Raid is a challenging content, that was what anet was saying before they implement it. Anet said it would not be à content for everyone then.
Agreed.
They put à nice reward behind them, because, you know, doing raid is a little more harder than spamming 1 in open world, and also to motivate people to try harder content, to challenge themselves. Yes, even in a game, some people like challenge.
This also may have been their motivation, but of course it was a misguided one, because 1. Legendary Armor is too big a thing to use for this purpose, and 2. it takes too much accomplishment to earn them this way. Rewards used to incentivize players to run content should be designed to get them to try it, not to get them to spend tens of hours on that content. People make mistakes, and just because ANet made a mistake here does not mean they are incapable of correcting it. The worst thing they could do is just never own up to their error.
But, some other people don’t like challenge in a game. They see the shinny, and they are: oh, shinny, I want it. Oh wait, I have to do something à little difficult to have it! No way, it’s à game. I’m supposing to have everything I want, in a easy way. I don’t care if people put à lot of effort for the reward, I want it for no effort…
More or less, yeah, and the important thing to keep in mind is that these people aren’t wrong.
But we will never agree between people who don’t mind challenge and a little work for a reward, and people who want all in an easy way.
Sure we can. We can provide challenging content for those who prefer challenge, and provide easier content for people who prefer less challenge, and each can choose the content that makes them happiest, everybody wins.
This also may have been their motivation, but of course it was a misguided one, because 1. Legendary Armor is too big a thing to use for this purpose, and 2. it takes too much accomplishment to earn them this way. Rewards used to incentivize players to run content should be designed to get them to try it, not to get them to spend tens of hours on that content. People make mistakes, and just because ANet made a mistake here does not mean they are incapable of correcting it. The worst thing they could do is just never own up to their error.
It was not a mistake, It was a great move. I know à lot of players who are now trying raid, trying to get better, trying to improve, thx to that. You disagree, but that’s normal since you’re not that kind of player. But again, that’s not a problem, and anet know before HOT that they would be people like you.
More or less, yeah, and the important thing to keep in mind is that these people aren’t wrong.
Yes they are wrong. So for you it’s perfectly normal and fair to have the same rewards as people who put à lot of effort in raids…it’s totally illogical.
Sure we can. We can provide challenging content for those who prefer challenge, and provide easier content for people who prefer less challenge, and each can choose the content that makes them happiest, everybody wins.
That i agree. And since it’s easier content, as for SAB, rewards can’t be the same.
If you care about the reward then do the content or buy it from raid sellers.
I don’t sit here complaining about tribulation mode in SAB and demanding storm wizard skins to be given to me by running infantile mode.
It’s the same for legendary weapons (pre HoT), WvW/PvPers had to do PvE that they had no interest in just to get a shiny. Now you guys have to raid even if you don’t want to, big whoop man up and get good or buy them.
None of you are entitled to anything, if you spent half the time posting here actually in game practicing, you’d have cleared all the raids and probably have them down on farm by now.
It’s the same for legendary weapons (pre HoT), WvW/PvPers had to do PvE that they had no interest in just to get a shiny.
really good PvP players could get it through tournaments. The rest (and all the WvW community) was completely right in complaining about that.
In fact, PvP reward tracks were created specifically to allow PvPers to not run the PvE content
Now you guys have to raid even if you don’t want to
And it’s still bad. And PvPers/WvWers still can’t get it, and still have to do PvE content. Only this time the content is much more restrictive.
None of you are entitled to anything
Yes, you included.
if you spent half the time posting here actually in game practicing, you’d have cleared all the raids and probably have them down on farm by now.
And? What that would accomplish? I’d still hate every minute of it. It’s a game, i don’t play it to do things i hate.
It was not a mistake, It was a great move. I know à lot of players who are now trying raid, trying to get better, trying to improve, thx to that. You disagree, but that’s normal since you’re not that kind of player. But again, that’s not a problem, and anet know before HOT that they would be people like you.
No, it was a mistake. You like it, but that doesn’t make it not a mistake. If they understood that there would be players like me, then they doubly made a mistake to ignore that, but even so, they underestimated the reaction. They’ve made mistakes before and will make mistakes in the future, the only real problem they have is that they often take far too long to correct their mistakes and the damage has already been done. They need to get out front on these sorts of things and announce that fixes are in motion sooner, rather than later.
Yes they are wrong. So for you it’s perfectly normal and fair to have the same rewards as people who put à lot of effort in raids…it’s totally illogical.
Why? Some people enjoy raiding, other people do not. Why do the former people deserve better rewards than the latter, when both are just trying to have fun? Again, people do not deserve things because they “put in effort.” People only deserve things when they provide a valuable service. Usually as a side effect of providing a valuable service, effort is involved, but the effort itself is not what is being compensated, it is the service that effort generates.
Running a raid does not benefit anyone. If the player doing it has fun, then that is the benefit he provides himself, but ultimately he is just having fun. Raids are not more deserving of reward than any other activity, because they do not provide any benefit that anything else doesn’t. Someone running a raid provides no more benefit to the game or its developers than someone AFKing in Lion’s Arch.
Now that doesn’t mean that I believe that the rewards between raiding and AFKing in LA should be the same, just that the raider is not OWED more reward than the AFKer, and if ANet decided to reward the AFKer just as much, that would be fair. because the AFKer has provided exactly as much value to ANet.
Now game design concept is something else entirely, it is a good idea to provide incentive for more difficult content, but only within reason, and in the least disruptive manner possible. It should be geared towards volume, rather than quality, so that the harder the content, the more you get, rather than the better you get. This allows players of easier content to always keep up if they play more of it, rather than having certain items permently out of reach.
But ultimately we just need to kill this perverse sense of entitlement, that “I raid, therefore I am owed things!”
Nonsense.
You are playing a game, you are owed nothing. Ever.
Then i have great news. You too can have the reward if you stop complaining and start playing!
I’ve been playing every day. If you mean “start playing the raids in their current form,” then no, because I find those to be awful and would not enjoy doing that. “just play the raids” is not a solution that would lead to me being happy. ANet providing a realistic alternative to running the existing raids would make me happy, so that is what I’m pushing for. Either help me to achieve that goal, or just agree that you don’t care if people like me are happy and move on.
Q: If I don’t like buying houses (because of their colour or their size) while playing Monopoly, why can’t I get hotel ?
A: Because that is the rule!
Q: But games are suppose to only be fun !
A: Yes, and they can only be fun if there are rules. If not then I decided it’s a game over for you… now !
Then don’t play it, nobody’s forcing you to play raids. It’s like complaining about hating SAB but wanting SAB yellow skins, nobody owes you anything.
I know i’m not entitled to legendary stuff that’s why I actually commit to doing raids and PvP for the backpiece instead of sitting here crying and being bad at the game and hoping they change the game to cater to me instead of self improvement.
Do you think Raids in GW2 were a bad idea?
The idea isn’t bad, the implementation is bad.
Anet sacrificed other content like dungeons for something a few people do one time a week.
Q: If I don’t like buying houses (because of their colour or their size) while playing Monopoly, why can’t I get hotel ?
A: Because that is the rule!Q: But games are suppose to only be fun !
A: Yes, and they can only be fun if there are rules. If not then I decided it’s a game over for you… now !
First, when has anyone ever accused Monopoly of being fun? Second, most people play Monopoly by house rules anyway, eliminating rules that the family agrees make the game less interesting to them.
I know i’m not entitled to legendary stuff that’s why I actually commit to doing raids and PvP for the backpiece instead of sitting here crying and being bad at the game and hoping they change the game to cater to me instead of self improvement.
but you believe that if you do those things, you are entitled to get Legendary gear, while those who do not do those things are not entitled to them. The fact is that all players are equally as entitled or unentitled to them, the only distinction is what ANet chooses to give out under what conditions. If they make an easy mode raid, and it includes a path to Legendary armor, then the players who receive them that way are exactly as entitled to it as you are for doing hard mode.
Do you think Raids in GW2 were a bad idea?
The idea isn’t bad, the implementation is bad.
Anet sacrificed other content like dungeons for something a few people do one time a week.
You’re so wrong…Anet sacrified dungeon 3 years ago when the dungeon team was dismissed. Then they decided to nerf reward because of économics reasons and to move players out of them. raid team is only 6 dev, you know…
you won’t have it because you refuse to adapt and put some effort in raid, that’s all. And since it’s Anet decision, i guess they were thinking that legendary armors were a proper reward for challenging pve content, aka raid, and that people who mastered raid would deserve legendary armor. How is it unfair? we play the same game after all. The difference is that some people don’t mind putting effort in raiding, with countless wipes, changing stuff, buying expensive foods etc, while others want to do nothing and have the reward. Who do you think deserve the reward? the lazy one or the worker? I have the answer for you, if you want…
Here you really lost me.
GW2 is a game. Not a exercise, not a job, not a sports club. A game. I said it when the fractal backpiece was introduced for Fractals only, I said it when the backpiece for PvP was announced, I said it for legendary armor:
Gating content behind game modes is plain and simple wrong and bad for the game. It breeds exactly the discussions we are having here right now.I know that many people think that people are looking up with envy and want on your efforts, but I stand on the firm believe that nobody remembers the name of your toon after he has passed them in Lions arch with your Eternal title and your grinded Astralaria. So the number of people that maybe care for that is in your closest group, aka your raiding team and your guild, and a few people that write you PMs about how that looks on you.
Regarding the question who deserves content X more, I would be with you if this was one of the activities I mentioned above, aka work, sport, exercise. I believe that first and foremost effort and dedication by playing the game should be rewarded in a game, not skill or reflexes and effort for builds which is a non-game activity anyway in my mind. Skills and reflexes should net you more, but a less skilled person should not be forced to go out emptyhanded off anything.
tl:dr Gating is wrong, and nobody cares if you have the Eternal title or Astralaria.
