I know you might all be tired of these threads (especially the mods and devs), but please bear with me.
I looked outside of video games for ideas on how blowouts and number disadvantages are handled (especially in sports and warfare), and have found some ideas that might translate well into our WvW system.
Let me preface by saying that I do not know how intricate these would be to implement, and I’m not suggesting that these are by any means final ideas and/or perfect. I am merely attempting to provide the devs with some thought-starters in the hopes that it may inspire something.
In no particular order:
Balance timezone imbalances:
Divide the times of the day into “sets” and keep score based on sets won and not overall points. For example, primetime can be a set. At the end of primetime, 1st place gets 3 points, second place gets 1, 3rd place gets 0 (or whatever point spread keeps things balanced). Then the overnight set starts and the overall score resets. Then comes early morning? 9-5? Evening? Whatever time breakups make sense. The winning teams would still keep everything they own, this would just help keep things a little closer and the losing sides more motivated.
.
.
.
Reward strategy more than numbers
Guerrilla tactics work in real life, but not in WvW. Why? Because in real life when you die you’re dead. Can we make it part of the outnumbered buff that when you down somebody they have no “downed” state. Kind of like when you kill an NPC. That way a small force with a good strategy can can actually take on a large force. Also, it requires the large force to do something other than zerging. Maybe when one side is greatly outnumbered, you can even increase the penalty and duration of the debuff for being killed.
.
.
.
Even blowouts can be fun:
Right now it’s hard to have fun during a blowout, even if you’re the one winning. In fact, the destroyees probably have more fun than the destroyers (there’s nothing like winning a battle you’re supposed to lose). Here are a couple of ideas to counter that.
-Remote waypoint: If a side owns no towers, keeps, garrisons, or castle increase their mobility. Again, this helps make guerrilla warfare viable. Right now you can only spawn at one waypoint if you don’t own anything, making it easy for the enemy to shut you down. Maybe if you don’t own anything, your commanders can lay down a waypoint. Make these waypoints destroyable so that they aren’t just placed outside the gate during a siege. Actually, maybe make them work like siege weapons. You have to buy them, you need supplies to build them (though not a lot), but they’re only activated if you don’t own anything larger than a supply camp. Also, each commander can only have one active waypoint at a time, but they could use one that someone else built.
-Get by on a budget: If you’re getting blown out and have the outnumbered buff, can you spawn with supply when you die? Maybe not full supply, just 5? Or instead, maybe your supply counts double? This would make it more viable to use siege weapons when you don’t have a lot of people.
-Home Field Advantage: If you’re getting blown out, you get home field advantage in your borderlands. Maybe it’s a buff, maybe it’s more/stronger guards. Maybe you can use the remote waypoint idea from above even if you own towers (maybe even keeps, but prob not garrison). I’m not sure what home field advantage would be, but it would make things more fun if your getting blow out. It would also give the winning server more of a challenge and more satisfaction if they can hold the enemy’s borderland.
-Mercy rule: If one side is greatly dominating the other two at the halfway point of the matchup, call the match. 2nd and 3rd place get a tie if they’re close, otherwise they get placed normally. Then revert WvW to one day “exhibition” matches for the rest of the time left. The matchups for these one day matches would either be the same servers, or if other matchups also got called due to the mercy rule it could shuffle amongst those servers. Don’t worry about balance in the matchups as much since these are exhibition matches (Euro league teams play MLS teams don’t they?).
Again, these are meant to be thought-starters more than anything. Though I am interested to know the community’s take on these so we may help the devs with insights on how such changes may affect us. Please keep your feedback constructive and objective if possible.
(edited by Fodux.5379)