Man, it must be rough to be a fight guild. Maybe you should all move to tier 8 where you don’t even have to worry about PPT and PvD and all that. You can just meet up and GvG all day instead.
It’s not as easy to do when you have to build all the siege via scribing and let it sit in a pipeline for 24 hours before it becomes usable. In order to siege cap a single keep, it would take more than a month—not counting the time or gold needed to even get the scribe leveled.
If a guild does that, it will be a simple matter to either forcibly disband them or punish the users in question. Also, it would take a huge amount of resources for them to make all of that siege and days to build it.
Basically, trolling would be very hard to do and impossible to do more than once or twice a year without a dozen people all working very hard just to troll.
This doesn’t solve the main problem with the Oasis—There’s no reason for a vastly outnumbered force to even show up. In fact, since each death is 25 points for the enemy, nobody would come unless they were assured victory or had very even numbers. If you just ignore the event, your enemy gets nothing instead.
Also, since it happens every 15 minutes, it would basically replace the entirety of WvW. There’d be no time for anything except this event.
All that needs to happen is that the laser damage needs to be reduced based on the cores turned in by the losing servers. Even better if, instead of having to turn them in, they can simply destroy them with a moderate channel without having to reach a turn in point. That way, no matter how outnumbered, a server has a chance to make a difference in the event.
Everyone would just complain and not transfer.
Since we know who built it, we know who to punish if it’s troll siege. Thus, the timer is no longer necessary. Also, we could allow the guild that built it to set it to self-destruct if they really need to remove it.
Since it’s not easy to create, it’s very unlikely that anyone will troll with it. If they do, they can be stopped easily and won’t be able to troll again until they build another guild.
Not the best example. I wasn’t active at this point in time, but I can guarantee you BG pushed hard in order to stay in t1, while SoS and FA tanked because they definitely didn’t want BG stuck in t2. Week 36 would be a better example, but it probably has problems too.
On SoS we didn’t tank—we didn’t have to. BG’s hordes completely overwhelmed us for 20 hours out of the day. Worse yet, they were mostly good fighters too instead of the mindless drones of YB.
FA might have tanked because FA does stuff like that, idk.
The answer to this would be to give rewards for holding an objective that are equal to taking one. An easy way would be to add the HoT system of participation. Make PTT a large part of that so the more you get the more participation stacks. This way every event you complete or fail for defending an objective would give you participation. Of course there would have to be something to track actual participation so that people aren’t AFKing but from what I have seen the system works pretty good in HoT maps and Silverwaste. IMO this should be done in addition to all the current rewards and not in replace of them.
While I love the idea of increased defense rewards, we must consider that many sieges end up with several defense events. For example, last night SBI sieged our Rampart for over an hour, resulting in 25+ defense events.
Rather than buffing the rewards, I’d rather rework how participation is counted. I didn’t get credit for most of those defenses because I was working the mortar/shield generator. Only the people repairing were actually rewarded.
I think it’ll be out in 2016 but I also thought it’d be out by now and I also thought it’d be out with HoT.
I also thought they were going to be making at least token attempts at communication.
I also thought they were going to balance things for specific game modes like they talked about in stream.
So…yeah, I have a pretty awful track record…
We would just have to be careful not to warp play patterns with rewards. It’s not helpful for people to go on a camp flipping spree to fulfill conditions of some quest when said spree isn’t actually helping their server. For example, when they let enemies flip an objective so that they can get credit by flipping it back.
That said, rewards based on the outcome of the match are the least warping but are a bit unfair due to population issues. Population is, of course, very difficult to balance as Anet can’t exactly count on people playing WvW consistently since it’s not technically an e-sport. People (and guilds) become active and inactive as they please.
Thus, while I like your ideas, I don’t think that rewards can be addressed without also accounting for population. They could be implemented, though, without harm—just the stacked servers would always reap more rewards which might lead to even more stacked servers.
On a somewhat related note, what’s the status on condi Reapers right now? Strong/Weak?
They’re not ‘explode or be exploded’ at least.
