WvW weekly achievement and siege updates inc

[Infusion.7149]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/wvw-january-31-preview/
 

 

Quote

 

New Weekly Achievements

We’re adding a set of weekly achievements that reward players for active and positive contribution to World vs. World—for example, capturing objectives, taking down dolyaks, and defeating enemy players. Completing these achievements each week will reward players with 8 gold and up to 35 additional WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets (a ~10% increase in max weekly tickets). The weekly gold reward will only require completion of six out of seven of the achievements to give players flexibility in how they complete the weekly meta-achievement. These achievements will reset every Monday at 11:30 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8).

 

Quote

Siege

On the siege side of things, we’re making flame rams and ballistae more durable. The duration and range on the flame ram’s Iron Will skill are both also being increased to help relieve pressure on assaulters, while the range on the ballista’s Reinforcing Shot is being increased to improve its ability to destroy siege weapons on objectives. We’d like to see the warclaw used a bit more frequently in objective assaults, so we’re doubling the damage that its Chain Pull inflicts on gates.

Ram enjoyers, rejoice! We’re fixing a long-standing issue that caused players to be kicked off siege weapons when hit by certain crowd-control abilities, even when under the effects of stability. This bug has become a key part of the WvW meta, resulting in defense strategies like double-stacking catapults behind gates to chain crowd control on flame ram users. All the changes above combined should help improve the success rate of gate assaults, even while they’re being heavily defended.

Objectives

The base maximum supply limit for keeps and Stonemist Castle, as well as the supply limit increases granted from the T1/T3 upgrades, are being reduced. These changes are intended to cut down on the time that objective assaulters spend chipping away at an objective’s supply reserves during wall and gate sieges without directly lowering the active defensive capabilities of the defending team.

To compensate, we’ve increased the health of all supply dolyaks to make them easier to defend, and we increased the amount of supply that each successful delivery gives to Stonemist Castle and keeps. The base maximum supply levels for camps have also been increased, as well as the amount of supply that camps generate every 30 seconds, making them a more reliable supply source.

 

Edited January 27, 2023 by Infusion.7149

[Dawdler.8521]

8 gold per achievement or 8 gold in total per week?

If its the former I assume there is 10+ achievements at least, if its the later then lol the 50 gold/hour PvErs will be so envious.

Of course its the later.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[Beddo.1907]

It ain't much, but it's progress.

[Evenge.4067]

Omfg. Fix exploits, such as certain classes leaping into structures! Mounts still exploiting players into structures. Simply adding an invisible wall here and there would cure most those issues that have gone unattended to for years.

[gooddrakkarboi.4870]

6 minutes ago, Logan.4796 said:

2 gold normal dailies = 14 gold in a week

8 gold in a week from WvW improvement = 22 gold in a week from doing basic WvW playing now. N i c e

roughly the same amount you get each day for T4+recs fractals which takes around an hour. N i c e

[vares.8457]

More gold is nice but we really don’t need more skirmish claim tickets. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by vares.8457

[Vavume.8065]

I like the weekly achieves, more gold more tickets is never a bad thing.

[Chips.7968]

416g per year extra for slogging through achievements (wait to see how long those take). 

Or play PvE for a few hours. Such rewarding gameplay. 

 

Can we ask who's feedback created these QoL updates. Was it PvErs or WvW players?

Underwhelming is a word. Not sure even that encapsulates this "announcement".

Edited January 27, 2023 by Chips.7968

[gooddrakkarboi.4870]

2 minutes ago, Chips.7968 said:

416g per year extra for slogging through achievements (wait to see how long those take). 

Or play PvE for a few hours. Such rewarding gameplay. 

 

Can we ask who's feedback created these QoL updates. Was it PvErs or WvW players?

Underwhelming is a word. Not sure even that encapsulates this "announcement".

you get roughly the same amount of money by doing daily t4 and recs fractals for three weeks (20g per day)

 

xd

[idpersona.3810]

4 minutes ago, gooddrakkarboi.4870 said:

you get roughly the same amount of money by doing daily t4 and recs fractals for three weeks (20g per day)

 

xd

Brought to you by the same people that removed Jade bot bags for giving too much loot to WvW players.
(and I know they reinstated it a bit later, but it still goes to show the thought processes behind some of these changes)

WvW is one of the worst gold per hour activity in game. And obviously gph isn't everything. But it really shouldn't be quite so abysmal. The best reward track is about 19g for completion. that's 2.3gold for 8 hours of work. Even with boosters that's only about 5g/hr.
So yea, the 8 extra gold (per week) may seem like a lot to them.

