Sviel.7493

Is that a fun game? Where no one actually fights each other? Where there's no point in defending?

While I'm not thrilled about your proposed solution, I agree that the current state of this 'mechanic' is hilariously terrible. Even if your zerg sweeps the keep and several people place traps, it's still far too easy for a perma-stealth class to evade detection considering how monumental the pay-off for success is. Those saying to simply use the tools at your disposal are, to be blunt, not all that bright or trolling.

I got all excited but it was just this... Guess that's my fault for having foolish expectations...

Rams have like a 15 minute timer instead of the normal hour.

I would be pissed if they had years of radio silence and then dropped alliances out of nowhere in an expansion.

One of these days, I'm going to find that clip where they said waiting years to release a single huge update with no communication was a mistake and that they planned to do numerous smaller updates with lots of communication for the future. They got a bunch of blowback for HoT and immediately shriveled up, so there went that...

@Dawdler.8521 What relevant changes did HoT make in this area other than cratering WvW population while we all went to build guild halls? There's a temporary invuln for walls, guild cata cost was increased...and that's it? I'm pretty sure break-in time ratios are shorter now than pre-HoT, though with half the siege placed it's ultimately slower in some cases.

I care about it, but it's not what determines if I'm enjoying the game. What I want is to be attacked by multiple groups of enemies that are not overwhelming and not too dumb. I want to fight them for camps, for towers, for keeps and I want to win sometimes and lose sometimes based on how well we fight and how well we maneuver. If that happens while I'm in first place, fine. If it happens while I'm in last place, that's fine too. However, the score is what drives this conflict. When an enemy has a T3 keep on my home BL, I know that making it my T3 keep is more than a 60PPT swing with Yak points accounted for. I know that if I harass an enemy keep and prevent it going from T2 to T3 for a full skirmish, then I effectively prevented 96 points for that enemy and more depending on how many Yaks I killed and how long I controlled the camps for my team. This is fun and fulfilling only within the context of the score existing.

I wonder if that was really the only thing behind that change. I mean, it's comforting to think that they have folks crunching numbers and considering the fallout of various changes and all that, but if such people exist, they are doing a very poor job (see: siege health)...so, maybe, they really are just making huge, half-baked changes based on some dude thinking it would be cool... Anyway...if you want fights inside structures, a few things must be true: It must be possible to get inside structures.Once inside, both sides must have a reasonable chance at accomplishing some goal.It has always been possible to get inside structures, so that's fine. Weakening walls didn't really help with this--walls don't prevent people from getting inside so much as delay them. The only time they effectively keep people out is if there is a fight directly outside of a structure. So unless fights directly inside are for some reason much better than fights directly outside, nothing is gained. On the other hand, with less delay time, it is less likely that defenders will have enough people in that location to have a reasonable chance of winning a fight. This means fewer fights inside objectives and, ultimately, fewer fights overall. As a (negative) bonus, making walls weaker makes it harder for defenders to buy time for their allies to arrive. It was already difficult and several other half-baked changes (see again: siege health, see: inadvertent offensive siege DPS buff) made it harder and harder. If defenders have less ability to stall, you end up with more uncontested caps and fewer fights. If you want to incentivize fights inside structures, the key is to make the structure especially valuable to multiple teams. A sustained assault and a sustained defense makes for huge fights within structures. This is usually the result of walls being upgraded (so...not weaker), the keep being valuable to the defense because of invested time and valuable to the offense because of a huge point swing or a potential waypoint. If making walls weaker resulted in more fights, we would see more fights within T1 structures than within T3. This is not the case at all. Rather, if you hit a T3, the defense has time to organize and fight but likely can't repair all the siege damage which makes subsequent assaults inviting. There are several levers you can adjust to increase the likelihood and length of fights in these structures, but wall health is not one of them.

At this point, I'd be ok with an update that said "we haven't actually done anything, but we're thinking about it." I'd be surprised if they hadn't made any progress at all, but 31+ months without anything to show off or talk about is really perplexing.

