Guild Wars 2

First, let me start out with saying that I love WvWvW. I love the feeling of having epic-scale battles taking place in real time. I love the feeling of finally breaking through gates from a long siege and storming the enemy’s keep. It is simply a great game mode.

That being said, one of the most disheartening things I’ve ever experienced in any game I’ve ever played is logging onto a brand new WvW match and seeing the WvW map completely controlled by one faction.

Let’s face it- people don’t like to lose. Everyone wants to win, and that’s okay. But when you see a situation where your world only owns 2 supply camps and a tower, it is extremely disheartening. It isn’t impossible to come back from this kind of situation, but it is extremely difficult. It costs a LOT of silver to continuously upgrade, build siege weapons, and most importantly, a lot of manpower. You can’t take keeps without enough people attacking together, no matter how much coin you are willing to throw away to take it. I would love to be able to fight back and gain some ground back for my server. But since we are outmanned, and will continuously be outmanned while we are losing by so much, it just isn’t possible without a true miracle.

Armor repairs from losing every straight up fight and getting randomly picked off add up. Siege weapons aren’t cheap, and you have much less presence in the jumping puzzles to get them cheaply (or, while the Mistwraught Vault is bugged and we have no keeps in EB, we have NO access to free siege weapons). And even if you somehow muster up the strength to take a keep, you can’t upgrade it- they take too long to apply, and cost way too much when you know you’re going to lose it as soon as the enemy gets a zerg together, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Now, there are other problems, but these seem to be the biggest problems in regard to motivation/incentive to play as the losing team. Outmanned buff helps a little bit, but it doesn’t come into play nearly often enough to even make a difference- you may get slightly more rewards, but you also have far less capping power than if it were an even match.

Therefore, it would be fantastic if a team that is getting crushed could get a massive buff to give players more incentive to stick around. Outmanned currently gives:
- 20% magic find
- 33% bonus exp
- 33% bonus karma

It isn’t enough. 20% magic find will not cover the cost of siege equipment. I doubt it would even help cover the cost of armor repairs. We need something more… extreme. Something that gives incentive to players to stick around in WvW and help capture objectives (read: NOT farm mobs). It simply HAS to help cover the lopsided armor repair costs and throwaway of siege equipment.

I’m thinking something along the lines of:
- 100% magic find (on player deaths), and double gold from capturing objectives
- 100% exp (on player kills)
- 100% karma

With those restrictions, along with the condition that it only takes effect if your server is being stomped (which would have to be decided by Anet- half the winning teams points? Half their potential points? Both?) would keep it somewhat balanced. It is restricted to completing objectives and helping your server win, not farm mobs. This would give people motivation to fight when the chips are down, and the feeling that you are being properly compensated for helping your server come back from a huge deficit.

Perhaps we’ll have closer, more even matches when people start to stick around. And that’s an outcome we can all enjoy.

Putting aside the buffs, the other side stinks too. Logging into WvW finding all keeps owned by your side sucks the fun out of the thing too. You run about, hoping to find a fight, and get nothing. Once in awhile the enemy puts together a zerg, steamrolls a few locations (and those of us puttering about looking for a fight), and then the zerg winds down.

One thing I’d like to see is killing mobs give a huge magic find bonus. Give people a reason to run around farming mobs…making them targets for pioneering teams of killers. :-)

I really agree that the " Outmanned " buff is really not good enough. It needs to be something that really wants to bring more players into the population lacking WvWvW map and it currently does not do that.

Jaif, the whole purpose of the outmanned buff is to offset the disadvantage of having less manpower. But the problem is that manpower is far more important than any other aspect of WvW- skill doesn’t even come close unless the manpower is close to being even.

And currently, players get discouraged because the losers can’t muster the manpower to put up a fight. Having players farming mobs doesn’t add to the manpower of your server, so that wouldn’t fix anything about this situation.

Bump for exposure. The server in first for my match currently has 94% of all potential points and nearly a 60k point lead. They have all three orbs, we’re getting spawned camped, and to add insult to injury, we don’t even have the outmanned buff.

When the chips are down you’re at more of a disadvantage simply due to the winning server likely holding all three orbs. Not sure what part of the outmanned buff is supposed to offset a 15% increase to maximum HP and 150 point increase to all stats. PvE incentives to offset population imbalance and orb disadvantages simply will not work.

The bonuses that the outmanned buff provide are irrelevant to its purpose in a PvP setting.

What is worse is that if you fall behind, its IMPOSSIBLE to get back up. You can’t get enough supplies to make seige engines, the forts are too fortified, there are too many defenses to break through. The design is so kittening stupid. You are losing so lets make it HARDER for you to catch up to break even. What a joke WvW is

I think the bonuses are backwards, and should be based on points as well as population.

Orbs should not have any effect on players. I think the perfect thing for Orbs is that they give a buff to NPCs.

The buffs to players should go to the losing side(s). The outmanned buff is worthless, mainly because it doesn’t actually counter the fact that you’re outmanned. If buffs were given to the losing sides, it would go a long way towards preventing the current situation of one side just rolling over the map and the other teams being unable to dislodge them.

Oh and I forgot to add. Orbs are the most kitten thing ever in WvW. Lets give the winning team a 50% boost to their HP and their stats to that you can’t kill them! This should totally balance out the game!

Nevron.9413:

When the chips are down you’re at more of a disadvantage simply due to the winning server likely holding all three orbs. Not sure what part of the outmanned buff is supposed to offset a 15% increase to maximum HP and 150 point increase to all stats. PvE incentives to offset population imbalance and orb disadvantages simply will not work.

