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If you were a WvW developer for a year, in what order would you solve problems?


subversiontwo.7501

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Well if i was a Dev id revert the entire state of the game back before the June 2015 build which destroyed the game and ever since hasn't recovered... (this is before the change to stats on items, leveling up, vanilla trait system and most if not all changes in that build) which changed WvW for the worse and every year declines even more.This game has went so downhill i dont even recommend it anymore to friends... its sad as i love this game and would jump right back if drastic changes occurred... so far i haven't seen and still waiting for that alliance wvw (which who knows what they will even do for wvw) to come... which they just said "not announced"

Oh to Wvw edits:Revert it back to actual silver/gold to upgrade places which required actual micromanagement of community... remove the all the levels and defenses they added which were completely unnecessary... so basically all the recent gimmicks no one asked for.... along with the mount (sadly it has grown old now) and make the mount just something you unlock playing wvw and you can use in pve.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2015-06-23

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I think I would first try to make the game mode more popular by making it easier to enter: A starter WvW map accessible to any player below PvE level 30 or so.If that works, then chances are that more development resources may be allocated to the mode?

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1.reward winning server(alliance)(rest will get sweets too but less)2.ballance things around 5-10 man groups not 1v1 or 50v50. But healthy middle ground. If you add numbers in manpower in this balanced game it will not be as bad.3.make defending more beneficial(reward)4.eotm instead one of the alpines5.more pips per week(or benefit active play more, not killing 1 folk every 8 minit and then camp spawn, so if I run around and flip things up, i wanna get more reward, cuz right now passive play is kinda much smarter decision)

  1. Special GvG minimap(arena) and weekly/daily event for guilds and reward for participation in them(winner gets more),make leaderboard.

I get in america is popular reward last and first the same, because feelings hurts, but rest of the world likes winning and if you loose you have atleast motivation to gid gud.And this is sweet compromise, winner just get little bit more.

If you put into "competitive" mode some competition(leaderboard), ppl will work their asses off to be first and flex=more active

Peace

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My top 10:

  1. Desirable exclusive rewards for playing WvW including skins and unique legendary weapons, capes, etc
  2. Increase the overall rewards for player kills
  3. Alliances or similar system that moves us away from "servers"
  4. Remove Rally
  5. Insta-death when a player dies in the water
  6. Nerf the hell out of stealth with long reveals post attack at least double the time if not more
  7. Nerf all skills/traits that reduce damage and stack with protection such as Dolyak Stance
  8. Change invuln to a huge toughness/vitality boost
  9. Nerf all AoE spam
  10. Bring back Ricochet (yeah this one is selfish)
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posted thoughts on several threads yet; i think u brought up many points yet.but the real important stuff in my view:- weekly rewards and rewards per link for server performance. we're a t1 EU server and usually don't even really try bc it's not for much to go hard on them. worst case, our opponents just stop playing lol. though some pulled some NA guilds who fill their nighttimes, which i personally dislike, but guess cannot change that.

  • make the starting position in EBG random , also randomize who gets on which border (i still don't understand why desert BL is not liked by so many, we had great fights there)

  • make EotM a rated border map similarily to EBG and since it has a difficult terrain, give it a special buff for each day of the week, so you make it interesting, fun and worth to play.

also some of its map mechanics have to be adjusted surely, but after all that should be not a too big problem. it would kinda be the first "content" since and eternity (i barely can count warclaw, since it was more a thing for pve players, it's use for WvW is rather negative - means we'd be happier without it existing)

( - in further extent, also adapt a random starting point for EotM. short explaining how i thought of the reward and boon mechanics: 1 random different permanent boon for each team on the EotM map. 1 mapwide for all teams equally set rewards buff while u are on EotM that changes up daily, maybe also randomly chosen. use things like: +10% WXP gain, +10% reward track gain, +25% magic find from drops of EotM loot, 5% chance to drop rare items from EotM loot (like black lion chest keys)... with stuff like this you make it interesting.

minor but comfyness issues:

  • wxp gain for defending stuff... if thats yet the case, i failed to notice it, could be just a bit up'd then.
  • polishing the maps; also for example powering up mobs. maybe removing the weaker ai mobs around and instead putting some elite levels into the maps. make the desert border dinosaurs in the middle of the map aggro all the time, on stonemist the tree things. more thrill, more fun imo ;P it won't be an real issue for roamers anyways bc the warkitty just avoids them but if theres a highdps elite jumping around into roamerfights, it surely would add a special note.

this could be also used to make the environments more exclusive. clean all the minotaurs etc from alpine borders and put on one map sons of svanir instead and on the other one icebrood creatures, for example.

