Disabling waypoints by damaging a guard? Why?

[exeggcuter.8394]

Hello,

 

So I just now realized how bad a mechanic the disabling waypoint at keeps is currently structured. All you have to do is damage a guard (even by just using the warclaw's javelin thing) and the waypoint will be disabled for 2 and a half minutes or so. I understand why this mechanic is there, so that attacking a keep is a winnable fight. However, it is extremely easy to disable a waypoint without having any plans of attacking that objective at all. This often means that waypoint on that on keep is almost useless, since it can be taken out by the opponent on a whim.

 

I'm not going to claim it is unfair, since it doesn't favor any of the teams, but it's definitely one sided in favor of the person doing the disabling. The threshold for pulling it off is so low that I've been able to do it without ever dismounting from the warclaw. For those who don't know the trick, attack a gate with the javelin ability. That's usually enough. It gets a lot harder when an enemy player is trying to stop the disabler, but it typically ends with the waypoint disabled anyway, regardless of who actually survives that duel.

 

Here is my proposed solution: the keep needs to take siege damage (of any source) to have the waypoint disabled. There should be no delay to this. The second it takes a catapult boulder hit, for example, BAM waypoint disabled. Since gates don't require siege damage to destroy, here is my solution to that. If a gate has <90% max HP and takes damage, BAM waypoint immediately disabled. Damaging the lord should also obviously disable the waypoint. At that point the walls and gates are not stopping the objective from falling to whoever is attacking it. Damaging the lord with a trebuchet would be a perfectly reasonable cheese way of doing it, since that requires far more effort than simply going near a guard on patrol well outside the walls.

 

Damaging cannons, guards, oil pots, staring at the lord, wandering near the keep, thinking about attacking that keep or even looking at WvW stats shouldn't be enough to disable a tier 3 keep's main feature. It should require some amount of effort and or skill.

 

TLDR: DISABLING WAYPOINT TOO EASY, MAKE HARDER PLEASE THANK YOU

[roana.2654]

Working as intended.   Swords on your keep and WP disabled? Time to play "Was that a tap?" or "Is our Keep Under Attack?" and deploy scouts to check.

 

If only actual siege damage put the keep in combat, how would small groups ever have a chance to sneak the objective?  It would be obvious that there was siege somewhere on it, and the mapblobs would come running.

[Recursivision.2367]

Disagree. As a solo roamer, contesting keeps is one of the most impactful ways for me to contribute to the server as an individual.  Killing sentries and flipping camps is pretty low impact, but I can actually feel impactful by keeping a keep contested and picking off returning players during an SMC cap.

A large portion of the WvW player base seems to consider this griefing, and most servers put very little value on this type of activity. I think this is the real issue. I think these small-scale activities should be encouraged even more by game design and the community. Instead, mounts and other decisions have continued to marginalize the small-scale focused communities in WvW which isn't healthy for the game mode imo.

 

 

 

[Mabi black.1824]

55 minutes ago, Recursivision.2367 said:

Disagree. As a solo roamer, contesting keeps is one of the most impactful ways for me to contribute to the server as an individual.  Killing sentries and flipping camps is pretty low impact, but I can actually feel impactful by keeping a keep contested and picking off returning players during an SMC cap.

A large portion of the WvW player base seems to consider this griefing, and most servers put very little value on this type of activity. I think this is the real issue. I think these small-scale activities should be encouraged even more by game design and the community. Instead, mounts and other decisions have continued to marginalize the small-scale focused communities in WvW which isn't healthy for the game mode imo.

 

 

 

I think the same thing

[exeggcuter.8394]

I agree that it's one of the best ways to contribute solo. However, remember that most professions have a build available that allow running away without dying for a considerable distance, even if actively chased by a player that is experienced at doing so. Now imagine your goal is to prevent a waypoint being disabled by such players. All this person has to do is shoot a guard once or scratch a gate, or scratch a cannon.

 

Is this good game design?

[Strider Pj.2193]

Psst..  you don’t even have to damage the guard.. just throw down a piece of siege in view of one of the archers and they’ll peeped it until it’s dead.  In fact, pop a bit of supply in it to make it last longer.

[Strider Pj.2193]

1 minute ago, exeggcuter.8394 said:

I agree that it's one of the best ways to contribute solo. However, remember that most professions have a build available that allow running away without dying for a considerable distance, even if actively chased by a player that is experienced at doing so. Now imagine your goal is to prevent a waypoint being disabled by such players. All this person has to do is shoot a guard once or scratch a gate, or scratch a cannon.

