Guild Wars 2

Hello all!

I’d like to discuss with you something that has been bothering me since Ember Bay was released: Daily Quests.
With the direction the game is taking, i fear that with each new map released, more daily quests/hearts will come, and i true believe this is a poor way to “keep people playing”
I remember how painful it was in WoW to be obliged to do dailies simply because either you needed rep or the loot was simply way too good to pass, and in gw2, the second is the issue, because if i have to farm toons of petrified woods or blood rubies to get some good ascended stuff, i feel like i must to that to gear my chars – if you want to be relevant in raids or whatever, meta dictates that you must have the best gear available or GTFO.

My point is: I don’t want GW2 to become a secondary job as it happened with WoW, there are way more solutions to keep people entertained than simply throwing dailies (and new currency) at us non-stoping.

And please, don’t come with the cookie-cutter comment “yeah but you don’t need meta, play what you want and how you want”, because my point is: now, it is “fine”, but my fear is about the future and how new expansions can be affected by that.

Thanks!

From what you’ve described it sounds like the root of the problem is not the dailies but feeling the need to have multiple characters using the newest and/or best equipment, and the dailies are simply how you’re going about getting the materials for that.

Firstly I would have thought that only affects a minority of players as most people seem to choose 1, or maybe 2 characters for raiding and other ‘end game’ areas where you need the best equipment and if they have others they use them for other activities.

Secondly unless you’re expecting to change your stats a lot you can use other ascended equipment in place of Blood Rubies. Or if you’ve got the storage space (maybe a rarely used character’s inventory?) you could save the most commonly used stat combinations and switch them out when you need to.

Removing the dailies wouldn’t change any of that, it would just remove one of the ways you can get the currencies you need.

It’s not a system problem, it’s a you problem. Take control of your impulses, and take responsibility for your choices.

Also, stop fearing the future. Play in the now. The future will sort itself out, and accept there will come a time when you stop playing for whatever reason… no point in spoiling your now with fears of what might be.

~EW

If there were a gear treadmill in this game, then you would have a point. However, there isn’t. I already have a full set of ascended gear. The only thing I could really use is switchable runes.

I don’t really see a problem here.

At the end of the day, MMO pay-styles vary greatly depending on player choices. The continuum ranges from “drop-in for a short time when you feel like it” to “play for many hours every day.” For reasons related to their profit models, developers provide things to keep the players at the “many hours” end of the continuum busy.

Problems crop up when players at the “drop-in” end of the continuum want the rewards put in for the players at the “many hours” end. Players who might otherwise recognize that “obsessive content play X” is not aimed at me cannot get past the desire for virtual prize Y. Unfortunately, the virtual prizes are what gives the game longevity. They aren’t going away, and neither is this issue.

IndigoSundown.5419:

At the end of the day, MMO pay-styles vary greatly depending on player choices. The continuum ranges from “drop-in for a short time when you feel like it” to “play for many hours every day.” For reasons related to their profit models, developers provide things to keep the players at the “many hours” end of the continuum busy.

Problems crop up when players at the “drop-in” end of the continuum want the rewards put in for the players at the “many hours” end. Players who might otherwise recognize that “obsessive content play X” is not aimed at me cannot get past the desire for virtual prize Y. Unfortunately, the virtual prizes are what gives the game longevity. They aren’t going away, and neither is this issue.

Actually I feel that these daily purchases makes dropping in much easier.

When Ember Bay first came out I would do everything on 3 characters. Then it dropped to just 4 hearts and some of the bosses then it was 4 hearts on one character and now it has dropped to nothing on any character. I have stopped partly because I know I can get 200+ petrified wood a day if it ever came to that(the chance of this is extremely low) so at worst I would need 2 days or a weekend to get everything I needed.

I’d rather have a handful of dailies I can choose to run for a few guaranteed bloodstone rubies / petrified wood than have those items completely relegated to RNG or longer events.

I only do dailies when I feel like doing them. The more alternatives there are, the more likely is that I will feel interested in doing them… so, for me, the more, the merrier.

