Guild Wars 2

I recently voted on the opinion poll for the Repair Hammer which I think is a great addition to WvW but there are other problems in WvW that I think need to be addressed. One of these is the Outnumbered problem which I experience often in WvW. During the daytime hours almost on a daily basis our server has low population and we get slaughtered. Many players have voiced an opinion about leaving the server as a result. My suggestion is why don’t we get some kind of buffs to increase our survivability and damage output during these times which could be scaled by population on other servers. I really don’t think the current Outnumbered +50% Magic Find, +20% World Experience, + 25% World Experience and Take No Armor Damage suffices. This is growing negative sentiment about this problem by what I am hearing. I love WvW and I hope the developers can work on this problem.

Also, instead of a Repair Hammer added to WvW, how about an opinion poll on increased timers on seige. Albeit the majority would vote for increased timer over a repair hammer.

no no no
if somebody is outnumbered should not have any kind of stats privilege
this would just make guilds go agressive against pugs and eachother so they can steamroll a map with 20 vs 80. Ofc you have not considered how this will affect guilds or roammers /duellers .
using siege will also not atract players on your server. Make your server more atractive , and you will gather the players you need to fight: )

You said “steamroll a map”? …that is EXACTLY what is happening to the outnumbered server that I am on. Having a stat privilege would help kinda like a bolstering. As for roamers and such, SORRY! If we are outnumbered a little bolster stat privilege would be nice because we are getting STEAMROLLED over and over and over again. I see your point with one-on-one encounters but really this benefit would level the playing ground by taking out those roamers and scouts.

As far as seige, I would love to see a 2 hour timer instead of one. Its frustrating especially on low population times when you are running the map to protect your stuff and by the time you get back…Poof…all seige is gone. I have spent loads on seige and again, without seige our outnumbered guild is DOOMED!

Same here….T2 is boring. 5 of us will try to take a tower and 50000 JQ will come “steam rolling” around the corner. I realize they want to push to be in T1, but these match ups and server linking are a disaster.

6 more weeks of this sounds painful and boring. It’s just going to drive off more players the more anet lets this continue.

• The primary reason and use for the “Outnumbered” is Warning. Not to make you able to compete with enemy numbers.
• The small numerical bonuses are there mostly to reward those that still dare the dark waters.
• When you’re severely outnumbered, the general best idea is to start Roaming, which one of the others described very nicely in another thread as “being as annoying as you can”. The best way to “fight” against an overwhelming size enemy is to frustrate them, Send 1 guy to take every camp on the map at the same time, start cataing towers in 1-2’s and force the enemy to split up to deal with you. They will usually just get bored or frustrated and leave.

That aside, the why we can’t have stat boosts or other goodies on “Outnumbered”.

Because of how the "Outnumbered works for the whole map, adding stats or other advantages to it will create a lot of unbalanced situations.

• If Server A is karma training at Bay on Server B’s ABL. And Server B has a scout at NEC when a Server A roamer attacks the camp. Server B Scout will have an unfair advantage in stats, on top of the camp guards, vs Server A’s roamer that might have nothing to do at all with the group at Bay. The lareg group at Bay might even join the map in the middle of the fight between the scout and roamer, and mid fight give the Scout an advantage.
• Same situation with a 5 vs 5 havoc group from both sides, meeting to fight over SET, while Server A gets a large group joining the map to go to Bay.
• Zerg Busting or other very organized guilds that specialize or train on beating larger groups of un-organized enemies. So Server A has 20 players in Server B ABL, and Server B has pulled a zerg from EBG to chase them out numbering 40. The Server A group has trained, uses voice com, runs specific builds, classes, squad setups to maximize group synergies, and in general specialized themselves on killing twice their number of unorganized players. And all of a sudden they’re getting EXTRA stat bonuses as well ? In this case the 40 pugs are the guys that needs that outnumbered buff!

Further reasons why this just doesn’t work:

The difference in player skill. Going to use number 1-9 to simplify player skill for these examples, where 9 is top and 1 is bottom.

• 5 Server A Defenders at skill 5, defends a tower against: 10 Server B Attackers at skill 5. And the outnumbered buff roughly boost so that 1 person equal 2 enemies in relative stats. This is fair and even, this is the ideal situation and how people that want a Outnumbered buff to work.
• 5 Server A Defenders at skill 3, defends a tower against: 10 Server B Attackers at skill 7 (Organized guild group, that also likes to PvP). With the outnumbered buff still boosting roughly 1 defender = 2 attackers in stats. At this stage the outnumbering buff doesn’t really do much at all, it will make them survive a little bit longer, or 1 more might be able to run away. The difference in skill between the sides means that the stat difference matters that much less.
• 10 Server A Scouts at skill 3, tired of being ganked by enemy roaming group, gangs together to ambush and kill them as they attack a tower. Server B has a roaming group of 5 players at skill 7, they’re not very organized, running random roaming builds, but are in voice-com. In this case the Roamers would be able to pick apart the Scouts without the Outnumbered Buff, but in this case they also have the stat buffs, and will completely dominate the poor scouts.
• I have seen a single roamer (my crazy guild leader) charge solo into un-organized groups of 20, kill 10, down a few more, until they finally manage to kill him. Had he gotten an outnumbered stat bonus in addition to this, he would have taken all 20 solo. Is that really what you want ? (This would be 1 Roamer skill 9, vs 20 zerglings skill 1)

Edit: Just figured out how to make proper bullet points!

