Guild Wars 2

Alright folks, we’ve seen a lot of craziness happen in WvW matchups lately, but I’m here to voice my opinion against a snowballing mechanic that does not aid the balance of the game in any way shape or form.

To start off, I play on Borlis pass, which is one of the weakest WvW servers out there. I consistently have no queue to get in(which is nice) and my server is near consistently in last place in every matchup, save a few other servers(which is not nice).

Now, when WvW was announced, we all praised the DAOC gods for 3 faction PvP. Why? Because 3 faction PvP is supposed to stop one faction from becoming too powerful, since the other two can team up on the most powerful and knock them down a peg. Which, in most normal cases would work.

Except for Orbs. Orbs give such a ludicrous buff to the controlling team, that when a team controls all 3 the game becomes “Well, guess I’m not playing WvW for the rest of this week(or soon for 2 weeks)”. I don’t particularly enjoy running out so that my server can get slaughtered, so I can waste my limited resources on repair bills, and get no reward, neither xp nor Karma, nor gold, against a team that not only controls nearly the whole map, but has a huge buff for doing so.

Not only that, but it seems that the organized WvW guilds are now planning their entire strategy around Orb rushing when the matchups reset. So, essentially, the outcome of a day long or week long match is decided in the first hour by whoever gets the orbs? Isn’t that sort of anti-fun? Then the two losing servers get to sit there for a week and not accomplish anything?

I also can’t imagine it’s fun for the winning servers to log into a ghost town, where they’re not opposed by any enemy players.

I have two ideas. 1-Controlling orbs either nets huge point bonuses or buffs the server wide buffs, BUT gives the opposing teams a very slight buff(like, 1%) in order to balance things out. It makes the orbs worth capturing, but also makes it more difficult for them to be held onto for long periods of time. Obviously this would remove the stat buffs the controlling team gets currently.

Option 2 is more simple-Just remove them. I think this would go a long way towards keeping WvW balanced in the long term.

TL;DR Orbs are an un-fun mechanic and should be nerfed or outright removed. Thoughts?

Like i said before, the orbs arent the problem its the mis matches, where 1 server has 3x more people and run over everyone else.
if the balance problems do get fixed and their server match ups become equal like they are trying to achieve, the orbs will become very hard to take on a equal playing field. with the set up defending your orb will be very easy. but owning an enemys orb will be very hard. owning all 3 orbs would be very rare and would not last long. but this system will only work if the servers are matched up in equal power.

the way it is now people are only seeing the bad effect of teh orbs because 1 stronger side in running over everyone and CAN hold all 3. In a balanced match i think the system will work good and teh orbs will be a good inccentive to try for. they will be hard to get but worth it for the time you can actually hold an enemys

It’s not even a server balancing issue, it’s a fundamental flaw in the execution of WvW.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/It-s-a-question-of-balance/first#post173603

Sigh…this again.

No. Orbs are fine. ANet should not be making changes to WvWvW to compensate for the players poor attitudes or inability to organize. I cannot believe the attitudes of MMO players these days, it is really depressing to see what the player base has been reduced to.

I hate to be the guy to say “L2P” or just get coordinated. But I play on Sanctum of Rall and every single night Fort Aspenwood gets all 3 orbs. We usually get back at least one of the orbs during prime time, and then loose it again later in the night when our numbers fall off.

It is not impossible to siege down a keep and get the orb back. It takes much coordination, but with a one or two well defended trebuchets, some well executed diversionary tactics, clear communication, cooperation of your faction in the zone and patience, it is entirely possible to remove the supply stores from the keep and force the enemy into making a choice between holding the orb or holding potential points from all of the other points that they may not be defending because they have to run supply by foot to repair a wall. But if you don’t have the numbers to defend the siege equipment then there really is not much hope of removing the orbs from their grasp.

