Guild Wars 2

Currently WvW in Guild Wars 2 resembles games like Battlefield 3 more in terms of pacing and play-style and sense of accomplishment than it resembles RvR in DAoC.

This different, faster, more tactical, less strategic game-play might appeal to some (and that‘s fine) but it doesn‘t to me and those who had hoped for a more epic and meaningful experience. I can‘t say for sure what type of play-style ANet was aiming for, but I‘ll go ahead and list the top issues which are holding WvW back from my point of view.

1. The 4 „different“ maps – I understand the splitting into 4 maps was probably done due to technical constraints. And that‘s unlikely to ever change. And yet this issue alone is the single biggest reason why WvW feels so disjointed and meaningless and thus more akin to Battlefield than RvR. There‘s no sense of a „united front“ when every map is fighting their own battles and it’s hard to foster a community when combat is so disjointed.

2. Objective density – The WvW maps are littered with objectives. Close to 50 in total across all four maps. Given the relative size of the maps, it means that the next objective is usually less than a minute travel-time away. This makes it extremely difficult to react to enemy movement. Defending is difficult/unpopular because it takes longer to react to an „inc“ than it does for a zerg to make up its mind and tear down some walls.

3. Over-reliance on NPCs as a mechanism – Many upgrades and mechanics in WvW involve NPCs, commonly as patrols or guards. However, while they might prohibit a single player from capping points all too easily they are absolutely useless once 3 or more players are involved. This may be by design, but considering the amount of upgrades focused around them, I don‘t think this is intentional. NPCs tend to be either total pushovers, or over-powered bosses that require zergs. Finding a middle ground is difficult in every MMO but GW2 really falls short in this regard.

4. Capping speed- Seizing a keep that is being defended does truly require some effort and coordination. But without significant defenses, any keep can fall in a matter of minutes. No wonder nobodies likes investing into upgrades, especially into supply bases, because they are capped too easily. This also encourages the „zerg from A to B to C“ type game-play that is prevalent in WvW.

So what to do?

About 1. – Well this is the least fixable issue and I doubt it will ever be changed (for whatever reasons). Maybe an expansion pack will able to feature a reworked WvW zone all within a single zone. That alone would be a huge improvement to WvW, not only in terms of game-play but also in strengthening the server community.

About 2. – This is an issue every map designer faces and arguments can go in both directions. While it‘s tempting to litter a map with objectives and claim it adds „choice“, it also comes at the cost of „focus“. Give players too many objectives to chose from and the game becomes a lot more about running from A to B and on to C than it does about actual fighting your enemy. But if you don‘t add enough choices, it just becomes a huge turtle-fest/stalemate. However thankfully there is a sweet spot to be found from a game-design POV and that is 3. In a two-faction battle there should (ideally) always be three possible points of contest. It provides the ideal balance of choice vs. focus. Since WvW is a 3 faction contest though, it should be expanded to 5. What that means is that at any given moment in WvW there shouldn‘t be more than 5 simultaneously contested objectives. Some games have achieved this by „locking“ objectives that weren‘t currently contested. This may be an option for WvW or ANet could simply reduce the number of objectives.

About 3. – Currently WvW knows 2 different types of NPCs. „Easily killable by one player“ and „requires a handful of players“. Essentially no NPC, or even groups thereof, are ever a threat to a group of 5 players. This may be OK for minor objectives like supply camps, but it really „cheapens“ larger objectives like keeps and towers. Ideally a tower lord should require a minimum of 5 players to take down and a keep lord should require at least 10. This would require them to have real encounter mechanics however, which a lot of elite and champion mobs seem to be lacking. That said, WvW would benefit from having slightly less mobs and NPC littered through the place. More class, less mass.

About 4. – This somewhat ties into the previous point. If keep-lord encounters took significantly more effort that alone would increase the cap time for keeps by a meaningful margin. But even the actual cap-time needs to be increased drastically, relative to the strategical value of the objective. For example, a supply camp should require about 1 minute to cap, a tower roughly 2 minutes and a keep 5 minutes of holding the circle. Stone Mist may even require 10 minutes just to underline the importance of it. Not only does this slow down the rate at which objectives exchange hands, it also gives defenders more time to rally.

