Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

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.

10% of population but is it playerbase which plays everyday or 10% of people who bought game ? cause in every MMO around 50% people are gone after 3 months from release . I play now more dc universe and I will never agree with your 10% , it is much easier to find group on t6 content then on t3 . But anyway all stats in gw2 right now dont make any sense .all players who wanted content,challenge left this game 1,5 year ago and only casuals are left . Anet will never ever fix this game becasue 1 hardcore dung without rewards is not gona bring thousands hardcore players to their game .

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

Vayne.8563:

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.

10% of population but is it playerbase which plays everyday or 10% of people who bought game ? cause in every MMO around 50% people are gone after 3 months from release . I play now more dc universe and I will never agree with your 10% , it is much easier to find group on t6 content then on t3 . But anyway all stats in gw2 right now dont make any sense .all players who wanted content,challenge left this game 1,5 year ago and only casuals are left . Anet will never ever fix this game becasue 1 hardcore dung without rewards is not gona bring thousands hardcore players to their game .

I appreciate your point of view. I simply don’t agree with it.

The 10% population quote from from EQ. He said 10% of people did PvP and raids, and 50% of the forum posts were about raids. That tells me something.

This was a dev who no longer worked for the company, but he was explaining to people why the company didn’t include the usual raids in the current expansion. As he was no longer working there, he had less reason to lie, even though he was defending what the company did.

The devs of the company said, look just forget about that figure, we support all our players…but they never actually said the figure was wrong. But this only applies to Guild Wars 2.

Now, when it comes down to harder or easier to get a group for the current raid or an old raid, or instance, that’s not really the point. The point is is that many people simply don’t raid at all. It’s always easier in a game to get a group for current content, because the raiding people are actually concentrating on that, so they’re all in the same place.

But a big percentage of players solo and never group at all. Don’t go into dungeons, don’t go into raids. They don’t even PvP.

Not everyone is looking after a day of work to be ultra challenged. The age of the average gamer is going up, not down. People have families and lives and responsibilies and tend, eventually, to play more casually. The age of the average gamer is over 30 now. I’m 52. I don’t raid. I have raided. It’s not something I enjoy, so I don’t do it.

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Vayne.8563:

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Standing AFK somewhere in Tyria while ranting and preaching on the forums isn’t spending time in Tyria.
Ranting and preaching in[insert random map here]chat, isn’t spending time in Tyria.

“Difficulty” is a nebulous term.

An encounter can be difficult for 30 seconds – it could require extreme hand eye coordination and perfect timing.

Another encounter could be “difficult” because it requires endurance – 30 minutes of systematically wearing down an opponent that can’t really defeat you (no 1-shots), but through sheer persistence, might make you slip more often as you get tired (hand cramps up, etc.)

Another encounter might be difficult in yet another way – it might be ‘impossible’, right up until you figure out the exact way to do it (like a lot of jumping puzzles are). As soon as you figure it out, which was always possible from the very first try, it’s suddenly ‘easy’, but until then it was ‘nigh impossible’.

And then there’s puzzles that require a little intelligence – DDO had a few of these, like moving blocks around the room until they fit a certain pattern and open a secret door – stuff like that.

There’s clue hunts, that you have to infer from character dialogue.

To top it all off, different players find different kinds of content difficult or not. What’s difficult to one, might be easy to another.

And there’s different skill levels on top of that. Yes, some people are just better at doing certain things. Some are really good at PvP. Others at hard PvE. Some aren’t very good at much.

An MMO attempts to provide as many options for as many different kinds of people as possible – it tries to appeal to a broad audience, and this is both it’s curse and it’s blessing.

It attempts to be a wide, wide world – where a diverse range of players come together to do stuff.

I haven’t even mentioned the exploration/immersion players – who do things like goating, and love just the thrill of reaching places – mountaintops, the bottom of the ocean – whatever. Just getting there to see the view (and maybe kill a few monsters along the way) are the reward itself.

I am one of those players.

In GW2, it feels like the exploration player got the least bang for his buck.

It’s true that all the other game modes have their issues – PvP doesn’t get content updates enough, WvWvW suffers from an inability to move beyond the zerg in most cases (even with the occasional ‘roaming’), and Dungeons are simplistic affairs that are completely linear and on rails – really just an extension of the Personal Story.

The Open World is interesting the first play through or seven – despite the odd choice of rectangular, gated ‘zones’ that are highly unrealistic and immersion breaking.

They’re still incredibly beautiful, even if they’re not particularly challenging (though challenges can be found here and there).

Tyria is small-ish and cramped. It’s trivial to explore everything (except WvWvW).

Once you’ve made it all the way through the zones, there’s little else to do.

I guess, in short, what I’m saying is that there seems to be little replayability, for the exploration/immersion style player.

Which leaves PvP and WvWvW – which is fine I guess, but I hear that has problems too.

Nokaru.7831:

sorrow.2364:

Grind is repetitive content done for whatever purpose.

…

Legendary weapons are not a grind because they don’t force you to do repetitive contents to get them.

…

Making a Legendary is a time sink. Your suggestion is grind.

This is the most ridiculous double-talk I’ve ever seen. Legendary Weapons in GW2 are a grind. You’ll be hard pressed to find any forum discussion about them that doesn’t say “grind” or “farm” in it. They are slightly less grindy than they used to be, but this doesn’t change the fact that at their core they are designed to be a ridiculously large item and time sink.

Where do you think all the Lodestones come from? From playing “how you want?”

It’s pretty amusing how people redefine words to suite their purposes. This is the definition of grinding.

LOL really? someone actually said there was no grind here because you didn’t repeat it? smh

So let’s see we have the “you don’t have to grind for anything you just have to farm gold” crowd the “you don’t have to play the game at all no one is forcing you to” crowd and now the " it’s not a grind because you don’t have to do it a second time" crowd.

Why can’t they just accept it for what it is. I have a feeling these people sit around and make excuses for the economy like “you don’t HAVE to buy food no one is forcing you to”….

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Standing AFK somewhere in Tyria while ranting and preaching on the forums isn’t spending time in Tyria.
Ranting and preaching in[insert random map here]chat, isn’t spending time in Tyria.

It really doesn’t matter how much people play the validity of their arguments their points or their concerns are not determined by the number of times or how long they stay logged in each weak. That’s a weak and fallacious argument at best.

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Standing AFK somewhere in Tyria while ranting and preaching on the forums isn’t spending time in Tyria.
Ranting and preaching in[insert random map here]chat, isn’t spending time in Tyria.

Check the achievement point total and then comment.

Vayne.8563:

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Standing AFK somewhere in Tyria while ranting and preaching on the forums isn’t spending time in Tyria.
Ranting and preaching in[insert random map here]chat, isn’t spending time in Tyria.

Check the achievement point total and then comment.

Sarcasm mode was on. Sorry, should I have said that literally?
And achievmentpoints say absolutely NOTHING in this game. But as a ‘veteran’, you already know that I guess:)

tigirius.9014:

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Standing AFK somewhere in Tyria while ranting and preaching on the forums isn’t spending time in Tyria.
Ranting and preaching in[insert random map here]chat, isn’t spending time in Tyria.

