Guild Wars 2

John Corpening.9847:

Hey All,

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Thanks again!

John

Make it a lil bit less dramatic. It feels sorta like the wvw (not the season) achievements….ie….once we get into latter ranks it feels like going nowhere fast

thanks for the clarification john!

John Corpening.9847:

Regarding gold rate, the rates chosen are based on what players can expect from average play in other areas of the game, not on farming rates. It is not our intent to make PvP a better place to farm but to make it about on par with what a typical player can expect in other areas of the game. Some of you have correctly noted that time spent in PvP doesn’t contain many of the gold sinks that PvE players experience and this has been factored in. We do want to encourage players who haven’t tried PvP to come give it a shot because they will continue to earn the rewards they get in other parts of the game. We don’t want people to feel this is where they must to go to maximize their rewards. We will adjust rates if we feel it is necessary.

thanks for the reply!
i appreciate this. i understand and accept this.
i will not make comments about gold rates anymore since my queries have been answered by john.
thanks again!

as for the questions:
Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?
i would keep keep acquisition the same as it is now.
i.e. rank points gained via anet’s public hotjoin servers, solo arena, team arena.

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?
maybe further drastically increase the rank points acquisition on solo arena and team arena? leave it the same rank points acquisition rates for anet’s public hotjoin servers and player rented custom arenas.

game modes | rank points acquisition %
hotjoin | 100%
solo arena | 300%
team arena | 500%

Just leave ranks, but don’t make the bulk of rewards come from them. There was nothing WRONG with ranks, just that it was the only way to obtain anything. The long term goal was fine for what it was (finishers, titles, prestige).

John Corpening.9847:

Hey All,

Thank you very much for your participation. I’ve just spent the past couple of hours reading through every post on this thread. There is a ton of great discussion going on.

The point of the CDI is not for us to talk about specifics about what we are working on but to open discussion with and between all of you. That said there are some pretty big misconceptions that are going around that I’d like to clear up.

First off, on Dec. 10th we are adding a new vendor that sells items for both glory and gold. Players will not be able to simply buy all the rewards with gold but will also need to use glory which amounts to time spent in PvP. This vendor is temporary until the next phase rolls out. It will be there so you can spend your glory before the new system comes into play. The new system inherently factors in time. We will discuss that system more when we are ready. As soon as we are able, we will let you know when the glory vendor will be removed.

Regarding new skills, PvP will continue to have all existing skills unlocked for players. Only new skills will require unlocks. The number of skills currently in the game can be intimidating for new players. We would like to allow them some time to learn the base set while they work towards unlocking the new skills.

Regarding gold rate, the rates chosen are based on what players can expect from average play in other areas of the game, not on farming rates. It is not our intent to make PvP a better place to farm but to make it about on par with what a typical player can expect in other areas of the game. Some of you have correctly noted that time spent in PvP doesn’t contain many of the gold sinks that PvE players experience and this has been factored in. We do want to encourage players who haven’t tried PvP to come give it a shot because they will continue to earn the rewards they get in other parts of the game. We don’t want people to feel this is where they must to go to maximize their rewards. We will adjust rates if we feel it is necessary.

Regarding exclusivity of skins. Since skins will be shared across the game PvP will be getting exclusive skins that require participation in PvP to obtain. These will be able to be carried over into all other areas of the game. I think this was a little unclear in the blog post.

There was some confusion about the achievement rebalancing. We split up some of the pools of points into additional tiers and we added more tiers on top of that. This is to allow players to get more regular achievement rewards. Your total achievement points may go up, they won’t go down and you should hit tiers more frequently than before.

This has been a great discussion thus far, thanks a bunch for your feedback. By far the most discussed topic on this thread has been the plan to remove ranks. So here are some questions for you.

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Thanks again!

John

Fantastic post. I think that quite a few of the naysayers are going to feel a lot better after reading what you just said

I will say; I hope the glory portion of buying items won’t be absurd just due to people who farmed the hell out of glory. You have to realize there are those of us rank 20-35ish who played normally and didn’t hoard the whole way and don’t have a lot. While those vendors exist they should still be reasonable GOALS even starting fresh, not just a place to dump Glory (especially since itll be split cost).

ronpierce.2760:

Just leave ranks, but don’t make the bulk of rewards come from them. There was nothing WRONG with ranks, just that it was the only way to obtain anything. The long term goal was fine for what it was (finishers, titles, prestige).

yes, bulk of the rewards should come from solo arena / team arena / ladders and not ranks alone.

ranks is just used as an indication of how many hours a player have spent participating in sPvP.

John Corpening.9847:

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Slightly.

I would keep rank acquisition. It adds a sense of overall progression and gives the player a clear indicator of experience. Yes, it can be farmed. Yes, people have gamed the system. But it’s still nice to keep around for everyone else who isn’t using gimmicks rather than tossing it aside.

I would, however, make two changes.

1) Give it bonuses. Use the achievement system to add bonuses to glory to help people leapfrog upwards via skillful play. Completing PvP achievements will award bonus glory, and therefore add more rank to your total. This will allow you to reward certain actions in different ways, which can range from “play 100 games as a guardian” to “kill an opponent carrying the orb in spirit watch 20 times”. Once again, you’ll need to work out the farming related kinks, but these will help add a touch of spice, just like the achievements in Team Fortress 2.

