Guild Wars 2

People already touched on what would provide further incentive to play some of the mini games, in that providing some sort of unique MiniGame Themed reward would attract even more players.

An entire minigame themed costume would definately be appreciated. Or even just a Back Slot Armor Piece- Im sure a lot of people would love carrying around a keg on their characters back!

Maybe a town clothes football jersey that has a graphic of whatever minigame you won. There could be several logo options available based on what level of achievement you have in the minigame for example:

T1 Keg Brawl Jersey: Has KegBrawl Icon, and a logo saying “I got my butt kicked in KegBrawl and all I got was this lousy T shirt!”

T2 Keg Brawl Jersey: Icon, logo saying “Rookie of the Year”

T3 Keg Brawl Jersey: Icon, logo saying “Champion Brawler” or perhaps your name could be featured across the jersey.

Or a simple hat with the MiniGame Logo would suffice (think viking cap for KegBrawl). People love collecting things, and it would incentivize more people to seek out and at least sample more mini game content.

GregT on the previous page had a very good (albeit snarky) post. He’s exactly right on all accounts.

As far as rewards go, I think costumes (to brawl in) is one of the best options for rewards. It’s displayable, doesnt affect normal gameplay, and feels like a real prize. Minis are nice, but much less interactive (for now?). Titles are great too, but needs to be used in conjunction with actual rewards.

Speaking of costume brawl, we really need to be able to have a designated area to do it in when we want competition, but can’t find anyone. I think I might write that suggestion sometime soon.

I had a ton of fun with both the events and I think the rewards were more than enough for a holiday event!

The only other thing I can think of would be titles, but then again you would need to be careful that the titles are achievable within the limited time available or you will have a ton of complaints like with the clock tower.

~Also even though this is a bit off topic I agree with the idea of holiday items having their own bank slots.

I’m fine with fun being the only reward for things like keg brawl. If you do want to add incentives then make sure they arent the “grind it x times for item y kinda deal”. And make the incentives diverse, like a mix of achievements (already got that there), and give out free booze for it and other gimmicks for the coming activities. Town clothes are missing in general so maybe this is a good way to add some, they could be activity related in style.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Glory is for competitive PVP. It’s purpose is to create prestige for people who are good at killing other players on a level playing field. Activities, on the other hand, are a grab bag of mini-games that shake up the gameplay for a bit. Yes, it’s—**gasp** —fun. The fact that the glory bar is even displayed is just a side effect of us leveraging our awesome competitive PVP framework to host them. (It is really cool by the way. For example, did you know that you play activities with players from other worlds?)

But now that we’ve got that straight, I’m super interested in learning what you guys think you should be getting out of activities. Trick or treat bags were sort of a trial, but I think it worked out pretty well so we may do similar things in the future. Keg brawl doesn’t have anything like that, but it does have achievements. Would that compel you to play? Something else?

Thanks for your time!

I don’t understand why, like in GW1, you didn’t make a gamer title for playing such mini games….

^ Yeah!
Bring back the gamer title track for various [event] PvP activities!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Glory is for competitive PVP. It’s purpose is to create prestige for people who are good at killing other players on a level playing field. Activities, on the other hand, are a grab bag of mini-games that shake up the gameplay for a bit. Yes, it’s—**gasp** —fun. The fact that the glory bar is even displayed is just a side effect of us leveraging our awesome competitive PVP framework to host them. (It is really cool by the way. For example, did you know that you play activities with players from other worlds?)

But now that we’ve got that straight, I’m super interested in learning what you guys think you should be getting out of activities. Trick or treat bags were sort of a trial, but I think it worked out pretty well so we may do similar things in the future. Keg brawl doesn’t have anything like that, but it does have achievements. Would that compel you to play? Something else?

Thanks for your time!

Those events were great fun. Personally, I would like to see Halloween events start at least 2 weeks earlier. I wanted to spend more time in these games but just don’t have enough play time during the week.

Rewards: In general, I like rewards that are useful and don’t take up inventory space. Karma, money, crafting mats that are hard to find come to mind. Minipets would be nice (but make sure there is space in minipet bank for them). You could make them rare and themed to the area. A gamer title is a great idea too. You need lots of titles and achievements we can work towards.

