Guild Wars 2

Speaking as someone that does both PvE and PvP but leaning signficantly more on the PvE spectrum, here is what I think.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
Team and individual.

With brackets for skill level. So depending on how many PvP games you have played you will be place within bronze, silver and gold. This will allow players that intentional tank their rating to avoid fighting players of higher skill level and gives noobs a decent chance even and illusion of chance a chance of standing a chance.

Then at the end the best team and players fight.

How long should a season last?
7 to 9 weeks but preferably 8 weeks.

What would motivate you to play in one?What types of rewards would you like to see?

Nice rewards that are applicable to both PvP and PvE. Sicne we don’t know the new progression system, I cannot comment on exactly what. But assuming you go through with letting PvE skins into PvP and vice versa, unique armor skins, gems, ascended materials ( a decent amounts more a few hundred since it is over an 8 week period).
Gems for the winner, custom perma finisher. Exclusive legendary skins for the winners/team.

How would a player earn these rewards?

Some of the basic rewards you win it by reaching a certain threshold similar to monthly and dalies. But the most important thing is that they cannot directly include capturing control points or killing players because it will make people tempted to not work holding points but instead going to cap points and zerging.

Number of matches should be rewarded and wins. Number of matches should give more and better rewards than winning matches, so that you are not screwed for having back luck.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

Better rewards. I mean really really good rewards. I mean like rewards that doesn’t punish the PvEer (assuming that is your intent) for leaving their easy PvE farm to go do PvP. So give them a few ascended mats and champ loot boxes with a chance for ascended and precursor equipment as usual, similar to world bosses.

But the most important thing is that you have to find a way to separate the experienced players from the pure nooobs. Which will mean make brackets that completely prevents grouping players who have no experience with some that do because PvPers tend to be extremely rude to players when they don’t have it their way, which discourages certain players from returning.

The goal should be to give enough rewards per match for the equivalent amount in PvE. I keep saying ascended materials, make it so that they can drop from the PvP side for winning a match.

Include an ingame method for popular builds. It will be a good start for the new players since their. And for god sakes please improve the game’s balance but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
How long should a season last? — 4-5 Months

What would motivate you to play in one? — Having smaller skirmishes, 2v2 or 3v3 deathmatch. Anything larger with the currently dead player base is not even worth investing time in my opinion.

What types of rewards would you like to see? — Gems, gold, skins only available to pvp for the top winners, and for the love of god please make use of the wall of champions thing in the mists reflecting each season.

How would a player earn these rewards? — Top 5, top 10 teams in each bracket gets pvp only skins reflecting that they are the best. Assuming there is something more than conquest in the foreseeable future “cough 2v2 or 3v3 deathmatch”. If there isn’t then I probably won’t come back, sorry it’s just stale at this point.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate? I can’t even get my friends to play now. Hotjoin you have to wait to get on teams with random team switch, soloq you can’t, and team que with 2 people you’re just going to get rolled by a pre-made. Your system is beyond flawed, make a que time for hotjoin, make small skirmish battles so I can encourage my friends to come back.

Even with the pre-existing player base, 2v2 for example, you have more teams overall which is more appealing and gives everyone more incentive to play because the teams are not confined with having a bunker guardian “assuming you come out with small scale deathmatch”, this opens the flood gates for more teams to play. Having a league is good, however keeping it with conquest is just a really bad idea. And this is assuming your ladder works out. Also I hope to god that those dissipation traits are fake on the “false” patch notes. If so you probably won’t see me around anyways. But it was a fun run regardless.

Countless

Writetyper.1985:

…because even PU mesmers are better than dealing with Decap.

Quote of the season.

If ladders/leagues are brought into PvP with conquest mode still being the only gam choice, and with builds like decap engi still being highly effective with little to no risk, this is going to be too painful for anyone who still enjoys the combat in this game to bother sticking around.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

Profession based ranks for accounts. Every profession on an account gets ranked separately. This way, when Johnny is trying out his Guardian for the first time, he is ranked differently than his 90% ranked Thief. When he deletes his Guardian and makes a new one 2 months later, he doesn’t get to start over because it’s per profession on the account.

The https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/player-vs-player-rewards-roadmap/ was almost 3 months ago. Has work already started on this “long term” stuff? To be frank, asking us about it now when you could have asked us 3 months ago seems like a long time to wait. These CDI’s are starting to feel more and more like an appeasement process on your guy’s end than something that is actually happening. Does it make sense where we would think that a 3 month gap in the announcement of something, and then asking our opinion on what should be in it is kind of a long time to wait?

I hope this isn’t the case, but if it is, it’s super frustrating for those of us that keep playing PvP. I play it because I love it, but this whole time I was thinking that you guys were working on that “long term” stuff you said you were working on. Now it seems you aren’t. What the heck is going on?

my first and biggest suggestion on this CDI is simple.

if implementing such things (ladder/leagues/seasons), leave solo + team tournaments in game. dont remove them.
there is enough time to remove them afterwards, if it really happens to get less popular.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?

Something similar to the way Starcraft runs it’s system. Players get placed into divisions (Bronze/Rabbit, Silver/Dolyak, Gold/Wolf, Masters/Phoenix, etc) based on their skill level with placement matches at the start of the season and then they battle it out for top spots in their divisions and to move up throughout the course of the season.

How long should a season last?

2-3 months seems like a good number.

What would motivate you to play in one?

Ability to attain skins and/or other always visible vanity items (not finishers) only attainable through this system

What types of rewards would you like to see?

see above

How would a player earn these rewards?

Different rewards for placing in different divisions at the end of the season. Extra rewards for players in the top X% at the end of the season.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

Guarantee end of season rewards for players that participated enough in this system (meta achievement?)

Edit:

Iason Evan.3806:

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

Profession based ranks for accounts. Every profession on an account gets ranked separately. This way, when Johnny is trying out his Guardian for the first time, he is ranked differently than his 90% ranked Thief. When he deletes his Guardian and makes a new one 2 months later, he doesn’t get to start over because it’s per profession on the account.

I like this idea. I feel it would help to encourage new players to try new classes without worrying about their rating falling through the floor.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?

Divisions or tiers. From Bronze to Platin and even further. Highest division would open up to ‘professional play’ (like challenger division in League of Legends). Also possibly an amateur-division for players not being able to play more than 1-2 hours per day if they want to have more of a challenge.
Issue: Glicko-2 system and rating derivation among other issues.
Possible Solution: An Elo-rating on highest division with a decent decay. Lower divisions would have an Elo-Rating just determining their MMR. Lower divisions would have League points to get up to higher tiers in their division or even transcend to a higher division. Also, a certain amount of inactivity should result in a drop to lower tiers or divisions (possibly 3-4 weeks ?).
Possibly profession-based rankings for SoloQ, but account-bound for TeamQ.

How long should a season last?

3 months
Issue: Stretching out a season for too long or keeping it too short.
Reason: 3 months allow for a reasonable amount to get to higher tier when many matches can be played per day. It is also not too long and doesn’t necessarily allow players to go on a break and rush to the top near the end of a season.

What would motivate you to play in one?

Issues: No competition, no rewards, no recognition.
Solution: Certain changes in terms of MMR (no 4vs5s) and first and foremost balance (and that way more frequent for a game wanting to be competitive or esports). Then exclusive rewards and a chance to be recognized by a broad playerbase.

What types of rewards would you like to see?

Possibly exclusive skins (and maybe finishers), exclusive capes or backpacks similar to the gold trim capes back in GW1, possibly a similar star as world map completion with the colour of the division and number of season I have participated in at the end of a season. Fancier the higher the division gets. And what Countless said, being on the Wall of Champions is also a suitable reward.
(I personally like Skins and capes as well a mention on the Wall of Champions the most)

How would a player earn these rewards?

