Guild Wars 2

So today I seen something truly remarkable, I checked the arah lfg and there was a 3 man group that said “P2 @ lupi pay 15s”, now you probably think your eyes are kittening you, this did not mean they needed help at lupi, no. This means they wanted you to pay 15silver to join the path which wasnt even near complete, and then carry them through lupi.

Guild wars 2 is a very strange game, it has a playerbase that dumbfounds me and amazes me at the same time, it is the only the only game i’ve ever played where the vast majority of players are straight up terrible at the game. I think a major cause of this is the fact that there is no incentive to get better as a player, I think they need to add a better reward system to the pve side of the game or at least remove the timegates on certain dungeon paths, obviously the easier paths should stay the way they are.

I think encouraging players to contribute in groups would cause less toxicity and improve their overall gameplay, open world is a mess at the moment because its complete RNG wether youll get a group that wants to complete the event or have it completed for them, and the fact that the ‘real reward’ is only given upon completion of the event just breeds hate as spending 30+ minutes on an event that may fail and give no reward is a poor design decision and gives the player the illusion that the events failure was no one’s fault.

Reward thresholds would be great for individual classes, imagine upon completion of a dungeon path it showed a scoreboard that kept track of damage dealt, damage taken, damage evaded/blocked, aegis uptime/ total % of projectiles reflected and time spent on each boss. If they made it so these thresholds had to be met before you would get a certain piece of the reward and made the rewards DESIRABLE, I feel that would be enough on its own.

TLDR: The playerbase is terrible at the game, add meaningful reward systems that will make players want to get better at the game and perhaps add thresholds that need to be met before you can obtain the reward.

Extra marks awarded for the use of ‘toxicity’ in a creative sentence. 7/10.

As for rewards, they are there but they’re pretty boring imo. I mean, the better you are at clearing the dungeons, the less time you’re wasting and the faster you can make your money. There’s nothing unique, there’s nothing exciting and nothing that makes you stand out from the crowd for having achieved or gotten better at something. They won’t implement that. The QQ will go on forever about how ‘unfair’ it is that the better more skilful players can get something that the lazy and careless can’t.

Also scoreboards while lovely would result in lots and lots of angry PHIW’ers. And I mean a lot. Like most of the ‘community’.

Don’t get me wrong because I would welcome that kind of thing. It just wont happen given the kind of player base this game has. and the lack of interest anet has in anything to do with dungeons. At all.

You know what?

I started reading this with the immediate expectation of it either being a BINGO thread or something that I disagree with but to be honest I feel you, OP.

You’re saying things that I’ve mentioned many times by now.

In fact, I can personally relate to your statement saying there’s not enough incentive to learn to play the game better.

When I first began playing this game I was a complete idiot when leveling up my warrior and talked to basically no one, seeked no sources of information to learn how to do anything better and by the time I was 80 I was using blues/greens with random stats/runes/sigils without caring about anything and had clownshoes utilities.

I was hardly ever put in a situation where I had to stop and think “I can’t do this, I need to change my approach” unless I tried doing something like soloing a champ.

Everything felt too easy, be it the XP gain or the personal story or whatever I was doing. It wasn’t until I started doing dungeons until my perspective of the game changed and I started becoming interested in the game’s combat and learning to be a better player.

Unfortunately, dungeons are something that Arenanet doesn’t care about at all. They don’t even put bare minimum effort into maintenance with them unless a major bug comes about where it’s impossible to complete a path. Aside from that they ignore them, which is understandable but sad.

This game is a themepark MMO and as such, it’s destined to always cater to players that prefer a more casual playstyle so it makes sense why things are the way they are. Afterall, the game was advertised as one that you could always play how you want yet still succeed. You can’t really make a game and adhere to that statement without emphasis on content that’s accessible by everyone.

As for the rewards… not much to say other than they’re in generally really bad. Part of that is because as expected from a themepark MMO and from the cash shop model, they want there to be a large incentive for players to spend real life money on gems. With really good ingame rewards, it would overall lower their profits from the gem store because of the fact that gold would have a lower value. I could be wrong on this but it’s my interpretation of it.

Yeah I feel the ingame cash shop conflicts with a lot of game play decisions, which is understandable but right now the rewards are so deceiving. I imagine alot of players would get upset if they could see a total loot screen after opening 100 champ bags, whereas in that time they spent opening the bags they could have made more gold using other methods.

It sucks because I like the buy 2 play concept but I get the feeling this game would have been alot better with a sub fee.

+1 I would love to have a scoreboard / method of tracking and comparing party & player effectiveness in dungeons.

Evapor.6849:

TLDR: The playerbase is terrible at the game, add meaningful reward systems that will make players want to get better at the game and perhaps add thresholds that need to be met before you can obtain the reward.

I think that generalization is unfair and as a result, lead you to a false conclusion. While you are correct in saying the game doesn’t do much to challenge players to play better, the game is actually intentionally designed that way to appeal to a larger market. GW2 has it right in recognizing that there is a large market for games that simply let you play ‘badly’ and appealing to that market. The content/theme/story alone wouldn’t likely be enough to sustain this game if it was just another ‘tiered progression’ game.

Evapor.6849:

So today I seen something truly remarkable, I checked the arah lfg and there was a 3 man group that said “P2 @ lupi pay 15s”, now you probably think your eyes are kittening you, this did not mean they needed help at lupi, no. This means they wanted you to pay 15silver to join the path which wasnt even near complete, and then carry them through lupi.

Guild wars 2 is a very strange game, it has a playerbase that dumbfounds me and amazes me at the same time, it is the only the only game i’ve ever played where the vast majority of players are straight up terrible at the game. I think a major cause of this is the fact that there is no incentive to get better as a player, I think they need to add a better reward system to the pve side of the game or at least remove the timegates on certain dungeon paths, obviously the easier paths should stay the way they are.