Here’s the big thing, this is extremely important.
You can’t think of an MMO like just another game. You are correct that in general games like Call of Duty, or a board game like monopoly, or a casual game of football once you win that’s it. No one cares if you beat everyone once or got a really good score.
An MMO however does foster some long-term rewards for playing, treating it like every other kind of game out there is going to naturally give you a bad time. Reward structures in all MMOs have to give short-term rewards, and long-term rewards to encourage you to play. To encourage you to improve at a certain area and eventually get the reward you do not see everyone else have. This goes back years of MMO reward structure as back then MMOs needed to keep players around to make money, regardless of how little you think of other players and what they have on their person, there will always be someone else who does care.
In fact, the biggest reason we are having these conversations now rather than years ago is because a certain population this wonderful game attracted is under the presumption that they can treat this game like a normal game of kickball or some trivial activity. It’s not quite that simple for a myriad of reasons. I’ll follow up on this more later after work, but ultimately creating rewards divided into content sections is actually healthier for the game and population than catering all the rewards for everyone’s interests.
+1 Sykper /thread
An MMO however does foster some long-term rewards for playing, treating it like every other kind of game out there is going to naturally give you a bad time. Reward structures in all MMOs have to give short-term rewards, and long-term rewards to encourage you to play. To encourage you to improve at a certain area and eventually get the reward you do not see everyone else have.
There’s a mix of true and false in this paragraph. You definitely do need short term and long term rewards, and we all agree on that.
You don’t need to encourage players to improve at anything, if they want to, they should have the opportunity to do so, but if they don’t want to, that’s fine too, so long as they’re enjoying themselves.
And the “reward not everyone else has” bit, that’s completely unnecessary. Provide plenty of options, but let people stand out on their own, by making choices that other people haven’t chosen from available options, rather than enforcing that only some people can even have certain options. There’s no need for that and it just fosters elitism and causes those without to feel worse about their game experience. For every one person who is slightly happier because he has some super rare widget that other people do not, you have dozens of other people who are more sad than he is happy, because they do not have the widget that they want to have. The net happiness decrease benefits no one.
This goes back years of MMO reward structure as back then MMOs needed to keep players around to make money, regardless of how little you think of other players and what they have on their person, there will always be someone else who does care.
Yes, the person who has the item, but him caring about it does not trump the many people who do not, and would just like the item for themselves. And yes, it goes back to previous MMOs, but previous MMOs had different business models, where you did want to “lock people in” to a gear treadmill that never ended, to keep people playing enough to keep their subscriptions active. GW2 does not need that model, they have a model based on players enjoying their game, and playing it as much or as little as they want, “progressing” as much or as little as they want, and hopefully buying things in the gem store because they are HAPPY and want to extend that experience, rather than paying a monthly sub because they MUST if they want to keep on the treadmill.
The old ways MMO practices that you lionize are like someone in WWII trumpeting the virtues of the noble battlefield horse.
In fact, the biggest reason we are having these conversations now rather than years ago is because a certain population this wonderful game attracted is under the presumption that they can treat this game like a normal game of kickball or some trivial activity.
You mean “the population that plays GW2 rather than WoW.” Yeah, they do think that, because that’s the game they bought three years ago and have been playing since, and would like to continue playing more of.
None of you are entitled to anything
Yes, you included.
This Won the Thread.
This also may have been their motivation, but of course it was a misguided one, because 1. Legendary Armor is too big a thing to use for this purpose, and 2. it takes too much accomplishment to earn them this way. Rewards used to incentivize players to run content should be designed to get them to try it, not to get them to spend tens of hours on that content. People make mistakes, and just because ANet made a mistake here does not mean they are incapable of correcting it. The worst thing they could do is just never own up to their error.
The reward to try this piece on content is Legendary armour. The same way that the Legendary SPvP back is incentive to try PvP and the Fractal Backpeice. What about people that don’t like PvP or FotM, should they be entitled to those rewards in unranked or farming level 1 FotM? It’s people like you that want easy mode for everything that will make achieving rare or ‘legendary’ rewards meaningless.
Anet created the precursor crafting a way to aquire legendary weapons more legendary. Killing boss after boss, wiping time after time, hearing the cheers of your members when you finally get that kill…all of that is a journey you can call legendary. Acquiring it through easy mode dilutes all of the fun. If you want to kill the boss for the sake of just killing it then sure bring on easy mode. If you want the armour then take the journey that so many people have put in time and effort to do.
This also may have been their motivation, but of course it was a misguided one, because 1. Legendary Armor is too big a thing to use for this purpose, and 2. it takes too much accomplishment to earn them this way. Rewards used to incentivize players to run content should be designed to get them to try it, not to get them to spend tens of hours on that content. People make mistakes, and just because ANet made a mistake here does not mean they are incapable of correcting it. The worst thing they could do is just never own up to their error.
The reward to try this piece on content is Legendary armour. The same way that the Legendary SPvP back is incentive to try PvP and the Fractal Backpeice. What about people that don’t like PvP or FotM, should they be entitled to those rewards in unranked or farming level 1 FotM? It’s people like you that want easy mode for everything that will make achieving rare or ‘legendary’ rewards meaningless.
Many others have made it clear that they feel that gating things behind specific content is wrong. Not that they are entitled to the item, but that the very act of Content gating items like that is not good for the game as a whole, and that there should have been other ways to get the same items.
Now. Personally I love the smug sense of entitlement that people have thinking that they deserve a special something because they can do this Raid, like somehow they are special, and that is exact problem. You’re not Special. You don’t deserve legendary armor for doing a Raid, because truth is Anet could have given out yellow breathers as the reward for the Raid and give everyone all full sets of Legendary Armor for every toon they had, as Birthday gift if that stuck their fancy.
It’s their game
So please, in the future spare us the painful regurgitation of entitlement because you can do a raid, it’s been established, none of us, are entitled to anything.
The question is not, do you deserve it…. You don’t. You don’t deserve anything for playing a game, the fun is it’s own reward.
The Question is Was it a good idea to Link that Item to that Content
Given that there is a underlying sense of embitterment about the PvP Back item and Fractal item, from the pro-Raids group, it’s clear that no one likes the idea of gating Items behind content they don’t enjoy.
The reward to try this piece on content is Legendary armour. The same way that the Legendary SPvP back is incentive to try PvP and the Fractal Backpeice.
Then it has failed, in both cases, because they are not a “reward to try,” they are “reward to succeed over VERY long periods of time.” They both require dozens of hours at the task and at least a reasonable amount of success at them. This is not how a “trial” reward functions. A trial reward is something that anyone can earn after an hour or two of effort, maximum. Anything beyond that is not a trial reward, it is a long term reward.
There is a place for long term rewards, but the further away you put something, the more routes you should make towards it. If a player tries a specific content for 1-2 hours, then he may decide it’s not for him, but he gave it a fair shot and can move on with a clear conscience. If a player finds after two hours that he does NOT enjoy something, and yet sill has to keep at it for dozens more hours if he wants to get that reward he wanted, then that has totally failed at being a trial reward.
What about people that don’t like PvP or FotM, should they be entitled to those rewards in unranked or farming level 1 FotM? It’s people like you that want easy mode for everything that will make achieving rare or ‘legendary’ rewards meaningless.
Here’s what I’ve said in the past about the PvP backpiece, and you can extraopolate similar answers to any other content:
The Ascension is made up of many pieces. Currently the only way to get any of those pieces is advancing through the Path to Ascension meta achievement, which in turn requires you to participate in the Ranked leagues. The way I would see that changed would be to keep one of the smallest ingredients intact, but open up the rest. If you want to earn it entirely through PvP, that path would remain available, but it would not be the only path.
I would leave in the “Recruit’s Wings of Glory” backpiece. This backpiece can ONLY be achieved by getting through the amber ranks at least once, and that would stay intact. Nobody with an Ascension wing could have gotten it without going through amber at least once, which is a task that any player can manage in a few total hours of work, spread as thinly as he might like. If the player spends that time, gets those wings, and never wants to PvP again, then he’d never have to and could still get the Ascension.
Does that mean that the wings would be “given away for free” to that player when the PvPer has to “work for it” (buy doing the activity he already wants to do)? No. He still has to work, it would just be elsewhere in the game. He would still have to earn the other components that a PvPer would need, there would just be alternate ways of earning those compontents. Perhaps they could be purchased from various token vendors around the world, like the ones in HoT metas or dungeons. Perhaps they could be gained in raiding, wouldn’t that be nice for people who already have their armor bits? Hell, part of it could be purchased with Baubles, perhaps, all sorts of things. No one source (outside of PvP) would have all the pieces, so you’d have to spread out a bit, but you’d never have to do any one task for more than a few hours if you really don’t want to, even if the sum total of time and effort put in would end up being equivalent to what it would take to earn it via PvP (and likely a bit more, since PvP is the default home for it).
Anet created the precursor crafting a way to aquire legendary weapons more legendary. Killing boss after boss, wiping time after time, hearing the cheers of your members when you finally get that kill…all of that is a journey you can call legendary. Acquiring it through easy mode dilutes all of the fun.
If that is true for you, then you don’t get it through easy mode. You get it through the way that brings you the most fun. Me, I don’t see it that way, raiding for it would bring no additional fun to me, it would bring only additional misery, so I would prefer to earn it some other way. To each his own.
The reward to try this piece on content is Legendary armour. The same way that the Legendary SPvP back is incentive to try PvP and the Fractal Backpeice.
Then it has failed, in both cases, because they are not a “reward to try,” they are “reward to succeed over VERY long periods of time.” They both require dozens of hours at the task and at least a reasonable amount of success at them. This is not how a “trial” reward functions. A trial reward is something that anyone can earn after an hour or two of effort, maximum. Anything beyond that is not a trial reward, it is a long term reward.
