Orbs-The worst of all worlds slaughter rule, and why they don't belong
in WvW
Posted by: fleacircus.6405
in WvW
Posted by: fleacircus.6405
I wrote about a fix for this on the suggestion forum, check it out here.
It should significantly reduce the problems with Orbs without having to nerf the buff, remove them entirely while making 3 Orb lockdowns far less common.
@Creslin: My initial thoughts were the same – simply make the buff less of a WvW advantage but I think that ends up wasting what could potentially be the most interesting aspect of WvW.
It would fix things if you simply made it an xp/kama/etc boost but I think most teams would simply end up ignoring it. The risk vs reward just doesn’t pan out well. You would end up with WvW players having more important things to do than secure a buff for people who are not even in WvW.
@Everyone else: Thanks for the feedback/support. I was a little disheartened to see this post becoming buried under “Plz add more dance styles” style posts.
(edited by fleacircus.6405)
This would have the following positive effects on gameplay:
A breakdown of how matches would likely run under this system:
Under this system, a 3 Orb bonus would continue to be a significant advantage but only for a short time. I would imagine the most common outcome is that each team manages to capture their “home” Orb, once again meaning all teams are on even ground. Capturing more than one Orb becomes the focal point of WvW games with the eventual win going to the side that had the best control of the orbs and used their buff time the most efficiently.
(edited by fleacircus.6405)
Since it was suggested on reddit that I post this here:
There is currently a lot of debate about the Orbs of Power in WvW – mostly that they are too powerful and once a server has three of them they will proceed to dominate the game until the end.
I’m going to use an example from another game that I have more experience tweaking the gameplay of: Quake 3 Arena.
In Q3A Team-Deathmatch, the Quad Damage powerup spawns every 90-seconds and lasts for 30 seconds. How well a team controls this powerup tends to decide who ultimately wins the game. It needs to be timed, the area around it needs to be secured before it spawns. If a player gains the Quad they tend to go on the offensive while everyone else spends 30 seconds playing hyper-defensive to not just give free points to the Quad carrier.
Now this works really well. It creates a focus for the gameplay. Grabbing weapons and controlling armors between powerup spawns tends to be to give you a better chance at that powerup.
It would be quite easy to mimic the problems WvW seems to have by tweaking this system; If Quad damage spawned once at the start of the game – and its effects persisted the entire game – then you would immediately have two problems. First, whoever got the Quad at the very start of the game would win 99% of the time unless the teams were implausibly unbalanced. Second, the interesting strategic aspects surrounding the powerup itself would simply degenerate in to “zerg Quad at start of game, give up if you don’t get it”.
From this situation there are a few ways you could try and fix things, many of which have been suggested for WvW.
You could reduce the advantage the powerup gives but it would have to be reduced down to almost useless. This would make it hugely less desirable and alter gameplay significantly as it would no longer be the must-have buff.
You could give the side that didn’t get the Quad some sort of buff but this has much the same effect has simply reducing the power of the Quad itself with the added problem of rewarding a team for failing.
So, this leads to my proposed changes to the Orbs of Power – Make them respawn every two hours (even hours servertime) and have the buffs given only last 60 minutes (wearoff at odd hours servertime). The times are pulled out of thin air and are likely too short but they will do for discussion. The _ behaviour_ is solid.
(edited by fleacircus.6405)
Having the same problems as other here. My partner and I have been trying to play together on Isle of Janthir with the following problems:
- Unable to see each other on the minimap unless we are very close to one another.
- Minimap blue dots are occasionally in the wrong place.
- Minimap pings, personal waypoints and called target marks do not appear for the other player.
- Random, unexplained minimap pings 30 minutes after either of us tried.
- Portraits go black occasionally.
- Unable to join any instances together.
- Mail to one another is quite laggy – may be unrelated to the party problems, I havent mailed anyone else.
First experienced problems problems 15 or so hours ago. They have been persistent since then. Have tried quite a few combinations of zoning, logging out, leaving party, etc.
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