Guild Wars 2

DevonCarver.5370:

I’m curious what you all think about choke points as strategic ideas. I don’t think we’d ever want a map that was just a bunch of canyons, this isn’t Sparta or Thermopylae, but having areas that make it harder for large groups to get through if they are well-defended creates gameplay. Think of a tower that guards the only pass through a canyon, rather than bridges everywhere. Is that something that, in moderation, could provide for more varied and strategic gameplay?

For the purposes of the question, think in terms of building a new map from scratch, rather than retrofitting the current maps.

It’s hard to say, honestly. Unfortunately, in this game, choke points don’t really do too much to hurt a group. The soft CC is too easily cleansed, and the hard CC like lines, walls, knockbacks, etc, are all stopped by one boon that most everyone has access to; stability.

I’ve never really seen a chokepoint held for any long period of time against a larger group, or against almost any organized groups. The only examples of real chokes I can think of in the normal WvW maps would be East Keep’s lord room (or “Hills” to some), or Mendon’s bridge. In East Keep, we see large groups building 5-10 superior ACs, bunkering down, and waiting until someone pushes in. When we decide to make an organized push through the tunnel with heal books, stability, water fields, etc, it’s not hard for us to out-tank those ACs for a few seconds and destroy them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, imo. Arrow carts currently promote some pretty boring gameplay in my opinion, and it’s good that we can counter them with movement. However, in respect to the idea of a chokepoint, it would probably be have to be held by a minimum of 5 superior ACs over a HUGE tract of land, and, honestly, that just doesn’t sound entirely fun to me.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I feel like if the mechanics were varied and interesting, a long choke could be really exciting. You mentioned making it where only some siege could be placed at strategic positions, and I really like that idea, especially if the siege has unique mechanics. Imagine, for a second, a tower similar to Mendon’s, or a keep similar to East Keep, with one long tract of land between the gate and the lord room. Instead of AC spam bogging people down, how about player controlled traps, similar to the Obsidian Sanctum traps. The catch, however, is that all of these traps would be destructible, and within 900 range or so of the attackers, with there being “safe zones” outside of the range of traps between each trap that the attackers could recover for a moment and continue pushing.

This, in my opinion, would give rise to some very interesting gameplay. The traps themselves would have to be powerful, such as stripping stability on the first trap from everyone inside, but also easily telegraphed, so that the attackers know when it is possible to move up and try to take the tower/keep. Say that the first trap strips stability, the second trap pulls attackers backwards, the third trap chills attackers (possible uncleansable movement chill only, similar to the EotM one), and a final large boulder trap strips stability and knocks players down.

If the cooldowns were appropriate on these traps (say at least a minute each), and were telegraphed well (maybe make each zone have a color and when the trap is active, turn the color off or on), it would lead to a very fun fight. It punishes mindless zergs who would just try to push through all 3 traps immediately, because they would lose stability, get pulled backwards, get knocked down by the boulder, and still not have made any progress at all. It rewards strategic play, too, because these traps have great utility, but don’t necessarily do a large amount of damage. This requires the players to have to fight the other players themselves, but still offers a very sizeable defenders advantage. Sure, a group of 5 wouldn’t be able to wipe a group of 30+, but I don’t really think they should be able to, in most cases. However, an organized group of 10-15 could easily take out a mindless group of 40+ with advantages like this.

This is obviously just an example, but I would love for utility advantages rather than stat or damage bonuses to be explored as a means to buff defenders. Fighting with our characters is one of the most fun things in this game, because the combat in this game is so good. I’m admittedly more of an open field guy, but before the AC buff, I had a ton of fun inside of keeps and towers fighting on some really interesting terrain. If we could come up with some new zones that balance positioning of siege or simply give a utility advantage (such as the traps I mentioned), I would probably find myself inside keeps or towers more often. It’s fun for me to fight players, but it’s not fun for me to run inside of 30 red circles that I can’t do anything about.

Dayra.7405:

Lol, yeah I can hear the commander in TS: “now lets get some karma at Vabbi’s WSR border”, resulting in a 50+ T1 zerg rushing fast over a T9 map.
10min later: “All red here, now to Underwords RoF border”
…
A few min later: “Oh sh**, T1 zerg ahead, lets go to …”

Not only by the winer, btw. the determined loser may have even more interest to “get some fun somewhere else”

Problem of course there is no incentive to win a match (neither the stats-bonus for score is noticed nor are the few bonus-chest taken serious by anyone (if noticed at all)

anyhow we got this problem that goes under the name of “server population in/balance”: some matchups can’t “consume” all the players they produce while others does not have enough even to be called a matchup.

agreed on the absence of really good incentive. this is a crucial point. more detailed leaderboards can give some room here, but also other things may need to be done. something like in-game bets on matchups results?

I admint, karma trains is an issue that must be addressed in my proposal. Cause of this I thought about synergies with 8h rounds: maybe with guesting tied to round you will think twice on how to spend this chance. Karma trains or strategical positioning? A bunch more loot there or stem the archirival world “foreign operations” here? OurEnemyGuild is taking everything in X, should we try to stop them with the help of OurFriendlyGuildOnThatServer or we care more make the train stop at another station?
Players will answer to those questions… I believe that this way it will open up for more strategic moves than to more chufchufs

Proposal Overview
Implement the EotM instance-based system in standard WvW.

Goal of Proposal
Mitigating population imbalances across servers by essentially turning WvW into a game of Green vs Blue vs Red.

Proposal Functionality
You need two things not currently present in the EotM system to make this work for standard WvW. First, a list of available instances so that players can join the instance of their choice (each instance consisting of the standard selection of four WvW maps as we currently know it). And second, a score multiplier attached to each instance that decreases the further down the list you go. To give an example, the first instance might have a score multiplier of 1.0, meaning at the end of the week the scores each team has accumulated in that instance will be multiplied by 1.0. The next instance might have a multiplier of 0.9, and the next 0.8, and so on. At the end of the week the sum of all scores for all instances determines who wins.

Associated Risks
The risk of players getting stuck in an instance not of their choosing is eliminated by providing players with a list of instances, enabling them to play with their friends (unless of course that instance is full, which is no different from the system we have now). The other risk that must be addressed is teams opting to “abandon ship” and desert a specific instance altogether (ie moving to another instance with less opposition). This can be mitigated by penalizing the amount of war score teams can achieve through this behavior via score multipliers, so that instances are worth less the further down the list you go. Finally, the game needs the ability to “freeze” inactive instances (ie instances with no or very few players) to avoid those instances having an undue impact on the total score. The war score in such instances should simply stop accumulating until enough players rejoin (exactly how many players are “enough” is subject to playtesting). If necessary, impose a time delay on the “unfreezing” of instances (ie force a certain amount of players to remain on the map for a certain amount of time before unfreeze occurs) to mitigate the impact of teams engaging in “instance-hopping”.

DevonCarver.5370:

I think there has been good discussion around the concepts of world pride and how the changes in EotM affect that. Let’s pivot to a different concept from EotM and how it could apply to WvW.

I’m curious what you all think about choke points as strategic ideas. I don’t think we’d ever want a map that was just a bunch of canyons, this isn’t Sparta or Thermopylae, but having areas that make it harder for large groups to get through if they are well-defended creates gameplay. Think of a tower that guards the only pass through a canyon, rather than bridges everywhere. Is that something that, in moderation, could provide for more varied and strategic gameplay?

For the purposes of the question, think in terms of building a new map from scratch, rather than retrofitting the current maps.

You want terrain that sometimes favours big groups and sometimes favours small groups. I mean, whoever can force their advantage should win.

I’m not at all for destructible bridges and the like though. Thing shouldn’t one shot players. That’s way too gimmicky. You don’t want push button and win.

Proposal Overview
Random Events & Similar Mechanics

Goal of Proposal
Add variance to the otherwise predictable nature of WvW.

Proposal Functionality
I see WvW and EOTM as two extremes: WvW is very stable, predictable, flat, aesthetically pretty basic. Ruins were a very nice addition to WvW and they’re going in the right direction. EOTM is WvW’s crazy artsy sister who’s very interesting but can get on your nerves at times.

I say leave camps and towers alone as far as the enemies inside; I want to be able to solo-cap a camp in WvW, and if I can’t, I’m going to be very turned off. Make events that have randomized timers of 2 -3 hours (and less for lesser events) that will add variance to WvW.

Imagine you’re in a zerg and suddenly, somewhere on the map, a “zerg” of ghost NPCs spawns and will be alive for the next 15 minutes. They do moderate damage but have a lot of health and will chase you down, wasting your zerg’s time and generally being a nuisance. You must avoid them.

Imagine another: just like in PvE, some kind of collection NPC spawns and says they will give the aid of their people if you help them out. Almost like how the quaggans were. Or perhaps they’ll just give everyone around them a five-minute speed/HP buff.

Associated Risks
People may simply hate the events. “Oh, have to go kill 100 grubs to get her stupid buff.” “WTF these awful ghosts again”.

Good events could create a hub for chaos. Example: buff NPC spawns, everyone wants her buff, you’ve got huge zergs pouring in on this tiny event. This could either way: it’s either a great time or just a mess.

People waiting for these events to spawn. There should be no pre-events and the timers should be wide enough that people can’t just dawdle about; also, ideally, these will not all spawn in a single spot.