@Rachiia: You said “I thought Reaper’s Rumble and Lunatic Inquisition were fun, but what was the point?” That was the point. FUN.

@AnthonyOrdon: Honestly, it was just fun for me, but if rewards are the topic here then I’d love to see some townclothes. As it is, we have a very small selection of townclothes and (afaik) all of them are only attainable via the gem store. I’d really like to start finding individual pieces of townclothes rather than having to buy full costumes. There should be a snazzy shirt here or a hot skirt there or some manly britches there. I’m not a fan of buying a chef costume with boxing gloves & aviator shades….that’s not even remotely what a fantasy character would wear in town.

I thought the Halloween PvP was far from brainless, as the surest way truly to succeed was to ally with and to manipulate the players around you. Though there is only so much you can do—-and though I may be the odd one out in thinking this—a game where you can ensure survival is much less interesting than a game based around struggling to maximize survival. Looking at the Lunatic Inquisition, for example, unlike with other games’ Zombie modes where gameplay is often very much just brainless fun, this game included stealth and item collection which at least require careful thought to optimize. Their application in this game could have been rather more exciting, and the pacing needs definite work—but also it’s the lazy pace that allows you time to conspire with teammates.

Anyway—to risk a truism—better-measured incentivization is always good, but it should be considered that there are people on the design team at ANet who feel, in an absolute way, that not all of the content on GW2 should be experienced because people feel a “need” to experience it. And furthermore that distinguishing their product from the Infinite Skinner Engine that is WoW is important for their prestige. For example, they are obviously aware that achievements can be broadcast over chat channels, but made the choice to prune that particular aspect of the system, one presumes to foster a certain type of community.

And lastly, might I suggest that the attitude of GregT, as one of the “zerg swarm” of gamers that rampage after whatever Triple-A experience might be deemed the optimum at this precise moment in the evolution of video games, like some kind of thrill-seeking algorithm made living flesh… may not be the sort of spirit first considered by the designers of primarily casual content in an open-to-all kind of MMO. Though most of his suggestions are actually very solid… and though the shareholders might think differently altogether about the importance of this group of gamers!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

But now that we’ve got that straight, I’m super interested in learning what you guys think you should be getting out of activities. Trick or treat bags were sort of a trial, but I think it worked out pretty well so we may do similar things in the future. Keg brawl doesn’t have anything like that, but it does have achievements. Would that compel you to play? Something else?

Thanks for your time!

I enjoyed Lunatic Inquisition over 9k, I found it innovative, “light hearted”, extremely fun. I didn’t notice at all if I got rewarded in any way, and I am not interested in finding it now xD because the fun I had greatly surpasses any kind of ingame mechanic.
I truly hope you guys will continue to excel with new awesome content like this in future events!

Keg brawls: omg I love that… the only thing that comes to my mind to improve it, would be adding a system that, when you get the “brawling champion” achievement, makes all Norn’s Inns/pubs/whatever cheer for you when you enter, worth a whole map event (nearby event! attend the keg brawling party in celebration of “name of player”: 1 free alchool or something like that).
No exp or any kind of reward, just pure fun.

I loved both of the Halloween PvP mini-games, and I played Lunatic Inquisition more as I enjoyed the challenge of survival.
I was the last survivor (and top player) countless times, and I absolutely loved Ripper, but it felt a bit weak. The best I could do with it was get 5 kills. Which is very low, considering it one hit kills lunatics and they were pretty much standing still. The survivability of it is just terrible. Miss with it and you’re screwed because you can’t move. Once the Ripper appears I think a skilled villager should feel OK to get out of hiding and reap some lunatics. Evading all attacks during the channeling, or removing the snare come to mind.

Also it would be nice if there was a command immunity for a brief time after you have successfully obeyed one. Immunity duration long enough for stealth to be available just before the next command runs out of time? Assuming you’d be hammered with commands by multiple lunatics.
Being the top player as a villager rewarded me with 10 pToTs and I think I got over 200 pToTs from Lunatic Inquisition.

There’s just one annoying issue I had with the mini-games and this is that I could not join a friend’s game unless lucky or she/he left and we timed our join.

I like the ideas that some people have already stated. Keep the bags but add in them a chance to get something cool, be it a Mini pet, part of a costume/ town clothes, a recipe, weapon skin, or other items that go with the event being played. Also Titles!

