Reflections on WvW After Scaling Rewards

[Malus.2184]

Scaling rewards were implemented in a way that heavily favour the defender, as such people are incentivised to defend stuff, which is good as WvW should be more about simulating a war experience. The issue is that a lot of stuff in the defenders' arsenal that was okay before is in contest massively broken now. T

The defender has multiple ways of delaying and interrupting the attacker. This was fine before the change as it never really did anything in the larger scheme of things. Now, it's just a way to drag out the siege and farm the attackers for loot bags.

While the attacker theoretically can do these things as well they're practically extremely difficult to pull off and the only realistic way to take supply off the defender is to break their walls. If the defender has already dug in they have an endless amount of siege attacks that can go the other way and that kinda ruins the idea of a siege since it's about starving out the defenders and if they can just attack at will there's effectively no starving. The defender can also destroy the attacker's siege rather easily with a concerted effort since healing siege is difficult.

The conclusion I've reached is

1. Remove the Siege Disabler and Supply Removal Trap completely. They made sense when only a few would even bother to defend, now it's just too disruptive.

2. Increase the supply cap of every objective and make it so that using a ranged siege costs supply from the user. Change the last trait of any particular Mastery to also reduce the amount of Siege used. This way sieges will go faster and the defender actually has to try to repel the attacker instead of just farming them out.

3. Change the Flame Ram as well so that using the Iron Hide, and possibly Flame Blast, also costs Siege.
This would make the logistic side of things for both the attacker and the defender paramount.

[Durnik Delmore.4528]

Its a seige....

 

Its a battle of attrition and resources. 

 

The attackers can keep dolyaks away. take camps and strangle the opponents supply routes. 

Treb from a distance. 

Attackers can pull defenders off the walls. 

Stop new defenders from entering the structure. 

[Chaba.5410]

I haven't noticed much increased difficulty in taking objectives and certainly no increase in supply trap or disabler usage that would make it seem like they are "massively broken". Why do you feel this way about them?

[Junkpile.7439]

Game mode is still totally dead. 

[Biermeister.4678]

7 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

drag out the siege and farm the attackers for loot bags

Bag farming happens on both sides attackers are more apt to farm bags catching defenders as they run in or stack on EWP and drop damage 

[Malus.2184]

8 hours ago, Durnik Delmore.4528 said:

Its a seige....

 

Its a battle of attrition and resources. 

 

The attackers can keep dolyaks away. take camps and strangle the opponents supply routes. 

Treb from a distance. 

Attackers can pull defenders off the walls. 

Stop new defenders from entering the structure. 

There is no attrition if the only way you can attrition the defender is by breaking stuff and the defender can easily break the stuff you need to break their stuff with.

In the past you could repair the siege you used with an item, that was removed.

As I said, all the things that people were used to once have changed because the content has changed. Incentivising people to defend more often has made siege equipment more exposed, only for the attacker though as the defender has their stuff sitting nice and flush on walls, behind walls, and/or too high up for even siege breaker Ranger to reach, depending on location, of course.

The risk vs reward has changed a lot. Beforehand people were a lot more lenient with losing a t3 keep, unless it was their garrison, than they are now and a large number of people will show up to defend even a t1 keep (except on the desert map, guess everyone despises that). This makes sieging significantly tougher since the attacker already has an uphill battle if the defenders play their cards right.

I've been in sieges against keeps that were well-defended with someone having made plenty of sieges beforehand so now the supply only had to be used for repairing stuff, and they were all nightmares that we ended up losing unless we had a siege breaker Ranger. Attrition towards the opponent is pretty difficult when there's nothing you can attrition. Defenders killed can just run back, they neither need to eat or sleep nor do they get ill. The only thing you can attrition away from them is their supply and there's only one way the defender can effectively do that. It would be nice if there were more than one way because laying siege right now can easily be a lesson in futility where only the defender had any fun.

And this is a game, it needs to be fun for everyone involved, or else people have no reason to bother.

[Malus.2184]

6 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I haven't noticed much increased difficulty in taking objectives and certainly no increase in supply trap or disabler usage that would make it seem like they are "massively broken". Why do you feel this way about them?

What tier are you on? Because I have a feeling it depends on what tier you're on. On t2 you encounter those things often. 

