Guild Wars 2

I’m almost certain that this topic has been brought up several times, but it bears repeating. It bears repeating over and over until it’s fixed, quite honestly.

Based on what I’ve seen about the quality of GW2, I’m almost certain that a change for the better is coming on this topic. I just thought I would make a post about it after spending 2 hours in WvW, successfully capturing 2 full on castles and countless towers and camps, and only having ONE badge to show for it despite not ever getting killed even once.

I helped kill plenty of people(scorpion wire off the wall is awesome!), helped build siege weapons and defend them, rezzed or pulled people to their feet, DPS’d on many Keep Captains, got the killing blow and the execute of several players, and I’m pretty sure I looted every bag I got from kills. They just never had badges in them. Maybe I just don’t fully understand how badges are awarded, but after all of the different things I accomplished in those two hours, a single badge just seems very wrong.

Assigning rewards based only on the amount of damage that you’ve inflicted on an enemy is such a mind-numbingly simply way to calculate rewards for a number of reasons. Primarily is the simple fact that there is so much more than just damage going on in any situation, and many different ways of contributing to the success of your team.

Lets take a look at a typical WvW situation:

Generally speaking, as long as you’re in the fight and doing just about anything at all, the game is going to reward you exp and karma when the gate or keep goes down. Or when you successfully repel attackers, or capture a camp. But what you don’t get by being a team player and filling a supporting role, is Badges of Honor. These appear to be rewarded based solely on who inflicts the most damage on a given target.

This not only screws over people who do ANY of the myriad of things required to be successful in keep sieges(such as running supply or breaking enemy siege weapons) but is also unfair to condition based builds that kill more slowly, yet are often vital to weakening enemies enough so they can actually be killed before they escape.

The game seems to only reward the person who mindlessly tunnel-visions on enemy kills. This makes very little sense unless the idea is to encourage players to selfishly pursue kills instead of being part of the greater team effort. Furthermore, it also promotes camping and exploiting in areas such as the jump puzzle. A decent team can just sit in there for hours farming kills with siege weapons at key locations. Why should something that’s borderline griefing be rewarded more than capturing towers and keeps?

A-net, maybe the kill-based system was a shortstop so you could release the game. I understand completely. In almost every way you’ve made an amazing game with as smooth of a release as I’ve ever seen. But the current system of how rewards in events, boss fights, and WvW are assigned needs some serious work.

Bears…..i laughed so hard at your improper use of the word that you use so many times.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_'bears_repeating'_mean

“Answer

“Bears repeating” actually has nothing to do with the animal. Bear in this phrase means “able to support, carry, or hold.” For instance, a person may bear a heavy load, or bear glad tidings. If something bears repeating it means that the subject can usefully be brought up or talked about multiple times."

This is one thing I can agree with.

I wouldn’t mind if they flung a few more badges our way.

It doesn’t need to be a vast increase just the odd 1 or 2 thrown in for various other objectives.

I also wouldn’t mind if they gave them for defended an objective X amount of times. Mainly because quite a few folks on Underworld refuse to defend because, and I quote, it doesn’t reward enough.

Agreed.
I play a support guardian and this just doesn’t make me want to play WvW anymore.

Agreed.
I’m a support person myself, spend a lot of time organising the zerg, putting down healing turrets and rezzing people. I think we should get badges for each keep, tower, supply point we capture.

I spend 90% of my time upgrading my guilds tower & supply camp, running and protecting supply, building siege, and after all that dedication I only get a few badges if the enemy decide to attack my tower. It happens maybe once an hour, maybe a skirmish once every 15 minutes.

By contrast, running in the zerg will net you tons of badges, but their role is of equal, if not less importance.

Certainly, the conditions for getting badges needs to be changed. WvWvW is about much more than just mindless zerging, yet badge distribution doesn’t reflect this.

Agreed!

It’s the same like what is going on with rewards in general… You get the feeling that just DPS is related to the reward in the end!

