Guild Wars 2

-Upgrades to towers and keep are an unnecessary financial drain

There is no incentive for anyone to pay in gold the upgrading cost of towers and camps. FWIW I do not count people’s own perceived benefits from a sense of generosity and team-spirit (illusionary benefits). I am surprised that any ever pays these costs. I can understand that ANET probably wants WvW to be in a state of permanent transience; everything your team owns is limited to where your team has presence. But then why bother with towers either? It is because they add strategic depth to the game.

Proposal – remove the gold cost, massively increase the karma cost.

-Badge drops punish WvW players

Badges are the worst drops in WvW because they cannot be sold. So I would rather receive spikes and other trash that I can sell so I can buy stuff I actually want with gold. As it currently is, when a PVE killings something, a PVE player will always* receive items from their drops which are of some gold value. When a WvW player kills something, they may receive and item from their drop has no gold value at all and have almost no value/use beyond that. Badge drops punish WvW players.

Badges have very little value because are a very poor secondary currency. Sure people going for legendries are required collect 500, but beyond that there is a very poor incentive to use the badges. The drop rate is very low, which is understandable because we can’t have people acquiring a part of their legendary too easily (unless they are smart enough to get a portal to the EB JP everyday lol). Coupled with this is the excessive amount needed for siege equipment. The badges can’t even supplement the amount of siege equipment that you would typically use. Btw, has anyone ever seen any with a set of the badge acquired armour.. ever?

Proposal – assign a redeemable karma value to badges.

-armour repair costs are an excessive money sink

Armour repair costs is a design choice which acts as a money sink which combats inflation. I get that. But poor rewards from WvW mean that if you intend to participate in WvW, you will probably only break even. This is very demoralising. For most people (including myself), my presence in WvW to help my “team” is not enough of a reward.

Proposal – increase event rewards for towers and keeps, but not for camps.

Discuss. Additional proposals are welcome.

e:formatting

How is removing the gold costs for keep upgrades and replacing it with karma an improvement? There is a big incentive for upgrades. It makes the keeps easier to defend. Karma has value too if you had not realised. Why should i feel the need to waste my karma on the keep? I’d much rather spend gold.
The upgrades arent necessary, those who have the money and feel the need for the upgrades already do so.

If anything the system should be a collective pool, where each person has the option of committing small sums of gold to the total upgrade.
I have no issue with spending karma but what you suggested it is not an improvement on the current system because it then requires people to exclusively have karma to purchase keep upgrades.

I have no issue with badges being redeemable for karma.
For what its worth, i have a full set of WvW badge purchased armor. Im sure many others do.

Armor repair costs are absolutely fine actually. Perhaps reduced by half to help newer players? But they should always remain there.

You honestly shouldnt be WvWing to profit, thats your issue. The reward is the enjoyment, if you dont enjoy it, you simply dont do it.

I do agree there should be more incentives in terms of rewards, more exchangeable goods for the badges. But youre mistaken about there being too many disincentives. Just not enough incentives.

inbetween.5623:

You honestly shouldnt be WvWing to profit, thats your issue. The reward is the enjoyment, if you dont enjoy it, you simply dont do it.

Why not? Anet has stated if we want to play wvw 100% of the time and never PvE we should be able to. That is their goal. PvE players make a lot more money ‘just PvEing’ then WvW do just WvW’ing.

Upgrades to towers and camps serve 1 primary purpose, and that is time delay. The better upgraded they are, the more time it gives your team to respond to and try and save. If you are on a low pop server or a server that doesn’t try and save camps or towers, then I can see what you are saying. Actually everything you say seems like maybe you are on a low pop server.. are you?

I used to break even in wvw the majority or the time (Including the purchase of a few upgrades and siege)

Since becoming a commander that’s not the case any more, but for people that just want to go around and drop a reinforce wall or doors upgrade here and there it is entirely possible to enjoy yourself and not lose money to wvw.

Tip: Read chat, listen to your commander. Stay with the group and you won’t get picked off (eliminating bills). Ignore any thieves or d/d eles trying to break up the team just set an objective and stick to it, or follow the commanders if an objective has already been set. Remember wvw is not about kills, it’s about map control and you can get all the kills in the world and still lose a matchup if you don’t control the objectives.

inbetween.5623:

How is removing the gold costs for keep upgrades and replacing it with karma an improvement? There is a big incentive for upgrades. It makes the keeps easier to defend. Karma has value too if you had not realised. Why should i feel the need to waste my karma on the keep? I’d much rather spend gold.
The upgrades arent necessary, those who have the money and feel the need for the upgrades already do so.

