Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

I do care about which one I get and I know FOTM now has the highest general drop for them (not specific ones.. so then in a way it again becomes a gold grind.. grind FOTM for lodestones and sell the ones you don’t want to buy the ones you want) but then still it’s doing a lot of FOTM before you get what you need.

And it’s not like I don’t want to do a lot of work to get an item (that makes an item more special) that I need but as I said I don’t like grinding currency to get an item and you might see how needing 100 or 250 of a specific lodestones turns that lodestone also into a form of currency.

So when it comes to mats (where you need many of) it should be easier to farm them imho. Like what happened with some mats in the past and then Anet patched it out.

But farming a specific item (also if you need that 1 item to create something.. so like mats but then you only need 1) I don’t mind if it’s very hard and to get it. However when collecting a whole bunch of it.. being it gold or lodestone that is just not fun for me many many of the people complaining here.

If it’s one item every time you know that item may drop. So every time there is this feeling of “will it drop now?!”. You might be lucky and get it the first go or unlucky and need many more then runs that the average but every time there is that feeling.
Thats what makes it fun and epic when you get it.

When grinding gold or mats then when it finally drops or you get the gold there is only the feeling of “ok 99 more to go.. pfff” and when you then finally create the item you want it might be partly “epic” but also partly “nice to be done with that”.

LOL I forgot to mention my other goal of making the triforge pendant completely from materials I gathered. I have every part (including the stones) expect for the dust (the dust man that dust!). Lodestones wouldn’t be hard to gather from FOTM (just would take time). I think its other parts of it that would be worse to get. If you enjoy FOTM then its a good thing if you don’t well its a long term goal. So basically you don’t need all 250 lodestones tomorrow but can gather and collect them over a prolonged period of time.

Devata.6589:

ronpierce.2760:

The grind most people are upset about aren’t the visual grinds. I’m pretty sure you know that by now… In fact most of the “visual” grinds aren’t very bad at all. Dungeon sets, T3 cultural, etc all of these are fairly easy to grind out. But when you need 250 each of several t6 mats, this and that, AND your best route is to buy them, and it’s to progress VERTICALLY (not horizontally for looks) and in no realistic way could you do it without either buying gold or (less efficiently) farm the gold… That’s the problem. Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing. But these kind of farms to be competitive/on the same playing field as others, it starts to push the boundary of pay to win.

Why would it be worse for vertically then for horizontal? Like if a gold-grind suddenly becomes more fun when it’s horizontal.

The only reason YOU personally don’t mind that is because you don’t care about those items.

“Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing.”

So when complaining about your game-play please also don’t forget about others people game-play.

It’s just as bad horizontal as vertical it just depends on the persons game-play if it hurts him.

I agree the grinding is bad, really across the board. But it’s more acceptable to have longer term goals when they don’t hinder basic game play (ie making you less of a competitive player). But like I said, honestly most of the “purely visual” grinds in this game already aren’t that bad… It’s almost entirely Ascended armor/Legendary that takes grinding to a whole new level, which IS (I’m agreeing with you) waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long even for just visual grinds… But also, incredibly too long for the sake of a vertical progression specifically. I won’t take back that grinding for visuals taking a bit longer than vertical isn’t bad nor uncommon. That’s one of the many ways to increase the “value” of horizontal progression armor, by making it more exclusive/harder to get. But in the case of GW2, yes, it’s WAY too much. At this point, 1.5 years into the game, pretty much everyone should have been able to gotten a legendary weapon without ever spending a single dime or gold, just by playing the game. And in turn, new stuff should have come out, for more NEW things to grind for (albeit much much SMALLER grinds/farms/goals, what ever you want to call it). The time it takes to get ascended items and legendary items is beyond decent design, but I still firmly believe it is a money-grab.

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

Ok finally we agree it’s a grind.

Can you now imagine that some (more ‘RPG’) people like that sort of stuff? Collecting mini’s, going for a specific skin doing all that sort of stuff.

And didn’t Anet say GW2 was a good for casual gamers and is it so wrong to think that this is especially something the casual gamer do (collecting mini’s and so on)?

Can you then also see that for those people everything is a big boring grind?

I agree that we did know they had many mini’s in the game during the beta and I did say in the beta-forums that they should have less. Back then it was impossible to know they ONLY had the mini’s in the cash-shop. Also the fact that this was already the case during Beta does not make it any better. You only had access to the beta if you already both the game.

GW had set a big name for itself as a game that generated income with the selling expansions. GW2 was released as a B2P game. Yeah it did have a cash-shop. But at this moment GW2 is much more a micro-transaction based game then a B2P game because it focuses on the cash-shop to generate income. Not on box-sales (including expansions).

I was interested in GW2 mainly because of that B2P and the name they had with GW1. Because I know how micro-transaction based games always hurt the game. Isn’t it P2W then it are these sort of things but it always effects the game in some negative way. So I am very disappointed that GW2 also turned into a micro-transaction based game in stead of a true B2P game. It’s not B2P + micro-transactions where the focus is micro-transactions, not B2P.

Well there is a reason for this focus on the micro-transaction over boxed expansions. The main reasons given by Anet (they have been consistent since before beta about it as well) is that they do not want to fragment the community by releasing expansions. So to generate lost revenue from not selling those expansions (We shall see some major updates in the future I hope that expand the game world) they have to use the cash shop.

Unless you can think of a way for them to generate revenue without them selling boxed expansions and not using the cash shop this is how their business model is going to work.

Anet stated long ago that cosmetics will be a grind to get. What they defined as casuals are people who just log in to complete the daily or have 30mins to 1hr to play each day. With that definition in mind would that person care about digital pixels that they can only see 1hr at most each day (or less)?

That fragmentation would be true for the way GW1’s expansions work. For expansions like you can expect them in GW2 thats not so much true. Yes a new continent might not be accessible for a part of the community but thats all. They can still play the same game and can play together in most of the world, it are not separate games like GW1 expansions. That also why you never hear this complain by any other MMO developers.. I never did at least.

The type of fragmentation you would have is not more then what the overflow-system or WvW (in stead of open PvP) now creates.

What they said (or I hear them say) is that they would not make expansions the way they did in GW1 because there it fragmented the player-base. Before release however they did say they would for sure make expansions and everybody was expecting that until about 6 months after release they suddenly said that the game might never get an expansions.

Thats the actual story. They way you tell it is how many fanboys (not saying you are one.. maybe they told you) are now trying to defend the idea that GW2 might never get an expansion.

“Unless you can think of a way for them to generate revenue without them selling boxed expansions and not using the cash shop this is how their business model is going to work.”
I am saying they should sell expansion to generate the money.

“Anet stated long ago that cosmetics will be a grind to get.” No they never said “oow we have this great game without grind. Except for mini’s and skins and other fun things, that will be a boring grind”. No they never said anything close to that.

“What they defined as casuals are people who just log in to complete the daily or have 30mins to 1hr to play each day.” A casual gamer might indeed play less hours but at the same time he might also do other things ingame. The the one does not excludes the other. Funny enough, if time ingame was the only reason then they still failed with the temporary available rewards and achievements.

“With that definition in mind would that person care about digital pixels that they can only see 1hr at most each day (or less)?” Why not? If thats what they like. Isn’t one of the main goals here nice looking pixels (the legendary weapon)? What in my opinion proofs they did also refer to people who like that sort of stuff as casual players.

Galtrix.7369:

Suddenflame.2601:

To everyone complaining about Random Number Generator (RNG) and grind in Guild Wars 2 (GW2): You guys need to play more Massively Multiplayer Online Roly Playing Games (MMORPG). Lets take a Free-to-Play (FTP) game such as Forsaken World (FW) for instance. To get any where in the game you need certain items to progress. The RNG in that game is so bad that many people use the in-game botting system to farm the items that they need. Basically meaning your character needs to be logged in for days on end (24/7) just to get items that you need.

World of Warcraft (WoW) a subscription based MMORPG that makes you spend weeks to months performing raids to get best-in-slot gear. This is repeated often for new best-in-slot gear is added often. During these raids it is not guaranteed that you will get the piece you need. Some raids you can only perform once a week making you wait for another chance (hence chance) at getting the piece you need. To get other items in the game you need to compete with other players (as drops are not shared between the players) to grind to get items since drop rates are low to force you to grind.

Perfect World (PW) is similar to FW (made by the same company) but has even worse grind and drop rates to the point you have to kill monsters for hours or even days just to get items for a single quest. You basically sit there for hours killing a specific mob in a specific area for hours to months (depends on how lucky you are) just hoping you will get that one item.

In GW2, precursors are pretty common as evidence by the number of people with legendaries in LA. Also, money is easy to obtain in GW2 where as in WoW, FW, and PW money takes forever to obtain. WoW, FW, and PW require you to grind for long periods of time inorder to obtain enough money to buy anything useful.

So if you want to complain go ahead, but I suggest you play Forsaken World and Perfect World first and make the comparison. By saying GW2 is grindy or has terrible RNG makes most MMOs look like bloody nightmare. By saying GW2 is grindy or has terrible RNG you are making a comparison of a form. If you want to say GW2 is grindy which MMORPG has less grind? Which MMORPG has better RNG?

WoW, FW, and PW are worse on these two points so if your making a comparison with these games you are insane! Just for your information I have never gotten a precursor in 1500+ hours of playing Guild Wars 2.

No. No. Just no. A thousand no’s. I’ve played WoW. I’ve played Forsaken World. I’ve played Perfect World. I’ve played the grindiest of the grindiest games. I’ve practically played almost every MMO out there except for some of the lesser-known Chinese farming games.

Let me tell you right now, Guild Wars 2 has THE absolute worst RNG in any MMORPG EVER. Guild Wars 2 is not as grindy as most MMO’s, but the RNG in GW2 is unbelievably terrible. I would rather have Wow’s RNG system. I would rather have Perfect World’s RNG system (even though it is pretty bad, GW2’s is still worse).

Over 90% of my life has been dealing with MMORPG’s and games in general. You cannot convince me that Guild Wars 2 actually has decent RNG.

