Guild Wars 2

I have mentioned the idea of mini tournaments a few times and thought maybe it was time to write out a format and see what the community thinks, see if it can lead into maybe getting a weekly event into wvw that could promote getting more players into it.

Goals
The goal of this proposal is to try and attract players of the other game modes into wvw, mostly during down times of living story or spvp seasons. To provide current wvw players an exciting event every week, giving them some extra purpose to reset, and during the week in earning participation while not being stressed over coverage and commander burnouts during the week.

Also to re-implement past wvw rewards back into the system as well as provide some means to earn potential future rewards, namely ascended armor and legendary back piece, if it is ever implemented.

Tournaments would only last for a period of 24 hours per week, starting from reset.

Every Week

1. 24 hours Friday 10pm est – Sat 10pm est.
2. Every time zone will get a chance to fully participate equally during their prime times which are normally 8-12pm. Est would start late but they get to finish up the scoring.
3. The tournament will note the victory points after the 24 hours and use that as the tournament total for that week. Scoring continues on as normal.
4. The victory points a server earns in that 24 hours will be the 1:1 amount of wvw tournament tickets earned, which can be used to purchase various rewards.
5. The tickets will be awarded at the end of the week at reset.
6. Using the 5-4-3 victory scoring, 2 hour skirmish timer, a server could earn a maximum of 60 tickets per week and a minimum of 36.
7. The rest of the week will resume normal play, with the extra bag rewards for placement as usual. The entire week will also be used to earn participation for the ticket reward for that week.

Seasons
Optional to this could be a season mode which would be used for the purpose of handing out bonus tickets. The victory points earned from the weekly tournaments are added together over a period of 4 or 8 weeks (between link times).

1. For the 4 weeks period you run the weekly tournament as normal from the start of the relinking, while closing off transfers for this period. Then at the end of the 4 weeks the 6 main servers (and their links) earning the top victory points will earn 100 bonus tickets. Then tournaments continue every week after, the season either starts over right away or after the next relinking if players would like a break in between.
2. For the 8 week period you can run this like a sports season with a playoff mode. You add up the victory totals after 4 weeks, the top 6 teams will move into the “playoffs”. Those 6 will continue on the next 4 weeks to earn victory points and the top 3 teams will earn 150, 125, 100 tickets. But all servers will continue to earn tickets according to their victory points even if they’re not in the playoffs.
3. In this format it would not matter if you’re in tier 1 or tier 4, as long as you’re winning skirmishes, you’re not going head to head with different tiers, it’s basically a race for victory points during the period where most servers get the maximum participation from players.
4. As a seasonal reward the top server will also receive a badge next to their name, much like the spvp badges.

Participation
Participation of course will be need to be tracked so that players are not “sleeping on the job” to earn tickets for the week. There are various methods Anet could use.

1. Check for a minimum wvw level earned for the week, 5 levels for example.
2. Implement a new repeatable reward track for the tournament time, then check if the player has completed this track for the week (most of the rewards in this track should be siege much like the triumphant armor track).
3. Provide a new series of achievements for players to earn participation for the week.

For example – WvW Year One Season Achievement week number (1-52):

• Capture 1 sentry. Worth 1 achievement point.
• Capture 1 supply camp. Worth 1 achievement point.
• Capture 1 bloodlust ruin. Worth 1 achievement point.
• Capture 1 tower. Worth 1 achievement point.
• Capture 1 keep. Worth 1 achievement point.
• Kill 100 players. Worth 1 achievement point.

Cont… 600s post flood control -_-

Part 2

Rewards
Tournament tickets can be used on a number of things.

1. As one part of payment for Ascended weapons on the Ascended vendor when it’s available, the prices should be high.
2. As payment for Gift of Heroes (current cost is 200 tickets) to upgrade Hero weapons (gained from reward track) to Mistforged Hero weapons.
3. As payment for Gift of Heroes to upgrade Triumphant armor (gained from reward track) to Triumphant Hero armor.
4. Ascended accessories (current cost is 200 tickets).
5. Infusions (current cost is 50 tickets).
6. Mini Dolyak (current cost is 200 tickets).
7. Obsidian Shard (current cost is 50 tickets).
8. Superior siege 6 tickets, Superior Trebuchet 12 tickets (same price as with proof of heroics).
9. Gift of WvW used for crafting Wvw legendary back piece, 600 tickets.
10. Gift of Battle used for crafting legendaries, 600 tickets.
11. Flax seed, 1 ticket.
12. 5 Badge of honor, 1 ticket.
13. 1 Ticket, 5 Tomes of knowledge ( I didn’t forget you tome people!).

Prices and most numbers listed in this proposal are used for example purposes and should be changed accordingly to what Anet deems to be more appropriate.

Implementation
Implementation shouldn’t be too extensive as most of the scoring is already done with skirmish victory points. Just a matter of calculating totals separately for the tournament score and then seasonal scores. Participation tracking will need to be implemented in whatever fashion Anet deems fit to use. Most of the rewards are already in the game.

