Guild Wars 2

Why do I see your 1-5 under “play the game your way” is all about the trait changes from April. Well that and discouraging degenerate play styles which caused them to nerf loot to keep inflation to a minimum and the intro zone champ trains.

Hmm…I seem to be rewarded no matter how slow I am at accomplishing things. I’ve almost finished Map Completion on my first character after two years. Yay! I only need 7 more PoI, Vista.

Well, I hope I will be rewarded for finishing it, even though I am so slow. I will, won’t I? =/

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Hmm…I seem to be rewarded no matter how slow I am at accomplishing things. I’ve almost finished Map Completion on my first character after two years. Yay! I only need 7 more PoI, Vista.

Well, I hope I will be rewarded for finishing it, even though I am so slow. I will, won’t I? =/

All you get for that are two “gifts of exploration” which you can use to make a legendary. But if you haven’t had a precursor drop for you, then they are pretty much useless. Enjoy

The cities are terribly unsatisfying. They are big, they are beautiful, but they are incredibly shallow.

Karma vendors are terrible.

And crafting, especially the discovery and recipe part, isn’t too great. Aside from cooking and jewelcrafting, you only learn a few recipes to craft other armor skins. And they didn’t even create recipes for all the karma armor, only the first 2 sets.

Armor skins are also unsatisfying. I’m given a ton of choice, yet I can barely pick one thing I like. Which feels weird where in GW1 I had the opposite problem with 15ks.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Hmm…I seem to be rewarded no matter how slow I am at accomplishing things. I’ve almost finished Map Completion on my first character after two years. Yay! I only need 7 more PoI, Vista.

Well, I hope I will be rewarded for finishing it, even though I am so slow. I will, won’t I? =/

All you get for that are two “gifts of exploration” which you can use to make a legendary. But if you haven’t had a precursor drop for you, then they are pretty much useless. Enjoy

It’s okay. I’ve had 3 drop, so far.

I just didn’t understand the statement about only being rewarded for rushing through content. /shrug

Behellagh.1468:

Why do I see your 1-5 under “play the game your way” is all about the trait changes from April. Well that and discouraging degenerate play styles which caused them to nerf loot to keep inflation to a minimum and the intro zone champ trains.

I’m going to respond to this one.

What is being called “degenerate play styles” is called “Progression” in the United States. Almost every game here makes its money from players to go after champs and other monsters. It’s what Americans pay for when they subscribe to MMOs or buy access to a game like GW2. Yeah, i know that’s weird, but it’s what sells here.

The last time I saw a game like this was when Ragnarok Online was brought to the US. In RO, people leveled up their characters to the point where there was nothing left except socializing. In Japan and Korea, people are more willing to stick to such games because the gamers value socializing over progression. Not so in the U.S. where Americans thrive on endgame content. I know this from playing various MMOs (and simillar types of games) over the last 17 years on NA, EU, and Asian servers. The only thing keeping me in this game is the RP, the Sylvari storyline, and my need to see how the GW2 storyline ends. I also help the newer players when I can.

I’ve got alot of Progression-obsessed friends going back to WoW or heading over to ArcheAge. We’re losing alot of good guilds & players because of the situation with the content and progression. This is bad for newer players because there are less to people to teach others to master the harder classes like Mesmer and Ranger.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I just didn’t understand the statement about only being rewarded for rushing through content. /shrug

Well not understanding is understandable, because I never said:

only being rewarded for rushing through content

I just mentioned that such behavior is often rewarded, just take a look at the various trains set up and the way dungeon runs are carried out.

Well, okay, then. I would hope one would be rewarded whether one chose to go through content at breakneck speed or just ambling. It’s always great when the Devs allow one to have a choice! =)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, okay, then. I would hope one would be rewarded whether one chose to go through content at breakneck speed or just ambling. It’s always great when the Devs allow one to have a choice! =)

It’s not about rewards so much as the journey to acquire them and the overall subjective value for players. The slow and ambling players will often find themselves caught up in frenetic whirlwinds of activity for group required content.

As more and more of the game becomes oriented on knocking out checklists of required activities, it becomes more about whacking the moles and less about enjoying the thrill of the hunt.

kta.6502:

Behellagh.1468:

Why do I see your 1-5 under “play the game your way” is all about the trait changes from April. Well that and discouraging degenerate play styles which caused them to nerf loot to keep inflation to a minimum and the intro zone champ trains.

