Guild Wars 2

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The ‘Marked’ debuff will apply to a stealthed player, but the player will only be visibly marked on the map while unstealthed. We may set this debuff to also reduce stealth duration, but wanted to get feedback on the basic version first.

Thanks for the response. Throwing my 2 cents in: Given how massive the new borderlands keeps are, and the ability for PU mesmers to currently maintain very high stealth uptime, it could be quite hard to track down one even if he is marked on the map temporarily between stealth. Even moreso if that mesmer had a thief buddy with him. That stealth reduction debuff could go a long way toward making finding mesmers after a keep take more fun and less annoying.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Hi all,

• Keeps will now mark enemy players within their perimeter, for the first 5 minutes, after being flipped.

Will this mark also apply to stealthed players? And if so, will it actually reveal them too, or if they are stealthed will you see the mark on the minimap but not the player?

Tyler Bearce.3427:

• Arrow Carts (all types) now require 10 more supply to build.
• Players can no longer rally off of basic creatures in WvW. Only veteran rank or higher.
• Keeps will now mark enemy players within their perimeter, for the first 5 minutes, after being flipped.
• Fixed a bug where waypoints were available for a few seconds between repel events.

Amazing. Now if you wouldn’t mind porting these changes over to regular WvW while we wait for HoT…

I have to second cele engi as a great build, at least from my experience as a mid-tier player. I’ve been using juggernaut and HGH to a lot of success, and my sustain is fantastic. I play d/d ele too and honestly, not only do I have better burst healing with healing turret on my engi, but I can stack might a lot faster in a fight too. This is the build I’m using:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqelUUh6rY7WwWLQ+FL3FV4EGQZGYDGhBg4B9D5AA-TJRGwAAeAAGOBAo2fYZZAA

You could probably swap tools for inventions to get kinetic battery or adrenal implant plus streamlined kits, but I really like how bunker down works with the build, even more sustain plus damage. I’ve been nuking your average d/d cele eles with this build, btw.

Edit: I should add, something a lot of people don’t know: protection injection in alchemy still works amazingly with juggernaut, since it will proc even if you have stability. Against CC-heavy classes I end up rolling with a lot of protection uptime as a result without ever actually getting CC’d.

Thank you for posting this. John has accurately identified the core issues right now with WvW, and I’m glad to see them acknowledged. I’m cautiously optimistic that they’ll be addressed, though as others have said, I’m not going to hold my breath. But regardless, it makes me happy to hear addressing them will be the #1 development priority after HoT launch. I genuinely hope you follow through; WvW has a lot of unrealized potential, I’d hate to see it go to waste.

Dibaryon.7469:

The only thing that sucks is keeps and towers being automatically upgraded. I’m still convinced it’s not the best idea ever, and that there should be a different solution to this (even though I loved the new map).

I think automatic upgrades (as in, don’t have to pay gold for them, don’t have to babysit them by constantly selecting new upgrades) are great. I think the worry for roamers is with inevitable upgrades. Under the new system, objectives will upgrade whether yaks get to them or not; yaks will only speed up the process if they successfully reach an objective. This seriously diminishes the importance and weight of flipping camps and yakslapping.

One solution to this is to keep the automatic upgrades, but also require that a certain number of yaks reach an objective in order for each tier of upgrades to occur. That way roaming groups can still have a serious impact (denying upgrades) by flipping camps and killing yaks (like they currently do today).

The shrines buffs only apply to the team that actually owns the keep. Attackers that take the shrines don’t get these buffs themselves, they only deny them to the defending team.

I actually really like that the shrine buffs are only 5 mins. It basically means that, if you’re roaming or in a havoc group (meaning you’re likely taking shrines all the time) then you’ll have a really high uptime on the buffs. Whereas large zergs that focus on taking larger objectives won’t see much value in it, since it’ll likely wear off before they engage in a fight. It’s basically a buff primarily for roamers and havoc groups. If you increase the length of the buff, then zergs are gonna be swarming shrines too, which defeats their whole purpose as an objective for which roamers and small groups are better suited.