  • (some parts are still a bit buggy, maybe make pulls on walls harder to put off. like let walls block targetting radius for offensive field spells, from lower levels maybe? thats a difficult one surely but a blob that bombards the walls with 20 elementalists is quite annoying.)
  • some new masteries and legendaries to farm for our veterans. i'm not there yet, but there are surely some people who are.

    however, strong disagree with _straegeons _damagenerfs, and downed state is fine. hell downed got nerfed so badly yet with giving the warclaw the "fatal fangs"... only nerfing stealth, but that would kill thieves completely. idk how to make that fair.

idk about the alliances _catchyfx _mentioned, but if its well implemented why not. (i still don't fully understand how alliances wouldn't result in pure chaos). however not sure if we needed guild versus guild maps, since the guilds are totally not equal sized usually. that would need a big rework for some things, maybe to big to be doable. at best they could model OS (obsidian sanctum) to a gvg-battlezone, but seperate it from the ranked state (like EotM is now). maybe with own guild exclusive rewards, idk.

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Thanks for the replies that have come in.

I'm going to be honest and admit that I almost instantly regretted making the topic. It's one of those topics where you first think that it is easy to distinguish between what you are trying to get people to tag along on and perhaps more difficult for them to actually identify what you are trying to achieve. In my book there is a clear and important distinction between listing what changes you would want (a wishlist of sorts) and explain how you would go about solving problems. I immidiately realized that something like that isn't unmistakable though.

That means that some comments here have been really good and interesting to read while others, even if more ambitious, have not really amounted to more than the comment Widmo jokingly (and well) made early in the thread.

It's good to see people trying and comming from a good place, trying to be constructive, so in that sense any feedback is good feedback, I just have to sift alot and try to hold my tongue from commenting and derailing the thread when people suggests things that already exist or that I don't agree with. I've really tried to back off and let it slip. Friends, keep posting interesting stuff, I read it all even if I don't add much more to the topic myself :).

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If I was a WvW developer, it's unlikely I'd be able to do any of these lists, because they are mostly compilations of work requiring different disciplines (aside from the "shut WvW down" one). This thread seems like more of a game director thing.

As far as game direction goes, the two priorities would be:

  • Dismantle the power creep in WvW. We've reached the point where too many classes can do too much by themselves. A universal reduction of power levels, implementation of diminishing returns on offensive and defensive stats, and clear strengths and weaknesses between builds would help make combat less samey, hopefully more enjoyable, and potentially reduce server overhead.
  • Work towards making WvW a deeper game mode. "Winning" currently involves keeping cap points for longer than the other two teams, and that's about it. Very easy to understand, but after seven years, also very boring. There is potential for other varieties of open-world PvP content that feed into the WvW ecosystem without the cap point thing. I'd take suggestions from the team and get prototypes for a few of them, and see where it goes from there.

As an actual developer, however, my priorities would be:

  • Making more maps. Best to stick to one's day job.
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@Ben K.6238 said:There is potential for other varieties of open-world PvP content that feed into the WvW ecosystem without the cap point thing.Agreed. One thing that would feel less mechanical could be fighting for resources instead (or would that be too close to real life?). The resources would not be stuck to fixed places and would provide boons to the team. From a development perspective, this is a leap into the void though, an almost complete rewrite of the game mode, not something done by one developer in a year I suppose.

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I can't know what's possible to accomplish in a year, of course, but this is what I'd try. This is assuming that alliances are coming sometime before the rapture so I won't be trying to solve things like population imbalance, making points matter and other issues that alliances are supposed to mitigate or make possible.

Quarter 1: Combat and New Player Experience

Add a blanket buff that reduces all damage and healing (except from combo fields) as a temporary measure to slow fights down and give people room to respond.

  • Balance changes are not the purview of WvW devs, but something this simple should be possible. Actual balance changes should come, but would be beyond my power to implement.

Add more effective tutorials.