Edited January 27, 2023 by idpersona.3810

[Luthan.5236]

Depends on how the achievement is designed. Can I do it whlie going for the wood tier chest (to get +1 pips in the following week) at reset ... which basically is the only thing I do atm? Then it won't be helpful to encourage to more participation. If they include something like "do 3 out of the 4 WvW dailies for a few different days" ... that could help. Or if the individual stuff took long. (Then it might turn out grindy though.)

The 8g additional - is nice on top of the other sources. Skirmish tickest: I won't complain here. I mean ... for a lot of casual players that also play other game modes (or mainly play other game modes) ... it is an insane grind - the WvW tickets are way grindier than PvP tickets + ascsended glory shards. Unless you are at a high WvW rank to get extra pips. (Which would mean an even more insane grind to get to a high rank.)

More interested in how they want to reward active play and participation. We had threads about the participation system being flawed. Good to know they apparently saw these. Not many details about changes there though.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[devastoscz.9851]

Honestly, this bread crumb of an update is almost insulting, particularly to the veteran players.

Anet, the lifeblood of the game mode are the commanders and their core groups, the eternal roamers, your veterans. New players are sure welcome, but the day-in day-out people are what keeps things "happening" in the borderlands. And those players have no interest in 10% ticket increase or the 8 gold a week. You're throwing me a freaking coin and token I have no use for anymore (sitting on 20k tickets). Give me something to spend tickets and badges that's actually remotely worthwhile. Give me meaningful mechanical changes that are going to shake up the way the game mode is played, spend your time making the mode more interesting, less campy.

As for the Warclaw "siege" ability, it makes me think the developers don't play this game. Here's some logic: 2 players with 20 supply can build a ram and take down a gate. One of the player rams, the other suppresses the wall. 2 warclaws with 25 supply cannot, even if you double the damage. Not to mention, the ranger on top of the wall who is going to dismount you with a pew pew pew, cause neither of you can suppress him while mounted. And now you're in combat, you can't remount, and you've wasted 10 supplies so you can't even build an actual piece of siege. Go back to a camp, resupply to build , the gate is fixed and the only thing you've accomplished is wasting your time.

It's time to put in real thought and effort. Your core audience is vaporizing with every one of these lackluster, slap-in-the-face "announcements". Alliances "soon" TM.

Edited January 27, 2023 by devastoscz.9851
spacing

[TheGrimm.5624]

Weekly achievements, good with that, gives people additional goals to work towards but there are more dynamic options out there but as a mid step lets see. The fact that none of the mentioned achievements included discussions on killing attackers is noted.

This: "In addition to improved rewards, this update includes changes that are designed to encourage direct player vs. player conflict in fights over objectives while taking care to not take the fun (or the teeth) out of objective defense." 

First thoughts are erring on the side of the attacker. Mostly sides using rams already outnumber the defender hence why they used rams. The word choice here: "while the range on the ballista’s Reinforcing Shot is being increased to improve its ability to destroy siege weapons on objectives. " more implies options to take down defending siege. Add to that Balis are not very effective versus attacking rams and it's again hats off to the attackers. Reducing supply counts could be seen as making it easier to take back things after overnight caps but also means less chance of people being able to make it to a defense or hold out till others might be able to get to a defense. Again seems to be hats off to the karma train. So we seem to continue on the trend of outnumbered means leave the map, defending means go attack elsewhere. I guess they are coding for the year of Rabbit. Defenders, follow their example and run away! it seems. Supply camps, some people already saw the need to hold them, this might help that a bit more so will see there.

 

Edited January 27, 2023 by TheGrimm.5624
Sentence restructure

[idpersona.3810]

Thanking about this more (and I don't want to sound ungrateful).....this didn't warrant the pre-announcement announcement. It was have been better off just just drop this in patch notes and not let us expect more. It is a step in the right direction I suppose, but it's the smallest of steps.
It's clear they see WvW needs to be more rewarding, but they seem terribly worried about taking the steps that would actually do so.

