Guild Wars 2

To compensate for the lack of players in wvw, why are teams with less players not more heavier/bruisers

because its not fun to want to play wvw but you’re against a stacked server, so there’s a zerg of 100 of them and only like 7 of you on the entire map.

Individual stat bonuses that raise health or damage is a bad idea. I am all for servers who are constantly outnumbered/outcoveraged/outscored recieving bonuses to make it more balanced like longer RI on supply camp supervisors, increased gate/wall durability/health on towers and keeps, dolyaks with increased durability/health/speed, breakout events that require less players to start and that spawn with guard support, etc.

That’s kind of an odd reason for not having it.

IMO, there shouldn’t be boosted stats because an isolated fight between two groups of players shouldn’t be effected by one of the sides having an unfair advantage due to stat boosts just because they are outmanned in the zone.

What they should do is introduce a barracks upgrade for structures. Once built, they will garrison a veteran guard every 10mins until they reach the cap for the barracks (10 or so). Once a gate or wall is destroyed, they all spawn at the lord and can walk their way to the courtyard.

Now that the backstory is explained…

Why not allow the outmanned debuff dramatically increase NPC health and damage?

This would significantly reduce the effectiveness of small man roaming and havoc squads and force everyone to stay with the zerg, or get beat down by people with an artificial advantage.

Huygens.4075:

This would significantly reduce the effectiveness of small man roaming and havoc squads and force everyone to stay with the zerg, or get beat down by people with an artificial advantage.

Yea but it’s not like giving +300 all stats. Just a little bit of vitally and toughness to help the outnumbered players could be something to think of adding.

CD is basically kicked out of EB atm, don’t even own much in our own wvw section.

bonus mf/exp doesnt fix the problem.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

I agree that’s a valid concern, but I only wish that ANet had as much concern about game-ruining mismatches in the first place that they’d actually do something about that. When are you folks ever going to learn that you need to implement some other match system than server vs server vs server? Population and coverage are ALWAYS going to rule the day (and night) in WvW and if you can’t come up with some way to balance that you are always going to have a flawed game.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

Uh huh. How about grading the stat bonuses. The more outmanned you are, the more stats you have.

I don’t think the excuse that you don’t want our feelings to be hurt will fly. Nobody yells at more help and if they do then we block them.

I’d rather block annoying people then get crushed when outmanned and spawn camped.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

That is a valid point. I am not sure if it is strong enough to completely dismiss the idea of e.g. giving the NPCs and structures added toughness and health for the outmanned side. Assume there would be no player bonuses or they would be limited to max +30% health + toughness increase when the side is very badly outmanned e.g. just 10% or less of total population on that map. Now those who are playing on the badly outmanned side will have trouble even scoring any kills, because the large number of enemies can always revive the downed player so fast (I know there are things like stealth stomp, but let’s not make all of us roll into thieves). At least I would rather have more human players on my side than some minor buffs.

It would be fairly simple to avoid some server intentionally abusing this system. Example of abuse one server gathers all their forces into one giant blob and teleport from one map to another, while all other 3 maps are empty and thus outmanned. To prevent this just make the outmanned buffs so that they never trigger if the total population of all maps for that side is >= 30 %.

I have a question for Arenanet:
Are you planning to do something major to address the WvWvW population and coverage issues?

e.g. free transfers to those servers who haven’t won for ages or to those servers who have low WvWvw population? Or different scoring system which rewards the server points divided by their population percentage e.g. a server with 50% of all 3 servers WvWvW population will get twice less server points, compared to a server with 25% of WvWvW population. Players would still get the same points from objectives.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

LOL c’mon man! That has to be one of the lamest reasons I think I have ever heard! Hey we need more of you to log off because this stat boost is making up for being outnumbered 3-1…..

