Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

They are both the same amount of time spent playing the game, why should they not offer at least close to equivalent rewards?

Because one is specifically intended to be more demanding than the other. A raid is more difficult and more specific in its timing than logging on for fifteen minutes to do some map completion or an event. Since more is necessary to be put into it, more is given in return.

Because one is specifically intended to be more demanding than the other. A raid is more difficult and more specific in its timing than logging on for fifteen minutes to do some map completion or an event. Since more is necessary to be put into it, more is given in return.

So? Why does it matter that it is more difficult or more specific? Again, this is like someone demanding a multi-million dollar salary simply because they are very good at Basketball, whether there is a market for that talent or not, as if the universe owes millions of dollars to anyone that can pass a ball through a hoop well. Raiding is more demanding than other content, but what about that makes it more entitled to superior rewards?

Ohoni.6057:

You see golf has quite a few major tournaments (content). One of the majors is called the Masters (this is X type of content, say Raids for example). The reward for winning the Masters is an exclusive green jacket and trophy. No other major tournament rewards this Green Jacket and there are no trophies like it. So, if you want a green jacket, you have to win the masters (play that particular content)…..

http://www.readygolf.com/Replica-Masters-Green-Jacket-p/the-green-jacket.htm?gclid=CjwKEAjw1MSvBRDj2IyP-o7PygsSJAC_6zodIbw3ERKYHTRCFv9VxzpDPnnOnD7jhrbaFydOzF9WbhoCMPbw_wcB

$150 for the skin. That’s less than half the price of Sunrise, btw.

thats a replica skin. There is already replica skin for legendary armor (its called ascended). You have access to that already.

I don’t think you want the replica do you? You probably want the real thing….guess what? you aren’t getting it and you don’t deserve it unless you play and beat the Masters (raids)

SkiTz.4590:

thats a replica skin. There is already replica skin for legendary armor (its called ascended). You have access to that already.

Did I miss something that said legendary armors get ascended skins instead of new ones?

There are some skins you will not get, the game is not designed with the goal “everyone should get to dress up however they want.” Legendary Armour comes from Raids, do the Raid or don’t wear the armour – you’ll be dead in 80 years either way.

Windsagio.1340:

SkiTz.4590:

thats a replica skin. There is already replica skin for legendary armor (its called ascended). You have access to that already.

Did I miss something that said legendary armors get ascended skins instead of new ones?

its essentially a replica in terms of stats….
You aren’t statisically any better with legendary than ascended…

There are no true replica skins in this game. most of the heavily sought after skins are unique and rightfully so. For something as prestigious as legendary equipment, there shouldn’t be true replicas…. either get the real thing or don’t…thats what makes it unique… anet isn’t making some cheap knockoff of legendary skins…

thats a replica skin. There is already replica skin for legendary armor (its called ascended). You have access to that already.

We don’t know what Legendary Armor looks like yet, but I doubt it looks anything like Ascended armor.

its essentially a replica in terms of stats….
You aren’t statisically any better with legendary than ascended…

That’s not a proper replica. This is a “replica” of the Master’s Jacket in terms of stats, I doubt many people would refer to it as a “replica” though.
http://images.express.com/is/image/expressfashion/new_27_611_3376_802_85?cache=on&wid=640&fmt=jpeg&qlt=70,1&resmode=sharp2&op_usm=1,1,5,0&fit=fit,1

A replica is something that “looks” like the original, not something that mimics its performance. I really don’t care that much about getting a replica of the raid armor in terms of stats, the more important thing is to get the same appearance.

There are no true replica skins in this game. most of the heavily sought after skins are unique and rightfully so.

All skins in the game are replica skins, there is not one skin in the game that is truly unique. For example there are currently 83 Eir’s Longbows on the TP, and that doesn’t count the likely thousands of them players already have “banked” in their wardrobes, ready to apply to infinite bows if they want. The only “Unique” version belongs to Eir herself, not to any player. Similarly, tons of players have “Firey Dragon Swords,” but none of them are Sohothin or Magdear, even though they are aesthetically identical.

You can keep the unique stats, that’s irrelevant, just provide the skins.

Ohoni, GW2 is not a fashion simulator – once you come to terms with this fact I feel you will be happier. Right now you’re trying to warp the world to fit a view you hold, your view is not reality and no amount of squinting or arguing will make it so.

You are not owed the ability to try on all the dresses.

Ohoni.6057:

Raiding is more demanding than other content, but what about that makes it more entitled to superior rewards?

It is generally a good idea to have rewards be proportional to the effort/risk involved. It’s a fairly basic game design thing. Developing a sense of mastery and having something achieved through it is one of the most widely successful elements of games I can think of. Highscores, a fancy hat, new levels… and so on.

As a general principle it holds quite well and is reflected in GW2 in for example that dungeon bosses drop better loot than some random moa in Queensdale. Silverwastes farming breaks the rule and is one of the more complained about things in the game because of the material incentives it creates.

Ohoni.6057:

thats a replica skin. There is already replica skin for legendary armor (its called ascended). You have access to that already.

We don’t know what Legendary Armor looks like yet, but I doubt it looks anything like Ascended armor.

its essentially a replica in terms of stats….
You aren’t statisically any better with legendary than ascended…

That’s not a proper replica. This is a “replica” of the Master’s Jacket in terms of stats, I doubt many people would refer to it as a “replica” though.
http://images.express.com/is/image/expressfashion/new_27_611_3376_802_85?cache=on&wid=640&fmt=jpeg&qlt=70,1&resmode=sharp2&op_usm=1,1,5,0&fit=fit,1

A replica is something that “looks” like the original, not something that mimics its performance. I really don’t care that much about getting a replica of the raid armor in terms of stats, the more important thing is to get the same appearance.

There are no true replica skins in this game. most of the heavily sought after skins are unique and rightfully so.

All skins in the game are replica skins, there is not one skin in the game that is truly unique. For example there are currently 83 Eir’s Longbows on the TP, and that doesn’t count the likely thousands of them players already have “banked” in their wardrobes, ready to apply to infinite bows if they want. The only “Unique” version belongs to Eir herself, not to any player. Similarly, tons of players have “Firey Dragon Swords,” but none of them are Sohothin or Magdear, even though they are aesthetically identical.

You can keep the unique stats, that’s irrelevant, just provide the skins.

i was talking about exclusive skins…. you know, the ones that are account/soul bound on acquire, thus making them unique to oneself… I’m not talking about stuff you can simple buy on the market, obviously that is not unique…

Raids, currently will be giving UNIQUE skins. Kinda like how ppl who frequently do fractals can achieve that unique backpeice (fractal capacitor)…

its exclusive/unique in terms of how you get it…you have to do that fractals in order to get that, there is no alternative. Same way it will be with raids. That is what makes a skin unique, there is only one way to get it.

Coulter.2315:

Ohoni, GW2 is not a fashion simulator – once you come to terms with this fact I feel you will be happier. Right now you’re trying to warp the world to fit a view you hold, your view is not reality and no amount of squinting or arguing will make it so.

You are not owed the ability to try on all the dresses.

It actually totally is ><

SkiTz.4590:

Windsagio.1340:

SkiTz.4590:

thats a replica skin. There is already replica skin for legendary armor (its called ascended). You have access to that already.

Did I miss something that said legendary armors get ascended skins instead of new ones?

its essentially a replica in terms of stats….
You aren’t statisically any better with legendary than ascended…

There are no true replica skins in this game. most of the heavily sought after skins are unique and rightfully so. For something as prestigious as legendary equipment, there shouldn’t be true replicas…. either get the real thing or don’t…thats what makes it unique… anet isn’t making some cheap knockoff of legendary skins…

You shifted sideways a bit there, from saying ‘its a replica skin’ to ‘there are no replica skins nor should there be’.

there are 3 unique things about legendaries.
Modifiable stats
Unique Skins (I’m including the particle effects)
Pretty purple description text

~~~

The one absolute non-starter is that it’s not a prestige item in several ways.

Windsagio.1340:

Coulter.2315:

Ohoni, GW2 is not a fashion simulator – once you come to terms with this fact I feel you will be happier. Right now you’re trying to warp the world to fit a view you hold, your view is not reality and no amount of squinting or arguing will make it so.

You are not owed the ability to try on all the dresses.

It actually totally is ><

Its meant to be but doesn’t really have the range of cosmetic options it should.

Windsagio.1340:

SkiTz.4590:

Windsagio.1340:

SkiTz.4590:

thats a replica skin. There is already replica skin for legendary armor (its called ascended). You have access to that already.

Did I miss something that said legendary armors get ascended skins instead of new ones?

its essentially a replica in terms of stats….
You aren’t statisically any better with legendary than ascended…

There are no true replica skins in this game. most of the heavily sought after skins are unique and rightfully so. For something as prestigious as legendary equipment, there shouldn’t be true replicas…. either get the real thing or don’t…thats what makes it unique… anet isn’t making some cheap knockoff of legendary skins…

You shifted sideways a bit there, from saying ‘its a replica skin’ to ‘there are no replica skins nor should there be’.

there are 3 unique things about legendaries.
Modifiable stats
Unique Skins (I’m including the particle effects)
Pretty purple description text

~~~

The one absolute non-starter is that it’s not a prestige item in several ways.

Wait, what? Legendaries are totally prestige items. Or at least they’re meant to be. I’d agree that the implementation of legendaries right now is kinda bad, and I’d definitely argue that earning legendary armor pieces through challenging content (raids) is a huge step in the right direction, but still, you cannot really argue that legendaries are definitely designed to be prestige items.

Ohoni.6057:

Raiding is more demanding than other content, but what about that makes it more entitled to superior rewards?

You already answered your own question. Because it’s more demanding, that’s why it should have superior rewards.

It is generally a good idea to have rewards be proportional to the effort/risk involved. It’s a fairly basic game design thing. Developing a sense of mastery and having something achieved through it is one of the most widely successful elements of games I can think of. Highscores, a fancy hat, new levels… and so on.

Rewarding individual players for the effort they put in is a good idea. Different players have different levels of skill, so what might be easy for some is hard for others, and vice-versa. If you reward more difficult content more than you do less difficult content, then all that does is provide disproportionate rewards depending on the players’ skill, and since each is an equally valuable customer, there is no actual justification for doing so.

If the developers choose to do that, then that is a gift to you, an undeserved gift, and should never be confused for something “owed” to you or something that you “earned.”

i was talking about exclusive skins…. you know, the ones that are account/soul bound on acquire, thus making them unique to oneself… I’m not talking about stuff you can simple buy on the market, obviously that is not unique…

Raids, currently will be giving UNIQUE skins. Kinda like how ppl who frequently do fractals can achieve that unique backpeice (fractal capacitor)…

its exclusive/unique in terms of how you get it…you have to do that fractals in order to get that, there is no alternative. Same way it will be with raids. That is what makes a skin unique, there is only one way to get it.

You’re sort of looping the discussion back in on itself, but remember where we started, that in the real world, there is no clothing item that you cannot wear without completing a specific task. Any clothing item that’s out there, you can get that “skin” and wear it. The same should be true in the game, so long as you’re willing to put forth a reasonable amount of effort into any area of the game that appeals to you.

You already answered your own question. Because it’s more demanding, that’s why it should have superior rewards.

No, again, that’s nonsense. It’s like saying that good Basketball players are owed high salaries by Divine Right. It’s exactly this sort of attitude that poisons the game when raiding becomes involved. “I raid, therefore I am entitled to better things.”

Those who receive great rewards in life are not because they have great skills, but because society values those skills, because those skills provide value to society. This cannot be applied to a game. If you raid every week, what benefit does that do me? Why should I care? Why should I reward you for that (or in this case, contribute to your reward)? And yes, any reward you get as a raider is paid for by your fellow players, because we each contribute to the success of the game, regardless of how we play. The fewer the people who actually receive the Legendary Armor, the more people paid for you to have it.

So why do those people owe you rewards? They don’t. It is a gift to you. Be grateful, not entitled, and don’t try to block others receiving the same gift.

Ohoni.6057:

You already answered your own question. Because it’s more demanding, that’s why it should have superior rewards.