I think the word “server pride” is very missleading.
You will always have a team and compete against others, so we will always have some pride for ouer Team, whether they are Worlds or Servers. This said the problem with a coloured based system is not the server Pride, it is the community/COMMUNICATION that result out of this.

Why communication is one of the key elements of WvW was written down multiple Times in this thread, just to summerize:
EotM: No Communication – Karmatrain 24/7
WvW: Communication – a more strategic Gameplay (Upgrading etc.)

If you want to mitigate the shift of ppl between teams, the teams have to be big, which will result in an alliance of people who can’t communicate with each other because of the language differences or non static overflow systems. You cant make Teams on speech basis, because they would have different primetimes and nightcapping would be even worse then it is now.

My personal Solution:
1. We need Seasons like we had before that have a duration 2Month or longer (I prefer longer).

2. Before the season starts Worlds (same language!) with many WvW-Active Players will be putt together with worlds that have few WVW-active players. The shift in WvW Population would be slightly better and with Season durations 2 Month+ and no language barriers communication could be established.
By putting 2-3 Worlds together you should be able to balance out Teams. But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do NOT use world Population as an indicaror use the acrive WvW-Playerbase as reference.

I am well aware that this is a very “hacky” solution and we will still have shifts in WvW-Population, but it might help, without destroing WvW and make it Karmatrain2.0 .

greetz

Vael Victus.2654:

Proposal Overview
Random Events & Similar Mechanics

Goal of Proposal
Add variance to the otherwise predictable nature of WvW.

Proposal Functionality
I see WvW and EOTM as two extremes: WvW is very stable, predictable, flat, aesthetically pretty basic. Ruins were a very nice addition to WvW and they’re going in the right direction. EOTM is WvW’s crazy artsy sister who’s very interesting but can get on your nerves at times.

I say leave camps and towers alone as far as the enemies inside; I want to be able to solo-cap a camp in WvW, and if I can’t, I’m going to be very turned off. Make events that have randomized timers of 2 -3 hours (and less for lesser events) that will add variance to WvW.

Imagine you’re in a zerg and suddenly, somewhere on the map, a “zerg” of ghost NPCs spawns and will be alive for the next 15 minutes. They do moderate damage but have a lot of health and will chase you down, wasting your zerg’s time and generally being a nuisance. You must avoid them.

Imagine another: just like in PvE, some kind of collection NPC spawns and says they will give the aid of their people if you help them out. Almost like how the quaggans were. Or perhaps they’ll just give everyone around them a five-minute speed/HP buff.

Associated Risks
People may simply hate the events. “Oh, have to go kill 100 grubs to get her stupid buff.” “WTF these awful ghosts again”.

Good events could create a hub for chaos. Example: buff NPC spawns, everyone wants her buff, you’ve got huge zergs pouring in on this tiny event. This could either way: it’s either a great time or just a mess.

People waiting for these events to spawn. There should be no pre-events and the timers should be wide enough that people can’t just dawdle about; also, ideally, these will not all spawn in a single spot.

Your entitled to your opinion but good god no … just no, they have several maps dedicated to PvE and living story events if you want this. I will go to anyone of those several maps if I want a dynamic special event popping up. Keep this crap out of WvW.

I’d not like to see the Color System of EotM gettign changed for all of WvW.
Before Anet does that, Id much rather like to see Anet reducing the amount of Servers from 51 down to 30 by merging alot of the low populated and mid populated servers together.

That something like this hasn’t been done already is something I find questionable.
Be reducign the amount of servers, Anet could reduce their monthly fix costs by alot and make basically more profit.

It would revitalize alot of the player community and the empty maps in PvE plus would bringt low populated Servers more into competition for WvW if they get merged with other servers…
However, just Anet his the metrics over this and when they think having 51 servers is fine, when in my opinion 30 would be more than enough I believe they will have their reasons to keep that amount of servers.

Currently we have 3 maps that are exactly the same in The Mists War. If there could be some variation of the 3 home borderlands like how EOTM is with the jungle, snow, and dessert themes that would be cool. Id like to see not just those 3 environments either, more new terrain and climate types would bring alot of fun to gw2. Towers and Keeps in WvW are also the same in those 3 borderlands. If there was like for example bridges over moats to get inside a keep, or moving the keep lord up higher in storys of the tower so you have to run up 2-3 flights of stairs to get to it, or even more hidden passage ways into a keep/tower that would be cool. 1 last idea would be to not just have only 3 different maps like I just mentioned, but to interchange the maps to a different theme every 6 months or so to keep us constantly changing our tactics and gameplay. For example a snow, dessert,jungle theme the first 6 months then the next 6 months be like a swamp,beaches, and a volcanic theme, and then the next 6 months be a randomization of the 6 or 9 or 12 maps etc. Different types of siege and making guild siege easier to get instead of just using commendations to purchase it. Lastly, introducing a WvW Server chat so that people in 1 borderland could contact another borderland to let them know their keep is being hit by the enemy. (people use teamspeak for that but not all servers are able to)

Lets keeps PVE as much out as possible is the development ideas. As stated before, there is plenty of pve outside wvw to keep anyone happy. WVW players want to play wvw, not run around killing grubs etc.

Edge of the Mists does quite a lot of good things which aren’t seen in other WvW maps. Some things I’d like to see implemented in other WvW or new maps are: destroyable terrain, better rewards, buffed NPCs (maybe only some, because I’d still like to be able to solo a camp). Another thing great about EOTM is the merging of lower tier servers into three factions, which revitalizes and replaces WvW for those servers which otherwise wouldn’t have been wvwing. However, the problem with this approach is that server no longer holds any meaning, and more importantly, communication between players is a lot more difficult, because the map is much larger and more to the point, not all players are communicating through the same means, which have been long established by now.

As it stands, EOTM is quite random compared to the other WvW maps, which isn’t a good thing for the players who want to organize. It’s difficult to work together because of a lack of communication as a result of being thrown together into the world from different servers and a lack of unified voice comms. Moreover, the random players from random servers have unknown play times, so organizing is made even more difficult, because other guilds don’t know when another guild might be on to play. There is a serious lack of consistency in EOTM as a result of how the system works.

On another note, I’d like to see two of the three Borderlands maps changed such that all three are different.

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to pivot to something that Luna mentioned early in the thread, the idea of a more complex fight for Stonemist.

Would it make Stonemist feel too difficult to capture if the assaulting team had to capture and hold 3 capture points? Here are some of the problems I see with it.

1) It would encourage everyone defending to just blob up on one point and hold out as a group.
2) It could be so difficult to actually accomplish that it becomes nearly impossible to flip Stonemist.

However, I think it would be an improvement to the current rush the middle of the room scenario.

Do any of you think this version of Stonemist would be an improvement or does it not really make any positive changes in your mind?

I have a better idea actually.

Make 3 points (i’ll call them A,B,C), and make the server holding 2 out of 3 points slowly begin decapping the other’s capture. If the defenders want to hold the fortification, they too have to hold 2 out of 3. This would make it necessary for both attackers and defenders to spread out.

An even better idea would be to scale the number up based on amount of people. If the ratio of the attacking server vs. the defending one is 3:1, make it so the attacking server has to hold every point. If the ratio of the defending server vs. the attacking one is 3:1 make it so the attacking so the defending server has to hold all 3 points aswell.

This would require a lot more coordination and involve a lot less mindless killing.

Well hopefully something be done soon to improve WvW, because last night at 2am East on SBI we had less than 12 people covering the 4 WvW maps. I was alone in our borderland and we had 10 max in EB.

Anyway, how can you not want to transfer to a higher tier in these conditions?

Matipzieu KyA.9613:

Wow, I wasn’t expecting my long posts to generate that much discussion! Glad they were helpful and reasonably well-received. My real underlying goal was to help spark some more rigorously analytical, critical, and thoughtful problem-solving. I was really trying to hone in as best I could on describing a series of things that I’ve seen thousands of posters try to articulate over the years across many games.

Styx, thanks for the opportunity to clarify! I just realized that what was intended to be an off-the-charts Jeff Sachs argument ended up sounding a little bit like William Easterly, haha. (Did I just out my undergrad major? ) I actually don’t think that realm pride is inclusive only to T1, but the opposite: from personal experience I’ve found it’s much more valuable the farther “down” you go. Back in the DAoC days, my guild and I formed on Bors/Hib. Let’s just say we were, uh, not exactly tier one. To put it, um, delicately. I’m not quite prepared to say that Bors/Hib was awful, but we were not tier one. I’ll put it nicely like that because even a decade later I still have a sense of camaraderie with my old server. That’s the thing I’m trying to figure out how to recreate on GW2: not to trickle Blackgate down.

Yes, we have a real problem here:

I also absolutely agree, hands down, that the current situation is problematic, and I agree with Nuzt that there needs to be a well thought out but relatively prompt developer response to it. (Hence, likely, the thread? ) I’m not prepared to say it’s a code blue just yet, but I do think that the situation is very serious, and that the status quo is on track to an emergency room visit if left untouched for a few more months, hence my “underdog rewards” proposal that could be implemented in a relatively lightweight way in the next few weeks. (It probably needs a new name, though. “Underdog rewards” sounds a little too demeaning.)

