Guild Wars 2

If I were to tackle two problems right away (meta aside) the following two things seem like the easiest, lowest man-power requiring changes:

1.) Incentives: Brings in casuals because they chase shinnies.
2.) Passives (the bad ones): These are mind-numbing RNG.

(1.)Incentives: So how do we bring shinnies? Black Lion Trading Keys. Add them to Tournament Reward Chests -> specifically, add them at a decent drop rate to team PvP and lower rate to solo PvP, and absolutely NONE in hot-joins and, all in all, just scrap glory as anything more than a joke at this point. Make them guaranteed from the Rank Up Chests (even if this can be farmed) as an incentive to ranking.

Why do this and why is it helpful (not harmful)?

• PvE can grind a key, for free, in 20 minutes by 1-10 Personal Story grinding.
• Black Lion Chests add little money to the economy and are largely harmless toys, boosters, exp scrolls, and skin tokens. Selling skins is a TP exercise and, while it brings gold to PvPers, is a gold sink on the over-all.
• It takes 5-15 minutes for a match-up in PvP, but is more fun than rinse-repeating PvE.
• It adds a way not only for PvPers to acquire these skins, it also adds a bit of an incentive to actually play PvP rather than grind yourself stupid in PvE for 20 min for a free key.
• Making them common in TeamQ > SoloQ and none in HotJoins adds a clearly lacking reward increase structure between the forms of play.
• It attracts casuals with the possibility of getting keys to get tokens to sell/keep skins.
• Shows you care about PvP.

If you fear losing money, just keep adding finishers -> I will buy those. I am not going to waste my money on RNG irregardless of how far out of reach you put it, and I will just spend 15-20 min rerolling a warrior in PvE to get a key if I am that desperate for one. (Or I’ll just buy the skin on the TP.)

(2.) Passives: Trash them all if they have strong RNG. Get rid of them and slowly reintroduce them in batches every two (or one) weeks as you make them into something decent. (I’m on the fence about critical rng procs that dominate many sigils, because you often have to be heavily specced heavily into making these actually work well.) Just do this for PvP.

Too much of this game revolves around reaction play vs. overpowered passives. Which is beyond silly because it completely subverts the idea of motion, dodging, and active play.

What is a good passive? A passive that adds an effect all the time, every time to an ability -> 20% reductions, types of skills doing something additional, etc. These are passives that I, as a player, can deduce by watching my opponent and act accordingly in the future.

What is a bad passive? A passive that arbitrarily and randomly adds a POWERFUL effect to an ability. This sort of passive cannot be planned/played against in anyway beyond just praying to the gods of luck that it doesn’t hit you at the worst moment.

That’s my two-cents, but fix the meta first.

I don’t feel incentives have a real place in pvp. Its more of a pve thing. Gw1 didn’t have them. The only thing it had was balthazar points to buy skills. Of course gw2 can’t follow suit since there aren’t many skills in the game.

I agree about passives and rng though, they shouldn’t even be in pvp. Where you find rng, you find no skill.

Aza.2105:

I don’t feel incentives have a real place in pvp. Its more of a pve thing. Gw1 didn’t have them. The only thing it had was balthazar points to buy skills. Of course gw2 can’t follow suit since there aren’t many skills in the game.

Ziashen keys → GW1 thing.

They keep the casual audience involved.

Aza.2105:

I don’t feel incentives have a real place in pvp. Its more of a pve thing. Gw1 didn’t have them. The only thing it had was balthazar points to buy skills. Of course gw2 can’t follow suit since there aren’t many skills in the game.

I agree about passives and rng though, they shouldn’t even be in pvp. Where you find rng, you find no skill.

GW1 had zaishen keys for incetives and they were a great boon. They revived the less-competitive game modes (HB, RA, HA) and brought a lot of new players in while giving competitive PvPers and nice reward.

I think everyone likes rewards not just casuals. Xeph cited lack of incentives as one of the reasons he left and he was a hardcore top level player.

Aza.2105:

…

I agree about passives and rng though, they shouldn’t even be in pvp. Where you find rng, you find no skill.

Crits are RNG.

errant.9843:

Aza.2105:

I don’t feel incentives have a real place in pvp. Its more of a pve thing. Gw1 didn’t have them. The only thing it had was balthazar points to buy skills. Of course gw2 can’t follow suit since there aren’t many skills in the game.

I agree about passives and rng though, they shouldn’t even be in pvp. Where you find rng, you find no skill.

GW1 had zaishen keys for incetives and they were a great boon. They revived the less-competitive game modes (HB, RA, HA) and brought a lot of new players in while giving competitive PvPers and nice reward.

i don’t feel like zkeys were incentives to play pvp but rather as just a little bonus. it was a way to get money without having to do any pve which was great.

i think they need something like what zkeys did, cause everything you gain in the mist can’t be used outside of it. you can play hundreds of hours in spvp but as soon as you step into the pve world it is as if you haven’t even been playing the game at all. maybe converting glory into gems or something.

GettCouped.7846:

Aza.2105:

…

I agree about passives and rng though, they shouldn’t even be in pvp. Where you find rng, you find no skill.

Crits are RNG.

Yup.

Barret.4095:

errant.9843:

Aza.2105:

I don’t feel incentives have a real place in pvp. Its more of a pve thing. Gw1 didn’t have them. The only thing it had was balthazar points to buy skills. Of course gw2 can’t follow suit since there aren’t many skills in the game.

I agree about passives and rng though, they shouldn’t even be in pvp. Where you find rng, you find no skill.

GW1 had zaishen keys for incetives and they were a great boon. They revived the less-competitive game modes (HB, RA, HA) and brought a lot of new players in while giving competitive PvPers and nice reward.

i don’t feel like zkeys were incentives to play pvp but rather as just a little bonus. it was a way to get money without having to do any pve which was great.

i think they need something like what zkeys did, cause everything you gain in the mist can’t be used outside of it. you can play hundreds of hours in spvp but as soon as you step into the pve world it is as if you haven’t even been playing the game at all. maybe converting glory into gems or something.

Or maybe pvp chests could reward you with pve mats and such.

Aza.2105:

Barret.4095:

i don’t feel like zkeys were incentives to play pvp but rather as just a little bonus. it was a way to get money without having to do any pve which was great.

i think they need something like what zkeys did, cause everything you gain in the mist can’t be used outside of it. you can play hundreds of hours in spvp but as soon as you step into the pve world it is as if you haven’t even been playing the game at all. maybe converting glory into gems or something.

Or maybe pvp chests could reward you with pve mats and such.

dude why not, or being able to use pvp skins in pve and vice versa