Guild Wars 2

Personally I don’t believe that removing Ranks and their associated Emotes/Finishers is the wrong way to go. It’s something passive in the background even a casual player can jump into and work towards it without particularly being forced into Ladders and something more competitive (which is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea). I don’t see why the ladder and just ranks in general can’t co-exist.

John Corpening.9847:

Knowing what our high level plans are, what we would love to hear from you is what you would like to see from rewards in PvP?

1) Titles and vanity rewards based on ranking in the forthcoming ladder/season system.
2) Rewards that are desirable to PVE and WvW’ers, because they can be used outside of sPVP, to engender a larger PvP playerbase.
3) A way to use sPVP currency to buy the best-in-slot gear for PvE/WvW.
4) More vanity options, from the silly to the significant.

“gold rewards from playing casual sPvP should be higher than the gold rewards for doing a dungeon, because in a dungeon you are also earning karma and gear drops that can be sold for gold. Please don’t make us use the gold we get from PvP matches to buy XP that PvE players gets for just playing.”

yes, much, much more gold, please.
for example,
game mode | gold rewards
casual PvE | 100%
casual WvW | 100%
casual sPvP | 200%
competitive sPvP | 500%

the gold reward from sPvP must be much, much higher than PvE. at least 2 times higher for casual sPvP and 5 times higher for competitive sPvP.

and yes, let us gain experience points passively for participation in sPvP as well, all those player kills, points captured, top stats earned, personal points earned etc should reward experience points passively.

I agree, I don’t understand the desire to completely remove rank and their finishers. It’s fine to put it on the back burner, but I don’t think it’s fair or even needed to get rid of the system. Just make it so only the player sees their own rank, and start using ladder rank as the new “status symbol”. You can still use rank for achievements and finishers, so that there’s still this progression thing going on in the background for the pvp veterans.

I think you should keep glory. Much like you have Karma in PvE and Badges of Honor in WvW, I think PvP will continue to need a secondary currency. Otherwise you might as well remove Badges of Honor from WvW and replace everything with Gold and maybe Karma rewards.

I think rank should be kept too… if only because the only way to deal with the issue opened up from the Skyhammer farmers without banning would be to give the rest of the PvP population time to catch up. Since there’s no ETA on these changes, a person can easily assume sooner rather than later and give up on raising their rank. It’ll leave a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths. But the more time given for the regular guys to catch up, the better they’ll cope. With that, an infinite amount of time would be preferable.

I’m also assuming that you get much more gold for winning solo and team queue matches than you do for hotjoin, so I’ll leave that alone.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

will I be able to wear my Arah set which I’ve earned in sPvP in PvE/WvW too? I’ve never been in Arah (dungeon) before.

I have Arah sets both in PvP and PvE and feel like it’s unfair for both sides, but specially for the PvE side.
And come on, even achievement points chests contain tournament skins.
How long till they allow players in PvP to buy fractal weapons for gold?

Anyways, as long as the PvP way to earn gold and experience isn’t faster than the PvE way, I’ll welcome the changes. The last thing PvP needs is a huge influx of PvE players farming skins/gold/exp.

Upham.6137:

The last thing PvP needs is a huge influx of PvE players farming skins/gold/exp.

Actually I beg to differ. A huge and constant influx of PvE players is exactly what PvP needs. PvE is the largest pool of potential players that PvP has to draw from. To thrive PvP needs players. So even if only a handful of the PvE players stay and continue to play in PvP, they will aide PvP more than most anything else. Just need to keep smurfers at bay to keep PvP looking amicable to new, potentially long term players.

1. Keep the ranks and finishers as is. I casually play sPvP (usually just get the daily done via Solo Qs) and I’m not even rank 30 yet. I was looking forward to achieving rank 40-50 in another years time because I’m starting to warm up to PvP. Possibly reduce total rank points needed to get to 80 if it’s an easy fix.

2. Just using gold as a currency sounds awful. Keep glory in the game, and introduce your new rewards that cost glory + gold. When glory goes away, will Tomes just cost gold then? It’ll feel awful because this will be a tasty gold sink for all of the PvE champion farmers.

3. Keep PvE skins out of PvP. I can farm up a full set of Citadel of Flame gear in like a week. It takes months of constant PvP-ing to get to rank 50. See the problem here? If anything, allow PvP-ers to transfer skins to PvE. They have put in way more hours to get skins than any PvE player.

4. Allow us to use Living Story skins in both PvE and PvP. I don’t want to make the choice of stashing a skin in my bank, thinking i may use it in the future, or having it be unlimited use in sPvP. If anything, achievement skins should be added to the achievement panel like the Zenyth weapons. Or…. allow us to get living story achievement skins in PvP somehow. X tokens from reward chests = LS skin.

5. If you are going to remove ranks, maybe make 8 different leagues (if there are enough players). Rabbit -> Dragon. If you’re in that league, you’ll have access to the finishers.

