Guild Wars 2

Other Issues With The Format Don’t Help

WvW has gotten soooo so stale. With no drastic new content that truly effects the game, no new rule types or any tangible content updates, the players who do play for fun are simply getting bored. I myself am in this category. Hell I used to treat WvW like a part-time job. I would get on almost every day and play WvW, with maybe a FotM run in-between. I did it because I enjoyed it, but that slowly started to change. It became the same thing, day after day after day. So after my guild disbanded I kind of stopped. Why bother?

WvW has become boring and there aren’t even good rewards for doing it. The die-hards are leaving and I seriously doubt a new map will fix this. Alongside reward changes, WvW needs some drastic changes. There needs to be extremely strong incentives to defend, to split into smaller groups (I’m talking 15 – 30 here instead of these omni-blobs), there needs to be population balances. There needs to be so, so many fixes before it even becomes fun again. These issues are drastically impacting player retention.

I’m not going to touch on how to fix each of these, because each one is a massive can of worms on it’s own, but I feel that once those issues are fixed, WvW will be in a much better state to retain players.

Fixing the Rewards

So fixing the content will help fix player retention, but how do we get more players back in to the format? We give people a reason to play.

I propose several very simple changes to make WvW a rewarding format (and yes, these will result in making a certain something slightly less rewarding)

 
1) Remove or highly reduce Karma and WXP gain from EotM.
EotM was never intended to be a farming map. It was intended to be a place to play WvW when you’re queuing or just want to jump in quickly and have a bit of fun. With the extreme ease of access to karma, this has meant that anyone looking for some serious karma and WXP gains (which WvW used to actually provide) will go straight to EotM.

 
2) Increase gold rewards on rank-up
I’m going off memory here but the average rank-up is around 15 – 25s. It’s really not much when you consider how expensive WvW can be. I propose this should be 50s – 1g per chest. Yes, this is pretty high, but look at how much gold you can get from PvE in such a short time. It’s incredible.

 
3) Remove or greatly reduce badge rewards from EotM.
For my next change this is extremely important. EotM is not “honourable” and it shouldn’t give you more WvW currency than actual WvW.

 
4) Unique Armour skins
WvW needs unique armour like PvP. It needs to require some serious investment and should take time to get a full set. This should be something like 2,000 badges per piece and limit it to 1 piece per 100 WvW ranks. This way players who do participate in WvW a lot can show it off outside of WvW. Yes, I know there is 1 or 2 sets that are in fact WvW exclusive, but these are extremely easy to get.

 
5) Provide an alternate way to obtain WvW weapon skins
This would need to be on a similar scale to the armour. Alternatively run tournament far more often.

 
6) Make WvW Armour Salvageable
I honestly don’t even know why this isn’t base-line.

 
7) Fix the Achievements
Again, I don’t know why this isn’t already in. WvW achievements should be absolutely nowhere near as high as they are now, and not only that but there should be non-title achievements and repeatable achievements, such as “Kill X players within X seconds” or a repeatable track for objective captures (perhaps post-title).

 
8) Increase drop rewards on player kills
There is nearly no reward for killing players. Yes they drop a bag but it’s basically the same as killing a regular mob in PvP. Players should drop silver and a blue or green, minimum & guaranteed. Alternatively allow kills to give a currency that can be exchanged for rewards.
 
9) Other Unique Rewards
Things like minis, back-pieces, finishers and foods should be obtainable from WvW. Yeah, I know you can get a mini and finisher from the tournaments but I’m talking general WvW play here.

 
I know that seems like a lot, but it’s actually not. It simply comes down to decreasing the crazy rewards of EotM, increasing the current base rewards for WvW and providing some unique things that other game-modes have versions of (armour, food, finishers, back-pieces & minis). I’m also not going to touch on making the match-win rewarding because that’s much, much harder to nail down.

Conclusion

When compared to other formats and areas of play, WvW is abysmally rewarding. The opportunity cost of playing WvW is beyond poor, it’s sad. There’s no incentive to spend your time there over another area of GW2. It lacks any incentive to go and play other than the actual game-mode itself. This issue, alongside other on-going problems are causing the mode to bleed players, with no real influx of new ones. By adjusting the rewards, adding some new ones, fixing the other problems WvW has and maybe making EotM slightly less rewarding, WvW could truly enter a new age of activity.

