Guild Wars 2

Ok, the scenario is, your server has taken a keep, and the zerg has moved on to the next keep, you and a few others are left behind by the commanders, with an order of ‘beef up the defenses’ get supply etc.

Now this role can be important, and on quickly changing battle fields quite exciting, but in general , its as boring as hell, and useless. because beside acting as a scout, the numbers still win it, if an enemy zerg shows up, you’re screwed unless your own zerg gets there in time. But in the mean time ,you sit around /dancing and running supply etc, sometimes for many hours, being very bored.

So what to do? well, we already know that fighting will keep it interesting, so have some npcs (krait/dredge etc) attack every now and then, only a few at first, so a few players could handle them, but if ignored will eventually add up and take the fort.

Now this isnt meant to aid either side, just to keep defenders busy, if an opponent runs in the npcs will attack them too, as to not provide the attackers with an advantage.

An additional side effect of this is that every few hours, if a keep hasn’t been visited at all by anyone, it will eventually fall to the npcs, becoming a rouge keep until claimed.

Another side effect is it forces more people to scout, and it will help split players from only running in one big zerg.

I like the basic idea of “give defenders something to do”, but I don’t like the idea of Keeps being completely overwhelmed by NPCs. I think it would be more useful to have friendly Keeps periodically spawn Dynamic Events for the defenders to perform (each of which serves a dual purpose as a mini-tutorial).

• [Siege Engine Practice] Targets spawn at various locations around the Keep (a few in arrow-cart range, more in cannon or ballista range, a few farther away for catapult practice). Defenders can shoot the targets for the usual Event participation rewards, but will also gain practical experience in using catapults and trebuchets. This DE will also encourage new players to “refresh” siege engine timers, even if they don’t know about the despawn behaviour. If the keep has no siege whatsoever then the event will fail, so defenders will have an incentive to deploy at least one AC.

• [Stop the Skritt Thieves] CC-resistant Skritt Thieves spawn outside the keep and enter through the doors. They will make trips back and forth, removing supplies from the keep’s stockpile each time, until they’re eliminated by defenders. For balance reasons, they shouldn’t be able to completely drain a keep even if it’s left completely undefended; perhaps the DE will fail automatically if the stockpile falls below 50%. This event is intended to remind new players that their usual CC → Nuke combos may not work in WvW, because their opponents (most importantly: human players) can quickly shrug off many control effects.

• [Patrol the Perimeter] Players will be called up on to “capture” a number of very small control points within the keep. A lone player should be able to sweep the area in a few minutes, pausing at each point long enough to “capture” it and satisfy the objective. If there are many defenders then they could split up and complete the Event more quickly. The control points should be selected randomly from a set of locations which are strategically important (e.g. gates) and others which are known to be popular hiding places for enemy Thieves and Mesmers.

The respawn rate on these events should be fairly low (perhaps one event per 5 minutes?) and they should probably be automatically ended if an actual attack occurs. Defenders who are strategically manning a fortress will gain some minor participation rewards and (hopefully) stave off boredom; new/casual defenders will tend to move between forts in order to farm events (thereby learning the maps, passively scouting, and exposing themselves to fights/ganks); and we’ll see less PvDoor action since attackers would be more likely to encounter at least a token defense force behind any given set of walls.

I like patrol the perimeter and siege engine practice. I do not enjoy the idea of stop the skritt thieves unless they’re job mobs that spawn inside the keep.

I think that pervertparade’s suggestions are good, and @ runeblade, I think the idea here is to come up with a better method of distributing players in WvW,
Some of these ideas will definitely be annoying in practice, but I think it is important that we come up with a serious way of getting people to hang around in keeps. It would mean that their zerg’s are smaller, and gathering a large zerg would leave you at risk, behind the lines, but at the moment, there is no down side from the game side to running with the zerg, WvW is a numbers game. from a player side it can have downsides like lag, culling etc. but if people spread out more..

I like the mob idea but we sort of already have that with mercenary camps and they honestly don’t do very much.

I suppose a wild “champion uppity mob” could appear every now and then with a small escort to a fortification that hasn’t been under attack by enemy players in a while. They would weaken the front gates and smack any dolyaks trying to deliver supplies. It then helps to have a few players break off from the zerg to make sure and kill it before it busts the door down.

We know that usually a tower with the door down is as good as capped, so the mob doesn’t actually have to cap it to be a serious problem. After the door is down though, the champ should run off and despawn, not loiter around the entrance adding insult to injury.

To avoid the champions getting killed steadily by guards though, they should have mechanics to fight that, like self-heals, lifesteals, or regen. They would also have to code it so that defense events dont trigger for the whole structure raising false alarms and locking waypoints. Killing the champion should be the event.

Bonus points if a few are champion trolls, perhaps spawning under bridges.

events similar to pervertparade.7146 i like, though it should not be stuff that actually steals supplies as such, that could severely hamper the defence, when the actual enemy shows up.