I couldn’t bear to read the full OP sorry.
Do you reserve the right to Bear arms too?
Would you shave them?

What’s a badge? ;-)

Let’s just say this combined with auto-loot in WvW would make the game much less frustrating.

/signed

There also needs to be more things to use the badges for.

They need to just skip the entire badge idea all together. The idea that people need to stop killing to loot a bag for their reward is insane, many a time have I lost my loot simply because I didn’t see the bag drop or I died. Not to mention their drop rate is terrible. I killed 150+ people last night over the span of 5 hours and I got a grand total of 29. It is easily faster to grind the karma for exotics. In around 12 hours you can have the karma for 1 exotic piece where in WvW at even 6 badges an hour you’re only a 1/4 of the way to a piece. Equal playtime should yield equal rewards and it is paramount in WvW that gear be accessible due to it being a huge factor in PvP.

Just reward “honor” for anything that gives xp like player kills, events, upgrading(not gathering) and add a lot more events to the map. There should be more events in WvW, in a stalemate you’re literally beating your head against the wall for very little xp. Make events for blowing up the oil, catapults, door, etc. Heck even make chunks of land events like the island inbetween the borderland two bottom world spawns. This will give most players goals and motivate them, maybe they can’t take the tower but at least they will get xp for destroying the oil.

Make WvW autoloot. And also add in Defense bonus badges. Example – Some who stands around building siege on towers and keeps after they are taken, or a group of 5 that stand around defending a supply camp to ensure we have a steady stream of supply. Give these players 2-3 even 5 badges every 5-10 minutes spent at a keep or supply camp defending it. Give badges for Supply escorts! It will reward those who don’t Zerg but actually try to keep what we take. We had a few guild members who did nothing but defend a northern supply camp and ORB for about 2 hours and what did they get for it? Respect and nothing more.

People will say yeah but people will exploit this. Stop spending all our time defeating the exploiters and start spending our time adding in things to improve our experience

I agree, NPCs need to drop this as well when a supply camp/tower/keep/SM is conquered.

the badges need to change… they are the only “currency” that needs to be physically kept in your inventory.

badges need a seperate spot next to gold and karma in your bag inventory slots.

and needs to be automatically acquired even if you can’t gather the loot.

Maybe they should add badge rewards for WvW related daily, weekly and monthly achievements. Maybe make more achievements too so people who rez, heal, repair and build get rewarded badges too.

I would have thought this was obvious. WvWvW is an amazing game that requires tactics and teamwork to win, with players filling various roles as needed (healing, reviving, assaulting supply camps, etc).

This badge system only encourages players to ignore their downed team mates, to stick with the zerg instead of splintering off from them to assist by cutting off enemy supplies, and to spec for DPS and ignore support builds.

Please at least consider making some changes to how badges are awarded =)

Agreed.
I play support guardian, and with support class we’re not rewarded, this state of mind is not encouraging WvWvW.

Agree! Put in auto loot and add badge rewards for more than DPS.

+1 I like to play defensively in WvW and support the team, it’d be nice to be rewarded for being a team player vs DPS button-masher.

This is the same problem as PVE has with regards to event medals and loot…The game as a whole has far too much emphasis placed on DPSing and killing things which is really unfortunate since theirs a lot more nuance to the game beyond simply who can shoot something the hardest…

Agreed! A group/zerg can do amazing job when you have a few players supporting instead of just pure DPS. But they get screwed over if they keeping playing support. I’ve tried doing a bit more support but end up a lot more towards DPS because of the badge factor.

Then you have support from upgrading, building siege, running supplies, protecting the dolyaks but it can be boring and no real reward besides money loss. Probably the main reason why no one does it but perhaps a daily WvWvW achievement that rewards players on doing one of each (capture of a camp, escort, build siege, repair defenses, rez 10 players, etc) can reward a few badges at the end of it all. This way it can’t be abused really since you can only get it once a day but rewards you for helping in all ways.

