Guild Wars 2

First off – I’d get the game out of the stupid medieval rut. Tanks, Submarines, Airships, Subterranean APCs, and Helicopters would be available, with bases having adequate defenses against them (Megalasers, anti-air cannons, and massive cannons like the Blood Legion Ghostbore Cannon used in the Iron Legion personal story and Claw Island)

Towers, camps, and forts would be redesigned to be less identical. We’d have a few medieval castles and forts, but also some like the Silverwastes forts, Charr outposts, Asuran Labs, and Dredge facilities. Some would specialize in providing vehicles and war machines instead of mere supply, while others would just be reinforced chokepoints that provide siege coverage when controlled (Like the Steeleye Span). Maybe a searing cauldron or two.

The maps themselves would be completely overhauled, and not symmetrical. More environments, more waypoints to allow the servers to create more organic and dynamic borders than the static shapes of EBG and DBL.

Then again, the game I’ve always admired most for massive, large-scale theatre-of-war PvP has always been Planetside.

Svarty.8019:

My vision for perfect WvW is putting big fights inside structures. That’s when it’s most fun, for me, and what brings all the elements of WvW together.

I think we need more dramatic fighting inside keeps.

I like Desert map Air and Fire keep Lords. They have the right amount of power – sometimes enough to swing a fight and lead to an outnumbered victory. This is a fun thing that should not be changed. Well done, Arenanet.

The old last-gasp, desperate Lord room fights tend be very rare nowadays. In the past, these battles could last long enough for the third side to participate and lead to great, epic battles in the keeps.

I would like to see the return of (or a new replacement for) several features which were removed for dubious reasons;

1. the “bug” that meant people could waypoint into contested structures,
2. the “bug” that meant people could banner-rez Lords.
   These are what made WvW more dramatic and exciting.
   While Emergency Waypoints are fun and cool (well done, Arenanet), they are also on a long timer which is six(?) times as long the “bug” – this is too long and often leads to zergs capping before defenders can arrive.
   Nobody really wants to cap stuff without a decent (read: even) fight, first!

I also believe that the Desert map Garrison walls need to be reappraised regarding which walls are destructible. At the moment, there are too few options to counter point-blank siege here – this is one reason that there aren’t enough fights at this keep. (On a side-note, I’d like to see the whole structure redesigned from the ground up. It’s horrible even for defenders).

There are plenty of opportunities for the map guys to make changes to the WvW maps, but I’d keep a copy of the current maps so that reversion is an option – WvW players are notoriously picky, but I’d also be looking to change the layout of ABL hills – it simply doesn’t make sense to have a really long wall at one side that people can;

1. put lots of holes in, and
2. just walk past
   In the attached picture you can see, I would remove the blue wall and replace with gates at the positions of the red lines. It would mean shorter journeys for dolyaks, but upgrading hills is difficult anyway.

Everything in this post is my opinion – please explain why, if you disagree.

Yet everyone you ask will go “OMG PPT k-training whore!” when you want to fight in and around structures – just like we did in the old days, when it was much easier to get into structures and easier to hold up caps.

None of them realize that we need to constantly karma train to keep upgrades at a low level and get fun fights around structures. Once a tower/keep is T2 or T3 with 5+ superior ACs that are certain to be there, poof WvW fun flies out window and it’s zerg zerg zerg all day long just to do something.

But noooooooo… we’re PPT kitten and ruin WvW because the true WvWers want “fights” (ie zerging).

So yeah. If Anet is a brickwall, you’re trying to talk sense into the snails crawling all over the wall.

That’s because players aren’t game designers (in general) and most players aren’t actually looking at what makes a healthy, long term, viable game.

Sarika.3756:

That’s because players aren’t game designers (in general) and most players aren’t actually looking at what makes a healthy, long term, viable game.

Neither are the anet ‘designers’ then.

morrolan.9608:

Sarika.3756:

That’s because players aren’t game designers (in general) and most players aren’t actually looking at what makes a healthy, long term, viable game.

Neither are the anet ‘designers’ then.

