Guild Wars 2

Sounds good to me. People adapted pretty quick to the arrow cart change, Those who couldn’t adapt, died. This should help any problem that still exists.

Well better than nothing, I assume. I still believe the incredible damage + poison is going overboard and incentivizing people to make the somewhat stale turtle situations even staler. Furthermore after only two weeks, people saying everybody having adapted to the arrowcart changes is just silly. After 8 months of wvwvw the builds keeps evolving, and I’m under the belief that when people actually start to adapt to the use of arrowcarts in world versus world, it will significantly slow down world versus world, more so than it has done so already.

Devon, thanks for detailing your reasoning, but I don’t understand why you think a WXP allocation reset is required for this. There are two separate points:

1) Even if the range increase was significantly lower, it would still be very valuable for only 5 points, and anyone regularly using arrowcarts would be foolish not to go for it.
2) When confusion was nerfed, mesmers didn’t get a full replacement of their confusion gear if they wanted to switch to a power shatter build. There is a long history of balance changes making some of your gear/skills obsolete in MMORPGs, and this would be very minor change compared to those that have come in the past.

Regarding arrow cart damage: as a commander, I’ve successfully kept an enemy’s Bay for 6+ hours, wiping the enemy force 15+ times despite being outmanned 2:1 to 3:1 with every door and wall breached. This was thanks to a massive number of arrow carts in inner/lordroom while keeping an eye out for mesmers/portals so they didn’t manage to surprise us.

But here’s the thing: that happened BEFORE the arrow cart damage improvement. Arrow carts were already capable of incredible things before they got +80% damage. While I understand this depends on the specific tower/keep, you’d be surprised at what you could do in most places with proper placement. A good defensive commander can do miracles.

The problem for defense was never damage. The problem always was not having the time to place enough arrowcarts before the enemy zerg had already breached the gate. If you really want to make arrow carts more valuable, revert their damage but reduce their cost to 20 supply to make them cheaper/faster to build, while also increasing the siege despawn timer to 1h30.

As always, I think everyone really appreciates your excellent communication Devon, but I suspect a few people are starting to believe you’re not playing the same game they’re playing. So I think it would be really valuable if we could have an equivalent of the PvP State of the Game with you for WvW, because whatever design decisions you make, that’s a better way to introduce and debate them than a forum thread which derails into thousands of pages of flaming and circular arguments.

If the damage is not going to be reduced (and quite frankly the range was the biggest issue) then maybe you should re-look at the siege limit per 1000 range, although a range reduction will reduce the amount of AC’s able to be placed on a gate the minimum of 12 is still do-able with the pre-buffed range.

Will Golems have reduced damage by arrow carts (seen as siege weapon) or not (seen as player in special armor)?

I would see them as player in special armor, because they could move out and you cannot harm the user of it without destroying it.

not very surprised by the change.. as for the reset i hope every time you tinker with the wvw talents you give us the reset … i still wish for some trebuchet talents but i don’t like the points sitting around and whistle some songs..

Honestly this is the very least of what I was expecting and not enough by a long shot. Could you please explain what the reasoning was behind an 80% (untraited) buff? Many players thought that the arrowcarts were very very strong already (other had the opposite idea, I know) so why this incredible buff? Why not go up in small steps until you find something that works?

I do not want arrowcarts to be buffed but if you think it is best I’ll let you try. But please do it sensibly. Nerf the 80% damage increase to 15% and wait 2 weeks, then evaluate and repeat if necessary. This is just ridiculous.

DevonCarver.5370:

we do think that we overshot a bit on the range of the arrow carts once they have been upgraded.

a bit. a bit. a bit. a lol. a lol. a lol. lol. lol. lol

Dayra.7405:

Will Golems have reduced damage by arrow carts (seen as siege weapon) or not (seen as player in special armor)?

I would see them as player in special armor, because they could move out and you cannot harm the user of it without destroying it.

i’d think they would count as mobile siege. also, last i piloted a golem, i was downed once the golem exploded, so i think the % health is shared (even if the numbers aren’t).

don’t quote me on it though.

nice job, once again you are quite quick in fixing things that can bend too much the game in one direction.