Ok really you played FW and claiming its better? Have you even tried in FW to gather some materials to make high grade potions and armour? Like really? The drop rate on one of the items to make accessories is even lower than Teq ascended weapon drop. On top of that there is RNG on your crafting! So you need to make over 1000 items (which requires 3 of that one item so you need 3000 of them) just to make an item worth selling or using. Like dude you did not even look at the RNG in FW did you? There is RNG every where in that game. You apparently did 0 crafting in FW which means you hardly even made it past noob stage. PW is even worse than FW on every point.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

85 WvW ranks and the results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ova0HffwPeU

I’m not sure, does anyone think this is fun? Sure, handing out free rares and exotics isn’t fun either, but when I’m looking at those guaranteed rares for world boss metas…

Even guaranteed rares seem dull to me. I rather have a change for a item that I want then guaranteed a rare I don’t want. Because what then happens is that you sell that rare to then buy the item you want making those bosses nothing more then yet another gold-grind.

Never the tension feeling of “will it drop??” and the epic feeling of “Yes it dropped!!”.

Suddenflame.2601:

ronpierce.2760:

Just because some games have even worse designers doesn’t make the rng and grind in gw2 acceptable…. It just means it’s not the worst contender. Also GW2 is aimed for a us/eu audience, the audiences who least enjoy long terrible grinds.

Name one MMORPG that has better RNG and grind?

Guild Wars 1.

I’m just going to say this. I think it’s too late for this game to become a good “game” as far as collecting and crafting by playing the GAME (not the market). They make too much money from it, they won’t risk hurting the community’s precious economy, and they release big-change patches so rarely… I hate to say it, but honestly, I feel like the game has a foot in the grave and is stepping on a rock with the other.

Devata.6589:

That fragmentation would be true for the way GW1’s expansions work. For expansions like you can expect them in GW2 thats not so much true. Yes a new continent might not be accessible for a part of the community but thats all. They can still play the same game and can play together in most of the world, it are not separate games like GW1 expansions. That also why you never hear this complain by any other MMO developers.. I never did at least.

The type of fragmentation you would have is not more then what the overflow-system or WvW (in stead of open PvP) now creates.

What they said (or I hear them say) is that they would not make expansions the way they did in GW1 because there it fragmented the player-base. Before release however they did say they would for sure make expansions and everybody was expecting that until about 6 months after release they suddenly said that the game might never get an expansions.

Thats the actual story. They way you tell it is how many fanboys (not saying you are one.. maybe they told you) are now trying to defend the idea that GW2 might never get an expansion.

“Unless you can think of a way for them to generate revenue without them selling boxed expansions and not using the cash shop this is how their business model is going to work.”
I am saying they should sell expansion to generate the money.

“Anet stated long ago that cosmetics will be a grind to get.” No they never said “oow we have this great game without grind. Except for mini’s and skins and other fun things, that will be a boring grind”. No they never said anything close to that.

“What they defined as casuals are people who just log in to complete the daily or have 30mins to 1hr to play each day.” A casual gamer might indeed play less hours but at the same time he might also do other things ingame. The the one does not excludes the other. Funny enough, if time ingame was the only reason then they still failed with the temporary available rewards and achievements.

“With that definition in mind would that person care about digital pixels that they can only see 1hr at most each day (or less)?” Why not? If thats what they like. Isn’t one of the main goals here nice looking pixels (the legendary weapon)? What in my opinion proofs they did also refer to people who like that sort of stuff as casual players.

Actually Colin in one of his forum posts back in the beta forums (I remember clearly reading it) where he said they don’t want grinding for vertical progression but don’t mind grind for cosmetic items. If i can find that post I will link it.

Expansions have been in limbo from the beginning as I keep reading different views of different Anet employees on the same subject (which is probably why they stopped posting as much).

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

Thank you…..

ronpierce.2760:

Devata.6589:

ronpierce.2760:

The grind most people are upset about aren’t the visual grinds. I’m pretty sure you know that by now… In fact most of the “visual” grinds aren’t very bad at all. Dungeon sets, T3 cultural, etc all of these are fairly easy to grind out. But when you need 250 each of several t6 mats, this and that, AND your best route is to buy them, and it’s to progress VERTICALLY (not horizontally for looks) and in no realistic way could you do it without either buying gold or (less efficiently) farm the gold… That’s the problem. Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing. But these kind of farms to be competitive/on the same playing field as others, it starts to push the boundary of pay to win.

Why would it be worse for vertically then for horizontal? Like if a gold-grind suddenly becomes more fun when it’s horizontal.

The only reason YOU personally don’t mind that is because you don’t care about those items.

“Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing.”

So when complaining about your game-play please also don’t forget about others people game-play.

It’s just as bad horizontal as vertical it just depends on the persons game-play if it hurts him.

I agree the grinding is bad, really across the board. But it’s more acceptable to have longer term goals when they don’t hinder basic game play (ie making you less of a competitive player). But like I said, honestly most of the “purely visual” grinds in this game already aren’t that bad… It’s almost entirely Ascended armor/Legendary that takes grinding to a whole new level, which IS (I’m agreeing with you) waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long even for just visual grinds… But also, incredibly too long for the sake of a vertical progression specifically. I won’t take back that grinding for visuals taking a bit longer than vertical isn’t bad nor uncommon. That’s one of the many ways to increase the “value” of horizontal progression armor, by making it more exclusive/harder to get. But in the case of GW2, yes, it’s WAY too much. At this point, 1.5 years into the game, pretty much everyone should have been able to gotten a legendary weapon without ever spending a single dime or gold, just by playing the game. And in turn, new stuff should have come out, for more NEW things to grind for (albeit much much SMALLER grinds/farms/goals, what ever you want to call it). The time it takes to get ascended items and legendary items is beyond decent design, but I still firmly believe it is a money-grab.

Nice that we seem to agree on the most part but you say “But it’s more acceptable to have longer term goals when they don’t hinder basic game play” you really have to rethink that.

It hinders basic game-play when you are into the combat. But some people are into collecting those skins or mini’s that is there game-play. So as much as the vertical stuff hinders your game-play that horizontal grind hinders others peoples game-play.

“But like I said, honestly most of the “purely visual” grinds in this game already aren’t that bad…" With this one you are referring to dungeon sets and so I guess. And thats true those aren’t that bad. At the same time I also don’t think they are fun. Doing dungeons to get tokens to buy it is not my type of game-play but indeed they are not that hard. 20 runs or so to get a complete set? Thats an acceptable farm.

However think of the mini examples I gave Suddenflame. If you like to go in to the world to collect mini’s thats not really possible (they are not in the world) and as far as you can get them it’s an never ending gold grind. Some others are in temporary achievements what does not make it any better, that makes it “get it now or never get it.. and there go’s your collection” same for some of them in the cash-shop and then 2 weeks later again, and then again and again and… well you get the point.

“but I still firmly believe it is a money-grab.”
Yes, that is where my dislike for the cash-shop focus comes from.

Oh, I was referring to dungeon armors, stuff with basic farms. Stuff like minis and rare exotics like Anomaly, Essence of Foefire etc, these are all absolutely ridiculous.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

So killing Mob X over and over is still RNG and no different from GW2 as the killing does not gurantee that desired result. Same with Dungeon Y. Both have RNG. So whats your point in stating it has the exact same type of RNG as GW2? There is no way to guarantee a drop from what you just said about WoW either since its still under RNG. Precursors as stated above are not set into a location due to their availability to everyone (expect PVP). Only difference between GW2 RNG and WoW RNG that you stated so far is WoW has rare items set to locations where as GW2 does not.

This means there is higher access to this object than in WoW. Since there is higher access to it they countered it by placing it under a lower value to keep its economic value higher. If it was guaranteed the weapon essentially would be worthless and common which in turn makes legendaries lower in value in comparison to other exotics that are harder to acquire.

Devata.6589:

ronpierce.2760:

Devata.6589:

ronpierce.2760:

The grind most people are upset about aren’t the visual grinds. I’m pretty sure you know that by now… In fact most of the “visual” grinds aren’t very bad at all. Dungeon sets, T3 cultural, etc all of these are fairly easy to grind out. But when you need 250 each of several t6 mats, this and that, AND your best route is to buy them, and it’s to progress VERTICALLY (not horizontally for looks) and in no realistic way could you do it without either buying gold or (less efficiently) farm the gold… That’s the problem. Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing. But these kind of farms to be competitive/on the same playing field as others, it starts to push the boundary of pay to win.

Why would it be worse for vertically then for horizontal? Like if a gold-grind suddenly becomes more fun when it’s horizontal.

The only reason YOU personally don’t mind that is because you don’t care about those items.

“Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing.”

So when complaining about your game-play please also don’t forget about others people game-play.

It’s just as bad horizontal as vertical it just depends on the persons game-play if it hurts him.

I agree the grinding is bad, really across the board. But it’s more acceptable to have longer term goals when they don’t hinder basic game play (ie making you less of a competitive player). But like I said, honestly most of the “purely visual” grinds in this game already aren’t that bad… It’s almost entirely Ascended armor/Legendary that takes grinding to a whole new level, which IS (I’m agreeing with you) waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long even for just visual grinds… But also, incredibly too long for the sake of a vertical progression specifically. I won’t take back that grinding for visuals taking a bit longer than vertical isn’t bad nor uncommon. That’s one of the many ways to increase the “value” of horizontal progression armor, by making it more exclusive/harder to get. But in the case of GW2, yes, it’s WAY too much. At this point, 1.5 years into the game, pretty much everyone should have been able to gotten a legendary weapon without ever spending a single dime or gold, just by playing the game. And in turn, new stuff should have come out, for more NEW things to grind for (albeit much much SMALLER grinds/farms/goals, what ever you want to call it). The time it takes to get ascended items and legendary items is beyond decent design, but I still firmly believe it is a money-grab.

Nice that we seem to agree on the most part but you say “But it’s more acceptable to have longer term goals when they don’t hinder basic game play” you really have to rethink that.

It hinders basic game-play when you are into the combat. But some people are into collecting those skins or mini’s that is there game-play. So as much as the vertical stuff hinders your game-play that horizontal grind hinders others peoples game-play.

“But like I said, honestly most of the “purely visual” grinds in this game already aren’t that bad…" With this one you are referring to dungeon sets and so I guess. And thats true those aren’t that bad. At the same time I also don’t think they are fun. Doing dungeons to get tokens to buy it is not my type of game-play but indeed they are not that hard. 20 runs or so to get a complete set? Thats en perceptible farm.

However think of the mini examples I gave Suddenflame. If you like to go in to the world to collect mini’s thats not really possible (they are not in the world) and as far as you get get them it’s an never ending gold grind. Some others are in temporary achievements what does not make it any better, that makes it “get it now or never get it.. and there go’s your collection” same for some of them in the cash-shop and then 2 weeks later again, and then again and again and… well you get the point.

