Guild Wars 2

As others have said, the likely reason why we haven’t had alternative methods of acquiring Crystalline Ore is because ANet needs a hook to keep people coming back to Dragon’s Stand. (This problem will only become more acute when the next expansion is released.) It’s similar to how people keep coming back to Dry Top because it’s the game’s only source of Quartz (aside from the HI node).

This is a bug. I experienced this today too and missed out on probably about 50 – 60 pips because of it. While I don’t know what causes it, I DID at least find a possible workaround.

The next time this bug happens to you, go sit at spawn and wait until your participation starts to decay, then go out. The next tick should apply Outnumbered to you properly.

Jayne.9251:

My thoughts are if you enter WvW with the “what’s in it for me” attitude, that will kill the game mode faster than anything else. The beauty of WvW is the cooperation, and being part of something bigger than self.

The trouble is that with the way things are currently setup, players ARE forced to choose between either maximizing rewards (mainly through ON farming), or doing their best to help their server. This problem isn’t unique to WvW; it happens all the time in PvE and PvP, but the difference here is that PvE/PvP players can largely segregate themselves from the hardcore farmers. You can do raids/Fractals with experienced peeps you know, and it doesn’t affect the experience of anyone else. PvP farmers who just want to do dailies have PvP Custom Arenas, while the “professionals” now have Tournaments where they can form their own hand-picked crew of 5 people and thus never have to deal with newbies.

But this is not the case for WvW. Everybody’s on the same map, and every person who is there farming (or even doing stuff like roaming, if you want to be nitpicky about it) is not really doing “the best” they could for their server, if we’re going to consider War Score and PPT as the be-all and end-all.

It therefore is in ANet’s best interests to construct a reward system where players DON’T feel like they have to spend hours upon hours grinding in order to get anywhere meaningful within a reasonable amount of time (For Warbringer? Sure, I can imagine it taking a couple months of work since it’s a Legendary. For Ascended gear? That PvE or PvP players could get within days? I don’t think so), because then people will naturally start looking for ways to shortcut the system. You can’t stop people from doing this; it’s human nature. All you can do is remove the impetus that makes people want to do it in the first place.

While I agree that the Outnumbered buff needed to be changed, I don’t think this current implementation really fixes the problem at all. My breakdown below:

1. First, the good news. From my observations, it seems that once you acquire the Outnumbered buff, it persists on you for the duration of the entire tick. This means that you now don’t have to worry about a sudden flood of players rushing onto your map right before the tick and potentially “stealing” your bonus pips. You’ll get them regardless. This is a wonderful change, ANet. Kudos on this part.

2. Unfortunately, this does nothing to address the REAL problem that was being caused by Outnumbered, which was people continuing to stay on ON maps doing small little things that don’t really benefit your server at all, like just running around capping sentries or shrines, or running yaks to Keeps that already have max supply. It’s disheartening when your Commander puts out a call for defenders for a T3 Keep under attack, and only 1 or 2 people show up to the Emergency WP, when you know for a fact that there’s plenty more players around; they’re just off doing their own thing getting ON pips. And I can’t really blame them. When it’s so difficult to get pips (particularly if you’re a new player), why would you go help with a defense that may fail anyway when you’d get far better rewards just continuing to do what you’re doing and raking in double (or even triple) the pips you’d normally make?

This problem is compounded under the new Decay system, because if you’re unable to get any participation credit (entirely possible during protracted sieges where you don’t get immediate kills), you might wind up losing all of your participation anyway.

3. The root cause of this unhealthy WvW behaviour still exists, which is the fact that it takes an unreasonable amount of time to progress through the Skirmish track every week. It’s no wonder that players are being driven to use Outnumbered in unintended ways that wind up affecting how the rest of WvW performs. I STRONGLY urge the devs to read through the suggestions in this thread and look at increasing the baseline pip acquisition rate so that players don’t feel that they are losing out by taking part in “normal” WvW: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Feedback-Pip-Acquisition-merged/first

I generally support this idea. While on the one hand I acknowledge that it would make balancing more tricky to do, I just find it really, REALLY stupid that simply by swapping some traits, my character suddenly doesn’t know how to use a Staff/Torch/Shield anymore.

That said, I think that locking weapons to Elite Specs SHOULD remain for PvP, to keep things on a more level playing field.

Conncept.7638:

Zaxares.5419:

It’s weird that Asura even HAVE hair. They evolved as a subterranean race, and subterranean races generally do not need hair as insulation because a) geothermal heat keeps the underground warm to hot, and b) without inclement weather, there’s no rain or snow to pose a potential threat to body temperature.

What? Moles. Voles. Gophers. Prairie Dogs. Woodchucks. Asura are not lizards or bugs, they are mammals as stated by a developer, and nearly all subterranean mammals have hair.

Asura don’t just live slightly underground like all the mammals you quoted though. They lived DEEEEEEP underground. Like, so far underground that entire generations of Asura never saw the sun. In evolutionary terms, that’s like comparing a fish that lives in a river to one that’s lived in deep underwater caves that’s completely lost its eyes because it had no need for them.

