Guild Wars 2

I love the idea of massive WvW PvP but I’ve found the execution to be … lacking.

As I see it the pitfalls keeping WvW from being fun for all are:

1. repair costs at lower levels
2. ability to see all the region maps while in the WvW area
3. lack of any sort of experience/loot/guild prestige etc for defending a tower/keep
4. the “owner” can take over the turret/oil pot etc that YOU actually put all the resources into building.

For a quick breakdown of each issue:

1. Repair costs are prohibitive for my character currently lv 34. This is mainly because I get ~ 1 silver in damage to my gear per death. At best, when our side is doing very well and I managed to join a zerg swarm I break even.

2. Ability to see all the regional maps leads to people hopping over to the servers they are doing well on and/or organizing mass hops from a server. It’s not fun for the team struggling to eek out a tower when they are outnumbered and then swarmed.

3. Defense is very important. If you don’t have toons defending your tower and upgrading it you lose all your progress. Yet there is not much of a reward system in place to encourage people to stay and defend. This is a great opportunity to open up the PvP world to players at lower levels who are currently at a huge disadvantage despite the “scale up”.

For the final point, an example. I was the only toon who stayed behind to actually upgrade and defend our keep (yet I couldn’t claim the keep for my guild because it’s first come first serve even if not a single guild member stays behind). While staying at the keep, picking up supplies, and running back and forth repairing, building, and destroying enemy rams and catapults wasn’t very rewarding (fun, experience or loot wise) it made a big difference when an army 2X our ranks arrived to attack the keep. We had defense at 100 and they had to start over with their siege attacks.

Yet when that army arrived, and I started using the defensive items I spent all that time building up with supplies … I got immediately kicked off as soon as the “owner” arrived. Okay, you spent 4 silver on that item, but the fact of the matter is that the item wouldn’t even be usable if I hadn’t taken the time and effort to build it. Do you really deserve to use that turret over me? So in the end, despite the fact that I was the only person who stayed behind to defend the keep I got a total of 100 exp from the ordeal, no guild prestige, and then got booted off of the heavy artillery once the fun stuff began.

I think WvW has the potential to be immensely rewarding and fun for all levels and styles of play. Put more rewards in place and chill out on the penalties.

If you want more carrot, break out the sickle and start harvesting!

Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun.

Ha ha ha. Yeah — I certainly do have a lot of those carrots!

I thought all those NPCs built the cannons and oil pots as the dolyaks arrive with supplies. Do players actually have to run around building that stuff?

Legitimate issues, bad and misleading title.

The only one I disagree with is #2. With overall population caps it’s up to you to adjust as a team. If they are more coordinated then yes, they will swarm you. If your side doesn’t have enough population to hit the cap then no doubt your rankings will slide for good reason.

Wasn’t sure what to title this — but since my biggest concern was the need for more defensive “carrots” I thought it fitting. Have a suggestion? I may be able to edit it.

3 & 4 are my biggest issues, the repair thing is annoying but would be rectified if defense rewards were put into place.

Richard.8207:

I thought all those NPCs built the cannons and oil pots as the dolyaks arrive with supplies. Do players actually have to run around building that stuff?

Yes and no. What the Workers actually build are the locations where cannons and oil can be built. Players then take supply to those spots and build them up, much like siege units (Though they are unowned, so first come first serve.)

I don’t disagree with what you are posting for the most part. I would add to this that having played WvW from low level to 80, I am very underwhelmed. If I could discribe it in one word, “Blah” would be that word.

Issues:

-Areas are way to big for the pop sizes. Cut down on the amount of areas. I see Planetside 2 making this same mistake currently. Focus the battles a bit more.

-Need to reduce the center area on the main map. That one area is just simply way to big.

-Need other maps like capture the flag and such. I would even love to combinee to a degree jumping puzzles with defense. The currently selection of maps bores me to tears at this point.

1.You needn’t repair after every death. There are no downsides for waiting until something breaks, and, that way, you save cash. At level 80 it costs 6-8 silver to repair one broken piece and all damaged ones (more if there’s more then 1 damaged).

2.Not necessary

3.Once someone attacks a stronghold, you gain an event note. If you hold out long enough for it’s timer to run out, you gain quite a bit of XP, karma and coin. Soon after – it restarts, allowing you to gain even more if you hold out for longer periods of time.

The loot you get from players and monsters in WvW gets placed at your feet in a bag, allowing you to loot from the top of the ramparts without any issues.

