Guild Wars 2

Input of a “retired WvW commander”

I’ve stuck around PvE to play with friends but more or less went cold turkey from WvW for various reasons which I’m 100% ok with. Even this suggestion is welcome to fall on deaf ears cause it seems WvW isn’t meant to be the game I’d want it to be, enough people like it (or at the time seemed to) so it was fine.

On the theme others have been putting in of wanting to play with friends, guilds, alliances, etc over necessarily wanting to play for a server. Why not put more focus and reward on interactions with guilds. Taking a page from the first person shooter genre (say Team Fortress 2), why not have something akin to the Domination system?

A way of tracking a slew of various ways groups on competing servers interact, with a reward pool that goes right back into the beast…

• Knowing which guild knocked over your tower / keep / etc -> knowing what points they (or their allies?) control -> and knowing that your group would get a reward for destroying / taking over / defending said points.
• Being a small vs large staffed server is rough but maybe a hidden modifier calculating your alliances average player activity compared to your competitors would grant you a bonus to rewards when hitting depots and towers.
• For groups that don’t cap and just do large player battles, why not have something akin to a banner the commander can summon (ever X minutes?). While they’re holding it any kills within its range get added to a string, every… say 50 kills a point value is added to the reward system. Killing said commander and breaking the banner would also give points to that guild.
• Fighting on non-reset days could still lead to taking the fight to a certain enemy akin to doing a daily. (Find their point and knock it down, maybe getting a message in your chat when your point is taken (by them?))

Rewards could be anything from chance of gear/ siege/ wxp/ etc on the individual scale. On the Guild/Alliance scale it could be a weekly progression tiered or a ranking of which group has been the… most competitive?

I feel like this system redesigned for GW2 could improve a lot of different things players have complaint with in the game. While it seems to just be a bunch of rewards for doing stuff the intent is they would only show up or become a multiplier when facing off against repeat opponents.

This system probably has more holes in it then swiss cheese and may not end up fixing the imbalanced server fights or inactive servers but maybe those interested can find some way for it to work

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Best of luck to you and to whomever takes over in the control room of the stream show. Really nice work connecting the fans to the makers.

My question is about all the other pvp activities beyond what we know as structured pvp (example → Legacy of the Foefire or Battle of Kyhlo).

I’m curious if people are interested in the ‘activities’ (stuff like Keybrawl or Aspect Arena) being added to the list of maps available in Custom Arena. Allowing players do have organized team play with these…. gamemodes if you will.
(As far as I know those games are single player entry only)

Hey all,
I’ve really enjoyed some of the PvP activities like Kegbrawl and the limited time Dragon Ball. However, the solo-queue being the only option kinda makes any team play or organized versus a non-starter. When the Custom Arena Kits got announced I was hoping these activities would be on the list so you could do tournaments and whatnot.

I can understand reasons against it for farming glory but with that going away is this just not a thing cause its not worth ANets time to implement? Some of these games seem simple enough in design that there’s no balance needed and could be pretty competitive.

Basically I’m wondering if there’s anyone else who would like to see ANet add team play to PvP Activities, not as a priority but if its a simple adjustment to the engine/code then its another way for this awesome game to build community events.

If there are a ton of folks who DON’T want to see team play added because it would tarnish the image of Structured PvP I get it just been curious for a while so wanted to ask.

Though (I imagine) these would be very tough to implement…

*An ‘announcement’ system for commanders that acts as a ‘pop up’ or flash in the middle of the screen for a few seconds /announce or /an RETREAT to DEPOT
*A way to promote LT’s in your squad with a marker similar to the commanders, but only visible by in-squad members.
*Being able to see your squadmates either as dots on the minimap and/or a different color name tag in game. Some way to spot a friend in a melee when told to move as one.

So I did a bit of searching to see if this was covered by a dev in a previous post but the way they implement this new push in the Living World of 2013 has me curious

In short, are the 4 teams overlapping their content or overwriting it?

To give an example; Will there be events in Diessa(T1), Southsun(T2), Mount Maelstrom(T3), and Iron Marches(T4) set to go off 2 weeks after each other then when a team’s new content comes out in the same zone or a new zone (or wherever)… POINT IS each team’s stuff would be in the world for roughly 2 months.

OR is it just 4 teams working on the same arc with special events overwriting each other in the one zone.

Both have crowds that will be interested in them but for a lot of my friends they can’t commit to playing week in and week out but when they log in once a month or so there isn’t a lot of temporary (or permanent content) that’s new and available.

So thoughts on which model you’d prefer and why? Which you think ANet will go with or have they already clarified?

Byeondthelol,
While thats fun and probably likely to happen on some Friday nights, the rest of the time the time & resources vs risk/reward aren’t in SouthEast’s favor (more then likely SE would take the Briar tower then have a 3 way fight).

If we’re focusing on Borderlands then lets consider time of siege. With SW you just have to secure Vale Depot and build some defenses for the bottleneck then have your zerg fight on the field outside, then begin making trebs. Even after a wipe thats easy to rebuild.

