SubHonour Guard.6498This is true for forces that are similar in size but for largely uneven fights this does not prolong the fight long enough for a smaller force to be particularly effective. For more similar sized fights the lord is powerful enough to reduce the duration of the fight by killing the attackers faster. A mechanic like bannering the lord does not increase the lords ability in combat so it has a smaller effect on the actual fighting, allowing the players to fight each other more. Pre-HoT garrison fights could last hours once inside the lords room.
Largely uneven fights are not the sort that would last for hours pre-HoT. The lord would drop and, unless contested, the ring would cap very quickly due to the number of people in it. Bannering the lord would buy a bit of time but, since the lord died so quickly, it didn’t make a big impact if you didn’t have the forces to make use of the extra time.
Post-HoT, the EBG/ABL lords live longer but are still a non-factor in a fight. How do you feel about those? On DBL, lord rooms and inner keeps are generally bigger so there’s more room to fight, but the lord creates an area of advantage for the defenders. This means that it’s hard to take a defended keep with even numbers and the defenders, when pushed to the lord, have an advantage. Is this not what you wanted?
On the other hand, if the offense manages to kill a defender, they gain more of a foothold. They don’t lose all of their progress every three minutes while slowly dying of attrition.
Assuming that the problem is one server having a 100% win rate against the other the keep fight will happen because the smaller server cannot push out and win. This doesn’t mean there can’t be a good keep fights, just that one side needs a major advantage. The nature of the advantage is where we disagree, I believe mechanics that reduce the fighting between players is uncompelling.
Allow me to clarify my position. I am not an advocate of reducing fighting between players. However, I recognize that if everything caters to unmitigated PvP, small population imbalances wreak havoc on the game mode. I also recognize that WvW is more than just unmitigated PvP. Thus, I seek mechanics that are less vulnerable to population imbalance. Sometimes that means a reduction in fights, but as fights are the most volatile component in terms of population, that is occasionally necessary. There must be a balance, of course, but we cannot simply say ‘more fights always.’
As to the nature of the advantage, I want it to be something that the offense can play around.
A 3 minute free WP is too powerful. A 30 minute WP on a stick is, as you said, far less effective. We should note that Emergency WP had a 20m CD initially and was raised because players complained despite the same thing existing on a 3m CD pre-HoT. What CD length would you prefer and why?
Bannering the lord can’t be blocked and resets the ring timer. It is too often ineffective for a force that needs an advantage and needlessly annoying for the offense. The best case is when there isn’t any real population imbalance but you just need to buy a bit more time for your zerg to come over. Having a powerful lord that doesn’t die instantly, on the other hand, still gives time for a zerg to respond but also gives a tangible advantage to defense. If the offense has enough room to disengage from the lord without leaving the keep, all is well.
Anecdotally, this is all false and my experience is the complete opposite. The best example of this was garrison, where mesmers would portal people inside from spawn, warriors would wait above the lord to run in and drop banners and everyone else would repair holes in walls and gates. People would build ac’s that forced the attackers to move and that presented an opportunity for defenders to cc people and pick them off. Fighting the attackers at the gate is fundamentally different from fighting them in the lords room since the defenders have more control over the reinforcements. If you can control all these elements the only thing stopping the defending force from pushing the attackers back is time and it was a very meaningful resistance.
In other words, the defenders would use multiple tactics that the offense could not play around to draw out the fight indefinitely and win by attrition. That sounds like it could be very fun for the defense (I enjoyed it) but terribly frustrating for the offense. They have to kill the lord, kill every warrior on multiple levels of the keep, camp the places where mesmers could drop portals and somehow keep the gates open all while fighting w/e defenders are around and dodging ACs. That sounds less like a fight than like mass torture.
Your statements about the win/loss ratio seem good. It’s not groundbreaking material, but you express it clearly and fully. Your observation about being pushed back to keeps is also good. Unfortunately, the rest of the post seems to abandon this starting premise. As we shall see, it is later contradicted in full.
OPThe major difference between pre-HoT and post-HoT keep fights is that there are no post-HoT keep fights. Attackers are very effectively held off by siege, siege disablers and tactivators, *if they manage to get into the lords room they will generally be able to take the keep. *
This statement is not quantified and also does not draw on universal norms. One of the primary complaints about DBL on release was the that lord’s were too powerful and made it too easy for defenders to arrive and win a fight. In addition, lords in DBL scaled to zerg size whereas before they melted instantly to a zerg. You say you miss things that prolonged lord room fights but don’t mention that they’re now much longer by default. We should also note that popular complaints said that the lord rooms were death traps—these were taken so seriously that Anet changed the map to address them. Yet, here, you say the lord’s room is just a victory lap. How so?
