Do we Want to Bring Back Epic Garrison Battles?

[Svarty.8019]

Back at the beginning of the game, several factors combined to make garrison battles much longer than they are in 2019.

I've been talking to people on TeamSpeak (yes, we use that on my server!) and the old folks there reminisce about those fights as being better than the ones we have now.

I think the factors that have changed since the early days are these;

• Bannering the Lord was removed.
• Better discipline from attacking zerg, tighter balls (!)
• Less forgiving combat: Enormous damage all over the place (there are two factors: players perfected their builds and gear/ Anet added powercreep via expacs).
• There is more understanding of the environment - awareness of siege placements, pro scouting, orange dots
• EWP - this replaced the timed waypoint (Anet later claimed it was a bug/unintended effect) that happened every 5? Minutes.
• Communications with PvE - we can no longer call on PvE for reinforcements because of the Megaserver.

If you can think of more, please add them below.

Some of these things could be reversed/changed, but we wouldn't want to waste Anet's time [insert your own joke].So the question is: do we want to bring back epic Garrison battles?

[Dawdler.8521]

You can never have the old times back.

[RedShark.9548]

@Dawdler.8521 said:You can never have the old times back.

Having and wanting something are different things.

[Edu.6984]

From that list the only thing that should be implemented is removing power creep. Condi application, condi cleansing, boon corruption, boon application and raw power dmg need to be toned down.

[Offair.2563]

The waypoint opened every 2.5 or 3min, for a brief 2-3 seconds yes.

[Len.1879]

@Svarty.8019 said:Back at the beginning of the game, several factors combined to make garrison battles much longer than they are in 2019.

I've been talking to people on TeamSpeak (yes, we use that on my server!) and the old folks there reminisce about those fights as being better than the ones we have now.

I think the factors that have changed since the early days are these;

• Bannering the Lord was removed.
• Better discipline from attacking zerg, tighter balls (!)
• Less forgiving combat: Enormous damage all over the place (there are two factors: players perfected their builds and gear/ Anet added powercreep via expacs).
• There is more understanding of the environment - awareness of siege placements, pro scouting, orange dots
• EWP - this replaced the timed waypoint (Anet later claimed it was a bug/unintended effect) that happened every 5? Minutes.
• Communications with PvE - we can no longer call on PvE for reinforcements because of the Megaserver.

If you can think of more, please add them below.

Some of these things could be reversed/changed, but we wouldn't want to waste Anet's time [insert your own joke].So the question is: do we want to bring back epic Garrison battles?

First of all, old folks will always reminisce about the old times. That's how old folks work.I for one do not enjoy long fights in garrisons. I do enjoy long fights with interesting back-and-forths. The problem I have with it is that those fights are not repeatable. You usually have a T3 keep, which is fought for in an epic battle. Then the keep is flipped. The attackers have little to none interest in defending it, so the usual story from here is: defenders take the keep back after five minutes. Tier builds up again over a long time. I want those fights. But not in that boring frequency.

[LetoII.3782]

Some remember epic battlesI remember neverending, laggy 1-spam fests.

[Svarty.8019]

@LetoII.3782 said:Some remember epic battlesI remember neverending, laggy 1-spam fests.

Yes, but that was in Dark Age of Camelot...

[MedievalThings.5417]

@Svarty.8019 said:

@LetoII.3782 said:Some remember epic battlesI remember neverending, laggy 1-spam fests.

Yes, but that was in Dark Age of Camelot...

Actually, that was never in DAoC. 300 person fights at Keeps and you could always full rotation. The graphics were pretty bad, but the server side skill lag didn't prevent you casting skills. The only thing that did lag was position, as time went on, you could lag your location when the world turned (so fighting outside lord, and poof through the wall at the right time, now inside - cause the map rotate based on time).

[Svarty.8019]

@Ubi.4136 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:

@LetoII.3782 said:Some remember epic battlesI remember neverending, laggy 1-spam fests.

Yes, but that was in Dark Age of Camelot...

