Guild Wars 2

Sviel.7493:

In other words, the defenders would use multiple tactics that the offense could not play around to draw out the fight indefinitely and win by attrition. That sounds like it could be very fun for the defense (I enjoyed it) but terribly frustrating for the offense. They have to kill the lord, kill every warrior on multiple levels of the keep, camp the places where mesmers could drop portals and somehow keep the gates open all while fighting w/e defenders are around and dodging ACs. That sounds less like a fight than like mass torture.

The point is certainly for the defenders to find it enjoyable over the attackers but in my experience it can be equally enjoyable for the attackers to fight and lose in those situations. It wasn’t a foolproof defense either as you’ve pointed out.

Sviel.7493:

One of the primary complaints about DBL on release was the that lord’s were too powerful and made it too easy for defenders to arrive and win a fight. In addition, lords in DBL scaled to zerg size whereas before they melted instantly to a zerg. You say you miss things that prolonged lord room fights but don’t mention that they’re now much longer by default.

This is true for forces that are similar in size but for largely uneven fights this does not prolong the fight long enough for a smaller force to be particularly effective. For more similar sized fights the lord is powerful enough to reduce the duration of the fight by killing the attackers faster. A mechanic like bannering the lord does not increase the lords ability in combat so it has a smaller effect on the actual fighting, allowing the players to fight each other more. Pre-HoT garrison fights could last hours once inside the lords room.

Sviel.7493:

We should also note that popular complaints said that the lord rooms were death traps—these were taken so seriously that Anet changed the map to address them. Yet, here, you say the lord’s room is just a victory lap. How so?

Killing the attackers for you is not prolonging fights, it’s reducing them. A force large enough to overcome deathtraps will generally be unkillable by the defenders on a smaller timescale and a force similar enough in size will be killed much more quickly.

Sviel.7493:

Beneath your stated complaint seems to be the common gripe that people can destroy your super aggressively placed siege without an open field fight. Try backing up from the wall a bit and seeing what happens. If there’s a force to fight you, they will fight because they can’t keep the wall up forever (unless you’re really bad at sieging?). If there isn’t a force to fight you, there was never going to be a fight anyway.

Assuming that the problem is one server having a 100% win rate against the other the keep fight will happen because the smaller server cannot push out and win. This doesn’t mean there can’t be a good keep fights, just that one side needs a major advantage. The nature of the advantage is where we disagree, I believe mechanics that reduce the fighting between players is uncompelling.

Most commander’s gripes with keeps is not that they are unsiegeable but that they are not worth sieging. The time it takes to siege a keep now is far longer and the fights you get inside are shorter. It’s far easier for the force to leave and wait for the enemy to come out, a situation which robs the smaller force of the advantage they need to win.

The waypoint tactivator is not inherently bad but is just a less effective version of what was previously in the game.

Sviel.7493:

Once you get into the keep, a larger force will absolutely steamroll a smaller force assuming equal skill. This is a tale as old as the Orbs of Power. The only time the smaller force can put up meaningful resistance is during the fight to get into the keep. Since that fight was fairly absent pre-HoT, population imbalance led to easy wins and server stacking ensued. Now, the fight takes a little longer and isn’t as faceroll easy as putting catas on a wall and spamming AoEs up top. Post-HoT the defenders can claim a few victories by stalling an assault even though the offense always wins in the end unless the apparently glorious keep fight takes place.

You talk about a 70/30 win ratio but describe a situation where the zerg always wins. Trickling in via waypoint only shifts a fight if there are pretty close numbers to begin with—otherwise you just get run over. The keep fights you’re looking for were not a product of waypoint flashes and banners, but of fairly even populations clashing and one side having the advantage of quicker reinforcements. Those fights are simply not possible with more than moderate differences in population.

Anecdotally, this is all false and my experience is the complete opposite. The best example of this was garrison, where mesmers would portal people inside from spawn, warriors would wait above the lord to run in and drop banners and everyone else would repair holes in walls and gates. People would build ac’s that forced the attackers to move and that presented an opportunity for defenders to cc people and pick them off. Fighting the attackers at the gate is fundamentally different from fighting them in the lords room since the defenders have more control over the reinforcements. If you can control all these elements the only thing stopping the defending force from pushing the attackers back is time and it was a very meaningful resistance.

Definitely not a new idea, I’m hoping that by being specific about why attacking a keep is so much worse now that we can see improvements. From an outsiders point of view it can look the same since taking a keep pre-hot could still take hours just like it does now but the way it happens is what makes it enjoyable or not.

