Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

50% of what? But this is my point: Other content has exclusive rewards, what’s wrong with raids having exclusive rewards? Your saying you don’t want ANY content to have exclusive rewards?!? Or are you saying you just don’t like raids and you want the rewards but are fine with other stuff for some reason having exclusive rewards? If your answer is A, then I advise you go to a different game cause I highly doubt anet is suddenly gonna say screw you exclusive rewards to all its content. If it’s B, then you just chucked logic out the window. I don’t see any c, but if you got one please do explain. But so far either way you slice the pie its not looking good for you.

I would go with A. While the raid content bothers me personally more than the other systems, ideologically I’m opposed to anyone not being able to get the rewards they want just because they can’t or don’t want to participate in one specific aspect of such a multifaceted game. So this is the topic I am most vocal about, but if someone else really cares about making PvP armors less exclusive, then I certainly wouldn’t argue against them.

The raid issue is a new issue because raids are new to this game. They were not in it before, and therefore everything related to them is a new discussion. Other content might have been in some ways similar, but that does not mean that just because previous content did something a certain way, that raids have to follow suite, or that it would justify raids following suite.

How about a pve/pvp split?

I don’t pvp that much (so it’s not for me), but it seems a reasonable compromise for high prestige items.

I could agree to that, IF raids are considered to be on the “PvP” side of that split. I have a feeling that raiders and PvPers have a lot more in common than raiders and PvEers. However the split ends up, there needs to be a split between raiders and general PvE players.

GW2 though is in definite need of CGC and rewards go hand in hand with that, as it will require some time and dedication to complete (it wouldn’t be challenging if it didn’t) the situation is unavoidable that people who cannot spend that time will not get those rewards.

It isn’t even remotely unavoidable. You avoid it by providing alternate methods for those people to acquire those rewards. Boom, avoided.

This is by design and complaining that something other people will love exists because it doesn’t fit with your life priorities isn’t fair – its your life and you decide what to do with it, sometimes this will put you in a different camp from certain other groups (be it photography night, spawning children or going fishing at the weekend).

I haven’t heard anyone seriously complaining that raiding exists, only about the negative impacts that it could bring to the game, such as locking up exclusive rewards. So long as non-raider players are not incentivized to participate in raiding, it’s a “live and let live” situation. But so long as non-raider players ARE incentivized to raid, well then it’s war, and one side has to burn.

You know (as you seem experienced in gaming) that the CGC must have special rewards linked to it. They are adding Legendary backpacks to PvP and Fractals and new weapons too (Fractals being reduced in required completion time). There will be plenty to do and get for those who don’t have time for raiding.

Like what? You just listed two things that are no less of a time/skill investment than raiding. It’s like you just said “you don’t need to be a doctor, you could also be a lawyer or a hedge-fund manager, like, whatever.”

Then they are being bloody hypocrites. You can’t be ok with exclusives for content that YOU like and then not ok with them when you don’t like the content.

Of course you can. People can care about what they care about and not care about what they don’t care about, that does not make them hypocrites. What would make them hypocrites is if they care about it in their own case, but actively fight against it in someone else’s case.

So if someone says “I care about these rewards being exclusive, but I don’t care about those rewards being exclusive,” then that is not hypocritical, their degree of investment is their own business. It is only hypocritical if they say “I care about these rewards being exclusive, but I don’t want you to have these other rewards because they are exclusive to something I like.” I am not taking that position, and so far I don’t believe that anyone has.

It is more accessible.

Let’s wait to see if they’re actually hard before we get into that part though.

I don’t buy that they can ever balance it out. If the raiders like it, then it’ll be too hard for most players. If it’s easy enough that most players can do it, then the raiders will drown the forums with their tears about how it’s too “casual.” My assumption is that if they’re going to bother with raiding at all, that they will at least try to err on the raider’s side, at least at first. After a few months, they might give up on that though.

There needs to be a reward for doing Raids. Hopefully these rewards will be sellable. Otherwise, outside of trying to sell a path, they’ll be no reason for me to repeat the content.

There should be rewards, just not exclusive ones. The amount of rewards you get should be comparable or better than other activities in the game. If you enjoy raiding, so that on a level playing field raiding is how you would prefer to spend your time, then great, it’s available for you! If you don’t prefer raiding, and would not do it unless bribed into it via exclusive rewards, then also great, you don’t have to raid! Everybody wins!

Ohoni, you don’t deserve the rewards because you don’t want to do the content. Thats as simple as it gets.

It’s also a nonsense statement. "deserving " a reward is entirely based on meeting an arbitrary goal put there at a developer’s whim. They are free to change that goal at their whim. If they choose to say that players “deserve” the armor for completing the raid then that’s what players deserve. If they say that players can also “deserve” the armro for completing some other challenge, then players deserve that too. I’m just pushing that they adopt the latter position.

There a lot of things locked behind certain content… do you see an uproar in the community of players complaining about PvP getting their own exclusive stuff? or fractals getting their own stuff?

Yes. You don’t? There’s not so much of it right at the moment, because neither gameplay type is particularly novel, but each time they’ve added exclusive rewards to those modes there has been some degree of negative response, and there continues to be under the surface. I imagine that vocal criticism of raid armor will die off too over time, after the game releases and people have fully tried it, but don’t confuse that for acceptance, it just means that people have given up on trying to change something that they still do not like, and that still makes them less happy about playing the game.

Raids shouldn’t be any different. Disagree all you want, I know this won’t stop you , but sooner or later, you need to realize that you are not going to change anet’s stance on exclusive rewards.

Why? They’ve changed their stance numerous times before. Just coming up we’re going to be getting non-RNG routes to earning Fractal weapons, non-RNG Precursors, why should I not expect to ever see them change their stance on raid armor?

This game (or any MMORPG) would be a disaster with your views of a reward system. Thats why there is no MMORPG out there that does not have exclusive rewards.

I’m playing Marvel Heroes at the moment, and it doesn’t have exclusive rewards. Much of the loot is themed, and more likely to be acquired directly from certain scenarios, but almost every item in the game can be gained through some alternate means, and those that can’t are just stats, not skins, so it really isn’t that important.

PvP is player vs player. Raids aren’t player vs player, so saying it should be on that side is illogical and irrational.

