Guild Wars 2

Its become clear that WvW is often a numbers game. My server is extremely dedicated to WvW and has some amazing commanders. The trouble is our numbers are often fewer than the opposition. Although the dedicated players are on all the time, fighting tooth and nail with smart tactics, the opposition often garners points simply by the number of players they have. “Outmanned” as it stands now is little more than a badge letting you know you’re screwed. The bonuses don’t help with combat at all.

In addition to this problem there have been a lot of posts about match-up imbalance where one server dominates for a few days and pulls so far ahead in the point count that it becomes pointless to play because catching up is impossible.

My idea is to work into the game a kind of “Turn-the-tide” quest line that would become available to start for the bottom server of the three, or once they have acquired enough “Outmanned” buffs (make them like badges so you can hold onto them for the week).

I’m not sure how the dynamic event would start. Maybe this “Turn-the-tide” quest line could be “purchased” with enough Outmanned badges? Or if you dropped below a certain number of over all points in relation to the other servers. Regardless, the quest would give the losing or outmanned sever a series of tasks to accomplish, similar to the “Ogre” or “Dredge” tasks, but much more complicated and time consuming. Like collect a series of items, run them to another location, summon some creature, etc. The result would be that one or a series of Dragons would be summoned and start attacking the keeps and castles held by the other servers. These dragons would be very strong and hard to kill. Zergs could form around them. Think of them like big siege with AI. And they would remain on the WVW map until killed or until a series of towers / keeps were captured by the team who summoned them. Not sure on duration.

For the outmanned or badly losing server, it would give them something to hope and fight for. For the winning server it would be very fun too, because they’d suddenly have big things to kill and a chance to get good loot and XP from the dragons. It would recreate that kind of “Hail Mary” Lord of the Rings plot line in so many fantasy narratives where an all-powerful oppressor is overthrown by the underdog because of a magic ring or small band of dedicated heroes.

The key would be to set a proper cool down on the amount of times the “Turn-the-Tide” quest line could be activated. And also to make the quest line difficult enough / the Karma cost high enough that it couldn’t just be activated at the drop of a hat but would require a series of dedicated players working for a few days to make it happen. And to make the dragons tough enough to actually make a difference. Also, you’d have to figure out a way to avoid servers exploiting the dragons when they weren’t truly outmanned or overwhelmed. And to make sure the dragons weren’t SO powerful that a good server couldn’t defeat them and still hold onto map control. And also to make the dragons a relatively rare occurrence in WvW. Something that occurred at moments of extreme imbalance or steady outmanned situations.

Plus, a huge undead dragon attacking SM would just be so epic and something you could use to recruit players from your server with.

Thoughts?

I think relational population ceilings should be added to each WvW map so a single server cannot have significantly more people than another in each map. For instance, say the lowest population server only has 100 people on a map, maybe the other two servers can only have 120. There could be a ~100 player floor so that servers couldn’t play the system by intentionally cutting off the other servers. This way all the people who flocked to a winning server will be forced to sit in 12h queues or move. I would like it if ANet also made moving to low/medium population servers free so there is no penalty for being apart of the solution. Moving to high population servers could cost a significant amount (~50 USD) to discourage additional stacking. This would also ensure that several large guilds couldn’t stack into a single low population server as they would have to wait weeks before every member could play as other lower population servers would field less players. The server imbalance problems would solve themselves because people will want to play rather than sit on a winning team’s bench. I also think this would shift the focus of WvW from a numbers game to skill as a server with a lower population would be able to remain competitive with one with better coverage. Thoughts?

Smart thinking Outspoken. That would certainly help. But would people be kicked if they were already on and the enemy numbers dropped?

No, the queue just wouldn’t move forward until the population dropped below the threshold.

Or the devs could look at the obvious population imbalances currently,
the scores are pretty clear about who’s having the population advantage, and manually reset and shuffle the servers on the 28th while closing free transfers and telling everyone:
“Thanks for the beta test, enjoy your population balanced matches as the ladder can do it’s job now.”

Another good idea from Braxxus.

People sure like having pve in pvp

i was thinking a dragon siege blue print. or maybe even an egg or something like that. you build the dragon egg and hatch it..and the dragon flys around the fort/keep blowing fire on the siege on the walls. maybe even get to ride it? o.0

Benjamin.7893:

People sure like having pve in pvp

thats why I prefer to call it Faction vs Faction, or RvR instead of PvP.

I dig that idea, Funeral. Would be amazing to ride them.