No, again, that’s nonsense. It’s like saying that good Basketball players are owed high salaries by Divine Right. It’s exactly this sort of attitude that poisons the game when raiding becomes involved. “I raid, therefore I am entitled to better things.”

Those who receive great rewards in life are not because they have great skills, but because society values those skills, because those skills provide value to society. This cannot be applied to a game. If you raid every week, what benefit does that do me? Why should I care? Why should I reward you for that (or in this case, contribute to your reward)? And yes, any reward you get as a raider is paid for by your fellow players, because we each contribute to the success of the game, regardless of how we play. The fewer the people who actually receive the Legendary Armor, the more people paid for you to have it.

So why do those people owe you rewards? They don’t. It is a gift to you. Be grateful, not entitled, and don’t try to block others receiving the same gift.

You are conflating and confusing a lot of different types of design, like game design versus ecomomics, business, society.

However, it is actually better for basketball that the best players are paid a lot of money. Because that increases, and encourages depth in basketball. High potential wages encourages people to spend more time and energy mastering basketball.

the best players are always the most rewarded in all facets of basketball.
Ill take you to the very basics, the playground, the winners get to play more.
The winner gets to keep playing, while the loser has to sit down, the better you are, the more you can play.
the next step up, personal betting. The winners win the pot.
Status, the winners are seen as better by the community, and are given more respect and benefits. for example the best players usually have dibs on the best court in the park. They can also are allowed to use more resources, like getting 2 courts to themselves, to play full court.

local tournaments, the best players win the tournaments, these tournaments are often self funded. IE everyone puts in an entrance fee, and the winner gets the money/prizes.
why? because encouraging the best players enhances the game itself. It makes the time spent playing more worthwhile, and increases the highs and lows and emotions of the game.

so yeah, the fact that the best players are the most celebrated, does a lot to enhance the game, and enhance motivation to play.

but like i said you are looking at the wrong scope.
For talking about basketballs game design, you should look at the rewards WITHIN the game. Which in basketball is mostly about points and penalties.

so its not divine right, its the thing that will make basketball a better, more appealing, more worthwhile game.

Ohoni.6057:

You already answered your own question. Because it’s more demanding, that’s why it should have superior rewards.

No, again, that’s nonsense. It’s like saying that good Basketball players are owed high salaries by Divine Right. It’s exactly this sort of attitude that poisons the game when raiding becomes involved. “I raid, therefore I am entitled to better things.”

No, it’s not nonsense. It’s perfectly reasonable. Higher prestige gets you higher rewards. That’s basic game design 101. It’s how every single videogame works and has worked since the dawn of time and for good reasons.

Just like it’s perfectly reasonable that good basketball players deserve higher salaries. You can argue all you want why they deserve higher salaries, but the point stands: they put effort into their sport, they become the best and they deserve higher salaries for it.

Ohoni.6057:

Those who receive great rewards in life are not because they have great skills, but because society values those skills, because those skills provide value to society.

So basically you’re saying they receive greater rewards because they do have greater skills. That’s literally what you’re saying.

They have greater skills so they get greater rewards.

So basically you agree with me. Good.

This cannot be applied to a game.

Yes you can, as it has been, in almost every single game in existence.

Ohoni.6057:

If you raid every week, what benefit does that do me? Why should I care?

Why should it do you any benefit? Why should I care if you care? You’re not the one raiding. You’re not helping me overcome that challenge. So you’re absolutely and completely meaningless to me.

Ohoni.6057:

Why should I reward you for that (or in this case, contribute to your reward)?

I don’t know what you’re smoking, but you’re not rewarding me for anything. The game is.

Ohoni.6057:

And yes, any reward you get as a raider is paid for by your fellow players, because we each contribute to the success of the game, regardless of how we play. The fewer the people who actually receive the Legendary Armor, the more people paid for you to have it.

That is complete and total utter nonsense. I don’t even get how you came to this. The only one who paid for the raids is the raiders. The raiders asked for raids in HoT. Anet saw there was a demand for raids, so they included it in HoT. Now the raiders paid for HoT so they can play those raids.

You paid for HoT for different reasons, but not for the raids. You didn’t contribute to the raiding in any – single – way. You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t pay for it. You’re not playing them and you’re not helping us getting our legendary armors.

So please, get off your high-horse and get real.

Ohoni.6057:

So why do those people owe you rewards? They don’t. It is a gift to you. Be grateful, not entitled, and don’t try to block others receiving the same gift.

I give up. You’re absolute insane. Your view on reality is so idiotic, egocentric, self-centered, self-serving and entitled, yet you have the nerve to call us, the normal gamers, the normal people who except normal games with normal reward systems, entitled. It’s baffling.

I’m seriously wondering how many (real) games you have played. If I had to guess, not many. Otherwise you’d realize how insane and outlandish your proposals/demands are.

However, it is actually better for basketball that the best players are paid a lot of money. Because that increases, and encourages depth in basketball. High potential wages encourages people to spend more time and energy mastering basketball.

You clearly did not read my prior example where I clearly explained this very principle, and why basketball players are entitled to rewards because of the value they ADD to the world, and why this in no way applies to raiders.

For talking about basketballs game design, you should look at the rewards WITHIN the game. Which in basketball is mostly about points and penalties.

Ok, you cannot discuss “points” as a reward mechanism in basketball (as opposed to salary), unless you are also willing to agree that Achievements would be a valid substitute for Legendary Armor as an exclusive raid reward.

so its not divine right, its the thing that will make basketball a better, more appealing, more worthwhile game.

Yes, and in ways that raiders being good at raiding does nothing to make GW2 a better, more appealing, more worthwhile game, thank you for proving my point.

Just like it’s perfectly reasonable that good basketball players deserve higher salaries. You can argue all you want why they deserve higher salaries, but the point stands: they put effort into their sport, they become the best and they deserve higher salaries for it.

But see, that was exactly the point I was saying was a foolish interpretation of the reality. Let’s look at another sport, La cross. It’s no less challenging than basketball, the people who are dedicated to it are no less skilled or dedicated than Basketball players, and yet are expert la cross players as highly paid as the best basketball players? Not even remotely close. Why? Because the sport is not as valued by the public, so the teams do not make as much money, so they have no reason or capability to play the players nearly as much.

Basketball players do not make money because they are skilled athletes that work hard. They make money because the thing they do is a thing that peopel want them to do and support them.

Applied to raiding, nobody cares if you raid. Nobody’s life is improved if you raid, or if you are particularly good at it. Your skill at raiding does not improve the world, and so there is no compelling reason why it should result in increased rewards.

Why should it do you any benefit? Why should I care if you care? You’re not the one raiding. You’re not helping me overcome that challenge. So you’re absolutely and completely meaningless to me.

Because I’m helping to pay for them to make the content you’re playing, and for the rewards that you’re earning. Unless the active raiders make up a significant portion of the community, they cannot claim to be paying their own way.

You paid for HoT for different reasons, but not for the raids. You didn’t contribute to the raiding in any – single – way.

It doesn’t work that way. We sent our money into the void, ANet decided how to split it up. If I could have said “I’m sending you this $50, but you can’t spend any of it on raid content,” then that would be great, but it wasn’t an option.

I give up. You’re absolute insane. Your view on reality is so idiotic, egocentric, self-centered, self-serving and entitled, yet you have the nerve to call us, the normal gamers, the normal people who except normal games with normal reward systems, entitled. It’s baffling.

I have to say it because you don’t get it. Ideally you would understand this going into it.

With the announcement of raiding in Guild Wars 2, I wanted to take a few moments to write about some of the concerns I have based on specific examples from both pugging and organized PVE in this game, as well as the perspective of a former top 50 US raider in World of Warcraft.

The first area that I’m concerned with is exploitation or creatively using the game environment or abilities such that allows the players to circumvent the content. What worries me here is that you make no effort to stop this behavior, and because this is something that you have a history of not doing, I can’t expect you to start doing it simply because we’ll have more people in the group. Examples of what I mean:

• The Molten Furnace fractal, where you have an exceptionally well designed encounter with multiple mechanics that players are supposed to play through. What actually happens, though is that players just stand in a corner and completely negate the vast majority of the damage simply by standing in one spot.
• The Mossman encounter, where dragging him into the water breaks all of his mechanics and lets players just burn him down
• Mai Trin, where players can intentionally bug Ellen Kiel such that she will resurrect players if she dies during the initial trash and is revived, at which point she’ll rez anyone coming into the instance, allowing players to continue running back in during the encounter.

Each of these would be quite easy to fix, but for reasons unknown, you allow players to continue to break the game. In examples like the Aetherblade Fractal, the glitching has been around so long that nobody knows how to do it “legit” anymore. This is an area that you absolutely must address if you’re going to be serious about adding raid content to your game.

The next area that I’d like to talk about is the Meta. The term “Meta” is a greek prefix meaning “beyond,” and is used to describe not simply beating content, but finding the most efficient way of completing it. In most cases this means to find examples as I listed above and exploiting them to get the content down more quickly. I believe that in a few ways, this is hurting the pve endgame in Guild Wars 2:

• Firstly, the current meta is built around supporting a broken mechanic which you have made no effort to fix: Linecasting. This is done to force all missiles in Frost Bow’s 4th ability to land in a very small area. This artificially inflates the damage that an Elementalist brings to the table and devalues the damage other classes bring. Frost Bow 4, and all abilities like it were never meant to spike damage on a single target, they were meant to spread their damage over an area. The way it works is being exploited in order to kill bosses and trash faster than ever expected.
• As a result of killing bosses faster than anticipated by the content developers, the mechanics you build into the fight are often circumvented, such as with the slime in the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal, which can be kited to the hallway and burned down before its blocking phase and before any of the small slimes can get to it to heal it. This is clearly not what you intended the encounter to be, but this is the way that many players do it.

These examples are breaking your game. Most of the time, they’re not more fun to do than the original encounter, but players do them because they’re faster or more consistently effective than playing through the actual mechanics. These are loopholes that must be closed if raiding is going to be a serious thing and is going to be challenging.

Part of the Meta is group composition, armor choices, and rune/sigil choices. There is a generally accepted notion that Berserker’s stats and either strength runes or scholar’s runes are hands down the best. Power builds beat out condition builds, and there is often no reason to bring certain classes to a dungeon. I’ve been in groups where a necromancer joins and immediately there is a vote to kick. Or I’ve seen a warrior camping longbow auto-attacking and berating an elementalist for using dagger/focus when staff is just better.

Most of these conclusions are done with very crude napkin math and without the ability to collect empirical evidence to support one build or stat or rune over another simply because this data is so time consuming to collect. The only way to do this currently is to record the fight, and record the numbers as they scroll in the combat log. As a result, nobody really does it, and if they do it, they’re trying to prove something. When they see it, they’re done. This is confirmation bias.

As a result, damage is modeled mostly using exclusively +power or more recently either power or condition damage, but the math gets much harder when trying to take both into account. As players do both forms of damage, stat combinations like sinister and celestial become very difficult to properly model, so the facts are glossed over and build x is simply the one promoted. Please just dump the combat log to a text file so that we can parse it and make our own decisions. I’m not asking for a damage meter, only a personal log of my actions so that when a player makes a claim, they can back it up with actual data. Let the players help the developers identify problems or areas that can be improved.

Finally, I’d like to briefly discuss overlapping mechanics. Stuns/roots are an interesting mechanic. AoE fields that can kill in 2 seconds are an interesting mechanic. Rooting a player in a field that will kill them in 2 seconds, however is not an interesting mechanic. Feel what you like about World of Warcraft, this is an element that they’ve improved dramatically on for the genre, and this is one of the critical areas that they’ve focused on. I’m all for randomness in a fight, but you’ve also got to look at how these different things will interact and make rules to avoid it. Every action a boss takes should have a purpose. If it’s rooting a player, why is it rooting them? Is it about to drop a field on them that needs to be interrupted? In a case like that, it makes sense, but you have to properly telegraph it so that players know they’re supposed to interrupt. It can’t simply be that the boss floating off camera raises his bow a little.

