Feedback:User/Guild Wars 3 perhaps/Capture-the-Flag (Orb) in WvWvW

Capture-the-Flag (Orb) in WvWvW
User	Guild Wars 3 perhaps
Categories	Player vs. Player Mechanics

Go here to see a list of my other GW2 suggestions and discussion contributions.

This suggestion started as an update to my previous suggestion, Alternative Scoring in WvWvW. However, it grew in complexity until it finally warranted its own feedback entry.

As it stands now, WvWvW is really a king-of-the-hill game; capture a location and hold it longer than the opponent to score points. Sure, it involves three teams, hundreds of players, a ginormous map, and multiple capture points to mix things up a bit; but at the end of the day it's still just king-of-the-hill. That's really the only method by which points are scored for a team. Consequently, all strategies and tactics in WvWvW will have a king-of-the-hill-centric focus; witness the rolling zerg mobs assaulting gates to the exclusion of all else.

How about adding some alternative game-types to WvWvW which will also score points for a team. Capture-the-flag, for example. I realize there is currently the whole Orb of Power mechanic in WvWvW. However, since capturing the Orbs of Power do not score points for a server (at far as I'm aware, anyway), there's less incentive for players to invest the time and effort in capturing them.

Furthermore, once an Orb has been captured and placed on an Altar of Power in a keep, an enemy team no longer has a reason - or even an option - to capture the Orb directly; they need to capture the keep in which it rests, instead. This assumes, of course, that an Orb does not immediately return to its Cradle of Power when the keep falls to an enemy force. In this sense, the Orb mechanic is not a true capture-the-flag game. Even if the Orb is sent back to its original Cradle of Power when the keep falls - forcing it to have to be re-captured - then this is a very indirect capture-the-flag mechanic, at best.

My suggestion for adding a true capture-the-flag scoring mechanic to WvWvW would be to do the following:

• Capturing an Orb of Power from its Cradle of Power scores some amount of points for the capturing team.

• Successfully placing a captured Orb of Power on Altar of Power also scores some amount of points for the capturing team.

• If the team who's Orb of Power has been removed from its Cradle of Power prevents an enemy team from placing it on their Altar of Power, they will score some amount of points for having blocked the enemy team from completing the capture.

Even go so far as to permit the owning team to pick up a dropped Orb in an effort to manually return it to its Cradle of Power. The scenario would play out like this:

• Red team defeats the blue team's Keeper of the Orb. They remove the blue Orb of Power from its Cradle of Power and start to run back to one of their keeps. They score some war points for this action.

• The 15 minute timer now starts. The Orb must be placed on an Altar of Power - of any team - within that time limit or the Orb automatically returns to its cradle.

• A message pops up in blue team's chat - or even all-chat/world-chat - that their Orb of Power has been removed from its cradle. A call goes out among blue team to chase down the red invaders in an effort to recover the Orb.

• Blue team catches up with red team and a battle ensues. The Orb changes hands between red and blue as player after player carrying it gets downed, dropping the Orb in the process; like a fumbled football.

• Eventually blue prevails in killing or driving off red. They now have the Orb in their possession. What isn't clear to me at this point is whether or not the blue team benefits from the Orb even when it sits in blue's Cradle of Power OR if blue must place the Orb on an Altar of Power owned by the blue team to benefit from the Orb's health boost. If the former, the blue team now starts running the Orb back to the Cradle of Power. If the latter, then blue starts running the Orb back to an Altar of Power in one of their keeps.

• Regardless of which of those two scenarios apply, once blue has returned the Orb to a Cradle of Power or Altar of Power, they now score points for having successfully blocked the capture of their Orb. If they return it to an Altar of Power, they will also score points for a successful capture of the Orb.

• Even if the 15 minute timer expires and the Orb automatically returns to its Cradle of Power, blue will still score points for successfully blocking the capture of the Orb.

As a result of the above suggestions, the opportunity to score points has been added to the process of defeating a Keeper of the Orb, successfully capturing an Orb, and successfully blocking an Orb's capture. Now we've given some incentive to players to play a capture-the-flag game with the Orb.

The problem we face, though, is - once an Orb is captured and housed in a keep - there is no way at present to steal an Orb short of capturing the keep itself. To truly realize the full potential of this game-within-a-game, we must unlink the Orb capture-the-flag game from its dependancy on the keep king-of-the-hill game. How to do this, though? How do we make it possible to steal an Orb from an Altar of Power without having to capture the keep in which it is housed nor break the current king-of-the-hill game mechanic in WvWvW?