Caliban.3176:

Honestly this is the very least of what I was expecting and not enough by a long shot. Could you please explain what the reasoning was behind an 80% (untraited) buff? Many players thought that the arrowcarts were very very strong already (other had the opposite idea, I know) so why this incredible buff? Why not go up in small steps until you find something that works?

I do not want arrowcarts to be buffed but if you think it is best I’ll let you try. But please do it sensibly. Nerf the 80% damage increase to 15% and wait 2 weeks, then evaluate and repeat if necessary. This is just ridiculous.

old arrow carts were a nuisance at best. you could ignore them while rezzing a downed player.

new arrow carts are a zerg dispersing tool.

what they could do is not let, say, 2 arrow carts firing in the same area stack damage, because then with enough arrow carts you could one-shot everything. that way ballistas still have their “massive unit damage” role, and ACs are still good zerg dispersers without being abusive.

i say this because while i don’t like siege wars (where 30 people on each side watch 2-3 people exchanging treb fire), i also don’t like “zerg overcomes everything”. there needs to be a balance. smart use of siege SHOULD be able to get rid of a zerg trying to bruteforce it.

Glad to hear.

The ability to outrange catas and melting rams and golems was the biggest problem of the ACs, imo. This is a step in the right direction.

On the other hand, i agree with aneu. Dmg is still a bit over the top and could use a small toning down but, if you want to keep it this way – please makes ACs more counterable.

Atm they are not affected by LoS. They don’t have much siege placement restrictions, which means that tons of them can hit same small space, making is a off limits area. And, on top of that, they’re extra cheap.

Aneu.1748:

If the damage is not going to be reduced (and quite frankly the range was the biggest issue) then maybe you should re-look at the siege limit per 1000 range, although a range reduction will reduce the amount of AC’s able to be placed on a gate the minimum of 12 is still do-able with the pre-buffed range.

I just wanted to be the one to say “Thanks!” for bringing us New yet FREE content on a VERY regular basis. You’ve continued to monitor, and patch while providing us with new features to boot. You’re work is remarkable for how often you spoil us.

Please keep this in mind the next time you come across another negative comment.

Thanks again, and keep up the most excellent work.

Great job Devon! Thank you for this, can we get a response about golems please though?!?

BrunoBRS.5178:

Caliban.3176:

Honestly this is the very least of what I was expecting and not enough by a long shot. Could you please explain what the reasoning was behind an 80% (untraited) buff? Many players thought that the arrowcarts were very very strong already (other had the opposite idea, I know) so why this incredible buff? Why not go up in small steps until you find something that works?

I do not want arrowcarts to be buffed but if you think it is best I’ll let you try. But please do it sensibly. Nerf the 80% damage increase to 15% and wait 2 weeks, then evaluate and repeat if necessary. This is just ridiculous.

old arrow carts were a nuisance at best. you could ignore them while rezzing a downed player.

new arrow carts are a zerg dispersing tool.

what they could do is not let, say, 2 arrow carts firing in the same area stack damage, because then with enough arrow carts you could one-shot everything. that way ballistas still have their “massive unit damage” role, and ACs are still good zerg dispersers without being abusive.

i say this because while i don’t like siege wars (where 30 people on each side watch 2-3 people exchanging treb fire), i also don’t like “zerg overcomes everything”. there needs to be a balance. smart use of siege SHOULD be able to get rid of a zerg trying to bruteforce it.

Before, a single arrowcart was a nuisance, having them stacked was dangerous. And arrowcarts should not be able to kill people on their own, they should be support for the players in the field. That’s what they used to be.

Arrowcarts now have not managed to disperse zergs. They have managed to make the minimal group size of an effective gathering of players bigger. That means it encourages zerging.

I like your idea of not letting damage stack but I do not think they’ll do that because that could mean that someone could grief you just by hitting the biggest stack of players just so you don’t do damage.

