Guild Wars 2

So in March Anet said they are adding a WvW reward / title system.
(previous thread was moved to suggestions for some reason)( this isn’t a suggestion ANET said they were doing this)

Now I dont know how they will do the reward system, but if it is similar to the realm rank system in DAOC it could help to promote less zerging, more defending.

If the system rewards players MAINLY for killing other players and the amount of damage they did.

You will see alot of players who want to raise their rank so they will start to stray away from the zerg so they can get more credit for player kills. you might actually start to see alot of roamng 5man groups picking off people and looking for other small groups.

another thing people dont think of from DAOC was taking keeps JUST to defend and make points form enemy attackers, SO you might see groups taking towers and actually staying there to defend.

They reward system would also need not have a cap that could be obtained in a few months, refer to the DAOC realm rank system that get progressively harder where rewards eventually get few and far inbetween, so you keep building your character for years.

Now if the system follows the karma, big reward for taking undefended keeps and avoiding player kills, this system will not fix anything

Not going to hold my breath but if done correctly the reward system could make WvW alot better

If they reward based on kills they may as well remove the objectives. No one would attack/defend. It would simply be “hey lets find an open field and beat on each other all day for titles”

Pirhana.8935:

So in March Anet said they are adding a WvW reward / title system.
(previous thread was moved to suggestions for some reason)( this isn’t a suggestion ANET said they were doing this)

Now I dont know how they will do the reward system, but if it is similar to the realm rank system in DAOC it could help to promote less zerging, more defending.

If the system rewards players MAINLY for killing other players and the amount of damage they did.

You will see alot of players who want to raise their rank so they will start to stray away from the zerg so they can get more credit for player kills. you might actually start to see alot of roamng 5man groups picking off people and looking for other small groups.

another thing people dont think of from DAOC was taking keeps JUST to defend and make points form enemy attackers, SO you might see groups taking towers and actually staying there to defend.

They reward system would also need not have a cap that could be obtained in a few months, refer to the DAOC realm rank system that get progressively harder where rewards eventually get few and far inbetween, so you keep building your character for years.

Now if the system follows the karma, big reward for taking undefended keeps and avoiding player kills, this system will not fix anything

Not going to hold my breath but if done correctly the reward system could make WvW alot better

You don’t have a clue what you are talking about. The large scale three-faction PvP map called Conquest in Rift is the poster child for what happens when you mix team objectives and individual objectives in PvP. It totally ruins everything for everyone by creating different motivations for being in the map. Want to know what happens when a group heads off to take an objective only to have half of them split off to capture unrelated individual kills? Map chat gets filled with angry comments between players on the same team and everybody quits because of frustration. Commanders already get frustrated when members of their group get distracted by gathering or farming mobs. At least now that sort of thing is minimized because players can do their dailies or farm for gold outside of WvW … just imagine what it will be like if players actually get significant individual rewards for non-team activities that can ONLY be found in WvW.

Besides, as Conquest proved in Rift, adding individual rewards for kills does the exact opposite of what you say. It strongly ENCOURAGES zergs because players can get kills much faster that way. How can you not see that? Why would you run with a small team looking for kills when the likelihood is that the enemy will be running around in a zerg looking for easy meat like you? The ONLY people actually pursuing map objectives will be the ones who either prefer that style of play no matter what or who already have max’d out whatever individual rewards ANet may have added. That’s exactly what happened in Conquest and that’s what will happen here unless ANet is extremely careful.

I see far more downside to the proposed changes than upside.

For every opponent you defeat, your realm should get a point on the score board.

Cazio.2137:

If they reward based on kills they may as well remove the objectives. No one would attack/defend. It would simply be “hey lets find an open field and beat on each other all day for titles”

Not even close. This system existed and what you say will happen, didnt happen.

