Due to this discussion I’d like to post a suggestion.
My suggestion is based on the assumption that lack of rewards (especially loot) for people focusing on supporting as much as can be done within current game construction that participate in Events is not an intended development path to force people to build as much AoE damage as humanly possible.
I don’t know if the system should work to force people to balance their builds to deal damage, survive and support with no focus on one or the other. I would like to believe that it was intended for builds focused as much on support as possible to be needed or desired in team environments.
If I am wrong, my point is moot, as the current system does force people to focus on both survivability and damage with one or two support utilities if and when needed unless there is a massive wave of people that just obliterates everything (in which the only valid thing to do is aoe tag stuff) and the only required thing is for DEs to scale with more people than currently.
In the off-chance that support play is meant to be viable and not penalised by game mechanics, I’ll explain the issue.
As stated in the thread I’ve linked, it seems to be that people focusing on support during DEs or WvWvW get no rewards for aiding their allies. Instead, they have to “tag” monsters or players to be included in the loot roll and gain enough contribution to get medals. Many people brought these issues up but I didn’t find any suggestions thread about it via search tool.
My suggestion what to do with the fact that players playing support oriented builds feel penalised in DEs and WvWvW is as follows:
Loot based on contribution would solve many issues. If after an event we could get a “Chest” (similar to what we get after area completion) or even a ground item along the lines of “Gathered Loot” that includes rewards from the event similar to is possible to obtain currently via killing and looting monsters that are the target of the events it would clean up a lot of gameplay and help in rewarding players who participate and gain contribution in other ways than damage. It would also greatly help those who do not have AoE tagging abilities. These rewards would need to be tied to performance in said events, not completely random or inadequate to player contribution. Say top contribution would result in rolls for ~80% monsters defeated (could be 75% as well as 85%, it’s a minor thing), and could scale down from that.
This would also mean that monsters that spawn via events don’t drop their own loot at all. This would also mean that people get a less random way of getting loot (which may or may not be desireable).
This would not only help to appreciate support players, but also clean up DEs and Wv3. It would:
1. Resolve issues with people running around pushing F all the time to get their loot in DEs and Wv3 (and as a bonus – no shining corpses to “F” through till you can revive someone, less graphical glitter, more focus on the battle, less incentive to just AoE tag everything instead of helping the team),
2. Impair more simple bots that autoattack-spam all possible targets in range and get to loot them even if their autoattacks don’t earn them any contribution,
3. The need to develop another system to promote support play and not make people focusing on support feel penalized for their efforts to help others,
4. Being forced to build a certain way to participate in DEs and WvWvW, which many people (including me) don’t enjoy at all.