There are so many advantages to superior numbers that stat boosts, unless absurd, won’t make up for. Like, you know, the down state you guys love so much. Know how hard it is to get stomps off on people especially when outmanned? Giving a stat boost in no way even come close to preferring that over more people but at least it helps a bit versus the relatively craptastic one offered now.

Deniara Devious.3948:

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

That is a valid point. I am not sure if it is strong enough to completely dismiss the idea of e.g. giving the NPCs and structures added toughness and health for the outmanned side. Assume there would be no player bonuses or they would be limited to max +30% health + toughness increase when the side is very badly outmanned e.g. just 10% or less of total population on that map. Now those who are playing on the badly outmanned side will have trouble even scoring any kills, because the large number of enemies can always revive the downed player so fast (I know there are things like stealth stomp, but let’s not make all of us roll into thieves). At least I would rather have more human players on my side than some minor buffs.

It would be fairly simple to avoid some server intentionally abusing this system. Example of abuse one server gathers all their forces into one giant blob and teleport from one map to another, while all other 3 maps are empty and thus outmanned. To prevent this just make the outmanned buffs so that they never trigger if the total population of all maps for that side is >= 30 %.

I have a question for Arenanet:
Are you planning to do something major to address the WvWvW population and coverage issues?

e.g. free transfers to those servers who haven’t won for ages or to those servers who have low WvWvw population? Or different scoring system which rewards the server points divided by their population percentage e.g. a server with 50% of all 3 servers WvWvW population will get twice less server points, compared to a server with 25% of WvWvW population. Players would still get the same points from objectives.

I would like one of the devs to actually answer this as well. I’m getting pretty fed up with my guild giving it our all when we are on, only to get rolled the rest of the time because we don’t have coverage. Aside from transferring to a mega server there is absolutely nothing we can do to ever win against a server with good coverage during the day or at night… This does not make it for a fun game experience at all.

Charak.9761:

CD is basically kicked out of EB atm, don’t even own much in our own wvw section.

bonus mf/exp doesnt fix the problem.

No armor damage does help though. I fight like a madman when there’s no penalty for dying.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

So you’re saying there will never be a buff to outmanned that would give a tangible advantage that would allow an outmanned server to compete in any way, such as less supply required to build siege as that would fall under the same rationale as not giving a stat boost.

Then I guess population differences on the map will always, forever be the determining factor for everything.

Let me draw a sports analogy countering Devon’s argument:

Imagine 1st a balanced soccer game 11 vs 11. Can be very interesting to watch and play. Soccer is the world’s most sports and the final of world championship of football (soccer) is the most spectated TV event in the world, gathering around 2 billion viewers.

Then imagine the WvWvW version of soccer 3 vs 5 vs 11. You can all guess who wins.

Now Arenanet has been hinting to give extra rewards for the winner of the match up. Who would be wanting to play on that soccer team which has just 3 players when you can transfer to play with the team of 11 and have a guaranteed win and rewards? Nobody. This would utterly kill the game already outnumbered servers.

What we are asking here is to give the soccer team with just 3 players some minor advantages e.g. ability run tiny bit faster?

But it seems that is not happening and the side with better coverage will win forever. And those servers, who have huge pve population and small to medium WvWvW population are screwed forever.

I think about how much better my server (SoS) would be right now if we hadn’t just relied upon coverage to beat CD and SBI for weeks. We’re paying in spades for the bad habits developed at that time.
What if, no matter what the time of day it was or who you were facing; you knew that you could go into WvW; right now, on any server; and get a quality fight? Win or lose, you log in and the fights are decided by your skill and organization.

Don’t get me wrong, the WvW focused servers of T1 and T2 will still carry the day with their 50+ organized guild roamers; but you won’t be eating PuG grind all week long at least.

Oozo.7856:

That’s kind of an odd reason for not having it.

IMO, there shouldn’t be boosted stats because an isolated fight between two groups of players shouldn’t be effected by one of the sides having an unfair advantage due to stat boosts just because they are outmanned in the zone.

