Guild Wars 2

IndigoSundown.5419:

Something naughteblonde posted crystallized something that’s been floating elusively about at the back of my brain for a while as discussion of the new dailies has gone on.

Daily achievements are a form of structure. The old ones provided somewhat less structure. The new ones provide somewhat more. The restrictions (i.e., the greater amount of structure) in the new dailies is primarily where you have to go to complete them.

Players in general use the dailies as a form of structure. That structure serves as motivation to play. Some people don’t mind the restriction in area within the daily structure. Some do. While that latter group can still go to the area of their choice and do the things they did before, there is now less structure in doing so. And, if they were using the old dailies as motivation (“Hey, I’ll get a reward!”), that’s now gone.

Thus, in order to continue playing where they want to, they have to provide their own motivation. For some, that’s not working out so well. Others will adjust over time, but are complaining in hopes their preferred structure will be reinstated.

I’ve actually always used dailies as structure, even before the change. Probably why it doesn’t bother me as much as some.

Djinn.9245:

I am speaking about playing all the time. And frankly these changes to Dailies have not motivated me to login more often. I used to accomplish my Dailies while I played. Now that I can’t, I sometimes don’t bother logging in when I normally would. I don’t feel like running around doing things I don’t want to do. And if I’m not going to do the Dailies anyway, why bother at all?

Thanks. That was my point. If the change to the dailies means you don’t log in as much, that would mean that the old dailies provided more motivation. So, what’s changed? All the tasks (i.e., the things you would have had to do to complete old dailies) are still available. However, the game is no longer telling you to do them, and no longer rewarding you for doing them.

If that has influenced desire to play, then the old dailies provided structure and motivation to play. The new dailies also provide structure in telling players what to do. However, that structure has increased in that it tells them where to go to do the tasks.

I’m sure you already knew that telling you where to go was the sticking point. However, you weren’t the target audience for my post. I was trying to address those who asked, "Since the old tasks are still available (e.g., Kill 50 mobs), why don’t “you” do them? It must be about the reward." Well, that it might be reward for some people, but for others it’s a desire for structure, but not so much structure as the new tasks provide.

That insight and ~$5 will get you a Caramel Macchiato (but not from me).

I will agree that I log in much less now, than I did with the old dailies. In fact I rarely log in at all anymore. I have no desire to log in anymore, not just because of the new dailies, But because the new dailies are one of many changes to the game that limits the way I want to play. If you love being told exactly what to do and where to go in this fantasy world known as Tyria, then more power to you. I however don’t like it. I hate PvP, I dislike WvW, and I avoid Fractals like the plague.

I do not like doing those things, so I won’t force myself to do them. The result is me playing other games with my free time, and occasionally checking the GW2 forums to see what’s new. I used to love this game so much, that it was difficult for me to not play . It felt like trying to quit an addiction. Now, although I would love it if things went back to how they used to be, I know that will never, ever happen.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

I am speaking about playing all the time. And frankly these changes to Dailies have not motivated me to login more often. I used to accomplish my Dailies while I played. Now that I can’t, I sometimes don’t bother logging in when I normally would. I don’t feel like running around doing things I don’t want to do. And if I’m not going to do the Dailies anyway, why bother at all?

Thanks. That was my point. If the change to the dailies means you don’t log in as much, that would mean that the old dailies provided more motivation.

No, that is not true. The old Dailies fit in with what I was doing anyway – they didn’t motivate me to play. The new forced choices are DEmotivating me.

SenorMoody.5908:

I will agree that I log in much less now, than I did with the old dailies. In fact I rarely log in at all anymore. I have no desire to log in anymore, not just because of the new dailies, But because the new dailies are one of many changes to the game that limits the way I want to play. If you love being told exactly what to do and where to go in this fantasy world known as Tyria, then more power to you. I however don’t like it. I hate PvP, I dislike WvW, and I avoid Fractals like the plague.

I do not like doing those things, so I won’t force myself to do them. The result is me playing other games with my free time, and occasionally checking the GW2 forums to see what’s new. I used to love this game so much, that it was difficult for me to not play . It felt like trying to quit an addiction. Now, although I would love it if things went back to how they used to be, I know that will never, ever happen.

Yea, I was talking to a buddy who also plays GW2 about the changes and he told me how he has suddenly been playing a lot of Shadow of Mordor instead of GW2.

Djinn.9245:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

I am speaking about playing all the time. And frankly these changes to Dailies have not motivated me to login more often. I used to accomplish my Dailies while I played. Now that I can’t, I sometimes don’t bother logging in when I normally would. I don’t feel like running around doing things I don’t want to do. And if I’m not going to do the Dailies anyway, why bother at all?

Thanks. That was my point. If the change to the dailies means you don’t log in as much, that would mean that the old dailies provided more motivation.

No, that is not true. The old Dailies fit in with what I was doing anyway – they didn’t motivate me to play. The new forced choices are DEmotivating me.

Have it your way. You’re wired differently than other people. You can get angry enough over something changing that you’ll stop playing a game you (presumably) enjoyed, even though the aspect that changed did not matter to you.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

I am speaking about playing all the time. And frankly these changes to Dailies have not motivated me to login more often. I used to accomplish my Dailies while I played. Now that I can’t, I sometimes don’t bother logging in when I normally would. I don’t feel like running around doing things I don’t want to do. And if I’m not going to do the Dailies anyway, why bother at all?

Thanks. That was my point. If the change to the dailies means you don’t log in as much, that would mean that the old dailies provided more motivation.

No, that is not true. The old Dailies fit in with what I was doing anyway – they didn’t motivate me to play. The new forced choices are DEmotivating me.

Have it your way. You’re wired differently than other people. You can get angry enough over something changing that you’ll stop playing a game you (presumably) enjoyed, even though the aspect that changed did not matter to you.

There is a list of things that seems to be getting longer with every update that removes choices and de-motivates people. Sometimes its something small like a piece of straw that finally breaks that camels back.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

There is a list of things that seems to be getting longer with every update that removes choices and de-motivates people. Sometimes its something small like a piece of straw that finally breaks that camels back.

There’s a lot of choices which made no difference which I’d really like to see pruned anyway. Town Clothes was one (though not removed in a way I’d have structured it but…) and Personality should be next on the block due to it being entirely pointless.

Is Personality even displayed anymore? Did they add it back and I simply didn’t notice?