Moving on, you say that attackers are “very effectively held off by siege.” By this I assume you mean places where defensive siege can destroy proxy catas without dying to meteor storms. This changed nothing about non-proxy catas. In addition, there’s more room around the east keep walls than on ABL so catas can be built that aren’t proxy. There’s also high ground to launch an assault on every keep so they can actually be built in place where it is difficult or impossible to destroy them with siege from within the walls. In other words, the only attackers that fared worse are those that couldn’t imagine any way to hit a wall other than rubbing their noses on it. The truth, then, is not that offense has no counterplay but that defense finally has a bit. That’s not a problem if it isn’t taken too far. After the turrets were removed, it hit a pretty good spot. If you’re talking EBG, there wasn’t much change. Unless your opponent has many shield gens working in perfect tandem, they can’t protect the whole wall.
You mention siege disablers which were not changed. There are actually more ways to block them post-HoT than before.
You also mention tactivators, ironically, despite the most effective one being a waypoint that does the thing you later claim to miss so much.
While defenders have a better chance of keeping their structures post-HoT it’s often done with no fighting involved. A larger force will poke a keep, be showered with ac’s and siege disablers, leave before a fight can happen and then continue to win against anyone that fights them open field.
Beneath your stated complaint seems to be the common gripe that people can destroy your super aggressively placed siege without an open field fight. Try backing up from the wall a bit and seeing what happens. If there’s a force to fight you, they will fight because they can’t keep the wall up forever (unless you’re really bad at sieging?). If there isn’t a force to fight you, there was never going to be a fight anyway.
Keep fights are important for keeping a 70/30 fight win rate between uneven groups which is important for the longevity of the game. For this to happen, keeps need to be redesigned to prolong the fights in keeps, not the fights to get into the keeps. Examples of this can be seen in pre-HoT gameplay that has now been removed.
Once you get into the keep, a larger force will absolutely steamroll a smaller force assuming equal skill. This is a tale as old as the Orbs of Power. The only time the smaller force can put up meaningful resistance is during the fight to get into the keep. Since that fight was fairly absent pre-HoT, population imbalance led to easy wins and server stacking ensued. Now, the fight takes a little longer and isn’t as faceroll easy as putting catas on a wall and spamming AoEs up top. Post-HoT the defenders can claim a few victories by stalling an assault even though the offense always wins in the end unless the apparently glorious keep fight takes place.
You talk about a 70/30 win ratio but describe a situation where the zerg always wins. Trickling in via waypoint only shifts a fight if there are pretty close numbers to begin with—otherwise you just get run over. The keep fights you’re looking for were not a product of waypoint flashes and banners, but of fairly even populations clashing and one side having the advantage of quicker reinforcements. Those fights are simply not possible with more than moderate differences in population.
We don’t have seasons in WvW anymore, so I’m guessing no.
So many people missing the point here~
The problem isn’t that the gate eventually falls, but that there’s no player interaction in it falling. All defense is just stalling—that is enshrined in the mechanic of supply. A well-played defense will always lose when it doesn’t have the supply to keep going. It can lose even faster if the offense manages to break something open before the defense can adequately respond. In the case of 5v40, the strength of the offense is such that they will very likely break something before the defense runs out of supply. Unless they’re dumb.
That’s all fine.
The problem is when the defense is present, aware of the attack and unable to do anything meaningful about it. By meaningful, I mean there should be some avenue, provided they have enough time, to repel the assault. That doesn’t mean that they need to succeed at repelling every assault—that would be ludicrous and boring. It just means that for every offensive assault, there must be a defensive action which can theoretically repel that assault.
The issue with PvD is that the only defensive action is attempting to repair the gate. Even that fails when the attacks coming through it are too much to get close. Thus, there’s nothing for the defense to even attempt to do. They’re helpless to watch as they lose the keep.
If the enemies had thrown down 8 rams and 3 shield generators, the gate would still have fallen and much quicker…but the defender’s objective would then be to destroy the siege. It would be very difficult, but it gives them something to work towards.
Removing PvD isn’t going to make it much harder to cap structures. There are few cases where it would matter and they are overwhelmingly in the 5v40 scenario. If it’s 30v30, PvD isn’t an option for a prolonged period.
Thus, they could make the change without causing any damage to the balance of even match-ups.
I want to do this, but it would require me to make my necro condi. I’m not sure I can live with that…
I was wrong about red being lowest rank~ Thanks all for correcting that.
@Kovu
I have a very different experience with firekeep. The courtyard Cata spot in inner is very hard to defend due to the walls that block most defensive siege. There are no outside spots that give me as much difficulty save for the standard proxy Cata shenanigans.
1 supply repairs 1.75k damage. That means 1 Yak into a keep brings enough supply to repair 70k damage. On average, Yak routes are about 3 minutes. That means the Yak effectively repairs ~375 damage per second.
