Guild Wars 2

This is a totally ridiculous change.
In higher tiers you maybe able to do something because you have a lot of people but you’re pretty much screwing up the low population servers!
On veloka we had around 40 people just derping(enemy + ours) around and swords would just blink once in a while.
This change takes a lot of possibility and strategy. Now who needs to listen to commanders ? just kitten the gate, it will go down faster! The more you have the merrier! If you send a scout to check it out, he will probably be too late! It’s a ninja for everyone, even the derps!
There’s 40 people at Ogrewatch, why should you know ? Just run in there and bam you’re dead!
There’s an enemy zerg fighting at a certain location, now how should you know where to position yourself if you want to flank them ?

Sure you could “send scouts” but the lower population servers don’t have that leisure.

I do understand if you made it where 10 people would create fightmarkers and not 5, but by making it 25 you made the fightmarkers pretty much non-existant in the lower tiers!

I agree that this is the worst change in WvW. Higher tiers got problems too, they can miss people so just sent out people to contest everything. Yes everythig has crosses.

So now we have shifts for the boring guard function, stay in tower/keep, check gates and refresh siege. Greatest fun I had in wvw….

PvD got encouraged now, why not stack on the door, why even bother buying siege against paper doors….

To put the limit to 25 was a big mistake. 25 is obviously too high number. Why did not Arenanet communicate with the community before doing this change? Was it even suggested by anyone here? Do Anet developers even play their own game on the outmanned side or on a low population server?

It seems Anet is failing even the very simplest forms of communication and logic.

And when they make “improvements” like this e.g. like the new & “improved” culling, they cannot even revert back to the original behavior. Extremely sad.

Agree 100%. Might be OK for very lager populations. But for others a turn for the worst.

yeah, if u do the 25 people thing then don’t aoow that thieves trigger sword by tagging the gate and contest the waypoint like that

Do u know guys a role of spotter in www?

I think it’s a good move but 25 is maybe too high, even if you have scouts sat around areas it’s causing some panic already.
Like the culling though, which I don’t have preference on and in the future if they decide to increase the AOE cap it’s something they should have researched and asked for user feedback.

I like it. Now you need to keep scouts in towers and maybe 3-4 people in keeps. People just need to adjust(and they will adjust) and not just zerg around and follow commanders.

siniaq.5628:

Do u know guys a role of spotter in www?

Off-peak hours or lower population servers. And having people sit inside Towers or Keeps is not exactly very fun for them.

It was a silly change, but now you just have to treat every White Sword pop as Orange ones.

Anet knew that lower tiers servers can only field small size zerg, this change is intended to annoy the rest of you so you all transfers to higher tiers/high population servers—> buy gems
This way when nobody playing on lower tiers anymore Anet can just shut down or merge the rest of lower tiers servers —> less maintenance cost

Ok, im willing to accept my infractions now for telling the truth dear Anet

Another bad decision in the worst patch they’ve done yet.

i 100% agree with the OP, now we can have 24+ zerg yes zerg hit our towers and keeps without any swords now. This will encourage more PvDoor! poor implementation in my books. Bring back the old 5 man swords.

This night after the patch was wonderful trying to defend a map while seeing white swords in every single structure and barely having 10 players doesnt give us much room for scouting.

The worst was when the inner WG of Garrison was being sieged and there werent even white swords :-(

Skapocalypse.5236:

I like it. Now you need to keep scouts in towers and maybe 3-4 people in keeps. People just need to adjust(and they will adjust) and not just zerg around and follow commanders.

the same zergers will zerg, and leave the others to do the scouting.
The same people who run dolyaks now, or supplies…

Most zergers will expect ‘others’ to stay behind, never themselves.

The end result will be that most towers and keeps won’t have designated scouts on the lower populated maps.

‘Not making swords’ is a form of organisation. It often fails, true, but that doesn’t mean the system had to adjust.

Look at it this way for your argument: people sometimes adjusted to not making swords, and sometimes they didn’t…
Same will happen with scouting: some will, some won’t.

People ,won’t magically adjust: those that bothered now with being supportive for no reward, will keep doing it.
The karma trainers will still try to train.

the thread about this change went something liek this: “its going to help against zerging”… “oh yes? thats good”.. “its going to help against zerging” … “oh really? no it wont”… “its going to help against zerging, thats why i love it”… “ah then i love it too”… “why would it help against zerging?”… "because.. "… “i love it too”..

