Is it time for WoW to have performance-based rewards for Queue-able content?

[Richardbro]

I think this would greatly benefit the game in both a PVE and PVP sense.

For PVP, it would make people try harder and care more about the outcome in a random BG.

For PVE, it would make less people afk in LFR's and try to learn to improve on their class for dungeons and LFR.

When I say performance-based rewards, I'm not talking about being first on the DPS or heal charts, I'm talking about having a high uptime on abilities meaning you're actually playing the damn game and not AFKing, and having respectable numbers for that persons item level.

The rewards can be as simple as a higher drop rate of gear, gold rewarded at the end or a call to arms box rewarded at the end.

Thoughts?

[Alnilam81]

I can't see it happening, and it would no doubt cause an uproar however it was implemented. The best I could think of would be to use a similar system to how FFXIV rates people after completing a FATE, i.e. you get a gold, silver or bronze rating (based on participation) and get a scaled reward accordingly.

[purebalance]

Yes. Will it happen? No. The bad players would demand they get the same rewards rather than get better.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I can't see it happening, and it would no doubt cause an uproar however it was implemented. The best I could think of would be to use a similar system to how FFXIV rates people after completing a FATE, i.e. you get a gold, silver or bronze rating (based on participation) and get a scaled reward accordingly.

Wouldn't that be similar anyway?

What constitutes a gold or silver reward?

[Darkeon]

Silly goose, that takes work! Maybe as a selling feature point at some point in the future; As a general update in mechanics? Doubt it very much so.

[Tatzi]

I definitely think something like this would help.

Extra valor/honor/conquest, a bag with gold + other things, an achievement for receiving a certain amount of 'gold' with a title/mount/pet/border award, or something else. Just a small reward like this would make a lot of people actually play the game, rather than AFK through a dungeon or other mode.

Bad players can complain, but they're not performing as well as others. They have the opportunity to get the rewards, but because they don't try or are poor performers, they won't be able to get it without improving.

[LilSaihah]

For PvP, yes. Use something similar to SWTOR's badges; as you complete goals (however much damage done, kills made, objectives hit, defense timers hit), you get badges, and at the end of the match you get more commendations/XP. For WoW, use XP, either regular leveling XP or the new PvP leveling XP.

For PvE, I'm not sure if it would really work. Just delete LFR anyway

[Deleted]

rewards are already performance based: play better than lfr, then do normal heroic mythic. those who try harder are rewarded better.

measuring gameplay to reward each player individually wont change anything, also take into account rng based situations would punish or favor sometimes.
in fact, you would have to decrease lots of players, not reward the "few" who are doing "ok"

[Alnilam81]

Wouldn't that be similar anyway?

What constitutes a gold or silver reward?

Well in FFXIV the rating you get affects the amount of XP, Gold and Seals (a faction currency) you get when the FATE (map events) are completed. Not 100% sure exactly what dictates rating, seems to be damage done, number of tags etc, in collection FATEs it's tied to the number of items given in. It seems a fair system though, I pretty much always get gold unless I get distracted IRL, but you will get lower ranks if you do little.

[Aigilas]

In legion, you are now getting Keystones, which increase difficulty + also reward level, this will help with the idea you have

however implementing this in que'd rather than make a group way would be impossible to monitor, how would you manage it, have a script to tally each ability used with a rating, implement it for each class and spec, (that could be abused, easily) highest dps (will be abused by mass aoe'ing everything and ignoring fight mechanics) or even tying it to cd's well people could just afk everyminute tap a couple a cd, tab out again

the only way i see it working in a non abused fashion is the way the new CM modes in legion will work, i dont know specifically how well it will turn out, but i have hope

[Manabomb]

I think this would greatly benefit the game in both a PVE and PVP sense.

For PVP, it would make people try harder and care more about the outcome in a random BG.

For PVE, it would make less people afk in LFR's and try to learn to improve on their class for dungeons and LFR.

When I say performance-based rewards, I'm not talking about being first on the DPS or heal charts, I'm talking about having a high uptime on abilities meaning you're actually playing the damn game and not AFKing, and having respectable numbers for that persons item level.

