Who are the Daily Achievements intended for?
1 2
(cont)
The new Daily seems intent on pushing players out of their comfort zone and providing them with a set of out-of-the-ordinary challenges to complete. It really seems aimed at players who have otherwise run out of things to do in GW2, who require a set of instructions given to them every day lest they run out of reasons to log in. And I’m not going to argue that the game can’t have that sort of activity in it. But I am going to ask this: what are you offering now to fill the void that was created by removing the original Daily and the intentions behind it?
My friends and I completed the original Daily Achievements almost every single day, usually without actively trying but always pleasantly surprised when the rewards came in. And while that may sound broken on some level, people need to understand that this was intentional and by design. But now, this newer Daily Achievement has turned into something that seems to consume most of our available play time, leaving little for the actual type of playing we wanted to do. We no longer log in to “play the game”, instead we log in to “work on the Daily”. And, honestly, we’re not finding it very fun.
You have taken a system we got enjoyment out of every day for most of this game’s life and turned it into something we really dislike. Sure, we have the option of not completing the Daily, but until you’re providing more alternate ways to obtain the attached rewards we feel like we have little choice. And even if we didn’t participate in the Daily anymore, the point is we were having fun doing something and now we’re not because you changed it.
So, now you have your system aimed at players without goals and in constant need of guidance, the carrot on the stick to bring them back into the game every day. But in the process you sacrificed a system aimed at rewarding players for just playing their way in the game. And I think you tried to fix that by giving players the options of which Daily tasks to choose from every day, but the problem there is that the choices are really not very generic, and generally not very fun.
Yesterday, my choices were: Kill Variety, Aquatic Slayer, Gatherer, Personal Story, Healer, Mystic Forgesmith, Keg Brawl Stealer, Group Event Completer, Mists Invasion Defender. I was supposed to choose 5 of those. I chose Kill Variety (thankfully generic), Aquatic Slayer (not something I do through typical play, but instead something I have to purposely set out to complete), Gatherer (thankfully generic), Healer (again, not something I do through typical play).. and then I was out of picks I could stomach but still short one task. I didn’t want to switch to an alt and do a step of my Personal Story. I didn’t intend to use the Mystic Forge; I wanted to sell my drops instead. I didn’t want to play Keg Brawl. I didn’t want to WvW. And despite keeping any eye out for them the entire time I played, I didn’t run across any GROUP events, nor did I feel like running to particular zones to track specific ones down (or blowing coin on map travel which I was trying to earn through the Daily). I left last night wondering how the Daily turned from something so simple into something so annoying. The old Daily was aimed at players like me, but this new one is clearly not. And I’d love to know why.
I’m not sure whether it is the new layout, but I definitely find the new dailies more intimidating and annoying. I liked doing the original 4 since they were straightforward, and wish those 4 were persistent every day.
Adding a 5th requirement was annoying.
Even with the new choosable dailies, it feels like I have to go farther out of my way now in order to complete my daily than before, with goals that are more tedious than before.
But thats just me.
Game the system.
Aquatic slayer – Hit that up in cursed shore. Just swam along to a temple of melandru event killing things
Group event – Did the abomination at caer shadowfain, and the Melandru temple
Gatherer – mithril and ori is plentiful in cursed shore
mystic forger – bought 15 earrings with karma from caer shadowfain, chucked them into the forge. Got 2 rares worth 1.5g each, 2 greens worth 30silver each and 1 green worth 5silver from it
Now you can do any of the last ones you want. You could wvwvw, keg brawl, just do whatever it is you normally do and heal people/kill different monsters, go play an alt.
Yes the dailies have become more direct and less general. But im struggling to understand what it was you were doing in game that you cannot complete a large portion of them with absolute ease. You werent farming cursed shore, you werent traveling from dragon event to dragon event, you werent wvwvw’ing, you said you dont do fractals, even just normal map completion would garner a large amount of them, maybe you could be pvp’ing all day, but then you dont deserve the pve daily.
The question is really, if you’re never doing any of the 9 tasks in an average day, maybe your average day is really really inactive.
also Mystic forger is done faster than literally every other daily besides talking to the laurel vendor and crafter. It doesnt waste money if you use karma items (heck I made 3g) and it’s easy. But everyone complains about it because they’re vehemently opposed to … something. I dont really know. Is talking to an NPC really that bad?
