Better rewards for challenging content

[Kuya.6495]

GW2 seems to have  a problem that the most challenging content (CMs-Challenge Modes) don't actually give the best rewards. In fact, right now, the most rewarding content is just doing Drizzlewood for hours non stop. I know some people might say that legendary armor is itself amazing rewards, but just note that you don't need to do CMs for legendary armor. As for the new Strike CMs? The rewards are a meme at this point. The sword you can get there doesn't look anywhere near as good as what you can get in the gemstore despite aetherblade CM being, arguably, the hardest instanced content in the game right now. You could also say that people should only do CMs just for the challenge. That's great and all but that only really motivates people to clear the content once. Only a minority of players will do challenging content just for fun. For most people, there needs to be good enough rewards to get them to repeat the content. And you could also say, "why should anet cater to a minority of players?" Anet has been trying to slowly introduce more players to harder content. As you can see with their new strike structure. Anet has been doing a good job of layering mechanics but they need to do better with reward structure. So no, it's not for a minority of players because we know Anet wants to introduce players and get them to do harder content eventually. Anet wants to increase the quantity of players doing harder content. Part of that is not just designing mechanics in a layered way, but also providing good incentives in the form of rewards.

 

Now what kind of rewards should we add? I think there needs to be two types of rewards tied to the content. There needs to be rewards that can be obtained by grinding the content repeatedly in a single day because this incentivizes players who already finished their daily/weekly clears, to do it again with others who haven't done it yet. This reward should have low drop rates. The other reward, should be the guaranteed rewards. Rewards you get from doing the content once a day or weekly.

 

Now for the rare rewards you can farm, i think adding mount skins would be a great idea. Right now, most mount skins are obtained via the gem store so adding it to CM content would be a great incentive for players to engage with the content. Lots of players who might be interested in GW2 due to the mount system are turned away from the game when they hear all the skins are in the gem store and not earned via game content. Not only would i make the mount skins extremely rare drops from CM content (think mount skins that can drop doing hard trials and extreme trials in FFXIV) i would also make them sellable on TP. Letting the skins be sold on TP means people who already got the mount still have incentive to do the content because they can sell the skin they already obtained before. It also means people can convert gems to gold and buy the mount skin off TP which helps with anet's bottom line.  I would also prefer new exclusive skins for the CM content and not simply putting in gemstore skins unless Anet intends to retire the skins from the gemstore. You don't want to create the impression of buy to win by putting the same skin in the CM and the gemstore. 

 

For the guaranteed rewards, i think we should stay away from direct liquid gold rewards like in fractals (this is liable to raise inflation in game and anet has done well to avoid it thus far). I think something like what happens in drizzlewood, rewards via materials, would be better. As an example, i think material shipment boxes would be a good reward to add to hard content. What i mean by that is you can add a chest that lets you choose between wood, metal, cloth, trophy and leather shipment boxes. I would also make it a tiered reward chest. That is a chest of shipments and a large chest of shipments. The normal one gives 5 shipment boxes and the large one gives 10. That is like essentially adding 5g or 10g to challenging content rewards. 

 

Now how would i distribute these rewards? Well Dragon's End meta already has a rare drop so i don't think it needs a mount skin, so i would just add a daily chest of shipments to it so you can get 5 shipment boxes for doing the meta as it's still not rewarding enough considering the effort and time investment you put into it. Although maybe others disagree and think it should get 10 shipment boxes a day instead (i think drizzlewood is 10 gold an hour?). For normal raids and normal eod strikes i would put the 5 shipment boxes on the weekly rewards. The daily eod strike can also reward the 5 shipment boxes as well. For raid CMs and eod strike CMs i would add the weekly 10 shipment boxes which amount to more or less 10 gold worth of materials. (at least as far as the npc buy price goes). 

 

Do you disagree harder content needs better rewards in GW2? Do you think it needs different rewards from what i suggested? 

Edited April 26, 2022 by Kuya.6495

[Strider Pj.2193]

The crux of the problem in the above post is that you have defined challenging content as (CMs). That, by itself is up for debate.  Many wouldn’t call that challenging.  They might say raids, they might say T-4 fractals, heck even some might say WvW or open world challenges.  
 

And for different people those things may all be easy OR challenging.  Good luck getting the community to agree on that first.  

[Ariurotl.3718]

No thanks, I don't want to see any more rewards I'm never going to be able to get.

[Kuya.6495]

6 minutes ago, Ariurotl.3718 said:

No thanks, I don't want to see any more rewards I'm never going to be able to get.

If the mount skins can be sold on TP, you can still get them even if you don't do the content.

[Kuya.6495]

36 minutes ago, Strider Pj.2193 said:

The crux of the problem in the above post is that you have defined challenging content as (CMs). That, by itself is up for debate.  Many wouldn’t call that challenging.  They might say raids, they might say T-4 fractals, heck even some might say WvW or open world challenges.  
 

And for different people those things may all be easy OR challenging.  Good luck getting the community to agree on that first.  

You're right. Most experienced raiders would not consider CM raids challenging anymore. However my post is about adding rewards to normal raids, normal eod strikes, cm raids, cm eod strikes and eod final meta. I 100% agree wvw also needs better rewards. People are welcome to suggest other types of rewards and other game modes that need better rewards too. I simply chose to focus on those specific instances of game content right now for the purposes of my thread.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Kuya.6495

[Ariurotl.3718]

21 minutes ago, Kuya.6495 said:

If the mount skins can be sold on TP, you can still get them even if you don't do the content.

