Ah yes…
In the current matchup, the server with the highest KDR (~1.8) is fighting both the two on the very lowest in KDR (~0.4).
But guess who’s gonna win? Yep, probably Abba, the lowest ranked server there. Why? 100% pure nightcapping. No, seriously, we cant even call them Blobbadon anymore because their zergs no longer exist, they have had nearly zero daytime presence!
But whatever. I just find this absolutely hilarious.
If they have nearly zero daytime presence, how is that different from other servers having zero nighttime presence? When they’re nightcapping for all of their points, how are they outstripping the other servers who are daycapping for all of their points?
I can’t remember the site that lets one see what servers had how many people on as a graph versus time—perhaps the nightcapping spree lasts longer?
Yes, skirmishes are great, but they should be encouraged rather than forced. A group should skirmish to save a camp because they want the supply. They have the option to avoid the fight and lose at least 5m worth of yaks instead.
A skirmish is also required once the walls are down on an objective. Most of the epic WvW fights I recall happen in the lord room’s and courtyards of keeps. I absolutely don’t want to change that.
However, if a skirmish is required to keep the wall up as well, then there’s no chance for a server that is temporarily less populous to launch a meaningful defense. They clearly can’t skirmish once the walls are down, so they have to desperately keep the wall up as long as they can. If they’re denied any options for doing so, they might as well log off or go attack undefended objectives elsewhere.
Point being, safe sieging does not encourage fights by trying to force them. The only time safe sieging results in a fight is when there was going to be a fight anyway because the defending server had enough people. Whether or not the walls go down, if you have the people you’re going to want to kill the defenders to stop all of the supply damage being taken.
NoeinProxy catas are fine IMO. One of the few ways to breach a t3 structure currently (especially in T1). Nerfing cata’s further is not a good idea, unless all siege is nerfed.
Can you expound on this? I don’t want to make assumptions about your argument but I can’t really say anything about it as is without doing so. Specifically, what is it about proxy catas that makes them the only way to breach a T3 structure? Is it their safety? Their speed?
BarattaSimple fix if it is close let splash damage hit the cata and operator.
That would work in some cases. It probably wouldn’t be a nerf to taking undefended structures either. It would also make sense, for what that’s worth. However, in the case where the cata is fired horizontally so that it doesn’t strike the wall near where it’s built, it would be no help at all.
BeardedThere is nothing wrong with proxy cata’s. If you limit the placing cata’s to some min distance, then you will make cata’s completely useless, because there are few if any place to place cata’s not next to a wall that they can’t be hit by treb or motor fire. And treb and mortar fire kills other seige way too fast
Am I right in reading this as you saying that catas that can be killed are useless? If so, what are your thoughts on using the catapult shield bubble and/or shield generators to block treb/mortar shots?
Defense is already way too strong. There are,already multiple servers who refuse to engage any oposing force even when they out number the other servers 2 to 1.
If a server does nothing but defend, they will get hammered in score. It should be child’s play to knock them out of your tier in favor of someone more feisty. If they aren’t getting beaten in score then your assessment is either off or they’ve been allowed to keep all of their camps for free.
Even then, defense is not an infinite game. No matter how well they defend, a wall will fall eventually. How quickly that happens should depend on the skill and ingenuity of the attacking force.
This game should always be about player vs player interaction not player vs door, player vs wall, or player vs seige. What a lot of people do not understand is the true purpose of the towers and keep are. The towers and keeps are not there for people to hide inside and defend. They are there for the other servers to attack, and to force you to engage them.
Proxy catas are Player vs. Wall and are valued, apparently, for that reason. There is as little player interaction involved as possible. In fact, many of the complaints listed here state that they should be immune to player interaction but then claim that the goal is to force player interaction. It sounds more like people want to force fights (even lopsided fights) but don’t want any interaction other than that.
I suppose we must disagree about towers and keeps. You seem to view WvW as some sort of convoluted arena that is all about large groups clashing. I wouldn’t mind such a game mode, but this isn’kitten While that is a welcome part of the experience it is not the only part of it.
DeceiverXThis is a design failure on the elevation of some regions and shape of the keeps, and isn’t relevant to Proxy Catapult placement.
There’s no elevation involved. The spot in question isn’t no odd shape either: it’s a corner. I’ll post a screenshot later when I am able.
And this helps solve the age-old problem of getting people to respond to a siege attempt. Frankly, if they removed safe sieging in general (trebbing structures from other structures), there would be no need to have the fortified upgrade; it could cap on reinforced.
