Guild Wars 2

Rhomulos.2089:

Ohoni.6057:

Well Ohoni, looks like your dream of non exclusive rewards are shattered

Yeah, it’s not looking good, but I’m glad you’re happy that I’m sad, that’s the mark of a truly great person.

We can only hope that they continue to iterate on this design and make these rewards available through other means (aside from the trophies, which can stay).

Why wouldn’t you have exclusive rewards for specific content? Even Tequatl has exclusive rewards, and Fractals, and Dungeons, and Dry Top, and the Silverwastes… What would be the purpose of not having exclusive rewards?

It allows people who want those rewards to earn them, even if they have no interest in Raids. Raids are, by their nature, exclusionary content that most players are not intended to complete. By locking these rewards behind raiding, it puts them off limits for large portions of the players, which is antithetical to GW2’s basic philosophy of inclusion. They’ve turned to the Dark Side.

While it does go against what they’ve said on some level, they have absolutely no way of giving hardcore players something worthwhile if it’s available to every mediocre/inexperienced player who stumbles into every random group they can.

Hardcore players want to show off what they’ve accomplished just because it’s exclusively earned through their effort and hardwork. If you look at legendaries and ascended gear, they lost their status very quickly with how mindless and profitable a lot of open world grinding is. Hardcore players are entirely left behind while casuals literally have everything they want.

Hardcore players are finally getting their own shard of content that’s for them, while casuals get EVERYTHING else. If a casual player wants to be a completionist, all they have to do is put the effort into working with 9 other players to clear very demanding content.

Can we maybe drop the term Hardcore.. Because what is hardcore.. The people who now have the best rewards grind all day but don’t really need (not saying they do not have!) any skill.. So are they hardcore because the grind all day or are they casual because they don’t need any skill.

I name them the Hardcore casuals.

If I am good in Jumping Puzzles but bad in raids, does that then make me a hardcore because I am good at JP’s or a casual because I am not good in raid.. nonetheless, I would like to have a nice unique reward for beating the the Jumping Puzzle (in x time).

People simply want content to be rewarding in a fun way (well many do at least), that has nothing to do with hardcore or elites or any of those terms.

Just ast 90 % of the rewards, and 95% of the best looking rewards are now locked behind a gold-grind.

Pleeeeeeeeeeease stop talking about Gem store items as if they are in-game content. They are cash purchases. Every one of them is a cash purchase. You might be choosing to grind for gold rather than spending cash yourself, but ultimately that item is being purchased with cash, and if you aren’t doing it then someone else has. Stop talking about them as if they intend for players to be grinding for gold to afford them, rather than that just being a secondary method of acquiring them for players too cheap to pay in cash themselves.

The gem store will NEVER be balanced against actual gameplay, and no amount of complaining will ever change that.

Also, HoT changes nothing on that score. The game launched with dozens of armor sets that came free with the box, HoT is coming with around 12 total sets of armor that come free with the box, same/same. GW2 launched with things coming out on the gem store, and they promised in that presentation that they would continue that as well. Nothing is changing.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Good.

Even if it is RNG like Fractal skins that won’t bother me.

As long as it is some doable RNG (so not like 1/10000) it is fine. Then RNG can add to the game.. every time the rush of “will it drop now”. That effect go’s away when it’s a completely unreasonable drop-rate but with doable RNG it will be a pro.

Ohoni.6057:

Just ast 90 % of the rewards, and 95% of the best looking rewards are now locked behind a gold-grind.

Pleeeeeeeeeeease stop talking about Gem store items as if they are in-game content. They are cash purchases. Every one of them is a cash purchase. You might be choosing to grind for gold rather than spending cash yourself, but ultimately that item is being purchased with cash, and if you aren’t doing it then someone else has. Stop talking about them as if they intend for players to be grinding for gold to afford them, rather than that just being a secondary method of acquiring them for players too cheap to pay in cash themselves.

The gem store will NEVER be balanced against actual gameplay, and no amount of complaining will ever change that.

Also, HoT changes nothing on that score. The game launched with dozens of armor sets that came free with the box, HoT is coming with around 12 total sets of armor that come free with the box, same/same. GW2 launched with things coming out on the gem store, and they promised in that presentation that they would continue that as well. Nothing is changing.

They are usually some of the best looking items in the game and so the type of items you want to be rewarded in the game from the content.

Yes now they are Gem store items… that is the problem!

Then again, enough has been said about that in the other thread, we just now have some new information.

