Guild Wars 2

Assuming Anet could work the technical hurdles of bringing orbs back without hacking and cheating being involved, I think they could work as a simple and effective mechanic for helping balance scores against population imbalances that too often decide matches.

The idea of how it would work is an orb would be worth a set amount of points per tick, like a tower or keep, and it would be a lot, at least 25 points or more. But an Orb would not appear on any map until the population of all three teams in the match filled at least 75% of their player slots on that map.

This way when matches were at there most contested, with all three maps fully queued, you would have the potential for maybe 100 more points on the scoreboard, to represent how the fighting has reached its most meaningful fevered pitch, and most rewarding too.

Once a population dropped below this number on a map, the orb would go into a fade period, but it would last a while, maybe an hour (4 point ticks) so as to prevent a team from just purposely evacuating a map to make the orb team lose their points right away.

It would really add some excitement and dynamic change on to a map to see that an Orb has appeared, a new objective that every teams is going to want. Right now, especially on the Borderlands, it can get very stale and tired fighting the same strategies and cyclical fight flows that happen in a match, when there is no wild card to mix things up.

Removing the orbs did not stop hacking. Removing the orbs only made hacking less obvious. But it is there, much like when you try to shove your kitten under the rug. Still there. Rotting.

Orbs gaining points for your server would be welcome addition. They add an extra incentive to attack and defend the keep where the orb is located. Chasing the orb carrier is also fun.

Orb being available only when enemies are playing on map is not good idea. It would lead to odd situation where your team would avoid entering a map to deny opponent having an orb. Players would be frowned upon entering maps unless your server can guarantee to hit queue limit.

Pendragon.8735:

The idea of how it would work is an orb would be worth a set amount of points per tick, like a tower or keep, and it would be a lot, at least 25 points or more. But an Orb would not appear on any map until the population of all three teams in the match filled at least 75% of their player slots on that map.

what about servers that dont get queues but still suffer from opponents outnumbering them?

kingkillar.6714:

what about servers that dont get queues but still suffer from opponents outnumbering them?

The idea there was to encourage low population servers to actually congregate to one map, instead of being spread out outnumbered everywhere. By filling out one map they would not only be more successful together, but they would be fighting on the map worth the most points, since it would be the only one with an orb in it.

Too often outnumbered servers have a few people in every map, and can’t get anything really accomplished in any of them.

I don’t know how bad the situation is in the bottom couple tiers, but I would hope that even there, most servers can hit 75% of the player limit in at least 1 out of the 4 maps, certainly during the main 6-8 prime hours on their server.

Pendragon.8735:

kingkillar.6714:

what about servers that dont get queues but still suffer from opponents outnumbering them?

The idea there was to encourage low population servers to actually congregate to one map, instead of being spread out outnumbered everywhere. By filling out one map they would not only be more successful together, but they would be fighting on the map worth the most points, since it would be the only one with an orb in it.

Too often outnumbered servers have a few people in every map, and can’t get anything really accomplished in any of them.

I don’t know how bad the situation is in the bottom couple tiers, but I would hope that even there, most servers can hit 75% of the player limit in at least 1 out of the 4 maps, certainly during the main 6-8 prime hours on their server.

This wouldn’t help low tier server at all I think. It would just make the winning server win by even more points. Why work for the points when they can easily be obtained in an empty map?

You’d be surprised how far low tier servers go to avoid actually fighting for their points. Talking about T5 and lower, from experience.

Pendragon.8735:

kingkillar.6714:

what about servers that dont get queues but still suffer from opponents outnumbering them?

The idea there was to encourage low population servers to actually congregate to one map, instead of being spread out outnumbered everywhere. By filling out one map they would not only be more successful together, but they would be fighting on the map worth the most points, since it would be the only one with an orb in it.

Too often outnumbered servers have a few people in every map, and can’t get anything really accomplished in any of them.

I don’t know how bad the situation is in the bottom couple tiers, but I would hope that even there, most servers can hit 75% of the player limit in at least 1 out of the 4 maps, certainly during the main 6-8 prime hours on their server.

While I think your initial orb idea has some merit and is a fair, effective method for reducing the impact of low population times, your followup shows why Anet wouldn’t likely go for it.

Based on design decisions, statements by staff, and new changes that have been implemented in WvW since launch, it’s pretty clear to me that Anet would rather servers have an equal number of players across the borderlands. They don’t want a server to have EB full and their BL nearly full, but no one on the opposing two borderlands. Ideas that incentivize servers abandoning certain maps to only play on others aren’t likely to be well received.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Pendragon.8735:

kingkillar.6714:

what about servers that dont get queues but still suffer from opponents outnumbering them?

The idea there was to encourage low population servers to actually congregate to one map, instead of being spread out outnumbered everywhere. By filling out one map they would not only be more successful together, but they would be fighting on the map worth the most points, since it would be the only one with an orb in it.

Too often outnumbered servers have a few people in every map, and can’t get anything really accomplished in any of them.

I don’t know how bad the situation is in the bottom couple tiers, but I would hope that even there, most servers can hit 75% of the player limit in at least 1 out of the 4 maps, certainly during the main 6-8 prime hours on their server.

This wouldn’t help low tier server at all I think. It would just make the winning server win by even more points. Why work for the points when they can easily be obtained in an empty map?

You’d be surprised how far low tier servers go to avoid actually fighting for their points. Talking about T5 and lower, from experience.

You either didn’t read the OP or didn’t understand it then. Those points wouldn’t happen if the map was empty. As the OP noted, the orb would only exist if certain population thresholds were reached by all three servers on the same map.

Syeria.4812:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Pendragon.8735:

kingkillar.6714:

what about servers that dont get queues but still suffer from opponents outnumbering them?

The idea there was to encourage low population servers to actually congregate to one map, instead of being spread out outnumbered everywhere. By filling out one map they would not only be more successful together, but they would be fighting on the map worth the most points, since it would be the only one with an orb in it.

Too often outnumbered servers have a few people in every map, and can’t get anything really accomplished in any of them.

I don’t know how bad the situation is in the bottom couple tiers, but I would hope that even there, most servers can hit 75% of the player limit in at least 1 out of the 4 maps, certainly during the main 6-8 prime hours on their server.

This wouldn’t help low tier server at all I think. It would just make the winning server win by even more points. Why work for the points when they can easily be obtained in an empty map?

You’d be surprised how far low tier servers go to avoid actually fighting for their points. Talking about T5 and lower, from experience.

You either didn’t read the OP or didn’t understand it then. Those points wouldn’t happen if the map was empty. As the OP noted, the orb would only exist if certain population thresholds were reached by all three servers on the same map.

Yes, but you still don’t understand do you? Why bother meeting that threshold just for a few points when you can go into an empty map and PvD for them instead?

Option A: Struggle for a few points in a map with high amount of people from all servers.

Option B: Take easy points in a map with no players from the other servers around.

encouraging people to create superservers by adding incentives to fight based on having higher population is not what wvw needs.

there is already enough space in the game to accomodate at least 3x as many people as there currently are. we are not being encouraged to USE the space.