Guild Wars 2

It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.

You might think the above quote is from the much discussed manifesto or another statement made long before launch, and therefore easily dismiss it as one of those ideas that had to be rethought once the game went live.

You’d be wrong. It’s from the vision-casting blog post by Colin Johanson in January of this year. It was forecasting the roll-out of laurels and the items you can get with them, primarily ascended jewelry. The idea, presumably, being that laurels can be earned from your choice of activities, including PvE, PvP, or WvW dailies and including many dailies that fit all three.

Of course, after amulets we got ascended accessories, which have the pretty hefty additional cost of 50 ecto in addition to laurels, unless you plan to participate in guild missions.

Recently, of course, we have been given ascended weapons, which are clearly designed to steer us into certain portions of the game. While bloodstone dust is about as plentiful as QQ posts about thief stealth, dragonite ore and empyreal fragments clearly have optimal and suboptimal methods of acquisition.

Which brings me to a recent post in the WvW forums.

DevonCarver.5370:

The rewards included in season 1 achievements should help to address this. Very specifically the ascended crafting materials. It is also the case, that we want people playing all the parts of the game, so there are always going to be optimal ways to get specific rewards and those may not always include WvW. We are building the whole of GW2 and we try and balance things across all the game types.

We will continue to make strides, however, to make WvW feel more rewarding, especially in this type of area.

Is this This is clearly a 180 on a design principle stated, not three years ago, but only 9 months ago?.

Is it right that the game should be using rewards to push people into playing content in which they have no interest?

Isn’t the burden on the creators to make content enticing enough to draw people to it, rather than requiring they visit it in order to get the gear they will go back to using where they actually enjoy playing?

I don’t mind some soft leading. A daily here or there might get me to try an area of the game I’ve never done before, and I may find I like it. But if there are areas of the game I’ve sampled and decided I dislike, why should I have to choose between doing it anyway or getting gear a lot later than I would have otherwise?

Before the inevitable “people don’t want to work for rewards these days, you just want to log on and have your BiS gear dropped at your feet” ridiculousness, I’ll point out that I’m not talking about getting gear for nothing. I’m talking about having an equal opportunity to get it from the content that I enjoy.

Playing the game you want isn’t what you think it means. It doesn’t mean you can do anything and get EQUAL REWARDS. Because you can’t.

However, let’s pretend a person never wanted to leave Queensdale. They could level to 80 in Queensdale and they’ll never NEED a single ascended item to beat Queensdale. Never ever.

You will, however, need those ascended items to get to the highest level fractals. That’s a different story.

People who kick around the world and don’t do the highest level content (which is most of the game’s population in my opinion) do NOT need an ascended weapon. They just don’t.

Most of the complaints we see about the open world is that it’s too easy. An ascended weapon would just make it easier.

However, if you do the harder stuff, Anet is making it harder to get the top stuff. Many of my characters are still running the hardest content in rares.

Seems to me when he says ‘we want people playing all parts of the game’, he didn’t mean the same people, but that they want to reward people no matter which part of the game they choose to find most attractive. Doesn’t mean each particular reward will found everywhere, nor as easily attained in each and every section/mode/area of content found in the game.

I suppose it’s up to interpretation, as (darn filter) so many things are. /shrug

You know there’s a problem with communication when people have to decipher the difference between what was stated, and what was meant.

Probably should look into that.

Anything stated should be as clear and as far from ambiguity as possible.

Now then, do i personally think this means they are going to heavy hand people into new areas, no. What i do believe is they want to lower the barrier of entry into all aspects of the game for players who would otherwise be naturally adverse to trying something else. I.E those that are PvP, PvE only, or those that have no care about WvW etc…

I do hope that they look into proper risk/reward as that is skewed throughout most places of the game currently.

I have to confess, when I read the words, “It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.” playing every part of the game regardless of whether I enjoy it or not was not what I thought of.

Vayne.8563:

Playing the game you want isn’t what you think it means. It doesn’t mean you can do anything and get EQUAL REWARDS. Because you can’t.

However, let’s pretend a person never wanted to leave Queensdale. They could level to 80 in Queensdale and they’ll never NEED a single ascended item to beat Queensdale. Never ever.

