Guild Wars 2

Hi,
I am curious how people feel about instrinsic rewards vs extrinsic rewards with regards to MMO, specifically Guild Wars 2. We are bathed in rewards for everything we do right down to achievement points. Do you feel that this type of behavior detracts from people playing the game to simply have fun or not?

Quick facts:

An intrinsic reward is an intangible award of recognition or a sense of achievement motivation, in any endeavor when one feels conscious satisfaction. It is the knowledge that one did something right, or one made some body’s day better.

An extrinsic reward is an award that is tangible or physically given to you for accomplishing something as recognition of ones endeavor.

So it is a matter of “I did XYZ because it was fun and that was a really cool event!” vs “i did XYZ because Im gaining better crafting materials, better loot, more minis, currencies, etc”.

My opinion:
The game cannot be void of reward entirely, but being showered in it as much as we are does detract from people playing the game to have fun. The sheer amount of rewards, and the diversity of rewards, encourages this behavior. I think reducing the amount and diversity to a small number of different rewards would yield a more positive expreience.

Forum-discuss on with your thoughts.

Interesting question and point of view. I will preface my answer by saying that I do not pay much attention to many of the rewards such as minis, skins, etc. I have only a modest amount of gold and most of my toons have exotic gear (karma, tp, etc.) along with a few laurel and guild commendation ascended pieces. Much of what we receive, however, does not phase me one way or the other. So, from this limited perspective, I don’t really experience that “reward overload.”

With that caveat…I agree that the game cannot be devoid of rewards from a practical perspective. I also feel that a good mix of intrinsic and extrinsic reward works best for me. From my professional life both teaching management and owning my own business, I have found that most people are motivated by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards…with neither alone being sufficient to create a motivated and enthusiastic staff.

If, however, I look beyond my own limited preferences and try to consider the larger group of players, it does seem like folks get really caught up in farming rewards. Whether that is good or bad I cannot say. It doesn’t bother me at all and, I guess if they are having fun at it, then maybe it isn’t all bad. That just doesn’t appeal to me very much.

Funny, I’ve been contemplating the exact same thing, just slightly differently.

“Do you give yourself goals that reward you intrinsically or extrinsically?” was kind of a topic I’d been mulling over making.

Personally, I do think that Intrinsic goals are better and more satisfying. I do dungeons because I want to improve how I play the game. I know there are some people who are really good at dungeons and they believe that it’s trivial content. I’m just an average player, so I feel like I make improvement each time I run them.
But then after that, I also like to run dungeons with my Guildies, taking the information I’ve learned in PuGs and such and guiding my team to a smooth and successful run. I think it’s rewarding helping people. I think it’s rewarding hearing people say, “Wow, we did it, and that was a really smooth run!”

I kinda feel like the system with the achievement points has slowly slid down the slippery slope. Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re worse off, it’s just… different than it used to be.

When the game started, you’d be running around exploring Queensdale and then all of a sudden – ding! You just killed your 200th bandit, here’s a small achievement notification. It was an innocuous and pleasant surprise, not a driving goal to reach “Oh man, my tracker says I’ve got 480/500 trolls killed, I’d better go to frostgorge and farm some trolls”.

I feel like the problem is that if everything is rewarding in a tangible sense, then that becomes the norm and the expected. “I just finished this story quest! What kinda reward do I get? I hope it looks cool…”

The definitions are probably not helpful since a lot of people here don’t have English as their first language and I have this feeling that it’s not very clear for those who do speak English.

To make it easier, intrinsic means the reward is inside already. So the activity by itself is rewarding, meaning fun, challenging, entertaining, fulfilling in some way and no additional reward needs to be given to feel this.

Extrinsic means the reward comes from outside. So your wages are extrinsic as are rewards in game for activities.

The problem with MMOs is that they are made to keep people occupied for undefined amounts of time. A single player RPG for example is finished at some point. You might replay it but you finish a game like that. An MMO goes on, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to do.

