Guild Wars 2

First off. New maps are great, beautiful, and alot of fun. But there are some problems with sze and balance. Ive spoken with alot of wvw commanders and guild leaders.

Looking for relatively simple ways to fix wvw.

Current problems as I see them.

They are all inter-related and mainly they have to do with motivation. Some assumptions:

1. WvW’ers want kills, wins, bags, and loot. Non-wvwers just want the loot.

2. You made changes to wvw to give us something fun and new and you tried to address balance issues with autoupgrades and scaling lords. Excellent work.

Problems as I see:

1. People are nolonger needed to upgrade things. Great we save money…really bad….good morning every single objective is owned by the enemy server and is t3. People pop in…attempt a few fortified gates with 10 ppl..20 min later on the lord and are destroyed by dominating enemy zerg which could have RP walked from anywhere to defend.

2. Big zergs got bigger. Because the upgrading tgat used to keep ppl busy nolonger important its unnecessary.

3. Towers hold no strategic advantage. They cant be used to assault another structure..

I humbly urge you to please consider the following:

People need to invest something to upgrade structures…should be labor if not money…but something should have to be required AND it needs to be scaled to make the momentarily less populated server able to do it with less time/resources. If noone is paying attention to the objective autoupgrades should practically stop.

The rewards need to scale with the difficulty. You did great work with the lords but enemy players need to bevthe real concern. Defended objectives, defended maps need to be worth more. You already monitor the population on maps, pls use it to scale the rewards. This is a truly natural way to instill value beyond the arbitrary point system.

Towers should have a strategic advantage pls add some kind of a weapon that can be built in towers that can hit enemy keeps. Give us a reason to care that the enemy took it.

You cant shrink the map…increase player speed out of combat pls. Add free to anyone teleporters at equidistant locations.

And I havent heard anyone say they like the giant lazer…remove maybe add interesting battlefield element to the center.

I really do love the maps…they just need some tweeks.

Anyone else have SIMPLE ways to do it.?

Make that the WP are only available at T3 to give us a reason to defend Rampart… Same for south tower…. But give the WP to everyone who hold the tower to T3… Or bring back the old WP on left and right keep.
And yes, auto upgrade have to be removed….

agree on most of the points here….towers and taken areas should be stepping stones and you should be able to reach and attack and support from one to the next…the auto upgrading dumbed it down and makes no sense, we want things to be more strategic, not simplified, if anything, its now harder for the smaller servers to sneak attack and ninja places like stated by op, we need to be able to take advantage of weaknesses and areas the enemy did not fortify or left unguarded…not to mention how the wvw skills themselves were nerfed and are too easy to get all of them now with tons of points left over for no reason….

1. Revert all HoT-WvW-changes and bring the Alpine BL-Map back.

2. Add Desert BL-map to EOTM rotation.

I honestly think that most WvW players would have been totally happy with old maps if:

- Existing bugs were fixed
- Upgrading was made free but with (close to) old upgrade system.
- Population unbalance and night capping was addressed at some level.
- Maps got visual update and maybe some tweaks here and there.

Added bonus would have been if

- Autolooting was introduced to everyone in WvW.
- Siege line of sight was made consistent and clear to understand.
- Protecting dollies was made easier (like with the shield buff we have now).
- More effort was placed to combat lag.

…but this is only my gut feeling and can be wrong. In the end it’s impossible to say what “we want” without some kind of realistic poll and good enough coverage from the actual users.

Here’s what I think without reverting back to the old borderlands.

People are complaining about how large the maps are, how it takes too long to get to certain destinations. This problem could be solved by adding more waypoints to the map so players can defend positions faster and get into the battle faster.

• Place waypoints on each supply camp, that activates immediately after it is captured. This gives players a spawn point closer to action and forces enemy teams to capture the supply camp to cut off reinforcements. Would introduce some interesting plays and increase the importance of supply camps.

• Place waypoints in towers that activates in a set time frame (shorter than keep waypoints). Capturing towers will allow players to secure a fortified rendezvous point until enemy players recapture it.

• With all the new waypoints, make the use of the waypoints non-instant. Require the player to stand still “channeling” the waypoint for a set time.. like 10 seconds as well as being out of combat. Taking damage while channeling the waypoint will interrupt the player.

• Assaulting an objective will contest it for a longer period of time.. like 5 minutes as opposed to the default 2 minute 30 seconds.

• Remove Righteous indignation from champions.

• Increase the amount of time required to capture objectives

With the update makes recapture easier. However, who can use wp? Enemies? Do you suppose they are considering some system for auto upgrade removal…manual free upgrades would be fine right?

Towers still have strategic importance and will have even more when they can mark enemies like sentries. They allow players to track enemies and provide a place of refuge where a small force can significantly harass a larger force. They make it much harder to sneak north camp, which is now the most important camp on the map as south doesn’t feed as many objectives as it used to.

Just because they aren’t easymode assault launching pads doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

Honestly, it’s disappointing to see people complain that towers aren’t important or that yaks aren’t important (3x faster upgrades, people). It doesn’t have to be slammed into your face in order to be a vital part of a successful strategy.

they need to move the southern WPs into the keeps. Having them attached to the towers is stupid. What does the home team need WPs all the way down there for. And the invading teams already have waypoints 30s walking distance from those towers. Having the WPs in the keeps is strategic for all teams. Plus WPs need to be part of tier 3 upgrades so that it gives teams a reason to fight and hold something again. Some of the best battles I was in were defending or attacking a keep because the waypoint was coming soon. I also agree with reverting upgrades to a manual process but not having a gold cost with it.

I think those 3 changes would bring back some of the missing strategy. Zergs, roamers, havoc teams, and soloist would all have uses again.