Guild Wars 2

I must admit taht the most fun I had so far in MMO’s were the 40-man raids in vanilla WoW. Of course most of them weren’t considered too hard (MC, BWL, etc) – but I can remember how our (bad) guild slowly worked on them, practicing on the bosses, failing, failing, failing – until we finally managed to get further, and further. It just really felt like we were progressing as a team, and everyone had his/her role(s). The strategy, organizing and training was the fun for me.

That’s what I was looking for in GW2, and I must say that I was quite disappointed in that regard. The instances mostly feel… well, “brainless”. It’s just a running trough most of the times, and since everyone has so much practice with all of them, you don’t even have the time to see the details. That’s not going to change of course – if you come late, you missed the chance to really see the content (I had nearly a 1 year break from GW2 after reaching max level, high equip and getting bored pretty fast).

At the moment, most instances / bosses really feel the same. Zerg. No splitting, grouping, planning, or role changes. Just run there, hit, dodge, hit, wait, hit – maybe dispell or heal from time to time. Of course, there are some minimal differences inbetween, but most bosses lack any kind of identity. Going back to WoW, if I think BWL, I think about the first Dragon there (forgot the name) with the eggs, and how we had to solve that. If I think about GW2, I couldn’t give you a single specific boss description at all.

I think the strategy aspect is really lacking imho – If I hear “Hard Content”, then I personally think “Many, different, unique strategies you need to train to defeat a boss / mob group / etc”

Of course, I’m more of a casual player by now and missed out on a lot of GW2’s older content, I just give you my personal, current (and old) view of things – if I go trough an instance with some friends that still regularly play, it’s just a constant “run trough”. I literaly have more brain activity while watching TV. Maybe that’s another issue, actually – simply running trough everything shouldn’t be that easy. If you were spotted by an enemy in a WoW instance (in-combat) and you didn’t kill it, it followed you until you’re dead. You couldn’t just “run” trough – well, except for paladins.

More unique strategies where people have to organize themselfes a bit would make the content a lot more interesting imho. And not only for “super hard fractals” or whatever, but even for “easy” sections of the game.

Beldin.5498:

NewTrain.7549:

Beldin.5498:

NewTrain.7549:

Fact is, more challenging content (that you wouldn’t be forced to do) would greatly increase the fun of the game for a large group of players and yet you’re against it because it’s not something you personally enjoy.

The real “fact” is that those that want “more challenging content” mostly just want stuff
that 95% of the playerbase will never have a chance to get, so that they can show off
how great they are.

And THAT is what i am against.

You’re confused on what actually constitutes a fact. Where is your proof that 95% of the people who advocate for harder content only want superior rewards. I want harder content because I find challenges to be fun. The reward can be on par with what’s currently offered and as long as it’s exciting and engaging I’ll keep playing. hence why I enjoy PvP (though not much in GW2) because of the variable challenge.

Oh common .. just read the forums .. read thos thread .. next post already :

hard content needs either greater, or different rewards, because it is harder.

And that in the end again says : (nearly) nobody wants harder content .. they just
want “exclusive” rewards that not everyone can get.
If they want hard content just because its soooo much fun, then they rewards only
need to be “fair” .. 1 hour hard content gets the same reward then 1 hour easy content
because the reward is doing the hard content instead of the lame boring easy stuff.

Are you serious? That’s not “fair”. Hard content requires a lot of experimentation, trial, error, and most importantly repeated failure. If it takes 20 hours of failure before you can complete the content to get the same reward per unit time as someone who needs 0 hours to be able to spam “1” on a staff guardian in an open world zerg, that hard content is going to be less rewarding per unit time than the easy content. If it’s hard enough, even, you won’t have a 100% success rate even after you’ve more or less figured it out, making it even less rewarding (unless you think the rewards can control for the varying success rates of teams? If this is the case, please propose such a system.).

If you want fair rewards, hard content needs to have a greater reward per unit time for successful completion, compared to easy content. That greater reward needs to be significantly enough higher to account for “time to master”, and also the fact that failure will still occasionally happen after mastery. Are the people doing the hard content probably going to get more reward per time than the people doing easy content, when it comes to a long run average? You bet. But at least they’ve earned it. In the opposite case, people who didn’t do anything but put some time in grinding easy content actually get better rewards than people who put the same amount of time in doing hard stuff. Perhaps they’re both unfair in your view, but harder content having better rewards is still less unfair. Anything else and you’re explicitly saying that mindless grind is greater than skill, and developing skill is something that players ought NOT to do.

As far as I am aware, GW1 was marketed with a skill>grind philosophy, and ANET made basically the same promise when it came to GW2. They obviously haven’t done a good job at keeping it, but that’s not a reason for them not to at least try.

@Vayne – care to reply to my suggestion of a token system?

That means the casuals can get it – one day – if they really want it. So why wouldn’t it work?

Also I never remember GW2 as being marketed for " the casual gamer" although I see that’s what it has become sadly.

Zui.9245:

Are you serious? That’s not “fair”. Hard content requires a lot of experimentation, trial, error, and most importantly repeated failure. If it takes 20 hours of failure before you can complete the content to get the same reward per unit time as someone who needs 0 hours to be able to spam “1” on a staff guardian in an open world zerg, that hard content is going to be less rewarding per unit time than the easy content.

Hey .. you had however 20 hours of pure great fun .. right ? Because that is why you
want hard content … because its so great fun for you .. isn’t it ??

Else .. if it is NOT fun .. why do you not just play the easy content ?

And that is also the mindset i’ve read soo often in forums of different MMOs.

A: We want harder content
B: you only want better rewards.
A: no .. i don’t care about rewards .. i just want the “challenge”
B: Ok .. here you have your challenging content with same rewards than normal
A: what the hell .. if i get the same rewards i can simply play the easy content again

Harper.4173:

@Vayne – care to reply to my suggestion of a token system?

That means the casuals can get it – one day – if they really want it. So why wouldn’t it work?

So you’re saying doing a bunch of stuff I don’t want to do becomes more fun or easier if I can look forward to months or years of it? Is that what you’re saying?

Not fun is not fun. The solution is to make the stuff sellable. People who like the content can make gold by running the content, people who don’t get can the rewards. The only people that lose are the people who want to the difficult content just to show off how uber they are.

I don’t know how big a percentage that is, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not a huge percentage.

Anyway, it’s a compromise. One that’s already worked in Guild Wars 1.

The developers should never reward gamers for not having fun.

So that also means they should never reward players having fun because other players would not have fun in the same way.

Let’s look at fractals – we shouldn’t have weapon skin drops because some player can’t /won’t do fractals and will never get them.
So let’s stop rewarding the players having fun doing fractals because some players won’t have fun doing fractals and will never get those rewards. So instead of them going for the rewards while not having fun – let’s remove the rewards so they’re not forced.

Dismiss the players who were having fun and wanted/liked the rewards. They don’t matter.

Also – comparing people “farming” difficult content to playing the TP is ..absurd.
For one – playing the TP requires no in-game skill investment whatsoever. It requires real, outside world skills that have nothing to do with the concept of a video game.

An accountant and/or major in economics would do better than a gaming veteran.

Secondly – the " learned to trivialize it "bit – I have a feeling you have no idea how speed clears and efficient runs are done.
It’s not just “learning to trivialize” – it’s working to adapt yourself, your play style and your build in order to be more efficient.
It’s called hard work and dedication. It’s called adapting, thinking, preparing, and executing things till you get them right.
It’s called finding the right people and using teamwork.

I feel that these things should be rewarded.
Rewarded more than mashing #1 in the open world in a zerg of 50 people with 0 investment of skill, time or player ability and with 0 chance of failure.

Resenting other players because they can get the things they want is not something for which I can offer you any sympathy. You are not owed the right to consider yourself superior to other people playing a game.

Is it me or did you fail to understand what I wrote?
I said I resented the game. The GAME. Not other players. I have nothing against other players.
Also I don’t want to feel superior – but I do want the game to acknowledge in some way that I have invested far more time and resources into it than others.

Regarding fractals – make your own group with people who want to do 1 fractal. I know for a fact I’ve seen groups doing just 1 fractal per day for their daily challenge.

What you call “forcing you to do the entire sequence” I actually like about it.
Just because you don’t have the time/ patience to do 3 fractals and a bonus in one sitting doesn’t mean the system isn’t right. It’s just not right for you.

And why should weapon skins and minis not be allowed as trophy items – but unique names for items and different inventory items are alright. How exactly did you draw the line?
Is it just because you " said so" ?

Work = doesn’t mean just work as in working.
You can have fun while doing it. I meant work as in put in the time and effort = get the reward. Don’t put in the time and effort = don’t get the reward.
People get so hung up on the word “work” they fail to see the meaning.

It means putting in the effort, caring about something, doing it because you want to.
Plus – bonus fact – you can have fun while doing it.
Not everything should be handed out.

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

@Vayne – care to reply to my suggestion of a token system?

That means the casuals can get it – one day – if they really want it. So why wouldn’t it work?

So you’re saying doing a bunch of stuff I don’t want to do becomes more fun or easier if I can look forward to months or years of it? Is that what you’re saying?

Not fun is not fun. The solution is to make the stuff sellable. People who like the content can make gold by running the content, people who don’t get can the rewards. The only people that lose are the people who want to the difficult content just to show off how uber they are.

I don’t know how big a percentage that is, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not a huge percentage.

Anyway, it’s a compromise. One that’s already worked in Guild Wars 1.

No Vayne. You’re missing my point. Completely.

You dislike hard content correct? Great. They can make it obtainable through easy content but in very very small steps. Do you understand it now?
Or maybe tie it in to another reward currency.

