[Suggestion] Income and Upkeep System

[Suggestion] Income and Upkeep System

in WvW

Posted by: Varonth.5830

Varonth.5830

So as we all know the current WvW tends to snowball, and as we can see in this Sub-Forum there are alot of dissatisfied players, who dislike the current system.

So here is my first idea:

Income and Upkeep

At the moment camps provide supply for towers, keeps and stonemist. Now this supply can be used for siege equipment, upgrades and repairs. My idea adds another layer to what camps provide.
They will provide upkeep supply for everything you have in WvW. What does this mean:
Everything except supply camps will need upkeep supply, which is just an invisible artificial number, which could be shown on the WvW Hud aswell as the the current informations shown there.
I already calculated some numbers:

  • A camp will add +5 to your income.
  • A tower has an upkeep cost of 2 (-2 income).
  • A keep has an upkeep cost of 5 (-5 income).
  • Stonemist will have an upkeep cost of 12 (-12 income).

If you own everything that will leave you at +-0, so you can actually hold everything.

Now, there is nothing bad happening when your income is >= 0. If it’s +2 you can take another tower, and nothing bad would happen. Now if you take a keep,
it would increase your worlds upkeep costs to by 5, so you would need at least an income of 5 or greater. You are at +2 and took that keep, and now you are at -3. That is a bad state, because your supply camps cannot handle the demand for your world. So since the camps cannot deliver enough income to keep everything running, the keeps start using their own supply over time.
Every few second (I thought about 15-30) the system will reduce the amount of supply every keep has by X where X is your current upkeep cost. So since you are at -3 they will all start loosing 3 supply every few seconds. This is bad, but it can become even worse. When your worlds income is less then 0 and one of the reduction ticks would reduce that building (except camps, which are unaffected) supply to 0 or less, your world would abbandon this building. It would go back into it’s neutral state, like when a new WvW match starts. This would then reduce the upkeep cost, and perhaps bring your world back into a positive income, allowing you to keep the rest of your buildings.

What would that imply:
First thing, camps would not only be extremly usefull, they would be crucial for your campaign. There have to be players guarding a supply camp. The more you dominate, the more camps you have to guard with your players. This will of course decrease your attacking force.

A small guerrilla force from the underdog on the other hand could heavily damage your worlds progress, if they take a supply camp off guard.

And a huge zerg could be stopped by a small organized group of players, taking camps behind enemy lines.
Splitting up, in order to guard the extremly vulnurable camps would be neccessary, probably leading to less mass zerging, and more small scale groups, with groupsizes depending on what you want to accomplish.

Two additional ideas for these camps, are 2 new upgrades, one, which increases the income provided by this camp by 1, and the other making the main npc a champion instead of a veteran.

I’ll probably post some more ideas regarding other stuff (like Orbs and their Snowball effect, middle man constantly attacking underdog instead of topdog etc) once I worked them out a bit better.

[Suggestion] Income and Upkeep System

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Posted by: Splintrr.7391

Splintrr.7391

Great idea, as Kaineng, with the average amount of our territory held ending up at 0/0/0/0, my guild has been settling for hit and run tactics on camps with 5-10 man groups…the problem is this is only good for the Event Rewards, and breaking in new warparty members…it is totally useless in the war effort, as they take it back with 20-30 man zergs within 5 minutes.

Feralblood(Guardian) Splintrr(Ranger)
Warsworn [WAR], Dragonbrand
Evermoor Alliance

[Suggestion] Income and Upkeep System

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Posted by: Replect.3407

Replect.3407

+1

Without having thought about it in that much detail, I really think that could work…

It sounds pretty neat! Actually, it sounds quite awesome! :-)

I probably wouldn’t neutralize a base instantly when the upkeep costs couldn’t be handled anymore, probably damage walls and the gate more and more until they are destroyed and the other servers has a free way to the keeplord, but probably your way is necessary for more balance, not sure!

Probably the numbers and if supplies efficiency should be effected related to the camps you have is something to think about, but in general I hope this thread gets the attention of ArenaNet!

EDIT: This remembers me on economy simulations like ANNO, where you have to make sure that you have anothe ressources to keep your buildings up, before you start to grow more and more…

EDIT2: One problem could be caused by groups that don’t know or don’t care about these potential costs and start to take towers/keeps anyway and cause big cost troubles for the hole server!

(edited by Replect.3407)

[Suggestion] Income and Upkeep System

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Posted by: Luthan.5236

Luthan.5236

My idea: There should be at least 1 Dolyak arriving every X minutes at a captured keep or tower. Else the walls and gates will get debuff and take 100 percent more damage. Or something like that. Should be seperated from the supply inside and take effect even if there is still supply left. Maybe like some different imaginary supply instead of the building stuff you have for the upgrade. Think of it like food for the workers that stopped maintaining the walls now.

Also if no supply camp is held at all every repairs should be disabled. Not possible to repair.

They should at least hold 1 supply camp somwhere AND have supplies at the location they want to repair. And they should get Dolyaks moving there constantly or else the gates and stuff will take more damage(only locations affected where Dolyaks arrive/ not arrive).

OR: maybe make upgrades constantly use up supplies. Not only to repair but to maintain. Otherwisee automatically damaged… in this order: the upgrades first. If they are at 0 should still be repairable if people manually get supplies there(and if the supplies are > 0 in the keep/tower). After that upgrades all at 0 let take towers and gates damage. Randomly between all the parts to not make one part go to 0 to fast and make it too easy to attack.

[Suggestion] Income and Upkeep System

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Posted by: Jamais vu.5284

Jamais vu.5284

1+
Not sure if this is the mechanic to end all mechanics for toning down utter domination, but it’s certainly a good start.

[Suggestion] Income and Upkeep System

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Posted by: Amonde Daneren.2380

Amonde Daneren.2380

You had me up until the part with keep decay.

Making the supply camps produce less and less “usable” supply is good. But it has to stop there. Supply camps are not defensible positions. No walls, no good place to palace siege, for all intents and purposes they are in the middle of a field. Any tower/keep is highly defensible and since the retaliation patch, smart use of siege can easily dissuade a zerg.

If you add keep decay at “negative upkeep”, what will happen is: the enemy doesn’t need to use tactics or siege, they just zerg camp your supply. This would only exacerbate the zerg versus zerg gameplay currently in WvW.

Also, if something like this is ever implemented, it has to be calculated across all maps. If you hold all the borderlands, your upkeep in EB should be affected, even though you might not hold anything in that map.

[Suggestion] Income and Upkeep System

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Posted by: Replect.3407

Replect.3407

Well, even if I like the idea as you can see in my previous post, I kind of have to agree with what Amonde said… But probably even that is something that could be taken into account. I still think the idea is great, but obviously needs more work to make sure these kind of flaws wouldn’t destroy it…