Guild Wars 2

I think most of us miss the question:

“What’s stopping everyone from zerg escort a dolyak?”

With the PvE killing, it’ll be a kill-steal situation. not very encouraged in the game. If it scales, read below.

With tracking progress on who’s around the dolyak, or checkpoint, people will just crowd around a dolyak to get the reward.

EDIT:

Although, with the recent knight fight, I suppose they can make each dolyak provide some sort of “buff” and have the escorts have the buff to qualify for the participation. Then they can limit how many people per dolyak, whatever the good amount of people is.

LAzraeL.2346:

I think most of us miss the question:

“What’s stopping everyone from zerg escort a dolyak?”

With the PvE killing, it’ll be a kill-steal situation. not very encouraged in the game. If it scales, read below.

With tracking progress on who’s around the dolyak, or checkpoint, people will just crowd around a dolyak to get the reward.

EDIT:

Although, with the recent knight fight, I suppose they can make each dolyak provide some sort of “buff” and have the escorts have the buff to qualify for the participation. Then they can limit how many people per dolyak, whatever the good amount of people is.

Speaking to the Veteran Supervisor NPC at the supply camp could be one means of receiving this “buff”. The “buff” ends when the Dolyak successfully reaches its destination or is killed, requiring the player to speak to the Veteran Supervisor a second time to receive the “buff” again.

DevonCarver.5370:

I think if you examine more closely what you just said, you can see the problem. The progress was being given to anyone standing around near the dolyak when it ended its path. That is hardly accurately tracking who helped it out. Without a good way to know who actually helped, we can’t provide adequate rewards.

To reward “defense,” give guilds a reason to hold objectives, not just cap them.

Here is how you reward defending without just giving points away. The trick is to reward guilds instead of individual players. You could do this and at the same time deepen support for guild involvement in WvW.

This will give people a reason to hold and defend, without the free-riding problem that you have from “standing around” awards for “defense” or “escort” missions.

Let more than one guild claim (i.e., “Pledge Support”) to each objective.

Change this to allow up to N guilds to place claims on each structure. Pick an N that won’t destroy your back end, but make it big enough that guilds will be limited in placing claims only by lack of resources, not lack of things to claim.

Change the interface from the guild decal banners we have now to a tab on the Quartermaster window that shows a list of all guilds who have “pledged” the current structure. Change the structure bonuses to be the union of those given by all guilds who have pledged.

When an objective gets flipped, all claims are wiped until it is retaken and claims re-pledged.

Add a cost to hold a claim (“pledge”) on each structure.

Bigger structures cost more to pledge. The cost is deducted from guild resources each tick. This should be influence and maybe a bit of silver. You might need a new “WvW Influence” that can only be farmed in WvW (when guild members participate in caps and kills).

A small guild should be able to log in for a few hours, run some ops, and have enough to keep a pledge on, say, one supply camp overnight while they are logged out. Bigger guilds that want to hold more and bigger structures will have to have more people on or work longer to keep their pledges funded 24×7.

Unfunded pledges drop off at the first tick when the full payment can’t be made from guild resources / bank.

Because there would be a cost to each claim, there needs to be some sort of new privilege (e.g., “Warmaster”) that a guild member would need to have assigned in order to be able to place a guild claim on any objective.

Make a guild leaderboard for each server showing the PPT earned for the match.

Each tick that a guild holds a pledge on an objective, add the PPT for that objective to the guild’s leaderboard score. More objectives held longer = more support for the war effort = higher standing.

Pay added “bounty” points as a bonus for each Yak that reaches its destination to each guild that has pledged the camp it started from.

This gives people a reason to escort Yaks without letting players farm by just standing around. To some extent guilds might free-ride on each other, but if a Yak doesn’t make it then nobody gets the bonus, so every guild also has an incentive to keep supply covered any time their members are on, to avoid missing bonus points.

This also encourages “active” play and gives smaller guilds that focus on supply a chance to outdo larger ones that just hold big structures. If you pledge a single supply camp and make sure every Yak that leaves gets where it’s going safely, you should get more in base PPT + bonus than a guild that just pledges a (more costly) tower or keep, but doesn’t put any effort into guarding the supply chain.

I think another feature WvW can use is when a server is outnumbered, the enemy towers are attacked by an NPC, similar to the champion giant event in Diessa Plateau.

The NPC should be hostile to all servers and not take out the tower’s claimer, just get the main gate down. This allows the outnumbered server easier access to a tower without being bombarded by ACs whilst on the gate. Of course the ACs can be used against the NPS if there are any defenders.

And if this event could be make to occur randomly, would be better as then a server cannot plan ahead to stop it.

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

I think another feature WvW can use is when a server is outnumbered, the enemy towers are attacked by an NPC, similar to the champion giant event in Diessa Plateau.

The NPC should be hostile to all servers and not take out the tower’s claimer, just get the main gate down. This allows the outnumbered server easier access to a tower without being bombarded by ACs whilst on the gate. Of course the ACs can be used against the NPS if there are any defenders.

And if this event could be make to occur randomly, would be better as then a server cannot plan ahead to stop it.

Problem I see with something like this, is tied to the “outnumbered” definition.
A server could have a 50 players on one map, while having 1-2 players per other maps, while server B and C have a few 20 men bus turning, thus A have the “outnumbered” buff… then, the 1-2 serve A “scouts” tell the zerg, “x tower is opened on B map” and the zerg comes for an easy cap…
Or the zerg is not fast enough and C steals the cap.
__________

Outnumbered is just too easy to trick to be a real basis for rewards/advantage.

LAzraeL.2346:

I think most of us miss the question:

“What’s stopping everyone from zerg escort a dolyak?”

With the PvE killing, it’ll be a kill-steal situation. not very encouraged in the game. If it scales, read below.

With tracking progress on who’s around the dolyak, or checkpoint, people will just crowd around a dolyak to get the reward.

EDIT:

Although, with the recent knight fight, I suppose they can make each dolyak provide some sort of “buff” and have the escorts have the buff to qualify for the participation. Then they can limit how many people per dolyak, whatever the good amount of people is.

