Treat WvW more like sPvP

Treat WvW more like sPvP

in Suggestions

Posted by: Roy.7405

Roy.7405

As a fan of the Alliance Battles(AB) and Fort Aspenwood PvP formats in GW1, I personally would like to see some changes to WvW that encourage defending and different play styles, as well as making it more tolerable to continue playing even with little hope of winning. To explain some of the issues I have with WvW, I will use AB from GW1 as an example, which I enjoyed because there was little punishment for experimentation and defeat.

To start off, for me personally, armor repair is my biggest gripe with WvW, which excessively punishes defeat and discourages defensive heroism. Whether its a 2 v 5, 4 v 10, etc, the current system encourages retreating from battle instead of taking a stand against a numerically superior opponent. Repair costs discourage defending when outnumbered, because you risk incurring an armor repair cost should/when you fail and death removes you from the battle for a long period of time due to traveling distances. In AB (at least in the early years), even if you faced an opponent who outnumbered you, you still had an incentive to defend a shrine because it would slow down your opponent and you could return in less than 2 minutes, without worrying about a bill. Now in WvW, if you stand your ground you not only get repair costs/bill (a punishment for death that doesn’t exist in GW1) but it can be well over 5 minutes before you can find, let alone reasonably fight, another opponent.

Also, over the course of a week, it becomes quite clear who will win and who lose a matchup; for various reasons. Because of this, near the end of the matchup for some people it becomes more about the experience than hope of victory. If that experience comes with a repair bill and running around to avoid enemy mobs, it discourages people from coming out, producing a spiral of lessening participation.

As for rewards, the reward of AB during the early years was the experience, win or loss (in my opinion). There were no Zkeys or rankings, and pretty much the only physical reward for winning was that you could donate faction to your guild. If you lost, there was always next time and there was no punishment for failure (aside from the map). However, imagine that if every time you lost you got a bill (armor repair). It would dampen the experience for you, especially if you couldn’t afford it and had to leave to avoid further bills.

From a few of my games in sPvP, I recognized that there were a couple of elements that could be taken from that format and applied to WvW to make it more enjoyable (or at least less painful) for the losing side while still allowing the 2 to be different, distinct PvP formats.

Remove armor repair:
Personally, I feel that the punishment for defeat is defeat and that the reward for victory is victory. You don’t need to punish the loser more by telling them to go pay a bill; that discourages them from playing.

PvP split skills in WvW (optional):
Possibly have skills that were split between PvE and PvP versions have their PvP versions active in WvW. In WvW you are still fighting other players, so I would imagine that skills that are unbalanced in sPvP are also unbalanced in WvW when competing against players. I have yet to notice any of the split PvE skills affect a battle (mostly because I don’t which ones are split), but I imagine that these balance issues could appear amongst an organized guild group. Racial skills (which are banned in sPvP) would still be allowed in WvW.

PvP armor and skill set in WvW (if possible):
I realize that this 1 may be difficult to implement due to the current way PvP armor is handled. To me, 1 of the great aspects of GW1 PvP was that you could quickly create a PvP character and experiment with whatever build and max armor setup you want (assuming you’d unlocked the appropriate items), and if there was something you didn’t like about your build you could change it quickly. If your team had lost a battle in AB, you could stay in the outpost for a couple of minutes and change your builds. Now imagine however, that if in order to do that you had to pay a fee for losing (armor repair) and pay a fee to change your skills (trait retrainer). I doubt that AB would have been nearly as popular under those circumstances.

My suggestion is to allow players to use either their PvE or PvP armor and weapons in WvW (no partial sets; all PvE or all PvP). Upon entering WvW, a player’s build is saved automatically (like a skill template) and restored upon leaving or logging out. While in WvW, players will be free to reassign their traits or change armor types (to PvE or PvP) while in the safety of their world’s main/starting base.

