Guild Wars 2

Note: this is a tad long. For the TL:DR, consult the uploaded infographics designed for your convenience.

Orr has problems. Between the past horde of bots mindlessly shuffling about slaying mindless shufflers, the severe annoyance of trying to walk any distance without every necrotic abomination within three leagues trying to chew your ankles off, and the absurd competition between players over getting loot tags, there’s nothing remotely resembling a proper war on the entire continent. Orr is lifeless, and despite the poetic irony, that isn’t particularly fitting for this game. I would thus like to discuss a way to add the spark of life to this husk of a continent, and reanimate it into the spectacular warzone it deserves to be.

Fortunately, all the mechanics already exist in WvW. All Orr needs is a little bit of loving from the mechanisms used in WvW design: destructible fortifications, spontaneous and sustained events, and flexibile AI. Reforging Orr with these systems will allow it to become something unique, a Player Versus Environment persistent warzone. This will require a few basic principles.

All Orrian zones should be level 80. All of them should be proactive, player-driven attack/defend warzones. All of them will require time, coordination, and teamwork to accomplish anything significant, although some content for the lone player will still exist in the form of out-of-the-way delves. The majority of Orr should be essentially empty (none of this undead-every-five-feet tediousness), allowing players to move freely, but the battlezones themselves should be up to our ears in undead foes fighting masses of players, along with all manner of siege equipment for both sides. It will also have world bosses and a way to escalate conflict to break stalemates, thus ensuring that the content should remain fresh. With these principles, Orr can become a truly unique zone, unlike any other area in the game.

This will require four things: revising the map, rethinking siege events, reworking player-led assaults, and redistributing the loot.

The Map

Orr is actually well structured and lovingly rendered, when you aren’t being knawed upon every five feet and have the time to enjoy the view. With a handful of tweaks, the maps can become an excellent warzone. The primary change will be turning current camps and structures into destructible terrain. Rather than have camps with functional gates that get “captured” by undead just shuffling in, these zones can be redone so that the walls and gates can be destroyed, just like in WvW. This will allow the undead to actually lay siege to certain areas.

In turn, the undead controlled areas can get structures of their own. Bone walls and guard towers are already in the game, and it wouldn’t be difficult to allow the undead to claim terrain via their insidious architecture. The goal here is to take existing features of the map (pact bases, major trouble spots, and the temples) and turn them into WvW style objectives. For your convenience, I’ve cobbled together a set of map examples. They’re a tad crude, but hopefully they convey the overall idea.

The Straits of Devastation forms a very simple, intuitive map. Each of the three landings presents a clear chain of conquest, with each area being contested like a MOBA lane. Malchor’s Leap will be a little stranger due to its structure, but should form a decent attack/defend setup. Players must defend the eastern sections in order to launch attacks across the canyon and seize the two temples. Finally, Cursed Shore will form a decent twin pairing, with the north and eastern side of the map independent from the south and west.

But what is a warzone without a proper army? The enemies in Orr are simply not suited to the level of play it needs. Your average rotting corpse may not be the brightest bulb in the bunch, but the overall onslaught needs to be far more crafty and nefarious. The AI for this zone would have to work differently than standard timed events. Instead of kicking things off based on the clock, the undead would periodically launch assaults on the nearest Pact strongholds. Some randomization should likely be included, so if there are three targets available the risen will decide on one or two rather than have a guaranteed progression. With a simple AI in place, the game can commence attacking the living.

So, let’s talk about how to make an undead siege. A good battle against the risen should be a wide affair, with a large number of players scrambling to stave off the horde. It should divide the playerbase between several objectives; clearing the walls, slaying infiltrators, launching assaults against siege equipment, and maintaining the fortifications. To do that, we define four general formations of monsters.

The Frontline attacks the objective directly. The Perimeter plants itself outside the objective and establishes a zone of control. The Siege sets up within the zone established by the Perimeter and starts laying down artillery fire on the objective. And finally, the Sappers are composed of units that can circumvent standard barriers and attack the fort from the inside.

Each siege should randomly decide on a number of forces (scaling upward and outward based on player response) and each type of unit from the above pools. As the event scales upward, it can start drawing from multiple sets for variety.

Finally, I suggest four world bosses running around Orr, capable of attacking any keep or tower during an Escalation.

-Tequatl Twins. A quick look to the sky shows at least three draconic champions of Zaitan, thus allowing for a fight against multiple Tequatl-like creatures at once.

-The Ghost Ship. A spectral version of the sailing pirate ship (which can move, as demonstrated by it sailing away when it wins the shore event) which coasts across land or sea, firing cannons, unleashing pirate raiders, and keel-hauling anyone foolish enough to get in front of it.

-The Soul Well. Retexture the Fire Elemental boss as a rising column of wailing souls and kitten spirits for hexual harassment (NEVER forget to practice safe hex, especially around undead).

-Release the Kraken. Create a world boss made of world bosses, a risen giant squid composed of several individual parts. One shell-encased body (invulnerable, and for show), four attacking tentacles (using the giant wurm model), four siege tentacles (similar to the large claws that fling objects), and two support tentacles (mostly for show), and you’ll have a malevolent monstrosity ready to feed.

