Guild Wars 2

Topic length barriers are too short. The topic should have said, “What type of content would reward skill over time spent?”

The general basis of the topic is this: time and time again I see players in the forums begging the developers to create content that rewards player skill over time spent, but having worked as a character and environment artist on several Indy games and seen the ideation process first hand, I’m unable to comprehend rewarding content based on skill rather than time spent. It seems time spent is the nature of the MMORPG.

I understand that MOBAs like Dota 2 and LoL reward skill will true horizontal progression and combat timing ultimately determines a player’s “skill”, so I’m asking you as players to help formulate ideas to do this. I’ve gone over the idea of skill over time spent and how the developers may implement such a system into Guild Wars 2 to no avail, so I understand where the frustration as a developer pondering this could come from.

Let’s help the creative designers out a bit: How would you as a player feel rewarded for your skill rather than the time you spend on a certain task?

In GW2 ?
Never felt this.

Guaranteed Loadestones at the end of higher level fractals, not chance for cores.

I sort of though that WvW did this

I mean in pve that mob that spawns or the vet etc , well its pretty much a given that you will defeat them eventually ( even it if take you a few goes ti work out how to take them down )

Where as wvw you are fighting against unpredictable human element (which is why I fail at wvw)

I would probably consider soloing lupicus a skill. It takes a reasonable amount of time for 1 player to do it and it takes practice. One obstacle is that players get better. At first it might take you a while to solo lupi, then at the end really easy. At that point, skill per reward would be out of scale since, after doing it lots of time, soloing lupi would be like walking in Lions Arch.

Get rid of all mother kittening RNG first of all, in PvP rewards could be based on score, in PvE, rewards could be based on how much damage you dealt to the final boss.

Edited the topic sentence to reflect the actual purpose of this thread, not to describe things that are already in game that are personally rewarding which is highly subjective. I’m looking for fresh ideas that could be taken into consideration.

Viking Jorun.5413:

It seems time spent is the nature of the MMORPG.

No.

Time spent is the nature of WoW. Since the main reason why everyone and their mothers are making MMORPGs is to try to get a slice of WoW’s pie, this means modern MMORPGs have focused on time spent as well.

In the context of a pay to play game, rewarding time spent makes perfect sense:

• It allows players to grind, increasing the game’s longevity through content that is easy to build – it doesn’t have to be fun, just make it give a reward and people will do it.

• It keeps people playing, and thus paying, for a very long time. The more successful someone wants to be, the more he has to play, and thus the more he pays to continue playing.

• It caters to the lowest denominator. Not everyone is skilled, and not everyone wants to bother with becoming skilled. Rewards for skill won ’t ever be reached by all players. Meanwhile, rewarding time spent means everyone could, sooner or later, have access to those rewards.

The thing is, rewarding time spent requires a very specific mindset. Most people, when going to the movies, don’t say “I’m going to watch whatever is there, as long as I get paid during the credits”. Most people go to the movies to have fun, not to get a tangible reward.

In other words, rewarding time spent caters to grinders, and not many others. This strongly limits the target audience of MMORPGs – if you take a look at subscription numbers, there are very clear patterns hinting that it’s basically the same players jumping from MMO to MMO, as opposed to new players entering the genre.

ArenaNet knew this. They mentioned they wanted to make a MMORPG for people who don’t like MMORPGs. IMO, they failed – whenever people talk about other games they have played here, a lot of people describe having played half the AAA MMOs released in the last years.

I would begin by not rewarding time spent, and by making challenging content. Assuming game designers cannot make challenging content is, IMO, the same as assuming they cannot make fun content – which means they aren’t that great designers in the first place. Single player games have always had multiple examples of challenging content.

I’ve come to the conclusion that such a thing is impossible when still in the boundaries of a typical mmorpg (gw2 did change a few things, but it’s still more of a hybrid rather than say outright action-mmorpg in that some of the ‘skill’ involved in doing damage and avoiding damage is taken from our hands and hidden behind spreadsheets). Not when damage/effects are based on chance. Not when you have 2minute CD on skills that severely limits their use in the first place. Not when you can’t negate all damage. Not when there’s no system to grade your performance. Not when there aren’t secondary/tertiary objectives to consider.

You mentioned MOBA games-notice that in either of them the gameplay doesn’t end at ‘fight this dude’ whereas mmorpgs tend to end exactly there-your only objective is to make that red bar at the top of your screen go away; no multitasking or strategy or gymnastics of cognitive faculties needed. The ‘defensive’ condition “Weakness” improves your defense at a percentage chance. Crits also occur at a percentage chance as do some on-crit effects; they aren’t reliable as say doing an uppercut in street fighter and cannot contribute to skillful play imo as their effects are out of your control. Notice that in fighting games and action games you can actively negate damage through skillful play-your damage mitigation skills aren’t on cool downs leaving you with a myriad of spreadsheets to determine your survivability. There isn’t a combo system or ranking system for combat performance like say dmc so that entire piece of potential reward for skillful play is gone.

Hmm…..out of that mini rant I think I actually like the idea of a combo/style point system for combat. Laying down combo fields, cross-profession combos, reflecting/blocking/absorbing projectiles, evades-have these things contribute to one’s combat style points which will award bonus silver/items depending on the amount of points gained…doesn’t sound like a bad idea imo. Since we don’t have the ability to negate all damage it can’t reset on injury like original systems-perhaps accumulative until downed or hp < 50% or something. Ah, it would also need a ‘style point radius’ or something around the boss/mob (say melee-mid range?)to prevent that one guy staying waaaaaay in the back mashing his number keys with his long range weapon from getting anything.

Beyond that I don’t think anything is really possible as far as systems go-mmorpgs tend to not be about skillful play in the first place but rather cooperative play (of course a minimum amount of individual competence is required but you get what I mean). I suppose you can have solo challenges (because once it’s group content it WILL be exploited) that tests a player’s grasp of game mechanics and have the rewards be titles or skins or something…but having a bunch of solo instances kinda defeats the purpose of a mmo doesn’t it?