And just because raids are new doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t follow what’s been done in the past and been successful. Exclusive rewards have been successful in this game. Mawdrey, the Luminescent gear, the WvW skins, etc. I don’t recall a single thread with the direct complaint of I can’t get X skin because it’s tied to Y content. Not even with dungeons. And there are players out there that hate dungeons and PvP and I don’t see them complaining about not being able to get a dungeon skin.

It’s not war just because one side has to be incentivized to play and no one has to burn. In time, there will be groups who will sell raids for a fee. Then players who do not like to raid, can do the content they want and earn money to buy a raid run. And you wanted a token system. Gold is the perfect token system. It’s very easily earned. You can get it through just about every play style. Use the gold “tokens” to buy a spot in a raid.

And every time they release the gear to be less exclusive, there are complaints about it being less exclusive. They may just not be vocal as once it’s done, there’s no real way to go back to being more exclusive and maintain the prestige. You no longer know if someone earned it using what method.

So what’s this source that says that the method to obtain the precursors isn’t locked behind a horrible RNG system? We don’t know what it will take to complete the precursor collection. Could involve an item or items that have the RNG rate of a fractal skin.

Ohoni.6057:

Do you not believe that was a perfect example for raiding?

No.

1. You put in a horrendous example of a child being mildly allergic. No one is allergic to doing raids. Those that have physical limitations that make it hard to raid can buy runs when those start being offered or play with friends, family, and guild mates who would be more tolerant of their limitations should they want the rewards that come with raiding.

2. The food the child hates might be vegetables that are necessary for the health of their child. The parent could be putting the dessert behind them eating the vegetables so that their child will be healthy. Plus, it also teaches the child a lesson about life. That sometimes you have to do things that you don’t necessarily want to do. Like in a job.

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

A raid is, from a point of lore, as uninteresting to me as a dungeon after I have seen it´s cinematics once. The story always stays the same, no progression for me there, just a number of items to collect. Fractals kind of have a privileged status for me there as they are only random islands from the mists and let you have a glimpse in the past.

And doing SW, DT, or any of the LS1 dynamic events more than once was so much more interesting to you from a lore point? Doing the Battle for LA more than once didn’t make any lore sense, killing the Triple Trouble Wurm, destroying the Marionette, cleansing the Tower of Nightmares, fighting an invasion by Scarlet’s minions etc was so much better to you than dungeons?

To make SW again makes sense lore wise if you don´t fight any legends or vinewraith, it is an embattled place at the border to the realm of Mordremoth. You could even argue that it makes sense to make Vinewraith again because it is a plant that can sprout again, but this is indeed a little far fetched.
Fighting against a scarlet invasion makes sense if it are not the same minions attacking over and over. As the places were always different where they attacked and the mob combination was always different, you could reasoanbly believe that it were not the same monions over and over again.
Triple Trouble, Tequatl, Shatterer, Jormag and any other, named mob does indeed not make sense more than once lore wise, but that does not negate my argument that it is the same with raids. I still did them quite regularly for a time because they could be made in 10 minutes or less, but never for a specific, for example Jormag only item. And not because I did not have the time else wise, I just did not want to commit an hour to making a whole round of world bosses, so we´re back at casual vs organized game again.
Individual parts of LS 1 indeed lost their magic to me after they were done, but that did not negate them being great while they were fresh. I see it lorewise the same with a raid. I do it once, get the item, look the cinematics, done. Next content please.

I don´t know about your Pen and Paper group, but my players regularly loot random mobs for weapons and money because they are greedy and most of the creatures I use are classical fantasy figures of the poorer kind like Bulettes, shambling mounds, bandit captains, slavers, dark Knights etc etc.
I avoid money hoarding villains in general because these creatures completely kill an economy after their hoard is divided under the players, just take a look at what most regular things in a PHB costs and tell me how many lifestock you could buy with a dragon hoard. With a lot of money, you face players raising an army or the good old Zombie in the Box trick to clear dungeons without much effort and the authorities looking away because they are bribed with the riches.

People are getting ahead of themselves here, there are two definitions of unique in this case and ANet hasn’t stated which one they mean.

A: That specific items are only available from doing this content.
B: That specific types of items are only available from doing this content.

Option A I have no problem with and even encourage so long as it isn’t RNG based, option B I have every problem with.

I still don’t have ascended gear because I don’t like crafting and that’s the only way to get it, in spite of the fact that ANet blatantly stated when they introduced ascended gear that there would multiple means of obtaining a set. They better not repeat that same BS here. I have no problem if there are unique items tied to certain content, if I really want that specific item I’ll put in the work for it as anyone should be expected to, or if I decide I don’t like the content enough to warrant the effort, I won’t.

But if they shoehorn an ENTIRE CATEGORY of items in to one content type, that is just poor game design, as poorly handled rewards as a game can make. Any item category should have multiple venues for being obtained, so that if people don’t like certain content, they don’t lose out on play options which affect the entire game because of exclusivity to a single game mode they don’t enjoy.

Lord Kuru.3685:

If people were going to sell raids, they’d either

• do it like dungeons now (at last boss, buyer just gets final reward), or if that’s not possible due to tweaks in the reward system (perhaps you have to hit boss to get any credit),
• ask buyer to stand in specific location and only autoattack enough to get credit.

Teaching will just add time to the transaction — not to mention, sellers certainly don’t want buyers to screw things up (dropping the wrong combo fields, for example). People might learn from videos that elite guilds put up, but I don’t think there will be any learning from raid selling.

But the real problem is that with Legendary Armor locked behind raids, everyone is going to want to do them — and if they turn out to actually be hard, it’s going to be a problem as most players aren’t cut out for raids (not necessarily because they’re bad players, but maybe time issues). This will lead to a lot of rage. And that’s when Anet will give in and make them easier (they’ll probably call it “more accessible”).

Agreed on the first point, we don’t know as of yet how the raid will reward players. It could be something on a per wing or boss basis, perhaps a full run is required that is up in the air.

How the player interacts with the encounters depends on those hosting and how the reward is spread. I do imagine ‘tagging’ of some sort will come into play, however depending on how the encounter works (which could be either a tuning or mechanical dilemma) they might request the pug to do more than afk attack for their credit. If I were a demon of a raid designer, I would make the encounter in question actually get harder if someone dies, such as a damage buff in the simplest context.

