Guild Wars 2

Pirlipat.2479:

Josher.9612:

Bruno Sardine.2907:

I don’t understand the whole we don’t want it argument.

If it’s players, how is it affecting you negatively, esp. if the gear is confined to the PvE realm?

If it’s the devs, how does this ruin your game precisely other than not fitting into your philosophy (which is a guiding principal, not a mandate)?

In terms of the actual treadmill part, does it have to follow the “oh I gotta do Dungeon A and gear in it to be able to do Dungeon B and so on….” or is there another way?

Say you have an “elite path” in each dungeon with the reward being a specialized token at the end; this path is real tough and requires players to really understand the game mechanics, their class, and the synergies with other classes. You need X of these tokens to get the top tier gear… but unlike the other dungeon sets, it’s all scattered about so you have to go to all sorts of different dungeons to make up the full set. Does it have to be token-based? No, whatever might work best, I just used it as an example because it’s familiar. The entry requirement for “elite path”? Nothing more than what it takes to get into the explorable mode for that dungeon… if you and your group have the skill and determination, you can get it.

Exactly. If its a tough challenge that’s not “cheap” and you don’t have to do it 40 times, how is that NOT a good thing? I’ll spend the time learning a tough encounter as long as I don’t have to do it again and again. Most of my friends are the same.

But thats rather about asking for a challenge to gain a reward and not about the reward itself.

The challenge isn’t worth akittenif the reward stinks too….in MMO terms. Maybe its a mindset, but I don’t treat MMOs like single player RPGs. Then again, if I got a great story, a cinematic ending, ect like in a single player game, the challenge would be enough. Winning the game is the reward, but you can’t beat a MMO. If Anet’s idea of winning GW2 is grinding for skins for months until the next expansion, that’s a lame ending or rather a lame endgame, in MMO terms=)

What would you want as a reward, considering that this dungeon is the ultimate challenge and that you can’t use any gear you got there in PVP?

Pirlipat.2479:

What would you want as a reward, considering that this dungeon is the ultimate challenge and that you can’t use any gear you got there in PVP?

The key thing is, the skins are not universally appealing, so you need to make it worth people’s while if they aren’t going after the skin.

I suggest more coin and the ability to buy ectos and lodestones from the dungeon vendors, which you can sell or use in crafting.

People ran Domain of Anguish for 4 years. People ran Underworld and Fissure of Woe for 7 years. They never gave any statistically better gear than you could get anywhere else.

Domain of Anguish gave gemstones which were high value trading items or they could be collected for Tormented weapons (which could be dedicated in the hall of monuments), and Underworld/Fissure of Woe got you obsidian shards and globs of ectoplasm, used in crafting obsidian armor sets (in Fissure of Woe) that could be dedicated in the hall of monuments, and they were also high value trading items.

You could sell tormented weapons or the armbraces that were exchanged to get them to other people..

So yeah, people ran these high end areas for dosh, even if they didn’t want the skins.

Dungeons right now, you only run if you want the skins.

Better gear isn’t the end in itself, we want better gear for a much higher quality of life, which in turn will make content funner.

i agree, OP. it is incredibly frustrating, though also hilarious, to see the threads you have described. i myself recall the sPVP thread you are referring.

it’s like these people want the gear grind… they really want it!

“And seriously if you want gear based progression so bad, why not play every other mmo ever?”

You sir, have won the internet.

Are you guys not 80? Do you not see the massive grind that is already there for exotics? lol Dungeon grinds, grinding for crafting mats which are a pain because of a flawed farming code, wvw badge grind?, boring karma grind? not to mention the biggest grind of them all …legendaries… open your eyes… this is NOT any different than other MMO grinds except for the balance in stats. Some mmo’s have roughly the same difference in stats as well.

This aspect of GW2 is NOT revolutionary and its NOT what they promised.

The game could be more fun but a lot of people (of varying opinions on rewards) are not happy with this massive grind. If you do not know what im talking about and dont have 80 experience then you can’t comment. You just don’t know how bad it is.

Maeglin.7416:

Kouken.8604:

Lysidian.4653

There is no opportunity for skilled players to stand out and above those that are not.

What? this makes no sense, if everyone has same level gear then the skilled players shine, as skill is all that matters.
Winning a fight because you out stat another player destroys the concept of skill based PVP, and in a PVE enviroment, out stating another player therefore doing more DPS in no way makes you a better player.

Making PvP only contain cosmetic upgrades is fine. In PvE it gets old fast when there is no sense of progression. I’m not talking about making it huge upgrades and stuff like in WoW but a sense of progression is needed to keep people interested, this isn’t a sandbox game.

