Reward Structure Changes Mentioned in the Postmortem

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Near the end: Inside ArenaNet: World Restructuring Beta 1—Recap and Next Steps | GuildWars2.com

"We’ll be making some quality-of-life changes to World vs World in the November 9 release. Your feedback is clear: skirmish reward tracks take entirely too long to complete, especially for new players or players who are playing on the third-place team in a match up. To address this, we’ll be increasing the number of skirmish pips earned for match placement from 3/4/5 to 4/5/6. We’ll also be adding a new +1 bonus skirmish pip for players with a WvW rank between 1-149. Existing rank-based pip bonuses will also increase by +1 (so a total of +2 for Bronze, +3 for silver, and so on).

We’ve also been taking a look at components of the skirmish track and participation system that aren’t achieving their intended design goals. In the short term, we will be experimenting with removing incentives from some unintended gameplay, and we’ll be removing the “participation grace time” granted by repairing structures in WvW. We’ll also be removing the outnumbered pip bonus, though the outnumbered stat enhancement will remain."

 

Commentary from me:
So, we all get an extra pip from rank, including 1-149 rank newbies, and another pip on the skirmish track. We lose the Outnumbered pips though.

Absolute baseline (as in only 3 pips/tick) is currently ~40 hours to cap the track. New absolute baseline (5 pips/tick minimum) will be ~24 hours to complete the track.

Meanwhile I'm wondering how they are going to change the skirmish track and when they'll scale commitment based on the previous achieved tier. 
 

[Gibson.4036]

Nice, simple change that will be quite significant for newcomers.

I've never been under Outnumbered for longer than a few ticks anyway.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Gibson.4036

[Dawdler.8521]

Removing outnumbered pips is sad but I suppose the boosted base make up for it.

Participation on repair is weird though since the opposite end of halfheartedly repairing walls isnt mentioned, afking on siege.

[thehipone.6812]

I like the change to outnumbered personally.  +5 pips was ridiculous compared to baseline pip rate and created perverse incentives  to chase outnumbered instead of just worrying about playing.  It is even worse for new players who have a naturally lower pip rate and the outnumbered buff is a bigger relative boost vs. the baseline.   Giving everyone a permanent boost of effectively 20% of the current outnumbered bonus seems like a good start. 

 

I personally like the commitment bonus staying at where it is now.  More tiers will feel compulsory, whether they are or they aren't in actuality.

[Josh Davis.7865]

3 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Removing outnumbered pips is sad but I suppose the boosted base make up for it.

Participation on repair is weird though since the opposite end of halfheartedly repairing walls isnt mentioned, afking on siege.

Siege is on our radar. The right solution for this (diminishing returns) requires some engineering time, which we aren't able to prioritize quite yet.

[Strider Pj.2193]

1 minute ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Siege is on our radar. The right solution for this (diminishing returns) requires some engineering time, which we aren't able to prioritize quite yet.

Nice.  Siege, when used to actually attack a structure probably should continue to give some participation, but firing ‘indefinitely’ would be solved if the engineering side of it is able to be accomplished for DR.

[Infusion.7149]

People are probably going to be up in arms about outnumbered but I feel as though unless you actively hunt for outnumbered maps you will only have ~10% outnumbered. Is the PPK removed if you are outnumbered after these changes?

Instead of just slapping 1 base pip onto things I would have had a weekly vendor for emblems to WVW kegs of exp for low rank players similar to the ones in guildhalls. Higher ranked players should have emblem to mystic clovers to incentivize active play (IMO). In addition, if taking away wall repair and such why keep daily veteran creature slayer? It should be replaced by dolyak defender.

edit: see also https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Special:RunQuery/WvW_skirmish_pip_query?

Edited October 21, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

7 minutes ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Siege is on our radar. The right solution for this (diminishing returns) requires some engineering time, which we aren't able to prioritize quite yet.

Nice. I hope you guys can strike a good balance.

It is particularly annoying when on a heavily outnumbered map to maintain participation while roaming solo. It would be great too if the team could look at the decay rates since you are looking at adjusting the ways that people cheese maintaining active participation.

It's been discussed on the forums that maybe pips ought to come partially from more active gameplay rather than waiting on a timer, but that is also a delicate balance to strike.

