Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

DavidH.7380:

Devata.6589:

It’s basically like the dungeon token systems, and what I have always said about the dungeon token system is that they are great but only as a side thing! Your main goal for items in a dungeon should imho firstly be some special reward you get for completing it (maybe depending on the difficulty levels or on the paths), then there might be some special RNG drops in there you might wanna get, that should be like your second most reason to wanna do the dungeon (based on the way they put the items in there) and then the tokens would be a great thing your would earn along the way. Something you are not even really farming but you earn it while going for those other things. [I think the caparace stuff is an better example of something you earn along the way and the coat as a direct reward for completing something.]
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“You were saying?” That there is way to much grind (mainly gold grind) in this game.
Have been saying that all the time, you have not been paying attention?

Anyway, this is a good addition to the thread. Maybe Anet also thinks the grind get less if they also make some stuff available in-game, but that is of cource not the case. If I want to collect skins and special items the grind is still just as much there and if I want to hunt down for specific items changes are big those are still behind the gold-grind (or another currency grind).

It sounds like what you are describing is a system where new content (dungeon,puzzle,quest chain, boss, LS chapter, etc.) is released and completing it once or twice more or less automatically gives you the best / majority of the rewards from that content. If you want an item then you complete the associated content or, looked at from the other direction, when you complete fresh content (for you) then you obtain the important associated items and you can move on to something else that is fresh.
~Skip for space

No I said it would you would work with 3 types of reward at the same time. The one for completing it (and you can be creative with this, like complete it at easy mode and get the skin, complete it at hard mode and you get the skin but one part of it is silver, complete it ad epic mode and you get the skin to also glow)

Then there are also some rng drops in there (thats what makes it more interesting to repeat) and at the same time there is a token system that should not be designed like you have to grind it but while playing for the rng drops you get it along the way so even if you are unlucky you are not leaving empty handed.

Having one group of mobs that does drop one mini version of itself with a very rare drop-change at multiple places in the world is by itself indeed also a boring farm but mixed in with other systems it’s not that bad.

And there are so many places you can easily put those sorts of rewards they should be able to keep you going for a long time.

With a better understanding of what it is you are advocating, I’ve come to the conclusion that you have some good suggestions. I think they would be especially good if combined with the “RNG + failure bonus” ideas that are being tossed around in the RNG thread. Combined you’d have a wider variety of items and activities to pursue in the game, multiple vanity versions of identical items for the low, medium, and high time investment players, and the best combined features of both the RNG and token systems. Throw in some gold grindable/sellable rare world rare drops, gem store alternatives, and PvP / WvW tracks, and you probably would be closer to having something for everyone and less perceived grind than the current system.

DavidH.7380:

Devata.6589:

DavidH.7380:

Devata.6589:

It’s basically like the dungeon token systems, and what I have always said about the dungeon token system is that they are great but only as a side thing! Your main goal for items in a dungeon should imho firstly be some special reward you get for completing it (maybe depending on the difficulty levels or on the paths), then there might be some special RNG drops in there you might wanna get, that should be like your second most reason to wanna do the dungeon (based on the way they put the items in there) and then the tokens would be a great thing your would earn along the way. Something you are not even really farming but you earn it while going for those other things. [I think the caparace stuff is an better example of something you earn along the way and the coat as a direct reward for completing something.]
…
“You were saying?” That there is way to much grind (mainly gold grind) in this game.
Have been saying that all the time, you have not been paying attention?

Anyway, this is a good addition to the thread. Maybe Anet also thinks the grind get less if they also make some stuff available in-game, but that is of cource not the case. If I want to collect skins and special items the grind is still just as much there and if I want to hunt down for specific items changes are big those are still behind the gold-grind (or another currency grind).

It sounds like what you are describing is a system where new content (dungeon,puzzle,quest chain, boss, LS chapter, etc.) is released and completing it once or twice more or less automatically gives you the best / majority of the rewards from that content. If you want an item then you complete the associated content or, looked at from the other direction, when you complete fresh content (for you) then you obtain the important associated items and you can move on to something else that is fresh.
~Skip for space

No I said it would you would work with 3 types of reward at the same time. The one for completing it (and you can be creative with this, like complete it at easy mode and get the skin, complete it at hard mode and you get the skin but one part of it is silver, complete it ad epic mode and you get the skin to also glow)

Then there are also some rng drops in there (thats what makes it more interesting to repeat) and at the same time there is a token system that should not be designed like you have to grind it but while playing for the rng drops you get it along the way so even if you are unlucky you are not leaving empty handed.

Having one group of mobs that does drop one mini version of itself with a very rare drop-change at multiple places in the world is by itself indeed also a boring farm but mixed in with other systems it’s not that bad.

And there are so many places you can easily put those sorts of rewards they should be able to keep you going for a long time.

With a better understanding of what it is you are advocating, I’ve come to the conclusion that you have some good suggestions. I think they would be especially good if combined with the “RNG + failure bonus” ideas that are being tossed around in the RNG thread. Combined you’d have a wider variety of items and activities to pursue in the game, multiple vanity versions of identical items for the low, medium, and high time investment players, and the best combined features of both the RNG and token systems. Throw in some gold grindable/sellable rare world rare drops, gem store alternatives, and PvP / WvW tracks, and you probably would be closer to having something for everyone and less perceived grind than the current system.

In a sense they have done something like that. Take the modrem parts you need to get your collection done for your carapace armor. Those collections require specific parts from each mordrem boss in the breech event. But then on the next up date the come out with extractors that allow you to get the specific parts you need. If you wait till that update there’s no RNG at all.

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

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Oke, lets for a moment, just for the sake of argument and to prevent repeating everything again play on your turn.

I dislike the ‘type of grind’ and the ‘quantity’ of grind, and find that especially the case for the element of the game I personally prefer the most. The same part that happens to also be the focus point of this game. Cosmetics.

I also find this grind or this type of grind, especially for this part of the game to be way worse that the way many other mmo’s reward there stuff.

This is not how I alone feel but how many people feel.

Because of that I would suggest Anet does something about it. (I just have an example of how it could be better) I don’t care how they fix it as long as they fix it. And while it seems completely logically that it’s linked to the cash-shop focus this link is not the important thing for me. What is important for me is that they fix it. The only reason I do point towards that link is because I think to solve a problem you need to find the cause of the problem. But again, in the end it’s the result that I care for the most.

How is this Vaye? Can you live with this formulation of the problem we are talking about here?

I can live with it.

Oke great, then every time you see a comment from me about the grind or the cash-shop simply think back about this and translate my comment for yourself back to fit along these lines.

Vayne.8563:

It won’t happen because there is no way for the company to produce content fast enough for the content locusts. Even in Guild Wars 1’s time, people finished Factions in weeks and claimed there was nothing to do.

You mean the 1 to 1,5 year between an expansion would be to short?
I think it should be doable, GW1 fastest expansion was 6 months later. I even think they would be able to keep a very minimal LS going on and have one bigger patch in-between the expansions.

Vayne.8563:

The strategy here is that you don’t get these big drops but you can get drops from anywhere, making the world feel bigger, to me anyway, because you can go anywhere. I don’t want to be standing around in zone X waiting for Y to drop. I don’t particularly like it in Drytop and the Silverwastes, which was a change in the direction you liked.

What you want is very specific. You want to go to a specific place and have a chance to get a specific reward, without grinding and without ridiculous RNG and without spending gold. You want what you want. You’ve narrowed down what you want to such a narrow point that you won’t get it, because other people want other things, even if there are other people who want what you want.

I want the freedom to roam in any map and have a chance of getting something cool. That’s what I want. So, yes, your very specific, needlessly restrictive set of desires, is incompatible with my desires.

Because if it getting the carapace armor worked your way, everyone would have it in two days or three days and then they’d be crying there’s nothing to do.

How do you solve that problem and your problem at the same time?

First of all, most of the content is already there / being developed, only the traditional quests should be added. The rewards should be the easy part and are already being created but end up in the cash-shop. So the trick is to put them all over the world behind content. I also did say rng would be fine as long as it was doable / reasonable / viable. That also helps to keep people busy for a long time.

Of course you are also not required to always stay at one place. If you really get tired of one place you can go to another place for an item you like there and come back at a later time when you feel like it.

In addition, for all the items that are not account-bound the gold-grind option is still there for people like you.

And let’s be fair. You say this current model makes the world bigger because you can go anywhere (what might also be true for you), but in reality it results in attrackting most people to a few locations where they grind gold, while the other system would be more likely to get people to explore the world more, indeed making it feel bigger.

Sure I explain it in details because If I don’t you keep getting questions like ‘but what if’ and ’how you solve this; . Much like you now do. The vaguer I am the more you get this sorts of questions. That does not mean they could design the reward system along these lines without following the details.

Devata.6589:

phys.7689:

Serophous.9085:

DavidH.7380:

Like Vayne, I’ve played (not a whole lot) traditional MMOs that would do things like require you to kill 1,000 centaurs in Queensdale to get a rare drop or to level the faction reputation necessary to purchase the fractal dungeon key that is required to even enter a level one fractal and see the content. And there is no other way to see the content / item except to spend days doing nothing but running in circles killing centaurs. And as soon as the next content or items are added you’ll have another similar gatekeeper grind to do somewhere else.

In my opinion, Anet does a decent job of avoiding that kind of traditional and content limiting grind in the game. They don’t, however, eliminate the necessity to engage in significant repetition of content in order to obtain worthwhile rewards. I doubt that is even possible. IMHO, that is really the heart of this discussion… is it even possible for a MMO to largely eliminate significant content repetition, and if not, how do we make what clearly IS a grind / farm not feel so grindy / farmy?

Then let’s actually discuss the heart of the discussion rather than go around in in a circle like we have.

So you run a dungeon once, and your are garunteed an item you wanted, why do you want to go back? Sure, can be fun the first five times, but it gets boring, specially if you are getting the same item over and over.

Make the dungeons harder or longer? Yeah, I think anet will tick off the demographic they are aiming for doing that.

Let’s face it, in this day of age, those of us who look at YouTube or the net for guides get content done fast, because in pve, its all scripted. Even if you change it up, there are only so many variables that it wouldn’t matter since it will still be memorized.

Anet only has so much man power to pump out content and test it privately, then release on a two week schedule, so adding content faster is really asking for a lot.

