What do you think about turtling tactic?

[Valerria]

Haven't had time to sit through the recordings yet but the match reports from EVIL vs. IQ certainly were interesting reads. EVIL has been running the Mo/As for a while and finally paid for it. Perhaps they'll at least think about ditching their mesmers now...

[TLLOTS]

Agreed. iQ did a superb job countering EVIL's build by turtling in round two and three. Even more impressive was their fantastic use of meteor shower and other fire spells to quickly nullify any NPC advantage EVIL had. A very well deserved victory, especially since it seems most favoured EVIL making it to the finals.

[Servant of Kali]

Turtling is awesome. Personally, i dont like when guild uses the same build over and over for months. Sorry. I like suprise factor. iQ knew what Evil would play, since Evil plays it all the time, it's always the same. One profession changes perhaps but team build as well as team tactic is the same. I love when teams learn to counter other teams, which is exactly what iQ did.

Evil is a good guild, of course, but maybe they should discover variety..

[Shadowleaf]

Yeah, iQ was amazing. And turtling rocks, and sometimes the only option.

And yeah, I don't see why they think they can keep running the same build over and over and over and then take it to the World Championship! They deserved to lose.

[dantheman5415]

And yeah, I don't see why they think they can keep running the same build over and over and over and then take it to the World Championship! They deserved to lose.

That was a little harsh, but I kinda agree...if you don't adapt to the changing metagame, you won't be able to succeed. EvIL had a huge headstart in the early/mid days of GW PvP regarding knowledge of the game, but slowly other guilds are catching up.

[Tucks]

I wouldn't say turtleing is aweosme, but it was the best tactic iQ could come up with at that time, its a shame for evil though, as they could have run standard boon prots and won that easily, because they are the better players.

[Buddah]

because they are the better players.

If they were the better players that day they would have won. Instead they weren't so they lost.

What this really showed is that winning at the flag isn't too important in the early and mid game. Only time it was highly contested was at VoD of the 3rd.

[David Holtzman]

What this really showed is that winning at the flag isn't too important in the early and mid game. Only time it was highly contested was at VoD of the 3rd.

No, what it showed was that a 10%morale boost is not sufficient to effectively assault a well defended turtle which is something we all knew already. The problem comes about from a failure in the way GW is designed. A team needs very specific skills to be able to assault a turtle and those skills are not necessarily useful outside the assault. Unlike fighting games or RTS, GW limits the number of moves you're allowed to take into the battle. That means that if the opponent is smart he can create a scenario where it is no longer enough to simply apply the skills you have, rather you require tools you do not.

[Buddah]

That means that if the opponent is smart he can create a scenario where it is no longer enough to simply apply the skills you have, rather you require tools you do not.

And who's fault was it they didn't put these need skills in their bar.

Besides what you call a failure in GW's design I'd call a sucess as it makes other strats other than butting heads at the flag viable.

[David Holtzman]

And who's fault was it they didn't put these need skills in their bar.

GW, for limiting the number of moves you can take in. If you want to be effective in all situations you end up effective in none. That's a game design flaw more than a player flaw and it's one you only will see in this sort of game. I'll give you an example:

If you've read sirlin, you know about his "low-strong" scenario. He did basically exactly what iQ did in principle. He created a brick wall and forced his opponent to try and pass it before a real "normal' fight could begin. In both cases it was an excellent move. But here's the difference: in Street Fighter you always have the tools you need available. That means that if the opponent adopts a strategy of focusing the game completely on one aspect, you have a chance to try and stop that. In GW, you may not necessarily have that chance because you may not have gone in with the right skills. The tools needed to win the scenario may simply not exist for you. That's degenerative gameplay.

Besides what you call a failure in GW's design I'd call a sucess as it makes other strats other than butting heads at the flag viable.

Other strats viable = very good. Creating a strat that is physically impossible to counter with the moves you brought in = bad. It's bad because it makes the game revolve around bringing the right moves more than playing them correctly. At the high end, if that is what it comes to, then it turns out GW may very well be a degenerate game not worth truly competitive consideration. I'd hate to see that.

Of course, it's relatively easy to fix. You just need map mechanics that force variably encounters. GW is all about seting up encounters correctly and then applying skills to the right places. In order for this mechanism to function properly the game needs to force different kinds of encounters. It would be easy enough to reward a team with, say, 20% damage bonus for holding the stand 5 minutes. They could limit the time on this bonus to 5min as well, so it wouldn't remain constant throughout the match. In this way GW could make up for the lack of highly specific tooling needed to do a number of tasks including assaulting a turtle. It also offers a significant reward for utilizing various facets of the map and a serious disincentive to ignore them.