Guild Wars 2

This post is about suggestions that I have been thinking of over the couple of months to improve the world vs world experience.

Note: Some of these suggestions are not fun but needed.

General changes

- Boon priorities

Applying boons should have priorities.
Party –> Guild ? Randoms –> Pets.

This has been said many times and it’s a simple thing that improves the experience by alot.

- Info towards the community.

Let us know in what order conditions will be cleansed and in what order boons will be removed and what combo field has the priority when multiple are placed.

These are simple things that would improve tactics if we knew how this worked.

- Mobs in WvW

At this point, mobs favor stealth classes, they tag the mob, go into stealth and the mob will lose agro on the stealther and go for the one that has no access to stealth.

Mobs favor glassy specs, as mobs will target the players with the highest toughness.

Mobs also make for rally machines, they’re easy to kill and will give someone who lost a fight a second chance or a run away ticket.

I believe back in the day mobs where added so everyone could complete their daily achievements, with the new WvW achievements it’s easily doable without the mobs, they are useless now.

Changes regarding movement speed.

- Movement speed

As stated, the maps can’t be bigger because of technical limitations. This is a big problem, because right now there is zero risk in running a big group. There is no advantage in splitting up your group because you can get to the other side of the map in about 3-5 minutes.

Solution: Make everyone move slower, this can be 95% or 90% of what it is now, something you wouldn’t really notice, but will have an impact in the long run. Ofcourse for the jumping puzzles there should be an exception, otherwise you can’t make the jumps anymore.

- Swiftness

When travelling, people usually travel at a 133% speed rate instead of the 100% and that is because swiftness is too easily applied. I don’t say this is a bad thing, quite the opposite. It’s a great boon, especially in combat. For this one I have two suggestions.

A) Have swiftness only work in combat.
B) Swiftness can only be applied to groups smaller than 25 (can be any number), every extra player will not gain the boon.

Personally I prefer option B, but I can understand this is also the hardest one to implement.

- Waypoints

Right now waypoints favor the server that can field the most people, as they can upgrade their keeps faster and in the end put more pressure on less populated servers.

But in my opinion even worse, is that you can skip half of a map by simply clicking a waypoint. The travel time (3-5 minutes) I spoke of earlier, becomes now 1.5-2.5 minutes. Again, there is no risk to split up your group.

Solution: Remove waypoints in WvW, except for the ones at spawn, obviously.

Capturing points

When capturing points (ring after the lord is down) the cap goes faster the more people enter the ring. I think this only promotes running more players and that the cap should go as slow as there would be only 1 player in that ring.

Skill Lag

Everyone is aware of what is probably the biggest problem in WvW right now, the skill lag. It’s easy to say: remove the skill lag, but I think that is impossible, here are however some suggestions to lower the skill lag.

- Conditions and boons

Decrease the maximum cap of 25 to 20 for all conditions and boons, compensate with more damage per condition.

Think about it, every single condition/boon (not even every unique condition/boon) has to be sent to the server which has to process it. Every condition/boon has it’s own duration and damage dependend on who applied it. When having fights of 25 vs 25 for example, those are alot of conditions and boons. By decreasing the maximum cap, the skill lag would be decreased.

- Boons are too easily accessable

Some boons are too easy accessable, for example it’s easy to have 100% swiftness, regeneration and protection duration on some classes. Other classes are never below 10 stacks of might. And other classes have almost 100% stability and retaliation uptime. I’m not saying that any of these classes or builds should be nerfed. But in my opinion it would be more fun to require some skill in order to gain boons. This way boons actually add something special to the combat system. Having kitten ons around will also decrease the skill lag.

Confusion, retaliation and torment

Both these conditions and the boon force people in combat to not do something. Confusion and retaliation force you to not attack, torment forces you to stand still. So now combine them and we have a fight where you cannot attack and cannot move. In my opinion this is really boring gameplay.

I think it’s too soon to say anything about torment and I haven’t found it really annoying so far, but I do think confusion and retaliation need a rework.

Retaliation

On hit sent out a ranged attack to the attacker(s) which hits for 1 or 2k but can be blocked and dodged.

Confusion

A) When having confusion on you, your weapon skills have a 50% chance of mixing up. Meaning pressing 1 could result in triggering skill 3. This only applies to weapon skills, not profession skills and/or utilty skills.

OR

B) When having confusion on you, your attacks will also hit your allies.

