Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

This is an RPG. There’s no click here and receive everything. Leveling by actually playing the game has been a core component of RPG’s for nearly their entire existence.

Actually… no.

Roleplaying has NOTHING to do with levels or stats whatsoever.

http://www.raphkoster.com/2005/12/16/do-levels-suck/ maybe read this essay by one of the creators of Ultima Online, an RPG without levels.

Shakkara, thanks for the link. It put a word on all my thoughts regarding levels.

I have 7 lvl 80’s and after the second, lvling felt incredibly boring, tedious and grindy. Its not that it takes too long. Its that the most cost efficient way of leveling is map completion and leeching dungeons. Map completion got boring on my first character so you can surely imagine how boring it is repeating certain zones for the 8th time. Thankfully i run dungeons with friends every day and i can stick an alt outside the entrance and switch at the end. Ran my lvl 50 ele to arah and reached 80 in no time once i had wp’s in all dungeon zones.

Now its just engi and ranger to go. T_T

Btw for people saying the fun is before you hit 80. I dont agree with that. You are restricted with builds, gear, effectiveness and places to go. The main reason i level alts is so I can have them geared properly and play a variety of classes in organised groups for dungeons. If im underleveled im not really enjoying it as much because im not as effective as I can be.

Galen Grey.4709:

stale.9785:

CES – for a while now I’ve felt that the traditional level system is just flawed. It exists as a roadblock for content in GW2 – and in other games. I’d have done it much differently;

Tutorial, which does the standard “press this to move, this to attack, this is how you use skills. don’t lick the computer. this is a lever, use it. don’t lick that either. stop drooling and click something” that we already get.

Out of tutorial, it should just be “These are traits, this is what they do. You’ll have to do X (buy a book, in this case) to use higher level traits.” and “These are skill points – you can learn a skill from a trainer for 1/3/5/10/30 skill points. Trainers live throughout the world. Elite skills can be captured from dead enemies”

Character growth should have been all in skill acquisition and learning your profession/game mechanics. Also, gearing up and world exploration, of course.

The zones could be kept interesting by having continuous DE style things happening. Centaurs that can actually take over the map, or be fought off, then driven across zones, only to return if the players aren’t diligent. Give us the ability to purge the Orrian menace from the later zones (There’d have to be one area still affected, but we should be able to recover most of the south of the map from the zombies, and restore it)

Bleh – too much like this. Anet, if you make a GW3, hire me as an Idea Hamster™ for it.

EDIT: because I don’t see grammar issues till AFTER I submit. Bleh.

Yes and no.

Yes in that strictly speaking it isnt needed. No because yeah its definitely needed. It all depends how you look, from what point of view. From a player perspective its like you said restrictive. From the game point of view its a necessary evil to ensure a populous world. At launch at least what did people who got to max level do? go back to try out the other zones they missed? some did sure but the vast majority stayed in Orr cause that was what was most profitable. If you had 0 levels I bet the same thing would have happened from the get go. Its natural a lot of players care about the reward more then they do care about the content. Leveling slows them down and thats a good thing even for them because I do believe sometimes you need to protect the players from themselves.

Yes and no.

Yeah people go look for the best rewarding places… IF the world is currency-driven like GW2 is.

If you can find special armor (looks mainly then) or mini,s or mounts, or items or recipes in the rest of the world there are reasons to do those thinks in all of the world.

So then you are not just busy leveling and there is no once best rewarding place to be.

Thats what I talked about in my previous post in this topic.

GW2 however is very currency driven and does place a lot of items not in the world but in the gem-shop or behind a vendor. So then people will all go to those few places that are best rewarding. They farm the gold / currency there and then buy what they want.

And yes I do see how thats bored. Some people however like such a constant grind of gold in one place but many don’t.

TooBz.3065:

I thought the leveling was fine for my first 7 characters, but I hit a brick wall on my 8th. Can’t seem to make myself do it one more time.

Then again, who needs 8 level 80 characters anyway.

I feel the same way… half way done with my 6th 80, and I only started it because I had a level 20 scroll and 9 level up scrolls to kick start it. I’m at level 41, and just want to be 80 so I can gear it and get back into WvW with a finished (or what used to be finished) character.

Short answer: Offer a +10 level consumable in the TP. It follows the mantra of a “convenience” item. Buy eight and boom, done leveling. Funds the game (although I don’t like funding Living World over Expansion quality fare) and makes players like the OP happy. Win-Win.

I’m a little confused by the OP… what are you racing to level cap for, exactly? There’s nothing there waiting for you, no “end game” so to speak.

What am I missing?

Zeldain.5710:

I’m a little confused by the OP… what are you racing to level cap for, exactly? There’s nothing there waiting for you, no “end game” so to speak.

What am I missing?

Pretty sure there is endgame. Otherwise what am i playing everyday. :/

Devata.6589:

Yes and no.

Yeah people go look for the best rewarding places… IF the world is currency-driven like GW2 is.

If you can find special armor (looks mainly then) or mini,s or mounts, or items or recipes in the rest of the world there are reasons to do those thinks in all of the world.

So then you are not just busy leveling and there is no once best rewarding place to be.

Thats what I talked about in my previous post in this topic.

GW2 however is very currency driven and does place a lot of items not in the world but in the gem-shop or behind a vendor. So then people will all go to those few places that are best rewarding. They farm the gold / currency there and then buy what they want.

And yes I do see how thats bored. Some people however like such a constant grind of gold in one place but many don’t.