It could still be brought back, lore-wise. Not ALL of the Zephyrite ships were brought down. Zephyrite survivors you can speak to in Dry Top report that they saw several of their ships sailing on even as they fell from the sky, and given that it’s been well over two years since LS2, the surviving Zephyrites could easily have recruited more to their numbers, rebuilt any destroyed ships, and be back to do more trading. (We know that two of the Zephyrite Masters survived, and presumably they went back to rejoin their brethren after we discovered what happened to the Master of Peace. I presume that one of them got elected to become the new Master of Peace.)

I’m currently sitting on 1530, and gain an average of 1 – 2 ranks per day (w/o boosters). I’m not too concerned about gaining levels, as I’ll hit 2000 before I finish earning enough tickets to acquire all of the skins anyway.

I can see where you’re coming from, Strider, but I feel that that approach basically works against the long-term health of WvW. The fact of the matter is that players ARE leaving because they feel what is being asked of them is too much. Those of us that are staying can basically be divided into two camps:

a) the die-hard WvW fans who were here before the update, and frankly would have stayed anyway even if there were no new rewards. (If you believe the “true WvW veterans” who brag about this seemingly every night in map chat.)

b) the completionists/AP hunters/skin collectors, who structure their behaviour around whatever is the most efficient method for achieving their goals, some of which can actually be at odds with what Group A is trying to do. (These are the players who you see repairing walls which are actively being trebbed, or who just continue to farm Outnumbered pips in a quiet corner somewhere despite a Commander begging for more help in another map.)

WvW needs a more healthy level of population, and the only way to get more of it is to entice more casual players into the game mode. Some will go to Group A, and some will go to Group B, but if we just let the status quo continue, the game mode will just continue to slowly bleed players until one day ANet decides the population is just too low to justify any more work being done on it (like SAB) and decides to put it into life support.

As anyone who’s seen any of my other posts on this subject, I agree that the amount of time needed to max out Diamond per week is too excessive, especially for newbie players who have just come in to WvW.

The baseline rate for Pip acquisition should really be pegged to about 9 or 10. This works out to an average of 12 – 13 hours of WvW per week, or about 2.5 hours per day. This is also, I should point out, the equivalent of doing a complete HoT map meta cycle once per day, which I feel is about the maximum of what you can ask the average casual GW2 player to do. (And even so, what you are essentially asking this average player is to STOP doing whatever else it is they normally do each day and come do WvW instead. That’s a BIG ask.)

Remember that a big part of the WvW update was to encourage new blood to come join the game mode. 4 weeks in and I can tell you that it has NOT worked. Participation has dropped off dramatically; queues even on reset night are all but gone. Players have either decided that the time investment required is simply too much and have chosen to go elsewhere, OR players have just decided to bandwagon onto the big WvW servers because of the slow pip acquisition, in which case we’re just back to square one; we have 3 – 6 big servers that everybody tries to squeeze onto, and then dozens of dead servers in which barely any action happens.

It IS annoying, I’ll grant. But that’s why when I can see that the tide of the battle is turning, I turn tail and flee before the enemy can chase me down.

They could take a page from what they did with PvP and add a Grandmaster Mark box to the final Diamond chest. Because WvW is reset weekly instead of every 8 – 12 weeks like PvP, you can only gain a Grandmaster Mark box per Diamond chest once per week. (Further Diamond repeats give more WvW tickets, but not more Grandmaster Marks.)

Thank you for letting us know, McKenna. Hopefully you’ve also taken on our feedback from the various Pips threads and made some other adjustments to the system. I think there is great promise in the new WvW reward structure; it just needs some tweaks to make it more fair and accessible to newbie and casual WvW players. (Like how I think the current PvP Season reward system probably strikes the sweet spot in terms of balancing rewards with time spent. I’d like to see WvW get there faster than the 24 weeks it took us for PvP.)

It’s weird that Asura even HAVE hair. They evolved as a subterranean race, and subterranean races generally do not need hair as insulation because a) geothermal heat keeps the underground warm to hot, and b) without inclement weather, there’s no rain or snow to pose a potential threat to body temperature.

Finishing Diamond chest wouldn’t be an issue, if it weren’t for the fact that not doing so means you are severely handicapping your pace of progression towards your own rewards because the bulk of the rewards are all concentrated towards the end of the track. Currently, if you were earning about 5 or 6 pips per tick, it would take you 21 – 24 hours in WvW every week to earn 175 tickets. Repeat that for TWO weeks so you can buy ONE piece of Exotic equipment. That’s a flat-out insane time-investment, considering that you can more easily acquire that same (or even better, considering you could farm Ascended trinkets and/or backpacks from the LS3 maps in far shorter amounts of time) equipment from other game modes. What is that telling players who only play WvW? That you have to spend close to 5 or even 10 times the amount of time other players do to get your own Exotic/Ascended gear? That isn’t the sort of approach to make WvW feel as rewarding as PvE or even PvP.

Anyway, apparently ANet is doing some tweaks to the Loyalty reward (now called Commitment) with tomorrow’s patch. Let’s see if they make any other changes to it while they’re at it.