Like I said.. we will have to see what happens with the model.. Mike specifically talked multiple times about B2P and earning the money buy getting people to buy HoT.

Indeed GW2 started good and then went more into the cash-shop model, likely also because of their LW idea’s that would not work with expansions.. Maybe they are now making the shift back.. We will have to see.. If Mike O’Brien’s talk about B2P and selling the box holds any value then we will see that move.

Can we maybe drop the term Hardcore.. Because what is hardcore.. The people who now have the best rewards grind all day but don’t really need (not saying they do not have!) any skill.. So are they hardcore because the grind all day or are they casual because they don’t need any skill.

I name them the Hardcore casuals.

It’s a fair term, but you need to understand the intended context. There is “hardcore” that means “content that most people can’t accomplish easily,” and there is the opposing “casual” that means “content that pretty much anyone can do.” Then there is a completely separate axis of “hardcore” that means “applying serious dedication to a given task,” and its opposing “casual” which means “applying minimal effort to a given task.”

Now it’s true, there are people who are hardcore/hardcore, that enjoy crazy hard content and will do it for many hours per day, there are hardcore/casuals who enjoy difficult content but would only dabble in it occasionally, there are casual/hardcore that hate difficult content but will play easy stuff for many hours, and casual/casual that hate difficulty and only dabble occasionally.

For the purposes of this sort of discussion though, the first set of definitions are the ones most people are using, reflecting the challenge level of the content. Personally I would account myself a semi-casual/semi-hardcore player. I like a little challenge, but not a punishing level, and I spend a decent amount of time in, but not more than a couple hours a day. I’m willing to work for weeks or months on a long term goal if need be, but I want genuine progression along the way, not repeated failures in the hope that success will eventually come.

If I am good in Jumping Puzzles but bad in raids, does that then make me a hardcore because I am good at JP’s or a casual because I am not good in raid..

It would make you potentially hardcore at JPs but casual at raiding, and since we’re talking about raiding, the latter is the one that actually matters here. Now, if they implemented a system by which you could earn raiding rewards by completing jumping puzzles, your JP skills would allow you to matter too.

People simply want content to be rewarding in a fun way (well many do at least), that has nothing to do with hardcore or elites or any of those terms.

It is only elitist if they want to keep those rewards out of the hands of those who do not enjoy the same level of challenge.

Like I said.. we will have to see what happens with the model.. Mike specifically talked multiple times about B2P and earning the money buy getting people to buy HoT.

And he also said that nothing was changing about the gem store. Read that as “nothing is changing.” The eocnomic model is the same today as it was six months ago and will be in six months, they will add some items to the game world as a value of purchase for the expansion, but they will continue to add items to the gem store that are good too, and if you want to earn those through ingame activities that don’t involve grinding for gold, then you have to figure out a way for those ingame activities to reward ANet is cash money, rather than warm fuzzies.

Why do you keep leaving out that half of the conversation?

Ohoni.6057:

Can we maybe drop the term Hardcore.. Because what is hardcore.. The people who now have the best rewards grind all day but don’t really need (not saying they do not have!) any skill.. So are they hardcore because the grind all day or are they casual because they don’t need any skill.

I name them the Hardcore casuals.

It’s a fair term, but you need to understand the intended context. There is “hardcore” that means “content that most people can’t accomplish easily,” and there is the opposing “casual” that means “content that pretty much anyone can do.” Then there is a completely separate axis of “hardcore” that means “applying serious dedication to a given task,” and its opposing “casual” which means “applying minimal effort to a given task.”

Now it’s true, there are people who are hardcore/hardcore, that enjoy crazy hard content and will do it for many hours per day, there are hardcore/casuals who enjoy difficult content but would only dabble in it occasionally, there are casual/hardcore that hate difficult content but will play easy stuff for many hours, and casual/casual that hate difficulty and only dabble occasionally.

For the purposes of this sort of discussion though, the first set of definitions are the ones most people are using, reflecting the challenge level of the content. Personally I would account myself a semi-casual/semi-hardcore player. I like a little challenge, but not a punishing level, and I spend a decent amount of time in, but not more than a couple hours a day. I’m willing to work for weeks or months on a long term goal if need be, but I want genuine progression along the way, not repeated failures in the hope that success will eventually come.

If I am good in Jumping Puzzles but bad in raids, does that then make me a hardcore because I am good at JP’s or a casual because I am not good in raid..