So how exactly do you implement something that retains players, and isn’t considered grind?

the game doesnt have a good balance of rewards. Other games juggle it a lot better. SAB (the first one)juggled it waaaay better.
A) you get content sensitive rewards/abilities from mastering the area (find this go here, etc)
B) you have a rare chance of sellable drop on success.
C) you can get a non sellable version by either mastering the levels (finding and getting all the hidden marbles as fast as possible) or at a slower pace with low mastery through repetition.

there are even better versions, but the main point is gw2 current system isnt working very well, loot/grind/rewarding feeling wise

Agreed about SAB version 1. It was still not optimal but much better then most of what we see in GW2. If only the SAB mini’s would also have been available in SAB (in a not time limited way).

With the first version I also leveled all my alts up to the max in SAB and had fun doing it, with the second version only one as it was not rewarding to do it with the others. And it’s safe to assume that this reward model was also part of the reason for it’s popularity.

uhh…SAB when it first came out can be compared to silverwastes now:
Oh hey, need baubles? Fastest way is to just GRIND level 1-1 over and over again so you can buy all your skins easily. Oh sure, take the rare chance for the sellable skin to drop, but now that becomes worthless to me, i’ll just sell it in hopes of someone who doesn’t want to do this process will buy with gold.

Sure, first playthrough you didn’t know where all the abilities are or the cost, but once you did, back to level 1-1, farm up a bunch again, and buy all easily. when the v2 came out, this was basically a must because of the lack of baubles in world 2. Face it, SAB was pure grind, but people had nostalgia or fun doing it, so it was hidden.

Comparing it to silverwastes….
Oh hey! I can run around and collect bandit crests to buy the armor pieces. Oh sure, there are chests, or bosses, or the maze that can drop additional pieces for me to shorten the grind, and yay for that! And yay for the final boss dropping chest, but boo its not for sale.

Its all the same. Replace crests with baubles, and you are running around basically collecting them by doing events instead of them just lying about.

This is an MMORGP, if they game you everything at the start the game would be pointless, you would quit within the first week.

Serophous.9085:

uhh…SAB when it first came out can be compared to silverwastes now:
Oh hey, need baubles? Fastest way is to just GRIND level 1-1 over and over again so you can buy all your skins easily. Oh sure, take the rare chance for the sellable skin to drop, but now that becomes worthless to me, i’ll just sell it in hopes of someone who doesn’t want to do this process will buy with gold.

Sure, first playthrough you didn’t know where all the abilities are or the cost, but once you did, back to level 1-1, farm up a bunch again, and buy all easily. when the v2 came out, this was basically a must because of the lack of baubles in world 2. Face it, SAB was pure grind, but people had nostalgia or fun doing it, so it was hidden.

Comparing it to silverwastes….
Oh hey! I can run around and collect bandit crests to buy the armor pieces. Oh sure, there are chests, or bosses, or the maze that can drop additional pieces for me to shorten the grind, and yay for that! And yay for the final boss dropping chest, but boo its not for sale.

Its all the same. Replace crests with baubles, and you are running around basically collecting them by doing events instead of them just lying about.

actually i got more baubles, and entertainment, by running through all the levels, they had some hidden spots with lots of baubles, some of which were harder to get to, or only effecient to get if you were fast, and you got chance of sellable versions, and guaranteed baubles from the boss as well. It was basically about going everywhere and hitting as many hidden spots as i could, beating bosses on the way.

Im sure it wasnt perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than the reward structure for most of the content now.

events as they are currently designed, arent really thrilling, there is a lot less conscious design in most of the content in gw2. They kind of just throw a bunch of enemies at you. Most of the time the best solution for them is line of sight them and burn em down with enhanced cleaves/aoe.

oh and getting an item to sell to people who dont want to do/or arent good at a certain type of content is fine. The point is the content wasnt really grindy. It required few repetitions, and mostly just beating the content and learning the secrets was enough to get the reward.
heres how you reduce grind
1) lower required repetitions
2) reward players more for playing better/learning better
3) have many paths to achieve the same ends (within that game aspect)

an example of 3 with sab, is that you could do level 1 level 2 etc, target bosses, or target hidden orbs. You could run the last world and target harder to get to orbs, but if you were fast/good at getting them it was faster/as fast as other methods.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Stark.1350:

So because you have more important things in real life to attend to, you should feel you should be handed everything in game. If your guild mates are so high up there, why don’t they help you get mats? Nevermind the fact that the chest of loyalty at the end of the monthly login period gives you free ascended mats.

. . . are you being serious right now? I can’t quite tell.

Because there’s a lot of conversations going on here now, and being handed things on a silver platter? Nobody has asked for that. Not even in jest.

So go take a breather, have a glass of water, and try that again with less of a loaded question at the top and less rhetoric later.

Though in retrospect maybe we should! this is a game and until Arenanet start handing out our weekly wage packets for working at there grind mill, this is supposed to be entertainment not a place of work, there is place of work it is at the Arenanet office and not at our keyboards. There is another form of work in which involves grind too its called “slavery”.

@Devata

The problem is you keep comparing what Anet did with Guild Wars 1 with Guild Wars 2. At the time Guild Wars 1 was created there were no free to play MMOs out at all. The field of competition was very small. And even though Guild Wars 1 itself wasn’t an MMO, it filled the niche of an MMO type of game for many people. Free multiplayer games back then were pretty much unheard of.

The updates that Anet created for that game were far far simpler. The type of thing that you could created and get away with back then, without all the competition, was more modest. For example, Prophecies released with just over 200 quests and 25 missions. That’s what it had. Guild Wars 2 released with over 1500 dynamic events.

You just can’t compare the complexity of the game.

Guild Wars 1 was pathed. Guild Wars 2 isn’t. Guild Wars 1 had no z axis. Guild Wars 2 does. All this adds complexity to the creation of updates.

But the biggest difference is that Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO. You never had to worry about 100 people doing the same even at the same time. You knew exactly how many people could go into each instance. It made the game much easier to program.

One could say that if Guild Wars 2 wasn’t a true MMO, if the genre wasn’t over-crowded with free to play games, and other options, if people’s expectations weren’t much higher now than they were back then, if it weren’t much more expensive to make a game now than it was back then…then maybe, just maybe, you could have been right.

But Guild Wars 1 is almost ten years old. This isn’t then. The game isn’t a simple. And pretty much everything is different.

You say that they could support this game by doing what they did ten years ago. I don’t see how you can be certain of that. And I don’t see how you can expect companies to take a risk on your say so.

The MMO community is more fractured now, with less people playing each game. I don’t believe there’ll ever be another WoW, because WoW only got where it did by coming out when it did.

In the end, there’s only you saying this would work, with no real evidence to support it, except Anet did it years ago.

I strongly believe it wouldn’t work now, but even if I thought it would, I still couldn’t ask a company to risk losing everything on such a small amount of evidence.

Vayne.8563:

I agree. I think this sort of thing is the best compromise. The thing, even though it’s a step in the right direction, according to Devata, it’s too grindy for his/her tastes.

Well if you’re going to make new stuff not grindy and not cost gold and not cost cash, I’m not sure what the options are.

Her answer is, repeatedly, new expansions, new content. She claims it’ll work but I don’t see the evidence for this. I don’t think in this day and age that a developer could put out enough new content fast enough to make a game truly buy to play with no cash shop.

Devata brings up another game but the DLC content which they come out with goes against the ideal plan.

This is the limitation of believing only one ways is good. If it was the only good way everyone would be doing it. I believe the way Devata wants the game to be run would result in less players and I believe it would be a tremendous risk.

There are basically 2 general complaints, one is rewarding grind and the other is content grind. I’m only using the word grind to fit with the topic, however.

The second complaint is the lack of substantial content additions over the past 2.5 years. This one, i feel, is due to releasing in China. So what they did add, often felt grindy, to keep players interested enough to do the “work” to get at stuff. This, i’m hoping will change with HoT.

The first part is actually pretty important though, even a bunch of the grindy (or harder to reach) achievements offer pretty horrible rewards. Many of them feel like a complete after-thought of just tossing something in the game to give players something to do.

As to one of the previous posts, the one about getting most things from anywhere in the game. That actually affects the reward system pretty negatively, since the loot table could be rather large, meaning players have an even lower chance at getting at the goods they want. It’s actually nice to see them rewarding things for certain content.

Grind itself is largely perceptual, but when you tack on artificially high amounts of materials and match it with lower than average drop rates, you get the grind mentality. Of which you see a decent amount of it being produced. Things like lodestones and even worse, giant eyes, and content really starts to feel grindy. Even ascended gear itself isn’t all that rewarding to achieve, many find the looks bad and many feel the stat progression is even worse. So you have a grind for an item that’s not really all that great to begin with.

All in all, the crux has been creating challenging content that also feels rewarding in the open world, something arena has been struggling with since release.

Vayne.8563:

@DevataThe MMO community is more fractured now, with less people playing each game. I don’t believe there’ll ever be another WoW, because WoW only got where it did by coming out when it did.

In the end, there’s only you saying this would work, with no real evidence to support it, except Anet did it years ago.

I strongly believe it wouldn’t work now, but even if I thought it would, I still couldn’t ask a company to risk losing everything on such a small amount of evidence.

^ This part in particular is something well worth reading and considering by anyone, no matter their personal preferences and ideas about anything otherwise.

Well observed, Vayne.

@munkiman

It’s just this crazy balancing act that no company can really ever get right. If you want to keep people who play all the time playing, you have to have something for them to work towards. You can’t introduce content fast enough, period.

If you don’t target those people, you lose them and they often represent the core of the game.

The trick is to find appropriate compromises. That’s what I believe Anet tried to do with ascended gear.

Frankly, I don’t love grinding any more than the next man and often don’t. It takes me longer to get rewards than it does a lot of other people, because I don’t enjoy grinding…or farming which I consider to be different.

I don’t like repeating content over and over. That includes dungeons in this game and other games. It’s no fun for me.

But companies still have to solve the problem of keeping people busy while they make more stuff. Every company does it differently but they all have a strategy.

I suppose we choose one game over another because we can deal with that company’s strategy to keep people playing.

Vayne.8563:

@munkiman

It’s just this crazy balancing act that no company can really ever get right. If you want to keep people who play all the time playing, you have to have something for them to work towards. You can’t introduce content fast enough, period.

Yeah, but it’s all about rewarding gameplay, either in combat (group or solo), or in loot or in an ideal game, both. Combat in GW2 is only rewarding enough at first, then it tapers off pretty quickly. Many of the challenges simply aren’t worth doing, since the progression toward them is slow and many of the end points are lackluster.

I whole-heartedly believe that arena has been developing by-the-numbers, moreso than by feel. I just hope HoT changes that.

aerial.7021:

Though in retrospect maybe we should! this is a game and until Arenanet start handing out our weekly wage packets for working at there grind mill, this is supposed to be entertainment not a place of work, there is place of work it is at the Arenanet office and not at our keyboards. There is another form of work in which involves grind too its called “slavery”.

