New PvP Rewards

[Llava]

No one posted this yet?

Jeez.  You guys are slipping.

Update – Wednesday, June 29

      New Guild Wars PvP Reward System:

      This week we're implementing a new reward system for Player vs. Player (PvP) combat. When playing in cooperative missions and in explorable areas, you will continue to earn normal experience. But when fighting in Arenas, Tournament, and Guild Battles, you will gain faction with Balthazar, the god of war, instead. Faction is shared by all characters on your account and is awarded for kills and for winning battles. Faction can be redeemed to unlock runes, weapon upgrades, and skills, which then become accessible by any new PvP Only Characters for your account.

      The rate at which you gain faction will vary depending on your success and the type of PvP. The high-level arenas provide faction faster than the low level arenas. The Tournament provides faction faster than the Arenas. Because Guild Battles require the greatest amount of organization, they provide the greatest rewards. Faction rewards for guild battle victories increase with higher guild rating. Nevertheless, for all types of PvP, even if you are not victorious, you will gain faction for every enemy your team kills. (Please note: To prevent organized faction-farming, only automatic-match, rated guild battles provide faction. Also, characters who have been in a guild for less than two weeks do not gain full faction for a victory.)

      Faction Rewards
          o Unique Kill: 1 in low level arenas, 2 in all other PvP types
             
          o Repeat Kill: 0
             
          o Arena Victory: 6 in Team/Competition Arenas, 2 in Shiverpeak Arena, 1 in Ascalon Arena
             
          o Tournament Victory: 20 for the first, 40 for all subsequent
             
          o Guild Victory: 200 to 500, depending on your guild rating

      To redeem faction, take a roleplaying character to a Priest of Balthazar. There are Priests, each with a different list of skills to unlock, in Ascalon City, Yak's Bend, Lion's Arch, the Henge of Denravi, Amnoon Oasis, and Droknar's Forge.

      Rune Unlocking
          o 1000 (Minor)
             
          o 1500 (Major)
             
          o 2000 (Superior)

      Weapon Upgrade Unlocking
          o 1000 (Minimum Power)
             
          o 1000 (Maximum Power)

      Skill Unlocking
          o 1000 (Basic skills)
             
          o 3000 (Elite skills)

      Runes must be unlocked in order, from minor to major to superior. For weapon upgrades with variable statistics, you must unlock one lower power upgrade before unlocking the maximum power upgrade. For example, the +1 Vampiric Sword Hilt must be unlocked before you can choose a +3 Vampiric Sword Hilt as a reward. Thus, runes and weapon upgrades unlocked through cooperative play will allow you to purchase more powerful items sooner.

And the rest of the update:

      Other PvP changes:
          o In PvP matches, each player in the party now shares Faction Point rewards for each kill, regardless of whether the player was alive or involved in the combat.
             
          o The minimum party size for the Tournament has been increased from 5 to 8.
             
          o The survival mission that introduces the Tournament has been significantly revamped. It now consists of a single battle against the "Unworthy Dead." The more quickly your team destroys the enemy, the earlier it can advance to the next levels of the tournament. Your team’s initial morale boost is determined by how quickly you defeat the enemy. There is no Faction Point reward in this mission.
             
          o If a randomly-formed party playing in the Competitive Arenas manages to win 10 times in a row, it will start being matched against players from the Team Arenas.

      Other changes this week:
          o Added new quests "Caravan In Trouble" in Eastern Frontier, "Family Reunion" in Sardelac Sanitarium, "Khobay The Betrayer" and "Slaves of Menzies" in Fissure of Woe.
             
          o Added new scroll "Slayer's Insight," which gives 250% XP from combat. This effect ends if your party fails to kill a boss monster within 5 minutes.
             
          o Improved the user interface for collectors. Collectors now accurately and completely describe items that can be obtained from them.
             
          o Added a way for multiple players to more easily synchronize their emote animations. By following your emote command with a space and an asterisk, you indicate your emote should begin on the next 10 second pulse. For example, typing “/dance *” causes your character to wait until the next 10 second pulse to begin dancing. If several players do this before the next pulse, they will all begin dancing simultaneously.
             
          o Added new artwork for the Elementalist's ascended Aeromancer Armor, the Necromancer's ascended Necrotic Armor, and the Mesmer's ascended Enchanter Armor.
             
          o Added new artwork for Onyx, Obsidian, Parchment, Vellum, Vials of Ink, Spiritwood Planks, Spiderwebs, Half-Eaten Masses, and Mursaat Tokens.
             
          o Added a Guide NPC to safely lead new characters through The Breach into Piken Square.
             
          o Fixed Necrotic Traversal and Consume Corpse so that they are able to consume player corpses correctly in PvP.
             
          o Removed experience for killing animated minions.
             
          o Improved pets so that they have the equivalent of armor infusions.
             
          o Improved desert teleporters so that they now teleport nearby henchmen when a player teleports, and so that henchmen will not set off teleporters on their own.
             
          o Updated attribute quest "Forgotten Wisdom." It is now given as a quest after you complete "Forgotten One."
             
          o If a GM flags your character name as a violation of the Rules of Conduct, you will now be given the option of renaming that character.
             
          o Added an error message when two parties from the same guild attempt to issue a challenge simultaneously.
             