[LordHT.8297]

Well, trying to save an outnumber map just got even more frustrating thanks to a couple of outnumber farmers that no one cares about. Good job anet for spending time on it!

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Outnumbered farmers don't usually want the buff publicized for their map though, counter productive for them. Now it's an indicator of were people can go look for fights.

[LordHT.8297]

1 minute ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Outnumbered farmers don't usually want the buff publicized for their map though, counter productive for them. Now it's an indicator of were people can go look for fights.

A indicator of were you can get unfair fights earning nothing extra for that*
The extra outnumber pips are there to encourage players to play on maps that are in need of more players.
It is not clear how anet will encourage players to play on maps that need players and balance the maps populations after this change.

[Luthan.5236]

Pip changes are good - the +1 everywhere. Outnumbered ... not too important. Better to have players split equally on maps and if there aren't enough ... it does not even make sense to have outnumbered bonus pips. Players will either fill up the map quickly (removing outnumbered) or they will stay outnumbered ... not really being able to do a lot.

Don't know about the commitment. Was this even mentioned? This should still stay "+1 if you completed wood tier previous week".

Repair thing ... seems a bit bad to remove participation there.

What I want: Remove the timer completely in the obsidian sanctum. (If this is empty - which it is most of the time - you just lose participation with no real way to reset the timer.)

Certain types of defensive play need to have a way to still keep participation up. (Or at least not lose the timer/tier.)

Maybe there could be an option to get less pips but a bigger timer (grace timer)? That you could toggle while playing defensivey. To avoid abuse limit it and allow resetting to full pips only after the 2nd tick after resetting back to normal. (Like after joining the map ... where the first tick also does not count if the timer is only 1 or 2 minutes for example - until next reward pips.)

Edited October 21, 2021 by Luthan.5236

[Josh Davis.7865]

Posted this elsewhere, wanted to make sure I put it on the forums as well:

 

A quick follow-up here regarding the removal of the outnumbered pip bonus.

 

Looking at the sources of pips, outnumbered is a small percentage (7%) of overall pip gains compared to ranks and placement, despite the fact that outnumbered is a huge bonus (+5). The changes outlined in the blog (+2 baseline pips) are intended to provide more players, more pips, in more scenarios.

 

It's worth keeping in mind that the entire point of World Restructuring is improving population balance across match ups. The ability to benefit from outnumbered exists to the degree that it does currently because population isn't balanced as well as it could be. We're experimenting with this change now because the goal is that world population balance will improve with World Restructuring, meaning that the outnumbered bonus will be even more difficult to benefit from in the future.

 

And, I know this is hard to believe (trust me, I get it), but if we don't see the results we're looking for from this change, we'll make additional adjustments.

 

[Gibson.4036]

Nevermind.

My math was actually totally wrong.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Gibson.4036

[Kelian Ravenwood.4130]

Just want to state the level of communication here (both in the news item and on the forum) is wonderful; thank you for responding to questions in the forum.  It's great to see this level of attention paid to the WvW playmode and the WvW players.
While I loved getting outnumbered pips, they always felt a bit strange as an incentive ("we need help on this map because we are outnumbered, but if you show up to help we lose the bonus, so come help but not too many of you...").  I'm personally not that sad to see them go, particularly if they become a rarity (with a better balance of players across maps).  My hope would be the true incentive for going to a sparsely-populated map is to help secure the map anyway... 😀

[Otter.3841]

Personally, I feel like this is a strange and hurtful change. The point was to increase the speed at which you level your skirmish rewards. Unless I'm misunderstanding the math, we're gaining +3 pips per tick if you meet the requirement but we're losing the Outnumbered pips which is +5. So we're actually losing a net 2 pips per tick. 

 

Now I can't speak for everyone, but in my experience, some of the servers I've played on need that Outnumbered incentive to motivate roamers to help out more when the server is lacking active population. This Outnumbered pip buff has been especially helpful to those I know who work often and have to miss regularly active server times so they have to roam late night when nobody is on.

 

What I believe was designed with good intentions instead poses a threat to those who don't want to run with a zerg on active maps or are online when those zergs aren't running.

