Guild Wars 2

A lot of threads in this forum have players complaining about WvW dying a slow death and becoming boring.

How about this short list of small and simple suggestions, based on an old game called Shadowbane, that was discontinued in 2009, but was easily the most hardcore and engaging WvW system in existence of MMOs. It made WvW very personal and unforgiving.
It followed 2 simple rules.

1. Player accountability.
2. Persistence.

1. Player accountability.
Only a small modification is needed to make this work.

Introduce a mechanic to track the guild which performs a claim of a camp/tower/keep.
Be it the final killshot of the keep lord or supply camp boss, or maybe some form of flag capture. Display the guild’s crest on the map over the asset captured, and display the name of the guild leader.
Example:

Stonefist Castle
Held by: Guild Name
Sovereign: Guild Leader Name

This will help build camaraderie and loyalty of guild members towards their flag and their leader. It will also give bragging rights to the prominent guilds and introduce friendly rivalry between guilds on the same side.

2. Persistence

Don’t reset the keeps every 2 weeks. Make it hardcore. Let them be held until they are captured. Until someone manages to take it. It’s frustrating to lose all your siege at the end of the allotted period.

Let all the siege stay as is until destroyed, even after the asset capture, and make the capturing party have to destroy enemy siege manually when they take over the asset. Don’t automatically clear everything in a convenient way. Give players more jobs to do. Have them burn enemy oil cauldrons down so they can build their own on the cleared area. To prevent infinitely covering the landmass with siege, introduce a limit of siege units that can be maintained at the same time by one player.

Yes, this may mean a zerg guild could hold their territory for a long time, until a proper coalition assembles against them. But that’s where the fun is. The politics, the unions, and true real consequence. I am certain that players themselves will maintain healthy populations.

Both good ideas imo.

The first idea was suggested some months ago in a brilliant post (whom I forget the author) which called for guilds to be paid some sort of currency for every minute or so that they hold an objective.

That currency would then allow them to buy exclusive skins/loot/etc.

Rather than fight for some meaningless ppt guilds would fight for their own personal gain and prestige. This would totally revitalise WvW and give some actual meaning to the name ‘Guild Wars’.

Like I said absolutely brilliant idea, totally ignored.

Excellent addition. I couldn’t agree more.
This element was also present in Shadowbane. Controlling guilds could tax their territory, essentially even taxing other player guilds for holding the most cities in the region.

Konrad Knox.5162:

Be it the final killshot of the keep lord or supply camp boss, or maybe some form of flag capture.
…

It will also give bragging rights to the prominent guilds and introduce friendly rivalry between guilds on the same side.

yikes that’s a horrible idea.. the “rivalries” would be anything but friendly, it would be all qq and rage and it would encourage ppl to focus on the claim objective rather than working together for the bigger goals.

Konrad Knox.5162:

This element was also present in Shadowbane. Controlling guilds could tax their territory, essentially even taxing other player guilds for holding the most cities in the region.

Why not tax in GW2 as well? This way the costs of upgrading can be distributed to all that make use of the upgrades:

If an objective has been upgraded to have merchants and or a WP, the guilds that has claimed it can set a tax between 1% and 10%.
It get the tax for any buy/sell/repair business with the merchants in this keep.
E.g. if a player sells something for 1s50b and tax is 2% the guild-bank get 3b and the seller get 3b less, i.e. only 1s47b, if you buy something you have to pay the tax additional to the normal price. If you repair for 1s50b you have to pay 1s53b and the guild get 3b.

A player using the WP has to pay as many b as tax level. E.g. if tax is 2% and 50player teleport in, each has to pay 2b for the teleport and the guild-bank gets 1s.

Of course anyone can avoid these taxes by doing business only with the border/cita merchants and using only border/cita WP. But if you enjoy the comfort of the keep-upgrade you participate in the costs automatically.

It could be combined with other things that increase binding between guilds and objectives written down in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/If-you-could-change-the-scoring-mechanic/3552163 (which also contains conditions under which a claim can be stolen from a guild that let their objective become dilapidated.)

It would also make sense that upgrades are automatically be taken from the guild-bank of the claiming guild in this case and not from the player that order them. So there is a risk in claiming. You can only claim, if the guild-bank contains enough money to pay the full upgrade and you automatically loose a claim, if the guild-bank money is below the costs of all remaining upgrades.

Konrad Knox.5162:

A lot of threads in this forum have players complaining about WvW dying a slow death and becoming boring.

How about this short list of small and simple suggestions, based on an old game called Shadowbane, that was discontinued in 2009, but was easily the most hardcore

… and you have lost the developers’ attention.

Anet it’s okay to take inspiration from other MMOs. Heck you already did it with the crafting system (and you can’t tell me that rank names level every 75 wasn’t ripped from world of warcraft). Borrow the following inspiration:

Map size from ESO,
Combat calculation system from World of Warcraft (cause hell, they could do 50 man battles with no lag),
The designs from Shadowbane in this thread (esp the perpetual match one, or at least make matches month long).
Raids from WoW or other large MMO for the pveers.

Please, guys, dooo thiiis!

There was something like this in Lineage 2, which worked really well. You’d fight for pve towns and then be able to impose a tax on the town, which is then deposited once a week.

Honestly, that game had some of the best world pvp I’ve ever seen.

TBH, such a change will require a redesign on many maps.
All of these game are designed with guild vs guild or alliance vs alliance in mind, having these guilds or alliances holding points. These game embrace pking and pking is a main part of these games.

But, guild wars 2 is focus on peaceeeeeeee and loveeeeeeeee between players. So, things that might lead to players conflicts may be at the bottom of development list.

Though, it did be nice if they redesign the entire WvW thingy and make it more interesting and meaningful.

Guild controlled objectives could also be used as a proxy for guild halls, with access to guild exclusive merchants, etc.

To hell with love and peace.