Small rewards for dolly escort wouldn’t be high enough for a bus to escort it… from my experience, zerglings want action… What kind of action would you expect from walking a dolly?
This is just not fun… people who actually do it do it “for the server” not because it’s fun…
making it minimally rewarding is not gonna make it more fun…

And well, a zerg escorting a dolly would not be making points for its server either, so…

Main problem would be botters; but bots should be dealt with without taking off from real players…

Jocksy.3415:

Small rewards for dolly escort wouldn’t be high enough for a bus to escort it… from my experience, zerglings want action… What kind of action would you expect from walking a dolly?
This is just not fun… people who actually do it do it “for the server” not because it’s fun…
making it minimally rewarding is not gonna make it more fun…

And well, a zerg escorting a dolly would not be making points for its server either, so…

Main problem would be botters; but bots should be dealt with without taking off from real players…

Maybe. It also depends on what you find fun.. In wvw, I sometimes just walk with a dolyak… repeatedly. For fun. I’m not into zerging. I see your point, but I also remember back when dolyak escort get event participation reward, there were 5~15 people on a dolyak just walking with it. Unless you are saying 15 people is a standard escort number for a dolyak, then I guess it is fine.

This can work for defense as well.. Pick a number.. let’s say.. 1 per uncontested tower, 50 per contested tower, 5 uncontested keep, 100 contested keep… etc. Every 2~3 minutes they get event participation reward, make it similar or less to people who run with zerg capturing stuff. Make a little counter next to the tower/keep symbol showing how many defenders there are.

Granted there may be troll.. I don’t know how to solve that part.. But afk shouldn’t be a problem since they get kicked quite quickly. As long as the defender just stand around as a scout/defense.. they are participating in wvw.

The buff can be substituted with any system really, I’m just working on what I’ve seen in the game so far.

Bots must be banned and escorting rewarded. Its a simple problem. There are mob farmer ranger bots. Why not delete the ranger class?

McWolfy.5924:

Bots must be banned and escorting rewarded. Its a simple problem. There are mob farmer ranger bots. Why not delete the ranger class?

Only if we get to delete warriors to stop knockdown and bannering spam, necros to stop the condi spam, eles to stop the healing spam, engineers to stop the grenade spam, mesmers to stop the PU spam, thieves to stop the stealth spam, and guardians to stop the boon spam.

Heezdedjim.8902:

DevonCarver.5370:

I think if you examine more closely what you just said, you can see the problem. The progress was being given to anyone standing around near the dolyak when it ended its path. That is hardly accurately tracking who helped it out. Without a good way to know who actually helped, we can’t provide adequate rewards.

To reward “defense,” give guilds a reason to hold objectives, not just cap them.

Here is how you reward defending without just giving points away. The trick is to reward guilds instead of individual players. You could do this and at the same time deepen support for guild involvement in WvW.

This will give people a reason to hold and defend, without the free-riding problem that you have from “standing around” awards for “defense” or “escort” missions.

Let more than one guild claim (i.e., “Pledge Support”) to each objective.

Change this to allow up to N guilds to place claims on each structure. Pick an N that won’t destroy your back end, but make it big enough that guilds will be limited in placing claims only by lack of resources, not lack of things to claim.

Change the interface from the guild decal banners we have now to a tab on the Quartermaster window that shows a list of all guilds who have “pledged” the current structure. Change the structure bonuses to be the union of those given by all guilds who have pledged.

When an objective gets flipped, all claims are wiped until it is retaken and claims re-pledged.

Add a cost to hold a claim (“pledge”) on each structure.

Bigger structures cost more to pledge. The cost is deducted from guild resources each tick. This should be influence and maybe a bit of silver. You might need a new “WvW Influence” that can only be farmed in WvW (when guild members participate in caps and kills).

A small guild should be able to log in for a few hours, run some ops, and have enough to keep a pledge on, say, one supply camp overnight while they are logged out. Bigger guilds that want to hold more and bigger structures will have to have more people on or work longer to keep their pledges funded 24×7.

Unfunded pledges drop off at the first tick when the full payment can’t be made from guild resources / bank.

Make a guild leaderboard for each server showing the PPT earned for the match.

Each tick that a guild holds a pledge on an objective, add the PPT for that objective to the guild’s leaderboard score. More objectives held longer = more support for the war effort = higher standing.

Pay added “bounty” points as a bonus for each Yak that reaches its destination to each guild that has pledged the camp it started from.

This gives people a reason to escort Yaks without letting players farm by just standing around. To some extent guilds might free-ride on each other, but if a Yak doesn’t make it then nobody gets the bonus, so every guild also has an incentive to keep supply covered any time their members are on, to avoid missing bonus points.

This also encourages “active” play and gives smaller guilds that focus on supply a chance to outdo larger ones that just hold big structures. If you pledge a single supply camp and make sure every Yak that leaves gets where it’s going safely, you should get more in base PPT + bonus than a guild that just pledges a (more costly) tower or keep, but doesn’t put any effort into guarding the supply chain.

A big freaking NO to all of this, This are the most terrible WvW ideas I’ve ever read, which would ruin WvW for many people and would completely destroy any fun that this mode gives, just to turn WvW more into a stupid WvW Guild Elitist crap sandbox place that favors only one target group of players.

Let this NEVER happen!! Never ever .

Orpheal.8263:

A big freaking NO to all of this, This are the most terrible WvW ideas I’ve ever read, which would ruin WvW for many people and would completely destroy any fun that this mode gives, just to turn WvW more into a stupid WvW Guild Elitist crap sandbox place that favors only one target group of players.

Let this NEVER happen!! Never ever .

While I can agree with you on the Leaderboard thing (for various reasons), the rest of those suggestions are setup in such a way that its not obvious who the supporters are. So elitism is at the very least masked from casuals.

For example, what guild in that format would end up on the banners? The best solution is “no one – just the color.” If you’re that interested, go prod the API or talk to the Guild Claimer.

As has been discussed back and forth in this thread (and others), we need a way to reward defense, or at the very least discourage rapid re-capping of structures.

Perhaps this? Karma earned from a structure is re-scaled based on how long it was in ‘enemy’ hands, with scaling similar to enemy WXP. The original Karma from a structure should be the max, but should take a significant time before its achievable (say 4 hours). Minimum of 30 minutes before any Karma at all is earned.

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

For example, what guild in that format would end up on the banners? The best solution is “no one – just the color.” If you’re that interested, go prod the API or talk to the Guild Claimer.

It would not be practical to have the guild emblems displayed on the big banner as they are now. But maybe they could rework it to display smaller images of the decals for all pledged guilds on it.

The suggestion also was that anyone can see who is supporting a facility by talking to the Quartermaster and looking at the Pledge tab, which is where you already go to claim an objective.

Not sure where the spouting about “sandboxes” and “elitism” comes from. We already have guild claims now; they’re just pointless and have various annoying features, like not letting a guild with better bonuses place a claim if another guild with less or no bonuses already has claimed. This suggestion just takes that system and expands it to let more than one guild “claim” an objective instead of only one.

