Guild Wars 2

I wanted to compose a comprehensive list of thoughts and ideas for WvW – have people add to the list or detract from, and give thoughts and opinions on others.

I think we can all admit that staring at the same maps for the last two years is getting old.

Oddly, a lot of these ideas stem from EotM.

1.) Use the different terrains from EotM for each of the borderlands. One server will be jungle, one server will be desert and one server will be winter, with each of the borderlands having debuffs against the enemy based on the terrain.

2.) Borderlands should have more choke points and areas to force battle. They should favor the defender – after all, you are in THEIR borderlands.

3.) I never understood why enemies started off with a tower and a camp in your own borderlands. It is YOUR map. Enemies should start with nothing and have to fight their way into it. Also, why do enemies get siegerazor? That doesn’t make any sense either. You are attacking an enemy borderlands. There’s no siege to raze.

4.) Get rid of the random towers and keeps and make them more unique. Maybe one tower could be the foundry, one tower could be the hangar, another tower be something else and so on, each offering unique NPC defenders, upgrades and defensive abilities. I had one thought where Hills or Bay could be an asuran research center, offering the defensive capability of the laser cannon from Skyhammer. Guarded by golem NPC’s and other asurans. etc.

5.) I always thought the garrison should be near impossible to take and should be equipped with all the defensive capabilities all the unique towers and keeps offered. And the way to finally take garrison would be, if you took over say that asuran research center, the laser cannon defense on the garrison would be disabled and so on and so forth. This is somewhat similar to Alterac Valley in WoW, where you have to kill tower lords to weaken the final boss.

6.) Make upgrades mean something. And if it makes a building that much more difficult to take, make them cost more and take longer. Currently most upgrades are useless. Fortified walls help, if you can get there. Reinforced gates are a joke. And adding more veterans that die in a blink of an eye don’t help at all. Camp upgrades are even more useless. The only decent camp upgrade is double doly’s – the rest are just plain stupid, since they still can get flipped in seconds.

7.) I think each tower or keep should have more than one area you have to capture, and not just a giant blob rush through the gate and to the useless keep lord. That way the zerg is forced to split up. Also, keep lords and NPC guards should be somewhat difficult to kill, not just free loot bags.

8.) I hate, hate, hate, the one hour timer on siege. I understand it, but I hate it. I don’t know how to get around this. It’s especially worse on servers with low populations.

9.) I’d like specific, battle feel type music in WvW. Make it feel more energized and “stressful”. I’d also like it to look more battle ridden. Broken siege, etc, that litters the landscape.

10.) If you won’t change the fact that classes can cast spells on top of walls, pretty much negating cannons, oil and even where AC’s can get placed, then defenders on top of the wall should have increased defense and offense. They have the height advantage – this just makes simple sense.

11.) These are ideas mostly for the borderlands, though some can be applied to EBG. I haven’t thought about EBG except I’d like to see Stonemist become more unique.

12.) I don’t understand the skritt or centaur areas in the borderlands. Why not actually have them do something, like be mercenary camps you can capture or something. Instead of having them just run to a camp, have them send out patrols that are marked on the map.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

I’d also like to add, given the increased difficult this would obviously have on attackers, to increase rewards for taking something over.

I feel kinda bad because you obviously spent a lot of time putting together your thoughts on this, but no one has responded.

For me personally this kind of imagineering is cool and all, but without more communication from ANet there’s no reason to believe there’s any reason to talk about this stuff.

robotempire.2451:

I feel kinda bad because you obviously spent a lot of time putting together your thoughts on this, but no one has responded.

For me personally this kind of imagineering is cool and all, but without more communication from ANet there’s no reason to believe there’s any reason to talk about this stuff.

Why should they respond? they have commented on all of this stuff. They have made massive CDI discussion, blog post, and participated in many many threads on this matter already. They do not need to reaffirm their position on the daily threads of this matter.

Why is it, that every time a post pops up of this nature (pretty much once a day) do folks disingenuously post as if every time the do not respond to the new one, that they ignored the topic?

In my opinion, most of those ideas are horrible. Garrison nearly invulnerable, what a terrible idea, then no one will try to take it, and we lose the great massive 3 way fights there

Garbage EoTM maps forced in to WvW, just no

Starting with absolutely nothing on any borderland other then yours? then why would anyone leave their own BL? This idea completely promotes an absolute lack of fights. Funnels everyone to EB.

