Let us not forget, though, that the new LoS calculations make it safer to be at the bottom of a wall than the top. Hence the incredible success of proxy catapults and the miserable failure of wall siege.
Sentries give one point, but I had no idea about the yaks. And here I thought that killing yaks was just about denying upgrades/supply.
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.
If you single-handedly hold off a 30 man blob, they haven’t half a man of brains between them.
Before I say anything else, let me acknowledge that I really appreciate a constructive post on what ails WvW. It just so happens that I disagree with most of it.
Recommendation 1 – Outposts
You’re right that the towers no longer directly threaten the keeps, but I disagree that this is a problem. When towers could be used as trebbing platforms, they provided spaces to put nigh uncounterable siege that took ages to do anything about. Rather than encouraging objective control, they made it impossible to defend the outer walls against an equal force.
I do agree that towers need to have some strategic significance, but it should be elsewhere. If the barricades upgraded with the tower, like someone suggested in this thread, they could function as very effective barriers. It would also help if there were barriers on both sides of the tower so that groups could not access the northern map without breaking a barrier or controlling a tower. The benefits are obvious—enemies are funneled into very few paths unless they break a barricade and, thus, give up the element of surprise.
Finally, once guild upgrades start rolling in, towers will serve as large sentries. This alone is hugely important. Repelling an attack is much, much easier if you’re waiting for the zerg when it rolls up to your keep.
Recommendation 2 – Waypoints
Waypoints present a huge get-out-of-jail-free card as you can instantly move an army into a structure. Given how long it takes to get in, this guarantees that the attackers will have to contend with as big a force as finds it convenient to WP in when they get the chance. They don’t even have to be on the same map and they can still show up to defend in time. In addition, as they allowed defenders to reach every point on their home BL in less than a minute, there wasn’t much room for invaders to get anything done.
Now, the difference between a server that has seen a lot of action on its BL and one that hasn’t is not as great. Before, if one server had WPs and the other didn’t, it was always a better idea (for PPT) to keep whacking the one without WPs for relatively easy points. Chances of success were much higher and it ensured that they would remain easy pickings. Also, the weakened server could not realistically apply pressure through a counter invasion because of the huge difference in mobility.
Since the only WPs in those keeps will be through guild upgrades and will have a large CD, it will now be possible to threaten a BL even if it has been untouched for days. Hitting it once won’t be enough, probably, but actually laying siege to it will be rewarded. Thus, we have less snowballing in terms of mobility and ease of defense—which translates to less snowballing in terms of score.
Recommendation 3 – Oasis
I agree that the Oasis event is problematic. It most often is won by a landslide, perhaps because there’s no reward for second place. Rather than removing it, though, I propose we refine it.
The total number of cores should be static: each time a core is turned in, by any team, it counts towards the maximum. The laser should hit all structures and damage done should be based on the number of cores turned in by that server. In this way, a small team can mitigate the damage caused by the laser even if they can’t win the event outright.
Additionally, the lasers should hit only the gates, not the walls nearby or the oil’s above.
We should also note that whoever owns Rampart spawns much, much closer than anyone else, which is usually a homefield advantage.
Upgrade System
Recommendation 4 – Manual Upgrades with Hybrid Cost
Having any sort of price for the upgrades is going to make them few and far between, as in the past. It is especially cruel to demand a price of scouts as they see even fewer rewards than the average WvW player.
Manual upgrades are also fairly unnecessary. The reason they were consolidated was to make it possible to defend a tower/keep earlier on. Before, a paper objective was often given up as a loss. With the consolidation, there’s no reason to have a player start the upgrade since there’s only one choice. It would be nice to have player investment, but this is not the place to find it.
Finally, making upgrades compete for supply felt awful. It made the process take much longer since obligatory thrown siege would eat up most of the supply unless run from camps…but that was dangerous is as the left the structure unscouted and the player could run into roamers. Not to mention, it was too slow.
Right now, assuming 2 yaks get in every ~4 minutes, It takes 10 minutes for a structure to get cannons/oils. That means that none of the four yaks were sniped. If they are, it takes 30 minutes. For reinforced walls/gates, it would take 2 hours with no yaks and ~40 minutes with them. Fortified takes 6 hours with no yaks and 2 hours with them. That means that roamers can make upgrades take 3 times as long—That seems like ample involvement. At the same time, ensuring those yaks get in has a tangible benefit for the defending team. Thus, I cannot accept the argument to go back to supply with ‘giving roamers something to do’ as a basis.
Recommendation 5 – New Upgrade Paths
I’m rather indifferent to this. I prefer the fully consolidated upgrades, though.