@Cactus did you play DAOC?? it worked very well there… for like 8 years.
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Besides, as Conquest proved in Rift, adding individual rewards for kills does the exact opposite of what you say. It strongly ENCOURAGES zergs because players can get kills much faster that way. How can you not see that? Why would you run with a small team looking for kills when the likelihood is that the enemy will be running around in a zerg looking for easy meat like you?
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like i said points have to be based off damage done. why run around in a zerg and always get a few hits on somone and only get 14 points when they die. when you could solo them for a 1000 points or be in a group of 3 and get an easy 333 points.
if your in a group of 5 and a kill a group of 5 thats a fast 5000 points. it would take you all night to get that in a zerg. im sure heavy damage dealers could do okay in a zerg and there would also be small points for hitting objectives but the main point soarce would come from hit and run groups

this is why 8v8 groups roamed DAOC . yes there was still a zerg but the roaming groups were everywhere and making more points

Roaming worked well in DAOC because there were CC and AE that was capable of killing zerg. Plus there was radar that allowed roamers to strike at will against zergs who didn’t have radar. There were alot of advantages to gank groups in DAOC as compared to GW2.

@ ninein yes that is true but the possibility is still there in this game.
@Cactus i think your assuming every 5man group would get killed by the zerg, a good group should never get caught by the zerg. zergs generally are point A to B. (objectives)

Right now the zerg makes the most rewards from hitting objectives karma, gold, exp. so there is no need to run a group. now if the new reward system works like i said, groups are going to make the most points and you will see them doing what they did in DAOC.

Also, they were almost always heavily gear-advantaged/rank-advantaged.

They attempted to balance the siege vs the roamers in Warhammer but most claim they went too far..

This game will certainly be more like Warhammer in that they are already rewarding keep takes…you’d be crazy to think these additional rewards will be for kills only I think. Chances are they’ll try to strike a balance and good luck…

Pirhana.8935:

@Cactus i think your assuming every 5man group would get killed by the zerg, a good group should never get caught by the zerg. zergs generally are point A to B. (objectives)

Not really. I believe, however, (with history to back me up) that players looking for quick kills will join a zerg to get them. Players in a zerg will rack up kills faster than five man teams, and I guarantee that zergs looking for kills won’t give a diddly about objectives. Bank it.

@Cactus Im also using history to back me up on a seperate game.

I understand the zerg will get you more kills and badges., exp and karma. but if the new system is rewards base off damage done and divided to the group like i said, then each of those lots of kills in the zerg would only get you pennys in reward points.
Apposed to running in a 5man group and only having the kill points divided by the 5 group memebers… well thats dollars for each kill.

Now zerg vs group, yah they will kill groups sometimes, but even today without the inncentives there are a few gank groups that run around and know how stay away from enemy zergs. there is this thing called Over Extending. part of the zerg chases a group, then most give up and turn around, then the group stops and kills the people who kept chasing , you can even watch groups of 3 do this.

Its going to be a bit complicated. As I understand it, early in the games release ëscort the doylak"mission included XP and other rewards and essentially what happened was servers were experiencing 50 players following a dolyak around the map “farming rewards”. The rewards have to be seperated some how to avoid this stuff and I really don’t see how they can do that individually. My best guess at what they should do is measure a players contribution in WvW and apply larger server bonus’ and those bonus’are given to individuals on a percentage base of their contributions. But even this would be treading the line of exploitation. In all honesty, I just have no idea how they are going to do this without it being a flop.

Pirhana.8935:

@Cactus Im also using history to back me up on a seperate game.

I understand the zerg will get you more kills and badges., exp and karma. but if the new system is rewards base off damage done and divided to the group like i said, then each of those lots of kills in the zerg would only get you pennys in reward points.
Apposed to running in a 5man group and only having the kill points divided by the 5 group memebers… well thats dollars for each kill.

Now zerg vs group, yah they will kill groups sometimes, but even today without the inncentives there are a few gank groups that run around and know how stay away from enemy zergs. there is this thing called Over Extending. part of the zerg chases a group, then most give up and turn around, then the group stops and kills the people who kept chasing , you can even watch groups of 3 do this.

This depends on how organized the zerg is compared to yours and how many members you are fielding.

Against PuG zergs you would have a reasonable success ratio if your communication and Field combo/blast finishers are placed correctly. Against a superior force that’s organized and you’re gonna be looking at more deaths than kills for the most part, unless you can get really crafty with terrain advantages.

