Guild Wars 2

in it’s current form it’s only about who has more people at a given time on a map and who did more damage to this or that npc/gate. All the rest is unrewarding even though it might be fun.

The often stated, you can do important things as a small group is simply unrewarded by the game. Escorting and protecting a dolyak? Rewards? Nothing. Babysit a tower, build up infrastructure? Just costs coin and leaves you with the feeling that you missed the fight about that camp over there, where you might have gotten some badges, coin, xp and karma.

I was sitting on watch at a tower (Greenbriar at a foreign borderland, right next to our entry point) the other day for like 2 hours. Bought some upgrades, told people when enemies passed. It was fun, but in the end I just spend coin and had some nice talk. And that’s where the game fails to reward me.

So, now my thoughts on how rewards should work. The whole WvW-System is build around points which are given each server after an defined amount of time. And that’s the way player rewards should also work. Players don’t only get rewards right after they did some capping or such, but also after the server gets it’s points for the current cycle. The question is, how much impact did each player have to achieve this points?

Example 1: I cap a supply camp. Now this has two impacts on the world. First, cut off supplies for enemies, second I might have secured supplies for my side. The reward for the cut off supplies is the reward I would get directly. What I don’t get directly is the reward for securing supplies for my side. Because they are only “secured” not used in any way. So the reward after the countdown could be based on how many supplies were taken/used/transported from that camp since I secured it and we held it.

Example 2: We cap a tower/keep/castle and I sit watch afterwards. I build up infrastructure and simply just look out for enemies. The capping can be directly rewarded. That other thing is a bit tricky to reward. Building up things is simple: for every supply I “invest” in keeping that tower I get a reward. And supply should also mean coin in this place. It should be rewarded, that I actually reinforced the thing. Sitting watch alone is difficult, but just being present should count as being active. In the real world every tower had/has it’s people on station. Not just NPC’s, real people, able to communicate. (Bots are not my problem, it’s yours.)

Example 3: Reward-Distribution for capping: There are big problems with supporting roles. I think that for “buffing” chars you are already working on a solution. What I am talking about are the people building up infrastructure for a siege. For a trebuchet there are 100 supplies needed, still only the one firing it gets his share in the reward. But where is my reward if I play a pure runner? I run to the camp get supplies, get back to the battlefield building something, run back, and move on to the next place where supply is needed. Doing this I would actually do even more, I would also secure routes between these two places. Give me some reward for that.

Just my thoughts.

I’ve also talked about this in my guild chat, about how WvW needs some kind of progression/reward-system, like tokens for dungeons, karma for pve, glory and ranks for spvp etc., but I end up being chewed out by oldschool GW1-pvp’ers who say something like;
“Fun is enough for us, we don’t need rewards, why must everything be about rewards? Don’t make this a WoW clone, go play WoW”, which kills all discussion.

What they fail to realize was that GW1 was a niche game, small, little to no content updates, pvp was dead or highly elitist and restricted to long-term players and HoH/AB/GvG were dead or filled with syncers and wintraders. GW1 made a comeback after HoM calculator was released because of the progression it provided, without it would have kept dying.

In other words, “Fun” isn’t enough to keep people motivated, eventually more and more people will leave/quit until there’s a small core of hardliners left that refuse to discuss changes to the game because “we play for fun”.

please no… no ranks, no more collecting badges .

we dont need WvW ruined by people on disability who spend 18 hours a day in the game

Why do people feel the need to grind for kitten?
Fun should be ALL that keeps people motivated. If it’s fun as hell, why is that not motivating enough to play it?

Zeroumus.5402:

please no… no ranks, no more collecting badges .

we dont need WvW ruined by people on disability who spend 18 hours a day in the game

No, we need people who are willing to stick with it. I love WvW but I do agree it needs a reward system. As it stands, more people will quit because WvW is the end game, and it’s nothing but repetitive. The fact that it’s a week long doesn’t help. Unless you’re high in the elo bracket, WvW is simply a stompfest. There needs to be more incentive to go to WvW other than just “there’s nothing else to do and it’s fun.” When servers are losing, they don’t go anymore.

I do agree that there should be rewards for playing a supportive or defensive role, though. And an increase in badges would be awesome. But other than that, I think it’s fun and is really all I play now, regardless of reward.