You can’t avoid extrinsic rewards, because once you’ve reached max level, finished the story and got your exotic gear together there is very little to do, except repeat what you’ve already done before.

So after doing it a few times, any intrinsic value will have faded from a certain activity (it’s what we call diminishing returns…and NOOOOO I do not mean DR for loot, just in general for anything that happens more often). So people need motivation externally. A reason to do it again.

So that’s why traditional MMOs came up with gear treadmills and dailies to keep people busy and coming back. The idea is that you are working towards something and that makes it worth it to do the same activities again and again.

The bigger issue I see with the current reward system, is that there’s little sense to it and that makes it confusing. The thing is that the reward tells you the value of an activity. So if activity A gives you a good reward and B an ok reward, you want to do acitivity A more. But if you need to get X amount of reward that takes you doing activity A 100 times or B 200 times, this worsens the chances of people doing activity B. And as such that activity is devaluated.

Look at the champion trains going on now. It’s a prime example.

For me a lot of things are too easy to get or too grindy. It doesn’t feel right and if it’s too easy to get the value is also lessened of the reward, which then in turn devalues the activity.

Some people are impervious to this it seems but in essence things do tend to get boring when the balance between effort and value of the rewards makes no sense.

Good thoughts. To avoid events becoming boring after repeating them a few times, why not continually put new ones in there and have them activate after a few days. Let those run, then deactivate those, and activate another set.

I know that events are extremely complicated. I recognize that. A lot of factors to consider. However, Arenanet, and all of us, want to enter a zone and see an event unfolding that we’ve never seen before even if we have been to that area a dozen times before. I am more inclined to partake in that event.

Have multiple layers of events. Each layer is only active for a set number of time (only arenanet will know this). Once layer A deactivates, Layer B activates. Etc. Keeps things fresh. A lot of content. Tons of content. And you will not need to worry if the content in Layer B conflicts with anything in Layer A because Layer A will be completely deactivated.

Keep the thoughts and opinions coming. Makes a good read and I can definately see this getting into a philosophy discussion too.

I spend most of my time achievement hunting, and while the points and getting AR chests are an extra motivator, it’s mostly a matter of being something else I can check off a list and say that I’ve accomplished. All of the currencies in the game exist for the sake of accomplishing some intrinsic goal, so as soon as those goals are completed, all of the money I have will have no real purpose, unless I set some sort of personal goal to hit x amount. So eventually I will be playing the game solely for getting the next AR chest.

In past MMO’s, I didnt need a reward for having world or server firsts, because kitten yeah, I did it first.

And now as games scale down difficulty and scale down the significance of being rewarded, the intrinsic rewards also matter less. “I put a month of failing and finally worked out the strategy” is meaningful. “I logged on first on the new content patch!” is not. When your hardest content is beatable on the first day it releases, or on the first blind attempt, there (in the vast majority of cases) cannot EXIST an intrinsic reward, because there is nothing to feel rewarded for doing. (Note: In some cases, you can find that combination of skill and luck to accomplish the first attempt or first day kill of something difficult. Then you usually fail miserably on it the next far too many times and wonder what the hell happened)

Intrinsic rewards require something that makes you feel rewarded when you finish.

Then again, I come from a time when the answer was “figure it out your own kitten self” (which included guilds and friends) and not “Oh, soandso wrote a guide”.

But now I’m grumbling.

I greatly enjoy intrinsic rewards, but unfortunately I think it’s a dying aspect of this genre. 10-12 years ago I would log on to an MMO, group up with some friends, and we’d just go explore and dungeon crawl for the fun of it.

Nowadays, it’s an extrinsic gamers playground. One only needs to look at all the people checking off that 2 week achievement list, or the mass of gold farming Orr zergs, or guides that come out a mere hour after patches detailing how to do everything to see it.

Still waiting for the MMO that offers some challenge and sense of exploration, sense of the unknown, and actual adventure. Doubt I’m ever going to see it though.

