Guild Wars 2

This is not the way to go about things Anet.

There was a problem. True. Most people can acknowledge that. Even those taking advantage of it, not wanting to easily give it up, realize it wasnt meant to be that way.

However, the implemented solution to the problem, created a new problem.

That problem isnt “omg I cant farm tokens in 20 minutes”
That problem isnt “omg the game isnt a cake walk anymore”

The problem is simple. The changes have made things not fun. They have made things frustrating. And NOT because you cant get easy rewards. Here is a little formula:

Fun > Reward > Low Frustration level

What does this mean? Simple:

A game should have elements that are Fun. First and foremost.
If an element ISNT exactly fun, it needs to feel rewarding, to make up for it.
If an element isnt fun OR rewarding, it needs to not be frustrating (because it doesnt offer fun or rewards).

Certain dungeons, before the fix, like CoF, werent exactly fun. Speed runs, through the use of unintended ways of beating the challenges, isnt exactly fun gameplay. It WAS however, rewarding to those doing it (which is why they did it). Not rewarding in that “I just beat a hard challenge” feeling. Rewarding in the “I got tokens and gold” fashion, which for many, was enough to make up for the fact that the Fun level was low.

This fix gets rid of the unintended ways of beating the challenges. This removes the “reward” from the picture because now people cant speed farm it. This means “Fun” needs to step in and take its place.

Does “fun” replace it? No. Why not? Simple. Untested, unbalanced game encounters and mechanics. You CAN beat the dungeon. Yes. But many people cant. Bad or good, doesnt matter, Not being able to beat a dungeon, isnt fun. Its frustrating. Dieing over and over (even if that gets you past something), isnt fun. Its frustrating. Encounters and events NEED to be tested and balanced so that they are FUN while still being challenging enough to prevent speed running via “unintended” gameplay. Eventually players will say “this isnt worth doing. its not fun, or rewarding, so im just not gonna play it.” I really dont think this is what anet wants its players thinking.

Right now, aside for those uber geared, or small 1% of elite uber skilled gamers, CoF isnt something they can play through, even slowly, and complete in a FUN and REWARDING fashion. In fact, most people I talk with, walk away extremely frustrated. Not because they cant farm it 5 times an hour, but simply because getting through it even ONCE is not worth it. The effort and frustration put in, doesnt equal the fun and reward it puts out. Gaming really does come down to that simple formula. THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED HAD THE CHANGES BEEN PUT ON A TEST REALM FIRST.

One last thing. Punishing good players, players who are skilled enough, and geared enough TO do dungeons quickly and more importantly, without “expoiting”, is the wrong way to go about things. Having diminishing returns on dungeon rewards based on how quickly you do them is just WRONG. Its like saying, “I know you are geared and skilled enough to get through this in 15 minutes, but you need to purposely slow down and take at least 30 to get through this, even if you dont need to”

Thats punishing good players. Even Blizzard realized this, as much as I hate to admit it. Its why their system limited the number of runs you could do in a specific time period. That let skilled, geared players rush through a dungeon as fast as they wanted, getting 100% of the rewards, but still managed to put a kind of soft cap on how often they could reap the rewards.

And just for the record. I have 55 tokens from CoF. I had these long before the “fix”. I just didnt find the runs to be fun, even if there were ways to speed run it. So this isnt me complaining about something being taken away. This is me simply being astonished and disappointed that the professionals at anet would allow something like this to happen in the way that it did. Very amateur of them.

The “fixing one problem by creating another” seems to be ANet’s M.O.

Simple example — making Ranger Pets unrezzable.

What was the problem before? That “F” interact key is undifferentiated for loot revive and interact, which makes players frustrated when they just want to loot and end up talking to NPCs or reviving your pet.

*_Could*_have made the interface less clunky, let us separate loot from revive, make revive’s target clearer and easier to manage.
Or instead, take the sloppy way out and just make pets unrevivable.

Same with dungeons — people going twice as fast as you’d like them to make content last. You could tune it. Or you could nerf the kitties out of it.

I have to admit, I am finding this to seem like slap dash and patch developing. I could understand them halting an exploit, but this is heavy handed. To make matters worse, alot of people had complaints with the dungeons and their design and tuning before, so it looks like they quickly slapped down what players found to their liking, but still haven’t addressed what wasn’t working as related to dungeons.

This and the anti farming stuff, and nerfed rewards make it difficult even for someone trying to give arena net the benefit of the doubt to view things as not feeling like a brick wall for players to earn…well anything really in game at the current state. How was so much of this not caught in the beta I wonder? I hope they fix it soon. I had no expectations coming into this game, but I am getting disheartened with all this.