Guild Wars 2

Hello folks,

I’m really happy about the WvW update as of today. WvW finally got some love and even a slight one as this is appreciated.

The improved rewards might bring more people to WvW, motivating new players that have never tried it before to go and try it as well as improve the quality of life of those who already do it regularly. Making the game mode more “viable” in terms of personal reward is a good motivation for everyone to go for it.

Though the main problem with WvW remains: Mechanics.

I’m not criticizing personal rewards and I think it’s a great approach, but truth is it patches nothing out of the WvW problems. For example, old players, that quit WvW (and even GW2) for good due to the lack of appeal in WvW “Guild Wars” will not come back because of a “personal reward” system. Also, Commanders, in a majority, are mostly dedicated players already with endgame gear and they lead because they love to do it, not because of personal rewards.

What WvW really lacks is the main thing all PvP-based games and systems build their foundation over: The sense of winning.

WvW lacks “sense of winning”. When you WIN a War, it means nothing. There’s no “feel” to it. You don’t go screaming on voice-chat with your friends celebrating. You don’t jump off the chair and let your beer drop, crashing on the floor. You don’t yell “YEAH!!! kitten!!! WE DID IT!”. You shrug. You and everyone else.

Same happens along the road, which is the worst thing. If you can hold your keep, great. If not, ok, you wait a few minutes and try to get it back. There’s nothing compelling you to go beyond and do anything you can to keep your objectives. Nothing.

The current mechanics do that to you along the road. You start lacking motivation. You never get to “feel” the win, when you have one. You don’t feel the losses either. It’s empty. That’s what the game mode of WvW makes you feel when you look at it out of the box: empty.

I’m not a game designer. I’m not a wise man. I’m not an academic in psychology. I’m just a player but this is what I feel about WvW in GW2. I don’t know a magic recipe for solving it without ruining and redesigning what GW2 already have consolidated as WvW but I think a few suggestions could collaborate into leading WvW towards the right direction. That’s why I came in to write a few suggestions that might improve the “feel” of what we have today.

Those suggestions are pointed towards making it important not to just “take” objectives over and over and over, drowning each player in Karma and WvW experience, but into actually HOLDING taken objectives, leading players to collaboration and a sense of reward as a whole, instead of individuals.

Please feel free to point me dumb or to post your suggestions as well, but here we go. I think a good point from where to start without major changes are the Supply Camps.

Supply Camps 2.0
When a Camp is captured and it successfully delivers 5 caravans to a Tower/Keep, it launches a special type of caravan with a Merchant/Trader. Apart from being different from a standard Dolyak and have a merchand riding it, it’s also indicated as a different color on the minimap.

If the “Trader” successfully reaches the Tower/Keep, it establishes a “Trade Route” with that Tower/Keep. A Supply Camp can have trade routes with both the Tower/Keep it supplies. If the Trader fails to reach the destination, the Supply Camp will launch another one after 5 successful caravan deliveries. Once a “Trade Route” is established with a Tower/Keep, it no longer launches Traders to that location.

After a Trade Route is established, it finishes only when either end (the Supply Camp or the destination) is captured by the enemy. Also, as soon as the Trade Route is established with a Tower/Keep, a special Trader NPC will appear within it, with 4 tabs of special goods being sold to players, 1 for each kind of Special Supply; this will be explained soon.

Continues —-

When a “Trade Route” is established, that Supply Camp will start sending special caravans to the destination, each carrying a special type of supply that is not the common used for building/repairing. Every fourth Caravan sent to a destination with a Trade Route will be a special caravan that will deliver the following goods: Weapons, Armor, Beer and Magic Shards, in this order.

This flow of caravans do need need to be delivered, as the 5 required for the Trade Route to be established, so if a caravan is killed and not delivered, it does not interrupt the launching of the special caravan, which can be killed as well.

