My point is that the gold value is not a good indicator of the difficulty of getting the guild hall because the difficulty of obtaining the items is not directly tied to their price. I was not saying that they magically change in value when used for the guild hall instead of sold on TP.
If Linseed Oil costs about a gold to buy and we value 5 Oils at 5g, it is a bit misleading since the time it takes to make 5 Oils (about 10 minutes daily with 4 characters) is far less than the time it takes to make 5 gold. Thus, using the market gold cost tends to make people freak out and think that the guild hall grind is worse than it is.
If you were right, prices would only change due to difficulty of getting a material changing. You’re completely ignoring even the basic principle of supply and demand.
Consider how quartz shot up to 11s a piece after HoT and just recently, in the last 24 hours, fell back to 4s a piece. Nothing changed how easily quartz is acquired—if your contention was correct, that would have to be the case.
You can also consider Elder Wood, Mithril, leather in general…all the materials that saw huge price changes without any change in rate of acquisition.
Also, you need to consider how much of the material is needed for the guild hall. It is easy to gather ~25 flax seeds per character per day due to node farms. Anything beyond that takes longer due to more spacing. If a guild has 8 characters (which could be 2 players or less) gathering daily, they get 10 Linseed Oil a day. That’s enough to keep pace with Aetherium production on most paths. If they have more people farming than it is even less reasonable for them to buy on TP as the oil will just sit there doing nothing until Aetherium catches up.
Materials have the same value whether gathered/crafted or purchased from the trading post.
The buy order price for Vial of Linseed Oil typically closely tracks the cost of crafting it from Flax Seeds bought at buy order (low) prices.
Yes, but the time it takes to gather Flax Seeds to make the oil is much lower than the time it takes to get the gold to buy the seeds/oil for the average player. Thus, even if the market value is very high due to demand, someone who farms wisely may spend less time/gold acquiring the item.
The market value of the upgrades isn’t a good indicator. If a guild buys literally everything then they’re going to make it much, much more expensive than it ever reasonably should be. For example, buying Linseed Oil will drive prices way up but is never really necessary with the Aetherium gating.
- As has been said over and over, towers and keeps are not strategic: owning one does not help you progress to the next (see northern towers on alpine borderland); this limits the opportunity to actually enjoy the FANTASTIC game engine that GW2, no joke, it’s the best in an MMO now in my opinion.
Can’t agree with them not being strategic. They, combined with sentries, are essential to keeping track of enemy movements. Additionally, they are a large part of PPT gain as two northern camps feed into each one.
It’s true that you can’t directly hit other objectives from them but I say this is a positive change. It means that sieges happen in the field, as they should, instead of siege firing behind walls. Especially with the new bonuses to defending, it’d be nigh impossible to retake a tower with a zerg sitting in it and destroy the siege before losing your wall.
- The huge amount of chokes promotes pirateships, which amounts to two groups looking at each other for minutes sometimes 5-10 minutes at a time with each knowing that if one pushes the other, the one that pushes loses. “But Finality, that’s why you use two groups and split” – But if you do that, the bigger group just pushes the group that didn’t move around to pincer, and it’s game over. Again, overall this does not provide an opportunity to have some sort of fight to enjoy the engine.
You’re right about the pirateship, and that is truly a silly balance situation. The number of chokes should be fine since there’s generally an alternate path but right now, in the pirateship meta, its a problem. I’d argue it’s a balance issue rather than a map issue.
- The new classes and builds promote pirateshipping too! (along with the change to talents which amounted too: backline damage is now insane, and now more insane due to CoR and other forms of cheese abuse).
Very, very true. And very, very not fun.
- Guild upgrades are gated but once unlocked are just crazy. Huge rule in MMOs: If you are going to give people upgrades they worked for, do not take them away. Add to them. Once you do get the upgrades, it’s out of control. Between siege only doors/supply drops/emergency WP/temporary invulnerability, the upgrades get crazy. Which promotes siege play, which at least for our guild, gets boring pretty fast. If I wanted to play Scorched Earth I’d go back to the 90s.
