Guild Wars 2

@Ononi, the reason Outfits aren’t being spoken about is because of your own reasoning would deny it, because it would be an exclusive reward behind content that doesn’t satisfy everyone’s wants.

No, check back a few posts. I specifically listed a way that Outfits could be used that at the very least I would be comfortable with, and I imagine most players would be comfortable with. Outfits don’t bother me specifically because they lack customization, you can’t mix and match them. Even if I’d unlocked all 18 Legendary Raid pieces, the chances of me wearing all 6 on a single character are fairly small, and the chance of me wearing all 6 on three different characters is almost impossible to imagine, but if previous sets are a guide, then I’ll likely want at least some of the pieces on various characters, for example the Lumi set, where I have all of it, but only wear full Lumi on my Mesmer, two pieces on my Guardian, three pieces on my Warrior, and none on anyone else.

So to people who value the aesthetics of the costuming, Outfits are of significantly less value, but to people who want to “show off how awesome they think other people should think they are,” an Outfit would have the same value as a full suit of the armor (which of course you would also get, and owning the Outfit would make clear that you also owned the armor).

You can read upwards for a more detailed explanation, but the idea played off the “Precursor/not Pre exotic” mechanism, to allow raiders to get armor pieces, and non-raiders to get identical armor pieces, but only the raider version could be converted into a unique outfit, that would look different than the base armors, but would only be available in Outfit form. The player Legendary armor would still look “legendary,” it would just be slightly different, so that you wouldn’t confuse the two.

Oh so you genuinely believe its a fashion simulator and so you MUST go complain about PvP armour, Silverwastes Armour, all skins available through crafting only, anything gained from PS with unique skins…

Yes, and I have done, but those arguments were in the past, and this one is in the present. I’d still love to see more movement on those armor pieces though.

Isn’t that bold part is an argument for exclusive rewards?

No. “Expression of identity” is about using the tools you have in an interesting and unique manner, it is not about limiting which tools are available to you. A player who is wearing starter gear in an interesting color scheme is more expressing his identity than a raider in full raid plate using the default colors (aside from expressing that the raider is unimaginative). Expression is entirely about how you use options, not about keep some options exclusive.

but at least belonging to different parts of the game and thus you can tell by someone’s armor what type of player and or person they are.

But again, this game fails at that. One of my mains has a PvP helm, and yet I barely PvP and do not enjoy it when I do. If someone tries to sum up my character’s biography based on his clothing, then they would come out with numerous misconceptions. I think in any game that allows creativity, it’s impossible to judge people’s capabilities by their armor. You might have a Frac-50 master who chooses to wear starter gear because he likes how it looks.

The only type of game in which armor appearance has a reliable indication of how good the player is or what activities they pursue is one like early WoW, where there is no “skinning,” and someone in the previous meta raid armor is objectively stronger than someone in the raid armor from before that one, and objectively weaker than someone in the current meta armor, and if they have mixed pieces, it can only be because they don’t have the other pieces.

If you do want to tell another characters biography, titles function just as well for that purpose, or even better yet being able to view people’s achievement history.

Ohoni.6057:

@Ononi, the reason Outfits aren’t being spoken about is because of your own reasoning would deny it, because it would be an exclusive reward behind content that doesn’t satisfy everyone’s wants.

No, check back a few posts. I specifically listed a way that Outfits could be used that at the very least I would be comfortable with, and I imagine most players would be comfortable with. Outfits don’t bother me specifically because they lack customization, you can’t mix and match them. Even if I’d unlocked all 18 Legendary Raid pieces, the chances of me wearing all 6 on a single character are fairly small, and the chance of me wearing all 6 on three different characters is almost impossible to imagine, but if previous sets are a guide, then I’ll likely want at least some of the pieces on various characters, for example the Lumi set, where I have all of it, but only wear full Lumi on my Mesmer, two pieces on my Guardian, three pieces on my Warrior, and none on anyone else.

So to people who value the aesthetics of the costuming, Outfits are of significantly less value, but to people who want to “show off how awesome they think other people should think they are,” an Outfit would have the same value as a full suit of the armor (which of course you would also get, and owning the Outfit would make clear that you also owned the armor).

You can read upwards for a more detailed explanation, but the idea played off the “Precursor/not Pre exotic” mechanism, to allow raiders to get armor pieces, and non-raiders to get identical armor pieces, but only the raider version could be converted into a unique outfit, that would look different than the base armors, but would only be available in Outfit form. The player Legendary armor would still look “legendary,” it would just be slightly different, so that you wouldn’t confuse the two.

Certainly Outfits trade customization for a mostly coherent set of gear (there’s a few outfits that carry clipping) but again just because it won’t bother you doesn’t mean the outfit wouldn’t carry as much worth as individual pieces would to players. And this wouldn’t just be another outfit, it would be something visually stunning, as per Legendary Quality.

And the finished idea you suggested, might even be More Exclusive and probably more problematic as players who don’t raid might have big issues with how the outfit just meshes better to the character than the individual armor pieces. And then there’s the issues with how to scale the individual pieces across the whole game…

Overall your solution sounds like a huge overhaul for the minimal effect on attempting to normalize Legendary Armor.

Ohoni.6057:

No you are still wrong yet for some reason don’t get it, the volume of non-exclusive is all that matters. That’s what limiting frustration means and is.

Hmmm. . . how to explain this. . .

Ok, say you are a vegetarian. You only eat veggies. I have a restaurant, and I decide that I have separate menus for different people. I give you your menu, it’s the menu you have to order off of, who gets which menu is up to me. Now each menu contains ten out of twenty possible items I can serve, each person gets ten choices, so it’s all fair, right?

But let’s say that even though I serve seven different vegetarian dishes, the menu you end up with is one that includes maybe one veggie dish, one that you don’t especially care for, or maybe even none of them at all. They’re in the restaurant, I’m perfectly willing to serve them to other customers who have that item on their menus, but not to you, because it’s not on the menu that I arbitrarily assigned to you.

Would you find that your frustration has been “limited” by having access to those other ten dishes, the ones to which you couldn’t care less about having access, or would you feel that you were still frustrated by having your favorite meals available to other customers, but not to you, because I decided that they wouldn’t show up on your menu?

Your analogy is absolute garbage and doesn’t even come close to describing the situation in GW2.

I have a better, simpler and more accurate analogy for you:

You live in a neighborhood with several restaurants, some close to your home and some far away. The closest restaurant to your home is an a Mexican restaurant. The Italian restaurant is quite far away.
Obviously the Italian restaurant serves Italian food and the Mexican restaurant serves Mexican food. Everyone is fine with that, except for Ohoni. Because Ohoni really loves pizza, but doesn’t feel like driving all the way to the Italian restaurant. Instead, he demands that the Mexican restaurant starts serving pizzas.
Ohoni doesn’t mind if the pizzas would be cheaper at the Italian restaurant, as long as the Mexican restaurant near his house starts serving pizzas, because he really wants those pizzas but he’s really doesn’t like driving to the Italian restaurant.
In fact, in Ohoni’s ideal world, EVERY restaurant would serve EVERY meal. This doesn’t at all sound outlandish, unrealistic or nuts to him, despite other people pointing out how it’s simply not feasible for every restaurant to serve every dish.

Ohoni.6057:

Isn’t that bold part is an argument for exclusive rewards?

No. “Expression of identity” is about using the tools you have in an interesting and unique manner, it is not about limiting which tools are available to you. A player who is wearing starter gear in an interesting color scheme is more expressing his identity than a raider in full raid plate using the default colors (aside from expressing that the raider is unimaginative). Expression is entirely about how you use options, not about keep some options exclusive.

Sorry, but who are you to decide who is expressing one’s identity more than another. That’s entirely up to the person.

Either way, we’re talking about design of a reward system. Providing everyone with all the options to those items makes those items lose (some of) that identity. Obviously not the part you particularly care about, but still.

but at least belonging to different parts of the game and thus you can tell by someone’s armor what type of player and or person they are.

But again, this game fails at that. One of my mains has a PvP helm, and yet I barely PvP and do not enjoy it when I do. If someone tries to sum up my character’s biography based on his clothing, then they would come out with numerous misconceptions. I think in any game that allows creativity, it’s impossible to judge people’s capabilities by their armor. You might have a Frac-50 master who chooses to wear starter gear because he likes how it looks.

If you do want to tell another characters biography, titles function just as well for that purpose, or even better yet being able to view people’s achievement history.

Personal opinion. Everyone’s identity is their own. How people want to express their identity is their own. Just because someone choses some armor is more important thanother armor doesn’t mean that that option is a failure.

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

nah, in most of those cases in other games, i wanted it for myself. Im not really an external validation type. However, a reward that i can get doing something else diminishes my motivation to do specific tasks.

And there we differ (no worries, that’s normal ). To me the best “drop” from a raid is the experience of beating the raid – and there are no other avenues to get that reward. Nothing diminishes it.

Let me share a story.

A new raid came out in a game I was playing hard. I was bouncing between three different guilds at the time: two good sized raiding guilds and my RL buddies guild. We weren’t big enough to field our own raid groups but were welcome in both the other groups’ raid nights because of our proven reputation for being focused, well-geared, and knowledgeable on raid strats in our roles. I also had the free time and raid-ready characters for all three roles so I could fill in gaps in any composition.

We’d all beaten the first boss on soft-cuddly mode, but hard mode was kicking everybody’s butt. After a few weeks of this I finally end up approaching the raid leaders of both guilds asking if they’d give over some of their top people to me for a week (raid locks being a thing). I put together a hand-picked composition from the hardest of the hard from three guilds. I normally prefer to heal, but I had two healers better than me to play with and my tank was stronger than the second strongest tank available to me so I’m rolling in on my tank. Simultaneous raid-calling and tanking. Yeah, kinda crazy. We zone in and mad with power, I start putting them through drills: tackle some hard-as-heck trash pulls with certain people sitting out (“pretend Zane has DC’d”). People picked so guild A’s tank has to rely solely on Guild C’s healer that they’ve never played with before in a fight that’s lively with two healers. Or half the DPS sitting out so they can see the tanks and healers are still dishing major damage alongside their core roles. My version of a “getting to know you” party, only with bloodthirsty mobs serving the drinks .

I probably don’t have to tell you how the story ends. Ok, fine: In epic whupus form we beat down the boss encounter — all nine stages — on our third try of the evening. One of the other raid leaders put together a multi-angle video set to music where you can hear my voice calling the phases with occasional, tight commentary from the team as they very professionally call for assistance when they’re getting pressured. And cheering. Oh the cheering. Every contributing guild took home players who knew the strats first hand, veterans who would help their in-house teams make it happen in the following weeks.

I don’t have the slightest recollection what came out of the box that evening and I rarely ever log into the game anymore… but the story? Pure GOLD. Loot of the finest kind. I still go back and watch the video from time to time.

Got a link to that vid? I’m curious.

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

nah, in most of those cases in other games, i wanted it for myself. Im not really an external validation type. However, a reward that i can get doing something else diminishes my motivation to do specific tasks.