You sound like a typical PvE Skinner Box addict, rewards or lack thereof, are the least of the issues with WvW, and have nothing to do with why most WvW players & guilds have left the game.

IMO
Eotm should simply and purefully be utterly removed for the game if they hope to fix anything at this point.

That tier 1/2 wvw-waiting room has done way more dmg to the game that any failed event could ever do.

Then the mode needs a full rehaul, ESPECIALLY the population management (change servers, merge, make a new tri-alliance system, whatever).

Just do it.

Like some of your ideas tho
As in the mode could use some “endgame” reward track or something.
sPvP has it. Why doesn’t WvW has it?!

This is a great, comprehensive write-up.

I can say that I think I agree with each and every point you make here. I think making reward tracks ala PvP a thing would be fantastic. Increasing gold on rankup, while disconnecting it (as much as you can) from EotM is an immediate implementation need. Increasing rewards for player kill is also something they need to do immediately.

One thing WoW did right was to make it very easy to see who PvPed alot. That’s something that would make a WvWer have a sense of accomplishment with, and should have been in from launch.

Again on the EotM thing. As it was supposed to be a way for queued players to get into WvW while they waited for the real thing. I think they need to make it less viable than real BL WvW. I have often wondered how many players EotM draws away from the lower populated servers just because of the higher payoff.

I think the full blown removal of EotM would be a bad move. A place for people to sit in while queued is good, so is a “training ground” for new players who just want to get their feet wet, but it shouldn’t be providing the rewards that it is.

A reward track would be fantastic especially since it’s something people are likely already familiar with, I just question how they’d implement it. Perhaps every 1 WvW rank would be equivalent to one of the minor chests and 5 ranks would be a major chest? That might also be a good method to implement unique skins. Throw in some Tomes of Knowledge, badges instead of dungeon tokens and some transmutation stones and that’d be really cool. Maybe add in some siege stacks for particular chests. I like that.

Kaiser.9873:

I have often wondered how many players EotM draws away from the lower populated servers just because of the higher payoff.

This is sort of my main point. WvW used to be a place people would go for XP and Karma alongside the gameplay. Yes, it could be extremely annoying to have “lowbie scrubs” in your zerg, but it helped bolster your forces and you could turn them into serious WvW players. Now a player looking for these rewards just pops into EotM and never has to touch the serious stuff.

Sometimes I wonder if the devs of EotM are saddened by what the player-base has done to the map. The fault really isn’t at ANet over EotM, it’s the community, which I think is honestly even sadder.

I don’t see problem. If you wanna fight go EotM. If you wanna PPT and play map tactic go normal WvW.

Junkpile.7439:

I don’t see problem. If you wanna fight go EotM. If you wanna PPT and play map tactic go normal WvW.

Except outside of a few commanders EotM is not a fighting area. Even when a guild groups goes into EotM to find fights they get berated by their “teammates” for derailing the train.

Junkpile.7439:

I don’t see problem. If you wanna fight go EotM. If you wanna PPT and play map tactic go normal WvW.

Not sure if you’re baiting a response but it’s worked if you are.

EotM and fights really aren’t a thing. It’s so few and far between because the majority of players are there for WXP, XP, Karma and Badges. I’d love it and I’m sure others would too if EotM became the “fights map” and the others became the “PPT and Win” maps.

Rewards never brought players to WvW in the firs place, so in my opinion, that debunks that theory.

Personally, iI still really enjoy WvW, but what I feel is the issue for most, is that it got stale for those who tapered off or quit. The provlem with that, as I see it, is thay everytime they try to have a change, an event, or try something new, a large portion of the community cries again it. The funny part about many, is that they fly off the handle at the announcement of any change, before they even try it. Then they did their heels in before the change or event even occurs, and blindly convince themselves to hate it, no matter what.

coglin.1867:

Rewards never brought players to WvW in the firs place, so in my opinion, that debunks that theory.