Behellagh.1468:

Is Personality even displayed anymore? Did they add it back and I simply didn’t notice?

Another totally wasted opportunity of a system, in my opinion. Unless they’ve hidden it somewhere completely unintuitive (something I wouldn’t put past them), I haven’t seen my game personality since April.

Gamer personality was a system that went nowhere. Seeing as it went nowhere, they probably shelved it.

Not telling us about shelving it though is a bad oversight.

Vayne.8563:

Gamer personality was a system that went nowhere. Seeing as it went nowhere, they probably shelved it.

Not telling us about shelving it though is a bad oversight.

The only impact it had originally was in providing dialogue choices. It is quite possible they did drop it since apparently providing more than two options in most of the living story dialogues was too much work. Not telling us about dropping it would be pretty typical of ANet these days.

Arrow.4619:

Vayne.8563:

Gamer personality was a system that went nowhere. Seeing as it went nowhere, they probably shelved it.

Not telling us about shelving it though is a bad oversight.

The only impact it had originally was in providing dialogue choices. It is quite possible they did drop it since apparently providing more than two options in most of the living story dialogues was too much work. Not telling us about dropping it would be pretty typical of ANet these days.

I think, but I’m not 100% certain, that you still get the dialogue choices. You just can’t see why.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Oh please. Open-world-only players weren’t being overly spoiled. Everyone who spent some little time playing open world was getting their dailies done without much effort. Everyone, not just the open-world-only players.

Keep telling yourself that, you might forget about the 50% of the days you had to go out of your way to finish a 1-2 dailies to get the meta. Funny how that works with positive vs negative memories.

Carighan.6758:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Oh please. Open-world-only players weren’t being overly spoiled. Everyone who spent some little time playing open world was getting their dailies done without much effort. Everyone, not just the open-world-only players.

Keep telling yourself that, you might forget about the 50% of the days you had to go out of your way to finish a 1-2 dailies to get the meta. Funny how that works with positive vs negative memories.

As opposed to now where you’re pretty much guarenteed to have to go out of your way to get the meta? I’d also like to see your evidence for “50%”.

Yet, your post proves that you do infact acknowledge that before, the dailies were more accessible and gave more choice, even if only “50%” of the time. Funny how that works….

Seriously though, it’s more than just the dailies, as people keep having to repeatedly point out. The overall paradigm shift is towards herding players into specific content for specific tasks in order to gain access to rewards that were previously avaiable to them through playing the content they wanted. It’s a stark contrast to the philosophy the game was built on.
The player is increasingly controlled, choices ever diminished, to the point that it is putting people off playing all together. However much you may try to brush it off or rationalise it, the result is the same; fewer people playing the game. It doesn’t matter whether you perceive that to be relatively few or the majority, the fact is that the philosophy shift is alienating players. That can never be a good thing.

wolfyrik.2017:

Carighan.6758:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Oh please. Open-world-only players weren’t being overly spoiled. Everyone who spent some little time playing open world was getting their dailies done without much effort. Everyone, not just the open-world-only players.

Keep telling yourself that, you might forget about the 50% of the days you had to go out of your way to finish a 1-2 dailies to get the meta. Funny how that works with positive vs negative memories.

As opposed to now where you’re pretty much guarenteed to have to go out of your way to get the meta? I’d also like to see your evidence for “50%”.

Yet, your post proves that you do infact acknowledge that before, the dailies were more accessible and gave more choice, even if only “50%” of the time. Funny how that works….

Seriously though, it’s more than just the dailies, as people keep having to repeatedly point out. The overall paradigm shift is towards herding players into specific content for specific tasks in order to gain access to rewards that were previously avaiable to them through playing the content they wanted. It’s a stark contrast to the philosophy the game was built on.
The player is increasingly controlled, choices ever diminished, to the point that it is putting people off playing all together. However much you may try to brush it off or rationalise it, the result is the same; fewer people playing the game. It doesn’t matter whether you perceive that to be relatively few or the majority, the fact is that the philosophy shift is alienating players. That can never be a good thing.

The appearance of choice is diminished. You’re talking about very narrow specific choices, not over all choices.

You can easily choose to ignore those 10 achievement points, and just do what you want anyway. The game gives you complete freedom to do that. You don’t need those points. If you want that reward, as with any reward, you will do what you need to do to get it.

And for people who got 10 points before, or even eight or nine it’s more freedom. It’s only not freedom if you feel you must have the daily done…and since most of the daily rewards come from logging in, that’s more freedom for some people too.

Carighan.6758:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Oh please. Open-world-only players weren’t being overly spoiled. Everyone who spent some little time playing open world was getting their dailies done without much effort. Everyone, not just the open-world-only players.

Keep telling yourself that, you might forget about the 50% of the days you had to go out of your way to finish a 1-2 dailies to get the meta. Funny how that works with positive vs negative memories.

50% of the time? No. I would actually be more likely to complete more than 5 than less than 5. But thank you for assuming you know better what I’ve been doing than me myself. Now I know I can just skip anything you write on this forum because you’re a patronizing kitten.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Carighan.6758:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Oh please. Open-world-only players weren’t being overly spoiled. Everyone who spent some little time playing open world was getting their dailies done without much effort. Everyone, not just the open-world-only players.

Keep telling yourself that, you might forget about the 50% of the days you had to go out of your way to finish a 1-2 dailies to get the meta. Funny how that works with positive vs negative memories.

50% of the time? No. I would actually be more likely to complete more than 5 than less than 5. But thank you for assuming you know better what I’ve been doing than me myself. Now I know I can just skip anything you write on this forum because you’re a patronizing kitten.

Strange. A moment ago you were telling us, quite authoritatively, what “everyone” was doing. Now apparently specific knowledge of each individual is required.

I did no such thing.

I think the problem here is different types of people. There are people who really want no constraints at all. There are people who feel more comfortable with some guidelines and there are people who absolutely can’t leave the front door without a complete road map.

As it stands now, the people who crave freedom the most are disenfranchised, because that specific demographic feels hard done by.

The other two groups are probably more okay with the changes.

There are several ways to deal with the situation. One way is to give more options for the dailies, which may or may not circumvent what Anet is trying to do.

Another way is to give people 5 achievement points for logging in and another five if they do three of the dailies. That wouldn’t change my game at all, and might mollify some of those who dislike the change.