By ending up in a specific devision at the end of a season. Maybe even with various positions in possible tiers in each division, kind of like tier 1 to X.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

One is the recognition out of participating in leagues and especially being in a higher division. Then there are exclusive rewards to show it to others. And lastly, working MMR and more challenging gameplay. Right now, the balance is off with slower gameplay (past quickness nerf) and certain design choices (high viability of passive things, AI, invulnerabilities/hard counters, very low frequency of balance changes, difficulty vs reward) and if leagues are introduced to SoloQ, MMR has to be fixed so 4vs5s are not possible and if someone leaves and won’t come back in 1-2 minutes, they can get Dishonorable and the empty spot can be filled by someone volunteering (possibly not getting any rating but a specific reward). These 2 things play a very, very important and essential role in the enjoyment of the game and has made many players quit or switch to PvE/WvW, especially competitive.
In terms of leagues for various game modes, I think this idea should not be left out and checked in competitiveness and fairness to have it be implemented for other game types, possibly even further splitting things (in terms of skills) between game modes to allow for competition and fairness.
Also, please keep TeamQ and SoloQ and further add unrated queues to these.
And remove Skyhammer and Spirit Watch from SoloQ.

Trigr.6481:

What types of rewards would you like to see? — Gems, gold, skins only available to pvp for the top winners,

I disagree with this on a fundamental level and was delighted when the rewards from season one weren’t crazily skewed towards the winning servers.

Incentivising people to move to already powerful servers is the great danger that I think Arenanet are aware of.

I would therefore propose an alternative of smaller rewards for the higher up a ladder or league one ends at. At the same time, like Trigr suggests, an in-game wall of champions would be a superb way of celebrating achievement without rewarding the powerful with more power.

Proposal Overview
There was nothing truly wrong with the original vision of a automated tournament system. It should have been tweaked, not scrapped entirely. A unranked solo and team que should’ve been added to the game quickly after release.
Goal of Proposal
The competitive scene in Guild Wars 2 is non-existent and it is time ANET step up and actually support the community that made Guild Wars 1 a successful game.
Proposal Functionality
Teams will be given a chance to sign up for automated daily tournaments. Teams earn qualifying pts based on how they perform in those daily tournaments. Substantial gold is rewarded to the teams that place in the top 3. Two tournaments are held at the end of every week, one for NA and one for EU. Each player must have a set number of qualifying points earned during the week to be on a roster. Teams are then ranked based on their overall performance in these weekly tournaments on a leader board. At the end of the month, the teams ranked highest on the leader board (the cut off being your choice) compete in a tournament. Gems are rewarded to the teams that place in the top 3. At the end of the year, teams that have placed in at least one monthly tournament are brought back to play in one last tournament to decide the winner of that year’s championship.
Associated Risks
If you fail to release a league system within the next 3 months, the competitive PVP community will decay even further and may be beyond saving.
This system WILL require tweaks based on community feedback each offseason. The time of painstakingly forming a PERFECT system out the gates, however, has passed.

Svarty.8019:

Trigr.6481:

What types of rewards would you like to see? — Gems, gold, skins only available to pvp for the top winners,

I disagree with this on a fundamental level and was delighted when the rewards from season one weren’t crazily skewed towards the winning servers.

Incentivising people to move to already powerful servers is the great danger that I think Arenanet are aware of.

I think this is a bit of an irrelevancy though. In SPvP this wont be an issue because players will be relying on themselves, not their servers, to achieve these rewards.

^
sPvP is region-wide, meaning whole Europe or North America.

Proposal Overview
System for Leagues
Goal of the Proposal
The intention of these ideas for the League system in Structured PvP is to provide a basis for structured rewards that feel rewarding to acquire, are fun to show off, and can be easily extended. This system assumes that there would be multi-month long seasons.

Details of Proposal with examples
Each division, as an example, would have 100 players in it. Within each division there would be certain thresh holds to acquire certain rewards. These rewards could potentially be armor sets, with individual pieces being rewarded at specific rank levels.

For example: Bob is placed 80th in his division. This allows him to purchase the armor set item: boots for (x) gold. Harry is placed in 3rd place, which allows him to purchase armor set items: boots,gloves,legs,chest,helm, and shoulders for (x) gold.

The armor would be an armor set that is exclusive to sPvP, but has an additional particle effect based on league. This would allow players to progress through each league and earn armor sets that distinguish their rough placement for the season.

Assuming the division order is Bronze then Silver; this is how the rewards would play out. Bob is placed 3rd place in Bronze division. He buys a full set of his bronze level armor with corresponding bronze shiny particle effects. Harry just got high enough to qualify for Silver division, so he is now in 80th place in the Silver division. Harry can now buy the full armor set from the bronze division in addition to the boots from the Silver division. Harry can now run around in all of his Bronze division gear with the replacement Silver division shiny boots.

End of Season Rewards

Achievement category with completion being possible without particular placement that rewards a weapon of the players choice. In addition, players that are in the top division would earn a title as well as a weapon with the same skin, but with a particle effect.

Proposal Functionality
*Multi-month seasons
*No new currency use, only gold
*Reward based on individual league placement
*Armor skin reward with corresponding league appearance
*Showing progression through armor
*One armor skin set per season (outside additional particle effects)
*One weapon set (outside additional particle effects)
*End of season participation rewards; including weapon skin
*End of season top performer awards; including weapon skin and title
*Strong potential for continued expansion of rewards through future seasons
Associated Risks
*The reward structure could result in people “skipping” lower tier division armor in order to save gold.
*Lower tier particle effects could look better to some people; making the system less progressive
*Players could get the skin they want and then stop pvping due to lack of other incentives

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
For leagues, I would like to see at least, a 2v2 and 5v5 league, both soloq and teamq viable, like we have now. For ladders, I would like to see a system similar to SC2 where there is no leaderboard, but placed in a ladder based on your performance, per class, not account wide. With maybe 5-6 different ladders, like, Skrit, Quaggan, Tengu, Hylek,Destroyer, Dragon, etc…keep`m GW2 themed

How long should a season last?
3 months, quarters are a great way to divide a year.

What would motivate you to play in one?
The options to play by myself, and to play with a team, much like the current tournament system.

What types of rewards would you like to see?
Obviously, a currency that is useable in all aspects of the game, Laurels and gold, and the ability to pursue finishers, and back items, titles that are ladder specific. An end of the season reward for those in the top of what ever ladder they may be in, keep it % based, not a specific number of players, cuz that is too similar to a leaderboard. Also, access to more novelty items to be used in the heart of the mists. Like the Quaggan tonics.

How would a player earn these rewards?
Some rewards should be at the end of the season, and most should be progress based. Like, maybe I am in the Quaggan ladder, but I want a Dragon ladder skin, let me trade in like 45 Quaggan tokens for something that would cost like 5 Dragon tokens to someone in the Dragon ladder.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
By making each ladder reward a player, and giving access to higher up ladder rewards, even if a player is not in that ladder. Restrictions are no bueno, but hard work is fine. Like, every ladder should have specific end of the season rewards, so those in the lower ladders get things that those in the higher ladders don’t. Then there is nothing really shameful about being in a “lower” tier.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
Ladder divisions based on the personal character rating. NOT account wide! You win games, you gain points, you lose games, you lose points. 5v5 only!

Goal of Proposal
Having personal character rating and not account bound one will allow for better matching of the players. 5v5 is the only scenario you could possibly balance.

How long should a season last?
2-3 months or so.

What would motivate you to play in one?
Rewards that are usable in PvP and PvE, like armor and weapon skins, but cool ones, not like the latest additions in the gem store… Good balanced system with balanced classes that is fun to play and won’t make me rage, like the current one.

How would a player earn these rewards?
Either spend the points you earn or get parts of gear on different rank limits.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
Rewards and balance that will make it fun and skill dependent.

It’s already made in other games, just see what they did. After all the nonsense from WoW their arenas were actually good and enjoyable experience (5v5!).