Hopefully something in that mess is useful to you in your development process. I like this game a lot and want it to do well, but I’m pretty worried for raiding, especially with the claims you guys have made when compared to the existing content in the game.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Ohoni.6057:

Raiding is more demanding than other content, but what about that makes it more entitled to superior rewards?

You already answered your own question. Because it’s more demanding, that’s why it should have superior rewards.

No, it doesn’t automatically follow. Remember, it’s only more demanding because raiders asked for it to be so. You are basically saying, that it should have superior rewards, because you’d like it to have superior rewards.

It being more demanding doesn’t make it objectively a superior type of content. You may attach some kind of worth to it, but it’s just your personal preference, nothing more.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Ohoni.6057:

And yes, any reward you get as a raider is paid for by your fellow players, because we each contribute to the success of the game, regardless of how we play. The fewer the people who actually receive the Legendary Armor, the more people paid for you to have it.

That is complete and total utter nonsense. I don’t even get how you came to this. The only one who paid for the raids is the raiders. The raiders asked for raids in HoT. Anet saw there was a demand for raids, so they included it in HoT. Now the raiders paid for HoT so they can play those raids.

You paid for HoT for different reasons, but not for the raids. You didn’t contribute to the raiding in any – single – way. You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t pay for it. You’re not playing them and you’re not helping us getting our legendary armors.

I totally agree with this. Buy HoT for what you want, challenging group content was anounced at in the first anouncement of Heart of Thornes, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxLkfXwxLTs 18:24) and you know current group content all has unique rewards locked behind it. You know the devs are devoting a piece of their budget towards this new content as i know they devote a piece of their budget to WvW while i hardly play it these days. You buying heart of thornes does not in any single way mean that you contribute to raiding or WvW for that matter. You bought it because you like certain type of content just the same as people who like raids bought it because they like raids. The entitlement going on over 50 bucks is kittening disgusting. The devs do not owe you ANYTHING but what they promised, and they made a promise to have challenging group content, now known as raids, with unique rewards. Just like they promised new WvW borderlands and leagues in pvp, elite specs, a new class, new maps, the mastery system and the fractal update. These are selling points and they won’t change them.

Ohoni.6057:

You clearly did not read my prior example where I clearly explained this very principle, and why basketball players are entitled to rewards because of the value they ADD to the world, and why this in no way applies to raiders.

I did read it and dismissed it as irrelevant.

Raiders add as much value to the world as pro-baseball players do.

To me, as a potential raider, other fellow raiders are very valuable. More so if they’re skilled.

To Arenanet raiders are very valuable because they bought and actively play the game. Especially the people who bought HoT specifically for the raids (and who otherwise might not have bought HoT) are valuable to Anet. They’re extra players (and thus extra income) that otherwise might not have bought or played GW2/HoT.

On top of that, raids can create a new culture in GW2 (aka “raid culture”) that adds new value to the game, even beyond the game itself. Many raiders record and upload their (successful) raid attempts to YouTube, because they’re fun to watch and sometimes educative for fellow raiders who have yet to beat the raid.

Thus it gets GW2 more publicity and will potentially draw in more players who see these raid videos and think “hey, this is awesome, I wanna give this a shot myself!”.

We’ve already been over this. Anet has to expand their horizon and real new players in while keeping old players interested in the game. Many people want raids. Thus Anet added raids to the game.

Of course the raids need proper rewards to make them more appealing. Difficult content should have higher rewards. I know you disagree with that, but I don’t care. That’s how it is. That’s how games are designed, as it has proven to be a successful game-design formula over the past 2 decades. You can cry about it as much as you want but it won’t change the facts.

Ohoni.6057:

Because I’m helping to pay for them to make the content you’re playing, and for the rewards that you’re earning. Unless the active raiders make up a significant portion of the community, they cannot claim to be paying their own way.

No you aren’t. You’re paying for the content you’re playing. You contribute absolutely nothing to the raids or the raiding culture.

If everyone was like you and nobody wanted raids, HoT wouldn’t have raids. Clearly many people do want raids and will buy HoT specifically for the raids. These raiders bring in extra revenue to Anet that they otherwise wouldn’t get. Therefor Anet added raids to GW2.

The raiders pay for their own content, just like you pay for your own content.

Besides, simply buying the game doesn’t entitle you to all the rewards within that game. It simply doesn’t. That’s not how reality works. Buying the game entitles you to playing the game. That’s all you’re entitled to. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you don’t like the way GW2 or HoT is designed, you’re free to leave and find yourself another game.

Ohoni.6057:

It doesn’t work that way. We sent our money into the void, ANet decided how to split it up. If I could have said “I’m sending you this $50, but you can’t spend any of it on raid content,” then that would be great, but it wasn’t an option.

It’s exactly how it works. How do you think Anet decided on where their development budget goes? You think they just throw a dart at the dartboard and let fate dictate what their budget will be used on? No, of course not. Their budget is based on demand.

People demand challenging content. People demand raids and people demand better rewards for more difficult content. So Anet listens and gives us exactly that.

Again, buying HoT doesn’t entitle you to anything. Your logic is completely backwards. You’re not giving your money to Anet so they can develop what you want. It’s the exact opposite. Anet develops what they want and then you can decide if you think what they developed is worth your 50 bucks. That’s how capitalism works. Vote with your wallet.

Ohoni.6057:

I have to say it because you don’t get it. Ideally you would understand this going into it.

You’re the only one not getting it. You’re the one who refuses to listen to logic, reason and reality, all while just repeating yourself 100 times as if that’s gonna make your backwards logic any more logical.

Good post, i basicly agree with all of it.
Don’t make assumptions about how easy it is to fix stuff tough.
#RememberTheCulling

Astralporing.1957:

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Ohoni.6057:

Raiding is more demanding than other content, but what about that makes it more entitled to superior rewards?

You already answered your own question. Because it’s more demanding, that’s why it should have superior rewards.

No, it doesn’t automatically follow. Remember, it’s only more demanding because raiders asked for it to be so. You are basically saying, that it should have superior rewards, because you’d like it to have superior rewards.

It being more demanding doesn’t make it objectively a superior type of content. You may attach some kind of worth to it, but it’s just your personal preference, nothing more.

That’s not how it works.

Challenging content and better rewards go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other.

Without valuable rewards, the challenging content wouldn’t be worth playing. A challenging itself might be fun, but getting wiped 100 times on a raid boss is not really fun if there isn’t a grand prize waiting for you at the end.

On the other hand, the grand prize wouldn’t be a valuable if anyone could get it with no real challenge. Scarcity adds value to an object, that’s how it works, both in real-life and in videogames.

I want epic rewards, I want that grand, limited, exclusive prize. But I want to earn it. I want to be challenged for it.

When I get that grand prize, I want to feel that I got it because I earned it, because I managed to overcome a difficult challenge, because I managed to become among the top 10% best players of the game. I want to have that grand prize because I earned it and I want others to not have it because they didn’t earn it.

A lot of people feel this way. This is just how the human psyche works. That’s why games are designed the way they are. That’s why raids in HoT will have exclusive legendary armors.

Ohoni.6057:

In an actually fast map/group your time will be spent doing loads of events and not waiting around.

Sure, but the point is that even on a “fast” DT or SW map, there is a long time gap between “when you start on the map” and “when you have earned the core reward from the map,” and I believe that this time is too long.

Sure it is. That’s exactly because you can progress the map in small intervals. If it took an actual coordinated effort to progress the map then it would be a lot faster to reach the end reward. If each event was in a chain and you HAD to participate in all of them for the chance to fight the bosses then it would take a fraction of the time 9provided the team was actually good to finish them faster). The reason there is so much repetition is because of the “come when you want, leave when you want mentality”.

Why? If the fight is engaging enough you won’t “need” to go and find something else to do with your time, the fight is right there.

That’s simply not relevant. I don’t always want to do something else because the current activity bores me, I sometimes just want to do something else because I want to do something else.

What you are saying is irrelevant. If Jormag was more engaging for the time it takes to kill it would make the fight interesting and there wouldn’t be a need to make it any faster.

I know, I know, these are my problems, get over it, but in aggregate these sorts of issues make the game less approachable to people with actual human lives to juggle. If I want to set aside an hour or two for hardcore gameplay, then I can do that, but that’s not always what I want to do, and nor does that mean that I want all my time to be spent on autopilot semi-AFK clicking.

Indeed these are your problems. How is the game less approachable? If you want to fight Jormag (in this example) you set 2 hours for gameplay, if you don’t have the hours fight something else. There is loads of content for you to do, for variable amounts of time.

I want to be able to choose at any given time what I’m going, and be able to change that choice as frequently as possible, not because I necessarily intend to change activities at every opportunity, but because I might want to change activities at the second, third, or forth such opportunity, and the more “escape points” offered, the more likely one is to fall at the time that would be convenient for me to take it.

There are activities that take a variable amount of time, you don’t have time, do something else. Your personal time schedule doesn’t matter, nor your personal wants and desires. And the “escape points” are what make the game feel like a grind. Allowing players to “leave” and still get some reward is exactly what makes the game a grind. If those using those escape points got absolutely nothing then the game would be a lot better. They are already pushing towards this with making event mobs not drop loot anymore (a very good change) in SW, now they need to make all event mobs not drop loot. It’s a good start.

Oh it does make perfect sense, if you can’t see it then it’s not my problem. All you are asking for is for small 15-minute gameplay periods to progress and allow you to get any rewards in the game. That’s what I’d call an entitled person who wants everything handed to them. Won’t happen

Why is it more entitled to request a reward for completing eight 15 minute tasks than it is to request one for completing one two-hour task? They are both the same amount of time spent playing the game, why should they not offer at least close to equivalent rewards?

Talking about PVE:
A 2-hour run is a higher commitment than 8 15-minute runs. A 2-hour run has a much higher possibility of failure at any point during its duration and failure. It’s completely different to coordinate a team for 2 hours than for 15 minutes, it’s different gameplay, different mechanics and it’s not an endless repetition. Also, a 15-min run will probably stay a 15-min run forever, with very little flactuations, a 2-hour run can be done in 1-hour or 30 minutes if the event/content is a whole chain that progresses.This means that playing good, having a good composition, having knowledge of the game is actually rewarding. In a 15-minute run it doesn’t make much of a difference.

There are dungeons that take 15 minutes and they do reward coordination, team composition, skill and encounter knowledge. But, let’s remember during BWE Ascalon Catacombs Story mode took hours to finish, Swamp Fractal at release of FotM was considered a hard fractal and was re-rolled often, Dredge, Cliffside fractals were also very long and took upwards to an hour to finish. Arah was a very long dungeon too, even Twilight Arbor explorable took a great amount of time, and still does if you don’t run through and skip the mobs. What I’m saying is that even those dungeons that are done in 5 minutes NOW are not actually 5-minute content. They’ve become 5-minute content after we, as a community, learned how to play, got good compositions, builds, and expert knowledge of the mechanics.

And that’s one of the best aspects of having a “2-hour” run. How long will it stay at 2-hours? When will good player teams get it to 1 hour or 30 minutes? On the other hand, 15-minute runs that have been and always will be 15-minute runs don’t exactly have any possibility for progress or making the players doing them better themselves. And that’s another key difference between 2-hour and a 15-min content.

A 15-minute run is highly repeatable, therefore it’s just a grind. How much time they add up to is irrelevant. A 2-hour run brings out the best aspects of the game, reinforcing the game mechanics, allowing players with great knowledge to do it even faster, rewarding coordination, dedication, skill and ability. A 15-min run doesn’t do any of those, it’s just a simple grind. That’s why 2-hour runs need unique rewards not available in 15-min runs, no matter how many times you repeat the 15-min runs. And I will repeat again, dungeons taking 15 minutes after the players understand them, are not 15-min content.

So you enjoy nearly nothing in Guild Wars 2 yet you post all the time on how they should change a specific part of the game to suit your selfish needs.

Why are you still here?

Again, your impression of what I enjoy is not accurate. I could say the same for you, but I know better than to presume what another person enjoys against their own assertions.

That’s what I get from your posts.

They just added another currency-grind (The Mordrem Guard) to the game. Something every player can do. I can’t say that is a lot of fun.

