Outnumbered Buff [A Real BUFF]

[WarHawk.1892]

For new people and non-WvW browsers:

• The enemies greatly outnumber your forces. Be careful out there!+50% Participation+20% Magic Find+25% World ExperienceTake no armor damage on deathBeing killed by the enemy team will not grant War Score.

— In-game description

What occurs during the times that this buff is active usually involves being stomped into the ground until the buff is removed solely by more players logging in. So, what if the Outnumbered Buff:

• Provide a 50 to 100% increase in number of targets on AoE Skills

My thoughts are that this would directly allow a smaller group (Likely 5-15players) to combat server stacking Timeslots/Guilds. Active players and organisation would still be needed. Instead of being stomped into spawn by guild transfers, a lack of superior timezone coverage, or imbalanced initial relinks. I also had an idea for perhaps allowing double kill score from players active at this time since it can be much more difficult to make meaningful point generation, but the general issue I'd rather tackle atm is the lack of being able to establish a feasible defense when outnumbered. Yes siege can be "annoying", but solves nothing when you arent cowering behind a set of 12ft thick stone walls.

It would most often effect groups of 10-15 with a small sem-organised tag attempting to survive against 30-60 players depending on the time of day. It would not necessarily make the smaller group "overpowered" as even doubling targets to 10 instead of 5 would never provide AoE coverage up to a full 60 player squad, but does allow for more possibilities from skilled individuals and goes a long way to removing the sense of hopelessness when this is occuring every sing day somewhere.

Most current aspects of this "Buff" listed above are practically useless. Participation is -eh, Magic Find is useless generally everywhere already, World Experience isnt going to do anything when you cant do anything to begin with, and No Armor damage sounds fancy - but its free already. It would be much more appealing if it looked like this:

+100% Impacted Players via Profession Skills (or 50, or 75)

• 50% Participation
• 25% World Experience
• 10% Skill Cooldown
• Death does not grant Enemy War Score

(If this existed elsewhere I havent really been on these forums in like 2yrs so eh) Here It is Again then!

[kurea.5421]

THUMBS UP!

[Hackuuna.4085]

Two problems:

1) The outmanned buff stays for a full 5mins regardless if your side gains numbers during the tick. This is because it's linked to participation rewards that are calculated at the end of a tick and outmanned is only calculated at the start of the tick.2) Some groups will inevitably complain when they lose their outmanned buff and blame it on their server mates. ANet cannot encourage such behavior.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

Think you missed the #1 most important part of Outnumbered: +5 pips.

And that is the point. It's an acknowledgement that while outnumbered, you might not be able to successfully flip objectives, or even win fights out in the open field. This boon is to try and compensate for that.

But you want the smaller group to be given an advantage that manifests itself in a fight? Why? They should be rewarded for not having enough friends to bring along to help? For not being able to organize a defense? For the bulk of their players being on a different map?

If you're outnumbered on a map and can't fight toe-to-toe with the enemy, then adapt. I've run in a group with 5 other players and flipped T2/T3 keeps while outnumbered, all because the commander saw that the other two servers were busy fighting each other. Either adopt hit and run / ninja tactics, find some friends to help, or move to a different map. Simple stuff.

[lordkrall.7241]

So, basically create a situation where people will bully people out of the borders to get the outnumbered buff?

[L A T I O N.8923]

@"WarHawk.1892" said:For new people and non-WvW browsers:

• The enemies greatly outnumber your forces. Be careful out there!+50% Participation+20% Magic Find+25% World ExperienceTake no armor damage on deathBeing killed by the enemy team will not grant War Score.

— In-game description

What occurs during the times that this buff is active usually involves being stomped into the ground until the buff is removed solely by more players logging in. So, what if the Outnumbered Buff:

• Provide a 50 to 100% increase in number of targets on AoE Skills

My thoughts are that this would directly allow a smaller group (Likely 5-15players) to combat server stacking Timeslots/Guilds. Active players and organisation would still be needed. Instead of being stomped into spawn by guild transfers, a lack of superior timezone coverage, or imbalanced initial relinks. I also had an idea for perhaps allowing double kill score from players active at this time since it can be much more difficult to make meaningful point generation, but the general issue I'd rather tackle atm is the lack of being able to establish a feasible defense when outnumbered. Yes siege can be "annoying", but solves nothing when you arent cowering behind a set of 12ft thick stone walls.

