Guild Wars 2

Page two, we meet again. For the first time.

It’s DEFINITELY more restrictive. I would argue that the choice in question is not so much in the basic requirement, i.e. events vs gathering, it’s the choice within the requirement, i.e. the specific map and even the specific boss. The way it is now, if every character you have has a given map, you can’t even fill out map while getting the event requirement, if you can’t be up during the time a certain boss is active, that choice is taken away. It’s increasingly geared toward the players whose PRIMARY interest, rather than secondary interest, is the reward. I have 12 characters who are in varying stages of development. I want to be able to run the one I feel like running not the one AN has arbitrarily decided I should run.

While acknowledging it’s not my thread, it’s not the number of options I’m talking about when I use the word choice…it’s choice of game play.

You could argue I can run whatever character I choose and ignore the daily, but that in itself is taking away options, thereby taking away choices.

I just want to call out a couple of posts for being spot-on to the core issue here:

Cuddy.6247:

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.

Hamfast.8719:

Entire post and previous post; go read them they’re good posts.

And the really important one:

Hannelore.8153:

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.

I’ve been arguing this for a while. Frankly, this issue is core to all of the major complaints we’ve had for the past year+. The design decisions for this game are clearly being made in a near-vacuum, made perhaps in good faith with particular metrics and reasons behind them, but without a proper understanding of the realities of implementation or how they would affect the game as a whole.

Take the megaserver. I think this system was a good idea! Except that it never, never should have gone live without the following two things:

1) A proper, easy-to-use way of selecting which map copy you get into. GW1-style district selection as an example. And,

2) A complete overhaul of all dynamic events in the game such that they properly scale with zergs.

These things are essential to the proper functioning of the megaserver system, and we don’t have them. Instead we have threads like this and a game atmosphere where you’re competing with other players just to tag things, which encourages zerker meta, which just compounds the problem. Sure I can choose a support build, by why would I? Support = no credit for event and no mob tagging. If I want credit and loot, zerk is the only real choice.

When the megaserver was decided upon, I know someone on the team raised those ^ two issues. And either they were deemed non-issues, or they were acknowledged but the time and resources for making them happen were never allocated. I’ll let the implications of those possibilities speak for themselves.

I don’t know about achievements, but the since the changes in trait acquisition mechanics making a new character for serious play become a scary business…

Cuddy.6247:

What I don’t see is any practical application of these choices. The game still hasn’t been really expanded.

Maybe it’s tinfoil hat time, but I’ve been thinking since Ascended crafting was put in that ANet has been trying to use reward systems (e.g., Ascended gear, trait hunts, aimed dailies) to get more mileage out of existing content.

Kalarchis.8635:

… and a game atmosphere where you’re competing with other players just to tag things, which encourages zerker meta, which just compounds the problem. Sure I can choose a support build, by why would I? Support = no credit for event and no mob tagging. If I want credit and loot, zerk is the only real choice.

I agree that megaserver creates issues with events, particularly with scaling. However, I don’t have trouble tagging in non-glass gear. The problems I see with tagging come from:

• Depending on condition damage
• Lack of “spammable” AoE
• Lack of knowledge of where mobs spawn
• Lack of consistently available speed buffs
• Depending on ssslllooowww projectiles
• Relying on tab targeting
• Waiting until the client shows me the mobs before attacking, because no one else is and the mobs are dead by the time they resolve on my screen

That last one generates some of the stupidest gameplay I’ve ever seen.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Cuddy.6247:

What I don’t see is any practical application of these choices. The game still hasn’t been really expanded.

Maybe it’s tinfoil hat time, but I’ve been thinking since Ascended crafting was put in that ANet has been trying to use reward systems (e.g., Ascended gear, trait hunts, aimed dailies) to get more mileage out of existing content.

Honestly, I’d buy that theory. Since I don’t have any plans to quit this game though, I’m glad they dumbed down dailies to a disreputable level. Makes it possible for me to not invest time in the game if I haven’t found any motivation and still get a reward.

Kalarchis.8635:

I’ve been arguing this for a while. Frankly, this issue is core to all of the major complaints we’ve had for the past year+.

Past year, try last 2 years, ever since Nov 2012. And the fact that they are now giving significant rewards simply for logging in points to a significant decline in players.

Along with the stupidity of making sure all bosses are on timers, so that you almost never get to do them unless you organize your playtime around AN’s schedule, the game does not even give you a timer of some sort in the game itself to track such things.

This makes just playing – much less doing a daily requiring a timered event – simply not worth it to me.

I take it as the same “vision” idiocy I have witnessed since EQ1; a successful game run into the ground by the hubris and greed of the operators.

It’s to the point with this last patch that I am embarrassed I ever even recommended this game to anyone :/

I agree 100% with the TC, theyre going exactly in the wrong direction…

I understand from a certain point of view as to were most PvEr’ are coming from. However I keep seeing the word ‘choice’ branded about. Well I can’t speak for PvP and WvW players, but they didn’t have much choice in their dailies hunt. Most of the dailies were in fact in PvE. So why should they be left out. And be forced to leave their prefered game mode. Has any of the PvEr’ ever thought of actually seeing it from their perspective?. I don’t think they have. What Anet tried to do here is: balance the whole thing out. And not to be harsh, but if anyone says they were ‘forced’ to go somewhere to get their daily. Really?. I remember that in the old system if I wanted to get the daily magguma killer achivememnt – I had to go there. I’m sorry but isn’t THAT forcing me to go to a map?. And people have the temerity to say they are being forced now?.