Siege play is much, much easier to make work when populations are in flux as they are in WvW. Designers can have a general idea of how much siege will come into play—they cannot predict how many players each team will field and must account for it fluctuating greatly.
Personally, I like it, but I understand if you don’t. I think this change is better for WvW balance in general but perhaps not what the current crop of WvW players actually wants. I’m not sure there’s a way to accomplish both goals.
- The keep lords are too strong for small groups, meaning they do not die fast enough for a larger group to come in and wipe them. Small groups have a hard time due: Fortified gates/guild upgrades/guild cata nerf on supply/+5 supply being taken away. You’re HURTING small group play when you wanted to promote it.
It takes 3 people to kill a lord, 2 if you juggle aggro, and doesn’t take any longer than if a zerg tried to roll over it.
Small groups definitely struggle with fortified walls but, again, this is a good thing. Small groups shouldn’t be able to drop guild catas and ninja keeps with comparable speed to a zerg. They can get in, but it takes longer.
Meanwhile, with the changes to scoring around yaks, small groups can still make a huge impact if they focus on taking camps and harassing keeps to create weak points rather than trying to just bash their heads through the walls in one go. Whether they ultimately take it or just soften it up for a large group, they get stuff done.
Admittedly, this means that objectives are changing hands less often. Again, this is a good thing. Flipping something should have meaning…it shouldn’t just mean that the enemies happened to be somewhere else.
- Lastly, on the note of auto-upgrades, increase the time. Right now, Ramparts can go from being paper to tier 3 in about 80 minutes. 80 minutes!!! Due to the lack of engagement from small groups and roamers (chokes hurt them!), there is no one on to keep the yaks pinned down.
With a little yak sniping, that time goes up to 6 hours. If that’s not an opportunity for a small group to make a difference then I don’t know what is. If they don’t show up…that’s a different problem.
“Scribing costs for WvW claiming and guild siege equipment have been adjusted to be less expensive.”
This is the best news~ It should allow for everything else to develop as well.
Dunno what tier you’re in but I’m constantly fighting zergs on my BL in prime hours and havoc groups in off hours. I can’t remember the last time it was empty…had to have been weeks ago.
Some people complain, some like them, but in the end they still come.
I guess I would ask what tier You are on as well. I’m in tier 2 on FA. Let me give you two examples of our prime time adventures in different BLs. One night we spent 2 hours flipping everything in our bl, and about 75% of an enemy bl. You know how many players we saw? Once we saw about 10 show up to do the laser event. So 2 hours one group of 10.
On the second night we flipped around 50 percent of our bl and then in the hopes of drawing people out we map hoped taking the 3 keeps on each of the other BLs, some of them more then once. Since the servers would simply wait for us to leave then cap thier stuff again. In those 2 hours we saw one group of 20ish try to defend fire keep, once. And from time to time we would run to defend our bl keeps hoping for a fight to find 2 people on a gate with a ram. So 2 hours one group in of 20ish.
Right now in my experiences, except for reset night, the BLs are for people who want to karma train. They get a little Zerg together and karma train away. Dodging fights and Killing doors where they can. Which is usually everything, since no one is there.[/quote]
I can’t speak for TC, but on SoS we defend it we have people (or if we don’t). If FA shows up with 30-50 people, though, we can’t always stop them. You may have experienced us delaying captures as long as possible but, in the end, a few defenders can’t hold out forever in most cases. When we backcap, that’s because we can’t fight w/e force(s) are on the map, not because of a love of K-training.
When we do have a comparable force, we fight non-stop. We defended Rampart with ~30 people versus two groups of ~30 from both TC and FA for about 3 hours. After that, the guild that was leading the charge moved to EBG to take over from another guild that called their raid there on account of Rampart being full of holes and becoming increasingly indefensible.