Mmm, I give it a 4/10 on the rhetoric. Needs improvement, especially in going right to hyperbolic choice of comparisons. What are you being forced to labor over, lest you get fired from the program? I mean, since we’re comparing it to a job, or worse, surely they must have some force over you to not just compel but . . . nay . . . force you into doing things you don’t want to be doing or else!

Vayne.8563:

naiasonod.9265:

Vayne.8563:

Because if it getting the carapace armor worked your way, everyone would have it in two days or three days and then they’d be crying there’s nothing to do.

How do you solve that problem and your problem at the same time?

I can only speak for myself on this one, but I entirely approve of the bandit crest vendor and using things like that as a deterministic way to get what we want. 1000 bandit crests + 1 gold isn’t at all hard to get, even from the most casual of perspectives I can reasonably think of.

Only wanna spend maybe a half hour a day out in the Silverwastes? Get tired of doing events after maybe ten tops? You’ll still be able to get some of those pieces deterministically in a very reasonable timeframe.

Want every single piece for all three armor types? You’ve got a bit of farming to do.

Want all of those carapace pieces to be transmuted into luminescent pieces? You’ve got even more farming to do.

But if all you want is a carapace heavy chestpiece and legs to spice up your heavy armor options? Pff. You don’t even have to farm for those. Just go do the last chapters of the living story and bam, there you go.

I think the way they’ve handled carapace is excellent, and I dearly hope we see more balances between availability and things to ‘work for’, as much as I personally loath the phrase’s application in this context.

I agree. I think this sort of thing is the best compromise. The thing, even though it’s a step in the right direction, according to Devata, it’s too grindy for his/her tastes.

Well if you’re going to make new stuff not grindy and not cost gold and not cost cash, I’m not sure what the options are.

Her answer is, repeatedly, new expansions, new content. She claims it’ll work but I don’t see the evidence for this. I don’t think in this day and age that a developer could put out enough new content fast enough to make a game truly buy to play with no cash shop.

Devata brings up another game but the DLC content which they come out with goes against the ideal plan.

This is the limitation of believing only one ways is good. If it was the only good way everyone would be doing it. I believe the way Devata wants the game to be run would result in less players and I believe it would be a tremendous risk.

Your comment is a little hard to follow, you talk about the cash-shop and a way to keep players playing (as if a cash-shop does that??) and the ability to push out enough content to keep people busy but what I am saying pushing out an expansion once every year, year and a half. Most P2P MMO’s put out an expansion every 2 years with some patches in-between and that is enough to keep people busy (sure people leave after WoW’s patch, but more than enough also keep playing) so why would an expansion a year not be able to do so.

It’s all not that very different from what the market is already doing if it comes to the way to keep people playing or the content being pushed out.

The main difference form what the market is doing would be the payment model but that’s only different from the MMO market, in fact the B2P model is still the most used model in the complete gaming industry.

Lastly the other game I talked about was in a separate discussion talking about if a game would have to generate income on a monthly base or if it would also be possible on a yearly or longer base (especially if development cost where high). The fact that one of the examples of very expensive games was using more or less a similar system as the B2P I suggest was nothing more than a side note but not used as an example to show the model would work in an MMO (as far as destiny is an mmo). As far as I know that game has only one DLC released by now what would help to show they don’t need income on a monthly base (like the big bunch) what was the only point about the other game.

I think the model (reward model and payment model) would keep more people happy and playing but of course we cannot look into a parallel universe. While the reward model is similar to what WoW has (the one WoW at least uses for the cosmetic) and it seems to be working there.

What we know for sure is that the current approach GW2 had been using did result in an ongoing decline of income and so like also of players. Now they push out an expansion likely also in an attempt to get more people back and generate some new income. (You know those expansions that are the main focus in the model I talk about)

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

naiasonod.9265:

Vayne.8563:

Because if it getting the carapace armor worked your way, everyone would have it in two days or three days and then they’d be crying there’s nothing to do.

How do you solve that problem and your problem at the same time?

I can only speak for myself on this one, but I entirely approve of the bandit crest vendor and using things like that as a deterministic way to get what we want. 1000 bandit crests + 1 gold isn’t at all hard to get, even from the most casual of perspectives I can reasonably think of.

Only wanna spend maybe a half hour a day out in the Silverwastes? Get tired of doing events after maybe ten tops? You’ll still be able to get some of those pieces deterministically in a very reasonable timeframe.

Want every single piece for all three armor types? You’ve got a bit of farming to do.

Want all of those carapace pieces to be transmuted into luminescent pieces? You’ve got even more farming to do.

But if all you want is a carapace heavy chestpiece and legs to spice up your heavy armor options? Pff. You don’t even have to farm for those. Just go do the last chapters of the living story and bam, there you go.

I think the way they’ve handled carapace is excellent, and I dearly hope we see more balances between availability and things to ‘work for’, as much as I personally loath the phrase’s application in this context.

I agree. I think this sort of thing is the best compromise. The thing, even though it’s a step in the right direction, according to Devata, it’s too grindy for his/her tastes.

Well if you’re going to make new stuff not grindy and not cost gold and not cost cash, I’m not sure what the options are.

Her answer is, repeatedly, new expansions, new content. She claims it’ll work but I don’t see the evidence for this. I don’t think in this day and age that a developer could put out enough new content fast enough to make a game truly buy to play with no cash shop.

Devata brings up another game but the DLC content which they come out with goes against the ideal plan.

This is the limitation of believing only one ways is good. If it was the only good way everyone would be doing it. I believe the way Devata wants the game to be run would result in less players and I believe it would be a tremendous risk.

Your comment is a little hard to follow, you talk about the cash-shop and a way to keep players playing (as if a cash-shop does that??) and the ability to push out enough content to keep people busy but what I am saying pushing out an expansion once every year, year and a half. Most P2P MMO’s put out an expansion every 2 years with some patches in-between and that is enough to keep people busy (sure people leave after WoW’s patch, but more than enough also keep playing) so why would an expansion a year not be able to do so.

It’s all not that very different from what the market is already doing if it comes to the way to keep people playing or the content being pushed out.

The main difference form what the market is doing would be the payment model but that’s only different from the MMO market, in fact the B2P model is still the most used model in the complete gaming industry.

Lastly the other game I talked about was in a separate discussion talking about if a game would have to generate income on a monthly base or if it would also be possible on a yearly or longer base (especially if development cost where high). The fact that one of the examples of very expensive games was using more or less a similar system as the B2P I suggest was nothing more than a side note but not used as an example to show the model would work in an MMO (as far as destiny is an mmo). As far as I know that game has only one DLC released by now what would help to show they don’t need income on a monthly base (like the big bunch) what was the only point about the other game.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I’m not talking about the cash shop as a way of keeping players playing. I’m talking about the game existing at all. I’m talking about having enough money going forward to add any kind of content at all.

Pretty much from the moment your game comes out, you’re working on more content for it. It is your belief that that content could be made into an expansion and that would be enough to cover costs and make a profit. It’s my opinion that that’s not enough in this day and age. You have a belief it can happen and I have a belief it can’t. Not for an MMORPG. Not with the amount of competition out there.

If the game doesn’t exist there will be no content and no one playing. I’m not sure what’s hard to follow about that.

Simulation games are not grindy. No one has yet made a simulation mmo.

aerial.7021:

naiasonod.9265:

I can only speak for myself on this one, but I entirely approve of the bandit crest vendor and using things like that as a deterministic way to get what we want. 1000 bandit crests + 1 gold isn’t at all hard to get, even from the most casual of perspectives I can reasonably think of.

As a skin yes, stat wise though its far from ideal its not even exotic.

Why would it be good for the one and bad for the other. It’s an interesting way to get / collect them or it isn’t.

Serophous.9085:

Devata.6589:

phys.7689:

Serophous.9085:

DavidH.7380:

~

Then let’s actually discuss the heart of the discussion rather than go around in in a circle like we have.

So you run a dungeon once, and your are garunteed an item you wanted, why do you want to go back? Sure, can be fun the first five times, but it gets boring, specially if you are getting the same item over and over.

Make the dungeons harder or longer? Yeah, I think anet will tick off the demographic they are aiming for doing that.

Let’s face it, in this day of age, those of us who look at YouTube or the net for guides get content done fast, because in pve, its all scripted. Even if you change it up, there are only so many variables that it wouldn’t matter since it will still be memorized.

Anet only has so much man power to pump out content and test it privately, then release on a two week schedule, so adding content faster is really asking for a lot.

So how exactly do you implement something that retains players, and isn’t considered grind?

the game doesnt have a good balance of rewards. Other games juggle it a lot better. SAB (the first one)juggled it waaaay better.
A) you get content sensitive rewards/abilities from mastering the area (find this go here, etc)
B) you have a rare chance of sellable drop on success.
C) you can get a non sellable version by either mastering the levels (finding and getting all the hidden marbles as fast as possible) or at a slower pace with low mastery through repetition.

there are even better versions, but the main point is gw2 current system isnt working very well, loot/grind/rewarding feeling wise

Agreed about SAB version 1. It was still not optimal but much better then most of what we see in GW2. If only the SAB mini’s would also have been available in SAB (in a not time limited way).

With the first version I also leveled all my alts up to the max in SAB and had fun doing it, with the second version only one as it was not rewarding to do it with the others. And it’s safe to assume that this reward model was also part of the reason for it’s popularity.

uhh…SAB when it first came out can be compared to silverwastes now:
Oh hey, need baubles? Fastest way is to just GRIND level 1-1 over and over again so you can buy all your skins easily. Oh sure, take the rare chance for the sellable skin to drop, but now that becomes worthless to me, i’ll just sell it in hopes of someone who doesn’t want to do this process will buy with gold.

Sure, first playthrough you didn’t know where all the abilities are or the cost, but once you did, back to level 1-1, farm up a bunch again, and buy all easily. when the v2 came out, this was basically a must because of the lack of baubles in world 2. Face it, SAB was pure grind, but people had nostalgia or fun doing it, so it was hidden.

Comparing it to silverwastes….
Oh hey! I can run around and collect bandit crests to buy the armor pieces. Oh sure, there are chests, or bosses, or the maze that can drop additional pieces for me to shorten the grind, and yay for that! And yay for the final boss dropping chest, but boo its not for sale.

Its all the same. Replace crests with baubles, and you are running around basically collecting them by doing events instead of them just lying about.