Vayne, you have a rare gift. I can’t think of many other people who could convince themselves that “the most powerful rewards” really means “rewards that are sufficient for whatever you did to earn them”.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Seems to me when he says ‘we want people playing all parts of the game’, he didn’t mean the same people, but that they want to reward people no matter which part of the game they choose to find most attractive. Doesn’t mean each particular reward will found everywhere, nor as easily attained in each and every section/mode/area of content found in the game.

I quoted the whole remark in hopes that context would help. I should have probably also pointed out that it is specifically addressing a thread complaining that dragonite is very slow to come by in WvW. He says that they are adjusting things to try and provide more ascended mats through WvW, but feels it necessary to give the caveat that they see the rewards system as a way to keep people playing all parts of the game.

I don’t see the need for interpretation here. It’s pretty clear.

I’ve never had a problem with certain cosmetics only being attainable in certain areas. It makes sense that you get themed armor with certain content.

When we’re talking about a straight power increase, however, it’s a very different story. WvW players are arguably in most “need”, to use Vayne’s word, of Ascended gear. As he points out, a great deal of the game’s PvE is pretty easy with Exotics. Unlike in PvE, in WvW, ascended gear has increased the power of the enemy.

Vayne.8563:

Most of the complaints we see about the open world is that it’s too easy. An ascended weapon would just make it easier.

However, if you do the harder stuff, Anet is making it harder to get the top stuff. Many of my characters are still running the hardest content in rares.

This might have some relevance to what I posted if ascended mats were being given out in proportion to the difficulty of the content. But they aren’t. An average hour in WvW is much more challenging and much less rewarding than an hour of popping around to world bosses when the timer goes ping. Running through the world solo or with a small group discovering chests and taking on less visible champs can be much more challenging than zerging Orr temples, but is definitely less rewarding.

Please put your straw man away. No one is suggesting that people earn ascended gear for playing entirely in a starter area. I’m talking about the major ways of playing the game, and how as early as the beginning of this year Colin was talking about players being able to get the most powerful gear in the part of the game they like, as opposed to being drawn into other parts of the game with differences in reward.

The perceived “need” or lack thereof for ascended gear also has no relevance on the disparity between “play the way you want” to “reach the most powerful rewards” and “we want people playing all the parts of the game, so there are always going to be optimal ways to get specific rewards”.

I’m not claiming there’s not an imbalance in mats. I’ve never said that. I’m talking about looking at the forest instead of the trees.

Someone ONLY wants to play WvW and nothing else. Okay. I’m pretty sure that those rewards could be fixed so you could get dragonite playing WvW, but Anet has an entire game to balance.

Temple events are now populated. People are doing dungeons again. You may not care about that, but a lot of people do. Anet is making changes for the good of the game as a whole. Some people realize it, some people don’t.

And yes, some people won’t like the way certain things are changed and some people will.

Personally I think you should be able to get stuff faster in WvW anyway, but that’s another issue. It’s the continual quoting the play the way you want thing.

Do you know, rewards can NEVER be equal ever. It can’t happen. Because you can’t compare apples and oranges. It’s like class balances. It’ll NEVER be balanced. By the time you think it is, someone else thinks it isn’t.

Lawyers and politicians go into specific documents and take out individual sentences and try to attach importance to them that was never intended. This isn’t a court of law. This isn’t a legal document.

This is someone presenting an idea. The idea will probably evolve and things will be changed so that more dragonite Orr can be gotten by WvW. At least I hope that’s the case.

But this whole pendantic, Anet said X in one document thing has reached the point of ridiculousness. Hell, in other threads people are still bringing up the manifesto.

People talk casually. They answer questions. They write articles. They try to make the game like what they’re saying, but will every single instance of every single thing be perfectly fair. No.

If you want more dragonite ore in WvW say it. Don’t go find a sentence in a document and say, look Colin said so. Because that only ends up weakening arguments.

Why not just say, listen, this is unfair, because I want to play WvW and not PvE and I’m at a disadvantage if I do that. So I’m being forced to do something I don’t want to do.

That’s a stronger argument. Bringing up what people said and trying to say, well he said it does NOT make your argument stronger.

You have a valid point. Leave the quote at of it and just make the point.

I wasn’t trying to start a discussion on what the meaning of the word “is” is. I don’t think there’s much room for doubt that there is a clear difference between what Colin was saying and what Devon expressed. It’s not even that surprising, since any observation will tell you that they have made choices recently to get people to play in several areas of the game in order to keep their BiS gear.

