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A bit of clarification on WvWvW | ANet Interview by Variance
Master10K
Member Posts: 3,065
A fairly unknown fansite managed to score an interview with Arenanet and it brings to light some much needed clarification on Guild Wars 2's WvWvW PvP, amongst some other things a lot of us already know.
Are you planning to have several WvW maps from day one, or will there be only a single map at launch?
John Corpening: There will be four maps at launch. We will be pitting three different worlds together in WvW. Each world will have a home map that connects to a center map. Teams can invade their opponents’ home maps by first going through the center map. So we expect the center map to be a crossroads of combat as each team does battle for the glory of their world.
Full Interview Link
Comments
Pft, darn you. I was just about to post this. Seriously man, get some more sleep.
Some interesting clarifications and insights into PvP though.
I hope the three 'home' maps are different enough to really feel different. Could put a whole new perspective on the maps when you get to play in a different home location. Create more replayability as people gradually become familiar with the limitations and advantages of each home map...
I did and it's 11:30am in the UK right now. :P
"Each world will have a home map that connects to a center map."
Hmmf, something like that was to be expected I suppose. I do hope that the three home maps will vary and not be exact copies of eachother in layout, surroundings and general look and feel and that you get a random "one of three" when the WvWvW week resets.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I just said that!
< Copy Pony.
... well, it shows that we mostly want the same types of things in PvP, I guess.
I mean, I do actually like open world PvP, I'm not actually that rigidly against ganking (Maybe because I like running away and laughing.). I'm just not wanting to marry it like you.
Actually, on another note, it must REALLY feel bad for a server, when you walk into your home map and it's ALL taken over by the enemy. That's got to be a totally downer feeling, realizing that you'd have to claim back your whole home map just to get back to the middle!
The good thing is that they said "there will be four maps at launch", so maybe maps will arrives as free content patches down the line. I also wander if there will be a randomizing factor like:
- H1, H2, H3 will be the home maps at launch and C1 will be the central map at launch.
- H4, H5, H6 & C2 arrives as a content patch.
- Then this week's battle will be on H1, H4, H6 & C1 and next week's maybe H2, H3, H4 & C2.
I also like how you can upgrade your impenetrable fortress of doom and also find ways to grief & disrupt enemy supply lines.
This sound really great, i love the all concept behind pvp in this game.
Just a comment for the dev about the pvp maps, i just hope you guys are going to put some extra work on the map terrain restriction to give them impact to strategies.
I will give a short exemple to make it easier to understand. In usual mmo map and terrain have zero influence into strategy. Canyon are not canyon where you can actually organize an ambush for exemple because usually there is no restriction to where you can go on what type of terrain. This is one of the thing that make battle totally shallow in mmos. You just cant use that Canyon or bridge to make an ambush because the character have a milllion way to pass through. I mean even in Quake maps you had some strategical hot spots create with items spawn and ways to cut the oponent to reach those, this is just plain lacking in any pvp mmo i played, i hope you are considering to put such things in your game.
There is a comment about solo player cuting the supply routes, this is just looking very good to me if that is the kind of stuff you are talking about.
'Sir! We've run out of spikes from the spike factory! Also, they've stopped sending us boiling oil from the rendering factory.'
'... well, if we don't have enough spikes, put kittens on those walls! Everybody reinforce those walls with their minipets! Also, tell the men we're reducing their fried chicken quota. Uhm, and tell the greasiest soldiers that we're saving their bath water to dump over the walls.'
I don't mind different home maps as long as they are balanced. I remember the distances from the respawning flag to the flag stand in Warrior's Isle was shorter for the "home team". Frozen Isle had an advantage to the defending team iirc. Some maps were better suited for splitting. It really is a downer if the other server gets a home map where splitting is near impossible and the other gets one where it is very easy etc.
For this reason, I would be content with "copy maps". I'd also be happy with weekly changing home maps but with all the home maps being the same for every server.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Or maybe having a CS (special Map) that allows 4 or 5 Home maps comnnected to a Central map..... this would allow them to have a number of servers not divideble by 3......
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Haha, goes to show ;-)
It was a quick on the job read and reply so I skipped reading your post V_V
But yeah I wonder how it this will turn out. The three faction aspect should make up for a lot.
Also is it reasonably safe to assume that you only have access to the other home zones if their portal keep is conquered? I think so.
/theorycrafting on
If so it is safe to assume that important resources needed for your portal keep can only be found in the central zone as supply lines can be attacked they said. That should prevent sieges for portal keeps lasting a week as the defenders need to get out and get stuff to keep it up.
But it also means it could be a great tactic to block your oponents from leaving their portal keep until you can take it down. On that note I hope those portal keeps will have multiple exit points into the central zone; having just one bottleneck to control would be too easy for the sieging parties.
