Guild Wars 2

Hey Guys,

Having discussed with my fellow players and ex-players what they would like to see in WvW to keep them playing / bring them back, we have thrown together this idea. Let us know your thoughts and give us some constructive feedback. It is just a base idea at the moment and needs input!

The concept is an accumulation of parts, so I’ll break them down individually here.

Campaigns

Campaigns are a week long WvW battle between the factions. Similar to standard WvW but with a few changes to attract players.

The Campaigns will Last one week only and have an off week in between, so the campaigns themselves will only occur every other week (twice a month).

Winning the campaign will be similar to standard WvW, based on a PPT and PPK system. (both counting towards 50% of the victory)
The mixture of both PPT and PPK is to promote the PPT playstyle and not only the GvG style, while still allowing the GvG style to have a say in winning the match.

The campaigns will have slightly different features to standard WvW such as 100% reduced arrowcart damage, see incentives below.

Factions

In general the server format is somewhat obsolete now. There are huge population imbalances and it is impossible for some servers to compete, even with the linking!

Our suggestion is to introduce Faction based WvW: Green, Blue & Red Factions.
Players will be able to sign up to these factions at the start of every campaign, but at a cost of 100gems (this could be increased as 100 may be too low? Anet need an incentive to do this after all!)

It does not matter what server you are on, you can choose to join any faction, but there will need to be an imbalance soft cap; Once one faction has 100 more players than the other, it is locked until the others catch up. This should ensure a similar population and timezone coverage for all factions.

After the one week campaign is over, players will be removed from the faction and will be free to choose a new faction at the start of the next campaign.

Incentives and Rewards

Incentives and rewards are required not only for the benefit of the current players, but also to help attract old players back to the game, many of whom left due to the changes in WvW.

Maps:
In general the Desert Borderland map is seen as a failure and most WvW players avoid it like a plague.
Our suggestion is to remove the Desert BL from the Campaigns and use only the Alpine maps. This will satisfy a lot of WvW players as the team with the Desert BL as their home border currently have an easy time defending it.

Bring back the Orbs to the Borderlands!
The orbs were a fantastic part of the game when they were around, a justification for long sieges and open field fights. We understand they were removed due to hacking, but a combination of community reporting and a reduction in active hackers will allow for the return of the orbs, and all the fun that they bring. (with the factions being population soft capped, being outmanned will hopefully not be an issue and you will not lose your captured orbs easily).

Arrowcarts
Reduce Arrowcart damage.
The buff to arrowcarts was brought in to help outmanned servers defend against larger numbers. But now with the factions being closes balanced, there should hopefully be less population imbalance and outnumbering. This will allow for Arrowcarts to have their damaged nerfed by 50%.
They will still be effective sustain damage (enough to swing a fight) but it also means people will need to step up and fight to defend their towers, not just hide behind siege.

Rewards
WvW players deserve a proper reward for the time and effort they put in.
Our suggestions here need your input and discussion, but also remember that the rewards cannot be too overpowered or unfair. Anet will never buy into that, we need to be realistic.
Our suggestions are:

Winning faction:
All players in the winning faction will receive the favour of the mists. This will allow them free entry into the next campaign (remove the gem cost of joining for the next campaign only).
Players will also receive all rewards from their chosen track reward (track for the reward is chosen upon entering WvW for the first time at the start of each campaign.

Second place
All players in the faction that comes second will receive all rewards from their chosen track reward. (again this is chosen at the start of the campaign).

Third Place
All players in the faction that comes third will receive 50% of the rewards from their chosen track.

Note: In order to be eligible for the rewards, all players must have completed at least 1 reward track in WvW during the campaign. Less participation than this will prohibit the player from receiving any rewards.

Standard WvW

While the campaigns are aimed at the dedicated WvW players, we cannot neglect the casual and PvE orientated players (nor expect Anet to do that).
WvW participation has fallen off greatly in the last few years and it needs incentives to entice PvE and PvP players to join.

We suggest increasing WvW participation by adding in a victory/participation based reward. This would be PvE based to attract players such as victory grants the winning server access to a special vendor that sells the PvE Raid loot at a discount (and for proof of heroics + Badges?)

Of course you would need to have enough participation to be able to access the vendor, e.g. complete 1 full reward track in WvW.

Standard WvW would run as normal every week, even when the campaign is running, but campaign players will not be able to participate in standard WvW during a campaign. This allows players who do not wish to spend gems to continue playing WvW, whole also giving the casual players a break from the hardcore. But as there is a down weak between campaigns, casual and hardcore are not permanently separated.

Of course when I say 3 factions this may not be enough, there may be a huge demand for this game mode, but this is something Anet can monitor and add additional tiers, having more than one campaign matchup.