I did it multiple times, like I said I leveled all my characters in there but I did not do it the way you suggest, only the first level. That would also not work for leveling up all my characters.

I played the whole game on every character once a day. Those bubbles I did earn along the way. The sellable drops where nice but indeed not that great, that why I said ‘if only the mini’s would be available in there’ while of course you then have the problem of temporary availability. Then again, that was the same now because they were now temporary cash-shop items.

So did I play it many times? Yes, did I simply grind the currency (baubles) no. Did the rewards where part of the fun / reason for playing? Yes. That’s why with the second SAB I only did it in one character. While by that time the game had also become too big to do really do on all characters on a daily basis. But I would then more likely have switched between them.

But all in all it never did feel like a grind or I did it really play it as a grind, so just trying to get the baubles in the fastest way as you said, it was always a combination of the fun of doing it in combination with earning the rewards.

I still don’t think the two are the same but yeah it was a step in the right direction.

Obtena.7952:

That’s a nice story. I can attest that from my own experience SWTOR does NOT have less grind that GW2 because SWTOR requires me to have certain tiers of gear to successfully complete much of the PVE content or compete in PVP. Furthermore, that gear isn’t just thrown at you .. it is, by definition, a grind to get it; repeated content to get gear or tokens from raid drops. Nothing is more grindy than that.

By simply playing the story you get minimum required raid gear and then it doesn’t take that many raids to gear up. Far less of a grind than to get a full suite of BiS gear in GW2. As for PvP you get it by simply playing the game same as GW2.

morrolan.9608:

By simply playing the story you get minimum required raid gear and then it doesn’t take that many raids to gear up. Far less of a grind than to get a full suite of BiS gear in GW2. As for PvP you get it by simply playing the game same as GW2.

I’m working on my fourth set of Ascended gear here in GW2, and every single bit of it, I’ve gotten the mats for on my own time, then crafted on my own time.

SWTOR? Crafting on there is a giant joke. Whee, slot machine reverse engineering!

You can get exotic gear here in GW2 with karma off Orr vendors. It might not have the stats you’re exactly wanting, but crafted exotics are enormously cheaper to straight-up buy off the TP than buying re’d raid-tier hilts, barrels, armorings, mods and enhancements off SWTOR’s GTN ever will be in comparable terms of wealth-value to buying power.

Raiding in TOR is like raiding in every other MMO that didn’t even try to get out from under WoW’s long, dark shadow – a choreography test. Can you and XX other people dance the hokey pokey on command repeatedly and well enough to get the shinies?

Thumbs up to those that enjoy it. Don’t want it here. BiS doesn’t carry the same weight here as it does in a raidy-gear grindy treadmill game anyway.

Full exotics is all anyone will ever need for anything other than high-tier fractals, and fractals aren’t ‘The Endgame Woo’ at all.

There is no endgame here, and that creates such a cognitive dissonance in those that’ve been trained for years by WoW and its myriad misshapen clones to think in one myopic view that BiS is all-important; that gear is all important.

Welcome to hell. Gear matters here, but gear is a distant second to skill at using a cleverly arranged build.

Skill’s BiS here. Knowledge of your build is BiS here. Gear? Sure, gear matters, but give me full blue level 80 berserker stats on my guardian and I’ll still embarrass most people trying to do dungeons in full exotics no matter what stats they’ve picked.

Why? Skill and knowledge. I’m pretty dang good at playing a guardian; I know the profession inside and out.

You’re not in Kansas anymore. Skill and Knowledge are BiS here. And lemme tell ya, you can’t farm for that.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

aerial.7021:

Though in retrospect maybe we should! this is a game and until Arenanet start handing out our weekly wage packets for working at there grind mill, this is supposed to be entertainment not a place of work, there is place of work it is at the Arenanet office and not at our keyboards. There is another form of work in which involves grind too its called “slavery”.

Mmm, I give it a 4/10 on the rhetoric. Needs improvement, especially in going right to hyperbolic choice of comparisons. What are you being forced to labor over, lest you get fired from the program? I mean, since we’re comparing it to a job, or worse, surely they must have some force over you to not just compel but . . . nay . . . force you into doing things you don’t want to be doing or else!

Its a reaction to the rhetoric by some of “want something ‘work’ for it” attitude, and the general philosophy by the game industry on the whole that grind be it small or large must exist in a game too cover for there lack of content.

Vayne.8563:

~

“The problem is you keep comparing what Anet did with Guild Wars 1 with Guild Wars 2.” I compare it to a lot of game, for myself more than the games I give as examples here. Here I mainly refer to WoW and GW1 as that are games most people here know. Comparing it to TCOS for example would be useless as most of the people would have no idea what the heck I was talking about.

“At the time Guild Wars 1 was created there were no free to play MMOs out at all. The field of competition was very small.” Uuhm yeah, so an extra reason why the B2P model would be interesting. You see for F2P MMO market has a lot of competition. The B2P one isn’t. This is also a little strange about Anet, they really seem to think they have a unique system. When promoting the game always talking about how t has no sub… yeah so, most mmo’s don’t! That’s not some unique selling point. B2P would be.

“Prophecies released with just over 200 quests and 25 missions.” Yeah you only forget that the complete scale is also different. GW2 has a bigger market so also bigger income but also a bigger development team. So maybe that put everything back on even grounds?

“You say that they could support this game by doing what they did ten years ago. I don’t see how you can be certain of that. And I don’t see how you can expect companies to take a risk on your say so.” 100% sure I can’t but nor can you say it won’t. Again the numbers show it would generate the money so then the only question left (the one you seem to think is impossible) is if they would indeed be able to push out an expansion in a year.
If only all those companies who released P2P games where I before released told them it would not work, had listened, they would have likely ended much better than they did, eventually being forced to go F2P or even going bankrupt. That is never good for a game.

Maybe I can find my post in the Crysis 2 forums where I told them what they did to that game would likely result in bad Crysis 3 sales. http://www.dsogaming.com/news/disappointing-sales-crysis-3-pc-has-just-passed-100-000-sold-copies/

Sure I understand they don’t simply listen to a person on a forum, all I want to say with this is that ‘a person on the forum’ does not always has to be wrong or the persons being paid to make such decisions are not always right.

Addition: I just searched the Crysis forums, this was even before Crysis2 was released but was a discussion about leaked information that eventually turned out to be the case. It was about a few changes form Crysis 1 to Crysis 2 what would make the game more console like. I suggested if it would be true there would be no Crysis 4 because Crysis 3 would sell bad. It was a reaction to somebody who said it was good Crysis did change the game for the masses / consoles instead of having a version that would be good for just the 3000 freaks (PC-gamers)

“Did you read the post?
Not for the Masses? Yeah they invest Multimillion € to sell it to 3000 Freaks?
Hmm lets see what have we here.. Oow yeah Crysis 2 where did it came from, it came from Crysis 1. Developed for the PC only so not for the masses but for the so called freaks. Trust me, if this Crysis 2 PC version will be a console (masses) game the whole game will die while if the PC-version will not be a console port there will be a Crysis 4.”
25 FEB 2011

Turns out I was correct. Well sure, maybe at some point they might try to revive the genre with a Crysis 4 but as it’s stands it’s dead in the water because Crysis 3 sold pretty bad (what was the point there).

Can we now go back to the grind conversation instead of arguing if they could or could not push out an expansion once a year. I think they can, you think they can’t but that’s not the subject here is it? Also you seem to believe they have the people to make the right decisions and so what people on the forums say is not really interesting as we don’t know what we are talking about. But it’s not that simple as I just did show.

So people can just go on suggesting solutions for the grind problem and they might in fact be better then what the people at Anet think that is the best. Maybe, maybe not.

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

naiasonod.9265:

Vayne.8563:

~

~

I agree. I think this sort of thing is the best compromise. The thing, even though it’s a step in the right direction, according to Devata, it’s too grindy for his/her tastes.

Well if you’re going to make new stuff not grindy and not cost gold and not cost cash, I’m not sure what the options are.

Her answer is, repeatedly, new expansions, new content. She claims it’ll work but I don’t see the evidence for this. I don’t think in this day and age that a developer could put out enough new content fast enough to make a game truly buy to play with no cash shop.

Devata brings up another game but the DLC content which they come out with goes against the ideal plan.

This is the limitation of believing only one ways is good. If it was the only good way everyone would be doing it. I believe the way Devata wants the game to be run would result in less players and I believe it would be a tremendous risk.

Your comment is a little hard to follow, you talk about the cash-shop and a way to keep players playing (as if a cash-shop does that??) and the ability to push out enough content to keep people busy but what I am saying pushing out an expansion once every year, year and a half. Most P2P MMO’s put out an expansion every 2 years with some patches in-between and that is enough to keep people busy (sure people leave after WoW’s patch, but more than enough also keep playing) so why would an expansion a year not be able to do so.

It’s all not that very different from what the market is already doing if it comes to the way to keep people playing or the content being pushed out.

The main difference form what the market is doing would be the payment model but that’s only different from the MMO market, in fact the B2P model is still the most used model in the complete gaming industry.

Lastly the other game I talked about was in a separate discussion talking about if a game would have to generate income on a monthly base or if it would also be possible on a yearly or longer base (especially if development cost where high). The fact that one of the examples of very expensive games was using more or less a similar system as the B2P I suggest was nothing more than a side note but not used as an example to show the model would work in an MMO (as far as destiny is an mmo). As far as I know that game has only one DLC released by now what would help to show they don’t need income on a monthly base (like the big bunch) what was the only point about the other game.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I’m not talking about the cash shop as a way of keeping players playing. I’m talking about the game existing at all. I’m talking about having enough money going forward to add any kind of content at all.

Pretty much from the moment your game comes out, you’re working on more content for it. It is your belief that that content could be made into an expansion and that would be enough to cover costs and make a profit. It’s my opinion that that’s not enough in this day and age. You have a belief it can happen and I have a belief it can’t. Not for an MMORPG. Not with the amount of competition out there.

If the game doesn’t exist there will be no content and no one playing. I’m not sure what’s hard to follow about that.

Money-wise the numbers we can use seem to show it will work, even better than the current model. So then the only question that remains is if they are able to create one expansion a year.

No plz Devate plz stop it ….
You are really want us to have paid DLC like Destiny ?
So we are FORCED TO pay more real money ?

And just for what ?
Because you want more ingame grind and no the cash shop items , just because you are a collector ?

I have a idea :
Ask about about more grind (mini -skins) inside the game x10.000 times . And the gold you make at the end of it , you can hapilly transform gold>gems and by the 2-4 Black market items .