Vayne.8563:

The appearance of choice is diminished. You’re talking about very narrow specific choices, not over all choices.

Isn’t that the point though, it’s feeling of how the game plays, it’s subtle but ignoring it is foolhardy. It’s walking the the thin line that decides whether a game breaks or succeeds, that’s what the f2p market relies on. Games like Candy Crush Saga and Star trek Online build their entire finance around it. What’s more, narrowing is precisely the problem, the game has gone from narrowed choices down from the previously narrowed choices. But yes it does encompass the entire game, the narrowing of choice across the board is precisely what the OP details. It is the very core of the thread.

Vayne.8563:

You can easily choose to ignore those 10 achievement points, and just do what you want anyway. The game gives you complete freedom to do that. You don’t need those points. If you want that reward, as with any reward, you will do what you need to do to get it.

That’s not the case though is it? Those achievements are the only means of gaining quite a few skins, the horizontal progression of the game itself, they are also a goal within themselves. A choice between attaining them through means you don’t enjoy or not attaing them isn’t really a choice at all. It’s holding holding a section of the game effectively to ransom.

Your argument comes from a position of privelege, you joy the additional activities, so you are unaffected. In fact you beenefit from it. “I’m fine so everyone else can go hang”. It’s a selfish false choice which could easily be fixed without affecting you in the slightest, by simply restoring a greater variety of activities. Other players would be happier and you would still get the same rewards.

Vayne.8563:

And for people who got 10 points before, or even eight or nine it’s more freedom. It’s only not freedom if you feel you must have the daily done…and since most of the daily rewards come from logging in, that’s more freedom for some people too.

No it’s not more “freedom” for anyone. Why are you so obsessed with keeping the discussion limited soley to AP? Heck even in AP terms, it isn’t more freedom. Before, all players could access AP while playing through content they enjoyed, and maybe occasionally having to go out of their way. If you didn’t want to go out of your way, you could simply settle for fewer points that day. Now unless you go out of your way, you can’t get the AP at all, barring access to a section of the game, however small, that was available before.
The worst part is that there isn’t any good reason for it. It’s got nothing at all to do with challenge. This is painfully obvious. You can’t seriously tell me that having to go to a specific map to gather a specific item (ore, wood, herb) is more challenging than gathering the ones which are available where you are playing? It’s not a challenge, it’s tactical inconvenience. It’s the deliberate removal of choice in order to badger, cojole and shoehorn people into playing the conent they don’t enjoy for the sake of metrics.
You abolutely cannot tell me that having to go to a specific map at a specific time of day to kill a specific mob is “more freedom” than having a choice between either going to kill that specific mob or going to kill several mobs on the map you’re alread on, or a map nearby or which has advantages for the player for whatever reason, or ignoring the mob hunt entirely in favor crafting on the character you are playing at that moment or finding a jump puzzle etc etc.

This is not more freedom. Logging in to get rewards doesn’t require skill and isn’t rewarding. Fewer choices to get the reward you want isn’t more choice, being railroaded into content you don’t enjoy isn’t freedom.

wolfyrik.2017:

That’s not the case though is it? Those achievements are the only means of gaining quite a few skins, the horizontal progression of the game itself, they are also a goal within themselves. A choice between attaining them through means you don’t enjoy or not attaing them isn’t really a choice at all. It’s holding holding a section of the game effectively to ransom.

“The only means of getting certain skins…”

So is PvP. So is Tequatl. So are fractals. So are parts of Living Story. So are dungeons (mostly now, in alternative with PvP, but some skins are still exclusive). Same for Dry Top and Silverwastes. So is the gemstore, for that matter. Hell, so is GW1.

No one claims all those activities are absolutely necessary. In fact, many of the people complaining about dailies “do not do PvP” and “do not do fractals or dungeons.”

If all skins were AP rewards, your argument might carry some weight. As it stands, you only need AP if you want those specific skins (a miniscule fraction of all skins in the game), and even then, it’s up to you to decide whether you think that the reward is worth it for you, given what you have to do to get it.

Really, you’re grasping at straws to find some reason why people “are forced” to do dailies, when there absolutely isn’t one.

Vayne.8563:

I think the problem here is different types of people. There are people who really want no constraints at all. There are people who feel more comfortable with some guidelines and there are people who absolutely can’t leave the front door without a complete road map.

As it stands now, the people who crave freedom the most are disenfranchised, because that specific demographic feels hard done by.

The other two groups are probably more okay with the changes.

There are several ways to deal with the situation. One way is to give more options for the dailies, which may or may not circumvent what Anet is trying to do.

Another way is to give people 5 achievement points for logging in and another five if they do three of the dailies. That wouldn’t change my game at all, and might mollify some of those who dislike the change.

Ah, in the time it’s taken for me to respond to your previous post, you’ve posted one which brings the very points I raise.

Now we’re in agreement. Though I’d say that the of the two groups you describe some of the second group (those who like some structure) have also been disenfranchised to a degree. The previous AP system gave those people some structure as well, infact I’d say I fall somewhere between the first two groups. I’d also suggest that this may be the case for the OP. What we’re seeing is the change from game wide structure to over-structure. It’s the difference between:
1. walking an open field
2. walking a field with some useful paths to follow if you like or
3. being dragged on a leash wherever someone else wants you to go.

Im fine with options 1 and 2, but the game is rapidly becoming option 3. Or at least it very much feels that way to me and apparenty more than a few others.

As for the points you raise about what Anet is trying to do, well we don’t know because they don’t tell us and they absolutely don’t ask our opinions on it. I’d argue that if their goal is to try lure people into other sections of the game, then this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If they are trying to make the game more accessible in general as they claimed with the NPE launch, then they’re still going about it the wrong way. They could achieve these goals without alienating people.

However I’ve given up on trying to apply or understand any kind of rational thinking that they may engage in. It became clear to me that a while back, that while individual Anet staff may be rational, the organisation and planning for the game is anything but. I realised this when watching how rabidly they refuse to alter the design philosphies for various classes which sounded good on paper before the game was launched, despite the painfully obvious and demonstrated-over-two-long-years fact that those philsophies simply do no work well within the existing constraints of the game.

Seriously, is there any player at all that thinks that ranger pets work fine in all aspects of the game or that necromancer atrition works well with the active defences the game holds so strongly to? I could go on listing but you get the point.