There is a place for long term rewards, but the further away you put something, the more routes you should make towards it. If a player tries a specific content for 1-2 hours, then he may decide it’s not for him, but he gave it a fair shot and can move on with a clear conscience. If a player finds after two hours that he does NOT enjoy something, and yet sill has to keep at it for dozens more hours if he wants to get that reward he wanted, then that has totally failed at being a trial reward.
A reward can be an incentive to make you try to do your best even if you are not payed for your trial. Success should always be your goal.
What reason do you have to ever give your best if the only thing you actually need to do is just “try”?
You can not achieve some goals by taking easier alternative route either.
And if all of that doesn’t seem worth your time then the reward probably isn’t as shiny as you think it is.
(edited by Henry.5713)
Many others have made it clear that they feel that gating things behind specific content is wrong. Not that they are entitled to the item, but that the very act of Content gating items like that is not good for the game as a whole, and that there should have been other ways to get the same items.
I don’t see that as a problem. How can people be motivated to try new things if they can have everything in a same game mode ?
And I don’t pvp, so there are things I will never have…Anet is clear, with the legendary backpacks and armor, that this solution is OK for them.
Now. Personally I love the smug sense of entitlement that people have thinking that they deserve a special something because they can do this Raid, like somehow they are special, and that is exact problem. You’re not Special. You don’t deserve legendary armor for doing a Raid, because truth is Anet could have given out yellow breathers as the reward for the Raid and give everyone all full sets of Legendary Armor for every toon they had, as Birthday gift if that stuck their fancy.
Wrong again, we deserve it because we’re doing raids, and it happens that it’s the raid reward.
You don’t deserve it because you’re not doing raids. So simple I don’t know why you don’t understand…
It’s their game
So please, in the future spare us the painful regurgitation of entitlement because you can do a raid, it’s been established, none of us, are entitled to anything.
indeed, it’s their game, and their choice to reward raid with legendary armor. So pls in the future spare us your entitlement of having every reward in the game when you don’t want to comit some time in some contents…
The Question is Was it a good idea to Link that Item to that Content
I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
For now they chose to give through raid to 1/Evaluate their ability to design raid that people like (I mean the one that are asking for challenging content for more than 2 years) and 2/See if many materials or other things won’t lose too much value because of this.
Maybe for the next expansion there will be a new set of legendary armor released through story achievement, adventures and map meta completion. Those who hate PvE meta will then don’t do it because they don’t find it fun.
But for now it is locked by raid completion and I am sure it attracts people to do raid while they wouldn’t have tried it without the reward.
What reason do you have to ever give your best if the only thing you actually need to do is just “try”?
Fun. If you have no other reason to play the content except for the rewards, then it’s better for everyone if you could get those rewards somewhere else.
And if all of that doesn’t seem worth your time then the reward probably isn’t as shiny as you think it is.
I don’t understand that reasoning. Assuming you’re not a masochist, what reward in a game could be worth so much that you’d accept months of self-punishment for it? What positive effect could come from encouraging such a behaviour?
I don’t see that as a problem. How can people be motivated to try new things if they can have everything in a same game mode ?
The tryout rewards, those that do not require high commitment to that mode.
Wrong again, we deserve it because we’re doing raids, and it happens that it’s the raid reward.
By that reasoning, if it happened to be a reward in other gamemodes, people playing those would deserve it as much as raiders do. Which is what i was saying all along.
indeed, it’s their game, and their choice to reward raid with legendary armor.
It’s also their choice whether to reward other content with it or not.
I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
Maybe you don’t remember, but they have admitted then that the decision to gate ascended, instead of waiting till they were able to implement a more widely accessible system from the get go, was a mistake.
(edited by Astralporing.1957)
What reason do you have to ever give your best if the only thing you actually need to do is just “try”?
Fun. If you have no other reason to play the content except for the rewards, then it’s better for everyone if you could get those rewards somewhere else.
And if all of that doesn’t seem worth your time then the reward probably isn’t as shiny as you think it is.
I don’t understand that reasoning. Assuming you’re not a masochist, what reward in a game could be worth so much that you’d accept months of self-punishment for it? What positive effect could come from encouraging such a behaviour?
I don’t see that as a problem. How can people be motivated to try new things if they can have everything in a same game mode ?
The tryout rewards, those that do not require high commitment to that mode.
Wrong again, we deserve it because we’re doing raids, and it happens that it’s the raid reward.
By that reasoning, if it happened to be a reward in other gamemodes, people playing those would deserve it as much as raiders do. Which is what i was saying all along.
indeed, it’s their game, and their choice to reward raid with legendary armor.
It’s also their choice whether to reward other content with it or not.
I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
Maybe you don’t remember, but they have admitted then that the decision to gate ascended, instead of waiting till they were able to implement a more widely accessible system from the get go, was a mistake.
This is what happens when the people who got trophies for showing up and none of their games kept score grow up…
People do things to earn the rewards, that is the driving force behind every game. No one plays game “just for the fun of it”, that would be boring and a waste of time. People play games to WIN.
I’m finding several arguments in this thread just plain bad.
1 – There seems to be a level of dislike for people who do raids/pvp/whatever only for the rewards. It seems hypocritical when they simultaneously argue that they want a new game mode just so they can get the rewards.
2 – legendary armor is not content. No one is stopping you from entering a raid and completing that content. Let’s no pretend that you are locked out of certain content. Rather, for one reason or another, you’re unable to get the reward.
3 – almost all multiplayer games require some effort to get rewards. Effort-driven rewards increase the longevity of the game. If you want instant access to every piece of content and reward, then play a single player game and use the console.
4 – guild wars 2 has always had exclusive skins and effort-driven rewards. Legendary armor is consistent with this principle.
5 – different people find different things fun. Some people find hard content with prestige rewards fun. Others find easy content, which still awards some cool skins, fun. It’s great that we have both. And you can get top stat gear from both.
6 – giving every single reward through low-effort content decreases the longevity of the game. There would simply be nothing to work towards. Some games address this by increasing the level cap. Others through a gear treadmill. Guild wars 2 does it through masteries and skins.
7 – have fun playing what you like to play. Don’t like raids? Fine, then open world, dungeons, fractals, pvp, wvw, SAB. You can still enjoy the game without legendary armor. And yes, awarding legendary armor to everyone would take some of the fun out of raids.
The Question is Was it a good idea to Link that Item to that Content
I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
For now they chose to give through raid to 1/Evaluate their ability to design raid that people like (I mean the one that are asking for challenging content for more than 2 years) and 2/See if many materials or other things won’t lose too much value because of this.
Maybe for the next expansion there will be a new set of legendary armor released through story achievement, adventures and map meta completion. Those who hate PvE meta will then don’t do it because they don’t find it fun.
But for now it is locked by raid completion and I am sure it attracts people to do raid while they wouldn’t have tried it without the reward.
It also has the potential to alienate a substantial part of the player base, which could cause irreparable harm to their long standing customers.
For me, it’s not personal. The few times I did the raid because I was invited by my friends and guild mates, the armor and other baubles hold no attraction to me directly, might be because I am old school, and everything is about stats first, look second. The fact that my main toons have full ascended means I will never have to worry about a gear upgrade ever again, so the raid was, cute but pointless to me. But, I can see from the posts on this topic that I am apparently in the minority. Like Torolan said something profound when he said no one really cares about how pretty your gear is beyond you and maybe your close friends. While it might attract a passing comment, few really care that you have it, their interest is purely for it’s look on their own toon and less will even remember who you were when you part ways.
But, there are a lot of people who are very vested in the look of their toon. I guess that is the nature of a game like GW2. I believe the joke is “Fashion Wars 2”
So, will Anet pull in a good bank roll for their decision to make Legendary Armor Skins exclusive to the Raid.
Time will tell, but, I am betting not.
(edited by STIHL.2489)
The Question is Was it a good idea to Link that Item to that Content
I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
For now they chose to give through raid to 1/Evaluate their ability to design raid that people like (I mean the one that are asking for challenging content for more than 2 years) and 2/See if many materials or other things won’t lose too much value because of this.
Maybe for the next expansion there will be a new set of legendary armor released through story achievement, adventures and map meta completion. Those who hate PvE meta will then don’t do it because they don’t find it fun.
But for now it is locked by raid completion and I am sure it attracts people to do raid while they wouldn’t have tried it without the reward.It also has the potential to alienate a substantial part of the player base, which could cause irreparable harm to their long standing customers.
For me, it’s not personal. The few times I did the raid because I was invited by my friends and guild mates, the armor and other baubles hold no attraction to me directly, might be because I am old school, and everything is about stats first, look second. The fact that my main toons have full ascended means I will never have to worry about a gear upgrade ever again, so the raid was, cute but pointless to me. But, I can see from the posts on this topic that I am apparently in the minority. Like Torolan said something profound when he said no one really cares about how pretty your gear is beyond you and maybe your close friends. While it might attract a passing comment, few really care that you have it, their interest is purely for it’s look on their own toon and less will even remember who you were when you part ways.
But, there are a lot of people who are very vested in the look of their toon. I guess that is the nature of a game like GW2. I believe the joke is “Fashion Wars 2”
So, will Anet pull in a good bank roll for their decision to make Legendary Armor Skins exclusive to the Raid.
Time will tell, but, I am betting not.
This argument makes no sense. Exclusive skins are part of every game mode, and they do not seem to alienate the player base. And we don’t even know what the skin looks like yet.
And yes, it goes back to previous MMOs, but previous MMOs had different business models, where you did want to “lock people in” to a gear treadmill that never ended, to keep people playing enough to keep their subscriptions active. GW2 does not need that model, they have a model based on players enjoying their game, and playing it as much or as little as they want, “progressing” as much or as little as they want, and hopefully buying things in the gem store because they are HAPPY and want to extend that experience, rather than paying a monthly sub because they MUST if they want to keep on the treadmill.
