Because PvP is generally so passive and reactive in team fights...

[Swagg.9236]

Downed Penalty (PvP)

• Stacks up to 4 times (just like Downed Penalty in PvE); players accrue 1 Downed Penalty (PvP) stack upon being Defeated. First three stages have no effect on rallying health; fourth stage causes instant Defeated status upon entering Downed State. Each stack of Downed Penalty (PvP) earned through Defeat lasts 10 minutes (constant, dog-pile revives now have an effective limit).

  PvP Respawn and Defeat

• Global respawn time in Conquest modes reduced from [current] to 8s. When a player is Defeated, that player's respawn timer is increased by 3s for every point currently owned by that player's team (combats snowballing; keeps the action going and forces rotations).
• Defeating a player is now worth 10 points (awards skirmishing). Defeating a player with 4 stacks of Downed Penalty (PvP) will still only award 5 points.
• Players can now use a /respawn command in order to immediately put themselves into a Defeated state (saves people stuck in map geometry because that's still a thing apparently; allows people to potentially recover quickly after losing a bad skirmish/duel). Using this command applies 2 stacks of Downed Penalty (PvP). This command has a 5 minute cooldown (ideally curbs abuse; punishes repeatedly poor play). Using this command does not reward the other team points unless the user is in the Downed State.

Honestly, if having a limit on revives per PvP match might outright destroy a class or two, then the game is probably not well made. Moreover, a community's attitude and behavior generally reflects its environment: if a consensus arises that a game's community will generally start attempting to abuse a mechanic which is clearly made to help people hindered by bad map design or to allow players to play more of the game (regardless of what fail-safes are put in place to prevent such abuse), that might also just be a reflection of the game's overall issues with design and direction. It's not like any of this is serious anyway; just thought exercises.

[Avatar.3568]

Why would you change it

[Swagg.9236]

@"Avatar.3568" said:Why would you change it

When it comes to revives, it's far too easy to get away with dog-piling on a guy who is about to go downed, particularly if your team has any sort of voice comms. It's literally just "I'm going down," and then everyone presses F on a guy while maybe blowing some cooldowns. Putting what amounts to a soft-cap on the amount of times that one can respawn in a game doesn't take away from team coordination on revives (what very little of it is required anyway), but it does prevent certain builds and comps from repeatedly undoing the effort of opponents with the literal press of a button. It would force players to plan and position differently as a game goes on, and it could also influence overall map play with high Downed Penalty targets serving as effective gravity wells for action as pick classes try to dive in for the quick kill.

When it comes to the spawn timer, a number of games with protracted, two-team PvP scenarios will tip the balance in a losing team's favor just so that the team who came out on top from the first decisive encounter isn't allowed to just sit down and ride out the rest of the match off of snowball momentum alone. One of the most direct ways of tilting the scales is by manipulating spawn timers; this puts the pressure on the winning team to consistently maneuver and perform well in order to beat back a constant onslaught. It generally results in games that remain competitive for most of a given round or match as it allows either side to leverage more field presence than the other. The only hitch with GW2 is finding a way to appropriately balance its implementation.

Finally, getting lodged into an inescapable geometry prison notwithstanding, it's very possible to die in a bad spot in GW2 PvP without necessarily losing track of team goals or team movements over the course of a game. People kill you from off-screen; there aren't any features which encourage real-time, in-game communication; build comps can predetermine a match's outcome; so when it finally does happen that someone is killed far from a point of interest, that person is often double-punished for dying by being forced to bleed out for what amounts to a 30s+ respawn time. Giving players the option to enter spawn immediately (with a cost) is a good way to strike a balance between punishing "bad play," but also serving as a teaching moment and hopefully giving someone a second chance to quickly re-enter the fray. The only caveat here is how someone would be bound to abuse the fact that one would be able to end one's self in PvP (because this is GW2, let's be honest), so the important part of this mechanic is keeping its value as a feature to the individual player without letting it become oppressive within a competition.

tl;dr: GW2 PvP coasts on snowball momentum. Every match starts out as a muddy mess before things quickly turn boring as the disadvantages levied onto the losers of the initial team fight are often extremely oppressive; only effectively counteracted by very specific builds (which leads to a patently shallow and homogeneous metagame). Swinging the tide via baseline mechanic changes that are separate from the silly number tweaks dumped out every balance patch would be a good way to break open the metagame a little bit without too much work.

[Sneakers.8462]

Honestly, these suggestions seem to give advantages to the losing team who are making mistakes and punishing the winning team for doing well.

Snowballing is the outcome of a team winning their fights and staggering the spawns in order to get map control. Quite often, uncoordinated teams will run out as soon as they re-spawn into an outnumbered fight and inevitably die, thus allowing the snowball to continue.

[Luthan.5236]

I only like the suggestion where the respawn time depends on the points captured. Though in just a conquest game mode it does not make really sense. If there were some different modes/maps with deeper mechanics it would not be a bad idea.

Giving 10 points for defeating a player is bad. There actually should be the focus on conquest. For killing we have the death match mini seasons.