Perhaps, what time zone do you play in? I’m on all over but I know that we don’t have many people in EU or early NA atm. If you roll a zerg onto our BL at that time you’re not going to have much fun.
@Heimlich
-I realize that Sup Siege can be bought with badges/proofs, but as badges/proofs are not available in large enough amounts to match the previous glut of mithril/elder wood, I predict that less siege will be available.
-Sabotage is comparatively cheap. I said that it depends on Flax Fibers and Resonating Slivers dropping in price, but since they’re the major part of the cost and both new materials, I’m predicting that they’ll fall.
-Small guilds don’t need to progress their guild halls very much. As long as they can claim things, larger guilds can slot upgrades (built by the large guild) into their claims. Given the difficulty of raising the guild hall and the cost of the upgrades, I’m predicting that this will happen rather than most of the guilds paying for their own stuff.
-I don’t think you’re wrong about supply, but I also don’t think we disagree. What I’m saying is that hitting attackers in the supply is more effective now than it was—for the reasons that you stated. Also, defenders have old tools to hit supply (cows/traps) and now new tools (sabotage depot) that should make a supply denial strategy more feasible/effective.
@Downwood
-That’s pretty interesting…perhaps that’s because golems are considerably easier to deal with than before. I’m not confident with making any predictions on that yet—will have my eye on it.
@Dawdler
-I’m not really concerned about closet K-Trainers who complain about people defending.
@Xenesis
-I think their intent was to boost small groups but, you’re right, the costs are just too high. If they don’t come down like I predicted and/or ANET doesn’t change the mats then this all falls apart.
@Pixie
-If we can establish a symbiotic relationship where large guilds handle the upgrades and small guilds focus on claiming, it will ease the pain enough that small guilds should stick around.
This thread is not about the time of losing your objective being too short. It’s about being able to do something about proxy catas with the cart you have on the wall, without the help of the cavalry.
I know you’ve spent a long time sussing out various siege placement. But you can do something about proxy catas — it’s just not necessarily carts. I’m not being coy, I just don’t want to reveal my solution and have those on the offensive side find a counter to my counter.
You are, by definition, being coy.
Your solution cannot be evaluated as long as it is unknown. Thus, there’s no point in you repeatedly mentioning it. For all we know, it’s no better than the current ‘solutions’ which are unviable. If you’re not going to tell us, quit talking about it.
I see some of you are die hard happy about the new changes. Yet somehow I don’t think you run with a guild of any size nor have spent much time in wvw. Last night the queue for EB was like 60 and I visited the borderlands couldn’t find any people or tags so I had to go back to ESO. Because although ESO has a really bad lag problem they do not have any population issues that this game has. I’m kinda stuck because ESO’s lag sometimes makes that game unplayable and the messed up borderlands are making this game sometimes unplayable. So say what you want but facts are facts. The borderlands are empty and EB is full.
Dunno what tier you’re in but I’m constantly fighting zergs on my BL in prime hours and havoc groups in off hours. I can’t remember the last time it was empty…had to have been weeks ago.
Some people complain, some like them, but in the end they still come.
No, I’m pretty sure I’ve nailed your suggestion down perfectly.
Let’s look at Catalin last post where he says that the only vulnerable spot at the Academy is the SW/W walls. If you do something to eliminate this spot then there are no vulnerable spots at the Academy. Making this towers defense super easy, and would provide no challenge for the defenders.
You are purpose changes that in your words makes attacking a tower challenging, and then not expecting the defense of a tower to be challenging as well. You are purposing to bend the game directly toward your preferred play style. That’s very selfish.
‘Vulnerable’ here refers to a place where there is no counter whatsoever. The whole tower is literally vulnerable, but the enemy comms will need to combine distance, cata bubbles and siege spacing to get the wall down if there’s no easymode wall where defenders have no recourse.
