Guild Wars 2

This is a sound idea for fixing many problems with the game. If implemented I hope it drives Arena Net to create more inspiring dynamic events like those we had at release, and less of those events meant for farming we’ve seen as of late.

Erasculio.2914:

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:

Actually, the differentiation is in the type of players, not in the genre of the games.

The GW2 farmers (or most mmorpg farmers) – their counterpart in Sonic are the people who dont really enjoy the gameplay as much as they simply want to beat Robotnik in the end finish the game (without cheating).

Similarly in Pacman, there are players who are content with playing the first 5-10 levels of the game. They enjoy the gameplay, and since the mechanics is generally the same for all levels (the same goal), there is really no reason to progress further. On the other hand, some people may or may not enjoy the gameplay as much, but they want to beat the highest level or the highest score, even if the mechanics is repetitive.

In player profile, these are the “Achievers”. You’ll be glad to know that most people are not like that. Interestingly though, most GAME DESIGNERS are in this category. So there is always some sort of bias -consciously or subconsciously- when designers design games.

The types of personalities are not exclusive: Achievers may also be Socializers. So people farm in different degrees of intensity.

Whichever the category, ALL kinds of players are driven by goals and rewards for playing a game. And that reward can range from prestige, sense of accomplishment, real world rewards, etc. But it can NOT be the gameplay itself.

Knote.2904:

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.

Not exactly. There’s a fundamental difference.

You’re argument is for finding an ideal balance in farming – which I believe is impossible- by reducing the rewards for farming in it’s current state.

My argument is for improving farming as an entire sub-system, if they can. Because I’m not event exactly against the farming in GW2. I don’t think there was anything wrong with, and hence I don’t know why they’ve been trying to “fix” it. But as a result -intentionally or not- they created a better farming system! Which is the Invasion Events. So that’s good.

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.

Exactly! As I read your first paragraph, I was about to chime in and say that you don’t even have to switch media to movies or music – for the majority of my 30-odd years of playing videogames, you didn’t play games to get a reward, you played them precisely to see what was next.

That, for me, was the innovation of games like Scramble (1981). The earliest arcade games, like your Pac-Man and Space Invaders types, didn’t have different levels, really. Beat the level and you basically got the same thing only harder. But Scramble had multiple very different playing zones, and once you’d seen other people reaching the later ones, you really wanted to make it there yourself!

As you say, it’s really only in the MMORPG genre that you get this infestation of players who have no interest in experiencing content unless they are rewarded with some sweet, sweet pixels. As someone who plays games as an entertainment/leisure pursuit, it’s quite sad to see.

Banquetto.9521:

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.

Exactly! As I read your first paragraph, I was about to chime in and say that you don’t even have to switch media to movies or music – for the majority of my 30-odd years of playing videogames, you didn’t play games to get a reward, you played them precisely to see what was next.

That, for me, was the innovation of games like Scramble (1981). The earliest arcade games, like your Pac-Man and Space Invaders types, didn’t have different levels, really. Beat the level and you basically got the same thing only harder. But Scramble had multiple very different playing zones, and once you’d seen other people reaching the later ones, you really wanted to make it there yourself!

As you say, it’s really only in the MMORPG genre that you get this infestation of players who have no interest in experiencing content unless they are rewarded with some sweet, sweet pixels. As someone who plays games as an entertainment/leisure pursuit, it’s quite sad to see.

Level progression is considered as a goal or reward. Even “to see what was next” is the reward. The “experience” he was talking about here is only half of the mechanics of every game. No games are designed without a goal or reward as part of the mechanics. Except, well, certain arguable exceptions… like Minecraft.

projectcedric.6951:

Erasculio.2914:

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:

Actually, the differentiation is in the type of players, not in the genre of the games.

The GW2 farmers (or most mmorpg farmers) – their counterpart in Sonic are the people who dont really enjoy the gameplay as much as they simply want to beat Robotnik in the end finish the game (without cheating).

Similarly in Pacman, there are players who are content with playing the first 5-10 levels of the game. They enjoy the gameplay, and since the mechanics is generally the same for all levels (the same goal), there is really no reason to progress further. On the other hand, some people may or may not enjoy the gameplay as much, but they want to beat the highest level or the highest score, even if the mechanics is repetitive.

In player profile, these are the “Achievers”. You’ll be glad to know that most people are not like that. Interestingly though, most GAME DESIGNERS are in this category. So there is always some sort of bias -consciously or subconsciously- when designers design games.

The types of personalities are not exclusive: Achievers may also be Socializers. So people farm in different degrees of intensity.

Whichever the category, ALL kinds of players are driven by goals and rewards for playing a game. And that reward can range from prestige, sense of accomplishment, real world rewards, etc. But it can NOT be the gameplay itself.

Ms. Pacman is OP. Needs a nerf. She’s also only wearing boots and gloves. Too distracting.

The difference with pacman vs farming though… pacman got harder the higher in levels you went. With farming it stays the same.

I would enjoy it far more personally if there was something with rewards that got harder as it went along and gave more rewards for the higher difficulty.

Don’t even try and say that fractals do this well…

projectcedric.6951:

Actually, the differentiation is in the type of players, not in the genre of the games.

The GW2 farmers (or most mmorpg farmers) – their counterpart in Sonic are the people who dont really enjoy the gameplay as much as they simply want to beat Robotnik in the end finish the game (without cheating).

Similarly in Pacman, there are players who are content with playing the first 5-10 levels of the game. They enjoy the gameplay, and since the mechanics is generally the same for all levels (the same goal), there is really no reason to progress further. On the other hand, some people may or may not enjoy the gameplay as much, but they want to beat the highest level or the highest score, even if the mechanics is repetitive.

In player profile, these are the “Achievers”. You’ll be glad to know that most people are not like that. Interestingly though, most GAME DESIGNERS are in this category. So there is always some sort of bias -consciously or subconsciously- when designers design games.

The types of personalities are not exclusive: Achievers may also be Socializers. So people farm in different degrees of intensity.

Whichever the category, ALL kinds of players are driven by goals and rewards for playing a game. And that reward can range from prestige, sense of accomplishment, real world rewards, etc. But it can NOT be the gameplay itself.

I wouldn’t consider the farmers to be high achievers by any means. They find the easiest things that reward the most. The MMORPG farmers have no equivalent in Sonic, Mario, or whatever 16 bit era platformer because they would never play those kinds of games.

