Guild Wars 2

WvW was clearly intended to have achievable goals for groups of various sizes, but in general it seems that the zerg has come to dominate. Optimum play appears to be gathering up as many players as possible and then golem-rushing your target. While there’s certainly some nuance there, there’s little place for smaller groups to do much that’s truly meaningful. Sure, you can go behind enemy lines and cause havoc (flipping camps and killing sentries such), but a group of 5-10 players is generally best off joining up with a zerg if they want to do anything truly useful.

So, I had an idea: implement capture points that give advantages to allied zergs but require players to stay on them to give the benefit. The zerg couldn’t simply sweep through, take what it needs, and then continue on (like with supply camps), and the points needn’t be proximate to where the zerg wants to be at all. The benefits could be things like enemy doors taking 25% more damage or enemy siege having a 1/2 second longer cooldown on their #1 skills. Commanders would want to send crack-teams to take and defend these spots, because the benefits are awesome but can’t be capitalized upon if you sent your whole zerg to take them.

I was thinking…how about we reduce the chances of getting badges and loot from an enemy player the more people are in an area? So…if you’re in a huge zerg, you rarely get loot from kills. But if you’re in a small group of 2-3 people, your chances of loot from enemy kills shoots way up.

I have a feeling this will encourage smaller scale battles all over the map. Whatdya think?

bhagwad.4281:

I was thinking…how about we reduce the chances of getting badges and loot from an enemy player the more people are in an area? So…if you’re in a huge zerg, you rarely get loot from kills. But if you’re in a small group of 2-3 people, your chances of loot from enemy kills shoots way up.

I have a feeling this will encourage smaller scale battles all over the map. Whatdya think?

Why do you need loot if you’re doing something you enjoy?

I ran yaks with a 5 man team for two hours last night and didn’t get any xp, and maybe one loot bag, but I still had a blast hanging out with my guildies.

Not everything has to involve loot…

bhagwad.4281:

I was thinking…how about we reduce the chances of getting badges and loot from an enemy player the more people are in an area? So…if you’re in a huge zerg, you rarely get loot from kills. But if you’re in a small group of 2-3 people, your chances of loot from enemy kills shoots way up.

I have a feeling this will encourage smaller scale battles all over the map. Whatdya think?

I feel like that would just encourage selfish play. Zerging up is the best way to succeed in WvW right now. While there should certainly be rewards for doing other things, people should be getting into small groups because there’s a tactical advantage there, not because they’ll get more loot. This sort of system would also cause roamers to actively discourage allies from helping them, since they’d get less loot.

It would be nice if there were repeatable achievement chests kinda like with the Zephyr games where you get a Loot bag every 15 runs. Run 5 yaks, get a loot bag, that sort of thing.

Clockradio.3257:

Not everything has to involve loot…

Agreed, but MMOs are basically big Skinner Boxes so it does make sense for them to reward players for doing things they enjoy. Basing a series of rewards around yaks, for example, would lead to more interesting conflict. Like, let’s say you get a Loot bag every time you kill 5 Yaks, but you also get a loot bag for every 10 yaks you successfully run. This would lead more players to run yakslapper builds while more players would also run with yak defender builds, leading to a new mini metagame between these two groups of players. Currently, there isn’t much of a circle between these two groups as yaks are often undefended and when they ARE defended, most yakslappers will just hunt for a different yak. If more yaks were defended but there were good rewards for killing yaks, you’d see players trying to out-think each other rather than take 3+ people by a yak as reason to do something else.

Clockradio.3257:

bhagwad.4281:

I was thinking…how about we reduce the chances of getting badges and loot from an enemy player the more people are in an area? So…if you’re in a huge zerg, you rarely get loot from kills. But if you’re in a small group of 2-3 people, your chances of loot from enemy kills shoots way up.

I have a feeling this will encourage smaller scale battles all over the map. Whatdya think?

Why do you need loot if you’re doing something you enjoy?

I ran yaks with a 5 man team for two hours last night and didn’t get any xp, and maybe one loot bag, but I still had a blast hanging out with my guildies.

Not everything has to involve loot…

For lots of people (like me), loot is the only reason I do anything. I need my shinies as carrots dangled in front of me, or else I won’t play.

Back when I ran havoc groups before SoR was top tier, I used to go as far as capturing enemy towers with groups of 5. Flame rams, as it turns out, are fairly cheap and powerful.

I haven’t had a chance to play Golem Wars yet, so I am unsure how well they can defend, but prior to golem wars a coordinate group of 5 people could be quite deadly while defending a keep, even against 10 or 20 invaders.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Back when I ran havoc groups before SoR was top tier, I used to go as far as capturing enemy towers with groups of 5. Flame rams, as it turns out, are fairly cheap and powerful.

I haven’t had a chance to play Golem Wars yet, so I am unsure how well they can defend, but prior to golem wars a coordinate group of 5 people could be quite deadly while defending a keep, even against 10 or 20 invaders.

Five people can turn away an entire map zerg with five superior ac’s…

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Back when I ran havoc groups before SoR was top tier, I used to go as far as capturing enemy towers with groups of 5. Flame rams, as it turns out, are fairly cheap and powerful.

I haven’t had a chance to play Golem Wars yet, so I am unsure how well they can defend, but prior to golem wars a coordinate group of 5 people could be quite deadly while defending a keep, even against 10 or 20 invaders.

We used to do that on Tkittenil recently. But it is basically impossible now with the AC buff. Except on slow nights, you basically have to run a mini-zerg to do that now (15-20 people).