And there we differ (no worries, that’s normal ). To me the best “drop” from a raid is the experience of beating the raid – and there are no other avenues to get that reward. Nothing diminishes it.

Let me share a story.

A new raid came out in a game I was playing hard. I was bouncing between three different guilds at the time: two good sized raiding guilds and my RL buddies guild. We weren’t big enough to field our own raid groups but were welcome in both the other groups’ raid nights because of our proven reputation for being focused, well-geared, and knowledgeable on raid strats in our roles. I also had the free time and raid-ready characters for all three roles so I could fill in gaps in any composition.

We’d all beaten the first boss on soft-cuddly mode, but hard mode was kicking everybody’s butt. After a few weeks of this I finally end up approaching the raid leaders of both guilds asking if they’d give over some of their top people to me for a week (raid locks being a thing). I put together a hand-picked composition from the hardest of the hard from three guilds. I normally prefer to heal, but I had two healers better than me to play with and my tank was stronger than the second strongest tank available to me so I’m rolling in on my tank. Simultaneous raid-calling and tanking. Yeah, kinda crazy. We zone in and mad with power, I start putting them through drills: tackle some hard-as-heck trash pulls with certain people sitting out (“pretend Zane has DC’d”). People picked so guild A’s tank has to rely solely on Guild C’s healer that they’ve never played with before in a fight that’s lively with two healers. Or half the DPS sitting out so they can see the tanks and healers are still dishing major damage alongside their core roles. My version of a “getting to know you” party, only with bloodthirsty mobs serving the drinks .

I probably don’t have to tell you how the story ends. Ok, fine: In epic whupus form we beat down the boss encounter — all nine stages — on our third try of the evening. One of the other raid leaders put together a multi-angle video set to music where you can hear my voice calling the phases with occasional, tight commentary from the team as they very professionally call for assistance when they’re getting pressured. And cheering. Oh the cheering. Every contributing guild took home players who knew the strats first hand, veterans who would help their in-house teams make it happen in the following weeks.

I don’t have the slightest recollection what came out of the box that evening and I rarely ever log into the game anymore… but the story? Pure GOLD. Loot of the finest kind. I still go back and watch the video from time to time.

Perfect, now consider there was no filming and that you had an item which signified that night for you, you wore it with pride because it literally was the object formed of that evening. This is exactly the reason people want unique rewards attached to raids – because they are more than just something new to wear, they are memories.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Got a link to that vid? I’m curious.

Sure . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk1IxLnlcxc

(Though upon review that one is shot single camera. There could be another version somewhere or I may just be mentally interspersing my viewpoint of events… As one of the two swapping tanks I spent a lot of that fight looking up at a ‘space troll’s junk .)

Coulter.2315:

Perfect, now consider there was no filming and that you had an item which signified that night for you, you wore it with pride because it literally was the object formed of that evening. This is exactly the reason people want unique rewards attached to raids – because they are more than just something new to wear, they are memories.

Sure. At no point have I suggested there shouldn’t be tangible (as such things go in an MMO), visible, and verifiable icons for bragging rights. But I have multiple priorities as both raider and clothes horse and think that those bragging rights can be fully served without using armor skins, therefor serving another only-sometimes intersecting class of player too. As some have called for: compromise.

But I also feel that while an in-game item can serve as a talisman, a mnemonic key, the only truly unique prize is the experience itself. (though a good video capture sorta splits the difference)

Coulter.2315:

Oh so you genuinely believe its a fashion simulator…

No. I just know its foolish to think its NOT a fashion simulator amongst other things. One look at the human female light armor sets (and some of the heavy!) will tell you this isn’t a game struggling for a grounded ‘professional adventures exposed to fangs and claws on a daily basis’ vibe. Surely you’ve noticed? Some might even call it ‘a tad egregious’ .

…and so you MUST go complain about PvP armour, Silverwastes Armour, all skins available through crafting only, anything gained from PS with unique skins…

You may wish to put in a little more effort reading the last full page of the thread before commenting. Take a moment, I’m sure you’ll see were I’ve already said I don’t waste my time trying to unseat systems already in place (without MUCH more serious cause) and that I’m largely resigned to ANet sticking to its original plan for armor skins exclusive to raids. This is me chatting. When I settle in to really try to convince the Devs of something, it looks quite different. There’s fancy letterhead .

That was really the nice thing about the CDIs – they were a chance for the pebbles to vote before the avalanche had started.

You are being selective and have a WEAK position that betrays not a philosophy but a greed.

Oooo. Such hostility. I’m sure everyone reading is now totally convinced of the poorly thought out avarice underlying my input. The scales have fallen from their eyes.

Azumi.9572:

Eponet.4829:

Azumi.9572:

Playerbase abuse. Or, as I call it, tough love.

Tough love would be if they actively worked with the person in order to help them improve.

Most of the time it’s just a paper thin justification to be rude.

Tough love is tough love. It’s motivation to get better.

Player A: “You suck apples. This run is taking forever because of you. Your out of position and you’re way behind where your class should be. Don’t join up again until you learn better. Oh, and your rotation is terrible. Work on that.”

Then Player B, if of Mindset A, gets kittened. He wants to put Player A in his place. He reads guides, changes his build, practices his class more. He gets better.

Then he does a raid again and does excellent.

Then he morphs into a Player A and passes on the tough love to the next struggling player who needs it.

But if Player B is of mindset B (Entitled, Thin-skinned, Whiny, SJW, etc.) (s)he never raids again. Makes posts on forums whining.

If GW2 is full of Mindset B (which it is), raids become easier nerf after nerf. Rewards become non-exclusive. Raids die.

If GW2 is full of Mindset A (which it isn’t), raids remain hard and get harder. Rewards remain exclusive. Raiding becomes a thing.

By the way, Player C is the dude who reads all this happening, feels bad but kinda agrees with Player A. He’d put it in better terms and more delicately (treating Player B like a flower) but he also thinks Player B sucks and needs to improve.

Sorry, but that is just plain wrong. Even in confrontational child care, a relatively new approach to child care which does teach children and young adults how stupid their deeds are by showing them with tough love, a child that really tries to better itself gets rewarded. The educator is not an unforgiving policeman that accepts only the best a child can do, he accepts the best effort of the child if it is suitable for society.

Most people over the age of 12 would think that Player A is an elitist moron. I especially was confused with “putting Player A in it´s place”. That´s not how education and leading by example works. You can´t put an educator in his place, an educator is impersonal when on the job. All you can expect is respect for your station as educator. I am not angry at my children as persons if they behave bad in Kindergarten, I am angry with their deeds(I work in day care). None of my kids strive to be like me as a person, and they should not.

Some people would call player B just sensible, which is not whiny or entitiled. Sensible persons are the cornerstone of any society, you can´t build a society on people with the mindset of Generals Patton or Montogmery and expect it to last long. Of course they also have a place thre, but it is no surprise that most strong men regimes turn out to be really bad for everyone except an elite.

I can agree with player C, except for the sugar coating part. You can agree with the opinion of A that B is not good, but a loud mouthed rambling rarely brings you a success with more sophisticated and intelligent people, probably rather a
“Ok, this guy´s really good at his job. He´s a true moron too, but the boss won´t let him go because his work is fine. So I have to politely deal with him.”

Astralporing.1957:

I gave you such an example. That you chose to disregard it doesn’t mean you didn’t get it. Only that it didn’t fit your thesis.

No you didn’t. The example game you gave lacks a critical aspect: unique items therefore it’s irrelevant. Try another one. Obviously a game without unique items doesn’t fit the description, Tetris doesn’t even have items so it doesn’t fit either.

maddoctor.2738:

Except what you are asking is exclusivity for content you like. Specifically, raids.

Not really. I’m asking for exclusivity everywhere not just raids. The more exclusivity everywhere, the better the game.

But okay, let’s go with your way of thinking. In that case, a “compromise” of having exclusivity in as much as 50% of content (but the one i like, so not raids), would be even better, right? After all, 50%/50% is better than the 10% exclusivity/90% nonexclusivity you have proposed earlier.

You didn’t get it right… 10% exclusivity on all types of content. Understand now or should I paint it? Raids are irrelevant to the exclusivity, all content should have 10% exclusivity, not just content I or you or anyone likes.

Or is it maybe it’s that specific 10% that really interests you, not the remaining 90%?

It’s all content that interests me and all content needs exclusive rewards. Raids are not 10%, 10% of the rewards from raids will be exclusive, 10% of PVP will be exclusive, 10% of WvW will be exclusive, and so on. Raids don’t need to have only exclusive rewards, that would be silly. They can have both exclusive and non-exclusive rewards.

maddoctor.2738:

Not really. Where do you put the maximum title? 18 runs? With armor you’ll run it even more times to get more legendary armors available for your characters.

See? You are advocating grind.

Where? Getting 60 different pieces of armor for 10 different character is now called grind?

Except that it’s not a compromise, since the one side gets what they want, that some of the things are exclusive, while the other side does not get what they want, that nothing be exclusive.

Not really. One side wants everything (or nearly everything) exclusive, the other side wants nothing exclusive. They both get what they want in varying degrees, so it’s by definition a compromise. In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be just 10% exclusives but 90%, but that’s another story.

But like I said, you would still get the armor, that is on the table.

Since you wouldn’t get it from the specific content then having legendary armor in the game wouldn’t help with said content being run. It’s rather simple. Also, simple answer to your “scenarios”

And you are still missing the point that rewards = just skins isn’t how everyone thinks of them. Still missing it and still don’t get it, or maybe simply refuse to.

Not really “missing,” so much as “not caring.” I care about as much for those people as I do about your strawmen who want to earn Legendary armor by chatting in Lion’s Arch.

Then if you don’t care about the “other side” sorry but the other side can simply say they don’t give a kitten about your side. See how good a discussion will be like that.

Than one title sure. But you can just as easily create titles for 1st success, 6th success (equivalent to one armor set), 12th success (equivalent to two sets) and 18th success (equivalent to the almighty 3 full sets… ooo, aaah!).

But Nike, Mad Doctor doesn’t want to “grind.” He wants to have a reason to repeat the content infinitely, but he doesn’t want rewards that would require him to repeat the content infinitely, because that’s “grind.” Why can’t you think of something that would please him?!

Legendary armor fits nicely. You can repeat the content infinite times to outfit all your characters, you can outfit only one, two, get multiple weights or only one, rather simple.

Not really. Where do you put the maximum title? 18 runs? With armor you’ll run it even more times to get more legendary armors available for your characters.

I would have one title related to each possible piece, another title related to acquiring each full set (ie “all light pieces”), and another related to maxing all 18 pieces, so 22 titles in all.

Good for you, that clutter on the screen to select the title alone would make this worthless. Imagine if they add 22 more titles, bleh. Raids only need 3 titles, one for each Wing, any more is bloating. Something other than titles needed as an exclusive to continue running it once you beat it once.

