The Karma mystery.

The Karma mystery.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Swoo.5079

Swoo.5079

It all started with the 20th of August 2013 update and the following line:

“The amount of karma granted from consumable karma items has been increased. Karma boosts no longer affect the amount of karma gained from consumable items.”

It was weird because Arenanet had been following a very clear policy of communicating and explaining any changes to currency changes and its effects in the game economy.

Colin Johanson, the game director, immediately assumed Arenanet lack of communication and measures were swiftly implemented to not only revert the changes for a few days but also to reimburse players that used their karma the moment they saw the changes.

Awesome communication and reaction by Arenanet.

Interestingly a few days later the Karma rewards for daily and monthlies were reduced considerably, again with no warning.

Players were expecting the over 9000 karma per daily to be reduced to 6000 Karma per daily. But over 9000 (or 4200 pre buffed) to 600! That is 6% (buffed) and 14% (pre buffed) of the previous amount. The monthly was changed likewise. Dungeons also had their karma gains removed.

To this date (as far as I’m aware) no explanation or comment was made on this change.

But lets look at the story of Karma in the game.

Karma started as a currency that couldn’t be traded, representing personal time investment of the players in the game.

It also allowed players to gear up as they leveled and completed Dynamic Events – with no quests (aside the personal story) to give rewards, Karma/Heart/Renown vendors stepped in and exchanged the players Karma for useful rewards.

Then the first players arrived to Orr and found out the Exotic Armor vendors sold that armor for 42K a piece, while players that hoarded all the Karma they gained would be lucky to have enough for 1 or 2 pieces.

So to fully equip a single character, players would have to complete over 700 dynamic events in Orr.

This was during the first couple of weeks of the game and players complained about the grind required to reach max equipment.

So Arenanet introduced the jugs of liquid karma as part of the dailies and monthlies reward – this cut the time required to purchase an exotic armor piece considerably – now doing a monthly and the 30 dailies would give a player enough to buy 4 pieces, probably the 6 if he used boosts that could then increase the gain by up to 70% (karma booster, karma banner, +15% guild bonus). Note stuff like ice creams, karmic infusion and +10% banners were only introduced later.

This also had the benefit of allowing players to distribute their karma to alts or using alts to help main characters.

By this time getting exotic armor was fairly easy and many players were starting to leave the game due to “having nothing to work for and who cares about legendary weapons since there are already a few out” and so Arenanet released ascended items.

Karma became quite useless unless you wanted a legendary, so Arenanet released the Lost Orrian Jewelry Box.

This allowed players to effectively convert Karma into Gold and some rare drop materials.

More karma modifiers were introduced and with the achievement karma bonus it was possible to reach 104% Karma gain and pretty much get a never ending amount of money from Lost Orrian Jewelry boxes.

This explain why the boosts had to stop working. It doesn’t explain why Arenanet decided to include drips of liquid karma in boss boxes just before nerfing the karma and then removing them once the karma was nerfed.

It also doesn’t explain why the karma gain from dailies, monthlies and dungeons were severely reduced.

In fact, with the new wallet that made Karma account wide, what is the point of having karma containers in the first place, other than wearing the mouse button?

Especially because now there are even more ascended items to “bridge the gap between exotic and legendary items”.

There is no explanation why increasing the cost or reducing the amount of karma lost orrian jewelry boxes isn’t a better measure than affecting new players or casual players with several alts.

It is true that it is possible to acquire more ectos, coin and tier6 materials today, so crafting the armor is easier, but the question remains why this change was given so little attention by Arenanet communication, leaving the player base free to all kind of speculations.

Ascended items are Anet biggest mistake and a kneejerk reaction.

(edited by Swoo.5079)

The Karma mystery.

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Posted by: Waldir.2571

Waldir.2571

Nice narration of the events but I think you are over thinking it. Karma was scarce at the start and they fixed it, nothing to do with it after a while so they fixed it, too abundant after that so they fixed it. That’s all I guess. Its about fixes.

The Karma mystery.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Eurhetemec.9052

Eurhetemec.9052

It is true that it is possible to acquire more ectos, coin and tier6 materials today, so crafting the armor is easier, but the question remains why this change was given so little attention by Arenanet communication, leaving the player base free to all kind of speculations.

It is easier, but we’re still looking at @4.5g per piece for armour, and a player is unlikely to arrive at 80 with more than 8-10g if new. For people who don’t play for multiple hours per day (i.e. more than two) acquiring cash is also quite challenging, and anything much more than 1g a day is unlikely (even that may be high), unless they sell absolutely everything they find (which may be an advisable course, but one the game tries to direct you away from, I feel).

I suspect the goal here is to force people into dungeons, because it seems like that is by far the most expeditious route to Exotic armour now, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened at the same time as the LFG system, which should make that MUCH easier for casual players to get into.

