Guild Wars 2

In this thread, let’s try to figure what sorts of things that Anet could offer to a winning server to boost player’s competitive spirit without causing too much burnout or server stacking. Secondly, let’s identify the problems that might be standing in the way of this but not try to solve them.

This is important because the WvW population is very different in competitive times and lazy times. In the former, PPT is important and players act as such—in the latter, PPT is meaningless and players know it. The result is that changes to WvW which would be good for competitive times are often ill-received since the current population prefers the non-PPT version of the game. In other words, things that improve the competitive situation in part (that is, not enough for a tournament), but hurt the skewed gamemode that people are playing currently feel bad for everyone.

I’ll post my contribution after this…character limit is breaking my back q_q

Possible rewards are probably best split into several categories. Namely, Server rewards, Guild rewards and Personal rewards. The idea is to have enough various rewards that a wide variety of players are incentivized.

In terms what is actually received, let’s split that as well:

Legendary Tier – These would be tournament rewards. I’m not sure what would be appropriate but perhaps unique guild emblems and a statue in Lion’s Arch? Perhaps a forum archive with some stats from each tourny and a synopsis of the winning server’s efforts? These are awarded on a server level. In addition, the number and potency of awards given out in the other tiers would increase during any tournament.

Ascended – These would be available at least one week out of a month and would include unique Armor/Weapon skins, and gold. These are awarded on a server level.

Exotic – These would be available every week. On the server level, they would include chests with1-2 exotic items and a chance at Ascended. On an individual level, they would include an additional chest per individual reward (more on this later) and a small amount of gold.

Rare – These would be available every week. These would include materials necessary to build a guild hall (flax, sand, shovels, etc.) and a permanent Medal somewhere in the player’s account. Anyone who receives such an award is also eligible for an additional chest from the Exotic Tier. They would be rewarded on an individual basis per server as follows:

-Realm Defender’s Medal
-Top 20% of players who received the most wexp from player kills. It’s based on wexp so that farming kills won’t add much to the score.

-Last Line
-Top 20% of players who participated in the most defense events.

-Saboteur’s
-Top 20% of players who flipped the most camps in enemy territory.

-Yakslapper’s
-Top 20% of players who slapped the most Yaks.

-Pheonix
-Top 20% of players who flipped the most Keeps/Towers in allied territory.

-Yak Messiah
-Top 50% of players who successfully escorted the most Yaks.

-Scout’s Honor Medal
-Top 20% of players who flipped the most Camps/Sentries in allied territory.

Masterwork Tier – These would be non-material rewards. Basically, there would be a place in the WvW UI and/or a sign in every spawn where players could view who had earned what medals for their server. It would also be possible to see the medals earned by what guild for that server. Any medals from another server would not count towards these totals.

Guild Tier – These would be awarded weekly or monthly on a guild level and would include guild hall decorations, functional items and resources. They would be given based on the number of individual medals earned in the guild.

1st Tier – 3
2nd Tier – 15
3rd Tier – 30
4th Tier – 100

My Goal with these rewards is to make awards available to whoever puts effort in, no matter how it’s done. Please let me know if I’ve missed some area. At the same time, I wanted to avoid having too many guild exclusive rewards so that solo players don’t feel too slighted while also giving guilds something to work towards. Finally, I wanted to give players recognition for their work while also showing new players what kind of activities could be valuable.

On the whole, I wanted the rewards to be good enough to be worth working towards but not so rare/magnificent as to induce people to play to burnout levels. I also wanted to tie plenty of the non-tournament awards to triggers that do not require winning the week so that players aren’t too heavily punished for being on a less populous server.
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For the second question, I think the biggest obstacle is population imbalance. If matches aren’t competitive, it can be hard to give out awards. I’ve tried to solve this issue by making individual rewards a per server thing. That way, it’s easier to earn them on a less populous server. I’m hoping this lessens the incentive to just switch to the current bandwagon as that would only increase rewards during tournies and even then only tourny-specific rewards.

Well, I’m assuming the devs will continue to add more reward tracks. 2 hour skirmishes are coming with rewards and skirmish currency to purchase rewards. Also, judging by the devs comments on t2 mistforged gear, there might be vendors that sell stuff based on rank. Perhaps wvw specific guild rewards will be offered as well… Beyond those, I wouldn’t want to see any other reward systems.

We are not getting any tournaments at this point, the focus will be on 2 hour skirmishes.

Aren’t 2 hour skirmishes already a thing?

At any rate, simply adding more rewards isn’t the best way to go about it. It would be better to tie rewards to specific activities across a wide range of playstyles. Rather than adding rewards on top of those you mentioned, I’m suggesting a more productive framework in how they’re given out.

Rewards are tricky because they could encourage behavior like tanking to get a more favorable match, and/or server stacking.

Even skirmish rewards would likely result in this behavior.

The first thing that should happen is adding stuff that would encourage more participation – an ascended equipment vendor and better WVW specific skins.

Glass Hand.7306:

Rewards are tricky because they could encourage behavior like tanking to get a more favorable match, and/or server stacking.

Even skirmish rewards would likely result in this behavior.

The first thing that should happen is adding stuff that would encourage more participation – an ascended equipment vendor and better WVW specific skins.

I agree with this person. If you do server rewards it will be a mess of musical servers and what WvW needs the most is people spread out and fighting each other. Not stacking a server and blobbing around PvDing. Honestly at this point I say the population is too weak to even support server based match ups even with linking. Make 3 teams like an ESO where people choose their side and fight. Stack a team? Enjoy a queue and since your not in the game mode; you’re not earning the sweet rewards such as the ones listed below.