Maybe it’ll cost 1000 laurels. You can get that without being forced to “not have fun” right?

You can make the “hard content” way the really efficient way to do it while still offering alternative ways that aren’t hard at all but more inefficient.

The sellable thing – I don’t see it working.
Rather than design content and put it in – I think they’ll just sell it to us in the gem store.

Now please – do you get my idea?

Beldin.5498:

NewTrain.7549:

Beldin.5498:

NewTrain.7549:

Fact is, more challenging content (that you wouldn’t be forced to do) would greatly increase the fun of the game for a large group of players and yet you’re against it because it’s not something you personally enjoy.

The real “fact” is that those that want “more challenging content” mostly just want stuff
that 95% of the playerbase will never have a chance to get, so that they can show off
how great they are.

And THAT is what i am against.

You’re confused on what actually constitutes a fact. Where is your proof that 95% of the people who advocate for harder content only want superior rewards. I want harder content because I find challenges to be fun. The reward can be on par with what’s currently offered and as long as it’s exciting and engaging I’ll keep playing. hence why I enjoy PvP (though not much in GW2) because of the variable challenge.

Oh common .. just read the forums .. read thos thread .. next post already :

hard content needs either greater, or different rewards, because it is harder.

And that in the end again says : (nearly) nobody wants harder content .. they just
want “exclusive” rewards that not everyone can get.
If they want hard content just because its soooo much fun, then they rewards only
need to be “fair” .. 1 hour hard content gets the same reward then 1 hour easy content
because the reward is doing the hard content instead of the lame boring easy stuff.

I’m sorry, 1 post somehow equates to 95% of the playerbase? Perhaps you skipped over all of the posts in here in which players state they want harder content just so they have something more to do. Once again, you seem really confused as to what constitutes a fact and are merely arguing from an extremely selfish standpoint of “I DEZERVE ANYTHING EVERY1 ELSE HAZ!111!!!”

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

@Vayne – care to reply to my suggestion of a token system?

That means the casuals can get it – one day – if they really want it. So why wouldn’t it work?

So you’re saying doing a bunch of stuff I don’t want to do becomes more fun or easier if I can look forward to months or years of it? Is that what you’re saying?

Not fun is not fun. The solution is to make the stuff sellable. People who like the content can make gold by running the content, people who don’t get can the rewards. The only people that lose are the people who want to the difficult content just to show off how uber they are.

I don’t know how big a percentage that is, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not a huge percentage.

Anyway, it’s a compromise. One that’s already worked in Guild Wars 1.

No Vayne. You’re missing my point. Completely.

You dislike hard content correct? Great. They can make it obtainable through easy content but in very very small steps. Do you understand it now?
Or maybe tie it in to another reward currency.

Maybe it’ll cost 1000 laurels. You can get that without being forced to “not have fun” right?

You can make the “hard content” way the really efficient way to do it while still offering alternative ways that aren’t hard at all but more inefficient.

The sellable thing – I don’t see it working.
Rather than design content and put it in – I think they’ll just sell it to us in the gem store.

Now please – do you get my idea?

I get your idea. It would simply have to be implemented very carefully. That’s all. And btw, I do like CERTAIN hard content. My favorite dungeon in the game is the Aetherblade path of Twilight Arbor and I prefer fractals to most dungeons.

But I don’t like Triple Threat at all. And I didn’t enjoy Liadri either. So it’s not that I don’t like hard content.

I have a guild of about 150 people, 100 of whom log on at least weekly. Of those people maybe six of them beat Liadri. Most of them never even tried it. The biggest percentage of my guild has never beaten any explorable path of Arah. I’ve beaten all of them multiple times.

Just because I can stand hard content doesn’t mean that I think it’s necessarily great for the game.

Ohoni.6057:

1. I’m not a fan of “hard” content. I like challenge, but not challenge that assumes that a large number of players will never be able to do it. Challenge should be enough that you have to pay attention, learn certain patterns, and get things right most of the time, but should not require perfection.

2. Having an event in which you need to get something right 12 times in a row, and failing it even once can kill you, is not “hard,” it’s just tedious if your succeed and frustrating if you fail. The best content follows the rule of three, do one activity successfully, then have to do it a second time with slightly more complications, and then do it a third time with even more complications. All three rounds should be forgiving of minor stumbles, and you should never have to repeat the same sequence more than three times in an event (I’m talking broad objectives, I’m not saying each boss should die in three hits).

3. DPS checks are not hard. If content can be done easily when everyone is in full Ascended Zerk, but not when everyone is in full tank greens, then that is not hard content, it’s just gear-check, and nobody should be proud at succeeding in it. You didn’t do well, your shorts did well. Content should scale to the stats of the group, with better stats allowing you to win it faster, but not being necessary to overall success.

4. If content requires large masses of people to succeed, but having a minority of the players fail can cause the entire thing to fail, that is not hard content, it is just frustrating content. If at least half the people know what they’re doing, an event should succeed, the more people that know what they’re doing, the faster it succeeds. In large group events, difficulty should be measured on a personal level, on whether you can survive the action, not on the average skill level of the entire group.

5. Hard content is not “superior” content, it’s just content some people like more. If you are the type that enjoys “hard” content, that does not make you better than those that prefer casual, and you do not deserve better rewards just because you enjoy “hard” content. Anything achievable via “hard” content should be equally as achievable using “casual” content, it just might come to you faster, for example if a “hard” event takes more time and has a greater chance of complete failure, it might reward twice as many tokens towards a cool reward, allowing you to acquire it faster, but there should not be rewards that can ONLY be gained through hard content.

6. If you have to bribe people to do “hard” content with cool rewards, then people don’t want to do “hard” content, they just want cool rewards. If this is the case, then you just shouldn’t have “hard” content because that’s clearly not what the players want. You should reward players adequately for the time spent, they should never say “I would do that but I’d make half as much as if I did this other thing,” but so long as they are adequately rewarded, if they still don’t want to do it, then they don’t want to do it, make it more FUN, not more rewarding.

7. As for breaking up the zerg, this is not hard to do, so long as you force it to happen. So long as everyone can move in a pack, they will move in a pack, because it’s the path of least resistance. The only way to avoid it is to make events in which you MUST engage multiple spread out targets at once, in which even 150 people on one only is impossible to win with, and you also need to convey this information clearly to the players. If they have to bang their heads against the wall or visit an outside blog to figure this out then you’ve failed, the event trackers need to make clear that some people need to go left and some right, and how many are needed at each, so that a totally new player who doesn’t know the event can figure out at a glance where he will be most useful. You have to balance out rewards and difficulty between events, otherwise people will just overload the easiest/more rewarding path.

This is win post.

1 example of an extremely bad piece of content was new pavillion, from design, ingame feedback and rewards.

Harper.4173:

But you already have that in game. And it’s not with skin or unique rewards- but with things that give vertical progression.

Take high-level fractals – there’s a higher chance to get ascended armor drops there than anywhere else in the game.

Same with Teq. These are harder than average parts of the game with “better rewards” not just rarer. Not just skins. Better.

Yet I don’t see anyone complaining.

If you missed the hundreds of pages of threads explaining why ascended gear and its acquisition are a blight on this game, then you are blind. All those things you mentioned? If they were removed, i’d be screaming with joy.

Ohoni.6057:

Then why do they keep doing FotM50 runs if the rewards are not worth it?

Some people do it for the challenge. However, that was taken away when fractals were reset.

So, to answer your question for me personally…

I don’t. I quit.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Ohoni.6057:

Because calls for “harder” content typically comes packaged with this sort of elitist bullkitten that makes us not want you to have what you want because you want it.

That’s a generalization. I could say that current dungeon farming is filled with elitism, yet dungeon farming is mindless easy. Elitism will be there regardless of content.

In the end, harder content being more rewarding comes to common sense: it’s simply fair that players who work harder deserve better rewards. Of course, “work harder” might mean different things to different players, and by no means should it imply that players should be forced to do a specific piece of content to ever get a good sense of reward.

But if the entire game is driven by instant gratification, there’s no long term satisfaction, fulfilment or sense of acchievement neither.

What common sense? If i want to run marathon ill “work” towards that goal and have personal staisfaction and pat on the back. Same as someone doing 5 km. I never saw marathon runners demanding better rewards than those doing 100m sprints. So i ask you again: what common sense?

Beldin.5498:

Zui.9245:

Are you serious? That’s not “fair”. Hard content requires a lot of experimentation, trial, error, and most importantly repeated failure. If it takes 20 hours of failure before you can complete the content to get the same reward per unit time as someone who needs 0 hours to be able to spam “1” on a staff guardian in an open world zerg, that hard content is going to be less rewarding per unit time than the easy content.

Hey .. you had however 20 hours of pure great fun .. right ? Because that is why you
want hard content … because its so great fun for you .. isn’t it ??

Else .. if it is NOT fun .. why do you not just play the easy content ?

And that is also the mindset i’ve read soo often in forums of different MMOs.

A: We want harder content
B: you only want better rewards.
A: no .. i don’t care about rewards .. i just want the “challenge”
B: Ok .. here you have your challenging content with same rewards than normal
A: what the hell .. if i get the same rewards i can simply play the easy content again

If you had read the full post you responded to, you would understand how it is impossible to give equal rewards for both hard and easy content. It just can’t be done. One always ends up being more rewarding than the other.

A player is certainly capable of enjoying hard content, and enjoying things they can get in the game via in game rewards. For players who might shockingly enjoy both things, but not enjoy easy content, a dilemma exists when easy content is much more rewarding than hard content.