If you don’t care about the leaderboards, then don’t pay attention to them. And if you want to spend all day happy capping random stuff, you can do that to your heart’s content, at the same time knowing that you’re annoying all those “elitist” guilds whose claims you’re erasing over and over.

Just don’t be surprised if before long they show up to fight you for it.

And ANet just got done making a whole new special playground for those who just want to karma train 24×7. What they have not done at all since launch is anything for who have suggested that maybe the “war” in a game called “Guild Wars” should offer something more in the way of reasons for guilds to . . . go to war.

Heezdedjim.8902:

To reward “defense,” give guilds a reason to hold objectives, not just cap them.
[snip]

Let more than one guild claim (i.e., “Pledge Support”) to each objective.
[snip]

Add a cost to hold a claim (“pledge”) on each structure.
[snip]

Make a guild leaderboard for each server showing the PPT earned for the match.
[snip]

Pay added “bounty” points as a bonus for each Yak that reaches its destination to each guild that has pledged the camp it started from.
[snip]

I like some of these ideas.

The concept of allowing more than one guild to claim an objective is a good one. It would encourage alliances and dovetail into community building, while making the task of applying guild buffs much easier.

I’ll elaborate on that last point. On the server I play on, several guilds will agree to cooperate in upgrading and defending a structure. This cooperation extends to claiming the structure, applying buffs, and then – when the buffs expire – removing the claim so another guild included in the “alliance” can claim and apply their buffs.

That’s how it works under ideal circumstances. The reality, however, is there usually exists some lag between when one guild’s buffs expire and when the next guild’s buffs are activated because of the necessity of removing the first guild’s claim from the structure before the second guild can claim it. If there isn’t a player from the first guild logged in who has the necessary permissions to remove their claim, the “alliance” has to wait before the next set of buffs can be applied.

Heezdedjim’s suggestion above would neatly solve this problem. By creating an in-game mechanic permitting multiple guilds to claim an objective, it avoids the scenario I outlined above. It has other advantages, as well:

• It completely eliminates the need to implement punitive mechanics suggested either here or in other threads of forcibly removing a guild’s claim to an objective when a certain time limit expires, if they have no buffs active, or if a guild with more buffs active than the current claimer comes along and wants to claim the objective. Based on ArenaNet’s responses in other threads along with their general game design philosophy, they will never implement any mechanic allowing one guild to forcibly eject another guild from a claim; so let’s stop wasting time and forum space asking for it.

• By not implementing the punitive mechanics just mentioned, it avoids additional programmer/developer time and effort creating new functions from scratch. Instead, the current claiming system remains intact with the simple addition that more than one guild can lay claim to a structure at a time.

• It allows the guilds on a server to respond to hotspots with much greater flexibility. For example, let’s say there’s a guild with all buffs active with a claim at Overlook Keep on Eternal Battlegrounds. Stonemist is also owned by the same server on which this guild plays. Stonemist is claimed by a few of the server’s guilds, too, but some of their buffs have expired. Stonemist comes under attack. The guild that claimed Overlook Keep could easily move their claim to Stonemist and – since they’re the guild with the most buffs currently active – they become the primary claimer, giving Stonemist’s defenders all available guild buffs.

Here are some specific details and limiters I think would need to be included:

• The current limit placed on a guild of claiming only one objective per map is maintained. Multiple guilds would be allowed to lay claim to a single objective; but with this limit in place it would encourage guilds to spread out their claims rather than everyone claiming Stonemist and nothing else, for example.

• The guild with the most buffs currently active is the primary claimer and it is their emblem which will display on the structure’s banners. As their buffs begin to expire such that they are no longer the guild with the greatest number of active buffs, then the next guild with the most buffs becomes the primary claimer and will have its emblem displayed next. This will be completely automated; it won’t require players to speak to anyone or click any dialogue boxes to trigger.

• Buffs are not cumulative. For example, it doesn’t matter that the structure is claimed by five guilds, all with “Fort +5 Supply” active; the most additional supply a player can pick up at the structure will still be + 5. This avoids ridiculously imbalanced buffing (+25 supply!) while encouraging the claiming guilds to coordinate the activation of their buffs with one another or claim different objectives if they have identical buffs already active.

(continued)

(continued)

• I’m split on whether or not to limit the number of guilds permitted to claim a single objective. On the one hand, limits may be necessary to avoid the potential pitfall I identified above (everyone wanting to claim Stonemist and nothing else, for example).
  On the other hand, unlimited claiming may present programming obstacles of which I’m not currently aware. The other drawback to limits is it could result in in-fighting among the guilds. An alliance of guilds may all want to claim the same structure. If a guild outside their circle submits a claim to this structure, preventing one of the guilds from the alliance group to stake a claim, it could get nasty as the alliance group harasses the “outsider” in an effort to get them to drop their claim.

Now to address the areas of Heezdedjim’s suggestion I find problematic:

I had made a suggestion 11 months ago which recommended adding influence costs for claiming objectives (recurring theme is recurring). I’m in support of guild influence costs associated both with claiming an objective and holding the objective over time as a disincentive to those guilds who claim objectives only to become absentee landlords.

However, where I part ways with Heezdedjim is his(her?) lack of an incentive for paying these costs (I don’t feel a guild’s position on a leaderboard to be sufficient incentive). The thread I linked to above adds the incentive that for each guild buff active and/or members of the claiming guild defending their claimed structure, they will earn guild influence and/or decrease their influence maintenance costs by a certain percentage.

The upfront influence-on-claim cost and ongoing influence maintenance cost discourage guilds from claiming who have no intention of activating buffs in support of their server’s efforts. The influence bonuses for having buffs active and defending the structure then reward guilds who contribute to their world’s success. Ideally, the influence bonuses will balance with the costs such that a guild actively buffing and defending their claimed structure(s) will not lose influence and may even gain a little.

How to make this work in the context of an alliance of guilds laying claim to the same structure? Have them split the influence maintenance costs! Each guild that claims an objective will have to pay the initial upfront influence cost; there’s no getting around that one. However, once they are added to the list of guilds claiming the structure, the influence maintenance costs are evenly divided between them (perhaps with a slightly greater decrease in these costs for the current primary claimer with the most buffs active). This is further incentive to guilds to cooperate and coordinate efforts.

This system would allow smaller guilds to participate in claiming objectives which they would not otherwise be able to afford on their own. Larger guilds would welcome even smaller guilds to join the claiming alliance at a single structure because every guild benefits by having their maintenance influence costs reduced.

