Guild Wars 2

I want to measure the exact effect of Speedy Yaks, but I can’t really put that upgrade on every camp. Presumably, if I can measure a handful of routes, I may be able to accurately scale the rest of them.

Unfortunately, I don’t currently run with a guild and my solo-guild doesn’t have Speedy Yaks unlocked yet. Unless someone can provide me with that data, it’ll be a few weeks.

As for Banana, sometimes it’s more upgraded on the inside than outside, so perhaps I was a bit off. Please accept my apologies.

I think this is an informative and constructive post that isn’t what I would consider a match-up thread. It references a specific match-up but talks about more general problems and isn’t bad-mouthing or bragging.

If this is the kind of thread you’re after, you have my support.

Thanks for the info and I hope FA doesn’t get ripped apart…I left around the time the TC implosion started and was wondering how it went so far.

Refreshing siege is definitely super tedious. There are also periods where I’m simply too busy elsewhere to run back up to some northern tower and refresh the siege. It’s also really boring to do and isn’t something new players will ever intuit.

I think a visual indicator would be a nice QoL change.

That said, I would rather go after the root problem and get rid of siege auto-destructing in the first place. I suspect it was implemented to deal with siege trolls but, as it takes a minimum of an hour, it seems far less effective at that than at tying up would-be defenders with tedious tasks.

Instead, give players the option to start a destruction timer that takes 1h. If someone uses the siege, the timer goes away. In that way, a true siege troll would still have to refresh the troll siege but legitimate defenses don’t disappear because they didn’t see action for a while.

Spurnshadow.3678:

From what week have these numbers been taken? Why did you not include T1? That makes no sense.

This has massively flawed logic. Number of kills is not an indication of avoidance, it’s an indicator of how bad a server is. If these numbers are form this week, BG has been farming the crap out of the other servers. We aren’t playing as much cause it’s just getting boring at this point. It’s easier to cap objectives on Blue BL as they have a lower population and don’t defend as much as Red. That makes for easier points. It also creates more of an opportunity for farming. Also, Red hits Blue a lot. They’d rather cap the keeps there than deal with BG on Green BL. It’s just the path of least resistance for PPT. Again, nothing to do with hating DBL. BG generally stays on EB and just gets most of it’s PPT from kills from both red and blue. Many of the big guilds in BG just don’t even care to try to flip T3 keeps.

I can’t speak for the other tiers as I don’t know their strategies, but I’m sure there’s much more involved that just “I hate DBL. lets loose rather than playing there.” But my rebuttal point is that there are many more factors than just, it’s DBL, lets not play there.

Hmmm…It sounds a lot like you’re saying that the spike in action on Blue BL is because they’re the weakest server…which is what I said in the first place…Meanwhile, your rebuttal to me saying that was that it was DBL and people didn’t want to fight there and also didn’t want to fight the dominating server…but now you’re saying the opposite on DBL. I’m starting to wonder if I’m talking to a different person, honestly.

Also, I pulled the numbers from wvwintel right before I made the post.

Melanurus.1506

Actually Juno you’re an idiot. Please don’t speak on subjects you’re ignorant on. Maguuma home BL is red. no one on maguuma cares about home BL nor PPT. JQ and a particular commander during SEA and EU prefers to fight doors on empty BLs all day. It has nothing to do to widespread point manipulation, it has everything to do with its 2017 and no one on maguuma cares about winning or losing weekly. Just about fights kid.

For those of you watching at home, this gentleman is a former guildmate of mine. He really hates me, for some reason, but I can’t say I care enough to have ever figured out why.

Anyway, it’s possible that Mag has changed lately, but they did used to play on the borderlands (even DBL) quite a bit. I should know, I fought them myself for weeks. They were so familiar with me just from our fights over Firekeep that 2 separate guilds asked me to hop servers and join them. Either way, the point against using their data to determine whether DBL is popular or not stands. Since Mag is not playing on their home border for reasons that have nothing to do with it being DBL, apparently, it doesn’t make sense to use their lack of activity on that map as a condemnation of it. Thus, I stand by my exclusion of T1 from the data set as it’s skewed by their decision.

I like the idea of WvW events, but I’m a little horrified at where you’re going with this.

I was very, very worried when you said that the main problem with WvW is tier 3 objectives, but I’m guessing that you mainly play on EBG? I’ve been visiting that place recently (it feels like a foreign land) and I can understand the sentiment, sort of. Why attack a T3 objective when enemies are close at hand when you can instead hit a softer target that’s probably easier to take? An extended siege is impossible due to spawn distances and there’s an uncontestable WP very near. Putting supply pressure on an objective is also very difficult. Thus, a T3 objective does preclude a lot of action and can be demoralizing.

But please consider us poor borderland players! We have more objectives to worry about that span much, much more space. Dying in battle actually means something too as we likely can’t just respawn and stop the enemy from flipping whatever they were trying to flip. Many of our objectives are actually much closer to enemy spawns than our own. Thus, we rely on upgrades to buy us time. For example, once our northern towers are upgraded, we don’t have to have someone watching them specifically. We’ll have time to investigate and respond. If all of our objectives were paper, enemies could just WP around and snatch something before we had a chance to stop them. Worse, a big group could hit the map and steal a keep before we could call in reinforcements to deal with that sort of enemy volume.

Events are cool and all but, please, make sure that they don’t ruin the sort of gameplay that people come to the game for.