 

Is this good game design?

If you NEEDthe run backs, then yes.  It’s good game design.  Mounts already make that process faster than it was.

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 hour ago, Recursivision.2367 said:

Disagree. As a solo roamer, contesting keeps is one of the most impactful ways for me to contribute to the server as an individual.  Killing sentries and flipping camps is pretty low impact, but I can actually feel impactful by keeping a keep contested and picking off returning players during an SMC cap.

A large portion of the WvW player base seems to consider this griefing, and most servers put very little value on this type of activity. I think this is the real issue. I think these small-scale activities should be encouraged even more by game design and the community. Instead, mounts and other decisions have continued to marginalize the small-scale focused communities in WvW which isn't healthy for the game mode imo.

 

 

 

 

Agree it is a valid task for a roamer and strategical play to block quick access to a defender. To the OP's point though it could be made more difficult. Example it could be adjusted to show the swords but not lock out the way point till a guard is killed versus just aggro'd. As a roamer I could see this as valid. The question though does need to be weighted by does it further remove roles from scouting which is another roamer task that's done less these days due to a multitude of reasons.

[Strider Pj.2193]

1 minute ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

 

Agree it is a valid task for a roamer and strategical play to block quick access to a defender. To the OP's point though it could be made more difficult. Example it could be adjusted to show the swords but not lock out the way point till a guard is killed versus just aggro'd. As a roamer I could see this as valid. The question though does need to be weighted by does it further remove roles from scouting which is another roamer task that's done less these days due to a multitude of reasons.

A true scout that is valuable, and wanted, would be given participation by a commander.  If one’s not on, or not willing to give participation, then it’s either a) not needed (the scout) or b) not valued by the commander for various reasons.  
 

Either way, it’s a scouts job to ascertain if it’s a tap or not.

 

If people aren’t willing to scout or utilize scouts, I don’t think the process should be made harder to tap a keep.

[exeggcuter.8394]

I like the suggestion of it requiring killing a guard. For one, it requires actual effort. For another, you can't have a build both good at killing a guard quickly, and being able to run away and survive for as long as possible. Those two things require mutually exclusive stat blocks. If a cannon / oil pot, etc is killed that's also completely acceptable imo. Servers currently don't value scouts, I think, because it's easy enough to wipe out a waypoint after having been scouted, tracked down, and actively hunted down by several players with the ever present run away with pool noodle worthy DPS. Why bother scouting for such players when they're just gonna wipe out the waypoint even if you *DO* scout for them? As commander I highly value scouts, but never to counter this particular type of play precisely because there currently aren't any good counters to it.

 

So I guess I'll ask it again, if only to rile up the players defending this:

 

Is this good game design?

[exeggcuter.8394]

Hmm and I just now realized I didn't address another point Mr. Strider here made. A scout identifying whether it's a tap is not the same as preventing the waypoint being disabled. That first one is well within the capabilities of any scout worth giving participation to. That second one is another thing altogether.

[Strider Pj.2193]

9 minutes ago, exeggcuter.8394 said:

Hmm and I just now realized I didn't address another point Mr. Strider here made. A scout identifying whether it's a tap is not the same as preventing the waypoint being disabled. That first one is well within the capabilities of any scout worth giving participation to. That second one is another thing altogether.

Get rid of mounts, and I’ll agree to the ‘killing a guard’ .  
 

It’s too fast to respond right now.  If you slow that down, we can talk.  🙂

[TheGrimm.5624]

16 minutes ago, Strider Pj.2193 said:

A true scout that is valuable, and wanted, would be given participation by a commander.  If one’s not on, or not willing to give participation, then it’s either a) not needed (the scout) or b) not valued by the commander for various reasons.  
 

Either way, it’s a scouts job to ascertain if it’s a tap or not.

 

If people aren’t willing to scout or utilize scouts, I don’t think the process should be made harder to tap a keep.

