What is WvW supposed to be about?
WvW is supposed to be about “worlds” competing with each other to own objectives, the ownership of which give rewards.
This is distinct from PvP, FPS games, etc which are supposed to be about individual players or small teams competing to kill each other first or most often.
Capturing a bunch of empty towers and keeps which earn points-over-time for absentee landlords or fighting opposing servers in epic battle? If it’s the former, then the system is working exactly as intended. Carry on.
As presented, this describes PvE. Replace the word “Tower” with “Tequatl” or “Keep” with the 3 headed wurm.
However, one of the hallmarks of WvW is that worlds are free to choose their strategies and tactics, and if well designed, there is not a single “best” strategy or a single “best” playstyle or set of tactics.
In this particular case, if one world has chosen to concentrate its players in a single zerg, a possible set of counter tactics is in fact to send small teams to take every objective where the zerg isn’t. I hypothesize this should force the zerg to break up into smaller teams to get broader geographical coverage.
If the “zerg” team is not smart enough to recognize the threat of the small team counter strategy, and does not respond, then yes, the small teams are doing PvD; they and their world are rewarded handsomely for doing so until the “zerg” team comes to its senses.
An “arms race” of strategies and tactics can keep a game like this vibrant for a decade even if the developers don’t change a thing.
If WvW is supposed to be about the latter, though, then PPT as a scoring mechanic is the antithesis of the goal of bringing players into conflict with one another. PPT rewards players for avoiding their opponents. A server earns more points for capturing undefended objectives because there’s no defenders to slow down a zerg’s momentum. It also permits karma trains to farm loot from NPCs faster; in a game mode where – ostensibly – we’re supposed to be fighting one another rather than the AI.
If the worlds collude, as in a karma train, to maximize bags, world xp from captures, and other tactical rewards, at the expense of the strategic rewards owning those objectives are supposed to be about, then there is an issue and we need to look closer. Three hypotheses I can think of for this behavior:
1. the tactical rewards are far more valuable than the strategic ones. In this case the rewards need to be adjusted.
2. the players doing this are PvE players who don’t like or can’t hack PvP combat. In this case we need to stop incenting PvE players to set foot in the WvW zones.
3. the strategic rewards are not seen as relevant to “the good of the world”. Perhaps also the strategic rewards need to be a big deal for the PvE players, for example, making it a whole lot easier to do the 3 headed Wurm encounter, or save up for that Legendary, or even run Arah for the first time, if you have a large WvW advantage. Let’s get players with different playstyles on the same team, not at each other’s throats!
Separately, I think there’s a player segment which wants zerg on zerg fights, for the sake of those fights. This is an unmet need in GW2 today. GW2’s engine (both client side and server side) really isn’t up to such fights above a certain scale, and the current design of both WvW and EoTM don’t really support such play. I would further subdivide this set of players into large scale guild-on-guild and a less structured world vs world (or maybe even random teams) preference. I have in the past suggested that there be a way to buy a medallion which would open a private zone instance to which the medallion buyer could then invite their guild and an opposing guild at a planned time for a large scale guild on guild match.
(edited by bewhatever.2390)