I think I understand what problem you're trying to solve, but let me summarize so you can correct me if I've misunderstood; PPT accrual in WvW does not track closely enough with the immediate reality of the battlefield. No matter who's winning a fight, objectives continue to tick at the same amount for the full duration of the battle. If I have that right, then we more or less agree on that point. It's the solution where we differ. To explain why I disagree, please allow me to highlight how we got here. Right now, a fully upgraded Keep gives 20 PPT. A Tower gives 10 and a Camp gives 5. So assuming you have T3 everything, you can get 130 PPT from static objectives.At the same time, Yak deliveries give about 4 PPT for SC/SEC/SWC, 5 PPT for NEC/NWC and 6 PPT for NC. This is down from roughly 13 PPT per non-NC and 18 PPT for NC before they cut Yak points by 66%. Currently, Yaks give ~28 PPT whereas they used to give ~73 PPT. In a more realistic scenario where camps are not fortified, a team can expect 112 PPT from static objectives. That means 28, or roughly 20% of their PPT comes from Yaks. Pre-nerf, almost 40% came from Yaks. In a reset scenario with a paper map, Yak PPT is unchanged but static PPT is reduced to 52. That means Yaks make up 35% of PPT now and used to be ~65%. In short, a much larger chunk of PPT used to be dynamic. By killing Yaks--not even flipping camps, just killing Yaks--it was possible to both deny upgrades and deny a significant portion of PPT accrual. If we want to make PPT more dynamic without penalizing dying for objectives, reverting the Yak PPT nerf is the first place we should look. If we base it on supply levels in an objective, no matter what the bonus/penalty for certain supply levels is, then PPT will become more arcane but not necessarily more dynamic. A server that simply doesn't use supply when near the threshold will maintain full PPT. A less organized server will lose PPT. *All numbers are based on DBL. Yak PPT is different on ABL because that map is an absolute mess. The southernmost camps give more PPT and all camps vary widely. Unlike DBL, there was never a standard YakPPT goal and it shows.

Downgrading keeps like that probably would be awful in practice. Assuming you didn't have a Supply Drop slotted in to just negate the whole thing, the only time it would trigger would be when some noob grabs the last morsel of supply which will inevitably lead to them getting yelled at. The downgrade would then be blamed on them, if it occurred. In addition, since one Yak could stop the downgrade, it's going to lead to a full zerg escort. Very boring. It makes more sense to keep the current system where you can drain supply to 0 and then keep hitting multiple entry points so that they can't possibly repair them all. This is much more active and potentially leads to a larger number of smaller scale fights. If you keep pressure on, they have no walls at all rather than a lower tier wall.

This is true. I held off on mentioning that because the OP was specifically about keeps, but the upgrade time difference in the Northern Towers is BANANAS. This is one of many reasons I prefer DBL because they actually fixed that nonsense. But if we're just talking keeps, Alpine side keeps upgrade much faster and their Yak paths are much easier to protect (especially at Bay). Buuuuut, the minimum break-in time is much lower since you can re-use outer siege on inner and can hit from places where enemies have no meaningful way of interacting with you. So it's harder to hold the side keeps as the defensive team and easier for other servers to upgrade them on Alpine. In the end, I agree that DBL has a PPT advantage (the 2 extra Yak paths alone do that), but I don't think side keep upgrade times are a big part of that. The middle keep upgrades much faster, though, which does have a big impact. I'm hesitant to take away sped up Packed Yaks as that's basically the only time people actually walk Yaks. It's super obnoxious from SWC to Bay since the path is like 3 meters long, but it's ok elsewhere as it sets up a large area of small skirmishes. Still, if they lost their double count I don't think it would be the end of the world.