It really doesn’t matter how much people play the validity of their arguments their points or their concerns are not determined by the number of times or how long they stay logged in each weak. That’s a weak and fallacious argument at best.

This is true to a point. However, if a person is removed from the game for a longer period of time, and the conversation has moved on and the game has moved on, their comments eventually are less relevant.

For example, someone who hasn’t played since the middle of Season 1 might be complaining about temporary content. That’s not happening now. The content we do get is permanent.

Yes, it’s annoying that it happened then, but complaining about it now has a whole lot less relevance.

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Standing AFK somewhere in Tyria while ranting and preaching on the forums isn’t spending time in Tyria.
Ranting and preaching in[insert random map here]chat, isn’t spending time in Tyria.

Check the achievement point total and then comment.

Sarcasm mode was on. Sorry, should I have said that literally?
And achievmentpoints say absolutely NOTHING in this game.

But if you have 19,500 achievement points, it’s hard to say I’m only on the forums and not playing. And if you watch them for a week at a time, you’ll see them go up by more than the daily. How does that not tell you something?

I agree the reward system is a little broken.. I never played WoW and I doubt I will ever play it so it’s not about that.. I just want a long term goal to work towards that someone else can’t get if the said person has enough money to obtain it. After all, the brag rights should come with being able to play to game or known as a “skilled player”. Meaning the player actually played the game itself and mastered the content.

There are so many things that GW2 does right.. the landscape is breathtaking.. there’s so many ways to enjoy the game.. pvp, gvg, pve but something is missing. I can’t exactly put my finger on it.

TA Aetherpath needs better rewards.. not a random sheer dumb luck of obtaining the skin.. a weapon set that can only be obtained by collecting certain amount of tokens that can be obtained by doing this path. Something like that.. sort of like the Chaotic weapon set from RS. Now that’s old school grind fest mmo.. but it still works.. people still play it after 13 years of existence.

tigirius.9014:

Nokaru.7831:

sorrow.2364:

Grind is repetitive content done for whatever purpose.

…

Legendary weapons are not a grind because they don’t force you to do repetitive contents to get them.

…

Making a Legendary is a time sink. Your suggestion is grind.

This is the most ridiculous double-talk I’ve ever seen. Legendary Weapons in GW2 are a grind. You’ll be hard pressed to find any forum discussion about them that doesn’t say “grind” or “farm” in it. They are slightly less grindy than they used to be, but this doesn’t change the fact that at their core they are designed to be a ridiculously large item and time sink.

Where do you think all the Lodestones come from? From playing “how you want?”

It’s pretty amusing how people redefine words to suite their purposes. This is the definition of grinding.

LOL really? someone actually said there was no grind here because you didn’t repeat it? smh

So let’s see we have the “you don’t have to grind for anything you just have to farm gold” crowd the “you don’t have to play the game at all no one is forcing you to” crowd and now the " it’s not a grind because you don’t have to do it a second time" crowd.

Why can’t they just accept it for what it is. I have a feeling these people sit around and make excuses for the economy like “you don’t HAVE to buy food no one is forcing you to”….

That really made me laugh.I agree with you on 100%.

Also about the farm.There is a lot of farm if you want anything.Yes you can not do any of the linked things but then i will ask why do people even play GW2.In the game there is almost 0 chalenge with loot nerfed to the ground.Everything being RNG based….

1. Legendary weapon farm
2. PvP rank farm
3. WvW rank farm
4. MF farm
5. FotM infusion farm
6. achievement farm
   If every time i received 1g when i am asked is GW2 grindy game i’d be rich.

Vayne.8563:

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Standing AFK somewhere in Tyria while ranting and preaching on the forums isn’t spending time in Tyria.
Ranting and preaching in[insert random map here]chat, isn’t spending time in Tyria.

Check the achievement point total and then comment.

Sarcasm mode was on. Sorry, should I have said that literally?
And achievmentpoints say absolutely NOTHING in this game.

But if you have 19,500 achievement points, it’s hard to say I’m only on the forums and not playing. And if you watch them for a week at a time, you’ll see them go up by more than the daily. How does that not tell you something?

Like I said: sarcasm mode was on. Let it go plz. How that does not tell me something btw, there are very little achievments in the gw2 that actually feel like ACHIEVMENTS. Something you worked hard for. That’s why it tells nothing. It tells nothing about skill, nothing about time investment. Just that you ‘focussed’ on something while playing.

Let me just go over the list of games that I’m amazed people actually attribute to being the same somehow as the grind we see here.

1. WoW is less of a grind and is more rewarding, they learned years ago that giving a currency that allows for that final piece of gear is far superior to having people run the same dungeon over and over again for the final piece of armor they wanted.
2. Rift not only gives rewards from loot but they also have boxes daily and a far superior currency system than GW2 or WoW when it comes to getting everything like enchants, gear, or cosmetics.
3. AoC actually gave useful drops from regular mobs outside of dungeons, that allowed players early on the ability to farm for gear that they wanted if they weren’t the dungeoneer/raider types.
4. STO/NWO both give gear from their non-instanced dungeons in order to allow players the ability to sell it for currency to gain the items they want, STO has a reputation system that offers great gear, and their crafting isn’t restricted and depending on the purpose the gear designs in crafting can be far superior than those found in reputation or fleets. STO also has a fleet (guild) system in which much like the WoW garrisons are built by the players to gather resources to be used to purchase high end gear.

So you see there are several superior methods of both loot farming and gear progression that allows the playerbase to function without restriction that give the players goals to work towards and be rewarded by, what would be considered unrestricted uninstanced rewards are easily found and RNG is a thing of the past in most of these titles and the RNG that does still exist allows players to flourish rather than feel unfulfilled while playing.

GW2 lacks true grinding.. grinding can involve years of repetitive action..

yes, there is farming which can be done in various ways.. but it’s not the same grinding that people here are referring to in regards to other mmos. The grind of GW2 here is laughable.. really. Try the other mmo of NCSoft, the Korean one.. then you will understand the term grind.

tigirius.9014:

LOL really? someone actually said there was no grind here because you didn’t repeat it? smh

So let’s see we have the “you don’t have to grind for anything you just have to farm gold” crowd the “you don’t have to play the game at all no one is forcing you to” crowd and now the " it’s not a grind because you don’t have to do it a second time" crowd.

Why can’t they just accept it for what it is. I have a feeling these people sit around and make excuses for the economy like “you don’t HAVE to buy food no one is forcing you to”….

It’s funny how people twist a word definition to the point they think it fits better the thesis they want to prove.
If it is not repetitive, it is not grind. Not that hard to understand.

Also, in the case you have not clear the definition of repetitive: it is a small set of actions (ie: killing a mob or a group of mobs, doing a small amount of quests etc) done over and over with no variation whatsoever.
Repetitive does not mean “you don’t have to do it a second time”. The term you’re referring to is repeatable, not repetitive.

If you think that grinding is something you have to sink a lot of time in, than your definition of grinding is wrong. That is not my definition, that is the definition of various sources that has even been posted here by some people.

