Guild Wars 2

I’m not trying to be negative or flame anyone here; so lets get that out of the way.

My question is philosophical. I’m trying to understand the core design philosophy behind this type of gameplay system and why YOU think it’s fun.

To me this feels like a chore rather than enterainment. Tier 1 and Tier 2 is better suited for smaller sized guilds and the biggest challenge is to find all the NPC targets in the world. Once you find all the targets, you spam the NPC to talk to them in order to prevent them from walking away, activate the mission, post in guild chat the closest waypoint to the NPC and kill all NPCs before the timer runs out. Tier 3 will be out of reach for small guilds due to scaling and symantics.

Recipe for fun with Guild Bounties:

1) Get 100 people on Teamspeak
2) Try to locate all targets before they despawn/reset
3) Find other guilds camping your targets doing the same thing. The longer it takes to locate your targets the more guilds show up.
4) Strategize! Which guild will kick it off first? When X guild kicks off do you take the chance to start yours before you’ve found your targets? What if you’re missing one of the difficult to find ones like Sotzz? Split second decision, go NOW!
5) Madness and much hilarity ensues.

My guild has gotten 5/6 on T3 without doing any of that. We all gather in some central location pop the T6 mission and spread out into 6 teams and Hunt!

It is a ton of fun. If it wasn’t for the few totally insanely hard to find bounties we would have succeeded multiple times.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

My guild has gotten 5/6 on T3 without doing any of that. We all gather in some central location pop the T6 mission and spread out into 6 teams and Hunt!

It is a ton of fun. If it wasn’t for the few totally insanely hard to find bounties we would have succeeded multiple times.

I don’t know about the OP but that’s how you are supposed to do them… it is way more fun also.

I also don’t really like the bounty hunt system.

I guess it could be fun (but also frustrating) if you did it like Zudet, but if you’re just looking for the rewards, it’s a boring and tedious (but at least successful) task. You just spread out (we had 18 people for our first T3 try, which was successful too…) look for the mobs, pop the quest and then you post waypoints…boring and unfun.

For me this is just the next carrot on the stick thing I didn’t really want in the game. Now I’ll have to take part in that boring tedious PVE thing at least once a week to get my shinies asap. I know I don’t need them. I know it, trust me. But somehow I feel the urge to do it nonetheless. And I dislike me for that urge…

I’ve rarely actively finished a daily before the laurel stuff. It either happened, or it didn’t. If some gathering was missing, I wouldn’t bother before, because there was no reward I particularly cared for. Now I feel the urge to hunt down that last ore or tree to finish it, when I actually just wanted to go offline, because I want shinies I don’t actually need. It’s sad isn’t it.

Everything’s going to be boring if you’re just trying to charge through it for rewards. But I totally sympathize with hating the carrot/stick urge, nonetheless.

Turkman.1089:

I also don’t really like the bounty hunt system.

I guess it could be fun (but also frustrating) if you did it like Zudet, but if you’re just looking for the rewards, it’s a boring and tedious (but at least successful) task. You just spread out (we had 18 people for our first T3 try, which was successful too…) look for the mobs, pop the quest and then you post waypoints…boring and unfun.

For me this is just the next carrot on the stick thing I didn’t really want in the game. Now I’ll have to take part in that boring tedious PVE thing at least once a week to get my shinies asap. I know I don’t need them. I know it, trust me. But somehow I feel the urge to do it nonetheless. And I dislike me for that urge…

I’ve rarely actively finished a daily before the laurel stuff. It either happened, or it didn’t. If some gathering was missing, I wouldn’t bother before, because there was no reward I particularly cared for. Now I feel the urge to hunt down that last ore or tree to finish it, when I actually just wanted to go offline, because I want shinies I don’t actually need. It’s sad isn’t it.

This. +1. Sums up how I feel too. I know I dont need any of it. I know I can do anything in the game in rares. Who cares about ascended, about more loot? But its just human nature to feel the urge(and to act) to get the best thing you can get. Theres nothing wrong with it. Theres nothing psychotic about feeling the innate urge to log into a game each night, complete a mundane task to keep on par with everyone else. Theres nothing sick about that. For those of you that can block that, urge, I commend you. But to those of us that cant, it sucks! :P

On the other hand, the dallies did get me back into zones I wouldnt have touched again otherwise, which is great. The world is definately more alive. But is there another way this could have been achieved without an accumulating currency-carrot on a stick thing?

I think the change to dragon chests is probably the best thing in recent memory. I neither feel compelled to complete a dragon kill on every character each night, nor do I feel like I am missing out if I dont. I try to catch them when I can and I get a few in. If arenanet installed this type of ‘lure’ to the zones instead of a daily carrot on a stick, that might be a better option.

Edit: I honestly started this game with the biggest notion to explore, to slow down in leveling, to enjoy everything, take in the sights(because I knew the game would be gorgeous). I soaked up every inch of aesthetics, tried to explore every inch of a zone to find some under water tunnel leading to some small camp of quaggen, which happened to have some unique lighting effects. It was the best MMO experience Ive had to date. Leveling was grand. Then November 15th game, and the first carrot was introduced. Since then, this game is no longer a unique snowflake. Its like any other…dare I say…bland mmo with carrots, sticks, and us horses chasing after them.