It would most often effect groups of 10-15 with a small sem-organised tag attempting to survive against 30-60 players depending on the time of day. It would not necessarily make the smaller group "overpowered" as even doubling targets to 10 instead of 5 would never provide AoE coverage up to a full 60 player squad, but does allow for more possibilities from skilled individuals and goes a long way to removing the sense of hopelessness when this is occuring every sing day somewhere.

Most current aspects of this "Buff" listed above are practically useless. Participation is -eh, Magic Find is useless generally everywhere already, World Experience isnt going to do anything when you cant do anything to begin with, and No Armor damage sounds fancy - but its free already. It would be much more appealing if it looked like this:

+100% Impacted Players via Profession Skills (or 50, or 75)

• 50% Participation
• 25% World Experience
• 10% Skill Cooldown
• Death does not grant Enemy War Score

(If this existed elsewhere I havent really been on these forums in like 2yrs so eh) Here It is Again then!

So if one side has 15(red), one side a mapblob And one side 15(twice)The reds want 15v15 on the 3rd serverIT would be An impossible unfair fight wouldnt IT?

[Stand The Wall.6987]

any sort of combat bonus wouldn't work.

edithmm maybe if it did it on a squad vs. squad basis. so if a squad is outnumbered by more then 200%, then:-25% damage-15% condi durationif 300%-50% damage-30% condi durationstill tho its kinda cheap.

[enkidu.5937]

Server A: 150 pplServer B: 80 pplServer C: 50 ppl

-> Server C should stick on one map, to make fights even. But instead, the outnumbered buff promotes the exact opposite. It makes ppl to give up fighting and instead spread among the maps to get more pips and rewards.

Additionally, the current victory point system encourages the strongest server during the week to focus on the second one, because the strongest server wants to saveguard his first place. And the third server also focusses on the second one, to try to reach at least the second place.

Instead, Anet should think about a world-wide mechanic, that encourages Server B and C to focus on Server A. Maybe higher rewards or additional war score for reconquering or defending structures from the dominant server A or even kills vs. server A?

[TheGrimm.5624]

You can't tie in any performance boosts else it will lead to abuse. Compensating and encouraging people to go to less populated maps is a better and more balanced route.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:any sort of combat bonus wouldn't work.

edithmm maybe if it did it on a squad vs. squad basis. so if a squad is outnumbered by more then 200%, then:-25% damage-15% condi durationif 300%-50% damage-30% condi durationstill tho its kinda cheap.So how would you determine if a squad is outnumbered? If there is a 20 man getting rolled by an 80 man, those 20 would obviously be outmanned, but if there is another 20 man nearby ganking a 5 man, those 20 would also be outmanned vs 5 people because on the whole its still fights vs 80 even though they avoid them?

Its not cheap, its just silly. The game isnt this smart. It never will be. Outmanned doesnt affect player performance for a reason.

[WarHawk.1892]

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:Think you missed the #1 most important part of Outnumbered: +5 pips.+5 Pips historically hardly influences anything whatsoever. Pugs still flood Eternal Battlegrounds and unless youre that minority of reward minded PvE junkie that stands around at spawn to finish their Participation track, most people log out rather than search to play outnumbered due to the fact that regardless of earning more Pips standing around the player will get less rewards from capturing and fighting (Both of which contribute to fun gameplay and keep players active - not pips). This is reinforced further by a ton of WvW focused players utilizing alternate free accounts. They dont change maps for pips, they change servers and accounts to avoid a dull and often slow paced atmosphere and simply play elsewhere - because its easier to do so and honestly always will be.

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:If you're outnumbered on a map and can't fight toe-to-toe with the enemy, then adapt. I've run in a group with 5 other players and flipped T2/T3 keeps while outnumbered, all because the commander saw that the other two servers were busy fighting each other. Either adopt hit and run / ninja tactics, find some friends to help, or move to a different map. Simple stuff.This is an obvious possibility; it however simply dodges the discussion entirely - and also is something most players won't do nor have done in years.

@"lordkrall.7241" said:So, basically create a situation where people will bully people out of the borders to get the outnumbered buff?

And then achieve what exactly? This takes a lot for granted. Do you suppose theyre going to do something meaningful with 5 players vs entire zergs or ppt any better than before? No & No once again. 100% Skill Target Cap wouldnt affect their "PPT-Rate" and it doesnt effect weapon skills like meteor-shower nor coalescence of ruin; and therefore is not "buffing" high burst skill kills. It would allow a small team to blast a "chokepoint" better with necro-wells or that random single guard you got in an unorganised defense squad to cover a few more people.

