Guild Wars 2

So why Anet has no love for Scouts and players on Siege?

Someone who spends 10-20 minutes trebbing a tower’s wall deserves more than 60 WXP when the zerg that run in the lord room get XP and Karma and Coins. and WXP.

What about those scouts that keep the towers safe for hours while the whole zerg is capping stuff and collecting bags?

It is about time that something be done about this?

How would you suggest to do that with out making zerging even more profitable?

I trebbed a keep for seven hours straight once. True story.

I kept Bay walls down in a lopsided match and enjoyed watching the enemy teams flip and reflip it. Meanwhile we were quietly upgrading the rest of the map while Bay kept the enemy servers occupied.

And that was when trebbing gave zero xp.

:)

But yes, they need to do some kind of rewards revamp for those who stick around and defend. I do know its on Devon’s radar as something to fix.

As much as it’s seems logical to rewards scouts, you will never come up with a system that will account an actual scouting function.

Any system like that will always be susceptible for abuse.

I can already ensure you that standing in a tower will never be rewarding compared to fighting . Perhaps anet will come up with a cool scouting mode , but then again who will account for actual scouting ?

Can I ask what you perceive as a bigger problem; giving rewards to those who may not deserve them, or giving no rewards to those who do?

It’s like asking which is worse; letting a criminal go free or convicting an innocent, and I personally agree with the latter.

I say decide what rewards are appropriate, put them in place, and as you start to see the ways in which it can be abused you will much more effectively be able to tweak it to prevent said abuses.

Allow XP share? Guild members can set to share their XP with a guildy who stays behind to guard / scout a keep, runs dolyaks, trebs for 7 hours straight (wtf?)

DevonCarver.5370:

Solstice.1097:

Can I ask what you perceive as a bigger problem; giving rewards to those who may not deserve them, or giving no rewards to those who do?

It’s like asking which is worse; letting a criminal go free or convicting an innocent, and I personally agree with the latter.

I say decide what rewards are appropriate, put them in place, and as you start to see the ways in which it can be abused you will much more effectively be able to tweak it to prevent said abuses.

Unfortunately that runs the risk of closing the barn door after the horse gets out. The economy is not something we like to take those sorts of risks on and we wouldn’t be adding rewards until we are more certain of their effects on all of the game.

I’d like to thank you for taking adding rewards to WvW seriously and not just adding them because we want them. If rewards get too good and get close to or more profitable than PvE, WvW would turn into a farm and while it would get more people into WvW, it would be for the wrong reasons. It could end up doing more harm to the game mode then good.

If I may suggest something, the needed mechanics are already in place to allow reward for most of those situations. Scouting a tower or a keep is problematic but the rest is fairly easy to adress.
Keep a running timer similar to the contest one that gets overridden by an actual contest and reward the players that upgrade it or damage a structure with a seige engine withing its area of effect. Bam, reward for upgrading and seiging.
Also, give the participation reward of the cap to the players damaging a structure and tranfer the chest reward from keep/tower/camp lord in an event reward chest so everyone participating gets equally rewarded.
I’m not a programmer, but those modifications seems simple to do and would both allow a more fair reward distribution and fix the “I must tag the lord” issue.

Ninestrings.2815:

As much as it’s seems logical to rewards scouts, you will never come up with a system that will account an actual scouting function.

Any system like that will always be susceptible for abuse.

I can already ensure you that standing in a tower will never be rewarding compared to fighting . Perhaps anet will come up with a cool scouting mode , but then again who will account for actual scouting ?

I don’t actually WvW for the rewards much anyhow, but I do know countless dedicated people who get next to nothing and do what my server calls the “dirty jobs.” I prefer the REP acronym another teammate came up with: Ruin Enemy Plans — which is the definition of what I value in WvW Its what I find fun. I like playing chess. And most of my scouting is mobile and would be near impossible to calculate reward.

But for those who selflessly sentry towers for hours on end, Devon we already get an XP reward pop up when a tower or keep is successfully defended … Even adding wxp to those events would be a step in the right direction. Do 10 of them in a row, and you get a chest pop up like a wxp rank up?

