Guild Wars 2

Hello again GW2 pvpers. This’ll be another long, but exciting topic on how ANet can improve sPvP outside of balance. This is a subject I haven’t seen anywhere on the sPvP forum but I think that it’s incredibly important for maintaining a healthy playerbase.

To start off I’ll define an important key term.

Habituality
You can probably get the definition off of the this word through google, but the context important so I’ll define it myself anyway. Habituality is the state where a person is controlled by habits. In the context is of MMOs its the state at which a person is willing to keep coming back and playing a certain way given reward mechanics. The rate at which they come back and the time increment being very important factors. Good examples of this are WoW and those awful (but effective) strategy browser games (Warning: I don’t recommend getting invested in these browser games; they will use every trick in the book to hook you and get you to pay).

Habituality has often been used for nefarious purposes in free to play videogames, but that doesn’t mean that mental tricks done through reward systems are inherently evil. In fact, I think that if done right it can greatly benefit the abysmal state of sPvP.

The Problem With Rewards in GW2 sPvP
One of the many suggestions in the sPvP forums is to add reward incentives in order to get players into sPvP again. I, however, posit that the necessary rewards are already there. They’re just implemented in a haphazard mix of pure grind and lottery.

The freedom for players to gain credit whenever they want might sound like a good thing, but players are humans. Without the correct checks and restrictions, they will resort to methods that provide quickest and most efficient path to their rewards. If this means doing things that are not necessarily fun for them or other players, they will do it. Without proper pacing they will blaze through content, get burnt out and lose reason for player.

The inclusion of lottery boxes as a reward system only exacerbates the problem. Without set goals due to implementation of lottery boxes, players will not know how pace themselves. When and if they do receive their desired rewards from these boxes, they will either be satisfied or frustrated they didn’t get the item earlier rather than simply being satisfied they earned the items if they have the option of purchasing it straight up.

The results of careless implementation of rewards has been apparent in the farming meta of hotjoin. I don’t think I need to explain the situation there, because if I do, this topic will quickly turn into a rant.

Solution! Get ‘em while they’re hot!

Get rid of glory farming. Gonezo. Piff! Pretend it never existed in the first place, because it was a terrible system. Who created such a system anyway? I’m sure their mother would be ashamed of them. Pure farming without proper pacing or constant addition of rewards leads to burnout. Furthermore, the rewards lie in players playing for the wrong reasons and in the absolute worse manner possible for a competitive team based eSport. That not only leads to burnout, but it leads to burnout done through a system that wasn’t engaging or enjoyable for the players involved.

Replace Glory farming with something more involved and risky. An MMR system for example, would not only force players to not farm, but it would encourage them to play in a manner conducive to their team’s success.

To make up for the removal of glory farming and promote healthy player habituality, figure out the optimal time increment players play the game before getting bored and then use that to work on controlled rewards to get players to come back and to also play in a manner more healthy to the game. Dailies are a perfect example and they’re already in the game, although I think they could use a bit more depth to be more than a simple workaround to a flawed tournament system.

Also, get rid of lottery box vendors. This game’s demographic isn’t teenage Maplestory players, so it should not be expected to act as such. Instead, tie lottery boxes to dailies. These boxes are only frustrating if players have to invest in them, but if they’re an infrequent bonus they’re all the better.

They need additional game modes. I didn’t really think it would be an issue just having a single game mode (capture and hold), but the lack of variety really drags down the whole PvP experience. Add that to the lack of viable builds, and the entire PvP experience drops drastically.

As for Glory farming, ArenaNet kittened that up when they added the Skirmisher bonus. Before that was added, the worst players (ie the ones that fought in the middle of nowhere and were a burden to their teams) walked away with the worst rewards. The players who attacked and defended the points walked away 3-4 times as many points.

Then some idiot came up with the idea of rewarding the bad players for fighting in no mans land, and hot join capture and hold turned into team deathmatch, without the teamwork. At that point, players took the path of least resistance and went for the easymode farming classes ie Thieves and Mesmers, as stealth and clones offer unrivaled survival when using glass cannon builds.