Sorry to say this to the OP, but after the gaming community was up in arms about how MS ‘bought’ out the new Tomb raider game and complaining about how it isn’t right about a multi-plat game going exclusive to one console. But then make excuses for Sony helping out Capcom for making a game that was multi-plat for years, suddenly become ‘exclusive’ to one console. Were they up in arms?. The answer is a resounding no.

Tl;DR: In esscence, what I find is that those that complain always have a level of hypocricy in their arguments.

CalamityO.2890:

Tl;DR: In esscence, what I find is that those that complain always have a level of hypocricy in their arguments.

Wow what an insane level of arrogance you’ve got there kid…
When people cant even do their dailies (they should be easy to do Im not alttabbing to find where the region is I havent discovered yet) then obviously there is something wrong.

Right now only 1 out of 4 dailies is one I can do by myself without looking stuff up and that’s not how they advertised GW2, its becoming way too much like WoW; a grindfest for elitists.

Vayne.8563:

Hannelore.8153:

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.

You’re confusing newbie with new account. Newbie is any character that is in the low levels, while new accounts are players who are fresh to the game. Someone who has five lv80s but makes a new class they haven’t played before is still a newbie, even though they know the basic game mechanics, playing that class will be very difficult until they learn it, and their character will not have access to level, skill, trait, and food benefits that their already-established characters do.

The only thing that a new character can do that a new account cannot is go to PvP and WvW for those dailies that do not involve PvE. Therefor, for the large majority of dailies they are simply forced to switch to established characters to do them. This goes completely against the fact that people may have many characters.

I wonder how you will take your lv10 Ranger to Bloodtide Coast.

Did you know that dailies encompass some peoples’ entire playtime? That means that they never get a chance to play any new characters, due to work, etc.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

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.

Most days they will get zero if they’re stubborn and don’t want to put 20 minutes to get 10 points and that’s all it’s been since the patch 20 minutes.

So you spend 20 minutes to get 10 points, which is better than you could have got before.

Either you care about achievement points or you don’t. If you don’t, no big deal. If you do this is advantageous.

No matter how you slice it most people aren’t going to be negatively affected. You might. Most people won’t.

CalamityO.2890:

Has any of the PvEr’ ever thought of actually seeing it from their perspective?. I don’t think they have.

If this is what you think, then you didn’t read the original post in this thread. Or any of my replies.

I get the rewards for just logging in now. I get 10 ap in about the same time it would take me to get 5 ap with the old system. I feel much more rewarded with it now.
I guess it just works better for me because I usually log in to just do the dailies. Not going out of my way any more than before.

Just from a rewards perspective, you only have to log in every day to get the same rewards you were getting before. So from that point of view you have MORE choice, because you can log on, get your reward, and then do anything you want in the game without having to worry about what you’re doing at all and still get the rewards you used to have to do “chores” to get.

The sPvP and WvW rewards seem pretty good. On the PvE side the rewards are lackluster anyway, I’m not sure why anyone would bother with them even if there were more choices of dailies. I think the rewards and dailies for PvE need to be heavily revised.

And Daily Activity should always be a daily everyday. It just gives you an excuse to do something different.

One of the last dailies I crafted an exotic, gathered a few times and played in a pvp match and I received 10ap. It took me hardly any time at all. With the old system it would take me nearly the same amount of time(give or take 10 mins), but I would only receive 5ap. When logging in to do just dailies, the new system feels much more rewarding.

You should read my post history if you think I’m a shill… lol
Most would probably think I’m paid to talk bad about the game if anything.

Fernling.1729:

Rampage.6489:

Fernling.1729:

I get the rewards for just logging in now. I get 10 ap in about the same time it would take me to get 5 ap with the old system. I feel much more rewarded with it now.
I guess it just works better for me because I usually log in to just do the dailies. Not going out of my way any more than before.

thats impossible since you now have to go to specific regions you liar, how much does arenanet pay you to shill?

One of the last dailies I crafted an exotic, gathered a few times and played in a pvp match and I received 10ap. It took me hardly any time at all. With the old system it would take me nearly the same amount of time(give or take 10 mins), but I would only receive 5ap. When logging in to do just dailies, the new system feels much more rewarding.

You should read my post history if you think I’m a shill… lol
Most would probably think I’m paid to talk bad about the game if anything.

Allright Im sorry I shouldnt jump to conclusions as fast as I did, Im just really ticked off right now because of the changes.

I got this game and got a necro to 80 but dont like that class, Ive been conflicted for a long time since living story 2 came out I didnt want to do that on my necro and didnt like the areas or story.
But I first wanted to decide “do I even want to play this game” before starting a new character and then they drop this change on me which was the straw that broke the camels back for me

Im probably quitting the game before I even got seriously started (didnt even get myself extra inventory space yet) and that got me bummed out sorry again for taking it out on you.

