Guild Wars 2

I’m going to define “reward” as “something that has functional use in the game”; i.e., non-cosmetic rewards like gold, resources, karma, gear, etc.

The game philosophy is that everyone – as much as possible – is rewarded for doing what they enjoy doing, and that no playstyle will be favored over any other in terms of reward. If you like to solo, group, craft, do events and hearts, explore, do dungeons or PvP, then you are rewarded (as defined above) more or less equitably without any significant favoritism built into the code.

The whole point of “the whole game is the end game” philosophy is that Anet wants everything you do to be “end game” in quality and quantity; this means that if gathering resources and exploring and killing random mobs is as “end game” as explore mode dungeons and ORR and WvW, then it should offer the same kind of rewards.

If all these diverse aspects of the game do not offer fundamentally equitable rewards, and more/better/superior rewards are offered via some particular aspect of the game, that particular aspect, which will favor a particular playstyle, becomes the de facto “end game” and all other playstyles start becoming marginalized, because “what they can do” is less profitable in terms of reward than what others are doing.

I’ve noticed in crafting that even finding new recipes for the same kind of item gives diminishing rewards. I suspect that any kind of repetitious farming for any kind of reward will be dealt with the same way. This means that GW2 is actually sticking to its “everything is the end game” mentality of keeping rewards equitable for every playstyle, including that between casuals and hardcore players. The farming code provides more casual players with better rewards most of the time they play, and more hardcore players with diminishing rewards for their efforts.

If you’re trying to gain rewards, they become harder and harder to obtain by continuously doing any particular aspect of the game. So, we can say that if you’re playing to max out your rewards, Anet has put (and is still working on) – basically – kind of cap on how much reward you can get in GW2 ( at least for doing the same kind of thing over and over at a sitting). This serves both the design philosophy and helps diminish the profitability of botting.

However, if you’re doing something because you enjoy the thing you’re doing, and not because of you’re trying to maximize rewards, then the fact that rewards are diminished shouldn’t matter. If you enjoy doing a thing so much in-game that you’re willing to spend hours and hours doing that same thing over and over, then again, by Anet’s philosophy, it should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to maximize game reward for your time.

IMO, Anet is promoting the concept that everything you do in GW2 should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to get rewards for doing that thing. The game is designed to serve the interest of those that enjoy doing a thing, and not to serve the interests of those that are intent on maximizing rewards for doing that thing. The game structure of “you may or may not get a reward for X”, or" you will get diminished rewards for doing X over and over" demonstrates this philosophy.

This is not a carrot-based, skinner-box game, nor does it seek to celebrate any particular playstyle with superior (or more) rewards. Yes, you can play it that way, and you will get diminished returns for doing so. When you “figure out” how to get more rewards for your time than other players, Anet nerfs it because that is their design philosophy. Everywhere that you expect to get more/better rewards for your time than any other player, you will probably be disappointed, because GW2 is not a rewards (as defined above) based game. It has rewards in it, but it is not designed around rewards as being the reason people play the game.

You might not like that philosophy, and you might think an MMOG cannot succeed employing (and sticking to) that philosophy, but Anet has demonstrated over and over that this is their philosophy, and that they plan on adhering to it. The game is designed to serve those that play for the fun of it over the interests of those who play to maximize rewards.

You might counter that your way of “having fun” is to maximize rewards; you can also say that your way of “having fun” is to grief other players or to grind for superior gear. There are some things that people find fun that are not available in GW2 because those things do not serve their basic design philosophy.

GW2 is a fun-centric game, not a rewards-centric game. If you play MMOGs primarily to farm/maximize rewards, you’re going to be disappointed. For those of us who just play in MMOGs to have fun doing whatever thing we’re doing and for whom rewards are just a secondary bonus for our activity, Anet’s philosophy is the greatest thing since pocketbread.

“IMO, Anet is promoting the concept that everything you do in GW2 should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to get rewards for doing that thing. "

But if you enjoy farming, grinding dungeons, dungeons in general, or any of the things they’ve nerfed recently then you are kitten out of luck.

The idea of playing for funs sake makes perfect sense, right up until the point where they started making it impossible to do things that for many players were fun!

It’s not their job to tell me what’s fun and what’s not. If someone enjoys farming, let him do it.

If anyone in their right mind would consider dungeons fun in their current state I believe they have a serious grinding addiction on their hands. As for dynamic events and tasks, they are fun the first time around, but gets repetitive fast, especially with the low amount of skills. I tried rolling a second character but I’m simply no longer having fun, while my first character was a lot of fun from lv1 to lv80. I didn’t have this problem with GW1 at all, I completed that campaign over 8 times each and I’m still having fun with that. A bit of a disappointment when a lot of us are GW1 veterans.

Zenyatoo.4059:

“IMO, Anet is promoting the concept that everything you do in GW2 should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to get rewards for doing that thing. "

But if you enjoy farming, grinding dungeons, dungeons in general, or any of the things they’ve nerfed recently then you are kitten out of luck.

The idea of playing for funs sake makes perfect sense, right up until the point where they started making it impossible to do things that for many players were fun!

I addressed this in the post. Farming for rewards goes against their basic design philosophy of equitable rewards for all playstyles because it favors the farming playstyle. They don’t want farmers to be rewarded extra because they farm.

If you enjoy grinding dungeons then you can still do 20 dungeons a day if you particularly want to. And before someone says “oh but whats the point with the rewards nerfed”, well then you don’t really enjoy grinding dungeons do you?

Deith.7596:

It’s not their job to tell me what’s fun and what’s not. If someone enjoys farming, let him do it.

You might as well say that if someone enjoys griefing, raiding or grinding for exclusive, superior gear, let them do it. Just because you have fun doing something doesn’t mean Anet has to put it in the game or allow it.

