GvG: back to the original VOD

Hi everyone.

I was talking with a lot of guys who play GvG now, and most of us agreed, that we would like to see the old system of Victory or Death back in game.

For those who don't know, I mean the system in which for example in 20:00 all the NPCs(expect guild lord) from Your base start marching towards the flag stand and there they battle with NPCs of other team

at 22:00 Guild Lords will start their march to flag stand too and there they battle until one of the Lords is down(in certain time(26-28 minute) the lord who took most damage will fall).

I think the old VOD was much more fun, well it had it's minuses too, but for example keeping alive every single archer in base was much more important than it's now. Now when you loose 4-5 archers it means almost nothing. Also it would be nice if Bodyguard gets back his old Fireball and Firestorm skills.

The times can be set lower to faster the GvG in case some guilds will just camp their base.

What are Your opinions in this guys? Im adding a poll here.

One significant problem of the old VoD was highly defensive builds that promoted stalling until the NPC rush, which led to very long matches. Even if the timer was lowered (which changes the flow of the entire format) this strategy would still re-appear.

Also consider that there are so many absurd damage-oriented splits (ie MB Ele, IoP Gankers, Shatterstone, etc), many of which weren't around when the old VoD was. Ganking early = advantage at VoD, which would only encourage more obnoxious gank builds as opposed to good splits.

VoD was removed in 2008, and there has been a fair amount of power creep since then due to the dartboard buffs to make some elites and attribute lines more viable. VoD cannot return in its old form in the new state of the game.

well do You have any other idea, how to make those archers around the base(and especialy those in some corners, where no one goes) more valuable?

Ive got some thoughts- for example these staying in some area where nobody goes could patrol the base.
or other idea, if guild lord is attacked, all the NPCs pull back to the lord to defend him.

My GvG experience with VoD was limited to a handful of matches, so I'm not exactly qualified to come up with a reasonable solution. Part of the problem with the NPCs as they are however, is that they are too easy killed by solo gankers. The Archer has Troll Unguent and nice AL, but Troll's is easy to interrupt or kd, and they have no defense against basic condition/hex degen. Footmen have no defenses at all, and Knights have only Healing Signet, leaving them in a similar situation to the Archers. Lastly, the Guild Lord has his Amulet of Protection ability, but still no protection against hexes and conditions. There is a common theme here, and until these NPCs can at least stall a ganker, VoD cannot return in its old form.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean with your first idea, but putting them on patrol won't really help. The NPCs go down so quickly that patrols would be taken out one at a time. As for your other idea, it would allow for a single player to simultaneously gank NPCs at the base AND make the NPCs at the "front lines" retreat allowing for added mobility. It's simply too easily exploited.

Note that I do not like the current tiebreaker mechanic, but VoD (or NPC mechanics) would need to be significantly changed before it could re-implemented.

VoD was indeed a lot more exciting, but that's part of the problem with it too - that the game mechanics completely changed at 28/18 minutes.

The idea of a tiebreaker was that it would provide a reward for guilds who played normally wiped the other team but were unable to kill the lord, since ideally, that'd be the only way the lord would be taking damage. Naturally, people figured out how to abuse it.

The point system that the test krewe has in the works addresses the abusability issue. The concept is that the stuff that goes into winning a gvg match normally - damage dealt, morale, locational NPC kills, lord damage - will all be rewarded.

Of course, at the current rate of progress, we'll be shooting the lord with fire eles until GW2 comes out.

Well current VOD system is not very bad too, but i just liked the old one more. Yes, the NPCs were stupid enought to just block them somewhere and kill with AOE, but still it was more fun then now and as i said every archer had his value, when timer now reachers 24 all dmg just goes into the lord not caring about anything else while there is plenty of NPCs around(some of them just standing out of range, doing nothing)

If they add some skills to the archers (for example: antidote signet,distracting shot, hunters shot, dryers defense) and let them patrol in the base or/and defend the lord while hes under attack, it would be much more fun and some other factor to count with in gvg.

Not a lot of experience with GvG tie breakers. I always won or lost well before that spot outside of a few matches. But as mentioned, the stall tactics and defense heavy builds were dominate during the old VoD. To prevent a return of that, the only thing I can think of is to make a FRESH set of NPCs spawn for the VoD. The NPCs around during the match would not move for the VoD battle, but new NPCs would spawn to provide combatants. Possibly tie the number of NPCs into the spawn with the DP of the team. That would force people to be more aware of their DP and the flag stand as well.

But I didn't think it over much, just tossed that around while reading your suggestion.

Maybe update the VoD in some way to allow for the power creep, Then have both? So you cant specifically prepare for what to face, VoD or tie breaker.

i havent gvged as long as most of yal i think but i'll throw an idea out there.

Archers (and only archers) are nice to have, but most of the time they are positioned somewhere that is completely worthless (Isle of Meditation). I thought it might be cool if you could talk to Archers and give them commands as to where to stand.

This might become rly gay thou if you put all your archers at the backdoor b4 the game starts and have your mainteam go the other way so you have excessive npc damg at one side... maybe once an archer dies you can talk to any other archer to replace where that last archer was standing so you cant have 5 in 1 spot?

just an idea