Guild Wars 2

How about Champions/Legendaries in dungeons? Running dungeons has become a lot more profitable now, although that’s mainly due to the end reward (but still not as profitable as mindlessly spamming 1-1-1-1-1 in a big zerg in order to get phat lootz). Don’t they deserve the loot bags? Because they stopped dropping silver as well.

Not that they’re gonna remove the champ bags, they already stated that they like how they work. They just gotta iron out some of the issues with the zerg farming.

Bright.9160:

Not that they’re gonna remove the champ bags, they already stated that they like how they work.

They are not working.

This is the third time ArenaNet has to nerf champion drops in an event because people would otherwise exploit it instead of completing the event successfully.

This latest update has almost been an admission of failure. In the blog entry about 2013, ArenaNet had said, when talking about the champion loot, that…

ArenaNet

This change will make champions more rewarding, and will make playing in Orr and Southsun Cove (where events can scale up to add champions) more exciting and fruitful for guilds and players joining together in the open world.

Now, ArenaNet has been reducing how events scale up to add champions. They reduced the frequency of the event itself in Orr – a place that doesn’t even have that many interesting events in the first place, and in which the change basically means the Arah meta-event will happen even less often than it already did. This is the perfect example of the champion drop actually hurting the Dynamic Events system and the open world, instead of helping either of them.

What strikes is how simplistic their system is. They could add a simple refinement and alleviate pretty much all those problems. How?

Add loot_counters for [ creature categories / specific creatures /whatever ] that are spawning during events.

for example, during a kill aetherblade captain event, put the champions loot_ counter to 3. What does this do? The first 3 champions killed during this event will give the champion loot box. The following champions killed : drop nothing or very basic loot.

This way, events are gonna get done because a fair number of champions will give loot, but they are not going to be stalled, because they wont drop loot forever.

I just wonder/hope that they have something similar in development…

The best solution to this farmfest I’ve heard so far. Props to you.
The current situation really hurts the community, tearing it apart in two groups. The failures of Arenanet to fix this up until now are rather disturbing.

Quick idea related to Champion farming/failed events:

• -Spawn 3-5 “Legendary” type mobs at the fail of an event.

The mobs wipe the players (unless it’s a super coordinated, super group), then 5 minutes later those Legendary types despawn. The thing then resets the event back to what it originally was at the start. No extra Champions spawn, no extra farming. Just death and reset.

Erasculio.2914:

ArenaNet has to remove the Champion loot boxes from the game, and give those rewards to events instead.

• Make every Champion in the open world an event. For the ones that are just there (e.g., the spider in Queensdale), have it so that attacking the spider creates the event.
• One loot bag per event that features a champion, not matter how many champions spawn in the event.
• Done

Erasculio.2914:

Change champions, so all of them are either an event itself or only appear as part of an event, so we won’t have champions in the open world that no one wants to kill.

Absolutely…and the side bonus to making every champ an “event?” THEY WOULD ACTUALLY SCALE! You know, so 50 people in FGS don’t kill, say, that poor broodmother drake and her children in 5 seconds flat.

Posted an idea in another thread in which I suggested that the events scale with the quantity of the number of players AS WELL as the previous win/loss ratio for the event, penalizing repetitive fails, encouraging more success.

Other details in that post but this response is focusing on another idea that you brought up.

What if they kept the high amount of champion spawns, but only awarded champion chests post event completion?

These rewards would only be given upon successful completion of the event, so the champions themselves don’t drop loot but the number of champions you kill during the event increase loot at the end.

This encourages the large group play still, for those who like it, and encourages players to complete events as well, instead of delaying events for possible failure because all they want are the champ chests.

The new champion counter chests can be awarded in stacked bags in a pop up chest like current achievement chests and the like.

That wouldn’t solve anything, as players still get more loot the more champions they kill. Everyone knows how to keep their eyes on the timer. When they see they’re running out of time, they quickly end the event, simple as that.

Giving champions better loot was a response to people complaining that champions drop crap relative to their level compared to normal mobs, which is a legit sentiment and the response was just as legitimate.

If you remove chests from champs, it goes back to the issue: what makes them different from normal mobs in terms of drops?

If you make chests attainable at event completion instead of champs, it doesn’t necessarily fix the farming “problem”. So what? People will just farm events instead. And they will find the most efficient events that give the best rewards, and they will harass anyone who don’t do the events as efficiently as the best way does. That means, new issues will arise: disputes over people not having the best gears for farming events, complaints about only certain events are done repetitively in certain maps because their the easiest relative to their rewards, etc.

What makes you think this lamentation will end there?

projectcedric.6951:

What makes you think this lamentation will end there?

The lamentation will never end. But unless ArenaNet did what they should really do – create an area specifically for farming, in which it was obvious drops would be better, so farmers would move there and leave the other players in peace in the open world – all we can do is make the game less bad.

We have already had multiple examples of farmers clashing with players who want to complete events. This is not going to end any time soon. Meanwhile, just like people complained that champions gave little to no rewards, dynamic events give little to no rewards.

What is better for the game as a whole, considering ArenaNet’s original vision for the game? The vision that, again, made killing random mobs give little experience, so doing dynamic events would be better? It’s obvious – events should give better rewards than killing random mobs or killing champions.

In order to fix the issue with champions giving small rewards, it’s only a matter (as mentioned in my OP and in other posts in this topic) of making every champion in the open world to be an event, even if it’s just “Kill enemy X” events like the ones we have in the invasions. This would allow people to get rewards for champions, due to receiving the reward for the dynamic event about killing champions.

projectcedric.6951:

Giving champions better loot was a response to people complaining that champions drop crap relative to their level compared to normal mobs, which is a legit sentiment and the response was just as legitimate.

If you remove chests from champs, it goes back to the issue: what makes them different from normal mobs in terms of drops?

If you make chests attainable at event completion instead of champs, it doesn’t necessarily fix the farming “problem”. So what? People will just farm events instead. And they will find the most efficient events that give the best rewards, and they will harass anyone who don’t do the events as efficiently as the best way does. That means, new issues will arise: disputes over people not having the best gears for farming events, complaints about only certain events are done repetitively in certain maps because their the easiest relative to their rewards, etc.

What makes you think this lamentation will end there?