My logic is players saying “why would I play WvW when I can do X instead because that has better rewards”. Yes there are people who play WvW for WvW but look how small that community is now. Look how many people are playing EotM. Those players could be in WvW fighting instead but where’s the incentive.

Where’s the incentive for PvP or PvE players to actually play WvW outside of the actual experience? There isn’t one. The initial fun usually dies off for all but the hardcore players.

I’m not saying people don’t jump into WvW for fun or curiosity, but those players who aren’t super keen on the game mode would be much more likely to participate and treat it like the 1/3 of the game it is if the rewards were on par with PvP and PvE.

I’m using the same reasoning many players use for FotM being dead. The rewards suck. Sure, it’s awesome and people get into it because it sounds cool, but why would people keep doing it unless they REALLY want those Fractal Skins. They wouldn’t and they wont. They go farm SW instead.

mexay.3902:

Yes there are people who play WvW for WvW but look how small that community is now.

The community is only small now because that is the result of three years of neglect in regard to the real issues that WvW has, when the game launched there were a whole bunch of guilds with 500+, some a 1000+ players who came specifically to play WvW, they left long ago, because it was clear WvW had fundamental issues and that Anet were not going to address those issues, lack of rewards has very little to do with it.

Saying that, GW2 doesn’t look very healthy fullstop, I saw a post by someone who is in multiple big PvE guilds claiming far fewer people are logging in, PvP forum has continual complaints about matchmaking caused in part by the small playerbase.

Never liked EotM myself and never understood people in those stupid trains. It should be removed from the game with all other mindless trains (silverwastes train, champ train, dungeon train and whatever boring trains there is). The points you make why its needed are :

*it is place to play instead of queueing. The problem is population inbalance, so many players flog into few servers leaving other servers empty. If you spread wvw population equally over ALL servers we would never have queues. So EotM is not needed.

*it teaches new players how to play wvw. Now, really? It does not teach anything but bad habbits and how to avoid fights. People who start in EotM and then try to go real WvW are horrible, it takes forever to teach them how to actually behave. So, EotM not only does not teach anything useful but it also makes harder to teach new people later.

Points you had for rewards:
1,3) Remove Karma, WXP, badge gain from EotM. – sure, or just remove EotM completely
2) Increase gold rewards on rank-up – sure but even 1g is still nothing compared to PvE rewards
4) Unique Armour skins – ok
5) Provide an alternate way to obtain WvW weapon skins – ok
6) Make WvW Armour Salvageable – ok
7) Fix the Achievements – ok
8) Increase drop rewards on player kills – well… I can see huge problem with this. Just like fixed PvP matches, this will be abused. You do realise that players from same guild, in same party can be fighting in wvw against each other. So there will be area, not far from spawns, where one server kills everyone in other server, then they run back and kill everyone in other server and in very short time everyone involved have gathered 100 kills and piles of godly stuff. I am quite happy with lootbags you get currently, with good raid you get plenty and something good drops out of them eventually.

Kaiser.9873:

Junkpile.7439:

I don’t see problem. If you wanna fight go EotM. If you wanna PPT and play map tactic go normal WvW.

Except outside of a few commanders EotM is not a fighting area. Even when a guild groups goes into EotM to find fights they get berated by their “teammates” for derailing the train.

Who cares what EoTMers think, they don’t care about us. I think the WvW crowd should all dump into EoTM and take it over for a week. The map is suppose to be a WvW map after all. Screw their trains. We should all pile in and go fight it out or destroy the ktrainers.

FogLeg.9354:

*it is place to play instead of queueing. The problem is population inbalance, so many players flog into few servers leaving other servers empty. If you spread wvw population equally over ALL servers we would never have queues. So EotM is not needed.

*it teaches new players how to play wvw. Now, really? It does not teach anything but bad habbits and how to avoid fights. People who start in EotM and then try to go real WvW are horrible, it takes forever to teach them how to actually behave. So, EotM not only does not teach anything useful but it also makes harder to teach new people later.