Actually, that was never in DAoC. 300 person fights at Keeps and you could always full rotation. The graphics were pretty bad, but the server side skill lag didn't prevent you casting skills. The only thing that did lag was position, as time went on, you could lag your location when the world turned (so fighting outside lord, and poof through the wall at the right time, now inside - cause the map rotate based on time).

I remember it as a literal slideshow with 1 frame every 10 seconds at BEST. I was there. The only way to improve that was to point your camera at the floor. :)

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@Len.1879 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:Back at the beginning of the game, several factors combined to make garrison battles much longer than they are in 2019.

I've been talking to people on TeamSpeak (yes, we use that on my server!) and the old folks there reminisce about those fights as being better than the ones we have now.

I think the factors that have changed since the early days are these;

• Bannering the Lord was removed.
• Better discipline from attacking zerg, tighter balls (!)
• Less forgiving combat: Enormous damage all over the place (there are two factors: players perfected their builds and gear/ Anet added powercreep via expacs).
• There is more understanding of the environment - awareness of siege placements, pro scouting, orange dots
• EWP - this replaced the timed waypoint (Anet later claimed it was a bug/unintended effect) that happened every 5? Minutes.
• Communications with PvE - we can no longer call on PvE for reinforcements because of the Megaserver.

If you can think of more, please add them below.

Some of these things could be reversed/changed, but we wouldn't want to waste Anet's time [insert your own joke].So the question is: do we want to bring back epic Garrison battles?

First of all, old folks will always reminisce about the old times. That's how old folks work.I for one do not enjoy long fights in garrisons. I do enjoy long fights with interesting back-and-forths. The problem I have with it is that those fights are not repeatable. You usually have a T3 keep, which is fought for in an epic battle. Then the keep is flipped. The attackers have little to none interest in defending it, so the usual story from here is: defenders take the keep back after five minutes. Tier builds up again over a long time. I want those fights. But not in that boring frequency.

Except back then holding a structure was indeed a thing, many guilds would stay on given nights for the whole point of trying to T3 the other servers Garri or keeps. There was communication in server meetings that were publicly held in TS, given tags were assigned a map to try and control. This helped with dividing resources, having some coverage on each map, coordinated attacks could be done, as flipping a servers garri required that or a sneak attack, which was hard to do as we had lots of dedicated scouts at the time. So we would break into inner Garri and would have fights, non-stopped for an hour+ and never flip it, we would have to have one tag attack a keep of the server in EBG while attacking Garri as well so they would have to make a choice on what map they were going to send reinforcements to.

As soon as a structure was capped, tags back then would take the whole zerg around it to drop and build siege, ask scouts for call outs and would ask people in the zerg to send extra loot bags to the named scouts since it was a rather boring job with zero reward in game. And when it would get close I still remember having 20 people walking a north yak to hills while 20 people walked a south yak to get that last supply in. Why did people defend? No passives, and upgrades cost actual money and supply to upgrade and they were manual, no auto upgrades based on yak numbers, you could have 2,000 yaks go into a keep back then and still be paper because no one put any investment into it and started upgrades.

Siege was stronger, far, FAR stronger in the case of ACs, but we had far less of them, part of that was due to the fact you often had little supply until a keep reached T3, as a structure upgrade consumed everything, God it was so annoying to be 10 supply from an upgrade and have some random run trough the keep every few mins and take supply delaying it by yet another yak. Broken walls/gates and siege you destroyed were harder to build back, due to supply being harder to get back then. Camps didn't have the upgrades we have now either, they didn't even have a T3, they capped at T2 with level 82 guards and also consumed supply when upgraded. So structures were weak at given times and could be taken advantage of, because if the server started an upgrade, you know they had zero supply to work with, as defenders you had to be smart about it, since the upgrades were not auto, and you had to pay for it, you wanted to make sure starting the upgrade was not going to hurt you.