2) Give it a sense of immediate satisfaction. As a filthy, loathsome casual, I find I simply don’t care when I rank up. Going from rabbit to deer felt somewhat special, but going from rank 10 to rank 11 was completely meaningless because it gave me nothing. All I could do was spend a little more glory on RNG based rewards from a vendor that were inferior to the stuff I got from achievement chests. Each rank increase should provide a feeling of satisfaction, not just every tenth.

I m happy that the pvp sections gets reviewed more often by Dev’s/Anet than the PvE departments. I recall Fractals have lots of posts and less responses.

Ranks are what I respect the most because its the one thing you cannot buy. Anyone can exploit or buy a legendary weapon. If forging made it account-bound that would retain its respect for me.

A rank/title in pvp takes tangible time and efforts and is the end game goal for me: that still has a prestige factor. I was unaware of the skyhammer thing whatever it was. So therefore I now see there are some non-legitimate high ranked players at the moment.

John Corpening.9847:

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

I do agree that Rank should feel like more of an achievement, yet at the same time obtainable for most. Rank could instead be based on WINS, encouraging people to actively participate and play for their team.
This would eliminate complaints around it merely being a ‘grind with no skill’ into something that does merit some prestige. A player who wins alot, is usually an indication of some form of skill.

Of course there will always be a few free-riders, but they won’t be as high up as those who actively help their team to win. This would also discourage AFK’ers.

However, I do want to see finishers and such more obtainable due to this method since it can be difficult even for casuals, but still possible.

Perhaps even Tourney matches or the like could be worth more than regular hotjoin ones to encourage more serious play. Obviously this is just an idea.

EDIT: Custom Arenas in this fashion I think would excluded being counted. Just to prevent some notable abuse.

John, you had me at exclusive skins…

John Corpening.9847:

[…]

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?
If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?
[…]

• Nope. I’d keep rank and progress, but I’d make it a sign of seniority. The more time you spend in PvP actively playing, and the more matches won, the higher your rank. There should be no farming schemes for rank. The only way to increase would be active PvP play. Dishonorable would halt rank progress even when players can still join matches, to make sure people avoid being AFK or leeching. Rank would not increase in private matches and custom arenas.
  Unlike ladder, rank only goes up.

• Rank would not be used for matchmaking or limiting how much you can play, but it’ll unlock rewards over time, much like achievement points. Rank finishers unlocked, would be unchanged and unlocking more would be a matter of time… time spent in PvP. Playing. There could be other smaller perks and rewards for rank, such as a few armor pieces (e.g. Raven mask, Phoenix wings back item, Bear Paw gauntlets, Dragon Fists ring glow effect skin, Dolyak Hoove boots skin, Bunny Thumper hammer skin, and so on…)

John Corpening.9847:

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

I’d keep the rank system in place, but no longer have rewards reliant on ranks (ie. armor/weapons). Basically, it would remain as a way of tracking your personal long-term progression but would no longer be necessary in attaining certain armors and weapons. It would be a sort of personal background feature.

However, having a way of obtaining permanent finishers (ie. phoenix/dragon) is still important, and I’d still keep that tied to rank. I know plenty of people that play PvP (myself included), and have been for a while, in large part due to the long-term goal of attaining those final two finishers. The implication that they are/were being removed was the primary part of this preview that stood out negatively for me. I’ve read an ANet post from another topic saying that finishers aren’t going away, but they will no longer be “earned”. Do not give us limited finishers as a substitute. I’ve invested in nearly 50 ranks with the near sole purpose of attaining a dragon finisher in the future, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to get those last 30 or so ranks before these changes are implemented. Being given the poor substitute that is a limited finisher for all that effort would be a slap in the face. I’ve spent more time on this than I have my legendary.

Justin ODell.9517:

cymerdown.4103:

They could keep the changes to the reward system, but just not remove ranks and their finishers. Just have it as this little side progression thing, but not have it display anywhere except on your PvP menu and maybe keep the progress bar on the bottom. This way, you still get the cool new rewards, and yes glory is now gone, but rank points and the rank finishers will remain.

The finishers are not going away. You will likely have until the first ladder season to earn them. After that they can’t be earned, but you will continue to have them. If all you want is additional finishers to work toward, be sure to mention that in the rewards discussion.

Hi Justin. Instead of completely removing the rank finishers that we have yet to unlock when the ladder is in place, can we be given a reservation of just the next rank finisher instead? What i mean is, if someone who is rank 64 when the ladder is in place. he will have the rank 70 finisher reserved for him, so he can play at his own pace and use it once he gets to rank 70. But the rank 80 will not be available to him. Basically its to avoid making our progress redundant. Imagine the pain of being rank 69 and having the rank 70 finisher robbed from you because you couldn’t get to 70 before the ladder is in place.

On another note, please leave the current daily achievement for PVP as it is. Adding 4 new dailies in TPVP will not help the TPVP scene, it will only attract people who wants to clear their dailies and not actually contribute to team play or aiming to win. It will be like hotjoin heroes,having more than 1 person capping an uncontested capture point.
The TPVP players are already little in number,do not fix something that is not broken,you’ll just lose more TPVP players.

I do not speak for everyone,but if you need credibility of how passionate and serious i am about GW2, I’ve played 3614 hours in the past 456 days,rank 81 on NA Achievement Points official leaderboards,rank 239 on NA Solo queue official leaderboards as off this very hour.