6. (Wishful Thinking) I’ve always wanted to change how my character looks during combat. Having a way/reward that changed the dodge animation, or color of spell effects would be awesome. If you make it a reward based on skill, seeing a guardian come up to you with greatsword whirling red bolts would be epic.

Xista,
the gold earned from participation in casual sPvP and competitive sPvP must be very significantly more than earning gold in casual PvE / WvW or else PvE / WvW players will not bother to check out sPvP at all.

the sPvP player population will remain low.

top competitive sPvP players need to control the gold economy via their sPvP skills, not the gold farmers in PvE.

Personally I’m not working towards the finishers, but I can see that a lot of people are for quite a while now, to obtain a specific one. I would find it unfair to remove that in the future.

Why not simply keep it? Keep ranks for that purpose only, it’s nice to have one thing that shows how much time a player has spent playing the gamemode. Alternatively you could tie rank-finishers to sPvP achievement tiers while removing ranks.

I like this new system! I was about to suggest the same thing!!! Now Pvp player can jump into Pve/Wvw with the gold reward!!!!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Xista,
the gold earned from participation in casual sPvP and competitive sPvP must be very significantly more than earning gold in casual PvE / WvW or else PvE / WvW players will not bother to check out sPvP at all.

the sPvP player population will remain low.

top competitive sPvP players need to control the gold economy via their sPvP skills, not the gold farmers in PvE.

I would like to see gold only in Team Queue and Solo Queues. Having it in hotjoins could just backfire making it a toxic place to be. People already AFK if they’re losing, and jump out into spectator mode to force auto-balance. If anything, it would have to be a very low amount in hot joins. Probably less than ~5 silver.

Xista.7391:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Xista,
the gold earned from participation in casual sPvP and competitive sPvP must be very significantly more than earning gold in casual PvE / WvW or else PvE / WvW players will not bother to check out sPvP at all.

the sPvP player population will remain low.

top competitive sPvP players need to control the gold economy via their sPvP skills, not the gold farmers in PvE.

I would like to see gold only in Team Queue and Solo Queues. Having it in hotjoins could just backfire making it a toxic place to be. People already AFK if they’re losing, and jump out into spectator mode to force auto-balance. If anything, it would have to be a very low amount in hot joins. Probably less than ~5 silver.

5 silvers is too low.
people earn about 10 silvers per southsun survival game of 10 minutes.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Southsun_Survival#Rewards

PvE dungeon runners, they earn 1 gold from CoF path 1 per day. average 10 minutes as well.

gold rewards from casual sPvP should be much higher than PvE to attract new sPvP players from PvE / WvW.

the message must be clear.
sPvP is the end game to rake in riches.
not PvE farming.

Since you devs keep repeating in every thread that we should give our reward ideas here I’ll bite, I’d like to see some of the followinf for rewards…

Rank finishers
I like them, I want them to stay.

Armor skins exclusive to just pvp
Seriously, new skins that you can’t get in PvE since there are some PvE skins unobtainable in PVP.

Titles
Anything cool, maybe tie it to where you rank in your league or division.

Colored Nameplates showing which division you reach in a season
Think league of legends at the loading screen, the players get a gold or silver or diamond rim based on their past leagues and divisions they reached from previous seasons.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Xista.7391:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Xista,
the gold earned from participation in casual sPvP and competitive sPvP must be very significantly more than earning gold in casual PvE / WvW or else PvE / WvW players will not bother to check out sPvP at all.

the sPvP player population will remain low.

top competitive sPvP players need to control the gold economy via their sPvP skills, not the gold farmers in PvE.

I would like to see gold only in Team Queue and Solo Queues. Having it in hotjoins could just backfire making it a toxic place to be. People already AFK if they’re losing, and jump out into spectator mode to force auto-balance. If anything, it would have to be a very low amount in hot joins. Probably less than ~5 silver.

5 silvers is too low.
people earn about 10 silvers per southsun survival game of 10 minutes.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Southsun_Survival#Rewards

PvE dungeon runners, they earn 1 gold from CoF path 1 per day. average 10 minutes as well.

gold rewards from casual sPvP should be much higher than PvE to attract new sPvP players from PvE / WvW.

the message must be clear.
sPvP is the end game to rake in riches.
not PvE farming.

Just want to echo this. +1

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the message must be clear.
sPvP is the end game to rake in riches.
not PvE farming.

Yikes, talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs……ie…not really a good idea.

You don’t want to kitten off the PvErs. They are the grease that keeps the game going.

Essence Snow.3194:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the message must be clear.
sPvP is the end game to rake in riches.
not PvE farming.

Yikes, talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg……ie…not really a good idea.

You don’t want to kitten off the PvErs. They are the grease that keeps the game going.

PVErs already have riches, at least more than PVP. It wouldn’t hurt to let us have a turn, and if it attracts a few PvErs to actually work for their money rather than kill 6 bosses over and over and over and over in FGS, would it REALLY be the end of the world? >_>:

Reward ideas-

1. Weapon skins.

2. Guild armor- current guild armor looks horrific and boring. Get us some snazy amazing looking gear.

3. Back pieces. Flags that you carry on your back, capes, etc.

4. Flame kissed similarity. Maybe add in special particle effects to existing armors that you can only get when you get high in the ladder. Players can’t complain because it shouldn’t be easy to get.