Fernling.1729:

Rampage.6489:

Fernling.1729:

I get the rewards for just logging in now. I get 10 ap in about the same time it would take me to get 5 ap with the old system. I feel much more rewarded with it now.
I guess it just works better for me because I usually log in to just do the dailies. Not going out of my way any more than before.

thats impossible since you now have to go to specific regions you liar, how much does arenanet pay you to shill?

One of the last dailies I crafted an exotic, gathered a few times and played in a pvp match and I received 10ap. It took me hardly any time at all. With the old system it would take me nearly the same amount of time(give or take 10 mins), but I would only receive 5ap. When logging in to do just dailies, the new system feels much more rewarding.

I’ll be honest, I would rather have 5AP + 1 Laurel than the 10AP. The Laurel was the main reason why I did dailies in the first place.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Fernling.1729:

Rampage.6489:

Fernling.1729:

I get the rewards for just logging in now. I get 10 ap in about the same time it would take me to get 5 ap with the old system. I feel much more rewarded with it now.
I guess it just works better for me because I usually log in to just do the dailies. Not going out of my way any more than before.

thats impossible since you now have to go to specific regions you liar, how much does arenanet pay you to shill?

One of the last dailies I crafted an exotic, gathered a few times and played in a pvp match and I received 10ap. It took me hardly any time at all. With the old system it would take me nearly the same amount of time(give or take 10 mins), but I would only receive 5ap. When logging in to do just dailies, the new system feels much more rewarding.

I’ll be honest, I would rather have 5AP + 1 Laurel than the 10AP. The Laurel was the main reason why I did dailies in the first place.

I’m expecting to get 55 laurels over 28 days, where before I would have gotten 38. I guess that over the course of a few days I’m finding that the reduced motivation to do the dailies (laurels were my main interest) matches the reduced time I need to spend for anything but the “do 4 events” thing. ymmv

yolo swaggins.2570:

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.

Wanted to second this.

Its been an ongoing issue with ANet since LS 1 (maybe before then). The assumption seems to be that their customers don’t know what they like and want to do in this game. So, every time they attempt to push me into game modes I don’t like I ignore it – then come the forums and tell ANet as politely as possible to go pound sand. And every time it happens I lose a little more respect for them for attempting to “push” me into a game mode(s) I am simply not interested in.

I also agree that this is mostly about suppressing the hunger for new content. I don’t think it works but they seem to always go back to that same tactic regardless of how alienating it is.

Well i recall some people asking for traits to be obtainable by questing like in gw1. So while i don’t like the change (especially the one trait point every 6 levels one) i can’t pin the tail on a-net for this one after recalling that part.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Well i recall some people asking for traits to be obtainable by questing like in gw1. So while i don’t like the change (especially the one trait point every 6 levels one) i can’t pin the tail on a-net for this one after recalling that part.

Same with dailies. They said the daily system was supposed to do something, their initial implementation did that bug had flaws. They then sort of “gave up on it”, generalizing each daily so much that it really didn’t matter what you did.
This made dailies (as a system) pointless, but force-fed players free rewards.

Now they’ve re-did the system and it’s very close but more refined to the first iteration. Ofc, the issue now is how long the second (useless) implementation was live. Everyone is way used to it. If they had never done it and went straight from version 1 to the current one, I doubt we’d see any complaints.

That being said, the main criticism against version 2 is still that it just didn’t do what dailies were supposed to do for the game. It gave free rewards, but that wasn’t ever the point.

IndigoSundown.5419:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Fernling.1729:

Rampage.6489:

Fernling.1729:

I get the rewards for just logging in now. I get 10 ap in about the same time it would take me to get 5 ap with the old system. I feel much more rewarded with it now.
I guess it just works better for me because I usually log in to just do the dailies. Not going out of my way any more than before.

thats impossible since you now have to go to specific regions you liar, how much does arenanet pay you to shill?

One of the last dailies I crafted an exotic, gathered a few times and played in a pvp match and I received 10ap. It took me hardly any time at all. With the old system it would take me nearly the same amount of time(give or take 10 mins), but I would only receive 5ap. When logging in to do just dailies, the new system feels much more rewarding.

I’ll be honest, I would rather have 5AP + 1 Laurel than the 10AP. The Laurel was the main reason why I did dailies in the first place.

I’m expecting to get 55 laurels over 28 days, where before I would have gotten 38. I guess that over the course of a few days I’m finding that the reduced motivation to do the dailies (laurels were my main interest) matches the reduced time I need to spend for anything but the “do 4 events” thing. ymmv

I guess you’re right. But then all you really need to do to get them is log in instead of doing dailies. :I

yolo swaggins.2570:

I guess you’re right. But then all you really need to do to get them is log in instead of doing dailies. :I

Well the main complaint against the new daily system is that before, people weren’t doing dailies, either. And now they “have to” (whyever).

Carighan.6758:

Now they’ve re-did the system and it’s very close but more refined to the first iteration. Ofc, the issue now is how long the second (useless) implementation was live. Everyone is way used to it. If they had never done it and went straight from version 1 to the current one, I doubt we’d see any complaints.

It’s nothing like the first iteration at all. Nowhere near. Not in the least.