My impression thus far would be that, due to the 10-man constraint and the potential of GW2 mechanics, the ‘extra’ will likely need a bit more skill to get his/her reward and complete the encounter successfully. In other MMOs, you could bring in a tank for instance that was at a much higher gear-level for the raid than required and have a ‘carry’ mentality going. The mentality behind GW2 raids is that they will persist in their difficulty practically forever due to the non-vertical gear curve, the Magumma Raid in question will be as challenging to new players as upcoming new raids will be.

With concern to ‘Rage’ or Frustration issues, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It sets a goal for the player to go forward on, to improve and work with others in doing so. There are plenty of players and guilds in this lovely community who will find nothing better to do than play with said ‘engaged’ players and help them along. It is likely similar to the same sensation you feel in WvW, fighting off this guild group that has been decimating your forces for hours or even days. To finally win an engagement is something that makes the player feel accomplished!

Conncept.7638:

People are getting ahead of themselves here, there are two definitions of unique in this case and ANet hasn’t stated which one they mean.

A: That specific items are only available from doing this content.
B: That specific types of items are only available from doing this content.

Option A I have no problem with and even encourage so long as it isn’t RNG based, option B I have every problem with.

I still don’t have ascended gear because I don’t like crafting and that’s the only way to get it, in spite of the fact that ANet blatantly stated when they introduced ascended gear that there would multiple means of obtaining a set. They better not repeat that same BS here. I have no problem if there are unique items tied to certain content, if I really want that specific item I’ll put in the work for it as anyone should be expected to, or if I decide I don’t like the content enough to warrant the effort, I won’t.

But if they shoehorn an ENTIRE CATEGORY of items in to one content type, that is just poor game design, as poorly handled rewards as a game can make. Any item category should have multiple venues for being obtained, so that if people don’t like certain content, they don’t lose out on play options which affect the entire game because of exclusivity to a single game mode they don’t enjoy.

This. I have no problem with the current legendary armor skins that are coming only being available through raids.

But within 6 months they better at least announce if not release a set of legendary armor skins that are different into content other than raids.

Skins can be unique to content. Stats and tier level can’t. Everyone should be capable of having the meta build (playing it is another issue) or any other build. You can’t do that if you lock stats and/or tier level behind content.

Luckily, they’ve basically upped the chances of getting the ascended drop you want from fractal RNG with the ability to change stats. Not that the drop rate of any fractal skin was all that high to begin with (they could up this without crashing the mats market or making ascended too quick to earn comparatively).

Conncept.7638:

People are getting ahead of themselves here, there are two definitions of unique in this case and ANet hasn’t stated which one they mean.

A: That specific items are only available from doing this content.
B: That specific types of items are only available from doing this content.

Option A I have no problem with and even encourage so long as it isn’t RNG based, option B I have every problem with.

I still don’t have ascended gear because I don’t like crafting and that’s the only way to get it, in spite of the fact that ANet blatantly stated when they introduced ascended gear that there would multiple means of obtaining a set. They better not repeat that same BS here. I have no problem if there are unique items tied to certain content, if I really want that specific item I’ll put in the work for it as anyone should be expected to, or if I decide I don’t like the content enough to warrant the effort, I won’t.

But if they shoehorn an ENTIRE CATEGORY of items in to one content type, that is just poor game design, as poorly handled rewards as a game can make. Any item category should have multiple venues for being obtained, so that if people don’t like certain content, they don’t lose out on play options which affect the entire game because of exclusivity to a single game mode they don’t enjoy.

If you can’t be bothered to do something as simple as crafting, what would you consider to be an alternate appropriate method for acquiring ascended gear? All the other opinions in the thread notwithstanding, I honestly can’t understand, if we all agree that reward should be related to effort expended, I can’t honestly think of a more fair way to obtain an item that’s available to everyone, considering they’ve now decided to hand out ascended materials like candy.

I’m not going to waste my time on the skin exclusivity argument any more as it’s a pointless and circular argument and anet’s stance on it is already clear. I like skin exclusivity and think it adds rather than subtracts from the game. I respect those with differing opinions, but I think they’re wrong.

I do happen to agree about stat exclusivity. GW2 is founded on the principal that anyone, regardless of ability, should be able to eventually top off their stats. Since ascended, unlike legendary, is a stat exclusivity issue, then this bears discussion.

In your mind, what would be an appropriately challenging or time consuming method to acquire that stat bump? Crafting isn’t time consuming or challenging in the least. You can actually acquire all the needed materials from login rewards alone on a long enough time scale. Yes, it will take you much longer to acquire this way, but it also requires no cost or effort on your part.

This seems extremely fair to me as it doesn’t trivialize the acquisition of ascended stats, and still allows everyone to obtain them. Even a player who literally does nothing but log in once a day can eventually acquire that stat bump.

I guess I’m just curious what, to you, would be acceptable? Like what content do you like to do that you’d like to see ascended tier rewards from, and what seems a fair way to implement them in that content that still requires cost and/or effort on your part to acquire?

PvP is player vs player. Raids aren’t player vs player, so saying it should be on that side is illogical and irrational.

It really depends on how you choose to divide things up. I believe that the mentality of a serious PvPer is closer to the mentality of a serious raider than to a casual PvEer. I believe that the sorts of players who would enjoy raiding are more similar to the sorts of players who enjoy PvP than to those that enjoy casual PvE. I believe that if you had to say “well, we can add a method by which Raiders and PvPers can earn rewards one way, and casual PvEers by another,” then that would end up pleasing more players than if PvEers were lumped in with raiders, although certainly there would be people upset about it either way.

The better method would be to give ALL gameplay styles their own route.

And just because raids are new doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t follow what’s been done in the past and been successful. Exclusive rewards have been successful in this game. Mawdrey, the Luminescent gear, the WvW skins, etc. I don’t recall a single thread with the direct complaint of I can’t get X skin because it’s tied to Y content. Not even with dungeons. And there are players out there that hate dungeons and PvP and I don’t see them complaining about not being able to get a dungeon skin.

Because none of those are raids.

But again, I’m willing to compromise. So long as earning Legendary raid armor takes no more time or skill than earning the dungeon tokens needed to earn a Legendary Weapon, then I guess I’d be fine with that. I wouldn’t enjoy myself any more than I did earning those tokens, but I could hold my nose for the few hours that would take.

My concern, however, is that it might instead require dozens of hours in the raid over a period of weeks, and that failure might even be possible, wasting any time spent on that run. If that’s the case, then it is a different thing entirely than dungeon running, so comparing the two becomes impossible.

