Guild Wars 2

I hate WvW, not as a concept but in it’s current implementation.

For solo play, information on what to do is unavailable.

For group play, objective flipping is boring and grindy, while keep taking is grindy and unimaginative. Keep defending is one of the most boring things I’ve ever done, ingame or out.

Fixes are fairly straight forward, most involve simple gameplay adjustments to encourage competitive behavior instead of mindless objective zerging, while inserting stratagy and order in to what is currently a mindless and chaotic mess.

1) Supply Causes Static Defense

1a) Spawn Supply Dolyaks at Keeps instead of Camps

1b) Make unescorted Supply Dolyaks always fail (spawn light npc ambushes)

1c) Make Dolyaks require a 10 second interuptable (with damage) finish move after their softdeath that cannot be bursted through.

1d) Keeps decay over time without supply, rather than using supply to upgrade their facilities.

Current keep defense is incredibly static as a scout it forced to sit in a keep or roam in a pattern in order to keep intel relevent for keep defense. No gameplay element, designed correctly, should force people to do boring things in order to play properly.

Spawning Dolyaks at keeps means that defenders have a chance to escort Dolyaks on their runs. Making unescorted dolyaks fail, and make supply important to keeping keeps defendable means that defenders must escort the dolyaks. Spawning light npcs means that even if no players engage the dolyaks the escorts are still not mindlessly boring. Making Dolyaks require a finishing move means that bursting down a Dolyak is no longer viable, a group needs to defend the Dolyak, but they also need to be completely defeated (or be pushed back) by the attacking side in order to fail the supply run. Keeps degrading rather than upgrading moves people out of the static position of designated keep upgrader, and instead focus players on open map control. This will also lessen the nightcapping issue, as fully upgraded keeps no longer will be an expensive endevour requiring 24 hour support, but instead a starting point which over time- due to lack of maintenance, falls apart.

2) Supply escorts are meaningless for attacking sides

2a) After being Finished Supply Dolyaks respawn on the killing persons side, as either a supply if the opposite objective is owned by the killing realm, or an attack Dolyak that spawns items similar to the recently implemented Last Stand mechanic (free siege, semi powerful npc) if both neighboring objectives are owned by enemy teams.

2b) Repeated flipping of the caravan leads to an increasingly powerful Dolyak/Caravan up to a reasonable cap and balanced against exploitative flipping.

3) Supply Favors the winners

3a) Total supply grantable by Dolyaks is a fixed amount across all available Dolyaks

3b) Supply loss of keeps is fixed, meaning more keeps requires a higher amount of total supply

3c) To maintain a whole map at full upgraded status a side must successfully capture every Dolyak every time.

Currently winning sides continue to win, and it becomes easier and easier for them to do so. This continues until a new batch of players log on and the old ones log out. Losing feels hopeless, because winning sides have more supply, more weapons, and bigger zergs.

If a side owns one keep, by ensuring that escorting their 1 Dolyaks keeps that keep upgraded fully means that they are unlikely to be stuck flipping one keep the whole night, getting more and more bored and disheartened. Forcing the winning side to escort more and more Dolyaks to keep Keeps upgraded means that either the losing sides can take degraded keeps easier, or that winning sides truly require superior play and communication is order to dominate, not just higher numbers.

4) Keep Defense is boring

4a) Physically getting in to a keep allows you to bind to that keep, giving that keep a waypoint which can be used upon death

4b) Waypointing to a keep costs supply in that keep

4c) Getting it to a keep requires a 3 second interruptable (with damage) cast time on the door of the keep.

Currently keep defense likely has you sitting on a piece of siege for hours, hoping that someone comes along, at which point you spam 1 or 3 for 10 minutes and either they die or they don’t.

Not having siege is even worse. Hardly any spells can be used to hit people on the ground due to the Z axis counting towards range, and jumping down is suicide against any competant or numerous zerg.

Allowing waypointing means that people can actually go out of the keep while still covering it for defense. Requiring supply highlights the importance of supply escorts. Requiring a cast time for entry means that sides actually need to coordinate attacks in order to allow entry, and the waypoint respawns means that such attempts can be made without forcing failure to require a boring 10 minutes walk back across the map.