I think you are misunderstanding my point of view. My point of view are the incentives for an individual to participate in WvW. The question i am interested in is “Why would anyone even bother even logging in WvW in the first place”. Unless ANET adjusts the incentives of WvW, there will be no long term for WvW. It is bad enough that not many people bother spending on upgrades to help the team, what is worse is when there is nobody on your team.

inbetween.5623:

If anything the system should be a collective pool, where each person has the option of committing small sums of gold to the total upgrade.

A good idea although it would probably require a significant new system. As it currently is on SoS, I know one commander was apparently temporarily banned because people sent gold to him – i.e. temp ban for gold buying (his name starts with a P and is found on EB and is infamous – yes I know the name).

inbetween.5623:

I have no issue with spending karma but what you suggested it is not an improvement on the current system because it then requires people to exclusively have karma to purchase keep upgrades.

There is still a supply requirement for upgrades.

inbetween.5623:

You honestly shouldnt be WvWing to profit, thats your issue. The reward is the enjoyment, if you dont enjoy it, you simply dont do it.

I do agree there should be more incentives in terms of rewards, more exchangeable goods for the badges. But youre mistaken about there being too many disincentives. Just not enough incentives.

I do not enjoy conquering empty servers, so I do not participate when that happens. Neither does anyone else. There needs to be a real incentives the game eco-system to keep people battling past the negatives (eg, being outnumbered). If there aren’t adequate incentives, people will move on to something else. I am not saying remove all disincentives. I merely want to change the balance so that there are more incentives and less unnecessary disincentives.

Setch.2398:

Upgrades to towers and camps serve 1 primary purpose, and that is time delay. The better upgraded they are, the more time it gives your team to respond to and try and save. If you are on a low pop server or a server that doesn’t try and save camps or towers, then I can see what you are saying. Actually everything you say seems like maybe you are on a low pop server.. are you?

The team benefits are irrelevant to the neutral individual. You could argue the neutral individual wants the tower to fall so that it can be reclaimed for another event bonus. I mention a “neutral individual” because this leads you to ask: “why should I bother with this”?

And I was on a low pop server (HOD) until I joined SoS because being on a low pop server sucks.

It isn’t “disincentives”. It is just that dungeon runs in pve pays A LOT more than wvwing. That’s why a great majority of players stays in pve, for more rewards. Also when you run dungeons you gain access to armour and weapon skins, which doesn’t require that much dungeon rewards relatively. That WvW armor set requires so many badges that most people just writes it off. This is an imbalance in the incentives since killing humans is harder than killing mobs.

CHIPS.6018:

It isn’t “disincentives”. It is just that dungeon runs in pve pays A LOT more than wvwing. That’s why a great majority of players stays in pve, for more rewards. Also when you run dungeons you gain access to armour and weapon skins, which doesn’t require that much dungeon rewards relatively. That WvW armor set requires so many badges that most people just writes it off. This is an imbalance in the incentives since killing humans is harder than killing mobs.

and it is ugly. and it has stats that can be much easier acquired (eg, karma armour in cursed shore)

Staying with the group will save you money, but you’ll become a lazy player. There’s a reason individual zerglets die so easily. I roam and cap camps. I normally come out with 10 to 20s more than I started after repairs. The key is knowing how to run, how to hide, and how to fight.

I agree that the rate of income is to low for roamers, but with zerglets you just stand there and spam 1. Why should that be rewarded? I’m not trying to be rude or mean. But seriously your reward/work ratio is very large. Why should you make mint?

If they remove badges, what will I use to buy my lovely ballistas?

If they used Karma instead of gold I wouldn’t really be able to do the amount of upgrading I have been doing as I prefer to defend rather than join the karma train and those on the Karma Train are usually not the ones doing the upgrades anyway.

Frankly, they should just create a fourth (or fifth?) type of game currency specific for WvW—like glory for PvP, karma for PvE, and gold for general use. And then replace all current WvW costs with this currency—everything, including upgrades, invader’s stuff, siege, etc.