Suck it up, talk to an NPC that you dont like for 30 seconds, and bam 1/5th of the daily done. If you think that’s taking up too much of your time I cannot help you.
maybe if it was 20 choose 5 instead of 9 choose 5 there would be enough variety that you wouldnt need to try to focus on anything
JQ: Rikkity
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions
I’m afraid you’ve completely missed the point, Zenyatoo. In fact, that you’re trying to offer advice on how to “game the system” only reinforces what I’m saying.
With the old Daily I could just go to the zone currently in the line of my travels and play, and the Daily would get finished in the process. But when you start talking about going to specific zones to complete a task, or following a specific pattern to game the system, or spending some form of currency to complete steps in the Daily Achievement.. clearly we’re talking about two entirely different kinds of Daily designs.
What do I want to do in a typical play session? It’s pretty simple.. I go to whatever zone I’m currently working on and play there (and only there) until it’s completed. Participate in events I run across (not purposely seek out), complete heart tasks if there are any, vistas, skill challenges, etc. Pretty normal stuff, actually. I’m not trying to complete all the maps in the world, rather I’m trying to progress an adventure through a particular set of zones I’ve set aside for a particular character. That way, leveling my Norn feels entirely different than leveling my Human. When the Daily starts requiring that I deviate from that plan, I stop having fun with the game.
Now, if the new Daily is your thing.. that’s fantastic. But where did my kind of Daily go? Too bad for me, I guess?
(edited by Edge.4180)
“clearly we’re talking about two entirely different kinds of Daily designs.”
Right, but yours doesnt exist.
The idea behind the new dailies was to give players reasons to go to zones, and do things they normally wouldnt do. Which is working perfectly.
No daily in any MMO i’ve ever played (and believe you me I have played a lot) has ever been designed around simply being completed during “normal” play.
The ones in guild wars one for instance rewarded you for going to a mission, dungeon, zone, boss, different boss, ETC. A specific one. It got people to places, out in the world, it got people their titles done too (Cant do something with henchmen, wait till it was the daily, easy)
In WoW, dailies were something you specifically went out, got, and then completed.
Same for most other MMO’s. You went to the board, took the quest, then went and did it, and went back to doing whatever.
The daily is not just meant to hand you the reward. You are meant to actually work at it. It’s also still very very very easy, and even someone who only has 15 minutes a day can do 5+ of the new ones.
All in all, I agree. I was looking forward to this change and hoped that it would reward my activity within the game instead of pushed me to do things that I didn’t particularly wish to do.
My biggest concern with the daily system though is the time required to complete it. As a player with a fair amount of free time, it doesn’t effect me much. But friends with full time jobs who work from 8am-9pm and wish to get to bed by midnight don’t want to spend 60-90 minutes every day just to get their dailies finished and have no time for any other content. It shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes for a casual player, unfamiliar to the game, to finish the dailies.
I hope that we’ll be able to customize our dailies further so that they can be completed within our normal gameplay routine and that players with tight schedules can log in, play a little, and log out with their dailies complete.
Champion Hunter
“clearly we’re talking about two entirely different kinds of Daily designs.”
Right, but yours doesnt exist.
Except it did for most of GW2’s life.
The idea behind the new dailies was to give players reasons to go to zones, and do things they normally wouldnt do. Which is working perfectly.
As I said in the original post, I agree that the new changes to the Daily do exactly that. Which is unfortunate if you’re not looking to be guided away from whatever your plans were that evening.
No daily in any MMO i’ve ever played (and believe you me I have played a lot) has ever been designed around simply being completed during “normal” play.
I disagree with you there, and I don’t know how you can claim that when Guild Wars 2 did, for the majority of its relatively brief existence. These changes to the Daily only started happening.. what, in the past two months?
You’re still reinforcing his point.
The dailies are now designed to make you do what the developer wants you to do instead of what you want to do.
In other words they’re trying thier best to find ways to keep people playing by steering them towards things they don’t enjoy.
Personally, I think this is going to backfire on them.
OP;
if, you feel that you cannot complete the daiy in 1h, its because you dont need to finish it yet, you are not at the “casual endgame”.
dailies are the casual player’s endgame.
and those 100+ gold stuff are the hardcore’s endgame (dailies for them is their morning coffee).
You’re still reinforcing his point.
The dailies are now designed to make you do what the developer wants you to do instead of what you want to do.
In other words they’re trying thier best to find ways to keep people playing by steering them towards things they don’t enjoy.
Personally, I think this is going to backfire on them.
do what you want to do.
unless you want the reward so badly that you need to do it, but that’s unhealthy i think.
no content is gated, no rewards are “necessary”, just set yourself a different goal…
“clearly we’re talking about two entirely different kinds of Daily designs.”