The bonuses that the outmanned buff provide are irrelevant to its purpose in a PvP setting.

I usually never play under the outmanned buff and we usually have at least one or two orbs. However, imo the buffs need to be switched. What are now the orb buffs should be the outmanned buffs, and what are now the outmanned buffs should be the orb buffs.

What the outnumbered side needs isn’t more karma from objectives they may not be able to take anyways; they need more health, more stats, something to make them beefier.

The purpose of the outmanned buff isn’t to give you a better chance to win, but to encourage people to actually stay and lose. But it doesn’t do it enough- you aren’t compensated for your work in any way, and it is far more costly to lose than to win. If the rewards were even comparable to when you win, people might be motivated to stay and play, which would increease your chances of winning far more than an orb buff would.

If the rewards were ramped WAY up, it gives a morale booster to people playing- you may not win, but 100% magic find as a BONUS to whatever magic find you already have can result in some very nice drops. Getting tons of karma for the few times you can actually take something makes defeat not seem so bad.

That’s wrong-headed, though. People do not like to lose, they like to win. The outmanned buff should give the side that has it a chance to regain ground. You don’t encourage people to hang around by offering them steeper odds, you encourage them by giving them a chance to win.

1500% extra karma/xp/mf would be meaningless when the side that is outmanned cannot get enough people together to take an objective to earn that Karma… especially since the winning side that has the numbers to cause the outmanned buff also has all three Orbs and is getting a huge boost to their stat’s.

Incidentally, the only thing you can reliably do with the outmanned buff is kill Sentries, and maybe Dolyaks, on the road… both of which give a substantially reduced amount of karma in the first place.

Richard Nixon.6573:

The purpose of the outmanned buff isn’t to give you a better chance to win, but to encourage people to actually stay and lose.

…

If the rewards were ramped WAY up, it gives a morale booster to people playing

My point is simply that you aren’t going to benefit from the current outmanned buff at all if you can’t leave your spawn. I avoid spawncamping the other side (because I actually want people to come out and fight, not be demoralized and log out), but many don’t. A hefty stat/health boost might give the outnumbered the extra oomph they need to at least make it out of the gate to try and accomplish something.

As it stands, they’re outnumbered AND heavily out-statted. A karma boost doesn’t do diddly if you can’t get out of your spawn to take advantage of it.

I don’t like the way it works either, but I understand the intention behind outmanned- it is intended to provide encouragement for players to stay by making them think that they will be more rewarded for their actions, even though they are limited in what they can do.

The orbs were probably designed first, and they didn’t want outmanned to overlap the orb bonus (or else what would be the point of having the orbs if the two just negated each other?). That’s why my suggestion isn’t to overhaul how the system works- it’s not going to happen. I just want outmanned to actually do what it is intended to do.

Can you honestly say that, as an example, you won’t want to play WvW with 1500% and guaranteed badges of honor for every player kill? Make the rewards worthwhile enough and people will stay. When people start to stay, the matches start becoming more even.

If you are stuck in your spawn with no supply, barely any players, and facing a blood thirsty crew of people who simply adore to spawn camp; the odds you break out is slim. Even if you do, can’t take anything back since you have no supply. Ok so you raid supply camps, then their zerg shows up and slaughters us. Back to the spawn for me!

Outmanned buff is a joke. It provides zero advantages in combat. Yea boi! I got 33% more MF baby! That will really help us take out that 5:1 zerg camping the spawn! /pumps fist

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The outmanned buff could give you a guaranteed exotic item and 50 badges per kill and that still wouldn’t work for the simple fact that the only way you get that buff is when you’re so outnumbered by the other side that you get insta-gibbed as soon as they see you.

fixit.7189

If you are stuck in your spawn with no supply, barely any players, and facing a blood thirsty crew of people who simply adore to spawn camp; the odds you break out is slim. Even if you do, can’t take anything back since you have no supply. Ok so you raid supply camps, then their zerg shows up and slaughters us. Back to the spawn for me!

Outmanned buff is a joke. It provides zero advantages in combat. Yea boi! I got 33% more MF baby! That will really help us take out that 5:1 zerg camping the spawn! /pumps fist

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Amen!!!

Sokar Rostau.7316:

Incidentally, the only thing you can reliably do with the outmanned buff is kill Sentries, and maybe Dolyaks, on the road… both of which give a substantially reduced amount of karma in the first place.

That is wrong. Even 2 players can cap supply camps in about 30-60 sec each (including time to stand in a circle) – did that with my friend a lot of times.
But i still agree that outmanned buff is just a joke.

FWIW, I agree that the outmanned buff is not doing what it should. I was pointing out that the population issue is two-sided – the winners and losers have a problem.

I don’t think the solution is to improve the buff. I think the solution is to deal with the population problems more directly. Part of that is simply waiting for people to level and for the ranking system to go to work. Part of that is probably to give bonuses to guilds that transfer to “losing” servers. I think many other ideas have been put forth as well.

-Jeff

I started 20 days ago in WvW. 20 days ago, my server Kaineng (smallest server in the game) was the bottom of the bottom tier. This week we’re 2nd place.

What excuse do any of you from the larger servers have to make posts like this? You want 100% this and that and double gold for being the loser? Baaahahahaha!!! That’s going to fix the game for you?

They designed the game so that the worst teams move down and the best teams move up. When you move down to face a server that is worse than you, and you start to win, what are you going to be asking for then?