CalamityO.2890:

Well I can’t speak for PvP and WvW players, but they didn’t have much choice in their dailies hunt. Most of the dailies were in fact in PvE.

This has been already debunked in this thread. Several times.

I think there’s basically four issues here… and in all three, I think the OP is right, although I don’t necessarily agree on how much of an issue they are.

In no particular order:

The New Player Experience: Well, I’d have to say that I’m glad that I have a character of each profession maxed already, and potentially having to go through that is one thing I’m definitely not looking forward to should new races and/or professions be added.

The intent appears to be to match the more loved questing for skills (and, later, boss-hunting for elites) that GW1 had. However, I think there are a few things that ArenaNet have missed that made that system work:

The first is that basically all of those quests were soloable. Any time you felt like doing them, you could pick up some henchmen and, well… just do them. In GW2, though, a lot of them are explicitly timed events, or even worse, events that occur on an unreliable timer where you can’t be sure when they’re going to occur (potentially leading to long waiting periods to get them) or if there’ll be sufficient players around to do them even if the DO pop.

The second is that the GW1 campaigns were, by their nature, fairly linear, so going through a largely preset path to get your skills didn’t present an onerous burden. The problem is that depending on how you look at it, GW2 either has none (at least at the lower levels) or has five that over time twist into one: the game is designed so that you’re only really expected to go through one zone in order to level you enough to tackle the next. Suddenly, the lower-level game experience that was intended to give you plenty of choice and variety in what you did… becomes a straitjacket demanding that you go to a particular location you might otherwise have not gone to with that character until considerably later and hope that the right event comes up in order to get something you need for the build you want.

The third difference is that in GW1, you got all your skills through the core gameplay – running around and killing monsters. In GW2, some of this is gated around non-core stuff like jumping puzzles – I’ll comment on those later, but suffice it to say that things like jumping puzzles are not everyone’s proverbial cup of tea.

Dailies: I’m also in the boat of being someone who doesn’t really care about getting achievement points – I’ll pick them up if they’re convenient, but I’ve never particularly cared for maxing them. The main reason I did dailies before was for the daily achievement rewards, and as has been observed… we get those just for logging in now. However, I did like that, with the last system, while it might push me to play a particular character and/or a particular area, I could generally do something that was on my to-do list and do that for the dailies without going out of my way. The current system… well, I’ve recently been giving sPvP a spin (which I was doing previously, so this isn’t a ‘success’ for the new system) so I’ve mostly been collecting those dailies, but if I was pure PvE in orientation, I think I’d regularly be finding myself logging in, picking up my log-in rewards, looking at the daily achievement list, and deciding “well, blow that”.

And, depending on how I’m feeling… deciding not to play at all. And, being a cash-shop funded game… I suspect they’d rather I at least played a bit. :P

(Incidentally, the ‘make it a real achievement’ argument can’t really apply when some of those ‘achievements’ can be achieved with an easy vista within a city, or in the newbie areas near the city. What they generally ask you to do is bounce around to multiple regions if you want to get three from the PvE category – which, depends on how you handle this, is either a time sink, a gold sink (waypoints), or an inventory space sink (needing to have multiple characters in different spots with free inventory space). A cynic might think that these might be the actual reason for the new system, where PvE-only players are concerned…)

The third part will come in a following post.

Vayne.8563:

Most days they will get zero if they’re stubborn and don’t want to put 20 minutes to get 10 points and that’s all it’s been since the patch 20 minutes.

that 20 minutes can be a significant part of the person’s daily gaming time. Most people do not play 10 hours a day, like you do.

Vayne.8563:

Either you care about achievement points or you don’t.

World isn’t binary. There are degrees inbetween. In fact, almost noone would be at either of those extremes – and yet you are completely ignoring that fact in your theories.

So, onto that third thing:

Quite a few people have noticed that the Wintersday festival meta is quite a bit more restrictive than it has been in the past. Previously, there were multiple ways to get credit for completing enough achievements to get the meta. This year, however, there are 11 achievements required, and 11 choices of achievements you can earn to get them… which is to say, precisely one combination of achievements that you can complete to get the meta. Whatever arguments you might make among the others, this is clearly a reduction of choice.

This is a problem due to something that is otherwise a good thing: as well as the core game of killing monsters (or traitors, or malfunctioning toys, or whatever) and taking their stuff, ArenaNet has introduced a range of other little minigames inspired by other game types – jumping puzzles, SAB, the bell game, and so on – which particularly come out during holiday events. Each of these has something in common: Not everyone who signed up to play an MMO is going to enjoy them. Whether for technical reasons (some of these games legitimately do ask for more in terms of internet connection and computer specs than the core gameplay) or simply due to not enjoying that type of game, there are going to be people that simply aren’t going to get much fun out it and having to do it will be a chore.

In the past, meta achievements have given players the chance to ‘opt out’ of any of these that they found to be more chore than entertainment. The achievements did, of course, require a reasonable cross-section, but if you’re not a Scrooge that hates fun, then you’ll be able to screen out one or two activities that you find about as much fun as pulling teeth. The current system, however, leaves a stark choice: if one of the activities required for the list is one you hate, you either need to grit your teeth and do it or you’ll miss out on the achievement, even if you’re at 10/11 and would be quite happy to do literally anything else related to the festival.