A design change that increases rewards for dedicated play and wining on lower-tier servers was intended to be a lightweight but impactful fix that, while probably not ideal, we do know is actually effective in a number of real-life situations that resemble this. (Part of my real life job is to come up with solutions for ugly problems like these in international contexts.) A lot of the analogies are imperfect, but I think there’s at least some reasonably sound social science behind using progressive incentive shock design in this case.

I apologize if the post came off a bit Blackgate elitist; that particular video was the fastest thing I knew how to reach for to help make my point. (I was aiming more for “Hey, we’ve got this situation with malnutrition among the majority of Parisian citizens, and that’s a huge problem! How do we improve infrastructure and set economic policy such that the baking industry in Paris improves in the next three weeks?” rather than “The peasants are starving? Bah! Let them eat cake!” )

A relevant story from a DAoC mid/lower tier server:

Having spent time on Bors/Hib back in the DAoC days, I absolutely get many of the problems that happen with regard to server transfers, etc. One particularly instructive story comes to mind. In DAoC, instead of servers fighting each other, the model was that each server had three races/factions (“realms”) that fought each other, Alb, Hib, and Mid. On my guild’s home server back around 2001-2002, Hib was doing relatively well, but Alb and Mid were struggling. We were about the equivalent of a T4-T5 server at best, nowhere near T1. However, an ultrawealthy Midgard player had a clever idea: since you couldn’t transfer, he then publicly announced that he would be handing out the equivalent of around 500-750g in GW2’s economy today per player that rolled a fresh character on Mid/Bors. Word got out, and the population of Mid/Bors exploded (he followed through) and completely upended the balance in RvR. Mid/Bors due to the huge population boom.

The relevant lessons here for all of us in KyA were: (1) individual incentives can definitely impact server balance, (2) community is still what matters most, but (3) community can be jump-started by incentive shocks. These lessons largely formed my analysis above.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Matipzieu KyA

Ah, dang. I am a William Easterly fan. Looking forward to his new book comin out like next week!

Also dang, my rant got deleted.

Nightingale.8364:

Lets keeps PVE as much out as possible is the development ideas. As stated before, there is plenty of pve outside wvw to keep anyone happy. WVW players want to play wvw, not run around killing grubs etc.

PvE elements have some serious benefits for WvW design though. Here are a few examples:

• They make it easier to implement an idea, since the designers can more easily figure out what is possible. (If a player could have the commander siegerazer ability… that’d open up a lot of interesting lines of play, but probably also a lot of overpowered exploit-like things)

• They offer players something to do while they wait for their party to get ready.

• They make it possible for players to enjoy a fight when they’re too small in numbers to take on a larger objective. (Walking over a capture point to take it when nothing defends it isn’t interesting at all. I very much prefer killing some guards first.)

I’m not saying that we should fill the WvW map with grubs, just that the NPC’s have their purpose. Perhaps the aspect of EotM that makes players believe it’s a ‘PvE’ map, is that the fights are often in one place, far away. And you have to run from your own keep all the way there. In between you find nearly no one, because they’re all fighting at the choke point on the other side of the map.

No one is defending any objectives in between, because they don’t have much value. And players aren’t organized enough to wait around the spawn to gather a new group and attack somewhere else. So it appears to be all useless NPC’s that you meet.

I don’t think the problem lies with the amount of NPC’s, but with the nature of the objectives that the NPC’s protect. They just don’t have enough value, because the fight isn’t really about getting that generator, or that tower… it is about getting the enemy keep. (At least, this is how I perceive it)

DevonCarver.5370:

I’m curious what you all think about choke points as strategic ideas. I don’t think we’d ever want a map that was just a bunch of canyons, this isn’t Sparta or Thermopylae, but having areas that make it harder for large groups to get through if they are well-defended creates gameplay. Think of a tower that guards the only pass through a canyon, rather than bridges everywhere. Is that something that, in moderation, could provide for more varied and strategic gameplay?

For the purposes of the question, think in terms of building a new map from scratch, rather than retrofitting the current maps.

I’ll build a full presentation in a bit (about to see a movie ) but I wanted to drop off the rough outline quickly.

THE FRINGES
Add three smaller maps to WvW around the perimeter. These “fringe” maps are only accessible to 2 of the 3 realms: A Red-Blue fringe, a Blue-Green fringe, and a Green-Red fringe.

These maps are laid out as relatively long, narrow strips where choke points and Thermopylae-style fights are the norm – there is no broad plains to go around on. You can add a little daring with jump puzzle level of difficulty side trails for position or bypass, but the action is firmly rooted on a single ‘road’. You can also make things extra dramatic in uniquely Mists-style by making the whole zone a cliff face with the abyss always looming to one side . Or float the entire thing over the void. Either way bridges fit the landscape nicely.

For PTT relevance, each fringe includes exactly 2 camps and a single keep arranged:

Camp -> Keep <- Camp

With map points so heavily weighted in a single place, there is no way two friendly severs can split the map equitably. There will be war. Further, simultaneous control of both of your Fringe keeps should grand a tangible bonus on the Eternal Battlegrounds map. With Fringes being accessible to only 2 servers, they make the ideal location to work out your grudges against hated a rival server without the other server playing kingmaker, and provide a potential stage for ritual combat between individuals or guilds, again with fewer interruptions from third parties.

By adding some specialized, high value targets in separate maps you also spread out the action across multiple fronts allowing WvW to absorb more (and smarter) players – a big push in EB could require dispatching smaller forces to break the enemy’s hold in the shared Fringe.

PVE elements have serious benefits in a wvw map?

Ok i see your arguments. Simply, if i wanted to do pve, i would go into one of the many dungeons, pve maps or living story. Maybe go kill a dragon or even do a JP. Thats fine, but why put pve into a different game mode?

When i play wvw i expect to fight other players (in large or small groups). I dont expect to be taking on a giant wurm which i must kill to get some buff or whatever. Its not what i play wvw for.

Keep pve in the pve area of the game and develop the wvw idea to encompass more fights with actual players.

DevonCarver.5370:

Matches last 8 hours, there are 21 matches in a week with the same 3 worlds, the winner of the week is the world that wins the most matches over the course of that time.

@Devon, when I first read this I honestly thought this guy must be out of his mind “21 matches week”, in which case I’d like to offer my apologies for jumping the gun and not giving it the thought it deserves before making my decision.

I took a long hard think about it and of its pro’s and con’s and although this at first glance would seem like a major “unwanted” change, it’s very well thought out and could solve a lot of problems and if not already done I would suggest putting something like this into testing. Obviously it won’t underline the problems with mindless zergs, but it would definitely produce some surprising results for the coverage issues. Night capping wont be a thing of the past because they will still win them “matches” but thats all they will win, is them particular “matches” 6/7 out of 21. It will no longer be the 600+ tick every night that determines the winner it will instead be a "contribution towards the overall score out of the 21 matches.

As for the color scheme i am dead against it, my server is my home and I love my home win or lose!!!

Another as some people have mentioned about is no incentive to win. I would suggest a world based reward for winning and a WvW based battle advantage reward for losing, (I know at first this doesn’t sound appealing) but it drives people to push harder instead of thinking “I’m gonna stick PvE this week we lost for sure.” In most cases the fair-weathered players are the ones that just wanna mindlessly farm other players, so if losing would affect their chances of doing this in WvW and PvE they may change their way of thinking. Servers get buff similar to the outmanned buff for the next 8hrs match up:

for the next 8hrs match up,

1st place server:
+50% Magic find boost (non stackable)
2 bonus rank up chests per level
+50% gold from monsters (non Stackable)
- 25% cost of waypoint travel (for their world)

2nd place server:
+25% Magic find boost (non stackable)
1 bonus rank up chest per level
25% gold monsters (non stackable)
- 10% cost of way point travel

3rd place server: (gets non drop related rewards and more towards battle advantage rewards in WvW only)
increases your speed by 20% (non stack-able with skills/other speed buffs/boosters/runes/sigils)
increase supply carried by +2 per person
decrease the amount of supply need to build/repair by -2 per person
+40 to all stats
-30% costs to repair armor.
-10% Magic find boost (for their world) harsh i know but it would encourage people not to be fairweathered players and push that little bit harder
Start reset with 1 fortified tower with full supply (700/700)

WvW would just get the most benefits out of it, if anet would completely redesign and merge all of the 3 borderland maps together.
This would exactly allow them, like Devon said to make a compolete new map out from scratch, so that they could come up with a new huge map that would be fitting for features like:

• Mounts
• more Verticality
• more/improved choke points
• more better Enemy Creatures/ more Events
• more different interesting Jumping Puzzles instead of 3x the same stuff
• more interesting points to conque with thermographic/terrestrial differences
• a map, that fits then to the new 3 Faction style WvW Gameplay thats also big enough to let more people enter the map, instead of like 250 people per side, it could get raised to say for example 500 people per side, what would make the map a whole new epic experience

All of this just isn’.t possible, if anet stays on keeping the current 3 borderland maps.
However, such a huge change to WvW wouldn’t be something, that just could be done with some small patches.
Thats imo something for the large Feature Patches that significantly improve the game only with new features, bug fixes, QoL changes ect. and are about no Living Story ect.

Twinny.9304:

-10% Magic find boost (for their world) harsh i know but it would encourage people not to be fairweathered players and push that little bit harder

Actually it would encourage players to transfer to the top of T1. If it affected PvE outside of WvW as well, it would be a PR disaster.

