Guild Wars 2

I love it.

Being part of borlis Pass, and having a current drop in WvW population. This Sneak Attack Feature has allowed us to take many objectives from the high pop servers.

And being that we don’t have the population to protect anything anyway, anything we lose we were gonna lose no matter what. So it’s all good there too.

However, i would suggest refining this feature. Always have sneak attack active forever, but, guilds can have a buff just like +5 supply, or +magic find etc, called “Sound the alarms”. Any objective that is Claimed by a guild, and that guild has “Sound the alarms” running, it will then show White swords on the objective, and give a message over "/T chat “A Guard has been killed at Briar Tower in <Borderlands>”

Next, if a guild has an objective claimed and no buff running for 60 seconds, that claim on the objective is released.

Grats on loving pvd, you can achieve that a lot faster and with better rewards in EoTM.

small minds think in small ways.

If you are defending your objectives. Then you would see it being attacked.

testpig.5018:

small minds think in small ways.

If you are defending your objectives. Then you would see it being attacked.

Translation: If you want to sit in your tower and be bored all day

If you like the sneak attack, then you’d love EotM. I’d suggest you give it a try. You might have to work just a bit to find a map that’s 100% PvD k-train, but don’t worry, you’ll get in one sooner rather than later.

I agree with op and would promote better organization between guilds.

sneak attack is not PvD at all.

It’s take an objective deep in the enemy zone, and use it as a offensive structure against enemy players and enemy structures.

If you are out patrolling the the BLs, you will find the fight, instead of waiting for white swords to appear to have a fight handed to you.

The mindset of zerg infested servers have polluted tactical combat in guild wars. Sneak attack is fantastic in promoting healthy fights.

My server has been fighting the same server for the last 4 weeks, before and during sneak attack. During white swords it was purely numbers that gained our enemies any ground. They were lazy and easily tricked. When sneak attack started it was actually embarrising how dull and poorly conceived were their tactics.

Now on the 4th week we face an enemy who learned and adapted very well. We have a escalating grudge match everyone seems to be enjoying and I have come to respect our new favorite adversary.

I wouldn’t mind the lack of white swords IF there was a way to drop Sentry Turrets from EotM in regular WvW.

Synosius.9876:

Now on the 4th week we face an enemy who learned and adapted very well. We have a escalating grudge match everyone seems to be enjoying and I have come to respect our new favorite adversary.

This. People have had time to adjust how they play, much like changing traits on a build. The ones who seem to have not adapted yet probably depended on white swords a bit TOO much.

T2 has been a lot closer the last few weeks…

I am giving serious thoughts to transferring, one of the T2 servers is just is just good at taking something in the enemy’s bl, then defending it. They use that sneak attack. The server I am on, won’t do that.

testpig.5018:

sneak attack is not PvD at all.

It’s take an objective deep in the enemy zone, and use it as a offensive structure against enemy players and enemy structures.

If you are out patrolling the the BLs, you will find the fight, instead of waiting for white swords to appear to have a fight handed to you.

The mindset of zerg infested servers have polluted tactical combat in guild wars. Sneak attack is fantastic in promoting healthy fights.

work on low populated server, but for blob server, they never mind if there are sword or not, they just blob what they want, it is not a solution for balancing server population but only fight mechanics (scouting, more superior siege and organized small groups)

Some servers got lucky and had a few transfers to make them competitive and have a handful of dedicated people willing to camp a tower and keep.

Other servers.. are not so lucky.

I was quite negative about the removal of white swords but if you got a reasonable match up with the dedicated scouts holding it together you find some enjoyment

I am wondering what can be added to replace white swords and beef up the defense or at least give 4 vs 20 a fighting chance when defending.

Of course this only counts if servers are equally matched.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Of course this only counts if servers are equally matched.

As of this moment – 2:00am pacific time Wednesday – 5 out of the 8 NA matchups are (as usual) total and utter blowouts.

Well 2am… Ka likes to night cap hard. During our prime time its evenly matched and we still have lots of fun. If Ka wants to move up they will have to keep night capping even harder. I wish them well and good luck, i miss you!

Dredd Spirit Caller.4082:

work on low populated server, but for blob server, they never mind if there are sword or not, they just blob what they want, it is not a solution for balancing server population but only fight mechanics (scouting, more superior siege and organized small groups)

The sneak attack is not the solution to the server population balance. Because blob servers will always blob the non populated server. But the low pop server has a chance now to take an objective from the blob server. With white swords, that was a very very small chance to happen.