Or an better idea :
WoW is thinking about creating a FLEX system , where you csn trade gold>game time + they will have a Cash shop .
You should better go to MMO Champion and try to prevent WoW from failing

Just by hearing you , you are no different from the ppl that wanted the Achentant gear (vocal minority , which is 1 of the 3 type of ppl that i hate as a Dark Knight!) …

Edit: The one Dev that posted , it will be likly to have read already the posts and weighted ech repsonse .
Now if you personaly have an other idea about the 3-part Items you want ingame , you can write it …
Ignore Vayne and give more ideas , rather than ‘’i dont know what wrong , they should fix it althought ’’’

munkiman.3068:

Vayne.8563:

I agree. I think this sort of thing is the best compromise. The thing, even though it’s a step in the right direction, according to Devata, it’s too grindy for his/her tastes.

Well if you’re going to make new stuff not grindy and not cost gold and not cost cash, I’m not sure what the options are.

Her answer is, repeatedly, new expansions, new content. She claims it’ll work but I don’t see the evidence for this. I don’t think in this day and age that a developer could put out enough new content fast enough to make a game truly buy to play with no cash shop.

Devata brings up another game but the DLC content which they come out with goes against the ideal plan.

This is the limitation of believing only one ways is good. If it was the only good way everyone would be doing it. I believe the way Devata wants the game to be run would result in less players and I believe it would be a tremendous risk.

There are basically 2 general complaints, one is rewarding grind and the other is content grind. I’m only using the word grind to fit with the topic, however.

The second complaint is the lack of substantial content additions over the past 2.5 years. This one, i feel, is due to releasing in China. So what they did add, often felt grindy, to keep players interested enough to do the “work” to get at stuff. This, i’m hoping will change with HoT.

The first part is actually pretty important though, even a bunch of the grindy (or harder to reach) achievements offer pretty horrible rewards. Many of them feel like a complete after-thought of just tossing something in the game to give players something to do.

As to one of the previous posts, the one about getting most things from anywhere in the game. That actually affects the reward system pretty negatively, since the loot table could be rather large, meaning players have an even lower chance at getting at the goods they want. It’s actually nice to see them rewarding things for certain content.

Grind itself is largely perceptual, but when you tack on artificially high amounts of materials and match it with lower than average drop rates, you get the grind mentality. Of which you see a decent amount of it being produced. Things like lodestones and even worse, giant eyes, and content really starts to feel grindy. Even ascended gear itself isn’t all that rewarding to achieve, many find the looks bad and many feel the stat progression is even worse. So you have a grind for an item that’s not really all that great to begin with.

All in all, the crux has been creating challenging content that also feels rewarding in the open world, something arena has been struggling with since release.

Interesting point about the game leading up to the China release. Maybe A-Net made the game super grindy on purpose just so all the gold farmers feel comfortable and at home?

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

naiasonod.9265:

Vayne.8563:

~

~

I agree. I think this sort of thing is the best compromise. The thing, even though it’s a step in the right direction, according to Devata, it’s too grindy for his/her tastes.

Well if you’re going to make new stuff not grindy and not cost gold and not cost cash, I’m not sure what the options are.

Her answer is, repeatedly, new expansions, new content. She claims it’ll work but I don’t see the evidence for this. I don’t think in this day and age that a developer could put out enough new content fast enough to make a game truly buy to play with no cash shop.

Devata brings up another game but the DLC content which they come out with goes against the ideal plan.

This is the limitation of believing only one ways is good. If it was the only good way everyone would be doing it. I believe the way Devata wants the game to be run would result in less players and I believe it would be a tremendous risk.

Your comment is a little hard to follow, you talk about the cash-shop and a way to keep players playing (as if a cash-shop does that??) and the ability to push out enough content to keep people busy but what I am saying pushing out an expansion once every year, year and a half. Most P2P MMO’s put out an expansion every 2 years with some patches in-between and that is enough to keep people busy (sure people leave after WoW’s patch, but more than enough also keep playing) so why would an expansion a year not be able to do so.

It’s all not that very different from what the market is already doing if it comes to the way to keep people playing or the content being pushed out.

The main difference form what the market is doing would be the payment model but that’s only different from the MMO market, in fact the B2P model is still the most used model in the complete gaming industry.

Lastly the other game I talked about was in a separate discussion talking about if a game would have to generate income on a monthly base or if it would also be possible on a yearly or longer base (especially if development cost where high). The fact that one of the examples of very expensive games was using more or less a similar system as the B2P I suggest was nothing more than a side note but not used as an example to show the model would work in an MMO (as far as destiny is an mmo). As far as I know that game has only one DLC released by now what would help to show they don’t need income on a monthly base (like the big bunch) what was the only point about the other game.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I’m not talking about the cash shop as a way of keeping players playing. I’m talking about the game existing at all. I’m talking about having enough money going forward to add any kind of content at all.

Pretty much from the moment your game comes out, you’re working on more content for it. It is your belief that that content could be made into an expansion and that would be enough to cover costs and make a profit. It’s my opinion that that’s not enough in this day and age. You have a belief it can happen and I have a belief it can’t. Not for an MMORPG. Not with the amount of competition out there.

If the game doesn’t exist there will be no content and no one playing. I’m not sure what’s hard to follow about that.

Money-wise the numbers we can use seem to show it will work, even better than the current model. So then the only question that remains is if they are able to create one expansion a year.

Where are you getting those numbers. You’re assuming that Anet can come out with an expansion as frequently as they used to. You’re assuming the number of people that will buy the expansion. There are a lot of assumptions in your numbers.

Simplest question is this. If this is such a great way to make more money, why aren’t people doing it? I say it’s because the risk factor is way higher than you think it is.

naiasonod.9265:

I’m working on my fourth set of Ascended gear here in GW2

Gz. I kinda gave up on getting full exotics after using up the karma points I farmed up from the old map clearing/dailies on a few pieces, and with karma jugs out the window, I found the alternatives not worth the brain damage they would likely cause. As a pvp person who spent most of their time in what was a tremendously unrewarding and often frustrating pvp experience (no team, no win), that pretty much sealed the deal for me, as I found myself quitting not too long ago after.

naiasonod.9265:

You can get exotic gear here in GW2 with karma off Orr vendors.

Yea, but if you aren’t big on wvw’s ZvZ, or dynamic event trains, karma sources karma might quickly become somewhat of an issue. Or at least, I wasn’t aware of alternatives aside from the said two sources once they removed karma jugs from dailies/map completion (or was it just dailies? I don’t quite remember anymore.)

naiasonod.9265:

BiS doesn’t carry the same weight here as it does in a raidy-gear grindy treadmill game anyway.

Full exotics is all anyone will ever need for anything other than high-tier fractals, and fractals aren’t ‘The Endgame Woo’ at all.

I’m rather disappointed to see you go down the path of the brain-washed. This particular issue of needing vs requiring has been debunked quite well in this thread, surely you couldn’t have missed it.

If something is not needed, if might as well not be there to start with. Ascended doesn’t add anything to the game, and it would be a win-win situation if exotics would be bumped up to ascended level in terms of stats.
If anyone wants to complain about this, remember, the gear wasn’t needed to start with – outside fractals, that is (the agony resistance should stay intact).
To justify the cost, I would also make the gear ‘slotted’, i.e. have the ability to swap out, with no additional cost, the stats/runes according to your current needs and desires – exactly like the gear functions in pvp.

naiasonod.9265:

You’re not in Kansas anymore. Skill and Knowledge are BiS here. And lemme tell ya, you can’t farm for that.

What is skill and knowledge? Experience. And what is experience? Exactly, learning through repetition and in a wide range of different scenarios. Or in short, grind.

Since I reckon you’re refering to pve (given the context of BiS), I need to emphasize that ‘skill’ in pve directly translates to having the script learned by heart, which is not really ‘skill’ in the most generic meaning of the expression.
Skill in pvp, however, is a whole different beast, and that even though this game’s pvp falls flat compared to the original.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

No plz Devate plz stop it ….
You are really want us to have paid DLC like Destiny ?
So we are FORCED TO pay more real money ?

And just for what ?
Because you want more ingame grind and no the cash shop items , just because you are a collector ?

I have a idea :
Ask about about more grind (mini -skins) inside the game x10.000 times . And the gold you make at the end of it , you can hapilly transform gold>gems and by the 2-4 Black market items .

Or an better idea :
WoW is thinking about creating a FLEX system , where you csn trade gold>game time + they will have a Cash shop .
You should better go to MMO Champion and try to prevent WoW from failing

Just by hearing you , you are no different from the ppl that wanted the Achentant gear (vocal minority , which is 1 of the 3 type of ppl that i hate as a Dark Knight!) …

Edit: The one Dev that posted , it will be likly to have read already the posts and weighted ech repsonse .
Now if you personaly have an other idea about the 3-part Items you want ingame , you can write it …
Ignore Vayne and give more ideas , rather than ‘’i dont know what wrong , they should fix it althought ’’’

No, where did I say I want DLC like Destiny? I said an expansion once a year , 1,5 year. If people are not even prepared to buy that then why go for a B2P game in the first place?

And you are not forced to buy that but you do it to get a better game for it.

Yeah I have been asking for more grind, that’s clearly what I have been doing in this thread. If you want a healthy discussion at least say things that make a little sense.

So w8 a sec .
When you create a post and say :

a) Cash Shop should be removed
b) They should implant a item with 1-5% chance to drop and that item can be improved x2 times , by playing ingame

Or Argue with how many Items+ Minis are ingame compared with the Gem store …

Does all of these make sense too ?

You see , i am not a nice guy and the ’’second’’ of the 3 types of players i hate is those that even them dont make a sense (the third is those that try to ’’force’’ their opinion on others constantly and limit their imagination/opinion)

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

naiasonod.9265:

Vayne.8563:

~

~

`

Your comment is a little hard to follow, you talk about the cash-shop and a way to keep players playing (as if a cash-shop does that??) and the ability to push out enough content to keep people busy but what I am saying pushing out an expansion once every year, year and a half. Most P2P MMO’s put out an expansion every 2 years with some patches in-between and that is enough to keep people busy (sure people leave after WoW’s patch, but more than enough also keep playing) so why would an expansion a year not be able to do so.

It’s all not that very different from what the market is already doing if it comes to the way to keep people playing or the content being pushed out.

The main difference form what the market is doing would be the payment model but that’s only different from the MMO market, in fact the B2P model is still the most used model in the complete gaming industry.