It would make you potentially hardcore at JPs but casual at raiding, and since we’re talking about raiding, the latter is the one that actually matters here. Now, if they implemented a system by which you could earn raiding rewards by completing jumping puzzles, your JP skills would allow you to matter too.

People simply want content to be rewarding in a fun way (well many do at least), that has nothing to do with hardcore or elites or any of those terms.

It is only elitist if they want to keep those rewards out of the hands of those who do not enjoy the same level of challenge.

Well when looking it from that perspective then maybe you are also hardcore at something (there must be some content you are above average in) and then it’s nice if you would also be specifically rewarded for that. Well that is how I feel about it.

So Elitist is rewarding?.. you know because if you can get everything in any way it’s not really rewarding anyway.

In fact I think that is one of the mistakes Anet made imho.. From the starts people have been complaining about the bad rewards in GW2 and so Anet did keep increasing rewards, now when you do a bid of EotM you bags are full in no time (what you can sell for geld) however complains have never stopped.. Why, because such rewards don’t really feel like rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

Like I said.. we will have to see what happens with the model.. Mike specifically talked multiple times about B2P and earning the money buy getting people to buy HoT.

And he also said that nothing was changing about the gem store. Read that as “nothing is changing.” The eocnomic model is the same today as it was six months ago and will be in six months, they will add some items to the game world as a value of purchase for the expansion, but they will continue to add items to the gem store that are good too, and if you want to earn those through ingame activities that don’t involve grinding for gold, then you have to figure out a way for those ingame activities to reward ANet is cash money, rather than warm fuzzies.

Why do you keep leaving out that half of the conversation?

That is true and was a strange statement when compared to the other statement.. Now they make money with the gem-store then they make money with expansion but nothing will change.. That is also why I still hold some reservations but the news of the rewards we see in Raids that gives some hope..

Nothing is changing on the gem-store is also a little vague term.. what we will see no new items in there? That is nothing changing. Really, all I think he did try to say there was that they would not stat selling unlocks for Free To Play players as he specifically said that in the content of the Free to Play players.. We will not monetize the F2P players, nothing is going to change to the gem-store.

But your right.. that was a bit vague especially when setting it off against the statements about B2P and that they would earn the money buy selling people the expansion.

That is also why I am still not 100% convince everything will be fine, but the signs are good so far.

Well when looking it from that perspective then maybe you are also hardcore at something (there must be some content you are above average in) and then it’s nice if you would also be specifically rewarded for that. Well that is how I feel about it.

Right, but the thing is, I don’t want a unique reward for that one thing I’m good at, I want to be able to earn ALL things through that method, and I want other people to be able to earn all things through the methods they enjoy too. I want people to be able to play their favorite content as much as they want, and not have to worry about getting all the unique rewards for that content and having no other rewards left. I want people to be able to dabble in any content that interests them without having to worry that they are making zero progress towards that One Cool Thing they really want to earn. I want for players to be able to “do that thing they really enjoy doing” AND “win that reward they really want to win,” without the two things likely being mutually exclusive.

So Elitist is rewarding?.. you know because if you can get everything in any way it’s not really rewarding anyway.

It’s rewarding you for putting forth time and effort, instead of rewarding you for doing one specific thing.That’s still a reward, just a less specific one.

In fact I think that is one of the mistakes Anet made imho.. From the starts people have been complaining about the bad rewards in GW2 and so Anet did keep increasing rewards, now when you do a bid of EotM you bags are full in no time (what you can sell for geld) however complains have never stopped.. Why, because such rewards don’t really feel like rewards.

That’s because most of the stuff you’d be earning that way is stuff that you already have. I’ve had every green/blue/yellow skin unlocked since weeks after the Wardrobe came out. Still, if an Exotic dropped with a skin I didn’t have yet, I would still view that as a reward. And you can always sell the “junk loot” you acquire and use that gold to buy something you want. And they could always change the loot mechanics a bit so that you could be working towards specific rewards of your choice, instead of piling up trade goods.

That is true and was a strange statement when compared to the other statement.. Now they make money with the gem-store then they make money with expansion but nothing will change.. That is also why I still hold some reservations but the news of the rewards we see in Raids that gives some hope..

