Guild Wars 2

Hello, long post time again.

Been trying to come up with ways to change the Outnumbered buff to help the outnumbered fight against the outnumbering, without messing up the actual combat (to much). The goal here is to come up with ideas that will help the outnumbered deal with larger groups, but not change how small group fights works, for this I’ve set it at 5vs5 and anything up to this and below should be unchanged. As always I also try to limit this to as easy or simple solutions as possible, so no complete redesigns of WvW etc. Changing the Outnumbered buff alone will not fix everything, and not even fix fighting against zerg/blob’s, but should be a goof first step in combination with a couple of other changes as well.

THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: No stat boosts, no invulnerability, no perma stability, or any other knee-jerk solution. No matter what small groups must still be able to fight on even terms. If you got 5 man and run on enemy BL where they have a full 40 players, and you run into 5 of their players when taking a camp, that 5 vs 5 should be FAIR (as fair as WvW allows at least).

First off: I haven’t found any place that list if 2 servers can have the outnumbered buff at the same time or not, from what I’ve seen I’m going to assume that only a single server gets the Outnumbered buff, but if anyone can confirm either or it would be great. It can change how a few of the ideas work or not.

The actual changes:

Outnumbered (buff):

• Increase the number of targets on skills with +X (ex +2, perhaps as high as +5)
• Increase supply capacity with +5, and Supply usage speed by +33% (Build/Repair/Gather)
• When you die, you don’t trigger “Rally” on enemy players.
• White Swords on objects (remove them if not outnumbered).

Extra changes:

• Remove Player damage vs doors, Siege or nothing.
• NPC scaling to number of players. (speed ratio of 0.75 ratio per 1)

More details:

The increased number of targets is to be able to hit more enemies with attacks, and affect more allies with buffs. This should let a smaller group (say 10 vs 40 as an example) put some more pressure on the larger group and protecting itself better, without unbalancing things to much (hopefully, I’m sure some of you will prove me wrong). Just how much the +X should be is a matter of balance but I think 2-5 should be the extreme ranges. I was also thinking about adding the opposite, so the larger groups could target less enemies, but that would have to be tied up into an “Outnumbering de-buff” and ANet would never add that, because it would encourage people to tell others to go away so they didn’t get the de-buff.

More supplied for outnumbered should be pretty obvious, lets a defending team bring more supply and use it a bit faster to counter an outnumbering enemy. Same with the faster usage, lets them get a siege up faster or repair a door a bit faster, might help against a larger enemy. The other side of the coin, is that it gives Roamers and Havoc’s some more tools to play with when fighting behind enemy lines, I don’t think that is a bad thing but some may disagree. (Another option here would be to tie this bonus in with your home borderland, giving defenders a boost).

The whole Rally thing, this is to give an outnumbered enemy the opportunity to actually fight an attrition against the larger enemy. It is far from perfect, if the larger group wins they can still hard resurrect, and if they are many enough they can still combat heal them up fast enough anyway. Just removing the fight swinging mechanic from one side.

White swords is still a hot topic, and I’m probably going to get a lot of flak for this one. But changing how white swords work depending on Outnumbered could be really interesting. Give the Outnumbered server the advantage of surprise and thus encourage/force the larger server/map presence to use more people to scout. This again interacts a bit weird with Home BL, and a lot of BL defenders are probably inscribing my name on silver bullets right now. But if you lose white swords, it means you also have the numbers to scout and control things.

Now for the other changes; Removing PvD means you’re locked to using siege to open up towers/keeps, a huge group can’t just stand whacking at the door any-longer. This would make it much easier to defend structures with less numbers, a well placed siege disabler could cripple an offensive. Now this would obviously make Siege Disablers even stronger, but it would encourage the attackers to try out different siege placement than the usual 5 rams packed on door, 5 catas packed right next to wall, and perhaps use the actual range, and have people stand guard to defend the siege against incoming players with possible siege disablers. This again would help an outnumbered defender to force the outnumbering attacker to spread and spend the supply more around, and take a longer time to take the objective.

And yes the NPC scaling (another not so popular topic). There are several ways this could work: Scaling number of NPC guards, strength of guards, strength of champion, more aoe attacks for guards etc. But I’m going to focus on the Champion Lord. Keep them as is for 5 or less players, start scaling them above that, the goal here is that it should take *almost* the same time killing the lord with 5 players, as 10 players as 40 players. It is ok if it goes slightly faster with more numbers, but not slower (ANet’s philosophy that you should never be punished for having more players around you). The idea here is that eventually people will realize that they can take 2 towers at the same speed as 1, since the lord dies just as fast to 20 as 40.