I think the problem isn’t with Badges specifically but their all around focus on damage as the sole focus of everyone. I think it stems from their strong desire to avoid the “Trinity”. They are so afraid of that they figure they can’t reward people who play support, otherwise they would encourage it.

I played a condition build guardian, focusing on DMG. I could kill people pretty well and was getting a nice flow of badges. I played with a very organized group the other day and realized how useful A support guardian can be, so I respecced. I am loving support, and I know I am being incredible helpful with my shields and my traits focusing on ressurecting….but my rewards have taken a huge hit. It really is quite sad. My next class will definitely be all out damage…since it seems clear that is what they want.

My original post only focused on support while in a main force…this doesn’t even bring up the problem of all the other ways people support.

When I was with a very organized group we had scouts all over, and volunteers that would stay at keeps to refresh siege. They were VERY important to the cause, but I felt really bad because I know the system doesn’t care about them, they get nothing for scouting, or maintaining positions at a keep that isn’t under direct fire. Its honestly a screwed up system.

Agree that currently the badges are rewarded almost randomly, for silly things. Sometimes I take almost the entire HP of an enemy and get just trash or nothing, another time I shoot someone once while he’s in downed state – and get a badge! What?

No rewards for reviving? No badges for supply runs, upgrading, siege deployment, taking keeps?

On top of that, the loot is dropped in the form of a bag, EASY to miss especially when you’re on the run, so I’m pretty sure people are missing half of their badges this way.

Solution:
- WvW loot has to be placed in the inventory instantly.
- Give a badge for each x revives, or for a certain number of health healed on another player.
- Badges for taking towers.
- Badges for siege deployment, and building, say 1 badge for each 50 supply used.

Also, if your inventory is full, have the bags mailed to the player.

Perhaps tying the badge rewards to specific WvW related achievements would be better?

they really do need to use a traditional system of if you support a player getting a kill you should also be rewarded and while at it make badges a currency like karma so you dont need to loot them.

But i dont think badges coming from pretty much mainly player kills is bad, it encourages PvP and not daisy chain keep swapping, something that has destroyed a lot of other games world pvp entirely.

Repairing walls and gates doesn’t break pvp. Healing and buffing either doesn’t break pvp. Building siege could be exploited for badges, but it would be an expensive exploit. Were you thinking of something specific?

- I will add the way you get lootbags, it doesnt matter how much you hit an enemy, most of the time its the only that gets the “finisher” on the enemy that gets the lootbag.
This follows with rangers getting most of the bags since they have the longest range, or melee becouse their the first to get to the enemy.
Classes more focused on ST seem to get more lootbags then AoE classes that gets their damage spread around multiple targets.

Ive spent loads of time in WvW, hitting loads of enemies with AoE as an elementalist, but i have not had to many bags and only around 50 honor badges.

The usage of the word, bears, is correct. I disagree with badges for non killing.

I also want to add, though this isn’t directly a badge issue, but I also think support is SIGNIFICANTLY under-rewarded during a defense. In order to get ANY credit for defending a keep you need to kill things. If you are on the wall focusing on defense/support/resurrection you get nothing every time that tic goes down.

As a support guardian it is offensive. I’m casting shields up to wazoo, i’m rezzing (with my traited rez to protect people) and yet I get nothing…I"m forced to try my best to “tag” things with my scepter just to get any credit for helping. It’s just wrong.

This really needs to be addressed. The droprate for these is ridiculous, and the current best way to get them is to do jumping puzzles.

This goes for everything, though. Dynamic Events should also reward you for everything you do, from heals and boons to rezzing. I imagine this is something they’re working on, it’s not quite as simple as most people think, especially for WvW.

I really agree with this as the current system is very flawed. I personally like the achievements idea with maybe daily and fortnightly achieves (fortnightly as that is the length of the eventual match ups) for doing a variety of reasons.
Other reasons bar damage need to be rewarded as well, such as buffing, shielding, healing, combo created, control conditions (snare, daze etc..)… Stuff like that but then it is not just this that is flawed but the whole general event reward system.

