Guild Wars 2

Alright, so after the most recent server match-ups, it appears that many servers are getting a much better WvW experience, even after a night has passed in which the off hours players could easily have abused population imbalances to take over the entire WvW map.

However, on many servers this isn’t happening. Maybe it’s the weekend, maybe it’s the server rankings matching them more accurately. But either way there are still some servers where it’s a problem, and they’re losing 99% of their territory while very few people are logged on.

Even if population wasn’t a problem, and skill or coordination was, and one server was dominating the other two, there’s still the issue of people not even wanting to try and fight their way back into the match for the week. Partly this is because controlling all three orbs is giving too significant of a buff, party because it’s a lot of work to make a comeback from virtually nothing, and a great deal of risk due to the costs involved with losing repeatedly.

While my own personal opinion is that population isn’t as much of a factor as people make it out to be(as I’ve made pretty clear in some of my posts), I do recognize the fact that for many players WvW is about having fun rather than being hardcore and fighting no matter what the situation is. And because of this, some level of balancing needs to happen in order to keep WvW competative and fun even in situations where a bad server match results in complete domination. Both because it’s not fun to be spawn camped the moment you set foot outside your starting area, and because it’s pretty lame to have to resort to spawn camping because your server already controls everything.

So let’s look at some of the ways balancing can be done without completely wrecking the fundamental aspects that make WvW fun.

First off, it’s pretty clear that the advantage that controlling the orbs give is just making it so that the server that’s already doing well is just going to keep doing it. Controlling the Orbs should give benefits in order to keep them as an important objective to be fought over in WvW, but those benefits should not be direct performance enhancers.

Instead, the orbs should be giving something more indirect, such as improving any of the benefits already listed under the WvW stats and bonuses page(excepting Robust, Energetic, and Medic). The orbs could also not give any benefit to players at all, but instead be a simple multiplier for how many points each camp, tower, keep, and castle gives your Server each time points are calculated.

In this way the orbs stay as an important tool to helping a server win the points race for the week, but without creating a snowball or demoralizing effect.

Similar principles can also be applied to changing the Undermanned buff into something that would actually help servers with low populations have a chance to get back in the fight without making it outright unfair and arbitrary to the server and players who put in the work to get ahead. The main difference is that changes to WvW other than just the undermanned buff would also contribute to this.

My first suggestion is to make the undermanned buff give a bonus to out of combat movement, reduced repair costs, and reduced siege weapon and upgrade costs. This would allow the Undermanned players to be harder to pin down, get where they need to be more quickly without giving them an advantage to actual combat, and be able to fight and upgrade anything they do manage to recapture with less fear of throwing their money away. This buff would obviously need to scale with raw population ratios, so as more people trickle into an overmatched situation it slowly equalizes.

But these changes would also need to go hand in hand with an equal change to how the server controlling most of the map is treated.

The change to the Undermanned buff I described above could have a counterpart that works off of total map control rather than raw population, and have an effect on EVERY server in the matchup. As your side controls more of the map, upgrades and siege weapons start to cost more and more. But as your server controls less, costs also go down. The actual amount would need to be closely controlled, since you don’t want it to reach a point where it beggars players just to stay on the offensive, or for players to intentionally lose control of points in order to facilitate attacks elsewhere(although this could bring a new dimension to WvW strategy).

All of this combined would help to promote continuous combat in WvW without contributing to snowball situations we see right now. But at the same time keeping the incentive for playing well and staying on the offensive, without giving the losing side huge arbitrary and undeserved and unrealistic increases to their actual combat performance.

Furthermore, open field encounters, whether 1v1 or Zerg vs Zerg would also be virtually unchanged, Players would not have the excuse that they’re up against artificially improved enemies, and would keep the emphasis of WvW on player skill and organization being used to capture and holding camps, towers, keeps, and orbs.

So guys, tell me what you think? Do you like these ideas? Do they need some tweaking? Are they terrible?

While orb buff and undermanned definitely need changing, your idea seems very complicated and has a high risk of something going wrong.

Often the simplest idea works the best.

I remember playing WoW back in WotLK (haven’t played it since then) but I remember there being a zone that was always in PVP (Wintergrasp I think?)

