Guild Wars 2

Money.

Seriously, it ruins the fun so much in this game. Why are we skipping mobs? Because there’s an imaginary profit/reward given. Why are we kicking inexperienced people? Because they slow my profit. Why do most groups utilize exploits? Makes the money come in faster. Why are people using magic find armor? Money. Why am I repeating dungeons I am tired of doing? Money. Why do some players descriminate against certain classes? Slows the money. Why are we repeatedly killing the first boss in Twighlight Arbor? Cores = money.

The absolute best experiences I’ve had in this game are when I am with people who don’t give a kitten if we are quick or not. The people who play this game because they want to have fun. It was about the journey, not the destination.

I went to the dungeon Lord Caudicuses Manor. It was beautiful. I really really enjoyed the story and all the gameplay envolved in it. I loved it so much that I joined a group that was doing all three paths afterwards.

Unfortunately, they knew all of the short cuts. All of the ways to get the boss to be unable to attack you. One of the final bosses is chillin’ on a platform while we nuke it with AoE from under it in the water. Boring! So why do we do it? Imaginary profits!

I did Twilight Arbor exporable. There was a spider queen type boss. It looked so exciting! But the optimal way to beat it was to stand outside of the cave at this very particular angle where the boss had trouble hitting you. I stood still, fired grenades and it died. I walked in the room and saw all these spider eggs. I thought that woulda been such a cool mechanic, but we skipped it because there was a reward at the end.

Why can the reward in this game just be the design? The fun of it! There are so many cool bosses in this game that are completely skipped or ignored because there’s a chest at the end of it. I’m so tired of CoF, but it’s a profit center. Super quick and super easy to find a group. Easy money, but I’m tired of it. It was fun the first few times, but I don’t want to do it anymore. Same with CoE.

Imagine this game had no money systems. At all. People played certain areas because they wanted to. Because the design was great.

You know what was the most rewarding experience I’ve had in this game? I got together with four other engineers in my guild and we did Sorrow’s Embrace. Two of us were underleveled for it (One was lvl 56 , one was lvl 64). Three of us had never done path three before. Every single encounter was difficult, but fair! It all lead up to the battle against the Destroyer of Worlds and it was unbelievably epic! What was great was that NONE of us cared about the money. It was about the fun of it. We were in that dungeon hours longer than any pug would have taken, but it didn’t matter. My reward wasn’t 26 silver and some tokens. It was the experience.

Money kills that. Money makes the reward…something not real. I feel like this game has so much potential. Not even potential, the content is there in a lot of places. Arah (Story) was great! I loved Caudicus’s Manor (Or however you spell it). SE Path 1 (The one with the sigularity) is amazing! Money makes people want efficiency, not fun.

And it’s not even just the people, because I’ve done dungeons with people I like to hang out with. It was still boring because we skipped so much! Because bosses could be tricked into doing stupid things that turned battles into literally going AFK while auto-attack kills it. Seriously. Melee bosses NEED pulls to yank players off of rocks.

It just kinda sucks. Of course it’s not the ONLY reason people use exploits and skip mobs, but you can’t deny it’s a major reason.

I mean, compare this to any other game. For those who have played Final Fantasy 9, would you utilize an exploit to kill one of their bosses? Course not! For what? You didn’t REALLY beat it. The fun is figuring out how to beat the boss and seeing if your strategies work. It’s just barely coming out of the fight alive. What about a racing game? What if you could just back up and drive forward to win every race. Would you do that just to be able to get through it? Course not! The fun is driving, not winning or any rewards that they give you! Think of Braid! The fun is solving puzzles or finding out how amazing the solution is from looking it up online (guilty xD). I didn’t play it because I got gold coins from beating the puzzles to get some special armor for my guy.

I know this isn’t going to happen, but I just wanted to put the idea out there. More of a discussion than anything else. Love this game, just get sick of how money tends to spoil it sometimes.

I like the money because you can buy things and feel special having lots of gold.

I dont like legendaries because thats what people waste their time getting and dont socialize or have fun with too much grind grind grind not enough hi wanna kill with me?

I wish I could remove Stealth but that’s not going to happen.

Removing money is like removing incentives in the game. Without it, everyone might as well have the same gear from the market. No sense of difference, uniqueness or achievement either. I think that by removing money would render a game…. bland and tasteless.

I guess the trade off for no currencies would be camping boss respawns for loot.

I sort of agree with what you are saying overall though and it’ll be intersting to see how the bosses are changing with the update, although i’d be (happily) surprised to see anything drastic.