The achievers are the people who aim for 100% completion in games like Metroid or Castlevania. They play hard games because they are challenging, not because they get some shiny trophy at the end. This was before achievements ever made it in games and you could only brag to close friends about doing something crazy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, farmers are addicted to farming. You might find it the most boring thing in the world but it doesn’t stop it from being addictive to some people. It’s like alcohol, caffeine, gambling, drugs, etc. Loot gives them that hit that they’re looking for. The so called phat loot gives them a really big hit. The fact that it’s all random is what helps drive this addiction.

Erasculio.2914:

In one of the interviews before release, ArenaNet mentioned that killing random monsters would give significantly less experience than doing events. This, they said, was so that people wouldn’t just mindlessly grind monsters over and over, rather feel like playing (and finishing) events would be the best course of action for them.

Then, we got the Champion loot.

ArenaNet introduced the Champion loot in an update that made the champions spawned during the Jormag event to not give any drops, since people were already stalling event completition so they could kill champions there. Later, people exploited the Orr event, creating very heated arguments both in-game and here in the forum, about how the exploiters were going against the players who actually wanted to do the event. ArenaNet effectively nerfed how the Anchorage event works in order to stop most of the exploiting.

I have just tried to do a Fireheart Rise invasion. It failed, but the interesting thing is that the last 15 minutes were a heated discussion, as a large number of players stopped doing the event when the Aetherblades appeared, and began farming champions in order to get more loot. Considering how it’s easy to farm champions without progressing the event (search for an Aetherblade event about killing the captain, and avoid killing it while defeating the champions that spawn around him), this was basically one more example of farmers hurting event completition for those who were playing the game as intended.

As of now, ArenaNet has just released a new update, with the following update note:

Mark Katzbach

Updated the advanced event scaling system to slightly reduce the rate of champions created by events scaling up in difficulty.

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. 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.

Really, this update has severely damaged the community, as people are fighting among themselves. ArenaNet is not going to ban the exploiters out of fear of losing too many players, but they should stop what is making the exploiters exploit in the first place, instead of changing events to have less champions.

That’s actually a great idea:
You get the bag loot from participating in events:
1- Exotic bag: Gold Participation.
2- Rare bag: Silver participation.
3- Green bag: Copper Participation.

I pretty sure people would start farming events instead of champs, but the difference is that events take time to finish and scale well with more people. Which is the right thing.

Anet can just change all the mobs to vets and keep their stats the same. We’ve seen that not all vets are created equal. Save champions for bosses in certain events and legendaries if they need a step above that.

Even in the current invasions, silver rank twisted horrors are scary, while champion twisted horrors are quite a lot easier. The silver rank twisted horrors have more hp, attack more often, and hit harder, in addition to spawning about 3 at once. While champion twisted horrors spawn one at once and are much easier.

While we’re on this, why dont legendary mobs give anything special?

Azraeel.1238:

Erasculio.2914:

In one of the interviews before release, ArenaNet mentioned that killing random monsters would give significantly less experience than doing events. This, they said, was so that people wouldn’t just mindlessly grind monsters over and over, rather feel like playing (and finishing) events would be the best course of action for them.

Then, we got the Champion loot.

ArenaNet introduced the Champion loot in an update that made the champions spawned during the Jormag event to not give any drops, since people were already stalling event completition so they could kill champions there. Later, people exploited the Orr event, creating very heated arguments both in-game and here in the forum, about how the exploiters were going against the players who actually wanted to do the event. ArenaNet effectively nerfed how the Anchorage event works in order to stop most of the exploiting.

I have just tried to do a Fireheart Rise invasion. It failed, but the interesting thing is that the last 15 minutes were a heated discussion, as a large number of players stopped doing the event when the Aetherblades appeared, and began farming champions in order to get more loot. Considering how it’s easy to farm champions without progressing the event (search for an Aetherblade event about killing the captain, and avoid killing it while defeating the champions that spawn around him), this was basically one more example of farmers hurting event completition for those who were playing the game as intended.

As of now, ArenaNet has just released a new update, with the following update note:

Mark Katzbach

Updated the advanced event scaling system to slightly reduce the rate of champions created by events scaling up in difficulty.

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. 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.

Really, this update has severely damaged the community, as people are fighting among themselves. ArenaNet is not going to ban the exploiters out of fear of losing too many players, but they should stop what is making the exploiters exploit in the first place, instead of changing events to have less champions.

That’s actually a great idea:
You get the bag loot from participating in events:
1- Exotic bag: Gold Participation.
2- Rare bag: Silver participation.
3- Green bag: Copper Participation.

I pretty sure people would start farming events instead of champs, but the difference is that events take time to finish and scale well with more people. Which is the right thing.

This would require that ANet fixes the crappy requirements for participation first.

You can get a Copper reward in most events if you get like 5 kills. Out of hundreds. You can get a Gold reward in most events if you participate for more than 30 seconds. Out of as long as 30+ minutes.

This topic has a lot of weird propositions and some downright atrocious ideas. For example:

• To the guy who wanted the champion loots to be rewarded at event completion: That would not fix stalling events for more champion spawns, as you could still stall it and get more rewards, it just means that you would have to complete the event at the end to get them. It would, of course, do something about events that cannot be stalled.
• To the guy who claimed that no one plays for the experience: Have you ever played Monopoly? Did you happen to play board games when you were a kid? How about single player computer games? How about playing cardgames with your friends? It’s not exactly hard to make a case for all of those being about the experience rather than the reward. Because when the reward is just a “you win”, it’s not much of a reward at all.
• To the guy asking for champion boxes to be removed: Did you see how long some champions were up in the game before the boxes? Because I remember going to Caer Shadowfain multiple times every day for a while after the event timers in Penitent and Shelter were changed and it was rare for me not to see the Champion Risen Abomination just outside the camp.

Olba.5376:

Azraeel.1238:

Erasculio.2914:

In one of the interviews before release, ArenaNet mentioned that killing random monsters would give significantly less experience than doing events. This, they said, was so that people wouldn’t just mindlessly grind monsters over and over, rather feel like playing (and finishing) events would be the best course of action for them.

Then, we got the Champion loot.

ArenaNet introduced the Champion loot in an update that made the champions spawned during the Jormag event to not give any drops, since people were already stalling event completition so they could kill champions there. Later, people exploited the Orr event, creating very heated arguments both in-game and here in the forum, about how the exploiters were going against the players who actually wanted to do the event. ArenaNet effectively nerfed how the Anchorage event works in order to stop most of the exploiting.