Meanwhile, players deal far more damage than that. A zerg will absolutely dwarf it and, if they’re smart, will send a few folks to slap the yak.
So, yes, this is a potential issue. It’s less about whether an overwhelming force should win a battle and more about how they win it.
An outnumbered force must play a supply game to be effective. They reduce the supply that the enemies have to build siege, try to destroy any siege that still gets built and cut off routes to re-supply. If they play very well and the enemy zerg is as mindless as usual, they can work miracles. However, if the overwhelming force also plays well, they will win with a relatively minor loss in speed. The important thing is that every player is able to influence some outcome in the scenario regardless of the inevitable conclusion.
Thus, rewarding the most mindless of the mindless play is probably not a good idea.
Let’s not forget that the more important boons/condis are, the more critical it becomes to quickly recognize that they exist. Right now, it’s nigh impossible to see what’s going on. Some effects have visual tells but when your opponent is sporting 8 boons, it gets sort of messy.
I was literally about to make a thread with this title, lol.
AnetTrue Shot: The recharge of this skill has been increased from 4 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP and WvW.
That’s the only change that mentioned that it also applied in WvW. Other changes, like Warrior’s headbutt, were universal. The bulk of everything was PvP only.
I’m curious as to why they changed True Shot for WvW as well but didn’t change all the rest of the things. Was it an accident? Is there some master plan? I don’t think we’ll ever know…
@Straegen
I said ‘soon,’ but perhaps it would be more accurate to say ‘eventually.’ For now, in the absence of a statement from Anet, I hope I can assume their stance on retaliation-esque damage to siege hasn’t changed.
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@TinkTink
If you check out the History/Context section on ACs, you’ll see that their damage has been buffed twice since release. Once directly and once through WvW traits. The LoS calculation has been adjusted but the damage has steadily increased since opening day.
That said, I agree that ACs should be able to defend against enemy siege placed in their range. That’s why I propose buffing their damage to siege (it was indirectly nerfed last year) while reducing damage to players. That should allow them to defend without being able to create tunnels of death as easily.
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@Eypheha
I didn’t suggest lowering supply capacity for players. The only servers that will be hurt by this are those with large enough zergs to completely drain a keep. There’s literally no change for small-teams or low-pop servers.
The irony is that the red keep is supposed to be for the lowest ranked server and is meant to give a small advantage.
Changing it might not be too hard, though. If the touch-ups done to DBL were in-scope then raising the elevation of Overlook might be possible too.
Can you explain what’s going on there?
I’m guessing that they killed the lord while on outer…or they just all stacked in a corner to minimize damage while killing him? What’s the abuse?
Rather than raising the supply cap to the point that 8 rams per gate because child’s play, how about reducing the cost of trebs instead?
That said, I don’t think they need a reduction, but if you’re trying to solve the issue you presented then that’s a better way to approach it.
I think this is a semi-sarcastic riff on the extreme volatility of match-ups right now. Surely, no one can seriously brag about this sort of thing.
I think it’s more like Othello, with us being the titular character and WvW being Desdemona.
I’ve watched four guilds die, at this point. Simply rallying the troops isn’t enough. Unless Anet manages to stabilize the game, the burden is too much for players to bear.
To extrapolate, one guild left because the combat system was not to their liking ([Vae]), another left partially due to server politics and partially due to low population ([WvW]). The third ([PIX]) just up and disappeared. No one there really ever got into WvW very much. They followed tags for a while, enjoyed it, then ran off to other games. Finally, ([BLUR]) was a scouting guild and largely dispersed due to population drops after HoT.
On a smaller level, I’ve led groups in those guilds that focused on havoc scouting and had lots of success…but that dried up once Alpine BL came back. There’s not really much room to maneuver on Alpine without a zerg. You’re constantly exposed and can’t really gain any time advantage through misdirection. Hills is especially onerous as there are so few places to hit it and all of them are at a lower/even elevation and in the open field. The yaks are also difficult to assassinate to both Hills/Bay because the path is so short and so close to spawn. Anyway, without getting sidetracked too much on an ABL rant, its return was the final nail in the coffin for everyone I was still playing with.
Add to that server situations that don’t foster new growth, the lacking/outdated WvW tutorials and the stark differences in how tags operate in PvE and WvW and it’s tough to get anyone to stick around these days.
I recognize that some of it’s up to us, but there’s only so much we can do.
So this was moved to the thief forum…
I feel very differently about Rifle thief in general than I do about it in WvW, though. I plan to enjoy it in PvE myself and I don’t care about sPvP. The two topics seem very, very different.
I’ve had a few close matches lately, actually, but they tend to diverge over the course of the week. For example, when JQ/FA/SoS fought a few weeks back, the scores were neck and neck until around Tuesday, I think. I logged on and prepped for upcoming skirmishes, planned my attacks as such and basically had a blast. Every time a structure upgraded felt meaningful. Flipping an enemy structure or preventing its upgrades felt meaningful. Even upgrading a camp gave me a bit of breathing room.