Proposal Overview
Shorter matchups, cross-server allies, vertical npc scaling, more objectives, more chokepoints/terrain changes.
Goal of Proposal
With shorter matchups we can eliminate the following: stale matchups, low server moral causing people to not play wvw.
" cross server allies ": same as above.
" vertical npc scaling ": some of the negative aspect of zerg mentality.
" more objectives ": same as above.
" more chokepoints/ terrain changes ": same as above.
Proposal Functionality
Shorter matchups: 3 days each, 2nd day cross server allies are possible, 1st and 3rd day its only your server.
Cross server allies: sell a 10 use item on the gemstore that allows a player to play in wvw on a different server. Once activated the use lasts for the duration of the 2nd day. Unheeded suggestion: 200 gems not 800 :).
Vertical npc scaling: the enemy npc could have increased stats depending on how many opposing players are inside the capture point.
More objectives: borderlands could have a camp in ruins that spawns npc groups that run to friendly camps and guard yaks to their destination. In EB the spawn rate of hylek/dredge/ogres could be greatly increased.
More chokepoints/terrain changes:
Borderlands
Los breakers – south of south camp bridges, paths leading to north camp.
Paths – spawn to vale, entry point to ruins to the nw of briar along the cliff face, route in faithleap nw of the capture point to the left of the ramp that leads to the east of the rock face that blocks the jp entry, entry point to ruins west of hills.
Eternal battlegrounds
Los breakers – north of anzalias leading to speldan, in golanta, ne of green spawn south of keep.
Paths – small area south of hylek to the camps to the east and west, entry to hylek via south of sm.
Associated Risks
Shorter matchups and cross server allies may get some qq from server pride, vertical npc scaling may get some qq from karma trainers, more objectives may get some qq from roamers, more chokepoints/ terrain changes may get some qq from pugs/ zergs.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Nightingale.8364:

Lets keeps PVE as much out as possible is the development ideas. As stated before, there is plenty of pve outside wvw to keep anyone happy. WVW players want to play wvw, not run around killing grubs etc.

PvE elements have some serious benefits for WvW design though. Here are a few examples:

• They make it easier to implement an idea, since the designers can more easily figure out what is possible. (If a player could have the commander siegerazer ability… that’d open up a lot of interesting lines of play, but probably also a lot of overpowered exploit-like things)

• They offer players something to do while they wait for their party to get ready.

• They make it possible for players to enjoy a fight when they’re too small in numbers to take on a larger objective. (Walking over a capture point to take it when nothing defends it isn’t interesting at all. I very much prefer killing some guards first.)

I’m not saying that we should fill the WvW map with grubs, just that the NPC’s have their purpose. Perhaps the aspect of EotM that makes players believe it’s a ‘PvE’ map, is that the fights are often in one place, far away. And you have to run from your own keep all the way there. In between you find nearly no one, because they’re all fighting at the choke point on the other side of the map.

No one is defending any objectives in between, because they don’t have much value. And players aren’t organized enough to wait around the spawn to gather a new group and attack somewhere else. So it appears to be all useless NPC’s that you meet.

I don’t think the problem lies with the amount of NPC’s, but with the nature of the objectives that the NPC’s protect. They just don’t have enough value, because the fight isn’t really about getting that generator, or that tower… it is about getting the enemy keep. (At least, this is how I perceive it)

To keep it simple, the majority of WvW players were extremely unhappy with Anet putting the LS into WvW during season 1. People do not come to WvW to PvE, the largest portion of the game is already dedicated to this type of stuff, keep it out of WvW. How happy do you think the PvE player base would be if Anet suddenly announced that all PvE zones now included WvW. They would be irrate, they would not be able to enjoy their game mode without fear of being ganked over and over. If you want to PvE so bad go do it in the zones dedicated to PvE. There are no benefits to bringing it into WvW unless you consider kittening off an already volatile community a benefit.

Proposal Overview

Most of your changes in Eotm are excellent. The changes I don’t want to see implemented in the other four maps are; increased emphasis on verticality; shorter match time. Most importantly, your mentally and thought process behind “Scoring on capture of objectives” needs to be desperately changed. I propose using a mechanic which is already in your game to become the cure for the current attack/zerg happy karma train way of life in WvW. What mechanic do I speak of? Currently guilds in the game can upgrade various things to gain buffs, stat bonuses, and even start guild missions in the pve mode of your game. What I am proposing is that you, Anet, redesign guild missions to become the driving force behind WvW.

Goal of Proposal

I am using guild missions to attempt to cure the always attack mindset of WvW. Also this mechanic could add unbelievable depth to your game. For example, after an objective has been captured and claimed by a guild the amount of upper level upgrades available to a player at said objective should expand because of the claim by said guild. These upgrades can include things like objective bounty, increasing point accumulation based on time claimed, legendary supervisors, increasing reward value for both defending and capturing, stat increases for all friendly NPC’s and players, Wvw exp ticks after an event timer terminates, pulsing supply buff.

Proposal Functionality

Does this work in the current design of WvW? I believe it does, it encourages the fight between players by rewarding defensive as much as offensive. The majority of players enjoy the epic feeling after a long hard fought bout. This guild mission mechanic puts the ball in the players’ court to allow guilds to create guild wars over objectives in Guild Wars 2.

Associated Risks

Large potential for griefing, and power leveling exploitation. And probably unforseen risks with redesigning the maps. Hopefully, zergs will never pass each other like ships in the night, again.

The best part of EOTM, in my opinion, is the cross-server instancing. It allows those on the lower tier, or those on servers with little WvW activity, to still enjoy large scale PvP. More and more these days only higher tier servers get WvW fun on a consistent basis. A good portion of the lower tier servers often get bad weekly matchups or low WvW participation. I would say 2/3rd of the servers in this game have bad weekly matchups and low WvW participation. So moving forward, I hope you folks think about implementing cross-server matchups.

I know some may be against a total cross-server instancing like EOTM. You could compromise by matching a higher tier server with a lower tier server, where 2 or so servers would share the same goals and coverage each week to go up against other servers. So instead of 1 server vs 1 server vs 1 server each week, it could be 2 servers vs 2 servers vs 2 servers. This will only work if you match a high WvW participation server with a low WvW participation server. The goal is to make sure this game doesn’t end up with just a handful of servers with any worthy WvW fun, while the rest of 2/3rd of the servers become ghost towns in WvW with only PvDoor action to be had. You would still retain some server pride since you only need to share your pride with 1 other server.

For me personally, had I not spent $25 to transfer off a deadbeat server recently, I would’ve quit the game. Just think of all the players that enjoyed WvW, or wanted to enjoy WvW, but they were punished by their server choice that they made maybe 2 years ago. If you match a high tier server with a low tier server, this will allow those currently with little to no WvW action to still enjoy the game. Let’s face it, there’s a good percentage of the playerbase that will never spend $25 to transfer to another server. Going with this route will ensure those individuals to stay and keep playing GW2.

As far as map design and features wise, I absolutely love the map design. The “all of above” comes to mind when thinking about what to copy over into WvW. EOTM could be a very good WvW map if you just add 1 additional teleport point in the middle, maybe somewhere in Statuary. Make people fight over Statuary and turn it into a teleport point their realm can use. But as far as utilizing the vertical space, having different themed starting points, different bosses to fight over, less trash mobs but more important npc mobs, more choke points to slow down the zerg blob, etc.. are all welcome changes that I’d love to see in WvW.

Chokepoints

Examples of well-designed choke points:
Archway leading Lowlands supply camp (Lower right hand side of each BL map)
Bridge leading to Southern most supply camp in BL maps (Victor’s/Hero’s lodge, Champion’s Demense)
The hallway corridors leading into inner Stone Mist castle

They all provide easy alternative ways to get from A to B. At lowlands you can climb over the archway and have some fights there or go around it, or enter the small pond of water. The bridges in the original BL map all have water underneath them, making them feel very natural and instead of using the water one can always swim.

Examples of badly designed choke points:
Bridges in EotM
(Which are either extremely narrow or lacking side railings so those who lack stability are a huge risk being launched, knocked off from the bridge)

Qualities of a Good Choke Point
Map design provides alternate ways to reach the same destination (generally the alternate way should be very close, but the alternative might require more travel time)
Not too narrow
Not too long
Feels natural, not forced
Doesn’t overly favor some professions

Very Important Things to Consider

Because of many factors choke points are not effective in holding a large group, but it can be deadly towards small groups and solo roamers, especially if there is no alternative way to the destination the introduction of many choke points can often lead to situations of 1 vs 30+. If Arenanet’s purpose is to make all solo roamers run either as a thief, PU mesmer and warrior (= the TOP3 most abundant solo roamers), then adding more such choke points will sure achieve this goal, but the sake of versatility in this game, this would be a horrible decision.

Large organized groups are mainly inaffected by chokepoints, because of the 5-man AoE limit and most large groups are melee trains consisting mainly of hammer warriors and shout guardians. They have access to incredible amount of condition removal, area healing (blast finishers on water fields mostly from Staff eles) and lots of stability. Lines of warding, knockback, launch etc, soft and hard CC like cripple and immobilize are not gonna stop them much as they move as a group. For many roamers the same choke point is a death trap.

