Guild Wars 2

Instead of a hundred QQ threads about how bad the rewards are, what about a Thank You thread?

We’ve been playing wvw for over a year without rewards. Now we get rewards and people complain. I agree, the rewards aren’t “super”, but why should they be?
Most people in WvW ignored Living story because they didn’t like it. This season we could do what we liked and we even got a reward. The 5 tomes of knowledge were a nice boost, along with a little bit of Wxp, a funny dolyak and 100 dragonite ore.

I do have to say, I don’t plan on getting ascended through crafting cause I don’t have the money for it and playing WvW doesn’t earn me enough to level it.
So the dragonite is worthless to me.

That being said, I’m happy we did get something for doing the same thing as always (kill some players, dolyaks, sentries;.. cap some towers, keeps, stonemist). I’m also happy for the promise of accountbound wxp, edge of the mists and more. Thank you!

Sirendor.1394:

Now we get rewards and people complain. I agree, the rewards aren’t “super”, but why should they be?

Ok, I’ll play along. Why should they be? The WvW event was the perfect time to award the winning worlds with something extra special to draw more folks into WvW on a steady basis. Season 1 was a huge success as evidenced by the long que’s obviously due to PvE’rs (sarcasm off). Que’s meant folks were actually fighting to get into and participate regardless of reason in WvW. Instead of making a special gift for the winners thereby ensuring more active WvW into the future, the gifts were seen as lack luster, below what they give for PvE events, no special skins, no special titles aside from the everyone got veteran of the mists. The rewards even lacked a WvW element like badges, plans, serious gold.

Now, who knows if wvw will have the same draw going forward, the same fight for that special something. The Anet team gave high expectations and those expectations were deemed by a lot of folks to be under met. Did we read wrong Anet’s posts about the rewards? Did Anet honestly misunderstand what the clients desired? Many business’s have failed due to a disconnect between what management’s perception of a clients wish and the reality of said wish.

Honestly believe Anet could have done more with less, but special, than more with nothing special. Award the winners. Keep us motivated to WvW, to dethrone the winners, don’t give everyone the same ole stuff.

NargofWoV.4267:

Ok, I’ll play along. Why should they be? The WvW event was the perfect time to award the winning worlds with something extra special to draw more folks into WvW on a steady basis. Season 1 was a huge success as evidenced by the long que’s obviously due to PvE’rs (sarcasm off). Que’s meant folks were actually fighting to get into and participate regardless of reason in WvW. Instead of making a special gift for the winners thereby ensuring more active WvW into the future, the gifts were seen as lack luster, below what they give for PvE events, no special skins, no special titles aside from the everyone got veteran of the mists. The rewards even lacked a WvW element like badges, plans, serious gold.

Now, who knows if wvw will have the same draw going forward, the same fight for that special something. The Anet team gave high expectations and those expectations were deemed by a lot of folks to be under met. Did we read wrong Anet’s posts about the rewards? Did Anet honestly misunderstand what the clients desired? Many business’s have failed due to a disconnect between what management’s perception of a clients wish and the reality of said wish.

Honestly believe Anet could have done more with less, but special, than more with nothing special. Award the winners. Keep us motivated to WvW, to dethrone the winners, don’t give everyone the same ole stuff.

And if the winners got super awesome rewards season two would simply be: “Every single PvE:er stacks on the server that is most likely to win”, thus making it more or less impossible to get some sort of interesting matches and most people wouldn’t be able to play at all due to queues.

lordkrall.7241:

NargofWoV.4267:

Ok, I’ll play along. Why should they be? The WvW event was the perfect time to award the winning worlds with something extra special to draw more folks into WvW on a steady basis. Season 1 was a huge success as evidenced by the long que’s obviously due to PvE’rs (sarcasm off). Que’s meant folks were actually fighting to get into and participate regardless of reason in WvW. Instead of making a special gift for the winners thereby ensuring more active WvW into the future, the gifts were seen as lack luster, below what they give for PvE events, no special skins, no special titles aside from the everyone got veteran of the mists. The rewards even lacked a WvW element like badges, plans, serious gold.

Now, who knows if wvw will have the same draw going forward, the same fight for that special something. The Anet team gave high expectations and those expectations were deemed by a lot of folks to be under met. Did we read wrong Anet’s posts about the rewards? Did Anet honestly misunderstand what the clients desired? Many business’s have failed due to a disconnect between what management’s perception of a clients wish and the reality of said wish.