5. WvW Siege equipment. Maybe when you reach a certain position in the ladder you can talk to a special vendor that sells WvW siege equipment with a unique look.

6. Minis/Costumes- Wouldn’t advise doing this first however. These SHOULD NOT be the main rewards. PvPers have no use for them.

7. Special foods with special buffs that aren’t available anywhere else.

8. Guild emblem unlocks/emblem features (borders for example). I’d heavily advise this to make the “good guilds” be more prominent.

9. Special Emotes

10. Skill changers- maybe change the color of certain skills. Like change the color of mesmer skills to something else. Change the look of engineer turrets. Things like that.

11. Permanent open world weapons. Weapons you can use in your inventory and have infinite charges, however they can only be used in the open world. Mortars, robots, etc.

12. Trait unlocks

13. Skill unlocks

14. Hairstyles/character customization unlocks

15. instruments

16. Account medals you can display next to your name

17. Home instance/Guild Hall items (if you ever put in guild halls…which you should)

18. Crafting mat conversions. Example- Bottle of mist. Put in mystic forge with 250 bottle of mist, 10 of X tier item, mystic stone, and mystic coin and it makes 250 of whatever item that is. Help PvPers get into the crafting scene.

19. Costume mounts- Remember the broom? Expand on this by offering different costume mounts you can use out of combat and in the open world/towns only.

20. WvW “wall” upgrades. Maybe make it so when you claim a structure the walls actually look different if you have this item.

ronpierce.2760:

Essence Snow.3194:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the message must be clear.
sPvP is the end game to rake in riches.
not PvE farming.

Yikes, talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg……ie…not really a good idea.

You don’t want to kitten off the PvErs. They are the grease that keeps the game going.

PVErs already have riches, at least more than PVP. It wouldn’t hurt to let us have a turn, and if it attracts a few PvErs to actually work for their money rather than kill 6 bosses over and over and over and over in FGS, would it REALLY be the end of the world? >_>:

Correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t PvP already have the best rewards? I don’t ever recall PvE having rl cash prizes, hotel, airfare, etc…

Essence Snow.3194:

ronpierce.2760:

Essence Snow.3194:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the message must be clear.
sPvP is the end game to rake in riches.
not PvE farming.

Yikes, talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg……ie…not really a good idea.

You don’t want to kitten off the PvErs. They are the grease that keeps the game going.

PVErs already have riches, at least more than PVP. It wouldn’t hurt to let us have a turn, and if it attracts a few PvErs to actually work for their money rather than kill 6 bosses over and over and over and over in FGS, would it REALLY be the end of the world? >_>:

Correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t PvP already have the best rewards? I don’t ever recall PvE having rl cash prizes, hotel, airfare, etc…

Yyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. Hosted real life tourneys are not the same thing as game mechanics for the normal player base… There’s quite a difference, I’m really surprised you said that.

I noted it b/c it is a notable difference between the two. Both have rewards to be found in game but only pvp has out of game rewards offered.

Besides PvErs are notorious for taking the path of least resistance…..ie they will not want to work for rewards rather than kill 6 bosses over and over again as long as the latter is easier/faster.

Essence Snow.3194:

I noted it b/c it is a notable difference between the two. Both have rewards to be found in game but only pvp has out of game rewards offered.

Besides PvErs are notorious for taking the path of least resistance…..ie they will not want to work for rewards rather than kill 6 bosses over and over again as long as the latter is easier/faster.

Exactly why you make PvP gold income more, it requires more work, and it’s incentive to get some PvErs to start PvPing (which is the lacking side, it needs some incentive).

In return some pvpers will try pve more with leveling scrolls.

What I personally want
Pvp specific skins that your get from ze trnys
also my opinion on the change to rank, good call because its to grind/boring but on the other hand you are rewarding all those people who participitated in skyhammer farming.

Essence Snow.3194:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the message must be clear.
sPvP is the end game to rake in riches.
not PvE farming.

Yikes, talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs……ie…not really a good idea.

You don’t want to kitten off the PvErs. They are the grease that keeps the game going.

it will be all right.
once they see how profitable sPvP it they will jump ship.

thanks jcbroe for + 1 !

to encourage participation in sPvP (casual: hotjoin & competitive: solo arena, team arena, ladders) and not AFK while in hotjoin madness, perhaps consider drastically increasing the rewards for various top stats scorers?

let’s look at some numbers.

people earn about 10 silvers per southsun survival game of 10 minutes.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Southsun_Survival#Rewards

for PvE dungeon runners, they earn 1 gold from CoF path 1 per day. average 10 minutes as well. (i understand the 1 gold is per path per day, but they do a lot of paths everyday so it does not matter)

now let’s look at the “top stats” for sPvP shall we?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily_PvP