I trying to start a conversation around the questions at the end of the post. Is it really desirable for a game to be designed to keep people playing in all parts, even if they prefer to play in just one? When is witholding or delaying BiS gear a reasonable tool for that purpose? Does it let the developers off the hook for not improving and expanding those parts of the game to entice players to play rather than leading them there with a carrot?

I don’t think it’s desirable to force people to play every area of a game whether they like it or not. Frankly, I don’t like vertical progression at all, and wish it wasn’t in the game. That would solve a lot of these problems, but possibly open up a whole bunch of different problems.

I think rewards should be increased so someone can, in around the same amount of time, make an ascended weapon without ever visiting PvE.

Vayne.8563:

Lawyers and politicians go into specific documents and take out individual sentences and try to attach importance to them that was never intended. This isn’t a court of law. This isn’t a legal document.

But this whole pendantic, Anet said X in one document thing has reached the point of ridiculousness. Hell, in other threads people are still bringing up the manifesto.

Funny, because that’s how your posts tend to come across to some people. You take what has been said and try to read the most favorable possible interpretation you can into it in order to say it’s not what most people took it to mean due to pretty clear context and repetition.

I’m not sure why you brought up the manifesto. I didn’t reference it, and specifically contrasted the manifesto that GW2 defenders love to dismiss as being ancient and therefore outdated by pointing out that Coin’s statement was made only nine months ago.

If you want more dragonite ore in WvW say it. Don’t go find a sentence in a document and say, look Colin said so. Because that only ends up weakening arguments.

Why not just say, listen, this is unfair, because I want to play WvW and not PvE and I’m at a disadvantage if I do that. So I’m being forced to do something I don’t want to do.

That’s a stronger argument. Bringing up what people said and trying to say, well he said it does NOT make your argument stronger.

You have a valid point. Leave the quote at of it and just make the point.

I can’t disagree with you more on this point.

If this game needs anything, it’s not more people picking apart individual decisions and saying “I don’t like the way this armor looks” or “I needz mounts!” or “My profession gets nerfed the hardest”. Thousands of voices shouting their personal preferences are, in the end, just a bunch of noise.

What the game definitely needs is a clear identity. A vision from the developers stating the game they want to make, and feedback from the community on how well they are achieving that.

“WvW needs better rewards” is a meaningless, contextless statement.

But when the devs say, “Hey, this is the game we want to make”, that’s worth talking about. When they say it repeatedly (contrary to your assertion that people are picking out isolated comments from single documents) then it’s clear it’s one of their goals.

And when they change it for a different design principle, it’s time to talk about why, and whether or not it was a good change.

Gibson.4036:

Vayne.8563:

Lawyers and politicians go into specific documents and take out individual sentences and try to attach importance to them that was never intended. This isn’t a court of law. This isn’t a legal document.

But this whole pendantic, Anet said X in one document thing has reached the point of ridiculousness. Hell, in other threads people are still bringing up the manifesto.

Funny, because that’s how your posts tend to come across to some people. You take what has been said and try to read the most favorable possible interpretation you can into it in order to say it’s not what most people took it to mean due to pretty clear context and repetition.

I’m not sure why you brought up the manifesto. I didn’t reference it, and specifically contrasted the manifesto that GW2 defenders love to dismiss as being ancient and therefore outdated by pointing out that Coin’s statement was made only nine months ago.

If you want more dragonite ore in WvW say it. Don’t go find a sentence in a document and say, look Colin said so. Because that only ends up weakening arguments.

Why not just say, listen, this is unfair, because I want to play WvW and not PvE and I’m at a disadvantage if I do that. So I’m being forced to do something I don’t want to do.

That’s a stronger argument. Bringing up what people said and trying to say, well he said it does NOT make your argument stronger.

You have a valid point. Leave the quote at of it and just make the point.

I can’t disagree with you more on this point.

If this game needs anything, it’s not more people picking apart individual decisions and saying “I don’t like the way this armor looks” or “I needz mounts!” or “My profession gets nerfed the hardest”. Thousands of voices shouting their personal preferences are, in the end, just a bunch of noise.

What the game definitely needs is a clear identity. A vision from the developers stating the game they want to make, and feedback from the community on how well they are achieving that.

“WvW needs better rewards” is a meaningless, contextless statement.