The old ways MMO practices that you lionize are like someone in WWII trumpeting the virtues of the noble battlefield horse.
While ANet has never issued a concept statement rescinding the pre-launch “Is it fun?” concept blog, if you look at their actions, they’ve apparently discovered that GW2 is no more immune to the need to keep players engaged than any other MMO. We’ve seen numerous complaints about “grind” in relation to acquiring a great many of the game’s rewards. We’ve also seen numerous incidents of content-specific rewards. In armor alone, we saw Dungeons Skins right at launch, Glorious in PvP, and Carapace/Luminescent in SW. Apparently, ANet believes that creating incentives to play all kinds of content if you want all the rewards they throw into the game is a good way to extend the life of the game.
So, are raids and the exclusive rewards tied to them good for the game or not? Well, that’s going to come down to numbers, as in how many do they attract and keep versus how many will stop playing because of them. It’s a pity none of us have those numbers.
The Question is Was it a good idea to Link that Item to that Content
I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
For now they chose to give through raid to 1/Evaluate their ability to design raid that people like (I mean the one that are asking for challenging content for more than 2 years) and 2/See if many materials or other things won’t lose too much value because of this.
Maybe for the next expansion there will be a new set of legendary armor released through story achievement, adventures and map meta completion. Those who hate PvE meta will then don’t do it because they don’t find it fun.
But for now it is locked by raid completion and I am sure it attracts people to do raid while they wouldn’t have tried it without the reward.It also has the potential to alienate a substantial part of the player base, which could cause irreparable harm to their long standing customers.
For me, it’s not personal. The few times I did the raid because I was invited by my friends and guild mates, the armor and other baubles hold no attraction to me directly, might be because I am old school, and everything is about stats first, look second. The fact that my main toons have full ascended means I will never have to worry about a gear upgrade ever again, so the raid was, cute but pointless to me. But, I can see from the posts on this topic that I am apparently in the minority. Like Torolan said something profound when he said no one really cares about how pretty your gear is beyond you and maybe your close friends. While it might attract a passing comment, few really care that you have it, their interest is purely for it’s look on their own toon and less will even remember who you were when you part ways.
But, there are a lot of people who are very vested in the look of their toon. I guess that is the nature of a game like GW2. I believe the joke is “Fashion Wars 2”
So, will Anet pull in a good bank roll for their decision to make Legendary Armor Skins exclusive to the Raid.
Time will tell, but, I am betting not.
This argument makes no sense. Exclusive skins are part of every game mode, and they do not seem to alienate the player base. And we don’t even know what the skin looks like yet.
I am sure if it was just some “Raid Armor” like there was “Dungeon Armor” as opposed to the debut of “Legendary Armor” there would be far less issues and risks of alienating their player base.
It seems that “Legendary”, which at first were just a matter of luck and wealth, then later became a Journey type concept, so, we shall see how well Skill Gating Legendary items goes over. Didn’t go over too well when WvW was part of Map Completion tho.
I mean truth be told, if it goes over poorly, they could always simply remove Legendary Armor from the game, and just have the raid drop “Raid Armor Skins” and call the problem resolved as far as damage control goes.
We shall see what plays out. Will this be the bold new direction or that wrong turn at Albuquerque.
(edited by STIHL.2489)
you won’t have it because you refuse to adapt and put some effort in raid, that’s all. And since it’s Anet decision, i guess they were thinking that legendary armors were a proper reward for challenging pve content, aka raid, and that people who mastered raid would deserve legendary armor. How is it unfair? we play the same game after all. The difference is that some people don’t mind putting effort in raiding, with countless wipes, changing stuff, buying expensive foods etc, while others want to do nothing and have the reward. Who do you think deserve the reward? the lazy one or the worker? I have the answer for you, if you want…
Here you really lost me.
GW2 is a game. Not a exercise, not a job, not a sports club. A game. I said it when the fractal backpiece was introduced for Fractals only, I said it when the backpiece for PvP was announced, I said it for legendary armor:
Gating content behind game modes is plain and simple wrong and bad for the game. It breeds exactly the discussions we are having here right now.I know that many people think that people are looking up with envy and want on your efforts, but I stand on the firm believe that nobody remembers the name of your toon after he has passed them in Lions arch with your Eternal title and your grinded Astralaria. So the number of people that maybe care for that is in your closest group, aka your raiding team and your guild, and a few people that write you PMs about how that looks on you.
Regarding the question who deserves content X more, I would be with you if this was one of the activities I mentioned above, aka work, sport, exercise. I believe that first and foremost effort and dedication by playing the game should be rewarded in a game, not skill or reflexes and effort for builds which is a non-game activity anyway in my mind. Skills and reflexes should net you more, but a less skilled person should not be forced to go out emptyhanded off anything.
tl:dr Gating is wrong, and nobody cares if you have the Eternal title or Astralaria.
OK I will try to write it in a simplier manner, since you have some understanding difficulties.
Raid is a challenging content, that was what anet was saying before they implement it. Anet said it would not be à content for everyone then.
They put à nice reward behind them, because, you know, doing raid is a little more harder than spamming 1 in open world, and also to motivate people to try harder content, to challenge themselves. Yes, even in a game, some people like challenge.
But, some other people don’t like challenge in a game. They see the shinny, and they are: oh, shinny, I want it. Oh wait, I have to do something à little difficult to have it! No way, it’s à game. I’m supposing to have everything I want, in a easy way. I don’t care if people put à lot of effort for the reward, I want it for no effort…And so we are in this topic. You’re saying that no one care about reward or title, but after you’re saying that Gating reward is wrong…you lost me.
But we will never agree between people who don’t mind challenge and a little work for a reward, and people who want all in an easy way.
As you were so kind to write it up in a more primitive form for, me, let me return the favor:
*The idea that there should be content for an elite part of players both alienates and angers me for the sake of finding it both distateful and misplaced in a game. I would probably be at least good enough equiped for it and could also spare the time if I really wanted, but I don´t want to support this kind of thinking in any way.
*They put a nice reward behind raids to push them and not look like fools in implementing something only a minority of players will play. And it is not even working very well because most raiders could not care less for the armor because they can´t swap runes, just look around in the forum to check the validity of this statement. It is a grinders item for casual players who do not really care for their runes as long as they are halfway fitting, so it does not belong into a skill challenge like a raid. Besides, Anet does not care in the slightest if I am the best player in the world or the greatest scrub that can barely walk straight in game, not even remotely as long as I invest money and time. This is plain marketing chatter.
I had a chuckle when someone pulled Monopoly as reference game.
I love Monopoly! Especial Spongebob Monopoly which I play at work with kids.
So when I play Monopoly with kids, they all start the same as we do with raids.
Their skill level of dice slinging? Irrelevant for the sake of the game, relevant for my assessment of the physical abilities.
Their skill in counting? Irrelevant for the game as long as someone is there to help them.
Their tactical skill? Irrelevant for kids and thier enjoyment of the game, they like to have the crusty crab because it nets the most gain.
I have a blast when I play Monopoly with children because they get the spirit of the game. I am longtime motivated to play the game because I like the premise of it, not if I am the best and shiniest Monopoly player ever.
Monopoly is as RNG as it can get, discriminates nearly no one and has only very, very loose gates like 3 cards of a color. Even if oyu own only the street, you always get rewarded a little. Where is the reward in a raid if you fail at the first boss?
So, where are my Monopoly legendary medals I can present to a 7 year old that played with me?
you won’t have it because you refuse to adapt and put some effort in raid, that’s all. And since it’s Anet decision, i guess they were thinking that legendary armors were a proper reward for challenging pve content, aka raid, and that people who mastered raid would deserve legendary armor. How is it unfair? we play the same game after all. The difference is that some people don’t mind putting effort in raiding, with countless wipes, changing stuff, buying expensive foods etc, while others want to do nothing and have the reward. Who do you think deserve the reward? the lazy one or the worker? I have the answer for you, if you want…
Here you really lost me.
GW2 is a game. Not a exercise, not a job, not a sports club. A game. I said it when the fractal backpiece was introduced for Fractals only, I said it when the backpiece for PvP was announced, I said it for legendary armor:
Gating content behind game modes is plain and simple wrong and bad for the game. It breeds exactly the discussions we are having here right now.I know that many people think that people are looking up with envy and want on your efforts, but I stand on the firm believe that nobody remembers the name of your toon after he has passed them in Lions arch with your Eternal title and your grinded Astralaria. So the number of people that maybe care for that is in your closest group, aka your raiding team and your guild, and a few people that write you PMs about how that looks on you.
Regarding the question who deserves content X more, I would be with you if this was one of the activities I mentioned above, aka work, sport, exercise. I believe that first and foremost effort and dedication by playing the game should be rewarded in a game, not skill or reflexes and effort for builds which is a non-game activity anyway in my mind. Skills and reflexes should net you more, but a less skilled person should not be forced to go out emptyhanded off anything.
tl:dr Gating is wrong, and nobody cares if you have the Eternal title or Astralaria.
OK I will try to write it in a simplier manner, since you have some understanding difficulties.
Raid is a challenging content, that was what anet was saying before they implement it. Anet said it would not be à content for everyone then.
They put à nice reward behind them, because, you know, doing raid is a little more harder than spamming 1 in open world, and also to motivate people to try harder content, to challenge themselves. Yes, even in a game, some people like challenge.
But, some other people don’t like challenge in a game. They see the shinny, and they are: oh, shinny, I want it. Oh wait, I have to do something à little difficult to have it! No way, it’s à game. I’m supposing to have everything I want, in a easy way. I don’t care if people put à lot of effort for the reward, I want it for no effort…And so we are in this topic. You’re saying that no one care about reward or title, but after you’re saying that Gating reward is wrong…you lost me.
But we will never agree between people who don’t mind challenge and a little work for a reward, and people who want all in an easy way.