Ray.2640:

Allow XP share? Guild members can set to share their XP with a guildy who stays behind to guard / scout a keep, runs dolyaks, trebs for 7 hours straight (wtf?)

This really needs to be done. But instead of guild wide, I think it can be party wide.

Currently logistics mesmers also do not get the kind of rewards the average zergling gets, even though the role is more important than just another 11111 spammer.

If they can’t figure out a way to reward supportive roles, then at least let them get the same thing the grunts get.

I kind of like the XP share idea. Not too much, but, you know, something for the time you spend in a tower. Course, I still do it just b/c I know how important it is, but… It’s awfully hard to find a replacement sometimes because of the lack of reward. I can certainly see how monitoring this would be difficult though… I don’t think anyone wants a repeat of the old zerg yak escorts.

Only issue with the xp share is that it would be hard for smaller/solo guilds (most scouts I know are independent types so the role appeals to them, and subsequently a good number of them are in solo/small guilds).. They’d get zero reward with this system. Yep they could join a bigger guild, but not everyone wants that/have reasons why they don’t care to. If a scouting/defensive/sentry reward is implemented, it should be able to service all play styles y’know?

This kind of outside the box thinking is fabulous though. It could lead to an epiphany

DevonCarver.5370:

Jayne is correct, we do want to address this. It’s mostly a matter of having a more reliable system that lets us track when people are doing this things in order to reward them. Currently we are not able to track that well, if at all. Which means we can’t assign rewards to them. We absolutely believe that defending and scouting are critical to success in WvW and want to be doing more to reward them accordingly.

As an intermediate solution I suggested the WXP flasks we find in WvW shouldn’t be consumable by ourselves. Instead they’d be something we could only forward to other accounts and thus it would be a way for the community to award contributing players.

Zikory.6871:

How would you suggest to do that with out making zerging even more profitable?

Don’t give the rewards for killing the lord. Instead give the rewards for contribution on taking the tower. Put it all in a nice little chest that drops next to you along with you WXP, Karma, XP. Pretty simple really.

Julie Yann.5379:

Zikory.6871:

How would you suggest to do that with out making zerging even more profitable?

Don’t give the rewards for killing the lord. Instead give the rewards for contribution on taking the tower. Put it all in a nice little chest that drops next to you along with you WXP. Pretty simple really.

What constitutes “contribution”? What if I attacked a gate or siege then left? How would the rewards scale? Based off the amount of contribution or if I contributed at all?

What about possibility of exploitation? Would that allow for people to do just enough to “contribute” to the take, then afk or leave the fight? How about people sharing treb shots to guarantee the rewards?

It’s good to talk all this out and troubleshoot. It gives an indication, at least, at how difficult it is to implement this … as much as they want to. Maybe we will stumble on a solution.

The wxp liquid pay it forward thing is a cute idea, but what’s to stop players from just giving it to their friends and vice versa? Exploiting it that way?

I actually thought about a sign up board at spawn, where if you scout/sentry you add your name to it in the appropriate category (kind of like a time/work punch in clock). The game can monitor player activity and if you flip a tower you’re auto removed from the board until you go back to spawn and re-sign up. Flipping supply camps/dolys wouldn’t count, just towers/keeps/sm. Every hour you are awarded 1% of your server’s map wxp.

However I can see this being abused by afk players … and can’t really see a way to thwart that.

While we are on the rewards subject: why are there no rewards for escorting dolyaks? I spent over two hours escorting the yaks to bay and garrison, and all we get is an event medal. Why can’t we add a small amount of karma (even 10-15 is better than nothing) or reward 1-3 badges per yak? It is a [sometimes] necessary yet unrewarding task.

That goes back to just after launch. There was a massive issue with bots that just walked the dolys and gained karma/xp via a program. They had to remove it to prevent the exploit.

rhapsody.3615:

While we are on the rewards subject: why are there no rewards for escorting dolyaks? I spent over two hours escorting the yaks to bay and garrison, and all we get is an event medal. Why can’t we add a small amount of karma (even 10-15 is better than nothing) or reward 1-3 badges per yak? It is a [sometimes] necessary yet unrewarding task.