Right, but yours doesnt exist.
The idea behind the new dailies was to give players reasons to go to zones, and do things they normally wouldnt do. Which is working perfectly.
No daily in any MMO i’ve ever played (and believe you me I have played a lot) has ever been designed around simply being completed during “normal” play.
The ones in guild wars one for instance rewarded you for going to a mission, dungeon, zone, boss, different boss, ETC. A specific one. It got people to places, out in the world, it got people their titles done too (Cant do something with henchmen, wait till it was the daily, easy)
In WoW, dailies were something you specifically went out, got, and then completed.
Same for most other MMO’s. You went to the board, took the quest, then went and did it, and went back to doing whatever.The daily is not just meant to hand you the reward. You are meant to actually work at it. It’s also still very very very easy, and even someone who only has 15 minutes a day can do 5+ of the new ones.
The thing is, his type of daily did exist. It was GW2’s daily until they chaged how it worked. People are also resistant to change. We liked the old daily, could play how we liked, gather some random ores, and get it done.
Now we have to set aside 15 minutes to go and find an optimized path to do things we don’t want to do that day. I’ll probably find some fast way to do it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I disagree with you there, and I don’t know how you can claim that when Guild Wars 2 did, for the majority of its relatively brief existence. These changes to the Daily only started happening.. what, in the past two months?
Which, you know, started because people were complaining about the original format being “too grindy” and not varied enough compared to the idea that the Monthly rotated.
So the rotating 5 Daily requirements was brought out and people complained they wanted to choose.
And now you can, with some options which actually wound up easier to do than before . . . and people are calling it still more grindy.
I don’t get it.
As for the concept? Far as I can tell and intuit, they’re intended for three purposes. In descending importance
- First, and foremost, to give people an incentive to play daily and keep the population alive. So that we don’t have ghost towns between content updates because “there’s nothing to do”. Especially important for all the events which require more than a handful of people to finish, on average. (Yes, some of these can be done solo, or with two or three people, but on average . . . say, Melandru is going to take probably 5+.)
- Secondly, they’re intended to get people to move into a variety of activities of their choice. To encourage them to go to other places than the four or five places you can knock out the older Daily lists in an hour. To encourage them to move into older areas to populate them a bit more so players aren’t . . . well, alone there.
- Lastly, the variety is also intended to get people curious about aspects they don’t normally do. Jumping puzzles, WvW, group events, personal story . . . it’s encouragement to “you know, just poke at it casually, you don’t need to devote too much time here…”
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Hey I’ve got an idea. Maybe they should just give you the XP for logging in? Then you can do whatever you want and still make progress! Or even better yet they could just level your character up everyday, and then you wouldn’t even need to play at all!
Hey I’ve got an idea. Maybe they should just give you the XP for logging in? Then you can do whatever you want and still make progress! Or even better yet they could just level your character up everyday, and then you wouldn’t even need to play at all!
. . . you mean I could go back to Minecraft? Awesome, can we implement this? Please? I got a castle town to finish sometime before Christmas.
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I’m a bit baffled by your post. You basically act like the game is holding a game to your head, forcing you to do dailies, which you don’t have to do, and then you complain about the variety of tasks presented to you. If you are asked to kill mobs in a different zone than the zone you play in EVERY DAY you complain about it. The developers are trying to get you to experience other things, to try the full game they created as opposed to zerging events in Orr.
OP is totally on the mark. These are no longer things achieved just by playing the game as you would if you had no mind to a reward at the end or getting a carrot for spinning on a hamster wheel.
I don’t understand why GW2 needs these undesirable timesinks when this is not a subscription based game. This was why they claimed they wouldn’t need to put in grindy un-fun gameplay, because they didn’t need you to tip the register every month.
You would play the way you wanted, and naturally out of doing the things you enjoyed you would spend here or there on gems and push the game along that way.
There is just no reason I should have to go out to a field where I know NPC’s are going to die, and fight with a dozen other players to rez them, for what takes probably 15 minutes total round trip, because I need 10 revives. Or else not do it and have no path to what is now standing as a major part of progression in the game, which is gear treadmill.
For the specific example. it’s not that I don’t revive anyone in the course of a normal session. I may revive a few in WvW, I may revive a few in events, but often its not going to be 10. And by fact of knowing I will often fail to meet that goal, its easier (but not fun) to just go and get it out of the way separately. And such is the case for most of the dailies, they become a daily checklist, many a chore, that you have to do before you can go do the things in the game you really enjoy.
