38 replies to this topic

[Emraldman]

First let me say that I am a casual PvPer, I don't think i'm smart I just want 2 see if any1 else shares my opinion. Also I apologise if this thread seems rude, it's late at night and i'm suffering the after effects of this problem
I enjoy GW2 immensely, especially WvW. I enjoy the massive zergs and sieges and how u can join immediately, but one thing about it rly does annoy me, the way BoHs (Badges of Honor) drop.
BoHs can be obtained a maximum of 6 from each borderlands jumping puzzle per day, 20 (if ur lvl 80) from the LONG (and risky) Eternal Battlegrounds jumping puzzle per day, or RANDOMLY from loot bags that drop upon killing/damaging players if you're lucky. that wouldn't be so bad except it takes HUNDREDS to purchase ONE PIECE of gear. By a rough calculation if u completed every jumping puzzle for 10 days and all 3 borderlands dropped the max amount of badges EVERY SINGLE TIME u could buy ONE PIECE of gear, that's a tedious grind which i'm sure Anet said they didn't want to have in GW2 (tho i may be wrong), plus jumping puzzles aren't really PvP unless u get ganked by enemy players while tying to focus on difficult jumps

First let's look at a similar system; dungeon vendors sell gear for hundreds of dungeon tokens, but you get a very regular 60/20 tokens for beating a dungeon path, thus making the dungeons rewarding 4 completion and the gear obtainable with some reasonable effort..

What about  the random drops from players? Well most of wat i've seen of successful WvW so far is capping places either by having the largest zerg grp and a load of siege weps, or by gong where the enemies zerg grp isn't, this is not a good environment to earn drops. Firstly if u go in front of the grp u'll be killed by the enemies' numbers/siege weps b4 u can kill anybody, but if u stay in the back or middle u never get a chance to get enugh damage becos ur teammates will have nuked them down already. How am I being encouraged to work in a team if i'm scrounging for the most damage on players or to finish downed ones off?

Plz undestand; I DO enjoy WvW and I DO enjoy being part of a group to capture objectives, but at lvl 80 I wanna keep developing myself individually too, mbe craft a legendary or gain some awesome looking gear to show off. Also I don't want to just be given stuff, but I would like to be able to progress steadily and regularly with rewards, without relying on luck or doing the same jumping puzzle over and over.

I think giving BoH for finishing events in WvW would be better; not in tens ofc, that would be too easy, but mbe like 1 for capping a point, 5 for a keep, 10 for SM etc. it would  require effort, it would require teamwork and it would require dedication, but it would be regular and certain, and it would be rewarding players 4 working 2gether and participating in wat WvW is about instead of racing for the most damage, chasing fleeing enemies and going just to do jumping puzzles.

plz share ur thoughts with me and feel free to call me out if i'm wrong, ty 4 ur time guys

[Jabtangs]

Dunno personally, after getting all the gear from crafting/dungeons I feel like the badges are totally useless...

I wish there was something better to spend on.

But to OP's response, yea the pricing of gear from badges are waaaaaaaaay overpriced compared to other sources.

Badges are quite too hard to farm =(

[Caffynated]

I just wish they would make the maximum stack size 1k instead of 250. I generally have all of the siege I need, so the badges just keep building up until they take over everything.

[Freeloader]

Armor in GW2 is not like in other games ie where pvp armor is different than pve armor, therefore you are better off just rocking and exotic pve (dungeon, craft, or purchase) and saving the tokens.  There is no fair or unfair as there is no advantage or disadvantage to having boh gear.  Personally Im waiting to see if they add anything to that would be worth purchasing with boh.

[Raani]

My only problem with them is how they're looted. Yeah, sure...while engaging in PvP I totally have time to be checking around my feet for small brown loot bags. Who doesn't?

[Bronthophobia]

at first i was also freaked out on drop rate of badges... after gearing up both characters with pve gear/weapons i started playing wvw like crazy and so far i collected +800badges atm i have around 4100 WvW kills... so im fine with 20% drop chance on player kill.
as i plan to lvl necromancer for 3rd character im still deciding should i gear him with wvw gear or reward my server with cca 8-10 golem army

[sagasaint]

jump on a tower/keep defence -> build arrow cart -> collect badges by the dozens

[1up]

You kill stuff get loot and badges seems fair to me!