I agree population inbalance is a big problem, but I do seriously see the need to keep EotM. Is is a good place for people to get a taste of running around in big groups. It can get people familiar with things like siege and that other players from different servers can attack you, as well as following Commander tags. I’m talking the bare minimum here, nothing fancy. K-Trains are less likely to happen if you greatly reduce or remove the incentive for them.

Not only this but even if we have a relatively balanced population among servers, there can still be queues on occasion and it’s good to have a place to go. Sure, in a perfect world this aspect to EotM would be completely unnecessary, but that’s not going to happen.

FogLeg.9354:

8) Increase drop rewards on player kills – well… I can see huge problem with this. Just like fixed PvP matches, this will be abused. You do realise that players from same guild, in same party can be fighting in wvw against each other. So there will be area, not far from spawns, where one server kills everyone in other server, then they run back and kill everyone in other server and in very short time everyone involved have gathered 100 kills and piles of godly stuff. I am quite happy with lootbags you get currently, with good raid you get plenty and something good drops out of them eventually.

I was pretty hesitant about the last one and I feel it’s one that’s less important, however there are ways to fix this. You could do a similar system to WXP and diminish returns or even put a 5 minute timer per unique kill. Nobody wants to kill 50 people, wait a whole 5 minutes doing nothing, then do it again. That’s inefficient, especially when they could be in PvE doing that.

 
 
I feel there’s some jaded responses coming through. Yes, I’m extremely unhappy about the state of WvW and it’s neglect, but I strongly advise people look at why people are farming in SW or doing dungeon tours. It’s because it’s rewarding. If WvW had better rewards it could pull those people in and retain them. It would also feel slightly less crappy to do a full day of WvW to come out of it with nothing.

Be honest, do you guys enjoy coming out of a reset with nothing but a couple badges and maybe 50 blues/greens and 1 or 2 rares? I certainly don’t and after a while doing the same thing for crap rewards gets boring. This is the point I’m making. This is what matters to your more casual player.

Casual players provide the fat of WvW, they’re what fills it with bodies. Your hardcore players are slowly fading away because of the lack of content. I actually touched on this. If you want more players, you need good and unique rewards. You need to provide incentive for people to play the content, otherwise the majority simply wont bother.

Also just a note, this isn’t a “hate on EotM” thread. I want to constructively talk about the rewards of WvW. Yes EotM is part of the problem, but it sure isn’t the whole problem, nor is it the majority of the problem.

Good post, OP, but I’m thinking you’re using your own experiences a bit too much to color what defines the wants and needs of players. That’s fine because you’re speaking on your own, but it can be a bit hard to understand for some. This doesn’t make your points less valid, but it does weaken the argument somewhat.

The thing is, I am not really sure if “goals” as you stated really have a bearing for most casual players. It’s generally the more hardcore players that spend a lot of time in game in my experience and are generally the ones that are playing the game to reach a certain point, and this is also reflected in general discussion here when people find that they have nothing to do, and thus complain. Then again, this might have to do with that I feel that the so called “goals” in Gw2 aren’t particularly interesting; it’s really just a lot of grinding in many cases. It’s not like many traditional games where you can “beat” the game. So it is not sure if everyone plays the game for that reason. I’ve met players that go “hey, let’s do a fractal because we haven’t done one” vs “Let’s get to flevel 50”. Naturally these things have even less value when referring to people that mostly are into player vs player content which generally is dynamic enough to sustain itself. Ultimately, to me, gold is merely a means to an end, legendaries are just skins, and ascended armor is just a luxury.

There’s no real reason for me to think that they should be a central focus to whatever content I end up doing when they ultimately don’t really add up too much. For example, when I finished all my ascended gear, I pinged it in guild chat, a few people pretended to give a kitten , and then most of the time when I play now, I don’t even remember it. Still, I guess the journey there had some memorable value, but not too much.

