Guild Wars 2

It has to be said.

The advantage that organized groups have in WvW is just too extreme vis-a-vis the unorganized casual player. If this persists, as the current lop-sided match-ups show, most casual players will stop showing up to WvW.

So ArenaNet has a choice:

1) Handicap servers that pull away in score and buff those who fall behind, or
2) Admit WvW is a hardcore game mode.

If you support 1), how would you even the playing field?

If you support 2) why do you think WvW should become a hardcore game mode?

nerf orbs. They’re why guild riddled servers can win so easily, cause they just bumrush the orbs with organized pushes. Orbs should not exist.

Orbs…are overrated.

orbs and undermanned buffs should be switched around, they are just some kind of sadistic pun (the side already winning get a power bonus, the side that cant win because is undermanned get a gold/xp bonus to what they cant win).
this said, why the side with less and worse players should win?

NixZero.7540:

orbs and undermanned buffs should be switched around, they are just some kind of sadistic pun (the side already winning get a power bonus, the side that cant win because is undermanned get a gold/xp bonus to what they cant win).
this said, why the side with less and worse players should win?

I agree with this, that actually makes more sense than a lot of the drivel I’ve seen on here. Orbs would be a nice little perk for those winning, while the outmanned buff would actually be useful for once lol. It could scale with the amount you are outnumbered and such, and you could get like 10% MF per orb or something like that.

NixZero.7540:

orbs and undermanned buffs should be switched around, they are just some kind of sadistic pun (the side already winning get a power bonus, the side that cant win because is undermanned get a gold/xp bonus to what they cant win).
this said, why the side with less and worse players should win?

Fantastic idea!

That is one of the best ideas I’ve read about this game in weeks.

NixZero.7540:

orbs and undermanned buffs should be switched around, they are just some kind of sadistic pun (the side already winning get a power bonus, the side that cant win because is undermanned get a gold/xp bonus to what they cant win).
this said, why the side with less and worse players should win?

This is a really good idea, seems like it’s the “way it should have been”.

handicaps seemkitten in a perfect world some of the better guilds form the bigger servers should move to the less populated servers and build up their wvw communities there. and WvW is not very hard core. Would be cooler if I could loot corpses after I killed them. Then it would be more hardcore.

Samfisher.7942:

Orbs…are overrated.

Wrong, orbs make glass cannons iron cannons

Orbs are not overrated, you get 3 different injections of increase in HP pool from having them which can double squishies health pools. You have the actual flat % increase in health, you have the increase to stats (giving vitality) and then the fact you have the orbs means you’re probably dominating anyway so your WvW bonus HP buff will be creeping up to.

Orbs should have some other effect imo or perhaps an increased health buff but it only affects NPC guards/keep lords health and not players.

Eh, the last wuvu I participated in was a few days ago. I was pretty pumped to start using gold to buy upgrades for keeps to actually bring something to the table, but.. I logged on Friday at the start of the first week long wuvu and saw that one server was already at 15k points while the other two (mine and another) were at less than 10k. At this point it isn’t even worth trying. At this time I think the winning server has 60-80k and my server and the other have like 20-30k. The way it currently is isn’t fun for anyone. Right now, I don’t think my or the other server owns more than 1 keep/camp if even, so we aren’t even in at all. The winning team is left to run around and do absolutely nothing until next Friday at the reset.

Thrumdi.9216:

It has to be said.

The advantage that organized groups have in WvW is just too extreme vis-a-vis the unorganized casual player. If this persists, as the current lop-sided match-ups show, most casual players will stop showing up to WvW.

So ArenaNet has a choice:

1) Handicap servers that pull away in score and buff those who fall behind, or
2) Admit WvW is a hardcore game mode.

If you support 1), how would you even the playing field?

If you support 2) why do you think WvW should become a hardcore game mode?

Mechanics-wise, there isn’t a difference between an alliance and multiple zergs. Alliances have no “physical” presence in the game, they are simply organized by websites, voice servers. There’s literally no way to prevent or nerf alliances.

1) No. Servers that are “suffering” in WvW (as some people call it) need motivation to actually improve. If they just get a bunch of free buffs for failing, that could be considered motivation to fail until they get the buff, just to come fighting with more force. This would create a major unbalance.

2) WvW is a hardcore game mode. Let’s take two servers into consideration. I was on JQ at launch but moved to Henge for the WvW.

JQ is extremely unorganized and nobody seems to put much effort into WvW. Henge, however, is extremely organized and puts a ton of effort into WvW. While it may seem militaristic at times, it’s enjoyable and gets the job done. If you just skip through WvW and pick daisies (like a group of 25-30 people who spent twenty minutes organizing themselves), you’re not going to get anything done. It’s all about efficiency – which is also why you see smaller and more efficient groups wiping out much larger groups with a zerg mentality.