It’s pretty simple if you think about it. Just consider 2015 as 2012-2.0. In 2012, you had to buy a box of the game, it gave you a certain amount of “free” weapons and armor as ingame content, and then they continued to add new weapons and armor to the gem store. In 2015, you have to buy another box to advance the game, it contains a certain (smaller) amount of “free” weapons and armor, and they will continue to put items on the gem store as usual. Your experience six months from now will be no different than six months after launch. Now hopefully they will release boxed expansions at a faster rate than they have so far, but that has nothing to do with the gem store, which will continue to go about its business. Everything will be fine, but it will also involve them continuing to put out a new BL weapon set every couple months and new BL outfits occasionally, just as they have been.

lol disableing res orb will only be a problem if u die in a good spot … because if u die in the cleave of a raid boss and get ressed u will just die again with the next hit because of rez sickness.. its why this orbs are worthless

Crystal Reid.2481:

They will be disabled.

That’s more information about raids than we got from announcement and few blog posts.

Mmmm I would love me some obsidian gear

Clyan.1593:

I know we still have the problem with missing gods but since the devs have never commented on that thopic and since legendary armor is announced now i just thought i could ask again:
Will we ever get UW and FoW back? I mean, FoW at least was the place where we had to forge legendary armor in GW1…
So… maybe? Pls?

UW and FoW have never been gone. All you need to do is boot up GW1.

GW2 is a very different game. I loved GW1, but for me it is in the past. I don’t want to see things like UW and FoW in GW1, I want new things. Just as good or better, but new.

I really don’t understand why people want to go to place like this or Cantha, or Elona. I loved them all in GW1, just like you, but that doesn’t mean that arenanet isn’t capable of designing other stunning places too. And cause you have nothing to compare them too, it will even be more stunning as it has the surprise element.

“experiences from the past are no garantee for the future”

Just cause you liked e.g. FoW in GW1, doesnt mean you will like it in GW2. So when hearing bout them adding FoW to GW2 all it can do is meet up with expectations -meh- or dissapoint. With new stuff, we have no reference and it is more likely to meet our expectations and go beyond.

I would definitely like buffs to affect all 10 in raids.

Will allow ( or require?) more diverse party comps.
& I like war/guard/ranger/rev over war/war/guard/guard for 4 of the classes..

I figure at the very least you’d have two groups stack up might like they would any dungeon. However, having abilities affect all 10 people would much better.

Ohoni.6057:

That is true and was a strange statement when compared to the other statement.. Now they make money with the gem-store then they make money with expansion but nothing will change.. That is also why I still hold some reservations but the news of the rewards we see in Raids that gives some hope..

It’s pretty simple if you think about it. Just consider 2015 as 2012-2.0. In 2012, you had to buy a box of the game, it gave you a certain amount of “free” weapons and armor as ingame content, and then they continued to add new weapons and armor to the gem store. In 2015, you have to buy another box to advance the game, it contains a certain (smaller) amount of “free” weapons and armor, and they will continue to put items on the gem store as usual. Your experience six months from now will be no different than six months after launch. Now hopefully they will release boxed expansions at a faster rate than they have so far, but that has nothing to do with the gem store, which will continue to go about its business. Everything will be fine, but it will also involve them continuing to put out a new BL weapon set every couple months and new BL outfits occasionally, just as they have been.

Yeah but like I said it was the Living World approach that was the reason for this.. If the next expansion comes lets says 1,5 year from HoT then there is no need to sell the separate items and most new items would be included in the new expansion and os on, and so on. That is truly B2P. Not saying they can sell absolutely nothing in that shop but the question is where the focus is. They could for example also switch to only selling specific things in the store, like only finishers and mail-carriers while keeping toys, mini’s and skins really in the game That would already be much better.

Anyway, we can talk about this as much as we want, Mike did put the focus very much on B2P and we can only wait and see what will happen. I for a fact do hope they will do that as I think this cash-shop focus was one of the biggest reason the reward system was what it was and made the game as it was (grindy). So it would really benefit the game.

Up until now PvE balance has just been 100% ignored for the holy grail that is E-sports. There is pretty much no balance in PvE since everything is done for PvP.

Now that you are trying to become a raiding game, will you focus on balancing PvE instead? You can’t really have a serious raid if half the classes are useless and the other half are super OP like they currently are. That will mean you either tune it so all the classes can complete it, and the super classes think the content is a joke, or you tune it for the super classes and the other classes get kicked out because you can’t possibly complete it with them in the party.

Is anything going to be done about this before launch or will the game continue to be balanced around PvP exclusively?

