Guild Wars 2

While I’m definitely defense oriented, I think this is a good change. It does make it harder to defend but it also means people will have to actually try to defend instead of porting in after the fact. Should be more interesting.

I don’t think the problem is a lack of identity so much as one that differs from what you want. Also, I didn’t mention anything that isn’t in the game, did I? Or are you referring to my saying that as players adjust that the maps will work better?

I think that the problem is that players don’t consider objectives worth fighting over. Only keeps really generate the sort of fights you’re looking for. I contend that towers, and some camps even, are worth the same level of fight response—and if that were a more common sentiment we’d see more fights. Perhaps if the points weren’t so invisible? Perhaps if there was greater fanfare over a yak getting through or some drop that only appeared when taking camps or killing enemies near yaks? Preferably, something to do with guild upgrades.

The escort idea is only fun if enemies are there to attack you. Otherwise, it’s even less enthralling than walking yaks alone.

You make some good points here, though there are also some that seem less solid. At least, they don’t seem to accurately portray the desert BLs.

Fozzik.1742:

-You need to be able to get to the fights.
-You need to be able to get BACK to the fights.

This is true, but it shouldn’t be so easy that one force can rush back into the fight so fast that they might as well not be dying. When a player goes down in a fight, it needs to mean something. If both sides can spawn near the battle, the whole thing becomes a farce.

That said, 2 or 3 minutes is probably a good enough time for running back. If you can’t make it to any part of the map in 2 or 3 minutes then refer to this post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Guide-to-Desert-Borderlands-Towers-Keeps/first#post5745810

Those routes are all sufficient, though they vary in availability based on which towers/keeps you own.

As for getting to the fights in the first place, the sentries should be plenty to let you track large enemy movements, even without scouts in place. If that fails, it is not the map’s fault. Later on, when towers can potentially mark huge areas like sentries, it should be even easier provided you have defended your towers.

Fozzik.1742:

- Defending needs to be a thing.

You’re right in pointing out the irony of the killboxes—the safest place to be is in the killing zone. It goes right back to how the safest part of the wall is at the bottom, not the top.

Still, getting the Cannons/Oil automatically and having so many of them has made defending far more successful for me. I use a build specifically made to be able to get a few shots of siege off and escape to reset my health (or stay on the siege if pressure isn’t massive) and it’s been paying off. It needs more tweaks, yes, but it’s better than the old system where getting gate siege was a huge setback to defenses and then it was useless half the time anyway.

I imagine this will be slightly improved with Hardened Siege and Shield Generators, but the base state should also be better.

Fozzik.1742:

- Objective cascades.

Notice how many times I’ve said ‘this is a good thing—if you’ve defended your towers?’ The previous form of cascading was as hamhanded as the Siegerazor breakout events. It was great for a smaller force attacking a larger one, but it was even better for a larger force attacking a smaller one. If the enemy blobbed one of your towers, there was nothing you could do to save Garrison, almost.

Now, owning the towers allows you to cross the map quicker and, eventually, keep tabs on enemies better. With the new scoring mechanic (+3 points when yaks finish their journey) towers are also essentially to getting your points up. For reference, with just the northern keep and the two northern towers, north camp will generate over 50 PPT if all the yaks get through safely.

Ironically, the towers used to be better at this in the beta. They had walls instead of barricades and blocked both sides of the tower instead of one, I think. If that were the case, enemies would be at a massive disadvantage in terms of moving around the map. This was toned down to appease roamers, I think.

At any rate, the objective cascading is there, perhaps stronger. It’s just not as obnoxious. It doesn’t invalidate other desirable efforts, like sieging up garrison.

Fozzik.1742:

- Real, actually fun and worthwhile play for any size group, including individuals.

I thought the changes that made yaks/camps so important to scoring helped with this. It’s harder for small groups to flip things with walls, but it’s more rewarding for them when they flip things without walls as it has an even higher impact on score than flipping towers/keeps. If they can’t manage to flip camps, they can at least kill yaks to still have a great impact.

Of course, that means something needs to be implemented so that people care about the scoring, actually. Some of us do, but many do not. If they did, there would be more incentive to split up and guard even the camps and towers.