So it works this way: 3 Caravans — Weapon Special Caravan — 3 Caravans — Armor Special Caravan — 3 Caravans — Beer Special Caravan – 3 Caravans — Shard Special Caravan — repeat

When 3 special caravans of the same type (eg.: 3 Weapon Caravans) are delivered successfully to a specific Keep/Castle, the Trader NPC gets “upgraded” and starts to sell better gear. The NPC has 4 tabs of equipment available:

- Weapons (related to the Weapons Caravan)
- Armor (related to Armor Caravan)
- Food (related to Beer Caravan)
- Trinkets (related to Magic Shards Caravan)

When 3 of a related-type caravan is delivered to that Tower/Keep, the related tab is “upgraded” and its content is changed to contain items/consumables of the current level. Levels are:

1 – Normal (White) items
2 – Good (Green) items
3 – Rare (Yellow) items
4 – Exotic (Orange) items
5 – Ascended (Pink) items

This way, Weapons, Armor, Trinkets and food of the current level can be bought from the Trader NPC for Badges of Honor + gold.

• —Continues —*

If the Trade Route is interrupted by capture of the Supply Camp, the NPC is unaffected but ceases to receive upgrades if no other camp with a Trade Route is supplying it with special caravan goods. If the Trade Route is reestablished, he resumes to upgrade as new supply caravans are delivered. If the Keep/Castle is taken, the Trader NPC as well as all upgrades from the special goods vanish and are reset.

The point is: if you lose the Tower/Keep, you lose everything and must start over.

The Special Caravans are visually different but are displayed the same color as normal caravans on the minimap. No minimap function can differ one from another, only actively looking at them. Also, they do not deliver normal supplies but they still count as a delivered caravan for tower/keep upgrades.

In addition the the normal “supply”, each Keep/Castle will have a stash value of Weapons, Armor and Magic Shards. Those will be 4 new supply types added in order to supplement the new mechanic.

Those “goods” can then be used to actively purchase various kinds of “upgrades” to the Tower/Keep and its staff. Those range from passive buffs the the Guards attack and defense to active, temporary buffs or special actions that can be performed by using those supplies.

— Continues —

Weapons
Weapons will be used to passively improve the attack power of Guards and Lord. Weapon upgrades can be bought multiple times to increase attack power of all Guards up to a maximum level. Also, active, 1-time temporary buffs can be purchased with Weapons, like improved damage for defending players and siege weapons

Armor
Armor is the opposite of Weapons and will be used to passively increase the defensive power of Guards and Lord. Armor upgrades may be bought multiple times to increase defensive power up to a maximum level. Active, 1-time temporary buffs can be purchased with Armor to reduce incoming damage to players, walls, and NPCs.

Beer
Beer is used to increase the morale of NPCs, granting them the ability to invoke Boons and remove Conditions. Improvements in morale level may give NPCs might stacks as they attack, Aegis every few seconds, condition removal on hit and etc. Active, 1-time boosts can be purchased to temporarily give all NPCs a big stack of boosts, grant Resistance for a period of time or even set the “Indomitable” buff on Lord for a certain period.

Magic Shard
Magic Shards are something cooler and can lead to a lot of new ideias. It enables casting of Magic over the Tower/Keep and, in higher levels, even the WvW World Map itself! A feature like a Mage Tower or a Mage NPC can be implemented for players to talk ask for magic to be cast with Magic Shards. In lower levels, options are casting special AoE magic over the Keep/Tower like Meteor Shower, Blizzard, Poison and other type of AoE effects inside the Keep/Tower area and surroundings; in higher levels, those spells could be cast on a nearby enemy Tower/Keep (costing more points) or in areas where you have a Sentry controlled. You could, for example, cast a Snow Storm that Chills all enemies passing through a Sentry monitored area. Burst spells would be one-shot spells while environmental and impairing spells would be time-based, lasting for a certain while with the ability of being re-cast with a certain CD at the current NPC/Mage Tower.

Phew!!! So that’s it! I know it’s a LOT of text but I think mechanics like these would add a lot of value to actually holding objectives rather than only to capture and would compel players into defending them. Even tough this does not solve the “win/loss” problem, it’s a step towards making players feel their conquests as a group rather than as individuals dived in bags and reward tracks.

