Guild Wars 2

Is it strange to anyone else that they took away orbs that made the strongest stronger, and the weakest weaker every match. To only add them back in later?

But you obtain them differently… Right. But the concept is still the same and the problem with it still the same The server that dominates, will still have better access to and hold the buff points more often. We have already seen this happen!

Meanwhile the underdog server is still given nothing of value. Why haven’t these buffs been reversed yet?

Bloodlust

1. One point for every stomp made while under effects. (stackable)
2. +33% Magic find (stackable)
3. +33% Karma bonus (stackable)
4. +33% Experience (stackable)
5. +10% World Experience (stackable)

Outnumbered

1. +150 to power, precision, toughness, vitality, healing power and condition damage.
2. +33% movement speed
3. No armor damage taken on death
4. 20 points for any point taken or defended.

I don’t know, something like that. It doesn’t make sense that the winning team needs to be stronger. It’s not fun to ROFLSTOMP your opponent and it’s never fun on the receiving end. This would keep the underdogs in the match while the winning team would get more for their efforts. That way both sides have a reason to fight instead of one side just dominating… Again.

Haven’t we already gone through this with the orbs? Am I missing something?

Lokki.1092:

Bloodlust

1. One point for every stomp made while under effects. (stackable)
2. +33% Magic find (stackable)
3. +33% Karma bonus (stackable)
4. +33% Experience (stackable)
5. +10% World Experience (stackable)?

And then no one would care about it, and the whole purpose of it would be lost.

Better suggestions (upgrade speeds, yak speeds/supply) have been made but, purely and simply, stat buffs are shinnies that people actively chase and fight over (like they did with the old orbs which often forced conflicts against the buff holder).

kitteng awesome!

dont like it that anybody gets a stats buff.. destroys all the fun and wouldnt change anything.. if you get steamrolled the stats increase doesnt matter.. but it kittens up solo roaming or small group play

Vena.8436:

stat buffs are shinnies that people actively chase and fight over (like they did with the old orbs which often forced conflicts against the buff holder).

But this wasn’t the norm at all back with the orbs. The winning teams just won faster and even more completely. It didn’t cause a swell of underdogs to attack the orb holders. it actually made people look at the scoreboard where one server was so far ahead of the other two you may as well ignore them or ignore WvW altogether.

Even now the same top 4 servers persist week after week after week. And none of the other servers can stand up to them regularly. The matches are landslides time and time again. Don’t you remember back when there were 3 orbs and one team just held them all, all the time?

The whole reason they took them away is that if you are not in a position to compete with another world normally, how would you compete when they have constant 150 to all stats and outnumber you?

Just hand the bonuses to the PvE crowd and leave it out of WvW.

Incentive because you help your server and yourself in PvE, still doesn’t affect WvW.

Lokki.1092:

But this wasn’t the norm at all back with the orbs.

I don’t know where you played, but when the orb was in Bay or Hills or Garrison, that was always target-numero-uno for both servers sans the orb. Wherever the shiny was, that was where people gravitated towards. That was, largely, the point of it. One would expect the stronger to have the orbs, coercing the weaker to 2v1 the stronger. The buff was, then, 5% of stats per orb and meant to slightly off-set the 2v1 disadvantage. Far more imposing than its current iteration.

(And this was in T3/4 where BG often sat at that time. Resets, on enemy borderlands, were blitz tactics north to the orb every time, and then map politics evolved from whoever won the northern bout.)

Nowadays, people have to politics the 2v1 by playing cat and mouse all over the map.

Lokki.1092:

The whole reason they took them away is that if you are not in a position to compete with another world normally, how would you compete when they have constant 150 to all stats and outnumber you?

This wasn’t why they were taken away or, at the very least, not the reason provided for why it was taken away.

It was taken away because of hackers ruining it for everyone.

Vena.8436:

This wasn’t why they were taken away or, at the very least, not the reason provided for why it was taken away.

It was taken away because of hackers ruining it for everyone.

Uhh?

