Has the 5 player content become a joke?
The reason “drops” have been reduced from some instances is twofold :
1. in order to get people to play the ‘entire’ content and not stick to just one or two parts of the game, it makes more sense to reduce the rewards for the frequently done instances like dungeons and fractals.
2. Players will have to do the entire content, all over Tyria and into HoT, over fractals and raids, in order to get the so-called “best” items ingame : namely the legendary weapons and armors.
I believe, and this is just my opinion mind you, that the devs wanted to “push” people into the open world of the game, including things they normally don’t do (some don’t like WvW/PvP/Dungeons/Fracs…etc) in order to get them more ‘involved’ as you wish into the whole gameplay.
It’s not really limiting the game experience, but rather a gentle push towards what they intend for us to play, the way they see it.
Just look at what is required to make the new legendaries and soon armors. Only someone blind to the obvious wouldn’t realize that they’re trying to ‘guide’ us into the direction they want, and that for one reason only : keep playing for as long as possible in order for us to spend more money.
Logic at work.
Oh i love me some maguma it has it’s masetries, it has it’s exclusif rewards and sets of armor.
But i also enjoy doing in a special time of the day, 1 or 2 donjons and 3 fractals.
I like to do different things. I know that if i spend 3 staight ours in verdant brink i’m gonna get bored.
SO by forcing me to stay in maguma instead of enjoying the entire diversity of the game i question the strategy.
The jungle is attractive enough not to force us to get there…
And i also loveD doing donjons, and fractals with my guild mates. Donjons are now useless (exepte for tokens which i don’t need anymore), and fractals, despite their difficulties don’t seem rewarding
The reason “drops” have been reduced from some instances is twofold :
1. in order to get people to play the ‘entire’ content and not stick to just one or two parts of the game, it makes more sense to reduce the rewards for the frequently done instances like dungeons and fractals.
2. Players will have to do the entire content, all over Tyria and into HoT, over fractals and raids, in order to get the so-called “best” items ingame : namely the legendary weapons and armors.
I believe, and this is just my opinion mind you, that the devs wanted to “push” people into the open world of the game, including things they normally don’t do (some don’t like WvW/PvP/Dungeons/Fracs…etc) in order to get them more ‘involved’ as you wish into the whole gameplay.
It’s not really limiting the game experience, but rather a gentle push towards what they intend for us to play, the way they see it.
Just look at what is required to make the new legendaries and soon armors. Only someone blind to the obvious wouldn’t realize that they’re trying to ‘guide’ us into the direction they want, and that for one reason only : keep playing for as long as possible in order for us to spend more money.
Logic at work.
I just don’t like how most game content now has the ‘meta’ goal of building a legendary, as if everyone wanted a legendary. I have never had any interest in having or crafting a legendary and I would appreciate if A Net realized that other kind of rewards are sometimes more valuable for some players.
I completly agree. I don’t like crafting, and don’t see myself going threw it, it’s not why i bought the game.
So fractal was a way for me to get the next best thing, ascended gear. But no more because now Anet wants us to go to the new content. Which is paradoxical because raid will need at least ascended gear… so… I guess i won’t be able to do raids
I never had nor ever will have any interest in a Legendary weapon.
The game is too small for such things. There’s nothing legendary about them except some very poor visual effects for the effort put into making one.
Not remotely interested in going through all of that.
Now if there was enough of a game that Guild wars weapons (and gear) could expand into, that’d be different.
It’s not really limiting the game experience, but rather a gentle push towards what they intend for us to play, the way they see it.
You’ve made some very good points, except it’s much less of a gentle push than a swift kick in the pants.
Which, as many others have noted before, only shows up how flawed the expansion content truly is. They had to nerf half of the vanilla endgame content right into the ground to keep people in the new maps.
And it’s a shame, because small group content has always been a lot more satisfying for many of us.
As someone who dislikes blobs and prefers to play open world events alongside another 2-3 people at most, I’ve come to realize that, whenever I have the chance to enjoy the content this way, the map is probably rather empty and not going anywhere in terms of overall progession.
If the map is expected to reach T4, then there’s probably a tag with a quite big crowd on every single outpust and, if by any chance I still manage to find a niche non-zergy space, it’s just a matter of time for someone to raise a mentor/commander tag or start asking in map chat for more people to come (no matter if the event chain was going perfectly fine).
In this sense, I truly hope they’re not nerfing small group content in order to push us towards HoT maps. The game experience for small groups, even if potentially decent and rather enjoyable, ends up being quite disappointing and frustrating in most real cases.
Well, the thing is Anet isn’t stuborn. Yes they do mistakes. But the past has shown us that they listen to the community. For example for the elite specs number of hp needed.
I just hope we are in one of the situations where they are going to give us back interesting rewards in 5 person content. Especially fractals, i played a lot of them in the last 3 weeks and i didn’t get any ascended gear or ring. I think that until then i won’t waist my time there. Which is a shame i love spending time with my guildies on ts doing dungeons or fractal, but it’s not rewarding anymore…