And the thing is that if you don’t find something to be fun, no amount of other people telling you how fun and easy they find it, or how little work it actually is if you just do a little of it each day over the course of the event, is going to make it fun.

Guhracie.3419:

If this is what you think, then you didn’t read the original post in this thread. Or any of my replies.

I have indeed read your original post. And your replies. One word keeps cropping up in my head: conflicted. As some one who does PvE, I get that you want more variety in your dailies. But as some one who also dabbles in WvW. I understand that there wasn’t enough variety in WvW dailies. This attempt was to address something, the game has gotten wrong over the last 2 years. Balance. Everyone should enjoy their game mode equally. And not have it so loop-sided.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Most days they will get zero if they’re stubborn and don’t want to put 20 minutes to get 10 points and that’s all it’s been since the patch 20 minutes.

that 20 minutes can be a significant part of the person’s daily gaming time. Most people do not play 10 hours a day, like you do.

Vayne.8563:

Either you care about achievement points or you don’t.

World isn’t binary. There are degrees inbetween. In fact, almost noone would be at either of those extremes – and yet you are completely ignoring that fact in your theories.

And you’re ignoring the fact that many people can more easily get 10 achievement points now than they used to.

I’m not saying you have no point. I’m saying your point is massively overstated. That’s all. Sure it would be nice to have millions of options. But as people get used to this, many are seeing it’s not as bad as they thought and some are saying it’s better than they thought.

You may not like it, but I suspect you don’t have a huge following on this one. It’s not the trait system.

Rampage.6489:

Wow what an insane level of arrogance you’ve got there kid…
When people cant even do their dailies (they should be easy to do Im not alttabbing to find where the region is I havent discovered yet) then obviously there is something wrong.
Right now only 1 out of 4 dailies is one I can do by myself without looking stuff up and that’s not how they advertised GW2, its becoming way too much like WoW; a grindfest for elitists.

If you are struggling, and you are in a guild. Have them help you out. Because if you are struggling to find a lot of the areas, and they aren’t helping. Then you might want to reconsider that guild. If you aren’t, then you should consider joining one that is similar minded to you.

Is getting rewarded for a daily achievement without knowing you were doing it in the first place an achievement?

The dailies used to be a “do stuff” achievement. You didn’t even have to be aware what the requirements were and all of a sudden a chest popped up on screen. I look at the new login bonus as a combination of the old monthy achievement and the old “play how I want” daily achievement, minus the AP.

The new daily is the AP part of the old daily, with more balance how you can get the reward.

As for PvE, I understand the megaserver, it had to happen. It sucks for very high and full pop servers, also for WvW calls for help. But it was necessary for lower pop servers.

As for the NPE, I get the thought but it’s swung too far. My first toon did 100% map completion, the second helped a friend but only got 80% completion. The third and fourth got to 80 mainly in WvW. Fifth through eight were EotM. So you can see I played less and less GW2 for each toon. While Anet wants you to play how you want, I can see that if a lot of players tend to follow the same path it could lead to parts of the GW2 universe underplayed.

This is why I think the dailies and NPE were changed. Anet wants players to play more parts of the game. They also want players to play together. They know that in GW1, certain towns were rarely used while others were packed. I’m sure the same thing is happening in GW2. How much time has does anyone spend in Fireheart Rise, Iron Marches or Timberline Falls. There’s no world boss to lure players for 15 minutes every 2 hours.

CalamityO.2890

:… But as some one who also dabbles in WvW. I understand that there wasn’t enough variety in WvW dailies. This attempt was to address something, the game has gotten wrong over the last 2 years. Balance. Everyone should enjoy their game mode equally. And not have it so loop-sided.

So you think removing variety from PVE players is the way to balance between the 3 game modes? Misery loves company I guess. Just because Anet can’t bother to come up with more variety for WvW and PvP doesn’t mean they should remove variety from PvE.

Meh, haters gonna hate, whatever Anet does. I, for one, like the new system since it takes less time to grab those 10 achievement points.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Well i recall some people asking for traits to be obtainable by questing like in gw1. So while i don’t like the change (especially the one trait point every 6 levels one) i can’t pin the tail on a-net for this one after recalling that part.

No, some people asked for new skills to be more like skill hunting in GW1. Traits are obviously a nod to that request, but just barely, and poorly implemented.

CalamityO.2890:

Guhracie.3419:

If this is what you think, then you didn’t read the original post in this thread. Or any of my replies.

I have indeed read your original post. And your replies. One word keeps cropping up in my head: conflicted. As some one who does PvE, I get that you want more variety in your dailies. But as some one who also dabbles in WvW. I understand that there wasn’t enough variety in WvW dailies. This attempt was to address something, the game has gotten wrong over the last 2 years. Balance. Everyone should enjoy their game mode equally. And not have it so loop-sided.

Yes: everyone should have variety in their chosen game mode. And I have addressed that over and over again. I’m extremely happy that other modes are getting more variety, but there’s no reason it has to be at the expense of variety in PvE.

