[Feature Development] WvW Rewards

[saerni.2584]

Right now we have:

1. Rewards from gaining WvW levels

2. Rewards from killing NPCs

3. Rewards from killing players

4. Gathering nodes 

5. Reward Tracks

6. Matchup Reward Track (pips)

 

One big issue is that other than some nominal value from 1-4, most of the monetary value comes from 5-6. Often, that is simply due to the cost of Memories of Battle. And because the Reward Tracks vary quite significantly in monetary value there aren't actually that many good options overall. 
 

If I had to summarize the rewards issue I'd break it down as 1) there aren't enough monetary rewards built into spending time in the game mode, and 2) the rewards are fairly passive, ie the most valuable rewards are not significantly tied to active gameplay.

 

What we need:

1. Skirmish Rewards (winning a skirmish)

2. Matchup Rewards (winning a matchup)

3. Active battle rewards

 

The first two are self explanatory. The third means that there is are multiple bars that fill up with more activity (kills) for each side around objectives. Lower rank objectives get fewer bars while higher rank objectives get more bars. And larger objectives take more kills to "fill the bar." The bars reset every 10 minutes for everyone and reward active participants around the objective with some kind of monetary reward. 
 

This would mean you don't get the reward passively, there needs to be an active fight and you are rewarded after there are a minimum number of kills. This means heavy fights between groups in keeps, for example, reward both sides for actively engaging with one another.

Thoughts? Issues?

 

[Infusion.7149]

Varietal Seeds to the gathering nodes especially if it's a T3.

Daily capped Emblems to clovers to reward active play.

I don't think skirmish rewards are a good thing to add.

 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

1. Rewards from gaining WvW levels

These are useless, you don't level up often enough for the rewards to be of any use. Even a max rank player only levelled up 10k times, and not counting the bonus chests it only takes 370 days of doing Auric Basin once a day to reach 10k chests, far less than it takes to reach 10k rank. They're really only useful to players fresh to WvW.

2. Rewards from killing NPCs

Not even worth noting, mostly just WXP, which you can get from playing any game mode. (Well, different versions of XP, but the point remains nonetheless).

3. Rewards from killing players

Bags of loot are actually pretty terrible compared to the effort of defeating a player in small scale. Of course, they're balanced around large scale where players drop like flies, but in small scale and especially 1v1, its loot the equivalent of a mob drop in PvE.

4. Gathering nodes 

A joke at best, provides 1/100th of 5mins of gathering in PvE. They need to give out about 10x the items they currently do to be useful in comparison.

5. Reward Tracks

Only a few have monetary gain. They're mostly taken for the special, exclusive items or easily getting items that are hard to get from PvE like the Aurora/Vision equipment normally only obtainable with the complex meta achivements.

6. Matchup Reward Track (pips)

The bulk of the rewards, of which the majority are stacked at the very end so players who don't have alot of playtime can't easily reach them, if at all. Increasing pips for new players helped, but its still a 40hr work week to get Diamond tier.

 

As you can see, there's alot to improve just in the existing reward systems.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Varietal seeds from T3 nodes along with increased amounts gathered per tier (T1 is as now, T2 is double that, T3 is triple that of T1, so ore nods is essentially a rich ore node)

Daily and weekly trade of emblems for clovers, coins, MoBs, and Skirmish tickets. Don't make me link my own thread again.

Add in material bags, mystic bundles, mystic packets to be purchased with Skirmish tickets. This is so when people buy up what the vendor has they can still exchange the tickets for non account bound items.

I think a reward meter for active play is fine, but the Skirmish track is supposed to be a proxy for that.

If the reward track gained pips were based instead on the activity then that may work.

1 pip for kills 

5 for camps 

10 for towers 

15 for keeps/SMC 

Double pips if you are outnumbered.

People wouldn't be able to 'afk' the rewards. Not sure if it would encourage circle capping, but Zerg v Zerg would generate pips quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Lan Deathrider.5910
Clarity

[coro.3176]

Re: active rewards

• If a 5-player group flips a tower, they are making a huge contribution toward their server's score relative to their size.
• If a 50-player zerg flips a tower, they are actually being pretty wasteful.

The reward system still counts it the same. 1 tower captured

• If a solo roamer wins a 1v5 and gets 5 kills, they've just won a near-impossible victory.
• If a zerg rolls over a group of 5 and gets 5 kills, it probably doesn't even slow them down.

