Instead of bickering over semantics and whinging and complainers and white knights, I’d really like to have an actual conversation with people (actual people, so let’s throw out all usage of the aforementioned forum slurs that are so prevalent everywhere else) about the shift in design philosophy we’ve seen from anet in the last year.
The first thing to do is explain the design choices that I perceive to be making this shift. Then I’ll tell you why I don’t like it. Ideally, you’ll read what I’ve written and respond with your own facts, and then your opinion about why it makes for a better or more interesting or engaging game, one way or the other.
This year has seen a drastic decline in the amount of choice and flexibility offered in my chosen game mode, which is open world PvE.
Please note: I am all for more choice for the other game modes, but I do not believe it has to be at the expense of choice in any one game mode.
The recent change to dailies is a small part of a larger whole, but it is the impetus to this discussion. The April feature patch saw fewer options in the daily list, and now there are even fewer options (again, please remember that I am speaking about my preferred game mode, PvE), and those options are incredibly specific.
I think it is fantastic that PvP and WvW now have more options, though it could be argued that many PvE objectives translated over to, at least, WvW (gatherer, reviver, recycler, kill variety and others). I am merely confused about why it had to be at the expense of the selection that was previously available.
The festival meta achievements used to have a ton of options. Wintersday has absolutely no flexibility in it. You do the specific 11 achievements, or you don’t get the meta rewards.
Leveling and trait acquisition is not only narrow in scope (do specific, time intensive, buggy and/or level inappropriate tasks), but it is repetitive; utterly without variation (except for the location of a couple of the tasks on the trait tree) among the professions. Leveling has become a checklist of chores, or a grind for skillpoints and/or gold. Why take a crucial part of character building and make it so inaccessible?
Some of you will argue that the idea is to force players into other modes of gameplay. Perhaps this is true, but is it necessary? Are we really too stupid to know what we find fun and entertaining? Should ‘force’ even come into the equation when we’re talking about leisure time? Does the removal of options register as fun to anyone out there? Is doing it worthy of defending?
I feel like this has all distinctly impacted how I choose to spend my time in game and, ultimately, if I choose to spend time in game.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and respond thoughtfully.
I agree. While I’ve never been much of a player that had to complete dailies every single day, on the days that I completed them, it was because I was playing and not “grinding”.
I’ve completed the dailies the days since the update and disliked the entire process. Where before I could wander around the world and see players in just about every event circle, since the update almost every map has been dead except for the daily maps, and then the people were completing the selected tasks and little more. People were harvesting nodes on those maps and gigantic zurgs were making events into non-events on those maps. Note: 15 second Maw is freakin’ BORING!
Like I said, I’m a “lets see what I can find to do today” sort of player. If I wanted to be told “go to this specific place and do this specific thing” I wouldn’t have quit playing WoW 5 years ago. Admittedly I never got to level 10 there, because I didn’t like being told what to do. It just wasn’t my thing. GW2 was my thing. I played GW before GW2 launched specifically because friends started telling me about what was planned for GW2.
It just seems like different choices, not less.
I’ve only been playing for a year, so maybe it’s different for people who played from launch, but the game seems to have plenty of choices as to what people can do. I also played pre-change and post-change (the recent changes I mean) and it still seems like a really fun game with lots to do.
What I would like is an expansion though. The living story is fine, but I just want a huge new content chunk. LS tends to be not enough I guess – I just want more story and lots of it.
Technically, before, you could only unlock your traits to use by paying gold to the trainer. Now, you can unlock them by either paying gold/SP or doing a task that costs you nothing but time.
So, technically, you have more choice now than before, as far as unlocking traits goes.
As well, there were 12 dailies to choose from before, and 12 dailies to choose from now. Same amount of choice on what dailies to do. As well, one can choose to get their 10 AP by never leaving PVP or WVW, while before they couldn’t always choose to do so.
There’s a difference between “less choice” and “making different choices”.
I’m a primary PvE’r as well. When I think of other games modes like WvW, I keep thinking about what CJ was saying about it. I’ll paraphrase… “some of you already love WvW, but others may come to like it as well…” or words to that effect; it seems to me like he’s got someone at his back trying to push the WvW mode on us.
I for one, am not into WvW, mainly because of limiting outside factors. Those being that the hardware I have is in need of an upgrade so I can’t model more people on my screen like others can, and above all, my internet connection is not only strained but the furthest away from Anet’s servers! This forces such a lagstorm upon players in this region more than anywhere else. Mainly for this reason I just can’t find enjoyment in WvW; I’m hamstrung by outdated technology and location.
PvE is becoming just as bad thanks to megaserver and now the dailies sometimes including specific events, like the recent maw. There’s ALWAYS a crowd at those certain events, and thanks to this game being damage-based (you don’t hit, then it’s pointless doing the event), then it’s harking back to my original DPS-race topic I made several months ago, when megaserver became the norm. What was fun once, now has become ‘competitive’… it’s you against the rest of the other players for loot and event credit.
It all depends on your point of view.
For a player who is settled in their ways and activities, it’s less choice. The changes eliminated same things that I’ve been doing every night for the past year or more.
From ANet’s point of view, there is a much larger game world out there and types of play than the very focused, limited way some may be playing. To “encourage” those players to move out of their comfort zone, they may actually discover more of the game to have fun in than running paths, strip mining zones and boarding the boss train (toot-toot). They see it as showing players a greater range of options to play than so in their eyes it’s increasing choices a player is exposed too.
Problem with the second approach is that it assumes that players hadn’t tried those other activities and made an informed decision to do the ones they had been doing for the last year as the lesser of evils.
This is going on since the release of the LS. They dont want to give us a choice because they either think we are way too stupid for this and/or its simply more efficient. More choices means more programing. And more programing means more costs for them. GW2 is a game now in which profit means more than anything to the publisher. And if they have to dumb the game down to achieve the maximum profit they will do so without second thought.
Technically, before, you could only unlock your traits to use by paying gold to the trainer. Now, you can unlock them by either paying gold/SP or doing a task that costs you nothing but time.
So, technically, you have more choice now than before, as far as unlocking traits goes.
As well, there were 12 dailies to choose from before, and 12 dailies to choose from now. Same amount of choice on what dailies to do. As well, one can choose to get their 10 AP by never leaving PVP or WVW, while before they couldn’t always choose to do so.
There’s a difference between “less choice” and “making different choices”.
I’m going to assume that you are posting in good faith, and are not being disingenuous.
Previously, the way to unlock traits was to level up, and spend under 3g. Now the choice is between spending up to 43g and 360 skillpoints or doing 65 specific tasks that are the exact same on each profession. So, if we’re splitting hairs, you’re right. There are two choices for unlocking traits instead of one. But, for me personally, the 65 tasks have diminished the choices I can make while leveling, and it paints a very narrow, cookie-cutter path to unlocking builds. So, no, I don’t find that to be a step toward more choice, I see it as being a step toward less diversity and less character development.
