Reason for secrecy about the DR system
First off, I understand the secrecy about the DR system. Assumption: the more information players have, the more likely they are to figure out a way around it. Assumption: the only way to fix/stop exploiting is when players stay ignorant about how they are suppose to be rewarded for their efforts. These are reasonable assumptions, but flawed. I understand that there’s no such thing as a “perfected” game. There will always be bugs and players w/ their much bigger population and pooled time availability, will always find more loopholes than you can patch.
However, there are more imaginative fixes than “hey lets not tell them anything.” How about, lets look at like to fix this better? Case in point: Magg path in CoF. Patch after patch, people find a way to jump over, and log on alts to collect rewards too. Beautiful solution: can’t attack the final boss until the mag path is done. First, even if you did jump over it wouldn’t do you any good. And you can’t even log on alts because you have to do the real fight. Two loopholes fixed w/ one change.
Similarly, there’s no shortcuts or loopholes for stopping bugs or exploits. Sorry, but you guys are still going to have to fix things for real. Not giving info on the DR system did not fix Mag path exploits, a real fix to the last boss and making mag walk back did. A lack of transparency only makes legit players rage and non-hardcorers give up in frustration.
Industry Standard
GW2 is not the first MMO and it won’t be the last. And unfair as it may be, you will be compared to other games, and expected to perform similarly or better because you’re newer. That doesn’t just mean innovative fights, it also mean a solid UI. It’s the little details and the way the interface works that signals something that’s newer, shinier, and better.
It’s industry standard to let players know how they will be rewarded, how much, and when. A dungeon status check in MMOs have been around for ages. Once again, not unreasonable to have a status window letting you know if you’re speed running too fast, how many rewards you will receive if you run a certain path again, and when the reset is. See the other NCSoft title, Aion, for a straight forward and useful implementation of this feature. So please, bring your UI up to par, take the guesswork out of this.
Motivating Players to Break your System
What happens when thousand of players are given no information about an aspect of the game that is important for their character’s gearing, looks, or legendary crafting? We try to find out, by testing things in whichever way we can, by trying different things. And if we come across bugs or unexplained diminished rewards because there is no transparent information? We try to get around it. See how that works? So the less transparent you are, the harder you make the players work to find out that information for themselves, the more likely they are to find loopholes and exploits. Stop treating us like we’re all stupid cows too dumb or lazy to figure things out. I expect that line of thinking from forum trolls, not experienced devs and community managers.
How Transparency and Cooperation Works
Ever go to a team working event and tell your teammates they’re shady kittens who are uncooperative and cannot be trusted? How much cooperation and honestly do you usually get back when you take that approach? In my experience, if you treat people like pieces of kitten, that how they tend to treat you.
In this relationship, you, the developers, and we, the players, have a common goal to make dungeons a great experience. This works alot better if we feel like we’re treated like respectable and valuable human beings. You be upfront about how things are suppose to work, and the community returns the favor by being prompt and transparent about bugs and exploits that we find. The relationship between a gaming company and the players plays a significant part in how good a game is. The relationship is just as much part of the equation as how pretty your graphics are or how balanced your dungeons are. Tell us how things are suppose to work, so we can support you in making it work.
tl:dr Lack of transparency leads to more frustrated legit players and doesn’t make motivated players too stupid to figure things out. It’s counterproductive and a lack of dungeon status is out of fashion with the times.