The outnumbered team got a buff called “tenacity” which seemed to work well even though the numbers on the server I played on were greatly lopsided I still saw the underpopulated team win and was much more balanced then this mess we have in WvW right now.

No offense, but Tenacity in Wintergrasp was terrible for a couple of reasons. One, it turned individual players into one-shotting juggernaughts. Two, it didn’t actually solve the problem, since the side with the most people was still able to attack and defend and basically be in more places at once.

And with all due respect, GW2 generally, and WvW specifically, are both very complex themselves. Simple changes may very well NOT be the best thing to do.

I know Tenacity didn’t work perfect, but it was much better than the mess we have right now.

IMO just swap Orb buff for Outmanned and see how it plays out, then make more adjustments as time goes on.

One more post about WvW balance to add to the pile…

Its the second week for the one week matches, and we’re already seeing improved balance between worlds. Ranks are adjusting properly, people are learning what’s important in WvW, players are getting better. There’s no reason to implement changes without at least a few more weeks of seeing how things go.

Orbs are fine. As it stands, the queues for Eternal Battlegrounds on most worlds are far longer than those for the Borderlands, and changing the orbs to have no impact other than points would only cause people to ignore the borderlands more. At least this way, Borderlands have a objective of critical importance (and imo, more important than SM). But it may take some more time for the majority of players to realize this.

The out-manned buff could use some changes. I’m not too sure in what direction, but I do like reduced repair/upgrade costs.

I strongly dislike the idea of something like tenacity in WvW. First off, it didn’t work (I was on a Horde heavy server and we dominated Wintergrasp regardless of the buff on our opponents) and second, a skilled guild could abuse it to farm opponents efficiently. Waiting for the matches to adjust rankings should work just fine (and already is).

rndmize.9274:

One more post about WvW balance to add to the pile…

Its the second week for the one week matches, and we’re already seeing improved balance between worlds. Ranks are adjusting properly, people are learning what’s important in WvW, players are getting better. There’s no reason to implement changes without at least a few more weeks of seeing how things go.

Orbs are fine. As it stands, the queues for Eternal Battlegrounds on most worlds are far longer than those for the Borderlands, and changing the orbs to have no impact other than points would only cause people to ignore the borderlands more. At least this way, Borderlands have a objective of critical importance (and imo, more important than SM). But it may take some more time for the majority of players to realize this.

The out-manned buff could use some changes. I’m not too sure in what direction, but I do like reduced repair/upgrade costs.

I strongly dislike the idea of something like tenacity in WvW. First off, it didn’t work (I was on a Horde heavy server and we dominated Wintergrasp regardless of the buff on our opponents) and second, a skilled guild could abuse it to farm opponents efficiently. Waiting for the matches to adjust rankings should work just fine (and already is).

I loved tenacity in Wintergrasp. I remember a group of 5 of us jumping down into that horde of 50+ players and slaughtering over 20 of them with a brutal AOE stack. Of course we didn’t come close to winning and we died a ton too, but it was super fun to be a raid boss. You’re right that it wouldn’t work in GW2. The biggest issue is that death is pricey and Tenacity is just controlled suicide by both sides (controlled suicide can be loads of fun).

I am still a firm advocate that the Orb buff be changed. It just doesn’t make sense to buff the team that has the strongest position on the map. There are other options. Even giving them extra points would be better than the current option. The undermanned buff just makes me sad. It does nothing to help the situation.

rndmize.9274:

Orbs are fine.

/Facepalm

No they are not fine! Have you played on a dominant server? Have you played on a server getting steam rolled? Have you played on both sides of the fence?

When I first started WvW I was on a server that was getting dominated, even in a 1v1 fight (wasn’t aware of the orb buff) I thought to myself, kitten I must be seriously under geared as I normally play well in sPVP.

One day I got sick of getting slaughtered and switched to the winning team, I noticed this Orb buff 15% more HP and 150 to all stats?? WTF?

I wasn’t only rofl stomping other players 1v1, even 2 or three of them didn’t stand a chance against me!

Now tell me again how you think “Orbs are fine”

If this isn’t fixed soon, I’ll definitely be migrating to another game, I can see other people doing the same, as after you get over all the pretty PVE content, the only thing left is PVP/WvW and in it’s current state it’s broken and not fun for the losing servers (66.6%)

rndmize.9274:

At least this way, Borderlands have a objective of critical importance (and imo, more important than SM). But it may take some more time for the majority of players to realize this.

