Guild Wars 2

Preface: I’m on FA. We’re outnumbered a LOT. Unless you’re on the one map we have 3 tags on, you and your guild’s tag are generally outnumbered. I won’t even get into the fiasco that is us being in T1 this week. Still, we’re used to it, so why am I complaining?

What happens when you get the outnumbered buff?

• Some players straight out leave. It hits morale hard to see that you’re outnumbered. Who wants to fight that noise when you could just swap maps to where you aren’t outnumbered?

• The outnumbered buff pops off and on. This is annoying. You know the enemy has significantly more people than you, then they don’t. No wait, they do. No, they don’t.

• Buffs are ok. The armor not breaking is nice.

Recommendation: Change the Outnumbered Buff so that there are 3 tiers of being outnumbered. The buffs you gain would scale with how outnumbered you are, meaning that if you are the sole group on the map, every objective you complete will mean more for you. Since this doesn’t effect the server, I think that that is a relatively balanced concept, but I am open to discussion on this.

The following buff recommendations are just there as an example. (The current buff is 50% Participation, 20% Magic Find, 25% World Experience, and no armor damage on death) Also, I can’t find the actual number count for what ticks a server over to being outnumbered, so I can’t really put those in.

Minorly Outnumbered

• 20% Participation
• 10% Magic Find
• 10% World Experience

Majorly Outnumbered

• 35% Participation
• 15% Magic Find
• 15% World Experience
• Armor Doesn’t Break

Extremely Outnumbered (Think off-hours)

• 50% Participation
• 20% Magic Find
• 20% World Experience
• Armor Doesn’t Break

Core Benefits of This Change

• The buff might motivate smaller groups of players to keep playing as they’ll be able to more easily maintain their participation levels, even when sneaking hardier objectives.
• Since there are 3 tiers, commanders not only know that they are outnumbered, but they know if they’re facing 10 people more than them, or 30.
• The Outnumbered Buff won’t flash as much, hopefully.

Some possible discussion points not addressed:

• Is knowing how many extra people you are fighting too much of an advantage? Or is this similar to just having a good scout/spy?

• Will this mean fewer rewards in general, for the average WvW player, or is it worth it, since you’ll probably hit a Minor/Major tier far more often than you would hit the normal outnumbered now?

• Buffs are certainly a tad lackluster and ignored (Except the armor repair: A++) by the general player base. Would they really be noticed more this way? Should these be increased more? Should they be decreased?

• Would this be effective?

Thank you. Please discuss.

I like the idea of stacks to show by how much you are actually outnumbered. I think it’s better than be in the blind while you are outnumbered by 3.9:1 because the current buff only come out at 4 (hypotetically).

It is Outnumbered Effect, not a buff.

Like the scale idea. You might as well remove the entire “no armor break” though, since repairs are now free at spawn anyway, that benefit got rendered pretty useless back when they removed cost for repair armor.

You could probably scale those rewards much higher, I’d probably use the existing rewards as the first step, and add it for every level. So:

Minor:

• 25% WXP
• 20% MF
• 50% Participation

Major:

• 50% WXP
• 40% MF
• 100% Participation

SPARTA!:

• 75% WXP
• 60% MF
• 150% Participation

Ok, maybe a little extreme, but if you make it 33/66/100% participation instead, it would probably work well. Imagine all those that want to grind track for legendary will be tempted by a +100% participation bonus. You could probably up the MF a good bit as well, I wouldn’t mind making all 3 33/66/100. Actually make people consider it.

Unfortunately, those that log out the moment they see Outnumbered, won’t stay for this or any other bonus. As long as outnumbered combat works as it does (no fun for most), they’re going to keep leaving the game the moment it goes against them.

On the whole I think the scaling outnumbered effect would be a boon for roamers and defenders. We would see a bit more pugs leaving earlier because minor outnumbered flashed (Oh my kittens! The end is nigh! They got 2 more players than us!).

On the whole there are a whole lot of other things I’d like to see done with Outnumbered, but I think this is a nice and clean idea, that should be relatively simple to implement, it would work better in many ways because of that.