But when the devs say, “Hey, this is the game we want to make”, that’s worth talking about. When they say it repeatedly (contrary to your assertion that people are picking out isolated comments from single documents) then it’s clear it’s one of their goals.

And when they change it for a different design principle, it’s time to talk about why, and whether or not it was a good change.

Actually I disagree with this. I think there are two sides to every story. When a dev wants to make something, it only works if the community can get behind what they want to make. And sometimes, really good ideas DO come from the community.

If someone says they feel they’re being driven to play parts of the game they don’t enjoy, that SHOULD be said…because devs need to know that’s the case. And if enough people feel that way, it should be fixed, because in the end, an MMO is entertainment, but it’s also a service (as discussed in another thread). Basically, if people aren’t happy, they should have a voice.

to address the OP
I interpreted that statement that whatever game mode you engage in should have equal rewards and you should be able to acquire what you need by playing what you like.
Clearly this is not the case and imo it should be addressed.
I know what I like- I am not suddenly going to start doing stuff I do not like in order to get rewards.
I am not talking about skins here.

If someone wants to do one part of the game exclusively because that is what is fun to them be it pve, pvp, wvw- they should not be forced into another mode and they should also not be punished for their preference it, is really that simple.

It is not like we are talking about a legendary here.

The onus is on Anet to create content people want to engage in of their own free will not because of a carrot/ threat in the form of bis gear.

If you look at the current game people are clumped up doing repetitive things in order to either get mats or gold or both.
Often because they feel they have to not because they choose to- it creates friction and a negative atmosphere in game

If we had equal rewards people could get what they need by doing stuff they truly want to do- it would make for a much better situation imo.

This a little bit off-topic, but can you play the way you want without there being incentives?

Let me elaborate, I want to do World Bosses. Lets say you can get dragonite ore plentifully from elsewhere. This emans players will be scattered across all those activities to get dragonite ore, leaving a fairly small proportion of people doing world bosses, meaning there’s a good chance that there won;t be enough people for me to actually do what I want to do.

I personally feel that with the intent the OP quoted, rewards (most probably ascended crafting mats, but why not include direct rewards of the weapns itself thru a non-RNG means, like dungeon tokens) should be present in as much activity players would indulge in, though of course only one or two are more optimal than the rest. Viable for me, is sufficient. but of course ‘viable’ is subjective. My take on viable is if the most optimum path gives … say…. 50 of X items where u need for ur goals HUNDREDS of X, then other paths should give, 20-30 of X items. If the ratio instead for optimum path drops to other path drops are like 50 : 2, then i really don think thats viable.

Taking the case of dragonite ore, so as to get ..BiS weapons… as an example…

I like dungeons and occasional WvW. In WvW i hate mindless zerging, i prefer small scale stuff for personal and practical reasons which extend to pvE as well (my internet line often (but not always) suffers badly in massive zerg events, the number of times I dc-ed at world bosses when their health is like veryy low, only to relogin and find the boss is dead and i missed the rewards). Now if I stick to the activities i like, i would hardly ever see dragonite ore, and even then the likeliest place is from storming WvW keeps (usually need zerg though its somewhat possible with smaller group), which gets you…what…3-5 ores? So if you were to ask me, what id like is for dungeons to have dragonite, or dragonite is accessible thru wvw stuff that does not need, or attract a zerg.

And equally important if they do drop in other places, again, dont make the amount drop to amount required ratio be stupid. Its just as frustrating in this case, if they add more sources for dragonite, but those sources give 1-2 each when u need 500. In the end, id still be forced to go join zergs (and probably suffer dozens more time of frustration as i dc and miss out on the rewards) or wait a stupid long time as it slowly accumulates by doing stuff id prefer but which gives a sloths pace of progress.

This is no different than what I was posting about crystaline dust. It’s bad for you because you are “forced” to do things you don’t want to or can’t do. It’s bad for me because I have to make someone rich (probably in real-life) by killing karkas to sell for dust.

Spare me on the “other ways to get dust” assertion. See other posts about this.

This also applies to my thread about having more farming alternatives.

If you want money for your carrot goals, the best way to do that is champ farming. There should be more farm options so it doesn’t get boring, there’s just too few options that are actually decent.

Xae Isareth.1364:

This a little bit off-topic, but can you play the way you want without there being incentives?

