Guild Wars 2

This may have been discussed before. If so you have my apologies.

What I want in WvW are close matches. I don’t mind losing if it was a good fight, if there were epic battles along the way, but at the minute those aren’t happening (at least on my server – Underworld EU for the disappointing level of mediocrity!).
Right now it’s “oh look, a mass of red names stretching across the screen are stampeding towards the three of us in this keep” – SPLAT.
It’s dispiriting to know that no matter what you do, or how well you play, you’ll have about the same effect as a butterfly has on an oncoming freight train. And having been on the other side in the past, it didn’t feel that much fun being the freight train either.

Obviously a heavily populated realm is always going to have an advantage, and will probably always win, but there should be some way to at least make a fight of it.
One of the biggest issues, as I see it, is that it’s almost impossible to hold on to anything, specifically keeps. A gate, even a reinforced one, melts if a 30-person zerg rocks up to it.
The NPC defenders are, at best, a bump in the road, barely noticed.
The geography of some gates, such as the south gate of Bay, mean that any AC you set up has to be below the walls and behind the gate, meaning the operator is essentially firing blind.
Any defensive siege or defending players on the walls are vaporised in moments. In fact, being on the walls is actually a liability, it concentrates you into a small space and makes it far easier for the attackers’ AOE to hit you, whereas they can spread out on the ground below the walls.
These are supposed to be heavily fortified keeps, hard to attack and easy to defend, but the actual fortifications work against the defenders. The walls are supposed to provide protection and give the defenders the high ground, but all they really do is make you easier to hit because you have to stand in a clump on the edge to try and target the guys attacking the gate.
I propose the following:
That gates are made sturdier, and that the effectiveness of spells and character abilities against them is reduced. Also that AOE and Mesmer clones should be prevented from hitting anyone on the other side of the gate.
NPC defenders should scale up according to the size of the attacking zerg and just be generally a lot more effective (I thought I heard this was happening in the Edge of the Mists map. If so, please bring it over to the main maps!)
Walls should actually confer some level of protection on the defenders, to give them more of a chance to defend.

Obviously there are potential problems – this doesn’t make it any easier for a low-pop server to take a keep in the first place, for example – but I think it would help balance things out, at least a little.
Maybe (probably?) this is all pie in the sky stuff and you can poke holes in it until it falls apart, but there are other good suggestions in the forums right now and something needs to change, that much seems certain – of the nine matches currently on the EU side, only two could be considered even slightly close. Most of them have one server clearly dominating the other two after less than 24 hours of the week have passed. There’s little fun to be had in that.

There are ways of defending a 30+ force from attacking your keep, with around 5 people defending.

Supply draining treb shots.

You can’t assault a keep if you don’t have supply

If they rush you with golems and a zerg of 20+ though… that’s another story. You’re just boned if that happens

Yep everything you mentioned is an issue. I like all your suggestions too. Unfortunately, Anet does not.

Although I did not know about the scaling of the NPC’s in EOTM, maybe they’re testing it there.

The line of sight issues that make it easier to AOE targets on the walls than it is to AOE targets on the ground should have been fixed before release.

But anything that slows down the karma train will probably be unpopular.

Reverence.6915:

There are ways of defending a 30+ force from attacking your keep, with around 5 people defending.

Supply draining treb shots.

You can’t assault a keep if you don’t have supply

If they rush you with golems and a zerg of 20+ though… that’s another story. You’re just boned if that happens

to bad 30+ man zergs can face roll a reinforced door down in under 5 min with no siege at all…
even if you do have AC set up they get destroyed by eles (dragon tooth) and camera hackers in 30 sec and then they face roll the door down

When you have the outnumbered buff siege on bases under attack should fire automatically & the walls get higher ie the zerg loses range that allows them to hit the top of the walls. Doors should be invulnerable to player attacks & only dmg with siege also.Simple

Johje Holan.4607:

Yep everything you mentioned is an issue. I like all your suggestions too. Unfortunately, Anet does not.

