Guild Wars 2

(TL;DR Highlight: “This isn’t your modern mathematical notion of warfare, where maximum gain with zero losses is the perfect ideal. Nope, this is the romantic medieval notion of warfare, where a heroic suicide charge against overwhelming odds is the most glorious, where the more blood shed just makes victory all the sweeter.”)

TL;DR 2:
I’m not talking about spvp glory, I’m proposing that the WvW scoring system be renamed to “Server Glory”, and instead of PPT, your server gains glory via various glorious victories. Primarily, taking over objectives after a massive fight that kills many players.

I think the main problem with WvW is, that ANet wants to create a mostly strategic game, but players want a mostly tactical one.

Good strategy:
- Attack where your enemy least expects it, and is weakest.
ie. PvDoor and night capping is excellent strategy.

- Dont waste resources in a futile battle.
ie. Dont defend keeps against a zerg. Just let them take it and cap something else. Switch to an entirely different map if you have to.

The problem is, this isnt an RTS game. Most of the players are not “playing” the strategic game – maybe only a handful of guild leaders and commanders are, if any. Everyone else is playing the tactical game of personal fighting.

All of the “good strategy” I’ve mentioned above, are not very fun and aren’t what the players want or are involved in. People want to fight others. They want real fights to matter more than PvDoor.

Consider this:
- Servers A and B are engaged in an epic stalemate over a single keep. Hundreds of players are involved and dozens die every second. Entire guilds are organised towards supporting the siege/defense of this keep, with supplies, blueprints, scouting etc.

- After a week of constant struggle, Server A prevails and retains the keep.

- Meanwhile server C has quietly capped every other objective and have all gone to farm champions in Queensdale.

Who deserves to win this match? Currently Server C will win. But in terms of “fun”, I think most would want Server A to win.

How can we achieve this? How can we incentivise fights, and devalue PvDoor? How can we decrease the value of strategy, versus tactics?

I’m sure we all have our ideas. Here’s mine:
- Replace points with “Glory” (not the spvp glory…this is just a name change for points.)
- Server with most glory wins the match.

- Server gains a tiny bit of glory for holding objectives.
- Server gains a bit more glory for kills.

- The amount of glory gained for a successful capture or defend event, is proportional to the number of players killed during the event. The more deaths on either side, the more glory.
- There is a glory bonus during the event if your side has more kills than deaths.
- There is a glory bonus during the event if your server is outnumbered on that map.

- There are no server-wide buffs or benefits from holding strategic objectives. But individual players can receive achievements and personal rewards for various glorious accomplishments. Eg. kill 100 different players without dying. defend an objective against 2:1 odds or greater. etc.
———————————

Why did I call it “Glory” rather than “points”? Because this isn’t your modern mathematical notion of warfare, where maximum gain with zero losses is the perfect ideal.

Nope, this is the romantic medieval notion of warfare, where a heroic suicide charge against overwhelming odds is the most glorious, where the more blood shed in a battle, the more important it is to win, because “Only a coward would give up now!”

So what do you want out of WvW? Strategy? Or GLOOOOOOORY!!!?
:P

Still wouldn’t incentivize WVW. People simply want to kill other players and brag about it. The reason why good strategies don’t work and why commanders are ultimately powerless to actually command is because very few people care about anything other than 1) bolstering their egos and 2) getting items and achievements for themselves. People will leave no matter what when they realize there’s no profit in it for them, and they don’t want to “waste their time” doing non-zerg activities that actually require skill and planning.

There’s no ego or glory in it for me. I’ve sent my WvW glory/loot-hounds packing, since they were ruining my fun with their silly demands and bickering. I play for the experience of assisting and participating in other commanders’ strategies and tactics, and that is all the reward I care about while in WvW.

Honestly, I’d be happy if every copper piece of all pseudo-currencies were stricken from WvW, because—although I am not elitist on skills or personal interests—I just don’t trust or respect people who join onto teams in teamwork-driven PvP video games for the bloody loot or their bloody ego.

Perhaps my wall of text was too long or not clear enough, I don’t feel that either response has understood what I am trying to say.

Still, it’s an interesting contrast – Equinox is saying noone wants to play strategically, they just want personal rewards, and Virtute is saying he personally prefers to be a part of someone’s strategy, and doesnt like people who play for rewards. (presumably he is in the minority.)

Either way, I think my suggestion might improve things.

The main problem at the moment is that PvDoor is both the most personally profitable AND the most strategically useful thing to do… along with the LEAST fun.