Damage was less overall for zergs, so capping took longer in places like garri with such an open circle, people could troll it all day long since more was put into the hammer train and a smaller ranged backline, now you might last a few seconds in the circle as it's just fully covered in ranged aoe now. Bannering lord, people would call out for reinforcements in PvE and in 5 mins you would have a map queue, and people would being even upleveled warriors to banner and delay the cap if they were not very good at fighting, which helped the defense a ton. And with the lower dmg and stab being duration based only and not stack/duration meant one pushes were not that common, as the zergs would pass through each other time and time again, field blasting, prebuffing, veil and portal bombs where used often because you often needed better tactics than the other side to win quickly. It was a different game back then.

However, you stated you want to flip structures back and forth and you want the pace to be faster than now, and you don't like fights. In other words, you want to move even more towards a ktrain like EOTM was?

[Strider Pj.2193]

@Offair.2563 said:The waypoint opened every 2.5 or 3min, for a brief 2-3 seconds yes.

^ This. It was the length of time that ‘defense of the keep’ or ‘keep defense’ timer was on when a structure was tapped or attacked.

It also led to having people hit a gate or door periodically to make the timer start again.

Banner of the lord could be obnoxious as well... But yes, it was fun.

Though the desert BL lords would need to be toned down some...,

[Shadowresli.3782]

Except back then holding a structure was indeed a thing, many guilds would stay on given nights for the whole point of trying to T3 the other servers Garri or keeps. There was communication in server meetings that were publicly held in TS, given tags were assigned a map to try and control. This helped with dividing resources, having some coverage on each map, coordinated attacks could be done, as flipping a servers garri required that or a sneak attack, which was hard to do as we had lots of dedicated scouts at the time. So we would break into inner Garri and would have fights, non-stopped for an hour+ and never flip it, we would have to have one tag attack a keep of the server in EBG while attacking Garri as well so they would have to make a choice on what map they were going to send reinforcements to.

As soon as a structure was capped, tags back then would take the whole zerg around it to drop and build siege, ask scouts for call outs and would ask people in the zerg to send extra loot bags to the named scouts since it was a rather boring job with zero reward in game. And when it would get close I still remember having 20 people walking a north yak to hills while 20 people walked a south yak to get that last supply in. Why did people defend? No passives, and upgrades cost actual money and supply to upgrade and they were manual, no auto upgrades based on yak numbers, you could have 2,000 yaks go into a keep back then and still be paper because no one put any investment into it and started upgrades.

Siege was stronger, far, FAR stronger in the case of ACs, but we had far less of them, part of that was due to the fact you often had little supply until a keep reached T3, as a structure upgrade consumed everything, God it was so annoying to be 10 supply from an upgrade and have some random run trough the keep every few mins and take supply delaying it by yet another yak. Broken walls/gates and siege you destroyed were harder to build back, due to supply being harder to get back then. Camps didn't have the upgrades we have now either, they didn't even have a T3, they capped at T2 with level 82 guards and also consumed supply when upgraded. So structures were weak at given times and could be taken advantage of, because if the server started an upgrade, you know they had zero supply to work with, as defenders you had to be smart about it, since the upgrades were not auto, and you had to pay for it, you wanted to make sure starting the upgrade was not going to hurt you.

Damage was less overall for zergs, so capping took longer in places like garri with such an open circle, people could troll it all day long since more was put into the hammer train and a smaller ranged backline, now you might last a few seconds in the circle as it's just fully covered in ranged aoe now. Bannering lord, people would call out for reinforcements in PvE and in 5 mins you would have a map queue, and people would being even upleveled warriors to banner and delay the cap if they were not very good at fighting, which helped the defense a ton. And with the lower dmg and stab being duration based only and not stack/duration meant one pushes were not that common, as the zergs would pass through each other time and time again, field blasting, prebuffing, veil and portal bombs where used often because you often needed better tactics than the other side to win quickly. It was a different game back then.

