Since there seems to be a lot of good, constructive discussion going on these days I thought now would be a good time to discuss upgrades in World vs. World.
I feel upgrades have always played an important part in WvW, but I always wished they offered a bit more.
So let’s have ourselves community discussions, we know the developers are paying attention to these forums, so stay constructive and provide some feedback.
Let’s look a camp upgrades that could use some work.
Tier 1 – Hire Caravan Guard: Currently has no importance, it’s irrelevant and provides nothing to the game. When a caravan is destroyed the guards immediately de-spawn, so they don’t really offer any protection. It would be interesting to see the guards provide a passive speed boost to yaks, or perhaps a defense bonus to them while the guards remain active.
Tier 2 – Hire Additional Guards: Added guards is helpful, I would love to see the final upgrade offer a radius alert, alarming players on the map if a group over 5+ people begin to attack it. This would provide relevant task for havoc groups, and help break up the current blobs that plague WvW.
Now let’s look at towers and keep upgrades that could use some work.
Tier 1 – Hire Merchants/Hire Outfitter: Offers very little, is there some kind of unique item they could offer? Maybe hiring them allows the guards and NPC’s to be better equipped? I don’t feel like guards offer any difficulty and most often they are ignored. Good examples are the archers placed along the walls, they don’t do much.
Tier 2 – Hire Siegemaster: The siege master sounds cool, but he does nothing. It would be amazing if he placed free siege, similar to what siegerazor does once you purchase him. Keep in mind the Seigemaster is only available for towers, an asset I think it very easy to lose before it’s fully upgraded. Free siege placement might provide extra incentive to actually defend a lowly upgraded tower and would provide small squads something to do. An interesting thing to notice is the icon for siegemaster/services is an Asura working on a siege golem, as if repairing it. Maybe golems could regenerate health very slowly if they are stationed next to one? This would allow towers to play a larger role, damaged golems would be kept inside towers instead of at spawn or inside keeps.
Tier 3 – Hire Patrol: A patrol us used to scout an area and report on any enemy activity or to secure a perimeter. Patrols should put X on the map if they encounter a group of players larger than 15 attacking a keep or tower. Again this allows small groups to have purpose, allowing smaller guilds and havocs to play an important role in WvW. Clearing patrols before assaulting a keep would be an important tactic, and if they were taken out by a small group it would prevent the main force from being spotted within the area of the keep.
Finally, I would love to see unique upgrades. Maybe offering 3 options at the end of a tier that could only be chosen once while holding the objective, perhaps one upgrade could be the time required to capture the objective doubled, while another could allow reinforcements to be summoned every 2 minutes while a structure is under attack. (Similar to how the waypoints function now.)
What are your thoughts on upgrades?
What changes would you make?
What additional upgrades would you like to see?