Guild Wars 2

(Forgive me if this has been suggested before.)

Concept: An idea to increase the longevity and interest of WvW.

A series of capturable resource structures that, when owned, upgraded and defended, provide a set of concrete and powerful PvE and/or PvP bonuses to the server that owns them.

Examples:

• A farm structure could provide bonuses to food crafting (say, a bonus to experience or an increase in the chance of crafting double) and, when sufficiently upgraded, WvW only buffs that are equivalent or similar to some food buffs.
• A smith building could provide bonuses to armor and weapon smithing and provide a slight to moderate bonus to the damage of friendly units that acquire a buff (e.g., “Your weapons are sharpened/magically improved for 30 minutes.”) from the smith master.
• A logistics center that, when sufficiently upgraded, increases the speed, frequency of supply amount of caravans from supply camps.
• A lumber mill that increases PvE logging harvesting yields and/or provides discounted harvesting equipment at a special merchant (located in major cities).

Additional possibilities:

• distillery (tonics for increased hp%, reduced condition duration?)
• artillery camp (cheaper supply cost for building siege?)
• barracks (bonus to downed state HP? reduction in contested WP reset time? additional guards for keeps/towers? deployment of NPC scouting parties or patrols?)
• crystal/magic area (+healing bonus?)
• archaeological dig site (mf% increase?)
• Asura engineering station (allows maintenance of two or three portals on the map?)

Mechanics/Implementation: Resource structures must be built, upgraded and defended.

• Small upgrades to defense (number of guards, wooden walls, etc.) can be ordered, and supply would be necessary to construct them.
• Significant upgrades would entail spending money on more personnel to run these structures.
• A command could be given to have these personnel retreat to the nearest keep/tower should the structure come under heavy attack, thus increasing the purpose of fortified structures.
• Bonuses could increase at a steady rate (until reaching some cap), giving servers a strategic incentive to defend and upgrade such locations for the long term.
• Buffs and bonuses would be applied on a per-character basis by having the player visit the relevant structure’s NPC.
• These could be implemented in a new battleground or, to some extent, the current WvW set up.

Increasing the importance of keeps: Like medieval warfare, keeps could play a strategic role in sheltering key components of the local “economy”

• Supplies and personnel from these structures can be moved to keeps during sieges or attacks, preserving part of the investment a server makes into resource structures
• A keep must be upgraded to include a “civilian shelter” or “resource deposit center” (?) in order for the personnel and resources at a resource structure to be evacuated.
• Looting a keep that has personnel and resources would reward the victorious server with bonuses of some sort (e.g., faster upgrades to the resource structures they now own, extra gold, etc.)

Summary:

• Capturable structures provide bonuses to WvW and PvE.
• Upgrades to these structures provide increased bonuses and incentives to capture and defend them.
• Resources and personnel upgrades can be partially preserved after a resource structure is attacked by sending them to a local keep.
• The ability to loot these resources from a keep increases incentives to siege and defend and provides a logical order of attack (raid resource structures, then attack keeps).

Thoughts?

I suppose this is too difficult to implement in the current battlegrounds. If I have the time, I will create some concept art for this idea and post it to this thread.