If you reduce the damage back to normal levels you would need to have 4-5 arrowcarts to pump out the same damage as 2 buffed ones. So that would be a more efficient way of not overstacking damage as having so many arrowcarts hitting the same place is harder to manage (sadly it is not very uncommon however).

Smart use of siege should indeed be able to get rid of a zerg. I’m a very big fan of that. However smart use of siege to me is using arrowcarts to pressure your enemies and make their regroups less effective and give your allies in the field an even bigger advantage.

Are you certain that the arrow cart damage is where you want it? As it stands now, two arrow carts raining down on a gate renders flame rams useless, as no one can stand in to operate the device. They literally make Burning Oil useless, as AC’s can do more damage and are vastly more difficult to destroy.

Perhaps you should reconsider adding upgrades to flame rams. Like a 3rd button that temporarily raises a deflective shield to deflect projectiles / arrow cart damage. That way rams are still somewhat viable and Burning Oil remains a decent option as it could pierce the flame ram’s deflect shield.

I want to thank you, Devon, and the rest of the WvW team for being considerate of players who put their points into the AC mastery line specifically because of the current values that the line gets you able to achieve.

That said, it would be great if, like trait points, you could have an NPC retrainer at each server’s spawn that would allow you to retrain your WXP points for a fee. I think locking a player into what they chose forever and beyond is, in itself, unfair, and is a relic of archaic games like Diablo 2 that was fixed even there eventually. We shouldn’t be seeing restrictions like that in a game coming out in 2012 and being updated currently.

@Thedenofsin:
Did you actually read the first post in this thread? It says: “One change that is happening in today’s build will be a reduction in the amount of damage arrow carts do to siege weapons.”.

Noerknhar.3826:

@Thedenofsin:
Did you actually read the first post in this thread? It says: “One change that is happening in today’s build will be a reduction in the amount of damage arrow carts do to siege weapons.”.

And in his post he said talked about the damage to ram operators. Don’t tell people to read posts if you don’t do it yourself.

Noerknhar.3826:

@Thedenofsin:
Did you actually read the first post in this thread? It says: “One change that is happening in today’s build will be a reduction in the amount of damage arrow carts do to siege weapons.”.

People still can’t stand in there to actually operate the rams

Like the OP said “Are you playing the same game we are?” Before the change in the AC’s damage we could barely stand on the rams, but now it is just ridicules. I understand something had to be done keeps and towers where flipping to easy, but you guys act like you want WVW to fail by making changes because <b>you</b> think that these types of changes are best for the game.

Come play the game a while see how it works before making drastic changes like these.

Uttar.2341:

Devon, thanks for detailing your reasoning, but I don’t understand why you think a WXP allocation reset is required for this. There are two separate points:

1) Even if the range increase was significantly lower, it would still be very valuable for only 5 points, and anyone regularly using arrowcarts would be foolish not to go for it.
2) When confusion was nerfed, mesmers didn’t get a full replacement of their confusion gear if they wanted to switch to a power shatter build. There is a long history of balance changes making some of your gear/skills obsolete in MMORPGs, and this would be very minor change compared to those that have come in the past.

One can replace one’s gear after a change to powers. One can switch out which skills one has.

One cannot change how they’ve allocated their WvW “trait points”.

You could argue that Mesmers should of received a free trait respec (if they didn’t at the time of the nerf) but even then, it’s not that spendy and there IS a player-initiated mechanism to do so already.

Once you have the tech for the one-time reset of WXP Skills, work out a way to do it for just one player, and stick it on an item in the gem store.

Free money.

WTF…. here goes my hope of Anet actually admiting their mistake and reverting the 80% idiotism. News flash – defending, even prior to the AC buff, was never a problem if you had enough siege and players in the tower/keep prior to the enemy arrival (a.k.a. having good scouting). Guess Anet really prioritizes zerglings and mindless play, now instead of good scouting you need 1 semi afk player on a superior arrow cart while all others follow a blue dot on the map in hope of finding an empty tower to PvDoor.