As you were so kind to write it up in a more primitive form for, me, let me return the favor:
*The idea that there should be content for an elite part of players both alienates and angers me for the sake of finding it both distateful and misplaced in a game. I would probably be at least good enough equiped for it and could also spare the time if I really wanted, but I don´t want to support this kind of thinking in any way.*They put a nice reward behind raids to push them and not look like fools in implementing something only a minority of players will play. And it is not even working very well because most raiders could not care less for the armor because they can´t swap runes, just look around in the forum to check the validity of this statement. It is a grinders item for casual players who do not really care for their runes as long as they are halfway fitting, so it does not belong into a skill challenge like a raid. Besides, Anet does not care in the slightest if I am the best player in the world or the greatest scrub that can barely walk straight in game, not even remotely as long as I invest money and time. This is plain marketing chatter.
I had a chuckle when someone pulled Monopoly as reference game.
I love Monopoly! Especial Spongebob Monopoly which I play at work with kids.
So when I play Monopoly with kids, they all start the same as we do with raids.
Their skill level of dice slinging? Irrelevant for the sake of the game, relevant for my assessment of the physical abilities.
Their skill in counting? Irrelevant for the game as long as someone is there to help them.
Their tactical skill? Irrelevant for kids and thier enjoyment of the game, they like to have the crusty crab because it nets the most gain.
I have a blast when I play Monopoly with children because they get the spirit of the game. I am longtime motivated to play the game because I like the premise of it, not if I am the best and shiniest Monopoly player ever.
Monopoly is as RNG as it can get, discriminates nearly no one and has only very, very loose gates like 3 cards of a color. Even if oyu own only the street, you always get rewarded a little. Where is the reward in a raid if you fail at the first boss?So, where are my Monopoly legendary medals I can present to a 7 year old that played with me?
I’m not sure I understand your argument. Are you mad that there is hard content in the game? Or that it has exclusive rewards?
you won’t have it because you refuse to adapt and put some effort in raid, that’s all. And since it’s Anet decision, i guess they were thinking that legendary armors were a proper reward for challenging pve content, aka raid, and that people who mastered raid would deserve legendary armor. How is it unfair? we play the same game after all. The difference is that some people don’t mind putting effort in raiding, with countless wipes, changing stuff, buying expensive foods etc, while others want to do nothing and have the reward. Who do you think deserve the reward? the lazy one or the worker? I have the answer for you, if you want…
Here you really lost me.
GW2 is a game. Not a exercise, not a job, not a sports club. A game. I said it when the fractal backpiece was introduced for Fractals only, I said it when the backpiece for PvP was announced, I said it for legendary armor:
Gating content behind game modes is plain and simple wrong and bad for the game. It breeds exactly the discussions we are having here right now.I know that many people think that people are looking up with envy and want on your efforts, but I stand on the firm believe that nobody remembers the name of your toon after he has passed them in Lions arch with your Eternal title and your grinded Astralaria. So the number of people that maybe care for that is in your closest group, aka your raiding team and your guild, and a few people that write you PMs about how that looks on you.
Regarding the question who deserves content X more, I would be with you if this was one of the activities I mentioned above, aka work, sport, exercise. I believe that first and foremost effort and dedication by playing the game should be rewarded in a game, not skill or reflexes and effort for builds which is a non-game activity anyway in my mind. Skills and reflexes should net you more, but a less skilled person should not be forced to go out emptyhanded off anything.
tl:dr Gating is wrong, and nobody cares if you have the Eternal title or Astralaria.
OK I will try to write it in a simplier manner, since you have some understanding difficulties.
Raid is a challenging content, that was what anet was saying before they implement it. Anet said it would not be à content for everyone then.
They put à nice reward behind them, because, you know, doing raid is a little more harder than spamming 1 in open world, and also to motivate people to try harder content, to challenge themselves. Yes, even in a game, some people like challenge.
But, some other people don’t like challenge in a game. They see the shinny, and they are: oh, shinny, I want it. Oh wait, I have to do something à little difficult to have it! No way, it’s à game. I’m supposing to have everything I want, in a easy way. I don’t care if people put à lot of effort for the reward, I want it for no effort…And so we are in this topic. You’re saying that no one care about reward or title, but after you’re saying that Gating reward is wrong…you lost me.
But we will never agree between people who don’t mind challenge and a little work for a reward, and people who want all in an easy way.
As you were so kind to write it up in a more primitive form for, me, let me return the favor:
*The idea that there should be content for an elite part of players both alienates and angers me for the sake of finding it both distateful and misplaced in a game. I would probably be at least good enough equiped for it and could also spare the time if I really wanted, but I don´t want to support this kind of thinking in any way.*They put a nice reward behind raids to push them and not look like fools in implementing something only a minority of players will play. And it is not even working very well because most raiders could not care less for the armor because they can´t swap runes, just look around in the forum to check the validity of this statement. It is a grinders item for casual players who do not really care for their runes as long as they are halfway fitting, so it does not belong into a skill challenge like a raid. Besides, Anet does not care in the slightest if I am the best player in the world or the greatest scrub that can barely walk straight in game, not even remotely as long as I invest money and time. This is plain marketing chatter.
I had a chuckle when someone pulled Monopoly as reference game.
I love Monopoly! Especial Spongebob Monopoly which I play at work with kids.
So when I play Monopoly with kids, they all start the same as we do with raids.
Their skill level of dice slinging? Irrelevant for the sake of the game, relevant for my assessment of the physical abilities.
Their skill in counting? Irrelevant for the game as long as someone is there to help them.
Their tactical skill? Irrelevant for kids and thier enjoyment of the game, they like to have the crusty crab because it nets the most gain.
I have a blast when I play Monopoly with children because they get the spirit of the game. I am longtime motivated to play the game because I like the premise of it, not if I am the best and shiniest Monopoly player ever.
Monopoly is as RNG as it can get, discriminates nearly no one and has only very, very loose gates like 3 cards of a color. Even if oyu own only the street, you always get rewarded a little. Where is the reward in a raid if you fail at the first boss?So, where are my Monopoly legendary medals I can present to a 7 year old that played with me?
Frankly, you just needed to accept that raid is not the content for you. I don’t cry about PVP backpack locking behind PVP content. I don’t cry about Engineer’s rotation is micro-intensive. I don’t cry about Hivemind title locking behind the Tangled Depth’s weapon collection.
I don’t cry about PVP backpack locking behind PVP content.
The fact that this keeps getting brought up, is really is starting to sound like ya’ll are whining about it.
I don’t cry about PVP backpack locking behind PVP content.
The fact that this keeps getting brought up, is really is starting to sound like ya’ll are whining about it.
You also ignored the fact there is no thread about it, while there is 19 pages of you crying for raid easy mode.
I don’t cry about PVP backpack locking behind PVP content.
The fact that this keeps getting brought up, is really is starting to sound like ya’ll are whining about it.
Because it’s a great example?
I don’t cry about PVP backpack locking behind PVP content.
The fact that this keeps getting brought up, is really is starting to sound like ya’ll are whining about it.
Because it’s a great example?
Of what? Airing resentment?
I don’t cry about PVP backpack locking behind PVP content.
The fact that this keeps getting brought up, is really is starting to sound like ya’ll are whining about it.
You also ignored the fact there is no thread about it, while there is 19 pages of you crying for raid easy mode.
Touché
Do you think Raids in GW2 were a bad idea?
The idea isn’t bad, the implementation is bad.
Anet sacrificed other content like dungeons for something a few people do one time a week.
“A few people” Ok people NEED to stop pretending they know the metrics on how many people play the raids, we all know that you pulled that one right out of your kitten .
MMOs are an entirely different beast from any normal game you might play. GW2 is certainly no exception even at its launch, although it did a terrific job at splitting itself away from the normal MMO selfish paradigms of MMOs before it, with promotions of working together towards objectives and individualized loot tables rather than competing with one another. However it still carries the same goals an MMO must have to be successful, it needs to retain players by producing content and rewards, and create a business through attracting new players and producing purchasable content in game.
My focus however, is on the first pivotal point of creating content to retain players. How do you retain players in an MMO? When you play any other game, from board games to even video game RPGs where you can sink hundreds of hours into, at some point that game ends. There’s a finale, a true end-game where once you have reached it you have finished the game it is done. An MMO does not have this luxury, it needs to continue to create content to retain players, and it needs this content to not be the same content that players have grown accustomed to. GW2 has to avoid becoming stale. Imagine how easy a job it would be if once you logged out for the day of playing GW2, freshly creating that character the very next day it was wiped clean, gone. Building a game around just a day of playing is simple enough, building one that keeps content fresh, or layers onto it is a far harsher issue.
So then we have to discuss what I meant by creating new content that is not the same as the old content, I believe you all know what I speak of. This can come in the form of something completely new to the game (SAB), to something that adds a couple levels of challenge over the core game (TA Aether, Silverwastes, to HoT), or even slightly adjusting how the player in question plays the game, giving them more options (Elite Specializations, balancing). Simply creating a new zone with new creatures that look amazing, but are ultimately simple to fight like previous content was, would hinder retaining players. The bigger the change or deviation from the normal content, the longer the new content retains the players. However there is also a balance, as some players might find the change too radical, and completely different from their expectations. Why do something that might be harder if there’s nothing to gain?
Rewards.
GW2 took away the constant vertical progression ladder and made instead a horizontal ‘Fashion Wars’ where the focus on getting the best stats in game was minor compared to getting that particular weapon or armor piece. We all crave implicitly the carrot at the end of the string, in any content we do. We all want to stand out, and maybe rarely get the occasional whisper from a complete stranger who noticed and asked where you got those shoulders from. Regardless, part of the allure in GW2 is that with the continued delivery of content there will be new rewards. If you are able to do something completely new, you can get something totally awesome, or ugly, it doesn’t matter you got SOMETHING!
