[Suggestion] WvW Seasons

[Ben K.6238]

Summary: Running season-based events has proven successful in other games (e.g. Diablo 2/3, PoE) as a way of bringing players back on a regular basis and slowing decline over the long-term, even when the gameplay hasn't changed. It's something I suspect might help keep WvW alive.

In light of the news that there's still no ETA on world restructuring or the changes that will be needed afterwards, it's looking increasingly unlikely that WvW will have many players left by the time its core issues can be fixed.

This is, obviously, a bit of a problem, and it looks like it could go one of two ways. Either WvW will die, and maybe these changes resurrect it if they're completed (and work), or a band-aid approach could be used to give players some way to find more sustainable enjoyment in a game mode that's not offering much in the meanwhile. I think holding regular seasons could achieve this.

Here's my example of what WvW seasons might look like:

• Seasons to be run every server re-link (two months) using something like the festival system.
• Each season, players can complete achievements to acquire WvW-specific items and associated achievement points.
• The more achievements they complete, the more items they get. These could be skins - weapon/armour/outfit/Warclaw etc., and for the highest tier they might get a piece of WvW legendary gear.
• The achievements could be very similar to those used in the WvW tournament seasons, but with no prizes for server wins (the goal is to encourage participation, not bandwagoning).

Why do I think this is a good idea?

Because the achievement system required already exists, I suspect it would be easy to implement. Once that's done, it requires few resources to spin up each new season. It's possible to include extra changes to make each season different, but this is optional.

For players, it's the regularity and cyclical nature that appears to do the magic in other games where this is used:

• It's easy to schedule around - if you want to take a week off for the new season, you know exactly when it's going to happen months in advance.
• It synchronises player activity so they can enjoy the most active periods. Just like reset night, but it's not so frequent it loses all novelty.
• It reduces burnout. Players stay until they've completed as many achievements as they want to, and take a break until next season.

There are a couple downsides:

• In systems like this, the end of each season tends to be very quiet after most players have achieved their goals. However, it means those players do come back, which is not happening in WvW's current state.
• Aside from the experience of playing reset week, it's pretty much a psychological trick. But hey, it seems to work.

(My apologies if this has already been suggested somewhere... I've done what any unhelpful numpty would do and posted without searching.)

[Skynet.7201]

In the wake of the old Seasons, something should have been implemented as a replacement. I've been saying since the old forums we need something "like" Seasons. A regular "something to do." I'm not going to speak for everyone, but I watched a trickle of people leave starting in 2014 and it's been steadily growing since then. The common thread is boredom, and before anyone says this or that, I'm talking about a bunch of people that I personally know, people that I stay in touch with on Discord as they play other games.

This is the disparity between WvW and the other game modes (despite yesterday's announcement). Yes, we got gliding, a mount, ticket/pip system (grateful for legendary armor in WvW btw), But that doesn't give us anything to continue to look forward to on a REGULAR BASIS.

Good post.

[Ben K.6238]

Indeed... and I realise it's ironic that I'm basically asking for those seasons back, given they actually resulted in more burnout, not less. But it seems to me that the only reason for that was reward distribution.

The main prize was the one for server ranking, with the biggest going to the players on the server that won each pool. Trouble is, each player individually has very limited effect on the outcome of a match. Many tried to maximise what little agency they did have by staying online as long as possible, over a period of multiple weeks.

That's just not sustainable, and it's not surprising it resulted in player burnout. An individual player's reward should ideally have been proportional to their own contribution, without having to rely on other factors they couldn't control except by transferring.

[XenesisII.1540]

I'm playing d3 new season right now so I get it, yeah it might bring some people back, but I had skipped like the last 4 season for d3 because it became the same thing, running for a new portrait, a new look, repetitive.

They also had achievements for wvw tournaments, and then people complained about them, so they had to lower them in the following tournaments. I do think rewards need to be kept centered around personal progress, and not server wide which is what leads to bandwagons to servers to win.I believe they will be running some sort of "season/tournament" once the system is done anyways, when it gets released in 2039.

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

Call it the 'FINAL SEASON' as you die, you get kicked out of WvW to never return. The last person alive or the person with the most kills at the end of the season is declared the winner. WvW is shut down and becomes a little more than a memory.

[Sovereign.1093]

=) itz the only solution.

add wvw season tournaments

[Ayrilana.1396]

I believe someone from Anet stated that tournaments really weren’t healthy for that game mode.

