Guild Wars 2

There are currently many threads discussing the problems with “nightcapping” and mismatches in the WvW. Not least from my own world (Far Shiverpeaks, EU) which on prime time does very well in WvW, only to lose it all during night, forced to start all over again the next morning. Personally, I don’t mind this all that much, as I like to do small raids (on camps and such) rather than keeps and towers anyway. In fact, I think I would be more annoyed if I was on a server which dominated the others, as that would mean that I had less enemies to hunt. But nevertheless, I can understand that many players are frustrated with the current situation, so I thought I’d try to get a constructive discussion going about ways to fix these problems without ruining the fun for other players.

Balancing issues are obviously not new to Guild Wars 2. In fact, similar problems exist in the “real world”. So I think it would be great to use the real world for inspiration. Of course the fact that this is a game has to be kept in mind, so realism should not be the ultimate goal.

Anyway, my hope for this thread is that players from all servers (dominant and dominated, nightcappers and daycappers) would try to come up with constructive ways to resolve these issues without hurting the fun of others. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Mercenaries

Basically, low pop worlds or worlds that are currently tagged as “undermanned” in a zone could be allowed to temporarily recruit mercenaries from high pop/overmanned worlds (as long as they are not in the same match). This is already possible with free server transfers, but I’m suggesting some kind of in game tool that would make the process easier and perhaps more automated. If implemented well, I believe it could improve WvW balancing issues in several ways:

First, it would even out the numbers in a match, as low pop/undermanned worlds would increase their numbers, and high pop/overmanned worlds would decrease theirs.

Second, the concentrations of “night time players” (in relation to prime time) would spread out across worlds, thus evening out the balance between “night time crews”. Other than reducing the annoyance of nightcapping for those that have no night crews, it would also increase the fun for the night time players, as I imagine it must be pretty boring to play against doors all night. This way, even worlds where the primary player base is sleeping would be able to put up some kind of resistance at night.

Third, it would reduce queue times, as it will take load off the high pop worlds and put it on the low pop worlds that might not even have any queues to begin with.

Obviously, there would have to be some carefully thought out rules to govern the mercenary mechanic. For example, the mercenaries should only be recruited from worlds that have higher population, preferably worlds that are not undermanned themselves in any zones, or even only from high pop/overmanned worlds. Also, there should be no recruitment between worlds which are in the same match (to avoid sabotage, etc).

This is just something I thought of that I think would be fun, but the idea is far from finished. There are many more details that would have to be considered. Should it for example cost money to recruit? Should you be able to recruit any player on that server, or perhaps only special “mercenary guilds”? Should recruitment be automatic or require contact and negotiation? In an automatic system, a player on an overmanned world could for example simply chose to port to the undermanned servers borderlands/battleground instead of to their own.

The downside, as I see it, is that it’s most likely hard to implement. Also, there may be some issues with server pride (“You only beat us at x because you had mercenaries with you!!!”), and perhaps infiltration. Of course, these risks are “realistic”, and infiltration is a problem with free transfers anyway.

Enough about that. On to the second idea (next post).

2. Guerrilla warfare

From Wikipedia:

“Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians (or “irregulars”) use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and less-mobile traditional army, or strike a vulnerable target, and withdraw almost immediately.”

Basically, solos and small groups that are currently tagged as “undermanned” in a zone would gain a buff that gave them advantages in terms of movement speed and visibility (e.g. combat takes longer to appear on the enemy map), and perhaps something that enables them to more easily and efficiently raid caravans and camps, and perhaps even sabotage the supply storage of a point or something like that.

Conversely, large groups that are tagged as “overmanned” would gain a debuff that decreases their movement speed, make them more visible on the enemies map (thus easier to keep track of), and other similar effects.

3. Overstretching

In the real world, even the most powerful empires fall if they grow too large. At some point, the cost of keeping the empire going is greater than the available resources, at which point the empire collapses under its own weight. A similar mechanic could be put in place in WvW to make it harder for dominant worlds to capture the entire map.

Let all buildings have a certain supply upkeep that would be taken from the supply camp (automatically or through caravans). Under relatively balanced conditions, the upkeep should be negligible. However, the more points a single world holds, the higher is the upkeep per point. So, if one world holds almost the entire map, then the upkeep would be so great that losing just a couple of supply camps would lead to exhaustion of supplies, resulting in inability to upgrade, repair, build siege and so on, and perhaps even degradation of walls, gates and guards if the supplies run out.

Conversely, small empires could get a supply surplus, enabling them to more easily defend what they have.

Together with the guerrilla warfare suggestion above, this would mean that undermanned worlds could easily shift their tactics to camp and caravan raids, thus bleeding the dominant world until a more even playing ground is achieved.

Obviously the details, as well as pros and cons, can be discussed (to death). But I hope we will get more suggestions as well! How would you like to see these balancing issues resolved?

The Mercenary idea is quite smart, but I really don’t approve of it.

The whole argument of “balance” in WvW is a flawed one. It is inherently imbalanced and I think that’s a good thing. I oppose the idea of adding artificial bolstering mechanics via buffs (like tenacity) etc.

Over time, server matching will ensure that Worlds face off against comparable Worlds, thus alleviating the need for all too severe artificial balancing mechanisms.

That said, I would embrace the idea of making it harder to dominate by limiting the available resources. Make it possible to conquer the majority of the map, but make it hard to hold that position due to resource limitations. It’s a much more “natural” mechanism than buffs or debuffs of some kind.

The way I see it, the purpose of the mercenary mechanic would not be to get perfect balance in all worlds, but rather provide a way to even out the numbers, if even just by a little, in the matches which are the most imbalanced.

If the players are divided as follows, as an example:

World A has 100 players
World B has 20 players
World C has 20 players

Then world B and C would not get 80 “mercenary slots” each (so that it becomes 100 vs 100 vs 100), but closer to, say, 30 (i.e. 100 vs 50 vs 50), or even less. Also, there might be a cost associated with mercenaries (as in the real world), so that it would not be used too lightly.

As I said, this is not an easy idea to implement.. and yeah, time will tell if it is actually needed at all. Although I bet some matches will always be imbalanced no matter how good the match making, so there might be a place for this.

As for buffs. I generally agree that “natural” is best. But sometimes, unnatural means are needed to compensate for real worlds mechanisms that are not in the game. For example, in the real world, a zerg would require lots of supplies and logistics to maintain. The buffs I was talking about would simply mimic the logistics problem, making the small groups faster and harder to track, and large groups slower and easier to track, just as you would expect in the real world. I’m generally against giving buffs that would influence the actual fighting (e.g. +vitality, +power, or whatever) though.

all of this post, all of it GIMMY. No but seriously I think you pick up on the flaws of the current system.