Guild Wars 2

I am rather annoyed at the removal of the Orbs in WvWvW. While I can understand the reasoning behind it (if one world is doing well, they’re harder to defeat than map control alone would make them), I think removing them entirely is a bad idea.

My other point of criticism is the Outnumbered buff. The point of such a buff would be to make those that are horribly outnumbered stand a chance, but what we have is increased magic find and xp gain.

My suggestion is to swap the bonuses granted. Give 5-10% bonus XP, Karma, and Magic Find per orb controlled. This will make the orbs still things to be fought over, but not necessary to control in order to win. Make the Outnumbered buff give bonuses to stats based on how badly your world is outnumbered on that map. Say for every 100 more players that an opposing world has over yours, you get a set bonus to stats (for the sake of this discussion, we’ll say 50 to all stats in keeping with current Orb bonuses).

This second point needs to be elaborated on a bit more. I’ll just use worlds A, B, and C for the points.

Let’s say that World C is currently fielding 125 players in Eternal Battlegrounds. Now, let’s say that worlds A and B are fielding 300 each. Obviously, neither A or B would receive the Outnumbered buff. C, however, would do so. Both A and B have a 175 player advantage over C. C would then get 50 bonus points for being outnumbered by A and another 50 for being outnumbered by B.

Now, let’s say that A has jumped to 500 players in the Eternal Battlegrounds and B has dropped with C down to 100 each. C no longer receives Outnumbered bonuses from B, but both B and C would receive 200 bonus to all stats, since A has a 400 player advantage. This is a sizable boost that will let players in B and C feel like they have a chance, though they are still most likely to lose (A can engage both of them with armies twice the size of what B and C have, and A still has 100 players that would be free to do whatever). In this way, being Outnumbered at least gives a chance for a comeback (which is the point of such buffs).

The other important thing to note is that each battleground (the three borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds) would have the Outnumbered buff calculated separately. While mass transits of players from one map to another do happen, it is not fair for those on maps with low numbers of allies to be treated as though they still had the army.

I know this will most likely get overlooked by the staff, but I hope that it catches their eye and at least makes some impact on future decisions.

tl:dr; but the orbs have been removed as of Nov 1

Well, I haven’t been in WvW since then, so no surprise that escaped my notice.

I’m a bit surprised nobody bothered to look this over and give any comments.

I read about half of it, way too long.
the idea of making outnumbered give stat bonuses and orbs give karma/exp/mf bonuses is smart and logical.

yup. I’ve thought about that and agree with the idea as well. If a server is doing badly it should have quite a few ways to fight back. That way WvW would be kept active as much at the end of the week as it was from the start of the round.

(People have the tendency to give up if the score is 300k – 290k – 180k)

BabelFish.7234:

I read about half of it, way too long.

Most of it is just expanding on how Outnumbered bonus stats would work. The real point is what you already got.

I would be perfectly happy if all the orb gave was a bonus to the keep it was held in