You can legitimately make that argument the moment polls were allowed. Effectively, players were allowed to decide their fate. So we get scoring (for the good/bad that does). So unsurprising…players voted for something to help them artificially win at the game more. Even though population coverage solutions would have helped in that regard, and then some.

Before that however, yes, they were still designers. Yes, it takes more than posting a written document on a forum to be a game developer. I still hold by that players are super good at giving feeling, and discovering METAs/Bugs. After finding the METAs(includes siege placements, not just skills)…WvWs as a whole can agree that balance is an issue. Unfortunately, some suggestions are not necessarily good on the entire game mode however. Like a lot of which is posted here. At the very least some posts manage to state their bias for a play style which is nice.

Dawdler.8521:

Once a tower/keep is T2 or T3 with 5+ superior ACs that are certain to be there, poof WvW fun flies out window and it’s zerg zerg zerg all day long just to do something.

^^ This is a great observation.
GvG players want Arenanet to balance the combat powers so that they work in WvW. I do, too, but I would prefer it if weaker sides could compete with dominant ones in terms of attacking structures. That’s where the best fun fights happen especially because there’s something at stake in the fight.

Perhaps a look at the current trends is in order …

Dominant sides have all of their structures fully upgraded most of the time and thus have far more time to come and defend. The weaker sides are not able to hold all of their structures at T3, but usually everybody is able to get their own garrison to T3 for the majority of the time.

All of this results in the best fights being the dominant side attacking a weaker side’s garrison (or those multi-sided fights inside Stonemist Castle). I think there’s usually a great drop off in population after a weak side loses their garrison – many people are overcome with despair at this point and consider that there is “nothing they can do” to prevent the steamrolling antics of the dominant side.

Meanwhile, the dominant side doesn’t have to put people on their own map, just a few scouts – T3 and emergency waypoints mean they can often destroy a weak side’s efforts and morale, so they probably won’t quicky return within the timer on the EWP to take advantage of it being down.

I would then ask how to make it so that it’s more difficult to upgrade to (or maintain) T3 if you’re the powerful server without also making it difficult for the weaker sides? I’ve only ever thought dynamic handicapping is the way.

This would mean generation of a metric to measure who is leading at the current time.
Then we could have any number of huge or small tweaks happen using that metric
I would prefer to see smaller tweaks at first, such as;

• slightly longer EWP timers for dominant sides (because if the teams are mismatched, there’s less likelyhood of the weaker side desiring combat),
• more HPs for weak side’s destructibles and Lords (to allow weaker sides more time to return),
• THE BOMB – a bomb spawns in the weakest side’s spawn on the dominant server’s map. This bomb can be carried to a wall to instantly destroy it. The bomb should be on a long timer, but not so long that the dominant side will be bothered to send a spy to waste it (Okay, this may seem a bit like a nerfed version of the centre event on DBL, but that event rewarded powerful sides, so this isn’t the same). Also, the bomb carrier can be killed, so there’s some gameplay there – maybe they even show up on the map, who knows?

Disclaimer: This post is entirely my opinion.

@Svarty

I think you identified the problems well, but I cannot condone introducing handicaps. Handicaps are not very satisfying for the weaker team and will be despised by the stronger team. Even if they technically solve the problem, they won’t do much for making things more fun.

At the core, I think we need to accept that we’re trying to balance for a certain range of population imbalance. Once it gets too extreme, solutions will start swaying close matches.

Unfortunately, I think the core issue here is player behavior. The accepted strategy is to try and ‘one-push’ a keep. If you get rebuffed, you give up and go home. Sometimes, if you have even numbers, you’ll stay and fight—but if your server is undermanned then it’s considered impossible. If even a few players make a sustained assault, then even a T3 keep may eventually fall. Even if it doesn’t, they’ll disproportionately draw enemies to defend the keep which can alleviate pressure on the rest of their forces.

We just need to get away from ninja-capping as the only accepted contribution from small teams.

You dont really need to handicap too much.

- Remove tier based scoring, all score balance went to kittenoon as Anet introduced it.