I actually went to JQ BL and flipped their upgraded Hills just to give us enough of an edge to win the skirmish. Several times, the skirmish came down to so few points that the loss of even 1 person’s effort could have swayed it.
Admittedly, that doesn’t happen too often, but it was an invigorating experience while it lasted. I play in the hopes of experiencing that again.
ACs are already near useless against zergs as at least two specific builds kill them passively. They are also the only line of defense against a superior numbered force which thanks to shield gens and those aforementioned builds already have a massive advantage.
I didn’t mention it in the OP because those builds are likely to be changed soon. At the outset, retaliation damaged siege and it was quickly changed not to do so. Anet moves much slower these days but it seems like that sort of mechanic is not something they want in the game.
As for shield gens, I didn’t cover those either for sake of brevity and pending further research. What do you think about giving the force dome a minimum range, though? If it can’t cover the shield gen itself, there should be better options for dealing with offensive shield gens while defensive shield gens are about the same.
I do.
2 Shield Gens and 2 Rams cost at least 160 supply, assuming guild siege. That’s 8-10 people worth assuming relative veteran status.
If you have 3 people, you can deal with that, but it will take some coordination and time. I think that’s ok.
If you scout the group before they’re on your gate and hit them with 1 supply trap (-5 × 8-10 = -40 – -50) or cow, they lose the ability to build 1-2 of those items. Since they need 100% Force Dome uptime, that means they’re down to 1 ram or 0 rams. A similar result can be achieved if you have any pressure on their siege while they’re building it.
Thus, I don’t think it’s a situation that needs to be made impossible. There are already things in place to deal with it.
Now, if the population imbalance is pushed to gross levels (30v3 or so), then it is very oppressive. However, I don’t think there’s much point in trying to balance for a situation that is that skewed.
That said, I think reducing the amount of supply on the map should make that sort of occurrence less frequent if players work toward it.
This should be quick and simple~
Flipping a camp that feeds into a keep or killing a yak headed there should qualify for at least bronze level contribution.
If I can go a little deeper, assault events can have sub objectives that include owning the surrounding camps and killing spawned yaks. This will more effectively communicate to players the importance and value of cutting off supply. Perhaps the reward for flipping the keep can scale with how many of the support objectives have been completed.
There’s not much potential for abuse—anyone who gets credit in this way could have just blobbed into the lord room for the same effect.
My actual server tag above my head would be a start.
I really don’t understand why they haven’t done this already. It’s the simplest of fixes that would please a huge number of people.
I’m lucky enough to be on a server that gets it’s own name, but I’d be pretty heartbroken if I was effectively erased and whored out in the name of population balance. Sure, there’s potential for conflict based on different groups, but that’s not as big of a problem as what’s being done now.
@Kiroshima
Turtling is already a time-gated strategy. If you don’t retake supply camps, you’re not going to be able to keep your walls/gates up. This is especially true on DBL since there are more possible points of attack and therefore it is less possible to counter-siege all of them and do so before the offense gets some damage done.
In order for it to be remotely balanced as a Deadeye style physical damage weapon, they’d have to restrict almost all of the utility skills. Since there’s no precedent for restricting any of them, we complain.
If it’s condi, they’re still have to restrict the stealth/mobility utility skills or it’ll be a huge pain.
If it’s healing, then Deadeye is a very misleading name and it’s going to feel really weird shooting your allies in the back to heal them.
Basically, we don’t know the details, but no matter how the details pan out, it’s going to be a problem. I’d bet my right hand on it.
I want to return AC damage to siege to what it used to be in terms of time-to-kill. Ballistas would still be far and away the fastest way to take down enemy siege, though.
Proxy catas are a Line-of-Sight issue. There’s often no place to build a ballista that can hit them unless it’s super vulnerable to enemy attacks. That means you need 2-3 people just to get it built and then have to tank attacks while it goes to work. ACs work slightly better due to hitting in an AoE, but they are also stifled by LoS when catas are built against the wall. There’s no trade-off for building proxy—it’s just the best choice all the time if you have even/greater numbers.
If we just increase zoom while on an AC or remove the need for LoS at all, we end up with offensive ACs clearing all of the siege on the other side of the wall. The best way would have been to increase zoom and use a custom LoS calculation to prevent firing over walls or too far uphill. They do use a custom LoS calculation, but it apparently isn’t that.
So, yeah, proxy catas are only good due to abusing limitations in the game engine. They’re going to need to be addressed sooner or sooner, but people get really upset about those and Anet refuses to comment on them (here or on reddit) so I decided to focus on things that might garner more support.
