Guild Wars 2

Firstly I loved the idea of WvW, it’s good fun to go have chaotic PvP capping towers and keeps but as the months have gone by its begun to show its flaws. So coming from a BWE participant here are a few thoughts that might aid WvW as an outstanding and long lasting feature to Gw2.

Maps. While i understand servers and limits of tech are against this one, large maps would help to flesh out and draw out battle over a greater time, putting a more crucial aspect on keeping a team of players on their feet if needing to run back is the difference between taking or losing something.

Map Diversity would also be very welcome, perhaps Borderlands more reminiscent of their Eternal Battle grounds brother states (Hills/Mountains, Ruined plains, Bog/Swamp). This would force different tactics on different lands and add some more spice to the match ups.

Incentive to Cap/Lose/Recap. As it stands, there is more incentive to capture towers near enemy spawns for a quick gain of silver and karma and then allow them to be recapped to repeat this than there is to Capture and hold them. A Diminishing return on Capturing outposts or perhaps Greater/lesser rewards based on the upgrades upon capture would maybe turn to focus more towards server score.

Orange swords on the map. They need to go, seriously, its a beacon for zergs and doesn’t inspire any thought or planning to rush to where the crossed swords are in hope of some easy kills.

Anti Zerg. While effective WvW has begun to boil down to who has the biggest, meanest, richest zergs. I cannot for the life of me see an effective way to discourage this type of play (collecting 90-140 players in a long mass capping train) with things in their current state, perhaps some of the listed suggestions combined would help to force split efforts and smarter more competitive play.

Incentive to Hold/ Server Score. Applying boosts to WvW and PvE based on overall score throughout the week is all fine and dandy but I think there are some aspects which need to be removed (Increased health for one) or changed. Score should also not be auto-increased by 5-10-20-50 upon taking a location. Slow incremental point build up over time would ensure that keeps and camps and towers would be held not only for an advantage on the field, but so that maximum points can be gained.

Waypoints. While grand feel almost too cluttered (4 possible on each BL and 5 in SM) Again this is something that might improve from having larger playing fields.

A side thought I had early this week from watching videos of zergs camping in-front of spawns. Perhaps turn these locations into Capture points rather than complete safe zones outside of the Eternal battle grounds (Home spawns excluded in each BL). Capturing said Spawn (includes wading through a mass amount of legendary NPC’s And constantly re spawning Invaders) would close the Waypoint for a small window of time. measures to prevent quick recapturing would be needed but it may add an interesting reward/punishment factor.

Large Scale Events. Another Side thought that would give greater incentive is having the Environment put up a fight alongside the 3 servers. Events such as a Mass Dredge assault on towers or a keep attempting to win it over and rend if from All servers (not for another server) requiring immediate attention would add a sense of stress and panic to WvW. never knowing if what you hold, even as you push on the last few towers and keeps, is going to come under sudden attack, or if the Keep lord you’re about to finish off is suddenly going to have destroyers bubble up from under his feet you’ll need to take out as well. This would aid and hinder some of the natural balance servers find as well; Perhaps a winning server suddenly finds two of its keeps and towers being destroyed and or captured by an army of Giants leaving them vulnerable to a quick cap from the other servers and forcing the winning server to pull back. On the flip side a server about to be reduced to only two keeps left in their BL might have one suddenly be overwhelmed by centaurs as they defend the other from invaders.

TL;DR
Bigger more divers maps, no orange swords, stop zerging from being effective, give outlaying mobs a larger role in the push and flow, lessen WPs, change incentives on capping and holding as well as server buffs based on points.

Critical note on: Stop zerging from being effictive.

First of all, i make a distinction between a zerg and a squad. A zerg i define as a large group of players at the same spot playing on their own. A squad i define as a large group of players playing at the same spot togheter.

This is a MassiveMMO, i don’t think making big groups less effictive is a good idea. What is needed is to make those large groups having to play togheter more. And that this becomes visible somehow. At the moment the only visible way for me to see cooperation is the building of Siegeweapons. The fleeting cooperation of combo skills is now overlooked by most zergs, once people learn this they become squads instead of zergs. But it should somehow be more noticable for people. Or maybe the server communities should learn this better to one another.

About the more diverse maps, would love to see more and bigger maps in the future too.

About having more NPC mobs intervening, not sure about that. I don’t think that that wil attract more PvE players into WvWvW. But anything that can draw more PvE players and more sPvP into WvWvW should be considered. It should be somehow not intervere with the squad clashes. Also more objectives / fighting grounds for small groups would possibly draw some sPvP players into the fray.

About points: i think your on the right way when saying that all and any capturing should not give the same amount of points. Upgrading should change the amount of points given to the holding server. Capturing a well defended tier3 Keep can take hours, this should be reflected in the score for both defender as well as for the attacker.

About Waypoints: i think the current system is ok, as long your keep doesn’t get attacked you can hop quickly over the map, once under attack you have a restriction. Maybe the timer for the defence event should be longer and that the current jump in time should become a bit longer. I mean, have the DE for defending run for 10 min. When this resets a 5 or10 second window let’s people come in then. Instead of the current 3 minutes and 1 or 2 second window. HHmmm, maybe this is worth a seperate post in the suggestion threads.