DiscoJacen.1590:

there is no existing community! I wouldn’t be kitten my self on these forums if there were one^^

Then why are you still on the server? Anet just made it so you can transfer off to another lower population server much more cheaply.

The change they made is not going to fix anything immediately. If you can’t wait for players from higher pop servers to slowly start trickling down, then there’s a number of other EU 500gem servers to choose from, transfer there.

http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep-calm-and-don-t-feed-the-troll-22.png

x indigo x.6981:

Please understand that this change is meant to SOLVE the ghost town issue. If anet combines this with a dynamic transfer rate cost, BOOM that would solve a HUGE part of the problem with strong momentum too.

What are you looking for? more players in your lower tier ? this will solve it.
Is playing with your friends more important than playing in T1? this will solve it. Transfer with your friends.
Are servers OVERSTACKED with population bigger than what the map can hold? are queues killing your wvw experience ? this will solve it.
Is your guild and other guilds looking for a fresh start? this will solve it.

What exactly is the issue you’re complaining about ? Players getting locked out of a FULL server ? that is NEEDED to make the experience for the players on that server better. You want to get to a full server? ask yourself why ? This is a good change to WvW .. this is healthy long term approach ! This isn’t the libosection or twisted fancy cosmetic change. This is a healthy diet long term plan of success approach. We always look for the diet pill, but have you tried changing the bad habits and having a salad every once in a while ? :/

Blaaaaah ! i’m ranting now ! .. please understand that this is a very healthy change. The approach is right. The only thing that needs to prove itself now is how robust the algorithm is.

To those that complain about it and not like it, I would very much love to hear your suggestions as to what solutions would have been better.

Some said lower total server numbers .. meaning retire some server.. meaning FORCE people to transfer servers.. meaning violate those players cause hey i don’t like new algorithm ..

Some said free transfers .. THE WHOLE ISSUE STARTED BECAUSE OF FREE TRANSFERS. Please do not bring free transfers back. In fact add more penalties on players transferring out of lower population servers towards higher population servers. while also encouraging and rewarding transfers from higher population server to lower ones.

PICK A SERVER AND STICK TO IT! Have some server pride! Improve the community in your server! Learn not to just raise your hands and run away to another server when things get tough!

If you’re in lower tier, this will bring more population your way. If you’re in high tier, this will alleviate your queues. THIS IS A GOOD THING . UNDERSTAND THAT , PEOPLE !

Just quoting this again, this is an incredibly important post by Indigo. All of you that are complaining about this change, please read this and remember it. This is a healthy, LONG TERM change that could go a long way toward not only balancing WvW populations, but making the communities on each server more healthy too.

The biggest threat to the long term health of WvW in this game has been the tendency for population imbalances, overstacking, and mass exoduses to de-stabilize server communities. This was exacerbated by the free transfers early on in the game, and then cemented into place when the cost to transfer to each server was made effectively the same.

This change is an attempt — finally — to nudge things in the right direction. Please be patient, and give it a chance to work. And while you’re at it, do some soul-searching and ask yourself what you really care about: Playing in the full community you’re currently in, playing with your guild mates, or playing with your real life family and friends. If you can’t do all three, then you need to make some hard decisions. This change isn’t about your personal interests; it’s about every WvW player’s interests in the long term health of this game mode.

This is great, thanks for the work on this Bill and Stephen, and for keeping us updated. Much appreciated.

Yeah, second update: I forgot I had one other character that had done some of living story season 2. Everything is bugged for that character too (everything, including pvp reward tracks, collections, achievements, etc). For all other characters that never touched LS2, everything is fine.

Update: It seems this bug is only showing up on the first character I logged into after the patch. All other characters are fine, it shows my S2 unlocked and achievements normal. The problem persists only for that first character, even after re-logging.

I’m now seeing that this bug seems to only happen with the first character I logged into after the patch. All other characters are fine, but the problem persists with the first character even after re-logging.