Giving better loot to champions was a good idea. ArenaNet wanted players to actually fight champions instead of avoiding them. The problem is that people found ways to game the system and increase champion profitability beyond what was originally intended.

At least with events their timers can be controlled. Yes, they intend on doing only the easiest events but then when they’re done they have nothing else. They’re forced to make a choice: they can either wait a really long time for these easy events to start up again or they can move onto other events. If you understand the farmer mentality you will know that they would prefer the latter. After all, time spent doing nothing could be better spent doing something even if it’s harder.

You’re mistaking the fact that this started happening with champ loot.

It didn’t.

It’s been like this since release mob drops >>>>>>> event rewards x100 over.

Ever since release it’s been zergs inflating the mob count in events and farming them by spamming aoe to tag for loot, that’s how it’s always been.

And it needs to stop. Remove most of the loot from mobs and push that onto events/bosses/dungeons/victory for anything, that’s how it should be.

Especially so it STOP rewarding selfish play, and rewards teamwork instead so you want to WIN, even if you fail events you still win because you tagged a crap ton of mobs and got loot.

Champ loot was a much needed thing, it actually rewards the “risk” in taking on a champ mob, which is perfect.

Now Anet needs to reward the risk for other parts of the game, right now zerg mob tagging is probably the easiest and risk-free thing in the game but is BY FAR the most profitable, this is wrong.

The hardest stuff in the game should be the most rewarding and the easiest stuff should be the least rewarding (but still rewarding, don’t make them pointless Anet) besides dailies. Casual zerg farming is pretty relaxing and fun to do sometimes, but it shouldn’t be the only thing to do to get money/mats/loot.

I want to/should be encouraged to do the hardest stuff if I want loot.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

What makes you think this lamentation will end there?

The lamentation will never end. But unless ArenaNet did what they should really do – create an area specifically for farming, in which it was obvious drops would be better, so farmers would move there and leave the other players in peace in the open world – all we can do is make the game less bad.

We have already had multiple examples of farmers clashing with players who want to complete events. This is not going to end any time soon. Meanwhile, just like people complained that champions gave little to no rewards, dynamic events give little to no rewards.

What is better for the game as a whole, considering ArenaNet’s original vision for the game? The vision that, again, made killing random mobs give little experience, so doing dynamic events would be better? It’s obvious – events should give better rewards than killing random mobs or killing champions.

In order to fix the issue with champions giving small rewards, it’s only a matter (as mentioned in my OP and in other posts in this topic) of making every champion in the open world to be an event, even if it’s just “Kill enemy X” events like the ones we have in the invasions. This would allow people to get rewards for champions, due to receiving the reward for the dynamic event about killing champions.

If any, this proposal will simply have an insignificant amount of effect. Of course, on the surface you will see more people, farmers included, completing events because as you suggest, the champions are the events. What difference does that make? It is still farming champions.

Although I see that one of the main concern raised is that farmers prefer killing champs in an event instead of completing that event. The fix to that is quite simple: just stop an event or an event chain from continuously spawning champs until that event is completed. In other words, each event will only spawn a fixed number of champs.

So ok, that will pacify the dispute between the champ-farmers and the event-doers, but doesn’t really do anything significant aside. Farmers will still farm – they will farm events now.

zeromius.1604:

At least with events their timers can be controlled. Yes, they intend on doing only the easiest events but then when they’re done they have nothing else. They’re forced to make a choice: they can either wait a really long time for these easy events to start up again or they can move onto other events. If you understand the farmer mentality you will know that they would prefer the latter. After all, time spent doing nothing could be better spent doing something even if it’s harder.

Oh I can understand farmer mentality very well. And yup, you’re right, they will opt to choose something better to do: not play the game.

Actually, this “ideal” has happened before – it’s the time between they dramatically nerfed CS farming and the new champ loots.

Personally, I cannot account to whether it made the game better or not because it was the time I left the game for a while to spend my time on doing other things I considered more rewarding.

Erasculio.2914:

Now, I’m sure everyone has realized what the true issue is. It’s not a matter of making less champions spawn (wasn’t the goal behind the champion loot to make more people play events, so more champions would spawn?). It’s not a matter of making a few champions to not drop loot, as done in the Jormag event.

ArenaNet has to remove the Champion loot boxes from the game, and give those rewards to events instead.

I don’t agree with your conclusions at all. That solution just gates the rewards behind another layer of time sink similar to dailies, affects other areas of the game, and would punish the people who are getting DCed.

I DO agree that the problem is that 2 differing playstyles are in conflict here, even though neither is more “right” than the other.

The more elegant solution would be to allow the mob kills to continue to progress the event.

projectcedric.6951:

So ok, that will pacify the dispute between the champ-farmers and the event-doers, but doesn’t really do anything significant aside. Farmers will still farm – they will farm events now.

And it will deal with the issue mentioned above by Knote, about how Dynamic Events give little to no rewards. If fixing champions was worth all this trouble, and considering how DEs are far more important in the GW2 design than champions, fixing DEs ought to be important as well.

Farmers will always farm. Until they leave the game, which appears to be something ArenaNet doesn’t want them to do. The best we can do is not allow them to exploit, and not make the most effective way to farm something that goes against doing Dynamic Events. Just solving the dispute between farmers and other players is a boon by itself.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

So ok, that will pacify the dispute between the champ-farmers and the event-doers, but doesn’t really do anything significant aside. Farmers will still farm – they will farm events now.

And it will deal with the issue mentioned above by Knote, about how Dynamic Events give little to no rewards. If fixing champions was worth all this trouble, and considering how DEs are far more important in the GW2 design than champions, fixing DEs ought to be important as well.

Farmers will always farm. Until they leave the game, which appears to be something ArenaNet doesn’t want them to do. The best we can do is not allow them to exploit, and not make the most effective way to farm something that goes against doing Dynamic Events. Just solving the dispute between farmers and other players is a boon by itself.

Farming isn’t a bad thing, having carrots to chase isn’t a bad thing.

Whether it be a gear treadmill or a grind for legendaries/shinies and store items, it gives you something to do in the game while you find and do the things you find enjoyable.

But I agree with on exploiting, the whole “exploit early thing” is really annoying.