I tried very hard to be polite in my original post, and I thought I covered my points about the dailies that you seem to have ignored. So I’m going to continue to be polite:
I am aware that the total number of daily quests has not changed. Thanks for the head’s up. My point is that choice has been removed twice this year from my preferred game mode, and there’s no real reason for it.
I’m over the moon that PvP and WvW have options now, too. Imagine me, right now, dancing a jig. It’s great. It’s better than great! But it did not have to come at the cost of variety in the pve daily.
I sincerely hope that is clear, and that you’re not seriously going to try to argue that you’d rather have fewer choices in whatever your preferred game mode is.
The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.
Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.
This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.
The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.
Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.
This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.
Thank you. This is the kind of discussion from the opposite point of view that I’m looking for.
I’m not arguing that the new system is bad, but you’d still be just as free to do what you want if there were 8 options per mode, and you still only had to complete 3 to get the points.
It all depends on your point of view.
For a player who is settled in their ways and activities, it’s less choice. The changes eliminated same things that I’ve been doing every night for the past year or more.
From ANet’s point of view, there is a much larger game world out there and types of play than the very focused, limited way some may be playing. To “encourage” those players to move out of their comfort zone, they may actually discover more of the game to have fun in than running paths, strip mining zones and boarding the boss train (toot-toot). They see it as showing players a greater range of options to play than so in their eyes it’s increasing choices a player is exposed too.
Problem with the second approach is that it assumes that players hadn’t tried those other activities and made an informed decision to do the ones they had been doing for the last year as the lesser of evils.
There are a few problems with that, though.
Anet can’t make players move out of their comfort zone (ref. “lead a horse to water”) and it isn’t like most of them havn’t tried everything at least once. AFAIK most players have settled in their ways because of it.
PvP and WvW is considered endgame to some because they either have done most if not all PvE content to the point where it turned into a job or a boring grind. PvE players might rarely (if ever) go into PvP due to toxic players, hatred of losing (because they know they will lose alot), lack of diverse viability or balance between professions and finally lack of game modes.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they developed this during BETA and used it at launch because everyone would understand that it is part of the final product. It would be considered an intended feature and almost everyone would tolerate it for the simple fact that BETA is over with.
But restricting existing features will only irritate the playerbase more than motivate them to explore other parts of the game. You simply can’t push players into content. All you can do is attract them.
In my eyes, this decision is meant to suppress the hunger for content by getting players used to content they would not normally try. It is not going to work as well as they want.
The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.
Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.
This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.
Thank you. This is the kind of discussion from the opposite point of view that I’m looking for.
I’m not arguing that the new system is bad, but you’d still be just as free to do what you want if there were 8 options per mode, and you still only had to complete 3 to get the points.
I’m not at all against more options per mode. I’m quite happy to see people happy with the game.
What I think Anet was trying to do was stop everyone from just doing the absolute easiest daily in the absolute easiest way.
For example in the old dailies, if you got Shiverpeakes killer, Wayfarer foothills was packed. If you got vet slayer, tons of people went to Wayfarer as well, to the dolyaks and spiders in the North East corner.
It trivialized dailies. Now they are a bit more involved…but just a bit.
And the rewards you got for doing the easy old ones you get anyway…all except for the achievement points.
I know that people are used to and enjoy achievement points being given out for sneezing, but I don’t mind going a bit out of the way for an achievement…and so far, that’s all I’ve had to do.
PvP and WvW aren’t generally endgame as far as rewards go, only for challenge.. if you wanna call it that. i would expect endgame to be rewarding AND challenging, unfortunately in pve you will more than likely going solo knowing full well you’ll get garbage. even with a group, you still get trash. but pve is not as bad as WvW, ive run into more players noticing they are losing gold overall than making it in there. even worse is PvP – next to no loot at all.
From my point of view, Anet has steadily chipped stuff away from the game I started playing 2 years ago. The megaservers was a big hit, before that I could choose if I wanted exploring all by my self or going to well populated maps.
As for the new dailies, now I have to do them. Before most came just by playing as I usually do, now I have to spesifically do dailies. And though they are fast and easy, they still feels like they take more time to do now.
Whats really nagging me, I have started to feel that Anet has lost its vision. Its more about metrics and cost than working towards a grand future.
Perhaps its just me, set in my ways and all that, though I dont think gw2 is an old game. It should be settled in about now, and start the real voyage through the rest of Tyria.
From my point of view, Anet has steadily chipped stuff away from the game I started playing 2 years ago. The megaservers was a big hit, before that I could choose if I wanted exploring all by my self or going to well populated maps.
As for the new dailies, now I have to do them. Before most came just by playing as I usually do, now I have to spesifically do dailies. And though they are fast and easy, they still feels like they take more time to do now.
Whats really nagging me, I have started to feel that Anet has lost its vision. Its more about metrics and cost than working towards a grand future.
Perhaps its just me, set in my ways and all that, though I dont think gw2 is an old game. It should be settled in about now, and start the real voyage through the rest of Tyria.
Out of curiosity, why do you feel like you have to do them? What would happen if you didn’t do them?
I too am primarily a PvE player.
I too find the trait changes to be a concern when it comes to player choice, variety, and so on.
I find the new daily system to be better for one, myself at least, desiring more choice in how I spend most of my play time. A system that allows me to complete the dailies more quickly leaves me with more choice in how to spend the majority of my play time while still pursuing daily rewards.
I would not argue that any of the changes are to, “force,” anything as, quite simply, there is no force involved. Offering a completely optional, non gameplay affecting, reward for doing something is in no way a means of forcing people to do that something.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
I see the new dailies as a case of dumbing things down. Just making something require less investment isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the new dailies are significantly less fun than the old dailies specifically because I could complete the old dailies by doing the content I chose. Now the reward has been split into two with part of it being awarded simply for logging in, which is obviously uninteresting and the other part being awarded for doing very specific tasks that I at least would not do if I wasn’t getting something out of it.
Basically, it makes the dailies feel less like something that you get for playing how you want and more into a list of chores.
IMO, the new dailies suck for several reasons:
1) Newbies cannot do them. There is generally only one daily that can be done by a newbie without resorting to PvP/WvW, and characters below level 18 and 22 will not be able to see the PvP/WvW icons or know to go to Lion’s Arch.
2) What was previously a system that encouraged to enjoy parts of the game you normally wouldn’t, is now a grind, because you have to do certain things in certain places. To put this more simply, watching ten vistas anywhere would’ve been more fun than watching one vista in a specific map. At the moment, it feels like nothing more than a sink for a bit of silver from waypointing around.