Gold and Experience
I support this change. Frankly I’m in favour of anything that monetises PvP for ANet, simply because I have a totally unfounded belief it will receive more attention and become more popular as a result. I am unsure on the phasing out of glory all together, but provided PvP specific armors have nothing to do with acquisition by gold or glory, I don’t think I will have any major problems with it.

Rewards
I believe that, in a competitive environment, rewards should be earned for two things:

1. Participation
   Up until now this has been the rank finishers, rank gated gear and rank titles (ransacker, marauder etc).
2. Skill Level
   We have tournament chest gear, which is very easy to obtain. Champion titles which I would argue are more a participation reward than a skill level reward.

By adding PvE skins to PvP (which I support as a change to increase the player base) you trivialise the acquisition of all but rank finishers and titles, both of which have questionable value (skyhammer farming and visibility respectively). This means, from my perspective, there are no rewards for, or more importantly ways to show off skill level.

Ranks
The current rank system is an effective way for players to demonstrate participation, now that farming issues have been eradicated. Personally I would not remove it from the game. Rewards for these achievements should focus on the extras, finishers, mini pets possibly (mini tiger for tiger rank? etc) and maybe back slot items along with some titles. Add in here any other cosmetic items that are not gear itself. I would do nothing to the way ranks are acquired, other than reducing the points required due to the diminished rewards.

Gear Acquisition
For the armor sets that already exist, acquisition should:

1. Be meta achievement based
   These achievements should vary in difficulty proportionate to the difficulty of obtaining the PvE armor.
2. Encourage 5v5 and tournament play, especially in groups
   Without being unattainable in 8v8, it would help the playerbase if most of the achievements were easier to obtain in 5v5 matches and tournaments
3. Be attainable regardless of rank
4. Be fun and engaging!
   Make some of these a kittenallenging, avoid the grind! What about an achievement that required you to interupt enemy players heal, that flashed up when you did it, or even the guild lord heal on Foefire? Not only fun and more interesting than kill xx amount of players, but also promoting skill!

Its important to remember that, while the acquisition of different skins can’t be too far from what it is in PvE, it also shouldn’t be too easy. It should be encouraged that players go for lower tiers of gear first, or players will simply grind their favourite set immediately and never change it. This could be done by having requirements to unlock previous pieces of gear built in to the meta achievement.

Ladders
This for me could accomplish great things for PvP:

1. Reward for skill level
   I love the idea of seasons in PvP
2. Team Leagues
   I would love to see this implemented on a team basis. Leagues of around 100 teams, possibly fewer at the top level would do amazing things for the competitive side of the game, with promotions and demotions for a cut of the teams. Unfortunately the post specifically mentions “Players will be divided into divisions” but I’d love some clarity on this.
3. Solo Q balance
   If you only played with other people in your league, or those around it and the teams were balanced based around this, I believe Solo Q balance would be greatly improved. Class balancing (teams having bunkers, etc) and afking would still need to be addressed, but this would be a big step

The way I see teams working is as follows:

• Each team has a roster of up to 8 players
• No two teams can have more than 2 of the same players on its roster
• No player can join more than 3 teams

For me, until teams are implemented in some way into the PvP scene, it will struggle to move forward. Though I do understand that this would be a long term project, it was not listed on your agenda.

PvP Gear

Regarding exclusivity of skins. Since skins will be shared across the game PvP will be getting exclusive skins that require participation in PvP to obtain. These will be able to be carried over into all other areas of the game. I think this was a little unclear in the blog post.

This is the answer to rewards for participation and skill level. Some of this gear should be earned for participation , but should not stand out so much, different skinned current gear might be appropriate. More unique skins should be earned for skill level, i.e being high in ladders. Had this not been here I would have hated these changes, other than the ladder, but it being here is vital and should be the foundation of reward systems to come.

IMO,

Please leave the rank finishers alone. Keep the current rank system in play for casual sPVP players.. recolor or modify or make new finishers for your new ladder thingymabob..

Also – sPVP Gear: IMO you shouldn’t be forcing your customers/players to buy or acquire a skin TWICE just so they can PVE AND sPVP with it.

Rewards for time spent:
Gear aesthetics
Mini pets
Finishers
Consumables i.e. fireworks, beer, pipe
Toys (like the pve toy slot to be used out of combat)

Rewards for winning/achieving:
Gear aesthetics
Finishers
Emotes/Taunts
Appearances and haircuts (makeovers sold separately)

Rank System:
Use military ranks within the current system to gate the rewards i.e. private Rabbit Major Rabbit etc. Have the mini pets resemble the ranks.

Why minis? We cant even have minis out in pvp

ronpierce.2760:

Why minis? We cant even have minis out in pvp

It would cross over to pve. I mean if your gonna grind to get dragon this way you can show off a mini pvp dragon in pve land.

ronpierce.2760:

Why minis? We cant even have minis out in pvp

Agreed, this needs to change! Why not allow us to spectate as a mini pet that denotes our rank in custom arenas. We also should be able to have them out in HotM, and there should definitely be PvP specific ones. This is all at the least! Once we get the polymock arena (however it’s spelt) introduce one to the HotM! There are all sorts of ways Mini Pets could be there in sPvP without them actually being in the games themselves, which would of course produce to much clutter. Perhaps before the start of games though?