Like I said I don’t plan on participating in any more zerg fests. WvW and maybe a few dungeons (for cash) until they make changes to this zerg PvE content.

CMF.5461:

What if they kept the high amount of champion spawns, but only awarded champion chests post event completion?

These rewards would only be given upon successful completion of the event, so the champions themselves don’t drop loot but the number of champions you kill during the event increase loot at the end.

This encourages the large group play still, for those who like it, and encourages players to complete events as well, instead of delaying events for possible failure because all they want are the champ chests.

The new champion counter chests can be awarded in stacked bags in a pop up chest like current achievement chests and the like.

This would be awesome. Especially if the rewards were added in for everyone who helped on the map (regardless of tagging). It would encourage both types of players to work together more. It would also be a good challenge to try to maximize the rewards for everyone within that time period.

projectcedric.6951:

zeromius.1604:

At least with events their timers can be controlled. Yes, they intend on doing only the easiest events but then when they’re done they have nothing else. They’re forced to make a choice: they can either wait a really long time for these easy events to start up again or they can move onto other events. If you understand the farmer mentality you will know that they would prefer the latter. After all, time spent doing nothing could be better spent doing something even if it’s harder.

Oh I can understand farmer mentality very well. And yup, you’re right, they will opt to choose something better to do: not play the game.

Actually, this “ideal” has happened before – it’s the time between they dramatically nerfed CS farming and the new champ loots.

Personally, I cannot account to whether it made the game better or not because it was the time I left the game for a while to spend my time on doing other things I considered more rewarding.

I don’t know what your definition of rewarding is but for many the experience of the content is the reward rather than the end result of doing it. If you’ve done the content enough times then no doubt it becomes boring. This would hold true for many people but we know it doesn’t for everyone.

I actually don’t think that farmers actually hate farming and do it because they feel they have no choice. This is something that more moderate farmers like propagate. Habitual and frequent farmers are addicted to farming like an junkie would be to narcotics. Taken this into consideration we know that something doesn’t have to be fun to be addictive. There are lots of people addicted to slot machines for instance even when there are other more interesting ways to gamble like with Poker.

So if ArenaNet were to control the supply of their narcotics (the farming spots) it would probably make the addicts upset and quit. They would go play games were where it’s easier to get high. It’s the reason why games like Maple Story are so popular while offering so very little. It’s the addiction of farming and in many cases, grinding for better stats.

If you want something truly rewarding, play a really good single player game where there’s no loot. ArenaNet tries to create challenging and compelling content but the farmers don’t want that unless it comes with material rewards. They want to improve the rewards for jumping puzzles and mini dungeons. People who love this type of content will love the new loot rewards. People who hate this type of content because they don’t like jumping will hate it and complain about how it’s not fair for them. The great thing though is farmers will finally have something different to feed their addiction.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

So ok, that will pacify the dispute between the champ-farmers and the event-doers, but doesn’t really do anything significant aside. Farmers will still farm – they will farm events now.

And it will deal with the issue mentioned above by Knote, about how Dynamic Events give little to no rewards. If fixing champions was worth all this trouble, and considering how DEs are far more important in the GW2 design than champions, fixing DEs ought to be important as well.

Farmers will always farm. Until they leave the game, which appears to be something ArenaNet doesn’t want them to do. The best we can do is not allow them to exploit, and not make the most effective way to farm something that goes against doing Dynamic Events. Just solving the dispute between farmers and other players is a boon by itself.

I agree with the DE reward but its not exclusive with better champ loots. Why can’t we have both?

Even if we do, still won’t solve any farming issue. Farming is a different issue/concept to deal with from poor reward system. Farming will occur in both poor reward systems and good reward systems.

(Farmers cannot leave the game, mannnnn. According to the book “Gamification by Design”, Achievers/Killers/Explorers -the categories under which farmers belong- makes up about an essential 25% of any MMO gamer population. Basically, they are the drivers of competitive play who provide social pressure to the rest, which are Socializers.)

Aberrant.6749:

CMF.5461:

What if they kept the high amount of champion spawns, but only awarded champion chests post event completion?

These rewards would only be given upon successful completion of the event, so the champions themselves don’t drop loot but the number of champions you kill during the event increase loot at the end.

This encourages the large group play still, for those who like it, and encourages players to complete events as well, instead of delaying events for possible failure because all they want are the champ chests.

The new champion counter chests can be awarded in stacked bags in a pop up chest like current achievement chests and the like.

This would be awesome. Especially if the rewards were added in for everyone who helped on the map (regardless of tagging). It would encourage both types of players to work together more. It would also be a good challenge to try to maximize the rewards for everyone within that time period.

Yeah, rewards need to be moved to victory so people actually WANT to win and cooperate, and all of a sudden isn’t just a DPS race to tag the mobs which is completely selfish gameplay (helping rez players actually lowers your loot).

And it actually makes failing an actual LOSS.

There are two kinds of champ farms— the ones that just noodle around and wait to be found, and the ones that spawn from events.

Leave the non-event ones, loot, boxes and all, as they are. Do something about the event ones if event completion is an issue.

People also try to come up with all these different scenarios and motives for farmers, but it’s pretty simple.

If I want to buy that nice new zodiac skin? I need 50 or so gold. How do I get that if I won’t buy gems to convert? How to I get Foefore’s essence, say? That’s a few hundred gold. How do I afford all the components for a legendary? Not everyone can run dungeons. Not everyone can buy gems. How else are people supposed to afford these things? Market manipulation inflated the price of a lot of things (no matter how fast one farmed, price-jackers simply bought out every precursor and relisted for higher); farmers are playing catch-up to prices set by non-farmers, but then get blamed.

I don’t believe that treating people poorly is right and most farmers I know are not mean (we do champ loops instead, not events). But it is crappy that we’re getting blamed for having to keep up with inflation that we did not cause and, yet, are also being blamed with too.

Just making precursors alone not restricted to absolute RNG and/or dumping 500+ gold in the toilet or the trading post would alleviate the need for farmers to do this. Just about everyone I talk to is farming for their precursor. (I already have mine, having farmed southsun nonstop, thank god).

Sylv.5324:

There are two kinds of champ farms— the ones that just noodle around and wait to be found, and the ones that spawn from events.

