Guild Wars 2

I actually like WvW but I don’t spend massive amounts of time doing it, I’ll go in for the eb jp then stick around for a few zerg runs/a good defense or two to farm some badges and get out.

Heck today excluding the puzzle I got like 20 badges from around 40 kills, including the puzzle I got 37 badges today.

Been enjoying my time in WvW (almost exclusively leveling that way). I do see lots of issues with it though (zerging, culling… etc). I’m assuming lots of other folks are seeing flaws or having less fun as well….as, despite selling million(s) of copies, all but a few servers fill all 4 maps during primetimes, let alone population levels around the clock.

Yes I am having fun now, and spending the mjority of my game time in wvw atm, but if I ask myself, when the pay-for xpac hits and we get some new pve content and maybe 10-15 new levels, but wvw remained relatively unchanged….would I fork out an additional $40-50 dollars to continue playing this WvW?….prolly not.

WvW is getting stale because its lacking depth it ought to have. Think about Gran Turismo arcade version compared to simulation version. Arcade gives you pre-made cars for you to jump in and race. Simulation puts you in a career where you earn money to buy/upgrade cars, earn licences and more.

The problem with WvW is that it’s an arcade gameplay aspiring to be a simulation game. It isn’t fit for week long battles because it lacks long term depth. This is why I suggested an RTS style gameplay a while ago. Let servers build their own structures, it would give more creative keeps but at the same time, allow people to attack in more creative ways.

Defenders keep killing your trebuchets? No problem, build your own walls around them. Attackers keep coming through a valley to harrass you? Build a barricade to stop them at the valley. See someone about to siege you? Kill their dolyaks pulling the treb to your to the deployment site.

Why I don’t defend I can’t shoot a arrow to save my life when I have the height advantage in a fort, mesmer’s spawn themselves up on the fort, my aoe’s can never target 10 feet down, siege are useless they get broke in 20 seconds after there built, big zerg blocks the door way no more running out for supplies haha sorry to all the people who just say build a siege weapon it’s easy * winks. Oh yeah just because there are forts in WvW doesn’t mean everyone wants to defend/attack it most people do really do I promise you form a zerg to 30v1 all around the map they are like a pack of heards looking for kills and it’s sad to see them try to camp our spawn point from when we load into WvW yes happen tonight didn’t last long but they were there to zerg. Only time I do see the other faction try to take forts are when there is no one to kill on the map no more they have nothing to do but just take forts for the fun of it. No one wants to get zerg No one wants to be in a zerg who only goes around killing like 1-3 people on the map that gets boring people leave the game because they can’t go back to pve the content is boring and spvp they won’t play that because they don’t want to! they want play WvW but they can’t because of a zerg festival. I say if your unhappy with the content just buy or play another game like I do when I get bored of Gw2.

I hardly ever post on these forums, but I play the game a lot. I felt this is deserving of my input.

Currently, I find no enjoyment on wvwvw as an engineer. I was bored one day, so I started playing wvw. I found a tower, and spent tons of money upgrading this one lonely tower completely solo. I built guards, I reinforced everything, I put in tons of upgrades. Then, I got a ping on my map. The closest supply keep was taken. I had no clue the size of the force, but I prepared for the worst. And by god, it was. It was the worst. A group of about 15 to 20, a rather large Zerg for my low pop server. And I was alone. So, I attempted shooting them with my pistols. That didn’t work becuase I can’t shoot for kitten of the top, yet there aoe seemed just fine to reach to the top if my door. So, I grabbed a nearby mortar and pret much wiped them. So I defended a tower vs a Zerg of 20 people. I began to play more, and here is whAt I found:

Large pop servers Zerg. Simple as that. Anet needs to get rid of the free server changes, and quick. This will force servers to stabilize and pop will remain as it should in wvw. Or atleast make changes once every 4 weeks.

The next is the insertion of a cheap, quick building siege weapon for lower lvl and lower supplied people. I suggest a wall for the outside sieges. These can’t be placed indoors or inside keeps. They basically soak up aoe and siege weapon damage.

