Guild Wars 2

Something dawned on me last night which I wish to discuss with the community of gw2. I was completing the karka challenge for Princess and something dawned on me, that is how Anet operates and how that is unique from other companies and mmo’s.

Anet operates by adding instead of subtracting content as a business model.

An example: Princess eats excessive dragonite ore and spits out (usually) a trivial gift. Instead of Anet just patching the drop rate for dragonite ore, empyreal fragments, and bloodstone shards which would have been ‘subtracting resources,’ they instead add a creature or tool (princess and mawdrey) that eats these resources.

Another example: Anet is infamous for their incredible low RNG mechanic that is rampant through gw2. The community constantly discusses (whines) about RNG mechanic. And Anet answered their complaints, although long ago, with luck. Again, by increasing the RNG in gw2 Anet would actually be ‘subtracting’ the experiences of the player and the joy of find that rare treasure. Instead Anet added luck into the equation. By adding luck players can increase their RNG.

For the longest time this bothered me but I couldn’t explain why. I thought, why not just increase the RNG or reduce the (absurd) amount of dragonite ore. However, now I find comfort in this system of adding versus subtracting. Gw2 is a very unique mmo on the market that is constantly being added to. Anet is always adding events, jump puzzles, new maps, armors, living stories, pvp and pve content. As a consumer of Gw2, i’m very appreciative of their business model.

[That being said: Anet, Why you take away my Super Adventure Box!? (cries)]

Anyhow, if you have thoughts, I would love to hear them.

Yeah, after LS1 they got a massive earful from the proletariat about temporary content, so they sat down, had a meeting, and decided that more really is more.

I still would have rather had a bigger living story budget for more frequent small releases with system upgrade patches coming out one by one over time than wait for an expansion, but that’s just me. People wanted the expansions, so they got ’em

As it comes to ascended materials, some of that is actually an “economic” decision. The materials need some kind of value outside of Ascended gear. Some people can farm it up faster than they can use it, or they already have all their ascended sets and have no further use for the materials. Reducing the drop rate may wouldn’t halt the effect of inactive materials sinks.
So, they made material sinks. The number is limited per day, but it does a good job at chipping away stacks without adding much to the economy. (Because loot RNG lol)

As for RNG… Yeah, it’s bunk. Garbage. This is, unfortunately, also an economic decision to give artificial value to ‘rare’ items in game. Luck used to be on gear, but it was changed to be an account-wide attribute. (Fantastic decision.)
Problem is, they started hiding all the loot in containers, which are unaffected by Magic Find. So Magic Find is a falsehood. Basically, they gave us Magic Find, then they took it away, so they could continue to be stingy and play market baron.

And I hope they bring back SAB. Not for me, but to share the love with all the players who could enjoy it.