You’re a bad person if you destroy those. There’s no need to involve civilians.

@Bubi

Am I right to assume that you mean that defending isn’t important because WPs come at tier 1? If so, I contend that you don’t value reinforced/fortified walls as much as you should. Also, having an objective flipped means losing any siege that’s inside of it. Even if you manage to retake it quickly, it’s still a big set-back. In addition, it will likely be drained of supply if it’s switching hands.

The upgrade system does make draining supply harder in some ways because you can’t expect upgrades to run it dry. On the other hand, Yaks aren’t always out in the open so you can assassinate them more easily now—enemies won’t see you coming a mile off. That said, if you deal significant damage to a structure, it will still run out of supply very quickly. Thus, I don’t think this is a negative change.

I can’t say anything about fights on your server, but on mine people are wise enough to re-position if they’re faced with a choke. There’s always another path to take to the objective or a way to get behind an enemy. If you can’t force through them, keep moving until you have more favorable conditions. Once you actually get close to an objective the chokes tend to disappear anyway.

If the enemy has siege built on your gate before you see them, you’ve already been outwitted. A good scout will keep sentries flipped for early warning and can check a perimeter in a minute or less. If an enemy wants to take my keep, they usually have to run through cannon fire to get to the gate.

Cannons/Oil do suffer from the inverted wall problem. That is, it is safer to be at the bottom of a wall than at the top. A shield generator can mitigate this pretty well, though. I run a pretty defensive build in order to be able to stay on a Cannon/Oil long enough to do something—it’s effective enough that no one breaks my gates without killing the siege first. Still, I think you’re right in saying that more needs to be done to make built-in siege usable.

Mortars do seem a bit oddly placed. I’ve been able to figure out how to use all that I’ve actually sat on, though.

With the exception of Parched Outpost (merciless, boring stunlock), I really like the new lords. You can’t just blob them and win with no problems. In firekeep you have to make sure you can survive a knockback/fear. In airkeep you have to avoid fighting the boss in the center of his platform. This also means that if you’re defending with a smaller force, you have an obvious weak point to exploit. Just like the walls/gates, killing the lord now requires an actual strategy beyond overwhelming force.

But, if you don’t like it, oh well. Some of your complaints are things I agree with, some not…

To be honest, it seems more like people played for 15 minutes then spent hours upon hours complaining. Most are saying the same things like ‘too much pve’ or ‘too big’ or ‘too hard to find enemies’ without substantiating their claims. It’s a very whiny echo chamber—it’s hard for me to take it seriously so I can’t imagine Anet is all that worried.

Swift.1930:

Sviel.7493:

It would make more sense to increase the size of the guild hall arena and let that fill the need. If that causes a huge drop-off in WvW players, that’s too bad, but at least the remaining crowd will have more focused wants and, therefore, be easier to please.

So… cut small guilds and loners completely out of the picture?

I don’t think small guilds and loners were all that interesting in large-scale team-based pvp anyway?

Also, getting the arena set up is one of the cheaper parts of the guild hall assuming you’re not trying to fill it with gimmicks.

Yeah, you have to keep her near w/e she was standing when you found her. It’s silly, but it’s affecting all lords and supervisors right now.

I don’t know if we can talk about how big of a chunk wants what, but I do know that the solution to this problem isn’t to change WvW to accommodate these demands. Even in the old state, it was very imperfect for large-team PvP. It would make more sense to increase the size of the guild hall arena and let that fill the need. If that causes a huge drop-off in WvW players, that’s too bad, but at least the remaining crowd will have more focused wants and, therefore, be easier to please.

Even with standardized gear it would not be possible to balance the wildly varying environments in WvW. There will always be situations that are more suited to one thing or another simply because there are too many situations to be able to account for all of them. In addition, the varying strengths of players is part of the flavor of WvW.

That said, I’d love to see Dire removed from WvW like it was from PvP.

I think what you’re asking for is large-scale, team-based PvP. It’d be great if that need was met, but that is not what they are trying to accomplish with WvW. Perhaps that’s why you’ve been perennially dissatisfied?