I think there are enough ppl who are playing because they want to play, not just grind money. The game caters for both I guess.

that is an awesome post Op and I agree 100% – I just wish I could get shinies with no money- oh wait.. I don’t have any.
Seriously though, I may be broke but I have had sooo much fun.
It is the epic battles that stay with you not the loot

I totally agree that its not fun skipping mobs or glitching bosses. A lot of times, people are using their little trick and standing in the spot that doesn’t get them attacked. I’m always the one charging in and dodging all the boss mechanics, but in fights with adds I get targeted by everything and get killed a lot. I’m always the one in the group going “f your exploit”, but I’m the “noob” who gets killed even when I stay alive 3x longer than others do in the real fight. Like the time in Arah where we tried to run through most of the mobs to a point where they would all lose interest. It ended in us wiping 4 times (I died probably about 6 times) and spending more time/money than it would take to just kill everything. Although, It was pretty funny when I saw someone run up to the “safe point” with the spider champion on them and 4/5 of my party died to the aoe without using a single skill or taking 1 step. But in the end, I’m getting 0 loot from mobs, 0 gold from mobs, and 60 tokens at the end of an hour of pain and being bored. woooooo. /endrant

Cowrex.9564:

Removing money is like removing incentives in the game. Without it, everyone might as well have the same gear from the market. No sense of difference, uniqueness or achievement either. I think that by removing money would render a game…. bland and tasteless.

I can get money in the real world. If the only reason I play this game is to get money, it becomes a job. If fake money is your only incentive to play this game, I suggest you play a different game. The incentive should be fun, diverse and interesting gameplay, not money/rewards.

I guess the trade off for no currencies would be camping boss respawns for loot.

But no loot either. No artificial rewards. After you complete a dungeon, you have nothing more than a wonderful memory of what you just did. The reward is the experience, and I don’t mean the kind that levels you up.

I like the money because you can buy things and feel special having lots of gold.

I dont like legendaries because thats what people waste their time getting and dont socialize or have fun with too much grind grind grind not enough hi wanna kill with me?

See but that second part is exactly my point. Sure, it’s fun to shop. I agree, but the money system straight up ruins that. Why do we have to replay a dungeon multiple times to get the reward we want? Why not just have it so if you complete all paths of the story, you can unlock the reward. Efficiency wouldn’t really matter. People would only replay it if they truly wanted to. It also allows you to really ramp up the difficulty on the higher number paths.

Only peeps that want to remove money are those that haven’t figured out how to acquire it.

If you actually play the game as ANet intended it to be played, you can’t help from making enough coin to keep you going.

I think the downside with money in GW2, is the fact that it isn’t easy to come by. I mean, sure making money can be easy to some, but just playing the game naturally won’t make you money.

For instance, take other games like WoW for example. By the time you’re level 10, you’ve already made about 10-20g just from playing the game normally. No farming or working the AH to make more money, just regular questing.

But then you got GW2. By the time you are level 10, you have made about 10-20 silver. That’s just from playing the game normally without farming or working the TP. You don’t make a lot of money from just playing the game normally in GW2 as you do in other games.

So naturally, everyone is farming hardcore to make money in this game. And with DR and nerfs to loot drops and such, you need to farm or work the TP to make any decent money. Unlike other games that provide you with plenty of money without having to farm and such. I remember playing these other games to run stuff for gear or just to do them for other things. Never had to farm for money as it was easy to obtain. Now in GW2, I find myself running things just to try to make a few silver, instead of trying to get gear or doing them for fun.

For people who don’t farm constantly or work the TP, money is hard to come by. So naturally, everything we do is to try to earn money.

Without money you wouldn’t have the people to play with unfortunately.

What happens is you say “Hey this looks pretty cool!” Then after doing it a few times it’s not so cool anymore and you stop bothering. So does everyone else. Repeat for all the things to do and then months later everyone stops bothering. The new people that join the game after you had your fun have less/no people to group with, so they get bored and quit before long too.

If there was no money, then a different item would replace it as currency for trading.

Then we would have a post asking to remove that item.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Money.

Imagine this game had no money systems. At all. People played certain areas because they wanted to. Because the design was great.

You’re playing with the wrong people. You can do exactly that and still get money

to sum up:

i play the game in the style of “x”, can we please remove all the people who play the game in the style of "y"please?

or we could go plan B and remove all the people who don’t care about money cause they just ruin the fun that those who do

One things for sure. personally I use play style “z” I buy gems and sell them for my gold. we all know Anet won’t try and drop that style.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

I think the downside with money in GW2, is the fact that it isn’t easy to come by. I mean, sure making money can be easy to some, but just playing the game naturally won’t make you money.

For instance, take other games like WoW for example. By the time you’re level 10, you’ve already made about 10-20g just from playing the game normally. No farming or working the AH to make more money, just regular questing.