And who made the game currency driven? the developers? no said players on their quest to get the rewards as quickly as possible. Currency in guild wars 2 is used to change on game play for another. IE say you want a named weapon but you dont like farm the charged cores you need so instead you go play fractals which is content you like and use gold to exchange the time you spend playing fractals for charged cores. Only that got abused, players kept going towards the most rewarding content and strived to get as much gold as quickly as possible in order to “game” the system by spending less time playing content x then they would need to play content y for the reward they need. It got so bad that it got to a point where ironically things reversed. With ascended gear it would take a ton less time to pick the materials themselves but people got so used to farming gold that they still did that even though it takes far longer to make the gold necessary to buy the materials you could easily gather in a fraction of the time. Just look at ascended weapons and the basic materials they use. There was a time when a single ancient wood log sold for 10s! With 4 level 80 characters you can gather 144 of them in 30 minutes if you know the route (and there are websites that tell you the route if you dont want to discover it yourself) 14g for 30 mins of gathering is incredible disproportionate. Granted I never farmed but I dont believe there is any content that rewards anywhere close to 14g for 30 mins of game time. (well of course excluding gathering logs and selling them )

Its not that the game is currency driven, it isnt really. Only gem-shop items can only be acquired using gold (excluding real money) and there arent that many, no were close to the many rewards available ingame. Its players who value rewards above all else and aren’t willing to give the reward the time its design to take.

Case in point is ascended gear and new skins being available through the achievement meta. It would be much better game design to have these be acquirable through gold in an ideal world cause If I dont like say southsun cove why do I have to force myself to play it or miss out on say the Sclerite Karka Shell ? well thing is players forced them to do it like this or for a ton of players the game would resolve to farming COF P1 or Champion farming or whatever the next farming craze will be.

I dont wanna be harsh but the truth is Gw2 had a lot of great ideas that players corrupted out of a greed and this is one of them. Make any reward attainable through any content so you’re not forced to play specific content for specific rewards that was corrupted into just farm till you get bored enough to quit the game. They made it so people can just join each other and handle events together without the hassle of forming teams and that was corrupted into huge zergs and trains and what not.

Its the old user friendly / power user canandrum in a way. The moment you provide options for users some users will take the path they hate the most and blame you for it even though the path they want is right there together with the “bad path”.

HiddenNick.7206:

TooBz.3065:

HiddenNick.7206:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Sometimes the leveling process can feel like a grind…

I really can’t imagine how can you consider leveling a grind? When your leveling your pushed around the world to do different things and develop your character! Where is grinding in that?!

Grinding starts when your level 80 and everything you can do is repeating the same things over and over again!

To me, it’s a grind because I’ve done it before. Sure, the Necromancer was fun at first, but that basically wore off sometime between level 20 and 30. Now at level 60 it’s just the same pattern over and over again. Drop wells, focus 4, dagger, dagger, siphon blood. Rinse and repeat.

So when it’s leveling and you’ve done it before then it’s a grind. But if you’re level 80 and you’re doing CoFp1 for a hundred time then it’s not a grind?! Where is logic in that?!

And your argument about combat being repetitive… It’s not only about characters with less then 80 levels. It’s about ALL characters! If you don’t change your build from time to time then it’s going to be repetitive – period.

I disagree that I was saying combat is repetitive. I think leveling is a grind. Still do, although I will try the Necro in WvW.

The way I’ve leveled my 7 80’s and my 8th to level 67 is through hearts and dynamic events. I’m just bored with them at this point.

Also, I should point out that I don’t give a fig about character progression at all. I like to try new things and play around. When I get bored, i play around with something else. All this progression stuff is targeted toward someone else. So I see nothing wrong with selling a level 80 scroll (although I didn’t advocate it, and I’m not so calm down), because, for me, that’s not what the game is about.

It’s not about progression, its about community. Leveling takes me away from my community, therefore I don’t like it.

TooBz.3065:

<snip>

It’s not about progression, its about community. Leveling takes me away from my community, therefore I don’t like it.

Then why are you choosing to level in this manner? Do WvW and dungeons to enjoy content and level with the community. Grab a guildie or 2 to tackle some tough content. Have some fun. Think outside the box. Grab a friend or 2 and try to run through high level zones, testing your cooperation and ability to escape, all while gaining mad exploration XP in the process. Heck, even crafting for some levels can be done in LA so you can map chat while you do it.

You’ve got other options than just hearts & DEs in empty zones.

Seras.5702:

TooBz.3065:

<snip>
It’s not about progression, its about community. Leveling takes me away from my community, therefore I don’t like it.

Then why are you choosing to level in this manner? Do WvW and dungeons to enjoy content and level with the community. Grab a guildie or 2 to tackle some tough content. Have some fun. Think outside the box. Grab a friend or 2 and try to run through high level zones, testing your cooperation and ability to escape, all while gaining mad exploration XP in the process. Heck, even crafting for some levels can be done in LA so you can map chat while you do it.

You’ve got other options than just hearts & DEs in empty zones.

Yeah, people have made recommendations like that, and I’ll give it a try.

My experience has been that leveling a new character is a solitary experience that takes me away from my friends. I don’t know why I’ve done it that way, except that
a) the game encourages it and
b) my early WvW experience indicated that people love to target uplevels, so I only go in there once I’m level 80.
c) crafting is crazy expensive now, I use to get 10-30 levels crafting, but prices are out of control.

