WvW Experiment: Could a re-worked borderlands ruin zone give small group operations more purpose?

In a mode locked up by gates, walls, Righteous Indignation and imbalanced player numbers, is it possible to give havoc squads and roamers more purpose than what little they have now? One of the most deserted aspects of WvW is the Borderlands ruins area. Their initial introduction brought a few bodies to the former lake in the map's center, but the interested population quickly dwindled when everyone realized that the effort to maintain control of the area was far better spent doing exactly what everyone had already been doing in WvW. So then, the question begs: If we were to increase the ease of capturing and holding individual ruins--along with the world rewards for doing so--would that encourage more small-group cooperation within this now-deserted hub area?

Suggested changes to encourage more ruin fighting and havoc squad participation:

• Points now function as PvP capture nodes: Much shorter capture time (14 cap ticks); very short de-capture time (5 cap ticks); capture nodes remain indefinitely in the hands of the capturing team (no more decay) until de-capped by another team
• Holding a ruin capture point now grants +1 PPT to that team's world score.
• Bloodlust system reworked: If your world holds at least 3 ruins across 2 Borderlands at once, invaders killed by finishers grant War Score (no longer grants bonus stats; the War Score reward per finished invader remains the current amount).

If a world attempts to zergblob the ruins as a means to control them, they run the risk of keeping their assets from protecting lone towers and camps. Given how GW2 capture node speed is not affected by the number of people on the node (very questionable design choice), small teams can capture a point just as effectively as large teams. The points themselves are also large enough to support sustained skirmishes between groups of players. Many small teams will out-rotate a single, large blob given how spread apart the ruin nodes are (although portal memes can easily break this to some extent). Regardless, small, organized teams will be an asset to this form of the Borderlands ruins, and general activity in the area could possibly skyrocket given how valuable the ruin control could become.

Those are some good points, however the sole reason everyone is participating in a zerg or small scale roaming other objectives rather than exploring the ruins is because it's rewarding loot wise to do so. I don't think most players would enjoy lagging and playing on single digits fps counter if it's wasn't rewarding loot wise to zerg.

I'm sure that Anet considered rewarding caps on ruins, however the botting/afk potential for abuse was probably the reason they didn't. There are probably ways to circumvent it like limit the rewards on caps within a certain time window (3 caps every 15 minutes per point) and also scale rewards from 1 to 5 players, the best reward would still be inferior or on par with a supply camp but not more.

I would only change your suggestion about holding points for war score, for easier implementation I would just add a buff called "Inspired" which grants that particular borderland with a 10% PPT increase for 30 minutes (cannot be refreshed) if 3 points are held for a certain amount of time.

How can you encourage more fighting when some servers just don't have the extra population to provide a player to fight?

Indeed, do we actually want the population to fight more over 5 extra boring caps?

Something I mentioned not long ago was that I would rather see the ruins replaced by a single objective that buffs the other objectives somehow. This would be an open objective (no doors or destructable walls) but still a fortress in the style of a keeps/towers.

Perhaps even a ruined fortress, huehuehuehue.

Think a mini SM in the central area of Alpine border, except covered in vegetation with broken doors and crumbled walls, with a wide cap on the top floor.

What would help small scale more is dynamic events popping in the current maps. Balanced so not quite enough impact to attract a zerg, or, the more you bring the less you achieve through scaling. Something all 3 sides scrap over. That would be fun.

Maybe a body of water with 3 things to destroy protected by krait that activates a quaggan shrine of some elemental force like lightning?

Some ideas to attract more players to the ruins:

• Give some ppt for holding them. Could be something small like: 3 ruins = 1 ppt, 4 ruins = 2 ppt, 5 ruins = 3 ppt.
• Create a vendor or some reward that only appears if you control the 5 ruins. Something that gives incentive to go there once a day. Maybe a rich node, a chest, wvw exp.

@LetoII.3782 said:Maybe a body of water with 3 things to destroy protected by krait that activates a quaggan shrine of some elemental force like lightning?Thats an even more ridiculous idea than say an item you pick up from north camp and bring to bay or hills for extra points.

@Dawdler.8521 said:Indeed, do we actually want the population to fight more over 5 extra boring caps?

Something I mentioned not long ago was that I would rather see the ruins replaced by a single objective that buffs the other objectives somehow. This would be an open objective (no doors or destructable walls) but still a fortress in the style of a keeps/towers.

Perhaps even a ruined fortress, huehuehuehue.

Think a mini SM in the central area of Alpine border, except covered in vegetation with broken doors and crumbled walls, with a wide cap on the top floor.

That's what I thought SM should be outright: No gates; divided into 5 exterior sectors and 1 internal sector that each have capture nodes. Personally, I believe that gates are what keep WvW from being a decent game mode (even above the PvE stats, the huge amount of dead space between objectives, and the inherently imbalanced player numbers on each team). Without gates, players would be encouraged to branch off, capture objectives and defend/intercept enemy groups in mid-rotation.

Implementing a system like that for the ruins would be alright. My only worry is that, if the objectives within the "ruined fortress" are kept too closely together, it would encourage zerging. I like the ruin set-up because they are on different vertical planes as well as rather seperated from each other. Rotating from one to the other can take time and can provide enemy teams with opportunity to intercept rotations by just posting up in certain areas. A "ruined fortress" might be a little too straightforward with its design, and stalemate enemy groups in certain areas, whereas the more open-field nature of the current ruins provides a lot more variables for frontlines and intercepts.

Don't get me wrong, though, I still like the ruined fortress idea.

@xDudisx.5914 said:

• Create a vendor or some reward that only appears if you control the 5 ruins. Something that gives incentive to go there once a day. Maybe a rich node, a chest, wvw exp.

I'd rather players contest the ruins for more "natural" reasons such as "there are another 15 PPT suddenly up for grabs across all 3 borderlands" or "they provide decent rewards now" or "wow, we can contribute meaningfully for once despite us being a group of only 5-10 players without siege spam." Although, providing rewards for contesting the ruins would be a good idea. I'd suggest something like gaining a stack of [bONUS] whenever a player a captures or decaptures a node (caps out at something low like 5 stacks), and each stack grants a small amount of WvW exp per tick. There could be more stuff too, but the danger becomes players abusing the mechanic by just trading captures. The entire ruin zone could be constantly under a unique effect that is applied to people inside of it which would grant bonus WvW exp or entirely different rewards per finished invader. Things like that.