Guild Wars 2

I think people often confuse “hard” with “tedious”.

I find some of the jumping puzzles hard. They would probably be easier with a game controller, but with a mouse and this awkward camera and some of the jerky movement of the character, some of them can be challenging at times.

On the other hand, I can go to Cursed Shore and kill undead for Heavy Moldy Bags, and sell those bags to get a decent amount of money for them.

This isn’t hard.

It does try my patience though.

Or, I can go play the same dungeon over and over again, selling all my yellows and mats for more gold.

This isn’t “hard” either – it’s just tedious.

I can work on map completion (I’m now up to 93%, having done everything except WvWvW zones) – and most of it was extremely simple – not challenging at all. It took a few weeks though.

Tedious isn’t hard. It’s just tedious.

I welcome new content.

I welcome challenging content.

I don’t welcome tedium.

Ian.1349:

I really don’t understand why this is even a debate. More challenging content should = higher rewards, less challenging content should = lesser rewards. It’s such a basic concept, anyone who is defending the current reward structure (which for whatever reason relies heavily on RNG for the more challenging content in the game, FoTM/Aether path/Teq/Wurm) is straight up stupid.

It’s a debate because it’s not written in stone. It’s how it’s done elsewhere. Doesn’t mostly seem to be how it’s done here.

That’s why it’s a debate.

One would assume it was done here for a reason. To put less pressure on people not to do content they don’t want to do.

To the OP: I didn’t read every post , just the first few but I think there is a 3rd group: people who want progression. I think this could be the easiest solution since this doesn’t require adding new content to the game (I want new challenging content too,but lets put that aside now for a minute). This game is full of underused content without proper rewards or sense of progression. Easiest example is the open world: full of dynamic events ,hidden areas etc and after I visited these once I didn’t really want to go back, why would I.
I think existing content should be more appealing and meanwhile we could add some difficulty to it like : shake up some existing dynamic events with an increasing difficulty curve: What I mean is for example “Defend Beetletun from centaurs” event: every time you defeat a wave, the next wave will be stronger but the reward will be also greater and this could go on until they win, which resets the difficulty.
Back to progression: what I think the game is missing is this. After lvl 80 you quickly get your exotic armor (which is perfectly fine) and then the skin hunt begins, but after that not much is in the game. The only thing is which gives you some progression is the achievement system and WvW/PvP ranks. Other than these the game doesn’t really reward you for your time in game, but PvP rank isn’t visible anywhere anymore, and your WvW rank is only visible to your enemies who doesn’t even know your name. I think this game needs more stuff like it was in the GW:EN , like HoM (Player housing/ I never wanted to build a house ,just a place where I can visit my ingame accomplishments) or the reputation system, or something like these.

laokoko.7403:

sirian.4981:

I would note that the hardest most challenging dungeons aren’t played much because they don’t offer good enough rewards. Thats what the gear treadmill people are talking about. If the hard challenging content isn’t significantly more rewarding than easy content, few people will do it.

I think people actually do the challenging content.

I just dont’ think people would repeat them often if it isn’t rewarding.

I doubt this is true. I think most Guild Wars 2 players have barely ever entered a dungeon and I’m pretty sure most have never done Arah.

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

sirian.4981:

I would note that the hardest most challenging dungeons aren’t played much because they don’t offer good enough rewards. Thats what the gear treadmill people are talking about. If the hard challenging content isn’t significantly more rewarding than easy content, few people will do it.

I think people actually do the challenging content.

I just dont’ think people would repeat them often if it isn’t rewarding.

I doubt this is true. I think most Guild Wars 2 players have barely ever entered a dungeon and I’m pretty sure most have never done Arah.

what you said could be true. Many people probably never even reach level 80.

But many people in my guilds have run all the dungeon, but most do ac or cof more often than the other harder ones. The people that regularly runs dungeon, usually choose the easier ones. The harder one they just run it a few times.

Dungeons are very formulaic – not at all based on exploration.

Every time I go into a dungeon, it’s “do this”..“ok, now do this”.

“Stand here”, “kill this”, “now move to this room”, “stand here”.

That’s all it is, most of the time.

It’s incredibly linear and formulaic, and not much fun at all.

If dungeons were about exploring Tyria’s vast, dark underworld, then I bet more people would do it.

But, the only reason to do them at all is to get tokens for skins – otherwise, they’re some of the least interesting content in the game.

ipan.4356:

Dungeons are very formulaic – not at all based on exploration.

Every time I go into a dungeon, it’s “do this”..“ok, now do this”.

“Stand here”, “kill this”, “now move to this room”, “stand here”.

That’s all it is, most of the time.

It’s incredibly linear and formulaic, and not much fun at all.

If dungeons were about exploring Tyria’s vast, dark underworld, then I bet more people would do it.

But, the only reason to do them at all is to get tokens for skins – otherwise, they’re some of the least interesting content in the game.

I don’t agree with a lot of the stuff you say, but this is one of the reasons I don’t do dungeons. I don’t care as much about the money. I care about having fun.

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

sirian.4981:

I would note that the hardest most challenging dungeons aren’t played much because they don’t offer good enough rewards. Thats what the gear treadmill people are talking about. If the hard challenging content isn’t significantly more rewarding than easy content, few people will do it.

I think people actually do the challenging content.

I just dont’ think people would repeat them often if it isn’t rewarding.

I doubt this is true. I think most Guild Wars 2 players have barely ever entered a dungeon and I’m pretty sure most have never done Arah.

I’m honestly curious as to what makes you think most of the players don’t frequent dungeons and that most have never even done Arah? Am I missing a dev quote somewhere or are you just making a guess?

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

sirian.4981:

I would note that the hardest most challenging dungeons aren’t played much because they don’t offer good enough rewards. Thats what the gear treadmill people are talking about. If the hard challenging content isn’t significantly more rewarding than easy content, few people will do it.

I think people actually do the challenging content.

I just dont’ think people would repeat them often if it isn’t rewarding.

I doubt this is true. I think most Guild Wars 2 players have barely ever entered a dungeon and I’m pretty sure most have never done Arah.

I think with the LFG system most people who stick around till 80 will have done a few dungeons.

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

sirian.4981:

I would note that the hardest most challenging dungeons aren’t played much because they don’t offer good enough rewards. Thats what the gear treadmill people are talking about. If the hard challenging content isn’t significantly more rewarding than easy content, few people will do it.

I think people actually do the challenging content.

I just dont’ think people would repeat them often if it isn’t rewarding.

I doubt this is true. I think most Guild Wars 2 players have barely ever entered a dungeon and I’m pretty sure most have never done Arah.

I’m honestly curious as to what makes you think most of the players don’t frequent dungeons and that most have never even done Arah? Am I missing a dev quote somewhere or are you just making a guess?

The fact that they’re not interested in doing more dungeons is a pretty massive hint. As discussed with the Lotro guy earlier, Anet isn’t going to say ‘not enough people do this to be worth our time’ because it wil. just kitten people off (See: SAB).

Ian.1349:

I really don’t understand why this is even a debate. More challenging content should = higher rewards, less challenging content should = lesser rewards. It’s such a basic concept, anyone who is defending the current reward structure (which for whatever reason relies heavily on RNG for the more challenging content in the game, FoTM/Aether path/Teq/Wurm) is straight up stupid.

We have RNG in the content you cite for the same reason we have RNG and raid lockouts in other games — because players only repeat hard content until they get what they want, then demand new hard content with new rewards.

Vayne.8563:

ipan.4356:

Dungeons are very formulaic – not at all based on exploration.

Every time I go into a dungeon, it’s “do this”..“ok, now do this”.

“Stand here”, “kill this”, “now move to this room”, “stand here”.

That’s all it is, most of the time.