Insertion of more npcs into keeps, towers, etc. they don’t have to do anything, but giving more life to the towers and keeps is something I wish. It allows me to think “hey, I Am defending something here!” Instead of the typical emptiness I too often experience in these towers.

Insertion of ways to get people to want to cap and hold keeps. These can be special vendors that appear that sell crafting supplies. It can also be for special party events that occur when places are capped that celebrate the capturing guild. Or something. This can also add the more life as mentioned above.

Wall sieges. Currently, hardly any wall seiging occurs. I mean, if you truly want lord of the rings style sieges, you need ladders and or wall sieges. Basically, they have to be built right on wall, have low health buildings that allow for people to go over wall. While this mAy seem op, remember the thing I mentioned earlier about more npcs to defend. These npcs will keep people from spamming these as your off, especially if you have 1 or 2 real players in it. The wall sieges will allow for people to go over wall without having to destroy the front door, allowing for even more tactics and force zeros to leave people at each keep.

Insert dynamic events. These can scale to huge numbers. Basically, these can give rewards and happen spontaneously in the wvw. The world that does the most damage will win the “event bonus”m a basic bonus for the event that helps the world. Everyone will receive the standard award, but the “event bonus” is only given to one. This will allow for smaller groups to look around for these events, becuase you wouldn’t want the other world getting the event before you do.

Anet, pls allow for some way to shoot off the top of walls. Please.

I maxed out the kurz and luxon titles in GW1 playing alliance battles, thousands of hours of play over a span of years, and never got completely bored with it until the very end when alliances were team stacking and the player base became too small. There were so many different builds to choose from that were viable, and staples like a dev hammer, ranger, or water ele never got old…and you could always reroll something in a few minutes as needed.

Anyway, without getting into a giant wall of text, after 200-300 hours of WvW on t2/t3 servers, my enthusiasm for it is waning dramatically, and I’m not at all optimistic that in 6 months it will be any better unless anet shows they are capable of incremental improvements and fixes, rather than spinning the nerf wheel and doing a bunch of random buffs to solve balance problems.

The Problem: A group of 50 players can accomplish way more than 5 groups of 10 players in a single time period. Concentration = speed. That’s why WvW is a zergfest right now. AoE caps need to be raised or removed (at least for siege weapons). 1 well placed shot from a treb should wipe an entire group IMHO. Those shots are not easy to land.

ankdarkwolf.1487:

I started to play wvw recently, but a thing I noticed in an instant was the big difference between attacking and defending even with the same amount of players. Maybe I have too little experience but attacking a tower seems too easy: I can move in open field to evade, I can aoe walls and hit enemies with no great efforts for example, or build sieges in no time that are outside the range of the tower’s defences. When I defend a tower instead I find a lot of problems, as I said in another thread, the walls obstruct my attacks, I can’t use practically all of my active skill even under my position (out of range or line of sight problems) if I want to place at least a weapon’s skill aoe I have to jump on the border of the wall: this is time breaking and also make me an elephant-size-red-flashing target (as I am a really big norn). Sieges are always a pain in the purse, I try to place them always in good places but if I want to see at least 1/10 of the zerg attacking that ‘good place’ will always be an easy target. When I think of ‘attacking a tower’ I feel it has to be a difficult task, on the other side when I think of ‘defending’ I think it should be an advantaged status. Am I wrong?

Well said it’s incredibly easy atm to take a tower or even a keep if you’re fast enough
The lip on the wall blocking shots and people on the ground having a longer range than the people on the wall makes defending a more difficult task.

Taking a defended tower/keep.castle should be more difficult.

