Guild Wars 2

Whilst I was slightly disappointed by the lack of a skin that most metas award, I couldn’t help but think there was something they could have easily done to make most WvW players (and PvE players) happy.

Ascended armour. So close to release on Tuesday, it would have been a nice reward for 7 weeks of play. Here’s how.

They should have had a daily achievement for taking a tower, and within the meta had an achievement “Complete tower daily 40 times” bear with me for a second.

If they made it this way, players would have to log into WvW and take part in some form for about ~80% of the days of the season, (didn’t want to say 100% and alienate people that had an issue one or two days of the season, though the percentage could be changed up or down depending on how Anet wanted to do it) which is easy for a WvW player and would make PvE players get slightly more involved on a daily basis instead of logging in, completing the meta in 4 days and leaving forever.

So this, plus doing the meta would equate to at least 40 days work for a set of ascended armour, legitimizing WvW as a source of gear but at a cost of putting in daily effort. This is pretty simple for WvW players, and easily doable by everyone else if they put in the effort.

Another bonus of this would have been that everyone would have had a fair chance of gaining the armour, so nobody could have complained about the imbalance of rich players having better gear. And with the chance of getting another set next season, new players and old ones with alts would have had a chance of a set later on.

Just something that’s been rummaging through my mind so I felt like I should write it down.

kitten son, I’d be happy with a single piece of ascended anything.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

kitten son, I’d be happy with a single piece of ascended anything.

I had thought about saying one piece, but with an unknown time frame between seasons and the seasons themselves lasting 7 weeks. A full set made more sense.

And I know that feeling, I play mostly WvW and it takes me weeks of effort to make a single weapon (if I even bother with the grind) and I am dreading the crafting costs for armour.

I’ve opened a reddit thread on this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1sdlsp/wvw_season_1_rewards_what_do_you_think_would_be/

Here the best upvoted suggestions so far:

A 20 slot bag would have been a nice reward for a WvW player imho, bags are filling fast here.

Just a unique backpiece illimited skin.

As for the Chest itself, they should introduce ‘tiers’ to the WvW achievement. Depending on the levels you get, the higher rewards you get (with a cap, of course). That way it scales up a bit for dedicated WvW players, but it still has the main reward as long as you finish the first level of the WvW achievement.

The extra tiers should award no Achievement Points so Achievement players don’t feel obligated to do it.

Nope – these rewards would have been way out of scale.

It did not take 7 weeks to make this achievement – two-three days at most for a couple of hours work in WvW. The rewards were correct and balanced.

I look at this as a something you could work towards over 7 weeks of play – just like a living story achievement which most players get within the first two days.

TPMN.1483:

Nope – these rewards would have been way out of scale.

It did not take 7 weeks to make this achievement – two-three days at most for a couple of hours work in WvW. The rewards were correct and balanced.

I look at this as a something you could work towards over 7 weeks of play – just like a living story achievement which most players get within the first two days.

And the rewards aren’t already out of scale?
How is three days of hard work worth the equivalent of one CoF P1 run?

GJ kitten ing in the face of all the WvW players Anet and prove how much you prefer PvErs.

The current rewards were low, perhaps too low, but a full set of ascended armor is flipping that to be just as bad, if not worse, in the other direction. That would make it orders of magnitude greater than any other reward this game has given out for either a single event or meta achievement.

There is a reason the majority of the rewards for metas are cosmetic or vendor fodder. Giving out stat rewards for metas essentially penalizes players who didn’t participate as much as it rewards players who did. Whether you agree with it or not the stated philosophy of this game since before release was essentially not to do that ever.

TPMN.1483:

Nope – these rewards would have been way out of scale.

It did not take 7 weeks to make this achievement – two-three days at most for a couple of hours work in WvW. The rewards were correct and balanced.

I look at this as a something you could work towards over 7 weeks of play – just like a living story achievement which most players get within the first two days.

