I think you need to experience breakout events more to properly analyze them.
Is attacking the Breakout tower actually worth it? The fact that “no” is the answer, when the enemy has enough to activate the Breakout Event, is enough to consider that Breakout Events may be imbalanced. The Breakout Event discourages teams from full capping against invaders, because investing in a successful attack requires far more supplies and infantry than a Breakout Event.
This is like saying that playing on a map where the enemy has more players than you is not worth it because eventually you’ll probably lose stuff you take.
Breakout events discourage the two invading teams from attacking each other.
A fair point. On the other hand, the invaders should generally be 2v1ing the home team anyway. Nothing stops them from ninjaing keeps, supply camps, and other towers from each other. In my experience, nothing clears a map of players faster than having the defender and other invader wipe you off the map anyway. I don’t consider this a good thing. YMMV.
1. Tone down the duration of the protective bubble. It currently discourages making any defensive siege, because the bubble’s duration is enough to destroy any and all defensive siege located inside the tower.
No it’s not? I have successfully defended against the bubble duration, and killed all the siege that was in the bubble. This was with 20 defenders max.
3. Increase the time gap between activating Breakout Events. I’m not sure the exact current time gap, but it feels like less than 10 minutes. A more balanced time gap would be 30 minutes.
It takes more than 10 minutes to start a breakout event. I believe the time is 20-30 minutes. However, it seems like there is a bug where the breakout events come in pairs, e.g. the NPC will respawn in town after the 1st breakout event is successful so they can immediately start another breakout event at any time. I don’t think this is intended, it happens on every map though from what I’ve seen (haven’t seen breakout on EB). Anyway, this is why you think it is happening so quickly.
Ive found a few ways to sort of “deal” with them, one can be done by many professions. When they go down, apply Immobilize asap. They go mistform, but it does not remove immobilize. So they cannot run inside.
So if they mist form before you land immobilize, they win. If you try to preempt them actually going downed and use your skill early, they get downed and conditions are removed so they win. I guess this is a good thing since personally on my Ele I have never been stopped from getting back through the gate.
What people also don’t seem to take into account is that a lot of times Eles using AOE are being pulled off of walls, it’s not just people using D/D melee outside.
The other thing is, many elementalists are running D/D these days, and you can’t do crap from a wall with that set. EVERY other class has the option to equip both ranged and melee weapons on swap.
Why do people keep bringing up this “point?” I travel with D/D on my Ele because with Staff you’re a sitting duck and it’s slower. I switch into Staff for AOE after I get into a tower/keep. There is nothing stopping you from doing this. I can’t fathom how people act like this isn’t possible. Run to back of tower. Combat mode ends. Equip Staff. You don’t need a swap button.
All of it should have longer de-spawn rates and a whole lot more incentive to build it.
It cost a small personal fortune to build it in quantities that provide any noteworthy advantage. Three to five gold to be exact, omitting golems.
I agree that 30 minutes is way too low, if that is accurate.
But really, are you outfitting your entire map? 3-5g is 50-80 arrow carts.
why people just dont ponder on pro and cons of each class?
1st) If we just could switch weapon we wouldn t even go out of keeps.
Run to the back of the tower, combat mode goes off, equip whatever you want. Problem solved?
4) if you consider what s happen in www, that is a situational advantage, and ANY class has many of them…..do we want to talk about ranger pets? of mesmers? etc etc etc.
1st, ranger pets are horrible in PVP. I dare you to go into the Ranger forum and say that pets give them a situational advantage in WvW.
Ele is one of the best classes in WvW. Great at attacking or defending in siege. Great survivability during a siege. Great for protecting siege from other siege. Great for traveling due to swiftness + RTL. Great for 1v1 if you’re D/D bunker. They don’t need another advantage.
And by the way, you can’t be CC’d in Vapor form. They tested it in the Elem forum. The only thing that can block you are Wall like ability of guardian. So yeah try to time that.
Link? Mist form (non-downed) does not remove conditions. That being said I don’t think I’ve ever seen a downed Ele try to mist form in place. Requiring players who have immobilizes + have those skills ready just in case a Ele jumps out of a tower to “suicide” is hardly a counter.
Try playing an Ele`. Downed mist form is only of any use, when next to a keep.
Anywhere else in WvWs & especially in normal zones, downed mist form is next to useless. So close to useless in fact that useless has put a restraining order against it ;pDon`t want to do that?
Fine, nerf our downed state back into completely useless, but give us your damage output, your hp, your armour.
Mist form is far from useless outside of a keep. You can mist form into players of your server and they will bring you back up. I’m not sure how this is not amazing?