Oozo is on point here; what is happening in zerg v zerg shouldn’t affect the 1v1’s and 5v5’s going on around the map. Not all the action happens at SM/Bay/Hills.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

Thanks for confirming once again that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I guess now we know that the new build with the outmanned buff update won’t do kitten for the outmanned server..

lemora.1304:

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

Thanks for confirming once again that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I guess now we know that the new build with the outmanned buff update won’t do kitten for the outmanned server..

For sure, let’s let this Blackgate player tell us about what it’s like being outmanned.

What Devon said makes perfect sense to me. I generally feel like giving players stat boosts is somethin to be avoided. It makes for gimmicky play, especially when players use it as a crutch.

If you’re a better group of players, it’s possible to kill a larger number of players but there is a number big enough that you can’t win some fights. I think this is okay.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Let me draw a sports analogy countering Devon’s argument:

Imagine 1st a balanced soccer game 11 vs 11. Can be very interesting to watch and play. Soccer is the world’s most sports and the final of world championship of football (soccer) is the most spectated TV event in the world, gathering around 2 billion viewers.

Then imagine the WvWvW version of soccer 3 vs 5 vs 11. You can all guess who wins.

Now Arenanet has been hinting to give extra rewards for the winner of the match up. Who would be wanting to play on that soccer team which has just 3 players when you can transfer to play with the team of 11 and have a guaranteed win and rewards? Nobody. This would utterly kill the game already outnumbered servers.

What we are asking here is to give the soccer team with just 3 players some minor advantages e.g. ability run tiny bit faster?

But it seems that is not happening and the side with better coverage will win forever. And those servers, who have huge pve population and small to medium WvWvW population are screwed forever.

Nice analogy. However, instead of giving the 3 person team advantages, I say give incentives for players on the 11 person team to move to the 3 person team.
A 7 vs 7 matchup is going to be much more fun that an 11 vs 3 matchup no matter what advantages you give to the 3 person team (it doesn’t even have to be 7 vs 7.. something close like 8 vs 6 is good enough).

It’s not a good analogy.

Teams of 11 people are easy to balance (no one in sPvP complains about unfair numbers, for example) but when your teams are hundreds of people, you’re not going to balance it. Just have a soccer match with 200 vs. 200 people couldn’t be balanced – people are going to show up whenever they like, go to the bathroom whenever they like, disconnect, have things from outside the game interrupt them, have wildly different schedules that change over time (now to mention there are 4 different soccer fields and they get to move between them however they like).

styx.7294:

It’s not a good analogy.

Teams of 11 people are easy to balance (no one in sPvP complains about unfair numbers, for example) but when your teams are hundreds of people, you’re not going to balance it. Just have a soccer match with 200 vs. 200 people couldn’t be balanced – people are going to show up whenever they like, go to the bathroom whenever they like, disconnect, have things from outside the game interrupt them, have wildly different schedules that change over time (now to mention there are 4 different soccer fields and they get to move between them however they like).

Yes, but you don’t need perfect balance of exactly 200 vs. 200. Close is good enough.
The problem is that now we have massive imbalance along the lines of 200 vs 30 and winning/losing is simply a question of who has more WvW population and coverage.

Besides, if you do have fights on the scale of (roughly) 200 vs. 200, someone on one team going to the bathroom is likely countered by someone on the other getting up to make a sandwich: your not going to stray too much from 200 vs 200 because of that.

The point is that there are two solutions. One, keep teams as they are and give the smaller team advantages. The other is to even out the teams. Evening out the teams is harder to achieve, but I think is the better solution.

At least give us something meaningful. What the heck is magic find going to do for my server?

No armor damage is nice, but it could go further. While outmanned, grant the player +5 supply capacity, allied NPCs having higher levels, maybe even a automated notification to other borderlands that a specific map has the outmanned status.

Why do I have to pay repair cost while outmanned when just the seconde I get killed a few persons join the map and we lose the outmanned buff?