@Caedmon
If enemies manage to build multiple rams and shield generators on your gate, they deserve that kind of power. It cost them huge amounts of supply and should be difficult to deal with. Rather than making that sort of thing impossible, I want to make supply more meaningful so that they can’t pull those sort of shenanigans on every gate unless they take pains to do so.
This is the thing I said would never happen because it’d be really dumb if it did. It’s like a bad joke.
If thieves had stealth/evades on weapon skills instead of utilities, it could work out. That way, the most powerful mechanics could be gated in a meaningful way. As it stands, every weapon has access to huge mobility, evades and stealth…so adding range to that just seems like a recipe for the most ulcer-inducing class out of any mmo I’ve ever played including the ones that got cancelled in beta for being too terrible.
Perhaps a team of crack designers could pull it off, but…
edit: I main a thief, lol
The things you describe here really does do only the antispocial scum of this game’s playerbase… sorry to say that … especially the act of jumping around on the dead corpse or the downed enemy player, which just wants to get back into play, just shows what a kind of non social person these kinds of players are.
Sad thing is, they are oftenly then the first people which freak out, if other enemy players do exactly that on them too when they are downed on the dirt and try to whisper the people all kinds of insults…
A player which has honor and respect just kills off the downed enemy quick and without such childish drama around the act of defeating an other player in a competitive game mode. Especially when the situation is clearly to your favor and you know exactly that the enemy has 0 chance to come back from downed state at all, due to being outnumbered or being hit by surprise with a powerful burst.
That kind of antisocial attitude that people are showing in competitive game modes like described here in the quotes is it, which makes me always think that PvP and WvW would be way better and more joyful to play, if Anet woudl just remove this Downed State nonsense from there and turn it into Instant Defeat the moment you lost all your Health.
That would quicken the battles also by alot and make them more interesting.
Sadly there is still then no solution for bad morality of players and acting like small kids that need to grow up, but that change would be at least a good start to make PvP/WvW a little bit better in its social aspects.Its sometimes hard to be a good loser, but it is also alot easier to be a bad winner.
Something that some people should try to remember on more oftenly, when they play PvP/WvW.
I don’t jump on corpses, throw siege, laugh or dance. However, it’s my job to keep the fields clear and the supply lines open as much as possible. Therefore, the longer a slippery roamer spends bleeding out the easier my job gets.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I enjoy the show.
Anyway, as they say, there’s no honor among thieves.
I agree that ACs should be able to help an outmanned server defend against enemy hordes. However, there needs to be counterplay to that or turtling becomes the predominant strat and that doesn’t make for a fun game.
That’s why I want to return AC effective damage to siege to what it used to be while toning down the damage. Defenders can use them to kill enemy siege and keep their walls up, but the attacking force can cut off supply so the wall can’t be repaired and can also attack from outside of AC range. Both groups have methods to work towards their goals. With the current iteration, ACs are pretty bad at destroying siege but make for effective choke holders when stacked. The attacking force can bring down the wall but pushing in is problematic. This is somewhat mitigated by having multiple routes to the lord’s room, but I saw an opportunity to improve it.
Condi, condi and more condi is usually the way to go, with ranged obviously being easier than melee.
Seeing a thief burn to death while franticly teleporting all over the place is the best thing. Bonus points for downing them while they are stealthed. Dont just stomp them afterwards, stand there and slowly aa them to death. Jumping on the corpse or taking pauses to extend the suffering is optional.
I like to let them heal up to just a hair from full, then poke them gently. Or maybe walk away so they think I’m going to let them live, then shoot them once with a rifle. Anything to let them know they’re not welcome on my borderland…
@ich
By slow, do you mean the new condition that Revenants have? I’m pretty sure that’s the name, but sometimes people use that for Cripple. At any rate, that’s a good condition for a non-damage impact but it might be too powerful to apply in an AoE unless it was a really long CD.
With Bulwark, I was thinking a really narrow area that would cover just the siege and user. Someone directly behind would also benefit since the projectile would be destroyed. What kind of abuse cases are you thinking of?
@Kiroshima
I think turtling is more of a symptom of the problem. If ACs deal less damage, it should be ok as long as there are multiple paths to take to the lord room. If siege spent supply, it’d be much harder for small teams to operate.
As for shield gens, I’m definitely up for changes to those. I wanted to make a focused post instead of dropping a whole dissertation at once, though. That said, I think that a perma-bubbled wall is ok if it takes enough shield gens. That’s a lot of invested supply that’s totally useless in defending some other wall.
Also, I see you’re from UNIV. Had a lot of fun with you guys on DBL last week (or the week before?). Your persistence caused me the most enjoyable kind of stress q_q
In the vein of things that would be fairly easy to implement, I suggested a few mini-events a while back. The idea is to create a temporary objective to draw small-scale fights without being so significant that it’s worthwhile for a zerg to do. I centered them around supply camps to create more gameplay for roamers and scouts.