If you re-read my post, I also state that the meta should have included an achievement that could only be completed by playing WvW for at least 40 days out of the 49 to justify getting the armour.

Whilst some people may think that an ascended set may be too much, look at it this way. You play PvE, you earn plenty of gold, lots of materials and can get plenty of dragonite ore for making ascended weapons and armour. But if you play WvW primarily, there is almost no way you’ll have enough materials or money to make a set of anything without doing PvE as well.

~2 months of PvE will no doubt get you enough materials and gold for a set of armour, why not the same for ~2 months of WvW?

Again, I know the meta could be completed in 3-4 days, I’m saying they should have added a “time invested” achievement in it, to justify better rewards.

new number one in the thread above:

personally I would have loved a reusable exclusive armor/weaponskin, like the ones PvE Living Story updates offered so far. People loved the Jade Weaponskins, for example… something you use in combat.

A title is nice, but I see no point in throwing 6 greens at us when we got hundrets of greens while “working” for the meta; or a rank-levelup when we needed 50 for the achievement.

A single skin is all it would have taken to make the players happy. Hell, since ascended back piece inequality in WvW is such a huge issue, they could have even just given everyone an ascended backpiece.

Give it the look of a goblet strapped to your back. It can glow gold, silver, or bronze if you were 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Don’t even need to infuse it to keep the PvE crowd from QQing.

another nice comment from the reddit thread:

People would have been happier without the greens. Nobody who has played this game enough time to get that meta has any use for them. If you’re going to give us a gear reward, give us an exclusive skin or an exotic or above. Anything less is just an insult.

Some badges would have been nice. Blueprints as well. The ascended mats were a nice touch given that it’s harder to get those in WvW than PvE, but more of them, or just the “finished” materials (a dragonite ingot rather than some ore to save on the crafting cost) might have been nice. Maybe a merchant or two, given players are perpetually summoning them in the field to sell off all their worthless loot.

The mini was okay as a prize, and if I kept it in my mind as my “grand prize” for the whole ordeal I don’t feel bad about it—but I’m kind of sick of minis as rewards when you have to do so much of a song and dance to keep them following you through normal play, and it’s kind of stupid to summon them in WvW because the engine might be an idiot and decide to render the mini rather than an enemy player. Not to mention the release of the Christmas mini dolyak at almost the same time as the meta finished, and the mini dolyaks you can already get with gold commendations, and it being the least interesting of the lot.

I would have done most of the stuff anyway, but the reward chest could have better reflected things that WvW players would value or find useful without making it any “better” or “worse” in terms of some abstract version of worth. And the greens were insulting.

I love the level up scrolls.. Next time, make them tradeable and even people who dont need them get something out of it..

Free legendary, which seems to be what people were expecting.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

kitten son, I’d be happy with a single piece of ascended anything.

Like a Ascended ring Seal of the Khan-Ur with +prec + tough + condi + healing on power mesmer?
I just call this ring Useless

Hule.8794:

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

kitten son, I’d be happy with a single piece of ascended anything.

Like a Ascended ring Seal of the Khan-Ur with +prec + tough + condi + healing on power mesmer?
I just call this ring Useless

PU Condi.

boom

While I think an Ascended would have been a bit much… A really cool glow effect added to a piece or armor or a WvW skin for an armor piece or a special weapon skin would have been in line.

NargofWoV.4267:

While I think an Ascended would have been a bit much… A really cool glow effect added to a piece or armor or a WvW skin for an armor piece or a special weapon skin would have been in line.

Like I said, the meta should have been made harder to accommodate a better reward and thus make WvW an acceptable game mode for gaining gear, but only during seasons.

But I would have been happy with a unique skin. Perhaps a cape/cloak back piece for everyone and one with “1st” "2nd “3rd” emblazoned on the back of it for the winners.

