[Feature Development] WvW Rewards

[saerni.2584]

I don't think true afk rewards are that big of an issue (participation does decay pretty rapidly). The more salient issue is that people will only take spawn side camps on a 10 minute rotation and otherwise not fight enemy players or engage with other map content. They will do that because they need participation to maintain the gift of battle reward track (most likely) and don't like to engage with active play because all the rewards are easily farmed by tagging one event every 10 minutes. Low effort and high effort don't really change things for those players because the reward is the same regardless. 

We often assume these aren't "real" wvw players because they want a PvE legendary component and have to get it by farming a reward track. But there's no incentive for these reward oriented players to get better rewards by actively engaging with the content. If they could earn some extra gold while waiting to fill the reward track they might be more active.
 

I don't mind the passive farming for GoB. Shouldn't force someone to PvP who doesn't want to. But I think a casual who doesn't mind PvP but still just wants the GoB should be able to earn more rewards (separate from anything required like GoB) by playing the mode more actively. Right now they really aren't rewarded for trying harder and that contributes to the dead weight problem (counted towards player activity and counted towards map numbers but not accurately considerable as an active team player). 

 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

26 minutes ago, Strider Pj.2193 said:

I would love to see them do that.  
 

The next step for people would be AFKing in T-3 keeps.  
 

But determining ‘AFK’ is what truly creates the problem.  

You mean the siege spammers?

[Strider Pj.2193]

20 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

You mean the siege spammers?

I mean, that would be one type.  But not just them.  
 

Finding some way to differentiate someone afk vs just fanatical (🙂) would be great.  I just don’t think the tech is there to do it effectively. At least not on a cost/benefit ratio.

[joneirikb.7506]

2 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

^ that isn't a bad idea. Freeze all tracks, pips, and participation when at spawn. I think that right there would fix half the afk population.

 

My personal problems with his idea is that:

* It actively punish players for going into safe zones (Could extend that to inside walls with no defend event to avoid keeps btw).
* It is a radical change to how rewards work in the game and the majority of players would probably be as confused as they where during the WR-beta.
* It doesn't really encourage PVP.

Personally I'm more a fan of the suggestion I made before, with tying most of the rewards to attack/defend events as long as there are opposing players. It has the benefits of encouraging pvp/conflict, and works really well with the existing system/structure.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

30 minutes ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

My personal problems with his idea is that:

* It actively punish players for going into safe zones (Could extend that to inside walls with no defend event to avoid keeps btw).
* It is a radical change to how rewards work in the game and the majority of players would probably be as confused as they where during the WR-beta.
* It doesn't really encourage PVP.

Personally I'm more a fan of the suggestion I made before, with tying most of the rewards to attack/defend events as long as there are opposing players. It has the benefits of encouraging pvp/conflict, and works really well with the existing system/structure.

Oh I think an active component is proper. Blocking rewards and participation decay while in spawn would only reinforce it.

[Gorem.8104]

There used to be match rewards right in the form of a bonus chest you could earn for your server which would give 2 chest drops on a wvw rank up, I still had some of those bonus levels even when I had logged back in many months ago now after quitting for six years. Which means that its still in the game, we just can't earn them anymore. Surprised they don't bring them back too with alliances, give more incentive for winning. 

On that note this thread reminds me of a time when I got pm'd by the enemy saying "thanks for the pre drop" so there is that 0.0000000001% chance of happening apparently ;D 

The rewards could indeed do with a touch up, but my guess is their focus right now is just making sure alliances works, hopefully after that is done we actually see something worthwhile added. 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Gorem.8104

[Shiyo.3578]

On 12/24/2021 at 6:26 AM, Cyninja.2954 said:

so, what exactly prevents players from just afking at spawn, occasionally taking a camp or sentry, then leeching off of the entire map?

Nothing, but they literally aren't leeching - every single person on the map with participation is gaining rewards from things they are doing to keep their participation up.

[Dawdler.8521]

On 12/24/2021 at 7:11 PM, Gorem.8104 said:

There used to be match rewards right in the form of a bonus chest you could earn for your server which would give 2 chest drops on a wvw rank up, I still had some of those bonus levels even when I had logged back in many months ago now after quitting for six years. Which means that its still in the game, we just can't earn them anymore. Surprised they don't bring them back too with alliances, give more incentive for winning. 

Thats the wxp bonus drops. Its still there and has nothing to do with winning. They just changed them to being instant instead of an item (ie you only see it as getting multiple ranks and chests). Kegs give 5 ranks I believe.

If you are talking about the skirmish implementation chests that was a one time only.

