In the Manifesto, ArenaNet said, “We don’t want players to grind”.
Later, Mike O’Brien said, “We don’t make grindy games”.
I’m not sure if everyone understood those comments. Some people imagined a “required” word in those statements that simply isn’t there.
And how do you make a MMO that is not focused on grind?
You make grind unrewarding so it’s not worth doing.
Let’s face it: grind is easy. Killing the same enemies over and over or doing the same events over and over is not challenging; it’s so easy and so mindless that bots can do it. It’s not the kind of thing that deserves a reward.
ArenaNet’s system is not perfect, of course. It has some flaws, such as:
• While grinding is limited, so farmers cannot flood the economy and make fortunes quickly, exploiting the Trade Post is not. As a result, TP manipulators have made small fortunes overnight and thus driven prices very high. It’s no wonder that the prices in many aspects of the player-controlled part of the economy are as high as they are.
• ArenaNet takes too long to punish exploiters, and usually don’t punish them enough. People who get rich through exploits have a long lasting negative impact in the game by causing some kind of inflation.
• Fractals go against many things in the Manifesto, including the “We don’t want players to grind” statement.
But, despite those flaws, the current DR system, that basically makes grind to be as unrewarding as it should be, is a nice beginning.
Sure, grinders and farmers are not going to like it.
But when a game says, “We don’t want players to grind”, what are grinders doing here in the first place?
So instead I get to have the people who started the first month paraded in front of me with their legendaries and 4 figure in-game gold, which they got naturally with no grind, while in the name of “no grind”, ANet eliminates all hope of me ever attaining a legendary in the life of the game by saddling me with bugged DR?
I’m not buying it.
Please, go start a lecture series on the benefits to society of offshoring.
This is complete nonesense in my view.
DR would only fit your theory if the entire game is like that. But Fractals is the exception and it’s a big one. It basically funnels people into the same area, it doesn’t stop grind.
Making grind unrewarding also doesn’t fit in the manifesto if it’s combined with high requirements for BiS gear.
This is where your theory falls harderst. Making grind unrewarding would only fit the bill if grinding was also not needed for endgame. But with the cost of legendaries and ascended gear + infusions, grind is required and even more so since it’s been made unrewarding. So all it does is chase people out of the zones into the dungeon.
In fact, by not making various styles of gameplay rewarding, the game is only catering to one group of players, which is detrimental to the long term as well.
My guess is, that it’s easier for Anet to deal with botting in a dungeon than in open zones, so their solution was to pull the grind into Fractals and stick up a middle finger to the explorable zones.
I still think this game really didn’t need a persistent world in the end, especially if you chase people out of the persistent areas.
The DR/drop nerfs are actually a very bad thing.
You get less for the time invested and actually have to grind more to survive in an economy where so many people got rich before all the new restrictions came about.
More work for less pay is never a good thing. The gap between expoliters/Tp traders and people who play the other 99% of the game is already ridiculous enough as it is.
DR would only fit your theory if the entire game is like that. But Fractals is the exception and it’s a big one. It basically funnels people into the same area, it doesn’t stop grind.
Making grind unrewarding also doesn’t fit in the manifesto if it’s combined with high requirements for BiS gear.
Hence my point about Fractals being against ArenaNet’s Manifesto, and against their “We don’t want players to grind” statement. Not only the Fractals themselves, but also the Ascended tier which is pretty much tied to Fractals.
The solution here is not to remove the DR system and make the entire game a grind fest – it’s to rework Fractals and Ascended gear so they are not a grind, while keeping DR in place and fixing the negative impact of TP exploiters and other exploiters.
The DR/drop nerfs are actually a very bad thing.
You get less for the time invested and actually have to grind more to survive in an economy where so many people got rich before all the new restrictions came about.
More work for less pay is never a good thing. The gap between expoliters/Tp traders and people who play the other 99% of the game is already ridiculous enough as it is.
You want a gap between grinders/farmers and people who play the other 99% of the game, so your point doesn’t really have much merit…
Hello stockholm syndrome.
That’s a perfect way to describe how players act towards grind-based MMOs. They lie to themselves into believing they are a good thing, while in reality they are just time sinks keeping them hostage.
(edited by Erasculio.2914)
DR would only fit your theory if the entire game is like that. But Fractals is the exception and it’s a big one. It basically funnels people into the same area, it doesn’t stop grind.
Making grind unrewarding also doesn’t fit in the manifesto if it’s combined with high requirements for BiS gear.
Hence my point about Fractals being against ArenaNet’s Manifesto, and against their “We don’t want players to grind” statement. Not only the Fractals themselves, but also the Ascended tier which is pretty much tied to Fractals.
The solution here is not to remove the DR system and make the entire game a grind fest – it’s to rework Fractals and Ascended gear so they are not a grind, while keeping DR in place and fixing the negative impact of TP exploiters and other exploiters.
It still doesn’t explain why DR is a good thing against grind. The problem is this. If it’s not rewarding, people don’t go there. DR more than anything makes sure people don’t go into Orr areas unless they absolutely have to. This would mostly be for the story lines then which most people solo. So why have group events and an area that is so tough to go through solo?
No matter how you twist or turn it, it doesn’t make sense. If all areas are rewarding, it’s not grindy because you don’t need to spend much time there. You could have 100000 gold and nothing really to buy with it. Nothing will be rare etc. No sense of achievement. No it’s about a balance and the balance is off in part by DR. If you want to stay away from grind then you need a more horizontal approach, even if vertical progression exists, you can still increase the horizontal progression.
And it’s easy to sit there and say they should rework things to make the less grindy…the whole issue is how. And that you haven’t asnwered.
You want a gap between grinders/farmers and people who play the other 99% of the game, so your point doesn’t really have much merit…
Let’s see, a game where people can make enough to survive, or a game where you barely cover waypoint costs while the exploiters drive precursors into the stratosphere to the point they’re more a mockery than a realistic goal.
The problem is this. If it’s not rewarding, people don’t go there.
So your point is that people only play to grind? In other words, unless content gives then gold or an equivalent reward, they won’t play it?