It is with these very concepts that now there is a cry for having ‘new rewards’ in old content. ….What good will this do? How logical is it to take away a pretty big part of the incentive to try something new in the game that is completely out of your comfort zone, that you may or may not like, and put it someplace that might keep you complacent for now until the old content grows stale since time does this. Because once again, MMOs do not have the luxury of ending (Well nearly all of them) and a game that doesn’t end means there is no victor or loser, why bother ‘playing’ past the point of it being fun?
Having the mentality that an MMO can create new content without justifying a new reward for it is about the equivalent of asking a football enthusiast to really try playing football with a golf-club strapped to their leg. It could hold a weird entertainment for a time, but toss that enthusiast signed autographs of his favorite players every week he does this and we have a great funny youtube video folks. You just cannot get away with rewardless content, and if that enthusiast found out his hard effort was pointless since one of his friends was getting those same autographs by playing regular football you know heads will come off. I hate using metaphors here given how many have come up, but it often finds to be the best way to explain to everyone.
Feel free to name a game that can get away with adding something new that either slightly changes the rules, to almost completely changing how you play, that never ends, that ISN’T an MMO and does NOT need to give a reward for it. Otherwise, you can take your ‘personal’ game reward mentality out of here. It does not belong in GW2 or any MMO, it is not healthy at all for any party. It is truly the selfish position here.
A reward can be an incentive to make you try to do your best even if you are not payed for your trial. Success should always be your goal.
It can be, but it shouldn’t be. There is no reason to incentivize players to do better than they care to do. And again, that is a different goal than “getting people to try new things.” So either the purpose of the reward is to get people to try new things, or it isn’t.
My assertion is that any reward with the purpose of “getting people to try new things” should respect their choices and only hold them to the new content for long enough for them to make a reasonable decision, and then set them free. Any reward process that does not set players free after a reasonable trial period has failed as a trial reward, just as a trebuchet that holds on to the rock the entire time has failed at being a trebuchet.
If you want to reward a player for getting better, then you can do that, but these rewards should not be exclusive to a single type of content, because you should respect that the player may not want to get better at an activity that he does not enjoy, and therefore make it as likely as possible that the activity you are rewarding his improved skill in, would be one that he enjoys doing.
I don’t see that as a problem. How can people be motivated to try new things if they can have everything in a same game mode ?
Again, two different purposes, two different rewards. Small rewards that take minimal time to earn, used to convince people to try new things, then bigger rewards that take a long time to earn, but can be earned in numerous ways, to encourage continued play once you find something you enjoy doing.
Basically you have three minigames. In one you can earn a toy bear if you play it for half an hour. In another you can earn a ball if you play it for a half an hour. In the third you can earn a slingshot if you play it for half an hour. In any of them you can earn a bike if you play it for ten hours (or any combination of the three). This makes it most likely that a player will try each of the activities to collect the small rewards from each, but that then he will pick the one he wants to spend the most time in, and spend it thereto earn the high end reward.
If only one of those games will ever reward a bike, then the player would either never get the bike, even if he would be willing to spend ten hours in one of the other games, or he would spend ten hours in that game to get the bike, but not enjoy the experience at all because he does not enjoy how that game plays, making it more punishment than entertainment. Even if the other activities had “comparable” rewards, like a basketball hoop or a toy kitchen set, if the player in question wants the bike, those other “fair” alternatives are meaningless to him.
And I don’t pvp, so there are things I will never have…Anet is clear, with the legendary backpacks and armor, that this solution is OK for them.
But that doesn’t make it right, that doesn’t mean that they can’t change their minds when they learn to accept that.
Wrong again, we deserve it because we’re doing raids, and it happens that it’s the raid reward.
You don’t deserve it because you’re not doing raids. So simple I don’t know why you don’t understand…
So if ANet did change their minds, and made the rewards available through other means, so they were not longer “the raid rewards,” you would have no objection?
People do things to earn the rewards, that is the driving force behind every game. No one plays game “just for the fun of it”, that would be boring and a waste of time. People play games to WIN.
People pay games for their own reasons. Some care more about rewards than others, some care about personal challenge than others, and the individual values of rewards and challenge vary from person to person. Ideally though, it’s not just about the end goal, it’s about the journey too, and if a player does not enjoy the journey to the goal then he’ll have a substandard gameplay experience.
1 – There seems to be a level of dislike for people who do raids/pvp/whatever only for the rewards. It seems hypocritical when they simultaneously argue that they want a new game mode just so they can get the rewards.
Except of course that nobody has actually asked for a new game mode just so that they can get the rewards, but go on. . .
2 – legendary armor is not content. No one is stopping you from entering a raid and completing that content. Let’s no pretend that you are locked out of certain content. Rather, for one reason or another, you’re unable to get the reward.
Being able to enter content and having the capability of enjoying it in its existing form are two very different things. You can lead a horse to toxic water, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for him to drink it.
3 – almost all multiplayer games require some effort to get rewards. Effort-driven rewards increase the longevity of the game. If you want instant access to every piece of content and reward, then play a single player game and use the console.
and nobody is talking about reducing the effort involved, just in shifting the form that effort would take.
4 – guild wars 2 has always had exclusive skins and effort-driven rewards. Legendary armor is consistent with this principle.
But the current requirements for legendary armor (and other HoT-era rewards) are out of line with previous requirements for most items. And in cases where items have been overly exclusionary, there has been public outcry in the past.
5 – different people find different things fun. Some people find hard content with prestige rewards fun. Others find easy content, which still awards some cool skins, fun. It’s great that we have both. And you can get top stat gear from both.
Agreed. The important thing is that players be able to pursue the content they find fun, and avoid the content that they do not find fun, without their access to rewards being limited by these facts.
6 – giving every single reward through low-effort content decreases the longevity of the game. There would simply be nothing to work towards. Some games address this by increasing the level cap. Others through a gear treadmill. Guild wars 2 does it through masteries and skins.
Again, nobody is talking about reducing effort. In fact, the alternatives proposed would take longer to earn than through the existing methods, meaning they would increase longevity, rather than reduce it.
7 – have fun playing what you like to play. Don’t like raids? Fine, then open world, dungeons, fractals, pvp, wvw, SAB. You can still enjoy the game without legendary armor. And yes, awarding legendary armor to everyone would take some of the fun out of raids.
If their fun comes at the expense of other people not having that fun, then it’s fun that they have no entitlement to have.
they’ve apparently discovered that GW2 is no more immune to the need to keep players engaged than any other MMO.
But “keeping them engaged” in GW2 is a very different thing than in a game like WoW. It’s not about the progression treadmill, and it’s not about raiding. Some players like to raid, and they should be allowed to do so, but raiding isn’t for everyone, and the goal should not be to try and funnel as many players as possible into raiding. That is not “keeping them engaged” if they don’t enjoy that sort of content. Keeping players engaged in GW2 is about finding out what content they DO like, and providing more of it, and more reasons to be doing it.
In armor alone, we saw Dungeons Skins right at launch, Glorious in PvP, and Carapace/Luminescent in SW. Apparently, ANet believes that creating incentives to play all kinds of content if you want all the rewards they throw into the game is a good way to extend the life of the game.
Yeah, but each of these is substantially easier to acquire than Legendary Armor.
You also ignored the fact there is no thread about it, while there is 19 pages of you crying for raid easy mode.
I’m pretty sure that there have been several threads about it. I’ve been in some of them. We;re two seasons in though, so I think whatever decisions they are making about the Ascension have already gone into motion and we’re seeing what they’ve come up with. They’ve hinted that there will be some alternatives for earning it, at the very least there will be ways to earn it after season 4 is over.
The Question is Was it a good idea to Link that Item to that Content
I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
For now they chose to give through raid to 1/Evaluate their ability to design raid that people like (I mean the one that are asking for challenging content for more than 2 years) and 2/See if many materials or other things won’t lose too much value because of this.
Maybe for the next expansion there will be a new set of legendary armor released through story achievement, adventures and map meta completion. Those who hate PvE meta will then don’t do it because they don’t find it fun.
But for now it is locked by raid completion and I am sure it attracts people to do raid while they wouldn’t have tried it without the reward.It also has the potential to alienate a substantial part of the player base, which could cause irreparable harm to their long standing customers.
For me, it’s not personal. The few times I did the raid because I was invited by my friends and guild mates, the armor and other baubles hold no attraction to me directly, might be because I am old school, and everything is about stats first, look second. The fact that my main toons have full ascended means I will never have to worry about a gear upgrade ever again, so the raid was, cute but pointless to me. But, I can see from the posts on this topic that I am apparently in the minority. Like Torolan said something profound when he said no one really cares about how pretty your gear is beyond you and maybe your close friends. While it might attract a passing comment, few really care that you have it, their interest is purely for it’s look on their own toon and less will even remember who you were when you part ways.
But, there are a lot of people who are very vested in the look of their toon. I guess that is the nature of a game like GW2. I believe the joke is “Fashion Wars 2”
So, will Anet pull in a good bank roll for their decision to make Legendary Armor Skins exclusive to the Raid.
Time will tell, but, I am betting not.
This argument makes no sense. Exclusive skins are part of every game mode, and they do not seem to alienate the player base. And we don’t even know what the skin looks like yet.
We wouldent mind if it was only skins but you get an entierly new functionality with said skins since they are skinned onto legendary armor, give people the same item for some other content then but delink the raid excluseive skin.
My focus however, is on the first pivotal point of creating content to retain players. How do you retain players in an MMO? When you play any other game, from board games to even video game RPGs where you can sink hundreds of hours into, at some point that game ends. There’s a finale, a true end-game where once you have reached it you have finished the game it is done. An MMO does not have this luxury, it needs to continue to create content to retain players, and it needs this content to not be the same content that players have grown accustomed to. GW2 has to avoid becoming stale. Imagine how easy a job it would be if once you logged out for the day of playing GW2, freshly creating that character the very next day it was wiped clean, gone. Building a game around just a day of playing is simple enough, building one that keeps content fresh, or layers onto it is a far harsher issue.
