Ticking siege just ain't fun

Ticking siege just ain't fun

in WvW

Posted by: kurtosis.9526

kurtosis.9526

Hey guys, just want to put this out there, but having to tick siege every 30m just isn’t fun. What’s fun in WvW:

Placing siege
Using siege
Killing siege
Defending yaks
Killing yaks
Defending things
Flipping things
Map hopping on defense
Map hopping on offense
Hiding in keeps
Ninja flipping keeps
Zerg v Zerg
Squad v Squad
Small scale PvP
Map chat banter
VOIP banter
JP’s
JP PvP
Map completion (yes even this)
Scouting
Sentrying
Loot bags
PPT meta
Server-wide coordination
Tons more I’m probably forgetting

Notice, ticking siege is not in that list. It’s just a chore like taking out the garbage irl, but this is a game, not irl, stuff like that isn’t supposed to be in it.

I know it probably exists to solve some technical issue or other, but if there’s any other less-unfun replacement solution that’s viable, please consider adding it to your todo list.

Thank you.

(edited by kurtosis.9526)

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Posted by: timidobserver.7925

timidobserver.7925

/signed

Siege ticking is horrible. Even if you have to nerf all siege to justify it, the despawn timer needs to be at least 1-2 hours or longer.

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Posted by: Djamonja.6453

Djamonja.6453

I agree completely — apparently the reason it is implemented in its current form is to reduce the effectiveness of enemy “spies” placing siege like a ram in a tower/keep/whatever preventing the home team from being able to place proper defensive siege like Arrow Carts, etc.

But it is a huge pain on lower population servers to keep siege refreshed so it doesn’t decay before an attack occurs. The decay timer should be at least an hour, and probably 2 to be honest — no “spy” is going to bother placing garbage siege every 1-2 hours in a tower or keep.

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Posted by: timidobserver.7925

timidobserver.7925

Eh, I"d rather deal with spies spamming trash siege honestly.

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Posted by: Ross Biddle.2367

Ross Biddle.2367

Here’s what you do. Ticking siege is still necessary, but the problem is we still need troll, and unused siege to despawn. So, place siege, build it, and give it a 30 min despawn timer. If said siege get ticked repeatedly in a relatively short period of time (with an internal cooldown between ticks, say 5-10 mins), by a few different players, then the debuff on said siege gets an extended timer. That way, initially, useful siege in tower/keeps that’s being/going to be manned will, over a small fraction of time, will gain long two hour despawn timers. Meanwhile siege put off in obscure places won’t be able to achieve this without a group of trolls investing a sizable amount of time (relative for individual players) to do so.

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Posted by: timidobserver.7925

timidobserver.7925

Good idea Ross. They should push your idea out asap lol. Though, it does make ticking a bit more difficult since siege will have different timers. At least now if you run around and tick everything instead of one minute, you pretty much know when you need to be back. If everything has a timer somewhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours, it’ll make ticking siege more complicated.

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Posted by: Bertrand.3057

Bertrand.3057

Yup, allowing siege despawn time to be increased according to the number of different players who tag the siege item makes the most sense.

Talleyrand, Captain and Commander of the Bloody Pirates
Asura on patrol in defense of Gandara and Bessie!
Administrator of http://thisisgandara.com

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Posted by: Samarkand.9748

Samarkand.9748

Great idea Ross!
Need this ASAP, especially the smaller servers. The half hour rule is pretty much killing any enjoyment one got out of laying nifty siege networks.

Belascuza. The Beastly Besties (BB) Devona’s Rest
“Get off my Lawn.”

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Posted by: XII.9401

XII.9401

Hey guys, just want to put this out there, but having to tick siege every 30m just isn’t fun. What’s fun in WvW:

Placing siege
Using siege
Killing siege
Defending yaks
Killing yaks
Defending things
Flipping things
Map hopping on defense
Map hopping on offense
Hiding in keeps
Ninja flipping keeps
Zerg v Zerg
Squad v Squad
Small scale PvP
Map chat banter
VOIP banter
JP’s
JP PvP
Map completion (yes even this)
Scouting
Sentrying
Loot bags
PPT meta
Server-wide coordination
Tons more I’m probably forgetting

Notice, ticking siege is not in that list. It’s just a chore like taking out the garbage irl, but this is a game, not irl, stuff like that isn’t supposed to be in it.