It’s incredibly linear and formulaic, and not much fun at all.

If dungeons were about exploring Tyria’s vast, dark underworld, then I bet more people would do it.

But, the only reason to do them at all is to get tokens for skins – otherwise, they’re some of the least interesting content in the game.

I don’t agree with a lot of the stuff you say, but this is one of the reasons I don’t do dungeons. I don’t care as much about the money. I care about having fun.

Open World stuff is just more engaging – which is one reason why I wish they’d convert dungeons to open world (and make them 5x bigger).

The fun in dungeons is the spelunking aspext. The idea of going into musty old caves, dank catacombs beneath ancient cities, lava tunnels in extinct (hopefully) volcanoes.

And seeing what’s there.

Dungeons that go on…and on…and on…and on…and on. Dungeons that you have to camp in because you cannot possibly “complete” (if such a thing were even possible to begin with) in a single night, and probably not in three.

Dungeons should be week long (maybe even month long) forays into the unknown.

I said this in the dungeon sub-forum, but I believe that dungeons should be, at bare minimum, the size of Divinity’s Reach. And that would be just the smallest of them. And open world, too.

There should be no one clear path to “complete” it either, your goals should be your own – maybe there are 5 or 6 bosses spread out all over the “dungeon”, but you can go do whatever you want. They should have dozens of DE’s.

Basically, I consider the whole of Orr to be one massive open-air dungeon.

Now, if we could also get zones that big that are completely underneath the ground. IN other words, “dungeons” underneath all the major cities, underneath Orr, underneath….well, wherever it is dungeons go.

That’s what a dungeon is to me – it’s like a mini-city in itself, that takes forever to explore.

The thing about it being instanced to me is not something I care about one way or another – I do believe that the difficulty (and rewards) should scale, so that they (at least in theory) soloable.

I detest the current combat mechanics, I hate Defiance and Unshakeable, and I hate the obscenely high health pools, the 1-shot mechanics, but otherwise predictable and formulaic way all enemies in dungeons are designed – they are not “difficult” in the sense of needing some skill and strategy (and forethought) to kill – they are “difficult” in the sense that there is usually a set way to do it, and slight deviation means wiping. It means slip you die and have to respawn, because the 1-shot mechanics take you out quickly. But as long as you’ve memorized the sequence of each boss, and the exploit, then you’re fine and you faceroll the whole thing (stealth to skip trash mobs, dodge mechanic to avoid almost everything, DPS the hell out of it all).

It’s just formulaic, linear, and short.

I was kinda hoping for an “underworld” the same size (or larger) as the “overworld” of Tyria.

Ipan, the problem with that sort of play is that people solve the dungeon, post a guide then everyone just follows the optimal guide to completing the dungeon. So devs put in a lot of work to create this complex challenge that just gets cheesed.

Ipan that sounds like a huge amount of work and something very risky. Which isn’t to say we won’t get underground zones.

My two cents: I think Anet seriously underestimates casual players.

I used to play wow, daily, for the hardcore endgame. I didn’t care about rewards, but the fact I could stand up to a challenge with my guild, become a better player and help my guilmates play better, and overcome the greatest odds or whatever.

Now I cannot commit 2 straight, uninterrupted hours a day. That’s what makes me a casual player. I may play 2 or more hours one day, then dissappear for 3 weeks, then come back. I quit fractals because I often had to leave even though I thought I was going to have the time to do the full run. For the same reason I don’t run aetherblade even though it was cool the first time (even though it took us like 3 hours), or Arah.

But I still want to feel all I is run around pressing key #1. I greatly enjoyed the marionette event, it had all a raid boss is supposed to have: changing mechanics, difficulty, and little chance of success if all the group don’t stand up to the challenge. It only lacked a good reward but i didn’t care because bosses like that we’re so hard to come by. I can try challenging content, I just don’t have time for long content. But the two don’t need to go together.

The idea that the endgame of this game is the game in itself is cool as a concept, but the execution is lacking. I don’t enjoy events after the 100th time. I don’t enjoy 24 dungeon paths after repeating them for the nth time (and since I mention dungeons, WOW has like 160 of them…. that would be 16 new ones per year…. GW2?). I don’t enjoy exploring the map or levelling the fourth character to 80 (I have 4 characters I am trying to level and I cannot force myself to play with them more than a few minutes).

We don’t need new maps (that just spreads players too much), we need changes and variety to the existing ones, and the LS may be a good way to achieve this, but the piñata bosses are just too boring, even for a casual player.

Aenesthesia.1697:

My two cents: I think Anet seriously underestimates casual players.

I used to play wow, daily, for the hardcore endgame. I didn’t care about rewards, but the fact I could stand up to a challenge with my guild, become a better player and help my guilmates play better, and overcome the greatest odds or whatever.

Now I cannot commit 2 straight, uninterrupted hours a day. That’s what makes me a casual player. I may play 2 or more hours one day, then dissappear for 3 weeks, then come back. I quit fractals because I often had to leave even though I thought I was going to have the time to do the full run. For the same reason I don’t run aetherblade even though it was cool the first time (even though it took us like 3 hours), or Arah.

But I still want to feel all I is run around pressing key #1. I greatly enjoyed the marionette event, it had all a raid boss is supposed to have: changing mechanics, difficulty, and little chance of success if all the group don’t stand up to the challenge. It only lacked a good reward but i didn’t care because bosses like that we’re so hard to come by. I can try challenging content, I just don’t have time for long content. But the two don’t need to go together.

The idea that the endgame of this game is the game in itself is cool as a concept, but the execution is lacking. I don’t enjoy events after the 100th time. I don’t enjoy 24 dungeon paths after repeating them for the nth time (and since I mention dungeons, WOW has like 160 of them…. that would be 16 new ones per year…. GW2?). I don’t enjoy exploring the map or levelling the fourth character to 80 (I have 4 characters I am trying to level and I cannot force myself to play with them more than a few minutes).

We don’t need new maps (that just spreads players too much), we need changes and variety to the existing ones, and the LS may be a good way to achieve this, but the piñata bosses are just too boring, even for a casual player.

I don’t think casual means you dont’ want a challenge. But there are plenty of people playing this game solo, who don’t know what a meta is.

What I look for in end-game is variety. I’d prefer truly randomized content where the fights aren’t scripted and good play is required for success (as opposed to endless repetition to learn arbitrary boss mechanics). Alternately, I’ll accept a wide variety of things to do, some combination of alt-leveling, exploration, farming (like RIFT’s artifacts), and pvp.

What I won’t do is run the same scripted battles over and over again. WoW cured me of that

I don’t care about end-game gear, aside from aesthetics, especially when the next expansion makes all that gear-grind worthless.

I do like GW2 where I can take my max level character and still be (somewhat) at level anywhere in the world. And I find pvp interesting (although not wvwvw- too much zerg v zerg).

sirian.4981:

Ipan, the problem with that sort of play is that people solve the dungeon, post a guide then everyone just follows the optimal guide to completing the dungeon. So devs put in a lot of work to create this complex challenge that just gets cheesed.

And yet if they put the work into randomizing locations and types of critters and bosses, they would have so much more replay for the same effort…

I have to assume devs are scared about how to validate such systems. It is harder than purely scripted fights but it is do-able and whoever gets it right might have the next WoW.

qbalrog.8017:

What I look for in end-game is variety. I’d prefer truly randomized content where the fights aren’t scripted and good play is required for success (as opposed to endless repetition to learn arbitrary boss mechanics). Alternately, I’ll accept a wide variety of things to do, some combination of alt-leveling, exploration, farming (like RIFT’s artifacts), and pvp.

What I won’t do is run the same scripted battles over and over again. WoW cured me of that

I don’t care about end-game gear, aside from aesthetics, especially when the next expansion makes all that gear-grind worthless.