5) Keep Offense is boring

5a) Add a new siege weapon that creates a barrier around an area which prevents projectiles from coming in and going out

5b) Make attacking with normal weapons do ZERO damage

5c) Allow Siege Weapons to be bought from any Keep

5d) Allow sieged keeps to sound a graphical alert on the map

5e) Firing siege weapons use the supply of the keep when within keep limits

5f) Dramatically reduce the damage siege weapons to do fully upgraded keeps

5g) Increase the amount of supply used to repair doors

5h) Increase the amount of damage siege weapons do to downgraded keeps (lack of supply)

5i) Larger keeps would allow entry by enemy forces to the lower levels if defending forces do not cover all entrances (something like a 30 second interuptable cast timer on the doors, after a keep has been under siege for 10 minutes already).

The new siege weapon forces defenders to leave their walls. Meaning that enemies actually need to engage with people on the ground. Keep Waypoints means that such small battles are not overly detrimental. Reinforcements can be called in via the map, and escorters can teleport back immediately. Getting people in to the keep will actually be challenging, and defending the door from entry will be viable.

Siege weapons can come from an Attack Dolyak that has been converted from a failed supply run, or from any nearby keep.

Attacking a well supplied keep will be an epic encounter, while attacking a downgraded keep will be substantially easier as a punishment to the owner for lack of resource management.

The new siege weapon requires communication so that allied siege can go out once the shield is let down, while enemy siege is still repelled.

6) Badges of Honor

6a) Remove Badges from Jumping Puzzles

6b) Remove loot bags and have badges act like a currency that is automatically added on a kill

7) Death State

7a) Remove finishing states, it encourages zerging and means outnumbered battles can never be truly won

7b) Black out the screen upon death and bring up the map so the person can choose where to respawn (base or their bound keep)

7c) Remove item damage completely from WvW maps, it frustrates people, instead just lower the amount of money received from objectives and kills

Conclusion: I believe, with these changes, that people can intuitivly know what to do at every moment of WvW, and be able to get there quickly and engage as soon as they arrive.

Defense will no longer be a chore which needs to be done. Escorts will no longer be a joke that no one does. Attacking will not be standing around meleeing a door while prepared people do all the work for you and they running up a ramp in order to get a reward.

Combat will be more constant and more understandable. Failure will be recoverable, and stronger teams will need to work harder in order to completely dominate.

The things people are rewarded for and the things that help the team will be brought far closer together, and no one will need to do boring things in order to help their side to victory. Fun and victory will be one and the same.

Respawn is required in WvW to maintain balance. It should be obvious.

The further you get from your home, the harder it is to cap and hold. The closer you are to your home, the easier it is to cap and hold. You want to remove this feature.

No, making capturing keeps further from your spawn harder is required in WvW to maintain balance. That’s what obvious.

The current implementation punishes deaths by forcing you to run through an empty map for 5-10 minutes.

It fails to actually succeed because if a zerg is next to you they just mass res anyone who died, meaning that the mechanic only really punishes the losing side.

The suggestions I offered above instead making it harder for a winning side to hold more keeps by requiring a more intense level of coordination to keep supply levels high enough to stop keeps degrading, while also allowing individual players to fight against larger zergs without the punishment of running through an empty map.

This balances challenge for a side vs the enjoyment of the individual. While the current system throws out enjoyment of the individual in exchange for failing to properly balance steamrolling a weaker side.

Badges of Honor need to be thought over.

Too much to disagree with.

Ulysses.4765:

Badges of Honor need to be thought over.

But it’s not the most important thing.

WvW at the moment, for someone just hot joining is boring.

It’s boring because there is no structure, there is no clear sign of where to go other than the commander tag.

Supply Dolyaks just wander from point to point, you can kill them for personal gain but the impact that makes on the enemy team isn’t noticable or intuitive. Defending involves standing on walls and trying to ninja siege control. Using siege means just spamming 1 button over and over.

Engaging assaulting teams is impossible as people just die and then have to run all the way across the map again.

