Tyler, Gaile, and the ANET team … thank you for listening to us. I know that “listening” does not equate to “doing”. I certainly appreciate the dialogue.
Since you’re making the effort, I’ll make the effort of writing out some ideas. Why not? Some of these may be original, probably not. All ideas are considered independent from one another but some do work well together.
inb4 .. my ideas are dumb, unoriginal, written before, etc. I apologize in advance for not searching and reading the entirety of the supernet interhighway.
Replace Dolyaks with players
Have players perform the duty of supply runs. Something that BDO sort of brought to my mind. A player would go to a supply camp, press and hold F (I guess) to start stacking up supply on their back or whatever, then slowly make the trek to a destination — being encumbered and all. Note: a trek doesn’t start until the stacking of supply is complete .. just like Dolyaks. Only X number of people can stack up supply, based on a camp’s bonuses. Supply cannot be “used”. It can only be “delivered”.
Same abilities for Dolyaks may be applied to this user. Same death reaction (where supply drops from them) may be applied to this user. People following this user will get the same perks as following a Dolyak.
Why?
- To turn off one aspect of the autonomousness of WvW by giving players another role
- To reduce the zerg/blob on a map by creating more small groups
- To increase the need and purpose of small groups
- To give the supply run more immersion
Replace supply-to-siege with craft-to-seige
Instead of grabbing supply and rushing to a spot to use it, have players create siege parts with supply at camps, towers, and forts. Then when parts are ready, a player can drop down a siege blueprint and other players — with the right parts — can construct the siege. If I recall, Dark Age of Camelot did this.
Crafting can be done everywhere. But supply camps would be best as tower/fort supply would further diminish.
Make them tradeable. Mailable? Separation of roles between crafters from fighters. Crafters craft and send to the front lines via carrier.
Replace or add some WvW abilities to increase crafting .. maybe as a whole or for specific siege.
Possibly even increase/decrease effectiveness of siege based on crafted parts’ quality (eg basic wheels + fine uprights + exotic battering ram = x% effectiveness). The higher the quality, the longer the crafting takes or the more supply it needs from the camp.
Do NOT however require crafting to need anything else by supply from the camp. Don’t make this too complicated.
Do NOT allow siege parts to carry over reset night. Defeats the purpose then.
Why?
- Promotes another reason to keep a camp and protect it
- For reset nights, stops the mad rush to forts and towers because siege parts first must be made. This implicitly breaks down zerging/blobbing because there is no mad rush with numbers to a fort/tower until parts are available
- Introduces more proactive strategy and planning by making sure people have the right parts versus just having supply
- Increase players’ participation and feeling of worth, such as those that do not want to fight outright
Diminish ownership over time
Introduce NPCs that would slowly get stronger to overcome a camp, tower, or fort. They would appear and attack the owned properties sentries and mercenaries and eventually be so strong that they will win — unless players start paying attention and kill them. (Claimed places would be more able to defend themselves.)
In order for these NPCs to reduce strength, players will need to kill the NPC lead (eg a bandit commander). Then the following NPC lead will be a lower class NPC (eg a bandit lieutenant).
Interval of NPC “event” would be consistent with WvW population.
NPCs need to be strong enough to not be a one-shot. Maybe introduce a break bar?
Why?
This idea stems from night-capping and/or passive ownership being a problem. The best solution I could think of was to eventually make the ownership of a property go neutral if no one is around over time.
Now scouts have another role when watching over a tower or fort. Gives them something else to do. Maybe even reward them with some bags. If siege-crafting were introduced, gives crafters a break from the grind — and maybe bags.
Add more territory
Overwhelm WvW with enough borderlands that players have to break the zerg in order to maintain their score.
For every X number of servers in a server-link, increase the number of borderlands by Y.
For simplicity, let’s say the borderland is EBG for now. Hopefully this would promote the creation of another EBG-like borderland where all three servers have ownership and no one has an advantage.
Examples:
2 servers in a server-link. Let’s say Y = X/2. Add 1 more borderland.
3 servers in a server-link. Y = X/2. Add 1 more borderland.
4 servers in a server-link. Y = X/2. Add 2 more borderlands.