For the most part, I am in agreement with most of the postings in this thread. IF the ranking system is going to be based on kills alone, the points per kill needs to be divided by the percentile of damage done. I.E. 100% dmg =1000points, 10% dmg done 100points. However, the real question is… how are objectives going to play a role, if any in the new ranking system? Perhaps several different forms of ranks depending on your contribution. 1 set of ranks is based on kills, 2nd is based on objectives( supply camps/yaks/towers/keeps, 3rd is based on support(healing,boons,debuffs, CC). I think this would allow for balanced map fighting, as you will satisfy every type of player in WvW.

My biggest suggestion however, is to make the map sizes much larger than they currently are by around 30-50%(maybe even higher). The fact that you can siege an objective from another objective means that the map is too small. If they stretched out the objectives with small fighting areas that can be fought in, hidden in, and sieged from would help to break down zergs because of travel time, and more area to move around. Think of the Ruins in the home BL’s between the two briar towers except more variety and a lot more distance between them.

Pirhana.8935:

this is why 8v8 groups roamed DAOC . yes there was still a zerg but the roaming groups were everywhere and making more points

8-main groups were pretty much required in DAOC because you did not heal very quickly from damage, and so you needed your healers in your group doing full-time healing and rezing.

In Guild Wars 2, players heal themselves, so you have little need for grouping and this means Zergs everywhere.

You can’t really change this without changing the game mechanics. Not going to happen. If you want smaller 8-man battles in WvW, better look for another game.

Pirhana.8935:

@Cactus Im also using history to back me up on a seperate game.

I understand the zerg will get you more kills and badges., exp and karma. but if the new system is rewards base off damage done and divided to the group like i said, then each of those lots of kills in the zerg would only get you pennys in reward points.
Apposed to running in a 5man group and only having the kill points divided by the 5 group memebers… well thats dollars for each kill.

Now zerg vs group, yah they will kill groups sometimes, but even today without the inncentives there are a few gank groups that run around and know how stay away from enemy zergs. there is this thing called Over Extending. part of the zerg chases a group, then most give up and turn around, then the group stops and kills the people who kept chasing , you can even watch groups of 3 do this.

On zergs unless you hit you get something, so this might be a bit tricky for devs and will bring differet problems, if you start dividing on equal amount those rewards, I could easily just log on my thief with haste and perma stealth build to finish everyone around and getting same rewards as those who did all the work and it would be a lot easier for gank groups they could set 1 person to be a finisher, everyone get rewards everyone is happy that is just not fun…. everyone should work for it

People have to remember that radar made 8man teams popular in DAOC. It was easy to farm anyone who weren’t using radar software cheat due to having CC’s with long duration and no player limit. Plus it allowed 8 man teams to avoid any fight they don’t want to get involved. This allowed them to shoot up the ranks and get even stronger. Win win all around so there was a strong incentive in DAOC to play 8 man teams.

Cactus.2710:

Pirhana.8935:

So in March Anet said they are adding a WvW reward / title system.
(previous thread was moved to suggestions for some reason)( this isn’t a suggestion ANET said they were doing this)

Now I dont know how they will do the reward system, but if it is similar to the realm rank system in DAOC it could help to promote less zerging, more defending.

If the system rewards players MAINLY for killing other players and the amount of damage they did.

You will see alot of players who want to raise their rank so they will start to stray away from the zerg so they can get more credit for player kills. you might actually start to see alot of roamng 5man groups picking off people and looking for other small groups.

another thing people dont think of from DAOC was taking keeps JUST to defend and make points form enemy attackers, SO you might see groups taking towers and actually staying there to defend.

They reward system would also need not have a cap that could be obtained in a few months, refer to the DAOC realm rank system that get progressively harder where rewards eventually get few and far inbetween, so you keep building your character for years.