Common
Objective Assaulter
Objective Defender
Objective Neutralizer
Objective Capturer
Player Kills
Skirmisher
Teammate Revivals
Points Scored

Map-specific
Cannon Shooter (Raid on the Capricorn)
Commune Successes (Temple of the Silent Storm)
Trebuchet Hits (Battle of Kyhlo)
Trebuchets Destroyed (Battle of Kyhlo)
Trebuchets Repaired (Battle of Kyhlo)
Orbs Captured (Spirit Watch)
NPCs Killed (Legacy of the Foefire)
Guild Lords Killed (Legacy of the Foefire)
Forest Creatures Killed (Forest of Niflhel)

now we look at how much glory is earned
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glory

Structured PvP (Hot-join, match longer than 7 minutes)
125 Glory – End-of-match glory
25 Glory – If Autobalanced
75 Glory – If your team won (or if either team won and you were Autobalanced)
5 glory for being an Autobalance Volunteer
End-of-match bonuses for being the top player (per objective) (5 points each)

Solo Queue (Match longer than 7 minutes)
150 Glory – End-of-match glory
100 Glory – If your team wins
150 Glory – With win-chest
End-of-match bonuses for being the top player (per objective) (5 points each)

the end of match bonus is too few. let’s increase that! drastically too!
so where were we again?

10 silvers per southsun survival game. average 10 minutes.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Southsun_Survival#Rewards
1 gold from CoF path 1 per day. average 10 minutes.

let’s throw in some numbers!
Structured PvP (Hot-join, match longer than 7 minutes)
20 silvers – End-of-match silvers
50 silvers – If Autobalanced and help that team with lesser players win
30 silvers – If your team won (or if either team won and you were Autobalanced)
10 silvers for being an Autobalance Volunteer
End-of-match bonuses for being the top player (per objective) (25 silvers each)

Solo Arena (Match longer than 7 minutes)
30 silvers – End-of-match silvers
1.5 gold – If your team wins
2 gold – With win-chest
End-of-match bonuses for being the top player (per objective) (25 silvers each)

Team Arena (Match longer than 7 minutes)
50 silvers – End-of-match silvers
2 gold – If your team wins
3 gold – With win-chest
End-of-match bonuses for being the top player (per objective) (25 silvers each)

just an example.
now, if they put in more effort to score more top stats, they get to earn more. healthy competition among fellow players is always a good thing. in PvE farming, there is no competition, everyone gets the rewards. some might get more due to RNG factor. i.e. precursor drop

so, in the above example, if a player is that good or lucky and scores all 8 common top stats objective, that is 8 × 0.25 gold = 2 extra gold per game.

those 8 common top stats are up for grabs by any player, if they are good at that.

Since I was prompted in another thread, I’ll add something else.

The issues with PvP and PvE skins are largely because of two reasons. The first is the fact that if glory is removed, gold will be what buys high end pvp skins. For that reason I posted earlier in the thread that glory should be kept as a limiter.

The second issue is the skin debate. Especially with cultural and dungeon skins. This wouldn’t be a problem if these skins were just never put into PvP in the first place. PvE should have exclusive high end skins tied to dungeons and a few other pieces of content. WvW should have high end skins tied to Badges of Honor, instead of just the Invaders set. And PvP should have a number of exclusive skins as well instead of just renaming existing skins all the time.

It’s similar to the recent uproar over the Flamekissed gem armor. The only way to fully avoid it is to keep creating brand new armor skins, despite the extra work that it involves (and you guys already run with some painful schedules at times).

Right now things are still somewhat okay because there’s a lockout with tournament tokens and higher end animal tokens being needed. There’s also the fact that all the chests are a level of RNG. But still. Adding in these sets to PvP and the basic crafted sets in WvW always felt like it should have been a stopgap measure, but it’s now instead more of the status quo.

On another note, I’d really love it if there was a straight forward recipe for you to convert one piece of an armor set into another of the same set. It’s annoying to open tourney or rank chests and get duplicates, leaving you with the feeling of “so close…”, but this request isn’t that big of a deal.

as a bunch of people have already stated, why can’t the leaderboards and ranks/finishers just simply co-exist? my rank and finisher was the only thing i had to show for being a dedicated pvp player.

im not sure how replacing that with seasonal leaderboard rewards make for a better incentive to play in pvp. its population suggests that it’s not competitive at all, people have never cared about leaderboards in this game since it has been introduced and i’m not sure if they would care when it gets revamped either.

Im actually interested in how you are going to remove PvP and PvE gear difference

mind explain more in this category?

Blog post sounds very ambitious.

Sounds all very very nice.
Changing finishers to depend on ladder and not rank – gold in pvp – skins swappable between both all very nice. New heal skill

2 Questions:
It says that finishers which havent been earned yet will not be unlockable through the new system if i read correctly. Does that mean no dragon finisher?

It also said that glory is to be removed with gold in the long run (which sounds reasonable to me) but will i still get the chance to do something with the redonculous amount of glory i got by now before that happens?(maybe 2-3 legendaries?)