I know it probably exists to solve some technical issue or other, but if there’s any other less-fun replacement solution that’s viable, please consider adding it to your todo list.

Thank you.

Why do you buy GW2 only to play a mini smart phone game all day?

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Posted by: Hematuria.4051

Hematuria.4051

Why don’t they jus tag the siege with whomever threw them down. The server can police and report anyone doing anything odd. Maybe give commanders the ability to destroy a certain amount each day.

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Posted by: GuardianOMS.8067

GuardianOMS.8067

ITT: We list a bunch of things that are fun, then proceed to complain about one menial task.

Maybe give commanders the ability to destroy a certain amount each day.

Omg no. Having a commander tag doesn’t make you any more qualified to make decisions.

Sgt Killjoy – “Pedantic” “babe” and “bff” of Saiyr
The devs don’t care about WvW so I’m gonna kill players in PvE!

(edited by GuardianOMS.8067)

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Posted by: Hickeroar.9734

Hickeroar.9734

Yeah, turn the 30 minute timer into 90 minutes at the least. 30 minutes is ridiculously small. You can easily get tied up with an enemy in a specific place on a map for more than 30 minutes.

I’m sick to death of wasting my hard earned (or sometimes bought) gold (or badges) on siege that just dies because we’re actually out there, yaknow, playing the game.

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Posted by: Xerusian.1520

Xerusian.1520

At least have the outmanned buff halt the siege timer or double the time limit.

[RAM]ROXY
Fort Aspenwood

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Posted by: Jong.5937

Jong.5937

Hey guys, just want to put this out there, but having to tick siege every 30m just isn’t fun.

Signed! Totally agree.

What’s worse is you do this very not fun task for a couple of hours dilligently, then get called to some big battle somewhere. Run back to your corner as fast as you can to find all that siege you worked so hard to maintain WIPED!! Changing the timer even to 1 hour would make a huge difference to this.

Here’s what you do. Ticking siege is still necessary, but the problem is we still need troll, and unused siege to despawn. So, place siege, build it, and give it a 30 min despawn timer. If said siege get ticked repeatedly in a relatively short period of time (with an internal cooldown between ticks, say 5-10 mins), by a few different players, then the debuff on said siege gets an extended timer. That way, initially, useful siege in tower/keeps that’s being/going to be manned will, over a small fraction of time, will gain long two hour despawn timers. Meanwhile siege put off in obscure places won’t be able to achieve this without a group of trolls investing a sizable amount of time (relative for individual players) to do so.

Its a smart idea but I don’t think it would work, at least on our server. Very few players tag siege at all unless in battle. Those that do try hard until something like the above happens.

I’d suggest the following:

- Double the timer on all siege inside forts
- Halve the timer (or even cut to 10 mins) for all siege OUTSIDE of forts.

I don’t know, but I’d estimate a full half of all siege placed at any time must be rams on gates. If you also add cats and a few ballistas in open field then drastically cutting the timer on these would go a long way to compensating for increased timers inside forts. There may be a very modest increase in total siege placed but hopefully nothing they could not cope with.

It is very rare for offensive siege, other than inside forts to go unused for ANY length of time. 10 mins should be fine.

Piken Square

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Posted by: Truga.5897

Truga.5897

TBH, I see no reason for siege despawn timers. If it’s outside or on walls, it’ll get destroyed every 10 minutes anyway, if it isn’t I see no reason why it should despawn anyway.

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Posted by: AndrewSX.3794

AndrewSX.3794

Suggestion: Freeze siege timer as part of outmanned buff.

Seafarer’s Rest EU – PvE/WvW – 8 × 80 chars.
Most used: Guard/Mes/War/Nec/Ele.
Yes, i use 5 chars at time. Because REASONS.

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Posted by: Axle.5182

Axle.5182

Suggestion: Freeze siege timer as part of outmanned buff.

i was just about to mention something similar you beat me to it lol

or at least increase the despawn timer, the way i see it outmanned buff players have a hard enough time distributing out what little numbers they may have to flip camps etc and when it comes to taking larger objectives they most often have to ball up just to compete even in a single engagements with an enemy server.