Now, with all that said I do believe that the orb bonuses are slightly crazy to deal with. I do not like facing each day with orbs of power held in reinforced keeps defended by a larger population that is not only bloodthirsty, but has buffs equivalent to a very hefty piece of armor and 15% more health. It is a very daunting task and can take longer than I would like put into it as it is going to be taken over in a matter of minutes or when I go to sleep. But at the end of the day it is just a game, and you get as much enjoyment out of it as you want. I like being an underdog, and what I have witnessed in wvw has been epic on a grand scale, the victories are glorious and the defeat is oh so bitter. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who plays during prime time when the population is healthy, so my opinion is probably quite different than someone who plays during the off hours of the server.

One problem that I think is the player base’s reluctance to buy and use siege equipment, people seem to be barley floating their repair bills because there is still much they need to spend coin on (skill books, armor/weapons etc) as they haven’t reached level 80, haven’t decided on a build to focus on etc.

My idea for orbs of power/owning the whole map is that if you have the force to hold all 3 orbs or own 100% of the map, then your faction does not get to see battle indicators on the map, as you obviously have enough forces to scout and patrol everything you own. Perhaps this could be on a sliding scale, like if you own 2 orbs battle indicators only show up for groups of 10+ instead of 5+. If you own all 3 then you only see them for 20+. Now this would all be invalidated when they release mobile apps that could do the same thing as the map (if they do). But I kind of like the idea that if your server is so cool and has such wvw prowess then you can’t rely on the map for where the orange battle indicators are.

Phaedryn.3698:

Sigh…this again.

No. Orbs are fine. ANet should not be making changes to WvWvW to compensate for the players poor attitudes or inability to organize. I cannot believe the attitudes of MMO players these days, it is really depressing to see what the player base has been reduced to.

Have you seen the WoW forums? A lot of those players are here. I actually expected it to be worse. Man, I miss the DAoC forums of players complaining about other PLAYERS and not how the game wasnt ezmode for them. Sigh.

tarnin.1690:

Phaedryn.3698:

Sigh…this again.

No. Orbs are fine. ANet should not be making changes to WvWvW to compensate for the players poor attitudes or inability to organize. I cannot believe the attitudes of MMO players these days, it is really depressing to see what the player base has been reduced to.

Have you seen the WoW forums? A lot of those players are here. I actually expected it to be worse. Man, I miss the DAoC forums of players complaining about other PLAYERS and not how the game wasnt ezmode for them. Sigh.

Yeah, that’s actually the problem. Before wow, the MMO player base was much smaller and had completely different expectations (remember taking months to hit the level cap, and real death penalties?). Then wow comes along and greatly inflates that player base with a huge number of players that have an entirely different mindset. Worse, wow reinforced that mindset until it become “standard”. It has been one of the primary causes of the decline of the genre.

Can you imagine if a game with mechanics like DAoC had was released today? Hell, just try releasing a game with real support classes that have nearly zero offensive capabilities.

Phaedryn.3698:

Sigh…this again.

No. Orbs are fine. ANet should not be making changes to WvWvW to compensate for the players poor attitudes or inability to organize. I cannot believe the attitudes of MMO players these days, it is really depressing to see what the player base has been reduced to.

I’m not saying they have to. What I’m saying is that Orbs provide a snowball mechanic that make the people who are already good, better, and make it harder for the worse servers to do even remotely well. This does not encourage better organization or better play, it encourages people to sit out WvW when they have very little chance of winning. It would be one thing if the matches only lasted 24 hours, but now that they’re up to a week and soon 2 weeks, it’s simply watching one server dominate for 2 weeks, when, realistically, WITHOUT orbs, they would still dominate, just slightly less so.

PLEASE tell me what orbs ADD to WvW, because right now I just am not seeing it.

Orbs add a reason to attack/defend the keeps. It also gives you a kinda end objective to WvW. Defend/take the Orb. With out them its just randomly taking keeps/towers/garrison for no real reason.

Gordunk.7289:

Phaedryn.3698:

Sigh…this again.

No. Orbs are fine. ANet should not be making changes to WvWvW to compensate for the players poor attitudes or inability to organize. I cannot believe the attitudes of MMO players these days, it is really depressing to see what the player base has been reduced to.