Anyway, I know most of you are going to say “WvW is fine” etc. etc. and I’m inclined to agree. It is “fine”, but it could be better (at least in my opinion).

1.) If you have every single person on one map, it’s going to be a massive mess. Splitting the maps automatically does what you normally would have to do in a giant map: split your forces and assign different leaders. Splitting the maps does both automatically. It also means the chat system is actually usable and isn’t a colossal spam fest.

I agree it would be nice to have one huge battlefield, but from a practical standpoint this is superior. However, there is normally 2 fronts in each battle, and you have smaller groups going out, so it does still maintain that feeling you’re talking about.

2.) This depends on the map and situation. In some cases you do have plenty of warning, in others you don’t. However, defenders normally have the advantage in almost every way. This gives the attackers one advantage: initiative. If you want to know the enemy’s movement, you have to make informed assumptions or have people scout.

3.) I agree this could be improved.

4.) If you don’t defend a keep, it should fall relatively quickly. That being said, most matches thus far have been VERY short. In the last week-long match, things changed. Most structures had the time taken to be built up and fortified, essentially doubling the time it takes to sieze them.

The fundamental aspect of defense in Guild Wars 2 is building it up, and actually having players there to defend. It seems your complaint is that the basic defenses are too low, but Guild Wars 2 is designed that way on purpose. The basic defenses are relatively low, but when you have fortification and player defense they can last for hours, and hours.

I believe what you are looking for is an objective based WvW.

IMO the current WvW feels like a point based system. We attack because we want the points, which after some accumulation gives us these buffs. The server with the highest points win.

An unintended consequence of this system gives people the idea of giving up if they find that they can no longer grab the top spot. This is because players in general work for a tangible reward. The 8 buffs are not so tangible, because there is a lag between action taken by players and the actual gain of the buff.

So we got 3 areas to tweak : points system, buff system and the game objective :
a) Add points to the tally that is gained off objectives. For example, there is a passive objective to upgrade a keep to its fullest within x timeframe. If the server is able to accomplish that, the server would gain points. An active objective would be if the server if able to capture an upgraded keep, additional points are given in proportion to the upgrades.

b) Adjust buffs to be location based. For example, capturing an artisan like camp would grant the artisan buff. The longer someone holds it, the stronger the buff would be.

c) We can add a game objective that is to capture a server’s final keep/spawn point. We can set the difficulty level to be insanely hard that it would be near impossible, but the chance is still there. The final capture would grant points enough to ensure the victory. This would alter players’ behaviour to take actions that would defend the ultimate base, and prompts players to take actions to capture the ultimate base.

So what does these changes bring:
a) There are now trade offs between getting a higher incoming point stream or an instant boost in points. Alternatively, it could also be prompting players to defend and hold locations, rather than trading keeps (ie. losing one but gaining another brings no difference in the current point format).

b) Location based buffs gives meaning to locations, other than just another means for more points. This would prompt players to absolutely control some areas.

c) Capturing the final citadel provides an overarching objective for WvW. It prompts players to think deeper strategically. It also mean that the match never ends, because capturing the final citadel ensures a victory.

Alarox.4590:

1.) If you have every single person on one map, it’s going to be a massive mess. Splitting the maps automatically does what you normally would have to do in a giant map: split your forces and assign different leaders. Splitting the maps does both automatically. It also means the chat system is actually usable and isn’t a colossal spam fest.

I agree it would be nice to have one huge battlefield, but from a practical standpoint this is superior. However, there is normally 2 fronts in each battle, and you have smaller groups going out, so it does still maintain that feeling you’re talking about.

2.) This depends on the map and situation. In some cases you do have plenty of warning, in others you don’t. However, defenders normally have the advantage in almost every way. This gives the attackers one advantage: initiative. If you want to know the enemy’s movement, you have to make informed assumptions or have people scout.

3.) I agree this could be improved.

