From my experience in the beta, it seemed like it was overly difficult to reinforce a siege. The outcome of almost all of the sieges I took part in was decided on the outer walls of the keep. If the defenders managed to hold off the attackers outside the walls for a while and kill some of them, the attackers were forced to retreat. But if the attackers managed to kill some of the defenders and broke through the walls, they were pretty much guaranteed victory if their group was large enough to deal with the NPC defenders.

As a result, almost all of the sieges were over quickly, lasting somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes. And there was very little PvP to be found inside the courtyard or the keep. A very big part of the reason for this seemed to be that it absolutely takes forever to get back into the fight if you die; it's a very long walk from one keep to another. And the reinforcement tents (with limited uses) were very expensive, so they were almost never used.

If I compare the respawn options here to those in Planetside 2 for example, then that game seems to do a lot more to keep sieges exciting to the last second. Defenders there can keep respawning near a "keep" until certain structures have been shut down by the attackers, and these same structures can be recaptured/repaired to be used again if the attackers leave them unguarded.

For the attacking force, the primary tool to remain in the fight were Sunderers (mobile respawn tents, if you will). They didn't have a limited use like they do here and were a lot more affordable, but were destructible to keep them balanced.

I think it may be beneficial for Cyrodiil keep sieges if respawning/reinforcement wasn't as restricted as it is now. Perhaps some of the resource nodes surrounding a keep could be used as respawn point for people who died in a keep's vicinity, without being connected to the teleportation network between keeps of course. As a bonus, it would open up some strategies for a defending force to bust out of their keep to reclaim a place to respawn from the attackers.

In one article from the press, I read they were glad it was so hard to reinforce because they didn't like long sieges. But I personally prefer them, especially if the odds can frequently shift back and forth. I'm curious to hear what other peoples' opinions on this subject are.

I totally agree with you totally on this. The forward camps are expensive to purchase and seemingly made of paper. The journey back tot he action for the attacking force pretty much means that if there is no forward camp and you die, your participation in this particular attack is over. Only on a few occasions was I able to get back to the fight before the keep had been breached.

On all but one occasion, once we breached the outer walls we quickly took over the keep inside. The only occasion we didn't was when we had a small group that got overwhelmed as we got into the first flag room.

It would be better if the forward camps were either cheaper to purcahse or harder to destroy and could be packed up again for re-use later on.

Reinforcing sieges is supposed to be very difficult, if it is not difficult you have another guild wars 2 situation on your hand where zerging is easier and easier and the best way to win.

Well zerging will always be the best way to win regardless of the game. I saw it on the beta. But I do get what you mean though.

To temper my post above, now i've come to think about it, It did seem pretty easy to conquer keeps. I think something needs to be done to make it slightly harder but I don't think the 'respawn run' method is particularly a good one though.

Someone posted something in the beta forums about an NPC boss mob that would need to be killed after the keep is overrun. To extrapolate on that, maybe once the NPC keep guards are dead and the flags are taken, a hard-as-nails boss spawns. Just an idea. I'm not sure if it is a good one though but I thought i'd throw it out for discussion.

Zerging might be the best way to win ONE siege, but it might cost you a fight in 2 other places, because you're concentrating your forces too much.

Not a fan of the big bad boss NPC spawn idea. I would like the fight for a keep to be a fight between players primarily. It shouldn't be that you're first mopping up all the player defenders and then have to fight the AI for 10 minutes.