For reasons that may never be clear, I’ve tracked the length in time of each Yak path and calculated how long it would take for any borderland objective to reach tier 3. The data can be found in chart form here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EHTRrHcoPWPIG_PYoI1vJfeS6Po7qmdzxqlqDqj30Fg/edit?usp=sharing and in graph form in the attachment.

coro.3176:

I would argue kill count is a good measure/activity. If there are enough players from each server on a map, they’ll find each other and kill each other. .. and if they can’t/won’t, well then the map isn’t working properly.

Re: T1. Mag hates Red BL. If you even mention it in team chat, everyone will flat-out refuse to go there. Occasionally, you might draw one of the fight guilds out, but only if a very large group is attacking something. Most of the time a group of 2-4 players is enough to flip the map.

Why is it that tiers 2-4 have such similar kill counts, then, despite wide gaps in population? Or would you contend that there are not corresponding gaps in activity?

This sounds less like a battle between players and more like a competition to PvE harder than the other server. It would also be wrecked by coverage gaps.

That said, I don’t want to brush off your feelings of not having any impact. It’s certainly true that a single body in a zerg is just another foot to trample with. Smaller groups (~20) can benefit from strong individual members, but it goes haywire after that.

Personally, I never run with a zerg anymore. We may meet up for a common goal, but I try to stay on the opposite side of the map to ensure that we have eyes everywhere. It’s very easy for me to see the impact I have because things don’t flip when I call them out or drive off enemies.

I think the RTS side of WvW is there to be had, but you’ll have to leave the zerg to find it.

Swamurabi.7890:

I’d wager in T2, or whenever green is dominating, that the action is on blue borderland because there is less desire to play on either red or green. That’s why I suggested on a previous thread that WvW go to only two maps, one for the highest ranked server to defend (like GW1 Fort Aspenwood) and the other an equal fight for all (like GW1 Jade Quarry).

But the metrics would show which servers when red defend DBL and if they attack DBL when not red.

Let’s take a look at all of the other tiers real quick. A dominating server will be italicized and the losing server will be bolded.

Tier 2
47,210 Total Kills
—-
25,247 EBG Kills (53.5%)
11,523 Blue BL Kills (24.4%)
5,513 Red BL Kills (11.7%)
4,927 Green BL Kills (10.4%)

Tier 3
44,165 Total Kills
—-
24,537 EBG Kills (55.6%)
8,591 Blue BL Kills (19.5%)
3,748 Red BL Kills (8.5%)
7,289 Green BL Kills (16.5%)

Tier 4
45,574 Total Kills
—-
27,207 EBG Kills (59.7%)
6,986 Blue BL Kills (15.3%)
4,536 Red BL Kills (10.0%)
6,845 Green BL Kills (15.0%)

Note that the total number of kills per tier is fairly constant. This would suggest that either there is similar population on every world not currently in T1 or that kill count is not a good measure of population or activity.

But to your point, the dominating server’s BL does have lower kills in tiers 2 and 3, but not in tier 4. Meanwhile, the losing server’s BL has higher kills in tiers 2 and 4, but not in 3. If we consider both factors and also that some players will always avoid Red BL, the data makes more sense.

However, while we know that some players avoid Red BL since they state it publicly, we must also consider that there may be more at play. Given the stark differences between the two maps and the playstyles they engender, the already shaky metric of killcount-as-activity may not correlate to each map the same way.

**I have excluded tier 1 from this brief analysis as the data is tainted by an intentional and unrelated effort to manipulate the score on a large-scale. That being one server deciding to tank.

Swamurabi.7890:

I don’t know the numbers for DBL in the current setup of 2 ABL and one DBL, but in NAT1 the kill-death metric, the only metric that the players can see, is that EBG close to 60%, Green and Blue BL are around 17% and Red (DBL) around 6% of total kill-deaths.

In tier 2, or w/e tier SoS is in, things are a bit different.

47,210 Total Kills
—-
25,247 EBG Kills (53.5%)
11,523 Blue BL Kills (24.4%)
5,513 Red BL Kills (11.7%)
4,927 Green BL Kills (10.4%)

I wager there’s so many kills on Blue BL because it’s currently the weakest server and thus gets cannibalized by the other two.

Meanwhile, your tier 1 stats are being thrown off by the fact that the red team, Maguuma, is intentionally tanking the match. There’s not going to be much action on a BL if the home team is MIA.

The first red post in that link is someone clarifying that it didn’t mean what you thought it meant. Their initial wording in the poll was poor, for sure, but it seems their subsequent posts clarified it sufficiently. It is that clarification which you’ve linked.

also, forum bug?

It depends on the match-up. On my server, DBL is always active, or at least as active as the other BLs. Currently, according to the killcount metric that’s all the rage these days, it’s in second place. I was on several hours yesterday and didn’t have a moment of peace.

To be fair, ABL was also active when we had it last week. We have plenty of people who prefer to be on BLs. The difference between the two for me is less about population and more about gameplay. Here, I much favor DBL.

In my current matchup, blue BL has ~9k kills, green has ~3.9k kills and red has ~4.1k kills. EBG has ~19k kills. My server has queued EBG and Red BL several times this week but I haven’t seen any queues elsewhere.

However, I cannot agree that kills tell the full story. While many people in this thread are looking at that data and projecting their desired conclusion onto it, we need more info to make that call.

Consider that guilds that only wish for fights tend to avoid desert. Also consider that on Alpine, it is not possible to defend an objective without calling in a zerg due to safe sieging gimmicks. It is also difficult to avoid being seen by everyone on the whole map due to flatness. This means that, even at the same activity, ABL will have a higher kill count than DBL. Thus, even if there is a gap in activity, it will not necessarily be reflected proportionally in the kills.