I have just tried to do a Fireheart Rise invasion. It failed, but the interesting thing is that the last 15 minutes were a heated discussion, as a large number of players stopped doing the event when the Aetherblades appeared, and began farming champions in order to get more loot. Considering how it’s easy to farm champions without progressing the event (search for an Aetherblade event about killing the captain, and avoid killing it while defeating the champions that spawn around him), this was basically one more example of farmers hurting event completition for those who were playing the game as intended.

As of now, ArenaNet has just released a new update, with the following update note:

Mark Katzbach

Updated the advanced event scaling system to slightly reduce the rate of champions created by events scaling up in difficulty.

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. 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.

Really, this update has severely damaged the community, as people are fighting among themselves. ArenaNet is not going to ban the exploiters out of fear of losing too many players, but they should stop what is making the exploiters exploit in the first place, instead of changing events to have less champions.

That’s actually a great idea:
You get the bag loot from participating in events:
1- Exotic bag: Gold Participation.
2- Rare bag: Silver participation.
3- Green bag: Copper Participation.

I pretty sure people would start farming events instead of champs, but the difference is that events take time to finish and scale well with more people. Which is the right thing.

This would require that ANet fixes the crappy requirements for participation first.

You can get a Copper reward in most events if you get like 5 kills. Out of hundreds. You can get a Gold reward in most events if you participate for more than 30 seconds. Out of as long as 30+ minutes.

Yeah, the rewards shouldn’t be about competing with players, but cooperating.

Reward should be based 100% on how much of the event you were active/participating.

Like 65%-100% of the event you were active = gold
25%-64% = silver
1-24% copper

Something like that.

Also to avoid people just running the same event chains over and over again instead of nerfing events, just give it a decent cooldown (like 20-30 min or w/e) and make it so each chain you complete gives a bonus % to rewards you receive from other events in the zone, and double that bonus to event in other zones. You could exclude the giant events like temple from this so it only affects the smaller events. (This is to avoid the need of "I NEED TO GRIND MY % BONUS BEFORE TEMPLE STARTS nonsense)

Then you’d be encouraged to run different event chains throughout a zone, and eventually acquire enough of a bonus for events on other zones to switch zones and do events somewhere else of your choosing where it would be more profitable.

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.

Many people have commented on this, however I do feel there is something else to bring up that no one else really has. I mentioned this once before and it bear some additional thought. You really have to posit a question when looking at the whole farming issue:

Why do people play MMOs?

There are many things that you can have in an MMO: awe inspiring landscapes, exploration, a sense of wonder, competition, challenge, enthralling stories of tragedy and humor, interactive and engaging gameplay, etc. The problem with this is the fact that you can get all of these things elsewhere, from TV to books to other non-MMO videogames. So, you have to truly ask what is it that draws people to an MMO, when everything the MMO advertises is available elsewhere?

That is when you get into what I call the “escapist” demographic. Unlike other forms of entertainment, games provide a sense of personal accomplishment. You beat the bad guys, save the princess, you go home a hero. You perform an activity, and get a direct reward or gratification for this activity. It is much like a job in the sense that you perform a task, and get rewarded with money for performing the task. Only instead of getting money, in videogames you get emotional validation and recognition, even in a manner as tiny as the level up jingle.

MMOs provide something that is different from other games: displayable status. Sure you can play chess until the image of the board is burned into your retinas permanently, but when you sit down at the board you’re on the same plane as everyone else. This is not so in MMOs. In the MMO, there are many factors for inequality that show up time and again:

Level
Server Rank
Skill Rank
Leaderboard placement
Gear
Wealth
Achievement points

All of these things linger in the back of your character, defining you as a player on the whole. Whenever a person goes to play an MMO, these are the factors that ultimately stand out and make a player want to play an MMO as opposed to another game. In the MMO, you can save the princess, but instead of getting end credits you get a shiny flowing cape that proves to everyone else that you saved the princess, and people without this cape have not saved the princess.

It is here that you get farmers and grinders. I’m not talking about someone who “has farmed”, but someone who grinds constantly in the games. The people who farm in the game do so for a very simple reason: they want money, levels, shinies, achievement points, rank, accolades, status, and power. It is achievable, displayable, and directly impacts how strong they are compared to others. It is bragging rights, a sense of superiority over other players, both inconsequential and influential to gameplay.

A sense of superiority. This, is why so many people flock to MMOs. When life beats you down and you feel like a nameless cog in an unending clock of indifference, the MMO provides a means in which you can be powerful, but specifically “more powerful than other people”. Farming is the shortest path to this power. Put in unending hours, doing the same boring content over and over again, and you become more powerful than other people. Measurably. The cycle reinforces: farming begets more farming, since that is more people you want to be ahead of. You look at people who are so far ahead of you, and you yourself want to be there. Whether you are inspired, jealous, or do it merely out of spite for these guys, you yourself start farming too. Suddenly, you’ve clocked 1000 hours in to the game, and 900 of them have been a test of patience.

I call this “escapist” largely because it is done in lieu of real world accomplishment.

I’d say the biggest problem is what they put in the Boxes.

Basically…. more silver than any Event gives. Plus Greens with a minimum merch value
Atleast as much as COF generated if you do nothing else all day long.

And that’s the key word here… GENERATED.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize they should have thought more carefully about what they put in these things and stuck mostly to Crafting goods & Herbs instead like most other loot-bags give. Except with a cleaner Table that eliminates stuff people obviously don’t want (like Silk & Leather). …Then everything would eventually hit a point of “Saturation”. There is no Saturation point however for gold. It can just inflate every other commodity infinitely… (or until it reaches some kind of technical hurdle like in GW1 where people started substituting Ectos & Armbraces)

More on topic, I agree with the OP almost fully on this one. The whole “giving loot boxes to champions” thing was a bad idea. It is an award that is disproportionate to other sources of income in the game, and it rewards the wrong kind of behavior.

What they should’ve done is just make it so all champions are events, and the event gives the reward. The event should give the same reward, regardless of how many champions there were inside of it, so none of this “indefinitely farm embers” stuff that goes on. If the event has champions or is a group event, you get the reward regardless of how many champions you fought in it.