Ah, my mistake, I agree that defense events are hardly alluring in terms of wxp rewards. However, I’m not trying to give more incentive to defending camps—I just want it to be more feasible for the people that already consider points to be an incentive.
If camps highlighted enemies, it’d be even harder to do sneaky things as a group. The camp owner would immediately spot a zerg. It would certainly make responding to them more practical, but I think that the information given is too much.
In a similar vein, I was considering removing the 30s delay but, in the end, if a person can take a camp in ~40 seconds (my average on my half-geared warrior), it doesn’t matter if the attack is announced over a loudspeaker—there’s just not enough time to get there.
I already explained why it’s harder to upgrade:
@Jana
They’re more work because guarding the yaks and the camp is much harder. They also take more time no matter how you go about it. All in all, the effort investment is higher than when you could just run by and click a few buttons.
In fact, having to safeguard the yaks that leave the camp was exactly the point I raised…twice.
I am speaking specifically about the BLs here. Obviously, EBG camps are the same. Also, when did I ever say anything about NPC damage changing? And when did I say ’let’s do this to get back to some point we were at in the past.’ You’re putting so many words in my mouth…every post is admonishing me for another argument I never made.
I said that it has become harder to guard them while they upgrade, I didn’t say it wasn’t hard to start. Same with getting a camp to max upgrade.
Yes, power creep is part of the problem, but it is not the sole contributor. There used to be more ranged mobs in camps and also those Zealots that did all sorts of nasty things (like retaliation). With HoT, the camps shifted to being all melee to start and still mostly melee by the end—the scouts don’t do significant damage at all. Combine that with all the super powerful AoE the elite specs brought in and you have a recipe for pushover camps. Even if the power creep is toned down, that’s still going to be a problem.
Also, I’m betting that the new power levels from elite specs are here to stay whether we like it or not.
And for the record, I do guard my camps. That’s literally what I do the whole time I’m in WvW. I run around in the south trying to anticipate which camp is going to be hit and then cleaning up w/e I don’t save.
I love you, but I hate all of your ideas. I’m sorry o3o
@Jana
I never made any statement saying that fully upgraded camps were more or less common, just that there is more effort involved in getting there. Also, I in no way stated that every camp should reach max tier—I explicitly said that camps should be stronger when/if they get there but did not suggest making it easier for them to reach it.
I’ve been playing for 2 years and am very familiar with how things used to be. There’s certainly been power creep in that only a few classes could solo a fully upgraded camp with ease before, but that isn’t the only problem here. Besides, I’m not trying to change who can solo what, just how long it takes them.
@Straegen
Since Yaks now give +3 points on arrival, camps are worth more than walled objectives in terms of PPT. If you own what they feed to, the corner camps are each worth ~38 PPT and North Camp is worth ~50 PPT. That doesn’t even consider their necessity for upgrades and usefulness in tracking enemy movements.
Doubling the circle time would work but I was hoping to make it more interesting than forcing players to stand and do nothing for longer. Additionally, I didn’t want to make them take longer to cap for large groups as response time is a moot point in that case.
@Jana
They’re more work because guarding the yaks and the camp is much harder. They also take more time no matter how you go about it. All in all, the effort investment is higher than when you could just run by and click a few buttons.
I don’t see why you bring up how many camps you’ve flipped. I’m not saying they should be easier to upgrade, just that the point of the upgrades (better defenses) is currently ineffective. In essence, defenders get nothing for guarding a camp—it doesn’t take much longer to flip at all.
Note, I do not want to make them more difficult to take, I just want them to take longer. Any solo roamer that can currently cap a camp should still be able to cap it after these changes. They’d just have to pick off the rangers/eles first.
Currently, even a trash ele can flip a camp in ~40 seconds. That’s less than 10 seconds of warning time. It’s pathetic.
@Infusion
Given the longer travel times, it would make sense that defenders had more warning.
They did say they were going to communicate more after HoT dropped, so there’s that.
More PvE in WvW? I get what you are saying but I think a better option is to have players attacking a camp light up on the mini-map like they do near a sentry. Players should be defending the camps but almost nobody is going to sit in one to do that.