Overall PVP thoughts:
As a person that has not spent a single hour in PVP or WvW I can fairly say that the 2 PVP events made me quite interested in the future development of the PVP aspects of this game. The reason why I haven’t played PVP or WvW is due to having the feeling it involves too much grinding, with no actual rewards on the short term.

I would probably play PVP if some rewards (gear/skins/minis) were introduced in order for me to really want to play and get them. These rewards should be unique to PVP and be available in PVE since I see no point now (just fun, which lasts I guess 10 matches) to play PVP just for the same gear I can get in PVE and once I get it, I can only show it in PVP.

However getting to the 2 PVP Halloween events, I can say they are quite promising and would have enjoyed them if rewards would have been introduced, similar to the skins from black lion chests + the ability to combine the drops like tonics/boosts to form the mad king chests for an extra chance at a better/unique reward.

The Lunatic Inquisition:
I absolutely love the idea, I was like WOW… unfortunately as I played I realized the flaws which were mostly related to the pacing. Everybody should have been given a speed boost that’s on all the time since the zone was quite big and I felt it took ages to be able to kill a player, like 5 minutes of walking for 10 seconds of actions.I could have easily seen me play this for hours, even though as mentioned above I really didn’t play any PVP/WvW since launch and I’ve been in almost all the betas so congrats for the idea.

The level design was a little boring as well since there wasn’t too much to do to survive, I understand the time limit constrain but I would have enjoyed it if there more things to do like hide in crop fields, possibly shape shift into a scarecrow and just stay while ghosts would pass me similar to Assassins Creed multiplayer were you blend into the crowds, but in this case with the environment. The survive idea could have been further emphasized by having to get food/water/etc and thus not just have me stay in a scarecrow form all the time for example.

Reapers Rumble:
Love this idea too, although not a fan of moba games however again the pacing was way off since the area was quite big for the number of people that were present and it took too much time to get to the other side were the conflict was.This maps general look would probably have been better set for the Lunatic Inquisition.

Also some general gamification tips for PVP/WwW
- people need short(10 runs)/medium (50 runs)/long (100 runs) term rewards
- people need variety on these PVP maps in order to avoid the feeling of grinding/lack of content
- people need to know that they’ve achieved something after investing X amount of time, giving the feeling of accomplishment (this is were short term achievements come in), this feeling is temporary since it lasts a couple of minutes due to people forgetting about them, this is why visual cues above their characters or below their characters are important so other people can see that he has a crown above he’s head or something and wants to get that too.
- people need visual stimulation (on screen messages like X is now on a killing spree)

Rewards:
- Minis
medium term reward for sPVP and 2 Halloween PVP events
(not enough of people have them, making them feel like they aren’t in the game + no pokemon like battle system in place, hinting at Lions Arch mini arena, making them feel without a purpose to have them on display, or other features for them like send them to town to sell junk or gear similar to Torchlight )

- Weapons Skins:
Medium/Long term rewards for sPVP

- Town Clothing
short/long term rewards for PVP events

- Armor
Short/long term rewards for sPVP and PVP events

- Titles
medium/long term rewards for sPVP and PVP events

- Icons
short/long term rewards for sPVP and PVP events

Overall this was an absolutely great start for Anet and hopefully we will see a lot more amazing content.

@AnthonyOrdon:

Games like Lunatics Inquisition and Keg Brawl should have special themed “team gear”. I want to see a ‘Keg Brawl Set’. It doesn’t have to be light/medium/heavy, but can be just one set for all 3 to use (like town clothes). Obviously this shouldn’t be for PvE use, just for town clothes.

I would also like to see something like a karma reward or karma + minor monetary reward for playing. It doesn’t have to be game/economy breaking, but just a little boost would be nice for the time we spend, so that even when we’re having fun we can feel productive.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Glory is for competitive PVP. It’s purpose is to create prestige for people who are good at killing other players on a level playing field. Activities, on the other hand, are a grab bag of mini-games that shake up the gameplay for a bit. Yes, it’s—**gasp** —fun. The fact that the glory bar is even displayed is just a side effect of us leveraging our awesome competitive PVP framework to host them. (It is really cool by the way. For example, did you know that you play activities with players from other worlds?)