3) They have added yet more psuedo-loot – rewards that were already part of the game but were changed from automatic to now requiring you to click things. Just what we needed, more junk on our already overflowing characters and banks. In theory, this lets us use the experience and other rewards on any character, but in reality the boost that it gives is way too low to matter.
I personally used dailies as a form of map completion incentive. I would go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do, while completing them.
Overall, I see the new daily system as just like every other system Anet has implemted: Very good idea on paper and very poor implementation. Just like everything else, such as megaserver and world boss timers, they seem to’ve stopped development on the feature about halfway through and released an unfinished product that did not have the thought and polish of a proper QA team or any actual players.
Please stop making “paper” changes. It is hurting the game’s presentation because we keep ending up with these complex interlocking systems that don’t quite want to snap into place and become an actual thing.
(edited by Hannelore.8153)
1) Newbies cannot do them. There is generally only one daily that can be done by a newbie without resorting to PvP/WvW, and characters below level 18 and 22 will not be able to see the PvP/WvW icons or know to go to Lion’s Arch.
From the Patch notes -
The number of available achievements per day is based on the highest-level character on an account:
Levels 1–10: 1 achievement per category
Levels 11–30: 3 achievements per category
Levels 31–80: 4 achievements per category
IMO, the new dailies suck for several reasons:
1) Newbies cannot do them. There is generally only one daily that can be done by a newbie without resorting to PvP/WvW, and characters below level 18 and 22 will not be able to see the PvP/WvW icons or know to go to Lion’s Arch.
2) What was previously a system that encouraged to enjoy parts of the game you normally wouldn’t, is now a grind, because you have to do certain things in certain places. To put this more simply, watching ten vistas anywhere would’ve been more fun than watching one vista in a specific map. At the moment, it feels like nothing more than a sink for a bit of silver from waypointing around.
3) They have added yet more psuedo-loot – rewards that were already part of the game but were changed from automatic to now requiring you to click things. Just what we needed, more junk on our already overflowing characters and banks. In theory, this lets us use the experience and other rewards on any character, but in reality the boost that it gives is way too low to matter.
I personally used dailies as a form of map completion incentive. I would go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do, while completing them.
Overall, I see the new daily system as just like every other system Anet has implemted: Very good idea on paper and very poor implementation. Just like everything else, such as megaserver and world boss timers, they seem to’ve stopped development on the feature about halfway through and released an unfinished product that did not have the thought and polish of a proper QA team or any actual players.
Please stop making “paper” changes. It is hurting the game’s presentation because we keep ending up with these complex interlocking systems that don’t quite want to snap into place and become an actual thing.
Newbies get different dailies than we do. For example, when the daily was Iron Marches events, my wife’s new account got Queensdale events.
As someone who wants to someday max out my daily AP, I find that the new dailies give me a ton more choice. Because it’s incredibly easy to complete 3 in under 10 mins. I can then use the rest of my gaming time doing whatever I want, rather than spending 1-2 hours ticking off boxes.
Now, you may say that it’s my choice to want to max out AP, and if I didn’t want to… I could’ve just done whatever I liked and got my daily anyway. Perhaps… except, the new system takes that into account too. All your former daily rewards are now log-in rewards… the only thing you get from completing 3 dailies is the 10 AP. So really, if you’re not interested in AP, you are now completely free from ever having to do dailies ever again. Which gives you more choice.
The problem is not the new system. The problem is that all the players have gotten into the habit of having to do dailies, and can’t get themselves out of that habit. The choice to do whatever you want in game is there. You just have to make it, rather than blindly doing dailies.
First off, I hate a lot of changes anet did this year and I will especially never forgive the megaserverfail.
At first when I heard about the daily change I didn’t think it would be any good, but after 16.12. I’m totally happy about this change because it give’s me way more choice than before.
With my playstile and the old daily system it was like this:
Log in and go home instance for daily harvesting, then switch to pvp skyhammer map and play ~15 minutes for the 3 pvp daily (mostly because you had to win 3 games…). After that running a pve dungeon, then killing 50 enemy. After that I could finish up with skill points and searching another ~20 min. for a wvw zerg, trying to get the wvw daily.
-> I needed 1h – 1,5h each day only to get 10ac, 1 lorel, 1 essence, 5s, 1 mystic coin…. yay -.-
That’s why I often only did the 5 really needed daily, because it sucked and wasn’t any fun at all!
After the change it is WAY better:
I log in and get my lorel for daily reward! So no need to do anything else to get this part -> perfect!
Then joining pvp skyhammer map with 2 char ~5 min. and I have at least all 4 pvp daily -> So after patch it changed from 1h+ to only 5 min. playtime for the SAME rewards!!!
And then I can even get more! wvw daily’s are that smart that you can find people doing them -> takes ~ 10 min. and you don’t only get the daily reward, you even get at least one rank up chest (20s more).
In pve you can now usually do crafting/harvesting in no time, then ~ 5min. doing 4 events and you basically have done 3 out of 4 pve daily. And the last, for example fractals or dungeons are even greater because you get really nice loot for it and you don’t have to look for a party for hours!
Overall since the Update I don’t have to do anything boring, but I can get a lot of reward for pretty easy tasks. I can play like I want and I can even get more loot and have a lot of fun for doing 12 new tasks each day in under 30 min! If every part of the game would be such rewarding, the playerbase would be some million people more.
The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.
Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.
This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.
Thank you. This is the kind of discussion from the opposite point of view that I’m looking for.
I’m not arguing that the new system is bad, but you’d still be just as free to do what you want if there were 8 options per mode, and you still only had to complete 3 to get the points.
I’m not at all against more options per mode. I’m quite happy to see people happy with the game.
What I think Anet was trying to do was stop everyone from just doing the absolute easiest daily in the absolute easiest way.
For example in the old dailies, if you got Shiverpeakes killer, Wayfarer foothills was packed. If you got vet slayer, tons of people went to Wayfarer as well, to the dolyaks and spiders in the North East corner.
It trivialized dailies. Now they are a bit more involved…but just a bit.
And the rewards you got for doing the easy old ones you get anyway…all except for the achievement points.
I know that people are used to and enjoy achievement points being given out for sneezing, but I don’t mind going a bit out of the way for an achievement…and so far, that’s all I’ve had to do.
I don’t mind going out of my way either. My issue is that they are removing options previously available. I agree that tying rewards to specific dailies should help combat the “go to wayfarer foothills” mentality, and I’m not talking about narrowing the dailies to be more zone oriented is bad. I believe that I, in the past (at least in passing), even suggested more zone-specific dailies. But I’d like to see the variety of options in all modes that pve players had prior to April’s feature patch.
