Guild Wars 2

The greatest problem facing this game right now is the imbalance between risk and reward.

Rewards for challenging, time consuming content are not satisfying enough, while rewards for easily repeatable low-skill and effort tasks are out of proportion.

For example, beating a Citadel of Flame path 1 nets you about 1.26 gold, plus sold items. A fractal reward level 38 will get you about 60 silver to a gold with the possibility of receiving a couple rares.

Citadel of Flame path one takes about 10-15 minutes with a random group, while Fractal 38 requires at least an hour and 15 minutes to two hours and a well coordinated, skilled group.

This is totally insane.
The only motivation for Fractals of the Mists then is a daily, random, chance at a fractal weapon.

Another example?
Queen’s Gauntlet versus zerg farming the pavilion.
Defeating Liadri takes skill and effort. Your reward? A miniature, and a one-time payout of 2 gold.
On the other hand, you could just spend that time running in circles with the mindless mob and make twice as much money, repeatedly.

When I beat the Gauntlet meta achievement, I seriously thought it was bugged. 2 gold for all that effort. No title (I double checked when I first beat it). Just 2 gold. It completely shut down the awesome feeling that I had for succeeding through this skilled content,

Players like being rewarded for their effort. At the same time, players are lazy and want to be efficient with the time they spend on the game. Right now, Guild Wars 2 is filled to the brim with low risk-high reward and high risk-low reward scenarios. While this means that most people will have access to the most desirable content, it also imprints that this is the most effective way of playing.

PvE zerging is not new with Crown Pavilion- it’s something that players have been doing on their own. Groups will find an exploitable event that spawns monsters infinitely and just kill them repeatedly for easy rewards. By implementing this into the game officially with such high rewards as T6 materials and lodestones, it’s sending the message that this is okay- that farming large groups of monsters is good, and should be rewarded.

Some people enjoy this sort of farming. it’s relaxing, and easy. At the same time, there is no high-risk high reward alternative for those that want to do something else. Queen’s Gauntlet gambits are a good attempt, but it still needs balance work. Deadeye’s fight, by its own mechanics, means that many of the gambits do not adjust the difficulty at all. Any of the mobility reducing gambits are rendered useless by teleporting or shadowstepping skills. The damage increasing gambit is rendered useless by blinds and reflects.

As nice as it is to receive a lot of money for low effort farming, at the same time, it casts a shadow over the future of the game. So many people are just farming money for that next skin. This is un-engaged, mindless playing, and while it caters the same experience to the most people, surely the skilled challenges can provide at least decent rewards too?
Dungeon rewards are great, but completely unbalanced. Polish these up a bit. Citadel of Flame path 1 should NOT give the same amount of daily gold as Citadel of Flame path 3.

When I consider doing Fractals or a story dungeon, I don’t want to think “Hmm. I could just farm for a while and make much more money that way”. I want to think at least “Okay, sure, Fractals has nice rewards.” or “Yea, spending 1 and a half hours in that story dungeon was totally worth it!”

Of course, the biggest risk with high risk/skill to high reward content is that it may be exploited, as seen with the Deadeye fight. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun or should be avoided.

I like playing through dungeons and fractals. It’s fun! But the negative reinforcement of subpar rewards compared to something easier makes me want to play the content less and less.

I’m not disinterested in things like new jumping puzzles or new dynamic events, it’s just that there is more rewarding content elsewhere. I loved Zephyr Sanctum’s crystal finding challenge. At the same time, the Aetherblade retreat and Molten Wrapons Facility went un-run many times because the difficulty, while fun for the most part, was completely negated by the fact that you had a very good chance of getting completely worthless rewards. These dungeons were amazing! They were extremely fun. But they were ruined by having rewards inconsistent with their difficulty.

People like guaranteed rares. They like knowing that the effort they’re putting in, no matter how much, is being rewarded. It feels good. But balancing that reward still needs to be done.

Please consider changing the direction things have gone. Queen’s Gauntlet, Champion loot bags, and daily dungeon gold rewards were a small step in the right direction, but the Pavilion itself was a leap back.

If nothing changes soon, it will come to be expected (if not already) that the only way to make money is the next great exploit, or the next big farming area. Give us more incentives to explore! More incentives to run the difficult dungeon paths! More reasons to have fun rather than just grind.

