Guild Wars 2

Whoa Nelly! Get ready for the LONGEST post on this forum so far (3 posts long)

Theres a few things i recommend you do before reading this thread:

1) Come in with an open mind. If you can’t accept criticism, don’t bother reading.
2) Understand that this is by no means THE ANSWER. It is just discussion topics. Feel free to disagree, but offer reasons as to why the current system is better, or an alternative.

Theres nothing inherently wrong with the current system…except that it is not ‘RvR.’

If a.net was trying to create much larger WoW-battleground, then they succeeded, but in doing so, they lost most of the fundamental stand-out features that were in the original RvR system.

WvW necessities:

Competitive
Node based capture/defend system
Activities for large groups
Activities for small groups
Integration of GW2 Selling point: DE’s

Lets first talk about how the current implementation doesn’t live up to hype.

1) Competitive
The game should always be competitive. As it is now, there are huge blowouts. Some may argue that in time, servers will be matched up against others of their own caliber. Sure, this sounds great on paper, but in reality its a much different case. I have no facts to back this up (other than my amazing track record of calling out poorly implemented game design mechanics and always being right – See WAR, D3, SWTOR, CS:GO, just for a few examples), but blowouts will happen, and quite often.

This is due to how the game scores. I like that they are upping the time to 15 minutes per point, but still, this is a bit ridiculous due to how FAST you can capture, and recapture a keep.

The problem with blow outs is that it reduces player morale. Almost to the same degree as the current queue system. Getting locked in a keep just isn’t fun. There needs to be an alternate way to ‘come from behind.’ This currently doesn’t exist.

2) Node based capture/defend system
As alluded to above, keeps go back and forth way too easily. There is no achievement in taking a keep. Due to the massive amount of nodes, and limited amount of players, its difficult to keep defense up at all areas. This will get WORSE in time, not better. When coordination rolls out, finding the undefended keep and throwing down 3-4 siege rams instantly is going to throw the game out of sync.

Even if guilds happen to occupy keeps and have more ‘keep-pride’ they probably won’t be in the game due to queues to defend it.

3/4) Activities for Small / Large Groups
Well, we have a zerg currently, and it seems to work fairly well. Essentially, the more supply rolling around with your group, the more powerful you are.

This by itself is a bit of an overlook. To successfully build any kind of siege you need to have AT least ‘x’ amount of people carrying 10 supply.

5) Integration of GW2 Selling point: DE’s
And here is my biggest complaint. The horrible lack of DEs in WvW. Sure, you still see little orange circles, but they aren’t DEs…Escorting a dolyak has already been nerfed.

They need to up the ante here and really go all out making an experience no one has ever seen.

Gentlemen, we can rebuild this. We have the technology. A.net has the capability to do something revolutionary here, rather than give us some mutilated hybrid of WoW Battlegrounds and DAOC RvR.

Solutions: (A lot of this is going to cross over, but to keep it organized, i’ll try and keep it in the same format as above)

1)Competitive
RvR is supposed to get lopsided. Thats the whole point. Otherwise, you get a large battleground, the effect is lost. This is what happened in this game. Now, the question is, did they do it this way for fairness? Or to reduce server load and cut costs. For sake of optimism, I will say they did it for fairness: To which I must reply…WHY does it matter??

Solution 1:

Separate PvE servers from PvP. You don’t connect them in any pertinent way anyway. Separating them would make the metric portion of this game a lot easier. I assume they did it this way at first for some reason that was eventually cut out or forgotten.

Solution 2:

Zone with zones. user area makers to limit the amount of players allowed in a specific ‘zone’ of WvW. This would allow a lot more players in WvW at any given time, and keeps them artificially away from each other to prevent ‘vanishing’ and lag. It also doesn’t mess with the ‘intended’ amount of players in any given area.

Solution 3:

Redo the whole thing. Expand the maps to a much larger size and put a lot less nodes in each.

This is the best solution. It allows for a lot more players because the size is much larger. Keeps SHOULD NOT be exchanging hands constantly. Zergs can run from one area to another in 5 minutes..thats absurd. The whole point of WvW is that things are huge. Youre playing in a world.

If I was designing this, I would have tried to position capture nodes throughout the actual world of Tyria. But alas, that won’t happen.

To succeed, the best opportunity is to completely avoid competition. Go to the keep with no enemies. Boo. There is no real incentive to keep players defending when no one is around. You benefit much more by running around offensively, because when you defend, you never know if enemies will show up.

