Guild Wars 2

Long time DAOC player here. No doubt many of you know that WvsW shares alot of core design tenants with RvR. While WvsW does some things better and some things worse (as you would expect), I definitely see some things both short term and long term that need addressing if WvsW is to achieve its status as the best large scale pvp in the MMO space.

Short Term:

Map Size/Movement: The WvsW maps are huge. Personally I think thats a very good thing. And if I’m going to draw comparisons to DAOC, then it needs to be mentioned that DAOC also had huge maps. However the biggest I am seeing is that because of the difficulty in making waypoints at keeps, map movement is extremely difficult. This is also leading to a over reliance on zerging because players can’t easily get to places where they need to defend or attack, so they just follow the zerg around. It needs to be easier for players to move from keep to keep. And its especially important for a guild to be able to easily defend THEIR keep. So if you have claimed a keep there should be a way to quickly access it.

Lack of communication and focus: This is because of a couple issues. Foremost that you have no way of knowing when your guild claimed keep is under attack. In DAOC not only did you see when your guild keep was under attack, you saw how many players were attacking it. And you also saw if any keep from any guild in your alliance was under attack. Alliances are something I would love to see in this game. Allowing guilds to ally together just makes tons of sense. And letting guilds see guard spam (if they want to) just sounds like the logical thing to do. I could have sworn I remembered Arenanet talking in the betas about doing this, but I’ve seen nothing since. Maybe its still planned? I don’t know. But if it isn’t it should be.

Costs to players: This is a bit of a barrier to entry and honestly its a bit puzzling. Seige costs need to be looked at. Most are to high (though some are fine). To go along with this items are damaged at the same rate as in PVE and honestly thats just silly. It can easily keep a low level player out of WvsW. I’d suggest that kills resulting from pvp do 50 to 25% less durability damage than a PVE kill. Why punish players who want to get in on the action?

Long Term:

Incentive: Alot of people have said that WvsW has low incentives and that it will hurt its longevity down the road. While I dunno that I agree, I think anyone who has played DAOC would agree with me that some sort of PVP dungeon that is accessible to the controlling server would be a hugely successful addition. Who didn’t love Darkness Falls? Obviously this isn’t something I’d expect to see anytime soon, but I definitely think its something Arenanet should strongly consider.

Beyond these issues I’ve mentioned WvsW is about as good as it gets for large scale open world pvp. This doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, but I’m fairly happy with things right now. My biggest source of frustration is the difficulty in staying with a guild or small group. Because of speed variances, and a lack of ways to move around the map more than anything else.

Keep up the good work!

I wholehearthedly agree with darkness falls (it was the best and most brilliant content ever in any mmo) and wholeheartedly disagree about wvw size. Currently a single(or 2) zergs are enough to control all map because all objectives are next to each other. WvW should highly encourage lots of small groups working as a team for victory (of course you need some personal incentives for that). WvW size should be much much bigger and we need larger areas for group fights without losing team can resign to nearest keep.

I totally agree with the cost issue and the logistical ones. Costs are way too high, and the way of paying for things (one person selects to upgrade and pays a billion silver) doesn’t match the usage model (tens or even hundreds of people can benefit from the upgrade). If the cost of upgrades was spread out over the population of the map then it’d be a lot more bearable, as even the most expensive upgrades would cost around a silver across your whole team, but as it is it feels pretty awful.

The logistics thing is a big issue too. It’s not so much knowing where the enemies are as knowing where the friends are; there’s just very little sense of what assets your team has available and where they are currently engaged. It’s pretty awkward when you’re fighting in a large number of different locations (and your team might well be fighting in half a dozen locations or even more) but have no way of telling if help is coming, if help even exists, or where you are really needed.

Being able to get people in the right spot seems like it’d lead to more satisfying and even battles overall.

Cost only seems high now because we are new. The cost for upgrades isn’t bad at all. Upgrades for keeps and towers are meant as guild projects. A guild claims that keep and then sponsors upgrades. It’s not meant for the solo soldier to bear the weight of the reinforced walls pricetag.

As for movement speeds, I think it’s just right. Any faster and it would get too hard to take anything. Some of the success in taking towers is doing it before the enemy team gets there to reinforce the small squad they left on gurad.

Zerging is just the sign of lack of leadership, not because of movement constraints. Most people will follow the loudest voice of the crowd. When that voice says attack here, everyone goes. Until guilds get multiple commanders, and start breaking people p into smaller groups; we will have the zerg.

As for lack of communication, someone just needs to step up and hang out and defend keeps/towers and give status reportsto the group. if you are spending the gold on upgrades and seige to defend your guild encampment, leaving a few soldiers to defend and scout is just a good idea