One of the main draws of GW for me was that every day I played for intrinsic rewards, hoping for an extrinsic reward. And it seemed most other players did too. By that I mean, that I played because it was fun. I reran UW and FOW and Tombs and even THK because it was a fun challenge. If I happened to get a Chaos Axe or Storm Bow then awesome, that’s why I brought keys.

It seems though that GW2 is all about extrinsic rewards. Nobody is doing anything except that which garners the most loot per hour. This is a serious design flaw in GW2 when compared to GW. And unfortunately, it seems like the purpose of GW2’s design is to A) further perpetuate farming b) herd everyone into the current LS area, thus creating wastelands of the rest of Tyria and C) to earn as much money via the gem store as possible. Rather than adjust the design of GW2 to make it more like the incredibly successful genesis project that was GW, they’re simply doing whatever creates more gemstore loot and and funneling players into the “new content.” Anet is creating a mass of extrinsic loot to reward players for playing how the devs want rather than how the player wants to.

This is what I said before. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Play-The-Way-You-Want/first#post2228888

Rephrased here.
I think Guild Wars is the best when those extrinsic rewards are provided for things that are intrinsically rewarding. However, an extrinsic reward can be useful to push someone out of their comfort zone.

For example, if I were afraid to run a dungeon because I didn’t know the path and I’ve heard that people are kittens to newbies, but I do it because I can save 5 gold on the sword I want if I do it a five times, then that’s all good. If I find that I hate dungeons I can spend a relatively small amount of money and avoid them.

On the other hand, I think extrinsic rewards that (for all practical purposes) “force” someone to do stuff they hate or find dull are bad. If I feel like I have to run a dungeon to get the sword I want (not talking about skins) because otherwise I have to pay 50 gold then the incentives are too misaligned. Because even if hate running dungeons, I’ll do it because the alternative isn’t reasonable.

TooBz.3065:

This is what I said before. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Play-The-Way-You-Want/first#post2228888

Rephrased here.
I think Guild Wars is the best when those extrinsic rewards are provided for things that are intrinsically rewarding. However, an extrinsic reward can be useful to push someone out of their comfort zone.

For example, if I were afraid to run a dungeon because I didn’t know the path and I’ve heard that people are kittens to newbies, but I do it because I can save 5 gold on the sword I want if I do it a five times, then that’s all good. If I find that I hate dungeons I can spend a relatively small amount of money and avoid them.

On the other hand, I think extrinsic rewards that (for all practical purposes) “force” someone to do stuff they hate or find dull are bad. If I feel like I have to run a dungeon to get the sword I want (not talking about skins) because otherwise I have to pay 50 gold then the incentives are too misaligned. Because even if hate running dungeons, I’ll do it because the alternative isn’t reasonable.

Nicely put.

I play primarly for the intrinsic rewards. I do things because I find them fun or because I get a sense of satisfaction for having done them. That said, extrinsic rewards are part of the game, and while I’m not as driven to obtain them as some players are, I’m not immune to their lure either. I’m happy when I get a rare or exotic drop or when I am able to get something that works really well for one of my characters (I made Courage for my scoundrel of a mesmer the other night. Woo! ).

I really think what we’re seeing happening with loot and rewards in the game now is an overreaction on Anet’s part. In the beginning, IMO, the game was absurdly stingy. It was the anti-Monty Haul game. There seemed to be so much focus on keeping the economy balanced it was like they forgot that the extrinsic reward is actually part of the fun for many, if not most, players. This wasn’t just a forum phenomenon; you’d hear it in map chat too. And now, to me, it seems like they are trying to compensate by, as the OP said, showering us with loot and rewards.

Also, I agree with this sentiment…

Gehenna.3625:

Some people are impervious to this it seems but in essence things do tend to get boring when the balance between effort and value of the rewards makes no sense.

Seras.5702:

One of the main draws of GW for me was that every day I played for intrinsic rewards, hoping for an extrinsic reward. And it seemed most other players did too. By that I mean, that I played because it was fun. I reran UW and FOW and Tombs and even THK because it was a fun challenge. If I happened to get a Chaos Axe or Storm Bow then awesome, that’s why I brought keys.

