Guild Wars 2

Why hasn’t a reward been introduced into WvW matchups? Seems pretty easy to implement, just add a weekly Gold, Silver or Bronze chest for each placement in yoru matches rating, then you can add an additional consolation prize for 2nd and 3rd place finishes that result in either gaining rating or moving up a rank.

Gold Chest would obviously be the best result, Silver and Bronze chests for participation (IE completing a certain number of weekly WvW tasks sort of like dailies to be eligible), then the upranking prize would at least encourage lower ranked servers to try harder. This way, if you finish 2nd or 3rd, you can still get more reward if your performance was good enough to gain rating or rank up.

This way the servers shuffle now days, everyone should have a decent shot at a first place finish, and even if you don’t finish first, you can always boost your reward by trying to finish strong.

There are plenty of cool WvW items you can reward (ie Blueprints, Badges, Chests of Fodder items like the Achievement rewards, perhaps a WXP booster?) I think a lot of people are getting tired of fighting for bragging rights only or just trying to bait fights out for a video highlight reel. This or something like it would seem a good short term incentive to participation.

Simply because atm WvW rewards coverage and number over any kind of skill, thus bigger servers will always win regardless of being unable to win a single open field fight with no ACs involved or outnumbering you 3:1.

Thus a reward for winner would make no sense.

So encourage people to stack even more on overpopulated bandgwagon servers? (slow golf clap) Brilliant idea, you sure you don’t work for Anet already? With gems like that i’d have assumed you were a dev here.

It’s not as simple as that. Who would we reward?

Everyone on the server? That wouldn’t be right, then people who did nothing would be rewarded because the minority worked hard for their server and earned them prizes.

Reward people who had participiated in WvW? How would we determine that? If they made system that would track who were in WvW, that would only mean that players would simply enter and leave WvW to get their weekly. Minimum capture / other objective, theres so many stuff that needs to be done in WvW which are out of the objective event list already, would make this impossible as well.

Make players to claim it from a some sort of Lord or Supervisor in WvW? That would only mean the non-WvWers would queue up for the prize and leave.

It is a nice idea, but it would be really hard to make so it would be a fair rewarding system. Oh and we already have WXP which rewards us already for doing WvW. And if winning had greater meaning that bragging rights, I would fear that even more people would bandwagon to higher pop servers for easy livin’

Having a matchup rewards based on what is your placement on a weekly match up is a bad idea, because the winner is determined mostly by coverage and this would cause even more players transferring to the winning servers and losing servers would lose even more players.

It is already more difficult to get badges and WXP on a badly outmanned server. Now with your suggestion the winning server players would just get more and more. So in future match ups they would have more players, better WXP traits, more siege blueprints. GG.

Paavotar.3971:

It’s not as simple as that. Who would we reward?

junglizm.5843:

Gold Chest would obviously be the best result, Silver and Bronze chests for participation (IE completing a certain number of weekly WvW tasks sort of like dailies to be eligible), then the upranking prize would at least encourage lower ranked servers to try harder.

I meant Silver and Bronze for Second and Third place servers (in the Match, not overall in the ranks). Rudimentary amount of fairly easy to accomplish WvW objectives to prove participation would be the check point for earning the chests (easy to accomplish in a week, not a day). Things like Doly Escorts and Kills, Tower Capture’s, Invader and Defender Kills, Supply Camp and Sentry Captures. I think in sufficient numbers, these are all attainable goals for any server, no matter rank. I would leave things like Stonemist and Keep Captures out, as some matches may create impossible situations.

AndrewSX.3794:

Simply because atm WvW rewards coverage and number over any kind of skill, thus bigger servers will always win regardless of being unable to win a single open field fight with no ACs involved or outnumbering you 3:1.

Thus a reward for winner would make no sense.

If you are going to have a reward for victory, then giving the winner the best spoils is only a logical choice. In the current system, the only servers that don’t stand a reasonable chance of getting a first place (gold reward) chest would be those locked into the very bottom bracket. If you only encourage participation and not competition, then you foster a “karma-train” mentality where people will only come for their weekly and otherwise not care.

I tried to a explore the additional participation angle by suggesting a bonus reward for servers that up their rank or rating. This would also encourage both participation and competition. Simply make the first place finisher ineligible for this reward and I think it would balance out nicely.