[Tellia]

i dont like having to loot them. i mean fair enough if items like armor or dye or whatever need to be looted, but the badges should be automatic.

also, dont like how random getting them is. kill 20 people and get no badges from loot. kill 2 more guys and get 1 badge from guy a and 2 from guy b. its ridiculously random. they should make getting at least 1 badge minimum from a kill, and if they think it unbalances things and makes them too easy to get, by all means increase cost of items bought with them. i just think its cheap as hell that i can kill loads of people and sometimes get nothing or very little...

[MisfitAndy]

Is it fair?  No, it is not fair.

I spent nearly 4 weeks in W v W and only gained about 78 tokens.  Those are from drops only, I never did the jumping puzzle.

You should get an amount of tokens for achieving a battlefield objective, such as capturing a tower, etc.  Having to click on the ground in the midst of a frantic zerg is a poor design choice.  The drop rate on those tokens is pathetic, too.

For those of you who say "build an arrow cart and u will have ten million tokens L O L" I don't want to build an arrow cart to get tokens, and besides that I haven't found them to be that effective versus anything but a brainless an unorganized zerg, and even then I have not gotten many tokens from using them.

[Duckks]

I'd just wish you'd get better "kill contribution" as a support player. I kill nothing, but I sure make the guys around me do it better, with nothing to show from it

[EphraimGlass]

Duckks, on 06 November 2012 - 12:05 PM, said:

I'd just wish you'd get better "kill contribution" as a support player. I kill nothing, but I sure make the guys around me do it better, with nothing to show from it

I suppose that this would be my one complaint but then, I'm not really into WvW for the rewards.  I'll be crafting my exotic equipment sets eventually so if I do use my accumulated tokens eventually, it will probably be to buy a single piece for one of my alts.  (I've only collected ~60 so far, so unless I step up my efforts, I couldn't realistically expect to buy a whole set.)

Is it fair?  No, I suppose it probably isn't.  Nor is the fact that important work like guarding a supply camp can be both interminably boring and also woefully unrewarding.  Or the fact that larger servers with better nighttime coverage will dominate the top tier.  Or the fact that large, organized guilds with history pre-dating GW2 are more likely to be able to claim prestigious objectives.  Or maybe you do consider these things perfectly fair.

What I'm getting at is that ANet has always disclaimed that WvW would be a little bit unfair.

Are you playing WvW just to earn the tokens?  Then this particular unfairness might be especially striking to you.  But then, I might turn that around and ask you why do you care so much about the tokens?  So what if some other player has acquired Invader's Armour faster.

Now, I realize the OP made a number of disclaimers himself, among them a statement that irrespective of its flaws, he still enjoys WvW a lot.  My response to that is another question.  If the badges of honour didn't exist at all, would you still play WvW?  For myself, I know the answer to that question is "yes."  I know there's some psychological tripwire in there based on how the brain perceives rewards.  If the badges didn't exist at all, then there'd be no scarcity to fuss over.  Nonetheless, I'd encourage you just to enjoy the game for the gameplay.  If rewards come, consider them a bonus rather than wringing your hands over how scarce the rewards are.

[Tellia]

for me its not about if i would still play wvw without the tokens at all. its being fair. and rng this random is inherently unfair.

its really disheartening for me to see crap like this when a game as horrible as wow got it so right, with their honor system. you dont sometimes get honor, you always get it. you get it for kills, doing objectives, and simple participation. if you get less honor than someone, theres a reason like you lost, or played badly and died a lot and didnt get kills, or you tried to farm kills instead of doing objectives (which were always higher reward).

what have we got in gw2? horrible randomness. the tokens are not a "bonus" they are the reward anet put in place. people arent being rewarded in a consistent or logical manner, because of rng.

fact is, some people could find wvw enjoyable but not play it because of this. not because they need their epic rewards, but because they feel that they are not rewarded properly for their efforts. nothing to do with wanting or needing the reward, its about the bad taste you get knowing its so horribly flawed a system. and they are right...you arent rewarded by effort, you are rewarded by rng.

Edited by Tellia, 06 November 2012 - 01:26 PM.

[Louis8k8]

I hate how it's completely random. Sometimes you kill 50 and get 75 badges, sometimes you kill 200 and get 2 badges. It makes WvW's reward system very un-enjoyable and rage-inducing.