Lastly the other game I talked about was in a separate discussion talking about if a game would have to generate income on a monthly base or if it would also be possible on a yearly or longer base (especially if development cost where high). The fact that one of the examples of very expensive games was using more or less a similar system as the B2P I suggest was nothing more than a side note but not used as an example to show the model would work in an MMO (as far as destiny is an mmo). As far as I know that game has only one DLC released by now what would help to show they don’t need income on a monthly base (like the big bunch) what was the only point about the other game.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I’m not talking about the cash shop as a way of keeping players playing. I’m talking about the game existing at all. I’m talking about having enough money going forward to add any kind of content at all.

Pretty much from the moment your game comes out, you’re working on more content for it. It is your belief that that content could be made into an expansion and that would be enough to cover costs and make a profit. It’s my opinion that that’s not enough in this day and age. You have a belief it can happen and I have a belief it can’t. Not for an MMORPG. Not with the amount of competition out there.

If the game doesn’t exist there will be no content and no one playing. I’m not sure what’s hard to follow about that.

Money-wise the numbers we can use seem to show it will work, even better than the current model. So then the only question that remains is if they are able to create one expansion a year.

Where are you getting those numbers. You’re assuming that Anet can come out with an expansion as frequently as they used to. You’re assuming the number of people that will buy the expansion. There are a lot of assumptions in your numbers.

Simplest question is this. If this is such a great way to make more money, why aren’t people doing it? I say it’s because the risk factor is way higher than you think it is.

Well the numbers is all we have to go on, same for Anet btw. And the ‘if it’s so good why is nobody doing it.’ Question. Partly greed, partly the unknown. A few years ago nobody was doing F2P because it was the unknown and now everybody is using it. At the same time multiple companies are still trying to use the P2P model thinking they will get the money WoW does (greed) but it almost always ends in a failure. So just the fact that a companies are or are not doing something does not mean it’s a good or a bad idea.

That model is what eventually helped to create GW2.

It’s like the crisis example: Crytek figured they made the game better suited for consoles and the masses to have better sales. That worked, Crysis was a known game (made big by the PC community talking positive about it) so they sold many copies of Crysis 2 but because they did that the PC community now was very negative about it so the buzz around the game went away and Crysis 3 sold really bad. This all in an attempt to focus on the big money. Would they have made the changes between the PC-version and the console version big enough to also make the smaller group of PC-players happy, the game would simply have gotten better reviews and that would have helped with sales for Crysis 3 as well. But there logical (greedy) decision to focus on the bigger crowd eventually meant less sales on the longer term.

So sometimes you have to look a litter further then just at the numbers. I use the numbers where I can but fil it on with logical sense.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

So w8 a sec .
When you create a post and say :

a) Cash Shop should be removed
b) They should implant a item with 1-5% chance to drop and that item can be improved x2 times , by playing ingame

Or Argue with how many Items+ Minis are ingame compared with the Gem store …

Does all of these make sense too ?

You see , i am not a nice guy and the ’’second’’ of the 3 types of players i hate is those that even them dont make a sense (the third is those that try to ’’force’’ their opinion on others constantly and limit their imagination/opinion)

Those items would not increase the grind. The items you could improve where direct rewards for completing different content (3 different difficulty levels) so that is not grinding.

The rng items are indeed a type of form but are the items you now grind gold for because they are now in the cash-shop. This would simply be a little more friendly farm and it’s not something that is forced upon anybody because for the items that are not account-bound you will still be able to use the gold grind there is now.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Stark.1350:

So because you have more important things in real life to attend to, you should feel you should be handed everything in game. If your guild mates are so high up there, why don’t they help you get mats? Nevermind the fact that the chest of loyalty at the end of the monthly login period gives you free ascended mats.

. . . are you being serious right now? I can’t quite tell.

Because there’s a lot of conversations going on here now, and being handed things on a silver platter? Nobody has asked for that. Not even in jest.

So go take a breather, have a glass of water, and try that again with less of a loaded question at the top and less rhetoric later.

No, this is exactly what people are asking for. You already has someone mention earlier that they were SO happy they were fully raid geared out in WoW in 2 weeks.

“I can only play one hour a night. I expect to be able to be fully geared out.”

So, one person suggested that ascended armor drops from “mid-level” fractals. What about the person who isn’t skilled enough to do them? How is it fair to them to spend a lot of gold to craft them when you’re getting them for free?

Nevermind you can get all your ascended trinkets/jewelry just by logging in and getting laurels. Or you can get free ascended mats once a month from the chest of loyalty – again, simply by logging in.

Nevermind that ascended armor boxes do drop anywhere. But then you have people whining about the drop rate isn’t high enough.

What you choose to invest, is what you get out of it. If you can’t invest, don’t expect top flight things. This is the way it’s been in MMO’s since the dawn of time, except for WoW now, which they’ve nerfed into oblivion. Learn to deal with it.

Stark.1350:

So because you have more important things in real life to attend to, you should feel you should be handed everything in game. If your guild mates are so high up there, why don’t they help you get mats? Nevermind the fact that the chest of loyalty at the end of the monthly login period gives you free ascended mats.

That’s not what I said. I have no problem with having to grind for things like prestige armor and high end achievements. I just want the game to be more like GW1 where your got the best armor in the game over the course of playing through your story. Also, the free ascended mats don’t mean jack if your crafting isn’t maxed. Furthermore, the biggest barrier to getting ascended armor isn’t even ascended mats. It’s usually silk, oddly enough, and there’s no way to get that through the loyalty chests. I’m sure my guild would pitch in for those mats if I asked them to, but I prefer to work up my own character without having to leech off my guild mates.

KarlaGrey.5903:

naiasonod.9265:

I’m working on my fourth set of Ascended gear here in GW2

Gz. I kinda gave up on getting full exotics after using up the karma points I farmed up from the old map clearing/dailies on a few pieces, and with karma jugs out the window, I found the alternatives not worth the brain damage they would likely cause. As a pvp person who spent most of their time in what was a tremendously unrewarding and often frustrating pvp experience (no team, no win), that pretty much sealed the deal for me, as I found myself quitting not too long ago after.

naiasonod.9265:

You can get exotic gear here in GW2 with karma off Orr vendors.

Yea, but if you aren’t big on wvw’s ZvZ, or dynamic event trains, karma sources karma might quickly become somewhat of an issue. Or at least, I wasn’t aware of alternatives aside from the said two sources once they removed karma jugs from dailies/map completion (or was it just dailies? I don’t quite remember anymore.)

naiasonod.9265:

BiS doesn’t carry the same weight here as it does in a raidy-gear grindy treadmill game anyway.

Full exotics is all anyone will ever need for anything other than high-tier fractals, and fractals aren’t ‘The Endgame Woo’ at all.

I’m rather disappointed to see you go down the path of the brain-washed. This particular issue of needing vs requiring has been debunked quite well in this thread, surely you couldn’t have missed it.

If something is not needed, if might as well not be there to start with. Ascended doesn’t add anything to the game, and it would be a win-win situation if exotics would be bumped up to ascended level in terms of stats.
If anyone wants to complain about this, remember, the gear wasn’t needed to start with – outside fractals, that is (the agony resistance should stay intact).
To justify the cost, I would also make the gear ‘slotted’, i.e. have the ability to swap out, with no additional cost, the stats/runes according to your current needs and desires – exactly like the gear functions in pvp.

naiasonod.9265:

You’re not in Kansas anymore. Skill and Knowledge are BiS here. And lemme tell ya, you can’t farm for that.

What is skill and knowledge? Experience. And what is experience? Exactly, learning through repetition and in a wide range of different scenarios. Or in short, grind.

Since I reckon you’re refering to pve (given the context of BiS), I need to emphasize that ‘skill’ in pve directly translates to having the script learned by heart, which is not really ‘skill’ in the most generic meaning of the expression.
Skill in pvp, however, is a whole different beast, and that even though this game’s pvp falls flat compared to the original.

This post just makes me laugh. Gave up getting full exotics.

I leveled my first character to 80. I finished that leveling experience with 80 gold. Completed all the maps. Bought my first set of exotics. How is this so freaking hard?

Bernie.8674:

Stark.1350:

So because you have more important things in real life to attend to, you should feel you should be handed everything in game. If your guild mates are so high up there, why don’t they help you get mats? Nevermind the fact that the chest of loyalty at the end of the monthly login period gives you free ascended mats.

That’s not what I said. I have no problem with having to grind for this like prestige armor and high end achievements. I just want the game to be more like GW1 where your got the best armor in the game over the course of playing through your story. Also, the free ascended mats don’t mean jack if your crafting isn’t maxed. Furthermore, the biggest barrier to getting ascended armor isn’t even ascended mats. It’s usually silk, oddly enough, and there’s no way to get that through the loyalty chests. I’m sure my guild would pitch in for those mats if I asked them to, but I prefer to work up my own character without having to leech off my guild mates.

Having to leech off your guild mates? That’s what a guild is for. Helping each other out. I’ve helped seven different people get their legendary weapons, often by handing them precursors for nothing.

Silk drops like candy in this game. Go run any level 80 zone. Done.

Stark.1350:

Bernie.8674:

Stark.1350:

So because you have more important things in real life to attend to, you should feel you should be handed everything in game. If your guild mates are so high up there, why don’t they help you get mats? Nevermind the fact that the chest of loyalty at the end of the monthly login period gives you free ascended mats.

That’s not what I said. I have no problem with having to grind for this like prestige armor and high end achievements. I just want the game to be more like GW1 where your got the best armor in the game over the course of playing through your story. Also, the free ascended mats don’t mean jack if your crafting isn’t maxed. Furthermore, the biggest barrier to getting ascended armor isn’t even ascended mats. It’s usually silk, oddly enough, and there’s no way to get that through the loyalty chests. I’m sure my guild would pitch in for those mats if I asked them to, but I prefer to work up my own character without having to leech off my guild mates.

Having to leech off your guild mates? That’s what a guild is for. Helping each other out. I’ve helped seven different people get their legendary weapons, often by handing them precursors for nothing.

Silk drops like candy in this game. Go run any level 80 zone. Done.

you need 36×100×3 silk scraps, so thats 10800 peices of candy.

yeah gw2 has a problem with these large numbers, kind of odd, they made items in stacks of 250, but just saving this much silk would take up 43 slots.

oh yeah, thats just the silk requirement by the way. you also need 720 linen 720 wool 360 cotton annnd theres still more.

grind it up,

Stark.1350:

Bernie.8674:

Stark.1350:

So because you have more important things in real life to attend to, you should feel you should be handed everything in game. If your guild mates are so high up there, why don’t they help you get mats? Nevermind the fact that the chest of loyalty at the end of the monthly login period gives you free ascended mats.