Olvendred.3027:

wolfyrik.2017:

That’s not the case though is it? Those achievements are the only means of gaining quite a few skins, the horizontal progression of the game itself, they are also a goal within themselves. A choice between attaining them through means you don’t enjoy or not attaing them isn’t really a choice at all. It’s holding holding a section of the game effectively to ransom.

“The only means of getting certain skins…”

So is PvP. So is Tequatl. So are fractals. So are parts of Living Story. So are dungeons (mostly now, in alternative with PvP, but some skins are still exclusive). Same for Dry Top and Silverwastes. So is the gemstore, for that matter. Hell, so is GW1.

No one claims all those activities are absolutely necessary. In fact, many of the people complaining about dailies “do not do PvP” and “do not do fractals or dungeons.”

If all skins were AP rewards, your argument might carry some weight. As it stands, you only need AP if you want those specific skins (a miniscule fraction of all skins in the game), and even then, it’s up to you to decide whether you think that the reward is worth it for you, given what you have to do to get it.

Really, you’re grasping at straws to find some reason why people “are forced” to do dailies, when there absolutely isn’t one.

Straw grapsing, that’s hilarious! You’re resorting to a fallacy of appeal to ridicule instead of challenging my actual points, as well as cherry picking.

The number of skins may only be small, but that’s irrelevent, it’s still a portion of the game effectively held to ransom. That there are PvP only skins is absolutely fine. I applaud it in fact, that’s good game design, people who engage in specfic content should get specific rewards. However AP are not specific, your argument also ignores the fact that the AP chase and dailies in general provide some structure and a goal within themselves.
I haven’t once claimed that people are forced to do dailies. The point is that dailies were previously open to everyone to engage in as much or as little as they saw fit and yet still attain the AP reward in proportion. Now they can’t. People used to be able to get the AP from playing content that they enjoyed, on the character they were playing, on the maps and areas and activities they were engaged in to a greater degree. That has been removed or at the very least railroaded. You’ve completely missed the point of the entire thread, and every single point raised in order to attack an assertion that no one has made.

wolfyrik.2017:

Straw grapsing, that’s hilarious! You’re resorting to a fallacy of appeal to ridicule instead of challenging my actual points, as well as cherry picking.

It’s an idiom.

I challenged one of your points, in its entirety.

The number of skins may only be small, but that’s irrelevent, it’s still a portion of the game effectively held to ransom. That there are PvP only skins is absolutely fine. I applaud it in fact, that’s good game design, people who engage in specfic content should get specific rewards. However AP are not specific, your argument also ignores the fact that the AP chase and dailies in general provide some structure and a goal within themselves.
I haven’t once claimed that people are forced to do dailies. The point is that dailies were previously open to everyone to engage in as much or as little as they saw fit and yet still attain the AP reward in proportion. Now they can’t. People used to be able to get the AP from playing content that they enjoyed, on the character they were playing, on the maps and areas and activities they were engaged in to a greater degree. That has been removed or at the very least railroaded. You’ve completely missed the point of the entire thread, and every single point raised in order to attack an assertion that no one has made.

First, you’re making one rule for one thing, and another rule for others. There’s nothing distinguishable between PvP-only skins and AP skins (or all the other types I listed). They’re all skins, “the horizontal progression of the game itself, they are also a goal within themselves.”

You claimed that “A choice between attaining them through means you don’t enjoy or not attaing them isn’t really a choice at all.” If one of them is so important as to “force” people to do content they don’t like, then both are. After all, a choice between not attaining the PvP-only skins if you don’t enjoy PvP or not attaining them at all… that would be no choice at all, right?

If you can choose not to do PvP to get those skins, you can choose not to grind AP not to get the AP skins.

Second, people can still get AP from doing whatever they like, the character they like, in the maps and activities they like. AP doesn’t come purely from dailies.

Also note that if you are desperate for all the AP skins, then you’ll be “forced” to do a ton of other content as well as dailies to get it. Dailies will only take you to 15k AP total, which will not get you most of the skins.

I got the point of the thread. I also got the point of your previous post, which I quoted, being that players are forced to do dailies, because AP gives you skins (aka, an assertion which you did make).

wolfyrik.2017:

As for the points you raise about what Anet is trying to do, well we don’t know because they don’t tell us and they absolutely don’t ask our opinions on it. I’d argue that if their goal is to try lure people into other sections of the game, then this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If they are trying to make the game more accessible in general as they claimed with the NPE launch, then they’re still going about it the wrong way. They could achieve these goals without alienating people.

However I’ve given up on trying to apply or understand any kind of rational thinking that they may engage in. It became clear to me that a while back, that while individual Anet staff may be rational, the organisation and planning for the game is anything but. I realised this when watching how rabidly they refuse to alter the design philosphies for various classes which sounded good on paper before the game was launched, despite the painfully obvious and demonstrated-over-two-long-years fact that those philsophies simply do no work well within the existing constraints of the game.

Seriously, is there any player at all that thinks that ranger pets work fine in all aspects of the game or that necromancer atrition works well with the active defences the game holds so strongly to? I could go on listing but you get the point.

This has been a pretty large part of my stance for awhile now. This restructure, one could conclude, is to give the illusion that the game is more populated, but it also points directly to a flaw, scaling. They would also do well to not send every client nearby on the map, info about particle effects, if players could only see 5 random effects during these massive fights, it might help both huge FPS hits and general skill lag.

The goal at least for Arena lately seems to be this funneling concept, that more on a map is better, makes the game seem like it’s doing well. Sadly, anyone with guild rosters and friends that play (or used to play) can tell this isn’t going so well.

Megaserver, NPE, trait revamp, etc. really seem like they point even greater to lack of player retention, regardless of the existing flaws that have mostly been around since release. I’m not even sure some big announcement they have planned at PAX south this month will rekindle very many people into returning.

Even the folks that focus on WvW practically daily have lost a lot of interest in playing. If Arena can’t inject some pretty heavy “new life” into the game and address some pretty core issues, it’s going to be near impossible to right the ship this far down the road. One of those core issues, it feels like, is trying to be good at everything with a fairly small studio and possibly some inadequate tools for more efficient development.