People forget that this (along with the Dungeon reward changes) are the FIRST set of changes to the ENTIRE rewards system. It only seems imbalanced because nothing else has been changed yet – give it some time!

azurrei.5691:

People forget that this (along with the Dungeon reward changes) are the FIRST set of changes to the ENTIRE rewards system. It only seems imbalanced because nothing else has been changed yet – give it some time!

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really hope so.

I really want everything in the game to be rewarding. =D

The sad realization of this is a majority of these events were ignored until the patch with champion loot drops. It just means that Dynamic Events were never appealing and are basically a waste of time for most players who don’t really bother much about the story/lore/mechanic behind every dynamic event they encountered.

They just want to loot shinies.

azurrei.5691:

People forget that this (along with the Dungeon reward changes) are the FIRST set of changes to the ENTIRE rewards system. It only seems imbalanced because nothing else has been changed yet – give it some time!

Well based on that we’re going to be able to earn 50 gold an hour compared to what we’ve been able to with this update.

Somehow I don’t think so.

I was wondering how long it might take….barely a week.

If they’re changing things already then why implement it in the first place?!

Champions – Chance for exotic loot + meterial
Dynamic events – Few silver, few karma, counting into some achievements
Logic- None

I sometimes feel like ordinary players have much better ideas than developers with years of experience… don’t know why.

None of this would be an issue if they made weapon skins, ascended gear, and precursors purchasable with karma.

There would be no reason to farm or time gate content, people could go back to enjoying the game their way, and the open world be full and vibrant again.

Olba.5376:

Azraeel.1238:

Erasculio.2914:

..SNIP….

That’s actually a great idea:
You get the bag loot from participating in events:
1- Exotic bag: Gold Participation.
2- Rare bag: Silver participation.
3- Green bag: Copper Participation.

I pretty sure people would start farming events instead of champs, but the difference is that events take time to finish and scale well with more people. Which is the right thing.

This would require that ANet fixes the crappy requirements for participation first.

You can get a Copper reward in most events if you get like 5 kills. Out of hundreds. You can get a Gold reward in most events if you participate for more than 30 seconds. Out of as long as 30+ minutes.

This topic has a lot of weird propositions and some downright atrocious ideas. For example:

• To the guy who wanted the champion loots to be rewarded at event completion: That would not fix stalling events for more champion spawns, as you could still stall it and get more rewards, it just means that you would have to complete the event at the end to get them. It would, of course, do something about events that cannot be stalled.
• To the guy who claimed that no one plays for the experience: Have you ever played Monopoly? Did you happen to play board games when you were a kid? How about single player computer games? How about playing cardgames with your friends? It’s not exactly hard to make a case for all of those being about the experience rather than the reward. Because when the reward is just a “you win”, it’s not much of a reward at all.
• To the guy asking for champion boxes to be removed: Did you see how long some champions were up in the game before the boxes? Because I remember going to Caer Shadowfain multiple times every day for a while after the event timers in Penitent and Shelter were changed and it was rare for me not to see the Champion Risen Abomination just outside the camp.

Actually, when I mentioned that “champion loot bags” are given upon event completion, I meant for the champion loot bags to be removed from champions altogether. Therefore you are rewarded for finishing an event instead of farming champions. This solves a LOT of issues:
1- No more champion farming
2- You have people farming events, which is the right thing to do. Anet should want people to farm events instead of champions.
3- Although the participation medals are a bit off, if you stick around in an event long enough, you get gold.
4- For all those free roaming champions in Orr or other, they can put a little event upon killing them, this way you will still get rewards from them.
5- No more unlimited Ember farm, or any other stupid champ farming event.s

zeromius.1604:

I wouldn’t consider the farmers to be high achievers by any means. They find the easiest things that reward the most. The MMORPG farmers have no equivalent in Sonic, Mario, or whatever 16 bit era platformer because they would never play those kinds of games.

The achievers are the people who aim for 100% completion in games like Metroid or Castlevania. They play hard games because they are challenging, not because they get some shiny trophy at the end. This was before achievements ever made it in games and you could only brag to close friends about doing something crazy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, farmers are addicted to farming. You might find it the most boring thing in the world but it doesn’t stop it from being addictive to some people. It’s like alcohol, caffeine, gambling, drugs, etc. Loot gives them that hit that they’re looking for. The so called phat loot gives them a really big hit. The fact that it’s all random is what helps drive this addiction.

Firstly, “high achievers” and Achievers are two different things. Notice I use upper case “A” for the latter. This is the category of players who wants to win, in any way possible. To “win” is to reach a goal or reward. In GW2 context (and other mmorpgs) one reward is gold(in-game currency), and gold can give you access to different other rewards. Difficulty has got nothing to do with the quality of winning. In fact, the easier the method, the better.

Secondly, being an Achiever is not exclusive. Therefore, there is some level of being an Achiever in everybody. Conversely, being a high-type Achiever doesn’t mean that all the player wants to do is “win”/farm. In this sense too, how can you even say that mmorpg farmers would never play such games as Sonic, Mario etc?? It is completely possible for any person to both like farming in mmorpgs and play Mario too. Its just their gameplay in Mario will be different than other types of players.

Thirdly, “100% completion”, bragging rights ARE a kind of “shiny trophy in the end”. They are in the same concept as getting a high score, being number 1 in leaderboard, gaining a lot of in-game currency, points, badges etc – whatever is the goal of the mechanics of the game. In GW2, a Legendary is an in-game item that can be considered as having a sense of prestige or gives a player bragging rights. At the very least. it is absolutely a legitimate goal or reward.

In this sense, there is absolutely no rule that you can only do one kind of strategy to achieve that “shiny trophy in the end”, whatever that is respective to the game. In Pacman, if you want to eat ghosts, kite them or hide in the corner – that’s up to you. As long as it enables you to finish the level. That is a game goal, and being able to say, “I finished level X” or “I got this score” is the reward.

In mmorpgs, farming is also a strategy to achieve a reward. And people who put much value in getting that reward (hence doing a lot of farming) are Achievers.

Lastly, I will not respond further to “farming as addiction” as I find it irrelevant. It is just as possible for any player to be “addicted” to Jumping Puzzles or doing dungeons as another player to farming. This touches more on one player’s “immersion” in the gameplay rather than farming in itself.

Azraeel.1238:

Olba.5376:

Azraeel.1238:

Erasculio.2914:

..SNIP….