 

I can't speak for all roamers/havocs, but as a roamer/havoc I do what I do because it makes sense to help my side win. Now what do we win? Nothing, zippo. So its mental candy. Its a game within the game that roamers and havocs play against each other. We scout to try and help our side keep stuff, we tap keeps to help take their stuff. I can't say I have every seen fellow roamers call out to a squad asking for participation. We are playing against their roamers and havocs. Now does that also make it annoying when we know we are getting negative return when you are having to solo repair a wall because the squad rolled out so they wouldn't lose theirs, yes that is annoying. But again we were repairing the wall for the same reason we might have been scouting, because we didn't want to lose our stuff. Again increasing what would be required to tap a keep wouldn't be that big of an issue if it was increased a bit more than it is. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 minute ago, Strider Pj.2193 said:

Get rid of mounts, and I’ll agree to the ‘killing a guard’ .  
 

It’s too fast to respond right now.  If you slow that down, we can talk.  🙂

 

You should have gone there first, versus the participation. Lol, I sometimes linger trying to bait out their scouts. Then their over-stated reports draw more from where they were. 'How many did they have!? Don't know they killed me before I could get a count! Okay we are on the way!' 🙂. The game within the game, priceless.

[Strider Pj.2193]

1 minute ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

 

You should have gone there first, versus the participation. Lol, I sometimes linger trying to bait out their scouts. Then their over-stated reports draw more from where they were. 'How many did they have!? Don't know they killed me before I could get a count! Okay we are on the way!' 🙂. The game within the game, priceless.

Agreed.  I think most servers have that issue.  But yeah, to me, part of being a havoc is creating, well, havoc.  Making the other team respond to essentially nothing.  But that’s a whole different thing.

 

 

[exeggcuter.8394]

Yeah, obviously if they can kill the person defending the keep's ability to have a waypoint, waypoint goes offline. The specific thing I have issue with is when someone manages to take out the waypoint by tossing their body in the general direction of it. All ya gotta do is survive long enough to get close enough, which is not especially difficult even with several people chasing me. I've done it myself many times, and it's fun as heck. It's just there's no counterplay option aside from ... what? Babysitting keep with 10 or more players? With the objective of stopping a single player from disabling the waypoint? Target painter traps could help I guess, but that seems like a crapshoot at best.

[Ya Ya Yeah.7381]

The mechanic itself works great; it is just the fact that it can be grieved so easily. If this was a mode that was given a priority, then yeah, they should look at maybe adding some kind of system that only siege damage will disable the waypoint but player damage would only trigger the swords. It is just one of those things that will never ever get fixed but, yeah, it is garbage that one player can delay 50 endlessly (with a proper troll build) from getting to an objective.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

Wait...you use a skill to tap a keep? Just have 1 guard attack you for damage while on warclaw and leave...no skills required xD

 

Cant tell ya how many times ive tapped things this way

[SleepyBat.9034]

6 hours ago, Strider Pj.2193 said:

Psst..  you don’t even have to damage the guard.. just throw down a piece of siege in view of one of the archers and they’ll peeped it until it’s dead.  In fact, pop a bit of supply in it to make it last longer.

You beat me to it.

[Alsandar.7420]

This is another example of a newish player complaining publicly about something they don’t understand. We’ve all done it. 

[Mabi black.1824]

My opinion is that all the mechanics that help to take the structures should be supported or even incentivized. In my experience when there are T0 structures on the map and no T3 structures, I see players stimulated to try the attack to steal structures from the enemy, then to bring more content to all sides. On the contrary, when it's all T3 with 20 arrow carts positioned, it becomes more complicated and I see players give up, they choose not to try the attack and therefore less content for everyone.

[Strider Pj.2193]

29 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

When it’s all 20 arrow carts positioned, it becomes more complicated and I see players give up, they choose not to try the attack and therefore less content for everyone.

Fixed that for you.  🙂

[Biermeister.4678]

15 hours ago, Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:

Wait...you use a skill to tap a keep? Just have 1 guard attack you for damage while on warclaw and leave...no skills required xD

 

Cant tell ya how many times ive tapped things this way

I like to do a short dance at water gate then jump off the side 

[Stand The Wall.6987]

yes its a trash mechanic thats always been around cuz anet is dumbo.

[exeggcuter.8394]

Hmmm yes I get that it's been there for a while. That's literally the entire point of posting this thread, though. ANet is allegedly planning on making changes eventually. Hence the post to get discussion going. Glad to see that part is working.

 

I guess in summary right now it's a catch up mechanic a lot of people hate that's been around for ages, but is meant to make it so the team without tier 3 stuff can still take out tier 3 stuff.

 

This reminds me a lot of the philosophy behind the Blue Shell in Mario Kart. Which also has little in the way of counterplay.

Edited November 9, 2022 by exeggcuter.8394