Although I did not know about the scaling of the NPC’s in EOTM, maybe they’re testing it there.

I might be wrong about that. I was watching Wooden Potatoes’ preview video of the Kodan region of Edge of the Mists and I’m sure he said the door guards were tougher. I know he said the keep lords scale in there but I can’t remember if he said the same about the guards.
I hope there is something like that but it’ll need more to balance these fights are.
It does show that they’re at least looking at solutions, albeit slowly, so I’m optimistic that eventually it’ll get fixed.
It’s the wall problems that annoy me more than anything else, they make it far harder to defend than it should be.

possessed.2036:

When you have the outnumbered buff siege on bases under attack should fire automatically & the walls get higher ie the zerg loses range that allows them to hit the top of the walls. Doors should be invulnerable to player attacks & only dmg with siege also.Simple

That would lead to amazing strategies like take all keeps, siege the hell out of them, move to different map. Many servers already have trouble getting people to defend – this would actively discourage it.

30 people isn’t a zerg. I think you’d like t1, bigger blobs but also more of an emphasis on defense. Most of the servers hold and upgrade their stuff, and while waypointed keeps flip due to prolonged 2v1’s, it’s always a hell of a fight.

Typhus.3502:

30 people isn’t a zerg. I think you’d like t1, bigger blobs but also more of an emphasis on defense. Most of the servers hold and upgrade their stuff, and while waypointed keeps flip due to prolonged 2v1’s, it’s always a hell of a fight.

Maybe for your tier. In T3, T4, and below, anything with 15+ people is a zerg. Here’s the classifications we often use.

1-3 players = some enemies
4-8 players = small group
9-15 players = heavy group
15+ = zerg

If your a server that wants to focus on ppt, then ou need to find people who are willing to trait defensively and will forgo the karma trains. 4/5 AC, 5/5 cannon, 3/5 treb, and mortar mastery on just ~4 people can make most keeps impregnable to all but large golem rushes.
At that point you have to ask why no one was taking camps and keeping them drained.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Typhus.3502:

30 people isn’t a zerg. I think you’d like t1, bigger blobs but also more of an emphasis on defense. Most of the servers hold and upgrade their stuff, and while waypointed keeps flip due to prolonged 2v1’s, it’s always a hell of a fight.

Maybe for your tier. In T3, T4, and below, anything with 15+ people is a zerg. Here’s the classifications we often use.

1-3 players = some enemies
4-8 players = small group
9-15 players = heavy group
15+ = zerg

T1 in NA prime:
1-15: Havoc group
16-25: Small group
26-50: Zerg
50+: Full map blob

Here’s the thing. In T1, we regularly defend against a larger group of 30+ in paper towers. More often than not, 1 door treb and 1 AC is enough to turn zergs away.

If the zerg stays to PvDoor, that’s just the sign of either a bad commander, or a very over confident one. Especially if it’s home BL Garrison or EB Keep, T1 will pull all their numbers to defend. 5 people is plenty enough to hold for at least 10-15 minutes until backup arrives (while sending warriors ahead to banner the lord).

If you feel your server doesn’t defend enough, maybe it’s time to look for a new server. Tier 1-Tier 3 all defend their keeps and towers pretty heavily.

defending towers, too, because you need your towers and your camps to defend your keep.

One thing to know is a well defended objective will feel boring. It’s like being a fireman, you wait. Well upgraded, sieged and defended objectives will be passed by over and over. The better job you do, the more boring it will be to maintain it. Your patience is your most powerful weapon once your keep is upgraded. Don’t leave. Don’t stop ticking the siege.