If catas are both easier to destroy and take longer to bring a wall down, we’ve dealt offense a double blow. I don’t think that’s necessary—at the very least, only one thing should be done at a time.
Rickywhat about applying some real life / physics to it ? – if the cata is too close to wall, it makes a dent, but not as much damage as if projectiles had more distance to generate more momentum ? the ram, makes sense because it’s meant to work up close, but on the same hand if you launched a flaming ram from a teb distance, you will take down the doors in one shot.
No momentum is generated after the boulder leaves the cata—it is only lost due to wind resistance, though that amount is fairly insignificant. The only exception to this is if the cata is at a higher elevation that the point of impact.
Anyway, it wouldn’t make sense in terms of real life physics to base damage on horizontal distance—vertical distance would, though.
(edited by Sviel.7493)
@DeceiverX
There are some placements, like on NET in the DBL, where the cata cannot be hit by anything short of a ballista placed on the vulnerable front gate, in full view of the attackers. No matter how long it takes, that spot would remain absolutely safe.
Also, if damage is based on the time traveled, then the time it takes to break into an undefended structure will greatly increase. I don’t think there’s any need to make people wait longer to flip something that isn’t even being attended to—that’s why fortified walls and gates on towers were nerfed, right?
@Coldtart
Good luck using player weapon skills on a cata tucked so far into your corner that you have to lean out to hit it.
@Wanderer
Catas at any range should be vulnerable to destruction by something. There must be a way for offensive siege and defensive siege to interact.
Even if LoS rules were reverted, there would still be places where a proxy cata would be out of the way of any attack.
@Straegen
Disablers are a delay tactic, not a tool for destruction. Even if we ignore the lopsided danger in tossing them, they are not a viable means for defense unless you have a comparably sized force on the way…which brings us right back to the most populous server k-training everything with impunity.
You say you want a variety of strategies in WvW, but then you try and argue that YB strategy is somehow invalid.
Most of your ideas are slanted towards rapidly capping objectives and negating defense.
That won’t break up the Zerg. It’ll just lead to karma training.
I’m not sure if that was for me, but if it was, can you elaborate?
I was hesitant to call the strategy invalid—in fact, rather than nerfing it, I advocated for trying out existing responses and perhaps tweaking those. As to the rest, my goal is exactly the opposite. I want to slow down capping of defended objectives but not empty objectives. I want to do this by letting defense have a potential response to enemy siege.
joneirikbGood read, thanks.
Like most of your points. But I’m a bit iffy that a siege disabler (not a class skill) has to be the solution to one style. Would prefer to look at ways to make player skills and class skills the ways to fight.
I’m also a bit iffy on it, but I can’t think of a way around it save for making ACs super fragile and thus vulnerable to any attack. I’m open to ideas, of course.
(edited by Sviel.7493)
Scale damage based on charging time. Point-blank might be safer with fewer counters, but it’ll take way longer and likely the siege will get destroyed or reinforcements can be called in for the fight outside.
Imho, cannon and AC fire radius need nerfing to make ballistae more viable as anti-siege solutions rather than just humping tons of AC’s.
People will just build them point-blank and full charge for damage. Besides, it doesn’t solve the lack of interaction—it just makes things take longer. The siege still won’t get destroyed because there’s so little that can be done to hit it, if anything.
guilddabdEasy fix: reduce radius of meteor shower.
Not only would that have repercussions in fights, but it would still not solve the issue as some of these placements are nigh impossible to target due to camera limitations.
@STIHL Lets see, what folks do we have in wvw? There’s roamers who repair, flip camps and kill single enemies, scouts who repair, escort dollies, small scale, small scale havoc groups who flip camps and towers (or even whole borderlands), zergs who fight and flip camps, towers, keeps, blobs who do the same.
How about making this like dailies, so per week you have “cap 20 camps”, “kill 100 players”, “use 500 supply on repairs”, “escort 40 yaks” and so on. You can probably do that rather smart so that everybody will be rewarded, although it will likely be pretty hard to reward roamers and scouts – but maybe someone can come up with a good idea.
I think with this you can set the bar for the rewards higher and it might actually bring new people to try wvw. And actually: Bronze should be fairly high while gold should be rather low, so that people have to do quite a bit to get a reward but if they already showed their dedication they will be rewarded more (I hope that made sense).
I really like the idea of making the dailies weekly—despite the contradiction
I don’t think it’s productive to have people trying to do one thing or another based on dailies instead of what actually needs to be done. For example, while I’ll harass a keep into submission pretty regularly, I rarely actually go in to take it and thus don’t get credit. Same for towers—I’ll knock down walls and let people know in map chat then move on to w/e else needs doing.
