Guild Wars 2

My thought is to increase the importance not just of taking objectives, but holding the objectives beyond simply abandoning them before coming around again to steal it back with superior numbers. To do this, I’ve come up with a two-part plan.

Part 1 is to have objectives such as towers and keeps increase score when they gain supply, meaning when a supply caravan arrives. In such a way, supply camps and caravans are no longer simply supporting objectives that are likely to be abandoned anyway, but are now the true blood of WvW objectives.

However, here’s the thing: if supply simply = score, then people will just focus coverage to get and deny the most supply. So here’s the other half of the idea:

As you know, objectives tick for score every 15 minutes. I’d prefer not to change this, but instead create a “value” system for towers and keeps. Each time the caravan reaches the objective, the value is increased by by a certain amount depending on the objective[Towers:1, Keeps:2]. When the structure is taken, this value is resets to a minimum[Towers:5, Keeps:10]. This means that the longer an objective is held and supported by caravan, the more it ticks for. Theoretically, a tower held for long periods of time can tick for greater amounts of score than keeps.

My thought-process here is that smaller servers might have a chance at a closer match by denying supply and hitting particularly valuable objectives while also putting servers in a more dynamic situation where they need to prioritize objectives to take and protect while at the same time planning for the long-term rather than the directly eminent score tick.

While coverage will of course be very strong and gaining monopoly on points will also add nicely to the score, defending can become a long-term investment that outputs more than general dominance will against servers of equal or greater strength.

Thoughts on this? Criticism? Tweaks?

What do you do when an upgrade occurs and uses all the supply? The owners of the keep still built up supply, but under your suggested system here, they wouldn’t get credit for that supply if it is used during an upgrade.

The other problem, is that now the score can be strongly manipulated by supply trolls. This idea makes it very valuable for trolls to make a lot of extra or unnecessary siege to burn supply. In that case, even if you get a dev to show up to investigate a troll, you cannot really justify taking action against someone building golems, ACs, or balistas, because they can argue that they are purely sieging up the location. When in actuality they could be trolling to burn supply to manipulate the score.

coglin.1867:

What do you do when an upgrade occurs and uses all the supply? The owners of the keep still built up supply, but under your suggested system here, they wouldn’t get credit for that supply if it is used during an upgrade.

Forgive me if I was confusing with my wording. I meant that simply receiving supply increases the value of the objective. Thus, using or taking out supply won’t affect the value.

Edit: This also speaks to your second point, to the point where supply trolls won’t be able to influence the score via supply burning. Instead they will… well, they’ll still be siege trolls, that’s another problem entirely.

Thanks for the clarification.

Now that makes me wonder, how do we know what the value of the keep is, if it does not directly relate to the active supply in the keep?

Can the enemy see a keeps value as well? I ask because as of know, both sides know where their own as well as the enemies points come from. That knowledge drives fights and incentivizes opponents with a reasoning to take particular keeps.

coglin.1867:

Thanks for the clarification.

Now that makes me wonder, how do we know what the value of the keep is, if it does not directly relate to the active supply in the keep?

Can the enemy see a keeps value as well? I ask because as of know, both sides know where their own as well as the enemies points come from. That knowledge drives fights and incentivizes opponents with a reasoning to take particular keeps.

I think it would be wise to make it open information, placing it somewhere on the UI or map. This creates a sense of priority that both sides share, meaning it motivates fights at these particular locations, which might open up another dynamic of predicting the enemy’s movements via priority and creating very natural large-scale fights[ideally, of course]. The priority will also be shifting between fights, therefore encouraging a more diverse array of battlefields.

So, in short, yes, the enemy will also be able to see your objectives’ values, and vice versa. I will leave the implementation of working this information into the UI to ANet.

You mention smaller servers having a better chance by supply starving.

Well wouldn’t that make it easier for larger servers to supply starve the smaller? While still having more people of their own to walk and support supply into their own keeps?

coglin.1867:

You mention smaller servers having a better chance by supply starving.

Well wouldn’t that make it easier for larger servers to supply starve the smaller? While still having more people of their own to walk and support supply into their own keeps?

This is really the same problem with almost all of these suggestions, isn’kitten If it’s “easier for the smaller server” or “easier for the outnumbered server,” it’s likely going to be vastly easier to do it on the larger server.

I’ll start with this: The advantage larger servers have over smaller servers will never be closed. However, at the moment, smaller servers have no real way to fight against large servers, even if the larger server is worse strategically and in skill. Thus, while larger servers will have more options in any scenario, this gives smaller servers “some” options to use rather than the current “none”. Large, organized servers will still be the most likely to dominate, but, as I said, smaller servers will have a greater possibility to rank up over simply unorganized servers.

