Guild Wars 2

tl;dr: Skim through and read the bold to get the general ideas. Read non-bold for specifics.

Changes to Currency

I feel that changes to WvW currency are necessary to increase its accessibility and interdependence from the other aspects of the game. WvW would benefit from a system much closer to glory or karma than to dungeon currency. Here’s my thoughts on an “Honor” system (using same name just to illustrate):

• Honor is rewarded like experience for performing a variety of actions in WvW. It is not collected in bags but ticks above your head passively in the same way as experience, or is given through event rewards.
• Honor is used to purchase siege equipment, barter items, and fortification upgrades. Gold is still used for repairs and karma still for the non-exotic vendor.
• Every player you contribute to the death of grants you Honor in addition to Experience. Buffing or healing players who in turn kill enemy players should also count as death contribution.
• Dynamic Events grant either Honor or Karma in addition to Experience and Gold. Events like killing an NPC or capturing a sentry point, basically anything that’s unlikely to involve opposing players actively preventing, grant Karma. Fortification assault/defense, capturing an orb, killing a dolyak, and other such events grant Honor.
• In addition to personal Honor, a certain percentage of all Honor gained by a player while representing a guild is also added into Guild Honor.
• Guild Honor can be directly used to purchase Guild Siege Equipment and is the only currency that can be used to purchase Tier 3 Keep/Tower upgrades and Tier 2 Supply Camp upgrades. Guild Honor can also be converted into Influence.
• Guild Honor is used to purchase the Commander’s Compendium, rather than gold. This enables guilds that contribute to WvW extensively to field commanders to represent them, while keeping the cost prohibitive enough.

I’ve not put specific numbers to the relative cost/reward in any of this because that would take the focus away from the theoretical basis of the system and put it on potential balancing issues.

Guild Fortification Claiming

It’s fairly obvious that the fortification claiming system needs work. Anybody can simply claim a keep if they’re the first ones to click claim when it’s available. The keep then flies their banners even though they may not be the ones putting in the money to defend the keep, or actively defending the keep. The changes I propose are:

• Every fortification has a sphere of influence. This is already dictated by the range on the dynamic event for defense. Actions by a guild within this range count towards their Claimant Power to the fortification.
• Actions which increase Claimant Power include but are not limited to: assisting in the capture of the fortification (moderate), placing siege weapons within the fortification (low), killing players/siege within the range of the defense event (low), purchasing lower tier upgrades for the fortification (t1/t2) (high), purchasing higher tier upgrades for the fortification (t3) (very high).
• The top five guilds in Claimant Power can be determined by talking to the claiming NPC. Any member of the guild with the top Claimant Power at a given time who has the permission to claim fortifications will be presented with the option to do so.
• If the fortification is already claimed, a new claimant needs 25% more Claiming Power than the current claimant in order to claim it, to curb back and forth trading.
• A guild may still only claim one fortification at a time, so if they claim a new fortification the previous claim reverts to neutral.
• If the fortification remains neutral for a certain number of hours, any Top 5 claimant can initially claim it, to prevent the scenario where the top claimant has another claim and passively prevents anyone from claiming it.

This system still has its flaws I’m sure, but it ensures that the guild flying its banners on a fortification is always the guild who has put the most work into the capture, maintenance, and defense of that fortification. It also enables guilds to move their claim around to some extent, so that a very large and influential guild that initially claims a borderlands keep might shift their focus to Stonemist Castle if captured and become the top claimant in that more prominent and important location. You may also say that this could result in internal conflict between guilds, to which I say great. Having the potential for internal conflict as well as external makes things all the more exciting.