It isn’t that our server doesn’t defend enough, or that it doesn’t want to, it’s that it can’t.
We don’t have the people, there’s no way we can pull together the supply for upgrades, even if we could hold the keep/tower long enough for them to complete.
That’s partly why I want to make them easier to defend, and also make it so that players could deposit supply.
Also, a siege is supposed to be a lengthy thing. I find it hard to believe that when ArenaNet first thought up WvW they envisaged the “sieges” lasting only a couple of minutes. That’s not an epic battle, that’s an afterthought.

And people transferring off only makes the problem worse, I don’t want to do that. I picked that server (granted it was only because I thought the name Underworld was cool) and I’d rather stay and try to make it better. The alternative is a server that is almost entirely abandoned, though it seems we may not be far off that now.

As I type this, Underworld has 1 keep (our home garrison) and 3 towers – that’s on all borderlands and the eternal battleground.

Most servers can defend even when at a significant population imbalance but it is BORING. 99% of defense is waiting and refreshing siege. The other 99% of a server is fighting (fun) and enhancing their characters in various ways (XP, WxP, Gold, Etc). In fact the best way for a player to increase their defensive power is to karma/wxp train and not defend. Even if a player is a hard core defender most others aren’t which can be somewhat isolating.

Given the current system design, I just tell people to stop defending unless you LOVE defending.

Yep, it can be really boring. It would be cool if ANet could make defense more interesting and rewarding. Like give you some wxp for ticking siege once an hour, offer some more interesting upgrades like more and better built in siege if you hold the location a certain number of hours, more levels for npc guards for holding the location longer.

Mystic forge in the keep would be nice too. It is a hassle to leave WvW to make superior siege when the castle is in perpetual flip mode.

Well, just come off an evening in the Underworld borderlands.
We actually had control of the map at one point, but then lost everything in about 20 minutes. 2 supply camps are ours at the time of writing.
I’d managed to get the walls reinforced and the doors were two thirds done when, at about 23.30 UK time, a zerg of 20 to 30 people came up and pounded the wall to dust, followed by the inner gate. There were, I think, 2 of us trying to defend. Shout out to whoever that charr was, didn’t catch his name. Think he had a pink warhammer.
Epic it was not (the fight, not the hammer – that was actually quite cool).
Something needs to be done to help defenders because it’s becoming farcical.
Of course we should lose, we’re horribly outnumbered, but it just shouldn’t be that easy to defeat someone who’s occupying an apparently fortified position.
I mean, think about it – we call it “flipping a keep”. Flipping it, like a huge castle is as inconsequential as a coin.
I see our garrison just got flipped back to us. Yay. Those upgrades I bought were a waste of money though, guess that’s why no one else ever bothers buying them any more.
I must go to bed now, I can hear the world’s smallest violin playing me a lullaby.

The LOS from the wall is my biggest issue. Having to jump onto the very edge and get instanuked to death or pulled off to even be able to LOS people on the ground is a pain. And then when you do back off AOEs can hit you all the way to the back of it anyways. What’s the point? It’s much easier to kill people on the wall than it is for the defenders to kill the attackers from it.

tbh towers and keeps are fine as it is, they are almost uncatchable if sieged up well with 4 defenders in there, most commanders will give up because most zergs have pugs who will just melt at the gate from 2normal ac’s let alone if theres a sup treb and 2/3 sup ac’s

That’s kind of my point – keeps and towers are fine if you can upgrade them fully, and you’ve got arrow carts all over the place and the people to use them, but if you don’t have the people to defend it while it’s upgrading and to make sure that the supply keeps coming in then it never reaches that point.
It gets flipped long before the upgrades are complete which is why no one bothers ordering them any more – they know they’re just wasting their money. This is what I discovered last night when I decided to actually make an effort to fortify what we’d gained – I set upgrades going on 3 keeps and 2 towers. All of them bar one was lost before the upgrades were finished. The one with the upgraded walls was lost not long afterwards. I think the reinforced walls on the garrison slowed down the attackers by 3 or 4 minutes at most. Just about long enough for the 2 of us who were there to set up a couple of arrow carts which did precisely naff all to stop the attackers.
The upgrades take too long and it’s too hard for a low pop realm to maintain the supply levels needed, let alone blanket the place with defensive siege.
And, as mower says, there’s little you can do from the walls besides decorate them with your corpse. Had I been able to go up on to the walls without instantly dying or getting pulled off the top by a necro/thief/mesmer then perhaps I could have done something about the three catapults that were parked all of three feet from the wall they were pounding.