I agree with everything you’ve pointed out, but IN MY OPINION, and from what I’ve seen, Guild Wars 2 is a game where there is NO clear goal to strive for, but sadly, the vast majority of the playerbase is hell-bent on farming the living hell out of easy content in order to get what? A legendary, some other cool skin, whatever it may be. It looks like people have created goals, and that is now the focus of the game and its updates (Take the Pavillion for example, it’s like a farmer’s heaven). JUST MY OPINION THOUGH

It is balanced

No risk = No reward
Risk = Fun, that is the reward

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger or you a better player. All those farmers in CS, FG, and the Pavilion are going to be sad little pandas when they do finally do complete their legendaries because making one is just 5 APs and nothing more.

Peetee.9406:

It is balanced

No risk = No reward
Risk = Fun, that is the reward

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger or you a better player. All those farmers in CS, FG, and the Pavilion are going to be sad little pandas when they do finally do complete their legendaries because making one is just 5 APs and nothing more.

You’re wrong on a couple of levels…

CS farm is basically no risk, if you die you suck, yet great reward.

Fractals 48 is high risk, high effort, and basically no reward.

And, yes, although the gold might not make you stronger, it does create inflation. Which means that people that don’t do the mindless farming (like me) are poor as hell, because I prefer to run dungeons instead. But scrubs that only know how to spam 1 skill and run in circles make 10 times more money than I do. Not to mention token rewards got nerfed as well, meaning no one wants to run dungeon paths twice (although that’s off topic).

Now, the fact that I hate mindless farming leaves me in a negative position, because if I want to buy anything, it’s going to cost me an arm and a limb. Especially with ascended weapons and armor coming out, there might be new materials, which will be super expensive, because there is so much gold in the economy, meaning that I’ll have to work my butt off in order to get the gear, whereas people that did a farm so complicated a mentally challenged chimpanzee can do it, have easier access to the gear.

Risk vs Reward in the game is still broken, and needs to be fixed.

It’s BECAUSE Liadri requires so much skill that the reward is crap, and I’m ok with that. It took me a while to beat her, but I have a mini to show for it. That makes me happy. But I understand that many MMO players simply don’t want skill based content- they want # based content, time based content, etc. That being the case, there would be a LOT of mad people out there because they can’t Liadri’s reward, if that reward was something awesome.

This is a way to give those of us who want skill based stuff something to do, without harming (too badly) those who don’t want it at all.

Peetee.9406:

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger

You haven’t been told about something called “Ascended gear”, have you?

The game also favors those who play daily in order to maximize time gated rewards. This puts players who don’t get time gated rewards daily even further behind, even if they have more skill.

It’s not so much the discrepancy of people with skill versus people without as the idea that if someone skilled doesn’t have much time to play, they have many options to choose from.

If they want to progress gear wise or monetary-wise, then they’ll play what is most efficient for their time rather than what is fun, creating an inaccurate picture of what players find enjoyable.

Tolmos.8395:

That being the case, there would be a LOT of mad people out there because they can’t Liadri’s reward, if that reward was something awesome.

I wouldn’t be mad because Liadri’s hard if that happened, I would be mad that she’s temporary. They can only do so much rewards with temp. content because it’s simply not fair to people just starting the game.

Erasculio.2914:

Peetee.9406:

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger

You haven’t been told about something called “Ascended gear”, have you?

Where is this “Ascended gear” purchasable for gold?

Peetee.9406:

Erasculio.2914:

Peetee.9406:

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger

You haven’t been told about something called “Ascended gear”, have you?

Where is this “Ascended gear” purchasable for gold?

You’ll have to have a lot of gold to get to 500 crafting and get the materials to craft ascended gear. Just because its not a direct buy doesn’t mean you aren’t buying ascended with gold

No matter the cost of ascended armor, the fact remains that challenging, and in my opinion, more fun, content is less rewarding than boring mindless mob grinding.

That just doesn’t make sense, and if ArenaNet are only judging feedback by in-game collected data, then it provides a very inaccurate state of what players want.

Totally agree with the OP!

The reward system in this game is so BROKE!

Which rewards more? Lvl 30+ frac or farming champs in CS with a 100 other people…..?

Which rewards more? Story dungeon or Ember farming?

Take the time and skill required to complete these compared to mindless zerging in mass numbers, who gets rewarded better…..