“but I still firmly believe it is a money-grab.”
Yes, all that is thats where my dislike for the cash-shop focus comes from.

Just to point out there are minis that exist in the world and only in the world.

Suddenflame.2601:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

So killing Mob X over and over is still RNG and no different from GW2 as the killing does not gurantee that desired result. Same with Dungeon Y. Both have RNG. So whats your point in stating it has the exact same type of RNG as GW2? There is no way to guarantee a drop from what you just said about WoW either since its still under RNG. Precursors as stated above are not set into a location due to their availability to everyone (expect PVP). Only difference between GW2 RNG and WoW RNG that you stated so far is WoW has rare items set to locations where as GW2 does not.

This means there is higher access to this object than in WoW. Since there is higher access to it they countered it by placing it under a lower value to keep its economic value higher. If it was guaranteed the weapon essentially would be worthless and common which in turn makes legendaries lower in value in comparison to other exotics that are harder to acquire.

Your response indicates that either you did not or cannot comprehend what I wrote, or that you have no experience with WoW, at all. You dare claim that resources are more accessible in this game than in that one? Very funny.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Suddenflame.2601:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

So killing Mob X over and over is still RNG and no different from GW2 as the killing does not gurantee that desired result. Same with Dungeon Y. Both have RNG. So whats your point in stating it has the exact same type of RNG as GW2? There is no way to guarantee a drop from what you just said about WoW either since its still under RNG. Precursors as stated above are not set into a location due to their availability to everyone (expect PVP). Only difference between GW2 RNG and WoW RNG that you stated so far is WoW has rare items set to locations where as GW2 does not.

This means there is higher access to this object than in WoW. Since there is higher access to it they countered it by placing it under a lower value to keep its economic value higher. If it was guaranteed the weapon essentially would be worthless and common which in turn makes legendaries lower in value in comparison to other exotics that are harder to acquire.

Your response indicates that either you did not or cannot comprehend what I wrote, or that you no experience with WoW, at all, which why you dare claim that resources are more accessible in this game than in that one. Very funny.

Do you know what accessibility is? In WoW it is true that certain armour and weapons exist in certain locations. Which means it has low accessibility. Since there is only one way to get that gear. Higher accessibility means there are more ways to get that gear. GW2 dungeon armour has low accessibility. Precursors in GW2 have a high accessibility but extremely low availability due to their drop rates being low but can be found in all parts of the game.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Suddenflame.2601:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

So killing Mob X over and over is still RNG and no different from GW2 as the killing does not gurantee that desired result. Same with Dungeon Y. Both have RNG. So whats your point in stating it has the exact same type of RNG as GW2? There is no way to guarantee a drop from what you just said about WoW either since its still under RNG. Precursors as stated above are not set into a location due to their availability to everyone (expect PVP). Only difference between GW2 RNG and WoW RNG that you stated so far is WoW has rare items set to locations where as GW2 does not.

This means there is higher access to this object than in WoW. Since there is higher access to it they countered it by placing it under a lower value to keep its economic value higher. If it was guaranteed the weapon essentially would be worthless and common which in turn makes legendaries lower in value in comparison to other exotics that are harder to acquire.

Your response indicates that either you did not or cannot comprehend what I wrote, or that you have no experience with WoW, at all. You dare claim that resources are more accessible in this game than in that one? Very funny.

Par for the course. Most of the defenders have warped or flat out wrong ideas about WoW or just draw on their experiences from 5 years ago.

Suddenflame.2601:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

So killing Mob X over and over is still RNG and no different from GW2 as the killing does not gurantee that desired result. Same with Dungeon Y. Both have RNG. So whats your point in stating it has the exact same type of RNG as GW2? There is no way to guarantee a drop from what you just said about WoW either since its still under RNG. Precursors as stated above are not set into a location due to their availability to everyone (expect PVP). Only difference between GW2 RNG and WoW RNG that you stated so far is WoW has rare items set to locations where as GW2 does not.

This means there is higher access to this object than in WoW. Since there is higher access to it they countered it by placing it under a lower value to keep its economic value higher. If it was guaranteed the weapon essentially would be worthless and common which in turn makes legendaries lower in value in comparison to other exotics that are harder to acquire.

That does not mean a higher access. That all depends on the drop-rate.

But indeed the big difference is that it’s available in a specific spot vs a more general drop. In GW2 it’s not in a specific spot so you can’t hunt for a specific item, resulting in that to get the item it’s all a gold grind.

Thats indeed the exactly problem I am trying to tell you.

Now you seem to see the difference but fail to see why this makes it a problem. And thats of course for the items ingame. Items out of the world (mini in the cash-shop) can’t drop at all. But in the end that does not change much because it still comes down to a gold-grind to get what you want.

Like I said before. When you are hunting down an item (in one spot) it’s aways that feeling of “will is drop?” and then if it drops they epic feeling that it dropped.

While with a gold-grind it’s just that a gold-grind seeing your gold (or other currency) slowly go up to eventually being able to buy the item. No so much fun.

Suddenflame.2601:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Suddenflame.2601:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

So killing Mob X over and over is still RNG and no different from GW2 as the killing does not gurantee that desired result. Same with Dungeon Y. Both have RNG. So whats your point in stating it has the exact same type of RNG as GW2? There is no way to guarantee a drop from what you just said about WoW either since its still under RNG. Precursors as stated above are not set into a location due to their availability to everyone (expect PVP). Only difference between GW2 RNG and WoW RNG that you stated so far is WoW has rare items set to locations where as GW2 does not.

This means there is higher access to this object than in WoW. Since there is higher access to it they countered it by placing it under a lower value to keep its economic value higher. If it was guaranteed the weapon essentially would be worthless and common which in turn makes legendaries lower in value in comparison to other exotics that are harder to acquire.

Your response indicates that either you did not or cannot comprehend what I wrote, or that you no experience with WoW, at all, which why you dare claim that resources are more accessible in this game than in that one. Very funny.

Do you know what accessibility is? In WoW it is true that certain armour and weapons exist in certain locations. Which means it has low accessibility. Since there is only one way to get that gear. Higher accessibility means there are more ways to get that gear. GW2 dungeon armour has low accessibility. Precursors in GW2 have a high accessibility but extremely low availability due to their drop rates being low but can be found in all parts of the game.

If you want something you can farm it in WoW. Farming in Guild Wars 2 is a joke. Want me to prove point? Fine, go farm Linen Cloth on your 80. Jenga.

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

ronpierce.2760:

Devata.6589:

ronpierce.2760:

~

Why would it be worse for vertically then for horizontal? Like if a gold-grind suddenly becomes more fun when it’s horizontal.

The only reason YOU personally don’t mind that is because you don’t care about those items.

“Grinding for ever for visuals, be my guest. For the most part I’d probably skip out on it, but I wouldn’t mind it existing.”

So when complaining about your game-play please also don’t forget about others people game-play.

It’s just as bad horizontal as vertical it just depends on the persons game-play if it hurts him.

I agree the grinding is bad, really across the board. But it’s more acceptable to have longer term goals when they don’t hinder basic game play (ie making you less of a competitive player). But like I said, honestly most of the “purely visual” grinds in this game already aren’t that bad… It’s almost entirely Ascended armor/Legendary that takes grinding to a whole new level, which IS (I’m agreeing with you) waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long even for just visual grinds… But also, incredibly too long for the sake of a vertical progression specifically. I won’t take back that grinding for visuals taking a bit longer than vertical isn’t bad nor uncommon. That’s one of the many ways to increase the “value” of horizontal progression armor, by making it more exclusive/harder to get. But in the case of GW2, yes, it’s WAY too much. At this point, 1.5 years into the game, pretty much everyone should have been able to gotten a legendary weapon without ever spending a single dime or gold, just by playing the game. And in turn, new stuff should have come out, for more NEW things to grind for (albeit much much SMALLER grinds/farms/goals, what ever you want to call it). The time it takes to get ascended items and legendary items is beyond decent design, but I still firmly believe it is a money-grab.

Nice that we seem to agree on the most part but you say “But it’s more acceptable to have longer term goals when they don’t hinder basic game play” you really have to rethink that.

It hinders basic game-play when you are into the combat. But some people are into collecting those skins or mini’s that is there game-play. So as much as the vertical stuff hinders your game-play that horizontal grind hinders others peoples game-play.

“But like I said, honestly most of the “purely visual” grinds in this game already aren’t that bad…" With this one you are referring to dungeon sets and so I guess. And thats true those aren’t that bad. At the same time I also don’t think they are fun. Doing dungeons to get tokens to buy it is not my type of game-play but indeed they are not that hard. 20 runs or so to get a complete set? Thats en perceptible farm.

However think of the mini examples I gave Suddenflame. If you like to go in to the world to collect mini’s thats not really possible (they are not in the world) and as far as you get get them it’s an never ending gold grind. Some others are in temporary achievements what does not make it any better, that makes it “get it now or never get it.. and there go’s your collection” same for some of them in the cash-shop and then 2 weeks later again, and then again and again and… well you get the point.

“but I still firmly believe it is a money-grab.”
Yes, all that is thats where my dislike for the cash-shop focus comes from.

Just to point out there are minis that exist in the world and only in the world.

I know I referred to them before. There are the mini’s you can get with grinding temporary achievements. Not really in the world but half you could say. Wasn’t it for the fact that it are temporary achievements then those where fine. Making it temporary and so a grind makes them just as bad not to say even worse because of the time-pressure.

And there are now about 4 ingame. Tequatl, The new worm world boss, a dungeon and I think one can drop in Southsun (not 100% sure).

The bosses have there own problem (spawning once in every two hours and being to much depended on just random people there doing the same event) but lets for a moment act like they solve that problem.

Then there are about four really mini’s ingame. However the whole collecting of mini’s has already been destroyed. No way you can still get a full or almost full collection because you likely missed out on some (the temporary ones, being it in the cash-shop or in achievements) and even if you didn’t miss any so far except for those 4 the rest are a grind.

So sadly those 4 aren’t fun anymore because Anet sucked the fun out of collecting mini’s.

If it was the other way around (4 out of the game the rest in-game) I would have been fine with it.