 

If the population balance in matchups was fixed to only a 2% difference, that's cool but it doesn't fix the fact that this could harm other people's experience. A balanced match up doesn't mean outnumbered will NEVER occur. What is the harm in it existing if it doesn't occur often but helps when it does?

 

If the overall goal was to increase how fast we get through the skirmish reward track, leave the Outnumbered pips alone. Some people rely on that.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Soul SilverRose.6351

[Widmo.3186]

A person from Staff reading and answering WvW thread. So Hawking was right and we somehow managed to get into alternate universe or what? Im kinda confused.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Greatly dislike losing outnumbered.  Most simply because there is no reason to play in outnumbered maps now, might as well just leave them as is, and stack in maps where you have advantage (as winning means nothing, so why take the risk).  

Also, outnumbered may not actually mean anything at all a lot of times.  If there are 5 allied players in a map, and 10 enemies...that would be outnumbered, correct? The problem is you most likely will not meet those 10 enemies all at once, and can easily roam or run havoc while knowing the risks.   

Thirdly, outnumbered both incentivizes staying in WvW (as yes, that is a huge pip boost) and will naturally balance out the maps populations as the 'buff seekers' come map to map.  Now, as mentioned, there is no reason to do anything but AFK in the map you are winning in.

Which brings me to another point, removal of repair participation is such a bad idea.  Right now there is little to no reason to defend a structure, let alone repair it.  You already have two camps, the 'let it flip and take back for XP' crowd and the 'leave the wall down so we can fight' crowd.  Neither of those mindsets actually fits the mode (one is PvE based the other PvP based); this change certainly doesn't help.  

To put it simply, actively defending, escorting, and repairing should be rewarded, not punished.  A lot of times I will enter WvW and to get my participation back up will escort a yak or repair a wall before going out to do other things.  The problem with yaks are they are beyond bugged, and will often not grant the escort boon near them, so you may not get participation at all (especially if speedy).  

 

 

Edited October 21, 2021 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Gibson.4036]

21 minutes ago, Widmo.3186 said:

A person from Staff reading and answering WvW thread. So Hawking was right and we somehow managed to get into alternate universe or what? Im kinda confused.

Being saucy about it probably isn't the best way to show appreciation for it nor encourage it.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Gibson.4036

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 minute ago, Widmo.3186 said:

A person from Staff reading and answering WvW thread. So Hawking was right and we somehow managed to get into alternate universe or what? Im kinda confused.

 

Xpac coming up with WvW as a big focus of that...so not as groundbreaking as you may think.  Just wait until this time next year 😄

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

These are good changes, but there's a few things that need be addressed still:

- AFKing on siege (as already mentioned), which will discourage siege botting as well.

- Chain Pull is utterly unused. Its perhaps the least used skill in all of WvW, and given that its supposed to be a siege weapon, thats especially bad. Either remove it, change it, or buff it.

- Basic siege needs an overhaul still, almost no one uses it unless its a 2man group or something. It costs far too much supplies for the damage it deals; the cost should be cut to be just over half of superior siege. This would improve overall aggression in WvW, especially from PUGs.

- The armor damage system should be brought back because lack of armor damage means enemies can farm you in your own objectives for hours and any kill you make is insignificant. Bringing back armor damage & removing repair anvils from captured objectives that aren't in your own lands would help mitigate this.

(Its good to have death be cheap defensively, but offensively having cheap deaths is a farming boon.)

- We should really consider looking at the target caps for offensive skills, some of them are way too low. You can't zergbust when your offensive skill target caps have the same number of targets as the enemy's defensive/support skill target caps, because they just cancel each other out. Relying on siege to perform this task is sometimes (not always) successful in objectives, but in open-field players need the power too.
 

There's more stuff that would help the game mode, like waypoints in objectives, since they can be disabled anyway, and parachuting on Emergency Waypoints like Drizzlewood Coast, but I don't want to make the list too long and only wanted to mention the core issues as I see them.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[zealex.9410]

1 hour ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Posted this elsewhere, wanted to make sure I put it on the forums as well:

 

A quick follow-up here regarding the removal of the outnumbered pip bonus.

 

Looking at the sources of pips, outnumbered is a small percentage (7%) of overall pip gains compared to ranks and placement, despite the fact that outnumbered is a huge bonus (+5). The changes outlined in the blog (+2 baseline pips) are intended to provide more players, more pips, in more scenarios.