As fairness goes, I've never been too concerned about siege equipments or gears. I think the price of siege and equipment from badges is alright. But it's not fairness that dictates whether the game is fun or not. This kind of extreme randomness is just plain bad design.

I'm still gonna play WvW obviously. But I'm gonna have to ignore paying any attention to Badges or expecting anything from badges, because it'll just piss me off. It's a non-essential feature, but why have a feature if people just hate it and avoid paying attention to it?

They should just make 1 kill = 1 badge instantly in your inventory. Low chance (influenced by magic find) to get double badges.
Dolyak = 1 badge
Claimer = 2 badge
Sentry = 1 badge
Camp = 2 badge
Tower = 5 badge
Keep = 10 badge
Garrison = 15 badge
Stonemist = 25 badge

Edited by Louis8k8, 06 November 2012 - 01:49 PM.

[Impmon]

They really need to overhaul the entire WVW system.

1.  When you queue for WVW you're on Red, Blue or Green.  Not your server.  There should be random & organized queue's for guilds to fight each other or alliances.  This will STOP the bandwagoning because nobody will know where they're placed.  Of course bandwagoners will shoot this idea down because they don't like having to play on someone who isn't facerolling the other.

There will be no more World vs World / Server vs Server.  I can see this happening.  Look what they did with orbs.  Weren't working.. gone.  WVW is obviously not working.

2.  Badges of Honor based on level of player & amount of damage done.  Similar to bronze, silver, gold DE rewards.  If you land one shot on an enemy you'll get minimal BOH's, if you solo three people you'll get alot more.  Kinda like DAOC if you were zerging you'd get 20-50 realm points per kill, if you solo'd someone it'd be 500+.

3.  Unique armor & weapons that are pvp stat based with more interesting skins then current.  The current armor has ridiculous costs, as does all tier 3 cultural armor / weapons.  It just doesn't make sense.  Give people some incentive to contine WVW other then PVDooring.

4.  Games will go 24 hours.  They will consist of a series of 5 matches with the victor being declared best of those 5.  After those 5 matches the winner will receive rewards like badges of honor & siege blueprints.

5.  Guilds will no longer be able to transfer to a side that is already winning.

[SaintThunderdome]

Impmon, on 06 November 2012 - 02:02 PM, said:

3.  Unique armor & weapons that are pvp stat based with more interesting skins then current.  The current armor has ridiculous costs, as does all tier 3 cultural armor / weapons.  It just doesn't make sense.  Give people some incentive to contine WVW other then PVDooring.

AGREE! Invader gear is ugly as sin. I'm level 80, so why do I want to wear gear that makes me look like I'm back in the 30s? Need moar pretty!

[Marrett]

I personally like the badge system. having full exotics i get alot of them a day (around 20-50) and just spend them on siege.

[Hennet]

Impmon, on 06 November 2012 - 02:02 PM, said:

They really need to overhaul the entire WVW system.
4.  Games will go 24 hours.  They will consist of a series of 5 matches with the victor being declared best of those 5.  After those 5 matches the winner will receive rewards like badges of honor & siege blueprints.

5.  Guilds will no longer be able to transfer to a side that is already winning.

These two ideas...

I would love the first one. A best of 5 scenario would be a lot more fun, but how would the rewards be divied out? Would it go to the whole server, or to who spent the most time in WvW?

The second thing... You cant transfer a whole guild, but just parts of its members. The guild is tied to the guild leader so I am not sure how well this would function. They just need to fix the transfer system period. It was working in beta with the transfer for gems and the guest system not being able to represent their guest server in WvW, they just need to get this working again.

[MonsterDemon]

Emraldman, on 05 November 2012 - 10:06 PM, said:

*snip*

Not sure if you know it, but killing an overgrown grub in EB can also net you badges...  There do need to be some kind of overhaul on the badges situation.  Perhaps awarding players who participated in capturing of camps, towers, forts, castle, etc. as another has commented.

[Tarkus]

Marrett, on 06 November 2012 - 06:00 PM, said:

I personally like the badge system. having full exotics i get alot of them a day (around 20-50) and just spend them on siege.