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I am for removing the anvil… And a short cooldown after exiting(say 5 minutes)

Having an anvil allows you to bang your head into a wall infinitely until the wall cracks. If there are waypoints inside of the raid and an anvil, it will be beaten within a few hours for the first ever try. Unless anet puts in place things to stop players from grinding their way to victory, players WILL grind their way to victory

The issue here is that people would simply re-log and repair that way.

I’m assuming that ANet will want people to be able to re-join their group in the event of a legitimate disconnect… And if someone has a legitimate reason to leave, I’d think they’d want the group to be able to use LFG to find another 10th member.

I don’t necessarily think they have an issue with this, as when they made repairs free they said “having to run back to where you were is penalty enough.”

I’d imagine there may be a waypoint at the repair anvil, but probably won’t be more than that… So you’d have to make your way back to your group. (And there might be re-spawns along the way, so good luck doing it alone.)

Or just farm BL keys.

Anyway, the discussion is merely about wanting every reward guaranteed as long as you play longer, no matter what you play, or not?

Personally I don’t think that’s necessary and devalues ever reward so that it’s less of a reward and falls entirely on a time grind.

Crystal Reid.2481:

They will be disabled.

Can we finally just take them out of the game ? Seriously if half your items aren’t going to work in areas whats the point just stop giving them out as rewards.

I honestly don’t care if they can be used in Raids or not but I think its a valid statement to say remove them, they just take up space in my bank and/or inventory.

Random.4691:

Crystal Reid.2481:

They will be disabled.

Can we finally just take them out of the game ? Seriously if half your items aren’t going to work in areas whats the point just stop giving them out as rewards.

I honestly don’t care if they can be used in Raids or not but I think its a valid statement to say remove them, they just take up space in my bank and/or inventory.

right click→ delete

(personally) problem solved

Honestly I think it’d be better if raids were two group instances and used the existing 5 man groups. This would require better coordination and wouldn’t let people scale stupidly high stacks with extremely minimal support, as well as making sure warrior and necro AoE rezzes hit the right people in emergencies.

More than number, I personally feel like they should increase ranged of 240/360 buffs to 600/900 type ranges. My biggest frustration with support in this game is that it all pushes toward stacking because otherwise you just end up with less support.

I think disabling res orbs is the right way to go. The few times I have seen people use them they have gotten lucky and it has helped, but like people here have mentioned they’re most often useless. Encounters shouldn’t rely on gemstore items to begin with (pay to win).

I don’t see the logic in removing anvils. I don’t think having a proper “game over” state makes content more difficult. The challenge in any encounter is finding a strategy that works, and then having the skill to execute it. If raid parties are expected to wipe a lot, let them wipe a lot. When they finally find a strategy that works for the encounter, they wipe some more until they get good enough to beat it.

Making raids as “difficult as possible” seems to a lot of people the same as making them as “inaccessible as possible”. It’s quite silly for Anet to spend the time designing content that will only ever be able to be completed (or even playable) by 1-5% of the player base. And I’m not saying everyone should be able to complete raids (there is already content out there that many will never complete).

Removing anvils sets up a roadblock that says “if you’re not here already, this isn’t for you.” Would it not be better to design a model where players can gradually increase their skill?

Finally, if the challenges rely more on the state of your armour rather than good mechanics, people will just bring spare armour pieces. This would trivialize the challenge and make the raid more about bag space and possibly giving up loot to complete.

You make good points about keeping the anvil Zaith, but on the other hand, not everyone will have multiple sets (though apparently we should in case some areas need more toughness as they noted), and the overall feeling that “Yes.. we can fail this completely” will push players to play harder, to work together better, to actively find solutions to problems, without just throwing bodies at it.

Ok so with the expansion coming closer and closer, i have in mind how previous story ended with a such a bad fight over zhaitan.

Now since then Anet have improved to boss fights, and we may see a fair good fight with an elder dragon right now.

But comes to my mind how (and where) are we going to fight him.

Is it gonna be in an instanced story mission (you can fight him solo?)?
Is it gonna be in the open world, which we can fight him in an epic fight never seen before, with massive mechanics?
Is it gonna be in an raid instance which is gonna be hella hard to kill him?

hmm
I think Anet can do 2 or 3 of these together.
I find Open world fight very pleasing which can be pretty epic, and there you may fight him but not actually finish him, and he runs away into his lair (for those with the story can finish right there).
BUT it may go even more beyond and for the hardcores can go in an epic raid fight which 10 players can go and finish him off with again another epic and really hard fight.