With SE you have to be constantly fighting uphill all the while your tower and depot are under fire, going for several choke/death zones just to reach the outer gate. If they moved for Bay/Briar instead, yes there would be better fighting but even if they succeeded in Bay the SW spawn would constantly be at their back and the focus of the map’s battle would only be in 1 corner of the borderlands.
Talk like this approaches game theory and I try my best to avoid that cause often just running through with a zerg of 50 trumps any theories you have.

I’m fairly certain this post doesnt make any sense as I’ve just passed 24 hours awake and my brain is shutting down.

Also something to the effect of SE would have a much longer spawn run to the Briar tower as well as SW tower would just breakout the tower back… but I dont want to go to indepth of my issues with breakouts on borderlands because with their flaws they are a decent resource to use in WvW.

Beyondthelol,
I stated rewards, offering money as an example (often in this forum we hear complaints about having to repair when we die in WvW so while not making Scrooge McDuck levels of money, making enough to repair, spend money on siege on top of what we get from puzzles, and then having some extra would be nice.
Beyond money though the act of getting rewarded for participation is not a moronic idea, in fact ArenaNet stated they want to reward players by way of ‘a prestige and system of advancement’
(source -> https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/)

On the second subject I’ll address the borderlands first. Yes they are identical maps and defenders should feel the need to secure their borderland. Except for the western side can place a treb in Vale Depot (arguable the most defensible supply depot in WvW) and siege down Bay. With such an advantage to one corner and disadvantage to the other, often maps will progress into a 1v1 then more commonly (though some servers have made exceptions in my experience) the defenders outnumber the attackers due to the tenacity of fighting for the borderland and eventually clear the map of enemies.

Consider the fact that if trebuchets had a slight reduction in distance then not only would SW attackers have to more directly siege the Bay keep rather then behind the Depot, the Hills treb would still be able to clear any siege being made to assault its gates.

Now for Eternal and Stonemist. Isnt the idea of stonemist to be a balancing point? If the trebs along the outer wall couldn’t hit the tower walls the tower trebs couldn’t hit SM walls. Resulting in any trebuchet sieges against stonemist being able to be countered by trebuchets either on the upper level or sitting on supply depot huts.

Towers are meant to be trade-able I would just like to see the ‘ace’ move of “even if we take this point it will just be trebbed down.”

If treb range was reduced taking stonemist may infact be harder. Would you consider them testing it for a week similar to the culling test?
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Again, with the confusion in this thread I wanna clarify I’m ok with Ele’s and guardians if they are working as ANet intended. Its the constant “is what i’m doing a glitch that will be eventually fixed” mystery that is bothering me.

ExZee you make a fair point for change #2 but how do you explain to the masses that focusing on stopping people from getting inside while the siege wears down the gate/wall. (cause I’ve been trying to teach group after group when i’m commanding and theres always people just getting tunnel vision shooting the gate)

The idea behind the change would be that there are 2 groups of defenders, those holding out inside with siege etc and those outside. The responders would have to not stream in one at a time focusing on the door and instead reward players who group together either as a pvp guild or big zerg and actually duke it out on the field.

As for your point on #1, are you in the mindset that defense as a constant is futile and should just be relied on responding zergs?

A lot of people seem to be confused over the wording, I mean scaled back to 85 or 90% what it was (as in a from 10,000 to 9,000). Sorry for the confusion the intent is not to turn them into point blank fireball machines thats silly.

1) its the the ease of defending its the value of a players time idling in a point and then beating back attackers for a bit of coin (or again, failing to defend and death) versus joining an attacking zerg and getting money, karma, xp for point after point.

2) Against zergs of 50 I can sneak past on my mesmer with stealths, blink and dodging. My ele just has to ride the lightning, lightning flash then double dodge roll and i’m inside. Yes, some classes have an easier time then most, but by that same token I see those classes more often in WvW. And if the bar is set at ‘elite squads can stop people from getting inside’ that seems a bit high since thats not the common majority.

3) Again, if ANet says that guardians and elementalists are working as intended (and if they have someone please link the post). Also my issue was 2 fold and the trebuchet reduction was with scenarios where one of the trebuchets can not be hit by the other.
To a point I don’t mind the treb back and forth so long as it is a back and forth.

EDIT: Changed wording with treb % to avoid confusion

1) Improve rewards for defending a point as well as give a first response reward (basically a separate reward for fighting in the first minute of the attack)
Right now I can make more money hitting depots, yaks, npc points, sentries, and towers in a big zerg then retaking the tower we just lost then for defending the tower and probably ending up dead.

2) When a tower or keep is under attack you have to perform a skill channel to get inside through the color-gate
If this is a siege simulator its kinda silly how even spaced out attackers can’t stop some people (perm stealth thieves or bunker elementalists for example) from just running past everyone into the point.