The issue is: being outnumbered is horribly boring for some players. It’s discouraging to feel that you can’t go anywhere on any of the four maps without being met by overwhelming odds, particularly if that’s a regular occurrence during your peak hours of play.

That issue isn’t all that easy to resolve by simple changes to game mechanics. Give too much of a buff to the low-count side and the other side feels that it can’t compete in “fair fights” and clever tacticians will arrange their forces to have the buff as often as possible on as many maps as possible.

I agree that population — by itself — has too big an impact on fights, scores, and how much fun people have in WvW. ANet will have to tackle that holistically, which probably means dedicating a lot of people to resolving it, including coders, testers, and skill balancers. I don’t know if they’re currently setup to make that sort of investment (I hope they are).

In the meantime, making incremental changes to QoL and mixing things up is worthwhile — WvW doesn’t need to go through months of evolution|content drought again, while ANet works on the fundamentals.

RodOfDeath.5247:

Same here….T2 is boring. 5 of us will try to take a tower and 50000 JQ will come “steam rolling” around the corner. I realize they want to push to be in T1, but these match ups and server linking are a disaster.

6 more weeks of this sounds painful and boring. It’s just going to drive off more players the more anet lets this continue.

Honestly this has to be the most frustrating part of WvW.

As a member of FA right now I don’t even want to log in during certain points of the day.

I know that the outmanned buff will never boost the stats of the players, but it would be nice to see it boost the guards and lords at least. I wouldn’t mind watching helplessly as the JQ blob had to fight 15 legendary mobs in Bay instead of a few vets and the the lord. It wouldn’t help much, but it would slow them down a bit.

Perhaps if the zergs had to actually work for the cap by killing some tough resistance the K-trains/PvD stuff would be reduced.

joneirikb.7506:

• The primary reason and use for the “Outnumbered” is Warning. Not to make you able to compete with enemy numbers.

• The small numerical bonuses are there mostly to reward those that still dare the dark waters.

• When you’re severely outnumbered, the general best idea is to start Roaming, which one of the others described very nicely in another thread as “being as annoying as you can”. The best way to “fight” against an overwhelming size enemy is to frustrate them, Send 1 guy to take every camp on the map at the same time, start cataing towers in 1-2’s and force the enemy to split up to deal with you. They will usually just get bored or frustrated and leave.

---

That aside, the why we can’t have stat boosts or other goodies on “Outnumbered”.

Because of how the "Outnumbered works for the whole map, adding stats or other advantages to it will create a lot of unbalanced situations.

• If Server A is karma training at Bay on Server B’s ABL. And Server B has a scout at NEC when a Server A roamer attacks the camp. Server B Scout will have an unfair advantage in stats, on top of the camp guards, vs Server A’s roamer that might have nothing to do at all with the group at Bay. The lareg group at Bay might even join the map in the middle of the fight between the scout and roamer, and mid fight give the Scout an advantage.

• Same situation with a 5 vs 5 havoc group from both sides, meeting to fight over SET, while Server A gets a large group joining the map to go to Bay.

• Zerg Busting or other very organized guilds that specialize or train on beating larger groups of un-organized enemies. So Server A has 20 players in Server B ABL, and Server B has pulled a zerg from EBG to chase them out numbering 40. The Server A group has trained, uses voice com, runs specific builds, classes, squad setups to maximize group synergies, and in general specialized themselves on killing twice their number of unorganized players. And all of a sudden they’re getting EXTRA stat bonuses as well ? In this case the 40 pugs are the guys that needs that outnumbered buff!

---

Further reasons why this just doesn’t work:

The difference in player skill. Going to use number 1-9 to simplify player skill for these examples, where 9 is top and 1 is bottom.

• 5 Server A Defenders at skill 5, defends a tower against: 10 Server B Attackers at skill 5. And the outnumbered buff roughly boost so that 1 person equal 2 enemies in relative stats. This is fair and even, this is the ideal situation and how people that want a Outnumbered buff to work.

• 5 Server A Defenders at skill 3, defends a tower against: 10 Server B Attackers at skill 7 (Organized guild group, that also likes to PvP). With the outnumbered buff still boosting roughly 1 defender = 2 attackers in stats. At this stage the outnumbering buff doesn’t really do much at all, it will make them survive a little bit longer, or 1 more might be able to run away. The difference in skill between the sides means that the stat difference matters that much less.

• 10 Server A Scouts at skill 3, tired of being ganked by enemy roaming group, gangs together to ambush and kill them as they attack a tower. Server B has a roaming group of 5 players at skill 7, they’re not very organized, running random roaming builds, but are in voice-com. In this case the Roamers would be able to pick apart the Scouts without the Outnumbered Buff, but in this case they also have the stat buffs, and will completely dominate the poor scouts.

