Guild Wars 2

What: Physically light a signal beacon in a WvWvW Tower when it is under threat, which gives a visual/audible notification to your teammates wherever they are on the map.

How: The signal beacon might be an upgrade or a standard feature in all keeps. It may only be lit if a condition is met i.e the gate to the tower is at less than 95% ‘health’, or there are 10+ enemy players within 2500 range of the outer walls… or something else. When the condition is no longer met (gate has been repaired or the enemy players are dead/gone) the beacon extinguishes itself.

Why:

• For flavour. I find myself keeping watch on towers that I expect the enemy zerg to hit, and announce in chat if/when they come and attack. This is a dull task in itself, especially if I don’t see any red.. but interacting with a beacon would (to me) be more enjoyable than only typing in chat. I like to interact with things, if you know what I mean. :-/

• I have seen people complaining that not enough players read the chat box in WvW. I don’t know true this is but, a separate audio/visual notification would be difficult to miss.

• Missing chat commands to reinforce a tower because the player is focused on something else can be the difference between holding it or losing it. Similarly, players without the necessary language skills may not know from chat that a tower is under threat, until the battle to save it is already underway (with the crossed swords on the map).

Comments: Mostly I am making this suggestion for the flavour it would add to my WvWvW game. But if anybody would like to, please feel free to leave your own thoughts as to how and why (or why not) this feature could be added.

Doesn’t the map already notify you that a fortification is under attack?

Scorpio.3821:

Doesn’t the map already notify you that a fortification is under attack?

not enough information i guess.

the map only shows a cross swords symbol.

Yes the cross swords usually appear where a fortification is being attacked. I think there is room to improve them, though. I would like to see;

1. A distinction between a ‘battle’ and a siege, as these swords appear wherever there is much fighting. Speaking for myself, reinforcing a tower under threat is very important while I don’t prioritise battles in the fields/lake.

2. I would also like to know – without checking my map – which tower is under siege. If only for the sake of convenience.

3. The cross swords, I find, are easy to miss. They appear on radar but do not make a sound, and there is no text on my screen telling me that ‘x’ needs defending. I can read chat or keep checking my radar/map but again, for the sake of convenience I would prefer a little notification.

We could maybe have these improvements without my signal beacon addon but, I thought this might be a more interesting way of doing things.