. Only keep than can really be defended well for any length of time is East keep and that is mostly because of the choke point into lord room.

Maybe bubbles that give a lot of protection to manned siege on walls like the oil and arrow carts. They all become almost useless due to huge amount of aoe from a large zerg. Make the walls and doors on a fully ugraded tower much stronger than they are now. More guards. Something to make defending easier and worth doing. It is so hard at times to get players to defend. All they want to do is karma train.

Preventing zerging is going against principles of psychology that people clump together for shared purpose and perceived safety. But even zerging isn’t foolproof. Superior tactics beat zergs and the Achilles heel of zergs is more people are harder to control.

just to be clear…. with increasing siege weapons power i dont mean like OP said, i was thinking about a 20% dmg increased.

Zergs are how it’s supposed to be.

Harbinger.8637:

When hit by a catapult, players are instantly downed(not just knocked down).
When hit by a trebuchet, players are killed instantly(no downed state).

So if you are hit by a Golem do you get kicked from the game?

+1
Lmfao. I chuckled in rl at this comment.

JCWolf.1674:

Npc guards need some loving as they are not contributing anything to WvW in their current state.

They certainly do. My idea would be that a guild that claims a tower or keep can then position the guards. Including the option to station NPC guards on various siege equipment.

This option would be a trade-off however, NPC guards would obviously use the siege equipment less effectively than human players( NPCs wouldn’t really have the creativity or programming to do counter-battery work), and perhaps they’d have a damage penalty on their siege equipment, say only 80% damage compared to what a human operator would be doing with it.