(UPDATED) February 14 WvW Rewards Update

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Hello World vs. World community!

I want to drop in with some additional context about the update to rewards in WvW.

Today’s release of Objective Scaling Rewards affects Towers, Keeps and Castle WvW objectives. This update gives increased rewards for those objectives, and due to the wide-reaching nature of the change, we have released it in a testing state with several event types giving out non-final rewards. 

This will allow us to observe if the system is working as intended while reducing the potential for major issues. Assuming everything goes to plan, we expect to further increase those rewards in an update later this week.

We’ll be carefully watching the live data and collecting feedback as we move into iterating on this system in future releases this year. We are excited to hear your thoughts!

 

February 16 Update:

Hello World vs. World Community,  
 
I have an update about Objective Scaling Rewards! As we mentioned Tuesday, we released the system in a testing state so we could see if everything worked as intended in a live environment. 

As often happens with testing, things were NOT all working as intended! Due to some issues, rewards were being distributed in much higher quantity than we expected. Also, the bonus world experience was too high – especially for mid-tier rewards. 

We'll be hotfixing both issues and turning the OSR system back on soon. For now, we’ve adjusted the reward bag to a common one that poses less risk. We chose this route because we want to reactivate the system to continue data gathering without risking the health of the economy. We’ll be updating the rewards based on live data in the near future. Similarly, we’ve reduced the world experience gains. 

For now, we’ll continue to monitor and adjust OSR. Also, we will be adjusting the WvW Weekly Tower and Keep achievements to progress for defense in addition to capture in our next release. Thank you for your patience and ongoing feedback as we continue iterating on the various WvW Rewards systems! 

[Nighthawk.2401]

Hey! I'm very excited to see ANet giving some much needed love to the WvW gamemode - especially the rewards systems! 🙂
I've been hoping for a long time to see an update, since rewards are an important driver of player engagement when decided what to spend time on, and WvW had grown to have such a disparity in rewards per hour compared to other end-game content/gamemodes. And at the very least it felt bad to be obligated to stop doing the content I enjoyed most just so that I could spend more time farming in other areas of the game for the sake of being able to afford to continue playing the parts I enjoy later. 

Today's changes are definitely going in the right direction, and I look forwards to future changes as well - especially in helping support-oriented players receive credit for player kills which they're indirectly helping with.

 

I'm wondering however, will you be providing us with any specific numbers/details to help explain how the new 'reward scaling' system is now calculated? So far I haven't been able to find specific patch notes on this topic, only a couple of broad statements about "better rewards for attacking/defending objectives, based on type and tier". 

Thank you very much either way, I look forwards to a bright future for all of guild wars 2, and especially my favorite end-game content, WvW! The direction the devs have been taking lately is very appreciated, especially the increased communication and pace of updates.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Nighthawk.2401

[Harriss.4635]

I'd like to request that we get more things that we can spend skirmish tickets on.  Once you have all 3 sets of legendary armor, skirmish tickets are rather underwhelming.  Maybe we can use them to buy clovers, antique summoning stones, and other legendary weapon components with them?  

 

[Gorani.7205]

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

We are excited to hear your thoughts!

First observations:
I get a green unidentified item bag and a box containing blue stuff (?) and a WxP bottle as a bonus as far as I can see.
This has sped up the ranking up process and contributes to daily ranker quite nicely, which is one of the more difficult to get. Do I really get better quality loot now? All those T5 materials from lots salvage items might suggest a lot better stuff ... bit it really isn't? Someone need to collect some real data on that. It does not seem to hand out skirmish tickets or Grandmaster Shards as hinted in the blog post.

[Infusion.7149]

Thank for the updates as always Rubi!

I am ecstatic since it is probably the first time since 2017 we are seeing substantial revamp of the reward structure to favor active players and not the people afk at spawn. I will have to dig into the details but at least we know some further action is being taken this week by the WvW team.

Here is my preliminary feedback based off the notes yesterday:

Before actually ingame I would have to say if the goal is to reward new players and people jaded with the gamemode alike it should probably reward memories of battle rather than additional skirmish tickets.
* This has tangible value even if there is "nothing to buy" per diamond rank players (when in actuality the grandmaster mark shards currency is so badly conceived that getting the mistforged ascended and mist lord ascended weapons with 0AP reward are a net loss for nearly everyone). There is a vast difference between the number of memories of battle required and the skirmish tickets gained in a week unless you play enough to loop diamond multiple times.

I am especially happy the grandmaster mark shard disparity to PvE/PvP alike was reviewed. If it is meant to be less of a burden please consider rolling it into a currency. The only vendor ingame for the shards has a dialog box so I would think it would be even easier than the legendary insight conversion which required a rework of recipes.

