Guild Wars 2

I think we all agree the state of the sPvP in Guild Wars 2 isn’t as healthy as we wish. Here go a few ideas to improve it, small changes that wouldn’t need too much work:

TL;DR:

Encouraging skill:

• Proper ladder system with leagues and divisions
• Make showing your league and level easier
• More rank points for playing queue

Making it rewarding:

• Exclusive PvE skins you get by playing PvP only
• Make PvP equipment tradable, adding “trading card” mentality to it
• More achievement tiers and points to balance it with PvE

PvP and WvW:

• Merge WvW and PvP daily, and reward rank points, glory, WXP and honor
• WvW, PvE and guild finishers

Harder/Polemic stuff:

• Map veto in leagues
• New game modes, without leagues and just for fun
• Influence-bought custom arenas for guilds
• Monetize PvP reward chests through the Gem Store for those without glory or rank
• Paid tournaments once population rises, require glory or gems to participate
• Give PvE experience for playing tournaments

Making PvP competitive and encouraging skill:

• Queue games need a proper league system, not just a simple ladder. StarCraft II and League of Legends do this pretty well, and are the example to follow. For those who don’t know those systems, the entire ladder is divided into skill leagues (bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, etc) which are in turn divided into divisions. This makes your ladder be of just 100 players, of your skill level, and you can see yourself go up and down each win. If you perform well enough, you’re moved to another division, or to another league. These kind of league systems make you want to keep playing to get better, and protect you from getting stomped by higher level players. There should be another non-league queue system, too, for team practicing and trying new professions without losing league position.

• In line with the league system above, players should be able to show off their position in the leagues. This could be done easily by adding custom profile-borders. Just like champions have a golden border, and veterans a bronze one, players could get a custom border depending the league they are in. The level of the players should show rank level instead, too.

• Progression through levelling is painful, and encourages rank farming, which isn’t healthy at all. In the other hand, we have the queues, that don’t get as many players, one of the reasons being you get less glory. Queue matchs should get a huge buff, making them reward a ton of rank points for winning, and a decent amount for just playing. Someone winning at tournaments should get x2 the rank points rank farmers get, and someone losing get as much. This would mitigate farming, and encourage skilled playing. To avoid abuses, the buff could be limited to a few games, though a proper league system would discourage lose-farming anyway.

Making PvP rewarding:

• PvE players need to feel rewarded for playing PvP, with PvE rewards. Make sPvP give unique PvE skins, so they can show themselves in PvE and WvW. This: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Masquerade_armor could be a good example of PvP-rewarded PvE armor/skin. You want that armor? You need to play PvP to get it. It could let you purchase PvE stuff, like bags of materials, using glory, too.

• Making PvP-stuff tradable could be a good idea, too. You open chests to get skins, but then you end up recycling most of them. Adding a “trading card” mentality to this could be healthy. You play PvP, get chests and upon opening them you find rare skins, which you could trade in exchange of gold, or just sell your repeated skins to get the ones you’re missing. Higher ranks, the most dedicated PvP players, could get a nice profit selling high level equipment. I think it would be great for the game if the entire system was reworked around this concept, adding all the missing PvE stuff, too.

• The achievements for PvP (and WvW) aren’t rewarding enough. They need more tiers, so progressing isn’t crazy, and they need to give more points each tier, so the difference in achievement points between PvP and PvE players isn’t that huge. Also, some new achievements would be nice, for using map mechanics, for example (the entire game needs more achievement variety, but PvP and WvW are the ones that need it most).

PvP and WvW:

• The WvW daily should be moved from PvE to PvP. This would let players complete both the PvE and PvP daily in WvW. The Daily PvP achievements should be reworked, too. Just like the PvE daily rewards gold, karma and experience, the PvP daily could reward glory, honor, WXP and rank points.

• WvW needs its own finishers. PvE could reward special finishers, too, so PvE players can show off in PvP and WvW as well. A guild finisher should be a must, too.

Other “harder/polemic” to do stuff:

• In leagues, you should be able to veto a limited number of maps you don’t like, so you’re never forced to play on them if you don’t want to.

• New game-modes, specially Deathmatch, with their own maps and no leagues. Conquest should be the main mode, and give the most glory, with the new modes being just for fun. The new modes could focus on specific Conquest areas, just like Deathmatch would focus on killing, we could have new modes with many capture points or many siege weapons.

• Custom arenas shouldn’t be a rich-only privilege. Monetizing them wasn’t a very good idea to begin with. Guilds should be able to have their own influence-bought custom arena, and paid arenas should exist for big guilds than need more than one room, players that can’t afford it with influence or specific playstyles.

• The above suggested “trading card” mentality for reward chests could be monetized somehow, by letting players buy PvP chests with gems, too. Still, everything that is available in PvE through normal means should be available in PvP without being forced to use the Gem Store.

• Paid tournaments could return once we have a stable league system, and people willing to pay to play for greater rewards. Tournament tickets should be available through glory, too. Some tournaments could require one-use glory tickets, but let you buy a tournament-only gem ticket, too (think of SAB infinite coin, but chepaer and limited for each tournament).

• Playing sPvP could reward PvE experience to help you level, through soulbound consumables, but only for playing league and showing your skill, so it doesn’t lead to abuses.

Just a bunch of ideas, hope you liked them ;P.

These right here

Your points have already been mentioned dozens of times by dozens of other users and everyone agrees that’s what pvp needs to be revitalized. That said I suppose it doesn’t hurt to bring up these issues over and over as it generates more attention to them.

Good points but nobody at anet (except perhaps PR) gives a flying kitten.

Proper ladder system with leagues and divisions
Make showing your league and level easier

Disagree. I’m sure you are talking about system in legue of legends – it is very bad. You can learn more about its problems by reading LofL forums and keep in mind that they mindlessly took ELO system from chess/shogi/go (1×1 games) to 5×5 game without proper changes.
If you didn’t mean L of L, then sorry. But i still think that some sort of leagues and divisions is the last thing we need in pvp. First of all we need balance and build diversity. Then we need rewards. And only after all other things we may ask for leagues and divisions, i dont understand why is it the first thing you mentioned in your post.