I don’t see what’s so bad about people receiving rewards for playing, when they decide to play. I also don’t see how this could be seen as a form of coercion. Nobody forces you to play for rewards.

Of course, if you don’t do the dailies, you’ll receive less compensation than people who do them… So what? I really mean this: Who cares! No one should need to be ultra rich, 100% efficient at playing, or spend half the day farming, to enjoy the game.

IndigoSundown.5419:

At the end of the day, MMO pay-styles vary greatly depending on player choices. The continuum ranges from “drop-in for a short time when you feel like it” to “play for many hours every day.” For reasons related to their profit models, developers provide things to keep the players at the “many hours” end of the continuum busy.

Problems crop up when players at the “drop-in” end of the continuum want the rewards put in for the players at the “many hours” end. Players who might otherwise recognize that “obsessive content play X” is not aimed at me cannot get past the desire for virtual prize Y. Unfortunately, the virtual prizes are what gives the game longevity. They aren’t going away, and neither is this issue.

In that case I think the solution is a combination of accepting it will take longer for you to reach your goals and being more selective.

I’m not quite at the ‘drop-in’ end but I think I’m closer to it than the ‘many hours’ end. And yet I’ve got some rewards that are definitely intended for players who spend more time (or money) on the game than me and I’m working on others. For example I’ve almost finished my 2nd legendary, I’ve got most of a set of ascended equipment and by the end of the week I’ll have the Shadow Raven mini pet.

If it’s something I really want and it’s only available for a limited time (like the Shadow Raven) then I make time to play like those other people – whenever I’m home and not doing essential things I’ll be farming for it. Then I take a break for a week or two, however long I feel like.

Otherwise I just work on it at my own pace. It took me a year and a half to make my first legendary and it’s going to be at least 7 months for my second. Ascended armour I’ve been making as and when I feel like it and have the materials.

And I accept that because it takes me longer to get things I want there are some things I’ll probably never get around to obtaining, but that’s ok because they’re a much lower priority (ranging from ‘would be nice but not worth the effort’ to ’wouldn’t use it if you paid me’).

I hope they make more zones like Ember Bay in the future. I love having the option to go there to farm karma, unbound magic and petrified wood.

Emphasis on “option”. I don’t do it every day but maybe when I’m winding down for the night I’ll spend 10 minutes (or less) there to do the dailies, and in passing get a boost in the items mentioned above.

You can do half of the dailies in bloodstone fen in about three minutes. Literally. The gliding skills and collecting 10 unbound magic take no time at all.

You can get two of the three dailies in Ember Bay in under ten minutes and if you’re lucky, you can get all three in that time. If you only go for one of them, you can get that in about 90 seconds.

The problem with MMOs is that casual players need stuff to do, and some people need a road map. If you don’t give them dailies they won’t do anything because there’s nothing telling them what to do.

For a guy like me, I could do without it but youd’ be surprised at how many casual players don’t want to do anything they want.,…they want a checklist.

I go in, I do the two easy bloodstone fen dailies on most days because it’s very fast. I do the ember bay dalies almost every day because I’d like to get ascended accessories for most of my toons without spending guild commendations which I’m currently using for minis.

But I don’t do more than the dailes because I don’t need those accessories faster than I’m getting them….at least on most days. Sometimes I do hang out in Ember Bay because I’m having fun hanging out in Ember Bay.

The game shouldn’t really determine what you do. If you’re not having fun, do something else.

Its strange that Anet went down the road of repeatable hearts/dailies in the new zones, that some people now feel compelled to do, and yet when they do them some people say its your own self control that is needed to ignore them, Anet put a cap on dailies because people didn’t have any self control, and now we have dailies without a cap, that people feel they must do to compete.

The new hearts/dailies from new zones should be capped at repeatable 15-20 times then they stop, that way people wouldn’t feel compelled to do them, just like they no longer have to feel compelled to do the normal dailies that Anet capped.

@Vayne, me and my friends used to have fun doing dailies to get to next achievement chests but Anet stopped that, should we quit the game and find a new game?