And oh my god yes to automatic loot… It should just pile up into a seperate area… And a little click to colect somewhere on the screen.

@Veltoss

I know it isn’t simple, but to be honest the system should have been built from the ground up to support non DMG forms of contribution. I made a post about this in the first beta weekend, and never got a response. In any case, what is done is done. I realize it may be hard to change, but it really has to. The system as it is is just way to skewed to people who focus completely on max DMG. I can be incredible helpful to my teammates and get next to nothing to show for it, that is just wrong.

I don’t use bears, i’m an elementalist.

It does, you can repeatedly kill the grub per day for badges among other boss status npcs.

When do you get badges. I have like done the monthly achievement 2 times and stayed a bit longer to have some fun. At least 100 kills. But 6 badges I think… but then again I think I forgot to pick up the loot sometimes.

Is there some min requirement at damage you need to do? I read about people doing AoE not getting badges while doing a lot of damage at 1 enemy is getting badges? Why then awarding kills. Should be kill = chance at loot. At some percentage of damage you did.

Which percentage do you get the kill? Hard to see that stuff in all the zergs. Or is it like PvE that you only need to to 1 damage(just hit the enemy with something)… then probably it would be a problem to award badges there already.

Kill = chance at loot and badges. And at least a bit of damage should be done.

And I agree: Badges for other stuff should be possible too. Warhammer Online after a siege a chest spawned at the keep lord and you got bags with loot and I think some PvP currency too. Can’t remember it exactly. They should make it here like this. But harder than the usual event. Maybe only if you get at least gold in the event… still not that hard. Zerging down the champ keep lord also seems really fast to me. So players defending the keep always need to count too.

Agreed
Im playing ranger so.. constantly on the move… when im starting to admire butterflys – im dead.
So… when i kill on the run – what? – supposed to turn back and look some bag on the ground? What about those other 3 guys who running after me?
Thats why i personally miss s**t load on bags… i know they r out there… just cant go back

Totally agreed and as a conditiomancer I usually don’t get kill rewards because I can’t apply bleeds fast enough to get enough dmg before the burst warrios and others kill the target.

Also this is an objective based game not PvP, badges should be awarded every EVENT DONE ESPECIALLY DEFENSIVE ONES.

Then the idea of using so much money to upgrade while asking people to make huge amounts of gold for legendaries simply cuts the amount of people willing to pay for upgrades by a HUGE margin.

Spent 3 hours playing last night. We took a garrison, took a supply camp, defended that garrison, lost supply camp, lost the garrison, retook the garrison, retook supply camp, and we lost the garrison again when I logged off.

I got a grand total of 1 badge of honor. I was getting kills, clearing walls, building siege weapons, and everything in between. This system seriously needs changed.

Actually it isn’t that bad.
I had 9 badges Yesterday evening (even a bag with 2 in it) and I’m a heal/glamour support specced Mesmer, so not a dps killing machine.

I’d love it if that happened, but it’s probably exploitable six ways from Sunday. I’m hoping when and if I ever stick to a profession long enough to make level 80 or at least the 60s that the badges will drop more frequently. I think I get the most off my Engineer, and for some reason my Mesmer got a bunch, too. I guess people are too happy to kill themselves with their own attacks.

There should be badge related dailies.

Destroy a cannon – 2 Badges
Destroy an Arrow Cart – 2 Badges
Etc
Res 10 team mates – 2 Badges
Assist in 50 Enemy Kills – 2 Badges

I do the normal routines of taking defending, running supply from A to B. Run with the zerg for a bit, listen to commanders in team chat and go where needed. End up getting maybe 10 badges in a 4 hour session, or on my elementalist, 1 in 4 hours because I try to heal/support and aoe walls to keep people back. Seems my AoEs never do enough damage to give me credit.

