I'm not a PvP player. Let's get that out of the way first. I pretty much only engage the PvP queue when Leo asks me to, and only enter the Sarn Arena to get his dailies. My primary build is a summoner, so I wouldn't do all that well in there anyways, but there's no permanent benefit from killing people in the Arena, so I don't even bother; I'm one of the guys you see hiding out in the corner of the arena or in one of the entranceways, begging for that one guy to stop coming over to kill them to reset the timer on purpose.



When that happened to me recently, though, I got to thinking.



GGG has already reduced the Leo daily pool to remove little-played modes such as 3v3, leaving only Sarn Arena challenges and 1v1 matches. Regular Leo EXP comes from 1v1 matches otherwise. Now that the pool's been reduced to acceptable dailies, it shouldn't really be reduced more, so the problem becomes--how do we get people to engage with PvP using Leo as an incentive?



I want that crafting bench maxed out, you see. I'd also like his hideout and decorations! He offers unique PvE and solo play rewards gated behind PvP; for the time invested, 320 exp per match when I'm not great at 1v1 PvP isn't all that lucrative, losing my interest fairly quickly with the tiny 1v1 match pool at any point during the day. The Sarn Arena is usually well-populated, but kills there don't give you Leo EXP, leading to crafting/hideout players hiding in corners while friendly PvP enthusiasts have to deal with a reduction in available terrain and loser PvP jerks go out of their way to reset hiding players' timers. It hardly seems to me that "hide in a corner" was the goal of the Sarn dailies, anyways, so those seem to have failed to make players engage with PvP at a basic level.



But, wait. There's lots of people just hanging out killing each other in the Sarn Arena for fun; Leo punishes them by sending people in begging for their lives, and Leo punishes PvE players and crafters by sending them in to hide for a while, at the mercy of anybody who either wasn't there when they first asked for a parley or just likes to be a dick. How do we fix this situation?



Simple. Make Sarn Arena kills award Leo reputation.



Not very much Leo rep; only, like, 5-10 points per kill, so you have to work for your Leo rep, but enough so that players like me don't view it as a waste of time or a hassle and will actively engage with the Sarn Arena for far more time than it takes to get the Leo daily. Think about it; it ups player interest and brings the point of the daily back in line with the result of the daily, all in one fell swoop. Suddenly, players are building a Sarn Arena character so they can go in for half an hour and have fun in the process, trading a sure three minutes for thirty minutes plus Leo rep. Build a character, aim for kills and survival in the melee rather than hiding in a corner and begging, and dying doesn't set you back to square one because you've been earning points all throughout the process.



That's how I'd fix that, I think. Thoughts? FYI: It's not a fantasy story, it's a cosmic horror story.