Post-Alliances "Seasons" -- a way to drive more player engagement?

[oscuro.9720]

Hello my fellow marauders of the mist, 

If you were slaughtering the unholy invaders in the mists during base game, you would surely remember when WvW had seasons. For those uninitiated, these "seasons" were rather lengthy periods of time where servers moved up and down the 8 tiers of play vying for the best positioning possible. At the end of the season, players were rewarded with tickets (and some other stuff?) based on their server's final placement if I am remembering correctly. 

Now, these seasons were far from perfect, and they were cut off after only two I believe. Some of their flaws included;

1. Blackgate existing. 

2. the exceptionally long period of commitment it was requiring of players. Since WvW is a 24-hour game mode, being evaluated on many months' worth of gameplay can be very daunting. Part of the reason Arena Net axed the seasons was due to "player burnout". The seasons were simply too long given there were 24 servers. 

Why do I bring up seasons now? I believe they are something that Arena Net could implement to drive player engagement with World versus World. 

How would new seasons work in my vision? 

Seasons are only named seasons due to the length of time and the overall standings. They would be three-week tournaments with a series of matchups that are randomly generated across different alliances. There will be six (6) tiers. The first week will be random matchups. The second week, the winners of the matchups will move on to a set of three matchups between the winners and everyone else will fill in brackets beneath them. The third week, the winners of the previous week will go to the final "champion" matchup. Everyone else will fill in brackets beneath them. At the end of week 3, only one team will be undefeated, and they will ostensibly "win" the season. All other teams will score based on their overall score with KDR as a tie breaker mechanic. 

Frequency of seasons

Due to their short nature, I believe between three and four seasons is the best balance. This gives a rough 1 month "on" and two or three months "off", with the "off" months being the standard WvW format well all play right now. 

This gives guilds a schedule to pattern around for periods of high engagement and recovery, this gives casual players an incentive to enter into WvW on a more frequent basis occassionally (for the rewards), and it keeps the game mode a bit fresher and more relevant in my opinion. 

Caveats

There would need to be suitable rewards to incentivize people to actually dedicate time to three weeks' worth of World Versus World. The rewards should be predicated on weekly activity to encourage players continuing to try and have fairly harsh increments between each placement to incentivize moving up even one place. For example, the marginal difference between 18th place and 17th place should be significant enough to encourage people to want to actually try. However, the base reward (essentially the last place reward) has to be sufficient to make players want to meet the minimum threshold of player activity needed to earn the reward. 

I do not know how the rewards would work. That is not something I am knowledgeable on; I do not play much for rewards but fully acknowledge it is a primary driver for MANY players and potentially the most critical element of any system being implemented. 

 

Just my thoughts, let me know what you all think. 

[b k.1648]

There's a third flaw to the season model - an individual player is rewarded over an outcome they have almost no ability to influence. World restructuring might prevent the servers being as lopsided as they were in 2014, but you'd still have to be in the right place at the right time to get the best loot.

Edited June 3 by b k.1648

[Cael.3960]

Bracket-based matchups that provide no means for a defeated opponent to reach the finals makes every subsequent match after a loss effectively pointless for many. Why bother sweating your hardest if the best you can do after losing week 1 is to place 7th? A double-elimination style tournament would be a better option. Or one that provided points for placement within a week and then a 'champion's bracket' at the very end once everyone has fought each other once where the consistent-best alliances play off against each other. 

 

That being said, if the rewards are exclusive and desirable enough for alliances to stack---you're really designing a 'season' around the top 3 sweatiest alliances. This ends up being a problem as talent migrates toward best chance of success and you end up with a collapse of the 'casual' playerbase which these hardcore alliances require to provide them with content. Burn out doesn't just happen with significant hours in a short period of time, it also happens when the content isn't fun or exciting enough to want to put in those hours in the first place.