Leave the non-event ones, loot, boxes and all, as they are. Do something about the event ones if event completion is an issue.

I don’t think that’s really an issue unless there are events that can be purposefully stalled to farm champ mobs.

projectcedric.6951:

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

So ok, that will pacify the dispute between the champ-farmers and the event-doers, but doesn’t really do anything significant aside. Farmers will still farm – they will farm events now.

And it will deal with the issue mentioned above by Knote, about how Dynamic Events give little to no rewards. If fixing champions was worth all this trouble, and considering how DEs are far more important in the GW2 design than champions, fixing DEs ought to be important as well.

Farmers will always farm. Until they leave the game, which appears to be something ArenaNet doesn’t want them to do. The best we can do is not allow them to exploit, and not make the most effective way to farm something that goes against doing Dynamic Events. Just solving the dispute between farmers and other players is a boon by itself.

I agree with the DE reward but its not exclusive with better champ loots. Why can’t we have both?

Even if we do, still won’t solve any farming issue. Farming is a different issue/concept to deal with from poor reward system. Farming will occur in both poor reward systems and good reward systems.

(Farmers cannot leave the game, mannnnn. According to the book “Gamification by Design”, Achievers/Killers/Explorers -the categories under which farmers belong- makes up about an essential 25% of any MMO gamer population. Basically, they are the drivers of competitive play who provide social pressure to the rest, which are Socializers.)

Farming isn’t really an “issue”. The only reason it’s even labeled and sticks out as an activity is because reward isn’t evenly balanced/distributed throughout the game.

If doing any sort of activity in the game was equally as rewarding as zerg farming (give and take depending on the difficulty of said activity) there wouldn’t even BE a concept of “farming” really, it’d just be playing the game whether that means “farming” champions or doing a difficult dungeon with friends, or exploring and doing puzzles.

the problem are the players though… there are players happy with the reward system and actually doing the event, not stalling it for a deluxe box…

i think it’s not fair we ask arenanet to interfere, it’s us in the first place that have to solve this issue.
i’m really starting to hate people these days, they only care about themselves and their loot. they have no sense of community… they only care about money… and i could understand this in the real world… but with digital gold?

zeromius.1604:

I don’t know what your definition of rewarding is but for many the experience of the content is the reward rather than the end result of doing it. If you’ve done the content enough times then no doubt it becomes boring. This would hold true for many people but we know it doesn’t for everyone.

I actually don’t think that farmers actually hate farming and do it because they feel they have no choice. This is something that more moderate farmers like propagate. Habitual and frequent farmers are addicted to farming like an junkie would be to narcotics. Taken this into consideration we know that something doesn’t have to be fun to be addictive. There are lots of people addicted to slot machines for instance even when there are other more interesting ways to gamble like with Poker.

So if ArenaNet were to control the supply of their narcotics (the farming spots) it would probably make the addicts upset and quit. They would go play games were where it’s easier to get high. It’s the reason why games like Maple Story are so popular while offering so very little. It’s the addiction of farming and in many cases, grinding for better stats.

If you want something truly rewarding, play a really good single player game where there’s no loot. ArenaNet tries to create challenging and compelling content but the farmers don’t want that unless it comes with material rewards. They want to improve the rewards for jumping puzzles and mini dungeons. People who love this type of content will love the new loot rewards. People who hate this type of content because they don’t like jumping will hate it and complain about how it’s not fair for them. The great thing though is farmers will finally have something different to feed their addiction.

The experience of the content is the reward for purchasing the content. It is not a reward for playing the content. However noble it sounds, it is against human nature to driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”. And this is not my opinion. Even social-oriented games like Bridge has an end goal, and social, casual players do not necessarily mean that they don’t care about winning or losing and are just there for the experience.

The work-reward relationship is the backbone of any game mechanics. Once again, “reward” here pertains to what you get after you experience something with the play. This can be real cash, real world materials, virtual cash and items, “badges”, prestige, etc. What it is NOT however, is the EXPERIENCE of playing the game.

Now let’s go to your point about addiction. Assuming you are right (which I do not necessarily agree but its irrelevant) about farming as an addiction, what motive does the designer have to reduce or control addiction?

The core of any game play is “immersion”, and as far as it conceptually goes, is the ultimate manifestation of immersion. There is a concept called the “Flow Zone” (Zichermann & Cunningham, 2011), which lies between anxiety and boredom.

Making players stay in this “Flow Zone” is the bull’s eye for all game designers. Addiction is the complete immersion in this Flow Zone, so excessively powerful that the player cannot move out of the flow zone.

From the designer’s standpoint, if farming is an addiction (as you say), then farming is a win. It is we, the players, who do not want addiction.

zeromius.1604:

projectcedric.6951:

zeromius.1604:

At least with events their timers can be controlled. Yes, they intend on doing only the easiest events but then when they’re done they have nothing else. They’re forced to make a choice: they can either wait a really long time for these easy events to start up again or they can move onto other events. If you understand the farmer mentality you will know that they would prefer the latter. After all, time spent doing nothing could be better spent doing something even if it’s harder.

Oh I can understand farmer mentality very well. And yup, you’re right, they will opt to choose something better to do: not play the game.

Actually, this “ideal” has happened before – it’s the time between they dramatically nerfed CS farming and the new champ loots.

Personally, I cannot account to whether it made the game better or not because it was the time I left the game for a while to spend my time on doing other things I considered more rewarding.

I don’t know what your definition of rewarding is but for many the experience of the content is the reward rather than the end result of doing it. If you’ve done the content enough times then no doubt it becomes boring. This would hold true for many people but we know it doesn’t for everyone.

I actually don’t think that farmers actually hate farming and do it because they feel they have no choice. This is something that more moderate farmers like propagate. Habitual and frequent farmers are addicted to farming like an junkie would be to narcotics. Taken this into consideration we know that something doesn’t have to be fun to be addictive. There are lots of people addicted to slot machines for instance even when there are other more interesting ways to gamble like with Poker.

So if ArenaNet were to control the supply of their narcotics (the farming spots) it would probably make the addicts upset and quit. They would go play games were where it’s easier to get high. It’s the reason why games like Maple Story are so popular while offering so very little. It’s the addiction of farming and in many cases, grinding for better stats.