Even if players lit up in the camp, it would still flip before anyone could make it there. Additionally, the 30 second grace period on swords allows a group that moves undetected to clear a camp before a response, which is not something I want to get rid of. The goal is to slow down 1-2 man teams so that taking a camp is something that more often involves several players—in essence, I want more PvP in my WvW.
gennyt.3428That would effectively make camps more zerg friendly and I’d hate to have small fights around a camp like that. Instead of buffing NPC babysitters, perhaps the focus should be getting the maps to be alive with player activity again.
A zerg wouldn’t notice a difference. A solo player would need to invest more time, but shouldn’t have a spike in difficulty. As for fighting around a camp…it should be a bad idea to take on enemies in the middle of a guarded objective.
Jana.6831I like it like it is actually. New 300 camps are slightly easier (5% maybe) to take than the old 250er. We still have a power creep and until that is adressed/fixed I would leave it like it is.
ETA: I’m still running more or less my old build (long story but I’ve run this exact build in June and am running it now – so I can tell that the difference between fully upgraded camps is marginal).
The new camps take much longer to upgrade than the old camps and require more work as one has to guard the camp as well as the yaks leaving it. Also, if the objective it feeds to flips, the camp no longer makes progress. Thus, shouldn’t they be harder to take?
Additionally, even before HoT, camps were too trivial to solo. Just like towers/keeps get take longer to flip as they are guarded, so should camps.
It takes 20 Yaks to get a camp to secured, which only adds caravan guards but doesn’t make it any harder to cap. This is ~15-20 minutes for an undisturbed camp. It takes 60 total Yaks to reach reinforced, or ~45-60 minutes. At this point, the camp is slightly harder to take for some classes but still a piece of cake for anything with AoE (anything not a thief, that is). Finally, at 140 total Yaks, or ~135-180 minutes, the camp gains a patrol which might possibly aggro someone killing the Supervisor.
I don’t want them to be so strong that they’re impossible to solo (roaming is life!), but I do wish that they could hold out a bit so that there’s time to respond if I’m in the area.
To that end, I propose a few changes:
ALL TIERS
- Increase aggro and leash range or institute a call for help functionality so that no camp guards fail to notice the screams of the dying supervisor. This should make the difficulty more reliable. Doesn’t matter how strong the guards are if they don’t actually guard.
- Give guards limited condi clear. Since condi seems like it’s here to stay, the guards should have a predictable method of clearing it. It wouldn’t be too tough to play around but might make them melt a little slower.
TIER 1 (Secured)+
- Add Ranger guards. It’s a little embarrassing how easy it is to clump the guards up and nuke them to oblivion. Conversely, they can be kited super easily. A few hard-hitting pew-pew bots would help diversify camp taking—though they should be frail and easily killed if focused.
TIER 2 (Reinforced)+
- No additional changes if Rangers are added at tier 1.
TIER 3 (Fortified)
- Add Elementalist guards. Nothing says fortified like AoE. As with the rangers, they would be glass cannons with a focus on damage rather than CC (there’s enough CC already in the camps). If picked off early, they wouldn’t pose a problem, but they would punish mindlessly running into the middle of the camp and spamming AoEs.
Ideally, this would make guarding a camp actually worthwhile. It’s currently pretty soul-crushing to get a camp to fortified and then lose it in 45 seconds to a Reaper.
tl;dr
Keep base camps just about the same. Make upgraded camps take longer to cap without increasing kill pressure by adding high damage targets that should be picked off before engaging the whole camp.
There’s so many to choose from…perhaps the worst right at this moment is condi druids? They just have so many defensive options coupled with high condi damage and high pet damage. Or any DH, for the same reason.
I still nag people on TS to defend the objectives I’ve spent hours defending. Even so, it’s rare that I get any of my towers (I’m a southern scout) to fortified because solo roamers/small groups love to harass them and my camps.
The only difference is I make a slight bit of gold playing WvW now. Just enough to buy cheap defensive siege.
So, yeah, old players are jilted—and rightfully so. New players in WvW should be fine, though, provided they’re in the top three tiers.
(edited by Sviel.7493)
Anomaly, what server are you on? The WvW experience varies greatly between tiers.