I saw the blog and suddenly i felt yoy. Started reading trough the tread. Everything seemed amazing untill i hit the ladders they make me kind of sceptical but all the rest is competly great anet You actually positivly affected me Gj

Shriketalon.1937:

3) Capes.

For the love of Melandru’s magnificent melons, make cape physics work and PvP will flourish. You want people to look cool? Capes are cool. You want people to want to climb higher in the ladder? Rank based capes will make them climb. You want people to care about prestige? CAPES!!!!!!

YES! For those of you who didn’t play GW1 capes were the greatest! The best of the best players were defined by unlocking a special color trim for there cape which couldn’t be bought/crafted etc! I.e. Gold, Silver, Bronze. It’s a way of showing off prestige without cluttering the screen with a tacky glow and its passive.. aka you don’t have to type /rank to show how good you are and it won’t be confused with the pve players capes even if they have our Armour!

The reason (I believe) they are not currently in is because of the cape physics as mentioned above (Stupid Charr) but i’m sure this could easily be implemented.

aussieheals.6843:

Shriketalon.1937:

3) Capes.

For the love of Melandru’s magnificent melons, make cape physics work and PvP will flourish. You want people to look cool? Capes are cool. You want people to want to climb higher in the ladder? Rank based capes will make them climb. You want people to care about prestige? CAPES!!!!!!

YES! For those of you who didn’t play GW1 capes were the greatest! The best of the best players were defined by unlocking a special color trim for there cape which couldn’t be bought/crafted etc! I.e. Gold, Silver, Bronze. It’s a way of showing off prestige without cluttering the screen with a tacky glow and its passive.. aka you don’t have to type /rank to show how good you are and it won’t be confused with the pve players capes even if they have our Armour!

The reason (I believe) they are not currently in is because of the cape physics as mentioned above (Stupid Charr) but i’m sure this could easily be implemented.

To add to this, you could easily add achievements / achievement rewards that are class and pvp specific.

Basic Example

Plan cape for new player – Has Arenanet logo, white background, no trim

New player plays thief –
1,000 kills with the thief unlocks a dagger icon for the cape.
2,000 kills with the thief unlocks a duel dagger icon for the cape.

1,000 kills in pvp unlocks black cape background

Player wins tournament –
Cape now has gold trim with duel daggers and a black background showing he/she is a beast thief

Give me a reason to play other classes please !

Don’t remove /rank please.

Let us have a way to show off our pre-removal rank without having to stomp someone.

looking forward to the new rewards!!D

just wanetd to come in here and say is it possible to not remove the ranks though? and especially the finishers tied to them. don’t let them be a determining factor in the ladders and what not, but allow them to remain in the game. they can be seen as lifetime achievement awards. i don’t play enough sPvP since i play PvE and WvW as well and with limited time, i have to choose where i spend my time. so i saw myself though not likely in the near future making next ranks, but i would definitely love to achieve tiger, shark, etc going forward. for me, as silly as it may sound, will keep me playing the game and wanting to log in.

as for those who’ve worked hard, yes they will get to keep the finishers, but to have their ranks completely stripped would not be the best solution, i can imagine. sure, some may argue that then ranks don’t matter at all. but this is an MMO, people like to hoard, to collect, to reach goals, and that in itself, i believe warrants a reconsideration into how the rank system , or simply, the ranks themselves and titles / finishers tied to them will and can evolve.

[added: and yes, with that, PLS PLS PLS don’t remove /rank]

Barret.4095:

as a bunch of people have already stated, why can’t the leaderboards and ranks/finishers just simply co-exist? my rank and finisher was the only thing i had to show for being a dedicated pvp player.

im not sure how replacing that with seasonal leaderboard rewards make for a better incentive to play in pvp. its population suggests that it’s not competitive at all, people have never cared about leaderboards in this game since it has been introduced and i’m not sure if they would care when it gets revamped either.

Because it’s needless fat that needs to be trimmed from the sPvP steak and it is conductive of a mindless, skill-less grind mentality that ANet at last seems to have realized is malignant to the game.
Where you might see some distant goalpost, having grindable ranks just is a Sisyphean carrot to me. I’m sure to some players that this is motivation-boosting but be cognizant that to some it has the exact opposite effect.

The long-term goal will be to climb the ladder and place in higher divisions.

akamon,
if they do remove ranks, earned ranked finishers will not be removed.
but everyone will lose the chance to earn rank finishers that they have not earned yet.

Jamais vu.5284:

The long-term goal will be to climb the ladder and place in higher divisions.

this goal is feasible for players who wishes to be competitive. you do realize that there are more casual players than competitive players yes?

felivear.1536:

I’ll post in this one since it appears to be the official discussion thread on it.

First, let me start by saying that this blog post was great. I have posted many threads over the past year stating what I think should happen to PvP and almost all of them has been done now or has been stated as planned. Obviously, that means I’m happy. I do want to break down how I feel about each one:

Gold and Experience in PvP

• This one is huge. I’ve played PvP since head start. I leveled my thief to 80 via crafting, and I had to buy gems to do it. Otherwise, I’m made almost no money.
• The same issue is with character progression. I acquired skill in PvP and I had no way to immediately carry that over to WvW because I was at a major level disadvantage. Like I said, these 2 changes alone make my day. I also love they are coming on the 10th.