Please look at the emblems again. There is no use for them due to the Conflux change to not require Emblem of the Avenger.

 

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

Today's changes are definitely a step in the right direction!

speaking of a few items (used as currencies) in WvW....

~ skirmish marks are practically worthless except for trick / trap (and other) boxes after the player finishes gearing their toons with legendary gear and infusions. 

~ grandmaster mark shards are useless too after gearing up with all legendary gear.

~ emblems of the avenger and emblems of the conqueror drop so often when only 2 are needed for the 2 conflux. [SUGGESTION] these should be tradeable for some of the same stuff that skirmish marks can trade for, such as the tricks / traps boxes, siege blueprint boxes, etc... and Heroes Banner boxes. the amounts gained from the trade would need to be looked at and balanced of course.

~ Memories of battle are rewarded less often then skirmish marks, as mentioned by Infusion, (in the time it takes to cap out on the weekly limit of Skirmish tickets, the same player has earned maybe about half that number in memories of battle, when everything that requires skirmish marks requires the same number of memories of battle or more.) [SUGGESTION] and should therefore be rewarded more, since they are used for many more items then skirmish marks are used for. AND / OR  [SUGGESTION] all the above items should be tradeable for Memories of Battle, as well.

basically, while i've offered a few suggestions for items to be traded for, i'm sure there's many more items that can be offered, such as guild siege, items listed by other posters in this thread (like Antique Summoning Stones), the main suggestion is to allow us to trade these currencies for stuff we can always use, even after we've finished gearing up our toons.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Forgotten Legend.9281

[Polar.8634]

a lot of additional exp with new rewards and matherials for lege armor are nice and might actually work for bringing new players. 

Would be nice to get rewards for older players tho as they already have lege armor mostly. 

But generally this update hit the spot imo(one of them at least), very nice. 

I virtually plus all sugestions above regarding useless wvw currencies, make them less useless and older players will get their reward, without need to create some new achievements or rewards.

[Luthan.5236]

I hear that grandmaster mark shards drop directly - and if they really are useless like mentioned in one of the posts above ... they'd need to adjust there. Otherwise they'll only stack up ... being worth less (if players do not need them or do not need them anymore).

I'd strongly suggest to bring some way of exchanging currencies in the future updates (better sooner than later). Can be one-way if you still want to keep certain stuff restricted. (Trading mark shards into something else but not making it possible to get them by trading into the opposite direction.) There need to be at least some not too hard ways to cash in the stuff into at least a bit of silver.

An easy way might be to allow converting into memories of battle. (Though ... then the price for those might drop a lot of people convert and the tp gets flooded.)

Preferrably I'd also like to see ways to spend currency in the game mode. Back then ... way back in 2012/13 if I remember correctly you had to pay money for the upgrades of the structures. Not a low (though money was harder to obtain back then) ... with ways for curency to spend like that ... new players could use them for gear and older players for "fun" in the game mode.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[Woop S.7851]

4 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

We’ll be carefully watching the live data and collecting feedback as we move into iterating on this system in future releases this year. We are excited to hear your thoughts!

Appreciate the great update! 👍

Questions/Comments:

• Can the top right WvW weekly achievements list auto-display (triggers) when user enters a WvW map?
• Can a prompt be visible for WvW reward tracks so new users won't forget to activate them in WvW?
• Some already mentioned: will equal rewards be given to support/healers (full heal traits, no damage) in attack/defending events?
• Do these updates apply to Edge of the Mists?
• Wiki references (rewards):

1. WvW weekly achievements: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_vs._World_(achievement_group)
2. Skirmish reward track: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skirmish_reward_track
3. WvW reward track: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/WvW_Reward_Track

When Alliances launch, will there be 'Weekly Alliance Rewards'? (To encourage group play/combat/faster max gear acquisition) | Examples (purely contextual):

• Capture tower with at least 'x' number of alliance members > gain a reward for guildhall upgrade
• Successfully defend a tower or keep with at least 10 alliance members > unlock a new cosmetic commander badge
• Destroy 50 invaders as a squad with at least 5 alliance members > gain a new title
• Fight a enemy group twice your size and survive for 3 minutes > unlock Ascended material/gear/equipment etc.
• Any possibility for tactical maneuver rewards such as Pincer or Hammer and Anvil (encourage/reward good commanders to lead - prevents empty maps)

Thanks again! 🙂

Edited February 14, 2023 by Woop S.7851
format/typo fix

[Ashen.2907]

2 hours ago, Harriss.4635 said:

I'd like to request that we get more things that we can spend skirmish tickets on.  Once you have all 3 sets of legendary armor, skirmish tickets are rather underwhelming.  Maybe we can use them to buy clovers, antique summoning stones, and other legendary weapon components with them?  