Let’s see, a game where people can make enough to survive, or a game where you barely cover waypoint costs
Which is even worse – do you honestly think people should only be able to cover waypoint costs if they grind and farm, since that’s what the DR punishes?
(edited by Erasculio.2914)
There will never be zero grind in any MMO, and to promise such a thing is foolish, and to expect such a thing will ever happen is just as foolish.
The problem is this. If it’s not rewarding, people don’t go there.
So your point is that people only play to grind? In other words, unless content gives then gold or an equivalent reward, they won’t play it?
Sigh….those are two different things. Grind doesn’t equal rewarding. You make that assumption. I do not.
If something is not rewarding, why do it? Why go to Orr if it’s a pain to go through there and there is no reward for going through there?
I don’t agree that reward=grind. Again, that’s your assumption and an incorrect one. But reality is that if something is rewarding, you go there. The problem lies in the distribution. Anet tends to put the rewards in one area. It was Orr now it’s Fractals.
If nothing in the game is rewarding because of total DR coverage, people will leave because it just isn’t fun anymore. Playing for fun only works if there is much horizontal progression, which this game doesn’t provide nearly enough of to make it work.
So yes, I do say that if something’s not rewarding, people will stop doing it. That’s why they abandoned Orr, because aside from the original rewards, it wasn’t actually fun to begin with.
There will never be zero grind in any MMO, and to promise such a thing is foolish, and to expect such a thing will ever happen is just as foolish.
Ah, because WoW and its clones have a lot of grind, so all MMOs need to have grind to be successful, right?
TOR has a lot of grind. That did great for them, didn’t it? Aion has a lot of grind, and it has been a big failure in the West. Rift has a lot of grind, and it’s Christmas gift to its employers was a bunch of layoffs.
The old MMO model, based on grind, is dead. Claiming a MMO needs grind to survive is as foolish as claiming MMOs need the holy trinity to survive.
The problem is this. If it’s not rewarding, people don’t go there.
So your point is that people only play to grind? In other words, unless content gives then gold or an equivalent reward, they won’t play it?
Let’s see, a game where people can make enough to survive, or a game where you barely cover waypoint costs
Which is even worse – do you honestly think people should only be able to cover waypoint costs if they grind and farm, since that’s what the DR punishes?
I don’t farm, I hate farming, I also don’t get SQUAT when I play the game “normally”.
I play “normally”, with my guildies, barely make waypoint costs, and I watch as the price of precursors floats further away from me like a carnival balloon accidentally released because people who thwarted this game’s purpose by rushing to 80 and received pre-dr drop rates for everything — and exploiters — are now wealthy and manipulating the TP, while ANet comes diligently behind these people and shuts the vault door, ensuring the remaining population is dirt poor.
I’m sorry, I don’t see how that does anything but exacerbate the economy of the game.
It’s like laws protecting DRM to “protect against piracy”…. the horse is already out of the barn… all you’re doing is harassing legitimate customers.
So yes, I do say that if something’s not rewarding, people will stop doing it. That’s why they abandoned Orr, because aside from the original rewards, it wasn’t actually fun to begin with.
Which is exactly the point I want to make. Making Orr to be rewarding without being fun is only going to make people grind there – play without having fun until they find something more rewarding to do.
If Orr were fun, people would play there even without any kind of reward.
You asked me how I think ArenaNet should fix the game. Does that answer your question?
I don’t farm, I hate farming, I also don’t get SQUAT when I play the game “normally”.
If you don’t farm, not only you would continue to get SQUAT when playing the game normally, but you would also see prices being inflated even more due to grinders making small fortunes very quickly, in addition to the current exploiters.
Wanting the DR system to go only makes sense for farmers and grinders – everyone else is being protected by it.
(edited by Erasculio.2914)
There will never be zero grind in any MMO, and to promise such a thing is foolish, and to expect such a thing will ever happen is just as foolish.
Ah, because WoW and its clones have a lot of grind, so all MMOs need to have grind to be successful, right?
TOR has a lot of grind. That did great for them, didn’t it? Aion has a lot of grind, and it has been a big failure in the West. Rift has a lot of grind, and it’s Christmas gift to its employers was a bunch of layoffs.
The old MMO model, based on grind, is dead. Claiming a MMO needs grind to survive is as foolish as claiming MMOs need the holy trinity to survive.
I never said they needed grind to survive, you did.
The thing is, MMOs are grinds, timesinks, that is how the genre has always been and will always continue to be, even if you try to innovate it, you are still always essentially making a character and grinding towards progressing them, even if you can’t notice the grind sometimes over other times.
This guy isn’t very bright.
Most of us don’t want to grind and farm. We have to because we don’t get jack for loot from doing anything.
Your argument makes no sense. It is basically; It’s good that you get nothing because you tried to farm to compensate for getting nothing from other things.
“You want a gap between grinders/farmers and people who play the other 99% of the game, so your point doesn’t really have much merit…”
That is the exact opposite of what I said with a nice reductio ad absurdum spin. I want less of a gap. I don’t want to have to farm but, with nerfed loot and bad luck I have no choice.
It’s not just farming the same mobs over and over. It’s the same mobs, events and dungeons. There isn’t that much of a spectrum of money making activities in this game.
So yes, I do say that if something’s not rewarding, people will stop doing it. That’s why they abandoned Orr, because aside from the original rewards, it wasn’t actually fun to begin with.
Which is exactly the point I want to make. Making Orr to be rewarding without being fun is only going to make people grind there – play without having fun until they find something more rewarding to do.
If Orr were fun, people would play there even without any kind of reward.
You asked me how I think ArenaNet should fix the game. Does that answer your question?
No, because “making it fun” doesn’t tell me what would make it fun.
Also, that is not really a fix. Because everything that is fun at first will become repetitious at some point and then it’s about progression. What the game needs is variation and more progression options that aren’t just about ectos and gold. Variety in activities and they all need to be fun and rewarding in various ways. The thing is that fun doesn’t stick over time so variety needs to be there.