It is difficult to build a community when your allies one moment might be your enemies the next.
The actual WvW game mode is not, in the end, all that fun (personally speaking). The draw is being part of something larger—the server community. Thus, while I suffer in the moment scouting and repairing and cleaning up camps/sentries, I enjoy the overall experience based on my contribution to the server.
Contrast this with a MOBA style game where team loyalties are more fluid. There, I’m playing for personal advancement. If my allies and enemies shift it doesn’t matter much because I only need to mesh with them in order to accomplish my personal goal of winning the game, which is in itself enjoyable and profitable for me. There is no such personal advancement in WvW
Let us pretend, for a moment, that WvW will be around a long time for now. It’s not too important whether you personally believe it or not. Many of the choices I’m seeing indicate that ANET is playing the long game with WvW and I want to see if we can hash out their vision.
Most of this is only applicable in the top 3-5 tiers of NA. Don’t know about EU.
Of note:
-Superior Siege, once the glut of spirit crystals dries up, will become comparatively sparse. It will be a much bigger investment to drop 5 superior catas on a wall, especially since they usually can’t hit both inner/outer on keeps now. It will either be replaced by guild siege or switched out for normal catas.
-Guild upgrades will eventually become prominent and people will be heavily incentivized to defend said upgraded structures. Towers will run Sentry Balloons just about always and keeps will run Hardened Siege/Walls.
-Northern camps will run Speedy Yaks to boost PPT while southern camps will run Iron Guards so that they don’t flip to solo roamers. Southern camps will also run Sabotage Depot as it is comparatively cheap and effectively denies attackers any supply to work with.
-Fights will refocus on taking camps while harassing keeps. Taking a keep will generally happen after prolonged harassment instead of as a rush.
-Small guilds will be relied upon to hold claims so that larger guilds can slot upgrades into a structure.
-Supply traps will become ever more important as supply itself gains importance. In the absence of guild catas and with a greater necessity to build siege to destroy defensive siege, zergs will need to actually pay attention to their supply count. Meanwhile, with so many small paths, it is easier to lay a trap where you know enemies will run.
-Small groups will become indispensable for taking camps and harassing keeps. I imagine 3-5 people. This will be driven by a desire to reset claim timers on camps for attackers and a desire to preserve claims/supply lines for defenders.
In order for these things to happen, we’ll need to see the price of higher tier guild upgrades drop. I don’t know if this will happen naturally or if ANET will be forced to intervene. We’d also have to see a bit of player adjustment, but this is happening…slowly.
tl;dr WvW will become a game of supply. The total amount of available supply will eclipse the total number of players in determining siege success. Camps will generate more fights than walls, many of them small scale.
You must be misinterpreting our suggestion.
We don’t want to be able to 100% defend everything, we want to eliminate situations where we have a 0% chance to defend.
We especially don’t want to have players pushing other players away to avoid a debuff.
If you watch the video, you’ll see that there are several places where proxy catas can go down that can’t be hit by anything except an arrow cart that’s in range of meteor shower. Thus, 1 ele makes it impossible to destroy the catas.
I’m doing fine on SoS, thanks. I hope you get your GvG gametype since you and many others are into that, but I also don’t want WvW to become a GvG gametype. Two very different modes, those are.
Lol, most WvW guilds operate on a screw-the-PPT basis? I think you may be living in a bubble…or maybe it’s just your server?
1-No reason to defend anything because it upgrades itself at no cost.
2-Solo roaming just isn’t viable and has no impact on the matchup.
3-The maps are “hard” to traverse but a pain in the kitten no one enjoys.
4-It’s pushed most servers to play only on EB which is getting extremely boring.
5-Home border defense community is dead and we had a great one with 15 people on all the time having fun with so much to do and coordinate, that’s now totally gone, see point 1.