Exactly! You described how I play better than I did.

Totally agree Seras, I managed to get the necessary monetary awards for HOM by working on the titles that didn’t require money (most of which required a decent amount of skill and understanding of the game). I think one of the reasons for GW1’s dedicated fanbase was because Anet wasn’t trying to force the game to be an MMO, but embraced the way people played, which was mostly by themselves with heroes and henchmen. There weren’t really any extrinsic rewards in the game that couldn’t be bought with rewards from another part of the game, and absolutely everything really hard to get was cosmetic and therefore optional. I used skill points to make consets that I sold for money that I used to buy the materials and consumables I needed. Other people took those consets and farmed UW, sold the ectos and the like to people like me, and bought things like zcoins so they could get the envoy weapons. Everybody did the stuff they wanted, and could use their rewards to get the stuff they wanted. And that is where stuff like the time gated laurels and excess of bound equipment fails.

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
I am curious how people feel about instrinsic rewards vs extrinsic rewards with regards to MMO, specifically Guild Wars 2. We are bathed in rewards for everything we do right down to achievement points. Do you feel that this type of behavior detracts from people playing the game to simply have fun or not?

- Well, there’s the presentation issue. Quarter of your screen is filled with advertisement of the current event. Every mob drops the event-related item, replacing normal rare drops. Everyone in your guild is talking about how they’re farming the event. Your mailbox is filling with solicitations WOULD YOU COME CHECK THE EVENT? There’s achievement pop-ups and sparkling loots and all that **** you can’t turn off. It’s kinda hard to play the game just to admire the original works.

I think you’ve been watching Extra Credits

On topic, ideally, rewards should be an icing on a cake, not the driving force for pursuing the content as with, for example, CoF1 before the change.

Content shouldn’t leave you feeling like you’ve wasted your time if you don’t get the reward you want. If it does, then there’s a flaw with the content. Obviously this isn’t taking into account personal tastes, people who’s sole driving force is the shinies and care little for the content itself (there’s bound to be people like that) ect.

Generally, for me, the process of achieving an extrinsic reward is at the same time an intrinsic reward to me. While the intrinsic is a greater reward, I also need that extrinsic reward to push me towards it.

I agree with a few of you that extrinsic should come naturally while enjoying the intrinsic. But.. Take any of the living story updates. Lots of “grind” or farm. A lot of repetitive content whether it be countless invasions and meatbags to kill, or sitting in pavilion farming events, or running aspect arena dozens of times for the achieve. We are checking off achieves to make sure we have the required number of achieves that give us the big shiney chest at the end.

I dont know about you guys but I enjoy these invasions and pavilion for a little while, then it does become a boring mindless grind to get the carrot at the end. But everyone is doing it. Other areas of the game are less populated as a result, and yes my game experiences is moderately impacted. My guild is involved in the story, so naturally Ill just follow them if I want to interact.

I agree with the OP.

Classic, pay to play MMORPGs have created the idea that an almost exclusive focus on extrinsic rewards is a good thing, but I disagree. I think the focus on extrinsic rewards creates a toxic community – one in which people play not to enjoy the game, but to reach a goal as quickly and as easily as possible even if it’s detrimental to others (see the issues with farming events in Orr), and often one in which players want to have a reward and they also want no one else to have it.

I think Guild Wars 2 could have been a MMO focusing on intrinsic rewards. With the goal to release content every two weeks, they could have kept people interested in playing the game by introducing new content, not new rewards. Even if those players who came back every two weeks didn’t keep playing every day, would this really hurt the game? We are not paying a monthly fee, people are exposed to the Gem Store every two weeks, and the current system isn’t exactly keeping the world alive so people have others to play with.

The price ArenaNet would have had to pay, though, and this is just a guess, is that they would have far less players than GW2 has right now. I think most of the current players of the game came from classic MMORPGs, and were seeking something similar, so an intrinsic rewards system would have pushed them away. While arguably this could be blamed on ArenaNet, for not being able to fulfill their promise about making a MMO for people who don’t like MMOs, it’s still what we see in game.

