Guild Wars 2

TL;DR – Give people who invest a minimum amount of gold to upgrade a tower to T2/T3 get a buff similar to determination (not as powerful.. obviously), while they remain in the tower (can’t leave the tower or the buff is gone).

Firstly, I think adding additional PPT to towers/keeps/garrions based on their tier would give additional incentive to upgrade.

For example:

Tier 1 – Ticks for less
Tier 2 – Ticks the same as it does now
Tier 3 – Ticks for additional (maybe double?)

As for giving individuals incentive to use their own gold and time to upgrade these towers (as well as defend), lets give them a buff while they remain in that tower (Maximum of 5 people). I can’t think of offhand how much it costs to fully upgrade a tower at the moment, but for arguments sake, lets say it costs 5 gold in total (2.5g for T2, and 2.5g more to upgrade to T3). For the example, lets assume the max of 5 players are taking part in the upgrades, and it’s a minimum of 50s each to get the buff. One player can do it themselves, they’d just have to front the entire 2.5g or 5g.

Here’s how it breaks down:

- The tower gets captured
- The 5 players donate 50s to begin the upgrade to Tier 2
- These 5 players now have an active buff on them while they remain in the tower
- Tower is upgraded to Tier 2, they begin the upgrade to Tier 3 (additional 50s each)
- These 5 players now have a more powerful version of the buff
- The buff remains on these players indefinitely as long as they stay in the tower, if they leave the tower, it’s gone.

So.. the buffs.. lets call it a “vested interest” buff

T2 Vested Interest buff

- 50% increase in damage
- 25% damage reduction from all sources
- CC immunity (or stability) (Cant be mesmer pulled, knocked back, feared, etc..)

T3 Vested Interest buff

- 100% increase in damage
- 50% damage reduction from all sources
- CC immunity or Stability
- 50% increase in siege damage
- Players under the buff receive 10s per tick

If T2 or T3 towers are either unoccupied or don’t have a max of 5 people inside with the buff:

- If it’s a T2 tower, players can donate 1g to acquire the T2 buff
- If it’s a T3 tower, players can donate 2g to acquire the T3 buff

Basically that’s it. It may seem OP, but realistically, what are 5 people going to do against a properly coordinated zerg? Then again, think of how much havoc 5 T3 buffed people could do to an uncoordinated zerg..

What do people think?

The WVW needs that have a Dark Age component. We need Relics or something in our BL’s that give big incentive to defend your lands. Make it epic to take someones BL

Remove the gold incentive and people will upgrade them.

Come up with 10 different upgrades and make it so towers can have 3, garrisons can have 6, and SM can have 9.

Convert some of the PPT into guild experience and guild merrits.

Introduce more things for guilds to buy (like housing….) and do (any reason to group at all would be nice….).

This way guilds will be encouraged to take things, they will be encouraged to defend things, and guilds will be rewarded for playing as a guild.

Relics worked because it gave your realm bonuses. This should be how the orbs always worked.

The orbs need to give PvE bonuses NOT WvW bonuses. You will have servers fighting for control of the orbs as hard as they can, then leave to use those rewards (like magic find or whatever) in dungeons thus meaning less people defending and the other servers a chance to get it for themselves.

I like the idea behind the suggestion, but not the execution. Here’s why:

1) I like claiming and defending a tower or keep. I will gladly donate towards its upgrades if I plan on being in WvWvW awhile and believe my server has a reasonable chance of defending it while I’m logged on. That does not mean I stay parked inside the tower or keep all night, though. I can be doing any one of a number of tasks in support of the defense of that tower or keep that take me outside its walls:

- Running supply from a nearby camp to build siege inside the tower or keep.

- Escorting Dolyaks to the tower or keep so it receives sufficient supply to complete the upgrades I’ve ordered.

- Capturing/re-capturing lost supply camps to restore the flow of supply to the tower.

- Jumping down off a wall to bomb a ram at the gate and buy time for reinforcements to arrive.

- Attacking an enemy force at another tower or keep to weaken them (e.g. destroy their golems) in an effort to pre-emptively reduce or eliminate the threat they represent to the tower or keep I’m guarding.

With your proposed suggestion, I’d lose whatever buff I had gained the moment I set foot outside the tower or keep; though my actions outside of it are all directly or indirectly related to its defense and support.

I think the better option would be to apply the buff similar to how a guild’s upgrades are applied to a tower or keep; they effect an area around the objective and benefit any ally within that radius while they remain in effect. If you want to limit this new buff to just the interior of the tower or keep, that’s fine. Eliminating it as soon as someone leaves the tower or keep (and presumably not being able to benefit from it again) is not a good idea, in my opinion.

Unless, of course, you intended the buff to be restored as soon as they re-enter the tower or keep. As written in the original suggestion, though, it wasn’t clear if this is what you meant; it appeared they lose the buff and will not benefit from it again even if they re-enter the tower or keep.

2) I like the team spirit of your suggestion in that you want to see the buff applied to a party of 5 players who are cooperating in a coordinated fashion to upgrade and defend a tower. However, I disagree with limiting the benefit to just those 5 players. WvWvW is – or at least should be, in my opinion – a server-wide effort.

As soon as you start according special treatment to a particular group of players – regardless of their personal contribution – you create class divisions. This will tear a server apart internally faster than any enemy server ever will. If a buff is applied to a tower or keep, then it should be applied to everyone equally. This is why guild buffs affect all allies and not just members of the guild who applied the buffs.

3) I agree more needs to be done to incentive/reward players for upgrading and defending their fortifications. However, I think the bonuses you suggest here are a bit OP. Applying a 50% or 100% increase in damage is a bit extreme.

Other posts have explored several options for how to incentivize and reward upgrading and defending towers and keeps. There’s not much consensus on the specific details of how to do this. Where there is consensus, though, is that something needs to be done to improve the rewards for defense.

Based on Devon Carter’s recent blog regarding future plans for WvWvW, it appears the devs have this on their radar. Let’s see what they come up with.

4) I think rewarding players with 10s per tick is not a good idea. As soon as you monetize a reward, you create farmers. We’d be plagued with AFK bots who would sit in towers and keeps doing nothing (after having done the minimum to be eligible for the reward in the first place) just so they can collect that 10s per tick.

5) I do agree with your suggestion to scale the points-per-tick based on the upgrade status of a tower or keep. Devon Carter hinted at this a bit when he wrote:

“We have some ideas in the pipeline to try to increase scoring when people are playing the game and to make it much more difficult to keep your territory without actively guarding it.”

I think we’re going to see WvWvW evolve in line with the spirit of your suggestion; at least in some areas. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Here are three posts I made along similar lines if you’re interested:

Influence Costs:Benefits Claiming Objectives

Make PPT dependent on # of defenders

Scale WvWvW objectives’ value w/ upgrades

Ostra.3927:

Relics worked because it gave your realm bonuses. This should be how the orbs always worked.

The orbs need to give PvE bonuses NOT WvW bonuses. You will have servers fighting for control of the orbs as hard as they can, then leave to use those rewards (like magic find or whatever) in dungeons thus meaning less people defending and the other servers a chance to get it for themselves.

The relics worked because they gave bonuses that affected BOTH PvE and RvR, I think you would find most WvW guild wouldn’t give two kittens about orbs that only buffed PvE. They would need to give buffs to WvW as well for it to be worth while, the true problem is, they were to easy to get, we need an SM type castle in each BL that holds the Orbs otherwise they are just to easy to obtain.