OK here are my thoughts, what do you expect??

Ven Zehn.6573:

the overall feeling that “Yes.. we can fail this completely” will push players to play harder, to work together better, to actively find solutions to problems, without just throwing bodies at it.

That’s a very good point, I agree completely. I guess I assumed that after some hours of wiping people would give up on their own and come back at a later time with different professions/builds/equipment/tactics even with an anvil available. I also agree that raids should be kept challenging enough so that they are not doable with just any group (by far). Basically I hope and think that the encounter mechanics should alone be able to keep the content challenging. It’s possible removing anvils would achieve a similar result, it just seems very artificial.

It does, and even now, in fractals, there’s no anvil, and people have gotten around that, so how much will removing the anvil really change? who knows lol

Well Griffith actually most of the time that we take random players in the team to be full they end up spoiling our fun because we have to keep running after them , sometimes because they don’t know how to do things, somethimes because we disagree.
Since this game should be fun for for everyone even small groups I can’t see why the scaling is such an issue.

Ven Zehn.6573:

It does, and even now, in fractals, there’s no anvil, and people have gotten around that, so how much will removing the anvil really change? who knows lol

There are anvils in the fractal foyer, and one would expect the same for raids.

Yea, but you cant get into the foyer once you’re in a fractal instance, you have to leave the fractal completely, by going to the log screen, and repairing in LA before re-entering.

Ohoni, you said players should be able to earn all rewards through the content they enjoy.

Which means you’re in favor of run around SW, spamming 1 and afk’ing rewarding legendaries. Because for some, that’s the only type of content that they enjoy doing.

And for just spending hours in cities. Because there are some who just use this game as a means to roleplay. So they sit in the cities and role play.

ANet has to balance the game around all types of players:

1. The player that likes to show off unique rewards they earned for doing content. Like the account bound minis or account bound skins.

2. The player who prefers good rewards to be available to all. These are the cool skins/items that are sellable so that as players get duplicates or get ones they don’t want, they sell them to players who do. And then the reward becomes a reward for their ability to grind gold for X time. Dungeon rewards are also like this due to the ability to buy runs.

3. The player who doesn’t have a lot of time.

4. The player who has time.

5. The unskilled player who can’t improve (and the one can’t improve ones, ANet shouldn’t cater to the players who won’t improve)

6. The skilled player.

7. The improving player.

All players are some combination of the above. And some of the options above are completely opposite.

So they do things to cater to each group. There’s some content that rewards gold which can be used to buy items that are cool and earned from some content they may not enjoy. There’s some content that offers unique rewards. There’s some content that’s over quickly, and some content that takes time. And right now we’re a bit lacking on the content designed for skill players so they’re adding raids. They’re also giving a bone to the players that prefer exclusive rewards. And for everything they add, there’s someone who doesn’t like it because it goes against what they want.

Random thoughts:

Res orbs are super tricky, and I doubt they’d have much impact on encounters either way. That’s really why I feel removing them is more about image than mechanics. They’re simply not that much of a factor.

Anvil removal (and I saw someone mentioning hard timers above as well) on the other hand is a straight attempt to make dying more punishing.. As zaith said, this isn’t increasing difficulty this is just decreasing accessibility.

Which ties to my whole thing with the whole system. It’s easy to make fake difficulty by deceasing accessibility & convenience. The group size is part of that, the no rez orbs migt be an attempt at part of that (although again – so hard to use effectively), and these timer/no repairs suggesions would be a HUGE part of that.

It’s not real difficulty though, why would we even want that kind of exclusivity?

Ven Zehn.6573:

Yea, but you cant get into the foyer once you’re in a fractal instance, you have to leave the fractal completely, by going to the log screen, and repairing in LA before re-entering.

Yeah because of the sub-instance thing – without sub instancess I’d expect like all the old dungeons, which also had an anvil in the foyer.

Honestly though, unless you do a lock timer there’s only a little bit more inconvenience for that.

Yea, and thinking about it more, removing the anvil or not does very little, if it was gone, people would find ways around it.

As for the orb, yea, pretty useless in general, unless the whole party wipes, in an area that is difficult to get to, and someone orbs to rez everyone, that’s the only sort of instance where orbs would have use.
But in the middle of a fight, unless you die away from the damage, the orbs won’t do much.

RNG is good to keep you artificially sticking around waiting for more. They don’t want you coming and going.