- Make walls/doors/guards have a fixed percentage increase per tier. Like, T0 is normal wall hp, T1 is 20% more hp, T2 is 40% more hp, T3 is 60% more hp. Simple. Effective. Right now it’s absolutely ridiculous how the tier system works because not only to wall hp massively increase (nearly 100% to T3) but you also have damage reduction increase by a kitten ton so you are actually looking at around 200%+ eqvivalent hp compared to T0.

- Lower superior siege damage increase to 25% (all). Reduce normal AC base damage to 75% of current.

That’s pretty much it.

@Dawdler
Those are all great suggestions that Arenanet should pay attention to, but none of them are to do with handicapping.

Sviel.7493:

@Svarty
I think you identified the problems well, but I cannot condone introducing handicaps. Handicaps are not very satisfying for the weaker team and will be despised by the stronger team. Even if they technically solve the problem, they won’t do much for making things more fun.

I can understand that they are unsatisfying in the current forms – direct buff (Outnumbered) or spawning things (Siegeraiser) – both of these handicaps could be improved, or new ones created. If the handicaps actually even up the match without making it seem like that side did nothing and still won.

Let’s not forget that the basic WvW has in-built handicaps in the form of the different EB keeps for strongest/middle and weak sides. Red was alway the weaker side and Green the stronger. My point being that the original developers knew that some form of handicapping was going to be necessary.

We just need to get away from ninja-capping as the only accepted contribution from small teams.

I can’t see how that can be achieved without handicapping – I mean, I like the idea. Could you describe what you mean please?

I tried to explain alternate value to ninja-capping it in the paragraph above the quoted one.

Small teams can break down a T3 structure and leave it vulnerable to attack from a larger team. Or, if the enemy group defending it is also small, they can attempt to take it themselves. It’s much more effective for a small team to do this than a zerg as the cost in manpower is much lower for a similar effect.

Chinchilla.1785:

morrolan.9608:

Sarika.3756:

That’s because players aren’t game designers (in general) and most players aren’t actually looking at what makes a healthy, long term, viable game.

Neither are the anet ‘designers’ then.

You can legitimately make that argument the moment polls were allowed. Effectively, players were allowed to decide their fate. So we get scoring (for the good/bad that does). So unsurprising…players voted for something to help them artificially win at the game more. Even though population coverage solutions would have helped in that regard, and then some.

Before that however, yes, they were still designers. Yes, it takes more than posting a written document on a forum to be a game developer.

I’m not even talking about the poll driven methodology, I’m specifically referencing the point about game design for a viable, healthy long term game design. Many design elements in WvW are antithetical to that goal.

I can’t give you any designer insight, but My most enjoyable WvWvW was back at launch when everyone didn’t have max gear and we all were lvl 10 to lvl 30’s running around in trashy greens. I enjoyed the close combat where you weren’t gutted by lag or auto attacks.

Lots of great suggestions, but right now I’d settle for people actually playing the game as opposed to standing around AFK for hours inside keeps. YB is proof that you only need a handful of people to take Stonemist, because all night that’s all I’ve seen active, yet we never went undermanned because of all the AFK players in side safe zones. Is this some new meta?

Guild Wars had great ways of making the alliance battles fairer is one side was starting to win too much territory- but then GW2 seems to have taken out all the good bits (like templates, for instance) and just inserted inferior stuff instead.

I’d like to see maps redesigned completely so that they are larger but with 5 servers and three identical maps, each one EB style so structures matter to each other and one central keep like SM in the middle of each map. Think of it as 3 map chess.

There would be a penalty applied the more structures you own (think debuff)- a lot of testing required to set it to the right level! So no one side could dominate against 4 opponents.

I would add a boost if you own less structures but sadly this would be exploited if it included any stats so it would have to be similar to the outmanned buff, or a very small boost.

There would be some epic fights – three ways are fun already but imagine 5 and the tactics needed to be successful would be very different- running one zone blob would not work.

Replace thieves’ entire trait lines with bratwurst

tl;dr, I’m just adding my thoughts here. It’s not perfect or specific.