[KeyOrion.9506]

Here's the thing about Seasons....after each Seasons completion, players in the WvW format wanted to be in the top servers that were performing super well. They started to server jump. By the third year....population balance was completely thrown off messily. When I say messily, those servers that had a decent balance of a sizeable force, finally and irrevocably disappeared never to return. Some servers became wvw ghost towns. They never recovered. Some guilds actually left the larger servers to join the smallest servers...but that was for recruiting efforts, because they were not finding any players in the larger servers that would or could join them. Some changed servers down to the lower populated servers for the challenge. But those players after Seasons that were in servers that got face smashed badly....server swapped. If you implement another Seasons of any sort, your going to have the same thing occur, people wanting to swap servers...again. It's already been tested. It was fun at the time, but it helped destroy quite a few communities, and quite a bit of player balance. I whole heartedly REJECT any Seasons approach that would damage any more of the community or the current populations, unless it somehow brought more body's into the mix of all servers.

[Ben K.6238]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I believe someone from Anet stated that tournaments really weren’t healthy for that game mode.

@KeyOrion.9506 said:Here's the thing about Seasons....after each Seasons completion, players in the WvW format wanted to be in the top servers that were performing super well. They started to server jump. By the third year....population balance was completely thrown off messily. When I say messily, those servers that had a decent balance of a sizeable force, finally and irrevocably disappeared never to return. Some servers became wvw ghost towns. They never recovered. Some guilds actually left the larger servers to join the smallest servers...but that was for recruiting efforts, because they were not finding any players in the larger servers that would or could join them. Some changed servers down to the lower populated servers for the challenge. But those players after Seasons that were in servers that got face smashed badly....server swapped. If you implement another Seasons of any sort, your going to have the same thing occur, people wanting to swap servers...again. It's already been tested. It was fun at the time, but it helped destroy quite a few communities, and quite a bit of player balance. I whole heartedly REJECT any Seasons approach that would damage any more of the community or the current populations, unless it somehow brought more body's into the mix of all servers.

This is because they rewarded players for the performance of their servers, when they should have been rewarding players for their own performance. I wholeheartedly agree that when your server's performance is in any way important, seasons will be detrimental as we saw last time.

[Swagger.1459]

@"Ben K.6238"

I’m here to be helpful because...“I've done what any unhelpful numpty would do and posted without searching.”

Enjoy!

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26547/world-restructuring

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26877/world-restructuring-faq

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/45856/world-restructuring-update-1

“Rewards/Tournaments/Leaderboards

If—and that is a big if—we do add/change rewards to be tied more directly to World success in matches, those changes would come later. The plan is to ship the core system and get all the kinks worked out and the teams balanced before we start trying to find new ways to give rewards or do tournaments or anything of that kind.”

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/61986/world-restructuring-update-2

[TheGrimm.5624]

After some discussions this weekend post ANet announcement about LW and what could be used to breathe some additional life into WvW and was thinking something very similar. So +10 from. Add collections for the collecter, AP for Chievo hunters and gear/supply that WvW players could use and all the better.

[KeyOrion.9506]

@TheGrimm.5624 said:After some discussions this weekend post ANet announcement about LW and what could be used to breathe some additional life into WvW and was thinking something very similar. So +10 from. Add collections for the collecter, AP for Chievo hunters and gear/supply that WvW players could use and all the better.

Anet quoted 11 million players strong....you think a FRACTION of that would be in WvW….so is that all European body's? Or do they just do body count on Accounts and say, HEY, guess what...11 million players strong is a piss poor tagline when not even .05% even plays WvW or PvP. We'd see the body's but we DON'T.

[Sovereign.1093]

@Ben K.6238 said:Summary: Running season-based events has proven successful in other games (e.g. Diablo 2/3, PoE) as a way of bringing players back on a regular basis and slowing decline over the long-term, even when the gameplay hasn't changed. It's something I suspect might help keep WvW alive.

In light of the news that there's still no ETA on world restructuring or the changes that will be needed afterwards, it's looking increasingly unlikely that WvW will have many players left by the time its core issues can be fixed.

This is, obviously, a bit of a problem, and it looks like it could go one of two ways. Either WvW will die, and maybe these changes resurrect it if they're completed (and work), or a band-aid approach could be used to give players some way to find more sustainable enjoyment in a game mode that's not offering much in the meanwhile. I think holding regular seasons could achieve this.