I suspect that if defence was made too easy then the game would just stagnate and people would stop playing. But yes, it can be a bit annoying when you put out a call to say that the garrison is being attacked but no one comes to help.
I think that you have to accept that castle and tower flipping is just a feature of this sort of game, we are not trying to recreate a 9 month historic siege here but are trying to have some fun and get some loot.
It sounds as though your basic problem is your low WvW population. Do you have commanders who organise people or WvW guilds? If not then I think that you are going to struggle.

The problem is a combination of low population and the difficulty of defending keeps and towers. No one’s suggesting recreating month long sieges, that would be ridiculous, but it’s equally ridiculous to have a castle flipping back and forth in a matter of minutes. It renders as trivial the act of taking what is supposed to be a heavily fortified castle.
It’s a subjective thing but I would prefer something a little more involving than playing swappsies with a keep every 5 minutes.
And personally, I find there’s little fun to be found when you’re being constantly steamrollered and even less when you’re the one doing the steamrolling (that did happen with Underworld, back in the long ago time).

Population imbalance is a fact of life in this game, it’s always going to be, I’m just trying to think of ways to make the advantage of having more people less pronounced.
As it stand now it’s become a feedback loop – everyone knows that a low pop realm is going to struggle, they don’t want to keep getting their backsides kicked so they give up or transfer away, further reducing the population of the low pop realm. It’s self-perpetuating.
Look at the EU matchups at the moment, the vast majority have a single realm that’s dominating the others. Incidentally, you may notice that Underworld has the lowest score of anyone. The fights are very uneven – close fought, epic battles are increasingly rare.
Give low pop realms some way to better defend what they’ve captured and there’ll be less ROFL-stomping and more epic battles, which is how WvW ought to be.

Some people answering here do not look like they understand the problem…
I once fought at 10 VS blobs.
10, according to some, should be plenty enough to defend or hold. BUT, though 5 people knowing what to do / getting on the siege that should be used to counter whatever, can hold for some time, when attackers are so many, forget about all sieges on the walls – you will be lucky to make two shoot with them before they are destroyed by AOE.
Then, this so big bus just has to put catapults close to the walls, keeping AOEing the walls – defenders cannot build anything against sieges – and they are not enough to go out and destroy the attacker’s sieges.

It is one thing to defend / hold a keep 5 minutes, waiting for allies to come and give a hand, it is an other to try and hold it when you know there is absolutely nothing you can do, not because you are not organised – not because you are not willing – but because there is really nothing you can do.

Treb them to destroy their supplies, they just send half of their zerg away, and when they come back, they pay attention to where the treb is.

They can even break the door manually, while under the fire of at least 3 superior AC used by people who are full up, since, when they are that many, their capacity to heal themselves is phenomenal.

The problem pointed by the author is not that it’s world is not willing to defend, it’s that it is impossible, given the difference in manpower.

There need to be something that makes the game fun as much for those outnumbered as for those outnumbering. Playing hide and seek with ennemy zerg to PvD is not fun. Rolling on roamers with a zerg is not fun – PvDing empty maps is not fun. Taking a keep with the mere force of numbers is not rewarding.

The author, kitten many, is asking for a minimum of balance. Yet, though many ideas have been given to Anet, we still have no idea whether they are going to do anything about the balance. Fighting outnumbered if not funny, no matter what one try to do…

I agree with these ideas, and I too am extremely frustrated with being AOE’d to death when I’m trying to defend a tower/keep, etc.

