Hello,
So anet. From the current reaction to the WvW rewards and what responses have been given on my poll (666 responses on one, 996 on another), you don’t seem to making too many right decisions on how to award players.
So with the initial/first awards in the game, you gave them out too much. These rewards are useful, however they lost the satisfaction/reward feeling when getting them because we got them so much. These awards you can not rely on. These awards should honestly not be the majority rewards.
1. Blues/Greens/Rares- These are useful, as I said. However, if a player recieves these for doing something hard, or doing an activity that takes a long time they do not feel rewarding in the mental sense because of how easily they are obtained everywhere else in the game.
2. Karma- Again, they are useful. They don’t have the reward sense.
3. Badges of Honor- this is sort of half and half. To a none or very very casual WvWer, they’d love to get badges of honor to hop into WvW and buy some new gear. However, I notice hardcore WvWers or people that mostly just do WvW have a lot of badges and they don’t feel rewarded when getting them
4. Ascended Mats. Since these are only made to craft ascended weapons, the ascended weapons look isn’t insanely popular, and you need to have a leveled crafting pofession; these quickly became stockpiled/deleted in peoples inventories.
5. Skillpoints- Thanks to the champion system along with the fact you gain skillpoints as you level, people don’t see these as important.
Those 5 rewards you really want to stay away from being the main source of a reward for hard content. People just don’t feel satisfied when they get them. They aren’t doing a sufficient job in taking the place of the gear grind in a sense of reward. With each patch, it feels more like a To Do list rather than a living story with a living world. On top of this it doesn’t feel very satisfying at all when you do stuff. You’re improving on the satisfaction factor. However, long term goals of the game the current way you are rewarding players may get old after a few months.
So here is my little guide (i’m not professional, just my personal opinion on the matter. I could very well be wrong as the night is orange) on rewards and how you should offer them. Right now the current “end game” has no lasting appeal. Players can get a legendary, ascended, and thats about it. Most people need something to do once they get their items. Most will go into some form of competitive scene to show off their armor AND their skill. This is why we’re seeing an emergence of WvW popularity in the 2nd half of 2013. So unless you offer more forms of competitiveness, then you’d need to look into my suggestions or do both
. All the following are very important on how you implement them.
1. New Armor Skins. These should be put in the game every 1 1/2 to 2 months. It is very very VERY important how you put these in the game. As of recently you’ve been putting them in the game via the gem shop. Next patch we will need to craft them or deal with RNG. I go into how to implement these items for both WvWers and PvErs in this link :https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/1-New-Armor-Skins/first#post3328036
2. New Weapon skins. These should be put into the game every month or so. Don’t do every single weapon at once. Alternate between very popular weapons and none popular weapons together. I will go into this here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/2-New-Weapons
3. New zones: Players should get a new zone every half a year to a year. I will go into this here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/3-New-Zones/first#post3328277
4. New skills: Players should be getting a new skill or maybe a new trait every month to 1 1/2 month. I will go into how to implement these here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/4-New-Skills
5. New dungeon/dungeon Path: I’d recommend doing this about once every 1 1/2 – 3 months. Keep in mind that it would be smart to eventually impliment some kind of new weapon skins/armor skins obtainable through the dungeon with tokens. You can do RNG stuff, but dont depend on it so heavily. I liked the current dungeon/fractal addition system you’ve got going on. Just could use some work on rewarding players for doing the new dungeon path.
Those are my main points for the 5 rewards. Your current reward system with skillpoints, ascended mats, achievement system, and others stated in the original first part of this post are useful, however they are not satisfying to the players. Especially while champion trains exist. I know many people who do champion trains, but hate them. It is a very confusing relationship players have with it.