My solution is to create a disguise NPC. For a certain amount of gold, players could purchase a "disguise" from this NPC which would change the color of their character name to that of an opposing team; the player purchasing the disguise could choose which of the other two enemy teams they wish to impersonate. Not only would their name change color but their true character name would display to the enemy rather than the generic "<world> Invader" or "<world> Defender".

When wearing the disguise, these players could come and go freely in the resource camps, towers, keeps, and stonemist castle owned by the enemy. They would not come under attack by any of the enemy NPCs and they could even use the portals of their enemies. Disguised in this way, they could then infiltrate each keep until they've located the Orb(s) of Power currently held by their opponents. Once the Orb was located, they could then remove it from the Altar of Power in an attempt to steal it.

Of course, a diguise mechanic such as this opens up huge possibilities for abuse; the major one being that an entire assault force could disguise themselves, enter a keep, and capture it from within with little resistance. I've thought up the following limitations on the disguise mechanic in an effort to address this issue:

• The disguise is donned or removed by pressing a button or an icon. Doing so is immediate and irreversible; the action can't be cancelled mid-way through. Disguises are one-use only; once a disguise has been donned, it destroys that item in the player's inventory. Once the disguise is removed, the player will have to buy a new one from the disguise NPC.

It may even be that only one disguise can be purchased at a time. This prevents a player from purchasing multiple disguises in an effort to chain them together to avoid the consequences (detailed below) of having a disguise removed prematurely. It will force players to act cautiously when disguised since they only get one shot at a time when using it.

• While disguised, the player's skill bar and profession-specific mechanic is 100% locked out. I had initially thought of allowing disguised players access to their skills, with the activation of a skill immediately removing their disguise. However, this still doesn't prevent a disguised zerg mob from assembling inside a keep and then simultaneously activating their skills. They may lose their disguises, but they would still be able to perform an en masse spike/nuke inside the keep. No, skills and profession-specific mechanic are locked out while disguised; it's the balance/price paid for being able to impersonate the enemy.

• Any boon, profession-specific mechanic, or other positive effect is immediately cancelled on donning a disguise. This prevents a player from loading up on boons or entering death shroud or stealth, for example, just prior to disguising themselves in an effort to get around the restriction on skill use and profession-specific mechanic activation once disguised.

• Donning a disguise or removing it is not immediate; there will be a short delay as these actions are completed (perhaps 3 seconds). While removing a disguise, the player's skill bar and profession-specific mechanic remain locked out for the full duration of the delay. This helps prevent disguised players from being able to use their skills while disguised or immediately after having removed a disguise. In this way, the player will be vulnerable for a full 3 seconds (or whatever delay proves best) as they are now visible to enemy players and NPCs in their original team color and name (i.e. "<world> Invader" or "<world> Defender"). They can be attacked during that time even though their skills and profession-specific mechanic are still locked out.

• Being hit by anything from an enemy - be it a weapon skill, utility skill, AoE damage, environmental weapon, blast radius of a trebuchet projectile, errant arrow cart missile, etc. - will remove the player's disguise; but they will still suffer from the same disguise-removal delay mentioned previously. This applies even if the player takes zero (0) damage from whatever it is that hit them; the disguise is still removed. Receiving damage, conditions, or other negative effects from a non-player source should not remove the disguise. For example, the diguised player jumps off a cliff and takes falling damage or runs through a poisoned swamp; neither of these will remove the player's disguise.

The two possible exceptions are marks and traps. It's open to debate whether or not these should trigger when a disguised player walks over them. On the one hand, making them trigger would open up strategies and tactics for countering disguised players. On the other hand, if a player is diguised as an enemy, part of the benefit conferred by the disguise should be the ability to avoid marks and traps. Perhaps the compromise is the diguised player won't trigger a mark or trap themselves but - if another player trips one and the disguised player is caught in its radius - the player's disguise will be removed. Of course, an enemy necro manually triggering a mark on which a disguised player is standing will remove their disguise.

• It's open to discussion whether or not dodging will cause a disguise to be removed. I'm split on this one. On the one hand, the argument could be made that rolling around so vigorously would cause a disguise to come off. On the other hand, the diguised player is already so nerfed by not having access to their skills (including healing), that dodging is about the only mechanic left to them for avoiding damage.

