Thoughts on defence changes as they relate to Keeps

[Mistwraithe.3106]

I'm not a fan. I decided to post a new thread as there are a few existing threads but they either are not particularly serious discussions or aren't addressing this particular issue.

The recent changes seem to be trying to make it so your only realistic chance of defending your tiered up keep against an organised zerg is to have your own organised zerg. This comes partly from the reduction in defender bonuses but I think a slightly bigger factor is the change to wall repairing. Often the only viable way for an unorganised defending group to defeat an attacking zerg (even if they outnumber it significantly) is to pick off the tail when they can, usually at a bad K/D exchange rate (ie the zerg is killing far more of you than you are getting of them). But this only works if you can destroy their siege and then tap the walls shut so those you kill can't just easily rejoin their zerg. It was hard work but pre the latest changes it was possible for a sizeable group of unorganised defenders to pull off an unlikely, you could say heroic, defence against an organised zerg. Now it's much less likely.

So, it seems Anet only want you to be able to defend against an organised zerg with another organised zerg. But most links won't have organised zergs on 24/7 - in fact I suspect no links ever achieve this?

And if you don't have an organised zerg then you can't just create one out of nothing. We have people who will try to tag up but without the numbers, party composition, teamwork and ideally discord communication (not essential but useful) it's a doomed attempt. A quickly assembled ragtag zerg loses to to a pre-organised zerg virtually every time and quickly - maybe they could wear them down but the new reduction in defence bonuses and difficulty in sealing the walls makes this much more unlikely. People know that (from experience) so they generally don't join the squad or don't stack tight with the commander - and those that do die to the enemy zerg for the aforementioned reasons. Which is a vicious circle. People without an organised zerg don't cloud for no reason, they do it because it's the best way of surviving and maybe winning if you don't have the luxury of an organised zerg.

This means Anet are making it essentially random whether you can defend your keeps. If you have are lucky enough to have an organised zerg ready to defend at the same time as an enemy guild is doing their run then yeah you could have a good fight (but I argue you could before these changes too). But if you don't then chances are that your attempts to defend will be futile. It's a small step from there to deciding not to try to defending (if you don't have an organised zerg) which I think is pretty clearly bad for the game and for player motivation (players not in organised zergs that is).

This seems like a serious step backwards. And I'm not sure what Anet think the upside is? Those situations where both sides have organised zergs already happened before the latest patch. I don't see this change increasing the frequency. Likely the opposite, by making it much less worthwhile trying to defend any defending team will likely struggle to get the numbers to form even an unorganised zerg to fight back, so it's reducing one of the stepping stones towards getting more organised (since I think getting experience working together on defence is one impetus towards trying to join or band together into more organised groups).

I don't think Anet act without reasons, so my only conclusion is that they are basing these changes on incomplete or flawed data. Perhaps the developers or decision makers only play WvW during peak times when all sides have organised zergs? Maybe they only play WvW with strong guild zergs and hence haven't experienced it from the other side? Maybe they are playing with Anet tags and always get a bunch of people joining them because of who they are? I dunno. But they seem to only have one very limited view of how the gameplay works and it's based on maybe 15-30 hours out of a 168 hour week...

Edited April 19 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Justine.6351]

Don't like the loss of patching a gate or wall to stop the flood of respawns and late comers.

[ArchonWing.9480]

The thing they don't understand is that defense runs on some duties that are essentially janitorial and the burden of this falls under a very subsection of WvWers. The game does not incentivize these things, and even if it did, it's very boring.

A good example is the gate repair thing. Yea I get it sucks when some idiot repairs you out, but 50% seems a bit excessive and asked for by no one.  So here's the thing, who's going to repair that crap? During an attack, it made sense to quickly patch it out to delay reinforcements, but now it's not feasible until you basically rout the attackers or you have a ton of supply to waste. And you really don't want to be taking groups of people around just to repair walls, which is what a tag would have to do.