You don’t have to be hardcore to be organized. You’ve got a team chat, make good use of it. Nominate someone who knows what they’re doing as leader, then do as they say.

Guilds are only temporarily going to be winning, if anything your server will become better if it doesn’t have the guilds because you will talk to each other and develop your community and work together whereas the guild will most likely always work with themselves and ignore the pubs.

Igolbug.7295:

Guilds are only temporarily going to be winning, if anything your server will become better if it doesn’t have the guilds because you will talk to each other and develop your community and work together whereas the guild will most likely always work with themselves and ignore the pubs.

That’s not true at all, guilds will still have the advantage if they are any kind of good. Anytime I take my guild into WvW or even my fellow alliance members guilds go in, we rally the pugs every single time under us and make sure everyone is coordinated, not just our guild. If the guild is any kind of serious about WvW then they realize that the pugs are far more important than their own members (Unless they happen to literally have 50+ people all in at the same time, which even our larger guilds typically don’t manage). One of our alliance guild leaders purchased the commander tome as well so as to better rally the pugs, which has been working quite well.

I think there should be tournament servers for alliances.

That way the alliances don’t have to deal with clogged queues from coattail riders and the coattail riders won’t be able to QQ about alliances having an advantage because they bought a Teamspeak server.

I quit basically due to orbs. That and my dude is only level 33. Turns out a level 80 will 3 shot you (when geared) if you arent over a certain level.

But yeh…orbs. Its pretty dumb to give the side already ahead basically 15% all over buffs to make them literally invincible. Good idea in prinicple but orbs pretty much make wvw ALOT worse ALOT of the time

yep, orbs snowball the game, instead of having catch up mechanics to keep people interested.

instead of having lots of “win more” mechanics, having ones that equalise the game, it can become keeping a constant small advantage over the opponent instead of getting an orb 1st, useing the stat advantage to snowball into the 3rd orb, then taking all of everywhere coz your superpowered.

you want a game to be even, not a one sided smashfest.

or even just add some type of counterplay options, like a siege weapon that inverts orb buff on those in the area, or something.

Super simple solution, if you don’t like playing with alliances, which are normally high tier WvW servers, go play on a low tier WvW server.

The game isn’t formed around alliances, nor should the game be formed around people who follow the alliances but aren’t hardcore. The game is very casual, but is also what you make of it. Alliances made it “hardcore” for the first 2 or so tiers but after that it is way more casual.

TL;DR – Transfer off alliance servers and go to lower ranked and more casual servers.

NixZero.7540:

orbs and undermanned buffs should be switched around, they are just some kind of sadistic pun (the side already winning get a power bonus, the side that cant win because is undermanned get a gold/xp bonus to what they cant win).
this said, why the side with less and worse players should win?

I would love this. Orbs having explicit power is just asking for trouble, but the MF bonuses from an orb would still make them incredibly attractive.

DeLLy.1897:

Super simple solution, if you don’t like playing with alliances, which are normally high tier WvW servers, go play on a low tier WvW server.

The game isn’t formed around alliances, nor should the game be formed around people who follow the alliances but aren’t hardcore. The game is very casual, but is also what you make of it. Alliances made it “hardcore” for the first 2 or so tiers but after that it is way more casual.

TL;DR – Transfer off alliance servers and go to lower ranked and more casual servers.

In case you havent noticed, even really low ranked WvW servers have been matched against servers who have far outmatched them. Whether its alliances or sheer numbers or advantage in timezone for players, theres always an advantage for one side from what I’ve observed. With that advantage, orbs are taken and the advantage only grows larger. WvW is meant for the casual and the hardcore hence the reason that low lvl players have their levels and stats boosted to allow them some sort of viability. I believe the removal or nerfing of orbs will help provide a more even playing field although organization will still better a server that has none.

Organized players more successful than unorganized rabble? You don’t say…

Keldrath.4735:

Organized players more successful than unorganized rabble? You don’t say…

QFE. I really hope ArenaNet doesn’t start pandering to the “I want to solo and am too good to group or coordinate with anyone” crowd.

They have already negated the advantage with what we call, The Queue Boss.

Q Boss keeps us at about 10 players in W3 at a given time.

there is a pvp solution to your pvp problem. if you want to win. get organized. if you arent willing to try organize your server, you have no one to blame but yourself. be the solution, not the problem

Sisho.5431:

NixZero.7540:

orbs and undermanned buffs should be switched around, they are just some kind of sadistic pun (the side already winning get a power bonus, the side that cant win because is undermanned get a gold/xp bonus to what they cant win).
this said, why the side with less and worse players should win?