It is remarkable, yes. But it’s also causing a lot of unhealthy gameplay styles, such as people constantly hopping from one map to another (and causing a great deal of frustration to players who have been valiantly defending their patch on an outnumbered map), or players who just build up participation and then go hide in a corner somewhere, occasionally venturing out to kill a dolyak or camp guard to keep their participation up. This, in turn, also contributes to the problem of queues, probably more so on big servers, because these servers can’t get Outnumbered anyway due to being so stacked, and so more players are forced to just idle in maps in order to get the necessary pips for their rewards.

Daddicus.6128:

Actually, that’s not true. If they had created a hardened-only farm, it would have had the drop rate about the same as it does now. So, players would only receive hardened scraps occasionally, and nothing the rest of the time.

What they did is fill out the rest of the salvages with other kinds of leather.

So, the solution would be to simply change the ratio, if the farm were the only change made. (Other ideas above are better, however.)

Well, that would depend on how exactly they made the leather farm work, I suppose. I think it would have had better results if, instead, the Centaur boss at the top of the Watchtower was changed to a sort of world boss-style encounter. Each day, you receive an item similar to the Hero chests from the HoT metas from which you can pick a “Large Bundle of X Leather” of the tier you need. The random centaurs you kill going up the slopes still drop their Bloodwarped Hides, but this way, they are no longer the primary source of the leather you require.

@Wanze: I suppose if you vastly increased the supply of Thick Leather, you could then transmute it to Hardened Leather through the Forge, so yes, I guess you’re right.

Same. I reached 300% MF a while ago, and now I’m just accumulating stacks of Exotic Luck in my bank. My suggestion would be to create a Luck Muncher similar to Mawdrey II et. al. It eats up to 10 Exotic Lucks per day and produces random goods of the same type as the other munchers.

DemonSeed.3528:

It’s possibly a sign they weren’t interested in wvw in the first place.

Quite possibly. But remember that the main reason why this update was brought in was an attempt to entice more people into what was otherwise a dying game mode. (You will never hear the devs say this, but the fancy new rewards they brought in were NOT made for the veterans. If they were willing to keep playing the same mode this long, they’d be willing to keep playing it for another 3 years with no changes. No, just like with PvP, the new shinies were made to try to attract new people in.)

If we’re not succeeding at keeping these new players, then very soon we’ll be back to the same old problems of overstacked servers and dead hours when you can’t even muster enough people to defend your garrisons. (Or worse, there’s people around, but nobody answers your call for help because they’re all busy afk farming their Outnumbered pips somewhere in a quiet corner of the map.)

And eventually, even ANet may decide that WvW is no longer viable because they can’t justify spending the time and manpower on a game mode that such a tiny proportion of the player base frequents, and decides to just put it on life support. Don’t think it can’t happen. It happened to SAB, and it may be happening to raids in the future.

Played 5 placement matches today. Feels just like Unranked in terms of MM volatility. Won twice in two massive steamrolls, lost three times in three massive steamrolls. It really does feel like all of the good players always get put on the same team and the other just had no chance to begin with.

Anyway, I’m only really in this to grind for those Ascended shards. :P Over the coming weeks I’ll be mainly keeping an eye out to see if the increased rewards are enough sweetener to entice the masses back into PvP, or whether they still haven’t forgiven ANet for the unwarranted sledgehammer they took to rewards in Season 6.

Deratrius.4035:

Mithril rank here. The pip rank bonus system is absolutely unfair to new players and I am a bit disappointed to see so many fellow WvW players trying to put PvE players down. We’ve been complaining about WvW losing numbers and wondering about how to keep the game mode alive but now everyone is more worried about getting their extra pip than about keeping that fresh blood in WvW. There hasn’t been this much activity since the last tournaments, don’t you guys want to keep this going?

Our goal should be to keep WvW alive, get new players to join and stay, incentivise winning & fights along with server loyalty. You could have this and still reward veterans by having a higher base pip (say 3) and/or more pips for 1st, 2nd & 3rd place (say 5-4-3).

If a new guy in my guild gets 1 pip while I get 6 that’s a crazy difference. With a higher base he would get 6 and I would get 12. I still get twice as many but he can actually progress and if he commits close to 3hours a day he can still get Diamond, it’s a ton of time but it’s doable. Currently he would need like 17 hours which is complete nonsense.

Hell if base pip was higher, I wouldn’t even be mad if the rank bonus pip I get was lowered or even removed entirely. I still get access to exclusive skins by merit of being higher rank alone so it’s not like I get NOTHING.

Glad to see that someone else sees the danger the pip system as it currently stands poses. The figure you quoted of 17 hours is actually exceedingly generous. At an average pip rate of 5 or 6, it would take you 21-24 hours of constant WvW to complete the Diamond tier. If you somehow were only pulling 1 pip, it would take you an astonishing 120 hours per week.