• I have seen a single roamer (my crazy guild leader) charge solo into un-organized groups of 20, kill 10, down a few more, until they finally manage to kill him. Had he gotten an outnumbered stat bonus in addition to this, he would have taken all 20 solo. Is that really what you want ? (This would be 1 Roamer skill 9, vs 20 zerglings skill 1)

Excellent post, imo.

Balance has gotten worse if anything with the server merges as now there seems to be one server that can just blob every map. Guilds and groups move to that server and those left remaining on the smaller just do not bother to show. This is not all on ANet. Numbers dominate and when people always outnumbered they will move to where the numbers are. The weekly matching is done using population numbers that no longer apply.

There was a time 10 of us could work a map and slowly flip back to our side and that our total numbers. Now you try that and the blob shows within seconds. Flipping camps? That used to be done by two or three, now a Blob will roam the map just to flip camps. I try every map some nights and get outmanned on each and yes, like others mention here it frustrating and not a lot of fun so I just log off and find something else to do until later hours.

At those later hours you still outnumbered but at least you can roam some maps and get some fights in, some camps flipped, or take a tower without running into a 60 man blob that just steamrolls objective to objective.

The end result? Sure there are players that prefer the blobs but that in and of itself leads to the problems. If a person likes the blob they will move to servers which can more easily blob . Do that and the players who prefer smaller scale fights just leave. this means less people WvW overall . A server with a blob on each BL can co-exist with s server with a blob on each BL but servers that can not blob due to numbers can not co-exist. The mechanics ensure that not possible. More numbers wins.

It then becomes little more then a fight between some small handful of servers to attract more people to their own so they can keep up in the arms race.

Fixes? I do not know. I had initially thought linking would work but the mechanics only mean more fuel to the bigger blob the better fire.

The idea that stat boosts would somehow ruin everything, skew all fights to point of no return, and somehow affect WVW as a whole is simply and plainly false. And I will point the proof of it, which is from this game (GW2), and from this game mode (WvW).

Remember Guard Stacks ? There have been countless times when equal size groups would clash and often the group without the guard stacks would mop the floor with the group that had them. This is a perfect example of a stat boost such as the one I am referring to.

Even now, how many times every single week do 2 groups clash in SMC and the defending side has it guild claimed giving themselves stat boosts ? Map is qued on both sides, the attackers without stat boosts still take it.

Therefore, I would LOVE to see guard stacks re-enabled while under effect of outnumbered buff. Further restrictions could be applied, for example have to have outnumbered buff for at least 5 minutes + experience PVP combat, or some other trigger.

But that sort of a stat boost, and implimented in such a way, would give the outnumbered side just a slight edge instead of it being overwhelming and would be overall better for the game as “hit and run” and guerilla tactics would be slightly more effective.

Tongku.5326:

The idea that stat boosts would somehow ruin everything, skew all fights to point of no return, and somehow affect WVW as a whole is simply and plainly false. And I will point the proof of it, which is from this game (GW2), and from this game mode (WvW).

Remember Guard Stacks ? There have been countless times when equal size groups would clash and often the group without the guard stacks would mop the floor with the group that had them. This is a perfect example of a stat boost such as the one I am referring to.

Even now, how many times every single week do 2 groups clash in SMC and the defending side has it guild claimed giving themselves stat boosts ? Map is qued on both sides, the attackers without stat boosts still take it.

Therefore, I would LOVE to see guard stacks re-enabled while under effect of outnumbered buff. Further restrictions could be applied, for example have to have outnumbered buff for at least 5 minutes + experience PVP combat, or some other trigger.

But that sort of a stat boost, and implimented in such a way, would give the outnumbered side just a slight edge instead of it being overwhelming and would be overall better for the game as “hit and run” and guerilla tactics would be slightly more effective.

I agree that the Guard Stacks wasn’t game-breaking in the stats department. When I argue against Outnumbering Stats above, I’m referring to when players want the “Outnumbered” to equalize them in stats to the enemy, as in the example I used above where 1 Outnumbered = roughly 2 other players in Stats. This is what a lot of people asks for. Problem is that the amount of stats to make that plan effective also vary entirely between the relative skill level between the players in question.

There are other advantages that could be added to “Outnumbered” without directly messing with huge stat boosts. A simple example that could replace your example would be to receive a certain amount of automatic Might stacks from Outnumbered, applied every X seconds.

Also a few things I and others have suggested before:

• Faster build/repair while outnumbered
• Carry more supply while outnumbered
• Stronger guards/lords while outnumbered
• Take less damage while on siege when outnumbered
• Modify so you can hit more enemies with skills when outnumbered (+7 to +10)

This has been going on for years.. Arenanet has no idea how to run a WvW and they have no interest in learning how to.