On another topic, I can’t really stand on how people here are asking to buff the grind rewards. For god’s sake…

Stiofan.6720:

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

A poll would automatically be ccorrupted. Beyond campaigning, the other piece is that these groups are far more vocal than the other groups.

~~~

A few points though:
1) Anet knows who does what, and how often.
2) Anet is de-emphasizing further development of this kind of content.

They want their game to be successful and to get the greatest return of improvements for their investment. The fact that they’ve decided to not focus on that stuff right now shows they know what players want to do based on their actual actions as compared to forum noise.

Illuminati.2431:

sirian.4981:

Seera.5916:

sirian.4981:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Morsus.5106:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Morsus.5106:

tigirius.9014:

you’re basically advocating for what happened to Teq to happen a second time elsewhere.

I love the new Tequatl encounter

Tequatl is the only real dragon at the moment.

As detrimental as it would be to the playerbase, I wish every dragon was that hard without prior planning.

That’s selfish though. not everyone has 45 minutes to devote to extensive boss planning “for glory” or “valiance” or some other knight kitten.

Casuals have all the other world bosses (‘cept for Wurm) so I don’t think it’s unfair to ask for one or two more Tequatl like encounters. Claw of Jormag and The Shatterer in particular would be awesome.

And again with assuming casuals want easy content, ugh.

Hello, Casual here. I like Teq. I like Wurm. I don’t think any true world boss should be brainless stand and spam 1. They all need some adjustments. They don’t all need to be super kitten hard, some varying level of coordination and challenge would add some spice imo.

You probably aren’t casual if you can consistently log on 30 minutes before the event timer just to get into the right instance to run Wrum.

Casuals would say “I only have an hour or two to play, I am not spending half of that sitting around waiting for the boss to appear”.

That’s a different kind of casual. Me, I’m a casual. I’ve got plenty of time to get to teq and wurm with thirty minutes left on the timer and I usually have hours of free time.

I don’t have the desire to put forth the time and effort to learn and keep up with meta builds and the rotations needed to play them effectively.

Don’t assume that all casual players are that way due to lack of time. Some of us just don’t have the desire to be hardcore.

I don’t want to get too semantic but tracking timers and sitting around in zones for a boss to spawn isn’t any more casual than reading meta builds.

The defining aspect of a casual is that they aren’t planning their playtime. A casual mindset would be “Nothing good on TV tonight, guess I will hop onto GW2 for an hour or two before dinner”. That person isn’t going to track boss timers and sit around in zone for 30 minutes just to fight 1 boss.

And especially not if that boss doesn’t give anything good. Why track timers etc. etc. If you can just speedrun AC and get better loot? And you only need to spam 1 for that!

The type of casual I’m describing and that I fit into doesn’t have a time crunch and doesn’t have the desire to learn and follow the meta, though we may do so by accident or lack of desire to figure out our own build. We don’t fit the requirements for speed runs unless by pure accident. They play what’s fun for them regardless of if it is meta or not.

And they may find the Teq fight fun. So now since the event is on a set timer, they can set a phone alarm for X time each day and be reasonably sure it’s 30 minutes until it pops.

They don’t have the hour or couple of hours time limit on playing so spending 45 minutes to an hour in Sparkfly Fen for Teq isn’t a huge chunk of their time most days.

Stop assuming that all of us casuals are casual because of time issues. Some of us are casual by choice. Which means we can do things that are typically done by hardcore players only, if there is easy access. And there is easy access to Teq, especially now with the megaserver change putting Teq on a set time of day to spawn. It’s not like Teq is hard if you can listen to and follow directions.

(1800 seconds later)

I don’t want to ‘farm’ at all.

Ever.

That word should not be part of gaming.

I am not a hamster, kitten it.

sorrow.2364:

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

And some people have fun treating and playing it like a “job”. Some people actually like different things in a game. Some like playing pvp, some just like dressing up their characters. There are very different types of games and people like very different things even in this one.

I particularly happen to know a lot of people who like nothing more than to have more gold and farm it and grind for it if it’s profitable.

Amazing isn’kitten
Not everyone wants to “play” like you do. Not everyone has fun the way you do.

sorrow.2364:

It gets boring, not repetitive.

It gets both boring and repetitive really fast.

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?

This is a “declared” non grindy game. And that “declaration” is just PR talk. It’s fake. The game has plenty of grind in it.
They also “declared” that players would get the best statistical gear really easy – which ascended is not.
They also declared no vertical gear grind -which they added.
They also “declared” a million things that didn’t come to pass with the game.

I want you to give me an example of good rewards tied to non-grindy content in GW2. Please give me that example since in 2 years of playing the game I have not found it.

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

True – but you are mistaken if you think the same process can be fun ad infinitum.

sorrow.2364:

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.

The Living world is a joke at the moment – mostly because the events are so unrewarding nobody even bothers with them.

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

Let’s just wait and see what happens. My trust has been broken once – they won’t earn it back by saying " we promise not to do it again" which they haven’t even said. The most they said is that “they see no reason to add further gear tiers in the following year”. And that was about a year ago.

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…

I agree with you 100% but they’ll never do this because the casual player base can never live up to this degree of difficulty.
At the same time the same casual player base is very entitled – spamming the forums asking for exclusive Living Story skins that should have been a one time deal. They weren’t playing then – tough luck – no skins.
But instead Anet goes 180 and puts the skins back for them.

Also while you consider this type of content hard – and while I consider that it would be hard for the majority – my personal feelings is that this sort of content is easy. Hard starts with Liardi and I don’t know where it ends.

While I support skill gated content the past few months have made me realize that the vast majority of players – the ones Anet caters to most – cannot participate in the gaining of “skill based items and gear” because they’re too casual to get it.

It’s sad but true. I think they knew this from the start. That’s why there’s nothing legendary about getting a legendary weapon – just grindy- and if you don’t want to work for it at all you can just buy it – so the casual majority has a chance too.

sorrow.2364:

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.

First of all let’s get our facts straight – Queen Pavilion 2.0 was designed to be anti-zerg not anti-grind. The content wasn’t touched when it came to grinding.
It was made zerg-proof. There’s a huge difference.

And you just argued against the “solution” I proposed and that Anet has been using only to go around and say that it’s better than nothing.

People want rewards faster – there’s nothing wrong with that. When you were a kid and it was Christmas time didn’t you want to get your gifts as soon as possible?
Time is limited – the faster you get to do what you want in life, the faster you get the things you want the better it is – at least for most people.

People don’t want to grind – true – but you can’t eliminate grind by making the good rewards skill based because guess what? most of your players won’t be able to get them and will become frustrated and leave.
Grind is a solution because switching the content from skill-gated to simply time-gated means that everyone can get it as long as they’re willing to work hard for it. And that’s not necessarily good – but it’s better than the game dying because just 10% of people can make legendary items and have cool skins (which I would like but I also realize it would murder the game).

Regarding legendary weapons – I disagree with you completely.