Warriors and guardians are already by the two most common professions in WvWvW. They both have good access to stability and weapon skills to push enemy off the cliff, bridge etc. With stability on there is no risk of falling down. They are also heavy armor. Warrior has the highest hit point pool and guardian has access to protection and lots of healing, so that they are both naturally less squishy than most professions. By adding more narrow, long choke points without any alternatives would just even further deviate the class balance in favor of these TOP professions in WvWvW.

Many of the same points apply to added verticality. Example of good verticality:
current Stonemist castle and the cliffs next to Garrison. Stonemist feels natural and very spacious thanks to its huge halls in both ground floor and 1st floor and the view from the top is magnificent. The cliffs near Garrison provide ledges where you can jump down without dying. Most of the cliffs near the BL top towers (closest towers to Garrison) are a bit excessively steep. In general combining choke points + verticality is not a good idea, because it once again skews the balance (those with stability vs those who don’t have it).

I am for more versatility and balance in this game. Sadly all the WvWvW changes implemented in 2013, added siege powers with WXP traits etc, were all just skewing the balance even more towards large groups, zergs. Buffed superior arrow carts kill a small group’s effort trying to take back a tower, but do nothing to stop a massive blob with golems. The BL changes really seriously hurt solo roaming, especially for those who are not thieves. EotM is an extremely zergy map. I really hope the pendulum swings to the other direction someday.

The map should some a few choke points and vertical elements, but not excessive amount of them. The original BL maps already have a good amount of both. I don’t see how adding them would make the BL maps any better. But I think there are many ways to improve BL maps: Give some important function to Skritt and Tamili areas (currently they are useless), maybe some added supply camp? And give us the lake back. Any specific reason why water is missing from EotM?

Nuzt.7894:

The Lost Witch.7601:

Nightingale.8364:

Lets keeps PVE as much out as possible is the development ideas. As stated before, there is plenty of pve outside wvw to keep anyone happy. WVW players want to play wvw, not run around killing grubs etc.

PvE elements have some serious benefits for WvW design though. Here are a few examples:

• They make it easier to implement an idea, since the designers can more easily figure out what is possible. (If a player could have the commander siegerazer ability… that’d open up a lot of interesting lines of play, but probably also a lot of overpowered exploit-like things)

• They offer players something to do while they wait for their party to get ready.

• They make it possible for players to enjoy a fight when they’re too small in numbers to take on a larger objective. (Walking over a capture point to take it when nothing defends it isn’t interesting at all. I very much prefer killing some guards first.)

I’m not saying that we should fill the WvW map with grubs, just that the NPC’s have their purpose. Perhaps the aspect of EotM that makes players believe it’s a ‘PvE’ map, is that the fights are often in one place, far away. And you have to run from your own keep all the way there. In between you find nearly no one, because they’re all fighting at the choke point on the other side of the map.

No one is defending any objectives in between, because they don’t have much value. And players aren’t organized enough to wait around the spawn to gather a new group and attack somewhere else. So it appears to be all useless NPC’s that you meet.

I don’t think the problem lies with the amount of NPC’s, but with the nature of the objectives that the NPC’s protect. They just don’t have enough value, because the fight isn’t really about getting that generator, or that tower… it is about getting the enemy keep. (At least, this is how I perceive it)

To keep it simple, the majority of WvW players were extremely unhappy with Anet putting the LS into WvW during season 1. People do not come to WvW to PvE, the largest portion of the game is already dedicated to this type of stuff, keep it out of WvW. How happy do you think the PvE player base would be if Anet suddenly announced that all PvE zones now included WvW. They would be irrate, they would not be able to enjoy their game mode without fear of being ganked over and over. If you want to PvE so bad go do it in the zones dedicated to PvE. There are no benefits to bringing it into WvW unless you consider kittening off an already volatile community a benefit.

Bringing WvW into PvE is not quite the same thing, and you know it. (In WvW we can avoid the wolves, in PvE we couldn’t avoid the fear of being ganked)

WvW is not a good place for the living story, since this leads to conflict between those who want to do WvW and those who just want to get their living story achievements done.

But that doesn’t mean that there is no place for NPC’s altogether.

I’ve already listed three reasons to have NPC’s in my earlier post, but I’ll offer a few more:

• They make the battlefield more realistic. (Without them, most camps, keeps and towers would always look empty)

• They can do boring stuff for you. (Like carrying supply from a depot to a keep. While also opening up strategic opportunities, like stopping the supply chain)

• They can set up a ‘minimum’ requirement for taking an objective. So that a single player can’t capture an entire map during the night for example.

• They can help to create an interesting setting. The Kodan in the ice keep of EotM really add something to the atmosphere of that place for example.

In short: I don’t think you realise how boring it would be to find nothing but doors, walls and capture circles until you finally meet an enemy.

The ‘PvE in WvW’ problem is not with the fact that there are NPC’s, but what their function is.

If they’re just grubs, skritt and harpy queens, then yeah… what is the point (though, perhaps ‘decoration’ is enough)? But if they’re dolyaks, guards and siegerazers, they suddenly have meaning.

That said, I play on Underworld, which means that many fights are small in nature, which gives NPC’s extra value. Perhaps you play in more populated servers in which NPC’s become negligible.

What i arealy miss from gw2: the body block system from gw1.
Less balling, more tactic and more roles in teamplay!

Input from: WvW & PvE Player, low experience in eotm, didnt read all these 300+ posts here.

Proposal Overview
More strategic value for EotM

Goal of Proposal
EotM is blind zerging, resulting in more WXP and loot than in WvW → randoms prefer the rewards of EotM (wxp, loot) over winning a weekly WvW match. Adding in strategic gameplay like in WvW or better would reduce amount of blobbing, reducing amount of revenue, increasing population of WvW again. Besides, it’s more fun.

Proposal Functionality
Some Ideas that could lead to a more strategic gameplay:

• Add a reason for defending, especially own, e.g.: Waypoints only usable by one server, special defensive measurements → more difficult to break in → more time to react (which is needed, since bad communication on EotM) OR upgrade for automatical highlighting on minimap of any attack on stuff of your side.
• make internal communication easier (since there’s barely no TS): that could be e.g.: possibility of commanders to paint stuff on the minimap for everyone in a special colour, paint could stay for a couple of minutes and be erased per hotkey.
• (unique) rewards for holding own stuff at/until the end of a match → more tactical gameplay
• unique positions to make it easier to defend

Associated Risks
EotM could become less popular amongst those who dont care about strategy but want only rewards. those players would either learn to like strategy (and eventually move back on to WvW) or move back to pve.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Nuzt.7894:

The Lost Witch.7601:

Nightingale.8364:

Lets keeps PVE as much out as possible is the development ideas. As stated before, there is plenty of pve outside wvw to keep anyone happy. WVW players want to play wvw, not run around killing grubs etc.

PvE elements have some serious benefits for WvW design though. Here are a few examples:

• They make it easier to implement an idea, since the designers can more easily figure out what is possible. (If a player could have the commander siegerazer ability… that’d open up a lot of interesting lines of play, but probably also a lot of overpowered exploit-like things)

• They offer players something to do while they wait for their party to get ready.

• They make it possible for players to enjoy a fight when they’re too small in numbers to take on a larger objective. (Walking over a capture point to take it when nothing defends it isn’t interesting at all. I very much prefer killing some guards first.)

I’m not saying that we should fill the WvW map with grubs, just that the NPC’s have their purpose. Perhaps the aspect of EotM that makes players believe it’s a ‘PvE’ map, is that the fights are often in one place, far away. And you have to run from your own keep all the way there. In between you find nearly no one, because they’re all fighting at the choke point on the other side of the map.

No one is defending any objectives in between, because they don’t have much value. And players aren’t organized enough to wait around the spawn to gather a new group and attack somewhere else. So it appears to be all useless NPC’s that you meet.

I don’t think the problem lies with the amount of NPC’s, but with the nature of the objectives that the NPC’s protect. They just don’t have enough value, because the fight isn’t really about getting that generator, or that tower… it is about getting the enemy keep. (At least, this is how I perceive it)

To keep it simple, the majority of WvW players were extremely unhappy with Anet putting the LS into WvW during season 1. People do not come to WvW to PvE, the largest portion of the game is already dedicated to this type of stuff, keep it out of WvW. How happy do you think the PvE player base would be if Anet suddenly announced that all PvE zones now included WvW. They would be irrate, they would not be able to enjoy their game mode without fear of being ganked over and over. If you want to PvE so bad go do it in the zones dedicated to PvE. There are no benefits to bringing it into WvW unless you consider kittening off an already volatile community a benefit.

Bringing WvW into PvE is not quite the same thing, and you know it. (In WvW we can avoid the wolves, in PvE we couldn’t avoid the fear of being ganked)

WvW is not a good place for the living story, since this leads to conflict between those who want to do WvW and those who just want to get their living story achievements done.

But that doesn’t mean that there is no place for NPC’s altogether.

I’ve already listed three reasons to have NPC’s in my earlier post, but I’ll offer a few more:

• They make the battlefield more realistic. (Without them, most camps, keeps and towers would always look empty)

• They can do boring stuff for you. (Like carrying supply from a depot to a keep. While also opening up strategic opportunities, like stopping the supply chain)

• They can set up a ‘minimum’ requirement for taking an objective. So that a single player can’t capture an entire map during the night for example.

• They can help to create an interesting setting. The Kodan in the ice keep of EotM really add something to the atmosphere of that place for example.

