Guild Wars 2

here a suggestion how to reward scouting: an UI which every player can open on the WvW map he/she’s currently on. Looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/EKz1gjo.jpg

Each occupied structure (towers & castles) list players who are in the building for more than 5minutes. Players have to flag themselves as scouts via talking to an npc in there to come up in the list.

Players can then freely donate any amount of money they choose. Commanders can make shoutouts to his zerg: “Please donate a few silver to xy, he’s in TS and scouts for a while now”. etc.

The money players donate in this UI gets transferred to the players mailbox directly.

as an anti-abuse mechanic you could include the spotting mechanic in the graph: When you, as a scout, click on an enemy player, the enemy player will be spotted and for a short time marked on the map for all to see.

The number of spottings could tell players how active the scout in the tower works.

Sounds cool, kinda like Recon Perk in cod mw3.
Though to make it a bit harder and scouting more demanding,
enemy names shouldn’t be visible unless targetted/in melee range or spotted.
Because often its merely the enemy name plate that shows their location..

I like the idea, not really sure the reward portion would work without a little prodding from whoever is commanding but in theory it would give players a way to reward scouts who otherwise go unnoticed and sacrifice the rewards others get, depending on how it was implemented the scouts could just be members of the commanders team and share a portion of the rewards with each objective capped, that would give the commander the ability to kick AFK’ers who are just there for the rewards, or rotate scouts out as they need to be replaced. Of course any reward system for scouts would be ripe for abuse, the donation system you suggest would probably be mostly safe providing folks actually donate.

This would bring hiding in castles/towers to a whole new level of difficulty for the occupants. And not easy for the scouts to spot as many players in a zerg as possible. I’m not sure about this.

I remember a dev commenting in a thread about how scouting/defending is unrewarding and they are thinking of ways to fix this… year-year and 2 months ago. I’d paste it here for you, but the search function is so borked I don’t intend to try to find it.

ah, cut them some slack I guess it’s not an easy thing to do

is that an excel spreadsheet to keep track of your scouts?!?!

oh my.

Please Anet. We are trying to help you refine your product!
I think we should definitely help figure out how to reward scouts. I dont know if there’s a “loot” way to do it or if donation is the way to do it. Either one could work IMO.

Enter Tower – Begin scouting – Leave area around tower 25 minutes later – receive green + 2-5 silver for protecting the tower and area. Bonuses if all dolyaks which passed through the area around the tower survive their journeys, and all sentries are your color.

I actually knew a PvE commander (ex military IRL) who keept track of nice karma like things peeps do for him in game on a spreadsheet while he plays. extrordinary person. Karma is an important concept in this game. Nice reminder n such. food for thought in the more competitive game play environment.

Pavel.8531:

I remember a dev commenting in a thread about how scouting/defending is unrewarding and they are thinking of ways to fix this… year-year and 2 months ago. I’d paste it here for you, but the search function is so borked I don’t intend to try to find it.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/devon-carver-on-the-future-of-world-vs-world/

It’s a nice article from last year, thanks for the post. They specificly said that they want roles to play an important part:

“It’s our goal to introduce more systems that encourage play within a wide variety of roles, not just those two. Scouts, siege masters, and defenders are only a sampling of the roles we intend to add to.”

I’d like that. I’d like to see gameplay that would be unique to specific roles too, this would make the game much more diverse. Think of how Team Fortress has those huge differences between classes and how fun it is to experience some totally new ways to play the game.

As it is now though, people who scout have quite a boring job to do. I’ve heard from people on our server who watch tv-shows / play handheld games while scouting in their towers. They stay there, talk to our commanders via teamspeak and get no reward (whether good gameplay nor good loot) out of it. A more active way of scouting shows in the new map EotM, you can build scout-probes in your map. Imho thats a wonderful tactic and really helpful, but wasted in a map where people ignore defense and just flip the castles of one another. Also what do you get for placing such a probe? Nothing really.

I think a scouting system would be a good idea. I think donations would also be a good idea. As for a reward, I’m not too worried about being rewarded other than the thank you’s from the commander/s. Maybe some karma awarded at each “tick” so long as you never go “out of range” of the structure you’re scouting or it gets taken over by an opponent, obviously. Good idea though, worthy of continued discussion.

That little UI thing is a cool idea. I also like Marcus’ post about different roles and stuff in WvW.

My only worry about scout rewards is you don’t want it to be something where someone can afk in a keep for an hour, and then get rewards for it y’know? It needs to work in a way that encourages active scouting and doesn’t reward people for just standing there.
Also, the different roles is cool but I wouldn’t want to be locked to one thing. Like I enjoy scouting sometimes, but it’s not like that’s the only thing I want to do in WvW.

I was also just thinking that..maybe Anet should take out the gold costs for upgrading anyway. I mean it really doesn’t make sense that, you capture these keeps and towers for the SERVER, but then it’s one or two people who end up paying for all the upgrades out of pocket. And it’s probably not the same people who captured those buildings, or claimed them, or anything. I mean if there is going to be a cost for upgrading buildings that the SERVER or GUILDS hold, shouldn’t the cost come from the server or guilds? Like, if a guild has a keep claimed, maybe upgrades should come out of that guild’s influence or something. Maybe since WvW is a server-wide endeavor, there should be some way for the cost to come from the server as a whole. Like, maybe you actually have to deduct points from your score to upgrade. This could potentially encourage people to also hold things longer, so that you don’t have to keep spending points to re-upgrade. However on the otherhand, it also might lead to people just not upgrading at all. Also I don’t know who would be able to authorize those kind of spendings, and could probably lead to easy trolling.

So..maybe (as much as I hate to say it…) a new currency could be introduced specifically for WvW? Given again either to the guilds or the server overall? Like…If it was a server-wide currency, it could be accumulated with your score, like for every object you hold at the tick, you gain a specific number of Currency. And this currency is exclusively used to buy upgrades. I still think it might be kind of sketchy as there are no real “server leaders” who could authorize spending, and you wouldn’t want it being wasted by trolls or inexperienced players. Other option, make new WvW exclusive currency for guilds, which maybe they earn as they claim and hold claimed things each tick, and then it is an ability like claiming that certain ranks within the guild ckittene that currency to upgrade buildings. However, maybe if a keep or tower is claimed, only a member of that guild can upgrade it. Unclaimed buildings could be upgraded by any guilds.