I haven’t been playing gw2 very long but WvW is where I spend all my time so it’s a shame that the Outnumbered problem doesn’t get some attention. I left swtor because they nerfed the game and took away the pvp servers so I was really happy when I started playing this game. You guys have raised some valid concerns but I still think some Outnumbered buffs could help even if it is applying the very smallest advantage if not for the sake of moral and people not abandoning the server in the least. From all the posts I’ve read people have developed a loyalty to their guild, tags and friends so they would prefer to stay on. I was just trying to think of a solution that would help the problem. I can’t tell you how many times there are only like 6 of us on the ebg map and we are standing at SOS wp with no keep or towers and just waiting for the zergs to go elsewhere so we can take our keep back. Pretty sad…even the tags leave. And I hear people saying I’m out of here because this sucks!

Geo Storm.1630:

I haven’t been playing gw2 very long but WvW is where I spend all my time so it’s a shame that the Outnumbered problem doesn’t get some attention. I left swtor because they nerfed the game and took away the pvp servers so I was really happy when I started playing this game.

You guys have raised some valid concerns but I still think some Outnumbered buffs could help even if it is applying the very smallest advantage if not for the sake of moral and people not abandoning the server in the least.

From all the posts I’ve read people have developed a loyalty to their guild, tags and friends so they would prefer to stay on.

I was just trying to think of a solution that would help the problem. I can’t tell you how many times there are only like 6 of us on the ebg map and we are standing at SOS wp with no keep or towers and just waiting for the zergs to go elsewhere so we can take our keep back. Pretty sad…even the tags leave. And I hear people saying I’m out of here because this sucks!

(Added line breaks for easier reading and responding)

This is primary a Population and Fair-Weather problem. Which means that ANet would have to fix those two first, since they are the main reasons for the whole “Outnumbered” problem.

It isn’t a bad idea to work on the Outnumbered ability, it’s been discussed often over the years on this forum, and some interesting ideas has come forward. But the core of the gameplay of GW2 is the very decent combat system, and too big changes to the stats will negate the skill aspect of the combat, which is one of the main draws for many.

So to improve the Outnumbered you’d have to look more at things that gives a team a chance to do something without screwing over the combat. I added some examples in my previous post, where the idea of the bonuses is to help the defenders to keep up in defence through supply limits/use, and siege compared to an outnumbering enemy.

What we do not want, is to have 5 players standing with the same stats as Tequatl + lots of blocks and invulnerabilities etc, basically un-killable, one-shoting people running around killing entire zergs alone, because its 5 vs 100 players.

Also, ANet’s general philosophy regarding the design of the game, where “you should always be happy to see another player.” means that they will never create any game mechanics that will punish you for having more players. This leads to both:

• It will always be an advantage to zerg/blob
• Outnumbered will never become relevant enough that players start yelling at others to leave the map so they can get the Outnumbering bonus.

woudn’t be better to try to atract players in 1 outnumbered server than punish a healthy server ?
i am not sure what you actualy try to achive with punishing the side that is outnumbering, is not their fault in the end .
Yet if all 3 servers will have similar population , problem would be solved:)

chefdiablo.6791:

RodOfDeath.5247:

Same here….T2 is boring. 5 of us will try to take a tower and 50000 JQ will come “steam rolling” around the corner. I realize they want to push to be in T1, but these match ups and server linking are a disaster.

6 more weeks of this sounds painful and boring. It’s just going to drive off more players the more anet lets this continue.

Honestly this has to be the most frustrating part of WvW.

As a member of FA right now I don’t even want to log in during certain points of the day.

I know that the outmanned buff will never boost the stats of the players, but it would be nice to see it boost the guards and lords at least. I wouldn’t mind watching helplessly as the JQ blob had to fight 15 legendary mobs in Bay instead of a few vets and the the lord. It wouldn’t help much, but it would slow them down a bit.

Perhaps if the zergs had to actually work for the cap by killing some tough resistance the K-trains/PvD stuff would be reduced.

No. Just because they outnumber you doesn’t mean anything really. You don’t know how many people from your server or the other server are actually playing. Plus, what happens when its just a regular group of 5-10 people trying to take the keep. Why should they have to fight “15 legendaries instead of a few vets” because their server has a blob on the other side of the map?

Something like this was discussed earlier when I proposed a dynamic short range “outmanned” buff here :https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Changing-outmanned/first#post6154980 .

The discussion ended up with the suggestion that outmanned could be a short range buff that gave stacks of might and damage reduction that varied with the number of players within combat range. This would get around the issue of outmanned actually being worthless and would possibly even bring a counter play to big blobs.

A long time ago, I used to play a lot of off-peak hours. I’d say supply was my biggest hurdle – if I wanted to grab a few people to do anything out-numbered, I’d need supply. Supply isn’t very well scaled down to out-numbered situations. Even if all you could do was flip a few towers back and forth for 40 minutes, that’d be a little more interesting that getting scouted and blobbed for trying to do anything. I’d recommend the out-numbered buff to reduce all supply costs to 1 for siege.

Supply might be a way to address this and makes sense from a Logical perpective as in if you have a massive blob of an army, it would consume more supply.

Perhaps something that would diminish the maximum level of supply in a camp keep or tower premised upon how large your army in the lands was. As example if you got a blob 40 plus all supply camps lose +30 meaning a base camp could only hold 70 for that sides army. A keeps max would drop to 800 or some such. Max carry of an individual would drop by 5.