The higher I go in Fracs, the closer everyday I get to quitting this game, because Mr. Nobody kitten skill players in my guild keeps linking me exotics after exotics and mass amounts of T6 mats from FAILING event chains in CS, while I get kitten for busting my balls in Fracs…..

You have a lot more risk and skill involved in solo/small group roaming in WvW than anything in PvE… therefore solo/small group WvW rewards should be higher than anything in PvE.

I’m sick of my friends that do boring fractals Vs. AI that always reacts the same way and getting rewarded with 20 slot bags, ascended jewelry, and unique skins.

Yet I can go do 2v8+ with a pal all day long and not get diddly squat. Not even a single rare usually.

I totally agree OP. That isn’t right. Lets make this happen.

Peetee.9406:

It is balanced

No risk = No reward
Risk = Fun, that is the reward

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger or you a better player. All those farmers in CS, FG, and the Pavilion are going to be sad little pandas when they do finally do complete their legendaries because making one is just 5 APs and nothing more.

GW1 player spotted. He’s right but some of you aren’t seeing why. Yes ascended armor/weapons may cost a ton of gold and give players a gear advantage in WvW(until everyone else gets it), but that twilight isn’t going to protect you from 100b or backstab. There are things worth more than gear or a legendary. If you want a certain look, go get it- I created an asuran guardian and I plan on putting the t3 cultural armor on him. Is it going to give him special abilities over other characters? no. Do I care? no. Giving super rewards for skill in combination with playtime will just lead players to perform those feats(especially pve ones) and promote new farming.

As an infrequent fractals user, I would have no issues if ANet buffed the rewards to be roughly equal to rewards elsewhere, especially at the higher levels.

There has been kittening and moaning since shortly after launch about how difficult it is to gain gold in GW2. While I believe that was/is true if one’s goal is a Legendary, I don’t think it was really true otherwise. Nevertheless the perception has been that the game is stingy.

While ANet needed to address those perceptions, I believe they would have been better served to buff rewards a little across the board rather than a lot, piecemeal. My guess is, though, that a game-wide revamp is in the works, it’s just being patched in piecemeal in order to be seen as doing something.

Edit: As an infrequent participant in WvW, I believe that it would be a good idea for WvW to be more rewarding, also.

As someone who’s worked on Indy games in the industry (As a character artist, mind you. It isn’t my job to figure these things out.) I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how to make things actually skill-based. Liadri is an example of fake difficulty in that there are too many factors which the user cannot control in order to win the fight. It’s part memorization up until stage 2, when the RNG of the fight, the pulls, and the randomized shadowfall which make the fight difficult and impossible to predict on the fly. I’ve asked the community before how they would handle this, and short of redesigning every mechanic in the game to revolve around player skill there doesn’t seem to be much that you can do about it. When you try to see it from my perspective or that of any game developer, it really becomes an impossible task in a game that doesn’t revolve around skill as a core game mechanic.

It’s weird how they are so careful about buffing fotm or dungeon rewards and then they introduce crazy farms like gauntlet.

Wethospu.6437:

It’s weird how they are so careful about buffing fotm or dungeon rewards and then they introduce crazy farms like gauntlet.

I find it the opposite tbh. It seems like the guys who adjust rewards are just super lazy rather than being ‘careful’. An obvious example is the new dungeon rewards.

I have brought up this same topic many many times on these forums. Never, i repeat NEVER have gotten a response for anyone at Anet. Sadly you are wasting your time :/
They rather cater to the bad player then the good because it makes them more money. Simple as that.

Shockwave.1230:

The game also favors those who play daily in order to maximize time gated rewards. This puts players who don’t get time gated rewards daily even further behind, even if they have more skill.

I believe that is a NCsoft problem, other games from the publisher are being based in daily stuff also.

Viking Jorun.5413:

As someone who’s worked on Indy games in the industry (As a character artist, mind you. It isn’t my job to figure these things out.) I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how to make things actually skill-based. Liadri is an example of fake difficulty(…)

When people talk of “fake difficulty” that sounds like its a complement to lack of certain mechanics or adaptation capacity, and i can start noticing lot of stuff that works arround that here.