I didn’t like it at first, but I think it’s probably for the best. There have been many matchups where a server got all three WPs and were basically unassailable for the rest of the week. This way, it’s possible to get a decent attack in. Not to mention, both servers have a huge incentive to hold that side keep now.

I disagree with most of it, but still funny. Many thanks~

Well, toughness scaling is an entirely different problem. It’s been severely devalued for a while—longer than the elites have been out.

I can’t agree with most of this.

The Airkeep knockbacks are well telegraphed and can be shut off. They only activate if the team that owns the keep puts some work into it. Same with the Earthkeep cripples.

A fight in the lord’s room should inevitably be swayed by the lord. If the defending server rallies equal numbers, they should have a potent advantage. After all, on a home BL, the home server is potentially outmanned 2:1…they’re likely sacrificing elsewhere for putting all of their manpower in one place. If you don’t want to die to an NPC, try not to fight in the lord’s room—let them sit in there while you go someplace else.

I can see slowing autoupgrades down some. That alone should increase the importance of yaks, though. No need to try to hit the same problem twice while throwing more complication into the system.

Of course, I’d love to see a fix for the event. It rarely lags anymore for me, even when all three servers are doing it, but when it does it’s crippling.

Barricade HP seems fine to me. Note that the number of hits is more important than the power of the hits when dropping them. It takes way longer to get through on my power-build thief than my toughness-build necro.

Chiccotot.7296:

Does it include Trebuchets?
I managed to break Rampart (Old Garrison) with a pair of trebuchets from northcamp.
It hits both outer and inner walls

That’s fine, Trebuchets are much slower than catas and cost way more supply. Range is sort of their thing, after all.

I liked them when they came out and they’re getting better and better as more people start showing up. For instance, I actually felt decently rewarded for defending a keep the other day because the siege lasted long enough that I got a few ticks of the reward. If it triggered on doing large sums of damage as well, it might be in a good spot.

Perhaps the best change of all is that no keep can be taken, outer and inner, with one set of catas. In addition, there are fewer, if any, uncounterable siege spots. If attackers want to ensure their siege is safe they have to build at a distance. This doesn’t hold true for towers, though, and is a bit skewed by people firing through walls…but it’s a start.

It still amuses me that people decried added PvE content and mobs while also clamoring for the return of the removed PvE areas (centaurs) and mobs (veterans).

But to the point, this post strikes me as sarcasm. I don’t think anyone believes this would actually happen.

To be honest, this way makes more sense to me. It should be useful but not amazing—it is the first shrine unlock for Firekeep after all.

As a defensive specced player (usually) it still speeds up my camp clear times considerably.

Yeah, there are plenty of ways to play a Rev that are fine, but there are also some set ups that seem way over the top. I’m a little skeptical of all of the hammer stuff.

Or they could just go to sPvP, you know.

To be honest, I think the gold cost on siege should be much lower. It should be realistic compared to the amount of income a WvW player has.

It kind of depends on what server you’re on.

I actually like this change, but it does sound painful.

What if it remained but golems had their base speed increased and possibly were unable to take mesmer portals? They need to be slow, after all, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be excruciating.

There’s no master cook or scribe so I still have to go to guild hall for Basins or w/e those things are that go into Linseed Oil.

It helps if everyone gives the Doly some sort of buff. The Med Kits from the sentry posts make this simple.

It’s scribing, and a fairly high level of it at that.

Soon.5240:

Sviel.7493:

Also, the condi bombs where 6+ conditions are inflicted at once make even removals a lottery.

If you pay attention, or review your combat log, when we apply multiple condi at once — they aren’t actually doing that much damage! – they just APPEAR to be doing so. And, in a panic, you expend your condi removal skill…..

…. and then we hit you with our TRUE condi damage…..

and then you melt….

While that is one method, another is to use the damage dealer with the low threats as cover. If a class only clears a few condis instead of all, this leaves them with only a lucky removal to pull through. That’s the problem I’m talking about—I did not mean to imply that the multiple conditions were all doing tons of damage.

^That’s sort of the problem. Condi is mostly weak to other condi or specific skills. Thus, fights are very heavily stacked at the start.

