Curse

Blame the Monks · May 15, 2007, 02:49 PM // 14:49

I would like to request the devs add better PvP rewards, and specifically, better PvP rewards for losing.

I think the current titles, silver trim, ladder recognition, skins are good...but are too little and only reward the top. For the casual gamer, faction is not a reward (its a tool). This means people only play pvp for a love of the competition -- which is good, but to encourage more casual play casual players need rewards and incentives to pvp.

PvP is a sum zero game. For each person who wins, someone must lose. Especially for the people who are average or below average, there is almost no rewards from playing pvp at this time. Faction means little or nothing and they have a small chance of winning halls, earning a prestigious title/rank, and so on. Yet these people are essential -- to survive and grow, pvp needs to have people who are willing to play, even knowing they may lose a lot. The middle and lower class MUST thrive for pvp to work.

GW is already reasonably skill based, and people who play the game for a long time can expect to get better and win more often. That's not the issue. But what needs to happen is that new or casual players get significant pvp rewards, even if they may not win very much at first or ever. In order to attract and keep casual players to PvP, PvP needs to be at least as rewarding financially or status wise as farming. This will draw people into pvp because of the rewards, and there they can find out how fun it can be, especially when you win.

I think a decent example of rewards is AB. AB lets players earn status rewards (the title, holding a town) at the same time they earn individual rewards (faction which becomes amber). At the same time, it is a good place to play casually, try out new builds, and earn unlocks. The main flaws with AB are mechanics: you can only get amber and there is only so much demand for amber so the gold earned per hour isn't competitive, the faction rewards are practically nonexistent, and the general nature of the format encourages bad play (but that's another story). But still, AB is popular because it is casual, accessible, and has some meaningful rewards. And IMO, had it not been for the fact that teams in AB are random and thus promote crap play and leeching, AB could have been a fantastic format for casual pvp.

This should be the model for all PvP modes, imo. IMO, a good system is one that promotes as much pvp as possible by everyone (including newbs and casual people) AND rewards skilled players with prestige and better rewards.

For example, consider this reward scheme:

For each point of faction you earn, you earn 1 gold. This means an hour or two of PvP would earn you a few thousand real gold. This would also be based on skill, as better players would earn more gold, but even a godly pvper can't break the game by earning millions of gold in a day (most pvpers will earn less than 1 million faction in 6 months).

Each time you lose a game, you earn an appropriate number of "tokens of grenth" (grenth enjoys you dying and so rewards even failure). RA/TA may give 1 token per match, AB/HvH may give 2 tokens, HoH may give 5, and GvG may give 10. You can trade tokens of grenth for tokens of bathazar: 3 tokens of grenth = 1 token of bath. When you win a game, you earn an appropriate number of "tokens of bathazar." RA/TA may give 1 token per match, AB/HvH may give 2 tokens, HoH may give 5, and GvG may give 10.

Tokens of bathazar can be traded in for rewards. For example, 1 token = flame of balthazar. 3 tokens = random gold item. 10 tokens = pick a green item from a list (similar to the endgame stuff).

PvP titles remain the same. Ladders remain the same, trim, tv, and so on remain the same. This gives the higher end players prestige. Winning tombs should also continue to have the best drops in the game (get rid of flames and increase the odds of good items instead of etheral crap) to reward excellence. Likewise, tourney success should continue to allow vanity rewards for pvpers (15k skins, etc).

An average player who spends an hour playing RA (say 30 games total, winning half and losing half) would earn 15 tokens of grenth and 15 tokens of bathazar. He would trade in the grenths and have 20 tokens of balth and then buy what he wants, so for his 1 hour of play he would earn say 3k faction for unlocks, 3k gold, an endgame green, 3 random golds, and a flame of bathazar. This is pretty equivalent to what he could earn farming, and a lot more fun (and better for the game). Meanwhile, he would also be getting better at the game by practicing, perhaps earning a glad point or two, and pvp would be palyed even casually and by average players.