Reporting a bug: All my PvP reward tracks have been reset.

Edit: This appears to be only on the first character I logged into after the patch. All other characters everything shows up fine. The problem is persisting on my first character after re-logging though.

Also same, all my collections have been reset.

Edit: All silverwastes and drytop achievements have reset too. My total achievement points seems to be the same though.

Same here. S2 achievements all reset and episodes all locked.

Exciton.8942:

Glad that the new patch is rolling out tomorrow.

I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure out whether your new algorithm is working. The accumulated points earned by each world is a pretty good indication of their WvW population.

For example, current NA Tier 2 is a very imbalanced matchup. If those three servers roll out to show similar population level. Then something is definitely wrong with your algorithm.

I don’t think it’s quite that simple. There’s only 4 or 5 population tiers, it’s still possible in the short run for worlds in an unbalanced matchup to be in the same one, just because they may all each still have more population than the worlds in the matchup below them. This algorithm change should help balance populations between worlds a bit over the long term by encouraging players who wish to transfer to go to lower tiers, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if all the NA Tier 2 servers turn out to be “very high” population".

In other words, just try and be patient tomorrow everyone.

aspirine.5839:

Nice to see a dev posting here, but I dont see how this will change anything in wvw :/

If the determined population levels truly reflect actual WvW server population fairly well, this could be a tremendous change. Having lower (not free, but lower) transfer costs to lower population servers offers a tremendous incentive to players and guilds looking to transfer to transfer down, not up. This has the potential to significantly even out populations across servers over time. It’s not a panacea, but it could go a long way toward fixing problems with population balance.

Puck.9612:

apharma.3741:

Will there be a period of free or very low cost transfers to allow for a slight rebalance of population etc?

Will there be any free transfers, for example to the bottom 3 servers?

Less populated servers should cost less money but making them free would be very bad for WvW.

Can’t emphasize this enough. Lower cost transfers to lower populated servers is great. Free transfers would be disastrous. There’s just way too much instability caused by making transfers free.

Edit: Forgot to say, thank you Samuel, this is a fantastic change, very much appreciated.

ASP.8093:

So, I dunno, maybe just give everyone like 3k hp so they don’t die quite as fast and call it a day? :/

I actually think this isn’t a bad idea. Maybe in addition to that, buff some of the other burst specs to be more in line with shatter mesmers currently, and call it a day.

Just throwing my feedback into the pile.

In general I want to say that I’m a big fan of special events in WvW, and throwing up a WvW experience/magic find buff to encourage more people to come out and try it.

This event, however, is a severe miss, and I really think a predictable one too. My matchup has resolved to running around in big circles of golems in EB, farming experience and WvW exp and leveling alts. There is very little actual PvP happening at all.

I think Anet’s intention was to try and incentivize bringing golems onto the battlefield to fight other players and golems, which I agree in theory could be a fun event. If you try this again (or even, if possible, if you could implement it in this current event), I highly, highly suggest that, in addition to the buffs to golems you made, you also disable their ability to damage walls and gates. That’s the only way I see to actually incentivize golems for use in PvP fights.

I’ve been trying to theorycraft a conjure build too, same idea of camping earth to avoid crits. With the high might uptime this could probably work on cele amulet too for a bit more sustain, plus you’d get added condi damage that way.

Asudementio.8526:

Edit: You know when most people quit a MMO they don’t hang around for months screaming at people still playing it. Problem may not be with GW2 mate- just sayin’

Seriously, lol. It’s like GW2 stole his lunch money or something.

I think there’s been a lot of new players because of stronghold. I definitely fit that category; have played spvp on and off since the game released but have picked it up a lot more recently to try stronghold, and have been liking conquest more as a result too.

Also the trait changes have made build theorycrafting a little easier, and given good build-making is a lot more important in spvp than in pve (and arguably more than in wvw too if you’re mostly a zerg player), spvp is a little more accessible now.