I do like GW2 where I can take my max level character and still be (somewhat) at level anywhere in the world. And I find pvp interesting (although not wvwvw- too much zerg v zerg).

Random mechanics come with a price. You can’t script stuff, so it’s just spawning random guys.

If you make something difficult but not scripted most people won’t touch it. So, random becomes generic, because nothing is uique. You get different mobs, but they all have to attack in roughly the same way.

But I agree with you. I don’t like scripted bosses.

I want a hardcore difficulty for Mordremoth’s fight (example) where you have to climb on its back when it swoops down. When Mordremoth is banking in the air left and right, players have to climb (jumping puzzle) its left/right side to avoid falling off to their deaths. Then, players have to destroy some of Mordremoth’s wings to force it to land.

Players who missed the jump will repair Charr Tanks that were damaged during Mordremoth’s swoop attack. Nearby players will get on Charr Tanks and harpoon Mordremoth once it’s on the ground to prevent it from escaping. When the elder dragon is on the ground, players can deal substantial damage to it. Mordremoth will attempt to destroy the tanks and regrow its wings. If the elder dragon destroyed the last tank it will flee.

Vayne.8563:

qbalrog.8017:

What I look for in end-game is variety. I’d prefer truly randomized content where the fights aren’t scripted and good play is required for success (as opposed to endless repetition to learn arbitrary boss mechanics). Alternately, I’ll accept a wide variety of things to do, some combination of alt-leveling, exploration, farming (like RIFT’s artifacts), and pvp.

What I won’t do is run the same scripted battles over and over again. WoW cured me of that

I don’t care about end-game gear, aside from aesthetics, especially when the next expansion makes all that gear-grind worthless.

I do like GW2 where I can take my max level character and still be (somewhat) at level anywhere in the world. And I find pvp interesting (although not wvwvw- too much zerg v zerg).

Random mechanics come with a price. You can’t script stuff, so it’s just spawning random guys.

If you make something difficult but not scripted most people won’t touch it. So, random becomes generic, because nothing is uique. You get different mobs, but they all have to attack in roughly the same way.

But I agree with you. I don’t like scripted bosses.

The real trick is to combine scripted events with a constrained set of randomized events or abilities.

For example, you could have a boss that uses cold attacks and has lots of Chill.

When players trigger it’s event, it’s attacks are chosen from a small pool of attacks that all have chill, but function in slightly different ways (maybe one is a slow ground targeted AoE, another is a bouncing projectile, and yet a third is a cone).

You always know that this boss is going to chill you, but you won’t be sure of exactly how it’s going to attack until you face it.

Furthermore, if it had 3 different attacks, and all of them were chosen from a constrained, but random pool, then it makes it even more variable.

The above of course is a really simplistic idea, but illustrates how you could use both pre-generated scripted content in tandem with randomized or procedural content.

people don’t want what they think they want…

Windsagio.1340:

people don’t want what they think they want…

Most of the features people want are things that existed in GW1, like Guild Halls, GvG mode, expansions, more skills and build flexibility, less Gem store armors and more armors as reward for new content.

Xillllix.3485:

Windsagio.1340:

people don’t want what they think they want…

Most of the features people want are things that existed in GW1, like Guild Halls, GvG mode, expansions, more skills and build flexibility, less Gem store armors and more armors as reward for new content.

Oddly enough, most, if not all, armor sets were in the various campaigns and expansions right from the start. Weapon skins were added to the game from time to time, and some of them dropped only in elite content. However, new armor skins were put in only for the new campaigns and in the expansion. I believe the only exception to that was Obsidian, which was less a reward for content and more like a legendary – farm (or buy) a bunch of expensive stuff.

I dont normally run dungeons because of the statements made (no real reward for time spent) but I can see myself making more difficult dungeon runs if you get extra champ bags from completion on the more difficult dungeons and then adding champs in actual dungeons also you can get a good amount of rewards. Maybe increasing the dye drop rates in dungeon only can be a good incentive to run dungeons more often. AC you get an extra bag on top of current rewards and Arah you get eight on top of current reward. That would give me a bit of motivation to run more dungeons (i.e farm).

Also people have to understand that once you do something more than twice in a row it is “farming”. WvW/PvE/PvP is all “farming” just depends if that “farming” is fun and engaging. And running dungeons ARE challenging but people play the game the way they want. When you run with people who tell you “do this” “stand here” “run here and hit with 1 here” the dungeons were not designed at least I don’t think to be run that way IMO. People do it because it makes it easier that is on the community not the designers (maybe the designers can change some things but people will always find exploits or an easier more tedious way to do it). And when people don’t want to run the dungeon that way they get grief HARD from the other players. So we can’t get mad EotM is turning into a Karma train because WE are turning it into that type of map.

Ian.1349:

Illuminati.2431:

I THINK, that is because it was the first serious hard content. You had to find out with trial and error. I think you get that point. GW2 players are so used to that everyone is said for them, they get explained EXACTLY what to do, and most of the times, when they have to do something, its spamming 1. Don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT saying you are one of those players. I’m just saying that MAYBE people got used to that easy bullkitten we get, and once there was something hard like world 2 tribulation mode, where the game doesn’t hold your hand anymore and you really have to find out the hard way, they don’t know what to do anymore. And yes, then you would feel like you needed to watch a tutorial. I’m not saying everything needs to be that hard, but just harder than the general content(on those rare occasions we actually get new content) we get right now.

Myself, and everyone I know that agrees with me we need more challenging content that can’t be done in 1 run, loved SAB world 2 tribulation. Not for its jumping, not for its 8 bit style, but because it was trial and error. It was diffecult and challenging, and we wouldn’t mind seeing more content that follow these principles.

I one hundred percent agree with you, which is why I am one of those people who is incredibly opposed to the recent changes to the downed state and weapon swapping levels. Instead of dumbing the game down for the player base, we should let people learn things the hard way. This game holds your hand basically the entire time you play it, with the exception of a few things, and as soon as things get tough, people don’t know what to do.

Vayne.8563:

Ian.1349:

I really don’t understand why this is even a debate. More challenging content should = higher rewards, less challenging content should = lesser rewards. It’s such a basic concept, anyone who is defending the current reward structure (which for whatever reason relies heavily on RNG for the more challenging content in the game, FoTM/Aether path/Teq/Wurm) is straight up stupid.

It’s a debate because it’s not written in stone. It’s how it’s done elsewhere. Doesn’t mostly seem to be how it’s done here.

That’s why it’s a debate.

One would assume it was done here for a reason. To put less pressure on people not to do content they don’t want to do.

I’m sorry you can’t understand something as simple as that. It’s really straight forward and it works for a reason. I don’t know what you have against trial by error and finally succeeding and being rewarded for your difficult efforts. It’s such a simple content.

You’re reminding me of why I don’t browse the forums often…

Well you should definitely stay away from any online forum if you don’t like to see disagreement because different people have different opinions about different things. A forum where only one thing is said and everyone agrees would probably get dull pretty soon.

Yes I understand the whole trial and error thing. I don’t enjoy the whole trial and error thing. And if it’s trial and error I know I’ll eventually get it, and it’s foregone conclusion.

I prefer puzzles to hand/eye coordination exercises but you don’t see them that much in most MMOs because once they’re up on Dulfy most people just look them up. They spend a couple of minutes, and give up.

I’d bang my head against a puzzle for hours until I solved even days sometimes…if I think the puzzle is an interesting one.

What I don’t like is dying and running back to try something, fighting through the same easy stuff over and over again to get to the point where I have to try it. I don’t like long runs back from waypoints in dungeons. They’re just there to punish. So if you die you have to run back but there’s no reason to make players do this. We know they can get that far, they already did.