Suddenflame.2601:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Suddenflame.2601:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well congratulations on starting an opinion based topic that anyone who’s played the game can easily see as ridiculous. MMOs are largely about the loot. You’ve asked a few times when trying to make you opinion sound like fact for someone to name a game that has less grind and better RNG than GW2, so I’ll answer…. World of Warcraft. I left WoW 3 years ago but I played it non stop from beta until I left. If you want something in WoW you can get it by killing mob X or by running dungeon Y until you get it, this goes for anything you want. In GW2 let’s say I try to farm lodestones, I may get 1 or 10 or none since its RNG, and until DR kicks in even though I may not have had even ONE drop. And there is no way to guarantee a precursor drop, I’ve never had one in all of my time in game, and I’ve played hard since beta.

So killing Mob X over and over is still RNG and no different from GW2 as the killing does not gurantee that desired result. Same with Dungeon Y. Both have RNG. So whats your point in stating it has the exact same type of RNG as GW2? There is no way to guarantee a drop from what you just said about WoW either since its still under RNG. Precursors as stated above are not set into a location due to their availability to everyone (expect PVP). Only difference between GW2 RNG and WoW RNG that you stated so far is WoW has rare items set to locations where as GW2 does not.

This means there is higher access to this object than in WoW. Since there is higher access to it they countered it by placing it under a lower value to keep its economic value higher. If it was guaranteed the weapon essentially would be worthless and common which in turn makes legendaries lower in value in comparison to other exotics that are harder to acquire.

Your response indicates that either you did not or cannot comprehend what I wrote, or that you no experience with WoW, at all, which why you dare claim that resources are more accessible in this game than in that one. Very funny.

Do you know what accessibility is? In WoW it is true that certain armour and weapons exist in certain locations. Which means it has low accessibility. Since there is only one way to get that gear. Higher accessibility means there are more ways to get that gear. GW2 dungeon armour has low accessibility. Precursors in GW2 have a high accessibility but extremely low availability due to their drop rates being low but can be found in all parts of the game.

No, the fact that it drops at many places does not make it more accessible. The opposite if it drops in one place (a little more) it’s more accessible for the person interested in that item then a very general drop anywhere.

And for as far as items are not account-bound the grind for gold option is always available in an MMO but in GW2 it’s to often the only way to really get it / work towards getting it.

Devata.6589:

I know I referred to them before. There are the mini’s you can get with grinding temporary achievements. Not really in the world but half you could say. Wasn’t it for the fact that it are temporary achievements then those where fine. Making it temporary and so a grind makes them just as bad not to say even worse because of the time-pressure.

And there are now about 4 ingame. Tequatl, The new worm world boss, a dungeon and I think one can drop in Southsun (not 100% sure).

The bosses have there own problem (spawning once in every two hours and being to much depended on just random people there doing the same event) but lets for a moment act like they solve that problem.

Then there are about four really mini’s ingame. However the whole collecting of mini’s has already been destroyed. No way you can still get a full or almost full collection because you likely missed out on some (the temporary ones, being it in the cash-shop or in achievements) and even if you didn’t miss any so far except for those 4 the rest are a grind.

So sadly those 4 aren’t fun anymore because Anet sucked the fun out of collecting mini’s.

If it was the other way around (4 out of the game the rest in-game) I would have been fine with it.

several in southsun i think 3. So you have 6 out of it. Anet needs to make money some how as a large portion of the money goes to NCsoft. Your concerned over minis but you should be happy that they actually put in minis that you can find cause since launch they were gem store exclusive.

Suddenflame.2601:

NewTrain.7549:

I love the logic in this thread.

If A isn’t as bad as B, then A must be good.

Let’s apply that to history and see if it works, shall we?

The Bosnian genocide wasn’t as bad as the Rwandan genocide, therefore the Bosnian genocide must be a good thing.

Good logic, eh?

I think you missed the point at no point did I say GW2 is good or perfect. In my original post I said basically stated that the grind is not that horrible as everyone here is making it sound.

No, you missed the point.

Just because A isn’t as bad as B, doesn’t mean A is good or necessary or should be condoned through silence.

NewTrain.7549:

Suddenflame.2601:

NewTrain.7549:

I love the logic in this thread.

If A isn’t as bad as B, then A must be good.

Let’s apply that to history and see if it works, shall we?

The Bosnian genocide wasn’t as bad as the Rwandan genocide, therefore the Bosnian genocide must be a good thing.

Good logic, eh?

I think you missed the point at no point did I say GW2 is good or perfect. In my original post I said basically stated that the grind is not that horrible as everyone here is making it sound.

No, you missed the point.

Just because A isn’t as bad as B, doesn’t mean A is good or necessary or should be condoned through silence.

Your really still missing the point. If i wanted silence of it I would have made a forum called “Shut up about RNG and grinding already”. I also did not say GW2 was good either. RNG and Grind however based on how the economy works is necessary to ensure a healthier economy. I am not going to repeat myself again here so just read the posts where I explained economics.

That doesn’t solve the issue. One of my questions of name one mmorpg that has better RNG and grind is not meant to be a one word answer. You must explain why you think that way as it leads to a healthier discussion.

Suddenflame.2601:

NewTrain.7549:

Suddenflame.2601:

NewTrain.7549:

I love the logic in this thread.

If A isn’t as bad as B, then A must be good.

Let’s apply that to history and see if it works, shall we?

The Bosnian genocide wasn’t as bad as the Rwandan genocide, therefore the Bosnian genocide must be a good thing.

Good logic, eh?

I think you missed the point at no point did I say GW2 is good or perfect. In my original post I said basically stated that the grind is not that horrible as everyone here is making it sound.

No, you missed the point.

Just because A isn’t as bad as B, doesn’t mean A is good or necessary or should be condoned through silence.

Your really still missing the point. If i wanted silence of it I would have made a forum called “Shut up about RNG and grinding already”. I also did not say GW2 was good either. RNG and Grind however based on how the economy works is necessary to ensure a healthier economy. I am not going to repeat myself again here so just read the posts where I explained economics.

That doesn’t solve the issue. One of my questions of name one mmorpg that has better RNG and grind is not meant to be a one word answer. You must explain why you think that way as it leads to a healthier discussion.

I want you to go read your OP and see if what you just wrote is at odds with it. I think you don’t even know what point you’re trying to make.

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

I know I referred to them before. There are the mini’s you can get with grinding temporary achievements. Not really in the world but half you could say. Wasn’t it for the fact that it are temporary achievements then those where fine. Making it temporary and so a grind makes them just as bad not to say even worse because of the time-pressure.

And there are now about 4 ingame. Tequatl, The new worm world boss, a dungeon and I think one can drop in Southsun (not 100% sure).

The bosses have there own problem (spawning once in every two hours and being to much depended on just random people there doing the same event) but lets for a moment act like they solve that problem.

Then there are about four really mini’s ingame. However the whole collecting of mini’s has already been destroyed. No way you can still get a full or almost full collection because you likely missed out on some (the temporary ones, being it in the cash-shop or in achievements) and even if you didn’t miss any so far except for those 4 the rest are a grind.

So sadly those 4 aren’t fun anymore because Anet sucked the fun out of collecting mini’s.

If it was the other way around (4 out of the game the rest in-game) I would have been fine with it.

several in southsun i think 3. So you have 6 out of it. Anet needs to make money some how as a large portion of the money goes to NCsoft. Your concerned over minis but you should be happy that they actually put in minis that you can find cause since launch they were gem store exclusive.

They have to make money indeed and I did gave an option for that expansions. Then I am also willing to pay. Not gonna spend a dime on the cash-shop that only has been sucking the fun out of this game.

I also told you they they also destroyed the fun in collecting minis so why should I be happy for those 6 (if you are correct.. I think a few where only during the LS there)? It does not make it any better. I haven’t been trying to get them because it’s not fun collecting mini’s anyway. Those 4 or 6 don’t make it any better, full collection still is a big grind. kitten even if they added another 100 to the game it would not make it better. Only way to make it better is to take all those that have been in temporary achievements, and the ones that had been and are in the gem-store and put those in the world (in specific places).

Only then it makes collecting the mini’s fun again and only then I am happy.

Yes they are indeed now not able to do that because they focus on the cash-shop to generate income. Thats why I made a topic about that: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-focus-on-micro-transactions/page/3#post3593248

I am very much aware of the root cause of the problem. So they need to change that before they are even able to solve the problem. The only good option I see is focusing there income on expansions.

Only then are they also able to throw all those mini’s in the game (in specific places!). And not only mini’s but also the skins and making dyes account-bound and putting the colors in the game so you can hunt for that and same for the finishers and so on.

@Suddenflame
Anyway you already agreed that indeed it is a heavy grind and thats what this topic was about was it not?

The reason for it (cash-shop / monetizing) and that maybe not all elements of the game are as grindy does not really matter for this topic.

There is many grind, you agree but don’t have the problem so much for the type of game-play you like.

The RNG and grind in GW2 is mind-numbing. NCSoft and Anet are obsessed with squeezing as much money out of the playerbase as possible in the shortest amount of time. The end result is a game that comes across as kitten in the “finished product” department, and a loot system and economy built soley on the push to get players to open their wallets. For the majority who fall on the “lose” side of the kitten RNG, everything is a grind. Want T6 mats? Grind gold to buy them. Want a special skin? Grind gold to buy it. Want a mini? Grind gold to buy it.
The entire game is focused on forcing people to grind for gold, and it is deliberately designed that way. They are creating a high pressure environment where the only thing that matters is gold, because psychologically it has been proven to bring in more real cash.
You know why we don’t have a large number of emotes/animations? Because they were seen as superfelous to the end goal of making money. They were additional development work that was seen as “no cash flow”. Same applies for fixing a number of QoL issues. The Monetization Lords see it as a waste of time because players aren’t leaving the game over it and it doesn’t bring in more money.
By design everything is forced into being an issue of gold. Diminishing Returns is not about bots, it never has been. It’s about limiting loot drops so that players need more gold to buy the items they want, because needing more gold is another pressure to open the wallet and just buy gold.
Then there’s the “urgency” pressure. They introduce gem and gold valued items that are only a round for a short period of time. “buy now, or miss out!”. People feel pressure to open their wallet to get that item they want. RNG plays a massive part in this. “Buy black lion keys with gems and you could get a Black Lion Claim Ticket!”. Anet is actively, and knowingly, feeding off of people who have money and don’t know they have a gambling addiction. It’s worse than gambling, in fact, because all the items are virtual and have no real value. So people are not even gambling real money to get a possible cash prize.
Every aspect of it works together to apply as much pressure as possible on the players to pay real money.

Yes, Anet needs to make money to stay in business. What they are doing however is abuse. It needs to stop.