WHY IT WORKS:

PvPers need to earn gold in addition to items and status rewards because otherwise inflation will set in. This is why I propose some gold rewards -- ideally, a pvper won't earn as much gold as a farmer because pve needs to be worthwhile also, but his gold + items + other rewards will in total be more attractive than pve farming.

This system also rewards people for just playing. Even average or poor players should find this system rewarding enough to play. If rewards are there, I think most people would prefer playing pvp to farming trolls. This in turn turns pve into something people do because they enjoy it rather than because they have nothing else to do in a game originally designed to steer them into pvp, but they just didn't like pvp.

Finally, this system rewards quality. The good players earn more, not just by playing more, but because by winning you get access to rewards losers can't get. The prestige unlocks, the high end drops.

PROBLEMS WITH MY SYSTEM:

First, is the freeloader problem. People could go afk and earn a little money and rewards. I am not sure how to solve this. Perhaps something as simple as writing a script that if a person doesn't move or act for more than x% of the match, they don't earn rewards.

Second, there is the risk of people deliberately tryng to lose quickly to get tokens. The best way to get around this IMO is the fact that they may as well try. Faction gives them gold and winning gives them 3x the reward as losing, so why not try?

Third, I can see a risk of a market crash because so many people earn gold and items that may not need to spend the money. To counter this, I think there should be more pvp vanity gold sinks -- for example buying fow armor on a pvp toon one time only (as opposed to unlocking by rewards). Or more upgrades for your guild hall, that type thing.

______________________

What do you think?

Frantic-Sheep · May 15, 2007, 03:31 PM // 15:31

I think its nice that you also included the downsides. If there is a reward for doing nothing/losing, people will always abuse it, making it less fun for the people who do want to play. Resulting in less people playing it (dont know if its less than no reward at all).
Another thing could be used as /resign spike. Lets say you just go in TA/HA there is no penalty to losing, so resign spiking gets you fast points for you and your team. (HA might require more time with the ghosts). GvG is also an option, resign spiking on a PUG guild, screwing the ladder (a bit) and the tokens.

Why do you need gold anyway as a pvp player? Only thing I can think of is buying a GH, which can be obtained by winning halls anyway - or a small contribution of anyone in your guild if you havent got enough already. If people get reward points and the system goes live, that already supplies a alternative way to get skins.

I only see downsides/more work that can easily put in somewhere else

PS. I do agree that you should be able to buy GuildHall NPC's with Faction/Reward points :\ or at least the Balthazar/Storage guy.. or something :P I dont know, doesnt matter much as well.

PS2. There shouldnt be much reward in losing impov. See your downsides and mine for example. What people would really drive away is something that gives you a penalty for losing. Not only does it feel like you lost (being a loser ;P) you also get double smacked by losing [something]. Good thing thats hardly the case in GW (would be pretty bad if it does - think equipment loss etc.). Only thing is rating - but that is part of the system and also could encourages to to win it back (different subject perhaps).

Patccmoi · May 15, 2007, 03:55 PM // 15:55

Very good overall idea imo. I wish playing PvP was as rewarding as PvE farming, in a game that doesn't want to promote grinding it would GREATLY help.

I'm not sure about the specifics, but this can always be balanced/worked out.

For the specific problems of people leeching, you could always put a minimum to start getting rewards. For example, you gain losing reward when you lose after 2+ wins. So people wouldn't just enter and leave cause then they don't gain anything. They could always leave after 2 wins, but if they're in a team that can win and winning is more rewarding than losing, why would they? You could even add a script that automatically kicks from the team someone that doesn't move for 2 games (not 1 game cause it happens that someone has to go afk for say a phone or answer the door and getting kicked all the time would suck). This way the first 2 games you get no reward for losing and if they didn't move they're kicked, so they won't get any reward afterwards either.