So what’s acceptable to you is frustrating to me. I hated corpse runs in older games and didn’t play many because I hated corpse runs.

Zoso.8279:

And running dungeons ARE challenging but people play the game the way they want. When you run with people who tell you “do this” “stand here” “run here and hit with 1 here” the dungeons were not designed at least I don’t think to be run that way IMO. People do it because it makes it easier that is on the community not the designers (maybe the designers can change some things but people will always find exploits or an easier more tedious way to do it). And when people don’t want to run the dungeon that way they get grief HARD from the other players. So we can’t get mad EotM is turning into a Karma train because WE are turning it into that type of map.

The problem is that people do that because they can, and because it has some kind of payoff (saves time usually).

And then, it becomes a social ‘norm’ – and if you don’t play that way, you are excluded from this content (normally what happens is you get flamed by the player who wants you to conform to the formulaic playstyle that has been set out by those who have already mastered this and want you to do the same).

So, through social pressure, everyone does the same thing, diversity goes downhill, and the game degenerates into a mindless farming exercise.

Farm Wars 2.

Although I didn’t get into GW2 until about a year into the game (I had planned on getting it at release, then I didn’t have a decent computer that could do more than internet for about a year), I am willing to bet that those dungeons were a lot more fun at the beginning.

I bet the first month or two were awesome.

But anyway, I think what every secretly wishes is that someone can create a dungeon that cannot be broken like that by the players.

To do that is going to require some kind of randomization of content – players need something they cannot predict or learn completely – of course, experience should always give you an edge, that’s what experience is for – but it should never allow you to faceroll everything mindlessly, which is kinda where we’re at now.

It trivializes the content., which leads to declining participation. Changing the carrots (rewards) endlessly, usually does little to improve the situation – when people get bored, they’re bored, and no amount of enticement will make old, broken content any more interesting.

So that’s why Anet is probably focusing on new players – it’s exactly the same tactic that phone company’s use – sweet deals for new subscribers, nothing for old customers. Make joining up really attractive – they’ll even pay your cancellation fee at the old company!!!

But they will do nothing to retain players, because it’s actually more profitable to just keep attracting new one’s and letting old one’s go (to a new game).

I think that’s the stage we’re in with GW2 – Anet is putting more effort into players who haven’t experienced any of the content yet, who will still find most of it novel (as I did this last year – GW2 was absolutely amazing when it was all still new – but now I’ve levelled 7 characters to 80, seen a couple dungeons, defeated Zhaitan, done a couple LS’s…..and that’s about all there is).

So – I think that’s the bottom line.

If you’ve really done everything you think is actually fun in this game, and you’re tired of it – get a new game.

Maybe if you come back in a year, there might be enough new content again that you’ll find the experience completely new.

The question is whether or not GW2 can survive that kind of cycle, and whether or not something even more innovative (Archeage, Star Citizen, Oculus Rift, Destiny, etc.) removes GW2’s chances.

Only time will tell.

Beldin.5498:

Harper.4173:

DeWolfe.2174:

There are those that play GW2 because they want to be a part of a community. Then those that play just to try and be above them. This game has way too many players trying to divide the community. Anet should not enable them in dividing the community.

And there are those that play because they want shiny things. Why not give people their shinies ?

Community is one thing. Being marginalized because you want to get more out of your investment in the game is another thing.

And there are those that want that others don’t get shinies .. and that are those i have
a problem with.

Say ANet brings out 6 new armor sets per year .. but 4 of them are only for the 1%
that can solo Arah naked with a white level 5 weapon .. would that be good for
the game ?

No.

But at least 2 should require an investment for you to get them. Either a skill investment or a huge time investment.

laokoko.7403:

Harper.4173:

Also you definition as " repetitive content" is too broad – by your logic even WvW is a form of “grind” since you do the same things over and over again and nothing really changes.

It depend if you enjoy it or not.

Many people do WvW just for the fun.

But there are also many that do it for the grind, in particularly a huge percentage of people that do EOTM, they are really in it for the exp, money, karma.

Swing your swords 1000 times just to get to the fun part etc.

Exactly. My point is some people have fun “grinding” so in order for everyone to be happy a game should have some form of grind but it should always be optional.

If you want to – do it.
If not – leave it alone.

Windsagio.1340:

sirian.4981:

ipan.4356:

All it means is that they didn’t design dungeons correctly to begin with.

If the content was fun and engaging, people would be doing it.

I will disagree that the dungeon design itself is poor. Many dungeons are well designed. The problem is the core combat mechanics for running dungeons.

Making dungeons to be fun and engaging would require a drastic overhaul of the core combat mechanics. There are a few fundamental problems. The biggest one being that everyone essentially does the same thing(DPS, with modest support abilities). Another is that dungeons are designed so that pretty much any combination of classes and traits can succeed, so what variance there is between classes further limits your design range.

Sure, you can mitigate this by making fun gimmicks for each fight, but thats just papering over the giant cracks in the system.

Rather, they massively underestimated the players desire to optimize, and their desire to be jerks about it. If you play the dungeons with mixed groups covering multiple styes, they’re engaging fights that require some reaction. that’s not as efficient as realilzing that you can burn down almost everything in those dungeons with pure dps though, so we get all these issues.

If anything Anet blew it by underestimating players desire to maximixe rewards at the cost of evverything else.

This kind of brings us full circle though, with the complaints mainly boiling down to the rewards not being good enough.

Because playing GW2 dungeons is vastly unrewarding. At least it is for the majority of players.

Dungeon armor was “good” rewards for 6 months after release tops.
The “guaranteed 1 gold at the end of a dungeon” update made them appealing for a while but that’s starting to not work as well either.

In a game where in order to get the cash to build the ultimate vanity item you need so much gold it translates into thousands of dungeon runs you bet the players are going to want to be as efficient as possible.

ipan.4356:

Dungeons are very formulaic – not at all based on exploration.

Every time I go into a dungeon, it’s “do this”..“ok, now do this”.

“Stand here”, “kill this”, “now move to this room”, “stand here”.

That’s all it is, most of the time.

It’s incredibly linear and formulaic, and not much fun at all.

If dungeons were about exploring Tyria’s vast, dark underworld, then I bet more people would do it.

But, the only reason to do them at all is to get tokens for skins – otherwise, they’re some of the least interesting content in the game.

How many times can you explore the same thing and still have it feel new and fresh?

Dungeons were like this – for the first month or two. After that you know them. After a year you know them by heart.

Harper.4173:

Windsagio.1340:

sirian.4981:

ipan.4356:

All it means is that they didn’t design dungeons correctly to begin with.

If the content was fun and engaging, people would be doing it.

I will disagree that the dungeon design itself is poor. Many dungeons are well designed. The problem is the core combat mechanics for running dungeons.

Making dungeons to be fun and engaging would require a drastic overhaul of the core combat mechanics. There are a few fundamental problems. The biggest one being that everyone essentially does the same thing(DPS, with modest support abilities). Another is that dungeons are designed so that pretty much any combination of classes and traits can succeed, so what variance there is between classes further limits your design range.

Sure, you can mitigate this by making fun gimmicks for each fight, but thats just papering over the giant cracks in the system.

Rather, they massively underestimated the players desire to optimize, and their desire to be jerks about it. If you play the dungeons with mixed groups covering multiple styes, they’re engaging fights that require some reaction. that’s not as efficient as realilzing that you can burn down almost everything in those dungeons with pure dps though, so we get all these issues.

If anything Anet blew it by underestimating players desire to maximixe rewards at the cost of evverything else.

This kind of brings us full circle though, with the complaints mainly boiling down to the rewards not being good enough.

Because playing GW2 dungeons is vastly unrewarding. At least it is for the majority of players.