So many people are just going to be like "kitten it, just leave it like that"

Now part of this is due to population imbalance for sure, but mandating tedious tasks and making them even more so doesn't really help matters.

Another example would be the siege/partcipation refresh thing. Well, I'm going to tell you that trebs don't fire on their own and some poor soul was probably just on it for half an hour or had a button held down. Either way, it's pretty crappy.

So I would imagine a lot of people probably just put down supply traps and call it a day, because they haven't ruined that .... yet.

Anyhow I am very literal on "they don't understand" because they just don't do that kind of stuff. They're not going to be the first to scout a structure and do the necessary preventive measures. But then again a lot of so called defenders don't either. So, I suppose I shouldn't be too upset. And then there are other tasks like obscure "safe" siege positions which I wouldn't even bother myself.

But it's really not even that. Yea, I know, join a squad, join a guild. What that just means is I don't really feel like helping much outside of raid times, and well... I guess pip farming.

Edited April 19 by ArchonWing.9480

[Justine.6351]

1 hour ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

The thing they don't understand is that defense runs on some duties that are essentially janitorial and the burden of this falls under a very subsection of WvWers. The game does not incentivize these things, and even if it did, it's very boring.

A good example is the gate repair thing. Yea I get it sucks when some idiot repairs you out, but 50% seems a bit excessive and asked for by no one.  So here's the thing, who's going to repair that crap? During an attack, it made sense to quickly patch it out to delay reinforcements, but now it's not feasible until you basically rout the attackers or you have a ton of supply to waste. And you really don't want to be taking groups of people around just to repair walls, which is what a tag would have to do.

So many people are just going to be like "kitten it, just leave it like that"

Now part of this is due to population imbalance for sure, but mandating tedious tasks and making them even more so doesn't really help matters.

Another example would be the siege/partcipation refresh thing. Well, I'm going to tell you that trebs don't fire on their own and some poor soul was probably just on it for half an hour or had a button held down. Either way, it's pretty crappy.

So I would imagine a lot of people probably just put down supply traps and call it a day, because they haven't ruined that .... yet.

Anyhow I am very literal on "they don't understand" because they just don't do that kind of stuff. They're not going to be the first to scout a structure and do the necessary preventive measures. But then again a lot of so called defenders don't either. So, I suppose I shouldn't be too upset. And then there are other tasks like obscure "safe" siege positions which I wouldn't even bother myself.

But it's really not even that. Yea, I know, join a squad, join a guild. What that just means is I don't really feel like helping much outside of raid times, and well... I guess pip farming.

The stupid part about 50% repair is that it will take one person forever to close but also it will take even longer for someone to reopen. Who is this update supposedly helping?

[Dawdler.8521]

31 minutes ago, Justine.6351 said:

The stupid part about 50% repair is that it will take one person forever to close but also it will take even longer for someone to reopen. Who is this update supposedly helping?

Just the boonball, since a stack of players are the only ones that can viably repair without their eyes bleeding from boredom. 

What, it was unexpected?

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, Justine.6351 said:

The stupid part about 50% repair is that it will take one person forever to close but also it will take even longer for someone to reopen. Who is this update supposedly helping?

Someone probably got mad that they got locked out due to a troll repair, and I suppose we've lost quite a few structures to people sealing in the enemy zerg turning various structures into a deathtrap.

But even with that in mind 50% is just silly.

[DeWolfe.2174]

9 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

so my only conclusion is that they are basing these changes on incomplete or flawed data.

The only Dev interaction with players I've seen or heard is directly with large guild tags. That's why everything they do is biased toward a 50 man boonball to log in, face roll, log out. World Restructuring itself is evidence of this design bias.

You'll never see a Dev asking for feedback from regular World vs World players. Certainly not roamers, scouts, and those of us who upgrade, defend, and do all the small things that make WvW run. They view us are cannon fodder and it's why the modes pug population is going to rapidly deteriorate.