I’m just going to say the premise of this thread in itself is rather misleading. How does shifting the rewards for the dailies into the login result in fewer choices? The fact that the all important time gated currency (laurel) is now no longer tied to any activity means you can log in and do whatever you want without issue. And should you -choose- to hunt AP, it’s now faster and easier, but it’s treated as an actual reward for going out of your way to do something, just like everything else (pvp, dungeons, etc). If anything, the recent daily changes add MORE choices rather than remove them.

Subdue.5479:

I’m just going to say the premise of this thread in itself is rather misleading. How does shifting the rewards for the dailies into the login result in fewer choices? The fact that the all important time gated currency (laurel) is now no longer tied to any activity means you can log in and do whatever you want without issue. And should you -choose- to hunt AP, it’s now faster and easier, but it’s treated as an actual reward for going out of your way to do something, just like everything else (pvp, dungeons, etc). If anything, the recent daily changes add MORE choices rather than remove them.

Okay, first of all, the premise of this thread is to have a discussion about the topic. So that is in no way misleading.

Shifting the rewards for dailies into the login system isn’t the issue, and it’s either dishonest to suggest that’s what I’ve said, or you honestly didn’t read the original post.

I’d be happy to discuss the actual contents of my posting with you.

The 10 AP is easier to get now. Less choice exists now though and that can harm the fun factor.

Things are different now.. not really less choice, per se. After all, they have been pretty consistently adding new things to do.

When change happens, some people are always going to feel like they’re being “forced” to do one thing or another, because they have an external locus of control. That’s probably the biggest difference between the sides in this debate honestly: nearly everyone in favor of the new systems has responded with “I still do whatever I want to do and enjoy it.”

Guhracie.3419:

Subdue.5479:

I’m just going to say the premise of this thread in itself is rather misleading. How does shifting the rewards for the dailies into the login result in fewer choices? The fact that the all important time gated currency (laurel) is now no longer tied to any activity means you can log in and do whatever you want without issue. And should you -choose- to hunt AP, it’s now faster and easier, but it’s treated as an actual reward for going out of your way to do something, just like everything else (pvp, dungeons, etc). If anything, the recent daily changes add MORE choices rather than remove them.

Okay, first of all, the premise of this thread is to have a discussion about the topic. So that is in no way misleading.

Shifting the rewards for dailies into the login system isn’t the issue, and it’s either dishonest to suggest that’s what I’ve said, or you honestly didn’t read the original post.

I’d be happy to discuss the actual contents of my posting with you.

You can claim it’s to have a “discussion” but you’d have to be kidding yourself if you think there’s no bias in the original post. That aside, I’d be happy to explain further.

1. Dailies: As I mentioned in my previous post (which you basically dismissed with a “you didn’t read what I said” comment, by shifting rewards to login rather than tied to random activities, A.Net made doing the dailies a -choice- rather than a requirement. You’re not locked out of any content by not doing the dailies anymore, where as previously if you weren’t doing the dailies you’d have reduced access to laurels, a time gated currency. Edit: And I am just going to add this. It should be obvious, but for many it’s not. You -cannot- analyze the daily change without considering the shift in rewards. The two go hand in hand.

2. Wintersday Festival Dailies: If I recall correctly last year’s festival didn’t reward you with a laurel, they were just factored into the regular daily. This year, they provide you with a laurel on top of the set you get from the 28-day track. Greater reward, greater effort required. Is that really unreasonable?

3. Traits: Previously you had to buy all of the traits in each section, and expend the gold to do so, even for traits you have no intention of using. There was no way around this. Now, you can choose each individual trait you want to get, and you can choose to buy it with currency and SP, or do the quest associated with it. More choices!

There’s a big difference between “having choices” and “getting everything you want for doing anything at all,” and the points you bring up do not support the premise of fewer choices. They support the premise of wanting to have everything without expending any additional effort for it.

If the idea is to attract people to some of the other arenas, they should do something more about balancing experience. My first try at PvP was with an 80 ranger. I tried to get people to strategize/give advice beforehand and got nothing. I got into the game , was instantly deserted, and was obviously pegged as a newbie by the other team and was constantly swarmed. I’ve tried a few other times with the exact same experience. If the want people to venture in, they need to do something more about balancing experience.

As for the traits system…I’d like it better if there was a way to choose PvE/PvP/WvW as the basis for earning a trait. Yeah, I could buy the traits I want… I’ve been playing long enough I have the funds and know pretty much what I want for a class, but as with the dailies, it’s the challenge of going after that trait that makes it fun for me.

I have to say again that AN seems to be catering exclusively to the AP-accumulation players and those of us who play for personal achievement, not points, are having to do all the bending.

I love bring up baby characters. I have those “instant level 20” things and wish I could sell them. I’ll never use them. The trouble is, while they’ve changed the trait thing to make it MUCH harder to get, they’ve cheapened the game play in the lower levels, making it too easy. IMO, of course.

Subdue.5479:

3. Traits: Previously you had to buy all of the traits in each section, and expend the gold to do so, even for traits you have no intention of using. There was no way around this. Now, you can choose each individual trait you want to get, and you can choose to buy it with currency and SP, or do the quest associated with it. More choices!

