Guild Wars 2

A few ideas

I’m by no means an expert in idea creation, but I’ve been pondering some of these for a while:

• More loot/rewards/etc based on time spent on a server. This concept is pretty simple: the more weeks/months you stay on a server without a transfer, a slow increase of passive bonuses are given as a reward for staying put (up to some kind of cap after a decently long amount of time). Think of it as a combination of world bonus and achievement permanent stat boosts (magic find, karma gain, etc) almost. The bonus goes up slowly, but is substantial enough that it’s worth staying put for in the long-term. If you move servers, this bonus is either reset or if that seems too unfair, you lose a chunk % of the earned bonus meaning it’ll still take a while to get it back at whatever the cap would be if you had reached it already.

• Adding to that, for every 8 (or maybe 4?) weeks you actively participate in WvW for your server (it could be connected to a weekly/monthly achievement or something so you do have to invest legitimate productive time), you get 1 extra bonus chest per week at the end of the match-up. This would be capped at something reasonable while still requiring a lot of longer term time investment. It would do two things: encourage people to actively dive in and do WvW every week, and further reward them for supporting their server long-term no matter if it’s a good week or a bad week in terms of odds.

• Novelty items for server loyalty. Since they’re already going to be implementing special finishers as rewards for winning a season within a league, why not reward the other end of the spectrum: give loyalty finishers. There could be a couple of them split up at different marks like: 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, and the final being at 1 year being on way to approach it. This could be tied into monthly WvW achievements. If you complete a WvW monthly meta achievement, it counts as 1 month credit of loyalty to your server.

• Loot bags. I’m not sure what the fairest way to handle them are for smaller skirmishes and such. They can take up just as much time as large zerg battles, but drop much less loot. Defeating a player and getting loot is part of the experience, so that shouldn’t be removed of course. I’m fairly certain there’s some kind of diminishing return system already in place when it comes to killing the same person multiple times, but this doesn’t take away from the fact that defeating mass zergs, especially different ones, will result in much more loot bags per hour compared to people who do smaller scale battles. People who spend a lot of time scouting or defending obscure points from getting flipped get the least rewarded per hour, even though their role arguably more valuable than full zergs at times. Maybe a loot-per-hour type tracking system, that also pays attention to if you’re moving your character/typing/etc actively (so people can’t afk to abuse) gives a lot of extra drops to people who are getting a lower drop rate compared to time spent. There’s probably some more reliable concepts out there than this tough.

An issue that comes from creating loyalty incentives

Even if server loyalty is much better rewarded, this leads into an indirect issue: a few servers (notably the T1 ones) are already stacked to the brim. More incentive for staying put is going to keep these servers stacked (most likely) and may even encourage people to jump ship to T1 last-minute just to be there already for the long-term perks. There would need to be some kind of transfer downward incentive, maybe a head start on passive boosts or something entirely else, in connection with other concepts that may or may not be mentioned here. I’m not really sure how to approach it. But something needs to be done to better encourage people to not so easily stack on servers and better focus on just playing WvW for what it’s intended to be.

While from a financial standpoint this may never happen, since transfer fees do help support the game, I would actually recommend them offering free transfers downward and between non top tier servers for a limited period of time in connection with implementing some kind of server loyalty system. This would allow full guilds to move to a lower tier server, for those who may consider it under a more balanced system, without the concern of the high transfer cost that comes with moving a larger group of people.

There’ll probably always be three stacked T1 servers to some degree, but with spreading out the incentive away from being based too heavily on server performance, it might in turn bring a little more balance to all of the servers. It may also get more people interested in trying WvW on less competitive or populated servers too.

The problem

With the direction things are going right now, I think there’s starting to become too many incentives to transfer to a “winning” server in exchange for more perks, outside of the fact that people naturally prefer to win more than lose. Winning servers get a lot more, losing servers get a lot less. When you’re on a server that’s in a losing situation, there’s little inspiration to even participate as that same time is more efficiently spent elsewhere if you want to get rewarded for the effort. I’ve seen people plainly quit during off-hours because they were getting nothing accomplished (and in return getting no loot for their time) no matter how much the few people on the map were trying. And the people who do put in the time anyways, not worrying as much about the reward, in turn are getting less for being “loyal” in supporting their server regardless of circumstances. That seems rather backwards from the standpoint that participation isn’t always rewarded and giving up (going to do other content) is rewarded.

The intended effect of rewards being added based on server performance are to build server loyalty amongst each server community, which in itself is something I’m definitely in support of, but the effect is really the exact opposite. A lot of active WvWers are being offered more incentive to go somewhere where they’re guaranteed more perks for their efforts, rather than staying put and putting in the same effort (or potentially even more), all while getting less reward no matter how much time they put in.

