Guild Wars 2

There is a fundamental root cause to nearly all of the endgame issues today. Issues such as the necessity of DR code to address karma/gold farming/botters, WvW population and turnout, difficulty of finding dungeon groups for less popular dungeons and the sharp fall off in interest post end-game. This is all because Arenanet broke their #1 rule, the game at the end IS different to the one that people have been playing and they’re not necessarily happy about it.

“Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes” – Jon Peters, ArenaNet Game Designer

The one thing everyone agrees on is how fantastic the 1-80 game is. You are able to level through that and your personal story in any way you see fit, xp is rewarded for everything from WvW to crafting and you can do any combination of hearts, DE’s, dynamic events, exploration etc. Bugs aside, no one complains about the content before the endgame and Anet’s success and glowing praise mainly comes from this portion. It’s only when you hit the endgame that things change, despite trying to avoid otherwise. When endgame arrives, players compartmentalize and despite promises to the contrary, the grind begins. In having essentially four different forms of currency i.e. karma, duneon tokens, gold and badges of honor with karma additionally being tied to character, players are forced into a narrowly focused efficient grind, and not necessarily playing what’s enjoyable or with any degree of variety just to get what they want. Compounding this problem are the rewards NOT being equal i.e. karma armor is inferior in stat choice and also often in looks. I’ll get further into problems and solutions below. No one ever says “I just want to get this kitten over and done with and never see it again” from 1-80, but they do when being forced to run the same dungeon over and over again. The solution then is to make all of these “currencies” as fluid and interchangeable as possible, with as much respect to the player’s time as the 1-80 game and always ensuring that regardless of activity – the player is always making some level of progress and can always exchange their “reward” for one they will actually use, something which the 1-80 game perfected.

The goal should be to encourage the players to spread out and enjoy as much of the content as possible instead of compartmentalizing them into a narrow portion which is the opposite of the game leading to that point, and also to not penalize anyone for helping a friend or trying something they wouldn’t normally be doing i.e. PVP or running a dungeon that doesn’t contribute any tokens towards their particular set.

I’ll address each problem categorized by currency below:

Karma (problems)

• Either useless to a character and just sitting in their “inventory” or it is the only endgame alternative if a player does not enjoy or have time for dungeon running. Forced to use the character you need karma on
• Gain by farming can be small compared to WvW, if a player does not do or enjoy PVP they can be disadvantaged
• All armour pieces cost 42k universally which is too high of a cost especially for smaller pieces.
• Players are fighting to tag every mob just to make sure they get gold rewards, and just wanting to get through this has created a need for DR/anti botting code.

Karma (solutions)

• Account bound karma, allow players to make use of karma between characters. This also frees up the player to more freely choose the character they want to play with, not the one they need the karma on.
• Karma exchange for dungeon tokens which can help players short on time/unable to do dungeons and provide relief on not having to do things all over again for alts
• 42k and 38k for chest and pants sounds right, the smaller pieces should follow the dungeon pricing scheme. 12k for helm, boots, shoes, and 16k for shoulders
• Allow dungeon tokens, not gold to be exchanged for karma also which will free up some of the farming pressure thus keeping karma as an “earned”, not bought currency.

Dungeon Tokens (problems)

• The #1 problem, being forced to run a dungeon repetitively over and over again with the worst case in going for the full set. Being “penalized” from spending time to help friends and seeing no reward, splitting friend and guild groups up instead of being the activity to bring people together.
• Dungeon rewards do not scale or adjust to effort i.e. some paths such as CoE path 3 or Arah are far more costly in time and risk, yet the costs for rewards and tokens received are the same.
• Tokens are not exchangeable or usable for anyone who actually just runs them for the challenge/content. ArenaNet would really score a coup if they manged to redefine the raiding game as well as they did for 1-80 into one people actually played because they enjoyed the dungeons, not for the rewards
• Story mode groups are already very hard to put together since they don’t reward tokens or anything else useful for the endgame.

Dungeon Tokens (Solutions)

• Universal token. Harder paths and dungeon difficulties with higher payouts adjusted for average time/difficulty. A compromise from the universal token solution to maintain “bragging rights” could also be a dungeon token trader akin to the dye and rune traders from GW1 as described here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Dungeon-Token-Trader-i-e-Dye-Trader/first#post489479
• Allow tokens to be exchanged for karma. Going by 60 tokens for one run as a fraction of a chest piece cost of 390 and applying the same ratio to the karma cost 60 tokens should be worth 6462 karma (rounded) or similar.
• Reward tokens in story mode, the same 60 token amount without diminishing returns. Again this would help “progress” players into explorable earlier while keeping an incentive for completed players to return and help out others if they have hit DR in other paths for the day

Badges of Honour (problems)

• Costs currently are far too high.
• Badges are not consistently rewarded and there are issues with not being able to loot them while being away from the front line
• MANY more hours required to earn rewards compared to karma or dungeons.