  • Add an instanced tutorial where a player takes a camp, uses it to build a catapult (running back for supply once, or NPC assists build), then takes down a wall (possibly pre-damaged) and caps a tower. There should be a party/guild version that caps a keep instead. The latter version could be a guild mission as well. Currently, the tutorial doesn't prepare players for what they face in the game. On DBL, there is no tutorial at all. This should use only existing assets to teach them everything that they need to know to hit the field offensively.

  • Add an instanced tutorial where a player defends a keep by throwing and building siege or killing all enemies if they are unable to prevent a break-in.

Quarter 2+3: Siege Renewal

Make siege battles more dynamic and involve more players than just those on siege engines. Also reduce the amount of know-how needed to effectively use siege.

  • In general, make uncontested sieges take less time while allowing players more opportunity to contest sieges if they are present. Reduce the impenetrability of sieged-up towers/keeps by more directly limiting their defense by supply, but also make offensive supply chains more important for sustained assaults. Reduce the base cost of siege engines to encourage setting up and firing even when a full assault success isn't certain, or with the goal of simply dealing damage.

    • Siege that charges now shows an arrow at the expected landing location that moves as it charges further.

    • New Siege Engine: Pile of Rocks - Costs 10 supply to set up with 1 initial rock. Players can dump 10 supply into it to increase the rock pile by 1 rock up to a max of 10 rocks. Alternatively, players can withdraw one rock from the pile. These rocks can be used in Catapults and Trebuchets. If the rock pile is destroyed, one stored rock is lost and it resets to full hp. This will allow players to have some parts of their group running supply while the siege is ongoing and, with appropriate risk, allow a shortening of supply lines for groups that can defend their rock piles. The pile can be reduced to 0 rocks and will persist until more rocks are added. Players carrying rocks are slowed by 50% and cannot use skills. If they drop the rock, it ceases to exist.

    • New Siege Engine: Pile of Arrows - Costs 10 supply to set up with 5 initial arrows. Players can dump 10 supply into it to increase the arrow pile by 5 arrows up to a max of 50 arrows. Alternatively, players can withdraw 5 arrows from the pile. These arrows can be used in Ballistae and Arrow Carts. If the arrow pile is destroyed, all stored arrows are lost. Players can carry arrows without penalty but all are lost upon death.

    • Arrow Carts now charge to increase range (max: 2500) and drop only one volley of arrows and cost 2 supply or 1 Arrow (from an Arrow Pile) to fire. They deal base 9,000 damage (about 2 of the current ticks) in a 360 radius (no target cap) and have a distinct warning marker and sound that plays prior to landing. Build cost is reduced by 20 supply for all versions.

    • Catapults now have 2 separate skills to increase/decrease range. Once the range is set, it always fires at that distance power when fired. Damage no longer increases with range. Catapults cost EITHER 10 supply or 1 rock to fire. They deal 5x their current base damage (as opposed to 2x fully charged as they do now) and have a 5s CD. Catapult's bubble skill is replaced with Gather Rocks, a skill which takes 10 seconds and then fires the Catapult for 2x current base damage. Gather Rocks can be auto-fired and is interrupted by taking any damage. It is much slower than maintaining a supply line, but will allow small groups or solo players to deal serious damage if left unattended. A player with 10 supply or a rock can take control of a Catapult that is being used to Gather Rocks regardless of ownership. Current Catapult DPS is ~1 damage units per 5s (Due to 4.5s charging time and 5s CD for 2x base damage). New DPS would be 5 damage units per 5s. Gather Rocks DPS would be 1 damage unit per 5s. Catapult rocks now have a distinct warning marker and sound that plays prior to landing. Build cost is reduced by 10 supply for all versions.

    • Trebuchets now have 2 separate skills to increase/decrease range. Once the range is set, it always fires at that distance power when fired. Damage no longer increases with range. Trebuchets cost EITHER 10 supply or 1 rock to fire. They deal 10x their current base damage (as opposed to 2x fully charged as they do now) and have a 13s CD. Their Healing Oasis skill is replaced with Gather Rocks, which takes 13 seconds to fire for 1x current base damage but does not cost supply or a rock. It can be auto-fired, but can be cancelled by receiving any damage. The current DPS is 2 damage units per 13s. New DPS would be 10 damage units per 13s. Gather Rocks DPS would be 1 damage units per 13s. Trebuchet rocks now have a distinct warning marker and sound that plays prior to landing. Build cost is reduced by 40 supply for all versions.