I still think that the best solution is to give out pips based on your participation tier, buffing the amount from loyalty slightly, reducing the amount from Outnumbered, so that the average pips earned per tick is around 9 or 10. That would take you about 12 – 13 hours of WvW each week, or about 1.5 – 2 hours per day. (Which is, not coincidentally, the same amount of time it would take you to do one complete map meta cycle in HoT.) I believe that this is a much fairer starting point.

Now, because veterans with their higher rank bonus will now complete Diamond much faster, we can also look at allowing tickets + Memories to be awarded from Diamond repeats. This allows veterans to be accorded benefits for having spent more time in WvW over the past years, allows them to gain access to the exclusive skins faster (for earlier bragging rights), yet it also doesn’t put the same rewards so far out of reach for newbies to WvW.

I really hope ANet is aware of this and is working on adjustments. I’m already seeing interest start to wane; maps are still queued at daily reset, but nowhere near as large as they used to be, and about 3-4 hours past reset all maps save EBG (which only tends to have a queue in the single digits) no longer have queues. This is a terrible sign because it means that players are once again starting to leave WvW. And it’s only been one week since the release!

The idea about losing all your participation on switching maps is a terrible one. It will only further deincentivize players to hop maps to defend important points. Already, whenever the Commander map hops, about 1/4 of his squad doesn’t follow. If participation is reset upon map switch, I guarantee that will rise to at least 1/2. The end result is that it will only further polarize the player base between “true WvW players” and “filthy reward hunters”.

I do think that the Outnumbered buff needs to be toned down (perhaps to 2 pips), but at the same time, pip progression needs to be increased across the board. My full proposal (which I detailed in my post here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Skirmish-Pips-Distribution-Feedback-Thread/) includes granting pips for participation directly, along with rewarding pips for direct participation (that is, capturing/defending/anything that grants war score directly to your server).

The problem with AFKers will largely dissipate if these players are able to complete their goals (namely, completion of the Diamond tier chest) within a reasonable amount of time so they don’t have to idle in maps taking up precious space. Simple bandaid solutions like preventing people from gaining pips while in the spawn zones won’t work; they’ll simply move out to quiet spots where nobody goes, like the Alpine BL JP. You need to tackle the root cause of the problem.

I think both sides have points here, and I’d argue that the REAL problem is the extremely slow pace of progress for pips as a whole. My post in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Skirmish-Pips-Distribution-Feedback-Thread/

sums up my analysis of the situation and what I feel should be done about it. But in a nutshell, the average rate of pips is far too low. I average about 5 – 6 pips per tick, and even with that, it takes me about 21 – 24 hours in WvW every week to max out Diamond. That’s like half a working week! I can’t even imagine how discouraged new WvW players who are only earning 1 – 3 pips per tick must feel.

And that’s the REAL danger, that these potential new players come in, look at the goal posts, and think it’s not worth their time getting involved when it would take them months, if not years, to get anywhere. They leave, and WvW once again begins to die a slow death from lack of players. Yes, it’s nice that long-term WvW players (of which I could be considered one, as I’m closing in on rank 1500) get cosmetic rewards to showcase their dedication to the game mode, but that’s only half of the equation. WvW desperately needs new blood and high player interest, otherwise the devs themselves will not be able to justify the time and manpower to keep it updated and balanced. We can’t afford to drive potential new players away by making the rewards too tedious to get.

The Blood Wurm actually has two targetable locations. One is his head, and the other is the middle of his neck. The neck can be hit at all times by players with a 1200 range weapon. His head target often disappears and reappears because every time he slams his head down on the rocky platform (to give melee characters a chance to attack), it’s technically a “new” target".

I’ve got 15 of the Rare weapons in my bank. XD I’m still holding onto them just in case ANet brings this item back, but I’m not holding my breath.

Goddess Lexy.7148:

First off, awesome list and ty for doing all this work… twice.

Anywho, I didn’t see it mentioned (maybe it was), but is there maybe a place for tomes of knowledge or perhaps a consume all option that can be added to it? I ask because I have over 4 stacks and I know there are plenty of other people that have lots more!

Thanks for all your time and effort into this stuff ^.^

Game on.

They’ve pretty much said that for Tomes and XP scrolls, “just use them”. So they’re not likely to be added. A Consume All option for Tomes would be nice though! (And a Consume All option for all alcohol too. Seriously, that achievement is just a RSI lawsuit waiting to happen…)

I personally would support it, if only to have parity across items of the Legendary tier. I like standardization.

You’re certain that the point was also under your team’s control at the time?

Just adding my own thread of “Racial skill slots” to this thread. It’s more of a major update, but I figure I’d just add it here so it’s at least preserved for future use when it inevitably disappears into the back pages. XD

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Racial-skill-slots/first#post6615185

I noticed that the match is Stronghold. If the 5 man team went in ONLY selecting Stronghold, and have deliberately selected their team for this game mode, it can be nearly impossible to win against them with random PUGs. The other team will know exactly what each team member is doing, have chosen their builds to match, while you have nowhere near the kind of coordination or preparation they have made.

If it’s any consolation though, such a team probably had to wait for close to 30 mins for their queue to pop.