How the hell is this more important than the game being balanced and fun? You obviously are playing on a winning server. So please go see for your self how it is from the otherside of the fence.

I’m not really sure how you can honestly say:

Orbs are fine.

Followed by….

I strongly dislike the idea of something like tenacity in WvW.

….later in your same post.

On the one hand you’re implying that direct increases to player stats such as hitpoints, healing, and damage output are fine(The buff Orbs give), but then turn around to say that Tenacity, which does the same thing, is something you dislike?

Either way Orbs are giving far too much of a direct boost to servers that are already dominating(and thus doesn’t need the buff), Single orbs are not the issue. But 3 orbs in the hands of a single side only serves to enhance the snowball effect.

The out-manned buff could use some changes. I’m not too sure in what direction, but I do like reduced repair/upgrade costs.

Tenacity…….a skilled guild could abuse it to farm opponents efficiently.

Well then, it sounds like you should be on my side then. Since the changes I proposed remove all direct buffs to player effectiveness, no one could possibly use them strictly for farming purposes.

And my changes give players a chance to fight back under their own skills and organization instead of relying on an godmode which doesn’t make sense that they’d have.

I am still a firm advocate that the Orb buff be changed. It just doesn’t make sense to buff the team that has the strongest position on the map. There are other options. Even giving them extra points would be better than the current option. The undermanned buff just makes me sad. It does nothing to help the situation.

A 15% buff is entirely insignificant compared to a 2v1. And if the two worlds without orbs aren’t working as hard as they can to get at least one back from the current leader, they’re doing it wrong. The entire point of a 3 way battle is for things to balance themselves out; the problem is that currently, the vast majority of players fail to realize the important of orbs and zerg the nearest target instead.

Here’s the good news: you can do something about this. Get on those borderlands and start telling people what to do. Tell them to work on capturing the orb at all costs. Get your guild together and do it yourself. Every world in the battle has an equal chance to get the orbs.

HellsMachine.4083:

…

I responded to your points in your thread. Stop reposting all over the place.

On the one hand you’re implying that direct increases to player stats such as hitpoints, healing, and damage output are fine(The buff Orbs give), but then turn around to say that Tenacity, which does the same thing, is something you dislike?

The difference is one of degree. With a tenacity type buff, a small outnumbered group can become a farming machine, as they’ll be able to get more kills and therefore more loot/badges per person; the effect is worse if its a coordinated group/guild. (This naturally assumes they’ll be buffed to 2-3x the strength of the opponents based on numbers).

The orb buff isn’t strong enough to be useful in such a manner. Further, every world has an equal chance to get orbs, players just don’t realize their importance.

nothing to see here.

rndmize.9274:

A 15% buff is entirely insignificant compared to a 2v1. And if the two worlds without orbs aren’t working as hard as they can to get at least one back from the current leader, they’re doing it wrong. The entire point of a 3 way battle is for things to balance themselves out; the problem is that currently, the vast majority of players fail to realize the important of orbs and zerg the nearest target instead.

I tend to agree that the two servers on the losing end of things should be working together, or at the very least, not attacking each other. But unfortunately that really doesn’t work in the current reality of the game. The two underdogs are still enemies as far as the game mechanics are concerned, so there’s no way for the two teams to coordinate effectively. Worse, if they’re in close proximity their AOEs will do just as much harm to each other as the side they’re attacking.

Furthermore, the server that’s already dominating is doing so for a reason. Whether it’s because of superior skill and coordination, sheer population, or superior strategy. Either way the side already winning has no business being given a buff that increases the margin.

So again it seems like my suggestions, while not perfect, still eliminate almost all of the flaws with the current system.

Here’s the good news: you can do something about this. Get on those borderlands and start telling people what to do. Tell them to work on capturing the orb at all costs. Get your guild together and do it yourself. Every world in the battle has an equal chance to get the orbs.

I completely agree that servers should be trying harder to coordinate themselves. But have you ever tried telling people what to do in an online game? I imagine herding cats is probably an easier job. And cats don’t yell back with “S T F U” or “Ur not my dad!”

The goal should be to creating a system which is equally fair to players ranging from the hardcore, well organizes guilds to the more casual, and anything in between.