ReiCH.6273
Very correct, now all they have to do is implement legendary armour, skins, minis and titles for the top tier in pvp and wvw and the game will be able to offer something for everyone …

True, but until I can play as a Mursaat Dervish then no, the game does not provide me all I want lol

Said this in another thread, it’s still true.

Every exclusive reward is another sign that Anet thinks most players won’t raid without being “incentivized”.

Minos.5168:

I’d imagine there may be a waypoint at the repair anvil, but probably won’t be more than that… So you’d have to make your way back to your group. (And there might be re-spawns along the way, so good luck doing it alone.)

New role: Thief-anvil-escort-bot ftw!

Windsagio.1340:

Said this in another thread, it’s still true.

Every exclusive reward is another sign that Anet thinks most players won’t raid without being “incentivized”.

If fractals or dungeons would not offer gold, skins or tokens, people would make the story once and every explorable path also only once to look at the cinematics and maybe for the AR. Maybe a few more times when people are new in the game, join the guild and the friendly guild organizer needs a helpful and friendly person to fill up the group.

I don´t know if that is a pro or con raid argument to be honest. My first impression is that a raid here still looks like a lot of work. You better have TS, need 10 people that know what to do and it will take some time no matter how good you do it. Why take the pains of organizing that more often than after the first time you beat it if not for new people that have not seen it before?
Challenge and Improvement are the counter arguments for this, and rather good ones to be honest. Once you have bested the content, you either set yourself subgoals like beating it faster, with X happening or not etc etc. But someday the well of subgoals has run dry, and the content loses any worth if there is nothing exclusively sellable or usable in it. And even with that mindset, if the raid stays alone for too long, it will have lose it´s magic on the hardest raider types by then.

The problem seems to me that Anet has to fill the bucket of raids or any other content more quickly than even the more active raiders can consume it, and I highly dobt that they are able to do that.

Tl;dr Raids are hard and take time, of course most people need to be attracted with shinies to do them.

Which means you’re in favor of run around SW, spamming 1 and afk’ing rewarding legendaries. Because for some, that’s the only type of content that they enjoy doing.

How about you worry about what you mean and let me decide what I mean. As it turns out, I mean what I say, but it seems that I mean very little of what you guys say I mean, so trying to tell me what I mean really doesn’t seem to be working out for you.

No, I don’t believe that hanging out in cities or AFKing on even maps should put you on course for the best rewards, but I do believe that just as a player can queue up for a PvP match, not accomplish much there, and still progress his PvP reward track, players should be on course to their desired rewards via a variety of active, engaging activities in the game. It isn’t a slippery slope, it doesn’t have to cover absolutely every element, it should just cover a wide variety of activities that ANet has already decided are worthy of some significant rewards.

1. The player that likes to show off unique rewards they earned for doing content. Like the account bound minis or account bound skins.

No. They do not have to balance around these people. These people are free to do what they want with what they have, but ANet is under no obligation to make sure that what they have is exclusive to them. “Showing off” is a degenerate playstyle that they have no reason to enable. Players who get off on other people not having what they have are not deserving of respect.

All players are some combination of the above. And some of the options above are completely opposite.

Yes, and that’s why there should be a balance of options. There should be methods that take less time, in exchange for requiring more skill and more intense effort over that shorter time. There should also be methods that are easier, for those incapable or unwilling to do the shorter path, but these would take more time overall. It should not be divided up such that the “short path” rewards can never be earned via the “long path” routes.

There is no way to “fairly divide” the rewards between the groups, because the desirability of rewards is entirely subjective, and while you would have scenarios in which all the rewards a given player wants happen to conveniently fall into the activities he’d prefer doing anyway, the far more common outcome is that one or more of a player’s most desired rewards would fall into the category of tasks that he had no interest in, or no capability to achieve. This is why all rewards need to be shared between all content, rather than divvied up in a “fair” manner.

If fractals or dungeons would not offer gold, skins or tokens, people would make the story once and every explorable path also only once to look at the cinematics and maybe for the AR.

One, all content should provide a quantity of reward that makes it comparable to other activities. Nobody is saying that raids and other dungeons should offer no rewards, just that the rewards you can get from them should be available elsewhere too. The quantity of reward should be enough to make it worth doing, similar to how being a doctor pays more money than being a carpenter, but it’s still the same type of money, and if the carpenter works longer and accumulates as much money as the doctor would make in a year, then his money is just as good.