 

This.

Without some changes the listed increased rewards are largely irrelevant to many long term wvw players who could hack stockpiles of GMM Shards and Skirmish tickets.

 

Edit: Even so, I do appreciate that there is some movement on wvw rewards even if it hasnt benefitted me yet.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Ashen.2907

[Luthan.5236]

Defending SM gave me (out of 5 or 6 defensive events where I got credit) 5k WxP almost all of the time - except once where I got 250 WxP only. Nice for a solo guild to do the WvW rank guild mission. (At least the easiest one that requires 10k WxP is possible then. And pretty fast.)

I don't think it will be fun to attack though ... (then again: if everyone defended only then defending also would give no rewards and we had enough attackers). We'll see how the future updates will add to this - they mentioned trying to add rewards to attacking as well ... even if the fight still runs ... which can take a lot longer until successful cap happens.

Since the weekly achievements are offensive ones - but not as rewarding (unless you prefer the tickets ... I always found WxP to be a bit slow though ... like the defendig now) there will need to be rewards for attacking (while the fight still continues) as well. Maybe at a slower pace.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[BigShow.8460]

Would it be too difficult to make heal and buff skills apply 1 damage to player enemies in order to provide a "tag" on opponents in WvW? Would that help solve the issue with support classes getting less rewards for fighting than their damage focused comrades?

[Floz.8904]

Holy flippin moly. An overwhelmingly positive response from the WvW community. It goes to show that if Anet spends dev time in WvW the people will love them for it.

Now monetise our addicted souls with wvw skins and give us a Kaineng Borderland. Let not the bad wrap on Desert BL deter you because it is legit the best BL now that we have mounts.

 

On a serious note though, do we have a method to equalise participation/loot drops for support players? Will this objective scaling reward system be heavily skewed to dps players over support players like the current bag drop system?

 

A look into a support participation revamp would be heavily positive given that some groups are even donating bags/loot to their support players to mitigate the losses and keep them on support. It's genuinely around 1/5th of what dps players receive.

 

With no support, there'll be no bags.

[Xenesis.6389]

58 minutes ago, Floz.8904 said:

Holy flippin moly. An overwhelmingly positive response from the WvW community. It goes to show that if Anet spends dev time in WvW the people will love them for it.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa, slow your roll there, they already took the rewards off line to apply nerfs...

/straightens your tie and brushes your shoulders

They have a reputation to keep for wvw afterall.

 

P.S No support there'll be no bags? ahem... killing people with damage gets you bags, not just spraying heals on people, there's more to wvw than hugging 50 people. 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Xenesis.6389

[Efar.8153]

you know that it is more difficult for 2 players to take over a camp than it is for a full squad to take a keep. maybe we should give the same rewards to all. just saying.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Efar.8153

[RogueLife.3719]

My guild was on earlier than me and said the got amazing loot and shards. I joined right after patch. They said the new rewards were nerfed. None of us got anything new that we noticed. I did notice that despite building and using siege and being a dps class I still got bronze for towers and a keep. The exp points for taking were greatly reduced. I was fully participating. That was very disappointing to me. I expected gain but got clawback instead.

[Mahdra.2863]

I don't often write to the forums, but after this update I felt I needed to drop in my 2 cents...

My better half played yesterday after the patch was live and reported getting 3 master shards and extra skirmish tickets from capturing Stonemist Castle, 2 from keeps... I was excited (because we're both working on legendary armor and still quite a road to go) but got a bit DISAPPOINTED today when I played myself in my regular raid. My raid and me took Stonemist and several keeps and towers and the BEST we ever got was SILVER reward.

Basically, there just weren't enough enemy players to kill (and I think that was the issue), which seems to EFFECTIVELY PREVENT us from getting these rewards! This feels very uneven and unfair... if you happen to play when the opponent seems to be lower in numbers (which isn't by choice, but just the fact that we have work lives and can't just logon anytime during the day) we're not getting the opportunity to get similar rewards.

This feels really bad, and I hope something can be done about that.

(Edit: I just read there's been a patch that apparently nerfed the rewards? Getting players disappointed is never a good thing, so please get something in place that is good and fair for all that participate equally...)

Edited February 15, 2023 by Mahdra.2863

[Xenesis.6389]

9 minutes ago, Mahdra.2863 said:

I don't often write to the forums, but after this update I felt I needed to drop in my 2 cents...

 

My better half played yesterday after the patch was live and reported getting 3 master shards and extra skirmish tickets from capturing Stonemist Castle, 2 from keeps... I was excited (because we're both working on legendary armor and still quite a road to go) but got a bit DISAPPOINTED today when I played myself in my regular raid. My raid and me took Stonemist and several keeps and towers and the BEST we ever got was SILVER reward.

