Guild Wars 2

How to breathe life into W3
Obviously there is a lot of balancing required to any major changes but before you shoot ides down based on current W3 maps, points systems, siege use and supply systems. Please if your going to read this do it with an open mind with a major overhaul coming these could be intertwined.

1. Include new maps that rotate between all maps week to week or maybe you could even implement a voting system and give the winners 100%, 2nd 50% and third 25% weight on the vote for the next matchup. You could even include weighting for what tier you are in, to say reward those for being in T1 they get more weight over the lower tiers as a reward for being there and feeling of achievement for winning.

2. Have a end of weekend reward via removal of 2 maps out of 4, the two maps that get removed are the 2 borderlands of the two teams that are loosing at that point.(map redesign probably be needed for balance)

3. Create more than breaking doors with siege as a way to enter an opponents points area/structures. for example. So some structures would remain sieges some would change to things like.
a) An open field skirmish area were no siege is aloud there is 5 capture points and you need to control these points to gain points, the base owner by holding capture points would remove the oppositions points. The reward for getting the points to a certain level would open a 5 minute portal for only the winning team to try take the structure. Obviously the portal point would have to be in an area that couldn’t be camped. Differing variations of this could be implemented like needing supply to be used up to be able to gain points.
b) Guild versus guild area that allows 5/10/20 people(randomised) from one single guild to enter another skirmish area in the map and it be a death match until last man standing kind of thing. WITH NO INVIS!! The way to organise who gets their shot at this could be determined by a queue and once all 3 teams have their 20 people clicked on rady it ports you to the area or it could be a guild ranking system yet to be implemented but should be. Guilds could nominate which size team they represent and when they have earnt enough of the karma style points to get there shot they can then spend it to have their hour of deathmatch which resets there points back to 0 and gives the next team the chance to nominate themselves for the death match hour. (then we wouldn’t have to put up with gloaters coming to the forums to say they are the best there numbers could do the talking.) Points would be allocated to the server for 1st and 2nd say 50 and 25 point, this could be once every 1 hour meaning it wouldn’t be available at all times and guilds would salivate at thier chance to do this once or twice a week.
c) More portal straight into battle would be good, maybe a death match area that when your killed you can click at respawn to port you straight back in to the fight with say a 20 second delay. This area could have a death tally and every time a team is in the lead during the 15 minute timer they get the points. Maybe have a 15 member limit on this to try keep it even numbers and you cant port back in their from the map until your chance is up.

There are heaps more ideas to create some variation on the W3 world, it needs it because fighting the same style of siege v wall/door with the occasional PvE fight for supply camp gets mundane for a 24/7 required environment. Obviously retweaking would be required to make points distribution balanced and not to negate the need for supply camps etc.

4. Create a carrot for the progression hungry players to want to W3, Ranks, skins, stats. Something to say your gaining something other than glory for playing W3. People love stats include stats that can be visualised.

5. Get rid of all the things that don’t make W3 its own beast. Remove Karma and Badges. Killing a person is harder for some and easier for others based on what class they are so badges for gear sucks and isn’t fair and makes a million mesmer and thiefs in W3. There should be a similar to Karma system that gets you the gear and doing multiple activities would gain you these points and you wouldn’t have to stupidly worry about picking it off the floor.

6. Make Mesmer portals only available in certain areas, at the moment it is the only strategy that works well and watching for and defending mesmer portals all day long gets mundane too. Make other strategies work until you can fix the culling problem.

7. Change supply system, Make two piles of Supply in structures one players can grab and use for whatever and one for the builders to use for upgrades / repair walls / doors. Running supply to repair isnt fun. Make the yaks and workers do this. Make it live when a door is being attacked so the attackers need to not only take down the door but drain supply to gain entrance. Attacking a door then would have benefits as it stops upgrades if my next point wasn’t to be implemented.

8. Make it when you gain a structure you are fully upgraded for 30 minutes but gain less points for said structure. After 30 minutes the structure would revert to the level of upgrades carried out on the keep. Also each points tick you would increase the points you gained for holding the structure. So start off with 1 point per tick with an increase every tick until you have held a structure for 4 hours to max it out, both defensively and points wise. Imagine the increased strategy required to plan a take down and the importance of defending. Would stop the zerg pvdoor mentality if you wanted to win a map that now has rewards for doing so.

9. Make the PvE stats rewards you gain from W3’ing only to those that have gained a certain amount of points in W3. So a second points system on top of the separate karma that means if you do NOT help in W3 you do NOT get any PvE rewards You could simply make it a percentage thing of, if you have more W3 Karma than PvE karma you get the 100% bonus if you have only 50% of W3 Karma you only get 50% of the bonus. Before all you PvE heavy people QQ, you dont deserve the rewards if you dont contribute. MAke it so the rewards are for the entire week. So the score last week affects the entire next week. So the only peaks and troughs are from your attendance in W3.

10. Remove all PvE frm W3 if it doesnt serve as a benefit to W3 like the grub! Jumping Puzzles. This one is just a preference of mine and I love PvE. They dont mix well and should never be mixed especially the rewards!!

W3 has soooooo much potential, its a fun game now. I pla it and will continue to but a few modifications I believe you will have the ultimate PvP meta game in any game on the market has ever had.