• Disguised players do not benefit from the boons or other positive effects of their allies. For example, a disguised player's Ranger ally puts down a Healing Spring; the disguised player will not benefit from its AoE regeneration and condition removal. It becomes debatable whether or not disguised players should be able to benefit from the boons or other positive effects of their enemies, though.

• As soon as a player picks up an Orb of Power from an Altar of Power, their disguise is immediately removed. Their skill bar and profession-specific mechanic remain locked out, however, for the same amount of time as if they had manually removed their disguise. Their presence is made known to all of the NPCs of the keep (if any) and they will become the priority target for these NPCs.

• Once a player's disguise is removed they can no longer use the portals to exit a keep (assuming they're already inside). They will have to climb a staircase to the top of the wall and jump down the other side to escape the keep.

• Disguised players can not build siege weapons or upgrades; either by initiating construction with blueprints or contributing supplies to the completion of the siege weapon or upgrade. An easy way to counter the second part of that sentence would be to prevent disguised players from carrying supplies in the first place. Any supplies they are carrying when donning their disguise are lost and no further supplies can be picked up while disguised.

Alternately, if we want to extend the strategy of the diguise mechanic beyond being a means for infiltrating keeps to play the capture-the-Orb game, we may consider permitting disguised players to carry supplies. This way, players could use their disguise as a means of moving supplies through hostile territory and depositing them in a friendly supply depot. They just can't use them to contribute to construction of siege weapons or upgrades.

• Players can not build siege weapons on the inside of an enemy keep who's gate is still intact. This prevents a disguised group of players from infiltrating a keep, removing their disguises, and then quickly constructing siege weapons in an effort to capture the keep from the inside.

• Players can not damage an intact gate or wall from the inside of an enemy keep. Again, this is to prevent disguised players from sneaking into a keep, removing their disguises, and then attacking the gate in an effort to circumvent the gate and wall defenses.

With the above suggestions, we now we have a mechanic that permits Orbs of Power to be stolen from an Altar of Power without actually having to capture the keep. I realize that, even with all of the restrictions I listed above, there still exists the potential for a large assault force to disguise themselves, enter a lightly-defended keep, remove their disguises, and kill all of the keep's defenders; including the Keep Lord.

This introduces two possible solutions:

• The defending players will now have to actually...you know...defend their keeps, instead of abandoning them as soon as they've captured them to go off as a zerg mob to capture another objective. Now defending players would be forced to devote some amount of personnel and resources to the constant defense of their keeps and to remain ever-vigilant for disguised infiltrators. They may even go so far as to come up with a password that must be typed in chat to be granted access to the keep. Fail to respond with the correct password and the players tasked with gate-keeping duty will attack the disguised player. This would introduce a greater depth of play to this portion of the game.

• Only one disguised played from a team can enter a keep at a time. Any other disguised players who attempt to gain access to the same keep using a portal will be prevented from entering until such time as it is vacated by their fellow disguised teammate.

For example, a player on the blue team disguises themself and enters a keep owned by the red team. Another disguised blue player comes along and also attempts to enter the keep. They will see a big red "No entry" symbol across the keep's portal - indicating the keep is already occupied by one diguised blue player - and they will be denied access.

Now along comes a disguised player from the green team. They are able to enter the keep without restriction because there are no other disguised players from the green team currently inside the keep.

As soon as the blue player inside the keep loses their disguise - for whatever reason - we now have to consider whether or not to allow another disguised player from the blue team to enter the keep. At first, it appears this wouldn't be so bad; only one disguised player entering at a time. However, even this could be open to abuse.

Let's assume there's a keep that has no real players currently defending it - only NPCs - and the blue team keeps sending in one disguised player at a time. Each one, on entering the keep, removes their disguise so the next disguised blue player can enter. Eventually, a large assault force of blue players will have assembled in the keep; enough to kill the Keep Lord and capture the keep for the blue team. Even if killing the Keep Lord in the abscence of breaking down the gate will not count as a legitimate capture, it won't be much effort for the assault force to jump over the wall to destroy the gate and complete the capture.

I know I had stated earlier that as soon as a player loses their disguise inside a keep, the keep's NPC defenders become instantly aware of their presence and make them a priority target. Even so, the first player inside the keep who removes their disguise could maintain the NPCs focus on themself long enough to give their other disguised teammates sufficient time to infiltrate the keep. Though the first one or two blue players may die keeping the NPCs busy, their sacrifice will buy enough time to permit the remaining assault force to enter the portal and conquer the keep.