Population Bandwagon Tanking Concerns
There is a concern about Bandwagons moving to winning servers. There isn’t anything that can be done if players decide they want to move to potential winning servers for 4 or 8 weeks before relink happens again. Short of cutting off transfers which I mentioned for the 4 week season. With a season happening right at relinks it will be difficult to tell where a server will end up other than the guaranteed top servers, but who knows where links will end up.

The only big bonus that happens is if the seasonal format is used for the bonus tickets. The tickets being awarded every week will range from 36-60 tickets per week, not a giant difference. If players feel the rewards of this system is enough to shuffle gold or real money to Anet to move around often, let them drain their pockets. Relinks will happen and everything gets shuffled again.

Maybe players or guilds from the top heavy servers feel they could win on lower servers. They could also raise the minimum gems needed to move to low population servers to help curb some of the mass transfers, maybe 1800 to mains, 1200 to links.

Tanking could be a concern for servers trying to get into a better position to win at the start of a new season in a lower tier. But as we’ve seen with the current glicko ratings we can have servers bounce from tier 1 to tier 3 the next week to tier 1 the week after. With the hopeful increased participation of pve and spvp players, maybe tanking would be more difficult to do.

TLDR
Weekly Tournaments 24 hours from reset, victory points earned is your ticket amount earned.
Season of 4 or 8 weeks of tournament victory points, earns extra tickets.
Rest of week used for participation to earn the tickets at end of week.
Tickets used to buy wvw shtuff.

Should probably read it if interested in the topic though.
Let us know what you think could work or what needs changing.

We used to get these…. if only Anet actually cared about us or even acknowledged us as a community.

WvW already losing players and you want more of what causes it to lose players? Brilliant.

zhonnika.1784:

WvW already losing players and you want more of what causes it to lose players? Brilliant.

Please explain.

Xenesis.6389:

zhonnika.1784:

WvW already losing players and you want more of what causes it to lose players? Brilliant.

Please explain.

We were told by the devs that there were permanent losses to the playerbase after each tournament we had.

Sure, could we have tournaments in the future? Yeah, but the fundamentals need to be dealt with first and foremost.

Things that take priority and need to be in place before tournaments…

Lag fixes.

Population balance fixes.

Core professions need improvements.

Better optional roles to build and use for each profession.

Condi systems and stealth systems need to be fleshed out.

… there is a big to do list to before any sort of healthy competition can take place.

Did you guys bother to read my original post?
The reason why players left is because of burnouts caused by tournaments running 24/7 for 6-8 weeks. Of course pve players also left after tournaments because nothing of interest for them after.

Please read my proposal it’s not the typical hey let’s run an old tournament so blackgate can win.

There are obviously other problems with wvw like class balance but the wvw team does not work on that.

Xenesis.6389:

Did you guys bother to read my original post?
The reason why players left is because of burnouts caused by tournaments running 24/7 for 6-8 weeks. Of course pve players also left after tournaments because nothing of interest for them after.

Please read my proposal it’s not the typical hey let’s run an old tournament so blackgate can win.

There are obviously other problems with wvw like class balance but the wvw team does not work on that.

There are major issues that need to be tackled before they hold any sort of formal and scheduled competition in wvw… First things first.

Most of the stuff you pointed out is not handled by the wvw team or will never happen.

Lag fixes. – Probably caused by their bloated passive condition boon spamming system in place, they haven’t fixed it in years, how much longer before you think this miracle will happen? It’s not like it’s constant lag, usually only happens in huge fights and in certain areas like SMC. This technically isn’t the wvw team’s problem to fix either.

Population balance fixes. – Not going to happen unless they revamp the server system which they canned for the links system a year ago. Wvw will probably be dead before that even ever happens.

Core professions need improvements. – Not the wvw department, that’s the balance team.

Better optional roles to build and use for each profession. – Not the wvw department, that’s the balance team.

Condi systems and stealth systems need to be fleshed out. – Not the wvw department, that’s the balance team, stealth won’t be changed as they built an entire class to function around it.

The WvW team’s purpose is to design and implement systems for wvw environment, not for all the hardware, not all the software coding, not for balancing the game classes, they have other teams for that.

I believe I have listed enough changes to tournament problems to warrant more than just a glance and write off as just another tournament thread. If you don’t like an aspect of the ideas presented then let me know and let’s discuss it.

The tournaments would happen when the most players are active on Friday and Saturday, when the scoring and coverage is mostly even before it starts to run away the rest of the week. Players will not be pressured for an entire week to more than a month to participate hardcore to get their server in place for rewards, like the old system did. Your wins in tier four count as much as tier one. It uses the current scoring system, the rewards mostly already exist in game, participation check is what they will be need to implement.

This is a more of a one day event presented every week that all types of players could get excited to participate in, it will provide an alternative way to provide rewards already present in other parts of the game, and reintroduce old rewards that are missing even from the lost and found section.

It’s not just another same ole tournament.

It doesn’t matter what team does what… That’s irrelevant. The point is you want to have these competitions (added to the skirmish stuff they are already building on) while wvw.. and profession.. and combat… and a plethora of other major issues exist… What you are proposing will do nothing to make a good experience for players…

Remember that Rytlock Esports meme? That’s what I’m taking about.

