Guild Wars 2

So First off! I am not an avid WvW player! That is EXACTLY why I’m writing this post!

Yeah it may be a selfish way to start “Do this and I’ll consider playing WvW” but I REALLY do think this is in the best interest of EVERYONE!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outnumbered

“The enemies greatly outnumber your forces, be careful out there!”
And we get:
+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

Well then if that’s the case… Why wouldn’t I take on a zerg of 20-30 people on my own!? After all the rewards far outweigh everything else…

Come on, really?

We all know there are servers out there that constantly get wiped because the other server has more people. So they count their losses and just don’t participate in WvW for a week. I am from one of those servers and I would love nothing more than to pick and choose when I decide to go into WvW and cause some trouble, regardless of whether I have 5-10 people with me vs 20-30 of them… or vice versa.

The point is, at present, unless each side has an equal amount of players the challenge is minimal at best… Basically the larger zerg wins.

So my general “Fix” for this issue is pretty darn simple and It would hopefully even out the odds in WvW to allow for any sized teams within the BL or EB to be of equal threat and challenge, no matter what size they are against.

I propose a change to “Outnumbered”

The enemies greatly outnumber your forces, be careful out there!
+##% Power
+##% Toughness
+##% Vitality
Take no armor damage on death

And basically depending on how badly outnumbered you actually are depends on the value’s of the boosts %age.

I’m not a programmer so I’m not even going to attempt to give example figures. But the balance should be significant enough to make a small group of players a challenge against a large group of players. Thus irradiating the problem of “Oh we are against that server who always beats us so we just won’t bother” and replace it with “Let’s go, we will have Outnumbered so we’ll be ok!”

Just my 10 cents worth…

Any thoughts from anyone?

Simple, any buff or debuff will be abused and I can see now all the griefing because players flocked to the map for it then loose it. Any buff or debuff should be applied to structures or siege.

The main argument against this idea is that people will harass those who enter a map and take away their buff, which will result in creating another problem. Another thing is even if one zone outnumbers another, they may not be travelling all together. Why should somebody roaming have an advantage in a duel? Or if two equal sized groups met but one of them was outnumbered. I’m sure you can see the problems with this solution.

The only possible thing I could think of is making structures owned by the outmanned side be worth more/tick on that one map. But even then I doubt that would avoid creating the harassing people entering problem. PPT will never be as balanced as people would like it to be, that’s why most people don’t particularly care about the score at the end of the week.

Yep what warriorjrd said. The only way it would work is if it were a local buff. By local I mean in your group only – the people in your general vacinity. But I’m sure that wouldn’t be possible technically.

There have been many suggestions to help mitigate this issue. But Anet has shown no interest in trying. So basically this is the way its going to be.

I’m curious to know if it would be all that hard to do the following:

Designate something like 30-50 guilds voluntarily as “mercenary guilds” that are told their server designation per one or two weeks, something like an hour before WvW reset. These guilds could reach out to a server’s teamspeak if desired and temporary permissions could be given, etc. These guilds would then fight for whatever server they are on and hopefully by the end of it a couple things are accomplished…

1) the mercenary guilds get what they want in variety of matchup (can’t get more variety than this possibly)

2) Servers maintain their community while essentially adding a megaserver component

3) Since you would want to add a big guild to a lower tier server and a smaller guild for a higher tier, there would be less of a discrepancy between gold and t8 which I think would be a good thing.

4) Bottom tier servers won’t constantly have to be picked apart from other servers because numbers will be better balanced.

Effectively, you are evening out the odds manually without having to mess around too much with the mechanics of the game itself.

So…in my line of work I am hired to identify the Root Cause of a problem…fixing the outnumber “bonus” is not it. (Lean Six Sigma Black Belt)

Closer to the root cause is the server population imbalance…not just numbers, but numbers that are dedicated to playing WvW.

Solution #1 How to fix this? Remove the Server based WvW…go to a more “Factions” based system—three factions…players/guilds join a faction. ANET balances populations to ensure equal distribution of players.

Solution#2: ETOM Model…Combine servers in WvW (Gold, Silver, Bronze)…have two servers cooperating on each Borderline…sort of a meta WvW.