That’s actually a great idea:
You get the bag loot from participating in events:
1- Exotic bag: Gold Participation.
2- Rare bag: Silver participation.
3- Green bag: Copper Participation.

I pretty sure people would start farming events instead of champs, but the difference is that events take time to finish and scale well with more people. Which is the right thing.

This would require that ANet fixes the crappy requirements for participation first.

You can get a Copper reward in most events if you get like 5 kills. Out of hundreds. You can get a Gold reward in most events if you participate for more than 30 seconds. Out of as long as 30+ minutes.

This topic has a lot of weird propositions and some downright atrocious ideas. For example:

• To the guy who wanted the champion loots to be rewarded at event completion: That would not fix stalling events for more champion spawns, as you could still stall it and get more rewards, it just means that you would have to complete the event at the end to get them. It would, of course, do something about events that cannot be stalled.
• To the guy who claimed that no one plays for the experience: Have you ever played Monopoly? Did you happen to play board games when you were a kid? How about single player computer games? How about playing cardgames with your friends? It’s not exactly hard to make a case for all of those being about the experience rather than the reward. Because when the reward is just a “you win”, it’s not much of a reward at all.
• To the guy asking for champion boxes to be removed: Did you see how long some champions were up in the game before the boxes? Because I remember going to Caer Shadowfain multiple times every day for a while after the event timers in Penitent and Shelter were changed and it was rare for me not to see the Champion Risen Abomination just outside the camp.

Actually, when I mentioned that “champion loot bags” are given upon event completion, I meant for the champion loot bags to be removed from champions altogether. Therefore you are rewarded for finishing an event instead of farming champions. This solves a LOT of issues:
1- No more champion farming
2- You have people farming events, which is the right thing to do. Anet should want people to farm events instead of champions.
3- Although the participation medals are a bit off, if you stick around in an event long enough, you get gold.
4- For all those free roaming champions in Orr or other, they can put a little event upon killing them, this way you will still get rewards from them.
5- No more unlimited Ember farm, or any other stupid champ farming event.s

That depends on how you’re going to pull it off.

Firstly, if you get just 1 bag for the whole event, then it’s going to nerf a lot of events that scale to have multiple champions. For example, the defenses at Penitent and Shelter. And that’s really not something you want to do.

Secondly, if you’re going to award 1 bag per champion after the event, you’re down the path I pointed out: people will either stall the event for more champion spawns or flock to the events that have the highest quantity of champions in the shortest amount of time.

There are already events that have champions, but are ignored because they take too long.

Olba.5376:

Azraeel.1238:

Olba.5376:

Azraeel.1238:

Erasculio.2914:

..SNIP….

That’s actually a great idea:
You get the bag loot from participating in events:
1- Exotic bag: Gold Participation.
2- Rare bag: Silver participation.
3- Green bag: Copper Participation.

I pretty sure people would start farming events instead of champs, but the difference is that events take time to finish and scale well with more people. Which is the right thing.

This would require that ANet fixes the crappy requirements for participation first.

You can get a Copper reward in most events if you get like 5 kills. Out of hundreds. You can get a Gold reward in most events if you participate for more than 30 seconds. Out of as long as 30+ minutes.

This topic has a lot of weird propositions and some downright atrocious ideas. For example:

• To the guy who wanted the champion loots to be rewarded at event completion: That would not fix stalling events for more champion spawns, as you could still stall it and get more rewards, it just means that you would have to complete the event at the end to get them. It would, of course, do something about events that cannot be stalled.
• To the guy who claimed that no one plays for the experience: Have you ever played Monopoly? Did you happen to play board games when you were a kid? How about single player computer games? How about playing cardgames with your friends? It’s not exactly hard to make a case for all of those being about the experience rather than the reward. Because when the reward is just a “you win”, it’s not much of a reward at all.
• To the guy asking for champion boxes to be removed: Did you see how long some champions were up in the game before the boxes? Because I remember going to Caer Shadowfain multiple times every day for a while after the event timers in Penitent and Shelter were changed and it was rare for me not to see the Champion Risen Abomination just outside the camp.

Actually, when I mentioned that “champion loot bags” are given upon event completion, I meant for the champion loot bags to be removed from champions altogether. Therefore you are rewarded for finishing an event instead of farming champions. This solves a LOT of issues:
1- No more champion farming
2- You have people farming events, which is the right thing to do. Anet should want people to farm events instead of champions.
3- Although the participation medals are a bit off, if you stick around in an event long enough, you get gold.
4- For all those free roaming champions in Orr or other, they can put a little event upon killing them, this way you will still get rewards from them.
5- No more unlimited Ember farm, or any other stupid champ farming event.s

That depends on how you’re going to pull it off.

Firstly, if you get just 1 bag for the whole event, then it’s going to nerf a lot of events that scale to have multiple champions. For example, the defenses at Penitent and Shelter. And that’s really not something you want to do.

Secondly, if you’re going to award 1 bag per champion after the event, you’re down the path I pointed out: people will either stall the event for more champion spawns or flock to the events that have the highest quantity of champions in the shortest amount of time.

There are already events that have champions, but are ignored because they take too long.

That is simple to solve. The event reward has to be designed so that you don’t get more champion rewards as ArenaNet thinks appropriate for the event. For example if there should be 4 champions be killed than you get max. 4 champion rewards even if you stall and more champions appear.

With this very little modification the proposal of the OP is great.

Olba.5376:

• To the guy asking for champion boxes to be removed: Did you see how long some champions were up in the game before the boxes? Because I remember going to Caer Shadowfain multiple times every day for a while after the event timers in Penitent and Shelter were changed and it was rare for me not to see the Champion Risen Abomination just outside the camp.

Just like you could never find anyone willing to finish Shank Anchorage pre-patch. I can’t count the number of times I and a few others had to beg for help. Suddenly post-patch everyone wanted to complete it (because the farmers were holding it up oh no), oh my god, the crisis— but almost none of those folks stayed to /finish/ Arah, I noticed.

Olba.5376:

• To the guy who claimed that no one plays for the experience: Have you ever played Monopoly? Did you happen to play board games when you were a kid? How about single player computer games? How about playing cardgames with your friends? It’s not exactly hard to make a case for all of those being about the experience rather than the reward. Because when the reward is just a “you win”, it’s not much of a reward at all.

All yes to your questions, and additionally, I happen to be academically doing a research on games.