But if its about giving double rewards just for winning.... ho boy. Might as well just stop playing WvW because no one gonna bother with anything except they're already winning. You are basicly saying then that the 50 man zerg already winning the matchup by a landslide *deserve* more rewards than the 5 pugs trying to play on an outnumbered border.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[Cyninja.2954]

6 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

Nothing, but they literally aren't leeching - every single person on the map with participation is gaining rewards from things they are doing to keep their participation up.

 

There is a vast difference between a player flipping a camp every 10 minutes and semi afking at spawn or a t3 objective versus going out and actively playing the mode. Both in terms of healthy interaction between players as well as actual contribution to the teams effort. Careful in treating this as equal.

 

The current lenience with participation, up to 10 minutes, is NOT a healthy baseline for good interactions. It's a trade-off between required interaction and giving players enough leeway to not have to chase participation constantly. Even so, semi afk camp flipping is a thing.

 

With your suggestion, participation rewarded would need to be reduced by so much that players would need to chase it even more, because the current leniency in overtime would allows for a lot of exploitation. Or there is a  risk of even more "afk flippere", given the increase in reward would not reduce the incentive to do this.

 

TL;DR:

You are treating the minimum required engagement for participation upkeep currently needed as a good baseline for player contribution when in fact it already allows for unhealthy abuse.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Shiyo.3578]

10 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

You are treating the minimum required engagement for participation upkeep currently needed as a good baseline for player contribution when in fact it already allows for unhealthy abuse.

I'm not doing anything. You can afk your way to 100g/hour in Spvp and pve but apparently that's a big nono in wvw.

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

I'm not doing anything. You can afk your way to 100g/hour in Spvp and pve but apparently that's a big nono in wvw.

Spvp scales with players in both directions, aka there is more or less instances with a limited amount of players active in each (though having mass afk players WILL eventually affect the game mode, and not in a positive way).

PvE, mostly other players are not affected directly, but it does give the game a great outer perception having afk players./s

WvW STILL is a fixed player mode where lack of players or to many players both affects each other player on that map (not only that, we don't know how afk players factor into the calculation for player hours played in matchmaking, but if it is pure "hours spent in WvW zones" that is another area where players are affected).

So even IF we were to agree that afking anything in this game should be fine, there would still be a far worse affect to one game mode versus the others. If these suggestions are supposed to benefit this mode, how is yours achieving that?

Try again.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Shiyo.3578]

You, just like the devs, show an extreme bias towards making WvW rewarding due to "But people can afk!!" while people are botting/afking the other 2 game modes WHILE YOU ARE READING THIS POST AND WHILE I"M TYPING IT.

Afking shouldn't be rewarded, allowed, or ok, but if it's ok to AFK in 66% of the game, why is the remaining 33% designed in a way to to ensure no one will afk in it because it's so unrewarding?

Bias, is why.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Shiyo.3578

[Cyninja.2954]

56 minutes ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

You, just like the devs, show an extreme bias towards making WvW rewarding due to "But people can afk!!" while people are botting/afking the other 2 game modes WHILE YOU ARE READING THIS POST AND WHILE I"M TYPING IT.

Afking shouldn't be rewarded, allowed, or ok, but if it's ok to AFK in 66% of the game, why is the remaining 33% designed in a way to to ensure no one will afk in it because it's so unrewarding?

Bias, is why.

 

You didn't read a thing I wrote, did you:

 

Let me summarize:

WvW and the way it's maps as well as it's match making are designed makes afking in this mode far more detrimental to player enjoyment compared to the other modes.

 

If your best argument for your idea is:"I think it should be fine to afk in WvW", while knowing (or not understanding) the constraints of this mode, then that is fine. It just tells everyone else how to value your idea.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Zikory.6871]

59 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

WvW and the way it's maps as well as it's match making are designed makes afking in this mode far more detrimental to player enjoyment compared to the other modes.

 

Alright radical idea. Every hour the WvW maps close and prompt you to go into a new instance in the same state as the old one. Like PvE. PPT transfers to the new map and ppk can remain for mid fight prompts. 

 

(I don't actually want this)

[Cyninja.2954]

8 hours ago, Zikory.6871 said:

Alright radical idea. Every hour the WvW maps close and prompt you to go into a new instance in the same state as the old one. Like PvE. PPT transfers to the new map and ppk can remain for mid fight prompts. 

 

(I don't actually want this)

 

There are many ways to "prevent"/monitor/disincentivize afk or semi afk farming. This leads back to what I said earlier: eventually, the regular players suffer and any system implemented needs to be balanced against this.

 

1 thing to remember: actually afking players are not constantly faced with having to deal with these "checks". They either afk (semi-afk) or not and don't care about the rest. It's the active players which have to put up with the designed system (the participation system is just such a system mind you). In this scenario, everyone getting booted on the hour, afk players would need to check back 1nce per hour, while active players need to redesign their entire game-play approach to the content for example.