This way, Anet could actually just cause this currency to automatically uptick whenever someone does something like kill an opponent, stop a supply yak, take a keep or tower, etc.

Especially since the GW2 engine apparently can’t handle adding things directly to the inventory.

I think there aren’t enough incentives for WvW. I’m a commander on a low pop server (not really low pop, just low participation) and I don’t make a freakin cent cause it always seems that nobody has and siege weapons but me. I’m not going to ruin my rep leading a zerg to a tower and get creamed cause no one has a siege to put down or claim a tower and not have it equipped to be defendable. I spend anywhere from 50s to 3-4g in a night and have to dedicate an whole day of PvE (mainly Fractals) just to make up for a few nights in WvW. I would love play WvW 100% of the time but the cashflow isn’t there. If they just increased the amount of badges dropped and added badges to event rewards, turning badges into a real form of currency. I would be able to do my job as commander without running myself into a financial hole all the time and it might encourage more people to play WvW and share the costs. I think that WvW has the most satisfying gameplay in all of GW2 but it is a big money sink for me.

Caedus.6571:

If they remove badges, what will I use to buy my lovely ballistas?

karma.

Catisa.6507:

inbetween.5623:

You honestly shouldnt be WvWing to profit, thats your issue. The reward is the enjoyment, if you dont enjoy it, you simply dont do it.

Why not? Anet has stated if we want to play wvw 100% of the time and never PvE we should be able to. That is their goal. PvE players make a lot more money ‘just PvEing’ then WvW do just WvW’ing.

This ^
I honestly think many of the people who are against rewards in WvW are likely just PvE players trying to make sure they stay on top of the pyramid.

Also, the OP brings up a good issue, but his solutions aren’t very good. Changing the cost from Gold to Karma wouldn’t remove disincentives, just exchange one for the other.

I agree armor repairs hurts wvw. I really am not sure why it exists. /shrug. Upgrades on keeps. This needs to change. It should be supply that majorly funds it. Perhaps karma also. Defenders in keeps should get some sort of reward for repelling an attack since they wont get much else defending thier homeland territory. And I would like to see siege blueprints drop more often from players and claim lords/keep lords. I think that would help a lot. My two cents.

Something like the Zaishen keys in GW1 needs to be introduced (PvP rewards with monetary value), but in a way that players are not just there to farm them.

Gear is also an area of concern. How many of you with exotic gear are playing with stats, runes, or sigils you don’t want? How many of you don’t play different builds because an entire set of new gear cost too much? How many of you don’t play more than one character in WvW because it cost too much? To me this is absolutely ridiculous.

Kill two birds with one stone and let people upgrade towers/camps using badges.

Gold is necessary for ugrading since karma is not tradeable and there are many guilds which use the gild bank to ensure commanders have enough money to pay these costs.

WvW reward vs cost ratio is unnecessarily bad.

You have to spend a lot of money for repairing armor, building sieges and upgrading, not to mention getting preferrably more than one set of gear.

Full exotic gear costs maybe 30g and not going into cost of ascended gear yet, which is necessary once they add them in game. Repairing gear is at least 1 silver but it’s not uncommon to have over 10 silver bills.

Loot is bad. Current loot system counts party somehow. This should be removed. WvW play has very little to do with party mechanics unlike dungeon where you are automatically in same party anyway. Also difference between being in party and not is huge. If you’re not in party all you seem to get is like blue drops or some claws whatever. Not to mention if you are supposed to be any help to your allies you are not supposed to run MF gear, lol.

I’ve given up idea of upgrading anything which costs more than 4 silver since I probably net less than 1g a day while I can play like 8 hours a day.

This is ridiculous compared to doing one fractal dungeon (takes maybe 1 hour) which can drop you ascended gear or materials for them, not to mention you usually net at least 1g even without having pretty common exotic drops.

WvW badges are currently useless crap.

If they really want WvWers being able to not do pve content, they’re not really encouraging it in slightest.

We have basically 2 maps (bl are copy paste lol) and practically no rewards so there’s no reason to play except lols. I wonder how long it can keep me or other ppl interested.

Frenk.5917:

Gold is necessary for ugrading since karma is not tradeable and there are many guilds which use the gild bank to ensure commanders have enough money to pay these costs.