I am not sure IF this would work it just an idea.

The main things I can think of is better profession balance, scoring/population balance and less skill lag.

OriOri.8724:

chefdiablo.6791:

RodOfDeath.5247:

Same here….T2 is boring. 5 of us will try to take a tower and 50000 JQ will come “steam rolling” around the corner. I realize they want to push to be in T1, but these match ups and server linking are a disaster.

6 more weeks of this sounds painful and boring. It’s just going to drive off more players the more anet lets this continue.

Honestly this has to be the most frustrating part of WvW.

As a member of FA right now I don’t even want to log in during certain points of the day.

I know that the outmanned buff will never boost the stats of the players, but it would be nice to see it boost the guards and lords at least. I wouldn’t mind watching helplessly as the JQ blob had to fight 15 legendary mobs in Bay instead of a few vets and the the lord. It wouldn’t help much, but it would slow them down a bit.

Perhaps if the zergs had to actually work for the cap by killing some tough resistance the K-trains/PvD stuff would be reduced.

No. Just because they outnumber you doesn’t mean anything really. You don’t know how many people from your server or the other server are actually playing. Plus, what happens when its just a regular group of 5-10 people trying to take the keep. Why should they have to fight “15 legendaries instead of a few vets” because their server has a blob on the other side of the map?

15 legendarys would be an extreme and is more or less just sarcasm, however, being outmanned most of the time against the enemy is far greater than 5 to 10 ppl…..by a lot.

I routinely see 50+ JQ facing about 6 FA in FA BL bay most days.

If that many JQ want to take a keep, they could fight upscaled guards without too much issue or resistance.

What you are suggesting is like 20 people will be taxed to take a keep. Frankly, 20 people against 6 are basically taxed to take a keep because 6 ppl can fight 20.

They (the 20) will have reasonable supply limitations, far less AOE for the wall death traps, and they can be deterred by siege and tactical game play.

6 people against 50 are like nothing. There is no logical reason that scaling could not be used to make those odds a bit better.

If you don’t ever experience being very, very outmanned for around 10 to 12 hours a day, you probably shouldn’t be participating in this discussion.

Rayya.2591:

no no no
if somebody is outnumbered should not have any kind of stats privilege
this would just make guilds go agressive against pugs and eachother so they can steamroll a map with 20 vs 80. Ofc you have not considered how this will affect guilds or roammers /duellers .
using siege will also not atract players on your server. Make your server more atractive , and you will gather the players you need to fight: )

That already happens, who owns more towers/castles have more stats, as example, my guardian when my server is being outmaned i have arround 20-23k HP, when we own a good portion stuff on the maps health goes up to 26k+ Hp

The more a server owns more stats players have…

What if it was the keeps and towers that got an outnumbered buff rather then the players. Outnumbered side keeps would have more reinforcement and the opposite for the server with more players online. it would give you more time to respond to an attack and wouldn’t make fights uneven. Just a thought.

Aileras.9460, that would make blob QQ because, cause they would take longer time farming stuff… look what desert map did?

one of the reason Blobbers cryed about desert map was structures had to much HP for them to farm.

GW2 players dont want effort on taking stuff…it needs to be cheese and easy.

RodOfDeath.5247:

T2 is boring. 5 of us will try to take a tower and 50000 JQ will come “steam rolling” around the corner.

…

6 more weeks of this sounds painful and boring. It’s just going to drive off more players the more anet lets this continue.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s discouraging to feel that you can’t go anywhere on any of the four maps without being met by overwhelming odds, particularly if that’s a regular occurrence during your peak hours of play.

chefdiablo.6791:

As a member of FA right now I don’t even want to log in during certain points of the day.

babazhook.6805:

Balance has gotten worse if anything with the server merges

neonreaper.4805:

Even if all you could do was flip a few towers back and forth for 40 minutes, that’d be a little more interesting that getting scouted and blobbed for trying to do anything.

Food for thought.

Down in the depths of T4 NA, the first iteration of server match-ups was at least interesting on occasion. With the second iteration, one server (CD) pretty much does the scout/blob thing and their eventual victory is a forgone conclusion. You’re lucky if you can trick them into thinking you’re going after the 3rd server’s stuff and then get back to try to retake one of your towers.

Couple 50/60 v 20/30 with the boon-share meta and the outnumbered almost never have a chance. I don’t believe there is any way for an outnumbered stat boost to address this without being ridiculously OP, which would be not only unlikely but unwise.

Unfortunately, I think ANet has painted themselves into a corner, just as they have in PvE. The enabler of server stacking is the ability of players to shift — in WvW, to transfer from server to server, in PvE to taxi from a partially full mega-shard to a fuller one. Both leave the abandoned groupings light on population, but in WvW this means less coverage, whereas in PvE it “only” means dead maps. I don’t think that they can remove or even limit the transfers more than they already are, and as much as I think there are holes in their grouping algorithms, I don’t think they can fix them as long as population can shift at a whim.