Vayne.8563:

For a guy like me, I could do without it but youd’ be surprised at how many casual players don’t want to do anything they want.,…they want a checklist.

That’s a good point too.

Reminds me of trying to teach my dad to play Minecraft. He started it on his own and got totally confused because there was nothing to say what he should be doing. I listed some options (build a house, make some weapons and armour and explore, find some Redstone and learn to craft with it, tame animals etc.) and he kept asking “But why? Why do I need to do that?” and got very frustrated when my answer was always “you don’t have to, but it’s one thing you could do”.

Eventually I told him about the Ender Dragon and that killing it required finding a way into the zone and would probably need the best equipment he could get, and to get that he would need a safe place to store stuff and sleep etc. Then he was happy – the point of playing Minecraft was to kill the dragon and all the other stuff was building up to that. I decided not to correct him. (Or tell him about the shared server I played on where we build rollercoasters, flying rainbow castles, a maze, pixel art in the sky and all kinds of other stuff that wasn’t going to help us ‘win’ the game.)

Whereas I’m the complete opposite. If anything I have trouble sticking to the pre-determined goals instead of making my own. I’ll be in the middle of seeking out hero points to unlock a jump skill so I can get to the top of a mountain to take a screenshot and/or glide off when I’ll remember I’m playing a key runner and was supposed to just do the storyline and nothing else. (That’s a real example.)

Danikat.8537:

Vayne.8563:

For a guy like me, I could do without it but youd’ be surprised at how many casual players don’t want to do anything they want.,…they want a checklist.

That’s a good point too.

Reminds me of trying to teach my dad to play Minecraft. He started it on his own and got totally confused because there was nothing to say what he should be doing. I listed some options (build a house, make some weapons and armour and explore, find some Redstone and learn to craft with it, tame animals etc.) and he kept asking “But why? Why do I need to do that?” and got very frustrated when my answer was always “you don’t have to, but it’s one thing you could do”.

Eventually I told him about the Ender Dragon and that killing it required finding a way into the zone and would probably need the best equipment he could get, and to get that he would need a safe place to store stuff and sleep etc. Then he was happy – the point of playing Minecraft was to kill the dragon and all the other stuff was building up to that. I decided not to correct him. (Or tell him about the shared server I played on where we build rollercoasters, flying rainbow castles, a maze, pixel art in the sky and all kinds of other stuff that wasn’t going to help us ‘win’ the game.)

Whereas I’m the complete opposite. If anything I have trouble sticking to the pre-determined goals instead of making my own. I’ll be in the middle of seeking out hero points to unlock a jump skill so I can get to the top of a mountain to take a screenshot and/or glide off when I’ll remember I’m playing a key runner and was supposed to just do the storyline and nothing else. (That’s a real example.)

There are different players. I’m a little more like your dad than like you. I like seeing progress towards a goal. I very quickly lose interest if things get too sandbox-y.

The problem boils down to this……. Daily schedules enforce the idea that if you’re not participating in that daily activity, you’re bottlenecking yourself later when the reward might be of value to you. Ascended mats have this same problem, where most people still craft the time gated pre-mats (mithrillium, silk weave, reseidue, cord), because at some point down the line they have a need for a bunch of them; and this way they only bottle neck is the T2-4 mats to produce the final material.

But this issue is the same thing going on with Mystic Coins- You don’t “need” it most of the time….. but when you do, the time gate becomes a source of constant frustration. Thus, its encouraging us to hoard them until we DO find something to do with them. You could by some of these materials off the TP…. but the mark up created by the daily limit is significant, and it’ll compound because it also means you need a lot more then is what you can produce in a reasonable time frame.

The way I see it, Guild Wars 2 expects the player to only work on one crafting project at a time, and everything is gated with that in mind. But the reality is players tend to juggle 5 or 6 projects in parallel because of how certain rare mats are collected… and when those projects share a common resource behind a time gate, they hit the wall hard on the time gate. The option to “buy” some materials are there…. but then it causes the player to shift to basic gold farming circuits (champ bags, etc) which is time not spent doing the 6+ dailies of unique mats/currency.