@Dawdler

Unfortunately, when they noted they were toning down tower defenses they didn’t give specific numbers. I also didn’t do before/after time trials so I can’t offer anything more concrete on that point.

As for turrets, as of last night they were doing nothing even with all shrines capped. It actually took me a few days to notice.

Based on complaints I’ve seen as recently as 2 seconds ago, some people have no clue about some of the changes that have been made to the map. Allow me to bring you all up to speed so that you can complain more accurately~

1.) Shrine effects are annoying because fire turrets, birds that blow you off of cliffs and invisible zergs.

-None of that stuff exists anymore. Instead, when you hold three shrines, you can essentially teleport from one shrine to another. At Airkeep, you transform into an eagle and fly to a new shrine. It’s exhilarating. I absolutely recommend trying it when you get the chance.

2.) It’s impossible to get anywhere without jumping off of a cliff.

-This was actually never true. You can get from any point to any other point by following a road that never goes near a cliff. There are also some cliffside roads that are totally optional. The only cliff you have to jump off of is in Rampart if you’re trying to leave to the south. Even then, it’s just a shortcut, but some stairs would be nice.

3.) Small groups can’t take big objectives.

-Not long after it came out, tier 2 and 3 Tower defenses were weakened to make them less impervious to small group attack. As for Keeps, you’re able to hit them without being as exposed as the day you were born, which offers ample opportunity for the creative havoc squad.

4.) Objectives reach tier 3 in 3 hours.

-This one is a bit tricky since objectives upgrade at different rates. North East tower is served by 2 Yaks with routes that take 3:57 and 3:54 to run. That’s roughly 2 Yaks every 4 minutes. It takes 140 Yaks to hit tier 3 so, if no Yaks or camps are hit and all sentries remain allied, it should take 280m. That means, unless Speedy Yaks are used, the minimum time to hit tier 3 for NET is 4 hours and 40m.

For Airkeep, it’s also served by 2 Yaks (note, on ABL side keeps are served by 3 Yaks). Their routes take 3:14 and ~2:10. The optimal time to tier 3 comes out to about 3 hours.

I don’t have exact times for SC Yaks atm, but I can say that for a south tower, time to tier 3 is even less than 3 hours. In general, the further south an objective is, the faster it upgrades. At the same time, it’s more vulnerable to enemy attack.

5.) It takes forever to run anywhere

-Again, this one is slightly tricky. Run times from Rampart WP to a side keep lord room are about 30% longer without shrines. With them, they’re about the same. Meanwhile, the time it takes to break into lord room from an enemy spawn is over 100% longer. Run times between north and south camps are almost identical to Alpine. Run times from enemy spawns to side keeps are longer. Run times from Rampart WP to a south camp are similar. Run times from SWT to Firekeep are much greater while SET to Airkeep are slightly larger. On top of that, DBL has an easy to get MS buff that allows any class greater mobility.

Still, when attempting to take shortcuts around Undercroft especially, it’s easy to get lost in the stairways if you aren’t familiar with the territory. You never have to go that way to get an optimal run time from one objective to another, though.

If there’s another change you feel is important, feel free to point it out. Otherwise, have fun~

Xenesis.6389:

Jayne.9251:

Don’t most servers already have a designated colour for scouts/havoc?

For EU probably, haven’t seen that be a thing for NA for quite a while now.

It was a thing on SoS, but it’s tedious to keep it going with transfers, server linking and what not. I don’t think it’s universally recognized anymore.

As to the OP, quick changes to improve communication between players are always appreciated. It’d be nice if there was a tag toggle to avoid clutter, though, or a way to only display tags on the full map.

This seems like an unintended consequence of making conditions affect siege. Since Retaliation doesn’t hit them anymore, this will likely be patched in the future.

Of course, there’s no way to know for sure if it’s a bug or not unless Anet says something. Hopefully they fix it or speak up before people get too used to having it around.

Living story stuff in WvW could be pretty cool if done right. It’d have to be cosmetic or a tactical change that people had the option of using. Meaning, it couldn’t just be flat out better than everything else.

I can get behind the decorations and perhaps boss skins or temporary holiday lords, but please don’t put game-changing stuff in like a huge, wall-wrecking, Teqzilla NPC.

Warlock.7136:

back when anet was talking about the changes to the meta coming with HoT, they mentioned that their intent was to change the meta away from power and to cnd. this was to fight the overabundance of “zerk only”. cnd has a natural deterant already they are called cnd clearing skills. the meta is functioning currently the way they want it to.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have condis as a damage source, but the current implementation is awful. Also, it’s disheartening to hear that their plan to get people off of zerk builds is to shift to condi. Basically, that’s going from full damage/no defense to full damage/full defense + ignore enemy defense. It’s not any more interesting.

Condi clear skills were meant to deal with debilitating conditions. You got a few on you and decided which you could deal with and which you needed to get rid of ASAP. For power builds that use condis, this works out—the rate of application is fairly low and the threat level of the condi is such that you can use your cleanses judiciously.

However, now we have condis doing absurd levels of damage and a much higher application rate, in some classes. You can no longer decide to let some condis play out, as that means death. However, given the rate of application and the sheer number applied, you can use all of your cleanses in the best possible manner and still be laden with condis. Such a situation would be tenable if being able to do it meant building full damage, but condi is designed so that they can build full defense while still laying all that out. Thus, you can’t clear enough condis to live and you can’t kill them fast enough that you don’t run out of clears and get totally mothballed.

