Guild Wars 2

Never understood why they were removed form the WvW game. WvW made so much more sense with the Orbs to capture.

Perhaps we could have another month test, but this time with the Orbs back… (?)

They removed the orbs because it:

1)Heavily favoured the more populated server
2)Incredibly vulnerable to flyhacks

Orbs will never be added again. I will tell you why.
1) Hackers: can take it, would be very public, embarrassing for Anet.
2) Winning servers win more
3) Ruins fulfill the same roll as orbs

I didn’t mean the Orb back with it’s previous problems. I meant a new improved version to restore the CTF mechanic to WvW.

The hack problem could be mostly addressed by requiring the lord to be dead in order to take it.

But that still leaves the problem of “the winning server wins more”. With the original orb mechanic, you had a statistical advantage over opponents. The more orbs you had, the bigger that advantage. It was also hard to get an orb out of a keep. So when you have a slightly stronger server made stronger by the orbs and you have to beat them to get it back, it just snowballs.

Seriously. These are problems that should be addressed while retaining the core mechanic. Fix the hacks, change the buffs, etc. Don’t just removal it all to hide the problem.

I would love to see the orbs come back in some form. Chasing the carrier can be a ton of fun.

I agree with re-adding the orbs. However the buffs they had could be changed to avoid the larger servers getting a greater advantage.

simple solution for many of this.

change orbs powers..

-Orbs double the point generation of the objective it is held in.
-Orbs can be placed in keeps or towers
-Keep / Tower lord must die for the Orb to be dropped.
-Because of the power strain of the Orbs. Each orb beyond 1 hinders your realm. Keep Doors/walls take 10% more damage per extra orb. (so if a realm controls all 3 orbs, they take an extra 20% damage to their structures.. making it harder to defend when you control the to many orbs)

What i can immage: orbs spawn in a random ruin. The ruin becomes neutral. Once if a server captured it they can grab the orb. The runer cant waypoint or teleport and must run back to spawn or something new “home” point.
The winers gain x points.
The orb should spawn randomly somewhere between 30 mins and 1 hour

I’m still annoyed ArenaNet took the easy way out with that one. I personally really liked the orbs as they added value beyond PPT to defending your keeps.

As others have mentioned, a return of orbs would be quite simple:
- Require a keep lord to be killed or the keep to be flipped entirely before the orb can be picked up.
- Change the buff to something along the lines of:
* 33/66/100% more WXP gain.
* 25/50/75% more Experience gain.
* 20/40/60% more Magic Find.
* 25/50/75% more Karma gain.
* 33/66/100% more Gold from WvW events, WvW Guard and Lord kills, and player kills.
* 10/20/30% reduction in Gold cost for activating Camp, Tower, Keep and Castle upgrades.

That’d make the orbs properly worthwhile but it wouldn’t upset the balance in any way. Hackers would be an issue, but they’d have to be several of them in order to kill a lord or capture a keep.

Forget the orbs, i want my lake back.

Orb can be back but the mechanic would need to change.
Like defending team have orb in Gari. Attacking teams orb place is in south towers.
This means Gari is much much harder to flip and attackers actually needs to do some work.
While defenders have their job easier.
Of course you can only take orb when tower/keep is yours.

This will actually wont give attackers such big advantage as their orb place is easier to take while defenders place is harder.