I think encouraging players to contribute in groups would cause less toxicity and improve their overall gameplay, open world is a mess at the moment because its complete RNG wether youll get a group that wants to complete the event or have it completed for them, and the fact that the ‘real reward’ is only given upon completion of the event just breeds hate as spending 30+ minutes on an event that may fail and give no reward is a poor design decision and gives the player the illusion that the events failure was no one’s fault.

Reward thresholds would be great for individual classes, imagine upon completion of a dungeon path it showed a scoreboard that kept track of damage dealt, damage taken, damage evaded/blocked, aegis uptime/ total % of projectiles reflected and time spent on each boss. If they made it so these thresholds had to be met before you would get a certain piece of the reward and made the rewards DESIRABLE, I feel that would be enough on its own.

TLDR: The playerbase is terrible at the game, add meaningful reward systems that will make players want to get better at the game and perhaps add thresholds that need to be met before you can obtain the reward.

op it sounds like a lrn2play issue
edit: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild

Seen a lot of these threads. It’s a sad thing that we can’t have more exclusive rewards that can be obtained through skilled play.

@sorrychief Nice bait.

Evapor.6849:

@sorrychief Nice bait.

Would you believe that the devs are not even good at their own game? I’ve played with a MM necro some months, maybe a year ago even and the guy was on Ready Up talking about balance changes to other classes. I still cringe at how he got into our teamspeak.

So what makes you think devs will reward skillful play in pve if they don’t in pvp?

Temp solution for OP: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon#Bonus_Chests I’m not sure what bait is exactly. Bait is for fishing, right?

Evapor.6849:

TLDR: The playerbase is terrible at the game, add meaningful reward systems that will make players want to get better at the game and perhaps add thresholds that need to be met before you can obtain the reward.

Personally, I believe the playerbase in MMO’s in general has simply become far broader than it used to be: Next to the “traditional gamers” who I believe could already be found in MMO’s 10-15 years ago, you now have all kind of youngsters, elders as well as former “traditional gamers” who have now reached their late twenties and early thirties. What these new types of gamers have in common is that I call them “casual”.

They likely have less time available to play, don’t primarily play to be challenged to the maximum of their abilities and beyond, but rather like socializing and easy access to the content. But most important of all, it’s (the adult part of) these players who fund a game like GW2.

Sorry if I’m gonna burst a few bubbles here, but a family consisting out of 2 parents and a few kids all owning a copy of GW2 and making frequent purchases in the gemstore is – economically speaking – the far more valuable player/customer than a handful of students with too much time on their hands playing excel wars and setting SC records.

To me, this thread reeks of self-grandeur and the usual “let’s pat each others on the back” so commonly found amongst several visitors of this forum section. Before you raise such matters as “bad players”, you might want to consider to what kind of audience a game like this caters to. In my opinion, your problem is not “the bad playerbase”, but that you simply picked the wrong game. Learn to deal with it or move on.

As a final note on your actual reward suggestion:
You mentioned how the “all or nothing” mechanism of open-world content isn’t ideal, yet I don’t see how your threshold idea is any different from that: Either you reach the thresholds or you don’t. This is precisely the same “all or nothing” approach.

In order to change that, you’d need multiple tier of rewards, similar to how GW1 missions awarded standard, expert and master rewards. You would then award reward X at standard level, X*2 at expert and X*3 at master (just examples). But you cannot award X, Y and Z at individual levels, because then you are again doing “all or nothing” (when a player only wants the Z reward, getting X or Y is meaningless).

I don’t agree with a few things you said, I believe hardcore players are the ones selling the copies, they are the ones that are constantly playing running around completing events, filling the world, helping noobs where necessary, They are the ones keeping the game alive. Many of the hardcore players that stream sell alot of copies for example last night in Phantaram’s stream (Pro pvp player) I seen at least 5-20 people asking where they could buy this game asking all sorts of questions because they were interested in the game, now lets compare that to the ‘casual’ players, casual players come and go they generally don’t play for very long.

I doubt the dungeons/fractals board would still be active 2 years after the games release with only casual players populating the game, guilds have made speedrunning very popular and is one of the main attractions people see when they watch gameplay of gw2. I’m not sure how you think a casual player is more valuable, considering last month we had an event hosted by the hardcore guild [DnT] which brought in 1000+ viewers and I bet that sold lots of copies on it’s own. Casual player’s are usually one time buyers that float from many different games and are brought in by hardcore players through social media or word of mouth.

Secondly i’m not a developer if you couldn’t already tell, my threshold system is simply an idea or a solution to what we currently have. There are two stages in a dungeon currently: Complete and Incomplete there is no inbetween and because of such we look for ways to complete the dungeon fast as possible, if there was a system add mini challenges or goals for the group to aim for i.e. kill lupi in under 5min, block every mossman attack. These challenges would test the player individually and give them a bonus reward for it, as opposed to the current system we have were someone can die every fight, contribute nothing and get the same reward as the players that carried them through the dungeon, this was just an idea to help the playerbase improve at the game as a whole. I’m sure you’ve heard tales of the players 1000+ hours in that still don’t know what a combo field is, I don’t have a problem with casual players I just think this game’s community is hilariously bad at the game because anet refuses to help the players get better.

I have nothing against bad/casual players.

sorrychief.2563:

Evapor.6849:

@sorrychief Nice bait.

Would you believe that the devs are not even good at their own game? I’ve played with a MM necro some months, maybe a year ago even and the guy was on Ready Up talking about balance changes to other classes. I still cringe at how he got into our teamspeak.

So what makes you think devs will reward skillful play in pve if they don’t in pvp?

Temp solution for OP: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon#Bonus_Chests I’m not sure what bait is exactly. Bait is for fishing, right?