On the Warclaw thing, maybe that will help? I don't usually see warclaws even used during gate breaks. Maybe once or twice a week, if that. A lot of players don't even have that unlocked (it's fairly expensive point-wise).

Overall, I just don't see these changes making a huge impact, which I suppose is their goal. Tiny changes around the outside to give WvW players the idea that they're being listened to, while not having to really work on the game mode.
Personally, I think fixing the exploits and rewards and participation flaws should be a higher priority than Alliances, but that's just me.

Edited January 27, 2023 by idpersona.3810

[Xenesis.6389]

Weekly Achievements

OMFG how long have I been suggesting weekly achievements!

I'm scared, they're reading the forums again!

AhhhhhhhHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Thank you Anet! (take a photo I don't get to say this often)

 

Siege

Don't know if rams really needed more defense, it's already hard enough trying to counter them without shields up. Fixing broken stability on them is fine, but more durability, eh. All in all just made it even easier for boon blobs to break in.... 😏

Thumbs up on ballista reinforced shot range increase, but it's only for this shot, and it's still 40sec cooldown, more than enough time for a break in, especially with shields up which btw only has a 22sec cooldown for....

Don't care about warclaw siege skill, it's kind of a waste of supply tbh because it's still limited attack amounts, rather build the siege with unlimited attack available.

Wasn't there an oil stability issue that needed to be looked at as well?

 

Objectives

Good change on SMC supply cap, you want to hold/siege up smc you should bring your own supply, run to the camps now for it. Don't think dolyak's needed a health boost but ok. More supply at camps, ok change.

Edit: forgot to comment on keep supply cap, not a good change, a lot of supply tends to get drained after one attack, and the game is stuck with commanders who tend to not like doing mass repair or leave holes up. Keep takes are already easy enough as it is, turning them into the village bicycle is not exactly going to promote defending(a bad thing), or make the blobs think they need less players(no amount of objective nerfing is going to change this).

Rethinking about camp supply, might not be good as players will more likely defend it with more golems now, this plus increasing dolyak health is a slight hit to the roaming scene and once again promotes more group roaming than solo.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Xenesis.6389

[Zyreva.1078]

35 minutes ago, Logan.4796 said:

I'm rather worried about yaks being more rapid fire and offering more supply in general. It is going to take far more effort to stop supply lines to the point where a lot of people might not stop yaks anymore.


We already have SPEEDY YAKS and INVULN YAKS tactivators. Yaks did NOT need a buff in my opinion. Yaks were already a fragile but very valuable and precious resource. Like they are supposed to be 🤷‍♂️

At this point it is pretty obvious they want wvw to be only about large blobs, so they will keep buffing those while making roaming/small scale even less relevant.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

At this point it is pretty obvious they want wvw to be only about large blobs, so they will keep buffing those while making roaming/small scale even less relevant.

Except the objective change is good for smallscale, less time spent draining supps and more focus on camps. It's pretty much the only one I agree with as something practically useful, the rest is fluff.

[TheGrimm.5624]

14 minutes ago, devastoscz.9851 said:

As for the Warclaw "siege" ability, it makes me think the developers don't play this game. Here's some logic: 2 players with 20 supply can build a ram and take down a gate. One of the player rams, the other suppresses the wall. 2 warclaws with 25 supply cannot, even if you double the damage. Not to mention, the ranger on top of the wall who is going to dismount you with a pew pew pew, cause neither of you can suppress him while mounted. And now you're in combat, you can't remount, and you've wasted 10 supplies so you can't even build an actual piece of siege. Go back to a camp, resupply to build , the gate is fixed and the only thing you've accomplished is wasting your time.

 

Was this a Reddit thing, Tweeter thing, player survey thing where people were asking to buff the warclaw to attack gates? Not sure I saw anything here complaining on how the warclaw was bad at gates, because why wouldn't you better use that supply in another manner? And even now, if I had someone in a havoc let alone in a warband or zerg I would still ask them why are you wasting our supply!?

[Draygo.9473]

Its a good low hanging fruit update. 

 

Now Anet needs to deliver on their priorities over the next few quarters I feel. 

