Guild Wars 2

Big mass groupings have become even bigger because people want easy Ranks.

Defense of towers/keeps has gone down significantly because there is little reward for defending a tower successfully, and no reward for failing to hold.

Players prefer to retake towers to farm their ranks, than hold them.

Offensive rewards have increased more than defensive rewards, so the latter is ignored.

It’s a downward spiral.

Offensive rewards far outweigh defensive rewards, and the Ranking has made the issue worse.

Pretty much, they made players worth wayyy too much and capturing worth way too little.

Terrible point design and after every patch it just seems like Anet wants us all to kitten zerg around all day with their awesome skill lag.

In fact you should get a lot more for defense imo.

Yep, all the new patch will do is encourage more and even bigger groups for easy rank farming. Nothing to encourage or reward smaller groups and nothing to encourage defending an objective. You might as well let them take it and then just cap it back for points.

Since they rightly or wrongly changed it so cata’s no longer damage rams through gates, they have made it even harder to defend a keep / tower against superior numbers. What’s the point in upgrading keeps/towers to re-enforced gates when it’s so difficult to defend those gates. You can’t go near it to repair as you just get instantly killed by the insane amounts of AoE splash damage.

Basically there is nothing to help players defend something, so most don’t bother.

Defending keeps, and towers seems to be ignored no matter what. The most boring aspect of the game, never gets rewarded even though you put in a lot of work to acheive something.

Defenders are the unsung heroes.

I enjoy defending, but I ask myself; Why waste money on siege and upgrades when it’s more rewarding to not bother.

I want WvW XP as much as the next, but defending/scouting and WvW XP are like oil and water at this point.

I don’t mind sitting in a tower to keep an eye on it, helping maintain awareness of big groups. But, while I’m busy performing a critical aspect of the game, most are out getting rewarded for being a massive group.

WvW is supposed to be about big battles, I get that. But it’s now all about big zerg battles, and WvW is way more than that. Unfortunately that’s the way to get ranks the fastest.

The zergs now are hilariously big. It’s almost comical.

They should increase WXP for getting kills while defending towers/camps/ etc. If you are in or within a certain range of your node you get bonus XP for killing enemies. And maybe you should get some XP when someone gets kills with the siege that you built/paid for.

dirtyfleece.6704:

They should increase WXP for getting kills while defending towers/camps/ etc. If you are in or within a certain range of your node you get bonus XP for killing enemies. And maybe you should get some XP when someone gets kills with the siege that you built/paid for.

This would require thought and effort. The WXP system was done with the bare minimum of thought and effort.

Agreed, I think that you should receive the same amount of wxp for defending a tower/keep that you would get for capturing it. Depending on the state of upgrade to the tower/keep/supply camp the wxp should be increased for both defending and capturing. One job that most players hate to do, but is important, is to escort yaks from supply depots, this task should also be rewarded. When the yak successfully makes it to its keep/tower you get the message pop up that the event has succeeded which shows that tools to track this event are in place. I’d suggest that to receive wxp for walking yaks you would have to successfully defend the yak from an attack or be within a certain distance from the yak for a certain amount of time.

One other way to encourage defense is reward repairs. This could be a double edged sword as players could easily drain a towers/keeps supply for easy xp. A possible way to do this would be that a player would receive wxp only once for repairing a wall or gate in a given time frame.

Easy fixes:

Have each Keep, Tower and Camp worth a fixed amount of Wexp, and spread it evenly across the number of players in the circle when it caps.

Have each player worth a fixed amount of Wexp, and spread it evenly across the number of players that tagged said played.

Increase defense Wexp for upgraded holdings. The more upgrades the greater the Wexp.

These simple changes would probably go a long way towards breaking up the Wexp trains (zergs) and provides incentives to upgrade property and actually hold it.

dirtyfleece.6704:

They should increase WXP for getting kills while defending towers/camps/ etc. If you are in or within a certain range of your node you get bonus XP for killing enemies. And maybe you should get some XP when someone gets kills with the siege that you built/paid for.

That’s not a bad idea. There is a careful balance to rewarding defenders and having people farm defense points by just sitting in a tower.

Any sort of change that improves defense rewards will be far in the future if ever, as even the smallest change suggestion seems to always answered with “our code is uber complicated, and will takes lots of time”. I believe you, but that seems to be a design failure in my opinion.

For the short term, I see myself playing WvW (and GW2, as WvW is my main activity) less, the opposite effect I’m sure the devs were expecting.

Hopefully the zerg mega mob will die down in a week or two, but I won’t hold my breath.

I totally agree with stuff said here. The badges made it bad before, but over time people started not needing badges anymore and the gameplay was lately a bit more fun. After the patch hit though, I saw the biggest trains and zergs that I’ve seen in my MMO history. Once there were so many people in stonemist that not even auto attack would activate anymore due to the “lag”. Now this issue is for another thread, just saying it to indicate the zerg size.