The majority of WvW, as designed, is just standing around and auto attacking for individual players. Every now and again you overextend and the other zerg picks you off. Sometimes your zerg runs in to a bigger zerg and everyone dies. Sometimes you go fort to fort and rack up points. But who cares?

WvW doesn’t feel real, it doesn’t feel intuitive, and it doesn’t feel like anything you do makes any difference.

This is not a necessity of the style of game, it’s a complete failing of design.

Risingashes.8694:

4) Keep Defense is boring

4a) Physically getting in to a keep allows you to bind to that keep, giving that keep a waypoint which can be used upon death

4b) Waypointing to a keep costs supply in that keep

4c) Getting it to a keep requires a 3 second interruptable (with damage) cast time on the door of the keep.

Currently keep defense likely has you sitting on a piece of siege for hours, hoping that someone comes along, at which point you spam 1 or 3 for 10 minutes and either they die or they don’t.

Not having siege is even worse. Hardly any spells can be used to hit people on the ground due to the Z axis counting towards range, and jumping down is suicide against any competant or numerous zerg.

Allowing waypointing means that people can actually go out of the keep while still covering it for defense. Requiring supply highlights the importance of supply escorts. Requiring a cast time for entry means that sides actually need to coordinate attacks in order to allow entry, and the waypoint respawns means that such attempts can be made without forcing failure to require a boring 10 minutes walk back across the map.

5) Keep Offense is boring

5a) Add a new siege weapon that creates a barrier around an area which prevents projectiles from coming in and going out

5b) Make attacking with normal weapons do ZERO damage

5c) Allow Siege Weapons to be bought from any Keep

5d) Allow sieged keeps to sound a graphical alert on the map

5e) Firing siege weapons use the supply of the keep when within keep limits

5f) Dramatically reduce the damage siege weapons to do fully upgraded keeps

5g) Increase the amount of supply used to repair doors

5h) Increase the amount of damage siege weapons do to downgraded keeps (lack of supply)

5i) Larger keeps would allow entry by enemy forces to the lower levels if defending forces do not cover all entrances (something like a 30 second interuptable cast timer on the doors, after a keep has been under siege for 10 minutes already).

The new siege weapon forces defenders to leave their walls. Meaning that enemies actually need to engage with people on the ground. Keep Waypoints means that such small battles are not overly detrimental. Reinforcements can be called in via the map, and escorters can teleport back immediately. Getting people in to the keep will actually be challenging, and defending the door from entry will be viable.

Siege weapons can come from an Attack Dolyak that has been converted from a failed supply run, or from any nearby keep.

Attacking a well supplied keep will be an epic encounter, while attacking a downgraded keep will be substantially easier as a punishment to the owner for lack of resource management.

The new siege weapon requires communication so that allied siege can go out once the shield is let down, while enemy siege is still repelled.

6) Badges of Honor

6a) Remove Badges from Jumping Puzzles

6b) Remove loot bags and have badges act like a currency that is automatically added on a kill

7) Death State

7a) Remove finishing states, it encourages zerging and means outnumbered battles can never be truly won

7b) Black out the screen upon death and bring up the map so the person can choose where to respawn (base or their bound keep)

7c) Remove item damage completely from WvW maps, it frustrates people, instead just lower the amount of money received from objectives and kills

---

Conclusion: I believe, with these changes, that people can intuitivly know what to do at every moment of WvW, and be able to get there quickly and engage as soon as they arrive.

Defense will no longer be a chore which needs to be done. Escorts will no longer be a joke that no one does. Attacking will not be standing around meleeing a door while prepared people do all the work for you and they running up a ramp in order to get a reward.

Combat will be more constant and more understandable. Failure will be recoverable, and stronger teams will need to work harder in order to completely dominate.

The things people are rewarded for and the things that help the team will be brought far closer together, and no one will need to do boring things in order to help their side to victory. Fun and victory will be one and the same.

GO AWAY GIGANTIC TROLL

sPvP is just a click away.

Risingashes.8694:

Ulysses.4765:

Badges of Honor need to be thought over.

Supply Dolyaks just wander from point to point, you can kill them for personal gain but the impact that makes on the enemy team isn’t noticable or intuitive. Defending involves standing on walls and trying to ninja siege control. Using siege means just spamming 1 button over and over.