You gain guild influence for every kill and every event that you do in WvW. The influence gained is a lot bigger then that, which you would get outside of WvW.

4.Who cares if YOU put the resources in building it, if the blueprint is the "owner"’s property? He actually spent silvers on it, not community materials, but personal wealth.

You’re very misinformed.

Combining jumping puzzles with defense? Try looking for the griefers in the WvW jumping puzzles.

They get so much rage thrown at them…

Chessrook.8643:

Combining jumping puzzles with defense? Try looking for the griefers in the WvW jumping puzzles.

They get so much rage thrown at them…

They’re the reason I stopped playing my thief in WvW, instead opting for classes with more range, like the ranger and engineer.

The only one I directly disagree with is 4. Because honestly, I can imagine it would be really annoying from the other angle to plant and start building a siege, only for someone else to finish it and hijack it. I mean, you did spend money on thekittenthing.

VakarisJ.5619:

1.You needn’t repair after every death. There are no downsides for waiting until something breaks, and, that way, you save cash. At level 80 it costs 6-8 silver to repair one broken piece and all damaged ones (more if there’s more then 1 damaged).

Actually there is a downside if you are <lv 80. Your “scale up” stats are proportional to your gear and when a piece breaks you lose the bonuses. Plus it reveals my Asura’s pink bathing suite like undies!

I provided the cost/death because it’s data and not mush like “a lot”.

If a piece gets damaged (yellow), it doesn’t get affected in ANY way. It retains full functionality.

Once all pieces of armor that you wear become yellow, your next death randomly breaks one item, which gets marked in red. Red items do not give any stat bonuses at all and do not show on your character.

If you repair your armor every time 1 item becomes yellow, then I’m not surprised you’re worried about that. You only need to repair once every 8 deaths by enemies. Enviromental deaths do not break equipment, scripted deaths, such as falling into a pit of spikes, do. Keep that in mind.

VakarisJ.5619:

3.Once someone attacks a stronghold, you gain an event note. If you hold out long enough for it’s timer to run out, you gain quite a bit of XP, karma and coin. Soon after – it restarts, allowing you to gain even more if you hold out for longer periods of time.

The loot you get from players and monsters in WvW gets placed at your feet in a bag, allowing you to loot from the top of the ramparts without any issues.

You gain guild influence for every kill and every event that you do in WvW. The influence gained is a lot bigger then that, which you would get outside of WvW.

Since this doesn’t relate to my original post, I’ll try to be more clear. My complaint is that there was no reward for defending a tower during the lull period. Which encourages people to take off with the zerg offensive and not stay behind to build up, watch for enemy scouts, and destroy catapults or other siege equipment the enemy previously placed. There should be rewards for this. When someone stays behind to defend and watch over a tower, missing out on zerg looting and offensive events, they should be compensated for making that sacrifice for the team.

SWTOR created a reward system in place that encouraged players to fulfill all roles in the strategic PvP environment. You got rewarded whether you spent the entire time standing next to a turret that never came under fire or if you made a kill. At first you only got rewarded for “kills” which lead to the highest ranked players in PvP being the ones who snuck in the last second to land a killing blow even if they did jack all to help the team win at capture the turret, download the data, or huttball. Once SWTOR changed the rewards system to actually reward team players (e.g. an experience bonus for passing in huttball), PvP became a lot more enjoyable. I’d like to see GW2 put a reward system in place for WvW that rewards people for strategic actions like destroying enemy siege equipment at the end of the battle.

I totally utterly disagree with almost all of what you said. THE WORST THING ABOUT PVP GAMES in the past, what…. 5-8 years? Literally YEARS, has been rewards for PvP. PvP is all about fighting and fun, not about ‘imaginary presents’. Give people a reason to not fight and just soak up cheese rewards for doing nothing, and most will do just that, nothing. The server has to work together, you didn’t place the siege, you don’t get user rights, simple. Some bad guild claims a keep and your sever suffers from it, so be it, there’s bad players on ALL the realms ( and IRL too =p). Take Spvp for example, theres not a lot of people AFK’n those, or running in circles not fighting so that they can get ‘max points’ for gear. Which is exactly how world pvp should be, fighting, continuous nonstop fighting. If you die and need to repair and its costing you money, easy solution; die less. The WvW works, in almost all aspects, the players themselves are what make it seem like its not. You have servers teaming up against other servers, zerg guilds spreading their influence on mulitple servers because there HORRIBAD at anything with even numbers. People not using siege, defending properly, or even using abilities / spec combos correctly. The game is just barely a month out, and most of what people expect is already on the table. THE LAST THING this game needs, is more rewards to NOT FIGHT in its wvw; the last thing i want is kids waiting around a keep they just defended for their ‘loot bag’. The loot should be the badkitten experience of kicking people’skitten using ability combos and siege equipment, repairing, strategizing, coordinating attacks, the list goes on of all the badkitten stuff in RL War, just like The Art of War. Please god keep the carrots out of the game, between all the PVE set grinds, i feel like there’s a little too much already. Keep the game about fighting not about rewards, its about the journey not the destination.