Offering a longer despawn with outmanned buff will help in freeing up players to get on with actually fighting off an enemy rather than having to choose whether to fight or disengage to refresh siege every 30 mins. Those without unmanned buff are more than capable of sparing a small number to refresh siege.

Axle
[AFTL] Afterlife Sanctum of Rall
http://www.afterlife-gaming.eu

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Posted by: Thurin.5610

Thurin.5610

/signed, this is a game not work, please change that again.

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Posted by: TallDan.6350

TallDan.6350

TBH, I see no reason for siege despawn timers. If it’s outside or on walls, it’ll get destroyed every 10 minutes anyway, if it isn’t I see no reason why it should despawn anyway.

Go on youtube and search “DTD Famous Siege Forest”

And then you will know why siege despawns.

Lady suzi ~ Human Guardian {} Gizmo Gregory ~ Asura Engineer
Firezof Arrows ~ Sylvari Ranger {} Hudeeni ~ Norn Mesmer
Ruins of Surmia [KoA]

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Posted by: Truga.5897

Truga.5897

I’m not seeing how timer prevents people building 123412341 siege. It just makes them despawn 30 minutes later.. as if they’d last that long against players.

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Posted by: Tommyknocker.6089

Tommyknocker.6089

At VERY least could we get a much longer timer on the improved versions, I am sick of making these in the forge only to have to perpetually man them so the level and mats were not wasted.

This timer has made the game of siege wars into a game of babysit wars for me; sad.

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Posted by: VOLKON.1290

VOLKON.1290

I call it “fondling the siege”. It becomes more fun that way.

The timers… they do need another looking at. I’ve spent so much time in the NE towers on the BGs babysitting that I have a butt groove worn at the top of the ramp.

#TeamJadeQuarry

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Posted by: Jayne.9251

Jayne.9251

I spent five straight hours yesterday in WvW JUST ticking siege. Five straight hours. This is not fun.

On any server there are only a handful of dedicated folks who do this. If these people take a break, or go for lunch, chances are when they come back all that siege will be gone. It’s incumbent on our servers to relegate this more so that it’s just not three or four people constantly doing this … but upping the despawn timer to an hour would make a MASSIVE difference, and maybe allow these folks a chance to get out and fight more, rather than be chained to a keep, or madly running the entire map to ensure there’s proper defense.

L’enfer, c’est les autres

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Posted by: Kimbald.2697

Kimbald.2697

On our very small server, I often try to put at least a few arrow carts in every tower we take.

If I do that in 2 or 3 towers, I am obliged to spend the rest of my time avoiding these ac’s despawn…

It’s not fun for anyone, but on smaller servers you can’t even afford to put people on it.
And it’s not like there is a constant coming and going of ‘zergs’ to each tower who can quickly sit in every siege.
By the time our small ‘zerg’ gets around a tower again, everything is despawned.

There are better ways to avoid the tactic of wasting sieges to force the limit.
Rams only deployable at actual enemy doors, upping the counter, lowering the number each player can put down in a given time… etc.

They picked an easy but badly designed ‘solution’ again.

Wiggely, wobbely and other wombaty wabbity creatures…

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Posted by: VOLKON.1290

VOLKON.1290

I spent five straight hours yesterday in WvW JUST ticking siege. Five straight hours. This is not fun.

On any server there are only a handful of dedicated folks who do this. If these people take a break, or go for lunch, chances are when they come back all that siege will be gone. It’s incumbent on our servers to relegate this more so that it’s just not three or four people constantly doing this … but upping the despawn timer to an hour would make a MASSIVE difference, and maybe allow these folks a chance to get out and fight more, rather than be chained to a keep, or madly running the entire map to ensure there’s proper defense.

I respect that dedication, seriously. Sadly I think I have you beat from an eight hour encampment one Saturday in the NE tower. If you ever come over to JQ we can take spell relieving each other.

You’re dead on right, though… it reduces the fun to the occasional spurt if someone tries to attack and that’s it.

#TeamJadeQuarry

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Posted by: Jong.5937

Jong.5937

Tagging when outmanned is NOT the problem. Even when “manned” siege is not tagged, or the people who are tagging get into a battle that distracts them for just long enough to lose hours of dedication.