Dungeon armor was “good” rewards for 6 months after release tops.
The “guaranteed 1 gold at the end of a dungeon” update made them appealing for a while but that’s starting to not work as well either.

In a game where in order to get the cash to build the ultimate vanity item you need so much gold it translates into thousands of dungeon runs you bet the players are going to want to be as efficient as possible.

Exactly.At this moment the dungeon reward’s are just not good enough.TA:A for instance is just not worth it to run it.The reward is a piece of crap.2g for what?The time that you put in is not equal to the reward.
What about SE P2?You receive only 1g.Yea right….
Also the loot tables are just awful.

Nokaru.7831:

Have you ever done a Champion farm before? Just because the mobs look different, it doesn’t mean all you’re doing is spamming 1 while reading reddit.

That’s the reality of effortless content. It all congeals together and turns what could otherwise be varied content into a blur of similarity. Farming can become grinding.

That’s why champion farming has been nerfed several times.

The fact that you obtain some materials by doing champion farming does not mean that crafting a legendary is an overall grind, but that champion farming is a grind and should be nerfed.

Harper.4173:

Also you definition as " repetitive content" is too broad – by your logic even WvW is a form of “grind” since you do the same things over and over again and nothing really changes.

WvW is not grind.
The actions you perform in WvW is not repetitive at all as they change according to the situation which is different from time to time.

Harper.4173:

If grinding is the repetition of content for whatever purpose then I’m sorry to say adding more of it to GW2 won’t harm it at all since there’s barely 4-5 months worth of content in this game at all.

That is your opinion. In my point of view and I think in the point of view of many others, adding grindy contents will harm and spoil the game.

Harper.4173:

I’ve been playing it since day 1 ( actually 3 days early release) and by your logic for the last year and a half I’ve been grinding it like a boss.

I’ve been playing for the same time too and I’m sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience with the game.

Harper.4173:

Please tell me that the 500 WvW tokens you needed for the gift back in the day weren’t done by grinding them.

Nope, they are not.
Of course if you play WvW by just following the commander and pressing 1 with a lootstick guardian, you’re going to be grinding, but you can obtain 500 WvW badges by doing achievements, doing Edge of the Mists, roaming, doing jumping puzzles and so on with the same efficiency. It’s up to you to not spoil your game enjoyment for getting a virtual item.

I’ve never grinded at all and I have well over 500 WvW tokens.

Harper.4173:

Please tell me the 500 AC tokens I needed for my legendary weren’t done by doing AC every single day until I had them.

You’ve done 3 different dungeon paths and you can even get the same amount of tokens doing PvP. Is this repetitive in your vocabulary?

Harper.4173:

And let’s not forget the gold – for the precursor and other things – I didn’t have to grind for that at all – I just got it all out of thin air.

How did you get that gold? By farming champion train they have nerfed several times? Yeah, that was a grind and in fact ANet didn’t want that in their game.

Harper.4173:

If people didn’t do this – and just played random content every now and then I seriously doubt most legendary weapon users would have their weapon even 2+ years into the game.

In fact, it was supposed to be a long-time achievement, not something people were able to grind out in a couple of months like they did.
I’m not saying that this game has not flaws, I’m just saying that you are trying to encourage the wrong behavior just because you’ve exploited in the past this game flaws.

Harper.4173:

Let’s face it – people want the grind. It keeps them working towards something.
And even if you consider it bad – I see nothing wrong with “optional grind” – you can choose if it’s for you. If not you can move on to something else.

Again, this is your opinion.
People don’t want grind, but eventually grind if it is the most efficient way to get something.
Solution? Nerf the hell out of grind, which is exactly what ANet has done in 2 years of game updates.
You can make non-grindy contents and they have proved that it is possible to do so.

It is fairly simple: tie the rewards to several hard challenges, rather than repetitive content.
Most of the time it is hard to do so through the AI, which will eventually get understood and exploited by people on the long run, but it is something you can’t do in PvP or WvW, where if you’re matched against evenly skilled people, it will be a challenge regardless.

Guild Wars 1 End-Game was fantastic… If not a touch monotonous and overly difficult in places… Although having said that I’d love to have some content that requires real organisation. Like a Dungeon that requires Specific classes and builds, like in GW1 they could always increase the party cap. for certain content. So a dungeon which requires 1 of each class. Builds that work in unison with each other and shows real skill in completing the Dungeon. “Urgoz Warren” Springs to mind!

Anyway, yes I agree that more end-game content is needed and ANet really should work with existing content primarily so end-game players can go back and do-over. Like replayable personal story, which I’ve been asking for since the beginning of time… (slight exaggeration, but you get my point).

@Sorrow -

1)Champion farming was a grind – sure – but you have to understand that the people doing it wanted to do it and it says a lot about the state of the game and general rewards in this game if people were willingly doing that.
That’s no reason to nerf it – just because players wanted to do it. They are still doing it.

2)WvW is repetitive – even those " unique player actions" become repetitive after a few weeks. Play it and see.

3)When I got those tokens we didn’t have EOTM – and the puzzles you did daily and they were still a grind. When I got those tokens you had to grind them by killing players – and maybe, just maybe they would drop. it was a grind.

4)Again – those tokens were farmed long before sPVP rewards were introduced.

5)I got that gold by farming the now long dead COF P1 repeat farm. Look it up. It was the grind you had to do if you wanted a legendary done back when I made mine. That and the Cursed Shore event chain with Plinx to get the karma.

6)Right – long term goals – you do realize playing the game at a pace that’s different than “very slow and unproductive” isn’t exploiting or abusing or breaking the game right?
Some people actually have the time and will to farm days on end. Why not let them?

7)Nerf the hell out of grind? Wrong. Grind is still in the game – the only thing they’ve nerfed are the rewards which is what the majority of the player base is complaining about now.
With the current levels of inflation the game is simply not rewarding enough.

Also – while they nerfed some “grind spots” they’ve over the past 2 years created plenty others.
Remember champ trains? Those weren’t here at launch.
What about EOTM? The grindiest WvW there is – not here at launch.

What about Fractals? When they launched you had to grind out for rings in order to be able to progress and get more rings and get further. Then after a while they reset our progress and had us grind it again.

8)I have nothing against tying very good rewards to very challenging content – I’ll try it – learn it – repeat it and get good at it but the majority of the player base won’t. And they’ll cry. And the content will be nerfed or taken out.

You can’t lock very good rewards behind content that the majority of the game’s casual player base can’t even dream of beating

So in order for them to have a chance too you make it easier but gate it – creating a grind.

Also the PvP and WvW “challenge” makes me think you’re really out of touch with stuff that goes on there in general.

Do you EOTM? If yes you’ll find out that people there do it for the rewards, easy ranks,karma and badges and very very rarely care about fighting each other.
A successful EOTM commander avoids enemy zergs and leads his zerg into a perpetual farm circle.

Remember the first season of WvW? When hordes of PVE players went into WvW to grind out achievements and kept the players that actually wanted to play WvW out of the map for hours?
It got so bad the “proper” WvW peope had to organize " karma and achievement trains" to get the PVE crowd their achievements/rewards so they’d leave.

Stiofan.6720:

Vayne you make alot of bold claims about the gw2 playerbase saying things like most players hate hard content and that most players would never do it, I would love to know where you get your facts and figures from.

Long long experience with MMOs. The hardest core MMOs always have the lowest populations. Devs over the years have said tons of things on this subject, including some Guild Wars devs.

The most recent quote was from a lotro dev who claimed less than 10% of the population PvP and raided…not just recently but since inception. It’s not much different than many devs have claimed over the years. Maybe not exact percentages, but we’ve always had some idea that the hardest content is only finished by a small percentage of players.

For every competitive person out there, there’s someone just banging around in the open world killing stuff.