Amstel Steel.2058:

It would cross over to pve. I mean if your gonna grind to get dragon this way you can show off a mini pvp dragon in pve land.

A far better reason than any I came up with, what a great way to show off, along with /rank your rank in PvP!

John Corpening.9847:

Regarding gold rate, the rates chosen are based on what players can expect from average play in other areas of the game, not on farming rates … Some of you have correctly noted that time spent in PvP doesn’t contain many of the gold sinks that PvE players experience and this has been factored in.

Sounds like it wont be very much gold at all. What do you define as farming anyway? Running through the nonterrible dungeon paths for 10g/24 hours? Spamming all the temples and metas for 14 ectos/rares /24 hours? Or is it someone that runs randomly in a zone swinging a sword and getting 1.5s from events making 3g/day at most after selling all the trash

I’d like to know how low to set my expectations. Especially when I look at other vendors that have had a gold sink attached to them, ie Therm reagants.

Of the things players have sufggessted the only ones that I agree with are emotes. I would certainly grind and grind and grind for such a base feature.

On the other hand finishers, armors etc etc have been very lackluster, especially those trench coats in the medium armor department. I wouldn’t waste a copper or a second playing for those.

As others have said, I’d love it if you kept Ranks. Having both the ladder for skill invested and ranks for time invested would be great, and having two sets of finishers instead of modified versions of the old ones would be more enticing.

The only other thing I’d like is if rank up requirements were shortened. Like the ranks in WvW, having upper levels of rewards that require years of hardcore play, and several times more of casual play, sucks. I don’t mind each tier taking longer to get through than the previous tier though. Like with the restructure of achievements, having more regular updates on your progress is great. As it is, once you get into the 20s you start forgetting about rank ups ever happening except once in a blue moon if you’re a casual player. Then again, the restructured achievement paths might alleviate the fact that ranking up is the primary visual progress of your time investment.

There is an issue with this discussion though. You guys have a plan in place to replace rank/glory with something in addition to the ladder system that will also reward time invested to some unknown degree. But because we don’t know what that system is, we can’t honestly say if we’d prefer it more to glory/rank.

Since we can’t be sure of what we’re getting, we’d prefer to keep the thing that we know instead of possibly being disappointed with the thing we don’t. Plus, the best choice from our perspective would be to have both.

John Corpening.9847:

Regarding new skills, PvP will continue to have all existing skills unlocked for players. Only new skills will require unlocks. The number of skills currently in the game can be intimidating for new players. We would like to allow them some time to learn the base set while they work towards unlocking the new skills.

Maybe my reading comprehension is lower right now because I’m tired, but you’re saying that as new skills are added to the game – they will no longer be unlocked by default in sPvP ? If this is the case, are you able to detail what we will need to do in order to unlock them? I feel that if you require skills to be unlocked in sPvP you run the risk of creating a disparity between new and old players as the older ones will have more skills unlocked as time progresses, giving them access to more build diversity which could set newer players at a disadvantage. I felt this disparity when playing GW1 for the first time earlier this year for HoM points – not being able to unlock crucial skills for particular setups really put me at a disadvantage and I would hate to see that come here – as in my opinion sPvP’s equitable playing field (class balance aside of course) is what truly sets it apart from almost any pvp mode I’ve played before.

I can see why this might be considered a way to give sPvP players a sense of progression (the more you play, the more skills you unlock) but I feel that it might actually create a kind of vertical progression. Instead of differentiating players by which skills they have unlocked, I believe it would be more fitting for this game to have different skill skins as a form of progression rather than the actual skills themselves. Maybe one unlock could change meteor shower on staff ele look like actual space rocks, or thief cluster bombs look like skulls – not the greatest examples but these kinds of changes would not create power disparity between players who have skills unlocked and those who don’t (especially given the nature of flavour of the month builds and skills at it stands).

Josh Davis.6015:

New skills being added to the game will be unlockable via skill points. This also applies to new utilities and elites. For PvP specifically, this means you’ll need to purchase Tomes of Knowledge to level up your character and unlock skill points.

Curious, does this mean the Tomes will be available even after the Glory change?
Secondly, would Scrolls of Knowledge also work if used say from PvE? I’m just wondering if its Skill Points universally that are a factor in obtaining these.

Josh Davis.6015:

Oprah.1347:

John Corpening.9847:

Regarding new skills, PvP will continue to have all existing skills unlocked for players. Only new skills will require unlocks. The number of skills currently in the game can be intimidating for new players. We would like to allow them some time to learn the base set while they work towards unlocking the new skills.

Maybe my reading comprehension is lower right now because I’m tired, but you’re saying that as new skills are added to the game – they will no longer be unlocked by default in sPvP ? If this is the case, are you able to detail what we will need to do in order to unlock them? I feel that if you require skills to be unlocked in sPvP you run the risk of creating a disparity between new and old players as the older ones will have more skills unlocked as time progresses, giving them access to more build diversity which could set newer players at a disadvantage. I felt this disparity when playing GW1 for the first time earlier this year for HoM points – not being able to unlock crucial skills for particular setups really put me at a disadvantage and I would hate to see that come here – as in my opinion sPvP’s equitable playing field (class balance aside of course) is what truly sets it apart from almost any pvp mode I’ve played before.

