Collaborative Development: Ladders & Seasons

#1 - Feb. 24, 2014, 2 p.m.

Topic Goal:

As we mentioned in the PvP Rewards Roadmap one of our major long term goals for PvP is to introduce ladders, leagues and seasons.

What we would like from this discussion is to hear from you about what you would like to see from this system.

Here are some questions to get things started but feel free to discuss other relevant ideas as well:

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?

How long should a season last?

What would motivate you to play in one?

What types of rewards would you like to see?

How would a player earn these rewards?

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?

Below are some suggested formatting tools that will make the CDI more accessible if followed.

Suggested Idea Proposal Format

Proposal Overview
<A short description of the proposal that is being put forward>

Goal of Proposal
<What problem are you trying to solve with your proposal>

Proposal Functionality
<How does your proposal work in regard in relation to the current design of GW2>

Associated Risks
<What risks or problems can you foresee with this proposal which you would like to have assistance on from other members of the CDI>

Please try to be as concise as feasible with your proposal. This however no suggested word count for proposal posts.

Suggested Discussion Approach

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Suggested Post Word Count: 200

CDI Rules:
1: This initiative is all about discussion.
2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.
3: Anger and emotion will have less impact than intelligent discussion.
4: Together we will share and evolve design philosophies which will impact how we develop the game moving forward.
5: Aggression and disrespect to a fellow community member or developer will not be tolerated, and in the extreme could lead to the shutting down of the initiative.
6: The teams primary focus is work toward the development of GW2 and therefore posting of discussion and commentary may not be as frequent as you like. Please do understand that the initiative is taken very seriously by us all and that we will be reading the discussions and joining in as often as it is possible to do so.
Please note this is not a competition, either between yourselves or the developers in regard to one up man ship. The point of this Initiative is to work together to make the game better.
Note: We will disclose the ideas we do or don’t like as a group but we will not discuss schedules or timing around implementation. If there is still concern surrounding how seriously we take community collaboration then please do take the time to think about how much impact the community has had on the working of this game over the year.

Thank you in advance for your participation!

John

#25 - Feb. 24, 2014, 6:10 p.m.

kdose.5309:

Please improve matchmaking parity first

I don’t think we are ready for ladders or seasons until we address matchmaking right now. Players of like rank and like skill need to be better matched together. I worry that ladders and seasons would isolate large groups of players from each other that might otherwise be compatible, due to the imbalance in matchmaking in the months up to this point.

We are still seeing too many matches of ranks like this: red team: 36, 13, 14, 52, 7 vs blue team: 37, 32, 28, 29, 34. Number averages don’t equal normalizing skill across a team.

Until this is fixed, you will be artificially pulling apart similarly skilled players and putting together incompatible players with any kind of additional layer of tournaments, ladders, etc. on top of a matchmaking system that isn’t working as well as it must.

Matchmaking improvements will likely come out at the same time, or some time before. We don’t have any dates yet, but a requirement of anything coming out of this CDI would have the new server infrastructure as a prerequisite.

#33 - Feb. 24, 2014, 11:32 p.m.

Just checking in and saying thanks for all the great feedback! There are a lot of posts that are on the same wavelength and quite a few interesting ideas.

Thanks for a great discussion so far!

#71 - Feb. 26, 2014, 2:45 a.m.

Lots of great ideas. Thank you all for some excellent proposals so far.

Thanks a ton merkator for the summary post, you did a fantastic job summarizing this thread!

Alissah, no experience is necessary to participate in the discussion. You have some great ideas and we love hearing from less experienced players. Often something that sounds crazy offers a fresh new twist on an old idea.

To everyone else, thanks again for a great thread. What you are posting is becoming part of our discussions and conversations in the studio. The CDI is still open so please continue with your very constructive posts.

Thanks!
John

#74 - Feb. 26, 2014, 9:33 a.m.

So an open question to add to the brainstorm, when considering leagues rewards is always going to be an important component to driving participation. There is some great ideas in this thread on rewards already, but it’s worth delving deeper into what type of rewards will motivate different types of players in the league structure. Top tier players might be motivated only by $$$ for example, while lower tier players may be driven primarily to earn levels/gold. (These are just random examples)

With that in mind, what rewards would you like to see for a pvp league structure based on player categories who would be motivated by those rewards at different tiers?