If you want something truly rewarding, play a really good single player game where there’s no loot. ArenaNet tries to create challenging and compelling content but the farmers don’t want that unless it comes with material rewards. They want to improve the rewards for jumping puzzles and mini dungeons. People who love this type of content will love the new loot rewards. People who hate this type of content because they don’t like jumping will hate it and complain about how it’s not fair for them. The great thing though is farmers will finally have something different to feed their addiction.

I don’t know why people this idea that farming is a bad thing and farmers are bad people with a flawed way of gaming.

Material rewards are satisfying, so is fun and engaging gameplay, ideally in an MMO you want both of these things so the game is super satisfying. Zerg farming sure as hell isn’t that fun after a while, but it sure as hell is rewarding which is satisfying (and thus can sort of be fun, opening a massive amount of loot bags yum).

Then you have other things, such as pvp which sometimes has NO rewards at all but people still do it because it’s fun (although the current pvp is arguably not fun atm but that’s irrelevant right now). Minigames are also something fun but with no rewards so people still do it.

Then you have things like regular Dynamic Events, they’re not interesting or fun, nor really that rewarding at all, thus they’re just ignored, or done because they spawn a crap ton of mobs which ARE rewarding.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to farm or getting loot, it’s satisfying, and chasing carrots is good because it always gives you something to do or work for while you play the game either to relax or find some other fun thing to do or socialize.

And no, lazy farmers would not complain about hard content/dungeons being the most rewarding unless their easymode way of farming was taken away completely and that hard content was the ONLY rewarding thing to do, which would also be stupid.

I don’t want zerg farming or easy farming removed even I enjoy it once in a while, but there just needs to be a balanced priority in risk vs rewards. I want to do something challenging and fun AND be properly rewarded for it, that’s the ideal combo (fun AND rewards). And if it’s rewarding that gets even more people to do it which makes it easier for people like me to get groups to do it, win/win/win.

And sorry for multipost spam, edit isn’t working now.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

What makes you think this lamentation will end there?

The lamentation will never end. But unless ArenaNet did what they should really do – create an area specifically for farming, in which it was obvious drops would be better, so farmers would move there and leave the other players in peace in the open world – all we can do is make the game less bad.

Orr could have been that area and arguably was at around Feb this year and prior.

They nerfed plinx and pen/shelt. Up until then, folks went there to farm in the open world, and while it wasn’t as efficient as dungeon-running, was good enough.

Amadan.9451:

the problem are the players though… there are players happy with the reward system and actually doing the event, not stalling it for a deluxe box…

i think it’s not fair we ask arenanet to interfere, it’s us in the first place that have to solve this issue.
i’m really starting to hate people these days, they only care about themselves and their loot. they have no sense of community… they only care about money… and i could understand this in the real world… but with digital gold?

Arenanet SHOULD interfere, they can fix things like “being able to stall an event for more rewards” and make it so if everything in the game is materially rewarding then people would just do whatever it is they find fun while still making progress on whatever carrot they chose to chase.

Being selfish and and caring about “loot” is natural, it’s only conflicting and shows it’s ugly face when the game is designed like it is now where only a few boring tasks are the only ways to satisfy it.

Right now the game rewards this selfish behavior, it should reward teamwork and risk and fun things in the game equally and then that “greed” works in a healthy way.

projectcedric.6951:

However noble it sounds, it is against human nature to driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

False.

Why do people go to the movies? It’s not because they are paid for it. It’s because they will enjoy the experience of seeing the movie. Why do people listen to music? They don’t receive a physical reward for listening to 500 tracks. They do it because they enjoy the experience of listening to music.

You are mistaken when you think the experience itself cannot be the goal. Playing a game to have fun, as opposed to playing a game to reach a reward within said game, is actually the rule, not the exception, as long as you are not talking about MMORPGs. I think MMOs (and its clones) are the only games in which people are so willing to go through experiences they don’t enjoy just to get a reward. In old RPGs, those rewards were not the goal, just auxilliary to the experience.

Sylv.5324:

They nerfed plinx and pen/shelt. Up until then, folks went there to farm in the open world, and while it wasn’t as efficient as dungeon-running, was good enough.

but i think even if those events were full farming as they used to be… farmers would still flock to the new event because is inevitably better rewarding and long lasting…
and the bad apples would still stall or wouldn’t care less to succed at the event.

i think the real problem is nobody cares if their freedom to play (farming or not) hurt the freedom to play of other players… it’s basic civic sense that nobody has.

Amadan.9451:

and the bad apples would still stall or wouldn’t care less to succed at the event.

Fixing this really should be the priority. On the other hand, no one cared to do most events in higher-end zones before the patch anyway.

Knote.2904:

Farming isn’t really an “issue”. The only reason it’s even labeled and sticks out as an activity is because reward isn’t evenly balanced/distributed throughout the game.

If doing any sort of activity in the game was equally as rewarding as zerg farming (give and take depending on the difficulty of said activity) there wouldn’t even BE a concept of “farming” really, it’d just be playing the game whether that means “farming” champions or doing a difficult dungeon with friends, or exploring and doing puzzles.

Yes, but such game is impossible.

The difficulty-yield relationship is part of a game’s mechanics. “Zerging” is part of a game’s dynamics. Dynamics means – how players behave in relation to other players and the mechanics of the game.

This mechanics is not based on game dynamics. That means that if you have perfected the game this way, considering that reward balance is based on single-player gameplay, it is not balanced in multi-player gameplay, and vice versa.

On the other hand, game dynamics adapts. Players’ behavior will move towards which is more efficient in terms of rewards, and not necessarily “fun”. (To be clear, “reward” in this context is not personal reward. It is the objective game reward, which is an essential element in all games.)

Farming and zerging are phenomena that are results of this adaptation. In competitive loot mmorpgs, it is obviously not efficient to zerg, so the players adapt by farming individually.

Hypothetically, let’s say you have designed the perfect game. The perfect game being defined as all activities in the game have the rewards appropriate to their specific difficulty – thus, “reward balanced”. In such a game, there is completely no incentive to do higher difficulty activities.

On the other hand, if higher difficulty activities are imbalance in terms of loot, playerbase will find a way to exploit that system and make it farm-able. In GW2’s case, this is the zerging of champs.