Solution #3: (and I have suggested this before)—have two types of WvW…a casual instance (like we have now) and a Professional Instance, where players put up some gold to play and join an Army (perhaps 10-50 gold). The gold would be put into a pot for distributing to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

The outnumbered buff is incredibly useful. It serves as a warning flag to go do something else or try EOTM.

I agree with OP. I find the outmanned buff pretty useless. Having the buff scale our pvt would be nice, even if its just a little bit.

outmanned used to give state bonuses as we all know they changed that. I thnk they changed it because of roamers wouldnt get a fair fight if one has the outmanned buff and the other doesnt but who knows.

Elitejelly.7462:

I agree with OP. I find the outmanned buff pretty useless. Having the buff scale our pvt would be nice, even if its just a little bit.

A guy in my guild mentioned he’d like a “Celestial” buff instead of just PVT, because he is a condition Necro.

I realise people argue the fact that there are AFK-ers in WvW so that will give less of a boost. Which I can only really suggest that ANet implement a more strict “unless you resume activity you will be kicked” rule. So people who who are AFK will be kicked more promptly.

Some of you argue that if they are roaming in a small group they will get more of a boost, but i would like to counter that with: The boost should cover the entire instance, so it doesn’t matter how big or small your group is you will get the same boost.

Further to the OP, perhaps another condition could be added in that decreases the boost based on how well they are doing in said map. So for example if they are outnumbered 10/1 they would get (just for arguments sake) 5 stacks of outnumbered boost. But if they owned >=(50% map) then they lose 25% stacks… or something to that effect.

So the system cannot be abused as it scales depending on how well you are doing. So exploiting it will only lead to you losing the boost and running yourself back into the original issue that you are too badly outnumbered to handle the enemy. Thus only being a matter of time before you get your back-side handed to you.

Therefore it’s in your best interest to play it right.

Before anyone states “They could arrange to have a small group go in and capture a majority of the area and then have a huge zerg flood into the BL on command to take advantage of the boost” I will just state that you can do that, but then your opponent(s) will get the outnumbered boost instead of you… So it’s always balanced and will always be a challenge.

I may be wrong… :S

emendez.3705:

outmanned used to give state bonuses as we all know they changed that. I thnk they changed it because of roamers wouldnt get a fair fight if one has the outmanned buff and the other doesnt but who knows.

Good point, then perhaps do the opposite of what i just said above (lol, not afraid to admit I’m wrong), and make the outnumbered boost work on proximity to players instead… would require more data, but would give roamers a chance to withstand a small group (or give them a chance at running away). Basically the Buff needs to be more dynamic.

Coopziana.1802:

So First off! I am not an avid WvW player! That is EXACTLY why I’m writing this post!

Yeah it may be a selfish way to start “Do this and I’ll consider playing WvW” but I REALLY do think this is in the best interest of EVERYONE!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outnumbered

“The enemies greatly outnumber your forces, be careful out there!”
And we get:
+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

Well then if that’s the case… Why wouldn’t I take on a zerg of 20-30 people on my own!? After all the rewards far outweigh everything else…

Come on, really?

We all know there are servers out there that constantly get wiped because the other server has more people. So they count their losses and just don’t participate in WvW for a week. I am from one of those servers and I would love nothing more than to pick and choose when I decide to go into WvW and cause some trouble, regardless of whether I have 5-10 people with me vs 20-30 of them… or vice versa.

The point is, at present, unless each side has an equal amount of players the challenge is minimal at best… Basically the larger zerg wins.

So my general “Fix” for this issue is pretty darn simple and It would hopefully even out the odds in WvW to allow for any sized teams within the BL or EB to be of equal threat and challenge, no matter what size they are against.

I propose a change to “Outnumbered”

The enemies greatly outnumber your forces, be careful out there!
+##% Power
+##% Toughness
+##% Vitality
Take no armor damage on death

And basically depending on how badly outnumbered you actually are depends on the value’s of the boosts %age.

I’m not a programmer so I’m not even going to attempt to give example figures. But the balance should be significant enough to make a small group of players a challenge against a large group of players. Thus irradiating the problem of “Oh we are against that server who always beats us so we just won’t bother” and replace it with “Let’s go, we will have Outnumbered so we’ll be ok!”