[Galmac.4680]

I bet, devs are playing only on Maguma (NA) or WSR (EU). They have big zergs.

[disForm.2837]

1 hour ago, Galmac.4680 said:

I bet, devs are playing only on Maguma (NA) or WSR (EU). They have big zergs.

They used to hang in Blackgate much more than Maguuma. Also, Mag don't tend to group as much and certainly don't boonball. Any Anet tag playing there is at much higher risk. 

[Riba.3271]

The changes werent bad, they just need to give defenders more tools: higher wall/ hitpoints and increased siege vs siege damage. Also attacking shield gens need big nerfs and quickness from golems removed.

This would mean defenders can maybe stop 1 attack, so get time to gather numbers, but eventually run out of supply and lose the keep If they are still weaker  in combat.

There is no reason to have competitive gamemode where weak players win: PvE and single player/coop games exist for that

Edited April 19 by Riba.3271

[Rosangelina.3694]

This is the worst of all the changes in my opinion. I honestly don't care about the stat change or capturing circles nearly as much as the wall repair change.... 50% is way too much and makes it impossible for a few people to patch walls anymore (at least not quickly). As already mentioned they usually only run with organized zergs from what I've seen as well, so I think their perspective is skewed... I am hoping they will tune down these changes or reverse them but not holding my breath.

[hugeboss.5432]

I'm beginning to wonder if the entire issue could actually be based on misinterpreted telemetry data.

1. When they unlocked more dominator title achievements, lots of ppl started fighting in wvw again.
2. Alot of teams gathered their zerg and piled into enemy borderlands & attacked garrison (but not to cap, as capping "BREAKS THE TOY").
3. The telemetry gathered would indicate there was a big increase of long fights inside garrisons, with very few actually capturing (fight zergs often avoid cap).

At first glance it could look like garrison is almost impossible to cap and needs to be tweaked (if one was unaware of the "fight club" strategy #2). North camp is also a common place used as a camping spot to draw in fights. Remember, the main "fight club" agenda is "to fight", and not actually capture the objective (it promotes more defenders). Nobody needed anything to be made easier to capture (it's already super easy compared to how it was 5+ years back).

- The problem with capturing an enemy garrison (or eb keep), is that it basically "kills" that team on the map (for roughly 1 hour, depending on camps/yaks). [Obviously, this is why fight teams will often avoid capping such structures]. These days, there's only 1 NA server that actually will run around ktraining everything (The 1up1down system made PPT less important).

[IMO] All EB Keeps & BL Garrisons should be (for good healthy living of wvw team content), *quite hard to capture* + *only require a decent effort to successfully defend* (Preferebly, the defenders should be the "favorites" to win the battle & successfully defend their keep.... after hours of fighting ofcourse lol). This way would actually promote large scale fights & help keep the battlefield alive and blistering with content alot longer!

[Mabi black.1824]

8 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Just the boonball, since a stack of players are the only ones that can viably repair without their eyes bleeding from boredom. 

What, it was unexpected?

We've always called WVW a large-scale PvP game mode. A game of team. Now, it's true that you won't always get 35+ players available to join, but if you put a tag how long does it take you to collect 10 people? And how long does it take 10 players to repair that wall? 60 seconds? 120 seconds? You're sitting at your PC all day, let your avatar sit down to repair a wall once in a while. You don't have to make him sweat forever. 😁

Edited April 19 by Mabi black.1824

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

world restructuring would be live now if it was not for bugs. Feels like these changes were made to balance WvW outcome. WvW is meant to be a numbers game to be balanced is what it feels like now otherwise outnumbered would actually have an impact.