You would have been right if not for one small detail you can always pop that credit card and buy one straight of the TP no questions asked.

If legendary weapons were just account bound – if no matter what you had to make it yourself I might have agreed that you could be right – but I fear that they’re a grind because they were made to be a grind.

In order to get those casual players to say " oh to hell with it – I’ll just buy the kitten thing" because they have the money but not the time to make it themselves. (They have the money and not the time because they have jobs – and if you have a well paying job chances are a legendary isn’t gonna cost that much).

Also at release legendary weapons were designed to be a huge grind – you needed 100 gold for 100 glacial something something and precursors cost 50 gold back then.

You couldn’t farm anywhere almost – the game was incredibly unrewarding at launch.

I really love this kind of “discussion”.

People claiming they want a challenge and this would make the game so much better that nobody would leave the game anymore. Don’t get me wrong guys. I want a challenge, too. Was really glad when they made something like Liadri and didn’t nerf the kitten out of it.

But your assumption that the playerbase wouldn’t decrease if you just make the content more challenging is just wrong. People don’t want challenges. They want rewards.

And here comes the problem. I read a few comments and you guys suggested getting different skins and stuff like that instead of the usual “better-stats”-stuff. That’s not going to work the way you think it is. I can remember very well how many people cried in the forums because they were unable to beat Liadri and thus had no chance to get the linked mini.

That will be the same with skins or anything else. You had to make the reward big enough to make it worth the time(otherwise a big part would just say they can get the same rewards more easily). But then another big group would complain that it is impossible for them to get that reward because the content is too challenging. Now guess which group most likely contains the bigger part of the GW2 playerbase.

We already have challenging content like the “new” TA path and Fractals(how many of the people who want more challenging stuff have “cleared” fractals? probably not so many). Even a few world bosses got changed and aren’t a farm fest anymore. And sadly those things are the best example for what I wrote above. It’s easier to just run different dungeon-paths and get your skins this way. Thus nobody visits the challenging content.

And for now I’m totally ignoring the fact that people might feel forced to do harder content if the rewards are better.

I’ve seen this in enough games by now. People don’t want challenge. People want bragging rights. How do you get bragging rights? By making “more challenging and rewarding content”. And please don’t all feel attacked by this now. I’m sure a few inhere actually want new challenging content because they already cleared to currently available challenging content I named before. Doesn’t change what I said above though. People who can ask for this legitimately are a minority(even though I’m talking high and mighty not even I can ask for more challenging content right now because I haven’t finished the currently available one – well at least fractals not).

Harper.4173:

And some people have fun treating and playing it like a “job”. Some people actually like different things in a game. Some like playing pvp, some just like dressing up their characters. There are very different types of games and people like very different things even in this one.

I particularly happen to know a lot of people who like nothing more than to have more gold and farm it and grind for it if it’s profitable.

Amazing isn’kitten
Not everyone wants to “play” like you do. Not everyone has fun the way you do.

Point is that developers have said several times that this is not that kind of game and people have bought it, me included, following these design standpoint.
If there should be exclusive rewards, they should be tied behind challenging and fun contents, not frustrating, repetitive and time consuming tasks.

Harper.4173:

It gets both boring and repetitive really fast.

It can’t get repetitive when each encounter is different. It can get boring at some point, though, but not because it gets repetitive.

Harper.4173:

This is a “declared” non grindy game. And that “declaration” is just PR talk. It’s fake. The game has plenty of grind in it.

It is not PR talk, it is design directions. Developers have said that they are following this path and if mistakes were made, that does not mean that they have changed it.

Harper.4173:

They also “declared” that players would get the best statistical gear really easy – which ascended is not.

Ascended gear does not make a significant impact to player performance except for fractals. I’ve never made an Ascended armor/weapon piece and I’m doing just fine.

Harper.4173:

They also declared no vertical gear grind -which they added.

And never kept following that route.

Harper.4173:

I want you to give me an example of good rewards tied to non-grindy content in GW2. Please give me that example since in 2 years of playing the game I have not found it.

I’ve pointed out some before.
Glorious Armor skin.
The Blazing Light and The Sunbringer titles.
Any backpiece they introduced in those two years.
Champion Titles.
There are also many other examples that don’t come in my mind right now.

Harper.4173:

True – but you are mistaken if you think the same process can be fun ad infinitum.

But it is developer’s job to make that process fun as long as possible.

Harper.4173:

The Living world is a joke at the moment – mostly because the events are so unrewarding nobody even bothers with them.

That’s because the rewards are bad, not because they are not grindy.

Harper.4173:

I agree with you 100% but they’ll never do this because the casual player base can never live up to this degree of difficulty.
At the same time the same casual player base is very entitled – spamming the forums asking for exclusive Living Story skins that should have been a one time deal. They weren’t playing then – tough luck – no skins.
But instead Anet goes 180 and puts the skins back for them.

You can’t say that.
So far the have taken this direction and they never said that they don’t want to further go that way.
The players spamming the forums is a vocal minority.
The casual portion of GW2 just play the game and don’t give a kitten about what the developers do, they don’t spam the forums for sure.

Harper.4173:

Also while you consider this type of content hard – and while I consider that it would be hard for the majority – my personal feelings is that this sort of content is easy. Hard starts with Liardi and I don’t know where it ends.

I did not said that I consider that kind of content hard. I said that this kind of concept can be a good way to make content hard and time consuming without investing tons of developer resource to please an insignificant portion of the playerbase.

Harper.4173:

First of all let’s get our facts straight – Queen Pavilion 2.0 was designed to be anti-zerg not anti-grind. The content wasn’t touched when it came to grinding.
It was made zerg-proof. There’s a huge difference.

They fixed the main issue of the pavillion first, so that it can’t be done by just zerging mindlessly and made it challenging.

On my records, also, I can’t remember anyone really grinding the hell out of Pavillion 2 like they did with Pavillion 1 and Dunwell farm. The magnitude was nowhere close.

Harper.4173:

People want rewards faster – there’s nothing wrong with that. When you were a kid and it was Christmas time didn’t you want to get your gifts as soon as possible?
Time is limited – the faster you get to do what you want in life, the faster you get the things you want the better it is – at least for most people.

True, nothing to argue against it.

Harper.4173:

People don’t want to grind – true – but you can’t eliminate grind by making the good rewards skill based because guess what? most of your players won’t be able to get them and will become frustrated and leave.

So let’s find another solution.
Maybe tier the difficulty of something and reward people according to the difficulty they have engaged that specific content?
So hardcore players have the challenges they want while casuals can still be rewarded even if they don’t want to get too much involved in difficult contents.

Harper.4173:

Grind is a solution because switching the content from skill-gated to simply time-gated means that everyone can get it as long as they’re willing to work hard for it. And that’s not necessarily good – but it’s better than the game dying because just 10% of people can make legendary items and have cool skins (which I would like but I also realize it would murder the game).

People will leave also if they end up doing repetitive and grindy contents.

Harper.4173:

Regarding legendary weapons – I disagree with you completely.