The problem with that is human nature, if it’s too hard people wont attack them because they feel the rewards do not match the time investment, Kind of like if they didn’t reward you for defending then the amount of ppl defending would plummet to a few as most people won’t participate unless they get fatz loot

not sure on what servers you play guys
but attacking an keep full fortified with siege up, an army of 30 attackers got no chance vs 10 defenders.
3 arrow carts will keep zerg away, 2 cata’s behind gate will destroy the rams /psuh golems back and 1 treb will destroy all the cata’s /balista’s
Damage from assault treb can be ignored when they got 2 full supply keep can resist more then 1 hour.
SO you need up to 3 trebs to take an full defended Keep

i’d go as far as saying that gates and walls should be immune to anything but siege, and only destroyable by the right type of siege. Normal attacks would do 0 damage. That alone would nullify the zerg factor in the cap speed of fortified spots. That would help making capturing keeps meaningful.

It’s very easy defend keep or tower if you really want. Problem is that it just too boring run supply, build siege weapons and keep watch.

Xolo.3580:

Another thing that totally encourages zerging is the fact that it takes so long to get to fights. Nobody wants to run minutes across the map and then get into a situation where chances are high that you die, forcing you to wait for ress or do the runaround all over again. I like smaller skirmishes and playing the ranged game, because IMO managing range and position is one of the most fun and essential things to master in PvP. Yet, it’s almost impossible to kite in this game, so any encounter with a stronger army will result in certain death if you are outnumbered period.
Of course you cannot let people instantly respawn 20 feet away from the last fight, but the current situation isn’t satisfactory either.

I disagree 100%. The maps needs to be way bigger so that it takes even longer to get to the fights, and crosses needs to be removed from the game. Both things would disencourage zerging, and fix alot of the culling issues since people would be spread out more.

One thing that I like about WvW is the sense of community. If you play reasonably often, you will eventually run into a lot of familiar faces, and over time, you start to remember these people, who become your comrades in an unending war against bad people with long, red names. “There is that elementalist that likes to jump off cliffs; there is that Norn that likes to put flame rams in the quaggan temple; there is that person who likes to make bad puns in team chat…”.

Even though this is an MMO, community-building is still generally restricted to your guild(s) and people that you know in real life. Members in a pick-up dungeon group are generally forgotten after disbanding, people that you run with in a group in PvE are seldom seen again. Veteran mist warriors who share a battlefield with you, however, will still be there the next evening when you log on, yelling about not taking supplies from keeps or towers. It’s a comforting feeling sometimes.

Siphaed.9235:

..and I’m not the only one thinking this. It’s become a complete zerg fest and is nowhere near what it was made out to be.

Scenario #1:

Group A of 5 players attacks a tower with a single ram. Group B with 25 players sees orange swords at tower and swiftly gets there. Group B wipes Group A with ease, where as Group A barely did 10% damage to the door.

Scenario #2:

Group C of 30 players quickly builds 3 catapults on the side of a tower aiming to the wall and start to attack. Group E of 5 players is trying to defend said tower and while heading there the tower already flips. Group C heads to supply camp before Group E even makes it to tower. If Group E attacks tower, see Scenario #1.

Those are common scenarios, but without the semi complexities of setting up a single Mesmer who does a portal drop 50yrd out, sets up group/self stealth, and then rushes into the middle of a group of siege defenders and pops the exit portal. All of a sudden you go from defending it with a few arrow carts and Ballistic (an easy tactic to stall the enemy, though not slaughter them), to a pointless defense that gets wiped in 30sec or less.

Anti-zerg mechanics such as AOE is not really AOE at all…because of a lock on 5 players. You can’t make people scatter when you hit only 5 of them out of the 30 there; it just doesn’t happen. Siege isn’t scary at all unless you have a bunch of it…but you have no time to set it up before the zerg rolls over the place.

Things need changes. Zergs need to …die.

may i just say…
1 person at garrison watergate
1 superiror arrow cart
zerg of 20 invaders plus 2 golems inc
1 more helper appears
1 mortar
….BOOM 10 lootbags on my feet
0 golems
6 of that zerg running away
problem solved!
2vs 20

if u are outnumbered stay on defense, protect what u have and dont go offense.