Here’s a radical idea. Instead of having your scouts sit inside the tower watching for inc, have them sit outside the tower watching for inc. I know, by doing that, you might find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to actually fight other people in your pvp experience. But if you do that, then maybe, just maybe, the scouts will have some fun and all of a sudden scouting isn’t some horrible task and this change is not some horrible change.

15 people would be a more reasonable number.

T7 checking in. Absolutely loving the new change. It’s fun making a larger server waste time playing whack-a-mole while we take things.

I fail to see how this change is positive in any way.

Now it’s easier than ever to ninja-steal any location without the threat of Combat Swords unless the enemy has decided to keep constant, 100% watch of every location.

Come on AreaNet, why?

Kimbald.2697:

Skapocalypse.5236:

I like it. Now you need to keep scouts in towers and maybe 3-4 people in keeps. People just need to adjust(and they will adjust) and not just zerg around and follow commanders.

the same zergers will zerg, and leave the others to do the scouting.
The same people who run dolyaks now, or supplies…

Most zergers will expect ‘others’ to stay behind, never themselves.

The end result will be that most towers and keeps won’t have designated scouts on the lower populated maps.

‘Not making swords’ is a form of organisation. It often fails, true, but that doesn’t mean the system had to adjust.

Look at it this way for your argument: people sometimes adjusted to not making swords, and sometimes they didn’t…
Same will happen with scouting: some will, some won’t.

People ,won’t magically adjust: those that bothered now with being supportive for no reward, will keep doing it.
The karma trainers will still try to train.

The PUGs will PUG that’s what they do. The people that play WvW with WvW guilds will adjust and when they do and PUGs see less and less karma trains and more commanders held up in towers/keeps they will either leave or adjust themselves. All ANet has to do is reward people for scouting and tower sitting. It might be in the works already(doubtful but it is a possibility).

I for one don’t mind sitting in towers and defending and I never will mind. If more people did it you would be surprised how stupid effective it is. One person with at least some siege keeps zergs from going to work on walls/gates early and gives the much needed to time to get the people to the ojective in order to repel them.

So white swords can know mean a lone skritt/centaur fighting a guard or it could mean 24 golems? Bizarre decision by Anet. The less info the defenders have will result in less effective defense. More towers & keeps will flip more often & few will spend the cash to upgrade them. Defenders will throw up their hands & just join the zergs attacking the now barely defended paper keeps & towers.

Haha, this is too funny. How about you guys look where you’re going? What, you see the little swords on a keep, you go in to check it out and… get surprised by finding enemies there? Were you not expecting trouble, since you’re going to check out why the keep is marked as under assault?

Look on your minimap less, look around you more. And with 25 people, you can’t blame culling unless your comp is from the nineties.

And yeah – as others have said, how about ceasing to run like a big huge herd of zerglings around the map, and actually splitting up? Maybe have a few scouts going around the map and relaying information instead of all of you following your commander like a bunch of zombies on speed?

Man, people will complain about anything. Put a little effort in it, get out of your comfort zone for once. It’s WvW, not PvE! There is no “proper way” to do things! Your enemy uses the new mechanics to their advantage? And you can’t? Why?

Adapt!

Skapocalypse.5236:

All ANet has to do is reward people for scouting and tower sitting. It might be in the works already(doubtful but it is a possibility).

I for one don’t mind sitting in towers and defending and I never will mind.

You touch on something here:

‘all Anet has to do is reward scouting in towers’.

Like they need to reward support, running supplies, repairing, escorting dolyaks…?

They’re not doing any of these in any meaningfull manner (some xp, that’s it at best).
There is absolutely no reason to assume they work on rewarding scouting, or staying in towers.

The system rewards zerging, and only the part of doing damage in a zerg.
For all those actually trying to help there is no other reward than the personal knowledge you did something helpfull while giving up karma and badges for it…

I will be scouting too if needed, depending on what our guild is up to a any given time.
But I don’t buy the argument of rewarding scouting, not even as a theoretical possibility the dev’s might consider.

honestly this is the BEST decision they have made. Learn to strategize have scouts it forces servers to use more teamwork and coordination. don’t be mad because WvW got a little “harder”. man up and deal with it it is truly an amazing change because its possible for small groups to accomplish more now and also for more “ninja” bd tactics to succeed.

maybe drop the number but still it a great change period end of discussion.