The best solution, then, may be to allow only one enemy player per team inside a keep at a time; regardless of whether they're disguised or not. It's not until that player exits the keep or is defeated while still inside that another disguised player from the same team will be permitted to enter through the keep's portal. This doesn't stop a group of disguised players from gathering outside a keep and waiting their turn to enter once the previous infiltrator dies or jumps over the wall. In this way, with proper coordination, they could chain their infiltration attempts together in an effort to incrementally move the Orb of Power further and further from the Altar of Power until they manage to get it outside the keep's walls. It does, however, prevent the abuse scenario of an assault group using the disguise mechanic as a means of capturing a keep from within; since a single player will never be strong enough, presumably, to kill a Keep Lord on their own.

As side notes:

• Successfully stealing an Orb of Power from a keep and placing it on the stealing team's Altar of Power will score some war points for the team. Successfully blocking the theft of an Orb of Power by returning it to the Altar of Power from which it was stolen will also score some amount of war points. These points may even scale with distance.

For example, a disguised enemy removes an Orb of Power from an Altar of Power. However, they are shot down in the keep's courtyard and never make it past the gate. The original owners of the Orb return it to their Altar a few feet away; they score 10 war point for their team. On another attempt, a disguised enemy manages to steal the Orb and escape with it across half the map before being shot down. The original owners of the Orb pick it up and return it to their Altar yet again. This time they're awarded only 2 war points for having let the Orb get that far away in the first place before being recovered.

• Disguised players do not have access to the team chat channel of the team they are disguised as. This could even be used as a form of informal spy checking. If a player speaks to an ally in team chat and gets no response, it's possible they are a disguised enemy.

• Once an Orb of Power is removed from its Altar of Power by a disguised enemy, the 15 minute timer starts. If it expires before the Orb is placed on an Altar of Power (regardless of which teams' Altar it is), the Orb will return to its Cradle of Power.

• If a disguised player removes an Orb of Power from its Altar of Power and is then subsequently downed/defeated, the Orb will drop to the ground. It is then available for any player to pick up.

• A disguised player can not steal an Orb of Power from a Cradle of Power. Since the Keeper of the Orb is not affiliated with any of the worlds figting in the Mists, he/she/it will defend the Orb of Power from any player; disguised or otherwise.

• Disguised players will still appear as allies to their team; perhaps with some icon next to their name to indicate they are in disguise. In other words, a disguised player's teammates will not mistake them for an enemy.

• In addition to supporting a capture-the-flag game in WvWvW, the diguise mechanic opens up a host of other strategies and tactics for players who prefer stealth, infiltration, and espionage over being cannon fodder in a zerg mob. Even if they never use their disguise to steal a single Orb, they can still use it to sneak into enemy resource camps, towers, and keeps to spy on the enemy and gather intelligence for their team or act as a spotter for catapults and trebuchets. Opposing teams will now have to consider adding counter-espionage strategies and tactics; further improving the WvWvW depth of play.

• If there is currently some icon or other method of indicating which keep houses an Orb of Power, this would have to be removed. Part of the fun of the capture-the-flag game I've outlined here is not knowing where the Orb currently resides. Thus the need to don a disguise and scout out the keeps until it's located. This adds even more depth of play to WvWvW as teams may then decide to rotate their Orb(s) from keep to keep to counter disguised spies from pinning down its location. Of course, they would then have to weigh the cost:benefit of transporting an Orb to a new keep - potentially losing it to an ambush while in transit - versus just leaving it in its current location.

All of the above permits the existence of an independent capture-the-flag game within WvWvW that can contribute towards a team's war score while simultaneously placing limiters on any potential game-breaking abuses; and all done without having to modify the current king-of-the-kill method of scoring points.

Furthermore, it is fairly easy to implement. All that is required is adding the ability of a player to disguise themselves as an enemy (something that already has a precedent in GW1) and placing some limiters on players so disguised; all of which already exist in the game in one form or another. For example, locking out a player's skill bar while disguised is no different - programmatically - then if they had been dazed or turned into a Moa by that Mesmer elite skill. In other words, for very little development cost a huge benefit is gained in the form of offering an alternate form of scoring in WvWvW. This, in turn, supports my original suggestion's goal of increasing the depth of play and offering a wider variety of strategies, tactics, and play styles in WvWvW.

Thank you for reading.

Guild Wars 3 perhaps 21:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Return to the suggestion portal.