New skills being added to the game will be unlockable via skill points. This also applies to new utilities and elites. For PvP specifically, this means you’ll need to purchase Tomes of Knowledge to level up your character and unlock skill points.

Thank you for the clarification, but I must object to this system. I really do think this will create vertical progression in a sense – basically if you don’t have the gold (which is what the tomes will eventually cost) you won’t be able to buy the skills you need for whatever meta is in place. Having meta skills is important to remaining competitive, putting a gold barrier to skills in a game mode whose foundation is based on every player coming to the table with equal loadouts (it didn’t like my other word) seems almost unintuitive. I see John’s point in not wanting to overwhelm players, but I also think that you should be giving us the benefit of the doubt in terms of what we’re capable of handling at first glance. The PvP community in GW2 provides many detailed guides that would be great for new players to sift through limitless numbers of skills. I am just worried this system could lead to having to farm gold to buy skills to be competitive.

What happened to everyone being on an open playing field with skills though? That was one of the ways GW2 PvP is so unique in that you could jump right in with all the skills. I am not sure the right direction is taking that away.

It seems more like a gating mechanic that goes against what GW2 PvP was supposed to be about. I am all for more rewards and gold and doing away with glory. But please reconsider how you are planning to do new skills.

Okay what I want on a very specific level:
A One-handed sword that is a sword-whip like Ivy’s from soul caliber, that dangle’s when not un use, but brought out, and is together when sheathed, and when you swing is whips around like a bamf.

IE: http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/12/127694/2488646-ivy-valentine-soulcalibur-broken-destiny-picture.jpg (excuse the massive boobs)

Josh Davis.6015:

New skills being added to the game will be unlockable via skill points. This also applies to new utilities and elites. For PvP specifically, this means you’ll need to purchase Tomes of Knowledge to level up your character and unlock skill points.

if that is the case then isn’t it much easier to use a PvE character with lots of skill points to unlock the new skills?

I wouldn’t change the stance on PvP being a even playingfield, this could frustrate a lot of players. A compromise: Give everyone each skill in sPvP but once you leave that area of the game, the new skills can’t be used anymore. Instead you have to buy a PvE version of that skill.

John Corpening.9847:

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

I think the rate of rank acquisition should be accelerated. It took me 7 months of semi-hardcore play to reach rank 51 (564,000 points). To reach the coveted dragon rank I would need nearly 9,000,000 points (and as high as 15,000,000 to attain the Legendary Champion title). If I maintain my rather unhealthy rate of play, it would take a total of 9.5 years (I assume we’d be well into GW3 by that point)… Neither hardcore nor casual players have any hope of achieving this absurd goal. Therefore, my thought is to keep the ranking system, but to rapidly increase the amount of rank points awarded.

For example, I would favor the following formula:

• Hotjoin: win = 800 points / loss = 300 points.
• Solo Queue: win = 1,600 points / loss = 600 points.
• Team Queue: win = 2,000 points / loss = 900 points.

At the same time, I think top stats should have their values increased: say, from 5 to 50 points per top stat.

If a scheme of this nature were ever implemented, it would be nice to see a rollback for a player’s previous accomplishments (it simply wouldn’t fair to older players). For example, you could take the top stats for all players and multiply it by a factor of 10, adjusting their ranks accordingly. Rolling back a player’s hotjoin, solo queue and tournament wins shouldn’t be much harder to execute, as these numbers are already in your database. So, if a player has 1,000 team arena wins, they’d at least be compensated in light of the new system. Likewise, with hotjoin and solo queue.

In my opinion, this is one reasonable course of action to improve the current rank system. You can’t simply erase all the time and effort invested by the current pvp population, but you also can’t leave it as it is given how absymally slow it is to move from one rank to the next. Overall, I don’t know the exact numbers needed to accomplish the best solution. I just think it should be possible for casuals and hardcore players to achieve their long-term goals. In the end, it shouldn’t take more than 2.5 years to achieve the highest possible rank for a hardcore player, and no more than 5 years for a casual player.

I wonder: will we get loot drops from enemies in sPvP just like in WvW? Instead of WvW tokens there could be dungeon tokens if the victim wore a dungeon set. So an enemy who wears the Arah set can drop an Arah dungeon token.

The loot won’t have to be picked up manually, but instead you get a reward-window after the battle, where you can pick up all the drops.

This could go so far as an enemy who wields a Legendary can drop crafting mats used for crafting a legendary.

i think the big problem is that sPvP is way too separated away from the start since launch, now they are trying to merge sPvP back together with PvE and WvW but the sPvP people are resisting.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder: will we get loot drops from enemies in sPvP just like in WvW? Instead of WvW tokens there could be dungeon tokens if the victim wore a dungeon set. So an enemy who wears the Arah set can drop an Arah dungeon token.

The loot won’t have to be picked up manually, but instead you get a reward-window after the battle, where you can pick up all the drops.

This could go so far as an enemy who wields a Legendary can drop crafting mats used for crafting a legendary.

this is a very creative idea! would encourage people to attack those with fancy armor weapons haha!

but, it must be carefully implemented to avoid being abused by farmers.

farmers, they can farm anything nowadays.

John Corpening.9847:

Regarding exclusivity of skins. Since skins will be shared across the game PvP will be getting exclusive skins that require participation in PvP to obtain. These will be able to be carried over into all other areas of the game. I think this was a little unclear in the blog post.