Logically speaking, if it were otherwise, why would MMOs keep dumbing things down more and more over the years.

Harper.4173:

1)Champion farming was a grind – sure – but you have to understand that the people doing it wanted to do it and it says a lot about the state of the game and general rewards in this game if people were willingly doing that.
That’s no reason to nerf it – just because players wanted to do it. They are still doing it.

People wanted the loot of the champion farming which is way too high, not the champion farming itself.

Do you think that if there were no champion bags and gold income from champion farming people would still do that? Be serious, please.

Harper.4173:

2)WvW is repetitive – even those " unique player actions" become repetitive after a few weeks. Play it and see.

Are you under the assumption that I don’t play the game?
WvW is not repetitive.
The only way you can get it repetitive is if you just stick with the big zerg, not following commander orders through voice communication, spamming yoru AoE skills and getting loot.
But that’s playing WvW not optimally because you are not contributing to your world victory, nor making anything meaningful other than selfish and mindless loot collecting.

Harper.4173:

3)When I got those tokens we didn’t have EOTM – and the puzzles you did daily and they were still a grind. When I got those tokens you had to grind them by killing players – and maybe, just maybe they would drop. it was a grind.

So you are saying that killing players and PvP is repetitive content too?

Harper.4173:

4)Again – those tokens were farmed long before sPVP rewards were introduced.

As I’ve pointed out before, this game didn’t came out perfect, but you’re making it look that the direction they are heading to is wrong, which isn’t.

Harper.4173:

5)I got that gold by farming the now long dead COF P1 repeat farm. Look it up. It was the grind you had to do if you wanted a legendary done back when I made mine. That and the Cursed Shore event chain with Plinx to get the karma.

Yeah, those were grind and they were nerfed to the hell because that is the kind of content and playstyle that GW2, by game design, have decided to not encourage.
If you enjoy grinding, maybe GW2 is not the game for you.

Harper.4173:

6)Right – long term goals – you do realize playing the game at a pace that’s different than “very slow and unproductive” isn’t exploiting or abusing or breaking the game right?
Some people actually have the time and will to farm days on end. Why not let them?

Because farming/grind is bad design.
A game is supposed to provide fun experiences, not providing you goals to go after and encouraging players to do the same thing over and over again.

You might like grinding, but that is your personal opinion.
Many people don’t like it and they have bought GW2 just because the GW franchise has an hystory of not encouraging grinding and it is advertised to provide that kind of experience.

If you like grind, there are several games who encourage and provide you with many ways to grind your way to the ultimate reward. GW2 is not one of these games and the developers have done their best to not let it become one of them.

Continues…

Harper.4173:

7)Nerf the hell out of grind? Wrong. Grind is still in the game – the only thing they’ve nerfed are the rewards which is what the majority of the player base is complaining about now.

Sure it is in the game.
In any game ever you can do the same thing over and over again with no real purpose, the point is that you shouldn’t be rewarded (so encouraged) to do so, which is exactly what they have done.
Nerfing the rewards of grinding, they have nerfed the grind. They can’t nerf the grindy player mentality, they can just take away from him reasons to grind.

Harper.4173:

Also – while they nerfed some “grind spots” they’ve over the past 2 years created plenty others.
Remember champ trains? Those weren’t here at launch.
What about EOTM?
What about Fractals?

This game isn’t perfect but it is striving to reach perfection.
It’s not by pointing out at flaws that you’ll prove that flaws are good.

Harper.4173:

8)I have nothing against tying very good rewards to very challenging content – I’ll try it – learn it – repeat it and get good at it but the majority of the player base won’t. And they’ll cry. And the content will be nerfed or taken out.

When did this ever happen?

Harper.4173:

So in order for them to have a chance too you make it easier but gate it – creating a grind.

This is the laziest and most uneffective solution to the problem.

Harper.4173:

Also the PvP and WvW “challenge” makes me think you’re really out of touch with stuff that goes on there in general.
Do you EOTM? If yes you’ll find out that people there do it for the rewards, easy ranks,karma and badges and very very rarely care about fighting each other.
A successful EOTM commander avoids enemy zergs and leads his zerg into a perpetual farm circle.

So what?
I do EoTM for general roaming. I go around, avoid zergs and do small scale fights, which is exactly how EoTM was supposed to encourage by design and it succeed on a certain degree.

As I’ve said and I’ll say it again, GW2 has still its flaws.
Still, WvW is not the only form of PvP as it is more PvE than PvP.

Harper.4173:

Remember the first season of WvW? […]

That’s why they have reworked this system for WvW season 3.

Stiofan.6720:

So you have a reliable source saying that in ‘guild wars 2’ (I don’t care about other mmos like lotro etc) only a very small minority of players like hard content? Can you link it pls.

I don’t have to link anything. I’m venturing an opinion that traditionally as in most MMOs, including games like Guild Wars 1 (which isn’t a true MMO) most of the hard content was ignored by most of the player base. It is possible Guild Wars 2 is a massive exception to that rule.

After all, this game was obviously designed for a hard core audience, testified too by all the quaggan backpacks and hylek hoodies that are sold in the store.

This game was aimed more at a casual audience. If you don’t believe it, look at what Anet is focusing on. So if the game is aimed at a casual audience, what are the odds, do you think that this game is the exception.

People make educated guesses all the time. I’m making an educated guess that most players who play Guild Wars 2 don’t play the hardest content.

Feel free to disagree if you wish, you’re certainly entitled to. There’s absolutely zero evidence I’m right.

Conversely there’s also zero evidence that I’m wrong.

1) yes people wanted the loot. And accepted the grind for that loot. It was a choice.

2)Yes – killing players in WvW gets repetitive too – you might not think it but it does.

3)GW2 is the game for me – the only thing you don’t seem to see is that we have grind in it even now. People want the better rewards that come with the grind and so do I.
I’d rather grind for better rewards given that I had the option than just play “normally” and have terrible rewards.
I’d love to play “normally” and have good rewards but 2+ years of the game have taught me that’s not going to happen.

Unless you go out of your way to make good loot and money happen in GW2 ..it won’t happen.

4)You mention fun experiences but what you fail to understand is that :

a)For some people getting lots of rewards/gold is more fun than the process itself. In a sense they have fun farming rather than just “Playing”.

b)The game can’t and won’t stay new forever – so while some experiences might be fun the first 10-20 times around there comes a time when the game becomes a grind for any/every experienced player. Because how many times can you see the same places, do the same things, fight the same bosses ( no matter how well designed or not they are) and go “wow – this never gets old”.

Sooner or later you’ll be repeating content for the rewards only. It might be after your first 5 runs, 10 runs or 100 runs – but there’s always that point in which you stop caring about the content itself and do it strictly for the reward. Or simply don’t do it at all.

c)If you think Anet is so anti-grind I’d like to point out Ascended gear. It is and was a grind to make and the worst thing about it is that it is vertical progression grind – the kind of grind that makes you stronger by giving you better stats.

I just want more horizontal progression prestige items – things that make you look cooler but don’t make you stronger – the sort of things that are optional.

The image you’re painting of the devs is really skewed – since there are a lot of things they could have done in order to make this game less grindy and a lot of things they’ve added that have only increased the grind.
So no, I don’t share your view that they’re encouraging a “grind free” environment.

And while you might like to show some parts of the picture in order to back up your vision let me remind you that the same company made some of the most grind-tastic additions to the game – remember 1st Queen Pavilion? yeah.

Ever since it was changed – requiring people to organize – they made it zerg proof – but not grind proof – and people grinded it for a month ( since they left it on for a month).

How does that go against grind again? Pavilions were going strong 24/7 with people doing nothing but that for weeks. and that was this year.