Honestly believe Anet could have done more with less, but special, than more with nothing special. Award the winners. Keep us motivated to WvW, to dethrone the winners, don’t give everyone the same ole stuff.

And if the winners got super awesome rewards season two would simply be: “Every single PvE:er stacks on the server that is most likely to win”, thus making it more or less impossible to get some sort of interesting matches and most people wouldn’t be able to play at all due to queues.

What would you rather have as a problem, a game with Que’s you have to fix, or a game with no que’s and limited interest by your player base?

I would rather have an alive WvW than one that is completely dead due to stacking.
WvW have been a limited interest to the playerbase since release, I don’t really see why it would suddenly become an issue now.

lordkrall.7241:

I would rather have an alive WvW than one that is completely dead due to stacking.
WvW have been a limited interest to the playerbase since release, I don’t really see why it would suddenly become an issue now.

You can’t say that Season 1 limited interest, interest went up, all be it for the supposed rewards, but it went up. Folks QQ’n about the Q’s like no tomorrow. To me, that’s a good problem to solve.

lordkrall.7241:

NargofWoV.4267:

Ok, I’ll play along. Why should they be? The WvW event was the perfect time to award the winning worlds with something extra special to draw more folks into WvW on a steady basis. Season 1 was a huge success as evidenced by the long que’s obviously due to PvE’rs (sarcasm off). Que’s meant folks were actually fighting to get into and participate regardless of reason in WvW. Instead of making a special gift for the winners thereby ensuring more active WvW into the future, the gifts were seen as lack luster, below what they give for PvE events, no special skins, no special titles aside from the everyone got veteran of the mists. The rewards even lacked a WvW element like badges, plans, serious gold.

Now, who knows if wvw will have the same draw going forward, the same fight for that special something. The Anet team gave high expectations and those expectations were deemed by a lot of folks to be under met. Did we read wrong Anet’s posts about the rewards? Did Anet honestly misunderstand what the clients desired? Many business’s have failed due to a disconnect between what management’s perception of a clients wish and the reality of said wish.

Honestly believe Anet could have done more with less, but special, than more with nothing special. Award the winners. Keep us motivated to WvW, to dethrone the winners, don’t give everyone the same ole stuff.

And if the winners got super awesome rewards season two would simply be: “Every single PvE:er stacks on the server that is most likely to win”, thus making it more or less impossible to get some sort of interesting matches and most people wouldn’t be able to play at all due to queues.

I agree and it would also mean that top servers will even be more stable in their position: more funds for accepting new people, more funds for BiS gear and so on.
But the fact that we got rewards at all, is quite enough.

NargofWoV.4267:

You can’t say that Season 1 limited interest, interest went up, all be it for the supposed rewards, but it went up. Folks QQ’n about the Q’s like no tomorrow. To me, that’s a good problem to solve.

I have never claimed that it did.
I simply claimed that adding super good rewards for the winning servers would most likely hurt WvW way more than it would help it.

I am not in favor of extra rewards for winners, maybe a title would be fine and a permanent finisher, not the silly stack of.

I am in favor of the chest having decent loot for all folks that completed the achievements.

Yes we all play WvW for the fun of it. Yes we would be out there anyways fighting loot or no loot, but that same logic applies to PvE.

Why is it that I can do three world bosses have three guaranteed rare or better drops, plus a chest each time that often has a rare, dragonite ore, and other stuff. It takes like no time to do because of the timers. I can do this every single day.

For a seven week league event, of which as a roamer it took me 4 weeks to get the achievements done, I get a bunch of greens, some dragonite ore, and some books of knowledge.

The issue is the disparity. Why does PvE get so much better loot then WvW regardless of the amount of effort that goes into the tasks? Living world events have better, more unique loot and I can finish them in a day, not 4 weeks. Why does each world boss give a rare or better, yet we do not get a guaranteed rare or better on a wxp rank chests, not even for the first one of the day.

I am not saying thank you to ANET for yet another predictable and lackluster effort at rewarding WvW.

Of course the rewards aren’t on scale with PvE… but you shouldn’t expect them to be. Anet is taking baby steps on this matter. They don’t want to inbalance the community further and they surely don’t want to provide winners with easy means to victory.

The reason why WvW at this moment is so unrewarding, is that zergs are still the most lucrative. A commander and a blob of 50 people can easily earn 5x (if not 10x) as much as a solo roamer or a small group roamer. If 50v50 people clash in eachother, one side will win. This means, if you’re a good tagger, 30-40 bags of loot from killing one single zerg. This is immense compared to small scale:
- every 5-20 minutes you find a fight.
- most of the fights are <10 people.
- if more than 20 people attack your 5, you loose or have to run.
- you are able to cap a tower/keep once in a while, unless there’s zergs everywhere.