6-A long list of bugs, glitches and simple stuff that has not been addressed, fixed or even acknowledged.Alot of these problems can be fixed with some simple changes to allow every server easy travel across the map by opening up the waypoints in Fire, Air and Earth keep if you control it and upgrade it, bring back the old upgrade system using badges or gold and get rid of the centre map event and make it a viable area for guilds to GvG (i hate guilds myself but it’s unfair not to give them something they might want).
We’re not allergic to change we just don’t like change for changes sake.
1. Defending things wasn’t about the money you put into it but the time it took for it to upgrade. Saving it meant that it retained higher tier defenses and w/e siege you had in it. Auto-Upgrades eliminate the lack of response that paper objectives got because, since they could just be re-flipped, there was no point in defending them.
2. With the changes to scoring that make camps the highest PPT objectives on the map, solo roaming is more important than ever. Harassing enemy supply lines is more impactful than taking their walled objectives. Specifically, if one accounts for the +3 points from yaks finishing their routes, NEC, NWC, SEC and SWC are worth ~38 PPT. NC is worth 50 PPT. Since yaks respawn right after their route, this gets better with swiftness and/or the Speedy Yaks upgrade. It gets worse if yaks are crippled by a hostile sentry.
Also, flipping sentries so that enemies can’t see large zerg movements is amazingly effective.
3. It takes about 3 minutes to walk from spawn to anywhere on the map, depending on what structures you own and such. It’s not even that hard, honestly. Some people had it figured out day one. If this is a problem for you, there are several videos that can show you how to get around.
4. There are many things you can blame Anet for. Player choice isn’t one of them.
5. See point 4.
6. Some bugs have been fixed, others acknowledged. It’s slow, slower than I’d like, but we haven’t been totally abandoned.
Are you seriously saying that hitting a few buttons every half hour is the difference between boredom and being entertained?
I’ve taken firekeep with 3 people and airkeep with 2. I’ve also taken both with groups around 10. The bosses require you to move but they’re not impossible or even overly difficult.
So what? You should not be able to 1vX a group that is playing intelligently just because you have an AC. WvW is designed around large groups and coordinating with your teammates.
You’re absolutely right here. The problem is that the group is not playing intelligently but still can’t be denied. They’re just putting siege in an area where defenders have no ability to attack it. If they were chaining cata bubbles or using a shield generator or hitting multiple spots at once or taking down counter siege with ballistas from vantage points…that would be a different matter. That would be a true game of play and counter-play.
@Catalin
I don’t want to get rich defending. I just want to be able to mostly defend and pay for the necessary tools of defense. The WXP might be fine at this point, honestly, since things are more likely to need repair since they can more successful be defended. The badges, on the other hand, are non-existent. I do staggering sums of damage to enemies but rarely actually finish them since they retreat if under pressure.
(edited by Sviel.7493)
Doesn’t bother me in the least. Part of the reason it was enjoyable is that we didn’t feel like we were required to do any of it. In fact the fast yaks turned out to be a waste. It took us long enough to get a camp up to the point that we could slot it, that the keep fortified after only two fast yaks. We would still have had all the fun and all the fights even without the stuff we did. But, it added to the fun.
Don’t forget the +3 points per successful yak journey. Fast Yaks takes the PPT contribution of North Camp from ~50 per tick to ~100 per tick, assuming you own Rampart and the two northern towers. It really should be the most sought after objective on the map.
- How many people are in your guild, and how many of them participate in World vs World?
- Do you find any of the Auras from claiming essential?
- How many World vs World upgrades has your guild earned, what level are they, and how close are they to getting +5 Supply, in particular? Do you feel it is achievable? How much have they spent?
- How has your guild been obtaining the upgrades? Do you feel that this has taken time away that you would have rather been playing World vs World? Please be specific, such as “I spent 5 hours getting shovels”, etc.
- How has the new system impacted you and your guild’s playing experience in World vs World? Would you prefer the new system or the pre-HoT system?
- If you could change one thing about the Guild upgrade system, what would it be?