I’ve always found it stupid that zerging is the most rewarding play type. They should have thought about that before putting the new patch through, since it gives just +1 reason to zerg. If badges, XP, karma and general loot weren’t enough, now there’s WXP as well. My suggestion would be: remove WXP from player kills and give big WXP for defending a camp/tower/keep. Something like double what you get for taking it. Then we might see a decrease in zerging.

Veldan.4637:

I’ve always found it stupid that zerging is the most rewarding play type. They should have thought about that before putting the new patch through, since it gives just +1 reason to zerg.

People will argue that sPvP is what you are looking for; WvW is meant to be about big fights.

Yes, I agree, big fights. But it should be only be an aspect of the WvW, not the dominating role as it is now. If it was all about zergs, then make a version of 2Fort from Team Fortress 2, where you can have your huge fights in the middle and skirmishes inside the server’s fort. Call it 3Fort. :P

Liquid.9672:

Easy fixes:

Have each Keep, Tower and Camp worth a fixed amount of Wexp, and spread it evenly across the number of players in the circle when it caps.

Have each player worth a fixed amount of Wexp, and spread it evenly across the number of players that tagged said played.

Increase defense Wexp for upgraded holdings. The more upgrades the greater the Wexp.

These simple changes would probably go a long way towards breaking up the Wexp trains (zergs) and provides incentives to upgrade property and actually hold it.

I love that idea.

I think yall are looking at it the wrong way… most points/loot ive gotten was from defending against the big mindless zergs that don’t know how to fight.

Just want to note, the ‘big’ became ‘bigger’ … is due to 2 facts.

1. Culling removed, allowing us to see everyone… this alone will make your average zergs appear bigger.
2. Patch. With any patch, comes floods of average fair weathered players who just want to try things out because there may be new ‘things’ or content or newness of something to poke around with. This will subdue in time again.

So while we do have more players, don’t forget we now can see more than previously too. I don’t believe the map limits have been removed, so it’s somewhat relative, with the extra fair weathered players from servers coming in to check it out.

On topic of Wexp – … they really need to give like 10X for defense to ever become something people will want to actively do. I could imagine that if a camp gave say 150wexp, and a keep ticker gave 1500wexp … people may say hey … in the time it takes to capture 10 camps, there may be likely chance someone will hit bay or hills, I think I’d rather siege up and give them some troubles.

Will never happen though, just saying. This patch gave commander icons more supply to go hit more stuff and that’s about it. =)

Which is fine for me… because I really enjoy those open field battle love stories … ‘when zergs collide’ (Trademarked, for hollywood)

Liquid.9672:

Easy fixes:

Have each Keep, Tower and Camp worth a fixed amount of Wexp, and spread it evenly across the number of players in the circle when it caps.

Have each player worth a fixed amount of Wexp, and spread it evenly across the number of players that tagged said played.

Increase defense Wexp for upgraded holdings. The more upgrades the greater the Wexp.

These simple changes would probably go a long way towards breaking up the Wexp trains (zergs) and provides incentives to upgrade property and actually hold it.

What if defending unupgraded towers gave more WXP than upgraded? It would add a nice risk vs reward element into the game

Kronyx.2570:

What if defending unupgraded towers gave more WXP than upgraded? It would add a nice risk vs reward element into the game

I think you’d get servers where groups wouldn’t bother to upgrade and use a T1 location as a honey trap to farm unsuspecting groups when a larger group is hiding inside, out of view. Farm the players, then net a nice chunk of WXP for defending.

True, but that would mean they are inside the tower/keep, and everything else on the map is relatively undefended. Like I said, risk vs reward. But, its just a thought

Loco.4561:

Since they rightly or wrongly changed it so cata’s no longer damage rams through gates, they have made it even harder to defend a keep / tower against superior numbers. What’s the point in upgrading keeps/towers to re-enforced gates when it’s so difficult to defend those gates. You can’t go near it to repair as you just get instantly killed by the insane amounts of AoE splash damage.

How ridiculous that they ‘fixed’ catas but not other forms of splash damage. Anet to be fair you need to stop all forms of splash damage through doors.

Mega zerg + Narrow corridor + Arrowcarts, and line denial (Guardian trio + Necros + Fear me + Tornado in the choke) = Defense of ppt and a literal kittenload of wXP

Niim.9260:

This would require thought and effort. The WXP system was done with the bare minimum of thought and effort.

Many times this.

Seems to be a recurring problem, doesn’t it?

This whole zerg thing also favors servers in descending order: highest Tiers will inevitably get the best ranks, even though that has little (if any) reflection on the individual it’s supposedly ranking. Poor Ferg people I guess.

WvW XP also encourages PvE’rs to come to WvW. I have never stomped a group of 15 with 3 so easily in my life. They should do more to bring easy kills to WvW from PvE like this.