THIS, big time! Ppl burn through content much faster than devs can make it. And this isn’t a sandbox game, so all the content you will experience in PvE is made by the devs, thus a sense of progression is needed to keep people playing. And if you don’t want to keep people playing after the content has run out, then thats fine, and that means the game literally has no endgame. And not in a good way.

I also salute the OP for starting this.. I’m noticing a lot more now that people want to be literally hooked to their games non-stop, not to mention people did that with this game and are now extremely burned out from my experience.

The problem is, is that our society keeps getting faster, everyone needs to have the best of everything (including gadgets) As much as I love them, but it’s starting to get pretty annoying, enjoy what you have or else you’re going to be bored a lot more from trying to find the newest thing to entertain you.

robot.9134:

Are you guys not 80? Do you not see the massive grind that is already there for exotics? lol Dungeon grinds, grinding for crafting mats which are a pain because of a flawed farming code, wvw badge grind?, boring karma grind? not to mention the biggest grind of them all …legendaries… open your eyes… this is NOT any different than other MMO grinds except for the balance in stats. Some mmo’s have roughly the same difference in stats as well.

This aspect of GW2 is NOT revolutionary and its NOT what they promised.

The game could be more fun but a lot of people (of varying opinions on rewards) are not happy with this massive grind. If you do not know what im talking about and dont have 80 experience then you can’t comment. You just don’t know how bad it is.

totally exaggerated. for one, if you do a lot of wvw, you get a ton of karma and badges. this isn’t a grind at all, this is playing the game. and if you do a lot of exploration and PVE, you should have plenty of mats to use to make exotics, or to sell to buy exotics by the time you are 80. also, unless you are a condition necromancer, exotic gear is prettykittencheap on the TP.

it is not hard at all to get exotic gear. legendaries are a “grind”, that’s for sure, but they aren’t necessary, at all. hell, even exotics don’t make that much of a difference when you really consider the gains, for most classes. unless you are a condition necro who wants precision, toughness, and condition damage gear, exotic gear is simply easy to get. it’s so easy that all you have to do is Play the Game. see what i did there?

Gao Gao.4973:

totally exaggerated. for one, if you do a lot of wvw, you get a ton of karma and badges. this isn’t a grind at all, this is playing the game. and if you do a lot of exploration and PVE, you should have plenty of mats to use to make exotics, or to sell to buy exotics by the time you are 80. also, unless you are a condition necromancer, exotic gear is prettykittencheap on the TP.

it is not hard at all to get exotic gear. legendaries are a “grind”, that’s for sure, but they aren’t necessary, at all. hell, even exotics don’t make that much of a difference when you really consider the gains, for most classes. unless you are a condition necro who wants precision, toughness, and condition damage gear, exotic gear is simply easy to get. it’s so easy that all you have to do is Play the Game. see what i did there?

You are talking so far outta yourkitten we should submit your post to Genius for the world’s largest pile of kitten. 18 hours straight, one session of WvWvW, 75 badges……..are you kitten kidding me. But thats not a grind?

Just playing the game nets enough crafting mats to lvl crafting AND make your gear? What game are you playing? Cus I am telling you right now it sure isnt GW2.

If you are going to continue to spout gross exaggerations, spare us and dont bother posting again.

lol…^^ beat me to it. Karma is only REASONABLY fast if you join the Orr farm train going on. Even with karma buffs its a grind… you can’t tell me farming loops is fun OR intended.

Its garbage.

Kouken.8604:

Gear progression based rewards being the only incentive to play is a community issue, not the developers,

Gaming should be about the journey, but a high % of gamers only care about the reward,
Been reading through complaint threads today and saw one person say,
“I like SPVP but because I already have the best gear I dont see a point doing it”

I dunno, fun? balanced skill based competition? skill development? fun?!

Just seems like a massive flaw in peoples mindset, why “grind” a system, most likely not enjoying yourself along the way, just to obtain a set you wont use anymore once youve completed it cause theres nothing else to “gain”?

Personally allowing easy(ish) access to full exotics to most players is a perfect system,
Allowing players to heavliy out stat each other would destroy WvW and the way mobs work in zones and discourage skilled players who simply dont have the time,

The grinds for cosmetic rewards is perfect, farming the 30g t3 chestpiece for sylvari atm and cant wait to get it!

The community mindset needs to change not the developers,

And seriously if you want gear based progression so bad, why not play every other mmo ever?

So contest reward is stupid and cosmetic reward is perfect?! Strange logic, but it’s yours, so …

What is fun? I always thought that fun was something extremely personal, but lately with the help of this forum, I started to think that fun was very generic and objective. So many people posting that if you don’t enjoy GW2 completely, if you have any complaints or similar, you are not having fun. I know most don’t think like that, but their message is clear “We, who like GW2, are having fun, and you, who doesn’t like GW2, are not!”.