And as others said, there are too many things to fix before you do that.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
Several tiers. At the beginning of each season everyone should be reset, so there is a fresh playing field for everyone. The first month’s result decide which tier you are in and the second is matches only in your tier.

How long should a season last?
About 2 months. Any longer and people could give up, when they don’t see any more chances for themselves.

What would motivate you to play in one?
Rewards and good matches. Good matches are fair matches. For that 4v5 and afk needs to be solved. Skyhammer and Spirit Watch need to be removed or at least changed due to class imbalance issues (suggestions have been made). Warrior supremacy needs to be addressed.

What types of rewards would you like to see?
Exclusive Skins, Titles, additions to existing skins (like the Guild symbols)

How would a player earn these rewards?
I think this should be different for Team Queue and Solo Queue:

• A team should win as a team, so only winning a match awards points.
• However a solo player who has no choice with whom he is teamed up should get points for achieving goals in a match. Essentially everything that shows up on the scorecard should give at least the same total amount of points as winning. It’s important that non-obvious things like bunkering and going to save a team mate are also taken into account.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
The rewards will be a big selling point. So there should be many rewards along the way, small ones at first, getting bigger as the season moves on, including some guaranteed ones. For every tier.

More rewards can lead to more rage from certain players. This will almost certainly drive new players away. There needs to be a working, easy report-system, that takes quick, justified action.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
Server-based ladders would be interesting. The more you split up a ladder, the more people will get to be high ranked, which encourages more people to play. You could then take the top leaders from each server and have them compete against each other.

How long should a season last?
Hmm…not sure on this. A month or two? I’d rather it be too long than too short.

What would motivate you to play in one?
ANet should make a big deal about it. Advertise it like the Living Story. Make random games viewable by players similar to how GW1 was. Post write-ups of high end matches. Put some energy into it and you’ll get it back. Appropriate entry levels would also be a motivation. See “How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?” for more.

What types of rewards would you like to see?
The standard armor/weapon skin stuff is nice, but custom emotes similar to the rank emotes would be awesome too. That way it’s more than just another finisher since we already have so many.

How would a player earn these rewards?
There should be entry rewards for playing x number of games or signing up as well as high level, exclusive rewards for top performers.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

This is a big one and could be a make or break for how much participation you get but create custom entry levels. There should be a rookie entry, veteran entry, and pro entry. One of the biggest hurdles for new players is getting smashed by more experienced players.

Ensuring that you actually have rookies in your rookie section may be tough, but providing lesser rewards for rookie levels and/or using current ratings could be used for this.

Zuik.7158:

silvermember.8941:

Zuik.7158:

Iason Evan.3806:

These CDI’s are starting to feel more and more like an appeasement process on your guy’s end than something that is actually happening.

Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

The CDI have had some effect mainly in PvE. The way scarlet has improve and certain additions like her hideou and the players interaction with Majory with the investigation are the result of player complaints about the player’s role.

If you are doing CDI expecting immediate changes then you are missing the point of them and the reality of developing an MMORPG.
1. Just because a CDI exist doesn’t mean it will be implemented, they are simply asking for ideas.
2. Assuming there is a good idea, the time it takes to design and implement the idea will take a few months. You probably wont see major changes to the game because the developer is lagging by a few months. You will probably see it later.

With that said, if you are not too happy about the results, you don’t have to participate. It doesn’t hurt to participate and if you are on the forums you are probably doing something less significant than contributing to a CDI.

They are asking for ideas under circumstances that will result in a mass response of mostly non-implementable (excuse my english) but strong ideas simply because people do not know what major changes are already upcoming for sPvP.

So yes, I believe this CDI thread is just another way of giving players hope. As for the other CDI threads, they are very far from this hole and probably contribute to the game a lot more.

I would agree if it was about new mechanics in PvP or new feature. Rewards are not on the same scale as redesigning mechanics and or new feature.

The questions seem more about rewards that will attract players to ladder and less about major changes. Implementing rewards to attract players now that they are not longer concerned about completely separating PvP from PvE and vice versa.

But like I said, they are not forcing you to participate. You can ignore it and go on your merry way.

T

Lordrosicky.5813:

Zuik.7158:

silvermember.8941:

Zuik.7158:

Iason Evan.3806:

These CDI’s are starting to feel more and more like an appeasement process on your guy’s end than something that is actually happening.

Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

The CDI have had some effect mainly in PvE. The way scarlet has improve and certain additions like her hideou and the players interaction with Majory with the investigation are the result of player complaints about the player’s role.

If you are doing CDI expecting immediate changes then you are missing the point of them and the reality of developing an MMORPG.
1. Just because a CDI exist doesn’t mean it will be implemented, they are simply asking for ideas.
2. Assuming there is a good idea, the time it takes to design and implement the idea will take a few months. You probably wont see major changes to the game because the developer is lagging by a few months. You will probably see it later.

With that said, if you are not too happy about the results, you don’t have to participate. It doesn’t hurt to participate and if you are on the forums you are probably doing something less significant than contributing to a CDI.

They are asking for ideas under circumstances that will result in a mass response of mostly non-implementable (excuse my english) but strong ideas simply because people do not know what major changes are already upcoming for sPvP.

So yes, I believe this CDI thread is just another way of giving players hope. As for the other CDI threads, they are very far from this hole and probably contribute to the game a lot more.

3, The cdi’s will attract “newbie” pvp players mainly, who might have opinions but their opinions are based on less experience and so are often misleading. The result of this CDI will be negative for the community therefore. Even the people suggesting stuff will be QQing about the stuff they suggest further down the road when they understand the game and its flaws.

Did you consider that was the point of this? Why would they be removing breaking all the ways around PvP and PvE if it wasn’t to attract a lot of potential PvPers that are avoiding PvP since it has no rewards.

This seems less about bringing back Old PvPs and more about attracting new ones.

1v1, 2v2, 3v3 Deathmatch Ladders

Proposal Overview
Teams of 1, 2, or 3 face off against each other, each with a supply of lives, in a timed match. When a player is defeated, their team loses a life. To win, the players will try to exhaust the opposite team’s supply of lives. If the time ends without a victor, the team that has done the most damage wins.

Goal of Proposal and Functionality
The goal of this proposal is to add an other gamemode to spvp that is amenable with a ladder system. While I believe a ladder system would be an excellent addition to the current sPvP enviroment, using the cap-and-hold gamemode would present some drawbacks. Since a team of 5 is required for cap-and-hold, if a ladder system were introduced, the decision would need to be made whether to require a fixed team in each ladder match, or to base one’s place on the ladder by their success regardless of team. Neither of those options are viable: Note that the latter would require that the ladder not allow premade teams for fairness, which certainly would keep many people from playing. On the other hand, it is certainly an additional burden to insure that your 4 other teammates are all on and willing to play at the same time, which would most likely to preclude all but the most serious of teams to compete.

By using smaller teams, each scored as a unit in a ladder system, one would avoid the problems above while still offering an exciting new gamemode and ladder system.

Associated Risks
Balance issues. The problem with such a mode would be that it would become very boring if you run too many bunker or stealth type playstyles – hence the time limit and the ability to win by out damaging your opponent if no team wins decisively. Also arena design would be very important.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?

Some type of brackets that defined skill level. I will give an example that are already in place for other games; Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, etc. The list can go on from how you want it to. There can be divisions as well. Bronze 1, Gold 5, or Diamond 3. That would define how high up some one is in there division. Also showing being able to see my rating so I can see my personal progress outside of divisions and leagues would not hurt.

How long should a season last?

7 to 9 weeks sounds best, 8 would be preferable. This amount of time gives people enough time to get their high end goals that they are aiming for.

What would motivate you to play in one?What types of rewards would you like to see?