This is how it was when i started playing wvw. the longest fight i remember was from 22.00 to 02.00 in the morning.

and don't forget the planing and coordination it took to rush a garrison with golems

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@Shadowresli.3782 said:

Except back then holding a structure was indeed a thing, many guilds would stay on given nights for the whole point of trying to T3 the other servers Garri or keeps. There was communication in server meetings that were publicly held in TS, given tags were assigned a map to try and control. This helped with dividing resources, having some coverage on each map, coordinated attacks could be done, as flipping a servers garri required that or a sneak attack, which was hard to do as we had lots of dedicated scouts at the time. So we would break into inner Garri and would have fights, non-stopped for an hour+ and never flip it, we would have to have one tag attack a keep of the server in EBG while attacking Garri as well so they would have to make a choice on what map they were going to send reinforcements to.

As soon as a structure was capped, tags back then would take the whole zerg around it to drop and build siege, ask scouts for call outs and would ask people in the zerg to send extra loot bags to the named scouts since it was a rather boring job with zero reward in game. And when it would get close I still remember having 20 people walking a north yak to hills while 20 people walked a south yak to get that last supply in. Why did people defend? No passives, and upgrades cost actual money and supply to upgrade and they were manual, no auto upgrades based on yak numbers, you could have 2,000 yaks go into a keep back then and still be paper because no one put any investment into it and started upgrades.

Siege was stronger, far, FAR stronger in the case of ACs, but we had far less of them, part of that was due to the fact you often had little supply until a keep reached T3, as a structure upgrade consumed everything, God it was so annoying to be 10 supply from an upgrade and have some random run trough the keep every few mins and take supply delaying it by yet another yak. Broken walls/gates and siege you destroyed were harder to build back, due to supply being harder to get back then. Camps didn't have the upgrades we have now either, they didn't even have a T3, they capped at T2 with level 82 guards and also consumed supply when upgraded. So structures were weak at given times and could be taken advantage of, because if the server started an upgrade, you know they had zero supply to work with, as defenders you had to be smart about it, since the upgrades were not auto, and you had to pay for it, you wanted to make sure starting the upgrade was not going to hurt you.

Damage was less overall for zergs, so capping took longer in places like garri with such an open circle, people could troll it all day long since more was put into the hammer train and a smaller ranged backline, now you might last a few seconds in the circle as it's just fully covered in ranged aoe now. Bannering lord, people would call out for reinforcements in PvE and in 5 mins you would have a map queue, and people would being even upleveled warriors to banner and delay the cap if they were not very good at fighting, which helped the defense a ton. And with the lower dmg and stab being duration based only and not stack/duration meant one pushes were not that common, as the zergs would pass through each other time and time again, field blasting, prebuffing, veil and portal bombs where used often because you often needed better tactics than the other side to win quickly. It was a different game back then.

This is how it was when i started playing wvw. the longest fight i remember was from 22.00 to 02.00 in the morning.

and don't forget the planing and coordination it took to rush a garrison with golems

I don't forget that for sure. I was one of the main roamers that would get on 1-2 hours before raids and flip camps, not just to starve supply, but also to build a golem in each and WP back to spawn, about 30mins before everyone got on, 2 mes would get on and double portal me around the map to place golems, in the trees by water gate so we would not be spotted until we were on the gate already. people would get on with builds meant for golems to get extra HP etc, only heavy classes, bubble rotation call outs etc. The feeling of community and server pride was a big thing back then, because people actually had to work and talk to each other to get anything done.

I think many people playing today never experienced what things were like back then. Not saying it was perfect, it was far from it, however I can say I had much more fun in the game back then vs now. I even find myself not caring, and feeling uninvested.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I blame alot more reasons than those, mostly siege creep, and defense creep. The more and more you make small groups of players unable to cap things, the less incentive there is to actually start a fight, which means that it never escalates to a long, drawn-out battle.

War was more epic back then because fights were heavily player-centric. Veterancy, especially, determined everything.

The game must be player centric, I'd even argue that players should be able to break doors without siege (like in other RvR games), but that's not going to happen because ArenaNet has built the modern WvW around the concept of siege and supply and strong defenses and that has only become worse and worse over time, until the point where most objectives defend themselves merely from player attrition.