Op just sounded mad..

dude.. send Pooka a tell.. Strats will be told

I never liked GW2’s WvW, even though I do love sPvP. In other words, I really like GW2’s combat per see, but I can’t get myself to like the WvW format.

Interestingly enough, for the last week I’ve been playing Planetside 2 and loving it, despite the fact I don’t really like FPS combat.

So, I went to compare GW2’s WvW with Planetside 2 to find why GW2’s large scale PvP turns me down while I’m loving Planetside 2’s large scale PvP. The caveat is that those are my preferences, I can’t speak for other players on this.

- Time to get into the action
Planetside 2 allows the player to spawn and respawn very close to the action; between the fixed spawn points, the vehicles that provide mobile spawn points, and the squad leader’s beacon, the player can usually spawn within half a minute of the action, or respawn there after a 10 seconds cooldown if he is in the middle of nowhere. Finally, the player can spawn a fast vehicle to get into the action faster.
In GW2’s WvW it usually takes way more time to get to the action, which – for me, at least – gets boring fast. The waypoint upgrade should help reduce this, but I’ve never seen anyone purchase that upgrade.

- Death penalty:
Planetside 2 has virtually no death penalty apart from waiting a few seconds to respawn and running back to the front lines. The player might also lose some resources if he had spawned a vehicle or something similar, but those resources are easily replenished and only used to spawn said vehicles anyway. There’s no further penalty to fighting a losing battle apart from the losing part.
WvW has gear damage on death, which makes fighting a losing battle a way less attractive; the repair bill can easily get out of control.

- Character flexibility:
In Planetside 2 players can change between any of the 6 classes, with a few stored build presets for each class, whenever they spawn or go back to most spawning points; changing classes or builds don’t even require changing the character. This helps break any potential boredom from having always the same play style.
GW2’s WvW follows the same class and build restrictions of GW2 itself, meaning I’m mostly stuck with a single play style for extended periods, and absolutely can’t change the class without changing the character itself.
Given my preference for having as much variety without changing the character itself, I find the Planetside 2 system way more pleasing.

- Toys:
In Planetside 2 the “toys” (vehicles) cost only resources, the resources are awarded individually (so I don’t have to worry about hamstringing my own team by using them), and the resources are only used for those “toys” anyway (so no regret from wasting something I could otherwise use to permanently improve my character); plus, the resources are easily replenished. The end result is that I can play with the “toys” without worrying about wasting in-game cash or harming my own team.
WvW requires resources shared by the whole team, plus gold, in order to get the “toys” (siege engines, upgrades, etc). The end result is that, between not wanting to waste gold on the siege engines and not wanting to waste my own team’s resources, I never had a chance to play with the siege engines.

(Continued from above)
- PvE elements:
Planetside 2 has absolutely no PvE elements; there is not even NPCs.
WvW has a lot of PvE elements, between vistas, POIs, skill point challenges, jumping puzzles, NPCs both involved and uninvolved in the fighting, PvE events, and so on.
My issue is that I don’t like to mix PvP and PvE, so while I usually like PvE, I don’t actually like it inside the PvP maps. Thanks to this, the PvE elements in GW2’s WvW maps mostly frustrate me, while not really adding anything I actually want to the game.

- Cash store:
This is something that is merely a promise for now, but while stuff purchased for cash in Planetside 2 is currently character bound, the stated intent is to make everything account-wide without increasing the prices. I’m already reserving half a hundred dollars to spend on that game as soon as this change is made.
GW2, on the other hand, has most things obtained from the store character bound, with no intent to change this. Given that I don’t usually purchase character bound items, this makes me unwilling to consider most purchases in GW2’s store, apart from account wide things like the shared bank tabs (which I already have all), the digital deluxe items (which I already have), and the extra character slots.