So you have the choice of either making hard content more rewarding, or easy content more rewarding, since it is simply not possible to make them equally rewarding per time spent. If you make hard content more rewarding, you reward people who have dedicated their time and effort to master content, and improved significantly as players in doing so. If you make easy content more rewarding, you’re sending the message that player skill isn’t even worthwhile to develop in this game, as it takes time and effort where you get very poor rewards, only to get a return of worse rewards than you’d get spamming “1” on a staff guardian in the open world.

Your entire attitude is basically complaining that some people want hard content and have the audacity to want rewards for it that aren’t subpar. Getting hard content is certainly nice, but getting hard content with atrocious rewards is a bit of a slap in the face. It’s saying that player skill simply is not valued. Imagine if the real world gave better rewards for lower quality/much less work; if getting D’s in school was much more valuable than A’s. It’s utterly ridiculous, because it creates a bunch of bad incentives and is not remotely fair. This is what you are arguing for.

Now, you could argue from the perspective of a player with low levels of skill who loves their easy content and loves their rewards (if you like your easy content so much, why should you care about the rewards anyway!? Does this make you realize how silly your argument actually is?), there also exists a dilemma if hard content is more rewarding than their easy content. This is definitely the case. They might be tempted to improve themselves as players to do hard content so they get better rewards. It would probably be absolutely awful to have to actually earn getting relatively better rewards, and that just sounds insanely unfair. Actually earning better rewards. Oh my, the insanity of it…

Ohoni.6057:

1. I’m not a fan of “hard” content. I like challenge, but not challenge that assumes that a large number of players will never be able to do it. Challenge should be enough that you have to pay attention, learn certain patterns, and get things right most of the time, but should not require perfection.

2. Having an event in which you need to get something right 12 times in a row, and failing it even once can kill you, is not “hard,” it’s just tedious if your succeed and frustrating if you fail. The best content follows the rule of three, do one activity successfully, then have to do it a second time with slightly more complications, and then do it a third time with even more complications. All three rounds should be forgiving of minor stumbles, and you should never have to repeat the same sequence more than three times in an event (I’m talking broad objectives, I’m not saying each boss should die in three hits).

3. DPS checks are not hard. If content can be done easily when everyone is in full Ascended Zerk, but not when everyone is in full tank greens, then that is not hard content, it’s just gear-check, and nobody should be proud at succeeding in it. You didn’t do well, your shorts did well. Content should scale to the stats of the group, with better stats allowing you to win it faster, but not being necessary to overall success.

4. If content requires large masses of people to succeed, but having a minority of the players fail can cause the entire thing to fail, that is not hard content, it is just frustrating content. If at least half the people know what they’re doing, an event should succeed, the more people that know what they’re doing, the faster it succeeds. In large group events, difficulty should be measured on a personal level, on whether you can survive the action, not on the average skill level of the entire group.

5. Hard content is not “superior” content, it’s just content some people like more. If you are the type that enjoys “hard” content, that does not make you better than those that prefer casual, and you do not deserve better rewards just because you enjoy “hard” content. Anything achievable via “hard” content should be equally as achievable using “casual” content, it just might come to you faster, for example if a “hard” event takes more time and has a greater chance of complete failure, it might reward twice as many tokens towards a cool reward, allowing you to acquire it faster, but there should not be rewards that can ONLY be gained through hard content.

6. If you have to bribe people to do “hard” content with cool rewards, then people don’t want to do “hard” content, they just want cool rewards. If this is the case, then you just shouldn’t have “hard” content because that’s clearly not what the players want. You should reward players adequately for the time spent, they should never say “I would do that but I’d make half as much as if I did this other thing,” but so long as they are adequately rewarded, if they still don’t want to do it, then they don’t want to do it, make it more FUN, not more rewarding.

7. As for breaking up the zerg, this is not hard to do, so long as you force it to happen. So long as everyone can move in a pack, they will move in a pack, because it’s the path of least resistance. The only way to avoid it is to make events in which you MUST engage multiple spread out targets at once, in which even 150 people on one only is impossible to win with, and you also need to convey this information clearly to the players. If they have to bang their heads against the wall or visit an outside blog to figure this out then you’ve failed, the event trackers need to make clear that some people need to go left and some right, and how many are needed at each, so that a totally new player who doesn’t know the event can figure out at a glance where he will be most useful. You have to balance out rewards and difficulty between events, otherwise people will just overload the easiest/more rewarding path.

I upvote this… x1000. Well said.

ANet has put exclusive rewards on harder content. We have TA/AP skins, Fractal Weapon skins, Teq Ascended Skins and (I believe) Triple Worm Ascended skins. This is not to mention the dungeon skins that have been around since launch. Those who’ve played all or most of this content since it appeared may find that this stuff is not hard. That’s due to practice effect.

So, people want more of this stuff in game. Why? Because they’ve played it enough that it’s old to them. Well, to be honest, just about everything I do in the game is old hat, also — and the rewards for doing what I enjoy (events and exploration) are almost non-existent. Many people are asking for more content, and they’re not all demanding challenge.

Explorers have gotten less new stuff than the “more challenge/exclusive reward” people. We’ve gotten one new zone (Dry Top), one unfinished zone with almost nothing to explore (SSC) and one temporary zone with a finite sky crystal hunt (SotW). Challenge people have gotten two persistent world raids, Guild Bounties, a replacement TA path and FotM, consisting of 17 mini-dungeon encounters.

It seems that ANet is (at best) only going to produce new stuff so often. They’ve tried to give something to everyone, and so far only those who want to follow the story seem to be getting any more than other groups.

So what’s my solution for the challenge crowd? Patience, and don’t play so kitten much. That’s what I do. Yes, not playing so much is probably not best for ANet, but unless they pick up what is apparently an already grueling pace, that’s kind of where we are.

Jana.6831:

@Harper: I play this game for fun – as others have stated: I make my own rules, I rarely “just smash #1”. I am able to do what I want because I can get the best gear by not doing one certain event – and I like that. I don’t need “the best skins” – what’s that anyway? My main ran around in exotic starter gear because I liked the look best – I got a lot of hate for that actually and when I got ascended I thought about making it into starter gear again – just to kitten people off. I don’t need the “best rewards” as usually playing is enough for me.
So please don’t say “people want this or that” as I’m pretty sure there are a lot like me around.
And although I don’t really try to make gold I have it – without doing dungeons without doing more than 10 world bosses a week, without doing EotM, without “flipping the TP” oh and without doing champ trains.
Maybe you should try to make some friends outside of your fractal circle.

basically you are just afk-ing in lions arch. cool that you like this play style. but the majority of the players doesnt like it and the game will die if we dont get new and challenging content.

if YOU dont want to do challenging stuff, thats ok. nobody will force you to do it. you can keep afk-ing all day. nothing will change for you.

Azathor.2845:

Vayne.8563:

Azathor.2845:

Vayne.8563:

kokiman.2364:

Laosduude.1690:

These so called “few players” can go pick up Wildstar then, or play any Korean mmo in the market today. Guild Wars 2 ever since the start has been so relaxing, I don’t want to see it go along some hardcore path to get the best items that gives a significant advantage on almost all situations.

Yeah god forbid challenge in a videogame.

Not really the point. Plenty of people have challenging lives. They don’t need MORE challenge. Getting up in the morning and working is a challenge.

Every job I’ve had in the last 30 years has been ridiculously competitive. I don’t play games to prove myself or challenge myself. I play games to relax and unwind after proving myself and challenging myself all day…or I did before I was retired anyway.

It’s okay for people to play games just to have fun.

LOl. Come on Vayne. Do you really believe this? Some people have a challenge just getting out of bed in the morning? Give me a break man….seriously Vayne, you’re reaching with this one.

I don’t see what harm it would be to have some areas where people could work together in small groups to do more challenging content and get elevated rewards. As long as this content didn’t provide game breaking gear, what’s the harm in it?

I don’t get why so many are against this line of thinking. No one is advocating across the board harder game just some further challenges within the game as it is today.

I’m not reaching at all. Do you realize the age of the average gamer is now over 30. It’s a different generation.

Why do you think raiding games are on the slide. No one has time for that stuff anymore…well not no one, but much fewer people. We’ve grown up, gotten married. I’m 52 years old, not 16. I’m past the point where I need to push my boundaries, and you know, that’s strongest when you’re younger and fades as you get older…for most people anyway.

And more women are playing the game these days. My guild is like half women. Half. The women in my guild aren’t looking for serious competition.

I’m reaching because you think kids are the people playing these games?

Give ME a break.

I’ll be 40 in April. I’m not a kid either but I still like raiding.

I don’t understand why this game cant have things for casual players and for players who want something more to do.

I don’t get what the big deal is?

the jelly haters ,who know they will never be able to complete challenging content because they are too bad to use more than 1111111, are so egoistic that they dont grant other players their fun and rewards. thats the big deal here.

I see people talking about difficulty and rewards yet, where’s fun in the conversation? Difficulty, challenge, and/or suffering are not inherently fun! Where’s the humor in entertainment too?

Game where everyone has everthing gets really boring really fast (this is also one of the main factors why people leave this game)

People dont demand better gear , they just need posibility to show off . If I have to spend over 2 hours to complete some content I want to get better reward then pug running cof p1 in 10 min .

For example
fract lvl50 = 20g+higher chance for ascended drop
cof p1=1g

Casual who cant finish fract lvl50 doesnt miss anything , he just get it slower .

NoTrigger.8396:

Azathor.2845:

Vayne.8563:

Azathor.2845:

Vayne.8563:

kokiman.2364:

Laosduude.1690:

These so called “few players” can go pick up Wildstar then, or play any Korean mmo in the market today. Guild Wars 2 ever since the start has been so relaxing, I don’t want to see it go along some hardcore path to get the best items that gives a significant advantage on almost all situations.