However do keep in mind, i think it should be a guild buff to “sound the alarms(white swords)”

testpig.5018:

sneak attack is not PvD at all.

The whole point of it is being able to capture an unscouted objective unnoticed. PvD is exactly what it is! I’ve captured enemy northern towers solo as a Mesmer several times during this event. All I did was kill the guards, put a ram print down, run to camp, finish ram, bang door down, kill lord and guards, stand in ring. Hoo-doggy, the exciting non-PvD.

Don’t you know the objective of the game is to capture objectives to generate points?

Don’t you know when you capture an enemy objective they will try to take it back?

Insert Battle here.

Maybe they think a couple defenders throwing disablers and ACing the ram down is more fun?

testpig.5018:

Don’t you know the objective of the game is to capture objectives to generate points?

In theory, it is. In practicality, it isn’t. Thanks to the idiotic matchup system, we already know which server will win and which one will be dead last as soon as the new matchup details load. Before a single cap is made. Just like last week. Desolation won, Jade Sea was second. There was never any doubt or suspense as to whether we’d be the loser. Same this week, will lose again. It is known. End of story.

The battles are all there is of interest.

Don’t you know when you capture an enemy objective they will try to take it back?

Of course they will. Once the map is flipped entirely by the omniblob and the Outnumbered buff is gone, they will come out of the woodwork to PvD those doors down. Great suspense.

msalakka.4653:

testpig.5018:

Don’t you know the objective of the game is to capture objectives to generate points?

In theory, it is. In practicality, it isn’t. Thanks to the idiotic matchup system, we already know which server will win and which one will be dead last as soon as the new matchup details load. Before a single cap is made. Just like last week. Desolation won, Jade Sea was second. There was never any doubt or suspense as to whether we’d be the loser. Same this week, will lose again. It is known. End of story.

The battles are all there is of interest.

Don’t you know when you capture an enemy objective they will try to take it back?

Of course they will. Once the map is flipped entirely by the omniblob and the Outnumbered buff is gone, they will come out of the woodwork to PvD those doors down. Great suspense.

Amen

And when the blob shows up…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqdWOjWE960 you farm them.

Those of you saying its pointless are in the higher tiers, yes? Is there still just too much k-train styles of the main commanders there that it makes little difference? Has there been any kind of change if you were to compare this week to the 1st week of Sneak Attack?

Yes. Even less upgrading or defending. Lost t3 crag to 3 guys. Nobody gave a kitten. The commander continued his wxp adventure retaking the other tower. Oh well. ANet clearly doesn’t play their own game.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

Those of you saying its pointless are in the higher tiers, yes? Is there still just too much k-train styles of the main commanders there that it makes little difference? Has there been any kind of change if you were to compare this week to the 1st week of Sneak Attack?

It appears to be making T2 NA much closer.

msalakka.4653:

Yes. Even less upgrading or defending. Lost t3 crag to 3 guys. Nobody gave a kitten. The commander continued his wxp adventure retaking the other tower. Oh well. ANet clearly doesn’t play their own game.

So it’s not the sneak attack feature that is the problem. It appears to be nobody caring.

testpig.5018:

msalakka.4653:

Yes. Even less upgrading or defending. Lost t3 crag to 3 guys. Nobody gave a kitten. The commander continued his wxp adventure retaking the other tower. Oh well. ANet clearly doesn’t play their own game.

So it’s not the sneak attack feature that is the problem. It appears to be nobody caring.

No, it’s still the problem of the sneak attack. This test has needlessly taken away resources of scouts. It’s made the already tiresome act of scouting more annoying while not giving more benefits for scouts. The reduced amount of interest in scouting is not something at fault of a server or individuals, it lies with the flawed way ANet has designed WvW and it’s rewards.

I generally don’t like it because my guild usually pokes something big to draw a blob or a guild to us, but without swords we’re getting less reactions than normal. And we can’t see where a possible group may be at as easily.

The impact on higher tier servers isn’t as bad imo though as they generally have people scouting and willing to scout and more numbers to protect things. Lower tier it basically seems pointless because yeah you can ninja a lot of stuff but you get a lot of stuff ninja’d from you due to lower numbers.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

No, it’s still the problem of the sneak attack. This test has needlessly taken away resources of scouts. It’s made the already tiresome act of scouting more annoying while not giving more benefits for scouts. The reduced amount of interest in scouting is not something at fault of a server or individuals, it lies with the flawed way ANet has designed WvW and it’s rewards.