The timers for siege in towers need increasing full stop and I believe that could be largely “funded” by more rapidly despawning offensive siege in the field, that often sit outside of gates/walls for a long time after a tower is capped.

Piken Square

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Posted by: Kimbald.2697

Kimbald.2697

A. If new spawned guards would destroy old rams, it would actually help already.

When you’re actively ramming a door, you kill the spawned guards anyhow so it’s not that them attacking your rams or not makes any difference at that point.

Combine this with the limitation of only putting rams at enemy doors, and you have solved a large part of the problem.

B. For the other siege: it should despawn if OUTSIDE, but when in the setting of a tower or keep, it should not despawn at all.

To avoid enemy spies putting a hundred ac’s in a tower, the guild who claimed the tower should be able to destroy friendly siege in their own tower or keep.
And if that is all they can do: put down usefull siege in your own tower or keep, than at least you can deploy that siege.
It’s when they can put down rams that it is a real waste.
Point A would solve the abuse of useless rams totally.

That would only leave a full spy-guild to first claim a tower and than fill it up with sieges.
This seems a rather unlikley scenario, but of course: it’s bound to happen here or there…

Wiggely, wobbely and other wombaty wabbity creatures…

(edited by Kimbald.2697)

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Posted by: VOLKON.1290

VOLKON.1290

I’d like to see this (which was mentioned in a prior thread…)

Flame rams (all): 10 minute timer
Regular Siege (non-ram): 1 hr timer
Superior Siege (non-ram): 2 hr timer

That, at a minimum, would be a great quality of life improvement.

#TeamJadeQuarry

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Posted by: Jski.6180

Jski.6180

I spent five straight hours yesterday in WvW JUST ticking siege. Five straight hours. This is not fun.

On any server there are only a handful of dedicated folks who do this. If these people take a break, or go for lunch, chances are when they come back all that siege will be gone. It’s incumbent on our servers to relegate this more so that it’s just not three or four people constantly doing this … but upping the despawn timer to an hour would make a MASSIVE difference, and maybe allow these folks a chance to get out and fight more, rather than be chained to a keep, or madly running the entire map to ensure there’s proper defense.

I respect that dedication, seriously. Sadly I think I have you beat from an eight hour encampment one Saturday in the NE tower. If you ever come over to JQ we can take spell relieving each other.

You’re dead on right, though… it reduces the fun to the occasional spurt if someone tries to attack and that’s it.

How would making it 1hr-2hr help you here when your doing it for 8hr meaning you would have to do it at least 4 times to 8 time?
I think the idea is to make sure you cant have too much siege up over time. Its one thing to be able to build siege with the supplies on the map in a set time say 10 mins to 30 mins kind of a combat time but its comply different when you make it 1hr to 5hr (down time due to time zones).
We could have it more of a siege take dmg over time past a set point say 1hr or have siege only be able to fire so many times before its “out of ammo” or simply make the cap lower for number of siege in a given places and/or make the given places larger so even if they are far apart they still count to the cap.
All of this has its problems and places limitation on plays as things stand the system farvores the more active side and this may be the best way of doing things.

Main : Jski Imaginary ELE (Necromancer)
Guild : OBEY (The Legacy) I call it Obay , TLC (WvW) , UNIV (other)
Server : FA

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Posted by: Niim.9260

Niim.9260

Hey guys, just want to put this out there, but having to tick siege every 30m just isn’t fun. What’s fun in WvW:

Placing siege
Using siege
Killing siege
Defending yaks
Killing yaks
Defending things
Flipping things
Map hopping on defense
Map hopping on offense
Hiding in keeps
Ninja flipping keeps
Zerg v Zerg
Squad v Squad
Small scale PvP
Map chat banter
VOIP banter
JP’s
JP PvP
Map completion (yes even this)
Scouting
Sentrying
Loot bags
PPT meta
Server-wide coordination
Tons more I’m probably forgetting

Notice, ticking siege is not in that list. It’s just a chore like taking out the garbage irl, but this is a game, not irl, stuff like that isn’t supposed to be in it.

I know it probably exists to solve some technical issue or other, but if there’s any other less-fun replacement solution that’s viable, please consider adding it to your todo list.

Thank you.