Because at the beginning of the game that was highly exploited so they had to get rid of the rewards for it.

Zikory.6871:

Julie Yann.5379:

Zikory.6871:

How would you suggest to do that with out making zerging even more profitable?

Don’t give the rewards for killing the lord. Instead give the rewards for contribution on taking the tower. Put it all in a nice little chest that drops next to you along with you WXP. Pretty simple really.

What constitutes “contribution”? What if I attacked a gate or siege then left? How would the rewards scale? Based off the amount of contribution or if I contributed at all?

What about possibility of exploitation? Would that allow for people to do just enough to “contribute” to the take, then afk or leave the fight? How about people sharing treb shots to guarantee the rewards?

How is that any different than those following the group, not building and siege, not scouting for incoming, not fighting the guys on the wall and just rushing in the kill to tag the Lord and stand in a illuminated ring to get the reward?

I don’t know what the details would be, there would have to be a certain threshold. If they cross that threshold and leave the fight or go AFK then they should still get the reward. Even sharing trebs, if they do a certain % of total damage they still contribute and should get rewarded.

would be very good if they would reward guarding yes. i run back and forth from suply camp to towers upgrading both and keeping the dolly safe and building siege. i spend way more money than im earning.

maybe a cool idea for scouting could be:

you form a 5 man party, than you talk to an npc in the keep or in the spawn and just like in a dungeon you and your party can pick an option.
1: kill 5 dolyaks in 30 minutes = XXX reward
2: kill 10 dolyaks in 30 minutes = XXX reward
3: kill 10 dolyaks and capture 2 supply camp in 30 minutes is XXX reward
and so on, the party gets rewarded on how good they performed.
maybe even give the time as a 2nd option to increase the dificulty and the reward, like you could pick 2: kill 10 dolyaks. and than the 2nd option, time frame: 15 minutes.

just an idea, trying to help here :p

DevonCarver.5370:

Jayne is correct, we do want to address this. It’s mostly a matter of having a more reliable system that lets us track when people are doing this things in order to reward them. Currently we are not able to track that well, if at all. Which means we can’t assign rewards to them. We absolutely believe that defending and scouting are critical to success in WvW and want to be doing more to reward them accordingly.

What about some sort of built in scout report to WvW?

The game obviously knows what type, and probably how many different pieces of siege is hitting a structure. So for instance, the scout selects the destructible asset (gate or section of wall) that’s being hit, or about to be hit, and an UI comes up where you can check boxes for the type of siege deployed there and an estimated number of enemy players. This interface should also be selectable for player counts at camp and sentry locations.

This would work well with a revised commander system, with checks against players that send completely erroneous reports, and reasonable checks against abuse. Maybe even have it so commanders can add players to their own list of trusted scouts, or another way of creating a list of vetted players on the server.

DevonCarver.5370:

Jayne is correct, we do want to address this. It’s mostly a matter of having a more reliable system that lets us track when people are doing this things in order to reward them. Currently we are not able to track that well, if at all. Which means we can’t assign rewards to them. We absolutely believe that defending and scouting are critical to success in WvW and want to be doing more to reward them accordingly.

Why not set towers up with frequent events. That way the guy standing in the tower scouting it is also in a prime position to run over and tag the event.

Simple things like “scout the north”, so you go run and stand in the little circle to cap it. “scout the south”. Then all siege in a tower becomes event tracked, when siege in a tower hits 30 mins it pops up as an event to refresh it.

When a tower is flipped there should be an event to build five pieces of siege within the tower. Anyone who dumps supply into said siege tags the event. Scouts who stay around to place/build, or run sup to finish it get those rewards.

The siege build event can reoccur periodically until the siege cap for the tower is met. That way the events promote/support sieging towers, and scouts get to actively capitalize on rewards.

How hard is it to implement events? Would this sort of thing need the “tracking” you’re talking about?

How often do you scout Ross, i’m curious. (Its not a slam, i am curious).

I just realized that perhaps we need to define/outline what generally a scout does on a map.