Removing PvP and PvE gear difference

• Again, this is something I totally agree with. See the above bullet points for gold/experience. After 1,000+ hours in PvP, I shouldn’t walk into Lions Arch looking like a trial account. Love it.

Achievements

• This is one of my few concerns. Although, I really love this addition, I don’t like the timing. The reason I say that is the MMR issue. Currently, MMR is too high for new players. They are pooled by default in with the veterans. What this change does is guarantees that you are going to have an influx of new people in PvP. Where are those new people going? Straight for ranked tournaments, the place they least belong. I’ll reserve full judgment here, but I am mildly concerned.

Setting goals for gear

• Although they didn’t give a lot of details, I’m pretty sure I understand what they mean. I think they mean where you identify a piece of gear you wish to obtain and then through a journey of sorts, you obtain it. This is what has been missing in PvP. Currently, it’s just a random mess of gear being dropped all at once, then nothing to work toward after. I love the idea of putting in a lot of hours to achieve a specific item.

Glory being retired as a currency

• This one really has me puzzled. Not that glory is being retired, this is also something I’ve suggested. The weird thing is that it’s being replaced with gold. Who has the most gold? PvE players. Who has the least gold? PvP players. So, what prevents a PvE hero from coming in here and dropping all of their gold on everything day one? Your aesthetics should be a sign of your skill level. The other part of this, and possibly the most concerning, is the fact that gold can be bought with gems. If you have the best rewards tied to gold, and gold bought with gems, doesn’t that mean you can purchase the best rewards in PvP? I’ll have to hear more on this and just hope for the best for now.

Removing Rank

• I personally love this. I think rank in this game was a really bad initially implementation. Rank was gained by glory gained, not winning. The fastest way to gain glory? Farming hotjoins with builds that weren’t conducive to team play. I think the whole rank system is a farce and I’m glad to see it die.

Ladders

• Yes please! This is the true progression. More than gear or anything else, a ladder creates the progression that is the most meaningful…skill progression. You travel through each tier as you get better by playing with people in your same skill range. The top tier people should get the best rewards and when you see someone that has those rewards, you should immediately know that he/she is a beast.

Unknown
So, there are 2 things that I was really hoping to hear in addition to all the other goodies.

• I have hundreds of chests. Should I wait to open them?
• I have a bunch of glory boosters, hundreds of each of the tokens, etc. Is there any plan on finding some way to convert those items to gold or glory? It seems like all of those rank tokens would be completely wasted if there is no way to convert them to a usable currency.

In summary, thanks for the blog. I am hopeful for the things to come. I’m mildly nervous for the time frame (next few months) only because of what that has meant in the past. Hopefully the devs will understand our skepticism with that.

Exactly my thoughts! Im super excited for almost everything :D

…you never gained rank through glory…never

PvP Match Rewards

Reworked Glory/Rank rewards, favoring mostly the wining team, were great. Greater rewards for more competitive formats sounds also good (In practice, queues usually prevent this from happening).
The system still lacks, however, any correlation between rewards themselves and player skill level.

While a single PvE dungeon run grants the same reward to everyone, there are HUGE differences between casual PUG and organized speedrun completion times (directly related to reward/time ratio).
In PvP however, a proper matchmaking system would set winning chances at about 50% for everyone excluding the top of TeamQ, and without the skill disparity being adressed, both an even match between experienced teams and some random game full of baddies soloqueueing for achievements would be equally rewarded. In fact, there are high chances on the second match popping and ending faster for a better reward/time ratio.

If rewards are balanced around the skill level of pressing a “Join” button for a 50% win chance, then we shouldn’t expect PvP to be an interesting income alternative for any decent player.

Gold and Experience in PvP

Both, any kind of reward and a way to level up characters through PvP, are welcomed.

From an economy perspective, however, there’s already an insane amount of gold introduced in the system every day, far away from the quantities in-game sinks can handle.
Gold-to-Gem exchange is keeping the inflation at bay up to some degree, but that’s at the cost of having gem price on an unstoppable rise which I’m not sure is a good idea in the long run.
IMHO the game needs less direct gold rewards if anything.

Back to the previous point, without PvP rewards being related to MMR, we should expect low earnings at average, so it seems like efficient PvE farming is going to be the best choice for PvP related rewards, which doesn’t make any sense to me.

The adittion of skill unlocking not only somehow destroys the idea of PvP-maxed characters on creation (which is one of the main selling points of GW2 PvP) but also seem to take back some of the rewards that are being added.
I’m not even close to understand this design choice.

Achievements

Daily achievements are OK for soloQ. They would increase overall population without serious downcomes in the long run (It’s going to be quite annoying, on the other hand, until MMRs are adjusted).
I’m not really sure about teamQ. For most of those attracted, it’s going to be like a second soloQ with them standing at really low MMR ratings. Real team population is going to be almost unaffected.