Server sizes is, like trolls, another problem entirely, however this design will encourage strategy and organization of both large and small servers.

Felt like bumping this in the midst of the new announced changes, see if people view the ideas here differently given the current overhaul.

Changes I’d make to the original post are that instead of infinite point increase, it’d be increased points per upgrade and, just as many people have suggested already in various threads, make the upgrading an event that counts arriving dolyaks, thus making caravans directly correlated with when and if a structure upgrades, instead of a timer system.

Make your idea easier. T1 = 15PPT, T2 = 20PPT, T3=25PPT.
To change as you wish. But this is only interesting without automatic upgrade and without free update (gold and supply).
I would love to see something like this in wvw… More PPT if your keep is upgraded. But for this you need to remove the auto and free upgrade.

To add to WvW an incentive to defend things, Anet has alot to do to fix WvW:

1) Defending locations must become first finally same as rewarding, if not more rewarding (over longer time) than claiming locations, where so longer you successfulyl defend a place, so more rewarding it should become over time with increased WXP, Gold, Exp, Karma and Event Reward Chest with WvW unique rewards inside that become better, so longer you defend successfully.

2) ANet has to implement finally WvW Traits, that are also designed for defending places more efficiently. Traits like

• Tower Defense Master
• Camp Defense Master
• Keep Defense Master
• Castle Defense Master
• Shrine Defense Master
• Trap Mastery
• Medic Mastery
• Reinforcement Mastery
• Assault Mastery
• Improved Cannon Mastery to 10 Tiers with effects that help more for Defense
• Improved Oil Mastery to 10 Tiers with effects, that help more for Defense
• Improved Mortar Mastery to 10 Tiers with effects, that help more for Defense
• Improved Trebuchet Mastery to 10 Tiers with effects, that help more for Defense
• Improved Catapult Mastery to 10 Tiers with effects, that help more for Defense
• Improved Golem Mastery to 10 Tiers with effects, that help more for Defense

3) Anet has to add Class specific Traits, so that classes, which are very good and designed for defending can do it better at situations where you need to defend, or at least buy enough time for your allies, so that reinforcements can arrive, before its too late. Not to mention that WvW in general would massively prrofitate from it, if there woudl be finalyl class specific traits, that incredibly would improve everyones roles and build diversity for WvW massively.

4) The Upgrade System has to get improved/expanded, so that NPCs become more useful, get better A.I and better Skill Sets that make those NPCs same as dangerous, like the NPCs from EotM, if you have upgraded your locations to get better Elite-NPCs protecting them, which actualyl are a good help also in defending your places and not just braindead cannonfodder thats killed in a matter of seconds. They should scale up, so more enemies attack them, just like the veteran monsters/champs scale up so more players attack them. Thats why they are “Elite”
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An example how ANet should improve for example Cannon Mastery with Tiers 6-10 to help making them more useful for defense.

Tier 6: Unlock “Heavy Shot” as 4th Cannon Weapon Skill
Heavy Shot causes for every foe hit for everyone 1 Stack of Vulnerbility and 1 Stack of Torment. Means, if you hit with this into a full bunch of enemies, everyone hitted will have for a short amount of time 25 stacks of Vulnerability and Torment for say max 3s.
A clear shot, that rewards with maximum efficieny for good targeting, if you hit a large group with it. rather that tryign to target single enemies.

Tier 7: Unlock Fiery Shot as 5th Cannon Weapon Skill
You shoot at your ground target, causign a large explosion at the point, that launches foes away and sets them in fire, causing burning to them.

Tier 8: Cannoneers Precision
All your Cannon Shots have an increased chance of 20% to cause critical hits and an increased Velocity of +25%

Tier 9: Cannoneers Expertise
All your Cannon Shots have now 25% increase AoE Ranges, have +1200 range and it turns Devastating Shot (AA) into Annihilating Shot, which removes now more Boons and adds a new unique Debuff to the game “Exhaustion” which makes it impossible for an exhausted target to receive new Boons, while that Debuff is active.

Tier 10: Cannon Grandmaster
Cannons that you control become undestructable. You gain stability stacks every few seconds while controling a Cannon. Damaged cannons get slowly repaired while you control them over time. Your toughness/vitality gains now +300 when controling a Cannon. AA Cannon Shots also are now Life Leeching, so that a part of their damage heals you. Annihilating Shot turns into “Exterminating Shot”
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With such an immprovement, Cannons would be alot more useful to defend something, because they wouldn’t be able anymore to destroy them so quickly and players which control them would be able to heal themself and sustain better AoE damage with increased defense and max health and life leechign shots, that reward again good targeting and hit lots of enemies at once, while the two new shots would definetely help in defending alot.