The original game (for me) had heart, it really felt like they put a lot into that game, though it wasn’t a monetization machine. Fast forward to now and we have an almost 180 degree concept working against them. Sadly, this is the industry now, pump out less than stellar content people can purchase for a quick gaming fix.

wolfyrik.2017:

Vayne.8563:

The appearance of choice is diminished. You’re talking about very narrow specific choices, not over all choices.

Isn’t that the point though, it’s feeling of how the game plays, it’s subtle but ignoring it is foolhardy. It’s walking the the thin line that decides whether a game breaks or succeeds, that’s what the f2p market relies on. Games like Candy Crush Saga and Star trek Online build their entire finance around it. What’s more, narrowing is precisely the problem, the game has gone from narrowed choices down from the previously narrowed choices. But yes it does encompass the entire game, the narrowing of choice across the board is precisely what the OP details. It is the very core of the thread.

Vayne.8563:

You can easily choose to ignore those 10 achievement points, and just do what you want anyway. The game gives you complete freedom to do that. You don’t need those points. If you want that reward, as with any reward, you will do what you need to do to get it.

That’s not the case though is it? Those achievements are the only means of gaining quite a few skins, the horizontal progression of the game itself, they are also a goal within themselves. A choice between attaining them through means you don’t enjoy or not attaing them isn’t really a choice at all. It’s holding holding a section of the game effectively to ransom.

Your argument comes from a position of privelege, you joy the additional activities, so you are unaffected. In fact you beenefit from it. “I’m fine so everyone else can go hang”. It’s a selfish false choice which could easily be fixed without affecting you in the slightest, by simply restoring a greater variety of activities. Other players would be happier and you would still get the same rewards.

Vayne.8563:

And for people who got 10 points before, or even eight or nine it’s more freedom. It’s only not freedom if you feel you must have the daily done…and since most of the daily rewards come from logging in, that’s more freedom for some people too.

No it’s not more “freedom” for anyone. Why are you so obsessed with keeping the discussion limited soley to AP? Heck even in AP terms, it isn’t more freedom. Before, all players could access AP while playing through content they enjoyed, and maybe occasionally having to go out of their way. If you didn’t want to go out of your way, you could simply settle for fewer points that day. Now unless you go out of your way, you can’t get the AP at all, barring access to a section of the game, however small, that was available before.
The worst part is that there isn’t any good reason for it. It’s got nothing at all to do with challenge. This is painfully obvious. You can’t seriously tell me that having to go to a specific map to gather a specific item (ore, wood, herb) is more challenging than gathering the ones which are available where you are playing? It’s not a challenge, it’s tactical inconvenience. It’s the deliberate removal of choice in order to badger, cojole and shoehorn people into playing the conent they don’t enjoy for the sake of metrics.
You abolutely cannot tell me that having to go to a specific map at a specific time of day to kill a specific mob is “more freedom” than having a choice between either going to kill that specific mob or going to kill several mobs on the map you’re alread on, or a map nearby or which has advantages for the player for whatever reason, or ignoring the mob hunt entirely in favor crafting on the character you are playing at that moment or finding a jump puzzle etc etc.

This is not more freedom. Logging in to get rewards doesn’t require skill and isn’t rewarding. Fewer choices to get the reward you want isn’t more choice, being railroaded into content you don’t enjoy isn’t freedom.

There are AP available in essentially every aspect of the game. Not doing dailies does not bar you from access to AP track skins.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

I am speaking about playing all the time. And frankly these changes to Dailies have not motivated me to login more often. I used to accomplish my Dailies while I played. Now that I can’t, I sometimes don’t bother logging in when I normally would. I don’t feel like running around doing things I don’t want to do. And if I’m not going to do the Dailies anyway, why bother at all?

Thanks. That was my point. If the change to the dailies means you don’t log in as much, that would mean that the old dailies provided more motivation.

No, that is not true. The old Dailies fit in with what I was doing anyway – they didn’t motivate me to play. The new forced choices are DEmotivating me.

Have it your way. You’re wired differently than other people. You can get angry enough over something changing that you’ll stop playing a game you (presumably) enjoyed, even though the aspect that changed did not matter to you.

I don’t know why you are saying that I’m wired differently. I’ve seen people agree with me in these threads. And I never said I am angry about these changes. I am perfectly calm about them. I simply don’t feel like playing sometimes because in order to do the dailies I will have to jump around and switch characters if I need this map on one and a different map or resources on another. Sometimes its just too much of a bother.

Its like if you had a take-out place where you could get all the different food you wanted in one place but they stopped offering a couple of items. Now if you want the same stuff you will need to go to different places to get it. But sometimes you don’t feel like driving around, so you just order a pizza.

Vayne.8563:

Arrow.4619:

Vayne.8563:

Gamer personality was a system that went nowhere. Seeing as it went nowhere, they probably shelved it.

Not telling us about shelving it though is a bad oversight.

The only impact it had originally was in providing dialogue choices. It is quite possible they did drop it since apparently providing more than two options in most of the living story dialogues was too much work. Not telling us about dropping it would be pretty typical of ANet these days.

I think, but I’m not 100% certain, that you still get the dialogue choices. You just can’t see why.

I still have received dialogue choices with the symbols recently. The problem is I don’t know why I should pick one choice over another anymore. Is my character still increasing one “personality” by picking a choice? Am I more likely to get a negative result if I pick one of the choices? Its very annoying.

Djinn.9245:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

I am speaking about playing all the time. And frankly these changes to Dailies have not motivated me to login more often. I used to accomplish my Dailies while I played. Now that I can’t, I sometimes don’t bother logging in when I normally would. I don’t feel like running around doing things I don’t want to do. And if I’m not going to do the Dailies anyway, why bother at all?

Thanks. That was my point. If the change to the dailies means you don’t log in as much, that would mean that the old dailies provided more motivation.

No, that is not true. The old Dailies fit in with what I was doing anyway – they didn’t motivate me to play. The new forced choices are DEmotivating me.

Have it your way. You’re wired differently than other people. You can get angry enough over something changing that you’ll stop playing a game you (presumably) enjoyed, even though the aspect that changed did not matter to you.

I don’t know why you are saying that I’m wired differently. I’ve seen people agree with me in these threads. And I never said I am angry about these changes. I am perfectly calm about them. I simply don’t feel like playing sometimes because in order to do the dailies I will have to jump around and switch characters if I need this map on one and a different map or resources on another. Sometimes its just too much of a bother.