You’re claiming I’m having these problems because im not in a guild, maybe you think im some sort of god but me joining a guild will not help the entire community get better at the game. It almost as if you never read the post andyour just trolling, oh wait.

Evapor.6849:

I don’t agree with a few things you said, I believe hardcore players are the ones selling the copies, they are the ones that are constantly playing running around completing events, filling the world, helping noobs where necessary, They are the ones keeping the game alive. Many of the hardcore players that stream sell alot of copies for example last night in Phantaram’s stream (Pro pvp player) I seen at least 5-20 people asking where they could buy this game asking all sorts of questions because they were interested in the game, now lets compare that to the ‘casual’ players, casual players come and go they generally don’t play for very long.

That’s pretty speculative. So in your opinion, even though the game targets the ‘casual’ player very hard, it’s the hardcore players that keep it alive because they are so effective at marketing the game to the casual group? I’m not sure that’s very accurate. That’s an interesting spin because if I’m casual, only have a few free hours here and there, why would I waste my time watching some feed from a hardcore guy instead of playing the game? Why do I even care what that feed has to say when the game caters to however I want to play it?

Your theme in your posts is evident and lacks a recognition of what kind of player this game appeals to. If anything, the lack of challenge for the hardcore player makes them more fickle than some casual guy that pops in an out a few times a week.

Hardcore players might not be marketing to casual players. But they are certainly a big influence on keeping a game alive. All those player resources that casual players rely on and use are not created by casual players.

spoj.9672:

Hardcore players might not be marketing to casual players. But they are certainly a big influence on keeping a game alive. All those player resources that casual players rely on and use are not created by casual players.

basically this.

Satenia.9025:

<snip>

They likely have less time available to play, don’t primarily play to be challenged to the maximum of their abilities and beyond, but rather like socializing and easy access to the content. But most important of all, it’s (the adult part of) these players who fund a game like GW2.

<snip>

Everything you say is fine except the bolded I have a problem with.

No one logs in every day wanting to repeatedly fail at things and be pushed to their limits. However, that is a major element of gaming. Repeated easy success, fun for a time, but sometimes you want to sink your teeth into something a bit more meaty. That’s what this game lacks at this point. It’s been too long since we’ve gotten a new challenging repeatable bit of content.

I’d say that’s one of the major problems of the game currently is the lack of true challenges, even the devs seem to agree at least publically. Look at all their recent claims of challenging group content. Will the deliver /shrug no clue, but fact is having something to push yourself on is a very important part of a healthy game, doesn’t mean it’ll be the most used and most played content, it just needs to be there which creates a problem with development resources and what not, but again, just something needs to be there and hopefully they actually pull it off.

As for the reward tiers, while the OP has a certain idea for it that may be undesireable the fact that it’s so easily to leech off people in this game is another major problem.

Tier based rewards are something that’s needed just to promote actually playing the game. Look at silverwastes and how easily people can just grab up rewards on the bosses and with one keystroke to tag things. It’s silly. The thresholds don’t need to be extreme but they should be there. A game should promote getting better at it, but at the very least it needs to promote actually playing.

And it’s not about chest thumping, it’s simply about the fact that this game doesn’t really motivate players to get better. Personally I’m not great, far from it, but I can do all the content… and well, why I don’t play as often as I used to is that I simply don’t have the motivation to get better, and getting better is something that’s fun to me and many gamers. You are right though a large portion of the demographic never wants to see how bad they are. They don’t want to learn, they don’t want to get better, because doing so means they have to accept that they were doing poorly before. That’s the reason things like scoresheets at the end of a dungeon are often controversial. They can be an amazing tool to improve, but far too often they just lead to toxicity between the chest thumpers and the people who want to keep their blinders on.

/shrug TL : DR – casual players can still be good and want to be good, GW2 doesn’t really motivate people to even play let alone get better, and the only reason we don’t have the motivational tools that could help this is because a lot of people are idiots (on both sides of the fence).

Obtena.7952:

Evapor.6849:

I don’t agree with a few things you said, I believe hardcore players are the ones selling the copies, they are the ones that are constantly playing running around completing events, filling the world, helping noobs where necessary, They are the ones keeping the game alive. Many of the hardcore players that stream sell alot of copies for example last night in Phantaram’s stream (Pro pvp player) I seen at least 5-20 people asking where they could buy this game asking all sorts of questions because they were interested in the game, now lets compare that to the ‘casual’ players, casual players come and go they generally don’t play for very long.

That’s pretty speculative. So in your opinion, even though the game targets the ‘casual’ player very hard, it’s the hardcore players that keep it alive because they are so effective at marketing the game to the casual group? I’m not sure that’s very accurate. That’s an interesting spin because if I’m casual, only have a few free hours here and there, why would I waste my time watching some feed from a hardcore guy instead of playing the game? Why do I even care what that feed has to say when the game caters to however I want to play it?

Your theme in your posts is evident and lacks a recognition of what kind of player this game appeals to. If anything, the lack of challenge for the hardcore player makes them more fickle than some casual guy that pops in an out a few times a week.

Well the entire idea behind eSports is to throw money at some hardcore players so that they will continue to advertise the game to potential players as well as fuel a more hardcore devotion from current players.

Now we all know how poorly GW2’s eSports are doing but, yeah that’s the idea, get hardcore players to advertise for you.

spoj.9672:

Hardcore players might not be marketing to casual players. But they are certainly a big influence on keeping a game alive. All those player resources that casual players rely on and use are not created by casual players.

It’s true that 3rds party content is a helpful resource but I fail to see how that changes what I’m talking about. If there wasn’t dungeon running vids created by hardcore players, I have a hard time thinking that people couldn’t complete that content. I’m of the opinion that if it’s not easily accessible from within the game, the casual gamer tends to ignore it. That includes forums. The dungeon content might be harder at first but casual players are more than capable of learning content and being aware the game exists. The threshold is just not that high. You don’t give the playerbase enough credit and perhaps the people making the videos too much.

