Guild Wars 2

Any chance the orbs of power are coming back? Over the past month or two, I have noticed that not many servers really defend any longer because there, essentially, isn’t anything to defend other than points, which can be brought back by constant, non-stop zerging. Zerging is, in all honesty, boring as hell. Running around in a group of 50, barely getting loot because I don’t have everything built for speed running for 2 minutes or more, isn’t really fun. When we had the orbs, there was a reason to have a presence on the home map AND on the other maps. Now, it’s just zerg here, zerg there, zerg EVERYWHERE!!!!

Now that there are the outmanned buffs and other buffs that have been released with patches via food or other means, even the original setup of the orb buffs would be okay, but not really optimal. WvW has gotten a bit stale. Defending is a lost art that I think needs to come back, either with the re-release of the orbs of power or by giving rewards for sitting around watching paint dry the way it sits right now.

Just a suggestion.

Waypoints are something worth defending.

That being said, I do wish players would defend objectives and play in enemy borderlands more often. If they bring back orbs of power they should provide bonus karma or magic find rather than a competitive advantage though.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Waypoints are something worth defending.

That being said, I do wish players would defend objectives and play in enemy borderlands more often. If they bring back orbs of power they should provide bonus karma or magic find rather than a competitive advantage though.

Screw useless karma or MF, make them give bonus WxP so I can finish all these ranks quick :P

I think they should provide another incentive… +5 supply to each point owned on the map (NOT world) per minute plus maybe an exterior incentive such as +3% WXP across the entire map (and maybe add a bit more WXP to those who defend since it occurs less). This would allow for a two fold inclusiveness:

1) Both offense AND defense would be interested in keeping it. Offense wants the +3% WXP and defenders want the bonus supply across the map.
2) Other towers would receive upgrades if you were able to defend the tower but not protect the yak’s from the massive 90 people zerg roaming around.

If they can put something like “Outmanned” in, I’d like to hope they can make it so that if it’s your home map you have to defend the orb or the attacking teams get a buff. Something like that.

DevonCarver.5370:

We have top people working on it! But I can’t give you anything more than that, as there is nothing more to give.

Why do I have a vision of the closing scene of Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Well, I would suggest any and all that read this thread put their 2 cents on it so the devs can get an idea what we want so we can get WvW a little better. Sure would make it more interesting than just flip this and flip that

DevonCarver.5370:

Mysterious Reply in 3…2…1…

We would really like to bring back the play that orbs provided to WvW. That being said the initial version of orbs was like Swiss cheese.

What you mean hard?
No! Full of holes!

We really want to bring back the orbs in some form or another, but it is a complicated thing and so there is no timeline, nor are there specifics as to what form they would take when they return. We have top people working on it! But I can’t give you anything more than that, as there is nothing more to give.

Make orbs of power like orbs in Spirit Watch sPvP map:
if you take the orb to your keep you score X points (plus some non-fighting stats buffs), if you take the orb outside a enemy keep a Breakout-like event will start.

Then the orb respawn after X minutes (preventing the “steal” bug/hacking abuse that caused the orbs removal).

This will add dynamism to the borderlands gameplay

Yeah, making them do something relatively useless but fun to fight for like the outmanned buff would be pretty cool.

would be nice to the see the orbs come back into the game with changed stats so they dont make the top server more overpowered then anything else (kinda sucks when the enemy side gets all 3 then backhands you with barely a glance and your dead)

so taking away the hp boost and stat boosts and replacing them with exp/wxp/magicfind/goldfind

this would take out the orbs being overpowered yet still make them desirable to hold for a server team

I disagree about the stats, if all they give is exp/wxp/magicfind/goldfind, people won’t need them to win. The point of the orbs was the stronger server would get them and the other 2 weaker servers would have to focus them to get them back.

I would like to see them brought back exactly how they were. WvW is much different then it was when orbs were here. There is a lot more strong WvW focused guilds and for the most part a lot of “pugs” have learned to work with the servers and commanders. Over all the WvW community’s are a lot stronger and I think it would bring a refreshing change of pace to WvW. Also I think it would be good for T1/T2, I can’t speak for the lower tiers.

All they had to do to fix the orb was make it so that it pops out of the holder when the keep is taken over, and start it off in the garrison, eliminating that indefensible north camp.

The only reason it was exploitable was the baffling decision to let us pop the orb out while the commander was still standing there.

DevonCarver.5370:

We would really like to bring back the play that orbs provided to WvW. That being said the initial version of orbs was like Swiss cheese.

What you mean hard?
No! Full of holes!

My first guess was “stinking”, but that’s also true…

depending on how quickly the orbs respawn, you could make it fix all walls/doors of a keep/tower by 10 or 20% or something when it’s dropped off, and/or add some supply to the stockpile?

I’d would not link buffs or effects directly to it.

I’d do something like bringing back a game style similar to Heroes’ Ascent, and make the orbs give your world extra ‘slots’ for it.

