Guild Wars 2

Commanders are the heart of WvW.

Most of the current commanders are ones that bought the tag when it was 100g.
And as we know, our pool of WvW commanders is being sucked dry.
300g is too expensive for WvW players to afford.
Up and coming players that would like to consider commanding are discouraged by the massive investment they need to make to buy a tag.

If the price is reduced back to 100g, more players will buy tags, which will result in more WvW commanders. When there are commanders on the map, more people play. When more people play, more people are playing.
That’s what we all want.

This is a very simple change to implement, and it can only benefit WvW.

Yes, I completely agree. I also made a topic about this a few weeks ago.
A big problem with home borderland defence is that it doesn’t support home defence. People don’t want to spend most of their time running across the map looking for the invaders; they want to spend their time fighting/defending on that map. The lack of mobility given to defenders just doesn’t allow this to happen. And a side effect of this is that attackers don’t go to the borderlands as often because they know there probably wont be anyone to fight. This may not be the case for upper tier servers, but it is the case for many servers. The game doesn’t exist just for the higher tiers.

psizone.8437:

With regard to the waypoint fee, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

It’s already difficult enough for WvW only players to keep their gold and it would be detrimental to players that waypoint often to buff up siege etc in keeps and use the waypoint to save time.

Sorry about the confusion. What I meant by not making WPs free was to not make them available as soon as a keep is captured. The WPs will still cost 0 gold to make, they will just be a part of the T3 upgrade (just like on SM). This will make waypointed keeps more meaningful, because if you lose the keep you will lose the waypoint until you recapture it and upgrade it again.

This is all about making people want to defend their home bl, rather than retaking it.
When there are people defending, the offensive groups have something to fight. When they have something to fight, they are more likely to play on that map. (This could be the case with roamers, small groups, or large zergs).

Requiring players to start the upgrades will in fact boost the numbers on the BLS. Think about it. If it is all paper to begin with, it is more likely to be attacked by enemies because taking paper objectives is a lot easier than taking fortified. Knowing this, the home team will need to keep players on that map to defend it while they upgrade it. Running in a circle every 30mins wont cut it. Also, people will care a lot more about objectives that they put work in to upgrade, making them more likely to defend it instead of leaving it to flip and then reflip it later.This is part of what made the alpine BLs successful (apart from the actual layout). The mechanics promoted people actually playing on that map to defend it and upgrade it.

This is coming from ~2.5 years of Wxp ranging from t7 to t4. Currently in t5-t6.

I used to be very much into home borderland defence on the alpine bl. It got a lot of action, be it from small groups or from zergs trying to take our keeps.

After observing the desert bl play patterns for quite a while now I have come to some conclusions.

1) BL defenders no longer exist. The auto upgrade system eliminated the need for players to stay on the map. Furthermore, nobody gives a kitten about losing upgraded objectives anymore because the auto upgrades are so effortless.The only action that the bls get now is just mindless capping without resistance to gain PPT/retake what you lost. This is not fun in any way.

2) The 3-way map model of giving the enemies WPs in the side keeps just doesn’t work. What anet is trying to do is create 3 clones of the same map. The thing that made the previous model work was that it promoted 3 distinct maps. One for your home, one for attacking one team, and one for attacking the other team. By giving the enemies free WPs on your home bl, the 3 desert borderlands become three 3-way oriented maps with the same environment, which is boring and removes the identity of “the home bl”.

3) It takes too long to travel in the desert borderland. By restricting the side keep WPs to enemies only, the home team has travel times that are far too long. This is another reason why BL defenders no longer exist. Without the side keep WPs, it is such a chore to travel down south where the enemies would be. Because of this, home BL defenders don’t play on that map anymore; which in turn deters offensive BL groups because they know there will be nothing to fight.

Now, here are the solutions. They are very easy to implement, and can easily be included in the January 26th patch if these are widely agreed on.

1) Don’t make WP’s free. Tie WP’s into the T3 upgrade on the keeps, just like SM. This will make keeps more meaningful, and people will actually want to defend them. Also, the upgrade changes coming in the Jan 26 patch are a step in the right direction, but to make objectives more meaningful so that people will defend them, upgrading has to have a human activation component. Something as simple as talking to the quartermaster to start tier 1, tier 2, or tier 3 will work. This will require players to actually be present on the map for the upgrades to go through. When players are on the map, players are on the map. Its that simple.

2) Allow any team to have a waypoint on any keep in the BL. This pairs up with the WP’s being tied to T3 upgrades. Very similar to what was present in the alpine BL.

3) Same fix as #2. If the home team is able to access the side keep WPs, the BL defenders won’t have such a hard time getting from place to place to defend objectives and fight enemies.

All of these changes, again, are very easy to implement. They will promote players playing on the desert BL regularly. The changes with HoT just made the desert BL a PPT zone (from my experiences). Its a place to take objectives without resistance and let them upgrade by themselves. These new changes I proposed will bring people back to the borderlands, which will produce fights (small or large).

Fighting is the foundation of WvW. When there is no fighting, there is no WvW.