I agree with this, that actually makes more sense than a lot of the drivel I’ve seen on here. Orbs would be a nice little perk for those winning, while the outmanned buff would actually be useful for once lol. It could scale with the amount you are outnumbered and such, and you could get like 10% MF per orb or something like that.

That makes a lot of sense. I would very much like it to be the MF/Exp/Karma buffs altogether though, (but maybe scale back to 10 or 5% MF given that it’s controllable, though Outmanned is not controllable).

The biggest problem is the snowball effect… where owning one orb lends you the power needed to take another, then a third.

However, you’re actually missing one crucial point: Orb bonuses are server-wide, meaning your friends playing in PvE get the power bonuses reflecting your server’s success. What you’d need to do, now, is argue to have it detached: Orb bonuses in PvE stay the same, Orb bonuses specifically when in WvW get switched with Outmanned (otherwise the economy would be impacted somewhat with the “very attractive” MF and Karma buffs that you can now control and give to the whole server, potentially thousands). I can’t imagine the current stat increases are gamebreaking in PvE, so I wouldn’t mind if they just stayed the same there.

CardboardBox.6087:

DeLLy.1897:

Super simple solution, if you don’t like playing with alliances, which are normally high tier WvW servers, go play on a low tier WvW server.

The game isn’t formed around alliances, nor should the game be formed around people who follow the alliances but aren’t hardcore. The game is very casual, but is also what you make of it. Alliances made it “hardcore” for the first 2 or so tiers but after that it is way more casual.

TL;DR – Transfer off alliance servers and go to lower ranked and more casual servers.

In case you havent noticed, even really low ranked WvW servers have been matched against servers who have far outmatched them. Whether its alliances or sheer numbers or advantage in timezone for players, theres always an advantage for one side from what I’ve observed. With that advantage, orbs are taken and the advantage only grows larger. WvW is meant for the casual and the hardcore hence the reason that low lvl players have their levels and stats boosted to allow them some sort of viability. I believe the removal or nerfing of orbs will help provide a more even playing field although organization will still better a server that has none.

Incase you haven’t noticed, tons of people keep transferring to only a few different servers.. mainly the winning ones. If they block transfers to certain servers and try to funnel more people onto lower pop than it shouldn’t be a big problem.

Unfortunately, there is always going to be a mismatch in some way. Whether its super long queues vs no queues, coordination vs no coordination, fielding players 24/7 vs not, alliances vs none.

Most of the lower tier servers are lower tier because they don’t field a huge population for WvW and they don’t have a strong overnight presence, so it is perfect for casual players.

Changing the orbs might level the playing field somewhat, but it won’t make a huge difference.

Orb removal or a serious nerf… Hm, not a bad idea. Why compound the advantage more organized and more populated servers have with orbs?

Starfleck.8392:

Sisho.5431:

NixZero.7540:

orbs and undermanned buffs should be switched around, they are just some kind of sadistic pun (the side already winning get a power bonus, the side that cant win because is undermanned get a gold/xp bonus to what they cant win).
this said, why the side with less and worse players should win?

I agree with this, that actually makes more sense than a lot of the drivel I’ve seen on here. Orbs would be a nice little perk for those winning, while the outmanned buff would actually be useful for once lol. It could scale with the amount you are outnumbered and such, and you could get like 10% MF per orb or something like that.

That makes a lot of sense. I would very much like it to be the MF/Exp/Karma buffs altogether though, (but maybe scale back to 10 or 5% MF given that it’s controllable, though Outmanned is not controllable).

thank you for your praise, I’ve posted a copy of my suggestion in the proper forum, maybe some devel will notice it.
another small thing I noticed about servers -severely- outgunned: if a server completely dominate all three maps and heavily fortify every supply camp, how would the other servers be able to do anything without a supplies font?
a well entrenched 20 man group with siege machines can keep three times that number without any at bay easily, even if they arent allready dominating in numbers at that time.
maybe after x minutes that a side dominates -every- supply camp the other two side base camps should spawn a temporary supply well?

Unfortunately the only fix for servers “severely” outmanned on all 4 maps at all times is server merging (that is, if they have been matched and re-matched already)

It only takes a team of 5 people or less to sneak out a back route and ninja some undefended supply camps, which would severely relieve pressure from the spawncamping. It takes a bit of luck, true, but just a bit of proper knowledge would suggest that as the right course of action. In all events, you can simply go to one of the three other maps for your Supply, if you really need it. From my own experience, down at the bottom of the ladder servers leave a whole lot of places undefended.

Most likely, though, the enemy wouldn’t waste their resources on fortifying every single objective (or even one objective) against a severely outmanned opponent. That’s just bad PvP, or being a complete kitten. Plenty of other ways to have fun with the game outside of WvW if your team is too incompetent to defeat a spawncamp, though.

p.s. That’s why you’re invulnerable in your own camp, by the way.