But then you got GW2. By the time you are level 10, you have made about 10-20 silver. That’s just from playing the game normally without farming or working the TP. You don’t make a lot of money from just playing the game normally in GW2 as you do in other games.

So naturally, everyone is farming hardcore to make money in this game. And with DR and nerfs to loot drops and such, you need to farm or work the TP to make any decent money. Unlike other games that provide you with plenty of money without having to farm and such. I remember playing these other games to run stuff for gear or just to do them for other things. Never had to farm for money as it was easy to obtain. Now in GW2, I find myself running things just to try to make a few silver, instead of trying to get gear or doing them for fun.

For people who don’t farm constantly or work the TP, money is hard to come by. So naturally, everything we do is to try to earn money.

Agreed^

Diminishing Returns get rid of it. I’m tired of running Dungeons for money and Lodestones as every time I run with a PUG I get the speed demons who can’t wait to finish the dungeon they barely just entered. They skip everything they possibly can including extra money!!

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

Let me just farm a mob in the open world so I don’t have to do this anymore so I can just rely on myself from time to time! I want to get my own materials and such but trying to do that is impossible because of DR and crap loot tables. And buying them on the TP is a joke! I want to make Mjolnir and I need 350 Charged Lodestones but have you seen the prices on those puppies?

This is sad as all this looks like is a cheap attempt to force people into the Gem store which I spent money on early on due to me thinking dyes once unlocked where accessible to all characters on an account which wasn’t the case.

Its getting harder to disappoint me Anet but somehow you always prevail in doing so

Honestly this could all be avoided if some of the encounters actually had sense or some logic that is not kite a kittenload of mobs while the bar fills for 5 minutes, trash didn’t have millions of HP and you had to kill trash to progress further through the dungeon.
- block the door until all trash in the room is dead or
- make all trash run to the boss room once the boss has been engaged.

Imo it’s just poor design, and they can easily correct it. Patch up a few spots, and every other spot players find to pewpew safely from. If that is intended then FML.

Minion of Vey.4398:

Without money you wouldn’t have the people to play with unfortunately.

What happens is you say “Hey this looks pretty cool!” Then after doing it a few times it’s not so cool anymore and you stop bothering. So does everyone else. Repeat for all the things to do and then months later everyone stops bothering. The new people that join the game after you had your fun have less/no people to group with, so they get bored and quit before long too.

So basically, they’re tricking people into playing. Yeah. That’s better.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Minion of Vey.4398:

Without money you wouldn’t have the people to play with unfortunately.

What happens is you say “Hey this looks pretty cool!” Then after doing it a few times it’s not so cool anymore and you stop bothering. So does everyone else. Repeat for all the things to do and then months later everyone stops bothering. The new people that join the game after you had your fun have less/no people to group with, so they get bored and quit before long too.

So basically, they’re tricking people into playing. Yeah. That’s better.

Do you feel tricked playing MMOs?

Minion of Vey.4398:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Minion of Vey.4398:

Without money you wouldn’t have the people to play with unfortunately.

What happens is you say “Hey this looks pretty cool!” Then after doing it a few times it’s not so cool anymore and you stop bothering. So does everyone else. Repeat for all the things to do and then months later everyone stops bothering. The new people that join the game after you had your fun have less/no people to group with, so they get bored and quit before long too.

So basically, they’re tricking people into playing. Yeah. That’s better.

Do you feel tricked playing MMOs?

That’s the reason I don’t do dungeons unless I want to anymore. I play to have fun, not work.

But why have any trading? It’s killing the meat of the game, which is combat. Why do we have to spend so much money just to get max gear and good runes? Why do I have to pay money to change my traits?

At least jumping puzzles are completely unaffected.

Because one of the lead designers of this game is a business guy.

Thats why we have so many systems which apparently work perfectly fine from an economists point of view, but are not fun to play at all.

I’d remove the whole getting rich off the Trading Post thing. Make anything bought off the trading post account bound. Let people get rich off being productive, not leeching off the players that are actually out in the world doing stuff.

I’d increase rewards for playing open world. You do CoF million times because you need money. You may enjoy dong events instead. But what of it if you will be as poor as before while in dundeon you can easily make 1g in 20 mins? Doesn’t calculate. Playing is too unrewarding. That’s why people gring money. Everything is super expensive but u get no money from anywhere to buy anything.

I have to agree with the OP…in a certain way. I dont want to remove money from the game, i think that is a bit extreme. But the amount of trash skipping, the amount of boss glitching is out of control. Ive never played an MMO where we can skip 80% of a dungeon’s trash, get to the boss, and have a 50/50% of the boss being able to be glitched where damage is greatly reduced if not completely.