By making these changes you encourage players to make combat more fluent by moving around and use their dodges rather than stop attacking because it would hurt.

Balancing

- Balance around the entire game

I know that you guys have said that World vs World is supposed to be a casual game. But the ones actually playing world vs world want it to be more.

Right now the class balancing is about sPvP, which is game breaking for WvW. There should be balancing around 1v1, 5v5 and 20v20.

By having 3 different balances other modes don’t have to be affected. The elementalist is a great example. D/D is a strong duel class, it’s nice for 5v5 with the aura sharing but in 20v20 the staff ele will (in most cases) outdo a d/d ele. The other way around, the d/d ele will outdo the staff ele in 1v1.

The elementalist has multiple builds which can be used for different types of group play, which is awesome.

Sadly for other classes there are some major problems.

When reading the following part I want you to imagine the following situation, there is a group setup, where there is not more people allowed to play than the agreed numbers.

In the following examples I’m talking about 1v1, 5v5 and 20v20. When adding a class you are taking up a slot of possibly another class. So take in mind: what will this class bring me that no other class can do better?

Guardian:
1v1: Not many builds – could use more builds.
5v5: Fairly balanced.
20v20: Overpowered – loads of healing to group members, condition removal, retaliation, protection, swiftness and regeneration. For every guardian you have the closer you get to 100% uptime.

Warrior:
1v1: Underpowered, not many builds, forces them to go really glassy in most situations – could use more builds.
5v5: Fairly balanced, maybe a bit underpowered.
20v20: Balanced, hammer stuns are great, just enough condition removal and/or healing on a decent cooldown. The warbanners are great if you make a mistake.

Engineer:
1v1: Strong duel class, fairly balanced.
5v5: Fairly balanced, great dps while still being tanky. Good stomp control.
20v20: Close to useless, reasoning: guardians can too easily spread retaliation, the engineer ignores aoe limit in most cases and because of it’s good dps will almost kill himself. The engineer doesn’t bring anything to the group that no other class can do better (underpowered) – could use more builds.

Ranger:
1v1: Very strong duel class, some builds are a bit overpowered – could use more builds.
5v5: Fairly balanced, maybe a bit underpowered.
20v20: The ranger doesn’t bring anything to the group that no other class can do better (underpowered) – could use more builds.

Thief:
1v1: Very strong duel class, some builds are a bit overpowered – could use more builds.
5v5: Fairly balanced, good stomp control.
20v20: Good stomp control, poison fields and blast finishers. Other than that the thief doesn’t bring anything to the group what no other class can do better (underpowered) – could use more builds.

Necromancer:
1v1: Very strong duel class, some builds are a bit overpowered.
5v5: Very strong, maybe a bit overpowered.
20v20: Very strong, not balanced, but this should be the tone.

Elemantalist:
1v1: Very strong duel class, fairly balanced, dps, cc, healing, cleansing, all in one package.
5v5: Strong class, fairly balanced, aura sharing for team members.
20v20 Strong class, fairly balanced. Support class with decent dps and soft cc.

Mesmer:
1v1: Very strong duel class, some builds are a bit overpowered.
5v5: Decent, fairly balanced.
20v20: Other than the veil the mesmer doesn’t bring anything to the group that no other class can do better (underpowered) – could use more builds.

This is my opinion on the balancing, yours may differ but you can see that the balance focus is based on 5v5 causing some underpowered and overpowered classes in the 1v1 and 20v20 sections of the game.

Guild vs Guild

Guild vs Guild is extremely popular yet being ignored. Is there any chance GvG will be implemented the way we know it? As an arena or even an empty map?

Guilds are wanting to fight eachother on equal footing yet don’t have a decent playground and have to fight without class balancing. Sometimes there are so many people spectating that they cause skill lag not to mention take up queue slots (the guilds fighting eachother also take up queue slots).

If you guys are unsure if GvG would make a profit for you, I’m willing to share the statistics of http://gw2gvg.com, just ask me.

Please share your thoughts.

Reserved for future suggestions.

Completely agree about waypoints. They simply favor the winning server. If Anet would remove waypoint there would be no way at all that a single server could cover all 4 maps at the same time no matter their population. It would make each match up a lot more balanced.

This upgrade should be remove in all keep!

MartyPartys.9187:

Changes regarding movement speed.