Main problem is still that it doesn’t fix the biggest problem, fighting outnumbered suck in this game.

Do people actually care about the buffs effect/level of effect even? Yay more magic find?

Crescendo Forte.4821:

• Would this be effective?

Thank you. Please discuss.

Yes. +1

Justine.6351:

Do people actually care about the buffs effect/level of effect even? Yay more magic find?

The only people that care about that are the ones that will leave wvw if there’s no commander on the map.

What they should do is make outnumbered provide useful buffs to solo players and small groups. Things like…
*siege costs less supply
*sentries/towers no longer mark your location on the map
*white swords take twice as long to trigger

Jim Hunter.6821:

Justine.6351:

Do people actually care about the buffs effect/level of effect even? Yay more magic find?

The only people that care about that are the ones that will leave wvw if there’s no commander on the map.

What they should do is make outnumbered provide useful buffs to solo players and small groups. Things like…
*siege costs less supply
*sentries/towers no longer mark your location on the map
*white swords take twice as long to trigger

The problem is: if they give an actual useful buff to outnumbered, there will be people like “Gtfo of my map, I want my outnumbered buff back”. Also I wouldn’t mind some extra MF. The last time I dropped a precursor was 3 years ago.

Jeknar.6184:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Justine.6351:

Do people actually care about the buffs effect/level of effect even? Yay more magic find?

The only people that care about that are the ones that will leave wvw if there’s no commander on the map.

What they should do is make outnumbered provide useful buffs to solo players and small groups. Things like…
*siege costs less supply
*sentries/towers no longer mark your location on the map
*white swords take twice as long to trigger

The problem is: if they give an actual useful buff to outnumbered, there will be people like “Gtfo of my map, I want my outnumbered buff back”. Also I wouldn’t mind some extra MF. The last time I dropped a precursor was 3 years ago.

4 years in and I still haven’t gotten a precursor

People are always going to kitten about something, at least this gives outnumbered players incentive to keep trying instead of just logging off.

+1, I like the scaling thought. I wouldn’t want the information on when the buffs trigger be published since I wouldn’t want the buff to be used as a scouting tool in of itself.

Also agree personal buffs are fine. I likewise fear if we add strategic buffs (+5 supply cap, no swords) then we might run into people saying, hey get off my map. I like that idea but think that the potential for it to be a negative influence outweighs the buff.

Only addition I can see is adding in coin and/or harvesting boons. Yes I said harvesting, helps pay for other things like gear and consumables don’t you know.

Jim Hunter.6821:

4 years in and I still haven’t gotten a precursor

People are always going to kitten about something, at least this gives outnumbered players incentive to keep trying instead of just logging off.

Could be worse, the one you found could have been an underwater one for 40 gold.

I admit I like seeing outnumbered but hear you about incentive for other players. I wonder about a bonus for on capture. Would leave a level playing field as far as ability but pay more for outnumbered people. Was going to say on kill, but that again leads to get off my map syndrome. Capture still would only pay once per objective regardless of player counts.

TheGrimm.5624:

Jim Hunter.6821:

4 years in and I still haven’t gotten a precursor

People are always going to kitten about something, at least this gives outnumbered players incentive to keep trying instead of just logging off.

Could be worse, the one you found could have been an underwater one for 40 gold.

I admit I like seeing outnumbered but hear you about incentive for other players. I wonder about a bonus for on capture. Would leave a level playing field as far as ability but pay more for outnumbered people. Was going to say on kill, but that again leads to get off my map syndrome. Capture still would only pay once per objective regardless of player counts.

I feel like it would need to be such a massive bonus that it would still leave people shouting for others to get off their map.

And I kind of thought my ideas were leveling the playing field lol. If you outnumber the enemy you have more supply (so siege is easy to build), and more people to scout the area/your stuff (so you don’t need all the passive crap telling you where people are).

This forces the blob to split up or risk having all their crap ninja’d. Which in turn encourages small groups to play because instead of running into 40+ guys everywhere they go they will run into numbers a little closer to their own.