So are you defining a Scout as 1 person standing at the waypoint waiting for white swords to appear? That doesn’t seem like “scouting” at all to me at all.

Sneak attack has put true scouting back into the game. Players now actually have to patrol and roam to make sure hidden siege isn’t making waste to their objectives.

And in patrolling and roaming you will find those fights.

Those that patrol will find the fights of those trying to sneak attack objectives. Those that don’t patrol will have an objective taken, and now they know exactly where the enemy is, and can fight for their land back.

What is the problem here? If you don’t want to find a fight, you can que for sPvP

testpig.5018:

Ultimaistanza.4793:

No, it’s still the problem of the sneak attack. This test has needlessly taken away resources of scouts. It’s made the already tiresome act of scouting more annoying while not giving more benefits for scouts. The reduced amount of interest in scouting is not something at fault of a server or individuals, it lies with the flawed way ANet has designed WvW and it’s rewards.

So are you defining a Scout as 1 person standing at the waypoint waiting for white swords to appear? That doesn’t seem like “scouting” at all to me at all.

Sneak attack has put true scouting back into the game. Players now actually have to patrol and roam to make sure hidden siege isn’t making waste to their objectives.

And in patrolling and roaming you will find those fights.

Those that patrol will find the fights of those trying to sneak attack objectives. Those that don’t patrol will have an objective taken, and now they know exactly where the enemy is, and can fight for their land back.

What is the problem here? If you don’t want to find a fight, you can que for sPvP

No, I’m talking about multiple individuals which are sometimes stretched insanely thin because of time zone constraints might be able to see other structures get white swords to somewhat discerne what might be hit next. By taking this feature out and not adding more to scouting to make it more worth while and less frustrating then it’s just turning the regular WvW maps into nothing more than a ktrain.

I don’t play much anymore, and I don’t lead in maps at all, but for what it’s worth I did seem to enjoy the lack of swords more so than when swords existed.

The very simple reason is that it rewards good scouting and sneak attacks. The only problem I have is that scouting needs to become rewarding... So I’m all in favour of returning yak escort rewards as it is a form of scouting. I’m also in favour of adding rewards for buying upgrades and staying in holdings while the upgrade event is in progress, these would be a good start with minimal ’AFK abuse’ potential.

I still am baffled at people’s terminology of scouting. What most people here consider scouting is actually role playing these guys….
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sentry
Scouting means you’re out there on the move searching for potential threats. There is nothing stopping you from gathering or killing stuff around the zone you’re scouting to make it less dull and more profitable than standing in a tower, plus the goal is to spot potential threats BEFORE they attack anything to give an early warning, not shout the moment they’re throwing siege down.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

I still am baffled at people’s terminology of scouting. What most people here consider scouting is actually role playing these guys….
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sentry
Scouting means you’re out there on the move searching for potential threats. There is nothing stopping you from gathering or killing stuff around the zone you’re scouting to make it less dull and more profitable than standing in a tower, plus the goal is to spot potential threats BEFORE they attack anything to give an early warning, not shout the moment they’re throwing siege down.

While I’m personally aware that scouting is in fact not guarding the same spot for hours, I was just sticking to the known WvW terms.

In WvW there is limited use for actual scouting, most significant threats are easy to spot and not entirely without thanks to the still-existing orange combat swords. (Coming up next: Super Special Bonus Sneak Attack Event; No more orange swords!)

“Most significant threats…..”

Thats the glory of the Sneak attack system. It has allowed everyone to be considered a significant threat.

1 player.. threat.
2 players.. threat.
3 players.. threat.

Before a threat was only 2fg +. And even then, they would not engage on a keep, because they would just get way pointed on and not have the time to take down the objective before massed on.

Now.. 2 simple roamers, can drop a guild catapult on a wall.. and take down an unscouted tower or keep.

Whose fault is that? Arena net for allowing 2 players to be able to build a ram, stand there pound a wall, and fight the lord for 5 mins while dealing with respawns…. or

the entire server that refused to roam and scout their keeps/towers because they don’t “know” where the enemy is because they don’t have “white swords” to tell them?

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

There is nothing stopping you from gathering or killing stuff around the zone you’re scouting to make it less dull and more profitable than standing in a tower

You do that and your tower has been ninja’d by the time you return — especially if you have to patrol more than one tower from lack of population.