Some high end goals that make it worth playing in high tier play. Some examples could be finishers, or titles, armor skins, weapon skins. Gems can also be rewarded. Maybe only in the highest leagues reward gems, and for wins. There really needs to something just anything that distinguishes skill for this kind of system. The reward could simply be making it to a Grandmaster/Challenger League and those would be the best teams/players.

How would a player earn these rewards?

At the end of a 7 – 9 week period or 8 week period that’s when the end of the season could be. before then let the players know, some might already know the season is ending. For some of the rewards you can give them out at the end, titles, finishers etc. Gems, you those can be done during a season. There could also be different rewards for different leagues. For example; say I was a platinum 1 and I finished that in GW2 with the new Leagues and Seasons system, I could get my own kind of reward maybe a title, or a finsher. Just something that says, “Hey look I tried, and I am still better than some of these players, and I might try next season.”

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

Giving players of all skill level different incentives. Not ever player is going to go for gold. Not every player wants to be the very best, like no one every was. So I will reiterate, my point from above, different rewards for different tiers of play. Another example; Say I am a Silver 1, “Well I enjoy playing GW2, maybe I will watch some of the guys on the twitch.tv streams and see if I can learn anything.” The very utmost important thing is there needs to be a different kind of experience in different levels of play spread across the brackets, or leagues and the divisions.

There are a number of games with league systems that we can rip from and tweak. Here’s one, but this may not be the one that best fits Guild Wars 2.

Proposal:
Make a League similar to what’s currently in Starcraft 2.

Attributes of Starcraft 2’s League:
Ranking:

• The detailed explanation can be found here but I’ll provide a quick summary: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Battle.net_Leagues
• There are two primary details about the SC2 system that I feel should not be overlooked. First is the fact that there is a public rating system that is separate from but informed by a private MMR system. There are seven levels of ranks named off of alloys. Each of these levels represents a percentage of the active ranked playing population. The top level, titled Grandmaster, doesn’t follow a percentage however and instead is only given to a flat number of the highest rated individuals. In SC2, that becomes the top 200 players in a region (the regions being NA, EU, and Asia). To rank up, you must consistently keep your rating points above a cut off level for several matches. Each rank level has a cutoff, and rating is gained and lost from playing against other players, so the fact that there’s a total number of points in the system helps to preserve the percentage of players in each rank.
• The second detail is a bonus pool that works off the public rating points system. Normally, you gain and lose rating points with every win and loss. But in addition, every X number of minutes you get points added to a pool that maxes out after a week. Whenever you win a match on top of the rating points you normally get you also get bonus points from this pool. Whenever you lose a match your rating points are first deducted from this pool. This serves three purposes: players that play often get to see numbers go up, this effectively acts as a global decay system for ratings, and players that don’t play very often have a buffer so they don’t completely lose their rating while getting warmed up and reacquainted with the game.

Rewards:

• Beyond having a new rank level symbol, the only other rewards to consider are the ones already voiced by the playerbase: unique skins and finishers. Getting skins would have to be from a process that never went back down; achievements and achievement tracks. Certain skins can be tied to things already implemented in game, like winning a certain amount of ranked games with a specific class. You can give armor skins for certain types of tracks, and weapon skins for others. Achievement skins can also be given out for reaching a certain rank level for the first time in your account, even if you lose that rank level during the next season.
• Finishers are better tied to your rank symbol level; if you lose your rank, even because of a reset for the next season, you lose that finisher until you reobtain that rank symbol. I also personally think that you should only have access to the finisher of your rank level, so if you reach Master you can’t at all use the Bronze, Silver, or Gold finisher. The game already seems to be placed in this trench with certain finishers like the World Champ and WvW Season finishers but I wanted to reiterate the point.
• Almost forgot, rank levels should get a badge next to your character name (like a title) that shows across all areas of the game. When players disable titles from appearing on screen they can also disable the badges.

Issues:

• Starcraft 2’s system works well for a 1v1 game. But Guild Wars 2 is a team game where players will complain about losing points due to bad teammates (the bonus pool system will help alleviate this). The easy way to do this would just to keep the current solo queue and team queue system, but I and many others find that unsatisfying for those in groups under five players.
• Starcraft 2 goes through the trouble of having a different queue for each team size and whether you enter the queue with a specific team or go solo and get a randomized group. Starcraft 2 also remembers each and every team combination you queue up with and rates them each differently while keeping in mind that certain teams can never face each other since their rosters each share a player (for the purpose of rank level population percentages).
• The direct comparison solution would be to have a large variety of queues for different player sizes (and therefore, different modes that accomadate these different sizes), but that could easily turn into a mess. An easier solution would be to at the very least add one more mode and three small maps designed around a team size of 3v3. Then you’d have four queues: solo conquest, team conquest, solo 3v3 mode, and team 3v3 mode.

Please improve matchmaking parity first

I don’t think we are ready for ladders or seasons until we address matchmaking right now. Players of like rank and like skill need to be better matched together. I worry that ladders and seasons would isolate large groups of players from each other that might otherwise be compatible, due to the imbalance in matchmaking in the months up to this point.

We are still seeing too many matches of ranks like this: red team: 36, 13, 14, 52, 7 vs blue team: 37, 32, 28, 29, 34. Number averages don’t equal normalizing skill across a team.

Until this is fixed, you will be artificially pulling apart similarly skilled players and putting together incompatible players with any kind of additional layer of tournaments, ladders, etc. on top of a matchmaking system that isn’t working as well as it must.

Proposal Overview
+ GW2 Ladder & Season Proposed Format
+ Supporting System Changes

Goal of Proposal
+ Competitive system that encourages players to queue and progress towards high rank and rewards; along with the eventual ability to compete in an end of season event. Majority of system benefits are available at easy to obtain ranks (90%), with a small amount of unique/awesome rewards available at high ranks (10%).

Examples of high-end rewards: unique dye that causes a glow effect, unique title/finisher/skin, something on a player’s account interface that shows his/her achievement

Example of normal rewards: skins/titles/gold/etc

Proposal Functionality

How players are ’ranked’:
+ Continue to rank players based on a MMR-point system within each 20-man ladder league. Implement actual slow-decay system (remove false decay) and improve (reduce) overall volatility of MMR.

Ladder Rankings:
+ Start with base MMR, play 5 matches to determine ladder group. Hardcap ’high-end’ ladder group placed with [1/2 x highest rank].

+ Ladder Groups consist of 20 individuals all ranked from highest to lowest based on ’group-points’. Similar to how LoL allows you to rank up or down (i.e. sit at top long enough, win placement matches, move up; fall to the bottom long enough, lose matches, pushed to lower league). Likewise, hard-cap bottom end of "Quaggan" leagues (i.e. a player can only lose X amount of MMR before he can no longer lose MMR or an insigificant portion).

+ Ladder Leagues (High to Low):
- Dragon (challenger league)
- Ascended
- Black Lion
- Mystic
- Quaggan

Ladder Types:
+ Solo/Duo Queue (combine Solo & Duo together)
+ Team Queue (Solo can still queue in, same functionality as before)

Season Length:
+ 3 1/2 months
+ 1 week for ’season warm-up’
+ 1 week for ’season conclusion’
+ 4 months TOTAL

Season Completion:
+ 2-week ’Dragon League’ tournament.
+ Those that qualify with Dragon League placement have the ability to compete in a massive tournament (ideally most matches would be broadcast/hosted by Anet).
+ Winner is placed onto headstone; announced on Anet website & GW2 launcher and VoD of final match made available. Top 10 teams receive gems (or cash!), with the most gems going to winners.

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Changes outside of ’Ladders & Seasons’ that MUST occur to support this system:

+ Remove the ability to swap characters in a match (huge revamp on the system end, but required for a true competitive match)

+ Develop U.I. Queue/Load-In Screen. For example; think LoL loading screen (it shows you all ’champs selected’, their ’abilities’, also provides some tips/etc). I think this just adds more to the ’a match is starting’ type of feel.