Devata.6589:

They have to make money indeed and I did gave an option for that expansions. Then I am also willing to pay. Not gonna spend a dime on the cash-shop that only has been sucking the fun out of this game.

I also told you they they also destroyed the fun in collecting minis so why should I be happy for those 6 (if you are correct.. I think a few where only during the LS there)? It does not make it any better. I haven’t been trying to get them because it’s not fun collecting mini’s anyway. Those 4 or 6 don’t make it any better, full collection still is a big grind. kitten even if they added another 100 to the game it would not make it better. Only way to make it better is to take all those that have been in temporary achievements, and the ones that had been and are in the gem-store and put those in the world (in specific places).

Only then it makes collecting the mini’s fun again and only then I am happy.

Yes they are indeed now not able to do that because they focus on the cash-shop to generate income. Thats why I made a topic about that: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-focus-on-micro-transactions/page/3#post3593248

I am very much aware of the root cause of the problem. So they need to change that before they are even able to solve the problem. The only good option I see is focusing there income on expansions.

Only then are they also able to throw all those mini’s in the game (in specific places!). And not only mini’s but also the skins and making dyes account-bound and putting the colors in the game so you can hunt for that and same for the finishers and so on.

I can’t think of any type of expansion that wouldn’t fragment the community which is what they are against and have been for a long time. Living Story exists as a compromise as they want everyone to play with their friends anywhere (as long as they are at appropriate level). Plus the minis were known since beta that they were going to be in the gem store along with some of the fancier armour sets.

Like i said before if you can find a way to generate revenue that does not involve fragmenting the community and does not need the gem store I bet Anet would be glad to hear you out. So far you been focusing on the demand for an expansion.

As well only cosmetic and utility items exist in the gem store. It does not force people to use it once you desire an item from it. This is no different from any other video game that contains microtransactions. Unlike other games however GW2 allows you to use in-game gold conversion to get those items as well. Its your choice on how you want to go about getting those cosmetic/utility items. You can also get most of those items including minis by using Black Lion Chests with keys (which can be found mind you I think they should really up their drop rate a bit).

Not many games offer this many ways to get items in the store.

From what I been reading is you want to change the entire gem store removing its profitability, fragmenting the community with expansions and changing its economic model all of which were in place long before launch and was fully known, all for minis and cosmetic/utility items to be in the game for your play style.

Devata.6589:

@Suddenflame
Anyway you already agreed that indeed it is a heavy grind and thats what this topic was about was it not?

The reason for it (cash-shop / monetizing) and that maybe not all elements of the game are as grindy does not really matter for this topic.

There is many grind, you agree but don’t have the problem so much for the type of game-play you like.

My gameplay style is hard to put a grind into it. There is a grind for money not for the gem shop but for cosmetic items in the TP sure. As many of them can only be gained through the TP (since they been removed from the gem store) or they are RNG in the gem store. This however is not the issue since this has been known since before the start. The cash-shop has nothing to do with the current “grind” as the recipes for Legendaries has not changed since launch.

edit: Its only become an issue on the forums since the launch of ascended weapons and armour.

Neural.1824:

The RNG and grind in GW2 is mind-numbing. NCSoft and Anet are obsessed with squeezing as much money out of the playerbase as possible in the shortest amount of time. The end result is a game that comes across as kitten in the “finished product” department, and a loot system and economy built soley on the push to get players to open their wallets. For the majority who fall on the “lose” side of the kitten RNG, everything is a grind. Want T6 mats? Grind gold to buy them. Want a special skin? Grind gold to buy it. Want a mini? Grind gold to buy it.
The entire game is focused on forcing people to grind for gold, and it is deliberately designed that way. They are creating a high pressure environment where the only thing that matters is gold, because psychologically it has been proven to bring in more real cash.
You know why we don’t have a large number of emotes/animations? Because they were seen as superfelous to the end goal of making money. They were additional development work that was seen as “no cash flow”. Same applies for fixing a number of QoL issues. The Monetization Lords see it as a waste of time because players aren’t leaving the game over it and it doesn’t bring in more money.
By design everything is forced into being an issue of gold. Diminishing Returns is not about bots, it never has been. It’s about limiting loot drops so that players need more gold to buy the items they want, because needing more gold is another pressure to open the wallet and just buy gold.
Then there’s the “urgency” pressure. They introduce gem and gold valued items that are only a round for a short period of time. “buy now, or miss out!”. People feel pressure to open their wallet to get that item they want. RNG plays a massive part in this. “Buy black lion keys with gems and you could get a Black Lion Claim Ticket!”. Anet is actively, and knowingly, feeding off of people who have money and don’t know they have a gambling addiction. It’s worse than gambling, in fact, because all the items are virtual and have no real value. So people are not even gambling real money to get a possible cash prize.
Every aspect of it works together to apply as much pressure as possible on the players to pay real money.

Yes, Anet needs to make money to stay in business. What they are doing however is abuse. It needs to stop.

Well said. I didn’t see at first because I bought into the hype and blinded by the novelty of getting to play a new game. Everything was good the first month or two and then I slowly began to feel pressured. Pressured into dailies for laurels, pressured into logging on for the Living Story, and later pressured into grinding ascended because I wanted to stay on a level playing field with everyone else.

I couldn’t stand the grinding or the champ trains so I bought gold. And it was so easy because I could just buy whatever I wanted instead of doing atrociously mind numbing content. I caught myself and just stopped playing shortly after that because I realized what was going on. Say what you want about a game like WoW but I never felt pressured or nickel and dimed over basics like I do here.

Neural.1824:

The RNG and grind in GW2 is mind-numbing. NCSoft and Anet are obsessed with squeezing as much money out of the playerbase as possible in the shortest amount of time. The end result is a game that comes across as kitten in the “finished product” department, and a loot system and economy built soley on the push to get players to open their wallets. For the majority who fall on the “lose” side of the kitten RNG, everything is a grind. Want T6 mats? Grind gold to buy them. Want a special skin? Grind gold to buy it. Want a mini? Grind gold to buy it.
The entire game is focused on forcing people to grind for gold, and it is deliberately designed that way. They are creating a high pressure environment where the only thing that matters is gold, because psychologically it has been proven to bring in more real cash.
You know why we don’t have a large number of emotes/animations? Because they were seen as superfelous to the end goal of making money. They were additional development work that was seen as “no cash flow”. Same applies for fixing a number of QoL issues. The Monetization Lords see it as a waste of time because players aren’t leaving the game over it and it doesn’t bring in more money.
By design everything is forced into being an issue of gold. Diminishing Returns is not about bots, it never has been. It’s about limiting loot drops so that players need more gold to buy the items they want, because needing more gold is another pressure to open the wallet and just buy gold.
Then there’s the “urgency” pressure. They introduce gem and gold valued items that are only a round for a short period of time. “buy now, or miss out!”. People feel pressure to open their wallet to get that item they want. RNG plays a massive part in this. “Buy black lion keys with gems and you could get a Black Lion Claim Ticket!”. Anet is actively, and knowingly, feeding off of people who have money and don’t know they have a gambling addiction. It’s worse than gambling, in fact, because all the items are virtual and have no real value. So people are not even gambling real money to get a possible cash prize.
Every aspect of it works together to apply as much pressure as possible on the players to pay real money.

Yes, Anet needs to make money to stay in business. What they are doing however is abuse. It needs to stop.

DR was introduced due to bots. I was playing back then. Not sure if you were, but there was a lot of bots back then. DR if your being hit with it you really need to rethink what your doing cause it doesn’t kick in for hours of you playing in place without logging out and switching zones. Also, you aware there is more and more games having RNG boxes. WoW from what i am aware is going to add them if they have not already. So do not think this is just Anet. It is only pressure if you allow it to be. If you allow it pressure you should go get checked out by a councilor or a therapist for an addiction issue.

As a few people pointed out they do not feel pressured but if you do then you have a problem that should seek professional help with it. I have missed dailies, LS, and other things without much of a care as I do not feel pressured to keep playing. If I was paying a subscription fee i would feel pressured to play to get my moneys worth. Since GW2 does not have you should not feel pressured.

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

~

I can’t think of any type of expansion that wouldn’t fragment the community which is what they are against and have been for a long time. Living Story exists as a compromise as they want everyone to play with their friends anywhere (as long as they are at appropriate level). Plus the minis were known since beta that they were going to be in the gem store along with some of the fancier armour sets.

Like i said before if you can find a way to generate revenue that does not involve fragmenting the community and does not need the gem store I bet Anet would be glad to hear you out. So far you been focusing on the demand for an expansion.

As well only cosmetic and utility items exist in the gem store. It does not force people to use it once you desire an item from it. This is no different from any other video game that contains micro-transactions. Unlike other games however GW2 allows you to use in-game gold conversion to get those items as well. Its your choice on how you want to go about getting those cosmetic/utility items. You can also get most of those items including minis by using Black Lion Chests with keys (which can be found mind you I think they should really up their drop rate a bit).

Not many games offer this many ways to get items in the store.

From what I been reading is you want to change the entire gem store removing its profitability, fragmenting the community with expansions and changing its economic model all of which were in place long before launch and was fully known, all for minis and cosmetic/utility items to be in the game for your play style.

Like I said. The problem of fragmenting the community is not as big of a problem as you make it seem. Besides most people will buy the expansions anyway.

The current system that is sucking the fun out of the game is a much bigger problem then the limited fragmentation of the community a expansion-based model would give. So that easy outweighs it.

But again. The thread was not about if expansions would have another problem then the cash-shop. It was about the grind and that we concluded is here a lot.

“This is no different from any other video game that contains micro-transactions.” Thats why I never play F2P games.. or well I try it and then stop again.

“Unlike other games however GW2 allows you to use in-game gold conversion to get those items as well.” So grind gold or buy.. wait wasn’t that the point I was making?

“Its your choice on how you want to go about getting those cosmetic/utility items.”
Grind or buy. I want to have fun getting them ingame. That is my game-play.

“You can also get most of those items including minis by using Black Lion Chests with keys (which can be found mind you I think they should really up their drop rate a bit). "
Yeah I know the best way to get it and then it’s about 1 key every 25 min. And then you don’t get a ticket there is a very very very slim change you get a ticket and a +- 20% change you get a ticket part, you then only need 10 of them.
Nice so you found another way to grind them.. by grinding keys.

“Not many games offer this many ways to get items in the store.”
It’s all grind. I want to play the game. Not try and get something from there store. It should be in the game.

