WvW/PvP Update Preview Stream at Noon Pacific Time Today

[Jski.6180]

The updates seem fine i just wish they would already add in legendarily weapons to wvw and not just more skins. Or at least some easily to changed combo types out side of spawn points weapons maybe kind of like the trinkes item that reset the combo types but for weapons only.

[Jaruselka.5943]

"-Objectives only contest when Lord is in combat or a wall/gate is damage below 98%.  White swords no longer have a delay."

This is by far the best part of the update. It's really annoying to get your keep waypoint contested just because some theif moons a guard. It would also be nice if the white swords would appear on the map if any structure was contested and not just those that have a waypoint.

 
 

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 7/10/2024 at 12:26 PM, Sviel.7493 said:

That's 2.5 hours from the time of this post.

I couldn't find an announcement on the forums so I figured I'd make one.  Will update with a summary if I don't forget to watch it.

 

Here's the summary:

 

Thx was out of pocket yesterday so missed this note.

[TheGrimm.5624]

21 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

The implication of that is that 50 vs 50 is "harder content" than 5 vs 5. 

I disagree.

This ^^^^^

[TheGrimm.5624]

The only thing I could say is decent is:

• Boons other than swiftness can no longer be applied to Siege Golems
• Flame Ram health has been lowered by 50%. Operated flame rams will have Iron Hide applied to them

Video is worth the watch but could have had more info.

Edited July 11 by TheGrimm.5624
Edited to be more polite after coffee.

[TheGrimm.5624]

4 hours ago, Jaruselka.5943 said:

"-Objectives only contest when Lord is in combat or a wall/gate is damage below 98%.  White swords no longer have a delay."

This is by far the best part of the update. It's really annoying to get your keep waypoint contested just because some theif moons a guard. It would also be nice if the white swords would appear on the map if any structure was contested and not just those that have a waypoint.

 
 

 

So as a havoc, I now have an easier time to take that waypoint away. I can now clear your guards out of notice, get 6 cats up before you get any notice and will be thru your walls before you can react. As a roamer I will be able to lockdown your way point by setting up one walmart siege out of range of your guards and block that waypoint. And in the reduced supply counts of trebs, can achieve this even easier from much further away with what single shot of fire and then hold fire. This looks good on paper but it dumbs down scouting as well. Not sure this is going to work as expected especially if makes out scouts feel more secure in not scouting.

Now upscale that to a warband or zerg. How fast will they be through your walls before notice? Was the tapped WP worth more than notice on losing the objective completely? This hurts more than it helps. You won't have the waypoint to be worried about.

Edited July 11 by TheGrimm.5624
Edit Hit enter by accident

[TheGrimm.5624]

23 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

PPK Warscore increasing by 50% is bad.  It apparently wasn't deciding many skirmishes before, but we shouldn't be changing that.  If we look at it in terms of incentives, it once again says that you better act only in an organized raid where you never wind up as an easy kill for enemies.  This isn't going to break the game, but it's not helpful in creating a game where people actually want to fight for things.

I think this will give more ammo to people complaining to other about their KDR and using it as an excuse not to try and fight it out. Agree, bad at least and a missed opportunity to address issues like not going for a stronger side but more to beat up the smallest side. So overall, bad change. 

23 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

Objectives only contest when actually threatened and that's, by far, the high point of the changes.  Should have been done 10 years ago, but now is also a good time.  I look forward to not having to sweep the entire keep because someone coughed on a guard.

I don't think this is a good change as I replied above. This will make it easier for larger groups to drop objectives before you know it was in danger. i think we are trading a contested WP for a lost objective, so a baby with the bath water here.

23 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

Multiple EWPs is also good.  Might need tweaks going forward, but they've acknowledged the problem so that's great.

This is interesting, but now wait for the map chat back and fourths when people complain why didn't you call out which ones were hot. It will add some strategy to the WP ambushes at least. 

23 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

Siege cost changes don't matter.  If siege in general was in a more interactive state, then this might have an impact.  As it stands, siege is just a formality.  The greatest boonball is going to win and nothing you do with siege is going to slow them down unless they're ramming a gate without stability which...should not be a thing.  Just use proxy catas like everyone else.