Rewards! On of the most human things there is.
Need for it. Even more human.
Making some rewards have more priority than other people’s. Very widespread human personality issue . It’s called bigotry. Something like: “My kind of reward (cosmetic) is more important (even perfect) than others”.

It’s not the community, its entire human population. So who should change?
And seriously, comments like this are not helping.

FarFarAway.6579:

For those who don’t “get” the socialism analogy – Socialism is basically the opposite of Competition. Socialism in an MMO environment philosophically-speaking, is a situation in which you assume players are going to continue to enjoy content for which they can’t compete to make their hero better than the average joe’s, simply because they “enjoy” it.

In a Competitive environment, the one in which the rewards-based player gains the most enjoyment, the player is continually striving to become stronger, better than the average joe. Its what drives you to keep playing. You may agree or disagree with this type of philosophy depending on what type of player you are, but for many MMOers, this is how it works.

Again, this is such an inept analogy it’s laughable.

People have been calling “socialism” because superficially it looks like “everybody’s equal” (i.e. everyone ends up with equal gear). But that’s just an extraordinarily shallow way of looking at it.

When you have a “level playing field” in a game (like Chess, where both sides are PERFECTLY BALANCED in terms of the “numbers game”), this means that ONLY PLAYER SKILL DECIDES THE OUTCOME.

This is actually a perfectly pure competitive environment in which those who shine do so solely by their own merits and skill as players, and not because they’ve paid more subcription time to developers than other players so they have an illusory progression through better gear.

“Illlusory” because the outcome of a contest between people of unequal gear level is UNCLEAR. Suppose both players are of equal skill, then the one with better gear will win. But also, a player with good gear and poor skill may squeak through and beat a player with better skill (especially where gear differential counts for a lot in the game’s numbers).

IOW, equalizing everyone’s gear makes the game more competitive and better able to accurately represent player skill and progression (in terms of bettering their actual skill at playing the game), precisely as a result of getting rid of illusory progression based on gear.

Jeez.

gurugeorge.9857:

Again, this is such an inept analogy it’s laughable.

People have been calling “socialism” because superficially it looks like “everybody’s equal” (i.e. everyone ends up with equal gear). But that’s just an extraordinarily shallow way of looking at it.

When you have a “level playing field” in a game (like Chess, where both sides are PERFECTLY BALANCED in terms of the “numbers game”), this means that ONLY PLAYER SKILL DECIDES THE OUTCOME.

This is actually a perfectly pure competitive environment in which those who shine do so solely by their own merits and skill as players, and not because they’ve paid more subcription time to developers than other players so they have an illusory progression through better gear.

“Illlusory” because the outcome of a contest between people of unequal gear level is UNCLEAR. Suppose both players are of equal skill, then the one with better gear will win. But also, a player with good gear and poor skill may squeak through and beat a player with better skill (especially where gear differential counts for a lot in the game’s numbers).

IOW, equalizing everyone’s gear makes the game more competitive and better able to accurately represent player skill and progression (in terms of bettering their actual skill at playing the game), precisely as a result of getting rid of illusory progression based on gear.

Jeez.

I agree with what you’re saying, in terms of player vs. player situations.

But you are making one huge assumption that is incorrect: That players in MMOs only “Compete” when they are participating in PvP.

That assumption is not true. Players compete for better gear, compete to complete content first (whether it be zones, levels, gaining mounts, pets, anything they can show off), and compete to accomplish a multitude of achievements.

GW2 is very limited in what it offers players to compete for, and how you display those “wins” or accomplishments. As many have said here, even the cosmetic gear you can gain isn’t really “prettier” than the lower gear. So what’s the point?

Its all about finding what motivates a large variety of players and then working that into the game, hopefully not at the cost of other players and what they enjoy. I just think GW2 has some gaps they need to fill.

I will say this much, in the end people are going to vote with their wallet. I guess we will see who wins!

The great irony of this game is that its “casuals” are more elitist then the “hardcore” in other games. Case in point:

Tirien.1326:

If a game needs progression in order to be fun the game isn’t fun in the first place.

I think we got two sets of gamers, the secure gamer (Casual) and the insecure gamer (Gear hunting/Achivement nut/World first/Etc).

The casual gamer is a strong gamer, he plays the game the way it is ment. No grind for him/her since they do 1 dungeon each day or maybe even 2, mostly for the fun of it. To enjoy guildies/Family/friends and the “reward” in game is just a +.

The insecure gamer needs some form of reckognition for doing what they do, but in the end nobody cares what you do or what you wear in games, nobody. I know it must feel bad when you have grinded and played for 200-400-600 hours just to show people something, and to know that people really don’t care about it.

