I really love the way that new maps and events are designed. Open world team play and coordination was one of the things me and people who I play with were really missing in old GW2 open world areas. They started with creating Silverwastes (which I think is one of the best maps in whole GW2) and continued to implement it in HOT maps.
But there are obviously some problems with that. Old players have a habbit to follow single zerg com, there is no other map which requires many small/medium group coordination and etc. Even SW being a teamplay map is quite easy: you just need 4 coms during phase 1 and 3 coms during VW. And even without coms people will go to forts/lanes because it is a very obvious thing to do.
New maps thou, is a different story. Ofc, if we just wait several months or even more people most likely will invent some common ways to do these maps, thou in my opinion it is still going to fail a lot due to overall complexity. So I think a better way to solve this problem is to give additional tools to playerbase so we can coordinate with each other in a much more efficient and fun way. Here are some ideas:
1. Player map radar.
We are already able to see all our guildmembers on all maps (as yellow dots) in real time, so what about making us able to see ALL players on a single map that we join (just like in WvW you can see allies that are close but on whole map instead). That way each player will always know where are more than enough people, where there are few or where there are none. It can also be implemented as a mastery to gain. If some people don’t like to see a lot of green dots on their HOT maps, just make an option to turn it on/off.
2. Local LFG tool.
Sometimes I just want to make/join a party but from players that are not scattered all over the map, but who are close by and who defend/do specific events. Would be nice to have some option to see parties with free slots that are in some proximity to you and to make them see that you want to join party so they can invite you. Faster and more efficient group finding is something that I miss a lot in new maps.
3. Party bonuses.
How about encouraging team play on HOT maps? For example, give some buffs to people in party if they stay in certain radius. Like “Strenght in Numbers BOON” 1% damage/1% defence agains enemies for each party member in 2000 range. Or other similar combat or even +exp/mf bonuses. Ofc many solo oriented players not going to like it, but I think it is quite natural to encourage group play in maps that are designed for group play. You know, some people are doing solo dungeon runs, thou dungeons were designed as group instances.
4. Anti map hoping.
I think anet should give more bonuses for staying on a finished map instead of jumping all the time and sniping the almost finished ones. This is also one of the things I don’t like about SW. The bonuses of staying there are just not enough to make people want to actually stay. Which is kinda sad I think. Looks like a broken design to me. Make maps faster a bit, but give more incentive to stay and continue. That will encourage people to stay with current party for example and do stuff together more than when they just jump every 10 mins from one map to another.
5. Additional COM abilities
How about givinn COMs an option to show their status? For example: “Requesting More people”, or “We are good, no more people needed”. This is done in map chat now, but when there are many coms on new maps it becomes quite hard to accomplish + different languages on megaservers not making it easier.
P. S. Please support this topic if you like the concept of team play and player coordination. I personally hope Anet will find ways to make this kind of new experience better, and won’t nerf it to “follow the zerg and press 1 to win” instead.
(edited by Archy.1046)