 

If there is 'seasonal' content the prize for podium placement should be non-tradeable and have zero impact on the game's economy. A cape, a title, maybe a gold-trimmed border on WvW objective flags or something. If you're hardcore enough to want the recognition you can stack and be sweaty about it. If you're not hardcore enough to be part of a sweaty alliance, you shouldn't feel like you're disbarred from enjoying the game mode while groups that are get their FOMO exclusive rewards. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

13 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Hello my fellow marauders of the mist, 

If you were slaughtering the unholy invaders in the mists during base game, you would surely remember when WvW had seasons. For those uninitiated, these "seasons" were rather lengthy periods of time where servers moved up and down the 8 tiers of play vying for the best positioning possible. At the end of the season, players were rewarded with tickets (and some other stuff?) based on their server's final placement if I am remembering correctly. 

Now, these seasons were far from perfect, and they were cut off after only two I believe. Some of their flaws included;

1. Blackgate existing. 

2. the exceptionally long period of commitment it was requiring of players. Since WvW is a 24-hour game mode, being evaluated on many months' worth of gameplay can be very daunting. Part of the reason Arena Net axed the seasons was due to "player burnout". The seasons were simply too long given there were 24 servers. 

Why do I bring up seasons now? I believe they are something that Arena Net could implement to drive player engagement with World versus World. 

How would new seasons work in my vision? 

Seasons are only named seasons due to the length of time and the overall standings. They would be three-week tournaments with a series of matchups that are randomly generated across different alliances. There will be six (6) tiers. The first week will be random matchups. The second week, the winners of the matchups will move on to a set of three matchups between the winners and everyone else will fill in brackets beneath them. The third week, the winners of the previous week will go to the final "champion" matchup. Everyone else will fill in brackets beneath them. At the end of week 3, only one team will be undefeated, and they will ostensibly "win" the season. All other teams will score based on their overall score with KDR as a tie breaker mechanic. 

Frequency of seasons

Due to their short nature, I believe between three and four seasons is the best balance. This gives a rough 1 month "on" and two or three months "off", with the "off" months being the standard WvW format well all play right now. 

This gives guilds a schedule to pattern around for periods of high engagement and recovery, this gives casual players an incentive to enter into WvW on a more frequent basis occassionally (for the rewards), and it keeps the game mode a bit fresher and more relevant in my opinion. 

Caveats

There would need to be suitable rewards to incentivize people to actually dedicate time to three weeks' worth of World Versus World. The rewards should be predicated on weekly activity to encourage players continuing to try and have fairly harsh increments between each placement to incentivize moving up even one place. For example, the marginal difference between 18th place and 17th place should be significant enough to encourage people to want to actually try. However, the base reward (essentially the last place reward) has to be sufficient to make players want to meet the minimum threshold of player activity needed to earn the reward. 

I do not know how the rewards would work. That is not something I am knowledgeable on; I do not play much for rewards but fully acknowledge it is a primary driver for MANY players and potentially the most critical element of any system being implemented. 

 

Just my thoughts, let me know what you all think. 

We might get there. First let's focus on initial sort placements and end of week options. If that works out, go bigger from there after that. Of course all of that is after the WR release and bug fixes in sorts.

[disForm.2837]

Today, WvW guilds or squads in general gravitate towards either fight oriented being GvG the extreme case. The other extreme is pure PPT, avoid fights unless forced. 

Interesting part, given how scoring works, PPT is significantly more efficient, points wise, than just fight/PPT. We can see it with Worlds today that host some of the strongest guilds and still sink to T3-4.

If they make winning skirmish, seasons, tournaments, regardless of the format, more desirable; I wonder how many guilds/players will change their play style.

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 hours ago, disForm.2837 said:

Today, WvW guilds or squads in general gravitate towards either fight oriented being GvG the extreme case. The other extreme is pure PPT, avoid fights unless forced. 

Interesting part, given how scoring works, PPT is significantly more efficient, points wise, than just fight/PPT. We can see it with Worlds today that host some of the strongest guilds and still sink to T3-4.

If they make winning skirmish, seasons, tournaments, regardless of the format, more desirable; I wonder how many guilds/players will change their play style.

Personally, look to weekend rewards to help move all more to the center. The goal of an objective is to trigger a fight. To create that environment for it. That's also why the balance of offense and defense is important so that there is time for a fight to develop. PPK and PPT are in pretty good balance now outside of potentially using PPK to help encourage servers to fight a bigger side versus focus the current weakest. But agree, I think less encouragement to be either extreme has value. We should want players to fight, players to take, players to hold, players to spread and do more all at the same time versus the various alternatives. The scoring adjustment blog will be an interesting tell how Anet sees it.