You act like Ele is some weak easy to take down class, but with the dozens of bunker Eles I see every day, this is not so.
the point is that u cant kill something that u cant see. it suck when you see your hp go down really fast and cant see the guy thats hitting u
Of course you can hit something you can’t see. You’re telling me you’ve never seen a thief get downed before while in stealth? I see this all the time. Thieves are not invincible. Yes, culling + stealth is ridiculous. Yes, if a thief is not overly aggressive they will probably be able to escape.
alright, also nerf the guardian heal skill that gives them 2 seconds of blocking. cause i can go down there do some damage and just block for 2 straight seconds when im low on health and runnin back towards the door, and the ranger trait that gives them the active signet buffs because, what class should be able to have 6 seconds of invulnerability, and the thieves ability to go invis, and the mesmers ability to blink…am i missing anything here?
Yes… none of those things can be done while downed.
correct, but that doesnt make them any more “fair” or less op. point is most classes have more useful skills to keep themselves from going down and some classes have more useful skills while downed. as a ranger who is specced to get active signet effects id say there is probably more people that qq over my 6 seconds of invulnerability that i normally use when they have got me down to about 4-7k life
Of course it does. Nevermind that an Ele can mist form before being downed, and has a blink. And is a strong bunker class.
Omg. is that really something to whine about? If you really think it’s a problem then I advice you to keep your eyes open for incoming people when bashing the doors.
People use this tactic once they are already inside a tower. They come out, attack, get downed, and go back in. I see this several times every day, without fail. There is absolutely no danger here for them, which is the bigger problem.
The reason people are mad is because they promised a ‘big’ update in Feb and everyone said oh wait till Feb they will fix all these problems. Then we basically come to find out they aren’t even thinking about starting to work on the issues that are important to the community.
Things that are important: Exploits, Hacks, Staleness of repeat matches, boring maps, lack of variety of siege, lack of variety of upgrades, rewards, broken mechanics, populations, transfers, zerging, night capping, pve issues, downed mechanics, rankings, commander issues, UI, and I am sure there are more.
Things they are working on: rewards, culling
Does anyone see how these lists don’t match?
The interviewers didn’t ask about most of these issues. So we don’t know if there are any other adjustments in the works.
Several of these complaints are not even WvW specific.
Populations: assuming you’re talking about servers with plummeting player numbers. If new people don’t join them, server merges are the only answer. Added breakout to try to help a little.
Transfers: they will not stop until guesting is implemented. They already increased the CD to 7 days because of complaints.
Zerging: what do you want ANet to do about this, have lightning strike from the heavens to kill zergs? This is a player issue.
Night capping: I guess WvW should only be active during prime time. People will always complain about night capping, morning capping, or afternoon capping. I have a solution, towers and keeps should go invulnerable unless a certain amount of players are in them!!!!!!!! /sarcasm.
Same issue for Black Citadel. Other character loads fine in Southsun Cove.
Breakout events should not be necessary in wvw as most servers should be in a tier which represents their strengths or weaknesses.
Look at the matchup history for WvW, this is not the case for many, many matches. In theory, your tier should be somewhat balanced. But even if this were always true, it is only true for aggregate performance. At any particular slice of time the match may be imbalanced and a server may be in need of breakout.
Trial was better, at least I could better judge the size of an enemy force and didn’t run straight towards 1-3 guys who suddenly morph into 20-40.
Left unchecked? How about the only peice of anti-personnel siege that can be placed in a location that cannot be destroyed? Making them a bit too ridiculous.
Where are these magical places that exist in every tower?
Behind-the-door Catapult giving you the blues? Get your own arrow cart on it since they ignore terrain. Oh, place it on an angle and away from the door a bit so the catapult doesn’t just shoot over the door and nail you, or at the door to nail you if you’re too close.
How is an arrow cart to legitimately hit the center of a courtyard behind the door where catapults are normally placed? I see this happening daily now, but I’m pretty sure the operators are using camera hacks.
The only thing that bothers me about breakout is that if you assemble enough people, you can flash build golems on zero supply camps. As a defender you cannot estimate an opponent’s siege capability based on the number of supply camps they own. You can get golem rushed out of nowhere. We can handle it if one attacker does it during off peak I guess? But when both attackers do it at the same time?
You realize this could already be accomplished by people entering the map with supply on them, right? Furthermore, they could go to another map to resupply then come back. This makes it easier and that’s not a good thing, but it’s not like this couldn’t have happened before.
Breakout events have nothing to do with high and low tier server populations.
Yes it does.
No it doesn’t. I’m on a top tier server with full population and yesterday we had the breakout event occur in all 3 BL. I guess people have this myth that top tier servers have full queues across four maps, and presence on all maps at all times of the day, it isn’t like that at all.
I understand the frustration of undermanned servers not being able to, well, breakout. If the players on those servers are playing GW2 for WvW they can transfer to a WvW-centric server. If they’re PvE players they probably don’t feel the frustration too much.