If you’ve read this far I cannot thank you enough. I just hope some devs have any kind of insight over this and can make up something good with any of the points shown here.

Best regards to all of you!

Can you make a tldr? Don’t think most are going to sort through 4 posts to decipher what you want.

Swagger.1459:

Can you make a tldr? Don’t think most are going to sort through 4 posts to decipher what you want.

I agree with you but I see no other way of describing something by text without a description. Also, there is a 5000 character limit per post.

LockeCole.6125:

Swagger.1459:

Can you make a tldr? Don’t think most are going to sort through 4 posts to decipher what you want.

I agree with you but I see no other way of describing something by text without a description. Also, there is a 5000 character limit per post.

I understand, but maybe you could take some extra time to create a bullet point list of the relevant and most important info. It will make the info more digestible and time saving for the devs and readers.

Swagger.1459:

I understand, but maybe you could take some extra time to create a bullet point list of the relevant and most important info. It will make the info more digestible and time saving for the devs and readers.

I can’t (or don’t know how to) link specific parts of the text to a word so the Bullet Points wouldn’t help much; an index would. =/

LockeCole.6125:

Swagger.1459:

I understand, but maybe you could take some extra time to create a bullet point list of the relevant and most important info. It will make the info more digestible and time saving for the devs and readers.

I can’t (or don’t know how to) link specific parts of the text to a word so the Bullet Points wouldn’t help much; an index would. =/

Sure you can. Just reread what you wrote and make a short list of the most important points that’s easier for the readers to understand. Think of how you would do a power point presentation for a psychology class and go from there.

To break it down for the tldr people.

• Send 5 straight dolyaks from camp to structure.
• Will then spawn a merchant dolyak, if that one is killed, have to send in 5 straight dolyaks again to spawn the merchant dolyak.
• Once merchant dolyak makes it to structure, you create a trade route between camp and structure, taking either will break and reset this.
• Then the camp sends 3 dolyaks(killing one doesn’t prevent 4th with the special), 4th will be a special dolyak carrying weapon, armor, food, magic shards, repeat after 4th. The special dolyaks will have different colors on map.
• Merchant has tabs selling those items with different grades, once 3 of one type example weapons makes it in, it upgrades that item level, white-pink.
• The items are used to buff the npcs at the structure.
• Weapons improves guard damage, can also temp buff players and siege.
• Armor improves defense, can also temp reduce damage to players siege walls npcs.
• Food buffs giving npcs ability to cast boons cleanse. Improvements give npcs might stacks, Aegis every few seconds, temp buff of Resistance.
• Magic shards, allow different spells like aoe meteor over an entire structure, higher levels can cast at distance on sentry points.

It’s an interesting idea and the biggest part about it is it could promote more open field fights along the roads. Some of the buffs are already in the game as guild upgrades, but I’m sure other similar buffs could be implemented.

With the process: 5 yaks 1 merc – 3 yaks 1 weapon, 3 yaks 1 armor, 3 yaks 1 food, 3 yaks 1 magic, repeat 3 times to get 1 level of special item.

The amount of dolyaks required should probably be toned down, as many of the higher levels may never be seen, 3 yaks 1 merc. Yes I know there’s also dolyak guild buffs to use as well. But camps are pretty easy to take and that alone is enough to break the process and get it stuck on the spawning merchant dolyak area, all that needs is one camp flipper every 5 mins.

Once a camp is retaken it should probably skip the 5 yaks 1 merc process if the merchant is already established in the structure, and just back to the 3 yaks 1 special schedule.

I do like the idea of having something valuable out on the map for players to actually want to go after to stop. The old orbs were one of those mechanics and intended to promote those open field encounters.

open fields enconters create lag…. tons of it.

IMO those ideias might conflict with the auto upgrades… and the the idea of automatization is to take players out of the gameplay and stack them on the ktrain.

Aeolus.3615:

open fields enconters create lag…. tons of it.

And that would make WvW alot harder for the skrits….

