Guild Wars 2

Arenanet envisioned a game that would avoid the many pitfalls of grinding – that would allow the players the freedom to do what they want, when they want, regardless of anything else. At the same time, as the system is currently set up, grinding is essentially inevitable for anyone who has a specific and demanding goal (such as crafting a legendary weapon or obtaining special equipment skins).

This, in and of itself, is not a problem.

There isn’t such a thing as a game that has no grind. You will always be “grinding” for something – grinding for the next level that will unlock the next skill, grinding for money to buy new equipment, etc. etc. etc. However, you can limit how tedious grinding becomes by opening up a variety of options towards obtaining the same goal.

For the most part, I think Arenanet did this well. You can gain experience from crafting, from exploring, from hearts, from dynamic events, from gathering, from dungeons, from reviving people and who knows what else. This is a wonderful system that encourages players to engage in a wide array of play styles and allows them to fall back on their preferred method whenever they desire.

Recent changes have…well… changed this. In the fight against botting (which I admittedly know almost nothing about) many people seem outraged by the box it puts players in. While that box isn’t so terrible, and I am in no way denouncing the company or the game in general, that doesn’t change the fact that constructive criticism has the possibility to improve the current situation.

So! Here are some suggestions. : )

1. Rewards scale based on difficulty.

Easy things should give “easy” rewards. Hard things should give “hard” rewards. If a quest takes a lot of time and effort to complete, you should get equally good loot, gold, karma, and experience (regardless of the level of the area). If a quest is a breeze and you blast through it in a manner of moments without a thought, you should get comparatively scaled down rewards.

This means that if you’re a level 80 character doing a particularly tough boss that takes a lot of effort, you should not get a bunch of level 43 blue gear out of it that sells for next to nothing and is completely useless to your character. If you are a level 80 character doing a high level quest that is nonetheless extremely, mind-numbingly easy, I don’t believe you should get massive rewards from it either.

This way you get aptly rewarded for doing things that deserve to be rewarded, and you place a natural incentive against farming fast, easy quests for high amounts of gold-karma-blah-blah-blah.

I don’t know how this system could be implemented or if it would even work if it was. But it’s an idea.

2. Area Scaling

This is similar, if not exactly the same. If you want to scale characters to an area’s level, that’s fine. But in doing so, you should also scale the rewards to the character’s level. This is done in some small aspects, like occasionally getting level 80 gear in level 15 zones, but should be more universal.

Now, this would require a fair amount of tweaking because level 80 characters have an advantage in low level zones that is immediately obvious. You don’t want them surging low level zones to get the same rewards as high level zones. You can fix this a variety of ways, the easiest probably being balancing the level-scaling itself a bit more so that level 80 characters don’t have as much as an advantage as they currently do.

As a lot of people are against level-scaling in general, this might be an extremely unpopular idea. I personally view leveling as an opportunity to unlock new skills and explore new areas, not as a way to make the content easier. I enjoy rolling back to a low level in low level areas, but obviously it isn’t for everyone.

If, however, you were to remove the level-80-in-level-15-zone advantage even more than currently, plus scale the rewards based on your character’s level (and the difficulty of the content, as stated in number one), you would encourage players to stop farming Orr and actually go explore the rest of the world as well.

3. Account-bound Karma.

I think this is extremely self-explanatory. With the ridiculous amount of karma required to reach certain goals, making Karma account-bound shouldn’t even be an issue. The amount you have to gain is still the same, but you are able to spread that amount over multiple characters and play-styles. This way people don’t feel forced into playing one character forever, grinding and grinding and grinding until they are sick of it just to reach a goal. They have the ability to explore multiple play-styles with multiple classes and characters without being punished.

Really, this one is so obvious that I don’t even know why it isn’t already done…

4. Lower costs or increase income.

It seems like if you want to have any available income, you either have to be constantly farming dungeons or you have to cough up the real-life cash to convert into in game gold.

Crafting, gathering, salvaging, waypoints, repairs, equipment upgrades, everything costs money. That’s fine, but with the amount of money you currently make on a regular basis in the game, it isn’t exactly balanced. And what I mean to say is that it isn’t balanced for the people who aren’t constantly doing dungeon runs or popping off fifty quests in a row in thirty minutes. Not everyone plays that way. They shouldn’t get punished for it.

5. Dungeon coins.

I’m a little uncertain about this. I personally find it annoying that you have to do the same dungeon fifty-kagillion times in order to get a dungeon skin that, frankly, isn’t that above and beyond oh-my-gawd-amazing in the first place…

Perhaps making the dungeon coins the same (as in, you get the same coin for every dungeon to buy any set you want regardless) would be a better idea. At the same time, to prevent people from farming the “easiest” dungeon, you might need to put in a system that prevents people from running the same dungeon multiple times within a certain time period.

Furthermore, with the coins being the same throughout the dungeons, you should scale how many you receive based on the difficulty of that dungeon.

Dungeon A → Moderate Difficulty → 30 Dungeon Coins (used to buy any dungeon set)
Dungeon B → High Difficulty → 50 Dungeon Coins (also used to buy any dungeon set)

This way people will explore all the dungeons and all the difficulties because the rewards will scale.

If you don’t want people to grind, don’t require them to grind by setting a ridiculously high cost and then telling them “but you can only reach that cost by doing one specific dungeon”. That’s counter-productive.

This was long. I wonder if anyone will read through it all, let alone a dev. : P

Anyway, please remember before you decide to flame me, these are my OPINIONS and are subject to change. I am not flailing my arms whining and screaming that my way is the best and everyone else is stupid and should go to hell. If you think I’m wrong, then fine. If you explain why you think I’m wrong, I may even come to realize my mistake and agree with you!

These are only my thoughts, please don’t murder me (or anyone else) based on them.

: D

I’ve read through it all. Good and comprehensive. The only thing I disagree with the the pricing/income changes. It feels fine. I’d rather it not blow up to WoW proportions. I love shrieking in joy when I get 20 silver off of something.

Thanks for reading it! : P

You have a good point and I totally agree. I don’t want the market to turn into something where everyone has a ridiculous amount of spare gold to toss around. Obviously that would make gold in general a lot less worthwhile and the value would drop drastically.

What I mean more is that you either need to give players a small bump in their expendable income, or you need to reduce the prices of certain common costs. For specifics, I’m talking about the cost of using Waypoints, which at level 80 seems ridiculously inflated when you keep in mind the costs of everything else you also have to pay for. Armor repair and traveling costs should probably get at least a little cheaper and, if they don’t, players should at least have a little bit more money on hand to use them.

As it is right now, I feel that unless you are doing a lot of grinding, you don’t usually have the luxury to afford these common things while still being able to upgrade your gear, craft, so on and so forth. : ) So basically, I’m suggesting only a very small change, not a large scale one.

You’ll find that money is much easier to come by when you spend some time each day on the Trading Post. On good days, I can make 50 extra silver in a single day, just selling things off I don’t really need. Most people prefer to do crafting to make their money, but simply being a mats supplier can be modestly efficient. Copper ore is one of the biggest money makers out there. A single vein can cover my waypoint costs for the hour. Find more ore, combined with other loot you find and questing payments, self sufficiency becomes much, much easier. This is especially good because there is little to no grind here. Just pick up some mats while you’re out. Maybe take a minute out of your travel and harvest the ore near a road, then go back to your business. It’s one of the reasons I like this game so much.