You would have been right if not for one small detail you can always pop that credit card and buy one straight of the TP no questions asked.

That is really an unconvenient way to buy a legendary and the price is insanely prohibitive for a virtual item.
Even if a minority straight up bought a legendary with real money, I’m fine with it because they have funded ANet to deliver more free contents to me.

Nanashi.6297:

I’ve seen this in enough games by now. People don’t want challenge. People want bragging rights. How do you get bragging rights? By making “more challenging and rewarding content”. And please don’t all feel attacked by this now. I’m sure a few inhere actually want new challenging content because they already cleared to currently available challenging content I named before. Doesn’t change what I said above though. People who can ask for this legitimately are a minority(even though I’m talking high and mighty not even I can ask for more challenging content right now because I haven’t finished the currently available one – well at least fractals not).

I’d go stronger, and say they want ‘challenging content’ with unique prestige rewards that specifically matches their skillset, which generally means learnable content and gear checks (We’re all MMO players here after all, and that’s been the model).

If there’s prestige items rewarded by playstyles people don’t like we get into the ‘you said I could play the way I wanted!!!’ line.

Windsagio.1340:

We’re all MMO players here after all, and that’s been the mode.

I don’t get that sense from reading some of the things on this thread. I am assuming that for some, this is their first mmo.

To say that this game is grindy is funny. The only time I ever felt it was a grind was running fractals over and over for the Prototype Fractal Capacitor.

Windsagio.1340:

I’d go stronger, and say they want ‘challenging content’ with unique prestige rewards that specifically matches their skillset, which generally means learnable content and gear checks (We’re all MMO players here after all, and that’s been the model).

If there’s prestige items rewarded by playstyles people don’t like we get into the ‘you said I could play the way I wanted!!!’ line.

well I was thinking about specifying a bit more. Yes you are right. They want people to see what they achieved by unique looks which are only obtainable in one challenging way.

And I wouldn’t even have a problem with that. I like those kind of things, too(Liadri was really awesome and I love the fact that her mini is not something everybody has. I basically have it behind me 100% of the time). But no matter how I look at it => it’s still about showing others how good you are(I mean I’d use mini Liadri even if it was sent to me by mail for free because it looks awesome but I still like the idea that people can see I managed to do something many people weren’t able to).

That’s not necessarily the same as bragging but exaggerating gets the point across much better.

@sorrow

Just because you choose to have faith in the developers doesn’t mean you should.
Yes ascended gear does’t change much – I know that too – but it also invalidates the initial statement where they said they want “everybody to have the best statistical gear” – even breaking a promise by a little bit still breaks it.

They’ve said a lot of things about what this game would and would not be and I don’t know how you see it but mainly I feel they’ve lost most if not all of their initial vision.

Also these “mistakes” you mention that you use in order to turn a blind eye have happened too often and have been too many for them to be just honest mistakes.

The " haven’t kept following that route" is false – because vertical progression now exists through ascended infusions on top of ascended gear.

Their word regarding vertical progression was already broken once – I don’t see any reason why they’d stop here. If there’s a pattern the pattern is that things like this will keep happening. I hope they never will add more vertical progression – but I’m not going to hold my breath.

“Glorious Armor skin.
The Blazing Light and The Sunbringer titles.
Any backpiece they introduced in those two years.
Champion Titles.”

These are great- except they’re not and never will be the rewards people go for or want the most.
I’m talking about skins – exclusive weapons and armor – not just text. This is a MMO in the year 2014 not a text-based RPG in the 1980s.

Regarding recurring LS rewards – they did it once – what more do you need as indication that they’ll probably do it again?

Also if you can’t remember Pavilions 2.0 that went on for days and weeks of farming it means you never bothered to look for them. I was part of them – did it a lot for a long time.

It was pretty much the same as 1.0.

Regarding content tiers and involvement of casuals vs hardcore.
That’s exactly what I was saying – making content that the hardcore can master easily but only rewards the casuals partially effectively makes the content a grind for the casuals because they have to keep replaying the part they can play in order to get the rewards they want. Since they can’t complete it. So they’re grinding.

“People will leave also if they end up doing repetitive and grindy contents.” – Yes – but only if you force them to.
If the grind is optional then when they feel they don’t want to anymore they can just stop and do something else.

Sadly – the money from the TP goes to NCSoft – not Anet. And NCSoft decides how much of that money Anet gets to make more free content for you.
So no – it’s not a good thing at all.

The fact that they wanted legendary weapons to sell for cash is so evident – how can game designers that made such a beautiful game, interesting lore and all of the things we have in game now drop the ball so bad on the most important weapons in the game?

How is it that an entire company failed to make “Legendary weapons” feel awesome and how is it there’s NOTHING legendary about building one?

It’s not an epic journey that makes you better yourself and improve your game, it doesn’t make you feel special or amazing. There’s NOTHING legendary about it.

We need some kind of new endgame, because what we have now is boring as all hell. Hence the reason why millions stopped playing a few months after launch because there is hardly anything to do besides crafting legendaries and WvW.

Also almost all the hardest bosses can be beat with an exotic weapon or even a rare.. which makes it pointless to go for a higher tier weapon except only for the skin itself. The Gigantic Lupicus which is probably the hardest boss you can beat in this game currently only requires the two weapons aforementioned. In other mmos, the weapon progression is used to beat the more elite level bosses which gave certain drops even if it was random.. still the coveted items could only be obtained by beating the certain bosses. This is how players obtained bragging rights because everyone who saw the certain weapon/cape/whatnot knew that the player achieved it with time and skill; not money.

It is also sad the BiS weapon is something anyone can buy.. I didn’t understand this concept when I first started playing GW2. I still don’t understand it and it’s even more apparent now. For anyone to have the ability to acquire a “legendary” the supposed BiS weapon without playing a single aspect of content cheapens it to me. As others said, there is absolutely nothing legendary about it.. just a pretty skin to admire.

zoe, that’s in fact the whole point. Well kind of.

“Best in Slot” is a nigh-meaningless term in GW2, the difference just isn’t that significant (With the exception of AR for fractals).

Legendary’s being buyable is certainly a weird variation, but it’s not so bizarre at the current price point. To buy one you’re easily taking as much work as to farm out the parts, it’s just some of it might be RL work. Either way the barrier is still there (imo)

layzoe.6035:

Also almost all the hardest bosses can be beat with an exotic weapon or even a rare..

Especially if you know that ascended gear is exactly like exotic in terms of weapon strength and armor as soon as you are playing in areas that are lower than lvl 80.

Difference inn damage from an exotic sword to an ascended is for example 0,35% in that case because of the slightly better stats. Armor its maybe 1% for 6 pieces.

Astralporing.1957:

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.

That seems more an indication that the majority of GW2 players don’t like doing dailies/monthlies, and low difficulty grind related activities than that they don’t like difficult content.

Ashen.2907:

Astralporing.1957:

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.

That seems more an indication that the majority of GW2 players don’t like doing dailies/monthlies, and low difficulty grind related activities than that they don’t like difficult content.

Given that Anet’s behavior seems to correspond to people not liking/doing that ‘hard’ content, what reasoning do you ascribe to their actions?