Monopoly – there are rules(mechanics) and there is an aim/goal: to force all other players into bankruptcy. Achieving this is the aim of all monopoly players, whether you enjoy the gameplay or not. This aim is what basically drives the game to progress. Nobody is playing that game to only go around every lot in the board purposely and aimlessly – even Socializers.

Skyrim (single-player video game) – this example is ideal for this discussion, because this game boasts an open-world system that encourages wanderlust in a player. Basically, there is an option for the player to do nothing except to feel the “experience” of the gameplay. But that is still not the totality of the game. There are aims and goals – do quests, finish story line, attain items, etc. Even if you do nothing but just roam around, there is still a inherent goal to that activity – to explore the map! The experience itself cannot be the goal.

Minecraft – we can even take the discussion one level further. The original mechanics of this “game” (if it can even be called a game) is simply to create a digital environment. Yes, this “playing” for “experience” alone, but does the purely sandbox version of this game can truly be called a game? No. Because there are no rules, no mechanics, no aim. A game must have an aim – that’s part of a basic definition of a game. Minecraft becomes a game due to the other modes of the game, especially “Survival”. Now, the creation process is no longer just an experience, it has a purpose.

Bridge – arguably the most social-oriented card game. Studies shows that players who play bridge mainly belong to the category of the players who do not put so much value in winning as they do in simply socializing through the game. BUT it doesn’t mean that they do not play to win. The game itself cannot progress without the players trying to achieve that goal. In other words, even in Socializer-type players, there is still the instinctive drive to achieve a game goal. Of course!

You can argue that there is a unique category of (meta) players. One example is us – or more specifically, ME- players who play games not necessarily as intended players but to STUDY the game. So my aim is not really part of the intended mechanics of the game. Even so, I still have an aim ASIDE from simply experiencing the game.

Man this mechanic has more problems than a pinto.

Seriously I don’t think there is an acceptable solution to this problem because Anet created some sort of monster. The fact that Anet has gone so far to stand out from all other mmos that in itself creates problems that are squarely unique to this mmo and this one only.

You know this is something that would never happen in a game like EQ2 or other mmos for one simple reason: You’re competing with everyone else already.
You have to complete your own quests for loot, you have find your own loot and you have to work with other people in order to get…more loot.

I think the civility in wow can certainly out-class this game’s community six ways to sundae. (pun). Just solely for the fact that you have play nice with everyone in order to get your loot seems to be a far superior incentive than what guild wars 2 “Every man for himself” motto seems to be.

What good is working together if my loot is no different from your loot off the same mob? Why should I bother completing dynamic events if my reward is less worthwhile than what a newbie at level one would get in any other game? Why should I even care if anyone likes me or not when I can just jump into anything at any time regardless and still get a sweet ride?

Now these champ chest are nothing new, nothing new at all even in the slightest. Names have been dropping master chests in mmos for DECADES. The only difference is I have absolutely no reason to care about anyone since I get mine anyway. That’s why there is the most intensive player backlash i’ve ever seen in any mmo.

Anet, you really went too far in wanting to change the face of mmos. You created a game that essentially needs nobody at all. A glorified one player game that happens to have other people in it. A game I would rather play alone because having to conceive the idea of working with other people for no good reason would be a hindrance to my own skills, ability or loot than an asset.

Yeah…..

Reinforcments.5713:

Man this mechanic has more problems than a pinto.

Seriously I don’t think there is an acceptable solution to this problem because Anet created some sort of monster. The fact that Anet has gone so far to stand out from all other mmos that in itself creates problems that are squarely unique to this mmo and this one only.

You know this is something that would never happen in a game like EQ2 or other mmos for one simple reason: You’re competing with everyone else already.
You have to complete your own quests for loot, you have find your own loot and you have to work with other people in order to get…more loot.

I think the civility in wow can certainly out-class this game’s community six ways to sundae. (pun). Just solely for the fact that you have play nice with everyone in order to get your loot seems to be a far superior incentive than what guild wars 2 “Every man for himself” motto seems to be.

What good is working together if my loot is no different from your loot off the same mob? Why should I bother completing dynamic events if my reward is less worthwhile than what a newbie at level one would get in any other game? Why should I even care if anyone likes me or not when I can just jump into anything at any time regardless and still get a sweet ride?

Now these champ chest are nothing new, nothing new at all even in the slightest. Names have been dropping master chests in mmos for DECADES. The only difference is I have absolutely no reason to care about anyone since I get mine anyway. That’s why there is the most intensive player backlash i’ve ever seen in any mmo.

Anet, you really went too far in wanting to change the face of mmos. You created a game that essentially needs nobody at all. A glorified one player game that happens to have other people in it. A game I would rather play alone because having to conceive the idea of working with other people for no good reason would be a hindrance to my own skills, ability or loot than an asset.

Yeah…..

Very WELL SAID. Enough said ANET wanted this to happen and they’re in the process of making it more worst and worst unless there are some common sense to play the game now with all of these HORRIBLE mindset towards it.

WORST ever.

Before the champions dropped their boxes, nobody really cared about them. Now, (nearly)the only thing the people do is farm champions. The loot from champions is way to high for the better of the game. Reduce it. Offer an guaranteed random item and a chance for some crafting mat. related to the level of the champ. That is more than enough, but not enough to spoil events for it. No coin, no other bonus.

The current system spoils all of the game!

I think it would be cool if every event would have significant daily reward. To encourage doing different events instead of trains.

Rexurus.3526:

Reinforcments.5713:

Man this mechanic has more problems than a pinto.

Seriously I don’t think there is an acceptable solution to this problem because Anet created some sort of monster. The fact that Anet has gone so far to stand out from all other mmos that in itself creates problems that are squarely unique to this mmo and this one only.

You know this is something that would never happen in a game like EQ2 or other mmos for one simple reason: You’re competing with everyone else already.
You have to complete your own quests for loot, you have find your own loot and you have to work with other people in order to get…more loot.

I think the civility in wow can certainly out-class this game’s community six ways to sundae. (pun). Just solely for the fact that you have play nice with everyone in order to get your loot seems to be a far superior incentive than what guild wars 2 “Every man for himself” motto seems to be.

What good is working together if my loot is no different from your loot off the same mob? Why should I bother completing dynamic events if my reward is less worthwhile than what a newbie at level one would get in any other game? Why should I even care if anyone likes me or not when I can just jump into anything at any time regardless and still get a sweet ride?

