Guild Wars 2

A basic fact is that a 100 player zerg will steamroll over everything in it’s path. And what’s worse, there is no way to trim it down with guerrilla tactics as you would be able to do in a real conflict. I know that thought and at least one of these ideas has been mentioned before, but I believe all three together would at least give people a fighting chance against zergs and, quite frankly, make WvW a whole lot more interesting.

1. Allow people to hide. It’s difficult to surprise an opponent when they can see your server and rank tag floating above your hiding spot. I’d say if their point of view can see 10% or less of your character, the tag should be hidden.

2. Make transformation potions change your display name as well. While I agree it should not actually match any of the PvE creatures on the map, I believe it should come close. It’s fairly obvious if the bull walking towards you is not what it seems if it is called a "Tarnished Coast Scout:. :-P Something like “Suspicious Dolyak” or “Nosy Skelk” would probably work. This gives players another way to spy on or surprise opponents, but also gives the opposing side a fighting chance if they are paying close enough attention to their surroundings.

3. Don’t allow defeated opponents to be rezzed; only give them the option of respawning at a waypoint. Also, black out their screens. First, this allows guerrilla tactics to have some effect, encourages rezzing people in downed states and forces the commander and their zerg to make more tactical decisions than just “run around in a circle flipping everything with what is essentially an invincible army”. Second, it prevents dead players from providing tactical information in a manner that simply cannot be countered. Finally, it’s just plain more realistic. Zergs can exist, but they should not be an unstoppable force and I believe well planned guirilla tactics should be rewarded and just as successful as all other aspects of WvW. Being the side with the largest amount of people should not guarantee success and decide the outcome before the week even starts.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

What would really be useful is a way to “double-spike” a person and force a respawn. Basically a longer channeled spike on a defeated opponent. Thoughts?

killing players who are real people is pretty immersive.

It’s like you cherry picked all the realistic stuff you want and ignored the rest. Lets add in perma death, I mean that would give people incentive to make survivable builds and stick to a large group. Safety in numbers and all. Also while we’re at realism, lets have abilities do more 1 hit kills. I mean If you get face mashed by a hammer, chance of you surviving is none, if you do live, you’ll probably be dazed for hours. So yeah might as well be dead. And who lives through a ballista to the torso? that’s a hole in your body. Also lets add in specific supplies, I mean the supply you fix a stone wall shouln’t all be the same as the supply you fix a wooden door with right? and if you carry 10 of these supplies it should slow you down, and even more drastic if you have 15 or 20 of these supplies. Anyone not taking off their heavy armor before jumping into the water should sink right away and start taking damage.

Of yeah winning side of a fight gets full loot of you body, I mean you’re dead. No need for the gear anymore anyways.

I love the idea of making transformation potions hide your tag. “Hey Sarge… does that tree look a bit odd to you?”

You can hide behind stuff already, though. It just has to be tall stuff When you consider that 75% of folks never pan their camera around, looking only straight ahead, it’s actually easy in some spots.

Keiel.7489:

It’s like you cherry picked all the realistic stuff you want and ignored the rest. Lets add in perma death, I mean that would give people incentive to make survivable builds and stick to a large group. Safety in numbers and all. Also while we’re at realism, lets have abilities do more 1 hit kills. I mean If you get face mashed by a hammer, chance of you surviving is none, if you do live, you’ll probably be dazed for hours. So yeah might as well be dead. And who lives through a ballista to the torso? that’s a hole in your body. Also lets add in specific supplies, I mean the supply you fix a stone wall shouln’t all be the same as the supply you fix a wooden door with right? and if you carry 10 of these supplies it should slow you down, and even more drastic if you have 15 or 20 of these supplies. Anyone not taking off their heavy armor before jumping into the water should sink right away and start taking damage.

Of yeah winning side of a fight gets full loot of you body, I mean you’re dead. No need for the gear anymore anyways.

“More” realistic =/= like real life. I mean, salad people? How would the biology even work.

Transformation potions changing your name tag is an awesome idea and I’m completely on board for that one. It makes hiding in flipped structures worthwhile, lets you set up ambushes, allows you to do sneaky scouting, and I can think of lots of other awesome uses.

Something like “Suspicious Dolyak” or “Nosy Skelk” would probably work.

Yeah I cherry picked this because while I like the idea it won’t really work. The zergs would just kill any animal with an adjective in front of its name.

There are a lot of things that don’t work well in WvW. For example it is rare in the games I’ve played for two servers to team together to ensure a larger server cannot win – temporary alliances yes I’ve seen those but nothing that lasts the match. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen only that this is a lot more common in warfare – banding together to defeat a common foe. In WvW there is no advantage to doing this, one server still has to “win” so most servers cannot manage the level of co-operation required. In warfare however the stakes are normally freedom, liberty, or survival.

I’m all for making certain tactics more viable, only I think it needs to be noted that the motivation to take certain risks is effectively absent from the game. Adding new game systems is great but if no one uses them it becomes a waste.

Keiel.7489:

It’s like you cherry picked all the realistic stuff you want and ignored the rest….

Bingo and well said!

A lot of you guys seem to be missing the OP’s point, and picking out individual things he said instead of the whole idea in general: Make large zergs more vulnerable as opposed to the powerhouse stompfest they are today. To that end, I love the “no rezzing defeated players” idea. If you can spike someone that badly while their zerg is around, they shouldn’t get to cheat death because the zerg can pick them up in a few seconds. Something else that would be really cool to see would be an expansion of traps. have a zerg charge a supply camp only to fall victim to a few well placed damaging traps would be extremely satisfying. I mean, not damaging enough to kill them, but enough that they have to stop and lick their wounds for a minute.