I’ve only done 100 CM a few times, but from what I saw, the only fight that really gives problems is Siax, because of the DPS check. The other fights can all be slogged through with a balanced DPS/bunker party; it won’t be fast, but if your party is capable of beating 100 on normal, it’s capable of beating CM except for perhaps Siax.

Personally, I felt that the leather farm failed because it didn’t give players the ability to DIRECTLY farm the leather they needed. (Mainly, Hardened leather.) Nobody likes having to go through RNG after a farm to see if you MAYBE get the item you need.

@kamedin: While it is true that the easiest solution is for ANet to simply ignore or even remove racial skills altogether, I feel that that would be a mistake on their part. It’s the same mistake they made when they dumped the old 3rd path from Twilight Arbor; they looked at the numbers and go “Oh, nobody ever runs this path. I guess people must not want to do it so let’s just remove it.” The truth was that nobody ran that path because it was BUGGED. ANet drew the complete incorrect conclusion, and I think it’s the same scenario here. People don’t use the racial skills because they’re inferior to their normal skills, so why waste your “normal slots” on sub-par skills? That doesn’t mean that people like me don’t WANT to use them. I would LOVE to bring racial skills more often, if it wasn’t for the fact that I get attacked by other players for “not pulling my weight”.

At the same time, I also understand why ANet can’t make the racial skills the same or more powerful than normal skills, because it could potentially lead to situations where players start demanding that “all Warriors must be Charr, because Battle Roar is effectively a free FGJ.” The racial skills should be fun extra additions that help the player or their party, but not to such an extent where they outshine normal skills.

So, by including racial skill slots, it effectively gives the best of both worlds. Players can bring their additional “flavour” skills, yet not compromise what a player brings to the table via their main build.

@Major Domo: I think your idea has merit, but as DirtyDan suggested, it likely wouldn’t make a lot of sense lore-wise. There is no evidence, for example, that any non-Norn has ever been granted the ability to assume Spirit form by the Spirits of the Wild. (And any such incidence would probably be a momentous event to the Norn.)

I do like the idea of a “Racial Power” trait tree though, that could improve the power and duration of your racial skills. However, I think that could potentially move racial skills into the “too powerful” area where people start choosing characters based on a combination of their race+class. For game balance reasons, it’s best to continue to leave them as lower-power versions of class skills.

@Carighan: Since the change to the trait and skill trees, you actually already start with all of the racial skills unlocked for free. As it currently stands, racial skills already do what you suggested; they are free skills you can use while gaining levels and unlocking your normal class skills.

One other benefit of racial skill slots is that it potentially opens the door to having class-wide skills make a comeback. Remember the “Antitoxin Spray” from LS1? Such skills could fall under the providence of racial skills, meaning that ANet could introduce new skills with specific uses for different areas, without having to force players to dump their valuable build slots for skills needed in rare circumstances.

I’ve been mulling over this idea for a long time. Racial skills are a wonderful way to introduce flavour between the different races, but because they’re underpowered compared to the standard class skills, most players never touch them. What’s more, Revenant characters can’t even use their racial skills at all!

So, what if each character receives an additional 3 racial skill slots (2 normal, 1 elite) into which you can only put racial skills? This would allow players to bring their usual build while adventuring, while also allowing them to do things like call upon their patron god for blessings, assume their Spirit totem, or summon their golem/warband/sylvan hound to help wreak havoc on their enemies? Racial skill slots would be unlocked at levels 5, 15 and 25 (elite), roughly at around levels when the skills would be useful and while new players are still unlocking new slots on their skill bar, so they can grow into them.

Because the racial skills are generally less powerful than normal skills, I honestly feel that it wouldn’t have much impact on the game’s balance. (Problem skills such as Take Root can be directly adjusted if the need arises.) Players have already proven that they can tackle the game’s toughest content without racial skills; the extra aid might in fact help more players get into things like high-end Fractals and raids, as well as giving ordinary players just that bit more edge in things like HoT maps or LS episodes.

For obvious reasons, they are disabled while in PvP. I am uncertain as to whether they should likewise be disabled in WvW; I don’t think they would have much impact from a balance perspective, but having two 40-man zergs all summoning extra allies before a fight might be too much of a performance hit.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the Mistfire Wolf would go into the racial elite skill slot too.

I already posted this in another thread, but I agree that we should try and keep it all together in one thread so the WvW devs can find it more easily. Here’s my proposal:

This thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/How-long-it-take-for-all-skirmish-reward) shows how long it would take you to earn the maximum 175 tickets per week. Refer to the Google doc link in that post. Based on the figures there, I think a happy medium that all players should be getting as a baseline is +9 or 10 pips per tick. This would take you an average of 12 – 13 hours in WvW per week, which is about 1.5 – 2 hours a day (which is also about the time it would take you to do one complete HoT map meta). Here’s the breakdown of how I think it should be arranged:

Participation
1 pip per tier (maximum 6 pips)

War Score Placement (I decided not to change this because of the potential of “tag-teaming” where two servers conspire to just beat down the third; the #2 server does so because they know they can’t challenge the #1 server and so settles for making sure they don’t come in last. Best not to have there be such a massive difference between rankings.)
Last place – 1 pip
Second place – 2 pips
First place – 3 pips

WvW Rank
Nothing – 1 pip
Bronze – 2 pips
Silver – 3 pips
Gold – 4 pips
Platinum – 5 pips
Mithril – 6 pips
Diamond – 7 pips

Commander Bonus
1 pip (I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea to give zerg commanders more bonuses over havoc squad commanders, hence why I’m keeping the original.)