That said, I originally entered WvW because I needed to get one more daily done…so there’s that…
Experienced siegers know the best place to put siege so that it cannot be interacted with—remove or alter that reality and suddenly a whole host of alternatives will open up.
which is the heart of the problem. they should always be able to be interacted with, on both sides of the fence. alternatives to attack or defend should be encouraged.
I agree with you, 100%.
However, rather than limit the interactions to a set number of positions, I’d rather modify the existing game to better reflect your statement. I don’t think that the interactions are too far off right now—if proxy catas are addressed then the other non-interactive spots will be only map hiccups (Firekeep stairs) or wonky hitboxes (NE Rampart).
Yeah, tier 2 and 3 are also very active on BLs on reset night. During prime hours, they’re active on the BLs all week.
Have you considered that if cata is not in the arrow cart range that means it is in the range of trebs/mortar?
Otherwise what should be the reason to use proxy catas?
Ah, so what you’re looking for is a catapult placement that can’t be hit by anything? Well, I can’t help you there.
Unless, perhaps, you’re satisfied with building shield bubbles to shut down the mortar/treb.
fair enough, but dont you think creativity is exhausted at this point? seems to me experienced siegers know every in and out of placement and there arent any surprises. im not saying that the predefined locations should be totally vulnerable and limited, but counter-able by at least one tactic or a combo of some. i think defending would lose a lot by the siege cap alone. add no exploits on top of that and you have a greatly reduced defense by siege.
Creativity is stifled, not exhausted. The existence of an indisputable best choice renders all other options meaningless. Experienced siegers know the best place to put siege so that it cannot be interacted with—remove or alter that reality and suddenly a whole host of alternatives will open up.
If arrow carts are hitting beyond their range, that’s a separate problem that should also be addressed.
If a group wants to hit 2 walls with 1 cata, they simply have to aim for the same spot from a distance. If they want to make it easier by placing the cata against the wall, it should be riskier, not safer. The same holds if you mean hitting an outer wall then an inner wall, too. Such convenience should come with risks or it will always be the best choice as it is now.
Proxy catas are, many times, the only way to do something against the ridicolous OPiness of arrow carts that make the gates untouchable, and you want to “fix” it?
You guys want more ppl leave wvw or what? You want destroy the wvw definitveliy?
I really dont understand…..
If you want “fix” the proxy cata ask for a big nerf of arrow carts then there will be no reason to go for proxy catas anymore…
Have you considered placing your catapults outside of arrow cart range? In some cases, this won’t even mean you need to charge the throw at all, so it’ll be the same speed.
@Stand The Wall
Creativity in siege placement is crucial. With pre-defined places, one can always predict just how to treb that catapult out in the field…defending becomes much more powerful and relies on a chart of distances rather than anything else.
Also, sometimes a ballista just needs to be free, you know? To counter some equally oddball treb placement.
Catapults already out-range arrow carts, ballistas and cannons. There’s no need to push that to some absurd degree.
The counters to offensive siege consist of killing the siege or blocking the shots with shield bubbles. The first is a permanent counter, the second is more of a delay tactic.
The counters to defensive siege consist of killing the siege using a height or range advantage and moving further away than it can hit.
With that in mind, there are two possible fixes that I can think of off-hand:
The first would be to change arrow carts to fire in a similar manner to catapults, as suggested by Tricare in a recent thread. This would mean that the area around the walls would be a kill-zone but the fire rate of the carts would effectively be lower, making them less useful against moving targets (players). Thus, players could still use proxy catas on an undefended structure but would be taking a huge risk if anyone showed up.
The second would be to add spikes or such at the base of the walls that disallow such close placement. This would make the accessible area around the walls somewhat of a kill-zone, like the first idea—with similar results. However, I think 500 units is enough distance…1,200 seems excessive.
I prefer the first idea since it doesn’t take any choices away from the attacking server—it simply adds some appropriate risk by giving the defenders a way to respond.
For anyone new, a proxy catapult is one that is built directly against a wall so that it can’t be interacted with by any siege built on top of or inside of the walls with the possible exception of arrow carts that are vulnerable to attack or AoE from below. In short, the only way to defend against a proxy catapult is to leave the structure being attacked and fight outside of the wall with the group that is defending the catapults. If that group is bigger, then there is no viable method of defense.
This leads to the server that has the most people being capable of taking structures with impunity, regardless of upgrades or defenders. It requires no significant thought or action on their part.
Because of this, it is considered a better idea to abandon structures and go hit undefended enemy objectives if you don’t have a comparably sized force. In essence, both servers in question are karma training (flipping undefended structures) rather than interacting.