That being said, I don’t disagree with the post either. I don’t think rewards and good gameplay are mutually exclusive after all, and pvp reward tracks I say have been a success in that regards. The idea is to have reward tracks run parallel to gameplays as a side quest of some sorts. Besides, wvw does cost gold, and perhaps some people are interested in gem store items that other players can more easily buy. So it could certainly help those people. So I agree with the 9 changes you’re suggesting. My personal opinion would also include the inclusion of a new currency only present in WvW proper, because badges are quite a joke now— you don’t even need to enter WvW or even EOTM because AP chests crap them out.

I think that you’re right in that the filler in WvW has always been the casuals and PvXers. In general there aren’t more than three or four hardcore WvW guilds on any server that rally 25+ per night 5 nights a week anymore. There can be an argument made that most of those hardcore guilds moved up tiers, or simply quit the game outright.

Those filler groups do desire something for their time more than simply winning fights, and taking keeps. There has been a general lament around this community that ANet simply does not value us as players, or customers. Most gaming companies have “shown love” to player communities by either fun events, or by giving them some method to outfit their toons that other communities don’t have easy access to. As we’ve seen by almost universal reaction the golem rush wasn’t what most wanted.

Im going off-topic here but there is little reason for creating new topic. I like players trying to fix and improve the game, I truely want developers to write about these things too, explain why and how and what they think.

But like with every such proposal to change the game lets consider this from Anet view too. Basically, they are here to make money from the game. If they dont make profit anymore, game is shut down. The GW2 business model has 2 parts: sell the game for x sum upfront and then people can play for how long they desire, and sell them gems that can be exchanged for goodies in the game.

Thing is, best possible customer for Anet is someone who buys the game, then buys bunch of gems and quits playing in fairly short time. Someone who plays free for years is just wasting resources. Anet still have to pay for server hardware and connections and hire people who fix bugs and deal with customers but they earn 0 from those veteran players. Its quite different from games with monthly fees that have to ensure every paying player every month over and over to hand out more money.

Anet can make more money by attracting more new players, not by keeping same players around forever. Since there is very little reason for wvw players to buy piles of gems either, why bother improving the wvw at all? Anet only has to invest enough to prevent too many wvw players wandering off to write negative comments about the game that would scare away new potential buyers.

<——————That Die Hard WvWer who is a total squirrel and just chased kills and doesn’t care about loot

Not to say having reward tracks like in pvp wouldn’t absolutely make my day. Just have each rank you earn be 3/4 of a minor track, and each stomp (has to be stomp not kill) is 1/8-10th of a minor chest.
If not, make me faster so I can catch the kitten thieves who always run away and I’ll be just as happy

@Fogleg: I’m honestly not even sure how that’s related in any possible way, but that’s not always true. This is not to say that if they were to cynically make this game into a revolving door where they just get people to buy gems and kick them out couldn’t be profitable and maybe there are forces that wish for this. But I’ve never seen the game as such for the most part.

From my experience, people that quit the game early don’t buy any gems at all, because why? Why would they spend any extra money on it? On the other hand, I know a number of friends and guildmates that buy gems regularly not because they have no gold but because they want to support the game. I think those customers are very valuable as they may pay way more than the game itself. I don’t buy gems myself but I do still convert gold to gems to get stuff from the gem store. In fact, right now I have 100 gold and 2000 gems because I don’t really have to use gold for most things. Repairs and wvw wps are free while I’ve crafted all the food and stones I’m going to need for quite a long while, so….

As for…

Anet only has to invest enough to prevent too many wvw players wandering off to write negative comments about the game that would scare away new potential buyers.

If that’s the case, then that’s good because they’re going to have to do more than they are.

great ideas man, here’s some of mine:

*greatly increase the rewards from loot bags but divide the rewards by the number of people who tagged the enemy. This makes sense logically and in terms of making WvW a far more interesting place.

*more objectives for different roles. WvW is a war. Why do we have so few roles? Add in rewarding objectives for spy’s, roamer’s, defenders, assassins (killing enemy commanders), disruptors (economy system, castles and keeps should have an economy that exists outside the walls).

*main zerg shouldn’t have so much mobility, being able to storm across the map and complete objectives as they go. Put a speed penalty depending on the size of the group. Groups of 20 and less shouldn’t have any speed penalty.