After a careful reevaluation of orbs of power we have decided to remove them from WvW in an upcoming build. As implemented, orbs tend to strengthen teams who are already winning and make it even more difficult for underdog teams to fight back. In addition, the current implementation seems to be irresistible to hackers/cheaters and will require significant modification to prevent cheaters from having an unfortunately large impact on the state of any given WvW game. Under the circumstances we believe that removing orbs completely is a better choice than attempting an in-place redesign/re-implementation as it will immediately put a stop to all orb hacking. It is likely that orbs, or some orb-like mechanic, will return at some point in the future, but only after we are confident that they will not exhibit the sorts of issues that we see with orbs today.

emphasis added.

Lokki.1092:

Uhh?

And what does it say one line after, or through out the rest of the paragraph? The main reason is the hacking nevertheless. (But you’re right, my memory has failed me.)

Had similar (same?) idea few days ago:

Or change the buff into something not stat based, like any brain-provided developer would do.

Outmanned: +50/100/150 to all stat depending on how large is disparity

Bloodlust: gain utility buffs depending on how many points you hold, magnitude of buffs (10/20/30%) depends on the points held on different BL’s.
In order:
1 point: +Exp
2 points: +karma
3 points: +Magic Find
4 points: +Gold Find
5 points: +WxP

Hold 1 point on all 3 BL’s -> 30% more Exp.
Hold 3 points in one BL, 5 in another BL and 1 in the third BL -> 30% Exp (3 times 1 point held), 20% karma, 20% MF (2 times held 3 points), 10% Gold Find, 10% Wxp.
Hold 5 points on all BL’s ->30% Exp, Karma, MF, Gold Find, Wxp.

Plus the stomp points.

Bam, everybody is happy.

And guess who replied saying what..

No one would care about the buff, completely defeating the point of it.

Vena.8436:

Lokki.1092:

Bloodlust

1. One point for every stomp made while under effects. (stackable)
2. +33% Magic find (stackable)
3. +33% Karma bonus (stackable)
4. +33% Experience (stackable)
5. +10% World Experience (stackable)?

And then no one would care about it, and the whole purpose of it would be lost.

@Vena: i see your point, a buff should be very desiderable in order to draw players to pvp for it away from main objectives. But a dev should also balance it out with the impact of said buff.

Stat buffs are the worse kind for WvW. I don’t even need to speculate: we had Orbs back in first months, and it was bad. Very bad.

You can tweak buffs to be something more interesting than + X % to exp/MF/gold/karma/WXP, sure. Things like “Armor don’t get damaged” “Upgrades and Yaks progresses faster” “Orange/White swords pops istantly when your structures are attacked”. Powerful but still in the field of “Utility”, not “Power”.

And the comparison with DaoC has little sense – manly because it wasn’t designed as a coverage war.

AndrewSX.3794:

Stat buffs are the worse kind for WvW. I don’t even need to speculate: we had Orbs back in first months, and it was bad. Very bad.

You can tweak buffs to be something more interesting than + X % to exp/MF/gold/karma/WXP, sure. Things like “Armor don’t get damaged” “Upgrades and Yaks progresses faster” “Orange/White swords pops istantly when your structures are attacked”. Powerful but still in the field of “Utility”, not “Power”.

No buff will help if all arguments or discussion about it dissolve to: “The stronger server will have it because more people.”, if the buff is to be of any actual use to WvW and not PvE garbage (ie. the finds, experience and karma gain).

• Utility buff to yaks or supply? You make the stronger not only have more available supply and faster, but their structures upgrade to T3 faster. Their repairs are faster.
• Faster upgrades? See above.
• Swords? So now you can’t even ninja from the bigger server.
• Hold +X supply? Ho boy. Dread the future there.

See the problem? You will always “enable” the stronger server, no matter what the buff says. Wouldn’t you love to face a stronger server that also got to T3-WP in half of the time it to you to get to Reinforced Gates? If anything, a 150+ stat boost is almost peddler’s change compared something like faster upgrading, more supply, or faster yaks.