The problem is made worse by population imbalance, but since there will always be at least temporary population imbalances, it is not a symptom of it.
Proxy catas have been around forever, but that doesn’t mean that Anet is fond of them. Plenty of things in WvW have been problematic forever but Anet just hasn’t gotten around to fixing them for one reason or another. We got some fixes (or attempts, which are nice) with HoT and we’re getting another round in April. Thus, I want to ask if this is one of the things they’re hoping to fix or change.
On Rampart, there’s a second double wall spot around the corner from the first that can’t be hit by inner cannons.
Stuff like that is making it really hard to hold on until April…
Why do this? I mean, I don’t think it would make much of an impact one way or the other, but why?
Disablers have 1,200 range, which is about half that of an Arrow Cart. With a bit of stealth or an attack from an unguarded angle, they should be usable at least. If this turns out to be ineffective, they could be tweaked.
It won’t make the defenders fight, though. If they’d rather run, that’s on them. Forcing them to fight is not a viable answer.
Like you said, hollow victories are probably the culprit. If there’s no reason to play other than fights, then anyone who plays at a time when populations are not very even is unlikely to have a good experience.
This is interesting, though it would mean an AC built on the inside of a wall could hit the outside with ease. I’m ok with that as long as they don’t gain any additional range as a result of this change.
It’s certainly easier to make and use than the current Line of Sight lottery.
I had to leave about an hour after taking it. During that time, there was a roaming pair that took the SEC a few times and tried to head north, but I was able to separate and kill them twice. There was a solo roamer that attempted to cata the south wall from a high spot but I had a ballista ready because the place had already been used a bunch throughout the week.
Please follow the second thread in this post ( link ) for a timely update on times.
Isn’t it the second post in this thread?
:3?
This is going to be long, so I’ll put a tl;dr up front: A healthy WvW meta-game must be able to support viable strategies for all servers whether they have exactly even numbers or if they are temporarily outnumbered to a moderate degree.
Details follow~
In any conflict, the best strategy will be exploited in full by all sides. Thus, when designing a game that centers around conflict, it is of paramount importance to consider what the optimal strategy is. Ideally, this strategy should not be self-sufficient—if it is, then no other strategies will be viable. In addition, it is even better to have several strategies that compete for the top spot. This is referred to as having a healthy meta-game. Here, I want to talk about the current contenders for best strategy in WvW and where we might want to go. First, I want to look at the strategies being employed by the current top servers. I’ll evaluate them based on how healthy they are and how effective. Second, I want to talk about what balance between offensive play and defensive play is healthy. Third, I want to propose a way to make mobility in WvW maps more dynamic and more reflective of player’s choices.
YAK’S BEND
Currently, the top server (Yak’s Bend) uses a strategy that is based heavily in aggressively recapping lost objectives and protecting those that are owned with massive amounts of siege. They also value communication and an extensive network of independent scouts. Most of the server is somewhat weaker in straight fights than their competitors, but their excellence in other areas means that doesn’t translate into losing points. Some parts of this strategy (communication and scouting) are fine. Other parts (massive siege defense) are stifling. The first two components are not self-sufficient—the last, however, appears to be. So long as there are people to man the siege, there’s no need for anything else.
However, I haven’t heard much in the way of people attempting to counter-act this strategy. A battery of Arrow Carts is likely vulnerable to one or two siege disablers—potentially thrown by stealth classes. The absolute worst thing to do is to attempt to engage the enemy head on, but this was the prevailing strategy of the day before the rise of YB and it has stubbornly stuck around. Since this is not likely successful under a hail of arrows, YB’s siege defense appears impenetrable.
There are several choices for reducing the effectiveness of siege bunkering. First, the siege cap can be lowered so that not as many Arrow Carts can be built. This sounds appealing, but it is too blunt of an approach. Either there will be room for enough Arrow Carts or there won’t—rather than diminishing the strategy by giving players tools to counter it, it simply disallows the strategy entirely. Second, Arrow Cart damage can be reduced to players. However, this falls into the same trap as the first. Third, Siege Disablers can be made less expensive. This would help, but might not be enough on its own. However, WvW should be about strategy versus strategy—not wallet versus wallet. Just like in PvP, no gold investment should be required to compete. There may be more that can be done here, but there first needs to be an effort to overcome the strategy before we can conclude that it is oppressive. Therefore, making the existing potential counter more easily available is a good first step.
