Upgrades are now an event.
To finish the event, X number of Dolyaks need to reach the Objective.
This Solution promotes:
-The importance of supply camps.
-The importance of dolyaks.
-Players not having to use their funds to upgrade objectives
-Players not having to choose which upgrade to upgrade first.
-Promotes Defending ALL objectives
-Promotes Escorting Yaks
-Promotes WvW
I like that they are attempting to make WvW better, but have to agree that a system like this makes a lot more sense. Keep the automated upgrades and decoupling from supply/gold, but ALSO retain the impact of players tactically denying yaks to actually halt upgrade production, instead of just slowing it. Great idea!
I’ve been worried that automated upgrades, especially unhaltable ones, would also aggravate the night-capping effect in lower tiers with population gaps, but I know, “everyone serious plays in the higher tiers” :P
I like the idea, but I see how this could become too overpowering for servers which already dominate, as many are pointing out. What if the upgrade time was based on the number of keeps you hold. Perhaps and inverse of the ratio of owned Towers/Keeps per map.
There are 3 keeps and 4 towers on a borderland map. If a side owns 0 towers they have a 100% improved upgrade speed at the time of capturing their first tower. Now they have 1 tower out of 7 total. This is about 14% of the available towers, so they now have a 86% improved speed upgrade on the second tower they capture. If the ratio was distributed Red – 2, Blue – 2, Green – 3. Then Red 2/7 = 71% speed, Blue 71% Speed, Red 57% Speed. If a server owned over a certain percentage, maybe 50% 4/7 towers/keeps or 70% 5/7 towers/keeps their timer would stop and they would have to upgrade by escorting dolyak caravans to the keep. This would cause servers which were dominating overnight more trouble since they couldn’t just cap everything and move on to get a full upgrade overnight, since a small group could kill dolyaks and force them to defend to get a full upgrade. Obviously the numbers could be tweaked or the ratios even made cross borderland/EB to promote more balanced matches. The new system it a great start, but it could be improved.
This could help to balance matches better and allow servers which normally can’t gain a foothold some advantages. Basically the more you hold the more difficult it becomes to upgrade new keeps, but if you have nothing you can get established quickly and into the competition. This would also help servers that are behind to come back quickly with their initial keeps upgrading much quicker until they catch up in total towers/keeps.
The game mechanic your proposing doesn’t solve for the overall problem of making dolyaks and supply camps useless in the bigger picture. the small scale combat that those objectives provide for the player(of lesser populated servers) is a major benefit to choking a keep out of it’s resources.
What’s the difference between this and the Arenanet proposed system?
Is it just that the keep will automatically upgrade over time anyway with the Arenanet system and they won’t in the OP’s suggestion? I quite like that part of the Arenanet solution because it means low pop servers can bunker up (as they so often have to anyway) and still upgrade.
Nobody at Anet loves WvW like Grouch loved PvP. That’s what we need, a WvW Grouch, but taller.
With that Svarty, the large population server that owns your corner, won’t need to worry about getting Dolyaks into the keeps in order to have it get fully upgraded on you.
So your small man group, that could currently kill yaks, and choke supply from the keep/tower to deny it from being upgraded, won’t have the ability to counter the enemy keep in your zone from being upgraded.
You will wake up every day, with each objective fully upgraded by the enemy servers in your BL.
The game mechanic your proposing doesn’t solve for the overall problem of making dolyaks and supply camps useless in the bigger picture. the small scale combat that those objectives provide for the player(of lesser populated servers) is a major benefit to choking a keep out of it’s resources.
Did they say how repairs would work? I was under the impression that you still need supply for repairing walls and the gate. Even if the keep generates its own supply I assume a prolonged siege would drain it eventually. Although it could take longer.
It may make dolyaks less important for servers that are further behind, but if you read about the cutoff point it basically becomes the system you proposed when a server has gained a certain number of keeps/towers. The system I am proposing is to help out servers that have trouble getting established or are falling behind. If servers are fairly equal in the number of towers and keeps then they have then the difference should be almost negligible. Remember that cutoff point for free timed upgrading could be adjusted up or down as needed. It could even occur at ~30% which would only be two towers/keeps.
The glory of the current system is that the small man group, can take a supply camp, and actually make a difference to the enemy.
You can actually Siege a castle, stopping/draining their supply, to deny them from getting upgrades.
With the new proposed mechanic, you can’t do anything.