Windsagio.1340:

Legendary’s being buyable is certainly a weird variation, but it’s not so bizarre at the current price point. To buy one you’re easily taking as much work as to farm out the parts, it’s just some of it might be RL work. Either way the barrier is still there (imo)

My take is that something that is supposedly the best item you can have in game should also have an intrinsic value in itself. For many gamers, the personal achievement comes with playing the most difficult content and mastering it. Having a reward for that achievement is part of it and the BiS should be a reflection of that. Since this is what we are discussing- the end game content, they way we envision it.

My hope is that if GW2 introduces new sets of legendary, that it’s not tradeable nor can a player purchase it. And the end game content does need a lot of rework, an expansion pack. So many of my friends left GW2, I am pretty much the only one left out of my group of gamer friends because I still have hope for this game. But it’s starting to fade slowly…

Windsagio.1340:

Ashen.2907:

Astralporing.1957:

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.

That seems more an indication that the majority of GW2 players don’t like doing dailies/monthlies, and low difficulty grind related activities than that they don’t like difficult content.

Given that Anet’s behavior seems to correspond to people not liking/doing that ‘hard’ content, what reasoning do you ascribe to their actions?

Seems to me that Anet has been introducing more ‘hard’ content since release. They have actively worked to make existing content more difficult in some cases. Their behavior seems to indicate that they have reason to believe that the theory that people do not like doing harder content is incorrect.

Ashen.2907:

Windsagio.1340:

Ashen.2907:

Astralporing.1957:

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.

That seems more an indication that the majority of GW2 players don’t like doing dailies/monthlies, and low difficulty grind related activities than that they don’t like difficult content.

Given that Anet’s behavior seems to correspond to people not liking/doing that ‘hard’ content, what reasoning do you ascribe to their actions?

Seems to me that Anet has been introducing more ‘hard’ content since release. They have actively worked to make existing content more difficult in some cases. Their behavior seems to indicate that they have reason to believe that the theory that people do not like doing harder content is incorrect.

They have indeed released some ‘hard’ content. But you can count on one hand how much ‘hard’ content they have made. And that, 2 years after release… I have now words for it…The biggest problem still is that they are very bad at creating a good reward system for different types of content that vary in how hard it is to complete(Im looking at you TA and Tequatl)

Harper.4173:

Yes ascended gear does’t change much – I know that too – but it also invalidates the initial statement where they said they want “everybody to have the best statistical gear” – even breaking a promise by a little bit still breaks it.

That is because there was still a vocal minority who wanted new gear tier and they listened to the wrong crowd.

Harper.4173:

They’ve said a lot of things about what this game would and would not be and I don’t know how you see it but mainly I feel they’ve lost most if not all of their initial vision.

The game still stands in their initial vision entirely. Some things have changed, of course, over two years of development and player feedback, but the core of game design stays the same.

Harper.4173:

Also these “mistakes” you mention that you use in order to turn a blind eye have happened too often and have been too many for them to be just honest mistakes.

They were not made on purpose and those mistakes were quickly fixed.

Harper.4173:

The " haven’t kept following that route" is false – because vertical progression now exists through ascended infusions on top of ascended gear.

Really? You mean that +5 power on infusion slot?

Harper.4173:

These are great- except they’re not and never will be the rewards people go for or want the most.
I’m talking about skins

Glorious armor and backpieces are skins.
They are experimenting a completely new game format, you can’t expect things will be perfect and well refined after only two years of experimentations.

Harper.4173:

Regarding recurring LS rewards – they did it once – what more do you need as indication that they’ll probably do it again?

If you mean LS reward being bought through laurels, than it is also because of the China release of the game. There is no reason to think they will do it again.

Harper.4173:

Also if you can’t remember Pavilions 2.0 that went on for days and weeks of farming it means you never bothered to look for them. I was part of them – did it a lot for a long time.

I did look at it and I’ve run pavillion several times, but I never bothered to run it again and again just because I thought that the challenge and the fun weren’t worth my time.

Harper.4173:

Regarding content tiers and involvement of casuals vs hardcore.
That’s exactly what I was saying – making content that the hardcore can master easily but only rewards the casuals partially effectively makes the content a grind for the casuals because they have to keep replaying the part they can play in order to get the rewards they want. Since they can’t complete it. So they’re grinding.

Nonono. That is not what I was saying at all.
I was saying making contents that the hardcore can’t master easily and the casuals too.
Casuals access to a specific challenge and eventually goes up in difficulty if they want to get better rewards.
Hardcore will eventually start at an higher difficulty and keep going up at it reaching even “almost impossible” tier difficulty with great rewards.

The example I’ve brought is dungeon gambits.
Complete the dungeon -> casual tier difficulty and rewards.
Complete the dungeon with all gambits -> highest near-impossible challenge with very big rewards.

It’s up to the player when they want to stop difficulty and reward wise.

Harper.4173:

“People will leave also if they end up doing repetitive and grindy contents.” – Yes – but only if you force them to.
If the grind is optional then when they feel they don’t want to anymore they can just stop and do something else.

No.
If people feel that some contents is behind a grind gate, they will get frustrated and ignore that content. You are under the assumption that casuals are the ones who are supposed to grind, while in reality only the hardcore playerbase is more inclined to grind out contents.
If I played GW2 for a couple of hours per day max and I notice that to get the reward I’m supposed to play hundred hours of repetitive contents, I would have gotten frustrated and give up on that content entirely playing something else.

Investing time and resources building contents that just a minority of players will enjoy is a waste.

Harper.4173:

Sadly – the money from the TP goes to NCSoft

NCSoft pays ANet, so it is fine. They are making free contents and they have the resources they need.

Harper.4173:

How is it that an entire company failed to make “Legendary weapons” feel awesome and how is it there’s NOTHING legendary about building one?

Well, that is your opinion.
Holding a virtual weapon on my virtual character that is worth several hundred dollars still feels legendary to me if I’ve spent zero money to make it.

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

But I bet I’ve spent as much time in Tyria as most people in this thread.

Standing AFK somewhere in Tyria while ranting and preaching on the forums isn’t spending time in Tyria.
Ranting and preaching in[insert random map here]chat, isn’t spending time in Tyria.

I play actively with my guild during the day and barely post here. But at night (I’m in Australia) most of my guild is sleeping and I post here a lot while doing other stuff.

You can do that when you’re retired.

sorrow.2364:

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.

I agree with this… to a point.

If you’re on a Tier 1 server, you’ll see some variety in how WvW is played. Not all guilds and groups join the karma train. There are many groups that use strategy, stealth, and alliances during gameplay esp. when fighting the hardcore server, Blackgate (BG). With BG around, there are days when BG’s train makes it impossible for the other servers to run a karma train. Some days, WvW turns into Game of Thrones on the T-1 servers. Then on other days, it’s hilarious to see a small group of 50 highly powered & highly skilled WvW / RP players keep a 150 man BG zerg from taking a fort!

Stiofan.6720:

Windsagio.1340:

Stiofan.6720:

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

A poll would automatically be ccorrupted. Beyond campaigning, the other piece is that these groups are far more vocal than the other groups.