It’s not war just because one side has to be incentivized to play and no one has to burn. In time, there will be groups who will sell raids for a fee. Then players who do not like to raid, can do the content they want and earn money to buy a raid run.

I shouldn’t need to say this, but I guess I need to say this, selling raid runs is NOT a solution. That solves absolutely nothing. for one thing, all it does is increase the wealth of raiding players, who are already winning better rewards, and draining the wealth of non-raiders, who are already not making good rewards. Who thought up that idea, Wall Street?

Second, even setting aside the money factor, a player would still have to go through the hassle of finding a group selling raid spots, joining them in the raid, and then waiting out the duration of the raid. If you’re going to go to all that trouble then why not just do the raid normally? The hassle involved in the raid itself is one of the main problems with raiding, and selling spots does nothing to reduce that, unless players can just drop in at the last minute, in which case it solves at least part of the problem. If you’re willing to put the time in to actually existing inside the raid, then why bother joining up with a “selling raid” group? Just join a normal raid party and do it.

The number of raiders around here wringing their hands with glee over the prospect of other players paying them to run the raids for them is just sickening.

And you wanted a token system. Gold is the perfect token system. It’s very easily earned. You can get it through just about every play style. Use the gold “tokens” to buy a spot in a raid.

Gold had the potential to be a fine token system, but ANet have thoroughly botched the gold economy. It’s way too distorted at this point to salvage, like the Karma economy. They would need to use a non-gold currency.

And every time they release the gear to be less exclusive, there are complaints about it being less exclusive. They may just not be vocal as once it’s done, there’s no real way to go back to being more exclusive and maintain the prestige. You no longer know if someone earned it using what method.

Yes, and since that’s never actually been a problem, it continues to not be a problem. Regardless of where that other character got a skin, he’s happy that he has it, and his happiness over having it automatically trumps any confusion you might have about where he got it. If you’re that curious, ask him.

1. You put in a horrendous example of a child being mildly allergic. No one is allergic to doing raids. Those that have physical limitations that make it hard to raid can buy runs when those start being offered or play with friends, family, and guild mates who would be more tolerant of their limitations should they want the rewards that come with raiding.

First, it’s metaphorical. Nobody is literally allergic to raiding, but many people have physical or circumstantial issues that make participating in a raid “negative” to their lives, as a mild allergy would in a food. Perhaps they don’t have the time to do a long, dedicated session. Perhaps they have outside needs that require them to take constant breaks. Perhaps they have physical issues that prevent extended play sessions. There are all sorts of reasons, and being able to “buy a slot” is no solution for them, it’s just discriminating against them for their circumstances.

2. The food the child hates might be vegetables that are necessary for the health of their child. The parent could be putting the dessert behind them eating the vegetables so that their child will be healthy. Plus, it also teaches the child a lesson about life. That sometimes you have to do things that you don’t necessarily want to do. Like in a job.

They might be, but then that wouldn’t fit the analogy, because in this case raids are not necessary or even beneficial to the health of the child. They are a nutrition-free food product, if you enjoy them, then great, if you don’t, then they will do nothing for you.

I still don’t have ascended gear because I don’t like crafting and that’s the only way to get it, in spite of the fact that ANet blatantly stated when they introduced ascended gear that there would multiple means of obtaining a set.

I sympathize, but really the time and effort of crafting ascended gear is nothing compared to clearing a single dungeon. You can knock it out in less than an hour per craft. All it takes is a sizable amount of cash, really. There is no logical barrier to making a set of ascended armor like there would be in farming raid loot.

Ohoni.6057:

Yet in MMORPGs players have this weird idea of everything being available to every type of gameplay although this thing doesn’t exist in any other RPG, so why should it in MMORPGs?

Because single player RPGs tend to be more narrowly focused and balanced. With a single player RPG, if you like most of it, you likely like all of it. If you can complete most of it, you likely can complete all of it (and if you can’t, there are usually ways to cheat). If a game, like Dark Souls, is very difficult, then it is ALL difficult, and if you don’t like that level of difficulty then you won’t play the game at all. If a game is mostly rather easy, then it isn’t likely to have crazy extreme challenges in parts that cannot be overcome. That would be seen as a gross imbalance and would result in significant player backlash.

Actually this is completely false and shows someone who hasn’t played many RPGs in their lifetime. Most single player RPGs have those fights or even whole dungeons that are above anything else in the game. Some completely optional fights that you don’t HAVE to fight to win the game, but you can for their extra challenge and they usually also offer some of the best rewards in the game. Even if those kinds of fights do not exist in the initial game, where the game mechanics are still new to both developers and players, they eventually come up in some form of DLC or expansion. There is a reason for example that most DLCs in the Mass Effect games are a lot more challenging than the original games. No RPG is “all difficult” or “all easy”.

But MMOs appeal to a broader audience, and cover a wide spectrum of player skill levels and interests. Some players claim to want the challenge that raids would provide, and that’s fine, the content and challenge should be there for them, but that doesn’t mean that there should be rewards associated to those specific tasks that other players cannot earn.

Once again you are completely wrong because it means exactly that, that’s how the entire industry works. There are dungeons in single player games someone might not finish, fights they might never complete, so their rewards are out of their hands.

And as for P&Ps, that is the worst example to make your case with, because if a P&P group has a DM that refuses to cater his campaigns to the play styles of the players, that is not a game that will run very long. If the players are interested in a casual monster-stomp and the DM keeps throwing them into Tomb of Horrors scenarios, they aren’t likely to come back.

Once again you are completely false because it’s the best example. If the players are interested in casual monster-stomp they won’t need the “Staff of Ultimate Cosmic Evil” to succeed. In fact, ultra powerful items will make those said encounters so much easier that it wouldn’t make any sense for that DM to give those types of items to his players. Not to mention from a lore/story point it wouldn’t make any kind of sense to reward your players with an extra powerful item from killing random monsters.

So yeah you are completely wrong on all 3 points.

Torolan.5816:

To make SW again makes sense lore wise if you don´t fight any legends or vinewraith, it is an embattled place at the border to the realm of Mordremoth. You could even argue that it makes sense to make Vinewraith again because it is a plant that can sprout again, but this is indeed a little far fetched.

And yet you might fight the same legends, or no legends at all during a couple of your runs. No it doesn’t make sense lore wise, VW is defeated and it’s over. The rest of it is just random chance and if you want to know, they said the raid will use dynamic events system which will make them slightly different every time.