I’ll give myself as an example: I consider myself competitive casual. I will never join a top PvP team to compete in tournaments to be the best in the world, I will however play in any solo play league or rated solo play if the rewards are compelling enough. I generally play hot join and custom arenas as my core game mode type.

For me, unique skins for my character that I can only earn from participating in a league structure would be the biggest motivating factor. This would allow me to show off to others that I was there, and also feel like I earned something unique and exciting for my time spent. Similarly, any rewards that help speed my progress towards building a legendary would provide a large amount of motivation for me. And gems would always be nice, can I always seem to be finding more on the gem store I want to buy than my wife will be ok wit

#95 - Feb. 26, 2014, 7:35 p.m.

Hey everyone,
I just wanted to jump in here as well and say thanks for everyone that is posting constructive and insightful feedback on the ladder topic. It’s great to see all sorts of player types commenting on this subject.

To copy Colin I would consider myself a competitive person in games. I love challenging players better than myself and learning from my mistakes. Rewards that inspired me were being part of the community, going to community events, and beating other teams/players that I was friends with to see who was better that day. I come from a fighting game background so for me having new combos, set-ups, and character knowledge to take to a local tournament to be number 1 pushed me into training mode for hours on end. For me something to show my time spent or accomplishments to the community is what I would play for the most.

Keep your ideas and feedback coming everyone!

#107 - Feb. 27, 2014, 12:25 p.m.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Sorry, there is no such thing as a competitive casual player. There is just a casual player who plays to win, and a casual player who plays for fun/to kill time.
Moreover, ‘competitive’ usually implies you also have a regular team you play with, because you cannot really be competitive with 4 deadweights on your team…unless you’re up vs an opponent team of simlar skill level (read pve/beginners).

I think you’re using a different definition of competitive, and casual/hardcore than I would, so by your definition I agree with you, but using my own definitions I do not

We tend to think of our players in various categories, and one of the goals of any league system (or PvP in general) is to try and engage as many of those players as possible, because today’s casual player can be tomorrow’s top tourny player – if they reach the top.

My definitions, and why I think you need to think of rewards that motivate each of these groups to help encourage their participation, since they are often motivated by different things are:

Competitive Hardcore (the guy I set next to at work) – Want to win, and want to be the best. They fight for the top of the ladder, want to win tournaments, and be the best in the world.

Competitive Casual (Me) – Wants to win, don’t care bout being the best in the world and will never have time to do so, won’t ever be on top of the ladder. However, I want to be the best among players of my similar levels of interest/time, so any league that allows me to compete with people of similar skill sets/interest is one I’d participate in. If I have to also fight against the competitive hardcore, I likely wouldn’t participate. Has the potential to someday become competitive hardcore.

Casual (the gal who sits behind me at work) – Wants to play to unlock rewards, doesn’t really think they have a chance of winning or being very good and openly recognize it. Will play as long as the rewards exist, for example there are people who play PvP each day and get their daily, then run off to their next goal some place else in the game. Has the potential to someday become competitive casual.

And ideal league structure would provide motivation for people in each of these groups (by my definition of what they are) to maximize the player participation, and increase the odds that players in each category might move to a more dedicated category of player at some point.

Hope that helps explain in a bit more detail what I’m saying when I say competitive casual, and also what groups I think need to be included in a league structure – and why they may need different rewards based on their different motivations.

#120 - Feb. 28, 2014, 9:51 a.m.

KarlaGrey.5903:

How is it that you don’t (or refuse to) understand that good, quality, and well-made pvp will attract players in and off itself, and that rewards should really just be that final cherry on top (unless we’re talking millions of $$$, I guess, but that would still not make a pvp ‘good’), or at least better thought out (prestige/fame bring SO much more to the table than gold/money, although the former shouldn’t preclude the latter, and they are also not mutually exclusive in any kind of manner).

While I agree we still have a lot of work to continue to improve the PvP experience as well, this is a thread dedicated entirely to talking about leagues and how they would function, and my entire post was focused on the discussion of rewards within those leagues.

As for competitive and casual and my definitions, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one! Regardless, I think the more important discussion and the entire point of this thread is: What players do we have who play PvP and how do we make leagues that motivate them, and what players do we have who don’t currently play PvP who would: and how do we motivate them.

While I understand your point and think discussions around game modes and types that can succeed is a great topic for us to continue to discuss, since we’ve done so once already, I’d encourage you to remember the goal of this CDI discussion. Remember, this is your chance to discuss leagues (and in particular, my question was rewards for those leagues) not everything else you have concerns with.

