Defend Achievements - Difficult Progression by current design and change

[Duos.3217]

• "Repairing walls and gates will no longer award event participation. This alleviates the behavior we've seen in farming Objective Scaling Rewards and "wasting" supply while defending. However, an additional side effect of this is that repairing alone will not progress achievements that require event participation, such as Keep Keeper, Nice View, or Stay Out."

I do understand the necessity for this change, but the camp defending achievement has been a very difficult one to progress towards and now with these change, keeps, towers and SM becomes harder as well.

I do believe something has to be done for those achievements, either the tier requirements or other ways to get credit towards these ones, as the way it is now, it s a very hard series of achievements to progress towards.

[Debesyla.7102]

Quote

camp defending achievement has been a very difficult one to progress towards

No it isn't.

[scureuil.4052]

so, 0 XPM when you try to defend outnumbered, but kill no one. 

 

With this update, noone will repair the structures anymore. It give nothing.

 

How about removing  entirely the walls and the gates, Anet ? 

[Draygo.9473]

Camp defending achievement is not affected by the change... it doesnt have walls or things to repair.

 

If Anet is looking for things that should progress the defense quest:

Disabling siege that has damaged the objective

Destroying enemy siege

Doing damage to enemy players (tiny amount of progression per hit)

Providing boons to players that are damaging enemy players and healing allied players in combat with enemy players (tiny amount of progression)

Rallying a downed ally. 

Participation area should include the entire area covered by the objective aura as long as a defense quest is up. 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Draygo.9473

[GODh.3892]

7 minutes ago, Duos.3217 said:

I do understand the necessity for this change

Then explain it to us, because i don't...

[Cyninja.2954]

2 minutes ago, GODh.3892 said:

Then explain it to us, because i don't...

 

Top WvW ranks gained until yesterday for this week on gw2mists: 345 (likely close to 400 today)

Kills 1.038

Killed Doylaks 19

Escorted Dolyaks 59

Captured Camps 25

Defended Camps 2

Captured Towers 29

Defended Towers 7

Captured Keeps 4

Defended Keeps 5

Captured SM 9

Defended SM 537

Captured Targets 67

Defended Targets 551

WvW Rank 345

 

That's without getting into the official statement in regards to players intentionally wasting supply into inefficient repairing.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Luthan.5236]

Maybe there should be a clear explanatoin as to what counts as "defending". Do you need to kill a player nearby in the event area (event visible in the UI)? Is that area maybe different from the one used for the US? Does damaging a player count? What if you tag someone and he runs away and gets killed while you are still in the objective? What if the guy gets killed in the objective while you moved away?

I found repairing always a safe thigngto get event credit wile for the other stuff it seemed harder. (Unless there was a huge zerg vs. zerg fight going on where you could be sure to actually get multiple kills.)

Edited March 14, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[Junkpile.7439]

11 minutes ago, scureuil.4052 said:

so, 0 XPM when you try to defend outnumbered, but kill no one. 

 

With this update, noone will repair the structures anymore. It give nothing.

 

How about removing  entirely the walls and the gates, Anet ? 

Well trick is attack those zero rank players who can't keep up with blob. They are always free kill. Of course blob cap stuff in couple min so not sure if killing enemy even do anything.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Junkpile.7439

[Xenesis.6389]

4 minutes ago, scureuil.4052 said:

so, 0 XPM when you try to defend outnumbered, but kill no one. 

 

With this update, noone will repair the structures anymore. It give nothing.

 

How about removing  entirely the walls and the gates, Anet ? 

Go ahead and don't repair. 

That just means you'll lose the objective faster.

You'll lose all it's bonus upgrades.

And lose the opportunity to get further defense events and better osr at that objective.

You want to play without walls? go to the camps or open field.

[Gorani.7205]

The removal of any participation (to the defense event and to keeping up the pip-decay-timer) shows again, that ANet is not addressing the core problem (mindless repairs on SMC walls), but hits everything else in WvW defense gameplay and especially single players and small groups, who will have no chance of really hurting attackers. On top of that is that we still do not know what actually contributes to a defense event, with the exception of killing at least one enemy player.