However, I have built one of my characters specifically for being able to hold out towers until reinforcements arrive.

Arrow Cart Mastery
Siege Might
Repair Mastery
Build Mastery

All maxed.
I can build siege, repair gates/walls, and just myself on one arrow cart can push an entire zerg the other way. If I had a video I’d post it because I’ve done it more than once. All you need to make this all work is enough supplies in the depot and you’re golden.
Now bear in mind I’m not saying any of this to disprove what you have said because I agree completely. I’m just making a suggestion so that you can prevent this to the best of your ability.

I still think certain attacks should have increased or decreased damage based of height compared to the target

There is very little incentive to defend as well as little to no recognition from your team generally speaking, and it is as is mentioned above.. boring. Defending even in the current system may be more fun if 2-3 defenders of that objective could hold it. But the simple fact that a group can man mode the door down and then run you over with little to no effort is a deterrent for many to not want to do it. Then look at golems, there is nothing more depressing than looking out of your tower or keep, and seeing 5-10 omega + 30 people, when you have maybe 10 people on the map. Those golems will take out most if not all of your siege and range your gate down in less than a minute. Tower taken in less than 3 mins, keep in less than 5.

So figure out a way this can’t happen and add some incentives for people to defend and you may actually see people be more willing to do it, boring or not.

It is also equally frustrating that Guild WvW fort buffs only last 12 hours at a time along with the fact that supply buffs cannot be independently assigned, if desired. It’s also personally disappointing that, on my server anyway, guilds don’t keep the buffs up on structures. There are a couple of people that I know who actively try to be responsible for certain towers, for example, but without the added buffs, they are just treading water when it comes to defense. Curious as to whether OP and others have defended both with and without full guild buffs running. Does that make a difference in your experience?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I agree with these ideas, and I too am extremely frustrated with being AOE’d to death when I’m trying to defend a tower/keep, etc.

However, I have built one of my characters specifically for being able to hold out towers until reinforcements arrive.

Arrow Cart Mastery
Siege Might
Repair Mastery
Build Mastery

All maxed.
I can build siege, repair gates/walls, and just myself on one arrow cart can push an entire zerg the other way. If I had a video I’d post it because I’ve done it more than once. All you need to make this all work is enough supplies in the depot and you’re golden.
Now bear in mind I’m not saying any of this to disprove what you have said because I agree completely. I’m just making a suggestion so that you can prevent this to the best of your ability.

Similar strategy here. Siege Might didn’t look like much benefit to me, so I haven’t used that trait yet. I have maxed ac, treb, cata, cannon and repair, and use a build that emphasizes toughness and condition damage. I keep a good sci fi anthology handy.

I wish I could do some crafting. Didn’t there used to be a do it yourself crafting bench for sale on the TP? I don’t see it there now.

While I agree with some that suggest that the problem seems to be an issue of numbers more than anything, I think having stronger NPCs with mechanics within the keeps would/do make the fights more interesting while adding to the defensive capabilities of the keep. They’re experimenting with it in EotM right now, and I personally find that aspect incredibly fun… Nothing more hilarious than seeing someone get knocked off the flying ship at the equivalent of a ‘supply camp.’ That being said: You can have a keep with fully upgraded doors/walls, kitten NPCs, and a dungeon boss like lord, but if you have only two people to defend it and no bigger force to back it up, that keep is going to be flipped. At that point, it’s an issue of server size. And though I imagine some lower tier servers may disagree, the game mode is simply not built for small group play. There’s only so far you can go if you don’t have a larger force behind you.