Now these champ chest are nothing new, nothing new at all even in the slightest. Names have been dropping master chests in mmos for DECADES. The only difference is I have absolutely no reason to care about anyone since I get mine anyway. That’s why there is the most intensive player backlash i’ve ever seen in any mmo.

Anet, you really went too far in wanting to change the face of mmos. You created a game that essentially needs nobody at all. A glorified one player game that happens to have other people in it. A game I would rather play alone because having to conceive the idea of working with other people for no good reason would be a hindrance to my own skills, ability or loot than an asset.

Yeah…..

Very WELL SAID. Enough said ANET wanted this to happen and they’re in the process of making it more worst and worst unless there are some common sense to play the game now with all of these HORRIBLE mindset towards it.

WORST ever.

Also….this would be a good pitch for an Zero Punctuation episode.

There’s nothing wrong with champ loot aside from stalling certain events to farm them endlessly which should be fixed.

Before champ loot it was just regular mob with aoe spam, it’s exactly the same thing, champ loot needed to happen because the risk vs reward for champs was ridiculously bad.

It’s just now they need to apply the same treatment to the rest of the areas in the game so it’s nice and even and champ/mob loot doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

It’s that simple. Don’t nerf anything, buff the rest of the game so it isn’t pointless in terms of rewards.

My suggestion would be to award champ boxes and increase other rewards for each DE rather than having them drop off the individual champs during the event. However, the catch would be you also have to be present at the end of the event to get your reward. That helps tone down the tag and run. The 1-2s we get now for event completion is peanuts to what we get killing things during the event. You could also make each event have multiple phases if you wanted in order to further reward those that stuck it out the entire duration vs. those that only were there a few seconds…or you could up the thresholds for bronze, silver, gold.

Wow this is getting way too long. It’s more like 6 pages but everyone’s got a long post. Those arguing against farming: If someone wants to hack and slash for loot, let them. Everyone doesn’t have to play a game your way, there is nothing wrong with farming(it’s actually good, without farmers many items would be out of reach. farmers increase the amount of mats/skins).

As for a better event loot system: Allow the meta event chains(gates of arah as a great example) to scale in difficulty and reward. For Arah: There are 5 events which produce tons of mobs. Let the first 3 events scale but be faster and produce fewer champs while the 2 final events can be very difficult and produce larger rewards and champs. Anet’s approach was to nerf ember without providing an incentive to keep going. You can’t keep changing single variables and expect to fix everything. Players discover the next best thing and keep going.

It seems to me ArenaNet is approaching (or already at) a crossroads. They’re going to have to decide whether they want to make the game they originally wanted to make (the game many of us signed on to play) or pander to the “MOAR LOOT!” crowd. I honestly don’t see how they’re going to be able to do both. One glance at the new Achievements overlay they just added to our character select screen tells me they’ve already made up their mind.

darkace.8925:

It seems to me ArenaNet is approaching (or already at) a crossroads. They’re going to have to decide whether they want to make the game they originally wanted to make (the game many of us signed on to play) or pander to the “MOAR LOOT!” crowd. I honestly don’t see how they’re going to be able to do both. One glance at the new Achievements overlay they just added to our character select screen tells me they’ve already made up their mind.

They can and SHOULD do both.

Easy, make everything in the game lucrative, just like they did for champion loot.

Then everyone can do whatever they want and still get money. And if someone wants to put in the effort to get extra amounts then they can do the more challenging stuff.

Knote.2904:

darkace.8925:

It seems to me ArenaNet is approaching (or already at) a crossroads. They’re going to have to decide whether they want to make the game they originally wanted to make (the game many of us signed on to play) or pander to the “MOAR LOOT!” crowd. I honestly don’t see how they’re going to be able to do both. One glance at the new Achievements overlay they just added to our character select screen tells me they’ve already made up their mind.

They can and SHOULD do both.

Easy, make everything in the game lucrative, just like they did for champion loot.

Then everyone can do whatever they want and still get money. And if someone wants to put in the effort to get extra amounts then they can do the more challenging stuff.

It doesn’t work that way. If everything is lucrative, then nothing is lucrative. Inflation is funny like that.

darkace.8925:

Knote.2904:

darkace.8925:

It seems to me ArenaNet is approaching (or already at) a crossroads. They’re going to have to decide whether they want to make the game they originally wanted to make (the game many of us signed on to play) or pander to the “MOAR LOOT!” crowd. I honestly don’t see how they’re going to be able to do both. One glance at the new Achievements overlay they just added to our character select screen tells me they’ve already made up their mind.

They can and SHOULD do both.

Easy, make everything in the game lucrative, just like they did for champion loot.

Then everyone can do whatever they want and still get money. And if someone wants to put in the effort to get extra amounts then they can do the more challenging stuff.

It doesn’t work that way. If everything is lucrative, then nothing is lucrative. Inflation is funny like that.

That’s my point, then there won’t be 1 or 2 boring things that’s the only way to make money and everyone can just do activities they find fun and “progress” in the economy.

if everything was the same in reward, then the masses would only do the easier stuff to get the same reward as the harder stuff. Thus a majority of the content gets ignored.

Hard balance to find, risk/reward. Right now the lucrative stuff is low to moderate risk, especially with the zergs running around you don’t have to do much but tag along. This should give low to moderate rewards honestly because of the repetition and ease.

The only reason they give good rewards is because the mob itself is “harder” then others in stats, but the skills are so simplistic that we are able to spam and out number it.

Right now everything seems like low to moderate risk with some things having huge rewards and others pointless.

Ashen.2907:

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.

This here^

Honestly if they removed the loot i just wouldn’t do the events and many many others wouldn’t either, so then you’d have to little players and you’d fail anyway…

Jeez some people can suck the fun outta everything..

CMF.5461:

if everything was the same in reward, then the masses would only do the easier stuff to get the same reward as the harder stuff. Thus a majority of the content gets ignored.

Hard balance to find, risk/reward. Right now the lucrative stuff is low to moderate risk, especially with the zergs running around you don’t have to do much but tag along. This should give low to moderate rewards honestly because of the repetition and ease.

The only reason they give good rewards is because the mob itself is “harder” then others in stats, but the skills are so simplistic that we are able to spam and out number it.

Right now everything seems like low to moderate risk with some things having huge rewards and others pointless.