And then we get to the next part, if you are so adamant about having titles as rewards for raids, would you really like if the entire game only had titles as rewards? Do you think titles are enough to drive players to play a game?

Again, nobody, nobody is talking about titles being the only rewards. Just of them being the only rewards that are exclusive to a single type of content.

Exactly the problem. So you ARE saying they are the only rewards that matter.

If titles are not meant to convey accomplishments, then why would they have offered titles in the first place?

You still didn’t answer the question, avoiding much?

Because people like using the skins to customize their characters, they like variety.

Then all the more reason to have them exclusive, since people like to customize their characters, and apparently don’t give a kitten about titles, titles aren’t enough to make content playable, therefore exclusive skins are required.

C) Armor and weapon skins are awarded by a variety of content, and players can pursue the content that appeals to them, and ignore the content that doesn’t, but any content they choose to do, they get fun rewards for doing it. Titles are all you need to show off that you’ve completed specific content, if that is something you feel the need to do.

Not really. Armor and Weapons you said yourself are more important because people like variety and to customize their characters. Therefore since titles are useless, exclusive skins for armors and/or weapons are needed.

Exclusives should never be necessary to “make the content desirable.”

Actually that’s how you make content desirable.

Outfits cannot be exclusive rewards from raids, it’s against their revenue policy of only adding Outfits on the gem store now.

And to get back to the discussion, after that intermission, regarding the topic of which types of rewards are better as exclusives, I’d say maybe the best type of exclusive for raids will be trophies for the Guild Hall (decorations)

That would probably be the best type of reward for the raid, because it’s the only reward with actual lore and story behind it. Much like the Priory got one of Zhaitan’s tails, the guild might get a trophy from a raid boss to put on display in their Guild Hall.

Although great, this type of reward has its own unique problems, unlike a title which is account bound, a guild hall decoation is guild-bound, meaning once the guild gets it, there is little reason to get it again. So, it shouldn’t be the only reward to go for.

Another problem is acquisition, it should be a tastement to a guild’s power, so if someone joins a pug raid he shouldn’t get an item for the guild. There is already a system in the game that awards influence based on the number of players from the same guild in the raid, so something like the more players from a guild, the higher the chances to drop it, or something along those lines.

Other than that, having such an item on the guild hall might lead to interesting developments, using the Scribe to craft something out of it, where the entire guild hunts for materials and resources (not inside the raid obviously) to make something new. But the best part is that this is the only reward that actually has some lore behind it and it’s not a “game reward”.

maddoctor.2738:

Where? Getting 60 different pieces of armor for 10 different character is now called grind?

Well, it might help cut through the language barriers for everybody if we can all briefly agree that Grind is “Repeating the same activity for the reward rather than for the joy of the gameplay.” That’s everywhere and people do it all the time. The Grind people complain about is “Repeating the same content for a reward more times than I think is reasonable” which is super subjective. Like to a degree you should never expect people to agree on where something switches from pleasurable pursuit to “OMGWTFBBQGrindy-grind-grind-oh god the pain-brrbulluglblah…”

If I really liked Southsun Survivalist I’d be in there every day its available playing multiple matches. Instead I’m only in there when there’s the added reward of it advancing the daily. That’s a grind. Not a terrible one IMO, as I like the Southsun Survivalist gameplay enough that doing it once a month or so when the stars align is grind I’m willing to tolerate. There’s a whole set of achievements associated with it (rewards), and while I like having achievements (desire), they are not enough of an incentive to make me actively grind the mini-game for them.

So while rewards can get people to use a piece of content, never confuse the desirability of the reward with the desirability of the gameplay. Increasing the rewards to get people to use content sets the stage for grind, but the gameplay determines when the players start complaining about it .

PopeUrban.2578:

I’d rather it work like it did in GW1:

You clear an instance, that instance allows you to progress to the next one. You can repeat the first one if you want some specific stuff from it, but you don’t need that specific stuff to try instance 2.

See, WoW’s raid model is a chore. You work your butt off learning a raid, you finally beat it, but now you can’t go on to the next raid without repeatedly grinding the thing you’ve already demonstrated mastery over a bajillion times to get good enough gear.

The GW1 model for story instance progression and raid-tier instances uses a content gate, but in a way that’s sane. It doesn’t require you to grind the content, it simply asks you to prove you can beat step one to prove you can proceed to step 2.

As for the guy asking for more stats? No. The guiding principal of GW1 and GW2 is that you’re not constantly climbing a gear treadmill, and that once you hit end game you don’t just “need better gear” to tackle harder content, but that you have to get better at the game

Skins are the reward model of the game for this reason. They’re there so you have something special that proves you did a thing. You choose content to get the item you want rather than being forced to do content you hate over and over just to get an item you need.

If anet was going to change that, they wouldn’t have gone to all the effort of designing the mastery system to replace that gear treadmill. Your ascended gear is intended to be the end of your stat progression. Further progression isn’t about proving what your gear can do. it’s about proving what you can do, and getting shinies that prove you did it.

Sure, it’s very good that Anet avoiding gear-treadmill. GW2 is not a WoW thanks god and Anet.

The idea is to add something good on top of standart and boring loot-based motivation. Please read the main article above.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

As a general principle, I’m against anything that creates competition in GW2 PvE.

btw, it’s not a competition inside of the raid, viseversa players must play as a team!

Why you think that PvE competition is a bad idea? (competition between raid groups)
Raid – it’s not an open world content for everybody.
It’s specific and very challenging content in the instance.
Just look how many millions people checking the site “wowprogress.com” to check which PvE guild has better raid progress. Competition is another strong motivation as I said earlier.
Also if we can join their forces to achieve one target then it will not be just competition. Let me tell you exampe: it’s like firemans teams against a fire. It can be partially a competiton between teams, but the joint-result is one to all teams “fire was eliminated”

Nike.2631:

Well, it might help cut through the language barriers for everybody if we can all briefly agree that Grind is “Repeating the same activity for the reward rather than for the joy of the gameplay.”

There is one problem with your definition, it means everything ever is a grind. The number of rewards can make the grind go away, if there loads of rewards to get from running specific content then it’s not a problem. You will run it multiple times to get multiple rewards, it’s not only one reward.

In other words, there is a big difference between:
Run the content 20 times to get 1 reward and
Run the content 20 times and get 20 rewards (one on each run)

Seera.5916:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

maddoctor.2738:

Nike.2631:

Ultimately it’s about identity in our shared space. Mounts, minis, and titles all float around ‘you’ in your vicinity. Tonics completely replace ‘you’. Even weapons are something ‘you’ are holding. But clothes doth make the man and armor skins have the most direct aesthetic impact on ‘youness’.

That’s good and understandable/reasonable, at least you give some “room” for any kind of compromise by not dismissing everything exclusive.

I like to think I’m reasonable . Ohoni has never responded to my posts in this thread that I recall, so I suspect they’ve either blocked me in some fashion or they simply consider me a traitor to the cause for not being militant/radical enough .

It’s funny if you consider the fact that Armor is by far the worse option to “show off” because unlike weapons, minis or titles, it is affected by graphic settings. In a crowd you won’t be seen at all.

That’s not a coincidence… it’s a byproduct of the exact crux of the difference in the two use cases: People who want exclusive visual rewards want to be seen by others as determined, capable, and skillful. People who want accessible cosmetic rewards want to be able to see themselves as pretty, scary, or tastefully refined.

I think the question we were all arguing about on this thread for many pages has been wrong all along. The question “should we have exclusive rewards?” isn’t the right one, because I think everyone that ever posted here agreed to some form of exclusivity, be it titles, minis, outfits, armor or weapons.

The real questions are:
What kind of rewards are better suited as exclusives. and the follow up:
Are those exclusives enough to make the content desirable.

Making progress after 30 pages

Indeed. Now you’re asking interesting questions.

I’ve said my piece on the first – visual cues are important, but armor is in a different class from other flags. And just to clarify, if they were to offer access to hairstyles and faces as rewards, I’d be as protective of those as I am of armor.

The second question… wooo. That one’s a doozy. As a successful raid leader in multiple MMOs… I don’t play raids for rewards. Ok, maybe a little when there’s stat advancement on the line that’ll makes the next run more likely to succeed, but really, I play for the pleasure of winning. I’m happiest when I’m there for the gameplay, not the chest. Ok, I also like enough coin to cover the cost of expenses for the evening (travel, consumables). In general all the people I care to convince I won were either in the raid with me or know me well enough to believe me when I’m in the mood to brag or regale them with a story of how we had this awesome time where things went pear-shaped but we pulled it out anyway… And for really awesome runs, posting a good video is way more effective than any in-game reward.

Titles, armor, etc. are for showing off to strangers. Not a big priority to me, but I understand the impulse. I do want a good reward structure – because happy raiders gives me a bigger pool to draw team members from. I want raiders with a variety of outlooks eager to participate. (ooo, enlightened self-interest)

nah, in most of those cases in other games, i wanted it for myself. Im not really an external validation type. However, a reward that i can get doing something else diminishes my motivation to do specific tasks.

Also armor is not part of your charachters self imo, its a representation of what proffession/race they are, and what they achieved.

tatttos, hairstles, skin colors, those are the things that should be easy access always. But Armani suits, Military clothes, these things are about what you have earned (like armors)

That said as long as items are cool and compelling, it doesnt matter if they want to give those instead, but I wouldnt want to rule out clothes/armor for cosmetic progression rewards as an option.

So would you have an issue with Legendary Armor Skins Set 1 being exclusive to raids for say a year before being added to other areas of the game and Legendary Armor Skins Set 2 being added as a new raid exclusive reward. Then later set 2 going non-exclusive and set 3 being added as exclusive and so on and so on?

I would. It devalues the items after that year.

But why not have one set of Legendary Armor skins in Raids that are themed around the raids, and maybe another set behind some other content that are themed around that content.

Of course raid are supposed to be hard content, so it makes sense to put the ‘best’ items behind the ‘hardest’ content. But overall this would work. Raids have their own skins themed around those raids (much like dungeon-armor but then not currency-based and really exclusive). JP’s have their own skins , mini, toys themed around that JP.

Of course this means that if you want a skin themed around a specific raid, you will need to do that dungeon.. I know, I know, this is complete outrageous according to some people. But strangely, to make it makes perfect sense.
It’s like the WvW portal example I used before.. Let’s give guilds the ability to build a Portal in their guild-hall to one of the WvW maps. The way to get that portal is by claiming and holing a keep for x days in that map. This has skin value and functional value for the guild, but to get that WvW portal you need to do some WvW with the guild.. Complete outrageous to some, but makes perfect sense to me.

Do the same with skins, toys, mini’s and so on, and your golden.

Devata.6589:

Seera.5916:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

maddoctor.2738:

Nike.2631:

Ultimately it’s about identity in our shared space. Mounts, minis, and titles all float around ‘you’ in your vicinity. Tonics completely replace ‘you’. Even weapons are something ‘you’ are holding. But clothes doth make the man and armor skins have the most direct aesthetic impact on ‘youness’.