Its fine for the guys who do a lot of direct damage (your glass Eles, thieves and warriors), but it seems that a lot of the more-support oriented classes such as CC guardians or support eles/mesmers just don't get any love here, and if they want to get seige they either have to do the jumping puzzle, pay for it out of their own pocket or pray to the gods of RNG for a random drop. As a thief I get a shite-ton of badges, so as a result I never have to pay in coin for siege equipment (because the only reason why you should have up your tokens is for the gift of battle because the skins and stats for the armour does not seem to be worth the effort), so there is a definite disparity there between classes.

This is not QQ, but its just a shame to see guys spending out of their own pocket for stuff a lot of the DPS heavy classes are getting for (pretty much) free.

[RandolfRa]

I have plenty of tokens because they can't be used for anything that interesting. You can buy siege with ratio 1token = 1silver, which doesn't seem very good considering how much easier it's to get money. (eg. ori run = 100s) Then you can buy the material used for legendaries, but legendaries are too expensive for me to puruse. So I'm just saving them up.

Quote

There will be no more World vs World / Server vs Server.  I can see this happening.  Look what they did with orbs.  Weren't working.. gone.  WVW is obviously not working.

They removed them because of hackers / abusers, and because the orbs didn't add much to the game. Just made the most powerful server more powerful, little else.

Edited by RandolfRa, 07 November 2012 - 03:02 AM.

[Xai]

Ehh. I've been casual WvWing since a week or two after launch, less so recently since I've been trying to max my explorer title, and I'm coming up on 250 badges. Most of those are easily from using siege in defense of various locations. Only did the jumping puzzles once each. Not sure what I'll save them for, but probably not invader armour.

[G L J]

Impmon, on 06 November 2012 - 02:02 PM, said:

3.  Unique armor & weapons that are pvp stat based with more interesting skins then current.  The current armor has ridiculous costs, as does all tier 3 cultural armor / weapons.  It just doesn't make sense.  Give people some incentive to contine WVW other then PVDooring.

I need to argue against this. What is a good pvp-stat for one person is not necessarily a good pvp-stat for another person. Even then, it's a great stat combination if you want to build tanky. The set (power, toughness, vitality) is the tankiest combination in the game - Not only that, but it's one of the hardest stat combinations to get as well, the badges are the only way to get those stats in jewelry form. Armor isn't much better; you can't craft it so it's automatically the hardest set to acquire.

As for it and t3 being overpriced, you're paying for the skin. By the time you acquire it you'll have already finished whatever set you wanted and you're probably going to transmute it over anyways. The bar to grind for power is low, costing maybe 16 gold to put best in slot items for everything. You are not required to get the tier 3 or invader's armor. Tier 3 cultural isn't even exotic - it's purely for decoration. However, the armor is beautiful (relative) and unique. Owning a full set of the armor shows your dedication to acquiring it. It is prestigious, and that is it's own reward.

The philosophy is the same as in Guild Wars 1. If you want to grind for gear, you're going to grind for looks - not for stats.

the fact that I own human t3 heavy armor only partially influences my opinion ; )

Edited by G L J, 07 November 2012 - 03:22 AM.

[Impmon]

G L J, on 07 November 2012 - 03:21 AM, said:

I need to argue against this. What is a good pvp-stat for one person is not necessarily a good pvp-stat for another person. Even then, it's a great stat combination if you want to build tanky. The set (power, toughness, vitality) is the tankiest combination in the game - Not only that, but it's one of the hardest stat combinations to get as well, the badges are the only way to get those stats in jewelry form. Armor isn't much better; you can't craft it so it's automatically the hardest set to acquire.

As for it and t3 being overpriced, you're paying for the skin. By the time you acquire it you'll have already finished whatever set you wanted and you're probably going to transmute it over anyways. The bar to grind for power is low, costing maybe 16 gold to put best in slot items for everything. You are not required to get the tier 3 or invader's armor. Tier 3 cultural isn't even exotic - it's purely for decoration. However, the armor is beautiful (relative) and unique. Owning a full set of the armor shows your dedication to acquiring it. It is prestigious, and that is it's own reward.