I doubt this is a popular position, but I was having more fun in WvW when FC would fluctuate between T7 and 8. At least I got into interesting fights once in a while, and roaming was fruitful. Now, WvW is 10% OK and 90% frustration.

Its nobody’s fault if you are outnumbered. don’t blame everything to the company.

XerMeLL.6042:

Its nobody’s fault if you are outnumbered. don’t blame everything to the company.

The Outnumbered condition has been a perpetual state of affairs for WvW since the game mode was in its infancy. It’s the result of the interaction between design decisions which enable it and player desires to stack the deck in their favor. Since ANet made those design decisions, the situation is at least partially their fault.

The part that’s human nature they can’t fix. People complain in the hopes that ANet will fix what they can. However, to do so they’d have to reverse the design decisions that enable “outnumbered.” That’s not likely.

“Outnumbered” is fine if there are fluctuations in who’s outnumbered during the course of a play session. It’s not fine if it’s the state of affairs pretty much throughout a match. It’s just not a lot of fun.

At the end of the day, this is a game, and games need to be fun. I’ve been on both ends of the outnumbered thing. There was some degree of fun in having an overwhelming numerical edge. For me, at least, it didn’t last. After a bit, the satisfaction of winning didn’t hide the fact that constant roflstomping is kind of boring. There was never very much fun being on the side that gets roflstomped.

joneirikb.7506:

• The primary reason and use for the “Outnumbered” is Warning. Not to make you able to compete with enemy numbers.
• The small numerical bonuses are there mostly to reward those that still dare the dark waters.
• When you’re severely outnumbered, the general best idea is to start Roaming, which one of the others described very nicely in another thread as “being as annoying as you can”. The best way to “fight” against an overwhelming size enemy is to frustrate them, Send 1 guy to take every camp on the map at the same time, start cataing towers in 1-2’s and force the enemy to split up to deal with you. They will usually just get bored or frustrated and leave.

---

That aside, the why we can’t have stat boosts or other goodies on “Outnumbered”.

Because of how the "Outnumbered works for the whole map, adding stats or other advantages to it will create a lot of unbalanced situations.

• If Server A is karma training at Bay on Server B’s ABL. And Server B has a scout at NEC when a Server A roamer attacks the camp. Server B Scout will have an unfair advantage in stats, on top of the camp guards, vs Server A’s roamer that might have nothing to do at all with the group at Bay. The lareg group at Bay might even join the map in the middle of the fight between the scout and roamer, and mid fight give the Scout an advantage.
• Same situation with a 5 vs 5 havoc group from both sides, meeting to fight over SET, while Server A gets a large group joining the map to go to Bay.
• Zerg Busting or other very organized guilds that specialize or train on beating larger groups of un-organized enemies. So Server A has 20 players in Server B ABL, and Server B has pulled a zerg from EBG to chase them out numbering 40. The Server A group has trained, uses voice com, runs specific builds, classes, squad setups to maximize group synergies, and in general specialized themselves on killing twice their number of unorganized players. And all of a sudden they’re getting EXTRA stat bonuses as well ? In this case the 40 pugs are the guys that needs that outnumbered buff!

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Further reasons why this just doesn’t work:

The difference in player skill. Going to use number 1-9 to simplify player skill for these examples, where 9 is top and 1 is bottom.

• 5 Server A Defenders at skill 5, defends a tower against: 10 Server B Attackers at skill 5. And the outnumbered buff roughly boost so that 1 person equal 2 enemies in relative stats. This is fair and even, this is the ideal situation and how people that want a Outnumbered buff to work.
• 5 Server A Defenders at skill 3, defends a tower against: 10 Server B Attackers at skill 7 (Organized guild group, that also likes to PvP). With the outnumbered buff still boosting roughly 1 defender = 2 attackers in stats. At this stage the outnumbering buff doesn’t really do much at all, it will make them survive a little bit longer, or 1 more might be able to run away. The difference in skill between the sides means that the stat difference matters that much less.
• 10 Server A Scouts at skill 3, tired of being ganked by enemy roaming group, gangs together to ambush and kill them as they attack a tower. Server B has a roaming group of 5 players at skill 7, they’re not very organized, running random roaming builds, but are in voice-com. In this case the Roamers would be able to pick apart the Scouts without the Outnumbered Buff, but in this case they also have the stat buffs, and will completely dominate the poor scouts.
• I have seen a single roamer (my crazy guild leader) charge solo into un-organized groups of 20, kill 10, down a few more, until they finally manage to kill him. Had he gotten an outnumbered stat bonus in addition to this, he would have taken all 20 solo. Is that really what you want ? (This would be 1 Roamer skill 9, vs 20 zerglings skill 1)

Edit: Just figured out how to make proper bullet points!

underrated post. Been a long time since I have seen someone who actually knows what they are doing.

I’m sure something like this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I’ll toss it in anyway:

Seems to me the solution is not to make it easier for a small party to take on a blob – the solution is to discourage blobbing altogether.

So – why not consider a debuff for having too many players from the same server in close proximity to each other. Say, anything over 25 gets an “overcrowded” or a “constricted” condition that reduces offensive stats.