Despite this, a 5-man team often does more valuable work than a zerg: they cap camps very fast, they ninja towers within minutes and due to their small size manage to do it unnoticed. They often fight greater odds, and still win, which is admirable.

If they would make WvW lucrative on the level of a small scale roamer, it’ll mean a huge benefit on the level of a zerg, inbalancing the whole game. That’s the only reason I can offer.

Sirendor.1394:

Of course the rewards aren’t on scale with PvE… but you shouldn’t expect them to be. Anet is taking baby steps on this matter. They don’t want to inbalance the community further and they surely don’t want to provide winners with easy means to victory.

It is hard to say, imbalance it further as everyone in this season WAS fighting for some sort of decent reward. I don’t believe any victor had it easy.

Sirendor.1394:

The reason why WvW at this moment is so unrewarding, is that zergs are still the most lucrative. A commander and a blob of 50 people can easily earn 5x (if not 10x) as much as a solo roamer or a small group roamer. If 50v50 people clash in eachother, one side will win. This means, if you’re a good tagger, 30-40 bags of loot from killing one single zerg. This is immense compared to small scale:
- every 5-20 minutes you find a fight.
- most of the fights are <10 people.
- if more than 20 people attack your 5, you loose or have to run.
- you are able to cap a tower/keep once in a while, unless there’s zergs everywhere.

WvWvW is exactly that, World v World, not 5-10 man v 5-10 man. If Anet wishes to do that, make some 5-10 man areas and only allow that size in. Having map blobs roaming around is a legit tactic in a World v. World. Now Anet has said they’re working on ways of rewarding in keep takes so that “scouts” who don’t make it to the Keep Lord but were instrumental in the Keep take get proper rewards.

Sirendor.1394:

Despite this, a 5-man team often does more valuable work than a zerg: they cap camps very fast, they ninja towers within minutes and due to their small size manage to do it unnoticed. They often fight greater odds, and still win, which is admirable.

Yes, havoc groups serve a valuable purpose but taking camps and guard points are a reward in WvW. Havoc groups if successful gain along with everyone else.

Sirendor.1394:

If they would make WvW lucrative on the level of a small scale roamer, it’ll mean a huge benefit on the level of a zerg, inbalancing the whole game. That’s the only reason I can offer.

I hear you. I fully believe there is room for solo roaming in the frontiers or small group roaming. During the season on late week blow outs, our guild could get in with small groups and do, well small group stuff… We’d look for little scrums here and there to have guild fun in. You can still do it and compete in larger events as well. I don’t believe it is a detriment to the concept of WvW.

Let’s just pause and analyze the comment that “Season 1 was a success,” shall we? First of all, there were no upsets, no surprise contenders for first place. It was obvious who was going to win their bracket from the start. Why? Coverage. Coverage defines success in GW2 because of largely broken mechanics rewarding players for nothing more than auto-attacking gates during their opponent’s off-hours. Note that I’m not complaining; I’ve been playing WvW for far too long to really care one way or another. As to your comment about server queues, only T1 servers had such extreme issues with queues. Why is this, you ask? BG and JQ both spent weeks paying guilds to transfer to their respective server, although BG was far more successful at it than JQ. They actively over-stacked their WvW population to ensure no coverage gaps and near-100% uptime on queues. Funnily enough, this exact same attitude had been going on for many, many months beforehand.

Season 1 highlighted all of the major issues that have been present in WvW since the get-go. Little to no rewards for players who exclusively WvW, coverage being the sole metric used to determine the outcome of a matchup, and the misguided drive to continually stack guilds on to T1 servers. It wasn’t a success, but it was a valuable lesson to those in the community who don’t primarily play WvW. Hopefully something productive that DOESN’T involve Seasons comes out of it. We shall see.

Anyways, since we’re saying thanks to the WvW team, here’s my contribution. Thank-you for the Obsidian Sanctum arena. Thank-you for finally merging WvW ranks into an account-wide rank. Thank-you for finally introducing a new WvW map. All of these things should have happened many months ago, but instead we got masteries. Better late than never, though, I suppose.

Boonprot, I like your post, but I would argue JQ going into the season was considered the top server… I would also say that it looked like two other realms conspired to bring JQ down, which may or may not have been “planned” and is fine either way. So to me, BG winning was an upset, but well deserved by them they played well and earned my congrats.