I think we should just remove siege all together since the top three in your ‘fun’ list are not fun at all.

~ AoN ~

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Posted by: Jski.6180

Jski.6180

Hey guys, just want to put this out there, but having to tick siege every 30m just isn’t fun. What’s fun in WvW:

Placing siege
Using siege
Killing siege
Defending yaks
Killing yaks
Defending things
Flipping things
Map hopping on defense
Map hopping on offense
Hiding in keeps
Ninja flipping keeps
Zerg v Zerg
Squad v Squad
Small scale PvP
Map chat banter
VOIP banter
JP’s
JP PvP
Map completion (yes even this)
Scouting
Sentrying
Loot bags
PPT meta
Server-wide coordination
Tons more I’m probably forgetting

Notice, ticking siege is not in that list. It’s just a chore like taking out the garbage irl, but this is a game, not irl, stuff like that isn’t supposed to be in it.

I know it probably exists to solve some technical issue or other, but if there’s any other less-fun replacement solution that’s viable, please consider adding it to your todo list.

Thank you.

I think we should just remove siege all together since the top three in your ‘fun’ list are not fun at all.

That would be the worst idea they could use. It would turn wvw into a pure by the numbers game you would still have walls and door (walls would have nothing to destroy them beyond a necro i think a few others can hit them). Even if you made wall hittable by players and door weaker your still going to have numbers win this keep and tower. Its a point system not a death match killing some one just takes them out of the fight for a time and nothing more. Its all about holding points.

Main : Jski Imaginary ELE (Necromancer)
Guild : OBEY (The Legacy) I call it Obay , TLC (WvW) , UNIV (other)
Server : FA

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Posted by: Zosk.5609

Zosk.5609

Again, they don’t want you to tick siege. They WANT it to expire because temporary siege is supposed to be temporary….

You’ve found an exploit, a way around it, I don’t know what you think the response should be except making the stupid stuff expire after 30 mins whether you are using it or not.

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Posted by: Kimbald.2697

Kimbald.2697

Again, they don’t want you to tick siege. They WANT it to expire because temporary siege is supposed to be temporary….

You’ve found an exploit, a way around it, I don’t know what you think the response should be except making the stupid stuff expire after 30 mins whether you are using it or not.

so small servers are not supposed to siege up their keep or towers at all, but simply put down the siege as the enemy is at the gate?
Right…

You are wrong about your theory.

Siege was not meant to despawn.
The despawn is Anet’s answer to an exploit of abusing the siege limit by players of other servers coming as ‘saboteurs’ and putting down a ton of useless rams in places where no door is in sight.
This results in not being able to put down real rams at doors you need to break, because you reached the map ‘limit’.

To avoid that all siege would despawn, no matter what, Anet allowed for siege timer to be extended by ‘sitting in’ the siege. Called ‘ticking’ here.
This was a sort of compensation for the measurement against the abuse. The reasoning being: if you use the siege actively it will not despawn.
The idea was good, but they didn’t think of all the consequences their ‘solution’ to the sabotaging would bring.

So get your facts straight: ticking siege is not an exploit, not a workaround.
It’s the compensation for the workaround of Anet against player siege limit abuse!

Wiggely, wobbely and other wombaty wabbity creatures…

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Posted by: Kimbald.2697

Kimbald.2697

Again, they don’t want you to tick siege. They WANT it to expire because temporary siege is supposed to be temporary….

You’ve found an exploit, a way around it, I don’t know what you think the response should be except making the stupid stuff expire after 30 mins whether you are using it or not.

please link your source for your claim.

This is one of mine by the way:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/260106-siege-despawn-timer/

Here devon Carter is pretty clear that the timers are there to avoid unused siege counting towards the siege cap.

I’m curious to your source where it says that siege is supposed to disappear, no matter what. And that sitting in it to lenghten the cooldown is unintended.

You say the siege is supposed to expire wheter you use it or not.
I say that is a false claim, so please show your source.
It goes against the sources I can find myself.

Wiggely, wobbely and other wombaty wabbity creatures…

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Posted by: Hickeroar.9734

Hickeroar.9734

Honestly, though, I’d rather that all siege hard-despawned after 6 hours than this 30 minute tick timer crap. It usually has to be re-placed multiple times in a 6 hour period anyway, and if we just had a schedule for re-application that we could follow, at least we could predict when we’d have siege, or not have siege.