People don’t defend uncontested objectives by design , because is no fun to sit around doing nothing in a game. Until now when you saw white swords you knew you could go with your 3 man group and defend it, and when you saw orange swords at the keep you knew there is something serious going on. Now is “guess the zerg” lottery, and i doubt it will do any good, but i guess we’ll see.

I can see this as an attempt to force people to split into smaller groups ( of scouts ) but 25 is too high imho, you can probably experience cooling with less people then that :P

Gaudrath.6725:

Haha, this is too funny. How about you guys look where you’re going? What, you see the little swords on a keep, you go in to check it out and… get surprised by finding enemies there? Were you not expecting trouble, since you’re going to check out why the keep is marked as under assault?

Look on your minimap less, look around you more. And with 25 people, you can’t blame culling unless your comp is from the nineties.

And yeah – as others have said, how about ceasing to run like a big huge herd of zerglings around the map, and actually splitting up? Maybe have a few scouts going around the map and relaying information instead of all of you following your commander like a bunch of zombies on speed?

Man, people will complain about anything. Put a little effort in it, get out of your comfort zone for once. It’s WvW, not PvE! There is no “proper way” to do things! Your enemy uses the new mechanics to their advantage? And you can’t? Why?

Adapt!

I actually think people will split up ,less in the zergs.
Simply because they will realise that the swords they run towards have at least 25 people there…

Any smart group will try to stay under 25 of course, and to catch these small groups in the act, you’ll need to spot them indeed.
But this won’t happen by zergs spliting up.
It will happen by the same people doing helpfull stuff now, not by the zergers splitting up.

We are boh from Piken, and he core of Piken WvW (ignoring the recent shifts back and fro) has a very good mentatility towards being helpfull and doing the supportive stuff.
So I think for our server the change won’t mean that much, if anything it could be a good change for all of our smaller groups who do specific tasks and co-ordinate well.

But in general, as far as ‘zergs’ go… no: I don’t believe this change will split up zergs.

Even culling cant deal with 25 ppl…

Ventari.8257:

honestly this is the BEST decision they have made. Learn to strategize have scouts it forces servers to use more teamwork and coordination. don’t be mad because WvW got a little “harder”. man up and deal with it it is truly an amazing change because its possible for small groups to accomplish more now and also for more “ninja” bd tactics to succeed.

maybe drop the number but still it a great change period end of discussion.

it’s not about manning up, or playing strategic, and certainly not about wvW getting ‘too hard for us now’.

It’s about being realistic.
This change is good for small guild groups, but for bigger groups of randoms I can’t believe it will lead to them splitting up in groups of less than 25 per commander.
That simply is an unrealistic view on how these groups are formed and the lack of communication they have compared to organised groups on TS or Vent.

Randoms will stick on badges, and unless those badges count their numbers and work together and actually form squads of less than 25 with NO ONE else following… you can’t make this splitting up work.

By the way: I respect your opinion as much as the next, but don’t say that your argument is the ‘end of discussion’.
I’m not here to be told by you what I can or can not argue about.
It makes you appear incredibly arrogant, instead of making your argument appear strong (which is probably your intention).

Anet only ruins WvW - you must already see that.

Kimbald.2697:

Gaudrath.6725:

Haha, this is too funny. How about you guys look where you’re going? What, you see the little swords on a keep, you go in to check it out and… get surprised by finding enemies there? Were you not expecting trouble, since you’re going to check out why the keep is marked as under assault?

Look on your minimap less, look around you more. And with 25 people, you can’t blame culling unless your comp is from the nineties.

And yeah – as others have said, how about ceasing to run like a big huge herd of zerglings around the map, and actually splitting up? Maybe have a few scouts going around the map and relaying information instead of all of you following your commander like a bunch of zombies on speed?

Man, people will complain about anything. Put a little effort in it, get out of your comfort zone for once. It’s WvW, not PvE! There is no “proper way” to do things! Your enemy uses the new mechanics to their advantage? And you can’t? Why?

Adapt!