Its like if you had a take-out place where you could get all the different food you wanted in one place but they stopped offering a couple of items. Now if you want the same stuff you will need to go to different places to get it. But sometimes you don’t feel like driving around, so you just order a pizza.

The, “same stuff,” here is AP and laurels. You can still get them doing essentially anything in the game.

Djinn.9245:

I don’t know why you are saying that I’m wired differently. I’ve seen people agree with me in these threads. And I never said I am angry about these changes. I am perfectly calm about them. I simply don’t feel like playing sometimes because in order to do the dailies I will have to jump around and switch characters if I need this map on one and a different map or resources on another. Sometimes its just too much of a bother.

You asserted that the old dailies did not motivate you to play. People derive motivation from outcomes that matter to them. If an outcome doesn’t matter, it is neutral with regard to motivation. If an outcome does matter, it provides positive motivation. Since you derived no motivation to play from the old dailies, then the outcome (rewards) should not matter to you. And yet they seem to. That’s what’s perplexing.

Djinn.9245:

Its like if you had a take-out place where you could get all the different food you wanted in one place but they stopped offering a couple of items. Now if you want the same stuff you will need to go to different places to get it. But sometimes you don’t feel like driving around, so you just order a pizza.

I don’t think anyone is in doubt that the new process for daily completion is a negative motivation for you to complete the new daily. However, you are carrying that over to the entire game. Why not just ignore the process you dislike? Why stop doing the things you used to do, assuming you enjoyed them? If the outcome of the old dailies was not a motivating factor, then why does moving a part of that outcome to a different process matter?

Vayne.8563:

wolfyrik.2017:

As opposed to now where you’re pretty much guarenteed to have to go out of your way to get the meta? I’d also like to see your evidence for “50%”.

Yet, your post proves that you do infact acknowledge that before, the dailies were more accessible and gave more choice, even if only “50%” of the time. Funny how that works….

Seriously though, it’s more than just the dailies, as people keep having to repeatedly point out. The overall paradigm shift is towards herding players into specific content for specific tasks in order to gain access to rewards that were previously avaiable to them through playing the content they wanted. It’s a stark contrast to the philosophy the game was built on.
The player is increasingly controlled, choices ever diminished, to the point that it is putting people off playing all together. However much you may try to brush it off or rationalise it, the result is the same; fewer people playing the game. It doesn’t matter whether you perceive that to be relatively few or the majority, the fact is that the philosophy shift is alienating players. That can never be a good thing.

The appearance of choice is diminished. You’re talking about very narrow specific choices, not over all choices.

You can easily choose to ignore those 10 achievement points, and just do what you want anyway. The game gives you complete freedom to do that. You don’t need those points. If you want that reward, as with any reward, you will do what you need to do to get it.

And for people who got 10 points before, or even eight or nine it’s more freedom. It’s only not freedom if you feel you must have the daily done…and since most of the daily rewards come from logging in, that’s more freedom for some people too.

Yes, you have complete freedom to not choose to play the game at all either. Choosing not to play any part of the game is not “complete freedom” within the game. We are talking about having choice within the Dailies.

And the same goes for the rest of the game.

Vayne.8563:

I think the problem here is different types of people. There are people who really want no constraints at all. There are people who feel more comfortable with some guidelines and there are people who absolutely can’t leave the front door without a complete road map.

As it stands now, the people who crave freedom the most are disenfranchised, because that specific demographic feels hard done by.

The other two groups are probably more okay with the changes.

There are several ways to deal with the situation. One way is to give more options for the dailies, which may or may not circumvent what Anet is trying to do.

Another way is to give people 5 achievement points for logging in and another five if they do three of the dailies. That wouldn’t change my game at all, and might mollify some of those who dislike the change.

The entire point of this thread is to talk about how the game in general is more and more directed with less and less choice. We saw this with the limiting of the costume system. Then we saw this with the NPE. Now we have seen this with the Dailies change, including the removal of choosing Dailies to contribute to Festival completion. The game focus has become narrow and narrower and narrower. There is no question that this has happened.

Some people are trying to argue that these changes either don’t affect them or that they really like them. But what most of these opinions have been talking about is the new mechanics that were introduced, like the login chest, etc. These mechanics have nothing to do with the level of choice which is the topic of this thread.

Speaking strictly of choice, I don’t understand why anyone is arguing against more choice. How does it hurt any player for there to be more choice? No one has suggested getting rid of the new mechanics that people like.

And what is the point of guessing at Anet’s motivation? All we need to do is give them our feedback. They will obviously take their motivations into account when making any decisions.

IndigoSundown.5419:

You asserted that the old dailies did not motivate you to play.

The Dailies aren’t what motivates me to play. You keep harping on whether the Dailies are motivating or not. The game motivates me to play. If the entire game is more and more restrictive, THAT is going to de-motivate me.

Djinn.9245:

If the entire game is more and more restrictive

It is a good thing that the exact opposite is true then.

Agree with OP almost completely. Lately we have fewer and fewer choice, and in some cases that means if you want something, you only got one choice (used to be more) to get something (be it special item, loot, achievements, something else). This forces you (don’t give me the “you are free to not do this content” please) to do it the way Anet has written: the only way to do it. And that makes the game a drag quickly. I really hope Anet turns around in this pilosophy (and not just marketing wise but TRUE intention). I don’t need marketing talking about this like they do with NPE. NPE IS a plain bad update they seemingly HAD to do for China publick. But it sucks for NA and I think they know it already. But talking around it with ‘metrics’ or ‘but it’s good and this helps new players’ only makes players more mad.

So just turn around, and no buts or marketing ploys. That would make me a very happy player. And no offence meant with marketing ploys, but it’s frustrating me lately, and I feel I need to voice it, in hope they might tune it down a bit.

Ashen.2907:

Djinn.9245:

If the entire game is more and more restrictive

It is a good thing that the exact opposite is true then.

Here are my examples of systems in the game where choice has been reduced:

-Costumes reduced from individual pieces to entire outfits.

-NPE: low levels are shown less choice of things to do (gathering, Skill points, etc.)

-Traits

-Dailies: less open PvE choices per day

-Dailies: less choice of where you can go to complete your open PvE Dailies. PvP: less choice of what class you can use to complete certain dailies. Etc.