But what’s the point in doing DEs if they are all very similar and the rewards are meh? That means there are too many events to begin with. People may scoff at questing but DEs and hearts aren’t much better in this way. I’ve had my fill of battling centaurs…oh and more centaurs.
The truth is that the game lacks variation because there is too much that is similar. Over 1500 dynamic events on launch they cried….yeh kill x centaurs, defend this outpost while killing centaurs, escort this merchant that gets attacked by centaurs.
Exciting stuff.
Now some events are quite good, but even those get repetitious after a while so there does need to be a level of reward to keep people coming back there. Or unique drops that only drop in some places or come from certain bosses, events etc. There simply is too little of that.
But no, saying it should be more fun doesn’t tell me anything. What is fun? You’ll see it’s different for different people and that’s why there needs to be more variation and a better distribution of rewards and more unique rewards.
So yes, I do say that if something’s not rewarding, people will stop doing it. That’s why they abandoned Orr, because aside from the original rewards, it wasn’t actually fun to begin with.
Which is exactly the point I want to make. Making Orr to be rewarding without being fun is only going to make people grind there – play without having fun until they find something more rewarding to do.
If Orr were fun, people would play there even without any kind of reward.
You asked me how I think ArenaNet should fix the game. Does that answer your question?
I don’t farm, I hate farming, I also don’t get SQUAT when I play the game “normally”.
If you don’t farm, not only you would continue to get SQUAT when playing the game normally, but you would also see prices being inflated even more due to grinders making small fortunes very quickly, in addition to the current exploiters.
Wanting the DR system to go only makes sense for farmers and grinders – everyone else is being protected by it.
Except they’re not protected by it. It’s too little too late. The exploiters and the people who got filthy rich before the DR are the horses that have already escaped from the barn.
Their cash is not going away, and thanks to DR it’s not leaving their hands either. They now form a plutocratic cabal of power-traders who are free to manipulate the TP without the competition of new materials entering the market at a sufficient rate to punish them for trying to speculate.
They are rich, and thanks to DR their TP listings are the only reliable source of mats.
They will continue, like an embedded tick, to extract the majority of the playerbase’s wealth, and will be the only people who will be able to buy precursors (and many exotics, which are already out of range thanks to DR.. really. try to price out foefire’s essence!)
There is a flaw in the system. The game has quite a bit of content that requires farming, yet it tries to hinder your farming. This leads to player frustration. And I’m not just talking about legendaries – I’m okay with them being very hard to obtain.
For example, I set myself the goal of getting a corrupted branch staff. It’s there in the game, and I thought it might be a fun goal for my endgame. This requires 30 corrupted lodestones. Having completed the Frostgorge Sound map playing normally I had none. Zero. So if I want to get that weapon I clearly have to farm, yet I’m consitently being hampered by the game in this. It’s not really that great a system.
There is a flaw in the system. The game has quite a bit of content that requires farming, yet it tries to hinder your farming. This leads to player frustration. And I’m not just talking about legendaries – I’m okay with them being very hard to obtain.
For example, I set myself the goal of getting a corrupted branch staff. It’s there in the game, and I thought it might be a fun goal for my endgame. This requires 30 corrupted lodestones. Having completed the Frostgorge Sound map playing normally I had none. Zero. So if I want to get that weapon I clearly have to farm, yet I’m consitently being hampered by the game in this. It’s not really that great a system.
How does it hinder you in your farming?
I think your views on the DR is just stupid…. I admit they are your opinions and you have the right to have them but I don’t agree with them at all….. When the only way to make money in the game is by doing dungeons or exploiting specific things on the market it’s depressing… If a player wants to farm to make money why should they be punished… You say “Let’s face it: grind is easy.” honestly I don’t think you have ever really did a true grind…. It’s not easy it’s a test in patience…. With the current drop rates it’s a test in restraining yourself from inflicting bodily harm on others due to the horrid systems that punish that play style… A.net said they don’t want players to grind but they also said they want players to play how they like so why should grinders be punished for how they LIKE to play ?
Honestly I blame the economists for A.net that they hired… To make the gold keep value they had the drop rates lowered to a completely ludacris level so that the only way to get it is to spend real world cash to convert to gold…. This is how it feels and that’s not something a long time supporter wants to feel.
Honestly DR should be 100% removed from the game or they should put drop rates at a acceptable rate….. 12+ hours farming for lodestones and only getting 1-2 TOPS is NOT reasonable when you ask for 100+ for some items…
They don’t want players to grind but they want the players to feel rewarded for playing and time invested…. If that’s true they would stop being silent and give us a real statement as to why the drop rates haven’t been reverted back to what they once were or why DR is still in when it was launched without it……. The bots are gone for the most part so that’s no valid excuse anymore..
There is a flaw in the system. The game has quite a bit of content that requires farming, yet it tries to hinder your farming. This leads to player frustration. And I’m not just talking about legendaries – I’m okay with them being very hard to obtain.
For example, I set myself the goal of getting a corrupted branch staff. It’s there in the game, and I thought it might be a fun goal for my endgame. This requires 30 corrupted lodestones. Having completed the Frostgorge Sound map playing normally I had none. Zero. So if I want to get that weapon I clearly have to farm, yet I’m consitently being hampered by the game in this. It’s not really that great a system.
How does it hinder you in your farming?
How doesn’t it? You do know what DR is, right? Diminishing Returns on rewards. It’s a direct counter to farming. The way it works if if you kill one type of an enemy too much you will start to get DR, and it works in other mysterious ways too.
Acquisition of Corrupted Lodestones
Icebrood (of high levels)
Corrupted foes (of high levels)
Some Ice Elementals (of high levels)
Chests within Honor of the Waves (explorable mode)
Chests within Fractals of the Mists
Also don’t forget you can’t even complete what is it, like 4 or 5 dungeons within a 2 hour time frame or you will get a ton of DR. You can’t even grind what they are pigeon holing the entire populous into without hitting it.