I think this shoulds be fixded.

The buff needs a timer. You only should get it if you are outmanned for more than 5 minutes… and then it should be on a 5 minute timer(if enough people joined so you would not be outmanned anymore it should count down from 5 minutes to 0 – should people leave again it should set back to 5 minutes).

I don’t think this could be exploited. Just too many users to be coordinated. On the high tiered servers it never will happen… there are players that just want to play and they would lose their spot and have to go in queue again for hours. Lower tiered… I don’t know about Vabbi… but do they not always have that buff because of almost no one playing WvW?

Only mid tiered servers could try to do exploiting but I doubt they can do much because lots of players need to join and leave. Would need big guilds doing this… and then they only have 5 minutes… after leaving and rejoining(while they still have the buff) to do something big to take advantage of it.

Icy.1396:

Deniara Devious.3948:

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

That is a valid point. I am not sure if it is strong enough to completely dismiss the idea of e.g. giving the NPCs and structures added toughness and health for the outmanned side. Assume there would be no player bonuses or they would be limited to max +30% health + toughness increase when the side is very badly outmanned e.g. just 10% or less of total population on that map. Now those who are playing on the badly outmanned side will have trouble even scoring any kills, because the large number of enemies can always revive the downed player so fast (I know there are things like stealth stomp, but let’s not make all of us roll into thieves). At least I would rather have more human players on my side than some minor buffs.

It would be fairly simple to avoid some server intentionally abusing this system. Example of abuse one server gathers all their forces into one giant blob and teleport from one map to another, while all other 3 maps are empty and thus outmanned. To prevent this just make the outmanned buffs so that they never trigger if the total population of all maps for that side is >= 30 %.

I have a question for Arenanet:
Are you planning to do something major to address the WvWvW population and coverage issues?

e.g. free transfers to those servers who haven’t won for ages or to those servers who have low WvWvw population? Or different scoring system which rewards the server points divided by their population percentage e.g. a server with 50% of all 3 servers WvWvW population will get twice less server points, compared to a server with 25% of WvWvW population. Players would still get the same points from objectives.

I would like one of the devs to actually answer this as well. I’m getting pretty fed up with my guild giving it our all when we are on, only to get rolled the rest of the time because we don’t have coverage. Aside from transferring to a mega server there is absolutely nothing we can do to ever win against a server with good coverage during the day or at night… This does not make it for a fun game experience at all.

They said they would do nothing to address this overnight coverage. This has been stated when it was even more of a problem at launch.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

Does Anet see an issue with the WvW population imbalances and if so, is there a plan to balance this?

I don’t mean to be rude or call you out or anything Devon, its just I feel like this is an issue and see a lot of people with the same opinion, but I haven’t really seen Anet say anything about it.

Fwiw magic find does seem to be a weird option for outmanned. No armor damage is good but the MF boost is a bit pointless since the chances of you being able to attack a zerg, kill something and then hang around to pick-up the loot are ridiculously low. Are we meant to attack NPC’s or the surrounding wildlife to get more gold for upgrades when outmanned? That would only move the few people we have away from defending anything we still hold.

There have already been some good suggestions on here such as increased movement speed, more supply capacity, more defensive NPC’s, reduced siege & upgrade costs, increased supply at towers/camps etc. Any of these would be better than MF.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

why killing outmanned player reward WXP and badges? (loot)
reduce the WXP by lets say five and no drops from outmanned player.
it should be: you want steamroll the opposition with larger numbers? no loot for you! (read with pakistanian accent like in Seinfeld ’no soup for you ’ episode)

also the +20% MF for the outnumbered is not enough, it should be +200%MF +200% gold. (we all saw in southshun that even +200MF is pitiful)

Lalangamena.3694:

also the +20% MF for the outnumbered is not enough, it should be +200%MF +200% gold. (we all saw in southshun that even +200MF is pitiful)

So the few people playing will start farming mobs? You won’t kill much players when they zerg around and you have a group of five to ten players. You won’t capture anything when there are enemies around matching your group size and calling their zerg (even with NPC commander). I know the point of it is to reward players who achieve something despite their disadvantage, but if the possibility to achieve something is prevented due to far too much enemies there’s no point in further increasing nearly non-existent rewards. One could even argue about WvW not being profitable enough and PvE much more tempting to play in such a situation but I guess that’ll go to far.