The rewards can be as simple as a higher drop rate of gear, gold rewarded at the end or a call to arms box rewarded at the end.

Thoughts?

I am going to sincerely doubt that Blizzard is going to make an average DPS per ilvl equation for something like that. Not only is it a pretty shitty system considering you could get all the shit mechanics thrown at you in LFR, this would also require classes to be much better balanced not only per tier, but per bossfight. Then you have all the variables of individuals taking talents they find fun, rather than the ones with the highest DPS increase. Sure you can tell people to gitgud, but telling people to gitgud at the sacrifice of their gameplay (And considering LFR, normal and heroic dungeons are some of the easiest content available to players) is something Blizzard -will- avoid at all cost. That will probably ending up meaning that the average DPS threshold would be scary low. Like, a min of 20k dps for someone of 705 ilvl. That's literally the only way they would balance it.

Something like monitoring APM and rewarding you based on that sounds interesting, but again the APM required would be too low for it to matter for literally anyone playing this game, not to mention you can have an extremely high APM doing pretty much nothing for the raid. (Frost mage spamming ice lance while running around in circles comes to mind.)

So no, unless they did both and unless they did it -right-, it's not a good system at all to be implementing. I don't know about you guys, but there isn't a whole lot of "right" going on with Blizzard, so we'll see.

Edit: Perhaps if you implemented other variables into it, like using defensive CD's correctly when mitigating damage as a dps or staying out of avoidable damage enough. Maybe then, a system like that -could- work, but again it would require a lot of work and just further segregates the community away from each other. We don't need groups of LFR elitists running around bashing on LFR scrubs that can't move out of fire, there's enough of that from the Mythic crowd already.

[Pull My Finger]

The thing is this: Blizzard is obviously fine with things demanding very low activity, or playing ability. Contrary to some people's beliefs, they're not idiots and aren't completely clueless about their own game. They know what they're doing. If they believed that the game should be more demanding across the board, they would make it so.

If you asked them, I'm pretty sure that they would say that the game currently offers a wide range of difficulty choices, from super-easy and tailored to the least knowledgeable of players all the way up to highly unforgiving and very challenging.

And then there's the question: who actually defines what "respectable" performance is? There's no definitive, or senseful standard for that. What's it supposed to be? 95% of the theoretically possible dps, according to some spreadsheet? 85%? 50%? If a group of 5 players kills a heroic dungeon boss and every one of them makes a few mistakes throughout the fight and none of them scores more than 65% on the hypothetical "performance scale", but ultimately still kill the boss, should they be denied rewards? If 2 out of 3 players dish out 5 million damage each while the third one "only" deals 3.5 million, does it make sense to act as if he/she didn't contribute to the kill at all because it's not up to some pre-defined standard? If I score 95% uptime in LFR, but only by hitting keys completely randomly, is that something to be awarded?

And how do you organize all that in matchmaking systems anyway? By yet another separate mode? Does the game really need another one? It would never work otherwise. It would only lead to disagreements, tons of blaming, pointing fingers and votekick abuse. You queue up because you just wanna do a dungeon, but random Joe McDouchebag thinks this is officially a "bonus reward" run because he wants to do one. How do you sort that out? How do you prevent people from making up their own, generally retarded standards like they already do anyway (silly itemlevel requirements etc.) ?

It's also a myth that higher difficulties and more demanding content would make the player base step up, "care more" and improve their performance. It doesn't work. They don't step up. They quit or boycott the content that's demanding.

Finally: I'm not sure if a game should really be so much concerned with rating people and their "performance" and make this huge deal about measuring them up against each other all the time.

[Palemaster]

I don't see why there should be extra rewards for not being AFK.

It should be the opposite, take data like APM, damage/healing done & damage taken, calculate a coefficient between 0 and 1 so people who slack will have a lower chance to be rewarded (which will apply to the bonus roll as well of course) with gear, with additional stats (warforged etc) & legendary items.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Honestly if you aren't motivated enough to do well in the game you shouldn't be playing it. Performance based stuff already exists for players who pride themselves on success. For the others, there is LFR.