TooBz.3065:

Seras.5702:

TooBz.3065:

<snip>
It’s not about progression, its about community. Leveling takes me away from my community, therefore I don’t like it.

Then why are you choosing to level in this manner? Do WvW and dungeons to enjoy content and level with the community. Grab a guildie or 2 to tackle some tough content. Have some fun. Think outside the box. Grab a friend or 2 and try to run through high level zones, testing your cooperation and ability to escape, all while gaining mad exploration XP in the process. Heck, even crafting for some levels can be done in LA so you can map chat while you do it.

You’ve got other options than just hearts & DEs in empty zones.

Yeah, people have made recommendations like that, and I’ll give it a try.

My experience has been that leveling a new character is a solitary experience that takes me away from my friends. I don’t know why I’ve done it that way, except that
a) the game encourages it and
b) my early WvW experience indicated that people love to target uplevels, so I only go in there once I’m level 80.
c) crafting is crazy expensive now, I use to get 10-30 levels crafting, but prices are out of control.

I wouldn’t say the game encourages solo play. It rewards solo & group play, and they’ve recently added the LFG tool, which works quite well. Try it out.

Yes, WvW is much easier for 80s. But you can run with a zerg and carry supplies and take outposts for XP. In a zerg, you probably won’t be singled out; too tough. Just build defensively and do your best.

If you’ve got a number of other 80s I’m sure you’ve amassed stacks of mats to facilitate crafting. I just leveled LW 1-400 and it cost me 1g thanks to all the leather and cloth I had in my bank just from playing & gathering. Heck, level every craft as far as you can with just what’s in your bank and with minimal investment. I’m sure you can get to 100 LW, cooking, huntsman, JC, and artificer with minimal effort. That’s 500 crafting levels.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

~

And who made the game currency driven? the developers? no said players on their quest to get the rewards as quickly as possible. Currency in guild wars 2 is used to change on game play for another. IE say you want a named weapon but you dont like farm the charged cores you need so instead you go play fractals which is content you like and use gold to exchange the time you spend playing fractals for charged cores. Only that got abused, players kept going towards the most rewarding content and strived to get as much gold as quickly as possible in order to “game” the system by spending less time playing content x then they would need to play content y for the reward they need. It got so bad that it got to a point where ironically things reversed. With ascended gear it would take a ton less time to pick the materials themselves but people got so used to farming gold that they still did that even though it takes far longer to make the gold necessary to buy the materials you could easily gather in a fraction of the time. Just look at ascended weapons and the basic materials they use. There was a time when a single ancient wood log sold for 10s! With 4 level 80 characters you can gather 144 of them in 30 minutes if you know the route (and there are websites that tell you the route if you dont want to discover it yourself) 14g for 30 mins of gathering is incredible disproportionate. Granted I never farmed but I dont believe there is any content that rewards anywhere close to 14g for 30 mins of game time. (well of course excluding gathering logs and selling them )

Its not that the game is currency driven, it isnt really. Only gem-shop items can only be acquired using gold (excluding real money) and there arent that many, no were close to the many rewards available ingame. Its players who value rewards above all else and aren’t willing to give the reward the time its design to take.

snap~

“And who made the game currency driven? the developers? no said players on their quest to get the rewards as quickly as possible”.

Lol not at all the players. There will always be players going for currency thats true but the game is made currency driven 100% by the developers (ArenaNet but also the other companies that have input into the game and payment model).

There are no mini’s in the world itself. You just need gold or gems to buy them. Dyes don’t drop as color from a mob in the game (you can get a random identified dye as a drop but you can’t really go for a color).

You can’t do a specific dungeon or play in a specific area to get a specific skin. Best way to get most skins are to farm gold and then buy it.

There are barely no recipes in the world available in a similar way. It’s all stuff you buy from vendors or the gem-store or the trading post.

This game is extremely currency-driven and that 100% because of the way it’s designed. Players have nothing to do with it. Players can farm for gold and make there own gamplay currency-driven but they can’t change the game itself.

I would love to go out and do a quest to get a specific mini or maybe a color or.. well take any of the examples. But I can’t because the game is not designed like that!

Also the idea that it would take less time to go for the item itself (what you say) then it is to farm gold is just not true. If I would like Cobalt there is not a place I can go to get it. I can go farm champions but I will have the gold to buy it long before Cobalt drops. Thats the whole problem. It’s currency driven. And you describe it yourself when you talk about how the game is designed and then you blame the players.

Yes there are indeed SOME items that you can farm like the wood in your example (what funny enough in a way is also a currency because you usually want to have the item you create with the wood. But oke I can go with that) but most thinks are just nearly impossible to farm and easy to get by farming gold.

And achievement rewards is also a currency grind.. event worse, time limited currency grind. Currency being the achievements itself. True you are more focused on a goal so I would not mind that so much wasn’t it for it being temporary.

Then making items able to sell for gold is fine. Some should be a sound bound, some should be soul-bound but most should you be able to sell.
However the change of getting a specific rare item to drop by change should be lower then when you are working to get that same item. Thats easily done by making it a rare drop in a area or from a mob and so on. Now it’s just so that some level of mobs (champions) have a bigger change of dropping better loot in general. Taking away farming for items and putting in place a currency driven game.

@Devata

There are plenty of minis to be had from the world itself without paying. Never bought a single mini off the gem store myself and I have quite a few. Today you’ll likely get the change of earning a couple without paying any gold at all. Sure if you want to collect them all you’ll have to buy them off the gem store but I dont imagine thats the bulk of the players anyway.

