Guild Wars 2

Ive seen this idea tossed around quite a bit but no real discussion has occurred. Lets change that. Here we will discuss the merit (or lack thereof) of awarding some small number of points for directly killing another player.

To summarize a common argument:

Zerging is fine time to time but the entirety of WvW should not rely on it. Incorporating a points per player killed system will encourage small groups or soloers that operate behind or away from front lines “ganking” players attempting to join the main zerg, run supply, et cetera.

This would have 2 main outcomes

1. Make it harder to operate as one large force. Allow smaller numbers to destroy a zerg through attrition as players in the zerg that are killed will have a hard time rejoining the main force. Instead of trickling out one by one they would have to form up and move as a group. This encourages coordination on the part of the zerging team.

2. Other groups will form in an effort to kill the smaller groups mentioned above and a nice meta game could result.

Of course the type of play that should be encouraged or at least made available is entirely up for debate as well. Im not trying to tell people how to play, just trying to generate discussion about it.

As much as I like diversifying gameplay, there is one big question to answer: how do you prevent the abuse of this system? This goes for all ideas thrown around in this forum, too. If we would gain points for killing enemies, I think there are big vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited. For example, right now there’s the chance that some players idle in a WvW map in order to have fewer actual players on the field and have legitimate players queue up. In my opinion, points for kill would bring this problem one step further by sending these idle players to their deaths so another server gains points while also diminishing the size of the actual army. A possible answer to that could be “no free transfers” or something along those lines.

So, to bring the discussion further: how would this feature be implemented to prevent blatant abuse while also not hurting or limiting the legitimate players’ play styles and options on the field?

That is true, farming spy accounts could have an impact. But as you mention removing transfers (as I assume will eventually be done) would solve most of the problem.

Also, the points per kill could be low enough that it will only start to impact the score in aggregate; a single person or few people wouldent make much difference.

The only other thing I can think of is players purposefully dying en mass to throw a match…perhaps in protest…perhaps to troll.