Guild Wars 2

Warning: Long read.

I have played though many world events. I have seen again and again that mobs rush mindlessly at players. And how did the humans win? They just need enough people to form into un-organized human-balls, and they win 100% of the time.

Where is the challenge? None whatsoever. Humans never need to think. They are never challenged. As long as there are enough of them in a mess they won’t lose. And without this challenge, PvE gets dull fast.

For example look at the Karka event. Out of all the servers, did the Karka even beat the humans once? Nope. Were the humans organized in any way? Nope. Not to mention that this was the first time the humans played this world event, so the mobs even had the element of surprise. So I can safely conclude that the Karka had 0% chance of winning, and hence there was 0% challenge for the humans. That’s the problem.

Now I do want humans to win, but they had to plan ahead. They can’t just rush headlong into a fight and expect to win the first time they try.

So what do I recommend? I want mobs to be lead by Hannibal. I want mobs to be lead by Genghis Khan. I want mobs to crushingly defeat these un-organized humans.

Sounds impossible? Nope. The way I see it humans are easy to defeat. Sure they are powerful. But nothing that a little trick here and there couldn’t handle.

1) Line formation

Firstly, mobs should always form a line in battle. Soldiers had done line battles for the last 4,000 years for good reasons. It allows them to surround and destroy enemies that do not form a line.

The battle of Cannae is a great example of why line formation triumphs over un-organized human ball formation. If you don’t line up, you get outflanked and destroyed.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Battle_cannae_destruction.gif

2) Small world events.

Not all world event has to be big. Here is my example of a small scale world event:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/CCHIPSS/BattleonaCliff.png

Here we have a world event where the players (in blue) are asked to kill some mobs on a cliff. There is a large roundabout on the cliff. The mobs (in red) would fight the players for a while, but eventually they would be overpowered and had to retreat. The players would give chase, all the way to the edge of a cliff.

Once the players follows the mobs to a cliff at the end of the roundabout, a second group of hidden mobs (in black) will attack them. This second group consists of riflemen, who has a knockback shot. They plan to use that to push some of the players off the cliff, into the river below. And with the players’ forces weakened, the red mobs now turns back, united with the black mobs, attacks the remaining players for a final victory.

So the mobs planned this whole thing out. The variable would be whether the players falls into the trap or not. No one forced the players to follow the red mobs all the way to the edge of the cliff. And if they weren’t so overconfident and focused only on the red mobs, they would have seen the approaching black riflemen. Being aware of your surrounding is the key to winning here.

3) Large scale world events.

Of course, there will be large scale world events also. Here is my example of one:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/CCHIPSS/Guild%20Wars/AscalonSettlementBattlePlanGendarranFields.jpg

I planned a centaur attack on Ascalon Settlement. I am going to guess that around 400 players from each server/zone would participate.

Keep in mind that centaurs in the game are fairly weak units. My necro can kill 10 of them by herself. So I will give the centaurs 1,000 men. So how can these weak units win against the powerful humans?

At the beginning there will be three main battle zones: Left, centre and right.

Humans will spread out their ranks in an unknown formation and unknown numbers across each zone. However for this demonstration I would assume 100 humans on the left, 200 humans in the centre, and 100 humans on the right.

The centaurs separated their 1,000 men into 4 groups: 200 on the left, 200 in the centre, 300 on the right, and 300 elite troops in reserve at the back.

The battle follows a series of steps and plans:

1) The beginning would be a series of small skirmishes along the human ranks from all 3 zones. The centaurs’ forces in centre zone and right zone are used to delay the humans, keep the humans busy and hold the humans there. So their attacks are fairly easy to dealt with. In fact the centaurs there will try to preserve their forces until later.

2) The main attack begins on the left zone. In the heat and chaos of the battle, the centaurs would suddenly rush the 3 elite units from the back to help the attack on the left zone. The combined might of nearly 200 regular and 300 elite centaurs should be able to overwhelm the 100 human defenders.

3) The battle moves on quickly after that. The centaurs, instead of attacking Nebo Terrance, swings around south of the town and attacks the centre zone humans from behind. The surprise factor and sandwich effect of this flanking maneuver should crush the humans.

4) The centaurs would leave a small force at the west gate of Ascalon Settlement to guard it (not attack). The main body however moves south-east to take over the southern hills of the town. The dead humans, now resurrected from a nearby Asuran gate, makes a stand there. I don’t really expect the centaurs to win this battle here. They probably lost most of their men by this point. But assuming that they did…

5) The centaurs leaves a small force to guard the southern gate of the town. The rest would move north to attack the south side of the humans in the right zone. Once again the humans are sandwiched.

6) If the centaurs wins, they moves to the northern heights and eastern heights to besiege the town with siege weapons. The centaurs, unfamiliar with siege warfare, decided not to attack the town walls directly but instead hopes to starve the town into submission. By this point, all exits in and out of Ascalon Settlement are blocked off by centaurs, so no supply can enter.

7) The players have 2 days to organize themselves and fight off the centaurs, or Ascalon Settlements will be destroyed and looted.

As you can see, even with all these planning, it will be tough for the centaurs to win. Like I said step #4 will most likely be a human victory. But the centaur gave the humans a semi-beat down.

An interesting proposition. However, as wonderful a fantasy as this is, it would be all but impossible to implement when the real problem is how events scale. I’ve read topics like this before, and the best that I’ve read suggested a different difficulty modifier than just the standard HP increase or extra reinforcements. Essentially, what I’ve seen work both in theory and in-game is event enemies gaining zerg-breaking abilities. Case in point, Risen Priest of Balthazar in Straits of Devastation or the Champion Karkas during the event. Now, sure, those events had some issues with them (Balthazar fearing into AoE, Karkas not showing up due to rendering issues), but painful AoEs would certainly get players more mobile and therefore more actively involved in combat than they are now. Going back to previous suggestions, I heard one that included, as scaling additions to a standard melee zerg by the enemy, ranged troops and later siege weaponry set up behind the melee forces. Easier to implement and (from what I can tell) also increasing PvE ‘difficulty’.