Guild Wars 2

Deihnyx.6318:

There is a very interesting post from Turk (I believe) who describe their experience about veterans afking for pip rewards. [snip]

The paragraph you quoted was more tied into my first paragraph about the kinds of players who come into WvW solely in pursuit of some shiny that, more often than not, tend to muck things up for those of us who actually enjoy the game mode for its inherent qualities. Players who are there in good faith and make an effort to learn and contribute are fine. The issue that I see is bringing in the latter over the former and encouraging them to stay, but I do not for a moment believe that the new rewards system was ever intended to do that. According to the Guild Chat episode about the update, my impression is that they designed the system to primarily reward current WvW veterans. If it brings in new players willing to work on the rewards, great. We’ll help them get caught up as best we can. If others are so far behind in ranks and pip bonuses that they instantly give up, then the rewards simply aren’t meant for them and the system, in my opinion, is working as intended — rewarding those committed to playing the mode while dissuading those who want quick/easy shinies.

I haven’t personally seen many people AFKing for pips. If I do, it’s usually post-primetime and they’re waiting for their participation to decay before logging out. Nor have I seen much bitterness or antagonism in map or team chat about new players in WvW (aside from a few trolls) or baseless accusations about AFK pip farmers. I’ll be more alert for it from here on, but outside of that first week or two post-patch, I haven’t noticed anything particularly egregious on my server.

Deihnyx.6318:

No matter what, a new player will need to rank if they want the armor. They will need 2k, a rank that will require devotion to the mode. […] But by using timegating tokens and locking them behind quite a lot of hours every week, you are also leaving out players who could be interested by this mode, who could gear up for it (pve players, raiders, would likely have the money) but are seeing a conscient effort from Anet to not give them a fair start.

By the time a newer player (rank 150 or lower, let’s say) reaches rank 2000 (roughly ~1-1.5 years for the sake of this argument, assuming they play consistently), they will have more than enough tickets and other WvW currencies to purchase at least one set of T2 armor and the corresponding T3, even if they’re only able to complete Gold each week (70 tickets per week). However, as we know, the more you play, the easier it will be to progress. I’m currently rank 1037 and have no problem reaching Diamond 6 by Monday or Tuesday, sometimes Wednesday/Thursday if I’m being slow and lazy about it. My average this week was about 4-6 pips per tick, occasionally 9-10 during off-hours when we have Outnumbered. The first two weeks, I was averaging between 3-4 pips per tick and rarely had the Outnumbered bonus. I’m not opposed to improving pip-gain overall, and I fully expect there will be an update to it in the future, but it’s wise of them to leave it for now while they gather data and evaluate the current system.

Deihnyx.6318:

There has to be limitation, and this limitation is ranking. Ranking can be done at your own speed.

Rank alone is not a good way to gate these particular rewards. We know that they wanted the rewards (the prestige rewards especially) to be long-term goals for dedicated players. Even if you tie tickets to rank-gain (as rank-up rewards or something), ranks are far too easy to farm, so rank-gating fails to serve as a limiting factor. It also turns tickets into yet another useless WvW currency (badges are still worthless and PoH semi-worthless). To offset the ease of farming ranks, they would have to set new requirements for rewards that currently have none and dramatically increase the current rank requirements on others, which would lead to the same complaints we have now. Not to mention, it would leave the system wide open for the hit-and-run reward hunters who would grind out ranks/rewards as quickly as possible and then abandon WvW after a few months when they’re done. That’s not healthy for our game mode.

Deihnyx.6318:

That is what PVP does with asking you to do 3 match a day for 60 days, and what fractals wants you to do with pages. Both are doable in an hour a day. And that’s what is reasonable to ask for WvW.

Reasonable based on what? A comparison against two completely different and unrelated game modes? Are you saying that a player who only puts in an hour a night should have a “reasonable” expectation of maxing out his tickets every week? I’d re-read older posts for more clarity on the argument but the thread merge has unfortunately made it extremely cumbersome to do so.