Personally I feel the Op does not understand WvW in the least, based on how the suggestions seem so unreasonably unrealistic. Every suggestion promotes locking down in each of the servers own borderlands. No one ever going there to fight, and the only place that will matter is EB. WvW will have dead borderlands on full servers, and everyone will be in queue for EB. This list near destroys the fun of the game mode as a whole.

I apologize OP, I am not trying to be mean to you, but I feel these suggestions are so bad, and so harmful to WvW, that I would express my emotions on them as aggressively as they came to me. You offer no explanation as to how each suggestion would help in your eyes. That does not help your points at all.

Stark.1350:

I’d also like to add, given the increased difficult this would obviously have on attackers, to increase rewards for taking something over.

I play for the fun, with my friends and guild, not for rewards. I much prefer my reward to be fun fights rather then minimize the fights to be a rarity just so I can get more loot on the rare fights we do see.

I understand WvW as little more than a run around karma train. You must be on a big server.

I appreciate your opinion though.

Speaking of wvw Ideas what if we had one day out of the week to have 3 hour long matches. Any server any tier for just 3 hours. For one day?

robotempire.2451:

I feel kinda bad because you obviously spent a lot of time putting together your thoughts on this, but no one has responded.

Rule 1: The Doctor lies. I mean “we cannot talk about it”

Stark.1350:

3.) I never understood why enemies started off with a tower and a camp in your own borderlands. It is YOUR map. Enemies should start with nothing and have to fight their way into it. Also, why do enemies get siegerazor? That doesn’t make any sense either. You are attacking an enemy borderlands. There’s no siege to raze.

Alright, now imagine your server is really struggeling to get/hold any PPT, would Siegerazer then be okay? It would and that’s when he’s actually used, those who have big zergs usually don’t bother with him. Don’t only see the “But the weaker server must be able to defend better” side, see also that the “bigger server” would also have the same mechanics.

Stark.1350:

6.) Make upgrades mean something. And if it makes a building that much more difficult to take, make them cost more and take longer. Currently most upgrades are useless. Fortified walls help, if you can get there. Reinforced gates are a joke. And adding more veterans that die in a blink of an eye don’t help at all. Camp upgrades are even more useless. The only decent camp upgrade is double doly’s – the rest are just plain stupid, since they still can get flipped in seconds.

I’m running solo, it takes a while until I have capped a 250 camp and sometimes I can’t, so having a camp at 200 or 250 means that a single roamer will have huge problems to take that camp, even 2 people will struggle to get it if they’re not that good. By upgrading camps to 200+ you cut the risk of it being taken “dramatically”. Same applies to towers if there’s additional personell and one human defending small groups will struggle. Same goes for even reinforced walls although fortified is a lot worse, that’s true. But reinforced stuff gives time to alert people in mapchat and they will have a better chance to be there to defend in time.

Stark.1350:

7.) I think each tower or keep should have more than one area you have to capture, and not just a giant blob rush through the gate and to the useless keep lord. That way the zerg is forced to split up. Also, keep lords and NPC guards should be somewhat difficult to kill, not just free loot bags.

They actually are not that easy to kill if you’re not in a giant blob. And if there are defenders you better get out the cannon, oil, turrets and acs before you rush in.

Stark.1350:

10.) If you won’t change the fact that classes can cast spells on top of walls, pretty much negating cannons, oil and even where AC’s can get placed, then defenders on top of the wall should have increased defense and offense. They have the height advantage – this just makes simple sense.

You have a nice buff with oil mastery. But I agree that they must have buffed ele some time ago (9 months or so – I still have no ele, so I don’t know for sure) and since then there’s basically no safe place for siege anymore, would be nice if anet took that into account when increasing the range of classes.

Stark.1350:

12.) I don’t understand the skritt or centaur areas in the borderlands. Why not actually have them do something, like be mercenary camps you can capture or something. Instead of having them just run to a camp, have them send out patrols that are marked on the map.

Pretty sure they had their purpose when there was still white swords around – attacking a camp so they would have white swords – but since I’m mostly in EB or capping camps on enemy borderlands I’m not entirely sure.