• spots enemy blob and trails it.
• orders supply upgrades at camps seconds before a blob arrives to drain it.
• maintains overview of entire map, coordinating with map commanders and acting like a traffic cop of sorts (great scouts will monitor all four maps and coordinate with multiple commanders)
• network amongst all guilds to ensure communication flows
• refresh and build siege
• maintain and order tower/keep/supply camp upgrades
• flip supply camps
• kill dolyaks
• escort dolyaks
• flip bloodlust ruins
• tap gates to divide up the enemy
• determine time response and blob size on map in reaction to perceived attacks
• solo run supply to siege to deteriorate walls/gates on enemy towers/keeps and use up their supply.
• contest waypoints at key times
• early response for defense of towers/keeps

There’s more, but that’s just off the top of my head atm….. There’s a difference between a sentry and a scout, although sentries do scout from a stationary spot and I believe are the most dedicated of players on the map.

I role play in map chat a lot when I’m scouting. Keeps things interesting.

I don’t feel there should be a reward for it personally. I find it a nice break from zerging and fighting. When I’m commanding, I usually swap scouts out every 15-30 minutes so people are willing to scout.

What about adding a dialogue to the tower lord that allows the player to trigger a personal event for scouting the tower which will last for 15-20 minutes where he has to be inside or nearby the tower?
The reward will be in silver and WXP and you will be able to trigger the event once per account (or per character) per tower. This will prevent the event from being farmed and would (hopefully) also motivate more players to scout the towers and add some sort of rotation between scouts and towers.
Maybe adding some upgrade options to the tower to enhanche the reward based on the tier and/or some sort of personal “bonus” if, while the event is active, there will be a succesful defense.

I apologize if i misspelled something or if my post isn’t clear, english is not my first language

I do think additional things to do while scouting could be a way to help spread rewards that direction.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Making-Def-in-wvw-more-worthwhile/first#post3103854

I posted several ideas to make defense more rewarding and worthwhile enough to encourage people to take to the walls to patrol and defend. From stuff like expanding camp upgrades to allow for barricades to be built for a little more def to things like a barracks door in keeps and towers so a lone scout can buy reinforcements to come and push off attackers buying time for players to come to your defense.

Zylonite.5913:

Someone who spends 10-20 minutes trebbing a tower’s wall deserves more than 60 WXP when the zerg that run in the lord room get XP and Karma and Coins. and WXP.

As a defensive player, I agree with your points but…

You can get some of the loot while manning a treb while a tower is captured. When the wall goes down, turn your treb to the Lord’s Room and fire a cow and then boulders into it. If you can hit and damage the Champion Defender, you’ll get loot when the zerg finally kills him. I’ve gotten quite a few loot bags manning a treb that way.

There could be a spotter system where you get some wxp from getting close to a player on the other team with a cd mind you. I could see how that can be exploited by i am not sure how else you could make a scout get something from going out of there way and just watching.

Scouting rewards in strongholds are easy to establish, place a capping area like in ruins over the doors. Once you have capped all you get areward and some time will pass till they refresh.
That’s all.

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

Jayne.9251:

I just realized that perhaps we need to define/outline what generally a scout does on a map.

• spots enemy blob and trails it.
• orders supply upgrades at camps seconds before a blob arrives to drain it.
• maintains overview of entire map, coordinating with map commanders and acting like a traffic cop of sorts (great scouts will monitor all four maps and coordinate with multiple commanders)
• network amongst all guilds to ensure communication flows
• refresh and build siege
• maintain and order tower/keep/supply camp upgrades
• flip supply camps
• kill dolyaks
• escort dolyaks
• flip bloodlust ruins
• tap gates to divide up the enemy
• determine time response and blob size on map in reaction to perceived attacks
• solo run supply to siege to deteriorate walls/gates on enemy towers/keeps and use up their supply.
• contest waypoints at key times
• early response for defense of towers/keeps

There’s more, but that’s just off the top of my head atm….. There’s a difference between a sentry and a scout, although sentries do scout from a stationary spot and I believe are the most dedicated of players on the map.