Concerning the spider queen encounter in TA: Since Anet is going to be revamping these dungeons, making some harder I’d imagine that they might make this boss reset if you try to pull her out of the egg cave. Id imagine that we will need to fight inside the cave, avoiding eggs and dealing with any cracked eggs/adds. They are going to make changes like that to dungeons. And I hope they do.

Im really sick of skipping every kitten pull for the sake of speed. Then, when someone falls behind, its a nightmare trying to get that person going again. Often does more damage than good. But then people avoid groups that have that potential. On gw2lfg.com they will post something to the effect of “LF1m, need warrior have mesmer, must know how to skip, 7 minute dungeon run, skipping all trash, full exotic”
I guess…my thief cant go on class alone? Stupid?

And allowing the sale of legendaries on the TP is probably the dumbest thing arenanet has ever done.

I got ur point, u are right with it. I wish gold were not so important like it is. It ruins the gameplay, it ruins the community, it ruins the whole game! Gold is the number one thing in Guild Wars for mostly people, it makes me sad that a beautiful game like this is so. I would’t suggest to delete the gold from the game, there are other solutions for that… This game has become something that i don’t like, it has become a “Farm Game”. Every single person is farming gold. But i still love the game, i still enjoy the game with my friends. I hope ANet will change some things that ruins the game.

But you can’t enjoy a journey without a destination ;

It’s like living your life being absolutely sure there is nothing beyond.
Or living your life without any goal.

I mean, if I ask, what do you play a game for? you’ll say, “for fun”.
What do you have fun for?

I got the Golden title without playing the TP, just doing open world stuff. It’s not hard, just sell everything. Don’t buy stuff, sell everything. You hit 200g eventually, and then you can’t complain you don’t have money to buy the important stuff.

Something very good would be randomly generated dungeons. Instead of creating 3 paths, designers would design tons of different rooms, hallways, encounters etc., and a dungeon would be generated upon entering it.

About money in game, we can say the exact same things about money in real life, it’s killing everything. I have yet to see a mmo where there is no artificial scarcity.

Rehashed Jibe Tube.7102:

to sum up:

i play the game in the style of “x”, can we please remove all the people who play the game in the style of "y"please?

or we could go plan B and remove all the people who don’t care about money cause they just ruin the fun that those who do

From the fact that you’re comparing gameplay in ff9 to gw2 is a clear indicator you’re all up for cookie cutter experiences all the time. As much as I enjoyed ff9 I won’t be revisiting it anytime soon.

Trash mobs are called that for a reason – they’re uninspired, unrewarding and boring.
GW2 gameplay is pretty open and that’s what makes it great. How exactly is killing this really tough pack of wolves to move past them rewarding when you can sneak past them or run past?

I’d like to remove magic find and DR, and Raise high level loots back to 4 months ago spec.

I don’t know about removing gold from the game, but I agree dungeon mob skipping is rife and makes for bad experience especially for new dungeon goers.
I had a goal in this game to get all 8 classes to lvl 80 and to complete all PVE maps b4 getting into dungeons. I just achieved that and since I’ve hardly touched the dungeons bar few in story mode, I thought it’s time I start getting into it.
But I’m reluctant because the few times I’ve tried I’ve had bad experiences.
On the first day Fractals went live, I wanted to try it. The group I was in, got to the 3rd dungeon and I fell off the jumping puzzle and died. It was the last boss fight and I could hear them fighting near by. Despite my pleas, no one would rez me. After killing the boss, they left the dungeon and I was kicked out, never getting my chest, despite all the work I put in to get that far and rezzing various party members many times. That whole experience left a sour taste in my mouth.
Then the other day, my Ele was on her way to finish the last 2 maps, Iron Marches and Fireheart Rise. So on the way, I wp to AC and was invited to do the exp. mode by a random group.
It was bad. They skipped everything and when someone died, they were forced to run through all those mobs again and usually got killed.
I’ve done AC several times in story mode but not in explorable and was unfamiliar with the route. Despite them knowing I was new to this, they ran like crazy through everything with their speed buffs leaving me behind. I got lost a couple of times, run into dead ends full of mobs and hated it.
Then this guy, a guardian I think said to me in the party chat, please delete your character!
I actually didn’t see what he said, I was too busy fighting for my life to monitor the chat window, but the person who originally invited me was quite a nice person and whispered me telling me to ignore him and block him. I didn’t know what he was talking about until I reviewed the chat and saw what he said. It was quite insulting and upsetting to see that in the party chat, which kind of further dashed my desire to do dungeons, especially with random people. Yet the leader of that group was nice so I was left with mixed feelings about it all.
What I’m trying to say is, I would have much rather if we had just killed all the mobs. It probably wouldn’t have taken much longer anyway and it would have been better when someone died and had to wp, not to have to dodge those mobs every time.
I see people on this forum constantly accuse Anet of lazy design as an excuse not to kill the mobs, but frankly I think it’s these players who are lazy and just want to skip to the chest asap and are rude to anyone who don’t feel the same. I’m not saying one has to kill every mob everywhere, but in a dungeon it’s a good idea since once you kill the mobs they usually don’t respawn, leaving the place nice and clear if you want to explore it.
I also wish you wouldn’t get kicked out of dungeon if the leader leaves. I’ve missed POI’s in Story Mode because leaders would leave as soon as they kill the last boss and you’re automatically kicked out.