[oscuro.9720]

17 hours ago, b k.1648 said:

There's a third flaw to the season model - an individual player is rewarded over an outcome they have almost no ability to influence. World restructuring might prevent the servers being as lopsided as they were in 2014, but you'd still have to be in the right place at the right time to get the best loot.

Yes, the individual contributions of a player are small, but that is the very nature of wvw. Driving a psychological focus on the “we” instead of the “me” for the outcome of something which you care about can help drive that large, communal feeling that, imo, made wvw so special at the beginning of the game when people really cared about their servers. Community forms, in part, from shared struggle.

What you call I flaw I consider a potential bonus, but it depends on that tactical level implementation. Perhaps increased pips per tick when playing during a season, or increase reward track progress could help drive some of it, but I think that guilds and alliances having some sort of shared or structured goal would outweigh the disinterest of fragmented player groups. If anything, it would encourage players to organize more into wvw guilds so that their individual contributions to a 10 man run are then scaled to be more measurable.

i think the problem you point out DEFINITELY gets magnified with time and is one worth being cautious of. You can feel like you are doing something in one week, but over 2-3 months, you feel like a grain of sand in a sandstorm 😅 But with a three week timeframe I think it could be manageable. It’s a sprint of sorts, one that ends just as player fatigue starts to set in (hopefully)

[devastoscz.9851]

I like the "idea" of seasons being in place, but once I try to settle the concept into something actually workable it kinda falls apart. I fear the 24/7 open system of WvW would entirely invalidate individual/small group efforts and/or induce people to play for an unhealthy amount of time. Pretty much the reason Anet killed seasons to begin with.

Maybe something along the lines of a 1 week head-to-head at most, make it the last week of each matchup so people can compete within their settled tiers for specific "awards". Most camps flipped, most T3 structures taken, most enemy kills, most yaks killed, most structures defended, etc. Reward being some sort of token (more for first place, less for second, less than that for third)  that you can spend to get a reward you can work towards over time; make it titles, a yak mount, skins, so on and so forth. Or just make them repeatable achievements with rewards, kinda like they do in fractal rush or holiday events.

Dunno, I just don't like the idea of people feeling the need to grind 24/7 for any period of time.

[joneirikb.7506]

What are alternatives to 24/7 ? Could they have a season/tournament system that doesn't use 24/7 ? How about weekends ? Say Saturday+Sunday, or perhaps just Saturday ?

What about other options? Cage off the EBG map for the season, so the season only counts the EBG map, and not the other maps ? That way the impact of 24/7 would be much smaller.

Are there other ways that a season/tournament could be split up or ran in a way that doesn't burn players out or make it feel like a job ?

[disForm.2837]

No matter what, you can't restrict any season/tournament to specific days or times of the week. That would inevitably exclude players, either in the "wrong" timezones or that just can't play those specific days (work, family, etc).

One way to limit burnout is having a max contribution at individual level. Similar to skirmish tickets. Your contribution to the global score is severely limited after certain threshold. That way, no-lifers can play as much as they want, you promote engagement but at the same time, regular folks don't feel the need to grind 5h/day.

[TheGrimm.5624]

4 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

Are there other ways that a season/tournament could be split up or ran in a way that doesn't burn players out or make it feel like a job ?

We haven't gotten to that conversation with Anet yet. Quick thoughts. Its a ranked system versus a winner take all. It needs to be both at the server and player level. It should be a system like the WV where players earn as they go so rewards are open to all over time. Any "reward" that is earned only by placing top should be more achievement based style like titles and not material gain type rewards. No caps on participation so players can determine their own go rate, combined with everyone can get there over time limits burn out. WV items rotate over time so players can choose to keep or spend their "victory" tokens on what they like. New achievement groupings for event so players have their own goals to achieve over time. Server ranking placement are the main source of tokens, but individual contributions can also be a good source but need to scale based on numbers. 2 players killing 1 should not be as rewarding as 1 killing 2, and that idea scaled all the way up. Again quick 2 minute thoughts.