I will add a fun fact: When rewards were updated in December, PvP saw a 40% growth in player numbers that has stayed solid ever since, the largest single jump in player participation in any game content type as a result of an update we’ve ever seen. This growth was almost entirely players who didn’t play PvP before, who suddenly became interested once it was rewarding, and I’d argue it’s not even that rewarding yet. To discount rewards as meaningless might be true to you as a player, but we consistently hear very different feedback from other players, and they make this very clear in their actions. We need to make sure players who truly care about prestige and being the best are catered to, and we need a way for players who aren’t that yet can become excited and invested and someday potentially become part of the first.

I’d encourage you (in this thread) to focus your brainstorming and ideas around how we can make leagues that you’d be excited to play in, since that’s the entire point of this discussion! If prestige/fame is what motivates you for example, tell us what kind of prestige and fame systems you’d like to see in a league?

#121 - Feb. 28, 2014, 10:28 a.m.

Hey guys, below are notes summarizing ideas put forth from Merkator’s awesome summary up to now.

Thanks for your continued input and amazing ideas!

• Structure
  • 1-week sprints leading for points
  • WvW League style
  • Solo
  • Individual
  • Team
  • Guild based teams
  • Automated Tournaments
  • 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 8v8, and bigger
• Rewards
  • Rewards unlocked as you climb the ladder.
  • Things that PvPers missed out on
  • Titles
  • Unique items
    • skins, weapons, armors
    • Specific item for achievements
  • Gems
  • Gold
  • Mats
  • Capes
  • Finishers
  • Rank Points
  • Ascended items
  • Legendaries
  • Precursors
  • Laurels
  • Boosters
  • Account bonuses
  • Cash
• Earning Rewards
  • Reaching a ladder threshold
    • For straight up rewards
    • For the ability to purchase rewards
  • Complete achievements
  • Being at a certain ladder position at the end of the season
  • Winning a post season tournament
  • Winning tournaments
• Season Duration
  • 2 weeks
  • 8 weeks
  • 2 months
  • 3 months
  • 4 months
• Personal Motivations
  • Finding a good group
  • Rewards
  • Just love playing on a ladder
  • To improve skills
• All Skill Level Motivations
  • Rewards
  • Matchmaking
  • Ease players into it
• Other
  • Balance Patch Mid-season?
  • Reduce wait time for matches
  • Pre-match player confirmation
  • Include new game modes in the random selection
  • Need ways to judge skill and player improvement
    • Stats
  • Ranking per character rather than account
  • Map selection
  • Can’t be on leaderboards until X games have been played
  • Live events
  • Sell items that contribute to cash prize pool
  • Templates
  • Give each person a Solo and a Team rating
    • Average decides team tier

Also I want to give special thanks to Phantaram’s incredibly insightful post about the importance of the competitive casual group of players. It is inspiring to us to see one of the very best players in GW2 looking out for the up and coming top tier players. Looking for ways to get this group involved in league play is an important goal of this discussion.

Thanks!
John

#123 - Feb. 28, 2014, 10:48 a.m.

Elrey.5472:

Not sure if this is the right thread to say it, but the major problem of why i don’t like pvp is because isn’t a complete deathmatch. It’s a team effort to capture things instead of a war to kill the other team before yours die. I’d love an Arena of 1vs1 deathmatch or something like that, with no teams.

Technically it isn’t no, this is a thread to discuss leagues and ways to accomplish successful leagues. Pop back and read the directions on CDI threads and it’ll help you understand how to use this format. Since you asked nicely, I’ll help you get started on how you could phrase it in a way that’d be ok for this discussion →

- I’d really love to participate in a PvP league, but I simply wouldn’t do so unless it was a death match based league. If it was a death match based league, I’d love to see the league function like this: <your ideas go here using the format on page 1>

Thanks!

#126 - Feb. 28, 2014, 1:28 p.m.

clint.5681:

Colin im going to let you in on a secret that is worth tens of thousands of dollars, but since I like you ill give it to you for free.

Put in capes and the people will come. Especially good trimmed capes for the upper tiers.

Everyone will be jelly and want to know how to get one and if you can only get them through pvp people will come. So they would be good rewards.

I love me some capes, agreed!

#159 - March 9, 2014, 12:39 a.m.