[SirBeef]

I think this would greatly benefit the game in both a PVE and PVP sense.

For PVP, it would make people try harder and care more about the outcome in a random BG.

For PVE, it would make less people afk in LFR's and try to learn to improve on their class for dungeons and LFR.

When I say performance-based rewards, I'm not talking about being first on the DPS or heal charts, I'm talking about having a high uptime on abilities meaning you're actually playing the damn game and not AFKing, and having respectable numbers for that persons item level.

The rewards can be as simple as a higher drop rate of gear, gold rewarded at the end or a call to arms box rewarded at the end.

Thoughts?

I don't think it is needed however, if this is added the vote kick system needs to be removed. You already kick players for underperformng to your standards so they would get less chance for gear if they underperform. No need to punish them twice. Also, you would need to have a way to evaluate if the tank took on too many mobs for the healer and or dps could manage, or if the tank had bad positioning putting the group in more danger than they needed. Penalize healers for ovehealing, anyone using cds when not needed, hero/bl on trash and so on. Just hitting respectable numbers and having high uptimes is not enough to judge performance. Who stood in fires? Did interrupts happen properly. Was cc used?

[Halicia]

Penalize healers for ovehealing, anyone using cds when not needed, hero/bl on trash and so on. Just hitting respectable numbers and having high uptimes is not enough to judge performance. Who stood in fires? Did interrupts happen properly. Was cc used?

You know perfectly well that if this was implemented, it wouldn't be this detailed. In the end all it would be likely to do would be to get people to completely ignore mechanics, add priorities, and interrupts/etc, and just AOE like no tomorrow to top the meters and win gold.

I still remember the introduction of LFR in Dragonsoul, where I thought that they were going to try to use it to 'teach' players the mechanics of the fights and indicate when they made mistakes. Two expansions later, they've still not tried to do any better than Dragonsoul in introducing players to the fight mechanics, or even basic raiding, via LFR.

[Morbownz]

Blizzard - "WANT SHINY REWARD?!"
Random - "YES PLEASE!!!"
Blizzard - "COMPLETE 5 AWESOME TIME-WALKER DUNGEONS"
Random - "... I don't really like them though"
Blizzard - "NO SHINY REWARD FOR YOU"
Random - "No, wait... I want SHINY"
Blizzard - "COMPLETE 5 AWESOME TIME-WALKER DUNGEONS"
Random - "...okaaay "

It starts like this. How many of those people afk in dungeons/LFR or BG actually want to be there? It's a poor choice to over-incentivise content, Blizzard said they knew this was an issue with MoP LFR and spoke about nerfing the rewards. Then in WoD they swing "THY HOLY PENDULUM" and go back on everything they said in MoP.

[Teebone]

I like this idea, but I seriously doubt the wow dev team has the skill or even work ethic to pull something like this off.

[clevin]

Yes. Will it happen? No. The bad players would demand they get the same rewards rather than get better.

This, but it's not the bads that are the issue it's the tryhard 'goods' who think they're above actually participating. I don't mind, too much, if someone is playing, but not doing that well either because of gear or maybe they just don't know their rotation well. I DO mind people who hit the boss, autoattack and tab out to watch Youtube or something. IF we could find away to not reward those people, not even with things like the items for legendaries, that would rock. It may well lengthen the queue, but the experience would overall be better.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think it is needed however, if this is added the vote kick system needs to be removed. You already kick players for underperformng to your standards so they would get less chance for gear if they underperform. No need to punish them twice.

The problem with that argument is that most LFR runs don't kick AFkers. Oh, they do sometimes but if things are dying it's often just faster to keep going vs kick the AFK people and wait for the spots to refill.

All I'd want is "is the DPS player casting specials (not just auto attacks) at least, oh, 50% of the time. Is the person slotted as a healer casting healing spells? That's it. It won't be perfect but it will incentivize people who really want something (even just legendary items) to at least minimally participate. For those who really don't want to do it, great, drop out.

[Kokolums]

The game does this already. Not overtly. But if you perform better, the rewards increase. It used to be quite overt, such as the Undying title (granted to Wrath Naxxramas raids if not a single person died in the entire clear).