No, big fat zergs flinging hundreds of spells around structures create lag.

If you’re constantly getting lag while fighting a dolyak in the middle of nowhere something be wrong with your setup.

XenesisII.1540:

Aeolus.3615:

open fields enconters create lag…. tons of it.

And that would make WvW alot harder for the skrits….

No, big fat zergs flinging hundreds of spells around structures create lag.

If you’re constantly getting lag while fighting a dolyak in the middle of nowhere something be wrong with your setup.

not really my dailly laptop is quite nice, the only comp where gw2 dont lays behind is on a i7 6700k @ 5.4GHZ with 980ti something something .

The point was Anet dont want players to have those burdens so they added alot of automatization to the game, i can see something arround that and i would love some camp changes, but this game is about not punish players that want to be carried, so add stuff that would coflict with Anet automatizations on WvW gona be ignored..its goes against their game ideals.

sorry for the bad english :\

Aeolus.3615:

XenesisII.1540:

Aeolus.3615:

open fields enconters create lag…. tons of it.

And that would make WvW alot harder for the skrits….

No, big fat zergs flinging hundreds of spells around structures create lag.

If you’re constantly getting lag while fighting a dolyak in the middle of nowhere something be wrong with your setup.

not really my dailly laptop is quite nice, the only comp where gw2 dont lays behind is on a i7 6700k @ 5.4GHZ with 980ti something something .

The point was Anet dont want players to have those burdens so they added alot of automatization to the game, i can see something arround that and i would love some camp changes, but this game is about not punish players that want to be carried, so add stuff that would coflict with Anet automatizations on WvW gona be ignored..its goes against their game ideals.

sorry for the bad english :\

The automation would still be there, his proposal wasn’t to replace it, this is an extra system built over it to provide some extra game play between camps and structures.

for what ive readed it looks players need to improve manually the npcs from that merchant, i found it as interesting a new way to not use supplies for that or in another words, add more sopply tipes than actually a “spupply” general value for everything.

Still requires players interaction it should be automattic lol, but that would probably makes ncps to hard to kill, and that is not what Anet wants as well, this game is ment to make bad players think they are amazing, the need week stuff and easy camps to cap, wich is one of the actual WvW issues in many many others.

You realize that automating the entire upgrade system was one of the reasons why players scouted maps less because there was no real reason to visit structures as often, and because structures were visited a lot less siege was being wasted because it wasn’t being renewed.

I think it’s fine to have some interaction somewhere. The proposal still basically runs itself, all you would need to do is get the upgrade and pop it, really not that big of a deal. The upgrades are for keep and tower npcs not camps, they weren’t meant to be solo’d and need a group anyways.

There’s a lot to break down here, which is fine, but forgive me if it’s a bit out of order.

I want to talk about your Merchant idea first. It is essentially an array of defense-oriented buffs in addition to existing systems. While it will increase the value of holding objectives, it does so by layering more things on top of existing things. The result is that defense becomes much more powerful in a way that cannot be undone through gameplay. Offense can prevent these things from happening in the first place but, once achieved, progress cannot be reset without fighting directly against them.

In addition, these changes favor the larger, dominating server over the smaller servers. They increase the disparity in power between the two and, thus, exacerbate temporary population differences.

As such, I cannot support this idea as is. I believe you have correctly recognized that mechanics are what need to be tweaked, but this is not the way to do it.

Second, I want to contest your claim that mechanics to incentivize holding objectives do not exist. I argue that guild tactivators, the current upgrade system and the related PPT system encourage holding objectives. The purely defensive advantages of higher tier walls are plenty of incentive. The higher levels of tactivators and more than double PPT are even more incentive. The problem is not a lack of incentive but that the incentive is not as effective as it should be. If players don’t care about PPT, why should they care about being able to defend? What’s the point in higher tier walls, tactivators and more PPT if you don’t care about the score in the first place?