I’m not really into farming, I might farm for a couple of days to just get something I madly want, and something that requires just gold. I am more into different dungeons, exploration, puzzles. When this patch launched i really liked the weapon Entropy, as i had no other way to get it i started farming all over the maps to get enough gold to buy it. The moment i bought it I couldn’t go back to farming and realised what stupidity I was doing for whole 3 days, and how much money I got from that. After that I tried gauntlet, it was so good, need of skill and quick reaction but no rewards, i could not beat liadri but everything i got was 1 gold from T1, T2 and almost done T3. I was also doing fractals not long ago, got to lvl 25 and single run barely gave 70 silver. Arenanet FIX THIS!

the best route to take with fractal loot is giving us a reliable way to convert tokens into gold. this would reward people who’ve completed a lot of fractals previously and it scales decently with difficulty level. I’m thinking 10g/150 relics. consider implementing it in a way that avoids massive inflation.(and no, I don’t mean time-gating..) edit2: 80s/1 random lode bag/5 random t6 mat bags/etcetc for 12 relics.

edit: you don’t actually get any gold for killing Liadri OP.

Viking Jorun.5413:

As someone who’s worked on Indy games in the industry (As a character artist, mind you. It isn’t my job to figure these things out.) I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how to make things actually skill-based. Liadri is an example of fake difficulty in that there are too many factors which the user cannot control in order to win the fight. It’s part memorization up until stage 2, when the RNG of the fight, the pulls, and the randomized shadowfall which make the fight difficult and impossible to predict on the fly. I’ve asked the community before how they would handle this, and short of redesigning every mechanic in the game to revolve around player skill there doesn’t seem to be much that you can do about it. When you try to see it from my perspective or that of any game developer, it really becomes an impossible task in a game that doesn’t revolve around skill as a core game mechanic.

Liadri is a poorly designed boss mainly because of the random screen blackouts, the overscripted nature of p1, the terrible camera inside the arena and the pulls are kind of a “meh” mechanic, especially since the orbs are basically untargetable…….. there are nice fights in this game though – soloing Lupus for example – and there is opportunity for many more.

I think the biggest Problem atm is that there are no unique rewards besides liadri minipet for those who do hard Content: as for me I went to fractals scale 80 last year with lot of effort of time and money ( back than the Drops were worse than they’re now at 30 ). I also went for liadri and the light up the dark achievment and have all achievments there… still I feel like I getting nothing in return … instead of doing this Things I could have farmed 25g/hour ( what I’m doing atm to save some money in case I Need some gear for hard Content ) …

what they should do is: add accountbound rewards : SKINS/ TITLES to reaching certain fractal lvl… doing certain challenging things with Special Skin… you could add a new Skin every 10 lvl’s of fractals that is Special …. I feel a bit kitten ed that the only Thing I get on 80 is the same fractal Skins ppl on lvl 20 get as we’ll and trust lvl 20 can be easely done with 3 expereinced guys instead of 5 and is pretty faceroll compared to 80..

Skill varies per person but to me skill was maintaining dual classes and 150 skills etc in GW2 it feels very shallow and generic.

I’d argue things are getting a bit better. Arah does give 3 gold plus a lot of champion loot bags if you survive most it’s paths but I’ll agree this game still rewards mindless zerging more then it should. There’s no real way to show off some of the games greatest accomplishments or rewards which is hurting some of the end-game.

Erasculio.2914:

Peetee.9406:

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger

You haven’t been told about something called “Ascended gear”, have you?

Which is almost certain to be time gated. All the gold in Tyria is still not going to help much.

condescending wonka pic

you never played WvWvW uh?

I had 40 friends playing the game at launch now its just me and one other who still play the game. When I ask them why they quit 95% say because there was no reward for performance. They also were not happy with time gated stuff like dungeons as well.

Complaining about easy gold.

Are you trolling? Really?

Also, about the fractals:

“Should i do FoTM or farm champs?”

What? On FoTM you can get pristine relics and relics. 10 pristine relics gives you the chance to acquire ascended rings, also, 10+ you have chance do gain ascended rings (i got 6 or 7 and my fractal lvl is 22). With relics you can buy the backpiece and with those special vials and globs and shards, you can create a ascended backpiece instead of spending 80 gold or more buying 250 vials of powerful blood for that book. With relics you can buy those 20 slot boxes instead of spending 12-20gold on the TP ones.

Why are you comparing FoTM with champion farm? Doesn’t make sense.

data.4093:

Peetee.9406:

It is balanced

No risk = No reward
Risk = Fun, that is the reward

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger or you a better player. All those farmers in CS, FG, and the Pavilion are going to be sad little pandas when they do finally do complete their legendaries because making one is just 5 APs and nothing more.