WALL OF TEXT ALERT

So this is a question that has a million answers depending on who you ask but in one way or another I think all people can agree that post-HoT WvW feels bad compared to pre-HoT, this is coming from someone that still enjoys WvW. Thinking about it for a while, I think I have been able to work out some of my feelings about WvW and I’m going to try and express my thoughts on what I’m going to call keep fights.

The Ideal Win/Loss Ratio

I believe that a group winning 100% of fights is going to create a negative outcome for all sides, firstly for the losing side because they will not enjoy the game. I’ve seen many guilds quit because they were on the losing side for too long, including my own, and a lot of these people blame matchmaking or population imbalance for the state of the game. After these people quit the winning groups are left with no one to fight, a common complaint comes up: Unchallenging fights can be as bad as no fights.

I saw a video online: a psychologist talking about young rats play fighting. The larger rat, while capable of winning 100% of the time, will only win 70% of the time so that the younger rat will keep coming back to play with him. I’ve talked to guild leaders about it but no one is happy to lose fights on purpose: Shifting your win rate from 100% to 70% for the sake of your opponent is not something people find easy or enjoyable.

Keep Fights: Pre-HoT vs Post-HoT

Thinking about it some more I come to the conclusion that keep fights play a major role in the spread of the win rate between servers. If a map is unbalanced the natural outcome is for the defenders to be pushed back to their keeps, which gives them better odds of winning fights against attackers. Kind of obvious. This is the part where I think I can put this bad feeling of mine into design terms.

The Advantage of Bannering Lords and Waypoint Gaps Pre-HoT

The major difference between pre-HoT and post-HoT keep fights is that there are no post-HoT keep fights. Attackers are very effectively held off by siege, siege disablers and tactivators, if they manage to get into the lords room they will generally be able to take the keep. The outcome of this is more population imbalance complaints. Pre-HoT it was much easier for a larger force to get into keeps but the defenders also had more options for defending against a force that was inside the lords room. Bannering the lord and using the keep waypoint between events were ways to prolong lord room fights. Prolonging lord room fights allow a smaller force to potentially cut off reinforcements and whittle away at the larger force.

While defenders have a better chance of keeping their structures post-HoT it’s often done with no fighting involved. A larger force will poke a keep, be showered with ac’s and siege disablers, leave before a fight can happen and then continue to win against anyone that fights them open field. If the population is imbalanced this is a bit of a lose-lose situation for everyone compared to pre-HoT keep fights, where a larger force would kill as many people as they could before getting repelled. While some people found it frustrating to take a keep with banner warriors, this is a situation where both forces get to fight and the smaller force gets to win. If your goal is fights then everyone wins. This also created a more natural connection between ppt and fighting.

Conclusion

Keep fights are important for keeping a 70/30 fight win rate between uneven groups which is important for the longevity of the game. For this to happen, keeps need to be redesigned to prolong the fights in keeps, not the fights to get into the keeps. Examples of this can be seen in pre-HoT gameplay that has now been removed.

I don’t think this will solve everything and I understand that skill balance might make it impossible to return to the pre-HoT days of keep fights. However, this proposal is a tangible and realistic starting point to start bringing WvW back on track.

I think a few people need to keep in mind that this is just a request for a minor QoL change.

I can assure you that there are guilds out there that will actively tag up/down to try and make fights as competitive as possible because they enjoy the game that way. Guilds are already doing it, Anet can either support them or not. Maybe it’s okay to listen to the guilds that still care about this game enough to act that way.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Like others have mentioned in this thread, we don’t think this would be a healthy feature for WvW. Many players will not participate in WvW if they don’t see a commander tag, and we try to avoid adding features that can be used to exclude players.

Like others have mentioned in this thread, you’ve missed the point. The unhealthiest feature of WvW is the population imbalance. Many players will not participate in WvW if they are being heavily outnumbered and guild groups running privately is a player created solution that you are refusing to support. This request is a product of guilds attempting to balance the game, not exclude players.

Bumping this too. I defended boon share months ago despite not running it anymore but I’ve changed my tune. Give dwarf rite a 15 second cooldown and disable resistance stacking out of combat with legend swapping. This should deal with some of the issues without nerfing the pve side.

I agree that it’s a very passive play style, that’s part of the reason we stopped playing it. I disagree that all the top guilds are running it. Some are and some are not while they are all still experiencing success. It’s just one way to play and by no means is it the best way.

So when I said boon share mesmers are not the problem what you meant to say was “I agree”. Got it.

Also you’re wrong. Having a group composition that doesn’t fall apart when your herald/mesmer dies scales far better than one that does.