As the original post talked about, these should have been made much more generic. Kill 100 enemies. Complete 5 events. These are things that almost all players should trip over just by playing. But these more specific things like keg brawl and kill 25 underwater enemies, its just not necessary. So what if less people enjoy fighting underwater, it should not be foisted on everyone to have to experience that part of the game to progress.
I was looking forward to being able to complete the daily without going out of my way to do anything specifically and only for the daily.
Gathering X items does that. Killing X monsters in a specific zone does not.
Doing X dynamic events does that. Doing X events while downscaled does not.
If you can read this then it is proof that ArenaNet’s moderators just, kind and fair.
I’m a bit baffled by your post. You basically act like the game is holding a game to your head, forcing you to do dailies, which you don’t have to do, and then you complain about the variety of tasks presented to you. If you are asked to kill mobs in a different zone than the zone you play in EVERY DAY you complain about it. The developers are trying to get you to experience other things, to try the full game they created as opposed to zerging events in Orr.
Experience other things I’ve already experienced? Most of the stuff I’m willing to do I’ve done. PvP can go to hell.
If people are in Orr all day its cause they have things in Orr they want to do. Not our fault the devs didn’t put anything more interesting in other areas to keep bringing us back after the first pass through.
So many of the options are just so poor and unfun. Racing everyone in the area to pick up NPCs…so exciting! Same with luring me into the water to kill enemies I don’t care about or redoing jumping puzzles I’ve already done.
But yeah, I kinda do have to do them if I want laurels, which is the only way I really have to nab ascended gear at the moment.
Dailies should reward you logging in and being active in the game. ‘How’ you are active is frankly not up to the designers to decide. They just need to define what activity is (kill, gather, craft, pvp, do events, heal,…). But if you need to match their definition-of-the-day exactly then it’s indeed a chore aka work and not at all natural and fun . For me the original ones were fine — always nice to get an achie-popup in your play--, although I admit more choise had to be implemented to suit more play-styles. Then came the daily rotating ones : frankly that was not an improvement because now you got almost always stuck doing atleast one thing you didn’t normally do. So I was really looking forward to the possibility to choose. Only to be bitterly disappointed : oh yeah…I can choose. But what’s the point of being able to choose between the plague and cholera? If they don’t offer 5 things that are ‘normal’ for my normal activity then this isn’t progress. Actually the choises are even worse then in the rotating ones. Doing group-events? Really? That means just being at the right place at the right time and hopefully enough other people are too.
I strongly suggest they just make a big list of 20-30 options and let people choose from that. And if they really want to add something extra then make a daily-hard achievement with all the weird stuff in it. But stop telling us how to play and have fun.
I strongly suggest they just make a big list of 20-30 options and let people choose from that. And if they really want to add something extra then make a daily-hard achievement with all the weird stuff in it. But stop telling us how to play and have fun.
At which point every completionist around the world who tries to complete all available options would die a little inside. The new dailies already bounced the “required” set to 9 tasks. I could complete entire old daily in 15 minutes if I was lucky and “speed running” it. Now? Cant be done in less than an ~hour.
OP;
if, you feel that you cannot complete the daiy in 1h, its because you dont need to finish it yet, you are not at the “casual endgame”.
dailies are the casual player’s endgame.
and those 100+ gold stuff are the hardcore’s endgame (dailies for them is their morning coffee).
Your statement is actually accurate. The Daily Achievement has become an end-game activity for players who have (somehow) run out of things to do (or at least run out of things they desire to do more than a daily set of assignments).
My frustration is that the Daily Achievement originally started out as something that was simple and useful to any player regardless of their progression. Participate in a single event and you were awarded with bonus experience, courtesy of the Daily Achievements. Participate in two more events and you received another bonus, courtesy of the Daily. Participate in yet two more and you received yet another bonus, again courtesy of the Daily. Eventually some coin and a reward or two was tossed your way.
It no longer works that way. With the introduction of the laurel the developers have indeed abandoned the roots of the Daily and created the equivalent of an end-game hoop jumping. And I never said the game shouldn’t have that. But I object to sacrificing a perfectly good system (the original Daily Achievements) to introduce this new system.
When people suggest “don’t do the Daily if you don’t like it!”, I feel like they’re not understanding that players are frustrated because they’ve lost a relatively casual and rewarding activity in this whole process. It’s very much like enjoying a leisure daily walk through a park of your choice, but then suddenly you’re being told that activity is no longer available, and now you must now participate in the circus instead. And if you don’t like the circus, then don’t participate. Well.. that’s cold comfort to the people who enjoyed their leisure daily walk through the park – whether I’m participating in the circus or not I’m still losing out on the activity I actually enjoyed doing.