Now if the system follows the karma, big reward for taking undefended keeps and avoiding player kills, this system will not fix anything

Not going to hold my breath but if done correctly the reward system could make WvW alot better

You don’t have a clue what you are talking about. The large scale three-faction PvP map called Conquest in Rift is the poster child for what happens when you mix team objectives and individual objectives in PvP. It totally ruins everything for everyone by creating different motivations for being in the map. Want to know what happens when a group heads off to take an objective only to have half of them split off to capture unrelated individual kills? Map chat gets filled with angry comments between players on the same team and everybody quits because of frustration. Commanders already get frustrated when members of their group get distracted by gathering or farming mobs. At least now that sort of thing is minimized because players can do their dailies or farm for gold outside of WvW … just imagine what it will be like if players actually get significant individual rewards for non-team activities that can ONLY be found in WvW.

Besides, as Conquest proved in Rift, adding individual rewards for kills does the exact opposite of what you say. It strongly ENCOURAGES zergs because players can get kills much faster that way. How can you not see that? Why would you run with a small team looking for kills when the likelihood is that the enemy will be running around in a zerg looking for easy meat like you? The ONLY people actually pursuing map objectives will be the ones who either prefer that style of play no matter what or who already have max’d out whatever individual rewards ANet may have added. That’s exactly what happened in Conquest and that’s what will happen here unless ANet is extremely careful.

I see far more downside to the proposed changes than upside.

I’m sorry, but Rift’s godawful PvP system(s) shouldn’t be compared to anything.

You didn’t need radar to stomp zergs in daoc. Many people used it as a crutch, but hell there’s radar in this game among other things. Long duration cc exists in this game… you just need to learn what it is and how to use it.

I seriously doubt they reduce the rewards for how many people attacked the person. I would prefer they did it that way, but it seems like they’re going in the opposite direction with this entire game.

All I got to say is this patch is a maker or breaker. If they do more to promote unskilled, zerging mindlessness, I’m out.

Long duration CC in GW2 doesn’t compare to DAOC. DAOC had 60+ seconds mesmerize, 60+ seconds roots, 11 second stuns, and 180+ seconds disease (slow) with no target limit. Even though there were diminishing returns, gank groups just alternate between the various CC’s to freeze them in place then target assist kill everything. You can’t do this in GW2.

I know how long the cc lasted in daoc =p I also know it’s very easy to get 60s duration on chill w/ no target cap if you try. It’s no mez obviously, but that’s really all daoc has over this game considering root tended to be a no no because it gave snare immunity.

Ninein.4782:

People have to remember that radar made 8man teams popular in DAOC. It was easy to farm anyone who weren’t using radar software cheat due to having CC’s with long duration and no player limit. Plus it allowed 8 man teams to avoid any fight they don’t want to get involved. This allowed them to shoot up the ranks and get even stronger. Win win all around so there was a strong incentive in DAOC to play 8 man teams.

I never ran radar in DaoC and never needed too. I was part of one of the most well know. 8 mans on hib percival.

If people are worth a set amount of points and the points get split evenly by the group no matter who does the damage then You will see smaller groups in wvw. If you get a set amount of points per kill no matter what then you will see more zerging. It’s all about how it’s implemented.

Example for people who need to see it, target is worth 100 points when killed. 5 man kills target everyone in group gets 20 points. Zerg kills same target target is hit by people from 3 groups that’s 15 people know splitting the same 100 points so that’s about 6 points per person.

But it everyone got 100 points for a kill and didn’t have it split then there is no reason not to Zerg. (Don’t do this Anet)

I think we already overly reward the Zerg, fixed karma and do rewards for objectives, easier to Rez harder to spike zerglings, AoE limits that reward standing close together.

So maybe it’s time to reward the other play styles in wvw a bit, it’s not like zerging will stop just becuase it become rewarding for small groups to wvw also.

Quenta.2978:

For every opponent you defeat, your realm should get a point on the score board.

That is kinda already the case…

Yes W3 need more some wannabe gankers (roamers) who can’t play any other class than ele or thief.

Instead of speculating, just watch the dev video from a few weeks ago. They’ve already said the goal is to make small groups more viable and to reward people for doing things such as defense.

With the February Patch, I’m sure that A-Net will put better Rewards for WvW

Junkpile.7439:

Yes W3 need more some wannabe gankers (roamers) who can’t play any other class than ele or thief.