Also, the stalemates are so mind numbing boring. Im on SBI and we have had a stale mate in front of Stonemist Castle against HoD for days now, the one time we got in (that I was there for anyways), we killed the keep dude 3 times but since there was no lag on ressing and 10 second lag on activating any skills, we gave up. Its to the point where I dont even feel like going into BGs at all now. Even doing the jumping puzzle isnt worth it when multiple sections are camped by opposing teams. JQ camping the end and beginning, Henge camping dark room (I wont even attempt it due to hating jumping puzzles but I hear about it in map chat often). What the heck guys.

And I dont get it.. why is there no lag on ressing people/npcs but 10 second lag on activating skills?

Just a note, I dont remember where I read it, but they said the reason they cant auto put it in inventory has something to do with their technology atm and nothing to do with not wanting to do it.

Sorry for being so long but Ive been thinking about this for days now.

I’m not sure how the dynamic is set out for claiming badges but I been playing since three day head start and am sitting on over 200 in my bank.

I dont think they should be TOO easy to pick up, considering these badges are used to get some of the best gear…right? Dont want to make it WoW easy…

I see badges like Warhammer Emblems; they are rare drops from enemy kills that allow you to get the best gear. Why make it too easy to get those? Im already getting more of them than i ever got Emblems in war, its hardly a grind.

As far as looting goes, there is an Auto loot, as in you dont have to choose what to loot as long as you pick up the bag. I have gotten into the habit of pressing ‘F’ every time i see single kill xp come off me or i do a finisher. Considering the loot is placed right at your feet, no matter where the guys dies, flashing your finger over to the ‘F’ key when you see the kill XP is NOT difficult. Especially if you dont have to LOOK for the ‘F’ key :p

Like I say, not sure how they work out the roll for the badges but if it is contribution based, Ie, if you hit that target you get a chance for a badge rather than be the one doing the killing blow it should remain as is, else you’d have too many ppl running around with the best gear too soon when this should be something to work for.

@Karicus
What about people playing support who don’t get to actually hit as many enemies as DPS players? Shouldn’t they get something?

Also, badges shouldn’t even need to be picked up. They should be a currency like Karma.

@Karicus
Its because getting “the best” gear stats in this game is super duper easy. Far easier than in WoW, or at least when I played.

It should be fairly equally time consuming to get gear from badges or gear from crafting or the gold to buy it. The pvp gear is so ugly that you have to get a skin for it anyways. I have full exotics minus a couple pieces that dont matter too much (spear/harpoon/aquabreather and rings). Its really, really really easy to get full exotics. Why is it so hard, rare and outright tunnel visioned to damage torwards player kills to get badges?

Btw my solution has been to bind my attack keys on a gaming pad to F in addtion to the primary number. Its a work around for some of the loot issues.

It means I kind of auto loot bags.

I have a few hundred badges over the last 3-4 days.

Like i said, i have no idea HOW the roll for badges is made… As far as supporting classes, I understand and sympathize with what your saying but ANet always said there were no full support classes, NO healer specific architype NO Tank specific Architype, yes they have similar abilities but none are specific support classes. So by ANet’s own definition, you should be doing some damage to your enemies, ok maybe not as much as say a thief but your having a contribution. If your a guardian, retaliation hits enemies so that’s damage and if the roll for badges IS (im not sure so dont slate me for it) based on contribution then you’ll get a chance to get them.

HOWEVER, if it’s based on ACTUALLY kill shots, then Yes, that isnt fair for the classes who have specced to support a bit more.

I’m still basing my response on the badge roll being based on some form of contribution here; I dont see it as tunnel vision to do damage to others. Isnt that the point? Every single class in game, every single build in game has damage capability. If your just sitting on the back lines throwing up shields and walls, yes that helps but not as much as pushing forward, damaging, retaliation, defending those behind you and what not. I dont wish to TELL you how to play your classes or what not in no way but bottom line is, if your not hitting something, for how ever low damage it is, your not contributing as well as designed. shrug