 

Basically, there just weren't enough enemy players to kill (and I think that was the issue), which seems to EFFECTIVELY PREVENT us from getting these rewards! This feels very uneven and unfair... if you happen to play when the opponent seems to be lower in numbers (which isn't by choice, but just the fact that we have work lives and can't just logon anytime during the day) we're not getting the opportunity to get similar rewards.

 

This feels really bad, and I hope something can be done about that.

Because they disabled the rewards.

[Mahdra.2863]

Oh! If they disabled the rewards altogether, that explains something.

 

Does that mean that 'getting Gold participation' on taking objectives was disabled, too? Because my bowstring nearly snapped, and despite of everything I couldn't get past silver... Hopefully things will be tuned also for situations when there's simply no people doing any defending. I didn't have the luxury of having enemies 😕 

[Xenesis.6389]

34 minutes ago, Mahdra.2863 said:

Oh! If they disabled the rewards altogether, that explains something.

 

Does that mean that 'getting Gold participation' on taking objectives was disabled, too? Because my bowstring nearly snapped, and despite of everything I couldn't get past silver... Hopefully things will be tuned also for situations when there's simply no people doing any defending. I didn't have the luxury of having enemies 😕 

We have no clue, and they don't be telling us. We'll have to see what factors are involved for gold now, from killing npcs, time it takes to capture, enemies present, etc through testing. I can tell you I did cap T3 keeps and smc with and without enemies present and got grandmaster mark shards for the rewards, whether or not the reward handout or participation levels for it was screwed up who knows but anet. We'll just have to wait until they bring it back online and do more testing, hopefully tomorrow or later in the week, and not a month from now....

Edited February 15, 2023 by Xenesis.6389

[MarzAttakz.9608]

47 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

We have no clue, and they don't be telling us. We'll have to see what factors are involved for gold now, from killing npcs, time it takes to capture, enemies present, etc through testing. I can tell you I did cap T3 keeps and smc with and without enemies present and got grandmaster mark shards for the rewards, whether or not the reward handout or participation levels for it was screwed up who knows but anet. We'll just have to wait until they bring it back online and do more testing, hopefully tomorrow or later in the week, and not a month from now....

Your findings were interesting for sure, however they occured pre-fix while the quoted players occured post-fix.

Based on their last tweet I'm assuming the rewards were too rewarding, they offlined us to change the numbers and push back to live, hence a noticable drop in the rewards.

"Thank you for your patience while we addressed this issue. The content has been re-enabled."

What we have now, as you said, is a whole lot of confusion. Par for the course. Waiting for data, gotta crunch those numbers Mr Scrooge. Insert "we felt the rewards were, well, too rewarding and reduced the payout co-efficient to 0.001 in WvW only"...

Boggles my mind that having moved to AWS they're unable to run test servers and we get to play test on Live...

Edited February 15, 2023 by MarzAttakz.9608
Formarting

[nutri.1385]

Some context for just how op were the wxp boosts. My world had T3 SM yesterday, and there was one guy with a treb attacking one of the walls, getting it to 98% HP with each hit. The SM was contested because of this and everyone had a Repel event. In order to get gold participation for it we had to spend 25 supplies on repairing the wall. In T3 SM getting it rewarded us with 10k wxp every three minutes! 

I actually need a lot of ranks for the Warbringer and yesterday evening saved me a lot of time. But honestly, it felt broken as hell! People on the map chat were speaking about a nerf coming, everyone knew it's not as designed. 

[Vavume.8065]

9 hours ago, BigShow.8460 said:

Would it be too difficult to make heal and buff skills apply 1 damage to player enemies in order to provide a "tag" on opponents in WvW? Would that help solve the issue with support classes getting less rewards for fighting than their damage focused comrades?

1 damage would not do anything, you can do far more damage than that and not get credit for a kill, the whole system needs to be redone.

[Lethe.1640]

Not sure if it's the update attracting more players into WvW or server problems but the lag has become impossible to deal with -- and I never had lag before. What. the. what.

[Zboard.5019]

2 hours ago, nutri.1385 said:

Some context for just how op were the wxp boosts. My world had T3 SM yesterday, and there was one guy with a treb attacking one of the walls, getting it to 98% HP with each hit. The SM was contested because of this and everyone had a Repel event. In order to get gold participation for it we had to spend 25 supplies on repairing the wall. In T3 SM getting it rewarded us with 10k wxp every three minutes! 

I actually need a lot of ranks for the Warbringer and yesterday evening saved me a lot of time. But honestly, it felt broken as hell! People on the map chat were speaking about a nerf coming, everyone knew it's not as designed. 

Felt broken because the exp gain was atrocious before 😅, we need a middle aproach imo