Guild Wars 2

So, I’ve been thinking about the SOTG lately, and had a few thoughts I wanted to share of in-house sPvP promotion. I am going to ignore class balance here, and assume all things turning out well with future features (custom arenas, spectator mode, Solo Que etc). With that out of the way, here’s my thoughts.

GW2 has a very sizeable population spread over PvE and WvW. There’s more people in WvW from one server, sometimes individual guilds then there are in sPvP & tPvP at any given time. These players are currently an untapped resource. But how to tap into this resource of players without breaking the separation and by extension, the robust economy?

I believe the answer lies in Cross Pollination. I think, Arena Net, with a few simple changes, that have a very minimal impact on their respective areas of play are the shining light in increasing sPvP traffic. I’m going to do this by using methods that avoid the currency “glory” because we can agree that the last thing we need is a “glory farming” epidemic in the game more so than we have now.

I’ll start of by addressing the PvE daily quest. Keep it as it is, but use it to promote sPvP. I suggest that adding 1 x Glory Booster and 1 x Copper sPvP chest to the rewards PvE players already get (chest is dependant on the sPvP rank of the PvE player). This literally has no impact on the economy, and gives PvE players a leg up on some cosmetic gear to entice them to the HOTM to potentially collect more.

Next, I want to address the sPvP daily quest. I think 1 x Laurel and 3 x Badges of Battle are a fair addition to the daily reward. This should be able to entice both PvE & WvW players to complete thier daily pvp quest, and once again, is minor enough to have minimal impact on PvE or WvW progression.

Next, I want to address Tournament chests. This is the meat of my address. I think these can be overhauled a little bit to provide not only a sizeable incentive to the PvE & WvW players to participate in tournaments, thus adding to the pool of players, but also encourage those sPvP players that are inclined to enjoy other aspects of the game, meaning PvE & WvW.

Firstly, making these rewards specific from tournament WIN Chests ensures no AFK farming or glory farming is the quickest way to gaining these rewards.

The first reward I suggest adding is an experience vial, similar to Karma jugs in PvE. Quick maths, max amounts of tournaments that can be done in an hour is around 4 (1 min que, 2 min standby and an average of 10-12 minutes per game). I think a vial for 25% of the players current PvE level is a fair reward.

Speaking of karma jugs, I think adding one of the small karma vials to the tPvP win chest is a good incentive also, these are earnt in small events. There’s 2 very easy options, that impact very minimally on the PvE realm.

I also think adding 5 gems per chest, but 30 for the 3 round tournament chest is the best way to monetize it slightly. 5 gems is so negligible, but will build up over time and allow a sPvP player to have some in game gold, or purchase something from the gem store. 100 games, or 15 hours of tPvP = 500 gems, or approx. 4 -5 gold.

Lastly, add 5 x Badges of Battle to the win chest. This will encourage more and more WvW players to come in, but won’t be a substitute for even a small skirmish in WvW badge rewards.

So what does the pure sPvP player get out of this? Well, gems for a starters but hopefully a significantly healthier and larger pool of active tournament players, not just hotjoin Heroes.

If we can incentive just 10% of the active PvE and WvW players into sPvP daily, the population has grown tenfold. This will build the population pyramid from the ground up, and provide Arena Net with justifiable reasons to continue working on more features and monetization strategies.

Thoughts?

TLDR: I wrote this on an iPad, took me forever…….. At least read the whole thing.

Badges of Battle? You mean badges of honor?

i like it
/15 char

Thanks Larynx, Badge of Honor was what I indeed meant.

I think if you look at the sheer number of posts and questions asked to arenanet, the two that stand out are “how do we get more players into tPvP and keep them there” and “how can you reward players for playing, without breaking the economy or creating more glory farming”.

I believe my suggestions could solve both.

One last thing to add and that’s a UI change. Incorporate the tournament NPC into the PvP tab, so that a player can que solo or as a team for a tournament from anywhere In The game. This one change could also sky rocket the amount of casual players playing tournaments.

In a couple days this thread will be moved to the suggestion forums where it will be buried forever.

I like your UI idea a lot a lot.

Its a decent idea and at the same time its a terrible idea.

Heres the real problem. Most people i know who play WvW or PvE hate spvp, they either say they suck at it, or small battles where all the attention is on them is not their style, they enjoy the large scale combat.