Further, every world has an equal chance to get orbs, players just don’t realize their importance.

Yes, every realm has an equal chance to get the orbs in the very beginning of a match. But knowing the importance of the orbs doesn’t address the issue of servers with off hours players vs servers without. Nor does it give a player any reason to try the uphill fight every day when they repeatedly lose the orbs every night because their server has no off-hours players.

Ultimately matchmaking will begin to even things out, but I’d much prefer a system that more dynamically promotes balance and consistent play than the one we have currently. Too many people are giving up after they get smashed once, and I’d prefer that the combat continue through the entire match rather than being decided immediately after the first few days, especially when the match length gets increased to 2 weeks instead of 1.

That’s why I don’t advocate giving the losing servers any kind of direct buff like Tenacity. I specifically went out of my way to try and think of ways to avoid that, and come up with a system that would allow the opportunity for a team that’s losing to get their act together and get back in the fight without taking away from the accomplishments of the other players.

Ensuring that players on both the winning and losing sides still want to play the entire length of the match is almost more important than absolute perfect balance.

I tend to agree that the two servers on the losing end of things should be working together, or at the very least, not attacking each other. But unfortunately that really doesn’t work in the current reality of the game. The two underdogs are still enemies as far as the game mechanics are concerned, so there’s no way for the two teams to coordinate effectively. Worse, if they’re in close proximity their AOEs will do just as much harm to each other as the side they’re attacking.

Hold up there. There’s no need for the losing servers to work together or coordinate at all. Every keep has at minimum two (most have three) entrances to attack, generally from entirely opposite directions, for both outer and inner walls. There’s no reason for two attacking worlds to even see each other until they’re at the inner gates or at the lord.

I completely agree that servers should be trying harder to coordinate themselves. But have you ever tried telling people what to do in an online game? I imagine herding cats is probably an easier job. And cats don’t yell back with “S T F U” or “Ur not my dad!”

I imagined similar, until I started doing it. My server is Jade Quarry, which is notable for its ridiculous number of players, tendency to complain about things that seem unfair, and a general lack of coordination. We don’t have any large alliances (that I know of) or major notable WvW guilds, the way ET and HoD do. Our biggest advantages were a generally decent playerbase, large night crew, and strong zergs.

Two weeks ago, we would have nothing to do with coordination. We had been more or less steamrolling everyone we came across, so even though we have a TS server big enough for several hundred people that was advertised, most didn’t use it. Most instructions sent in team chat and the like were ignored.

Then we started losing. Badly. We were beaten, repeatedly, by HoD, and it soon became clear that as much as people disliked coordinating, they disliked losing more. We’ve reached the point now that I’ve seen people asking for someone to start directing things through /team when we’re being pushed back or our zerging is ineffective.

The long and short of this is, stop imaging people might complain about you giving instructions are start doing it. If you’re server wants to win badly enough, they’ll start listening.

(Couple caveats for this: most players hate even a hint of arrogance from someone trying to direct them. Keep things simple, to the point, and be willing to discuss tactics with other players in /team. Commanding in a battleground will most likely end up being a cooperative effort, not one random strategic genius that everyone magically starts listening to. Explaining why something should be done, ie. “Help def dreaming bay, we’ve dropped 3g in upgrades on it and we can’t afford to lose it!” will work better than “get yourkitten to dreaming bay NOW!”, generally.)

Yes, every realm has an equal chance to get the orbs in the very beginning of a match. But knowing the importance of the orbs doesn’t address the issue of servers with off hours players vs servers without. Nor does it give a player any reason to try the uphill fight every day when they repeatedly lose the orbs every night because their server has no off-hours players.

This is a matchmaking issue, and removing orbs won’t fix it. Even if orbs were removed, a world without a night crew will still lose to a world with one; they’ll still have to deal with fully upgraded keeps and towers to retake in the morning; they’ll still have to deal with 6 hours of massive point loss every night; they’re still going to lose, regardless. I have faith that matchmaking will balance things out eventually, but you may have a bad time until it gets there.

rndmize.9274:

Hold up there. There’s no need for the losing servers to work together or coordinate at all. Every keep has at minimum two (most have three) entrances to attack, generally from entirely opposite directions, for both outer and inner walls. There’s no reason for two attacking worlds to even see each other until they’re at the inner gates or at the lord.