There was some confusion about the achievement rebalancing. We split up some of the pools of points into additional tiers and we added more tiers on top of that. This is to allow players to get more regular achievement rewards. Your total achievement points may go up, they won’t go down and you should hit tiers more frequently than before.

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Skins: I don’t think people are upset that all PvE/PvP skins are going to be changed. Because unlocking PvP skins is far more difficult than achieving it through PvE, the items will lose their status because of it. Of course, new skins are nice, but the fact that players have already worked so hard to get those skins is kind of a bummer, because once anybody who speedruns CoF a few times they can look the same as a rank 50 PvPer.

Rank: Of course, if you keep the current rank system, (which I personally think is one of the things done right with PvP, it’s very rewarding and takes a LONG time to rank up, so the ranks are accurately representative of the player’s “level” as opposed to everybody being 80 in PvE), you can gate the new skins to ranks. Which I personally think is the best way to go about doing this.

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

John Corpening.9847:

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

I think the rate of rank acquisition should be accelerated. It took me 7 months of semi-hardcore play to reach rank 51 (564,000 points). To reach the coveted dragon rank I would need nearly 9,000,000 points (and as high as 15,000,000 to attain the Legendary Champion title). If I maintain my rather unhealthy rate of play, it would take a total of 9.5 years (I assume we’d be well into GW3 by that point)… Neither hardcore nor casual players have any hope of achieving this absurd goal. Therefore, my thought is to keep the ranking system, but to rapidly increase the amount of rank points awarded.

For example, I would favor the following formula:

• Hotjoin: win = 800 points / loss = 300 points.
• Solo Queue: win = 1,600 points / loss = 600 points.
• Team Queue: win = 2,000 points / loss = 900 points.

At the same time, I think top stats should have their values increased: say, from 5 to 50 points per top stat.

If a scheme of this nature were ever implemented, it would be nice to see a rollback for a player’s previous accomplishments (it simply wouldn’t fair to older players). For example, you could take the top stats for all players and multiply it by a factor of 10, adjusting their ranks accordingly. Rolling back a player’s hotjoin, solo queue and tournament wins shouldn’t be much harder to execute, as these numbers are already in your database. So, if a player has 1,000 team arena wins, they’d at least be compensated in light of the new system. Likewise, with hotjoin and solo queue.

In my opinion, this is one reasonable course of action to improve the current rank system. You can’t simply erase all the time and effort invested by the current pvp population, but you also can’t leave it as it is given how absymally slow it is to move from one rank to the next. Overall, I don’t know the exact numbers needed to accomplish the best solution. I just think it should be possible for casuals and hardcore players to achieve their long-term goals. In the end, it shouldn’t take more than 2.5 years to achieve the highest possible rank for a hardcore player, and no more than 5 years for a casual player.

i agree with this.
increase the rank points acquisition, especially for solo arena and team arena.

also drastically increase the rank points rewards for top stats.
5 is too small.
50 sounds more reasonable.

John Corpening.9847:

Regarding exclusivity of skins. Since skins will be shared across the game PvP will be getting exclusive skins that require participation in PvP to obtain. These will be able to be carried over into all other areas of the game. I think this was a little unclear in the blog post.

So does this mean it will be possible to carry Tribal and Stalwart armor over to pve now? That would actually get me to play pvp. This from someone with a total glory earned of 0, and over 9700 achievement points.

Oops totally missed this topic… >.< Ah well I’ll repost here then.

===============

Hey there all… Idk if anyone has mentioned this and if so my apologies but… Why not a whole new set of finishers for the PvP Ladder?
Keep the Rank/Finisher progression as is now (unless ANet feels like amount required needs to be adjusted) and add brand new Finishers/Rewards for the Ladder players… The people who have been working their butts off grinding the ranks trying to achieve the ones they want will not be screwed over and the top % players in skill will have their special unique finishers.
I say this because these finishers have been in the game for over a year now and a lot of people made those finishers their goal & worked towards them. Do not cut them off ANet… just make new ones for your Ladder PvP and I think that would make everyone happy.

===============

Original Post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Rank-Finishers-vs-Ladder-Finishers/first#post3310872

John Corpening.9847:

So here are some questions for you.

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Thanks again!

John

1) Leave rank
2) Change glory boosters to rank boosters.
3) Remove all pvp rewards from rank progression add them in your new system as intended except for finishers.

John Corpening.9847:

Regarding gold rate, the rates chosen are based on what players can expect from average play in other areas of the game, not on farming rates.

What are “nomal” vs “farming” rates though? Is a very conservative 2g/hour per average in dungeons a “farming rate” of Gold acquisition? Or wouldn’t it be rather a standard rate for most players? Because that’s what most players do when they log in in PvE — instances, farming, or levelling alts. And levelling alts has a pathetically low pay-off even with very little expenses (only the trait tomes really), I hope you won’t go by that.
That would however mean that each and every sPvP match (let’s say the average is about 4.5/h matches if you play 1h without break) that you participated from start to end rewards about ~40s, which in turn seems a bit high.
WvW is maybe 1g/h with the most profitable venture there, a zerg train, but they do also get badges, their exclusive currency, and Ascended mats.
So either way you balance it, it’s kittened. It would be easier if you retain glory as additional currency, like said badges, or orient yourselves at mentioned dungeoneering rate, not some pathetically meager overworld alt-levelling rate of Gold acquisition. That would just be a slap in the face. No one will feel rewarded that way.
Another solution would be to give a reward chest containing a couple gold each day, emulating those from dungeons. However, I am of the opinion that daily reward chests are boring.