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The more I think about it, the more I dislike how Outnumbered triggers. Would have liked to have it a more dynamic ability that comes when you’re heavily outnumbered where you are, not on the other side of the map. Playing with the idea of having the Outnumbered buff trigger when a certain amount of players (2:1 ratio) are within 2400 range of yourself. So the Outnumbered buff was actually a huge warning sign, sort of feeling the ground rumble as a horde of enemies rolls inn on you standing watch on a tower wall. This would also allow for different bonuses and advantages (example a speed buff to represent you run away in fear ).

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Ok, I’m done, you may all sigh in relief now.

(Curse you forums and your stupid 5001 word limit!)

-Elrik, the overly verbose.

Well they could remove white swords and have it so only outnumbered buff can use them. That and maybe a faster cap rate. Keep in mind its your world that is out number not your group 5 ppl should never be able to take down 20 but 5 ppl should be able to ninja objectives from 20.

Nice ideas so far, however keep in mind you can’t see outnumbered on your enemies. The rally thing would became a tell when the enemy is weak.

Secondly I haven’t seen a group of players PvD a door in little under a year. It’s always with rams/alphas, even in small groups.

I am pretty sure you can get two servers with outnumbered at the same time, however it would require the third to be very big compared to the other two, so it rarely happens.

Lastly I suspect outnumbered is localized already as I have gotten it while a friend on another part of the map has not. the localization is much larger than what you are thinking however(like 1/4th of the map). My real issue with outnumbered is that it’s very finicky and seems to disappear when you need it.

It would be nice to see it stay for a time even if the numbers change. For instance when outnumbered is triggers it is applied for 5 minutes and is reset every minute you are outnumbered. (so you have a 5 minute grace period after you are no longer outnumbered) This means you can actually see the remaining time as well.

for 2 years the response to this topic from anet has been unchanged:

anet does not want to give us any kind of buffs that provide a fighting advantage to the outnumbered team because it encourages players to say “leave the map we want to be outnumbered”

i sincerely do not think they will ever change their stance on this, and thats why this topic has died down in general. because its just not gonna happen with the current wvw framework, and anet doesnt seem to be making very much effort to overhaul the wvw framework.

that said, have fun brainstorming~

@Jski: That was what I had intended for white swords, looking back I think I worded myself badly on that, thanks. I like the idea of having a slightly faster capture, would be a great help for smaller team trying to take things before the cavalry comes, but if the white swords gets changed it becomes less important. Good alternative.

At most, these changes would help out in a 5 vs 10 largely because of the extra targets, 5 vs 20 should still be very hard, and these changes should hopefully only make it slightly closer.

@zerorogue: Good point on the rally/outnumbered being a clear sign, guessing that most will be able to figure it out before then though.

The PvD is mostly what I see zergs do when they get Siege Disabled, this would instead force them to run off take a camp, get more supply, return and try to set-up some cata from a longer range (for ex), or actually wait for the Siege Disabler to finish. Or ust learn to spread out siege in the first place.

Not so certain about the outnumbered part as I’ve often gotten outnumbered in Citadel when people spot enemy coming out of spawn or hitting the south camps. But a certain timer to it would be nice.

@insanemaniac: I am well aware that ANet works at the speed of Glacial Ice but I also believe that they look at the forum and pick up ideas from it (yes, yes, I’m Naive, deal with it!). So yes, I will have fun brainstorming!

This was also part of the idea with this, to find ways to change the Outnumbered buff that would only compensate for the numbers somehow, but not changing stats or how a "fair" fight works out (fighting advantage). With the exception of the "rally" part, the rest of these shouldn’t affect a 2 vs 2 at a camp in any way. I’m still surprised that ANet gave us stat buffs on Bloodlust.

Thank you all for comments!

I like your ideas and I’ve heard other good ones in the past that I can’t seem to remember right now. However Insanemaniac is right, Anet is never going to apply them to the outnumbered buff. And I don’t think they should. For the reasons they state plus it really wouldn’t be that helpful. By the time you’re Outnumbered you’re screwed anyway.

What I think would be better is to apply your ideas to a general imbalance in the match. Make it based on score or average population difference.

So if the populations are imbalanced apply the advantages. Or if a server falls behind by a certain amount of points apply the advatages. Maybe even in a graduated scale.

Or just change the Outnumbered Buff so that it applies under these conditions instead of the way it works now which I think just about everyone agrees is worthless.

joneirikb.7506:

Outnumbered (buff):

• Increase the number of targets on skills with +X (ex +2, perhaps as high as +5)
• Increase supply capacity with +5, and Supply usage speed by +33% (Build/Repair/Gather)
• When you die, you don’t trigger “Rally” on enemy players.
• White Swords on objects (remove them if not outnumbered).

Extra changes:

• Remove Player damage vs doors, Siege or nothing.
• NPC scaling to number of players. (speed ratio of 0.75 ratio per 1)

Some good ideas among these – the Rally one I don’t agree with, I believe that mechanic should stay.