Heres the other thing you didnt consider. SPVP was HUGELY successful at launch….tons of players who bought this game bought it ENTIRELY for the sake of playing spvp. (i can name 14 of my RL friends alone who bought it with no desire to do anything but spvp).

The problem is, SPVP is the weakest designed part of this mmo. WVW fullfills to a great degree what players want, which is why its doing so well. SPV kitten truggling not because spvp players went to wvw (though i’m sure a few did) but mostly due to they just quit playing. People bought it expecting solo/duo que, ranked play with titles, tournaments to access gear instead of HORRIBLY slow glory grind, etc etc.

So the point is, if they DID fix all these things….trying to drag wvw and pve players into spvp may not give the results your looking for, it will instead bring people to it who are there not because they want to be…but because they’re just trying to farm something, and they will not be happy about it…but do it because they feel they NEED to.

The only safe thing to do, is put all these things in in one BIG PUSH….and advertise it heavily with a bad kitten video and announcement (like valve did for dota 2) that they’re having a big cash prize competition in 6 months. Instantly…you bring people back. Oh and make the game freetoplay spvp…you shouldnt have to buy the game if all you wanna do is spvp….just lock their characters to the mists and dont force them to play that stupid story tutorial.

As John Smedly head of SoE said regarding making Planetside 2 entirely free to play…

(While not all of the players that join in end up paying for anything, Smedley doesn’t mind. He sees them as additional game content, which is a good point. After all, who wants to play an empty game? It’s one of SOE’s core design strategies moving forward according to Smedley)

Thanks for the replies. The thing is, there’s a demend out there for sPvP players to have character progression outside of sPvP by doing sPvP. Some small changes, and over time players could level thier characters to max PvE level, through sPvP without having to be glory farming. Not everyone would care for it, but a significant amount of people would appreciate it.

Assuming ranked leader boards etc all come into play (I believe it’s a when, not if), these suggestions simply grow the game from the in house population, whilst marketing of ranking progression grows the game from without, i.e the Esports crowd.

I would love to sPvP to max level, and have a small amount of gold to purchase some starter gear and use the badges to fill my character out in WvW. As it stands, all I do is sPvP but do t touch the other play areas, because it takes time away from my competitive gaming.

The key is to avoid breaking the economy, and making any incentives be a minimal impact but enough to encourage it. WvW players won’t feel the NEED to do a tournament if they get rewarded with 5 badges, because that 15 mi s would net more reward in actual WvW. It would however, not make them feel that the 15 mins of a tournament is a lack of any progression for them.

Valkyriez.6578:

Thanks for the replies. The thing is, there’s a demend out there for sPvP players to have character progression outside of sPvP by doing sPvP. Some small changes, and over time players could level thier characters to max PvE level, through sPvP without having to be glory farming. Not everyone would care for it, but a significant amount of people would appreciate it.

Assuming ranked leader boards etc all come into play (I believe it’s a when, not if), these suggestions simply grow the game from the in house population, whilst marketing of ranking progression grows the game from without, i.e the Esports crowd.

I would love to sPvP to max level, and have a small amount of gold to purchase some starter gear and use the badges to fill my character out in WvW. As it stands, all I do is sPvP but do t touch the other play areas, because it takes time away from my competitive gaming.

The key is to avoid breaking the economy, and making any incentives be a minimal impact but enough to encourage it. WvW players won’t feel the NEED to do a tournament if they get rewarded with 5 badges, because that 15 mi s would net more reward in actual WvW. It would however, not make them feel that the 15 mins of a tournament is a lack of any progression for them.

This might be ok, but it kinda gets away from your whole reasoning of doing this.

you said this was a change to increasing sPvP traffic. Or to tap into the resource of players of WvW/PVE to bolster spvp.

What your describing kinda puts what i was saying into perspective. People will do what they WANT to do… spvp will still suffer. Now i’m not opposing your idea, but i also think it will have extremely little effect on spvp’s population.

Many players who pve will occasionally wvw, and those who wvw will often pve.

Thats because you carry everything about your character from one mode to the next.
WvW also has a smaller barrier for players wanting to enjoy it.

In wvw i can run in with my friends, and blindly throw attacks and AE or stand on a wall and dance around. Theres little pressure. (and i can farm and pve while in WvW)

In spvp i’m pitted against people with strict builds designed to fight me (often kill me as quickly as possible) i am forced to invest in knowledge on how to fight each other profession and identify what they do, i am forced to build an entirely new trait/item set specific for it….and a lot of fights are more personal (do to less numbers) so dieng is more degrading, upsetting, and can have an enormious impact on whether we win or lose.