Recommendation 6 – Guild Upgrades
The old upgrades were all temporary. While they are no longer available, that doesn’t amount to taking away paid content. It can be argued that any queued upgrades should be able to be used, but that’s only 12 hours of missing time. This patch removed the old upgrades entirely (like any balance patch) and added new upgrades in their place.
It’s rough right now, but ultimately the new upgrades will give much more power. In addition, since +5 isn’t guaranteed, it encourages the formation of guilds—which are the lifeblood of WvW. Understandably, lone wolves with shell guilds are upset, but since +5 will now be a permanent upgrade we should see as much of it or more as we did when they could still prop it up artificially. Just, it will be the work of a guild. They could even join a guild and just turn off the chat it they want the perks without the rest.
Finally, while guild halls are HoT gated, only the leader actually needs to have HoT. Once the hall is up, all members can visit and contribute. Thus, I would not say that it is problematic.
-snip-
Go on, call me a zergling, a one-masher, a rallybot, a scrub, say I don’t get it, whatever. The new maps are boring, sluggish, and empty. And this is from a Fort Aspenwood player – on a server that, according to Anet’s own metrics, is full. I don’t even want to think about what it’s like on lower tiers.
We, SoS, rarely go to FA border because we have a constant FA/TC presence on our own. Our numbers are very low as well, so we simply can’t field a team on EBG, our BL and our enemy’s BLs. It sucks as we’re often outnumbered by both server’s groups, but it does make for lots of excitement.
I’m betting that your complaints, while legitimate, are caused by the now aggravated population difference rather than the map itself.
It happened once for me, but hasn’t happened since. I’m not sure why.
I think it’s pretty silly that proxy catapults are so effective. It’s line of sight abuse and feels awful to deal with.
Wvw is a competitive mode, and if you fight like you’re fighting an NPC that makes you a pve player, 90% of the time if you approach a wvw player like they’re an NPC you’re gonna get your kitten handed to you. Thus WvW players are considered superior in our playstyle, the same could be and (you even said it) that pve players are superior in their playstyle.
I get that, but I don’t think too many people try to fight a player like an NPC. It seems plausible that one could fight one way in PvE and then switch gears for WvW. I could understand an apprehension due to uncertainty about whether any single player transitions well, but I’m seeing a wholesale discounting of anyone that enjoys more than just WvW.
Then again, I’m probably reacting to some extreme fringe. I hope that’s all it is.
To be fair, they did add Flax seeds and fibers to the gathering nodes. Granted, they made the nodes give less mats overall, but at least it’s possible to inch towards one’s flax needs at a reasonable WvW pace.
There are a bunch of threads on this already, but in summary:
The only place to get the bags other than the TP (5g+) is from PvP. They drop from the Centaur Loot Boxes that are the 3rd and 23rd reward on the Krytan reward track. The boxes drop 0-5 Heavy Supply Bags each.
Good Luck.
I don’t really like the way people talk about PvE players in here like they’re some mass of backwards cavemen. Especially given how laughably inept some of my WvW guildmates have been in PvE farming guild hall stuff. They do different things, but they’re not inferior players.
They drop indirectly in PvP as well.
The Krytan reward track gives Centaur Loot Boxes for the 3rd and 23rd reward. The boxes contain 0-5 Heavy Supply Bags and some other stuff.
I had to miss reset, but I ran scout defense for ~3 hours well after reset raids ended. I was alone at first but eventually amassed a group of ~5 people. We had several fights, mostly against other small groups—nothing over 10 people. There were 4+ attempts on Airkeep (cata, ram, no siege dropped, cata), 1 attempt on Necropolis (1 ram, 1 alpha, 1 omega), 1 attempt on Academy (1 guild cata) and countless skirmishes over camps, sentries and shrines. There wasn’t much time for offense beyond recapping camps/shrines, but we attempted to take the south east spawn tower and were nearly wiped in lord’s room by 10 enemies. Survivors fled to airkeep thanks to fall damage immunity providing an escape.
Notably, one player who joined up was playing WvW for the first time. He helped take a camp and build catas for the tower.
Despite the wide range of the attacks, I was able to predict them all by watching sentries and camps for marked enemies and swords. Thus, we were able to prevent any major damage. When I left, the enemies seemed to have swapped maps and an ally offered to tag up. It seemed like they were surprised to see people on…I’m betting that having people in map chat convinced more than a few folks to linger a bit instead of declaring the map empty and logging out.
I should note, we lost firekeep during this time as it was attacked while we were defending airkeep. Also, this was in T2.
Anyway, my point is that defense is alive and well. Offense is also doing great, but people are going to have to learn to build siege outside of cannon range or to at least kill the cannons/oil first. I had a great deal of fun tonight on the new BL—I’m confident that, once time runs it’s course, they’ll come to be loved as much as the Alpine variant. The only question is will it be by the same people.
So, basically, everyone avoids the new map then complains that everyone avoids the new map.