I reiterate, based on the Guild Chat interview, the skirmish track/pip system was balanced with varying degrees of participation in mind, from super casual (Silver/Gold) to super hardcore (Mithril/Diamond). It was not designed for everyone, least of all a new or super casual player, to reach Diamond 6 every week. There’s some room for improvement, but overall, I don’t see anything wrong with the system given the kind of game mode that WvW is. In a game where new content is zerged down and abandoned within 3-4 weeks (like nearly all of LS3’s new zones), followed by months of complaining about the lack of goals/content, I don’t see how a system that directly counters this could be anything less than beneficial.

Deihnyx.6318:

This discussion about why people are playing has been hijacking serious arguments for days now. IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

As dedicated WvWers, it very much is our business why other people choose to play in our preferred game mode because their reason for being there influences how they play, and how they play affects all of us. The last thing WvW needs is players who only want a shiny and don’t give a rip about the mode itself or the other people around them who are trying to play it seriously.

We’ve seen it plenty of times with the tournaments and the Gift of Battle reward track. I’m sure I’m not the only veteran WvWer with stories about kill/objective trading, noobs using precious sups to repair walls for achievements/participation while the keep is under assault, refusing to defend for achievement-related reasons, filling chat with vitriol because someone didn’t give them a turn on the cata for credit, the bandwagoning — this is what happens when shiny-hunters come into WvW. They take up space, they don’t get on TS, they don’t listen to commanders, they don’t cooperate with the rest of the team, and some of them don’t even read chat. WvW needs players like this about as much as it needs another tournament right now (i.e., not at all).

That’s why I’m mostly satisfied with how ANet implemented the reward system, because it immediately discourages this kind of hit-it-and-quit-it reward hunting (a long-standing issue in this game). And let’s be real: anyone who looks at these requirements and says “lol nah, /leavethemists” was never going to stick around in the first place. The people who do stay to work on the rewards and contribute to our communities are the ones we want, and we’re happy to have them.

I have no doubt that they’ll adjust the pip system at some point in the future (hopefully not for 3-6 months at least), but I don’t think they should make it easier or faster — just more consistent (fluctuating between 3 and 10 pips for reasons outside of your immediate control can be understandably irksome).

Deihnyx.6318:

Ranks are fine. Timegated tickets are not. There is no issues with asking high ranks (at least for most people here) but timegated wvw tickets is not fine..

There has to be some limitation on ticket- and reward-acquisition. If not time-gating, it would be something else. We already know from the Guild Chat episode about the patch that they intended most of these rewards to take time to acquire and balanced the system with that in mind. While I wouldn’t mind seeing one or two alternate methods for acquiring tickets (from repeating Diamond or as a weekly drop from the WvW JP chests, for instance), I think it’s healthier for the game mode if tickets remain time-gated. Another option might be adding/increasing rank requirements on all of the rewards, but I expect that wouldn’t go over any better than the current system.

Also, it’s worth noting that they never intended everyone to hit Diamond 6 every single week, but offered that as a goal for the most hardcore players. Casual players are expected to reach Gold, maybe Platinum, which can be done in a few hours over a weekend or just an hour or two an evening during the week (most dedicated WvWers easily exceed this, however). There’s no problem here unless, for some reason, you’re in a hurry.

Deihnyx.6318:

Or if you think WvW is more worth of people time to justify the huge timegates, again prove it.

Whether or not anything is worth one’s time is purely subjective. Legendary armor, for instance, is not worth my time, so I have no intention of investing my time into acquiring it. Some players felt otherwise and spent over two years preparing for the day it was released before they even knew what it looked like. It’s not up to anyone else who plays WvW to convince someone that it’s worth their time to earn the rewards. Decide for yourself and either get to work or move on.

For a mode that runs 24/7/365, time-gating of rewards is essential or it will end up just like the stupid tournaments where shiny hunters flooded in, wreaked havoc for a few weeks, and abandoned it again (until recently). Since ticket-gain is easier to control and adjust than rank-gain, I think they should leave the system as-is for now.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

black desert online? I played it – final fantasy xi was worse

Nope, this was over 10 years ago.

reddie.5861:

go back to times mmo’s where actually mmo’s try lineage 2, smashing countless of mobs and not even getting 0.01% on ur xp bar after a full train of mobs, but then u die and u lose 5% or some1 just kills you for the kitten off it and u lose also 5%.

theres no grind in games anymore..

This guy gets it!