Let me elaborate, I want to do World Bosses. Lets say you can get dragonite ore plentifully from elsewhere. This emans players will be scattered across all those activities to get dragonite ore, leaving a fairly small proportion of people doing world bosses, meaning there’s a good chance that there won;t be enough people for me to actually do what I want to do.

That’s why they would then buff the rewards for the world boss so it’s worth doing for people.

Unless the fight is just so interesting and fun that people are willing to do it w/o a reward, you need rewards.

Even if it was just THAT fun, people would do it once or twice, then never again. Just look at ANYTHING in game, imagine there was no rewards/loot for ANYTHING at all, which parts of the game would still be entertaining/interesting enough to get you to keep doing them w/o rewards? Even after doing them several times already.

I can think of a few. Exploration of course is fine the first MAYBE the second time. Dungeons as well. pretty much everything out side of pvp wouldn’t be that fun after awhile.

Pvp is different just because it’s never the same thing twice obviously, even then some kind of reward/progression is good to have there.

Knote.2904:

This also applies to my thread about having more farming alternatives.

If you want money for your carrot goals, the best way to do that is champ farming. There should be more farm options so it doesn’t get boring, there’s just too few options that are actually decent.

Xae Isareth.1364:

This a little bit off-topic, but can you play the way you want without there being incentives?

Let me elaborate, I want to do World Bosses. Lets say you can get dragonite ore plentifully from elsewhere. This emans players will be scattered across all those activities to get dragonite ore, leaving a fairly small proportion of people doing world bosses, meaning there’s a good chance that there won;t be enough people for me to actually do what I want to do.

That’s why they would then buff the rewards for the world boss so it’s worth doing for people.

Then people would just ‘farm’ world bosses because its better loot than everything else, and we go back to square one.

I may have given a bad explanation of my point. The point is that lets say, we have 100 players in the game, because dragonite ore is pretty much unique to world bosses, all 100 does world bosses for it. Now we introduce 3 more equally as good options, so, we end up with 25 players doing world bosses. 25 players isn’t enough to defeat that world boss, so those 25 players can’t do what they want.

In a world where there’s so many players that you can be absolutely sure we got enough people to do any content at all times, that’s all good, but if we don’t then dividing up the playerbase has problems.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Knote.2904:

This also applies to my thread about having more farming alternatives.

If you want money for your carrot goals, the best way to do that is champ farming. There should be more farm options so it doesn’t get boring, there’s just too few options that are actually decent.

Xae Isareth.1364:

This a little bit off-topic, but can you play the way you want without there being incentives?

Let me elaborate, I want to do World Bosses. Lets say you can get dragonite ore plentifully from elsewhere. This emans players will be scattered across all those activities to get dragonite ore, leaving a fairly small proportion of people doing world bosses, meaning there’s a good chance that there won;t be enough people for me to actually do what I want to do.

That’s why they would then buff the rewards for the world boss so it’s worth doing for people.

Then people would just ‘farm’ world bosses because its better loot than everything else, and we go back to square one.

I may have given a bad explanation of my point. The point is that lets say, we have 100 players in the game, because dragonite ore is pretty much unique to world bosses, all 100 does world bosses for it. Now we introduce 3 more equally as good options, so, we end up with 25 players doing world bosses. 25 players isn’t enough to defeat that world boss, so those 25 players can’t do what they want.

In a world where there’s so many players that you can be absolutely sure we got enough people to do any content at all times, that’s all good, but if we don’t then dividing up the playerbase has problems.

They wouldn’t be farming it non-stop, it’s still a daily reward. And as I said in my other thread it doesn’t matter if there’s one thing that’s the best. What’s important is closing the gap.

If everything was 90% as good as the best farming option, that best farming option might get more traffic, but a lot of people wouldn’t mind giving up that 10% gap in order to play the rest of the game.

Also I’m assuming you’re talking about Tequatl here. As I’ve said, even when it was first introduced, making it REQUIRE 80+ people was a huge mistake.

The harder it is to get enough people for the fight, the less people will bother, the less people bother, the harder it is to get enough people for the fight lol.

It should’ve just been a minimum of 20-30 people then scale upwards from there.

Knote.2904:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Knote.2904:

This also applies to my thread about having more farming alternatives.

If you want money for your carrot goals, the best way to do that is champ farming. There should be more farm options so it doesn’t get boring, there’s just too few options that are actually decent.