I think the issue here is that they did not follow their own rules for how they reward LS. If you compare to PVE LS arcs, they are typically:

• 2-4 weeks long (but can complete comfortably in days)
• 1-2 major meta achievements, of which exact reward is known
• Each meta achievement reward one unique item (minis, skins, home features – ie items that cannot be attained any other way)
• Less unique rewards are not awarded for achievements but more integrated into more direct gameplay (ex. tricolor chest, candy corn king chest, …)

This is how wvw was presented which broke bits of this example and made people unhappy.

• 7 weeks long (but can complete comfortably in a week or two). This is fine but I would expect 2-3 times what a normal PVE LS arc is for comparability
• 1 major meta achievement, for which almost all of it was not known. For exact parity, this could have been 2-3 of these. Since they didn’t, I’d expect 2-3 unique items in the meta reward
• Simply put, the meta chest had only one unique reward (mini) as opposed to 2-3 which would have had parity. Simply adding 1 skin would have but this at 2 uniques which would have been closer. Having the finisher be the last potential unique would have been fine (although this was not done as was advertised)
• The less unique rewards were not awarded by being integrated into the gameplay. Instead we had the mini-chests that were rewarded for particular achievements. To match PVE LS, this would have have to have been some actual new content that was introduced for the season, but there really wasn’t. I probably would have just removed these. In addition, the more non-unique rewards were pushed into the final chest, which lowers its perceived value. Adding the ascended mats was fine as there is a percieved shortage for wvw, but I would have at least done this with a hoard of materials similar to fractured to make it more unique. The tomes are a hard thing to add because they can be useless for people (ascended armor is at least coming out regarding ascended mats).

If I were to have done this differently, this is how I would have actually added at least some LS to the season

• Removed all the mini-chests that were rewarded for certain achievements that gave badges, prints, greens, and blues
• Makes some small changes to have the season feel different from normal wvw. I agree that no gameplay changes should happen but overal feel can:
  • Dolyaks have a chance to drop 5 limited use dolyak finisher.
  • Supervisors have a chance to drop the swiftness guild banners
  • Lords have a rare chance to drop wxp communal bonfire
  • These above are for season only, remove the nightmare stuff. We were told no ‘changes’ to wvw, this makes it feels like PVE’s LS not WVW’s LS.

Having only 1 major meta chest for 7 weeks is a bit too long – PVE had some 4 week long ones have 2 meta rewards. I would have awarded another chest at 10/15 that would not depend on placement. Prose for this chest would be something along the lines of “Keep up the fight – here’s some items to help you continue wvw season”. The 10/15 meta chest would contain ascended mats:

• Hoard of ascended materials
• Maybe some dark matter as well (I’m biased though because I don’t have exos to salvage left and right)
• Maybe some of those dolyak limited finishers

The 15/15 meta chest would contain the unique rewards. More importantly, it would be known beforehand exactly what these are, just like PVE LS. Saying something will be ‘very good’ beforehand without telling exactly what it is, is a recipe for disappointment because they are relying on your judgment, not their own, on whether it is good or not.

• Mini dolyak
• Another unique item, something like: stonemist model similar to Zephyr, infinite seigerazer tonic, infinite random siege piece tonic, pot of oil backpiece skin (hey it won’t look weirder than a book or a toxic spore), home instance ‘siege workshop’ that can forge sup siege for cheaper, … etc etc
• Gold/Silver/Bronze dolyak finisher for 1st/2nd/3rd for each league with unlimited use until next season starts (as Devon had said in a post). For now, I would have used this as the lone way that 1st rewards aren’t better than non-first, and as such I wouldnt’ have stressed this point during the season. GW2 already has problems balancing 15 minute winner versus loser rewards in spvp, 7 weeks of wvw winner versus loser would be very hard particularly with the coverage wars issue being highlighted as it is.
  I would have left this as is – no greens/rares/exotics/ascended directly. There is no history of that in PVE LS, shouldn’t be here. No tomes either.

I think any reward is fine as long as they tell you what it will be. Hiding a bad reward until the end of the season was a very bad idea.

It’s all about being able to make an informed choice.