But now that we’ve got that straight, I’m super interested in learning what you guys think you should be getting out of activities. Trick or treat bags were sort of a trial, but I think it worked out pretty well so we may do similar things in the future. Keg brawl doesn’t have anything like that, but it does have achievements. Would that compel you to play? Something else?

Thanks for your time!

Wow. I didn’t expect this post to turn into this long discussion.

It’s great that so many people are doing something just for the fun of it, but let me ask my original question in a different, maybe less controversial way.

Why should PvP and PvPers be treated like crap? Oops. That might be controversial. Let me rephrase. Why should PvP not yield rewards at least equivalent to other activities?

Every other activity during the Halloween event yielded some pretty sweet rewards: Explorers got a scavenger hunt and a nice back piece; platformers got the clock tower and exotics; and PvEers got lots of cool rewards, including exotics, karma and gold. PvPers got the equivalent of a Charlie Brown rock. Why?

@AnthonyOrdon.3926 Now, all that said, glory is not a gauge of your ability to kill “other players on a level playing field”; it is simply a reflection of how often you PvP. It’s much more a measure of how much time you spend in sPvP.

You get it for all sorts of activities in sPvP, not just killing other players. To GW2’s credit, it’s a much better measure than pretty much any other MMO, but the fact remains it’s less a measure of how good you are and more a measure of how often you play sPvP.

GregT.4702:

A lot of things are fun. Your PvP activities compete with them.
Flicking rubber bands into a bowl can be fun. I’m probably not going to be doing a lot of it any time soon while I have triple A videogames on my PC. Likewise, I’m not going to play your casual PvP activities “for the heck of it” unless either (a) they are competitive with my other PvP options (such as League of Legends), or (b) I am invested in your brand.

Brand investment
I will play your PvP over its competitors if I am invested. I am invested if either (a) my friends are playing it, and I can play with them socially, or (b) it provides a reward which I value which you are uniquely able to deliver as the custodians of the Guild Wars 2 brand, which may be the satisfaction of seeing interesting Guild Wars content, or just some titles or loot for my GW2 character.

Unique content
You can make casual PvP attractive by adding unique content – that is, by making it something you’ll want to see. WvW has a little bit of that flavour – watching a castle get sieged is pretty epic and is eye candy as well as fun. But on the whole this takes work and development time, so is probably not a great option. The Halloween PvP was, while not ugly, nevertheless visually bland and there were not a lot of memorable moments coming out of it.

Rewards
An achievement per se is not a strong reward. All it gives you are points. You can also get points from dailies; these are interchangeable. You can’t do anything with points and you can only show them off to guild members, as far as I know.

A title is slightly better. It at least allows you to demonstrate what you’ve done to others. However currently titles are underwhelming at best, printed in tiny text, without displaying how you got them, and only shown at all after someone has deliberately clicked on you.

Cosmetic armour, unlockable emotes, and unlockable miniatures are better still. They are push-advertising of your prowess, in that the choice of whether someone sees them is in your hands, not the viewer’s.

Rewards as Unique to the Activity
Trick or Treat bags were a terrible reward for PvP because you could get them from other places. That prompted the obvious question, what is the most efficient way to obtain these items? PvP was among the least efficient ways, as it turned out. Players wouldn’t be playing PvP for bags unless they were ignorant of the better way, so effectively there was no reward-related reason to play the Halloween PvP. Rewards for an activity need to be unique to that activity, or else it will be competing with the other way of getting that reward.

Rewards as Unlocks
Probably the most important thing is that rewards should be unlocks, not items. Items require you to store them in your bank. For an average reward, being forced to store it can turn it into a punishment. A much better system is to treat rewards as unlocks, accessible either from a menu (like titles) or from a special vendor (like Hall of Monuments stuff), allowing you to obtain an instance of the reward for free on any character at any time, without having to manage the storage of it.

Rewards as Conversation
The other key thing you need to work on for ANY reward is to make it part of a player’s conversation with other players. The easiest way to do this – and I can’t believe you haven’t already – is to announce achievements in either or both of guild chat and local chat. E.g., it shows up in Guild Chat, “John Smith completed the November Monthly Achievement!” It prompts chat about the achievement, promotes envy from those who don’t have it, and increases the desirability of achievements as a whole.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Best post I’ve read all week.

