Guild Wars 2

Dynamic events are a big part of GW2 open world PVE experience, yet the use of events in WvW feels – after almost 2 years – a bit lacking.

I was thinking that strategically meaningful events and event chains could be really interesting, I’ll give you a few examples:

• when an important upgrade (t2 walls, t2 gates, t3 walls, waypoint) is nearing completion, start dynamic events in the camps providing the supplies and on the dolyaks transporting those supplies. The events would prompt for allies to defend the camps and dollys and for enemies to try and cap the camps and kill the dollys.
• when starting a structure upgrade, use the same “collect” mechanic we’ve seen in some PVE events to collect money (with maybe the option to instantly start the upgrade by paying the whole sum in a single click);
• when a structure is under siege (siege weapons hitting gates/walls), defenders should see a major event that prompts for wiping or driving off the attackers (the generic “defend” event we have right now) and several minor events for building or using defensive siege; the attackers will have events around the structure that prompt for preventing defenders from getting inside and maybe even events to “tag” nearby structures that have a waypoint to prevent more defenders from joining the defense effort, events for destroying external and internal walls/gates, and finally for capturing the structure (each event rewarded separately, will require some tuning base rewards).
• after capturing a structure, the game could spawn several small events that request building some defensive siege and events for capturing the nearby supply camps.
• the completion of one of the major upgrades (t2 walls, t2 gate, t3 walls, waypoint) could start more “build defensive siege” events, since the more upgrades you have, the more you want to defend your structure;
• in a “outnumbered” situation, when even the events to take back the spawn towers fail, provide alternative guerrilla style targets: for example, cap camps and kill dolyaks to prevent enemies from upgrading towers and keeps.
• events could even take into account the 3-faction system: for example, if Red is attacking a Blue structure and attacking Blue would be better for Green, Green could get an event to “attack this Blue structure on the other side of the map” since attacking 2 Blue objectives increases the chances of flipping at least one and gives the chance to flip both. If Green is fighting in points head-to-head with Red, instead, they could have a “steal the cap” event! Thrilling!

These are only a few examples, and the possibilities are endless.

I don’t think these changes could fix all flaws the current WvW system has, but it would surely help with some issues.

Given the “dynamic” nature of those events, the rewards could scale with the number of enemies and maybe number and quality of siege involved: “yeah, good job capping this t0 keep with 5 superior catapults and 60 man blob: have this blue item” vs “wow, you capped a t2 tower with only a handful of men and normal siege? Are you a strategy wizard or something? Have this rare item for a chance of ectos!”
There could even be a “tiering” system similar to those we’ve seen in the Crown Pavillion and Zephyrites events, with better rewards for long-lasting sieges.

From a scoring system point of view, linking the results of the events (including the scaling!) with the score would help balancing the night capping and point-per-tick system: structures that see no attacks for a long time will provide less points in the same timeframe than those that are heavily contested: successfully defending T1 towers could probably give more points in time than a fully sieged T3 keep that no one dares attacking.

Having a map full of “meaningful” things to do would be really useful for new players getting in WvW (“hey, that’s an event! I know how to do that!”) and would maybe help in breaking down the blobs a bit by spreading attacks (and the relative “defense” events) in the whole map. This would help groups of all sizes to be able to enjoy WvW again.

Edit: added some terrible mockups
Edit: I posted some more ideas in another thread – if you like this, maybe you will like those also.

Reserved for more ramblings.

This is actually a really great idea.

careful… I don’t think they like it when players have better suggestions/ideas than they seem to come out with. Take dry top for example zzzzzz -.-

I like many of these suggestions +1 from me.

I like this too. But consider making the scale smaller for WvW. I recall last year when the Scarlett toxic events were plugged into WvW commanders went total commando bezerk kitteny about that. Yeah, those weren’t happy panda nights. Those elements had a little too much going on to be managable when compounded with the data and people management required to make WvW an enjoyable experience. Just my 2 cents.

BooDuh.2841:

I like this too. But consider making the scale smaller for WvW. I recall last year when the Scarlett toxic events were plugged into WvW commanders went total commando bezerk kitteny about that. Yeah, those weren’t happy panda nights. Those elements had a little too much going on to be managable when compounded with the data and people management required to make WvW an enjoyable experience. Just my 2 cents.

What do you mean with “making the scale smaller” ?

In my vision, the events would “scale” (give better rewards) with the number of opposing players present, for example 5 people successfully defending a tower with 2 arrowcarts and one ballista from a group of about 20 attackers would get a nice reward, while the group of 20 capping the tower would get a lower reward since their forces were a lot bigger than the defenders’.

The suggestions I made are, of course, only simple examples… None of them requires the players involved to have a deep knowledge of WvW strategies.

Menaka.5092:

BooDuh.2841:

I like this too. But consider making the scale smaller for WvW. I recall last year when the Scarlett toxic events were plugged into WvW commanders went total commando bezerk kitteny about that. Yeah, those weren’t happy panda nights. Those elements had a little too much going on to be managable when compounded with the data and people management required to make WvW an enjoyable experience. Just my 2 cents.

What do you mean with “making the scale smaller” ?

In my vision, the events would “scale” (give better rewards) with the number of opposing players present, for example 5 people successfully defending a tower with 2 arrowcarts and one ballista from a group of about 20 attackers would get a nice reward, while the group of 20 capping the tower would get a lower reward since their forces were a lot bigger than the defenders’.

The suggestions I made are, of course, only simple examples… None of them requires the players involved to have a deep knowledge of WvW strategies.

metrics are metrics and songs are songs. and then, of course, there is meter

Great idea! Arenanet should definitely look into whether this is feasible!