So after a few good discussion with friends and guildmates, I’ve come to the conclusion that the outnumbered buff was a great idea stemming from good intentions (logically speaking, players in an inherently more challenging situation should be given more rewards for sticking it out, right?) . However, the idea that someone playing on an outnumbered map should be given extra rewards because they are outmanned may sound good in theory, but the resulting abuse of the buff and negativity surrounding the slower acquisition of rewards for those actively playing in populated maps highlight the flaws. What if both the outnumbered issue and the rate of rewards for populated maps could be addressed in one fell swoop?
My proposition is to add a buff earned through active gameplay (similar to earning participation) that is mutually exclusive to the outnumbered buff. This buff would stack up to +5 pip aquisition, allowing for anyone playing WvW in the usual manner to earn pips at an increased rate and also leaving outnumbered as a reasonable alternative when the odds are against the player. This would change outnumbered to something that closes the gap for players in unfair situations as opposed to offering greater rewards, which would eliminate the incentive for the majority of players to abuse the system. This would also increase the rate at which pips are earned for the majority of the playerbase by a reasonable amount, but (if my math is right) it will still require 12 or more hours for the average player to complete the full skirmish reward track. And for those players that don’t have enough time for the full thing, they’d still theoretically progress at a faster rate while getting to focus on how the game mode was intended to be played (rather than map-hopping) and hopefully enjoy themselves more as a result.
At this point a dev has already posted there is a change happening to how outnumbered is acquired, but if the only change is to reduce how easily outnumbered is earned / maintained, several issues are still left on the table. I truly feel that with how pips can be earned as a whole, if players had a way to earn an equivalent amount of pips through active gameplay then there would be an excellent balance between rewarding players fairly for their contribution and cushioning rewards for players in more challenging situations. In turn, I think this would be a great QoL improvement for WvW as a whole.
There have been many other suggestions about specific elements I’ve read (rewards based on defense, the tier of structure being taken into account, removing degradation of rewards for a small timeframe when outside of WvW, etc.) that I’m sure are being looked at as well, and I’m sure there would be ways to work these elements into my proposition. I’m genuinely curious about how you guys feel about this idea!
(edited by ConnorO.8613)