The philosophy is the same as in Guild Wars 1. If you want to grind for gear, you're going to grind for looks - not for stats.

the fact that I own human t3 heavy armor only partially influences my opinion ; )

I can see grinding for a T3 skin that actually looks good.  But all the human light cultural armor looks like town clothes for some kinda perv attending a party like in the movie eyes wide shut.  I don't see it as prestige grinding that much for something that costs so much for just a different look.  I call it something else.  Waste of time.  If it had better stats yes that would justify the cost.  Just for looks, f--k that.

[Life_Infusion]

It's pretty random compared to the Dungeon tokens but I can deal with it...

[omar316]

The badge system is completely worthless. The W v W v W is completely pointless. There is no meaning to the fights except to have fun, ala hot join FPS style and there is no worth in actually doing well.

1) You can't see who killed you.
2) Remembering guild names is the closest thing you'd come across and even then you still won't really know who killed you.
3) Open transfers killed the server identity if any, now we have so called tiered servers.
4) Zerg wins. Zerging is rewarded. And many of you complaining about being support classes, and not getting enough damage in for contribution, stop zerging mindlessly. Get grouped up and start killing shit as a group. Group tagging works and is rewarded. Enemy has 10HP. You team mate does 9 and you do 1, you're given full contribution and both you and your team mate get the same amount of badge rewards if any.
5) This dumb lootbag system needs to be removed. Auto loot in W v W please. I don't know how many bags I might have missed in terrains like knee deep water or camouflaged dirt. Also I got better shit to chase than to find the sweet spot to loot a damn bag underwater.
6) There is no incentive to kill random nubs in the open lakes other than just killing them and hope for a Badge drop.
In DAoC and Warhammer there was Realm Rank. Best shit ever.
a) It shows how much time you spend in the lakes
<- b )It can also give better bonuses on higher ranks compared to lower ranks, higher ranks drop 3 or 4 badges, lower ranks drop Spiked Claws.
c) Gear tied to realm rank and Badges. Nuff said. That's prestige. Not spending 2 hours a day to grind gold and getting some shitty Cultural crap and calling that prestige, hey look, I got 2 hours a day I can spend grinding gold.

Edited by omar316, 07 November 2012 - 04:13 AM.

[G L J]

Impmon, on 07 November 2012 - 03:36 AM, said:

If it had better stats yes that would justify the cost.  Just for looks, f--k that.

But that's the entire point of it. It's not forced on you. It's entirely optional. If you don't like it you don't have to get it. All that grind is completely up to you. Could you imagine how pissed off you would be if you had to farm all that cost to get the best in slot gear? It took me ~25 hours of farming to get my tier 3 cultural armor. I'd have been livid if it was a mandatory grind for that.

If you are of the mindset that best in slot gear is mandatory for WvW competition, then the system is perfect. As it stands, it only takes ~16 gold to max out your gear. That's maybe 4 hours of work assuming 4 gold an hour. It would require 30 hours of constant gold grind to get your tier 3 cultural armor. Instead of a 30 hour grinding barrier to entry it's only 4 hours barrier to entry. If you only make 2 gold per hour, it's an 8 hour barrier to entry instead of a 60 hour barrier to entry

T3 cultural gear (and exotic invader's for that matter) is purely for those that like the look and are willing to grind for it. I valued the looks of it, and I was willing to grind for it - so I got it. If you don't like the look of the armor and the fact that it's expensive as hell, don't get it.

Edited by G L J, 07 November 2012 - 06:50 AM.

[LavaSquid]

2.3k kills and 580 badges, about 25% for me? (A mesmer and have only done jumping puzzle once)

I think the system is fine (you can only get badges from kill), but I really hope the loot bags go into my inventory directly...

Well, it maybe bad for those scouts, supply run teams and dolyaks escort guards, since they contribute but they don't get rewarded much. That is why a good commander is important, he assign teams to do all these boring jobs in turns.

[Xai]

LavaSquid, on 07 November 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

Well, it maybe bad for those scouts, supply run teams and dolyaks escort guards, since they contribute but they don't get rewarded much. That is why a good commander is important, he assign teams to do all these boring jobs in turns.

This, actually. There's little material reward for the less exciting yet still important stuff, which makes it that much more tempting to run with the zerg and leave yaks/locations unprotected.

[Tidds]

I have 1.8k pcs. of badges that I dont know that to do with, I wish I could buy something nice with it, except sieges.

Edited by Tidds, 08 November 2012 - 12:15 PM.