SMC does upgrade way too fast now. It's base speed is like 1/10th of what it used to be, even before considering tactics. Once upon a time, I would be shocked and surprised by such an oversight, but nowadays I didn't even bother complaining about it. As for other structures, it's kind of a mixed bag. Under the old system, each objective had different upgrade times depending on how far the workers had to travel from the supply depot to the wall. Assuming someone only did some of the upgrades (Cannon, Wall, Gate, Mortar, WP, Fortification) and activated each one exactly on time and never ran out of supply, Bay took 3 hours and 2 minutes to upgrade, Hills took 3 hours and 23 minutes and Garrison took 4 hours and 54 minutes. This is assuming Double Workers. Under the new system, assuming all Yaks survive, Bay takes 1 hour and 45 minutes, Hills takes 2 hours and 20 minutes and Garrison takes 2 hours and 23 minutes. If every Yak is packed, this is cut in half. On DBL, Firekeep (Bay) takes 2 hours and 45 minutes, Airkeep (Hills) takes 3 hours and 15 minutes and Rampart (Garrison) takes 1 hour and 58 minutes. This is because the Yak paths to each keep are not normalized. The short version is that upgrade times are generally shorter for keeps. On ABL, the side keeps upgrade MUCH faster than under the old system, but on DBL there was only a small speed increase. For the middle keep both ABL and DBL see more than a 50% speed increase with DBL being the fastest. This suggests that, as far as any of this was intentional, the new system was tested only on DBL as they were rolled out at the same time and ABL was supposed to be gone forever. But then ABL came back and they said it would eventually be adjusted for the new mechanics and it never was...so several of the new systems just don't work very well on that map. Unfortunately, they re-abandoned WvW soon thereafter, promised a new update (Alliances!) and then disappeared for 3 years and counting. Here's a thread from the old forums with upgrade times: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Average-Time-to-Build-a-Waypoint/page/1#post5332741And here's a graph of current upgrade times under the new system: http://puu.sh/FPLvd/375d762392.png

Just going to get the thread locked, not that it would matter, since the thread serves no purpose in any case. Probably, but that's still more of a response than we've gotten otherwise.

I don't disagree with your take on mounts. I'm saying that no matter how right you are, Anet is not about to remove mounts from the game. This is like we've all woken up with an obscene Tweety Bird tattoo on our left cheek. There's no going back--we just have to figure out a way to not let it ruin our lives. Generally speaking, toning down the bonus health and allowing CC should be baseline, imo. If a mount comes with those things it shouldn't also be a speedbot. Anytime siege damage is being done, it needs to be tied to some sort of limiter. Warclaw ties it to supply while Dune Rollers tie it to upgraded objectives and have a cooldown. If this Wartortle War Turtle also ties siege damage to supply, it sounds alright. Would probably remove the catapult, though. @Andy.5981That Armoured Dolyak seems like a good design. But when you say it can drop supplies off at Citadels...did you mean keeps? It might be a bad idea to have hoards of supply that enemies can't possibly steal or destroy.

@DeceiverX.8361While I would prefer that to what we have, that's pretty close to just removing mounts outright. That's not going to happen. Mounts have changed things and they will continue to change things--but what kind of change could be beneficial? @Hyper Cutter.9376What would you do?

Youtuber TheLazyPeon put out a video in 2018 where he got into GW2 for the first time. His favorite part about the game were the newly released mounts. He said that it felt like everything in the new expansion had been designed with them in mind--the seamlessness of their implementation caught him off guard. Each mount had a different feel to it and a unique skill that could be further strengthened through masteries. Several times, he mentioned how much he loved that mounts had their own health bar instead of disappearing instantly upon getting attacked. As a non-PoF player, my only experience with mounts has been other people using them in WvW. Still, I think I can objectively say that WvW was not designed for mounts based on the numerous exploits in the initial release and that persist several years later. It's probably fair to say that mounts were not designed for WvW either. But what if they were? If you had a chance to come up with an entire mount designed specifically for WvW, what would you do with it? It should be useful, but not so ground-breaking as to invalidate all non-mount play. Hopefully, it comes across as a unique entity like what Peon loved so much about he PoF mounts.

This is actually a really good idea.

Aw, don't do that to yourself...you know that's not going to happen...