The problem is less noticeable in larger fights because AoE condi clear means each person has more clear than anyone could have alone. Also, it’s difficult to load up tons of people with condi compared to the travesties which can be worked on a single target.

They should switch up removal to prioritize the things that kill you and should try to strike a better balance between application/clear rates.

The #1 reason any of the servers were in Tier 1 is population/coverage stacking. You will occasionally find a guild group that’s very skilled in fights and there are plenty of meta roaming groups, but the individual skill level isn’t much higher. There’s just more people total.

Not to dis BG or anything, but rather I want to encourage people not to just skip the week when fighting a former tier 1 server. They’re not invulnerable.

Hard-counters are usually something I don’t like, but this might be a decent way to tamp down the overbearance of condi while giving a small reason to play elementalists again.

I don’t think it would ultimately change much, though. It’d be better to go back to the drawing board with condi and make the necessary changes for it to be a main source of damage. As it stands, it seems very clear that they did not originally intend it to be that way. Either that, or they’re just really bad at this…but I like to have faith q_q

Finally found it q_q For anyone else wondering, it’s the little down arrow under the box where you choose a server.

I only see kill/death data and don’t see a way to view past data, though. Am I still missing something?

I’m less concerned with fact-checking and more with getting my hands on some juicy data.

Though, I had an interaction earlier where a 10-man guild attacked a tower in my scouting zone 3 times. They built all of their catas right next to each other and wasted their bubbles on AC fire which allowed me to disable, so I cleared them the first time with no kills. The second time, they set up catas in the same spot and basically the same thing happened. The third time, they went to the other side of the tower and I had no sup to build more siege. I had to call for help and they were all killed after a brief skirmish (~15 v. 10).

So, there was a whole lot of activity there beyond the fight. This is not atypical of my experience on DBL. On ABL, they would not have stood a chance due to the proximity to Garrison, so I doubt they would have even made the attempt knowing that they were a relatively small sized group.

Of course, it could also just be my server. We had EBG and DBL queued tonight, but that’s all.

Don’t shoot the messenger…

There’s probably nothing else they can report.

Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

I don’t think it’s too complicated to make scoring matter and defense viable. There seems to be more of a push to work on the other end, population balance, though. Hard-wiring a population is very difficult—promoting the conditions that naturally lead to more even matches is easier. Hard, yes, but easier.

Players tend to only blob vs. blob, so the bigger blob stomps the whole match-up. Commander coverage is a big factor too.

However, never say there’s nothing you can do. Even if you can’t win a particular week, promoting havoc on your server will push you towards victory in the long term. It doesn’t take a huge population difference for a blob to beat a blob, but it’s nearly impossible for a blob to beat several havoc teams at once when it comes to scoring.

Anet has made clear that they don’t want mechanics that punish players for having others nearby. That leads to people not wanting other players to show up.

If you want to cut down on PvD, the trick is to make scoring matter and make defense viable. Naturally, players will then defend their objectives which means nothing happens without a fight.

Leaa.2943:

DBL is a punishment for the server that get it. It is a very inactive map that most players avoid going too. I will keep on posting this link until people stop telling DBL is fine, it isn’t.
http://i.imgur.com/fWWmFKR.jpg

It does ofc not mean that noone ever like DBL ofc there are players who do. But most of the players do not like it and do not move to the map when being attacked which again is a huge disadvantage to the server who is red.

Where are those numbers from? Also, what do they mean?

I think your heart’s in the right place, but I don’t see this idea working out. If these events counted as participation to the existing defense event, it might be ok. As standalones, they’re just boosting rewards in a situation where rewards would already be given out—so we might as well just bump up the base reward, no?

Animals don’t rally. You can still rally by killing a camp guard or lord, though.

A change in scoring isn’t a cure-all here. If it shifts to PPK, people will continue to run from fights they aren’t sure of winning.

A change in player behavior though, such as one where scouting and defending is more prevalent, will mean there’s no option to just run away and PvD. Of course, that depends on the ability of players to mount a reasonable defense.

TIL There’s a WvW Producer~

waves

Guards can rally you but random mobs cannot. The mechanic was removed around the time HoT dropped. Summoned guards, like those that are with Yaks, don’t rally you. Not sure on the guards on structure walls.

@coro

SW Spawn to NWC/NWT is almost a straight shot over the sandfields. You just head due north instead of veering west towards the underlevel then take the stairs down and follow the road to the west. It’s only more effort if you’re down in the firekeep area.

SE Spawn to NEC/NET is similar. You can take the scaffolding down and follow that road, or cross the bridge near SET and follow that road instead. Once you hit the northern part of the map, follow the road to the east.

The west side has one cliff you might auto-run over, the east-side only has a cliff if you miss the bridge or something.

Are you suggesting that all maps be as bare and open as Alpine? What would be necessary to ease your travel on DBL if the clearly marked roads aren’t doing the trick?

@SixVoltCar

1.) I find the roads on DBL to be as straightforward as the roads on ABL. The difference is that I cannot always see immediately where the road leads due to varying elevations. I know that if I follow the road, though, it will take me everywhere I need to go.

2.) That’s a fair gripe about shrines. I disagree, but such is life.

3.) Shortcuts are bonuses—not necessary. Also, if you don’t want to give away your location, just don’t take the shrine. None of them are so important that you can’t choose to ignore them.

4.) When I think Alpine Bay, my stomach twists into a knot remembering the double cata wall, trebs from SWC, trebs from SWT and the like. It hardly qualifies as a maintainable defensive position. I still don’t understand what this has to do with walls not joining together and redundant siege.