It’s absurd to have veteran harpy award wxp while escorting a dolyak doesn’t. Also since patch NOBODY repairs anything because it doesn’t help with ranks and it’s easier to lose and recap a keep anyway.
I’m all for big laggy fights, but mindless running and recapping objectives shouldn’t be the best rewarded activity in WvW.
It feels like the person who designed that doesn’t play WvW at all..

another cool feature they could add is giving players a bonus for defending their camp/castle/what ever to the death and getting a “honorable death” medal with some exp and maybe some badges depending on how long and well you defended your base. so people don’t bug out as soon as a zerg comes around.

The wXP system is just further playing into the mindless zerg “tag” meta that already under-rewarded everything in WvW EXCEPT for massive PvD zerging and lawnmower fights.

wXP, loot, karma, and exp for everything in WvW should be based on the size of the group that does it. And defending should give some wXP to discourage intentional karma training/flipping.

The higher tiers are the ones more likely to have strike groups and not one super mob, as the latter will guarantee you a loss if maintained for too long.

Dolyak escorts used to give XP / Gold / Karma, but PvEr’s (and bots) would come in and farm the escort mission, taking up all the player slots on the server. You’d have 20+ players standing next to the Dolyak, way back in friendly territory.

Anet removed the rewards, and now just gives you a gold medal that credits towards the Escort title/achievement.

If they added WXP to Dolyak escorts, people would use that to farm ranks unfortunately.

Players will find the easiest way to get their reward and abuse it until it’s removed. R.I.P. Dolyak escort rewards.

Fizzlepip.5218:

Niim.9260:

This would require thought and effort. The WXP system was done with the bare minimum of thought and effort.

Many times this.

Seems to be a recurring problem, doesn’t it?

They just clearly don’t have the resources, to provide the support WvW needs.

The new XP for kills as it is now was a very bad implementation.
Now people focus mainly on one thing: Try to tag as many ppl as possible. Thats what everyone does. Never have I seen that everyone wants to sit on arrow carts. Now everyone is fighting to sit on siege weapons because they hit so many/all targets at the same time which rewards with insane amounts of WXP.
Also people don’t use the skills which benefit the fight the most but they just use the skills which tag most opponents.

So we have a huge imbalance because of this. They wanted to make “single target” classes more interesting. This new change did the exact opposite. Guards run around in zergs with staff because it hits most targets, I as a ranger have to try to hit as many targets as possible by using all AoE I have and switching targets as often as possible.
You can see how ridiculous that is? People don’t try to finish others but only hit everyone once or twice to get the highest possible reward. Stomping is fail now. The time it takes to stomp you could have gotten WXP by hitting/tagging other players.
So the WXP as we have it now encourages bad play. Team work is not useful at all – wasting time using support skills will not reward you at all. The only thing that rewards you is tagging as many targets as possible.
Some classes are better at tagging than others so we have another imbalance. Even commanders who never used arrowcarts (before they said: upleveld chars shall use siege weapons because they are weaker at fighting but on a siege weapon that doesn’t make a difference) – now even commanders try to sit on the arrow carts or trebs to get WXP.
Team play has become alot worse – everyone tries to get the most reward.

The solutions comes with the idea behind WvW that great teamwork and tactic is rewared:

Option 1 ) Don’t give any XP for kills because that way support classes and single target classes are not left behind and people will actually care for the success of their actions and therefore the success of their server instead of just fighting for loot and WXP.

Option 2) If you don’t want to do that lower the XP massively. The idea from someone in this topic is great: Lets say a player offers up to 100 XP. If 20 people tag him everyone gets 5 XP. If only one player kills him he gets 100 XP.
That way smaller groups are rewarded while big zergs are still useful but they won’t exist just to farm WXP. You can make a special formula there.

On top of that you have to change the behaviour of siege weapons: You should get alot less WXP while using siege weapons which hit up to 50? targets at the same time. Also you should get less loot bags while using siege. You could just do one great thing – limit the amount of loot bags and WXP from kills you can earn per minute or hour. That way everyone could get about the same amount of loot and people could care more about actually playing the game instead of playing the most effective way to get lots of loot/WXP. In my opinion it is just ridiculous how many badges you get with siege weapons compared to actually fighting on your own.

These ideas will benefit great team play. People will be able to play the way they want by either dealing heavy AoE damage, picking out special targets with Single Target skills or supporting with heals / walls and other useful skills.
This is how it should be.
The other thing is rewarding boring but important tasks like defending the dolly or scouting. But that is another story.

Liquid.9672:

Easy fixes:

Have each Keep, Tower and Camp worth a fixed amount of Wexp, and spread it evenly across the number of players in the circle when it caps.

Have each player worth a fixed amount of Wexp, and spread it evenly across the number of players that tagged said played.

Increase defense Wexp for upgraded holdings. The more upgrades the greater the Wexp.

These simple changes would probably go a long way towards breaking up the Wexp trains (zergs) and provides incentives to upgrade property and actually hold it.

It would also introduce anti-social elements to the game between allies. People would be asked to “GO AWAY” because they are costing the other player world XP.

Eh, Zerg’s are definitely a bit bigger. My solution would be to add a few more high value wvw objectives to the map, but they should be objectives that require a groups to do things on opposite sides of the map simultaneously in order to take them.