This would force commanders to separate and deploy forces strategically around the maps so as not to gain the condition.

As it is now, you can pump up the outnumbered folks all you want—the blob rolls on.

franandlaura.1382:

I’m sure something like this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I’ll toss it in anyway:

Seems to me the solution is not to make it easier for a small party to take on a blob – the solution is to discourage blobbing altogether.

So – why not consider a debuff for having too many players from the same server in close proximity to each other. Say, anything over 25 gets an “overcrowded” or a “constricted” condition that reduces offensive stats.

This would force commanders to separate and deploy forces strategically around the maps so as not to gain the condition.

As it is now, you can pump up the outnumbered folks all you want—the blob rolls on.

Yes, something like this might work.

There are ideas out there that could create a form of balance for the grossly outnumbered. I honestly believe that anyone that really enjoys the WvW mode would accept a reasonable attempt to make those overwhelming odds a worse option instead of an ideal one.

One of the key things that separates the top servers from the bottom is around the clock coverage and in most cases it is the night capping that creates the largest disparity between servers.

When a blob can fight a blob fewer people are upset about the odds even though they are rarely close to even.

When a blob is fighting a handful of players that can barely back cap a map, let alone put up any defense, it leads to fewer log ins.

I think your response is appropriate. No one is asking for an ‘I win’ button against overwhelming odds, just enough of a deterrent that the enemy has to spread out to benefit from it rather than blob up.

Also I might add, the outmanned buff is not a very good warning system. A few times over the last week or two it hasn’t even kicked in while a huge blob was taking down a keep. This happened last week. A handful of us were bouncing back and forth across the map trying to hold off some groups of 10 to 15 enemies in HIlls, Bay, and the various towers. Suddenly someone notices swords at our T3 Garrison. By the time a scout managed to see what it was, it turned out to be about 40 JQ and they were already at the inner gate. The buff never activated. We had no idea that there were that many in our BL.

Forget the weak token buffs of appeasement, the actual system has some flaws as far as being any kind of warning system at times.

If Anet is really invested in making the WvW game mode better all around then the outmanned system also needs an overhaul of some sort without making people into superheros of course. I believe that most people are just asking for a reasonable fix to the system, not an ‘I win’ buff.

There was an old board type space warfare I played that had a “feedback” rule to prevent just stacking forces and roaming over the maps. Once a spacefleet got too large and the vessels in too close proximity all of the energy and drive warps and weapons would distort the space at a local level causing random ships to explode or systems to shut down. Smaller fleets would escape these events.

Outnumbered shouldn’t affect stats. It should affect all the passive scouting mechanics and “I win” tactics.

If you are outnumbered you shouldn’t be marked on the map by sentries and towers. Certain tactivators like chilling fog should only work when you are outnumbered.

I would rather not see stats affecting the individual at the map level. If 1v1 or 5v5 battles fought one side should not have advantage because they outnumbered at map level.

I do think higher supply consumption can work at this level to a degree as exampled previously.

At the level of the local level for battles might I suggest something like this.

First define a total player and then a distance for this to apply and then apply the suggested penalty. Again this a suggestion and I am not sure of how it will affect the game.

The number of players is thirty. The distance is 4000 units. For every player over thirty within that distance the cooldowns of all skills are increased . So as example at 35 cooldowns might go up by 10 percent and at 60 they will increase by 50 percent. This would affect all cooldowns including those provided by runes and on weapon swap.

For the thief they will still get utilities runes and sigils dinged and that might be enough a penalty. If not look at adding Ini costs.

This means a side could still fill a map to full but if they all roam as one would start to erode their abilities. In a battle this might see two groups of 30 still used by the larger populations side while maneuvering to ensure they do not cripple themselves and the other team by getting too close.

It also might make battles more interesting at the tactical team level. A side of 60 blobbed as one would see itself at a disadvantage to two blobs of thirty attacking from different directions.

The larger group could also use that second force of 30 to feed the battle as reserves as team members in the first group are downed.

franandlaura.1382:

So - why not consider a debuff for having too many players from the same server in close proximity to each other. Say, anything over 25 gets an "overcrowded" or a "constricted" condition that reduces offensive stats.

Wish we could. But unfortunately ANet has a game design philosophy that you should never be sad to see another player. Which means they will never add any game mechanics that in any way will discourage more people together. This is one of the largest design problems with WvW currently.

Purely by PPT standards, it *is* better to split up to take objectives (except defended keeps). So the problem is rather that people doesn’t *want* to split up. Probably some interesting psychological explanations for that, wish I was competent to analyse it and figure out how to break it.

One idea I’d love to see implemented *if* they actually decided to remove that design-lock, is that the rewards (all, including reward track) got divided by the total amount of players. So 80 players in a zerg taking a camp, would get 1/80 of the normal progress on reward track, and wxp, and silver (I mean coppers...) etc. I imagine the karma-trains would deflate quickly.

Also like Puck’s ideas.

franandlaura.1382:

So – why not consider a debuff for having too many players from the same server in close proximity to each other. Say, anything over 25 gets an “overcrowded” or a “constricted” condition that reduces offensive stats.

