Lets talk a bit about the guild claiming that takes place in WvW. Now, the system with guilds claiming locations and POIs and thus getting bonuses is imo brilliant. It is a good way to show your participation in WvW (as well as show off your guild banner). There is however a major flaw in the system. It works on a first come first served basis.
It rewards those who got no lag and/or those that stay behind to cap it instead of fighting off the last invaders i.e. you get more long term benefit if you stay and cap rather than fight off people. To solve this I propose the following changes to guild claiming in terms of rewarding participation in PvP and guild activities as well as making it more realistic.
First off I divide the keeps and camps into four (4) categories (t1-4).
t1 = Supply Camps (open camps with no walls/gates to break down)
t2 = Minor Keeps (a small keep that has a gate/wall to break down e.g. Anzalion)
t3 = Major Keeps (a large keep with multiple doors and lots of space i.e. “Server Keeps”)
t4 = Stonemist (lets face it, this one is a tough job to take, even more so than the server keeps)
Now, why divide them into different categories? Because they ARE different, some will be more easily defended while others will change owner all the time (Rogue’s Quarry being the prime example of the latter). The idea is that the more dedicated playerbase you have in the guild the better a keep you can claim for your guild. You’ve all seen those banners that the claimed keeps and camps fly, ever wondered where those flags came from. Why not make the flags craftable from the “War” tab in the guild? The higher the tier of the place the more batches of guild flags you will need (due to the increased amount of banner stands).
If the flags cost ~1000 influence/batch as well as having a crafting time of two days (you want them to be fancy and look good, don’t you? And the way to do that is to hire the best taillors Tyria has to offer). This way the supply of flags would be kept down (so one guild couldn’t stock up on a ridiculous amount of flags just to cap stonemist) as well as making them a valuable thing to craft for WvW guilds, obviously you’d need rights to cap things as well.
So, how many batches of flags would it take to claim certain objectives? It’s all dependant on the tier they have, the higher the tier the harder it will be to take/retake it so the harder it is, the more influence (in the form of flags) your guild needs to claim it.
t1 = 1 batch of banners
t2 = 3 batches
t3 = 5 batches
t4 = 10 batches
Now, if you claimed something and lost it you’d have to pay more to claim it again. Lets face it, if you claimed it and lost it, why would the defenders of the keep trust the defences to you once again? For every time you claim a keep/camp the cost goes up by the formula X=N*T where X = actual cost of claiming, N = number of times this location has been claimed by your guild in the current WvW cycle, T = the number of batches of banners needed for that locations specific tier.
So lets sya you claim Stonemist for your guild since the blues took it from you. So you’d have to pay X batches of guild flags for it. Now, this is also the 3rd time you’ve claimed it this cycle (you really need to work on your defenses) so you’d be paying 3*10=30 banners to claim it.
Having this system would reward the guild activity and participation better than the current claiming system. It would also serve as an incentive to actively defend your precious little keep (while ofc, if you just defend those onuses you gain are pretty useless) and at the same time add more prestige to get a keep to fly your banner.
On a sidenote, being able to “bribe” the workers of a keep to switch flags to your own guild could be fun but that would also be the source of a lot of grifing.