TL;DR: Skip to the numbered lists.
The 2 biggest complaints about GW2 that I hear the most often are, ’I’m never on when other people are’ and, ‘I don’t know what to do now’. This suggestion attempts to be a partial solution to both with a primary focus on the first complaint. For the record, these complaints can be easily resolved by players coordinating better and setting personal goals. That said I believe that any action taken by Anet to make these easier would be beneficial to the game.
I understand Anet’s desire to incentivize players to play on a daily basis, which is why we have dailies. However, I think the current way of rewarding players for these dailies is hurting GW2 rather than helping it in it’s current state. I’ll explain.
First I want to clarify what I mean by dailies here. When I say dailies I mean all activities in GW2 that have a reward buff for a certain amount of time which is reset on a daily basis. That means Fractals, Dungeons, World Bosses, time gated crafted items, as well as these dailies. Pretty much everything under the Daily Reset category here aside from gathering and vendors. I say reward buff rather than diminishing returns because that’s more accurate in describing what it is. Diminishing returns is about a decrease in incremental rewards for increasing effort/resources put into an activity. That isn’t what is happening here.
In my experience, many players play GW2 simply for the daily rewards and log off after their dailies are complete. The busiest time of day for GW2 is reset, once dailies are finished groups become far more scarce. Why does this happen? In short, it’s because the rewards for content drop dramatically. Players feel less incentivized to continue to play, simply because they are done gaining rewards they feel are worth their time. This makes it incredibly difficult for players to coordinate playing group content outside of daily reset hours. As a result they are left feeling 2 things, ’I’m never on when other people are’ and, ‘I don’t know what to do now’.
I see a large but simple solution to this problem: revamp the daily rewards system. I’ll break this down into 5 steps.
1. Remove all current daily rewards that can be translated into currencies.
2. Create a new currency given for completing daily rewards.
3. Amount given of said currency would scale with the difficulty and time investment of the daily.
4. Create a new rewards shop with rewards that can only be purchased with this currency.
5. Ensure that these rewards cannot be translated into other currencies. (Ex: skins & mini’s).
What are the potential benefits of this?
1. It keeps players incentivized to play on a daily basis.
2. It keeps players incentivized to play content after their daily is complete as it remains as rewarding as before in terms of non-daily currency (ex: gold).
3. With players continuing to play after their dailies are complete, it gives players who haven’t completed dailies yet an easier time coordinating to find groups to play with.
4. Since players remain online and groups remain readily available other players don’t feel like they have nothing to do and no one to play with.
5. It removes a little RNG from the daily rewards system as players are guaranteed a certain amount of currency for completing a daily and can choose which rewards they want to purchase.
What potential problems does this have?
1. The basic rewards of various activities may also have to be revamped since dailies would no longer be as profitable.
2. The problem may persist as players may still only play for their daily currency reward.
3. Players may not be incentivized enough to play on a daily basis and general player activity may drop as a result.
Personally, I see potential problem 1 as somewhat likely, 2 as less likely, and 3 as unlikely. I also see the potential benefits of this suggestion as highly likely.
One final note: this isn’t a complete solution to the issues of player availability and rewards. Some will still feel that they never can find people to play with. Many will still feel that there is nothing to do in the endgame. This also isn’t a solution that will help interval activities (like level 80 map events). But, I do think this will be a much needed push in the right direction.
So what do you think? Are the initial problems I pointed out accurate? Did I miss any potential benefits or problems? Are these the droids we’re looking for?
(edited by ZacHank.1358)