That's pretty accurate, which is why it's basically impossible to hold the entirety of your home BL in an even, fully populated match-up--but that's a function of being outmanned by design. It doesn't translate practically because we rarely see those kinds of numbers online, there's a significant disparity in defensive stalling ability based on group size, and there's no obvious pathway towards several competent and distinct groups forming and splitting up while communicating with each other and reconverging when necessary. Not to mention, you don't need to hold the southern portion of the map to win. Actually flipping Bay/Hills doesn't need to happen in a 3-way because you're going to be winning the map as long as you hold your northern triangle. Flipping them increases your margin of victory and decreases enemy ability to stage assaults, but you never need to overextend yourself to pull it off. From a PPT perspective in a fully populated match-up, there's never a reason to defend the side keeps if doing so endangers your northern triangle. This is especially true on ABL where the minimum-flip time for the side keeps is super low and the upgrade time for the northern towers is super high. But another thing you pointed out is that a blob cannot work without an appropriate number of eyes and ears on the map. This is absolutely true. No strategy (except karma-training) works without scouts. In addition to relaying information, they must also be able to buy time when an objective is assaulted. The side whose scouts are able to buy more time has a significant advantage in the map. In the same way, the split server(s) must also have scouts. They need to see the zerg coming from as far away as possible to give enough warning time and have any chance to stall. That's why I left room for scouts in the examples I gave. The main contention that this thread has come to revolve around is whether zerging is more efficient for PPT. There is clearly disagreement on that front. But since PPT doesn't have much of an in-game purpose right now, I'm more curious if anyone believes that zerging isn't more efficient for rewards. Right now, rewards are driving player behavior much more directly than PPT--especially since Anet's idea of reviving WvW is to periodically lure PvE players in with the promise of some shiny thing or another.

I said they stayed in the area of the northern triangle, not in garrison, and only for the first 3-5 hours of the match, depending on Yak survival rates. I also said that the split server would upgrade some objectives, but would not be able to hold them later on. We should probably differentiate between ABL and DBL here. On ABL, North Camp is very bad, but it is also the only camp that feeds into the northern towers. For this reason, the northern towers take about 12 hours to hit T3. On DBL, NC is by far the highest PPT objective on the map (counting Yak points) if you own the northern triangle. It has separate Yaks for Rampart and the northern towers. On DBL, the Northern towers only take about 5-6 hours to hit T3. In short, on ABL, a strategy of upgrading your northern triangle will take at least twice as long to start bearing fruit and probably longer because of all the dead space in the northern portion of the map. However, the differences between the maps don't stop there. On ABL, you can treb Bay without leaving Garrison. This makes the break-in time much shorter. The distance between the objectives is also smaller which gives defenders less options to stall and less warning time. It's also possible to hit multiple walls at once, meaning any siege can be much harder to recover from. Finally, at the southernmost wall, you can use the same siege to hit both inner and outer--an alternate method of reducing the break-in time that also eliminates the primary method by which defenders can stall (pre-siege set-up). The end result is that to hold Bay or even stall for any significant amount of time, you must have a similarly-sized force as your opponent. Likewise, Hills has multiple cata spots that can hit multiple walls AND hit bother inner and outer. One spot can even hit multiple walls on both inner and outer. There's also the switchback cata spot that is impossible to reach from inside the walls, meaning you have to go out and fight the whole zerg to even get a disable off. So while upgrading the northern triangle takes longer on ABL, defending the side keeps is also much harder. It also takes far less time to cap a side keep than it does to cap garrison and there are fewer opportunities for defenders to stall. On top of all that, ABL has a much higher range of visibility. A 20-man group trying to head north will be easily and quickly spotted no matter their path. They also have no choice but to use the east or west switchback to access the northern towers unless they want to run all the way to the northernmost point of the map. This makes it very easy to predict and exploit their path.