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Remove ranks as they currently are. Kill the grind meter with fire.
Replace it with a once-a-lifetime reward for progressing to a higher division. E.g. you progress to Dolyak/Silver/whatever division, you get a permanent Dolyak finisher and/or a silver cape. And of course a large reward chest.
Short-term rewards is gold and bouncy daily chests
Mid-term rewards is climbing higher in the ladder and achievements.
Long-term rewards is progressing to the next division, winning seasons, and getting a cool finisher/cape/unique PvP skin.
The latter two aren’t grindable and this would be great.

Keep in mind that most people who will reply to you on this are the vocal opponents to the move, while those who support the removal are merry in the “knowledge” that you’ll actually do it after they’ve read the news — even though that apparently isn’t set in stone yet.

Regarding exclusivity of skins. Since skins will be shared across the game PvP will be getting exclusive skins that require participation in PvP to obtain. These will be able to be carried over into all other areas of the game. I think this was a little unclear in the blog post.

I have to ask what method a PvE only player is expected to use to earn these skins without doing any PvP?

One of the strong points about GW2 was the hard line placed between PvP and PvE that made it OK to not enjoy PvPing. I can only see these new changes as destroying that.

aussieheals.6843:

John Corpening.9847:

So here are some questions for you.

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Thanks again!

John

Leave rank, change glory boosters to rank boosters.

ah i was hoping if we could trade in the glory boosters for other types of boosters but rank boosters will be good too.

Ohoni.6057:

Regarding exclusivity of skins. Since skins will be shared across the game PvP will be getting exclusive skins that require participation in PvP to obtain. These will be able to be carried over into all other areas of the game. I think this was a little unclear in the blog post.

I have to ask what method a PvE only player is expected to use to earn these skins without doing any PvP?

One of the strong points about GW2 was the hard line placed between PvP and PvE that made it OK to not enjoy PvPing. I can only see these new changes as destroying that.

that hard line that separated PvE and sPvP is a big mistake.

they are trying to remove that line now.

many people are resisting the change.

John Corpening.9847:

Hey All,

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Thanks again!

John

Thanks so much for the clarification.

1.) I would make the progression have more tiers (in between the ones that are already in place) as far as finishers/ranks go with less of a steep curve. That way you feel like you are progressing. I would add tiers too so that people that want super long term goals have them. I feel like this way it keeps people engaged be they sPvP vets or people who dabble.

The rest of my ideas have already been expressed. Thanks for all you guys do!

Make rank system stay as it is. What would change is the background of the finisher will have colour representing the league youre currently in. Add more tiers to rank system or lower requirements for respective ranks.

Josh Davis.6015:

New skills being added to the game will be unlockable via skill points. This also applies to new utilities and elites. For PvP specifically, this means you’ll need to purchase Tomes of Knowledge to level up your character and unlock skill points.

This isn’t perfectly clear so I may be misinterpreting it, but it sounds like in order to unlock more skills for a class, I have to have that class at an appropriate character level in order to unlock it? Or is it just simply acquiring skill points (such as if I ran around and did skillpoint challenges and such without necessarily gaining levels)

I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference, but it would be troublesome if I desire to delete a character for whatever reason and come back later to that class as something else. Deleting a character would effectively reset all of the skills unlocked.

Instead a system like that in GW1 would be better where once you gained a skill it is unlocked for the account as a whole permanently.

okies i wanna add this.

keep ranks, do not remove ranks.
but, remove the PvP armor crafting requirement associated with ranks.
errr find something else to replace that.

so, rank will only be used as a measurement of one’s level of participation in sPvP.

how does that sound for everyone?

Something I want comment on is that if Legendary weapons are obtainable through PvP, then it is important that players have to do a broad range of different actions to acquire them. In PvE you can’t just farm one area of the game, you have to clear maps, farm numerous different locations, do quests for glory, basically you have to do a little bit of everything to acquire legendary equipment.

If it takes ~200 dedicated hours to acquire legendary in PvE, then acquiring it in PvP shouldn’t simply take ~200 dedicated hours of farming out glory or whatever it is. I realize glory is being removed, but it is the idea of farming out in a single game mode or whatever it is in PvP.

I can easily see it being tied to “reaching first in your ladder division” or something, but that would be boring too, as the appeal of legendary items largely comes from being able to consistently work at something and seeing progress towards it over time, rather than just a rush to reach some goal within a single ladder season.

Don’t get me wrong on the last point though. Some items being exclusive to doing well in a ladder season is fine, but it is nice to also have some grand goal that spans across multiple seasons without losing progress over time.

There are many other things to say about legendary items in general that has already been mentioned, from the flashy and possibly distracting effects, the exclusivity of PvP vs PvE versions, etc. But that is something to be left to other discussions.