I’m not saying they have to. What I’m saying is that Orbs provide a snowball mechanic that make the people who are already good, better, and make it harder for the worse servers to do even remotely well. This does not encourage better organization or better play, it encourages people to sit out WvW when they have very little chance of winning. It would be one thing if the matches only lasted 24 hours, but now that they’re up to a week and soon 2 weeks, it’s simply watching one server dominate for 2 weeks, when, realistically, WITHOUT orbs, they would still dominate, just slightly less so.

PLEASE tell me what orbs ADD to WvW, because right now I just am not seeing it.

You know this isn’t new, or unique right? DAoC had relics, owning all three of the same type gave an entire realm (in our case the entire server) a 30% bonus to damage (this included the little level 1 alt just made and grinding out mobs in the starter area, it wasn’t confined to the RvR zones). Relics also never reset on their own, nor was there any sort of population cap in place. We didn’t have the luxury of waiting out a timer and having everything go nuetral. If the other factions had the relics, our ONLY recourse was to go get them. Guess what, we managed just fine for years. We didn’t cry that another realm had all three then roll over and play dead. Relics were THE focus of RvR, the reason to be out there fighting (well, that and ownership of Darkness Falls).

So yes, they add to WvWvW…from my perspective they ARE WvWvW.

Every time I think about the orbs I just shake my head at the game designer who thought this was a good idea. Here’s my baseball analogy:

Team1 has the lead after the first inning so they get 4 outs now instead of 3. Team 1 has the lead after 2 innings so they now get 5 outs instead of 3. Team 1 has the lead after 3 innings so they now get 6 outs instead of 3.

At this point said game designer decided that given any more benefit to Team 1 ,who was not just already winning but pulling away even for some strange reason, that any more buffs to them would imbalance the game to the point that Team 2 & 3 just wouldn’t be able to compete. You think?

I’ve been in some back and forth battles with a server that had all 3 orbs and all I could think was how bad would we be mopping the floor with them in this battle if their guys were dropping that much quicker.

Soba.3041:

Every time I think about the orbs I just shake my head at the game designer who thought this was a good idea. Here’s my baseball analogy:

Team1 has the lead after the first inning so they get 4 outs now instead of 3. Team 1 has the lead after 2 innings so they now get 5 outs instead of 3. Team 1 has the lead after 3 innings so they now get 6 outs instead of 3.

At this point said game designer decided that given any more benefit to Team 1 ,who was not just already winning but pulling away even for some strange reason, that any more buffs to them would imbalance the game to the point that Team 2 & 3 just wouldn’t be able to compete. You think?

I’ve been in some back and forth battles with a server that had all 3 orbs and all I could think was how bad would we be mopping the floor with them in this battle if their guys were dropping that much quicker.

WTF do you think the orbs do? make you gods? Its a few more HP and 150 to each stat if you have all 3. There has to be a reason to WvW and its Orbs. There has to be a reason to WANT the Orb and thats a slight boost in WvW. Man, you people will complain about anything if its not easy huh.

Soba.3041:

Every time I think about the orbs I just shake my head at the game designer who thought this was a good idea. Here’s my baseball analogy:

Team1 has the lead after the first inning so they get 4 outs now instead of 3. Team 1 has the lead after 2 innings so they now get 5 outs instead of 3. Team 1 has the lead after 3 innings so they now get 6 outs instead of 3.

At this point said game designer decided that given any more benefit to Team 1 ,who was not just already winning but pulling away even for some strange reason, that any more buffs to them would imbalance the game to the point that Team 2 & 3 just wouldn’t be able to compete. You think?

I’ve been in some back and forth battles with a server that had all 3 orbs and all I could think was how bad would we be mopping the floor with them in this battle if their guys were dropping that much quicker.

You mean way back in 2001? Or the GW2 designer that looked at 11 years of awesome that is DAoC and use the relics as a model?

Tarnin

I was using hyperbole. I realize the bonuses are not as dramatic as my analogy but they are nothing to sneeze at either. 15% more hit points+ gains from 150 more in Vitality probably means a guys stays up long enough to get 1-2 shots off that someone on the other side wouldn’t get off plus he is hitting harder. Now multiply that affect over 50 players confronting an equal number of unbuffed opponents. They’re pumping out a lot more damage over the course of an engagement because they last longer and hit harder.

Pheadryn: Never played DAoC. If there was no Orb would you not bother to do WvW?