A few of you guys have mentioned better incorporating guilds into the ladders. I’m curious what your thoughts are on how to achieve this? Would you let any member of your guild affect guild standing? If so how would you track ladder standing for the guild? Would you create one or more guild teams? If you could create teams within your guild what sort of functionality would you want or need to manage those teams? How many members would need to be present to represent? Would you allow alternates?

Do you envision any sort of guild wide reward for fielding a winning team or should only the team be rewarded? For example, if your guild has a PvP team and they come out on top of the ladder maybe they get some special reward for being the top team but the whole guild gets something for having the number one team. What could a reward like that be?

#165 - March 9, 2014, 7:39 p.m.

Excellent feedback on guild participation. I especially like the “map star” icon that Vamp Rock suggested and I really think that Phaeton hit it on the head when he talked about getting players outside of PvP involved through guild wide rewards.

The idea of an end of season tournament has popped up a couple of times. I wanted to get you guys to touch on that a bit. What would the structure for this be? How many teams? Is this where the top end rewards for the season come from or should these have a completely different rewards structure. For example, it could be that the top of ladder simply qualifies you for the end of season tournament and the true champions of the season are the tournament winners. Or, the ladder just ensures that we have the very best teams for a tournament that is apart from the season.

I’m also curious about how much time do you think you will need between the end of the season and the tournament start. For example, Let’s say the season goes for 8 weeks. Would you need a week from the end of the season to get ready for the tournament? Two weeks? A couple of days?

#167 - March 10, 2014, midnight

Ah ha, you brought me to my next question xantosnightwish, when should balance patches come in relation to the season? If we had our perfect world, how often would balance patches happen and how would that affect the duration of a season? Some people have suggested fairly lengthy seasons which is at odds with more frequent balance patches. If a balance patch comes out should there be a waiting period before the season begins? If so, how long?

#190 - March 15, 2014, 10:11 p.m.

This is some pretty incredible feedback thank you for taking the time to post. There were a couple of items that struck me and I was interested in exploring a little more.

sorrow.2364:

Also, I prefer to avoid guild-based rewards, because it will happen what happened in GW1: people selling slots in gold-caped guilds.

Do you think this is alleviated by temporary rewards? Like a travelling trophy. What if everyone in your guild got something like a finisher that lasted until the end of the next season? Another thought is if the season reward was strongly themed, for example the “map star” that was suggested could be the very specific Season 1 star and we have a different one for Season 2. Basically, what if the big forward facing, public, reward was something that you had to earn from season to season to continue to show off that your guild is the best.

Credo.7231:

…In order to let player have a sense of progression I would implement certan badge sistem into each league,as players hidden MMR improves he is awarded with badges (let`s say there are 5 or ten of those).When he gets max badges he is promoted to the higher league.As an option I would also suggest to have 3 red badges that player gets by leaving games or by droping his hidden MMR dramaticly.When he gets 3 of those he gets moved to the lower league … Leaving two games in short period of time would grant a player that red badge…

This was an interesting thought that I wanted to riff on a little bit. I like the idea of having badges that you earn as you play to progress to the next tier and that you can lose to go back down. Tying it to hidden MMR is a little tricky because of how algorithms like Glicko2 work but incorporating it into the points used for progressing on the ladder would be much more straightforward. It would basically mean you could earn badges based on your performance especially against stronger opponents. It would almost be like tying it to hidden MMR but more manageable for players to understand and for the game to present. That was an interesting thought Credo. Wanted to see if anyone else wanted to riff on it a bit more?

Again, thanks a ton guys for an excellent discussion. Sorry for the span of a few days since my last post but things got a little crazy this week. Its been fun kicking around ideas with you all. Please feel free to discuss anything related to this topic or to riff on some of the great ideas in this discussion.

To let you all know, I’m probably going to close out this thread in a couple of days. I think we got some really great stuff here so it’s been a fantastic CDI.

Thanks again guys!
John

#199 - March 18, 2014, 11:54 a.m.

Thank you all for making this a great CDI. In this round we talked about league structure, season duration and rewards. There was also discussion on how to get more players involved and how to better incorporate guilds not just as participants but as fans and supporters of PvP.

Additional discussion came up on how to handle balance patches in conjunction with the season. There were also some great suggestions on including an end of season tournament as well as many other great ideas and suggestions.

The team has been following the thread and the ideas we have brainstormed here have become part of the discussion in the studio.

Thanks again for your participation in this CDI. I had fun bouncing these ideas around with you and I look forward to our future discussions.

John