Sarahphim.1308:

Since this doesn’t relate to my original post, I’ll try to be more clear. My complaint is that there was no reward for defending a tower during the lull period. Which encourages people to take off with the zerg offensive and not stay behind to build up, watch for enemy scouts, and destroy catapults or other siege equipment the enemy previously placed. There should be rewards for this. When someone stays behind to defend and watch over a tower, missing out on zerg looting and offensive events, they should be compensated for making that sacrifice for the team.

You do gain XP, karma and coin for helping upgrade a stronghold. You even get events like “help build the cannon” or “help build the oilpot”.

You aren’t supposed to sit in a stronghold, waiting for something to happen for an eternity. That’s not how you’re meant to play. You’re supposed to go on the offensive the second you defend a wave and try to take over the enemies’ territory, coming to defend when needed. There should not be a reward for sleeping in a tower for an hour before a zerg comes in and rolls you.

squiggit.2357:

The only one I directly disagree with is 4. Because honestly, I can imagine it would be really annoying from the other angle to plant and start building a siege, only for someone else to finish it and hijack it. I mean, you did spend money on thekittenthing.

Good point – I didn’t even think about people using that ability as a way to hijack someone’s equipment. I always forget to think about how people would abuse an event because I just don’t act that way.

Maybe give people a bit more xp and some karma for helping to build instead.

Maybe give people a bit more xp and some karma for helping to build instead.

Definitely. The XP you gain per tick of repairing walls/gates and building siege is really pitiful right now.

VakarisJ.5619:

You do gain XP, karma and coin for helping upgrade a stronghold. You even get events like “help build the cannon” or “help build the oilpot”.

You aren’t supposed to sit in a stronghold, waiting for something to happen for an eternity. That’s not how you’re meant to play. You’re supposed to go on the offensive the second you defend a wave and try to take over the enemies’ territory, coming to defend when needed. There should not be a reward for sleeping in a tower for an hour before a zerg comes in and rolls you.

I’ve gotten events like “Help defend the workers as they upgrade the wall” but I’ve never gotten anything more than 15 xp for helping to build any upgrades. Is it possible that upgrading the equipment before the event appears nulls this? I got nadda for removing the catapults after the battle.

Also – why aren’t you supposed to have someone in a tower? It gives you the ability to call in reinforcements well before the attackers arrive and it actively discourages mobs from coming. When we zerg we always go to the places that are only defended by NPCs first.

Also – do the NPCs ever remove the enemy siege equipment? I would think the advantage of doing this are self-evident. I spent ~ 30 minutes in the keep building it up and removing the siege equipment. I had just finished when the mob arrived. If I hadn’t stayed behind and done the boring work they would have had an even greater advantage with 2 ready made catapults, and no finished defensive materials like oil pots and arrow turrets.

VakarisJ.5619:

You aren’t supposed to sit in a stronghold, waiting for something to happen for an eternity. That’s not how you’re meant to play. You’re supposed to go on the offensive the second you defend a wave and try to take over the enemies’ territory, coming to defend when needed. There should not be a reward for sleeping in a tower for an hour before a zerg comes in and rolls you.

That actually does bring up a thankless job that is full time on some servers. The guys who touch all the siege equipment in Stonemist or any other large fortification before the 30 minute expiration. They clearly are coordinated and do their job quite well, so they deserve some XP and loot or at least a beer or something.

Paradopx.3804:

I totally utterly disagree with almost all of what you said. THE WORST THING ABOUT PVP GAMES in the past, what…. 5-8 years? Literally YEARS, has been rewards for PvP.