Anytime a class has stealth, mobility and burst, it will require a specific build to even have a chance to fight it. You must be tanky enough to survive the attacks you cannot avoid, have enough lock down and damage to kill them before they retreat in stealth to heal up, and the patience not to engage any objectives until they’re dead, lest they follow and gank you.
In short, thieves are pretty dumb in WvW. I wouldn’t expect changes, though.
*I play a thief fairly often. Sorry.
You sure can report. Submit a ticket to CS using the Support button at the top of this page. Give exact spelling of the character names. Even better, if you can give the display names (Like Fred.1234) that helps. If it’s a guild, CS needs to know which people were involved, as indicting an entire guild for the actions of individual members isn’t something we’d want to do.
You normally cannot attach screenshots to the initial ticket, but if CS needs or wants them, they’ll let you know how to send them.
I hope that helps you!
Despite spending 8 hours scouting on our BL, I wasn’t able to lay eyes on this guy even once. He moves incredibly fast and flips objectives without having to take down walls. Thus, I can’t report him as he’s too sneaky…we really need some GM back-up.
You sure can report. Submit a ticket to CS using the Support button at the top of this page. Give exact spelling of the character names. Even better, if you can give the display names (Like Fred.1234) that helps. If it’s a guild, CS needs to know which people were involved, as indicting an entire guild for the actions of individual members isn’t something we’d want to do.
You normally cannot attach screenshots to the initial ticket, but if CS needs or wants them, they’ll let you know how to send them.
I hope that helps you!
Despite spending 8 hours scouting on our BL, I wasn’t able to lay eyes on this guy even once. He moves incredibly fast and flips objectives without having to take down walls. Thus, I can’t report him as he’s too sneaky…we really need some GM back-up.
No, not at all.
If there was any sort of punishment for siege trolling then it wouldn’t be an issue. Then, we wouldn’t have to deal with refreshing siege.
It’s just revenant things. Pretty dumb but probably not going anywhere.
Basing the upgrades solely on yaks might work out once guilds get yak upgrades running more consistently. It’s really, really annoying when 2-5 people can deny yaks over pretty much the whole map, though. I suppose that’s more of a player issue, though…people don’t like defending camps. Perhaps if the contribution of camps to PPT wasn’t so hidden…
Catapults really didn’t need their supply cost dropped but it isn’t the end of the world either. This change should go on hold until the proxy catapult issue is remedied, though. When the safest place to put a catapult is right up against the wall, it saps all of the fun out of the siege on both ends.
Raw PPK is going to discourage fights and encourage yelling at players who are new or running outside of an organized guild. Also, if one group is better at open field fighting than most, they’re going to see their opponents turning tail to flee over and over. However, since I doubt I can convince anyone of how awful this will be, can we at least move it to points on stake? It won’t solve most of the problems but it at least allows for a bit of recourse.
I’m not sure how the rally changes will go but it seems like a good thing. I’m usually not in the heart of the zerg fights so it’s not really my area of expertise.
At any rate, this is the sort of communication I thought was going to be routine after HoT. It is more than welcome~
25 sup _
2 person guild catas are back, but at least it requires a keep to do it.
A cool idea but I think it would be way too frustrating if implemented. Perhaps if something other than population cap was earned? Some way the borderlands helped out in the fight on EBG? Perhaps a way to non-manually transfer supply from one keep to another or some upgrades that unlock when the homeland is secured.
Aren’t those auras supposed to double? Is the doubling just not listed in the tooltip?
I’m pretty impressed by how well you guys have done and sincerely wish that I didn’t have to fight you day in and day out.
That’s kind of my point, Heimlich. 7000g doesn’t sound reasonable. Gathering the mats over time using the high-efficiency methods like node farms does.
Specifics are malleable, but I like this idea. Ways to make WvW organization easier will be a great help in letting new players get a taste of it instead of randomly roaming and getting wrecked.
If 1 person can farm 10g of materials per hour, 10 people can get the whole 7000g in 70 hours. That’s about a month (35 days) of playing 2 hours a day which is about how long it takes to get the Aetherium you need anyway.
I would consider that obtainable.