This is an entirely different experience, i have tried to get friends who dont like to pvp to spvp…they will not do it, they get upset….but they will totally go into wvw and do that.

All your talking about now is something that would benefit people who are already playing spvp and already want to play spvp, by giving them a perk so (when they dont feel like playing pvp) they can go do pve/wvw. This however still does nothing to get people who dont normally spvp to finally start playing it….because just like you would rather SPVP to get gear (cause its funner for you), they would rather pve/wvw to get gear (because its funner for them).

I would rather keep the two even more seperate tbh.

hmmmm i think laurels need to stay in the PvE dailies or else the PvE only players will rage haha.

maybe experience jugs / vials from PvP daily is good also.

Why not laurels? You can buy dyes with them. As if it would affect PvE players, and its only the sPvP daily. Takes 20 mi urges to knock over and all you gotta do is run around in a circle in hot join.

Valkyriez.6578:

Why not laurels? You can buy dyes with them. As if it would affect PvE players, and its only the sPvP daily. Takes 20 mi urges to knock over and all you gotta do is run around in a circle in hot join.

it’s not that simple. people want laurels. people can only get 1 per day. large rewards are tied to them. if you offer a laurel for a pvp daily, that is potentially 2 laurels per day. to say nothing of the impact of doubling the laurel rate, it also forces players who don’t want to pvp, but want laurels, to go blindly “farm” pvp. is that really what you want?

No. If not laurels, besides the forge I want a more effective way of gaining dyes. I’m open to suggestion.

Thats my biggest problem with spvp atm. Still no incentive.

Pve rewards>pvp rewards

What do we get for all the time spent in spvp aside from the same cosmetic gear and shoddy ranking? Not much.

What does someone pveing get for their time spent daily, and even monthly?
ALOT OF STUFF

There is like what..one or two pvp only skins atm? And we cant even sell our unidentified dyes.

Lame.

+1 Jk just testing my new siggy

milo.6942:

Valkyriez.6578:

Why not laurels? You can buy dyes with them. As if it would affect PvE players, and its only the sPvP daily. Takes 20 mi urges to knock over and all you gotta do is run around in a circle in hot join.

it’s not that simple. people want laurels. people can only get 1 per day. large rewards are tied to them. if you offer a laurel for a pvp daily, that is potentially 2 laurels per day. to say nothing of the impact of doubling the laurel rate, it also forces players who don’t want to pvp, but want laurels, to go blindly “farm” pvp. is that really what you want?

Make it so that you can only get a laurel from one of the dailies.
Boom.
Won’t be implemented because the pvp daily is tragically small and insignificant so why would you do a 10 hour pve daily when you can do a 10 minute pvp daily.

However, this doesn’t address the issue of granting laurels in pvp not making sense. Laurels are a pve reward system for pve rewards with a pve merchant, pve rewards and pve rationale.

mbh.8301:

milo.6942:

Valkyriez.6578:

Why not laurels? You can buy dyes with them. As if it would affect PvE players, and its only the sPvP daily. Takes 20 mi urges to knock over and all you gotta do is run around in a circle in hot join.

it’s not that simple. people want laurels. people can only get 1 per day. large rewards are tied to them. if you offer a laurel for a pvp daily, that is potentially 2 laurels per day. to say nothing of the impact of doubling the laurel rate, it also _forces_ players who don’t want to pvp, but want laurels, to go blindly "farm" pvp. is that really what you want?

Make it so that you can only get a laurel from one of the dailies.
Boom.
Won’t be implemented because the pvp daily is tragically small and insignificant so why would you do a 10 hour pve daily when you can do a 10 minute pvp daily.

However, this doesn’t address the issue of granting laurels in pvp not making sense. Laurels are a pve reward system for pve rewards with a pve merchant, pve rewards and pve rationale.

If you use this rationale as well then would adding gems to sPvP break the economy? sPvPers would only spend their gems on the gem store because they would have no use for gold. I know that is all I use gems for.
Edit: you want a gold sink? gem store is your gold sink cause gold by itself is useless to exclusive spvpers.

Noctis Assassin.4035:

If you use this rationale as well then would adding gems to sPvP break the economy?

Maybe not break the economy, but I think anet wants gems to be at the highest possible price so that people will more often decide to spend real world money for something instead of what they consider to be too much in game money.

mbh.8301:

Noctis Assassin.4035:

If you use this rationale as well then would adding gems to sPvP break the economy?