(edited by Edge.4180)
I’m listening to you and hear myself.
I strongly suggest they just make a big list of 20-30 options and let people choose from that. And if they really want to add something extra then make a daily-hard achievement with all the weird stuff in it. But stop telling us how to play and have fun.
At which point every completionist around the world who tries to complete all available options would die a little inside. The new dailies already bounced the “required” set to 9 tasks. I could complete entire old daily in 15 minutes if I was lucky and “speed running” it. Now? Cant be done in less than an ~hour.
Please, please, please don’t take offense. This is not a fault with the new system. This is a fault in how you approach the listing.
(And yes, I do the same thing, “so how many of these boxes can I tick off before it resets?”)
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I strongly suggest they just make a big list of 20-30 options and let people choose from that. And if they really want to add something extra then make a daily-hard achievement with all the weird stuff in it. But stop telling us how to play and have fun.
At which point every completionist around the world who tries to complete all available options would die a little inside. The new dailies already bounced the “required” set to 9 tasks. I could complete entire old daily in 15 minutes if I was lucky and “speed running” it. Now? Cant be done in less than an ~hour.
Please, please, please don’t take offense. This is not a fault with the new system. This is a fault in how you approach the listing.
(And yes, I do the same thing, “so how many of these boxes can I tick off before it resets?”)
I agree. But that is what completionists do. Some people dont leave a single player game until they get all the achievements, some people do not care. Perhaps a bit compulsive behavior but whatever. Anyway, an ideal solution would be to add the ~20 tasks to choose from and after 5 of them are done, remaining ones becomes locked for the rest of the day.
I agree. But that is what completionists do. Some people dont leave a single player game until they get all the achievements, some people do not care.
I grew out of that after I started playing Team Fortress 2: The Hattening: Hats For All . . .
Yeah, locking the rest of the achievements are probably a good move, though it does prevent people from doing them for the XP boost. (I know I did, on my silly baby alts I wanted to level.)
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While I would love to see a much larger list to choose from, I don’t believe they will ever go this route. The developers seem to be against players spending their time each day playing in their own favorite way. With a huge list to choose from, players would just choose 5 preferred activities and repeat them each day. And while I say “whatever floats your boat”, ArenaNet seems to feel differently.
Using the Daily to shuffle players all around the game world? That sounds very nice, but is hundreds of players descending upon Ascalon with the sole goal of slaying 40 monsters and then racing off really the desired outcome here?
In their minds they likely envision players going to these zones and spending the day there, forgetting about the Daily and becoming involved in the map’s activities. In reality that doesn’t happen. In reality I visit the same location every time “Daily Healer” comes up because I can not afford to just wait and see if it happens naturally through normal play before I run out of time. Because I don’t have time to grab the stuff I’m still missing once my time is up.
Hence the daily chore I have to finish before I actually start playing, if there’s still time left in the end to actually play.
(edited by Edge.4180)
^
whatever float your boat would be;
gain x amount of xp = daily done.
if anet doesnt do that its because they kind of want to give some icentive to do this or that.
but all in all… you can still dungeon, daily, pvp, wvw… i mean. game is still wide.
and hopefully, the daily direction will eventually create some fun stuff (i think it can)
I can certainly see where you’re coming from. There’s been a definate change in Daily philosophy from “Give players an extra reward for playing as they already do” to “Give the players incentive to do stuff they wouldn’t normally do”.
Hard to say which is better, really. Rewarding normal gameplay is nice especially for those without a lot of time. But there’s also value in having little challenges to complete while you’re playing. Both have their advantages and even downsides. Even personally, sometimes I enjoy the new “challenge” dailys and other times I just loathe having to deal with them, just depends on what kind of mood I’m in.
Maybe the biggest issue here is not which option is better, but the fact that it changed abruptly. People enjoyed and got used to it one way (not everyone mind you, but plenty of people), then suddenly had the rug pulled out and it became something completely different. And its especially bad because its a change from “freedom” to “structure” which some people will automatically resent.
I don’t really know what the solution could be in this situation, really. I guess they could leave the current challenge-type Dailys and have them reward karma / laurels (laurels being a pretty big reward and so given for the bigger effort), and return the old Dailys and have them reward karma / money / experience, but then you’d probably get people complaining that they only want to do X type of Daily but can’t get Y reward from it. You could reward the same for both dailys, but then you’d end up doubling it up for people willing to do both (and people would complain about being “forced” to do 2x the work).
