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"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." -Eleanor Roosevelt

Primary Problems:

• Coverage
• Population
• PPT

Noteworthy Symptoms:

• Recruitment
• Player Mentality
• Server Structure

• PPK/PPF
• Alliance
• Maps: Game-style
• Maps: Dynamic

This is a suggestion for some core changes to WvW, that hopefully will get some of the basic problems out of the way. I've limited down the primary problems of WvW into: Coverage, Population, Recruitment, and PPT.

Main problem PPT Change the points system Alternative alliance

Map design: Make maps handicap when pushed back near spawn almost impenetrable defence no tactical advantage

Map design is one of the largest problems here, if you design a map to be easier to defend the further you are pushed back, then less people can accomplish more. Have maps give advantages the closer you get pushed back to your start. Not only in spawn points etc, but give greater defensive positions, unlimited access to supply from spawn, tower/keep that while have no tactical advantage on the map, gives you a superb defensive position to bunker down against huge amounts of enemies.

Example would be a mountain fortress protected by mountain tops on either side so enemy has to come from front. Or a keep with a river or lake in front, so there is only a single point of entry for using siege.

Another is to have dynamic npc guards. First of all guards needs improvement, to have more skills and be more resistant, especially more aoe skills and more resistance against aoe skills. Then have a set number of npc's on each map, so if you control many objects your npc's are stretched thin. You own few objectives, they are stacked with guards. Also let guards use siege.

Those are artificial ways of dealing with population problems. The other alternative is a variant of Alliance system, to make guesting possible between certain servers as an overflow function.

Also adjusting maps, both the amount and the type of maps, can greatly help with this, as long as the difference in population isn't too big.

Megaserver messed this one up for WvW, even if it was a good move for the rest of the game. Simply, we need a place to recruit people from our server.

Lions Arc: Make this town Non-MegaServer, so that we can meet up with server mates and ask for help etc, the good old: “EBG keep under siege need help!” in map chat.

Server Chat: have a own /server or something that allows us to speak to all server mates, so we can go to LA and use /server to ask for help and recruitment.

World Map: Make a own WvW specific map for our own server, give it all the services we expect to use from HomeBL and LA, and make it fill the same role as LA used to do, or Heart of the Mists for PvP. This will also remove idling from HomeBL for those that care about that. And it will welcome new players to come and see and explore, instead of yelled at in HomeBL for not helping an djust using crafting stations, TP, or portaling to LA for free.

There are a lot of problems with PPT, it encourages to play like a strategy game, when the game itself is more of an action game.

PPT is the main reason why coverage is the largest problem in the game, because of how it rewards you for sitting on objectives at night time when the enemy server doesn't have enough players to take them back.

PPT is also a partial reason for the population problem, as it brings in more fairweathers, while at the same time demoralize the opponents fairweathers. If this happens long enough, the losing fairweathers might drop out of WvW or transfer.

PPT does not encourage fights at all, it encourages Karma-Training, since you gain all the PPT from holding objectives, and an upgraded and defended T3 Garri keep gives just as many points as an undefended paper Bay. So the larger majority of players will end up taking the undefended keep because it is easier, faster, and gains similar or more points (more because you take it faster).

To solve this we would need a new Points system.

A points per kill, points per flip, PP Attack/Defense or other similar systems. Find a way to reward Points for actively fighting against other players over objectives. Remove points per tick, and for fighting undefended objects. The objects gives other benefits while controlled that should be worth taking them.

Another idea is to extend RI from 5 minutes to longer, say 30 minutes, so you create a temp safe zone. Makes defending something more important, an dyou can't just reflip it in 5 min.

Human behaviour is another problem, and probably impossible to remove in itself, for this one should consider giving rewards for doing what one would want them to do instead.

While the vocal minority on the forums might protest against it, the average player tends to play for a few hours, prefer the easy ways of zergs and karma training, gets angry or bored if they lose, and doesn't like going out of the security of a group because of evil gankers and players hunting them down etc. We're talking about fairweathers, pugs, zerglings, casuals or whatever you want to call them.

What they do isn't wrong, but we should reward them for going out of their comfort zone, and for being willing to try something they're not used to.

At the same time, the typical Veteran players can often come forward to new players as harsh, demanding, impatient, bossy, etc. Getting angry at a new WvW player for not knowing something instead of taking the time to teach them etc.

Current incarnation isn't working, either the core system needs to change to allow the server mechanic to work again, or the servers themselves needs to be changed.

lock AC skills to LOS path.