“From what I been reading is you want to change the entire gem store removing its profitability, fragmenting the community with expansions and changing its economic model all of which were in place long before launch and was fully known, all for minis and cosmetic/utility items to be in the game for your play style.”
Well fragmentation is not as bad as you make it and for the rest mostly yes. Not so much “for the cosmetics” but “to make the game fun and horner the name Anet had from GW1”. Also it’s not just for my play-style but for many.. And you know it are many because you created this thread to talk about all the complains about grinding.

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

@Suddenflame
Anyway you already agreed that indeed it is a heavy grind and thats what this topic was about was it not?

The reason for it (cash-shop / monetizing) and that maybe not all elements of the game are as grindy does not really matter for this topic.

There is many grind, you agree but don’t have the problem so much for the type of game-play you like.

My gameplay style is hard to put a grind into it. There is a grind for money not for the gem shop but for cosmetic items in the TP sure. As many of them can only be gained through the TP (since they been removed from the gem store) or they are RNG in the gem store. This however is not the issue since this has been known since before the start. The cash-shop has nothing to do with the current “grind” as the recipes for Legendaries has not changed since launch.

edit: Its only become an issue on the forums since the launch of ascended weapons and armour.

There have been talk about this for a much longer time. Pretty much right after the first people hit 80. When they added ascended weapons the threads about vertical progression started. Thats something else.. well it also requires a grind but it where other threads.

And that the grind-problem (or as you say it “other grind” because now you only referring to ascended grind) was here since the beta does not make it any better.

Devata.6589:

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

~

I can’t think of any type of expansion that wouldn’t fragment the community which is what they are against and have been for a long time. Living Story exists as a compromise as they want everyone to play with their friends anywhere (as long as they are at appropriate level). Plus the minis were known since beta that they were going to be in the gem store along with some of the fancier armour sets.

Like i said before if you can find a way to generate revenue that does not involve fragmenting the community and does not need the gem store I bet Anet would be glad to hear you out. So far you been focusing on the demand for an expansion.

As well only cosmetic and utility items exist in the gem store. It does not force people to use it once you desire an item from it. This is no different from any other video game that contains micro-transactions. Unlike other games however GW2 allows you to use in-game gold conversion to get those items as well. Its your choice on how you want to go about getting those cosmetic/utility items. You can also get most of those items including minis by using Black Lion Chests with keys (which can be found mind you I think they should really up their drop rate a bit).

Not many games offer this many ways to get items in the store.

From what I been reading is you want to change the entire gem store removing its profitability, fragmenting the community with expansions and changing its economic model all of which were in place long before launch and was fully known, all for minis and cosmetic/utility items to be in the game for your play style.

Like I said. The problem of fragmenting the community is not as big of a problem as you make it seem. Besides most people will buy the expansions anyway.

The current system that is sucking the fun out of the game is a much bigger problem then the limited fragmentation of the community a expansion-based model would give. So that easy outweighs it.

But again. The thread was not about if expansions would have another problem then the cash-shop. It was about the grind and that we concluded is here a lot.

“This is no different from any other video game that contains micro-transactions.” Thats why I never play F2P games.. or well I try it and then stop again.

“Unlike other games however GW2 allows you to use in-game gold conversion to get those items as well.” So grind gold or buy.. wait wasn’t that the point I was making?

“Its your choice on how you want to go about getting those cosmetic/utility items.”
Grind or buy. I want to have fun getting them ingame. That is my game-play.

“You can also get most of those items including minis by using Black Lion Chests with keys (which can be found mind you I think they should really up their drop rate a bit). "
Yeah I know the best way to get it and then it’s about 1 key every 25 min. And then you don’t get a ticket there is a very very very slim change you get a ticket and a +- 20% change you get a ticket part, you then only need 10 of them.
Nice so you found another way to grind them.. by grinding keys.

“Not many games offer this many ways to get items in the store.”
It’s all grind. I want to play the game. Not try and get something from there store. It should be in the game.

“From what I been reading is you want to change the entire gem store removing its profitability, fragmenting the community with expansions and changing its economic model all of which were in place long before launch and was fully known, all for minis and cosmetic/utility items to be in the game for your play style.”
Well fragmentation is not as bad as you make it and for the rest mostly yes. Not so much “for the cosmetics” but “to make the game fun and horner the name Anet had from GW1”. Also it’s not just for my play-style but for many.. And you know it are many because you created this thread to talk about all the complains about grinding.

The issue of fragmentation is a large part and #1 reason why Anet is questioning if they should even make an expansion. They learned from GW1 the fragmentation of the community with many different campaigns and expansions is a bad thing. it also conflicts with LS as if the LS takes place in an expansion area but some people can’t play there since they do not have that expansion.

My friends and I went through community fragmentation GW1 where I had all the expansions but my friends did not. So no Anet would not want to fragment the community again.

It doesn’t make sense to perform such a drastic change that your asking for especially when it was known before people even bought the game.

Devata.6589:

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

@Suddenflame
Anyway you already agreed that indeed it is a heavy grind and thats what this topic was about was it not?

The reason for it (cash-shop / monetizing) and that maybe not all elements of the game are as grindy does not really matter for this topic.

There is many grind, you agree but don’t have the problem so much for the type of game-play you like.

My gameplay style is hard to put a grind into it. There is a grind for money not for the gem shop but for cosmetic items in the TP sure. As many of them can only be gained through the TP (since they been removed from the gem store) or they are RNG in the gem store. This however is not the issue since this has been known since before the start. The cash-shop has nothing to do with the current “grind” as the recipes for Legendaries has not changed since launch.

edit: Its only become an issue on the forums since the launch of ascended weapons and armour.

There have been talk about this for a much longer time. Pretty much right after the first people hit 80. When they added ascended weapons the threads about vertical progression started. Thats something else.. well it also requires a grind but it where other threads.

And that the grind-problem (or as you say it “other grind” because now you only referring to ascended grind) was here since the beta does not make it any better.

Threads about vertical progression existed back in November 2012 when they first announced ascended. The grind-problem as you call it did not exist in beta for the majority of the population since majority of people did not care. The majority of the forums here do not care about cosmetic grind but are complaints about legendaries and ascended. This is why I am addressing this.

Your complaint however and solution requires a radical unnecessary change that you should have looked up prior to even buying the game.

Suddenflame.2601:

Galtrix.7369:

No. No. Just no. A thousand no’s. I’ve played WoW. I’ve played Forsaken World. I’ve played Perfect World. I’ve played the grindiest of the grindiest games. I’ve practically played almost every MMO out there except for some of the lesser-known Chinese farming games.

Let me tell you right now, Guild Wars 2 has THE absolute worst RNG in any MMORPG EVER. Guild Wars 2 is not as grindy as most MMO’s, but the RNG in GW2 is unbelievably terrible. I would rather have Wow’s RNG system. I would rather have Perfect World’s RNG system (even though it is pretty bad, GW2’s is still worse).

Over 90% of my life has been dealing with MMORPG’s and games in general. You cannot convince me that Guild Wars 2 actually has decent RNG.

Ok really you played FW and claiming its better? Have you even tried in FW to gather some materials to make high grade potions and armour? Like really? The drop rate on one of the items to make accessories is even lower than Teq ascended weapon drop. On top of that there is RNG on your crafting! So you need to make over 1000 items (which requires 3 of that one item so you need 3000 of them) just to make an item worth selling or using. Like dude you did not even look at the RNG in FW did you? There is RNG every where in that game. You apparently did 0 crafting in FW which means you hardly even made it past noob stage. PW is even worse than FW on every point.

To be honest, Forsaken World was almost identical to Perfect World, so I uninstalled after about an hour of playing. Yes, I have crafted in Perfect World. I reached level 91 in PW, and was an apothecary. The mats were difficult to get, but at no point when I was playing did I think, “Wow, this thing is just not worth that amount of effort”.

Fast forward to the time I bought Guild Wars 2 and there are still impossible things to obtain. Giant Eyes, precursors, and ascended drops are a few of them. All I had to do was look at the numbers and I said to myself, “Wow, this isn’t worth any effort at all. It would take me years to farm that crap”.

Yes, there is RNG everywhere in WoW, Perfect World, and other games, but it’s BETTER. It’s so much better than in Guild Wars 2.

Do you know that at one point I was farming in the champ train for about 10 hours a day? I did that for a month and got absolutely nothing noteworthy. Then I go to run a dungeon that I didn’t even want to do, and an ascended weapon drops with some unwanted stats. I laughed and deleted it almost 3 seconds after I picked it up. Right after that I stopped farming because I instantly knew that the RNG is screwy in this game, and I never farmed since then. 10 hours a day for about 27-30 days. Can you imagine that? And I only obtained about 14 exotics, which sold for about 2 gold each. Yay, 2 gold. (sarcasm). In any other MMORPG, I would’ve obtained a godly item or something at least worthwhile that would’ve put me ahead of the rest of the community. Not in GW2.

Suddenflame.2601:

DR was introduced due to bots. I was playing back then. Not sure if you were, but there was a lot of bots back then. DR if your being hit with it you really need to rethink what your doing cause it doesn’t kick in for hours of you playing in place without logging out and switching zones.

And with the bot problem almost gone its still there. GW1 also has a DR system. Not to mention the fact that it doesn’t do anything to deter bots anyway, especially in GW2 where the focus is so much on gaining gold to the exclusion of anything else. So IMHO its not there just for bots but to control farming by players.

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

~

~

Like I said. The problem of fragmenting the community is not as big of a problem as you make it seem. Besides most people will buy the expansions anyway.

The current system that is sucking the fun out of the game is a much bigger problem then the limited fragmentation of the community a expansion-based model would give. So that easy outweighs it.

But again. The thread was not about if expansions would have another problem then the cash-shop. It was about the grind and that we concluded is here a lot.

“This is no different from any other video game that contains micro-transactions.” Thats why I never play F2P games.. or well I try it and then stop again.

“Unlike other games however GW2 allows you to use in-game gold conversion to get those items as well.” So grind gold or buy.. wait wasn’t that the point I was making?

“Its your choice on how you want to go about getting those cosmetic/utility items.”
Grind or buy. I want to have fun getting them ingame. That is my game-play.

“You can also get most of those items including minis by using Black Lion Chests with keys (which can be found mind you I think they should really up their drop rate a bit). "
Yeah I know the best way to get it and then it’s about 1 key every 25 min. And then you don’t get a ticket there is a very very very slim change you get a ticket and a +- 20% change you get a ticket part, you then only need 10 of them.
Nice so you found another way to grind them.. by grinding keys.