I wonder – when the next batch of AAA MMOs gets released (Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, Wildstar, EverQuest and so on), will the players who come from a classic MMORPG background leave GW2 and jump to one of those games? Will this leave Guild Wars 2 half empty, since ArenaNet has been pushing away people who wanted something different? Will the monthly fees from those new MMOs push people away from them, so they will remain in GW2? Will all that time spent grinding prevent people from leaving their GW2 characters, which they have worked so much for?

Guess what… I find GW2 very boring lately and this august patch confirmed my boredom. The loot is not an incentive to play anyway and the LS is not pleasing me. I like wvw but even this I am not going. Spending even more time on the forum and haven’t connected in game since the patch two days ago lol

I derive my enjoyment from games in a number of ways, but one of them which is most relative to both this thread as well as a reason I choose a specific game is based on both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

Intrinsicly, the built in rewards, or whatever you choose to call it, is not “I killed that monster”, or “I finished that dungeon”.
This is where the loot haters never “get it”. You can have fun in a game like GW2 that doesn’t involve a boss fight.

For me, it’s the legendaries. The fight isn’t hitting 1,2,3,4,5, etc., it’s following a set path and gathering the materials required to meet that goal.

Yet somehow this automatically qualifies me as someone who should “go play something else”.

This community is seriously starting to act just like the Eve community.

I play for the rewards, because I know the fun comes with the journey to receive them. Just wish the rewards were less RNG based, and more skill based!

lilstev.3498:

I play for the rewards, because I know the fun comes with the journey to receive them. Just wish the rewards were less RNG based, and more skill based!

What happens when the rewards are soured by poor development choices, or some direction you do not like. And if that happens over and over..wouldnt playing for rewards become less enjoyable?

lilstev.3498:

I play for the rewards, because I know the fun comes with the journey to receive them. Just wish the rewards were less RNG based, and more skill based!

Which is a nice idealistic way of viewing it. The problem is that if the rewards are your ultimate driving factor, then your playstyle is molded to be one that is most loot efficient. Which means you’re just another 1 in the zerg train running through the Paillion or Scarlet’s army or in a COF speed run. IF rewards drive you, then that’s where you’ll be. And if that happens to be your idea of fun, well then lucky you. Me? I get bored in there. And the shinies don’t mean a thing when I’m covered by 40 other players’ particle effects.

If fun is your driving factor, then you determine your playstyle and the loot (whatever it may be) follows you.

Seras.5702:

lilstev.3498:

I play for the rewards, because I know the fun comes with the journey to receive them. Just wish the rewards were less RNG based, and more skill based!

Which is a nice idealistic way of viewing it. The problem is that if the rewards are your ultimate driving factor, then your playstyle is molded to be one that is most loot efficient. Which means you’re just another 1 in the zerg train running through the Paillion or Scarlet’s army or in a COF speed run. IF rewards drive you, then that’s where you’ll be. And if that happens to be your idea of fun, well then lucky you. Me? I get bored in there. And the shinies don’t mean a thing when I’m covered by 40 other players’ particle effects.

If fun is your driving factor, then you determine your playstyle and the loot (whatever it may be) follows you.

And what if getting gear together (rewards) is what makes it fun for you? Have you ever considered that fun could be different things for people?

If you can do the same events or dungeons or whatever 30 times and still think they are fun to do, more power to you…but for other people who like building up a character and getting gear together etc and call the fun, you might agree that this games has very little to offer….guess it depends on what you consider “fun”.

For me a MMORPG would be ideal if I can play what I like (intrinsic reward) and get money/items for it (extrinsic reward) in roughly the same proportion to the time I spent.

When I want to farm champions, do a complicated jumping puzzle, a dungeon, fractals or wvw, I would like to feel that I am rewarded roughly on the same level per hour spent.