(TL;DR) Simply if there are some super legendary skins players can work towards, simply have it require play of different kinds, with different things to “grind” towards obtaining it. Likening it to GW1, you shouldn’t be able to simply grind out a billion balthazar faction to obtain it.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wouldn’t change the stance on PvP being a even playingfield, this could frustrate a lot of players. A compromise: Give everyone each skill in sPvP but once you leave that area of the game, the new skills can’t be used anymore. Instead you have to buy a PvE version of that skill.

THIS!
A new player would have a big disadvantage in PvP if new skills have to be unlocked with skill points! DONT DO THIS! Keep it the way it is: Everything (Runes, Sigills, Skills, Traits) available in PvP without restriction.
If i am correct, all you try to achive with this whole skillpoint thing, is to allow pvp players to lvl in pve… Why not just replace the pvp-glory boosters with exp tonics? Acc bound as the boosters atm… available through mysic forge if you need more, available through the daily (might be interesting for pve players too). Don’t reinvent everything new, you already have greate stuff out there, that is currently useless! I’m personaly am not using any kind of booster at all, so replacing glory boosters with other boosters would be like making crap beeing another crap…

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder: will we get loot drops from enemies in sPvP just like in WvW? Instead of WvW tokens there could be dungeon tokens if the victim wore a dungeon set. So an enemy who wears the Arah set can drop an Arah dungeon token.

The loot won’t have to be picked up manually, but instead you get a reward-window after the battle, where you can pick up all the drops.

This could go so far as an enemy who wields a Legendary can drop crafting mats used for crafting a legendary.

this is a very creative idea! would encourage people to attack those with fancy armor weapons haha!

but, it must be carefully implemented to avoid being abused by farmers.

farmers, they can farm anything nowadays.

THIS… would be a rather bad idea.
The goal in PvP is to win! Not to kill/farm other people.
What your idea would cause is that i would have much trouble in soloQ, because my team would constantly chase their ele with 4 ppl because it is an easy kill… but we would loose the game!
DON’T DO THIS!

John Corpening.9847:

So here are some questions for you.

Would you keep rank acquisition the same as it is now?

If not, what would you do to improve rank acquisition?

Thanks again!

John

I would keep the aquisition as is is right now! If you change something here you once more slap into the face of the players, that have already put a lot of work into their rank. If you massively increas the rank gain, a new player would be able to gain the same rank a veteran player almost a year for (lets say rank 50) in a month.

BUT i would like to see the curve at the end (Phoenix, Dragon) to be more flat. As pointed out by Gesamtkunstwerk.6590 in this thread, it would take over 9 years to get the dragon. THIS is way to long! I would rather like to see this achivable in around 2 years of playing, so it shows that you are experienced, but you would be able to show it one day… and not in 10 years when noone is playing the game anymore.
Other thing you could do is increase the rank gain based on the ladder position. High ladder position = double rank points? (Would not use 10 trillion times more rank points… keep it rewarding, but do not overextend!) But on the other hand, many ppl mentioned that rank is more a personal progress bar, rather than a “Skill-meter”, so increase the gain based on ladder position might be not the best option you got.

John Corpening.9847:

First off, on Dec. 10th we are adding a new vendor that sells items for both glory and gold. Players will not be able to simply buy all the rewards with gold but will also need to use glory which amounts to time spent in PvP. This vendor is temporary until the next phase rolls out. It will be there so you can spend your glory before the new system comes into play. The new system inherently factors in time. We will discuss that system more when we are ready. As soon as we are able, we will let you know when the glory vendor will be removed.

Can you please tell us what the vendor will sell?
T6 -mats?
only pvp specific things? What could that be?

John Corpening.9847:

Regarding gold rate, the rates chosen are based on what players can expect from average play in other areas of the game, not on farming rates. It is not our intent to make PvP a better place to farm but to make it about on par with what a typical player can expect in other areas of the game. Some of you have correctly noted that time spent in PvP doesn’t contain many of the gold sinks that PvE players experience and this has been factored in.

I don’t know what you think a typical player is… So this staement is saying exactly nothing!
A typical player might be a farmer (this grazy ppl that are running around in circles creating a so called “zergs”, that spamm all their skills on a single champion). 4-x gold per hour. (sry i dont know the numbers, i am not in the circle business)
A typical player ould be someone who is loging in and is standing in Lions Arch for 20 min spamming in the chat about some stuff no healthy man would even care about… making exactly = gold per hour, but get reportet 100 times/hour.
A typical player could be someone who is doing just events (No, not the world bosses, normal events!) and heart quests do get the 100%. 10 silver – MAX 1g per hour. You probably remember the threads saying “Fast travel costs are WAY to high”. This people have still this problem… The way they play is just not rewarding ^^
A typical player could be a dungeon runner… 1g per 10-15 min which is the average time of a pvp match… so can we expect to get 1g per match? WOW!

=> give us numbers, or the whole discussion is pointless

Any plans if the gold reward is availabe only in soloQ/teamQ and maybe less in hj? or will it also be availabe on private arenas? CAREFULL! Gold attracts a lot of dubious people… I can the the private arenas “24/7 gold farm arena, join red team – blue team is automatically filled with bots”. Please keep an eye on that… An PLEASE if anything goes wrong with the gold reward… REMOVE IT INSTANTLY! Dont wait a month until you announce, that i might be removed in the future… ACT AS SOON AS YOU CAN SEE ANY SIGN OF ABUSE! (I used capital letters, because i think you have to see this and pay a lot of attention!)