Fighting against a scarlet invasion makes sense if it are not the same minions attacking over and over. As the places were always different where they attacked and the mob combination was always different, you could reasoanbly believe that it were not the same monions over and over again.

I always wonder how many millions of minions Scarlet had… No those invasions were just a chance to spam 1 for loot, they didn’t make any lore sense. And really if it was an actual invasion the mobs on those zones would feel it. Instead they stand still and do nothing, even though they are being “invaded”.

I avoid money hoarding villains in general because these creatures completely kill an economy after their hoard is divided under the players, just take a look at what most regular things in a PHB costs and tell me how many lifestock you could buy with a dragon hoard. With a lot of money, you face players raising an army or the good old Zombie in the Box trick to clear dungeons without much effort and the authorities looking away because they are bribed with the riches.

Sure that’s why those “legendary items” have no sell value. They cannot be obtained with gold at a town (or trading post) only from the content that rewards them. Which was the whole point.

Ohoni.6057:

My concern, however, is that it might instead require dozens of hours in the raid over a period of weeks, and that failure might even be possible, wasting any time spent on that run. If that’s the case, then it is a different thing entirely than dungeon running, so comparing the two becomes impossible.

The primary reason I hate adding the items on the TP is because it will lead to exactly this problem. In order to keep the items expensive it would put the items behind random chances and endless repetition of the content, which combined with how hard it is supposed to be, it’s a no-no.

The point of having “challenging” content is to replace as much of the randomness as possible with challenge, if it’s even MORE grindy then there is no point in having raids in the first place.

Dozens of hours in the raid over a period of weeks, until you understand the mechanics, get a good composition/party, learn how to play your own character better is fine. Dozens of hours FARMING the content once you master it is not.

Azumi.9572:

I’d be very interested to know the politics (Or ideology) of those who are entitled (Feel they should have raid rewards without doing raids) and those who are against them (raid rewards for raids exclusively).

I have a theory that I’m working on right now about various things regarding this subject (How people with different political views fall into separate categories on just about everything, and what political ideology says about you).

What we hate in others is more than likely what we hate in ourselves. If our self concept views a personality trait in others with abundance, that trait is more than likely in abundance within us too. Consider this before casting down upon others…..

Actually this is completely false and shows someone who hasn’t played many RPGs in their lifetime. Most single player RPGs have those fights or even whole dungeons that are above anything else in the game.

Not really. They have harder bits, but usually on the same tier as the rest of it (and for the record I’ve played dozens of RPGs over the years, including everything Bioware’s put out). If the bulk of the game is at a 7/10 difficulty, you might have an area that’s like an 8, but rarely a 10.

In some games they have a “challenging” area, but in a game where the level cap is like 99 and yet everything is balanced to be beaten by level 50 or so, so worse case scenario you power level a bit until you’re crazy OP and walk through it (even WoW is technically like this since the level and gearcaps keep increasing, allowing people to solo older raids). That’s of course not possible in this game, assuming they’re true to their formula, as they intend for this raid to never become truly “effortless.”

And even in cases where the “challenge dungeon” is completely impossible, which I’ve never encountered myself, it’s a single player game, and the challenge dungeon is a side quest, so if you can’t beat it, you skip it and move on, finish the game and then quit, and not have to worry about it again, whereas in GW2, if you can’t get the raid armor, you’ll never have it even years later as you keep playing the game, and that’s far more nagging on the gamer soul.

No RPG is “all difficult” or “all easy”.

A well balanced game has well balanced difficulty curves, so that players know what they’re getting into. It’s a poorly designed game that swings considerably harder or easier as it goes, throwing off players who had been enjoying the game to that point and suddenly either lose all challenge that they had been enjoying, or hit a wall that they can’t get past and have to stop playing. Neither is a positive outcome. You want things to get steadily harder, a bit, as they go and players learn the right skills, but you never want to jump up to a significantly harder difficulty tier, or require a player to increase his own skills at an improbably fast rate.

Once again you are completely false because it’s the best example. If the players are interested in casual monster-stomp they won’t need the “Staff of Ultimate Cosmic Evil” to succeed. In fact, ultra powerful items will make those said encounters so much easier that it wouldn’t make any sense for that DM to give those types of items to his players. Not to mention from a lore/story point it wouldn’t make any kind of sense to reward your players with an extra powerful item from killing random monsters.

That’s a poor example though, because in this case, the raid armor will not offer a stat advantage, so the typical raider mantra of “if you don’t raid, you don’t need raid armor anyways” is doubly pointless. In this game, a raider no more needs raid armor than that guy chatting in Lion’s Arch does, in both their cases it’s purely a matter of “want.”

And so in the P&P game, it’s not about whether the GM gives the casual players overpowered loot, it’s about whether he gives them cool loot, and a good GM does. He would give them fun items that would unlock fun options for them, and not necessarily make their journey easier (or raise added difficulties if it would), but just offers them unique experiences and make them feel their time was well spent. Cosmetics, really.

Not to mention from a lore/story point it wouldn’t make any kind of sense to reward your players with an extra powerful item from killing random monsters.

Like say getting a magical ring, upon which the fate of the world rests, off some scrubby little wastling in a cave? The unsuspected is the secret sauce of good storytelling. The best rewards are placed in the unlikeliest of places.

I always wonder how many millions of minions Scarlet had… No those invasions were just a chance to spam 1 for loot, they didn’t make any lore sense. And really if it was an actual invasion the mobs on those zones would feel it. Instead they stand still and do nothing, even though they are being “invaded”.

She’d mastered dimensional travel, if she ran out of minions in one timeline, she could always just pull them from another. Of course all enemies in the game are infinite, outside of story missions.

Dozens of hours in the raid over a period of weeks, until you understand the mechanics, get a good composition/party, learn how to play your own character better is fine. Dozens of hours FARMING the content once you master it is not.

I suspect it will be both, cumulative.

Tongku.5326:

Windsagio.1340:

You’re just wrong on this. The time commitment and the organizational commitment are barriers to participation. Gear is far from the only way to limit access to a game system.

No. It is you who are wrong. It doesnt matter if you play 3 hours 4-5 times a week or 1 hour 2-3 times a week. Sooner or later, you will have the appropriate gear / build set up for this content.

What does it matter? if you play 1 hour 2-3 times a week (or even 2 hours every day) but the raid takes longer to do (which, according to many people asking about raids is completely reasonable time), then you won’t be able to participate.