I actually think people will split up ,less in the zergs.
Simply because they will realise that the swords they run towards have at least 25 people there…

Any smart group will try to stay under 25 of course, and to catch these small groups in the act, you’ll need to spot them indeed.
But this won’t happen by zergs spliting up.
It will happen by the same people doing helpfull stuff now, not by the zergers splitting up.

We are boh from Piken, and he core of Piken WvW (ignoring the recent shifts back and fro) has a very good mentatility towards being helpfull and doing the supportive stuff.
So I think for our server the change won’t mean that much, if anything it could be a good change for all of our smaller groups who do specific tasks and co-ordinate well.

But in general, as far as ‘zergs’ go… no: I don’t believe this change will split up zergs.

It probably won’t, but it will make them much less effective in keeping the map locked down. Now, you can do a lot more by having several smaller groups assaulting multiple goals at once without the issue of having a huge blob simply wipe them out one by one by default.

This will encourage communication more than anything else, which is good. The maps are not that big, and there are always roamers about, so all they have to do is call it in. Instead of automatic red flag in the form of orange swords, now actual players have to do the tiny amount of work required to alert your big zerg where the enemy is.

And on the other hand, guerilla warfare is made practical. Servers with fewer people can and will do more damage even when outnumbered. Small group fights will not instantly attract the zergs to them, allowing for more frequent duels and small group action, which is always more fun than zerg clashes.

A good change whichever way you turn it.

And as for people worrying about the lack of reward for scouting… think of it this way. Guide your big groups to victory and join in when the fighting starts. You will be in the prime position to participate, since you’re the one who called it in in the first place.

People cry over because the swords were 5 man only… Now people cry they aren’t 5 man anymore…

The change fits the typical Piken playstyle extremely well (talking about pre-guild drama playstyle).
Our teams will orgnasie and get towers down before the enemy knows we’re there.

I just don’t believe it will splti up zergs of randoms, that’s all.
And because of that, I hardly see the need of the change in itself. Not making swords was a skill test of your groups, or in most cases: a test of remembering those 3 randoms near you aren’t on your TS and didn’t hear ’don’t attack the gate’

siniaq.5628:

Do u know guys a role of spotter in www?

Are you volunteering? Since personally I hate just standing around doing nothing while guarding something critically important that might not be attacked for an hour or so.

Change is perfectly fine.

Patch ensures you have to leave scouts at high value objectives rather then relying on simply pressing M, it also splits up the usual 50 man roaming zerg into smaller groups to attack and defend respectively.

If your having trouble with the new system, you need to work on your guild or server coordination…

You’re in a higher tier where you have the people to put in towers and still have enough people.
During the day this is an absolute hell. And during the night where we have about 5-10 people tops defending this is even worse!

Ilesyt.7084:

You’re in a higher tier where you have the people to put in towers and still have enough people.
During the day this is an absolute hell. And during the night where we have about 5-10 people tops defending this is even worse!

If you don’t learn simple coordination and communication tactics now, you will never move up the rankings. This change now forces servers to interact more with each other to progress, it is called World vs World after all and not Group vs Group.

If your against a system like that you shouldn’t be in WvW in the first place.

Maybe I made myself not clear yet: NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE. is that clear yet ?

There would have been such an easy solution:
5 people —> orange swords
20+people —> red swords
At least with the actual solution they need to bring rewards for guarding a tower but that then encourages AFK sitting in towers

So just take the orange/red sword solution

Ascii.9726:

If you don’t learn simple coordination and communication tactics now, you will never move up the rankings. This change now forces servers to interact more with each other to progress, it is called World vs World after all and not Group vs Group.

If your against a system like that you shouldn’t be in WvW in the first place.

If you’ve got so few people, it has little to do with tactics. Sure, you can send one person to stand guard (idle) at every tower and keep, but it’s not fun and you’re not playing WvW for something like that. I don’t mind them changing the amount of people that cause orange swords, but 25 is just too high. In my opinion, 10 or 15 would have been way better and requires more tactical play. Because with the limit at 25 you often don’t even have to worry about causing orange swords on the map.

Okaishi.8320:

If you’ve got so few people, it has little to do with tactics. Sure, you can send one person to stand guard (idle) at every tower and keep, but it’s not fun and you’re not playing WvW for something like that. I don’t mind them changing the amount of people that cause orange swords, but 25 is just too high. In my opinion, 10 or 15 would have been way better and requires more tactical play. Because with the limit at 25 you often don’t even have to worry about causing orange swords on the map.