It’s Anet’s job to protect the integrity of their game design and core philosophy. There are lots of things that a lot of people find fun that doesn’t fit in with their game philosophy, but they’re not going to put those things in the game or allow their game to be used that way just because some people find those activities to be fun.

There are plenty of games that allow – even promote – farming for rewards. Those games have become reward-centric games because of it. Anet doesn’t want GW2 to be like those games, so it is taking measures to limit the farming of rewards.

Zenyatoo.4059:

“IMO, Anet is promoting the concept that everything you do in GW2 should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to get rewards for doing that thing. "

But if you enjoy farming, grinding dungeons, dungeons in general, or any of the things they’ve nerfed recently then you are kitten out of luck.

The idea of playing for funs sake makes perfect sense, right up until the point where they started making it impossible to do things that for many players were fun!

Adapt. Trust me…there are plenty of ways to make money in this game without spending a dime in the cash shop OR exploiting. No, I will not elaborate.

That is true in fact they did well correcting a problem buffing a path too easy in dungeons but…

They are really fast at punishing (even too harsh) things in favor of players but really slow to address problems that takes away fun from players.

ex
Waypoints costs
Dungeon overall cost
Classes that aren t welcome in dungeons/pvp
Dungeon lines too difficult (really why for ex CM is easier than AC _?).
And drop of rewards for story mode (i was keeping most story modes behind for when i wuld have decent traits to try them……).

The game is already so hard that you often needs equipments to do some things…if you cannot get it easily you will be cut off from a big part of the game :|
Having at least one skin easy to obtain would be mandatory and the other skins requiring work would be fine….

Considering thise there are some issues…..i am not upset but they should try to not address ONLY things in player favors….with so many skills bugged and OP enemies…..

For the rest i agree that farming only a line of a dungeon is not right…..but they should ve thougt of what damage it would do to legit players also……

P.S. this said from a player that loves to buy minis and funboxes instead of equip.

Kana.6793:

If you enjoy grinding dungeons then you can still do 20 dungeons a day if you particularly want to. And before someone says “oh but whats the point with the rewards nerfed”, well then you don’t really enjoy grinding dungeons do you?

Exactamundo, mah brotha! Then they try and cover by saying they just want to be appropriately rewarded for their time, risk and effort – once again, if you really enjoy doing X, you do it even though it costs you to do it – you don’t stop doing it just because you aren’t making a profit at it.

I’m loving gw2 personally, and I do play exclusively for fun. If I was bored of it, or if I did it for reward and the reward wasn’t there, I’d go back to playing Rift as my subscription hasn’t run out yet. However, I do believe there should be good rewards for dungeons, I don’t think it’s good design to have players coming out with LESS silver due to broken armour, and I don’t believe having waypoints as a money sink is a good idea either.

But overall I enjoy roaming around the map doing my own thing, participating in events, all the usual stuff you do. I’ve been level 80 for a while and I have exotic gear, and I haven’t farmed/grinded at all, I haven’t got bored, I just like the game, simple as that.

For some people getting rewards is an important part of their fun.

The problem with what you’re saying is that rewards play a part in people’s enjoyment of the game. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

Calling a reward system a ‘Skinner Box’ goes too far. I’m well aware of some MMO developers resorting to cheap Skinner Box techniques to trick people into continuing to play (I’m looking at you, Blizzard). But including a reward system in the game, rewards with which you can purchase items within the game, adds to its depth.

Take that away and all you end up with is a hot join game with a really elaborate lobby, where there’s nothing to do but chat and play mini games. Persistent world MMOs need to be more than this. They need to be an ecosystem. Guild Wars 1 was not an MMO, it was a hot join game with an elaborate lobby. MMOs need to present some kind of progression at level cap, else there remains nothing to do except PvP – cue mass exodus of PvEers and Guild Wars 2 gets labelled ‘another game that failed to beat WoW’.

As bad as WoW has become, Blizzard understood, subscription or not, that in order to hold on to players, you need to give them a consistent challenge and feeling of progression. They did this with increasing raid tiers and a gear treadmill. There are all sorts of issues with gear treadmills that I won’t go into, but the trouble with Guild Wars 2 is that it removed the gear treadmill without replacing it with something else for PvEers to get their teeth into. Tiered raids without a gear treadmill would have been fine.

‘Fun’ is a non-word, as it’s far too subjective to ever be considered an objective value in its own right. Plenty of people find being challenged and rewarded, and progressing incredibly fun. You don’t, evidently, but you can’t just encourage those sorts of people to just leave the game, else I think you’ll find the game will fail, just like SWTOR did before, for the same basic reason: there was nothing for PvEers to do at cap after a couple of months.

I agree entirely with the OP. The whole thrust of the latest adjustments to the game seem to have been not merely to put a curb on farming of various sorts, but to address other problems that run counter to ANet’s “fun-centric” approach. I’m thinking, in particular, of the problems that have been frequently discussed in these forums of dynamic event chains not working the way they’re supposed to because people are just mobbing/zerging the first event over and over again and, so the first event is being “won” over and over and over and the events that are supposed to happen if the first event fails are just not taking place. This is causing people to complain about DE’s being boring, not realizing that their own actions are contributing to the problem. I think ANet is, among other things, trying to get people to stop mobbing the first event in a chain and let things take place in the fashion intended by the game design.

Amen to that OP.

I’m the kinda gamer that plays for fun, not reward. Like yesterday when I partnered with a random player to kill an elite mob. It took us around 5 minutes to do so during which the other player was taken down once and I was on the brink of being taken down too several times. It was the most thrilling battle of my 15 lvl character’s life and all I got from it was a low level pair of gloves that my profession can’t even wear. Did I care? No way, as I said it was an amazing breathtaking 5 minutes fight to kill a giant spider and it was worth every minute.

Drudenfusz.2971:

For some people getting rewards is an important part of their fun.