PvP gold sinks would also be a good idea, though i'm not sure exactly what you'd use it on. Maybe you could make 'shops' require gold to access them? Similar to how you pay to enter FoW/UW, you could require to make a donation to the Avatars in order to access stuff you can unlock. For example you gain Tokens of Grenth, but to turn them into Tokens of Balthazar you need to pay x gold to the avatar (i dunno, say 500g per Token of Balth. It's just ideas, so ignore the specifics). And to buy a green item with your Token, you need to make an offering of say 1-2k to the Avatar to open the trade window.

You could also make it so you can buy CUSTOMIZED weapons with PvP chars only, or armor pieces maybe. Say you want to give that PvP char a green item, you need to pay x tokens of Balth's + y gold and you receive the green, customized. So it's not an unlock. You could make it so you can unlock through Reward Points but you can buy customized gear through gold + tokens. This could be a pretty easy gold sink to implement, just make them expensive enough. Still leave some stuff unique to reward points for top PvP vanity items (for example no FoW armor easily buyable).

Another idea i had a while ago for reward was to put chests in RA/TA that would drop random purp every 5 wins and random gold every 10 wins. Don't give anything as good as Crystalline Swords or w/e extremely rare stuff there is in HoH, but you could get like most items in the game randomly there with max stats. Maybe it could drop either a non-inscriptable item or an inscription.

I think a lot of ideas could be thrown around, but the base idea is seriously needed. I know i had some guildies before that just farmed PvE instead of PvP when we're not GvGing because there's no real reward for the rest and a lot of people are reward-driven. If there's no reward to gain realistically, they won't really want to play. HA for a long time had people playing there not necessarily liking the place in particular just because there's shiny emotes to gain. Even if it's very long to gain them, at least you're going toward something. Next emote in X fame! Just like you gain next FoW piece in X ectos. If the same was more general to PvP (next green item in X tokens!) it'd definitely encourage people to PvP more instead of PvE farming. And they could stop nerfing farming in PvE so much if less people are interested in doing it.

pooface_po · May 15, 2007, 04:01 PM // 16:01

Maybe bring back those Zaishen tokens,as well as introduce a title for balth faction earned. Then ppl wouldn't think 1mil+ faction is useless

EDIT: basically, what you said

Blame the Monks · May 15, 2007, 04:11 PM // 16:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frantic-Sheep

Another thing could be used as /resign spike.

Ya, good point. Perhaps push back the /resign limit. Make it so you can't resign before 5 minutes in GvG, 3 minutes in HoH, and 1:30 anywhere else. The max x losses in a row is a good idea too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frantic-Sheep

Why do you need gold anyway as a pvp player?

PS2. There shouldnt be much reward in losing impov.

In a nutshell, so people will play. If you can earn gold in pvp, there is less reason to farm. That means those people will pvp, which is a good thing. My whole point is that PvP SHOULD be more rewarding than farming, even if you are average or below average. The money draws them in, the rewards encourage them to get better, and then the competition keeps them playing forever.

@ rewards

Maybe instead of greens, let you create one PvP item and turn it into a pve item (so it could be sold or used). It would have an ugly skin if it was generic, but could get better skins. (And of course the best of the best skins would be pve only or hoh drops only). That way it would always be worthwhile, wouldn't always look the same, and would take less programming work.

Patccmoi · May 15, 2007, 04:14 PM // 16:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by pooface_po

Maybe bring back those Zaishen tokens,as well as introduce a title for balth faction earned. Then ppl wouldn't think 1mil+ faction is useless

EDIT: basically, what you said

I don't think a title is the solution. Titles only go so far to bring people in and keep them there. Especially when titles are geared for the top really. I mean Joe Wammo comes from PvE and wants to play PvP some. You think he can hope to gain Champion points? Or a shiny emote past Deer if that? There's glad title that's accessible through RA, that's about it. But farming glad title won't encourage him long after he gets his glad 1 and has the choice between farming glad 2 or farming green items and gold to look better.

As Blame said, it's true that you need a good basis of casual-medium level players playing a lot for the health of PvP overall, and since there isn't any reward in PvP appealing to them compared to what they can get in PvE, they just go PvE more. Even if maybe they prefer playing PvP in the end, cause there is this sense of 'accomplishing' something in an online game. Getting your char rare gear, etc. achieves that. Getting 'glad(1)' isn't exactly the same.