Arrow carts do nothing to zergs.  They could be free and nothing significant would change in most cases.  Trebs also do nothing in most cases.  It's probably good that they're cheaper, but this isn't going to change the game.  The devs seem to believe ACs and Trebs are strong defensive siege but I don't know where they're getting that from.  Again, just use proxy catas like everyone else and you won't have to deal with any of this.

Siege cost throw the siege cost for use and siege acquirements all out of balance. They need to rebalance guild siege for the costs reductions as well. 

23 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

Overall, there was even less scoring QoL than expected but the impact was much higher--namely, the impact is that it no longer matters if I log in because I'm not running in a zerg during primetime.  I could singlehandedly win every skirmish I play and not change the outcome of a single match.  On one hand, I know that people were complaining that primetime play was pointless compared to off hours, but it was not to this degree and this is absolutely not the right solution to that problem.  Anet's constant drive to remove any ability to defend made that worse as the things you upgraded during primetime were instantly loss when your raid ended--you couldn't have any reverberating impact into the off-hours.  More and more, it seems like they really don't WvW to be a 24 hour mode.

They might have been better to just lose the players that play the 24hr game and just made the world into EotM ver 2.0. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

7 hours ago, LordHT.8297 said:

The only good change in my opinion is in the contested objectives, but they didn't explain that properly. Will the objective be contested for every 2% damage the gate/wall suffers? Why did they emphasize 98%? I hope they don't do anything stupid when implementing this.

I don't think is thought out very well by them. Maybe they zerg too much and don't scout or havoc. Can't say how many times while scouting and already get to the objective to find one or two walls down and that was from guard activity. Now they will have even more time to get the siege built before even the first notice triggers. This will probably speed up taking objectives.

7 hours ago, LordHT.8297 said:

The other changes are bad, they are again punishing people who play off hours and what do they expect from that? People will simply stop playing at these times, there's no point in defending, there's no point in attacking, why are you going to log in? To be farmed by retirees who do off-hours ppk to inflate their egos with kill counts?
The changes to sieges are also bad, they are nerfing golems and rans and buffing trebs and acs and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to realize that it will be much more advantageous to take down a keep with trebs from a safe distance than get close and have to deal with hundreds of acs with poor rams/golems which will lead to defenders to use counter trebs too which will be pathetic, welcome to TvT.

Agree they are removing an actual catchup mechanic that was in place and reducing play time across a lot more time periods. Even if they go with this approach these spreads are way too high. 

[Sviel.7493]

@TheGrimm.5624White swords now appear instantly, so assuming it took 30s to build siege after killing guard before, there's no delay in warning time.

In most cases, I think this will mean a quicker warning rather than slower.

[TheGrimm.5624]

Just now, Sviel.7493 said:

@TheGrimm.5624White swords now appear instantly, so assuming it took 30s to build siege after killing guard before, there's no delay in warning time.

In most cases, I think this will mean a quicker warning rather than slower.

Spin the thought. You can now kill all the guards and then get all the siege up before starting without noticing. It just means that zerg will have more siege and the wall down all the faster. 

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

Personally I don't see the point of skirmishes resetting every 2 hours anyways. Why not just be 1 big skirmish for the week and best war-score wins. There is no debate on having coverage to win matches and the team with the highest contribution at the end bases on war score wins.

[TheGrimm.5624]

Just now, ChrisWhitey.9076 said:

Personally I don't see the point of skirmishes resetting every 2 hours anyways. Why not just be 1 big skirmish for the week and best war-score wins. There is no debate on having coverage to win matches and the team with the highest contribution at the end bases on war score wins.

They added skirmish periods back around 2016 to handle run away scoring overnight. And that worked. Will need to hear the logic they used before trying to understand their whys on the the further adjustment.

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

4 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

They added skirmish periods back around 2016 to handle run away scoring overnight. And that worked. Will need to hear the logic they used before trying to understand their whys on the the further adjustment.

Thanks for the update it is helpful to at least recall the reason for that change.

[Dawdler.8521]

3 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Spin the thought. You can now kill all the guards and then get all the siege up before starting without noticing. It just means that zerg will have more siege and the wall down all the faster. 

The zerg dumps up rams before the guards are even dead - or the guards die instantly anyway, far less time than the 30s timer. Small scale usually do catas instead and thus wont engage the guards anyway or start sieging as someone go gank the guards too. So he's got a point. What you suggest doesnt really apply for any scenario where the intent is actually capping, which is where they will instantly tag the objective. So yes, you would definetly see swords way earlier with this change.