Jerus.4350:

Well the entire idea behind eSports is to throw money at some hardcore players so that they will continue to advertise the game to potential players as well as fuel a more hardcore devotion from current players.

Now we all know how poorly GW2’s eSports are doing but, yeah that’s the idea, get hardcore players to advertise for you.

I doubt advertising by E sports by highly skilled, dedicated players even reaches the casual player market the game targets.

@Obtena Most players want to check out the game before they buy it, social medias like twitch and youtube do wonders for games that otherwise would not have gotten alot of recognition, and in some cases you get to see it from someone you trust, in my case if im interested in a game ill take total biscuit’s opinion of a game before making my final decision whether or not to purchase it.

I’d say casual players are more likely to watch someone else play the game, because usually the person they’re watching is doing things ingame that isn’t so accessible to everyone, whether it be through top end pve/pvp play or just some guy that is insanely rich throwing things into the mystic forge, I can’t do that on a regular basis so why not just watch someone else do it?

edit: now that I think of it has any game gotten popular in the last few years without social media?

On your reply to Jerus, League of Legends reached me as a casual player, I knew it existed but when I seen it on some news site that some league of legends tournament was going to be larger than a football match, thats when I tried it out, I became addicted to it because the entire scene devoted itself to esports and competitive play. I don’t consider myself a ‘hardcore’ LoL player but it was the hardcore scene that grabbed me, as opposed to the non existent casual scene.

Evapor.6849:

@Obtena Most players want to check out the game before they buy it, social medias like twitch and youtube do wonders for games that otherwise would not have gotten alot of recognition, and in some cases you get to see it from someone you trust, in my case if im interested in a game ill take total biscuit’s opinion of a game before making my final decision whether or not to purchase it.

I’d say casual players are more likely to watch someone else play the game, because usually the person they’re watching is doing things ingame that isn’t so accessible to everyone, whether it be through top end pve/pvp play or just some guy that is insanely rich throwing things into the mystic forge, I can’t do that on a regular basis so why not just watch someone else do it?

edit: now that I think of it has any game gotten popular in the last few years without social media?

Don’t equate social media with only the content that hardcore players are pumping out. It’s just a subset of everything a player can review to make a decision on playing.

Again, if I have a few hours to dedicate to a game, I’m going to play it, not watch someone play it. While there might be the odd instance were a casual might watch a video because of content they won’t personally experience, it’s not and integral part of keeping the game alive.

Thats only your opinion of it. You cant speak for every casual player.

Besides i wouldnt even consider you a casual player. You are obviously quite invested in the game even if you have low play hours. So you hardly have the right to speak for casual players. I play even less than your example but i wouldnt consider myself a casual player.

Yes it is my opinion, like most discussions in these forums.

Regardless, I don’t think there is any denial that the game caters to the people that are these ‘terrible’ players that the OP is speaking to. Therefore, the problem isn’t that they are bad, the problem is not-bads wanting to change the game experience to not suit those people. Like it or not, this game makes money because people don’t/can’t/want to exert themselves too hard to play it.

Well, to really get at that issue we would have to operationalize the word “casual”. Right off-the-bat two contexts come to mind.

1. Time Based
2. Effort Based

Some players play upwards of 5 hours or more a day. Some play less than 1 hour a week. Which is more or less casual? What about a player who spends 5 hours following world boss trains and hasn’t bothered to learn their class or basic class mechanics? What about a player who has 1 hour a week to play but spends it solo-ing champions or speed running as many dungeons as they can in that hour?

The thing about GW2 is that it can be played at a high level, but unlike some other games, it an also be enjoyed at a very low skill level as well.

Perhaps the better delineation would be between players who enjoy critical thinking and problem solving in their gameplay and players who are just looking for a way to shut down and passively enjoy the game to unwind.

Evapor.6849:

I don’t agree with a few things you said, I believe hardcore players are the ones selling the copies, they are the ones that are constantly playing running around completing events, filling the world, helping noobs where necessary, They are the ones keeping the game alive. Many of the hardcore players that stream sell alot of copies for example last night in Phantaram’s stream (Pro pvp player) I seen at least 5-20 people asking where they could buy this game asking all sorts of questions because they were interested in the game, now lets compare that to the ‘casual’ players, casual players come and go they generally don’t play for very long.

I doubt the dungeons/fractals board would still be active 2 years after the games release with only casual players populating the game, guilds have made speedrunning very popular and is one of the main attractions people see when they watch gameplay of gw2. I’m not sure how you think a casual player is more valuable, considering last month we had an event hosted by the hardcore guild [DnT] which brought in 1000+ viewers and I bet that sold lots of copies on it’s own. Casual player’s are usually one time buyers that float from many different games and are brought in by hardcore players through social media or word of mouth.

First of all, I think it’s important to realize that the players posting on this forum are a vocal minority. The same goes for the very few streamers who have an audience enough to go viral.

Let me put it like this: I’ve actively been playing since launch, I’m spending my gaming time in all kind of areas, such as hanging around in major towns, engaging in world bosses, PUG-ing dungeons/fractals, doing some pvp as well as wvw – meaning I get to enjoy all kind of socialising. Let me tell you that it does not resolve around these forums and neither does it resolve around some (in-)famous streaming kids I’ve personally never even heard about (and I do bother with various forums outside of the game).

I do not doubt that there is an audience for what you’ve mentioned and surely there are box sales being made through it, but if it’s not being actively talked about ingame, it is not that much important. “Viewers” as such are irrelevant as long as they do not actively engage. They are there for their personal entertainment and they are loyal to the “celebrity” involved, not the game as such.

I don’t see how this can be more important than a casual player drawing friends or families in.