Everything that you associate with “money” is really just a function of time. I still wouldn’t want to group with some one who is AFK or not paying attention, or making terrible choices, because regardless of how that gets quantified, it’s still a waste of my time.

Money, in real life, and in Guild Wars 2, is just a way of exchanging time and effort between individuals. When some one has too little money, what we’re really saying is they have too little control of their own time and effort. When we say that some one has most of the money, we’re really saying that they have control over the time and effort of thousands or millions of people.

Taking money out of the game wouldn’t make people want to magically waste their time any more than they’re already willing to do, and if anything it might make for greater wastes of time and less activity, because there would be less ability to scratch some one’s back in return for getting your own back scratched.

I love this actually.

The OP is endearingly idealistic, kind of the way you think of the world when you’re still young, which is nice.

Many above me have already tried to help explain reality of the situation: That without money, or loot, everyone would play the content once, and that would be that. The game would probably have died back in October, since no loot = no players = no gem purchases = no income. So if you did have a way to magically make material incentives vanish, making the only “incentive” the experience, the tradeoff is that you probably won’t have anyone else to play with.

The MMO design is most likely not for you. I would recommend a single player game, or one with multiplayer functionality, but is ultimately based on player experience without the massive world, such as Torchlight II.

If you love Tyria, and want to enjoy it the way you wish, one solution is to find a group of people that are of the same mindset as you, and ignore the rest of the players. You have to realize that the only reason your current dungeon groups are playing with you at all is for the loot. You might be after the player experience, but for all you know, they’ve already done the path 30 times, and are not interested. The fact that they exist to play with you at all is because of money: without money, you’re just on your own. What you want to find is other players that are interested in the same things you are interested in.

Finding different-minded players and complaining about the result is not the way to go. What you want is not what others must want.

I understand certain servers have Roleplay guilds that are devoted to preserving the RPG experience within guild wars. If you find one, you might just find what you’re looking for

EDIT: This is just from a single google search, and might be a good place to start:
http://guildwars2roleplayers.com/home

From what I can see, the focus for this group of players is on making believable, heroic characters, and having them journey through the world. Loot, rewards, and other such things are only sought after in the scope of the journey. Probably closer to what you’d like.

AwwGee.5628:

Rehashed Jibe Tube.7102:

to sum up:

i play the game in the style of “x”, can we please remove all the people who play the game in the style of "y"please?

or we could go plan B and remove all the people who don’t care about money cause they just ruin the fun that those who do

From the fact that you’re comparing gameplay in ff9 to gw2 is a clear indicator you’re all up for cookie cutter experiences all the time. As much as I enjoyed ff9 I won’t be revisiting it anytime soon.

Trash mobs are called that for a reason – they’re uninspired, unrewarding and boring.
GW2 gameplay is pretty open and that’s what makes it great. How exactly is killing this really tough pack of wolves to move past them rewarding when you can sneak past them or run past?

Trash mobs are terrible design. Every single encounter should be interesting for some reason. Otherwise, why have us do it? Why not just delete those stupid trash mobs and have us get to the parts people actually consider fun? Shadow of the Colossus this kitten.

LFk.1408:

I love this actually.

The OP is endearingly idealistic, kind of the way you think of the world when you’re still young, which is nice.

Many above me have already tried to help explain reality of the situation: That without money, or loot, everyone would play the content once, and that would be that. The game would probably have died back in October, since no loot = no players = no gem purchases = no income. So if you did have a way to magically make material incentives vanish, making the only “incentive” the experience, the tradeoff is that you probably won’t have anyone else to play with.

The MMO design is most likely not for you. I would recommend a single player game, or one with multiplayer functionality, but is ultimately based on player experience without the massive world, such as Torchlight II.

If you love Tyria, and want to enjoy it the way you wish, one solution is to find a group of people that are of the same mindset as you, and ignore the rest of the players. You have to realize that the only reason your current dungeon groups are playing with you at all is for the loot. You might be after the player experience, but for all you know, they’ve already done the path 30 times, and are not interested. The fact that they exist to play with you at all is because of money: without money, you’re just on your own. What you want to find is other players that are interested in the same things you are interested in.

Finding different-minded players and complaining about the result is not the way to go. What you want is not what others must want.