[Riba.3271]

Seems like decent changes to siege. There are couple troublesome points:

• The weight of skirmish points per skirmish is bit too much tho. Won't this just mean that if there is matchup that is dead 14 hours a day (6 points), it accounts for 2 hours otherwise (42 points)? Way too big of a change
• Trebs buff is in right direction, but wont they just be better catapults now? Don't they have more damage and HP? What is purpose of catapults then

• "Objectives only contest when Lord is in combat or a wall/gate is damage below 98%.  White swords no longer have a delay." - Seems like good change, but can we extend this to having "watchtower" - tactivator active only in similar situation? Otherwise this is is pretty big nerf to smarter small groups that waited to setup siege before contesting objective (30 seconds less time before spotted).

Edited July 11 by Riba.3271

[TheGrimm.5624]

So from the recording (will add feedback after) :

Cal/Tayler/Roy

• They though short feedback period good
• Doing VODs to get feedback
• Teams is competitive team to clear that up in difference in balance versus competetive, same team with more devs

WvW

• Scoring points based on what Roy calculated, though details are not given.
• Scoring from takes they think will create more defending.
• PPK they wanted to have PPK be more part of the score. 
• They are looking at adding reasons to win next.
• Contesting - they are more worried about contesting the structure versus how fast its taken, they think that will be faster this way. 
• EWP - goal was address EWP reactions. Waypoints will have same names for now but different ones down the road.
• Alacrity - cooldowns on siege were set for a reason and alacrity throws that off
• Golem - OP already and boons too much, but steal and superspeed not impacted
• Flame Ram Health - They agreed that the empty rams take way too long to clean up - they didn't consider Iron Hide as a passive, were more focused o ram cleanup
• Siege Sup Change - AC and Treb strongest for defense were their thoughts - supply reduction to help with defenders and allow more for repair
• Adjust gathering from nodes to added varietal seedlings for ascended food crafting for WvW players
• They are giving time for only a week feedback, but may be open for changes after seeing how numbers apply. 
• They are asking feedback via the VOD adds value. 

Feedback

VOD do help give details

Scoring - no additional details so trying to back into what was being seen and how that plays out.

Careful on PPK as you don't want to discourage people from fighting. Might have also been an opportunity to use PPK to encourage a team with less score to go after the ones that are higher placed then they are versus still encourage two larger sides to go for the smaller one. 

Contesting - Already talked about this above in other posts

Flame Ram - Health good change, auto iron hide ok, but shouldn't IR it just apply to the player on the ram? 

Siege Costs - Need to adjust guild siege in these changes as well. Point of Base siege is its cheap but less damage. Superior is better due to damage. Guild should remain BiS since it requires making and base siege is built in. Keeping the superior siege and guild at same damage is good but guild should cost less or do more damage now than superior with the reductions in costs else the balance is now off.

Edited July 11 by TheGrimm.5624
Edit: missed the siege feedback

[XenesisII.1540]

3 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

• Alacrity - cooldowns on siege were set for a reason and alacrity throws that off

The same goes for every single skill in the game..... 😏

[TheGrimm.5624]

Just now, XenesisII.1540 said:

The same goes for every single skill in the game..... 😏

That part I was quoting from the recoding. Not my feedback there. 

[Riba.3271]

Just now, XenesisII.1540 said:

4 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

• Alacrity - cooldowns on siege were set for a reason and alacrity throws that off

The same goes for every single skill in the game..... 😏

True, alac should be 15% (instead of 25%), and quickness 25% (instead of 50%), in all gamemodes. This would them put at Fury/Protection level boons.

[TheGrimm.5624]

57 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

The zerg dumps up rams before the guards are even dead - or the guards die instantly anyway, far less time than the 30s timer. Small scale usually do catas instead and thus wont engage the guards anyway or start sieging as someone go gank the guards too. So he's got a point. What you suggest doesnt really apply for any scenario where the intent is actually capping, which is where they will instantly tag the objective. So yes, you would definetly see swords way earlier with this change.

As a havoc I can use this all more in that scale so from that aspect, sure it makes that a bit easier.