As to why this idea wouldn’t get people to be all “get off my map”. When you aren’t outnumbered, you have a much easier time taking objectives and getting rewards from them. So if we look at it that way, the buffs just serve to equalize the rewards that you would normally be getting if you had a full map. They shouldn’t be high enough to be better than having a full map, just equal to or slightly less than.

Not outnumbered: 10 loot chances per 5 minutes. No magic find. Participation as normal. You take objectives with decent speed.

Kind of outnumbered: 5-8 loot chances per 5 minutes. Some magic find to increase the quality. Some participation increase as objectives are slower to get, but not a ton. You’re still outnumbered, so the enemy is generally getting more points than you and can make unguarded objectives hard to find.

Outnumbered: 3-5 loot chances per 5 minutes. More magic find and particpation to balance out the fact that you aren’t going to be looting as much. You’re outnumbered, so encounters with enemy groups are starting to get harder and potentially less rewarding.

Super outnumbered: 1-2 Loot chances per 5 minutes. It’s incredibly hard to take objectives of any kind. Fighting the enemy zerg head on is a death sentence, so you’ll have to use guerilla tactics, which means your participation is gonna suck. Buffs hopefully mitigate this a bit and make it more rewarding.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I feel like it would need to be such a massive bonus that it would still leave people shouting for others to get off their map.

And I kind of thought my ideas were leveling the playing field lol. If you outnumber the enemy you have more supply (so siege is easy to build), and more people to scout the area/your stuff (so you don’t need all the passive crap telling you where people are).

This forces the blob to split up or risk having all their crap ninja’d. Which in turn encourages small groups to play because instead of running into 40+ guys everywhere they go they will run into numbers a little closer to their own.

I wonder from a code perspective if they could do the supply boost since they would need to decrease the amount being carried if the ratio changed. I like the idea of being able to carry more supply but worry about it being gamed as well if not coded with care. Agree though, things to draw people to less populated maps is never a bad thing. Less blobbing = bonus.

TheGrimm.5624:

Jim Hunter.6821:

I feel like it would need to be such a massive bonus that it would still leave people shouting for others to get off their map.

And I kind of thought my ideas were leveling the playing field lol. If you outnumber the enemy you have more supply (so siege is easy to build), and more people to scout the area/your stuff (so you don’t need all the passive crap telling you where people are).

This forces the blob to split up or risk having all their crap ninja’d. Which in turn encourages small groups to play because instead of running into 40+ guys everywhere they go they will run into numbers a little closer to their own.

I wonder from a code perspective if they could do the supply boost since they would need to decrease the amount being carried if the ratio changed. I like the idea of being able to carry more supply but worry about it being gamed as well if not coded with care. Agree though, things to draw people to less populated maps is never a bad thing. Less blobbing = bonus.

Yeah that’s why I suggested siege cost less instead of letting you carry more supply. That keeps people from just hopping to an enemy bl to get their extra supply before jumping on the EB karma train.

What about increasing the PPK for outnumbered as well for the roamers? Would be a nice bonus when I try to pick off zerg stragglers.

How about no downstate for enemies while outnumbered buff is up?

I like this suggestion. I also like the more PPK while outnumbered too, similar to the bloodlust ruins buff.
Both are small chances that doesn’t create a toxic behaviour and doesn’t require huge mechanical or system changes.
Outnumbered buff could have a bunch of interesting effects but as it looks like we are not getting anything, these small changes at least are something.

lmperdigao.2567:

I like this suggestion. I also like the more PPK while outnumbered too, similar to the bloodlust ruins buff.
Both are small chances that doesn’t create a toxic behaviour and doesn’t require huge mechanical or system changes.
Outnumbered buff could have a bunch of interesting effects but as it looks like we are not getting anything, these small changes at least are something.

Guilds fighting on that map will be very happy (….not) about changes to downstate or any stat changes while one side is outnumbered.
Regarding suggestions for artificialy changing the score while being outnumbered (bonus ppk/ppt etc..). If a server is low populated that server might not be in correct tier/matchup.

That’s why I like the OP’s suggestion, with only different tiers of wxp, participation and MF bonuses.

Well written OP. Nice ideas.