I understand certain servers have Roleplay guilds that are devoted to preserving the RPG experience within guild wars. If you find one, you might just find what you’re looking for

EDIT: This is just from a single google search, and might be a good place to start:
http://guildwars2roleplayers.com/home

From what I can see, the focus for this group of players is on making believable, heroic characters, and having them journey through the world. Loot, rewards, and other such things are only sought after in the scope of the journey. Probably closer to what you’d like.

I’ve had this suggested to me before. It’s not my style. I think the MMO community and designers are too afraid to remove things like that. This game has AMAZING things in it. I don’t WvW because I get rewards. I don’t do dungeons because I get rewards. I don’t do PvP because I get rewards. I do them because I love this game. I had 57g that I had been saving up from dungeons and such for about 3 weeks now. I spent it all yesterday because it was ruining the fun. I got myself some functional spiking armor and had a blast killing people in WvW.

There really don’t need to be this economy for there to be players. In fact, I think there’s an entire player base this game scares away just because there are these artificial, non-skill based obstacles in the way.

Also, just putting this out there, I have no issues with getting money myself. A few dungeon runs gets you a good 5g in under two hours. The problem is the way it is done and the requirement to repeat it.

I’m idealist about this because this isn’t the real world and I know, in video games, having no money works just fine.

FotM, Ascended gear and the planned incentive adjustments for open world play are all indicators that ANet has learned that players will not repeat content without rewards. Since players devour content faster than it can be programmed, incentives and rewards are going to stay.

If you remove money there would be always be a new kind of ‘money’. That’s how people work, they trade stuff. Remove money, and you will see ‘selling legendary sword for 500 lodestones’ for example, would still be the same.

hharry.1967:

If you remove money there would be always be a new kind of ‘money’. That’s how people work, they trade stuff. Remove money, and you will see ‘selling legendary sword for 500 lodestones’ for example, would still be the same.

No there wouldn’t. If you can’t trade, you can’t have a money system.

IndigoSundown.5419:

FotM, Ascended gear and the planned incentive adjustments for open world play are all indicators that ANet has learned that players will not repeat content without rewards. Since players devour content faster than it can be programmed, incentives and rewards are going to stay.

The only reason people will ignore places with low incentives is if the reward is higher somewhere else. If there is no reward, then people will gravitate towards the fun ones and the ones where people are. Ask PvPers if they play PvP because of the rewards. I guarantee most if not all will say the main reason they play is because it’s fun, not artificially rewarding.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

IndigoSundown.5419:

FotM, Ascended gear and the planned incentive adjustments for open world play are all indicators that ANet has learned that players will not repeat content without rewards. Since players devour content faster than it can be programmed, incentives and rewards are going to stay.

The only reason people will ignore places with low incentives is if the reward is higher somewhere else. If there is no reward, then people will gravitate towards the fun ones and the ones where people are. Ask PvPers if they play PvP because of the rewards. I guarantee most if not all will say the main reason they play is because it’s fun, not artificially rewarding.

Back before FotM, there were hundreds of posts complaining about nothing to do. There was plenty to do, there just was no progression available for those who’d done it before. Yes, some will play for fun, but for many, fun includes rewards, progression or money included.

If there were no rewards, some people would gravitate towards the things they found to be fun. The rest would gravitate to a different game.

I understand what the OP is talking about. I have eight level 50 characters and each only have earned 3 gold. I have not done a single dungeon, I have not bought nor sold a single item on the TP. I have not bought any weapon or armor from a vendor yet as I take what is dropped. I love playing the open world (hearts wish they were repeatable, story, DE), yet I know I will be required to grind out dungeons for months to make enough gold to outfit each with the armor/weapons/jewelry I want them to have after they reach level 80.

Lynne.8416:

I understand what the OP is talking about. I have eight level 50 characters and each only have earned 3 gold. I have not done a single dungeon, I have not bought nor sold a single item on the TP. I have not bought any weapon or armor from a vendor yet as I take what is dropped. I love playing the open world (hearts wish they were repeatable, story, DE), yet I know I will be required to grind out dungeons for months to make enough gold to outfit each with the armor/weapons/jewelry I want them to have after they reach level 80.

What’s wrong with the TP or vendors? Obviously you could have earned much more than 3 gold on each character but you chose to avoid it.

You don’t even have to grind dungeons, you get tokens from each dungeon outside of gold that you can you can trade for exotics. Dungeons have storylines too so it seems like they fit into your idea of what’s fun. Run each path once and you already have enough to get an either gloves, boots or a helm.

Hell I hate grinding. I have 4 level 80s right now (I had fun leveling them and I’m on my 5th) and all of them have exotic sets (some multiple) because I am a merchant. Hey look the mats I gathered while exploring can be used to make this which gives me a pretty good reward when I sell them on TP compared to a vendor.