So let’s hope most items will be more like what many here expect from Raids.. while we of course still don’t know if that will also be just a currency-grind. I would not be surprised. But let’s hope it’s not!

Devata.6589:

So let’s hope most items will be more like what many here expect from Raids.. while we of course still don’t know of that will also be just a currency-grind. I would not be surprised. But let’s hope it’s not!

They will add one new currency for each legendary armor piece

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

So let’s hope most items will be more like what many here expect from Raids.. while we of course still don’t know of that will also be just a currency-grind. I would not be surprised. But let’s hope it’s not!

They will add one new currency for each legendary armor piece

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Personally I hope the first raid will be really hard, but with a guaranteed precursor drop at the end.

Then in the other raids that will come later, they should add a guaranteed drop of the materials you need to turn that precursor into a legendary piece of armor.

That way, by succesfully doing all raids a bunch of times, you’ll be able to complete your legendary armor set.

This would not be a grind, because the raids will be really challenging and whenever you manage to overcome that challenge it will bring you a big step closer to your legendary armor. It would still take a long time to get your complete legendary armor because you’ll fail each raid a whole bunch of times before completing it, but it wouldn’t feel like a grind because you only have to successfully complete each raid a few times.

That’s how I see it, and that’s how I hope raids will be.

Xzygy.1452:

Each of these would be quite easy to fix, but for reasons unknown, you allow players to continue to break the game.

I think that they haven’t fixed them yet because it’s not as easy as it might look like. But more importantly they don’t want to allocate resources in fixing their broken dungeons. If they cared about their dungeons at all they would’ve fixed them already.

I hope they put more effort in their raids

I totally agree with this. Buy HoT for what you want, challenging group content was anounced at in the first anouncement of Heart of Thornes, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxLkfXwxLTs 18:24) and you know current group content all has unique rewards locked behind it. You know the devs are devoting a piece of their budget towards this new content as i know they devote a piece of their budget to WvW while i hardly play it these days

Yes, but that isn’t really the point I was making. The point I was making is that it is likely that even if you add up every penny put into this game by people who really want to raid, it would not add up to the budget spent on paying people to make raid content and rewards, meaning that portions of that budget would have been paid by players who don’t particularly enjoy raiding. That being the case, if they are going to lock rewards away from us that could have gone to us if raiding were not a thing, it needs to be justified to us why we are paying to subsidize rewards that we are arbitrarily not allowed to have.

I did read it and dismissed it as irrelevant.

I wasn’t talking to you when I said that.

Raiders add as much value to the world as pro-baseball players do.

Not even remotely, which was my point. A pro-baller is paid millions, because he brings millions in for his team. He has earned his salary. An awesome raider adds NOTHING to the rest of the game. He enjoys himself, that is all that occurs. Now you could argue that the people on his team benefit from him being good enough to make their lives easier, but in that case his “salary” should come out of their pockets, not out of the game itself. There is no reason for the GAME to reward his services as a raider, because the GAME does not benefit in any way from it.

Think of it another way, Mesmer portallers. Does a Mesmer get better rewards for running Jumping Puzzles than other players? No. Can they provide a very valuable function, in portalling other players through difficult content? Yes, a much more valuable service than a raider provides, but the game itself does not offer them any special reward for that. Other players may choose to tip them for their service, but the game does not care, because the game is not benefited by their actions.

To Arenanet raiders are very valuable because they bought and actively play the game. Especially the people who bought HoT specifically for the raids (and who otherwise might not have bought HoT) are valuable to Anet. They’re extra players (and thus extra income) that otherwise might not have bought or played GW2/HoT.

Yes, but they are not more valuable than the other players. To use the basketball scenario, in this case the Lebron James would be worth no higher salary than average joe 40 year old overweight guy. James only has extra value because his skills raise the value of the game to others. The skills of raiders do not do this.

On top of that, raids can create a new culture in GW2 (aka “raid culture”) that adds new value to the game, even beyond the game itself. Many raiders record and upload their (successful) raid attempts to YouTube, because they’re fun to watch and sometimes educative for fellow raiders who have yet to beat the raid.

Thus it gets GW2 more publicity and will potentially draw in more players who see these raid videos and think “hey, this is awesome, I wanna give this a shot myself!”.

Yeah, but players of any skill level can do this with any sort of content, some of GW2’s more popular videos are just Wooden Potatoes doing any silly thing he thought up that the game does not have any rules for. Now if raiders do post videos, and those videos do provide a valid advertising service, then maybe ANet could directly reward those specific players for that specific service, but there’s no reason that should extend to all raiders deserving to have special rewards, any more than that the viewership of the sPvP tournaments mean that all PvPers deserve bonus rewards.

We’ve already been over this. Anet has to expand their horizon and real new players in while keeping old players interested in the game. Many people want raids. Thus Anet added raids to the game.

And we’ve already been over the fact that myself, and most other players do not have a problem with them adding the raids themselves, we have a problem with those raids including rewards that non-raiders might reasonably want to have. Take the rewards out of the equation and I’m perfectly content to live and let live.

Challenging content and better rewards go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other.

Sure you can, you just make challenging content without better rewards. It’s shockingly simple, really. There are thousands of games on the market that have an “easy mode” and a “hard mode” and maybe a “nightmare mode” or somesuch, and offer absolutely no reward differences between these modes, except perhaps an added achievement, which you’ve already dismissed as being “not reward enough.” This idea that “with difficult content must come great rewards” is nonsense.

Without valuable rewards, the challenging content wouldn’t be worth playing. A challenging itself might be fun, but getting wiped 100 times on a raid boss is not really fun if there isn’t a grand prize waiting for you at the end.

Man goes into the doctor, swings his arm above his head and says “doctor, every time I swing my arm like this, it hurts,” doctor says “stop swinging your arm like that.”

If you aren’t enjoying the content, then stop doing it. do something else instead. It’s ok. No reason you should be doing content that you don’t enjoy. There are some people that enjoy the feeling of finally overcoming difficult content after the 101st try, and for those people, they might push through it, but if all you’re looking for is the prize, if that’s what’s important to you, then you should have other methods of earning it.

On the other hand, the grand prize wouldn’t be a valuable if anyone could get it with no real challenge. Scarcity adds value to an object, that’s how it works, both in real-life and in videogames.

You don’t need challenge to generate scarcity. We all seem to agree that almost nothing currently in the game is incredibly challenging to earn, and yet many items are scarce and rare and valued, mostly by virtue of RNG or high material costs. I’m not a fan of RNG, but I don’t see why skilled players are more deserving of nice things than lucky ones, so I don’t view skill-based filters as morally superior to RNG-based ones. And system designed to create haves and havenots based on factors outside their control is inherently flawed.

When I get that grand prize, I want to feel that I got it because I earned it, because I managed to overcome a difficult challenge, because I managed to become among the top 10% best players of the game. I want to have that grand prize because I earned it and I want others to not have it because they didn’t earn it.

And that’s kind of the problem because even if you are one of the top 10%, or even one of the top 1%, that doesn’t mean you’ve earned anything better than the bottom 1%, or that you’re actually superior to them as a member of the game’s playerbase. You’re both just customers, and your only worth to the game is in how much each of you has put in. If you, with your “top 1% play” only put in $120 over the life of the game, while they, with their “bottom 1% play” have put in $121, then they are worth more than you are, and they have earned greater rewards than you have by the only measure that actually matters.

Sure it is. That’s exactly because you can progress the map in small intervals. If it took an actual coordinated effort to progress the map then it would be a lot faster to reach the end reward. If each event was in a chain and you HAD to participate in all of them for the chance to fight the bosses then it would take a fraction of the time 9provided the team was actually good to finish them faster). The reason there is so much repetition is because of the “come when you want, leave when you want mentality”.

That’s not true at all. The reason that there’s repetition is because they wanted repetition. Purely arbitrary. Here’s how they could fix Dry Top in fairly short order:

1. Take Favor of the Zephyrites, and make it entirely personal. Make it a buff that stacks up on you as you complete an event, with different events offering different amounts based on the time they take to complete. FotZ ranking is used to determine how many geodes you earn per phase, and the prices you get in the stores. Your personal favor would stay intact until you either A. left the zone, or B. completed a post-sandstorm event, givign you time after the storm to shop in peace.

2. Also include a “Dry Top Threat Alert” meta, this would behave similarly to the current Favor tracker, and would be map-based, but would only impact which bosses are summoned. It would be possible for a player to grind out FotZ T6 for himself, even if the map only ended up T2-3, and he would still be pulling down nearly maximum geodes.

3. Keep the DT schedule from xx:00 through xx:15. Remove the DT schedule from xx:15-xx:40. Retain the schedule from xx:40-50. This would result in a 25 minute cycle. Add on another five minutes of duststorm, and shift the Chickenado and Skritt Queen spawns to the same time as the Devourer Queen, giving you 10 minutes to choose waht you want to do there. There you go, a 30 minute single cycle with no repetition, and then if you want to play for a whole hour you just do the whole thing twice.

There are two basic principles to this change, one, it speeds up the cycle so that you can complete a full cycle in less time and move on if you wish. Two, it greatly reduces the impact of players you have nothing to do with. The further an event is from your location, the less influence you have on its success or failure, the less your own rewards should be beholden to its outcome. If a group of players are kicking kitten at the “zerg chain” events, then it shouldn’t matter to them if nobody is doing chains in the Repair station area, they should still get the rewards for the portion that they are doing.

What you are saying is irrelevant. If Jormag was more engaging for the time it takes to kill it would make the fight interesting and there wouldn’t be a need to make it any faster.

Again, two completely separate points. Yes, if Claw content was more engaging, then it would less need to be faster, but it would still need to be faster, ideally. If it were more engaging then it would be more fun, and people would mind less that they had to take 20-30 minutes to complete it, but there would still be people that wanted to get to Fire Elemental on time, or that just had anything else they wanted to get to, so shorter would still be better for them, even if they were enjoying themselves well enough. So Claw should get some upgrades to make it more interesting, but it should also end quicker (and maybe repeat more often).

Indeed these are your problems. How is the game less approachable? If you want to fight Jormag (in this example) you set 2 hours for gameplay, if you don’t have the hours fight something else. There is loads of content for you to do, for variable amounts of time.

But that’s just the thing, you guys keep saying “you should be willing to make hard choices between two imperfect alternatives if you want to play this game.” “You should have to choose between either committing to an event that runs longer than is convenient for you, or not engage in it at all.” “You should either agree to do content that you do not enjoy, or be willing to permanently give up on the rewards attached to it.”

And ultimately, if those are the other options, then one does have to make that choice. But those don’t HAVE to be the only options! The options CAN be more flexible, more accommodating of players of varying skill levels and varying amount of available time, and varying interests, and largely this game succeeds by being better at this than many other games on the market, but it had room for improvement, and also room to get much, much worse, and you seem to advocate strongly for the latter.

There are activities that take a variable amount of time, you don’t have time, do something else. Your personal time schedule doesn’t matter, nor your personal wants and desires.

If we’re just talking about me? Yeah, my personal schedule doesn’t matter. But if we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of players, all of whom have their own personal schedules to deal with, yeah, OUR time matters, OUR schedule matters.

And the “escape points” are what make the game feel like a grind. Allowing players to “leave” and still get some reward is exactly what makes the game a grind. If those using those escape points got absolutely nothing then the game would be a lot better.

That’s utter nonsense. There is no logic or value to be found in these statements.

A 2-hour run is a higher commitment than 8 15-minute runs.

So? There is no inherent value in committing to a period of time. It is not something inherently worthy of reward. It’s like saying someone deserves special treatment because their eyes are green.

A 2-hour run has a much higher possibility of failure at any point during its duration and failure.

That really depends on how it’s designed. A 2 hour run is no more likely to fail than each 15 minute run is, it’s just that if you fail the 15 minute one then you only lose 15 minutes, while if you fail the 2 hour one you lose the whole time spent to that point. That doesn’t have to be the case though, if there are plenty of opportunities to recover. Yeah, if you fail a two hour run and are set back 10-15 minutes then it would take you that much longer to fully complete it, but no longer than it would take the 15-minute player to run his 9th event.

