Obscure One

There are a few things I've observed over the course of the game that would quickly add functionality to WvW with minimal time in development. I'll dive straight in:

• Ascended Gear: I know they intend to release ascended gear rewards for WvW, and it is currently slated for implementation in the near future, however I fear they may be overcomplicating the system to do so. Simply put, adding Laurel rewards to WvW would fill the void and is something already present. Players should be rewarded 1 laurel for every 10 gold participation rewards achieved in the taking or defending of points each day, only gaining credit towards the reward once per day per event. I.E. if I defend Stone Mist Castle and get a gold level event reward I will not gain additional progression towards the laurel reward for the rest of the day through the defense event for that capture point. Using laurels this way would allow WvW players to be rewarded ascended items at a comparable rate to those who do so through PvE (fractal grinding) content, without introducing a complicated system or using Badges of Honor whereby encouraging extremely long queues of people exclusively doing the jumping puzzle.
  
  
• Guild Master tag: Add an Art of War upgrade that allows members of a guild that have the permission to activate guild upgrades to activate a guild specific Commander tag called "Guild Master". This tag would appear Gold instead of Blue and would only be visible to guild members representing that guild.
  
  
• Squad Stats: all members of a squad report basic information beside a Commander (or proposed Guild Master) party menu. This information includes number of players in the Squad, how much supply is in the Squad, and how many are Downed/Dead in the Squad. Nothing major, but enough to help intelligent Commanders make more intelligent decisions.
  
  
• Siege Recycling: When any piece of siege is no longer needed the person who placed it may decomission it, randomly regaining 1-5 supply and a rare chance to recover the blueprint. This could be handled through a newly introduced WvW skill line, an item purchased with Badges of Honor or gold at a Siege Vendor, or simply be a #5 skill built into the siege weapon skill bar.

Well that's what's on my mind to make the game mode more enjoyable, rewarding, and well rounded. What are your top four for a better world...vWvW?

As we all surely know by now, WvW, particularly for the top tier servers, has gotten rather stale. The rewards for doing it fail to keep player numbers up, the events that were once cool ideas are now tedious, and the interesting concept of Commander has become all to mundane. Clearly there's room to improve and drawing from FPS multiplayer systems the developers could easily turn what they already have into much better experience for all involved.

Firstly, whenever you play any multiplayer FPS the first thing you ever focus on in terms of prestige is your rank. Ever since the FPS genre began introducing RPG leveling structures in the form of ranks, medals, and achievements, it has shown this to be a powerful incentive to keep players online. Hence, GW2, should have a similar, WvW specific, ranking system...though not as clunky and awkward as the glory system in sPvP. Ranks would simply be a small icon similar to the world completion star to identify that player has a particular amount of experience in WvW. This rank would be improved by points granted for log in, points per kill, points per event completed, and points per usage of supply. Finish ranking up? No problem! FPS's overcame the brickwall of rank caps with something called "Prestigeing". In GW2 this would translate to a rank reset, contribute to a title track for resets, and grant one special "Prestige" weapon or armor skin of the players choosing for each reset, likely with a token system. That's what I'd call an acceptable grind.

Secondly, having a Commander to draw players to the icon is nice, but ultimately it doesn't do enough to get players where the Commander needs them, when he/she needs them. This spurned the thought of three new additions to Commanders. The first being a portable waypoint purchasable only by Commanders for 100 badges of honor, and only with badges, from any siege merchant, requiring 100 supply to complete once placed. The waypoint would be destructible like any other piece of siege and could only be placed in uncontested areas. The second idea was allowing a commander to place a singular event anywhere on the map called an "order" and these would all be basic commands the commander could use whenever in the full screen world map. Orders would be things like "attack this location" or "rally at this location" or an event centered on them self called "form up". These events would award only points toward the aforementioned ranking system as encouragement to do them. Lastly the idea of Commanders being able to designate a single Lieutenant to also have a tag visible by all allies on the map. The Lieutenant would basically be what the commander tag is now, just an icon for players to move to.