Yeah god forbid challenge in a videogame.

Not really the point. Plenty of people have challenging lives. They don’t need MORE challenge. Getting up in the morning and working is a challenge.

Every job I’ve had in the last 30 years has been ridiculously competitive. I don’t play games to prove myself or challenge myself. I play games to relax and unwind after proving myself and challenging myself all day…or I did before I was retired anyway.

It’s okay for people to play games just to have fun.

LOl. Come on Vayne. Do you really believe this? Some people have a challenge just getting out of bed in the morning? Give me a break man….seriously Vayne, you’re reaching with this one.

I don’t see what harm it would be to have some areas where people could work together in small groups to do more challenging content and get elevated rewards. As long as this content didn’t provide game breaking gear, what’s the harm in it?

I don’t get why so many are against this line of thinking. No one is advocating across the board harder game just some further challenges within the game as it is today.

I’m not reaching at all. Do you realize the age of the average gamer is now over 30. It’s a different generation.

Why do you think raiding games are on the slide. No one has time for that stuff anymore…well not no one, but much fewer people. We’ve grown up, gotten married. I’m 52 years old, not 16. I’m past the point where I need to push my boundaries, and you know, that’s strongest when you’re younger and fades as you get older…for most people anyway.

And more women are playing the game these days. My guild is like half women. Half. The women in my guild aren’t looking for serious competition.

I’m reaching because you think kids are the people playing these games?

Give ME a break.

I’ll be 40 in April. I’m not a kid either but I still like raiding.

I don’t understand why this game cant have things for casual players and for players who want something more to do.

I don’t get what the big deal is?

the jelly haters ,who know they will never be able to complete challenging content because they are too bad to use more than 1111111, are so egoistic that they dont grant other players their fun and rewards. thats the big deal here.

Really? How in the world did you get it completely backwards,

its YOU who wants to deny other people rewards for doing what they find fun, thats what all the fuss is about.

If you find hard content fun, then fun is all reward you need over anyone else (you know, like people who find challenge fun actually do). Asking for better rewards just unveils whole poor attempt at “fun”.

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

Game where everyone has everthing gets really boring really fast (this is also one of the main factors why people leave this game)

People dont demand better gear , they just need posibility to show off . If I have to spend over 2 hours to complete some content I want to get better reward then pug running cof p1 in 10 min .

For example
fract lvl50 = 20g+higher chance for ascended drop
cof p1=1g

Casual who cant finish fract lvl50 doesnt miss anything , he just get it slower .

Tell you what, youll get a title “fractal pro”. You can show off that if THATS what you really want.

Or even better, let ANet time fractal runs and fastest time group gets unique title, but as soon as record is broken title goes to new group. Isnt that unique enough? And you can be sure that filthy casuals will never have that title.

And you are a bit confused, ANet (or any developers) goal isnt to speed up “hardcores” progress and slow down “casuals” progress, quite opposite, slow down hardcores and speed up casuals to keep them at roughly same spot.

There is always going to be a vocal minority that wants extremely difficult content in every game. The problem is, this same minority tends to slam through challenging content like a truck and then get bored while waiting for more “hard content.”

Granted, in the case of GW2, even the most difficult fights (see: Wurm) are pretty low on the totem pole as far as “challenging MMOs” go.

I like challenging stuff, but I don’t see GW2 ever becoming a game where truly difficult content is worth the investment. Coming from other, more complex games, I am endlessly surprised to see how little is actually required of you here.

I think that ultimately if you give players the tools to challenge themselves, they will find a way. You just gotta make it feel optional, so as not to scare away the other people. And I feel like the game already has some content like that. WvW, for example, may look like zerg smash on the surface, but I’m pretty sure you would feel otherwise if you hung out with a strong WvW guild for a day.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

@Vayne – care to reply to my suggestion of a token system?

That means the casuals can get it – one day – if they really want it. So why wouldn’t it work?

So you’re saying doing a bunch of stuff I don’t want to do becomes more fun or easier if I can look forward to months or years of it? Is that what you’re saying?

Not fun is not fun. The solution is to make the stuff sellable. People who like the content can make gold by running the content, people who don’t get can the rewards. The only people that lose are the people who want to the difficult content just to show off how uber they are.

I don’t know how big a percentage that is, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not a huge percentage.

Anyway, it’s a compromise. One that’s already worked in Guild Wars 1.

The sellable thing – I don’t see it working.

I’ll agree with vayne with the sellable rewards. It has a lot more adventage: Already earned this content’s specific skin? No problem, sell it to those who don’t like this kind of content, making you money and making it earnable to those who don’t want to do what it require. It also creates a lot more replayability. Also, what if you don’t like that specific thing? *Sold *

Anet tried this with TA aether ,but it failed ,but not because the concept ,but the ridiculous RNG. I’ll also take a risk and say: Fractal would be more popular with sellable fractal weapons. Some people already played hundreds of daily fractals ,yet they still not got what they wanted, but by making them sellable they could sell the unwanted ones and buy the ones they want.

Also if you’re familiar with GW1 reward system, it’s one of the things I really miss. Almost everything was sellable and the RNG & non RNG rewards were a lot more balanced than here in GW2.

Are you serious? That’s not “fair”. Hard content requires a lot of experimentation, trial, error, and most importantly repeated failure. If it takes 20 hours of failure before you can complete the content to get the same reward per unit time as someone who needs 0 hours to be able to spam “1” on a staff guardian in an open world zerg, that hard content is going to be less rewarding per unit time than the easy content. If it’s hard enough, even, you won’t have a 100% success rate even after you’ve more or less figured it out, making it even less rewarding (unless you think the rewards can control for the varying success rates of teams? If this is the case, please propose such a system.).

But let’s say an activity takes 20 hours of failure before you get it right but that after about thirty hours of practice you can clear it 100% of the time. Let’s say you then spend another 80 hours playing that content. If the rewards are even double what one would get for an “easy” activity, then over the course of those 100 hours you would earn a total of 160% the rewards of someone running the easy content for the same amount of time, even if the first bit you’re making nothing.

I think that if content is designed with a steep learning curve, such that you can fail it dozens of times before completing it once, but that you can fairly quickly get it to about 100% success rate, then it should only have a large one time reward, a big prize to say ‘hey, you made it," but not something you could then farm infinitely. Liadri is a solid example of this, you get a title and a mini, but they weren’t so foolish as to have it produce a sellable, repeatable mini that people good at Liadri could farm Liadri for.

Now, if content is designed so that it’s always risky, so that even the most skilled guilds that “have it on farm” still fail half the time, then the rewards can account for that and be 50% or more higher than normal, but there should never be a state in which you are getting bonus rewards for something that you have made easy for yourself though practice.

Let’s look at fractals – we shouldn’t have weapon skin drops because some player can’t /won’t do fractals and will never get them.
So let’s stop rewarding the players having fun doing fractals because some players won’t have fun doing fractals and will never get those rewards. So instead of them going for the rewards while not having fun – let’s remove the rewards so they’re not forced.

There’s no harm in fractals dropping skins, but you’re right that other activities should also drop those skins, so that players who like fractals can run fractals to get them, but players who don’t like fractals can do something else to get them.

Rewarded more than mashing #1 in the open world in a zerg of 50 people with 0 investment of skill, time or player ability and with 0 chance of failure.

I tend to zone out when people use the “mashing #1” pejorative. Nobody is saying that content should be that simplistic, but there is a vast gulf between that and, say, Liadri or Fractal 50. Nobody is arguing that everything should be faceroll easy, just that all rewards should be available without gating it behind highly difficult content.

Is it me or did you fail to understand what I wrote?
I said I resented the game. The GAME. Not other players. I have nothing against other players.

You said you resented the game for making players happy, ergo, you resented those players being happy.

What you call “forcing you to do the entire sequence” I actually like about it.
Just because you don’t have the time/ patience to do 3 fractals and a bonus in one sitting doesn’t mean the system isn’t right. It’s just not right for you.

And that’s what I’m saying, I won;t play it until it is right for me, and I resent any mechanism that tries to nudge me into doing it anyway.

And why should weapon skins and minis not be allowed as trophy items – but unique names for items and different inventory items are alright. How exactly did you draw the line?

Because a unique name is a pure trophy, it has no value other than to say “this is a thing I did.” A skin or a mini, on the other hand, has intrinsic value, you can have people that want to be using a Fractal weapon or want to be followed by a Liadri mini who have no interest in the content associated with them, and no interest in showing off how skilled they are, they just want that look. A trophy is something that has no intrinsic value beyond showing off an accomplishment, and the two should not be mixed.

Work = doesn’t mean just work as in working.
You can have fun while doing it. I meant work as in put in the time and effort = get the reward. Don’t put in the time and effort = don’t get the reward.
People get so hung up on the word “work” they fail to see the meaning.

But that’s my point, if they aren’t having fun, then it is the bad kind of work. Nobody is saying that you should get rewards without effort, they can always require effort, but ideally you should be able to determine the type of effort you’d need to apply, giving you a solid chance of finding a type of effort that you enjoy doing, rather than a type that you find to be a chore. Variety is a good thing.

1 example of an extremely bad piece of content was new pavillion, from design, ingame feedback and rewards.

I actually really enjoyed the new pavilion once I started getting into gold clearing groups, but yes, it was poorly designed in that it didn’t make those groups easy to set up, usually requiring things like voice chat, map clears, etc.. It would have worked a lot better if they had map-wide UI to show the relative health of each boss, and of how many players were active at each boss. It also would have been a good idea to keep the Gauntlet separate form the boss blitz players, and to kick AFKers after a bit.

Some people do it for the challenge. However, that was taken away when fractals were reset.