I agree with you about that, but if the server you want to choke out is far enough behind the system I proposed gives them a better chance of defending. If they are doing well then you might still be able to choke them out before they can upgrade.
The glory of the current system is that the small man group, can take a supply camp, and actually make a difference to the enemy.
You can actually Siege a castle, stopping/draining their supply, to deny them from getting upgrades.
With the new proposed mechanic, you can’t do anything.
I agree with you about that, but if the server you want to choke out is far enough behind the system I proposed gives them a better chance of defending. If they are doing well then you might still be able to choke them out before they can upgrade.
Like testpig said, you have no hope of attacking if you’re undermanned against another server. We play games to achieve objectives: having the ability to take an enemy’s keep – particularly your strongest enemy’s keep – is paramount to the appeal of WvW. There’s actually nothing gained from your system which ignores the strategic importance of supply. Any system that ignores a supply layer will always benefit the stronger servers since there is impossible to strategically wrest control of territory from them. Numbers will always win.
I have to agree that this system looks like an improvement over the suggested changes. I like the automated upgrade system but the new proposed system does lower the significance of supply caravans, well, significantly. I do hope arenanet takes a look a this tread and we can get some dialogue going.
the idea is good
it is simple and easy to understand, maintain the importance of dolyak
it also inline with how silverwaste tower get upgraded, a dolyak need to reach there otherwise the bar wont fill. theres consistency in the overview of the game
The glory of the current system is that the small man group, can take a supply camp, and actually make a difference to the enemy.
You can actually Siege a castle, stopping/draining their supply, to deny them from getting upgrades.
With the new proposed mechanic, you can’t do anything.
I agree with you about that, but if the server you want to choke out is far enough behind the system I proposed gives them a better chance of defending. If they are doing well then you might still be able to choke them out before they can upgrade.
Like testpig said, you have no hope of attacking if you’re undermanned against another server. We play games to achieve objectives: having the ability to take an enemy’s keep – particularly your strongest enemy’s keep – is paramount to the appeal of WvW. There’s actually nothing gained from your system which ignores the strategic importance of supply. Any system that ignores a supply layer will always benefit the stronger servers since there is impossible to strategically wrest control of territory from them. Numbers will always win.
The system I proposed certainly improves upon the current proposed Anet system that is just a timer and can give servers with low map presence (towers/keeps) an advantage and chance to get back onto a map. I will reiterate again that the system can be tweaked to eliminate this advantage of needing only time to upgrade a keep at any given percentage of total map towers. So we could allow for the timer only for the first keep and then each keep after than would require supply dolyaks to upgrade, or it could be after two, or three or any amount of keeps. Please read my post again because I outlined a strategy for the exact thing you are opposed to, it also doesn’t ignore supply. I just don’t mention it because I assume supply will be used for defense. Even if keeps slowly generate supply you can still choke them if dolyaks delivered bonus supply.
It seems that these changes are specifically focused on evening out the control of all of the maps. Instead of the scores being balanced by each server having their entire borderlands, it is balanced by all servers having an even distribution of each borderland.
+1, this is exactly what I have been thinking. Keep the automatic upgrades, keep the elimination of supply/gold costs for upgrading, all of that is great. But make it so yaks are still required for upgrades to happen. Don’t diminish the importance of escorting yaks and (conversely) slapping yaks by making yak-less upgrades a possibility.
Thanks for the image testpig, I think it gets the idea across really well.
Images make things that much easier to understand… And everyone from PvE would have such an easy way to understand what they have to do. No more worrying about random upgrades or anything.. It’s just
“Escort yaks”…
“Great i can do that”..
“how many do i need to do? 7 more? great i’m on it!”
And a new PvE’er is now apart of the WvW world with ease.
Please Anet, don’t turn into WARHAMMER ONLINE with the changes you are proposing. Did you guys end up hiring Paul Barnett or Carrie Grosskous ?
They should tie in the speed of " auto upgrades " to the wvw scores making it very quick to upgrade objectives for servers being decimated on the score board. For example for every 10000 pt lead a server gains over its competition they slow down upgrades by 10% (1st place) while the others gain a +10% increase in upgrade speeds. This may help slow down a dominating server while bolstering the weaker servers leading to a more closer match up. When the point spread between servers decreases below a certain threshold the benefit stops.
You could also make being undermanned and being behind in points a pre-requisite for this buff if the above is deemed to unfair.