Evapor.6849:

Secondly i’m not a developer if you couldn’t already tell, my threshold system is simply an idea or a solution to what we currently have. There are two stages in a dungeon currently: Complete and Incomplete there is no inbetween and because of such we look for ways to complete the dungeon fast as possible, if there was a system add mini challenges or goals for the group to aim for i.e. kill lupi in under 5min, block every mossman attack. These challenges would test the player individually and give them a bonus reward for it, as opposed to the current system we have were someone can die every fight, contribute nothing and get the same reward as the players that carried them through the dungeon, this was just an idea to help the playerbase improve at the game as a whole. I’m sure you’ve heard tales of the players 1000+ hours in that still don’t know what a combo field is, I don’t have a problem with casual players I just think this game’s community is hilariously bad at the game because anet refuses to help the players get better.

Individual rewards in a group environment do not work. Let me draw a parallel to the living story (grind) chapters (season 2) here: Personal achievements are commonly solved through having one person take one for the team, while the other 4 players hang back at some kind of “safe-spot” to get the achievement without much effort on their part. Later on, you switch roles. That is exactly what would happen in dungeons.

spoj.9672:

Hardcore players might not be marketing to casual players. But they are certainly a big influence on keeping a game alive. All those player resources that casual players rely on and use are not created by casual players.

I am curious to what resources you are referring to here. If you think the casual player is interested in your soloing lupi video then I’m afraid to inform you that you are greatly mistaken. The kind of casual player we have been talking about here is reading the official wiki at best. They are sort of busy playing the game themselves with the limited hours they have. As I’ve mentioned to the poster above, speed runs, famous kids streaming the game and so on and so forth is nothing that gets commonly talked about in the game. I’m also aware that there are some delusional persons on this very forum who think they have “taught” the community how to beat dungeon content and what not. Having been there since (pre-)launch, let me tell you that it has been done without those players. Slower, more painful, but yeah, still done. From my personal experience on these forums, hardcore players tend to have the attitude to tell everyone else how bad they are. I don’t really see how that helps keeping the game alive.

Im talking about guides, sites such as dulfy and the wiki. Gameplay videos are useful to some casual players. But not to the same extent. All the info on the wiki, guides, fansites and official forums is mostly compiled by hardcore and dedicated players. Without them there would be no public info about the game other than what the developers themselves release and whats in game.

Yes there are many players that dont know about all these outlets. But when they ask in game they often get directed to sites like the wiki, dulfy and gw2dungeons.net. Its much more useful to the community to have the info out there and you need dedicated players to create these outlets.

I spend almost all my time in wvw but in other games I raided quite hard core for years. One thing that other games do is put a skill block on content via attunements or medals that have to be earned.

now I dont think anything crazy needs to be done….but something to prevent terrible players from inserting themselves into something just to be carried through.

Whoever said this game has a huge number of terrible players….i couldn’t agree more..and to the people who say “its ok they are terrible,they are just unwinding” that’s like a novice chess player sitting down with someone for a match and stuffing the rook up their butt and saying….“I’m just unwinding” just because the game is a source of relaxation doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to play correctly.

Imho of course.

Jaxx

Jerus.4350:

Everything you say is fine except the bolded I have a problem with.

No one logs in every day wanting to repeatedly fail at things and be pushed to their limits. However, that is a major element of gaming. Repeated easy success, fun for a time, but sometimes you want to sink your teeth into something a bit more meaty. That’s what this game lacks at this point. It’s been too long since we’ve gotten a new challenging repeatable bit of content.

I’d say that’s one of the major problems of the game currently is the lack of true challenges, even the devs seem to agree at least publically. Look at all their recent claims of challenging group content. Will the deliver /shrug no clue, but fact is having something to push yourself on is a very important part of a healthy game, doesn’t mean it’ll be the most used and most played content, it just needs to be there which creates a problem with development resources and what not, but again, just something needs to be there and hopefully they actually pull it off.

First of all, I did not mean to be dismissive about the part you quoted, though I understand it could be perceived as such. I did not mean to say that the casual player wants to get everything handed on the silver platter (at least I don’t hope so). However, what I think is important – and what you also pointed out – is that players don’t get repeatedly stuck on something without any kind of progress.

Jerus.4350:

As for the reward tiers, while the OP has a certain idea for it that may be undesireable the fact that it’s so easily to leech off people in this game is another major problem.

Tier based rewards are something that’s needed just to promote actually playing the game. Look at silverwastes and how easily people can just grab up rewards on the bosses and with one keystroke to tag things. It’s silly. The thresholds don’t need to be extreme but they should be there. A game should promote getting better at it, but at the very least it needs to promote actually playing.

And it’s not about chest thumping, it’s simply about the fact that this game doesn’t really motivate players to get better. Personally I’m not great, far from it, but I can do all the content… and well, why I don’t play as often as I used to is that I simply don’t have the motivation to get better, and getting better is something that’s fun to me and many gamers. You are right though a large portion of the demographic never wants to see how bad they are. They don’t want to learn, they don’t want to get better, because doing so means they have to accept that they were doing poorly before. That’s the reason things like scoresheets at the end of a dungeon are often controversial. They can be an amazing tool to improve, but far too often they just lead to toxicity between the chest thumpers and the people who want to keep their blinders on.

/shrug TL : DR – casual players can still be good and want to be good, GW2 doesn’t really motivate people to even play let alone get better, and the only reason we don’t have the motivational tools that could help this is because a lot of people are idiots (on both sides of the fence).

In my opinion, what you describe are the downsides of the sort of game that Anet envisioned. One of the major things the game offers is that you can so easily contribute. There is an open-world event going on, you hit a few times, you profit. Others players aren’t there to grief you, but rather to support you. You don’t need to build teams, you don’t really need some kind of trinity, you don’t need to outrun another player to harvest a node and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, this also means that you can leech very very easily.