New achievements should be common to both soloQ and teamQ, with better game experience and rewards being the carrot to create a roster and jump into teamQ.

Gear

Not bad at all. I really think, however, that having distinct skins attached to different game modes and skill/challenge levels would be much more interesting and welcomed.

Updated Reward System

As I have stated many times, normalized rewards will prevent PvP earnings to compete with PvE ones, where a skillful and organized team can easily speedrun content and farm craploads of gold.
With proper glory/gold prices, there was a still a chance for PvP goods to be more affordable for PvP players. Without glory, PvP players will be the poor guys of Tyria, even in PvP :P

Ladders and Seasons

These are really good news, something that finally seems to favour good players on what it’s supposed to be a competitive game mode.
I completely understand there’s a need to increase the overall population before this improvements are made, but I somehow feel they are too far away in the schedule.

It’s also great to have rank gone. It’s a completely broken system which has always favoured non-competitive grinding over intended gameplay.
On the other hand, allowing players to retain their old finishers while making them exclusive seems quite an awful move.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

akamon,
if they do remove ranks, earned ranked finishers will not be removed.
but everyone will lose the chance to earn rank finishers that they have not earned yet.

i know. to be more clear, i would cherish the finishers more than the rank itself. though, they are indications of how far you got in ranks. i’d like to be able to continue achieve and earn rank, for the rank and more so their associated finishers.

if keeping rank is def out of the question, then i’d like —-

1.skyhammer farmers to finally be judged and rolled back.
2. a proper time to reach the finishers we want.

akamon try this thread for slightly more info
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Removing-Ranks/first#post3305130

it’s unclear how the current ranking systems will be handled after the new system is put in place.

I really liked the blog post overall. The upcoming changes to PvP Match Rewards, the achievements, the universal gear, the Gold replacing Glory change. These are all good things for GW2 PvP.

Where I stumbled on however was the removal of the rank in favour of ladders. I understand why dedicated PvPers are in favour of ladders, and I certainly think its implementation is a good thing, however as a more casual PvPer who doesn’t spend really more than than five or six hours a week in PvP (combined time of both hotjoin and Solo tPvP) ladders will be useless to me. I’m not going to be able to put in the time to go up the ladders so will likely remain at the bottom, whilst no longer advancing slowly up a personal rank system. I liked slowly filling my purple bar until I get to the next rank tier with a new shiny emote.

Honestly, I don’t see the harm in keeping the personal rank system. I thought it was kind of cool. As I’ve seen staff from arenanet say in response to other people they’re thinking of adding other things that reward in lifetime play instead of rank which is certainly something at least, i’m just worried it will differ to greatly with rank as a personal thing is now whilst i’m punished for my more casual way of playing PvP in the ladder system. And I am NOT saying I should be given the same rewards as the people who put in hours and hours of game play – not at all – i’m just worried that the time I will put in will be disproportionately rewarded.

I don’t want to be rewarded for how much I play and win in a ladder season. I want to be rewarded for my overall PvP progression.

I’m disappointed that the ability to earn the current Rank finishers will be taken away, even if we get to keep the ones we’ve earnt thus far. I play all aspects of the game – PvE, PvP and WvW – and so generally don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to one particular side of things, but was enjoying gradually working my way towards these finishers.

I hope A.net will reconsider totally removing the ability to get these finishers.

Ranks will be removed imho because they are unnecessary considering what PVP is supposed to be.
There is no competitive game (afaik) out there where you are rewarded for how long you play. Rewards are based on how good you play.
Let’s take LoL as example, since it is the most played competitive game: you have an account level, from 1 to 30, which only purpose is to be an entry barrier to ranked matches. And that is exactly how it should be in GW2 imho.

Players need skill-based rewards, not farm-based ones.

Why is everyone talking about ‘gear’ and such stuff as reward? My warrior looks already as kitten as possible with his Heritage armorset I earned by playing GW1. Ok, my ele and mesmer could maybe use some nicer skins, but that’s definitly not something I’m really concerned about.

‘Reward’ in PvP is actually more about prestige, glory and honour and less about shiny stuff in my oppinion. ‘Reward’ like a lot of gold (in GW1: massive amounts of zKeys, good PvP’ers were often as rich as whole PvE-guilds together) is actually a nice surplus, but it’s definitly not what PvP should be about. And in GW2, it was always impossible to get any kind of prestige in PvP since ranks were broken and leaderboards were on an extern website that doesn’t even allow to search players if one wants to look them up (not even mentioning their other flaws).

But let’s see what this ladder-thing will bring, maybe this will solve the whole ‘prestige-problem’.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Jamais vu.5284:

The long-term goal will be to climb the ladder and place in higher divisions.

this goal is feasible for players who wishes to be competitive. you do realize that there are more casual players than competitive players yes?

