Guild Wars 2

I’ll have to double-post to include everything. I apologize in advance :/

I’ve had this idea kicking about since just after the second Beta Weekend Event, and due to some recent topics involving World vs World, I thought I would share this here where it can be clearly seen.

Some players have been hoping for a Guild vs Guild gameplay mode and it occurred to me that something close to World vs World might be how to implement this. Rather than having a server facing off against two other servers, give individual guilds a method to face off against one another in an instanced, custom made World vs World map. I’ll explain the specifics below.

- A guild may access a Tournament NPC and type in the name of a player with sufficient ranking in another guild to challenge them. Should the challenge be accepted, both guilds involved may select 5 individuals each to decide the rules of their match via a vote. These rules would be map choice, number of players allowed to participate at one time and the duration of the match. This could be anywhere from 4 hours to 24 hours and 20-40 players per guild. The most commonly selected options between both guilds would be chosen.

- The objectives would be relatively the same as a standard World vs World match. You have a designated starting camp for your guild, and you will be tasked to take and hold various locations to increase your point totals over the course of the match. Due to the smaller scale of the game mode, there could possibly be something like 4 supply camps, two towers and one keep, or 5 supply camps, 3 towers, 2 keeps, 1 castle. Obviously, the health of any NPCs and/or fortifications would need to be adjusted accordingly for the player count.

- Rather than have supply directly held by an individual, supply could be globally pooled within the guild, accessible to either all guild members or those with sufficient permissions. Any supply earned by a player would be automatically sent into the pool. This would allow for those who take supply consumption seriously to organize the use of it more effectively.

- Rather than requiring gold or badges to build siege equipment, players will be required to earn points via capturing or holding points, defeating players and/or completing special objectives. These points may be used at an NPC to purchase instance-specific siege equipment. This means that players will not be able to enter a match with a stockpile of siege equipment and help level the playing field from the get-go each match.

- If a team manages to capture every point on the map AND is leading in points, a timer will begin to count down. If the countdown expires without the losing team capturing a point, the match will end.

- Rewards for this gameplay mode could be guild influence, points for guild ranking and badges of honor.

This gameplay mode could give guilds something to do when they are not able to effectively join in on World vs World as a guild. It also gives guilds on less populated servers a means of competing in a similar gameplay mode without the worry of not being viable against their opponent(s). It also gives players who have time constraints the ability to join in on guild activities and be rewarded regardless of when and for how long they are able to play for. Many players may have to leave the game before they even see a queue for a World vs World map pop up on their screen.

From a monetization standpoint, obviously you could require tournament tickets to be used to engage in this activity. Guilds who are interested enough to participate will want to fund their guild to do so. Particularly for higher population servers who are VERY interested in World vs World (be it for competition or the need for Badges of Honor for crafting Legendary Weapons), they could likely see this as a very interesting game mode worth investing their time and resources into. It would also allow guilds to play against one another from the same server, allowing them far more options on who they would like to play with/against. If you are not pleased with your current World vs World match-up, you would have the option to play Guild vs Guild.

The potential drawback for this is if the reward and gameplay is not properly balanced. If the rewards are too great in Guild vs Guild, players who are inclined to farm rewards may opt to skip out entirely on World vs World and only play Guild vs Guild. A possible way around this would be to either have rewards give lesser rewards if the game determines them to being farmed by a player/guild, or to limit how often a guild may participate in this game mode to avoid farming repeatedly.

Thanks for reading through my wall of text (and I apologize for not having a TL;DR. Hopefully this can be a starting point on opening up some well thought-out discussion on ways we can help remedy the current state of World vs World across our servers. I personally happen to be playing on Eredon Terrace, and would like this more for servers who are presently unable to play effectively against guilds with a stronger World vs World presence. I want everyone to have a chance to enjoy the game mode that ArenaNet has spent so much time working on, and to be able to feel they are able to contribute to their team’s success by participating. If you have your own ideas, it would be awesome to read on your take on what could be done to make this game better!

I would love to see something like this. It’s definitely a large undertaking, potentially something for an expansion actually, but it would be really cool.