I think this is a pretty solid idea and that, being a 24-hour thing with far less exclusive rewards, it avoids the burn-out problem of previous tournaments.

At the same time, I’m not really seeing the draw on new players. It makes points matter for a day out of every week, but that’s it. That’s not super exciting and isn’t really an area where there’s room for a new player to show up and learn things. It’s very do or die.

Well going by those conditions might as well just let wvw die because it won’t ever be fixed to your “perfection”.

You haven’t explained why it wouldn’t be a good experience for players under this new format.

Because the best way to win a 24-hour match is to have your A-Team pull an all-nighter.

Xenesis.6389:

Well going by those conditions might as well just let wvw die because it won’t ever be fixed to your “perfection”.

You haven’t explained why it wouldn’t be a good experience for players under this new format.

I did, you’re just not comprehending it all.

Sviel.7493:

I think this is a pretty solid idea and that, being a 24-hour thing with far less exclusive rewards, it avoids the burn-out problem of previous tournaments.

At the same time, I’m not really seeing the draw on new players. It makes points matter for a day out of every week, but that’s it. That’s not super exciting and isn’t really an area where there’s room for a new player to show up and learn things. It’s very do or die.

It doesn’t change anything you currently do or play for in weekly wvw, you still earn those same weekly bags.

The whole concept is an extra event tacked on to help give wvw some notice in the other areas of the game, more so when there isn’t much else going on like living story which is every 2-3 months, festivals which is maybe every other month, spvp seasons which have a break in between. Meanwhile wvw players earn a little extra reward for playing on the night they all mostly come out to play for anyways. In a way this is wvw’s living story event.

The participation part can be done over the week, so even if players are not able to take part on that night, they can still participate during the week and earn the tickets. This part should not be as easy as just hopping into wvw for the ruins or sentry cap for the daily, but the same time make sure they did spend some hours in wvw. The reward track participation would be great for this part as that takes around 8 hours to complete and you can do whatever to earn it, or the achievement points for achievements hunters from pve.

Would people rather wvw carry on as it’s normal dying self and have no events at this point? that just seems to be the consensus I’m feeling around here in these forums now.

This is a great idea! I am down with this!

After reading the comments I am seeing the same excuse some people saying which is “WvW loosing massive population every year”

If the system OP recommended gets implemented people will not leave. There will be reason for those PvErs who have never entered WvW to finally enter WvW and see what it is.

The again to keep those new players in WvW, WvW needs commander (which will come from having better population.) The WvW gameplay needs to be fun, with all the condition damage and crazy condition spam / boon duration and boon spam WvW has become completely boring / pale and laggy to play.

Before tournament gets implemented, Arena Net needs to nerf condition damage and stacking / spam and nerf boon duration / boon spamming. This will make WvW 100% more fun to play.

Tournament is needed to bring population into WvW!

@ OP

I think the idea is fine. It addresses alot of the wants/needs of the community in a streamlined kind of format. More importantly it adds luster to an otherwise repetitious mode.

Swagger said some stuff about how its not the time for such a thing though. Although I don’t agree with him shutting down all ideas like that, I do agree its not quite the time for this particular one.

There needs to be 1 step before we get to your idea. What would that step be? Well it would be about re-establishing group/guild/borderland pride/status. There are tons of ways to do this.

ONE very easy way, I would like to propose here and now, is taking the guild mission system and expanding it to providing missions every 48 hours rather than 7 days. I would also expand on the number of missions and provide a new ‘overall’ reward for guilds other than worthless favour that caps almost immediately. This new currency would maybe pay for guild upgrades schematics (schematics are the ones you build after already unlocking the upgrade).

I’m just gonna come out and say it: Guild missions are the way forward for this mode. They make players do all the roles that are needed to provide healthy diversity (yak escort, upgrading, defending, giving friendly and enemy roamers jobs, attacking places you normally wouldn’t attack, and giving guild groups reasons to migrate around all 4 of the borderlands). If we get players to be doing ‘different’ things on a 2 day basis (most guilds run every other day afterall), and rewarding them for doing those things…..we will fix alot of the issues that lead to burnout, such as repetition and lack of motivation due to lack of progression.

That’s all I’ll say on this here. Hopefully that will help convince nonbelievers that your idea is very viable in the very near future. If we bring out the best of the mode’s diversity, bring out server/guild pride/organization, and give meaningful rewards/progression that don’t lead players to a gold sink……I think we will be in a very gooood position for your proposal to shine and actually attract more players. I might make an OP expanding on the guild mission idea, but I just want to stress that there is no reason for anyone to disregard your idea. WE are very close to enabling such things in the mode….we just need some tiny yet significant changes. The argument that tournaments kill the population isn’t incorrect, but it is a symptom rather than the cause. It wasn’t the tournaments, it was the stuffy narrow minded scope of the ‘meta gameplay’ (1 tag blob mentality). And the lack of content/diversity, like your tournament idea would otherwise provide, is only perpetuating the stuffy gameplay