+ Develop more game modes

+ Implement queue’ing as a ’registered team’ (i.e. Team Rank leaderboard truly reflect ’your team’ not you as an individual and how you fair in ’team rank’).

+ Implement an actual ready check on match making that re-queues the group if someone does not confirm!

+ Implement a better broadcast system that does not require active ’authorized’ broadcasters to get into.

+ Add more announcements to the Guild Wars 2 launcher that features the latest in PvP and either VoD’s of matches or Delayed ’Live matches’ for viewers to check out.

:::::::::::::::::::::

Associated Risks
This would be all positive for the community, but overall the risks here would simply be ArenaNet Development Time (i.e. cost) vs Effective Output & Community Impact (i.e. benefit). With ArenaNet’s development time, this system might also take 2-3 years to develop.

I will take the time to talk about all my thoughts concerning spvp.

How would you design it?

The ladder/season system should display a team not a single person since the format is based on a 5vs5. I think the easiest method to implement this is to post the actual guild name for the team, it’s also easy to just make a guild for a team since you can have more than one. If you think further, it’s important that not anyone of the guild is allowed to start a match which counts for your actual guild rating. The easiest solution would be to have guild officers allowed to launch a match, if you have 5 people in your guild/team you can easily grant everyone this rank, if you have a greater guild, let’s say around 40 people let the officers be responsible of what they are doing.

How would you incentivize teams to stay together?

I think it’s important to have at least 3 of 5 people of your guild to start a match. The possibility to have two guests is important if someone disconnects in a tournament and isn’t able to log back on or if there’s simply not everyone online and you want to start a rated match (reason therefore could be some more points to qualify for an important tournament). Teams would stay together if you bind the seasonal reward to a guild/team. If a person has more than a single guild/team he will only get the rewards for the guild he achieved the highest rewards with.

Would you penalize them for splitting?

There should be a two weeks time frame you have to stay in one guild to play the tournaments with (note: I’m not talking about rated matches). In the season there are daily / weekly tournaments you have to attend to qualify for the seasonal tournament which happens at the end of each season, to show which is the best guild of the season. After each season the ladder resets aswell to avoid having the same team in the top scoreboard with several names or removing dead guilds/teams from the list. Note there is just one guild/team who is able to take the cup.

What types of rewards would you include for each ‘division’ on the ladder?

Rewards are nice to have but not the primary objective. Gold/gems are no rewards in the form of prestige and aren’t worth to actually play for. A cape with a gold/silver/bronze trim would be more noticeable around the world. Also there are the options with backpieces (possible capes aswell), weapons/armor only obtainable through tournament WINS or for example dyes which have for exp. no real color but effects like clouds/storm/rainbows.

Tiny spvp improvements with high impact

1.There must be a “/resign” function for solo and teamq
If everyone of your team knows the game isn’t winnable anymore and everyone is afk in base just to end it quicker there must be a function to end the match. If someone types /resign there will be no action but if everyone comes to the same agreement and types it in the game should be over.
It’s better to have it this way then punish a group with a leaver and fights 4vs5 for another 8minutes.
2. Also there should be the function to report someone who is afk on purpose for the rest of the match so people who actually abuse the system get their debuff and sorted out for the next match.
(4 penalties and after the 5th taking action sound still fine).
3.A tutorial in the heart of the mist or a sentence at the beginning of each match telling every player not to get rank points for the points he scored! He receives just the same amount of rank points as everyone else in his team at the end of each match. The internal scoreboard and getting points for kills/capturing are misleading for a lot of newcomers. Imagine 4 persons on the same spot to capture a single point cause they want those 10 points for their rankup.
4. The observe mode should only be able to retrospectively display your last match and matches of top teams playing at the current time. You don’t need an observe mode in hotjoin to look at not proper geared teammates you need to observe the top teams and your own errors to get good.

Spvp structure improvement

1.The soloq ladder should be removed since it’s not representative.
It’s impossible for a single person to carry another four in a capture based mode.
If you for exp. have a 4vs5 the outnumbered team is losing in most cases and
four other random teammates shouldn’t be able to decide the outcome of your actual rating since it’s yours and shouldn’t be affected by others at all.
2.Hotjoin servers should be removed aswell, it’s not necessary to split the community into two pieces, if you have more people in soloq you have quicker matches and also a nice reward with the 450 rank point bonus if you win at the end of a match. The argument hoping in and out of hotjoin if you want to play some matches is just not valid since you only get rankpoints and glory at the end of a match and not after you for exp. killed a person.
At least the servers you are able to rent/host should stay since they provide mode diversity (for exp king of the hill) or allow people to test things out on their private server also they are very good for self initiatives no matter what.

Adjustments

1.Displayed casting times for skills and their name so that they are easilier readable for newcomers and to understand while they play against another profession/race.
2. The possibility to switch skills and select between the weapon sets like with your utility skills, so that you can easily rerange them (for exp. switch shield skill four with five) This also opens for releasing new weapon skills in the future

Long term goals and not as easy to implement

1. Mode diversity (new game modes) based on 5vs5 or tinier groups
(there is no need to go bigger since it’s hard to balance and even harder to form groups, I saw a lot of interesting interaction happening trying out 3vs3 for example)
2. Some sort of serverwide heart of the mists
(maybe even for NA/EU players to play together and form teams)

Thanks for the read, I hope i could give some insight and help.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
- Something that is based on players skill level (not SoloQ LB or spvp-ranks!!)
- should only be implemented for teamqueue pvp or can be both Squeue and Tqueue, but with different kinds of rewards

How long should a season last?
- 3-4 months

What would motivate you to play in one?
- The competition to play vs. teams with the same skilllevel
- train with a team to get better and better for unique rewards
- balanced classes

What types of rewards would you like to see?
- unique things only attainable through pvp
- most pvp players dont care about pve ascendet armor or stuff, give them smth unique for the pvp scene (compared to legendaries in pve)
- thought about some nice things for the Guilds maybe (capes – compare GW1 gold/silver/bronze)
- or special, new armor/footprint effects like the legendaries have (able to turn on/off) so everybody in pve/wvw/pvp can see
- let people show their ranking near their name/character

How would a player earn these rewards?
- rewards based on their skilllevel (teamqueue wins against equal teams)
- could be working with a team-leaderboard
- those rewards should not be farmable like the pvp-finisher!

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
- like i said players should be rewardet for their skilllevel, not for farming hotjoin or beeing lucky in soloqueue and gettin’ carried by other players.
- so give !everybody! a reward, but make differents between normal spvp players and very good teamqueue teams (compare weekly ESL tournements)

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
solo – join alone together with random 4 other players
team – join as a team of 5 players
guild – join as a team of 5 guild members

How long should a season last?
8 weeks

What would motivate you to play in one?
better rewards.

What types of rewards would you like to see?
gold & silvers
badges of honor
achievement points
etc

How would a player earn these rewards?
participation
team victory
overall team effort

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
very much better rewards than PvE
other wise they will always stick with PvE or WvW

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?

Solo and team for first season but i’d like to see league for new game modes too (like 2vs2 or 3vs3). Bronze, Silver, Gold divisions.

How long should a season last?
8 weeks

What would motivate you to play in one?

Very good rewards.

What types of rewards would you like to see? How would a player earn these rewards?

Generic cool rewards for partecipating (for example items store)
Unique rewards for winning:

For example

Unique armor (usable in pve/www too o multicharacters, like achievements reward system)
Unique weapons (usable in pve/www too o multicharacters, like achievements reward system)
Unique back
Unique titles
Gems
Unique Finishers
etc.

You need to implement rewards for partepitating and for winning.

For partecipating: tokens. NO RNG. You can choose your rewards in a special vendor list. They have cool rewards but not unique. You receive tokens if you win the match. It doesn’t depend on your final position in your division.