    • Rams now deal 2x damage. Their Flame Blast no longer applies structural vulnerability at higher ranks, but instead increases the duration of the flames.

    • Cannons can now be remote-controlled from a console within the walls. When interacting with the console, their Field of View will be the same as if on the cannon. The cannons can still be destroyed, but players that attempt to use them will not be insta-killed by AoE.

    • Burning Oil is renamed Oil Cauldron and is now a ground based structure that starts with 10 Oil Buckets. Players can add an Oil Bucket to the Cauldron for 5 supply and it can hold a maximum of 50 Oil Buckets. Players can retrieve 1 Oil Bucket to gain access to the Pour Oil, Pour Tar and Detonate skills. Utility skills are still available while carrying Oil Buckets, but players are slowed 25%. Pour Oil deals 4,000 damage every second for 5 seconds in a 240 radius and applies Burning (3s) for 800 damage. Pour Tar pulses Cripple (1s) every second for 10 seconds. Detonate takes 3 seconds to activate, can be interrupted and deals 40,0000 damage in a 50 aoe around the player. Detonate, obviously, insta-kills the player that uses it. Any enemies hit are knocked back 800 units. Oil Bucket aoes do NOT penetrate gates.

    • Golems now deal 2x damage and can no longer move while disabled.

    • Ballistae's third skill now sets a target as if positioning a minimum AoE skill. Subsequent uses of the first skill now aim at that target. This will allow them to hit things that are within their actual range, but too far away to click on and target. Ballistae's first skill now costs 10 supply or 5 Arrows to fire and does 5x current base damage on a 2s CD. It retains the double damage bonus against siege weapons. Their second and third skills now cost 2 supply or 1 Arrow to fire. Build cost is reduced by 20 supply for all versions.

    • Shield Generators are unchanged.

Increase defender activities in general and especially those that can be disrupted by enemy players.

  • This has been partially accomplished by adding refillable Oil Cauldrons, Rock Piles and Arrow Piles.

  • Add Structure Repair Kits to camps which cost 10 supply to generate. They can be dropped and picked up again within 2 minutes, but the same player cannot generate a second Structure Repair Kit until the first is consumed. Allied players can pick up other's Structure Repair Kits and assume ownership of it. Structure Repair Kits cannot be held while mounted. When used on damaged walls or gates, Structure Repair Kits restore integrity equal to spending 30 supply (with a new WvW mastery that can boost this to 50 supply value). If a wall or gate is heavily damaged and the structure is no longer contested, send an NPC to stand near the wall and wave players over. The NPC should ask them to go get a Structural Repair Kit from a nearby Supply Camp and repair the wall. Perhaps make this a defense event that ends when the wall/gate is fully repaired.

  • Add a Yak-Herding Kit to camps that gives access to a skill which can give 1 targeted allied Yak 3s of Superspeed on a 3s CD. Also grants 3s swiftness to the player. Increase WXP portion only of Yak herding reward.

  • Add an alarm bell that can be rung by a player if a tower or keep is contested that pings all allied player's mini-maps who are on the map. A pop-up, which can be disabled, can also appear at the top of the screen that says which tower or keep just rang the alarm. Clicking the pop-up will set a route to the contested area.

Quarter 4: Polish

  • Use this time to catch up with the 'little' fixes that pile up throughout the year and to adjust/bugfix the Siege Renewal.
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@Leo.3428 said:

@Ben K.6238 said:There is potential for other varieties of open-world PvP content that feed into the WvW ecosystem without the cap point thing.Agreed. One thing that would feel less mechanical could be fighting for resources instead (or would that be too close to real life?). The resources would not be stuck to fixed places and would provide boons to the team. From a development perspective, this is a leap into the void though, an almost complete rewrite of the game mode, not something done by one developer in a year I suppose.

Fighting for resources is basically what you do in most strategy games, so that would be fine. In fact that sounds like a system I'd gladly try out.

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@Sviel.7493 said:Add more effective tutorials.Ditto. The same tutorial map could also be used for the WvW instances for below-PvE-30 players that I was suggesting.