And the field battles? Flash ACs will still mostly decide them, great job Anet, your balancing team needs commendation, for work well done. /sarcasm

LOL. It makes no difference if you lower the dmg against other siege when you cannot operate said siege because of AC dmg. What a joke. Many developers make the mistake of pushing players too hard in a direction they feel is where the game should be heading. Just gonna keep losing WvW players with this kitten.

For the sake of just 5 trait points, I would rather have the range fixed now.

Just immediately reduce the basic range to 1500….thats still enough to defend walls, gates and chokes.

Eventually I would like to see basic range 2000, and maybe traited to 2500.

3500 is just rediculous especially when exploiting LoS.

whats the point, if people just die when ramming it,

range and dmg needs a nerf badly.

DevonCarver.5370:

They do less damage to all siege weapons, siege golems included.

Hey, look’s like you listened to a suggestion I offered! Probably wasn’t the only one to offer it though.

Will arrow carts deal the same damage as before the AC patch or do they now deal even less dmg than before?

Kebab.4013:

Well better than nothing, I assume. I still believe the incredible damage + poison is going overboard and incentivizing people to make the somewhat stale turtle situations even staler.

Stale eh? How do you perceive a victory for defenders? Of course, you perceive it as the defenders wiping the attackers. So… not defending at all, just more attacking.

Kebab.4013:

Furthermore after only two weeks, people saying everybody having adapted to the arrowcart changes is just silly.

I can see this point, I think. It’s my belief that the siege weapons need their costs rebalancing. Since it is now necessary to take at least a catapult to any defended tower, catapults should be cheaper (supply and demand, surely? – or allow players to make them/sell them and let the market decide! Because that never results in things going down to the vendor price +1 copper. Ever! Yay crapitalism!).

I believe the damage done to players should be toned down aswell,also think superior arrowcarts and the fact that not everyone is lvl80 eventhough upscaled,they melt.Also not everyone is full toughness/vit and it shouldn’t be a requirement to be using it wvwvw.

Digs.8435:

LOL. It makes no difference if you lower the dmg against other siege when you cannot operate said siege because of AC dmg. What a joke. Many developers make the mistake of pushing players too hard in a direction they feel is where the game should be heading. Just gonna keep losing WvW players with this kitten.

Devon, does Anet realize how many PvP/WvW players it’s losing? The AC update should have been reversed by day 3 or never implemented to begin with. Anet has made this game more and more stale for the WvW guilds that keep going out there.

If Anet wants to stop fighting a losing battle it has to realize the direction it wants WvW to go in wont work. The next update needs to go away from slow paced/long haul grind gameplay. I appreciate that Anet wanted to bring a tortoise mentality to WvW, but you will see more and more guilds fall out of GW2 if you continue to push the grind.

Digs.8435:

LOL. It makes no difference if you lower the dmg against other siege when you cannot operate said siege because of AC dmg. What a joke. Many developers make the mistake of pushing players too hard in a direction they feel is where the game should be heading. Just gonna keep losing WvW players with this kitten.

Press 1. Leave the ram. Someone else takes the ram. Profit.

So let me get this straight, you are keeping the 80% damage buff to players on the cheapest siege in the game and the cheapest range trait but you are reducing the amount of damage ACs do to siege. Completely ignoring the fact that players still won’t be able to operate most siege (e.g. rams) because they will melt in the face of 2 or 3 superior ACs with traits. And you are putting off fixing the stupid range you introduced – in the cheapest trait line at 5 points that virtually anyone can get – most likely till next month.

Golf clap.

You just turned it from AC Wars to Golem Wars.

And it took you HOW LONG to get this in the game considering you already admitted the issue some time ago? Plus you aren’t going to address zoom hacks, PoV hacks, line of sight placement or other issues that exist with ACs? Seriously, this stuff isn’t funny.

In other news any issue with a dungeon gets hot fixed within 24 hours. Way to go.

Apfelschorle.6472:

Digs.8435:

LOL. It makes no difference if you lower the dmg against other siege when you cannot operate said siege because of AC dmg. What a joke. Many developers make the mistake of pushing players too hard in a direction they feel is where the game should be heading. Just gonna keep losing WvW players with this kitten.