The reward system still counts it the same. 5 kills.

See the problem? 

Edited December 21, 2021 by coro.3176

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

People wouldn't be able to 'afk' the rewards. Not sure if it would encourage circle capping, but Zerg v Zerg would generate pips quickly.

Yes because what we really need for this game mode is only rewarding 50 man stacks. Smaller groups? Pfff they can go PvE or something. This will surely make WvW better.

Can we bring back upgrades costing individual players money too? Rich moneybag scouts can pay for T3 from all the years of getting passive rewards.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

skirmish and matchup rewards sound good but battle rewards could be manipulated.

[coro.3176]

9 minutes ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

skirmish and matchup rewards sound good but battle rewards could be manipulated.

 

Unfortunately, which server wins a skirmish is often a function of who has more players on during that time slot. So a skirmish bonus would just reward players for playing during their server's strong hours and punish them (relatively) for playing during their server's weak hours.

If alliances manages to balance coverage by some miracle, sure.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

9 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Yes because what we really need for this game mode is only rewarding 50 man stacks. Smaller groups? Pfff they can go PvE or something. This will surely make WvW better.

Can we bring back upgrades costing individual players money too? Rich moneybag scouts can pay for T3 from all the years of getting passive rewards.

You can't solo cap things?

[saerni.2584]

8 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

 

Unfortunately, which server wins a skirmish is often a function of who has more players on during that time slot. So a skirmish bonus would just reward players for playing during their server's strong hours and punish them (relatively) for playing during their server's weak hours.

If alliances manages to balance coverage by some miracle, sure.

I think his concern about battle rewards is that they could be manipulated. Basically, the defenders farm enemies who sacrifice themselves to the defenders so the defenders get rewards periodically from the battle system.  I agree that skirmish rewards could be problematic without time zone coverage based matchmaking...so that might be a stumbling block to that kind of reward.
 

I'm less concerned with manipulation because you'd need a larger number of people (there's a minimum number of kills per time period to get rewards) so there's a coordination aspect that is difficult for individual players to manipulate. And large scale manipulation won't be as profitable for the attackers so you basically have a large group giving up their rewards to another side rather than just playing normally. 
 

More likely, and concerning to me, is how a battle rewards system based on kills could promote zerging. But that depends in large part on player scaling (you will find it harder to fill the bars if you outnumber your opponents because the numbers required goes up but the number of players available is smaller). I think we also need to have a separate system in place for promoting roaming based behavior that isn't the larger scale battle system. 

 

For the Battle rewards:

 

Attackers will benefit from attacking and taking well defended objectives because that will trigger more rewards if/when they win. 
 

Defenders will benefit from resisting even superior forces because they will periodically get bonus rewards for getting kills off the opposing force. 

Battles would essentially reward 1) attacking upgraded objectives, 2) protracted sieges, 3) defending objectives.

 

As for a system to promote roaming...I think we'd benefit from asking what kind of roamer gameplay we want to promote. Certainly a roamer could upgrade a camp and farm people coming to the camp under the battle system as a way of earning more rewards. However the ideal of a roamer isn't just in defending small objectives. I don't think we want to reward ganking too much, but roamers do kill people and scout and take down supply yaks.

 

I think it's been suggested before to have some kind of bounty board that marks certain roaming objectives for additional rewards. I think that's fine but I'd pair that with an "Intelligence Table" that lets you see current bounty objectives on the map for enemy forces.   The Table would also provide "bounties" but reward killing players with an active bounty within that territory. I'd also make it possible to sign up as a "field agent" and receive an attack or defend roaming mission periodically. ("Agent, Intelligence reports indicate an enemy operation targeting the supply dolyaks out of Faithleap. Take them out!") ("Agent, we've tracked down an enemy supply caravan, take it out!") ("Agent, enemy troops are operating at elevated levels, show them how a real warrior fights!").

[Stand The Wall.6987]

10 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

 

Unfortunately, which server wins a skirmish is often a function of who has more players on during that time slot. So a skirmish bonus would just reward players for playing during their server's strong hours and punish them (relatively) for playing during their server's weak hours.

If alliances manages to balance coverage by some miracle, sure.

it doesn't matter, people should be rewarded for winning to create incentive to win.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

As long as there are no rewards for losing you'll keep bots further at bay.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

You can't solo cap things?

The loot is already skewed vastly in favor of the zerg even with the passive system but you are essentially saying zerging is the only thing of value, that 5m of a roamers time in WvW is worthless compared to 5m of a zerg.