I find myself almost always opposed to a move away from diversity.
There are many positive things about the new system. I’m absolutely not denying that. Again, thank you for your commentary. Very well-reasoned stuff.
3) They have added yet more psuedo-loot – rewards that were already part of the game but were changed from automatic to now requiring you to click things. Just what we needed, more junk on our already overflowing characters and banks. In theory, this lets us use the experience and other rewards on any character, but in reality the boost that it gives is way too low to matter.
I personally used dailies as a form of map completion incentive. I would go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do, while completing them.
Overall, I see the new daily system as just like every other system Anet has implemted: Very good idea on paper and very poor implementation. Just like everything else, such as megaserver and world boss timers, they seem to’ve stopped development on the feature about halfway through and released an unfinished product that did not have the thought and polish of a proper QA team or any actual players.
The bolding here is mine, and that’s what I’m addressing first.
Hannelore (great username, btw), this is an interesting point. However, I can use “Iron Marches event completer” as an incentive for doing map complete in that zone, for example. To me, it seems like it can still fill that niche for you.
It’s interesting that you say that it seems unfinished. To me, this is probably the most polished feature they’ve released in a long time. Perhaps since the implementation of the account-wide dyes, in fact. Other than the inability to pull up the login reward chart, what is it that feels unfinished to you?
As someone who wants to someday max out my daily AP, I find that the new dailies give me a ton more choice. Because it’s incredibly easy to complete 3 in under 10 mins. I can then use the rest of my gaming time doing whatever I want, rather than spending 1-2 hours ticking off boxes.
Now, you may say that it’s my choice to want to max out AP, and if I didn’t want to… I could’ve just done whatever I liked and got my daily anyway. Perhaps… except, the new system takes that into account too. All your former daily rewards are now log-in rewards… the only thing you get from completing 3 dailies is the 10 AP. So really, if you’re not interested in AP, you are now completely free from ever having to do dailies ever again. Which gives you more choice.
The problem is not the new system. The problem is that all the players have gotten into the habit of having to do dailies, and can’t get themselves out of that habit. The choice to do whatever you want in game is there. You just have to make it, rather than blindly doing dailies.
Okay, so… as I’ve tried to explain, repeatedly, I’m protesting the culling of the number of dailies available for my game mode. Having more options to complete those three dailies for those ten points would NOT affect you in any way, would it? Can someone help me phrase this better? I feel like I must be spewing gibberish, at this point.
I just keep coming back to it’s only for achievements. That’s it. If you don’t care about achievements, it shouldn’t matter at all. If you do care about them, it matters in the positive way. There’s no way you could have gotten 10 achievement points before without going much further out of your way.
What option was taken away exactly? The ability to get five achievement points in a shorter time or with less effort?
What do achievement points mean anyway? Why are they important? If they are important, why shouldn’t they require us to go out of our way?
From my point of view, Anet has steadily chipped stuff away from the game I started playing 2 years ago. The megaservers was a big hit, before that I could choose if I wanted exploring all by my self or going to well populated maps.
As for the new dailies, now I have to do them. Before most came just by playing as I usually do, now I have to spesifically do dailies. And though they are fast and easy, they still feels like they take more time to do now.
Whats really nagging me, I have started to feel that Anet has lost its vision. Its more about metrics and cost than working towards a grand future.
Perhaps its just me, set in my ways and all that, though I dont think gw2 is an old game. It should be settled in about now, and start the real voyage through the rest of Tyria.Out of curiosity, why do you feel like you have to do them? What would happen if you didn’t do them?
Bad wording perhaps. I dont “have” to do anything. As I said, before the change, dailies kinda happened while I was doing something else. Now, if I want to do the dailies, I have to spesifically do the dailies.
Running around in queensdale looking for events or checking what time certain worldbosses spawn isnt things I usually do.
I agree with pretty much everything Guhracie has said. In fact, I am willing to admit that I am okay (if not happy) with most of the changes that have been made.
Megaservers – I would have no issue with this if I could choose a shard from a list AND/OR racial cities were server only, with or without guesting allowed. I remember when guesting was brought in, and I spoke to many people saying ‘yeah I am from XXX server but I came here to show roleplaying to my friend’. There was more of a sense of travelling to parts unknown and exploring there.
New Player Experience – Unlocking skills for all weapons at character levels makes no sense. Why would a new character have skills with a weapon they have never picked up before? The old system was far more intelligent and logical. And it saved having to 1,1,1,1,1 in the starter instance which is frustrating and dull. The same goes for the profession F1,2,3,4 skills. However, the speed at which you now level to 10 sort of negates some of this issue, since it is so easy to level at earlier stages now.
The big issue for me is the stepped progression. You can be mid fight, struggling, level up and ‘bam’ you faceroll the opponent. This is frustrating, illlogical and does not encourage players who want to challenge themselves by reaching into areas above their Exp level. I used to take level 30-32 characters into 40 zones to level faster and enjoy the challenge. I cannot do that now because instead of being level 30, I am now level 28… and will get my sweet derriere handed to me by those mobs until I hit level 34 and suddenly get a boost.
Ascended – Again, no problem if the stats for Ascended BEFORE infusions matched Exotic, not bested them. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/2/22/Ascended_example.png shows this well. Berserker with Ruby gives 92 Power, 63 Precision and 6% Crit chance. This does not match Ascended. Yes I am aware that this is a trinket which is accessible to all, but the armour and weapon Ascended stats give a further leap above Exotic stats. For those of us who do not play Fractals, this is an enormous advantage for those who do.
Anet said there would be no grind in GW2 – this is enforcing grind of Fractals to create an optimal PvE build. I don’t care if they give an advantage in Fractals, that is the intention. But to give a general quantum leap of an advantage over Exotic, that is unacceptable to me.
Traits – Been hitting my head against the wall on this one for so long, I have left a dent in the brickwork. Traits that require you to go way above your character Exp level to obtain. Yes, some were fixed but Anet has no interest in fixing the rest. Compounded with the stepped progression, this MASSIVELY restricts build choices until, and even after, you hit 80.
It is not all bad. The new rewards, plus rewards focused so that you have a higher chance of profession-suitable rewards is a massive boost to levelling characters.
Right now, my main anger and frustration is the way that Anet knows our concerns, particularly about traits, and yet seem incapable of doing anything to sort it. I mean, if a Dev came in and said “Sorry, this is how our NCSoft Masters want it”, I could accept that. But the complete lies about “We will never force you to grind” and “The new trait system makes traits more approachable” are unacceptable to me. If I blatantly lied to my customers, I would expect to be called in for disciplinaries left and right.
I just keep coming back to it’s only for achievements. That’s it. If you don’t care about achievements, it shouldn’t matter at all. If you do care about them, it matters in the positive way. There’s no way you could have gotten 10 achievement points before without going much further out of your way.