I’m going to call you on this point. Before we would pay all of 3g10s gold to unlock every trait your character could use. That is a whole lot cheaper than the current trait system.

Also lets say you are leveling up and now you can use traits. In the past it cost you all of 10s to unlock all Adept traits. It now costs 10s and 2SP to unlock per Adept trait. Sure respecing traits are free now but the costs of having a lot of options is expensive. Sure you can quest for traits but some of my Thief’s adept traits are locked up behind level 58 content. I get my 2nd trait point at level 36 so I’m being forced to unlock another trait line with that point or pay the price if I want to slot an adept trait ASAP because at level 36, I won’t be doing level 58 content.

So the new system eliminated by ability to experiment between traits freely on a line I’ve unlocked so yes, less choice than before or same choice but at a much higher cost.

Behellagh.1468:

Subdue.5479:

3. Traits: Previously you had to buy all of the traits in each section, and expend the gold to do so, even for traits you have no intention of using. There was no way around this. Now, you can choose each individual trait you want to get, and you can choose to buy it with currency and SP, or do the quest associated with it. More choices!

I’m going to call you on this point. Before we would pay all of 3g10s gold to unlock every trait your character could use. That is a whole lot cheaper than the current trait system.

Also lets say you are leveling up and now you can use traits. In the past it cost you all of 10s to unlock all Adept traits. It now costs 10s and 2SP to unlock per Adept trait. Sure respecing traits are free now but the costs of having a lot of options is expensive. Sure you can quest for traits but some of my Thief’s adept traits are locked up behind level 58 content. I get my 2nd trait point at level 36 so I’m being forced to unlock another trait line with that point or pay the price if I want to slot an adept trait ASAP because at level 36, I won’t be doing level 58 content.

So the new system eliminated by ability to experiment between traits freely on a line I’ve unlocked so yes, less choice than before or same choice but at a much higher cost.

That would be an argument for greater costs perhaps, but not for fewer choices. In fact, that’s a great argument for -more- choices! After all, rather than just a blanket purchasing of books, you now make a choice for each trait. How important is it to you now? Are you willing to pay for it, or would you rather quest for it?

Plus, let’s not look at this in a vacuum please. It’s not like every change A.Net has made has been to make gold harder to acquire and hold onto:

- No repair costs
- Dungeon Daily Chests
- World Boss Daily Chests
- Fractal Daily Chests
- Silverwaste Farming

I think as a whole, gold is a lot easier to acquire and hold onto now than it was back when the game came out.

Subdue.5479:

That would be an argument for greater costs perhaps, but not for fewer choices. In fact, that’s a great argument for -more- choices! After all, rather than just a blanket purchasing of books, you now make a choice for each trait. How important is it to you now? Are you willing to pay for it, or would you rather quest for it?

…I swear some of you people come from another galaxy….either that or I’m from another galaxy abandoned at birth.

I assume if they decided to make you choose between trait points and stat boosts each level you’ll welcome that as giving the player more choice right? Or how about choosing between getting karma or exp when doing an event? Or maybe you view the simple act of running to a location vs wp (when unlocked, obviously) as an amazing gift of choice to the player. No my alien friend (mods please realize the humor in this-if he’s from another galaxy then he’s an alien to me, if I’m from another galaxy then he’s still an alien to me; it’s just a mild bit of wit…very very mild-not an insult) the trait acquisition change doesn’t reflect choice-they’re barriers or hindrances imposed upon you and you’re supposed to say ‘thank you sir, may I have another’.

With regards to traits you know what choice is? ‘Hmm…can I make this trait work with this weapon/utility/other trait’. When you limit the number of times a player can say that in a given time frame you’ve reduced their choices, not increased them. Traits are not anything new-it’s a similar mechanic in other mmorpgs and the main purpose is to give an additional way to customize your character. The concept is to give a whole host of potential modifiers to skills and attributes and allow the player to CHOOSE how they want to customize their characters. What the trait change did is put an obnoxious barrier before that choice. I am honestly baffled at how someone can believe a system that allowed you to freely choose how you want to modify your character for a pittance is somehow more restrictive than a system that puts hurdles-be it time or money….and skill points (which come to think of it, that’s an increase of infinity times over because their cost with respect to trait acquisition was 0 previously) in the way of you customizing your character.

But let’s look at it another way-fresh lvl 80 under old system: 3g and has the ability to freely choose to customize their character however they wish. Fresh lvl 80 new system: 3g and….well you have zero traits (I know you might have one or two unlocked via story or being in the right place at the right time), because skill points. So a level 80 pre-change had far more choices when it came to customizing their characters-the point of trait systems, than a lvl 80 post-change has.

I realize that the popular thing now-a-days is to mindlessly rally behind anything that has the words ‘choice, option, freedom, equality’ but you must emancipate yourself from mental slavery and view what’s being presented critically. God/Buddah/Allah/Shiva/Whatever you believe in blessed you/Your race evolved with a rational brain-utilize it in all things.

To reiterate, unless you call forcing players to smash their head either against a wall of currency or a wall of time in order to progress a choice, I fail to see how you can even begin to seriously assert that this new trait system gives the players more choice in how they want to customize their characters when the previous iteration of the system gave players all the choice of customization at the end of this new system-just without the head bashing.