Lastly, Guilds seem to have far to little significance in this game to call it GUILD WARS, hence the idea that the orbs of power be reintroduced to WvW as awards for victory in GvG. GvG would pit guilds of one server against the guilds of others in the same WvW tier in 10v10 CTF style play where instead of a flag it's an orb. Guilds sign up to fight for one of three orbs, where the owning server of the orb plays defense and the other plays offense. The matches last 5 minutes or until the attacking team wins. Hence all the orbs could potentially change hands every 7
minutes (120 second match refresh time) and should be capable of changing the tide of major battles in WvW if a single server can swipe them all at the same time. To prevent excessive queues and griefing only guilds that purchase a specific tier IV required upgrade in the Art of War section for guild upgrades will be eligible to compete in GvG.

At any rate, those are the ideas bouncing around in my head on how to make GW2 WvW a more enjoyable and rewarding experience.

So for the third time playing the GW2 beta I have wished for one thing more than anything else, particularly in wPvP; a faster means of traveling from a way point to the action. Personally this concept is fundamentally simple and (other than the character models) is already present in the game in other manners. There are events that transform your avatar into a snow leopard, a hog, and even a garden variety canine with exclusive skills to being in that state...so why not a horse you "ride" in wPvP?

The mount concept is simple in both creation and in implementation via taking what is already in the game and just adding the avatar of a horse with your character mounted on it. I imagine building character models for each race riding a horse would take at most a week (and then another couple days or so to bug test for clipping). The game balance would be simply assigning the five skills of riding a horse to those riding a horse OR, for a more in-depth version, profession specific skills (which would take much more time and effort to implement). Though all that I'd really want is the exact same skills for the horse mount for anyone who uses one. The 5 skills associated to such mounts would be:

• Yah! - Gain swiftness for 3 seconds, drains 10% endurance. Cannot be used with less than 10% endurance. (cool down 0 seconds )
  
• Fore Kick - command your horse to rear up and kick your target causing damage and weakness. (channeled 3 seconds, cool down 3 seconds)
  
• Hind Kick - turn 180 degrees and command your horse to kick your target causing damage and knocking them back (cool down 20 seconds)
  
• Lasso - cripple a target for 3 seconds knocking them down (cool down 30 seconds)
  
• Cavalry Charge - gain invulnerability for 3 seconds and command your horse to rush forward rapidly in a straight line damaging and knocking down any targets in your path (channeled 3 seconds, cool down 60 seconds)

"Mounting" and "Dismounting" would be accomplished with the "Drop Bundle" which replaces weapon swapping (for classes that weapon swap) when using environmental weapons. Passively all Horses would allow you to move 15% faster, gain 10% toughness, and 5% power. This method would allow for subsequent additions of other mounts with varied stats in expansions (I.E. perhaps a "Dune Lizard" with 5% faster movement, 15% toughness, and 10% power) and a different set of 5 skills from the horse. Horses, much like siege equipment, would be exclusive to wPvP, purchasable through with gold (I'd suggest 6 silver) or collected badges of honor (4 sounds fair), and require a keep with a new NPC the "Rancher" (may take a few hours to throw him/her into each of the keeps). To add an element of strategy to the mix, the devs could require that "Stables" be a keep upgrade, and to go even further cause "Stables" to have have an "upkeep cost" of 10 supply every 5 minuets, and reduce the impact cost in gold or badges by half. Naturally there are more than just a few ways to do something like this as I am already describing a few in a single thought (I.E. even an event similar to gaining NPC's as allies could allow a server access to Horses rather than Ogres or Dredge).

So what do you folks think? Mounts? No Mounts? Better Idea on Mounts?

IMHO, in the words of Shakespeare's Richard III "A Horse! A Horse! My Kingdom For A Horse!"