Guild Wars: A Simple Fix for the Ball

Over at the Clam's, we've been going over the Costume Brawl. As usual, the bi-valve makes some good points as we've discussed both what makes the format shine and where it could be better. Along the way, I think he's come up with an idea that would help correct one of the biggest problems I have with the format: the long waiting and down times associated with the point-capture mechanism. They suck the momentum out of the game, taking away from the frenetic pace of action and excitement to leave you standing there doing nothing.

I can't count how many times this has happened to me - with a group or with myself. I get to a shrine to find an enemy standing there, engage them in the deadly dance of move and counter-move as we circle around the area, kiting in and out of range, pushing ourselves to the limit, testing our knowledge of our skills and our builds. And when I, of course, win what happens to that rush of emotion? What happens to that surge of confidence, of power, that comes from finishing off a worthy opponent? Do I rush off to the next spot, do I hunt down my next prey, do I try to join up with the rest of my team who are fighting for their own lives somewhere else on the map? No, I watch for the little capture bar to finish its achingly slow crawl. That's time I'm not doing anything. Except waiting. Sometimes another opponent comes along and it's go time again. But that just means I'm going to be back to the tedium again once that fight is over. Or maybe it's a bunch of enemies in which case it's time to beat a hasty retreat so I can live to fight for another spot.

Worse still are those times when I'm at a shrine and I can see, just on the edge of the radar screen, a fight going on. My teammates engaging with some opponents within easy traveling distance. Maybe they're in trouble and need some help or maybe they're winning, either way it looks a lot more fun than watching a progress bar. But I'm tethered to the shrine by the capture range. Do I abandon it and rush off to join in? Should I wait and get the cap? Is the shrine's bonus worth it to the rest of my team or can I just neutralize it and move on? (I've come around to the point of view that if there's a fight nearby, it's best to forget about the shrine and help win the fight. If it's a losing one those enemies are going to be on top of you soon anyway. If it's a winning one you can finish them off and come back to finish off the cap. But killing stuff is a much quicker and surer way of putting points on the board while the shrine bonuses are neglible. Not everyone agrees with me, though, and I have a hard enough time trying to convince people or the best paths to take on those maps with the limited text buffer to bother trying to explain it.) A game mechanic that where the incentive is for standing around while there's combat going on nearby isn't working nearly as well as it could, if you ask me.

And as the Clam suggests, the Costume Brawl is a winning idea and one that just might be around to stay - if not in this game then in the sequel. So, it makes sense to try and make it as good as it possibly could be. Clamatius's idea, then, is to speed up the process. As long as no opponents enter the capture radius, that bar will go up progressively faster in the same way that if you're not attacked or attacking you'll slowly gain health regeneration. The net effect would be to make it easier and quicker for a single player to capture a shrine and get back into the action while still having multiple characters capture them faster - they'd essentially get a head start on the speed progression, starting out and reaching the maximum faster. At the same time, you preserve the importance of fighting around each shrine by allowing you to spoil an opponent's efforts and, at the very least, set back their timetable. And it puts a premium on split-squad tactics, making the lone player running around trying to recap all the shrines much more important, forcing their opponents to respond. That means they have to, say, stop camping the rez pad to chase around the map trying to stop them from erasing their advantage and allowing their opponents to mount a comeback. Since the Costume Brawl is a beginner's environment that's exactly the swingy kind of play that helps erase skill disparity and encourage poorer players to try again since they were "so close" instead of simply blown out. In a newb friendly format you want to make sure everyone has a fighting chance and that losing is as painless as possible.