Helping the weaker servers is what ANET should be addressing not “helping” servers who are dominating their opponents. This is what game mechanics should do automatically. Balancing mechanics are too few this game where population numbers reign supreme………….
I like the idea, but I see how this could become too overpowering for servers which already dominate, as many are pointing out. What if the upgrade time was based on the number of keeps you hold. Perhaps and inverse of the ratio of owned Towers/Keeps per map.
There are 3 keeps and 4 towers on a borderland map. If a side owns 0 towers they have a 100% improved upgrade speed at the time of capturing their first tower. Now they have 1 tower out of 7 total. This is about 14% of the available towers, so they now have a 86% improved speed upgrade on the second tower they capture. If the ratio was distributed Red – 2, Blue – 2, Green – 3. Then Red 2/7 = 71% speed, Blue 71% Speed, Red 57% Speed. If a server owned over a certain percentage, maybe 50% 4/7 towers/keeps or 70% 5/7 towers/keeps their timer would stop and they would have to upgrade by escorting dolyak caravans to the keep. This would cause servers which were dominating overnight more trouble since they couldn’t just cap everything and move on to get a full upgrade overnight, since a small group could kill dolyaks and force them to defend to get a full upgrade. Obviously the numbers could be tweaked or the ratios even made cross borderland/EB to promote more balanced matches. The new system it a great start, but it could be improved.
This could help to balance matches better and allow servers which normally can’t gain a foothold some advantages. Basically the more you hold the more difficult it becomes to upgrade new keeps, but if you have nothing you can get established quickly and into the competition. This would also help servers that are behind to come back quickly with their initial keeps upgrading much quicker until they catch up in total towers/keeps.
This is a nice idea!
Another one:
Consider the number of players for each side currently on the map? E.g. If your side has 20 more players than both enemies, you need to escort dolyaks to upgrade your towers and keeps, they won’t upgrade automatically.
Images make things that much easier to understand… And everyone from PvE would have such an easy way to understand what they have to do. No more worrying about random upgrades or anything.. It’s just
“Escort yaks”…
“Great i can do that”..
“how many do i need to do? 7 more? great i’m on it!”
And a new PvE’er is now apart of the WvW world with ease.
“do i get any reward for escorting yaks”
“no”
“well **** that then”
“do i get any reward for escorting yaks”
“no”
“well **** that then”
there, there’s a more realistic conversation
Why would the answer be no? If a keep upgrades, the event completes and you get event rewards. What the event rewards each player involved is entirely mutable. Maybe everyone who escorted a yak for that upgrade gets a precursor. How about that? Ready to escort yaks now?
Fikbomber — Big Red and White Charr Engineer
Fikfain — Little Purple Sylvari Mesmer
Ascension [WAR] of Borlis Pass
So your small man group, that could currently kill yaks, and choke supply from the keep/tower to deny it from being upgraded
This sounds great in theory but in nigh on three years of gameplay, I’ve yet to see it happen.
this makes me wonder how you and your server WvW.. The first thing we do when the enemy takes a keep.. or a tower, is make sure it has no supply getting into it. The first thing we do when we capture a keep or tower.. is make sure supply IS getting into it. Which means escort and protect yaks.
lets make it happen folks, lets all come together around this simple solution to the auto upgrade mechanic. lets keep WvW alive!
It’s one thing to rally around something, it’s another to make ANet look at WvW ideas (let alone actually implement them). Not saying it’s not a good idea, just don’t get your expectations too high.
Upgrades are now an event.
To finish the event, X number of Dolyaks need to reach the Objective.
This Solution promotes:
-The importance of supply camps.
-The importance of dolyaks.
-Players not having to use their funds to upgrade objectives
-Players not having to choose which upgrade to upgrade first.
-Promotes Defending ALL objectives
-Promotes Escorting Yaks
-Promotes WvW
Lets all agree to this, and push ANET to follow.
When players have amazing ideas, gaming companies should listen.
Stop cutting us out of the loop.
Not keeping all IT jobs here is a major reason IT is so bad HERE. 33y IT 10y IT Security
We’ll never know if they are paying attention, but seriously if yaks won’t matter as much because they don’t want supply to be a limiter, give it another year and they’ll take supply out :P
Maybe you could just throw siege down and it’s built? I shudder to think of a future such as that!
Dinas Dragonbane, the Danger Ranger
Tri-Lead of Ascension [WAR] of Borlis Pass