Funny thing is, based on comments and posts from the early days of WvW, most people felt exactly the opposite of what you're saying now. That said, I don't have any desire to remove large fights from WvW. I don't want to force everyone into small-scale fighting or roaming. However, I also don't believe that players are some hivemind monolith that all want the same thing. There are plenty of folks who prefer non-zerg WvW activities or that enjoy a variety of playstyles. They tend not to stick around as long because it's much harder to get into the game any way other than zerging (not impossible, just harder). If we're talking about the borderlands, the zerg server simply has to focus on the two northern towers, the north keep and the north camp. The NW and NE camps are nice, but not mandatory. They may be able to occasionally flip a side keep, but this is not likely early on. However, once that northern triangle hits T2, they can flip a side keep and still have time to port back and defend their northern section. Conversely, even if the split server's keep hits T2, it doesn't allow them much extra time on offense. This is where the tide starts to turn. The key is that the time it takes to flip a keep or tower is only roughly equal when they're paper. There is a significant divergence once the walls start to upgrade. On top of that, a T3 northern triangle (two towers and a keep) is 40 PPT. If everything else on the map is paper, it's 36 PPT altogether--likely split between all three servers. Thus, a zerg server doesn't have to put itself at a disadvantage by trying to outcap a split server when everything is paper. It can just hover in a small area where it has a spawn WP until a handful of objectives have enough stalling power for them to go run over an enemy keep.

The greatest irony is that you quoted me saying that a T3 objective is worth more, then tried to use that as some sort of mic drop. Let's say we have 70 players on both sides--pretty near the cap for a map. One side has a 60-man zerg and 10 scattered defenders. The other side has 3 20-man groups and 10 scattered defenders. If we're starting on reset night, then the split server will initially win the PPT war because none of the defenders can stall very long in a paper objective and 20 men are going to flip an objective at roughly the same speed as 60. However, the zerg server will slowly upgrade their larger objectives and most distant towers because they have time to come and defend them. As those objectives tier up, it gets easier and easier to defend them which allows the zerg server more leeway on offense. Meanwhile, the split server will have a very hard time defending anything because all 3 20-man groups must converge from w/e they are on the map. Even if they manage to get a tier or two, that's still not going to slow a 60-man group down by very much. After several hours, you'll find that the upgraded portion of the zerg server's holdings will generate so much PPT that the split server cannot make up the difference just by juggling paper objectives. Or, to put it in your example, the split server will not be able to hold 3x as many things as the zerg server. Yeah, that always struck me as silly, but I don't think it's within the purview of the WvW team to change. They barely have any say in balance issues--they're probably not going to get core game mechanics changed.

On offense, small groups are better for PPT in vacuum, but in reality you also have to defend if you want PPT--especially now that upgraded structures give more points. If your zerg is big enough that it can't be stalled so that the small groups can coalesce to defend, then you're going to win the PPT war because you'll get a few things upgraded and the small-group opponent will not. Eventually, this leads to precisely the situation you described with the mindless zerg easily defending T3 structures in between steamrolling the enemy map. That is definitely something to watch out for. Bloodlust probably falls in that category. The way to buff a small group without buffing a large group is to find some sort of hallway principle. Something where bringing more people after a certain number has diminishing returns without resorting to blunt debuffs or anything that would lead to driving excess players away. In a fight, it's similar to a choke. Even if the enemy is very large, you can punish them if they try to squeeze through too small an area. Outside of fights, the best fit in WvW is siege. If bringing 50 people to a siege doesn't largely strip defenders of their ability to stall, then you're not going to break in much faster than if you only had 10 people since the stalling is a bigger factor than the actual wall or gate. Then, it becomes much more effective to attack several places at once so that one or two disablers or shield generators doesn't ruin your whole assault. In a way, the 50-man group still has an advantage--they've just split into 10 5-man groups like you said. But this gives opportunities for players on both sides to meaningfully interact instead of just one side getting run over. It's always nice to hear about a zerg-busting crew. The rewards I'm referring to come from pips and participation. Loot bags/xp are nice, but probably not comparable outside of a really lucky pre-cursor or something. To keep participation up, zerg-busting is not the easiest, most reliable method for most players. It might work out for you and your mates, which is cool, but most WvW hours are logged at the player's personal leisure rather than in a structured group. I don't know where you got the idea that I was personally trying to bust zergs and failing, but that's not the case.