It’s completely different to coordinate a team for 2 hours than for 15 minutes, it’s different gameplay, different mechanics and it’s not an endless repetition. Also, a 15-min run will probably stay a 15-min run forever, with very little flactuations, a 2-hour run can be done in 1-hour or 30 minutes if the event/content is a whole chain that progresses.This means that playing good, having a good composition, having knowledge of the game is actually rewarding. In a 15-minute run it doesn’t make much of a difference.

Yeah, but so what? If that’s something you enjoy, then doing it is the reward for doing it. If that’s all stuff that you find to be a hassle, then nobody is forcing you to do it. I complained above that I resented you guys insisting that I choose between two bad choices, “do the content OR never get the reward,”well in this case, nobody is saying that you even have to choose a bad option, you still get the options “play the sort of long content you like OR don’t, whatever.” All I’ve been asking for is that alongside you being allowed to make that choice for yourself, allow others to make the same choice for themselves,. without punishing them for choosing differently than you.

They’ve become 5-minute content after we, as a community, learned how to play, got good compositions, builds, and expert knowledge of the mechanics.

Which is true of some content, but there’s still a lot of content in this game that has very fixed timeframes, based on either hard countdowns, or wave spawning enemies that come at a set pace even if you kill them as fast as possible, and while you can make them more efficient, you really can’t do much to speed them up.

On the other hand, 15-minute runs that have been and always will be 15-minute runs don’t exactly have any possibility for progress or making the players doing them better themselves. And that’s another key difference between 2-hour and a 15-min content.

I know Teq takes longer than its 15 minute timer, but not necessarily by much, and people have put a sizable dent in his minimal kill time over the years. Even five minutes for an encounter is plenty of room for people to shave it down from the maximum time allotted.

A 15-minute run is highly repeatable, therefore it’s just a grind. How much time they add up to is irrelevant.

I don’t think a single 15 minute event should repeat in an endless loop, but I do think that several 15 minute events can chain together and then loop back around, and if you just pop in for one of those 15 minute segments then you should get a reward for that and be able to move on, rather than having to stick around through the entire chain to get the “good reward.”

They just added another currency-grind (The Mordrem Guard) to the game. Something every player can do. I can’t say that is a lot of fun.

It’s not, the current event is a big mess, but it could have been done much better.

maddoctor.2738:

Xzygy.1452:

Each of these would be quite easy to fix, but for reasons unknown, you allow players to continue to break the game.

I think that they haven’t fixed them yet because it’s not as easy as it might look like. But more importantly they don’t want to allocate resources in fixing their broken dungeons. If they cared about their dungeons at all they would’ve fixed them already.

I hope they put more effort in their raids

Some solutions would be easy to execute without too many development cycles. For example:

• In Molten Furnace, move the fence in just a little bit to eliminate the corner. Increase the smasher’s aoe to prevent players from standing under it.
• In thaumanova and swamp, close the door and lock the players in.
• In aetherblade, remove the terrain players wedge themselves into.
• In Mai Trin, remove Ellen’s ability to revive.
• For linecasting, change it from missiles to a pulsing aoe to accomplish the desired amount of damage in the aoe per target This would also fix similar exploits using missile based aoe against walls.

Generally, have a minimum time in mind that the boss is supposed to be alive. When the boss dies before that minimum, dump that session’s data so that a developer can replay it. We’ve been told that GW2 has one of the best metrics subsystems in the industry, I’d like to see them use it.

I don’t think these suggestions would take much time to implement, and I’m not suggesting that they should focus on this, but it speaks to the history of allowing exploitation, which needs to change, otherwise raids will just be bigger dungeons where we all stand in the corner mashing stability and cleaving blindly until the boss dies.

Ohoni.6057:

Yeah, but players if any skill level can do this with any sort of content, some of GW2’s more popular videos are just Wooden Potatoes doing any silly thing he thought up that the game does not have any rules for.

Mate the whole reason he tought up this challenge was because he is looking for harder content. WP is also one of the biggest supporters for unique rewards. And his channel is popular because he not only discusses the news, but also isn’t scared to directly point out what GW2 is doing wrong for him. And his views are in total direct opposition to your own. His videos being super popular in terms of GW2 content does not bode well for you saying it’s a “minority” of people who want exclusive rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

If you reward more difficult content more than you do less difficult content, then all that does is provide disproportionate rewards depending on the players’ skill, and since each is an equally valuable customer, there is no actual justification for doing so.

The rewards are fully proportionate to the challenge completed. You seem to think that every game must appeal to the largest group possible when that is only one goal you can choose for the game you’re developing. Having to clobber the troll for the next fancy upgrade instead of murdering bats for an hour is fundamental to a number of genres and a fairly uncontroversial game element. It’s even less of a problem in GW2 because the fanciest rewards are cosmetic rather than functional.

Mastery being rewarded is very popular not the least because people lack that in their daily lives. Very few of us have any real control over our work and have little connection to what we do other than needing to do it to continue living. Games that properly reward people for understanding what it’s about and putting in effort to improve are appealing because of this void. MMOs in general are very much about reaching clear goals and receiving proportional acknowledgement for it. So that’s all part of the justification.

Ohoni.6057:

1. Take Favor of the Zephyrites, and make it entirely personal.

That defeats the purpose of it being group content. Although it would help with a lot of DT troubles, there is a reason they made the stacking buff in SW personal. If it’s personal it would make it worse for players who want to do DT on small bursts though, goes against the 15-minute content.

2. Also include a “Dry Top Threat Alert” meta

So I would get maximum geodes by doing only the easiest events possible and ignore the harder ones. Good in theory but has loads of holes. Once again the path of least resistance

There are two basic principles to this change, one, it speeds up the cycle so that you can complete a full cycle in less time and move on if you wish.

The entire mechanic of Dry Top is to split the players so they do multiple events at the same time, it’s not very successful at doing that, but with your idea there would be no point in splitting. Players would form a huge blob and go from event to event, they will start calling out and trash talking anyone who is doing the next events and doesn’t follow the trains. In general with your suggestions we will have another champion train.

So Claw should get some upgrades to make it more interesting, but it should also end quicker (and maybe repeat more often).

I disagree and agree at the same time. Bosses on timers are terrible designs, what should be done on bosses like the Claw (which are supposed to be end-game) is to make the duration of the fight variable based on the skill of the participating players. Currently if you get enough DPS it will be faster, but still not fast enough, if the mechanics of the fight were completely different and allowed skillful play to reduce the time needed to finish the fight then it would be different. For example, allow the golems to do way more damage to the Claw, but players would actually need to escort them, buff them, heal them, provide swiftness, drag bosses away of them etc. It’s already been done, but it’s not impactful enough.

There are activities that take a variable amount of time, you don’t have time, do something else. Your personal time schedule doesn’t matter, nor your personal wants and desires.

If we’re just talking about me? Yeah, my personal schedule doesn’t matter. But if we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of players, all of whom have their own personal schedules to deal with, yeah, OUR time matters, OUR schedule matters.

No it doesn’t matter because there is content for everyone. Why do you want to be able to do anything regardless of how much time you have available?

And the “escape points” are what make the game feel like a grind. Allowing players to “leave” and still get some reward is exactly what makes the game a grind. If those using those escape points got absolutely nothing then the game would be a lot better.

That’s utter nonsense. There is no logic or value to be found in these statements.

If you got nothing if you leave an event in progress, then it would lead to higher participation in those events. If the game checked every so often if you are doing something meaningful so you can’t spam 1 for 1 minute then go afk and get rewards that could also help the game. Allowing players to stop and leave when they want and still keep rewards is bad design. See how they tried to “fix” this by making event mobs not give loot, so you have to stay at the event for the duration to get any reward.

A 2-hour run is a higher commitment than 8 15-minute runs.

So? There is no inherent value in committing to a period of time. It is not something inherently worthy of reward. It’s like saying someone deserves special treatment because their eyes are green.

That’s exactly what is inherently worthy of a reward. Commitment. It’s like saying that the winning team of the Eurobasket isn’t worth special treatment. Or any team on any game that strives to be better.

A 2-hour run has a much higher possibility of failure at any point during its duration and failure.

That really depends on how it’s designed. A 2 hour run is no more likely to fail than each 15 minute run is, it’s just that if you fail the 15 minute one then you only lose 15 minutes, while if you fail the 2 hour one you lose the whole time spent to that point. That doesn’t have to be the case though, if there are plenty of opportunities to recover. Yeah, if you fail a two hour run and are set back 10-15 minutes then it would take you that much longer to fully complete it, but no longer than it would take the 15-minute player to run his 9th event.

That’s not the case because 15-minute runs also have less mechanics and less content to deal with. Having to fight 10 different bosses is different than fighting 1 boss 10 times. More content to identify, more content to master, more content to find tactics and builds for.

Yeah, but so what? If that’s something you enjoy, then doing it is the reward for doing it.

No it’s not.

All I’ve been asking for is that alongside you being allowed to make that choice for yourself, allow others to make the same choice for themselves,. without punishing them for choosing differently than you.

The choice isn’t made by the players but by the developers, they are the ones putting rewards behind specific content.

They’ve become 5-minute content after we, as a community, learned how to play, got good compositions, builds, and expert knowledge of the mechanics.

Which is true of some content, but there’s still a lot of content in this game that has very fixed timeframes, based on either hard countdowns, or wave spawning enemies that come at a set pace even if you kill them as fast as possible, and while you can make them more efficient, you really can’t do much to speed them up.

And that’s one of the problems with the game. Allowing players to do content faster and faster (or more and more efficiently if we don’t count speed) when playing better is one of the best aspects of good content.

A 15-minute run is highly repeatable, therefore it’s just a grind. How much time they add up to is irrelevant.

I don’t think a single 15 minute event should repeat in an endless loop, but I do think that several 15 minute events can chain together and then loop back around, and if you just pop in for one of those 15 minute segments then you should get a reward for that and be able to move on, rather than having to stick around through the entire chain to get the “good reward.”

Sticking for the entire chain should always give better rewards, than repeating a single part of it multiple times. And that’s how it works currently with many types of content in the game. The problem is, the game allows players to skip parts of it and go only for the final part (which has the unique rewards, see: Vinewrath) which is another sad design concept. Porting to do VW doesn’t help anyone but those who are after the unique loot of the encounter, they take advantage of the work others put in and get their unique rewards for doing nothing.

Mate the whole reason he tought up this challenge was because he is looking for harder content. WP is also one of the biggest supporters for unique rewards. And his channel is popular because he not only discusses the news, but also isn’t scared to directly point out what GW2 is doing wrong for him. And his views are in total direct opposition to your own. His videos being super popular in terms of GW2 content does not bode well for you saying it’s a “minority” of people who want exclusive rewards.

I’m not criticizing WP, love his videos and support his Patreon, but that doesn’t mean that I agree with him on everything and some of his opinions on “elite” content I just don’t agree, but I still enjoy his work. My point was just that you don’t need to be an exceptional player to produce videos that help promote the game. Eexa barely even plays the content at all in her videos.

I was also pointing out that just because the game doesn’t enforce challenging conditions on the players, doesn’t mean you can’t enforce your own challenges, and punish or reward yourself according to your performance. He does “permadeath” runs, and nothing forces him to kill that character when they fail, aside from his own self-control, but he does it nonetheless. I think that the game should provide you opportunities for challenges, things where you can choose to kick things up a notch, but it should also leave in ways that those who are not seeking those challenges can avoid them, and not be punished for that choice.

His videos being super popular in terms of GW2 content does not bode well for you saying it’s a “minority” of people who want exclusive rewards.

Lol, I don’t think it’s fair to say that even a tiny fraction of his viewership (which even he admits is not that huge in the grand scheme of things) agrees with him on every issue. I’m sure there are people who agree with him about elite content, but don’t care about lore, or that enjoy what he adds about lore, but don’t care about PvP, or that love sPvP, but couldn’t care less about elitism, it takes all kinds, just like the game itself.

Mastery being rewarded is very popular not the least because people lack that in their daily lives. Very few of us have any real control over our work and have little connection to what we do other than needing to do it to continue living. Games that properly reward people for understanding what it’s about and putting in effort to improve are appealing because of this void. MMOs in general are very much about reaching clear goals and receiving proportional acknowledgement for it. So that’s all part of the justification.