~~~

A few points though:
1) Anet knows who does what, and how often.
2) Anet is de-emphasizing further development of this kind of content.

They want their game to be successful and to get the greatest return of improvements for their investment. The fact that they’ve decided to not focus on that stuff right now shows they know what players want to do based on their actual actions as compared to forum noise.

So you are saying arenanet actively monitors what everyone is doing all the time (doubt it) even if that was true you are missing something important, in gw2 there is no real hard content apart from fotm 50, so everyone is always doing easy content (its basically the only content there is), so then anet looks at the data and it says oh look nearly 100% of all the players are always doing easy content that must mean they love it.

If it was 50/50 hard/easy content and nobody ever did they hard content then you’d have a point. But since guild wars 2 is almost 100% easy content your argument is flawed.

Maybe arenanet is playing a some sort of sick joke mimicking the de-evolution of man?

Guild wars 1 has challenging content that made you think about strategy.

Guild wars 2 has simple content that makes you think about all the pretty colours.

Guild wars 3 will probably be cartoons.

You guys should watch the movie ‘Idiocracy (2006)’ its seriously like looking into the future.

First of all they don’t have to monitor it “at all times”. They have software which tracks it at all times. They get numbers and totals.

They have put harder content in the game. My guess is even new hard content is under-utilized. What if they put in TA Aetherblade path and only 20% of the game’s population ever finished it and only 25% have ever attempted it.

That’s a lot of resources when 75% of the population hasn’t entered at all. Yes I’m making these numbers up, they could be completely wrong. But my point is that Anet DOES have those numbers and if you think they don’t, you don’t know Anet.

Speaking for myself, I don’t specifically want ‘endgame’ content, I’d prefer just general content that could be accessed regardless of level.

Specifically more mini games, like the infamous Bar Brawls and Polymock. I’d also kind of like the see some sort of mini game wherein we get to build a customized Asuran Golem and then fight other players’ golems.

Stiofan.6720:

Same ol Vayne, Man you love them arguments, Every one of your posts is basically you arguing with someone else haha. Do you never win any arguments with the misses you have to come on here and take out all your arguing frustration on us poor folks on the forums. lol

That would imply I’m winning arguments here.

I do enjoy a good debate. But that’s not really my point here. I don’t argue just to argue.

I say that Anet has metrics. I say this because I’ve seen them say it and because we’ve seen them demonstrate it.

I say that Anet has a better idea of how many people do stuff than we do.

I say they probably make decisions at least in part using that data.

If there’s anything here you’d like to contradict, feel free..

Oh and I’m too smart to argue with my wife. lol

I skipped over a few pages (because frankly I got tired of the back and forth) but there are more than just people who play a piece of content for the reward/bragging rights, or just for the challenge. It’s more than just a spectrum too. You have those who play for the lore, you have others who play purely because of the social aspect (they play because their friends do), others play for the fun of it.

I don’t see anything wrong though with challenging content that provides an equivalent reward. If I just finished some extremely difficult challenge, whether it’s a dungeon like TA:AE, the 50th level of Fractals I want a reward that makes me feel like I didn’t just waste my time. People just don’t feel good when they spend the time on beating the challenging content, then the games just like “Hey! Here’s some green items and some blue ones.” The sames greens and blues you could have just went and done any world boss or champion to get in the first place for 1/3 the work. Even if you enjoyed the content, it feels like you were cheated when you’re “awarded” with items that you could have easily gotten anywhere else, and people don’t like to feel as if they were cheated.

That’s just my opinion, I don’t only play for the challenge, nor do I just play for the reward aspect of it all. I play for a mixture of reasons, usually just for the story, but sometimes I play something because it challenges me (Mad Kings Tower), or when I want a particular reward (farming fractals). It gets frustrating if you want something and your chances to get it are locked behind a one in a thousand RNG that you don’t get while others get it multiple times.

Vayne.8563:

Stiofan.6720:

Windsagio.1340:

Stiofan.6720:

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

A poll would automatically be ccorrupted. Beyond campaigning, the other piece is that these groups are far more vocal than the other groups.

~~~

A few points though:
1) Anet knows who does what, and how often.
2) Anet is de-emphasizing further development of this kind of content.

They want their game to be successful and to get the greatest return of improvements for their investment. The fact that they’ve decided to not focus on that stuff right now shows they know what players want to do based on their actual actions as compared to forum noise.

So you are saying arenanet actively monitors what everyone is doing all the time (doubt it) even if that was true you are missing something important, in gw2 there is no real hard content apart from fotm 50, so everyone is always doing easy content (its basically the only content there is), so then anet looks at the data and it says oh look nearly 100% of all the players are always doing easy content that must mean they love it.

If it was 50/50 hard/easy content and nobody ever did they hard content then you’d have a point. But since guild wars 2 is almost 100% easy content your argument is flawed.

Maybe arenanet is playing a some sort of sick joke mimicking the de-evolution of man?

Guild wars 1 has challenging content that made you think about strategy.

Guild wars 2 has simple content that makes you think about all the pretty colours.

Guild wars 3 will probably be cartoons.

You guys should watch the movie ‘Idiocracy (2006)’ its seriously like looking into the future.

First of all they don’t have to monitor it “at all times”. They have software which tracks it at all times. They get numbers and totals.

They have put harder content in the game. My guess is even new hard content is under-utilized. What if they put in TA Aetherblade path and only 20% of the game’s population ever finished it and only 25% have ever attempted it.

That’s a lot of resources when 75% of the population hasn’t entered at all. Yes I’m making these numbers up, they could be completely wrong. But my point is that Anet DOES have those numbers and if you think they don’t, you don’t know Anet.

Again, you pick up TA Aetherblade path as an example. Wasn’t it made clear that this dungeon is never played, not because it is ‘hard’, but because of it’s reward structure.
Let’s say 25% attempted it. They finished it and found out: Hey, look what god awfull kitten junk this dungeon gives me. And that for all the effort I put into this!
When that happens, you tell it to people. You tell it to your friends, to your guild etc. etc. A lot of people would still like to play and try it though, but I guess A LOT of people just didn’t care after they read someone said that. And it’s a common given that TA Aeatherpath just gives such, such, such bad rewards.

So again, I’m sure they monitor numbers, but I also agree with some other posters that the numbers they have are not representable at ALL. Like the numbers for Aetherblade path. If they are low, which could be the case, that doesn’t necessarily have to mean people avoid one of the only hard content in the game, it could also mean: kitten you Arenanet, if you make harder content which take up way more time, the rewards should be better too! That’s normal for humans to think that way: more effort=more reward.

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Stiofan.6720:

Windsagio.1340:

Stiofan.6720:

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

A poll would automatically be ccorrupted. Beyond campaigning, the other piece is that these groups are far more vocal than the other groups.

~~~

A few points though:
1) Anet knows who does what, and how often.
2) Anet is de-emphasizing further development of this kind of content.

They want their game to be successful and to get the greatest return of improvements for their investment. The fact that they’ve decided to not focus on that stuff right now shows they know what players want to do based on their actual actions as compared to forum noise.

So you are saying arenanet actively monitors what everyone is doing all the time (doubt it) even if that was true you are missing something important, in gw2 there is no real hard content apart from fotm 50, so everyone is always doing easy content (its basically the only content there is), so then anet looks at the data and it says oh look nearly 100% of all the players are always doing easy content that must mean they love it.

If it was 50/50 hard/easy content and nobody ever did they hard content then you’d have a point. But since guild wars 2 is almost 100% easy content your argument is flawed.

Maybe arenanet is playing a some sort of sick joke mimicking the de-evolution of man?