Just my 10 cents worth…

The buffs is not there to encourage you to fight a zerg, seems to be more for roaming, most of the lower tier servers are out-manned consistently, so all they do is karma train. Get a norn thief and you will never die, 24/7 karma/wvwexp train.

VIK.6205:

Coopziana.1802:

So First off! I am not an avid WvW player! That is EXACTLY why I’m writing this post!

Yeah it may be a selfish way to start “Do this and I’ll consider playing WvW” but I REALLY do think this is in the best interest of EVERYONE!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outnumbered

“The enemies greatly outnumber your forces, be careful out there!”
And we get:
+33% Experience
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience
Take no armor damage on death

Well then if that’s the case… Why wouldn’t I take on a zerg of 20-30 people on my own!? After all the rewards far outweigh everything else…

Come on, really?

We all know there are servers out there that constantly get wiped because the other server has more people. So they count their losses and just don’t participate in WvW for a week. I am from one of those servers and I would love nothing more than to pick and choose when I decide to go into WvW and cause some trouble, regardless of whether I have 5-10 people with me vs 20-30 of them… or vice versa.

The point is, at present, unless each side has an equal amount of players the challenge is minimal at best… Basically the larger zerg wins.

So my general “Fix” for this issue is pretty darn simple and It would hopefully even out the odds in WvW to allow for any sized teams within the BL or EB to be of equal threat and challenge, no matter what size they are against.

I propose a change to “Outnumbered”

The enemies greatly outnumber your forces, be careful out there!
+##% Power
+##% Toughness
+##% Vitality
Take no armor damage on death

And basically depending on how badly outnumbered you actually are depends on the value’s of the boosts %age.

I’m not a programmer so I’m not even going to attempt to give example figures. But the balance should be significant enough to make a small group of players a challenge against a large group of players. Thus irradiating the problem of “Oh we are against that server who always beats us so we just won’t bother” and replace it with “Let’s go, we will have Outnumbered so we’ll be ok!”

Just my 10 cents worth…

The buffs is not there to encourage you to fight a zerg, seems to be more for roaming, most of the lower tier servers are out-manned consistently, so all they do is karma train. Get a norn thief and you will never die, 24/7 karma/wvwexp train.

I’m thinking more the issue that (on my server) no-one bothers with WvW cuz we are always Outnumbered and the more they see that the more they just give up. It’s a viscous circle, so I recommend we change the buff to be less of a “GTFO you don’t stand a chance” and more of a “You’re a temporary superhero, go for it!”.

I just want the outlook to chance from a negative to a positive so people are encouraged to compete in WvW no matter how many people are in there. I think we would find that if they change the “Outnumbered” boost to the one I have suggested, then more people will be willing to play WvW and pretty soon it wouldn’t really be seen at all as the number of players will increase, because no-one will enter, see the “outnumbered” (lame excuse for a) buff and turn right back round and leave or go AFK and wait for more people to arrive.

I truly believe it’s a change that really does need to be addressed!

I have several issues with Outmanned:

1) Two of the three stat boosts do nothing. Exp means nothing to lvl 80’s. As for Magic Find…. everyone knows that WvW is the place to go for precursors now don’t we. And why is it when an exotic does drop for me it’s usually the Truth, Guild Defender or Exterminator? I’ve had multiples of these drop for me in WvW/EotM to the point where I think that’s the only exotics I’ll ever see in WvW.
WxP is fine, except when you realize that when you solo cap a camp for 5ppt and some WxP, in 4 minutes the enemy map blob drops in and caps it and gets 20-80 more players closer to Golem Mastery than your server. In this way going to and playing in an Outmanned map actually hurts your server MORE.

2) There’s no way to measure how many players would like to play WvW but won’t because they are Outmanned. At least when there were queues, you could count the number of players that wanted to play WvW but couldn’t. Outmanned to me means I don’t WANT to play so I choose to NOT play WvW.

3) There’s been several suggestion threads about Outmanned but we don’t even know if it’s on Anet’s radar to be worked on and if it is being worked on we’ll never know until it’s previewed.