I know that that is very difficult to realize because it depends heavily upon how good and dedicated I play each kind of content. I suck at jp, I am moderately good in pve, I am clueless in wvw – and I accept to get less in areas I don’t do well.

The reality is quite different.

Jumping puzzles: basically no extrinsic reward. The first time a big intrinsic reward. After it: …

Dungeons: Ok for both kinds of rewards.

Champion farming: Mindnumbing, doing it solely for the extrinsic reward. May be they have slightly overdone it.

Dynamic events: some of them are funny or even exciting, but the extrinsic reward is very low.

Guild missions: Typically high intrinsic reward and except for the Guild Trek a very nice extrinsic reward. Please more of them!

Wvw: With a good commander it can be satisfying but basically I pay more for wp and repair then I get from the events.

As far as I know ArenaNet will rework some of the rewards. That is good and necessary.

I think Anet is aiming to give us both rewards. The problem is finding the balance. Getting awesome loot for doing challenging content feels much better than doing challenging content and getting almost nothing. I don’t think the rewards need to change, the dificulty of the content should.

I’ll give some examples: The Fractals is the most challenging content in the game(if you do it in high level) and when it launched it was the most rewarding. I remember having lots of fun running the fractals and getting great rewards for that. But now that there’s easier content with better loot, most people don’t run fractals anymore.

It’s really hard to reach a balance in this regard. What Anet needs to do now is to look at what people are doing(or farming) the most and increase the challenge there. They have lots of ways to do that but my favorite one is to add mechanics to the event chains and remove the cheese like failing an event to farm the spawning champions.

I was in it for intrinsic rewards at first, but that slowly changed over time.

As a new player, I loved running around together with my boyfriend’s character, discovering stuff, exploring, enjoying awesome views, enjoying the landscapes… it was all very satisfying because it was new. We also made new friends and socialised. We did fractals for the first time.

When all that new-ness wore off I shifted more towards looking at extrinsic rewards. Money became an issue, so I could buy armour and weapon skins. Achievement hunting became a thing. Map and dungeon path completion became a thing. Getting all fractal achievements became a thing.

Now here’s the deal: I am a person who reacts extremely well to extrinsic motivators. So while the “feeling” of GW2 changed, I’m still happy playing it. Not as happy as before – differently happy. But I know that there are people who extrinsic motivators don’t work on, and they are the ones who leave GW2 after the first phase.

I can work with the extrinsic stuff fine, especially as some of the intrinsic motivation is still there – regular injections with living story, still socialising, etc. But I realise that this isn’t enough for some.

Gehenna.3625:

Seras.5702:

lilstev.3498:

I play for the rewards, because I know the fun comes with the journey to receive them. Just wish the rewards were less RNG based, and more skill based!

Which is a nice idealistic way of viewing it. The problem is that if the rewards are your ultimate driving factor, then your playstyle is molded to be one that is most loot efficient. Which means you’re just another 1 in the zerg train running through the Paillion or Scarlet’s army or in a COF speed run. IF rewards drive you, then that’s where you’ll be. And if that happens to be your idea of fun, well then lucky you. Me? I get bored in there. And the shinies don’t mean a thing when I’m covered by 40 other players’ particle effects.

If fun is your driving factor, then you determine your playstyle and the loot (whatever it may be) follows you.

And what if getting gear together (rewards) is what makes it fun for you? Have you ever considered that fun could be different things for people?

If you can do the same events or dungeons or whatever 30 times and still think they are fun to do, more power to you…but for other people who like building up a character and getting gear together etc and call the fun, you might agree that this games has very little to offer….guess it depends on what you consider “fun”.

You don’t understand. Dungeons, raids, fractals, and such are the ONLY WAY to have fun. If you are not doing those things, you are not playing the game right, and therefore have no voice in the matter because you are “you’re just another 1 in the zerg train running through the Paillion or Scarlet’s army or in a COF speed run.”
It’s the same attitude that’s slowly been choking the community, dragging it to the sewers. “Play my way or you suck and need to go play something else.”