Imo Outmanned needs something to actually make defending or taking back “your” objectives easier and faster (commander event was one first step in that direction). Like reduced supply costs for siege, more durable walls/gates, and more damage on hostile keeps on your homelands/your third of EB. This might help to fight the “Outmanned” frustration and encourage players to try to attack/defend a keep. However, these boni should only appear when you are outnumbered on multiple maps for a longer time period to prevent abusing.

I like your first paragraph more. People might be thinking it’s unfair to punish players for the lack of opponents, but imo the way you fight has a very high impact on how many people your opponent will have in wvw. When you abuse your superior numbers and not just you but also the 3rd server stomps the outnumbered server even the remaining minority might lose the motivation to fight on. So I’d suggest giving less rewards for capturing objectives in the outmanned server’s area for hostile servers (discourages keep trading between those two) and like already said less WXP from outmanned players.
Outmanned really should, at least to some degree, discourage servers from further steamrolling the weakest one. Right now outmanned works like a “hit me”-sign because it means any objective this server holds is probably easy prey.

TL;DR: Encourage outmanned team’s players to play by increasing the chance to capture something and discourage servers from bashing the outmanned one.

Please dont give outmanned buff any bonus stats. This will make 1v1’s/duels unfair.

why are you trying to 1v1 in wvw then, go spvp

WRod.3856:

Please dont give outmanned buff any bonus stats. This will make 1v1’s/duels unfair.

And GvGs, which are already influenced by Energetic, Robust and Medic boni. Second this.

Nobody cares about 1 vs 1 in WvW because this is not balanced for 1 vs 1. Same for GvG. Go sPvP and buy a Custom Arena one they are available for everyone and go GvG there(or if you want bigger team size than 10 complain to ArenaNet and tell them to make other maps). WvW is not intended for GvG… otherwise the name would have been GvG from the beginning and only organized guilds would play it.

The outmanned buff should allow members of other winning servers who are in queue to choose to fight for a random outmanned server as a “mercenary”.

When population is high enough that the outmanned buff disappears, no additional “mercenaries” will be allowed to enter the fight.

If the home server has players wanting to enter a battleground containing “mercenaries” and reaches the cap, “mercenaries” will be removed from the game until there is no queue (or no more “mercenaries”).

Should be possible to implement using the guesting mechanic.

This would make it more fun for players on all servers (in my opinion, obviously….).

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

Excuse my manners but this is a very ignorant view of WvWvW. Does anyone in Anet actually play their own game?

I for one, go to outmanned maps and take advantage of the outmanned buff. With xp booster, foods and outmanned, I can efficiently get 3 levels an hour. Others and I have basically, defeat the purpose of even doing WvWvW.

The reality is that no one wants to go to an outmanned map and have their @sses handed to them. So the current outmanned pve buff doesn’t help the current state at all.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

At no point in the current meta is having a buff better than having bodies because you guys have decided to have an AOE cap. Unless you’re saying buffs will let you one shot someone, what you’ve described would never happen.

DevonCarver.5370:

The main reason is simply that at the point that outmanned does that, it encourages servers to have fewer players on to take advantage of the stat boost. That, in turn, will cause people to yell at other players for logging on and taking away the buff.

Really odd to say this because us players cannot control who decides to logon to play WvW. Ever yelled in mapchat at another player ? It does not work ever.

I remember a time when the Devs thought highly of their players.