If a system is implemented whereby maintenance influence costs are deducted at regular intervals from a guild, then a means of allowing a guild to remove their claim from an objective MUST be added to the game. Otherwise, a guild could risk losing all their influence from having claimed a structure(s). Currently, once a guild has claimed an objective, the only way to remove it is to…claim another objective. The sole method for completely removing all claims is to have a claimed objective be captured by the enemy (not very reliable).

With regard to Heezdedjim’s suggestion of using earned PPT as the unit of measurement for determining a guild’s standings on a leaderboard:

Well, if you’ve read any of my suggestions you know where I stand on the issue of PPT; I’d like to see it eliminated entirely as it’s a system which incentivizes blobs, numbers over skill, and absentee landlordism as objectives sit empty and undefended.

Rather, I’d like to see guilds’ standings on a leaderboard tied to any or all of the following:

• How many kills have they made.

• How many points have they earned capturing objectives (per my previous suggestion that World Score points are now earned through captures rather than PPT).

• How many points have they earned defending what they have captured (per my previous suggestion that World Score points are now earned through successfully completed “Defend the X” events rather than PPT).

• And any other World Score point systems implemented which reward skill (either offensive or defensive), not numbers.

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

I think there are good reasons to keep dolyaks, but I wonder if we might be able to solve many of the problems we’ve discussed here by eliminating that sense of the supply chain of battle? It might just have the effect of making supply far less limiting.

Would it instead work to go with a combination of the two and have a guaranteed minimum amount of supply from holding a camp and have dolyaks carrying the extra? I’m curious what you all think.

As for the discussion around how to more closely involve guilds it’s definitely something we think about and I think there are intriguing ideas in here.

As far as involving guilds, I’d like to say that WvW would really need a simple solution in so far as to allow guilds to customize the keeps / towers they claim in different building styles. The guards can wear your guild’s emblem / armor style and you can upgrade them (with whichever currency) to have better spells and effects and different #s of guards.

Killing Dolyaks has always been good for cutting some supply and/or good for the quick karma / exp for roamers. I think this idea should be expanded as well as having control points buffed or changed. You could allow those who claim camps to tell the dolyaks where to go with supply and or be able to build their own siege. Need trebs put up on a hill? Hire a few strong guards and tell the dolyak to build it up on the hill. Likewise, need supply to a different keep? Tell the doly to head there.

I do think, however, that sometimes sieging goes on for waaaay too long. No one wants to sit there at a fully upgraded keep shooting for hours just to have everything repaired back up and counter siege deployed just to go into a chokepoint with more arrowcarts and superior ballsitas than god. That’s a very boring and slow paced part of the game… Do I think it should be like eotm? No, but I do think there needs to be a change to speed up the process of siege and make it a bit more fast paced and/or exciting.

I’d say you could add siege towers as well in order to allow small groups (and remove the ability to port for mesmers) to enter walls etc to stir things up. You could also make it so players have the ability to hire NPCs to scale walls etc.

Keep the dolyaks, will mean someone will have to escort them to the tower if they want to upgrade the tower.

But no minimum guarantee supply generation. The #1 issue with WvW is the zerging, at least the dolly escorts reduces the zerg by maybe 3 players :P

IMO the yaks need to go. Escorting dolyaks is the most boring thing and there’s not even a reward. Instead of escorting dolyaks, make it just like EoTM and if people desperately want supply to get through, they’ll defend the camp. This would make for much more fun fights too! That’ll be much more fun than walking a 10 minute path with a dolyak that moves 4.5 times slower than your character. Also, put another objective out there that can be solo’d in order for roamers to still have stuff to do in response to removing the dolyaks. Roamers can still solo a supply camp too and of course it’d be tough if defended.

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

What about a lattice system, similar to that used in Planetside??

Combine the Sentry Points and the Ruins mechanic into a series of small zones of control that dot the entire map. When someone captures a Supply Camp, it will automatically provide supplies to nearby structures if they are connected by a series of small zones of control, which use the current Ruins mechanic. In order to cut off a Keep and lay siege, an attacker must literally sever its supply chains by surrounding the keep and blockading its territory.

This opens up a lot more room for small scale skirmishes around a major objective and for defenders to help in small ways by breaking the siege and establishing a supply chain. Likewise, a zerg attacking a heavily defended area will actually need to establish a major foothold rather than relying on a single havoc squad performing the current supply chain dance. This change would mix very well with more Zones of Control (such as towers with additional gates blocking access to valleys, etc), and more elaborate keep mechanics.

I’ve included a crude example of a lattice below, though it uses an outdated map.

Here are a couple other incentives I thought of, but did not mention before, that would make holding objectives “attractive.”

A modest but useful stacking buff for all guild members active in WvW.

This should only apply while in WvW (not EOTM or PVE) based on the cumulative “weight” of structures you are maintaining claims on. This ought to be something unlike, e.g., the guard stacks. I’m not quite sure what. It should be something desirable, but not a straight power boost. It also should be big enough at the cap to be attractive, but not a game changer.

Maybe something like a nice bonus to WXP and badge gains. Or maybe some sort of reduced supply cost for building guild versions of siege or something. Maybe something else clever I can’t think of at the moment. These are buffs you would really like to have, but that don’t give rise to any roflstompage griping and balance issues.

Significantly reduced time and cost to build upgrades on the structure.

This could be a scaling de-buff to build times based on how many guild claims have been laid on the structure. The more paid up claims are present, the more build time (and maybe supply cost) are reduced, up to some sort of reasonable cap. It should still be “worth it” to have quite a few active claims though (i.e., a small buff that can get up to a lot of stacks, maybe 1% each stack for a total of something like -20% or -33% cost and time).

This makes some imaginary sense since it’s kind of logical that pledging support for a structure would involve leaving some of your peons around to work on fixing the place up, and the more hand on the job the shorter it should go.

Cumulative active structure guild bonuses

My idea was definitely that guild bonuses should not stack. So five guild claims when all have +5 supply just equals +5 supply. But I think each separate buff that at least one claiming guild has at any given time should apply. So if one guild with +5 supply and another with the HP buff each stake a claim, then both bonuses should apply as long as both guilds maintain those claims (and, as you mentioned, as long as the buffs are active and running in the normal guild “build” pane).

The meaning of “defending.”

I guess the hard thing about defending and escorting as a concept is that, if you’re doing it right, a lot of the time you’re actually doing . . . nothing. Or at least, you’re doing a lot of things that don’t show up in “easy” stats like kill counts and objective caps.

You might scout, guard, keep an eye out, etc. You also might stand around looking many and mean. Or you might have big fights. You also might go attack something all the way across the map to draw attention away from what you want to hang onto.