You’re missing the point. Every single boon in the game can be permanently maintained without a boon share Mesmer, minus quickness.

How about this for practice. We scrim ND often and while they are the better guild, we have had similar success against them running both with and without boon share.

Here’s what my bar looks like with boon share: http://puu.sh/oaP29/d24f7614d2.jpg

Here’s what my bar looks like without boon share: http://puu.sh/pkKyD/8b17d7a785.jpg

We’ve run boon share for months and are now moving away from it again. There’s advantages to running it but also added weaknesses, I would know.

Except that you still get perma up time on the boons from eles/heralds. Literally no difference in boon up time except for quickness/dwarf rite.

Yes. By having one herald hitting pain absorption every 4 seconds? Are you blind??

Boon share pretty much requires double herald + mesmer, a pretty big investment. The alternative is 1 herald hitting pain absorption every 4 seconds.

Boon share mesmers are not a problem. The same boon stacking can be achieved by camping malyx, you only give up perma quickness in return for better boon strip immunity. The only reason to run boon share is to open up heralds to spam dwarf rite which is not as big a problem as it used to be. Running such tight builds are their own weakness as a more versatile group can focus key elements down while keeping a greater degree of freedom.

Props for making this thread, [ND] definitely deserves some recognition at the moment.

Lower the map population cap again and put a 2 hour time limit on generation of ppt from a structure, so it will only start generating ppt again when it is flipped. This way the ppt available to a server is entirely up to the attacking force and night capping can be only so effective. There’s some issues with groups that aren’t large enough to hold any structure as flipping undefended structures would only benefit the enemy, but you can always increase the effectiveness of yak sniping or something.

My guild mates and I are having a competition to see whoever can screenshot the highest ping during a zerg fight. So far I’m winning.

http://puu.sh/hb3tW/d830b39105.jpg

This happens consistently to a few of us every large fight.

There’s several random builds in there that I was messing with but most of it is the PvE 4/5/0/0/5 that’s explained here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE

I wouldn’t recommend it for serious roaming.

If your friend is on JQ/BG/SoS then that guardian may have been me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQjbQ4sphDs

Skyhammer is completely balanced.

I’d also appreciate it if Maguuma would stop trebbing us from their spawn.

Pinko.2076:

I think SoS mentions people complaining about night capping more than people care about night capping.

The lower the tier the more often it happens.

Well it took a couple of days but we did it. Now you can complain about night capping.

SmoothHussler.6387:

Its becoming harder and harder for NA folks to bring themselves into wvw lately with the stagnant situation, but I always wonder what motivates these asian players from staying on during the hours they do considering there is nothing around.

Maybe it’s the fact that they’re Australian, not Asian.

Sagabatou.1076:

So, how did you like those supply traps in YBBL SoS?

It took a few days to get used to but I think we’ve learnt to adapt. There’s a few of us now that like to run ahead and we’re all starting to recognize the few of you that like to suicide traps into the middle of us. As a staff guardian it’s nice to be able to warn your group that there’s someone on the other side of the gate, most likely planting the third supply trap since we started ramming.

Forzani.2584:

Mayhem.1935:

I knew we were going to lose this matchup, and so i dont care to see a 20k deficit after the 2nd night. Afterall, it is not SEA or AUS players fault they arent on “our” time. That’s an america-centric viewpoint that is just dumb.

What i am disapointed with is the lack of small scale skill from them and the sheer cowardice of some of their players. 4 SoS see 2 DH? Start fighting one on their team goes down they scatter. Now obviously that isnt EVERYONE on SoS, but kitten seems like alot. I hear they have some good guilds that small scale i guess they are just ghosts or not on the maps i happen to be on.

Just my personal observations so far. I havent had a good fight yet outside of me and 2 PD fighting 5-8+ yesterday. All day long its 5v1 or run from even fights. /shrug Guess i was hoping for more from such a highly rated server.

Higher rated server means absolutely nothing. Why do people even think that it would?

Actually it means that the average person you encounter is more likely to be built for zvz than roaming.

HippoLogic.2519:

LOL seriously SOS show some class setting up siege at our spawn in your BL when you outnumber us 3:1 just shows how bad you really are.

Most of the attacking force was naked and flying kites around their treb. Sounds classy to me.

Le Rooster.8715:

SoS’s hiccup atm is not something about our community or whatever, most of the guilds that transfered off or have to transfer off don’t want to. Togethor we built a fantastic community it’s a shame that only one person can do so much harm.

Despite everything I’m still surprised that this situation hasn’t been properly spoken about. If someone apart of it was willing to give me a proper account I’d gladly share it at my own expense.