Tongku.5326:

And likewise, there are plenty of guilds who include both dedicated and casual players in their ranks in this game.

Sure. And i am now thinking about my casual guildies that quite possibly won’t be able to take part in this.

Tongku.5326:

Your only issue here is that you want the rewards IMEMDIATELY in addition for doing nothing / being carried.

Again, nobody is asking for that, as you already well know. So, please, stop strawmanning.

Tongku.5326:

And sorry, I do not agree with your personal demands. Your way of playing does not give you any right whatsoever, to demean and belittle players who enjoy exclusive content.

I don’t. Can’t say the same about the other side (see you quote above, for example).

Fox.3469:

This is the same topic over again, they have had tons of pages in the last one. Whatever needs to be said has been said. There is no need to carry on this discussion. They have seen the last topic, and based on what was said there and on what the company wants, they made this descission.

Need i remind you, that people that were against raids were asked to not participate in the CDI (in order to “not muddle the discussion”)? No wonder that devs have now a skewed vision about what players want.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Other content has exclusive rewards, what’s wrong with raids having exclusive rewards? Your saying you don’t want ANY content to have exclusive rewards?!?

…yes, that’s what is being said. Additionally, this case is more vsible, because raiders want not only the rewards to be exclusive, but also they want a content that only a minority will be able to consistently finish. Exclusive rewards everyone can access (even if at a different pace) – i.e. pvp reward tracks – are a lesser evil than exclusive rewards that by design are meant to not be accessible to majority of players.

Seera.5916:

I don’t recall a single thread with the direct complaint of I can’t get X skin because it’s tied to Y content. Not even with dungeons.

You have a short memory. PvP dungeon reward tracks were made as a response to player feedback, for example. I don’t believe there was a single exclusive reward that hasn’t been complained against at some point.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

If your answer is A, then I advise you go to a different game cause I highly doubt anet is suddenly gonna say screw you exclusive rewards to all its content.

PvP dungeon reward tracks, and the vendors with LS1 skins tell me otherwise.

FrizzFreston.5290:

You can hold on to that splinter of hope. Arenanet isn’t going to flip their tables after a press release saying one thing over these few forum posts.

You… don’t know that much about their history of policy changes, do you?

SkiTz.4590:

Ohoni, you don’t deserve the rewards because you don’t want to do the content.

Neither do you deserve it for wanting to do it.
Offering rewards to one playing style over the other is just an arbitrary decision, and has nothing to do with anyone “deserving” something, and you liking one content does not make you more deserving of a reward than someone that dislikes it.

Ohoni.6057:

Not really. They have harder bits, but usually on the same tier as the rest of it (and for the record I’ve played dozens of RPGs over the years, including everything Bioware’s put out). If the bulk of the game is at a 7/10 difficulty, you might have an area that’s like an 8, but rarely a 10.

Fortunately you saying this doesn’t mean it’s true.

If you’ve played older Bioware games you’d know, but obviously you are a newer gamer. Things like most Dragon battles in Baldur’s Gate were way above the difficulty of anything else in the game and the entire Watcher’s Keep was way above even those. Encounters like Twisted Rune, Kangaax and others were also extremely difficult compared to nearly anything else in the game and they were all optional (and had the best rewards)

In a similar way the Endless Paths of Od Nua are way more challenging than the rest of Pillars of Eternity, a rather challenging game as a whole but that part was made even harder.

There are a lot of other games with A LOT harder than usual dungeons and content that make the rest of the game look like a walk in the park and they still offer the best rewards. Which is the whole point.

And even in cases where the “challenge dungeon” is completely impossible, which I’ve never encountered myself, it’s a single player game, and the challenge dungeon is a side quest, so if you can’t beat it, you skip it and move on, finish the game and then quit, and not have to worry about it again, whereas in GW2, if you can’t get the raid armor, you’ll never have it even years later as you keep playing the game, and that’s far more nagging on the gamer soul.

They are both optional.

No RPG is “all difficult” or “all easy”.

A well balanced game has well balanced difficulty curves, so that players know what they’re getting into. It’s a poorly designed game that swings considerably harder or easier as it goes, throwing off players who had been enjoying the game to that point and suddenly either lose all challenge that they had been enjoying, or hit a wall that they can’t get past and have to stop playing. Neither is a positive outcome. You want things to get steadily harder, a bit, as they go and players learn the right skills, but you never want to jump up to a significantly harder difficulty tier, or require a player to increase his own skills at an improbably fast rate.

That’s why most of the harder encounters (like the raid in GW2) are optional.

That’s a poor example though, because in this case, the raid armor will not offer a stat advantage, so the typical raider mantra of “if you don’t raid, you don’t need raid armor anyways” is doubly pointless. In this game, a raider no more needs raid armor than that guy chatting in Lion’s Arch does, in both their cases it’s purely a matter of “want.”

It’s a good example in a game that is all about cosmetics. You don’t get different armors by their stats but how they look.

And so in the P&P game, it’s not about whether the GM gives the casual players overpowered loot, it’s about whether he gives them cool loot, and a good GM does. He would give them fun items that would unlock fun options for them, and not necessarily make their journey easier (or raise added difficulties if it would), but just offers them unique experiences and make them feel their time was well spent. Cosmetics, really.

In GW2 there aren’t higher stat items, there is only different cosmetics, so in effect the example isn’t poor but spot on. In other game systems you get more powerful items, in GW2 you get “prettier” (in quotes because “pretty” is subjective).

Not to mention from a lore/story point it wouldn’t make any kind of sense to reward your players with an extra powerful item from killing random monsters.

Like say getting a magical ring, upon which the fate of the world rests, off some scrubby little wastling in a cave? The unsuspected is the secret sauce of good storytelling. The best rewards are placed in the unlikeliest of places.

That reward wasn’t behind “random” farming like you want to do in GW2 to get your legendary armor. To get that ring someone will have to find said cave. It’s still a reward behind content, which is the whole point. Thank you for proving my point.

Ohoni.6057:

Dozens of hours in the raid over a period of weeks, until you understand the mechanics, get a good composition/party, learn how to play your own character better is fine. Dozens of hours FARMING the content once you master it is not.

I suspect it will be both, cumulative.

Then their “raid” will be an epic failure. Casuals won’t do it because they can’t, hardcores won’t do it because of the grind. They should remove it then and be done with it.