Gehenna.3625:

Seras.5702:

lilstev.3498:

I play for the rewards, because I know the fun comes with the journey to receive them. Just wish the rewards were less RNG based, and more skill based!

Which is a nice idealistic way of viewing it. The problem is that if the rewards are your ultimate driving factor, then your playstyle is molded to be one that is most loot efficient. Which means you’re just another 1 in the zerg train running through the Paillion or Scarlet’s army or in a COF speed run. IF rewards drive you, then that’s where you’ll be. And if that happens to be your idea of fun, well then lucky you. Me? I get bored in there. And the shinies don’t mean a thing when I’m covered by 40 other players’ particle effects.

If fun is your driving factor, then you determine your playstyle and the loot (whatever it may be) follows you.

And what if getting gear together (rewards) is what makes it fun for you? Have you ever considered that fun could be different things for people?

If you can do the same events or dungeons or whatever 30 times and still think they are fun to do, more power to you…but for other people who like building up a character and getting gear together etc and call the fun, you might agree that this games has very little to offer….guess it depends on what you consider “fun”.

Yea, I mentioned that…

Neural.1824:

You don’t understand. Dungeons, raids, fractals, and such are the ONLY WAY to have fun. If you are not doing those things, you are not playing the game right, and therefore have no voice in the matter because you are “you’re just another 1 in the zerg train running through the Paillion or Scarlet’s army or in a COF speed run.”
It’s the same attitude that’s slowly been choking the community, dragging it to the sewers. “Play my way or you suck and need to go play something else.”

I never said your opinion is invalid. But you can’t argue that being 1 more in the zerg train isn’t anything more than…being another 1 in the zerg train. There’s no strategy or teamwork. If it’s your idea of fun though, more power to you. I’m not telling people how to play.

But this thread is about intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards and what drives your playstyle. If the zerg train is fun for you, go for it. If it’s simply a mindless way to earn lotsa loot, then I hope you’re not sacrificing enjoyable play for gold. I hope people play the game the way they want to maximize fun. But alas, there are many that will stand in a corner of an Orrian temple for hours and just spam their aoe during a neverending DE hoping for good drops. Not saying I haven’t joined those zergs, but I can’t do it for very long. I get very bored.

To each their own, but I hope for everyone’s sake they play for the fun of it and don’t compromise their desired playstyle simply for extrinsic rewards.

I find zerg trains huge fun, I loved the CP, I love the current content. In fact, it’s the massive zergs in the starter areas when I started playing that made me excited about the game.

However, I also find soloing fun, I also find dungeons fun, etc., etc.

With all these, they all have some intrinsic reward. The question is whether they have enough extrinsic reward, and I would say no, or rather, not until recently. I think the move to better rewards is a good thing, and I don’t think Anet would be doing it unless they felt they had some headroom to do it.

IOW, I think they’ve been being deliberately cautious about rewards up till now because of the botting problem. I think they are going to be upping rewards across the board without breaking the economy (i.e. I think the game was designed with a higher level of rewards in mind). And I think this is a good thing.

All the activities in GW2 should be very rewarding both intrinsically and extrinsically, it’s not an either/or.

I think the words of millionaire Felix Dennis are rather applicable to rewards. To paraphrase: If everyone was trying to collect seaweed instead of money, I would be trying to get the biggest seaweed pile.

If you are viewing currencies as merely being a point system, then it is intrinsically rewarding to make those numbers go higher. And I’m pretty sure that’s how the people who play the game primarily for efficiency of getting loot or experience or whatever are viewing it. Going around in the zerg is just a more efficient way of increasing your score than doing other things in the game.

And that’s a totally OK thing for people to be doing and enjoying. I like the silly power trip I get of being in this big army that steamrolls over groups of enemies that would utterly destroy me by myself. The problem arises in that the game is ultimately not designed towards solo stuff, so if you don’t WANT to be in the zerg, or run the same dungeon repeatedly, you will have a hard time finding enough people. I have never completed the Dungeon Master achievement because I’ve had such a hard time finding groups for the less popular paths. So all of the sudden, my Intrisic rewards are in direct opposition to the Extrinsic rewards of other people.