4.) If you don’t defend a keep, it should fall relatively quickly. That being said, most matches thus far have been VERY short. In the last week-long match, things changed. Most structures had the time taken to be built up and fortified, essentially doubling the time it takes to sieze them.

The fundamental aspect of defense in Guild Wars 2 is building it up, and actually having players there to defend. It seems your complaint is that the basic defenses are too low, but Guild Wars 2 is designed that way on purpose. The basic defenses are relatively low, but when you have fortification and player defense they can last for hours, and hours.

1. I don’t see why having everyone of 1 map would be so much more messy than otherwise. And adding a message limit to the chat line would easily fix any spamming issue. Currently anything you achieve on one map can be rendered obsolete by what is going on on the other other maps. You mustered a huge force to take keep and it worked? Well in that time you lost three keeps elsewhere. So nothing has been gained. And since you can’t transition between maps freely…it makes everything feel disjointed (because it is disjointed).

2. You’re not really arguing about the objective density (too many objectives too close together) but about defense. Those are two different things. But even so, you chose to ignore the supply depots which will fall to any 3 man group, regardless of how many upgrades you invest. Defense isn’t just about keeps, but every objective in game.

4. Well we obviously disagree on that. In order to give defenders enough time to react, a tower shouldn’t fall in less than 5 minutes. And currently that’s the case.
My concern isn’t directly about the base-defenses. My general issue is that objectives, be it supply depots, towers or keeps exchange hands too quickly and frequently. Natural defenses factor into that equation, but are only a part of it. Useless keep lords and NPCs, easily destroyable defense weapons, rapid movement across maps etc. all contribute to this.

I don’t think making the maps bigger is the right solution. The complaints about objectives being too close together would just be replaced with complaints about there being too much useless space. The issue with attackers being able to change targets too quickly is just replaced with the issue of objectives being so far apart that the defenders can’t adequately defend them.

I primarily, the best way to address this ‘issue’ in WvWvW is to come up with some way to tie in objectives to the actual game itself. Right now other than supply camps, each individual objective doesn’t really -do- anything for you, other than give you more points.

I’m honestly not sure what could be done here, but conditional respawns or some other objective oriented buff could go a long way here. Right now all holding a Tower does is offer some more map control which just allows me to start trying to take the next tower in line so I can get more points.

The other problem I see here is that the mentality of Zerging from base to base to base attacking/defending is too good because doing anything other than zerging nets you virtually no benefit. I mean sure, you can make a small warband to raid supply bases and sentires, but other than that? There’s not many other options to do, as active defense gives no benefits and repairing/rebuilding fortifications gives peanuts.

a tower shouldn’t fall in less than 5 minutes. And currently that’s the case.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tower drop that fast unless someone has their head in theirkitten

Hell, last night it took BOTH of the enemy realms working in collusion nearly three hours to take our tower.

Maybe if you just completely abandon the place I suppose.

You hold towers so you can take or defend keeps. You hold keeps so you can have quick reinforcement points and push out further into the map. Complaining that holding a point just gives you map control is a little weird; WvW is fundamentally about map control. The points system doesn’t cause that, the inherent gameplay does. If matches didn’t reset and there was no victory, people would still be fighting over them, because that’s what you do in a set up like this, it’s all about territory control.

That being said, the points system does have issues in it’s set up. It’s too easy to get into completely hopeless situations well before the match is officially over, for instance. If there’s a 20k lead the day before reset, the other teams may as well give up; they’d need to have a 200 point advantage for more than 24 hours to close that sized lead. Even coordinating with each other against the leader, it’d be very difficult for either team to come back from that. So the points system creates pacing problems and leads to a fragile dynamic for keeping things interesting all the way up to victory. The teams have to keep things really close all week if things are to stay competitive. So that could stand to be addressed.

I agree with #2 and #4

There needs to be fewer objectives, and further spaced objectives

Taking a keep that is defended is a LONG process, but its still within what I feel is reasonable for me personally. Maybe a tiny bit shorter would be ok.

However, I totally agree that taking an undefended keep is WAY too fast. There is ZERO time for anyone to respond defensively to a keep being attacked that is undefended.