Dye system is again people being impatient. the whole dye system is a collection exercise and collections are meant to take time to finish off. You arent forced to pay gold for dyes in anyway you can collect them all for free but you have to give it its time of course. Its money driven because players are too impatient to wait imho.

Which skins are you talking about specifically? Because actually its more the opposite most skins you cannot buy with gold. For example you cannot buy dungeon skins, you cannot buy skins that you get through achievements. The only case where thats true is the gem store skins and there are like 5 sets? compare that with the 50+ in game sets (though some of those 50+ like the cultural armor set are gold based too to be fair) again 5 (lvl 3 are the ones that require enough gold to make the argument significant) vs 45 still makes most of them achievable through other means.

recipes you’re completely wrong. The majority involve simple discovery by using the right ingrediants. Those which require unlocks have mostly been rewards of different activities which again gold is only required if you arent willing to play the content or as a short cut.

The market in Gw2 is player driven. If you buy cobalt off the market some player actually went through the trouble of farming the champion got it and sold it. So what does that mean? If you need to farm the champion for 5 hrs before cobalt drops you should be charging 5hrs worth of gold farming for it. Now I dont know specifically about cobalt maybe its not that wanted or maybe people just undercut each other to oblivion but 3g is definitely not a good price for the time required to get it. If we look at entropy or Komalie’s Sacrificial Blade, prices there are more realistic. But in anycase, how is it arenanet’s fault that players sell cobalt so cheaply that it makes sense farming the gold then the item? Its a player created issue from start to finish. Players decided to charge an amount that has a fraction of the value of the real value of the time required to get the item. Logically it makes no sense. If I am selling an item its to make money, if I sell an item that took me 5 hrs to get, for the amount of gold I could make doing 30 minutes of a different type of content I am essentially making 1/10 of the profit I could be making. Its like switching to a different job that pays you 10 times less by choice.

The thing that bugs me most of all this is the solution to the problems you mention is take away choice from player hands. You will always have this situation as long as you make thing tradable. There is a reason why game have bind on pickup and thats to force player to play the specific content. To me thats not a solution thats a bigger problem. If I want a legendary I can choose to spend 300 hrs farming champions or I can spend the 6months – a year collecting the stuff I need myself. That you can buy the legendary isnt arenanet making a currency driven game at all, its an option being given to you to avoid what you find boring. If I hate gathering ? no problem I can skip that by playing content I enjoy and buying the mats I need. If I decide to spend 300hrs farming champions because it will get me there a lot faster it isnt fair to claim the game is boring cause its just focused on grinding, its a choice I made and essentially I am corrupting a great tool the game gave me to avoid grind but just using that tool for everything there by making the tool against grinding a grinding activity itself.

Galen Grey.4709:

@Devata

~

1/2

There are plenty of minis to be had from the world itself.
There are about 2. There is the one that drops form Tequatl but you can’t just go for that yourself because you are depending on the people on the map.

I think there is also one that drops in Southsun Cove from a specific type of mobs. Not 100% sure, that might have been temporary.

All the others are living story related (so temporary, not some long term goal you can go for while exploring the world), achievement related (also living story and temporary) or are in the gem-store.

Yes collecting are supposed to take time but by making it character bound the whole idea of collecting them all has been dissolved because how would you do that? Collect them all on all characters? And once again you can not hunt for specific colors so no goals there to really focus on.

I gave Cobalt as an example of a skin (well it’s a weapon but I refer to those things as a skin. You will most likely want that for the looks and then search another item for the stats you need). Yes you can get a armor set from a dungeon by farming a currency named tokens and then buying the set with those tokens and I think thats a nice option. However there is not some specific rare item that also drops in that dungeon. Some weapons, a mini, a skin whatever. You know like that was the case with the molten facility backpack and molten facility mini. That was great with one big negative, it was temporary. And even now Anet did bring that dungeon back in as far as I know they kept that reward out. They really seem to know how NOT to do it. They really did not understand that that was part of the fun of thats dungeon. That was one of the reason people loved that dungeon.

Yeah the dungeon sets are in-game but they are also currency based.

When I talk about recipes I talk about recipes as in them being an item. Not the recipes you can unlock during crafting themselves. And I am not wrong about it, it’s that you are talking about something else as I am. There is no quest-line (there are no quest in general but ok) that I can do to get this awesome recipe rewarded that lets me create that nice skin, cool item (maybe needed for another hard to get recipe), a mini, a mount and so on. There are not really dungeons (some temporary living story dungeons did, however temporary does not count for me because that it totally becomes a grind.. a grind against time!) that reward me such recipe’s and there are not really mobs that drop it. There are some vendors selling it, some that I need to unlock dirt by doing hearth or some that I need to unlock by doing an event (that last one being the best version, coming closes to what I am looking for). However overall those recipe’s are not something special you really want anyway. And then when unlocked you can buy it usually with the currency gold or karma. But heey at least it had an unlock mechanism thats something.

“The market in Gw2 is player driven. If you buy cobalt off the market some player actually went through the trouble of farming the champion got it and sold it.”
Indeed there was a player farming a champion.. With other worlds. There was a player farming gold. Just as I but he got cobalt to drop and I got something else I did not want so I sell my thing I don’t want to him and he sells me cobalt that I wanted so much. As an example.

Better was it if he was just extremely lucky and got it as a drop or if he went out to really farm cobalt. Then again if he did the last thing he most likely wanted cobalt and so would not put it on the TP.

