Suggestion for a new zone meta

[blp.3489]

Going back to the Future of Guild Wars 2 announcement to check the release dates (just 11 days to the first Season 1 living world episode and first CM strike on the 19th!) I was struck by the first graphic: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/arenanet-studio-update-the-future-of-guild-wars-2/

That picture strongly reminded me of several great Asian films with assaults on fortified gates.  There is a whole genre of Asian cinema involving epic battles set in historical times, many of which involve siege battles for walled cities or fortresses.  It strikes me that a siege battle for a fortress would make for an epic meta event.  Drizzlewood Coast has elements of that but it is split between smaller battles for the various camps and the assault on the fortress is very linear.  I am picturing something where either you hold the fortress and defend against a siege or vice versa.  If defending you have to defend against enemies scaling the walls, make sorties out to destroy enemy siege weapons that will otherwise bring down the walls, use defensive siege weapons, etc. perhaps attack the enemy head-on on the open field, and in the end either rout the enemy into retreat or be overrun and abandon the fortress.  If attacking you have to use a combination of siege weapons and fighting to breach the walls or gates and take over the keep.  There might be multiple layers of defense like inner and outer walls, towers or keeps, and you might build barricades or such to route attackers into ambushes.

I'm not sure how hard that would be to program or how large the forces could be without overloading the servers but if you pulled it off it might be the most epic content in the game.

Actually, if you think of South Drizzlewood, it could be quite similar except instead of scattered camps you assault, the camps could be replaced with parts of a single fortress like gate complexes, towers, walls, and keeps.  Actually you could also have some smaller outlying forts that guard mountain passes that the enemy needs to pass through.  In addition to escort missions you could have attack the enemy supply line missions.  You could generate a lot of varied gameplay by having multiple routes and strategies that the enemy could use, and you could keep gameplay fresh just by adding additional enemy strategies or enemy group compositions.

Anyway, that picture of the city gate really invoked possibilities for me.  I'm sure the developers have their own plan already mapped out but you never know if they might get inspired.

[Danikat.8537]

Have you ever played World vs World? Because it's exactly what you're describing, but with players on both sides instead of just one. Literally all of it - the fortified locations with multiple layers of defences, using siege weapons to bring down walls or stop attackers and destroying the enemies siege weapons to slow them down or create an opening, all of it. Even defending and attacking supply lines.

(I think Drizzlewood was designed to be similar to WvW (but purely PvE of course), but interspaced with the kind of PvE events we see on other maps as well.)

[Infinity.2876]

kind of like bloodstone fen except backwards.

 

 

[blp.3489]

3 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Have you ever played World vs World? Because it's exactly what you're describing, but with players on both sides instead of just one. Literally all of it - the fortified locations with multiple layers of defences, using siege weapons to bring down walls or stop attackers and destroying the enemies siege weapons to slow them down or create an opening, all of it. Even defending and attacking supply lines.

You are right of course.  I have spent a fair chunk of time playing WvW, but I'm far from a competent veteran.  I had a lot of fun but I burned out on it a little when I started working toward the wvw legendary armor because the way the squirmish tickets are distributed you are heavily punished for only playing a few hours every week, you only get significant numbers of squirmish tickets when you get into the later squirmish chests, and the weekly reset puts you back to receiving the useless early chests.

Because I mostly played on the borderlands I didn't experience regular epic battles for territory, I only made a few jaunts to Stonemist castle.  A lot of times it was just small groups of players trading camps back and forth, and the fights over the keeps were usually unbalanced fights that came down to who had the larger zerg, or capturing a tower or keep when there was no one guarding it.  Because it is a continuous ongoing battle, a lot of structures get taken when there wasn't anyone on the other teams around.

The most fun I had in wvw was when the defending and attacking forces were relatively even and fighting over a keep or garrison.  Even when we lost it was fun if it was a good battle where you felt you made a difference.

If there was a meta that was a one-time battle that you either win or lose, with relatively balanced sides I think it would be quite a different experience from typical wvw.

Anyway, it might be interesting to just take one of the existing wvw keeps and plop it on an open world map or in an instance and have one time events where either it is squad vs squad or the defenders or attackers are run with AI.  I think having the player squads be on the defensive would make it relatively unique, either your squad successfully defends the keep or it gets overrun.

Given the rather pathetic fight put up by the NPC guards in wvw, one mediocre player can easily take out the half dozen NPCs guarding a camp, it might take some creativity to create significant challenges for the players but I'm sure it could be done.

[kharmin.7683]

2 hours ago, blp.3489 said:

Anyway, it might be interesting to just take one of the existing wvw keeps and plop it on an open world map or in an instance and have one time events where either it is squad vs squad or the defenders or attackers are run with AI.  I think having the player squads be on the defensive would make it relatively unique, either your squad successfully defends the keep or it gets overrun.

Given the rather pathetic fight put up by the NPC guards in wvw, one mediocre player can easily take out the half dozen NPCs guarding a camp, it might take some creativity to create significant challenges for the players but I'm sure it could be done.

Hard no from me.  WvW exists for a reason.  There is no need to put that content into OWPvE.  Just look at all of the blowback from Anet putting Raid-like content at the end of EoD.

No thanks.

[blp.3489]

6 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Hard no from me.  WvW exists for a reason.  There is no need to put that content into OWPvE.  Just look at all of the blowback from Anet putting Raid-like content at the end of EoD.

No thanks.

Yeah, I should never have mentioned squad versus squad, if that existed it would be a new playmode between spvp and wvw.  As for an open world meta event it would literally be the same as Drizzlewood but with different terrain where the spaced out camps are replaced with a few strategically related structures.  For maximum asset reuse you could incorporate a garrison or keep from the alpine maps, but it would probably be better to build something new that fit in with the region.  The Silverwastes is another similar map, the main difference I would propose is to have the currently separate forts be more elaborate and more strategically interrelated.  Drizzlewood and the Silverwastes aren't in conflict with WvW and haven't resulted in blowback.

The DE meta got blowback because it required a higher level of skill and organization than any previous meta and large numbers of groups of fifty people were consistently wasting two hours of time over and over without succeeding.  It incorporates the hardest dps check and the most punishing lack of rewards if you fail of any meta while also being one of the longest.  I expect Anet will be able to tune it to be more fun and more rewarding experience for a larger segment of the players.