Two, if they do balance out the quantity of rewards, so that you can run a dungeon and feel that you are not making any less than you would doing other activities in the game, and yet players still do not want to play that content without the promise of unique rewards, then that content does not deserve to exist. If people refuse to do the content unless they have no other options for earning a specific reward, then that means that they do not enjoy that content, they just want the reward. If they do not enjoy the content, then ANet has no reason to force them into it, they do not benefit in any way from players who aren’t having fun. They should take those rewards and apply them to a type of content that the players do enjoy instead.

I think a lot of this argument boils down to a vast insecurity among raiders. They personally enjoy raids, but deep down they know that most players do not enjoy raids, that there aren’t enough players who truly enjoy raids to justify the developer’s time in crafting them, and they need for other players to also want to do raids so that they have an easier time finding groups to go with. Well I’m sorry, but other players are not your tools, they do not exist to make it easier for you to raid, and if they don’t want to raid, they shouldn’t have to. If there aren’t enough players who want to raid to justify their development, then they shouldn’t be developed.

If raids cannot justify themselves unless they have unique rewards, then raids cannot justify themselves.

Here is my reasoning for hard timers.

It forces players to take a break, and punishes death, something that is found in few places in this game.
I’m even for adding timers that increase in time every time you consecutively fail. Does anybody remember when triple trouble work came out? Yes, the two hour timer in between was awful, and I advocate nothing similar in time(maximum lockout would be like 20-30 mins)
However, after every event finished, people would rush to the forums and see if it had been beaten yet. It was failed so many times that it became well known as a difficult experience. My concern is that a group will go into the raid, beat it within a day of it coming out, and then having that trivialize the overall difficulty of the event.
Furthermore, a hard timer allows players to think, take a break, and go back into the content with a fresh start, as opposed to grinding themselves into a wall waiting, no… hoping for the sweet release of death to end their suffering.

Crystal Reid.2481:

They will be disabled.

No cleaner answer than that! Thanks for answering!

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

It forces players to take a break, and punishes death, something that is found in few places in this game..

This is the end all and be all of that discussion. This isn’t about difficulty, it’s about punishing failure… a concept a smart designer treats VERY carefully.

Torolan.5816:

Tl;dr Raids are hard and take time, of course most people need to be attracted with shinies to do them.

I’d agree to that, with the caveat that the greater the # of shinies the more they think they need to sweeten the pot.

As to my point, it’s not realaly to be pro-raids or anti-raids as a feature, so much as a speculation on it’s expected strength vis a vis the essential failure of dungeon content.

Windsagio.1340:

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

It forces players to take a break, and punishes death, something that is found in few places in this game..

This is the end all and be all of that discussion. This isn’t about difficulty, it’s about punishing failure… a concept a smart designer treats VERY carefully.

Extra Credits did a focus on this concept some time ago. Might not need to go much past the title:

Fail Faster

Basically, for enjoyment (and learning), a game should have short times between iterations. Unnecessary punishments just put people off from trying more. (Case in point, Living Story Season 2. /glare)

Sooo cannot be bothered with extra credits (or argumentum ad youtube in general).

As I said, it’s something to be careful of, and players know an abitrary barrier to completion when they see it.

Damage and repairs works at least in part because it has a strong metaphor, which isn’t really available in this case.

Windsagio.1340:

Sooo cannot be bothered with extra credits (or argumentum ad youtube in general).

As I said, it’s something to be careful of, and players know an abitrary barrier to completion when they see it.

Damage and repairs works at least in part because it has a strong metaphor, which isn’t really available in this case.

Eh, I had the wrong link anyway. :P

But yes, I agree. Less ‘wait to have fun’ and more ‘get rekt by raid again’. Because there is no repair anvil for your ego.

Rauderi.8706:

Windsagio.1340:

Sooo cannot be bothered with extra credits (or argumentum ad youtube in general).

As I said, it’s something to be careful of, and players know an abitrary barrier to completion when they see it.

Damage and repairs works at least in part because it has a strong metaphor, which isn’t really available in this case.

Eh, I had the wrong link anyway. :P

But yes, I agree. Less ‘wait to have fun’ and more ‘get rekt by raid again’. Because there is no repair anvil for your ego.

That’s all fine as a theoretical point, but it’s just that: A nice bit for a game school design lecture, but dangerous to apply willy-nilly.

In the case of GW, there is that delay already, in the form of release-run back-do your next prep. An arbitrary timer is taking an especially sloppy sledgehammer to a concept that can (and is) handled in much more elegant and inline ways.