(Continued [character limit])

Guild Fortification Claiming Incentives

The second part of the change is in the way that guilds are rewarded for their WvW claims. Notoriety is already covered in the top five claimant listing and the already present banner system. However, guilds should also get some tangible benefits for their investments in time and resources. A rough outline of such a system would be:

• A fortification claimed by a guild grants that guild bonuses, similar to the world bonuses the gradual accumulation of points grants. As a rule these bonuses should have minimal effect on combat effectiveness in WvW.
• The greater the fortification, the greater the multiplier on bonuses. Stonemist > Keep > Tower > Supply Camp.
• The bonuses gradually accumulate the longer the fortification is held. A guild thus has to decide if changing claims to a new fortification due to strategic value or increase in multiplier is worth wiping out the bonuses from the previously claimed fortification, making claims a more thoughtful decision.
• If the fortification claimed by a guild is claimed by another guild with higher claimant power, the bonuses the first guild has acquired begin to deteriorate at the inverse rate they accumulated until either the fortification is re-claimed or they switch their claim to another fortification.

Again, I don’t list specific bonuses here because the specifics are less important than the principles of the system, so I don’t want to get caught up on those.

Outmanned Buff Changes

Institute a tiered outmanned buff for when you have 75% of the people of the leading server, 50% of the people, and 25% of the people. The goal should be to encourage fighting on the part of the losing servers, without creating a grossly unfair gap in combat effectiveness during even numbers fights.

• 75% Buff (“Disadvantaged”): +5% Magic Find, +10% Experience Gains, +10% Currency Gains
• 50% Buff (“Outmanned”): +5 Supply Capacity, -5% Damage Taken, -50% Armor Damage from Defeat, +15% Magic Find, +25% Experience Gains, +25% Currency Gains
• 25% Buff (“Overwhelmed”): +10% Movement Speed (stacks w/ buffs), +25% Damage to NPCs, +10 Supply Capacity, -15% Damage Taken, -100% Armor Damage from Defeat, +25% Magic Find, +40% Experience Gains, +40% Currency Gains

The magic find, experience gains, and currency gains are transferred from the current buff, except you get to benefit from some degree of them sooner than 4:1 odds. At 2:1 and 4:1 odds you take half and no damage to armor, thus mitigating the monetary weight of constantly dying. Similarly you take a small amount less damage passively, which should offset the orb buffs a little. Your supply capacity is increased so that fewer people can still make siege weapons a factor in their tactics. At 4:1 odds you get a movement speed buff and an NPC damage buff to approximate the notion of “guerrilla warfare”.

Temporary Siege Equipment

In addition to the changes to the Outmanned Buff, a new vendor can be added to the starting spawn of every server on each of the maps. This vendor sells certain temporary siege equipment (no golems). The characteristics of the equipment are as follows:

• All of it is free of charge. You can buy it at any time.
• You can only deploy Temporary Siege Equipment when you have the “Outmanned” (2:1) buff or greater.
• Temporary Siege costs 50% of the supply cost of normal siege and has 75% of the effectiveness (damage output, weapon health, not range).
• After 30m, if the Temporary Siege has not been destroyed by opposing players, it is dismantled (think counting down debuff that causes it to explode).
• (Optional) When the server no longer has the “Outmanned” buff or greater, a second dismantle timer will dismantle it in 10m from when the buff is no longer present.
• (Optional) Temporary Siege cannot be deployed in and around Stonemist Castle.

Access to siege helps to level the playing field for the outnumbered servers. The siege is weaker but quicker to deploy, potent but countered by rushing it or the use of existing, more powerful siege. It opens up interesting possibilities for servers with the 4:1 buff however to really be a nuisance using lightning warfare tactics, due to increased speed, supply, and access to siege. This in turn encourages greater communication on the part of the stronger servers, and presents them with more interesting scenarios than “farm spawn, repeat”.

Those are just a few thoughts I’ve had on how the WvW system could potentially be improved. I tried to stay away from the normal topics of bickering like server balance or point accumulation or etc and focus on the other aspects of WvW that aren’t as subjective and could result in quality increases for all types of servers. Interested to hear other’s thoughts on these suggestions or completely different suggestions along these same lines.