I am not looking forward to see zero defense efforts, that now will happen.

[Draygo.9473]

People are still going to repair. Just the act of repairing gives WXP per supply spent. 

 

During an active siege hopefully this means people will be smarter with supply usage and use it to build counter siege, arrow carts, and use disablers more often than pumping a wall getting hit by 3 cats with no counter siege up. 

 

 

[Dawdler.8521]

8 minutes ago, Draygo.9473 said:

During an active siege hopefully this means people will be smarter with supply usage

Hahahahahahahaha...

No.

[Perle.7352]

Is the only way to get a defense tick by hitting people now?

 

As a healer, repairing walls was really helpful for me to get credit for defenses. I might just have to sacrifice on heals and use a bow to plink people now. I'm beyond frustrated about my ability to get contribution sometimes because heals don't seem to count for anything.

[Draygo.9473]

Just now, Dawdler.8521 said:

Hahahahahahahaha...

No.

One can dream. 

[GODh.3892]

On 3/14/2023 at 5:35 PM, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

Top WvW ranks gained until yesterday for this week on gw2mists: 345 (likely close to 400 today)

Kills 1.038

Killed Doylaks 19

Escorted Dolyaks 59

Captured Camps 25

Defended Camps 2

Captured Towers 29

Defended Towers 7

Captured Keeps 4

Defended Keeps 5

Captured SM 9

Defended SM 537

Captured Targets 67

Defended Targets 551

WvW Rank 345

 

That's without getting into the official statement in regards to players intentionally wasting supply into inefficient repairing.

Sorry but that does not explain anything... it's just a list of things that you have done during the weekend.

Repairing gates/walls is never a waste. It can be inefficient when it is still under attack, but even that totally depends on the situation.

Edited March 16, 2023 by GODh.3892
typo

[Nidome.1365]

It is hard enough to get people to repair a defended objectives as it is. This will make it near impossible.
I have lost count of the number of times I have been involved in an objective defence and despite killing enemies, destroying enemy siege, sabotaging enemy supply with a trap or cow treb and disabling their siege and not received defence credit.
There are also the defences where you show up to find an enemy catting a wall and they run away either immediately or when you destroy their catapult with counter-siege (eg cannon, treb, ballista). This change will also stop such a defence from counting as a defence.
There are also times when I have repaired a wall to delay the enemy for long enough for my allies to arrive, so despite being instrumental in the defence of the objective in such a scenario you would get no credit under the new system.

 

This change needs reversing or modifying in some way that makes all participation in a defence count as a defence.

[HeIIica.2945]

In my opinion, repairing walls, and gates, is participating, and is one important aspect in defending. I think it should be counted, therefore, I disagree with anet taking the participation away.  However, I do agree that it created an issue with depleting the supply that is needed for building siege for defending.  For me, they can do better, they should come up with something better.

[Cyninja.2954]

9 minutes ago, GODh.3892 said:

Sorry but that does not explain anything... it's just a list of things that you have done during the weekend.

Repairing gates/walls is never a waste. It can be inefficient when it is under attack, but even that totally depends on the situation.

Really?

Let's do some math shall we?

Let's figure out how much time this took minimum just for the defense events and SM (and again, this is MINIMUM time based around 100% uptime of defense events all the time):

537x3/60 = 26.85

551x3/60 = 27.55

That's a minimum of  54.4 hours of "defending" objectives or broken down to 3.25 days (Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday, Monday) an average of 16.7 hours per day until yesterday.

I said this the moment these rewards got implemented: this will lead to degenerate game-play and burnout. I'd go find my post on this matter from 2 weeks past, but honestly, I just don't care enough to do so.

Notice how 90% of this players entire participation (did you bother to check the numbers?) was tied up in only 1 thing: maximizing WxP gain and there was exactly 1 activity which yielded by far the most: defense events. If you do not see an issue with this over-proportionate rewarding of WxP for pressing F into a damaged wall, that is your opinion and right to it, but at least realize that not everyone will share your opinion.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Draygo.9473]

Just now, GODh.3892 said:

Sorry but that does not explain anything... it's just a list of things that you have done during the weekend.