For a moment, just forget whether your server is winning or losing in WvW, and pretend that you are just a player that has a few hours to play, and you decide to do some WvW.

Now, which of the following sounds like the most fun?

1. Actively defending and attacking keeps in massive battles?

2. Owning every keep on the map and camping the other servers’ spawns?

3. Having no keeps on the map and being camped in your spawn?

Now, I’m not a professional, but I’m guessing that most people would enjoy option 1, more than 2 or 3.

The point is that BOTH utterly dominating AND being dominated is not very fun or exciting. Maybe folks with self-esteem issues will enjoy dominating the map for a bit, but even those folks should get bored of it after a while.

So that said, the design of WvW should make it so you get to actively participate in battles most of the time, and the situation where one server is absolutely dominating is relatively rare. This just makes for better gameplay.

The problem is that orbs, as they are now, go exactly against that design. Orbs are essentially a “snowball” effect. The winning server gets them, gets more powerful, is more likely to become the dominator.

Orbs shouldn’t be changed because your server is losing or winning…they should be changed because they lead to a poor gameplay experience. That simple.

Also, I’m not saying remove orbs…just do something simple like switching the orb bonus with the outmanned bonus. Done.

Soba.3041:

Tarnin

I was using hyperbole. I realize the bonuses are not as dramatic as my analogy but they are nothing to sneeze at either. 15% more hit points+ gains from 150 more in Vitality probably means a guys stays up long enough to get 1-2 shots off that someone on the other side wouldn’t get off plus he is hitting harder. Now multiply that affect over 50 players confronting an equal number of unbuffed opponents. They’re pumping out a lot more damage over the course of an engagement because they last longer and hit harder.

Pheadryn: Never played DAoC. If there was no Orb would you not bother to do WvW?

If there were no server/realm rewards for doing so? I would, but not for very long. I do not care if there are no idividual rewards for WvW, they could remove them all and it wouldn’t matter to me. I fight (play) in WvW for my team, my faction, my server and for fun. My bigest complain with most forms of MMO PvP is that it is meaningless. People fight (play) for some set period of time then everything simply resets. Nothing changes, there is no effect on your faction/server for success or failure. I see it as pointless. I want something to fight over, something WORTH fighting over. To be quite honest, I think the buff from orbs needs to be buffed and it needs to affect PvE as well. Make it big enough that people log in and get ready to do a dungeon and the first thing they do is check to see if they have orbs, if not the go do WvWvW to get orbs so they have that buff for their dungeon run. I want the buff big enough that everyone on the server WANTS it, badly. I want the orbs (and their buff) to be THE focus/reason for WvWvW.

orbs do seem a little bit much.

i would be ok with them giving one realm more POWER.

But also giving them more hitpoints? making the stronger already stronger.

Please adjust the system with the outmanned buff.

Give Orb of Powers buffs have +power / +xp + karma
Give the Outmanned Buff +hitpoints / +xp + karma

Could someone tell me why these forums are filled to the brim with people who constantly whine about how others complain or make suggestions?

In this thread alone, there’s perhaps 5 people who have said “Well, you know, in DAOC, relics didn’t reset and we would spend 15 hours per day digging a hole with a spoon under the enemy camping our spawn so we could get out the other side; those were the good old days, so stop complaining and be happy!”

The fact is that these so-called oldschool MMO’s are all dead or dying because of those mechanics, and GW2 will go right down the gutter aswell unless adjustments and changes are made to compensate for e.g maldistribution of server populations, which in turn leads to massive queues on some servers and no queues on others, and this will inevitably lead to people quitting because they are tired of getting steamrolled or tired of being in queue for 2+ hours, leading to server merges and consolidation in a downward spiral until all that’s left are the nostalgic hardliners who complain about people making suggestions on forums.

In other words, you won’t try to choke of debate, discussion and legitimate grievances that people put forward if you like this game, the reason people don’t just quit and go to another game is because they like this one.