On each Citadel, each keep with an orb and the heart of the mists there would be a portal to the Legacy of Kings, a fractal shaped after the Tomb of Primeval kings, fruit of collaboration between the Zaishen and Dessa.
That’ll be the Heroes’ Ascent ‘lobby’. Like the heart of the mists, it’ll have PvP lockers, and an NPC to join the matches, but not the Mystic forge or glory vendors, and it’ll have asura gates to go back to your world’s Borderland Citadel, any keep with with an Orb controlledby your world, the heart of the mists and Lion’s Arch.

Matches would happen periodically, and each time they start, there would be a limited number of slots to join.
Each world would get a number of minimum slots, and each orb placed on a keep would provide additional slots for parties from their world.

Enemies get randomly paired (giving preference to pairings against enemies from a different world), and eliminate each other in 8vs8 matches with PvP gear and skills, until there’s only 3 teams left, who fight 8v8v8 in the last map: The Fractal of Heroes, a fractal resembling the Hall of Heroes.
There would be one of these for each 3 WvW worlds. And they fight for control over it.

The winners control the Hall of Heroes, and get a neat PvE reward they can use in WvW (e.g.: blueprints, honor badges, a rare or better random piece of gear), a decent PvP reward like a a special Heroes PvP chest, and their world gets a bonus that will last for as long as they keep winning and keep control of the hall.

If your world gets all orbs, you’ll get more slots for parties, increasing your chances to get the bonus. But even if you control no orbs, a single team could still win as there’s still a minimum number of slots.

I’ll have something like that over just some buff or effect any day.

Personally? I’d look into the effects of orb incentives as such.

0 orbs: No repair cost until your server retains an orb.
1 orb: Reduced teleport cost
2 orbs: +Magic find, plus previous +orb bonus.
3 orbs: +WXP/XP gain, plus previous +orb bonuses.

This not only encourages losing servers to get in there and play, but also gives incentive to defending and attacking orbs. I doubt increased wxp/xp gain would be too overpowered, since their effects are not that enticing in the first place.

It would balance the risk and reward.

Personally I would like to see an orb offer no bonus in itself. Control a keep and you can make a run to the both part of the map to retrieve and escort an orb back to the keep. Same rules as spirit watch for orb handling.

Once you install the orb you can start feeding supply into the pedestal (redesigned to look like asura tech) the orb then creates an aura field like Orr shrines with effect chosen by claiming guild. Let it have say 10 tiers of power and the higher the tier the larger the aura and potentially have the power increase at 2 or 3 dif tiers. At 1st tier the aura could cover just the inner keep. By tier 10 have it cover nearly to the nearby camps and towers.

This encourages defending while giving defends something to do. Especially if the aura had a slow decay rate. If not feed at least a little you would lose progress and you would drop tiers.Prehaps even use special items that spawn in the aura field that have to be turned in to charge it further indtead of supply. Defenitly not gold based. I just worry having it supply would lead to people draining the keeps supply to up the aura while a guild is trying to reinforce it.

This makes the North of the map a bit more important than currently. It also means servers will have a home turf advantage in denying other teams from installing an orb. Please note there would be multiple orbs in this scenario able to be installed but the alterin the north would only produce one until either one is installed or returned.

To prevent grieving only servers with a keep with no orb can pick up an orb. Everyone else gets a destroy option that would let you channel to return it. Ideally when a destroy channel starts have it spawn a claiming circle around the person Channeling. Your side holds the ground the orb goes back. Killing the channeler would stop the claiming circle. The other side can only pick it up if its not being focused on. To prevent your side from having some one go grab the orb and hide with it, when off its alter an orb sound show up on the map like a special commander tag. Commanders would also be able to take the orb to prevent Afk hordeing. Very least commander can force them to drop it so someone else can pick up.

As for what the auras could do I would come up with a slider or wheel of powers. If the devs decide have it just have two potential abilities, an offensive and defensive one. Then go with a slider with say 5 setting mixing the 2. Middle being even split ends favoring off or def. The claiming guild would set the aura when first claiming the keep. Orb gets inserted the chosen aura comes online. Until it comes online the choice can be freely switched. Once the aura is up, let it be you can change the aura but for each step away from its current setting sacrifices a tier of power. Similar thing if multiple aura types is the way the devs decide to go. Place them all on a wheel or web and each step away from current aura type sacrifices a tier to change it.

This also would open new wxp abilities like more effeciency when feeding the aura, thus letting a smaller def force maintsin or expand the aura level. Or even ranks that make helpful auras more effecient for you and hostile ones less so.

Any way discuss. Sorry if any part confusing writing this on my cell as I am half asleep, tried to keep it organized and avoid misspellings and weird auto corrects. Will edit tomorrow if need be. But what do you all think, tried to close as many holes as I could see in the idea. Let me know if I missed any

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Can-you-please-bring-back-orbs/page/2#post1800146

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Lets-bring-back-ORBS-OF-POWER/first#post1660799

here you go