That’s not what I said. I have no problem with having to grind for this like prestige armor and high end achievements. I just want the game to be more like GW1 where your got the best armor in the game over the course of playing through your story. Also, the free ascended mats don’t mean jack if your crafting isn’t maxed. Furthermore, the biggest barrier to getting ascended armor isn’t even ascended mats. It’s usually silk, oddly enough, and there’s no way to get that through the loyalty chests. I’m sure my guild would pitch in for those mats if I asked them to, but I prefer to work up my own character without having to leech off my guild mates.

Having to leech off your guild mates? That’s what a guild is for. Helping each other out. I’ve helped seven different people get their legendary weapons, often by handing them precursors for nothing.

Silk drops like candy in this game. Go run any level 80 zone. Done.

It may drop like candy, but each ascended piece requires 1500 scraps. Just compare the TP price of silk (1.76 silver right now) to the TP price of thick leather (9 copper right now). That’s no accident. If silk drops like candy the way you say, why does it cost almost 2000% as much as leather?

Stark.1350:

Bernie.8674:

Stark.1350:

So because you have more important things in real life to attend to, you should feel you should be handed everything in game. If your guild mates are so high up there, why don’t they help you get mats? Nevermind the fact that the chest of loyalty at the end of the monthly login period gives you free ascended mats.

That’s not what I said. I have no problem with having to grind for this like prestige armor and high end achievements. I just want the game to be more like GW1 where your got the best armor in the game over the course of playing through your story. Also, the free ascended mats don’t mean jack if your crafting isn’t maxed. Furthermore, the biggest barrier to getting ascended armor isn’t even ascended mats. It’s usually silk, oddly enough, and there’s no way to get that through the loyalty chests. I’m sure my guild would pitch in for those mats if I asked them to, but I prefer to work up my own character without having to leech off my guild mates.

Having to leech off your guild mates? That’s what a guild is for. Helping each other out. I’ve helped seven different people get their legendary weapons, often by handing them precursors for nothing.

Silk drops like candy in this game. Go run any level 80 zone. Done.

how do i join your guild?

Vayne.8563:

At the time Guild Wars 1 was created there were no free to play MMOs out at all.

False.

Vayne.8563:

And even though Guild Wars 1 itself wasn’t an MMO, it filled the niche of an MMO type of game for many people.

False.

CORPG is a term invented by anet. GW1 IS an MMORPG. You don’t need the ability to create a “zerg” to kill mobs in a persistent world, you need a virtual persistent 2D/3D world that let you meet and interact with many other people supported by a system that facilitate social interaction and roleplaying.

I bet one day the term will be even more extended of what it is today (that is even more complex of what wikipedia suggests). Mmorpg are not all about grinding, quests and killing respawning AI, mmorpg are (and in my opinion should be more) about people.

We can discuss if GW1 it was more closer to a sandbox or a themepark of what GW2 is, but not if it was or not an mmorpg.

By the way, back on topic, regarding the no grind philosophy I do fear the mastery system and the idea that you will be facing some challanges that you won’t be able to overcome not because you lack of skills, but because you lack of mastery points. What will happen if I have all the points required to travel to a specific location of the map, but a friend of mine, after stopping playing for few weeks will come back? Will we still be able to enjoy together the new content? Or will I have to wait untill he will have grinded all the points he needs to reaches me?
If he’ll need to grind, won’t this fracture the popolation? Isn’t the same as introducing a gear treadmill? Those are all the questions running through my mind.

naiasonod.9265:

captainteemo.6537:

After a short break from playing gw2 and coming back to it from other MMOs. You guys seriously don’t know what it means for an MMO to be grindy. Guildwars2 has it pretty good. If you’re upset, go try out other mmos and see for yourself.

Hey, well, there’s cow crap in the water over in India, so we shouldn’t complain about turds in ours? Bugger off.

Totally missed the point, but looking at it objectively would turn your “argument” in to a childish tantrum, so your exaggerated reaction is to be expected.

phys.7689:

Stark.1350:

Bernie.8674:

Stark.1350:

So because you have more important things in real life to attend to, you should feel you should be handed everything in game. If your guild mates are so high up there, why don’t they help you get mats? Nevermind the fact that the chest of loyalty at the end of the monthly login period gives you free ascended mats.

That’s not what I said. I have no problem with having to grind for this like prestige armor and high end achievements. I just want the game to be more like GW1 where your got the best armor in the game over the course of playing through your story. Also, the free ascended mats don’t mean jack if your crafting isn’t maxed. Furthermore, the biggest barrier to getting ascended armor isn’t even ascended mats. It’s usually silk, oddly enough, and there’s no way to get that through the loyalty chests. I’m sure my guild would pitch in for those mats if I asked them to, but I prefer to work up my own character without having to leech off my guild mates.

Having to leech off your guild mates? That’s what a guild is for. Helping each other out. I’ve helped seven different people get their legendary weapons, often by handing them precursors for nothing.

Silk drops like candy in this game. Go run any level 80 zone. Done.

you need 36×100×3 silk scraps, so thats 10800 peices of candy.

yeah gw2 has a problem with these large numbers, kind of odd, they made items in stacks of 250, but just saving this much silk would take up 43 slots.

oh yeah, thats just the silk requirement by the way. you also need 720 linen 720 wool 360 cotton annnd theres still more.

grind it up,

Yeah that is funny right. When it started that you would need a lot of slots I figured it was a bug / design mistake. You have stacks of 250 but of most items you need (ag of some you get) always more then 250. Something around stacks of 500 to 1000 would make more sense. So I decided to post that suggestion on the forum, however at that same time we got an update and we indeed get that ability.. as a cash-shop unlock. How kitten cheap.

Hamfast.8719:

ColinJohanson.2394:

The best gear/stats: This means to have statistically the best abilities in the game, you shouldn’t need to, by our definition of the word, grind. This goes for leveling and getting top gear (by our definition that’s ascended gear.)

But you do have to craft.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Grind: To us, grind means being required to do the same boring activity over and over again

Crafting is doing the same boring activity over and over again. And we are required to do it in order to get the Ascended gear we want. I’ve been able to level my crafting following online guides, but I’ve never gotten the hang of it. And sitting at that table in town scratching my head frustrates the hell out of me. I am not alone in my hatred of crafting.

I have no issue with attaining the materials. It’s knowing what I need and then putting them all together. The only Ascended stuff I’ve been able to get is Trinkets/Accessories. I would love to be able to get weapons, and to a lesser extent armor.

Please, PLEASE. PLEASE can’t you develop a system for those of us who despise crafting to get Ascended gear? (Clue: RNG is not a “system”).

Not to mention that people who play dungeons and WVW Have to get this gear to remain competative as we’ve seen in the kinds of players who run these dungeons and the kinds of players who run WvW and sure people can come on here and say that because you’re in a group in WvW you don’t need it but the fact remains as any Esports person will tell you that if you don’t have that gear you can’t remain competative and they know it to be true. If Anet wants this to be all about Esports then need to make the game fair and it’s not right now.

Erick Alastor.3917:

CORPG is a term invented by anet. GW1 IS an MMORPG. You don’t need the ability to create a “zerg” to kill mobs in a persistent world, you need a virtual persistent 2D/3D world that let you meet and interact with many other people supported by a system that facilitate social interaction and roleplaying.

Minor nitpick to your minor nitpick.

The game world in GW is not persistent. Only the towns/outposts (i.e., the lobbies) are.

aerial.7021:

Its a reaction to the rhetoric by some of “want something ‘work’ for it” attitude, and the general philosophy by the game industry on the whole that grind be it small or large must exist in a game too cover for there lack of content.

Look, if you’re not going to answer the question, then don’t bother trying to sell me on how right you are.

Stark.1350:

No, this is exactly what people are asking for. You already has someone mention earlier that they were SO happy they were fully raid geared out in WoW in 2 weeks.

“I can only play one hour a night. I expect to be able to be fully geared out.”

That’s still not asking for just being given it. As with the poster just above me, you’re going hyperbolic about this.

So, one person suggested that ascended armor drops from “mid-level” fractals. What about the person who isn’t skilled enough to do them? How is it fair to them to spend a lot of gold to craft them when you’re getting them for free?

I got my Wupwup Greatbow for “free” when it dropped off a Bonus Chest in WvW during the “Season 2” event between LS parts. So, should I bow down and beg forgiveness for that?

It’s not a terrible idea. Especially considering how the Ascended gear’s functional separation from Exotics is related to Agony. It’s almost the only reason to be using it, since when you start downscaling you might as well be using Exotics anyway.

Nevermind you can get all your ascended trinkets/jewelry just by logging in and getting laurels. Or you can get free ascended mats once a month from the chest of loyalty – again, simply by logging in.

And you can get free Exotic equipment the same way too. You’re not complaining about that being handed to people either. (Especially since it was given to you for map completion of high-level areas, before now.)

Nevermind that ascended armor boxes do drop anywhere. But then you have people whining about the drop rate isn’t high enough.

It’s really not.

What you choose to invest, is what you get out of it. If you can’t invest, don’t expect top flight things. This is the way it’s been in MMO’s since the dawn of time, except for WoW now, which they’ve nerfed into oblivion. Learn to deal with it.

I really don’t care all that much myself – when it came to Ascended and Legendary items and the problem of earning them . . . I opted to just wait and do it at my own pace. They don’t matter to me the same way they do to other posters here – I played fine in Rares before I got the Temple Armor for myself.

But.

There’s a difference between “this stuff shouldn’t require enough silk to clothe all of Cantha” and “gimme now plz”.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Minor nitpick to your minor nitpick.

The game world in GW is not persistent. Only the towns/outposts (i.e., the lobbies) are.

Towns/Outposts were and are part of the world and the platforms that promoted social interactions. There were mobs to kill there? No, but that’s another story.
An online world is not by definition a place where you have to/can kill stuff.
Anyway this thread is not about GW1vsGW2. Feel free to prove that I’m wrong in what I say, I don’t care, I’ll stop now derailing the thread. Have a nice day :*

Devata.6589:

I did it multiple times, like I said I leveled all my characters in there but I did not do it the way you suggest, only the first level. That would also not work for leveling up all my characters.

I played the whole game on every character once a day. Those bubbles I did earn along the way. The sellable drops where nice but indeed not that great, that why I said ‘if only the mini’s would be available in there’ while of course you then have the problem of temporary availability. Then again, that was the same now because they were now temporary cash-shop items.

So did I play it many times? Yes, did I simply grind the currency (baubles) no. Did the rewards where part of the fun / reason for playing? Yes. That’s why with the second SAB I only did it in one character. While by that time the game had also become too big to do really do on all characters on a daily basis. But I would then more likely have switched between them.

