Recently, I have decided to invest some hours into WvW roaming.
Although I know that roaming isn't the main focus of the devs in charge of WvW, it has a lot of potential to bring enjoyment, as it provides content for players that want to PvP but does not want to deal with the AFKs, bots, and toxicity of Ranked SoloQ. Unfortunately, the roaming scene is pretty bad right now, so I have brainstormed some suggestions that could help revitalize the roaming scene.
Keep in mind that I only have a few hours of experience roaming, primarily on Thief, Necro, and Rev, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Lets allow players that want to roam mark themselves as a "Roamer."
As a "Roamer," you cannot use the Warclaw and you can see everyone else marked as a roamer. This is to help encourage people to actually fight. Fights often just end before they even start because of the Warclaw, as most people are too scared to dismount. Being able to see all roamers on the map, friend or enemy, will allow you to know where small-scale fights are happening. This will allow roamers to immediately go towards areas of conflict instead of just aimlessly wandering around.
People marked as a "Roamer" can only join parties of up to 5 people.
I do feel that group roaming has great potential to create bonds/friendships within the game (which is kind of the point of playing an MMO).
Allowing group roaming would not only help encourage communication, but it would also allow skilled solo roamers to get into the tense 1v5 "montage worthy" situations very often.
However, roamers cannot receive healing, boons, or buffs from allies. This is to prevent near immortal combos such as "Tempest/Reaper," or "Scrapper(DPS)/Scrapper(Heals)"
Give better rewards to Roamers.
Well, I think WvW needs better rewards in general, but WvW roaming is the least rewarding activity in the game in terms of in-game income. Solo roamers should get bags with much better loot than a zergling, as winning a 1v1 or 1vX is much more difficult than tagging a bunch of people in a zerg. Roamers in a party should also get better rewards than zerglings, but not as lucrative as a solo roamer.
I believe that these suggestions could help the roaming scene in WvW very immensely, although I doubt that Anet would even consider helping the roaming scene at all.