Xae Isareth.1364:

This a little bit off-topic, but can you play the way you want without there being incentives?

Let me elaborate, I want to do World Bosses. Lets say you can get dragonite ore plentifully from elsewhere. This emans players will be scattered across all those activities to get dragonite ore, leaving a fairly small proportion of people doing world bosses, meaning there’s a good chance that there won;t be enough people for me to actually do what I want to do.

That’s why they would then buff the rewards for the world boss so it’s worth doing for people.

Then people would just ‘farm’ world bosses because its better loot than everything else, and we go back to square one.

I may have given a bad explanation of my point. The point is that lets say, we have 100 players in the game, because dragonite ore is pretty much unique to world bosses, all 100 does world bosses for it. Now we introduce 3 more equally as good options, so, we end up with 25 players doing world bosses. 25 players isn’t enough to defeat that world boss, so those 25 players can’t do what they want.

In a world where there’s so many players that you can be absolutely sure we got enough people to do any content at all times, that’s all good, but if we don’t then dividing up the playerbase has problems.

They wouldn’t be farming it non-stop, it’s still a daily reward. And as I said in my other thread it doesn’t matter if there’s one thing that’s the best. What’s important is closing the gap.

If everything was 90% as good as the best farming option, that best farming option might get more traffic, but a lot of people wouldn’t mind giving up that 10% gap in order to play the rest of the game.

Also I’m assuming you’re talking about Tequatl here. As I’ve said, even when it was first introduced, making it REQUIRE 80+ people was a huge mistake.

The harder it is to get enough people for the fight, the less people will bother, the less people bother, the harder it is to get enough people for the fight lol.

It should’ve just been a minimum of 20-30 people then scale upwards from there.

I didn’t read your other thread, and my point wasn’t about not closing the gap or closing the gap. It was about players being too divided to do content.

But now that you mention Tequatl. The 80+ players requirement was quite reasonable. You can’t have content be ‘massive’ but designed around very few players, the mechanics intended just wouldn’t work. Its the same reason why there’s dungeons in WoW, and then there’s raids.

The implementation was a disaster, it should’ve been an instanced guild alliance mission.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Knote.2904:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Knote.2904:

This also applies to my thread about having more farming alternatives.

If you want money for your carrot goals, the best way to do that is champ farming. There should be more farm options so it doesn’t get boring, there’s just too few options that are actually decent.

Xae Isareth.1364:

This a little bit off-topic, but can you play the way you want without there being incentives?

Let me elaborate, I want to do World Bosses. Lets say you can get dragonite ore plentifully from elsewhere. This emans players will be scattered across all those activities to get dragonite ore, leaving a fairly small proportion of people doing world bosses, meaning there’s a good chance that there won;t be enough people for me to actually do what I want to do.

That’s why they would then buff the rewards for the world boss so it’s worth doing for people.

Then people would just ‘farm’ world bosses because its better loot than everything else, and we go back to square one.

I may have given a bad explanation of my point. The point is that lets say, we have 100 players in the game, because dragonite ore is pretty much unique to world bosses, all 100 does world bosses for it. Now we introduce 3 more equally as good options, so, we end up with 25 players doing world bosses. 25 players isn’t enough to defeat that world boss, so those 25 players can’t do what they want.

In a world where there’s so many players that you can be absolutely sure we got enough people to do any content at all times, that’s all good, but if we don’t then dividing up the playerbase has problems.

They wouldn’t be farming it non-stop, it’s still a daily reward. And as I said in my other thread it doesn’t matter if there’s one thing that’s the best. What’s important is closing the gap.

If everything was 90% as good as the best farming option, that best farming option might get more traffic, but a lot of people wouldn’t mind giving up that 10% gap in order to play the rest of the game.

Also I’m assuming you’re talking about Tequatl here. As I’ve said, even when it was first introduced, making it REQUIRE 80+ people was a huge mistake.

The harder it is to get enough people for the fight, the less people will bother, the less people bother, the harder it is to get enough people for the fight lol.

It should’ve just been a minimum of 20-30 people then scale upwards from there.

I didn’t read your other thread, and my point wasn’t about not closing the gap or closing the gap. It was about players being too divided to do content.