Cheers

A couple more, simpler additions:

Queue Changes

It’s not possible to have an ETA on a queue since it’s dependent upon when people decide to leave a given map. However it seems easy enough to display the position in the queue to the player as a number. Also, enable a background audio queue notification where you can choose to have GW2 play some sort of sound when your queue is ready (something simple first, possibly customizable .wav file later), since not everyone wants to sit around in the game the entire duration of the queue.

Siege Weapon Tutorials

Add a place where players can learn information about the various siege weapons and try them out. The Heart of the Mists allows players to test builds and play around with trebuchets and cannons because they’re featured on the maps, it doesn’t force players to feel them out within a match. The same should be true of the WvW siege (though not their Superior versions), enabling you to get a feel for each weapon and read some basic information (ie. ballistas are player targeted, arrow carts rely on line of sight, rams cannot attack walls, etc).

If your idea needs 3 posts, it also needs a summary O.o

Anyways, I admit I didn’t read it all. (Where was the obligatory wall of text warning?) Mainly because I had a strong feeling of disagreement right from the beginning.
“go do WvW, using PvE or playing the market to finance the money inevitably lost on it.” Wait, what? Where do I lose money, exactly?
I’m using badges for siegeweapons. No money lost there.
The WP cost in WvW is 0. No money lost there.
Armor repairs? Sure, some 8 silver every once in a while. Not too much.
I admit I do not usually upgrade locations that are held by some other guild. They hold it, its their responsibility. I do, however, upgrade locations held by our guild. But that’s guild effort, divided between the guild members. Not too much money lost in there. (And I wouldn’t exactly say thats “inevitably lost”)
I do some 3-5 events in WvW and I’ve already gained back all the money lost in stuff mentioned earlier. And on top of that, I make a ton of other events before any of those steps need to be repeated. (I don’t die too much, and it takes time to upgrade the capture points.)
Just for the record, I earned around 1g in a couple of hours worth of WvW. Not quite as good as money earned in PvE, but certainly not losing it. In fact, everyone I know is making money in WvW.

Fred Fargone.3127:

If your idea needs 3 posts, it also needs a summary O.o

Separate ideas, separated by italic titles, not one contiguous idea. I’ve entirely removed the sentence you took issue with since it has no bearing on the idea. Whether or not money is gained or lost is immaterial to the changes suggested. Thanks for the feedback, though. I’ve changed the formatting in the posts to make it more obvious where the separations occurred and used the list formatting of these message boards so it looks less like a wall of text.

As far as a summary goes, I find adding a tl;dr just means people read that and miss the important details. Then we can’t have a discussion on the actual suggestions and why they’re actually bad (which I’m sure they are), but rather waste time clarifying things that were already explicitly stated in the non-tl;dr.

Oh, I guess some people would react like that to tl;dr. But I just use the summary to see if there is anything interesting to talk about. Then go find it in the actual text, see what you mean by it and then, well, talk about it.

And yeah, the text looks way better now. I’ll try to scroll through it. (Its hard to get the people to read the entire suggestion anyways, if its 3 pages.)

Fred Fargone.3127:

Oh, I guess some people would react like that to tl;dr. But I just use the summary to see if there is anything interesting to talk about. Then go find it in the actual text, see what you mean by it and then, well, talk about it.

Since I can’t add more text due to character limits I went through and bolded a lot more areas in the text bodies. If someone were to skim and read only the bold text they’d get the general idea of each section. Added a tl;dr note suggesting as much at the top. Hopefully that will help make it more accessible.

Hmm, okey, now that it is such a wall of text, it was way easier to go through. (Formatting helps, makes it clearer.)