JADE QUARRY/BLACKGATE
I’m lumping the number two and three servers together as they tend to use variations of a single strategy. They both focus on gathering in mid-to-large size groups and winning fights before taking largely unguarded objectives or in fighting in or around the lord’s room. In both cases, their defense and offense revolves around winning a large-scale fight.
Given even numbers, this is probably the most basic and also the healthiest strategy. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes oppressive with even a slight population imbalance. Even in a perfect tier with strictly even server capacity, if there’s any point in the day where one side has more people logged on, they will win every fight unless profoundly out-skilled. In addition, if one server brings much more people to the fight, they will win. Thus, if this is the best strategy, the only way to counter it is to bring more bodies to the fight. Any other strategy is choked out. This leads directly to the blob mentality and to the tendency for groups to focus solely on winning fights. This strategy is weakest defensively when more than one objective is contested as it forces the group to split up or abandon something. It is weakest offensively when attacking an objective fortified by siege. There is no need to diminish its effectiveness in terms of winning fights—we only need to make sure that it is employed in specific instances instead of being the default and the most effective. On defense, there is nothing stifling about this. It is potent but also has clear weaknesses. On offense, it is powerful once it gets through walls, but is less effective at actually breaking into an objective since an assault on a single point is easiest to mitigate. However, it is largely shut down by siege defense. Two things should happen to both boost this strategy while also keeping it in check offensively.
First, something must be done to allow in-the-moment counters to siege. As discussed earlier, it would likely be best to fit siege disablers into this role. The idea is not to make siege defenses totally ineffective, but to give them a weakness that can be exploited. The group, when it uses the tools at its disposal, should be able to win or lose any fight based on how well it uses those tools. Second, uncounterable offensive siege must be addressed. Whereas defensive siege can be killed by using height advantages or made irrelevant by assaulting from a distance, proxy catapults are impossible to deal with outside of abandoning the defensive structure to fight head on. Their existence means that defenders must fight the group at their strongest point or wait until the walls are down and use siege bunkering. If a way to break siege defenses becomes prevalent while proxy catapults exist, then the only way to deal with this strategy will be to use this strategy. That is the very definition of oppressive.
OFFENSIVE/DEFENSIVE BALANCE
Inevitably, population is the largest factor in determining what a healthy WvW looks like. It is fair to be slightly idealistic—we can assume that populations are reasonably even since, if they aren’t, no attempt at balance will be successful. Our goal should be to create a model that works for reasonably even total populations but does not fall apart during temporary imbalances throughout the day. That is, there should be viable strategies for every server at all times, whether they have the lowest current population, the highest, or even.
If the only way to defend a structure is by bringing a force of comparable size, a server that is currently less populous has no viable strategies for defense. On offense, they can only hope to attack and take a structure before any defense is established. In other words, players are encouraged to avoid interacting with other players in any way. Thus, it must be possible to defend with a smaller group than the attacking enemies. However, to avoid making offense futile outside of overwhelming force, this defense must be limited by supply. The components of this set-up are already in place: It is possible to counter offensive siege (save for a few exploits such as proxy catapults) so long as there is supply to build counter siege. Offensive groups have the advantage of hitting first, so they will likely do supply damage even if the assault ultimately fails. Finally, there is no way to replenish supply from within an objective (save for a single tactic with a 15m cooldown), so it will ultimately fall. Skilled offensive groups will be able to drain supply faster or breach the walls before supply is drained and then move on to a straight fight where their numbers will give them an advantage. Meanwhile, skilled defenders will be able to slow the enemy advance so that their server’s prime time gains stand. This model holds up both for even numbers and for inevitable imbalances.
If the only way to successfully assault a structure is by bringing a force of comparable size, a server that is currently less populous still has viable strategies for offense. They are unlikely to take any defended structures, but they can gain points by killing Yaks and flipping camps. If they are crafty, they can drain structures of supply and then converge on one and flip it before the defense can reorganize into a comparatively sized group. Offense’s advantage over defense lies in its mobility. Granted, with lower population, they must have allies defending or must be much more skilled in offense than their enemies are in defending or their server will hemorrhage points. The end result of this is that servers can either switch between offense and defense based on population or have some mix of the two with each individual player choosing the role they are best at. Thankfully, the components for this are already in place—they are simply overshadowed by more oppressive strategies.
MOBILITY
On the Alpine maps and EBG, mobility is created by waypoints and relatively flat terrain. On the Desert maps, it is created and restricted by waypoints and holding certain objectives. The particulars of this are up for discussion, but I want to suggest creating a more dynamic means of mobility.