Anyway, I’m done here, as we’re not really contributing anything new or meaningful to the discussion. Good luck in your quest for WvW shinies. It’s only as boring and grindy as you choose to make it. GW2 has always been about the journey, not the destination.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

The amount of wxp gain from getting bags is minimal. Real wxp is gained from karma trains with boosters. Yah im afraid I “get” wvw.

I was referring to player skill, not WXP. Karma trains are just one way to get WXP. I mostly run around solo and +1 in defensive fights as people call them out, and I’m pretty content with the amount of WXP and ranks I gain per session. If running around in blobs spamming autoattack is how you choose to play WvW, fine, but there’s more than one way to play.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Yes anything over 1 year to obtain in an mmo in 2017 is severe, Needing to play wvw 30-40 hours per week to hit ticket cap is severe in 2017. Believe me I know, I used to play ffxi, I know what a real grind looks like.

I don’t know much about FFXI, but I used to play a Korean F2P MMO that forever changed my perspective on the term “grind.” Leveling, drop hunting, skill point farming meant going out and killing the same set of mobs over and over for months (years if you didn’t have the full complement of cash shop items to help you) while competing with other players who also needed to grind those same mobs for their levels/drops/skill points (better pray they don’t just kill you for the spot because, without the appropriate cash shop items, you’ll lose all the progress you just made).

You could also have a pet that would give you an experience gain increase once it reached a certain level, but reaching that level meant more senseless mob farming. You could set up a character to do it AFK but that still meant beating on the same mob 24/7 for almost two full weeks. And you had to feed it every few hours or it would die (not to mention the time it took to go out and harvest enough food for it, on top of your tools wearing out/breaking and having to go back for replacements), and if other players found you, they could kill you/your pet (which meant paying a penalty fee to revive your pet that increased incrementally with each level), and all that just for a minimal exp. boost and the convenience of not having to run around and pick up all of your own loot (another useful pet function).

And that’s just the leveling experience. I won’t get into the nightmare of trying to gear up your character. The point is that, in light of my experiences with that game, if you call the new WvW reward system a “severe grind,” I’m going to politely /laugh in your face.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

im good at wvw, player skill is irrelevant to advancement only time spent increases advancement to rewards this type of mechanic is coded to only this game mode.

If you really believe all this, you don’t understand WvW very well. Bad players = loot bags. Loot bags don’t make much progress.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

rewards ins spvp take 3-6 months
rewards in pve take 3 months to 1 year
rewards in wvw take 5 months – 2 years

Irrelevant.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

wvw – requires no skill and an outrageous grind – having skill gives infinitesimal advantage in terms of advancement to rewards due to the severity of the grind.

Again, if you truly believe this, you don’t understand WvW. If you think it’s an outrageous and severe grind (I firmly disagree), you should find a more enjoyable way to spend your time.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

oh ok well lets take it in terms of spvp then. That requires 10x the skill of wvw. Yet there rewards are on par w/pve rewards. So then why is wvw so special?.

On the contrary, I would say that PvP rewards are on par with the type of game mode that PvP is. If you’re exceptionally good at it, you’ll advance quickly and get your rewards faster and possibly better rewards than casuals. If you’re exceptionally bad, however, you may not advance at all and might find yourself having to grind through terrible match after terrible match to get whatever it is you’re after. Sure, someone who has never PvPed before could jump in tomorrow and work on The Ascension, but he might have to invest more time than someone who has competed in the Pro League. WvW isn’t special, it’s just different.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I think the team did a terrible job implementing the spacing of rewards. You hit 1k which is doable u get all those ranks and then there is a gap of 500-1000 ranks before u get stuff. Seems very short sided to me.

I just reached rank 1k. There are plenty of rewards that I can collect while I earn my ranks for the Mistforged set (the T2, the Hero’s and Mistforged Hero’s weapons, maybe start Warbringer if I feel like it). If all you care about is that 2k chest, then you’re playing WvW for the wrong reasons.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Rank 2K takes 1 1/2 to 2 years. Legend armor takes 3-6 months. So no its not on par with other game modes. If u hit ticket cap each week the backpack takes 4 1/2 months not 2 months.

It doesn’t need to be ‘on par." WvW is not a hit-it-and-quit-it game mode like 99% of PvE. It’s a long-term goal for long-term players of a long-term game mode, and I think the team did a great job at spacing out the rewards and rank requirements.