Astralporing.1957:

Seera.5916:

I don’t recall a single thread with the direct complaint of I can’t get X skin because it’s tied to Y content. Not even with dungeons.

You have a short memory. PvP dungeon reward tracks were made as a response to player feedback, for example. I don’t believe there was a single exclusive reward that hasn’t been complained against at some point.

Actually some of the dungeon skins were available from PVP at the start. Only they required an excessive rank to get, then they made them available for glory+gold and then they put them in the reward tracks. Then when they removed glory as a currency they added them to the new PVP tracks. Obviously since they removed glory they had to introduce new ways of getting those skins.
Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_reward_
They didn’t add the dungeon skins at a later time, they were there at the start. And sadly getting dungeon skins from PVP rewards is more of a reward for PVE players who can’t do dungeons rather than reward for PVP players. Badly designed reward system.

The fascination of this thread is this:

The non-raiders just want access to the rewards.

The raiders want to believe that raiding is a special accomplishment that deserves special rewards.

To some degree neither is right: Not all subjects HAVE to have the same rewards, and being willing to put up with the raid experience doesn’t earn you anything.

I like the new system. Finally there is something for people who missed UW, FoW etc. from the old game.

Windsagio.1340:

The fascination of this thread is this:

The non-raiders just want access to the rewards.

The raiders want to believe that raiding is a special accomplishment that deserves special rewards.

To some degree neither is right: Not all subjects HAVE to have the same rewards, and being willing to put up with the raid experience doesn’t earn you anything.

‘Put up with’ and ‘earn’ were nice touches, language really far from fun and gaming. This is why I said it isn’t for you – you can’t even see the fun.

If you’ve played older Bioware games you’d know, but obviously you are a newer gamer. Things like most Dragon battles in Baldur’s Gate were way above the difficulty of anything else in the game and the entire Watcher’s Keep was way above even those. Encounters like Twisted Rune, Kangaax and others were also extremely difficult compared to nearly anything else in the game and they were all optional (and had the best rewards)

I’m afraid I did get in a little late, the only Atari games I’ve played were on a yard-sale system well after I got my NES, but the first game I played was Adventureland for the Vic20, and the first I actually beat myself was Goonies II on NES. It’s only been twenty-five years or so, but I have played a lot of games in that time.

They are both optional.

But to nowhere near the same degree. If you skip a dungeon in a single player RPG you aren’t likely to play that game six month down the line, while if it’s in an MMO, that dungeon is still in the game you’re playing right now. There are tons of optional objectives that I never got around to in Skyrim, and don’t care to since I haven’t touched the game in over three years, but if I were still playing Skyrim daily, it would be more likely to bother me.

It’s a good example in a game that is all about cosmetics. You don’t get different armors by their stats but how they look.

Your example still doesn’t make any sense. A cosmetic armor skin cannot be “overpowered” for any given player, nor do raiders “need” it any more than any other player, so your example of not wanting to give an overly strong weapon to casual players because it would further weaken the difficulty level lacks any relevance to the situation.

In GW2 there aren’t higher stat items, there is only different cosmetics, so in effect the example isn’t poor but spot on. In other game systems you get more powerful items, in GW2 you get “prettier” (in quotes because “pretty” is subjective).

Yes, but that’s why the example does not work. In the example, an overpowered item would cause the content to become even easier, whereas with cosmetics, they cannot make content any easier, so your justification for not giving it to them evaporates, and the only possible reason not to give them the cool item becomes “because the GM is being a jerk.”

That reward wasn’t behind “random” farming like you want to do in GW2 to get your legendary armor. To get that ring someone will have to find said cave. It’s still a reward behind content, which is the whole point. Thank you for proving my point.

It was not a special cave, it was just an ordinary cave, it just happened to have a great treasure as a random drop. Again, if you think that proves your point, then you must have a very weak point.

Then their “raid” will be an epic failure. Casuals won’t do it because they can’t, hardcores won’t do it because of the grind. They should remove it then and be done with it.

Hardcores love nothing more than grinding raids. Still, my own belief is that there just aren’t enough of them in the game to sustain the raid model, even if all of them that do exist love it. It’ll be Fractals all over again (and yet they still haven’t gotten around to resolving that problem).

‘Put up with’ and ‘earn’ were nice touches, language really far from fun and gaming. This is why I said it isn’t for you – you can’t even see the fun.

But that’s just the point, for a lot of people raid is not and will never be fun. It just isn’t. That’s subjective, and different people have different reactions. So for those for whom raiding simply is not fun, why should they be penalized? Why should they be forced to choose to either engage in the content that offers them no fun, OR forever miss out on a reward that they want? Who benefits from that negative experience? ANet doesn’t benefit. No other players benefit, aside from schadenfreude. So why force that scenario? Why not allow for players to play the game how they enjoy playing it, AND earn the skins they want to wear?

Ohoni.6057:

‘Put up with’ and ‘earn’ were nice touches, language really far from fun and gaming. This is why I said it isn’t for you – you can’t even see the fun.

But that’s just the point, for a lot of people raid is not and will never be fun. It just isn’t. That’s subjective, and different people have different reactions. So for those for whom raiding simply is not fun, why should they be penalized? Why should they be forced to choose to either engage in the content that offers them no fun, OR forever miss out on a reward that they want? Who benefits from that negative experience? ANet doesn’t benefit. No other players benefit, aside from schadenfreude. So why force that scenario? Why not allow for players to play the game how they enjoy playing it, AND earn the skins they want to wear?

You aren’t forced to do it. You can live without the rewards.

“Let’s say that the parent provided a meal that the younger child hates, while the older child really enjoys that food. Is it really an equal burden being placed on them to each finish the meal? Or let’s say that the child is mildly allergic to the meal, but the parent does not care because he prefers the older child, so while the younger might cramp down the meal because he really wants that desert, it would cause him to break out in hives. Is that fair to him?”

You’re insane.

ReiCH.6273:

Pukc.6328:

ReiCH.6273:

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

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

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

Legendary back for top tier pvp

Hardly competes with full set of legendary armour, minis, other skins, titles, guild decos if you’re a pve’er though… fair is fair, they need as much love as the raiders

And if you’re into WvW .. well … tough luck huh?