Phaedryn.3698:

If there were no server/realm rewards for doing so? I would, but not for very long. I do not care if there are no idividual rewards for WvW, they could remove them all and it wouldn’t matter to me. I fight (play) in WvW for my team, my faction, my server and for fun. My bigest complain with most forms of MMO PvP is that it is meaningless. People fight (play) for some set period of time then everything simply resets. Nothing changes, there is no effect on your faction/server for success or failure. I see it as pointless. I want something to fight over, something WORTH fighting over. To be quite honest, I think the buff from orbs needs to be buffed and it needs to affect PvE as well. Make it big enough that people log in and get ready to do a dungeon and the first thing they do is check to see if they have orbs, if not the go do WvWvW to get orbs so they have that buff for their dungeon run. I want the buff big enough that everyone on the server WANTS it, badly. I want the orbs (and their buff) to be THE focus/reason for WvWvW.

As much as I want this to be the case sadly it will never happen with the player base WoW has given us.

People cry now when they are forced to do something they don’t want to do and then quit playing the game. It is why MMOs in the past 15 years have mostly become the mindless drool fests you see today.

“I don’t want your PvP in my PvE! I just want to drool on my keyboard as I swing my awesome looking sword at this NPC dragon!!!”

Inb4t WoW kids saying how they don’t want to WvW before they go PvE because they don’t feel they should have to.

Call of Duty analogy, Kill streak rewards… I never understood why it should become easier for me to kill someone because I can kill them in the first place.

Relics in DAoC were specific to your realm, there were 6 total, one magic and one melee for each realm. Taking an enemy one would give a 10% bonus to that damage type, for a total of 20 if you had all 3.

These were permanent. If you took one the whole server would be spammed a message. If you succeeded in taking one to get the bonus, your keeps would become WEAKER (guards etc).

10 year old ideas, possibly superior. I’m sure we could make them better!

I’m happy to be doing RvR again… er… WvW (because it can’t be as complicated as DAoC, people might just complain).

Phaedryn

I play to compete. I don’t do PvE or crafting. Nor do I care that my server is in third although my goal is to change that through my competing. I don’t care that maps all green when I jump on although I will do everything I can to change that too. I would WvW if there were no points! I’m a journey over destination guy thus winning isn’t really that important to me either. I could die 30 times and win once but as long as the fights I am in are not whitewashes but competitive tactical fights then I am one happy camper.

I can’t stand the Orbs because they automatically give one side an advantage for no good reason( in my person opinion of course) thus tilting the competition when I come across other players either solo or in groups into one sides favor. I really don’t care if the Orbs were taken after 10 hour long sieges or 15 minute nightcaps. I really just want them gone. I wouldn’t care one lick if they enhanced PvE or crafting but when it impacts the competition when players face off against other players then I think it is detrimental to the game.

Mug.9403:

Call of Duty analogy, Kill streak rewards… I never understood why it should become easier for me to kill someone because I can kill them in the first place.

Relics in DAoC were specific to your realm, there were 6 total, one magic and one melee for each realm. Taking an enemy one would give a 10% bonus to that damage type, for a total of 20 if you had all 3.

These were permanent. If you took one the whole server would be spammed a message. If you succeeded in taking one to get the bonus, your keeps would become WEAKER (guards etc).

10 year old ideas, possibly superior. I’m sure we could make them better!

I’m happy to be doing RvR again… er… WvW (because it can’t be as complicated as DAoC, people might just complain).

But in Call of Duty when you kill that person, they no longer have kill streaks. Those kill streaks only last a small amount of time or they can be taken out. You can’t take them out here.

I wrote about a fix for this on the suggestion forum, check it out here.

It should significantly reduce the problems with Orbs without having to nerf the buff, remove them entirely while making 3 Orb lockdowns far less common.

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

Could someone tell me why these forums are filled to the brim with people who constantly whine about how others complain or make suggestions?

In this thread alone, there’s perhaps 5 people who have said “Well, you know, in DAOC, relics didn’t reset and we would spend 15 hours per day digging a hole with a spoon under the enemy camping our spawn so we could get out the other side; those were the good old days, so stop complaining and be happy!”

