Guild Wars 2

I am one of the people who are a little concerned that the “winning team” in WvW could use a little bit more opposition for being in lead. Many times both “losing teams” attack each other and I have yet to see real cooperation to kick the current number one. Part of me believes that this will maybe never happen. (After all, all enemies are red and drop loot.)

I have a suggestion how PvE style events could help to balance the relative strength. I call this the Release the Kraken proposition. It is nothing which could be implemented immediately, but it uses only game mechanics that are already in place so it may be an option for the future.

The idea is as follows: Assume that in each map there is an additional area which is equally accessible to all three parties, such as the jumping puzzle in EB (but I guess it should better be new area). The center of this area should be hard to get to (traps, jumping puzzle, enemy interference, and all that stuff). At the center is a shrine/place of power/red button or whatever. This MacGuffin can be activated by any player from any team. (It should not be able to activate for some hours after a match started, and it should not be able to be activated for some hours again after it had been pushed.)

Once activated the following happens: A huge creature is summoned to appear at one random castle/keep/tower of the leading team (equal chances, but at locations controlled by the leading team only!). This could be a Kraken rising from a lake to attack Dreaming Bay, Gojira approaching Stonemist Castle, or whatever fits the mood. The creature is out to complete and utterly destroy the stronghold and anything in its way. This means that even maximized guards should not be a threat to it, and it should take an opposition of at least 30-40 players to make it a fair fight.

The idea is that the creature should be a serious distraction to the dominating team. It should be as if a small “4th faction” joined in the fight. If it remains unopposed for too long it will shatter walls and doors and ruin money and resources spent to the fortification. (Maybe it should even be able to “downgrade” already made improvements.) And it won’t go away until it has been beaten. So it should be a problem that the leading team has to address immediately, and this should give the two other teams an opportunity to push forward.

Plus, with the shrine/place of power/red button there would be another objective that is worth fighting for. The leading team should try to block any other faction that tries to unleash the beast, and both other teams have a fair motivation to activate it. Plus, since it can be activated by any player of any faction, both loosing teams do have a real incentive to cooperate in the mini dungeon. When they don’t attack each other, they might outnumber the defense 2:1.

I am sure that there are many practical problems with this suggestion, but I really think with a little bit of professional game development mojo a concept like this could be realized in GW2. Personally, I would really like to see events to take a more active role in WvW than just to cash out rewards for conquest and defense.

tldr: Let world events distract the leading team to give the two other teams a chance to catch up.

~MRA

I actually love this idea.

Although, I feel like there shouldn’t be a “button” that unleashes Godzilla. I think that instead the game should use it whenever there is a need. For example, say Bob’s server has 150,000 points, compared Billy’s server (who is in second place) who has 50,000 points.

The game would then see that there is some kind of imbalance, and then a DE would spawn that would give the other servers a fighting chance. That could be a Quaggan uprising, Risen attacking, or a giant, scary, violent Rabbit attacking everything in sight.

The only issue is that these events can’t be too difficult, and they can’t happen too often. Otherwise, you’d see a lot of hate coming from the winning side.

The ideal WvW is for all three servers to be in a match that is equally fair and challenging, and that’s difficult to achieve. I’m not sure if this idea would fix that, but I’m all for trying to defend Stonemist from a murderous Rabbit.

Holy Hand Grenade, anyone?

More PVE in PVP? I think there should be less… This would just give more power to the already dominating server. If they have more people/organization, they can just camp the godzilla button like the hold the central castle all the time. Sure, the losing server could take it sometimes, but the majority of the time it will be taken by the big servers kicking butts.

Kal.2376:

More PVE in PVP? I think there should be less… This would just give more power to the already dominating server. If they have more people/organization, they can just camp the godzilla button like the hold the central castle all the time. Sure, the losing server could take it sometimes, but the majority of the time it will be taken by the big servers kicking butts.

There is no power gain for the dominating server in my suggestion. Maybe they are organized enough to camp the location, but, more importantly, the SHOULD do so, since a failure there would cost them dearly. And they are facing two faction who really have no reason not to cooperate on this objective. This is a diversion that essentially weakens the position of th leading server.

After all, the idea isn’t meant to cripple a well-organized server, but rather to make it a little bit more difficult to be in lead.

~MRA

I agree with MRA. The power well controlled servers would obviously have this camped in some method or another. It would be like the jumping puzzle where you have 30 evil villains chilling on the traps to make everyones life hell.