Anyways:

Honor:
- Players NEED to drop lootbags. Its part of the idea of being able to level up in WvW. And as I previously stated, I’m making a bunch of gold by playing WvW. I don’t want to lose that.
- I especially liked the idea of making healers affect the kill tagging. I mean, I do tag a lot of kills with my elementalist, but I also want to support the team. When I am in the supportive mode, I more often have a greater impact in in the battle, but gain absolutely no reward for doing so. No wonder nobody tries to actively keep our team alive. People you are currently healing should forward some of their dps to the healer. (No, they wouldn’t do any less damage, but the healer would just get a copy of it for kill tagging.) And remember, the players with 100% hp don’t get healed anyways, so you can’t just camp support.

Claiming:
- This would definately be an improvement to the current system where everyone just sticks around and the random newbie who just managed to be first to talk to the claiming NPC after the keep becomes claimable gets the keep. Ugh. Definately should have some point system where your contribution is taken into account.
- However, once claimed, that should be it. No back and forth. The guild who initially did the most to cap that keep is the one who… well, did all the work. So what if someone else managed to buy that WP for the keep, That’s trivial compared to capturing.
- Also, the guild should have like 10 minutes time to state their claim. Then give the next in line change, and move on to third. After that, just make it free for all.

Outmanned:
Definately needs a change. Pretty much like your suggestion, however there should never be 100% reduction in repair cost. People from PvE would just visit WvW to repair and save 0.1g Do it ten times and you’ve saved 1g

Queue info:
- Definately needed. I have also suggested this during the BWE2, BWE3 and at the headstart. Some dev stated that we absolutely need one, maybe they are working on it, or then they are just overwhelmed with everything else. Just a info on how many people are before and behind you would be perfect.

Thanks for the feedback.

Fred Fargone.3127:

- Players NEED to drop lootbags. Its part of the idea of being able to level up in WvW. And as I previously stated, I’m making a bunch of gold by playing WvW. I don’t want to lose that.

A fair point. I’ve removed the stipulation that they don’t drop loot.

Fred Fargone.3127:

- I especially liked the idea of making healers affect the kill tagging. I mean, I do tag a lot of kills with my elementalist, but I also want to support the team. When I am in the supportive mode, I more often have a greater impact in in the battle, but gain absolutely no reward for doing so. No wonder nobody tries to actively keep our team alive. People you are currently healing should forward some of their dps to the healer. (No, they wouldn’t do any less damage, but the healer would just get a copy of it for kill tagging.) And remember, the players with 100% hp don’t get healed anyways, so you can’t just camp support.

Agreed. Certain skills like Guardian’s Wall of Reflection can double as DPS, but support is usually undervalued. Healing and buffing (as important in GW2) are undervalued. I play a support Guardian in WvW most of the time, so that may explain our disparity in money earned:time spent that precipitated my original comment on money.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Claiming:
- However, once claimed, that should be it. No back and forth. The guild who initially did the most to cap that keep is the one who… well, did all the work. So what if someone else managed to buy that WP for the keep, That’s trivial compared to capturing.
- Also, the guild should have like 10 minutes time to state their claim. Then give the next in line change, and move on to third. After that, just make it free for all.

Can’t really modify it as such since they’re two separate ideas, but your alternative is certainly another possibility that would also be an improvement on the current system.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Outmanned:
Definately needs a change. Pretty much like your suggestion, however there should never be 100% reduction in repair cost. People from PvE would just visit WvW to repair and save 0.1g Do it ten times and you’ve saved 1g

Good point. I’ve changed it from reduction in repair cost to a reduction in armor depreciation. So if you had repairs from out of WvW you’d still need to pay money to repair, but if you died in WvW it wouldn’t result in armor damage so you’d never need to repair. That should solve the monetary exploit but keep the incentive to be willing to die.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Queue info:
- Definately needed. I have also suggested this during the BWE2, BWE3 and at the headstart. Some dev stated that we absolutely need one, maybe they are working on it, or then they are just overwhelmed with everything else. Just a info on how many people are before and behind you would be perfect.

Any indication is better than no indication, for sure. Glad to hear they’re working on it.