For some people, raiding, grinding superior gear, exploiting or griefing other players is an important part of their fun. Those things aren’t in this game, either. It’s not Anet’s job to include in GW2 everything everyone finds fun, or to allow people to do anything in the game they find to be fun.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Kana.6793:

If you enjoy grinding dungeons then you can still do 20 dungeons a day if you particularly want to. And before someone says “oh but whats the point with the rewards nerfed”, well then you don’t really enjoy grinding dungeons do you?

Exactamundo, mah brotha! Then they try and cover by saying they just want to be appropriately rewarded for their time, risk and effort – once again, if you really enjoy doing X, you do it even though it costs you to do it – you don’t stop doing it just because you aren’t making a profit at it.

Why have rewards if you don’t intend for people to get them? The dungeon sets require considerable commitment, they aren’t for people who want to even do a dozen runs down the same three paths, they are for people who will grind out dozens and dozens of times on the exact same content (I don’t know why it’s considered different that you killed the same boss 12 times instead of three or four but ArenaNet thinks the NPCs in the game think that’s important).

Any casual person who walked into a dungeon and doesn’t commit to the full grind for the items is going to walk out with a repair bill and junk. Who designs a dungeon in a game but doesn’t intend to reward people for entering it? The current loot drops are junk and the only real rewards from them are for doing the exact same content dozens of times.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Kana.6793:

If you enjoy grinding dungeons then you can still do 20 dungeons a day if you particularly want to. And before someone says “oh but whats the point with the rewards nerfed”, well then you don’t really enjoy grinding dungeons do you?

Exactamundo, mah brotha! Then they try and cover by saying they just want to be appropriately rewarded for their time, risk and effort – once again, if you really enjoy doing X, you do it even though it costs you to do it – you don’t stop doing it just because you aren’t making a profit at it.

And here we get to the nub of things. I suspect that what really grates on some of the people who are complaining is that ANet isn’t playing along with their “reward-centric” view of things. The only thing I can say is, maybe GW2 really isn’t the right game for them, if what they really care about is getting loads of loot.

Vorch.2985:

Zenyatoo.4059:

“IMO, Anet is promoting the concept that everything you do in GW2 should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to get rewards for doing that thing. "

But if you enjoy farming, grinding dungeons, dungeons in general, or any of the things they’ve nerfed recently then you are kitten out of luck.

The idea of playing for funs sake makes perfect sense, right up until the point where they started making it impossible to do things that for many players were fun!

Adapt. Trust me…there are plenty of ways to make money in this game without spending a dime in the cash shop OR exploiting. No, I will not elaborate.

Im not after money. Im just really losing all sight of doing anything interesting.
100% world completion done
4 crafting professions 400. And the others are just gold sinks using materials I dont feel like grinding out 300 more of…
Legendaries take an absurd amount of grind which is, oh hey, capped constantly so I couldnt actually work towards them if I wanted to.
Dungeons at their peak are fun the first time, decent the second, reasonable the third, and boring by the 4rth. And most dungeons are not at their peak.

WvWvW for me right now is either waiting 3 hours for a queue during the day, or playing at night like I usually do, and just stomping the enemy teams :/

And im not really a big Spvp fan.

Frankly speaking, there’s not actually anything fun for me to do right now. The only goals I could potentially have are being nerfed one by one (anti farm codes, lessened dungeon rewards, making dungeons more tedious and unfun [and no I dont mean magg])

I know one of my friends who has put the same amount of time as me in gw2 and put more time into gw1 has already given up on the game. And its looking like I might be doing that too soon. Fun for a first playthrough, but nothing much to keep me interested right now.

Fox.1054:

If anyone in their right mind would consider dungeons fun in their current state I believe they have a serious grinding addiction on their hands. As for dynamic events and tasks, they are fun the first time around, but gets repetitive fast, especially with the low amount of skills. I tried rolling a second character but I’m simply no longer having fun, while my first character was a lot of fun from lv1 to lv80. I didn’t have this problem with GW1 at all, I completed that campaign over 8 times each and I’m still having fun with that. A bit of a disappointment when a lot of us are GW1 veterans.

Well firstly, i personally LOVE the dungeons in their new state, i like the challenge, it’s fun to me.

However i will agree with the skill area, in PVE at least, in PVP i have no such issues. In PvE for what ever reason I just got really bored with my ranger, despite swapping between like every weapon set in existence… I don’t know what it is… however when i go into PvP i suddenly enjoy it more which is weird… or when i log onto an alt and do the same task, maybe it’s cause my alt is an ele that has a lot of conjures so i just have significantly more variety…

If rewards are part of peoples fun, as well as enjoying dungeons they can just do 20 different dungeons and paths in a row and get their rewards. The only thing that Anet are stopping is people spamming the same path because it’s faster and easier than others.

Zenyatoo.4059:

Vorch.2985:

Zenyatoo.4059:

“IMO, Anet is promoting the concept that everything you do in GW2 should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to get rewards for doing that thing. "

But if you enjoy farming, grinding dungeons, dungeons in general, or any of the things they’ve nerfed recently then you are kitten out of luck.

The idea of playing for funs sake makes perfect sense, right up until the point where they started making it impossible to do things that for many players were fun!

Adapt. Trust me…there are plenty of ways to make money in this game without spending a dime in the cash shop OR exploiting. No, I will not elaborate.

Im not after money. Im just really losing all sight of doing anything interesting.
100% world completion done
4 crafting professions 400. And the others are just gold sinks using materials I dont feel like grinding out 300 more of…
Legendaries take an absurd amount of grind which is, oh hey, capped constantly so I couldnt actually work towards them if I wanted to.
Dungeons at their peak are fun the first time, decent the second, reasonable the third, and boring by the 4rth. And most dungeons are not at their peak.