If you have too few people, either so does your opponent making the whole argument of ninjaing invalid as you can do the exact same thing or the enemy is a stacked server and notification or not you’ll be out-manned and it will make minimal difference.

Now let me take an example at what could happen at night:
We have 5-10 people tops in our bl at night. In comes UW zerg of 25-30. They can send 10 7 people to each tower and keep to contest it at the same time and still have enough people to kitten a keep/tower gate down + rams and not create any kind of sword. because we are so few, we can only guard our keeps and watch all of their gates and if they decide to take a tower, it will be too late. We would only know what tower they take when it turns a different colour, we wouldn’t be able to prepare and anticipate with enough time to know where they will be coming from, we would still have to keep 3 man per keep.
Now if there were swords, we would know exactly where they would be, and if they decided to ninja it would give us more time to prepare before the gate would be down because derping the gate makes them go down faster. It would give us time to check all keep gates and then check the towers and then go back in time to prepare.
If we had swords, we could just keep 1 guy at the other keeps and have the rest go to where they would go most likely.

Having tower/keep watchers is usual thing for organized WvW, and i personally get used to do those stupid boring 1hr shifts. But for majority of casual WvW players this is bad change, since watcher gets nothing for his job. So why someone will now wasting his time on watch duty in tower instead of running with zerg and get credit for PvD? Useful activity should be encouraged and rewarded, it is the basics of a proper gameplay.

its a great change that adds lots of depths to WvW

Its a good change, making scouting and having patrols really important.

Illesyt find the sarcasm in my post >.< except if you were being sarcastic too.. in this case: right! with the little flaw of beatuy that Xaoc indeed actually gave us skills in many respects, but surely not at communication.

i was just saying the guy is completely clueless, his opinion not worth a scratch and talking down to the lower tiers in terms of L2P marks him as outstanding in many ways, none of them positive.

Ascii.9726:

If you have too few people, either so does your opponent making the whole argument of ninjaing invalid as you can do the exact same thing or the enemy is a stacked server and notification or not you’ll be out-manned and it will make minimal difference.

You’d be surprised how well a keep or tower can be defended with a few people against a larger force, if the defenders know what they are doing. I assumed you knew this with your superior tactical knowledge.

Ascii.9726:

If you don’t learn simple coordination and communication tactics now, you will never move up the rankings. This change now forces servers to interact more with each other to progress, it is called World vs World after all and not Group vs Group.

If your against a system like that you shouldn’t be in WvW in the first place.

I LOVE how people in top tire talk down on the rest of the plebs, it brings worm to my heart and on the forum, specially since they have no clue of what they talk about. No, we don’t hit eachother with stones on lower tires, and most of us can read the map chat !!, and omg, there is here and there maybe a voice chat for all the server to use, a forum, and i’ve heard of people forming squads and talking yellow somehow.

Change is good, intention is admirable, but >> THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE << on lower tires, that would be the argument, and one size doesn’t fit all. Maybe is best idea ever on servers who run 1h long queue, but not so much for the rest.

The game seems so quiet now, then bam. A tower or keep turns into something else.

Steelo.4597:

Illesyt find the sarcasm in my post >.< except if you were being sarcastic too.. in this case: right! with the little flaw of beatuy that Xaoc indeed actually gave us skills in many respects, but surely not at communication.

i was just saying the guy is completely clueless, his opinion not worth a scratch and talking down to the lower tiers in terms of L2P marks him as outstanding in many ways, none of them positive.

Sorry about that, I missed the sarcasm part, continue then :p

Okaishi.8320:

You’d be surprised how well a keep or tower can be defended with a few people against a larger force, if the defenders know what they are doing. I assumed you knew this with your superior tactical knowledge.

Few people can hold properly upgraded and littered with right siege structure for some time, until arrival of “firefight” counterzerg. Only hold for some time. Proper assault can be repelled only by comparable force.

Kimbald.2697:

Most zergers will expect ‘others’ to stay behind, never themselves.

Exactly. Team players just got their WvW experience diminshed. It will make zero difference to the people that only do what they want and don’t really care if someone else has to take care of all the little tasks that contribute towards winning.