-Dailies: removed choice of using Dailies in Festival Completion

Now, you claim that there are actually more choices in the game. Please illustrate.

wolfyrik.2017:

As opposed to now where you’re pretty much guarenteed to have to go out of your way to get the meta? I’d also like to see your evidence for “50%”.

Yet, your post proves that you do infact acknowledge that before, the dailies were more accessible and gave more choice, even if only “50%” of the time. Funny how that works….

Seriously though, it’s more than just the dailies, as people keep having to repeatedly point out. The overall paradigm shift is towards herding players into specific content for specific tasks in order to gain access to rewards that were previously avaiable to them through playing the content they wanted. It’s a stark contrast to the philosophy the game was built on.

Yes well, check the past two years on this forum and players constantly harassing the devs about wanting specific rewards tacked onto the game. Or underwater combat removed (see WvW change and sPvP map removal). Or more ingame armour/weapon skins (see Dry Top / Silverwastes). Or, or, or.

This has been going up and down the forums for two years now, is it ANY surprise that the devs are shifting things onto more “do this to get that” now? Players have been yelling at them to do that.
Ofc, those very players probably didn’t think the devs would do it this specific way, they thought “Hey, I do 3 runs of TA and have a full set of all Aetherblade weapons” (or something to that extend).

Even then though, I fail to see how the new dailies are in any way impacting to how you play. If anything, they’re less so, seeing how what drives you to do them is now given upon log-in, removing those situations where you had to do something specifically to get your laurel/coin. Now you just do whatever you want, and hey, if those quests make you go to orr to get Omnomberries today (instead of next week), more power to you!
But if not, you already got the rewards from log-in, so no biggie. Doesn’t hurt to ignore them.

That is to say, it’s less specific a gameplay element now because “Needs to log-in” is less specific than even “Needs to log in and play whatever”. You could even just sit in LA to chat with your guildies – the game allows you to do that! Still getting your rewards.

Djinn.9245:

Now, you claim that there are actually more choices in the game. Please illustrate.

Another choice removed – I can no longer choose to work for my Laurel or whatever each day. It’s no longer a choice, I just get whatever it is delivered directly to me. I don’t even get the choice of which 5 of 12 incredibly simple things to do will earn me the Laurel. It just happens, from time to time.

Oh, and I no longer get the choice of crossing fingers each day and hoping my Daily Completion will give me a gem store item I will actually use.

And finally, I lost the choice to stop at 5 AP for the day, or just keep right on rolling and maybe hit 7 or 9 AP. Now I just get 10 for 3 tasks.

Vayne.8563:

wolfyrik.2017:

Carighan.6758:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Oh please. Open-world-only players weren’t being overly spoiled. Everyone who spent some little time playing open world was getting their dailies done without much effort. Everyone, not just the open-world-only players.

Keep telling yourself that, you might forget about the 50% of the days you had to go out of your way to finish a 1-2 dailies to get the meta. Funny how that works with positive vs negative memories.

As opposed to now where you’re pretty much guarenteed to have to go out of your way to get the meta? I’d also like to see your evidence for “50%”.

Yet, your post proves that you do infact acknowledge that before, the dailies were more accessible and gave more choice, even if only “50%” of the time. Funny how that works….

Seriously though, it’s more than just the dailies, as people keep having to repeatedly point out. The overall paradigm shift is towards herding players into specific content for specific tasks in order to gain access to rewards that were previously avaiable to them through playing the content they wanted. It’s a stark contrast to the philosophy the game was built on.
The player is increasingly controlled, choices ever diminished, to the point that it is putting people off playing all together. However much you may try to brush it off or rationalise it, the result is the same; fewer people playing the game. It doesn’t matter whether you perceive that to be relatively few or the majority, the fact is that the philosophy shift is alienating players. That can never be a good thing.

The appearance of choice is diminished. You’re talking about very narrow specific choices, not over all choices.

You can easily choose to ignore those 10 achievement points , and just do what you want anyway. The game gives you complete freedom to do that. You don’t need those points. If you want that reward, as with any reward, you will do what you need to do to get it.

And for people who got 10 points before, or even eight or nine it’s more freedom. It’s only not freedom if you feel you must have the daily done…and since most of the daily rewards come from logging in, that’s more freedom for some people too.

If I’m ignoring them they are not really fulfilling their function of making me want to play daily, are they?

I’m somewhat confused by the notion that choice has been removed. I suppose my perspective is simply different.

I very much like game in which I can earn my wings, so to say, then go pretty much wherever I want if I’m good enough to survive the flora and fauna.

I can do that very well in GW2. Dailies and monthlies eye, honestly, never a huge motivating force for me to begin with, though I’d often complete them if I didn’t have to go too far out of my way to do so.

In not a completionist by any stretch of the imagination. Achievements in video games are the very spirit of irrelevant to me if I don’t get anything useful to my interests for completing them, so AP hunting is a non-topic for me.

I like exploring. I also like dungeons, appearance options and being able to, preferably without too much of what I find to be annoying hassle, make my characters look how I want them to.

I like running around with smallish zergs, as well as seeing what I can solo, playing with weird builds just to see how they do and crafting things I actually want.

I do not like overmuch grinding – it feels like a mockery of my time, and I despise that feeling. I’m totally happy to put in effort for things, though to me, grind isn’t effort as it’s rarely hard. It’s just tedious and, to me, enormously dull.

So I don’t grind for much. Some would disagree, as I’ve certainly done dungeons a lot, but never to the point that I felt like I was grinding.

Honestly, a few dozen runs over a week or three can get one a lot of goodies. I have every single skin I wanted out if every dungeon set I liked.

So there’s been that too.

I really can’t say that my sense of choice has been impacted by the changes to dailies or even by the NPE though.

Trait locking, however? Yes. That absolutely kills my interest in making new characters.

I think pets are also terrible and we need a decent pet control ui.

But that’s the sum of my gripes.

naiasonod.9265:

I think pets are also terrible and we need a decent pet control ui.

I’ll settle for what we had in GW1 with the ability to “lock” a target.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

naiasonod.9265:

I think pets are also terrible and we need a decent pet control ui.

I’ll settle for what we had in GW1 with the ability to “lock” a target.

That’d be a far cry better than what we’ve got now, yep.

naiasonod.9265:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

naiasonod.9265:

I think pets are also terrible and we need a decent pet control ui.

