Guild Wars 2

I think the main reason people are leaving is lack of purpose. At any given time I log in I can usually get the unmanned buff in 2 of the 4 battlegrounds. Even if I play in a bg that doesn’t have the outmanned buff it makes putting in a lot of effort kind of pointless knowing the ticks aren’t going to add up to much with those 2 unmanned BG’s giving 0 points (and this is in Tier 1, I’d imagine other tiers are worse).

Want to add a fresh gust to Guild Wars? Make it just that- GUILD wars.

Add a new pvp type: sWvW.

Guilds sign up and must have a minimum of n players.
Guilds can challenge each other, they get a map similar (but slightly smaller) than the current WvW maps.
Game could be either point driven or fixed time driven (3 hours?).
Ranking based on ELO system.

Would lead to some epic battles. PRX vs WM. MERC vs SYN… whatever. Guilds would now be fighting for their names so there would be focus and drive, and the better teams would win and get higher ranked.

No more gaggles of people hanging in the starting zone or goofing off in the jumping puzzle because they are getting rolled outside.

Would probably kill off what is left of WvWvW, but within a few weeks WvWvW is headed for (even more of ) a ghost town as it is.

Makes me want to transfer to Kaineng.

I will log in to my outmanned/deserted battleground and take and hold one supply camp.

In doing that I will single handedly ensure we finish second to last instead of last!

I will be a hero in my own mind.

Even in tier 1 whether on my server or the others I’m starting to see more and more of the ‘feeding frenzy’ buff (other people call it the outmanned buff and it is supposed to provide you a benefit- but since it is visible to your enemies it just sets them on a feeding frenzy to attack the outmanned realm and has the opposite of its intended effect).

It is pretty common now to see an entire borderland one color and if you go there almost no one is there.

So here is one thought for the devs to consider:
Spawn only the eternal battleground and the borderland for the team that started the week in first place for that battle group.

Only when all 3 servers have a queue, spawn the second place servers borderland. Ditto for the final borderland.

Instead of having a ghosttown borderland (or two), servers will now be more full of PvP instead of PvD. During hours when servers have a weak population, their populations will be concentrated on active servers instead of spread across four near empty ones- making their fight pointless. People playing during active times currently often wonder why they bother when they know at night everything they do is just going to get flipped by their enemy, fully upgraded, and fully cowed with supplies.

The losers in this would be the people that have disproportionate manpower during certain times, since some of their members may have to wait in queue. That might make some of them consider less populated (in their time zone) servers and promote balance.

Population/activity seems to be dropping pretty quickly and is already at the point where the population cant sustain 4 simultaneous bg’s.

declan.3968:

dekyos.1548:

This week SoS won’t have a 1 time only event to skip in full force and jump 30,000 points instantly with. The larger portion of their lead last round was acquired during the 5 hour period when everyone was fighting that stupid giant crab for 20 slot chests.

Oh look, excuses.

Either way last week SoS and especially PRX put on a clinic in EB. Well done! You can put the excuses to rest by doing it again this week. Good fights so far.

Frood -S-

@Kolly:
The boost doesn’t really apply to me or other players that play during prime time when most sides have a queue (this weeks’ HoD maybe being the exception- and given their poor numbers I really wouldn’t mind them having a small stat boost).

It might have an impact in the off hours where there are typically like 20-30 people logged in to a zone.

Cosine,
Good thoughts. I like keeping it specific to each map. People might try to join the least populated map that needs the most help.

On point 2. I agree- except a far better solution would be to make mobs in WvW not drop any loot or give any xp.

The strategic mobs would still be worth fighting, and the random mobs would just be scenery. As it is now even actual people join the outmanned servers to go farm with the ‘outmanned’ magic find and exp bonuses- which just frustrates the people who actually want to fight even more. Seeing groups of bots in the outgunned WvW just adds to the chagrin.

That’s the point. You’d be psyched and go fight being outrageously outnumbered.
You wouldn’t be the only person on your server for long though >:)

Give each server a 99600 stat point buff in WvW. Divide that bonus by the number of players in that server for each realm.

On a full server (assuming 166 players/realm max) that would result in each player getting a 600 stat bonus (or 4x the orb bonus). When both sides are maxed they would get the same bonus so there would be no net effect- and orbs would now be a nice boon for the team that can take them. If a competing server was only fielding 83 people, each of those players would have a 1200 stat bonus- which might give players an incentive to log on when outmanned and mitigate (but not eliminate) the orb bonus. They would have a 600 stat point bonus against the full server, but by definition would be fighting at 2:1 odds. My money would still be on the side with more numbers, but not as much as the current fight of 2:1 odds and a -150 stat point handicap.

Currently WvW is semi fun, but almost entirely pointless as there are way too many positive feedback loops. This buff would give the devs a knob to add a reasonable negative feedback loop which could promote stability. 99600 is just a starting point based off 4x the orb bonus. But as an example of tweakability and effect, consider if they made it a 98483738829 buff. The side that is outnumbered would one-shot every opponent. Effect? Players on the overnumbered side would log out increasing their teams buff-> numbers would balance. Players would strive to log in to the undermanned servers reducing the bonus existing players get and-> numbers would balance.

‘Bandwagoners’ would all rush to join the least populated servers so they could have the OP chars, which would rapidly make them not the least populated server anymore. Every reaction to actions would promote stability so the outcomes would be more dependent on ability and teamwork rather than numbers.

Scores would no longer be so lopsided because during the off hours hopefully the outmanned crews would have the tools to at least put up a fight. As it is now, whomever doesn’t have the most players off hours log in and see that the zerg server for their triad owns every node on the map, has been running cows all day so has full supplies, has fully upgraded everything and siege equipment everywhere, and has all 3 orbs. If you take one node on the map it immediately sticks out and gives their megazerg one target to finally hit so they all rush their like rabid chihuauas- which makes it somewhat pointless. Personally I don’t mind the uphill battle- but most players do and wvw activity shows it. Despite that overwhelming advantage in numbers/orb stats/and single target focus we log in every night during primetime and even the score (or even get a slight edge without owning any orbs)- and come in the next night to the same situation. Give the undermanned time zones a chance to fight unreasonable numbers odds and they might be able to at least hold one or two nodes.

Obviously 98483738829 is just an example for cause/effect and would be stupid to implement =p. 99600 might not be enough, the side with the numbers would still have a huge overall advantage, but it might be enough to convince the heavily outnumbered side that there is at least a point to trying to fight and could be tweaked as needed to find a sweet spot.

Oh, and put a 5min delay on it so theres no ‘okay we’re in- everybody not in the keep lord room log off so we get a bonus’ :p