@L A T I O N.8923 said:So if one side has 15(red), one side a mapblob And one side 15(twice)The reds want 15v15 on the 3rd serverIT would be An impossible unfair fight wouldnt IT?

So Green Blob, Blue 15, Red 15 is what I take this to mean? So Red v Blue 15s. It would be very far from impossible as a 15man group can and often do wipe out 30player groups which means a couple of things. 1: The 30player group can hit twice as many as that 15 Both weapons and Skills yet this is not an impossible fight. The 15v15 scenario being discussed here would only mean one side can tag up to twice as many players with skills and not weapons only. Meaning (and a focus point is the necro wells) the 15group with the buff would not even function like a 30player group - because they themselves are less targets (enemy damage is no more spread out on them than before) and because they dont have as many weapon skills to utilize like CoR-rev or Meteor-Eles.

@"Hackuuna.4085" said:Two problems:1) The outmanned buff stays for a full 5mins regardless if your side gains numbers during the tick. This is because it's linked to participation rewards that are calculated at the end of a tick and outmanned is only calculated at the start of the tick.2) Some groups will inevitably complain when they lose their outmanned buff and blame it on their server mates. ANet cannot encourage such behavior.1: Actually something to Discuss 'below'2: Players complain about everything good, bad, and even what doesnt affect them. Making the same assumptions others above have, if the Buff was lost to an increase in population of the map itself that group can go to another map (likely to an enemy map where their server is less likely to populate). If its because that we assume theyre getting far more kills because of the above Buff, I find it unlikely.

1 pt2: What if then the Buff were to be tied to Keeps (or towers too) and not "mapwide" as most of the other buffs from guilds are? This alleviates a server abusing the buff in most instances and I use abuse quite loosely. Emergency Waypointing would be the only true way to "break" the buff for a single fight until the Tick-count. E-waypointing already has its dangers making the buff counterable in that regard, or simply wait a few moments if they got in before you could focus on the E-waypoint and you think or know you heavily outmanned them before.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:any sort of combat bonus wouldn't work.

edithmm maybe if it did it on a squad vs. squad basis. so if a squad is outnumbered by more then 200%, then:-25% damage-15% condi durationif 300%-50% damage-30% condi durationstill tho its kinda cheap.So how would you determine if a squad is outnumbered? If there is a 20 man getting rolled by an 80 man, those 20 would obviously be outmanned, but if there is another 20 man nearby ganking a 5 man, those 20 would also be outmanned vs 5 people because on the whole its still fights vs 80 even though they avoid them?

Its not cheap, its just silly. The game isnt this smart. It never will be. Outmanned doesnt affect player performance for a reason.

I suppose it could be measured by how many people are in combat with each other instead of an area effect thing. but yeah I don't like the idea of combat bonuses anyhow.

[Hackuuna.4085]

@WarHawk.1892 said:

@"Hackuuna.4085" said:Two problems:1) The outmanned buff stays for a full 5mins regardless if your side gains numbers during the tick. This is because it's linked to participation rewards that are calculated at the end of a tick and outmanned is only calculated at the start of the tick.2) Some groups will inevitably complain when they lose their outmanned buff and blame it on their server mates. ANet cannot encourage such behavior.1: Actually something to Discuss 'below'2: Players complain about everything good, bad, and even what doesnt affect them. Making the same assumptions others above have, if the Buff was lost to an increase in population of the map itself that group can go to another map (likely to an enemy map where their server is less likely to populate). If its because that we assume theyre getting far more kills because of the above Buff, I find it unlikely.

1 pt2: What if then the

Buff

were to be tied to Keeps (or towers too) and not "mapwide" as most of the other buffs from guilds are?

This alleviates a server

abusing

the buff in most instances and I use

abuse

quite loosely. Emergency Waypointing would be the only true way to "break" the

buff

for

a single

fight until the Tick-count. E-waypointing already has its dangers making the buff counterable in that regard, or simply wait a few moments if they got in before you could focus on the E-waypoint and you think or know you heavily outmanned them before.

I agree that it would be nice to see something done and the idea of tying a buff to areas is quite interesting but my gut says that ANet likes to remove as much toxicity as they can. Lord knows how toxic it was when people would map hop over outmanned before the begin/end tick change.

With the zone outmanned as you propose would one guy who is in a zone get the outmanned buff if two people show up to fight him?