Don’t worry though, there’s plenty of veteran spvp players doing all they can to stem the tide of new players. One player yesterday first accused me of hacking after I lolmesmer bursted him down, saying he reported me. Then he said he was DDOS’ing me so I could look forward to losing my connection. Then he called me a scrub and told me to get gud, come back when I’m rank 80. Then he blocked me funny stuff.

Josh Davis.6015:

I’m seeing “no rally” pop-up a lot.

Thoughts?

A no rally week would be fantastic. Seriously, this is probably the best suggestion made so far.

TheGrimm.5624:

Need to get a Kylo match tonight. One issue that took me a while to wrap a tired mind around was getting caught up in the treb. Would try to drop it when an attacker moved in a would get stuck. I think the treb on Kylo allows a player to pass through it where as the treb in Stronghold is solid and a player can get caught up in the bracing bars of its stand.

I definitely had this issue as well. I loved the changes to the treb, made it feel much more worthwhile to use. But I had a lot of issues getting stuck in it, it has a very awkwardly-shaped collision box. I would consider either giving it a cylindrical collision box, or just removing collision detection for the treb altogether.

Otherwise, I really like the iteration on stronghold, I feel like it’s gotten better every beta. Lots more teamfights now too, especially with the changes to supply.

Tofu.1978:

I’m against anything that would encourage people to run away from fights when out manned. If you play wvw for the fights I’m not sure a straight ppk system would actually benefit you. Maybe award some points for time spent in combat and also for kills. Seems exploitable but straight ppk doesn’t seem to motivate properly.

I also regularly see troll upgrades and have someone taunting in map chat how they are reporting our tag movements to the enemy servers (which is stupid because you just send the tag somewhere the main group isn’t going). Would we have suicide squads on second accounts with ppk? I don’t know.

This. There’s a lot of potential unintended side effects of a pure PPK system, especially in a game mode that frequently features imbalanced fights. That’s why we don’t have one.

If anything, I think they should fix the PPT system to make it more interesting. A tick every 15 minutes is just boring, and makes groups care less about defending a recently taken objective unless the tick is imminent. Make ticks happen every 1 min instead. Even better if each objective has it’s own unique tick clock, instead of the global one we have now. There could even be a counter at each objective showing how many points that objective has accrued since it was taken. Maybe objectives that are upgraded should earn more points per tick. There’s lots of other ideas.

Shifu.4321:

Played around with mortar in WvW for a few hours.

It’s still quite effective, very good when complemented with grenade. I’d say current damage slighly less than Well of Suffering’s tick, making it great ranged pressure on zergs. Best used when you’re on an elevated area where you can take advantage of the projectile arc to LOS other ranged damage.

In terms of usability, IMO, it’s much better as ranged pressure than old grenades simply because you won’t kill yourself using it, and the AoE is more reliable than grenades. The frozen field and poison fields can also be quite disruptive when shot on the middle of a zerg. You need to be smarter now when using it. Whereas I could just spam mortar 1 before, I need to switch between mortar, grenade and rifle now depending on the situation. Orbital strike + grenade barrage on the backlines can down a lot of people when coordinated with a good push.

So even in its nerfed state. still a very good weapon (for wvw at least).

I gotta agree that mortar kit still feels pretty good in WvW on a zerk engi. Great ranged pressure that’s spammable every 1/2 second. Even though mortar 1 takes a while to reach a target, you can just continually lay down mortars and catch a ton of people with it. You often end up forcing a zerg to either engage or run away; they can’t just stay at range and tank the damage. At the end of the day there’s still no other profession that can do that kind of aoe damage from 1500 range, it’s a nice niche role.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

People still complaining that wvwers only have no asc? While I agree wvw is way slower in acquiring mats than pve, the loot is still there and unless you are one of the few that upgrade everything all the time. you should be able to craft some asc by now.

