Guild Wars 2

To start, I have to say WvW is fun. It really is. The idea of it, the goals, there are lots of good things in it that make it completely awesome. However, it is not perfect, and I would like to propose a change. Currently, WvW uses the same currency as PVE, and the siege items have a fixed cost. Also, it has repair costs. That brings a huge glaring issue:

No money, no siege…

That in itself separates people in the WvW map. It does not matter if I’m a GOD that can kill 20 defending players single-handedly while catching ballista shots with my teeth, and kicking catapult bullets back at the launcher while getting tickled by arrow carts… If I have no money, I cannot place any siege at all… New players also fall in this category as well. The cheapest siege weapon (the ram), costs 6 silver. It’s a long time before a low level player can come up with that money, and even more before he has enough spare to purchase one.

The proposal would be to separate the currency in WvW from the currency in PVE. So when we kill a player, we automatically receive this currency. Let’s call it “contribution”. So killing players grants XP and contribution. Capturing objectives (or killing dolyaks) rewards XP, karma, and contribution. Any action in a WvW map awards contribution that can be used to purchase siege plans, or camp/tower/keep upgrades. Also, player dropped loot bags no longer contain gear. So there will be much less lootbags, but what they can contain, are random siege plans for example.

That way, the lowest level player can still “contribute” to the overall battle (just as much as high level one), while the rich player outside the WvW game cannot just come in and pay for all the keep upgrades, and place 6 arrow carts in a camp just like that. Of course, this brings a couple of issues that need to be addressed as well:

-What happens to repair costs? Will we have to use contribution?
I would say we need to remove all gear damage from PVP. It discourages experimentation (I’m going to try to solo that dolyak and guards), and it encourages to join the zerg (less chance of dying), or just quitting the when losing. The long walk we need to take to get back to the battle is penalty enough for me.

-Anet promised you can level and gear yourself in WvW.
This is a good point, and we still get experience so we can level. For gear, place vendors that sell all tiers of armor. Lvl 5, 10, 15, all the way to 80. So people can still level and get gear from WvW.

So that should take care of that. Now that we have this system, we can even take another step to help balancing. The servers with the highest score should get less contribution when killing/capturing, than the servers with the lowest score. That would give a certain defending bonus. Defenders can build more siege to defend their holdings, or get more siege to attack.

This way you can play WvW all you like without losing or getting any money, but you can still level, get gear, and spend in siege weapons depending on how much you contribute to WvW. No need to farm for tons of gold outside WvW just to you can place a trebuchet. As always, comments, flames, etc, are welcome.

Hum… No comments, and just a few views… I should work on my titles better I should have added a “kitten” somewhere… People seem to like kittens…

Ok, last time I bump this. I’m even more convinced now that WvW should not be affected by currency from PVE.

3 days ago, we were having a nice battle in our borderlands. We had the central keep and the north towers camps, our enemies had the side keeps and south towers. We were pretty balanced. We had lots of supplies in each base/tower, so did the enemy.

Then a commander logged in (I do not think he was really good leading people. but that is another matter), and he placed down 12 golems to build. We built them up, and went and capture one of the heavily defended side keeps… Ok, that was pretty overbalanced… It took us 15 mins or so to change the balance of the map.

Then he went ahead and did the same thing again to take the other side keep… So in about 30-35 mins, he pretty much completely changed the balance of the game. Simple because he had a lot of external gold. I really think that should be changed.

For what it’s worth, I think there should be a greater separation between PvP and PvE, across the board. My opinion, however, is not a popular one.

I actually have to agree, Arenanet did say that WvW, sPvP and PvE would be all seperated from each other, so that one doens’t bog down the other.
sPvP knows it’s own currency for buying boxes called “honor”

I’m not entirely sure it should be called “contribution” but your idea seems much to the point, and i’d like to see it.

Ex