So, to answer your question for me personally…

I don’t. I quit.

And that’s fine too. Players should not do content they don’t enjoy doing.

The problem is far beyond the content being not difficult enough. Just today some people admitted they’ve never even seen events like Frozen Maw or Fire Elemental failed. It’s quite impossible in today’s arrangement.

The problem is far beyond the content being not difficult enough. Just today some people admitted they’ve never even seen events like Frozen Maw or Fire Elemental failed. It’s quite impossible in today’s arrangement.

Yeah, but I don’t see that as a problem. Content shouldn’t have to fail. The challenge is in completing content as quickly and as efficiently as possible, not in just completing it at all. That isn’t to say that they can’t tweak content a bit, Fire Elemental in particular has terrible balance to the current zerg sizes, and is one of the few mobs that would actually benefit from having a massively higher HP bar at highest scaling, and probably have it get much more aggressive about laying fire fields and other attacks, I’m just saying, I don’t think the fact that it doesn’t fail is as big a problem as the fact that it tends to die within thirty seconds and with almost no risk.

what have you done anet!!
I just played your new system to experience it how you wanted ppl to experience it.. from lvl1 to lvl80 with a team mate only using skill 1.. we managed to:
Do all of the Personal Story as a duo spamming 1
Get 100% map complete as a duo spamming 1
Leveled from 1 to 80 as a duo spamming 1
Completed all dungeon story paths as a duo spamming 1
Completed 2 paths in each dungeon as a duo spamming 1

WTF!!

If that wasnt enough, when we completed the PS we recieved loot with a req lvl18!
You honestly think im eager to do that again? hell no!
I play to have fun..
Whats fun about auto win?
Whats fun about auto playing a game that offers ZERO difficulty?

Dont get me wrong, i can understand your thinking behind what u did but talk about how to screw up the implimentation of an idea..
Does the new system teach “NEW” players anything? yes it teaches them to spam 1 to kill something, it then teaches you about the compass just as the compass guides you into higher level areas to get 1 shot’d! & Everything in your H panel is locked which is a great help to new players.. =/

Implimenting this on its own is going to lead to the death of the game, implimenting this as you ALSO have either:
Expansion for vet players / Higher level content for vet players
also on its way makes better sence.. but considering its now taking months to release content that used to take weeks to release i can only hope and prey on that one…
but not for much longer.. i have already watched 5 large guilds walk away from the game and to be honest.. this keep em in the dark tactic is getting beyond a joke now..
i aswell as others know, SO MANY PPL will return if the content is there.. challenging content that is.. not this sesame street style of gameplay.. im suprised u didnt turn Trahearne into big bird, n Zhaitan into the cookie monster to match the new game introduction stlye…

I cant help but rewatch the video you guys made were the following was said:

• GW2 is our oppotunity to question everything, to innovate.
  Traditional Quests removed, Repeatitive content removed etc. NOT DELIVERED!
• GW2 takes everything you love about GW1 and puts it into a persistent world.
  UW, FOW, Challenging Content, Hard Mode, Theory Crafting ect… NOT DELIVERED!
• GW2 is stylised, painted and artistic even the environments feel like characters.
  Congratulations, GW2 is everything you promised here!
• Most games you go out & have fun tasks occassionaly, i swung a sword, i swung a sword again we just dont want players to grind in GW2 its not fun.
  If you dont grind for legendary or ascended etc.. there is no other content once youve completed your PS.. NOT DELIVERED!
• The most important thing in a game should be the player, we built a game for them.
  You built a game for the players of GW1 then slowly downgraded it and downgraded until its nolonger a game for them but a game for those who are new to mmo’s.. NOT DELIVERED!

GW2 had and still has tbh the potential to be a great game.. it just needs tougher content, fractals is a good example of what this game needs more of. sure fractals at lvl 1-10 is easy.. it was designed to be to introduce players to it, but when you reach 45+ its tough.. & in a fun way… but its also the ONLY tough content the game currently offers..

Just Add HARDMODE again with rewards to suit and the ranting will stop… we dont need NEW content (although nice) we just need hard content to challenge us, thats the FUN in MMO’s.. you create a character, you learn the game, you develope and build your character, you then play the real content everything else tryed to prepare you for.. and at present the only real content is:
Legendary = Small Grind
Ascended Gear = Small Grind
High level fractals = Actual Content
Is this what anet was preparing us for? small grind or 1 area… thats the choice?

Come on Anet…. pull it together, we may moan & rant but its only because we care..

Ohoni.6057:

The problem is far beyond the content being not difficult enough. Just today some people admitted they’ve never even seen events like Frozen Maw or Fire Elemental failed. It’s quite impossible in today’s arrangement.

Yeah, but I don’t see that as a problem. Content shouldn’t have to fail. The challenge is in completing content as quickly and as efficiently as possible, not in just completing it at all. That isn’t to say that they can’t tweak content a bit, Fire Elemental in particular has terrible balance to the current zerg sizes, and is one of the few mobs that would actually benefit from having a massively higher HP bar at highest scaling, and probably have it get much more aggressive about laying fire fields and other attacks, I’m just saying, I don’t think the fact that it doesn’t fail is as big a problem as the fact that it tends to die within thirty seconds and with almost no risk.

About 10 seconds now, actually.

MikaHR.1978:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Ohoni.6057:

Because calls for “harder” content typically comes packaged with this sort of elitist bullkitten that makes us not want you to have what you want because you want it.

That’s a generalization. I could say that current dungeon farming is filled with elitism, yet dungeon farming is mindless easy. Elitism will be there regardless of content.

In the end, harder content being more rewarding comes to common sense: it’s simply fair that players who work harder deserve better rewards. Of course, “work harder” might mean different things to different players, and by no means should it imply that players should be forced to do a specific piece of content to ever get a good sense of reward.

But if the entire game is driven by instant gratification, there’s no long term satisfaction, fulfilment or sense of acchievement neither.

What common sense? If i want to run marathon ill “work” towards that goal and have personal staisfaction and pat on the back. Same as someone doing 5 km. I never saw marathon runners demanding better rewards than those doing 100m sprints. So i ask you again: what common sense?

the both get paid, if they are good enough, but only the best. so they get paid based on how well they do at difficult tasks.

and yeah the 100 m runner gets paid more per step.

Ohoni.6057:

The problem is far beyond the content being not difficult enough. Just today some people admitted they’ve never even seen events like Frozen Maw or Fire Elemental failed. It’s quite impossible in today’s arrangement.

Yeah, but I don’t see that as a problem. Content shouldn’t have to fail. The challenge is in completing content as quickly and as efficiently as possible, not in just completing it at all. That isn’t to say that they can’t tweak content a bit, Fire Elemental in particular has terrible balance to the current zerg sizes, and is one of the few mobs that would actually benefit from having a massively higher HP bar at highest scaling, and probably have it get much more aggressive about laying fire fields and other attacks, I’m just saying, I don’t think the fact that it doesn’t fail is as big a problem as the fact that it tends to die within thirty seconds and with almost no risk.

yeah, but the reason there is no risk is because anet didnt want to design it so people might fail. In order to have risk, you need to have a chance of failure. This most likely means that something can kill you if you play wrong. Which means there has to be patterns or things you can react to, which means a more challenging fight, which is what people in here are asking for.

and unfortunately, if they made it challenging, it would need to pay more, or people would skip it. because it doesnt give them as much gold/drops as eotm, or failing some event somewhere else.

The reward structure is screwed, really bad, its not just screwed in terms of difficulty, but also in terms of game design. and nerfing isnt really the answer, the real answer is to properly encourage good play (not just difficult) through rewards.

i mean they can nerf events people fail repeatedly, but winning the event barely gives anything, so why would people want to win?

phys:
yeah, but the reason there is no risk is because anet didnt want to design it so people might fail. In order to have risk, you need to have a chance of failure. This most likely means that something can kill you if you play wrong. Which means there has to be patterns or things you can react to, which means a more challenging fight, which is what people in here are asking for.

and unfortunately, if they made it challenging, it would need to pay more, or people would skip it. because it doesnt give them as much gold/drops as eotm, or failing some event somewhere else.

The reward structure is screwed, really bad, its not just screwed in terms of difficulty, but also in terms of game design. and nerfing isnt really the answer, the real answer is to properly encourage good play (not just difficult) through rewards.

i mean they can nerf events people fail repeatedly, but winning the event barely gives anything, so why would people want to win?

I kinda agree..
Some content needs to be difficult for the challenge while others requires rewards to ofset it..

Example:
Fractals.. the higher you go the tougher the enemy which makes it harder to win, but to go higher, you will need ascended gear to apply AR infusions.. Yet the silk reward & ascended drops at lower levels is poor from 0-10 scraps + possibly a ring only discouraging some players from continuing further as they will need over 3000 scraps + earings, amlets etc.. yet once you get your ascended gear & continue, the rewards are the same as before, what motivates ppl to continue is the challenge itself.. can we beat it @ lvlxx

So yes i agree rewards are screwed, but not fully.. as you said it just needs tweeking in places.
The

the real answer is to properly encourage good play (not just difficult) through rewards

is a great idea eg: zero deaths = higher reward – also encourages better teamplay.
but you also still need that challenging content for small teams of 5 but as you said the rewards need to reflect its difficulty vs time..
High Difficulty + Quick rewards needs to match that of : Easy + Long
but High Difficulty + Long should be given a higher reward
aswell as Easy + Quick given a lower reward
No matter what path you take, you will get your reward, but its scaled upon what you put in.. teamplay, time, effort, or little of everything..

