I’ve been playing a lot of WvW… and I think it needs some changes.
1) Remove the jumping puzzle. Half our force in the puzzle when we are getting pounded is just ridiculous… especially when people who want to defend are being forced to queue. Not to mention the people doing the puzzles spam the team and map chat with QQ about griefers and the like in the puzzle (or begging for a mesmer to come in and portal them to the chest)… making it hard sometimes to catch communication about the changing conditions of the field. Or make the jumping puzzle a neutral zone…
At the very least give the puzzle players their own chat channel so that those of us actually contributing to the fight can turn that nonsense off and see the important communications instead of a hundred complaints about campers in the puzzle.
2) You have a Commander mechanic… now make a Scout mechanic… and remove the ability for people to lay on the ground dead watching everything for 20 minutes. They are dead… black their screen and make them respawn. A dead soldier isn’t a scout. Make another mechanic that gives people the ability to move around the map quickly with some stealth/camouflage abilities, and a mechanic to mark things they see on the map. And make them have to use the map to their advantage… if they get too close to enemy AI or PCs as well as members of their own server… they lose their ability to stealth. It would be nice to see some mechanic that allows the scout to set up small “ambush” buffs and debuffs of some sort. Some sort of mechanic that will allow the scout to slow enemy movement some and buff interceptors. Also… make it an intelligent design… it would simply be abused if the guy could use it on a single roamer then come out of stealth and kill him… make the ambush zones only work on groups of 5 or more… and make sure he cannot set it up within a certain proximity to friendlies or foes… it would be something set up preemptively, and last for a short time. Not something dropped on a bunch of peoples heads before unstealthing.
3) Rework the outmanned mechanic. And scale AI keep defenders in line with the number of members from a server logged in to WvW. Right now if there aren’t many players logged in to WvW (or they are all off doing the stupid puzzle while you are getting your face stomped in) it becomes a waste of time and money to try to defend anything. How about some kind of mechanic that gives a buff to the AI when PCs have the outmanned buff going on AND there are very few defenders in their vicinity? That way… it becomes worthwhile for one or two defenders to run all the way to try to defend a keep. The zerg will still take it, and you will still die a bloody death if you don’t evacuate in time… but at least being up on the walls wouldn’t be a 2 second event.
4) Find some way to make the zerg mentality less appealing. I realize this should mostly be on commanders to collect information and disseminate orders… but smaller tactical units should have some incentive to move away from the zerg. It would be nice to see some commanders that have more in their toolbox than 100 gold, a desire to have their icon show up in lions arch, and giant crowds of people standing around auto attacking. If there is some incentive for moving in smaller more tactical teams, players will start to use it. Really… to all you commanders out there… if all you know how to do is zerg… turn your commander icon off.
Also… make the icon work only in WvW… there’s no need to see commander symbols outside the battlefield.
5) Shorten the afk kick time… and expand it to include chatters. Someone standing in the keep for 30 minutes chatting about how much he likes chicken is a worthless resource. If he isn’t “actively” contributing to the war effort (or at least actively playing)… boot him back to Lions Arch so he can keep up with the latest gossip there and let the person next in the queue in.
That’s about it for now. I’ve given my thoughts…. I won’t be back to read any replies… not interested in “discussing”… just interested in dropping a couple rough half baked ideas in the suggestion box.