It seems as if you don’t know too much about wvw, no offense, so maybe think about your suggestions some more? Or move to a lower tier server and do some stuff in a small group or on your own.

Just had to comment on this. Don’t tell people they do not know about the game and then post wrong info. The wvw dev team stopped centaurs from causing Argo in nwc on borderlands. If you watch they go in and nothing gets agro’d. Same thing with the skritt. They do not even stop capping from occurring anymore.. It is a valid question as town at purpose they were envisioned to do. As it stand probably 25-30 of the map is useless and no one goes to i.e. Northwest and northeast.

I disagree with all of your points.

1.) Different terrain is fine, but adding fake bonuses just makes 3 out of 4 of the maps unplayable for people looking for fights and not EotM style gameplay.

2.) The have plenty of defenses built in to the terrain already. We don’t need places to completely shut down the map with seige.

3.) Huh?

4.) NPCs should not be a factor in competitive play.

5.) Garrisons are nearly impossible to take if they’re defended, and NPCs don’t belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

6.) Upgrades mean a lot, which is why flipping a T3 keep is a massive effort that takes a lot of planning from guilds. Are you in TS? You may not realize the effort that goes in to taking them and just see a commander tag go in and take it, not realizing he’s been working on the keep for hours.

7.) NPCs don’t belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

8.) Ok. Try to deal with it.

9.) You can make customized GW2 playlists in-game. Play whatever you like when battle starts.

10.) We don’t need fake bonuses, just play intelligently.

11.) SMC is very unique. If you control it, you control the map, and the fights for it are unlike any other location.

12.) Don’t care about this other than to to reiterate NPCs dont belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

Overall, it sounds like you want to turn WvW into a PvE karma train, aka EotM, a la your quote. “I’d also like to add, given the increased difficult this would obviously have on attackers, to increase rewards for taking something over.”

Fluffball.8307:

I disagree with all of your points.

1.) Different terrain is fine, but adding fake bonuses just makes 3 out of 4 of the maps unplayable for people looking for fights and not EotM style gameplay.

2.) The have plenty of defenses built in to the terrain already. We don’t need places to completely shut down the map with seige.

3.) Huh?

4.) NPCs should not be a factor in competitive play.

5.) Garrisons are nearly impossible to take if they’re defended, and NPCs don’t belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

6.) Upgrades mean a lot, which is why flipping a T3 keep is a massive effort that takes a lot of planning from guilds. Are you in TS? You may not realize the effort that goes in to taking them and just see a commander tag go in and take it, not realizing he’s been working on the keep for hours.

7.) NPCs don’t belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

8.) Ok. Try to deal with it.

9.) You can make customized GW2 playlists in-game. Play whatever you like when battle starts.

10.) We don’t need fake bonuses, just play intelligently.

11.) SMC is very unique. If you control it, you control the map, and the fights for it are unlike any other location.

12.) Don’t care about this other than to to reiterate NPCs dont belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

Overall, it sounds like you want to turn WvW into a PvE karma train, aka EotM, a la your quote. “I’d also like to add, given the increased difficult this would obviously have on attackers, to increase rewards for taking something over.”

Agree with you on 1, different terrain is fine but debuffs should either be very small or non existent.
Buffs for defensive siege however is a good idea.

2 is actually a good idea as it would encourage very large groups to split into different groups or risk being choked in with siege. It would encourage more tactical play.

3 doesn’t really matter one way or another.

4 could actually be pretty nice if done right, though your right static NPC’s should not factor. Maybe if each gave some unique buffs or a special seige weapon.

5 You & the Op are both kind of right. If well defended the garrison is near impossible to take, however if lightly defended or not defended it crumbles far to fast. This is because of the simplicity of design.
If the lords & their guards were to scale better & a second outer keep lord were to be added that would be nice. It would also be nice if gates on garrisons had a 3rd upgrade level.

6, again your both kind of right. As I said above it just depends on how well defended they are & the numbers involved on each side. There are some things that could be done to make upgraded stuff require more teamwork without making it impossible.

7, again your both kind of right. See 5-6 as to why.

