Guild Wars 2

Hello,

Normally I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to suggest I know better than an entire firm of highly dedicated and intelligent video game making gurus such as ArenaNet (as I’ve said many times before, GW1: best game ever). But for reasons I mentioned in a letter I wrote to ArenaNet last week (namely that the constant barrage of new content is turning the game into a chore and a grind, particularly for casual players), I have begun contemplating abandoning GW2 on an almost daily basis… So I’m just going to go for broke and mention my idea anyway.

The new account wallet is brilliant! Very convenient. Thank you :-) But it got me thinking… Why are there so many currencies in GW2 to begin with? Essentially this results in players performing specific activities to obtain specific rewards, often leading to the situation of players participating in activities they don’t like for the rewards they desire, and vice versa. Ideally, you would want players to do whatever they like, and then get rewards that they actually want for doing so. And so to achieve this, my idea is:

Remove all currencies except karma and gold.

The effect of this is straightforward: everything and anything a player does will contribute to the rewards they want. No one will be forced into activities they don’t want to do, or be forced to wait for a party to do the dungeon they need to progress towards obtaining the armor set they want. You could take this further to include the living story content, so that casual players are not pressured into completing the content to get the rewards they want before it is removed from the game, particularly if the vendors of such rewards are permanent additions (i.e. the content itself is temporary, but the rewards and access to them are permanent).

Of course, this idea leads to the problem of how much karma to charge for high end items like dungeon armor sets, and I appreciate this will take a serious amount of effort to work out correctly. But in the long run I think it will make things simpler. Players can stop fussing about what they are doing and just have fun, knowing they will be rewarded for it any which way they choose. And I am certainly not alone in feeling this way. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard players say “Thank GOD I don’t have to do THAT dungeon again”. Not the impression a game should leave on its players I think.

Please let me know what you think,

Regards,
Angelus

Well… what would be the point of doing dungeons if I can just get the armors by something something else that yields more Karma?

Other than that, it’s too big of an idea. While it might simplify things, implementing it would not be simple. You’re talking revamping every single dungeon in the game, revamping dailies, doing something about Laurels, doing something about guild commendations.

Quite simply, currency is the kind of idea that you decide early on in the development process, so altering it now wouldn’t be a plausible option.

That would be your choice though wouldn’t it? you could do a dungeon, any dungeon, or you could do something else.

I am aware that whilst the idea itself might be simple, getting to work correctly is a huge amount of effort, having to price everything correctly, refunding current currencies, changing karma rewards for daily, events, etc…

I’m glad you raised the point though, it is one that really does need to be considered seriously before deciding whether implementing such an idea is viable. But that part is really up to the developers. From players I’m more interested in hearing whether they like the actual idea.