 

Another forum favorite idea which comes up regularly is the captcha idea. Could afk players be reduced in say Spvp if captchas would have to be solved every x minutes? Sure, but at what cost to regular players perception/fun?

 

All I pointed out was that simply stating that "afk is not rewarded" while designing the system in a way where afking players get even more rewards, is not a sensible idea. Shiyo.3578 then proceeded to amend the idea by arguing that afk should be allowed, which is nothing more than retroactively adjusting her idea to be more in line with the outcome in behavior which those changes might provoke. That at least amends the inconsistency between the stated idea and the effect the changers would actually have. Now everyone can decide for themselves where they stand on this issue.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Zikory.6871]

8 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

There are many ways to "prevent"/monitor/disincentivize afk or semi afk farming. This leads back to what I said earlier: eventually, the regular players suffer and any system implemented needs to be balanced against this.

 

1 thing to remember: actually afking players are not constantly faced with having to deal with these "checks". 

 

Another forum favorite idea which comes up regularly is the captcha idea. 

 

...

That's a interesting but maybe heavy handed way to deal with it. I don't have a answer but tying rewards to timed participation was always going to be problematic. Afking was arguably a bigger issue before being rewarded for it when the population was much larger. 

Probably a unpopular opinion: Rewards and afking are fine and aren't the real problem. The game mode is stagnate, the only things left to do is farm rewards or kill people farming rewards. 

[Cyninja.2954]

12 minutes ago, Zikory.6871 said:

That's a interesting but maybe heavy handed way to deal with it. I don't have a answer but tying rewards to timed participation was always going to be problematic. Afking was arguably a bigger issue before being rewarded for it when the population was much larger. 

Probably a unpopular opinion: Rewards and afking are fine and aren't the real problem. The game mode is stagnate, the only things left to do is farm rewards or kill people farming rewards. 

 

Which is a possible position to take.

 

Thing to note: farming and afk farming are not the same thing. Being against afk farming does not mean one has to be against long-term rewards or better rewards overall.

 

That said, expect players who actually enjoy this game mode to not cheer and vehemently be in favor of simply "giving up" and accepting that afk farming is in any way acceptable. I'm sure most would rather see sensible and well made changes to reinvogorate the mode.

[joneirikb.7506]

Mostly agree with Cyninja. This is also the reason why no games actually managed to prevent AFK or minimum effort farming, players are hardwired to figure out how and do it, and while every MMO has tried to fight it, no one been able to figure out a good way to do it yet.

There are many ideas that sounds like they would work in theory, when you view the idea in simple terms, but once you start hacking out the details it gets harder and harder. And as Cyninja pointed out, tends to affect the normal players more than the AFK'ers.

An example: 

The simplest and easiest way to do this, is to tie all rewards to killing enemy players. Because killing players has to be the most active way right ?

Which will reinforce the blob meta even more, because most players doesn't want to lose a zerg fight, since that will mean likely losing participation, and most zerg battles tends to go overwhelmingly in one direction. The losing team then either run away and find other smaller groups to fight or just logs off (because no rewards).

Then small scale would likely be swamped by bot groups, trying to swarm enemy roamers (for rewards, since they can't do it solo), making small scale even more troublesome for normal players.

[TheGrimm.5624]

I am going to say put away the farming bit, that would need to be coded for.

That said could still a system here where there are quests you pick up using WvW currencies that have timers to complete. They would be WvW objectives as in kill players, take objectives, kill invaders, defend objectives, capture shrines, bloodlust, yaks runs, ranking objectives and the like. Activities that aid a side in winning. If you succeed within the time you are paid for playing with materials and coin, the harder the objective the more expensive it is to buy the quest but it pays more. This would act as both a sync, since you need the WvW currencies to buy them and a reward for active gameplay. Picturing a time frame of like 24 hrs before they expire. Devs could switch them up based on activity they would like to encourage in WvW. Inspiration here is a mix of Warhammer's kill quests and Destiny2 quest styles. There is a price to pick them up, a way that they could fail due to not completing in time and a payout if you succeed. 

Since the kill quests are the ones that people might try and farm the system, the players only count if they have built back up their worth. Aka there is already a diminishing returns process for how much WxP you get from a kill based on what that player has done since last death. Figure out a decent threshold there to and set that as minimum for the kill to count to prevent people from kill trading. To prevent just KTraining objective quests there could be differeing levels of that one as well requiring higher tier objectives above 0.

Edited December 30, 2021 by TheGrimm.5624
mis key posted before complete :)