That’s good and understandable/reasonable, at least you give some “room” for any kind of compromise by not dismissing everything exclusive.

I like to think I’m reasonable . Ohoni has never responded to my posts in this thread that I recall, so I suspect they’ve either blocked me in some fashion or they simply consider me a traitor to the cause for not being militant/radical enough .

It’s funny if you consider the fact that Armor is by far the worse option to “show off” because unlike weapons, minis or titles, it is affected by graphic settings. In a crowd you won’t be seen at all.

That’s not a coincidence… it’s a byproduct of the exact crux of the difference in the two use cases: People who want exclusive visual rewards want to be seen by others as determined, capable, and skillful. People who want accessible cosmetic rewards want to be able to see themselves as pretty, scary, or tastefully refined.

I think the question we were all arguing about on this thread for many pages has been wrong all along. The question “should we have exclusive rewards?” isn’t the right one, because I think everyone that ever posted here agreed to some form of exclusivity, be it titles, minis, outfits, armor or weapons.

The real questions are:
What kind of rewards are better suited as exclusives. and the follow up:
Are those exclusives enough to make the content desirable.

Making progress after 30 pages

Indeed. Now you’re asking interesting questions.

I’ve said my piece on the first – visual cues are important, but armor is in a different class from other flags. And just to clarify, if they were to offer access to hairstyles and faces as rewards, I’d be as protective of those as I am of armor.

The second question… wooo. That one’s a doozy. As a successful raid leader in multiple MMOs… I don’t play raids for rewards. Ok, maybe a little when there’s stat advancement on the line that’ll makes the next run more likely to succeed, but really, I play for the pleasure of winning. I’m happiest when I’m there for the gameplay, not the chest. Ok, I also like enough coin to cover the cost of expenses for the evening (travel, consumables). In general all the people I care to convince I won were either in the raid with me or know me well enough to believe me when I’m in the mood to brag or regale them with a story of how we had this awesome time where things went pear-shaped but we pulled it out anyway… And for really awesome runs, posting a good video is way more effective than any in-game reward.

Titles, armor, etc. are for showing off to strangers. Not a big priority to me, but I understand the impulse. I do want a good reward structure – because happy raiders gives me a bigger pool to draw team members from. I want raiders with a variety of outlooks eager to participate. (ooo, enlightened self-interest)

nah, in most of those cases in other games, i wanted it for myself. Im not really an external validation type. However, a reward that i can get doing something else diminishes my motivation to do specific tasks.

Also armor is not part of your charachters self imo, its a representation of what proffession/race they are, and what they achieved.

tatttos, hairstles, skin colors, those are the things that should be easy access always. But Armani suits, Military clothes, these things are about what you have earned (like armors)

That said as long as items are cool and compelling, it doesnt matter if they want to give those instead, but I wouldnt want to rule out clothes/armor for cosmetic progression rewards as an option.

So would you have an issue with Legendary Armor Skins Set 1 being exclusive to raids for say a year before being added to other areas of the game and Legendary Armor Skins Set 2 being added as a new raid exclusive reward. Then later set 2 going non-exclusive and set 3 being added as exclusive and so on and so on?

I would. It devalues the items after that year.

There is an interesting discussion we can have about this part. I made a post early in the thread about a timed-exclusive, making the armor exclusive for a period of time, then putting the precursors behind other content types. That has a lot of benefits:

A) It allows Armors to be exclusive rewards without many issues/complains, it’s something that can appeal to both sides of the exclusive vs inclusive argument (a compromise)

B) It gives the devs time to evaluate how hard their raids actually are, so when they add the legendary armor precursors through other content they can adjust the time/effort required. It’s unreasonable to expect them to add multiple ways to get them from release, but over time that might be possible

C) It will only work, if when Legendary Armor set A becomes non-exclusive, a new Legendary Armor set B will be introduced. So there is always an exclusive set to go for. this is important

D) It works in a similar way like how other MMORPGs make their raids more accessible, the early raids are far easier than the later ones, because of the new tiers of gear and new level cap. In GW2 we will never get a level cap increase, or a new gear tier, so another method of making the raid rewards easier to get over time is needed.

E) If they don’t do this, the alternative is to nerf the raids themselves, or have them rather easy from the start. This defeats the purpose of “challenging group content”.

The big problem with this concept of timed exclusives is once Raid A rewards become non-exclusive and Raid B is released, Raid A will be useless. In other games they solve this by the famous gear treadmill, where you have to do the raids in some sort of order to progress.

In GW2 we won’t get anything like this, at least I hope, so before something like this is done, we need to find a way for Raid A to stay important in the long run, even once it loses exclusivity. Is there such a way?

Certainly Outfits trade customization for a mostly coherent set of gear (there’s a few outfits that carry clipping) but again just because it won’t bother you doesn’t mean the outfit wouldn’t carry as much worth as individual pieces would to players. And this wouldn’t just be another outfit, it would be something visually stunning, as per Legendary Quality.

Well, this is just my opinion and I could totally be wrong on it, but I believe that the Outfit works as a compromise because it would fill most of the role of unique armor to people who want the “show off” value of it, since it would be equivalent to wearing a full set of the base armor, while at the same time I believe it would be more palatable to the “fashionistas” in general, because it is less customization, and therefore less useful to them. It’d be all or nothing, which is not what most of them would be interested in. I think it’s something that would be both very valuable to one side, and completely worthless to the other, which is the solution we’re looking for.

And yes, I would expect it to be shiny and “Legendary Quality,” but keep in mind that I expect the base armor pieces to be no less “Legendary Quality,” it would just be in a different style. For example maybe the outfit version has thorns, or flowers, or whatever, it’s hard to even guess without knowing what the base would be, but it would essentially be a Dawn/Twilight situation. Different enough that they are distinct, not different enough that one would be a deliberate slight.

Personal opinion. Everyone’s identity is their own. How people want to express their identity is their own. Just because someone choses some armor is more important thanother armor doesn’t mean that that option is a failure.

how people hose to express their identity is there own, which was my entire point. What I said was a failure was the idea that GW2 appearance could be used as some sort of map to the character’s history, that the armor a character had on would teach you anything about their capabilities or gameplay interests. Most players wear the clothes they think look good, not ones that reflect their most important life moments, so if you look at a character and try to size up anything about how that player plays, you’re as likely to be wrong as if you just took a blind wild guess.

Perfect, now consider there was no filming and that you had an item which signified that night for you, you wore it with pride because it literally was the object formed of that evening. This is exactly the reason people want unique rewards attached to raids – because they are more than just something new to wear, they are memories.

Or a title!

But anyways, if you want an armor or whatever as a memento of that fight, nobody is trying to take that away from you. You would still get that armor, and you could still use it to remember the event fondly. All that I’ve suggested is that other people, who are not you, would be able to acquire the armor through alternate means. Now why would that take anything away from your memento, that would not be equally taken away by some other player earning that armor piece by completing the same raid you did?

You didn’t get it right… 10% exclusivity on all types of content. Understand now or should I paint it? Raids are irrelevant to the exclusivity, all content should have 10% exclusivity, not just content I or you or anyone likes.

That’s not entirely true. Even if one accepts the premise that some exclusivity should exist, that does not mean that all activities should have exclusive rewards. It can be distributed out as the developers feel is healthy. If you have content that only a small number of players are expected to play, then perhaps exclusive goods would not be as good an idea as for content that most players are expected to play. After all, the idea would be to reward the players for giving it a shot, not for punishing players for not being able to do a task that was intended to be exclusionary.

Then if you don’t care about the “other side” sorry but the other side can simply say they don’t give a kitten about your side. See how good a discussion will be like that.

Right but this is not really a discussion in which I need the other side to ever agree with me. That’s not the point. The outcome will not be decided by the other side agreeing with me, the outcome would be decided in my favor if ANet agreed that the majority of players would prefer a system similar to what I described. The other side would then either need to adapt to that new reality, or not, but whether they came on board with it or not would not be the determining factor.

My entire proposal is based on my belief that the majority of players would prefer access to raid rewards without having to do raids to get them. If I’m right on that, then the will of those players should supersede the will of those players who want to keep them exclusive. If I’m wrong on that then the discussion is moot, so convincing you guys wouldn’t matter anyways.

Legendary armor fits nicely. You can repeat the content infinite times to outfit all your characters, you can outfit only one, two, get multiple weights or only one, rather simple.

And so far, nobody has proposed anything that would remove Legendary armor from the loot table, or reduce the amount of it you would need, and could earn, towards fully outfitting all of your characters. If that was your goal, then you would need to run the raid exactly as many times, no more, no less, under my proposal as under the original proposal. It is literally not an issue between the two options.

Good for you, that clutter on the screen to select the title alone would make this worthless. Imagine if they add 22 more titles,

That’s no different than complaining that the Wardrobe screen is too cluttered. You’re better than that. They could very easily set up a UI element that would make the title selector very user-friendly, one that divided up titles by family (like Raid Titles>HoT Raid>Wing 1>Master of [Boss] Slaying), and also searching by word makes finding specific titles much easier than finding specific armors.

Raids only need 3 titles, one for each Wing, any more is bloating. Something other than titles needed as an exclusive to continue running it once you beat it once.

Only because you insist upon it.

Exactly the problem. So you ARE saying they are the only rewards that matter.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about.

Then all the more reason to have them exclusive, since people like to customize their characters, and apparently don’t give a kitten about titles, titles aren’t enough to make content playable, therefore exclusive skins are required.

Now you’re just trying to punish people who think differently than you. You are saying “if people who don’t care about status value customization, then we must lock up customization to hurt them.” If people genuinely care about getting an exclusive reward, titles fill that role as much as any exclusive armor does. If people genuinely care about being able to display to others that they have accomplished something, a title can fill that role equally as well as armor does.

Assuming that you get the armor in both cases, which is the situation on the table, the only difference between “that armor being exclusive” and “getting and exclusive title” is that the latter makes less other people sad. The ONLY difference.

You get the armor, so you can’t claim to be upset about not getting the armor. You get something exclusive, so you can’t claim to be upset about not getting something exclusive. You get something you can use to show off your accomplishment to others, which cannot be faked, so you cannot claim to be upset about not being able to exclaim your accomplishments. The only thing left for you to be upset about is that other players are happy with what they have, and I’m sorry, I can’t defend that as a worthwhile position to take.

Outfits cannot be exclusive rewards from raids, it’s against their revenue policy of only adding Outfits on the gem store now.

They just gave us an Outfit last week.

I don’t believe their stated policy means they will never put new Outfits into the “free” game, or that they will never put new armor pieces onto the shop, just that they don’t currently plan to do either much, that their focus is on creating more Outfits for the gem store (since they fit everyone’s character and are easier to make), and what armor pieces they are making are better suited to drops than trying to get people to drop $5 on a pair of gloves.