This statement is so utterly wrong in concept, design and execution, it makes all the other walls of text you wrote completely irrelevant.

A lot of these I seem to agree with completely. It’s hard to hotjoin in WvW because it’s either boring (if you’re winning) or your server is getting steamrolled.

That and walking across the map to help defend or joining a zerg is boring.

I do think that flipping certain camps should give more reward though.

And another note: if your suggestion for rewarding kills is implemented, how would support-geared characters get their fair share? Right now the current system really supports people who gets exp because they tagged someone.

Otherwise, I really like a lot of your post and hope that ANet would eventually implement (not holding my breath) some of these in the future.

Plok.6145:

This statement is so utterly wrong in concept, design and execution, it makes all the other walls of text you wrote completely irrelevant.

My ‘wall of text’ is a clear and detailed explanation of my position, what I think it wrong, and how to fix it.

You’ve made a general statement that indicates you think something but are unable to actually explain your position.

Can you take out a piece of paper and actually try and write down why you think the things you do?

Star Lancer.2901:

if your suggestion for rewarding kills is implemented, how would support-geared characters get their fair share? Right now the current system really supports people who gets exp because they tagged someone.

I agree with what you’re saying. My change was really only focused on reducing the frustration of bags of loot.

Rewards should really be focused on objectives rather than kills, the problem being rewarding kills is important to avoid people gaming the system or just ignoring enemies, but at the same time rewarding support also tends to easily lead to mix-max behavior where people will go around AE healing people when doing such isn’t actually helpful.

You should cut these ideas into smaller chuncks so people can digest them individually.

It’s kind of sad that most people would disregard this whole thread because they can’t spend a few minutes digesting what they just read and try to understand what is being posted.

Risingashes.8694:

I agree with what you’re saying. My change was really only focused on reducing the frustration of bags of loot.

Rewards should really be focused on objectives rather than kills, the problem being rewarding kills is important to avoid people gaming the system or just ignoring enemies, but at the same time rewarding support also tends to easily lead to mix-max behavior where people will go around AE healing people when doing such isn’t actually helpful.

With that, I do believe that the general consensus is that the badges must be redone in concept. Maybe set a fixed amount of badges for completing objectives so that all participants get it too.

^ Maybe not. Take what I just typed with a grain of salt.

WvW is a mess because it’s an arcade game trying to be a simulation.

for one thing, just 1, and its on the supply escort issue because its the most unreasonable….

you fail to consider the bottom half of the rankings with this idea. its ridiculous to assume all servers can field enough people to have escorts. this would flip the tactics of the lower tiers to the upper and vice versa. the inability to complete upgrades foments a zerg mentality. there is no point to defending when you can take 2 towers in the span of time it takes to defend 1 unsuccessfully. the lower tiers dont have the manpower to babysit upgrades, so none would ever be completed.

in the upper tiers however… you achieve the desirable gameplay of eliminating zerg mentality (to an extent).

i would argue that having desirable gameplay in the lower tiers instead of the higher ones creates a better overall experience. because you snowball towards equal distribution rather than superservers.

I do not believe WvW is design for people to hot-join. At least, at it’s current implementation, that is not really happening. A game of WvW right now is sort of like a game of RTS, like starcraft. Just that instead of playing the mastermind, you are playing one unit.

Now imagine the life of a zergling or zealot. Yes it is boring, if you think only in terms of the individual. Organized, WvW centric guilds make the system more fun if you have a collective goal and the means to achieve those goals, that’s what makes WvW work.

Currently GW2 is designed as mostly a solo game, where all achievements are per person, and there’s no community projects of any sort. If there’s any fixing that’s to be done to WvW, it should be about how to build server communities, drive guild vs guild rivalry, and a more intuitive, guided, on-boarding process for newbies.