5)Liadri. Tequatl. When they came out people were asking for nerfs so much.

6)“This is the laziest and most uneffective solution to the problem.” – they did it with everything else – look at time gated crafting.
Look at dailies. Look at monthlies. They broke every bit into little chunks that you have to do every day for it to count.

This is the solution they’ve been using ever since they started addressing the problem.

7)Good that you do EOTM that way – but I fear you’re part of a minority of players that do. You see – the majority go there to farm.

Also I’m glad they reworked the system for WvW season 3 – but my point still stands. People want do to stuff and get it out of the way. In order to achieve this they will grind it.

Why have your legendary 3 years from now when you could have it in 4-5 months?

Why wait to get ascended armor in 1 year when you could have it next month?

People are goal-driven. It’s how we’re brought up – it how our society functions. Short, medium and long-term goals are what keep us going.

The things we want are what drive us forward.

Stiofan.6720:

So you have a reliable source saying that in ‘guild wars 2’ (I don’t care about other mmos like lotro etc) only a very small minority of players like hard content? Can you link it pls.

Yes, it’s called GW2 achievement points leaderboard.
Even after 2 years, still only 10% players have over 4k ap (a year ago 10% cutout was around 3600 ap, by the way) – that tells us a lot about how active the majority is.

Yes, i know it’s not exactly what you were talking about, but it is good enough for speculations and educated guesses.

(yes, there is a possibility that many those people actually like hard content, just do not play it, but i consider that to not be very likely)

Stiofan.6720:

I can’t remember arenanet doing a poll asking players if they like hard content or not.

No Arenanet made a second game, after making a first game. The amount of hard content in the second game is far less than the first game.

Do you think they made it that way because most people in the first game enjoyed hard content? Or did they learn lessons from the first game and apply what they learned to the second?

Which do you think is more likely?

Stiofan.6720:

Are you seriously trying to tell me that most players in gw1 ignored the hard content like uw,fow,deep,urgoz,hm? LMAO remember im a real gw1 vet. gw1 was the only game I played for almost 6 years straight. Vayne be honest did you really play gw1 before gw2 was released. Also It would of been nice if arenanet made it more clear that gw2 would be aimed soley at casuals before release. But to be honest I don’t really care anymore I have stopped playing gw2, I’ll check these forums every so often to see if they make any real changes before trying it again. vayne please never compare gw2 to gw1, any real gw1 vet can see that gw2 is just a money grab on gw1’s good name.

Look at my Hall of Monuments, or would you like me to show you my GWAMM title in game.

Yes people played those areas, but how many by percentage? How would you know how many people didn’t play those areas.

It’s so easy to go into Temple of Ages and see all the people standing around finding parties. But what percent of the population did those people actually represent.

I would never compare Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1. That’s because one of them is an MMO and one of them is a CoRPG.

However, I will generalize that in most games from what I’ve seen, most people don’t do the hardest content.

And if you don’t want to believe it, that’s okay with me. It seems to be widely accepted by a whole lot of people.

I heard Wildstar isn’t doing so well. And apparently it has good raids and dungeons. I wonder why.

Vayne.8563:

Stiofan.6720:

Are you seriously trying to tell me that most players in gw1 ignored the hard content like uw,fow,deep,urgoz,hm? LMAO remember im a real gw1 vet. gw1 was the only game I played for almost 6 years straight. Vayne be honest did you really play gw1 before gw2 was released. Also It would of been nice if arenanet made it more clear that gw2 would be aimed soley at casuals before release. But to be honest I don’t really care anymore I have stopped playing gw2, I’ll check these forums every so often to see if they make any real changes before trying it again. vayne please never compare gw2 to gw1, any real gw1 vet can see that gw2 is just a money grab on gw1’s good name.

Look at my Hall of Monuments, or would you like me to show you my GWAMM title in game.

Yes people played those areas, but how many by percentage? How would you know how many people didn’t play those areas.

It’s so easy to go into Temple of Ages and see all the people standing around finding parties. But what percent of the population did those people actually represent.

I would never compare Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1. That’s because one of them is an MMO and one of them is a CoRPG.

However, I will generalize that in most games from what I’ve seen, most people don’t do the hardest content.

And if you don’t want to believe it, that’s okay with me. It seems to be widely accepted by a whole lot of people.

I heard Wildstar isn’t doing so well. And apparently it has good raids and dungeons. I wonder why.

So when a game has good raids and dungeons, but it’s doing bad, you automaticly assume that is the reason?

There are 10 million other factors if you like an MMO. I don’t like the style. Alot of my friends don’t like that style either. I am not fond of the classes. There are so many different things involved to determine if a game is doing good or not.

And yes, in GW1, the ‘hard’ content was the core. And even if it wasn’t the core, the basic things in GW1 were already 10x more challenging, ‘harder’, replayable than all this kitten we have in GW2. Like Stiofan said, if you really are a gw1 veteran you would know this. If you say otherwise, you cannot call yourself a veteran. That’s as a clear as that you can’t call yourself a gamer if you play farmville.

Harper.4173:

1) yes people wanted the loot. And accepted the grind for that loot. It was a choice.

So you admit that grind is not anti-fun, but getting loot is fun. This is not a job, this is a game.

Harper.4173:

2)Yes – killing players in WvW gets repetitive too – you might not think it but it does.

It gets boring, not repetitive.

Harper.4173:

3)GW2 is the game for me – the only thing you don’t seem to see is that we have grind in it even now. People want the better rewards that come with the grind and so do I.
I’d rather grind for better rewards given that I had the option than just play “normally” and have terrible rewards.
I’d love to play “normally” and have good rewards but 2+ years of the game have taught me that’s not going to happen.

Unless you go out of your way to make good loot and money happen in GW2 ..it won’t happen.

Rewards don’t necessarily need to come with grind. You can have better rewards tied to non-grindy content. Is that to hard to understand?

If you think that in a declared non-grindy game didn’t give good rewards to non-grindy contents, what makes you think that they will give good rewards to grindy content?

Harper.4173:

a)For some people getting lots of rewards/gold is more fun than the process itself. In a sense they have fun farming rather than just “Playing”.

This does not imply that the process to get rewards is supposed to be boring and anti-fun.

Harper.4173:

b)The game can’t and won’t stay new forever – so while some experiences might be fun the first 10-20 times around there comes a time when the game becomes a grind for any/every experienced player. Because how many times can you see the same places, do the same things, fight the same bosses ( no matter how well designed or not they are) and go “wow – this never gets old”.
Sooner or later you’ll be repeating content for the rewards only. It might be after your first 5 runs, 10 runs or 100 runs – but there’s always that point in which you stop caring about the content itself and do it strictly for the reward. Or simply don’t do it at all.

That’s why there is the LW, to make the game stay new as long as possible without having to make grindy content. ANY game ever, even the most grindy ones, gets boring once you’ve sinked thousand of hours in them, the point is how good and fun were those hours.

You can’t just put a patch to the problem without fixing it entirely.

Harper.4173:

c)If you think Anet is so anti-grind I’d like to point out Ascended gear. It is and was a grind to make and the worst thing about it is that it is vertical progression grind – the kind of grind that makes you stronger by giving you better stats.

In fact, they never made any further gear tier. A company can make some mistakes.

Harper.4173:

I just want more horizontal progression prestige items – things that make you look cooler but don’t make you stronger – the sort of things that are optional.

It’s fine, but you don’t necessarily have to gate those things behind grind and repetitive contents.
For instance, look at the LW achievements. If done right, they can be potentially a good way to gate rewards behind them, or completing a dungeon without being hit can give a special reward, something along the line of the gauntlet gambits. That is hard and non-grindy content.