This would force commanders to separate and deploy forces strategically around the maps so as not to gain the condition.

And what would you do if 3 randoms would decide to follow your 23 man raid, wait you would be 26. Can you force them not to ? or you accept to play against the enemy with the debuff ? Maybe invite them in your guild)

joneirikb.7506:

So 80 players in a zerg taking a camp, would get 1/80 of the normal progress on reward track, and wxp, and silver (I mean coppers…) etc. I imagine the karma-trains would deflate quickly.

what happens when 70 ppls share the reward with a roaming group that assaulted an objective for few hours?
They get 1 wxp for that ? ok
what happens if 20 ppls enter a camp you are capping and share reward with you ?

Rayya.2591:

franandlaura.1382:

So – why not consider a debuff for having too many players from the same server in close proximity to each other. Say, anything over 25 gets an “overcrowded” or a “constricted” condition that reduces offensive stats.

This would force commanders to separate and deploy forces strategically around the maps so as not to gain the condition.

And what would you do if 3 randoms would decide to follow your 23 man raid, wait you would be 26. Can you force them not to ? or you accept to play against the enemy with the debuff ?

So an alert commander would see that his/her crew was getting the condition for being too large and take appropriate steps according to the situation.

The commander could:

• split the team into two 10 – 15 player groups and assault different parts of the map,

• assign a small squad to go flip camps and intercept enemy players who have died and are running back to their squads,

• instruct the new players to go scout the enemy, refresh siege, kill yaks, tap keeps and towers, or supplement forces on a different map,

• create a “bait squad” to draw the enemy out / lead the enemy into traps,

and on and on…

To me this sounds a lot more interesting than just rolling the blob around the bag farm.

And I’ve witnessed some very talented commanders playing this game. I think they’re up to it.

A few things to contain blobbing:

Enable friendly character collision. Make the blobmanders deal with the negative side of moving and forming big numbers.

Speed debuffs based on group size. It is still a problem that 50 man blobs maintain constant swiftness and can launch people out with movement skills to overtake small groups and single targets.

Friendly fire. Never going to happen, but it would make movement and maneuver in large blobs have a downside. .

Thelgar.7214:

A few things to contain blobbing:

Enable friendly character collision. Make the blobmanders deal with the negative side of moving and forming big numbers.

Speed debuffs based on group size. It is still a problem that 50 man blobs maintain constant swiftness and can launch people out with movement skills to overtake small groups and single targets.

Friendly fire. Never going to happen, but it would make movement and maneuver in large blobs have a downside. .

Thank you for the input. I just want to make a few points.

Blobbing alone is unlikely to ever be discouraged. The WvW game mode is essentially built around it.

Blob vs Blob vs Blob battles have some merit and fun. Many people play WvW just for this chaotic action.

Being heavily outnumberd against blobs for several hours every day is an issue that can be addressed without trying to discourage people grouping up entirely.

Basically the outnumbered buff could also boost the NPC strength around the objectives, the blob could be forced to move slower, supply cost could increase to build siege, and so on.

The idea would be to make it a bit tougher on those groups that take full advantage of having no resistance during off peak hours. They would still take all the structures largely without resistance, but it would also allow the limited enemy defenders a chance to hold out at times for help, or even reduce the PPT gains at times if they were able to push some of these groups away now and then.

It takes a very special kind of player to log in every day against overwhelming odds knowing that your whole map will be flipped. It takes a great deal of resolve to play knowing that you will die at the hands of an 8 to 1 or 10 to 1 disadvantage for 10 to 12 hours week after week.

There are some good fights here and there while the blob is elsewhere, but overall it is the opposite of fun.

Colision detecting would made the game unplayable… game cant handle that…

franandlaura.1382:

Rayya.2591:

franandlaura.1382:

So – why not consider a debuff for having too many players from the same server in close proximity to each other. Say, anything over 25 gets an “overcrowded” or a “constricted” condition that reduces offensive stats.

This would force commanders to separate and deploy forces strategically around the maps so as not to gain the condition.

And what would you do if 3 randoms would decide to follow your 23 man raid, wait you would be 26. Can you force them not to ? or you accept to play against the enemy with the debuff ?

So an alert commander would see that his/her crew was getting the condition for being too large and take appropriate steps according to the situation.

The commander could:

• split the team into two 10 – 15 player groups and assault different parts of the map,

• assign a small squad to go flip camps and intercept enemy players who have died and are running back to their squads,

• instruct the new players to go scout the enemy, refresh siege, kill yaks, tap keeps and towers, or supplement forces on a different map,

• create a “bait squad” to draw the enemy out / lead the enemy into traps,

and on and on…

To me this sounds a lot more interesting than just rolling the blob around the bag farm.

And I’ve witnessed some very talented commanders playing this game. I think they’re up to it.

i am talking about a guild raid
guild has 23 members online that joined a guild to play with a guild, in a game called guild wars2. 3 random players decide to follow that raid of 23 players. That would unavoidable force the players to play with an handicap in your version