I don’t care about ach pts. The daily login for free laurels, I love that bit. But there is something else which makes daily completion valuable…
Being able to get rid of that bloody purple text in the right of the window :p If they gave us an option to make that invisible, any complaints I have about the new daily system would amount to nought.
From my point of view, Anet has steadily chipped stuff away from the game I started playing 2 years ago. The megaservers was a big hit, before that I could choose if I wanted exploring all by my self or going to well populated maps.
As for the new dailies, now I have to do them. Before most came just by playing as I usually do, now I have to spesifically do dailies. And though they are fast and easy, they still feels like they take more time to do now.
Whats really nagging me, I have started to feel that Anet has lost its vision. Its more about metrics and cost than working towards a grand future.
Perhaps its just me, set in my ways and all that, though I dont think gw2 is an old game. It should be settled in about now, and start the real voyage through the rest of Tyria.Out of curiosity, why do you feel like you have to do them? What would happen if you didn’t do them?
Bad wording perhaps. I dont “have” to do anything. As I said, before the change, dailies kinda happened while I was doing something else. Now, if I want to do the dailies, I have to spesifically do the dailies.
Running around in queensdale looking for events or checking what time certain worldbosses spawn isnt things I usually do.
Right but the rewards you get for doing nothing now are better than the ones you got for getting dailies by playing. Are you into achievement points?
I just keep coming back to it’s only for achievements. That’s it. If you don’t care about achievements, it shouldn’t matter at all. If you do care about them, it matters in the positive way. There’s no way you could have gotten 10 achievement points before without going much further out of your way.
What option was taken away exactly? The ability to get five achievement points in a shorter time or with less effort?
What do achievement points mean anyway? Why are they important? If they are important, why shouldn’t they require us to go out of our way?
Edit: Okay, I think I understand where we’re not connecting. I’m in no way saying that the old system was superior and should be returned. I’m saying that there’s no observable reason to continue to cull the number of options from which to choose our 3 dailies. Does that make more sense?
The number of dailies keeps diminishing, at least in the PvE category. Before April, we had something like 10-12 choices, just in PvE. I find it discomfiting that the variety is slowly being sapped out of things.
I don’t miss getting the points for each daily, I miss having a wider pool of options.
I… am kind of at a loss here. I honestly don’t know how to make this more clear. I will keep on trying, though.
Instead of doing 3 out of a choice of 4 dailies, give the game modes 6 each to choose the three from. 10 APs. Map specific, just like they are now. I just don’t like that wanting more options is being misappropriated as wanting stuff for nothing, or being unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable. We had it. Anet took it away, for no apparent reason.
I’m not making stuff up out of thin air. This is not the alleged “I want to stand in Divinity’s Reach and chat with my friends and be rewarded for it” thread. This is me going:
“Hey. We had more options, and now we don’t.”
It’s becoming narrow and linear, and that alarms me, personally.
(edited by Guhracie.3419)
Right but the rewards you get for doing nothing now are better than the ones you got for getting dailies by playing. Are you into achievement points?
what do you mean- better rewards for doing nothing?
Right but the rewards you get for doing nothing now are better than the ones you got for getting dailies by playing. Are you into achievement points?
what do you mean- better rewards for doing nothing?
log in rewards do not require anything but to log in.
We had more options…but I found myself doing the same easy dailies whenever they popped up. I generally didn’t do dungeon dailies for my dailies. I generally didn’t do Fractal dailies. Well that’s not true. I did them when I could, as often as I could because I do all PvE dailies and that’s the problem…at least with the old system. If you were an achievement point hunter, you’d be locked in.
The freedom now is not having to do any of it, because it really only is for achievement points…and the extra rewards, none of which we got before.
Here’s my question to you. How do you keep adding more dailies, without falling into the trap of everyone doing the ones that absolutely take no work?
Suppose Anet gave you 15 dailies a day but all of them were time consuming? Would that satisify you? I don’t think so.
The situation has changed. The stuff we “needed” the dailies for, like the laurels and mystic coins aren’t part of that any more. The dailies have changed into something just for achievement points.
To avoid making it so that everyone just runs out and gets it instantly (which happens now anyway), Anet will have to be very careful about which dailies they add.
And that’s really what I’m getting from most people. I used to not have to do anything and I got all this stuff. Well now you’re getting more stuff.
I just don’t see why people should get achievement points without even trying.
Right but the rewards you get for doing nothing now are better than the ones you got for getting dailies by playing. Are you into achievement points?
what do you mean- better rewards for doing nothing?
log in rewards do not require anything but to log in.
yes, but are they “better”?
Havent really studied it, but wasnt it supposed to be more or less the same?
Right but the rewards you get for doing nothing now are better than the ones you got for getting dailies by playing. Are you into achievement points?
what do you mean- better rewards for doing nothing?
log in rewards do not require anything but to log in.
yes, but are they “better”?
Havent really studied it, but wasnt it supposed to be more or less the same?
They are more or less the same (laurel, mystic coin etc.) but you do now get guaranteed crafting materials, tomes of knowledge and gem store items (which were hit or miss previously).
Right but the rewards you get for doing nothing now are better than the ones you got for getting dailies by playing. Are you into achievement points?
what do you mean- better rewards for doing nothing?
log in rewards do not require anything but to log in.
yes, but are they “better”?
Havent really studied it, but wasnt it supposed to be more or less the same?
You got ap points then a random ‘gift’ each time you finished 5 daily things. Now you get something for logging in, something for each thing you do and 10 ap after doing 3. In my case I got between 5 and 7 ap a day so it is ‘better’ and I still get the same laurels (possibly more) spread over 28 days.
I just keep coming back to it’s only for achievements. That’s it. If you don’t care about achievements, it shouldn’t matter at all. If you do care about them, it matters in the positive way. There’s no way you could have gotten 10 achievement points before without going much further out of your way.
It doesn’t matter. People that maximized their ap gains are likely capped already, and so not doing dailies anyway. What we’re talking about are mostly people that do like getting their ap’s, but didn’t go out of their way to maximize their gain (so, those that averaged 5-8 ap daily, depending on their playing style and preferred game mode). For most of them, putting the same effort as before will mean less AP gained, not more. Because most of the days they will get zero.
For most of them, putting the same effort as before will mean less AP gained, not more. Because most of the days they will get zero.
Yes, well, minimal loss for a much smarter system overall. Because making the individual dailies less specific again would fix that for this tiny group of players, but also once again remove the entire point of the daily system (as it did for the previous system when they switched from specific to general dailies).
Right but the rewards you get for doing nothing now are better than the ones you got for getting dailies by playing. Are you into achievement points?
what do you mean- better rewards for doing nothing?
log in rewards do not require anything but to log in.
yes, but are they “better”?