This is an idea that is often floated in this section. I’ve modified it a bit to be more interactive.
Players can talk to the Quartermaster at an allied camp to send a Bomber Yak to an enemy objective. If the Yak is killed or reaches a gate, the bomb detonates after 5 seconds and deals massive damage to all players (on both teams) and gates in a moderate radius. For players, it should essentially be an auto-downstate. For gates, it should be about 10 hits of a Superior Ram. Only 1 Bomber Yak can be deployed every 20m.
1.) In this way, a small team can meaningfully hit an objective without having to spend a bunch of time at it worrying about being run over. However, since a larger group could just build rams and not worry about being discovered, this would not be an efficient or helpful mechanic for them.
2.) Since Yaks take a while to walk and there is a cooldown on Bomber Yaks, this won’t increase the rate that a Karma Train can travel.
3.) Assassinating these Yaks will be a high priority. Scouts in the area will have to close in and fight to take it out or set an ambush at the structure it’s headed to. It’s not such a big threat that it warrants a zerg, though, and there likely won’t be time to bring one. Hopefully, this generates small-scale, objective oriented fights.
4.) The Yak is a boon for small teams. Since the delivery time can be as short as 90s (or less if you give the Yak swiftness) and the damage happens in a burst, you can’t wait for white swords to check it out. Thus, you’ll have a reason to keep your eyes open as a scout rather than half-afking in the lord room.
5.) While the event would have to be scripted, Yaks, explosions and Quartermasters all exist in the current game.
Notes: New Offensive guild tactics could be used to improve the Yak bomb damage. In organized play, new group compositions centered around keeping a Yak alive rather than just ganking players could become viable. If nothing else, poor Quartermasters will have a purpose in life again.
Players can talk to a quartermaster at an allied camp to spawn a single Yak that holds 2x supply or counts as 2 Yaks towards the upgrade counter. The Yak would have a global icon (like trebuchets, visible even on mini-map) that acts as a beacon for invaders. There should be a cooldown on this as well.
1.) Escorting a Yak is not efficient for a large group.
2.) This won’t affect Karma Trains, but the secondary suggestion could effect how quickly a map upgrades when no enemies are around.
3.) The beacon should let people know there’s a small-scale fight for the taking. It would not be an efficient use of a zerg but would quickly let fight-focused invaders know where to go for both kills and helping their server.
4.) This rewards hanging about in allied areas and gives small-team roamers clear PvP objectives.
5.) All of these mechanics currently exist in some form.
Notes: Guild upgrades like speedy or armored Yaks work well here. Invincible Yaks is obviously very effective, but that might be ok as it’s currently nigh useless and would mark the camp as a priority target for roamers and defenders alike.
As for existing stuff I like…I think the reward tracks are pretty good. I no longer feel like I’m hemorrhaging gold in WvW. The material reward seems adequate, but there’s still no recognition of players/guilds that do great things for their server. A path to ascended would be nice, but I’m not so concerned about that that I’m going to miss it.
(edited by Sviel.7493)
I expect a certain slowness, but I also expect a road map of sorts and a decent turnaround on the simple issues. The recent ghost thief debacle is a great example, though that’s more kitten ing to the balance team instead of the WvW team.
But recall that all siege health was doubled last August which resulted in it being much harder to destroy enemy siege with things that weren’t condis or critical hits. ACs became far less valuable as anti-siege tools and Ballistae fell even closer to uselessness. A simple fix would be buffing the anti-siege damage on skills that are meant to be anti-siege…but even that didn’t happen.
Oh, and let’s not forget the Heavy Supply Bags. They required them for guild halls but also removed them from the game. It’s an understandable oversight and they fixed it fairly quickly.
Thus, we know they can move fast on some simple things…but sometimes they do nothing and say nothing and so we’ve got nothing to go on.
I have a bunch of posts and outside sources that seem to directly tie relate to the changes they were looking for when they made DBL. One of these days, I’ll get around to making a thread out of it.
Suffice to say that people complained about different things before. They were seemingly ignored and largely left the game. The folks who were still around wanted almost completely opposite things. By the time Anet implemented the changes the first group wanted, there were few people left to appreciate them. It’s not that they’re out touch completely—they’re just several years behind the trends.
Bigger maps are not possible due to engine limitations.
That said, a map that huge would mean huge swaths of it wouldn’t see any play. There aren’t enough places where players intersect.
I’m also not seeing the benefits of it.
Yeah, so I don’t think anyone actually read the OP.
I’m not trying to radically redefine the game or force players to do one thing or the other. Rather, I want small, easy to implement changes that actually have a chance of happening.
That’s why I suggested reducing the amount of supply in freshly flipped structures by half and reducing the generation rate at camps. Both are just numbers that can be adjusted.