3) Reduce the range of trebuchets by 5-10% as well as say the Ele focus block is intended and expected or fix their ability to block siege (guardians too).
This last one is more based on what I was advertised WvW would be. If ANet wants it to be a siege from tower to keep or keep to keep then please say so. I accept that a map redesign is out of the question but please explain why the ‘helms deep’ advertised battlefield is more akin to a 3d ‘angry birds’.
I’m ok losing defensive siege to treb fire so long as its from a point I can access.
(EX of issues: Hills -> Lake Tower or SM ->Anzalias/Durios/WC/QL/Durios or Overlook -> Anzalias)

These are 3 issues I’ve seen in WvW (all based on a lack of incentive to defend) with, near as I can tell, not requiring an insane amount of resources to fix. Anyone with an argument of why these issues aren’t important other then “you should defend for the points” or “you just need more skill” I’d love to hear rebuttals.

Arena Net has said that they do not plan on scrapping the current maps and I’d imagine ‘editing’ them would fall under the same lines. A more likely (though I suspect both these ideas are far fetched) would be to simply reduce the range of trebuchets.
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I guess the core goes down to, is Arena Net advertising a large scale multi-map battlefield in the design of ‘Helms Deep’ or are they advertising a leap frog/siege simulator with a baseball element (catch the boulder and win!)

Cause if its the leap frog then yes, the game is working fine and I need to go preorder Elder Scrolls online while dropping this for Planetside.

If you can’t tell I’m one of the skeptical ‘on the fence’ players waiting to see if the February patch is going to be as ‘amazing’ as they claim.

I love all the haters for the Yaks even though we are the best of the 4 servers that have been stomped this past week collecting over 80,000 points compared to the others 30k. Yes Kaineng has lots of numbers, but once the dust settles other servers may throw in the towel the Yak’s get started with old fashion juke tactics.

GL to Crystal Desert, if you guys try to go toe to toe with the fat cats then we’ll do our best to make it level. Otherwise good luck catching our packs Kaineng.

Thanks to the guys for taking time to answer some questions on screen as well as the ghosts for messing with the lights.

QUESTIONS!
-This was awesome, are there any plans to stream Q/A events on a regular basis? First Friday of every month ANet will do some QA? Also, think its wise to vet questions from the forums instead of the chat.

-You mentioned improving rewards for players in WvW. I realize you can’t go into specifics but can you tell us what the end goal of these new rewards are? Are the rewards aimed at rewarding players who are quick to defend or help out in a grand siege instead of balling up in a big zerg? (IE running supply, staying to delay enemies instead of going to cap point)

-For dungeons & pve; magic find has become a sore thumb for many, is getting a specific set of gear to improve rewards to far out of ANet’s theme of rewarding skilled play over gear, and if so are there any plans to change this?

-Lastly, the ‘culling test week’ was a great show in testing improvements with the playerbase. Do the developers have any plans on testing more changes in the future? (A testing version of Left 4 Dead 2’s Mutagens where every week something was different)

Here’s another question I can give.
During interviews and when talking about WvW the lord of the rings ‘Helms Deep’ battle is referenced a lot as inspiration for the game. Those large scale fights that last a long time seem to be well executed with keeps. TOWERS on the other hand become this thing that when upgraded or defended by a few can really counter the small groups its intended for (often towers are mentioned at being able to be taken by 5-10 players).
With a small exception the majority of towers have a single point of contention (the wall or gate). Once that is breached the attackers usually outnumber the defenders and just roll through.
My question is this, is ANet happy with the current design of towers in relation the time taken vs the numbers used? Would you like to see them redesigned to be easier to take initially but have the potential for choke point battles to make a last stand.

Basically I’m asking to remove the option to fortify towers but have fallback points like ‘balis on the mendon bridge’ or the choke at ogrewatch tower more common in tower design.

To all the folks who may respond yes I’ve taken a tower with 5-10 but thats when no one was IN it or aware.

First want to say thank you for answering some of these questions while still devoid of free time.

My first is that while these responses are awesome they’re few and far. Does ANet have any plans for any sort of regular news event where say Rubi or Gaile collect questions every Friday morning then get an answerable list, hop on the twitch.tv with any dev’s who have spare time and answer those questions mixed with questions from the chat?
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Forming groups was very tough especially with fractals until the gw2lfg.com website became popular. When asked about a lfg tool, ANet directed players to the website to form groups as there was no current system or around the corner to being released. Why not instead endorse or even bring in the creators of the website to make it the ‘official lfg tool’ for the game or at least until a more ingame solution is made? As near as I can tell they’re having to rely on donations to keep the site running.
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The ‘temp’ culling week was (to my mind) a big step in the developers actively showing they’re working and testing things to improve WvW. Do you have other plans to test things on live servers? (Perhaps recruiting organized guilds from a battlegroup to zone in and out to test the max queue issue on a thursday night?) I know I’d be ok with being ordered around by game devs on the last day of the battle week instead of fighting.

not sure if these are my best 3 suggestions but will give brief reasons after each
1. Improved Grouping UI – Kick Feature/ Squad layout (see their hp, minimap location, etc)
2. Remove AoE cap for siege AND/OR Boost Cata & Treb player dmg – I am perfectly ok being 1 shotted by a giant flaming boulder, I should feel terror and look to the sky when I hear the ‘krashink-WHOOOSH’ sound. Siege ISN’T SCARY right now!
3. Overflow Queue – When the map you want is queue’d you instead join another map that isn’t full similar to current Overflow (Queue for EBG and enter blue borderlands and entered in EBG queue.)