Not very convincing criticism…
If you only got one Badge when taking all of those objectives, it’s either a bug or you weren’t getting credit for the lord kills. That’s not a WvW issue so much as a zerg-burning-lord-before-you-can-tag issue.
It is more than a little odd that the cost of upgrades was removed and then the guild upgrades were made far more expensive. I’m planning to write something about it once I have more time to use it.
I, too, approach things with a light RP perspective. I’ve always been a bookworm and am even now procrastinating on the several hundred pages I have to deliver by sunday for the novel I’m working on, so stories are very important to me.
With that in mind, the new BLs with their unique, named characters for each lord and the individually themed objectives are a godsend. There’s soooo much more flavor in this map than in Alpine. There’s also more terrain variation—one side of the map looks nothing like the other. As a result, it does feel less like home, but I’m perfectly happy with that as it feels far more exciting. This is a place to have adventures, actually.
I’m not sure there’s a way to solve this problem for those whom it exists with, but the new map is in my opinion superior as a creative base moving forward.
Knight/Cavalier Necro works too. It’s not the fastest, but you’re not going to die unless you screw up, so it may be effectively faster in the end.
‘Map-reading’ is hardly a skill. I say this as someone who obsessively checks my map and calls out swords wherever they are found. Usually, the pop-up doesn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already predicted, but it’s still a useful information feed and I’d never advocate removing it to hide that information behind compulsive map checking.
All of the captures and capture/holds have worked out. Usually, they complete early though—after capping 2/3 camps or holding a tower until tier 0.5 instead of 1.
I didn’t address that in my first post, but I feel differently about that too. If rampart is under attack when it’s fortified and sieged up, I want to defend it because it’s fortified and sieged up. It’s much, much easier to repel an attack when I have stronger walls and siege fully built. In fact, if a blob comes, I have to have walls/siege or there’s no hope at all.
Defending a paper rampart is very difficult, by comparison.
Thus, waypoint or not, I’ll always be defending.
I think it’s a great idea too. Making it optional would be fine, but it’s never once gotten in the way of anything I’ve wanted to do.
I mostly like them because it means that if I manage to defend a keep for 8 hours straight, it upgrades. Previously, I’d scout a keep for a long period and would repel defenders with the help of whatever comm was running, but we couldn’t get any yaks in so it was only a matter of time before it fell due to no supply for upgrades/repairs/siege. It felt like it was pointless to defend too much because, as time wore on, the structure became indefensible even if the siege was only for 10 minutes out of every hour.
The time can be adjusted, but I think it’s probably fine as is. Fortified structures take a huge amount of time without yaks, as they should. Reinforced is also several hours. Even the initial upgrade, which doesn’t improve the walls/gates, takes a while. The cannons oil make it difficult to breach a gate but do little to protect the walls.
I think the statements about no one wanting to defend because everything comes free are melodramatic. Structures aren’t going to last several hours without being attacked—if you want to be able to defend it, you still need a steady stream of yaks.
On the bright side, I got flax from a node earlier. Pretty sure that’s new.
I know scribes make them, but that’s it.
It shouldn’t take an unplanned interview to get that sort of information out. I’m still somewhat optimistic, but they need to do a better job of communicating. This is a big change, after all.
We don’t want to punish players for having a random teammate show up to help out.
That said, the laser event does feel very unrewarding…the base should be higher, imo.
The Dolyaks going into Undercroft get burned by lava even when on the path. The Yak from the southeast camp often doesn’t make it in alive.
So why do you bother, if your only contribution is to attack the person and their method of complaining instead of the issues they raised. It isn’t that hard to get the gist of what that person is saying.
I think he’s saying that the issue that was raised is not clearly defined. He takes issue with the ‘more PvE’ claim because he doesn’t see any evidence to substantiate it. Neither do I.
Okay, we looked around and found that Coztic Frogs in Verdant brink drop them. Reportedly it was one of the huge ones with the hammer.
Annnnd nevermind. I checked and it was a Heavy Bag of Supplies, not a Heavy Supply Bag. As of now, the item is still nigh unobtainable.
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What do you all think about making flax obtainable in WvW? The same would go for other materials needed to craft WvW objects.
It seems that guild halls are based on PvE and then have a few WvW specific or PvP specific mats for the rooms that pertain to those game modes. This is problematic because guild halls were made absolutely critical to the success of a WvW guild. This means that a WvW guild must have a farm of PvE players to supply it or it runs dry. That’s a hard sell when recruiting members…why wouldn’t they just go to a guild that caters to their interests instead?
I don’t know the intent here. It may have been that they hoped guilds would diversify, but in order to truly encourage that they’d need a way for WvW players to benefit PvE players as well. The relationship is currently one-sided. It may have been that it isn’t working as expected or just wasn’t thought through. What I do know is that guild halls are here to stay—complaining is useless, but we may be able to inspire tweaks.