Seriously? How much gold/hr do you get in WvW? Cause I almost exclusively play WvW and I’m not exactly rolling in it. I’ve had no trouble at all acquiring the account bound items you need to craft the armor (bloodstone, dragonite, etc). The problem is the sheer amount of gold required to make ascended armor (and to a lesser extent, weapons). For my elementalist, by last count it’ll cost me 600 gold just to make my armor alone (and thanks to silk rising in price after the announced changes, it’ll probably cost even more). And that’s to make 1 ascended armor set with 1 stat combination, which after guard stacks are removed may not even be ideal anymore. It’s an insane jump in price over a set of exotic armor.

Agreed, seriously doubt this will take away from WvW, and it’s a major nod to the GvG community. Good on Anet for listening and implementing this, we’ll see how the end results turns out obviously, but this looks promising.

I’d really like to hear the dev explanation for this change too. I wasn’t a fan of ascended armor in the first place, this doesn’t make me more of a fan. Is there something wrong with making best-in-slot gear reasonably obtainable? Especially when you have a build system that encourages you to try out a wide variety of stat combinations.

I understand it isn’t a huge difference between exotic and ascended, but BiS is BiS. There’s a rather large psychological satisfaction in knowing your character is geared to the max, and conversely there’s a psychological dissatisfaction in knowing when it isn’t. This change is only going to increase that dissatisfaction among players to whom ascended gear feels unfairly difficult to obtain (especially WvW players).

Orochimaru.4730:

10% isnt much, 5% isnt much, even 1% isnt much.

But when you put two identically evenly skilled players together where one has the ascended gear, the one with the ascended gear will always win.

It’s not much, but every little helps when it comes to any fight.

So if you have the gold and mats craft your ascended gear. If you dont exotics are fine but expect to lose some fights.

Exactly this. Even the current gap between ascended and exotics was annoying, because no matter how small the gap is it still matters when you’re fighting other players. Now it’ll be even more annoying. It wouldn’t be so bad if ascended armor wasn’t such a massive gold sink, but as a 95% WvW player…I just don’t have 600 gold to drop on a full set of ascended armor. It just isn’t realistic. Do we all have to go farm silverwastes now if we want to be on an even playing field in WvW?

Malediktus.3740:

The book costs 10 USD, I rather use the money for gems.

“The entire book is free to read here on the web.”:

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

Which means the specific article he linked is also free.

TyPin.9860:

I see often the claim that the removal of those buffs also make builds not viable any more. Can someone link me a build, and explain me, why this one relies on guard stacks?

Full zerk staff ele builds rely pretty heavily on guard stacks (the extra vitality is literally a 20% boost to my health pool). It’s the difference between a thief taking out half my health in a backstab (with stacks) vs. 2/3 of my health (without stacks). Combined with the removal of stats from traits, it’s pretty much going to make zerk staff ele backliner builds unviable, and possibly other zerk backliner builds (necros, rangers) as well.

That said, I’ve already said I support the removal of stacks, I think they were a bad thing to implement in the first place. But I’m definitely going to have to change my gear because of it, and possibly my trait setup too, which I and others aren’t thrilled about.

Cecilia.5179:

I understand that some people think that is is normal to not get rewarded for having fun, but that isn’t what GW2 is about. The development team is against forcing people to do hours of mindless farming instead of something that they find fun. WvW is a fun playstyle that many people participate in. Shouldn’t it be just as rewarding as PvE?

I completely agree that WvW isn’t very rewarding, nowhere near as rewarding as Silverwastes/other PvE. I think most of our complaints were with the OP identifying lack of WvW rewards as seemingly their #1 complaint with WvW (enough to make them “angry”) when in reality there are far more pressing problems with WvW.

The problem with increasing rewards in WvW is finding a way to do it without causing unintended side-effects. Increase the rewards for taking objectives? It’ll just encourage karma-training and players stacking on servers so they can take objectives from defenseless servers more easily. Increase the rewards for killing players? That encourages zerging too at a minimum (it’s a lot easier and faster to kill players in big groups) and may also encourage kill-trading like what we’ve seen with people OS farming. Increase rewards for defending objectives? That may encourage players to just turtle up in objectives and never go out and fight.