You didn’t think this quite through I’m afraid to inform you.
There will probably be enough divisions that you wont chronically rank in some no-name percentile. Yes, you will be a rabbit or deer at first, but you can become Top 50.
Dominated a really high-ranking team? Have an instant jump 30 places. That is a reward I can get behind. Keep the sPvP seasons they proposed in mind too. You can be measured long-term by your results in past seasons.
Also, are they a permanent lifetime achievement? If yes, there’s your rank analogue. It’d be awesome if you earned a cape or finisher to show off for each division you once graduated into.

By contrast, for a casual player currently it’s almost unthinkable to achieve a rank 30+ after one year without resorting to the Skyhammer abuse.
What does rank mean to them I wonder? They certainly don’t have any prestige/boast value because they are so low. (They are also utterly interesting economically/AP-wise in case you wondered)
But with ladders, you can rank highly if your team plays really well with only a few matches a week, no giant time sink needed.
I find it a bit silly that you suggest the current ranks with a prohibitively high time-requirement to get anywhere are somehow more interesting to casual players than a segmented hotjoin/soloQ/teamQ rank triad.

So here are my two cents:

Gear

• A lot of people are complaining about not having PvP gear to show forth effort. But also a lot of people would love to have their PvE gear in PvP. So I feel like in order to solve this there are a couple of ways;

1. I would highly suggest making exclusive PvP gear that would require you to PvP to obtain through winning/PvPing only. This would allow the small community of PvP players to have some sort of way to showoff for being good. Everyone wants some type of frost armor? Maybe you can implement that through PvP? Anyway, since you will allow PvP/PvE skins to cross like gw1 did (gold/silver/bronze trimmed capes) and other games do, this will PvE players to still come to PvP with their skins and not feel they are starting scratch and PvP players to still awe the crowd if they go to PvE/WvW/or PvP. This will add incentive for PvE players to PvP if they want that new awesome, fantastic, super duper alatocious armor/weapon skins, while keeping PvP skilled players exclusive.
2. If you don’t wish to implement exclusive PvP armor then I would suggest making it so that, in order to bring certain rare skins such as cultural, mytyic forge weapons, and legendaries, you must use some form of currency from to convert allow you to bring them over. This sounds tedious and not sure how that would work but thats just a thought.

I honeslty would reccomend #1. Those of us who PvE/WvW and PvP would enjoy this as well. I don’t have a problem if everyone looked good in PvP with their armor skins, AS LONG AS we have some exclusive gear that we can work towards through ONLY by winning to show off our skill/progress. Maybe with your divisions you can implement this for being in certain divisions.

Dailies

• I do not know if you guys planned on updating these for PvP, but atm, dailies are useless and don’t mean anything for PvP. Not even a little bit. Hopefully you will look into this as well.

Old Materials

• I know a lot of us are wondering exactly what are we supposed to do with all of our glory boosters, tokens, match win chests, and old gear. Why is there a point to having them? You also mentioned that you would inform us of when we should spend all our glory. But my question is to why and on what? There is nothing for most of us to even spend glory on. Maybe you guys have something in the works, but I also want you guys to know that with this change allowing PvE gear to PvP and vice versa, hopefully you make it worthwhile because a few of us spent quite a few gems/gold to have two sets of skins (ghastly,fused,jetpacks,etc..) in PvE and PvP.

Black Lion Tickets/Scraps

• I know a lot of people hate these RNG tickets you guys implement. What if there was a possible way of allowing PvP players to obtain scrap tickets through PvP? And possibly tickets? Make the actual ticket drop from chests as rare as a precursor? That would allow people who missed the LS events and chance of obtaining through BL chests for 1 ticket a chance of winning them.

I am also surprised a little at the blog. A lot of it talks about whats up and coming for PvP, which I understood would happen. But there isn’t a lot of whats to come this year, and the little you mentioned, only talks about obtaining gold now and leveling up in PvP. No offense, but atm, leveling up and gold is the least of our concerns. We have waited an entire year and a half but the infrastructure of the what we PvP’rs has harldy changed and this year is almost over. Atm a lot of us are skeptical because we waited 6 months to of no change to PvP rewards or anything promised to only get a blog to talk about the future yet again. My other question is to why it took you so long to ask about these suggestions from us and didn’t ask from 6 months ago?

If you can answer those questions, then I can make further suggestions but until then, I will wait for an answer.

A lot of this stuff is ambiguous and could go either way. From a design perspective, it seems the removal of glory will cause more problems than it solves. This could all go very wrong very quickly if things are incorrectly implemented: pvp players may feel forced to participate in pve gold farming to obtain rewards in pvp. I say this because it’s very unlikely that the gold earned in pvp will outshine pve farming.

The removal of ranks could work, it just depends what comes in its place.

An incredible easy way to give some meaning to sPvP rewards would be adding some unique (and cool) skin templates to the tournament chests, with a small drop rate of course. These skins can be used in PvE/PvP/WvW or sold like any other skins you can buy from the trading post today.

Still don’t know why this isn’t already in the game. When I think back to Heros Ascend in GW1, where you had the chance to get the very best skins and items through PvP, I can’t believe no one came up with this idea for GW2 already