For once, we are having a civil conversation about the positives and negatives of guild wars 2. I applaud you all.

To stir things up, consider this scenario:

Guild wars 2, where ascended gear does not exist. Laurels do not exist. Commendations do not exist. Experience, Gold, Karma, Dungeon tokens exist. You can obtain max stat exotic set from any dungeon farming, or purchasable from Karma since Karma is universally awarded from most content in the game. Any gear set(zerker, carrion, rampager, knights, etc) can be obtained from either of these methods.

So now you have a max stat set and you want to look cool. The skins you seek could be from another dungeon so you dungeon farm again. Or, through difficult skill challenges. Lets say there is an instanced mini dungeon to complete in order to obtain a zodiak skin. These challenges are scattered throughout the world for the respective gear slots and variety.

So now you have your max stat set, you look cool. Whats next? Enjoy the game. All content rewards the same amount of gold, karma, experience whether you are in Queensdale or Orr. The question is: Do you like hearing the stories of the farmers in queensdale? Or do you want the challenge Orr poses? Maybe your guild wants a challenge, so they’ll go to Orr. Maybe you want to play out the story of defending the water towers in Queensdale from Centaurs…defend them while workers plug the holes. It doesn’t matter. Maybe you are bored of the green scenery in Queensdale, so you head to Timberline Falls for a variety scenery of snowy hills alongside green grass and rocky cliffs over your shoulder. So you head there and complete content. It all rewards the same things. Its just personal preference, difficulty vs leisure. Soloable content vs content that may require some guildees or pugs to work together. This is all dependent on the difficulty for each zone and DE being adjusted accordingly.

Would you play that game?

Edit: The Dynamic Event system for every zone will be multi layered. Each zone will have three or four layers of DEs. Layer A can contain 50 DEs and their subsequent chains. After a few days on a set rotation(to which only arenanet will know), Layer A Deactivates and Layer B activates with its 50 events. There will be no conflict between A or B. This will keep things fresh.

If we’re dealing with absolutely no currencies whatsoever, then we would be beating content solely for beating the content. And if I had my checklist of things to accomplish I would happily run through them. The issue is that it would be very hard to get people behind doing harder content repeatedly. There is really not thousands of hours of unique content in an MMO, and the only way they get people to play them that long is by providing larger goals that need to be facilitated through all of those currencies. So yeah, we would probably all play that game, but we would have stopped playing it once we felt we had experienced all of the content. We would probably want to come back from time to time to re experience it, but there wouldn’t be much reason to grind it into dust like is necessary to get the company’s desired mileage out of it.

The Talcmaster.7391:

If we’re dealing with absolutely no currencies whatsoever, then we would be beating content solely for beating the content. And if I had my checklist of things to accomplish I would happily run through them…..

I agree. But of course, the game needs currency because people want to be able to trade & buy things. I’m fine with that.

What’s happened is that we now have so many currencies. Want laurels? Run dailies and fractals. Want dungeon tokens? Run those dungeons. Want WvW badges? Run WvW. Want glory? Run PvP. Want karma? Run…everything. And each currency has its niche merchandise. And while this was (I’m sure) intended to broaden the activities of players, it actually polarizes players into factions. We have a lot of players that identify themselves as WvW-only or PvP-only or PvE-only that are angry at not being able to attain a certain currency through their chosen gameplay style. So they are forced to broaden themselves in order to attain gear according to how Anet has designed.

I’m opposed to forced gameplay style in MMORPGs. There should be gold and karma. One tradeable, one not. Boom, done. Karma for all account-bound gear (ascended, dungeons, WvW, etc) and gold for the rest.

To beat content solely for beating content isn’t inherently bad. It means that we choose what we want to do in-game based on the challenge and the fun. Not on what gold/karma/loot/badges can drop. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be currency or loot, but that the game should be designed to reward players for playing how they want.