Cowrex.9564:

Removing money is like removing incentives in the game. Without it, everyone might as well have the same gear from the market. No sense of difference, uniqueness or achievement either. I think that by removing money would render a game…. bland and tasteless.

Or you could tie gear to achievements?

All money does is make what is popular expensive – and therefore attainable with “pay to win”.

Additionally, making very few “cool skins” and making them ludicriously expensive rather than making many different skins that are cool for different reasons is a sign of dev laziness.

Each skin should have its own skill requirement and epic storyline behind it.

this is done fairly easily…

When I make a party for running a dungeon I explicitly say that I’m not open to skipping content, mobs, or glitching. Then… the people who bother to respond are normally the kind of cool cats I enjoy playing with… laid back people who enjoy playing games rather than just logging in for “rewards”.

Unfortunately… sometimes it takes a while to build a group… but party chat isn’t quiet during the run… we talk and laugh and theorycraft about better methods for fighting a boss or different tactics/utilities to try… (honestly… the bosses in this game aren’t complicated enough… but that’s another matter)… and often at the end of the run people link stuff they picked up to ask if anyone needs this or that.

And when I find someone I enjoy running with… I friend them… then I invite them to run with me again.

I might even start a guild for like-minded people.

You cultivate the culture of your experience by actively seeking it in game…

Anyone that thinks no money or “artificial rewards” in an MMO would be successful needs a reality check. LFk gave a very eloquent response, and it’s pretty much the best you’re gonna get. The amount of people on this forum that want the game to conform to them, instead of making a compromise that enhances your game is absolutely mind-blowing. This game doesn’t revolve around you. Also, the group of people that play for the “Experience” probably won’t buy gems anyway, so why cater to the person thats not going to pay the bills?

One day, our side will be heard. There wont be doing what the game dev wants without asking the players first. That days comming, and the game developers around the world are trembling at the thought.

Pride.7591:

Anyone that thinks no money or “artificial rewards” in an MMO would be successful needs a reality check. LFk gave a very eloquent response, and it’s pretty much the best you’re gonna get. The amount of people on this forum that want the game to conform to them, instead of making a compromise that enhances your game is absolutely mind-blowing. This game doesn’t revolve around you. Also, the group of people that play for the “Experience” probably won’t buy gems anyway, so why cater to the person thats not going to pay the bills?

Because that is the most evil thing I’ve ever heard. You really need to quit game design if it gets to the point where you’re making game design decisions that generate money instead of fun. Who gives a kitten about who pays the bills? I’ll GLADLY start using the gem store again with REAL money if this bull kitten with grinding and the Nexon company kittening stop. Until then, I’m not spending a DIME. I will not do ANYTHING in the game that I don’t want to do. Ever. If that means I’m going to be poor, fine by me.

This is the kinda kitten that Zynga pulls. It shouldn’t be what we see from ANet. I played GW1 all the time because I ALWAYS felt like the design decisions were in the best interested of the players. Everything you could buy with real money was fair. You got to the LOW level cap and there was some cheapo armor that you could easily attain which was MAX. All of the runes that you needed were relatively cheap. In short: there was no need to grind ANYTHING if you didn’t want to and there was no inherent disability for doing so. Now, you can just pay your real money to get the best armor along the way and get everything you need. That, or you can grind until your arm falls off. That, or be poor.

GW1 survived for YEARS without this Pay to Win strategy in there. And don’t hit me with “Oh, certain armors don’t work with Pay to Win”. So what? You can buy full exotic armor on the TP with all of the runes without having to do anything but give them credit card info. THIS IS NOT WHAT GAMES SHOULD BE!

Look, obviously money has it’s upsides. That’s fine. But GW1 had it right! Make it so if I just want to be efficient that I do the basic work from the story and I can buy max armor and some basic good runes. If you really want the pretty stuff you can work for it! If I want Scholar Runes, it’s like 12 kittenin gold. If I want max armor, I either have to grind dungeons or cough up a crap ton more gold. What’s the difference? I spend nearly 4 weeks getting gold from dungeons. I had about 60g that I worked for. Yeah that’s right, I worked in a game. I feel stupid about it but I did. To get full spiking armor, runes and accessories, I had to spend literally all of it. ALL OF IT. This was the cheapest armor available that was max and the right stats.

Seriously? Come on. Unless January 28th brings something new and less evil to the table, I’m probably just going to uninstall. This game is too bitter sweet, and the bitter is starting to take over the sweet.