Warclaw.. didn't help, even less reason to stay at an objective to defend it when you can just rush there at any time.

It's all become very weird, there's just this weird obsession with trying to recreate some kind of 1500s-style siege warfare where ArenaNet seems to imagine battles as hundred-year-wars when in reality they're five minute siegebomb and mounted zerg fests. We have more tools for epic battles than ever before (e.g true healers), yet fights are over before you can even be revived. Like the whole concept of removing revive-in-combat was pointless because no one even has time for that anymore.

Individual players mean nothing, just organic, discardable trash blobs versus inorganic, soulless siege and stone walls.

I don't even know what's going on with the game mode anymore.

[Len.1879]

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:However, you stated you want to flip structures back and forth and you want the pace to be faster than now, and you don't like fights. In other words, you want to move even more towards a ktrain like EOTM was?

That's pretty much the opposite of what I said.

[Straegen.2938]

T1 already has epic NA prime 3 way SMC battles. They already frag the server lag so not sure I would want "more".

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@Len.1879 said:

@"TinkTinkPOOF.9201" said:However, you stated you want to flip structures back and forth and you want the pace to be faster than now, and you don't like fights. In other words, you want to move even more towards a ktrain like EOTM was?

That's pretty much the opposite of what I said.

Then explain what you meant?

You stated that people don't defend after capping and it's capped back and after upgrading again, it's flipped again and you stated "I want those fights. But not in that boring frequency.". Which means you want to flip the structure back and forth more often. And you stated that: "I for one do not enjoy long fights in garrisons". you only like fights that have a back and forth swap. Because you don't like combat for combat, you want a short combat with a structure flip, and then a defense with a structure flip, this is called cap trading in ktraining. In other words, fights are ok, so long as they don't last long enough to get in the way of the reward.

So, that seems like it is exactly what you said. Not trying to be rude, but I really don't see how else it is meant to be taken.

[adammantium.8031]

What contributed to all these battles was motivation on the part of the participants. In the early days, players were far more invested, partly because it was a new and more exciting game, and possibly because of server pride.Waypoint every 3 minutes, and bannering lords, served to extend the duration for which a server could cling onto a structure, stringing a fight out. I always found bannering the lord to be kinda cheesy though.

I think it's unlikely that many players are so invested in the game they'd go to the lengths described by TinktinkPoof any more.

Alliances (theoretically stronger communities), better rewards, and an end to auto-upgrades and incentivizing scouting again...

But who am I kidding.

[Strider Pj.2193]

@adammantium.8031 said:Waypoint every 3 minutes, and bannering lords, served to extend the duration for which a server could cling onto a structure, stringing a fight out. I always found bannering the lord to be kinda cheesy though.

I think the part was ‘stringing the fight out’ which made it more fun for the people involved.

Having been on the defense side AND the attacking side of those epic Garrison fights (usually on reset) there was a collective cheer when it was successfully defended or capped. Of course it was in either on Mumble or Ventrillo at the time but..

Alliances (theoretically stronger communities), better rewards, and an end to auto-upgrades and incentivizing scouting again...

Yeah, those things would help as well.

But who am I kidding.

Not those of us used to the ‘Promise’ of Soon™️

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

See the new blob, same as the old blob.

[Len.1879]

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@Len.1879 said:

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:However, you stated you want to flip structures back and forth and you want the pace to be faster than now, and you don't like fights. In other words, you want to move even more towards a ktrain like EOTM was?

That's pretty much the opposite of what I said.

Then explain what you meant?

You stated that people don't defend after capping and it's capped back and after upgrading again, it's flipped again and you stated "I want those fights. But not in that boring frequency.". Which means you want to flip the structure back and forth more often. And you stated that: "I for one do not enjoy long fights in garrisons". you only like fights that have a back and forth swap. Because you don't like combat for combat, you want a short combat with a structure flip, and then a defense with a structure flip, this is called cap trading in ktraining. In other words, fights are ok, so long as they don't last long enough to get in the way of the reward.