Ascended gear – Why is WvW the only game mode where you cannot earn ascended gear when it is almost required since you are fighting other people in ascended gear? You are sending people from a dying game mode to go play in other game modes so they can compete at a high level. That is dumb as hell.

Armor skins – Look at the most popular PvP games right now. They are all about collecting pretty/cool skins. I’m sure you can make a light, medium and heavy set every month or two for people to earn before the news to come out. Make them available for a limited time to push the urgency of earning them before they’re gone.

Gold – It costs money for food and oils and mats to make new ascended sets and you’re not making enough in this game mode to support that. Again making people who want to play optimally go to other game modes to compete is dumb as hell. Why not an end of campaign bonus ala ESO’s to give a boost to WvWers wallets?

All these rewards should be gained based off of individual contribution and multipliers given for enemy presence on the map.

A full queue on the map for all factions? x2.0 multiplier. This is where you want to be! Yes, objectives are going to be harder to take, but defense is rewarding you greatly and when you do cap a point it’s going to be worth it.

High to full pop for at least two faction on your map? x1.5 multiplier.

Medium pop for at least two factions? Standard reward gain.

Out numbered buff for two factions on the map? 0.5x multiplier. Seriously… spread out or consider a transferring.

I love this game, but I just don’t play it anymore because there is no fun to be had in WvW due to lack of players/good fights and that is the game mode that kept me playing for the last 4 years. So, I’ll keep doing the PvE stuff as it is released and blow through that with friends in a day or two then shelf the game while spending my time and money in a game that has an active siege game mode (ESO currently with an eye out for Camelot and Crowfall) while wishing GW2 would fix my favorite game mode.

@Glass Hand, @Banono

That’s why I based the lion’s share of the rewards not on how you perform in the match, but how you perform on your server. They’re given out to a top percentage of people on the server in certain categories. Thus, moving to a more populated server will result in less rewards, not more, unless you’re moving there to do work.

There are some things still gated behind actually winning a match since that’s probably the point of competition.

As for what they consist of, it looks a lot like your list, Banono.

Server-wide achievements that reset weekly, and another that resets on a longer time period. Eligibility for these rewards depends on an arbitrary level of participation. Moving forfeits these rewards. Players killed seems to be an obvious one. Some of these should be repeatable and new records should be displayed in some kind of hall of fame.

The reason I bring up this is to introduce long term goals which everyone on the team shares, instead of just fill up a bar for yourself and jet that moment out. It also gives people things to do even if the matchup is lost, or getting rekt or whatever.,

I do like Sviel’s post.

I’ve also had ideas about rewards, particularly incentivising breaking into towers and keeps. Essentially:

If you break into a T2 or T3 tower, you get one guaranteed Rare drop off the Lord. This is 3-4 times per week.

If you break into a T2 or T3 keep, you get one guaranteed Exotic drop off the Lord. Again, 3-4 per week.

If you break into a T2 or T3 SMC, you get two guaranteed Exotics dropped off the Lord. 2-3 times a week.

This would incentivise having mid-week action, preferably if the weekly reward reset is set to Monday or Tuesday. It would encourage weaker servers to attempt to work together to break into SMC multiple times a week, and discourage continuous papering of stuff but rather giving weaker servers breathing space to upgrade and defend their structures, while also giving normally fight minded guilds an incentive to hit fortified towers they normally wouldn’t bother to hit.

In addition, killing players should give more rewards, higher chances of rare weapons or a, account-bound “Mist War Loot Bag” that gives only T6 mats and is about three or four times rarer than the Heavy Loot Bags you currently get (So you might have 80 Heavy and 20 Mist War loot bags after a busy Reset Night), but with a sharp dropoff point for diminishing returns on a player-by-player basis (so if the same player is killed 4 or 5 times by the an enemy player from the same server within 30 minutes, he shouldn’t drop anything at all past the third or fourth kill.

This would encourage more fighting, but discourage farming the same group over and over again. For optimal rewarding-ness, for instance, your group could wipe an enemy group from server A twice in a row with 20 minutes, fight a second enemy group also from server A, then the first group could WP back and wipe your group. Your group waypoints back, rallies, then goes out and engages an enemy group from server B, winning a fight with them.

That’s, assuming moderate 15-20 man groups, anywhere from 50-70 kills spread out across 40-60 different enemy players. That should be the most rewarding, while getting the same 50-70 kills from wiping Group A 4 times in a row would give you way less rewards because the kills are all on the same 15-20 players. You would get, 8-10 rares, 20-30 Heavy Loot Bags, 5-10 Mist War Loot Bags from the former, and 3-4 rares, 10-15 Heady Loot Bags and 3-4 Mist War Loot Bags from the latter. For an example.

Essentially, WvW rewards should disincentivize doing the same thing repeatedly (ktraining or farming), but it should encourage continuous action with different slants: fighting different groups instead of running over the same one repeatedly, attacking different structures on different maps instead of ktraining the same 3-4 paper towers in EBG in a circle, etc. Ideally, all these rewards would also be scaled via Time-Slices and Activity Levels, to prevent a server that utterly dominates a timezone getting the full force of all these rewards.

Ultimately, rewards should be based on participation in WvW activities, not winning skirmishes or matchups.