In other words, in any game, there is no design or solution in which the ideal can happen. That’s why it never happens. The successful games are only successful in terms of how much does the intent of the designer is made to reality – given that non of the intents are ideal. In almost all cases, the playerbase loses.

House always wins.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

However noble it sounds, it is against human nature to driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

False.

Why do people go to the movies? It’s not because they are paid for it. It’s because they will enjoy the experience of seeing the movie. Why do people listen to music? They don’t receive a physical reward for listening to 500 tracks. They do it because they enjoy the experience of listening to music.

You are mistaken when you think the experience itself cannot be the goal. Playing a game to have fun, as opposed to playing a game to reach a reward within said game, is actually the rule, not the exception, as long as you are not talking about MMORPGs. I think MMOs (and its clones) are the only games in which people are so willing to go through experiences they don’t enjoy just to get a reward. In old RPGs, those rewards were not the goal, just auxilliary to the experience.

Ok, fine, let me rephrase that.

IN GAMES, it is against human nature to be driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

And no, all games -regardless of genre- follow this rule. This is the definition of a game. If it doesn’t follow this rule, it is not a game.

And please do not take the word “game” out of the context here too. There is an objective, scientific definition of a game I am talking about here. And that is one in which there are rules and there is a goal.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

However noble it sounds, it is against human nature to driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

False.

Why do people go to the movies? It’s not because they are paid for it. It’s because they will enjoy the experience of seeing the movie. Why do people listen to music? They don’t receive a physical reward for listening to 500 tracks. They do it because they enjoy the experience of listening to music.

You are mistaken when you think the experience itself cannot be the goal. Playing a game to have fun, as opposed to playing a game to reach a reward within said game, is actually the rule, not the exception, as long as you are not talking about MMORPGs. I think MMOs (and its clones) are the only games in which people are so willing to go through experiences they don’t enjoy just to get a reward. In old RPGs, those rewards were not the goal, just auxilliary to the experience.

And getting rewards is also just as satisfying… why else would people put themselves through doing the same boring activity to get it?

It’s also so they can get a carrot, like a legendary, which is also really satisfying.

Fun = satisfying = rewarding = loot/carrots

You don’t think it’s satisfying getting your paycheck at the end of the month and getting that new TV or w/e you’ve been wanting, there’s nothing wrong with a little material satisfaction. Sure some people in the world go overboard with it, too much of a good thing, doesn’t mean it’s completely evil or wrong.

In a game however, it’s best to have both, fun and exciting gameplay AND the rewards, that’s what Anet should be aiming to make all of their content. Not just “oh well this is fun, they don’t need rewards from it they’ll just do it for fun!”

Well unless it’s the most amazing and exciting activity with tons of replayability w/o getting boring, people will do it a few times for fun then ignore it… that’s just how it is, because people ALSO want to get their carrots.

Look at the Queen’s Gauntlet for example, now that it gives jack all, no one will touch it, even I won’t now that I experienced it and got my achievements, sure it was fun but it’s not fun enough for me to keep doing it. Maybe I will once more a week from now, then never again.

For example, let’s say something has a limited amount of fun (100%), I do it w/o rewards for awhile and now it’s only 50% as fun as it was before, now I don’t want to do it. But then it becomes rewarding, so now I can do it for the rewards and it will be fun again because there’s still some “fun” value in it, but now I’m getting rewards so it’s still satisfying. The rewards lets me extract extra “fun value” out of that activity. It’s a very dorky example but there you go, that’s how I see it.

projectcedric.6951:

Knote.2904:

Farming isn’t really an “issue”. The only reason it’s even labeled and sticks out as an activity is because reward isn’t evenly balanced/distributed throughout the game.

If doing any sort of activity in the game was equally as rewarding as zerg farming (give and take depending on the difficulty of said activity) there wouldn’t even BE a concept of “farming” really, it’d just be playing the game whether that means “farming” champions or doing a difficult dungeon with friends, or exploring and doing puzzles.

Yes, but such game is impossible.

The difficulty-yield relationship is part of a game’s mechanics. “Zerging” is part of a game’s dynamics. Dynamics means – how players behave in relation to other players and the mechanics of the game.

This mechanics is not based on game dynamics. That means that if you have perfected the game this way, considering that reward balance is based on single-player gameplay, it is not balanced in multi-player gameplay, and vice versa.

On the other hand, game dynamics adapts. Players’ behavior will move towards which is more efficient in terms of rewards, and not necessarily “fun”. (To be clear, “reward” in this context is not personal reward. It is the objective game reward, which is an essential element in all games.)

Farming and zerging are phenomena that are results of this adaptation. In competitive loot mmorpgs, it is obviously not efficient to zerg, so the players adapt by farming individually.

Hypothetically, let’s say you have designed the perfect game. The perfect game being defined as all activities in the game have the rewards appropriate to their specific difficulty – thus, “reward balanced”. In such a game, there is completely no incentive to do higher difficulty activities.

On the other hand, if higher difficulty activities are imbalance in terms of loot, playerbase will find a way to exploit that system and make it farm-able. In GW2’s case, this is the zerging of champs.

In other words, in any game, there is no design or solution in which the ideal can happen. That’s why it never happens. The successful games are only successful in terms of how much does the intent of the designer is made to reality – given that non of the intents are ideal. In almost all cases, the playerbase loses.

House always wins.

Of course it’s not going to be perfect. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t TRY, and just completely ignore the rewards for certain parts of the game that should be getting a boost…

Just like pvp, it’s never going to be perfectly balanced but you need to keep trying anyway and slowly improve it (which also helps keep the game fresh).