6.) If you don’t want to aggro the wall NPC, put your cata somewhere else. There’s a generous range where you won’t draw aggro but can still fire at 0% charge for maximum speed.

@Baldrick
The times listed there were not into Lord Room, but the times listed here are: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Defensive-Zerg-Play-Alpine-vs-Desert/first#post6082672

In short, Garri WP to Bay Lord takes about 80s. Rampart WP to Firekeep Lord takes 135s or 105s with all fire shrines owned.

Citadel WP to Bay Lord takes about 125s. Citadel WP to Firekeep Lord is about the same as from Rampart, but I can’t get an exact number this week as my team doesn’t own DBL.

Contrast this with Time to Lord from an offensive perspective. Assuming a 20-man group with 400 sup, Bay takes 68/151/203s to reach lord or 34/76/102s with old guild cata cost. For Firekeep and Airkeep, it takes 90/168/258s.

The result is that you have a larger window to respond to an attack, even if running from Rampart. However, if you die in a lord room fight, it takes longer to return.

Ironically, running Citadel to Bay requires bunch of jumping down cliffs—including some rather dangerous drops. Neither of the DBL routes involve anything of the sort.

Shall we break this down~?

SixVoltCar.5248

1- Travel times between points differ from other BLs

Which travel times? You can find a list of DBL travel times and most ABL travel times here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Offensive-Small-Team-Play-Alpine-vs-Desert/first

I’ll also list some directly:
[Spoiler=Sweet Travel Time List]
ABL with swiftness and no leaps
From NC to NWC is 103s
From NWC to NC is 118s
From NC to NEC is 104s
From NEC to NC is 110s
From SE Spawn to SEC is 41s
From SEC to NEC is 96s
From SE Spawn to SC is 63s
From SW Spawn to SC is 65s
From SW Spawn to SWC is 49s
From SWC to NWC is 120s
From Hills WP to NEC is 55s
From Bay WP to NWC is 60s

DESERT – I’ll just time these myself since I have access to the map. No leaps or anything were used. All times are with swiftness. No unit markers because they made the forums censor some times, for some reason.

Citadel WP to NWT back entrance: 45
NWT to NWC: 42
NWC to NWT: 42
NWC to Firekeep: 32
Firekeep to NWC: 37
Firekeep to SWC: 60
SWC to Firekeep: 60
SWC to SWT: 45
SWT to SWC: 45
SWT to SC: kitten
to SWT: 43
SC to SET: 45
SET to SEC: 45
Rampart WP to NEC: 65
NEC to NET: 42
NET to NEC: 42
SW Spawn to SWC: 35
SW Spawn to SC: 70
SW Spawn to SWT: 47
SE Spawn to SEC: 40
[/Spoiler]

As you can see, there’s some shift in the travel times, but some are smaller while others are bigger. In general, none of the shifts are particularly huge. I should also note that most of the DBL paths don’t require walking anywhere near a cliff. ABL is in a similar situation with the NET and E Garri areas having great elevation.

2- Shrines and extra cumbersome mechanics are in the way and they’re proving to not be used even in tier 1 (as anything other than xp for roamers)

How can they be in the way if they’re not being used?

When I played in T2 and T3, they were being used regularly. Perhaps T1 is too busy GvGing to care, but how is that a problem with the map?

3-Terrain is too complicated, this is a compeditive environment and combined with travel times between points, that makes it a high stress situation to navigate on defense

There are clearly marked roads to everywhere and each structure has extra entrances for ease of return. Said roads are rarely next to cliffs. There are also elevators for whoever controls a structure and speed buffs galore. If you hit a shrine and can follow a road, travel times are actually shorter across the board instead of just sometimes.

But, I digress. Is there a specific area where you’re experienced high stress during navigation? Perhaps I’m not remembering everything clearly.

4-Keeps and towers are designed wrong, they render a lot of siege weapons redundant because the walls don’t join together due to mountains and such

I’m not sure what you mean here. Are you lamenting the inability to hit 2 walls at once with siege weapons? How are siege weapons made redundant by this? Why is this a design flaw? I’m genuinely confused on this point.

5-The lords are overpowered relative to the other BL’s

This is objectively true. It’s certainly more interesting, imo, but you may subjectively dislike it.

6-Wall segments are guarded by NPC’s

This is bad? The NPCs don’t even spawn until the structure upgrades a bit, but why are they an issue at all?

[quote=SixVoltCar.5248][quote][quote][quote][quote][quote][quote]

Second paragraph seems right, first paragraph seems a bit off.

There are many issues here. He has a valid point about being forced to play WvW, but he also has a very skewed perception of what WvW is and that is a problem that should be addressed too.

The fact that WvW players are forced into PvE as well should engender more sympathy than vitriol.

Zenith.6403:

Ragnarox.9601:

Problem with desert bl is that its huge compared to alpine. They need more respawn points, maybe in that oasis in the middle.

Have you actually taken stopwatch timer how long it takes to run from garrison to each of the camps? I haven’t, but seems it would take very similar times. Desert borderland has those +40% movement speed shrines and portals to speed up travel, which alpine doesn’t have.

I did. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Offensive-Small-Team-Play-Alpine-vs-Desert/first

Also, does anyone know a website where I can compare data from past WvW matches? The ones I used to use seem to have disappeared.

