Guild Wars 2

Putting aside the amount of rewards, let’s talk about what behaviours we want to see rewarded in WvW, what behaviours we don’t want rewarded, and what mechanics are possible to detect & reward these behaviours.

I think this is a much more difficult problem than many people assume.

Any reward structure has a few real and gameplay constraints on it:

- It needs to be difficult to idle or bot through.
(this usually means it must involve contact with enemy players.)

- It needs to be detectable with an automated system.
(democratic or vague requirements like “good commander” or “helps the server a lot” can’t work.)

- It needs to be fair to people with varying amounts of time.
(casuals, low levels, different classes, low-gold players, etc.)

- It probably needs to be immediate / instant gratification to be “fun”
(eg. one idea I had, was to tally up your participation throughout the week, and then reward you at the end of the week if your server won. But that’s probably too long a time period to be “fun”)

So what can we do? There’s a lot of stuff that helps your server win, that involves no contact with the enemy. Escorting dolyaks, standing guard, upgrading stuff, etc.
How can we reward such activities without making them bottable or idleable?

I guess one way is to reward them with blueprints – untradeable items that can only be used to help in WvW. (jumping puzzles already do this, after all.) Even if someone bots or idles for these rewards, it’s not a big problem, since they can only use it in WvW.

Cash/karma/item rewards can be reserved for defense/attack events that involve contact with the enemy.

Another idea is to have a feature where you press a button, and the number of enemies you see onscreen is reported to the global map as a ping. (there are limits to how often pings are displayed on an area of map, to stop it being annoying.) This is clearer and more convenient than typing into chat, and creates an automated system where we can reward people for intel gathering.

Another issue we need to think about, is whether we want to keep rewards for capturing stuff. This rewards zerg-oriented gameplay. Presumably we would prefer to reward holding stuff rather than capturing. But how do we do that?
Maybe one way is for players to “garrison” a point. They speak to an NPC to be assigned there, and they become responsible for holding the point. The player gets rewarded for defense events, and the reward increases proportionally to the amount of time the player has garrisoned the point without the enemy taking it. (thus the player is free to move and do other stuff, as long as they respond quickly to defend the point.)
The garrison reward can be divided equally amongst all garrison players who succeed at defense events, which means the fewer garrisoning players, the higher the reward. (this encourages people to spread out and garrison everything.) This garrison reward is on top of the normal defense event reward, which everyone gets (even if they aren’t garrisoning, and are just passing by to help out.)

Anyways, I feel we need to have a constructive discussion about this. Obviously the incentives in WvW have a big influence on player behaviour and gameplay, so it’s important to get the system right.

Another interesting thing is, the ideas I have listed above are mostly static/defense based. If they were all implemented, we’d probably see a lot of people standing around at or near points, or escorting dolyaks, or spying on people.

But what about attacking? Presumably we want to reward people for doing that too? Or is it just sufficient to reward people for kills, and we assume that taking a point is “fun” enough that people will do it even without a reward?

How do we reward attacking in a way that doesnt result in zerg-friendly incentives?

I’ve said this before, the fights should be the incentive. Why do people need incentive to PvP in a PvP function of the game?

You hinted at something about tallying up participation throughout the week. I LIKE this idea. I think if ArenaNet did something like this, but even on a daily scale it would help people feel more accomplished. So people could see, “Hey, I contributed +100 points today for my server.”

I REALLY like your ideas about rewarding defense which in turn would split up the zerg. Which are two separate problems that can be solved by something like you suggested.

I usually run solo and will cap/defend supply camps. I know I am helping my server, but it can be awfully boring. Some kind of reward system would GREATLY diminish this bored feeling.

Another thing that is very boring is escorting dolyaks. You are not rewarded for it at all which in turn DOES make it boring. I have limited time to spend in WvW. I am trying to earn gold, have fun, and help my server. If I am escorting a dolyak, I am only accomplishing one of those. Why can’t I get some kind of reward for doing those actions?

I really don’t think WvW needs sweeping changes that will change how people play. I think there just needs to be more incentive/rewards for doing the above actions. This in turn, will actually change how people play WvW and I think it would solve a lot of problems people are having.

The issue is that the amount of time/effort required to attain Badges are not sufficient compared to PvE methods. I’ll have to log in to check my account again but with almost seven hundred hours in the game and over half that time in WvW I only had enough badges to buy two accessories with about 250 badges left over. Not to mention the WvW gear is only good for a Pwr/Vit/Tgh set and lots of builds don’t run that set-up.