I’m going to respond to this one.

What is being called “degenerate play styles” is called “Progression” in the United States. Almost every game here makes its money from players to go after champs and other monsters. It’s what Americans pay for when they subscribe to MMOs or buy access to a game like GW2. Yeah, i know that’s weird, but it’s what sells here.

The last time I saw a game like this was when Ragnarok Online was brought to the US. In RO, people leveled up their characters to the point where there was nothing left except socializing. In Japan and Korea, people are more willing to stick to such games because the gamers value socializing over progression. Not so in the U.S. where Americans thrive on endgame content. I know this from playing various MMOs (and simillar types of games) over the last 17 years on NA, EU, and Asian servers. The only thing keeping me in this game is the RP, the Sylvari storyline, and my need to see how the GW2 storyline ends. I also help the newer players when I can.

I’ve got alot of Progression-obsessed friends going back to WoW or heading over to ArcheAge. We’re losing alot of good guilds & players because of the situation with the content and progression. This is bad for newer players because there are less to people to teach others to master the harder classes like Mesmer and Ranger.

I know that this isn’t your point but let me expand on mine. First when I say degenerate I mean a play style not foreseen by the developers that crop up due to exploiting the game’s mechanics and reward system.

Speed runs through a dungeon is a degenerate play style since it means avoiding encounters to get to the end quickly. The abuse of that has led to the various nerfings of loot from doing them. If the extraneous encounters aren’t needed to get the reward then why did the devs bother to include them? Players are taking advantage of the leash system. If the system didn’t exist speed runners would end up pulling a huge number of mobs onto their flanks when they rush to do the next boss chest encounter.

In my previous MMO speed runs led to a reward change that replaced a random exclusive reward from list X to a skee-ball ticket system with the number of tickets based on the data mined completion times and a vendor to trade your tickets for the previous acquirable items. And they would update the ticket amounts periodically base on the latest data mine. How’s that for a nerf.

Taking advantage of the way point system, champ respawn rates and number of champs in a zone so you can dash from one champ to the next just as it spawns is a degenerate play style. I admit the champ train concept was clever combination of understanding the spawning locations, transit times and respawn rate to minimize down time between champs but I’m fairly certain the devs didn’t expect anyone to formalize it as an activity that one would play for hours. It was partially the devs doing when they significantly boosted the champ rewards due to players ignoring champs but the train wasn’t an outcome they expected.

This game was never suppose to be about Progression. They threw the ascension level gear at those players. But they would never be satisfied by a horizontal progression system to begin with. As for content I can understand players wanting to binge on new content the way they binge watch a TV show’s season when they first pick up the box set. But here it’s one episode every two weeks and in the instantaneous gratification culture in the US that simply isn’t enough. They would blow through the content in a day. Me? I’m still doing episode 1. I’m ecstatic that the LS this time around doesn’t “force” me to complete it if I want the reward at the end of it. So it’s more “play it my way” than before.

But heck I’m a “care bear”, a casual player who should be playing Hello Kitty according to some. But I think I’m more of the target demographic than the OC min/maxing, speed running, leet PvP, MMO players that are leaving to look for their ideal game. I wish them luck finding their white whale.

That was beautiful, Behellagh.1468.

Thanks for going into detail, I wasn’t entirely sure on your points in the earlier post.

I think the whole of GW2 game development is being wagged by the “degenerate” play-style; it’s manifesting in almost everything in the game now.

You should read up on Skinner’s Box, a.k.a, “Progression”.

Originally GW2 was not supposed to be like this, the content was separated into the casual and hardcore (dungeons and fractals). Unfortunately with the ascended armor update it all began to spiral out of control, now almost everything you do in the game is a grind for one thing or another. I’m not neccessarily talking about ascended or legendary gear, even that one backpiece that you really want sometimes ends up as a terrible grind.

Honestly, it’s become a fashion show sweat shop. I really wish they would go back and revise all of the merchants and rewards, so you can at least spend the money that you do have on more interesting things without grinding all week just to buy that one item from another player. Of course, everyone would prefer the really good rewards to come from quests, but ANet has shown zero interest in that.

This is where all MMOs end up, and anyone who believes otherwise does not undersatnd how profit is made or how a business model is laid out.

Kuldebar.1897:

That was beautiful, Behellagh.1468.

Thanks for going into detail, I wasn’t entirely sure on your points in the earlier post.

