Guild Wars 2

So, this thread is not about abuse of pips or even about afk farmers! It’s about trying to make the Outnumbered buff more effective in doing what it is supposed to do.

It is supposed to encourage people to move to, AND PLAY ON, underpopulated maps. But, you only know about outnumbered when you have already joined the map, or if it’s broadcast in team chat (pretty unpopular these days!) and as soon as the map goes over the pretty low threshold the bonus disappears. It encourages people who find themselves on an Outnumbered map to stay quiet about it to preserve their pips!

Suggestion:

- ‘Outnumbered’ causes you to gain a 2nd ‘Selfless’ buff that is refreshed each second and lasts for 1 Hr
- It is ‘Selfless’ that grants you the pip bonus
- ‘Selfless’ is lost if you jump maps but will remain as long as you are outnumbered and for 1hr after Outnumbered disappears

- Outnumbered is shown in the map selection screen
- Outnumbered disappears from map selection a few seconds (say 10s to allow for loading) before it is removed from the map. This way individuals or whole parties are guaranteed to get the buff if they double-click while it is shown.

This is a genuine incentive to choose and play a low population map. You know you will have a buff for at least 1 hour if you continue to play on that map even if others also join. Other players can no longer instantly remove your buff, by WP’ing at the last moment of a tick.

Individuals or commanders who choose to “open up” an Outnumbered map get a bonus for a significant period of time while the population builds.

I’ve tried to think how this might be abused. I guess you could have some comms who deliberately move their parties between outnumbered maps, but really that should be a good thing – leaving room for others on more popular maps.

It will be easier to gain this buff if playing on an underpopulated server and people may switch servers for this reason. Again, though, I can’t see why this would be a bad thing.

I guess you would have some karma farm commanders, possibly with full map blobs, trying to move between maps to benefit from the buff, but a) I don’t think the majority of WvW commanders or players would be interested in such a farm b) it is little different to current karma trains, except with the benefit that they are always moving to maps away from the action – they will not be taking up space on ‘fighting maps’ c) It could be managed by adjusting the pip incentive (although I promised this thread was not about pip counts!).

Maybe I’ve missed something and there is a good reason why this is a bad idea. Maybe there are a lot of reasons! If I have I’m sure you’ll tell me!

If I understand you right this is a very bad idea.

You have only one big zerg. The zerg jumps to a map with the outnumbered buff.
I fail to see why people should be rewarded for one hour while they are now the main force on the map and the outnumbered buff just moved to the map they came from.

Then home calls for help.
Bye bye home.
Hardly anyone would want to jump if this would mean you’ll lose your one hour buff.

Yep, I get that, I do. But that kind of ppt blob happens already when there is a karma train commander. Only some people are into that and here, at least, they are very heavily encouraged to go to near empty (cough! Desert! cough!) maps.

Personally, I can’t see any of the popular/proper WvW fighting commanders hoping maps just to earn a few extra pips and they would probably be very happy to see those players who wanted such action going to a map where they are not. How much help would a bunch of ppt farming rallybots be defending garri etc. anyway! And those true WvW roamers would come home from an outnumbered map as they do already, they can always go back and gain their buff later after collecting their lootbags.

Some good commanders might choose to start a raid on an outnumbered map but that seems like a good thing to me.

And although, this thread was supposed to avoid the subject pip allocation, if this did get so popular it overwhelmed other play it could be balanced by reducing the bonus pips. The 1 hr suggestion is also just a first stab suggestion. If that’s too strong we could go with 30 or 45 mins – enough to reward choosing to go to a quiet map, without over-rewarding play on a map that is no longer outnumbered.

But it would need to be something to watch, I agree.

5 minutes just to guarantee a tick, instead of an hour and I think you have the right idea.
I do feel the pip generation from the outnumbered buff is a little too potent, but I feel the other way for people who play on a map that’s outnumbered for 4 minutes and 45 seconds until all of the AFK pip heroes port to a map with the buff (thus removing it).

~ Kovu