What if WvW was hell for a week?

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

It has come to my attention that Anet is actually taking suggestions for WvW bonus weeks.  Now that I've been given creative license, I'm going to throw my own suggestion against the wall and see what sticks.  Spoiler alert: I'm wholesale ripping off the Mutations from Starcraft co-op.  

The most recent bonus week was fun.  I like that it brought a bunch of PVE players into WvW so I could stomp them in mass.  My ego needed a boost far more than my virtual wallet did.  However, it has not escaped my notice that this bonus week was just regular WvW with more gibs.  The influx of stompable narbs was just a consequence of the shinnies, and not any real additional content.  There have been some minor changes in the past, such as the no downstate weeks and that one strange core week that I wasn't around to play.  But what if WvW became a bit more... weird.  A bit more dangerous.

One of my non-Gw2 hobbies is to impress 1:1 scale indentations of my back into every chair I own.  While doing that, I watch a lot of videos.  For a time, I watched a select few people playing Starcraft co-op, particularly the Brutal Mutations.  While the game was supported, this mode was effectively an RTS which tried to keep things interesting by inducing a series of conditions that would affect each mission in different ways, most of them to make it harder.  Think of the Gambits during the Queen's Gauntlet, but top-down and with more cannon fodder.  Then it occurred to me: In WvW any commander is effectively playing an RTS but with terribly programmed units.  So, it should be possible to introduce similar gambits into WvW to spice things up.  

To compensate for the increased difficulty, the awards should be increased.  That much is obvious.  I know that this kind of stuff is going to affect the players who just want to veg out, do the same stuff they've always done, and also play exclusively on Final Destination with no items enabled.  Not everyone shares my disposition toward sadism or my yearning for utter chaos.  I also know that a lot of these ideas are going to require quite some additional coding, as this will involve far more than adjusting magic find.  My hope is that by introducing these effects into the map will make the game more chaotic, encourage players to group up more to deal with these gambits, and bring a little bit of flair to a game mode that's been essentially unchanged in all these years.  That all said, here's some ideas on how to make WvW utterly difficult in future bonus events.  Feel free to suggest your own ideas of random stuff to torment the tag crowders with.  In no particular order and not necessarily all at the same time:

• Give Unstable Magic Abilities to all enemies that are champion level or greater.
• Have Flux Bombs, Meteors, and Lightning Strikes rain down from the sky in random places all throughout the map at high frequency.  
• Last Laugh is applied to all players.  
• Eclipses at regular intervals that will turn the entire game pitch black (a la Obsidian Sanctum Dark Room) for one minute at a time.  A chat warning will alert players ahead of the eclipses.
• Have Tornado's that slowly wander through the map (similar to bitterfrost frontier), that behave similar to the Elementalist's elite utility.  Damageable and killable.
• Hordes and hordes of hostile skeletons and zombies cover the whole map.
• Most of the map's ground becomes damaging acid that needs to be navigated around.  I originally was going to go with Lava, but that would conflict with the Fire Keep.  
• Cairn's Shared Agony regularly afflicts random players, damaging both allies and enemies standing within range.
• The Legendary Mobs from the Silverwastes will frequently spawn and harass towers and keeps throughout the map, doing high damage to the doors.
• Presents will spawn randomly throughout the map.  Anyone who channels open one of the presents will give a series of buffs or special action skills to their allies on the map... most of the time.  Sometimes it is a booby prize that will debuff players or spawn dangerous mobs.
• A Crown of Solitary Power will spawn at the center of the map, making the player who channels it have 20x more health and 2x more damage than normal, but constantly disables stealth.  However, this bonus is removed if an ally player stands within 1200 units of distance.  Effectively, one player becomes a solitary world boss.  The crown is on a timer, and only one person per map can wear the crown per map.  
• Giant Rifts will open on the map, giving players either slow or swiftness when standing inside of it.
• No Pain No Gain is applied to all non-player enemies.
• Have non-Arena dependent champions begin to wander the map.  
• Land Mines will spawn throughout the map.  They will be invisible until a player steps in range, and then they will appear and go off after 3 seconds.
• Toxic Rain will periodically cover the map, inflicting poison and to all players and enemies while it is raining.  Does not affect indoor or covered areas.
• The death of every nearby friendly player will give a brief demoralized buff, reducing all stats by 20% for 10 seconds.  Refreshes in Duration.
• A bunch of rather frail, non-hostile bunnies are on the map.  Any time one of these bunnies is killed, it gives a 10% debuff to the player that killed it, stacking up to 5 times.  Better watch those AoEs!
• Toxic Sickness is in play, where you can use your special action key to "purge" on command, but will do so involuntarily after 60 seconds.  Can hurt both allies and enemies.

Well... that's about all the ones I can think of.  Most of these are the basic ideas that will require a lot fine-tuning to actually implement.  I won't lie: the debuffnies and the Crown of Solitude are pretty far out there.  I'm pretty sure there's many other mechanics across the world of Tyria that I'm forgetting to stuff into WvW, corkscrew style.  

[Razi.6031]

It was hell for a week...

At least it's over today!

Edited October 3, 2023 by Razi.6031

[ArchonWing.9480]

Well, hell would just be original Red BL with those barricades and random crap knocking you off everywhere.

Flux bombs would be kinda funny if they worked like they did in fractals. Bascially the bomb appears above your ahead and then it drops on your location in  a few seconds a damage pool that lasts for a bit. The intresting thing is that it damages both allies and enemies.

There is also social awkwardness that causes collision between people.

I also suggest we be able to use allied dead bodies and load them onto trebs.  As well as the quartermaster, since they don't do anything anyways.

Speaking of Starcraft, I always thought that story mission with the lethal lava rising periodically in some spots was kinda funny. They should do that to SMC.

Edited October 4, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[WastedYears.8934]

Hated the rush event.

50 man queue taken up by mostly PVE players who arent defending objective isnt fun when you are a WVW player trying to hop around border and EBG to respond to call outs.

Edited October 4, 2023 by WastedYears.8934