I’ll settle for what we had in GW1 with the ability to “lock” a target.

That’d be a far cry better than what we’ve got now, yep.

See, I don’t know . . . I get use out of my pets, and the only reason I’d want to lock a target is if I had to try to take two targets at once or as I had to do sometimes in GW1, sic my pet on a low-priority target so it would tie it up, while I would focus down something else.

I don’t need to do that too much in GW2 but when I do . . . I really miss it. It would change the heck out of WvW for me

Djinn.9245:

-Costumes reduced from individual pieces to entire outfits.

I suspect town clothes didn’t sell well. Many pieces were promoted to armor skins.

-NPE: low levels are shown less choice of things to do (gathering, Skill points, etc.)

To facilitate new players learning the game, rather than requiring them to plum the wiki for answers.

-Traits

I’ll grant you this but it seems to be an offshoot of removing respec costs/locations. You can now respec your traits for free out of combat. It also adds traits as another reward for completing existing content.

-Dailies: less open PvE choices per day

-Dailies: less choice of where you can go to complete your open PvE Dailies. PvP: less choice of what class you can use to complete certain dailies. Etc.

True, but one of the prime motivations of doing dailies, the laurel, isn’t there anymore. They compensated the reduction of maximum of 12 AP to 10 by tossing in rewards with each daily. Rewards you still get even after you do three and get the 10 AP.

-Dailies: removed choice of using Dailies in Festival Completion

No idea what you are getting at here.

Behellagh.1468:

-Traits

I’ll grant you this but it seems to be an offshoot of removing respec costs/locations. You can now respec your traits for free out of combat. It also adds traits as another reward for completing existing content.

-Dailies: removed choice of using Dailies in Festival Completion

No idea what you are getting at here.

This is what I have a major issue with. Why does there need to be a penalty for being able to have free retraiting from anywhere? It’s like we’ve come to expect that everything good always has something that bites us. That may be true in the real world, but it kind of stinks that it’s also the case here.

The last thing is about how the winterfest dailies don’t count toward the wintersday meta achievement. In other holiday festivals, dailies count toward the meta. And the meta has absolutely no flexibility in it, either. There are 11 required achievements for it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

naiasonod.9265:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

naiasonod.9265:

I think pets are also terrible and we need a decent pet control ui.

I’ll settle for what we had in GW1 with the ability to “lock” a target.

That’d be a far cry better than what we’ve got now, yep.

See, I don’t know . . . I get use out of my pets, and the only reason I’d want to lock a target is if I had to try to take two targets at once or as I had to do sometimes in GW1, sic my pet on a low-priority target so it would tie it up, while I would focus down something else.

I don’t need to do that too much in GW2 but when I do . . . I really miss it. It would change the heck out of WvW for me

I’ll admit that my pining for pet controls is because I want very much to be better able to use them tactically. Send the minions to a specific point to be meatshields and tie up a mob while I’m taking this other thing down? Yes please!

Be able to sic the pets onto a new add? Be able to, without having to change targets myself, send them to aid a nearby party member?

Is love that to pieces. As it is, they die so fast and are so limited in their use that I can’t find a reason to summon anything but the elite flesh golem when I’m solo exploring.

Only pet that has enough HP to even be with my time. They’re just not worth skill slots to me otherwise.

They might could be a little more often if we had good controls. If they were actually tough enough to tear things down even halfway as well as my preferred wells/BiP/epidemic combo running rampager?

I just don’t know. Anet seems terrified of letting pets be good lest they be too good and had locked itself into erring on the site of preferring them almost brokenly pointless instead.

Djinn.9245:

Ashen.2907:

Djinn.9245:

If the entire game is more and more restrictive

It is a good thing that the exact opposite is true then.

Here are my examples of systems in the game where choice has been reduced:

-Costumes reduced from individual pieces to entire outfits.

-NPE: low levels are shown less choice of things to do (gathering, Skill points, etc.)

-Traits

-Dailies: less open PvE choices per day

-Dailies: less choice of where you can go to complete your open PvE Dailies. PvP: less choice of what class you can use to complete certain dailies. Etc.

-Dailies: removed choice of using Dailies in Festival Completion

Now, you claim that there are actually more choices in the game. Please illustrate.

They can’t and that’s the thing. They keep telling us that this game is casual that it’s got lots of choices in it, it’s been the same old nonsense since the beginning of the game. Garrisons in WoW have more options than this title does, better rewards, and have more fun events happening than what this game does to defend or to go out and kill rares to get resources for the garrison or my favorite part, WoW actually has chests that have contents that MATTER when you find them! You can actually use what you find in these chests, not here nope.

And even with the restrictions placed on classes in WoW I’d argue that due to the costs of buying the enchants on this game with the currency exchange being the only go to place to get gold to get these items with an ever more expensive rise in cost over time, that WoW has more choices on their classes than this game does. Even the event system on the Islands were done better in MoP than this title.

Rose colored glasses though man, you know how it goes when they put those things on.

Guhracie.3419:

Behellagh.1468:

-Traits

I’ll grant you this but it seems to be an offshoot of removing respec costs/locations. You can now respec your traits for free out of combat. It also adds traits as another reward for completing existing content.

-Dailies: removed choice of using Dailies in Festival Completion

No idea what you are getting at here.

This is what I have a major issue with. Why does there need to be a penalty for being able to have free retraiting from anywhere? It’s like we’ve come to expect that everything good always has something that bites us. That may be true in the real world, but it kind of stinks that it’s also the case here.

The last thing is about how the winterfest dailies don’t count toward the wintersday meta achievement. In other holiday festivals, dailies count toward the meta. And the meta has absolutely no flexibility in it, either. There are 11 required achievements for it.

I certainly preferred meta achieves that allowed options.

And you’re right. There is no compelling programming reason why the free-anywhere trait respec was tied to the other trait changes. Both came in the same update, but one functionality does not rely on the other. Free retrait should not be put forward as a reason to swallow the new trait system.

The only defense I have seen for these changes is people used to do stuff that defenders of the change didn’t want to do and they like it now that those people are forced to do what the defenders want. Everything else is just word play and focusing on only one thing rather than the big picture that the OP brought up. Which is we have less choices and you will get less rewards for playing how you want today as compared to playing how you want when the game launched. No matter what anyone says, this is fact. Many of us are waiting for a good explanation why it has become this way.