With my suggested change, taking over an unguarded objective is not glorious and thus it doesn’t give your server any points. And it doesnt give you any personal rewards either. Holding an objective gives a tiny amount of points, pretty much to break ties.

My suggestion that the points & rewards of an objective be proportional to the amount of players killed on both sides, will incentivise huge battles which is what people find most fun. (roaming battles are still rewarded via points per kill and loot bags.)

I also feel that rewarding server glory proportionally to player deaths fits in with the heroic/romantic medieval fantasy theme of the game. A server shouldn’t win because it has better coverage or a bigger zerg, it should win because it fought a tragic battle against overwhelming odds but manage to just hold out and win the day. 300 and all that.

Hello, I’m Alpha Squared and I approve of this topic!

Seriously, though Rieselle, I think you are really getting to the heart of the issue with WvW here. Whether intentionally or not, the design of the game mode has created a style of play where players actually ignore and avoid other players because it is both a) more beneficial to the server’s overall score and b) more beneficial to themselves personally.

It can not be overstated how harmful this is. WvW is a players versus players game at its very core, yet right now the best way to play it “successfully” is by avoiding players.

I do like the ideas you have for changing the incentives, but honestly I have no idea how difficult (if even possible) it would be to implement something like that.

Again: people don’t care about glory, they care about the quick, easy, and effortless path to rewards. People don’t want tragic battles against overwhelming odds, they want champion bags, exp, karma, and loot. You’re not going to change peoples’ mindset at this point. If your suggested changes were implemented, WVW would likely dry up very quickly due to lack of profitability.

Equinox.4968:

Again: people don’t care about glory, they care about the quick, easy, and effortless path to rewards. People don’t want tragic battles against overwhelming odds, they want champion bags, exp, karma, and loot. You’re not going to change peoples’ mindset at this point. If your suggested changes were implemented, WVW would likely dry up very quickly due to lack of profitability.

again, i don’t think you’ve understood what I’m trying to say.

I’m saying that server score and personal rewards should be tied in to glorious activities. So a tragic battle against overwhelming odds is more rewarding than running away and taking an undefended supply camp. (provided you give as good as you get).

So yes, i agree fully that most players only care about personal rewards. This is exactly the problem and why we need something like my idea, to align these desires with fun combat gameplay.

In a nut shell: wvw is currently designed as a strategic game. You are incentivised to take objectives with the least cost and time. Preferably without even fighting at all.

What needs to happen is a shift towards a tactical game. Where personal rewards and server score are primarily obtained through activities that involve real combat, and tactical successes such as winning a fight when outnumbered.

This will concentrate player attention on the fun parts of the game that they want to play, rather than making them feel torn between doing “the fun thing” versus “the profitable thing”.

Unless you’re trying to say that people don’t even care about fun, they just want to watch tv whilst auto attacking a door to easy rewards. In which case my response is, we are better off not having farming bots in wvw.

Asquared.4091:

It can not be overstated how harmful this is. WvW is a players versus players game at its very core, yet right now the best way to play it “successfully” is by avoiding players.

I do like the ideas you have for changing the incentives, but honestly I have no idea how difficult (if even possible) it would be to implement something like that.

Thanks! I think this is something that’s pretty clear to see. Unfortunately it looks like any kind of fix is too large and too different to be possible (short of some major overhaul like an expansion pack.) Which is why most players don’t even attempt to discuss solutions, because this is an issue that goes to the very heart of how wvw is currently designed.

Instead we have people saying stuff like, “why can’t we cap map population to the least populated server?” :/

well by award pt per kill more rather than holding a keep. Same problem with spvp. It’s boring because it rewards holding a pt and not dying a lot more than killing players.

Fixing is easy they just don’t want to do it. Just copy DaoC!!!!!!! Award a lot more wxp based on kills rather than taking structures. Scale the amount wxp given based on the number of players in the area when a structure is taken.

I’ve been thinking a lot about WvW lately. It’s probably my favourite aspect of this game but I get frustrated to no end when there is no cohesion or proper leadership by commanders. I also find the loot mongers annoying.

One idea was toying around with was the potential of adding in conditions to WvW instead of buffs. Think of it this way, if a server is dominating they get buffs but there is no consequence for not doing well in WvW (well at least not as powerful as the buffs are). This might motivate servers to work harder together.

In a real game of war, domination of land and resources severely impacts people, in this game we just lose ranking and some points. But if there were real consequences, maybe even loot based ones, imagine the difference it would make!

Anyway, just my 2 cents.