Maybe have dual Dailys that give the same reward but only let you do 1 type a day.
Or perhaps just put all of the old Daily categories into the “choose your own daily” type (so every day you’d have Gatherer, Kill Variety, Kill Count, and Events) along with a variety of the rotating challenge-type dailys. You’d still need to pick at least 1 challenge type to complete the daily, and there’s a risk of everyone ignoring the challenges and just taking the path of least resistance every day, but… it would at least satisfy most everyone. Doing 1 extra task outside your normal gameplay if you choose to go down that route doesn’t seem like too big a deal.
I can certainly see where you’re coming from. There’s been a definate change in Daily philosophy from “Give players an extra reward for playing as they already do” to “Give the players incentive to do stuff they wouldn’t normally do”.
Strangely, before both changes, it was already said that ANet was trying to force players into playing against as they normally do, and grinding, and so on and so forth until the forum servers come down in the darkness of the end of the world . . .
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I agree. I think it is worse than that though. I feel like also I “have” to do these dailies because if I do not I will behind in laurels which equates to me being behind in gear.
This is the main reason I have quit other games. If I am forced to do something I don’t really want to do each day, I will eventually get burned out.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they were not tied in with top end gear. I could choose whether to do them or not.
Or perhaps just put all of the old Daily categories into the “choose your own daily” type (so every day you’d have Gatherer, Kill Variety, Kill Count, and Events) along with a variety of the rotating challenge-type dailys. You’d still need to pick at least 1 challenge type to complete the daily, and there’s a risk of everyone ignoring the challenges and just taking the path of least resistance every day, but… it would at least satisfy most everyone. Doing 1 extra task outside your normal gameplay if you choose to go down that route doesn’t seem like too big a deal.
This is honestly the solution I would most prefer. I would be perfectly happy if Daily Kills, Kill Variety, Events, and Gathering were included every day in the available list to choose from. And then I would just have to choose a fifth task.
The difference between the old Daily and the new Daily is that I used to be able to complete the old one while I was playing. Thus, no matter how much time it took it didn’t take away from my play time. The new, unfortunately, has specific activities that I often have to tackle separately from my normal play. And because its very much its own time-sink now, it’s chewing into my available play time.
It’s about the way to manage the playerbase. If nothing changed and everything was stagnant, players would just play through the game and then leave for other games. Daily tasks and rewards associated with them are basically incentive for large community to log in every day and do these tasks.
You want the next bigger carrot (currently ascended items) -> you play every day to get it -> community full of players -> successful MMO
It’s part of behavioral psychology. Phenomenon called operant conditioning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
It’s about the way to manage the playerbase. If nothing changed and everything was stagnant, players would just play through the game and then leave for other games. Daily tasks and rewards associated with them are basically incentive for large community to log in every day and do these tasks.
You want the next bigger carrot (currently ascended items) -> you play every day to get it -> community full of players -> successful MMO
It’s part of behavioral psychology. Phenomenon called operant conditioning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
I don’t really agree with change for the sake of change. And constantly chasing the carrot is what has ultimately made me abandon other MMOs.
The other night after finishing the Daily, a friend of mine asked me what I wanted to do next. My response was “I don’t know.. I don’t really feel like doing anything now, we spent an hour on the Daily and yet I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything”. I just felt logging off. That’s not a fun gameplay design that’s going to keep me around for long.
It’s part of behavioral psychology. Phenomenon called operant conditioning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
I don’t think that applies here.
Seeking assistants for the Asuran Catapult Project. Applicants will be tested for aerodynamics.
These new dailies are terrible. I used to do the daily and get it 90% done just playing the game, and maybe have to go somewhere and do something on purpose to finish it up before I logged out which was fine. I was just getting the karma to get it even though I don’t really need it. The way it is now I’d never even come close to completing it just playing wvw like I always do. If it was just for Karma jugs still fine, I would just quite doing them. Now I have to do them to get laurels, to get ascended, to stay competitive in wvw. Which again is the only thing I play in this game. So frustrating.
Ketseras
Crystal Desert – Tonic [Lime]
Crystal Desert – Tonic [Lime]
I got my daily yesterday by accident. If that isn’t getting it playing the game the way I want to, then I don’t know what is.
[VZ] Valor Zeal – Stormbluff Isle – Looking for steady, casual-friendly NA raiders!
I got my daily yesterday by accident. If that isn’t getting it playing the game the way I want to, then I don’t know what is.