Havent really studied it, but wasnt it supposed to be more or less the same?You got ap points then a random ‘gift’ each time you finished 5 daily things. Now you get something for logging in, something for each thing you do and 10 ap after doing 3. In my case I got between 5 and 7 ap a day so it is ‘better’ and I still get the same laurels (possibly more) spread over 28 days.
ah. I missunderstood. I thought you ment better reward just by logging in.
Right but the rewards you get for doing nothing now are better than the ones you got for getting dailies by playing. Are you into achievement points?
what do you mean- better rewards for doing nothing?
log in rewards do not require anything but to log in.
yes, but are they “better”?
Havent really studied it, but wasnt it supposed to be more or less the same?You got ap points then a random ‘gift’ each time you finished 5 daily things. Now you get something for logging in, something for each thing you do and 10 ap after doing 3. In my case I got between 5 and 7 ap a day so it is ‘better’ and I still get the same laurels (possibly more) spread over 28 days.
ah. I missunderstood. I thought you ment better reward just by logging in.
I a real way it is better by just logging in. Before if you wanted just to chat at Mystic Forge you got zero laurels, now you get as many as someone who previously did daily/monthly.
From a PvE standpoint, we definitely have fewer choices in the Dailies. The very first one I had was two super-simple ones (harvest 10 things in this zone, view a Vista in this zone). But I couldn’t do either of the other two. One was Fractals level 11, but I have only scratched the surface of Fractals. Didn’t like it and never went back. The other was do events in the Silverwastes, but I haven’t made it that far in the Living Story. We definitely need more choices, not less.
(Yes, I could have done something from PvP or WvW, but I already dislike those game modes. I highly resent ANet trying to steer me towards it. This is a game, and I want to have fun.)
Achievement Chests are the only thing I get out of Achievement Points. But ever since the April 15th Patch, the rewards have been miserable. Some agree they’re hardly as good as rewards for killing a Boss. If (like Guhracie and myself) you have one preferred mode of play (PvE in this case), then you probably will have no need for 2/3 of your Achievement Chest reward. So until Achievement Chest rewards are revamped, this latest act of choice removal has given me the encouragement I needed to quit doing the Daily Achievements altogether.
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For me the biggest loss of choice came with the introduction of the MegaServers. One of the first things they ask you to do when you install the game is to pick which server you wish to reside on, and they sort those by population. So obviously they know that population density is very important to people.
So along comes the mighty Megaserver and wipes out that most basic of choices entirely. I prefer a rural area, but am now forced to live in New York City. PvE is pretty casual to begin with… I don’t need zergs rushing in to “tag” my opponent in every little wandering encounter. And while bigger crowds are helpful in some Boss fights, it is way out of control now. I often find myself lagging, and just as often lose out on many pre-events because they go so fast. But these details are an argument for another thread. Suffice it to say, the Megaserver is another huge blow to our freedom of choice.
______________________________
Town Clothes. My pet peeve. I bought a LOT of them, quite often for a single piece of the set. Then they got replaced by Outfits, which give me zero ability to mix and match. I have purchased no Outfits, and likely never will. Yes, some are really nice. But no matter how pretty they are, it is always embarrassing to show up at a party in the same dress as someone else. I need to express my creativity.
And exactly why did Town Clothes get replaced? Presumably because some people were expressing a desire to wear their Town Clothes into combat. They wanted more choice. But when the conversion to Outfits came, pretty much nothing survived the change except headgear. All the other nice stuff we bought was turned into tonics that can’t be used in combat, or it was locked into a single-piece Outfit that left no customization. Do you think the people asking to wear their Town Clothes into combat – the people ANet was trying to please – were happy with having just hats? I don’t think that would have been their first choice.
They could have easily retained the Town Clothes unchanged and added Outfits as a third garment class. But they decided to give us no choice by giving us Outfits that also leave us no choice for customization.
(edited by Hamfast.8719)
(Continued)
It’s not just choice though, that ANet loves to take away. They have a penchant for taking away period. And very often they don’t give us anything in its place. Remember season 1 of the Living Story? All gone. All temporary content. Many parts were loved, but after two weeks you couldn’t do it ever again. Taken away.
Super Adventure Box. Taken away. Why? It’s a popular mini-game that doesn’t affect the outside world at all. We don’t need to have an expansion every time it comes back. Just keep it open as-is.
Activities. The activities (Keg Brawl, Southsun Survival, etc.) used to be available at any time. Now only on a weekly schedule. With the Megaserver, you would think each one could be open 24/7. Taken away.
They changed the way “Target Nearest Enemy” has worked since the game started. Targeting is arguably the most basic, most important part of the game. They could have kept the original functionality and added the new functionality as a choice, but instead it was simply replaced. Taken away.
Lion’s Arch was destroyed. I enjoyed that part of the Living Story more than any up to that point. But the acknowledged social hub of the world has been gone for nearly half the life of Guild Wars 2 now. Festivals aren’t as festive. Friends are scattered. Restoration is long overdue. Between this and the Megaserver mixing strangers together, our sense of community is gone. Taken away.
Player outrage has reversed several take-aways. The Flamekissed Light armor took away the uniqueness of Cultural armor, but they reversed themselves due to feedback. The Gem Exchange got reversed after they took away our freedom to enter custom amounts. See the difference here? Both reversals were Gem Store based. They go where the money is. (Except in the case of my Town Clothes, where I spent hideous amounts of money, but have spent zero on Outfits).
I just wish they’d stop taking stuff away. ADDING stuff is great, but stop taking everything away.
And give us CHOICES.
(edited by Hamfast.8719)
Personally I haven’t seen a philosophical shift. We still have choices – in fact, I think we have more choices! Now I can log in, get my daily reward, and choose to get bonus chests or AP. I can choose to buy or obtain my traits, this Wintersday Grawnk thing makes it easy for me to choose when to work on stuff to get that gift tree (instead of having to grind for a meta-achievement)…
Really, I see a lot of choices.
What I don’t see is any practical application of these choices. The game still hasn’t been really expanded; there’s still no new weapon skills, utility skills, elite skills or [many] traits after 2 years. I’m essentially given more choices but I’m playing on the same characters and builds I’ve had for a while. Playing with the same four characters for 2 years gets stale no matter how many choices you give me.
And very often they don’t give us anything in its place. Remember season 1 of the Living Story? All gone. All temporary content. Many parts were loved, but after two weeks you couldn’t do it ever again. Taken away.
Eh, season 1 was replaced with… surprise, season 2.
Also, sorry, but if you get to that point then an actually evolving world is the only way to actually get closer to what MMOs have been telling us they are since inception, “living”, “persistent” worlds.