 

It's worth keeping in mind that the entire point of World Restructuring is improving population balance across match ups. The ability to benefit from outnumbered exists to the degree that it does currently because population isn't balanced as well as it could be. We're experimenting with this change now because the goal is that world population balance will improve with World Restructuring, meaning that the outnumbered bonus will be even more difficult to benefit from in the future.

 

And, I know this is hard to believe (trust me, I get it), but if we don't see the results we're looking for from this change, we'll make additional adjustments.

 

I dont think you were generous enough on the base pips but i can respect your prespective thank you for the communication. Also pls normalise the tickets gained from chest, to compensate for vets add a repeatable chest after diamont or smth idk.

[Neutra.6857]

Just a quick thing, but one of the issues I have had when outnumbered is finding things to do on a map to get participation rewards. All to often I will find myself in decay because I get killed before I can take a camp or kill a player or open a wall. Walking dolyaks does not really do anything for this and often the camps when not on your home map are watched by people looking for easy kill in off hours. I think if you are outnumbered maybe decrease the decay somehow?

[kash.9213]

39 minutes ago, Soul SilverRose.6351 said:

Personally, I feel like this is a strange and hurtful change. The point was to increase the speed at which you level your skirmish rewards. Unless I'm misunderstanding the math, we're gaining +3 pips per tick if you meet the requirement but we're losing the Outnumbered pips which is +5. So we're actually losing a net 2 pips per tick. 

 

Now I can't speak for everyone, but in my experience, some of the servers I've played on need that Outnumbered incentive to motivate roamers to help out more when the server is lacking active population. This Outnumbered pip buff has been especially helpful to those I know who work often and have to miss regularly active server times so they have to roam late night when nobody is on.

 

What I believe was designed with good intentions instead poses a threat to those who don't want to run with a zerg on active maps or are online when those zergs aren't running.

 

If the population balance in matchups was fixed to only a 2% difference, that's cool but it doesn't fix the fact that this could harm other people's experience. A balanced match up doesn't mean outnumbered will NEVER occur. What is the harm in it existing if it doesn't occur often but helps when it does?

 

If the overall goal was to increase how fast we get through the skirmish reward track, leave the Outnumbered pips alone. Some people rely on that.

There shouldn't be stat change buffs from structures and map population anyway so I'd rather lose the stats from Outnumbered and keep the pips. 

[Legionnaire.9478]

I don't agree with the outnumbered pips being removed. It's already incredibly slow to gain pips. While I think the +2 pips overall is a decent change it still doesn't help with how long it takes to get pips and/or also complete tracks. This seems to favor heavily populated servers before alliances are even out, and punish smaller groups and roamers for playing WvW the way they enjoy to.  Which goes against anet's philosophy with GW2. 

 

As someone who really enjoys roaming; it helped to be rewarded a bit more for going into the back areas of an enemy territory to capture camps/sentries, cutting off supplies. Not to mention jumping to a BL that needs players and benefit even if it's only for 15 minutes the increase pips. This intended change also punishes players who aren't able to play during peak time WvW in NA times and EU times.  This also shoehorns players into blobbing instead of doing their own things. It's already incredibly difficult to complete a reward track, max out pip rewards, and rank up by roaming over joining a zerg. 

 

This in my opinion will be less incentive for players to join less populated borderland because there is no "reward" for doing so. You instead are better off sticking to one BL than jumping to help in another BL once outnumbered is removed. The overall way pips are gained needs improvements as it heavily favors blobbing objectives over linking up with smaller groups and/or roaming by yourself. 

 

I also feel like until Alliances are polished and fully released it's not a good idea to punish players on low server populations by taking away their outnumbered pip bonus. I believe if you want to make this change, you need to do it when alliances are live, and you are able to monitor if outnumbered is effective at incentivizing players to play WvW, when "balance" is achieved with alliances.

 

Out of all the game modes, WvW is the slowest, less rewarding, and the most tedious to do. Not to mention the GpH for WvW compared to PvE is awful. I think this will just make new players less likely to play WvW.  

 

 

Edited October 21, 2021 by Legionnaire.9478