“Impulse” is not the problem, but it does make the time gate issue far worse. If something needed could be generated in unlimited supply via effort (like a unique item in the map reward cycle), then its basically a matter of just playing that zone as long as you need to get that item, and then stop or switch off.

As of right now, every hour not spent in Mad Lab is huge drop in my gold generation despite the each bag being only 5 silver. However, that surge of gold on the market has driven up the price of everything else (as its done every year since launch). Thus I have 2 choices…. do I farm Mad Lab until my eyes bleed, because its profitable and only around for a limited time? Or do I do my daily farm runs to get unique currencies I need for the projects I’m working on?

Having weighed a lot of factors, the gold is currently worth more for my time; but it sets back all my projects for 2 weeks…. and I don’t have the 8+ hours a day to do all of them each day. With things that have a practical attainable life span (like Living story achievements), when those chapters release I lose a weekend to go full bore on them, because getting help for it after the fact is difficult….. especially in a guild where they’ve already gotten sick of doing that achievement run, or the achievement itself was made harder due to fixes/changes in the week following.

People “talk” like crafting projects and progression work like the PvP reward tracks, where you focus on one at a time- but the reality is that much of these projects have overlaps, time gates, or bottlenecks that encourage us to do things in Parallel, so that no matter what we’re doing, we’re getting closer to a goal.

This is why the collections for the HOT legendaries had such an uproar, because you couldn’t even work the collection for the next phase until you did all the crafting requirements from the previous one. And considering the some odd 1000 Ingots and wood planks needed at each phase, followed by 15 each Spirit wood and Deldrimor ingots, I would had casually worked on the collection while in the process of gathering mats…. but I can’t. So instead I’m compelled to hammer out the Collection as fast as possible, so I can then spend all my time farming the mats I need for the crafting portion (which generally takes 5 times as long, even with buying mats to help top off). It runs too serial in a system that punishes the player on time if not working in parallel.

Edit: And adding to this further is the fact that most of how the game “works”, does not unless we have a full set of gear. <—- If want to know what the source of motivation is, this is the root. Remember Elite specs on Day 1 of HOT?… and how most classes needed their Grand master trait to really pull the class together? But you weren’t allowed to do that because “its was supposed to be a journey”? Its a reward system thats designed to be at odds with the game play system.

^I don’t play like that, at all. Thus, the reward/game play systems aren’t at odds, for me.

I like Dailies; gives me something to do. But, if something else comes along, I don’t feel any need to do a particular set of Dailies. For instance, since Halloween dropped, I’ve yet to set foot in Bloodstone Fen or Ember Bay. Before Halloween, I did Ember Bay every day, and usually, at least, part of Bloodstone, if not all.

starlinvf.1358:

People “talk” like crafting projects and progression work like the PvP reward tracks, where you focus on one at a time- but the reality is that much of these projects have overlaps, time gates, or bottlenecks that encourage us to do things in Parallel, so that no matter what we’re doing, we’re getting closer to a goal.

I think you are mistaking peoples intent here. They do not assume that everyone focuses on one project at a time. Quite the contrary: many people, especially in this game, don’t focus on any project at all but rather let things accumulate organically.

Personally, I have been playing this game for four years, three of them on two accounts. I have 20k+ achievement points on the main account and 10k+ on the secondary account. I’ve got a variety of ascended equipment and two or even three full exotic sets for different situations on many of my 28 characters. I’ve got enough gifts of exploration to craft a dozend core and half a dozend maguuma legendaries, full mastery on the main account and lots more.

Yet I haven’t “worked” on any project. On the contrary, I absolutely hate farming and play this game as my entertainment, in the evenings after work and family (although the times when I’m playing with one of my daughters have been steadily increasing lately ) or on the weekends if I find the time. I play often, but not daily, and certainly not daily on both accounts.

I just play whatever catches my fancy that day, sometimes alone out in the world, sometimes with friends in dungeons, fractals, or (rarely because of time constraints) raids, sometimes in wvw or pvp. Stuff simply accumulates, and achievements often get done without actively seeking them out.

