I have not seen a single good answer to the question “Why should 30 minutes a day for 7 days be rewarded more than 3.5 hours a day for one day?”
I’ve seen people questioning the definition of “reward”. I’ve seen people insulting each other’s motivation for playing. I’ve seen people creating false dichotomies between dailies and a game ruled by hardcore players. I’ve seen people saying dailies are better than nothing. I’ve seen all that, but not a single post that can explain why two people who spend the exact same amount of time in-game are rewarded differently, simply because of when they play.
It’s a necessary evil. They could allow you to just earn as many rewards as you had time to complete, but then people like me who are unemployed and don’t have anything else to do would end up even further ahead of casual one-a-week players than we already are.
I mean, they could change from Dailies to Weeklies, where you complete the same number of tasks for the same rewards as 7 Dailies but had a week to do it, but then what about people who only play for 7 hours every 2 weeks, or 10.5 hours every 3 weeks? What if your schedule leaves you with Saturdays to play but then one Saturday you have to attend a wedding or something? With a Dailies-type setup, you gain or you miss out on rewards in step with how much you play. Lower granularity would lead to situations in which you got screwed.
Sometimes the dailies force players to play change the way they play. By making players play in areas they are not in the mood to play. This can leave whole other zones nearly empty. This goes against the play your own way philosophy.
The Dailies give you enough options that this isn’t really a problem. The vast majority of the time I find myself completing Dailies by accident just by playing the game, and on days that I decide to complete the Dailies on purpose, I appreciate the opportunity to be rewarded for completing content I may not normally complete. Like today, for example, I have less play time than I usually do, so this morning I decided to power through my Dailies. I looked at the options available and decided to hop on over to Frostgorge Sound and actually complete some of those events that I usually just pass by on my way to the Claw of Jormag event or HotW. It was a pleasant way to spend my morning, different from what I normally do, and I got to hear an amusing exchange between two quaggan about how to get guys.
The way Dailies are designed right now, you can either play like you normally do and complete them, or you can pick a few that sounds like interesting diversions and do those. There are enough options every day that both options are almost always available.
The problem with dailies in GW2, is that they award laurels (they didn’t always and nobody disliked the concept of dailies too much before they did), and laurels are time-gated, with no catch-up option.
I actually really like the Laurel system, overall. Best-in-slot trinkets that won’t bankrupt you and can be acquired in parallel with working towards a Legendary? Sign me up!
Some sort of catch-up option would be pretty cool, though. Keep the maximum possible number of Laurels the same for everyone, but if you fall behind maybe you can get a second Laurel per day by completing three more Daily categories or something.
I main Ele and Necro, though I have an alt of each profession at level 80.
How to Condi Reaper on a budget
Everything I say is only in reference to PvE and WvW.