Thats your "active" score system.

I can cap SM solo if there are no enemies, I'll just be sweating my balls off for 30m+. Luckily I still get rewards every tick for it. How fast can a 50 man do it with the same conditions and move on?

But sure keep deflecting on a kitten idea.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

14 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

The loot is already skewed vastly in favor of the zerg even with the passive system but you are essentially saying zerging is the only thing of value, that 5m of a roamers time in WvW is worthless compared to 5m of a zerg.

Thats your "active" score system.

I can cap SM solo if there are no enemies, I'll just be sweating my balls off for 30m+. Luckily I still get rewards every tick for it. How fast can a 50 man do it with the same conditions and move on?

But sure keep deflecting on a kitten idea.

I question your ability to tag objectives then.

Regardless if that is such a concern for you add in +1 pip for sentries, yaks, and defenses.

[Shroud.2307]

This isn't an idea I've thought through, so feel free to highlight the flaws.

There is a Vendor in Domain of Istan (and similar ones elsewhere) that sells things like Obsidian Shards and material caches ("shipments") in exchange for Volatile Magic and Gold.

What if the Ticket cost of armor/weapons was greatly increased, and Tickets become a much more common reward for doing things not limited by weekly caps.
Lets say you get a couple tickets every tier you progress in your Reward Track, every rank up, every time you capture an objective, every time you kill a player, etc. Just a few every time you do basically anything like Karma.

Increase chances of Heavy Loot Bags dropping from players, remove chance for random items to drop from players.
Remove random items granted for rank up.

Add a Vendor that sells the following:

* Material Shipments; (Cloth, Wood, Leather, Metal, Trophy) in exchange for Tickets
* Emblem of the Avenger/Conquerer conversion to; Gold, Mystic Clovers, Mystic Coins, Ascended crafting materials
* Heavy Loot Bags + Tickets for specific T6 materials (eg. x25 bags + X# of Tickets for x15 Powerful Venom Sac)

This way rewards are much more in control of the player while still requiring that the player is active. If what you need is materials, you can get the exact material you need, but you'll also need to kill players. If you have an excess of something, you can trade it or spend it to get something you don't.

I'm sure there are things I haven't considered with this suggestion, but personally the only thing I would really like to see regarding rewards is for them to be more in our control.
Half the time I wish there was a "dismiss" option so I could literally dumpster my loot because I don't want it. If I could actually choose what I get, I'd be a lot happier. 

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I question your ability to tag objectives then.

Regardless if that is such a concern for you add in +1 pip for sentries, yaks, and defenses.

Because zergs can't tag sentries and yaks or defend structures, right ...

And even if they don't, it wouldn't make up for zergs generating up to like 50 times as much kills and much faster and therefore frequent caps, while putting in less effort than any solo roamer. We aren't talking about a minor imbalance here.

As long rewards are not split between players, increasing direct rewards per kill or cap is a huge slap into the face of small scale players. And since anet loves to hand out participation rewards for anyone and don't want (allied) players to compete for rewards, this is very unlikely to change (even tho it works fine in other games and would be the fairest way to balance "active" rewards in WvW for all playstyles).

Rewards for winning are also problematic. It incentivises stacking because that's simply the best, if not only, way for a player to impact the outcome of a match. Alliances are very unlikely to change that.

 

Edited December 21, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Infusion.7149]

51 minutes ago, Shroud.2307 said:

This isn't an idea I've thought through, so feel free to highlight the flaws.

There is a Vendor in Domain of Istan (and similar ones elsewhere) that sells things like Obsidian Shards and material caches ("shipments") in exchange for Volatile Magic and Gold.

What if the Ticket cost of armor/weapons was greatly increased, and Tickets become a much more common reward for doing things not limited by weekly caps.
Lets say you get a couple tickets every tier you progress in your Reward Track, every rank up, every time you capture an objective, every time you kill a player, etc. Just a few every time you do basically anything like Karma.

Increase chances of Heavy Loot Bags dropping from players, remove chance for random items to drop from players.
Remove random items granted for rank up.