As problematic as this is, I still enjoy it more than when we had the same match-up every week for months on end. Back then, there was still rampant population imbalance, but at least now we’re against new faces.
Also, while linking didn’t solve the whole population problem and screwed people looking for low-pop servers, it has made the numbers closer to even than before.
Basically, it sucks less than it used to, imo.
8/23/2015 – Heart of Thorns removes the supply drain at objectives when upgrading them and increases the availability of a guild’s +5 supply buff once they unlock it. The supply master traitline is reduced from 300 points to 145 points which makes it easier to access a permanent +5 supply. In addition, the tactic Presence of the Keep increases the maximum supply capacity to 25. To compensate, objectives now hold less total supply and Yaks deliver 20 supply down from 35 (double for keeps). The end result, however, is that zergs can hold much more supply and there is much, much more supply available on the map.
The general goal with these is to make tossing down six pieces of siege for one barrier a consequential decision. Players should still be able to stuff a gate full of rams if that’s what they’re into, but that shouldn’t be the standard operating mode.
Reduce maximum Supply on flip of Keeps/Towers to 50% of the cap.
-This means that instead of getting 500 supply for flipping a T3 Keep, the zerg gets only 250. Thus, instead of using 5 rams at each gate and breaking even, they must also resupply at camps or other objectives.
*Reduce Supply Generation at Camps from 10 per 30 seconds to 10 per 60 seconds.
-Since no Supply is being used in upgrades, less Supply needs to be supplied to the game overall. This was partially recognized in the change that reduced how much Supply Yaks carry but Supply generation at camps was left untouched. All of that excess Supply makes building gross amounts of siege much easier.
tl;dr: Reduce direct AC damage to players. Retain AC niche of AoE anti-infantry by adding Vulnerability, Cripple and/or Weakness to skills. Reduce the amount of supply a zerg can snatch up in a karma train without hurting small group supply counts and therefore reduce how much offensive siege can be sustainably deployed at each barrier.
4/30/2013 – Arrow Cart skill 1 damage is buffed by 80%, Crippling Arrows damage is buffed by 17% and Barbed Arrows damage is buffed by 60% plus the bleed is extended to 15 seconds. Arrow Cart mastery is added to the WvW trait lines.
7/5/2013 – In this WvW guide (https://youtu.be/64Mwats025Q?t=9m56s) by developer Hugh Norfolk (owner of Red BL NEC), he goes over various siege machines and what they’re good for. He tauts Arrow Carts as being useful for Keep defenses. “The purpose of these things is really to start getting those big AoEs down—getting those things to really damage large groups of areas.” He also describes them as doing moderate to high damage to infantry. He says the benefit of using them over skills is that they have a target cap of 50 instead of 5.
8/23/2013 – A player-made thread on these forums (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/4-months-in-Arrow-Cart-Mastery-has-split-WvW/first) says the effect of the Arrow Cart buff is that there are no longer any good fights in keeps. They claim that they need too many people to take anything and, as such, people have begun to run in 60-man zergs instead of the usual 20. They also claim that commanders will no longer attack a defended Keep.
7/26/2016 – Siege weapons can now be affected by conditions and critical strikes. Their health is doubled to compensate. Siege damage from other siege weapons remains the same, however, effectively doubling how long it takes to counter siege with siege.
Reduce Fire Arrows (skill 1) damage by 50%. Give it a 300% damage bonus to siege (so, same time-to-kill for siege as prior to 7/26/2016).
-This is a partial revert as the amount of sustain and especially outgoing healing has substantially increased since 2013. The idea is to make it possible to fight under Arrow Cart fire so long as you don’t just sit in it. Groups should have the option to push the entrenched positions and destroy the siege.
Reduce Fire Crippling Arrows (skill 2) damage to match skill 1. This is about a 10% reduction. Reduce the duration of the Crippled condition to 3 seconds from 4. Now also inflicts 3 seconds of Weakness. Reduce cooldown to 6 seconds from 9.
-There was little point in using this skill before unless you had several Arrow Carts and coordinated to keep enemies Crippled while other Arrow Carts dealt high damage. That’s not a situation that should exist. Instead, the focus should shift to the debilitating conditions.
Reduce Fire Barbed Arrows (skill 3) damage to match skill 1. This is about a 40% reduction. Replace the bleed with 10 stacks of Vulnerability for 10 seconds. Reduce the cooldown to 6 seconds from 9.
-The Bleed was pretty pointless. It dealt more total damage than skill 1 on paper over an extended period of time, but since it had a much longer cooldown the actual damage increase was not significant. If we also consider that Bleed can be cleansed and zergs excel at cleansing conditions, it was not accomplishing it’s goal of being anti-zerg.