Press 1. Leave the ram. Someone else takes the ram. Profit.

Have you ever been hit by more than 1 AC at a time. 4 of them can do about 4k dps at 3k armor lol. So do you keep rotating in for 1 hit on the ram and move out. That sounds like fun. Right now there is no reason to keep rams in your inventory. It is quite easy to place 4 AC’s that are not able to be hit by AoE, and as long as you always have a defensive treb up, which anyone with half a brain puts up immediately, there is no way to use a ram unless you are able to PvD during off houtrs.

I think the update is good. Arrow carts need to discourage zerging around walls, but they should not be able to easily kill other siege. Resetting points is a good touch. Thanks.

can you fixed the range now and issue a refund later when it’s ready? Most people concerned about wasted traitline will be happy as long as they know a refund is coming, meanwhile a lot of people are unhappy with the current range and would like to see it reverted as soon as possible.

Reslinal.2359:

can you fixed the range now and issue a refund later when it’s ready? Most people concerned about wasted traitline will be happy as long as they know a refund is coming, meanwhile a lot of people are unhappy with the current range and would like to see it reverted as soon as possible.

Most ppl who went into AC comply the sec it came out was to show if it was “OP.” They wanted AC to be changed back.

This is the update? 95% pve, some bugg fixes (we are still waiting to fix buggs since september) and some traps for wvw?

You created a new meta " hide in keeps and use your 12876 arrowcarts".
Damage buff off 80% and we need a topic with 500 replies before you see that is wrong?

Everthing melts in a second and it is the CHEAPEST siege ingame.

And you think its unfair for the wxp points? You now whats unfair? Buying a great game that getting worse and worse every update.

You are not improving the game, your cleaning up your own mess.

My gues next update, bugg fix on the traps.

NAILED IT!!!!! /s

It’s nice that ANET is trying to improve on a situation highlighted to them by player feedback.

Perhaps the message wasnt clear enough.

Players want to fight players, not dance around siege.

Pressing 2 on siege is boring.

….

Whatever

DevonCarver.5370:

They do less damage to all siege weapons, siege golems included.

What about people like me who have the maxed 5% siege defense and still get the same if not more dmg. from ArrowCarts and Balistas ?

You have any intension to revisit the dmg. formulas any soon or let the bug float around forever?

The AC damage is fine, people who run rams should be stacked defensive builds not a glass cannon. Also spec in Siege bunker. The glass cannons should be watching the rams back and pew pewing the ppl on top of the walls. People just got soft with the underpowered AC’s.
Anet could also put a defensive buff on rams to help protect the operators if they really think the damage is high.
Or they could increase the defense bonus of Siege Bunker from 1/2/3/4/5 to 5/10/15/20/25. To me that would make the most since for the points spent in Siege Bunker.

So many people exploit ac’s over walls and yet you leave the exploited range in place. Its complete madness. The damage is perfetic, one superior hits like a brick.

Now traps. Why do Anet insist on helping the servers that pvd until they have t3 keeps everywhere?

This is exactly what I’d hoped for. Thanks!

Offski.4897:

So many people exploit ac’s over walls and yet you leave the exploited range in place. Its complete madness. The damage is perfetic, one superior hits like a brick.

Now traps. Why do Anet insist on helping the servers that pvd until they have t3 keeps everywhere?

Madness? THIS..IS..SPARTA!!!!

DevonCarver.5370:

<snip>
We intend to change the arrow cart upgrade line to bring the numbers more in tune with what we intended the whole of siege weapons to be, but we felt that it would be unfair to make that change until we were able to provide all players with a reset of their spent World Ability Points, allowing people to reallocate them however they choose. To that end, we will not be making the adjustment to the range of the upgraded skills until we are able to implement a one-time reset of said points.

Is there a problem with making the arrow cart adjustments now and promising players who have invested their points in that trait line they will get a refund later?

It seems to me that fixing the problem now will resolve the gameplay issues, and promising players a trait refund later will keep them from getting terribly upset that their points are wasted.

Mr. Carver, does the Guard Killer ability increase also the condition damage ?