WvWvW for me right now is either waiting 3 hours for a queue during the day, or playing at night like I usually do, and just stomping the enemy teams :/

And im not really a big Spvp fan.

Frankly speaking, there’s not actually anything fun for me to do right now. The only goals I could potentially have are being nerfed one by one (anti farm codes, lessened dungeon rewards, making dungeons more tedious and unfun [and no I dont mean magg])

I know one of my friends who has put the same amount of time as me in gw2 and put more time into gw1 has already given up on the game. And its looking like I might be doing that too soon. Fun for a first playthrough, but nothing much to keep me interested right now.

I find it funny that you’re complaining about the dungeon code that nerfs your rewards for doing THE SAME EXACT ROUTE and saying it makes them tedious and unfun…. You do realize you can jump back and forth between 2 or more routes and get same rewards right? Pretty simple for you people that want to farm tokens for w/e reason….

My issue with this sort of logic is that if it added up, or if they really truly believed it, why even have levels? Why not just let us run around having fun in the game, without needing to entice us with progression?

Why does this suddenly become true at 80, but not before that?

Zenyatoo.4059:

Vorch.2985:

Zenyatoo.4059:

“IMO, Anet is promoting the concept that everything you do in GW2 should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to get rewards for doing that thing. "

But if you enjoy farming, grinding dungeons, dungeons in general, or any of the things they’ve nerfed recently then you are kitten out of luck.

The idea of playing for funs sake makes perfect sense, right up until the point where they started making it impossible to do things that for many players were fun!

Adapt. Trust me…there are plenty of ways to make money in this game without spending a dime in the cash shop OR exploiting. No, I will not elaborate.

Im not after money. Im just really losing all sight of doing anything interesting.
100% world completion done
4 crafting professions 400. And the others are just gold sinks using materials I dont feel like grinding out 300 more of…
Legendaries take an absurd amount of grind which is, oh hey, capped constantly so I couldnt actually work towards them if I wanted to.
Dungeons at their peak are fun the first time, decent the second, reasonable the third, and boring by the 4rth. And most dungeons are not at their peak.

WvWvW for me right now is either waiting 3 hours for a queue during the day, or playing at night like I usually do, and just stomping the enemy teams :/

And im not really a big Spvp fan.

Frankly speaking, there’s not actually anything fun for me to do right now. The only goals I could potentially have are being nerfed one by one (anti farm codes, lessened dungeon rewards, making dungeons more tedious and unfun [and no I dont mean magg])

I know one of my friends who has put the same amount of time as me in gw2 and put more time into gw1 has already given up on the game. And its looking like I might be doing that too soon. Fun for a first playthrough, but nothing much to keep me interested right now.

http://guildwars2hub.com/features/editorials/80-things-do-level-80

Vzur.7123:

My issue with this sort of logic is that if it added up, or if they really truly believed it, why even have levels? Why not just let us run around having fun in the game, without needing to entice us with progression?

Why does this suddenly become true at 80, but not before that?

As a GW1 vet I wish this was true. Hitting level cap and getting max armor at the end of noob island was amazing in Factions and Nightfall.

firstly, you cannot quantify fun, fun is not a “reason”, fun is a result of many different possible inputs, you can’t have a game that revolves around being “fun” because fun isn’t a cause of a good game it’s a product, but that’s all terminology and I think it’s just a poor choice of words on your part, I get what your saying anyway (which is really what matters).

anyway, I enjoy questing, love it to death when a game has good questing (even mediocre questing will do), I don’t mind dungeon running either and I don’t really need a lot of end game to be satisfied. but I love a good quest. I do it because I enjoy the experience (not the EXP the actual experience of questing) I couldn’t care less about the rewards as long as I can keep questing. that being said I think the questing in GW2 is some of the most god awful game design I have ever seen, don’t get me wrong, they do some things really well, but I found most of their features just cheapened the experience of questing and made it dull, made it unengaged, made it so bad that I just can’t get into it, no matter how hard I try. it’s not that I don’t like the world (I love it), it’s not that I don’t like the combat (combats fine, even if it is the same most of the way through), I just feel so removed from the game when I quest and I could go on all day as to why (but I’ll bekittenif I’m gonna type all that kitten out).

Elydian.1763:

The problem with what you’re saying is that rewards play a part in people’s enjoyment of the game. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

I covered this. People find lots of things in various MMOG’s fun; it’s not necessary that Anet provide for or allow everything that any player finds to be fun.

Calling a reward system a ‘Skinner Box’ goes too far. I’m well aware of some MMO developers resorting to cheap Skinner Box techniques to trick people into continuing to play (I’m looking at you, Blizzard). But including a reward system in the game, rewards with which you can purchase items within the game, adds to its depth.

I didn’t say that reward systems are all skinner box systems; however, most rewards-centric games are indeed skinner box games. GW2 has a reward system, but the game is not rewards-centric.

As bad as WoW has become, Blizzard understood, subscription or not, that in order to hold on to players, you need to give them a consistent challenge and feeling of progression.

People play – and keep playing – all sorts of games, over and over, that offer no such systematic reward system.

It’s like the argument made back when the added sound to film, and for a long time all movies were musicals. Nobody even thought of making a movie that wasn’t a musical, with song and dance numbers.

Although it might be hard for you to imagine, not everyone plays MMOGs primarily for the systematic reward progression.

‘Fun’ is a non-word, as it’s far too subjective to ever be considered an objective value in its own right. Plenty of people find being challenged and rewarded, and progressing incredibly fun. You don’t, evidently, but you can’t just encourage those sorts of people to just leave the game, else I think you’ll find the game will fail, just like SWTOR did before, for the same basic reason: there was nothing for PvEers to do at 80 after a couple of months.

