After watching the presentation and videos for the new Borderlands, I gotta say that a lot of the new stuff looks really interesting. However, as someone who’s currently not invested in WvW, I think it will take more than good maps to get me into WvW with HoT.
What could make this interesting/worthwhile? Rewards for success.
WvW has to be something more than just another champ farm run to really be worthwhile and here are some suggestions my husband and I came up with on how it could be an environment that really fosters competition:
Oasis Event – The idea of a big event like this that comes every 3 hours has a lot of potential. However, you really have to give some drive for people to keep winning this event or to take down the server that’s dominating it. How do you do this?
- Increase the reward for consecutive victories at the Oasis event.
– Increase the reward for breaking a winning streak from an enemy server.
This would really raise the stakes of the event over time. Not only would strong servers have reason to keep up consecutive wins, but this would also give a lot of reason for under dogs to stay dedicated, even when they suffer losses.
Tl;dr for Oasis Event – Increase the risk and reward for consecutive wins.
Investment – Another potentially interesting idea is giving servers incentive for taking and holding an area, such as Stonemist Castle. This could be done through a system of investment. There could be an NPC in the keep that operates like the Crown Pavilon/Ho Ho Tron donation did, where people can donate to it to reach a certain investment level.
For example, the keep starts out at investment Level 1, and after a certain amount of donations, the keep investment is at Level 2. Then, every so often in set time increments, reward chests are granted to defending server members (similar to daily chests). The level of investment (Level 2, Level 3, etc.) could affect the quality of loot inside them. Maybe Level 2 investment chests give blues, Level 3 chests give greens, etc.
To prevent this from just being a passive reward for controlling a keep, this should only trigger when a keep is actively defended regularly. If the keep isn’t being attacked, then this would eventually reset.
One difference this could have from the Crown Pavilon/Ho Ho Tron events is the investing could be done with a separate currency (WvW Badges?) or even with items. For example, people could donate blues with the hope of raising the investment level to Level 2. This has the added benefit of making individual players personally invested in the outcome of a fight, since they have used their own gold (or badges or items) to raise the investment level.
To encourage underdogs to take the keep, the investment could be tied to the keep itself, and not to the defending server, but could lose a level upon being taken. For example, if the investment level is Level 3, and the other server takes it, it drops to Level 2 instead of resetting to Level 1. That would both encourage strong servers to have their players defend a keep (to invest and get better loot) and encourage underdog servers to have their players go after defended keeps (to take over and benefit from the remaining investment). It also penalizes constant turn-overs and back-and-forth grabs because each grab drops the investment a level, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to take an hold something.
Tl;dr for Investment – Let players invest in a keep so that the chance of profit keeps them interested in defending.
Unique Event-based Rewards – The unique WvW weapons skins was a great move. More of this, please.
Hype up the benefits of holding a keep! – Set the announcer, similar to sPvP, to shout out something like “You gained control of the tower! Hold this to grant boons to your world!”. There’s a lot going on in WvW and if it doesn’t feel like winning a keep does anything but give you some good loot bags, then there’s not much incentive to hold it. A quick, big announcement on what happens when you hold a place could drive better defensive behaviors here.