GoTo to 5) Integration of GW2 Selling point: DE’s

This is where DEs come in. Why aren’t there DE’s integrated into WvW that relate directly to the war effort? Example….Rather than a dolyak quest, maybe a keep pops a DE where you need to run out into a forest and collect ‘timber’ and return it to an NPC.

So now players have to actively work, and disruption of supply generation comes in the form of PvP…. you know .. how it should be.

This also breaks the zerg up and 3) Gives small groups something to do.

Whether that is actively performing the DEs, or hiking into opponents, ‘woods,’ and participating in small scale PvP.

Or, allow for the construction of Siege blueprints, and make that a limited resource as well.

4) The Large Group

In a much larger world, large groups would focus more on one keep, rather than running in circles failing taking a keep, taking the keep, than retaking lost keeps.

If keeps were harder to get, there would be more organization. The feeling of taking a keep would be provide a lot more achievement.

With rarer siege weapons (perhaps at a larger cost to balance the gold sink aspect), taking a keep would become harder.

In addition, back to the competitive nature and being blown out of the water, Orbs should give a significant -end game- bonus to whoever controls them.

Heres the suggestion: After 2 weeks, with ~3 days left, spawn a TOUGH world boss that requires a lot of coordination to kill.

Whichever server kills it, they receive a point boost, AND set in motion ‘the end’ countdown, which in this example would be 12 hours. This randomizes the end of the game, meaning you can never count on when exactly the game is.

This creates a whole new end game metagame, which disrupts the humdrum activities of the previous 1week4days. After the boss is killed, its a fight for orbs, because they will significantly boost your score, allowing losing servers the chance to come back.

Example:
Red team: 100,000 (controls 1 orb)
Blue team: 80,000 (controls 2 orbs)
Green team: 50,000

In the game right now, come the end of the round, Green Team has no reason to play since they won’t win. Bad.

-see next post

Now, if orbs gave +25k points at the end of the game heres how it would go down:

Blue team sees that they will WIN if the game ends right now. So they make the conscious decision to take down the boss and start the end game counter. Blue thinks they can defend well enough to keep their orbs. Red team realizes this, so they seek to stop them from killing them until they can get an extra 10k points from holding keeps.

So they are duking it out most of the time around the end boss. Green team goes, “hey…lets take their orbs.” Blue team starts killing the boss, red goes in for the steal, green goes in for the REAL STEAL, and grabs all 3 orbs while red and blue take down the boss.

Green suddenly has 3 orbs, they defend successfully until the countdown is over, and they win +75k points, go to 125k and win.

That, in tandem with a much larger world, DEs integrated into the system that relates directly to the war effort, would make a much more complex, much more fun, and much more innovative genre than the hybrid we have now.

i know its not like DAOCs RVR but here is the fact. There are hours of ques and everyone an dtheir grandmother are trying to get into WvW. So this is oviously very popular and liked by alot of people….. So why would Arena net scrap this?

Pirhana.8935:

i know its not like DAOCs RVR but here is the fact. There are hours of ques and everyone an dtheir grandmother are trying to get into WvW. So this is oviously very popular and liked by alot of people….. So why would Arena net scrap this?

Did you read the topic?

Not bad but I think you are missing the point about PvP. It means Player Vs. Player not Player vs. World boss.

I think WvW is fine the way it is. It just needs some tweaking and small fixes. The Idea is sound.

They will never scrap it. Ever! Simple as that.

Keeps only go back and forth easily if you’re on the lower ranked servers

WvWvW has its issues but it certainly isn’t fault of the design of the zone itself.

People complaining about blowouts need to understand one thing about them. Everyone is given a equal chance. The realms are capped at 500 for a reason. Because one team takes the extra mile to make a guild/squad with coordination doesn’t mean that they have to play at a disadvantage because of it.

Its very easy to blame someone other than yourself when its your server and your playstyle thats causing you to be capped out. Its very difficult to accept the simple fact the other players may just well be better at the game than you. Swallow your pride people.

Just before the “EASY FOR YOU TO SAY CUZ YO WINNING” replies, i’m currently on SoS as someone not in a guild or alliance. I often come into wvwvw with a total capout against us. It sucks, but I’m not going to blame wvwvw or the fact that the other guild is hacking or beating us. They are just better than us. Its elementary.

While your solutions do sound entertaining it would never work in a real situation. One quote from a fellow invader one day struck a chord with me and I think it really reverberates with the mentality of a lot of players in wvwvw ATM.

“Stop making us do extra work to win I just want to zone out and zerg”

TLDR The wvwvw is fine, fix player’s attitude.