Honorable Mention (4th) Really like Aberrant’s idea of scrapping badges in puzzles and just giving them in a WvW daily.

Top 5 for suspense (and recognition)

5 Fort Aspenwood – For having trolls on your server who do the worst things, cause all is fair in war.
4 Gates of Madness – For you and other servers who’s players love their server more then transferring as they fell down the rankings, may you bounce back.
3 Ehmry Bay – Cause ya’ll got some crazy beef with us always and its AWESOME bringing your A Game
2 Tarnished Coast – For amazing response/coordination of small groups
(drumroll)
1 Maguuma – For our ‘old friends’ we always seem to run into

Top Guild: Starfleet Dental (Trolling recruitment videos ftw!)

kash.9213:

polish off their shiny Ascended gear if it get’s scuffed.

The first few Ascended items are from fractals but WvW will be getting some too which will make PvE’rs rage at being forced to PvP for PvE gear. And again I’m seeing folks transfer or bandwagoning (only show up when we’re winning) rather then get into WvW gameplay.

Arcadio.6875:

While I don’t agree with Anets decision to put so much PvE distractions into WvW, given that there is map completion in WvW it only makes sense that you have to do WvW to get the POIs/vistas.

That makes sense to a point. If we agree the three pillars of GW2 are SPvP, PvE, and WvW then why does ANet put focus on PvE → WvW? Also after spending so much time doing PvE with a ‘choose what you want to do’ design (events are supposed to be the meat of the PvE experience) they say you HAVE to do this as well to get world completion?

And also the argument isn’t per say that completion shouldn’t be required for WvW. Its that I hear stories of people who transfer away from their server for a week to join one that owns the entire map in WvW just for completion.

Hooray this is an option for completionists to bypass but the fact people are doing this shows the PvE playerbase has issue with being forced to do WvW. Does the WvW community have an issue with this ‘simple’ fix?

Also don’t forget if we rotate maps 3rd placed servers wont constantly be as red and can try defending from other naturals putting the focus of the map fight somewhere other then redland.

Thurbleton.5841:

For those who don’t know currently in your setup Green is projected as the best ranked server, red the worst, and blue in the middle. For the Borderlands the map is the exact same

Thanks for reading the post as a whole, I already know what the colors currently mean.

I use the word projected because in the meta of free server transfers the ‘3rd place server’ could have a few hundred more players boosting their server

Bella.6432:

Dear Yaks Bend,

Just want you to know we miss you guys. Despite you dropping down one we honestly wish it had been the zerg mania server. You all play well and always give good fights. We’d see FA coming and we’d say .. oh jeese :P … we’d see Yaks coming and it was more like, inc yaks, (insert number) … etc etc .. think you get it. It was a match .. it was fun and it wasn’t easy or stupid zerg only.

I have to laugh as we were sitting in Mumble last night lamenting our misfortune at you all being gone!! hahaha CD is cool though .. but boy what a great time it would have been if it were you guys, cd and us.. kitten ..

Hope to see you all again soon …… TC Bella <3

Was it just me or whenever it was us Yaks/TC/FA you could hear groan’s when FA was mentioned. I did enjoy how quick you Toast’s were on your feet. You guys have a great defense population and that’s something we’re slowly learning.

I have a few members in my guild whining about how unless you get some point like an enemy garrison in their home borderlands right off the bat; claiming it to get the vistas and points for world completion are neigh impossible and you just have to wait until your that color.

Granted a lot of these complaints aren’t from heavy WvW players so common rebuttals don’t always apply. The core issue, as far as I can tell though, isn’t that ANet has players who don’t want to do WvW being forced to go in to get completion. Its that we’re getting to the point where servers will spend weeks in the same tier and ‘rank’ meaning the same color.

So what is the value of colors other then to denote rank? For those who don’t know currently in your setup Green is projected as the best ranked server, red the worst, and blue in the middle. For the Borderlands the map is the exact same (don’t me started on the fact WvW has only effectively TWO maps) yet your expected to explore all the points of each borderlands.

Are the points in Eternal Battlegrounds that skewed to give Red an advantage in their natural and Green a disadvantage? More often in matches I see Green owning all their natural and often Quentin Lake. Then blue and green are both picking apart red territory.
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OK YOU MADE YOUR POINT, WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?

Would the player base have an issue if we just rotated colors every week?
The rankings could still be found on 3rd party sites that run the Glicko numbers and players who weren’t aware of the rankings wouldn’t directly know who was the top server of the week.

This would also greatly reduce the whining of the PvE players who are just trying to get world completion because they have a much more acceptable time frame for getting completion.