Badges of Honour (solutions)

• Being able to exchange tokens or karma for badges again would be the best solution but this could be spurious as there IS an intent for these sets to be rewards for high numbers of kills. However in practice so far the player community cares very little about where/what any exotic came from, only other than it’s exotic and preferences are mainly aesthetic and stat based in that order, not status related to the way it is earned. Being able to exchange them for tokens or karma but not the other way around should be the way to go for now.

Gold (problems)

• Crafted armor suffers from a lack of desirability/options as an alternative to dungeon gear while exotic weapons and jewelcrafted accessories are viable and in demand.
• Crafted armor lacks the power, toughness, vitality combination which is the most popular stat combination in the game
• Cultural armor costs are too high especially for their stat value

Gold (solutions)

• Give crafted armor more variations by adding some kind of “insignia” for different sets when they are added to the game.
• Same as above for power, toughness, vitality.
• Allow master armormakers to craft the respective cultural armors for less cost than the vendor price which can still be an option if you can’t find someone to do it.

These changes would all (for their respective categories) spread out the endgame effort rather than concentrating and reducing it to a grind, whichever path you take and would maintain the happiness that comes with having a variety of means much like the 1-80 game did.

fathamburger.8453:

Allow tokens to be exchanged for karma. Going by 60 tokens for one run as a fraction of a chest piece cost of 390 and applying the same ratio to the karma cost each token should be worth 6462 karma (rounded) or similar.

First let me say that your post deserve more time than i got to give.

But let me point out 1 problem with it. Which is this karma ratio you got here.

Farming orr , which is one of the best ways to get karma , gives you 375 karma / event , most of us got buffs , but lets keep it at that.

You can farm 180 tokens , in 1:30/2 hrs doing dungs , now 180 × 6462 = 1,163,160 karma , that is 1:30/2 hrs. You just finished karma grind in the game.

Im not saying that is bad , hey i would be glad to end all karma grind , but i dont think Anet would aprove that.

Then the question appears , how much karma is worth one token, and the opposite? Afterall , the trade must be fair both ways.

Very nice and well presented read, and I agree with the majority of your points and solutions.

Karma

I think the problem with this is that, like most other things, there isn’t enough variety of activities that grant Karma. At the moment in PvE, events are the only thing that grant Karma, and since the higher areas have a higher rate of Karma gain, it means that them areas are overcrowded.

I’d say the solution to this is rather than exchange Dungeon Tokens, but flesh out the amount of activities that grant Karma, and make these activities require the players to leave that one spot. A couple of things I suggested in some threads are:

• Make Ameranth the new Nicolas – Kind of like Nic in GW1, Ameranth would travel all over, asking you to bring a number of items, and in exchange, give you a Gift.

• Add Daily Order and Pact Missions when you get to the respective points in the story. These missions would stay in your mailbox (with a free transport stone to the mission) until you have such a time to do them, meaning players with less time wouldn’t be at a disadvantage.

• Helping Newbies – Leading a group that hasn’t done a Dungeon Run before, for example, would grant bonus Karma at the end of the run.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/The-Karma-Konundrum-The-Farming-Shore/first#post485986

Badges of Honour

As with Karma, there aren’t enough activities that reward these.

Since killing is the only way to get them, this leads to the zerg way of thinking. Helping take a point, defending a point, attacking caravans, defending caravans. In short, anything that helps your team gain points in WvW should grant badges of Honour.

Nox Aeterna.2965:

fathamburger.8453:

Allow tokens to be exchanged for karma. Going by 60 tokens for one run as a fraction of a chest piece cost of 390 and applying the same ratio to the karma cost each token should be worth 6462 karma (rounded) or similar.

First let me say that your post deserve more time than i got to give.

But let me point out 1 problem with it. Which is this karma ratio you got here.

Farming orr , which is one of the best ways to get karma , gives you 375 karma / event , most of us got buffs , but lets keep it at that.

You can farm 180 tokens , in 1:30/2 hrs doing dungs , now 180 × 6462 = 1,163,160 karma , that is 1:30/2 hrs. You just finished karma grind in the game.

Im not saying that is bad , hey i would be glad to end all karma grind , but i dont think Anet would aprove that.

Then the question appears , how much karma is worth one token, and the opposite? Afterall , the trade must be fair both ways.

Thanks for pointing that out, I meant that 60 tokens should be worth 6462 karma. I actually started writing this a few weeks ago but only got around to finishing it today, surprising that is the only error I made. I’m not much of a karma farmer actually.. have done a grand total of about 3 hours lol and while the first two were bearable while catching up on skype with a friend, the third hour was not. I was like.. if I wanted this kitten I’d play WoW… but I was basing this on each dungeon run taking about an hour being a conservative PUG estimate. Of course you have runs where people are inexperienced, someone drop outs and you have to zone out to find someone else etc. Full disclosure, it seems the way my chars are developing I will have one with dungeon gear, another karma farmed and hopefully one with crafted and one with transmuted cultural. Given the last two are kinda pipe dreamy unless ANet makes at least some of these changes, there’s still gonna be a lot more dungeon farming than I would like involved. At least dungeons give tokens AND gold.