Lots of good ideas. I agree with all of them.

insanemaniac.2456:

for one thing, just 1, and its on the supply escort issue because its the most unreasonable….

you fail to consider the bottom half of the rankings with this idea. its ridiculous to assume all servers can field enough people to have escorts. this would flip the tactics of the lower tiers to the upper and vice versa. the inability to complete upgrades foments a zerg mentality. there is no point to defending when you can take 2 towers in the span of time it takes to defend 1 unsuccessfully. the lower tiers dont have the manpower to babysit upgrades, so none would ever be completed.

in the upper tiers however… you achieve the desirable gameplay of eliminating zerg mentality (to an extent).

i would argue that having desirable gameplay in the lower tiers instead of the higher ones creates a better overall experience. because you snowball towards equal distribution rather than superservers.

You should have taken the time to actually read my post past point 1 and you’d see this has been totally addressed.

One of my suggestions was that keeps should start fully upgraded. ‘Babysitting upgrades’ no longer happens. All a losing side needs to do is have a few people escorting the Dolyaks, have everyone bound to their few keeps and teleport back once one of them is seiged.

Due to the Dolyak mechanics the losing side will be able to commit more people to defense and the keep will have all defensive upgrades available as the losing side will only need to have escorted a few Dolyaks to maintain maximum supply.

These changes help all levels of play. It means that lower tiers will always have clear points of interest that they should be focusing on, and that each member will be making a real (and noticeable) contribution to their side by choosing one of many playstyles which will have a lot of variety.

Well…thieves. That about nails it.

Alarox.4590:

Too much to disagree with.

This

Too much wrong in those 2 post i wouldn’t even know where to start. Culling crippled WvW, this will simply finish it off.

The main point of your post is that you want incentive to do something.

While I strongly disagree with most of your ideas, I just have to say that unescorted dolyaks sometimes DON’T survive because there already ARE NPC ambushes AND enemy sentries that can stop them.

Requiring a 10 second finishing move that is interrupted on damage is also a bad idea because then any thief could stop multiple players from being able to finish off a dolyak for quite a long time.

There’s more I disagree with but I just don’t have the time to type it all out. I don’t think this is the way to go about fixing WvW.

Risingashes.8694:

insanemaniac.2456:

for one thing, just 1, and its on the supply escort issue because its the most unreasonable….

you fail to consider the bottom half of the rankings with this idea. its ridiculous to assume all servers can field enough people to have escorts. this would flip the tactics of the lower tiers to the upper and vice versa. the inability to complete upgrades foments a zerg mentality. there is no point to defending when you can take 2 towers in the span of time it takes to defend 1 unsuccessfully. the lower tiers dont have the manpower to babysit upgrades, so none would ever be completed.

in the upper tiers however… you achieve the desirable gameplay of eliminating zerg mentality (to an extent).

i would argue that having desirable gameplay in the lower tiers instead of the higher ones creates a better overall experience. because you snowball towards equal distribution rather than superservers.

You should have taken the time to actually read my post past point 1 and you’d see this has been totally addressed.

One of my suggestions was that keeps should start fully upgraded. ‘Babysitting upgrades’ no longer happens. All a losing side needs to do is have a few people escorting the Dolyaks, have everyone bound to their few keeps and teleport back once one of them is seiged.

Due to the Dolyak mechanics the losing side will be able to commit more people to defense and the keep will have all defensive upgrades available as the losing side will only need to have escorted a few Dolyaks to maintain maximum supply.

These changes help all levels of play. It means that lower tiers will always have clear points of interest that they should be focusing on, and that each member will be making a real (and noticeable) contribution to their side by choosing one of many playstyles which will have a lot of variety.

it isnt the roflstomp matches i care about, where having an immediate fully upgraded keep would be a great benefit to the underdogs… but also a curse to fight against. its the lower tiers. the fair matches in the lower tiers often have long periods of time where not a single invader will enter a map, because there are only like 10 people total online for the server. youre making a manpower quota (by adding a deterioration mechanic) that the lower tiers cant meet. expecting those 10 people to all go roaming around in order to keep supplies topped off and keep walls from deteriorating is completely unrealistic. it would be boring. it would be frustrating. when i have a goal of holding the fort, i wont necessarily have a goal of fighting people… which is what wvw is about. objective oriented fighting/outsmarting on larger scales than solo. you would drive people away from servers that cant handle the quota, and into servers that already can.

honestly, i skimmed most of your post after reading about the deterioration. because i think that would be silly.
for what its worth, since these were short and autonomous of the general idea of adding deterioration to splinter zergs:
6a is a 50/50 design decision up to the devs. they want to cater to everyone. more methods of doing anything caters to more people.
6b is something ive always thought was ridiculous to not be included already.
7…. downed state and in-field rez’s are major issues. spying… whatever. real world analogue of spying is military grade spy satellites. you pretty much always know where major enemy forces are irl and in game. an enemy eye is something you just have to work around. or deceive. theres no such thing as a surprise queen in chess.

i was going to do a big ole write up. But figured nah, your mind is set in it’s ways.