And to get back to the discussion, after that intermission, regarding the topic of which types of rewards are better as exclusives, I’d say maybe the best type of exclusive for raids will be trophies for the Guild Hall (decorations)

They’ve already said raids will be getting exclusive Guild Hall trophies. I can’t speak for everyone, but personally I’m totally fine with that.

Although great, this type of reward has its own unique problems, unlike a title which is account bound, a guild hall decoation is guild-bound, meaning once the guild gets it, there is little reason to get it again. So, it shouldn’t be the only reward to go for.

Home instance trophy.

There is one problem with your definition, it means everything ever is a grind.

No, it means that everything ever CAN be a grind, which is true. Whether it is a grind or not is entirely subjective and different for each person. What is 100% a grind to you might be the most fun thing in the game to someone else, and what is your favorite activity might be a huge grind to someone else. There is absolutely nothing that is objectively “a grind.”

The way to avoid players from feeling that they are the victim of “grind” is by making sure that they have the ability to pick and choose which content to engage in, with as little penalty as possible, so that when they do feel something is a grind, they can do something else. They should only feel stuck doing something they find to be “a grind” when they beleive that every content in the game is a grind to them.

The number of rewards can make the grind go away, if there loads of rewards to get from running specific content then it’s not a problem. You will run it multiple times to get multiple rewards, it’s not only one reward.

The number of rewards is irrelevant to whether something is a grind or not, you can earn dozen upon dozens of rewards from farming Silverwaste chests, that doesn’t mean people aren’t entitled to feel that it’s a grind if they aren’t enjoying themselves. If having multiple rewards makes it less of a grind to you, then that’s great, but you can’t project that onto other players.

In other words, there is a big difference between:
Run the content 20 times to get 1 reward and
Run the content 20 times and get 20 rewards (one on each run)

Yeah, but it’s practically impossible that “Run the content 20 times and get 20 rewards (one on each run)” will be available as an option. I mean, I’m sure you’ll get some rewards each time, a pile of gold/greens/blues/maybe a guaranteed generic rare/exotic, but no way would they let you run the raid 18 times and end up with three full sets of exclusive armor. It’d be more likely “run the content 10 times, get one reward, run the content 200 times, get 20 rewards.”

That’s not me saying that’s how I’d like it to be, that’s me being a pragmatist that understand that’s likely how it will be, regardless of what either of us thinks about it, so don’t bother trying to convince me that’s not how you want it, reality doesn’t care.

maddoctor.2738:

Nike.2631:

Well, it might help cut through the language barriers for everybody if we can all briefly agree that Grind is “Repeating the same activity for the reward rather than for the joy of the gameplay.”

There is one problem with your definition, it means everything ever is a grind.

Nope. Single-use content isn’t a grind (not a repetition). Chess isn’t usually a grind either (motivation is the joy in gameplay without rewards beyond winning). Playing through the Personal Story once may or may not be fun, but it’s not a grind. Its a grind the second time you do it with the branches specifically there to give you some glimpses of new content in and amongst the repetition. The first time you down a raid boss isn’t a grind. Its one area where tabletop RPGs vastly outperform MMOs and why procedurally generated content is THE big thing in what’s coming for video games. Tools to close the gap between the speed content can be created and the speed at which it’s consumed.

The number of rewards can make the grind go away, if there loads of rewards to get from running specific content then it’s not a problem. You will run it multiple times to get multiple rewards, it’s not only one reward.

In other words, there is a big difference between:
Run the content 20 times to get 1 reward and
Run the content 20 times and get 20 rewards (one on each run)

There is such a huge quality vs. quantity discussion in there I’m not sure I even want to go down that rabbit hole. But let me try to skip to the end with “20 uninteresting rewards does less to make 20 repetitions (the grind) tolerable than a single supremely desirable reward.”

The fact that all rewards are not created equally (or valued uniformly) would be why discussing which might best be used for incentivizing repetitive use of raid content was such an interesting question. I’d offer a multi-pronged strategy myself, with certain reward types happening at regular intervals (e.g. a raid currency that lets you choose a reward after ever 4 success) and some delivered only at major milestones of repetition (progressive titles at 1, 10, and 25 successes).

(…and I still think you could create a broadly attractive array without exclusive armor skins. They won’t, but it could be done.)

There is an interesting discussion we can have about this part. I made a post early in the thread about a timed-exclusive, making the armor exclusive for a period of time, then putting the precursors behind other content types. That has a lot of benefits:

And I’ve long said I would be cool with a “waiting period” on the alternate methods, so long as the wait time is reasonable. I’d even be ok with them holding back the actual “here’s the reward” portion for six months or more, so long as they opened up the “here how you can start working towards it” part earlier than that, so people could get started and if they work hard get the reward the day it becomes available.

The big problem with this concept of timed exclusives is once Raid A rewards become non-exclusive and Raid B is released, Raid A will be useless. In other games they solve this by the famous gear treadmill, where you have to do the raids in some sort of order to progress.

This wouldn’t be entirely true, since raiders who still didn’t have the Raid A armor might still want to raid for it. If you are a raider type player, the raid should always be the most convenient way of earning the armor, the alternate methods are only for those that can’t or won’t do the raids. I’m sure player numbers would drop off on Raid A in either case once Raid B comes along and the vast majority of raider type players would already have all the Raid A armor anyways.

In GW2 we won’t get anything like this, at least I hope, so before something like this is done, we need to find a way for Raid A to stay important in the long run, even once it loses exclusivity. Is there such a way?

If it remains fun to do. People still run Arah, and there’s nothing exclusive about it.

Ohoni.6057:

You didn’t get it right… 10% exclusivity on all types of content. Understand now or should I paint it? Raids are irrelevant to the exclusivity, all content should have 10% exclusivity, not just content I or you or anyone likes.

That’s not entirely true. Even if one accepts the premise that some exclusivity should exist, that does not mean that all activities should have exclusive rewards.

That’s one opinion, the other is add at least a bit of exclusive rewards on all types of content. And besides before adding the rewards on content you don’t know how many players will find it enjoyable, try it, or complete it. Reward assignment happens before the content is available for play.

The outcome will not be decided by the other side agreeing with me, the outcome would be decided in my favor if ANet agreed that the majority of players would prefer a system similar to what I described.

Judging by how the rest of their reward system works, and the announcement of legendary armor precursors as raid exclusives I don’t see that possible.

You get the armor, so you can’t claim to be upset about not getting the armor. You get something exclusive, so you can’t claim to be upset about not getting something exclusive.

I don’t get both at the same time. Exclusive armor contains both. To make content more replayable you can add multiple rewards in that content, so repeating it does have unique flavor every time. And I’m talking about rewards through content, not reward through farming. Farming is always a form of grind so Silverwastes chest farming, no matter what rewards, and how many, it gives it’s always a grind. On the other hand if the Legendary armor precursors in the raid drop with limited RNG, then you don’t need to farm them, you just need to repeat it as often as required to get your pieces.

That’s not me saying that’s how I’d like it to be, that’s me being a pragmatist that understand that’s likely how it will be, regardless of what either of us thinks about it, so don’t bother trying to convince me that’s not how you want it, reality doesn’t care.

The loot distribution system (or lack thereof) in the game is one of the limiting factors for fun in the game, maybe they will tweak and change it for raids. Who knows.

Oh for the love of the Six Absent Gods would people please quit trimming off the “who said this” tagging at the top of quotes!!?!? Amongst other things they are hotlinks to the original post so you can review the quoted posts in their entirety.

Wall of Unattributed Text critical hits for ALL THE SANITY POINTS.

Nike.2631:

I’d offer a multi-pronged strategy myself, with certain reward types happening at regular intervals (e.g. a raid currency that lets you choose a reward after ever 4 success) and some delivered only at major milestones of repetition (progressive titles at 1, 10, and 25 successes).

That’s one way of doing it but I’d rather they split the rewards on the 3 Wings, give different/unique rewards on each Wing, so players don’t have to invest the maximum time to beat the raid. For example, if each Wing takes 2 hours, and 6 hours for a full raid run, and tokens for the armor gloves drop from Boss 1 in Wing 1, you can go after that boss (Do Wing 1) This means you can get your end reward running a 2-hour long content instead of the full 6 hours.

Nike.2631:

Oh for the love of the Six Absent Gods would people please quit trimming off the “who said this” tagging at the top of quotes!!?!? Amongst other things they are hotlinks to the original post so you can review the quoted posts in their entirety.

Wall of Unattributed Text critical hits for ALL THE SANITY POINTS.

I quote one person per post, easier to follow

maddoctor.2738:

I quote one person per post, easier to follow

Knowing who that person IS and having a one-click option to see their original post makes it easier to follow and actually takes less effort since it’s built-in to the board’s quote functionality . It also has the advantage of putting their name in the post so if you’re checking to see if anyone has answered you, you can just search the page for your own screen name.

Ohoni.6057:

This wouldn’t be entirely true, since raiders who still didn’t have the Raid A armor might still want to raid for it. If you are a raider type player, the raid should always be the most convenient way of earning the armor, the alternate methods are only for those that can’t or won’t do the raids. I’m sure player numbers would drop off on Raid A in either case once Raid B comes along and the vast majority of raider type players would already have all the Raid A armor anyways.

The thing is, by the time they add Raid B and Raid A rewards are more accessible, most “raiders” will already have the Raid A rewards and move on to Raid B. Let’s say that Raid A is doable by 10% of the population, that 10% will get their raid gear and then later on Raid B will be released. That 10% will move on to Raid B, not running Raid A anymore. The 90% that couldn’t run Raid A won’t magically become better at it and do it. So the amount of players running Raid A will be a nice 0% of the population.

In GW2 we won’t get anything like this, at least I hope, so before something like this is done, we need to find a way for Raid A to stay important in the long run, even once it loses exclusivity. Is there such a way?

If it remains fun to do. People still run Arah, and there’s nothing exclusive about it.

People run Arah because there is nothing else to do, or to sell the spots for gold, or to get better at the game by beating encounters solo, naked, without dodging, or with any other self-imposed handicap.

The problem with that is Arah is doable solo, or with 2-3 people and allows for those handicaps. From what we’ve seen Raids will not only be 10-man content, but it might be required to have 10 people in order to complete it.

It won’t be the same as Arah is more skill-based content while the raid looks to be more mechanics based content. Now if certain parts/wings/bosses will be soloable, or doable in small groups (if they are good enough) that might change things.

Nike.2631:

Oh for the love of the Six Absent Gods would people please quit trimming off the “who said this” tagging at the top of quotes!!?!? Amongst other things they are hotlinks to the original post so you can review the quoted posts in their entirety.

Wall of Unattributed Text critical hits for ALL THE SANITY POINTS.

I second this. I know Ohoni actually does it on purpose for whatever reason. Maddoctor at least inserts the name of the person he’s quoting once at the top of his comment.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Nike.2631:

Oh for the love of the Six Absent Gods would people please quit trimming off the “who said this” tagging at the top of quotes!!?!? Amongst other things they are hotlinks to the original post so you can review the quoted posts in their entirety.