Ohoni.6057:

But let’s say an activity takes 20 hours of failure before you get it right but that after about thirty hours of practice you can clear it 100% of the time. Let’s say you then spend another 80 hours playing that content. If the rewards are even double what one would get for an “easy” activity, then over the course of those 100 hours you would earn a total of 160% the rewards of someone running the easy content for the same amount of time, even if the first bit you’re making nothing.

I think that if content is designed with a steep learning curve, such that you can fail it dozens of times before completing it once, but that you can fairly quickly get it to about 100% success rate, then it should only have a large one time reward, a big prize to say ‘hey, you made it," but not something you could then farm infinitely. Liadri is a solid example of this, you get a title and a mini, but they weren’t so foolish as to have it produce a sellable, repeatable mini that people good at Liadri could farm Liadri for.

Now, if content is designed so that it’s always risky, so that even the most skilled guilds that “have it on farm” still fail half the time, then the rewards can account for that and be 50% or more higher than normal, but there should never be a state in which you are getting bonus rewards for something that you have made easy for yourself though practice.

So your suggestion is to make sure that hard content isn’t repeatable for rewards. Meaning people who want hard content unable to get any reward for replaying their content. While people who like easy content can spam “1” all day, every day, and still get rewarded. When people ask for hard content, they’re not just asking for the content. They’re asking for content that’s actually repeatable, without facing a dilemma as to whether or not they should be repeating it because despite being quite enjoyable, it doesn’t reward you. And given how little content ANET actually puts out, much less how virtually none of that content is hard content, it’s not like we’d ever regularly get enough hard content to keep us occupied and continually rewarded. What you really want is for people who like hard content to go ahead and do that content, but then be forced to go back to either getting virtually zero reward, or be forced to go back to doing easy content they don’t enjoy.

And at that, you think good rewards are a minipet that you can’t sell and a title. How’s this for an idea: replace all rewards from world bosses with a single, non-sellable minipet, and a title. No reward after that. You can still have your easy content fun! (Or are you only in it for the reward? Because that’s what ‘you’ keep accusing ‘us’ of, when we’re the ones actually doing thing that effectively don’t even HAVE a reward like level 50 uncategorized fractal champ solos, when for the most part you guys are chasing the most rewarding zero effort zerg farms).

Your whole post, especially that last paragraph, is saying that you don’t think demonstrating player skill should have better rewards than not demonstrating any player skill. In your mind, at best, it should have the same reward as afk-level-of-effort zerg farming. And for anyone who can’t complete the content at the success rate of the absolute most skilled players in the game, much less considering the time it takes to learn the content, it ought to be much less rewarding. Again, as I’ve pointed out in a few posts here now, it’s simply not possible to make easy and hard content equally rewarding. One will always carry greater rewards than the other in the long term. That could be easy content, or it could be hard content. If the former, you reward players for practically doing nothing but sitting through time gates while still at their computer, and comparatively punish people who engage difficult content in the hopes of improving themselves as a player. If the later, people who like braindead content still get the same reward, but people who have actually done things that could qualify as deserving better rewards (i.e. expanded themselves as a player via hard work) get those better rewards.

I am sure the point of how hard and easy content can’t have the same reward, and how wrong it is to have easy content that’s more rewarding is will be ignored yet again.

yeah, but the reason there is no risk is because anet didnt want to design it so people might fail. In order to have risk, you need to have a chance of failure.

Not really. There are a lot of lesser-participated events that are impossible to fail and yet difficult to succeed. If you don’t succeed then they just stick around, not being beaten, for hours if necessary. You may not be able to fail it, but it might take a while if you aren’t very good at it. The real kicker, the thing that makes events frustrating, is when you’re working diligently towards success, and then either the enemy just gives up and goes home, or the entire group wipes and everything resets. Those are fun stealers.

Now that doesn’t mean that the encounter shouldn’t be able to kill you, that you shouldn’t have to keep on your toes to stay alive. You might get knocked down, so that people have to wake you up, you might even die and have to rez (relatively near by) and run back (perhaps costing you more in WP fees than you earn if you are really terrible), but eventually the action should complete.

So your suggestion is to make sure that hard content isn’t repeatable for rewards. Meaning people who want hard content unable to get any reward for replaying their content. While people who like easy content can spam “1” all day, every day, and still get rewarded.

No, that’s not what I said. Of course the hard content would offer a repeatable reward, just that the repeatable reward shouldn’t be that much greater than any other repeatable reward. If the challenge is in making the event easy, then once you do that, you get one huge payout, then the content is relatively easy, so you get the smaller, easy mode payout. If you enjoy doing it, do it, it will pay out as well as anything else you could be doing, but you don’t deserve a huge bonus.

And at that, you think good rewards are a minipet that you can’t sell and a title. How’s this for an idea: replace all rewards from world bosses with a single, non-sellable minipet, and a title. No reward after that. You can still have your easy content fun! (Or are you only in it for the reward? Because that’s what ‘you’ keep accusing ‘us’ of, when we’re the ones actually doing thing that effectively don’t even HAVE a reward like level 50 uncategorized fractal champ solos, when for the most part you guys are chasing the most rewarding zero effort zerg farms).

So how would you do it?

How would you design repeatable hard content that even once you have it on farm it does not provide significantly higher reward per hour than running the other content in the game?

And no, you do not deserve the right to get consistently higher reward just because you enjoy hard content.

Your whole post, especially that last paragraph, is saying that you don’t think demonstrating player skill should have better rewards than not demonstrating any player skill.

Eh, I think that’s a slight exaggeration of my position, I don’t think demonstrating high player skill should have better rewards than only demonstrating moderate player skill. You should still have to display some skill, just not a crazy amount of it. Normal mode, not hard mode.

One will always carry greater rewards than the other in the long term.

Ok, then if that’s the case, and there must be a disdparity, then obviously you would make the more rewarding content the one that the most players can achieve, since that would make the most players happy. Clearly you wouldn’t want to make most rewarding the activities that only a small minority can achieve, how silly would that be?

Ohoni.6057:

yeah, but the reason there is no risk is because anet didnt want to design it so people might fail. In order to have risk, you need to have a chance of failure.

Not really. There are a lot of lesser-participated events that are impossible to fail and yet difficult to succeed. If you don’t succeed then they just stick around, not being beaten, for hours if necessary. You may not be able to fail it, but it might take a while if you aren’t very good at it. The real kicker, the thing that makes events frustrating, is when you’re working diligently towards success, and then either the enemy just gives up and goes home, or the entire group wipes and everything resets. Those are fun stealers.

Now that doesn’t mean that the encounter shouldn’t be able to kill you, that you shouldn’t have to keep on your toes to stay alive. You might get knocked down, so that people have to wake you up, you might even die and have to rez (relatively near by) and run back (perhaps costing you more in WP fees than you earn if you are really terrible), but eventually the action should complete.

So your suggestion is to make sure that hard content isn’t repeatable for rewards. Meaning people who want hard content unable to get any reward for replaying their content. While people who like easy content can spam “1” all day, every day, and still get rewarded.

No, that’s not what I said. Of course the hard content would offer a repeatable reward, just that the repeatable reward shouldn’t be that much greater than any other repeatable reward. If the challenge is in making the event easy, then once you do that, you get one huge payout, then the content is relatively easy, so you get the smaller, easy mode payout. If you enjoy doing it, do it, it will pay out as well as anything else you could be doing, but you don’t deserve a huge bonus.

And at that, you think good rewards are a minipet that you can’t sell and a title. How’s this for an idea: replace all rewards from world bosses with a single, non-sellable minipet, and a title. No reward after that. You can still have your easy content fun! (Or are you only in it for the reward? Because that’s what ‘you’ keep accusing ‘us’ of, when we’re the ones actually doing thing that effectively don’t even HAVE a reward like level 50 uncategorized fractal champ solos, when for the most part you guys are chasing the most rewarding zero effort zerg farms).

So how would you do it?

How would you design repeatable hard content that even once you have it on farm it does not provide significantly higher reward per hour than running the other content in the game?

And no, you do not deserve the right to get consistently higher reward just because you enjoy hard content.

Your whole post, especially that last paragraph, is saying that you don’t think demonstrating player skill should have better rewards than not demonstrating any player skill.

Eh, I think that’s a slight exaggeration of my position, I don’t think demonstrating high player skill should have better rewards than only demonstrating moderate player skill. You should still have to display some skill, just not a crazy amount of it. Normal mode, not hard mode.

One will always carry greater rewards than the other in the long term.

Ok, then if that’s the case, and there must be a disdparity, then obviously you would make the more rewarding content the one that the most players can achieve, since that would make the most players happy. Clearly you wouldn’t want to make most rewarding the activities that only a small minority can achieve, how silly would that be?

bah lost most my post.
you need to give rewards to encourage proper play, if yu designed a good game, proper play should make people happy. From a game design perspective rewards dont exist to make players happy, they exist to make people play the game in ways that make the game better to play.
The game itself is to make people happy.

sorreh for fake +1ing you

You know, they have a little “+1” button for that purpose.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

kokiman.2364:

Laosduude.1690:

These so called “few players” can go pick up Wildstar then, or play any Korean mmo in the market today. Guild Wars 2 ever since the start has been so relaxing, I don’t want to see it go along some hardcore path to get the best items that gives a significant advantage on almost all situations.

Yeah god forbid challenge in a videogame.

Not really the point. Plenty of people have challenging lives. They don’t need MORE challenge. Getting up in the morning and working is a challenge.

Every job I’ve had in the last 30 years has been ridiculously competitive. I don’t play games to prove myself or challenge myself. I play games to relax and unwind after proving myself and challenging myself all day…or I did before I was retired anyway.

It’s okay for people to play games just to have fun.

