Summary
Over the past year, content has become too focused on events that (1) provide back end rewards,(2) have long build-up/reset times, and (3) have short “reward phase” times. Newer events need to strike a better balance in rewarding a player’s immediate efforts, ie, improving the realization ratio for participation.
My Background
I’ve got a more than full time job, family, etc… etc… I’ve always been the type of person to consume the game in more frequent but smaller chunks. I’d load it up while watching TV with my wife or keep it going in the background if I’m working on stuff at home.
Despite my ADHD approach to gaming, I’ve played GW2 since launch and, despite having consumed all of the “content” quickly upon release, I continued to sink lots of hours into the game until about 8 months ago. But since then I’ve really drifted away from the game. I logged back in the other day to buy the rainbow unicorn finisher because I thought I would enjoy it when HoT rolls around. That made me think – what caused my engagement to drop off like that, and would HoT really make a difference, at least after the new car smell wears off?
Before continuing, I just want to be explicit in that this is not a “you must do this anet or the game will die” style of post, but just some feedback to chew on and consider. I understand my experience, motivations, and interests are most likely not representative.
The main point
In short, I very much enjoy the social aspect of the game, but also need the ability to hit the pause button for five minutes, metaphorically speaking. The casual, drop-in world events are my bread and butter. Events like Halloween labyrinth, Tower of Nightmares, Crown Pavilion, the scarlet mini invasions (remember, you got champ bags for each champ kill, not just at the end of the invasion).
Over the past year, however, there has been a notable shift in open-world gameplay to events that are end-weighted in terms of loot, but have long wind-up times and relatively short “reward earning” phases. Marionette, Assault Knights, the hour long LA evacuation events, Dry Top (sandstorm), and Silverwastes (breach/wv). And then the megaserver killed the Orr temple farms and made the world boss schedule static across all servers. EotM isn’t bad in theory, but the huge run distances can be quite the hurdle when a zerg is deep in enemy territory.
I understand that these events are structured in a way to encourage people to work together. I also suspect the lack of rewarding drops from event champs, particularly in Silverwastes, is to incentivize successful event completion, rather than just farming as many champs as you can kill (like Pent/Shelt and Plinx farming). The problem, however, is that if you can’t stick around to the end — or even worse, get disconnected and lose your event credit or can’t get back in the zone — you lose the bulk of the reward.
In other words, you don’t realize the gain on your efforts as you make the investment. And if for some reason you miss out on the reward event, your realization ratio drops severely. Imagine spending 20 minutes defending a fort in SW (getting what, 1-2 badges per 5m event cycle) but then missing out at the end? It’s not fun and it has made me not want to spend my time on it. (There’s also the chance that events fail because of other players, which is also disappointing, but that’s a separate issue).
In conclusion, I think the game needs to do a better job of drip-feeding rewards in direct response to effort. I get the concerns about how “farming” is bad for the economy, but the scale has pushed too far in the other direction. The reward is too far in the future and not connected enough with my own efforts to encourage my participation.
I know a better balance can be struck. I thought the revamped Crown Pavilion balanced those concerns extremely well. The world boss train remains decent, although frustrating at times. And boy did I love seeing just how many heavy bags I could collect during each temple event by rallying people to Orr. The PvP system also seems to do a very good job in this respect, although I don’t enjoy PvP like I do PvE.
Finally, bring back SAB. I know SAB doesn’t really fall into this category, but I loved SAB and can’t wait for its return.
Thanks!