I’ve had the complete opposite experience. PvP isn’t ‘one size fits all’ and there are several types of PvP. In addition to the fight to the death pits-type PvP you mentioned above, there are strategic PvP games such as capture the flag, and even the weird huttball PvP I mentioned above. These more strategic PvP types requires players to assume various roles. My experience has been that unless you give someone a reward for doing the boring work, like guarding the turret your team just worked so hard to capture, no one will do it ever. Why? Because it’s boring. It’s more fun to run around and kill things even if it leads to the entire team losing at capture the flag/huttball/losing that tower.

Sarahphim.1308:

I’ve gotten events like “Help defend the workers as they upgrade the wall” but I’ve never gotten anything more than 15 xp for helping to build any upgrades. Is it possible that upgrading the equipment before the event appears nulls this? I got nadda for removing the catapults after the battle.

Also – why aren’t you supposed to have someone in a tower? It gives you the ability to call in reinforcements well before the attackers arrive and it actively discourages mobs from coming. When we zerg we always go to the places that are only defended by NPCs first.

Also – do the NPCs ever remove the enemy siege equipment? I would think the advantage of doing this are self-evident. I spent ~ 30 minutes in the keep building it up and removing the siege equipment. I had just finished when the mob arrived. If I hadn’t stayed behind and done the boring work they would have had an even greater advantage with 2 ready made catapults, and no finished defensive materials like oil pots and arrow turrets.

I’ve no idea why you’d only get 15 xp for it, because I would get 1,5k XP, about 300 karma and a few silvers.
Edit: Well actually, “Help defend” objectives require a stimulus to for you to gain rewards – you need to kill someone in the area of the objective. It’s the same with escorting dolyaks, and no, creatures do not count – only players. I think it will get changed in the future though.

No, you’re not supposed to have anyone in a stronghold. Once one is attacked, you can clearly see on the map, via the crossed swords over the stronghold. Usually someone out of the 500 players on the map sees it and writes into the /team chat that it’s under attack and the zerg moves in to defend.
You don’t usually see enemies before they arrive at the stronghold, the draw distance isn’t THAT big, to make effective use of lookouts.
The basic tactic in taking over any stronghold is to hit the supply camps first – it’s kind of a vital point and yes – they’re usually defended only by NPCs and can be taken over by a solitary player.

I don’t know why enemy siege sticks around once you take over, yes it’s an annoyance, but usually the invading force takes everything down while making their way to the lord.
In order to get oil pots and cannons, you have to order the upgrade from the stronghold’s NPCs. Siege equipment, like catapults and arrowcarts are personal weapons that players tend to put on the ramparts once the zerg is known to be heading in the general direction of something important.

Richard.8207:

VakarisJ.5619:

You aren’t supposed to sit in a stronghold, waiting for something to happen for an eternity. That’s not how you’re meant to play. You’re supposed to go on the offensive the second you defend a wave and try to take over the enemies’ territory, coming to defend when needed. There should not be a reward for sleeping in a tower for an hour before a zerg comes in and rolls you.

That actually does bring up a thankless job that is full time on some servers. The guys who touch all the siege equipment in Stonemist or any other large fortification before the 30 minute expiration. They clearly are coordinated and do their job quite well, so they deserve some XP and loot or at least a beer or something.

Exactly! It’s a thankless boring job that no one wants to do but its a tremendous help to the team. Give them a carrot they deserve it.

30 minute expiration? Where did you see this info?

I have heard everything from 30 minutes to 12 hours.

Jeul.1068:

30 minute expiration? Where did you see this info?

I have heard everything from 30 minutes to 12 hours.

30 minutes is the consensus from the community. I assume someone tested it to find out since you can test it for 6 silver (or half your blueprints from a single jumping puzzle).

I honestly only agree with #3. There could def be more rewards for successfully defending a keep. Maybe just up the values maybe to be comparable to taking the point or something.

I never really had a problem with repair costs, however I made a huge effort to not die. Not saying you suck, just saying you either a) should work at staying alive more or b) find ways to optimize your income (e.g. hit all resource nodes, make sure and pick up all bags, etc etc)

I don’t understand how seeing the entire map is an issue, nor is it realistic. I would agree that you shouldn’t be able to see attacks that don’t involve your server (not even sure if you can honestly), but why wouldn’t you know the map? In any war the armies know the areas, and not only do they need the crossed arrows to show players who might not be with the group already (just zoning in) and keep the game enjoyable, think of it like intel being passed by your npc defenders.

And you may have put the supply into the seige equip, but that player spent the dough. It’s only right that he can kick anyone off who didn’t spend the coin on it.