This new update that, ideally, makes the score matter a bit more will perhaps improve our situation. If players want a high tick to get the extra pips, they’ll be more inclined to defend a 20-point keep and more inclined to keep supply camps running to get their structures upgraded. Again, the root of the problem is that players do not currently care about the score.

Third, I want to return to mechanics. Your idea to tweak them to incentivize holding objectives has merit. However, it must be done in a way that doesn’t confer semi-passive bonuses as those overwhelmingly benefit dominating servers. The best starting point is simply making sure the current bonuses apply consistently.

For example, T3 walls are a great boon in defense because they buy you more time. However, unless you can do something productive with that time, it is meaningless. Therefore, mechanics that cannot be countered no matter how much time passes render the defensive boon largely moot. For example, catapults placed in positions where they cannot be hit from inside the keep no matter what essentially nullify the defensive advantage. The only recourse is to fight the stacked enemies directly which, of course, aggravates the power disparity between large and small servers. Now, if those catapults could be hit from inside the keep but were protected by shield gens and such, a sacrificial thief with a disabler could create an opening to treb or mortar the catas down. With enough time, a smaller team could withstand an assault from a larger team. The larger server would retain the advantage as they have more people to hold supply lines, carry supply, man siege and fight, but the extra time from the higher tier defenses would be a meaningful factor. As a result, defending upgrading objectives would have more meaning. They wouldn’t just be auto-flipped when the current guild ends its raid.

edit: I should note that a smaller team assaulting a larger team cannot make use of uncounterable offensive siege as they will simply be run over. Thus, the argument that a boon for small servers is a larger boon for large servers cannot be applied here.

the issue isnt your idea, since it has a good point mostly about against fully automatization and need players interaction wich is what games should be about, it is Anet Dev’s mentality that is very “newbie”.

gñññ no to discourage the OP as it seems a nice idea, but what about sorting the rewards thing in wvw let’s focus in the main mechanic: players skills and how they interact with each other?

You know just to avoid as much as possible the existence of cancer builds in a pvp scene…

anduriell.6280:

gñññ no to discourage the OP as it seems a nice idea, but what about sorting the rewards thing in wvw let’s focus in the main mechanic: players skills and how they interact with each other?

You know just to avoid as much as possible the existence of cancer builds in a pvp scene…

As we have already seen, the wvw team has little to no control over balance of professions and their skills. Might as well take that discussion to the profession forums.

XenesisII.1540:

anduriell.6280:

gñññ no to discourage the OP as it seems a nice idea, but what about sorting the rewards thing in wvw let’s focus in the main mechanic: players skills and how they interact with each other?

You know just to avoid as much as possible the existence of cancer builds in a pvp scene…

As we have already seen, the wvw team has little to no control over balance of professions and their skills. Might as well take that discussion to the profession forums.

actually profession forums aren’t the place either. And because there is an split between pvp\pve may as well this subforum be perfect for complains about class balance in wvw.

Either I don’t think the balance team if it does exists at all it belongs to any subforum.

XenesisII.1540:

To break it down for the tldr people.

Love you! I really appreciate your help

XenesisII.1540:

The special dolyaks will have different colors on map.

Nope! They have the same color! Nothing differs them from normal caravans unless you actually looking at them! Only the Traders have map indicators.

XenesisII.1540:

But camps are pretty easy to take and that alone is enough to break the process and get it stuck on the spawning merchant dolyak area, all that needs is one camp flipper every 5 mins.

Once a camp is retaken it should probably skip the 5 yaks 1 merc process if the merchant is already established in the structure, and just back to the 3 yaks 1 special schedule.

Yes but you can establish Trade Routes with 2 nearby camps and losing one will not break the evolution since you are still receiving special goods from the other one. If you lose both, upgrades are halted but you’ll have a big downtime. It brings more value to try and hold such easily-capturable camps.

I really appreciate your help, dude! Thanks a lot.

Sviel.7493:

The result is that defense becomes much more powerful in a way that cannot be undone through gameplay. Offense can prevent these things from happening in the first place but, once achieved, progress cannot be reset without fighting directly against them.