But then, if there is no buff… there’s no reason for the stronger server to even divvy up the man power to control said buff, and the whole point is lost; the strong server simply crushes you anyway and without having to worry about you possibly even having a buff to help.

Added: People who suggest the “no stat buff, yes utility buff” often do it with different reasons in the back of their minds. Because its not ever usually carefully thought about in terms of relative power and impact on WvW as WvW. Like it or not, many people like to suggest buffs that conform to their views of what they want to keep safe… ie. combat safe from stat buffs.

Vena.8436:

No buff will help if all arguments or discussion about it dissolve to: “The stronger server will have it because more people.”, if the buff is to be of any actual use to WvW and not PvE garbage (ie. the finds, experience and karma gain).

But why couldn’t or wouldn’t that be useful? Karma is looking to be a currency for new Ascended gear. And can be a source of income for players. Especially full time WvWers What about gold increase instead of MF. We do get coin off of each other, Heck maybe add some real loot to our tables based on class? and we have outright been told that the game will start to include new skills. Who wont want more skill points to use if this happens? Can you imagine if each new skill is 50+ skill points? Well PvE players get their scrolls WvWers can have +150% more XP or something.

My point is They could make those stats useful to WvW players. Basically make it so when you are winning you get some nice bonuses. Double crafting XP. Access to vendors that sell (perhaps for karma/perhaps gated by World ranks) skins and other cosmetic items. And really when you are winning you don’t need help winning. Stats are a near useless buff for the winning team and makes comebacks almost impossible While you are winning hold this point and make gold, or double tokens, or whatever.

Could be nice.

Lokki.1092:

My point is They could make those stats useful to WvW players. Basically make it so when you are winning you get some nice bonuses.

Because then they lose their primary (or perhaps auxiliary) function and design goal: force the zerg to split (or at least manage itself) or lose something tangible (which, sadly, PvE boosts like karma and experience, really aren’t). Its definitely designed with “fair fight” in mind and, therein, forcing the fair-fighting servers to manage the maps and body count in more than the current: “Throw X bodies at it until it changes color!”

It also gives skirmishers something to fight for to immediately benefit their servers chance for success, and to make them threatening to other servers if they do not manage them. Skirmishers fighting over +% Gold Find might as well be ignored when balanced servers come head to head, and begin to fight over real-estate therein allowing them to just blob up. But if the skirmishers are fighting over something like a tangible stat buff, the server just blobbing up will find itself at a disadvantage compared to the other server.

Its a punishment for just running around as a big ball of death. You can still do it… its just that the other, smaller, ball of death will be fractionally stronger than you man for man.

I do hope I am making this clear.

Think of it, simplest case, as a Karma Bonfire vs. Food/Oil. Which one are people readily paying attention to when fighting? Its not the Karma. This is a server wide extension to the food buff, in a sort of silly analogy… and you can steal the other server’s food.

Vena.8436:

It also gives skirmishers something to fight for to immediately benefit their servers chance for success, and to make them threatening to other servers if they do not manage them…

I do hope I am making this clear.

I cant agree only from experience though, my first server was not one of the top servers and try as we might, we couldn’t even hope to ever get a single orb let alone get one from the top servers. As we tried and failed, falling more and more behind people just stopped showing up for the steamroll. It was a huge problem and there were tons of posts regarding it, the top server just pulled further and further ahead.

What is to stop the exact same thing from happening now? The server that is winning will sill have the most players to spare, the weaker servers will still have the hardest time keeping anything let alone a 4 node setup that requires pinpoint timing.

The top 4 servers will do well against each other sure but that’s nothing new. The 20 other servers will be steamrolled and often. That isn’t fun.

I take this of course, only from what happened with the orbs which is almost the exact same buff/situation as bloodlust. I dont know why you think it will be different this time.

Agree with OP

/15 char

I also agree with the OP, the buffs doesnt make any sense to me

this is the best idea ever. also make outnumbered stats stackable if your server is outnumbered on multiple maps.

but they already said they dnt want people to rage at other players joining map and making outnumbered buff gone:(

unfortunately it wont happen. your point is good nevertheless. it will make strong stronger.