• From -> You’ll get the garrison when we are that rank WHENEVER THAT IS
• To -> Worst case time is 2 weeks away but we may claim the point sooner then that

Khanswrath.1032:

I hear ya and am fully confident Anet will make changes to “liven” up the WvW scene. I just don’t want them catering to EVERY whine they see on the forums. I mean if you look at a majority of the posts and complaints they all center around assumed projections of what people “thought” WvW was gonna be. Four top examples are removing the downed state, PvE gear, siege and fixing the culling/rendering issues. Of those four only culling/rendering make any sense. Most of the complainers want WvW to be the proving ground of 1v1 matches where all that’s involved is skill. They want to be able to 1v5 people and obtain titles to showcase their prowess. That sounds a lot like sPvP to me but then again I am crazy. No one wants PvE in their WvW even though the entire premise behind WvW was to have an area you could go and do both. I for one love being able to kill other players and be able to do my daily. It has something for everyone and it’d be a shame to exclude players in the future because they cater to the one player base(hardcore PvP’ers) that is as fickle as the wind.

I’d like to think my reasoning or hope behind the request for improved siege isn’t whining. Here’s basically what I’d like to see WvW (I’m aware this probably will never happen)

The maps are redone and designed so with few exceptions (locals right out of spawn have some terrain advantages) you can’t siege from point to point. Furthermore short term siege like carts and balis are effective if done right at holding off zergs. This would result in a meta that would have a few things.

• Cata’s and Trebs would be placed on the field, could be repaired with supply, and have made on that thin line where “I can hit the wall but you can’t hit me” in cata vs cata
• Zergs would be broken down into roaming parties acting as a buffer to fight large defending groups with no AoE cap but maybe a damper (-50% dmg when hitting 10+ players at once). This would make groups have to spread out and offer better fights instead of the Portal 1->2 punch we see today.
• With more siege on the field we’ll hopefully see more value to warriors/thieves/engineers/guardians in the roles of strike groups or defense groups of big siege. Again big siege could be destroyed but if the strike team is repelled the siege can be repaired so as to not discourage fighting siege wars on the field.

Currently apart from rolling stuff over these roles don’t offer a ton when it comes to fighting folks on the wall but they can excel at ground fighting (I see thieves hop down occasionally and spinning blades but again that’s only hitting 5 people)

• A redesign of towers so they all have a ‘last stand’ point that causes the attackers a moment of pause before they can claim, currently very few towers have an effective spot for this. (Balista/Carts in the lord room covering bridge in Mendons)

Zergs could still be effective in this model but also promote smaller groups working within the meta. This is just an idea of what I’d like to see WvW become based off the current progression of players wanting to ‘zerg’ up along with others wanting small group play effectiveness. If you see obvious flaws in this where ‘zergs will just run this over’ or something please keep criticism productive to the topic.
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TL DR; I like long fights like slug matches inside SM. I want to see that happen more on the field, not tower rolls that end in 5 minutes.

TheDevilWithinU.7092:

Top servers don’t need to “only” zerg to win. We (SoR) being 5-10 of us just defended a tower that was not upgraded against a 40-50 man zerg. Top servers understand that well placed siege and tactics can make anything possible.

Also, zerging is a very big mistake as well, because you leave EVERYTHING undefended for the most part. Unless you leave a few people at each place that you cap.

You make some valid points Devil but while top servers have (I’m assuming) a majority of enthusiasts the remaining servers don’t. Which makes zergs are a big deal because that’s the easiest/simplest way to form up and do stuff.

I guess a good question for top tier server players on this topic is two fold.

• Either would an increase in siege damage/effectiveness throw off your meta game significantly? (assuming you already have small defenders beating back large groups) * * OR
• Do you have any suggestions on how to get players who don’t chat and simply stack in a ball by default to split up into smaller groups, guard points, and build siege in specific spots? (this isnt trolling, what ways could we as players or ANet use to promote and value the other ‘roles’ of WvW?)

All they are see’n now is that to win you just have to get a big enough group. Sure if you defend a point right you can get some scratch and a tale to tell but how long do you have to wait before an attack comes and whats your chances of defending successfully? People getting into WvW are taking the sure thing with zergs and rarely bothering to try defending/guarding.

Khanswrath.1032:

The casual player tends to find zergs easy and effective hence why you see so many. If you’re trying to make WvW into a glamorous end game kitten event for yourself you’re only gonna get disappointed. MAYBE Anet will cave and listen to the enormous amounts of tears about how this game is nothing like <insert any previous mmo with pvp you loved to death> and will modify it to be more similar to said game.

I do 2 organized nights with my guild a week for about an hour and a half. Between that and just running around by myself the 2-3 week stints where servers are locking in tiers is making the matches drag on and after spending a large amount of time on world completion; returning to WvW has made the game starting to get stale for no reason other then I’m not seeing any new changes and its the same thing over and over again.

You may be right and ANet planned this for casuals but they enough WvW oriented guilds on each server who want to play this game instead of something like Planetside 2. Hopefully ANet sees posts like these and can think of something for the enthusiasts and the casuals.

As previously stated I suspected some of the loss was due to a ‘build time’ before despawning but further rush defense setups resulted in fully built siege disappearing.

Also I’m not referring to one person making a dozen siege. When I run my groups we often drop all our remaining supply on defense siege then burn the local 100 instead of upgrading (the chances of holding out while upgrading proved slim when we had no siege)

Does anyone know how the ‘siege cap’ works? I too have heard theres a max of 200 siege per map but is it broken down by type (50 rams max, 30 carts, etc) ? Does it follow a circle (once 201 is made does 200 go away or 001) ?