Basically there is very limited freedom in the game, you can only do so much of one thing before being forced to do something else because your drops are being reduced and drops are already horrible to begin with…
(edited by Rukia.4802)
There is a flaw in the system. The game has quite a bit of content that requires farming, yet it tries to hinder your farming. This leads to player frustration. And I’m not just talking about legendaries – I’m okay with them being very hard to obtain.
For example, I set myself the goal of getting a corrupted branch staff. It’s there in the game, and I thought it might be a fun goal for my endgame. This requires 30 corrupted lodestones. Having completed the Frostgorge Sound map playing normally I had none. Zero. So if I want to get that weapon I clearly have to farm, yet I’m consitently being hampered by the game in this. It’s not really that great a system.
How does it hinder you in your farming?
How doesn’t it? You do know what DR is, right? Diminishing Returns on rewards. It’s a direct counter to farming. The way it works if if you kill one type of an enemy too much you will start to get DR, and it works in other mysterious ways too.
Acquisition of Corrupted Lodestones
Icebrood (of high levels)
Corrupted foes (of high levels)
Some Ice Elementals (of high levels)
Chests within Honor of the Waves (explorable mode)
Chests within Fractals of the Mists
I’m okay with this. It’s their answer to the favor of the gods from GW1 IMO, except instead it doesn’t limit people for playing at certain times to farm (when there is a blessing). So people can farm at any time they want, but then it has limits set in place for them like the favor of the gods had.
How does it hinder you in your farming?
After 30 – 60 minutes DR kicks in and the whole process becomes a massive drag. I wouldn’t mind lodestones being so hard to come by if I could get some fun loot while waiting for them to drop. Maybe that new dagger I’m hoping will drop some day. At least something. Now it quickly feels like a waste of time. It doesn’t seem to help if I leave the area for hours either, but that’s another story (and thread). Never had a lodestone drop after 60 minutes either, but that may be bad luck.
I don’t really think that’s your bad luck Mercypsy… I’m a no lifer and I admit it I spend 12+ hours a day alternating between lodestones attempting to farm them… Usually I come out of it with at tops 1 lodestone of a random type… I never EVER get one before DR kicks in full swing….. Because of that issue though I’m very very very bitter at a.net for having this system in place..
edit
I forgot to mention that it feels like DR kick in after 30 minutes and it doesn’t reset till 24 hours after the last time you killed that mob type.
There is a flaw in the system. The game has quite a bit of content that requires farming, yet it tries to hinder your farming. This leads to player frustration. And I’m not just talking about legendaries – I’m okay with them being very hard to obtain.
For example, I set myself the goal of getting a corrupted branch staff. It’s there in the game, and I thought it might be a fun goal for my endgame. This requires 30 corrupted lodestones. Having completed the Frostgorge Sound map playing normally I had none. Zero. So if I want to get that weapon I clearly have to farm, yet I’m consitently being hampered by the game in this. It’s not really that great a system.
How does it hinder you in your farming?
How doesn’t it? You do know what DR is, right? Diminishing Returns on rewards. It’s a direct counter to farming. The way it works if if you kill one type of an enemy too much you will start to get DR, and it works in other mysterious ways too.
Acquisition of Corrupted Lodestones
Icebrood (of high levels)
Corrupted foes (of high levels)
Some Ice Elementals (of high levels)
Chests within Honor of the Waves (explorable mode)
Chests within Fractals of the MistsI’m okay with this. It’s their answer to the favor of the gods from GW1 IMO, except instead it doesn’t limit people for playing at certain times to farm (when there is a blessing). So people can farm at any time they want, but then it has limits set in place for them like the favor of the gods had.
Well opinions are like you know what.
Fact is, it goes against their “we aren’t against farming” bull. I was pointing out their lies and slander. And favor is nothing like DR, GW1 already had DR I’m surprised no one mentions this but if you farmed in one spot too long you would get reduced drops.
I was hoping this crap would be removed but it only got double time worse in GW2.
DR is a bad thing.
They don’t want you to grind, but it is a grindy game.
Some people like to grind, let them.
Some people don’t want to grind, give them the choice.
It’s a grind to get anything you want, but they are trying to stop you.
MMO’s by nature are a grind.
By making it a grind and trying to stop people grinding will just alienate players.
Bringing in DR is just a cheap way at trying to stop grinding, it just makes people angry and frustrated.
More content and more things to do would be a better answer than the DR, but of course thats more expensive.
DR is just mechanic that makes it take longer to acquire certain items or materials. It makes it so that if you play evenings for example, you will only be able to get a few of these items no matter how much you farm.
I find daily/weekly quests much more honest in that. If they made dailies that reward certain materials rather than having to get them from random drops you can manage the speed with which people acquire items. These quests could for example require you to kill specific mob types and gather materials as requirements for these dailies.
This would ensure people going around the maps rather than sticking them in one dungeon. More daily achievements can enable this type of gameplay where people actually have a reason to go to lower level areas or anywhere else as the achievements require.
Much more can be done in that to bring the persistent world back to life, instead of just being a bunch of leveling zones.
I really hate the fact that a little farming is being harder and harder, there would be no bloody problem if there was a decent way for an honest player who is willling to put hours and hours in playing for coin to have another way of making decent coin.
Chests Always suck big time! no suprise wenn opening it there the chest as rewards are so boring that farming is a lot less worse to do.
I liked the Jormag event to make hours and hours of playing for coin as well for my corrupted weapon skins worth while, as more and more people got to the farm, the farm really did not give that much of an reward anymore, no problem there cause if you got to it at insane times you still had some decent coin after all.
after the nerving of that spot it’s indeed harder to get coin, so hard that buying gold from those who hack the game is maybe more interesting for a lot of players.
GOOD JOB…. NOT!
I got lot’s and lot’s of corrupted lodes why? because I spend day’s farming them. the only ones who now could farm these items on a good way are the bots that are flooding lesser farm spots, they always say bots ruined the game, (true) but making it so hard to get some decent coin is where all that trouble really starts.
Farming isn’t bad it’s just really needed for some coin. and that I wish to spend 700 hours in 50 days is Insane but still my choise to do.