If for example they did balance the rewards really well, and a hardcore optimized method for zerg farming yielded the best rewards by like 5%, that’s still only 5% that’s not enough for some people to bother with the extra effort of hardcore optimization and you can even argue that it’s actually deserved considering the effort involved, compared to relaxed and casual zerg farming which would be less…

Optimal farming being only 5-10% ahead of everything else is still way better than optimal farming being 50-100% ahead of everything else in terms of rewards, so maybe it’s not perfect, it doesn’t need to be, it just needs to IMPROVE.

i think this is what arenanet is trying to do, have fun/challenging/easy content with reward and try to satisfy people… although people can’t just stop themselves, they never have enough…
everybody was farming deadeye is it arenanet fault? although for the single time i did it it was nice for me to be rewarded that way…
how can we have nice things if people can never have enough? an activity should stop once it become boring, but when it comes to farm boring is not enough to stop for some reason… everybody complains about grindy games and korean farming games and than they turn their experience into just that… i really don’t get it

projectcedric.6951:

IN GAMES, it is against human nature to be driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

I agree with the end goal, I disagree it’s the same thing we see in MMOs.

In many MMORPGs, I see a lot of people who don’t enjoy the experience of what they are doing, but they are doing it anyway because they want a reward in the end. We see this both in players who say it with all the letters, as well as in those who want the quickest, fastest path to whatever it is they want.

Comparing it with something else, let’s say… The first Sonic game, for example (Sega Genesis FTW!). I’m sure a lot of people had the goal of reaching the end of the game. But I doubt many people played the game if they didn’t enjoy it, just to get to the end. And, likewise, the game had a cheat we could use to arrive straight in the last level, but that wasn’t something everyone did, and I doubt very much it was something even the majority did.

There was a goal. The journey to that goal, however, was equally as important as the goal itself. I don’t believe the same thing happens in MMORPGs, when people claim they don’t want to farm but that’s the only way they will get the gold they need for the shiny stuff they want. This is what I believe happens in MMORPGs:

Genavelle.9516:

The whole point of legendaries is that you spend a lot of time doing crap nobody wants to do so you can get a special unique weapon that only people willing to do that much work can get. If you don’t want to go through that process, then don’t worry about making one.

I can’t help but think something somehow got broken in gaming due to MMORPGs.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

IN GAMES, it is against human nature to be driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

I agree with the end goal, I disagree it’s the same thing we see in MMOs.

In many MMORPGs, I see a lot of people who don’t enjoy the experience of what they are doing, but they are doing it anyway because they want a reward in the end. We see this both in players who say it with all the letters, as well as in those who want the quickest, fastest path to whatever it is they want.

Comparing it with something else, let’s say… The first Sonic game, for example (Sega Genesis FTW!). I’m sure a lot of people had the goal of reaching the end of the game. But I doubt many people played the game if they didn’t enjoy it, just to get to the end. And, likewise, the game had a cheat we could use to arrive straight in the last level, but that wasn’t something everyone did, and I doubt very much it was something even the majority did.

There was a goal. The journey to that goal, however, was equally as important as the goal itself. I don’t believe the same thing happens in MMORPGs, when people claim they don’t want to farm but that’s the only way they will get the gold they need for the shiny stuff they want. This is what I believe happens in MMORPGs:

Genavelle.9516:

The whole point of legendaries is that you spend a lot of time doing crap nobody wants to do so you can get a special unique weapon that only people willing to do that much work can get. If you don’t want to go through that process, then don’t worry about making one.

I can’t help but think something somehow got broken in gaming due to MMORPGs.

It just comes to show you that even with all the innovations and the action combat style of gameplay, Guild Wars 2 still has a ways to go if people have gotten to the point where they don’t play it just the for the heck of it. Who played Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Tales of Xillia, Mass Effect, or Final Fantasy 7 for the phat loot waiting at the end? There are many that have played through these games multiple times even though there isn’t some legendary gear that can be attained through subsequent playthroughs. I’m not saying they’re better games nor do they have more replay value. What I’m saying is that Guild Wars 2 has the potential to keep people hooked in the same way these games did even without the phat loot. It’s just a matter of execution.

Erasculio.2914:

In old RPGs, those rewards were not the goal, just auxilliary to the experience.

From the beginning of the RPG genre games were designed around the concept of kill monster, loot monster, use monster’s loot to kill more powerful monster in order to get its loot.

zeromius.1604:

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

IN GAMES, it is against human nature to be driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

I agree with the end goal, I disagree it’s the same thing we see in MMOs.

In many MMORPGs, I see a lot of people who don’t enjoy the experience of what they are doing, but they are doing it anyway because they want a reward in the end. We see this both in players who say it with all the letters, as well as in those who want the quickest, fastest path to whatever it is they want.

Comparing it with something else, let’s say… The first Sonic game, for example (Sega Genesis FTW!). I’m sure a lot of people had the goal of reaching the end of the game. But I doubt many people played the game if they didn’t enjoy it, just to get to the end. And, likewise, the game had a cheat we could use to arrive straight in the last level, but that wasn’t something everyone did, and I doubt very much it was something even the majority did.

There was a goal. The journey to that goal, however, was equally as important as the goal itself. I don’t believe the same thing happens in MMORPGs, when people claim they don’t want to farm but that’s the only way they will get the gold they need for the shiny stuff they want. This is what I believe happens in MMORPGs:

Genavelle.9516:

The whole point of legendaries is that you spend a lot of time doing crap nobody wants to do so you can get a special unique weapon that only people willing to do that much work can get. If you don’t want to go through that process, then don’t worry about making one.

I can’t help but think something somehow got broken in gaming due to MMORPGs.

It just comes to show you that even with all the innovations and the action combat style of gameplay, Guild Wars 2 still has a ways to go if people have gotten to the point where they don’t play it just the for the heck of it. Who played Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Tales of Xillia, Mass Effect, or Final Fantasy 7 for the phat loot waiting at the end? There are many that have played through these games multiple times even though there isn’t some legendary gear that can be attained through subsequent playthroughs. I’m not saying they’re better games nor do they have more replay value. What I’m saying is that Guild Wars 2 has the potential to keep people hooked in the same way these games did even without the phat loot. It’s just a matter of execution.

Those games are single player games and yes they are better “games” in a sense and have way more replayability.

This game would need a lot done to make it more interesting, w/o rewards.

Just take leveling an alt as an example, it’s not interesting at all 100%’ing the world again on another char, compared to Skyrim.