Your example of Entropy and Komalie’s Sacrificial Blade are once again just another randon drop from a champion. Not something one specific boss, one specif dungeon our one group of mobs or one specific area can drop. No just a random very limited drop from a champ. The prices are kinda fair I think, it’s mainly related to the drop-chance. The thing is, people farm champions for money (because they drop all these things) to buy what they want. So many people who do not specifically want those items get them. Then they can sell them for the money. If items would be bounded to specific things it would simply be rares because people would need to be farming for that one item to get it. Less likely somebody is doing that and then even selling it because if he wants that item he will farm for it.

2/2
I don’t say it’s a problem it’s sold so cheap, it’s a problem that you can’t really farm for an item. You can’t really farm for cobalt. It has a very very very rare drop change but from all champions. And champions have a very very very rare drop change from a lot of thinks making them interesting to farm for gold.
But to answer your question. It’s also this mechanism that means it gets sold do cheap. Not that I am saying thats the problem.

If it would be one mob or one group of mobs dropping this item with a rare or very rare drop-chance (so not very very very rare) then you could farm for the specific item. Now you can’t. Now you are sort of forced to farm for gold to buy a item like cobalt.

“The thing that bugs me most of all this is the solution to the problems you mention is take away choice from player hands.”
WHAT?? Taking away choice? I give them choice. You want cobalt.. go farm cobalt by farming those bats flying in that area over there (fill in places). Oow you want Entropy? Go do that dungeon that drops it, you want Komalie’s Sacrificial Blade go farm that boss. And if for some reason you really want to play currency driven (because you don’t like to farm that specific dungeon that drops Entripy or whatever) look at the TP for an item around the same price and go farm that by doing whatever is necessary to do that, cell it and then use the gold to buy Entripy. I give much much much more choice then there is now. Now the only (or main) choice is to farm gold. And yes there are some multiple ways to farm gold but in the end you most likely will just go for the way that gets you there fasted.

With ‘my’ system (it’s in many mmo’s like that so not really my system) there is not really one best way to earn currency. That is because the items you want don’t just drop randomly (a lot.. it can happen) at people who do not want them. That means there prices will always be high and going for the item itself is not only always an option, it will most likely be the ‘cheapest’ way.

You talk about the legendary weapon but thats similar. Many of the ingredients are not really farmable, once again it’s better to farm gold and buy the items. It might be possible when farming indeed 6 months purely looking for those items but thats so long term that it’s not fun.

Reactions are becoming to big like this. But I tried to discuss all the things you mentioned.

@Devata can we stop this notion that somehow temporary stuff doesnt count?

Plenty of events had minis as rewards. The wintersday minis, the halloween minis, liadri, The Sab minis, the minis from the lost shores event, the ones you get with laurels and guild commendations, the ones that dropped from the molten Facility, The secret of southsun story arc minis, the dragon bash minis, mini horrik you got from the sky pirates event, the one you can get from the moa racing reward giver, the cutthroat politics mini m the birthday mini, the twilight assault mini, the tower of nightmare minis. Granted not every release had minis you could get but as you can see in the list above plenty of them did have a mini or more you could collect. So sure they’re temporary but last month you could be working to get the tower of nightmare minis, the month before that the halloween minis and this month you get the wintersday minis. Temporary or not if you like to collect minis you’ll be plenty busy with few breaks if any!

yeah thats what I do actually, I collect dyes on my main for the sake of collection and just give the colours I need to the alts and sell the rest. Why not?

Well yeah I know cobalt was an example which is why I wasnt evil and pointed out that ironically in the case of cobalt its a none issue cause the money farming will likely happen at the champions anyway But in any case the argument stands, The idea is to exchange a grind you hate with gameplay you enjoy and not to exchange gameplay you enjoy with a grind you hate just cause its faster. In a way its like bludgeoning someone to death with a taser and then complaining that whoever invented the taser did a bad job cause they promised a non lethal weapon which you could still use to kill someone with.

Again why should temporary content not count? Every release basically had new recipes so again you could have been collecting recipes from day 1 till today if you wanted to! There are some unique recipes you can get from stories and chests actually. Some are rewards for completing hearts for examples. Some can be discovered using materials you get from dynamic event vendors like the beaded warstaff for example. Or rewards for beating world bosses like the corrupted weapon recipes.

This is something we have different Point of view on I guess. You see a very very very rare drop as something that cannot be farmed while I see going the money route as an attempt to get the reward without doing the world the devs intended for it. The idea behind say cobalt dropping from multiple champion is so you can “farm it” without grinding directly for it. You do events that have champions in them and you have a decent chance some of those events have champions that drop that item. But you need to be patient this is a medium term goal its something you’ll get in months not days. Thing is people arent willing to wait months so they farm the money or the same few champions rather then playing the content itself. Obviously doing that will feel boring.

Thats taking away choice not giving it! You want entropy go do that dungeon until it drops is way less choice then we have right now. Because you can use gold to buy it directly you could literally do any dungeon you want to get entropy rather then a specific one. You could do fractals. Dynamic events or WvW. If you’re particular masochistic you could even kill a level 1 mob over and over again and still earn Entropy… eventually What you’re proposing provides far less choice to the players no more. If I want entropy and can only get it from that dungeon I hate.. tough luck its that way or nothing. Like this as long as I like one single thing about the game I can get entropy doing nothing else but what I enjoy. Thats a very good thing. If you keep the currency as an option then you’ll have the same exact system you have now. I mean you can get entropy as a drop from COE and Arah today! As long as you have gold vs drop gold will always win because gold has no chance in it and there are always eaiser ways to earn gold then doing say a dungeon run.

