Guild Wars 2

Since Anet seems to take suggestions regarding WvW, I’d like to share something that’s been in my mind for a long time.
I have to admit I’m not super frequent WvW player, but I find it really enjoyable and care for this gamemode, so I hope you’ll hear me out anyway.

In the past whenever I went into WvW, 80% of the time I’ve found ourselves to be outnumbered by the enemies, usually by quite a lot (like 20 vs 50), thus losing most zerg encounters. This is perhaps the biggest reason why I felt really discouraged from playing WvW. I felt completely powerless, most matches were lost before they even started. By the nature of the game, bigger zerg was in a huge advantage and usually claimed victory.
To make this even more discouraging, in those 20% cases when we’re close with the numbers, we’d win pretty much every time. As long as enemies outnumbered us by only a little amount, we’d destroy them every time without fail.
Because of that, the game always felt really unfair to me. Maybe it’s just observation bias, but I have strong feeling that our server was way better in terms of quality in those encounters, but often we lacked the necessary quantity. I wish the game would be based more on individual skill rather than overpowering your enemy by sheer numbers.
I’m not a game designer, so I don’t really know how to achieve this, but I’d be super grateful if Anet could bring smaller groups to be on-par with larger zergs to give them a fair chance. If I knew I have a chance to beat the enemy and the matches are decided by how well people play, I’d be more encouraged to do WvW and stop feeling punished for something I have no control of.

//reaction to a deleted post :/
I don’t think it’s necessarily antisocial. Smaller group of people (like 10-20) who know each other, know others’ builds and are well coordinated feels more social to me than running in a 50-man blob where no one is aware of the environment and just spams skills mindlessly.
But yeah, you’re probably right that these changes can have a huge impact and should be done carefully. That’s why I don’t list the specifics, just the general idea.
I haven’t spent a lot of time on these forums, but it seems to be that Anet has been quite receptive to WvW suggestions lately (they’ve even made a poll), so if you had any specific suggestions in mind, I wouldn’t hesitate to post them.

While i understand those situations it does make sense that 20 people are a lot weaker than a group of 50.

If somehow by some means 20 people would be buffed in some way to be in pair with 50 people than i think something is seriously wrong…

All i can say is that smaller teams should take on smaller camps and towers rather than go on castles (tho they have the option to go for them as well).

If you dont want to get stomped by 50+ people then here are some tips and tools that everyone has access to.

1) have a scout of some sort on your groups tail,watching your back, you can also have one in the front. Spotting a large zerg on time that is 5-10 seconds away from crushing you gives enough time for everyone to back off,flee, or stand your ground.

2) If you do decide to stand your ground there is no shame in using siege against such a large army. Arrow carts, specially when mounted with players that have high power as well as AC mastery can be extremely deadly to groups of 50. They can push the enemy back, split them apart or even spread them out.

3) Thieves and some other professions are excelent on taking down single targets. Use them to your advantage and let them pick off wandering enemies that wondered too far away from the rest of the enemies during your rain of arrows. Because the majority of the enemy team will be in combat (cause of the ac) they wont be able to rezz the downed player unless they use specific rezz skills (warrior banners, rangers shouts, mesmers illusion, eles glyph).
And making them waste a banner on such players is 1 step up you made in a fight of 20vs50.

4) Positioning is very important. Know the map and take its terrain to your advantage.

Cap inc dmg at 5 sources. This way a 5/10/15/20 man group that can focus can farm a mapqueue.

One of the skills players should learn, specially when fighting enemy with more players, is when NOT to fight. In general, if you rush into battle with 20 against 50, you should lose that fight for being stupid.

If you claim your players are in general more skilled compared to enemy players, then that itself IS already the buff you are asking for. Skill matters.

Reduce the number of cleave skills and AOE, and then iterate some aoe skills to be in creased in more than 5 cap.

Less spam more clever skill usage.

I know your pain, but this has got to be a really difficult problem for anet to solve. How do you create incentives for players NOT to join a map blob when they get so much positive feedback for doing so in the form of wxp, loot bags, fun, etc? The main problem I see in blobbing is it demoralizes the enemy. This may be just me, but the most fun I have in wvw is when my force is fighting against an equal-sized force and battles tend to be long and intense. The least fun is to be had when a huge blob crushes my side again and again in battles that are over in seconds. I also don’t have much fun being on the winning side in a one-sided battle. Again, fights are over in seconds and I get no sense of accomplishment.

I’d like to see something like a movement speed penalty, loot reduction, or some other non-combat penalty for being in a map blob. Or, nice rewards for beating a superior force would also be nice. However, I would never support a combat buff created to offset a numbers advantage. That would just create a toxic social environment.

Osu.6307, i dont think speed debuff would be fair, but many thing on this game arent fair either.

The real issue is how WvW is designed to work + some classes design and thier effectiveness in blob, it makes blobs efective due small maps that can be crossed real fast, reason players dont like new BL, it gives them to much work and it is hard to hide on a close tower.
While this skrit fights mentality continue will be always stacked blob for a fast recap, altough gamemode design forces this behavior.

20 man group should always win against better 50 man group because they have less players.

Junkpile.7439:

20 man group should always win against better 50 man group because they have less players.

But the other way should also happen, if the 20 man were better, the game is way to much forgiving for the bigger blob in this situations, due class balance and spam capabilities while in cluster.

This has always been issue in these types of games. I started table top gaming way back and many of the mechanics of said games always lead to a situation where the winning side found the best strategy overall was to mass all of its forces in a blob that would simply overwhelm a smaller force even if the two sides equal in overall strength.

Now in the real world this would be prevented by “time and space” in that you simply could not march an entire army from China, as example to Spain in a few minutes time to deal with a threat to Spain. In WvW virtually all objectives are within a few minutes of each other meaning the blob can deal with virtually any serious threat.

I really do not know how it can be dealt with or if it in fact can be. Larger maps would prevent this to an extent but people already claim DBL maps too large (This not my take. I think they fine)

I do recall a few games in this vein from those table top days (One space conquest stragey game as example) would address this by allowing for a sort of “feedback” effect that would randomly pulse if the overall forces engaged were too large wherein the feedback would destroy portions of the larger sides fleet outright. In other games too much magics used in a small area would create the same type of effects.

I really do not know if these suitable here. I can understand the point being made, I just do not know if anything can be done or if it should be.

you cant buff smaller groups just because they are smaller. your incentive is better rewards for being outnumbered. also if you play on the desert borderlands all of the objectives are designed for small groups, and the map promotes ambushing larger groups. if you get some practice with your team then you can take on MASSIVE teams with 5 or 10 people

Just to show how complex and impossible to solve this can be:

You have group of 20 players.

There is group of 10 enemies from server B left from you. And another group of enemies from server B with 10 players right from you.

There are 2 different groups of enemies from server C, one with 5 players and another 25 players.

You start to fight first group against B, then second group from B joins the fight. Finally server C runs in with both groups but from different sides. Now create a list of bonuses, describing who, when, for how long and why should be boosted?

Here is another example:
Your blob runs across the map into fight. It has huge tail. Half of your people never even make into the fight in time. How many of these people are considered to be part of the group that changes the boosts and how many were simply on the map but did not change battle result?

Aeolus.3615:

Reduce the number of cleave skills and AOE, and then iterate some aoe skills to be in creased in more than 5 cap.

Less spam more clever skill usage.

The genie has already left the bottle on this one. ANet’s biggest combat mistake was the proliferation of AoE into too many skills. AoE especially in an MMO should be very limited and on big cool downs. The fact that some AoE skills in the game are the biggest hitters certainly doesn’t help.