I’m not saying everything should give the exact same reward. But the rewards vs time spent should be the same/similar, with some things being higher based on the difficulty or effort required.

Even if something is still the “best” even by like 5-10% that’s still way better than how it is now, and giving up that extra 5-10% might not be a big deal if you don’t feel like doing that activity.

Knote.2904:

darkace.8925:

Knote.2904:

darkace.8925:

It seems to me ArenaNet is approaching (or already at) a crossroads. They’re going to have to decide whether they want to make the game they originally wanted to make (the game many of us signed on to play) or pander to the “MOAR LOOT!” crowd. I honestly don’t see how they’re going to be able to do both. One glance at the new Achievements overlay they just added to our character select screen tells me they’ve already made up their mind.

They can and SHOULD do both.

Easy, make everything in the game lucrative, just like they did for champion loot.

Then everyone can do whatever they want and still get money. And if someone wants to put in the effort to get extra amounts then they can do the more challenging stuff.

It doesn’t work that way. If everything is lucrative, then nothing is lucrative. Inflation is funny like that.

That’s my point, then there won’t be 1 or 2 boring things that’s the only way to make money and everyone can just do activities they find fun and “progress” in the economy.

My thought is that making everything lucrative doesn’t mesh well with the war on bots. Look at the latest batch of group events: Karka queen, Queen’s Pavilion, Scarlet Invasion; for us players, these aren’t any less “mindless” than running a large circle killing easy mobs, but the event locations and times are variable. The mobs actually kill people. Perhaps that makes it more difficult/impossible to bot.

That being said, I fail to understand why Orr Temple event completions aren’t much more lucrative than they are now.

Silentsins.3726:

Knote.2904:

darkace.8925:

Knote.2904:

darkace.8925:

It seems to me ArenaNet is approaching (or already at) a crossroads. They’re going to have to decide whether they want to make the game they originally wanted to make (the game many of us signed on to play) or pander to the “MOAR LOOT!” crowd. I honestly don’t see how they’re going to be able to do both. One glance at the new Achievements overlay they just added to our character select screen tells me they’ve already made up their mind.

They can and SHOULD do both.

Easy, make everything in the game lucrative, just like they did for champion loot.

Then everyone can do whatever they want and still get money. And if someone wants to put in the effort to get extra amounts then they can do the more challenging stuff.

It doesn’t work that way. If everything is lucrative, then nothing is lucrative. Inflation is funny like that.

That’s my point, then there won’t be 1 or 2 boring things that’s the only way to make money and everyone can just do activities they find fun and “progress” in the economy.

My thought is that making everything lucrative doesn’t mesh well with the war on bots. Look at the latest batch of group events: Karka queen, Queen’s Pavilion, Scarlet Invasion; for us players, these aren’t any less “mindless” than running a large circle killing easy mobs, but the event locations and times are variable. The mobs actually kill people. Perhaps that makes it more difficult/impossible to bot.

That being said, I fail to understand why Orr Temple event completions aren’t much more lucrative than they are now.

You’re kidding me right?

Right now the easiest, most mindless activity in the game POSSIBLE is the most rewarding, how is that combating bots?

Anyone can technically bot with this, I can go afk with auto attack on and get loot.

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. 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.

Exactly, I don’t understand why people are missing this point. If you assume the developers of the game are doing things intentionally, then they obviously intended for people to farm tons of Aetherblade mobs for loot during these events. It is causing a massive inflation in the game’s economy, and either the developers are incredibly foolish or that is intentional.

The ONLY reason people mob the Aetherblade spawns is because the Aetherblade spawns are much (much, much, much) more profitable than others; Anet made it this way on purpose, so if people are mad about farming of Aetherblade spawns they should complain about the way Anet designed the event, not about the fact that people are playing the event in the way it was designed (focusing on the mobs that are much more profitable than others, which will always happen in every event ever and in real life so it must be assumed that if developers give much greater reward for certain things than others they expect people to focus more on those things).

It is not a factor of 1 or 2, the Aetherblade mobs are probably 10x more profitable to attack than minion spawns and it is absurd to assume that is a design accident.

AND THERE IS NOTHING INHERENTLY WRONG WITH THAT! If you think there is something wrong with the fact the Aetherblades are so much more profitable than other spawns that is another discussion, but it is not obvious that there is anything wrong with it and I don’t understand why many players are trying to consider it a mistake. If you have a big problem with the way the game is designed you should address that issue, not get mad at other players for playing the game.

Killing atherblades will not cause a event to fail. Last time I checked they are Scarlet’s minions too.

The problem is not with the champion loot that was needed too. The problem is the Dynamic event rewards are not good enough. They neither scale with time difficutly or level. not to mention karma and XP at the moment for most level 80’s are useless. Make those more useful and you fix the dynamic event problem.

I have the feeling this is in the works.

Knote.2904:

You’re kidding me right?

Right now the easiest, most mindless activity in the game POSSIBLE is the most rewarding, how is that combating bots?

Anyone can technically bot with this, I can go afk with auto attack on and get loot.

Simple, bots function by running a very specific path and performing a small range of scripted actions. Not only do the maps change every hour for this event, but you have the event circles being completed at different times by different groups, ect., meaning that there is no “set path” to run.

I suppose you could AFK for the rewards at the end… it would be a stretch to call that the most profitable use of your time though.

projectcedric.6951:

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.

I play Mario Party solely for the experience, for the board game madness, for the mini-games that happens between rounds, for the items and features that randomly affect each turn. For the fact that in each round I can expect something totally new, be it mini-games, luck, hazards, item interactions, messing with my opponents and so on.

Sure, we naturally try to get that extra lead that increases our chance of winning, since that’s the dynamic of the game. But in the end, me and my friends are not even thinking of the ending results nor do we care if we got first or last place, it’s the process that makes it such a fun game and an enjoyable experience.

I love this solution. This champion farming fest is going a bit too far for my liking… It’s really breaking the game. I recently left a guild, of which I really liked the people, but I couldn’t DO anything with them, because all they did was farm.

Anet needs to promote their event system that they are so proud of. Events PROGRESS the maps. It’s kind of sad to see most maps at a stand still (e.g. most dungeons contested) because well… it’s just not worth it.

To me it’s just another chapter in the reward system issues book.

Did Anet realise people would fail events on purpose to spawn more champions, did they anticipate the pain train zerging in circles endlessly because of the quick respawn of champs?

Hard to say.