But what would you say to players who felt that a raid type encounter is no more “freeing” to them than the oppressive work life you described yourself escaping from? Why not offer them an escape as well?

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, but that isn’t really the point I was making. The point I was making is that it is likely that even if you add up every penny put into this game by people who really want to raid, it would not add up to the budget spent on paying people to make raid content and rewards, meaning that portions of that budget would have been paid by players who don’t particularly enjoy raiding.

How do you know? Do you have numbers? Or are you just guessing?

Because I don’t think what you say is true. If adding raids to GW2 was not profitable for Anet, they wouldn’t do it.

Therefor I doubt what you say is true. I highly doubt that. Because in your assumed situation it would not be profitable for Anet to develop raids .

Ohoni.6057:

That being the case, if they are going to lock rewards away from us that could have gone to us if raiding were not a thing, it needs to be justified to us why we are paying to subsidize rewards that we are arbitrarily not allowed to have.

No, Anet doesn’t have to justify anything to you. If you’re not happy with Anet’s business practices (which really aren’t all that outlandish, considering 99% of all games on the market follow a similar formula) then simply don’t buy HoT. It’s that simple.

Ohoni.6057:

Not even remotely, which was my point. A pro-baller is paid millions, because he brings millions in for his team. He has earned his salary. An awesome raider adds NOTHING to the rest of the game.

And once again you’re missing the point completely.

People who buy HoT for raiding earn Anet money, which is all that matters.

Ohoni.6057:

There is no reason for the GAME to reward his services as a raider, because the GAME does not benefit in any way from it.

Yes there is. If the rewards for raids weren’t proportional to the challenge the raids offer then there would be no incentive to do those raids.

You can say “yeah but shouldn’t you enjoy raids for the challenge and no the rewards?” but that’s simply not how it works. Wiping 100+ times on a raid is only fun as long as you know that you’ll get something extremely awesome at the end when you do succeed, something you’d otherwise not be able to get.

Anet is smart enough to realize this, you clearly aren’t.

Ohoni.6057:

Yeah, but players of any skill level can do this with any sort of content, some of GW2’s more popular videos are just Wooden Potatoes doing any silly thing he thought up that the game does not have any rules for.

Funny that you mention Wooden Potatoes. He’s actually on my side. He feels the same way about GW2’s current lack of challenging content as I do. He also feels the same way about raids as I do. I’m sure Wooden Potatoes will stream his raid attempts when HoT comes out and I’m sure it will draw in a lot of viewers, possibly even more than his current “silly content”.

I fact, the vast majority feel the same way as Wooden Potatoes and I do. That’s why raids and the rewards are designed the way they are. You my friend, are the very tiny but very vocal minority.

Ohoni.6057:

And we’ve already been over the fact that myself, and most other players do not have a problem with them adding the raids themselves, we have a problem with those raids including rewards that non-raiders might reasonably want to have.

Stop you there bro. YOU have a problem with those raids including rewards that non-raiders won’t get. There is no “we”. Only you and a very few others feel that way. The vast majority feels the same way I do.

Ohoni.6057:

Take the rewards out of the equation and I’m perfectly content to live and let live.

Yes, YOU. But the vast majority would not. There would be no incentive to play raids and raids would quickly become a barren wasteland, only played by a very small amount of people. Raids would then end up the same way dungeons ended up in GW2. That’s a mistake Anet won’t make twice. Hence raids will have exclusive, valuable rewards that you can’t get anywhere else in the game.

Is it bribing people into playing raids? Maybe. But it works and the majority of people are content with it.

Ohoni.6057:

Sure you can, you just make challenging content without better rewards.

Which would be bad game design. Look, I don’t like to wave around my credentials in an argument like this nor do I wish to bring my personal life into this, but in this case I feel like I have to: I’m a game designer myself. Not a hobbyist game designer. A professional one.

So, take it from me, as a professional game designer, that challenging content without better rewards would be poor game design.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s shockingly simple, really. There are thousands of games on the market that have an “easy mode” and a “hard mode” and maybe a “nightmare mode” or somesuch, and offer absolutely no reward differences between these modes, except perhaps an added achievement, which you’ve already dismissed as being “not reward enough.” This idea that “with difficult content must come great rewards” is nonsense.

Actually, many of those games do give you extra rewards when you play them on higher difficulties or beat them within a certain time-limit.

And those games that don’t give you any extra rewards for playing/beating them on higher difficulty settings, are those games singleplayer games or multiplayer games?

You don’t need to answer that question, because I already know the answer. They’re all singleplayer games, which is an entirely different beast than multiplayer or MMO games.

Ohoni.6057:

If you aren’t enjoying the content, then stop doing it. do something else instead. It’s ok. No reason you should be doing content that you don’t enjoy. There are some people that enjoy the feeling of finally overcoming difficult content after the 101st try, and for those people, they might push through it, but if all you’re looking for is the prize, if that’s what’s important to you, then you should have other methods of earning it.

I never said that challenging content isn’t fun to me. It is. But not nearly as fun as challenging content with a nice prize at the end. But that’s the thing. Challenging content is fun as long as there is a grand price waiting for you at the end.

You also seem to have missed that I (and many others) don’t want the prize just handed to us (which is what you want) because it wouldn’t feel like much of a prize in that case.

I want the prize, but I want to earn it. I want to be challenged, defeated, challenged again, overcome the challenge and finally earn the prize.

Ohoni.6057:

You don’t need challenge to generate scarcity.

There are only 4 ways of creating scarcity:

1) Putting it behind challenging content.

2) Putting it behind a huge grind wall.

3) Putting it behind insane RNG.

4) Making the item available for only a very limited time.

Now which one of those 4 options do you think most people find the most fun? Which one of those 4 options do you think most people find fair and acceptable?

I know you’d personally never answer “number 1”, but that’s just you. I can tell you, the vast majority of players do find number 1 the most appealing options out of those four options. Or maybe a combination of 1 and 3. But absolutely nobody likes 2 and 4. At least no one I know.

Ohoni.6057:

And system designed to create haves and havenots based on factors outside their control is inherently flawed.

I agree. Which is what scarcity through RNG does. That’s why I’m not a huge fan of RNG either.

A system designed to create haves and havenots based on challenge doesn’t do that though. In such a system, you are entirely in control of whether you become a have or stay a havenot.

Ohoni.6057:

And that’s kind of the problem because even if you are one of the top 10%, or even one of the top 1%, that doesn’t mean you’ve earned anything better than the bottom 1%.

Euhm, yes it does.

Ohoni.6057:

You’re both just customers, and your only worth to the game is in how much each of you has put in. If you, with your “top 1% play” only put in $120 over the life of the game, while they, with their “bottom 1% play” have put in $121, then they are worth more than you are, and they have earned greater rewards than you have by the only measure that actually matters.

Euhm no, that’s not how it works. It maybe works like that in pay2win games, but GW2 isn’t p2w.

But sure, lets go with you faulty logic. I’ve bought GW2 twice, both the core game and HoT (as in: I own 2 copies of GW2 and 2 copies of HoT). I’ve spend quite a bit of money on gems as well. So, according to your logic, I’m worth more than you are. And because I’m worth more than you, I deserve more than you do.

So there you have it. Now gimme my exclusive rewards Anet. You’ve heard it. I paid more than most people, so I obviously deserve my exclusive rewards.

(Obviously I’m not serious in that last paragraph, I’m just pointing out how ridiculous your argument is, in case you didn’t get it and take my last paragraph at face-value.)

Mate the whole reason he tought up this challenge was because he is looking for harder content. WP is also one of the biggest supporters for unique rewards. And his channel is popular because he not only discusses the news, but also isn’t scared to directly point out what GW2 is doing wrong for him. And his views are in total direct opposition to your own. His videos being super popular in terms of GW2 content does not bode well for you saying it’s a “minority” of people who want exclusive rewards.

I’m not criticizing WP, love his videos and support his Patreon, but that doesn’t mean that I agree with him on everything and some of his opinions on “elite” content I just don’t agree, but I still enjoy his work. My point was just that you don’t need to be an exceptional player to produce videos that help promote the game. Eexa barely even plays the content at all in her videos.

I was also pointing out that just because the game doesn’t enforce challenging conditions on the players, doesn’t mean you can’t enforce your own challenges, and punish or reward yourself according to your performance. He does “permadeath” runs, and nothing forces him to kill that character when they fail, aside from his own self-control, but he does it nonetheless. I think that the game should provide you opportunities for challenges, things where you can choose to kick things up a notch, but it should also leave in ways that those who are not seeking those challenges can avoid them, and not be punished for that choice.

His videos being super popular in terms of GW2 content does not bode well for you saying it’s a “minority” of people who want exclusive rewards.

Lol, I don’t think it’s fair to say that even a tiny fraction of his viewership (which even he admits is not that huge in the grand scheme of things) agrees with him on every issue. I’m sure there are people who agree with him about elite content, but don’t care about lore, or that enjoy what he adds about lore, but don’t care about PvP, or that love sPvP, but couldn’t care less about elitism, it takes all kinds, just like the game itself.

Mastery being rewarded is very popular not the least because people lack that in their daily lives. Very few of us have any real control over our work and have little connection to what we do other than needing to do it to continue living. Games that properly reward people for understanding what it’s about and putting in effort to improve are appealing because of this void. MMOs in general are very much about reaching clear goals and receiving proportional acknowledgement for it. So that’s all part of the justification.

But what would you say to players who felt that a raid type encounter is no more “freeing” to them than the oppressive work life you described yourself escaping from? Why not offer them an escape as well?

That defeats the purpose of it being group content. Although it would help with a lot of DT troubles, there is a reason they made the stacking buff in SW personal. If it’s personal it would make it worse for players who want to do DT on small bursts though, goes against the 15-minute content.

It wouldn’t defeat the purpose of it being group content, as being in good groups would allow you to complete more of the events, but still you would not be punished for events that take place entirely outside your control. And yes, you would have to complete the 30 minute block to get the max possible reward out of it, but no more than that, you’d start fresh at that point, and that is much better than the current system in which you either need to spend an entire hour there, or log in late and coast on other people’s achievements. With this method, if you popped in fresh during the sandstorm period, you would be earning “t1 level” amounts of geodes from the events.

So I would get maximum geodes by doing only the easiest events possible and ignore the harder ones. Good in theory but has loads of holes. Once again the path of least resistance

Well, keep in mind two things. First, the maximum possible geodes (and other loot) would come from unlocking all the biggest bosses, which would still require a mapwide effort, so going for “full T6” would still be the ideal, but getting a personal T6 and a mapwide T4 would not be the end of the world. Second, as I said they would have to scale the favor gain based on the events, so that they balance out. There are a half-dozen or so events you can do as part of the “zerg train” on the map, these would have to reward lower personal favor than some of the more out of the way and/or time consuming ones, which you could not complete as easily. This way it would balance out so that if you did all the zerg ones before the storm, OR 2-3 of the longer chain ones, either way would give you maxed favor.

The entire mechanic of Dry Top is to split the players so they do multiple events at the same time, it’s not very successful at doing that, but with your idea there would be no point in splitting. Players would form a huge blob and go from event to event, they will start calling out and trash talking anyone who is doing the next events and doesn’t follow the trains. In general with your suggestions we will have another champion train.

Maybe, on the non-max maps, but that’s mostly what we get anyways. Out of an entire map, it only takes around four small groups of 3-5 to split off the main party occasionally, it’s not like the map ever splits evenly into 3-5 pools. I don’t think they typically need to split zergs like that. If they only want a small number of people in an area, then just set the map cap lower and let people do what they want.

One thing that’s important though is that when you have any even that requires total participation for success, then require total participation. The Queen’s Jubilee map should never have had the Gauntlet set up above it. The Silverwastes map should never have the jumping puzzle, story mode missions, collections, or various other “not running Silverwastes” content. Same with Dry Top. At most they should have two separate versions of the map, and allow players to choose between the one that has all the various “side content” on it, or the one that is all about the meta chain, without players having to try and establish that using rudimentary options at best like clears and finding new maps.