Vermilion · May 15, 2007, 07:04 PM // 19:04

yes please. If I could play RA and get gold, that would make me happy. I don't know why.

You just got tomahawked · May 15, 2007, 09:47 PM // 21:47

So your saying we should re-model GvG to be like AB... ok...

Blame the Monks · May 15, 2007, 10:06 PM // 22:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by You just got tomahawked

So your saying we should re-model GvG to be like AB... ok...

Read. Think. Only then post.

TheOneMephisto · May 15, 2007, 10:16 PM // 22:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blame the Monks

Read. Think. Only then post.

QFT. New forum policy IMO.

JoeKnowMo · May 15, 2007, 10:49 PM // 22:49

I'm all for this. Blame's got a pattern of good suggestions to get more pvp going which is nice.

Even for pve'ers this is a great idea. Once we've taken our chars through the campaigns there's not much else to do. I typically spend the last few months of each chapter playing RA (and FA/AB since factions) but by this time I've usually unlocked almost everything and if not I get it done within the first couple of weeks of pvp'ing.

The balth faction does me no good and stays at its cap until the preview weekend for the next chapter.

Oh, crap. I just saw the 'read, think, only then post' tip. Too late for that. :P

Clinically Proven · May 15, 2007, 10:52 PM // 22:52

I'm personally not keen on reward for loosing in PvP due to the leeching issue mentioned in OP, however, faction for gold would be bloody awersome

Patrograd · May 16, 2007, 06:18 AM // 06:18

Double post :/

Patrograd · May 16, 2007, 06:24 AM // 06:24

I like the idea of better rewards for PVP very much, although I am against the idea of rewarding losses.

Faction for gold or skin unlocks would be extremely strong imo. If you're like me, basically a middle class GvG scrub who *hates* PVE with a passion, then the financing of a PVP Guild with hall changes, guest invites, fitting the hall with NPCs etc is a massively expensive thing to do.

Also, just because I hate PVE, why does my toon have to look so ugly after nearly 3k hours of play?

yesitsrob · May 16, 2007, 07:31 AM // 07:31

Like 10,000 faction = A Sigil

I find it silly that you have to either a) HA, or b) PVE to get or change your guild halls.

DutchSmurf · May 16, 2007, 09:32 AM // 09:32

Doing something else with faction then unlocking is a good idea. If you have unlocked everything faction becomes useless, so being able to turn it into gold or weapons is nice. Rewarding people for losing just results in people not even trying to win, see your example AB and FA. And until recent, see the ATs. Doing something against it is very hard, if not impossible. If it was as easy as some people on the forums seem to think, Anet would have done something about it long ago. There just is no simple solution for it. If you require moving, people would just rush into the other team without armor. If you add a 'farming code', that probably would have other not wanted effects too. I can already see the Chinese farmers leeching all kinds of pvp. Even easier then farming pve.

However, I don't think it gets more players into pvp, except for farming. People don't play pvp for thousands of reasons, but I doubt the lack of gold rewards is part of that. Adding rewards will get many noobs to RA, but they will never get further, because all other, more major, problems pvp in this game has. Believe it or not, farming trolls can be fun, for a while. For a pve-player, playing RA won't be fun. And because he has no pvp-ranks, he can't get into higher forms of pvp. So he plays a couple of matches in RA (if you are lucky TA), remembers why he is a pve-player and runs back screaming to his trolls.

So as much as I like your idea myself, I don't think it will help. I actually think it will kill RA and AB, which is the last thing you want. I also don't think the low level casual pvp has any major problems at the moment. The problem is the link between low and high level pvp.

