Why does WvW give such little gold per hour?

[Jaemes.3290]

It feels really unrewarding to earn on average less than 5 gold per hour in this game mode.

The most popular argument I've heard against giving WvW players more gold is that it incentivizes afking. But if you tie the gold into active activities such as capturing objectives and killing players, doesn't that address that?

You may argue then that if capturing gives more gold, people would just k-train and never defend. But - if you give kills more gold, then that would incentivize defending. You could also increase the amount of WvW experience for defending, so that the players who enjoy the tower defense aspect of the mode could still be rewarded, but in a different way that doesn't bring as much gold into the game.

I should say that I'm not asking for any crazy amount of gold here. Heck, even 10 gold per hour would make me happy. But when you can earn 20+ gold per hour mindlessly following a tag and spamming 1 in PvE, the pitiful amount of gold WvW players earn doesn't seem fair.

Edited May 25 by VonSchnitzel.9025

[Chichimec.9364]

So this thread asked folks why they play WvW. In two pages of responses so far, not one person said they play for gold. Me, I run in WvW 2 hours a day, 5-7 days a week, because I have a blast hanging out with my guildies. Personally, I wouldn't object if Anet increased the WvW rewards but I also wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them  to do it. In case you hadn't noticed, WvW is the barely remembered cornerstone of GW2.

[Infusion.7149]

Farming PvE is always going to be more effective than WvW. There is no incentive for Arenanet to make it profitable. Instead they ought to focus on making rewards unique to WvW that are actually useful for WvW players. For example, supreme rune of holding on the weekly vendor now that there is a 32 slot pillagers pack would be a start.

[Ronin.4501]

9 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Farming PvE is always going to be more effective than WvW. There is no incentive for Arenanet to make it profitable. Instead they ought to focus on making rewards unique to WvW that are actually useful for WvW players. For example, supreme rune of holding on the weekly vendor now that there is a 32 slot pillagers pack would be a start.

Just have to be careful not to make anything unique to WvW too good, or it's back to getting lots of PvE players who come to WvW but hate the game-mode and just flip spawn camp every 10 minutes.

[Dawdler.8521]

26 minutes ago, Ronin.4501 said:

Just have to be careful not to make anything unique to WvW too good, or it's back to getting lots of PvE players who come to WvW but hate the game-mode and just flip spawn camp every 10 minutes.

During the last beta week when there was a WvW rush, people claimed “there’s only so many because it’s PvErs coming for loot”. The first week had as many kills and deaths in 2 days than WvW normally get in a full week. 

I guess it does balance out when WvWers are really into PvE and PvErs are really into WvW.

Otherwise the only explanation is that WvWers keep dying to PvErs.

Edited May 26 by Dawdler.8521

[ArchonWing.9480]

Well, there's very little data about gold/hour WvW. But 5 gold seems kinda low; will have to ask around., People with a gw2efficiency account could run a farming tracker

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/farming-tracker

https://fast.farming-community.eu/competitive/wvw-reward-track

The floor would be the reward track / 8, but in reality the reward track potions would be less than 8 hours.,

Currently one can select the Thunderhead Reward Track for 28g (3.5 gold per hour), or if that's too much of an outlier for you, the other ls4 tracks give a bit more than 2g/hour but this is basically afk level.

And then there is skirmish tracks which I have really no idea to measure.

 

[Zok.4956]

9 hours ago, VonSchnitzel.9025 said:

It feels really unrewarding to earn on average less than 5 gold per hour in this game mode.

It has always been the case in WvW that you don't do it primarily for gold, but because you enjoy the game mode. With the exception of perhaps those players who only do it for the GoB. By the way, it used to be even worse, when playing in WvW cost net gold - because you had to pay for upgrades to structures, which didn't happen automatically. 

For players who primarily play for loot/gold, WvW is probably not the most efficient or best game mode.

 

10 hours ago, VonSchnitzel.9025 said:

if you give kills more gold, then that would incentivize defending

not really. It would increase the blobs/zergs that only farm kills/other players.

 

10 hours ago, VonSchnitzel.9025 said:

the pitiful amount of gold WvW players earn doesn't seem fair.

No, it doesn't seem fair.  But it somewhat separates those who are just looking for loot (and who don't care whether they follow a com tag in PvE or WvW) and those who actually enjoy WvW.

 

[bq pd.2148]

10 hours ago, VonSchnitzel.9025 said:

if you give kills more gold, then that would incentivize defending.