Even adding rewards tracks like in PvP, which many have asked for (and I personally am somewhat in favor of too) has the potential to backfire, if players figure out they can advance their reward track faster by stacking on a more populated server/karma-training in off-hours/blobbing up more.

TL;DR: Rewards in a PvP game mode are really tricky to do right, and have incredible potential for generating unintended and undesired player behavior. It’s an extremely delicate balance. Most of us are fine with rewards being mediocre for this reason, as long as the action in WvW itself is fun.

Los Re.4607:

2. Make bombers die after their attack. That will make rushes less efficient and people will have to spread to the map again for more supplies.

I thought of this idea too, I think it could be really great. You’d probably have to buff the bomber’s toughness/hp a bit, and make them do a little more damage to gates, but I think this could be a great change.

Agree, I like stronghold a lot. And maybe this is because I’m primarily a WvW player…but to me it doesn’t feel like “too much PvE”. Certainly not more PvE than MOBAs, which it is based on. I’ve been constantly in PvP fights in nearly every match I’ve played today.

I’ve found that even 1 person on defense, either using the treb or aoe’s, can interrupt this “speed meta”. The doorbreakers die pretty easily to player attacks.

I have to say I like stronghold a lot, I’m having a ton of fun with it. I’m primarily a WvW player, and though I’ve played a decent amount of conquest it just hasn’t grabbed me the way WvW has. Stronghold just might be the game type to finally get me playing a decent amount of sPvP.

I agree with others saying it should really have its own queue.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

misterdevious.6482:

They are really encouraging you to pay attention to yaks… ignoring the fact that yaks are much less significant in the overall scheme of things.

Yaks aren’t needed at all anymore. The upgrades will happen no matter what, so yaks are no longer worth to even target. We’ve told Anet often enough already that you would think they got it, but we’re not getting any response.

We players understand our own motivations and play style and Anet doesn’t, and they never consult with us in advance. Why does the gaming industry manage to pull this off so often?

Technically yaks will still be useful for increasing the total supply available to a team on a map; they are the only way you can build up a convenient store of supply at objectives. As a yakslapper you could still theoretically make a big difference on a map by denying the enemy team this extra supply, making it harder for them to siege up a keep, repair walls, build golems, etc.

The problem, at least for me, is that the most fun reason to snipe yaks in the current game is to deny upgrades, which will be taken away with these changes (since killing yaks will only delay upgrades). Yeah, if I snipe yaks after the changes, I can be somewhat content knowing the other teams won’t be able to repair walls as easily, and won’t be building as many arrow carts. But right now I get a strong visual reminder that my yak sniping is making a difference (because the enemy keeps and towers stay paper). After the changes, any evidence that my yak sniping is effective (like less arrow carts) will be hidden behind the keep walls (which will upgrade no matter what I do).

BrettM.9062:

misterdevious.6482:

Most of the proposed changes are to avoid points of conflict between players by limiting player ability to make bad decisions.

The only way to remove the ability to make bad decisions is to remove the ability to make decisions entirely. ANet could also remove all bad decisions made in choosing and placing siege by having some NPC do it, so there could be no argument between players. ANet could remove bad decisions in choosing and using gear and skills by giving everyone a fixed build, a fixed set of gear, and skills that trigger themselves at the right time, so there can be no argument over someone losing a battle by bad play or being a rallybot.

But, when a game is making all the decisions for you, then in what sense are you “playing” it?

Keep in mind that auto-upgrades aren’t just about preventing players from making bad decisions with regard to upgrades. They’re also about preventing players from making malicious decisions (i.e., trolling), in addition to removing the gold cost of upgrades. I think it’s important to remember that those are two major pros of auto-upgrades.

vespers.1759:

Call me old fashioned but I roam and play pvp because killing people is fun, not because I want gold from it.

This.