I just recently got my first legendary weapon, Kudzu, because I enjoyed doing the precursor hunt for that weapon. I even had to figure out a new character for that weapon because my main ranger, a male charr, wouldn’t be caught dead with it . A couple of weeks earlier I crafted the legendary backpack Ad Infinitum. Both items were mostly done with materials that had accumulated over the years from just playing whatever I enjoyed at that moment.

You’d be surprised how many people enjoy playing this game without checklists, without focus on one project or a few, but rather to just enjoy playing, walking through the world, enjoying the view. Focussing on one project (or even a handful) would feel way too restrictive to me. I love that this game allows me to just accumulate stuff and do a big project once I’ve got the materials, rather than having to focus on gathering specific stuff to ever get a chance at the big projects.

The dailies in Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay work great with this approach. The materials you get from those dailies have a finite niche use. You need a certain amount for specific ascended trinkets plus some goodies like minis and such, and the dailies help you if you want to specifically farm for them, but they’re not substantial enough that you couldn’t just make up for them by playing the areas a bit longer. If you focus on getting the trinkets they’ll give you a small boost, but once you’ve got all the trinkets (and minis ) you want there’s no need to worry yourself about them any longer.

Unlike games like WoW, where dailies are pretty much the main (if not only) aquisition method to progress your characters to be endgame-viable, dailies in GW2 are really of the “nice to have, but nothing substantial” variety. No matter if it’s regular dailies, Halloween, fractals, wvw, Bloodstone Fen or whatever, dailies give a nice extra but it’s not big enough to go out of my way to do them. I can always gather stuff another time.

I don’t want to stress myself over a small bonus. I’m here to enjoy myself and relax after a busy day in real life. I check the dailies whenever I’m undecided what to do and see if any of them appeal to me, just like I check unfinished achievements or my material storage to see if a little gathering could finish of an interesting crafting recipe.

It’s mostly the conditioning from games where dailies are as good as mandatory that makes people stress over the dailies in this game. Once you realize that our dailies are truly optional you’ll have much more fun actually doing them (whenever you feel like it ).

Danikat.8537:

I’ll be in the middle of seeking out hero points to unlock a jump skill so I can get to the top of a mountain to take a screenshot and/or glide off when I’ll remember I’m playing a key runner and was supposed to just do the storyline and nothing else. (That’s a real example.)

Sounds familiar . In fact, this is one of the reasons why I never got the hang of keyfarming. My latest keyfarmer will soon turn a year old and is looking back on a short story run to level 40 followed by a productive year as pvp dragonhunter . The one before that ended up with a restyling kit, a legendary longbow and three full sets of equipment to lead a happy and productive life as my secondary ranger (and more often than not primary these days, much to the displeasure of my main and first character, a huge charr ranger who’s very sceptical of this glittery pink asura girl ).

Ha! Can’t tell you how many of my current characters started as Ranger key-runners (I do have a few that aren’t Rangers, lol), while my current (Ranger) key-runner has sat idle for months.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

^I don’t play like that, at all. Thus, the reward/game play systems aren’t at odds, for me.

I like Dailies; gives me something to do. But, if something else comes along, I don’t feel any need to do a particular set of Dailies. For instance, since Halloween dropped, I’ve yet to set foot in Bloodstone Fen or Ember Bay. Before Halloween, I did Ember Bay every day, and usually, at least, part of Bloodstone, if not all.

Same here. I do usually work on one project at a time, or a few that work together (like doing the Living Story while collecting materials for a legendary) and I won’t go out of my way to obtain currencies or materials unless I know I need them, including doing dailies.

I do the dailies if I need something they award (not counting the 2g because gold comes from everywhere), or occasionally if I realise I’ve done 2/3 just playing normally and I can find a 3rd I want to do. But I’ve never done all 3 sets and many days I don’t do any.