40 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

not really. It would increase the blobs/zergs that only farm kills/other players.

if kill rewards were increased a lot but then also scaled down for every player participating in the kill, therefor higher reward for small scale kills than blob kills, it might work. not sure people would specifically go for defending, rather than just for kills, but better than just forming a single blob.

[Infusion.7149]

15 hours ago, Ronin.4501 said:

Just have to be careful not to make anything unique to WvW too good, or it's back to getting lots of PvE players who come to WvW but hate the game-mode and just flip spawn camp every 10 minutes.

I meant putting things like legendary WvW backpiece, ring, and armor (which still does not have a collection). Pillager's pack with 32 slots was added but while Convergences have a drop chance for supreme rune of holding , WvW still does not have a source for those. 

Ironically Arenanet did decide to add the WvW feasts to the WvW lockbox and Dugan. Thesis of strength and such are still not readily available and while Mist-Infused Maintenance Oil is less pricey compared to Bountiful Maintenance Oil it still is not cheap. I am not alone in suggesting that in the past so I am glad they either figured to add it on their own or acknowledged years of WvW forum feedback.

Likewise, the addition of memories of battle to the lords when flipped at T2/T3 was a years old idea that was made on the WvW forum. I was not a fan of the addition of skirmish tickets to it but it is what it is.

We also do not have a real reward for the Ultimate Dominator title nor God of WvW. Neither of those are attractive to mainly PvE players. We also do not have any form of collection or reward for a full set of Mistforged weapons, Mist Lord weapons, or Obsidian weapons.

There are ways to make rewards that are usable in PVE offputting to PvE-only players. A good example would be adding a weekly 15 Emblems of the Avenger + 10 Gift of Battle + 2 Emblem of Conqueror + 7 mystic clovers = 1 Gift of Exploration , since someone that hates WvW would not take that deal over open world PvE. Another instance would be mystic clovers at the weekly vendor which is hardly a good offer even for primarily WvW players.

All in all, making WvW less of a gold sink for active players could be a priority rather than making it a gold per hour farm. 

 

edit: Almost forgot...memory gobbler is still garbage.

Edited May 26 by Infusion.7149

[T G.7496]

Rewards are for the weak.

Seriously though, this game mode has always been best when played for the love of it foremost.

They have already increased the potential rewards considerably over the last couple of years, and it's plenty rewarding enough in my opinion.

[Riba.3271]

If you win and increase efficiency, you get more.

It aint like PvE. Placing 2 rams on a Gate when your team has 500 supply, is just griefing and boring everyone around you. 

 

Same applies to standing around and just waiting when you can scout for fights/defenders, clear siege, etc, to help your team. Or running a build that doesnt translate well into current scale or quality of fights.

Ofc you get less gold If you win only 40% of fights instead of your Max potential of 70% and take longer doing everything 

Edited May 27 by Riba.3271

[Dawdler.8521]

8 minutes ago, Riba.3271 said:

Ofc you get less gold If you win only 40% of fights instead of your Max potential of 70% and take longer doing everything 

If I wanted to calculate my rate of income via spreadsheet math I’d be playing Eve Online instead.

Edited May 27 by Dawdler.8521

[Riba.3271]

14 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

If I wanted to calculate my rate of income via spreadsheet math I’d be playing Eve Online instead.

Playing better => More rewards... Even in PvE

WvW would have died already if trolling your team didn't impact the trolls income negatively.

[Gop.8713]

Basically anet knows they don't have to pay us bc we'd do it for free ; )

PvE envies our reward . . .

[Andy.5981]

If they increase rewards per player kill you wouldn't get on any map due to the alt account bot farms set up to repeatedly kill and rez.

It's fine as it is.

Edited May 28 by Andy.5981

[Zyreva.1078]

On 5/27/2024 at 3:10 PM, Riba.3271 said:

If you win and increase efficiency, you get more.

The reward system favours numbers over efficiency and winning, because everything is multiplied, instead of split among players. Zerglings that win 40% of fights (or don't fight at all and just pvdoor some paper stuff while twiddling their thumbs for 90% of the time) still get more than a roamer who wins 80% of fights.

Edited May 28 by Zyreva.1078

[jul.7602]

Gold per hour isn't that bad tbh in WvW. If think the gold farming was bad now lol.. man you should have seen WvW in 2014-2018.

[One more for the road.8950]

Less than 5 gold per hour?

Are you standing still just capping a camp every 5 minutes on lowest reward track gain and barely any participation or are you forgetting to count everything that's not coin?

[Cyninja.2954]

On 5/26/2024 at 1:19 AM, VonSchnitzel.9025 said:

It feels really unrewarding to earn on average less than 5 gold per hour in this game mode.