I could easily add the points:

• place supply traps on important points to destroy supply of hostile zergs
• shoot cows on zergs to drain supply
• uses mortars or trebs to destroy hostile siege in a very early stage.

I think more rewards for defensive tasks would be very vital for WvW. It would attract players that like this way to play in a much bigger extend. Especially servers with currently low population could fill their structure with players willing to defend them with great passion.

I would suggest to make upgrades of towers and keeps much more active. It is way to passive. And even if you support the upgrade as much as possible there is no/very low personal reward. I personally love to annoy zergs by stealing supply from them by starting upgrades on camps, placing traps on neuralgic points or shooting cows on them. Things that weaken hostile zergs in a great way, but do not offer any reward. An easy fix could be to introduce a reward for destroying supplies by traps and cows – may be 1(2?) WXP per supply. Would be a small reward but it would at least honor my effort a little bit.

Another issue is the event for defending towers and keeps. It triggers obviously only when a wall/door is hit or the lord is attacked. These events are the main income of rewards for defenders so far. In many cases these events are not comprehensible in regard of rewards for the defender. Sometime I get bronze by repairing the door with 10 supplies. Sometimes I kill 2-3 enemies inside the tower/keep and get nothing despite the timer is running. Sometimes the event does not trigger at all while the outer yard of keeps is full of enemies and we wipe them.

Indeed.

The main 4 key roles in WvW one can see are attack, defense, logistics and intelligence.

Attack is already fairly rewarded thanks to the drops from guild claim NPCs, loot from defeated enemies and its fast pace.

While defending one will get some exp, coin and karma, if the location is getting frequent defend events that may trigger with even small scale attacks, like a roaming guy attacking the guards in the spot, but not nearly as much as while attacking. At least in my world you will rarely see a guild setting camp on a tower and focusing their efforts on it. At most they’ll put some siege and leave a lookout while the rest go around in a <25 size team.

Logistics is not only unrewarding, but it also can be expensive if you do not favor doing the other stuff. Unless you are in a tower that is being attacked you won’t get coins to upgrade that tower, and from just building up the site’s siege you will only get XP and WXP for your time.

And intelligence, well, it won’t only not reward you at all if you never run onto enemies or stop to capture a sentry point and kill a dolyak.
Being a scout looking for enemies can be really boring if you never run into anyone. If one wants to be really, really sneaky one can’t even attack dolyaks ad sentries, or the enemy will know there’s someone around there.
And being a lookout in a tower can be boring if no one ever comes to the location you are watching. Most people acting as a lookout is doing so while watching some series or browsing the Internet. Some are a bit smarter and take turns going to nearby camps for supply and set some siege defenses, but if your world isn’t strong enough to defend against bigger zergs, it all can be pointless, and it’s still better to go “Alliance Battles”, running around capturing, trying to outdo the other worlds and timing your captures for score instead holding onto what’s already captured.

Because of all of that most people focus on attack and rarely in any of the other 3.

Scouting rewards in strongholds are easy to establish, place a capping area like in ruins over the doors. Once you have capped all you get areward and some time will pass till they refresh.
That’s all.

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

That would obviously allow people to get rewards for doing nothing. Standing still and warning others about stuff are two different things. And there’s plenty of scouts that roam around. Not all scouts are just lookouts on locations.

DevonCarver.5370:

Jayne is correct, we do want to address this. It’s mostly a matter of having a more reliable system that lets us track when people are doing this things in order to reward them. Currently we are not able to track that well, if at all. Which means we can’t assign rewards to them. We absolutely believe that defending and scouting are critical to success in WvW and want to be doing more to reward them accordingly.

I think this basically means nothing is even close to being done on this front, so there you have it guys.

A full year after release, it’s heart-warming for the players in-game to know that the devs absolutely believe the game should be made better even though nothing is being done about it. It’s the thought that counts.

in a way, it’s good not to have rewards since it always causes reward hunters to do stupid things. Look at all the people repairing trebbed walls these days (and using supps from the tower no less).

Edit: is is bad that someone who trebs a wall down doesn’t get credit for the capture unless he can rush to the lords room in time.