This of course isn’t a perfect idea or solution and needs community input. What are your thoughts? Maybe with constructive discussions we can get Anet to listen? Right? Right?!?!

TLDR:
3 Factions – Green / Blue / Red

Must sign up to chosen faction, 100 gems per person to join. (or maybe more than 100 gems?)

Campaigns last for one week, active every other week (1-week downtime in between campaigns)

Factions have a population cap, if one faction has 100 more people than the others it is locked until the others catch up.

Winner is decided on a PPT and PPK bases, both counting for 50% of the win score. (this is to encourage and attract PPT play and not only hardcore GvG style).
Incentives are need to encourage players: Winning faction players get free entry into the next Campaign plus all rewards from their chosen track reward. Second place gets all rewards from their chosen track reward and third gets 50% of their chosen track. (tracks for winning reward are chosen upon entering WvW for the first time that week.)

Desert borderland map is removed and alpine maps used only. Orbs returned to Alpine maps! Arrow cart damage reduced by 50% (the aim of the factions and player caps on them is to balance the fight, overpowered arrowcarts should not be needed as players should not be heavily outmanned).

Incentivise standard (non-campaign) WvW participation by adding in a victory/participation based reward. This would be PvE based to attract players such as victory grants access to a special vendor that sells the PvE Raid loot at a discount.

So…WvW becomes pay-to-play? This is a good idea why? You’re asking to split the remaining population and condense solutions into an area locked behind a paywall?

Beyond that, it’s the standard wishlist of a GvG player. Remove mechanics that don’t cater to GvG, add mechanics that aggravate temporary population imbalances, remove servers because who cares about those anyway, and so on.

Currently, PPK accounts for ~11% of the score (see: https://wvwstats.com/grapher?server=Sea%20of%20Sorrows&data=Score%20from%20PPK%20. If you increase it to 50%, or make it 5x as effective, you’re effectively killing any reason to defend objectives. The costs of dying during the defense is too high compared to the possible reward of holding the objective. In addition, no one is going to fight open field unless they have a good chance of winning…in which case their opponent will be unwilling. I understand that you want to appear to throw the PPT crowd a bone, but your way of doing it misses the mark.

It is possible to create a WvW that feels great to PPT players and fight-oriented players. It is not possible to please both PPT and GvG, though. They are simply too far apart in what they’re looking for.

Tbh I think you read the TLDR and not the whole post.

This is not to be a replacement for WvW but a bi-monthly event to run along side it. It is a event mode for people who want to push a competitive edge without having to server transfer, because believe it or not some people like to stay on their servers! but sometimes that restricts them from competing with the best players.

Now I can understand your point because I myself prefer to PPT rather than GvG but I am also aware that they are a core player base and we don’t want to loose them from the game.

Also I am not in any way suggesting to remove normal WvW or servers. They remain the same and and run constantly as normal. People who do not want to join the Campaign can remain in normal WvW.
It will give them a break from the Hardcore types but not separate them completely as everyone is back in WvW as normal during the off week.

Now this game mode is aimed at bringing a competitive edge to WvW, something with high risk, high reward. The PPT/PPK ratio can be adjusted, these figures above are just examples.

I’ll state it again, standard WvW does not change (other than bringing in a reward vendor to entice people to play more) and remains as it always has. This game mode is to run along side it not take away from it.

I’m hoping as well that the reward vendor suggested will help breathe life into standard WvW PPT.

As someone who often posts lengthy threads myself, I always read the whole post. In this case, I chose a brief reply as the very foundations of the post were a non-starter.

Normal WvW cannot function if many of its players leave for a paid campaign. At the same time, since the paid campaign will not improve WvW in any way, we won’t see any improvements in population or enjoyment. Thus, the playerbase is split and what little resources go towards improvements will be for the paid campaign.

Also, being hardcore doesn’t mean GvG. Perhaps that wasn’t your intention to imply that?

I did not comment on the vendor as it would be easily adjusted—it’s not an integral part of the suggestion. But, in short, selling discounted Raid loot isn’t going to fly with Anet. It would also, by nature of being tied simply to general participation, be easier to obtain via EotM and K-Training. That’s about the same bar that current vendors are at, so it’s not a huge fault on your part…but future rewards should incentive playing well (not necessarily winning) rather than just farming NPCs.

Sorry bebe. Not really interested into having another another 1v1v1.

Pretending it is 1v1. You are still going to divide what little population WvW/Eotm share (even if it is just for every other week). There’s no guarantee players would return after all…

Do you need to pay gems to enter sPvP seasons?

Do you need to pay gems to enter PvE raids, fractals or dungeons?

Why pay gems for WvW?