WvW idea: "Ground War"

Before I begin, I want to say that I'm not completely serious about this. It's just an idea I had that I wanted to write out to see what people think. I doubt it'd ever be added to the game so there's no harm in chatting about it.

Anyway, I had this idea of creating a separate mode called "Ground War" that operates similarly to WvW, but on a completely new map.

The objective of this mode is simple; kill other players and claim the most land. The primary difference between Ground War and WvW is that killing other players awards the most score because objectives award nothing.

There are no towers, no keeps, no castles. The only objectives are ones similar to Ruins. In key locations through out the map there would be flags to claim. Claiming these flags takes the same amount of time as claiming a Ruin in the Borderlands but they do not award Bloodlust or score. Instead, they grant the ability to; glide within the territory, place Tactics and construct "safe zones."

Think of a Safe Zone like a tower. It is an enclosed structure with a singular portal entrance only usable by the server that owns/constructed it. The major differences are that it has significantly less health than a tower, it cannot be upgraded, all walls can be destroyed and there is nothing inside but open space for players to regroup.

In the event a server(s) become heavily outnumbered, the option to create a "War Machine" would become available (think about those giant Charr war machines). These War Machines would be similar to siege golems in that they are manned by a single player, can be dropped for other players to use and can be destroyed. The differences would be; double the health, significantly faster, significantly more damage and maps are limited to 5 active Machines at a time. Assuming all 5 are active and there are enough spare players to protect them, these Machines should hopefully compensate for the smaller numbers by providing heavy damage from a siege engine capable of rapidly destroying Safe Zones and withstanding a lot of punishment. As soon as a server is no longer outnumbered, the Machines receive a large debuff and a decay timer. Their damage and health are greatly reduced (not instantly of course, this would be bad in the middle of combat) and not using the Machines for an extended period of time would result in their automatic destruction.

As for the map, I picture it being very large (maybe near twice that of the normal maps) with extremely varied terrain. Think lots of open fields, lots of tight chokes, high cliffs, canyons and even lakes. Lots of room for large scale fights but also lots of cover for solo players or small groups to sneak around capturing Flags and sniping zergs.

EDIT:Also to clarify about the scoreThe whole point of the score would be to determine the next match. Going up or down only generates different encounters. Reward tracks would still exist but perhaps they would be progressed differently.

It doesn't seem to provide the same atmosphere as WvW so why would people play it?

Doesn't sound bad. We'll never get it, but hey, one can imagine.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:Before I begin, I want to say that I'm not completely serious about this. It's just an idea I had that I wanted to write out to see what people think. I doubt it'd ever be added to the game so there's no harm in chatting about it.

Anyway, I had this idea of creating a separate mode called "Ground War" that operates similarly to WvW, but on a completely new map.

The objective of this mode is simple; kill other players and claim the most land. The primary difference between Ground War and WvW is that killing other players awards the most score because objectives award nothing.

There are no towers, no keeps, no castles. The only objectives are ones similar to Ruins. In key locations through out the map there would be flags to claim. Claiming these flags takes the same amount of time as claiming a Ruin in the Borderlands but they do not award Bloodlust or score. Instead, they grant the ability to; glide within the territory, place Tactics and construct "safe zones."

Think of a Safe Zone like a tower. It is an enclosed structure with a singular portal entrance only usable by the server that owns/constructed it. The major differences are that it has significantly less health than a tower, it cannot be upgraded, all walls can be destroyed and there is nothing inside but open space for players to regroup.

In the event a server(s) become heavily outnumbered, the option to create a "War Machine" would become available (think about those giant Charr war machines). These War Machines would be similar to siege golems in that they are manned by a single player, can be dropped for other players to use and can be destroyed. The differences would be; double the health, significantly faster, significantly more damage and maps are limited to 5 active Machines at a time. Assuming all 5 are active and there are enough spare players to protect them, these Machines should hopefully compensate for the smaller numbers by providing heavy damage from a siege engine capable of rapidly destroying Safe Zones and withstanding a lot of punishment. As soon as a server is no longer outnumbered, the Machines receive a large debuff and a decay timer. Their damage and health are greatly reduced (not instantly of course, this would be bad in the middle of combat) and not using the Machines for an extended period of time would result in their automatic destruction.

As for the map, I picture it being very large (maybe near twice that of the normal maps) with extremely varied terrain. Think lots of open fields, lots of tight chokes, high cliffs, canyons and even lakes. Lots of room for large scale fights but also lots of cover for solo players or small groups to sneak around capturing Flags and sniping zergs.

EDIT:Also to clarify about the scoreThe whole point of the score would be to determine the next match. Going up or down only generates different encounters. Reward tracks would still exist but perhaps they would be progressed differently.

So you want to create a rvr offshoot mode that will compete for wvw players to fill? How much more of a headache do we need to give the devs when it’s obvious that wvw needs the attention and resources?

You’re better off asking for new wvw maps with additional mechanics because that’s more logical and realistic.

Not a bad idea, but I'd say that introducing an alternative mode for WvW is actually the fastest possible way to kill WvW because it splits an already dwindling playerbase.

I like the map idea, though not sold on the warmachine (balance mechanic, depends on if the game really should have that or not). I've been for more different types of maps for a long time :)

What I'd argue against is making it a separate mode, I'd rather they roll this into the existing wvw system, replacing an existing map (and ditching the HomeBL system entirely, so we can actually have rotations of stand alone maps for more variety).

I think this map idea could also work as a smaller map, since without all the objectives you can easily have a focus on smaller scale combat (more efficient to go for the capture points that way), with a couple of ideas, it could turn into a fun roaming map.

We already have this gameplay mode without objectives. Its just off time with T3 that no one cares about or is capable of attacking, so all we can do is run around them fighting players and taking imaginary ground.

I'd probably enjoy it if the concept was tweaked a little but I doubt they'd keep both game modes if one outperformed the other in terms of population retention...but I could be wrong.

Sounds fun, but given how long it's taken for the world rebalance, I'd rather they spend dev effort on getting that out sometime this year.

Edit: also, PPK-based gamemodes tend to favour zerg vs zerg rather than small engagements. I'd personally prefer more incentive to split up rather than blob up and steamroll smaller groups.