(part 2/2)

That’s sorta my point. Point blank catas was a common way to sneak something. Now you have to do it from farther range which is easier for defenders to respond to (shield gens, their counter siege, etc). With auto upgrades I’d say it’s about as close to free as you can get though, no? Again, in response to the guy saying DBL is for small groups the radar hurts havoc the most, imo.

The problem is that point blank catas don’t have to be sneaky. As you said, they were difficult for defenders to respond to…at all. Any siege that could interact with said proxy catas was simple enough to bomb down. Meanwhile, trying to return the favor was more dangerous. The result is that proxy catas are not practical to respond to without similar force. Paradoxically, they’re also the fastest way of taking down a wall.

If proxy catas are relegated solely for ninja-caps instead of just all the time, that’s ok. In the case of a shield gen, the defenders must build and operate more shield gens than the enemies have siege and can still be thwarted by splash damage or simply changing the attack angle. In the case of counter siege, defenders must build and operate more trebs than the enemies have catas and aim perfectly lest they’re thwarted by bubbles. If the enemies have the smarts to build 1 less cata and 1 more shield gen, things get even more hairy. What this means is that if there are people on both sides, they must interact with each other in a meaningful way to advance their goals. When proxy catas have free reign, that is not the case.

In the instance where you are ninja-capping a structure, though, it’s only a ninja-cap if no one shows up. You can still do the same thing but, now, if you aren’t sneaky enough or fast enough, you don’t always get a free pass even if someone shows up.

Auto-upgrades are, by definition, free. I won’t dispute that. In the previous system, though, upgrades functioned in basically the same way but required someone on hand to activate them. The necessary number of Yaks has not been radically changed. They did well in moving it to a Yak based system from time based. I liked the Yaks+time model, but it may have been too much of a good thing.

Radar definitely hurts havoc, but it’s not a baseline upgrade and is far from free. It’s also only available after owning the tower for 63 minutes and only practical after successfully upgrading it to at least tier 2 (60 Yaks, or about 3 hours). The Yak part can be directly influenced by havoc groups, too. The result is that it’s harder to ninja cap a tower that has been actively defended for an extended period of time. I’m ok with that.

The downside is that it gives more ambient power to a server that vastly outnumbers it’s opponents, but that’s a symptom of a different issue. Anything that helps a smaller server deal with opponent’s will be useful to the larger server as well.

I much prefer DBL for small groups because I’m not always in the open and I have more options to hit structures other than just ninja’ing them. I usually run interference to prevent enemies from accumulating supply and then hit them with siege in between Yaks. It is not uncommon for me to say something like ‘firekeep NE wall 20%, supply 80/1,000’ in team chat. Commanders know that they can rely on me to prevent enemy footholds from getting out of hand. My opponents (shoutout to those Mag scouts) know to keep an eye out for me. I’m satisfied with that level of power.

That sort of thing isn’t necessary or useful on ABL. It’s much quicker to roll onto a map and crack Keeps due to double cata spots and much harder to assassinate Yaks since the whole map is open. It’s also much harder to slow-build kittenince they’re visible for miles around and building a long-range treb is just out of the question.

(Part 1/2)

I think the change that locations that could hit both inner and outer being eliminated was enough. The supply cost becomes less meaningful the bigger the attacking blob is as they can carry much more supply. Big groups have the option to rush or ninja (because more supply carried), small groups can only ninja.

I really appreciate someone considering how much supply a group carries. It’s much more important than the actual number of people that show up.

That said, consider the case of a group of 50 people with an average of 15 supply each for a total 750 supply. That’s 15 S. Catas or 37 of the old G. Catas. Every supply trap you land removes 2 S. Catas and 5 G. Catas. However, since the most catas one can use on a single wall before the time to destroy difference becomes too small is about 8, you have to land 5 supply traps before you damage the G. Cata destruction speed. Conversely, every trap you land on the S. Cata group slows them down.

On high pop nights (especially reset), supply is often dictated by how much is actually available on the map moreso than how many people there are to carry it. Tactics like Sabotage Depot really shine here as they significantly slow down enemy forces. Supply traps and the like are also great. With the old G. Catas, their effect is greatly diminished.

Meanwhile, if you’re trying to ninja a structure with a catapult, you can resupply before triggering swords and build as many catas as you desire.

Thus, while larger groups do carry more supply, the increase to cata cost was a far bigger curb on their dominance than on roamers. It’s also less effective against ninjas as their pre-attack time is not as critical as how long it takes them from first assault to cap.

This point is going to require more context either way I guess. From what you’ve written here you’re not considering all of the tools that defenders could use. The terrain and elevations often limit (when compared to ABL) attacking siege options. Additionally, some changes have been made to allow additional points to be broken (eg. fire keep).

I’m willing to go as in depth as you want with it, but I’m not sure what kind of things you’re looking for. The point was that some defensive siege placements are uncounterable. I’ve taken that to mean that siege placed in these points can’t be mitigated by an attacking faction. What I sought to show is that any siege placed within the walls can be rendered useless by manipulating range or attacking vulnerable siege. You seem to be saying that isn’t sufficient, so my assumed definition must be lacking somewhere. Can you fill me in?

Also, consider that both Firekeep and Airkeep can be assaulted from higher elevation at some point. They’re not the quickest to open siege options, but they are the hardest to do anything about.

Now its very low risk to blob as you can just e-wp and save the day, patch everything up and erase all the progress on cracking something (again, I was replying to a guy saying DBL was for small groups).

In your example, someone attacks a structure and a scout comes along after the fact (terrible scout; no cookies for them) to check it out. They sound the alarm and the blob swoops in to trample the havoc group underfoot.

