On our community forums, a number of our guilds are baffled by a couple of nuggets that came out with yesterday’s statement by Devon on WvW:
We will also continue to make changes to siege weapons and introduce new siege weaponry to throw the balance in favor of well-organized groups while retaining the joy of jumping right into things for more casual WvW players.
Holding a tower against all odds with some smart siege placement and a bit of luck may be one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in a video game.
I’ll begin by stating where the objection comes from, then offer some solutions.
Organized groups are not especially interested in using siege in combat (one of Gandara’s most prominent guilds, XxX, hates using any siege altogether), and the most fun you get out of WvW will not be from how you place siege. It’s much more exciting to wipe a large group with coordination, tactics and patience than it is to wipe it with large amounts of siege.
What’s really thrilling about the PvP in WvW is being able to use all your profession skills, coordinate your combo fields and area skills (e.g. warding, feedback), and outmanoeuvre your opponent as a group. You don’t get this by placing an arrow cart or ballista and cycling skills 1-4 while standing in one spot.
Making siege more effective wonn’t give organized groups any particular advantage over zergs either. While the former can manage their supply better, the latter will simply have more of it, and all a zerg needs is one person to drop blueprints so that the organized group has no advantage in siege.
If more effective siege isn’t the answer, what is it that will give smaller, organized groups a better chance in this game?
Watch some videos and you’ll realize that what organized groups want is already in the game, they just need more of it. Organized groups take as much advantage of terrain as they can, whether it’s chokepoints to camps, slopes and cliffs they can loop around on, blind spots, or stairs and walls in towers.
Focus on map design. The current maps are far too open for these terrain elements to be present in many combat situations. That openness also hands the strategic advantage to zergs, who can quickly move from end of the map to the other. While there may be technical limitations on map size, the layouts can and should be adjusted to make it impossible for a single group to control an entire map.
You could try including new terrain elements, like shifting passages (destructible bridges, enchanted forests?), or treacherous mountain passes (think LOTR with opportunities for ambushes). If the terrain were more restricted, towers and keeps could actually exert power over a map.
Making waypoint use more dynamic could also help smaller groups. If you give players a lengthy cooldown on waypoint use, it becomes that much harder for zergs to hop across a map in unison. You could allow scouts to buy shorter cooldowns with WXP, and remove it altogether for outmanned servers. If the map is designed so that it’s that much more difficult to navigate, then you can think about introducing temporary waypoints for attacking teams, in particular for guild groups.
I realize that good map design is one of the most difficult things to do for WvW, but if this game is to be improved it must build on its strengths instead of relying on cheap siege adjustments and novelties. GW2 combat mechanisms are incredibly fun and should not be subordinated to siege in WvW.
I’ve focused on challenges that organized groups could handle more effectively than zergs, without relying on mechanisms that punish players for how large their groups are. I think there are more ideas out there and I’d love to hear them.
TL;DR: If the devs’ long-term goal is to make WvW “about tactical acumen and skill”, they should direct their attention to how map layout and terrain affect the flow of the game rather than making siege weapons excessively dominant.
Asura on patrol in defense of Gandara and Bessie!
Administrator of http://thisisgandara.com
(edited by Bertrand.3057)