No offense, but that’d almost be counter productive for the two losing teams. Even if they both worked together to get inside, they’d end up fighting each other at the lord. Only one team could claim the castle, and the defending force could just hold the Lord’s chamber and focus their efforts. The underdogs want to avoid fighting each other at all costs.

Instead they should be attacking two completely separate keeps/towers and forcing the leading server to split it’s attention between them. But that’s a question of tactics, not game mechanics.

I completely agree that servers should be trying harder to coordinate themselves. But have you ever tried telling people what to do in an online game? I imagine herding cats is probably an easier job. And cats don’t yell back with “S T F U” or “Ur not my dad!”

I imagined similar, until I started doing it.

No offense, it was a nice story. And I’m glad you were able to get people to work together. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same across all servers and all people. Balancing the game around the social habits of gamers is a pretty sketchy prospect at best.

This is a matchmaking issue, and removing orbs won’t fix it. Even if orbs were removed, a world without a night crew will still lose to a world with one; they’ll still have to deal with fully upgraded keeps and towers to retake in the morning; they’ll still have to deal with 6 hours of massive point loss every night; they’re still going to lose, regardless. I have faith that matchmaking will balance things out eventually, but you may have a bad time until it gets there.

You’re quite right, and I believe that matchmaking will help somewhat, and removing the orbs won’t fix it. Changing what the orbs do, along with a few other tweaks, will.

Did you even read my suggestions? They directly address the issue of a night crew cleaning house and fully upgrading everything without stopping people from doing it if they choose to put forth the effort and resources.

What would happen under my suggestion is that as the daytime people started logging back in, they’d find the entire map covered in enemy control. Due to the buff reducing costs of repairs and siege equipment based on map control, the dayshift could pick up a pile of siege gear for cheap, and assault like crazy while suffering little in the way of repair costs themselves.

Meanwhile the dayshift defenders who take advantage of their night crew’s upgrades,which would have cost an arm and a leg to do in the first place, are going to also be paying a lot to maintain their upgrades if any of them get broken down. If the underdogs take back their territory, it’s going to cost the night crew again, and again, every night. On top of that, the Triple Orb buff would no longer be giving such a massive stat and HP bonus.

You can’t stop night people from playing, and even matchmaking is sometimes going to place servers against each other where off-hours gives one side an advantage. But under my changes even a server without a strong night crew could still remain in the running and potentially win a war of attrition if they were willing.

Granted, as the underdogs take back more and more territory the buff is going to work in the reverse for them, forcing them to decide if they want to stop and hold early, or keep pushing to get as many points as possible before the night crew rolls through again.

Overall I think it would facilitate more combat and willingness to fight, even when at a disadvantage of population or off-hours players. Because most of the reasons to NOT fight will have been removed.

Also, where did you get that 6 hours number from? Seems made up. I think the actual time that a night crew dominates is going to vary from server to server.

There is no reason for the orb buff to exist. The 3X orb buff is the only reason many servers are locked into winning this weeks match already. The only chance of getting one back is if a player runs a flying or teleporting hack, which just leads to another problem with the orbs.

I won’t be participating in WvW again until the orbs are removed.

Orbs dont need to be removed. They just need to be PvE only.

No offense, but that’d almost be counter productive for the two losing teams. Even if they both worked together to get inside, they’d end up fighting each other at the lord. Only one team could claim the castle, and the defending force could just hold the Lord’s chamber and focus their efforts. The underdogs want to avoid fighting each other at all costs.

For both underdogs, regardless of which of them ends up with the orb, things even out more. And they hardly want to avoid fighting each other at all costs; the stat boost is only 15%.

No offense, it was a nice story. And I’m glad you were able to get people to work together. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same across all servers and all people. Balancing the game around the social habits of gamers is a pretty sketchy prospect at best.

If your server doesn’t want to work together, they’ll drop in rank until they’re against appropriate opponents. My point was simply that it can be done. The game mechanics highly reward it, much as teamwork is rewarded in Dota, LoL, L4D, etc.

Did you even read my suggestions? They directly address the issue of a night crew cleaning house and fully upgrading everything without stopping people from doing it if they choose to put forth the effort and resources.