Loyalty Bonus
2 pips (increased from 1 pip) if you have been on the server for 3 weeks or more, plus an extra 3rd pip if you have earned at least 100 pips the previous week. (This change encourages people to play WvW weekly, but doesn’t put you back at square one if for some reason you’re busy one week and can’t get on to play.)

Outnumbered
2 pips

Under this system, if we’re looking at a total WvW newbie who’s just been obediently following his tag around until he reaches maximum participation, he would have 8 pips (10 if he has the Loyalty bonus). For veteran players, you could potentially be earning 19 pips every tick (20 if you’re a Commander), although most will be lower than that. Finally, with the Outnumbered boost being reduced to +2, it should be enough to make it appealing to stay in such a map, but not such a HUGE difference that people are compelled to swap maps purely to make use of it.

Finally, to help counter afk farmers (that is, people who have built up their participation, then just map hop to a quiet map and hide in a corner somewhere, killing the occasional sentry or dolyak to prevent their participation from dropping. I normally wouldn’t care about this, except that it could potentially clog up maps and prevent other people getting on to play), I propose also giving a small direct pip boost whenever you do something that contributes to your War Score, equal to the amount of War Score that your server gains. (This applies to both captures AND defenses, so while killing a Dolyak only gives 1 pip, defending a fully upgraded SMC grants 30 pips per defense event.)

I hear you. I’m a Gold player myself, and I average about 5 – 6 pips per tick. Even then, it would take me an average of 21 – 24 hours of WvW each week to earn 175 tickets. Repeat that for 2.5 weeks to earn enough to buy ONE Exotic armor/weapon. It’s totally unreasonable, in my opinion. That’s like spending half your work week in WvW! I can’t even begin to imagine how a complete WvW newbie who’s only earning 1 – 2 pips must feel looking at these goal posts.

The acquisition rate for tickets really needs to be increased OR the costs for the items reduced. It’s no wonder that we’re getting Outnumbered farmers who try all kinds of sneaky methods to gain that extra +5 pips, like falsely calling out in Team chat that so-and-so map has Outnumbered, hoping that enough people will hop over so that THEIR map becomes outnumbered. I’m 100% certain that this is not how ANet intended the buff to be used.

I think the baseline pip rate should be something around 9 – 10 for it to feel more reasonable to players, and I think I know how it could be achieved. For starters, change it so you get 1 pip for each tier of participation. (That brings you up to potentially +6.) Next, you get +1/2/3 for your server’s current position in the Skirmish (potentially +9). Then, you get your rank bonus (another +1 to +7). Then, in 3 weeks, we’ll all get our loyalty bonus (which should be bumped up to +2), which for a total WvW newbie who’s just been obediently following his tag around would bring him up to +10. For veteran players, you could potentially be earning +18 pips every tick (19 if you’re a Commander), although most will be lower than that. Finally, the Outnumbered boost is reduced to +2; enough to make it appealing to stay in such a map, but not such a HUGE difference that people are compelled to swap maps purely to make use of it.

Liquid WXP should also be brought back, purchasable for Badges of Honor and/or Proofs of Heroics. They should also be added as an option from the Skirmish chests we get from each tier.

I LOVE Stronghold. I much prefer it over Conquest, in fact, but it seems I’m in the minority among the PvP crowd. I remember when it was first introduced, a lot of players derided it with comments like “If I wanted to kill NPCs, I’d just go PvE.” However, I’m more inclined to think that most disliked it because of the sudden need for different “roles” in the game mode. Unlike in Conquest, where you can more or less build for maximum damage and increase your chances of winning (it is, after all, all about making sure you kill the enemy team faster), that won’t necessarily guarantee victory in Stronghold. You need somebody who is mobile and can run supplies/operate the treb, you need someone who is tanky/has enough Stability to summon Heroes, you need someone who can keep your doorbreakers alive long enough to do their job, and then you need your classic DPS guys to kill enemy NPCs and the enemy team.

This variance means that a LOT of different builds which normally wouldn’t fly in Conquest can actually work in Stronghold, because they fulfill two or more of these roles. And build diversity is something that GW2 PvP as a whole could BADLY use more of.

If there is one change I would make to Stronghold, it would be this: Archers need to be made more dangerous. There’s generally very little reason to summon them unless all the gates are broken and there’s no point in sending doorbreakers anymore with spare supplies you have. I would propose making them slightly tougher and giving them a line-based ground attack similar to what the Mordrem Snipers in HoT do; this attack does high damage to players and guards (but only moderate damage against the Lord and light damage against gates), meaning that the enemy team cannot afford to simply ignore Archers as inconsequential apart from killing guards. In larger numbers (say 4+), Archers can easily down an enemy player (especially one that’s focused purely on offense), and even one or two Archers might turn the tide of a battle between players because their ground attack force them to use dodges and changes the battlefield.

