I don’t understand what you did with Guild Wars 2 PvP rewards. I was a big fanboi of GW1 PvP and still believe it was the best PvP ever created. So, first let’s look at what made Guild Wars 1 PvP rewarding and then compare it to GW2. (I’m going with HA right now, can’t really compare GvG against no GvG.)
1.)You only ranked up from winning. If someone was a high rank, they won a lot. Therefore, usually good. Pretty accurate representation of skill.
2.)Increased rank for consecutive wins.
3.)Hall of Heroes. Name/Guild Name announced when you won, acquire recognition. You stayed until you were kicked out. You opened the chest at the end. Accumulated tons of rank. Challenging.
4.)ITEMS FROM CHESTS IN GW1 PVP COULD BE USED IN PVE.
5.)Different game modes…
6.)/RANK (WHY IS THIS NOT IN GW2?!?!?!)
So, compared to Guild Wars 2.
You get points for playing. What is this garbage…It would be one thing if you accumulated glory for playing and rank for winning. Why would you associate the main sPvP rank with play time, how much you zerg, and how good you are at team deathmatch(ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ONLY HAVE CAP POINTS? WAT?) It gives a very, very vague idea of overall player skill.
Guild Wars 2 gives no reward for consecutive wins. While this isn’t huge on my list, it was still a great idea. You were happy when you won that 4th game in a row, that means you had to spend that much less time winning single games in Underworld.
Hall of Heroes. Perhaps one of the greatest PvP ideas of all time. This is where the best HAers spent their time. This is why great HAers were rich. This is why great HAers were known. The only reason I know anyone in sPvP is because they are always sitting in heart talking kitten in map chat and I see their name constantly.
Holy crap, Zaishen Chest. Why is this not a thing? You basically created two different games, and spent less time on the part of it that the game is all about. Ok, so, In Gw1 when you won in the HoH you got to open a chest. That chest dropped a Zaishen key, which you could sell for PvE money. It also dropped PvE items (weapons, minis, etc) which could be used/sold in PvE. This is one of my biggest let downs. There is no reason to have PvP armor. None. I play tournies for two days and have the highest tier free tourny armor. What? Even when you do come out with Paid Tournies or GvG, why would that be any different? I win a paid tourny and achieve full paid tourny gear. So what? This lets people know I played paid tournies for a week? Ok? Screw the PvP armor, give me a seperate paid tourny rank, give me a chest of PvE items that I can wear in PvP. There shouldn’t be an advantage to PvE armor, right? Same stats? I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore on this topic so I’m just going to go on.
Different game modes. I’m sure you’ll make more, but seriously? 4 cap point maps on release? “C’mon man”.
/rank. Uh, hello. Greatest PvP reward ever? “Hey, what rank are you?” “You wanna know my rank? WHY DON’T YOU LOOK AT THIS kittenING AWESOME SPECTRAL TIGER EMITTING FROM MY BODY?” The banners are just…fart noise. Like, if I kill someone and I wanna let them know what’s up, I’ll just /rank them. Don’t give me your pansy excuse that it promotes bad behavior and elitist attitude. This is PvP. Man up.
TL;DR? So, yeah. GW2 PvP? Not rewarding. Rank doesn’t matter, armor doesn’t matter and the biggest problem, winning doesn’t matter.
This ends my rant. I know more modes are coming out, most likely more maps. But for several of these concerns, I don’t see why the new modes or maps would change anything other than rank. Yeah, for paid tournies and GvG they’d better have some sort of ranking system based on wins, but at the rate I’m accumulating tPvP rewards, the armor doesn’t matter.