But tell me how many of the players are willing to go so far for it, end even i think at the rate of money earning goes other players have to what triple the hours I spend in doing it. really how can you espect players to spend so much extra time in the world wenn you got the title bin there done that..
Oeeee jeah we hate grinding just do the bloody dungeons 3000 times! what that does not look like a kind of boring farm?
who is insane i ask myself
How doesn’t it? You do know what DR is, right? Diminishing Returns on rewards. It’s a direct counter to farming. The way it works if if you kill one type of an enemy too much you will start to get DR, and it works in other mysterious ways too.
It doesn`t work that way. As of now it is account-wide and world-wide. Meaning a guildmate only logs for half an hour Tixx run and gets rares. I play for 6 hours straight on three alts, never staying in one location or on one activity more than half an hour (openworld, wvw, dungeons, tixx etc) and have ZERO return. No rares, barely any greens. I play around the same time every day, so I guess the 24-hour cooldown on DR just never drops for me.
What are my options? play an hour a day and spend all other free time in another game? because I have nothing to do after work ( it`s -20C outside, not much room for outdoor activity ). I can`t see how it is in any way “better” for me.
I do not enjoy the grind this game came to. I do enjoy exploring the maps, doing hearts and dynamic events. I spend most of my time in open world on lower-level alts, and switch to main to do dungeons or wvw with my guild. I come online earlier then they do, and spend my time on alts, effectively kicking DR into work. But I enjoy playing on alts, why am I punished for this with reduced drops when I switch to my main? I still cannot finish non-MF combat exotic set on my main because it requires too much grind now.
That’s a perfect way to describe how players act towards grind-based MMOs. They lie to themselves into believing they are a good thing, while in reality they are just time sinks keeping them hostage.
How come you decide what I want to do with my time? Leave my time sink alone. Any computer game is a time sink. Making yourself believe you could do something meaningful while you play is plain stupid. In any game.
(edited by Aelaren.3784)
Anets so-called anti grinding policy is utter rubbish. Ya dont say you dont want people to have to farm and then put insane material requirements inplace. So your whole theory about why DR is good for GW2 is flawed at its core.
Dont want us to farm. Dont make it so its needed. But oh wait, I forgot about buying loads of gems off them and turning it into gold option. Thats not farming is it. So thats must be what they want.
Dude read between the lines.
How doesn’t it? You do know what DR is, right? Diminishing Returns on rewards. It’s a direct counter to farming. The way it works if if you kill one type of an enemy too much you will start to get DR, and it works in other mysterious ways too.
It doesn`t work that way. As of now it is account-wide and world-wide. Meaning a guildmate only logs for half an hour Tixx run and gets rares. I play for 6 hours straight on three alts, never staying in one location or on one activity more than half an hour (openworld, wvw, dungeons, tixx etc) and have ZERO return. No rares, barely any greens. I play around the same time every day, so I guess the 24-hour cooldown on DR just never drops for me.
What are my options? play an hour a day and spend all other free time in another game? because I have nothing to do after work ( it`s -20C outside, not much room for outdoor activity ). I can`t see how it is in any way “better” for me.
I do not enjoy the grind this game came to. I do enjoy exploring the maps, doing hearts and dynamic events. I spend most of my time in open world on lower-level alts, and switch to main to do dungeons or wvw with my guild. I come online earlier then they do, and spend my time on alts, effectively kicking DR into work. But I enjoy playing on alts, why am I punished for this with reduced drops when I switch to my main? I still cannot finish non-MF combat exotic set on my main because it requires too much grind now.
That’s a perfect way to describe how players act towards grind-based MMOs. They lie to themselves into believing they are a good thing, while in reality they are just time sinks keeping them hostage.
How come you decide what I want to do with my time? Leave my time sink alone. Any computer game is a time sink. Making yourself believe you could do something meaningful while you play is plain stupid. In any game.
You’re right and I have no clue how DR works because its behavior seems to shift at random, I was just going by what ANet stated, which is probably just another one of their lies. I also haven’t been playing lately so obviously I’m not getting hit with it as often when I only log in for an hour.
If they intended for the game not to be grindy, then why would they make grinding a requirement to meet certain game goals ?
If you have taken part in crafting ascended, mystic or legendary gear then you should know their favourite number is 250…
Oh yes, did I mention dungeon tokens ? You do a dungeon path one time, you get 60 tokens, you decide to do it again….20 tokens….why ? So this way it takes longer.
Grind is all about making reaching a certain goal take much longer than it should, and they have put that in their game.
I am not a hater so you know, I love the game and I will keep playing it for a long time. Infact I don’t even mind the grind, it is a much, much more benign than in a lot of other MMO I’ve played or tried.
Other games require you to grind for a month to get just one piece, GW2 requires to grind for a month to get everything (minus legendary but I couldn’t give a kitten).
Both require grind but they aren’t comparable.
Still though, grind is grind.
They can’t expect people not to notice that when they keep spouting “we dont do grind” lol.
The magic number is 250 on materials that are on a .01% drop rate it seems…… It’s not that low but you get the idea just from that ….. Honestly t6 mats should have a flat 10 drop rate from all of the mobs that currently drop them…. Seems high but the rate at which the community chew through them I don’t think it would hurt anything… All it would do is make it afordable for those who don’t have time to go and farm…
Honestly 1 in 10 mobs and and needing 250 would still be a ton of time… Lodestones need some major attention because atm the open world drop rates make it so the only reliable way to get them is to buy them off the trading post….. 1 in 250 mobs should give at the least 1 lodestone… not 1 in 1,500.
If people are looking for someone to blame they need to blame Anet. They sell gold and that is gold that STAYS in the economy.
I proposed a fix for precursor prices … they buried it in “suggestions”. I suggested an NPC selling precursors for 100/200 based on one hand or two handed. Leaving drop and Mystic JOKE rates how they are. A gold sink that removes REAL amounts of gold from the system. Considering most gold that is bought is purchased for the precursors this is something they seriously need to do. Not to mention it would be EASY for them to implement.