The current mechanic is utterly broken though. I dropped 50 arrow carts last night, over half of which was because we were outmanned and busy fending off onslaughts and couldn’t get to the other locations to tick the siege.

The last thing an outmanned, underpowered force needs to worry about is that their siege is going to disappear.

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Posted by: melodey.4652

melodey.4652

Just extend the timer to an hour, would make the world of difference. At a half an hour, you don’t have enough time to defend/scout/flip camps back to be worrying about making it back before the siege timer is up. Plus very few people have the presence of mind to refresh siege unless it’s right in front of the waypoint in which they spawn, even if you remind them. Extending the time would give those who want to devote the time to refresh siege to do so without forcing them to leave the middle of a defense to go make sure water gate is covered.

Yak Slappin’ Bunker- roamin n stuffs [PD] [Duck]
all classes 80, who is the cheesiest of them all?
gw2 dress-up barbie is the real endgame

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Posted by: Reborn.2934

Reborn.2934

yesterday we had in our keep a “slave” that had in mind to reset the timers in our sieges every half an hour ….

thank you arenanet that you make me slave at my forty

P.S. DevonCarver where is my Bacon for the slavery ?

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Posted by: Slamz.5376

Slamz.5376

My solution:

Let us “lock” one item of siege for as long as you’re on the map. That siege will never despawn. So a team of 5 could keep 2 arrow carts in one tower and 3 more in another tower and never have to worry about timers on those items.

Camelot Unchained – from the makers of DAOC
A game that’s 100% WvW
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained

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Posted by: stinkypants.8419

stinkypants.8419

How about stack the timer 15 minutes for every person that siege ticks up to 2 hours or something like that?

(Alvyn | Crystal Desert )

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Posted by: Raf.1078

Raf.1078

How about if its ticked..say? 2 or 3 times in the normal 30 min span….at which point its apparent that there is a real effort being made to keep it up. Then the timer resets to 2 or 3 hours…which allows the players to go have a bit of fun and not worry about the siege despawning.

And come back in a few hours with a new sentry to put a bit of time in for the next 2-3 hr cycle.

PF/ GOAT on Tarnished Coast (Semi-Retired)
Raf Longshanks-80 Norn Guardian / 9 more alts of various lvls / Charter Member Altaholics Anon

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Posted by: Snowreap.5174

Snowreap.5174

I spent about 8 hours on Saturday refreshing siege in Eternal Battlegrounds. It was not exactly what I would call “fun”.

It was, however, valuable. Several times, our towers were attacked, and we were able to drive off the attackers because we had plenty of siege ready and waiting and enough time to get people on them.

“Time” is the key thing there. It doesn’t matter how much siege you have if nobody shows up in time to defend. And nobody is going to show up to defend if they don’t know there’s an attack underway. To ensure a successful defense, you either have to have guards stationed at each objective, or you have to have people patrolling so that when there’s an attack, your team hears about it.

The people who are guarding or patrolling might as well refresh the siege while they’re there. But refreshing siege needs to be a secondary task for them (ideally, a task they should get some small reward for); their primary task should be checking the area for enemies.

Other secondary tasks for your guards or patrollers: identifying useless siege and deliberately not refreshing it so that it goes away, and building extra siege if you think an objective doesn’t have enough. A side bonus of building extra siege is, you get first dibs to use it if there’s an attack (which means more bags for you).

One other thought: if you’ve been refreshing the siege you will know how much is at each objective. So if an attack is reported, tell your team how much siege is already there ready to use. Your defenders are more likely to show up if they think the defense will be (a) successful and (b) profitable. Having siege ready makes both (a) and (b) more likely. During one attack we had problems getting enough defenders to show up, but when I announced that we had 3 unmanned arrow carts available for bag farming, the response was immediate.

-ken

The Purge [PURG] – Ehmry Bay

(edited by Snowreap.5174)

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Posted by: Hematuria.4051

Hematuria.4051

ITT: We list a bunch of things that are fun, then proceed to complain about one menial task.

Maybe give commanders the ability to destroy a certain amount each day.

Omg no. Having a commander tag doesn’t make you any more qualified to make decisions.