A lot of MMOs wouldnt dream of allowing you to buy such rewards using the generic currency. Simply because they want to force you to play the specific content. Thats my experience at least.

why should a very long term goal be unfun? A legendary has you play a bit of everything ergo whatever you play in those 6 months will get you closer to your goal. Why is it unfun to do 10 dungeon runs in 6 months if you’re trying to build a legendary but fun if you’re not? The whole thing at the center of Gw2 is everything can be gotten playing the content you enjoy (or nearly everything) The only thing is you need to be patient and give the time the goal requires. I said it many times. Gw2 is more fun when you play it for the content primarily rather then for the reward.

Galen Grey.4709:

@Devata can we stop this notion that somehow temporary stuff doesnt count?

~

“@Devata can we stop this notion that somehow temporary stuff doesnt count?”
No. The thread is about leveling so and why it’s boring. Part of that is what goals do you have to go for, whats thinks are you doing while leveling. Not only is most of the living story at a fixed level it’s just one thing. You are not farming this mob, then doing that dungeon. Maybe there is a living story at that moment where there is an dungeon that does have a drop change for a mini but maybe not and even if it it’s. Then you can do that now but not tomorrow.

To make it even worse.. the whole idea or collecting mini’s (in this example) gets destroyed by it. You can’t collect them because many of them are out of the game… wellll not completely true. Most where not account bound so you can still farm gold and buy them. But my whole point was that that was not fun. So no we can’t lose this notion that somehow temporary stuff doest count because the stuff you are now referring to (when you do refer to those thinks) are not in the game. Only the one from winterdays is. That has indeed mini’s. Last one didn’t. So they do indeed not count.

BTW the many mini’s you refer to where all some sort of currency. Sab was collecting baubles I thinks. Laurels are also just that. Laurels. So I am not going for the mini, no I am farming dailies to get the laurels I need to buy the mini. Farming achievements and so on. I refer to the currency-driven nature and you keep coming up with other currency examples. It all means I can not go into the world to collect them. I can go into the world to collect a currency and then by it. Thats a big difference.

(you even refer to the birthday mini? Like if you are telling me there are mini’s. Yeah I know that, I was talking about how to ‘farm’ / collect specific items and the fact that the main way to do that is by farming some currency. And tower of nightmare minis??? You mean the ones in the gem-store? So farming gold to by gems to buy them? How does that not include farming a currency??)

The stuff I am referring to that should really be in the open world and dungeons are like the one in the molten facility (but then not in a temporary dungeon) and the one dropping from Tequatl. Those are directly in the world. No currency but something you can specifically work towards in the game world. Such items (being it mini’s, weapons, skins whatever) are almost non-existing in the game.

And the way the system works now makes collecting such items a living nightmare. Do it now or never get it so many people gave up on it totally. In a way they managed to destroy a whole part of ‘end-game’ that way.

Why not collecting on one char. Because in a way you will never have the collecting complete and if you want to have a color on an alt then you might have it on your main but not on your alt. So something that should be fun becomes frustrating.
BTW Anet did plan on making it account-bound. Search inet for the reason why did make is soul-bound.

A long term goal is fun but you need to see progress..

As much as I hate having progression mechanics forced on me, I actually found leveling my first character enjoyable and easy in this game. What I did find boring as hell was leveling my alts. But then Guild Wars 2 is a very very alt unfriendly game, for both alt characters and alt builds.

They’re adding more and more items to the game to help you level up, like experience scrolls and tomes of knowledge and now you’ll be able to level up through pvp. That’s not enough? Even without these crutches it takes only about a month of casual play to get to 80 anyways – perfect amount of time to get to know and get attached to your character.

I came from games where one level would take you a week, so threads like these are nothing but funny to me.

@Devata

Temporary content does count. If you play regularly you wouldn’t have a problem. If you want to be completionist and collect everything but you don’t want to have to play the game regularly and actually miss some LS events, that’s on you, not the game. LS rewards people who play consistently by perpetuating an evolving world and rewarding you for participating. If you didn’t play during the 4 weeks X LS event was going on, too bad you missed out. It’s fair. If you don’t play you don’t get the rewards. If you do play you do get the rewards. I’ve never bought any minis and my collectibles tab is filled with LS minis. I didn’t even farm them, I just played the LS normally and got them.

Your “do it now or never get it” argument is weak. It’s more like “do it now sometime in the next 4 weeks or never get it”. They’ve given plenty of time to complete the LS achievements. If you’ve decided that you won’t even bother simply because there is a time limit (4 weeks), then that’s a choice you’ve made. It isn’t difficult to complete the achievements within that time. It’s not difficult at all, even if you play 1hr/day. You just have to actually do it. You can’t just see that the LS is going on for 4 weeks, completely ignore it, and then complain you weren’t able to get any of the rewards, and that temporary content sucks. Even the most recent LS achievements took 3 run throughs of that tower to complete pretty much everything for the meta. If you can’t be bothered to run through the tower 3 times within a 1 month period, then you don’t deserve any of the rewards in the first place.