I disagree and agree at the same time. Bosses on timers are terrible designs, what should be done on bosses like the Claw (which are supposed to be end-game) is to make the duration of the fight variable based on the skill of the participating players.

True, I dislike “fail timers” myself, and would prefer if weaker groups just took longer to complete it, but even that aside I think that Claw should be balanced so that an average group can complete it faster than the current average, and a “prime” group could complete it much faster still. And sure, more mechanics would be better. Like on phase 1, I’d like them to make both “gutters” into death fields, and a weaker “death field” against the back wall, so if you get Feared into it you take damage, and make it so that the attacks are sent faster than usual, but in exchange they make the old heat shield “bug” into a feature, and allow you to cancel the channel to have a low cooldown, which means you can use it constantly, but still need to time it right because if you use it too early or late you get hit, while if you allow it to go full channel then you lose your shield for 30 seconds.

No it doesn’t matter because there is content for everyone. Why do you want to be able to do anything regardless of how much time you have available?

Because we’re talking about having exclusive content arbitrarily locked behind specific content. So long as that’s on the table, “something for everyone” is not. If it’s “something for everyone,” but content A offers reward A and content B offers reward B, then every time a player decides what to do, he might enjoy content A, but not care about reward A, and be unable to earn reward B through his efforts there.

“Content for everyone” has to include people being able to run the content that is for them, while also working towards the rewards that are “for them.”

If you got nothing if you leave an event in progress, then it would lead to higher participation in those events. If the game checked every so often if you are doing something meaningful so you can’t spam 1 for 1 minute then go afk and get rewards that could also help the game.

Well that’s something different. I’m not saying you should be able to leave in the middle of a single event without consequence, like the “tag and run” situation. I’m saying that each event should only last a relatively short period of time, and there should be little or no reward for doing multiple parts in a row, in most cases, so if a chain has parts A, B, and C, you could do all three, or you could do A, and leave to do something else entirely, or just do C, whatever, and each step would reward you according to the difficulty of that step, not based on its position in the chain.

Other than that, I fully agree that they could do more to balance out the impact of “tagging,” on how events reward content. In some cases it’s actually too difficult for some builds (like ones where a big zerg can wipe the enemy out before solo players can deal enough damage to enough enemies to qualify), and in many it’s too easy to get minimal participation credit. I would not at all object to them using more clever ways of determining your actual contribution, and of requiring more attention of the players in at least most aspects of the game.

See how they tried to “fix” this by making event mobs not give loot, so you have to stay at the event for the duration to get any reward.

Yeah, which is one of the major flaws of the current Mordrem event, and makes it significantly less satisfying to play. The VB maps too, although I don’t pay as much attention to loot in the betas since I won’t get to keep any of it anyways.

That’s exactly what is inherently worthy of a reward. Commitment. It’s like saying that the winning team of the Eurobasket isn’t worth special treatment. Or any team on any game that strives to be better.

They aren’t. They are only worthy of as much praise as people see fit to give them. If they impress you, great. If they don’t impress someone else, equally as great. They only deserve to be rewarded proportionate to the amount they bring in. If their presence attracts TV viewership and therefore ad revenue, or sells products, then they are worth paying. If they perform equally as well on a personal level, but do not attract those viewers or sales, then they deserve nothing more than the satisfaction of having done a good job.

That’s not the case because 15-minute runs also have less mechanics and less content to deal with. Having to fight 10 different bosses is different than fighting 1 boss 10 times. More content to identify, more content to master, more content to find tactics and builds for.

Perhaps, although they could balance that factor with a gentle diminishing returns in a single area, so that you would have a nudge toward seeking out ten different bosses instead of constantly killing the same 1-2.

The choice isn’t made by the players but by the developers, they are the ones putting rewards behind specific content.

And all I’ve been asking for is that they allow others to make the same choice for themselves, without punishing them for choosing differently than the devs might choose for themselves.

Sticking for the entire chain should always give better rewards, than repeating a single part of it multiple times.

Why? I mean, repeating the same bit isn’t really feasible, you’d have to keep coming back exactly when that bit started and it wouldn’t usually be on a fixed timer. There’s no real reason you should have to stick around for the entire chain, all you should have to do is complete one portion, one discrete collection of actions, and then if you want to stay, stay, if you’d rather be doing something else, feel free to go do that thing instead without feeling that you wasted your time on the first step.

The problem is, the game allows players to skip parts of it and go only for the final part (which has the unique rewards, see: Vinewrath) which is another sad design concept.

Well, if they have ramping rewards like that, then you do need to stick around, I’m just saying, that shouldn’t be the norm. I described how I’d fix SW, and I’ll be much more brief here, but basically it would involve tightening up the number of defense you need to do to trigger a breech (speeding up the entire chain process by about 50% or more), tightening up the rules for building the personal buff so that it’s harder to gimmick, and then having the breech and final boss, so that if you did everything from the start you’d get the current full reward, while if you just popped in at the last minute, the VW rewards would be less impressive. You should still get something decent for just doing the VW, it is a fairly complex encounter in its own right worthy of reward, just not as much as if you did the whole chain.

But most content should not be like that, each phase should reward roughly equivalent to their own difficulty, not each being more rewarding than the last.

If history is anything to go on, these will get fixed when gw3 has been released for about 9 months.

In gw1 we had glitches that were way more game breaking.
The ability to teleport through non-permanent objects using res scrolls was only fixed when I myself plus others I’m sure, as users of said res scroll exploit detailed exactly how this bug was being abused.

We had a skill that would teleport you to a dead corpse of an enemy. This allowed us to travel through gates, and into areas otherwise inaccessible. This again, was not fixed until Gw2 had been released, and had been present in the game since the skill was released.

Honestly, I feel the reason they didnt fix this was due to it being done by such a small percentage of people, and there were much more important things to fix

A lot of the game breaking exploits are only fixed when they are having a significant enough impact on the game experience.

The thing about Fractals, right now if they fixed Mossman and Mai Trin, a lot of people would just stop doing Fractals.
I ran a 50 earlier, and rolled swamp. I had 2 friends with me and 2 pugs. I swam up to the mossman start, and people asked land/swamp? so I said land.

Long story short, the 2 pugs left, and calling me rude names for not pulling it into the water

The same Fractal with 2 new pugs, we get to cliffside and a similar thing happens, they want to stack on the rock for the boss. I say no, lets do it properly and we had 0 deaths. Maybe a couple of downs but it wasn’t an issue.

We then got Grawl, where we had maybe 1 full death on Lava shaman, but we slowed dps and that was easy enough.

Then we hit Mai Trin, and people died on the canon stage. A lot. I think I was the only one not to die during the whole fight, but thats rare for me, I’m a euro on Na and get 200+ping on good days.
THe point really was that, really the mechanics of Mai Trin (the canon stage is so rng – circles hitting when they shouldn’t/not showing) .. getting a lag spike. or whatever means that if 3/5 or 4/5 of your team is down/dead.. one person can’t res them.

This was on a 50 too. I know it happens on even the best 50 fractals, people die to the canon stage because its dumb time gated nonsense that shouldn’t have been implemented in the first place.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Ohoni.6057:

You don’t need challenge to generate scarcity.

There are only 4 ways of creating scarcity:

1) Putting it behind challenging content.

2) Putting it behind a huge grind wall.

3) Putting it behind insane RNG.

4) Making the item available for only a very limited time.

Now which one of those 4 options do you think most people find the most fun? Which one of those 4 options do you think most people find fair and acceptable?

The game is full of 2,3 and 4 and they all have massive problems. The 1s are very few, let’s see if having more will be a good thing or not.

In any case if they use method 1 for the raid rewards, they can always add the raid rewards using methods 2 or 3 at some time in the future. But starting the rewards with method 2,3 or 4 will never give the opportunity of using type 1.

maddoctor.2738:

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Ohoni.6057:

You don’t need challenge to generate scarcity.

There are only 4 ways of creating scarcity:

1) Putting it behind challenging content.

2) Putting it behind a huge grind wall.

3) Putting it behind insane RNG.

4) Making the item available for only a very limited time.

Now which one of those 4 options do you think most people find the most fun? Which one of those 4 options do you think most people find fair and acceptable?

The game is full of 2,3 and 4 and they all have massive problems. The 1s are very few, let’s see if having more will be a good thing or not.

In any case if they use method 1 for the raid rewards, they can always add the raid rewards using methods 2 or 3 at some time in the future. But starting the rewards with method 2,3 or 4 will never give the opportunity of using type 1.

I agree.

Preferably I’d like the rewards from method 1 to be different from the rewards gained through method 2, 3 or 4, for reasons I’ve already stated in this thread. I’d like my rewards to be an indicator that I’ve managed to beat the content that the reward belongs to. It makes the rewards feel even more rewarding. I’m sure many others feel that way too.

What is your stance on that though? Just curious. I’ve heard Ohoni’s stance a million times now. I’m curious what other people think.

Ohoni.6057:

But most content should not be like that, each phase should reward roughly equivalent to their own difficulty, not each being more rewarding than the last.

LMAO you do realize you’re contradicting yourself now, right? What you just said here is in favor of challenging raids having better rewards than regular PvE content.

You said it yourself, content should reward roughly equivalent to their difficulty. If raids are significantly more difficult than the rest of the game, then the rewards should be significantly better.

Ohoni.6057:

But what would you say to players who felt that a raid type encounter is no more “freeing” to them than the oppressive work life you described yourself escaping from? Why not offer them an escape as well?

I would recommend drawing. Or simply accepting that GW2 contains a mix of things for different people to do which means that they can’t please everyone with everything. People who don’t want raids have still got dungeons, events, WvW, PvP and plain goofing around.

All game design choices will alienate some, be irrelevant to some and be welcomed by some. If you want a challenge-based game with skins as clear trophies and marks of achievement then exclusive rewards are a must. If you want a more openly expressive game then it’s better to have things freely available instead of gating them behind totally arbitrary wastes of time. If you want time spent doing what you enjoy to be the main factor then why not reward people as much for finding diving spots as you would for clearing fractals? Everything then becomes a simple matter of spending time and that isn’t very satisfying if you want engaging game play and is boring if you just want the dressup right away. It incentivises doing the easiest, quickest thing repeatedly because everything else would be less efficient ways to reach the intended goals of unlocking gear. This is why I think that what you argue for is half-baked.

How do you know? Do you have numbers? Or are you just guessing?

Because I don’t think what you say is true. If adding raids to GW2 was not profitable for Anet, they wouldn’t do it.

It’s speculation based on the raiding populations of other games, and the attitudes of the population on this one. Could totally be wrong, but as I said, I think it’s likely right. And ANet has no idea whether it will be profitable for them or not, they won’t know until they get metrics on raid populations. At most they’re just hoping that the largest possible number of players will be playing the raids, and that the minimum possible number of players are actually offended by the raids, so it ends up being a net gain even if they don’t get enough raiders to directly pay for the raid costs. This would not be the first time this has happened though, sPvP seems to be in a similar boat.

And once again you’re missing the point completely.

People who buy HoT for raiding earn Anet money, which is all that matters.

Right, but they don’t earn ANet more money than any other player, so they have not earned more rewards than any other player. Tehir having higher skill alone earns them nothing, and anything ANet chooses to give them for having higher skill is a gift, not something earned or owed to them in any sense.

Yes there is. If the rewards for raids weren’t proportional to the challenge the raids offer then there would be no incentive to do those raids.

And if this is true, as is so often asserted by supposedly pro-raid players, then they should not make raids, because clearly people don’t actually want to do them, they just want to get better rewards than other players.

Funny that you mention Wooden Potatoes. He’s actually on my side. He feels the same way about GW2’s current lack of challenging content as I do.

Yeah, and as I noted, I’m happy to disagree with him on some things.

Stop you there bro. YOU have a problem with those raids including rewards that non-raiders won’t get. There is no “we”. Only you and a very few others feel that way. The vast majority feels the same way I do.