Would you really be willing to give that up? Let’s think about this for a moment:

My team does more damage at world boss than yours, so we get loot and you don’t.
I arrive first at a node so I harvest it and you don’t.
I have the proper class composition and you don’t so I beat the content while you don’t.

There are MMO’s which do all of the above, but I don’t think that GW2 ever wanted to be that kind of MMO and I think it’s a major strength.

Ultimately, I think they really hit the nail with the fractal levels:
You can play some kind of pro group doing the lvl 50 fractal in half an hour.
But you can also play some mediocre group and doing the level 30 fractal casually within an hour.

Both groups will get the same kind of rewards, but the better one will get more within a shorter amount of time. Personally, I consider this ideal. I would very much like to see that kind of concept being applied to other content. In my opinion, it can please both hardcore players as well as the more casual ones.

Mini Liadri.

hyjaxxx.1584:

I spend almost all my time in wvw but in other games I raided quite hard core for years. One thing that other games do is put a skill block on content via attunements or medals that have to be earned.

now I dont think anything crazy needs to be done….but something to prevent terrible players from inserting themselves into something just to be carried through.

Whoever said this game has a huge number of terrible players….i couldn’t agree more..and to the people who say “its ok they are terrible,they are just unwinding” that’s like a novice chess player sitting down with someone for a match and stuffing the rook up their butt and saying….“I’m just unwinding” just because the game is a source of relaxation doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to play correctly.

Imho of course.

Jaxx

While you’re entitled to your opinion, this attitude is startling. The example you provide and what happens in this game are not comparable; the guy putting the chess piece in his posterior is acting maliciously, not in the spirit of the game. The guy playing to relax on his terms is not doing it to purposefully ruin other people’s experience and acting in a completely reasonable manner within the spirit of the game. It’s the players responsibility to ensure they interact with others at a level they are comfortable with.

Satenia.9025:

Scaling rewards doesn’t have to be how the OP said. What I think is more of a system of say "participate in 1 wave on a tower defense in SW get copper reward, 2 get silver, and 3 gold, participate on all and X amount of kills you get platinum and an extra champ chest or something like that. Copper you get very very small reward. Get silver you get good rewards, but gold is required for shovels or something. That’s not asking for some strange feat, it’s simply asking that you participate through an event instead of a simple tag for reward once every 10 mins or something.

The idea of scaled rewards is sound, not all ideas on how it’s done will necessarily be good, but doesn’t mean that the idea of promoting active play with them wouldn’t be great, and furthering scale with bonus monetary value rewards would promote playing well.

With this in-famous / famous, There are people in this game ( like me ) who would very much like to have a name out there and be known for one type of content. And with these " big names " it can draw the er.. cassaul players to play alittle more than they nornaly do as they get more into what a big star does/do. This too can and will help out a game like this as we see with the Pvp tournamnets and the " please come Pvp, pritty, please? " buffs anet throws out from time to time. And word of mouth through lions arch is a thing too! Its wierd, although it sometimes happens.

Sarah

@Satenia The other person stated the casual player’s were bringing in more players than the hardcore scene of a game. I disagree with this because most gam’s I have played entire lifecycle revolve or did revolve around the hardcore audience, see many of the most popular games on the market at the moment, they are designed to keep people playing over and over to become better players and provide systems ingame for doing so.

On the second point like I said I’m not aware of any game that’s gotten popular or maintained its popularity in the last few years without relying on social media.

Hypothetically if the small ‘hardcore’ audience this game has suddenly dissapeared overnight, I would wake up in the morning log on to do my daily dungeons/fractals I would likely have to post my own LFG because no one else is doing dungeons, the paths I did do would take several hours due to lack of player ability, I would then go to silverwastes and farm for half an hour and then log off due to frustration of events failing or due to boredom. If I was to speculate this playerbase would be unprepared for the ‘Challenging content’ that awaits them in HoT because anet has simply hasn’t given them the proper ingame tools to better themselvers, like I said everyone has to do the very minimum to contribute for the maximum reward. What happens when the playerbase simply can’t do the content that is available in the game? do they go back to the content that was previously the most rewarding? no, hardcore players are the ones that stayed and went back to dungeons for another year. Casual players will likely quit the game if they feel the expansion did not meet their expectations.

We can debate what is more valuable all day, casual or hardcore players but when there is clear evidence out there, the top 5 games on twitch tv have a playerbase that is good at the game and host competitive events that cater to millions worldwide and challenge the players to better themselves. Anet is trying to make there way into the esport scene and plans on adding ‘challenging content’ when it is clear that the vast majority of the playerbase is not ready for this as they are not very good at the game.

This is nowhere near as easy to do as one might expect. Too many variables to track, and too much subjectivity in relevance. This guard kept stability for the group up. But did the instance require stability? How does one weight individual abilities against each other to see if they are meaningful? People will find the way to pad their score and you’ll have warriors who drop banner of discipline on constructs instead of swapping to something useful, because it still adds points to their score so they can boast about it/get rewards.

At best, you will create a subset of population that will try to improve some metrics, like damage. Certainly good start, but it can cause people charging into fights just to get a few more hits in just so they can boast about their massive damage later. Or load utilities that improve the score more than ones that would contribute to the encounter.

Bottom line, while I agree that there should be incentives that would teach the general population to improve, the rewards idea seems like a lot of work and produces a lot of balancing issues. Something that ANet is very unlikely to get into. That, and the whole ‘play as you like’ crowd of nomad 15kap staff guardians who are sure that their contribution was meaningful.

On the upside ANet already made a few attempts at this. First the Marionette, then the majority of PS2 actually required to engage the brain on the first run through (which caused a lot of ‘too hard’ outcry). Need more stuff like that, and Lidari-like events. Get the personal skill up, make people have situational awareness, then they will be more open to developing their group skills.