- Movement speed

As stated, the maps can’t be bigger because of technical limitations. This is a big problem, because right now there is zero risk in running a big group. There is no advantage in splitting up your group because you can get to the other side of the map in about 3-5 minutes.

Solution: Make everyone move slower, this can be 95% or 90% of what it is now, something you wouldn’t really notice, but will have an impact in the long run. Ofcourse for the jumping puzzles there should be an exception, otherwise you can’t make the jumps anymore.

- Swiftness

When travelling, people usually travel at a 133% speed rate instead of the 100% and that is because swiftness is too easily applied. I don’t say this is a bad thing, quite the opposite. It’s a great boon, especially in combat. For this one I have two suggestions.

A) Have swiftness only work in combat.
B) Swiftness can only be applied to groups smaller than 25 (can be any number), every extra player will not gain the boon.

Personally I prefer option B, but I can understand this is also the hardest one to implement.

- Waypoints

Right now waypoints favor the server that can field the most people, as they can upgrade their keeps faster and in the end put more pressure on less populated servers.

But in my opinion even worse, is that you can skip half of a map by simply clicking a waypoint. The travel time (3-5 minutes) I spoke of earlier, becomes now 1.5-2.5 minutes. Again, there is no risk to split up your group.

Solution: Remove waypoints in WvW, except for the ones at spawn, obviously.

Capturing points

When capturing points (ring after the lord is down) the cap goes faster the more people enter the ring. I think this only promotes running more players and that the cap should go as slow as there would be only 1 player in that ring.

Man I really like some of these points!! Especially the last one.

Isn’t it counter productive that the more people you have, the fast you can cap. Shouldn’t it be the opposite?

For example, a larger group capping has to hold it off longer, giving the defending world more time to defend. Not a cake walk to cap. Smaller groups/worlds shouldn’t cap extremely fast (put the timer on a cap of x amount of players, that way if one or two people capture, it isn’t equal to lets say 50 players.)

I would also like to expand that that should be updated especially on keeps and garrisons, more-so than a camp. Camp defenses could be stronger against large zergs, but cap times are not groundbreaking when it comes to them.

MartyPartys.9187:

Skill Lag

Everyone is aware of what is probably the biggest problem in WvW right now, the skill lag. It’s easy to say: remove the skill lag, but I think that is impossible, here are however some suggestions to lower the skill lag.

- Conditions and boons

Decrease the maximum cap of 25 to 20 for all conditions and boons, compensate with more damage per condition.

Think about it, every single condition/boon (not even every unique condition/boon) has to be sent to the server which has to process it. Every condition/boon has it’s own duration and damage dependend on who applied it. When having fights of 25 vs 25 for example, those are alot of conditions and boons. By decreasing the maximum cap, the skill lag would be decreased.

- Boons are too easily accessable

Some boons are too easy accessable, for example it’s easy to have 100% swiftness, regeneration and protection duration on some classes. Other classes are never below 10 stacks of might. And other classes have almost 100% stability and retaliation uptime. I’m not saying that any of these classes or builds should be nerfed. But in my opinion it would be more fun to require some skill in order to gain boons. This way boons actually add something special to the combat system. Having kitten ons around will also decrease the skill lag.

I rarely have an issue with skill lag due to our low wvw population, so scaling the stacks of conditions to player population/or group population would be better than an overall cap. I could see this hurting our smaller groups when against an opposing larger force

The point about changing Retaliation and Confusion are pretty interesting, but in a good way. Making Confusion actually a “Confuse” mechanic? sounds BA to me.

How about a grouping system that lets us form squads the WAY we enjoy??!

They need a private or guild only squad system to form forces under the 25 person limit.

I’m suprised this thread doesn’t have a lot more attention, you raise a lot of very good points.

Specifically with the waypoints, I agree. Although I don’t think they should be spawn only, the major issues is when there are waypoints on Bay and Hills in the borderlands and Stonemist in EB. Maybe restrict them to just the Garrisons and Keeps in EB, because really they only remove 30 seconds or so from travel time anyway.

Even if that sort of change does not take place (and lets be honest, it is prety unlikely that it will) I think the whole timer aspect of the waypoints when a keep is under attack needs to have something done about it. Sure being able to spam the waypoint to move a zerg to a keep is useful for defenders, but it makes it pretty kitten difficult for a small “ninja” team to take hills while the enemy is on the other side of the map if they can just waypoint directly inside to push the attackers out.