Hm… Maybe there could be small locations guarded by sentries than can be captured and used to reveal enemies. Much like when a player sees someone from the other team in sPvP and their icon gets revealed to their team mates.

Get to the location, defeat its sentry, capture it, use an object at the base to go up to the ‘watchtower" (a door, a ladder, a rope, etc). Once at the top, you can use the “tower viewer” up there by paying a honor badge as the “coin”-
Then you’ll get 5-10 minutes of use of that tower viewer, that can be seen as a buff in the tower viewer object itself.

While you use it, the game goes to first person for you and you can aim the camera around, to get a 90-135º view that can see enemies from 1200 units to 5000-10000 units from the watchtower.
Any player of your world within range of your watchtower would be able to see as red dots any enemy you can see within that view, and you’ll get a small portion of the exp earned from defeating them, and a small chance to get drops when they are defeated, and if they where defeated within an event, it’ll be considered that you ‘helped’ in the event and you’ll get bronze cooperation.

As you have to feed the thing with badges of honor and actively aim it, and as some would be out in the open, one can’t just afk on it, and as it has to be fed with an account bound currency, and the rewards are limited, it’ll be rewarding enough so there may be volunteers for it, but not enough so people would fight over who gets to use it.

Then it’s all about placement and ranges, and how fast it can turn around, so there’s still a chance to sneak past them, if careful and fast enough.

They would also be kind of a homage to the watchtowers Riverside Province mission in GW1 and even look kind of similar to them, just less white mantle-ish. That’s always cool. Oh, and don’t forget the chances for hilarious jokes about Sauron.

Jayne.9251:

How often do you scout Ross, i’m curious. (Its not a slam, i am curious).

I do my 15m shift in a tower or keep on the odd day (I play a few hours of gw2/wvw a day). Most of my scouting is open field, find and tail the zerg. But on my travels i’ll run dolly’s, drop sup siege, move supply, lay traps.

I dont scout half as much as many of the other members of my servers core wvw community. They play a lot more than me for one, and typically don’t mind it as much. Also, I find I’m more inclined to do it on a day where I’ve been playing for hours and hours. Usually when it’s time for some food, or some other chore/task.

Outside the box thinking: What if players doesnt get rewarded for capturing things, but rewarded for the points your world gets on the tick.

Vaugh.7193:

Outside the box thinking: What if players doesnt get rewarded for capturing things, but rewarded for the points your world gets on the tick.

On first thought a nice idea, on second thought bad for the weaker servers. They’d just be losing more in comparrison to “better” servers.

I think it will hardly be possible to introduce a good reward-system for scouters/deffers without changing (lowering) the general reward system in WvW, as imo scouting rewards should be close to zerging rewards.

There have been quite a few suggestions about how to split zergs etc., such as shared wxp, xp, … Ofc with all the worldpoint/skills avaiable they can’t really reduce the wxp income too soon.

I’m afraid I don’t have any good Ideas myself :/

For scouting towers and keeps, couldn’t one scout for towers, or two for keeps, check in with an npc to start a quest? The quest might include visiting key points at that location, on a regular basis. The points might have a degen timer that can only be started if you have been checked in at the NPC. To bot proof, change the locations of the spots, at each reset, like what is done with mining nodes. I am sure the community could come up with suggestions for the spot locations.

The NPC would have to allow the outgoing scout to check out. The quest could be balanced such that the scout has to actively patrol a certain area (i.e. hills south). If the quest is active, maybe it could show an icon on the map to let everyone else know.

The potential abuse would be someone checking in, and running around to the points, but not looking over the walls. I see that now, even if someone does say “They’re here,” often that is all you get, and often the swords show up seconds later.

For scouting in the open, maybe the scout could place a pin on the map, with a dialog. If you get the enemy count correct, within a certain allowed error, you get credit. ±25% Gold DE reward, ±50% Silver, etc (I am bad at counting numbers in zergs, even when they all show up on the screen). Put a timer on the DE, and a somewhat slow decay on the pins such that 2-3 pins can be seen at a time.