Wall of Unattributed Text critical hits for ALL THE SANITY POINTS.

I second this. I know Ohoni actually does it on purpose for whatever reason.

The reason is to address the point/argument and not the poster, which is a good one. But after many quotes and sub-quotes it gets confusing, especially for anyone else that might want to join in the discussion. I’ll admit sometimes I miss the original point after many quotes and re-quotes, even it was mine… forgetting what we were talking about in the first place.

I’ll try to have much simpler posts from now on and not respond to multi-quotes. Editing earlier ones in the process, without removing the actual points. It gets confusing (even for me) and looks like people arguing in a chat room, rather than having a forum discussion.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

Seera.5916:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

maddoctor.2738:

Nike.2631:

Ultimately it’s about identity in our shared space. Mounts, minis, and titles all float around ‘you’ in your vicinity. Tonics completely replace ‘you’. Even weapons are something ‘you’ are holding. But clothes doth make the man and armor skins have the most direct aesthetic impact on ‘youness’.

That’s good and understandable/reasonable, at least you give some “room” for any kind of compromise by not dismissing everything exclusive.

I like to think I’m reasonable . Ohoni has never responded to my posts in this thread that I recall, so I suspect they’ve either blocked me in some fashion or they simply consider me a traitor to the cause for not being militant/radical enough .

It’s funny if you consider the fact that Armor is by far the worse option to “show off” because unlike weapons, minis or titles, it is affected by graphic settings. In a crowd you won’t be seen at all.

That’s not a coincidence… it’s a byproduct of the exact crux of the difference in the two use cases: People who want exclusive visual rewards want to be seen by others as determined, capable, and skillful. People who want accessible cosmetic rewards want to be able to see themselves as pretty, scary, or tastefully refined.

I think the question we were all arguing about on this thread for many pages has been wrong all along. The question “should we have exclusive rewards?” isn’t the right one, because I think everyone that ever posted here agreed to some form of exclusivity, be it titles, minis, outfits, armor or weapons.

The real questions are:
What kind of rewards are better suited as exclusives. and the follow up:
Are those exclusives enough to make the content desirable.

Making progress after 30 pages

Indeed. Now you’re asking interesting questions.

I’ve said my piece on the first – visual cues are important, but armor is in a different class from other flags. And just to clarify, if they were to offer access to hairstyles and faces as rewards, I’d be as protective of those as I am of armor.

The second question… wooo. That one’s a doozy. As a successful raid leader in multiple MMOs… I don’t play raids for rewards. Ok, maybe a little when there’s stat advancement on the line that’ll makes the next run more likely to succeed, but really, I play for the pleasure of winning. I’m happiest when I’m there for the gameplay, not the chest. Ok, I also like enough coin to cover the cost of expenses for the evening (travel, consumables). In general all the people I care to convince I won were either in the raid with me or know me well enough to believe me when I’m in the mood to brag or regale them with a story of how we had this awesome time where things went pear-shaped but we pulled it out anyway… And for really awesome runs, posting a good video is way more effective than any in-game reward.

Titles, armor, etc. are for showing off to strangers. Not a big priority to me, but I understand the impulse. I do want a good reward structure – because happy raiders gives me a bigger pool to draw team members from. I want raiders with a variety of outlooks eager to participate. (ooo, enlightened self-interest)

nah, in most of those cases in other games, i wanted it for myself. Im not really an external validation type. However, a reward that i can get doing something else diminishes my motivation to do specific tasks.

Also armor is not part of your charachters self imo, its a representation of what proffession/race they are, and what they achieved.

tatttos, hairstles, skin colors, those are the things that should be easy access always. But Armani suits, Military clothes, these things are about what you have earned (like armors)

That said as long as items are cool and compelling, it doesnt matter if they want to give those instead, but I wouldnt want to rule out clothes/armor for cosmetic progression rewards as an option.

So would you have an issue with Legendary Armor Skins Set 1 being exclusive to raids for say a year before being added to other areas of the game and Legendary Armor Skins Set 2 being added as a new raid exclusive reward. Then later set 2 going non-exclusive and set 3 being added as exclusive and so on and so on?

I would. It devalues the items after that year.

There is an interesting discussion we can have about this part. I made a post early in the thread about a timed-exclusive, making the armor exclusive for a period of time, then putting the precursors behind other content types. That has a lot of benefits:

A) It allows Armors to be exclusive rewards without many issues/complains, it’s something that can appeal to both sides of the exclusive vs inclusive argument (a compromise)

B) It gives the devs time to evaluate how hard their raids actually are, so when they add the legendary armor precursors through other content they can adjust the time/effort required. It’s unreasonable to expect them to add multiple ways to get them from release, but over time that might be possible

C) It will only work, if when Legendary Armor set A becomes non-exclusive, a new Legendary Armor set B will be introduced. So there is always an exclusive set to go for. this is important

D) It works in a similar way like how other MMORPGs make their raids more accessible, the early raids are far easier than the later ones, because of the new tiers of gear and new level cap. In GW2 we will never get a level cap increase, or a new gear tier, so another method of making the raid rewards easier to get over time is needed.

E) If they don’t do this, the alternative is to nerf the raids themselves, or have them rather easy from the start. This defeats the purpose of “challenging group content”.

The big problem with this concept of timed exclusives is once Raid A rewards become non-exclusive and Raid B is released, Raid A will be useless. In other games they solve this by the famous gear treadmill, where you have to do the raids in some sort of order to progress.

In GW2 we won’t get anything like this, at least I hope, so before something like this is done, we need to find a way for Raid A to stay important in the long run, even once it loses exclusivity. Is there such a way?

A) It’s not exclusive, it’s temporary exclusive.

B) This is still pretty much impossible.. how would you for example ever be able to put a difficulty-scale to a time-scale, not to mention that it keeps changing because up balance changes and inflation.

C) Creating a cosmetic tier grind. Isn’t the tier grind something Anet said they wanted to prevent? Not to mention that it’s one of the complains you do hear about MMO’s in general.. the tier grind. People feel like their previous done actions become devalued because of it.

D) It’s not the same, armor gets better, so raids get easier, the items do however still get locked behind the raid.. but again, this is the tier grind that is one of the most hearth complain with MMO’s.

E) and the other alternative is to simply keep it locked behind that raid without making it easier.

Devata.6589:

E) and the other alternative is to simply keep it locked behind that raid without making it easier.

Reposting from another post above, what will happen if they do that:

The thing is, by the time they add Raid B and Raid A rewards are more accessible, most “raiders” will already have the Raid A rewards and move on to Raid B. Let’s say that Raid A is doable by 10% of the population, that 10% will get their raid gear and then later on Raid B will be released. That 10% will move on to Raid B, not running Raid A anymore. The 90% that couldn’t run Raid A won’t magically become better at it and do it. So the amount of players running Raid A will be a nice 0% of the population.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

E) and the other alternative is to simply keep it locked behind that raid without making it easier.

Reposting from another post above, what will happen if they do that:

The thing is, by the time they add Raid B and Raid A rewards are more accessible, most “raiders” will already have the Raid A rewards and move on to Raid B. Let’s say that Raid A is doable by 10% of the population, that 10% will get their raid gear and then later on Raid B will be released. That 10% will move on to Raid B, not running Raid A anymore. The 90% that couldn’t run Raid A won’t magically become better at it and do it. So the amount of players running Raid A will be a nice 0% of the population.

And how would, making the rewards available in other parts of the content solve that?

In fact, as long as there are items rewarded that people want / require for something, there will be reasons for them to do it. So by making rewards available in other parts you might even increase this problem.

Ohoni.6057:

Personal opinion. Everyone’s identity is their own. How people want to express their identity is their own. Just because someone choses some armor is more important thanother armor doesn’t mean that that option is a failure.

how people hose to express their identity is there own, which was my entire point. What I said was a failure was the idea that GW2 appearance could be used as some sort of map to the character’s history, that the armor a character had on would teach you anything about their capabilities or gameplay interests. Most players wear the clothes they think look good, not ones that reflect their most important life moments, so if you look at a character and try to size up anything about how that player plays, you’re as likely to be wrong as if you just took a blind wild guess.

You don’t seem to get the word expressing or identity. You’re talking about how other people view a person wearing something doesn’t mean you know that person. Which is obviously tru. I am talking about a person picking something for himself. Obviously it doesn’t mean that the rewards need to be exclusive as there’s more than one reason one wants to wear a certain armor. Some people want to show off, others want to be fashionable, others want to look like they are the hero that got the broadsword of ogre-decapitation from that special dungeon X, some want to be distinctively part of the order of whispers, and there are players that want to be seen as a prime raider or good PvPer prrson by showing their PvP armor.

While you could claim one of those reasons has the most players (without any research done it’s just a bit pretentious but it’s a valid hypothesis) none of those reasons are any less valid than the other.

[/quote]

FrizzFreston.5290:

Nike.2631:

Expression of identity is CRITICAL in MMOs.

Isn’t that bold part is an argument for exclusive rewards?

Quite the opposite. Make the armor an exclusive mark of achievement, and suddenly all succesful raiders look exactly the same. Make it available through multitude of choices, and people will start dressing as they like, which introduces greater variance.

FrizzFreston.5290:

I don’t necessarily mean behind a challenge, but at least belonging to different parts of the game and thus you can tell by someone’s armor what type of player and or person they are.

That completely kills any expression of individuality. Instead of being yourself, you suddenly are just a nameless member of a bigger group. It elevates a single aspect of your identity to the front, but at the cost of destroying all others.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Of course it can be decided to be completely arbitrary by design. But in a game your game identity is largely based on what you do in-game

That is a really sad way of looking at it. You are far, far more.
Unless you aren’t, of course, but that’s nothing to be proud of.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

I gave you such an example. That you chose to disregard it doesn’t mean you didn’t get it. Only that it didn’t fit your thesis.

No you didn’t. The example game you gave lacks a critical aspect: unique items therefore it’s irrelevant.

…sigh
Check again, how you can get G.E.C.K in Fallout 2.
You can either
- pursue clues, that will lead you to the vault city.
- learn there about Vault 13 likely having what you need
- pursue one of several avenues of locating vault 13
- finally find the G.E.C.K.
or
- skip the entire core game storyline and sail directly for Poseidon oil rig
- get the item from a cabinet (that, if i remember, wasn’t even locked).

By your reasoning, having G.E.C.K available through the second way should have destroyed any worth of the first approach. And yet the only people going for the second route were those that aimed solely at the speed completion record.

maddoctor.2738:

Try another one. Obviously a game without unique items doesn’t fit the description

Ha ha, that’s a good requirement. Now you will likely claim that if an item is being accessible through more than one way, it is no longer unique, so doesn’t qualify…

maddoctor.2738:

maddoctor.2738:

Not really. Where do you put the maximum title? 18 runs? With armor you’ll run it even more times to get more legendary armors available for your characters.

See? You are advocating grind.

Where? Getting 60 different pieces of armor for 10 different character is now called grind?