Consider a new piece of siege: the Teleporter. It would function as a waypoint that is powered by supply. It would need to require a substantial amount of supply to set up—say, about 100, and would then cost at least 5 supply to use. It must be fragile and also fairly large so that it cannot be hidden easily. If found undefended, it will be easily destroyed, so it will either need a sizeable force nearby or a great hiding spot.
The idea is that large groups can get their members back into the fray quickly at the cost of dedicating supply to build the Teleporter and then draining member’s supply on use. Meanwhile, roaming groups can create a base of operations deep within enemy territory to better go about their trickery. Since it drains supply, it won’t be ideal for blitz attacks since it limits how much offensive siege can be built after using it. Defenders will have to be wary of enemies owning camps that they can reach from a nearby Teleporter but will be amply warned since the camp is not owned.
Defensively, the Teleporter will allow players to get into the fray but at the cost of draining the lifeblood of their defense: supply. Either they take supply from the besieged objective or they spend precious moments running to a camp before returning. Once the walls are breached, any Teleporter will be quickly found and destroyed. This would serve to both increase player interaction and also speed up sieges if it causes supply to drain more quickly.
CONCLUSION
The ideal meta for WvW should be multi-dimensional. That means that any one strategy should have its limits. Siege bunkering should be weak to a well-placed disabler. Blobs should not be able to bypass their weakness (single-point sieges) and skip to their strength (running things over). A skilled WvW assault group should be good at breaking up to quickly crack a structure and/or drain it of supply and at fighting together once the walls are down. A skilled WvW defense group should excel in countering siege, draining enemy players of supply and scouting assaults before damage is done. Additionally, population imbalance should be manageable on at least a temporary basis: If two servers have diametrically opposed high population times, the winner should be the one that attacks and defends the best at the appropriate times—not necessarily the one that karma trains hardest when it has the advantage. If a server has more low-pop times than high-pop, they should be able to compete by defending better than their opponents so long as they can also go on offense when needed. A server that has more high-pop times should not automatically win unless they do their jobs well.
P.S. It is necessary, when all is done, to make such things visible. There is currently no meaningful tutorial for WvW. At the very least, players should be able to have access to a list of guilds that will be willing to show them the ropes. They also need to know exactly how scoring is done.
If you can hit them with the force balls, can’t they just kill the generator/you? If the catapults are right up on the wall then you won’t be able to knock people off. If they’re a good distance away, you won’t be able to reach.
The situation you described is a defender’s dream but I don’t think it happens much in a practical sense.
The problem is the stealth though, not the act of being in the keep.
Anet could have easily done it another way. Instead of marked they could have made it so that being near a flipped keep add revealed for a couple of minutes. Hence no one can stealth there. Simple and effective without destroying the fun and putting a giant bullseye on you from across the entire kittening map.
Concerns about the sentries and marking of foes was raised from day 1. Most people was like “huehuehue now we can see the enemy so we can run to them and fight them, this will surely improve WvW!”.
Some of us saw the real issue – it take away the fun of player interaction and the “job” of a scout. And now look where we are. WvW is kittentier for it. Go figure.
I actually suggested a revealed debuff and would have preferred as such, but I’d rather have the marks than have nothing at all. A short duration mark would probably still be a good idea, though. People shouldn’t have to sweep every keep they take.
As for the sentries, I completely like them. Crafty enemies will avoid them and, even if someone is spotted, a scout still needs to check it out.
@Puck
That’s a problem with the people, not the system. There’s ample reason to defend a keep besides having achieved a waypoint. To list a few: Better walls, built siege, difficulty in retaking versus difficulty of holding. Of course, I doubt you personally are motivated by those things, but it’s not fair to say that they don’t exist.You are talking about busting upgrades which now has nothing to do with the wp’s. The only way your argument works is if you are only talking about sm.
Pre HoT the majority of my game time was spent hitting hills and bay. I could spend hours tapping all the keeps, setting up sneaky catas to drain supply, keeping the camps flipped and sniping yaks. There was a good number of times when I’d get in and kill the few defenders and flip it before their zerg arrived. There was also a lot of times where I had to call in a guild and we’d have an epic fight.
None of this happens now. Fire and air wp’s don’t belong to the home server, and no one put any effort into building them. There is no reason for roamers to devote the time and effort it takes to slowly bust a T3 keep.
Keeps are taken now if you have overwhelming numbers. If they put up a solid defense you just move on because they only matter for ppt.
Just yesterday, I devoted time and effort to push enemies out of our Airkeep. I flipped camps, sniped yaks and set up sneaky catas until I had the place drained of supply and without an outer wall. Then, I let a guild know and they came by to break inner and flip it. I was motivated by popping the enemy WP in Airkeep so that they could no longer threaten our northern triangle so easily. It worked well in that I was then able to defend against enemy pushes because I could predict their movements more easily.