[Junkpile.7439]

Capping too hard because 60 man boon blob try to hunt solo roamers 30 min inside keep before capping
🤣

Edited April 19 by Junkpile.7439

[Bleikopf.2491]

3 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

We've always called WVW a large-scale PvP game mode. A game of team. Now, it's true that you won't always get 35+ players available to join, but if you put a tag how long does it take you to collect 10 people? And how long does it take 10 players to repair that wall? 60 seconds? 120 seconds? You're sitting at your PC all day, let your avatar sit down to repair a wall once in a while. You don't have to make him sweat forever. 😁

Should I need a tag just to repair a wall? /s

[Luthan.5236]

I only play during the WvW rush nowadays. For the rewards. 😄 Though I actually prefer defensive gameplay (and the "intended" way =  upgrading and defending structures) I probably will just ignore that since cap, the lose to recap ... seems the most efficient thing. (Will give you quickly what you need - except the defensive achievements where you can occasionally to a 3 min defense in between before losing to recap.)

With all the changes it seems like they want to enforce this playstyle. Defending probably not really worth with lower supplies (one of the older changes) and other changes that got made now. I mean: When you lose it you can just recap ... and the walls are repaired. 😄

And for the points or "winning" the matchup: Not a single person ever cared cause the game mode doesn't make you care. If you log out and others cap the stuff it is not "your" match to care about. (Caring about a win is more for PvP where you can play for the whole duration of the matches cause it has short matches.) WvW is to optimize rewards. (And maybe having fun if there are still ways to have fun. Not sure about that yet.)

[XenesisII.1540]

4 minutes ago, Bleikopf.2491 said:

Should I need a tag just to repair a wall? /s

hahah can't wait to see the first [8:05PM][T] [EBG] CommanderRazor: Tagging up to repair keep walls, let's get them to 50% quick so we don't lose participation! take supplies from veloka

[ArchonWing.9480]

More like "Don't even bother repairing the wall, we're going to cap something else and recap. Drop a supply trap and forget."

[Chaba.5410]

9 hours ago, DeWolfe.2174 said:

The only Dev interaction with players I've seen or heard is directly with large guild tags

That's too bad.  We had one join our 12-man squad a few weeks ago.  But we had to disband and then reform because we let him die and brought shame and dishonor upon ourselves.

[Reztek.7805]

11 hours ago, Galmac.4680 said:

I bet, devs are playing only on Maguma (NA) or WSR (EU). They have big zergs.

I doubt devs play at all, besides some alibi marketing streams. It's hard to believe anyone thinks the last changes will improve the gamemode.

[misterman.1530]

I agree with OP. There is so much wrong with the changes to walls. For instance, you can usually hit more than one wall at the same time with a cata/treb. That means you have to rebuild two walls to 50%+ before they go back up, making defending that much more difficult. Stagger the breakable walls - in red EBG keep, for example. Make it so you can't hit two walls at the same time. Offer defenders some semblance of a chance to defend.

[frostiecakes.2981]

Tell me your development team doesn't play the gamemode without saying it.

[Sylvyn.4750]

Attackers already had the advantage on LOS with respect to walls, and even beyond...a defender can get pulled off stairways up and over the wall and land at the defender's feet...that's some crazy physics there...yet we can't hit the attackers from the wall unless we're standing on the very outer lip due to the LOS rules.  Now we can't patch up a wall or gate behind them to cut off reinforcements...I think we'll just be seeing more back-capping instead of defending...

[Grave.5683]

The "balance" team changed gravel from what it was to the most useless siege function it is today because cloudfly got sniped during the no downstate week.

Cloudfly had a spy on the server he got sniped from,he dressed his guild with donations  from that server yet shortly after they transfered out with gold they didn't earn and started trying to cull them.

Cloudfly received zero punishment,the devs catered to him despite breaking the ToS and punished the defenders without ever listening to them.

This was a prime example of how anet treats boonblobs and how it treats outmaned and cheated defenders.

5 years later nothing changed,except the one bootlicker making damage control posts that make it look like a single defender is killing blobs with a plastic arrowcart.

Oh and mag is still following a figure that is actually a sos original,that one still cracks me up every time the words "old mag" come up.