Greyfeld.7104:

GregT.4702:

A lot of things are fun. Your PvP activities compete with them.
Flicking rubber bands into a bowl can be fun. I’m probably not going to be doing a lot of it any time soon while I have triple A videogames on my PC. Likewise, I’m not going to play your casual PvP activities “for the heck of it” unless either (a) they are competitive with my other PvP options (such as League of Legends), or (b) I am invested in your brand.

Brand investment
I will play your PvP over its competitors if I am invested. I am invested if either (a) my friends are playing it, and I can play with them socially, or (b) it provides a reward which I value which you are uniquely able to deliver as the custodians of the Guild Wars 2 brand, which may be the satisfaction of seeing interesting Guild Wars content, or just some titles or loot for my GW2 character.

Unique content
You can make casual PvP attractive by adding unique content – that is, by making it something you’ll want to see. WvW has a little bit of that flavour – watching a castle get sieged is pretty epic and is eye candy as well as fun. But on the whole this takes work and development time, so is probably not a great option. The Halloween PvP was, while not ugly, nevertheless visually bland and there were not a lot of memorable moments coming out of it.

Rewards
An achievement per se is not a strong reward. All it gives you are points. You can also get points from dailies; these are interchangeable. You can’t do anything with points and you can only show them off to guild members, as far as I know.

A title is slightly better. It at least allows you to demonstrate what you’ve done to others. However currently titles are underwhelming at best, printed in tiny text, without displaying how you got them, and only shown at all after someone has deliberately clicked on you.

Cosmetic armour, unlockable emotes, and unlockable miniatures are better still. They are push-advertising of your prowess, in that the choice of whether someone sees them is in your hands, not the viewer’s.

Rewards as Unique to the Activity
Trick or Treat bags were a terrible reward for PvP because you could get them from other places. That prompted the obvious question, what is the most efficient way to obtain these items? PvP was among the least efficient ways, as it turned out. Players wouldn’t be playing PvP for bags unless they were ignorant of the better way, so effectively there was no reward-related reason to play the Halloween PvP. Rewards for an activity need to be unique to that activity, or else it will be competing with the other way of getting that reward.

Rewards as Unlocks
Probably the most important thing is that rewards should be unlocks, not items. Items require you to store them in your bank. For an average reward, being forced to store it can turn it into a punishment. A much better system is to treat rewards as unlocks, accessible either from a menu (like titles) or from a special vendor (like Hall of Monuments stuff), allowing you to obtain an instance of the reward for free on any character at any time, without having to manage the storage of it.

Rewards as Conversation
The other key thing you need to work on for ANY reward is to make it part of a player’s conversation with other players. The easiest way to do this – and I can’t believe you haven’t already – is to announce achievements in either or both of guild chat and local chat. E.g., it shows up in Guild Chat, “John Smith completed the November Monthly Achievement!” It prompts chat about the achievement, promotes envy from those who don’t have it, and increases the desirability of achievements as a whole.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Best post I’ve read all week.

Second that. An extremely good post.

i dunno…just seems like you want alot of people to know you did something rather than having fun doing it. I dont get a reward for killing absolutely everything on the map, not every champion or veteran gives you a reward that is unique to killing them.

I think a good reward is basically the chance at something unique that you can either use or keep. I would not mind an NPC who handles skins, I dont think they will go this way though..its a f2p game and the transmute stones are on the BLC.

And the reason for not giving glory is because its not spvp..its an open event with people who dont like pvp doing it for the achievement. Rewards can not serve one master, they serve many..and you guys want this reward to only serve you. The announcement thing..not a bad idea..and if you had been paying attention..it was already there…“Ripper is going on a rampage”, I saw announcements like this all the time telling me who was kicking butt in the game I was in.

I think the token idea is the best compromise..have a holiday vendor, many items for prices in tokens..and each event gives you tokens based on winning or losing, and a chance at a special prize like a mini.

Wow, the responses by solanu.3784 were nonfactual (as the Anet post above explains no glory used as a reward in the event mingames) and degrading. You sir or ma’am need a timeout and nap time.