Well, you are the person that says that the reward should be the reason players would want to repeat the content. Repeating content over and over again just to get the loot is grind.

There’s no real difference between this and running silverwastes. In both cases you are repeating a content you wouldn’t do otherwise for rewards.

maddoctor.2738:

And to get back to the discussion, after that intermission, regarding the topic of which types of rewards are better as exclusives, I’d say maybe the best type of exclusive for raids will be trophies for the Guild Hall (decorations)

That would probably be the best type of reward for the raid, because it’s the only reward with actual lore and story behind it. Much like the Priory got one of Zhaitan’s tails, the guild might get a trophy from a raid boss to put on display in their Guild Hall.

Although great, this type of reward has its own unique problems, unlike a title which is account bound, a guild hall decoation is guild-bound, meaning once the guild gets it, there is little reason to get it again. So, it shouldn’t be the only reward to go for.

Another problem is acquisition, it should be a tastement to a guild’s power, so if someone joins a pug raid he shouldn’t get an item for the guild. There is already a system in the game that awards influence based on the number of players from the same guild in the raid, so something like the more players from a guild, the higher the chances to drop it, or something along those lines.

Other than that, having such an item on the guild hall might lead to interesting developments, using the Scribe to craft something out of it, where the entire guild hunts for materials and resources (not inside the raid obviously) to make something new. But the best part is that this is the only reward that actually has some lore behind it and it’s not a “game reward”.

That would actually be a good option. Maybe make it not a single trophy, but some sort of materials that a trophy (and several other things) can be crafted? Then it could be an individual drop, and still reward all-guild groups more, as well as encourage repeating content on a guild level (without being a hard encouragement on the individual level).

Astralporing.1957:

By your reasoning, having G.E.C.K available through the second way should have destroyed any worth of the first approach. And yet the only people going for the second route were those that aimed solely at the speed completion record.

I think someone answered that back on page 27:

Conski Deshan.2057:

A quick google search pulls up http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_unique_weapons
Listing a couple of dozen unique weapons only acquired in one specific way…
Not to mention I know from playing , that several of the rewards such as companions, and houses all have one specific path to obtaining them. If you’re talking about the conversation options as “different” paths I’d Argue that’s like dungeons, you’re still in the dungeon but you can choose p1,p2 or p3, it’s the same content to the same difficulty just with different flavors.

Ha ha, that’s a good requirement. Now you will likely claim that if an item is being accessible through more than one way, it is no longer unique, so doesn’t qualify…

If a game doesn’t have unique items then what’s the point in using for the argument?

There’s no real difference between this and running silverwastes. In both cases you are repeating a content you wouldn’t do otherwise for rewards.

If you can’t see the difference between repeating content to get multiple rewards (without RNG) and repeating content to pray to the RNG gods to get your rewards I can’t help…

Astralporing.1957:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Nike.2631:

Expression of identity is CRITICAL in MMOs.

Isn’t that bold part is an argument for exclusive rewards?

Quite the opposite. Make the armor an exclusive mark of achievement, and suddenly all succesful raiders look exactly the same. Make it available through multitude of choices, and people will start dressing as they like, which introduces greater variance.

FrizzFreston.5290:

I don’t necessarily mean behind a challenge, but at least belonging to different parts of the game and thus you can tell by someone’s armor what type of player and or person they are.

That completely kills any expression of individuality. Instead of being yourself, you suddenly are just a nameless member of a bigger group. It elevates a single aspect of your identity to the front, but at the cost of destroying all others.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Of course it can be decided to be completely arbitrary by design. But in a game your game identity is largely based on what you do in-game

That is a really sad way of looking at it. You are far, far more.
Unless you aren’t, of course, but that’s nothing to be proud of.

Your personal opinion on whether something is sad is completely irrelevant. Alot of people don’t use their real life identity in a game. Most people realise they are more than just a character in a game.

The rest you said is just the usual nonsense based on assumption.
Raiders won’t all look the same unless they all decide to pick the same armor AND the same colour from the many colours (400+). It’s merely providing the option to identify, because you and Anet can’t tell what someone wants to use to identify themselves with. Which is something Anet can provide as an option or not. Hence I call it a design decision. You can add all kinds of personal values to it, but sorry, that’s just your view.

Astralporing.1957:

…sigh
Check again, how you can get G.E.C.K in Fallout 2.
You can either
- pursue clues, that will lead you to the vault city.
- learn there about Vault 13 likely having what you need
- pursue one of several avenues of locating vault 13
- finally find the G.E.C.K.
or
- skip the entire core game storyline and sail directly for Poseidon oil rig
- get the item from a cabinet (that, if i remember, wasn’t even locked).

Astralporing.1957:

By your reasoning, having G.E.C.K available through the second way should have destroyed any worth of the first approach. And yet the only people going for the second route were those that aimed solely at the speed completion record.

I did my own googling on Fallout too so here is what I found, a nice list of unique Fallout weapons:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Fallout_2_unique_weapons

Little Jesus is available from a single mob that has it
The Holy Hand Grenade is available from a specific special encounter
The Improved Flambe is only available if you get an un-improved one and upgrade it at a certain person
Jonny’s BB gun is available inside a specific well
Louisville Slugger is available as a reward from a specific quest
Plated boxing gloves are found inside a rather specific locker

Unique weapons in the first Fallout game:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_unique_weapons

The .223 pistol is available in Fallout as a quest reward, in Fallout 2 it is available from multiple locations but it’s no longer in the unique item list
The Alien Blaster is only available in the Alien Ship encounter in Fallout, in Fallout 2 it is no longer a unique item and it drops from multiple sources
The Red Ryder LE BB gun is available in a rare special encounter only, in Fallout 2 it is available from multiple locations but it is no longer a unique item
The turbo plasma rifle is available only from one vendor who upgrades a non-unique rifle after you finish a specific quest.

So in both Fallout and Fallout 2 THE BEST UNIQUE weapons are available behind VERY SPECIFIC content. I don’t care about how you could get the G.E.C.K or whatever. For your “way” to be used in a video game EVERY SINGLE REWARD must be available through multiple content. Find me ONE game that follows that principle, that’s all I was asking, your example is horrible for that because those games are full of unique weapons available through specific content.

I apologize for the extra long post but I had to find all unique weapons in the Fallout games to crash Astral’s example.

This video is very relevant and I hope Anet takes a look at this and takes notes. The video also explains why and how Ohoni is so wrong:

maddoctor.2738:

The .223 pistol is available in Fallout as a quest reward, in Fallout 2 it is available from multiple locations but it’s no longer in the unique item list
The Alien Blaster is only available in the Alien Ship encounter in Fallout, in Fallout 2 it is no longer a unique item and it drops from multiple sources
The Red Ryder LE BB gun is available in a rare special encounter only, in Fallout 2 it is available from multiple locations but it is no longer a unique item

…yes, because the Fallout unique items list contains only items that are available from a single source. That’s the basis of selecting items for that list.

By asking for an unique item available from multiple sources, you are asking “give me an example of an item available from one source, that is available from multiple sources”. That’s why i said it is a “good requirement” to ask. You might as well have said that you will ignore anything that doesn’t support your thesis.

Still, i needed to supply only a single example to invalidate your point. I did it. You can, of course, continue to shift your goalposts however you wish.

maddoctor.2738:

I don’t care about how you could get the G.E.C.K or whatever. For your “way” to be used in a video game EVERY SINGLE REWARD must be available through multiple content.

You seem to have mixed your arguments somewhere. I wasn’t talking about Ohoni’s options being supported (or not) by old games (as i consider that whole argument foolish. If we followed that way of thinking, we’d still be living on trees). I was talking about your claim that making a reward available through two different avenues would always invalidate the harder one.

I have given you an example where it is not true. Example from a very classic game, of proven quality.

Again, you may continue to ignore it, but it doesn’t make your point any stronger.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

The .223 pistol is available in Fallout as a quest reward, in Fallout 2 it is available from multiple locations but it’s no longer in the unique item list
The Alien Blaster is only available in the Alien Ship encounter in Fallout, in Fallout 2 it is no longer a unique item and it drops from multiple sources
The Red Ryder LE BB gun is available in a rare special encounter only, in Fallout 2 it is available from multiple locations but it is no longer a unique item

…yes, because the Fallout unique items list contains only items that are available from a single source. That’s the basis of selecting items for that list.

By asking for an unique item available from multiple sources, you are asking “give me an example of an item available from one source, that is available from multiple sources”. That’s why i said it is a “good requirement” to ask. You might as well have said that you will ignore anything that doesn’t support your thesis.

Still, i needed to supply only a single example to invalidate your point. I did it. You can, of course, continue to shift your goalposts however you wish.

maddoctor.2738:

I don’t care about how you could get the G.E.C.K or whatever. For your “way” to be used in a video game EVERY SINGLE REWARD must be available through multiple content.

You seem to have mixed your arguments somewhere. I wasn’t talking about Ohoni’s options being supported (or not) by old games (as i consider that whole argument foolish. If we followed that way of thinking, we’d still be living on trees). I was talking about your claim that making a reward available through two different avenues would always invalidate the harder one.

I have given you an example where it is not true. Example from a very classic game, of proven quality.

Again, you may continue to ignore it, but it doesn’t make your point any stronger.

actually he never said that.
He said that there are always some items in an rpg that have exclusive sources. He never claimed every item in the game needs unique sources or the game fails.

your claim that the game will be better is not backed up by your example because the game CLEARLY didnt abandon unique rewards, you cant claim its success being something like gekt if it also contained unique items. At best you can say having both can lead to a succesfful game, which has always been what most people in this thread are saying.

to prove your point, you d have to show a succesful rpg game with items which contained no uniquely rewarded items.

Now if you want to totally ignore the past, and be a trailblazer, you will have to show why it is better from an idea standpoint.

the key is a reward system has to correctly motivate play, in a well designed game. As i have said before, both gold and karma gives you an exact picture of the logical conclusion of the type of systems you guys want to implement, and they both have problems that need to be avoided in order to create a generally satisfying experience for certain things

That’s one opinion, the other is add at least a bit of exclusive rewards on all types of content.

Well, if we’re talking about that, let me remind you that I do believe is is fair to add exclusive rewards to ALL content, so long as the bar for earning the exclusive stuff is very low, requiring minimal time and skill to achieve. I think it’s fine to have unique rewards designed to encourage players to try out new things, I just think that it’s an abuse of this principle to place these exclusive items behind many many hours of the content, or behind a massive skill wall, because by the time a player reaches that point they’ve already well made up their mind about whether they actually enjoy that content, and if they do not then you’re just incentivizing them to not have fun, which benefits no one.

So yes to exclusive rewards that can be earned quickly, yes to long term rewards that are not exclusive to specific content, no to long term rewards that are exclusive to certain content. Always.

And besides before adding the rewards on content you don’t know how many players will find it enjoyable, try it, or complete it. Reward assignment happens before the content is available for play.