Many of the elite specs come with much more condi mitigation but in order for it to be healthy it must be generally accessible. Also, the condi bombs where 6+ conditions are inflicted at once make even removals a lottery. I don’t think the builds need to be removed entirely, but they do need to be designed more intentionally. That is, there needs to be more thought put into a damage type that ignores defenses and is hard counter (removal) or nothing.

I understand that it may not work, but what’s happening right now is guaranteed not to work.

I agree that the maps were not released at the best time since there was so much other stuff going on, but that’s over and done, now. I like what they’ve done so far (added flax/flax fibers to nodes, moved WPs, lowered tower def) and I’m hoping that it keeps coming. There’s still much to be done.

If the complaints were reasonable, this might work. Instead, people are using hyperbolic statements that are easy to ignore due to being demonstrably untrue.

For example, people say that yaks don’t matter anymore. The truth is that yaks make upgrades go 3x faster. Thus, the real complaint, that yaks are no longer essential, goes unheard. Instead, the speaker just looks like an idiot and gets brushed off.

For a real-world example, look up the student protests in France circa 1970. There was a ton of hullabaloo and they accomplished just about nothing because they were brushed off as not to be taken seriously.

We need less shouting and more calm, nuanced analysis. Less protesting and more willingness to try adjusting and report what things are difficult to swallow.

Loosmaster.8263:

Speaking of which, when I logged on last night, there was the PvP boon. When was the last time you saw the WvW one? The only time I can remember was during the Golem event…

I didn’t know there was a WvW boon :o

You can still claim one objective per map. The warning box pops up saying you’ll lose your claim on some other map but it doesn’t actually happen. I’ve already reported the bug.

So, it’d take 10 events in order for the bonus to do anything at all, assuming you’ve got a guild hall that’s high enough for a +10% bonus. In addition, there are several bum awards in each list…eh, might be better to go Silverwastes after all. Slightly slower for the more expensive lodestones, but with the added bonus of giving a whole bunch of other stuff, including Coarse Sand.

I’ve been using these to offset the cost of building a guild hall and they’re definitely helping…but I can’t help but wonder if I’m doing them efficiently or not.

I just run about spamming events as best I can and take what rewards I’m given. I thought it was tied to number of events with perhaps various weights to each one. Recently, I tried out the guild buff to boost map bonus and saw that it gave a percent boost. This suggests that there is a weight to events…but is there any information on what that might be?

Is there any information at all on how these work? I’m beginning to wonder if the answer to everything is ‘farm silverwastes and buy off TP.’

Zioba.6182:

So you just need again a ton of materials that you can’t get in WvW… Anet, what have we done that you hate us WvW players that much??

You can get Flax and Flax Fiber in WvW now, from the nodes. It’s not nearly enough, though.

Towers still have strategic importance and will have even more when they can mark enemies like sentries. They allow players to track enemies and provide a place of refuge where a small force can significantly harass a larger force. They make it much harder to sneak north camp, which is now the most important camp on the map as south doesn’t feed as many objectives as it used to.

Just because they aren’t easymode assault launching pads doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

Honestly, it’s disappointing to see people complain that towers aren’t important or that yaks aren’t important (3x faster upgrades, people). It doesn’t have to be slammed into your face in order to be a vital part of a successful strategy.

That’s a 5-fold increase~

There’s more to be done with rewards, but I’m glad that this was taken care of.

When all is said and done, WvW will be fine and people 3 years from now will love the maps like we loved old Alpine. It sounds like it won’t be the same people, but oh well. If you’re going to quit, do so with dignity. Enough with the dramatic threads already.

The bug in question has been fixed. Why are we reviving this thread?

This is pretty depressing. I’m really sorry to hear it.

Things are looking up in T2, SoS. We’re still hurting bad but we’re starting to see more and more people playing. I think we’ll recover, but it sounds like it might be the end to lower tiers.

If they were smart, they’d kill the door siege first. It takes just one extra trip to the supply camp but makes it much, much harder for a lone defender to ruin their day. If they fail to do that, they were betting on taking the objective uncontested…and I’ll be kitten ed if anyone in WvW gets away with that on my watch.

d/d Ele is strong enough that you can really do whatever you want, but Tempest probably isn’t the best choice. Tempest is most effective when you have several nearby allies and enemies. d/d is most effective in a 1v1 situation. There may be some happy union in small group fighting, but I’m not seeing it.