Paavotar.3971:

It is a nice idea, but it would be really hard to make so it would be a fair rewarding system. Oh and we already have WXP which rewards us already for doing WvW. And if winning had greater meaning that bragging rights, I would fear that even more people would bandwagon to higher pop servers for easy livin’

I considered this, but currently Bandwagon servers don’t really have 100% easy living. T1 is generally anyone’s game, depending on participation. Anything between Ranks 4 and 22 have roughly the same random chance of ending up in a favorable match up. Ranks 1-3 would only get easy wins when their rating put them in non-rank 1, 2, 3 matches. Ranks 23 and 24 I do not know how to fix, that problem is more fundamental than just a reward system. They would honestly have a hard time getting a first place finish match chest. But with a bonus chest for ranking/rating, I think it could be offset a bit.

When you figure out a way to make a Vizunah Square/Vabbi and Blackgate/Eredon Terrace matches close a few hours before reset then you can start talking about rewards for winning servers.

Swamurabi.7890:

When you figure out a way to make a Vizunah Square/Vabbi and Blackgate/Eredon Terrace matches close a few hours before reset then you can start talking about rewards for winning servers.

I can and I did many months ago. It’s called parametrized score. By adding a modifier to the amount of points you get by capturing and holding each objective, based on the ratio of your current population vs the enemy’s current population (the players that are on the map right now), you can even everything out, so Vabbi holding 1 tower will even out Vizunah holding almost all 4 maps. Vabbi would simply get a lot more points for holding that one tower vs insurmountable odds.

This also fixes coverage, if a server has a big zerg at night, and nobody is playing from the other servers, that server won’t be getting almost any points for holding a map that has no opposition on it.

Say you have 10 towers each giving 10 points if all sides are equal.
Total available points is 100 then.
If one server has 90 people on, and the other has only 10 people on, the ratio would be 1/9

If that big server holds 9 towers, with this ratio it will earn 9 * 10 * 1/9 = 10 points!
The small server will earn also 10 points, for holding the one tower that’s left.

If the small server manages to somehow capture another tower, while having 9x less people, they will make over twice more points than the huge server. And that is fair.

See, evened out. Math can be truly amazing. This should be fairly easy to implement, since all it requires is counting the players (a number that should be already given..) and adding a variable or two to the scoring process.

Yeah, I think adding more rewards to the winning server will only increase transfers away from the lower population servers and cause bigger problems.

We don’t need to find a solution that rewards the winning server more, we really need a solution that brings more people out on the lower population servers and thus makes the whole matchup better.

zerospin.8604:

I can and I did many months ago. It’s called parametrized score

I proposed something similar a few months ago, that would award score based on activity at a particular location. If a keep or tower, doesn’t get any action, it would not reward as many points. Points that are constantly under assault would award more points, both for defense and capture. This would narrow the scoring gap between between servers that have large populations and those who can “dig in” and defend less locations for longer periods of time or conduct guerrilla hits on weakly defended locations . Many such systems have been suggested but Anet hasn’t made any effort or even hinted at changing the scoring system in its current incarnation.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Yeah, I think adding more rewards to the winning server will only increase transfers away from the lower population servers and cause bigger problems.

We don’t need to find a solution that rewards the winning server more, we really need a solution that brings more people out on the lower population servers and thus makes the whole matchup better.

The current reward system only functions to award individual achievement. I believe a balanced performance based award would encourage participation. The system I proposed would still reward everyone, not just the server that wins. You could even have the opportunity to win a consolation reward, to help balance lop-sided match ups.

Example
Server A 1st place, Gold Chest
Server B, 2nd Place, no rate or ranking advancement, Silver Chest
Server C, 3 Place, rank and rating advancement, Bronze Chest, Performance Chest.

Then just tie eligibility to a weekly WvW task list similar to the one that exists for dailies and monthlies with WvW specific goals. You finish the weekly requirement, you get your chest at the end of the match.

Unless you are rank 23 or 24, every server has a pretty decent shot at getting a 1st place finish. The performance chest would help alleviate the bottom tier from getting totally left out. There will always be a 23 and 24 though, but history has proven that over the long term, even that changes.

As someone who has transferred for WvW twice and never transfered to a T1 server, I can tell you, transfers aren’t all bandwagon jumping and glory hounding. Seeking like minded communities and agreeable server politics plays a large part in it, especially for those that put some sort of thought into a move.

All I was aiming for was a more substantial goal for WvW, other than forum warrior fodder.