Repairing gates/walls is never a waste. It can be inefficient when it is under attack, but even that totally depends on the situation.

 

???

Never a waste?

Bold statement.

Repairing a destroyed wall still getting hit by an afk treb is certainly a waste.

Repairing an outer wall where you cannot destroy the sieging catapults/trebs is a waste when you can spend that supply fortifying inner. (300 supply delaying an attack 2 minutes, or 300 supply building 6 AC's on inner). 

Or if you calculate it out 300 supply can disable attacking siege for 17.5 minutes. 

[Chocofox.9503]

This change is terrible for lifetime achievements. There is no point slowing the other teams from capping points solo or holding them off from a zerg. With my understanding now unless you are killing a player you can no longer get credit for these defend events. Stonemist is  where people will now get defend credit as it is one of the few objectives that is both regularly attacked and defended.

The defend events already could only get one progression per 3 minute cycle. With this change stopped them cold , Stay out, and stay out in particular will be much harder to achieve. Zergs tend to ignore tower defends and usually only capture them. This also means that holding keeps waiting for backup you are likely to lose participation and instead will have to abandon the keeps to go capture a camp rather than defending. Rather than strategically playing and preventing the other team from encoring points its creating more reason to just mindlessly zerg rush everything. This is just encouraging the zerg rush mentality and means this is only creating an easier time for attackers to effortlessly capture objectives. This removes solo players ability to actively participate in wvw outside of capping camps or being a ganker.

Rather than fixing the defend reward issue the new system created this is a patch fix that makes progression of these lifetime achievements much more difficult, punishes newer players with harder progression, and makes the older players chance to finish some of these achievements they have spend decades slowly working on dramatically harder. 

[Draygo.9473]

Chocofox, anet is aware of that issue, they said it in the patch notes. I believe they intend to make other activities progress the quest. 

 

It does suck we have nothing to fill the gap.

[InspectorCaracal.2970]

30 minutes ago, Draygo.9473 said:

If Anet is looking for things that should progress the defense quest:

Disabling siege that has damaged the objective

Destroying enemy siege

Doing damage to enemy players (tiny amount of progression per hit)

Providing boons to players that are damaging enemy players and healing allied players in combat with enemy players (tiny amount of progression)

Rallying a downed ally. 

These!

I was really excited about the defense weeklies because I like defending objectives more than capping them, but since I'm not in a big guild and tend to play support builds more than DPS, they've been a pain to actually get.

It doesn't help that what actions get you defense event participation is cryptic at best. As far as I know, the only things were killing players and repairing walls, so now the only thing I know of is killing players? But then what happens when you drive away the attackers but nobody dies?

[Zboard.5019]

Yeah well, then give participation for other things that killing enemy players: destroying or disabling siege/ supporting allies or even damaging enemies...

The problem remains: the WEXP gain is pretty bad, people will keep using supplies to repair as it still gives WEXP, and the weekly rewards take ages to complete...

[InspectorCaracal.2970]

Just now, Zboard.5019 said:

Yeah well, then give participation for other things that killing enemy players: destroying or disabling siege/ supporting allies or even damaging enemies...

The problem remains: the WEXP gain is pretty bad, people will keep using supplies to repair as it still gives WEXP, and the weekly rewards take ages to complete...

To be fair, while the flat WXP gain from actual actions is pretty low, I get the 250 WXP rewards from event boxes really frequently - it's probably about 60% of my WXP gain right now. Which means repairing walls for like twenty WXP when you could actually participate is a pretty bad tradeoff.

[Chocofox.9503]

5 minutes ago, Draygo.9473 said:

Chocofox, anet is aware of that issue, they said it in the patch notes. I believe they intend to make other activities progress the quest. 

 

It does suck we have nothing to fill the gap.

Yes they are aware of the issue but they have in no way stipulated they are working on a fix for it. Rather it is more just a blanket statement alerting players that they can no longer get participation that way.