Div · May 16, 2007, 12:42 PM // 12:42

Great idea. Maybe tone down the amount of gold earned though. I can fairly easy make a couple thousand faction an hour (meaning a couple thousand gold), but most farming places might not even provide that much consistent gold flow. The fact that you can also get tokens of balth/grenth makes it even better, and even better than farming, because you also work towards pvp titles and is in general less boring than repeated bot-like farming.

bungusmaximus · May 16, 2007, 01:10 PM // 13:10

Hmm AB already rewards, in amber, even if you lose, that system is fine ImO. I would love a reward like that for other PvP too. I love TA battles, but after a day of TA battles I feel leet and poor ^^. In TA you only get something nice after you won 10 frigging times, and that something doesn't even appeal to me that much. At least I will be able to buy some skills for my PvE chars when I earn a little scratch. Anyways, PLAYING the game should be rewarded wherever possible. I have no problems with farmers as long as I don't have to be one.

Patccmoi · May 16, 2007, 01:15 PM // 13:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Great idea. Maybe tone down the amount of gold earned though. I can fairly easy make a couple thousand faction an hour (meaning a couple thousand gold), but most farming places might not even provide that much consistent gold flow. The fact that you can also get tokens of balth/grenth makes it even better, and even better than farming, because you also work towards pvp titles and is in general less boring than repeated bot-like farming.

Would it be bad if playing casual PvP was more rewarding than farming?

And honestly 'a couple thousand faction an hour', which is realistic (a so-so player in RA will gain what, 1-2k faction/hour? Little more if he's lucky and get dragged by 3 others. A good one maybe 3-4k), is NOWHERE CLOSE of PvE farming. Hell, just killing apes in the beginning of NF on my Rt i was doing around 12-15k/hour. UW farming if you get 2 ectos/hour (and that's not much) already crosses that. And you can get items/inscriptions in the process while PvE farming, which kinda makes up for the tokens. If you get lucky and a Sup Vigor rune drops, that 1 hour of farming is worth a loooot of casual PvP play.

Higher level PvP would give a little better, which makes sense. In HoH you'd get gold along the way, but if you win you also have the chance of better rewards akin to PvE lucky drops. GvG you'd get gold which is nice, but when you get to GvG play i doubt people play that for the reward itself, it's really more about competition so it wouldn't matter all that much.

But honestly if you get gold along with faction or something similar (or say you can trade faction for gold at a trader or Priest of Balthazar), you already have reward for a loss in a sense, you made some gold. That might be better than giving tokens of grenth. Or maybe if you make token of grenth really less interesting than Balth's, like 10 tokens of grenth for 1 token of balth's, it becomes much less interesting to lose. But the problem is mostly bot/afk farmers still that might not care even if you need 100 grenth for 1 balth's.

Blame the Monks · May 16, 2007, 02:06 PM // 14:06

I think you guys are underestimating how much pvers earn. Usually pvers say an average guy can earn 10k an hour farming, and a really good farmer can earn a LOT more.

I tried to compensate for that (as you can read in my first post) and make pvp roughly as rewarding as pve. Not more rewarding, but equivalent for the average guy. A really good pver will make more pveing, and a really good pvper will make more from his time than pveing. That was the goal.

And I thought about the potential max as well -- the fastest faction churn I could think of was if a high ranked steamroll guild (like cow) went on a rampage and won 10 gvgs per hour. (This can't happen because of wait times, but lets assume it could and each game was over in 5 minutes or less). Each cow would earn 4k faction per win, 1k for flawless, and say another 600 or so from kills and npcs.

Even that is only 56k an hour + the tokens. Sure that is a lot, but is it really any more than the guys who get lucky drops soloing doa in hard mode get? Not to mention NO guild can keep up 10 gvgs per hour for long, if they could do it at all. I don't think the max gold is a problem.

Likewise, I think the gold and rewards for losing are key. Because again, pvp has to be financially rewarding (and balanced and fun) to the average guy or else he won't play. If only winners are rewarded, that is 50% of the people who have an incentive to go elsewhere. That in turn reduces the community, and makes some of the other winners start losing more, and the pvp community gets smaller and smaller as fewer and fewer people consistently win. Kind of like what is happening now. =/