And OP, after they make upgrades automatic (aka, not cost any money), the only gold sinks left in WvW are foods. That’s it. Pretty sure even your roaming can pay for food. If you want pretty armor, you have to PvE. Is that “fair”? Meh, sure it’d be nice to have some WvW-specific skins to work toward, or some extra gold/rewards. But on my list of priorities for Anet when it comes to WvW, I have to say that those are pretty low down.

For once I actually agree with everyone defending this. Do you think Alexander the Great would have complained about pin sniping? Seriously, this is war, war is dirty, and it’s definitely not cheating, so deal with it.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Dawdler.8521:

Spurnshadow.3678:

That whole scenario, and many like it will probably go away.

Thats because they never existed. People are massively overhyping current dollys. Escorted by 20 players, lol… Probably 99% of all T3 upgrades exist because of nightcapping and are lost in primetime. Your “scenario” would still be the same with passive upgrades.

Sorry, but this happens a lot when a keep or garrison is under siege. If it is a hair away from upgrading and your structure is Swiss Cheese, then getting that last dolyak in is of utmost importance if you’re working on a structural upgrade as everything will repair. The risk is leaving the lord less defended.

Here’s another example: your keep isn’t under siege; the map has a lot of activity; you’re about to get a WP; some thief keeps killing yaks; a havoc group of 10 keeps flipping the camp. You bet that at least 20 will escort that last yak. This means that they aren’t attacking something, giving an opportunity for other defenders to secure their position or go after a different structure because you force is occupied.

The HoT system would take that scenario, and others like it, out of the picture. It would mean people are just attacking or defending structures as there is much less reason to worry about supply.

Exactly. I see scenarios like this all the time in WvW, and it’s great. The proposed “yaks are no longer required for upgrades” change would seriously diminish the role of yaks, and make these scenarios go away.

This is a fun idea.

Edit: I think I still like testpig’s solution in his other thread a bit better (requiring a certain number of yaks to make it into an objective in order for it to upgrade), but this is my second favorite of the ideas I’ve seen.

+1, this is exactly what I have been thinking. Keep the automatic upgrades, keep the elimination of supply/gold costs for upgrading, all of that is great. But make it so yaks are still required for upgrades to happen. Don’t diminish the importance of escorting yaks and (conversely) slapping yaks by making yak-less upgrades a possibility.

Thanks for the image testpig, I think it gets the idea across really well.

nightblood.7910:

Well I was more concerned about the home team advantage of mobility on their own BL. I can see having less chance of mobility in EBG. Only if the server is absolutely dominant do they have weaypoints in all keeps in EBG.

I dont think the EBG change will have much if any effect. The Bl’s on the other hand, the ability to WP into the southern areas of your BL is going to be gone.

But as many have said, I am looking a this from the current map perspective.

Even if a server owns all objectives on EB, they would only be able to have waypoints at SM and at the keep closest to their spawn. They would never have access to waypoints at the other two team’s keeps.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Nightshade.2570:

But… the south towers are getting waypoints not the side keeps…

So the enemy has a waypoint to…a south tower…? I dont think thats a big advantage

No I’m pretty sure the WP’s in the southern towers are for the home server.

It sure would be nice if we had a kitten anet rep that could clear things like this up. Everyone go check reddit, facebook, twitch and whatever the hell else they use instead of their own official forums.

WPs in the south tower are not for the home server, they’re for the enemy team that spawns closest to that waypoint. That’s what they said in the livestream today. The idea is that enemy teams on the BLs should always ideally be trying to own at least the tower closest toward their spawn (siegerazor helps with that too).

And yeah, those waypoints aren’t a huge distance from the spawns, but it’s still something (similar to the distance between the keeps and the spawns on EB). If the towers have supply in them it gives a way for enemy teams on the BLs to quickly zone in and get supply before attacking a nearby objective.

Also, remember in the new BL map there is a center oasis objective. If you’re an enemy team on a BL and you die during that oasis event, having a waypoint at your southern tower means you can get back to that event a lot quicker.