That said, if I wanted to run dungeons for loot, I sure as hell would not be playing GW2.

The Karma mystery.

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Posted by: Swoo.5079

Swoo.5079

Nice narration of the events but I think you are over thinking it. Karma was scarce at the start and they fixed it, nothing to do with it after a while so they fixed it, too abundant after that so they fixed it. That’s all I guess. Its about fixes.

I’m not entirely sure how turning 1 million karma in some 30g + loadstones and obsidian shards is nothing.

I bet for casuals that is substantial money.

Ascended items are Anet biggest mistake and a kneejerk reaction.

The Karma mystery.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Swoo.5079

Swoo.5079

It is true that it is possible to acquire more ectos, coin and tier6 materials today, so crafting the armor is easier, but the question remains why this change was given so little attention by Arenanet communication, leaving the player base free to all kind of speculations.

It is easier, but we’re still looking at @4.5g per piece for armour, and a player is unlikely to arrive at 80 with more than 8-10g if new. For people who don’t play for multiple hours per day (i.e. more than two) acquiring cash is also quite challenging, and anything much more than 1g a day is unlikely (even that may be high), unless they sell absolutely everything they find (which may be an advisable course, but one the game tries to direct you away from, I feel).

I suspect the goal here is to force people into dungeons, because it seems like that is by far the most expeditious route to Exotic armour now, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened at the same time as the LFG system, which should make that MUCH easier for casual players to get into.

That said, if I wanted to run dungeons for loot, I sure as hell would not be playing GW2.

That is a problem with the game.

Arenanet keeps trying to lure people into certain content via increased rewards but once it is successful and the rest of the activities are a desert they nerf those activities and buff others. Ad infinitum.

I wonder if they test player reaction to content without rewards.

Does anyone doubt that the large majority of the MMORPG players only do raids because of the loot?

And even then most don’t care until they have stuff like LFR and still many don’t care?

If a designer has to load a certain piece of content with rewards to attract players, maybe, just maybe, that content sucks.

Ascended items are Anet biggest mistake and a kneejerk reaction.

The Karma mystery.

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Posted by: Wolfheart.1938

Wolfheart.1938

I know that Arenanet devs are probably really busy with their schedule and stuff, but their communication has been kinda bad lately, especially regarding controversial issues like the introduction of ascended weapons.

While I can understand why they didn’t comment on those controversial issues I really don’t get why not a single word was said about the massive karma nerf from 2 weeks ago. Karma was overabundant, I get it. But that huge of a nerf?

“We have no first-person view because stupid people would lock into it”
“You can’t have more than 10 HS decks because that would confuse people”
“30 fps is more cinematic”

The Karma mystery.

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

I think they overnerfed karma and they’ll bring it back up when they realize it.

The Karma mystery.

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Posted by: Eurhetemec.9052

Eurhetemec.9052

Does anyone doubt that the large majority of the MMORPG players only do raids because of the loot?

And even then most don’t care until they have stuff like LFR and still many don’t care?

If a designer has to load a certain piece of content with rewards to attract players, maybe, just maybe, that content sucks.

True that. I think you need to provide rewards which are at least even with other activities, though, or people will avoid your activity. Once that is in place (and actually was a stated goal for GW2 at one point), though, then you’ll see both what’s easy, and what’s fun rising to the top in popularity. Champ farming isn’t huge fun, but it is easy, and it’s kind of chatty – y’know, social, like in an MMO of old!

Because it’s easy pretty much everyone is nice to each other instead of nasty, too.

What they need are, really, I think, long-kitten -but-easy raid-like open-world (but perhaps within structures) events with a dozen or more cool, different bosses who SEEM dangerous but aren’t REALLY very dangerous, and which reboot at set, known, repeatable times every day (maybe rebooting faster in peak time). I think that way you’d get everyone together, have a good time, have some sense of danger/threat (like, have encounters where you can wipe, but it requires actually messing up a bit, not horrible DPS check walls and the like).

Temples are a bit like that but they’re thinking too small. Like DAoC PvE raids, a bit more is what I’m suggesting.

EDIT – Reason I use DAoC PvE raids as an example is that they were:

A) Extremely popular.

B) Quite similar in how they worked to World Boss events (in a sense).

C) Didn’t have to throw out tons of loot – most people would be going home empty-handed in terms of “new stuff”, and those who got stuff were getting mostly cosmetic upgrades or utility items. Everyone would tend to get a decent amount of cash and sell items, which would translate to blues/greens in GW2 terms.

(edited by Eurhetemec.9052)

The Karma mystery.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Pack Hunter.6103

Pack Hunter.6103

I think the change was…excessive. Dailies should reward you more…Even I agree with that and I’m barely a casual