The Art of Escalation

Under normal circumstances, a siege is a fairly simple affair. Undead try to break down the gates and walls, enter the keep, and capture the zones. Players attempt to drive them away, break their perimeter and siege, and protect NPC repair crews. The key, however, is to avoid stagnation. Should the players win everything and seize the map, something needs to turn the tide.

And that is Horde Mode.

If the entire zone is controlled by players and a certain amount of time passes, it unlocks Horde Mode. The temples will be besieged with ever-escalating, endless waves of undead, allowing the players to fight truly intense wars until they eventually fall. Not that eventual failure can’t be fun as hell, mind you, since Horde Mode should feature some of the most intense dynamic events in the game. To do so, it should go something like this…

-The battle begins scaling upward above the current player population, eventually becoming a fight meant for 2-3 times the current playerbase.
-Veterans and extra siege equipment are introduced over time.
-World bosses begin stirring, performing strafing runs.
-Champion mobs enter the battlefield.
-A World Boss enters the fray.
-Normal Undead are replaced by veterans.
-Double world bosses attack.
-Keep scaling. The programming should find a way to ensure that the match becomes absolutely unwinnable by the best of teams and almost never occur, but provide for the one in a million possibility with a fun and engaging battle. Break the players or break the server. Either way, crush them!

Fine-tuned, the results should be a battle that is ultimately impossible to win, but fun and rewarding to play. Horde Mode should provide greater rewards the longer players can hold the line, allowing the entire server to come together and give it their all. As long as the rewards match the amount of effort, players will have a strong incentive to hold out as long as possible against the endless undead onslaught.

But the undead aren’t the only ones laying siege. Players need to have fun as well. Developing that content shouldn’t be particularly difficult compared to creating a siege. When the undead control a structure, they should set up a reasonable defense.

-A boss monster and company should patrol a capture ring, much like lords in WvW.
-Towers should have bone walls constructed around the perimeter to block passage.
-These bone walls should have ranged defenders overhead and melee defenders milling about.
-An attack event will trigger a few defender waves with an obscenely high aggro radius.
-Certain special NPCs can be developed to hunt down player siege equipment.

Otherwise, taking an undead fort is much like the current claiming objectives, albeit with more structure. Special bosses like the various priests apply as normal, and certain structures can have objectives (like the Lyssan altar only being accessible when all three seals are claimed).

Speaking of siege weapons, players should gain access to certain pact weaponry via karma. Likewise, the events scattered around the map that are currently just for show could provide bonuses to siege. Help repair the crashed chopper, and the next siege will have aerial bombardment. Assist with gathering a special relic, and it can provide a shield against the next undead siege. These events shouldn’t be scrapped, but they can be easily reconfigured to assist the server’s overall mission.

This will make players the leaders of the war effort, not the followers. No more sitting around passively waiting for an event to start up and let us slay a boss. We take to the field, we determine the time and the place, and we lead the charge to slay every risen abomination on the continent. The NPCs are OUR backup this time, not the other way around. Let nothing stand between us, the enemy, and their shiny objects.

Speaking of shinies (yeah, that was a crude segueway, sue me)….

The loot situation in Orr is toxic. Players currently compete for drops in a way that isn’t remotely healthy for the community. The mantra of PvE in this game is that players should always be a benefit, people you are happy to see. If the loot system is destroying that, the loot system must be changed. To counter this problem, I propose a rather radical solution.

Eliminate loot drops in Orr.

This may sound a tad extreme, but let me allay any negative reactions to the above comment. Loot drops from standard mobs can be completely eliminated in Orr, as long as there is another route: Karma. If Karma in Orr falls like rain, players have a special incentive to play there that is based around overall participation. By providing heavy karma bonuses for Orrian war events along with a proper set of pact vendors, Orr can mimic a fully functional drop system while circumventing the need to tag mobs.

Meanwhile, provide karma with purpose, and lots of it. Give pact vendors a nice selection of karma supplies, including 1) Tier 1-6 loot bags, 2) Supply Crates organized by general equipment type (Artificer, Huntsman, Leather, etc) that contain five random items of that category, 3) Bulk commodities for cooking supplies, especially lower level elements that go into high level recipes, and 4) Salvage stocks, which unpack into several trash items for breakdown. This will cover pretty much everything under the sun, as long as the odds of getting rare equipment from the Crates use the standard loot probabilities. One more thing will seal the deal.

Make claiming temples provide a server-wide karma discount to Orrian vendors. The better your server does at stemming the undead tide, the cheaper it is to buy supplies, get special armor, and deck out your character with all manner of karmarific loot. And since everything is communal, the spirit of camaraderie will always be present.

To allow lone players to have their fun, scatter more daily chests throughout the nooks, crannies, crevices, and crypts of the Orrian countryside. As long as there are a few out-of-the-way areas with a veteran boss and chest, players can still have fun. Likewise, position the majority of the gathering nodes in these areas, thus ensuring that people work a bit for their effort.

TL:DR?

Turn Orr into a WvW warzone, players versus the undead horde. Make us fight for defined objectives in a proactive manner, allowing players to lead the fight rather than wait around for events to spawn. Use destructible terrain and spontaneous capture/control events to make Orr an all out Server Versus Dragonspawn war. Get rid of distractions such as mob tagging and let players focus on achieving victory together, and Orr will be a continent upon which legends are forged.