In short: I don’t think you realise how boring it would be to find nothing but doors, walls and capture circles until you finally meet an enemy.

The ‘PvE in WvW’ problem is not with the fact that there are NPC’s, but what their function is.

If they’re just grubs, skritt and harpy queens, then yeah… what is the point (though, perhaps ‘decoration’ is enough)? But if they’re dolyaks, guards and siegerazers, they suddenly have meaning.

That said, I play on Underworld, which means that many fights are small in nature, which gives NPC’s extra value. Perhaps you play in more populated servers in which NPC’s become negligible.

I agree with guards and such, I actually mistook you for the guy asking for the random PvE spawning ghosts which would not be good. As far as Guards, Dolyaks, and these type of NPC’s I have no issue with them performing their tasks.

Proposal Overview
Borderlands Map 1.1
Add 2 towers at the road intersections east/west of the northern supply camp.
Add WvW component of the Skritt and Centaur camps, making pacifying them ally them to your side like EBG mercenaries yet upgradable like a supply camp.
Add more functionality to the northern supply camp, giving it an ability similar to the Shrine in EotM.

Goal of Proposal
Too much open space currently in the borderlands that is only rarely strategic. Would give the home team a more defensible base zone while still giving more attack options for enemies to fight the uphill battle.

Proposal Functionality
Upgrades for mercenaries could include:
1. Raiding/Patrol Parties-The mercenaries send a party east/west to attack and one south to patrol neighboring lumber mill/quarry.
2. Upgrade Defenses- They bolster the amount and quality of guards at the entryways to their camps.
3. Guard Training-Increases the stats and abilities the npcs possess.
4. War March/Skritt Sabotage-Activatable “breakout” type events to help push the high ground objectives. War March would be very much like the current breakout with siege yet not as tough a boss, but with extra centaurs instead of one tough champion. Skritt Sabotage would be more of an escort mission, if you escort the skritt to their tower objective, they burrow inside and attempt to destroy siege or the door if no siege is present.
These abilities would be used in the two directions of the new northern towers/northern supply camp, and south from each camp down to the Bay and Hills Keeps, enabling whichever side who maintains control of these a strategic advantage.
Northern Camp while fully upgraded and controlled by the home team could spawn a champion/legendary patrol for the east and west side of the high ground area.

Hopefully the new objectives would give the home team better defense(and more to lose at the same time) while giving attacking teams more to attack with if the home teams turtle on the high ground.
Associated Risks
Possible that it helps the home team too much. Home teams able to attack the Hills or Bay with the mercenaries would only receive mercenary help on the outer gates, none on the inner.
Currently home teams if pushed to natural border lines only have to worry about Garrison and two towers which they can quickly reach, giving them 2 more towers to actively defend while being an advantage makes them work harder, yet gives enemies another chance of a solid foothold in the north.

Proposal Overview
Objective Upgrades enhancement for current objectives

Goal of Proposal
Personnel upgrades become more useful, making defending npcs tougher and more versatile like in EotM. Defending itself will become more lucrative while attacking and upgrading “enemy” structures in multiple maps will provide your entire server(those who fought in the last 15 minutes) with bonus Wxp. Players will be encouraged to claim all the objectives they can, upgrade them for more Wxp, and defend them while upgrading for slightly better rewards. Servers who can maintain a solid balance of defense and offense will be rewarded the most.
Structural upgrades stay relatively the same except for Waypoints, making it more difficult to hold far away structures but more profitable at the same time.
Proposal Functionality
Supply Camps-
1. Double Delivery-stays the same
2. Caravan Guards-Dolyak takes 50% damage while guards remain alive
3. Additional Guards-no change
4. Strengthen Guards-also makes Dolyak immune to damage while guards are alive.

Towers
Personnel Upgrades-
1. Combine Merchants/Services into a single upgrade
2. Hire Patrol-Same as before but hires a patrol on the inside of a tower as well, and on the inside of an inner keep
3. Guard Training-Access to 1-2 more regular skills for their class, and an elite(archers can use traps, etc)
Structural Upgrades
1. No Burning Oil upgrade-All structures will start with Oil
2. Cannons/Mortar will remain the same
3. Orb Altar- Gives the tower a bloodlust buff in the same radius as guild buffs, this buff applies to guards as well and rewards each successful defense with an event chest of blue quality.
Keeps
1. Waypoints-Only available for one keep closest to your spawn in each map. In far keeps, becomes Altar of Power, providing the same buffs as the lesser altar mentioned for towers, but also will provide a server wide +100 Wxp tick to every player for that server who has successfully completed a WvW event during the current 15 minute score timer.
Associated Risks
Turtling could become a problem, which is why both attack and defense would be rewarded in this idea. People could also complain about guards becoming too strong at towers/keeps for very small groups.

Blarg, want to do more but getting late and tired, won’t be able to think straight! I think it will have to wait until tomorrow!

So, we were asked about choke points.

My take on choke points is twofold. First, they are strategic. Second, they do not make for fun gameplay. In other words, I think some are a good idea, but not too many.

I’m definitely glad to hear Devon talk about choke points instead of bridges though. The bridges are one of my least favorite part of eotm. Good for trolling? Yes. Good for fun fights? No.

Probably has been said already but not read the rest of this topic in days.

We need better/more loot. Yes we love the fights, but we also want to buy gems with gold as PvE players do to get all the fancy stuff on the gem store

WvW players have a huge set back when it comes to making gold.

• Fewer drops, which are not even worth much
• Extra cost of upgrading towers
• Extra cost of buying siege
• PvE player can make more gold in 30 minutes than a WvW player can in one day!
• Purchasing very expensive Food items for guild and rest of server.
• No rewards for patrolling towers or escorting dollies any more
• PvE players can guest on other servers where PvE events are more likely to succeed and get better loot; WvW players stuck with their server and costs 1000 Gems to move to another server.
• Infinitely more chances of dying in WvW than in PvE meaning WvW Players have a bigger gold drain on having to repair gear more frequently.

Sure some WvW players have Legendary weapons, but used to be, and still is really, that anyone who wields a Legendary in WvW is called a PvE scrub; simply because you couldnt make enough gold in WvW to get a Legendary.

DevonCarver.5370:

Topic Goal:
The Edge of the Mists features numerous changes to the standard WvW mechanics.The most notable changes are: Scoring on capture of objectives, scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs, unique bosses at each objective, increased emphasis on verticality, more chokepoints, a much shorter match time, and destructible terrain.

The most notable changes? Seriously? The MOST notable change is the possibility of any server join in a different faction every week.

DevonCarver.5370:

Of the changes included, which would you like to see implemented in the standard WvW maps?

You need to apply the “join a team for a week” to the current WvW. Server vs Server is just not working. Gold on the table for transfers is killing the already killed WvW balance. Servers are dying, timezones are unfair, and pay2transfer is uncontrollable.

Guilds paying a lot of gold for transfer entire guilds to cover timezones or massive migrations are a reality. You need to HIT that. If not, this game has no sense at all.

Just too many serves for the current WvW population.

DevonCarver.5370:

Devon Carver

Devon Carver, do your job, WvW is dying. Stop trying and prioritizing minors mechanics, and work in the overall balance.

And there is players who only play WvW and they are getting boring, i find myself playing only few hours a week because WvW is empty, and i am in a T3 server.

I believe that most everything that is needed to make WvW enjoyable on the long term has been said in this thread, from the changes in the server matchup to alliances to SM choke points, new traps, guard escort, and so on.

If it has not been done after this much time either Anet does not have enough dedicated designers and programmers for WvW or have been preparing something big (like an expansion) and have been keeping it quiet.

None the less, most of us have had probably near 250-500+ hours of fun with this game so it’s not as if we didn’t get enough for our money. Like many players I will blindly move to the next big game, not because it may have the greatest combat system (apparently it doesn’t), but because I have a thirst for something new, to explore a new world and meet new people in WvW type PvP.

Meanwhile GW2 seems stalled, WvW is losing its population, our suggestions are apparently heard but it takes months for decisions to be taken. Even at reset night it’s either hard to find a challenge or you get swarmed and are totally outnumbered. The PvE world didn’t get a new area to explore since Southsun. The Living Story is more like a farming party and GvG is still something we are supposed we are supposed to have forgotten since GW1.

My respect to everyone who made this fine game still despite my seemingly negative comments I’ve had mad fun with GW2.

the problems:
Keeps in the WvW offer nothing more then any other keep, so there is no real reason to attack lets say garrison other then to just upset the enemy realm.

The History:
Before we had the Orbs of power mechanic which would bring a value to each or any keep that had the orb in it. It added some importance to try to defend one keep at all cost over another.

the Solution
I would love to see Orbs returned to the game. However, change the way Orbs work. Instead of giving a over powering buff to the realm that controls it. Have each Orb worth 50 points to the PTT or something.

I would love to see the outmanned buff changed to increasing all siege damage by 25% by the team that has the outmanned buff. AND also reducing the damage of all walls/doors/npcs by 25%. This would allow the outmanned realm to actually be able to defend their land just a little be longer.

Keeps, on reset all keeps and towers should be at 50% supply.

Utilize the NPC camps to the north East and West corners of the maps in the colored borderlands so that they actually bring more support to the zone in a way. Capping one of those camps, brings more guards to defend the NW or NE supply camp, and the northern towers.