Did they introduce the siege limit during the Lost Shores updates? (When your unable to place due to too much siege nearby). Also if this IS in fact an issue perhaps its not being solved because we aren’t noticing it and reporting it. More feedback for/against is appreciated!

We take a tower and I start dropping carts/catas/and balis for defense. As everyone starts moving back and forth from the depots to build I notice there are sections where I had placed siege but theres none there now.

This could be clever enemies sneaking in and aoe’n them down along the wall but wanted to know if anyone else has seen siege disappear after placing a TON down on a tower just after claiming? At first I suspected it was because the siege was still in ‘building’ phase but even when dropped over time just after a dozen or so siege is built around a point I’ll notice some along some wall will disappear and no attackers were spotted.

Am I cray cray or is the game making siege disappear?

Remove the 5 person AoE Cap and increase the damage of Catapults/Balistas/and Trebs (and I guess make their warning signs more noticeable). We don’t fear siege anymore and for big zergs siege isn’t needed if the group is big enough. (1 ram’s dps = roughly 50 people)
Lets say 35/50 people are right on the door, 3 cata’s from inside or a few arrowcarts placed far enough back squash them.
-Zergs will spread out more or get wiped by 3-4 balistas on a hill
-Give defenders a chance to score some kills before getting rushed post breach of a point
-Hopefully give players a reason to use siege/supply more instead of the 1-2 people who drop it in zergs.

And if your argument is the defenders will get aoe’d down… well 10 defenders vs a 50 zerg invasion already DO get aoe’d down

I know there’s ways around and decent counters for a crack group of a dozen guys but I dont play on a tier 1 server where you probably never see the outmanned buff. I’m on Yaks bend and sure we dance the line between teir 3 and 4 but we’re almost always low pop and still got plenty of folks who join to have fun auto afking doors so we’re just trying to make due.
so… forget it, guess I’ll just go to the southwest spawn borderlands
best of luck to you and stormbluff this week cover

Cover Girl.2580:

that treb is ridiculously easy to take out. use the longwall path from the north and toss some meteor showers up there

Wouldn’t use the term ‘ridiculously’. As you can see on the map the fight tends to end up at the bottleneck bridge but even if people can get past there only 2 professions (If meteor shower can hit assuming ranger volley can too) out of the 8 can target it.

So yes… its ridiculously easy to counter if you have enough people to push the defenders to the keep gate then have elementalists and rangers go up that hill to wear down a treb while probably going under fire from defenders on the wall.

so 25% chance your a profession thats able to take out the treb, maybe higher odds if engineer mortars can take it out… while standing perfectly still to use the mortar….

So we fought tooth and nail for this tower and have been fighting to get into the keep. Actually as the map shows trying to get past a bottleneck bridge to get TO the keep. Meanwhile all the opposing force has to do to stop us, is this one trebuchet.

I know people already know about this spot cause I see it all the time but this seems kinda silly. If the treb had to be placed on the edge of the wall where we can damage it I’d be fine but its safely out of aoe range on the rampart… up a hill…. past a bottleneck.

I realize WvW has been called time and time again as intentionally not being balanced but having 1 guy undo the work of 30 and all they can do is just stare as the wall wears down is kinda getting taxing every time we fight to take this tower.

I also realize its the weekend and even on a workday ANet probably doesnt sift through the hundreds of posts every hour but just wanted to add another post of “Come ON, seriously!?”

Just one wish? I’d like to see the bulk of towers/keeps redesigned to allow for a balance between pre wall/gate down and post wall/gate down.

Very often I see as soon as the threshold opens the defenders bail and run. On a handful of points you can find a chokepoint of some sort within the design to allow for a ‘last stand’ causing the attackers to falter rather then rush in.

• Mendon Bridge (EB)
• ColorLake Tower Stairs (BL)
• Ogerwatch Cut under the bridge (EB)

These last two don’t have exact choke points but can occasionally delay attackers.

• Durious Gultch (EB)
• Klovan Gully (EB)

A redesign on towers with the aim of moderate defense pre gate and an effective rally point post gate would definitely pick up game interest with hopefully a low amount of ANet resources spent.
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Some of my favorite memories from WvW are the slugging matches that ensue after a point is down. Often seen when all three teams are vie’n for Stonemist but recently had a 30 min fight at ColorLake Tower after the wall had fallen and the attackers had to retreat and whittle us down with treb fire.

I support your post whole heartily. Very often I’m asking folks to use the most out of their profession and support but sadly I see the masses just wanting to auto/afk on a door in my tier.

first I want to say I’m a mesmer and I have no problem with portal bombing and I’ve never used it. My issue is when a ton of people stack up one one point two issues happen

#They don’t all load due to culling (ANet is working to fix this issue currently)
#We can only damage 5 out of the X players that are on that spot.