In a zerg size the guards reacting to on coming rush of the zerg even with the 30 seconds delay might be more warning. Not to mention think about how this allows a zerg to clear siege before they even start and gives no warning now. We are more worried about removing an easy tap and losing more visibility to activity as a counter to that point. I think this is more harmful. Tappers are still going to have an easy time of it, they will just adjust the means but at the cost of more objectives lost. I would prefer we just lose the WP versus the actual objective. 

[Dawdler.8521]

26 minutes ago, Riba.3271 said:

• Trebs buff is in right direction, but wont they just be better catapults now? Don't they have more damage and HP? What is purpose of catapults then

Trebs only have 30% higher base damage than a catapult... with the catapult being traited for 45% extra damage vs 20% extra damage on the treb. 

The treb also take twice the time to fire but in turn has a bit more than twice the range. I am unsure what the health of a base cata vs a treb but wouldnt surprise me if it's the same.

So actually they are almost identical. That's why the trebs have always been dogshit compared to a catapult when you consider the cost difference. 

15 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

As a havoc I can use this all more in that scale so from that aspect, sure it makes that a bit easier.

In a zerg size the guards reacting to on coming rush of the zerg even with the 30 seconds delay might be more warning. Not to mention think about how this allows a zerg to clear siege before they even start and gives no warning now. We are more worried about removing an easy tap and losing more visibility to activity as a counter to that point. I think this is more harmful. Tappers are still going to have an easy time of it, they will just adjust the means but at the cost of more objectives lost. I would prefer we just lose the WP versus the actual objective. 

This assumes the zergs is slower than a snail nailed down to a wall.

A normal zerg might clear siege sure but at the same time 3+ rams or catas are already going down.

For this to be "hidden" it has to be some really, really awkward scenario where a few people take 5+ minutes to clear guards, clear siege and build alot of siege to eventually get on them and steamroll the door/wall quickly. Any player numbers above just a few will never, ever bother to do that. They'll just dump siege and open the door/wall. And even the smaller number will probably be better served to do that too since the guards and siege wont matter anyway.

Edited July 11 by Dawdler.8521

[TheGrimm.5624]

24 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

So actually they are almost identical. That's why the trebs have always been dogshit compared to a catapult when you consider the cost difference. 

This assumes the zergs is slower than a snail nailed down to a wall.

A normal zerg might clear siege sure but at the same time 3+ rams or catas are already going down.

For this to be "hidden" it has to be some really, really awkward scenario where a few people take 5+ minutes to clear guards, clear siege and build alot of siege to eventually get on them and steamroll the door/wall quickly. Any player numbers above just a few will never, ever bother to do that. They'll just dump siege and open the door/wall. And even the smaller number will probably be better served to do that too since the guards and siege wont matter anyway.

Some of the defense nerfs I think came from the zergs that didn't clear siege first. Now they won't need to worry about. But don't worry since now we will have more complaints that more structures fell to more havocs so the next call out will be we need minimums before a structure can be capped since small scale took it to fast and why didn't anyone know. 

[Lai.6259]

does new vp system mean OCX prime team got punish if other team it match are NA prime ?

[Dawdler.8521]

7 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Some of the defense nerfs I think came from the zergs that didn't clear siege first. Now they won't need to worry about. But don't worry since now we will have more complaints that more structures fell to more havocs so the next call out will be we need minimums before a structure can be capped since small scale took it to fast and why didn't anyone know. 

Again I’m not really seeing what you are saying. The change would only make attacks “hidden” if they fiddle about a long, long time before actually hitting it with siege. But that activity change nothing when it comes to rushing for defense. Guards ain’t gonna help you kill 20 players banging on the gate. That cannon ain’t gonna do crap against catas on the other side of the tower. 

You could be far more hidden now since you get a period of “stealth attacks” if you dumped up siege fast and ignored everything else. In that time you could be through the walls/doors before it even contested.

The change would mean you get instantly noticed if you do that since the swords now mean it’s definitely under siege, not just poked.

It make scouting a whole lot easier so hopefully they focus on the field instead and warn ahead of time instead of faffing about inside objectives like the average zergling wallhugger does in defense.

[Sviel.7493]

2 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

It make scouting a whole lot easier so hopefully they focus on the field instead and warn ahead of time instead of faffing about inside objectives like the average zergling wallhugger does in defense.

This is what makes me want to suffocate a Quaggan.  I can understand if you're semi-afk due to IRL stuff, but it's not scouting if you never go out to scout.