Maybe not break the economy, but I think anet wants gems to be at the highest possible price so that people will more often decide to spend real world money for something instead of what they consider to be too much in game money.

Well, if anet wants to use that rationale so that they keep profits higher then they can do whatever they want with their game.

Would just like to say I really think something like this could bring some extra life into the spvp scene.
Great post!

I think, regardless of any criticisms that are made, the idea still stands that adding more inter-connectivity to the game modes would be healthy for the progress of the game as a whole, while individually helping to expand the Spvp community.

So many of the gw1 pvp veterans seem to have either left or they don’t post on the forums (or I just don’t recognize them), but personally all I played was pvp in gw1 and that was really the only redeeming quality because it provided the level of competition I desired while allowing me a way to earn money towards more PvE style content (level grind wasn’t nearly as exhausting and mindnumbing as it is in gw2).

Coming to gw2, I really have zero desire to faceroll through countless hours of PvE content that is only slightly more directed by different silly characters I could care less about just to get to level 80. For WvW, it is so gear dependent that it completely shuts my desire down to participate longer than 5 minutes at a time. When I do participate, all I do is run around aimlessly until a big group randomly appears from the blue and 100 man crit instagibs me. Summarized: I don’t like running around forever just to find some action in which I have no choice other than to instantly die. It isn’t fun or competitive, and the necessity to gear grind to WvW makes me never want to ever do it.

Spvp is the only option I have left for enjoying the game. So now all I’m doing to play gw2 is getting on, grinding about half a rank, solo queing some tournies, and getting some aesthetic and meaningless gear (outside of appearance). It doesn’t make the other content more appealing. Maybe if a I was able to gain levels in SPvP and/or get some gear I could use in WvW, I would do them more (I would DEFINITELY be more into WvW if it were an even playing field and not gear dependent with no way within how I play the game to get said gear).

So I 100% support this general idea. It’s what made gw1 pvp so addictive for me, and it would definitely make me log more hours and enjoy the game more.

The general ideas outlined here are good ones. One of the main complaints I get from friends who do WvWvW about spvp is lack of rewards and feeling of it being totally cut off from the rest of the game. Sadly pvping just for fun doesn’t cut it for long for a lot of people. Heck I love to pvp but I do need more then what this game offers right now to keep playing too much longer.

I believe something along these lines was mentioned in the last SOTG wasn’t it? There was definitely some discussion about dailies and the prospect of rewarding I think badges or something for the PvP daily as a way to bring PvE players into PvP.

Noctis Assassin.4035:

mbh.8301:

milo.6942:

Valkyriez.6578:

Why not laurels? You can buy dyes with them. As if it would affect PvE players, and its only the sPvP daily. Takes 20 mi urges to knock over and all you gotta do is run around in a circle in hot join.

it’s not that simple. people want laurels. people can only get 1 per day. large rewards are tied to them. if you offer a laurel for a pvp daily, that is potentially 2 laurels per day. to say nothing of the impact of doubling the laurel rate, it also forces players who don’t want to pvp, but want laurels, to go blindly “farm” pvp. is that really what you want?

Like I said, a small amount of gems, like 5 or so for a tPvP win is negligible but would help those players who do tournaments alot build it up for a transfer to gold if they want Ed to.

A goldsi k for gold already exists in sPVP: dyes. It’s very inefficient to use the mystic forge for them unless you already have every piece of gear which is not the average.

Make it so that you can only get a laurel from one of the dailies.
Boom.
Won’t be implemented because the pvp daily is tragically small and insignificant so why would you do a 10 hour pve daily when you can do a 10 minute pvp daily.

However, this doesn’t address the issue of granting laurels in pvp not making sense. Laurels are a pve reward system for pve rewards with a pve merchant, pve rewards and pve rationale.

If you use this rationale as well then would adding gems to sPvP break the economy? sPvPers would only spend their gems on the gem store because they would have no use for gold. I know that is all I use gems for.
Edit: you want a gold sink? gem store is your gold sink cause gold by itself is useless to exclusive spvpers.

Like I said, a small amount of gems, like 5 or so for a tPvP win is negligible but would help those players who do tournaments alot build it up for a transfer to gold if they want Ed to.
A goldsi k for gold already exists in sPVP: dyes. It’s very inefficient to use the mystic forge for them unless you already have every piece of gear which is not the average.