“Not many games offer this many ways to get items in the store.”
It’s all grind. I want to play the game. Not try and get something from there store. It should be in the game.

“From what I been reading is you want to change the entire gem store removing its profitability, fragmenting the community with expansions and changing its economic model all of which were in place long before launch and was fully known, all for minis and cosmetic/utility items to be in the game for your play style.”
Well fragmentation is not as bad as you make it and for the rest mostly yes. Not so much “for the cosmetics” but “to make the game fun and horner the name Anet had from GW1”. Also it’s not just for my play-style but for many.. And you know it are many because you created this thread to talk about all the complains about grinding.

The issue of fragmentation is a large part and #1 reason why Anet is questioning if they should even make an expansion. They learned from GW1 the fragmentation of the community with many different campaigns and expansions is a bad thing. it also conflicts with LS as if the LS takes place in an expansion area but some people can’t play there since they do not have that expansion.

My friends and I went through community fragmentation GW1 where I had all the expansions but my friends did not. So no Anet would not want to fragment the community again.

It doesn’t make sense to perform such a drastic change that your asking for especially when it was known before people even bought the game.

Indeed the expansion in GW1 thats what I said before. It has never been seen as a problem by any other MMORPG but it was a problem in GW1. The big difference there an expansion was a separate game. Not one world where an expansion would add many new items, a new race and a few new maps and a new continent to the world. It was pretty much a second game.

And no it was not known that GW2 would focus on the cash-shop so heavy. It was sold as an B2P game and Anet had a good name with there expansion-based model. It was know there was a cash-shop but thats about it.

So with all the knowledge you had you would expect they would once again focus on expansion and just having a cash-shop as extra. But they didn’t they heavily focused on the cash-shop pretty much making it like any F2P game.

The drastic change would makes a lot of sense because it is the only way to make the game what it should have been in the first place. A game without this much of grind, lots of fun and also good for casual gamers.

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

Suddenflame.2601:

Devata.6589:

@Suddenflame
Anyway you already agreed that indeed it is a heavy grind and thats what this topic was about was it not?

The reason for it (cash-shop / monetizing) and that maybe not all elements of the game are as grindy does not really matter for this topic.

There is many grind, you agree but don’t have the problem so much for the type of game-play you like.

My gameplay style is hard to put a grind into it. There is a grind for money not for the gem shop but for cosmetic items in the TP sure. As many of them can only be gained through the TP (since they been removed from the gem store) or they are RNG in the gem store. This however is not the issue since this has been known since before the start. The cash-shop has nothing to do with the current “grind” as the recipes for Legendaries has not changed since launch.

edit: Its only become an issue on the forums since the launch of ascended weapons and armour.

There have been talk about this for a much longer time. Pretty much right after the first people hit 80. When they added ascended weapons the threads about vertical progression started. Thats something else.. well it also requires a grind but it where other threads.

And that the grind-problem (or as you say it “other grind” because now you only referring to ascended grind) was here since the beta does not make it any better.

Threads about vertical progression existed back in November 2012 when they first announced ascended. The grind-problem as you call it did not exist in beta for the majority of the population since majority of people did not care. The majority of the forums here do not care about cosmetic grind but are complaints about legendaries and ascended. This is why I am addressing this.

Your complaint however and solution requires a radical unnecessary change that you should have looked up prior to even buying the game.

Maybe not in the beta. It takes a little bid of gaming before you start to notice that. Like some people also pointed out in this thread.

Plus they never said they would have had a focus on the cash-shop to generate income. So there was nothing to look up prior to buying. All you could work with was what they did with GW1 and there statement of releasing it as a B2P game. What is more in the line with expansion-based then with micro-transaction focus (something you expect from F2P more).

GW2’s new slogan

“Not quite as bad as those Asian p2w grindfests you’ve heard about!!”

Sad.

Neural.1824:

The RNG and grind in GW2 is mind-numbing. NCSoft and Anet are obsessed with squeezing as much money out of the playerbase as possible in the shortest amount of time. The end result is a game that comes across as kitten in the “finished product” department, and a loot system and economy built soley on the push to get players to open their wallets. For the majority who fall on the “lose” side of the kitten RNG, everything is a grind. Want T6 mats? Grind gold to buy them. Want a special skin? Grind gold to buy it. Want a mini? Grind gold to buy it.
The entire game is focused on forcing people to grind for gold, and it is deliberately designed that way. They are creating a high pressure environment where the only thing that matters is gold, because psychologically it has been proven to bring in more real cash.
You know why we don’t have a large number of emotes/animations? Because they were seen as superfelous to the end goal of making money. They were additional development work that was seen as “no cash flow”. Same applies for fixing a number of QoL issues. The Monetization Lords see it as a waste of time because players aren’t leaving the game over it and it doesn’t bring in more money.
By design everything is forced into being an issue of gold. Diminishing Returns is not about bots, it never has been. It’s about limiting loot drops so that players need more gold to buy the items they want, because needing more gold is another pressure to open the wallet and just buy gold.
Then there’s the “urgency” pressure. They introduce gem and gold valued items that are only a round for a short period of time. “buy now, or miss out!”. People feel pressure to open their wallet to get that item they want. RNG plays a massive part in this. “Buy black lion keys with gems and you could get a Black Lion Claim Ticket!”. Anet is actively, and knowingly, feeding off of people who have money and don’t know they have a gambling addiction. It’s worse than gambling, in fact, because all the items are virtual and have no real value. So people are not even gambling real money to get a possible cash prize.
Every aspect of it works together to apply as much pressure as possible on the players to pay real money.

Yes, Anet needs to make money to stay in business. What they are doing however is abuse. It needs to stop.

I was going to post something but this blows anything I could write up out of the water.

Suddenflame.2601:

DR was introduced due to bots. I was playing back then. Not sure if you were, but there was a lot of bots back then. DR if your being hit with it you really need to rethink what your doing cause it doesn’t kick in for hours of you playing in place without logging out and switching zones. Also, you aware there is more and more games having RNG boxes. WoW from what i am aware is going to add them if they have not already. So do not think this is just Anet. It is only pressure if you allow it to be. If you allow it pressure you should go get checked out by a councilor or a therapist for an addiction issue.

As a few people pointed out they do not feel pressured but if you do then you have a problem that should seek professional help with it. I have missed dailies, LS, and other things without much of a care as I do not feel pressured to keep playing. If I was paying a subscription fee i would feel pressured to play to get my moneys worth. Since GW2 does not have you should not feel pressured.

I’m not really in the mood to answer this but I will try to do so clearly. First, it’s clear that you are the type who will never be shown any other way than what you think is true. That much is obvious from your comments on this and other threads where you are given plenty of evidence contrary to your statements but you continually argue semantics.

Second: Bots were the given reason. Anet is in this game to make money any way they can. There are, in fact, no rules on the table that prevent them from running bots themselves, or running automated Trading Post accounts that are there to deliberately inflate the market rates. Sure, it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s a fact that this is something they can do. Bots were a convenient excuse for adding a function to the game that deliberately forces people to grind for gold, as opposed to farming for specific items. On a side note, I’d like to know your source of info, since you seem to know so much about how DR works, especially when Anet is so secretive about it.

Third, thanks for assuming that I have a gambling problem (FYI, I don’t).
The fact remains that thousands of people don’t even understand that they are addicted to gambling in situations like the RNG here. Because they’ve been lead to believe that it’s not gambling. Additionally, players do not have to feel the pressure for it to be there. This is not a time-share-condo high-pressure sales meeting. It’s about subtlety and illusion.

Yes, other games use RNG, so what of it? Guild Wars 2 is using it with an iron fist. In all the other games I’ve played, I’ve never felt it was completely hopeless to farm/grind for what I was after. In GW2 I have one choice, for my playstyle, to obtain the things I want. Grind gold.

Perhaps though you’ve never gotten good at something in real life and then had it taken away. Perhaps you’ve had your life handed to you on a silver platter, never needing anything other than to occupy your time. News flash: there are people out there who find MMO’s to be a great way to let off stress, to have fun, and to keep their minds occupied with productive projects, because they cannot, for whatever reason, do things in RL to fulfill those needs. I love working with my hands. I used to create jewelry. Real jewelry. Life stepped in and took that away for a time length that I’m not sure of yet, so I turn to games and such to work with the metals and gems that I enjoy. Do you even understand what it is like to create something on your own, with your own hands? Or do you just buy everything and have it delivered and assembled for you? I love working with wood too, but we’d get evicted if I set up my tablesaw in our apartment.
My side of this is just one story among thousands. There are thousands of reasons why people turn to games for some mind relaxation, and not all of them can be pigeon-holed into your narrow viewpoints on how things work.
And don’t go and pull the “then find another game” bullkitten commentary. People invested a lot of time into this game before discovering that all was not what it seemed to be, and they aren’t willing to just up and throw away what they’ve been able to scrape together.

Suddenflame.2601:

Neural.1824:

The RNG and grind in GW2 is mind-numbing. NCSoft and Anet are obsessed with squeezing as much money out of the playerbase as possible in the shortest amount of time. The end result is a game that comes across as kitten in the “finished product” department, and a loot system and economy built soley on the push to get players to open their wallets. For the majority who fall on the “lose” side of the kitten RNG, everything is a grind. Want T6 mats? Grind gold to buy them. Want a special skin? Grind gold to buy it. Want a mini? Grind gold to buy it.
The entire game is focused on forcing people to grind for gold, and it is deliberately designed that way. They are creating a high pressure environment where the only thing that matters is gold, because psychologically it has been proven to bring in more real cash.
You know why we don’t have a large number of emotes/animations? Because they were seen as superfelous to the end goal of making money. They were additional development work that was seen as “no cash flow”. Same applies for fixing a number of QoL issues. The Monetization Lords see it as a waste of time because players aren’t leaving the game over it and it doesn’t bring in more money.
By design everything is forced into being an issue of gold. Diminishing Returns is not about bots, it never has been. It’s about limiting loot drops so that players need more gold to buy the items they want, because needing more gold is another pressure to open the wallet and just buy gold.
Then there’s the “urgency” pressure. They introduce gem and gold valued items that are only a round for a short period of time. “buy now, or miss out!”. People feel pressure to open their wallet to get that item they want. RNG plays a massive part in this. “Buy black lion keys with gems and you could get a Black Lion Claim Ticket!”. Anet is actively, and knowingly, feeding off of people who have money and don’t know they have a gambling addiction. It’s worse than gambling, in fact, because all the items are virtual and have no real value. So people are not even gambling real money to get a possible cash prize.
Every aspect of it works together to apply as much pressure as possible on the players to pay real money.