10, Op is right here. When was the last time you saw anyone stay alive on a oil pot or cannon. Traditionally these things would be further back as to limit how much could be rained down on them.
In game it would be nice if both got the iron hide bonus & oil pots were moved back slightly.

Shadows Creed.3902:

Just had to comment on this. Don’t tell people they do not know about the game and then post wrong info. The wvw dev team stopped centaurs from causing Argo in nwc on borderlands. If you watch they go in and nothing gets agro’d. Same thing with the skritt. They do not even stop capping from occurring anymore.. It is a valid question as town at purpose they were envisioned to do. As it stand probably 25-30 of the map is useless and no one goes to i.e. Northwest and northeast.

I already said that I’m not entirely sure but I am pretty sure that they caused white swords when they attacked while I was still in one of our camps. So not really sure what you’re accusing me of

ETA: I agree that I was rather mean, but I feel it’s sometimes neccessary as all people seem to think is “wvw = zerg” and that leads to botched mechanisms to split the zerg which makes the life for existing roamers a lot harder, like the no white sword thingy. Balancing wvw is really difficult so seeing only one side or trying to split the zerg at all costs is, well, one sided as in the end people will do what they want to do (zerg, guild roaming, solo roaming) and in EU and NA bronze/silver tier they are actually doing exactly that. And I’m pretty sure that even in gold tier servers there are a lot of roamers, people just don’t realize it, for whatever reason.
I would buff the damage siege can take but that would also mean that the server with a smaller “zerg” would have more problems to take it out, but maybe still not a bad idea, at least when it comes to ACs and cannons. Buffing outnumbered servers with something meaningful would mean that a 1 vs 1 would be really unfair, buffing keeps would mean that an enemy server with a bigger population could easily take your garrison and leave you no chance to retake it (don’t ask me how many times hills has been taken from us only to be upgraded with a WP. The last time it took two days to get it back and I think the other server I had been on didn’t have it for a whole week). So, I hope you get my point.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

When was the last time you saw anyone stay alive on a oil pot or cannon. Traditionally these things would be further back as to limit how much could be rained down on them.
In game it would be nice if both got the iron hide bonus & oil pots were moved back slightly.

Oil mastery actually protects the person on it. It also reflects projectiles which is rather nice. Overall the mastery is really good, I don’t have anything to add to it. Cannons are a different story – they were fine before siege disablers, now they need a buff.

Jana.6831:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

When was the last time you saw anyone stay alive on a oil pot or cannon. Traditionally these things would be further back as to limit how much could be rained down on them.
In game it would be nice if both got the iron hide bonus & oil pots were moved back slightly.

Oil mastery actually protects the person on it. It also reflects projectiles which is rather nice. Overall the mastery is really good, I don’t have anything to add to it. Cannons are a different story – they were fine before siege disablers, now they need a buff.

The shield only lasts about 3 seconds with a ridiculous cooldown period. Once the shield is off, you still get nuked down after.

I think a lot of comments on here are people seeing different views based on server population. Being on a low-mid server, there are periods where nothing is happening. There are periods where there’s no defense and fully upgraded keeps are wiped away in 30 seconds. From what I’ve seen, when attackers outnumber the defenders, the attackers will win 99% of the time.

Jana.6831:

Stark.1350:

10.) If you won’t change the fact that classes can cast spells on top of walls, pretty much negating cannons, oil and even where AC’s can get placed, then defenders on top of the wall should have increased defense and offense. They have the height advantage – this just makes simple sense.

You have a nice buff with oil mastery. But I agree that they must have buffed ele some time ago (9 months or so – I still have no ele, so I don’t know for sure) and since then there’s basically no safe place for siege anymore, would be nice if anet took that into account when increasing the range of classes.

Ele skill ranges and such for killing siege weren’t really “buffed” or “Changed”. In fact the Ele’s who are able to hit most siege, have to spec for it with trait points to have an increased AOE radius, which leads to the ele sacrificing 1 thing, to gain that. (It’s also been like that since Beta, and there are many spots siege can be placed which is hard for an Ele to hit.) I manage to set siege in “ele” resistant/proof places, however I am an Ele with increased aoe radius, and do enjoy killing enemy siege so I know what I would be able to hit if it were myself attacking and not the enemy. (Plus if ever unsure if the siege would get hit or not I could always hit my skills and test before laying siege down.)