Treat WvW more like sPvP

in Suggestions

Posted by: Roy.7405

Roy.7405

Respawn timers:
From what I could tell, armor repair’s main purpose was to reduce the quantity of people returning to battle after death by making them consider repair costs. With repair costs gone, a new way of slowing down people from reentering battle will be needed. Using a respawn timer (such as the ones in sPvP) would better fulfill this role. Coupled with the amount of time it would take to rereach the battlefield, the attacking (or defending) side would still have enough time to potentially take advantage of an opponent’s death.
I recognize that in order to make these changes, a couple of other aspects of WvW may have to change as well:
Reduce the quantity and/or quality of drops from PvE monsters.
I highly doubt people would come to WvW to fight solely against PvE monsters, but removing armor repair costs may make this a tempting option for a tiny number of people to farm creatures with little risk (and of course there are better options in PvE anyways). Reducing the drops would probably not have a significant impact on WvW players, since they are busy attacking other players and not PvE monsters.

Resource/Gathering nodes
I don’t foresee this being an issue, but just in case I’ll mention it. If safe resource farming becomes an issue, replace rich nodes with regular nodes and possibly reduce the number of nodes. Again, there are better PvE options anyways so I don’t foresee this being an issue.

Reduce Coin Rewards for Events
With the removal of armor repair, the major cost factor for most WvW players will be removed. Thus, to prevent inflation, the rewards for completing events would need to be reduced. For those players who typically lose money in WvW due to repair costs, this means their budget goes from negative to a very slight positive, without causing inflation. For those players who already made money in WvW, they will continue to make money (at a reduced rate), now without having to worry about armor repair.

The next 2 aspects would need to be balanced with both in mind in a way that doesn’t negatively alter the way WvW is played:
Reduce cost of siege blueprints
Due to the reduced rewards from events, some players may complain that siege blueprints are too expensive. To deal with this, the cost of siege blueprints may need to be reduced slightly. However, they should not be reduced to the point where buying blueprints becomes purely trivial.

Increase health/armor of siege weapons
The removal of armor repair costs may encourage some players to rush in and deal as much damage as possible to siege weapons without concern for survival. Even though protecting your world’s siege weapons is already done by players, extra help may be needed against to deal with these players/strategies. In order to deal with this, the health/armor of siege weapons may need to be increased. This should be done with consideration to the reduced price of siege weapons, to prevent the map from being filled with high health, cheap siege weapons.

Badges and Loot
The rate at which these drop may need to be adjusted should there be a significant change in the number of deaths in WvW.

As for the actual silver cost and stats of siege weapons, loot rate, etc, I will be leaving that up to ArenaNet since they may have the market and battle data to choose the appropriate numbers.

Treat WvW more like sPvP

in Suggestions

Posted by: Zharion Sirocai.2786

Zharion Sirocai.2786

I was just talking about this today, actually. I see a lot of people who only play WvW for the karma gold etc, and this generally entices people into a “attack everything defend nothing” mindset. Rarely will you see anyone stop to actually defend the tower/camp/ etc they just took.
I would love to have no armor repair, and i believe lowering coin gain would offset the gold saved, so people wouldnt just farm wvw.
I would also like the commander icon to be removed, add a variant “guild commander” who can only be seen by guildies, or add the option to hide the icon. But, im not expecting miracles.

Treat WvW more like sPvP

in Suggestions

Posted by: Taldren.7523

Taldren.7523

Keep it simple, stupid.

Create a new ruleset for WvW …

Add a WvW rank system. XP for the ranks (or Realm Points for you DAoC players) would be based on the player’s rank when he/she is killed. XP is split between party members equally, but is split between multiple groups proportionally to each groups contribution to the kill with a minimum of 1 WvW rank xp.

Each rank would also be worth an amount of WvW specific karma points (or bounty points for you Dark Age types) that could be used to buy items such as armor, weapons, siege equipment, ect.

Every Rank level you would get 1 WvW skill point to buy WvW specific utility and elite abilities (or Realm Ability’s for you DAoC nubs) that can only be used in WvW zones. These abilities would not be more powerful than standard abilities, but are more focused on WvW needs.

Remove the down state from WvW.

Sounds perfect to me.

80 Elementalist (RotV), 80 Mesmer (RotV)
80 Necromancer (IRNY), 80 Guardian (IRNY)
GW2: it’s like DAoC, but for the WoW crowd.