Suggestion on how to get players to PvP

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Trying to isolate and deal with how WVW doesn't encourage players from fighting each others, thus many players largely ignore the pvp. This is one of many problems with the mode, but one that greatly affects how people experience the game mode.

In short, how to encourage players to want to participate in PvP? This isn't meant to solve anything else, except to try to get the majority of players to willingly fight other players.

I'm not going to argue for more or less rewards, what I am going to argue is how rewards are given and for what, for the practical effect that humans build behaviour patterns after what they're rewarded for.

There are few to no drawbacks from dying:

• You get sent back to spawn and it takes 1-2 minutes to get back
• Armour gets damage (And Auto-Repair while in spawn for free, making this irrelevant)
• Enemy get point for kills (PPK)

While not a direct “loss” it is worth noting:

• Fighting other players does not refresh participation.
• Dying and sent back to spawn means loss of time to keep participation.

So to start with, I'd say we remove this last “lost progress”. And change this to include participation on fighting enemy players, not just killing them.

• Participation on successfully attacking/damage an enemy player. Not just on kills.

This would mean players get participation on fighting and getting killed, and might include some players suicide into others for participation. Overall I don't see this as a large problem if it gets people more willing to fight and lose, without losing their participation.

Note: Siege should not count for this. Make siege a tactical choice between helping server or gaining personal reward.

Secondly I'd like to make use of the objectives and their relevant Events. As a way to try to gather people toward the same areas (objectives) and reward them for taking them with pvp, and not with pve.

Using some made up numbers, would have to be adjusted and tested by ANet:

• Reduce ALL rewards (wxp, participation, etc) with 50% by default
• Then have a modifier that if enemy players are participating in the same event, increase all rewards with +50% (or even more).

This will make players want to look for Attack/Defence events, and both participate and hope that enemies appear, since it will increase both sides rewards. Rewards driven players will want to PVP to maximise their rewards, and players that doesn't care about the rewards but want to fight will more reliably be able to find people that are willing to Attack/Defend and not flee.

As a part of this, I'd probably also say that we should remove PPK (Point Per Kill). PPK was added as an alternative and a counter to PPT, but with this idea, you already have plenty of reason to fight against other players over the objectives.

This also plays into the above of not losing anything on dying.

Possible problems:

• Kill trading/Suicide for Participation: There will probably always be some, but compared to how things has been for years, I'd call that a luxury problem.
• Some are probably going to try to leave, so the enemy doesn't get rewards, but that also denies themselves rewards, so I don't see this happening very much outside of trolling. Can't fix trolls.
• Zerg Trading, basically 2 zergs just rushing out at each others and killing/dying to keep participation. Probably would look like a normal pug vs pug battle, as long as they're fighting I'd say it's good.
• Hard to get participation in Coverage dead-zones. This is probably the biggest issue, I can't predict the effect of this.

TLDR: Long-winded theory on how to change players behaviour patterns through changes in rewards. Because most players will automatically go/do what gives rewards, without thinking about it.

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