I agree the marionette encounter was one of my favorites.

Evapor.6849:

@Satenia The other person stated the casual player’s were bringing in more players than the hardcore scene of a game. I disagree with this because most gam’s I have played entire lifecycle revolve or did revolve around the hardcore audience, see many of the most popular games on the market at the moment, they are designed to keep people playing over and over to become better players and provide systems ingame for doing so.

That’s because those games are designed with horizontal progression in mind so as the game develops with increasing rewards locked behind content, it’s only natural that the most dedicated, skilled players continue to play it to expose themselves to this fresh, usually more challenging aspects of the game.

This doesn’t not fit the GW2 model so while it’s our typical experience as MMO’s gamers, it’s not relevant to GW2 because it’s not typical in it’s approach and appeal to gamers (which is why it’s successful mind you).

Obtena.7952:

Evapor.6849:

@Satenia The other person stated the casual player’s were bringing in more players than the hardcore scene of a game. I disagree with this because most gam’s I have played entire lifecycle revolve or did revolve around the hardcore audience, see many of the most popular games on the market at the moment, they are designed to keep people playing over and over to become better players and provide systems ingame for doing so.

That’s because those games are designed with horizontal progression in mind so as the game develops with increasing rewards locked behind content, it’s only natural that the most dedicated, skilled players continue to play it to expose themselves to this fresh, usually more challenging aspects of the game.

This doesn’t not fit the GW2 model so while it’s our typical experience as MMO’s gamers, it’s not relevant to GW2 because it’s not typical in it’s approach and appeal to gamers (which is why it’s successful mind you).

Your idea about rng is interesting. A spin off from warcraft 3 called gem tower defence does what you said with gems and slates and is too bad.

Sarahfull.4930:

Obtena.7952:

Evapor.6849:

@Satenia The other person stated the casual player’s were bringing in more players than the hardcore scene of a game. I disagree with this because most gam’s I have played entire lifecycle revolve or did revolve around the hardcore audience, see many of the most popular games on the market at the moment, they are designed to keep people playing over and over to become better players and provide systems ingame for doing so.

That’s because those games are designed with horizontal progression in mind so as the game develops with increasing rewards locked behind content, it’s only natural that the most dedicated, skilled players continue to play it to expose themselves to this fresh, usually more challenging aspects of the game.

This doesn’t not fit the GW2 model so while it’s our typical experience as MMO’s gamers, it’s not relevant to GW2 because it’s not typical in it’s approach and appeal to gamers (which is why it’s successful mind you).

Your idea about rng is interesting. A spin off from warcraft 3 called gem tower defence does what you said with gems and slates and is too bad.

Woah, talk about misposting … :p

Playing with “bad players” can be very frustrating sometimes but the thing is that “bad player” or “personal performance” is a very subjective thing. And realistically you cannot measure personal performance with any objective metrics – too many factors should be taken into consideration. If you introduce any kind of automated metrics system and start rewarding for that – players will find a way to exploit it to their advantage (i.e. if it’s a max damage metrics – everyone gonna play staff eles etc.). This will literally ruin any kind of teamwork.

Instead of punishing people for being bad game should reward em for being good. Being good not only means highest damage but also how helpful you were. I can think of 3 basic things that ANet can introduce without too much of an effort from their part

1. Bonus chests for completing encounters fast enough or under certain conditions. They already have bonus chest in grawl fractal rewarding you if you didnt lose any prisoner. You can also reward for fast kill/no downed state/evading certain attack etc.

2. MVP system. Let players vote at the end of each dungeon path and choose whoever they think was more of a help to the group. This will work better than any automated metrics system.

3. Bonus reward for completing dungeon through LFG system. This will help greatly with “spreading knowledge” about the game since it will encourage experienced premades to use LFG and teach other people their ways of doing dungeons

Evapor.6849:

@Satenia The other person stated the casual player’s were bringing in more players than the hardcore scene of a game. I disagree with this because most gam’s I have played entire lifecycle revolve or did revolve around the hardcore audience, see many of the most popular games on the market at the moment, they are designed to keep people playing over and over to become better players and provide systems ingame for doing so.

On the second point like I said I’m not aware of any game that’s gotten popular or maintained its popularity in the last few years without relying on social media.

Hypothetically if the small ‘hardcore’ audience this game has suddenly dissapeared overnight, I would wake up in the morning log on to do my daily dungeons/fractals I would likely have to post my own LFG because no one else is doing dungeons, the paths I did do would take several hours due to lack of player ability, I would then go to silverwastes and farm for half an hour and then log off due to frustration of events failing or due to boredom. If I was to speculate this playerbase would be unprepared for the ‘Challenging content’ that awaits them in HoT because anet has simply hasn’t given them the proper ingame tools to better themselvers, like I said everyone has to do the very minimum to contribute for the maximum reward. What happens when the playerbase simply can’t do the content that is available in the game? do they go back to the content that was previously the most rewarding? no, hardcore players are the ones that stayed and went back to dungeons for another year. Casual players will likely quit the game if they feel the expansion did not meet their expectations.

Personally, I don’t see how this applies to GW2. When you look at where Anet has put their focus on these past few months (years?), then the answer is NPE, living story and generally their “living open world”, not dungeons and fractals. Heck, there haven’t been any serious dungeon advancements since launch.

This is a rather obvious hint at what the majority of their playerbase – or at least those they consider “important” – cares about and participates in. With minor exceptions like the triple-wurm-thing, none of that “living world” stuff needs hardcore players pushing the community. As we’ve already establishes before, it’s very easy to contribute and get “credit”, there is no trinity or advanced coordination required and so on and so forth.

As such, the hardcore players may provide added value for the limited instanced content, but this is not mandatory to keep the game going. So dungeons and fractals take a bit longer to complete, groups wipe more, etc.? This is no game-stopper. As far as I’m aware, the current instanced content is perfectly doable with average players playing random classes with random builds. The game aims to be like that and personally I think it’s a major strength.

