Guild Wars 2

There have been a couple of threads about being outnumbered and any possible buffs that could be added to assist in the situation and there have been equally valid posts showing how this wouldn’t work.

However, what if, when outnumbered you were able to “hire” mercenaries to assist you? These would “hired and directed” by commanders, perhaps being targetted to attack certain objectives etc.

I know we have the Hylek etc in EB and as such it could be that these mercenaries would only be available in the Server BL’s only.

Warning WoW reference being made Warning

Back in the days of Vanilla WoW, Alterac Valley was the only taste of raid size PvP we had. For those that remember that far back those were the days of awesome 24hr+ AV’s. In those fights resources could be gathered that would allow for the summoning of cavalry or the Ice/Tree Gods. These, when used correctly could have a large impact in breaking the lines of an attacking force or hammering the defenders into submission.

It would be interesting if Outmanned servers had access to something similar that could help turn the tide in pushing abjectives, perhaps being used as a feint while your zerg taps a second objective, or allowing a large zerg to push one objective while a second smaller group tags along with the Mercs to cap a second (allowing a double flip) or, in the case of 2vs1’s and in EB, allow a server to siege SM with there zerg and the Mercs balancing out against the 2 server defence force.

A lot of people in WvW would frown on the introduction of more NPC’s being added.

Having said that I’m not familiar the Ice/Tree God of WoW.

I quite like this idea, but you’d have to be very careful with what power you give to commanders. Because it only costs 100g it is available to pretty much everyone and the moment you introduce a means for them to control mercs, you will encourage the world and his wife to tag up just to control them. I believe this is why Anet have been very careful with what tools they provide commanders.

However, that is not to say it is a bad idea in general. It may be a better option to have them spawn and act automatically when you are outnumbered. For example, extra champions could spawn at towers and keeps to provide extra defense, such as a few champion archers or lord bodyguards. I like the idea of having controllable mercs, but I’m not sure how you would make sure it is balanced across the game and also to make sure it doesn’t encourage negative behavour.

Maybe special events could trigger when you are outnumbered, that only worlds that are outnumbered can participate in. These events could be at strategic points and when successfully completed, they can send in these special mercs as you stated. So for example, say you want to send mercs to Hills, when you are outnumbered an event triggers near hills (not too close), that you need to complete in order to send mercs to attack it. So after you trigger the mercs you can head elsewhere or join them in the attack.

Like I say, I like the idea, you just need to be very careful with how much power you give to individual players.

Yes, balancing it out would take work. However handling like you said might work.

Also these NPCs would stay up as long as they are “alive” and in fairness should probably only be spawnable/triggerable on a 2-3hrs timer. (Perhaps you would need to be outmanned on that specific map for a solid 2hr period before the event is triggered.)

FearedbytheGods.8617:

A lot of people in WvW would frown on the introduction of more NPC’s being added.

Having said that I’m not familiar the Ice/Tree God of WoW.

They were OP… That’s all you need to know.

Alterac Valley these days is just a rush-to-lord-fest that last like 10 minutes at best…

Lol. Powerful when used properly? Yes. OP? No, as they were very kiteable if you knew what you were doing.

And I’m talking about Vanilla WoW where you had real fights not the avoid everyone and go straight for Lord fights that we have now.