Periodic special objectives

[blp.3489]

Reading through one of the other threads I saw an idea that intrigued me enough that I thought it was worth thinking through.

The most basic form of the idea is to have some mechanism whereby, periodically, some objective takes on special significance and becomes especially worth fighting over.  The goal would be to encourage the servers to have "massive battles" over a specific objective.  I think Stonemist Castle is a permanent focal point on the EBG map, but the BL maps don't really have an equivalent.

One approach would be to have something appear in one of the keeps or towers, let's call it a relic.  Whoever controls the keep or tower it is in gains some sort of bonus reward.  How the reward works probably needs a lot of thought and/or experimentation but one somewhat random example might be that the hosting tower or keep takes on the bonus rewards of Stonemist Castle for some period.  Or bonus rewards similar to the recent objective bonus rewards are generated for the controlling players.  Whatever the reward is it has to be good enough to make it worthwhile for the other two servers to try to capture it, and worthwhile for the owning server to defend it, all the while making tradeoffs about other objectives that you might lose or gain.

A variation on that might be to have a free-for-all where some number of relics appear in some location outside of any objective and the servers have a chance to transport these relics to keeps or towers.  Each server has to decide how many relics it wants to challenge for and then split its forces between escorting the relics it has and attacking enemies to take the relics they have.  Servers could choose between open field battles during transport or capping towers or keeps that contain relics.

Another variation might be to encourage battles around the ruins by making them periodically strategic to hold as many as you can in some more direct way than bloodlust, or maybe capture circles could appear in some semi-random open field locations.

Some random ideas:  use the warclaw pull (on gate) ability to pull relics to your objectives, or move them with CC skills like in the Tarir meta event; or have the relics be objects with uses, a super siege golem for example, or have banner-like functionality except when you wipe the group that has the banner it remains and you can use it.  I vaguely recall that there was something in the hunger games where there was a pile of weapons and you had to decide which one you would take, which one will get you killed if you try to take it, etc.

Someone with more WvW experience can maybe explain the problem with something like this, or better, how it could be done better.  I doubt the devs have time to do this sort of stuff but I still think it is interesting to try to picture how it could work.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

1 hour ago, blp.3489 said:

The most basic form of the idea is to have some mechanism whereby, periodically, some objective takes on special significance and becomes especially worth fighting over.  The goal would be to encourage the servers to have "massive battles" over a specific objective.

[...]

One approach would be to have something appear in one of the keeps or towers, let's call it a relic. Whoever controls the keep or tower it is in gains some sort of bonus reward.

[...]

Another variation might be to encourage battles around the ruins by making them periodically strategic to hold as many as you can in some more direct way than bloodlust, or maybe capture circles could appear in some semi-random open field locations.

Aren't you just describing the Desert Borderlands' central mechanic that was removed because people disliked it, it caused massive lag, etc. and got replaced with Ruins?

One of the variation sounds pretty similar to the much older Orb of Power which was cut out for balance issues. And another sounds like the initial implementation of Ruins before they got nerfed.

[Dawdler.8521]

The "problem" with the ideas is simple (literally) - it's far too complicated.

People wouldnt have the patience or time for this. Heck even now we do have "special objectives" with bloodlust that is an incredibly simple mechanic and people still ignore it most of the time.

But also, we kind of already have all of this by proxy baked into the mode itself. Something worth taking despite the danger? That would be high tier objectives. Some sort of periodic call to arms for battle? Well that is just a commander. "Transporting" something to objectives? We got dollys moving around all the time that need protection from players. And the "relic" idea is just a glorified version of basic objective defense. 

At the end of the day WvW is player centric, not complex mechanics.

[Jobber.6348]

Tbh all that seems too complicated, but I can tell you why people prefer EBG to Borderlands: 

1. Objectives are very well spaced in EBG. All objectives are situated very near each other, and each side are relatively equal in distance from each of their respective objectives. This makes the map condensed and very fast paced due to the short travel distance. 

 

2. Side objectives like Merc camps have actual gameplay advantage for capturing them. For one, they periodically send patrols out to take the two adjacent camps for your team, making them invaluable for denying opposing teams supply. For Borderlands, you have Ruins, Monuments and useless Centaur and Skritt camps instead. If these were updated to better confer a tangible bonus to the capturing team, you would have solved all your Borderland issues in one go. 

 

So what needs to be done is this:

 

1. Borderlands need to be squashed. Too much leg day for bottom two teams before they actually touch an objective. This isn't too big of an issue for Alpine BL in particular but DBL suffers from this greatly. Arguably, maybe DBL should be left as-is because it is a unique and fun map with interesting terrain. That alone makes the way it plays unique and worth exploring further. 

 

2. Make Alpine Ruins into Merc camps. Say they are Skritt villages. If you capture one, they will send patrols out to the other nearby ones and war against them if they are neutral/opposing. If you capture all of them, the united Skritt will send patrols out to the nearby camps. 

 

3. The chain pull idea is solid, but for the wrong objective. Why not have DBL Monuments spawn a Bomb of sorts every so often which can be pulled by a few players with Warclaws over to an objective, where they can use the Bomb to blow open Walls/Gates. The Bombs do very heavy damage but needs several players to pull it to an objective quickly. The Bomb can only be accessed if you are the owner of the Shrine or if you kill the Shrine and capture it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Xenesis.6389]

Hot spots have been discussed dozens of times a dozen different ways before.

We have Orange swords that serve this purpose, and by extension gives sudden importance to the nearby objectives.

We have objective tiers and keep waypoints and now scaling event rewards and weeklies that provoke players to create hot spots at objectives. The borderland keeps serve the same purpose as smc does in ebg.

We had an orb.

It was fly hacked to death.

Literally death because it was taken out of the game and replaced with the ruins.

They cannot stop hackers so you will never see transportable objectives ever again in wvw.