I think some people need some form of accomplishment from gaming, but what to do when they find out that nobody cares about what they do? I would love to get a psychologist on this.

It’s grindy inly if you make it so. It’s not suppose to take a day.
It’s suppose to be fun, progression comes in last before fun.

If you play a game for progression you need to find a new genre, or quit gaming completely, because the progression in games is nothing, and nobody cares about it. So why bother?

Don’t flatter yourself – no one cares what you think of them. Gamers who play for achievements and progression do it for themselves not for others. Accomplishment feels good. It seems that you have to tell yourself that everyone else is doing it wrong so that you can feel better about yourself.

Schurge.5194:

The great irony of this game is that its “casuals” are more elitist then the “hardcore” in other games. Case in point:

Tirien.1326:

If a game needs progression in order to be fun the game isn’t fun in the first place.

I think we got two sets of gamers, the secure gamer (Casual) and the insecure gamer (Gear hunting/Achivement nut/World first/Etc).

The casual gamer is a strong gamer, he plays the game the way it is ment. No grind for him/her since they do 1 dungeon each day or maybe even 2, mostly for the fun of it. To enjoy guildies/Family/friends and the “reward” in game is just a +.

The insecure gamer needs some form of reckognition for doing what they do, but in the end nobody cares what you do or what you wear in games, nobody. I know it must feel bad when you have grinded and played for 200-400-600 hours just to show people something, and to know that people really don’t care about it.

I think some people need some form of accomplishment from gaming, but what to do when they find out that nobody cares about what they do? I would love to get a psychologist on this.

It’s grindy inly if you make it so. It’s not suppose to take a day.
It’s suppose to be fun, progression comes in last before fun.

If you play a game for progression you need to find a new genre, or quit gaming completely, because the progression in games is nothing, and nobody cares about it. So why bother?

Don’t flatter yourself – no one cares what you think of them. Gamers who play for achievements and progression do it for themselves not for others. Accomplishment feels good. It seems that you have to tell yourself that everyone else is doing it wrong so that you can feel better about yourself.

I agree so much I wanted to see it agian. /slowclap

The problem i think, is some people have more time to play then others, this leads to content being devour faster.

Now level 80 players might complain that they have nothing to do, and i agree with them, I’m not level 80, I’m only level 78 and quit after that.

But i think it comes down to this game being for casuals or players who have jobs or functional lives, so they only get maybe 3 or 4 hours of gaming a day instead of us who might play 12 or more hours a day.

It’s a great game don’t get me wrong, the journey was excellent, but now that i did my time, I’m done. Perhaps for others who don’t play as much, they have not gotten bored yet or perhaps they are achievement junkies or perhaps they play for some other reason, either way, the game is great, just not a good investment for a hardcore player with out a career in their life.

I cant wait for the people addicted to the never ending Skinner box model leave,
it gives me hope that with those kittenmain… remain to have fun and hopefully this will lead to communities the old school mmo’s once had.

FarFarAway.6579:

Its all about finding what motivates a large variety of players and then working that into the game, hopefully not at the cost of other players and what they enjoy. I just think GW2 has some gaps they need to fill.

I see your point now.

No doubt, and no doubt those gaps will be filled in time – after all that’s what MMOs do, they grow and evolve, the developers try and perfect the game and improve it.

However, I doubt the game will ever have gear stats progression through PvE. I think there will probably be other ways to show PvE achievement, but it seems the Anet philosophy is dead set against having gear progression be one of them.

GW2 like GW is still, at its core, built around PvP (it just has a decent amount of PvE, and this time round a charming persistent world, but combat, the thing you spend most of your time doing, seems to be fundamentally designed for PvP), so I do think that’s the main reason for the equal gear level.

gurugeorge.9857:

FarFarAway.6579:

Its all about finding what motivates a large variety of players and then working that into the game, hopefully not at the cost of other players and what they enjoy. I just think GW2 has some gaps they need to fill.

I see your point now.

No doubt, and no doubt those gaps will be filled in time – after all that’s what MMOs do, they grow and evolve, the developers try and perfect the game and improve it.

However, I doubt the game will ever have gear stats progression through PvE. I think there will probably be other ways to show PvE achievement, but it seems the Anet philosophy is dead set against having gear progression be one of them.

GW2 like GW is still, at its core, built around PvP (it just has a decent amount of PvE, and this time round a charming persistent world, but combat, the thing you spend most of your time doing, seems to be fundamentally designed for PvP), so I do think that’s the main reason for the equal gear level.

But gear progression already is in GW2. Just try fighting level 80 zone in your starting gear.