*WvW skill tree!!!!!! Spend your points to unlock powerful constructs like: (trench: gives you and 4 allies reduced damage from siege, rabbit hole: hides you from enemies that don’t get to close, dynamite: weakens walls, commander: increases stats of those around you.

mexay.3902:

coglin.1867:

Rewards never brought players to WvW in the firs place, so in my opinion, that debunks that theory.

My logic is players saying “why would I play WvW when I can do X instead because that has better rewards”. Yes there are people who play WvW for WvW but look how small that community is now. Look how many people are playing EotM. Those players could be in WvW fighting instead but where’s the incentive.

.

Make the rewards bigger and WvW WILL turn I to a giant k-train EoTM, with little point to it beyond following a blob. I mean just look what happened during golem week if you want a taste,

Now I know some would argue that’s already happening, but there’s so much more than that, intricacies like developing teamwork/cooperation/common strategy/thwarting enemy strategies, etc …

Bigger rewards usually is attractive to those obsessed with loot only, and very little care for server, team or others.

No thanks.

I can guarantee you the lack of rewards is absolutely not why I gave up on wvw. For me it was the continual de-emphasising of fighting strategy and the complete lack of depth in map strategy. There is simply no good pvp in wvw.

Good pvp is its own reward. If you aren’t playing for the sake of the pvp itself, you aren’t a pvper.

@Jayne:
Unfortunately so far that’s been very very true, but I think that there could be a way to reward players for participation without turning it into a sham of WvW.

Maybe make one of the bigger rewards come from the killing of players, or perhaps from fighting off a keep take, rather than taking the keep itself(not just a tag, but actual wall down situation). The more players involved in the attack the better the reward for defenders, or something like that. The more often that structure is attacked scale the rewards in some way.

Maybe base rewards off of contribution. Kill X number of players in a week get X amount of new badges used to purchase WvW exclusive skins or something. Make the number of these new badges that could be earned in an hour/day/week limited in number to discourage people just flipping stuff all day every day.

If defending or killing players rewarded as well as just Ktraining around the map then it’s possible that Ktraining would come to a screeching halt.

Proper rewards are only a piece of the puzzle. the way PPT works is the biggest culprit because its based on coverage / population.

Most players I know that left, left because of the population / coverage issues, all other elements are there as well, but they are all secondary to that.

This entire write up, while good, deals with a secondary issue.

Junkpile.7439:

I don’t see problem. If you wanna fight go EotM. If you wanna PPT and play map tactic go normal WvW.

So not the reality.

PPT is in WvW – on many servers.

Tactics? What WvW are you playing – only a few even drive the main force to a battle or objective and it’s not all tactically correct or even close.

atheria.2837:

Junkpile.7439:

I don’t see problem. If you wanna fight go EotM. If you wanna PPT and play map tactic go normal WvW.

So not the reality.

PPT is in WvW – on many servers.

Tactics? What WvW are you playing – only a few even drive the main force to a battle or objective and it’s not all tactically correct or even close.

Tactics?? Like when enemy have some huge guild blob and we have some kitten PUGs it’s good tactic just let enemy cap everything. When everything is capped and blob can’t kill anything they leave and we can cap everything back and get good PPT. Some stupid people would try to go kill that guild blob and that is just bad tactic.

I agree the awards are an issue, but the bigger issue at least in the North American servers is the lock in Tier 1 which has now filtered down into Tier 2. This means that in addition to the reward issues, servers really can’t set goals of moving up a tier and there’s no suspense. Regular tournaments could address some of this issue while changes in the amount of volatility allowed would also assist in mixing it up a bit. Sure you might end up with some lopsided match ups every now and then, but you would also prevent weak servers trading wins to keep the hounds from the lower tiers at bay. There is a fundamental weakness in the glicko system which relies on inter-tier movement in order to redistribute glicko to up and coming servers, and without a high enough level of volatility it results in locks that are insurmountable absent the complete collapse of two servers within the same tier (we’ll see if this happens in Tier 2 over the next couple of weeks, but I doubt it).

