Hello everyone!
It has been quite a while since Guild Wars 2 has been released and what was new is now old. Over the time things have gotten more familiar and talking from my persepective, the incentives have gotten less.
As I know the word “incentive” has been thrown around already from time to time by players, I feel there have to be made some lasting changes for the reward system and what incentive PvP offers. I therefore want to propose some ideas of mine.
1. Ranks
So according to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Rank reaching rank 80 equals nearly 9 million rank points. The maximum rank point being able to achieved each match are 330. Now this equals around 27186 played matches in case one reaches max rank points each match. Alternatively, if one makes 20000 glory per day, it equals around 448 days to reach max rank. Looking at PvE, the cost of the tier 3 cultural armor is set at around 120 gold ( if I am not mistaken ). This means it takes one much less time to get hands on a full set of a tier 3 cultural armor. In case of hardcore-farming it may even take less than a week, though this is more of an assumption of me. Looking at the nightmare armor now though, it may be even easier to get the full set. Same goes for the Dredge Armor which is most likely set at rank 70.
Seeing how far off the actual reward is for the effort put in in reaching the higher ranks, I want to suggest something.
Suggestions 1: Scrap the Rank System
Instead allow us to buy every armor set and weapon through a fixed amount of glory. It can be even set high and have a similiar mechanic as jewels, sigils and runes in the locker, making it able to have an infinite amount of this or that item. This would also fix the issue with not being able to storage more than 1 exemplar in the locker yet.
A high amount of glory needed for the for full tier 3 cultural armor set around let’s say 350k-400k would mean that it takes some time to get that much glory.
There can even be an achievement for having all these items stored or enable in the locker. A title or something.
I also want to mention, that the crafting mats and the mystic forge gamble are not necessary anymore. Instead we could have more crafting materials for dyes and have a more stable income to earn gold and therefore gems. Which is also an issue, forcing some pvp players to play pve and farm the necessary amount of gold or have them wait until they reach enough gold with spent laurels and sold dyes here and there.
2. Leaderboards rewards
So far the only incentive for playing leaderboards is facing good teams on a similiar skill level as one’s own and to be able to brag about a high position on the leaderboards. Aside that there is not much incentive, especially for these who do not have an own team yet and a forced to play SoloQ before we have more options in the future.
Suggestion 2: For more incentives to play in ranked tournaments, give us rewards in form of titles ( seasonal, similiar to the gladiator ones in WoW ), special weapon and armor skins ( which can also be seasonal ), monthly rewards, weekly, daily, etc.. Just give more incentives to play for a high spot on the leaderboards cause right now it does not hold much of any reward as the top teams can also scrim instead of playing tournaments, making a few aspects easier to handle, such as what map to play on.
3. Endless Finishers
Right now, Finishers can be crafted or gotten through chests. This means crafting materials have to be spent. The crafting materials necessary to craft the finishers are not so rare, so it is easy to craft one, but they only last for 60 minutes as much as I know. I have not used any of them in a while. This comes down to how much worth it is to use a finisher.
Suggestion 3: An Endless Finisher would make things much more interesting. They can be chosen via an additional tab in the hero-menu. The UI can be similiarily structured as the mount and pet menu in WoW, so it is somewhat similiar to the locker UI too.
It has to be made clear now though what to do with the various finishers we have right now and when once has access to them. They can be tied in to an amount of matches played.
These are my suggestions so far, I may have forgotten the one or another I still had in my mind, but I can add it later.
Bottom Line of this post is though, make the actual gameplay more rewarding and the others things a pleasent suprise or reward on the side. Do not hold a meaningless carrot in front of us.
PvP is not about looks or anything, but about skill and recognition as a good player.
It is not a grind. At least as much as what has been told us before release.
(edited by Lady Sara Goldheart.2764)