Also, the Glory reward system is awful, I want to be able to save up and buy what I want, not rely on RNG to give me the same crap again and again. I think a huge amount of work is required to get PvP to a place where everyone will be happy. Which is a shame, because during the first beta weekend, there was so much promise in this game.

Yeah this game definitely needs a lot of work. I’d need at least ten different topics to address the issues that I alone could point out.

IMO, they need to tie in the reward system with how the intend players to play the game and not, for whatever reason, reward mooks running around mindlessly with GC builds.

the whole rank system is dumb as well. having it tiered every 10 levels in an exponential fashion promotes burnout. also once you hit the next tier you can get all the cosmetic skins you wanted from boxes or the forge so you then have nothing to look forward to but another even longer 10 level grind.

TwoBit.5903:

Get rid of glory farming. Gonzo. Piff! Pretend it never existed in the first place, because it was a terrible system. Who created such a system anyway? I’m sure their mother would be ashamed of them. Pure farming without proper pacing or addition or rewards leads to burnout. Furthermore if the rewards lie in players playing for the wrong reasons and in the absolute worse manner possible for a competitive team based eSport. That not only leads to burnout, but it leads to burnout done through a system that wasn’t engaging or enjoyable for the players involved.

Replace Glory farming with something more involved and risky. An MMR system for example, would not only force players to not farm, but it would encourage them to play in a manner conducive to their team’s success.

Nailed it. This is the #1 challenge the PvP devs should be thinking about right now.

You’ve got it all wrong. There is no lottery style of rewards in this game, well maybe there is but it’s irrelevant due to crafting. There isn’t 1 time where I’ve bought 30 gold chests trying to get an item when I can craft it for the price of 1-2 slivers.

As far as burnout, PvE is facing the same issues. The rewards in this game for both PvE and PvP are visual items (and in PvP, the competitive drive to get better and be a top player). You shouldn’t have to justify PvPing because you get “rewards”. The PvP itself is the reward.

Of course what we’re seeing at a competitive level is teams getting frustrated due to lack of competitive features. They all want to get better, and you don’t get better by playing 1 sided matches all day against ‘pro’ teams. Replays would help people see what strategies work, who isn’t pulling their weight, and what the other team did that made them win instead of yours. Detailed stats would let us see how much damage our team is doing compared to theirs. Rating helps keep competition alive and is 100% needed for a “competitive” game. It helps drive players to strive for a higher rating and get better.

Do you think nearly as many people would play LoL if it didn’t have matchmaking and rating? It’s like playing people in diamond vs bronze Starcraft.

Raytek.6193:

You’ve got it all wrong. There is no lottery style of rewards in this game, well maybe there is but it’s irrelevant due to crafting. There isn’t 1 time where I’ve bought 30 gold chests trying to get an item when I can craft it for the price of 1-2 slivers.

As far as burnout, PvE is facing the same issues. The rewards in this game for both PvE and PvP are visual items (and in PvP, the competitive drive to get better and be a top player). You shouldn’t have to justify PvPing because you get “rewards”. The PvP itself is the reward.

Of course what we’re seeing at a competitive level is teams getting frustrated due to lack of competitive features. They all want to get better, and you don’t get better by playing 1 sided matches all day against ‘pro’ teams. Replays would help people see what strategies work, who isn’t pulling their weight, and what the other team did that made them win instead of yours. Detailed stats would let us see how much damage our team is doing compared to theirs. Rating helps keep competition alive and is 100% needed for a “competitive” game. It helps drive players to strive for a higher rating and get better.

Do you think nearly as many people would play LoL if it didn’t have matchmaking and rating? It’s like playing people in diamond vs bronze Starcraft.

if you arent going to reward pvpers then make the pvp portion of the game free to play with no purchase. This is boxed as a progression based mmo, people want progression. PvPing just for fun is great for the super leet pros who want their name on a ladder but not casuals, and the lack of casuals is what is hurting gw2 the most. Adding a ladder isn’t going to bring casuals back, just a few elite teams maybe.