Pre-HoT, this would happen by waiting for the timer to expire and then spamming the WP in chat so that everyone could tele into the besieged structure. This had a 3 minute CD, effectively. Post-HoT this happens by someone reaching and pulling a lever and has a way longer CD. I’m not certain why this is considered a downgrade—there’s no scenario that I see in which a blob is not doing less teleporting around than before. You could argue that no WPs at all would be better, but the fact is that the current situation is an improvement by that metric.

On the other hand, while towers remain unchanged, it is harder to ninja a keep since you can’t use double cata spots (except at earthkeep). I’m happy about this, but I acknowledge that it’s an actual downgrade to the ninja capabilities of small teams when it comes to keeps. Still, with less WP capability, it seems like a net positive.

@Nightshade
I’m all for a bit of hand-holding, but gear-fixing is going too far. If you load into WvW as a new player you should definitely get a tutorial which highlights what kind of things you may want in gear, but you should still have choice.

This is probably the most critical ignored area. No number of shiny updates mean anything if new players have no idea what’s going on.

This is a haphazard treatment of a symptom of the real disease. It’s not a terrible idea in that it’s an honest effort to solve a real problem, but it introduces several other problems and doesn’t fix the underlying cause of the first problem.

Let’s first worry about the small steps we can take to move WvW in a good direction. Things that give people confidence to stay, return or check it out to begin with.

Dawdler

- The design of the map is kittenpoor for WvW. It’s completely broken. It doesnt follow the basic rules that keeps and towers defend each other. The northern towers are in the completely wrong place, the southern towers are in equally wrong place and when it comes to objectives on the whole the entire map literally screams “go around!”, it’s far too wide with zero chance to scout chokes. It doesnt work.

That’s a very limited definition of WvW and also not quite fair. On Alpine, keeps and towers assault each other moreso than defend. You have a strong defensive structure and then a weak defensive structure which can be used as a staging point for an attack on the stronger one. It doesn’t make much sense. Your keep is much more secure if you don’t give enemies a convenient place to grab and siege from.

As for chokes, I can’t respond much to that. Some people complain that there are too many, some complain that there aren’t enough? I know that if there’s a group on the map and I need to track them, I can do so accurately even without having eyes on them the whole time. It takes a bit more work than the open fields of Alpine, but it’s also more fun and safer for me. Can’t say I have too much pity for anyone who can’t keep up.

Frost

But its not really designed for small groups or havoc though. The map was designed, in general, to be a defender’s paradise.
- increased cost of guild catas (havoc’s primary tool)
- structure upgrade speed, auto upgrades
- oppressive keep lord mechanics
- limited approach options to structures
- structures laidout with uncounterable defensive siege placement locations by design
- addition of powerful buffs available via guild halls encourage joining and playing with larger guilds (damage reduction, invuln, supply drop, airship, chilling fog, etc etc)
- addition of emergency waypoints encourage groups to stay blobbed up as the e-waypoint allows the blob to respond quickly if needed
- auto scouting/radar for objectives with no defensive counter option limits the ‘point-blank w/ splash damage’ option for offensive siege placement
- strong defensive siege addition in shield gens (which reach and work through walls and gates)

Some of the things you mention there are not map specific. Guild catas, for instance. Also, it was pure foolishness having those at 20 supply. It was more convenient for solo roamers but was even more convenient for large groups that wanted to build 8 catas to delete a wall.

Some other things are also off. There are no uncounterable defensive siege placements. There are some that you can’t counter by firing from the base of the wall. However, those can easily be countered by basing your siege out of their range. Note that there’s a band outside of AC range and inside Mortar minimum range. Also, Mortars are always vulnerable to attack and can’t be rebuilt at will. With greater verticality, there are also staging points that can’t be responded to from within the walls at all.

Emergency waypoints have a hefty CD on them. If you get pushed out by one, that structure now has to be rebuilt and guarded until the CD resets. If you keep a small amount of pressure on it and strike elsewhere in another group (splitting up?!) to draw enemy attention, you can break the still damaged walls and take it with ease. Or, if the enemies sit in it to wait out the CD, go somewhere else to punish them. The length of the CD is up for debate, but do recall that pre-HoT structures had a free E-WP every few minutes during an attack.

The auto-scouting radar is not free and requires defending an objective long enough to get it running. After that, you can still siege it from outside of it’s range. Since players complained and got the tower walls downgraded to barricades and then removed from the game altogether, it’s one of the best things towers have left. Imo, Barricades should be an optional upgrade with the final form being walls.

Spurnshadow

I did imagine the zerg thing. That’s why I put in the description that if anyone does attack another player, then they would receive a debuf that prevents them from doing anything for 3 seconds. Maybe 5. That would basically nearly wipe you if you tried to do that.

I was more concerned about zergs suddenly appearing at a building with all of their siege built, or just giving the slip to anyone trying to keep tabs on them. It would, ironically, make scouting a bit of a nightmare.

Spurnshadow

Making the bubble bigger is helpful as the bubble protects you and the yak. As it is now, it’s very easy to knock someone out of the bubble and kill them. This would give someone who wanted to escort yaks increased protection. The duration of superspeed is so that a yak may get away while you run interference. If you are on a fast class, you could catch up and give you and the yak more super speed. Some people actually like escorting yaks sometimes. Sometimes, it’s very important to get that last yak in.

That’s a good reason, though I’d run it just for the free superspeed w/e an allied Yak walked by.

