Guild Wars 2

The system for attaining these is dumb. You have to sit around with a list buying things from the Trading Post, then go to a bunch of people who are each right next to waypoints or nearly so. It’s a badly designed fetch quest with almost zero gameplay because you aren’t even doing anything to get the items, you are just getting them from the TP. There is little to no chance that any player not using the wiki will EVER get one naturally in the course of play, due to how ludicrously specific the items the provisioners want are, and after all that, with the exception of a few items for collection and of course the gift for legendaries, there is almost nothing of value that they even give to players. The whole system needs to be redesigned or outright removed.

I wouldn’t call it “bad”. It’s essentially the equivalent of the T2 precursor crafting. The story element around it is that you’re donating a specific type of weapon to help the pact in Maguuma. It’s a bit of a “grind”, and the impact of what you’re doing is kind of meh, but that’s what it is.

Agreed. It’s a pointless timegate, and not fun.

To be fair it’s not that bad. It’s just not entertaining or engaging.

The same can be applied to the material collection for gifts though.

The system provides a sink for mats, adds profit to craftable recipes, provides a wealth-transfer mechanism, and also removes gold from the economy (due to those TP sales you’ve derided).

To be sure, the location- & time-gating makes it tedious and boring. That’s not the same as being “dumb”.

So what’s your fun, more interesting alternative that provides the same benefits?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

So what’s your fun, more interesting alternative that provides the same benefits?

Fun? Nothing, the whole idea is not really compatible with the idea. I could think of several things that would make it less annoying however.
(for example, use tradable craftable provisioner marks for everything, instead of different items for each vendor, and make a slot for those in the bank)

Probably designed by people who don’t even play the game.

Is it fun? No.

Is it hard? No.

Does it serve a purpose? Yes.

I had everything collected before Legendary armor was added except provisioner tokens. Took me 6 weeks to get the amount needed together for the full set. That’s just about as nasty of a wait as it can get.

That being said, all it takes is 3 things to manage this:

- gold for the items needed
- one or more characters you can leave at a spot which you log in 1nce per day to turn stuff in (3 characters works best, 1 for each map)
- patience

Manage those 3 points and provisioner tokens are half as bad.

Timegates are the way of line in GW2.

Though, I’ve only ever crafted the items to trade with the provisioner, so I skip the ‘have to sit around with a list buying things from the Trading Post’ part of the OP statement.

yes it is a bad system

I don’t mind the cost and i don’t mind the timegate

But the provisioner token system is just pure annoyance
zero skill needed, no real commitment needed just so incredibly annoying having to put a char aside with all his inventory slots permanently in use until you are done with this thing is just bad design tbh
And combine it with the unnecessary “Waypoint is contested and there is nothing you could do about it” its even more annoying

I understand that there need to be timegates
but they dont have to be so boring and annoying

Orangensaft.7139:

yes it is a bad system

I don’t mind the cost and i don’t mind the timegate

But the provisioner token system is just pure annoyance
zero skill needed, no real commitment needed just so incredibly annoying having to put a char aside with all his inventory slots permanently in use until you are done with this thing is just bad design tbh
And combine it with the unnecessary “Waypoint is contested and there is nothing you could do about it” its even more annoying

I understand that there need to be timegates
but they dont have to be so boring and annoying

First off, you can turn in 7 items daily for 7 provisioner tokens (excluding the 2-3 gold items) to merchants who are always available (4 in VB, 1 in AB and 2 in VB). Those are your baseline merchants. The rest are available after completing some events which makes sense to keep the maps active and give players more incentive to play the events. Something that will become important in the future of the game.

Second, the moment you make timegates more involving, a part of the playerbase will not complete them, thus adding to the difficulty of the timegate (look at the new backpack and the complaints about having to do heartquests). Also no matter how interesting or fun you make a timegate, by the time you’ve completed it more than 20 times it will always be boring.

As far as annoyance and difficulty factor, provisioner tokens are not the worst this game has timegate wise. They are just the most convoluted (having to read up or check spreadsheets or the wiki which merchants wants what items etc.) and least payed attention to until one needs them, and then one needs a ton of them at once.

Cyninja.2954:

Is it fun? No.

Is it hard? No.

Does it serve a purpose? Yes.

Is it annoying? Yes.

Could it have been made less annoying without losing the purpose? Yes.

So, basically, it’s been made unnecessarily annoying for no purpose whatsoever.

I developed an instinct since GW:Eye of the North and that was treating anything with a requirement of the number 250 as a red flag.