My wannabe ganker engie would love to throw you some tips

or slick up them shoes

Seriously though, people are already getting tired of the zerg crap en mass. Seems like more and more people are rocking duels every week.

Emerge.9640:

Cactus.2710:

Besides, as Conquest proved in Rift, adding individual rewards for kills does the exact opposite of what you say. It strongly ENCOURAGES zergs because players can get kills much faster that way. How can you not see that? Why would you run with a small team looking for kills when the likelihood is that the enemy will be running around in a zerg looking for easy meat like you? The ONLY people actually pursuing map objectives will be the ones who either prefer that style of play no matter what or who already have max’d out whatever individual rewards ANet may have added. That’s exactly what happened in Conquest and that’s what will happen here unless ANet is extremely careful.

I see far more downside to the proposed changes than upside.

I’m sorry, but Rift’s godawful PvP system(s) shouldn’t be compared to anything.

Which is why I would truly hate to see ANet duplicate Rift’s mistakes.

I really dont care of rank on wvw i m full support mostly,i remember uo the ranks was some of fame title and karma stats you gain titles like Lord XXX and others.

On other point i never see an update to wvw like new achivements i only see more pve adds as always.

2)my badges? what i do now with that. the armor and the jewels are on pve now. it will be nice to change for laurels or something usefull .

Look, clearly the best reward system to break up zergs is to assign a pool of rank points to each objective and split them up based on the number of people who participated in taking the objective. Here’s a practical example. If killing an enemy player is worth 10 point and taking a supply camp is worth 100 points, if 10 people take a supply camp each person gets 10 points (the same as a solo kill). Then if 20 people zerg the supply camp half of them get no reward at all. That would certainly break up zergs since having an overly large amount of players take an objective would hurt your increase in rank.

Of course the system can’t be as easy as “a supply camp is worth 100 points”. For instance, the number of points given needs to scale with the level of upgrades on the objective and the amount of enemy siege inside it. Taking a fully upgraded tower is a lot harder than taking a brand new tower obviously so you’d need more people for that. Still, the principle of splitting the rewards based on the number of people participating is surely the fastest way to discourage zerging through rewards and is also part of the “reward people by damage done” suggestion above.

Well, it is extremely unlikely that such a system will ever be implemented in GW2. Even a cursory examination of GW2’s mechanics reveals that GW2 is designed to allow large numbers of players to play together with little to no downsides. Take for instance the fact that everyone gets full exp and their own loot roll from defeating mobs. Or the fact that events scale so that more players will yield more loot. Or even that the gathering nodes are not shared between players. Well, having a system where the rewards are limited by the number of player present flies in the face of all of that. Going back to that previous example, if I’m about to get 10 points for killing an enemy player and an ally joins in I only get 5. That’s not going to make me very happy to see that player is it? Well, the same applies to a system where I need to share my rewards based on damage done as is being discussed above. As long as the rewards I’m getting for whatever I’m doing are less than what I’d get if I had the same thing with less people it directly contradicts the design of GW2.

tldr: if you’re looking for the new reward system to discourage zerging, don’t get your hopes up. At it’s core GW2’s design enables large groups of players to play together with little to no downside and it is extremely unlikely that this new reward system will directly contradict that.

Ranks or no ranks ima still play the same way….solo and giving the middle finger to objectives.

Played the same way in DAoC.

ps. Factions in UO had titles based on kills but the game wss full loot so special rewards werent needed after you looted 200 of each reg

Cactus.2710:

Emerge.9640:

Cactus.2710:

Besides, as Conquest proved in Rift, adding individual rewards for kills does the exact opposite of what you say. It strongly ENCOURAGES zergs because players can get kills much faster that way. How can you not see that? Why would you run with a small team looking for kills when the likelihood is that the enemy will be running around in a zerg looking for easy meat like you? The ONLY people actually pursuing map objectives will be the ones who either prefer that style of play no matter what or who already have max’d out whatever individual rewards ANet may have added. That’s exactly what happened in Conquest and that’s what will happen here unless ANet is extremely careful.

I see far more downside to the proposed changes than upside.

I’m sorry, but Rift’s godawful PvP system(s) shouldn’t be compared to anything.