• Currently ANet has no fix to the 5 player limit not only on player abilities but siege as well, furthermore they’ve limited the amount of siege you can place in close proximity.
• If this was remedied either with the cap removed on everyone or just siege I think we’d see a drop in ‘turtle defense’ and ‘portal bomb’ strats cause we could just aoe that one spot and get a TON of kills (furthermore a smart guardian could just run to the portal exit and use his ‘no one can leave this circle’ ability to trap them)

In other words people are abusing portals as a way to exploit the game, rather then fix the symptom by nerfing mesmers I’d like to see the real issue dealt with. I’m all for working together and ‘grouping up’ but that doesn’t mean we need to stack on top of each other.

This may make all you grumpingtons on Aspenwood get even grumpier but seems like the reason we’re not trying to attack Tarnished Coast (or Toast as we call them) is cause they’re really hard to beat and you guys aren’t fronting the numbers or pulling silly moves sometimes.

I know the meta game play is that we should gang up on Toast until they are not in 1st but they have faster, more player, and better performing response. Like to think Toast thinks the same for us cause we’ve had many many weeks to learn how to do zone defense with a small force versus large zergs long enough for our Alliance Guilds to repel them.

Oh and sorry we haven’t made a nickname for you guys yet on FA. Although if you run into Gates of Madness call them Gomby’s please : D

Seems like portal bombing is a symptom not the real issue. If culling wasnt an issue or if being a group of 40+ was bad for WvW then portal bombing would be less effective.

Adding more things related to the point vs point system so you have to spread out or taking off the AoE cap for everyone or just siege would do the trick… going through a portal with all your buddies only to all be 1 shotted by a balista would quickly diminish the effectiveness of portals.

If the aoe was lifted you can be sure people would opt for circling an enemy zerg instead of ‘turtling’ up

Short version is player interaction to upgrade points, possible dynamic depending on how many players are nearby to help similar to pve events.

-Want to upgrade a wall? You need to bring ‘ore supplies’ from the nearby depot along with the standard supply mechanic so players will be running back and forth (inadvertently protecting yaks and patrolling). Similar to just carrying a spawned in item from A to B that can be dropped for 30 seconds like siege prints.

-Want to upgrade the doors? Perhaps protect lumberjacks while they go into the nearby lands to gather wood?

-Want upgraded troops or vendors? Collect nearby foodstuffs or escort someone as they go to spawn to rally more npcs then protect them back. (This will make upgrading farther points more of a challenge.)
^-Perhaps this could be repeatable when an adjacent point is under contention for low pop or ‘outmanned’ servers as a way to help push the battle back and forth.

It would also be nice to see the maps develop more with either stonemist turning into a rubble filled battlefield or areas in the borderlands being built up (say the ‘citadel’ adds more houses and instead of 1 depot it becomes an urban fighting area?)

Some of these are bad ideas but hopefully the general concept of making multiple events/reasons for players to spread out and defend (at least during the upgrade phase) will be taken into consideration by ANet.

I realize WvW wasn’t intended to be a core pillar of the game but hopefully it will become a fun constantly evolving gametype like the PvE world is.

Basically for most servers (light ones this wont apply and prime time when everything is queue’d this isn’t needed) the bulk of players will try to queue for Eternal Battlegrounds and their home Borderlands. When prompted that that map is full it gives the option to queue, but also to queue and join another map while they wait.

This would get more fighting in the other maps and possible players would stay even after prompted that the map they wanted has an open spot in the queue.

I was first to respond and only found a broken altar with the orb next to it and npc guards still up. Our only available alter was EH so got an escort and brought it there. While I dont mind since we have 1 day left of this circuit the issue of not being able to repair Altars seems kinda important to WvW…

Indeed we do have fun!

You can get ~20-25 badges a day doing all of the jumping puzzles. If you’d rather place it safe you could just do Eternal (which gets you 8-12 badges) and your home borderlands on multiple characters (since badges are account wide)

I’ve gotten my chest and shoulders so far with this system along with general wuv wuv fighting.

The buffs are nice but I don’t feel the cost of constant death (because I would be facing superior numbers) balances out. When a group can make it past the ‘blockade’ at spawn (which is typically where the fighting ends up when one side is outmanned) I rarely end up die’n and can enjoy the bonus XP and Karma from hitting camps, yaks, and sentries (I dont think I’ve ever found any magical items in WuvWuv apart from chest loots so +Magic Find does squat for me).

But for the Swarm that is fighting outside spawn, more would be prone to try fighting if they new they weren’t just constantly wasting coin and rarely getting a kill.

I know this is unlikely to happen and ANet often stands firm on their decisions but wager it was worth suggesting. I dont feel this breaks the game for one side or the other.

That or offer more ways to get past the blockade…. underground paths or some such.

These past few days I’ve noticed my server being active and holding territory in EB and 2 Borderlands but a third we are almost always ‘Outmanned’. Now I wont gripe about the buff but rather see a way to solve this issue in a way ANet has handled queues in the PvE game.

How tough would it be when someone wanted to join a queue’d battleground it prompted them ‘This battleground is full would you like to join another until yours is available?’

That would get bodies into the battleground and possibly gain that shard a foothold on the map and keep some in that map instead of joining the full one when the queue popped.

Thoughts community?

I’m one of the [Bomb] leaders for WvW and I just want to see a fair fight. I’ve heard reports of someone on my server hacking an orb and for that I (and other big wvw leaders) apologize on behalf of our server. I’ve heard Mag has broken their orb to be perm for them as well.