Until I had to log off, I defended the keep in order to get it upgraded so that it could better withstand sieges and would take longer to blitz in case I was caught doing something elsewhere. Also, I wanted to make sure that the enemies wouldn’t be able to take and upgrade it before someone came to replace me.
Anyway, my point is that there is still ample reason to attack/defend the side keeps. The WPs are part of it, albeit a smaller part than before.
Solo roaming on the BLs is pretty much all I do. Judging by the number of enemy solo roamers I run into, it’s very much alive.
Catapults, especially proxy catapults, fire too fast for a shield generator to block much of their damage. They can be mitigated but I wouldn’t call it a counter.
Chasing a nearly perma-stealth, multi-blink class through one of the huge DBL keeps is a nightmare. One person’s hobby shouldn’t ruin the day of everyone else.
That’s a problem with the kittenty bl, not the mechanic.
It was a pain in the Alpine keeps too, especially Garrison with the myriad hiding places.
A treb can be countered by a shield generator because it fires so slowly. At least, the damage can be mitigated to the point where a strike team with a ballista can take it out quickly enough.
Chasing a nearly perma-stealth, multi-blink class through one of the huge DBL keeps is a nightmare. One person’s hobby shouldn’t ruin the day of everyone else.
What tier are you on? I imagine the loss of roaming quality is more due to the lack of population than any inherent flaw in the maps. With the exception of north camp, the run times from corner spawns are no more than 30 seconds longer.
The potential for communication is still there; it just comes in other forms. I think the positives of automatic upgrades far outweigh what may have been lost.
That said, I still wish people would communicate more…A sentry dot isn’t something I can run across the map for, but if someone lets me know that there’s more to the story, I can respond appropriately.
Airkeep’s problems are caused by proxy catapults, which are a problem at virtually every structure. The keep itself doesn’t need to be redesigned anymore than anything else with walls—that is, adding a buffer of spikes or such so that siege can’t be placed directly on the wall.
I saw an Anet employee on HoD a few weeks back, but there were 4-5 other people so I couldn’t give chase.
I did kill their catapult, though.
If the catapults couldn’t be built directly against the wall, they would be in range of the north cannon on the east inner gate
The cannons are a joke if the attackers got there first. Just sayin’.
If the outer wall is still up, the inner cannons might still be alive. If it was the outer cannons, I wouldn’t even bring it up though q_q
If the catapults couldn’t be built directly against the wall, they would be in range of the north cannon on the east inner gate as well as other defensive siege. I wouldn’t mind the high-reward assault spot if it was also high-risk.
However, for the sake of consistency, it would be nice if the hitbox for the inner wall matched the wall itself instead of extending down onto the rocks below.
Waypoints are the key to encouraging direct engagement with enemy armies. I’d like to see waypoints become high-supply-cost siege weapons that are capped at three per map and can be destroyed by enemy teams.
I literally just had that idea, more or less.
I prefer making them cost supply to use but not be capped so that some troll can’t just build 3 in a useless place and screw the whole server. Also, I didn’t want to replace the Rampart waypoint, just add to it.
@Points per Cap/Points per Upgrade
These are effectively in place already since, with HoT, each Yak that finishes its supply run gives its server 3 points. That means Secured is 60 points, Reinforced is an additional 120 points and Fortified is another 240 points. Just, the points are gradual as opposed to all at once. Also, roamers can absolutely shut these points down already.
Removing PPT makes it far less valuable to take a structure, though. It would be better just to take camps and snipe Yaks to prevent your opponent from getting any points at all. While I’m all for making camps more like roaming hotspots, I think this goes too far in that direction.
@Borderlands too big
Even when I’m alone during off hours, I can reach anything with walls on the map in time from any other point on the map if we have Rampart—even if the objective is paper. If we don’t have Rampart, I can still reach anything that isn’t a southern tower. However, I acknowledge that the travel times are about 30 seconds longer than Alpine and much, much longer than EBG. I don’t think it’s an issue, though.
@Banners
I haven’t seen much of these but they do seem pretty silly, I agree with you here.
@PPK
PPK tends to cancel out, so it wouldn’t matter much if it was increased. All that would serve to do is enhance the lead of the most populated server, though. I’d rather attempt to move away from that.
@PPT Based on Upgrade Status
This is probably the way to go assuming that the starting value is lower than the current one and the ending value is higher. If population is heavily imbalanced, it would be problematic, but it’d take a much larger imbalance to hit that spot than it would in terms of PPK. At that point, all is lost anyway, so it shouldn’t be a deterrent.