Reduce the overall size of the citadel space, so that MORE of the zone is actually designed for combat not just avoiding an huge chuck of land mass that provides nothing. some of the area directly around the citadel would be great for fights!

Add salvage WvW ablity, that destorying enemy siege has a chance to reward back salvaging some supplies from it and also a blue print from it

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Probably has been said already but not read the rest of this topic in days.

We need better/more loot. Yes we love the fights, but we also want to buy gems with gold as PvE players do to get all the fancy stuff on the gem store

WvW players have a huge set back when it comes to making gold.

• Fewer drops, which are not even worth much
• Extra cost of upgrading towers
• Extra cost of buying siege
• PvE player can make more gold in 30 minutes than a WvW player can in one day!
• Purchasing very expensive Food items for guild and rest of server.
• No rewards for patrolling towers or escorting dollies any more
• PvE players can guest on other servers where PvE events are more likely to succeed and get better loot; WvW players stuck with their server and costs 1000 Gems to move to another server.
• Infinitely more chances of dying in WvW than in PvE meaning WvW Players have a bigger gold drain on having to repair gear more frequently.

Sure some WvW players have Legendary weapons, but used to be, and still is really, that anyone who wields a Legendary in WvW is called a PvE scrub; simply because you couldnt make enough gold in WvW to get a Legendary.

WvW players don’t need to make tons of more money, they need to get their costs reduced!!

• Remove the Costs for Upgrading Towers with Gold, and replace the Costs with just only Karma & Badges of Honour – no golds costs
• Remove Siege Weapons from TP, Blue Prints should be only earnable and be drops from Chests when taking Towers/Keeps. Otherwise receiveable from NPCs for Karma/ Badges of Honor
• Add to the Shrine Bonus, that if you hold all 3 of them, that the Server that owns all 3 Shine Buffs, doesn#t need to repair Equipment on Death, Equipmment of a Server with the 3 Shrine Buffs will be “blessed” and can’t be destroyed. This gives people more incentive to go out for the Shrines
• Remove finally Food and Nourishments of any other sort out of WvW, this crap has nothing to search at all in WvW. With the Removal of this stuff from WvW, WvW could become alot more balanced. Buff Items should be finally PVE ONLY
  That removes also the cost problem there …nothing to buy7use anymore, so no cost problem…
• Are you any serious?? You are complainign about makign too less money and then you want to remove the rewards for escorting and patrolling? How about a serious NO??
• Server Transfer Costs won’t change, this is no argument for WvW Players being poor, these costs are there for a serious reason….
• L2P – simple, so better you play and so better you know, when its good for you to flee better, rather than to fight until death, so lesser will you die here. On the other side, you have ALWAYS the option free to play anytime the map, that has the buff that gives you also undestroyable armor, more exp and more w-exp.
  —-

In fact, WvW players can make quite easy enough quickly money, if you zerg like locusts from place to place at the right time, when your enemies mostly all are sleeping and all the places defenseless. Do this for some hours without dieing and you get your money together quickly.
However, if everything you think about, while playing WvW ist – how can I make as quickly as possible tons of money, then I think is WvW nothign for you…

PvE will always be tons easier to make quickly money, just by speed rushing through the easy Dungeons, you make more money, than a Zerg in WvW in the same time that the Dungeon Team needs to finish the Dungeon.
FZ1 rewards 1,25G in short time for a very experienced Zerker Rush. No WvW Zerg in the world makes faster 1,25G than this.

However, for what does a 100% WvW Player need much money at all ??
A 100% WvW player basically needs money only to buy its Lvl 80 Exotic Equipment and currently for repairing, upgrading and siege weapons.
If Naet would just remove the cost factor of these 3 things, WvW’ers would make more money over time, without having to significantly increase the Money Rewards from taking Towers, Keeps ect.

Its just the same thing that you suggest, but better for the Game Economy.
The game generates already way too much Gold, faster than the current money sinks do draw it out of the game I have the strong feeling.
Don’t make it just worser by lettign the gold inflation become just only stronger through in WvW increased Gold Gain.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d say there is a pretty strong sentiment against the idea of collapsing all of WvW into 3 colors, rather than the current world set up. Which I agree with. I think world pride and association is an important part of the way that WvW works currently.

I’m willing to bet this sentiment largely stems from the fact that people are unable to decide who they play with in EotM, and since it’s just a random gathering of people the sense of community evaporates. I for one happen to agree, I think very few players want a purely random system. It is relatively easy, however, to design a system that lets players retain the same degree of choice they enjoy now with respect to where they play. That’s all a server is essentially – an “instance” that certain teams have opted to play in. Under such circumstances the resulting color alliances will, if anything, simply be larger versions of the communities players are currently a part of. And those communities will be more stable as well, since the departure of a few guilds here and there no longer has the potential to set off a mass exodus, as seems to continue to occur with some regularity.

People want influence over whom they socialize with – that’s nothing new. But it is entirely possible to accommodate this in a color-based system.

DevonCarver.5370:

The discussion around community, world identity, etc. has been very enlightening. I also wanted to call out everyone who approached the discussion with an open mind. Whether you like Edge of the Mists or not, its valuable to discuss some of the concepts there and see if they are applicable to the other WvW maps.

I think that there has been an abundance of great ideas so far and a couple that I personally don’t like.

I happened to play a lot of EoTM over the weekend and as much as I like playing with people from other servers, EoTM basically is one huge 24/7 Karma (or WXP) train.

While people are quite divided over the PvE elements (I am not a fan of it because I want to play against other players) the greatest problem I have with EoTM is the total lack of coordination.

One of my guildies was leading and doing a great job of it but there is hardly any way to control the masses and have some meaningful play. You either have superior numbers and win or you don’t. At one point we somehow got lucky and noticed, that our zerg mainly consisted of 80s. Good for us, we steamrolled everyone as people seemed to know what they were doing or at least weren’t all rallybots.

Yesterday evening we ran into two enemy guilds who were apparently having their guild raid on EoTM. 40+ organized players = end of story.
We tried a couple of times and then logged off – no point in getting owned because no one listens, groups up, pushes together etc.

On Kodash we always have a number of people who are not on Team Speak and aren’t doing what the commander wants. But there always is a good core croup that does coordinate and follows the commander. Worst case we can request support from other maps to quickly defend our garrison or join forces to take an enemy’s garrison.

For me and my guild that is what makes WvW fun. It more than a mindless karma train 24/7.

On EoTM every once in a blue moon I see someone dropping siege to defend but mostly I have the feeling that all zergs are happy going clockwise conquering everything.

Summary: The danger I see when it comes to throwing people together based on colors is that you will lose out on all elements of coordinated play and I think that this is what most people appreciate about WvW.

I would like to suggest a new point system to address WVW coverage issues:

Divide the day into the 4 time zones (NA, OCX, SEA, EU) and each server will earn points and bonuses based on their ranking for that time zone only. For example:

For the 6 hour period of EU:
Red ticked up to 50
Blue ticked 49
Green only ticked 1

Once the score is tallied, revert the score to zero and award victory points and bonuses as follows:
Red gets 3 victory points and their garrison is fully upgraded
Blue gets 2 victory points and bonuses to karma rewards and drops
Green gets 1 victory point & bonuses to supplies and upgrade speed to catch up then
At the end of the day which ever side has the least points gets Garri auto upgraded.

This is just a rough example showing the principle but this way you can limit the large gap in points caused by severe difference in coverage. Its not a magic bullet but the system really needs to be shaken up in case ESO’s and other game’s WvW can compare to GW2 WvW and players start hemorrhaging to other games.

DevonCarver.5370:

Probably the most contentious issue has been the talk of getting rid of world’s and replacing the system with just the three colors. I think there is some merit to the idea, although I believe the worlds have a lot of value. I’d be curious to know if the folks who argue against and world pride feel that way because of being on underperforming worlds or not. I also wonder if there isn’t some work that could be done to restore that world pride without completely overhauling the WvW system. Someone mentioned alliances, which I think would work fairly well. If the less populous worlds were grouped together, does that seem like something that could reinvigorate them?

I was on Blackgate before they even made T2 and only recently transferred off so I could play with a friend due to the server being full. I am absolutely for the color system and dumping servers. Server pride has some merit but I don’t think it even comes close to outweighing overall WvW health. WvW is dying, there is no competition left in almost all matchups. What’s worse is there is nothing really to fight over. With no competition and nothing to really gain there isn’t much reason to WvW. The only thing left is server pride, which you’ve mistakenly taken as a positive instead of the negative symptom to a larger problem. If you really wish to cling to server pride then see what it’s don for SoR, SBI, HoD, ET, SoS, etc. That fact that so many servers got destroyed shows how important server pride is. What you will find in all of those cases where server pride meant nothing is people wanting the chance to win.

WvW needs to be rebuilt into a competitive fight where there is something to actually fight over. Getting rid of servers is the first step to creating a battlefield where there are always friendlies to back you up and enemies to fight. With no servers everyone will have a competitive chance at winning. Once everyone has a chance to win you need to give them a reason to win, create some awesome looking WvW skins(like there should have been at launch) that you get to choose one of when your color wins a match.

Even if you went the alliance route and grouped all the lower tier servers together they would have zero chance against a T1 server. They might field a great NA primetime but outside of that they will get absolutely crushed. You’re going to end up putting so many servers into an alliance that you might as well just go the server-less route.