- Server restrictions:
This is merely a promise for now, but while Planetside 2 currently restricts each player to just one faction per server, it’s devs have already promised to remove this restriction. This means that I will be able to actually play with anyone else, no matter which server he plays or what is his preferred faction, by merely creating a new character in the worst case scenario – a new character that should have access to everything I’ve ever purchased from the cash store, BTW.
GW2, on the other hand, only allows players to have characters on one server, and the server can only be changed once per seven days. It’s way more restrictive, and a huge issue for anyone that has friends on more than one server.

Siphaed.9235:

..and I’m not the only one thinking this. It’s become a complete zerg fest and is nowhere near what it was made out to be.

Scenario #1:

Group A of 5 players attacks a tower with a single ram. Group B with 25 players sees orange swords at tower and swiftly gets there. Group B wipes Group A with ease, where as Group A barely did 10% damage to the door.

I can feel your frustration on the uninteresting routine of zerg tactics in WvW. I mentioned in one of my previous post on the impact of repair bill (in general pvp death penalty killing the players’ innovation of WvW tactics as nobody wants to leave the comfort zone of a zerg force to operate in smaller strike forces) and the impact is starting to be felt by many players who complains about the monotony of WvW tactics. If you take the pain to explore WvW mechanics, you will not feel the same monotony and pain.

I give you an example by using your above example. If you are operating on a 5 man strike force with a single ram, you don’t get 5 players hitting the gate. I tell you why. One single hit from the ram is 8000 dmg. One hit from a single player to the gate average about 80-100 dmg (more or less). Going by this mathematics, it takes about 100 hits from a single player to make up the equivalent of a single ram hit. So, don’t bother to let player hit the gate, it will make no significant impact to the gate hp.

With the player freed up from hitting the gate, deploy the 4 of them not manning the ram out to the 4 different directions as sentry to lookout for enemies. If you see a large force incoming from a distance, abort and RUN for your lives. RUN is seldom a tactics in many players’ book. Perhaps it is cowardly to run from their perspective. At the end of the day, its their pride that kills them, not the enemy.

And furthermore with no players but only the ram hitting the gate, you will NOT create the orange sword on the map. We called it the stealth attack. Zerg forces normally prioritize orange sword against white crosses. With a good chance that there will be other orange swords on the map, the enemy zerg force will not come your way.

There are a lot more innovation that can be had in small strike force. One tactics is called ‘tracking the enemy zerg force’. It is very difficult to stop/defend a huge zerg force from taking over any objective. A smart approach is to not fight them head on but to let them capture the objective but have a smaller force to retrace the enemy zerg force route with a 1 to 5 min delay. Everytime the huge zerg force take over an objective, the smaller strike force will recapture the objective 1 to 5 min later. When the huge zerg force completed their map ‘tour of duty’, they would have realized that 80% of their captured objective has been recaptured back. By that time, they may have decided to deploy small forces in their captured objective to do defending which in turn will thin the size of their zerg force going forward. If they shall decide to retrace their route to recapture the objective, you would have also succeeded in slowing down the progress of the zerg force. Best of all, you can do this with just a 5-man strike force. Imagine what ‘damages’ a 5-man strike force can do to a 100-man enemy zerg force. And it is not just through senseless fighting.

WvW play need not be monotonous if you don’t want to. Experimentation is key and the game mechanics doesn’t seem to encourage that at the moment.

DarkWalker, no offense but the things you like about planetside2 are exactly the things I don’t like and I think WvW does better. If anything, I’d like WvW to have bigger maps so that both roaming space and running time increases…I really think SPvP probably suits your play style better as it’s instant action.

Mirage.2597:

Defending is a complete joke in this game , i’m not sure what can be done , but it will be the down fall of wvw , I don’t remember DAoC towers going down so so easy

ae in daoc didn’t have a hit cap. A shaman throwing dis/poison or a sm could destroy countless people if they were grouped up. They need to remove the hit limit from ae and teach people to spread out or there’s a good chance you’ll be ae’d to death. 10 golems on a door = 5 hit at once = no chance of defense. AE made low defender defense possible.

Rieselle.5079:

Maybe the guilds on the tier 1/2 servers can make some videos showing the sort of WvW gameplay they see there.