@Ben K.6238 said:Fighting for resources is basically what you do in most strategy games, so that would be fine.My concern with this is that GW2 is one big and complex software probably optimized for its specific gameplay - mostly static terrain and structures, few mobile assets, mechanics precalculated for the local terrain whenever possible. Trying to change even a bit of this is a risk of breaking the whole without even realizing at first.

@Ben K.6238 said:In fact that sounds like a system I'd gladly try out.Me too ^^

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Create a Prince of Persia town .3 Floor Buildings , 4 rooms wide, some are connected by ropes/brighes
Wooden 1 hp doors , minigaps , broken floors

Simply polygons and designLet the community to playtest it for a 1 monthIf is worth it , move on to implanted it as a new WvWvW map with mini-max cities , rather than castle/keeps and no''timer''

In the middle of the city , its a castle1 team will have to escord the 1-3 MEGA ram (you can choose to spawn more rams in other directions if you have ppl to defend them) and storm each building manually to kill any enemy2nd will use trap doors/bookstores to move across the floors3rd will use the HoT vines to jump across the buildings2nd and 3 rd will attack from the windows

The 1st team will go capture the 2nd Castle doors and then move to the next round to capture the 3rd group CastleEach team takes tunrsThe team that captured faster and has more progress , wins

IF it works , implant 3 major cities all over the map + event start if you place a ram plans on a spot (+have used suplies to built it) .If the team that is getiing attacked has outnumber debuff , then the second enemy gain HALF participate for protecting the base of the outnumber (no need to implant Rounds in a outdoor event-becuase nthe winner will rush in the next city)

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i would remove the Gaps between Skills&Traits between PvE and WvW (prob pvp too)and remove the link teams, so every server fights for itself.

Together with an reward in moving to an "weaker" server, instead of just paying an lower price just to loose in wvw. (with an 2month cooldown or so)

Also the "reveal" from taken keeps shouldnt be a reveal that deadeyes can cleanse, since its op that they can keep invisible inside the boss itself until it can be killed again.

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1) first I would add an event system that adds objective base gameplay with a timer that has defined winners and losers.

2) new small scale team helpful objectives added to the game besides just camp flips.

3)NPCs get a buff in damage and health.

4) No more 3 sided Boardland maps. They are changed into brand new maps that are two Faction based maps. Red vs Blue, Blue vs Green, Red vs Green, EBG. Now each Faction only has 3 maps to play on instead of 4.

5) Each Faction color has unique NPCs and Faction theme beyond just the fixed structures.

6) EoTM map is removed and now a new map during Meta Event time that replaces either the EBG map or Borderlands while meta is active.

7) all new rewards. No more weapon Skin sets. All new unique named skins for each weapon type. Now with rare chance to Black Lion currency.

8) new Mobile Sieges that's not Guild exclusive and not all of them are Golem slow.

9) New EBG meta event map with larger space and new mechanics unique to that map while it's on timer.

10) Outpost added as a new temporary structure that players can build using supply.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  1. Spend 6 months doing no work, but instead making huge efforts to convince the other staff that WvW is the way that the game should move development-wise, especially when PvE veteran Bree Royce celebrates the fact that upcoming games are also favouring massive online PvP battles! https://massivelyop.com/2019/12/18/massively-ops-2019-awards-best-trend/
  2. A Point multiplier for success while outnumbered.
  3. Develop a metric for measuring which team is leading in the matchup at the moment,
  4. Quadruple rewards for killing members of the server that's leading (loot AND points), This is a COUNTER-SNOWBALLING measure.
  5. All teams get a varying multiplier on points as the week progresses. For example, on first day you get 5,4,3 for a skirmish, on second day you get 6,5,4 etc. This creates a better chance of a comeback at the end of the week, earlier days aren't worth as much!
  6. Consider moving reset to Monday in order to make the weekend dramatic. There are many more WvW players on weekends.

Some of these ideas are not mine, other players have suggested them over the years and the developers didn't implement them.

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I don't know how to fix WvW. I think the a lot of the issues we see are there because of the core design of the game, NA and EU servers not being able to match up with and against each other. I don't think it is possible to fix this but if it could it would eliminate a lot of the time zone imbalance and you could have decent action on the battlefield around the clock.

Add WXP vials to either final track rewards or pip chests. It would have support players feel rewarded for their scouting, trebbing, dolyak escorting, and just general defense. It's painstakingly long to build up WXP without running with the zerglings or having a zergling build that can tag a lot of dots.

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