I doubt the siege decay timers are tracked per toon, so this is probably not technically feasible, right now. What about tracking siege time saved for rewards? If I catch something with 15 minutes left, I get credit for 45 minutes saved. If I catch something with 59 minutes left, I get credit for 1 minute saved. This would be bottable, so maybe put a cool down on it?

DevonCarver.5370:

Solstice.1097:

Can I ask what you perceive as a bigger problem; giving rewards to those who may not deserve them, or giving no rewards to those who do?

It’s like asking which is worse; letting a criminal go free or convicting an innocent, and I personally agree with the latter.

I say decide what rewards are appropriate, put them in place, and as you start to see the ways in which it can be abused you will much more effectively be able to tweak it to prevent said abuses.

Unfortunately that runs the risk of closing the barn door after the horse gets out. The economy is not something we like to take those sorts of risks on and we wouldn’t be adding rewards until we are more certain of their effects on all of the game.

Then what was the addition of free gold for dugions then? completely destroying gold to gem ratio

DevonCarver.5370:

Jayne is correct, we do want to address this. It’s mostly a matter of having a more reliable system that lets us track when people are doing this things in order to reward them. Currently we are not able to track that well, if at all. Which means we can’t assign rewards to them. We absolutely believe that defending and scouting are critical to success in WvW and want to be doing more to reward them accordingly.

What efforts are you making to improve rewards for defenders and scouts?

Since we bringing all the old WvW thread back to life, lets discuss scouting rewards….

I defend for hours and hours everyday and i get some rewards but not enough. A good offense is backed by its defenders and defense teams and havocs tapping stuff when they need too. This is a great discussion and I agree more rewards are needed for the backliners..

DevonCarver.5370:

Solstice.1097:

Can I ask what you perceive as a bigger problem; giving rewards to those who may not deserve them, or giving no rewards to those who do?

It’s like asking which is worse; letting a criminal go free or convicting an innocent, and I personally agree with the latter.

I say decide what rewards are appropriate, put them in place, and as you start to see the ways in which it can be abused you will much more effectively be able to tweak it to prevent said abuses.

Unfortunately that runs the risk of closing the barn door after the horse gets out. The economy is not something we like to take those sorts of risks on and we wouldn’t be adding rewards until we are more certain of their effects on all of the game.

• create a siege type scouting bunker that needs to be build for the scout to sit in, while giving them something to do to prevent afk exploiting (siege refreshing for example). This would also have the added benefit of commanders being able to kick non scouts of the siege.

• the scout could also be designated by the commander using a commander ability let’s call it scout promotion this would mean only these people would be able to use and benefit from the scout reward system while inside the scouting bunker.

just my 2 cents on the matter.

DevonCarver.5370:

Jayne is correct, we do want to address this. It’s mostly a matter of having a more reliable system that lets us track when people are doing this things in order to reward them. Currently we are not able to track that well, if at all. Which means we can’t assign rewards to them. We absolutely believe that defending and scouting are critical to success in WvW and want to be doing more to reward them accordingly.

What patch is this specifically being addressed in?

Our players are getting battle fatigue from getting nothing for defending.

Do keep in mind that “scouting” is a community created meta that gameplay mechanics have no bearing over. A game cannot tell the difference between a scout and someone who’s afk, as they’re largely doing the same thing. How can you differentiate between two characters standing around in the same spot, while one’s scouting and the other is afk?

Since it’s a community created meta, it should be rewarded by the community – BG recognises and occasionally reimburses scouts for their time. Others should probably start doing that too perhaps?

Defending on the other hand, needs to be made easier and more rewarding. Laying down 6 superior flame rams with 10 omega golems backing you up means that there is very little you can do to defend the structure if you’re even 30 seconds late in responding, assuming you have the numbers to defend in the first place. There’s got to be something devs can do about that.

Trebbing gets plenty of rewards if your hitting zergs with it.
I always thought it’d be cool if there were mini games or something in the towers, keeps to have a reason to stick around.
Maybe if there was some damage done with siege achievement that is re doable .
Guess I’m not sure either lol