Curse

Zubey · May 18, 2006, 03:10 PM // 15:10

Issue: No one fights in the Quarry because the faction return is better at Aspenwood. (i.e. even losing at Aspenwood gives better faction than winning at the Quarry)

Potential solution: Dynamically adjust the faction awards for these two missions in one of the following ways:

a) Have the less-popular one increment its winner's award for each minute it's idle. e.g. If there hasn't been a battle for five minutes, the award goes up 100 points.

or

b) Have an NPC in each staging area make periodic announcements like "The [Luxons/Kurzicks] are beating us back at [the quarry/Fort Aspenwood]! The Council of [Elders/Nobles] has asked for help there". The NPC is essentially announcing which mission will give bonus faction for a period of time -- the game could assign this randomly or dynamically based on use.

Wyvern King · May 18, 2006, 04:02 PM // 16:02

I think this is a great idea - the quarry is practically empty. Also there's the irritating fact that soundly thrashing your opponent into submission with 10 jade to 3, or destroying the Engine of the Godes when it's 10% done, doesn't get any bonus rewards

But yes, I like b) with maybe a little a) thrown in (ie a little more faction for fighting in a less popular district).

I once was in Aspenwood and a few of us decided to do Jade Quarry for a bit of fun (it was empty for Luxons most of the time). We did it once, had fun, but to be honest it was a waste of time in comparison to the (less fun) Aspenwood.

And please nobody talk about it being fun making it not a waste of time - you know as well as I do that doing something pointless in an online game that is fun is really not that great (like if you were to spend all your time in Guild Wars doing an Ascalon mission you like; fun, but not profitable so no increasing rewards).

Zubey · May 18, 2006, 07:55 PM // 19:55

I think the macro-goal should be to have the competitive missions properly incentivized.

With the multiple benefits from gaining faction, each needs to have a good reason to do it.

Right now, there's a bit of a viscious cycle going on in Jade Quarry:

1) It gives a lesser reward than Aspenwood, so many people won't do it

2) Those who want to do it (even though it has a lesser reward), have to stand around for a long, long time waiting for a team. Rather than wait so long, many leave, making the wait even longer.