And nobody is stopping you.
However certain players are trying to stop me and others from playing rewarding content. For no reason.

But there is a reason. If you put better rewards on that content, you’re pressuring people to do that content. I know myself. I’ll do most of that content. I won’t enjoy it, but I’ll do it. It will change the entire dynamic of the game.

There are plenty of games that cater to that. Why can’t you let us have just one?

Because nobody is forcing you. You’re forcing yourself and it’s half funny and half sad.

I’m going to do something that’s probably going to ruin your game experience if what you wrote above is true.
I’m going to reveal the fact that : Currently the most profitable content in this game is the trading post – and anyone who wants to make money should learn how to play it and get spreadsheets and calculators and get cracking.

If what you wrote above is true – you’re going to become a TP guy right? Hardly.

You know, I know, everybody knows the TP is where it’s at yet I don’t find myself getting a master’s in economics any time soon. And neither will you.

The bottom line is this " pressure " you speak of is something you’re putting on yourself – and it’s a pretty far cry from the casual laid back Vayne you make yourself out to be on the forums.

Nobody is forcing you to play what you don’t like.

Also how do you know you won’t enjoy it?

And why is it that you being " forced " ( when in fact you’re just forcing yourself) to play content you don’t like is worse than me being actually forced to have terrible rewards for content that I do like?

Why should you enjoy yourself over me?

I’m not asking for vertical progression, power creep or other things.

It’s rather hilarious, really.
When one mentions how the game implemented vertical gear progression with fractals and thus even further restricted building freedom, the apologists hurry to defend such design choices by claiming ‘oh but you don’t need it to play the game’, yet in the same moment you see such nuggets of hypocrisy flying around from the very same posters.
I really like it how nicely you exposed those double standards.

How would I do it?

I’d accept that rewards cannot be perfectly even across all game modes. I wouldn’t even try to make them even, because it’s a foolish task that will necessarily either end up in nonsensical reward levels (like we have now when comparing many various dungeon paths) that scale extremely poorly with both time and difficulty, or you’ll end up with a spectrum of reward that has relatively more reward either at the easy, or hard difficulty end.

As for whether or not easy or hard content should get more reward, I’m still going to go with hard content. Why?

First, it promotes an incentive for players to expand their own boundaries in the game. This is a time tested strategy in every single game. Even “easy” games that only offer single player have a difficulty spectrum increase as you continue playing. Part of the fun is your own growth as a player, whether you know it or not, even if that growth isn’t all that significant.

Second, it is less likely to mess with the game economy. If you have to have a reward spectrum, you should offer the greater reward to the smaller player group. If you do otherwise, you end up with a kittentier economy. From a player POV, the economy for the large portion of easy content likers (assuming they’re large) won’t be much worse if hard content gets better reward; it will be noticeably worse the other way around. This fact is especially perverse if you have a system like GW2 does, where to best compete (not just complete) for the fastest times on the hardest content, you really ought to have ascended gear, and the best way to get that gear currently is to play mindless easy content until you can’t take it anymore, and then keep at it anyway.

Third, if you really have to have a rewards spectrum (and you do), your options are between rewarding players who are just showing up, and players who are showing up and also putting in considerable effort. To give players putting in more effort less reward simply because they put in more effort is ridiculous. It’s like saying that Bob’s showing up to work on time and leaving on time but is really just putting time in while doing an acceptable but mediocre job, but Jim is showing up on time and leaving on time, and doing a fantastic job while continually improving his abilities and taking on new responsibilities. Would anyone suggest that Bob ought to be making more money than Jim? Would anyone even suggest they ought to make the same amount?

Basically, what I’m saying is that rewards should scale with merit as best as possible. This means both that you get more rewards for more time played (possibly capping at a point), and also more rewards for actually doing something worthy of getting more rewards (read: hard content). Hard content by definition merits better rewards than other content.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

kokiman.2364:

Laosduude.1690:

These so called “few players” can go pick up Wildstar then, or play any Korean mmo in the market today. Guild Wars 2 ever since the start has been so relaxing, I don’t want to see it go along some hardcore path to get the best items that gives a significant advantage on almost all situations.

Yeah god forbid challenge in a videogame.

Not really the point. Plenty of people have challenging lives. They don’t need MORE challenge. Getting up in the morning and working is a challenge.

Every job I’ve had in the last 30 years has been ridiculously competitive. I don’t play games to prove myself or challenge myself. I play games to relax and unwind after proving myself and challenging myself all day…or I did before I was retired anyway.

It’s okay for people to play games just to have fun.

And nobody is stopping you.
However certain players are trying to stop me and others from playing rewarding content. For no reason.

But there is a reason. If you put better rewards on that content, you’re pressuring people to do that content. I know myself. I’ll do most of that content. I won’t enjoy it, but I’ll do it. It will change the entire dynamic of the game.

There are plenty of games that cater to that. Why can’t you let us have just one?

Because nobody is forcing you. You’re forcing yourself and it’s half funny and half sad.

I’m going to do something that’s probably going to ruin your game experience if what you wrote above is true.
I’m going to reveal the fact that : Currently the most profitable content in this game is the trading post – and anyone who wants to make money should learn how to play it and get spreadsheets and calculators and get cracking.

If what you wrote above is true – you’re going to become a TP guy right? Hardly.

You know, I know, everybody knows the TP is where it’s at yet I don’t find myself getting a master’s in economics any time soon. And neither will you.

The bottom line is this " pressure " you speak of is something you’re putting on yourself – and it’s a pretty far cry from the casual laid back Vayne you make yourself out to be on the forums.

Nobody is forcing you to play what you don’t like.

Also how do you know you won’t enjoy it?

And why is it that you being " forced " ( when in fact you’re just forcing yourself) to play content you don’t like is worse than me being actually forced to have terrible rewards for content that I do like?

Why should you enjoy yourself over me?

I’m not asking for vertical progression, power creep or other things.

It’s rather hilarious, really.
When one mentions how the game implemented vertical gear progression with fractals and thus even further restricted building freedom, the apologists hurry to defend such design choices by claiming ‘oh but you don’t need it to play the game’, yet in the same moment you see such nuggets of hypocrisy flying around from the very same posters.
I really like it how nicely you exposed those double standards.

No double standard here. Fractals was made to appease a certain audience. It was always going to be a compromise.

But appeasing a certain audience is as far as it went. You don’t need ascended gear for anything else in the game…and ways to make ascended gear (and to a lesser degree have it drop) were added.

Everyone can have ascended gear if they want it. That’s a very different situation than what we’re discussing here.

I love how you always try to malign everyone who disagrees with you, while not actually offering an argument. It’s a great tactic to use, because most people don’t watch carefully.

Using personal attacks to dismiss arguments doesn’t really say a lot for the arguments you’re supporting.

you need to give rewards to encourage proper play, if yu designed a good game, proper play should make people happy.

There’s no such thing as “proper play.” Play how you enjoy, that is proper. There is no style of playing that needs to be encouraged.

Ohoni.6057:

you need to give rewards to encourage proper play, if yu designed a good game, proper play should make people happy.

There’s no such thing as “proper play.” Play how you enjoy, that is proper. There is no style of playing that needs to be encouraged.

I’m not sure I agree with this. While it’s factually true, it skirts what I think is an important point.

There are better and worse ways to play each game, and playing the game in a way that the game wasn’t designed to be played can be problematical. Anyone can play Guild Wars 2 the way they played WoW. They can set up a tank/healer and rush to make level to do dungeons.

But I doubt they’ll play for very long. It’s a game’s job to explain to people the way the game is best played and from their, people can diversify. This is to me, one of Guild Wars 2’s greatest weakness. Anet did a poor job of explaining to people how to play their game.

phys.7689:

Ohoni.6057:

yeah, but the reason there is no risk is because anet didnt want to design it so people might fail. In order to have risk, you need to have a chance of failure.

Not really. There are a lot of lesser-participated events that are impossible to fail and yet difficult to succeed. If you don’t succeed then they just stick around, not being beaten, for hours if necessary. You may not be able to fail it, but it might take a while if you aren’t very good at it. The real kicker, the thing that makes events frustrating, is when you’re working diligently towards success, and then either the enemy just gives up and goes home, or the entire group wipes and everything resets. Those are fun stealers.

Now that doesn’t mean that the encounter shouldn’t be able to kill you, that you shouldn’t have to keep on your toes to stay alive. You might get knocked down, so that people have to wake you up, you might even die and have to rez (relatively near by) and run back (perhaps costing you more in WP fees than you earn if you are really terrible), but eventually the action should complete.

So your suggestion is to make sure that hard content isn’t repeatable for rewards. Meaning people who want hard content unable to get any reward for replaying their content. While people who like easy content can spam “1” all day, every day, and still get rewarded.

No, that’s not what I said. Of course the hard content would offer a repeatable reward, just that the repeatable reward shouldn’t be that much greater than any other repeatable reward. If the challenge is in making the event easy, then once you do that, you get one huge payout, then the content is relatively easy, so you get the smaller, easy mode payout. If you enjoy doing it, do it, it will pay out as well as anything else you could be doing, but you don’t deserve a huge bonus.

And at that, you think good rewards are a minipet that you can’t sell and a title. How’s this for an idea: replace all rewards from world bosses with a single, non-sellable minipet, and a title. No reward after that. You can still have your easy content fun! (Or are you only in it for the reward? Because that’s what ‘you’ keep accusing ‘us’ of, when we’re the ones actually doing thing that effectively don’t even HAVE a reward like level 50 uncategorized fractal champ solos, when for the most part you guys are chasing the most rewarding zero effort zerg farms).

So how would you do it?