Only so far, they’ve been static and theme parks. Now I readily admit that GW2 is only two steps done on a road of near endless lengths, but the idea of actually completing and progressing events in a MMO is amazing.
It’s what MMOs always tried to give the illusion of having, but never really had. It’s far from perfect, it’s the most basic baby steps, and yet in concept, yes, please, more of this. Hell, if I knew how to do it, I’d make Mordrem able to permanently take over silverwastes (I mean, “how” as in "how to do it in a sensible manner without punishing players excessively). Centaurs eradicated from human lands. Orr slowly but steadily cleansing as players keep wiping out risen by the hundreds.
But anyhow, back to the point: I see the way they do story chains as the very first step in evolving MMOs from static theme park ride presentations to actual persistent worlds. Where things change. Even when you’re not playing. You come back months later and things are different. And as flawed and as incomplete as the step is, the direction is still awesome.
As far as the flaws go, three changes I’d like to see ~immediately:
(edited by Carighan.6758)
If you want to run the same series of dungeon paths each day, this system hasn’t changed that. You can still play however you want, you just no longer get rewarded daily achievement points for it. You now have to actually make a choice if you want those AP’s. Do you spend 10-15 mins doing something else for a couple of quick dailies or do you choose to not do the daily meta and keep grinding out the same old content for gold and drops.
I think that the main disconnect in this thread is the word ‘choice’ and the suggestion that it’s been reduced. What’s been reduced are the number of choices that you wanted to complete, not the number of choices that are actually available to you. I suspect the real problem is that a subset of players preferred it when they didn’t actually have to make a choice.
They could run whatever content they wanted and would just get the daily without having to really chose which dailies that they wanted to complete. But that’s not more choice, that’s essentially avoiding choice. I’d say that the problem is that not that choice has been reduced, but that you don’t like the choices that are offered, and that you don’t like the new choices, because you’ve already made a specific choice to play some content exclusively.
A better word perhaps, would be variety. There is now too much variety required in order to achieve the daily, causing you to have to make a choice between spending time completing a daily, or repeating the content that you like to repeat. You can no longer essentially ignore the daily and get the points for free.
One idea that might improve the system for that subset of players, would be to add an additional four dailies that are more game-mode generic, and less choice oriented (e.g. the old Kills, UW Kills, Salvager, Condition Applier etc dailies). These four could count towards the daily meta achievement (and therefore the AP’s), but not include a reward chest. That way, players could repeat the same content over and over that they like to repeat, achieve the daily, and then ‘choose’ to go out of their way if they want the additional rewards.
I just keep coming back to it’s only for achievements. That’s it. If you don’t care about achievements, it shouldn’t matter at all. If you do care about them, it matters in the positive way. There’s no way you could have gotten 10 achievement points before without going much further out of your way.
What option was taken away exactly? The ability to get five achievement points in a shorter time or with less effort?
What do achievement points mean anyway? Why are they important? If they are important, why shouldn’t they require us to go out of our way?
Edit: Okay, I think I understand where we’re not connecting. I’m in no way saying that the old system was superior and should be returned. I’m saying that there’s no observable reason to continue to cull the number of options from which to choose our 3 dailies. Does that make more sense?
The number of dailies keeps diminishing, at least in the PvE category. Before April, we had something like 10-12 choices, just in PvE. I find it discomfiting that the variety is slowly being sapped out of things.
I don’t miss getting the points for each daily, I miss having a wider pool of options.
I… am kind of at a loss here. I honestly don’t know how to make this more clear. I will keep on trying, though.
Instead of doing 3 out of a choice of 4 dailies, give the game modes 6 each to choose the three from. 10 APs. Map specific, just like they are now. I just don’t like that wanting more options is being misappropriated as wanting stuff for nothing, or being unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable. We had it. Anet took it away, for no apparent reason.
I’m not making stuff up out of thin air. This is not the alleged “I want to stand in Divinity’s Reach and chat with my friends and be rewarded for it” thread. This is me going:
“Hey. We had more options, and now we don’t.”
It’s becoming narrow and linear, and that alarms me, personally.
You are wrong though, because you absolutely, positively did not have more options before.
If you were an ap hunter (and if youre not, then there is no point in complaining about this), then counting only the pve ones, you HAD to do 8 of the 8 daily achievements, many of which were just as specific as the ones we get now.
So before, do 8 specific dailies out of 8, get 8 ap (or 12 out of 12 if you wanted to get max). Now, do 3 out of 4, and get 10 ap, with zero need to do more to max out your ap/day. Not to mention that you dont have to go outside of one game mode to max your ap/day, which is also giving people MORE choice.
You can argue that before if you really didnt like 2 of the choices, you could still get 6 ap, but now if you dont like 2 of the choices, you dont have an option to get partial credit. But again, if youre an ap hunter, then before you would have gone out of your way to get all of them done no matter what, and if youre not an ap hunter, then again, this shouldnt be a concern, because other than ap, these dailies give nothing unique at all.
I cant think of any reason why more choices would be a BAD thing, especially with all the stuff in pve that could count towards it. Dungeons/fractals can easily be a guaranteed option each day, just like world bosses/events/gathering/kills/ect., which should be easy enough to add up to 6 options per day.
There is no excuse to not give more options in the future, just like the pvp/wvw ones could also use some work (the pvp class specific ones in particular are a terrible idea), so the system isnt perfect at all.
But the entire purpose of this thread is still misleading because, once again, you dont have less choices by any means now.
The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.
Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.
This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.
Thank you. This is the kind of discussion from the opposite point of view that I’m looking for.
I’m not arguing that the new system is bad, but you’d still be just as free to do what you want if there were 8 options per mode, and you still only had to complete 3 to get the points.
While that’s true, it’s pretty obvious that ANet intends the tasks rotate so one does not see the same thing every day in a given mode. PvE presents a lot more opportunity for generating different tasks. There’s a lot of zones.
It’s also pretty obvious they were reaching pretty hard to generate a pool of tasks for WvW and sPvP. The “Win as a <insert profession>” task is going to be ignired if you don’t want to PvP as that profession. Also, we’ve seen “take land for your world” twice in WvW tasks and are nowhere near exact duplication in PvE. Then there’s the WvW kill one of three specific Vets."
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
I’d like to address one issue first: the idea that if you’re not an AP hunter, there’s no point in discussing this. Some of us just like the challenge and sense of accomplishment of completing an offered part of the game. I like the bennies, but, except for the laurels, it’s not why I do them. The same way I don’t half-do events just to get the credit for it, leaving other players to complete it for me—- I “invest” in the game and my “obligation” to the NPC I’ve promised to help—-I take the dailies as one more part of the game. As I say, it gives me a daily sense of accomplishment. I know, from others I play with, I’m not the only one who feels this way.