True. I love new and different content. Though some have seemed to imply that “new” has to mean “harder,” which of course is not true. You can have new content that is of equal challenge and similar style to older content, as long as people enjoy the older content, they will enjoy the new options of the new content.
However there is also a balance, as some players might find the change too radical, and completely different from their expectations. Why do something that might be harder if there’s nothing to gain?
If you have difficulty convincing players to take on harder content, then apparently harder content is not what they want to do. Just focus on creating new content that is of comparable difficulty to the previous content, just offering new and unique experiences.
It is with these very concepts that now there is a cry for having ‘new rewards’ in old content. ….What good will this do? How logical is it to take away a pretty big part of the incentive to try something new in the game that is completely out of your comfort zone, that you may or may not like,
But also, what good does it do to get players to spend countless hours doing activities even after they know full well they do not enjoy those activities? Who benefits from them not enjoying their time in your game? Your theory assumes that every player who tries the new content will enjoy that new content, but how do you account for the players who will not enjoy it?
True. I love new and different content. Though some have seemed to imply that “new” has to mean “harder,” which of course is not true. You can have new content that is of equal challenge and similar style to older content, as long as people enjoy the older content, they will enjoy the new options of the new content.
I disagree, new content that offers a similar challenge and similar style to old content will die out fast. You can dress up the content as nicely as you want but if you are fighting a new imposing mob with the difficult of a wild boar, that appeal will die out extremely fast. In fact it will beg into question why there wasn’t more done? There’s only so much you can do before the only way to appease players is to ramp up the difficulty.
If you have difficulty convincing players to take on harder content, then apparently harder content is not what they want to do. Just focus on creating new content that is of comparable difficulty to the previous content, just offering new and unique experiences.
You will run out of ideas quickly on creating new and unique experiences when the content itself is just similar to what you are used to. Steadily ramping up the difficulty is a natural progression to prevent staleness, creating new mechanics that are detrimental if you do not do them successfully rather than being ignored are how you engage the player and prevent staleness.
But also, what good does it do to get players to spend countless hours doing activities even after they know full well they do not enjoy those activities? Who benefits from them not enjoying their time in your game? Your theory assumes that every player who tries the new content will enjoy that new content, but how do you account for the players who will not enjoy it?
They do not have to. If ALL of the new content were strictly put into a certain activity that not everyone can enjoy, you would have a point here. This is part of why the content drought is a priority for arenanet and why they had to suspend Legendaries.
BUT, when you release a LOT of content that branches across DIFFERENT activities with DIFFERENT rewards, everyone can be entertained and get something they may or may not like but are rewarded for doing so anyways. There’s absolutely no reason to jeopardize the rewards of other activities because a group of players who like one particular content want all the other activity rewards in their own. In fact, the carrot on the stick is actually intended for those players who might dislike an activity to spend hours in it to get their reward. When they complete it finally, sometimes they might have regretted those hours, sometimes they might surprise themselves and actually like the content. Either way, they will be satisfied on getting what they wanted in the end.
Ironically, the current reward system you want to defy Ohoni was intentionally made for players like yourself.
I don’t cry about PVP backpack locking behind PVP content.
The fact that this keeps getting brought up, is really is starting to sound like ya’ll are whining about it.
You also ignored the fact there is no thread about it, while there is 19 pages of you crying for raid easy mode.
To be fair, I have 19 pages of you crying about the PvP back item now.
You also ignored the fact there is no thread about it, while there is 19 pages of you crying for raid easy mode.
Perhaps because getting pvp backpack is already on the level of the easy mode.
(also, there were threads about it)
. The bigger the change or deviation from the normal content, the longer the new content retains the players.
I am going to have to disagree with this and I think the NGE is testament that big changes are not in fact good changes.
@STIHL Yeah and the NGE was designed to make the experience of the game even more easy and casual…..Hence the reason why it sorta failed and why raids will only have a positive effect on the game overall
I disagree, new content that offers a similar challenge and similar style to old content will die out fast.
It’ll die out no faster or slower than more difficult content. Content being more difficult does not mean that most people will play it more. If anything, it will result in less overall play, because some players will try it, realize it is beyond their capabilities, and give up entirely, as was the case with a lot of HoT content for a lot of players.
Now for you, harder content might encourage you to play it more, but that is a personal factor on your part, do not project it onto the community at large. They can and should provide some harder content along the way, because some people do enjoy that, but it should not be the only new content added, it should not be assumed that it is content every player is expected to eventually do, and players should not be punished for not taking part in it by not having access to goals that they desire.
You can dress up the content as nicely as you want but if you are fighting a new imposing mob with the difficult of a wild boar, that appeal will die out extremely fast.
Nobody is saying “with the difficulty of a wild boar,” but once a reasonable level of difficulty is attained, one which the majority of the community is comfortable with, you don’t have to constantly raise that bar, because each time you do, you’re leaving players on the other side of it.
You will run out of ideas quickly on creating new and unique experiences when the content itself is just similar to what you are used to. Steadily ramping up the difficulty is a natural progression to prevent staleness, creating new mechanics that are detrimental if you do not do them successfully rather than being ignored are how you engage the player and prevent staleness.
The ideas themselves are the same either way. I mean, if you run out of ideas generating content that is the same difficulty, then you will just as quickly run out of ideas while ramping the difficulty. Adding difficulty does not make the content new or interesting, it just makes it harder. You still need the same amount of ideas either way.
They do not have to. If ALL of the new content were strictly put into a certain activity that not everyone can enjoy, you would have a point here. This is part of why the content drought is a priority for arenanet and why they had to suspend Legendaries.
And yet if they really want the reward that is ONLY attached to a specific type of content, then they are left with only two options, continue doing that content that they hate, or never get that reward, and neither of those outcomes is a happy one. Why not include a happy outcome too?
BUT, when you release a LOT of content that branches across DIFFERENT activities with DIFFERENT rewards, everyone can be entertained and get something they may or may not like but are rewarded for doing so anyways.
But again, if the reward they get is not a reward they want then it isn’t really a reward, it’s junk. Rewards are not fungible, you cannot say “you can’t get Skin A through the activity you want to do, but you can get Skin B, so it’s fair.” If Skin a is the one you want, and Skin b is one you couldn’t care less about, then that is an entirely pointless argument. What matters is that you get the thing you actually WANT, not that you get “something.”
In fact, the carrot on the stick is actually intended for those players who might dislike an activity to spend hours in it to get their reward.
That’s an abuse of the reward system that ultimately benefits no one. You should never WANT players to be participating in a system that they have tried and know they do not enjoy. That is not good for ANYONE. If the system is so bad off that nobody would play it unless you bribe them into it, then it is clearly a system that isn’t wanted by the players and should be scrapped in favor of something they do want.
Rewards should be the “spice,” the added bonus on top of the experience of having fun doing something you enjoy doing, they should not be the “salary” for engaging in unpleasant tasks. Game developers should never want you to be doing tasks you find unpleasant, that is a representation of them failing at their job.
It’ll die out no faster or slower than more difficult content. Content being more difficult does not mean that most people will play it more. If anything, it will result in less overall play, because some players will try it, realize it is beyond their capabilities, and give up entirely, as was the case with a lot of HoT content for a lot of players.
HoT PvE content was not the biggest drawback for player retention. WvW suffered the most, with massive sweeping changes without any meaningful rewards added. Players were not leaving HoT in droves, some avoided the new expansion all together, others joined up with groups to comb VB and attempt the once thought ‘impossible’ meta events.
Turned out when players started working together they could get stuff done once thought impossible, get their rewards, and those who craved a bigger challenge got something to sate them, those who might have disliked it at first now enjoy it, and those who still hate the new maps get their rewards and barely go back there unless needed. As long as the content is rewarding you, regardless of your feelings, and getting you to play it, it is doing its job. It doesn’t get more simple than this given just how many different kinds of players are in this game.
Now for you, harder content might encourage you to play it more, but that is a personal factor on your part, do not project it onto the community at large. They can and should provide some harder content along the way, because some people do enjoy that, but it should not be the only new content added, it should not be assumed that it is content every player is expected to eventually do, and players should not be punished for not taking part in it by not having access to goals that they desire.
I am not projecting, they provided harder content like I hoped, the content did not need to be liked by all, it simply needs to be there with the carrot dangling waiting to be snatched by those willing to do it. Not you or your personal feeling about this reward should convince it to be accessible elsewhere.
Nobody is saying “with the difficulty of a wild boar,” but once a reasonable level of difficulty is attained, one which the majority of the community is comfortable with, you don’t have to constantly raise that bar, because each time you do, you’re leaving players on the other side of it.
We have had a reasonable and steady increase in difficulty for years since Core launched. HoT took a bigger step, they can hold the difficulty of future content at that level for a while until the playerbase once again gets better. What is disturbing is this constant will to regress backwards for future content.
The ideas themselves are the same either way. I mean, if you run out of ideas generating content that is the same difficulty, then you will just as quickly run out of ideas while ramping the difficulty. Adding difficulty does not make the content new or interesting, it just makes it harder. You still need the same amount of ideas either way.
Wrong. Increasing the difficulty is a natural side-effect of newer inventive mechanics. If Vale Guardian’s Green Circle does ignorable damage yet still carries that same unique mechanic of standing inside of it to completely wipe out the damage, does that make it an equally interesting mechanic than it’s current iteration of doing a massive nuke, potentially downing you? NO. It does not, that’s exactly my point, good future content with new ideas for mechanics should naturally cause an increase in difficulty.
And yet if they really want the reward that is ONLY attached to a specific type of content, then they are left with only two options, continue doing that content that they hate, or never get that reward, and neither of those outcomes is a happy one. Why not include a happy outcome too?