Yes, and they thought all non-musical movies would fail, because nobody would go to see them. I understand that you believe that such a system is the only way an MMOG can succeed, but Anet stated right up front that this was not that kind of game. It’s like the producer and director tell you “this movie is not a musical” and then you pay to go see the movie and complain “OMG!! There are no song and dance numbers! You need to put in song and dance numbers!”

Also, I’d like to point out a problem in your argument. There is plenty of challenge, reward, and progressing available in GW2, especially in the form of creating alts and learning entirely different skill sets. What is not available, however, is the ability to invest endless amounts of time in your character to make them significantly more powerful than the characters of players who don’t play the way you do, or for the reasons you do. Again, this is core philosophy that was explained before purchase in many venues.

As far as SWTOR, IMO they suffer from the same problem that plagues TERA, RIFT, AION and other recent releases; they are fundamentally gear-grind, reward-centric games that attempt to toss some scraps and cookies to anyone playing the game for other reasons, making them – essentially – WoW clones. Why should a gear and reward-centric player quit WoW for any of those games? Answer: there is no real reason, except for those that just want a different skin on what is fundamentally the same game.

By the same token, why should casual players leave WoW for SWTOR, TERA, RIFT or AION? There’s no reason to, other than a different skin on the same “you’re our scrub mass populace by which other players can feel superior” game.

GW2 is different because it is fundamentally designed to celebrate the more casual playstyles. It has abandoned the gear-centric reward-grind model, and embraces playing for the fun of it (while not embracing EVERYTHING anyone might find “fun”). No elitist raids, no uberguild exclusionary in-game mechanics. They celebrate the explorers, the soloers, the jumpers, the quiet introverts, the RPers, the crafters, the resource collecters, the helpers; they’ve taken out virtually all griefing mechanics and made it so that you’re always glad to see other players and you’re not subject to the petty tyranny of in-game jerks who play all day long every day.

So GW2 has given the casual populace of other games a sound reason to give up their scrubby scraps tossed at them by other developers and come to Tyria where they are the new kings of the design. Here, Anet has reiterated in no uncertain terms in the latest patches that we – those that play for non-reward centric fun of it – are indeed those that Anet treasures and wants to keep happy, and has put a big red flag up to reward-farmers that no, this is not that kind of game, and you will not turn it into one.

I agree completely with OP. I love this game and have a ton of fun doing pretty much anything: dungeons, PvP, leveling, and even just exploring. I’m glad they made it the way they did and I wouldn’t change a thing. Thanks ANet for such an awesome game!!

Vzur.7123:

My issue with this sort of logic is that if it added up, or if they really truly believed it, why even have levels? Why not just let us run around having fun in the game, without needing to entice us with progression?

Why does this suddenly become true at 80, but not before that?

You’re confusing a game that is not reward-centric, or progression-centric, with a game that has no rewards or progression. Of course Anet knows that people enjoy progression and rewards, but not everyone wants progression and rewards to be the fundamental reason for playing. When reward progression becomes the core design philosophy, you have a skinner-box game.

There’s nothing wrong with skinner box games, it’s just that there’s a glut of them on the market – WoW, AION, TERA, SWTOR, RIFT .. etc, etc. Why make another one? Who do you think you’re going to appeal to by making the same game with yet another skin on it? You can’t compete with WoW for skinner box customers – AION, RIFT, TERA and SWTOR all found this out.

Deith.7596:

It’s not their job to tell me what’s fun and what’s not. If someone enjoys farming, let him do it.

Or you could find a game where farming is an integral part of the design and play that.

Please don’t try to turn GW2 into the game you like. I like this one. If you like grinding and treadmills there are plenty of options out there for you. You should play one of those.

I don’t go to WoW forums and complain about the grind and the treadmill. I simply play other games that are more in line with what I want to play.

You can’t tell thousands of MMO players who enjoy progression not to enjoy progression, or that they should find certain activities fun, like doing the same types of things as other MMOs, but without the point in doing them. Good luck with that. Most players want some overarching purpose of doing what they’re doing. Otherwise it just feels like a colossal waste of time (which it is anyway, but at least with character development you feel like you got something out of it).

Edit: Let me add this: I think Arenanet did a spectacular job with the leveling process, in not making it feel grindy. Now they need to do the same thing with endgame. Give some progression, but do it in a way that doesn’t feel grindy. Create some dungeons that are actually fun to run would be a good start. One of the exciting things about dungeons in other games is that you might get the piece of armor you are looking for. You could get it on the first run if you’re lucky! That’s what keeps players coming back again and again. The excitement of maybe getting their drop. I think badge farming is a lame excuse for an endgame, and takes away the excitement and suspense. You already know how many runs you have to do. So it feels exactly like a grind.

Rizzy.8293:

Getting rewarded is pretty fun, you should try it.

I enjoy being rewarded. It’s not the reason I play a game. It’s the reason I have a job. I already have a job. I don’t look to games for “rewards”. They’re nice. They’re fun. They’re not why I play a game.

FarFarAway.6579:

You can’t tell thousands of MMO players who enjoy progression not to enjoy progression, or that they should find certain activities fun, like doing the same types of things as other MMOs, but without the point in doing them. Good luck with that. Most players want some overarching purpose of doing what they’re doing. Otherwise it just feels like a colossal waste of time (which it is anyway, but at least with character development you feel like you got something out of it).

There are plenty of games on the market that will satisfy those peoples’ desire to have someone give their gaming experience purpose.

I don’t understand why people leave those games that already do things they want to do.

FarFarAway.6579:

You can’t tell thousands of MMO players who enjoy progression not to enjoy progression, or that they should find certain activities fun, like doing the same types of things as other MMOs, but without the point in doing them.

Nobody is trying to tell them that. What ANET explained over and over was that this is not a progression-centric, or reward-centric game. Some players enjoy full open-world PvP and exploiting things in game for their benefit and griefing other players through mechanisms like kill-stealing and node-jacking. ANET doesn’t tell them not to enjoy those things; it just doesn’t provide for those playstyles and “fun” activities in GW2 because it conflicts with game design philosophy.

