A productive Rant

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: CaptainVanguard.4925

CaptainVanguard.4925

Ive made a few in my time of where GW2 had some qualities that have long since faded but this one is less about saying GW2 is bad and more about saying what the current zones are doing wrong.

The problem with Grinding when it becomes too much:

Too much of a ‘good’ thing to some is often a bad thing to others. One of the issues with Season 2 and HoT zones dry top/silverwastes and all the HoT zones specifically, is that every single bit of content requires you to regularly farm events in that zone in order to aquire a zone specific resorce thats basically a glorified time sink that takes a few days of your life to get the attained equipment you desire.

Solution:

Not “every” zone, needs a grind, not every zone “needs” gear that is attained via farming regular content, some zones “should” be easy, almost laughably easy because it balances the challenging content and gear from the easier more rewarding content that gives a level of instant gratification.

Basically, grinding needs to be something available to the zones in HoT and episode 1 of S3, but from now on, every future zone should have bosses that literally “drop” the loot you want every run you do them, literally “drop” the gear you need to start making progress, such as maybe an early ascended accessory to start people off.

Catchup isnt a bad thing, nor is toning down older content

When was the “last” time you honestly tried to farm an Amberite weapon with a zone of people? When was the last time you cared about bandit crests, when, was the last time you tried to get a Sceclarite weapon?

If the answer is, forever ago, then your on the right track to recognising the problem. The issue is that older content is going to be less relevent, and that includes the grind towards it.

Solution:

Simply reduce the grind, its time to nerf the amount of geodes you need to collect Amberite weapons, its time to nerf the amount of crests you need to collect Carapace Armor, and theres “nothing” wrong with that nerf since it was “relevent” then, and not now.

Easier is often better, Gw2’s launch advocated this game as a casual friendly MMO

Longevity is less tied to grinding, and more tied to gratification, people “like” to feel rewarded, they dont like to spend weeks upon weeks farming for specific loot that feels pointless and niche in the games future.

Example: Going through ascalonian catacombs to grind dungeon runs for the tears feels like you’re missing the point. Its not the resorce that mattered, its the loot.

If I kill a dungeon boss, I want a dungeon loot reward, I dont care if its an item I cant use, I dont care if its a duplicate of an item I already own, I “want” that loot as it feels like an “instant” reward.

Grinding has much more effective ways of appearing, in Wrath of the Lich King in WoW the large success of the expansion was lended to the fact there were “multiple” ways to loot things. Not all of it required farming weeks of dailies, sometimes, you could just spam dungeon runs and get loot every boss, even useless trash.

Solution:

If I get a piece of loot I cant use, thats leagues more interesting to me, than getting a masterwork or rare piece of loot that has no value to me at all, TL:DR I am probably “not” going to care if I get a rare, but I will care “greatly” if I get an exotic, even if its one I cant use.

The Casual matters, no matter what the hardcore say

In the end, There are OTHER ways to add content with challenge that does NOT require the game to sacrifice its casual base for its hardcore, or vise versa.

Examples and Solutions:

Raiding: Add a story mode raid difficulty for those looking to experience the lore of the raid, simply deny anyone doing it any loot while doing so or if they get any loot, maybe they get a basic ascended accessory at the end of the run per account.

Dungeons: Make every story mode entirley solo, not just Arah, so that everyone can get into explorable without having to waste the effort on finding a group. Revamp the Explorable experience to make it harder and more challenging, and equally, reward loot every boss, even crap loot nobody wanted in ADDITION to tokens.

Fractals: Incentivise the noobie to join the fractal experience, offer a double-reward weekend event, tie this to other experiences like raiding/dungeons and pvp to increase their value.

PvP: Add the “activities” into this category as an ‘alternative’ to the mainstream pvp progression, let people earn the progression rewards from it, though keep the ranked pvp rewards to ranked gameplay only.

WvW: Add a third borderland type, not much to say on this but there is more I can go into but id need a seperate topic for it.

Dailies and Questing: Add a “Dragon Watch” mini secondary questing system that lets you do mini quests at random once per day, each one takes you across Tyria doing variable activities and offers a bit of lore/va thats repeatble each day with random new adventures, similar to fractals, rewards you with some laurels at the end.

Specializations: As a future way of fixing the “trinity” you’ve created, give us 18 new specializations by expansion 2, ambitious I know but hear me out, by adding 3 specs for each class, you can give each one a soft trinity of its own, allowing us to pick tank/heal/dps for any class bringing “back” what Vanilia GW2 had, the ability to play without feeling too grounded to a class/role choice. I could go into some suggestions on this but I digress its just something to muse on.

Anyway, these are “some” things you can do to fix the game and work on it in a productive way.

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Malediktus.9250

Malediktus.9250

All content is releveant in GW2 and the worst thing to do would be “toning” down “old” content.
All I read here is i want the best rewards specific zones have to offer on a silver plattern. For example noone forces to to have all the ambrite weapons. Your suggestions just make people burn through content even faster which is exactly a problem GW2 already has. You get everything way too fast hurting the replayability and longevity of the game.
Everything is already super casuals compared to basically any other online RPG I tried before. Never before I had to spend so little effort to get the desired stuff.

EDIT: Your claim that easier is better is also wrong. There are a lot of casuals who are not bad players and enjoy a challenge.

1st person worldwide to reach 35,000 achievement points.

(edited by Malediktus.9250)

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: FrizzFreston.5290

FrizzFreston.5290

I would say that less dependability on the number of people playing within a map is definitely something that sounds reasonable.

But making things easier isn’t a necessity at all. It’s still a game and certain challenges need to be overcome. The whole “casual equals easy” thing is totally wrong.