Whenever [Bomb] is running in force we will only be going for the higher score team, so until ehmry catches up in overall points we will be focusing at magumma.

Goon Squad and Starfleet Dental, COME AT US BRO
<3

Lets have a good week of fighting, if you see any guilds hacking to break orbs or steal points please report and screenshot. I want to acknowledge starfleet at the defense of Magumma Garrison saturday night.

-[Bomb]

POST ABOUT EXPERIENCES WITH A NON-SELF BALANCING SYSTEM AND SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO FIX IT.
Before I post a response I feel I should mention I play on Yaks Bend. Week one we had an insane lead and the maps were queue’d. This second week we’ve been on the losing side, not exactly being stomped but every morning we usually only have 1-2 keeps and a handful of towers with Blackgate controlling most of the field.

Every morning most of the towers and the nearby keep are upgraded partially/fully. Having to retake these is very hard given our lack of supply, we usually have the outmanned buff, and its very easy for enemy players to just run in and then aoe from the relative safety of the walls.

This is compounded with the fact the defenders inside the point have +150 to all stats and 15% more health then normal.

-SUPPLY Depots are anything BUT an area of supply. I would like to see faster generation or a higher base value for these points. You can raise the supply needed for upgrading as well but spending 100 supply on rams and arrow carts to take a defended tower then having none left at the depot to set up siege to defend the point results in the more populated server simply retaking it.

-OUTMANNED BUFF; Right now the buff is ridiculous. Granted it may not be designed as an incentive to play or to balance the game but consider this situation which is fairly common. Your against a larger force, who has better buffs, and more then likely a stronger position tactically. How are you supposed to KILL one of them in order to benefit from these buffs?
More often in WvW they just back off and heal, the only time to get a solid kill is to close the gap but with the difference in numbers between the groups its a tall order.

-TOWER/KEEP GATES. I’m not referring to doors, I love doors. A few rams or some such and they fall, and the siege up top is ok and great in a balanced fight. What I hate is how easy it is for 1-2 defenders to blink/shadowstep/or just dodge roll past all the attackers and get inside. Its more enraging then trying to move your pug zerg an inch.
I realize its important to get in a point to defend it but at the same time its nigh impossible to keep people OUT of a keep short of a dozen guardians rotating the push back bubbles. What I’d like to see is a 1-2 sec delay of having to stand next to the door before you get teleported in.
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I feel these changes would give a big help to teams trying to regain a foothold in maps while still keeping WvW overall enjoyable and fair. Another idea was to limit the amount of upgrades you could do in enemy territory (like no cannons/mortars) which would make a server who DID hold a point for X amount of time that much more impressive.

shortcake.8659:

I don’t get how anyone thinks they even remotely have a right to complain about queue times. If you’re going to sit on an overpopulated server so you can “win”, it’s your fault and nobody else’s.

I’m on Yaks Bend which is VERY near the bottom and unless I get on right after work I will have a queue on ALL four maps. The issue isn’t a ‘winning’ server, its that if the queue is full its hard to get your group of friends/guildies in to do coordinated stuff.

But your second point is valid. I see players ‘sitting’ a lot or just running around. This is a bit of an annoyance but an issue that is hard to solve.

I held off a 10+ player offense and I’ve seen small groups hold off large zergs. It just costs an equal amount of resources. 6 arrow carts will do enough damage to down a player, same as 3 balistas. those are rarely seen as a defense though because you currently have to put them at the edge to hit the enemy. The main issue with siege as a defense is they currently take damage from retaliation (though I hear that is getting fixed so thanks ANet!). One thing that would be awesome is if you got the ‘zoomed’ out camera while manning arrow carts. Then we can place them in spots that can’t be AoE spammed down while still harrassing the attackers. Cata’s and Trebs can be countered by mortars, thats what those are built for.

The zerg teams that is primarily due to a lack of grouping system. I’ve found 4-5 people can do hit and runs on depots and towers (if they have an upgraded ram and its a standard tower). double that if its fortified. The issue is people dont want to wait and group up, its easier to find a (or the) zerg and join that.
Best cure for this is to learn the game and be vocal in chat, calling for small groups with yourself as the lead ‘LF4M, small team for farming X supply depot/sentries’ or ‘whos up for doing some hit and runs against the enemy lines’ (someone mentioned thieves which I think is brilliant)

Putting a level limit on WvW that has merit but is a bad move I think. A smart play would be to restrict EB to a certain level and up and allow the borderlands to be open to everyone. ANet is hinting this by putting high level gathering in EB and low level in borderlands but lowbies dont pick up on this.

One last thing, while I’m sure the ‘pve’ element of WvW is debatable the jumping puzzles are very important to farm. I’ve gotten about 100 siege blueprints not to mention my first badge set from doing those. If you remove that easy tool for getting siege items the game might as well be pay to win.

Oh and I completely agree the Queue is an issue and some transparency wouldn’t hurt if the issue is to hard to resolve. One humble players suggestion is a 5th map if all 3 servers are ‘full queue’ servers or maybe just ‘upper league’ servers?