Which is why I would truly hate to see ANet duplicate Rift’s mistakes.

I think Mike Fergy said they are going to put in a better WvW rewards system in the Feb patch. But this pretty much just gives WvW players the same type of gear that PvE players get. I hope there is more to it, something that will keep us playing for a longer time period

Enenion.8127:

Look, clearly the best reward system to break up zergs is to assign a pool of rank points to each objective and split them up based on the number of people who participated in taking the objective. Here’s a practical example. If killing an enemy player is worth 10 point and taking a supply camp is worth 100 points, if 10 people take a supply camp each person gets 10 points (the same as a solo kill). Then if 20 people zerg the supply camp half of them get no reward at all. That would certainly break up zergs since having an overly large amount of players take an objective would hurt your increase in rank.

Of course the system can’t be as easy as “a supply camp is worth 100 points”. For instance, the number of points given needs to scale with the level of upgrades on the objective and the amount of enemy siege inside it. Taking a fully upgraded tower is a lot harder than taking a brand new tower obviously so you’d need more people for that. Still, the principle of splitting the rewards based on the number of people participating is surely the fastest way to discourage zerging through rewards and is also part of the “reward people by damage done” suggestion above.

Well, it is extremely unlikely that such a system will ever be implemented in GW2. Even a cursory examination of GW2’s mechanics reveals that GW2 is designed to allow large numbers of players to play together with little to no downsides. Take for instance the fact that everyone gets full exp and their own loot roll from defeating mobs. Or the fact that events scale so that more players will yield more loot. Or even that the gathering nodes are not shared between players. Well, having a system where the rewards are limited by the number of player present flies in the face of all of that. Going back to that previous example, if I’m about to get 10 points for killing an enemy player and an ally joins in I only get 5. That’s not going to make me very happy to see that player is it? Well, the same applies to a system where I need to share my rewards based on damage done as is being discussed above. As long as the rewards I’m getting for whatever I’m doing are less than what I’d get if I had the same thing with less people it directly contradicts the design of GW2.

tldr: if you’re looking for the new reward system to discourage zerging, don’t get your hopes up. At it’s core GW2’s design enables large groups of players to play together with little to no downside and it is extremely unlikely that this new reward system will directly contradict that.

I agree that it is unlikely that Anet will install such a system even though aspects of it might have a generally positive effect on the game, but such a system would also have some major drawbacks. Aside from the fact that it is a departure from the normal way Anet does things, it would also be difficult to define how many players were involved in any particular event. Does a player who draws a few enemies off to the side while the group attacks a camp count? How do you score a player who joins a battle midway … by time, by damage, by number of buttons pushed? Does taking an unattended tower count as much as a fully defended one? Does trebbing a wall to pieces from the relative safety of a nearby keep count the same as taking it down with open field catas? There are so many shades of gray in such a scoring system that I simply don’t see it being feasible.

It would also cause LOTS of friction between players on the same team if the point system discouraged players from joining groups. You’d have small groups of elite players roaming around doing their best to exclude lesser geared or lesser leveled players entirely. You’d have small groups competing with each other for taking camps and arguments over who actually took it. I don’t see any of that as being positive for the game at all.

Cactus.2710:

It would also cause LOTS of friction between players on the same team if the point system discouraged players from joining groups. You’d have small groups of elite players roaming around doing their best to exclude lesser geared or lesser leveled players entirely. You’d have small groups competing with each other for taking camps and arguments over who actually took it. I don’t see any of that as being positive for the game at all.

That was kind of the point of my 3rd paragraph. They are not going to add a system that splits rewards between players because that makes you unhappy to have more players. It creates a very antisocial playerbase that needs to compete with itself as well as enemies and you can tell they care about this issue by how the rest of the game is designed. This applies to both the system I was talking about and the system for splitting rewards based on damage as was being discussed above.

Given that the entire game is based around facilitating large numbers of players working together, the new reward system is not going to try to discourage players from playing together. It’s just not going to happen. And that means that the best way of earning the new rank is going to be by playing with large groups of players, aka zerging. The new rewards are not going to change this.