Here's my example of what WvW seasons might look like:

• Seasons to be run every server re-link (two months) using something like the festival system.
• Each season, players can complete achievements to acquire WvW-specific items and associated achievement points.
• The more achievements they complete, the more items they get. These could be skins - weapon/armour/outfit/Warclaw etc., and for the highest tier they might get a piece of WvW legendary gear.
• The achievements could be very similar to those used in the WvW tournament seasons, but with no prizes for server wins (the goal is to encourage participation, not bandwagoning).

Why do I think this is a good idea?

Because the achievement system required already exists, I suspect it would be easy to implement. Once that's done, it requires few resources to spin up each new season. It's possible to include extra changes to make each season different, but this is optional.

For players, it's the regularity and cyclical nature that appears to do the magic in other games where this is used:

• It's easy to schedule around - if you want to take a week off for the new season, you know exactly when it's going to happen months in advance.
• It synchronises player activity so they can enjoy the most active periods. Just like reset night, but it's not so frequent it loses all novelty.
• It reduces burnout. Players stay until they've completed as many achievements as they want to, and take a break until next season.

There are a couple downsides:

• In systems like this, the end of each season tends to be very quiet after most players have achieved their goals. However, it means those players do come back, which is not happening in WvW's current state.
• Aside from the experience of playing reset week, it's pretty much a psychological trick. But hey, it seems to work.

(My apologies if this has already been suggested somewhere... I've done what any unhelpful numpty would do and posted without searching.)

it was the sole reason why i wanted to excell in wvw. :/ i bought mny gw2 to give for my irl gamer buds so we can win. needs to return imo.

[Blackarps.1974]

A seasonal thing like other companies do with their games would work for WvW but ONLY after the restructure update goes live for a few cycles to work out most of the kinks. I'd also like to add to your idea that there should be achievements related to just killing people that you can repeat. As a fight guild kind of person, I don't want to run around doing achievements, I just want to play and kill people so I don't want rewards tied to completing shopping lists or forcing me to play in ways that aren't enjoyable. DICE does a good job with medals in Battlefield. You can basically repeat the same "achievement" over and over but you still get XP every 100 kills with a specific weapon. That way if you really like a gun and how it plays out, you aren't punished in any way for it.

[Dawdler.8521]

Well, here is the thing: we are already running weekly matchups and already getting the skirmish achievement points for that.

We dont need what is effectivly seasons upon seasons.

[Ben K.6238]

The cadence of weekly matchups is too short to have that sort of effect - they don't gather much interest because resets are so frequent.

2, 3, 4 months tends to work a lot better as you can set much more substantial goals, and the frequency is slow enough that it still has some novelty.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Ben K.6238 said:The cadence of weekly matchups is too short to have that sort of effect - they don't gather much interest because resets are so frequent.

2, 3, 4 months tends to work a lot better as you can set much more substantial goals, and the frequency is slow enough that it still has some novelty.But again you would also have the weeks in addition to any 2/3/4 month season. Or is this change assuming a removal of the 1450 pips/week for all chests and just drag it out to like 20,000 pips over several months?

[Hoxworth.7318]

Yet anet has said time and time again things like this arent healthy for WvW, WvW's already on its deathbed so calm

[lare.5129]

only my opinion: please NO

[XenesisII.1540]

Yeah we don't need anything else, wvw is fine as it is, please stop suggesting stuff.

[Aeolus.3615]

@XenesisII.1540 said:Yeah we don't need anything else, wvw is fine as it is, please stop suggesting stuff.

Asking for changes before alliances gets deployed..... even the mount was bad adition before it.,.. >_>

[Ben K.6238]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Ben K.6238 said:The cadence of weekly matchups is too short to have that sort of effect - they don't gather much interest because resets are so frequent.

2, 3, 4 months tends to work a lot better as you can set much more substantial goals, and the frequency is slow enough that it still has some novelty.But again you would

also

have the weeks in addition to any 2/3/4 month season. Or is this change assuming a removal of the 1450 pips/week for all chests and just drag it out to like 20,000 pips over several months?

Not much point in removing that, but it's not something I sign in to complete every week. If it included achievement points or some other exclusive thing every week I might think about it. But it wouldn't feel great to miss out on exclusive stuff because you're away or busy that week, whereas it's much easier to make some time (and make more interesting stuff on the dev side) if you've got a longer period to play in.

[Sovereign.1093]

i dont mind all the changes, it has always been in the change of making fights longer, by adding so many ways to be tanky. so its getting harder and harder to make a one bomb that my guys and i are opting to use zerkers.

now all that is missing is why win?