I also wonder whether offensive or defensive tactics will end up being favorable: you could either reinforce and defend your portal keep asap, or go further into that central zone and prevent other servers from doing so and trying to make an early breach into other home zones. Or maybe split up and divide tasks. But I suppose most people would want to be on the frontlines if their side is on the offensive, rather than doing maintainance chores back home. Potentially leaving the door open for the third server party crashing your own keep ...
/theorycrafting off
My brand new bloggity blog.
Sounds like an interesting system.
My guess is that you'll have a spiderweb of connections between objectives. So you'd have fortresses that serve as major objectives and for example logging camps as minor objectives. Each major objective is connected to all the nearby minor objectives. Once you capture the logging camp it was start sending out loggers towards the nearest friendly keep and each logger that arrives will buff the keep's door HP for a few minutes.
The enemy could start killing the loggers as they travel so that the enemy's keep will no longer receive all the upgrades it has. This would be the solo content.
They could capture the logging camp so that their own keep will start receiving upgrades. This would be the small group content.
Or they could directly capture the fortress so that the logging camp gets cut off from yoru lines and no longer has anything to upgrade. This would be large group content.
Atleast that's what I'm picturing/hoping. Sounds pretty cool.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\
( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o)
(")("),,(")("),(")(")
They have specifically mentioned killing caravans/protecting caravans, and small guilds taking over resource points, so your theories seem pretty sound and close to what they mentioned.
A lot of this is down to map design and planning. I mean, having single player content is useless if they're not capable of making end runs around fortresses and such.
It could be a lot of fun for me if they do it right. It's at least a system that pertains to my interests.
I think H1, H2, H3 and C1 represent one battlefield.
From wiki: Currently there are 4 different battlefields one of which is picked when the world are matched up.
And from the source translated: [...]Currently, the plan, all the worlds (ie server) once a week to get to a big fight. The time interval may still change. For every three servers an area is generated - currently we have four big battlegrounds - where your fighting to strategic points such as castles, watchtowers and sawmills.
dont know if this has been mentioned. I know it wasnt clarified in the article. Are the four maps seperate instances, or are they open?
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
They are open but seperated by portals.
portal= teleport to seperate zone
portal= a funnel type single enterance
no offense, but I am still perplexed
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
They are instances in the same way every single game world in every single MMO ( yes, including EvE online due to the test server. ) is an instance.
There's copies of them but it's limited to one copy per server. There's portals between them but all portals lead to and from the same copies.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\
( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o)
(")("),,(")("),(")(")
I'll be interested to see how they do portals to and from a central zone. My big concern is how do you avoid the possibility of a gank squad waiting right on the other side to massacre anybody stepping across?
I can understand the four zones to decrease server load, but what about communication? Will there be a chat channel for your faction across all four zones?
I'm a big fan of symmetry when it comes to design. It doesn't have to be skinned the same, but it should be functionally identical. When one side can reach an objective before the other, it leads to stale gameplay. Side A goes to the objective they can reach first, side B then decides they can only win by focusing on another objective. Even more problematic I think is when the map itself offers advantages to one side or another. As an example, in WoW's Alterac Valley, the alliance had to attack the horde at Iceblood by going up a ramp chokepoint, but the horde could go on offense by just dropping down off the high ground elsewhere. On the mirror side though, the chokepoint was a mountain pass. The alliance couldn't flank the horde at all because there was no way around.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Thanks for the link and the info/theorycrafting. I am left wondering how exactly one server is supposed to win. Are the battles all week long? What if one server completely dominates the maps for the whole week?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
They'll probably win, whatever that will mean.
I'm expecting some kind of point system based on how long and how many objectives are held. Fewer points for locations on the central map and higher points for locations on the home map of an enemy. There are probably a bunch of other bonuses that will pop up randomly that can increase your score, not to mention total kills being a factor.
Hope we're close to hearing some more official details on this, but it probably won't happen until after the final two professions are revealed.
There's a couple of things in play:
3-factions: 1 server may be considerably more able/more numbers and indeed run the show. But 3 will help.
Next week it will be ranked higher. Guilds that specialize in WvWvW will likely migrate to similar servers.
Battles are weekly (atm) so even if one server is caning it, it won't drag on forever and the rotations/ranking/self-organizing will help likely enough.
Win conditions: Some sort of elaborate points system for objectives, pks, zonal terrritory and even defeating the home areas of other servers? It's all possible. ; )
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Cool stuff. There are some RTS elements in there like upgrading keeps and supply lines that make it much more interesting.
In that same interview I read that the marketplace will be global, meaning it will function through all servers. I think that's great, especially for lower populated servers.
I've always hated searching for an item in the auction house to find that it still wasn't up for sale or that it was up for a ridiculous price, just because I ended up on a low pop server. So news of this Guild Wars 2's global economy, from this interview, also makes me happy.
It's really great that they got some important questions answered, to quench my GW2 thirst.
damnit, when will this game come out already =(
*goes back to reading his ghosts of ascalon book*
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)