The fact is that these so-called oldschool MMO’s are all dead or dying because of those mechanics, and GW2 will go right down the gutter aswell unless adjustments and changes are made to compensate for e.g maldistribution of server populations, which in turn leads to massive queues on some servers and no queues on others, and this will inevitably lead to people quitting because they are tired of getting steamrolled or tired of being in queue for 2+ hours, leading to server merges and consolidation in a downward spiral until all that’s left are the nostalgic hardliners who complain about people making suggestions on forums.

In other words, you won’t try to choke of debate, discussion and legitimate grievances that people put forward if you like this game, the reason people don’t just quit and go to another game is because they like this one.

Actually, those mechanics are why DAoC is still alive and going on 12 years. It’s decline is due a number of other factors, but the RvR isn’t one of them.

It’s the newer generation of MMO folks, mostly brought in by wow, that are the death of the genre. Those who need everything as dumbed down as possible, or need their hands held through everything. You see it all over this forum, people who look a WvWvW and cannot fathom finding a solution to win other than come to the forums and cry, insisting that ANet make it all better for them. Of course, it wont end with this issue, if they get there way there will be another, and another, and another. It’s the mindset that is at fault, the players why need to be pandered to, not the game.

lol he said pandered to. Panda. Wow. gget it?

What puzzles me most about orbs is that an attacker who grabs one is much more able to keep hold of them than the initial defender. The defender’s orb spawns in the cradle, which isn’t exactly the most defensible spot on the map, but once an attacker gets their hands on it they can take it to a keep.

Unless I’m much mistaken, the only way the side who owns an orb can take it to a keep is by intercepting it once it’s been stolen and then taking it to an altar. That seems completely backward to me. The only reason I can see why we can’t just grab our own orbs from the cradle and take them straight to our garrison is to prevent griefing, i.e. joe kitten grabs orb and takes it straight to the enemy. But surely we could use some sort of a waypoint system and choose to teleport our orb from the cradle to one of our keeps?

The current system is also another ‘snowball effect’ in so far as it favours a strong attacking side; if they can grab the orb fast, they can defend it far more easily than could the side where it spawned. So an initial, situational advantage becomes a more permanent advantage.

Soba.3041:

Phaedryn

I play to compete. I don’t do PvE or crafting. Nor do I care that my server is in third although my goal is to change that through my competing. I don’t care that maps all green when I jump on although I will do everything I can to change that too. I would WvW if there were no points! I’m a journey over destination guy thus winning isn’t really that important to me either. I could die 30 times and win once but as long as the fights I am in are not whitewashes but competitive tactical fights then I am one happy camper.

I can’t stand the Orbs because they automatically give one side an advantage for no good reason( in my person opinion of course) thus tilting the competition when I come across other players either solo or in groups into one sides favor. I really don’t care if the Orbs were taken after 10 hour long sieges or 15 minute nightcaps. I really just want them gone. I wouldn’t care one lick if they enhanced PvE or crafting but when it impacts the competition when players face off against other players then I think it is detrimental to the game.

First, I don’t PvE or craft either. Hitting 80 meant I no longer needed to. If you posted that to respond to my calling for Orbs to affect PvE, you don’t understand my reasoning at all. I want to bonus given by the Orbs to be so influential that everyone and their brother will drop what ever they are doing to get, or defend them. I want the bonus so big that it cannot be ignored.

“I could die 30 times and win once but as long as the fights I am in are not whitewashes but competitive tactical fights then I am one happy camper.”

I think this is part of the problem frankly. You make this about fights, and tactics. That is what sPvP is for. WvWvW is about leadership, coordination, communication, and strategy (not tactics). Individual effort means absolutely nothing. You individual build means absolutely nothing. there are no individuals in WvWvW, only your side and the enemy. You want personal competition, that isn’t WvWvW.

I’m willing to bet you have not played DAoC or (to a leser extent) Eve Online, correct? Most of your PvP has probably been in battlegrounds or arenas that is the most prevalent form of PvP in MMOs? This is not that, at all, never was meant to be that. This is a paradigm shift for you (and, apparently, many others) and what annoys me is that rather than adapt to that you want ANet to change it…make it more familiar. There are a lot of out here who do not. We see that form of game play as 1) inferior and 2) already existing in GW2 in the form of sPvP and we would rather not have our WvWvW dragged down to that level.