But now that you mention Tequatl. The 80+ players requirement was quite reasonable. You can’t have content be ‘massive’ but designed around very few players, the mechanics intended just wouldn’t work. Its the same reason why there’s dungeons in WoW, and then there’s raids.

The implementation was a disaster, it should’ve been an instanced guild alliance mission.

I agree. But also having an easier version of the fight in open world.

I find it funny that a common argument against raiding is that “it’s too hard to organized 20 people”, but you have to organize 80 RANDOM people for Tequatl. There’s a big flaw here. =p

Knote.2904:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Knote.2904:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Knote.2904:

This also applies to my thread about having more farming alternatives.

If you want money for your carrot goals, the best way to do that is champ farming. There should be more farm options so it doesn’t get boring, there’s just too few options that are actually decent.

Xae Isareth.1364:

This a little bit off-topic, but can you play the way you want without there being incentives?

Let me elaborate, I want to do World Bosses. Lets say you can get dragonite ore plentifully from elsewhere. This emans players will be scattered across all those activities to get dragonite ore, leaving a fairly small proportion of people doing world bosses, meaning there’s a good chance that there won;t be enough people for me to actually do what I want to do.

That’s why they would then buff the rewards for the world boss so it’s worth doing for people.

Then people would just ‘farm’ world bosses because its better loot than everything else, and we go back to square one.

I may have given a bad explanation of my point. The point is that lets say, we have 100 players in the game, because dragonite ore is pretty much unique to world bosses, all 100 does world bosses for it. Now we introduce 3 more equally as good options, so, we end up with 25 players doing world bosses. 25 players isn’t enough to defeat that world boss, so those 25 players can’t do what they want.

In a world where there’s so many players that you can be absolutely sure we got enough people to do any content at all times, that’s all good, but if we don’t then dividing up the playerbase has problems.

They wouldn’t be farming it non-stop, it’s still a daily reward. And as I said in my other thread it doesn’t matter if there’s one thing that’s the best. What’s important is closing the gap.

If everything was 90% as good as the best farming option, that best farming option might get more traffic, but a lot of people wouldn’t mind giving up that 10% gap in order to play the rest of the game.

Also I’m assuming you’re talking about Tequatl here. As I’ve said, even when it was first introduced, making it REQUIRE 80+ people was a huge mistake.

The harder it is to get enough people for the fight, the less people will bother, the less people bother, the harder it is to get enough people for the fight lol.

It should’ve just been a minimum of 20-30 people then scale upwards from there.

I didn’t read your other thread, and my point wasn’t about not closing the gap or closing the gap. It was about players being too divided to do content.

But now that you mention Tequatl. The 80+ players requirement was quite reasonable. You can’t have content be ‘massive’ but designed around very few players, the mechanics intended just wouldn’t work. Its the same reason why there’s dungeons in WoW, and then there’s raids.

The implementation was a disaster, it should’ve been an instanced guild alliance mission.

I agree. But also having an easier version of the fight in open world.

I find it funny that a common argument against raiding is that “it’s too hard to organized 20 people”, but you have to organize 80 RANDOM people for Tequatl. There’s a big flaw here. =p

Its not even just that. Raids are meant for the elite and they work because you’ll fail over and over again but you get up, swipe the blood off your lips and get into the raid with your close friends to fight again, becoming better and better until that one day you beat the raid. Its a beautiful experience of bonding with your friends and overcoming a challenge.

The way Tequatl was made completely destroyed that. You can’t just go back and try again because it needs to spawn again, its frustrating. You do it with a bunch of randoms, so even if you and your friends get better, there’s 35 new Random Joes who just got into SF and they don’t have a clue what they’re doing each time you try this ‘raid’.

I hope they revamp Jormag eventually, but leave the current one as it is but make another instanced guild alliance mission which you can beat (but try as many times as you want) once per day/week. It even makes sense logically. The Claw was beaten by mere humans and shamed by its fellow dragons, now it came back with a vengeance to wreck havoc and destroy all those responsible for that.

Being rewarded for playing the way you want is too vague. It leaves out the most important condition of sane gameplay, which is that reward should correlate with difficulty, and you should be able to play the way you want and be rewarded accordingly with equivalent content of the same difficulty— which doesn’t happen in this game anyways— but I’m just saying.

Still, I agree with OP on the fundamental idea that methods of acquiral need to be a lot wider, especially for stuff that actually matters.