Wish there was a timed or something ‘extra’ or a bonus timed event announced by the game, visually indicated on maps, happening in minor WvW map objectives like monuments or indigenous mob camps like dredge/centaurs/hyleks, or could just be a small to medium sized objectives such as camps and towers or a something new. Give those places something meaningful more than its current and/or aesthetic value. This could happen and change area every skirmishes or hourly.

my perfect wvw would be a wvw without zergs. Group of people separated running around and taking different objectives cuncurrently so that we have many different small scale fights in every map … and this can be achive with a system that gives reward if you take objectivs on different maps simultaneously

PierPiero.9142:

my perfect wvw would be a wvw without zergs. Group of people separated running around and taking different objectives cuncurrently so that we have many different small scale fights in every map … and this can be achive with a system that gives reward if you take objectivs on different maps simultaneously

Once upon a time, I thought that would be fun, too.

What I’ve experienced is that small group WvW seems to happens at the launch of a WvW-oriented game. Then people find that the groups are having success and join the groups. The groups become zergs.

I think your idea of the coordination of capturing objectives on different maps simultaneously seems interesting, but how would that help the war effort? Could you give more detail?

The way I interpret the concept is that it would be possible that such coordination could happen with guild groups, but zerg-oriented (rather than GvG, open field combat oriented) people would join the more popular commander, filling his/her map and the other commander(s) would have very few people.

Subversion.2580:

1) Get rid of- or greatly reduce the transfer costs to allow the playerbase to reset balance themselves. Overall, GW2 has managed their business model very well. The one exception is WvW, Worlds and transfer costs that leave the WvW community, and only the WvW community, to (no matter how indirect) pay for content. Some players transfer to win others transfer to find an environment that maximizes their particular preference of content and so forth. What they all have in common is that they transfer for reasons tied to content (favourable content, matching content), the system encourages it and that is a deplorable business practise where players essentially pay for the game several times over just to re-access their preferred content.

No! Just No!
Free transfers are the original cause of population imbalance and reduced/free transfers since have only succeeded in making things worse.
Do it again and you could finish WvW for good.

My actual server tag above my head would be a start.

First, running around is annoying, so all camps should have waypoints after their RI is expended and there is a “supply” route from the natural spawn to the camp. For example, if you spawn in the SW side, and you want the NEC to have a waypoint, you could capture SWC, Bay, Garri, and the sentries in between, you can have a waypoint to the camp. Or you could go through the south side by taking South camp, SET, Hills, NEC, and the sentries in between. You should be rewarded for maintaining clear supply routes between your home spawn and your territory.

Second: supply should be the main thing to fight around. Whoever controls the supply controls the universe. SIEGES (not fights) should be driven on how effective the supply the offense spends is vs the supply the defense spends.

Ideal Siege Flow:
Whoever controls the supply over time should win the siege. This means owning a majority (not 100%) of the camps that feed into a structure (3 out of 5, or 2 out of 3, or w/e).

To facilitate this, we make all ranged siege (Arrow Carts, Catapults, Trebs, Cannons, Mortars, Ballistas, Shield Generators) cost supply to rearm (they spawn with a few shots based on the type of siege), but any siege with a charge up bar does increasing damage based on the charge (optimal damage comes from fully charging the bar). This indirectly buffs rams and golems since you spend supply and you get infinite uses, but they are riskier as they have to melee structures and are very vulnerable to disablers, and boiling oil is also free to use so you have to contest that as well.

This means offense and defense need to constantly resupply in order to continue their siege. This means you need to secure camps. If one side has more camps, they will win over time assuming there are no heavy fights that break one side completely as the other side will eventually run out of supply faster than the other (odd number of camps means one side runs out first).

Securing a MAJORITY of camps means that your zergs have to split. Thus the siege combat flow will actually start with multiple (ideally you hit all camps) smaller skirmishes, allowing for the small group fights to occur, or even “gvg” over camps. With 5 camps, you need to secure 3, which means you can afford 3 groups of 15 with extra roamers/pugs. Since defenders will probably own the camps long enough to have waypoints available, you must contest multiple, if not all camps in order to prevent reinforcements from arriving quickly (maps are ideally larger to make up for all the waypoints).