I would definately like that though, for the existing content to just be, improved, but then ALSO making it rewarding would be great, there’s no reason you can’t have both…

It’s Anets fault designing the event backwards, why didn’t they make the Aeterblades spawn fewer Champs and increase the number of Champs that spawn from the minion events. Personally I run from one Aetherblade event to the next and totally disregard the main event until the last 10 mins or so. WHY? cause I can kill 5 or 6 Champs per event instead of 4-5 events before I run into a Champ off the minions. After killing Scarlet half a dozen times the event becomes kind of stale. Now I just farm Champs while I can in the hopes that I might drop a particularly nice hammer skin.

Knote.2904:

Optimal farming being only 5-10% ahead of everything else is still way better than optimal farming being 50-100% ahead of everything else in terms of rewards, so maybe it’s not perfect, it doesn’t need to be, it just needs to IMPROVE.

Number 1: Again it goes to the fundamental concepts of optimization and “farming”. Given that, maybe after intensive refinement, rewards of activity A has been reduced to 5-10% more than activity B, the obvious thing to note is that the very nature of “farming” itself has the ability to explode this to 50-100%, by doing it 10 times. If it cannot be done 10 times, it won’t be farmed.

Fundamentally, therefore, farming only occurs because something can be largely ahead of everything else in terms of rewards. At the same time, something will always be ahead of everything else in terms of rewards because it can be farmed and it will be farmed.

Lets say the optimal farming rate now is 5g per hour. If you nerf the event/s that provide this farm, farmers will move to something that is say 3g per hour. And perhaps the next one is 1-2g hour. Notice that differences, in terms of percentage, is actually the same. Simply, people just move to the next best efficient thing.

Number 2: This optimal calculation can not take into consideration things that are difficult to value. We know the value a particular T6 mat, because we know how much we can sell it for gold. But how much do you value an activity that you actually do not like doing? For example some people would prefer farming Activity A over Activity B even if Activity B is the optimal farming activity by 50% on a per hour basis, because they find that they cannot do Activity B for very long periods of time on end. So eventually, for those people, the gold rate evens out between the two activities.

OR

How much do you value chance? Given that Activity A gives a more consistent drop rate of lower-value loot, and Activity B gives a rare chance of a higher value loot – in the end again, if you do them enough times, they probably even out in terms of gold, but the “optimal” in this sense depends on how much people value the probability.

My general point in all this is:

It’s not that they shouldn’t improve the game, but they should improve the game in the right way. Farming cannot be reduced or avoided, much more especially in mmorpgs. And there is no need to. Like I said, only about 25% (maybe 50% in mmorpgs) of playerbase farms. And this is an essential part of the game.

What they should do is make things more wholistic so that people who choose to farm are simultaneously doing other things too. The Invasion events are a first improvement in this sense. Farmers are no longer just stuck in FS, CS or CoF. Now they are motivated to run all around the world in a different map every hour.

If they want people to pay more attention to DEs and world events, then perhaps indeed they should increase the rewards of those events so that they are equal to the most optimum farming activity.

Farmers wont stop farming then, they will just start farming those events. Basically, its just diverting the farming efforts from one activity towards another, depending on which one the designer chooses.

Erasculio.2914:

ArenaNet has to remove the Champion loot boxes from the game, and give those rewards to events instead. They should follow the same thing they originally did with experience points, and make enemies in the world give little loot, with events giving far more loot than they currently do. Change champions, so all of them are either an event itself or only appear as part of an event, so we won’t have champions in the open world that no one wants to kill.

I thought about this too but originally thought why not specify what champions drop what loot, but this idea is so much better and I agree.

projectcedric.6951:

Knote.2904:

Optimal farming being only 5-10% ahead of everything else is still way better than optimal farming being 50-100% ahead of everything else in terms of rewards, so maybe it’s not perfect, it doesn’t need to be, it just needs to IMPROVE.

Number 1: Again it goes to the fundamental concepts of optimization and “farming”. Given that, maybe after intensive refinement, rewards of activity A has been reduced to 5-10% more than activity B, the obvious thing to note is that the very nature of “farming” itself has the ability to explode this to 50-100%, by doing it 10 times. If it cannot be done 10 times, it won’t be farmed.

Fundamentally, therefore, farming only occurs because something can be largely ahead of everything else in terms of rewards. At the same time, something will always be ahead of everything else in terms of rewards because it can be farmed and it will be farmed.

Lets say the optimal farming rate now is 5g per hour. If you nerf the event/s that provide this farm, farmers will move to something that is say 3g per hour. And perhaps the next one is 1-2g hour. Notice that differences, in terms of percentage, is actually the same. Simply, people just move to the next best efficient thing.

Number 2: This optimal calculation can not take into consideration things that are difficult to value. We know the value a particular T6 mat, because we know how much we can sell it for gold. But how much do you value an activity that you actually do not like doing? For example some people would prefer farming Activity A over Activity B even if Activity B is the optimal farming activity by 50% on a per hour basis, because they find that they cannot do Activity B for very long periods of time on end. So eventually, for those people, the gold rate evens out between the two activities.

OR

How much do you value chance? Given that Activity A gives a more consistent drop rate of lower-value loot, and Activity B gives a rare chance of a higher value loot – in the end again, if you do them enough times, they probably even out in terms of gold, but the “optimal” in this sense depends on how much people value the probability.

My general point in all this is:

It’s not that they shouldn’t improve the game, but they should improve the game in the right way. Farming cannot be reduced or avoided, much more especially in mmorpgs. And there is no need to. Like I said, only about 25% (maybe 50% in mmorpgs) of playerbase farms. And this is an essential part of the game.

What they should do is make things more wholistic so that people who choose to farm are simultaneously doing other things too. The Invasion events are a first improvement in this sense. Farmers are no longer just stuck in FS, CS or CoF. Now they are motivated to run all around the world in a different map every hour.

If they want people to pay more attention to DEs and world events, then perhaps indeed they should increase the rewards of those events so that they are equal to the most optimum farming activity.

Farmers wont stop farming then, they will just start farming those events. Basically, its just diverting the farming efforts from one activity towards another, depending on which one the designer chooses.

What, I don’t really understand what you’re arguing here.

The 2nd half of your post is literally what I’ve been talking about this whole time.

Julie Yann.5379:

It’s Anets fault designing the event backwards, why didn’t they make the Aeterblades spawn fewer Champs and increase the number of Champs that spawn from the minion events.

Cause they are clearly using the same code for the aetherblade appearances that they used for the balloon events.