Looking at world bonuses for example, some servers are stuck on the shorter end of the stick and may end up with much less free passive buffs on a weekly basis purely because their server is unable to competitively hold many points during some or potentially even most match-ups. This kind of system punishes servers who are not stacked with a lot of players who can cover multiple timezones. The system should reward servers, or at least the players who put in the time, for trying their best regardless of being on the losing side of things.

Another upcoming perk for servers who have better performance I’ll quote from a recent news post: “At the end of every matchup of WvW players will receive one, two, or three bonus chests depending on their server’s performance.” What this does is again add more incentive to be on a winning server. If you look at the gold league match-up for example featuring T1 + T2 servers, which are the top 6 ranked servers, the bottom 2 are essentially guaranteed to lose every match of all 7 weeks no matter how much the representing players do. And the any player who participates the minimum amount needed for these bonus chests on a T1 server, naturally get extra chests purely because they’re on the server and did the bare minimum, not because they put in more time. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if the losing side has to put in more time per person, while the winning side has good enough coverage that people get more incentive for doing less work.

One more thing worth mentioning is loot bags dropped from player kills. Bigger servers facing off will naturally have larger zerg battles, which in turn means more loot drops purely based on the amount of people you tag, rather than the time you spend in WvW. Small skirmishes can tactically be just as important to helping your server do well, but again there’s less incentive. Winning servers also naturally win these zerg sized battles more often, in turn again making a bigger incentive to move to servers where they can pull off these kinds of numbers of players at various points in the day.

This in turn means those loyal players who don’t transfer for season 1, are in turn indirectly punished by receiving less buffs through their world’s performance, less weekly bonus chests because they can’t win the match-ups, less loot bags vs time spent due to lower populations, and in the end may not even be in the competition for the novelty finisher for placing in the top spot of their respective leagues. Not counting the season itself, most of these perks (including the weekly bonus chests) will still be part of the off-season, making the point still stand. People are rewarded less for remaining loyal to a non-winning server.

With the current system, two people can put in the exact same amount of time every week into doing WvW, but there’s a fairly big difference in how they’re rewarded for that effort depending on role on the map (scout being a good example of a commonly non-rewarding but needed job) or server performance. That difference in time vs. reward is further increased courtesy of season 1.

My apologies for the incoming wall of text! What I would like to discuss here is: incentive for winning as a server vs. how participation and server loyalty are rewarded.

I’m writing this from the perspective of someone who transferred off of a T1 server fairly recently after spending a very long time on one, so I could be with my guildmates who were mostly elsewhere, in turn to do WvW with them rather than with random groups. While I personally am not that reward-driven as a person, as I play more for the fun of the gameplay than the actual reward given, I decided to make this post since I’ve personally experienced two rather different ends of the spectrum of reward vs. time spent in WvW.

The people on my new server try just as hard, regardless of having less hardcore WvW guilds or broad time coverage like a T1 server has, but the amount of progress they make towards anything is notably less as a result, in turn meaning the amount of time they put towards representing the server is naturally rewarded less even if individually they put in just as much time as T1 players. I imagine for some low population servers the situation may be worse in some ways than what I’m already seeing.

Balance of server power (stacked servers) is a different but relevant topic that goes hand-in-hand with being rewarded for time spent. People are definitely aware of the power skew already, so I wont ramble about it here to help keep the topic more focused on the participation incentive and loyalty side of things.

This thread is not intended to complain about how the current system(s) are handled, but instead a way to offer some constructive insight and potentially new ideas on how to better encourage and add incentive based on server loyalty and participation in WvW. This in turn should naturally get more people in WvW having fun. A lot of people do weigh fun based on time spent vs. reward, as seen by players commonly grinding certain content types with each major patch. By making WvW more rewarding regardless of winning or losing circumstances, that in turn makes it a more appealing of a game type for everyone who‘s interested in giving it a try.

The animation still feels a bit off, I kinda have to agree with the golf club analogy. For the reusable mining pick, the animation looked fine as there’s a lot of ways to smash into a rock. The eventual axe animation will likely be easier to do for the same reasoning as the pick; there’s plenty of ways to imply the tree is being chopped at.

The sickle just feels awkward though and it’s a shame they keep recycling other animations through each change to it, rather than having them develop a new movement animation that better matches the flow of how harvesting plants works with the shape of that sickle. There’s a time and place where recycling animations can work out fine, but this is one situation where it’s not working out as well as intended.