Guild Wars 2

(Naturally the first step is to put Orbs back in the game and ban/fix the hacking. But with this change, even occasional hacks shouldn’t cause too much trouble.)

One of the huge problems with the Orb bonuses is that holding an Orb made it more difficult to take the orb, or a keep, to the point that it could become a snowball effect. Basically, if you were winning already, Orbs would ensure you keep winning.

One of the glaring flaws with the Outmanned buff is that it does not help outnumbered players recover at all. Its bonuses—magic find, exp, karma—encourage PvE behavior, not PvP fights. Players are not motivated to join and fight with the buff, because the buff does not help them fight. In short, having the Outmanned buff on a map gave you an incentive to completely give up, and just farm mobs or do a jump puzzle.

The obvious, elegant solution is to swap the buffs. Make holding an Orb give you the PvE buffs (stacking up to 3 times), and the Outmanned buff gives you the HP/stat boost (maybe scaling up with how badly you are outnumbered).

This way, even if a server holds all 3 Orbs, it would not cement their grip on the week’s match. It will reward that server’s players with greater rewards from the PvE environment within WvW, giving them something to do if the other servers stop showing up. It is a boost without a match-breaking effect: still worth pursuing, but not powerful enough to determine who wins.

At the same time, Outmanned servers won’t feel automatically crushed. They will have a slight buff that can still be overcome by numbers, but gives them the edge needed to defend their last holdings, or to win numerically even skirmishes, or to take camps and other “starter” objectives with their lower numbers.

It won’t solve the zerg problem, or the turtle problem, or PvDoor silliness, or other snowballing effects. But at least it gets the mechanics moving in the right direction.