I would like to balance things around the assumption that people have some or will develop some level of competency in whatever game mode they participate in.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Malus.2184

[Chaba.5410]

2 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

What tier are you on? Because I have a feeling it depends on what tier you're on. On t2 you encounter those things often.

NA T3 and T4.  Was in T2 when the patch hit.  Something "massively broken" (like getting gold for repairing SMC walls) would be widespread. What I have noticed is a lot more activity in general.

[ArchonWing.9480]

I am in t2, and am probably disabling your siege. Even have a shared inventory slot for them. It has absolutely nothing to do with the rewards.

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[Gehenna.3625]

On 2/21/2023 at 12:54 PM, Malus.2184 said:

Scaling rewards were implemented in a way that heavily favour the defender, as such people are incentivised to defend stuff, which is good as WvW should be more about simulating a war experience. The issue is that a lot of stuff in the defenders' arsenal that was okay before is in contest massively broken now. T

The defender has multiple ways of delaying and interrupting the attacker. This was fine before the change as it never really did anything in the larger scheme of things. Now, it's just a way to drag out the siege and farm the attackers for loot bags.

While the attacker theoretically can do these things as well they're practically extremely difficult to pull off and the only realistic way to take supply off the defender is to break their walls. If the defender has already dug in they have an endless amount of siege attacks that can go the other way and that kinda ruins the idea of a siege since it's about starving out the defenders and if they can just attack at will there's effectively no starving. The defender can also destroy the attacker's siege rather easily with a concerted effort since healing siege is difficult.

The conclusion I've reached is

1. Remove the Siege Disabler and Supply Removal Trap completely. They made sense when only a few would even bother to defend, now it's just too disruptive.

2. Increase the supply cap of every objective and make it so that using a ranged siege costs supply from the user. Change the last trait of any particular Mastery to also reduce the amount of Siege used. This way sieges will go faster and the defender actually has to try to repel the attacker instead of just farming them out.

3. Change the Flame Ram as well so that using the Iron Hide, and possibly Flame Blast, also costs Siege.
This would make the logistic side of things for both the attacker and the defender paramount.

From my experience the attackers still have the advantage. I guess it depends on what server you're on and against which servers you play. I'm on a server where we usually fight against bigger zergs or better zergs so we actually need everything we can get to be able to hold on to something.

You just need to be smarter in where you put siege. If you put it in the usual places, then yeh, of course you're going to suffer from supply removal traps. Just step up your game. It always amazes me when people can't use a certain tactic anymore that they don't adapt and are lost.

 

[Malus.2184]

29 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

From my experience the attackers still have the advantage. I guess it depends on what server you're on and against which servers you play. I'm on a server where we usually fight against bigger zergs or better zergs so we actually need everything we can get to be able to hold on to something.

You just need to be smarter in where you put siege. If you put it in the usual places, then yeh, of course you're going to suffer from supply removal traps. Just step up your game. It always amazes me when people can't use a certain tactic anymore that they don't adapt and are lost.

 

While I would normally agree with you on this one I disagree. There's no counterplay at all. If you could counter a Siege Disabler with a Siege Enabled then it would be an option. If something makes an approach unviable then there's no adapting.

[Gehenna.3625]

11 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

While I would normally agree with you on this one I disagree. There's no counterplay at all. If you could counter a Siege Disabler with a Siege Enabled then it would be an option. If something makes an approach unviable then there's no adapting.

I don't think everything needs counterplay and a lot of things don't actually. 

Siege disablers are just time a time delay function and you do need to get to the siege to put it down while not getting killed. It also costs supplies. Just keep siege apart from each other, disablers have a small aoe. Expect siege disablers to be used so don't build all your siege at one time. Start a main attack on one side and have a small attack on another side at the same time. They might get through while the opponents focus on your main attack.

Approaches are not unviable, but you may have to try more than once. If a small group keeps denying them camps for resources they'll run out very quickly. It also depends on the objective. Some you can use trebuchets on from another objective. Use that to open outer walls and drain their supplies...I mean really try to be a little bit more creative.

[TheGrimm.5624]

 

5 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

While I would normally agree with you on this one I disagree. There's no counterplay at all. If you could counter a Siege Disabler with a Siege Enabled then it would be an option. If something makes an approach unviable then there's no adapting.