They’re only the same thing if you get all the materials for the guild hall and then sell them in order to buy all of the materials for a guild hall.
More practically, someone will see 7,000g and think ‘it would take ages to farm up 7,000g’ and thus consider the hall impossible. In fact, by farming the materials directly, the hall is very obtainable. By extension, the guild could instead farm up 7,000g (by selling guild hall mats) and ignore their hall but that’s sort of a moot point when talking about the cost (in time/effort) of building a guild hall.
Fine, lets just name them sentry 1 (first you meet north of bay) and sentry 2 (second, toward the tower).
Sentry 1 is utterly pointless. No, he wont see you unless you want him too. Someone attacking bay north wont be seen by sentry 1. You can take the camp as well without him seeing you.
Bah, now this entire discussion is about sentries.
Ah, right, forgot about the side path in the canyon that cuts into firekeep.
Wish I could log on atm :<
There’s a sentry between the earth shrine and firekeep that I think would catch people. I’ll have to run around there to see how big his tagging circle is and if it can be avoided. Since I’m always defending my home BL I’m not as familiar with their detection radius as I don’t really have to sneak past them.
When you say north sentry I assumed you’re talking about the NE one? He -is- really out there…could definitely be positioned better imo.
@Phantom
In that set up, a queue on EB would disable entrance to any Borderland. Also, it would delay times only by forcing more loading screens which is, in essence, people sitting there looking at their screen. I don’t think any time-based (and therefore screen staring based) solution will be palatable.
I like the idea but I think it has too many snafus that will catch small groups. Like, if someone loads onto a BL, realizes they’re more needed elsewhere and wants to hop to a new BL.
Perhaps changing maps could drain sup? That way if a blob hops a BL they’ll have to be there a while before they can move on anything but a single person jumping will hardly be inconvenienced. This seems too extreme to me, but…perhaps there’s a good place we can work to from here?
What? You cant be seen beyond the camp from the tower, that’s ridiculous. You also have a second path to go north across the desert and attack from north bay (sentry there wont see you).
If you want to see just how ridiculous the desert border tower and keep placement is compared to alpine, I have included a picture (the “walls” are obviously hastily done). On the left the alpine plane is just moved down to show the desert plane.
Okay, that’s farther than I remembered. Seems you can get to middle firekeep undetected with the overland route?
What northern route are you talking about, though? I mentioned the staircase that leads down to firekeep (which I’ll have to doublecheck in terms of tower visibility) but if you use the stairs up north then you have to exit the canyon next to one of two sentries.
That’s the point. The gold value measures the opportunity cost of making the guild hall. It does not accurately measure the time/effort necessary.
Yes, I already mentioned the eastern path (ie spawn to south camp).
Also you can most definetly hit fire bay without going anywhere near either sentry.
The only way to avoid the sentries is to go over the top and then down the staircase to the middle of the keep. If you do that, you can be seen from the tower.
Ah, I see. I did not consider that because it is literally impossible to both sell it on the TP and donate it to guild hall at the same time. Thus, when talking about donating it to the guild hall it is necessary to discount using it as a gold making device. One cannot, after all, sell the oil to make money to buy the oil in any reasonable manner.
So, yes, you’re right, congratulations. Unfortunately, that technicality has zero real-world application. It doesn’t make the gold value any better of an indicator of the necessary effort.
@Dawdler
On Alpine, zergs could go to south camp or southwest camp without being spotted by SWT. They couldn’t hit Bay without being seen, though, if SWT scout was on west side of tower instead of at the gate.
On Desert, they can still get to either camp undetected and can’t hit Firekeep unseen due to sentry on far path and visibility from tower on the overland path. Desert has the same choke within cannon range as Alpine SWT but is even more restricted, forcing people to go through a kill box or take down a barricade—neither of which should go unnoticed. Add to this that towers will eventually mark like sentries and things get even better.
There’s more, but it’s fairly intuitive if you look at guild upgrades and how barricades obstruct pathing.
@morrolan
Can you be more specific then? ‘Flow’ doesn’t tell me much—especially since you then mentioned ‘protecting’ keeps.