Oh, how evillllll. Someone wants to make a profit and be able to pay the company bills, and the salaries of everyone employed there. The temerity! The AUDACITY!! Seriously, if you want to be a communist, go find somewhere to do so and stop telling those of us that don’t that we should. Pretty hypocritical of you to say ppl shouldn’t be buying stuff with their evil money while a few posts up you’re goin on about some spike armour you BOUGHT, and had fun using. If you don’t want ppl to be able to use their money, lead by example and give yours away. People have been trading since forever, nothing wrong with it in a game. Don’t like the prices? Don’t buy. No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to. Oh yeah, most of my gear is karma, only have a pistol and dagger on me that was paid for, maybe me shortbow, not sure bout that, forgot where I got it. If I can’t be assed to grind dungeons for gear, see no reason why I should have to because ppl want a communist game.

Don’t want money and trading in game? Don’t use it, then it isn’t in game for you. Plenty of servers and ppl that you can find ppl to group with with your same gaming philosophy, if you bother to look for them, here and in game, as much as you try to convince us here, you aren’t barking mad.

i’d remove bad players

Oh, how evillllll. Someone wants to make a profit and be able to pay the company bills, and the salaries of everyone employed there.

Ever see the glassdoor reviews for anet?

If they paid their workers properly i’d be much happier, and so would all of you, because the better talent would stay there to make better balancing and economy decisions for the game.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I’ve had this suggested to me before. It’s not my style. I think the MMO community and designers are too afraid to remove things like that.

Yep.

Classic MMOs haven’t been made to cater to real players, those who want fun content. No, making content that is fun is too hard – “fun” is subjective so not everyone would enjoy it, and fun content is the kind of thing that takes a very long time to be developed, but that can be consumed very quickly by players. In the context of a monthly fee, in which the goal is to keep people playing for as long as possible, those who want to have fun are just in the way.

Classic MMOs have been made for a very specific group of players: grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters. Players who do not want to play through fun content; no, they are very willing to play through content that even they don’t enjoy, as long as they get a reward in the end. This is perfect for MMO developers: they can make simple and mediocre content, just by adding a lot of +1s as rewards, and know that a small horde of grinders will consume the content they make for a very long time.

The thing is… It doesn’t work anymore.

Grinders are playing games basically as donkeys chasing a carrot in front of their faces. They don’t bother with skill, or with trying to understand a game, or with anything other than time spent. Ergo, they need a game to have grind in order to get their “fix” from it. Whenever they see a game with no grind, they are going to object; they cannot understand the idea of a MMO without grind (since all classic MMOs have been made to cater to them); and whenever someone talks about how grind is bad for MMOs, they always reply with the same thing, “then MMOs are not for you”, with the unspoken assumption that MMOs cannot exist without grind.

In reality, they have been fooled by designers of classic MMOs to believe that their addiction to grind is a good thing. However, not everyone is easily deceived, and as such MMOs are becoming a relatively small market. Considering how many MMOs exist right now, there simply aren’t so many grinders in the world to keep all those MMOs filled with people. Considering how grinders are also unlikely to leave a game in which they have grinded a lot (since that would mean losing all they “worked” for), it makes sense that a single big MMO would keep a lot of grinders, and the others would only get a small group of them. Little surprise, then, that all big MMOs released recently have been failing.

The MMO genre is stagnant. Normal people look at MMOs with disgust, as they are not so easily deceived by the grind. Whenever someone tries to do something new, grinders complain since they believe all MMOs should be only a new place to grind, and nothing else.

GW2 is trying to advance the genre, though, hence the small army of annoyed grinders in this forum. ArenaNet’s strategies are far from perfect, not to mention incomplete, but they are going in the right direction. Just as people used to say “If you want a good story don’t play FPS, go play RPGs” and then were forced to shut their mouths after the release of Half-Life and Bioshock, so will one day all the grinders who say “If yu don’t like grind don’t play MMOs, go play single player RPGs” will also be forced to shut their mouths. I wait eagerly for that day, and hope GW2 will manage to be it.

plasmacutter.2709:

Oh, how evillllll. Someone wants to make a profit and be able to pay the company bills, and the salaries of everyone employed there.

Ever see the glassdoor reviews for anet?

If they paid their workers properly i’d be much happier, and so would all of you, because the better talent would stay there to make better balancing and economy decisions for the game.

Throwing money at a person doesn’t make them more talented. If they don’t like their pay level, there is a world full of different companies they can apply to. You don’t deserve a higher rate of pay simply because you can see lightning and hear thunder. Put out the work that says you deserve a raise. Don’t want to do the extra work? Don’t expect the extra money. And no, aint rich, like the lames like to go on about when someone says earn it if you want more money. Never made more then 25 k in my life. Nor was I willing to work the kinda hours you need to in construction to make 6 figures, but you can. So yeah, I got paid what I deserved, mostly.