That having been said, IMO, there are several major problems with the new system. First…if you have limited playing time, and you want the dailies for whatever reason, that limited playing time is being dictated by AN. A corollary to this is, if you are trying to bring up a baby and the dailies are aimed at your top characters, then you’re forced to either play your big guy or get the daily.
I guess I play in off times because the way people are finding events in the designated maps, i.e. following game chat or looking for commanders, isn’t helping at all. If anything does show up there, by the time I can bampf and run to the spot (and I’ve chosen characters with 100% of the given map) the event is over. I spend all my time chasing around the map looking for things, or wandering around an area I know will eventually spawn one. Corollary to this…if it’s a time when the map is populated, attendance at a given event is so high, you’re lucky to get a bronze with a high-powered character, let along even ping the badies with a baby.
Are the chests nice? Yes. But if you go after the dailies mainly because it’s one of the fun parts of playing the game, not because you’re obsessed with the goodies, this new system has seriously undermined a major fun part of the game.
To the person (I’m very sorry. Can’t see the message screen from here) who said something about the way it used to be…having to get 8 out of 8 for a daily….I’ve only been playing a year, but I’ve never seen that. When I started tracking the daily, it was 5 out of 8 for PvE (My preferred playing method.) Those 5 could be accomplished by any character I happened to be running in an appropriate level of any given area. That choice has been steadily eroded just in that one year of playing.
I can only see one way for this new system to be remotely fair to those of us who like running characters of all levels and have limited playing time. If, as I’ve been told is the case, the dailies adjust for the level of your highest character, at the very least, they should adjust the dailies for the character you happen to be running at any given moment…which would be, it seems to me, a bloody nightmare of programming.
I know they’re trying to get people to play all the maps, and I will say, I’ve been able to do a couple of events I’ve never done before because of lack of people in a given map and lack of communication among those who are there, but that’s just not enough to offset the negative effect this new structure has had on the rest of my playing enjoyment.
(edited by Pookii.4583)
I just keep coming back to it’s only for achievements. That’s it. If you don’t care about achievements, it shouldn’t matter at all. If you do care about them, it matters in the positive way. There’s no way you could have gotten 10 achievement points before without going much further out of your way.
What option was taken away exactly? The ability to get five achievement points in a shorter time or with less effort?
What do achievement points mean anyway? Why are they important? If they are important, why shouldn’t they require us to go out of our way?
Edit: Okay, I think I understand where we’re not connecting. I’m in no way saying that the old system was superior and should be returned. I’m saying that there’s no observable reason to continue to cull the number of options from which to choose our 3 dailies. Does that make more sense?
The number of dailies keeps diminishing, at least in the PvE category. Before April, we had something like 10-12 choices, just in PvE. I find it discomfiting that the variety is slowly being sapped out of things.
I don’t miss getting the points for each daily, I miss having a wider pool of options.
I… am kind of at a loss here. I honestly don’t know how to make this more clear. I will keep on trying, though.
Instead of doing 3 out of a choice of 4 dailies, give the game modes 6 each to choose the three from. 10 APs. Map specific, just like they are now. I just don’t like that wanting more options is being misappropriated as wanting stuff for nothing, or being unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable. We had it. Anet took it away, for no apparent reason.
I’m not making stuff up out of thin air. This is not the alleged “I want to stand in Divinity’s Reach and chat with my friends and be rewarded for it” thread. This is me going:
“Hey. We had more options, and now we don’t.”
It’s becoming narrow and linear, and that alarms me, personally.
You are wrong though, because you absolutely, positively did not have more options before.
If you were an ap hunter (and if youre not, then there is no point in complaining about this), then counting only the pve ones, you HAD to do 8 of the 8 daily achievements, many of which were just as specific as the ones we get now.
So before, do 8 specific dailies out of 8, get 8 ap (or 12 out of 12 if you wanted to get max). Now, do 3 out of 4, and get 10 ap, with zero need to do more to max out your ap/day. Not to mention that you dont have to go outside of one game mode to max your ap/day, which is also giving people MORE choice.
You can argue that before if you really didnt like 2 of the choices, you could still get 6 ap, but now if you dont like 2 of the choices, you dont have an option to get partial credit. But again, if youre an ap hunter, then before you would have gone out of your way to get all of them done no matter what, and if youre not an ap hunter, then again, this shouldnt be a concern, because other than ap, these dailies give nothing unique at all.
I cant think of any reason why more choices would be a BAD thing, especially with all the stuff in pve that could count towards it. Dungeons/fractals can easily be a guaranteed option each day, just like world bosses/events/gathering/kills/ect., which should be easy enough to add up to 6 options per day.
There is no excuse to not give more options in the future, just like the pvp/wvw ones could also use some work (the pvp class specific ones in particular are a terrible idea), so the system isnt perfect at all.
But the entire purpose of this thread is still misleading because, once again, you dont have less choices by any means now.
This is baffling to me. I absolutely, positively, had more choices before now. This is an empirical fact. 8-12 is greater than 4. The purpose of this thread is not misleading. What you’re arguing is that it’s now easier to earn those 10 achievement points, and that’s true. I don’t see that I’ve indicated anywhere that it’s not. But it’s not even slightly misleading to say that there are fewer options to choose from.
The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.
Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.
This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.
Thank you. This is the kind of discussion from the opposite point of view that I’m looking for.
I’m not arguing that the new system is bad, but you’d still be just as free to do what you want if there were 8 options per mode, and you still only had to complete 3 to get the points.
While that’s two, it’s pretty obvious that ANet intends the tasks rotate so one does not see the same thing every day in a given mode. PvE presents a lot more opportunity for generating different tasks. There’s a lot of zones.
It’s also pretty obvious they were reaching pretty hard to generate a pool of tasks for WvW and sPvP. The “Win as a <insert profession>” task is going to be ignired if you don’t want to PvP as that profession. Also, we’ve seen “take land for your world” twice in WvW tasks and are nowhere near exact duplication in PvE. Then there’s the WvW kill one of three specific Vets."
Thank you for this. I don’t PvP, and I only occasionally do WvW, so this isn’t an issue I would have easily thought of. I do think there is some room for more variety, especially looking at the achievement sections of both modes. If you take some of those achievements and put them on a smaller scale, like… disrupting a caravan or successfully escorting a caravan, for example, in WvW. Or viewing a vista in a WvW map. You could translate events, gathering, and several others into WvW, too. PvP seems more limited in scope, admittedly. Maybe kill variety (kill 2-3 different professions in a PvP match) could work there. I don’t know enough about it to offer many suggestions, but maybe other people who do play that mode could come up with some, or address that it’s difficult to implement a variety beyond what we already have.
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