Well make it optional. You can either choose to use your gold to upgrade, or use your badges. Run out of badges, check the guild bank. Simple.

jalmari.3906:

Loot is bad. Current loot system counts party somehow. This should be removed. WvW play has very little to do with party mechanics unlike dungeon where you are automatically in same party anyway. Also difference between being in party and not is huge. If you’re not in party all you seem to get is like blue drops or some claws whatever. Not to mention if you are supposed to be any help to your allies you are not supposed to run MF gear, lol.

Does anyone remember when people used to play games for fun instead of loot? I don’t remember hopping onto dota back in the day in search of exotic gear, I was in search of entertainment. Did this concept just get lost for everyone along the way, or are all MMOs so grind focused like this?

I can completely understand not wanting crap drops, but I feel there is a very important reason for that. Extreme example: If, say, everyone dropped an exotic when you killed them then everywhere you look there would be people farming WvW for gear. You wouldn’t be able to go 5 meters without seeing someone getting killed by their friend on another server and ressed over and over for loot. Remember when Dolyaks gave karma when you escorted them? Remember when every dolyak would have ~20 people walking along with it, taking server slots and generally polluting what is supposed to be a primarily PvP experience with PvE?

Another thing is existing competition would be boosted to abnormal levels. People wouldn’t be going for wins, they’d be going for kills, which does not necessarily equal wins. People would fight over using arrow carts, because they are the most effective way to tag zergs. A zerg would be 50% longbow rangers using barrage. Just think about how much animosity there is already, on the jumping puzzle, where big rewards are at stake.

A knee-jerk bandaid fix is not always the best solution, even though it may sound good on paper. Please remember this.

Increasing the amount of badges dropped and turning badges into a real WvW currency that you can use for upgrades and siege, anything WvW related might be a viable solution. Badges are useless outside of WvW, you wouldn’t have people farming and might encourage players with tight purse strings to contribute a little more than a body to the fight.

Conditional Love.8149:

-Upgrades to towers and keep are an unnecessary financial drain

Agree.

Frankly I think they should all be free and cost only supply. I don’t see the downside to this. Making fort upgrades cost personal money makes no sense except that it’s a money sink for the sake of having a money sink. Why am I spending personal money and personal karma for something that does little or nothing for me?

-Badge drops punish WvW players

Somewhat disagree. You can buy siege engines with badges which saves a ton of cash.

You can also turn badges into cash by buying siege engines and then selling them to other players.

-armour repair costs are an excessive money sink

Strongly disagree. Armor repair serves a strategic purpose in that it discourages “mindless suicidal zerging”. You can still zerg, but if you’re suicidal, it’ll cost you. As well it should.

Proposal – increase event rewards for towers and keeps, but not for camps.

Increase event rewards based on the number of “unique kills” (i.e., not 1 person 5 times but 5 people 1 time each).

There should be very little reward for “PvDoor” against an empty fort. Ninja for strategic reasons if you want but “karma trains” shouldn’t exist.

I also feel like there are gold disincentives to WvW. The prices of everything has been going up ever since Fractals got introduced (I don’t know if Fractals are to blame, I have heard rumours that people make more gold there but I know that) but how much we make in WvW hasn’t. Gearing up a new build or gearing a new character is getting very expensive (even before ascended gear is in) for a WvW player.

I feel like the following is true:
-when I PvE, I make more gold (when I WvW, I make a couple gold an evening)
-when I do dungeons, I am earning more gold -and- earning tokens toward armour/weapons that have a range of abilities
-when I do WvW, I die more than doing PvE so my repair costs are higher, further hurting how fast I make gold
-I use the most expensive food in WvW because it may mean more repair costs and I feel like it’ll make a difference in small scales battles I encounter. I feel like food is not at all necessary for me to succeed in dungeons (I don’t run Fractals)
-as PvE, I have to pay for waypoints but when I WvW, I have to buy siege and upgrades, which is more expensive
-hero badges and loot bags don’t always get picked up
-hero badges are earned slower than dungeon tokens

Edit: I’m just posting here because I’m in a WvW guild but to get new gear, most of us do dungeons. And we’d rather be doing WvW

I spend majority of my time in WvW, and not only do I profit overall (even spending money on upgrades, yes, siege is bought with badges on the other hand) but I profit JUST during WvW.

Single biggest thing to do: Don’t hang around in a zerg, kills give finite amount of loot so the more people to share it between, less chance you’re going to get some.