Most players want some overarching purpose of doing what they’re doing. Otherwise it just feels like a colossal waste of time (which it is anyway, but at least with character development you feel like you got something out of it).

Source for this info? Perhaps most players want that; perhaps most don’t care about it. Perhaps most players get their sense of “overarching purpose” out of life, and don’t look for it from games they play.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

You’re confusing a game that is not reward-centric, or progression-centric, with a game that has no rewards or progression. Of course Anet knows that people enjoy progression and rewards, but not everyone wants progression and rewards to be the fundamental reason for playing. When reward progression becomes the core design philosophy, you have a skinner-box game.

There’s nothing wrong with skinner box games, it’s just that there’s a glut of them on the market – WoW, AION, TERA, SWTOR, RIFT .. etc, etc. Why make another one? Who do you think you’re going to appeal to by making the same game with yet another skin on it? You can’t compete with WoW for skinner box customers – AION, RIFT, TERA and SWTOR all found this out.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I agree.. because I sorta do. I’d love to see more sandbox MMOs on the market, which tend to be much less about rewards. I also agree that WoW isn’t the only way to make an MMO, and find it frustrating that it keeps getting imitated.

OTOH, for a themepark type game.. I don’t know, it does seem kind of central to the mechanics. I think the people who just enjoy the content, fighting mob after mob, without needing to be rewarded for it, are a pretty small niche. It can be fun for a little while, but it’s not like a more engaging action game – and even they tend to rely entirely on PvP for longevity.

I don’t think that works so well in an MMORPG.. RPGs depending heavily on rewards, or a finite story, rather than visceral fun action mechanics.

I’m thinking GW2 is going to put that to the test, though. In a way, I guess I hope I’m wrong.

Thank you Wintyre Fraust for clarifying Anet’s philosophy. I was looking for a post like this, because I had trouble understanding why they wouldn’t just let people decide themselves what they like to do in the game. I wasn’t for or against, I just thought it was totalitarian.

Something in me is still resisting your claims, but your reasoning is very solid. I don’t know if I agree, the main counter argument being that it’s perfectly normal to have a correlation between fun and reward – but I understand their philosophy now. How it holds up for me now that I’m lvl 80 remains to be seen. I think I might be someone who needs a goal in the form of some reward that makes my character progress to have a sense of fun.

Anyway, thanks for this excellent and decent thread.

edit: Hmm.. So in a way Anet is saying: Hey guys, this is just a game, don’t expect it to save your life, or spent countless hours on it. It actually tells you to play less (..and ‘enjoy’ more). That might be the true revolution of this game.

Vzur.7123:

OTOH, for a themepark type game.. I don’t know, it does seem kind of central to the mechanics. I think the people who just enjoy the content, fighting mob after mob, without needing to be rewarded for it, are a pretty small niche. It can be fun for a little while, but it’s not like a more engaging action game – and even they tend to rely entirely on PvP for longevity.

Painted that way it does sound bleak. However, there is much to do to make it a unique and challenging experience. New content obviously adds uniqueness. What GW2 lacks is full utilization of dynamic events. Remember in the manifesto where they described that changes to the world that could occur? I’ve noticed that they rearely occur, because the encounters themselves just lack the challenge to get the world into a state where it’s changed. I think Arena Net under estimated their player-base’s skill. I’ve made suggestions elsewhere on how to change it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Scale-Dynamic-Event-Difficulty-on-Success/first#post101866

Other than that have multi-faceted tasks required to complete some of the larger world bosses would increase difficulty by require organization.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

I covered this. People find lots of things in various MMOG’s fun; it’s not necessary that Anet provide for or allow everything that any player finds to be fun.

Of course. The problem though, is that ArenaNet were clearly aiming for mass market with GW2, which means it can’t be niche. It has to try and please a lot of people, not just the players from GW1. They have to be able to embrace people transferring from WoW.

However, I understand where you’re coming from. GW2 does things differently. It takes the things people believe to be necessary for an MMO to succeed, and throws them out or replaces them with systems that are better. It did this with many things. The problem though, was that they assumed that a game changing at endgame was necessarily a bad thing. It’s not, in fact, it has to change, because leveling is about progression for a lot of people, and when the leveling stops, that feeling of progression has to remain else there’s a feeling that the game has ended. Only PvP games can survive this. GW2 hoped and promised to provide a good core PvE game as well as its PvP.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for the gear grind, and I’m not for the gear treadmill in the slightest. As a player, all I want, and all I think you’ll find most PvEers want, is a good flow of challenging PvE encounters, with a sense of increasing difficulty, and a badge to wear when we’ve beaten the hardest encounters. That’s all we want.

GW2 very nearly provides this, and can potentially completely satisfy this mindset. The problem isn’t even a gear progression problem, it’s the sense that we’re being forced to over-do the content to gain any badge at all. In short it’s far too grindy. The other problem is that the monetary rewards are being diminished to a point where we can’t even break even anymore when taking travel and repairs into account.

GW2 has a reward system, but the game is not rewards-centric.

Like I said above, the game is already frustratingly close to giving enough reward as it is. It doesn’t need to be reward-centric.

Although it might be hard for you to imagine, not everyone plays MMOGs primarily for the systematic reward progression.

I’m well aware of this, however, many do, and you can’t just say that this isn’t the game for them, as that’s a drastic oversimplification of the big picture. GW2 right now is doing MMO better than any MMO has done before it. People can’t simply “choose WoW” anymore, because so many things about GW2 make WoW seem rather stale. The MMO genre is still young, and hence the market is not yet at that ideal stage where there’s a separate MMO for everyone, which is arguably exactly why theme park MMOs exist, to try and cope with a sparse market. ArenaNet know this, and are doing their best to do what WoW has done. That is, please MMO fans, rather than pleasing MMO fans that don’t care for progression, or MMO fans that only care for progression. This game truly has the potential to please both, so why stop short?