I agree it should be worked out so that it’s not just a rush to claim Stonemist all the time. In fact I really like the idea of active supply management figuring into a big part of it, and I think that holding one camp with 100% supply deliveries should outscore standing around Stonemist by a good margin, even though both are meaningful. (But taking one camp and leaving all the Yaks to die should score much lower than holding any keep or tower.)

People “take one for the team” now and just stand scout duty because they know it needs to be done, and everyone takes a turn. But it’s really hard to quantify stuff like, for instance, spending a ton of time sieging up a place nicely, so that what would otherwise be a successful attack turns into a slaughter at the gate.

That was the idea behind an ongoing cost and measuring “success” at defense by how long your can simply hold onto something without it being flipped. You might have done all sorts of things in the meantime that made that happen. All of them mean something, but not all of them are really metric-able.

I get the general loathing for PPT, but if used for the “right” purposes, and if getting it “costs” the right things, it can be a really simple and fairly direct bottom line proxy for doing a whole lot of other things that we know we want people to do, but can never actually give them direct incentives to do.

I think the passive score has a place, as long as it requires active effort (farming influence to pay for it, running supply, keeping an objective by whatever means) in order to get it. So it has to cost more than just capping and hoping nobody comes around behind you.

And if WvW Influence is the main resource used to hold claims, you have to do a lot of all that other stuff like killing and capping in order to “buy” your passive points. So the incentives flow both ways.

Shriketalon.1937:

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

What about a lattice system, similar to that used in Planetside??

Combine the Sentry Points and the Ruins mechanic into a series of small zones of control that dot the entire map. When someone captures a Supply Camp, it will automatically provide supplies to nearby structures if they are connected by a series of small zones of control, which use the current Ruins mechanic. In order to cut off a Keep and lay siege, an attacker must literally sever its supply chains by surrounding the keep and blockading its territory.

This would be a great change and add to the strategy.

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

I think there are good reasons to keep dolyaks, but I wonder if we might be able to solve many of the problems we’ve discussed here by eliminating that sense of the supply chain of battle? It might just have the effect of making supply far less limiting.

Would it instead work to go with a combination of the two and have a guaranteed minimum amount of supply from holding a camp and have dolyaks carrying the extra? I’m curious what you all think.

As for the discussion around how to more closely involve guilds it’s definitely something we think about and I think there are intriguing ideas in here.

As others have pointed out, there’s value to the Dolyaks for smaller groups to contribute to the success of their server as well as serve the deeper strategy of supply line maintenance/denial.

That said, the whole Dolyak supply chain system could benefit from a face lift. During the Twisted Marionette living story, I saw a drawing in Scarlett’s Lair of a Dolyak with rocket boosters; that would be a good start Joking aside, there have been several suggestions on how to better incentivize and reward Dolyak escorting while preventing bots from exploiting it.

One idea I’ve seen which I feel has merit is allowing players to contribute carried supply to the supply depot of a tower or keep; this would be in addition to the existing Dolyak deliveries. The player-deposited supply doesn’t speed up the upgrades; it’s simply another source of supply delivery for the defense-minded to actively contribute to the upgrading of a tower or keep. We’d have to exercise caution with rewards, though, so we don’t have Dolyak-escort bots replaced with bots scripted to run supply from camps to towers/keeps.

But really, you need to put rocket boosters (and lasers) on Dolyaks; even if it’s just for one “Day of the Dolyak” per year. So many millions have been slaughtered, they deserve an opportunity for revenge.

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

I think there are good reasons to keep dolyaks, but I wonder if we might be able to solve many of the problems we’ve discussed here by eliminating that sense of the supply chain of battle? It might just have the effect of making supply far less limiting.

Would it instead work to go with a combination of the two and have a guaranteed minimum amount of supply from holding a camp and have dolyaks carrying the extra? I’m curious what you all think.

As for the discussion around how to more closely involve guilds it’s definitely something we think about and I think there are intriguing ideas in here.

Personally I would prefer their removal, I don’t think they promote engaging gameplay, either attacking this defenseless critter or babysitting them.

I kind of like the idea that The Elder Scrolls Online has with their version of WvW, where outside key buildings there will be a number of smaller resource camps of three different types, each conveying a boon to the key structure.
Lumber Mills improve doors, walls, and overall hp of the structure.
Farms improve NPC’s I think.
And Mines, idk, improve siege I would guess.

I’d like to see something similar in GW2, where you had different types of camps, each could give supply passively like the Generators in EOTM, but also conveyed buffs to their respective towers and keeps, and when upgraded could make taking them exceedingly difficult.

Say if you owned an upgraded Lumber Mill, doors and walls of nearby towers and keeps auto repair, and if they were also reinforced, it would take a massive war effort in order to break them down.
This way if it is lost the impact is immediate and relatable.

Currently if you lose a camp, it’s oooooh noooes, we might not have supply 30 mins from now. It’s not a big deal to lose a camp and just flip it back later, and it’s usually not worth investing in upgrading.

-

On a side note, I hate the current upgrading system, talk about a bad incentive structure. It costs you pretty much nothing to attack in a zerg until your blue in the face, but defending and holding a position, that’s going to cost you personally.
I hate the idea that you have to spend your own money just upgrade things. I presume it’s there to dissuade people from buying the wrong upgrade or getting them at the wrong time when you need the supplies.

But I think the entire structure of having upgrades automatic, devoid of player interaction is bunk.

If you could start and cancel an upgrade, and that once started (after a brief period of time) bundles of materials that are going to be used in the construction of X upgrade began to appear one after the other, and players had to carry it to the location then proceed to build.

Then if supply only drained each time one of these bundles were picked up, or some similar system, then upgrading itself shouldn’t cost anything but the players time.
But I think upgrading should be an active process however you do it.

Yoh.8469:

Personally I would prefer their removal, I don’t think they promote engaging gameplay, either attacking this defenseless critter or babysitting them.

I kind of like the idea that The Elder Scrolls Online has with their version of WvW, where outside key buildings there will be a number of smaller resource camps of three different types, each conveying a boon to the key structure.
Lumber Mills improve doors, walls, and overall hp of the structure.
Farms improve NPC’s I think.
And Mines, idk, improve siege I would guess.

I’d like to see something similar in GW2, where you had different types of camps, each could give supply passively like the Generators in EOTM, but also conveyed buffs to their respective towers and keeps, and when upgraded could make taking them exceedingly difficult.

Say if you owned an upgraded Lumber Mill, doors and walls of nearby towers and keeps auto repair, and if they were also reinforced, it would take a massive war effort in order to break them down.
This way if it is lost the impact is immediate and relatable.