“It isn’t working!” CL4P-TP
Ingame Name: Guardian Erik

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Arvizal.8436

Arvizal.8436

I feel like all the suggestions, if implemented, would kill the longevity of the game by FAR. What you are suggesting is wanting everything handed to you by putting zero effort in. Even casual players do more work than what you’re suggesting. You aren’t catering to casuals in this post – just bad players, who don’t wanna get better, aka lazy players.

I really hope ANet doesn’t decide to go down this road as it seems as though you believe more rewards for less work = better. If people go through content too fast they’ll eventually be nothing to do, and nothing to look forward to/be working on. These ideas don’t “fix” the game, they ruin it.

Casual does NOT mean easy.

Thief main since launch! – Ded Pixel – Maguuma – [SAS]

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Aeolus.3615

Aeolus.3615

The only grind i find awfull in gw2 is the profession crafting system, due being boring crafting stuff and gold digger-

1st April joke, when gw2 receives a “balance” update.

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Sarie.1630

Sarie.1630

Some points are great, some I don’t agree with. Let’s take it from the top:

Solution:

Not “every” zone, needs a grind, not every zone “needs” gear that is attained via farming regular content, some zones “should” be easy, almost laughably easy because it balances the challenging content and gear from the easier more rewarding content that gives a level of instant gratification.

This I absolutely agree with, and has been something I’ve mentioned before. In any future expansion I’d love to see a mix of meta-event maps and regular exploration maps. There is absolutely a place for both of them. Sometimes I want to play through a meta event and… actually it feels like a more fun way to obtain gear than dungeons do. Sometimes I want to play through a large (often quiet) map and just soak it all in, complete some events and see what extra lore and side-stories I can find. I often find myself going back to some of the quieter core maps to do just this. It would be great to have some more to roam around.

Solution:

Simply reduce the grind, its time to nerf the amount of geodes you need to collect Amberite weapons, its time to nerf the amount of crests you need to collect Carapace Armor, and theres “nothing” wrong with that nerf since it was “relevent” then, and not now.

I don’t agree with this one. I farmed up almost all of my Ambrite weapons on Tier 4 Dry Tops which were largely unorganised. It’s perfectly doable and just takes a while longer. There are guilds around who organise Tier 6 runs and, even if it’s just for the duration of your completion of those achievements it might be worth getting into a guild like that.

I don’t think the solution is to cheapen the achievements of those players who worked hard to get them in the first place.

Example: Going through ascalonian catacombs to grind dungeon runs for the tears feels like you’re missing the point. Its not the resorce that mattered, its the loot.

If I kill a dungeon boss, I want a dungeon loot reward, I dont care if its an item I cant use, I dont care if its a duplicate of an item I already own, I “want” that loot as it feels like an “instant” reward.

Grinding has much more effective ways of appearing, in Wrath of the Lich King in WoW the large success of the expansion was lended to the fact there were “multiple” ways to loot things. Not all of it required farming weeks of dailies, sometimes, you could just spam dungeon runs and get loot every boss, even useless trash.

Solution:

If I get a piece of loot I cant use, thats leagues more interesting to me, than getting a masterwork or rare piece of loot that has no value to me at all, TL:DR I am probably “not” going to care if I get a rare, but I will care “greatly” if I get an exotic, even if its one I cant use.

Dungeons could do to drop more interesting stuff, sure… but I wouldn’t like to see them move away from the token arrangement. At least I don’t have to complete the same dungeon 50 times just to get a specific armour piece drop like I had to in Aion.

The most interesting things Dungeons currently have going for them are the recipes for trinkets. They drop so freaking rarely in my experience, but when you get one, it feels kinda special. This idea could be expanded on…somehow.

The Casual matters, no matter what the hardcore say

Everyone matters.

It is likely true that everyone thinks that every piece of content should be “for them”.

I don’t like Raiding. I despise the attitude of Raiders in EU, and I will likely never be part of that scene. You just have to be prepared to write off that particular piece of content. I have, and I don’t feel hard-done by. There’s still a ton for me to do in this game. Would I appreciate it if a Raid story-mode was brought out…. absolutely! I would never assume, or argue that this story mode should drop full Raid quality rewards though.

Dungeons: Make every story mode entirley solo, not just Arah, so that everyone can get into explorable without having to waste the effort on finding a group.

That seems a bit sad, really.

Perhaps if story mode dungeons scaled. Perhaps if you went in solo you could complete it but your rewards would be reflective of that. Perhaps if you went in with 4 other players your rewards would be reflective of a full 5-man group. That all probably takes a lot of work on ArenaNet’s part…

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: DoctorDing.5890

DoctorDing.5890

I disagree with almost all of the OP. The only point I do agree with is the one about each map having its own currency which is required to buy stuff on that map.

In an ideal world there would be fewer currencies but that is hard to introduce retrospectively. Instead, my suggestion would be to have a currency exchange vendor so you could earn currency on maps you love and then convert it into the currency you need, at a suitably determined exchange rate. New map currencies would only be unlocked at the vendor after you had done some relevant events/story/meta in that map but after that you’d be free to earn rewards doing stuff elsewhere if that is what you enjoy more.

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: preacher.9370

preacher.9370

Really don’t have an opinion on most of it, but seeing the activities added to pvp would be kind of nice.

A productive Rant

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Ayrilana.1396

Ayrilana.1396

It’s a waste of a map to create one like core Tyria, have people play it for a week or so, and then abandon it.

Getting bandit crests and geodes isn’t that difficult. I often get into T4 maps in DT and people still do SW. There are even guilds dedicated to those particular maps but I’m unsure as to how active they are as I am not a part of them.

Easier is not always better. No vendor item requires weeks upon weeks of grind on the HoT maps unless the time you play during those weeks is severely limited. If you made rewards easier to get then players would have less reason to play on the maps because they’re no longer rewarding.