The most popular argument I've heard against giving WvW players more gold is that it incentivizes afking. But if you tie the gold into active activities such as capturing objectives and killing players, doesn't that address that?

That's already the case. Gold per hour goes up a LOT when fighting and killing enemies.

Capturing objectives also increases gold /hour significantly until the WvW weeklies are done (and let's be honest, those usually take 1-2 hours tops), after which the bump is far smaller but still present.

What you are looking at is the passive income which comes in for clearing skirmish rewards and reward track rewards. WvW reward track progression potions:those are dependent on WvW rank to some extent, but are front-loaded with Wizard Vault weekly and WvW achievement weekly reward track chests while back-loaded with higher skirmish chests.

Quote

You may argue then that if capturing gives more gold, people would just k-train and never defend. But - if you give kills more gold, then that would incentivize defending. You could also increase the amount of WvW experience for defending, so that the players who enjoy the tower defense aspect of the mode could still be rewarded, but in a different way that doesn't bring as much gold into the game.

That's already happening. K-trains are a direct result of objective rewards being improved.

Increasing kill rewards will merely increase the incentive to kill trade. Increasing direct defense rewards will lead to exactly what we saw while defending Stonemist, semi afk defenders just camping 1 objective.

Objective rewards in this mode need to be indirect. Tied to points, structures held over time, strategic advantage, etc. This increases the incentive to hold structures, but spreads this incentive across the entire boarder or all objectives instead of a singular one. It also increases the incentive to take enemy objectives.

Quote

I should say that I'm not asking for any crazy amount of gold here. Heck, even 10 gold per hour would make me happy. But when you can earn 20+ gold per hour mindlessly following a tag and spamming 1 in PvE, the pitiful amount of gold WvW players earn doesn't seem fair.

That's about where the gold per hour ends up being at during semi active times when there is stuff going on. Your wish has already been granted.

[TheGrimm.5624]

21 hours ago, jul.7602 said:

Gold per hour isn't that bad tbh in WvW. If think the gold farming was bad now lol.. man you should have seen WvW in 2014-2018.

^^^^ This. It is getting better. Is it on par with other game mods, not so much I would say. But we no longer need to leave the game to make the coin to play the game mode so that is a plus.

[TheGrimm.5624]

This is one of those topics that looks simple on paper but is more like an onion with many layers. 

So for most players:

• Choose your rewards tracks and make sure they meet what you need in terms of coin or gearing up
• Make sure to evaluate store, break or sell as market prices change
• Work on longer term gear if you are going to stick to the game mode since you will make more once you are beyond the gear hurtles
• Don't waste throwing down blue siege, sell it or find a scribe that is on your side that will trade you blue for purple, especially don't waste it as decoys or corpse siege
• Siege you get from mist-hardened lockboxes, figure out to send to your drives, guilds or sell it
• If you aren't supporting your guild scribes or using your Badges of Honor, convert then to Badge of Tribute and sell them on the TP

Ways to lose money in WvW:

• Scribing
• Roam/Havoc
• Being efficient

Best ways to make money:

• Follow a tag
• Go the AFK route and just keep your participation up with the lowest effort

Rewards tracks are a good route, but additional tools and options above and beyond could better increase both activity and reward. The system favors both active and inactive play the same which lead to their own issues like wall running and minimal game play actions and solutions posted in the past quite often just encourage more large scale vs small scale play. A future system needs to be both active in actions required but also handle the various scales of play in equal measures. Again its not a simple issue, but we are in a better state now then years ago but it could use some love.

Edited May 29 by TheGrimm.5624
edit: BoH/BoT addition

[godofcows.2451]

Because it would be abused and exploited. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

15 minutes ago, godofcows.2451 said:

Because it would be abused and exploited. 

Its still easier to do that in PvE so not as much a worry there.

Edited May 29 by TheGrimm.5624

[Draygo.9473]

I personally just do map exploration in EoD from time to time and sell a legendary for a large gold boost. Leverage the value of a gift of battle for all the pve'ers that wont step a foot into wvw. GPH becomes a bit hard to compute for this. 

[disForm.2837]

WvW gph spread is quite significant. Most of the gold comes from reward tracks, where your WvW rank dictate how fast you complete them. Max rank is almost 3x as fast as a new player. 

The other big source of income is activity itself, taking objectives, defending (lol), killing enemy players. If you are in a strong squad, constantly winning fights and taking objectives, your rewards are several times better than just flipping a camp every 5 minutes.