Sure but that would nullify the prestige of owning such an item which some people care about a lot. Perhaps not ideal.

 

I've always thought that the clear solution in that respect is through the gating of specific currency that's much more abundant in higher-difficulty content but still available in minuscule amounts in other types of content. That way, a high-level g4m3r would be able to buy the reward within a couple of weeks while a low-level pleb (like me) could reasonably achieve that within a number of months. We wouldn't have the situation that we currently have with raid rewards (or even the upgraded Boneskinner weapons... I'd like to have the staff personally but I'm not prepared to suffer repeated abuse and humiliation in strikes to get it).

 

But that's somewhat tangential to the topic at hand so I'll just go away now.

[Kuya.6495]

7 minutes ago, Ariurotl.3718 said:

Sure but that would nullify the prestige of owning such an item which some people care about a lot. Perhaps not ideal.

 

I've always thought that the clear solution in that respect is through the gating of specific currency that's much more abundant in higher-difficulty content but still available in minuscule amounts in other types of content. That way, a high-level g4m3r would be able to buy the reward within a couple of weeks while a low-level pleb (like me) could reasonably achieve that within a number of months. We wouldn't have the situation that we currently have with raid rewards (or even the upgraded Boneskinner weapons... I'd like to have the staff personally but I'm not prepared to suffer repeated abuse and humiliation in strikes to get it).

 

But that's somewhat tangential to the topic at hand so I'll just go away now.

I like your suggestion but in either case the "prestige" is lessened if players can obtain the reward without doing the hard content. 

 

Unfortunately the main reason i want the reward to be accessible to other players via alternate means is precisely because unfortunately there is a large amount of players in GW2 who get really angry when rewards are added to some content they don't want to do/don't think they can do. In order to head off and lessen the opposition to say, adding mount skins to challenge modes in raids or strikes, i suggested making the skins sellable on tp so at least players who don't want to do the raids or strikes can just farm drizzlewood and buy it themselves off tp. 

[kharmin.7683]

Success through harder content should be it's own reward.

[Einsof.1457]

I am still absolutely shocked that mount skins aren't part of playing the game. It's okay to have some gemshop skins, but some REALLY NUTSO skins from doing raids or other tough content, etc. would have been pretty kitten nice by now.

[Ashen.2907]

1 hour ago, Kuya.6495 said:

I like your suggestion but in either case the "prestige" is lessened if players can obtain the reward without doing the hard content. 

 

Unfortunately the main reason i want the reward to be accessible to other players via alternate means is precisely because unfortunately there is a large amount of players in GW2 who get really angry when rewards are added to some content they don't want to do/don't think they can do. In order to head off and lessen the opposition to say, adding mount skins to challenge modes in raids or strikes, i suggested making the skins sellable on tp so at least players who don't want to do the raids or strikes can just farm drizzlewood and buy it themselves off tp. 

I am a big fan of tradable rewards. It keeps the content desirable longer for those who got the rare drop/earned enough currency to buy the item, etc by allowing them to sell subsequent rewards to those with the gold but lacking desire, skill, time, etc to complete the specific content.  

If there is going to be exclusive prestige associated with a reward for specific content create a colored and/or animated title. 

[SlayerXX.7138]

No. At maximum I want slight better rewards if at all.

NOTHING that can be converted to gold. The second you make challenging content profitable you ruin it.

 

If you put any extra rewards into challenging content they have to be one of the following:

1. Minor(PvP/WvW reward track or+5 stats infusion for Raids)
2. Discount based(make stuff cheaper like runic armor drop from strikes or cheaper ascended Gear)
3. Only usable after a long Period of time(PvP Legendary backpack achievement/ 22+ weeks of claim tickets for legendary armor)
4. Cosmetic(but they are running out of design ideas sooner or later)

 

Otherwise People will "speed" run it:1,5 hours dragon response mission grind.

People will over optimized it: Cold war Strike with Randoms is a blast. Cold war Strike with a optimized group is standing still for 10 min and doing dps.

People will grieve the content cause they are only there for the rewards: Ever joined a PvP tournament?

People wont have any patience with other players cause it cuts into there profit.

 

If the rewards are to tangible, Challenging content will stop rewarding the challenge and start rewarding Content per hour.  People in Raids and Strikes will lose all patience with other players. In PvP they will be even more toxic. In WvW even more afking.

 

Look at IBS Strikes. Since they stopped being "current" content they became so much better. People don't death rush them anymore. And the lfg isn't full with "250 LI FC" groups anymore. People still do them because they are fun and the rewards are all human so it doesnt feel like a big waste. 1 Armor set, cheaper ascended, LW currency, some collection and a cape.  You want people in your group who are here for the challenge not the rewards. 

 

I personally would like something exclusive but People are rioting in the forums already.

Long achievements for a mount skin would be nice. One for OW, Strikes, PvP, WvW and Raids so people cant complain.

 

•  
•  

[Shikaru.7618]

I would love to see account bound +stat infusions drop from raids and strikes. You can make each boss drop five or so +1 stat and you have to forge them up into +5 stat. Similar to how agony infusions work but with the +stat instead. At +5 you can even make the infusions combinable with agony to make your character viable in 5 and 10 man content.