Even in top tier servers not all maps have a presence or the numbers necessary to breakout at all times. Rarely do we ever have a presence on all 4 maps. Usually it is only on 2 BL + EB, sometimes just 1 BL + EB. Even more rarely we are down to a single map.
I’m downplaying it when used with a zerg. If the attackers for some reason have an overwhelming majority then the NPC doesn’t help them much because they have numbers anyway.
IMO, if 60 attackers got pushed completely off the map by defenders (and defenders stay there camping them), then yes, they do need help. This also works on the home borderlands and we can switch attackers with defenders.
And where it helps a lot is with smaller groups. Before breakout if the tower was lightly manned and sieged up your option was basically to go to another map and join the zerg, or harass supply camps only. Now there are more options.
Although, when can a server no longer use breakout events? We took back a tower with a breakout event, then took back the other tower and then the garrison on our own, but the breakout commanders still appear to be usable.
It appears that there is a bug with the breakout event, where the #3 server (red bottom right) on the #1 server BL (green) will finish the breakout event but the NPC will appear in town again and can charge the tower despite it still being under your control still. This will only happen once, unless the tower is flipped and you retake it. Was hoping to wipe out an enemy super zerg when we saw the NPC back in spawn, but they wiped him instead =(
It’s odd to me that some people seem to be against more fighting in WvW. Seems like they’d just rather the enemy stayed off their BL and it was a ghost town. I don’t really get it, but to each their own I guess.
(edited by Visiroth.5914)
With defenders = can stop
Without defenders = no can stopQuestion: if there are no defenders why do the “weak” attackers need an NPC help?
Who really cares then? You get an extra bit of support in exchange for waiting 1 minute then following a slow NPC to the tower, then standing in a control point to get the siege. You also need at least 10 people instead of just 8 who could build 2 rams and take a tower faster anyway? I don’t see what the big fuss is.
Oh, and you get full supply in the tower after taking it so you have a better chance of defending the tower than you ever did without the event.
The breakout is hardly unstoppable. I’ve already witnessed it get stomped before the Champion even made it to the tower and could initiate the siege.
The bubbles also don’t last long enough to destroy either a gate or a wall unless several additional siege are dropped by players.
u know why they have the cap right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KztvINdeJuothere is that abuse too
Not sure how that is really “abuse” if they want to waste their plans like that. Siege despawns if it’s not built now too.
No, he’s suggesting that the maximum bandwidth of the server allocated to an individual client is nowhere near saturating his somewhat standard broadband connection. Habib even explicitly states that they are limiting bandwidth consumption by BOTH server and client with the sever side culling. To me that sounds like it is both an optimization for the client resources, as well as the server resources.
I mean flourishing. And of course the numbers increased, the reason they went F2P is because the numbers were darn near dead. So, going from 30,000 players to 43,000 players is definitely more players, but still a dead game.
It’s nice that you’re pulling numbers completely out of thin air. Turbine added a million new player accounts when they went F2P along with 20% player returns to LOTORO in their first month of switching. I’d call that flourishing.
Let me say that I do agree that the majority of people who stop playing probably won’t return, because they likely did not like the game as opposed to getting bored of it, being annoyed with features lacking, or bugs.
Look at the numerous examples of failed MMOs that went to the free-to-play model with no barrier to return. Can you give me an example of one that is flourishing?
Not sure what you mean by this comment, but there have been multiple PR from Turbine and Sony talking about player increases from their games that switched to F2P. I don’t know about flourishing, but the games haven’t been shut down either.
No word on WvW Culling fixes
They posted about this a few days ago…
Soon other MMO’s will be attempting this type of PvP so Arena Net really need to get going. Just check Cyrodiil in Elder Scrolls Online (Jesse Cox video), the WvW map is over 15x larger and actually a world with quests and event chains going on in it!
I guess we’ll have to see how this actually turns out. But with the complaints toward jumping puzzles in WvW maps, I’m not sure how stuffing more PVE into this type of map will work.
The ladder has been fairly stabilized over at the NA side
It’s only stable at the upper echelons. ET and HoD have both been dropping a tier every single week. And this week in T3, a server that moved up from T4 is winning.
It’s completely obvious why PVE and WvW are tied together. ANet wants to attract not only PVPers to join but also casual PVPers and PVErs. It is mass PVP after all, and not small scale like sPVP so filling the maps with numbers is important. You want it to be a pure PVP format, but it’s not, and it’s not intended to be.
Honestly, gear is the least of your problems. I funded the majority of my exotics through gold accumulation entirely through WvW.
You’re telling me you can jump up there normally? Because I’ve been told that this happening is due to Mesmer portal abuse.