Add a Vendor that sells the following:

* Material Shipments; (Cloth, Wood, Leather, Metal, Trophy) in exchange for Tickets
* Emblem of the Avenger/Conquerer conversion to; Gold, Mystic Clovers, Mystic Coins, Ascended crafting materials
* Heavy Loot Bags + Tickets for specific T6 materials (eg. x25 bags + X# of Tickets for x15 Powerful Venom Sac)

This way rewards are much more in control of the player while still requiring that the player is active. If what you need is materials, you can get the exact material you need, but you'll also need to kill players. If you have an excess of something, you can trade it or spend it to get something you don't.

I'm sure there are things I haven't considered with this suggestion, but personally the only thing I would really like to see regarding rewards is for them to be more in our control.
Half the time I wish there was a "dismiss" option so I could literally dumpster my loot because I don't want it. If I could actually choose what I get, I'd be a lot happier. 

Arenanet should not touch skirmish tickets cap period. If the time to acquire them per week is scaled then that's on them to decide if extra pips are even necessary for all ranks.
If they do they would need to retroactively scale all the tickets people have that are unused as well as any in progress items such as Mistforged weapons. If people would get tickets from killing players/structure captures we'd have many k-train type of affairs.

The reason why skirmish ticket caps are in place is so people don't "farm" for the weekend and just don't play at all whatsoever during the week. It already sort of happens, Thursday and Friday before reset time the matchup is more or less decided so people either do their dailies, run their "fun builds" that are nonmeta, or just don't play WvW at all.

Memories of battle on the other hand, are something that could be looked at. There's a memory of battle gobbler but you'd have to be rather foolish to use it right now. Even when memories of battle were 3 silvers it wasn't an attractive proposition.

The system is already in place to use memories of battle , testimonies of heroics, and badges of honor as currencies. Testimonies of heroics should probably be able to buy any new "meta" runes/sigils in EOD.

There's one thing that should really be considered and that is the time investment to hit a T3 keep/SMC. I've mentioned this in the past that there is no perfect solution to this given coverage and relative inability of the system to determine if it was a fair fight (i.e. even numbers, guild as opposed to random group), but memories of battle if it is defended could be looked into or if you take a T3 keep/SMC.

edit: speaking of memories of battle that reminds me, why are they not in the daily chests for WVW that actually aren't Veteran creature slayer...
* Keep capture
* Tower capture
* Camp capture
* Invasion defender
* Objective defender
* Land claimer (maybe not)
* Guard killer (probably not)
* Dolyak slayer (probably not)
* Monument capture (probably not)
* badge spender (definitely not)
* etc.

Daily could have dolyak defense added as a bonus.
 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

38 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Because zergs can't tag sentries and yaks or defend structures, right ...

And even if they don't, it wouldn't make up for zergs generating up to like 50 times as much kills and much faster and therefore frequent caps, while putting in less effort than any solo roamer. We aren't talking about a minor imbalance here.

As long rewards are not split between players, increasing direct rewards per kill or cap is a huge slap into the face of small scale players. And since anet loves to hand out participation rewards for anyone and don't want (allied) players to compete for rewards, this is very unlikely to change (even tho it works fine in other games and would be the fairest way to balance "active" rewards in WvW for all playstyles).

Rewards for winning are also problematic. It incentivises stacking because that's simply the best, if not only, way for a player to impact the outcome of a match. Alliances are very unlikely to change that.

 

Slap in the face huh? I only roam or small scale with my guild. What I suggested would definitely cap Skirmish track faster than the current system.

Would it be faster in a Zerg? Sure, but all things break down on that scale.

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Slap in the face huh? I only roam or small scale with my guild. What I suggested would definitely cap Skirmish track faster than the current system.

Would it be faster in a Zerg? Sure, but all things break down on that scale.

Who cares about capping the skirmish track other than new to WvW players who want easy legendary armor? Most regular WvW players have no troubles finishing diamond, probably even more than once, even with current pip gain. And the only valuable part of the repeatable chests (and the entire skirmish tracks as a whole tbh for those who are done with their legendary stuff) are memories of battle. Which would drop in price significantly, because zergs could gain so much more of those, leaving long term small scale players likely with even less rewards.

Edited December 21, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

40 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Who cares about capping the skirmish track other than new to WvW players who want easy legendary armor? Most regular WvW players have no troubles finishing diamond, probably even more than once, even with current pip gain. And the only valuable part of the repeatable chests (and the entire skirmish tracks as a whole tbh for those who are done with their legendary stuff) are memories of battle. Which would drop in price significantly, because zergs could gain so much more of those, leaving long term small scale players likely with even less rewards.