If you want to keep pride a factor you can then give guilds tools to foster pride. Give reasons to actually claim and defend keeps. Give them special GvG maps where guilds and any willing recruits duke it out in a 1hr matchup that aids their color. I can think of tons more you can do but lets leave that for another CDI.

The same server issues can be seen mirrored in PvE. Go to a lower tier server and you’re not going to see Teq/wurm getting killed. People want a chance to do the content and go where they can accomplish that. Going server-less would help not only WvW but it would help PvE. You guys would of course lose out on gem transfers but it’s all for the health of the game right?

Simple answer to Devon’s last post, better use of terrain would be very welcome; but as you said let’s avoid maps with a dozen Thermopylae.
A simple implementation might be making more chokepoints, maybe even within siege range of towers; the deeper you get into a team’s home territory. Keep gradual cliff drop downs to allow the defending team more mobility while limiting offensive mobility.

In the current maps, it’s too easy for an enemy to ninja towers close to spawn due to the multiple approaches.

A single approach, possibly under watchful siege and easily defended; would make total domination of a borderland a much taller order and mean that much more.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

(continued)

2) Keep the reward system as it currently exists in EotM exactly as it is. Reward the karma trains to their hearts’ content over there. Maybe this was the intent with the new map and signals the first ray of hope that this issue is being taken seriously.

3) Substantially increase the rewards earned from scoring kills on opposing players. Enough to compensate for the loss of loot from other activites as suggested in point #1.

4) Player skills can no longer damage gates of a tower, keep, or Stonemist Castle which have been upgraded to tier 3/fortified state.

5) Eliminate points-per-tick. Throw it, the baby, and the bath water out the window. Gone. Done. Never to return. Nothing in the game will earn a server points over time.

6) Points are now earned only from direct player confrontation. Keep the current system whereby players earn a World Score point from a kill, but untie it from the Borderlands Bloodlust buff. Borderlands Bloodlust is just another mechanic that favors overwhelming numbers and coverage, not skill. If anything, additional World Score points should be awarded to the outnumbered side when they make a kill. Keeping it at one-point-per-kill across the board would be an acceptable compromise, though.

World Score points are also awarded to a server which successfully captures a supply camp, tower, keep, or Stonemist Castle ONLY if the objective was actively defended by real players at some point during the siege. Capturing an empty objective will never award any points under any circumstances.

Lastly, World Score points are the reward for a server which actively defends an objective under attack. The current “Defend the XYZ” events which trigger when an objective is sieged can be left in place. As each is successfully concluded by the defending server (i.e. you held the tower, keep, etc. for 3 minutes), World Score points are rewarded.

Defense events will reward fewer points per event than capture events; a 10-to1 ratio could serve as a starting point, tweaked over time as testing and balance dictate. However, if a siege is prolonged, it’s conceivable the defenders could actually earn more points from multiple defense events than the attackers earn through a single capture event.

Another balancer to throw into the mix is losing an objective results in a loss of a set amount of points for the defenders; half the capture reward, perhaps. Conversely, defenders may earn a bonus if they successfully defend the objective over multiple defense events and/or the objective does not come under attack again for X minutes after the conclusion of the most recent defense event.

With such a scoring system, the points reflect the actual conflicts between players rather than which one of them is the most effective at playing PvDoor. It’s a measure of the players’ skill in combating other players and effectively sieging or countering the sieging of one’s opponents.

A server which grossly outnumbers their opposition, zergs the map, and captures empty fortification after empty fortification will, at the end of the day, have earned almost nothing. Certainly no World Score points and only some marginal account-bound items that can’t be sold nor traded.

If, on the other hand, they attack a fortification in which there are real player opponents, they have the potential to earn some World Score points if they capture the objective as well as more lucrative personal rewards if they manage to kill any of the real players.

The outnumbered server which runs from the blob everytime they show up and/or turtles behind their walls as the zerg goes around them to PvDoor will also earn nothing; even less than the zerg, if they don’t bother capturing anything back.

If, on the other hand, they stand their ground – even in the face of overwhelming odds – and fight, they stand a chance of earning World Score points for their server and potentially some nice loot if they manage to score some kills in the process.

In Conclusion

By implementing something as simple as redefining which activites will be rewarded, you subtly but powerfully shift this game mode into alignment with what WvWvW was originally envisioned to be; epic combat between servers. Assuming, of course, this was indeed the vision.

On the other hand, I could be mistaken and WvWvW is intended as an experiment to test players’ tolerance for mindless repetition and shallow, non-strategic, single-tactic game play. In which case, I bought the wrong game.

I know this thread is pretty much over, but i just wanted to express support for this. I think the PPT scoring system is the root of a lot of issues in WvW, and I even posted an alternative similar to this a while back that didn’t get much support

Only 7 pages in 7 days? That prove players don’t care anymore what do you do to WvW. Players don’t trust on you anymore.

Hopefully this help you to take conscience about what do you did in the past for WvW and what do you need to do now. Maybe you need to start reading the old already posted topics.

But, sincerely, for me, now is pretty late. Take that as a lesson from this CDI, don’t ignore the community for too long.

Proposal Overview
Change the capping mechanics in WvW.

Goal of Proposal
The goal is to discourage PvDooring unguarded keeps, and encourage splitting the zerging and moving toward small scale combat, and actual PvP.

Proposal Functionality
A new mechanic in WvW: Mist Essence. Mist Essence is earned primarily through player kills, tags offering only partial essence and full essence from individual stomps (any pve style methods of earning it should be very limited, i.e. capping borderland bloodlust points, no npc farming).

To fully cap any major ppt-earning point (camp/keep/etc), players must “deposit” their essence, otherwise at most you can only reduce a point to neutral state (no karma/exp when neutralizing).

Cap points where a player put in essence return some interest (in the form of essence/buffs/etc), after some time can be withdrawn (maybe in the form of pure loot?).

Interrupting an enemies’ capture lets players loot the invested essence for that cap.

Associated Risks
This is a rough idea that would probably run into issues through testing/implementation. Would probably need several iterations.

Also in a game mode that is mostly mindless zerging, such gameplay mechanics might be too confusing for players if not effectively communicated (I remember as a new wvwer it took some time to understand how the ppt thing worked)

Karma trains/farming would effectively end, this could be seen as a good or bad thing among wvwers.

roamzero.9486:

Proposal Overview
Change the capping mechanics in WvW.

Goal of Proposal
The goal is to discourage PvDooring unguarded keeps, and encourage splitting the zerging and moving toward small scale combat, and actual PvP.

Proposal Functionality
A new mechanic in WvW: Mist Essence. Mist Essence is earned primarily through player kills, tags offering only partial essence and full essence from individual stomps (any pve style methods of earning it should be very limited, i.e. capping borderland bloodlust points, no npc farming).

To fully cap any major ppt-earning point (camp/keep/etc), players must “deposit” their essence, otherwise at most you can only reduce a point to neutral state (no karma/exp when neutralizing).

Cap points where a player put in essence return some interest (in the form of essence/buffs/etc), after some time can be withdrawn (maybe in the form of pure loot?).

Interrupting an enemies’ capture lets players loot the invested essence for that cap.

Associated Risks
This is a rough idea that would probably run into issues through testing/implementation. Would probably need several iterations.

Also in a game mode that is mostly mindless zerging, such gameplay mechanics might be too confusing for players if not effectively communicated (I remember as a new wvwer it took some time to understand how the ppt thing worked)

Karma trains/farming would effectively end, this could be seen as a good or bad thing among wvwers.

This could make WvW very slow at the less populated servers. In the night, morning and early afternoon, we would barely be able to get any essence. And without being able to make captures, perhaps the evening wouldn’t fill up either, because there is no one there, because no one can cap anything. (Self fulfilling prophecy)

This might also take ‘care’ of nightcapping… though that’s just a major pain for players that just happen to live on the other side of the planet.

I think we would need some other sources of essence than just mostly player kills to make this work.

urieldhynne.2743:

Only 7 pages in 7 days?

Keep in mind that players have to keep up with other CDI threads as well. Including, but not limited to fractals (17 pages) and ranger (35 pages).

Though I do think Devon could drop another question or proposition for us to discuss.

The Lost Witch.7601:

I think we would need some other sources of essence than just mostly player kills to make this work.

Since borderlands bloodlust cap points earn no ppt, I think they would be an ideal way to get mist essence, since at the same time the area would attract players to encourage fighting. Maybe make it so that in addition to earning a flat amount for a player kill, you also steal what they already have.

However since there isn’t a bloodlust area in EB that would need to be addressed, plus a lot of minor details (should essence degrade over time? should it reset when changing BLs?)

EOTM has proved to be an exciting and new perspective on the wvw style of play. ( A truthful compliment) The topology is well thought out and takes time to learn which; is good. Match length time is obviously still under review. My personal thoughts are currently it would enhance game play and reduce the thankless/mindless time spent running if there were forward spawn points which only allowed a group/party maybe of five to spawn deeper into the map. It would encourage party play without causing imbalance to match-ups. People who died far away from their home spawn could get back into the live game more quickly but; only if they partied/grouped up.
I propose this as one of the most off putting facets of EOTM is joining and finding there is no way you will ever get to where the action is. What do you guys think?