There's a lot above here and don't have time now so will address this and come back to the others. Simple counters, reflects. Longer ones, don't use rams, use catapults, third is if using rams place them outside the range of the disabler, then when the defender gets on wall, pull them off and kill them.

[TheGrimm.5624]

21 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

There is no attrition if the only way you can attrition the defender is by breaking stuff and the defender can easily break the stuff you need to break their stuff with.

Each time you attack and they repair they are running out of supply. Before you started the attacks you took the supporting camps. If they want supply to flow they have to come out to recap. That one of the reasons they don't have additional rewards for camps since this should also increase the fights at the camps. My server was usually pretty good at wanting to keep them and the number of people responding to camp defenses seems to have increased some from what I am seeing even though no extra rewards so its due to the extra demand on supply. So your attrition is in works there. People that repair after the event are the people that were repairing before the OSR was added. You just have more people now repairing during it which after an attacker is repelled is the point. So where we had more people just running off to the next attack now some are actually stopping to fix the damage before they run off. That's a good thing if you don't want more karma trains running off to the next paper target. If you are facing something SMC, you don't make one breach you make several at once so they either leave it breached or they burnout their supply. Same with any keep.

 

21 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

As I said, all the things that people were used to once have changed because the content has changed. Incentivising people to defend more often has made siege equipment more exposed, only for the attacker though as the defender has their stuff sitting nice and flush on walls, behind walls, and/or too high up for even siege breaker Ranger to reach, depending on location, of course.

The biggest difference in siege I am seeing is more people using base siege versus superior or guild siege. Which if anything requires more supply thereby burning through supply either side has.

 

21 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

The risk vs reward has changed a lot. Beforehand people were a lot more lenient with losing a t3 keep, unless it was their garrison, than they are now and a large number of people will show up to defend even a t1 keep (except on the desert map, guess everyone despises that). This makes sieging significantly tougher since the attacker already has an uphill battle if the defenders play their cards right.

Which was bad. You should never just think, oh well its a T3 we can just flip it back. In this aspect I am glad to hear more people not wanting to lose their stuff, that's one of things defenders have been asking for. 

 

21 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

I've been in sieges against keeps that were well-defended with someone having made plenty of sieges beforehand so now the supply only had to be used for repairing stuff, and they were all nightmares that we ended up losing unless we had a siege breaker Ranger. Attrition towards the opponent is pretty difficult when there's nothing you can attrition. Defenders killed can just run back, they neither need to eat or sleep nor do they get ill.

 

That's another common thread here, momentum wins the day, a defender killed has to run back. An attacker killed is just battlefield rezzed. The defenders take longer to get to the fight and then need to face the attackers' roamers and havocs hunting those defenders running back. Will still keep up the topic that either full dead need to run back either side or something midway like those downed that are spiked have to face a run back and can't be rezzed from dead but that's a different topic.

 

21 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

The only thing you can attrition away from them is their supply and there's only one way the defender can effectively do that. It would be nice if there were more than one way because laying siege right now can easily be a lesson in futility where only the defender had any fun.

And this is a game, it needs to be fun for everyone involved, or else people have no reason to bother.

Failed attack rewards are bugged and they are working on it. What we have right now is somethings that seems to encourage people to defend more versus leaving defense to just those that didn't like to lose their stuff while everyone else just runs off afterwards. 

 

[Malus.2184]

13 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Each time you attack and they repair they are running out of supply. Before you started the attacks you took the supporting camps. If they want supply to flow they have to come out to recap. That one of the reasons they don't have additional rewards for camps since this should also increase the fights at the camps. My server was usually pretty good at wanting to keep them and the number of people responding to camp defenses seems to have increased some from what I am seeing even though no extra rewards so its due to the extra demand on supply. So your attrition is in works there. People that repair after the event are the people that were repairing before the OSR was added. You just have more people now repairing during it which after an attacker is repelled is the point. So where we had more people just running off to the next attack now some are actually stopping to fix the damage before they run off. That's a good thing if you don't want more karma trains running off to the next paper target. If you are facing something SMC, you don't make one breach you make several at once so they either leave it breached or they burnout their supply. Same with any keep.