The DR isn’t there to keep us from grinding. It is there to push people to the Gem store. If you honestly can’t see this then you need to stop drinking the koolaid. Selling gold and seriously limiting the ability of your customer to farm it by DR is so sleazy I am embarrassed I pushed friends to buy this game and I have been supporting them since they became a company.
I have been finished with all parts for my legendary and needing my precursor for 2 weeks now. Dusk is 500 gold and will rise before I get to 500 gold. I have several friends in the same boat. You know what? Working for something you will never catch up to because of DR isn’t fun in any way shape or form.
So why should I get punished?
I don’t focus on farming nor grinding, however the lack of even decent ammount of crafting materials forces me to grind/farm.
The system is unbalanced and legit players are punished in the most part.
Finally we got some real troubles opent up,
- Farming is needed and they try to get it out of the game, not as they try to tell us because of grinding is a bad thing, but it’s bad for buying gems so we should translate that to gold, WE AIN’T DUMB and I never will do it! rather stop playing
-Not all players want buying you’re gold we want to earn gold bye playing
- Drop rates suck at special items
- Chests drop more junk items as a little reward as that what fits the boss you defeated, also just standing around and let other do the killing gives “allmoist” same rewards as those who slain it. a few green and blue items sometimes just standing gives even a rare whoot!
- DR makes dropes even worse…….and moisly punishes players!
- MF is all quessing work and makes it wonder if it works at all. load lots of it on armor you get worse.
- No good balance in drops to players who spent lots of time and players who spend less time.
- Lodestones should also able to get from karma!
- Every mob players find good stuff they change in nighttime, leaving bugs for us to handle for weeks (DID YOU GUYS FIX FRACTALS DC BUGS YET WE STILL LOSE PLAYERS UNDERWAY or is it still to hard to crack for you guys???!!!)
- Reported kitten of bots and other buggy crap gives no response of being handled or seen at all. (Yeah you get lots of complains and reported things to handle, just give a response even automated response is better as none at all)
ow yeah and another thing
- if I sent a guild member over to the enemy in WvW server can he still spy for us?, or did you guys still think it 7 days block to change server is still a solution?
it’s kinda neat info to know where and how commanders are and looks like, we target them first. also all attack info we could sent over in guild chat also very very nice?, guild chat makes it real easy thanx? after 7 days we let him come back and sent another player over for spying. to bad you can’t kill these kind of spies huh…
Insane
The problem is this. If it’s not rewarding, people don’t go there.
So your point is that people only play to grind? In other words, unless content gives then gold or an equivalent reward, they won’t play it?
Let’s see, a game where people can make enough to survive, or a game where you barely cover waypoint costs
Which is even worse – do you honestly think people should only be able to cover waypoint costs if they grind and farm, since that’s what the DR punishes?
I don’t farm, I hate farming, I also don’t get SQUAT when I play the game “normally”.
I play “normally”, with my guildies, barely make waypoint costs, and I watch as the price of precursors floats further away from me like a carnival balloon accidentally released because people who thwarted this game’s purpose by rushing to 80 and received pre-dr drop rates for everything — and exploiters — are now wealthy and manipulating the TP, while ANet comes diligently behind these people and shuts the vault door, ensuring the remaining population is dirt poor.
I’m sorry, I don’t see how that does anything but exacerbate the economy of the game.
It’s like laws protecting DRM to “protect against piracy”…. the horse is already out of the barn… all you’re doing is harassing legitimate customers.
Wait, you want to say that same thing as in real world is happening just because nature of humanity is involved? Rich getting richer, while poor suffer?
Another world destroyed by human greed i guess…
As for your WP fees, im not sure how a 20 min dungeon run for ~1g profit could leave anybody barely able to cover WP fee. Really.
Same goes for open world, WP fee is 3s max if you use free portals, and where ever you go doing 2 event will cover that fee.
Diminishing Returns and Grind.
These are the two terms that are closely related here. When you define grind as repetitious activities that you find undesirable but are required to do to progress, we can already see that there is a big element of opinion involved.
When does something become repetitive and when does it become undesirable? This depends on the person.
And what makes something required? There is the physical requirement that without infusions you will wipe in certain content, but there are also time elements and a personal sense of accomplishment that come into play. Because how quickly do you need to get gear? Will you be able to join parties if you do not have certain gear etc.
Diminishing Returns basically discourage people from repeating certain activities as the rewards go down as you continue to repeat them. But what if some people like to grind away? Why would you want to alienate them from your game?
And if grinding works and gives good rewards, why would you not reward other playstyles? Why not give quest rewards? Of course GW2 does do some of that, but not nearly enough. Why would there not be rewards of rare materials as part of completing the dungeon?
But no, grinding Orr was the thing, grinding Fractals is the thing to do. Why? Because of the rewards.
But it only rewards one type of gameplay. And if you don’t like this style of play (just running Fractals each evening) then it automatically becomes grind, because you have do something you don’t like to get somewhere (progression) and there are NO alternatives.
So, my statement here is that to avoid grind there most be equally rewarding alternatives. And with alternatives I mean activities in different play styles. Dungeons, exploring, questing, completing the world, WvW, etc.
This will allow people to pick their favourite activities and feel successful in the game. It will not feel grindy because you are not required to repeat a specific type of content to achieve this.
I completed all jump puzzles before Lost Shores. Reward? Nothing. So why care, you could ask….Well, the puzzles were fun and for me as a person with fear of heights they were quite a challenge to complete. But it doesn’t help my character progress. There are no special drops or rewards you can’t get elsewhere and there’s no title for it as far as I remember. Nothing to acknowledge a certain feat.
So, why then, would I ever do them again on another toon? I mean complete all of them. I already achieved it but it doesn’t progress my toon either horizontally or vertically.
Now, you may not care much about the puzzles, but why can you not progress to long term or endgame goals no matter what you are doing or where in the game and feel like you are really working towards a goal.
Why do people want to buy a legendary (if the price wasn’t too high)? What is legendary about a weapon that just took a lot of money and luck? They are not heirlooms or powerful artifacts created by the gods of old. They are crafting items and you need to get lucky at a fountain or spend lots of cash on the TP.