I switched to Vulnerability to make it a potent anti-zerg skill when you actually have other damage to cash in on that Vulnerability. If you just have a gauntlet of Arrow Carts, you’ll see a large reduction in damage from today.
In general, I’ve shifted Arrow Carts to non-damaging conditions instead of damage. Since zergs are so good at cleansing conditions, I’ve lowered the cooldown on the skills that apply them. There should still be a window to act but the Arrow Carts also cannot be ignored. Meanwhile, the damage dealt to Siege by Arrow Carts remains effectively the same as before 7/26/2016.
Add a 200% damage boost versus siege to Fire (skill 1).
-This is to return their time-to-kill numbers to pre 7/26/2016 and to make up for the removal of skill 3. Since skill 3’s chief purpose was to damage siege, it served as a DPS spike that ultimately didn’t mean much since it was on such a long CD.
Replace skill 3 with Bulwark: Block all attacks from the front of the ballista for 6 seconds. Cooldown 12 seconds.
-This is to, perhaps, allow Ballistae to survive long enough to deal damage. Since they are so easily obstructed, they must be built where they can be destroyed by any ranged attack. This has rendered them largely useless whereas they should be better than Arrow Carts at destroying enemy siege.
Based on this post:https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Limiting-Offensive-Siege/first#post3166647
The mapwide siege limit seems to be 100 pieces of siege. That’s ~14 per walled structure. If towers only use ~7, that’s ~22 per keep. It seems like plenty, honestly.
Thus, it shouldn’t be too difficult to devise a way to get rid of timers on everything but rams without exceeding that 100-siege cap.
Since forums are places for sharing information and discussions, why not make this thread about what it would take for you to buy the next expansion?
For me, it would take a change of the meta to something less unpleasant, a clarification from Anet on what WvW is intended to be and, thus, what their future changes will be trying to accomplish and something that actually suggests they aren’t planning to abandon WvW and coast it out on once-yearly major updates.
No.
What do you see in the map that encourages this idea? You say it’s perfect, but I can’t understand why.
It’s not fun for anyone to spend several minutes searching every nook and cranny and then even more time trying to pin down the mesmer once it’s found. Adding a ‘skill layer’ is a very thin attempt at justification.
Repairing walls is definitely something a zerg should help with after a defense, but that’s an entirely separate issue from mesmers.
Guild missions more often lead to 6 people sitting in a camp. They’re there to finish the mission efficiently—not to contribute to the war effort in any meaningful way.
Valor is a good idea. Favor isn’t really enough of a draw. On the other hand, it could have major economic consequences in terms of Flax Fibers.
The 48-hour thing isn’t happening. That means too much favor too fast. It would also affect the whole game unless you mean to just split off WvW missions, in which case you might as well just call it something else. New time cycle, new rewards = new system.
Because the best way to win a 24-hour match is to have your A-Team pull an all-nighter.
Yeah, there have been been some good changes, but you have to keep this in perspective.
It’s been 5 years. 5 years ago, Mitt Romney was running for president. A few QoL changes, no matter how nice, are not enough.
Yes, there’s a new map which I like (and others don’t). Yes, upgrades are in a better place and rewards are also in a much better place.
No, I don’t know what Anet wants WvW to be. They’re talking about being a unit in an RTS now but, seriously, what does that even mean? I don’t know what their stance is on proxy catas despite asking both here and on reddit. I don’t know if they have any intention of ever making significant WvW balance changes (I’m guessing no). I don’t know if they plan to improve on how new players learn to WvW, but going on how so much of their game design is obtuse, I doubt it—seriously, the wiki is a required tool for doing anything…especially when it comes to the Mystic Forge.
They demur when it comes to talking about the future, but they also largely refuse to talk about the present. It’s gotten so bad that even the people complaining can’t agree on if something is a feature or a bug. If, after 5 years, people complaining in your forums offer clearer definitions of your game than you do (because you offer none or ‘RTS unit’), you done goofed.
I think this is a pretty solid idea and that, being a 24-hour thing with far less exclusive rewards, it avoids the burn-out problem of previous tournaments.
At the same time, I’m not really seeing the draw on new players. It makes points matter for a day out of every week, but that’s it. That’s not super exciting and isn’t really an area where there’s room for a new player to show up and learn things. It’s very do or die.
They stated in the AMA that they’ll release the WvW stuff when it’s ready and that they’re working on several things. Some are far along and some are fairly new.
In other words, they’re doing that thing again where they try and do huge things without giving us any clues or anything for months(years?) at a time. You know, that thing they said they weren’t going to do anymore after HoT. If anyone has a link to that red post (on reddit, of course) where they said they were going to do smaller things more often instead of big things once in a blue moon, I would love to have it.
He specifically states the use of a ground targeted skill rather than burning damage.
Everything was ignored this patch. I think it just wasn’t a patch that was meant to do much besides LS content.