Although I like where your head’s at, you are right. This idea has several glaring practical problems, as has already been mentioned.

1) If the leading team is dominating so badly they won’t have trouble defending one more objective, especially when that is guarded by puzzles, traps, and neither of the two lesser teams are organized and cooperating. You make it sound like the other two servers will team up to take this Magic Button. . they won’t. They’ll zerg it and murder eachother on the way in, making it a joke for the top team to fend them off.

2) This ultimately does nothing to change the balance of the matchup, because the only thing that can achieve such balance is cooperation from the lesser teams to defeat the greater. It provides temporary relief of the symptoms, but the disease is still there. aka Cool but ultimately Ineffective.

3) PvP has to have a winner and a loser. It is not supposed to hold your hand. It is not supposed to make everyone equal, or cater to anyone. This is an important concept to get across because of the following: PvP = player created content. The dynamic environment of WvW is built on the framework of a few castles and towers Anet gave us. But the ebb and flow of battle, the organization of one server against the others, is all player driven.

You start notching that down by introducing arbitrary game mechanics to limit or redirect a player’s intentions and you go down a dark and dismal road where an already safey feeling game becomes totally oppressive.

actually, i think there is merit to the idea…

WvW while it is pvp, does still have pve elements already.

there is a big grub that spawns sometimes in the eternal battleground. its super awesome fun to kill.

really tense, watching out for invaders coming to steal grub.
what could be cool would be a couple more of them (not up all or even most of the time) but more agressive… if left alone they head towards a base and start attacking the walls/gate.

this would create opportunities for players to capitalise on and incentives defending /upgrading bases.

maybe even have one that give a server-wide buff for the next hour or something, just to give your zergs a bit of an edge (if worried about the “strong get stronger” problem, just make it that you only get the buff if score is X or something like that)

but i don’t think that player control over this phenomenon is necessarily a good idea.
the clever can work out how to use it as an opportunity (MAYBE make some kind of way of directing it… example: go give 1000 supply to ogre camp, they call in a huge ogre who attacks a nearby enemy camp.. though this example is kinda like building a seige golem… the theory is that a small team of players could pull it off under the noses of strong enemy presence and that it allows for opportunities to cause mayhem without the need for a zerg )

so yeah, i think that dynamic events should play a bigger part in WvW… some of my most fun experiences there so far have been when an event tied with a battle (there was a time where mosquitoes where in the swamp, we were killing them and then the enemy counter-zerged quentin… man it was intense trying to finish off the mosquitoes in the midst of the zerg {and yes i am aware that it was a terrible idea to divert resources from the fight to such trivial things, but it was the best thing to do in that situation})

Lord Jaguar.9504:

3) PvP has to have a winner and a loser.

While you are certainly correct with this point I would argue that in WvW (as opposed to sPvP), the “fun” more important than the “competition”. It is designed as “the casual gamers PvP”, and I would think that this was the right move.

I am a little afraid that many players (up to 2/3 of the players?) could get frustrated during a two week match if they have to face a stronger enemy and do not really have many tools at hand to oppose them (at least, that is what they might think). I would credit lots of the whining here in the forum to this frustration. With such an option or any similar mechanic, a loosing team might say: “Well, I may not be able to beat your world in the scores, but I will be kitten if I do not at least send you that godkitten motherkittening kitten up your kittens to trash all your precious toys! (evil laughter)”

And, again, I would never vote for an idea that cripples the leading team. Just give a little strain to one in lead, and a little bit of hope to the other two.

~MRA

Crimifa.2361:

there is a big grub that spawns sometimes in the eternal battleground. its super awesome fun to kill. really tense, watching out for invaders coming to steal grub.

what could be cool would be a couple more of them (not up all or even most of the time) but more agressive… if left alone they head towards a base and start attacking the walls/gate.

this would create opportunities for players to capitalise on and incentives defending /upgrading bases.

This is also an interesting idea.

Crimifa.2361:

(if worried about the “strong get stronger” problem, just make it that you only get the buff if score is X or something like that)

Yes, I would be worried, as I would be about any mechanism that allows the dominating team to gain something from it. We already see this problem with the orbs in the Borderlands. A balancing mechanism should always work as follows: who’s in lead can only lose unless they act, and who’s behind can only win if they try.

~MRA