Is this truly a legendary achievement?
I think inflation comes from valuing something in a way that it’s actually not worth. It’s a false achievement. The only respect is the money side of it: It’s expensive.
So, why do DR and require grind at the same time? Why force people in the same area or Dungeon. Why make it so that people are forced to participate in a playstyle that they might not like, when you can reward other playstyles as well?
It doesn’t make much sense to me.
No offense, but the “we don’t make grindy games” and “we don’t want players to grind” statements are sort of invalidated by the nature of how all high end gear is acquired. “Just playing the game” doesn’t consistently net a player what they might want without it taking an exorbitant amount of time. Usually you grind because while it’s a dull activity, it increases the rate of you getting from A to B significantly faster; because it’s a direct means to an end. Rather than a direct grind, they prefer you indirectly grind through playing the game and trading; that doesn’t mean Anet has made a grindless game, if it was then you wouldn’t need insanely high material requirements for exotics/ascended/legendary items as they would be primarily obtained through skill-based activities.
If people are looking for someone to blame they need to blame Anet. They sell gold and that is gold that STAYS in the economy.
I proposed a fix for precursor prices … they buried it in “suggestions”. I suggested an NPC selling precursors for 100/200 based on one hand or two handed. Leaving drop and Mystic JOKE rates how they are. A gold sink that removes REAL amounts of gold from the system. Considering most gold that is bought is purchased for the precursors this is something they seriously need to do. Not to mention it would be EASY for them to implement.
The DR isn’t there to keep us from grinding. It is there to push people to the Gem store. If you honestly can’t see this then you need to stop drinking the koolaid. Selling gold and seriously limiting the ability of your customer to farm it by DR is so sleazy I am embarrassed I pushed friends to buy this game and I have been supporting them since they became a company.
I have been finished with all parts for my legendary and needing my precursor for 2 weeks now. Dusk is 500 gold and will rise before I get to 500 gold. I have several friends in the same boat. You know what? Working for something you will never catch up to because of DR isn’t fun in any way shape or form.
Thats actually a really good idea that i wish they would put into the game.
It would take down the filthy rich that currently control the pre market (The ones that bought up all the cheap ones durring the Lost Shores event and then sky rocketed them back up for even more profit; and the ones that got lucky and didnt get a ban from the karma glitch at launch.)
So yes, I do say that if something’s not rewarding, people will stop doing it. That’s why they abandoned Orr, because aside from the original rewards, it wasn’t actually fun to begin with.
Which is exactly the point I want to make. Making Orr to be rewarding without being fun is only going to make people grind there – play without having fun until they find something more rewarding to do.
If Orr were fun, people would play there even without any kind of reward.
You asked me how I think ArenaNet should fix the game. Does that answer your question?
I don’t farm, I hate farming, I also don’t get SQUAT when I play the game “normally”.
If you don’t farm, not only you would continue to get SQUAT when playing the game normally, but you would also see prices being inflated even more due to grinders making small fortunes very quickly, in addition to the current exploiters.
Wanting the DR system to go only makes sense for farmers and grinders – everyone else is being protected by it.
That may seem true if we look at DR system alone. If we see the problem as a whole however, it’s rather obvious that DR doesn’t protect anyone. Grind, even with DR, is still more rewarding to most other activities.
Lowering rewards for something (anything) is a bad choice when the game lacks any good rewards to balance it.
What needs to be done is not making grind unrewarding enough, but go in opposite direction – make other gameplay options rewarding (preferably in ways that would make farming unappealing or not very profitable).
Increase drops for mobs that aren’t done often/in less populated zones. Increase rewards for dailies/monthlies, make more once-per-day rewards for different activities.
Make Order quests (in the GW1 zaishen quests style).
You don’t want people sitting in one place? Lower/remove cost for waypoint travel.
Don’t want people to keep to one dungeon? Don’t make mistakes like putting ascended drops there and only there.
And so on, and so on.
Carrot is always better than a stick. Unfortunately, Anet’s mixture is 0.01% carrot and 99.99% stick (and a very heavy one).
(edited by Astralporing.1957)
Disagree with OP. Hunting mobs and expecting some loot is not a new concept. Grinding is as grinding does my momma used to say. I call it hunting. Open world hunting and DEs should offer the same reward potential as dungeons, or at a minimum there should not be such a huge disparity. I don’t mean I should get the same loot you get from killing a dungeon boss from a veteran in southsun, but if I kill 45 or so such veterans, I think I should get more than a piece of leather.
In the Manifesto, ArenaNet said, “We don’t want players to grind”.
Later, Mike O’Brien said, “We don’t make grindy games”.
I’m not sure if everyone understood those comments. Some people imagined a “required” word in those statements that simply isn’t there.
And how do you make a MMO that is not focused on grind?
You make grind unrewarding so it’s not worth doing.
I get your point, but it breaks the rule that “everyone is different” and doesn’t take those differences into account. DR to some means doubling up the farming effort, double your farming fun! Just sayin…
Ok, i will bite…
I like farming, i really do. This is so because i set a goal and think of an effective approach in pursuing it. Every copper made out there is one step closer to attaining a my legendary. I decided to get a legendary sometime after the November 15 nerfs. It’s been painful, joyful, exciting, boring, annoying…Yet i have made good progress.
I also like spreadsheets, i love them. They help me keep track of my progress and also help me plan my next steps in an orderly manner so that i can avoid stress and be in control of my pursuit.
I will have my legendary in approximately less than 2 months from today, with everything planned step by step.
@OP sorry if this comes as a shock but in your post it seems as if you are very confused. Do you really have a valid reason behind thinking that DR is good or is it because you want less people having legendaries, because you don’t have one either?
I mean, at times i despair too because getting one is really tough nowadays but you are showing us that you like DR because it Hinders other people’s progress in being rich and prevents them in acquiring in game goods that way.
You should really check the definition of the word “Envy” and try deviating away from it.
The way I look at it there are two possibilities.