Anyway.. rate isn’t set in stone, Arenanet would have better data than I do but while one character isn’t so bad.. I’m not exactly willing to karma farm for all of them and my buffs after the first one would run out but the key points of exchanging and having a variety of ways to get to the goals are the main points I really want to get across.

ya they are pretty much the same issues i got and another BIG one is WvW seams extremely BLAND with no ranks to gain or any progress towards ur character it seam’s like WASTED time and instead of an enjoyable experience instead of turned to a boring back and forth grind with no possible GAIN anyways they NEED to have a pvp ranking system similar to Warhammer mmo or DAOC

Since I only have one character at level 80, I cannot speak to the end game. But what I have found is all of a sudden I can’t go off exploring unless I am in a group and most often they don’t want to go where I do.

In the higher levels the mobs re-spawn ridiculously fast; so fast in fact, that I can’t even go where I want to within reason because I am so involved with killing them step-by-step. By the time I get to where I wanted to go, the place is overrun and I am dead.

I love exploring and would really like it if there was some explorable version at end-game for folks like me. I would rather explore than fight all the time and doing diplomatic events instead. I would find that very engrossing and rewarding if they offered up Karma and special diplomatic status for completion.

lynspottery.6529:

Since I only have one character at level 80, I cannot speak to the end game. But what I have found is all of a sudden I can’t go off exploring unless I am in a group and most often they don’t want to go where I do.

In the higher levels the mobs re-spawn ridiculously fast; so fast in fact, that I can’t even go where I want to within reason because I am so involved with killing them step-by-step. By the time I get to where I wanted to go, the place is overrun and I am dead.

I love exploring and would really like it if there was some explorable version at end-game for folks like me. I would rather explore than fight all the time and doing diplomatic events instead. I would find that very engrossing and rewarding if they offered up Karma and special diplomatic status for completion.

You’ll get to this point like the rest of us Lyn, but yeah.. I did get a bit burned out on endless war related take/retake events by about 50-60

+1 bump.. this is really too important for Anet not to see.

Hardly the “root” of all mmo end-game problems. You mentioned ideas that would fix small scratches, though I agree with some of them and they may help. However, everything you mentioned has a connection with some “material” gain or some progression, ranking, etc… in the game. Or “better rewarding” is what this threads about. I’m a pvper and I’m not looking for better rewarding such as a more efficient dungeon token/gold/karma, etc… system. Rather, I’m looking for content that increase the quality of the “gameplay” itself such as adding new attribute stats, weapons, and skills.

Imo the worst idea was to make the dungeon rewards account bound. Sure, it sounds good in theory that people shouldn’t be able to pick up some dungeon gear just by trading for it, but in practice the only people running the dungeons are the people who don’t yet have the gear from there and still actually want the gear.

At least back in the day you could trade your drops from UW/FoW for things you actually did want; spending time in a dungeon that didn’t particularly drop what you wanted was still a productive way to spend your time, and A-Net needs to re-establish this principle if they want people to remain interested in end-game content.

I also PVP but you don’t have to be so snide about it Phira, plus I never said I was addressing “all” MMO endgame problems, just the ones in this game This half hearted attempt at leaving in some kind of “Grind progression” to keep the attention of the WoW kids isn’t really doing them any favours. The audiences are different and though GW2 could do with some 25-40 man large scale content, it doesn’t neccesarily need the grind associated with that. Again this was marketed as “no grind” or no raid progression game that is starkly different to 1-80, but what they have here is the “get your toes wet” version just to test if this is the direction that they may need to go in like the rest of the market. However they could handle the progression in line with the philosophies established in the rest of the design up to the end game, my point is that they haven’t.

Good call on the trading Xarog, people could essentially either help their friends or still run those dungeons to save up for other characters or future sets

I agree with what you’re saying in relation to large scale group content and perhaps it being possible with dungeons. I’m surprised there isn’t much talk about the idea of large group dungeon play, but I believe it would be a success. I understand people will say that they don’t want the gear grind wheel and that’s fine, but at least make it rewarding.

I understand it was advertised that dungeons would only involve 5-players, but why not explore the idea of large scale competitive group content? Guilds want more to do with their new friends besides WvW and it would invigorate the masses to accomplishing goals within large scale group play.

Guild Wars 2 has the epic capacity to support such a system with dynamic events that can really be challenging to large groups of players. There are some interesting threads talking about the idea of large scale group play that is very challenging, and I really hope you all look into this being possible.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Combat-Dynamic-Events-what-s-the-point-if-they-re-easy-mode/page/1

Summary: I and many people in my guild want hard challenging large scale PvE group play. Failure/downed/dying is healthy to push players into playing better. We don’t want to zerg bosses, but we want a challenge if we all fail.

Please make it rewarding and explore the idea of large scale dungeon PvE achievements. We as a guild want more to do in a cooperative way besides WvW.

-Thanks