They absolutely need to do something about the rezzing mechanics.

The biggest draw of a Zerg. aside from the relative safety in numbers is that you are practically immortal unless your entire zerg wipes.

The constant rezzing by team-mates, both from downed state and defeated makes it virtually impossible to nibble a way at a larger force.

Honestly, this is a big deal breaker for me and by far the most frustrating feature of this entire game.

Got a big Zerg infront of your Keep? Might as well hand it over because it’s nigh impossible to defeat a larger force. You can’t even channel a finisher faster than someone else can rezz their team-mate.

This is game-breaking.

If they would make the maps bigger, then small mans/solo’s could avoid the zerg much much easier. That is the biggest problem imho.

Random starting points would be swell too. If the Glicko system is going to lock you into playing the same servers 4 times in a row you shouldn’t have to be in the exact same place 4 times in a row.

@Zergs, define zerg.

If you mean “large group of people”, and by extension are saying that big groups of people are inherently wrong to have in WvW then you’re just flat out wrong.

My guild rolls with 30-60 people at a time and murders groups of 50-100 while maintaining map dominance. Same thing with most coordinated WvW guilds. There’s a difference between a group of random people following a PuG Commander, and a guild and it’s allies following a guild commander utilizing tactics.

In addition to the above, we have our smaller groups going out to flip camps, ninja keeps and towers, distract enemy forces, bleed towers/keeps of supply, and scout all the time. We view both as being equally important. Small groups play an integral role in WvW, you just have to go through the process of getting coordinated.

Yeah the game doesn’t tell you to get small havoc-spreading groups along with a main force, but you can choose to do that and dominate. I see too many complaints that WvW is all zerg when they haven’t even tried getting coordinated with a guild.

If you want zerging to be less effective, then get coordinated and kick their kitten

Dee Jay.2460:

Got a big Zerg infront of your Keep? Might as well hand it over because it’s nigh impossible to defeat a larger force. You can’t even channel a finisher faster than someone else can rezz their team-mate.

This is game-breaking.

It’s possible to defeat a big zerg, but I agree that the insta-rezzing makes it much harder than it has to be. If you’re taking 80 people to a keep door and they’re dumb enough to stand there getting their faces nuked by defenders and siege, you should be punished for it insteading having the hard counter of insta-rezzing.

I remember when my guild fought the WM and SF zerg (like 70-100) with about 30 people in the open field. We tried bait-and-bleed, flanking, portals, pincers, etc. If we pushed into them, we’d get out on the other side and their guys would be rezzed up in the back, and they could push us back at full force. If we used bait-and-bleed they would eventually push us back a bit, then rez the dead. The problem was that if we didn’t kill them all at once, they would rez the downed. If we rush them and went all out and killed half, they would rez them after we wiped. Not to say their skill and tactics weren’t a factor, just that it would be much closer minus the mass rezzing.

That being said, if you want to counter zergs overall then do it by making a guild. There’s nothing stopping you and everyone else on your server from doing it except your lack of initiative.

Mance.5640:

If they would make the maps bigger, then small mans/solo’s could avoid the zerg much much easier. That is the biggest problem imho.

We move a tactical group of 5-15 (depending on time of day) all through the Borderlands and do fine with avoiding zergs. You shouldn’t be able to just avoid them all by mindlessly running through a map. It would be incredibly frustrating if small groups could go anywhere they please on the entire map without you having any say in it. I think the current size is actually fine with regards to that.

However, I agree EB is a different story.

Seems we are only focusing on the “what is a zerg” portion and ignoring the rest here. Yes some guilds are coordinated but most servers T3 and under don’t and most likely wont ever pick up on this or establish this so a nudge in the right direction via game design would be useful to create tougher match ups for everyone and thus more fun (unless you only have fun by owning every map and trolling spawn).

If having events that directly effect towers/keeps/supply seems off then perhaps just randomly spawing bosses (dragons dropping in maybe) for the servers to fight over for a few extra bonus points?

Swish.2463:

If having events that directly effect towers/keeps/supply seems off then perhaps just randomly spawing bosses (dragons dropping in maybe) for the servers to fight over for a few extra bonus points?

Focus should be PvP and structures.

I agree about upgraded towers and keeps being worth more points as currently there is little incentive and reward for upgrading. Maybe give a guild influence per tick as it is usually the guilds that claim them and upgrade.

I’m not too keen on adding more PvE content in WvW – you don’t have to look further then Grub in EB to see how much of a needless distraction that can be.

As for anti-zerg measures: playing in large numbers is what is the epic part of WvW. One of the finest memories in WvW I have was defending a Hills Keep from wave after wave of enemy attack with 20 trebuchets being destroyed in those hours of siege. They had more numbers but we were more determined and in the end defended our keep.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun in smaller groups – I once captured a keep in a group of 4 while there were 6 defenders – they just weren’t determined enough to charge all at once and we pulled them from walls one by one and in the end took the keep.