In all the WvW, which to many like me, was the primary reason to play the game, is boring and without Realm Ranks (Dark Age of Camelot) or other incentives to keep coming out, I can’t be bothered to log back in.

PvP for PvP’s sake, fine, but I have War of the Roses and BF3 for that, which are far superior games for just PvP. In a MMO I expect to progress at least a tiny bit for my efforts and right now gearing a character in WvW isn’t viable unless you want to zerg on Friday Nights to take/hold keeps while the taking is fast and rampant and buy karma gear with it.

I’ll keep my eyes on the forums because with three 80th level toons, I can’t be bothered to log in anymore. Same thing happened to me in GW1.

Daedalus.3954:

I’ve said this before, the fights should be the incentive. Why do people need incentive to PvP in a PvP function of the game?

I LOVE WvW. It is all I do usually when logging on to play. However, I logout a lot now due to many of the things that I see are problems in WvW. I just get bored.

I do not have a large group of people to play WvW with. Which leaves me playing solo, or with 3-5 people. Usually when I play, my side has the outmanned buff. My small group can take a camp or even a tower. We can setup some arrow carts etc to help defend. However, the enemy zerg will come and demolish us within seconds. It is just very demoralizing.

I prefer to play in a dynamic WvW, so I do not agree on rewarding more holding a point, that would make people sit inside a tower/keep and very few would attack objectives.

But I agree on rewarding more people escorting Dolyaks and doing repair runs, also I would like to see support being rewarded as now the only thing which will net our precious bag is damage.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution, because if you reward defense more then few/none attacks, if you reward attack more then very few/none defends. It’s already bad when the three servers cycle trough maps to conquer objects and never clash in a battle, granted that I haven’t seen it happen very often, but it still happened.

So the current balance of attack and defense rewards will have to do untill ANet realizes a brilliant way to dynamically scale it.

I’ve said this before, the fights should be the incentive. Why do people need incentive to PvP in a PvP function of the game?

Because this PvP mode has money sinks, so it needs to reward people for their succes, otherwise you’re forced to PvE too keep up with costs and that’s not an option for many.

Mik Hell.8206:

I prefer to play in a dynamic WvW, so I do not agree on rewarding more holding a point, that would make people sit inside a tower/keep and very few would attack objectives.

But I agree on rewarding more people escorting Dolyaks and doing repair runs, also I would like to see support being rewarded as now the only thing which will net our precious bag is damage.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution, because if you reward defense more then few/none attacks, if you reward attack more then very few/none defends. It’s already bad when the three servers cycle trough maps to conquer objects and never clash in a battle, granted that I haven’t seen it happen very often, but it still happened.

So the current balance of attack and defense rewards will have to do untill ANet realizes a brilliant way to dynamically scale it.

I’ve said this before, the fights should be the incentive. Why do people need incentive to PvP in a PvP function of the game?

Because this PvP mode has money sinks, so it needs to reward people for their succes, otherwise you’re forced to PvE too keep up with costs and that’s not an option for many.

Not many people stay behind a cap’d tower etc to stand guard. If you do that you are missing out on badges, karma, xp, and gold. I really do think something should be done about this. As long as the rewards can not be farmed by people sitting in a tower, I do not see the negatives.

As of right now only offensive play is directly encouraged because of the rewards. I’d like to see pro-active defense encouraged too!

Something else I think they can explore is reinforcing the sense of ownership for controlled points. Whenever I use my money to purchase an upgrade for a point, I always stay guarding that point. I definitely feel a powerful sense of ownership when this happens. I spent 20 silver (that is a lot for me right now) buying upgrades. This is my supply camp!

If I felt that more in WvW i think it would help things.

Joey.3928:

Something else I think they can explore is reinforcing the sense of ownership for controlled points.

Well, my “garrison” idea certainly helps for this.

Mik Hell.8206:

I don’t think there’s an easy solution, because if you reward defense more then few/none attacks, if you reward attack more then very few/none defends. It’s already bad when the three servers cycle trough maps to conquer objects and never clash in a battle, granted that I haven’t seen it happen very often, but it still happened.

I don’t really agree. In my suggestions, defense is rewarded more than attack, but you only get the defense reward if you are actually attacked. You don’t get any reward (apart from the siege blueprint idea) if you’re just standing around on a wall.

So let’s say defense is rewarded in all the ways I suggest. But attack is rewarded a little bit too.