          o Fixed minor issues with the following quests: "Althea’s Ashes," "Ascalon Settlement," "Caravan Trouble," "A Cure For Ralena," "The Last Hog," Fissure of Woe quests, "A Gift for Althea," "Defend the Crafter," "Final Blow," "Shiverpeak Stragglers," "Oswalt’s Epitaph," "Hungry Devourer," "Price of Steel," "The Warrior’s Path", and "Wisdom of the Druids."
             
          o Fixed a blocked teleporter in Prophet's Path.
             
          o Fixed the appearance of the PvP character creation doll so that it does not appear to hold both a two-handed weapon and a shield at the same time.
             
          o Fixed the appearance of the NPC Alari Doubleblade.
             
          o Updated the placement of items in: Salt Flats, Talus Chute, Silverwood, Witman’s Folly, Perdition Rock, Reed Bog and Thirsty River.
             
          o Updated several vague or confusing skill descriptions.
             
          o Updated European and Korean translations.
             
          o Fixed miscellaneous rare crash bugs.

[schild]

I'm very close to getting hardcore back into Guild Wars. Arena.Net does good shit.

[Trippy]

          o Added a way for multiple players to more easily synchronize their emote animations. By following your emote command with a space and an asterisk, you indicate your emote should begin on the next 10 second pulse. For example, typing “/dance *” causes your character to wait until the next 10 second pulse to begin dancing. If several players do this before the next pulse, they will all begin dancing simultaneously.

Definitely a feature that needed to get into the game right away

[tazelbain]

I was busy playing it. I haven't got enough to redeem yet.

This is better.  Its still going to be a good bit treadmil to unlock stuff unless you got a guild that wins a lot in GvG.
Too bad this wasn't in when my guild was rising up the ladder and didn't suck.

[Krakrok]

You no longer receive experience for PvP. At all. So much for leveling w/ PvP only. Lame.

[tazelbain]

Not a big deal post 20, leveling in the arenas has always been next to worthless.
But for ascalon arena, that's a huge change.  I usually did lvl 8-10 in there, boo!

[HaemishM]

Since it appears most of this is for the post-20 or start-at-20 PVP-only characters, taking exp. away from PVP isn't that bad.

[Nevermore]

It's not that bad with respect to leveling, but it also means you no longer earn refund points in PvP.  Very annoying for people who like to change arounds builds frequently.

[Stephen Zepp]

So I guess the question is will the f13 guild start at least pvp again? Wound up leaving since I was the only one on pretty much ever! Not that it has done me any good, had to finish off the rp game unguilded with henchmen! Ring of fire was, shall we say, interesting ;)

[Xanthippe]

I'm currently unguilded, but looking for a guild.  The guild I left BC for ended up going defunct about the time I joined.

Is BC active?

[tazelbain]

So I guess the question is will the f13 guild start at least pvp again? Wound up leaving since I was the only one on pretty much ever! Not that it has done me any good, had to finish off the rp game unguilded with henchmen! Ring of fire was, shall we say, interesting ;)

The problem is a guild needs 20+ good players, who play regularly, to make a creditable attempt at PvP.  When I was in the Bat Crountry we had 3, it didn't work so well.

Now that I left my PvP guild (due to execisive bitching and moaning),  I am going to start using my friend list to compile a list of skilled players I meet and try to build PvP groups that way. Or maybe I will luck out and find a serious *AND* mature PvP guild.

Name's Tazel Bain if you want to add my to your friends list. (although I won't have much time to play in the next week)

[Llava]

I suspect that not receiving experience for killing players in PvP is a bug, and this is the patch note that led me to that conclusion:

          o Removed experience for killing animated minions.

[Krakrok]

When playing in cooperative missions and in explorable areas, you will continue to earn normal experience. But when fighting in Arenas, Tournament, and Guild Battles, you will gain faction with Balthazar, the god of war, instead.

The no exp isn't huge but there isn't any reason to not have both. I liked the extra skill and refund points from PvPing. Which means you won't be able to respec your PvP characters after creation and usage of all your refund points even though you have access to every unlocked skill.

The faction points don't help your RP character at all because the items unlocked are only good for your PvP characters.

PvP only characters can't access the Priests of Balthazar so you need to have taken one RP character to level 20 to use faction to buy Elites.

It takes 72 wins in the random arena to get 1000 faction and at 2 minutes each that's 144 minutes per unlock if you win every match. Which would be 7 hours to buy an elite skill. At the top end it would take about 84 minutes to unlock an elite skill if you won 6 guild matchs @ 15 minutes each and got 500 faction each time. Sounds like a grind. In fact it sounds like it would still be quicker to just level up multiple RP characters if you wanted to unlock all the skills.

And Planetside has support exp now you say? Hrmm.. might be switching back.

---

How much better would it have been if people just dropped random loot in PvP when you killed them?

[tazelbain]

Sounds like a grind. In fact it sounds like it would still be quicker to just level up multiple RP characters if you wanted to unlock all the skills.

Ya, I don't think its worth to buy skills, but the rune and weapon part are much harder.  So, thats what I'd buy first.

Also, those of us who play who like to play PvP, for fun, its not so bad.

[Xanthippe]

Let me see if I have this straight.

PvP unlocked skills are accessible only for pvp toons.

RP unlocked skills are accessible for all toons.

Balthazar faction only applies to unlocking skills for pvp toons and cannot be used for respeccing attribute points or gaining skill points.

Is that right?

[Llava]

Correct.

Balthazar faction points just unlock skills for your account.  RP character still have to buy their skills from a trainer with money and skill points.

[Llava]

As of today, they have reimplemented experience from PvP.

You get both faction and experience.