My guild has pulled off some really good defenses with minimal numbers. We work with a rotation of people on watch and others on offense. On a tier 8 server you have to make the most of your available forces and keeping the same people on watch is poor management. Set yourself up for success – Garrison and Hills make sure you own them and fortify them. Do not ignore your yaks. Steady continuous improvement will win the day. Get the north half of the map sieged up. A defense is not forever. People go to bed and if you don’t have off shift coverage it can be disheartening to see the losses. But the pay off when the barbarian horde is on every gate and wall clamoring for your hide and you can turn them away and watch them gesture and dance and cry OHHH the QQ is sweet. When you hold the tide and your team surges to push them out of the gate the battle is epic. Yeah I am the old one who shouts " GET OFF MY LAWN!" The defensive fight isn’t as flashy as the zerg buster that roams around and plants their boot on the enemies face but the victory is earned all the same.

Comment from Blackgate. Nuff said.

:P

Srsly tho, there is nothing wrong with a larger force taking a T3. No one is disputing that notion. It’s still fundamentally the idea that when I’m on a wall, be it Hills or Bay for example, and it is almost as easy to kill defenders as if they are in a paper SE or SW tower, it’s just patently silly.

Ceteris paribus, if you have equal numbers of invaders and defenders, the defenders should logically win. With the T3 advantage, the number of defenders needed should be lessened. It should require strategy and tactics to overcome that, not simply zerging the door. ANet has tried to implement some things to counteract that and give a little better gameplay experience through the WXP masteries, but it can be exceptionally frustrating when even maxed out AC/Siege Might/Siege Bunker leaves a defender struggling to hold out for reinforcements.

Perhaps reducing all non-siege damage to a door to like 1 point inflicted might be part of the solution. Still enough to trigger swords/contest WP, setup adrenaline, etc. but not to have any real net positive effect from a PvD assault and better allow defenders to repair.

Then again, a heavily stacked server like BG might then have even less weakness or vulnerability other than the opposing servers finding out a way to slip some skale venom into their cheeseburgers.

IDK…

:D

Well this is rather disheartening to read.

I’m new to the game, and my interest in getting into WvW is pretty high. I would certainly prefer playing a more defensive role. However, after what I’m seeing here, I now fear that playing defense isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Pity.

TChalla.7146:

Well this is rather disheartening to read.

I’m new to the game, and my interest in getting into WvW is pretty high. I would certainly prefer playing a more defensive role. However, after what I’m seeing here, I now fear that playing defense isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Pity.

I wouldn’t be totally discouraged from entering WvW, but just keep in mind the limitations when fashioning a character. Soon the WXP will be account bound and you will be presumably able to customize various characters to be able to perform differing roles. You will still have to engage in some kind of combat in order to gain WXP ranks for the most part. The point of my argument, and others if I may fairly extrapolate, was that defenders need to have some additional capabilities to some as yet undetermined extent in order to be more competitive in those kinds of combat.

Just note that defensive posturing currently means that your defensive traiting will necessarily progress at a slower pace. In my own experience, I know I could have had more levels available if I got out and tagged more things and walked less Dolys or scouted less, however in the PPT aspect of the game, these are all vital functions and your good Commanders always appreciate those endeavors. Then again, build a Warrior and jump in the fray. It can be a lot of fun too.

Well… my main so far is a necromancer. Without knowing a great deal about the game, I have made the assumption that my use of AoE and conditions would actually play a pretty fair part in defending whatever it is I am defending. I certainly would hope I’m not the only defender out there.

TChalla.7146:

Well this is rather disheartening to read.

I’m new to the game, and my interest in getting into WvW is pretty high. I would certainly prefer playing a more defensive role. However, after what I’m seeing here, I now fear that playing defense isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Pity.

Don’t be too disheartened. I know my posts may come across as negative but it’s only because when WvW is at it’s best it’s freaking awesome and I’d like it to be that way a bit more often!
I should point out that the problems I’m experiencing are because Underworld is currently rock bottom in terms of WvW.
If you’re on a more populous realm and I promise you’ll have a much more positive experience.
And hopefully at some point in the not too distant future, with some of the good suggestions from these forums and a little TLC from ArenaNet, it won’t matter as much which realm you end up on, you’ll still have a good time.