GW1 player spotted.

What? GW1 had a great Risk vs Reward system. You had normal dungeons that were relatively easy, and gave you a decent-ish reward with a small chance of a really good reward,elite areas like The Deep, Urgoz, FoW, UW and DoA that were challenging, but really rewarding. If you were able to speedclear any of those areas, you could make some good money. Mostly in FoW and DoA though, UW was a little less profitable after Dhuum.

DoASC was one of the harder things in the game to most players, and after high-end GvG, it was the most profitable thing in game.

In GW2, every scrub can smash his face against the keyboard and make more cash than experienced dungeon runners are making, which is preposterous.

Strange game, the only winning move is, not to play…

Ideal 1: Horizontal Progression. A game where the reward for overcoming higher difficulties challenges is simply the nobility of being able to do so, i.e. fashion, title, miniature. That is to say, all players of all skills must all equally have the same capability of attaining the best items in terms of power, gold and prestige.

Ideal 2: Reward is proportionate to difficulty.

Ideal 1 + Ideal 2 = disaster.

Bright.9160:

data.4093:

Peetee.9406:

It is balanced

No risk = No reward
Risk = Fun, that is the reward

Let me let you in on a little secret, all the gold in Tyria isn’t going to make your character any stronger or you a better player. All those farmers in CS, FG, and the Pavilion are going to be sad little pandas when they do finally do complete their legendaries because making one is just 5 APs and nothing more.

GW1 player spotted.

What? GW1 had a great Risk vs Reward system. You had normal dungeons that were relatively easy, and gave you a decent-ish reward with a small chance of a really good reward,elite areas like The Deep, Urgoz, FoW, UW and DoA that were challenging, but really rewarding. If you were able to speedclear any of those areas, you could make some good money. Mostly in FoW and DoA though, UW was a little less profitable after Dhuum.

DoASC was one of the harder things in the game to most players, and after high-end GvG, it was the most profitable thing in game.

In GW2, every scrub can smash his face against the keyboard and make more cash than experienced dungeon runners are making, which is preposterous.

You say that like there weren’t people just solo farming stuff in GW1 as well. That aspect of the game hasn’t changed much. Except in GW2 you need a whole blob to make it work while in GW1 it can be done solo. Some of the things might have required skill but certainly not all. Cast enchantments, run into mob, stand still and watch things die is not something I would consider skillful. Coming up with the build to do it would be skillful but many people just copied the build from somewhere.

projectcedric.6951:

Ideal 1: Horizontal Progression. A game where the reward for overcoming higher difficulties challenges is simply the nobility of being able to do so, i.e. fashion, title, miniature. That is to say, all players of all skills must all equally have the same capability of attaining the best items in terms of power, gold and prestige.

Ideal 2: Reward is proportionate to difficulty.

Ideal 1 + Ideal 2 = disaster.

I take it you are not a gw1 player.

pullnointer.1476:

projectcedric.6951:

Ideal 1: Horizontal Progression. A game where the reward for overcoming higher difficulties challenges is simply the nobility of being able to do so, i.e. fashion, title, miniature. That is to say, all players of all skills must all equally have the same capability of attaining the best items in terms of power, gold and prestige.

Ideal 2: Reward is proportionate to difficulty.

Ideal 1 + Ideal 2 = disaster.

I take it you are not a gw1 player.

So?

Khisanth.2948:

You say that like there weren’t people just solo farming stuff in GW1 as well. That aspect of the game hasn’t changed much. Except in GW2 you need a whole blob to make it work while in GW1 it can be done solo. Some of the things might have required skill but certainly not all. Cast enchantments, run into mob, stand still and watch things die is not something I would consider skillful. Coming up with the build to do it would be skillful but many people just copied the build from somewhere.

You’re correct, but solo’ing things wasn’t the most profitable thing in the game. It was relatively profitable, and to a lot of people it was profitable enough to keep doing. But at least in GW1, solo farmers didn’t cause super inflation (if anything, they caused deflation), and the most profitable things (DoA mainly) was still one of the hardest things to do unless you were good at it.

Solo farming could get you like 20-30k/hour max. 50k if you were lucky. Farming DoA was 80k/run (and a run was 30-45mins). So we made 3-16 times the amount of money people solo farming did, but we put in at least 10 times the effort as well.