[Zyreva.1078]

4 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Except the objective change is good for smallscale, less time spent draining supps and more focus on camps. It's pretty much the only one I agree with as something practically useful, the rest is fluff.

It would be good if they would reduce supply overall, not just shift it from keeps to camps, because blobs running over a camp to quickly resupply does not help small scale at all, nor do buffed dolyaks.

Edited January 27, 2023 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[TheGrimm.5624]

43 minutes ago, Logan.4796 said:

I'm rather worried about yaks being more rapid fire and offering more supply in general. It is going to take far more effort to stop supply lines to the point where a lot of people might not stop yaks anymore.

We already have SPEEDY YAKS and INVULN YAKS tactivators. Yaks did NOT need a buff in my opinion. Yaks were already a fragile but very valuable and precious resource. Like they are supposed to be 🤷‍♂️

I think they meant the supply camps will be spawning more supply every 30 seconds at the camp itself, they aren't increasing the number of yaks that run supply. They are buffing yak health to account for the end destination not being able to hold as much supply. Still doesn't sound like yaks won't be killed by solo players. Maybe I am misunderstanding their point but I would picture a change in the number of yaks to be a larger undertaking versus having the camps refill supply faster.

 

6 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

At this point it is pretty obvious they want wvw to be only about large blobs, so they will keep buffing those while making roaming/small scale even less relevant.

The increased supply at the camps does aid the attacker and defenders, but agree I think it aids larger attacking forces more than defending ones who need it at the point of the assault itself. If they are running into a defense without supply they have already probably lost the defense.

[TheGrimm.5624]

13 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Except the objective change is good for smallscale, less time spent draining supps and more focus on camps. It's pretty much the only one I agree with as something practically useful, the rest is fluff.

Agree on hoping camps have more meaning since it also encourages more open field fights.

Not sure I agree that the change in supply count helps smallscale. When going solo or havoc against an objective you normally would either already take their feeder camps to bait some out or work on draining the supply by hitting from further points where the goal was just to weaken multiple points which doesn't take as long as thought.

People already weren't repairing as often, now it just means they wouldn't and if they did there is no supply to do so if they wanted to. Now they want to ask them to waste time to run to a camp and bring back supply where as that supply will aid an attack more in all meaning full terms? They aren't going to run to camps to just have to hoof it back to do a repair, they are going to move on to the next attack. Again more reduced time to take actions it seems.

[Engel.6029]

Anet should have just put this in patch notes. Making an announcement gives the impression they put some effort into these changes.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Engel.6029

[prototypedragon.1406]

Expect nothing great, not disappointed by what is delivered. Saves one disappointment in the long run.

[Silinsar.6298]

"Make WvW more rewarding to play with a focus on active participation."

ANet needs to rethink  what participation is. I know that currently, its passive nature is abusable, but if you fight enemies over objectives, when defending for example, and don't get kills because they escape or you get overrun, it is always a "feels bad" moment to start losing participation. Making it harder to keep up participation measured by kills and claiming objectives would be a reward nerf felt by smaller / outnumbered groups, which are already disadvantaged in that regard.

 

New Weekly Achievements

I don't mind some extra gold.

 

Siege

This seems to incentivize attacking over defending - rams are usually in use when the objective is undefended or the defenders are outnumbered, and ballistas aren't reliable defensive siege. Aka mostly a karma train buff.

 

Objectives

Again, helping attackers. Though it lessens the impact of non prime time upgrading. More focus on camps seems interesting.

Curious to see how the doly buff turns out. Escorting them sure is everyone's favorite activity... The buff would need to be massive to have a noticeable impact, and that would reduce the tasks roamers can effectively perform. Just make the damage reduction buff 100% but remove the invuln dolys thing to encourage encounters around them.

 

"We’re currently working on improving rewards for active participation in fights over key objectives, making towers, keeps, and Stonemist Castle bigger player activity hotspots."

Again I'm getting a "go forth and zerg" vibe from this update. I don't like it, personally.

 

"Address player population balance issues through the World Restructuring and Alliances features"

All the population balance isn't going to help the game mode if they don't encourage players to keep playing the game mode while they're outnumbered. And I think some of the planned changes might achieve the opposite.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Silinsar.6298