We have ~15 active members. It’s about the same as before HoT. Our tag is literally WvW so, as you can imagine, they all participate in WvW.
We’re up to Aura 7: Toughness right now. I don’t think I’d call them essential but they are helpful. Given the wide range that they apply over, it’s hard to complain.
Our guild is over lvl 30 and has most WvW upgrades unlocked for that level. I’m our main scribe and am a bit behind on paper farming due to the ludicrous amounts of wood needed. My guildmates have spent, collectively, thousands of gold. I’ve spent hundreds and have dedicated hours to farming. I think it could have been cheaper if more people in the guild were familiar with PvE and knew how to farm things instead of just buying them on TP.
We’ve spent a whole lot of time in PvE. Some folks spam Silverwastes for shovels and sand, others farm flax, etc. Personally, I farm both flax node farms on 5 characters daily. I mine the rich quartz formation in DryTop daily. Then, I do soft wood farming runs on 3 maps then switch characters and do it again.
I haven’t felt a huge change. The buffs were not noticeable before and we rarely ran them. We’re missing +5, but that just means we’re more likely to have to resup than before. Often, pre-HoT, I’d be knocking down walls by myself and resupping 3-4 times to get anything built…so it doesn’t really bother me. We’ve all learned/adjusted to the new maps and run there almost nightly.
I don’t think the material costs are too crazy, honestly. 10 people working 2 hours a day could easily keep pace with Aetherium gains. Doesn’t even have to be the same 10 people every day. However, I’d change the amount of Flax Fibers needed per upgrade. It, in the long run, will be the biggest reason people are pulled out of WvW to PvE for upgrades.
Not sure why you said that in two posts, but you’re not considering that ACs are fragile and almost always vulnerable to enemy attack. In addition, they only have the potential to make defense easy when the enemy is right next to the walls/gates. In that situation, the defenders should have a huge advantage.
What happens, then, is that attackers pepper the wall with damage while their catas go to town. Even with a defending force equal to half the attackers, they can’t keep an AC alive long enough to take down any siege. No other siege can hit something built right next to a wall, either, leaving the defenders with no recourse.
It’s a problem because , rather than promoting player interaction, it makes it all but impossible. Proxy catas are both the fastest and safest route to getting through a wall if you have a few folks to spam AoE upstairs. Additionally, as it’s much harder to attack downstairs, enemies will be hardpressed to respond.
If the structure is undefended, it makes sense that walls melt to proxy catas. If it is defended, such an assault should be foolish…but it isn’t.
Yeah, the cost for superior siege is pretty crazy. I think they might be hoping to incentivize using guild siege since their master plan is to make WvW more guild focused. Unfortunately, the cost of making guild siege is also a punch in the gut.
What seems really strange, though, is that it costs less badges to buy 2 regular blueprints and make a superior blueprint in the forge…then it also costs proofs of heroics. What, exactly, is the benefit?
That’s about 25g worth of upgrades. Spread out over a guild, it’s doable for reset night, but in no way sustainable. Still, I wish I was on that BL to experience it~
I think that anyone who is at scribe 388 probably isn’t going to blink in spending 25g, though.
They did increase proof of heroic drops in response to complaints of them becoming soulbound. It was, in fact, about doubled.
I mostly agree that the problem you state exists but I really don’t agree with the solution. Something as simple as not allowing AoEs to wrap over the top of walls (sounds simple, at least) would do the trick. Then killing siege placed on walls would require either a treb or a balli or any projectile that wasn’t obstructed. The result would be that being at the base of a tower wall would be very dangerous due to the AC fire, which is how it should be. However, sieging it from a little way away would be perfectly safe.
The downside is that, with enough ACs, it would be hard to get through any hole you made. This could be solved by either nerfing AC damage vs players (but not siege) or allowing players to build a sort of ballista with scaffolding to shoot from a higher angle.