I agree with you that, if not finely tailored, the “upgrades” can cause more problems than solutions. They should be enough to help protecting vs a small group but won’t make a big difference in larger scales. For example, a 5% defensive buff in the maximum Armor level for a Guard is almost negligible.

Also, we can rip off the “NPC upgrades” entirely and still keep the group consensus of protecting a “common benefit”. What if only the Trader NPC evolves? At maximum level he sells Ascended Gear and he could as well sell Salvage kits, gathering tools or other stuff at a discounted price. People wouldn’t want to lose that fully upgraded Trader which took a lot of effort to evolve. I think it’s much more rewarding that looking at our very own pips and checking “Oh, my ascended is almost there”.

Sviel.7493:

the root of the problem is that players do not currently care about the score.

That’s why I thought the NPC would be one step towards people caring about an objective “as a group”. It does not solve the problem but it’s a step into addressing it.

We could rip this all apart and think of an “Economy System”, that improves over time when you hold multiple objectives that link to each other by the Sentries, modifying the concept of the “Trade Routes” while still maintaining its root idea. So Economy would increase and decrease over time based on your structures and structure level, caravans delivered and etc. Objectives “linked out” of a trade route – ike. not connected through sentries – would stop receiving the Economy bonus of adjacent objectives. Think of a “Network” while the “routers” are the Sentries and they enable Economy trades with each connected node.

If the buff is too small, it won’t be worth protecting. If it’s big enough to help against small teams but not large, it is unlikely to spur people to hold objectives but will push them toward zerging over small-team play. I don’t think there’s a sweet spot where more defensive buffs work.

Paring it down to just a trader would eliminate that problem, but people would be able to finish their business with said trader after seeing him once or twice. After that, the incentive would be gone. In addition, they can just hold an easy structure like their own Garrison/Rampart and not worry about trying to get traders anywhere else.

The goal is still good—just the implementation is tricky.

I like the base concept of an Economy System, but I’m not sure how it would actually work. Perhaps Camps that benefit from it send out Yaks with bonus supply? That wouldn’t change anything for an empty map as the structures there all have full supply anyway. For towers and keeps, I’ll need more time to think. Or perhaps they can just function as increasing the bonus for camps?

Sviel.7493:

Paring it down to just a trader would eliminate that problem, but people would be able to finish their business with said trader after seeing him once or twice. After that, the incentive would be gone. In addition, they can just hold an easy structure like their own Garrison/Rampart and not worry about trying to get traders anywhere else.

It should be that it’s not exploitable that way. For example: your Garrison in your respective Home BL as well as Towers anywhere cannot upgrade a Trader to Level 5; maximum would be 4, with Exotic Gear which is easily attainable in any way. Same would apply to the Mage NPC/Mage Tower, which would not be able to reach max level.

So this leaves us with the 2 side Keeps on every BL as well as the on in EB which could reach max Level (5).

Sviel.7493:

I like the base concept of an Economy System, but I’m not sure how it would actually work. Perhaps Camps that benefit from it send out Yaks with bonus supply? That wouldn’t change anything for an empty map as the structures there all have full supply anyway. For towers and keeps, I’ll need more time to think. Or perhaps they can just function as increasing the bonus for camps?

I don’t know either, there are too many possibilities. Starting options could be discounted siege weapons, Caravans having more escort Guards and being more tanky, Camps allowing players to get more supplies (like on Garrison), Circles taking longer to Decap/Contest.

Maybe little “powers” instead of those, that can give quality of life upgrades to a server. For example: all Sentry circles have Supply Trap effect. It could ruin an entire Zerg if they are dumb/kitten or careless (since one player could go ahead, capture it and cancel the effect).

LockeCole.6125:

old players, that quit WvW (and even GW2) for good due to the lack of appeal in WvW “Guild Wars” will not come back because of a “personal reward” system.

I would contest this because although it would not bring back everybody, it might bring back people would play for the backpack. And others might return because of their friends returning, not the personal rewards.

I’ve already witnessed the return of at least one influential old guild leader.