Yes, I read them. To me, it looks like all your suggestions do is tighten the potential variation between winners and losers and force an equilibrium. As it stands, it’s already costly to expand beyond your “default” territory. You have to travel farther to get there than your opponents; you have to spend money to upgrade defenses; and you expose yourself to attacks in more places. With the current system, by default, if one side controls the entire map, you’re left with an automatic 2v1 situation. Even if one side only controls most of the map, you have a near 2v1 situation as it’s generally silly to travel a distance and hit your second opponent when the first one is right in front of you.

Scrapping the orb bonus and making it even more costly to expand/cheaper to defend would lead to a musical chairs situation (during prime times) – world A takes objective X, thus increasing their costs and decreasing the costs of world B, which takes objective Y elsewhere. Let me further note that defenders already have powerful advantages – 12 hour claiming guild bonuses are roughly equal to an orb bonus, but only in the local area of an objective. By making it harder for one side to win strongly when there’s a major player number imbalance, you make things static during times of balance. In fact, now that people are learning to play WvW better, I’ve already seen instances where things were basically static for hours.

Also, where did you get that 6 hours number from? Seems made up. I think the actual time that a night crew dominates is going to vary from server to server.

Naturally, it’s a guess. The amount of time a night crew dominates is mostly irrelevant; it exists, and it creates an automatic imbalance between servers that have one and servers that don’t. The only practical ways to fix this are to match up servers with night crews against similar or to shut down servers for a span of time at night. Changes to mechanics and balance, like your suggestion, will inevitably have negative side effects (or at least, I’ve yet to see one that doesn’t).

The problem with orbs is most notable when trying to retake an orb. The combined bonus of three orbs as well as the guild bonuses are quite significant.

You mentioned reduced cost of siege with out manned Elite, did you mean supply cost or cost to buy? If you meant purchase cost that would have the issue of if people want to buy blueprints, they can just wait till they’re out manned, and just buy a whole pile; but then purchasing blueprints isn’t that great anyway.

In my opinion orb bonuses should be reward based, and out manned should be performance based. Orbs should reward the controlling team with better rewards for completing WvW objectives and/or more points for holding positions as you’ve mentioned. Out manned I don’t have a big issue with, but if it was equivalent of the current minor orb buff, I feel that would be something more practical, but not overpowering.

rndmize.9274:

For both underdogs, regardless of which of them ends up with the orb, things even out more. And they hardly want to avoid fighting each other at all costs; the stat boost is only 15%.

The stat boost is not only 15%. It’s 150 to all stats, which is a significant boost especially for players that are glass cannons.

Yes, in an ideal world the orb buff would work, but the fact is it’s the root cause of lopsided games.

You can blame server transfers all you want, but that wont stop unless the orb buff is changed. Players will still transfer even if it costs money, it will just become a matter of “Pay to win”.

Once a server has all 3 orbs and has heavily fortified and upgraded them, then it doesn’t matter how many players all attack the orb at once, the orb can be defended with only 10 players.

rndmize.9274:

If your server doesn’t want to work together, they’ll drop in rank until they’re against appropriate opponents. My point was simply that it can be done. The game mechanics highly reward it, much as teamwork is rewarded in Dota, LoL, L4D, etc.

I don’t doubt that it can be done. In fact I’m in favor of people taking the matter into their own hands instead of waiting for Anet to do it for them. However, that doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with you and me. In fact I’d go as far as to suggest that most people, even the hardcore players, would prefer a system that promotes combat rather than simply leaving them to their own devices.

Yes, I read them. To me, it looks like all your suggestions do is tighten the potential variation between winners and losers and force an equilibrium. As it stands, it’s already costly to expand beyond your “default” territory. You have to travel farther to get there than your opponents; you have to spend money to upgrade defenses; and you expose yourself to attacks in more places. With the current system, by default, if one side controls the entire map, you’re left with an automatic 2v1 situation. Even if one side only controls most of the map, you have a near 2v1 situation as it’s generally silly to travel a distance and hit your second opponent when the first one is right in front of you.

