Guild Wars 2

This may be a crazy suggestion but here goes…

We were having some discussions about WvW on our guild forums and an idea popped up. Why not use one of the great NPC races that are in the game and make them a real threat in WvW. Allow them to take camps, towers, etc. just like the player characters like the Balaur in Aion. In our opinion, it would help with the PvDoor that’s going on in some servers and maybe help with the night capping a bit.

This seems hard to balance. NPC’s don’t have the ability to react as dynamically as we do as players. How do you program an NPC to build siege, man battlements, etcetcetc. I fear that to compensate for this lack of functionality, the NPC’s would be buffed up to unreasonable levels turning WvW into a gigantic AC. Plus if this is the case, I hate to draw the parallel but we’d essentially be fighting against a Bot Legion, relentlessly attacking 24/7.

Dualius.4916:

This seems hard to balance. NPC’s don’t have the ability to react as dynamically as we do as players. How do you program an NPC to build siege, man battlements, etcetcetc. I fear that to compensate for this lack of functionality, the NPC’s would be buffed up to unreasonable levels turning WvW into a gigantic AC. Plus if this is the case, I hate to draw the parallel but we’d essentially be fighting against a Bot Legion, relentlessly attacking 24/7.

Oh please, an NPC attack would be far easier to organize than a player zerg.

1. Spawn 30 or so NPCs
2. NPCs head for waypoint 1a or 1b, both of which are supply camps closest to their spawn.
3. NPCs head to waypoint 2, which is a predetermined point on their attack path. This point can have like 3-5 variations, depending on how well ANet wants to code it.
4. NPCs head for waypoint 3, which is the staging point. They split up and head for points 4a-e and build siege in those points.
(The siege they could build is, for example, 2 ballistas, 1 arrow cart and 2 catapults, to take down a wall from short distance.)
5. NPCs build siege.
At this point, they have at each siege:
One engineer operating the siege,
One guardian blocking projectiles aimed at the siege
One random class defending the siege

And the remaining 15 NPCs form a “cavalry” group that attacks any player approaching any siege.

6. Wall goes down, catapult crews remain, others rush inside.

7. Fight fight fight.

That would be, by far, much better organized than your average player zerg, and not all that hard to code. Its just an event, really.

But that being said, I don’t think an NPC faction would really solve anything.

I’d find it interesting if the Flame legion decided to randomly stage an organized attack on the garrison, but only as an event.

I think hiring mercenaries and war bands using karma could be interesting.