For winning: Top X players in every divisions at the end of the season.. Players sorted by ELO. They win unique rewards.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

With these rewards. There are cool rewards for partecipating and unique rewards for winning.

1) For The Casual

Infinite Season
2-3 man deathmatch
Gold Silver Bronze Divisions etc
Reaching a higher division unlocks sPvp specific armor relative to that division indefinitely. Maintaining a division for 1 month unlocks a small amount of gems.

*This system includes decay
*Gaining higher divisions requires not only a high skill cap but ‘x’ amount of games played as well.

2) For The Hardcore

3 month league
5v5 – GvG, all players must represent same guild
Winners are displayed on wall of champions & receive gems + sPvP only dye colors to show off their status. (Sorry I’ve given up on the fight for capes :P)

Edit: Sorry, I misread the title and so this post pertains to PvP gameplay in general. However, I think many share the view that a ladder/league system is much less important when gameplay and content is a bit lackluster.
—-
I didn’t see this suggested yet, so I thought I’d throw it out there…

Proposal Overview
- Street fighter style deathmatch (1v1 or XvX tag-team)
- Best of 3 rounds
- Allow for different “load outs” to switch weapons, traits, and utilities between each round
- Time-limit is probably required so as to not have indefinite games
- Matchmaking and ranking as described by others in this thread (leverage Starcraft 2 or League of Legends MMR systems)
- Reward players with PvP specific currency (there was nothing wrong with the original glory). Just make the currency valuable by exchanging for champion chests, ascended mats, etc. Add bounty for extra currency when defeating exceptionally high-ranking players
- Tekken (or Virtual Fighter) style spectator mode, where the two fighters are kept in the same plane, and the arena rotates as the characters move around the arena
- Allow flare for players to show off guild (e.g. banner or flag in the arena or guild-specific finishers)

Goal of Proposal
- This style allows for immediate gameplay and action. One issue with WvW is that there is a significant delay from when a player wants to play until when a player sees action. In WvW, one has to find the zerg or contested areas for combat.
- 1v1 PvP deathmatch will lack the social anxiety of having to find a team for sPvP or having random team members that just aren’t as good.
- Better spectator experience! One problem with watching current sPvP tournaments is the difficulty in following all players and action.

Proposal Functionality
- Leverage existing sPvP infrastructure. Need to add multiple rounds and different time setting. Use small arenas.
- Load-out menu needs to be developed as well but can leverage “PvP locker” system or existing Hero menu

Associated Risks
- The proposed spectator mode would be most difficult to develop properly. It will be tricky to make it fluid without causing motion-sickness due to the sheer speed at which players can move. May need to find the correct angle.

For rankings, I suggest global team and individual leaderboards, driven by one of the usual suspects in ranking algorithms (ELO, glicko, etc.). All leaderboards and queues should be, as now, global across the entire game.

This system could completely replace the existing PvP “rank” system. The leaderboards should be archived on the website for each past season, as well as showing the live boards for the current season.

The top 1, 2 and 3 spots on each leaderboard should give (1) a UNIQUE and very cool title, awarded for that spot in that season only; and (2) a UNIQUE and very cool finisher that also is awarded for that spot in that season only.

Beyond that, rankings should be divided by percentiles into gold, silver, and bronze. Each band should award everyone who ranked in that band a common title and finisher that is associated with that band in that season.

Finally, anyone who completes whatever 10-part season meta achievement you feel like tossing together also should get a common “I was there” title and finisher that are unique to the season, but given to everyone who did the meta regardless of rank.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
-Guild/Team based ladder and a solo ladder

How long should a season last?
-Depends on how many teams/guilds are playing but I’d say 4 weeks with a big tournament each 3 months

What would motivate you to play in one?
-Different gamemodes
-Legacy of Foefire with a bigger scale and a flag that needs to be carried to the center of the map, pretty much like GW1 GvG.

What types of rewards would you like to see?
-sPvP-exclusive skins

How would a player earn these rewards?
-Play/win tournaments, play/win tournaments above a certain rating

League/Ladder Structure
Team queue should be heavily emphasized. Although seasons could exist for solo queue, it would just be a ladder reset. Solo queue in a team game is too prone to luck of the draw on teammates. It’s not deserving of special rewards, but still could be a way to show you’re an above average player.

I would keep the rating system on an account basis, rather than a team basis. Team rosters were frustrating because you always felt bound to the same team and would worry about tanking the rating to invite a new person just to play. The very competitive teams will stick together and keep a tight roster anyway. Perhaps show each player’s guild on the leaderboard so that it’s more obvious who the teams are.

I would also keep rating per account, rather than per character. Casual players often switch characters to fill a role that their team is missing. That hurts their overall rating if their teams perform well.

The rating system needs to be more visible and be a true ladder. In order to go higher, you need to keep playing. None of this play 15 games and be in the top 20. Although the exact formula can remain hidden, players want to see how closely matched they were and how much they stand to lose or gain in rating.

Season Length
Two to three months. It should coincide with the cycle for the big mechanics and balance change patches.

Rewards & Motivation
Rewards need to reflect both time and skill, including an incentive for players who only devote a few hours to the game a week.

Rewards need to be competitive with other areas of the game per time spent. Winning a team match (15-20 minutes if you count queue time) should give rewards equivalent to a dungeon speed run, and losing is roughly half that to represent a slower dungeon run. The rewards need to cross over between PvE and PvP. Maybe you can only get dragonite for winning, but you get currency win or lose (more for winning) that lets you buy ectos, etc. And of course give some of it in coin.

Bonus rewards could also be offered for the first few games per day, similar to dungeon path bonuses. The psychological factor of getting extra stuff for a little bit of time invested will attract more casual players and boost the base, even if they only play for an hour. When the monthly achievement was bugged and gave laurels for both PvE and PvP for that month, the team queue exploded (you needed team queue wins for the PvP monthly at the time).

In order to reward skill, there needs to be something that only the best players can obtain. It should be symbolic like a title or name tag symbol and something cosmetic. There rewards could also be tiered, applying decreasing rewards to top 1%, top 2%, etc.

Solo queue should also give decent rewards to be worth playing, but still keep the focus on team queue.

Issues
- The balancing process needs to be improved to avoid professions being overly dominant or not worth bringing as well as add more variety.
- Finding teammates for team queue can be frustrating. Slanting rewards too heavily toward team queue compared to solo queue may deter people from playing tPvP at all. If it’s too even between solo and team queue, there’s less incentive to play team queue, and you really want to boost the population there over solo queue.
- For somewhat competitive people that also want to play with friends, it’s a tough choice between maintaining rating and having fun. The system needs to buffer them against tanking rating too hard when teammates are much lower rated.

Proposal Overview
Unranked and ranked versions of the sPVP ladder

Goal of Proposal
To simplify the concept behind getting into pvp and make it more accessible to casuals and for a casual outcome-independent gaming session. Also to draw away from the ‘careless’ and strategy free mentality of hotjoins.

Proposal Functionality
Mirror how MOBA’s handle their queue.
There should be a Ranked queue an unranked queue, and a custom games section.
The custom games section is where current hot-join type servers would be moved to depromote their significance.
Users will learn to allocate and appreciate the 20minute investment into a game with a 5 minute /surrender vote functionality.
Users will experience the unranked queue as synonymous with ‘spvp’ and the ranked queue for more elitists and faster/ NOT better rewards.

Associated Risks
Very few, just that it may appear similar to a moba queue system.
Team system encourages team work and strategy, similar to MOBA’s , as a player makes mistakes it can get frustrating and name calling/verbal insulting may occur. A ‘report’ functionality would help. But also match-making with similarly skilled players.

3682468

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?

• Unranked play + Ranked play with tiers.
• Ranked play is only available to players rank 20+
  • _This is necessary. So inexperienced players aren’t matched with experienced ones. It’s not fair to any of them.

How long should a season last?