That’s great for you and all, but what about all the other players who don’t play the game like you do and don’t want to? I shouldn’t be forced to play like you anymore than you should be forced to play like me.
Ketseras
Crystal Desert – Tonic [Lime]
Crystal Desert – Tonic [Lime]
I got my daily yesterday by accident. If that isn’t getting it playing the game the way I want to, then I don’t know what is.
I’m not sure if happening to be in the right place at the right time (either purposely or by chance) counts as “getting it playing the game the way I want to”.
Either that, or you like to spend your game time doing fairly specific activities. The difference is that the older Daily tasks were much more generic and thus complimented a larger variety of activities, and so more players were able to complete the Daily “by accident”.
I want to contrast this new system with exotics at launch. Since most people are going to be doing dailies for laurels and to use them to gear up to ascended.
At launch think about all the ways you could acquire BiS exotics when you hit 80, and as well as all items prior to 80. You could get them in drops, you could craft them (awesome), you could buy them via tokens from completing dungeons, you could purchase them via karma which you gained from every quest you did in the game, or you could even buy them off the trade post if you simply liked gaining gold the most. Heck you could stand in one spot and kill the same mobs over and over and still progress if that is what you loved doing.
This was great and a breath of fresh air compared to previous games that set you in lockstep path toward certain rewards. Some might say well exotics were too easy to get, they had to make the next thing harder. Fine, but it could have been harder and still achievable in all the same methods that exotics were. Just set the rarity on drops such that the low number would cause finding them or buying them to be very expensive and take a lot of gameplay. Set the mats to craft the next level stuff at 3x as difficult. Up the karma price drastically. That’s all fine, at least it would be gameplay of the type you choose in playing toward these things (notice I said playing and not working).
Heck look at crafting now, there is hardly any reason to even max out most trade crafts and Anet has admitted this themselves, and its because they released something much better than what you can craft and partially ruined its purpose.
Anet already had a ‘directed gameplay’ option prior to FoTM even, which became the first big directed play, and they are called legendaries. This was for the hardcore gamers to have to go and do specific tasks all over the game world and quite lengthy and arduous tasks. But that was fine, the rewards were cosmetic, extremely rare, but still befitting of showing someone that did them had achieved something that really stood out and marked them. It’s ok to have directed gameplay for such an upper echelon type of quest or reward.
But now we are down to where just the basic new content being pushed out, and progressing along what Anet expects virtually every player to do, is becoming ‘directed gameplay’ itself. The theme park has suddenly gone from this expansive fun world where you went and did what you want, picked your own rides, to a guided tour, where someone is leading you along telling you to go do this or do that if you want your next pass.
I don’t really agree with change for the sake of change. And constantly chasing the carrot is what has ultimately made me abandon other MMOs.
The other night after finishing the Daily, a friend of mine asked me what I wanted to do next. My response was “I don’t know.. I don’t really feel like doing anything now, we spent an hour on the Daily and yet I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything”. I just felt logging off. That’s not a fun gameplay design that’s going to keep me around for long.
- You quit because the next step either wasn’t presented or was too far away to reach. Watch closely how these games are made: when you run around the world there’s always something to do. Quests, reward boxes, achievement pop ups, gathering points all give you a momentary goal to do. It’s that fleeting moment when you see that the next step is too far away that you lose the motivation and hit the log out button.
You don’t have to like it, but you have to be motivated to do it. The most frequent complaint on these forums is that something is not fun. The simple question to ask here is: “Why do you play it if you don’t like it?” They don’t like it, yet they spend considerable time playing it and complaining on forums on their off-hours. Seriously, read about B.F. Skinner’s experiment. These MMO makers have hit behavioral gold vein here.
The new daily IS ment to push people slightly out of their comfort zone. It IS ment to bring people to zones to do things that doesnt just involve farming in orr.
The new dailies are awesome!
Colin Johansen casts – Working As Intended
Colin Johansen hits you for 239407889 damage
Game over
Colin Johansen hits you for 239407889 damage
Game over
You don’t have to like it, but you have to be motivated to do it. The most frequent complaint on these forums is that something is not fun. The simple question to ask here is: “Why do you play it if you don’t like it?” They don’t like it, yet they spend considerable time playing it and complaining on forums on their off-hours. Seriously, read about B.F. Skinner’s experiment. These MMO makers have hit behavioral gold vein here.
No, I complain and chat on the forums in my off-hours because it amuses me and rarely I might have a point I wish to make. It also kills time until my meds kick in.
