Reward tracks, obviously.
A few people have suggested participation tracks for map wide goals much like found in HoT pve. Participation would simply involve being involved in “typical” tasks such as capturing structures, killing enemy dolyaks while protecting your own, stomping and/or killing enemy players, and defending structures. Issues would involve how to deal with afk abuse, but in any case it’d be a much more meaningful reward system as opposed to who can run up and tag the lord fastest. I think anyone that’s trebbed down a wall could agree.
I like these ideas and I’ll go back to read the thread a bit more in detail too.
What kinds of rewards would you like to see awarded and earned by track or currency in wvw?
Well. Here’s the thing.
Rewards only have value if they can’t be easily obtained elsewhere. Memories of Battle is an example, but its use is too niche. Currently, the most reliable thing in WvW is the heavy loot bag, but with t5 mats in the crapper, they have also been devalued.
When you look at PvP tracks, they offer an assortment of items that can’t be trivialy obtained (one notable one was the heavy supply bags), but also alternate ways of getting dungeons for people that don’t want to do them.
This could be anything as simple as having an ascended insignia of the new HoT stats at the end of a track, for example. Or a sinister ring. Or ascended earrings. Or skins. Or Superior Siege.
The success of the PvP reward tracks isn’t because it’s farmable or anything because PvE’rs will still farm in PvE outside of novelty, but it’s a workable system that actually goes with actually playing the content while World vs World’s reward system is an utter failure. In PvP, even failing gets you something. This is not true in WvW. And even if you’re doing okay, someone that’s relatively new to the game can run around a level 25 zone and go around gathering— they will still make more than you selling soft wood and iron.
Some ideas
- +Remove Champ Bags from the lord. Tower Reward = Tower Capture
- +Rewards for defending structures that you have owned longer, but there is a strict inactivity timer
- +Rewards for taking structures held by the enemy longer
- Well, here’s an obvious one. A progress bar for player kills that fills up. But, instead of determining who can staff 1 faster, all players in the vicinity that have “participated” give credit for all kills in the area. You of course still run the problem of leeches, but it’s still better than going into some dumb tagging fest and kittening over support builds that are arguably more important at times.
But those are just ideas. I think it should be balanced around playing WvW, not around tapping as many enemy targets as possible.
As a side note, due to progress in WvW being always kept in check by enemy servers, the rewards will never reach the levels of PvE, so concerns of abuse or leeching aren’t really important unless it’s some kind of severe bug exploit.
ArchonWing , having played mesmer for maybe 90% of the time in WvW where most actions are not rewarded (portaling/veils/tagging siege/mediocre enemy “tagging” compared to ele/necro/guard) I can say for a fact that player kills are something that needs to be looked at. Most of my large loot bag hauls are from arrowcarts. A necro dropping wells and marks tags just about everything. A guardian spamming staff 1 in EoTM gets more player kills than anyone in “real” WvW (there is a diamond rank EoTM commander). There are already rewards for kills in the form of loot bags.
Defending needs to be rewarded more & ought to scale with the number of attackers as well. Defending against 25+ should carry more weight. When defending, siege destruction should be credited. If you hit someone’s catapult or ram attacking your tower/keep (with a ballista or just YOLOing it), it should count more than a normal out of combat siege kill. If I feedback/wall of reflection 5+ golems and they implode because the enemy is acting clueless spamming 1 then I should be rewarded more than someone just killing a player. This way it is not just relying on timers.
Attacking-wise : If you treb/cata a wall down and your team takes it (without it flipping to the enemy team in between) then you ought to get credit for the capture.
Also the PvP rewards are being PvE-ed. Just look at the red wins/ blue wins daily PvP rooms with kill swapping. It reminds me of GW1 hero battles. People are tanking their tier in PvP Leagues as well. PvP is indeed “farmable”.
A vendor in the Citadel selling the following:
- All exotic level 80 armor and weapons:
- Price 20 Badges of Honor
- Select stats on equip (any stats, not only the 6 common ones)
- Account bound
- All ascended armors and weapons:
- Price 20 Laurels
- Select stats on equip (any stats)
- Account bound
- All superior runes and sigils
- Price 5 Badges of Honor
- Account bound
- All level 80 nourishment (food and utilities)
- Price 1 Badge of Honor
- Account bound
There is exotic WvW equipment for about 100-200 badges a piece right now.
While I would fully support what you propose, (especially given the low drop rate of badges these days) it will never happen with the way Arenanet prices things in WvW. Just look at the proof of heroics vendor: 60 badges for a superior trebuchet , 48 badges for a superior shield gen , 30 for a superior cata. The difference between the Arenanet’s extreme cost for superior siege and your extremely low cost for ascended equipment is hilarious; siege is something expendable while armor is reused time and again.
It is far easier to earn low amount of badges just doing WvW dailies than it is to earn hundreds of proof of heroics. That is why 5 badges of honor for a superior rune or sigil would destroy the rune/sigil economy. If instead it were 10 proof of heroics per rune or 20 per sigil then it would be more likely. You’re assuming that accountbound won’t affect the economy. Look at what happened with the dyes after the dyes were in birthday gifts. You would be drastically increasing supply and lowering demand at the same time.
If the ascended equipment only costed laurels , expect PvErs to come to WvW to buy the armor only. If it costed 100-250 proof of heroics per piece depending on piece (i.e. only WvW currencies) then I would see it working. They’re more likely to hand WvW players the materials to craft them to be realistic. It’s currently 125 badges for a WvW infusion, in addition to the laurels.
i.e.
100 proof of heroics + 20 Memories of battle = headgear/shoulders
125 proof of heroics + 25 Memories of battle = footwear/gloves OR 1 handed weapon/offhand
175 proof of heroics + 35 Memories of battle = legs OR 2 handed weapon
250 proof of heroics + 50 Memories of battle = chestpiece
TOTAL = 875 proof of heroics for a full set of armor (about 100 WvW rankups)
Stats given should not matter as much with the mystic forge change (Anthology of Heroes).
