Hello, Mist-dwellers!
Today, we're going to talk about more World vs. World reward changes. This is a big topic and one you've brought to our attention many times. We've considered several ways to improve how you are rewarded for your time spent in WvW, and while this isn't everything we have planned, it's a big part of it. Without more build up, let's talk about the Objective Scaling Rewards system.
What Are Objective Scaling Rewards?
In a nutshell, these are additional rewards for participating in objective events in WvW: assaulting or defending towers, keeps, and castles, specifically. The more these objectives are upgraded and defended, the better the end reward will be. There are four cases we're targeting with additional rewards:
- Successful assaults: flipping control of the objective.
- Successful defenses: Repel the Attackers events, which end after three minutes.
- Unsuccessful defenses: losing the objective when the attackers successfully take control of it.
- Additionally, we want failed assaults to be rewarded in this fashion. This is currently not functioning, and we are working on it for a future update.
The system is tied to the existing events and uses all the participation rules of that system. The Objective Scaling Rewards system is intended to reward players regardless of success or failure of the activity; actively participating is the key. Sounds great, right?
What's Changing?
First off, this system doesn't touch camps, the dolyak events, or other aspects of WvW. It's only for attacking or defending the event objectives of towers, keeps, and castles.
Secondly, the requirements to earn different tiers of rewards in these events have changed—it will take more active participation in the form of defeating guards and opposing players and/or standing in the circle to complete the capture process to achieve silver- and gold-tier rewards. There are two reasons for this: first, it was necessary to make the Objective Scaling Rewards differences meaningful; and second, some of these events were awarding things in an inconsistent manner. This was mostly invisible due to the ease of getting gold-tier rewards in general, so it was never really flagged as an issue until now.
Lastly, in terms of rewards per time spent, for active participants this system will provide significantly better rewards, including rare equipment bags, WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets, or even Grandmaster Mark Shards.
Why the Change?
We have several goals for this system. Primarily, it's a way to increase and improve rewards for active play in WvW. We think of active play as meaningfully contributing to team success and engaging enemy players for control of map objectives. This player interaction is the lifeblood of WvW, and incentivizing participation is always at the forefront of our decision-making process.
Another goal is to incentivize battles. By improving the rewards given to key events—especially defense events—and scaling those rewards based on participation and upgrade status, we anticipate players will engage in more direct conflict as opposed to moving from one undefended objective to another.
We're aware this is a big change and we may not have nailed the exact breakpoints for various reward tiers, so we'll be watching closely and adjusting as needed to ensure that this system achieves what we would like it to. Your participation and feedback are vital to this process, so please let us know what you think!
When Are Objective Scaling Rewards Coming?
This will release on February 14, 2023.
Conclusion
We're very excited about the coming year and are eager to see how everyone reacts to the changes and events we have planned.
Summary
The Objective Scaling Rewards system will be released on February 14, 2023. The system is tied to the existing events and uses all the participation rules of that system. It's only for attacking or defending the hard objectives of towers, keeps, and castles. The requirements to earn different tiers of rewards have changed.
See you on the battlefields!
Floyd, Cecil, and the WvW Team