Okay, ANET came out and said this would be a minor patch for us this month and that we’d get a week long trial of TotSS. They did just that. Posts that are complaining that they didn’t do more when they said they weren’t need to re-focus on what should be done in the future and what’s good with the current patch.
I’ll say that having more people interested in SPvP when I went in there was great. I only hope it stays this way. Some suggestions so that it will:
1. The reward system is clunky, but PLEASE, whatever you do, do NOT make rewards a massive grind. We have that in the spvp system already in the form of ranks. I don’t think a new player should have to grind for 4 months to acquire an acceptable looking suit of armor. That being said, rewards should be straight purchasable with glory instead of the clunky crafting system that involves me scouring the internet for random forum posts.
2. The customizable servers need to have the ability (among others) to wager gems. Both teams put in whatever amount of gems they want and it’s winner take all.
3. I’m not sure we should be charged for organizing a personal server. I feel it should be free that anyone can create and shape. These can be closed down upon a few minutes of inactivity to prevent the server becoming clogged. I just don’t know how people will feel about paying to teach newer guildies the spvp scene or trying to have competitive games against in game rivals. These kinds of things bring players to your game and charging them for something you want to happen anyways isn’t the most profitable path.
4. Profiting from spvp should come in other ways. For example, legendaries should become available in spvp. These are purchased with rank points, yes rank points from paids. They are also purchased with the spvp equivalent of laurels that you’ll introduce. This spvp laurel will be rewarded when completing the daily. This ensures that your spvpers will be doing hot join and paid tournaments to keep your population healthy.
5. Once you have the above running, you can implement gem store purchases in the form of spvp skins, cool (seriously, they need to be cool) finishers, black lion equivalent spvp chests and keys that have a chance of dropping random skins/weapons, dyes, bags, and finishers. Lastly, you need to have the pvp locker have a purchasable loadout area. Much like unlocking additional bank slots for gems, this would allow a player to create a build, traits and all, then walk over to the pvp locker and save it. You could have say, 4 of these slots.
6. I also suggest making the /rank emotes more awesome. Don’t get me wrong, they’re cool, but I think for time spent and to attract other people to them they need to be pretty much jaw-droppingly epic the higher rank you go up.