I said a certain amount. I don’t know what server you are on, but we don’t have kitten as commanders. Tagging the siege with a player’s name would allow the server to petition if the same guy keeps dropping siege in worthless places.

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Posted by: Jong.5937

Jong.5937

@snow reap,

The point is that even if you are guarding or patrolling you will get called to help out elsewhere, when it is so so easy to not make it back in 30 mins. Or, god forbid you go off for a meal without cover!

If this was an intentional piece of gameplay I could maybe accept it. But as has been pointed out this was introduced to solve the problem of hitting the siege cap. The idea was to not de-spawn active siege and 30 mins is a somewhat arbitrary figure that in practice creates a horrible grind.

A change to 1hr for normal siege (in a tower) and, yes, 2hrs for superior siege, makes sense and would make it so much more likely that desired siege would not accidentally de-spawn, which is Anet’s stated intention.

Piken Square

(edited by Jong.5937)

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Posted by: Snowreap.5174

Snowreap.5174

If you’re on guard or patrol duty, you shouldn’t get called to help elsewhere — you’re already doing something important. When I’m on patrol duty and I see an attack coming, I stick around long enough to make sure that defenders show up, then I resume my patrol.

The exception is, when you are in danger of losing something so important that you’re willing to give up other things to keep it. In that case, there’s no reason to continue guarding it.

One thing to keep in mind here is that all servers have the same siege timer to deal with. Dealing with it is just one of the many small things you can try to do better than your opponents, in order to win the match each week.

I’m not sure that making the refresh timer longer is a good idea (even though it would certainly be more convenient). The key question is: “what is the maximum amount of time your team should remain penalized when siege-capped due to enemy spies who are trying to sabotage your ability to place useful siege?”

Right now the timers are pretty low, which makes sabotage generally not worth the effort. If you just drop siege without adding any supply, it will only last 2 minutes. Adding a little bit of supply will extend it 5 minutes. To get just 30 minutes of “benefit”, a saboteur has to finish the build completely.

If you extend the refresh time, that will make it more likely that saboteurs will (a) build useless siege in order to siege-cap your team and (b) waste valuable supply to finish building each piece. I’m not sure that would be an improvement.

-ken

The Purge [PURG] – Ehmry Bay

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Posted by: Jong.5937

Jong.5937

You make good points. But even when patrolling between Aldon’s and Jerrifer, for example, it is easy to not tap siege for 15+ mins. Then, say, something actually happens at one of them and you need to “hold the fort”. It is still incredibly easy to not get back in the 10-15 mins you have remaining.

And although the grind is the same for all servers, so is the cost when we fail. It is another thing that makes WvW a very costly hobby in the world of GW2 and a real disincentive to properly protecting towers. Of course those who like the constant kitten-for-tat of capping towers might be happy and so may be Anet, when all those T3 towers get flushed for lack of any preventative siege! But I’m not sure it is fair on those who invest, already for scant reward, in tower upgrades.

I guess also, on our server, I have not seen this saboteur problem, but I do see the tapping problem, so I would vote for easing the timer to 1hr and see. Remember in my proposal the timer would only be reduced INSIDE towers. Outside I actually propose we have a shorter timer. It would take fairly ballsy saboteurs to completely build, not just drop, siege inside a fort! Not saying it wont happen, but not sure how much of a real problem it would be.

Piken Square

(edited by Jong.5937)

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Posted by: GuardianOMS.8067

GuardianOMS.8067

ITT: We list a bunch of things that are fun, then proceed to complain about one menial task.

Maybe give commanders the ability to destroy a certain amount each day.

Omg no. Having a commander tag doesn’t make you any more qualified to make decisions.

I said a certain amount. I don’t know what server you are on, but we don’t have kitten as commanders. Tagging the siege with a player’s name would allow the server to petition if the same guy keeps dropping siege in worthless places.

Neither does my server but allowing one player to do something just because he has more gold than others or chose to waste it a different way is a terrible system to rule off of.

Dunno how I feel about the names thing.

Sgt Killjoy – “Pedantic” “babe” and “bff” of Saiyr
The devs don’t care about WvW so I’m gonna kill players in PvE!