Draknar.5748:

@Devata

Temporary content does count. If you play regularly you wouldn’t have a problem. If you want to be completionist and collect everything but you don’t want to have to play the game regularly and actually miss some LS events, that’s on you, not the game. LS rewards people who play consistently by perpetuating an evolving world and rewarding you for participating. If you didn’t play during the 4 weeks X LS event was going on, too bad you missed out. It’s fair. If you don’t play you don’t get the rewards. If you do play you do get the rewards. I’ve never bought any minis and my collectibles tab is filled with LS minis. I didn’t even farm them, I just played the LS normally and got them.

Your “do it now or never get it” argument is weak. It’s more like “do it now sometime in the next 4 weeks or never get it”. They’ve given plenty of time to complete the LS achievements. If you’ve decided that you won’t even bother simply because there is a time limit (4 weeks), then that’s a choice you’ve made. It isn’t difficult to complete the achievements within that time. It’s not difficult at all, even if you play 1hr/day. You just have to actually do it. You can’t just see that the LS is going on for 4 weeks, completely ignore it, and then complain you weren’t able to get any of the rewards, and that temporary content sucks. Even the most recent LS achievements took 3 run throughs of that tower to complete pretty much everything for the meta. If you can’t be bothered to run through the tower 3 times within a 1 month period, then you don’t deserve any of the rewards in the first place.

No it does not count for what I am talking about and besides even if it would count there still isn’t much of what I was talking about in the living story / temporary content. Just a few. So it’s a little bid nonsense to keep on going about that.

About the 4 weeks. Even if I had half year the time I would still not like it. I want to be able to do it in multiple years if needed.

Why it does not count I said in the previous post.

Devata.6589:

No it does not count for what I am talking about and besides even if it would count there still isn’t much of what I was talking about in the living story / temporary content. Just a few. So it’s a little bid nonsense to keep on going about that.

Why it does not count I said in the previous post.

Well I reject your reasoning. Good day, sir.

Draknar.5748:

Devata.6589:

No it does not count for what I am talking about and besides even if it would count there still isn’t much of what I was talking about in the living story / temporary content. Just a few. So it’s a little bid nonsense to keep on going about that.

Why it does not count I said in the previous post.

Well I reject your reasoning. Good day, sir.

That’s possible. But fact is that I can not now go into the world and (lets for the example only take mini’s) do a dungeons to get that mini that drops from it. Then go farm moa’s in a specific area so it drop’s a mini-moa, then farm two bosses to get there mini (there is One from tequatl) then do a quest to get yet another mini and so on keeping me busy multiple days (in total maybe years) while leveling in the mean while.

Thats what I was talking about and thats not possible. So reject it if you want, you can reject the idea the world it round, be my guest. Doesn’t change the facts.

Leveling does get a bit boring after the first few times. I mean the first time, yeah, all the cool zones and what not, but after that… bleh… which is why zones are mostly empty these days except for Queensdale and other races starting zones. WvW isn’t a good source of Exp unless you wanna run with a train, but if your server is getting beat pretty bad, well there goes that. even if you don’t get the promised 10 levels per crafting, 8 per is still a lot, which is why people still do it to level alts. Seriously, after the starting area, you will rarely see another soul while leveling, it’s quite sad really… Even though WoW was still the generic questing type, leveling there is still way more fun for me than it is here. Granted, I use heirlooms, but I guarantee(sp?) I can hit 80 faster than I can here. I don’t want it to be super streamline pick up and hit 80, but I wanna feel like I’m getting somewhere after 8 hours. /shrug

@Devata it does count because no one can play all content at once. In Sept a Collector would be hard at work trying to get the Tequalt minis. In Oct a Collector would have been getting The Halloween Minis. In Nov they were getting the Tower of nightmare minis while this month they’ll have the wintersday minis to get. Out of all these minis only the Tequalt minis will be available in January but does that mean the player who doesnt like anything other then collecting minis have nothing to enjoy once they get the tequalt minis? Nope, they were still busy collecting minis in October, November and December even though they were probably done collecting the Tequalt minis in September. Thats why it counts, sure today I cannot get the Halloween minis if I am a collector but thats not a problem cause there is still new minis I have to collect today. The halloween mini might not exist today but they gave me content I enjoyed doing back in october. Thats why they count because without them october, nov and dec would have been pretty boring months with no content for our fictitious player to enjoy. With them our player was all happy and excited. They made a difference and as such they most definitely count!
As for leveling it all ties into it. Again using our collector as an ex. How did you get the halloween minis? with candy corn the other by completing the meta event all of which required you to play in the labyrinth which is something a lot of people used to level up fast. The nightmare tower minis? play the tower which in turn gives you xp which helps you level. Its all organically interwoven at the end.
I disagree with your point of view in that I dont believe that failing at a task implies the task didnt exist. if I fail to get one of the two nightmare tower minis because I just didnt have enough time to get everything done it doesnt mean I didnt enjoy myself at all in November, it means I actually enjoyed every second of November cause there was enough content to keep me busy the whole month. I will be disappointed I didnt manage sure but without the risk of failure, success is meaningless. The risk of failure has always been something that sets Gw2 apart after all. Unlike other MMOs quests can really fail, its not just a question of time you need to succeed. At the end of the day you will never have all minis unless you fork out money or spend tons of in game gold. While some minis can be earned in game others need to be bought. But this is not an all or nothing proposition. There are shades of grey and in this case the shades of grey is trying your best to get as many minis as possible and if thats what you enjoy doing so far every month you basically had some minis you could get by just playing the game.