Yes, Anet needs to make money to stay in business. What they are doing however is abuse. It needs to stop.

DR was introduced due to bots. I was playing back then. Not sure if you were, but there was a lot of bots back then. DR if your being hit with it you really need to rethink what your doing cause it doesn’t kick in for hours of you playing in place without logging out and switching zones. Also, you aware there is more and more games having RNG boxes. WoW from what i am aware is going to add them if they have not already. So do not think this is just Anet. It is only pressure if you allow it to be. If you allow it pressure you should go get checked out by a councilor or a therapist for an addiction issue.

As a few people pointed out they do not feel pressured but if you do then you have a problem that should seek professional help with it. I have missed dailies, LS, and other things without much of a care as I do not feel pressured to keep playing. If I was paying a subscription fee i would feel pressured to play to get my moneys worth. Since GW2 does not have you should not feel pressured.

I’m playing WoW right now and the closest thing I can think of is the Timeless Isle gear boxes, which are Ridiculously easy to get, very easy to control in terms of RNG drops through your loot specialisation, are account bound so you can send things you can’t use to characters who can, and are free.

Could you produce.. Some.. Kind of citation for that?

Neural.1824:

/snipped for brevity

Let me ask you a question. And this is a perfectly serious one, there is no intent to sound condescending here at all. It’s simply that this sort of sentiment is one I see often, but you’re the first one that sound eloquent enough to put an answer to words:

Why are you still playing?

Seriously, if you HONESTLY think these things; that Arena.net is actively trying to cheat you, ruin your fun, make your experience terrible all for the hope that they can bleed cash dollars from you… why in the name of GOD are you still here?

Because personally, if I feel that way about ANYONE (be it a company or an individual), I completely divorce myself from that entity. I would have nothing to do with a company that I felt was trying to strong-arm me for money.

Again, completely serious question… because I do not understand why someone who would feel so strongly about a company actively pursuing such despicable behavior that you would still sign in every day. I literally cannot follow the logic.

chemiclord.3978:

Neural.1824:

/snipped for brevity

Let me ask you a question. And this is a perfectly serious one, there is no intent to sound condescending here at all. It’s simply that this sort of sentiment is one I see often, but you’re the first one that sound eloquent enough to put an answer to words:

Why are you still playing?

Seriously, if you HONESTLY think these things; that Arena.net is actively trying to cheat you, ruin your fun, make your experience terrible all for the hope that they can bleed cash dollars from you… why in the name of GOD are you still here?

Because personally, if I feel that way about ANYONE (be it a company or an individual), I completely divorce myself from that entity. I would have nothing to do with a company that I felt was trying to strong-arm me for money.

Again, completely serious question… because I do not understand why someone who would feel so strongly about a company actively pursuing such despicable behavior that you would still sign in every day. I literally cannot follow the logic.

I can help answer this in my POV, while, of course I’d love to see his as well. My reason is that ANet had a wonderful IDEA and pitch that they gave. It sounded great, but they failed on execution. Being one of the bigger MMO creators, it gives room for hope that things can be changed with enough feedback. Especially feedback with substance/direction. I love GW2 combat because it loosens up the tab target MMO standard, weapon swings cleave like you’d expect a two handed sword to do, etc. There are ways to fix the issues in the game to make it a great game. It ultimately comes down to “will they do it?” I’d say none of the other current MMOs would do me better because either they have similar issues, worse issues or in the case of WoW, I’ve just played it out over the last 8 years. I needed a change in scenery, plus a break for the traditional tab targeting. GW2 has hope, the developers just need to act on it if they want to salvage it.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Suddenflame.2601:

Neural.1824:

The RNG and grind in GW2 is mind-numbing. NCSoft and Anet are obsessed with squeezing as much money out of the playerbase as possible in the shortest amount of time. The end result is a game that comes across as kitten in the “finished product” department, and a loot system and economy built soley on the push to get players to open their wallets. For the majority who fall on the “lose” side of the kitten RNG, everything is a grind. Want T6 mats? Grind gold to buy them. Want a special skin? Grind gold to buy it. Want a mini? Grind gold to buy it.
The entire game is focused on forcing people to grind for gold, and it is deliberately designed that way. They are creating a high pressure environment where the only thing that matters is gold, because psychologically it has been proven to bring in more real cash.
You know why we don’t have a large number of emotes/animations? Because they were seen as superfelous to the end goal of making money. They were additional development work that was seen as “no cash flow”. Same applies for fixing a number of QoL issues. The Monetization Lords see it as a waste of time because players aren’t leaving the game over it and it doesn’t bring in more money.
By design everything is forced into being an issue of gold. Diminishing Returns is not about bots, it never has been. It’s about limiting loot drops so that players need more gold to buy the items they want, because needing more gold is another pressure to open the wallet and just buy gold.
Then there’s the “urgency” pressure. They introduce gem and gold valued items that are only a round for a short period of time. “buy now, or miss out!”. People feel pressure to open their wallet to get that item they want. RNG plays a massive part in this. “Buy black lion keys with gems and you could get a Black Lion Claim Ticket!”. Anet is actively, and knowingly, feeding off of people who have money and don’t know they have a gambling addiction. It’s worse than gambling, in fact, because all the items are virtual and have no real value. So people are not even gambling real money to get a possible cash prize.
Every aspect of it works together to apply as much pressure as possible on the players to pay real money.

Yes, Anet needs to make money to stay in business. What they are doing however is abuse. It needs to stop.

DR was introduced due to bots. I was playing back then. Not sure if you were, but there was a lot of bots back then. DR if your being hit with it you really need to rethink what your doing cause it doesn’t kick in for hours of you playing in place without logging out and switching zones. Also, you aware there is more and more games having RNG boxes. WoW from what i am aware is going to add them if they have not already. So do not think this is just Anet. It is only pressure if you allow it to be. If you allow it pressure you should go get checked out by a councilor or a therapist for an addiction issue.

As a few people pointed out they do not feel pressured but if you do then you have a problem that should seek professional help with it. I have missed dailies, LS, and other things without much of a care as I do not feel pressured to keep playing. If I was paying a subscription fee i would feel pressured to play to get my moneys worth. Since GW2 does not have you should not feel pressured.

I’m playing WoW right now and the closest thing I can think of is the Timeless Isle gear boxes, which are Ridiculously easy to get, very easy to control in terms of RNG drops through your loot specialisation, are account bound so you can send things you can’t use to characters who can, and are free.

Could you produce.. Some.. Kind of citation for that?

Just goes to show you that most of the people here who bring up WoW have no idea what they’re talking about.

I geared up a character in about a day or two and had enough additional pieces of timeless stuff to gear one or two more alts, should I choose to level some.

ronpierce.2760:

I can help answer this in my POV, while, of course I’d love to see his as well. My reason is that ANet had a wonderful IDEA and pitch that they gave. It sounded great, but they failed on execution. Being one of the bigger MMO creators, it gives room for hope that things can be changed with enough feedback. Especially feedback with substance/direction. I love GW2 combat because it loosens up the tab target MMO standard, weapon swings cleave like you’d expect a two handed sword to do, etc. There are ways to fix the issues in the game to make it a great game. It ultimately comes down to “will they do it?” I’d say none of the other current MMOs would do me better because either they have similar issues, worse issues or in the case of WoW, I’ve just played it out over the last 8 years. I needed a change in scenery, plus a break for the traditional tab targeting. GW2 has hope, the developers just need to act on it if they want to salvage it.

Okay, so in other words, you DON’T think Arena.net is conspiring to cheat you or bleed your wallet dry. You just think they’ve “lost their way” I guess is one way to put it. Good on ya; I find I disagree with a lot of the things you want (based on previous things I’ve seen in other threads), but that’s fine.

But that doesn’t really answer my question. He seems to believe that Arena.net is simply out to fleece their customers before the inevitable collapse once other titles launch. Personally, the Arena.net that he paints… there’s no redeeming them. There’s no bringing that company back. That company would be rotten to the core.

In other words, the Arena.net Neural sees… there’s no hope. So why is he still here?

chemiclord.3978:

Okay, so in other words, you DON’T think Arena.net is conspiring to cheat you or bleed your wallet dry. You just think they’ve “lost their way” I guess is one way to put it. Good on ya; I find I disagree with a lot of the things you want (based on previous things I’ve seen in other threads), but that’s fine.

But that doesn’t really answer my question. He seems to believe that Arena.net is simply out to fleece their customers before the inevitable collapse once other titles launch. Personally, the Arena.net that he paints… there’s no redeeming them. There’s no bringing that company back. That company would be rotten to the core.

In other words, the Arena.net Neural sees… there’s no hope. So why is he still here?

1.) Because I stupidly believe in miracles, and that it’s possible the devs will win out over the monetization dept.
2.) Because I have a number of friends that play the game to whom the game is still brand new, the world unexplored, and the deeds of Anet still unknown. I intend to do my best to help them enjoy it to the fullest, and be there to soften the impact when they start to get tired of the grind.

As a game, on it’s own, Guild Wars 2 is amazing. Otherwise I’d be back playing Rift. It’s unfinished, but a great game none-the-less. Coming from a casual perspective, the combat is fun with the exception of one-shot gimmicks, and even those can be adjusted for with a little patience and practice.
Yes, I believed at one point that Anet was rotten to the core. I’m starting to believe that there are some devs in the company that may not be happy with where things are going, yet can’t do anything about it because it would mean no-paycheck. The rotten part of the company is the monetization department. They are obsessed only with short term ROI, and from where I stand it certainly looks like they will do anything, including kill the game, to make their numbers.

Man, if you honestly believe people within Arena.net manufactured their own bot crisis in order to justify a crippling diminished returns mechanic with the purpose of pressuring players into buying gems with cash dollars… not even Christ Jesus would be able to resurrect the spirit of that company.

That’s a company that has no scruples from the top on down… because if that REALLY happened, and there was ANYONE with any shard of a soul remaining within that company… that person would have talked to someone. That sort of underhanded manipulation of their own game would not have gone without a peep.

Put that sort of scenario out in the political arena, and Oliver Stone is begging you to make a movie about it.