Guild Wars 2

I´d like to see some kind of reward for playtime, like actually getting rewarded for playing the game independent from how exactly you play the game. This could be realized like the achievement rewards, but maybe more focused on materials, maybe for ascended gear (armor mainly), since this, imo, is one of the main things many players go for over a longer period of time (especially for gearing up multiple characters), although this is just an idea.
For example, there could be a bag of materials (and maybe one achievement point or something) every…100 hours account playtime..or 500…I´m not sure what number would be fitting for not having too much here, still this could be a bit like the achievement rewards, so some bigger rewards every 1000 hours and so on, maybe with a larger ascended (or maybe even legendary?) focus over time.

I see that this can be farmed (or maybe “abused”) by just being afk a lot, but I think it would be a good way to support active players over time, regardless of their playstyle.

Absolutely not.

Good idea in principle, but it’s quite hard to define what playtime is with regard to being AFK. So it’s likely to cause more problems than helping.

Atm you have dailiy login rewards, which are quite similar.

saturn.4810:

Atm you have dailiy login rewards, which are quite similar.

The problem I see in daily login rewards is that many people just log into the game, get their reward and go offline again (or maybe do their dailies before). I don´t have a problem with that in general, but since these rewards have been implemented to reward playing the game, iirc, this is not what they actually do in many cases. So I think, my suggestion (or some changed version of it) would be a better reward in addition, for those, who actually play the game. Again, though, afk time would be included, but I´m not sure how/whether that should be excluded (I mean, a bit afk time is just natural imo).

Then I would just run GW2 24/7 on my PC. Afaik there is no auto-kick on afk.

saturn.4810:

Then I would just run GW2 24/7 on my PC. Afaik there is no auto-kick on afk.

I’m not advocating implementing this suggestion, but there’s definitely an AFK auto-kick.

tuck.2719:

saturn.4810:

Then I would just run GW2 24/7 on my PC. Afaik there is no auto-kick on afk.

I’m not advocating implementing this suggestion, but there’s definitely an AFK auto-kick.

There is, but it’s fairly easy to get around: just set something heavy on “A” or “D.”

100% no on this as well. Creating an artificial sense of players by offering incentive for mass AFKing isn’t going to help the game.

Shouldn’t the “reward” for playing the game be you enjoyed playing?

Miku.6297:

Shouldn’t the “reward” for playing the game be you enjoyed playing?

No, because MMOs hang their replayability on progressive secondary rewards. Take gold out of the game and allow everyone to pick whatever stats and skins they want whenever they want for free and the population would plummet. We’d play through a given set of content once and then basically never touch it again.

Blaine Tog.8304:

No, because MMOs hang their replayability on progressive secondary rewards. Take gold out of the game and allow everyone to pick whatever stats and skins they want whenever they want for free and the population would plummet. We’d play through a given set of content once and then basically never touch it again.

Well that’s your opinion, I play because I find playing fun. Don’t most of the “MMOs” you are talking about also use an extremely vertical progression track?

The OP is requesting more rewards for simply “playing” meaning being online doing ANYTHING at all. Not being online challenging content or trying to progress.

If you are reward oriented then log in and play that aspect of the game to earn “rewards”. If you just want to hang out and have fun with friends do that; no reward needed.

Miku.6297:

The OP is requesting more rewards for simply “playing” meaning being online doing ANYTHING at all. Not being online challenging content or trying to progress.

To make this clear: I don´t want to reward being afk at all, but to have a reward for playing the game, not just logging in, regardless of how you play (as, as I said before, iirc, login rewards were supposed to do). I´m an active player myself, with a lot of playtime and I think this should be worth some dedicated kinda reward, spending that time in this game for itself. And remember, this is just an idea and not a final state proposal you need to agree or disagree to.

Miku.6297:

Well that’s your opinion

Full stop: No, it’s not. It’s how MMos are designed.

I’m not saying the content shouldn’t be fun and engaging on its own; it absolutely should, and it’s clear that ANet does their best to make it so. But that can only take you so far. It isn’t feasible for any company to produce gaming content at the rate at which players can consume that content, so MMOs use secondary rewards to keep us playing and replaying older content.

Bloodshooter.5210:

To make this clear: I don´t want to reward being afk at all, but to have a reward for playing the game, not just logging in, regardless of how you play (as, as I said before, iirc, login rewards were supposed to do). I´m an active player myself, with a lot of playtime and I think this should be worth some dedicated kinda reward, spending that time in this game for itself. And remember, this is just an idea and not a final state proposal you need to agree or disagree to.

Right! It’s just when I read basing the rewards on the time logged in, that will most likely reward afking as well as playing in different ways.

I also have alot of fun playing the game in ways that are not reward driven. Maybe I should clarify what I meant, when I said “shouldn’t the reward for playing be you enjoyed playing”, I was strictly rerfering to people like myself who log in and have fun just chatting and hanging out with friends. I was directing this at activities that are not currently “rewarded” by other methods, I.E. Loot/exp/progression.

XP seems to be the best proxy measures of play time at the moments. Otherwise afk could create a lot empty maps.

Rewards like this are only complained about. If it’s simply timed based, people are encouraged to never logout and/or leach. If it’s activity based, people whine about it being a grind. For example, why isn’t there an achievement for playing every race or class through the story?

Don’t we have achievement points for this? People who play a lot and play lots of different content have a lot of achievement points, they get achievement chests… I don’t see what needs to be added? Rewards for staying afk?

Doug Whisper.2465:

XP seems to be the best proxy measures of play time at the moments. Otherwise afk could create a lot empty maps.

Yeah, they could do something with the XP bar even after masteries are done, once you are lvl 80, to give you rewards for getting a certain amount of XP. Would probably be the safest way to do it, but then they would need to cut some sources to prevent truly beneficial sources of rewards, because of things like CoF farm.