I miss this system too. I was particularly sad when in the latest LS episode, you could only convince Phlunt to leave if you chose only Dignified options. It would have been amazing if normally Phlunt doesn’t get bullied into leaving (with Aggressive options), but he DOES accede if you’re a Barbaric type because he’s heard of your previous conduct OR you’re just that intimidating. XD

Thanks for the update, Lindsey! Sorry to hear about the technical issues that resulted in the lost work, but at least we’re back on track. (And yes, this is why I have gotten into the habit of saving at least two copies of my work! There is always one local copy on my work PC, a backup copy saved to the company network (this stuff is always the latest “official” version, while the one on my PC tends to have the latest “in progress” changes, and one last copy on a removable drive that I save to at the end of every work day both as a backup and in case I need to do any work on it at home.)

Anyway, this will definitely save me a LOT of bank space, even though I think that some of the options (like the dowels and patches) are probably unnecessary since they are usually only crafted or bought when needed. It’s not like you receive them as loot from general adventuring.

Yes, I just noticed this today too. I don’t recall this change being mentioned in the patch notes or elsewhere, so if this isn’t a bug, it’s a really sneaky and unpleasant stealth nerf. >.<

PabbyGaul.9682:

PvE’ers pve forbthe rewards..All about them rewards and it kills them they cant get it.

WvW’ers dont wvw for rewards. All about that satisfaction that comes with a hard fought battle and kittench teamwork.

Just 2 different mentalities. Its one little little thing …one little thing rank gated is not going to break the game mode. I dont post much but I dont want the squeaky wheels to get all the grease. If they dont cave most of the pve’ers will get frustrated and leave due to the “play =shinies” memtality and those that learn to enjoy wvw might learn why wvw’ers have continued to play for 5 yrs on the same maps.

I can see where you’re coming from, but as a veteran of many gaming communities past and present, let me just caution you that a refusal to consider changes that bring in and keep new blood is, in the end, a recipe for disaster. Any gaming community will shrink over time, whether because of real life requirements, players eventually getting bored and leaving, or their attention gets called away by another game.

Little by little, the pool of players gets smaller and smaller, and while you might like the fact that you know everybody on your WvW timezone on a first-name basis, as well as knowing who your enemies are, keep in mind that this is NOT a success by ANet’s standards. From a development perspective, they might not be able to justify the time and man-hours to a game mode that’s only enjoyed by a relatively small percentage of the gaming population. (This is what happened to SAB, and it also seems to be the fate of raids, as since ANet has all but confirmed that they will be making no more Legendary armors, that more or less seals the fate for any more future raid wings.) That could one day happen to WvW too; ANet just decides that it’s no longer worth their time to continue making new content for WvW and puts the mode into life-support.

So be careful what you wish for, and perhaps consider some measures to make it easier for more casual WvW players to earn their rewards without needing to spend 2 – 3 hours in WvW each day, or resorting to really shady farming tactics. Observe what happened with PvP Seasons, for instance. When Season 5 came out, it was an instant hit thanks to the new skins and the relative ease with which they could be obtained. Then ANet slammed the brakes on for Season 6 and it was a total disaster. Participation was the lowest it had ever been for a Season, and matches were all over the place thanks to matchmaking struggling to find enough people of suitable skill levels to match each other. Now ANet’s trying to walk back the changes a little for Season 7. We’ll see this time if the masses decide if they’ve done enough to warrant a return, but it was a sobering lesson that I hope ANet took to heart.

c) Adjust down the amount of currencies required for the new rewards so that a week’s worth of play, even if you don’t manage to successfully complete the entire Skirmish track, is still enough to earn you one or two pieces of Exotic gear. (Full completion should earn you 3 – 4 pieces.) Compare this with dungeons in PvE (or even via reward tracks), where you can earn an Exotic piece in about 2 days worth of “work”. Players are ruthlessly efficient when it comes to deciding how they will spend their time in a game; if you want to keep attention in this mode, you will need to ensure that players believe they are not “wasting their time” that could be spent elsewhere.

Pros: This tackles the same issue as B does, but from a different angle.

Cons: This carries more of the same risks that B does, but at a much higher level. I do not favour this solution as much as I do B, but done carefully, it can potentially help which is why I’ve included it here.

d) Do nothing. This operates under the assumption that if queues do not improve, or if players see just how much work they need to do to get their new shinies, players will get fed up and leave, which ironically improves the queue situation.

Pros: No work needs to be done on ANet’s part.

Cons: I feel that taking no action basically works against the whole reason why this update was made in the first place. It annoys long-time players of WvW, and at the same time, it drives off the new blood which WvW desperately needs.

I personally favour Solution B for this whole issue, with perhaps small influences from A and C. There is so much potential in this update, and I honestly do feel that with just a few tweaks here and there, this could be the shot in the arm that WvW needs to remain a fun and engaging game mode for years to come.