Because their happiness will come at a cost of another. Not a single suggestion you have made has accounted for the damage to other players’ happiness when you trivialize their rewards by offering them elsewhere in an activity that very likely will be an easier alternative. Their reward for their efforts in content they might have liked, will be impossible to prove to their friends and others that they received it doing something harder than other content. But again, I know you don’t have this viewpoint and you have demonized players who think like this.
But again, if the reward they get is not a reward they want then it isn’t really a reward, it’s junk. Rewards are not fungible, you cannot say “you can’t get Skin A through the activity you want to do, but you can get Skin B, so it’s fair.” If Skin a is the one you want, and Skin b is one you couldn’t care less about, then that is an entirely pointless argument. What matters is that you get the thing you actually WANT, not that you get “something.”
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Yes, you might absolutely abhor say…the Chak skins by doing that content you enjoy (if you somehow like Tangled Depths). That is still a reward someone else might envy or want. And it was a carrot you didn’t care for, but the reward in content you might not enjoy immediately IS the carrot meant for you. There are zero issues for wanting something you have to work towards.
That’s an abuse of the reward system that ultimately benefits no one-.
IT BENEFITS EVERYONE. It gets you to play, it gets you to work with others, sometimes it gets you to work alone. What matters most is if you are willing to want it enough to do the content, if you decide that the reward is not worth the content, then that’s your choice, you made the call and you clearly did not want the reward enough. That is the difference between GW2 and other MMOs, you have an actual choice here. YOU decide what you want to do at YOUR OWN PACE. The game isn’t going ahead of you, the current Raid should stay at the current difficulty for the rest of GW2’s life, it will still be there when the 20th expansion where we fight Zhaitan’s 4th return with Scarlet the reborn Kralkatorrik Minion. This game is quite flexible enough, it does not need to change a working reward system to suit your needs, it can offer Legendary Armor outside of raids, that’s completely acceptable by me and a lot of people here. Just not the armor assigned to Forsaken Thicket.
Game developers should never want you to be doing tasks you find unpleasant, that is a representation of them failing at their job.
It’s a really good thing that there are tasks every player can enjoy then. Arenanet is doing a good job and should keep it up. They learned already that having a reward with multiple methods of acquisition was a terrible idea, after all the Original Legendary Weapons they regret being made available on the Trading Post. And despite the debacle about not getting the next 12 weapons any time soon, the clear journey for the new Magumma Legendaries is a perfect example of a reward done right.
I wonder how many here are selling raid spots and don’t want their lucrative side business crushed by a easier mode that their customers can play to get their items.
I dident see these posts from arah sellers when you could just get it from spvp farming.
Maybe we should do the same 1 reward track for each legendary armor precursor and be done with it.
It’ll die out no faster or slower than more difficult content. Content being more difficult does not mean that most people will play it more. If anything, it will result in less overall play, because some players will try it, realize it is beyond their capabilities, and give up entirely, as was the case with a lot of HoT content for a lot of players.
HoT PvE content was not the biggest drawback for player retention. WvW suffered the most, with massive sweeping changes without any meaningful rewards added. Players were not leaving HoT in droves, some avoided the new expansion all together, others joined up with groups to comb VB and attempt the once thought ‘impossible’ meta events.
Turned out when players started working together they could get stuff done once thought impossible, get their rewards, and those who craved a bigger challenge got something to sate them, those who might have disliked it at first now enjoy it, and those who still hate the new maps get their rewards and barely go back there unless needed. As long as the content is rewarding you, regardless of your feelings, and getting you to play it, it is doing its job. It doesn’t get more simple than this given just how many different kinds of players are in this game.
I understand what you are saying, or more to the fact, what you are trying to say. And You have said some really good things about games, and made some good points.
One point in Particular, you made that I would like to return you to think about.
MMOs are an entirely different beast from any normal game you might play. GW2 is certainly no exception even at its launch, although it did a terrific job at splitting itself away from the normal MMO selfish paradigms of MMOs before it, with promotions of working together towards objectives and individualized loot tables rather than competing with one another. However it still carries the same goals an MMO must have to be successful, it needs to retain players by producing content and rewards, and create a business through attracting new players and producing purchasable content in game.
My focus however, is on the first pivotal point of creating content to retain players. How do you retain players in an MMO? When you play any other game, from board games to even video game RPGs where you can sink hundreds of hours into, at some point that game ends. There’s a finale, a true end-game where once you have reached it you have finished the game it is done. An MMO does not have this luxury, it needs to continue to create content to retain players
I want you to read this for a moment. Take some time to process your own words. And then think about what you said about players not liking the new content.
You see, as you so clearly put out, the goal of an MMO is to continue, to always have that next content patch/expansion, to keep the game fresh and keep players coming back.
Now we could get into a discussion about projected ROI and investments, but long story short, if, for example, Anet made around 2 bauble bubbles of Profit off the Expansion, they would be excited to invest more into the next expansion, with hopefully a equal to, or even greater return. Now, if their numbers overall are growing, which is likely the case due to the Main game becoming F2P, they could invest more Bauble Bubbles into the Next Expansion then they have into this current one.
However, there is a small problem (That almost every MMO company learned one way or another) If players not enjoying the content, they will not buy more of it. It’s not simply that will stop playing, it’s that they don’t see the point to go to the next step of the game, if they did not enjoy the previous step.
Allow me to explain,on this topic alone, I see how many people left WoW, because they were not enjoying how much a “cake walk” many of the raids and dungeons were. Now pause and ponder that. They were doing the content, they were farming the content, and it was well within their ability to complete it. They were simply not having fun, so they stopped buying it.
Do you think that does not happen to everyone? Do you think anyone sticks around for content they don’t enjoy? Do you think anyone invests money into a game they don’t find fun, engaging and enjoyable?
I don’t know. Maybe you do.
I hope Anet is not making a mistake with this, and I would love to see them continue their great game. But every move has to be a smart move, it’s not enough to simply make content, it needs to engage the player, if they don’t enjoy something and do it for a reward, you can pretty much sign the “burn out” receipt for that player.
Anyone that players games knows that.
Why do you think you’re here, and not still playing your previous MMO?
I want you to read this for a moment. Take some time to process your own words. And then think about what you said about players not liking the new content.
Certainly.
You see, as you so clearly put out, the goal of an MMO is to continue, to always have that next content patch/expansion, to keep the game fresh and keep players coming back.
Yes, to avoid having the game get stale and lose player retention, the game must continue to evolve and build on what it has.
Now we could get into a discussion about projected ROI and investments, but long story short, if, for example, Anet made around 2 bauble bubbles of Profit off the Expansion, they would be excited to invest more into the next expansion, with hopefully a equal to, or even greater return. Now, if their numbers overall are growing, which is likely the case due to the Main game becoming F2P, they could invest more Bauble Bubbles into the Next Expansion then they have into this current one.
For the sake of the argument, let’s say this is true.
However, there is a small problem (That almost every MMO company learned one way or another) If players not enjoying the content, they will not buy more of it. It’s not simply that will stop playing, it’s that they don’t see the point to go to the next step of the game, if they did not enjoy the previous step.
Halt. You are confusing something here and you sort of made a leap from a previous point. As you said if projections were true, then GW2 HoT as a success doesn’t having this ‘small problem’ existing in the first place. Or if it did exist, a very small segment of the populace would be vocal enough and perhaps leave due to it, not significant enough to warrant changing anything.
But I assume you wanted to deviate at this juncture from your assumption of success, let’s go with that then.
Allow me to explain,on this topic alone, I see how many people left WoW, because they were not enjoying how much a “cake walk” many of the raids and dungeons were. Now pause and ponder that. They were doing the content, they were farming the content, and it was well within their ability to complete it. They were simply not having fun, so they stopped buying it.
Another pause here, because this point is awkward from your stance. I ask of you to re-read what you wrote here, since you just indicated that players left WoW because PvE content was ‘too-easy’ and putting it on farm. …Did you catch it?
If you hadn’t, you validated my point where if you don’t continue to create newer mechanics that through their very nature increase the difficulty which prevents staleness, you get exactly what those players complained about WoW about. Farm Status, they were not happy, they were not having fun.
Do you think that does not happen to everyone? Do you think anyone sticks around for content they don’t enjoy? Do you think anyone invests money into a game they don’t find fun, engaging and enjoyable?
They will stick around for the content they CAN enjoy, if a game offered too little of what they wanted then they certainly have a right to want to leave. …Then you also have to consider that 1) GW2 is not a subscription game, and 2) There is always the prospect of future content giving more of the content they enjoy back again. Arenanet has set themselves up in a cozy position with this.
I don’t know. Maybe you do.
Trust me, if I actually had things MY way…we would be getting an SAB expansion.
I hope Anet is not making a mistake with this, and I would love to see them continue their great game. But every move has to be a smart move, it’s not enough to simply make content, it needs to engage the player, if they don’t enjoy something and do it for a reward, you can pretty much sign the “burn out” receipt for that player.
Again, I believe they know this, and given how they were seemingly surprised about the quantity of players raiding, how well the SPvP league system brought players into SPvP of all things (think the number was a 135% increase in population? More than double?!), Arenanet has some good ideas on how to keep different groups active.
Anyone that players games knows that.
Why do you think you’re here, and not still playing your previous MMO?
Because RL issues took me away from hardcore raiding. And because despite all these supposed ‘issues’ with GW2 this game is still easily one of the best MMOs out there, and the original OP of this thread discussing how ‘Wildstar’ was a failure ergo GW2 must be going down the same path was nothing more than hyperbole and outright criticism without support.
…Have you seen those ‘Raid Training’ initiatives going on? NA started it but it has picked up traction in the EU as well. I have NEVER SEEN such an overwhelmingly positive support for training for raids even back in my WoW days! Those are the kinds of things I absolutely love, and are exactly the kinds of things this game needs more of than just people giving up and demanding rewards elsewhere.
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