You can check the timer for when it’s going to upgrade by clicking on it on your map. This is a thing that could happen pre-HoT too, but you couldn’t check. So…if it’s happening, it’s really your own fault.

The buffs do have cooldowns, in addition to using charges. Cooldowns need to stay, I think.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

Not true actually, they are made from salvaging dyes and dyes can be ‘farmed’ either by farming the materials to craft dye, or by going to the map (forget which one) that has unidentified dye as a map reward and complete events there.

I did not know this~

I’ll find the map and see how much this offsets the price then update the OP.

Dawdler.8521:

coglin.1867:

Dawdler.8521:

Sviel.7493:

Every other day I meet someone who’s in WvW for the first time. I party them and we go on a havoc field trip flipping camps/sentries/towers and defending w/e needs defending. Without fail, they’ve been totally smitten with WvW.

So, we might lose some people who poo-poo the new map, but there’ll be fresh blood to replace them. Unfortunate, but fine by me.

And then once they discover that most people dislike borders and queue EB or EoTM instead, they will also queue EB or EoTM so that they can play together with other players. There will be no fresh blood to replace anyone.

I feel that is a poor assumption. Many people do not blindly dislike something purely because they discover others dislike it. Many people try things for themselves and make thier own discussions.

Assuming new players will love playing on a mostly empty border that WvW players generally dislike is an equally poor assumption, so it balances out.

Except I’m not assuming, but stating things that actually happened. Though, to be fair, the borderlands were not empty when I was showing them around, nor are they empty any more than they were on alpine. Lower population for sure, but flat out empty? Nope.

It was originally moved to Sat night, then moved to the afternoon after people complained, then moved back to night after people complained some more.

The current price of Flax Seeds is 5 silver and 33 copper. This is not a case of low supply; the TP has the maximum displayable amount available. Since 20 are needed per Linseed Oil, it costs over a gold to make each one. Additionally, one must farm ~15 nodes to get enough Flax Seeds for one oil, so knowing the locations in the new maps does not produce enough to do much with.

For scribing, 3 Linseed Oils are required per decoration. 100 Linseed Oils are required to be able to buy decorations to craft in the first place. This is on top of the hundreds of Linseed Oils needed for Empty Kegs and other guild upgrades. With the other materials counted, each decoration costs 4-5 gold to make or a full day’s worth of material farming—assuming you buy the Pigment Pouches, as those cannot be farmed.

Ranking without decorations is incredibly slow (and I love a good grind, honestly) and requires copious amounts of Resonating Silver at 60 silver apiece. Each item needs 3 and, true to form, they cannot be farmed as they come from guild missions only. There is a hard limit to how many can be earned per week outside of joining/leaving guilds.

Then, Guild Upgrades. Recall that a major problem with the previous version of WvW was the gold cost of the upgrades. Consider that being able to use the upgrades that are unlocked in the guild hall requires 75+ Flax Fibers per use at 8.5 silver each. That’s 6 gold and 37 silver per use of the upgrade. Or, 17 gold for the more powerful upgrades.

It is fair to argue that this is due to the relatively recent drop of HoT, however, several things suggest that is not the case. For one, supply is far outpacing demand. As time goes on, supply will drop due to less people grinding the new maps while demand will remain relatively even for things like Flax Fibers. Additionally, since so many of the materials cannot be farmed at all, players are left with no option but to buy them. This skews pricing as there is no way to personally offset supply.

To summarize, the price of Guild Upgrades and Scribing is too kitten high. This holds especially true as the rate of gathering these materials within WvW itself is very, very low. I would estimate that an average player would take 3 months to gather enough Flax Fibers for the lowest tier upgrade. A guild, then, would need 90 average WvW players to use 1 upgrade a day.

PokerStar.5081:

You only need to change a few lines of code for this to happen

:V

PokerStar.5081:

Simple and best solution to get WvW back on track, cause right now many guilds don’t even bother anymore cause it takes 15 mins to run to some towers which is silly.

It would be impressive if someone managed to take 15 minutes to run anywhere, even without swiftness.