There’s been a lot of posts lately from people offering suggestions for how to deal with ‘night capping’ in WvWvW. Unless Anet drastically overhauls WvW, you will never stop ‘night capping’ from happening. WvW is a global 24/7 battlefield. The majority of suggestions also seem to aim more at funneling players into certain time zones where they can either get the points that they’re supposed to get or have the points they can get reduced during ‘off times’. Or reducing those players rewards. That won’t work and it’s unfair to players who play in those ‘off times’. Losing stuff in WvW is a part of the game, deal with it. If you happen to be getting steamrolled during your servers ‘off times’ then that’s a problem for that server to work out. I can tell you it comes down to the dedication and teamwork of the majority of the guilds on your server to work together to combat that issue.
But, I understand that on some servers it doesn’t matter how dedicated and coordinated the server is, they just don’t have the numbers to be competitive in some match up’s in WvW.
So for the solution I’m putting forward. (Forgive me if anyone else has offered something similar, I couldn’t find threads like this idea I’m putting forward)
Updating the Out Numbered Buff
This idea is aimed at helping servers with lower populations during certain times defending their home BL by expanding on the benefit’s of the Out Numbered buff (I’m not sure about whether this could be implemented in EB due to lack of information on the criteria of getting the Out Numbered buff)
We all know that if you end up with the Out Numbered buff in your home BL you’re going to lose most of it without back up and if there is no back up coming most players won’t bother to defend. We also know that the Out Numbered Buff is near useless in this situation as well, so I’m suggesting Anet expands on what it offers to players and their server in their home BL.
Player benefits
1. Retain the current Out Numbered buffs
2. Permanent 33% speed increase whilst Out Numbered
Server Benefits
1. Contested WP(way point) cool down reduction - Keep’s with WPs have the contested timer reduced from 3 minutes to 90 sec.
2. Seasoned Guards - All NPC guards scale up in level and difficulty ie, Keep Lords go from Champion to Legendary.
3. Commanders Presence on Keep Lords - Whilst in the presence of a Keep Lord players gain the Commander’s Presence buff (the one that the breakout commanders have)
4. Armored Caravans - Yaks and Yak guards gain extra Toughness and Vitality whilst in transit.
5. Call for aid - If the enemy get to the inner walls/gates of a Keep, a message is sent out to all players in WvW that " ‘X’ keep is under attack in the BL ". (Similar to the Scarlet Minions message)
6. Increased siege decay time - Any siege that has been placed by players has its decay timer increased by another 60 minutes, totaling 120 minutes.
7. Lord’s Room Medic - The addition of healing NPC’s in the keeps lord room.
8. Siege maintenance - Any destroyed defensive siege natural to towers and keeps will automatically repair themselves over time using the tower/keeps supply 10 minutes after an assault has been successfully repelled. This ends if the structure is attacked again.
9. Structural Maintenance - Any structural components of towers and keeps that have been destroyed or are in need of repair will begin to be repaired by the towers/keeps workers 10 minutes after an assault has been successfully repelled. This ends if the structure is attacked again.
10. The Last Stand - If the Keep Lord is killed the WP is immediately uncontested and has a small shield bubble over the area where the player would WP in. Enemy players who enter this bubble are immediately killed.
The Out Numbered Buff for the ‘Server Benefits’ would need to be on a cool down that is influenced by the amount of friendly players from that server show up, whilst that server has the Out Numbered Buff on their BL. You don’t want it to disappear as soon as a friendly zerg shows up in Citadel, with the enemy zerg inside a Keep that still has it’s WP contested, whilst at the same time you don’t want it to still be there long after the enemy has been repelled from a tower or keep and the friendly zerg is still on the map hunting the enemy zerg down.
Anyway, that’s my solution to the whole ‘night capping’ issue. Peak time WvW is hard and stressful for all sides, off peak time should be as well and this is the best solution I could come up with. I don’t believe punishing players in WvW for playing in a different timezone by taking stuff away from them is right when they’re matched up against servers with lower WvW populations, but making it harder for them to get that stuff, in my mind, is perfectly fine.
Agens Leti – Cmdr
Wolves Vs Worlds [WolF]