• Seeing as you guys don’t think the game should be balanced more often than every 4 months, I think your seasons should be 4 months long.

What would motivate you to play in one?

• This is a very deep rabbit hole that if you really cared for, the meta wouldn’t be what it is currently. Good luck, godspeed.

What types of rewards would you like to see?

• It has been very clearly established that GW2 PvP is a minigame for casuals. Casuals will be fine with some capes, maybe some unique armor skins, other in-game content. There’s no reason for you guys to throw any money into any wishes for having a competitive scene.

How would a player earn these rewards?

• End of season rewards based on tiers. Maybe after winning a tournament or something like that.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

• Believe me, there is nothing you guys (the PvP team) can do to encourage hardcore competitive players to participate; that’s up to the Skills and Balance team. Therefore, I think your aim should be to keep the PvE heroes happy. Give them more PvE-like content.
  • Fights vs Bots, deathmatch, that kind of stuff…

In any case, good luck with your future endeavours.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?

All of the following is applied to both solo and team ladder:
The ladder should consist of 2 different leagues. Let’s call them silver and bronze for now. Everyone should have access to the bronze league. However, only players that have a certain rank on the ladder (top 1000 for example) should have access to the silver league. It should also be dynamic so as soon as a player drops from top 1000 they will lose access to silver league. But, as soon as they get back in top 1000 they get silver league access right away. That way everyone will have enjoyable games. “pros” will be in games with “pros” and “newbies” will be in games with newbies". But also if some pros want to play with newbies they can, but their games will be harder due to the matchmaking system I’m proposing:
Matchmaking should work in a different way for this. It should be dynamic as it is now. However, it needs more complexity. Teams should be more balanced rating wise. For example: if there is #1 player in the game and everyone else is way lower ranked. That #1 player in the game should get lower rated players in his team instead of having it the way it is now. Total rating of both teams should be as equal as possible. That will provide more challenging and even games.
Also, it’s important to keep decay system so people actually keep playing.

How long should a season last?

3 or 4 months. It would be cool if there would be a big tournament (GW1 swiss automated tournament style). At the end of each season (or even at the end of each month). That tournament should be open for all players. Ideally there would be 3 tournaments at the same day but each player could only register for one. That is to cover all time zones so everyone can participate.

What would motivate you to play in one?

Knowing that I can progress easily. For that I want a dynamic rating system. I want rating to be visible, so I know exactly how much I need to gain to get to my goal (certain position). Fair matchmaking = higher rank on the ladder you are, the lower ranked teammates you will get (in the league you decided to join).

What types of rewards would you like to see?

If the system is actually implemented properly and is FUN to play, rewards won’t matter much. The ladder position is a reward by itself. However, I would end a participation reward at the end of each season for everyone who played certain amount of games. Also for each game won players should get reward tokens. However, those who are higher on the ladder should be motivated to play and they should get more reward tokens.. somehow.. still have to think that one through. Have various options on what reward tokens can be exchanged for.

How would a player earn these rewards?

As mentioned before: by playing and winning. And at the end of season.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

Everything that I wrote there should encourage them to play. But remember: there has to be a sense on progress. They need to know that they all have a chance to get to top. Rating system has to be dynamic enough for that.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
I like the idea of solo and Team games.
I like the idea of tiers one can move between.
I like the idea of being able to choose when my play will go towards the ladder (separate ladder and non-ladder games).
I also like the idea that i could participate in a ranked game a day or even every other day and still have it count towards my progress. I think requiring a large time commitments, like a tournament all in one day is a mistake (unless it is a finals in the top tier or something like that).
Earlier someone mentioned an interesting idea that players could have separate ranking for each class. Not sure if it is a good idea but if each class was ranked and rewarded separately then players could participate on multiple classes allowing those with greater time and skill to potentially be rewarded multiple times for there commitment and trying new classes. It does have the draw back that a few skilled players could end up dominating everything and could confuse some players.

How long should a season last?
2 to 3 months.

What would motivate you to play in one?
The ability to participate in small time blocks. I enjoy many aspects of the game and also have other commitments so needing to have large available time blocks or participate every day would not work for me. I would participate casually if possible, otherwise I would just continue occasional games like I do now.

What types of rewards would you like to see?
Armor skins and rewards that work across game types (like gold and ways outside of crafting and rng to get ascended stuff, I don’t personally care if skins are unique). Its difficult to really say without a better idea how reward structure is to be changed.
Exclusive titles based on overall performance, public name display for the top performers. I also would like to see the top performers get a limited time visual reward that at the end of the next season should be transferred to the new top players/ teams, kind of like a trophy that transfers between champions.

How would a player earn these rewards?
Rewards should be balanced to reward both playing and skill.
Commitment rewards:
Players should receive a reward based on playing. There could be a reward for playing and a separate reward for placement. Alternately one could achieve rewards faster if playing at a higher difficulty level. I’m not sure which of these would be better.
In rewarding skill I like the idea of allowing players to move between tiers and then rewarding based on what tier you end in better than rewarding based on placement within a tier as the second seems to incentivize trying to start in a lower tier. There could also be special rewards for the top players/ teams in the top tier.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
Allow players of varying skill levels and time commitments to play and feel rewarded for there play as outlined above.

I also liked the idea someone mentioned where if someone drops from a game players who queue after that will be given the option to, without rank penalty and for some reward, be asked if they would like to join the ongoing match.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
At least 5 tiers of leagues to help differentiate players according to skill level, one for team and one for solo.
Leagues should also be profession bound, since if you are in an higher ELO, players may feel discouraged to learn another professions because that might risk their ELO.
So, for instance, if you are playing mainly Elementalist and are on an hypothetical Gold tier, then you can jump on your Ranger and play ranked freely without loosing ranking on your Elementalist. The overall account position is determined by the character/profession with the highest ELO.
This is extremely important because professions in GW2 are extremely different and I don’t think it is a good idea to discourage PvP players to experiment with other professions.
I’d also like to see automated tournaments with gem rewards restricted to a specific league, in order to keep the competition fresh. I’d also like to make those tournaments watchable ingame in order to give players willing to learn some material to pick from (perhaps a tab on the PvP panel with “Live Games” similiar to DotA?)

How long should a season last?
2 months max or even less.

What would motivate you to play in one?
Exclusive rewards and sane competition.
That means that the position in the league system should be extremely visible to other players (like the star for map completation) so it is something you are proud of going around with and showing. With sane competitions I mean a system similiar to DotA to prevent early quitting. For instance, if a player quits the game and don’t enter back in a fixed amount of time, then the team with one player less does not lose rankings, while the player who left does.

What types of rewards would you like to see?
Exclusive titles, exclusive finishers, exclusive armor/weapon skins and exclusive items (like Zaishen Keys back in GW1) which can be also monetized.
This will motivate PvE players to jump in PvP to grab those rewards, otherwise mainly PvE players will never be encouraged to jump in PvP to get the same rewards there are in PvE, but much harder to obtain.
A PvE player should feel that by playing ranked PvP and getting better he’s not losing gold/rewards compared to daily farming.

How would a player earn these rewards?
By playing in the leagues and winning (not partecipate, otherwise we’ll see so many AFKers just for rewards). The rewards gets better the higher you are in the league system, so people are encouraged to get better instead of park into the lower ELO and grabbing all the rewards.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
Rewards, rewards, rewards.
PvE players show their maximum accomplishment by going around with their super cool legendary. PvP players should show their maximum accomplishment (ie competing in max tier or winning an automated tournament/season) by going around with comparable super-cool stuffs. Also, hardcore PvP players should have an extremely high gold income comparable to the most hardcore PvE players, in order to put them on par in terms of rewards and to make PvP and PvE equally profitable.
It is important, also that players of any skill level are rewarded (so this does not discourage people and eventually quit PvP) but also that reward gets better the better you get, so people are also encouraged to practice. For instance, gold reward and “zaishen key”-like rewards should be available to everyone by winning games, but exclusive super-cool skins, titles and finishers should get better the better you or your team gets.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?

• Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platin

How long should a season last?

• 1 Quartal/ 3 months

What would motivate you to play in one?

• progress
• rewards

What types of rewards would you like to see?

• Special Skins
• Tomes of Knowledge
• things people need when go in pve/wvw world like Karma, Badge of Honor, Obsidian Shards

How would a player earn these rewards?

• Give each tier his own Tokens like Bronze Token, Silver Token, Gold Token etc.
• make a limit for how much tokens can b earned per day
• Allow each Tier to change Tokens for the next higher Tokens like 5:1 – IMPORTANT Point for the next Question

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

• when people on low skill lvl still can work on higher rewards but with much more time than they will participate – when not than they will ignore pvp cause they know they dont have a chance to get this rewards
• make a weekly Meta Archievement with a number of games played/won and reward should be some tokens + other stuff like gold, karma, or whatever people want

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
Kinda like Starcraft 2 like other people mentioned aswell
Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum

How long should a season last?
2-3 months

What would motivate you to play in one?
Getting as high ranking in a season as possible with the includet title if i would achieve a certain high ranking

What types of rewards would you like to see?
Titles wich represent the achieved ranking

How would a player earn these rewards?
By earning a certain ranking like top 50 or something

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
A league system with seperated divisions (i.e. the Starcraft 2 League System as many mentioned before) to segment different skill levels seems a good way to go.
I addition to that i would really like to see a more Guild Wars -esque approach to matchmaking, especially if solo and team queue are still a thing then. this goes hand in hand with the next question…

How would a player earn these rewards?
Keep the winning team together and match them against other winning teams. Set up a specific number of wins (7 for example) which will mark the end of a winning streak and the roster will be disbanded (in solo queue).

What types of rewards would you like to see?
Increase the rewards with the number of wins and per division. More rank points, more gold, better chance to get epic skins, finishers, backs, titles, etc. Add unique skins only obtainable in PvP which have a very rare drop rate from the “winning chest”, but can be sold via the tradin post.
Have a region wide shoutout when a team or guild achieved the highest number of wins in team queue.

Proposal Overview
Starting at the bottom of the league.

Goal of Proposal
Currently with only a matchmaking system in place the new players gets placed on a predetermined position of the matchmaking-curve. From this position depending on their player level they either drop or rise. The SoloQ-problem here is, that players currently rated at the entry level will always have to play with nearly unrated players, where the system does not already know, where to place them.
The Goal of this proposal is to let players stagnate or rise at the entry level, but not let them drop down.

Proposal Functionality
Implementing a league system similar to lol or sc2, where players start with 0 points and collect points to increase their league position.

Associated Risks
At the first start of the season, every player will start at this level, making it hard to leave this position.

Proposal Overview
Exclusive rewards and prizes for top players for each season not available anywhere else in GW2 that allow prestige etc.
In general, PvP-exclusive skins.

Goal of Proposal
Lack of incentive to play PvP at all.

Proposal Functionality
It would be similar to the “X of the Arena” titles given out a year ago for players who did well in Paid Tournaments and gathered many Qualifier Points, that to this day still remain the most prestigious thing in GW2. Titles, exclusive armor/weapon skins, etc. not available anywhere else in the game. These titles/skins/whatever will only be given to the top X number of players in each season, and should only be available for that season. These should also be account bound.

Other rarer, but not Account bound PvP-only skins should also be available, allowing PvPers to sell them on the TP etc. (Like the GW1 crystaline sword from HoH)

Associated Risks
None.

Discussion Overview
How should the MMR/Elo-System influence the new league system?

Symptoms
Currently your first games are very important. After the first 3! games you can either end up in the top10 or getting not even in the top 1000, making it much harder to climb up the ladder. If you just got lucky with your first 3 games, you should also not get placed that high.

Discussion approach
In the new league system you have to farm point to increase you league position, this guaranties a minimum amount of wins necessary to climb up to the top.

Should the points you earn for every win depend on the matchmaking system?

F.e. Should winning against a better rated team earn you 10 instead of 5 points?

proposed solution

• minimum amount of points per win f.e. 5
• maximum amount of points depending on the rating f.e. 10
• With the classification into leagues, you should also only play against players within the same or neighbor tier.

Follow-Up Questions

• How many tiers?
• How many victories / points to climb up to the next tier?
• Can you loose your already acquired tier, or should it be a save line?
• Should it be easier to climb up the first tiers for new players?
• How does the deflation look like?
• SoloQ-TeamQ differences?
• Individual character rating or account bound?

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
Your rank decays a procentual bit each day, and completely resets at season end, but going through ranks you’ve been before is much faster. System keeps track of your highest rank, and bases some rewards, and how quickly you progress through ranks on that.

How long should a season last?
A week. (I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out)

What would motivate you to play in one?
When my rank decayed, having the ability to go back to my highest rank very fast, and asociated daily-, and seasonal rewards will keep me coming back from time to time. (see below)

What types of rewards would you like to see?

1. Daily “bags” (like champion bags) depending on my current rank.
2. Seasonal “currency” (a little bit of gold, karma, but at higher ranks also gems, and maybe laurels) depending on my highest rank this season.
3. Whenever your highest rank goes past a certain treshold, get some “unique” aka: ascended materials, fun tonics, other soul- and account bound stuff, achievement points, unlock unique armor and weapon skins, maybe an aura or symbol that shows off your rank (you can get a new copy of them for free, to show off prestige)

How would a player earn these rewards?

1. Gain rewards daily depending on rank before the day ends. Mostly for pvp players who play every day.
2. Gain rewards seasonally depending on highest rank attained that season (week). Easy for pve players to get. Just jump in once a week, play an hour or so and get a few rewards. (pvp players will obviously have higher ranks, and thus better rewards)
3. Gain rewards when attaining rank tresholds you’ve never had before. (aka increasing your skill) could encourage pve players to “get into” pvp, and try getting the next tresholds for better rewards. (you can view the next rewards, like with achievement points)

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
If you do not participate in pvp to the point where you’re in “0” on the ladder, you don’t get daily rewards. If you as much as win a few games to go to “step 1” of the ladder, you start getting daily and seasonal rewards, and the 1-time rewards for getting to step 1. This will encourage even new players to do a bit of pvp atleast once a week, but doesn’t “force” (even though some may feel like they are) them to do it daily. Rank decays quicker at higher ladder steps (as it’s procentual), so staying low on the ladder, but high enough to qualify for rewards is a good strategy to get free rewards.

Ofcourse you get paired up in mathces with players from your own skill level.

Associated Risks
Laurels may lose value if they are given as seasonal rewards. However, I think it makes sense, because laurels are time-bound. Seasonal rewards are time bound, and laurels are only given to very high ranked players. (low ranked only gets gold and karma)

edit: simple one: being higher on the ladder gives additional rewards when winning matches. For example, people that are at the lowest step get teh 15 silver we currnetly have. at about halfway you get 15 silver and some karma, at 75% to the top you get 1 gem.

Giving more different rewards is better than just ‘increasing the gold you get’, because it -in my oppinion- gives a better sense of progression.

“I get gold, karma, AND a gem!” vs “I get more gold than you.”. This should apply to daily, seasonal and treshold rewards too.

Alissah.9281:

*How long should a season last? A week.

Interesting system, even tho I’d not go that way. Your system will reset the ladder far too often. And I think we have a different idea what season means. Season for me is resetting everything, and placing everyone on the bottom of the ladder again, without any benefit from the previous season. In the end you system is a daily+weekly reward system.

Beside the problem of matching players together when you reset your ladder every week, we also need a system, that rewards players for playing more then the weekly games.

In the end, rewarding players every daily and weekly with something additional is very interesting idea, and we should find a way to implement this idea in a more ordinary league system.