WvW justs the return of Orbs. With a counter balance mechanic for the realm that controls the majority of them, to make their keeps walls/doors take more damage when attack per orb they control.

Then WvW needs a better outmanned mehcanic that increases siege damage output by 33% when outmanned.

Whole guilds transfering servers has to be stopped or WvW will remain a joke with absolutely no need for useless and incorrect rankings.

Just wanted to toss that in. With these transfers happening it is hard to want to put any effort into WvW. Better off playing Spvp.

Great ideas though.

Well done Risingashes, obviously put a lot of thought into it and potentially some very good ideas.

At first I came in here to lol at another one of these topics

But this stuff is really nice outside the box thinking and obviously the OP is:

1. very experienced in WvW
2. put a lot of clear thought into it
3. thinking well ahead of the status quo

I think it should be looked into

Permastealthing thieves are what keep me from returning to WvWvW. Just tired of never seeing or hitting my attacker. I don’t know how anet considers this fun for non stealth classes.

I’ve read this and thought about it. Although there are a couple of good ideas there, these are the same good ideas that virtually everyone has floated at some points, however some of the others obviously have not been thought through properly – just one example, porting back to a keep costing supply? What if the keep has no supply? No port? You decide to go on the offense, After a close and protracted battle, your side looses and they all port back the the keep to regroup. Oh, your walls just deteriorated due to lack of supply? Better not launch any attacks for a while while we build up supply at athe keep – Where is everyone going? Sitting around watching supply build is boring and we cannot risk lauching any attacks until it has built otherewsie we might cripple our own keep.
Also, you don’t need a new siege weapon – just a focus ele on air (something that seems under-utilized)

So many rules. In my opinion logistics should be kept simple. I don’t want to do a list of chores to keep the wheels turning. I am either an infantry man, an artillery gunner, an engineer, an intelligence agent, or a combination. If I want to do logistics I’ll walk out my front door and run some errands.

Now how about a topographical siegemasters map or a range finder on blueprints.

I disagree with almost every single point, and those I don’t disagree I’m somewhat neutral instead of agreeing. Cba to write a wall of text though, just posting to add to the statistics how many agree / disagree if somebody keeps track of those.

all of his suggestions makes this game turn into the failure that WARHAMMER online is.

testpig.5018:

all of his suggestions makes this game turn into the failure that WARHAMMER online is.

QFT

1b is already in the game. Whenever I run by Umberglade, the dolyaks are always getting attacked by wolfs or ghosts. If I get them to fight me, then run away so they leash, they despawn after running back to a certain point.

Good potential in this list, thanks for writing it up.

1b is already in the game. Whenever I run by Umberglade, the dolyaks are always getting attacked by wolfs or ghosts. If I get them to fight me, then run away so they leash, they despawn after running back to a certain point.

Good potential in this list, thanks for writing it up.

1b is already in the game. Whenever I run by Umberglade, the dolyaks are always getting attacked by wolfs or ghosts. If I get them to fight me, then run away so they leash, they despawn after running back to a certain point.

Good potential in this list, thanks for writing it up.

1b is already in the game. Whenever I run by Umberglade, the dolyaks are always getting attacked by wolfs or ghosts. If I get them to fight me, then run away so they leash, they despawn after running back to a certain point.

Good potential in this list, thanks for writing it up.

1b is already in the game. Whenever I run by Umberglade, the dolyaks are always getting attacked by wolfs or ghosts. If I get them to fight me, then run away so they leash, they despawn after running back to a certain point.

Good potential in this list, thanks for writing it up.