Another example is the Glorious Armor which is given only to tournaments winner. If they make some sort of automated tournament system, that is another example of skill-gated non-grindy reward.

continue…

Of course there’s “no” grind with the DR and non-farmable dungeons.

Harper.4173:

The image you’re painting of the devs is really skewed – since there are a lot of things they could have done in order to make this game less grindy and a lot of things they’ve added that have only increased the grind.
So no, I don’t share your view that they’re encouraging a “grind free” environment.

I’m basing my statements on what they said. People make mistakes and you can’t really predict how grindy people will take a content.

Harper.4173:

And while you might like to show some parts of the picture in order to back up your vision let me remind you that the same company made some of the most grind-tastic additions to the game – remember 1st Queen Pavilion? yeah.

Ever since it was changed – requiring people to organize – they made it zerg proof – but not grind proof – and people grinded it for a month ( since they left it on for a month).

They made changes to improve the experience but it was not yet perfect. The fact that they changed it is a proof that they don’t want grindy contents.

Harper.4173:

5)Liadri. Tequatl. When they came out people were asking for nerfs so much.

So? Also many people thanked ANet for how challenging and good were those contents.

Harper.4173:

6)“This is the laziest and most uneffective solution to the problem.” – they did it with everything else – look at time gated crafting.
Look at dailies. Look at monthlies. They broke every bit into little chunks that you have to do every day for it to count.

This is the solution they’ve been using ever since they started addressing the problem.

Still better to let the game drown into the problem.

Harper.4173:

7)Good that you do EOTM that way – but I fear you’re part of a minority of players that do. You see – the majority go there to farm.

How can you say so? Based on your experience?
Because mine says that people that grind are a minority, not the other way around.
Both of experiences are worthless, so let’s move on.

Harper.4173:

Also I’m glad they reworked the system for WvW season 3 – but my point still stands. People want do to stuff and get it out of the way. In order to achieve this they will grind it.

Why have your legendary 3 years from now when you could have it in 4-5 months?

Why wait to get ascended armor in 1 year when you could have it next month?

People are goal-driven. It’s how we’re brought up – it how our society functions. Short, medium and long-term goals are what keep us going.

The things we want are what drive us forward.

The issue is that, if you grind, you get your reward faster, which isn’t supposed to work like that. That is the flaw.

People want the rewards, which is a fair point, and they will eventually find the best and fastest way to get those rewards.
If the fastest way is grind, then it means that something is wrong and should be fixed.

Legendary were not designed to be grindy contents, they just ended up being so because some other contents gave players the ability to farm absurd amount of materials needed to craft the legendary.
They were designed to be a way to show the time you’ve spent playing the game, regardless when you’ve played. That’s why they required stuff from any gamemode and any game zone.

It is simple.

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Stiofan.6720:

Are you seriously trying to tell me that most players in gw1 ignored the hard content like uw,fow,deep,urgoz,hm? LMAO remember im a real gw1 vet. gw1 was the only game I played for almost 6 years straight. Vayne be honest did you really play gw1 before gw2 was released. Also It would of been nice if arenanet made it more clear that gw2 would be aimed soley at casuals before release. But to be honest I don’t really care anymore I have stopped playing gw2, I’ll check these forums every so often to see if they make any real changes before trying it again. vayne please never compare gw2 to gw1, any real gw1 vet can see that gw2 is just a money grab on gw1’s good name.

Look at my Hall of Monuments, or would you like me to show you my GWAMM title in game.

Yes people played those areas, but how many by percentage? How would you know how many people didn’t play those areas.

It’s so easy to go into Temple of Ages and see all the people standing around finding parties. But what percent of the population did those people actually represent.

I would never compare Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1. That’s because one of them is an MMO and one of them is a CoRPG.

However, I will generalize that in most games from what I’ve seen, most people don’t do the hardest content.

And if you don’t want to believe it, that’s okay with me. It seems to be widely accepted by a whole lot of people.

I heard Wildstar isn’t doing so well. And apparently it has good raids and dungeons. I wonder why.

So when a game has good raids and dungeons, but it’s doing bad, you automaticly assume that is the reason?

There are 10 million other factors if you like an MMO. I don’t like the style. Alot of my friends don’t like that style either. I am not fond of the classes. There are so many different things involved to determine if a game is doing good or not.

And yes, in GW1, the ‘hard’ content was the core. And even if it wasn’t the core, the basic things in GW1 were already 10x more challenging, ‘harder’, replayable than all this kitten we have in GW2. Like Stiofan said, if you really are a gw1 veteran you would know this. If you say otherwise, you cannot call yourself a veteran. That’s as a clear as that you can’t call yourself a gamer if you play farmville.

I beat every single instance in Guild Wars 1. Once. Well Fissure of Woe a few times. The Deep a couple of times. The other ones once. My wife and I beat DOA with six heroes (Three of hers, three of mine). I vanquished every area in hard mode.

But that wasn’t what kept me in the game and that’s not why I played it. So you’re saying I can’t call myself a veteran? And you can because you played different content.

Since you and are won’t agree on this, I guess we can just leave it up to other people to decide what they believe is the truth.

Vayne.8563:

Since you and are won’t agree on this, I guess we can just leave it up to other people to decide what they believe is the truth.

Agreed.

But do you know what the problem is? You add absolutely NOTHING to a discussion. I’ve read your comments on several topics, and the only thing you do is bluntly said: You say this, I think you are wrong and this is why. And then you rant about everything. That adds absolutely NOTHING to a discussion. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely don’t mind it if someone doesn’t agree with me. It’s only human for people to not agree with each other. But this is a discussion. I see other people that don’t agree with me, they give counterarguments and then come up with different solutions to the issue where this topic is created for. You think everything is fine just the way it is, and you have to say it to everyone. From the first post we noticed you don’t agree with ‘us’ that like to see some changes in the game. Post about it 1 time, thats fine. but now the only thing you do is counterargument EVERYONE who likes to see a change. You add absolutely nothing to a discussion, the only thing you are doing is stop a healthy discussion., you only counterargument, and thats it.

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Since you and are won’t agree on this, I guess we can just leave it up to other people to decide what they believe is the truth.

Agreed.

But do you know what the problem is? You add absolutely NOTHING to a discussion. I’ve read your comments on several topics, and the only thing you do is bluntly said: You say this, I think you are wrong and this is why. And then you rant about everything. That adds absolutely NOTHING to a discussion. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely don’t mind it if someone doesn’t agree with me. It’s only human for people to not agree with each other. But this is a discussion. I see other people that don’t agree with me, they give counterarguments and then come up with different solutions to the issue where this topic is created for. You think everything is fine just the way it is, and you have to say it to everyone. From the first post we noticed you don’t agree with ‘us’ that like to see some changes in the game. Post about it 1 time, thats fine. but now the only thing you do is counterargument EVERYONE who likes to see a change. You add absolutely nothing to a discussion, the only thing you are doing is stop a healthy discussion., you only counterargument, and thats it.

It’s funny because some of the devs think I do add to discussions. It’s just that I don’t necessarily add what you want to them.

There’s certainly no doubt that a percentage of people want harder content in this game. It adds to the discussion to discuss how big a percentage that is, whether or not you believe it does.

Because otherwise, people might just be left with the idea that everyone wants hard content, and I don’t believe that’s true.

I’ve also made points in threads about rewards being inexplicably linked to hard content. The TA Aetherblade path is hard content but people don’t do it because it doesn’t reward enough.

I pointed out that in other games, the highest rewards are given to the hardest dungeons, making people force themselves to do content they don’t really enjoy. I’ve seen it happen.

So I don’t believe the devs are going to want to provide much better or more desireable rewards for hard content. If they make it too valuable they pressure people to do that content.

But I do understand that you feel I add nothing to the conversation. I’m glad other people have felt I do, including some people who disagree with me.