Currently if you lose a camp, it’s oooooh noooes, we might not have supply 30 mins from now. It’s not a big deal to lose a camp and just flip it back later, and it’s usually not worth investing in upgrading.

-

On a side note, I hate the current upgrading system, talk about a bad incentive structure. It costs you pretty much nothing to attack in a zerg until your blue in the face, but defending and holding a position, that’s going to cost you personally.
I hate the idea that you have to spend your own money just upgrade things. I presume it’s there to dissuade people from buying the wrong upgrade or getting them at the wrong time when you need the supplies.

But I think the entire structure of having upgrades automatic, devoid of player interaction is bunk.

If you could start and cancel an upgrade, and that once started (after a brief period of time) bundles of materials that are going to be used in the construction of X upgrade began to appear one after the other, and players had to carry it to the location then proceed to build.

Then if supply only drained each time one of these bundles were picked up, or some similar system, then upgrading itself shouldn’t cost anything but the players time.
But I think upgrading should be an active process however you do it.

Some good ideas in there. The one I take issue with, though, is:

“If you could start and cancel an upgrade, and that once started – (after a brief period of time) – bundles of materials that are going to be used in the construction of X upgrade began to appear one after the other, and players had to carry it to the location then proceed to build.”

We can never, ever, under any circumstances give players in WvW the ability to cancel an upgrade in progress. That’s a troll/saboteur’s dream come true! Bad enough they already order personnel upgrades in the middle of a siege that eats up nearly all the supply at a tower or keep at the worst possible moment.

The only exception to this would be if – on cancelling an upgrade – its progress up to that point is saved. If and when the upgrade is re-ordered, it starts from that save point rather than back at zero. Even with this safety measure in place, I don’t know that it would really solve anything. You start an upgrade, troll/saboteur cancels it, you re-start it, troll/saboteur cancels it again, ad nauseum. Even with the saved progress feature, you’d spend all your time inside of a tower or keep restarting upgrades and nothing else as you try to outlast the troll/saboteur.

The rule-of-thumb is any power or ability given to me in the game is a power or ability available to any other player. If I don’t want some sub-set of the player base to have that power or ability (even for legitimate reasons, such as countering trolls/saboteurs), then I don’t get to have that power or ability, either.

Perhaps the solution lies in the middle ground of incentivizing/de-incentivizing this mechanic. There would be no personal gold cost associated with ordering an upgrade. Canceling an upgrade, on the other hand, will incur a coin cost. So the trolls/saboteurs have to be able and willing to pay these costs to engage in their shennanigans, while the players looking to play the game as intended bear no such costs.

DevonCarver.5370:

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

I very much like the Dolly’s as they give me worthwhile targets when I’m out playing solo.

…That said they are way, way too easy to kill while live player defenders are present. Dolyaks need something like a 2000 point armor buff per allied player present in a radius of 1,000 or so. If three people are escorting a dolyak, it should be IDIOCY to try and hit the dolyak first. Make dealing with those human guards first a tangible priority.

Removing Dolyaks would eliminate the imbalance of reward for killing (gold, karma) them and for escorting (no rewards at all) them. On the other hand generators would encourage the formations turtles around important ones. Therefore I would keep the Dolyaks.

I agree with Yoh.8469: upgrades are far to passive. I want to work for an upgrade and want to be rewarded if the upgrade is finished. I would keep the unlock for money. Each launched Upgrade should start a rewarding event where players have to bring special supplies to the object:

• stones and wood for walls and doors
• meat for guards and workers
• iron for siege weapons

Each supply camp offers after capture a certain amount of the mentioned materials. You need to capture a certain amount of camps for each upgrade and you have transport the supplies to the object by players. Maybe you have to guard the players carrying supplies.

You could also add a timer within the upgrade has to be finished. The enemy has the opportunity to prevent the upgrade and get rewarded for it.

New Guild Unlock- Alliances

Dovetaling into the discussion surrounding multiple guilds being permitted to lay claim to the same structure, I suggest a new guild unlock and upgrades.

The new unlock will be called “Alliances” and will be found in either the Politics or Art of War line (I included Politics since there may be areas outside of WvW to which this new feature could be applied).

It is available at Politics Level 1 and will cost 1,000 influence to unlock.

Unlocking it allows the guild to participate in the joint claiming of WvW objectives; essentially it is the cost-of-entry for engaging in this new mechanic. The cost is low (cumulatively 1,500 influence for unlocking Politics 1 followed by the Alliance unlock itself) while still requiring the guild to make a conscious decision to participate in this feature of WvW. Such guilds being more likely to actively contribute to the upgrading and defense of their claimed objective.

New Guild Upgrades

Once the “Alliances” upgrade has been completed, this will open up additional guild upgrades in the associated line. Each upgrade will apply some form of escalating bonus which scales with the number of guilds laying claim to the same structure.

The first upgrade would be found in level 1 (of either Politics or Art of War). It would be called “Pact” or “Parlay” or something like that. The buff it gives could be anything the devs determine is in keeping with the spirit of benefiting the guilds that are working together in the defense of an objective. The following is just one example to illustrate what I mean and should not be taken as written in stone.

“All guild members of the guilds claiming an objective gain 1% more damage for each guild in the alliance up to a maximum of 5% additional damage.”

Yes, I know that is an absolutely terrible and unbalanced buff; five guilds buffing each other would increase their damage output 25%! Like I said, it’s just simply there to illustrate the concept that (a) the buff – whatever it may be – scales with the number of guilds laying claim to the same objective and (b) is given a hard cap upper limit where appropriate.

The next upgrade would be found in level 2 of the line (Politics or Art of War). Named “Accords” or “Council Chambers” or some such, it takes the same buff from the level 1 upgrade and increases it or gives a completely different buff. However, the concept of scaling the buff based on the number of guilds claiming the same objective remains intact.

The next upgrade would be found in level 3 of the line (Politics or Art of War). Named “Treaty” or “Round Table” or some such, it takes the same buff from the level 2 upgrade and increases it or gives a completely different buff. However, the concept of scaling the buff based on the number of guilds claiming the same objective remains intact.

And so on…

Alternately

Instead of “Alliances” being an unlock and all the rest being upgrades with a time limit, we take a different approach. Each tier of the line (Politics or Art of War) will have a new unlock in the same vein as the originally suggested “Alliances” unlock.

The first tier is the cost-of-entry unlock as described earlier as well as giving some minor – but still scaling – buff to all guilds claiming the same objective together.

Each unlock at the higher tiers builds upon this initial unlock. Once unlocked, the buffs conferred are permanent so long as the guild which purchased the unlock has placed a claim on an objective in concert with other guilds. The unlocks will NEVER give a buff/bonus if there’s only one guild claiming an objective; the point being to encourage guilds to work together at a single fortification and support each other to benefit from the buff or bonus.