No I dont mean the gem store minis, you could collect 2 minis during the tower of nightmare story arch. A Toxic hybrid which dropped from the chest at the top or from champion toxic hybrids or from the chest in the nightmare chambers. As well as the Mini toxic Nimross which you get by completing the instance at the top if no one in the party gets killed. No money or gold involved. just luck and skill in that order.

No its not, no game that I am aware of has some sort of specific gameplay just to collect minis, you’re always doing sometime else be it killing mobs, farming dungeons. just cause you go through an intermediary step like laurels or getting achievements really change anything?

I am sorry but the problem there is people are spoiled. They always have to win and cant handle failing. As if its ever possible to collect everything. Its a fact of life both in the real world and in games, its ultimately impossible to get everything. If people abandoned a whole game aspect they enjoy just cause they cannot have it all then thats them being spoiled. it may sound harsh but its the truth. A game in which you always win is boring, having some challenge in which you can truely fail and there is lasting consequence in that failure is a good thing. I personally believe Gw2 needs more of this not removing the little it has.

I know dyes where account bound originally and I am very happy they changed it into what it is today. If you remember the whole story you will remember that while dyes were account bound you had to process the seed and you were limited to 1 per day and dyes were not tradable. Which meant if you were lucky and got a new dye each time (which no one would have obviously) it would take a whole year and a 1/2 to unlock them all. Of course factor randomness and it would have been impossible to unlock them all. With no trading it meant that if you wanted a specific colour you had to wait until you go lucky enough to get it or just spend $100 in the gem store. If they made it account bound with the system as is a collection would have been ruined. Everyone would have every dye within a month or two. Like this dyes are meaningful to this day. This is a very good compromise we got.

Zeldain.5710:

I’m a little confused by the OP… what are you racing to level cap for, exactly? There’s nothing there waiting for you, no “end game” so to speak.

What am I missing?

… WvW. You’re worthless so long as you aren’t level 80 and have full exo.

Galen Grey.4709:

~

You are also referring to the mini’s that you can get with currency’s. The ones I am referring to are not even that common in the living story, Molten facility being the main thing. Maybe the way you can get them with Wintersdays and SAB but thats about all.

Trust me. Collecting such items (and for the sake of argument I just focus on the mini’s here) and fun crafts is what I did in most MMO’s. It’s what I loved to do and it’s something I silly can’t do in the same way in GW2. Trust me, I tried by the currency grind is simply not my thing. And the fact that it’s time-limited also means I can’t do it in my time but need to do it in Anets time. Do you miss something then thats pretty much the end. I farmed the heck out of MF but never got the mini or the backpack as an example. I could still get them but it would be yet another currency (gold in this case)grind.

You are talking about the fact that you can collect mini’s. Yes you can! I am talking about the way you can collect them. We are really talking about different things here.

Most of your examples are currency grind (like the Halloween mini’s). Fact that you take those as examples proofs that we are talking about something else and in a way proof my point. It’s almost all a currency grind so you are grinding gold and yes to then buy the mini but you are not doing a dungeons or whatever in the hopes of getting the mini to drop. That last thing is what I consider fun. Grinding currency to buy it not.

About the toxic mini’s I didn’t even know that. It doesn’t even matter because I gave up on collecting mini’s a long time ago because of how boring it is, but yeah that sort of drop would then indeed be the type of drops I talk about. However it also shows how the temporary stuff does not count. I want to go hunt for a mini when I feel like it not when Anet feels like it. If I decide today to go for that mini I still can but it’s yet another gold grind. Same for all the other mini’s you might have missed during the living story.

It’s just not even close to fun like this to collect mini’s. At least not for people like me and seeing the many complains about the living story I am not the only one. But then we get into the temporary nature of living story again so lets keep it with that.

“No its not, no game that I am aware of has some sort of specific gameplay just to collect minis, you’re always doing sometime else be it killing mobs, farming dungeons. just cause you go through an intermediary step like laurels or getting achievements really change anything? “

Yes is changes EVERYTHING.
For me at least. That is what I have been trying to say to you during the last multiple comments. That changes everything! From being fun to being a boring grind. And then the time-gated / temporary nature of the living story makes it even worse.
In those mmo’s where they drop I had fun doing it. Here it’s not even neutral, it’s not fun at all doing that! And so I am not doing it anymore with the exception of a few collections or few mini’s that I really like. But collecting them to get a collection no way. Thats (for me) not fun like this so I stopped doing it and so thats part of end-game thats now missing.

Oow and trust me, I am not an exception to the rule!

And it as nothing to do with being able to lose or not being able to collect everything. Take WoW as examples. I knew I would never get the mini’s from the first 2 collectors edition and not the one in there cash-shop (just a few) and the ones from blizzcon and the ones from some card game. So there was a collection of mini’s I would never be able to get. Easy, you take them out of the equation. But having a new mini every few weeks you need to grind (with currency) or else you will not get him and so getting less and less of a complete collection Is a big difference.

When grinding currency (what you need to do to get the mini’s) you are pretty much forced to do specific things the get the most currency. Then you can say.. well you can also do the thinks you like and get the gold like that to buy the mini’s, maybe it takes a little longer but you can get the gold like that. But guess what I think it fun. Going into the world to collect those mini’s.

Doing that dungeons and every-time getting that feeling of will it drop or not is what I love. And so you want some more sure of a drop you do a quest-line to get a mini and so on.

Sirendor.1394:

… WvW. You’re subpar so long as you aren’t level 80 and have full ascended.

Corrected that for you.