The way I look at it, there are actually two main issues here:

1. AFK farmers preventing other players from logging on to play WvW (and by this, I mean both players who are either sitting in base waiting for their participation to expire before logging off, or players who are just hiding around somewhere on the map, darting out to capture a Sentry or kill a Dolyak to keep their participation up, and then darting off to hide again without giving any meaningful contribution to their server)

2. The high ticket+Memories cost of the new rewards, which is the root cause of what is driving these players to do AFK farming. Sure, I get that these skins are meant to be cosmetic rewards for long-time, dedicated WvW players, but the fact of the matter is that other players want them, and if having to spoil the playtime of lots of other players is the fastest way to get them, then by the Six, they’ll do it.

There’s a number of different ways I feel this situation could be addressed, so here’s my thoughts on them:

a) Re-split the servers.

Pros: This will instantly create many more match-ups and thus eliminate queues.

Cons: This could also be a return to the “bad old days” where server imbalances means that one server basically just runs roughshod over its rivals, who can’t even muster enough strength to mount a proper defense, or even cap objectives. I saw this happen a lot on my server, Tarnished Coast. For a long time, we were called Tier 1.5, because we didn’t have the numbers to compete properly with the Tier 1 servers, but we were far too populated for Tier 2 servers, who we trounced handily whenever we got matched up with them.

b) Adjust the speed/ratio at which Skirmish rewards are given out, including a “cash out” option which basically gives you all the remaining pips you would have earned had you stayed for another 10 minutes.

Pros: Since WvW is a game mode that relies on having a moderate level of population at all times, ANet needs to consider giving it high “throughput”. Think of it like a busy restaurant at mealtimes. If the Skirmish rewards remain capped per week, then it benefits the mode as a whole to get “customers” full and out the door so that they can make room for new customers. The faster people are “done” and leave, the less impact they will have on queues.

Alternatively, another possible solution is to extend the time limit between skirmish resets (say, to four weeks), and increase the amount of tickets + Memories given out by a factor of 5. (I would have used 10, but I’m guessing ANet would deem that to be too generous.) Furthermore, repeats of the Diamond tier continue to give tickets + Memories. This eases the “time limit panic” that’s compelling players to surge into WvW before the week resets, and allows people to hop into WvW over the course of the month, resulting in a more balanced customer throughput over time. At the same time, truly dedicated fans of WvW who make it their primary gamemode can accrue more currencies over time and get their prestige items sooner.

Cons: In the long-term, this might affect the mode’s viability as players get their rewards and leave. But considering that as it stands, you would need to play WvW for an average of 1.5 – 2 hours every day for TWO YEARS to get all the rewards, I think the bigger danger is new players getting disheartened at how far away the goalposts are and giving up. Remember the collapse in player interest in PvP Season 6 and heed that lesson well, ANet!

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gift_of_Heroes

So I noticed that the Battle Historian seems to have been removed altogether. Does that mean that there is now no way to obtain the item above? I was hoping to use them along with the base Hero weapons to upgrade them to the Exotic variants.

Occasionally you’ll get back armor pieces that are worth a fair bit. (Mostly crafted armor that can sell for 5g+). Basically, it’s gambling by another name. You could also salvage the Exotic armors directly in hopes of getting Ecto + Dark Matter, but not all Exotic armor pieces can be salvaged. (I forget if the Triumphant sets fall into this category.) I occasionally get Exotic armor pieces that can’t be salvaged, but CAN be Forged, and so I like having a few spare Exotic pieces that I got for free to throw into the Forge to make up the last spots.

ANet could always make it so you could purchase those Sentry Turrets from EotM and drop them in the Mist War. With EotM not eligible to earn pips, I predict a massive slump in the population there, so allowing players to buy those consumable items and use them in the main WvW maps might give them just that little bit of incentive to re-visit EotM from time to time.

Thanks for the answer, McKenna. I’ve been holding onto the T1 Exotic armor all this time just in case for this moment. Time to MF gamble!

ShamRain.4168:

Magic find doesn’t affect gathering. You should use some kind of gathering boost.

^ This. Always have your Guild’s Gathering bonus on when heading to the LS3 maps. You might want to consider a Gathering booster and banner too if you really, really need those in a hurry. After many hours farming the new map trophies across all the new maps, I can confirm that it’s a subtle but noticeable boost.

Most of the weapons were corrected, but I believe one that has not is Dreamer III, which requires items that only drop from the Temple CAPTURES, not defenses.

Heh, yeah, that was my second suggestion (which I omitted here because it didn’t seem to be what the OP was asking for).

Like you two, I think a better (though more complicated) solution is to update the gathering tools so that every unlimited tool comes with an upgrade slot, into which you can put a crafted essence that determines what bonus reward you get when using the tool. (The Watchwork Pick and Unbound tools already come with essences pre-inserted.) Bonus rewards could include rare crafting materials (determined by the tier of the node you are harvesting), festive materials (snowflakes, Halloween mats), and map currencies. This method means that you can use whatever skin you’d like for your harvesting tools (indeed, there could even be a wardrobe specifically for tools) and still get the bonus reward of your choice.