This sounds like some pretty interesting tactics all around. I usually don’t have to deal with anything beyond enemies blobbing on one gate/wall or another. Even if we repel them, they resup and blob on the same place or somewhere else. Just the other day, after repelling 4 attacks by the same blob, their commander whispered me saying he hoped I died and that I was killing the game mode by defending. He said I wasted an hour of his life.
Seems like the difference between those that are closet K-Trainers and those that actually want tactical warfare.
Disablers/supply traps are 15 badges each. That’s 8-15 objective captures or 1.5 wxp lvls or dailies. I also used them to buy siege but that’s sort of not feasible now.
T3 NA isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. Despite what people say here, there are people on the BLs during prime hours. There must be, as things flip and what not. It’s probably not enough people for most of the time, though.
Still, you should check it out for a while before buying, as with anything.
As a TC player, you vastly outnumber the enemy servers. If you’re on your home BL, you’re going to be bored. What’s your time zone and what BL were you on? I wish I could have a moment with no roamers on my BL QQ I’m constantly flipping camps/shrines and warding off small groups trying to take my towers. I swear I’m going to die young.
@TheThinker
All the PvE banners require scribing too. Getting the actual upgrade does not but using it does. That said, WvW still got shafted needlessly by the guild hall…
Even without hero points and siege, the rate needs to increase. One defense can easily cost me 90+ Badges of Heroics in disablers and supply traps, not counting w/e siege I put down. Meanwhile, defending rewards ZERO Badges unless large sums of enemies are killed. That means that the most common scenario, massively outnumbered defense, is not sustainable whatsoever. Even when an allied zerg shows up to fight, I’m often pretty removed from the field of battle repairing things or killing enemy siege or otherwise ensuring that they can’t resume their assault.
If a guild has schematics built, they can slot them into a structure held by another guild. So, while they can only claim one, they can have improvements in however many they want, provided somebody claims them.
Got my bonus chests too. Seems normal to me.
Player Assisted Dolyaks – Supply is a vital part of WvW strategy, yet hardly anyone defends the supply lines. To incentivise both defending and attacking the supply, I propose that dolyaks gain massive benefits when accompanied by allied players. Benefits could include such things as: extra supply dropped off at the destination and faster respawn time of the next dolyak based on how long the dolyak was escorted for (the longer it is escorted the bigger the bonus), and a 33% movement buff while accompanied by allies. And if preventing faster supply wasn’t incentive enough, for the attackers, they could add the option to steal some off of the defeated dolyak.
This is already in game. Dolyaks get 90% damage reduction when allies are nearby. They don’t drop off extra supply, but the respawn timer is now only ~3 seconds so there’s no need to reduce it. Also, with a first-aid kit from any sentry post, players can give yaks 50% swiftness uptime without any of their own swiftness skills. Thus, the yak already has the movement buff and since there’s no respawn time, making the yaks move faster means more supply over time.
Finally, attackers already have a chance to steal supply off of a defeated Dolyak. They occasionally get 5 sup when killing a Dolyak.
The new borderlands are nothing like EB style. At least, I’m not seeing it. Can you be more specific in your assertion? I see EB as a place where fights are constant and defending is hardly a thing except for sometimes when you hold SM or when your keep is under attack. Everyone is right next to each other and can spawn close enough to get back into the action in a moment of so.
The old BLs were a place where the home team had an advantage only in the northern triangle and could get a full map advantage by getting WPs in the side keeps. At it’s best, it made for intense defense of the side keep WPs but at worst it made it impractical for a smaller force to attack the BL (with WPs) of a larger force no matter what kind of strategy they employed. Thus, most of the action took place on the smaller forces BL where they resisted getting run over for as long as possible. Usually, attackers would build siege in a nearby tower and thus ensure victory since the smaller force couldn’t counter the siege very effectively.