That was what I expressed. When that's the only way you can drain their supply then the experience becomes lacking, especially when the defender has three ways to drain the attackers' supply. I would increase supply and then make it so that using ranged siege used supplies as well. I would probably make it so that upgrading the keep gave it more default siege so there would be less need to use your own and drain supply on building it. Just to nudge people to use the supply naturally, a kiss/curse effect.

Siege is highly effective and if there's no price to using the effective stuff then it becomes boring.

It would make it more interactive and I do confess it would get a kick out of seeing people screaming to leave siege alone 😛

[Random dude.5089]

On 2/21/2023 at 6:27 PM, Junkpile.7439 said:

Game mode is still totally dead. 

no wonder there is 50/100 q for 6 hours straight , make sense

[Ombras.2853]

30/40 people camping SMC and waiting for a wall to repair isn't "playing the game", btw.

[TheGrimm.5624]

8 hours ago, Malus.2184 said:

That was what I expressed. When that's the only way you can drain their supply then the experience becomes lacking, especially when the defender has three ways to drain the attackers' supply. I would increase supply and then make it so that using ranged siege used supplies as well. I would probably make it so that upgrading the keep gave it more default siege so there would be less need to use your own and drain supply on building it. Just to nudge people to use the supply naturally, a kiss/curse effect.

Siege is highly effective and if there's no price to using the effective stuff then it becomes boring.

It would make it more interactive and I do confess it would get a kick out of seeing people screaming to leave siege alone 😛

🙂 Let me try this from a different direction. Are you encountering structures that have supply stockpiled? I am mostly finding any controlled objectives to be mostly less than 100 and more times closer to 0 supply in them when a defense is needed and mostly limited siege. Feels like camp flips have increased but it could be the lack of supply in objectives that's making that more visible. Could just be server differences here.

[Graymatter.4723]

On 2/21/2023 at 5:06 AM, Durnik Delmore.4528 said:

Its a seige....

 

Its a battle of attrition and resources. 

 

The attackers can keep dolyaks away. take camps and strangle the opponents supply routes. 

Treb from a distance. 

Attackers can pull defenders off the walls. 

Stop new defenders from entering the structure. 

Yes, but defenders are constantly rewarded but attackers aren't. So spending 2 hours to take SMC will net you a lot less in rewards then defending SMC for 2 hours. The rewards are unbalanced.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

45 minutes ago, Graymatter.4723 said:

Yes, but defenders are constantly rewarded but attackers aren't. So spending 2 hours to take SMC will net you a lot less in rewards then defending SMC for 2 hours. The rewards are unbalanced.

There are supposed to be rewards for failed assaults. 

[Graymatter.4723]

3 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

There are supposed to be rewards for failed assaults. 

Perhaps I am unlucky but I haven't seen one. On the other hand, I have probably gained 20 levels in successful defense rewards and earned a ton of grandmaster shards.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

9 minutes ago, Graymatter.4723 said:

Perhaps I am unlucky but I haven't seen one. On the other hand, I have probably gained 20 levels in successful defense rewards and earned a ton of grandmaster shards.

It is bugged atm. Their intent is to have assaults also give rewards with OSR.

[cyberzombie.7348]

On 2/22/2023 at 5:27 AM, Malus.2184 said:

While I would normally agree with you on this one I disagree. There's no counterplay at all. If you could counter a Siege Disabler with a Siege Enabled then it would be an option. If something makes an approach unviable then there's no adapting.

Disablers can be blocked/reflected by pretty much anyone, and if its an organized zerg then you can bet it'll happen. Plus ballistas are pretty useful counter siege, just have to be smart about them and place em in vantage points... or just behind an attacker.

[MarzAttakz.9608]

SM defense needs to be nerfed or other objectives increased if this is the base line you're aiming for.

You're not doing the longevity of the mode any favours (not that you have subjectively done so in the past) with these changes.

[Malus.2184]

20 hours ago, cyberzombie.7348 said:

Disablers can be blocked/reflected by pretty much anyone, and if its an organized zerg then you can bet it'll happen. Plus ballistas are pretty useful counter siege, just have to be smart about them and place em in vantage points... or just behind an attacker.

With no guards where they're intensely vulnerable to any roamers who can easily take them out before they can get help. Or do you mean within range of every siege yet can get help?

And as for blockíng/reflecting they still get through when I'm in a big organised group that does those things.