Yes, and they thought all non-musical movies would fail, because nobody would go to see them.

That’s not the same thing. You’re implying that the only reason people want progression is because that’s what they’re used to. That’s not true. It’s because it’s what they like, because, well, it’s an aspect of human nature to be satisfied by progress. Why do you think so many genre games are starting to record all sorts of stats on players? Look at Battlefield 3. People enjoy being able to amass a portfolio of achievement. It’s human nature.

What is not available, however, is the ability to invest endless amounts of time in your character to make them significantly more powerful than the characters of players who don’t play the way you do, or for the reasons you do.

Like I said, we’re not looking for statistical advantage. I applauded ArenaNet’s philosophy on this. There was nothing more frustrating in WoW than taking a break and “falling behind”.

No elitist raids, no uberguild exclusionary in-game mechanics. They celebrate the explorers, the soloers, the jumpers…….tyranny of in-game jerks who play all day long every day.

Who said wanting a challenge wasn’t also a casual play style? In addition to this, if it can celebrate all these niche demographics, why can’t it also celebrate the raiders? You’re immensely prejudiced towards raiders. We’re not all jerks who play all day long. Every raiding guild I’ve ever been a part of has been a great group of friendly people, who all, believe it or not, have full-time jobs and raid because they love defeating challenges by designing and executing strategies with a good group of players who love doing the same.

and has put a big red flag up to reward-farmers that no, this is not that kind of game, and you will not turn it into one.

And who’s being exclusionary now?

Durzlla.6295:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Vorch.2985:

Zenyatoo.4059:

“IMO, Anet is promoting the concept that everything you do in GW2 should be because you enjoy doing that thing, not because you’re trying to get rewards for doing that thing. "

But if you enjoy farming, grinding dungeons, dungeons in general, or any of the things they’ve nerfed recently then you are kitten out of luck.

The idea of playing for funs sake makes perfect sense, right up until the point where they started making it impossible to do things that for many players were fun!

Adapt. Trust me…there are plenty of ways to make money in this game without spending a dime in the cash shop OR exploiting. No, I will not elaborate.

Im not after money. Im just really losing all sight of doing anything interesting.
100% world completion done
4 crafting professions 400. And the others are just gold sinks using materials I dont feel like grinding out 300 more of…
Legendaries take an absurd amount of grind which is, oh hey, capped constantly so I couldnt actually work towards them if I wanted to.
Dungeons at their peak are fun the first time, decent the second, reasonable the third, and boring by the 4rth. And most dungeons are not at their peak.

WvWvW for me right now is either waiting 3 hours for a queue during the day, or playing at night like I usually do, and just stomping the enemy teams :/

And im not really a big Spvp fan.

Frankly speaking, there’s not actually anything fun for me to do right now. The only goals I could potentially have are being nerfed one by one (anti farm codes, lessened dungeon rewards, making dungeons more tedious and unfun [and no I dont mean magg])

I know one of my friends who has put the same amount of time as me in gw2 and put more time into gw1 has already given up on the game. And its looking like I might be doing that too soon. Fun for a first playthrough, but nothing much to keep me interested right now.

I find it funny that you’re complaining about the dungeon code that nerfs your rewards for doing THE SAME EXACT ROUTE and saying it makes them tedious and unfun…. You do realize you can jump back and forth between 2 or more routes and get same rewards right? Pretty simple for you people that want to farm tokens for w/e reason….

What? When did I say that I was upset about the nerf to the money rewards? They change the actual dungeon paths to make them tedious and unfun. And most dungeons in general have lots of unfun mechanics. It’s not about the money, I have plenty of gold. (Tbh I have no idea how people get to 80 without having at least 10g…)

Vorch.2985:

http://guildwars2hub.com/features/editorials/80-things-do-level-80

Ive actually done most of the things on that list. Or mentioned why I wouldnt want to be doing them in the first place. o.o

Fun is a nebulous and undefinable concept imho. ANet trying to force the players to find fun in the game without actually rewarding them is kinda counter productive? Reminds me of Dolph Lundgren shouting Are we having fun yet while throwing grenades at JCvD. Sure someone is having fun, but the other is not..

i think the problem comes down to the fact that many feel that fun is a zero sum equation, if you are having fun, someone else is not etc

oh and Skinner Boxes exist in RL btw, you are living in one.

Elydian.1763:

The problem though, is that ArenaNet were clearly aiming for mass market with GW2, which means it can’t be niche….They have to be able to embrace people transferring from WoW.

While every game aims for a large customer base, I disagree with your reasoning here. It seems to me that plainly evident in the game design, manifesto and marketing campaign is the philosophy that they were primarily appealing to people that did not care for WoW (and standard MMOG) mechanisms. By definition this means that if you enjoy the fundamental structures and mechanisms of WoW and WoW-like clones, there’s a good chance you will not care for GW2 design.

IMO, Anet believes there is a mass market for GW2 out there, but it is not comprised of people that are happy with WoW-like game structure and mechanisms, but rather likely do not play MMOGs any more because they are all like WoW.

The problem though, was that they assumed that a game changing at endgame was necessarily a bad thing.

No, they didn’t. They just said that it’s been done, and is being done by everyone. Why try to reinvent the wheel when other games – especially WoW – already basically has that kind of system perfected and has years of content depth already ready for players? It’s not about good vs bad game design, it’s about game design that appeals to different prospective customer bases. There’s plenty of games to appeal to the reward and progression-centric player .

It’s not, in fact, it has to change, because leveling is about progression for a lot of people, and when the leveling stops, that feeling of progression has to remain else there’s a feeling that the game has ended. Only PvP games can survive this.