Paradopx.3804:

I totally utterly disagree with almost all of what you said. THE WORST THING ABOUT PVP GAMES in the past, what…. 5-8 years? Literally YEARS, has been rewards for PvP. PvP is all about fighting and fun, not about ‘imaginary presents’. Give people a reason to not fight and just soak up cheese rewards for doing nothing, and most will do just that, nothing. The server has to work together, you didn’t place the siege, you don’t get user rights, simple. Some bad guild claims a keep and your sever suffers from it, so be it, there’s bad players on ALL the realms ( and IRL too =p). Take Spvp for example, theres not a lot of people AFK’n those, or running in circles not fighting so that they can get ‘max points’ for gear. Which is exactly how world pvp should be, fighting, continuous nonstop fighting. If you die and need to repair and its costing you money, easy solution; die less. The WvW works, in almost all aspects, the players themselves are what make it seem like its not. You have servers teaming up against other servers, zerg guilds spreading their influence on mulitple servers because there HORRIBAD at anything with even numbers. People not using siege, defending properly, or even using abilities / spec combos correctly. The game is just barely a month out, and most of what people expect is already on the table. THE LAST THING this game needs, is more rewards to NOT FIGHT in its wvw; the last thing i want is kids waiting around a keep they just defended for their ‘loot bag’. The loot should be the badkitten experience of kicking people’skitten using ability combos and siege equipment, repairing, strategizing, coordinating attacks, the list goes on of all the badkitten stuff in RL War, just like The Art of War. Please god keep the carrots out of the game, between all the PVE set grinds, i feel like there’s a little too much already. Keep the game about fighting not about rewards, its about the journey not the destination.

I agree with your message mostly, but not really your delivery.

I consider myself a hardcore pvp’r, by means that I wish a major game like GW2 would go the way of Darkfall style where the only rewards is taking your enemies stuff and maybe some stats to show off. However that will never happen.

I do agree that the rewards for people just "sitting’ in keeps needs to be minimal if existent at all, however I got the impression he was referring more to the active defense of keeps where you are literally fighting off the hordes at the front gate.

If I’m wrong then yea, there should be no rewards for just “hanging out” in a world pvp zone.

Sarahphim.1308:

VakarisJ.5619:

3.Once someone attacks a stronghold, you gain an event note. If you hold out long enough for it’s timer to run out, you gain quite a bit of XP, karma and coin. Soon after – it restarts, allowing you to gain even more if you hold out for longer periods of time.

The loot you get from players and monsters in WvW gets placed at your feet in a bag, allowing you to loot from the top of the ramparts without any issues.

You gain guild influence for every kill and every event that you do in WvW. The influence gained is a lot bigger then that, which you would get outside of WvW.

Since this doesn’t relate to my original post, I’ll try to be more clear. My complaint is that there was no reward for defending a tower during the lull period. Which encourages people to take off with the zerg offensive and not stay behind to build up, watch for enemy scouts, and destroy catapults or other siege equipment the enemy previously placed. There should be rewards for this. When someone stays behind to defend and watch over a tower, missing out on zerg looting and offensive events, they should be compensated for making that sacrifice for the team.

SWTOR created a reward system in place that encouraged players to fulfill all roles in the strategic PvP environment. You got rewarded whether you spent the entire time standing next to a turret that never came under fire or if you made a kill. At first you only got rewarded for “kills” which lead to the highest ranked players in PvP being the ones who snuck in the last second to land a killing blow even if they did jack all to help the team win at capture the turret, download the data, or huttball. Once SWTOR changed the rewards system to actually reward team players (e.g. an experience bonus for passing in huttball), PvP became a lot more enjoyable. I’d like to see GW2 put a reward system in place for WvW that rewards people for strategic actions like destroying enemy siege equipment at the end of the battle.

I’m going to strongly voice agreement that people should be rewarded for objective play. Objective play should be rewarded. However this isn’t like SWTOR and their objectives. AFK farming was a problem even in that game, it would be a far worse problem in this game.

Instead of rewarding people merely for sitting there, reward them for DOING things related to defense such as upgrades, bringing in supplies, etc. (In fact they need to reward people bringing in supplies from outside even during sieges). Give them little things they can do around the keep to get very small yet constant rewards. Maybe even let them speed the process on upgrades somewhat.

I don’t think anyone should be asking for anything close to the amount you get for active defense, but some little rewards here and there for your time and effort in doing needed things in WvW is a good thing.