Scrapping the orb bonus and making it even more costly to expand/cheaper to defend would lead to a musical chairs situation (during prime times) – world A takes objective X, thus increasing their costs and decreasing the costs of world B, which takes objective Y elsewhere. Let me further note that defenders already have powerful advantages – 12 hour claiming guild bonuses are roughly equal to an orb bonus, but only in the local area of an objective. By making it harder for one side to win strongly when there’s a major player number imbalance, you make things static during times of balance. In fact, now that people are learning to play WvW better, I’ve already seen instances where things were basically static for hours.

I don’t necessarily see constant combat for hours on end as a bad thing. And I suspect that by erring on the side of static, it would place more emphasis on well-coordinated strikes and teamwork to make the difference rather than raw numbers. And raw numbers making too much of a difference is probably the number one complaint I see, especially in extreme cases.

This is all purely conjecture on both our parts, of course.

The only practical ways to fix this are to match up servers with night crews against similar or to shut down servers for a span of time at night. Changes to mechanics and balance, like your suggestion, will inevitably have negative side effects (or at least, I’ve yet to see one that doesn’t).

I strongly disagree that harsh changes such as population control or closing WvW during off hours is the only viable solution. While there may be some minor negative effects to my suggestions, they’re far far more mild than anything else I’ve seen posted in these forums, especially compared to the potential benefits.

This is what happens when a player with the 3x orb buff attacks you, and it sure as hell beats the 20% magic/33% experience/33% karma outnumbered buff (which IMO should be the winner’s buff).

I don’t necessarily see constant combat for hours on end as a bad thing. And I suspect that by erring on the side of static, it would place more emphasis on well-coordinated strikes and teamwork to make the difference rather than raw numbers. And raw numbers making too much of a difference is probably the number one complaint I see, especially in extreme cases.

I would argue precisely the reverse. By erring on the side of static, well-coordinated strikes and teamwork become superfluous, because by extending your territory you instantly increase costs across the board not just for the group that made the strike/capture but for everyone from that world. Thus, the musical chairs scenario.

And combat, while interesting, is only means to an end in WvW. Fighting for hours with no visible progress is tiring and disappointing. On Friday night I was on a borderlands where, after pushing one of our opponents off our keep, we went to attack theirs. We used the water entrance to garrison, dropped three rams per door for speed, smashed our way through the place and… the keep lord was bugged and invulnerable. That was a lot of wasted coin and effort for no real victory, and I would be similarly disappointed in a scenario where capturing a keep would actively make it easier for the enemy to take it back. Both cases encourage a “why did we bother?” attitude.

I strongly disagree that harsh changes such as population control or closing WvW during off hours is the only viable solution. While there may be some minor negative effects to my suggestions, they’re far far more mild than anything else I’ve seen posted in these forums, especially compared to the potential benefits.

I didn’t mean population control, I meant what’s currently happening now with the rankings being adjusted through week-long matches. (Although… I could see pop control as viable. Make it so any one world cannot field more than the sum of the players from the other two worlds on that map and you have a semi-reasonable, if crude, population balance mechanism.)

And both the things I mentioned aren’t meant to be viable solutions; they’re just the only things I’ve seen that would not have negative side effects that affect play/balance. (Naturally, closing down WvW at night would lead to a whole other set of negative side effects, ie. people with odd schedules not being able to play; but that would be a problem for players, not system balance).

And while your suggestions are indeed better than the vast majority of orb whining that passes through this forum, I hold to the position that the current mechanics of WvW are fairly solid and the problems will fade in the coming weeks as rankings adjust and people learn to play.

So rndmize, there is a strong number of people that don’t like the current system, but there is a few people who like it the way it is. Tell me then, what would be the harm in changing the way the orb buff works, other than the dominating team losing their “easy PK” buff?

Eliteseraph, you have come up with a very creative way to address the Orb buff problem. However, your idea requires hours and hours of lines of code, which naturally has a high potential for bugs and possible exploits. Which is why I suggest we simply try a simpler route, like switching the effects of the out-manned buff with the orb buff, with small adjustments made over time to balance out the game.

Orbs are fine. At most, remove the 15% health buff since it already buffs vitality. Orbs have been changing hands back and forth on my server constantly, it’s not an I Win button. If your team is getting steamrolled, it’s not the orb buff that’s doing it. If you are losing that badly, even giving you the orb buff and taking it away from the dominating team would not change a thing. You would still be getting dominated. Bad matchmaking, pure and simple. Let the system run for a few more weekly cycles so it can get enough data to accurately match servers up with good opponents. I have been on both a dominating team and a dominated one, it’s not the orbs, it’s the players. Enough with the scapegoating.