I understand that many of you feel that way, and believe it. However, once again, I and many others don’t share that view. Just because you cannot imagine enough people playing mainly for reasons other than character progression and rewards doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

GW2 very nearly provides this, and can potentially completely satisfy this mindset. The problem isn’t even a gear progression problem, it’s the sense that we’re being forced to over-do the content to gain any badge at all. In short it’s far too grindy. The other problem is that the monetary rewards are being diminished to a point where we can’t even break even anymore when taking travel and repairs into account.

So you are saying that the content difficulty (read: grind) between you and a cosmetic badge that does nothing more, functionally speaking, than announce that you have completed some really difficult content … is too difficult? Well, okay, I think that it’s fair to make such a complaint if you wish, and it’s fair for Anet to look into it. If nobody is doing that content, then it probably needs to be adjusted.

I’m well aware of this, however, many do, and you can’t just say that this isn’t the game for them, as that’s a drastic oversimplification of the big picture. …This game truly has the potential to please both, so why stop short?

There might just be a semantic difference we’re stumbling over, but surely you realize that the MMOG marketplace is full of opposing desires that simply cannot be satisfied within a single game? While some reward/progression centric people might be satisfied with equal rewards (see definition in O.P.) for other less demanding playstyles, I personally don’t think that’s a significant part of the marketplace.

That’s not true. It’s because it’s what they like, because, well, it’s an aspect of human nature to be satisfied by progress. Why do you think so many genre games are starting to record all sorts of stats on players? Look at Battlefield 3. People enjoy being able to amass a portfolio of achievement. It’s human nature.

People enjoy and are satisfied by all sorts of things – I’m not arguing otherwise. Not all games offer all things to all people, and some things cannot be offered by the same game because they serve contradictory, exclusive interests.

And who’s being exclusionary now?

All games have to exclude things to have any form or function, and especially to serve a game philosophy/design. Because people want to be able to permanently kill characters or take their stuff doesn’t mean it should be in every game. Just because some people like to farm for rewards doesn’t mean every game should allow or endorse farming for rewards.

As far as the mechanics of the drop system is concerned, Flannum says “It’s more of a badge system, so this is something that we did in Guild Wars 1 as well. Our basic philosophy is that you should never complete a piece of content and get something you don’t want. So it’s going to be the case where you go through and are guaranteed to get a piece of gear that you didn’t have before, and that you’re going to want.” So, you’re guaranteed to get a piece of gear every time you do a dungeon? “Yes.” Sweet.

Doing things just “for fun” doesn’t exist in rpg’s, let alone mmorpgs. The fun that comes from playing an rpg, mmo or otherwise, comes from character progression, challenging content, and rewards/gear/loot/gold etc. Running long and difficult dungeons, just to reach the end and not get properly rewarded is extremely discouraging. 9/10 times, most players would not run the dungeon again knowing they wouldn’t get rewarded for their hard work. This isn’t mario kart.

But rewards are fun.

Doing fun content and being rewarded is double fun.

Do you not want double fun?

Why implement dungeon sets that require farming, if you’re going to nerf farming? Makes no sense. Dungeons already have a high maintenance cost, why not reward the player?

Ktham.6947:

Why implement dungeon sets that require farming, if you’re going to nerf farming? Makes no sense. Dungeons already have a high maintenance cost, why not reward the player?

If you’re doing a dungeon for the fun of it, you’re not farming it. If you’re doing it for the rewards, you’re farming it. In GW2, rewards are considered to be bonuses for doing fun things, not something to be “farmed” for their own sake. Which is the difference between a “grind” and something that is not a grind; if you’re going to be running dungeons anyway because you enjoy doing that sort of thing, it’s not a grind to get the gear. If you are only doing the dungeons to get the gear, then it’s a grind.

Knote.2904:

But rewards are fun.

Doing fun content and being rewarded is double fun.

Do you not want double fun?

That would apply if I had argued that being rewarded wasn’t fun, or if I had argued that we shouldn’t be rewarded for our in-game activities. What I said was that this isn’t a reward-centric game. And no, I don’t want it to become a reward-centric game.

i dont care about rewards

but combat isnt fun
it is mindless grinding one event/dungeon after another which are all the same all the time, because there is no teamplay/tactics whatsoever

so what do u mean with fun-centric?

OP, your post is the best post I’ve seen on the forums so far. Good job on explaining your opinion in a clear, well worded way. I hope to see more like this.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Ktham.6947:

Why implement dungeon sets that require farming, if you’re going to nerf farming? Makes no sense. Dungeons already have a high maintenance cost, why not reward the player?

If you’re doing a dungeon for the fun of it, you’re not farming it. If you’re doing it for the rewards, you’re farming it. In GW2, rewards are considered to be bonuses for doing fun things, not something to be “farmed” for their own sake. Which is the difference between a “grind” and something that is not a grind; if you’re going to be running dungeons anyway because you enjoy doing that sort of thing, it’s not a grind to get the gear. If you are only doing the dungeons to get the gear, then it’s a grind.

But that’s what happens when you hit lvl 80. You grind. Progression level stops, unless you want to unlock skill points but I already have my build. Lvl 80 could explore and do events but how long would that last? In order to acquire a dungeon set requires multiple runs.

Yes, some of the paths are much easier than others, but the other paths are either ridiculously hard or glitched. So do the players have a choice? Not really. I would make the argument that incorporating a limit cap was not the proper choice; rather than limiting player actions, I think they should have either work on a fix for the bugged paths or make small nerfs to the incredibly hard paths, because once you start placing restrictions on players, they won’t have any incentive to play.

Now, I’m only talking about dungeons. The cap on farming DE’s was a good idea; it influences individuals to explore and enjoy the world of Tyria.