My recommendation is that Anet actually stop listening to the squeaky wheels in WvW that have figured out how to game the current system, are a little too content to sit on their laurels and are now resistant to change/competition. If the tiers actually became competitive and it was possible to work a server up from T4 or T5 into T1 or T2 then there would be real goals to accomplish and a real sense of accomplishment when it happens. Right now there is just stagnation, frustration, and myths about how good servers that haven’t had to compete in a really long time actually are.

Just my $.02

Yes I think WvW really could do with some incentive to play it, like people have already said, a reward track system. I rarely see people defending in WvW. The only time I ever see players defending, is when there’s a guild roaming group on the map and they have scouts roaming about, telling them where the enemy players are attacking.

The majority of the time, it just seems to be a game of musical chairs. Capture keep, run to next one, capture keep, run to next one etc, without any defending. They just let the enemy players take their keeps. It’s a real shame, as WvW was the most exciting thing when I heared about it. I couldn’t wait to take part, but the end result was a bit….. underwhelming.

coglin.1867:

Rewards never brought players to WvW in the firs place, so in my opinion, that debunks that theory.

correct, but it wouldnt be too bad if WvW players have chance on stuff people get from running dungeons etc.

i mean i personally didnt finish any dungeon in this game, nor i really give a kitten like u said i didnt came to WvW for rewards but on the other hand it wouldnt be to bad if rewards would get upscaled a lil..

if you can get item X only by doing Y instance they should ram this into wvw as low drop on player kills or whatever, i think WvW and PvE should have same rewards.

For instance it is still a GIANT mystery to me why there isn’t a chest spawning when you defend something.

That Anet would not give the same amount of rewards for defending AND capturing is beyond me. Even more dramatic after so long into the game and countless threads on how ppl tend to not defend just to keep farming.

Tongku.5326:

Proper rewards are only a piece of the puzzle. the way PPT works is the biggest culprit because its based on coverage / population.

Most players I know that left, left because of the population / coverage issues, all other elements are there as well, but they are all secondary to that.

This entire write up, while good, deals with a secondary issue.

Want to highlight this.

Also, I do like what the OP is saying, I certainly think it would help. But what Tongku said is the main problem.

DiscoJacen.1590:

For instance it is still a GIANT mystery to me why there isn’t a chest spawning when you defend something.

That Anet would not give the same amount of rewards for defending AND capturing is beyond me. Even more dramatic after so long into the game and countless threads on how ppl tend to not defend just to keep farming.

This would do a great deal to solve the KTrain mentality. Also since there are many people that don’t necessarily want more loot from WvW, how about different loot?

For instance take a week and instead of badges of honor make the “badge drops” into dungeon tokens for a particular dungeon instead. You could cycle through with “special events” of different dungeon tokens for the week instead of badges of honor every month or so. May be a terrible idea, but it would be something different.

Kaiser.9873:

DiscoJacen.1590:

For instance it is still a GIANT mystery to me why there isn’t a chest spawning when you defend something.

That Anet would not give the same amount of rewards for defending AND capturing is beyond me. Even more dramatic after so long into the game and countless threads on how ppl tend to not defend just to keep farming.

This would do a great deal to solve the KTrain mentality. Also since there are many people that don’t necessarily want more loot from WvW, how about different loot?

For instance take a week and instead of badges of honor make the “badge drops” into dungeon tokens for a particular dungeon instead. You could cycle through with “special events” of different dungeon tokens for the week instead of badges of honor every month or so. May be a terrible idea, but it would be something different.

It would also be easily abused. Just place a character on another server beating a gate and your character inside the keep would have loot raining over him every 3 minute or whatever the timer is. I have gotten plenty of gold defense badges for not even doing anything – or being in a keep for that matter, just having ran past one earlier. That you get a chest when attacking something mean you actually did something, even though your contribution may have been small. You wont get a chest if you dont attack the lord, putting it on exact equal terms as defensive badge.

Giving loot for doing nothing is not a good idea. Improving loot from players is a much better one.

Problem is that you get loot totally wrong things. Nobody leave tower empty if there is something valuable inside. Tower have gold chest inside. Attackers wanna get gold and defenders don’t wanna lose gold so both sides fight.