Revenant.2691:

Orbs are fine. At most, remove the 15% health buff since it already buffs vitality. Orbs have been changing hands back and forth on my server constantly, it’s not an I Win button. If your team is getting steamrolled, it’s not the orb buff that’s doing it. If you are losing that badly, even giving you the orb buff and taking it away from the dominating team would not change a thing. You would still be getting dominated. Bad matchmaking, pure and simple. Let the system run for a few more weekly cycles so it can get enough data to accurately match servers up with good opponents. I have been on both a dominating team and a dominated one, it’s not the orbs, it’s the players. Enough with the scapegoating.

Might not be an “I win” buff, but if I can go from getting owned 1v1 to owning 2-3 players, it’s enough of a difference for me to call it an “easy PK” buff.

Just tell me, what is the harm in changing the way the orb buff works, so it’s not a direct performance enhancer? Could change it to increase MF and GF which would still make it valuable as it gives the team more cash to spend on siege.

Currently this game is “the side that controls the orbs, controls the world” I definitely think it needs tweaking.

Tekla.2139:

Fair and simple solution for WwW Orb and Co.
Make the orb self-destruction after x-time ( 2 day ), also if uor server detain more Orb further decrese that time.

Home Orb will grant*: 150 Vitality/Toughness/Healing Power.
Enemy Orb (x1) will grant: 75 Power/Precision/Critical Damage.
Enemy Orb (x2) will grant: 150 bonus points to all stats. +20% Magic find +33% Experience +33% Karma.

No Orb will grant: +1 to all stats for each time an enemy player detaining your orb kill you.

Outmanned will grant: +5 to all stats for each time an enemy player kill you. +50% Magic find +66% Experience +66% Karma.

Once an Orb destroy itself and damaging it’s surrending, it will not re-spwan for ( x-time ) unless there either a keep availabe and a certain DE ( dragon attack on starter zone ) is done.

I’m sorry but this is a terrible idea, players will be doing suicide runs just to get a buff. Make it simple like for example, out-manned buff makes it so your gear takes zero or reduced damage upon death, this will help motivate players of the losing team as repair bills is a big de-motivator and morale killer.

I don’t think the orb bonus of 15% health and 150 to stats is enough to make you suddenly 3x as powerful as most people are stating here. I’ve killed 3 or more people without any orb buffs, and been killed 1v1 with full orb buffs. A lot of it depends on who you’re fighting right at that moment. If it’s 3 level 2 guys wearing starter armor, I’ll probably kill them in 2 crits apiece even if they have the orb buff. But for a level 80 player with good gear, 150 to all stats is kinda minor to be honest. I already had 3k+ armor before the buff, getting an extra 150 doesn’t do much for me. Same with power, crit chance, etc. It would make a significant difference for a low-level player equipped with grays or blues, but we’re increasingly seeing more and more level 80s or at least 70+ in WvW, a trend I expect to see continue. I honestly, fervently believe that one side dominating is much more a result of matchmaking than orbs. If this proves to be untrue further down the line, then so be it, orbs should be toned down, but until the WvW scene has stabilized I believe we should wait and see how it all plays out before crying havoc and letting slip the bats of nerf.

As far as changing it to not be a direct performance enhancer goes, if you do that then there will be little reason for anyone to focus on taking orbs. Magic find and gold find? If you’re farming mobs in WvW you’re doing it wrong, in my humble opinion. If it increased badge drop, maybe, but it should definitely give a distinct advantage on the field or it will become irrelevant. If you changed it to decrease repair/upgrade costs, increase supply capacity, etc. I believe that would honestly make WvW MORE unbalanced. Either way, it has to give benefits that in some way that gives a benefit in battle to the team that holds it or it will be a wasted mechanic.

Just had a thought. If Orbs were changed to give a magic find/gold find bonus OUTSIDE of WvW for their home server, then yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It wouldn’t confer a specific advantage to the people fighting in WvW, but it would still give a major incentive for taking and holding them. It would have to be significant, though, like +10%/25%/40% for 1/2/3. People would be climbing over each other to get those orbs, and it wouldn’t unbalance WvW play.