The advantage of this modified version of my suggestion over the first is that the buffs are not time limited. If they were, once a guild’s Alliance buff or bonus expires, they will become persona non grata at the claimed objective since they will no longer be contributing a scaling buff or bonus to their allies.

This will become a serious source of contention if a limit on how many guilds can claim a single objective is implemented, as well (not something I’m in favor of but which would most likely happen due to programming and balance constraints; wouldn’t want 100 guilds claiming a single keep, for example). Thus, to avoid the in-fighting and drama that would ensue, I suggest these are permanent unlocks rather than consumable upgrades.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Yoh.8469:

Personally I would prefer their removal, I don’t think they promote engaging gameplay, either attacking this defenseless critter or babysitting them.

I kind of like the idea that The Elder Scrolls Online has with their version of WvW, where outside key buildings there will be a number of smaller resource camps of three different types, each conveying a boon to the key structure.
Lumber Mills improve doors, walls, and overall hp of the structure.
Farms improve NPC’s I think.
And Mines, idk, improve siege I would guess.

I’d like to see something similar in GW2, where you had different types of camps, each could give supply passively like the Generators in EOTM, but also conveyed buffs to their respective towers and keeps, and when upgraded could make taking them exceedingly difficult.

Say if you owned an upgraded Lumber Mill, doors and walls of nearby towers and keeps auto repair, and if they were also reinforced, it would take a massive war effort in order to break them down.
This way if it is lost the impact is immediate and relatable.

Currently if you lose a camp, it’s oooooh noooes, we might not have supply 30 mins from now. It’s not a big deal to lose a camp and just flip it back later, and it’s usually not worth investing in upgrading.

-

On a side note, I hate the current upgrading system, talk about a bad incentive structure. It costs you pretty much nothing to attack in a zerg until your blue in the face, but defending and holding a position, that’s going to cost you personally.
I hate the idea that you have to spend your own money just upgrade things. I presume it’s there to dissuade people from buying the wrong upgrade or getting them at the wrong time when you need the supplies.

But I think the entire structure of having upgrades automatic, devoid of player interaction is bunk.

If you could start and cancel an upgrade, and that once started (after a brief period of time) bundles of materials that are going to be used in the construction of X upgrade began to appear one after the other, and players had to carry it to the location then proceed to build.

Then if supply only drained each time one of these bundles were picked up, or some similar system, then upgrading itself shouldn’t cost anything but the players time.
But I think upgrading should be an active process however you do it.

Some good ideas in there. The one I take issue with, though, is:

“If you could start and cancel an upgrade, and that once started – (after a brief period of time) – bundles of materials that are going to be used in the construction of X upgrade began to appear one after the other, and players had to carry it to the location then proceed to build.”

We can never, ever, under any circumstances give players in WvW the ability to cancel an upgrade in progress. That’s a troll/saboteur’s dream come true! Bad enough they already order personnel upgrades in the middle of a siege that eats up nearly all the supply at a tower or keep at the worst possible moment.

The only exception to this would be if – on cancelling an upgrade – its progress up to that point is saved. If and when the upgrade is re-ordered, it starts from that save point rather than back at zero. Even with this safety measure in place, I don’t know that it would really solve anything. You start an upgrade, troll/saboteur cancels it, you re-start it, troll/saboteur cancels it again, ad nauseum. Even with the saved progress feature, you’d spend all your time inside of a tower or keep restarting upgrades and nothing else as you try to outlast the troll/saboteur.

The rule-of-thumb is any power or ability given to me in the game is a power or ability available to any other player. If I don’t want some sub-set of the player base to have that power or ability (even for legitimate reasons, such as countering trolls/saboteurs), then I don’t get to have that power or ability, either.

Perhaps the solution lies in the middle ground of incentivizing/de-incentivizing this mechanic. There would be no personal gold cost associated with ordering an upgrade. Canceling an upgrade, on the other hand, will incur a coin cost. So the trolls/saboteurs have to be able and willing to pay these costs to engage in their shennanigans, while the players looking to play the game as intended bear no such costs.

Fair enough, good points.
Maybe if it were to time out if no one was actively upgrading it, or like you said saved progress, so it’s was more like a pause.
The reason I bring it up is that people don’t troll in the opposite way, in starting upgrades just to waste supply or at a bad time just to impede the defenders.

I think that pausing upgrades might be the best option, so long as one person can’t start and pause upgrades in rapid succession.

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

I think there are good reasons to keep dolyaks, but I wonder if we might be able to solve many of the problems we’ve discussed here by eliminating that sense of the supply chain of battle? It might just have the effect of making supply far less limiting.

Would it instead work to go with a combination of the two and have a guaranteed minimum amount of supply from holding a camp and have dolyaks carrying the extra? I’m curious what you all think.

As for the discussion around how to more closely involve guilds it’s definitely something we think about and I think there are intriguing ideas in here.

I really like the dolyaks. Perhaps a camp upgrade to ‘fortify’ dolyaks could be neat though. So they can’t easily be killed by a single foe anymore. (I’m talking like +400% health and protection/regeneration buffs.)

That way players can more reliably protect dolyaks if they need to. At the moment there is not much you can do to prevent a decent thief from taking out that dolyak. Even if the thief can’t manage to kill you.

The Lost Witch.7601:

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

I think there are good reasons to keep dolyaks, but I wonder if we might be able to solve many of the problems we’ve discussed here by eliminating that sense of the supply chain of battle? It might just have the effect of making supply far less limiting.

Would it instead work to go with a combination of the two and have a guaranteed minimum amount of supply from holding a camp and have dolyaks carrying the extra? I’m curious what you all think.

As for the discussion around how to more closely involve guilds it’s definitely something we think about and I think there are intriguing ideas in here.

I really like the dolyaks. Perhaps a camp upgrade to ‘fortify’ dolyaks could be neat though. So they can’t easily be killed by a single foe anymore. (I’m talking like +400% health and protection/regeneration buffs.)

That way players can more reliably protect dolyaks if they need to. At the moment there is not much you can do to prevent a decent thief from taking out that dolyak. Even if the thief can’t manage to kill you.

So an upgrade that turns dolyaks into Champion level? I wouldn’t mind that, as long as there’s one for upgrading the caravan guards to Elite level.

I would prefer if Dolyaks had their supply capacity greatly increased, rather than their HP.

You want to be able to solo them if the map is empty. Likewise if there are people on the map they need an incentive to protect them = increase their supply capacity.