With some structure changes, the offense should be able to focus the same wall from at least 2 camps trebs, or they can take the risk and go for the cheaper catas. In order to break the offense, the defense will need to not only hold their defensive camps for resupplying, but destroy the enemy siege(or w/e) at all of the offensive foward bases, as the offense can quickly and easily respawn and resupply at each camp they control if uncontested. The defense could zerg, but this would be inefficient as there are 5 locations you have to potentially zerg, while the offense can build at potentially any of them and respawn at the ones they have proper routes to.

Presumably once the walls are down on outer/inner (if offense wins), the individual groups on both sides can team up and make the final pushes/defense on the keep/tower lord. This is where the large zerg battle occurs, while roamers can still focus on camps through backcapping and such. If the defense wins the zerg fight, it helps for roamers to contest the camps to avoid enemy reinforcements (and vice versa) since camps allow for waypoints if held (see the top of the post).

This kind of siege warfare allows for all sizes of play (zerg and skirmishing), although the sheer number of things to cap does make it harder to siege effectively if the offense is small in numbers (which is practically impossible now too anyways). The other nice part is that it forces people OUT of camping their structures. Since you have to spend supply to use ranged siege, the “safe” strategy of turtling will inevitably deplete the supply of the turtle. If they refuse to exit, they will lose the ability to use their defensive siege and their walls will inevitably crumble. Fight for your supply, or lose your structure.

With adjustments, this kind of high level warfare would be ideal to me as it rewards various playstyles and hurts the turtle strategy.

after the stream on ashes of creation yesterday, they have the siege (WvW) game i hever dreamed about players can even siege cities Ç_Ç.

I dont think Anet can compete with that….. by miles…

1) Camps are to easy to take. Move the champion tower Lord to each camp.

2) Camp tier upgrades should be time gated and not based by how many caravan/yaks gets to its destination.

3) To promote roaming in communication with commanders. Give Sentry’s the ability to take out/kill caravan/yak unless the caravan/yak has guards protecting it and giving more· purpose for small group communication to take camps.

4) Escorting a caravan/yak is to hard for one person to do and is typically done by just one person. So allow the buff the caravan/yak has, to be shared with one other person.

5) Siege should have an auto attack option and at what distance chosen.

6) Cannon siege should have less distance of range then ballista siege.

7) All siege should be able to take out other siege with ease.

8) Keep/Tower/Castle gates should be easier to take down then walls

9) Limit the amount of hits a wall and gate can take in a 10 seconds span. To incentives multiple plans of attack and to deter mindless zerging.

10) Watchtower improvements should only apply to Keeps/Castles.

11) Ruin cannons should stay till destroyed by apposing enemy’s and not by the lose of the ruins.

12) Add multiple supply depots in Desert Borderland Towers.

13) Limit the amount of gate/wall repairs done in a suitable time frame. Not to fast and not to slow.

14) Sentry’s that apply a mark on enemy’s should last 30 seconds longer.

15) Oil and cannons spawned by fortifications shouldn’t be damaged by player skills. Only by other siege.

16) Remove Mortar’s from all fortifications to balance idea 9)

17) Now to give a small group and single roamers the initiative to take towers/camps and escort dolyaks. Those that escort dolyaks should gain one bag per escort. A small group taking a camp should gain 3 bags limited to 3 players and 5 bags from a tower limited to 5 players.

My perfect WvWvW would look a little like what I just explained. Mainly because WvWvW isn’t just one game mode. Its three game modes in one. Roaming, skirmishing and zerging. .Roaming consists of 1-2 players. Skirmishing consists of 3-8 players. Zerging/blobing consists of 9-100 players. The changes I suggest are based off of making all three game modes in WvWvW purposeful and rewarding.

I would like Anet to think about how they question us in their polls. For example what game mode in WvW do we play the most. Roaming, skirmishing or zerging and based off of what we chose they ask another series of questions. So this way they can have more accurate information that isn’t conflicting. Oh and only question those with 3k+ WvW rank. This way Anet will get the best feedback from experienced players.