Cavalorn.8057:

What puzzles me most about orbs is that an attacker who grabs one is much more able to keep hold of them than the initial defender. The defender’s orb spawns in the cradle, which isn’t exactly the most defensible spot on the map, but once an attacker gets their hands on it they can take it to a keep.

Unless I’m much mistaken, the only way the side who owns an orb can take it to a keep is by intercepting it once it’s been stolen and then taking it to an altar. That seems completely backward to me. The only reason I can see why we can’t just grab our own orbs from the cradle and take them straight to our garrison is to prevent griefing, i.e. joe kitten grabs orb and takes it straight to the enemy. But surely we could use some sort of a waypoint system and choose to teleport our orb from the cradle to one of our keeps?

The current system is also another ‘snowball effect’ in so far as it favours a strong attacking side; if they can grab the orb fast, they can defend it far more easily than could the side where it spawned. So an initial, situational advantage becomes a more permanent advantage.

Now this is a valid concern.

Phaedryn.3698:

Now this is a valid concern.

Writing in The Prince, Machiavelli laid out a fundamental point of warfare: that which is easy to take is harder to keep, and that which is hard to take is easier to keep.

This is borne out in WvWvW. Camps are relatively easy to capture, but they’re much harder to defend against another capturing force. Towers are in the middle, and keeps (especially the likes of Dreaming Bay and of course Stonemist) are buggers to take but are much easier to stop anyone else from taking once you have them.

But the Orb mechanic goes completely against this. For the attacker, it is easy to take AND easy to keep. For the defender, at least in that crucial beginning stage, the orb is hard to keep and even harder to take back.

I’m fairly sure this is why we see one side having all three orbs so often, and I’m not sure this isn’t part of the design. Orbs seem to be designed to be so easy for an invader to capture and hang on to that the original owner is meant to crave getting them back. If that’s the plan, I respectfully disagree with the wisdom of it.

The issue is that this is a real issue and no amount of “just learn to deal with it” will in fact make it go away. No matter how many times you say “just deal with it” I log in, see a server with 3 orbs controlling 95% of the map, and log out to continue doing other things. And I’m not the only one, or there would be substantially more of us in WvW. Unless of course you think our entire server can only muster 40 people on 4 maps.

Real changes need to happen to stop this from happening to improve the gameplay and make this game less … well bad right now. If they don’t my care-o-meter will continue to go down and if/when they ever do fix it I’ll be on to other things. Simply put it’s been 5 days now of not being able to play the game. People have dropped things outright for less.

Orbs are facilitating terrible gameplay experiences.

Phaedryn

Cut my teeth in Shadowbane. Played Eve but not much more than 6 months worth. PotBS was probably my favorite in terms of tactics on multiple levels. I’ve never played WoW either. I’m actually not a sPvPer and haven’t done a match yet although I imagine I will get around to it eventually. Enjoying WvW too much right now to waste what time I have to play on anything but WvW.

I don’t solo PvP either in WvW unless forced to. I like working in groups of 5-30ish. I didn’t say I want personal competition either. I want competition but on the scale I mentioned and all those fights are about tactics. Strategy is what keep/tower/camp to take and when to take it. Tactics is how you take it and the buffs allow for those buffed to not bare the full brunt of bad tactical choices due to stat enhancements over their opponents. If you have 3 orbs and you squeaked out a victory in a hard fought 30v30 running engagement, then the real questions is would you have won without the buffs or did they save you from the better tactical decisions of your opponents.

I’m sure it has been said thousands of times already. Simply swap the Outmanned buff with the Orb buff.

Holding orbs still have meaning and rewards. The servers that are outmanned can actually get a buff that will help with the issue at hand.

Fyrestrom.3094:

I’m sure it has been said thousands of times already. Simply swap the Outmanned buff with the Orb buff.

Holding orbs still have meaning and rewards. The servers that are outmanned can actually get a buff that will help with the issue at hand.

This is the obvious solution to the orb fiasco. Getting such a massive buff because some server is in the timezone that cannot defend their borderlands is pretty stupid.

Also the ranking system does not reflect the reality of what is going in each server.