I think the whole of GW2 game development is being wagged by the “degenerate” play-style; it’s manifesting in almost everything in the game now.

Thank you.

But I believe the root cause is the reward system of the game creates a positive feedback loop that in turn drives players to unconventional, unique play styles.

Due to the RNG nature of rewards, the only way to guarantee you get item X is buying it off the TP. Not a problem if what you want isn’t overwhelmingly popular or the drop rate is common, big problem if there is a huge demand and a drizzle of a drop rate. So players do whatever earns them the most gold per session in hopes to earn enough to buy one but the thing is lots of players are doing the exactly same thing. So everybody’s whose after item X are building up their gold reserves to buy one of the few available but it still will only go to the one that has the most gold. And likely that will never be you, at least not in a time frame you are looking for.

A more obvious positive feedback loop are gem shop skins, direct ones and indirect ones via tickets. So players exchange gold to buy gems to get items which in turn raises the cost of gems in relation to gold. So you need to earn more gold to get the next item at a similar gem price.

This convinces players that they must do whatever gets them the most gold during their play session, even if they dislike that activity. Which leads to the “GW2 is full of grinding” threads. Or players get clever and find a way to use the multitude of existing game mechanics to create a way to play totally unplanned and unforeseen by the developers. So when the devs data mined that players weren’t bothering to defeat champs they decided to juice up their rewards. And that led to some clever person to come up with the Queensdale champ train.

Someone else figured out by guesting on several servers that his level 80 can mine T6 mats from multiple maps all day, switching from one server to the next until the nodes respawn on the first server. Guesting was meant to play with friends on other servers, not to strip mine their resources to line your pockets (channeling Capt Planet here).

Now we have the boss train that arrives at the next stop every 15 minutes, all aboard.

But it’s all about getting the almighty gold in hopes to buy that item you want either at the gem shop for “free” or TP. Except nobody sees that doing that makes the gem shop more expensive for those shopping for “free” and more players with more gold means the price of those highly desirable items keep increasing, always being just out of reach.

Now the only real fix for items like precursors is either increase the drop rate or make them craftable. Except legendary weapons can be considered by some as “winning” the game. Even if they never spent a dime buying gems their presence in the game is a feature. Nobody wants to play in an MMO where you don’t see other players. It’s better to live in a city of a million strangers than alone in a ghost town. So ANet really doesn’t want players to leave because their grand quest is over.

I think that’s one reason ANet decided to do the Living Story than bulk content expansions. Keep players playing every two weeks at least. Here’s something new to do even if a devoted player can polish it off in only a few hours. You are now a persistent part of the world, even if the content isn’t.

Anyways enough of my rantings. I play because it’s more engaging than passively watching a TV show. I play for fun. If that means I never get a precursor/legendary, so be it. I just enjoy running around in a pretty world playing hero, bonking nasties on the head and going though their pockets.

Behellagh.1468:

Thank you.

But I believe the root cause is the reward system of the game creates a positive feedback loop that in turn drives players to unconventional, unique play styles…

It’s a symbiotic relationship, a feedback loop, for sure.

My issue and my problem with the path ANet took shortly after game release was when they wholeheartedly embraced vertical progression.

No getting over that for me and nearly every major change since Ascended Gear has simply added more of the same to the game and removed some things I considered strengths; reasons for coming back and playing.

The Trait System changes being the obvious example of a change that “fixed” something that wasn’t even remotely broken and replaced it with “dead blighted space”.

I think when players attempt to make content less “painful” by subscribing to a chain-gang method of playing, that’s probably a sign the content isn’t all that enjoyable or fun.

It’s a contortion, turning player motivations into pretzel machines of activity.

Zergborg mentality for the PvE world; at least in WvW/PvP, the superior numbers make some measure of tactical sense.

Despite the trait system mutilation, the strongest part of the game left for me is solo gameplay although leveling alts is not nearly as enjoyable as they used to be.

Now I came along after they announced this at the start of Dec 2012. And that is really the only vertical progression they’ve done in nearly two years and how long did it really take to role it out completely for armor and weapons? It certainly not WoW’s expansion route where the first items drop from an expansion is better than the set you spent months doing raids to get.

The “fix” to the trait system was in response to the contingent of players wanting something that was found in GW1, acquiring traits from completing specific content rather than handing them to you for free. Except, to my understanding these were more unique traits in GW1 and not the “basic” ones every became use to here in GW2 for 3g and change. But hey, we can now retrait for free. You know swapping between all those individual traits you unlocked by doing content that might not be available when you had the trait points to select it or by spending a lot more in the long run than 3g and change.

