Guild Wars 2

I’ve been trying to get my World Completion but for the last month or so I’ve been stuck on the “clear the red WvW Borderlands” portion, because my server has never been red during that period, and other servers have been able to hold the locations I’ve needed access to. I think that so long as WvW is necessary for world completion, there needs to be a way for individuals to gain access to keeps controlled by opposing servers. My suggestion would be a “white flag.”

This could be a potion, it could be a piece of gear. It would be available at a reasonable price, and it would server two primary functions.
*It would allow a player to pass through ANY “color gate” on the map, as if they were a member of the appropriate server. This would allow players to enter keeps held by opposing teams.
*It would make players “friendly” to all opposing team members, and therefore unable to be fired upon. Of course the “white flag” player could not make an attack either.

Now I realize that those traits alone could prove extremely unbalancing, so I’m looking for help in fleshing out what traits would be necessary to offset these benefits. Here are a few I’ve considered, one or perhaps even all of these could be applied as necessary:

*Once you activate this ability, you cannot deactivate it without leaving the WVW battlegrounds completely. This would prevent players sneaking into an enemy base and turning off this protection to go on a rampage.
*All chat options would be disabled, preventing flagged players from acting as scouts for the rest of their team (or at least not any better than a player who second-boxes a character on the enemy’s servers and communicates to his team via non-game means).
*While flagged, enemy siege engines, and perhaps even enemy players would be invisible, making it impossible in any way for the flagged player to scout out enemy positions and strengths. This would work since while flagged those elements would be irrelevant to the player anyway.

Any other suggestions on how to tighten it up? I just feel that this is necessary so long as WvW territory is necessary to complete PvE goals, and so long as the battlegrounds are not on a fair rotation that gives players easy access to each of the three colors within a reasonable period of time.

Well thought-out notion. I dislike WvW but have nothing against having to “complete” the WvW maps. I just don’t want to participate in the WvW. But it would probably just be easier to make the WvW maps NOT a requirement (for monthly achievements as well). Otherwise those of us who dislike WvW are at a disadvantage.

People would find ways to exploit your suggestion. You can’t have one side invisible to the other because of SKILL POINTS. Often, defeating a monster is required. Everyone should remain visible to everybody else.

And if nobody is invisible, then even if gagged from chat, people would still use Ventrilo to pass on enemy positions.

So simple removal of WvW from the requirement is easiest and best. If it is important enough, you can also change servers for free for a week too, can’t you? You’d be a week without your regular companions, which would be a pain. But perhaps you might discover new friends. And one of you might convince the other to move “permanently” if you prefer the population of one server over another.

People would find ways to exploit your suggestion. You can’t have one side invisible to the other because of SKILL POINTS. Often, defeating a monster is required. Everyone should remain visible to everybody else.

True, but if you were auto-friendly to the other servers then it still wouldn’t matter. They couldn’t hurt you, you couldn’t hurt them, if you both wanted to take on the skillpoint mob then the game would treat you as if you were playing it on a PvE map, or taking on the challenge with WvW players of your own server.

And if nobody is invisible, then even if gagged from chat, people would still use Ventrilo to pass on enemy positions.

Yeah, I considered that, but the same is true for double-boxers. If you want to be a jerky scout you can just have a second account with access to the opponent’s servers and use out of game chat to communicate info to your real server. This would be slightly easier, but still a hassle.

So simple removal of WvW from the requirement is easiest and best. If it is important enough, you can also change servers for free for a week too, can’t you? You’d be a week without your regular companions, which would be a pain. But perhaps you might discover new friends. And one of you might convince the other to move “permanently” if you prefer the population of one server over another.

I started on my server and plan to end on my server. I don’t believe world transfers should be a casual affair, especially when you have to do so for a week at a time, even when the objectives you’d like to complete would only take fifteen minutes to do. Maybe when guesting is in or something.

The issue only comes up if a server ends up the same color week after week. (Assuming ANet wants to keep WvW maps for map completion.) This could be resolved for making sure that never happens more than two weeks in a row. If that were true, everyone should have access to a third of each of the maps for at least a day or two every week.

I don’t play WvW that much, so what I did is checked on late Thu (when some people lose interest) and Fri/Sat (when my server is guaranteed to hold a portion of the map).

That would also be great, but they don’t rotate maps properly. Mine’s been blue or green for the past month and a half or so.

Ohoni.6057:

That would also be great, but they don’t rotate maps properly. Mine’s been blue or green for the past month and a half or so.

“This could be resolved for making sure that never happens more than two weeks in a row. If that were true, everyone should have access to a third of each of the maps for at least a day or two every week.”

the flag idea could be purchasable in the starting areas. make it a back piece. make it cost 2 silver, or a skill point. make it so it is always visible, as well. would like to have it look like below…

Only if it comes with a /bonjour emote.

Jrunyon.3012:

Only if it comes with a /bonjour emote.

I lol’d

I all seriousness though, I have thought about something similar myself but it is not necessary and also besides the point. If you wait a week for the wvw resets, your server will often switch sides, allowing you to get completion you couldn’t get while it was enemy territory. You can also organize and army and take the points you couldn’t get by yourself :P Worse comes to worse you can always switch servers. Just take note of who red/green/blue are.

This is actually a pretty nice idea. I like the potion idea since it’s the least intrusive. I would totally be down for the back-flag idea except that (in the case that ANet EVER IMPLEMENTS SOME SORT OF FIRST-PERSON CAMERA MODE LIKE THEY HAD IN GUILD WARS 1) it would look a little silly if, say, a group of people were to try and film a machinma in WvW somewhere. Suddenly everyone has back-flags! Hurray!

But in all seriousness, this would be a great convenience for a lot of people and I support it. The only danger would be if one world decided to abuse it by filling their WvW roster with non-combatants, thus reducing their world’s overall warpower.