Evapor.6849:

We can debate what is more valuable all day, casual or hardcore players but when there is clear evidence out there, the top 5 games on twitch tv have a playerbase that is good at the game and host competitive events that cater to millions worldwide and challenge the players to better themselves. Anet is trying to make there way into the esport scene and plans on adding ‘challenging content’ when it is clear that the vast majority of the playerbase is not ready for this as they are not very good at the game.

Could you elaborate this further? I don’t understand how you measure the skill of a games community over twitch tv. This is not sarcasm, I’m just not familiar with that kind of environment. To me, twitch tv is where some popular internet kids play games and other people watch. This is a very small part of the community and I don’t see how you can generalize based on that.

Satenia.9025:

Before you raise such matters as “bad players”, you might want to consider to what kind of audience a game like this caters to. In my opinion, your problem is not “the bad playerbase”, but that you simply picked the wrong game. Learn to deal with it or move on.

This is actually a really good point that I think a lot of folks gloss over. It’s a tough pill to swallow that the game you are playing and even enjoying just isn’t targeted at you.

I’ve kept this in mind for the last 6 months – 1 year and it’s made the game a lot more enjoyable for me. I think others could do the same and find themselves enjoying the game again.

Saint.5647:

Satenia.9025:

Before you raise such matters as “bad players”, you might want to consider to what kind of audience a game like this caters to. In my opinion, your problem is not “the bad playerbase”, but that you simply picked the wrong game. Learn to deal with it or move on.

This is actually a really good point that I think a lot of folks gloss over. It’s a tough pill to swallow that the game you are playing and even enjoying just isn’t targeted at you.

I’ve kept this in mind for the last 6 months – 1 year and it’s made the game a lot more enjoyable for me. I think others could do the same and find themselves enjoying the game again.

I see so many people claiming that gw2 is a casual-only game, that it’s a themepark, that it isn’t catered to more hardcore players, but I simply cannot agree that this is Anet’s intention.

With the amount of effort and money they spend trying to bring attention and players to the hardcore PvP scene, it’s obvious they agree that it is the hardcore players who bring in new blood, usually via streams and big events. Why they apply their money and attention to the PvP side of the game only, rather than taking advantage of all the PvE content they have as well, when catering to hardcore players, honestly baffles me.

It’s obvious they care about getting GW2’s name out both to casual players (via things like that video promotion with the “oath” they made a while back) and hardcores (through their PvP efforts, tourneys, mini lama and leaderboards), but they seem to be missing out on the hardcore PvE-ers in the game.

@Satenia I said the most popular games on twitch generally have communities that are good at the game, the average league of legends or CS:GO player is aware what makes a good player, has a general idea of how the ingame mechanics are to be utilised and how to effectively do well. They may not be the top players but they have a general idea of why things are done the way they are, they are aware of how to improve themselves and have information available if they choose to do so.

Now if we compare that to guild wars 2, we have a community where a good chunk of the players hitting level 80 and 100s of hours playtime don’t use the dodge button, don’t look for attack tells and couldn’t tell you what a combo field is and have no idea how their class functions.

Like I said there should be systems ingame that teach players the fundamentals of the game, show them how to dodge, show them what a combo field is, show them how to effectively use mechanics like stealth and at least give them an idea of how to play their class.

Evapor.6849:

Now if we compare that to guild wars 2, we have a community where a good chunk of the players hitting level 80 and 100s of hours playtime don’t use the dodge button, don’t look for attack tells and couldn’t tell you what a combo field is and have no idea how their class functions.

Lol this is so true. It’s also really sad.

It’s not really sad if you think about how the game is structured. There is no reason to train players to do that if they don’t want to do content where it’s needed. For instance, a player just doing open world stuff doesn’t need to dodge, look for attack tells and co-ordinate combo fields so to think that kind of player would know that is unreasonable.

The place the game really fails for this kind of thing is storymode dungeons, where these skills should be trained on players because of their introductory nature into more difficult, co-operative PVE content.

It’s unreasonable now to expect someone to know the fundamentals of the game? Those mechanics I have listed are the core of the combat system. If I don’t dodge, I will go down or die. If I don’t blast might how am I going to get 25 stacks for the extra damage? If I don’t look at the vinewrath boss phasing I will get instagibbed since I wasn’t standing in the safespot.

If I don’t do any of these things above I will just be leeching the event, not contributing anything, but still hoping the other players can make it succeed because I will get my reward anyway. The entire point of this thread was to give these kinds of players a reason to contribute and not be a complete burden to everyone around them.

Evapor.6849:

It’s unreasonable now to expect someone to know the fundamentals of the game? Those mechanics I have listed are the core of the combat system. If I don’t dodge, I will go down or die. If I don’t blast might how am I going to get 25 stacks for the extra damage? If I don’t look at the vinewrath boss phasing I will get instagibbed since I wasn’t standing in the safespot.

Guess I have to repeat myself: a player just doing open world stuff doesn’t need to dodge, look for attack tells and co-ordinate combo fields, so I question how you define your game fundamentals. The situations you are describing aren’t widely applicable to what happens in openworld, so no, it’s not reasonable to expect everyone to know all the things you feel are fundamentals.

The proper place to expose players to those ‘fundamentals’ would be the content it’s needed. Actually, GW2 does that but it could be done better. The entire point of your thread is to suggest a way to ‘train’ players to learn how you think they should play by changing rewards system. I suspect that’s a clever way to say “If you want this loot, you have to do content that forces you to do all these ‘fundamental’ things to get it”.

Obtena, your signature says it all. Anet treats their players like idiots and doesn’t put the average player in the situation where they actually have to rethink their approach to defeating something or just succeeding in general. This is the problem I guess.