But all in all it never did feel like a grind or I did it really play it as a grind, so just trying to get the baubles in the fastest way as you said, it was always a combination of the fun of doing it in combination with earning the rewards.

I still don’t think the two are the same but yeah it was a step in the right direction.

But do you see? Right there, you just admitted to grinding, but saying it didn’t feel like a grind. BUT IT WAS! You played it over and over again, multiple characters, for the rewards, RNG rewards at the boss chests, and bauble rewards.

So basically Anet needs to take the grind they had in SAB v1 and go from there. You’ll be grinding, but not feel like you’re grinding. BUT STILL GRINDING!

Another thought that occured to me last night. Something that may help to make gold not feel all so important. What we need is a currency that you get all the time, for doing pretty much anything in the game, and increase its usefulness and value. Something like…oh I don’t know…KARMA.

If karma was use more than gold (of course this would cause inflation on the market though), there may be less whining. Do events you like, you earn karma, go spend it in another zone vendor for something you want. heck, to help stabilize gold a bit, combine karma and gold for items. 5g and X karma for an high value item or something. This currency is just sitting there in the game, doing nothing at the end (after spending for easy exotics at temples) and you earn it for basically doing any events you want in the game. So lets make it actually have value now at the end game.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

aerial.7021:

Its a reaction to the rhetoric by some of “want something ‘work’ for it” attitude, and the general philosophy by the game industry on the whole that grind be it small or large must exist in a game too cover for there lack of content.

Look, if you’re not going to answer the question, then don’t bother trying to sell me on how right you are.

Stark.1350:

No, this is exactly what people are asking for. You already has someone mention earlier that they were SO happy they were fully raid geared out in WoW in 2 weeks.

“I can only play one hour a night. I expect to be able to be fully geared out.”

That’s still not asking for just being given it. As with the poster just above me, you’re going hyperbolic about this.

So, one person suggested that ascended armor drops from “mid-level” fractals. What about the person who isn’t skilled enough to do them? How is it fair to them to spend a lot of gold to craft them when you’re getting them for free?

I got my Wupwup Greatbow for “free” when it dropped off a Bonus Chest in WvW during the “Season 2” event between LS parts. So, should I bow down and beg forgiveness for that?

It’s not a terrible idea. Especially considering how the Ascended gear’s functional separation from Exotics is related to Agony. It’s almost the only reason to be using it, since when you start downscaling you might as well be using Exotics anyway.

Nevermind you can get all your ascended trinkets/jewelry just by logging in and getting laurels. Or you can get free ascended mats once a month from the chest of loyalty – again, simply by logging in.

And you can get free Exotic equipment the same way too. You’re not complaining about that being handed to people either. (Especially since it was given to you for map completion of high-level areas, before now.)

Nevermind that ascended armor boxes do drop anywhere. But then you have people whining about the drop rate isn’t high enough.

It’s really not.

What you choose to invest, is what you get out of it. If you can’t invest, don’t expect top flight things. This is the way it’s been in MMO’s since the dawn of time, except for WoW now, which they’ve nerfed into oblivion. Learn to deal with it.

I really don’t care all that much myself – when it came to Ascended and Legendary items and the problem of earning them . . . I opted to just wait and do it at my own pace. They don’t matter to me the same way they do to other posters here – I played fine in Rares before I got the Temple Armor for myself.

But.

There’s a difference between “this stuff shouldn’t require enough silk to clothe all of Cantha” and “gimme now plz”.

I think one could argue that there have been both those types in this thread. (in reference to your last quote.)

With that said, your last paragraph sums up exactly what I’ve been saying this entire time. You still managed to get what you want, just over a longer span of time. Those items didn’t MATTER. And if people can control their WANT over items that DO NOT MATTER, then grind, as it stands, goes away. Unfortunately this has been bled into our systems from MMO’s previous, where items DO matter.

Play the game at your own pace and the rewards come to you. It pays to be in a guild in this game as well. Help out people in the guild and you’ll find the help often comes back your way.

It’s not nearly as “grindy” or as “impossible” as people are making it out to be.

Serophous.9085:

Devata.6589:

~

So did I play it many times? Yes, did I simply grind the currency (baubles) no. Did the rewards where part of the fun / reason for playing? Yes. That’s why with the second SAB I only did it in one character. While by that time the game had also become too big to do really do on all characters on a daily basis. But I would then more likely have switched between them.

But all in all it never did feel like a grind or I did it really play it as a grind, so just trying to get the baubles in the fastest way as you said, it was always a combination of the fun of doing it in combination with earning the rewards.

I still don’t think the two are the same but yeah it was a step in the right direction.

But do you see? Right there, you just admitted to grinding, but saying it didn’t feel like a grind. BUT IT WAS! You played it over and over again, multiple characters, for the rewards, RNG rewards at the boss chests, and bauble rewards.

So basically Anet needs to take the grind they had in SAB v1 and go from there. You’ll be grinding, but not feel like you’re grinding. BUT STILL GRINDING!

Another thought that occured to me last night. Something that may help to make gold not feel all so important. What we need is a currency that you get all the time, for doing pretty much anything in the game, and increase its usefulness and value. Something like…oh I don’t know…KARMA.

If karma was use more than gold (of course this would cause inflation on the market though), there may be less whining. Do events you like, you earn karma, go spend it in another zone vendor for something you want. heck, to help stabilize gold a bit, combine karma and gold for items. 5g and X karma for an high value item or something. This currency is just sitting there in the game, doing nothing at the end (after spending for easy exotics at temples) and you earn it for basically doing any events you want in the game. So lets make it actually have value now at the end game.

No I said I did it multiple times to level my characters but also having the rewards as an extra thing / in the back of my might / earn them as well. Because I liked doing it. Is it then already grinding? I do not think so while it might come close. If I would have continue on to the point where I did not like it anymore but just did it for the baubles it would have been grinding but that was never the case.

I did not do it multiple times just to get the baubles to get the rewards.. you know like the people grinding for gold. To me that is a difference. I would not consider this grinding. In fact I think that is the general difference.

By your definition playing a game, doing quest and leveling at the same time would also be grinding because he you do something and leveling is an element of it. But it only because grinding when you do what you do for the sole purpose of the currency you earn (XP in that case). That does not mean the reward might not be one of the reasons or like an additional motivator for doing something (multiple times).

Would I have done SAB if I would not have gotten those rewards? Yes and likely multiple times. Did the rewards help to do it more times (increase playability), likely they gave the content an extra thrill / an extra motivator, by having the rewards to look forward to.

Would many people be doing champ-trains if they did not reward them anything? No. Do they even really like doing it or is it something they just put up with the earn the gold? For most they just put up with it. You see the difference.

Is it possible some people where purely grinding baubles in SAB? Sure.

But heey if you would want to consider both grinding (what would make everything a grind as you always earn some currency while playing and rewards are almost always part of the motivator) sure then by that definition I would want them to replace the boring grind by the better grind. But I do really think this is then really by your definition.

Same btw for farming but then your doing it for a direct item. I did for example farm MF for the back-pack and mini. I did farm it because I was repeating the dungeon for the mini also at a point where I did not like doing it anymore but just to get them knowing the dungeons would be removed at some point (never got them btw). Now I don’t mind considering it farming even if you do not dislike it but do it for the sole purpose of the reward. But it does not already become farming (or grinding) when your motivator is also just because you like it.

morrolan.9608:

Obtena.7952:

That’s a nice story. I can attest that from my own experience SWTOR does NOT have less grind that GW2 because SWTOR requires me to have certain tiers of gear to successfully complete much of the PVE content or compete in PVP. Furthermore, that gear isn’t just thrown at you .. it is, by definition, a grind to get it; repeated content to get gear or tokens from raid drops. Nothing is more grindy than that.

By simply playing the story you get minimum required raid gear and then it doesn’t take that many raids to gear up. Far less of a grind than to get a full suite of BiS gear in GW2. As for PvP you get it by simply playing the game same as GW2.

You don’t get it … It’s not about how many raids I need to gear up, it’s about the fact that I need to do raids to gear up at all. GW2 doesn’t even come close to making me do anything I’m not interested in to gear up; I can do WHAT I CHOOSE to get gear I want. I’m also not FORCED to get BiS gear to do endgame content in GW2 .. in SWTOR, forget it if you don’t have it.

Devata.6589:

No I said I did it multiple times to level my characters but also having the rewards as an extra thing / in the back of my might / earn them as well. Because I liked doing it. Is it then already grinding? I do not think so while it might come close. If I would have continue on to the point where I did not like it anymore but just did it for the baubles it would have been grinding but that was never the case.

I did not do it multiple times just to get the baubles to get the rewards.. you know like the people grinding for gold. To me that is a difference. I would not consider this grinding. In fact I think that is the general difference.

By your definition playing a game, doing quest and leveling at the same time would also be grinding because he you do something and leveling is an element of it. But it only because grinding when you do what you do for the sole purpose of the currency you earn (XP in that case). That does not mean the reward might not be one of the reasons or like an additional motivator for doing something (multiple times).

Would I have done SAB if I would not have gotten those rewards? Yes and likely multiple times. Did the rewards help to do it more times (increase playability), likely they gave the content an extra thrill / an extra motivator, by having the rewards to look forward to.

Would many people be doing champ-trains if they did not reward them anything? No. Do they even really like doing it or is it something they just put up with the earn the gold? For most they just put up with it. You see the difference.

Is it possible some people where purely grinding baubles in SAB? Sure.

But heey if you would want to consider both grinding (what would make everything a grind as you always earn some currency while playing and rewards are almost always part of the motivator) sure then by that definition I would want them to replace the boring grind by the better grind. But I do really think this is then really by your definition.

Same btw for farming but then your doing it for a direct item. I did for example farm MF for the back-pack and mini. I did farm it because I was repeating the dungeon for the mini also at a point where I did not like doing it anymore but just to get them knowing the dungeons would be removed at some point (never got them btw). Now I don’t mind considering it farming even if you do not dislike it but do it for the sole purpose of the reward. But it does not already become farming (or grinding) when your motivator is also just because you like it.

Sorry, I didn’t know doing something multiple times =/= grinding.

But in other news, since I like doing the same events MULTIPLE times in silverwastes, fighting the bosses durIng the breach MULTIPLE times, and the vinewrath and maze MULTIPLE times for fun because I do like the zone and events, then it isn’t a grind. The crests are just a bonus for me along with the bags I earn. If I use those bags and crests to make gold, then its all the more bonus to me.

Grind is subjective it seems.