I do agree with you that Coverage rules the day in persistent world v world games. The EU and Ocean worlds are suppose to keep this from happening, limiting the off hours guilds from hitting off hour coverage. However, it has not succeeded. This isn’t the first game to encounter this problem nor will it be the last.

However, one point you made is that season 1 was some how a failure and that lessons learned need to come out of it. While I agree, lessons learned, I don’t consider the vast numbers of ‘not usual’ wvw players joining in is a bad thing. It is a good thing, a good problem to solve.

So, yes, thanks to Anet for making WvW relevant to more players… Wish it was going to continue going forward, but I have my doubts.

I like this straw man argument that someone twisted “Rewards, which were virtually identical across all servers, should’ve been better” to “We can’t reward winning servers with awesome stuff because everyone will transfer there.”

ANet defenders at their best.

lordkrall.7241:

And if the winners got super awesome rewards season two would simply be: “Every single PvE:er stacks on the server that is most likely to win”, thus making it more or less impossible to get some sort of interesting matches and most people wouldn’t be able to play at all due to queues.

If you used your brain for a second you’d have come up yourself that the rewards don’t have to be hugely stratified by server ranking. They just need to be better overall.
Next.

I think putting green items into a 6 week meta achievement is not rewarding but taunting.

That Dolly mini got wrecked 1 min after i opened the chest. No way the Devs must have thought that players would be happy with those rewards. As i said, i feel provoked.

They spent 0 effort on those rewards and tossed them together in 5min during lunchbreak.

A finisher? Ok! But with charges? —-→ Keep it.

I expected something like a:
Ascended weapon of choice with a unique skin.
Nice unique Armor Skins?
Nice unique colours?
a huge unique Bag? (all wvwler would have loved this one)

Something you could only get when you fought in Season1 and never again after that day. That would have been a reward. We got daily chest niveau junk.

Something that says " Season 1 Guildwars2 i was there!"

One may say: “But WvW is all about playing with and against other players and not rewards.”

But i think wvw lacks a few things and rewards is one of them. Not getting a statement on that topic tells me they know what they did or actually didnt do.

Big missed chance there.

+ Some of the things you had to do to get the key where silly (jumpingpuzzles). But the promise of a great reward helped me to force myself trough that same ol JP for another and hopefully last 3 times. Im sure they thought doing a jp 3 times must be insane fun.

On rewards and Ranks: Give the big servers (winning servers a different title so they can feel like winners) The main reward must be equal though. People shouldnt be punished for not having enough nightcappers or not hopping on the winning train.
I think thats common sense. It would just be bad for the game.

Players have made WvW a way bigger thing then spvp (the place you test your builds ) Its time Arena net notices that, gives up on esport dreams and puts more effort into that part.

Id also like to thank Arenanet for giving in on the gvg topic and providing guilds a chance to do GVGs. Nice Move.

WvW Go Go!

I don’t care about the new rewards we’re getting i’m just glad wvw is structurally improving. EoTM, acc bound wxp, can use dust for asc back pieces. True hardcore wvwers play wvw for wvw, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if they get some shiny rares for their troubles, they play because it’s fun.

Sirendor.1394:

Most people in WvW ignored Living story because they didn’t like it.

Exactly. Season 1 was a Living Story type event for WvW, why not get Living Story style rewards? Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to WvW either way, I was just under the assumption that WvW’ers would finally be getting PvE rewards for what we do every day INSTEAD of PvE.

Neeho.3859:

Exactly. Season 1 was a Living Story type event for WvW, why not get Living Story style rewards? Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to WvW either way, I was just under the assumption that WvW’ers would finally be getting PvE rewards for what we do every day INSTEAD of PvE.

But we did get a Living Story style reward.

Most living stories give us a skin or something like that.
This Living Story update gave us a mini and a title. So basically we got exactly the same kind of reward as a PvE Living Story.

I’ll be really thankful to the WvW team as soon as I see them combined character bound WXP to Account bound.

On a side note, thanks WvW team. Good job on the rewards. Well thought out since this is a test run season and it needs to be fair…

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

I like this straw man argument that someone twisted “Rewards, which were virtually identical across all servers, should’ve been better” to “We can’t reward winning servers with awesome stuff because everyone will transfer there.”

ANet defenders at their best.

Eh, it’s a borderline straw man argument. There is a very real danger of only compounding the server-stacking issues by offering better rewards. That said, the rewards were 100% garbage in a game mode where the bar is already set so low. Difficult situation.