Subdue.5479:

Behellagh.1468:

Subdue.5479:

3. Traits: Previously you had to buy all of the traits in each section, and expend the gold to do so, even for traits you have no intention of using. There was no way around this. Now, you can choose each individual trait you want to get, and you can choose to buy it with currency and SP, or do the quest associated with it. More choices!

I’m going to call you on this point. Before we would pay all of 3g10s gold to unlock every trait your character could use. That is a whole lot cheaper than the current trait system.

Also lets say you are leveling up and now you can use traits. In the past it cost you all of 10s to unlock all Adept traits. It now costs 10s and 2SP to unlock per Adept trait. Sure respecing traits are free now but the costs of having a lot of options is expensive. Sure you can quest for traits but some of my Thief’s adept traits are locked up behind level 58 content. I get my 2nd trait point at level 36 so I’m being forced to unlock another trait line with that point or pay the price if I want to slot an adept trait ASAP because at level 36, I won’t be doing level 58 content.

So the new system eliminated by ability to experiment between traits freely on a line I’ve unlocked so yes, less choice than before or same choice but at a much higher cost.

That would be an argument for greater costs perhaps, but not for fewer choices. In fact, that’s a great argument for -more- choices! After all, rather than just a blanket purchasing of books, you now make a choice for each trait. How important is it to you now? Are you willing to pay for it, or would you rather quest for it?

Plus, let’s not look at this in a vacuum please. It’s not like every change A.Net has made has been to make gold harder to acquire and hold onto:

- No repair costs
- Dungeon Daily Chests
- World Boss Daily Chests
- Fractal Daily Chests
- Silverwaste Farming

I think as a whole, gold is a lot easier to acquire and hold onto now than it was back when the game came out.

Well here’s the problem, I don’t know, from experience what each of these traits do, how they work together. And with the cost being so high I’m certainly not going to be experimenting to figure out what works for me. I’m not a flavor of the month kind of player. I don’t use someone else’s published build when constructing a new character. And by restricting all of these traits behind higher level content or prices, Grandmaster costing 3g + 20SP discourages self experimentation and encourages cribbing off of someone’s published build to minimize costs. That’s sad because what this game needs is even more cookie cutter Zerk Warriors in our midst.

And it’s not the gold, it’s the SPs. Sure you get one every “level” after 80 and boss chests do drop skill scrolls fairly regularly but I can flip 20 SP into 30-50g rather easily and I’m being conservative and my “casual” play nets me about forty five SP (dang kitten filter) a month. But traits isn’t suppose to be some thing every player needs to grind, it’s as innate as our profession’s skills.

I’m an explorer and short of doing dungeons I’ve pretty much do all the content with each of my characters but the “play your way” mantra was all about not forcing players into one style of gameplay to achieve the reward. With traits your choices are exploring and doing all the trait missions or grinding out SP and gold.

Different folks, different strokes, largely. Being almost an entirely WvW player, having the ability to do the dailies within my desired format is obviously something that makes me happy; pretty much I have the ability to reliably acquire my dailies within minutes of playing versus needing to move to some content that I had no desire in doing. This also left me with a lot less AP than most of my PvE friends over the past two years of playing.

I do, however, understand the concern and believe more options are better. Not really sure if there’s any way to argue or debate with the OP about it – but that said, I’m seeing a lot of outcry that I’m kind of seeing as a little childish coming from a lot of so-called “PvE’ers” who mostly just run WBT and expect to win at the game. The folks who logged in for WvW and sPvP for the past two years and did their dailies or got the AP had to do what was a of things that were simply undesirable to them. While obviously I don’t mean that PvE folks should suffer because of the change, it is important to consider that two other entire audiences have pretty much silently dealt with the same problems since their conception to an even larger magnitude.

I understand that some people don’t like certain formats and don’t wish to really partake in them – and that’s cool – but a lot of the WvW dailies are extremely easy and can still appeal to the other audiences: capturing a camp in WvW is safe, easy, and literally killing a mobs. Capturing the closest camp to your spawn in an opponent’s borderlands is pretty much guaranteed with no retaliation, especially without the white swords in WvW at the moment. One would think PvE players would like this, seeing as the camps are not exactly easy-mode flips and the mobs that guard them use a variety of skills and effects to make the fight more interesting. The other WvW one is ruins capturing, which quite literally is walking into a desolated area, standing there for a minute, and leaving. Basically a vista. I was near a WBT boss recently in-game and some folks were complaining about the daily system, so I mentioned these two possibilities as easy ways to complete the daily without really needing to try new formats or do things in formats they don’t like. The responses were really negative, with many people insisting that the killing mobs guarding camps in WvW is not PvE content or comparable to PvE content. I genuinely don’t understand this kind of attitude and don’t really see why it’s such a big problem for some people to do.

My gripe with ANet comes from the absolutely massive mishap regarding traits and the NPE. But the OP already knows my stance on this due to constant posting in the Trait thread

That is true that more choices are given in terms of more achievements. They are more specific now though and a great amount of freedom is not there to choose how you may want to do one of the more generic achievements.