Like I told you elsewhere, if you’d started back when the WvW team announced they were working on a rewards update, you’d be halfway there by now. You didn’t and now you’re behind. Oh well, lesson learned.

Also, it looks infinitely better than legendary armor, so it should take longer to acquire.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Ok well then by that logic. I have been playing pve for 5 years w/7k hours. I dunno how that should be tracked or rewarded but it should be. I am just starting out in fractals I do not have the legendary fractal back piece.

But since i played in pve for 7k hours I should get that 4-5x as fast as someone who did not play pve, even though we are both starting out in fractals and on the same page. And we run fractals the same amount in the same party together. But yah I should get it at least 40-50 days before the wvwer does. Yah thats now how it works though….

Also the legendary backpiece should be locked behind 2k hours of pve game time. So even if the wvwer obtains enough items to get it, they simply cannot buy the final component to complete it unless they pve for 2k hours.

oh wait…. thats now how any of that works! is ittt???

In a sense, that’s exactly how it works. For instance, back when CoF farming was a thing, a group with hundreds of hours of CoF farming experience would have been far more efficient, and thus acquired greater rewards, than a group just diving in for the first time. I would argue that it’s equally true of fractals and raids — a player or group of players with hundreds of hours of experience in those modes will reap greater rewards more often than a player or group just starting out.

It’s a matter of time investment, just like the WvW rank bonus. Many of us haven’t invested much time in PvE game modes (I, for one, have never set foot inside a raid or a T4 fractal), just as you haven’t invested nearly as much time into WvW as we have. We’re not getting something for nothing — we’ve put in the time to get where we are. You’re starting out late compared to most WvW vets and nothing is preventing you from putting in your time to get where we are.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

But it pretty harmful having rewards which take 2 years to grind out awarded freely to those who happen to play the game mode for years

I addressed this in a comment yesterday. It’s no different than retroactively issuing AP rewards to players who had already reached the appropriate milestones. We’re not getting anything for free. Everyone who ranks above you in WvW has already invested time and effort into the game mode. We’ve known for at least a year now that they were working on a new reward system, and it was pretty obvious that ranks would likely play some role in that system. You had your chance to get ahead and you blew it.

If you’re actually struggling to rank up and make progress on Blackgate, of all servers, you might consider that WvW simply isn’t the game mode for you.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

My point is that its discouraging and puts newer players at a time disadvantage whereas other content does not.

Nothing was stopping you or anyone else from playing WvW these past four years. You chose not to. You’re not at a disadvantage — you just didn’t put in the time beforehand like the rest of us did, so you’re having to make up for it now. That’s your fault, not ours and certainly not ANet’s.

Deihnyx.6318:

And what you guys don’t understand is that they’re not giving you more, they’re just allowing you to do it faster, and skip the brainless grinding.

My point above also applies to this. Those of us with higher ranks and higher pip gain haven’t skipped anything: we’ve done it already. We’ve been playing for years with nothing, and ANet very generously decided that we should be rewarded retroactively for time already spent in WvW, while requiring that same time commitment from newer WvW players to be on equal footing with us vets.

It’s no different than the retroactive reward chests that many received when the new achievement reward system was introduced four years ago. Low-AP players made similar arguments back then that many are making about the WvW pips and rank requirements today (unfair to new/casual players, completing certain achievements is too hard/takes too long/isn’t enjoyable, progress is too slow, it’s daunting/demotivating, etc.), only it’s vastly easier to gain WvW ranks/pips than it is to catch up on AP and AP rewards. All you have to do is play regularly.

That said, I think a good argument can be made for increasing base pip acquisition and improving the distribution of tickets across the skirmish track rather than lumping them all into the final chest of each tier. I’m in favor of increasing the Commitment bonus (and gutting Outnumbered, it’s much too high) and possibly the server placement bonuses. That way, new/casual players will still have to put in time/effort, but progress will feel more consistent.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I’d be fine with them lowering it to anything around r 1000. Either make the first piece cost r 500 and have the t3 chest be 1000, or have them all be r 1000 or have it scale from r 1000 – 1500.

If they are going to leave it at r 2000 I wish Anet would say so. I also think If it stays at r 2000 that it should be legendary.