I also hold onto things if I get them. I have a bank tab full of odd bits and pieces like Chak Eggs, Unidentified Fossilised Insects, Black Lion Ticket Scraps, Reclaimed Metal Plates etc. which I’m holding onto in case I need them later on, but I didn’t go out of my way to get any of them, I just happened to be doing things that awards them. (And if you’re imagining stacks and stacks of these things think again, I don’t think I have more than 10 of any item.) And of course I keep normal crafting materials.

It doesn’t bother me to decide I want something and find I don’t have any of the materials – I’ve decided to start working on it, not that I must have it right now. And I often find the gated components are not what takes me the longest to get. For example when I started making my second legendary I had less than 50 Mystic Coins. I didn’t buy any, I just waited to get them from login rewards and now I’ve finished everything except the Gift of Fortune I’m just 2 Clovers (approximately 6 coins) short and will have them before I finish gathering Ecto and T6 mats.

Reading this topic it feels a bit like some people are playing a different game to me. I’m not saying one approach is right and one is wrong, but it obviously makes a huge difference to how you perceive the game.

Rasimir.6239:

Danikat.8537:

I’ll be in the middle of seeking out hero points to unlock a jump skill so I can get to the top of a mountain to take a screenshot and/or glide off when I’ll remember I’m playing a key runner and was supposed to just do the storyline and nothing else. (That’s a real example.)

Sounds familiar . In fact, this is one of the reasons why I never got the hang of keyfarming. My latest keyfarmer will soon turn a year old and is looking back on a short story run to level 40 followed by a productive year as pvp dragonhunter . The one before that ended up with a restyling kit, a legendary longbow and three full sets of equipment to lead a happy and productive life as my secondary ranger (and more often than not primary these days, much to the displeasure of my main and first character, a huge charr ranger who’s very sceptical of this glittery pink asura girl ).

Well calling them a key-runner isn’t entirely accurate for me, but it’s an easy short hand. I call them ‘temporary characters’ which is my own distinction meaning when I create them I have a specific purpose in mind and I’m expecting to delete them at the end of it. Which affects how I play them – for example I’ll use their Banker Golem right away instead of saving it, I won’t spend money or go out of my way to get skins and items for them but I will actually transmute their gear more often because I have less time to experiment with styles, I won’t put anything in their inventory I don’t want to lose (I’m very careful to clear them before deleting, but I’d rather not take the risk).

The ones I call key-runners are specifically for playing the low level storylines, as part of my project to play every version of the story, but I do also use them to get Black Lion Keys (in fact one of them got my 2nd ever dropped key, from a level 9 bandit of all things, my only other key was from a champion in Orr which seemed more reasonable). They usually last a week or two, but some I’ve had for over a year.

But still, when I’m playing them I’m supposed to be working on whatever I created them for. Not getting side-tracked with screenshots, jumping puzzles, or trying to break out of maps or playing through long event chains or whatever else I keep finding myself doing.

Danikat.8537:

But still, when I’m playing them I’m supposed to be working on whatever I created them for. Not getting side-tracked with screenshots, jumping puzzles, or trying to break out of maps or playing through long event chains or whatever else I keep finding myself doing.

Why not? Is anyone (other than yourself ) forcing you to do specific tasks and those tasks only?

Quite a few of my (currently 28) characters got created with the intent to check something out and then free up the character slot again, but I always end up rather buying new character slots than deleting anyone. My norn ele for example, that I created to check out the NPE, just had her second birthday. Not that I needed yet another ele (my most-played character is a Sylvari ele, and there’s a couple of asura eles around, too), but I found I enjoyed the character and wouldn’t let her go again.

Maybe it really is a sign of old age, but I refuse to stress myself over a game. I’ve been there and done that, played and optimized and gamed everything to the fullest when I was 20 or 30 years younger, but I learned that I don’t enjoy forcing myself and in most cases even end up losing interest in the game, so I no longer play like that. Personal choice .

Good to see that my concern led to such interesting topic to read, really enjoying to see your views on the game as a whole guys, thanks a lot!

Whenever you are not getting fun from what you are playing, you are just working. I work in real life, so I don’t want to do that in GW2.
IN A GAME, DON’T DO THINGS THAT DON’T GIVE YOU FUN. Is simple as that.