I’d like to think this will result in good player behaviour, because the boring tasks (defending, escorting, supply runs, etc) have a large mechanical reward, and the “fun” tasks (attacking, fighting, capturing) are still needed to win the game for your server.

If everyone sits around defending and noone attacks, then noone gets rewarded and the game is also boring. I doubt very much this situation would last for long – most players would just attack for fun anyways.

As i wrote on my sugestion i want them to reward Defending better, and the better upgraded a spot is the more reward the defender and the attacker should get if they make it, if you take a fully upgraded Supplycamp you should get better reward and then same if you defend a fully upgraded supplycamp you should get alot more coin.

That way you reward the ones that upgrade and the farm guilds will start thinking maybe we should Defend Hills that is fullyupgraded instead off taking this supplycamp for the 100 time today.

Just off the top of my head. Maybe every keep drops a chest every 3 hours like dragon events. Garrisons, and SM have higher rare, exotic, and (eventually) ascended chance. Even higher chance can be assigned to the medal ranks a player receives in WvW events. Or the total amount of towers, and camps a server holds. I realize it would be possible for people to just pop in grab the chest, and leave. It should be possible to determine if someone did that, and give them a chest full of blues like when someone pops in when Jormag is at 10%. Even if they do it still give the whole serve incentive to act to defend their holdings or nobody gets anything.

Doesn’t even have to be every three hours could be like twice a day or something.

Some ideas I had…

Make Commander account wide. Commander is based off of player, not ingame avatar. I have my commander on my thief. I have 4 lvl 80s and like the variety. Why should I be forced to play my thief when I don’t want to, but our server needs a commander when I’m playing.

Change the commander price. It no longer should be based on gold. Since I have 4 80s and am going for 8 of them I’ve been doing dungeons to get their gear. 100g is nothing these days. People are starting to buy it without the incentive to lead, and just want a marker over their head. There are some commanders I never follow and will personally log into my commander character just to get people away from that commander because that commander has absolutely no idea what they’re doing, and when I do that, they start following me with their tag on. The currency should be changed to….

Faction. Add this as a currency. Like GW1, you can get faction, but for your personal server. Keep badges of honor for siege and armor, but faction should be used as a currency to purchase superior siege (over using PvE items and skill points), purchase commander tag (Requires a lot), and claim objectives in World vs World. Faction can be just like Karma, but resets to 0 when you leave the server, but will return to your faction if you enter the server again. This faction is used to…

Purchase badges of honor. Purchase Commander tag. Purchase unique buffs in WvW (such as more magic find, more experience per kill, more karma, +X in X stat), purchase unique dyes only available via Faction. Purchase armor skins. And more.

I like the idea of having a weekly achievement or something for WvW. However, these “achievements”, much like the daily and monthly, should not give achievement points otherwise people will complain (I mean the daily and monthly shouldn’t give achievement points). However, unlike the daily and monthly there is no end. The more you do, the more you’re rewarded. You should get a chest at the end of the week sent in your mail that is unlocked and untradable and account bound.

In this chest there should be a jug of liquid faction, some coins, some badges of honor, and either 3 rares or an exotic (small chance of precursor).

I’d like to see more “events” structured after FPS-game modes (we already sort of have domination), be it as part of an attack on a keep/tower/castle aka some sort of S&D phase to break certain points of defense or the implementation of CTF (orbs were CTF, why not use banners instead but with other strategic goals than buffs – supplies, siege prints, money), raid/HQ mode on supply storages for… let’s say 1000 supplies – one might even add “transport those home” similar to some heart missions in PVE.
there are soooo many possible ways to use such scenarios as small or even major parts of WvW to add more variety & chances to “gain” stuff as those would most likely be events.
right now it’s just knocking on doors for the most part with no real reward for trying (unless you kill the lord – on the other hand defenders gain stuff if they fail) and even if it is a well defended attack – boring/repetitive as hell.

Rewards are mainly targeted at DPS players. Whoever does the most damage gets the best rewards and this is terribly flawed for something with the depth of WvW. For those of us who are more defensive and supportive, we get the stink end of the stick.

I can’t tell you how many times I have stayed behind when we capture a keep just to fortify it so that when it is attacked, we can actually defend it while others run off to ‘farm badges’ with their DPS characters. These are the same people who complain when there is no siege available to defend said keep, so they can get more badges. while being weighted down with all the loot and badges they collected.

Makes me not want to play at all anymore, but I still do because I generally like this game.