How would you design repeatable hard content that even once you have it on farm it does not provide significantly higher reward per hour than running the other content in the game?

And no, you do not deserve the right to get consistently higher reward just because you enjoy hard content.

Your whole post, especially that last paragraph, is saying that you don’t think demonstrating player skill should have better rewards than not demonstrating any player skill.

Eh, I think that’s a slight exaggeration of my position, I don’t think demonstrating high player skill should have better rewards than only demonstrating moderate player skill. You should still have to display some skill, just not a crazy amount of it. Normal mode, not hard mode.

One will always carry greater rewards than the other in the long term.

Ok, then if that’s the case, and there must be a disdparity, then obviously you would make the more rewarding content the one that the most players can achieve, since that would make the most players happy. Clearly you wouldn’t want to make most rewarding the activities that only a small minority can achieve, how silly would that be?

bah lost most my post.
you need to give rewards to encourage proper play, if yu designed a good game, proper play should make people happy. From a game design perspective rewards dont exist to make players happy, they exist to make people play the game in ways that make the game better to play.
The game itself is to make people happy.

sorreh for fake +1ing you

We all know very well why bribes exist. So no, “make it and then must bribe them to play it” philosophy is one i will never agree with.

If content cant stand on its own 2 legs then its NOT worth making.

But anyway, number of people who want this is miniscule anyway, so no matter how you want to spn it in the big picture its waste of developers time. IF they decide to waste some time on it you should be very grateful. Asking for something spcial on top of that or better rewards jsut spells false entitlement.

There are better and worse ways to play each game, and playing the game in a way that the game wasn’t designed to be played can be problematical.

No, there aren’t. There are ways YOU prefer to play the game, and those might differ from the way I prefer to play the game, and neither of us is “Right.”

Anyone can play Guild Wars 2 the way they played WoW. They can set up a tank/healer and rush to make level to do dungeons.But I doubt they’ll play for very long.

I think you’re saying that they would find that playstyle ineffective and would either adapt or leave, which is likely true. The game does not have to allow any way of playing to be viable, but any way that people do find to play within the game, if THEY enjoy it, is a “correct” way to play. If someone does want to go full tank or healer, and they enjoy how that works for them, then they’re completely entitled to that enjoyment, and they are not “doing it wrong.”

Ohoni.6057:

There are better and worse ways to play each game, and playing the game in a way that the game wasn’t designed to be played can be problematical.

No, there aren’t. There are ways YOU prefer to play the game, and those might differ from the way I prefer to play the game, and neither of us is “Right.”

Anyone can play Guild Wars 2 the way they played WoW. They can set up a tank/healer and rush to make level to do dungeons.But I doubt they’ll play for very long.

I think you’re saying that they would find that playstyle ineffective and would either adapt or leave, which is likely true. The game does not have to allow any way of playing to be viable, but any way that people do find to play within the game, if THEY enjoy it, is a “correct” way to play. If someone does want to go full tank or healer, and they enjoy how that works for them, then they’re completely entitled to that enjoyment, and they are not “doing it wrong.”

You’re putting words into my mouth and changing the definition of what I said. I never said anything about “doing it wrong”. I agreed that your statement was factually correct. People can play a game any way they want.

However, different games are designed specifically to be played a certain way and playing them a different way isn’t likely to yield maximum enjoyment. For example you could play Guild Wars 2 by standing in Lion’s Arch and there’s nothing wrong with that. But Anet isn’t going to build the game around that play style, and you can’t expect them to.

However, different games are designed specifically to be played a certain way and playing them a different way isn’t likely to yield maximum enjoyment. For example you could play Guild Wars 2 by standing in Lion’s Arch and there’s nothing wrong with that. But Anet isn’t going to build the game around that play style, and you can’t expect them to.

Right, but nobody is expecting them to. That’s a non-argument.

Vayne.8563:

No double standard here. Fractals was made to appease a certain audience. It was always going to be a compromise.

Yet , following your logic, the game forces you to play them due to the BiS. Obviously, the game is playable without them, but it is also playable without a random super duper minipet (your example), which – unlike ascended – really does have zero impact on your performance (number-wise), yet there you are arguing how you’d feel ‘compelled’ getting it.
I feel compelled getting the BiS because its statistically the best gear, so what makes you think you should feel compelled getting that random pet, if others should (in your opinion) not feel forced… I mean, compelled getting a feature that statistically affects their performance?
much
hypocrisy
whoa

Vayne.8563:

You don’t need ascended gear for anything else in the game…and ways to make ascended gear (and to a lesser degree have it drop) were added.

Nor do you need the pet. But you see, the original poster suggested alternative ways of obtaining those things yet you argued against those too. Much. Double. Standards. Yay.

Vayne.8563:

Everyone can have ascended gear if they want it. That’s a very different situation than what we’re discussing here.

Any everyone can have that particular minipet too if they really want it. They can set it as a goal and work towards obtainign it. Like the original poster I quoted stated clearly in several posts.

Vayne.8563:

I love how you always try to malign everyone who disagrees with you, while not actually offering an argument. It’s a great tactic to use, because most people don’t watch carefully.

I love how you always attack anyone who seems to disagree with you, pulling the typical ‘oh but I’m ok with it so it’s ok’ (translation: what I say is fact, while everything else are mere opinions), which however adds absolutely nothing of worth to a discussion.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Vayne.8563:

No double standard here. Fractals was made to appease a certain audience. It was always going to be a compromise.

Yet , following your logic, the game forces you to play them due to the BiS. Obviously, the game is playable without them, but it is also playable without a random super duper minipet (your example), which – unlike ascended – really does have zero no impact on your performance (number-wise), yet there you are arguing how you’d feel ‘compelled’ getting it.
I feel compelled getting the BiS because its statistically the best gear, so what makes you think you should feel compelled getting that random pet, if others should (in your opinion) not feel forced… I mean, compelled getting a feature that statistically affects their performance?
much
hypocrisy
whoa

Vayne.8563:

You don’t need ascended gear for anything else in the game…and ways to make ascended gear (and to a lesser degree have it drop) were added.

Nor do you need the pet. But you see, the original poster suggested alternative ways of obtaining those things yet you argued against those too. Much. Double. Standards. Yay.

Vayne.8563:

Everyone can have ascended gear if they want it. That’s a very different situation than what we’re discussing here.

Any everyone can have that particular minipet too if they really want it. They can set it as a goal and work towards obtainign it. Like the original poster I quoted stated clearly in several posts.

Vayne.8563:

I love how you always try to malign everyone who disagrees with you, while not actually offering an argument. It’s a great tactic to use, because most people don’t watch carefully.

I love how you always attack anyone who seems to disagree with you, pulling the typical ‘oh but I’m ok with it so it’s ok’ (translation: what I say is fact, while everything else are mere opinions), which however adds absolutely nothing of worth to a discussion.

I think people should read your posts and my posts and decides for themselves who attacks who. It’s pretty obvious.

That aside, you seem to ignore my position, so I’ll make it clearer for you.

A single reward (as I said in this very thread elsewhere) won’t be an issue. It’s when those single rewards keep stacking up, until people start to feel the game isn’t made for them.

Right now, the hard core crowd feel the game isn’t catering to them, it’s catering to casuals. And I agree with that. I think that’s because casuals are in the majority. Pretty sure if it was otherwise, then the game was cater to hard core. So Anet gave them fractals and threw them a bone and you know what…there were still complaints about it at the time, even if you don’t remember that. But the fractals is one thing.

Now that’s say Anet makes a bunch of new hard core content with a bunch of new rewards.

You know how people are saying that everything is made for new players, even though it’s not true. They see a bunch of stuff for new players and feel disenfranchised. Why on Earth would you think that it would be any different when casuals see a bunch of stuff for hard core players that is obviously not targeted at them. You don’t think they’ll start to feel disenfranchised.

Admittedly there’s a ways to go between what we have now and this point, but it’s still a point that needs to be made. Any time you start supporting a sub group another group is going to feel disenfranchised. It’s life in the big city.

It would be logical for Anet to put emphasis on their biggest player base first and support smaller player bases carefully…because the last thing any business wants to do is to annoy it’s core demographic. They already did it with ascended gear and it wasn’t pretty. The did it again with the trait system. I’m thinking no one really liked that. Certainly not casuals forced to go into WvW and EoTM.

So you know, Anet needs to coddle the core player base right now…and that’s what I think they’re going to be working on. It’s good business sense. If they have time, they’ll make something for the hard core crowd as well.

You don’t understand.
Even if there’d be more challenging content with appropriate rewards (which you’re referring to as ‘stacking up’), it should not pose any kind of problem, because you are not forced/compelled to get that one cute minipet, or that one cool looking gear in order to be able to play the other parts of the game.

You repeatedly make walls of text beating about the bush, refusing to acknowledge the truth behind that one simple statement the original poster was arguing for pages long.

Every single apologist argues how ascended is fine because it is not a requirement, and there you are arguing how players would feel forced/compelled getting an item of purely cosmetic value just because it is new (?).
Really, I don’t even…

KarlaGrey.5903:

You don’t understand.
Even if there’d be more challenging content with appropriate rewards (which you’re referring to as ‘stacking up’), it should not pose any kind of problem, because you are not forced/compelled to get that one cute minipet, or that one cool looking gear in order to be able to play the other parts of the game.

Okay, I don’t understand. I see. I don’t understand because you don’t agree.

Or, just possibly, you’re wrong in what you’re saying. Anyway, I KEEP saying and you keep ignoring that it’s not one pet I’m worried about. It’s when the game has too many of these little things and casuals start feeling disenfranchised. You think it won’t happen, I think it might happen.

Anet will ultimately decide how likely it is to happen and make their decisions accordingly.