As for walking Yaks, I’m probably the matron saint of that q_q

Spurnshadow

I thought there was some good stuff here. Being creative and trying to give a small advantage to outmanned players. Combine some of the things in the tree with things like Iron Guards, it could give outnumberd defenders a leg up. I’m trying to come up with new ideas that don’t effect players directly, so… whatever.

The problem is that NPC guards are so weak to begin with that buffing them isn’t a huge deal. The Iron Guards upgrade is only noticeable on lords if the structure is being attacked by 5+ people. We must remember that guards haven’t been updated since day 1. Meanwhile, players have all this new, shiny gear, food, elite specs, etc. Conceptually, it’s a cool tree. Practically, you’re better off going into the siege tree and dying in a blaze of glory on an arrow cart.

Spurnshadow

What? There are very real choices to make. If you can only pick 2 trees and limit yourself to a certain amount of masteries within, then yes, you must make a choice as to what kind of role to play. Some people just love sitting inside keeps and upgrading them, refreshing siege, scouting, etc. Someone like that would pick scout/defender. Some people love siege humping and hiding in keeps. They’d pick defence mastery/siege mastery. Zerglings would pick attacker/siege mastery. Maybe it’s not prime time anymore and things are slowing down. You’re now running in a group of 5 instead of 50. Time to retrat to something more appropriate. Of course, there are real choices.

So, basically, you make a choice that’s dictated by what you’re doing then swap as necessary. So everyone who’s on offense will have the same thing and everyone on defense would have the same thing. There’s no point mixing it up because the other trees don’t have anything you might want at that moment.

Sounds to me like an illusion of choice—there are options, but one of them is the right option depending on what you’re doing.

Spurnshadow

Also, as I’m not getting paid for this, and neither is anyone else in this thread, I didn’t want to spend any more of my time coming up with new ideas. I’m sure there are some very creative people that could think of things very outside the box that I didn’t. Not my job.

I get paid to be critical of other people’s work, but that often means I come off as a jerk when I’m actually interested in something. I chose to respond to your post because I think you were close enough to the mark that it was worth talking about. Sorry for focusing on the things I think I bad.

@Glass Hand, @Banono

That’s why I based the lion’s share of the rewards not on how you perform in the match, but how you perform on your server. They’re given out to a top percentage of people on the server in certain categories. Thus, moving to a more populated server will result in less rewards, not more, unless you’re moving there to do work.

There are some things still gated behind actually winning a match since that’s probably the point of competition.

As for what they consist of, it looks a lot like your list, Banono.

@Spurnshadow

Commerce Tree:
I think you should move more abilities into the base tree. Players shouldn’t have to respec to buy things from a vendor. Practically, they’re going to spec to do that then spec to back into the field and do w/e else they do. It’s an artificial drain on mastery points.

Siege Tree:
Bunker and Protector are pretty much required to make any use of wall siege in the first place…and even then, they likely aren’t enough. Other than that, I’m not thrilled about increasing siege damage but another tree reduces by the same amount so…no change? Anyway, this is a solid tree but is probably too narrowly focused to be good. Siege warfare in WvW revolves around non-interaction, but this could work if that area was fixed. If not, there’s no occasion for it.

Scout Tree:
This one seems ok except for the stealth from sentry. Imagine if a Zerg took that 20s of stealth. Sure, they’d have to flip a sentry first, but that’s not a high bar. It would probably be better not to introduce more stealth into WvW.

Supply Tree:
The supply stuff is nothing new. For Yak Escorter, people are just going to move in and out of range to reset it. It would be better to make it a scaling movespeed buff rather than duration based. For Yak Defender, the size of the bubble is just aesthetic. Making it bigger wouldn’t do anything. Are you suggesting that players inside the bubble should also have damage reduction?

Defence Tree:
Revealer is nice, but it’s a fix for a problem that really shouldn’t exist in the first place. None of the rest of the tree amounts to anything. Buffing guards and giving them regeneration isn’t going to make them useful in a real fight. Also, Lords already live longer than players so the buff there will be short-lived and without practical effect. Finally, Capture Resistance does nothing because circles don’t tick down when you’re contesting them. The only time this tree performs is when there’s a fight between 1 or 2 people at an objective.

Offence Tree:
Conversely, everything in this tree is useful. Since it’s just flat damage boosts/reductions, though, it’s not really interesting. It’s also just flat out the best for zerglings, so expect virtually everyone to run it.

General:
This is miles better than the OP, but it doesn’t avoid all of the pitfalls. There aren’t real choices as to what to take so it won’t increase variety. You won’t have people picking based on their class, which is good, but they will pick basically the same trees based on their playstyle. Finally, people will have to amass ranks just to benefit from special vendors. There’s no further benefit so if they don’t have enough points to respec without going out into the field, they’re just at a disadvantage.

Chaba.5410:

That could work. Problem has always been that the game doesn’t have any sort of guides in that regard. The traditional solution was to get people to join a guild to learn WvW, heh. Also server community forums. Remember that dude on TC who wrote like a 20 page document for TC on “how to wvw”? Heh.

I don’t know about TC, but I’m the one on SoS that wrote a Scout Manifesto complete with math. I also adopted newbies and showed them the ropes whenever I could.

But you’re right—without support from the game, it’s a fairly insurmountable task. People often drop onto the map and don’t even want to talk in chat to ask for help. If they do ask, they’re told to just follow the pin. A zerg is nice, sure, but if everyone amasses into a militia, all of the other necessary things go undone.

I posted a thread about using the reward system to show players what sort of activities are useful, but it doesn’t seem to be popular at all. Guess I’ll keep working on other ways to educate the masses .-.