Behellagh.1468:

And that is really the only vertical progression they’ve done in nearly two years and how long did it really take to role it out completely for armor and weapons? It certainly not WoW’s expansion route where the first items drop from an expansion is better than the set you spent months doing raids to get.

In regards to that, I don’t make much of a distinction between character progression tied to gear and character progression tied to specific content; both are a form of gating/throttling which serves to put the game experience on rails.

If I have to get “X” gear to raise my stats it’s much the same as having to do “X” task to get a particular ability. The problem for me is that such restrictions decide how the player plays the game in a rather narrow way. Yes, ANet has allowed for gold purchase of traits, but the cost is rather high for something that used to be unlocked by simply playing the game as one wished.

I don’t buy that ANet was simply giving former GW players the “GW2 version of hunting elite skills” , unless we think making every trait in the game an “elite” somehow correlates. But, I also never bought the argument/logic that Ascended Gear was introduced to “fill a gap” between Exotic and Legendary.

As I stated earlier, it was the free form/open concept that interested me in GW2, but that has largely been dispensed with significant changes to the game.

Behellagh.1468:

Why do I see your 1-5 under “play the game your way” is all about the trait changes from April. Well that and discouraging degenerate play styles which caused them to nerf loot to keep inflation to a minimum and the intro zone champ trains.

Well the trait changes are god awful so I agree with all of OP’s points.

Kuldebar.1897:

(…)

• Committed guild membership is by design unrewarding and wholly fungible.
  (…)

I don’t understand this part, could you elaborate please what you mean?

Edit: Corrected formatting to display the “quoted” part

Behellagh.1468:

The “fix” to the trait system was in response to the contingent of players wanting something that was found in GW1, acquiring traits from completing specific content rather than handing them to you for free. Except, to my understanding these were more unique traits in GW1 and not the “basic” ones every became use to here in GW2 for 3g and change. But hey, we can now retrait for free. You know swapping between all those individual traits you unlocked by doing content that might not be available when you had the trait points to select it or by spending a lot more in the long run than 3g and change.

You are a very keen observer.

You make a lot of good points, but I can’t get on board for this one. This trait acquisition change came hand in hand with the China release, and the way it unnecessarily elongates rounding out your traits is an obvious nod to an Asian player market that generally readily accepts grinding as standard MMO faire. I think they didn’t want to make it too fast or easy for that crowd, looked for ways to do that, and simply used the “skill capping” concept of GW1 as a rudimentary blueprint for this. I mean, it’s not like there’s much rhyme or reason as to which event unlocks which trait. It’s mostly a “go to random event X to unlock trait Y” kind of thing, there’s little reasoning, and zero immersion, behind it.

I really don’t think this was in response to players wanting this, but rather a clever way to extend the 1-80 grind a tad by transforming a popular GW1 concept into a vaguely familiar GW2 progression mechanic.

Rouven.7409:

Kuldebar.1897:

(…)

• Committed guild membership is by design unrewarding and wholly fungible.
  (…)

I don’t understand this part, could you elaborate please what you mean?

Edit: Corrected formatting to display the “quoted” part

Here’s a write-up that explains the GW2 Guild issue:

I’ve been in 11 guilds since I started playing Guild Wars 2. Eleven. That’s a personal MMO record. World of Warcraft comes in second place with six, but that’s only because I’ve played off and on for eight years now. Guild Wars 2, by contrast, has graced my hard drive for a mere three months. By and large, I’ve found that its guilds seem to lack the cohesion of guilds in other MMOs, which may prove disastrous for the experience of all players.

My typical experience with guilds in Guild Wars 2 goes something like this: I join up, seduced by the promise of dozens of active, social members and frequent expeditions into dungeons and PvP, only to find myself dumped into a guild chat channel where no one responds to simple chat or to my offers to help — aside, that is, from a hopeful guild leader. This status quo maintains itself for perhaps a week, but eventually I’ll open up my guild tab to find most online players representing another guild or even cavorting about on a different server. The good news is that I think I’ve now found a decent guild; the sad news is that my standard for “a decent guild” has declined to where all I require is that people chat and acknowledge each other’s existence.

-Massivity: The Two Big Social Flaws of Guild Wars 2 by Leif Johnson