Just chiming in to say I applaud ANet finally doing something about the orbs. I agree with EasymodeX when he said this probably won’t change who wins the match in most cases, as they won for other reasons like better coverage or more numbers in general. Still, there’s no reason to make the strong stronger. WvW isn’t a MOBA where deadlock needs to be avoided.
All 4 maps had queues earlier on CD, as they always do on Friday.
There are 3 ways out of spawn for most maps. Spawn “camp” usually happens at a single exit. What, exactly, is stopping you from running the blockade? In every match I’ve ever been a part of, both sides have been able to take supply camps across the map, even when outmanned. Granted, you’ll never hold these positions in that situation.
It would actually be interesting to see additional spawn points open up, but only active when outmanned.
It’s not that complicated.
IIRC when server transfers were first offered you could transfer more than once per day. Return it to that, but do not allow entry into WvW unless you were already on that server BEFORE the new match begins. If you go back to your “home server” you can enter WvW during the current match. Whatever server you’re on when WvW resets on Friday becomes your new “home server.”
PVE is unaffected by this, in fact, this helps it! Bandwagoners disrupting the current matches will be eliminated. Guilds can still exodus in preparation for next match so volatility will unfortunately still exist. If there was a mass migration to your server, then you’ll be stuck with possible queues for a week. Can’t make everyone happy.
So what’s your counter to 4 trebs placed on the edge of the borderland garrison, bombarding the north east gate of the Bay fortress, short of taking said garrison?
You can kill them with your own siege outside of the garrison. This is a standard tactic. Granted, if you’re outmanned this probably isn’t going to work. But in that case, they could probably just storm the Bay and you’d be screwed either way.
Thanks for the update.
Probably won’t be answered, but is it intended that altars in keeps stay broken unless ownership of the keep flips sides?
I find it rather ridiculous that the altar does not repair itself (or become repairable at least) after the orb resets up north.
The bottom three tiers have competitive match-ups this week. The other tiers don’t.
Did you look at the same data I did? 2/3 matches had their top 2 within a 60k point differential, which is pretty close. The second to last tier was about 140k point differential between 1st and 2nd place, that’s a blowout.
Reviewing NS/DH/EB, EB was over 100k behind 2nd place. So that matchup was only competitive between 2/3 servers. If the system was really working, you wouldn’t see one (or more) server being so far behind.
Why in the world would you buy gems and hope that ANet “fixes” WvW? Whether you buy gems or not you are not funding a particular aspect of the game, they will prioritize what they want. They’ve already done a blog post for sPVP, people are mad, and rightly so, that for WvW it’s just silence. If you are not satisfied with a service, you don’t typically PAY MORE for it!
The problem with MMO’s nowdays is people do have the patience to wait around for devs to fix stuff.
That is where communication comes in. The problem is other than player culling, they don’t seem to have even acknowledged other issues. Which leaves us completely in the dark as to what may or may not even be changed. That’s not a good thing.
About the only thing I’ve read is they told us to give the matchmaking system time to balance out, which obviously isn’t happening with rampant server transfers. For my server, everything the OP says is correct. We either get stomped or drop a tier and plow the opposition. Close fights are only over the weekend, which is a shame.
Time does not heal all ails. I don’t understand how future players will balance servers and not just repeat the same server hopping shenanigans that occur now. Also, and this is a big problem when talking about population, general server pop != WvW server pop. However, there is no way for ANet to control players who transfer solely for WvW. There is in the short term, but they haven’t given any indication that they care about it whatsoever.
I’ve managed to make enough money while doing WvW to purchase 5 exotics so far while repairing my gear.
Magic lightning from the gods should strike down small forces who dare to step near a tower/keep? It’s the enemy team’s problem that they don’t defend/scout. I’ve defended upgraded towers with 1-2 people against 10+ invaders, the upgrades work fine.
There are people who run from the supply camp proper all the way to the base of the hill, and then have invincibility. I don’t see how this can possibly be working as intended as you can’t get up the hill.
It’s only a particular spot, there is no invincibility from the entirety of the hill’s base, so either way you look at it, it doesn’t seem to be designed like this.
It’s a lot worse now, even friendly players aren’t loading, sometimes, ever. I literally followed the same group around the whole map and never saw anything but necro pets at one point. Also NPCs like Veteran Guards have the same loading issues that enemy players used to (and still, only worse)have.
It’s not just an issue for people who care about score. There’s an underlying issue behind score discrepancy which is generally rooted in a stark difference in server participation, whether this is a 24/7 problem or only during off times. I don’t know about you, but not being able to hold/take anything besides supply camps on 3 out of 4 maps is not fun.
A buff that gives meaningful boosts would go a long way in curbing this, by at least giving an undermanned side a fighting chance. It’s also a much more elegant solution than trying to hard cap one server’s player numbers, which wouldn’t even work since the 2 strongest servers usually seem to prey on the weakest rather than fight each other.