Today I discussed with my brother about the new feature pack in gw2 (which he doesn’t play) and we both came to a realization that these new features came as an addiction triggers.
Level Gating Addiction Triggers
ArenaNet took systems from the game and dismantled them to appear on different levels.
Now how does this works as addiction triggers?
The game, as you progress as a new player, unveil its features slowly and in a form of rewards.
As you level and the game unveil more of it and reward you slowly, you enter a state of anticipation for the next reward and the one after that.
What went wrong here, in my opinion, is that this system came 2 years later. Also it doesn’t really stand with the game’s philosophy (ugh I know this is a weak spot ). Besides philosophy and late appearing, it offends the current player base.
Collecrions- Horizontal hoarder addiction boost
Sure, we asked for new stuff to do, new rewards, more things to farm (eventually).
But look on these collection, what do they stand for? Why should we do them? What’s their point?
These are just hoarder’s achievement system and rewards, to boost players’ will to farm, search, collect and claim the reward, and eventually play more.
They even added nice collections, like spoons, bugs in jars and such.
Just to make them childish and fun to collect, and you don’t require any graphic enjine for this just imagination.
I’m not against collections, I just point out they are aimed to create more addiction triggers and they aim at a larger player base then other reward tracks, like WvW/Dungeons etc…
I really like the collection achievement, the new icons ANet implemented play a large role in this as well, the achievement visual view/ presentation is great to stimulate players to collect and get addicted to doing so
All in all
The way ANet changed the leveling experience to a gated content and systems harms both new players (no body like to be fed with a spoon, and nobody likes to be barred off) and the current player base.
Collections are a fun thing to do, but my main complaint against them is thet they play rhe role of addiction stimulation. And I never thought GW2 will come to a point it will play out on addiction over adventure and content.
That’s all I had to say for now, excuse any typos, I wrote this via phone.