The new BLs have keeps where multi-pronged attacks have a much better chance of working due to not being able to be spotted from miles away. Additionally, since the home force can’t WP them, a smaller foreign force has a chance to effectively siege it if they play their cards right. Defending them is currently a bit less intense among some people since no one is using guild upgrades, but once those come along there’ll be even more reason to hold a structure for a long period besides just better walls/gates. Also, with the sentry mechanic, tracking enemies is much easier. Whether it’s getting early warning on a zerg or hunting down a pair of roamers, their marking is essential. I really can’t wait to be able to put that on a tower…a scout’s dream.
But, more to the point, the borderlands are not much different in terms of mobility for a server that couldn’t routinely WP sidekeeps. They’re certainly not EB-esque, at least. But, we should note, the whole borderland concept is somewhat contrived anyway. Every team has always been able to spawn near a keep and at least one tower. If they so chose, they could make any border their own for one corner. The only thing that makes the hometeam different is that they spawn near a keep and two towers instead of one so it’s usually worth more to hold your own border than to move elsewhere.
As for WvW game mode itself, I don’t believe that Anet will recover WvW to be again a game mode suitable for strategy and tactic enthusiasts. A map where you can kill other players? Yes, you are still able to do that in WvW. A map where you can precisely plan your strategy, for example wreaking havoc in enemy supply lines to deny your enemies to be able to improve their last stronghold with cannons and mortars, and many other big strategies and small group tactics? Not anymore.
I must disagree here. The ability to blow up supply when an objective flips makes it easier to starve enemies. Granted, it’s 500x too expensive right now but I’m sure that’ll change one way or the other. Meanwhile, with the less open maps, it’s much easier to effectively place supply traps. Also, since objectives almost always have supply, it’s less of a sacrifice to use it in a trap.
For example, I and a team of 3 other people managed to hold firekeep versus 25 enemies earlier today. We did it via the use of supply traps, sneaking behind enemies to build ballistas and making use of built in siege when we got a chance. In all, we killed ~6 catas, 1 golem and several rams. If the enemies had attempted a strategy beyond simple blobbing, they would have gotten through. Instead, they sieged for about 45 minutes then gave up.
I won’t be happy, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d quit. I’d try to adjust, at least.
I really do appreciate server pride, though. On SoS, we have a decent sized core group of players that have been here forever and have no plans to leave no matter what happens. I love seeing that group expand, too. With factions, it’d be impossible—we aren’t all in the same guild because our playstyles vary. Some want a zerg, some prefer scouting, some want to use elite builds and be the ultimate fight guild, etc. Even personalities and preferred guild environment differ.
Thus, we couldn’t all fit into the same faction. Any faction I did join would inevitably have less variety of people, too.
Both PPT and population issues need to be addressed. Fixing either will also change the best solution for the other. Thus, I’d say fix PPT first to avoid over-consolidating servers when fixing population.
I’ve seen a small influx of new players but nothing like what was expected. Outside of raids by the servers big guilds, I think most of the people I’ve met have been newish to WvW. Some were solo, some came in small guilds.
On the other hand, I think the biggest reason on my server that population has dropped is guild halls. We were already pared down to a dedicated core that was largely willing to stomach the new BLs if we didn’t like them…but we also really want to help gain strength as a server which means tons of guild hall grinding.
The disillusionment with the guild halls has been more crippling than the disillusionment with the new maps.
COR is a pain in small fights too. If even one or two lands, the fight is basically over for anyone that isn’t a condi bunker build.
It would help to know what server you’re on. I imagine you could find a contact in-game to show you the ropes, that way.
Stealth needs to be reworked in WvW to account for wide open spaces and the ease of escape/resets. Classes that rely heavily on stealth should be buffed to compensate.
Picket line? Really?
Complain all you want, but don’t come at us for liking the new BLs.
I’m actually a little jealous, tbh. Would prefer an option to disable, though.
This is even less accurate than the source, which has been largely discredited. Save your panic for when we actually know what’s going on.