Sure, but when you do this, there are two things to consider. 1. You want to make sure you’re rewarding the right things. You do not want to reward players for not having fun, so if you assume that at least some of the player will not enjoy the new content (which is fair to say about ANY content), then you need to give them an out to not have to do it while still being able to earn the reward that they want. And 2. Just because you implement a reward system one day doesn’t mean you can’t change it the next. If the system they launch with is not satisfactory to a large number of players, they can always change it, as they have done to almost every system since launch.

I don’t get both at the same time. Exclusive armor contains both.

You would get both at the same time. They would both be included in the exact same reward mechanism, you could not get one without the other. This is just like how if you get a new armor piece, you also get the skin, they are part and parcel.

To make content more replayable you can add multiple rewards in that content, so repeating it does have unique flavor every time.

And nobody is talking about reducing the need for repeating the content for multiple rewards. If you feel that you need three sets of light boots, then you can run the content until you get all three, same in my proposal as in the original version. If you just want the skin and title, you only have to run it once, which was no different than if you only wanted the skin under the previous system. What are you not understanding here, that you are seeing a difference that does not exist? There would be no more or less farming under my proposal than under the original system, the mechanisms would be identical.

That 10% will move on to Raid B, not running Raid A anymore. The 90% that couldn’t run Raid A won’t magically become better at it and do it. So the amount of players running Raid A will be a nice 0% of the population.

True, aside from new players to the game that like raiding but weren’t around when Raid A was the top dog. But that all seems to be working as intended. If current players don’t have their Raid A armor before Raid B comes along, then it’s likely because they don’t enjoy raiding at all, so if they don’t do Raid A, then that’s the best case scenario. I can’t imagine a system that would work better.

I still think people from Raid B would run Raid A occasionally, just for the variety, so long as the immediate reward from each Raid run would be good enough to justify their time and effort. You do, however, raise the core flaw in designing raids to be “based on earning exclusive rewards,” in that once a player has all those exclusive rewards, he has no more reason to do it, whereas if you balance a raid to be fun and give general rewards that make it ALWAYS worth doing, there is no point at which it becomes less worth doing than it ever was.

You don’t seem to get the word expressing or identity. You’re talking about how other people view a person wearing something doesn’t mean you know that person. Which is obviously tru. I am talking about a person picking something for himself. Obviously it doesn’t mean that the rewards need to be exclusive as there’s more than one reason one wants to wear a certain armor. Some people want to show off, others want to be fashionable, others want to look like they are the hero that got the broadsword of ogre-decapitation from that special dungeon X, some want to be distinctively part of the order of whispers, and there are players that want to be seen as a prime raider or good PvPer prrson by showing their PvP armor.

If you think I disagree with any of that then I think you are misreading my comments.

Groups will progress through content at different rates. Some will get through wing A before others do and move onto Wing B. That doesn’t mean that those still on wing A wont eventually progress. They’ll just do so at a different rate. They might in turn be better at other encounters.

We see this all the time in other games with raids. Just because people aren’t able to defeat a raid at the same rate as some of the top guilds doesn’t stop them from trying and eventually doing so.

Personally the inclusion of raids is what’s drawing me back to the game. I’ve always loved it, but didn’t enjoy the Event, Fractal endgame grind. While it felt big, it wasn’t a good system for people with more than 4 friends, generally.

I’m really excited.

Ohoni.6057:

If you think I disagree with any of that then I think you are misreading my comments.

I think you mean that you don’t understand my point. There’s multiple reasons why someone chooses an armourpiece to wear. Exclusivity of said chosen piece adds value and identity to that piece and could be one of those reasons. Though, as i said, thats obviously not true to everyone.

It honestly doesn’t matter.

Anet is adding legendary armor to raid. You do the raid, you get the reward. You don’t like it, too bad, your problem, not anet’s. "I don’t like this stuff! cry cry cry! isn’t a valid excuse. A lot of ppl seem to be OK with exclusive rewards…so does anet.

They are adding other exclusive items as well in other places like PvP and fractals.
I’m sure the new maps will also have exclusive rewards only obtainable in that map.

guess what, the entire xpac is exclusive….

What about the players who only have purchased the core game and are NOT getting the xpac? Should everything be available to them just like your logic says ohoni? They won’t even have access to the new rewards AT ALL. According to you, anet shouldn’t be locking rewards behind something unfun. Some ppl don’t find spending 60 bucks for an xpac fun, I guess you believe they should have access to the rewards right??

Keep on praying and hoping you get what you want Ohoni, because it’s not happening and it doesn’t need to happen.

I think you mean that you don’t understand my point. There’s multiple reasons why someone chooses an armourpiece to wear. Exclusivity of said chosen piece adds value and identity to that piece and could be one of those reasons. Though, as i said, thats obviously not true to everyone.

Yes, but one player’s desire to wear a piece of armor for its exclusivity value should not trump another player’s ability to have access to that armor piece for aesthetic value, which is why armor exclusivity is such a bad idea. If people want to show off exclusivity, it should come in forms other than armor and weapon skins.

What about the players who only have purchased the core game and are NOT getting the xpac? Should everything be available to them just like your logic says ohoni?

That’s because they didn’t pay for the content, and why I think Devata’s never going to get anywhere complaining about gem store items. I’m not suggesting they mess with their business model, I’m not suggesting that they do anything that would reduce their own income, all the changes I suggest would be revenue neutral.

Ohoni.6057:

I think you mean that you don’t understand my point. There’s multiple reasons why someone chooses an armourpiece to wear. Exclusivity of said chosen piece adds value and identity to that piece and could be one of those reasons. Though, as i said, thats obviously not true to everyone.

Yes, but one player’s desire to wear a piece of armor for its exclusivity value should not trump another player’s ability to have access to that armor piece for aesthetic value, which is why armor exclusivity is such a bad idea. If people want to show off exclusivity, it should come in forms other than armor and weapon skins.

What about the players who only have purchased the core game and are NOT getting the xpac? Should everything be available to them just like your logic says ohoni?

That’s because they didn’t pay for the content, and why I think Devata’s never going to get anywhere complaining about gem store items. I’m not suggesting they mess with their business model, I’m not suggesting that they do anything that would reduce their own income, all the changes I suggest would be revenue neutral.

Why should aesthetic value trump exclusivity value? Why can’t they be treated equally?

And how do you know your changes would be revenue neutral? How do you know that it won’t cause more players to stop buying gems or future expansion packs than it will cause people to buy the game or players to buy more gems than before? Now, I’m not saying I know your changes will be revenue negative, I can’t claim that with 100% certainty anymore than you do. If players leave the game due to a change they don’t like, they don’t buy gems and they don’t buy expansion packs. That’s lost revenue.

But given human nature and the number of people in this thread for and against your vision, I don’t think your ideal situation would be revenue neutral. I think it would be revenue negative.

Why should aesthetic value trump exclusivity value? Why can’t they be treated equally?

They can, but that means that the one who values it for aesthetics gets it. Or at the very least, that if more players value the aesthetics than value the exclusivity, then the item would not be exclusive. If the exclusivity player gets to keep the item away from the aesthetics player, then that would be him trumping the aesthetics player.

And how do you know your changes would be revenue neutral? How do you know that it won’t cause more players to stop buying gems or future expansion packs than it will cause people to buy the game or players to buy more gems than before?

Because it wouldn’t interact with gems, or at least wouldn’t interact with gems any more or less than the existing system. That’s a far cry from ideas like “stop putting things on the gem store and give them to be for free instead.”

If players leave the game due to a change they don’t like, they don’t buy gems and they don’t buy expansion packs. That’s lost revenue.

Well obviously, but my ideas are predicated on the fact that they would attract more players than they would repel. If there were any reason to believe otherwise then I wouldn’t suggest them.

But given human nature and the number of people in this thread for and against your vision, I don’t think your ideal situation would be revenue neutral. I think it would be revenue negative.

As I’ve noted before, the number of people for or against the idea in this thread is entirely irrelevant to the final outcome. This thread is a horrible sample group for this sort of proposal.

Ohoni.6057:

Why should aesthetic value trump exclusivity value? Why can’t they be treated equally?

They can, but that means that the one who values it for aesthetics gets it. Or at the very least, that if more players value the aesthetics than value the exclusivity, then the item would not be exclusive. If the exclusivity player gets to keep the item away from the aesthetics player, then that would be him trumping the aesthetics player.

And how do you know your changes would be revenue neutral? How do you know that it won’t cause more players to stop buying gems or future expansion packs than it will cause people to buy the game or players to buy more gems than before?

Because it wouldn’t interact with gems, or at least wouldn’t interact with gems any more or less than the existing system. That’s a far cry from ideas like “stop putting things on the gem store and give them to be for free instead.”

If players leave the game due to a change they don’t like, they don’t buy gems and they don’t buy expansion packs. That’s lost revenue.

Well obviously, but my ideas are predicated on the fact that they would attract more players than they would repel. If there were any reason to believe otherwise then I wouldn’t suggest them.

But given human nature and the number of people in this thread for and against your vision, I don’t think your ideal situation would be revenue neutral. I think it would be revenue negative.

As I’ve noted before, the number of people for or against the idea in this thread is entirely irrelevant to the final outcome. This thread is a horrible sample group for this sort of proposal.

If they are treated equally, it means for every 1 armor skin that’s put in to favor those who go after things for their aesthetic value, 1 armor skin is put in to favor those who go after exclusivity value. Not always to those who prefer the aesthetic value. That’s favoring one and excluding another.

And where is your proof or evidence that your ideas will bring more players in than it will chase away? Posts here and human nature show me that people tend to prefer exclusive items, especially when it’s the reward for something challenging. Restating that because I think you skimmed over the other half of my reason for believing what I do. Why do you think “Limited Time Only” sales are successful? They are successful because people don’t want to miss out. They want to be able to say that they got the limited time deal. So give me actual proof that you’re right. Something you can link to that’s a reliable source. Prove my hypothesis wrong and yours is right. Stating your hypothesis over again is not proof.

And if you can’t prove the above, you can’t claim your suggestion is revenue neutral.

Astralporing.1957:

Again, you may continue to ignore it, but it doesn’t make your point any stronger.

The thing is, Fallout does make my point stronger, since unique items in Fallout like the legendary armor precursors are available through a single type of content. You failed to provide an example of the opposite.

The opposite “argument” is for those unique items to be available from multiple types of content, I asked for a single RPG that follows that principle. You failed to provide an example of that, as simple as that, because I believe that kind of game doesn’t even exist.

Unique items ARE required in RPGs, there is no RPG (to my knowledge, that’s why I’m asking) that doesn’t have unique items, so by extension Guild Wars 2 should also have unique items, that’s the whole point.

I never asked for raids to have unique/exclusve items. I asked for every piece of content to have exclusive items, there is a huge difference.

Ohoni.6057:

<snip>

So what you want is just for raids not to have exclusive rewards, but it’s fine for everything else. Just because it might be hard for many people. In other words you are just against raids in general and want their rewards to work in a different way than everything else in the game.

Got it. But I doubt something like this will happen.