Guild wars 1 has challenging content that made you think about strategy.

Guild wars 2 has simple content that makes you think about all the pretty colours.

Guild wars 3 will probably be cartoons.

You guys should watch the movie ‘Idiocracy (2006)’ its seriously like looking into the future.

First of all they don’t have to monitor it “at all times”. They have software which tracks it at all times. They get numbers and totals.

They have put harder content in the game. My guess is even new hard content is under-utilized. What if they put in TA Aetherblade path and only 20% of the game’s population ever finished it and only 25% have ever attempted it.

That’s a lot of resources when 75% of the population hasn’t entered at all. Yes I’m making these numbers up, they could be completely wrong. But my point is that Anet DOES have those numbers and if you think they don’t, you don’t know Anet.

Again, you pick up TA Aetherblade path as an example. Wasn’t it made clear that this dungeon is never played, not because it is ‘hard’, but because of it’s reward structure.
Let’s say 25% attempted it. They finished it and found out: Hey, look what god awfull kitten junk this dungeon gives me. And that for all the effort I put into this!
When that happens, you tell it to people. You tell it to your friends, to your guild etc. etc. A lot of people would still like to play and try it though, but I guess A LOT of people just didn’t care after they read someone said that. And it’s a common given that TA Aeatherpath just gives such, such, such bad rewards.

So again, I’m sure they monitor numbers, but I also agree with some other posters that the numbers they have are not representable at ALL. Like the numbers for Aetherblade path. If they are low, which could be the case, that doesn’t necessarily have to mean people avoid one of the only hard content in the game, it could also mean: kitten you Arenanet, if you make harder content which take up way more time, the rewards should be better too! That’s normal for humans to think that way: more effort=more reward.

I’m not talking about why TA isn’t played now. It came with achievements and people would have played it once if they were interested in it, no matter what the rewards. It had enough of a reward to TRY IT.

So what if Anet saw most people didn’t try it or at least finish it? It would tell them something.

Even people who don’t like dungeons but like achievements would have tried it.

That is the conclusion that I am coming up with by reading this thread and some others here. I don’t think there is a hard end game content; not the type that would keep a player logging in daily for years and keep coming back for more. It seems majority of the players left want fluff and content with that; the wardrobe changes, the mini pet, the appearances and gem store items.

The reward system is broken as the hardest content reward which you can spend hours in the game is the same as you would get at a world boss; just add in a gold or two. I suppose that GW2’s lack of gear and vertical progression made the game reach its ceiling. After thinking it over, I realized that the game lacks depth. It is as someone as put it on another thread about a gem store which I think perfectly suits the description of this game, “cosmetic and playful”. And there is nothing wrong with that but the lack of challenges left in this game have made most of the hardcore player base leave; some only returning periodically for the updated content.

If the current living stories are any indication; they waited in vain.

Vayne.8563:

Illuminati.2431:

Vayne.8563:

Stiofan.6720:

Windsagio.1340:

Stiofan.6720:

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

A poll would automatically be ccorrupted. Beyond campaigning, the other piece is that these groups are far more vocal than the other groups.

~~~

A few points though:
1) Anet knows who does what, and how often.
2) Anet is de-emphasizing further development of this kind of content.

They want their game to be successful and to get the greatest return of improvements for their investment. The fact that they’ve decided to not focus on that stuff right now shows they know what players want to do based on their actual actions as compared to forum noise.

So you are saying arenanet actively monitors what everyone is doing all the time (doubt it) even if that was true you are missing something important, in gw2 there is no real hard content apart from fotm 50, so everyone is always doing easy content (its basically the only content there is), so then anet looks at the data and it says oh look nearly 100% of all the players are always doing easy content that must mean they love it.

If it was 50/50 hard/easy content and nobody ever did they hard content then you’d have a point. But since guild wars 2 is almost 100% easy content your argument is flawed.

Maybe arenanet is playing a some sort of sick joke mimicking the de-evolution of man?

Guild wars 1 has challenging content that made you think about strategy.

Guild wars 2 has simple content that makes you think about all the pretty colours.

Guild wars 3 will probably be cartoons.

You guys should watch the movie ‘Idiocracy (2006)’ its seriously like looking into the future.

First of all they don’t have to monitor it “at all times”. They have software which tracks it at all times. They get numbers and totals.

They have put harder content in the game. My guess is even new hard content is under-utilized. What if they put in TA Aetherblade path and only 20% of the game’s population ever finished it and only 25% have ever attempted it.

That’s a lot of resources when 75% of the population hasn’t entered at all. Yes I’m making these numbers up, they could be completely wrong. But my point is that Anet DOES have those numbers and if you think they don’t, you don’t know Anet.

Again, you pick up TA Aetherblade path as an example. Wasn’t it made clear that this dungeon is never played, not because it is ‘hard’, but because of it’s reward structure.
Let’s say 25% attempted it. They finished it and found out: Hey, look what god awfull kitten junk this dungeon gives me. And that for all the effort I put into this!
When that happens, you tell it to people. You tell it to your friends, to your guild etc. etc. A lot of people would still like to play and try it though, but I guess A LOT of people just didn’t care after they read someone said that. And it’s a common given that TA Aeatherpath just gives such, such, such bad rewards.

So again, I’m sure they monitor numbers, but I also agree with some other posters that the numbers they have are not representable at ALL. Like the numbers for Aetherblade path. If they are low, which could be the case, that doesn’t necessarily have to mean people avoid one of the only hard content in the game, it could also mean: kitten you Arenanet, if you make harder content which take up way more time, the rewards should be better too! That’s normal for humans to think that way: more effort=more reward.

I’m not talking about why TA isn’t played now. It came with achievements and people would have played it once if they were interested in it, no matter what the rewards. It had enough of a reward to TRY IT.

So what if Anet saw most people didn’t try it or at least finish it? It would tell them something.

Even people who don’t like dungeons but like achievements would have tried it.

No, but you are talking about Anet monitoring numbers, and according to you, the numbers for ‘hard’ content like Aetherblade path are to low for Anet to make any new content like this.
All I’m saying, is that your way of logic: Anet’s numbers say not enough % of the playerbase plays this type of content, so why make more?, is wrong. Like I said, the numbers are totally not representable to the type of content, but they represent that if you make hard content that gives crap rewards, no one will play it.

Do you even read what I say before you rant on again and again? I never said that you said anything about Aetherblade path not being played. What I said was that when you used the Aetherblade path in your “Anet monitoring bullkitten” story, it is totally not representable.

I completely agree with you . Anet numbers means nothing . When 99% of content is casual spamming 11111 all stats will show that people do more casual stuff becasue all we have are casual activities ! More difficult content has no rewards and it is a bit sad that AC path=Aether path o_0 maybe even on Ac you have more rewards . And hardcore content means that less people will finish it ! what is the sense of making hardcore content which 95% of people can complete . Then it is not hardcore content , content like that should finish 20% of population max .

hardcore gw2 game-play means u can chat now on megaserver for like 9h, thats pretty hardcore as any gw2 player can be.

This is a game for players that are bad at mmo’s mostly or never played mmo’s before.