1: The OP is a troll. So blatantly bringing up a topic that will instantly get 99% of GW2 players heated up and irritated by his viewpoint doesn’t seem like a smart idea; unless your point is to troll. In that case, he’s a fed troll (which makes sense considering that he hasn’t posted in a while now; he’s high off his success and his work is done).
2: The OP is an Anet white knight. No matter what Anet does, no matter how much $$$ they extract from their playerbase through gems, Anet can do no wrong. “Anet has said grind is bad and this is their grindless game! Death to Anet’s enemies!” That’s what I pull from the OP’s sig.
The problem here is it’s an incredibly naive, fanboyish viewpoint that’s unrealistic. No company is perfect, and according to a large number of disgruntled players, and also according to the devs themselves, they’ve kittened up (I refer back to the AMA about ascended gear).
I’d consider myself a fairly normal player. I don’t especially like farming, but I’ll do a bit of it when necessary. I think it’s a fairly normal thing to expect:
1. Enjoyable gameplay
2. Good, concrete rewards for that gameplay
Before Fractals, Orr’s rewards were considered good, but the gameplay in Orr itself is highly repetitive and boring, after a little while. It’s the same with Fractals now. Orr now is both repetitive and boring still, and has no worthwhile rewards.
What the OP’s view is, is that there should be fun gameplay, and it doesn’t matter if there are good rewards are not; you just have fun. That’s a load of bullkitten, because no matter what I’m going to get bored doing the “fun” activities if I don’t get something to show for it.
I’d like to be able to play the game again and not the TP, because then actually buying the expensive stuff for my characters wouldn’t feel like I’m throwing away the capacity to gear out the rest of them, unless I had the quadruple digits necessary to pay for them all. Plus then I would feel that the good I do helping lowbies in the lowbie zones isn’t being completely negated by the fact I’m a parasitic trader siphoning the money out of everyone else’s pockets for my own gain (Trader, Farmer and Casual alike). But I want my precursor skins (Hahaha, legendaries? Please, that’s beyond even MY reach.), my T3 armor, and all that other good stuff, and so, I trade. And I will trade until I can afford it without losing my capacity to get more money for future alts.
So yeah, as I said, I’d like to be able to actually, you know, PLAY THE GAME again. Not going to happen while anet continues to seemingly think that people shouldn’t be able to make more than 1g even if they spend 24 hours logged in, UNLESS they are a trader in which case its suddenly totally ok to ‘make’ 10-1000x that amount in a day (I say ‘make’ because its not actually adding gold to the economy, merely siphoning it out of someone else’s wallet, and paying a tax, to boot).
So yeah, even one of us ‘filthy rich evil people’ thinks that the system is borked, and I really doubt I’m the only one.
For the record though, I made my initial start-up gold farming frostgorge, not through exploits.
What we are talking about is reward for playing the game. There is a general reward in the gameplay and gameworld, but there are bills to pay and things to buy. We don’t want a loot wasteland and we don’t want the big rock candy mountain, but we do want a “sense” of reward for playing the game. Right now, my sense is loot wasteland so I would argue that the current DR and general tuning of the loot system needs to be adjusted to produce a feeling of reward for playing the game.
I want to play the game and feel I don’t have to do dungeons as the only source of income. Killing Claw of Jormag should net more than 1 Silver 50 Copper from the event, and 50 Copper from the chest plus an assortment of blues.
Frostgorge is my favorite zone. I like to swim below the Glaciers mining Mithril, and doing the events I happen to stumble upon when on the surface. However, this is barely profitable, and thus If I want to progress in this game, I’m forced into dungeons.
Hell, when I’ve mined out the zone and DR kicks in on monsters. I have to leave this zone, regardless of the fact It’s where I want to be.
I play alot and I have never once experienced diminishing return.
Play the game as it was obviously intended. Dont stand in one area (or even stay in the same zone) repeating the same small number of events over and over for hours. That isnt heroic and it isnt fun. Branch out, tackle new events you havent been to in a few days, switch between farming mobs and tackling dynamic events – there is plenty to do to keep DRs from kicking in.
One of my favorite things to do is start at one end of a zone and work my way through it. In most zones, you make a fair amount of coin and karma doing this – and it is fun.
People keep looking for an easy/simple way to acquire mats for their legendaries. The thing is, if it were easy or simple, then they wouldnt be legendary.
Stop looking for shortcuts and play the game.
Let me give you some mmo history. DR is never a good thing. Other companies tried this in the past with all of the same excuses to help kill off the gold farmers, protect the player economy etc etc etc. It never does that. It ALWAYS kills the player population and backfires on the devs in the end who put in place lower drop rates, DR, breaking higher drop rate mechanics like magic find, because it forces the good players the ones that stick with a game for year out of the game.
No one wants to waste their time or money and when these things are used to try to offset the manipulation of the market of a game, they always fail to take out the people they are targeting and often destroy the game’s population because they aggrivate the people they want to stay.
The reason why it’s less dramatic in this title then it has been in the past? No subscription fee to play.
If there was a subscription fee to play this title and they did this to the player population, remained silent about it, made it impossible for so many to get the gear mats they need, this game would be dead, would have 3 servers and would have fired the majority of it’s staff and would be making press about how awesome their new plans for F2P will be when it comes out in the next couple of months.
Sound familiar? Yeah it’s because we HAVE seen this before, We as players know what happens when you do this to a playerbase.
And what gets me is the people who have blinders on are the ones who say things like “well they are the experts not us”, uhm no. Here’s the problem with that. If the devs were gamers and more importantly long time mmo gamers like they have claimed in their video they would know what putting DR/Lower drops does to an economy and to players en masse EVERY time from the history of it all, they would know and thus not do it. They would also more importantly implement something else that was used to fight gold farmers and not destroy the community and even more importantly communicate with the playerbase to let us know this is what’s happening and why instead of leaving us in the dark. If they had played mmo’s they would know how important communication is to any mmo between developers and gamers.
So saying that the players are wrong just because we aren’t on their team developing is just amazingly short sighted. Through knowledge of history, one can be right about something so political without actually being a politician.
(edited by tigirius.9014)
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