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Posted by: Phantom.8130

Phantom.8130

B. For the other siege: it should despawn if OUTSIDE, but when in the setting of a tower or keep, it should not despawn at all.

To avoid enemy spies putting a hundred ac’s in a tower, the guild who claimed the tower should be able to destroy friendly siege in their own tower or keep.
And if that is all they can do: put down usefull siege in your own tower or keep, than at least you can deploy that siege.
It’s when they can put down rams that it is a real waste.
Point A would solve the abuse of useless rams totally.

That would only leave a full spy-guild to first claim a tower and than fill it up with sieges.
This seems a rather unlikley scenario, but of course: it’s bound to happen here or there…

i think this is the best way to go. however, i’d change your point A to having rams only able to be deployed at a gate, and on a 5 minute despawn timer. when it’s being manned, the timer is a non-factor, and once a ram’s done its job, it’s just useless clutter.

on a seperate note, the current system does nothing to prevent saboteurs. why? well, they can just run back to the troll rams they filled a place up with and tick it all before it expires. if they don’t get back in time, no big deal. they’ll just drop more blueprints and eat up the tower/keep’s supplies to rebuild. it’s a horrible design.

Anet has said that the despawn timers are there to save on resources, which……. seems like a fresh load of BS. if 17 arrow carts are placed in a tower, and are being constantly ticked by some unlucky SOB (me), what makes it any different than if they were permanent? oh yeah, that unlucky SOB (me) can’t go out and actually play the game at all, or all the gold and badges they used to buy the siege is a colossal waste. huzzah! either i’m a slave shackled to the siege i dropped, or i’m a beggar living off of donations. usually both.

increasing the timer to an hour or even two just delays the problem, but it doesn’t FIX the problem. we need a REAL fix, not just another band-aid slapped over a gaping wound.

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Posted by: Truga.5897

Truga.5897

How about this. The last blueprint you used that got built doesn’t have a despawn timer. Keep despawn timers on build sites and extra siege, but keep that last one you built stand until it gets destroyed.

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Posted by: TallDan.6350

TallDan.6350

Why spend all this time tickling siege, WvW wins go to the server with the most players/best coverage anyway, so unless you’re in the only evenly balanced matchup in WvW, why not just go and have some fun, as nothing you do will make any difference to the final outcome. Losing a tower is not the end of the world anyway you can always recap them.

If your server is one of the losing ones, you may hold a keep for hours but it will only get pvd after you go to bed and at the end of the week, the largest server will still have won.

I agree that the siege timers should be a little longer but honestly, in the hours you sit in the keep think of all the points you could have scored attacking the enemy keeps or taking camps or killing dolyaks.

Refreshing siege as you pass by is fine but don’t waste hours of your day sitting in a keep just to refresh siege, the game is supposed to be fun after all.

Lady suzi ~ Human Guardian {} Gizmo Gregory ~ Asura Engineer
Firezof Arrows ~ Sylvari Ranger {} Hudeeni ~ Norn Mesmer
Ruins of Surmia [KoA]

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Posted by: Jong.5937

Jong.5937

I agree and disagree with you fellow Surmian!

Yes, no one should sit in a fort ticking siege (really why we want the timers changed!), but not ticking it at all is really unfair (putting it politely) to those who spend hard earned dosh (very hard earned in WvW. Roll on the 28/5 patch!) on upgrades and the siege itself.

The ultimate extension of the first part of your argument is no one should buy upgrades either! We should all just run around like nutcases swapping towers!

A couple of pieces of well placed siege can be life or death even to a T3 tower, buying time for a response, but who wants to place it? Currently they need to know they are going to be around for hours to babysit it themselves, and as everyone, including you, says, that’s no fun! If they place it and leave they can be sure it will vanish in 30 mins unless the fort is ‘lucky’ enough to get attacked!

End result, few place precautionary siege so those that spend money on upgrades have to do it a lot more than they might otherwise. Now I’m sure that doesn’t matter to those who run with the zerg and never buy upgrades or defensive siege (not saying that’s you!) but……

Example: Earlier today a kind soul from a guild new to our server placed 2 ACs at each inner gate of SM – a not insubstantial investment. He called out in map chat for people to tick it. 45 mins later it was all gone. Not fair on him or those upgrading SM!

Piken Square