Perhaps taking objectives could yield materials? Supply camps could have supply type things (flax, etc) while towers and keeps could have other materials (ley-line sparks?) as rare drops. It would be faster in PvE, but possible in WvW. The latter seems dicey as the sparks are locked behind a mastery in PvE, but the flax at least should be fine.
Finally, while the gold flow in WvW has majorly improved (it’s no longer negative!), it’s not so high that anyone can sustain what they’re asking for. Even with the brutal nerf to dungeon rewards, WvW is still way behind other game types. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix that other than a flat buff to rewards? We don’t want to encourage k-training, after all.
Currently, the only other way to get them is in a Centaur Loot Box which shows up as the 3rd and 23rd reward on the Krytan PvP reward track. They’re selling for about 10g on the TP if that’s an option for you.
Basically, this seems like a pretty big ‘oops’ moment, but these things happen.
The changes are god awful, I still haven’t played on a new map because there’s never anyone there. No player Damage on doors is stupidity, I’ve never been one for PvD but if that was the concern then damage should have been reduced instead of this abomination.
WvW ranks, LOL just LOL. There is nothing to invest in, everything is so easy to obtain now.
So when exactly is this " As work on Heart of Thorns wraps up, we’ll be treating resolving the remaining core areas in WvW as our #1 live development feature priority for the game to ensure we deliver on making World vs. World not just the great experience it is today – but the incredible experience we know it can be" suppose to start ?
Dear god please consult your WvW players, you have managed to butcher WvW in one foul swoop. It’s not even that I personally hate the new maps, there’s just no one on them in T4 which makes me assume that they really are just that bad.
I honestly don’t see myself or many other of my WvW friends that have played WvW from release sticking around all that much longer. It’s saddening that Anet doesn’t seem to know what we want and what would make this mode thrive.
For the record, no one has actually managed to get that no PvD upgrade yet. You may want to hold your complaints until it actually starts showing up in game.
A bit melodramatic, no?
Also, I don’t get how you’re all griping about PvE. I see mobs about as often as on the old BL and fight them less. The only time I fight a mob is during the Oasis event and they’re just a side dish to the enemy players I’m trying to maim/murder.
The BLs are also not that hard to get around, especially if you own the structures. If I could record, I’d make a tour video or something. They’re definitely confusing at the outset, but it gets better.
Tonight, we ran with 5-10 people in T2 on an enemy BL. We managed to take a couple of towers and a keep. Several keeps, technically, but never both at the same time. We had plenty of fights with a couple of different groups from both other servers. Most of them outnumbered us (~15 people) but it wasn’t so bad that we couldn’t at least put on a good show. We had some moments where we got slightly lost. We had to contend with defenders at almost every objective. We defended a few things when we had the chance. All in all, it was exactly what I look for in a WvW raid.
I think it’s known, just low priority and not as simple to fix as it appears. I’ve seen it reported all over the place so I’m sure they’ve heard about it.
I love having a homeland to fight over. Something that, when we can’t possibly hold our own, gives us a line in the sand to fight for.
I think the bigger issue here is people that can’t function without a commander.
I told everyone Dragonhunter would be strong and no one believed me \D:/
I like that it isn’t a combat destroying machine. If it was, it’d be zerg mandatory, which would be annoying.
I just wanted to add that a group of two to three people takes several minutes to blow up a barricade.
This is pretty easy to solo within 30 seconds.
So whats the trick? Tried to duo a barricade yesterday and after about 15s, the hp bar wasnt even down to 99% – it didnt move at all. Needless to say, we gave up.
That’s odd…I took one down in about 60s solo on a character in Knight/Cavalier gear. I’m inclined to think you’re exaggerating. It was a necro, but not Elite spec.
Then again, I tried to solo one on a non-power character and it was going to take all day so I left.
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I was distressed at first because our Aetherium capped out about 15 minutes after this started happening, but if you’re working on it then I can’t ask for more.
Good luck and godspeed~
Given that it’s permanent, I don’t think this is as big of a deal as you say. It does feel disproportionately large due to having all of that stuff and having it taken away, but it should be fine in the long run.
That should, the MF and XP buffs should probably be changed to things that are more useful in WvW.
Btw, you only need guild level 10 for +5 on camps, then level 15 for towers, etc, all the way up to level 37 for SMC.
It does not count. I can’t explain that situation any other way, but that’s the answer we’ve gotten before. Must be some other quirk in the system.
I love the auto-upgrades, but making a button that has to be pressed seems like a fair way to keep them from being too easymode.
It takes like 5 people to get a guild hall. If your guild is smaller than that, ask a friend to join for a day.