@Puck
That’s a problem with the people, not the system. There’s ample reason to defend a keep besides having achieved a waypoint. To list a few: Better walls, built siege, difficulty in retaking versus difficulty of holding. Of course, I doubt you personally are motivated by those things, but it’s not fair to say that they don’t exist.
While the intensity is a bit lower (perhaps due to lower population overall?), the waypoint fights still exist. Now, they happen immediately rather than after a night crew sets them up. Additionally, invaders gain an immediate advantage which is amazingly potent given that it’s more difficult to run from corner spawns to northern objectives.
Thus, I don’t think we an fault the new style with destroying WP fights. There’s still incentive and, if anything, it is greater than before when trying to destroy an enemy WP on your home BL.
As for allied WPs, allowing them to pop back immediately means the home server can recover from a bad period more quickly. One empty hour no longer means that your BL is out of reach for another half a day.
I’d love to see discussion on this, but perhaps it would be more productive if it considered every point instead of just lamented what was lost?
If the yak is invulnerable, what’s the point in stealthing it?
Also, even if this is possible, you can just take the camp like X T D said.
What’s everyone’s opinion of the state of each tier. Obliviously asking all what server and tier you’re on.
I miss you q_q
AnetWorld vs. World
Guild Claiming—Cloaking Waters: Reduced stealth duration from 1.5 minutes to 1 minute. Also fixed a bug that allowed the fountains to be destroyed, preventing the fountains from providing stealth to allies.
Fixed a bug that caused keeps to mark nearby enemy players incorrectly.
It still seems scary to me, but I’m not really an EBG person. However, given all the hubbub over this before and after its implementation, I’m wondering how the rest of you feel.
@Shadow
I need you to be more specific. At any rate, those portals only exist around Earthkeep and I only use them as a shortcut when running to Airkeep. They wouldn’t affect either path I already posted.
@Straegen
The bigger keeps does make it harder to spot attacks, though I think that’s an interesting advantage to give to offense. It rewards people for making dual-pronged attacks.
On defense, I usually run through the keep listening for impacts and checking walls/gates for damage from afar. Since most people insist on using the same handful of spots, it doesn’t take me too long to find them. The only time they make it through outer is if I somehow miss a large group hitting the map or if the objective is paper and I’m preoccupied elsewhere. For keeps, I don’t think anyone’s made it through inner even if I had to run from spawn to check what popped the swords.
On Alpine, I had far less success because groups could hit the map and set up on Hills/Bay then knock both walls down with one set of catas. If I wasn’t in the keep when they started, there was no hope. I had no sentries to help and they could use more siege.
I don’t know what WvW is like for you guys who are saying defending is easy but it’s about the same as it’s always been where I am…
The only time I complain about siege is when it’s open field. Otherwise, I expect there to be siege in anything we’re attacking. Does it bother me? Not really. That’s why it’s there, so attackers can’t blob everything down with no resistance.
If the blob is big enough, it doesn’t matter how much siege or how many guild buffs the structure has, they’ll still plow straight on through. If it’s only a small group? Then yeah, it’s more of an issue because there are a lot of things you have to work around. Is it impossible though? Not even close… Just don’t go “okay screw this” as soon as your rams or catas die. Can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen just give up as soon as their siege is killed. Like I said earlier, attackers have the advantage of time and resources. Go re-supply, keep pressuring. By quitting as soon as your siege dies all you’re doing is allowing time for that structure to refill, repair and re-prepare for attacks.
Anyway I can pretty much tell I won’t talk any sense in to the zerglings here. Probably have never defended or done strategic small group roaming in their lives, it’d be a waste of my time so… Keep QQ’ing about how easy it is to defend. I’ll be over here enjoying the engagements that come from the attacker and defender roles instead of getting my panties in a knot because it takes more than 3 minutes to capture something.
When a 3-40 man group gets prevented from taking a keep because of 5 people on shield gens, arcs, etc. then it becomes too easy. Then pull the Emergency WP just when your foes are on the lord and Rick Roll them.
If a 40-man group gets bounced because of 5 people, they are really, really bad at the game. They could hit 8 locations without thinning themselves so low that they couldn’t defend their siege. Honestly, if they hit so much as 2 places they should prevail—or they could hit 1 place and stagger cata boulders.
Sviel.7493 Do it without shortcuts, if your server dont have them.
Which path do you want me to do w/o shortcuts?
In theory, creating a successful strategy out of the ambitions of myriad smaller parts.