You have zero basis for that claim. In this thread, there is a slight majority for your position, although you tend to be on the far fringe of that majority. This thread is in no way a representative sample of the game’s population. If I’m outnumbered here roughly 3:1, that does not translate to the game’s population being 3:1 in favor of raiding and unique rewards, for all we know the game’s population is 3:1 against. Perhaps even more. We don’t have access to any metrics that would allow us to claim majorities definitively, but based on the history of the game and the game’s community, I think it’s fair to guess that the majority of the game’s population likely is neutral to against on the raid topic.

Yes, YOU. But the vast majority would not. There would be no incentive to play raids and raids would quickly become a barren wasteland, only played by a very small amount of people. Raids would then end up the same way dungeons ended up in GW2.

Then they shouldn’t make raids.

And those games that don’t give you any extra rewards for playing/beating them on higher difficulty settings, are those games singleplayer games or multiplayer games?

You don’t need to answer that question, because I already know the answer. They’re all singleplayer games, which is an entirely different beast than multiplayer or MMO games.

In some ways, but not relevant to this element. A single player game might offer difficulty modes, and let players freely choose between them. An MMO can’t reasonably offer difficulty modes, but it can offer alternative challenges, and let players choose freely between them, but that choice is toothless if it doesn’t offer comparable rewards, because then players can’t freely choose, they feel compelled to choose the more rewarding options even if they are the less preferred ones. You have to respect your players choices, even when you disagree with them.

Challenging content is fun as long as there is a grand price waiting for you at the end.

You left out the “for me” portion there, which is essential. Challenging content is not necessarily fun for me, even if it does have a fantastic reward. For me, I do like a certain amount of challenge, maybe less than you, probably more than many, and I like to have a nice reward at the end of it, sure, but it doesn’t need to be a unique reward, it just has to be an amount of reward equivalent to the effort. More importantly, if the challenge is above that level I’m comfortable with, then I don’t like it at all, it is not remotely fun for me, and that would remain true whether the potential reward would be junk loot, or whether it would be a million bucks cash money.

I want the prize, but I want to earn it. I want to be challenged, defeated, challenged again, overcome the challenge and finally earn the prize.

Ok, but let’s say that they did that, except remove the last bit. Instead, it’s “I want to be challenged, defeated, challenged again, . . . and again, and again and again and again . . . and five years later I’m still trying and not good enough, and eventually they shut the game down and I never got past that bit.” Now let’s assume you personally are so great that this is an impossible scenario for you. But there are certainly people for whom it would be true. Do you assert that they too should “learn to love the bomb?”

Or what about people that do overcome the challenge, at least once, and can do it again, but genuinely do not enjoy the experience and do not want to repeat it? Given that it’s fairly safe to assume that repetition will be mandatory to max out the rewards on one of these things, why should they keep doing it, if the “challenge” portion is already out of the way, and they genuinely do not enjoy the content itself?

There are only 4 ways of creating scarcity:

1) Putting it behind challenging content.

2) Putting it behind a huge grind wall.

3) Putting it behind insane RNG.

4) Making the item available for only a very limited time.

Now which one of those 4 options do you think most people find the most fun? Which one of those 4 options do you think most people find fair and acceptable?

I know you’d personally never answer “number 1”, but that’s just you. I can tell you, the vast majority of players do find number 1 the most appealing options out of those four options. Or maybe a combination of 1 and 3. But absolutely nobody likes 2 and 4. At least no one I know.

There are advocates of all four. There are certainly people who have bunny ears that are saying ANet should not reintroduce them (including WP). They advocate that “limited edition” scarcity is a good thing. Nobody much cares for RNG, but it is the most fair since it effects everyone equally. I think the solution most people would favor though is “don’t have unnecessary scarcity.” Just set reasonable goals for people to earn things, and let as many exist as people want to go for.

Use all four methods, just don’t dial them up so high. Have it so that there is a method by which you can grind for a reasonable amount of time to earn the item. Have another method where you can instead use high skill, and get it a reasonable amount faster that way. Have it able to drop from RNG under certain circumstances, either the fastest or slowest method, depending on your luck. And sure, have limited time options too, cases where the method of earning it is faster/easier if you get it within a certain window.

I think that’s the best way to do it. Let the player decide for himself which method he prefers.

I agree. Which is what scarcity through RNG does. That’s why I’m not a huge fan of RNG either.

A system designed to create haves and havenots based on challenge doesn’t do that though. In such a system, you are entirely in control of whether you become a have or stay a havenot.

Not even remotely true. Every player has a base skill, and a max skill. Some start out with a higher base than others, and can effortless pass basic challenges that take significant practice for most. Some have higher max skills than others and can accomplish things most never could. It’s an idealistic dream to believe that all players have the potential to be among the best, and it’s very condescending to therefore imply that any players who are not among the best have merely not lived up to their potential.

But sure, lets go with you faulty logic. I’ve bought GW2 twice, both the core game and HoT (as in: I own 2 copies of GW2 and 2 copies of HoT). I’ve spend quite a bit of money on gems as well. So, according to your logic, I’m worth more than you are. And because I’m worth more than you, I deserve more than you do.

It’s possible, I’ve spent a reasonable amount as well, but certainly not to the whale level. But again, you and me as individuals don’t matter a whole lot, but the sum total of players do. If raiders really do, on average, spend several times what other players do, then they would be worth more as customers, I just don’t see much evidence to support that.

My point was just, players who spend more money DO bring more worth to the game, while players who play better do not bring more worth. I don’t mean that to say that a skilled player is worth less than an unskilled one, just that they are not worth more, they are worth equal, and neither player deserves bonus rewards due to his skill, because that skill does not bring value to the game. If a player is killed, then that is great for him, but it is something that only matters to him, and should only be rewarded by his own self-esteem.

Ohoni.6057:

DT suggestions

Splitting the blob is essential in making open world content fun and not a zerg fest. Big blobs lead to mobs with insane amounts of health that are never fun to fight, big blobs lead to mobs covered in effects so it’s hard, if not impossible, to see their tells. Having four small groups splitting off is one the good things of Dry Top, maybe reducing the overall map cap would go a long way in making it more fun and engaging.

If it’s “something for everyone,” but content A offers reward A and content B offers reward B, then every time a player decides what to do, he might enjoy content A, but not care about reward A, and be unable to earn reward B through his efforts there.

And this is exactly where the main reason for the arguments over most of this thread’s pages come from. You are saying that content A should reward both A and B and “we” are saying that content A should have reward A and content B should have reward B. Effort is subjective, if content B is remarkably different to content A why should they both reward A and B?

so if a chain has parts A, B, and C, you could do all three, or you could do A, and leave to do something else entirely, or just do C, whatever, and each step would reward you according to the difficulty of that step, not based on its position in the chain.

If C is the last part of a chain (see: Vinewrath) it stands to reason to have some unique rewards associated with it. It gives players a reason to do the events and progress through them, it gives a reason to stay on the zone otherwise they will be empty wastelands. It’s also a great way to reward player commitment. What ruins this in SW is that players can skip A and B and go directly to C and capitalize on the efforts of other players.

Yeah, which is one of the major flaws of the current Mordrem event, and makes it significantly less satisfying to play. The VB maps too, although I don’t pay as much attention to loot in the betas since I won’t get to keep any of it anyways.

It was a half-baked way of fixing the problem that’s for sure. When mobs drop loot, you might stay and kill them so you get the loot, when they don’t drop loot, you tag a few and then can leave and go tag other events because there is incentive to stay. That’s why both systems are flawed. I hope some time in the future they will “fix” their participation, one way is to make participation work on how long you participated in an event.

For example they could add a system of diminishing participation.
The longer you are active in an event, you get a hidden stacking buff, if you stop participating, you lose points, at the end of the event you get rewarded based on your final participation, in other words, if you leave an event, because you tagged enough mobs, your participation will degrade to zero and you will get nothing. it’s a crude attempt at fixing this issue, I hope Anet finds a better one. But that’s about an entirely different topic altogether.

They aren’t. They are only worthy of as much praise as people see fit to give them. If they impress you, great. If they don’t impress someone else, equally as great. They only deserve to be rewarded proportionate to the amount they bring in. If their presence attracts TV viewership and therefore ad revenue, or sells products, then they are worth paying. If they perform equally as well on a personal level, but do not attract those viewers or sales, then they deserve nothing more than the satisfaction of having done a good job.

Players of games strive to be better for a reason, they want recognition, and what better recognition than having something unique to show for their efforts? Top teams in tournaments get prize money too, regardless of the revenue they generated, they are being rewarded for being good at their game, they are paid for being able to tackle what others cannot.

And all I’ve been asking for is that they allow others to make the same choice for themselves, without punishing them for choosing differently than the devs might choose for themselves.

You mean you are asking for players to be able to get everything through the path of minimum resistance. That’s not healthy for the game and the devs know it.

Well, if they have ramping rewards like that, then you do need to stick around, I’m just saying, that shouldn’t be the norm. I described how I’d fix SW, and I’ll be much more brief here, but basically it would involve tightening up the number of defense you need to do to trigger a breech (speeding up the entire chain process by about 50% or more), tightening up the rules for building the personal buff so that it’s harder to gimmick, and then having the breech and final boss, so that if you did everything from the start you’d get the current full reward, while if you just popped in at the last minute, the VW rewards would be less impressive. You should still get something decent for just doing the VW, it is a fairly complex encounter in its own right worthy of reward, just not as much as if you did the whole chain.

Exactly. If you do everything you get the full reward, if you popped last minute VW should give less rewards. If you pop the last minute you should never be allowed to roll for the best loot available, only if you participated in the whole chain you should get the Chest piece for example.

But most content should not be like that, each phase should reward roughly equivalent to their own difficulty, not each being more rewarding than the last.

Of course, only the so called “more challenging content” should work this way. This is about raid rewards though, not DT or SW. But here is the problem, suppose they make VW work so you get rewarded more once you do the full run and less when you just pop at the end. Then the VW reward would need to be unique enough to attract attention, otherwise it will need to no player going for VW full run, and instead just popping at the end. If that VW gave unique rewards for the full run then more people would do the full run instead. And this is where we go back to raids and their rewards.

If they make it so you only get the legendary armor precursors from the final boss of the raid then I think that would be dumb. There are 6 armor pieces in the game, and there will be 3 wings in the game, they could split it, so each wing rewards a different legendary armor precursor. Different encounters, different rewards, so you could do any phase you want to get the reward you are after, instead of going for the entire thing and being rewarded at the last boss only. So you want the boot precursor? Wing A, boss A drops it, so go there, you want Chest armor? Wing C, boss B drops it.

That way you make sure the raid doesn’t take 12 hours to finish, and even if you play a part of it you are rewarded for your time and there is no need to go after the final boss only. Now if the legendary armor precursors are behind some heavy RNG only after the final raid boss is beaten I’ll be very very angry.

LMAO you do realize you’re contradicting yourself now, right? What you just said here is in favor of challenging raids having better rewards than regular PvE content.

And I’ve said that’s fine, within reason. I long ago conceded the point that raids should tend to offer a higher quantity of reward over time than most other content, that’s fine. If you can earn like 5g per hour doing open world content, then maybe you could earn 7-10g per hour doing raids, more if you can complete them in better than average times. That’s all good. What I object to is raids having unique rewards, so that even if you do the other stuff for a thousand hours, you would never be able to earn the reward a raider could get in two hours.

I would recommend drawing. Or simply accepting that GW2 contains a mix of things for different people to do which means that they can’t please everyone with everything. People who don’t want raids have still got dungeons, events, WvW, PvP and plain goofing around.

And I would assert that they can do a good job of pleasing most of the people most of the time, and that if they have to displease anyone, raiders are a better target than most.

Ohoni.6057:

1) Putting it behind challenging content.
2) Putting it behind a huge grind wall.
3) Putting it behind insane RNG.
4) Making the item available for only a very limited time.

Just set reasonable goals for people to earn things, and let as many exist as people want to go for.

Having multiple ways of getting the rewards invalidates certain ones. Putting it behind any of the above but also 1 invalidates 1 as a way of getting anything. Unless the grind in 2 or the rng chances for 3 are so insane that makes 1 worth the effort. All this provided 1 is actually more challenging.

Arietta The Broken.1875:

In gw1 we had glitches that were way more game breaking.

Mallyx glitch is STILL not fixed after all these years…