So, I do present the question to you, since you seem to be a behavioral psych major or something similar . . . if I don’t feel compelled to play the game out of a sense of “I need to have these rewards” but “I want to get on and see what my friends are up to”, did the Skinner Box fail?
Seeking assistants for the Asuran Catapult Project. Applicants will be tested for aerodynamics.
I don’t really agree with change for the sake of change. And constantly chasing the carrot is what has ultimately made me abandon other MMOs.
The other night after finishing the Daily, a friend of mine asked me what I wanted to do next. My response was “I don’t know.. I don’t really feel like doing anything now, we spent an hour on the Daily and yet I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything”. I just felt logging off. That’s not a fun gameplay design that’s going to keep me around for long.
- You quit because the next step either wasn’t presented or was too far away to reach.
No, like I said, I quit because I got tired of chasing the carrot. Which is why I was very attracted to GW2s originally easy-to-reach end game, which then allowed you to just focus on aesthetic changes.
However, it’s kind of funny when a stranger tries to analyze the reasons why I do things, especially when I know exactly why I do them (seeing as I was the one in that moment, weighing the factors at the time, and coming to a decision).
I quit, WoW, for example, because I was tired of daily tasks that felt more like a chore than fun, which chewed up all the time I wanted to spend doing other things in the game. There were other reasons, but that was one of the big nails in the coffin.
But, we’re going off-topic.
Ello, uber-casual player here (I play 10 hours a week or so).
I like the new dailies. The old ones were boring and were becoming too much of a routine (“go to this area and run this path to complete daily”). I like being pushed outside of my comfort zone and try new things. I like that I can be a little creative in how I’ll solve my dailies. And as an uber-casual player, I have just finished my first set of dailies since the new update in 45 minutes. I chose healer, kill variety, gatherer, mystic forge and personal story. I did every single one but the mystic forge one on an alt I’m leveling (if I did not have an alt, I would probably have picked the aquatic one). My alt was level 11, and in the starting charr area there are plenty of dead NPCs to be found everywhere. For the mystic forge one, I crafted some white garbage on my main and threw it in.
It did not take me “out of my way”, except maybe for the mystic forge one, and that took me about 3 minutes including loading screens – I was planning to level that alt anyway.
So really, it’s just a matter of “pick and choose wisely”. Pick the ones you think match your plan of the day best, and it’ll work itself out. Just because there are a few options you would not normally do or maybe not like, like keg brawl or wvw, does not mean you have to do it. Just pick something else. Yes, it’s that easy.
The OP makes a strange argument.. diving in the water and having to stay there for Aquatic Slayer was ‘working on my daily’
Killing stuff in Shiverpeaks yesterday while I search for new story stuff was ‘Playing the game’ …
I know which I prefer, and i’m glad I get a choice. (DIAF Aquatic slayer :P )
The OP makes a strange argument.. diving in the water and having to stay there for Aquatic Slayer was ‘working on my daily’
Killing stuff in Shiverpeaks yesterday while I search for new story stuff was ‘Playing the game’ …
I know which I prefer, and i’m glad I get a choice. (DIAF Aquatic slayer :P )
I got Aquatic Slayer while in a guild group at Frostgorge, tagging along behind them as they showed off some points of interest, a jumping puzzle, where the Ancient Wood was . . . and just killing everything I came across. Which is kinda what I do anyway.
Seeking assistants for the Asuran Catapult Project. Applicants will be tested for aerodynamics.
Todays missions:
-Daily kill variety (check)
-Daily aquatic slayer (check)
-Daily gatherer (check)
-Personal story completer – I don’t play the storyline…
-Daily healer (check)
-Mystic forgesmith – Dont have the items for mystic forge
-Keg brawl stealer – I don’t play the mini games
-Group event completion – Searched for an hour, could not find one active with enough players around
-Daily myst invasion – no clue where this happens
The list does not favor the causual player. We need a larger list or at least 5 choices out of the old daily event list…
Todays missions:
-Daily kill variety (check)
-Daily aquatic slayer (check)
-Daily gatherer (check)
-Personal story completer – I don’t play the storyline…
-Daily healer (check)
-Mystic forgesmith – Dont have the items for mystic forge
-Keg brawl stealer – I don’t play the mini games
-Group event completion – Searched for an hour, could not find one active with enough players around
-Daily myst invasion – no clue where this happens
The list does not favor the causual player. We need a larger list or at least 5 choices out of the old daily event list…
Oh come on, the mystic forge one you can do with a couple of very, VERY cheap whites found in the open world or bought from traders or trading post. The mystic forge one is actually the easiest one.
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