I mean, sure those mystic coins are totally useless right? I too cap diamond multiple times a week when I only WvW, but that doesn't mean that it's time/reward ratio is correct. It's not, and even the devs acknowledge it.

And yet again here we are with people pooping on the idea of increasing the rewards, or making the Skirmish track quicker to complete. 

[saerni.2584]

@Lan Deathrider.5910 You raise an interesting topic...to what extent should increased rewards fall into the existing Reward Tracks and Pip Reward Track? 
 

Personally, I feel that the niche skin/currency/et Reward tracks make them hard to use for universal rewards. 
 

So we can either 1) give pips out more frequently or 2) increase the rewards in the current boxes. This is in addition to new forms of rewards that support gameplay (encouraging fights, making skirmishes more competitive, etc).
 

I'd argue that giving out more memories of battle won't help much because the value would go down with increased drop rates. Adding that many more mystic coins would likewise seem unlikely given Anet seems comfortable at the current price point. 
 

If anything is missing from the current reward tracks it would probably be pieces of unidentified gear (ranging up to rares). I think there's room in the current reward pips structure to drop 5-10 gear bags (exotics) per chest, depending on the rank of the pip chest. Any PvE meta is worth way more per hour so it shouldn't be hard to justify.
 

 

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I mean, sure those mystic coins are totally useless right? I too cap diamond multiple times a week when I only WvW, but that doesn't mean that it's time/reward ratio is correct. It's not, and even the devs acknowledge it.

And yet again here we are with people pooping on the idea of increasing the rewards, or making the Skirmish track quicker to complete. 

Repeatable chests don't grant MC. And yes, i will keep pooping on the whole "i want more rewards, gimme, gimme" notion, because of the potential negative impact on WvW gameplay that many suggestions could bring with them, whether you ignore it or not.

 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

23 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Repeatable chests don't grant MC. And yes, i will keep pooping on the whole "i want more rewards, gimme, gimme" notion, because of the potential negative impact on WvW gameplay that many suggestions could bring with them, whether you ignore it or not.

 

Your free to play for the reasons you want. Doesn't change that WvW isn't worth the time investment for the current rewards, and that is something acknowledged by the devs.

 

I think some of you are too afraid of change that you're holding the rest of WvW back from meaningful updates/reworks.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

43 minutes ago, saerni.2584 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 You raise an interesting topic...to what extent should increased rewards fall into the existing Reward Tracks and Pip Reward Track? 
 

Personally, I feel that the niche skin/currency/et Reward tracks make them hard to use for universal rewards. 
 

So we can either 1) give pips out more frequently or 2) increase the rewards in the current boxes. This is in addition to new forms of rewards that support gameplay (encouraging fights, making skirmishes more competitive, etc).
 

I'd argue that giving out more memories of battle won't help much because the value would go down with increased drop rates. Adding that many more mystic coins would likewise seem unlikely given Anet seems comfortable at the current price point. 
 

If anything is missing from the current reward tracks it would probably be pieces of unidentified gear (ranging up to rares). I think there's room in the current reward pips structure to drop 5-10 gear bags (exotics) per chest, depending on the rank of the pip chest. Any PvE meta is worth way more per hour so it shouldn't be hard to justify.
 

 

It's either the rate, the rewards themselves, or some combination.

New reward tracks would be nice.

Better drops from player bags would be nice too.

Trading emblems to a daily/weekly trader for other loot would be nice, and would control the flow of trades for mystic coins or mobs without steeply impacting their value.

Adding an active component to the Skirmish track would encourage active play. The current pip system just encourages hanging out in spawn for five minutes at a time.

[Shroud.2307]

43 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Doesn't change that WvW isn't worth the time investment

For me, this is the issue. Too many people are laser focused on what they gain and refuse to do X, Y, or Z if it isn't profitable (I'm not necessarily talking about you, specifically).

It isn't that I don't want WvW to be more rewarding, it's that I find it lame how many people allow rewards to dictate their fun, and that it's very easy to turn WvW in to PvE if the wrong things are changed.
But I digress, this is just how I feel about player motivation.

__________

You can get (mostly) everything you need in WvW in terms of gear and materials with enough time invested. If someone doesn't have that time to spare, there are faster ways in other areas of the game. The point is that you will meet your goals which ever you choose to do.
If you don't have the time to spare or you're impatient, that doesn't mean other people don't have 24 hours a day to grind, and both parties are equally important to the economy.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Shroud.2307