With some commentary and editing, it would be entertaining and instructive to see what WvW is like when a server plays it “properly”.

Go into the threads for those matches each week and there is usually several videos in their. I know the SoR/BG/IoJ thread has at least 2 videos right now. I think one of them is of a BG force defending a tower with 11 people vs 30+.

For those saying defending is pointless or impossible need to practice better siege tactics. There are places siege can be put that makes it VERY hard for the enemy to destroy and can wipe a huge zerg. I’ll use Garrison for example because i love defending this keep.

Water gate I have personally help off and attacking force of 20ish people at water gate with just 1 arrow cart that they had no hope of destroying. I’ve defended that gate with 2 arrow carts and easily kept 30+ people out while our inner gates were getting hit by a different server.

Inside the keep there are places you can place siege that make it effectively impossible for an enemy to get a ram down on the inner gates to attack. Thus forcing them to have to use catapults in positions that can also easily be destroyed by siege.
A force of 30 people trying to attack a gate that they can’t place siege on will never get in if their only method is to beat the door down by hand.

There are a few keys to defense.
1. Effective siege placement(not an arrow cart on the front wall that can easily be AoE’d down by an Ele
2. Defenders at the tower/keep. You can’t wait until you see crossed swords to defend. Against a good attacking force that is already to late. Two sup rams can power a door down fast and if you are trying to defend while they already have the lords room it’s an uphil battle.
3. Communication. There will be times the 3 people you left behind at a tower aren’t enough. Maybe they were able to treb down your defense siege or caught you with some tactic you weren’t expecting. You need to be able to sound the alarm to get an organized defense group to come wipe them from behind while you destract them with defense.
4. Yaks. This once isn’t necessary most of the time but against a good attacking force it is a must. You need to get Yaks in to upgrade. The doors on an non-upgraded tower are paper thin and an organized attacking force will chew through them. Upgraded walls and doors buy you the time you need to let siege do some work.

TL:DR – Learn to place Arrow carts. They own for defense in the right spot.

It is nowhere near what it was made out to be? Welcome to Guild Wars 2 dude…NOTHING was near what it was made out to be. There was way to much hype for this game and it was impossible to live up to. Personal story? People heard this and thought FF7/OOT type of story and you would have your very own story unique from everyone else. In reality? it was just side quests that everyone else on the server has options to do. You could literally never do a single story quest and the game would never change around you. Home instance? I thought it was SO cool when I heard about it…have never stepped foot into mine…ever.

There was way to much hype for GW2 that it just could not live up to and now it is boring for most people. Luckily for me I was not a complete idiot and didnt fully get consumed by the hype. People always think of the best possible scenario of implementation and then in reality they just get a very basic concept inside an MMO. GW2 is good, but its far from great. Once you accept that the game becomes more fun.

I can see where you are coming from. But I have really been enjoying wubwub lately. In the past couple of weeks I’ve begun to see armies and tactics instead of mindless zergs and endless camp flipping. Maybe it’s because our teir has been semi-static and evenly(-ish) balanced.

But I’ve seen a “zerg” suddenly split into 3 groups, 1 group feints an attack just long enough for the defenders to notice, while the other two take wildly different routes to converge almost simultaneously on an enemy keep and take it before the defenders know what happened. The tower is taken, and since nearly everyone correctly has supply and know what’s up it’s fortified and defended for the inevitable counter-attack. To the other side they might have just seen a “zerg” but believe me it was anything but.

I’ve seen 10 really good players roflstomp a zerg of unprepared 40. Now will 40 players beat 10 of even ability, yes, and that’s as it should be. The key is to recognize that and not engage in that loosing fight. (or if you’re the 40, find the 10)

I do think some of the tiers can get boring, but that doesn’t mean wubwub is broken. Yes there are some things that need tweaking, but I fear anything major done by A.net will just screw it up. Wubwub it’s not for everybody. It will never match exactly what all people want.