Dolyaks are a nice mechanic, cute and fluffy… why would you get rid of them ?

1) Increase supply capacity
2) Give them few defensive skills like aegis/swiftness/blind/weakness
3) Make them bite ! and kick !

Proposal Overview

Building private and public guild hall facilities in EOTM and WvW structures. Only the public guild hall facilities reward the guilds that build them with guild influence and money at each WvW PPT.

Goal of Proposal

Having guild halls and guild hall facilities in EOTM and WvW structures that offer convenience, guild influence, and money would incentivised players and guilds to defend structures.

Proposal Functionality

Building guild halls and guild hall facilities should have a cost.

Building public guild hall facilities in EOTM and WvW structures reward guild influence and money to the guilds and respective guild banks at each WvW PPT. Guild hall facilities are merchants, golem bank, guild bank, weapon merchant, armour merchant, crafting stations etc. A second type of guild hall facilities are private where the facilities are fenced and gated for guild members only.

Private guild hall facilities should not reward the guilds that build them with guild influence and money.

This is in association with a guild claim on a structure and subsequent influence and money reward at each WvW PPT with the structure claim lapsing after one hour and reclaiming thereof.

Big structures like SMC can have a maximum of ten guild halls for example. Garrison can have a maximum of 8 guild halls for example. Valley Keep, Lowland, and Over Look can have a maximum of 5 guild halls each for example. Bay and Hills can have a maximum of 3 guild halls each for example. Towers can have a maximum of 2 guild halls each for example. Supply camp can only have one guild hall for example.

Associated Risks

Building guild halls in EOTM overflow maps is awkward. Instead of full blown guild halls, guilds could build guild hall facilities in EOTM structures.

Crazy idea.
But what if players didn’t auto regen health out of battle?

I was watching Wooden Potato talk about how Healing Power sucks, and it does, and a large reason is does is because of how unrewarding and unnecessary support is.
There is rarely a situation where people need outside help for healing (not that they would know they are getting healed, haptic feedback is non-existent), and attrition doesn’t really exist either.

So what if in EOTM we test this perhaps, and disable auto regen out of combat.
If you didn’t regen out of combat, you would have to rely more on your heal skill between battles, but also support builds would suddenly become a lot more viable as they could help keep a group up between fights, or during prolonged battles.

It’s a small change, but I think it would have massively implications. But support would definitely become more viable as a result.

Seen a lot here about removing dolyaks, i don’t understand this at all it gives smaller parties/individuals a job to do we need more of the small things like this not less of. Yes it could be redesigned a “little” better, but not removed.

By removing the small scale stuff your effectively making less for the roamers to do and forcing them to join the karma train which is increasing in size not decreasing it. We need more small scale stuff not less of it, to allow more people to break away from that train.

I am uncertain about the way the game works with the dolyaks and the game not being capable of rewarding players for escorting them.

1. If dolyak escorting only gave rewards to people who were “close to the dolyak upon entering the structure,” then why were all of the bots walking with them instead of just standing still at the structure?

2. If Sentry Turrets in EoTM can light up any player within 1200 range, why can’t the game system be able to tell if any people escorting it are within 1200 range and just reward them depending on what % of the trip they stayed within 1200 range?

DevonCarver.5370:

[…]
To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

I think there are good reasons to keep dolyaks, but I wonder if we might be able to solve many of the problems we’ve discussed here by eliminating that sense of the supply chain of battle? It might just have the effect of making supply far less limiting.

[…]

Changes to supply management should consider the fact that the current (arguably more realistic) supply chain system introduces a set of frustrations and divisions between allies in the servers. Specifically, the subject of supply resting inside capture locations and supply resting inside of supply camps.

If you can remove the resource competition, where allies argue and berate each other over supply being removed from capture locations with ongoing structure upgrades, then you will also have encouraged a sense of teamwork and peace by removing the opportunity for either ignorance or trolling to cause frustration between allies.

I like the Idea of having both generators and dolys make the run.
Like built generators could send 10 each and the rest is carried by dolly?
Could give roamers points for killing the dollys and destroying the generators, though there should be a downtime to repairing generators (like, being unable to rebuild them within 3 minutes of their destruction by enemies, given the camp was not taken by the enemy)…

On the minus side,
The supply needed to build generators when the camp is first captured might mean a longer time before an upgrade can be bought.
Since the camps are not “protected” by the structure, it might be easy to destroy some generators without taking the camp. (if camp is not taken, the server that has ownership of the camp might not know the supply generators are down)

Neutral
Would send minimal amount of supply to structures under attack

I think Shriketalon.1937’s idea and Yoh.8469’s would be really great additions to the game! They could even be merged together to make it more appealing to control surrounding objectives before taking a keep. Not only would this stop the supply chain, but it would also demotes the keep defenses.

Though I prefer Shriketalon’s idea, I think Yoh’s idea would fit if it doesn’t provides ALL the upgrades, but only supplemental upgrades which helps to defend the keep. If lost, you can still defend, but are more vulnerable to ambush. And those points should still be easy to defend (like a tower, not a camp). You could maybe even split the map in sections separated by walls and doors which can be destroyed or controlled via a nearby tower to advance further in enemy-controlled area.

So many good possibilities. But I love the idea of roaming to capture those points.

DevonCarver.5370:

Shriketalon.1937:

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

What about a lattice system, similar to that used in Planetside??

Combine the Sentry Points and the Ruins mechanic into a series of small zones of control that dot the entire map. When someone captures a Supply Camp, it will automatically provide supplies to nearby structures if they are connected by a series of small zones of control, which use the current Ruins mechanic. In order to cut off a Keep and lay siege, an attacker must literally sever its supply chains by surrounding the keep and blockading its territory.

This opens up a lot more room for small scale skirmishes around a major objective and for defenders to help in small ways by breaking the siege and establishing a supply chain. Likewise, a zerg attacking a heavily defended area will actually need to establish a major foothold rather than relying on a single havoc squad performing the current supply chain dance. This change would mix very well with more Zones of Control (such as towers with additional gates blocking access to valleys, etc), and more elaborate keep mechanics.

I’ve included a crude example of a lattice below, though it uses an outdated map.

That’s a really interesting idea. I like the change it makes from the dolyaks to control of an area while still maintaining the feel of supply lines.

One solution for the lattice would be to make those areas (about 1 or 2 between the camps and towers, preferably more but there’s not enough space with your maps) like ruins, with capping/holding them, no NPCs, and a few neutral areas that always count as link.
Combed with that you should move/place some camps to more off-road locations. Especially utilize the huge tracts of land currently dedicated to PvE-exclusive tomfoolery.