So, that seems like it is exactly what you said. Not trying to be rude, but I really don't see how else it is meant to be taken.

I want to have long battles that can be repeated. Which is not the case in a high-tier garrison as soon as the attackers win, because that causes a long "cooldown" for such a battle, as the incentive for attacking the garrison is largely gone. The idea of having extended intense battles is independent of where it takes place. Could happen in the ruins for all I care.

[ArchonWing.9480]

With mounts getting back into the fight from spawn is no longer a big deal. This is one of the few good things it's done. If you really wanted to push the issue, I guess you could make the exits from garrison a bit more flatter.

Of course this doesn't apply to the other keeps.

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@Len.1879 said:

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@Len.1879 said:

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:However, you stated you want to flip structures back and forth and you want the pace to be faster than now, and you don't like fights. In other words, you want to move even more towards a ktrain like EOTM was?

That's pretty much the opposite of what I said.

Then explain what you meant?

You stated that people don't defend after capping and it's capped back and after upgrading again, it's flipped again and you stated "I want those fights. But not in that boring frequency.". Which means you want to flip the structure back and forth more often. And you stated that: "I for one do not enjoy long fights in garrisons". you only like fights that have a back and forth swap. Because you don't like combat for combat, you want a short combat with a structure flip, and then a defense with a structure flip, this is called cap trading in ktraining. In other words, fights are ok, so long as they don't last long enough to get in the way of the reward.

So, that seems like it is exactly what you said. Not trying to be rude, but I really don't see how else it is meant to be taken.

I want to have long battles that can be repeated. Which is not the case in a high-tier garrison as soon as the attackers win, because that causes a long "cooldown" for such a battle, as the incentive for attacking the garrison is largely gone. The idea of having extended intense battles is independent of where it takes place. Could happen in the ruins for all I care.

That is how things were however. Once capped the fights didn't stop, the attacking server if they capped, right away started sweeping for mesmers, in most cases after a flip, the other server, in full was back on inner fighting again in minutes, because once the fight started to turn, most of the mes of the defending server bailed out of the fight to hide, so it was a rush to find them before they could port everyone back in...However that slows down the ktrain, so anet added marked after a structure is flipped, yet another passive added to make people not care and not invested.

Assuming all mes were found and killed before they could port people in, the other zerg was already back banging on the wall/gate, and you had a constant defense of the Garri/keep, it would go on for hours after flipping of close calls pushing off the other servers attacks, roamers scrambling everywhere to cap camps and escort yaks to get supply in etc etc. And one of the larger changes from back then is people pushed OUT, letting a zerg into outer or inner was not a thing, because if you wanted to hold, supply was so short you could not afford to instantly rebuild a wall to 100% each time, you had to be proactive and push them off.

Capping something, as someone else said above, was huge deal, and if you were in voice coms people actually cheered, so once something was taken, people wanted to hold onto it, not just move on right away to something else. And the home server also wanted it back because if allowed to upgrade it was just as hard to get back, and losing something that people invested time and personal gold into upgrading wanted it back.

[kash.9213]

At this point in the game:

Coverage keeps anyone logged on who can see Team Chat moving around maps cleaning stuff up, sometimes we get a good stretch of what seems like a long fight, but mostly all of the structures and points on the maps are a quick laundry list for whoever is left playing.

I don't care apart from the fight and that's a map to run across to hurry up and probably be late. I've lost any interest in keeping up with collections or anything else, there's too many currencies, collections, modes, and other junk that seems to go no where for my limited time. I don't really care much about my points or reward track anymore except to sell materials in bulk or whatever to get a skin I like once in awhile, If I know there's no groups who are fun to fight there than I don't feel like trying to catch the tail end of that fight for four nodes.

If it was open world pvp or something and my side or guild owning that keep would influence the area around it that I could make an actual profit from, I'd never miss a minute and would probably stay up late looking for more...party to fill my own bank...and party because I'd know every side and guild looking at that garrison will bring their A game.