P.S. The best feedback from experienced players aren’t typically commanders and not the voice of every one that plays WvW. Just because everyone jumps off a bridge doesnt’ mean you should. I face palmed so hard when the first poll voted for scoring and not quality of life updates.

HazyDaisy.4107:

My actual server tag above my head would be a start.

I really don’t understand why they haven’t done this already. It’s the simplest of fixes that would please a huge number of people.

Jayne.9251:

HazyDaisy.4107:

My actual server tag above my head would be a start.

I really don’t understand why they haven’t done this already. It’s the simplest of fixes that would please a huge number of people.

I’m lucky enough to be on a server that gets it’s own name, but I’d be pretty heartbroken if I was effectively erased and whored out in the name of population balance. Sure, there’s potential for conflict based on different groups, but that’s not as big of a problem as what’s being done now.

@Kiroshima

Turtling is already a time-gated strategy. If you don’t retake supply camps, you’re not going to be able to keep your walls/gates up. This is especially true on DBL since there are more possible points of attack and therefore it is less possible to counter-siege all of them and do so before the offense gets some damage done.

Turtling isn’t truly time-gated due to group mentality and map structure. To take any keep, you actually have to contend with 2 structures worth of supplies, the garrison and the target keep. Worst case scenario, you have to burn through 2200 (tier 3 keep target, tier 3 garrison to supply, with only 100 of your own (offense can only take 1 camp to siege from without risk assuming trebs as the method of assault, plus whatever they carry with them). This doesn’t count 80/160 supply per yak, which is very hard to gank solo as the yak travels along the reinforcement path. It will take ages to break through a T3 wall that is properly sieged up, unless the offense takes HUGE risk (eg proxy catas) which can get rained on by ac’s.

If Offense plays safe and uses trebs, they can only destroy certain walls safely, and will be unable to deplete inner siege without taking more risk, while defense can easily camp shield gens to stop any collection of trebs, filling in extra supply as necessary. Even if they manage to break through supply in the keep, there’s still the garrison supply, requiring even more time/effort. This is very draining on the offense morale as for the most part, the majority of a group is just standing around doing nothing. If they split, they risk losing their siege, if not, they never had much momentum to begin with. It’s terribly boring all around, so it isn’t actually necessary to counter-siege everything, you just have to counter-siege to break even on supply expenditure.

I mean yes, it is time-gated if you want to siege for hours on end and gank all the yaks/camps, but it’s extremely taxing on both sides since the majority of people won’t be playing, they’ll just be waiting for the rest to do things. But defense is just way too strong if you all in turtle.

Jayne.9251:

HazyDaisy.4107:

My actual server tag above my head would be a start.

I really don’t understand why they haven’t done this already. It’s the simplest of fixes that would please a huge number of people.

Server identity was lost long time ago with introducing mega server. We knew players and guilds from “home” servers. U knew which players are slackers or scammers so u wont invite them in guild. Server communities has been formed in LA. So when we were lacking players in wvw someone just hoped in LA and shout for more ppl.

IMO already used in other games reward system to guilds should be introduced. By owning keep by any guild there should be lets say gold reword per week/day from “home” world LA taxes out of selling/buying at npc.
Let say X guild is owning a keep. If they manage to own/defend that keep for whole day the daylie taxes from lions arch from NPCs would be transfer to that X guild.
If X guild is owning enemies keep for a day, daylie LA taxes would be transferd from enemies “home” town LA to X guild.
Could be taxes per hour.

This will appeal many to join/form wvw guilds. Zerges would be devided among keeps. In this way skill lags would be history when 3 sides are clashing for SM or smth.

Rapier.3675:

Server identity was lost long time ago with introducing mega server.

I agree with this to some degree.

Just think … Where in the game is your server name shown?
Why would any PvE player even think about joining WvW if they don’t even see their World name shown anywhere?

Or the ladder. There’s no sign of the ladder on the UI either, and that’s been an essential part of the WvW system since the beginning.