If a requirement of 1000-1500 is acceptable to you, what’s another 500 ranks? To most of us who play primarily in WvW, 500 ranks is not an issue. I’ve earned around that much in the past year alone, and that’s with month-long breaks where I only logged into the game for dailies.

In your first post, I noticed that your current rank was below 400, yet ranks have been in the game since early 2013 (you can still read the blog post introducing the system here). That’s fewer than 100 ranks per year since the system was released! You also said you’ve played between 360-500 hours of WvW since the game launched, which comes to approximately 2 hours of WvW per week (only ~30 minutes of WvW per day), and that’s being generous. I don’t mean to demean you in any way, but to reinforce my earlier point: if the T3 reward seems out of reach to you given your normal playstyle, it’s because you are not the target audience for this particular reward. It’s that simple.

I agree that the T3 should have been legendary, but I can understand why they chose not to go that route at this time. I do hope they will introduce legendary WvW armor in the future.

Arcaedus.7290:

The problem with this argument though is there are many of us who are dedicated WvWers. We’ve been in the game mode for over a year and actively participate in it for hours every night and are still no where near rank 2000.

[…]

Lowering the rank requirement to 1500 or 1000 would reward this group without really harming the groups from the first list and without making the rewards easily accessible to casual or new players.

I fall into the second category of WvWers that you describe, spending most of my playtime babysitting sentries/camps/towers, recapping, and supporting the main zerg in defense/offense when necessary. I just hit rank 1000 this week, so I’m nowhere near qualifying for the T3 myself, but I’m okay with that because I see it as a long-term goal. If ANet reduced it to 1000 come this Tuesday, I would honestly be deeply disappointed because I would have nothing to look forward to in terms of rewards for my favorite game mode. I want to reach the bar they’ve set for it, not cry until they lower the bar to my level. I understand for some players, like the OP, it seems impossibly daunting, but I feel the same way when I look at the requirements for raids (a game mode for which I have zero interest at the moment) and legendary armor. As Nikkinella said earlier, it’s a matter of perspective.

And again, there are 3 tiers of Triumphant armor that players can obtain. The T2 is functionally the same as T3 and has no rank requirements or limits outside of crafting.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

If they leave it as is, all it proves is that the game is headed in the direction of some of the most grindiest mmo’s out there

Have you ever played a F2P Korean MMO? I did, for 4 years. Compared to that, earning 2000 ranks in WvW is nothing.

People here seem to be forgetting that the 2000 rank requirement is only for the Sublime T3 chest, not the entire T3 set. The first piece is available at rank 1500, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. If the requirement for the Sublime chest is reduced to rank 1000, then each of the previous parts must be reduced in turn, meaning the T3 gloves become available at 500.

Is this seriously what you’re suggesting? Because, in my humble opinion, rank 500 is far too low for this set of rewards. It’s nothing to an average dedicated WvWer (which, I suspect, most of those protesting this requirement are not).

To reiterate my previous comment, McKenna herself said that the T3 was designed as a prestige reward for vets with “crazy high ranks.” Five hundred is decidedly not "crazy high.* I’ve earned almost 100 ranks in the last two weeks with minimal effort, playing as I normally do (some zerging, but mostly roaming/back-capping and sitting in towers/camps). I don’t particularly care how acquiring this reward compares to other game modes, only how it functions in this game mode, and in this game mode, rank 2000 is no big deal if you actually play WvW.

Again, learn to deal with the fact that if you’re not a high-ranked, dedicated WvWer, this reward was not designed with you (much less a new player) in mind. If you want it, work for it.

I don’t think the T3 ascended skins were ever intended to entice new or casual players, but to reward dedicated, high-ranked veterans. During a recent Guild Chat, McKenna herself said that “it was supposed to be the prestige reward for WvW” for players with “crazy high ranks.”

I think some people in this thread just need to accept that these rewards are not meant for them and were never designed with them in mind. For everyone else, the T1 and T2 skins are easily obtainable with minimal long-term investment.

Don’t listen to the whining, ANet! The 2k requirement is reasonable and reflects the commitment of those who stuck with WvW during its bleakest years. Most of us are happy to have a prestigious, long-term goal to aim for finally!