They used to have pvp only gear, like the tribal armor and another set or two. I luckily got tribal before they discontinued it. Have NO clue why they removed it from the game. At the same time when I get a whisper from someone jelly I just think … sorry I cared about pvp before it was an easy farm :P I’m thinking though, this might change when HoT drops. To my knowledge they haven’t discussed PvP rewards or GvG rewards yet. Ofc I could be completely wrong because I haven’t been following a lot of the news since a lot of it is just being repeated and that got really annoying really fast.

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

The fascination of this thread is this:

The non-raiders just want access to the rewards.

The raiders want to believe that raiding is a special accomplishment that deserves special rewards.

To some degree neither is right: Not all subjects HAVE to have the same rewards, and being willing to put up with the raid experience doesn’t earn you anything.

‘Put up with’ and ‘earn’ were nice touches, language really far from fun and gaming. This is why I said it isn’t for you – you can’t even see the fun.

The bribe belies the fun. This is a central point to my argument.

I’m not interested in raiding because my experience is that raiding brings out the worst in people. I also don’t need the rewards very much. My part in this discussion i more one of interest than one of personal gain.

On the other hand, Anet knows that raids are for raiders about the rewards and about standing out, which is why they’re so heavily incentivizing them.

~~~~

To put it another way, Anet also can’t see the fun (or more specifically they can’t see the extended player interest), or they wouldn’t have to sell it on special rewards.

And let’s not fool ourselves. If there were no special rewards for Raids, it would be an empty wasteland. A tiny minority of players would do it. I question whether people would raid for even silverwastes-level rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m afraid I did get in a little late, the only Atari games I’ve played were on a yard-sale system well after I got my NES, but the first game I played was Adventureland for the Vic20, and the first I actually beat myself was Goonies II on NES. It’s only been twenty-five years or so, but I have played a lot of games in that time.

Talking about main RPGs like the ones I posted about that follow exactly the idea of challenging content rewarding better items. But if after so many years you don’t get the concept…

They are both optional.

But to nowhere near the same degree. If you skip a dungeon in a single player RPG you aren’t likely to play that game six month down the line, while if it’s in an MMO, that dungeon is still in the game you’re playing right now. There are tons of optional objectives that I never got around to in Skyrim, and don’t care to since I haven’t touched the game in over three years, but if I were still playing Skyrim daily, it would be more likely to bother me.

If it bothered you, you would try more to find them. Learn the strategies from those who beat it already, read about them online, in Skyrim’s case find a map on the wiki that shows every single location so you can get which ones you missed. In a rather similar way, Raids will eventually get their guides and become way easier over time, allowing more and more players to do them. If the same rewards are available elsewhere that part of the game is completely lost, by the time raids become “easier” for the more average person, they would’ve already got the reward from the “easier” way.

It’s a good example in a game that is all about cosmetics. You don’t get different armors by their stats but how they look.

Your example still doesn’t make any sense. A cosmetic armor skin cannot be “overpowered” for any given player, nor do raiders “need” it any more than any other player, so your example of not wanting to give an overly strong weapon to casual players because it would further weaken the difficulty level lacks any relevance to the situation.

A cosmetic armor skin in GW2 is the same as higher quality items in other games. Since this one is all about cosmetics.

In GW2 there aren’t higher stat items, there is only different cosmetics, so in effect the example isn’t poor but spot on. In other game systems you get more powerful items, in GW2 you get “prettier” (in quotes because “pretty” is subjective).

Yes, but that’s why the example does not work. In the example, an overpowered item would cause the content to become even easier, whereas with cosmetics, they cannot make content any easier, so your justification for not giving it to them evaporates, and the only possible reason not to give them the cool item becomes “because the GM is being a jerk.”

Not really. The justification is still the same, different quality items come from different content. The “Staff of Ultimate Power” translates into “Staff with loads of particles” in GW2.

That reward wasn’t behind “random” farming like you want to do in GW2 to get your legendary armor. To get that ring someone will have to find said cave. It’s still a reward behind content, which is the whole point. Thank you for proving my point.

It was not a special cave, it was just an ordinary cave, it just happened to have a great treasure as a random drop. Again, if you think that proves your point, then you must have a very weak point.

It was a very specific cave among dozens of specific caves and the treasure was far from random, maybe you should re-read the Lotr books. The rings wasn’t found in the cave, someone else had it on him (found it in a river). A very very specific creature in a very very specific cave had the item. No amount of killing of random goblins in “the Hobbit” could drop that ring. It wasn’t a generated random treasure, it had a backstory and very good reason for being there.

Getting “Spark” after raiding a destroyer base in Timberline falls and defeating a Champion of Primordus (content) is completely different than getting Spark from a random Destroyer crab outside the cave.

Then their “raid” will be an epic failure. Casuals won’t do it because they can’t, hardcores won’t do it because of the grind. They should remove it then and be done with it.

Hardcores love nothing more than grinding raids. Still, my own belief is that there just aren’t enough of them in the game to sustain the raid model, even if all of them that do exist love it. It’ll be Fractals all over again (and yet they still haven’t gotten around to resolving that problem).

I disagree with that. There is a reason raids in other games usually have very little RNG but bosses drop good loot all the time.

Windsagio.1340:

And let’s not fool ourselves. If there were no special rewards for Raids, it would be an empty wasteland. A tiny minority of players would do it. I question whether people would raid for even silverwastes-level rewards.

You genuinely don’t think that anet have designed something they think is challenging and want to reward appropriately?

You aren’t forced to do it. You can live without the rewards.

Not the point. You did not read what I actually said. I’ll repeat:
“Why should they be forced to choose to either engage in the content that offers them no fun, OR forever miss out on a reward that they want? "

That is not something you can opt out of. If you genuinely hate the content but love the reward, then you have no choice in feeling either of those things, all you can choose is which you put more value in, your time, or not getting that reward, and there’s no good reason why players should be forced to make that choice.

Talking about main RPGs like the ones I posted about that follow exactly the idea of challenging content rewarding better items. But if after so many years you don’t get the concept…

I don’t enjoy some of the same games you do, that does not mean that my opinion is less valid than yours.

In a rather similar way, Raids will eventually get their guides and become way easier over time, allowing more and more players to do them.

To a point, but if ANet meets their own expectations, it’ll never get that much easier, never get as easy as raids get in WoW, for example, because players will be unable to outlevel/outgear the raid like they can in WoW.

A cosmetic armor skin in GW2 is the same as higher quality items in other games. Since this one is all about cosmetics.

In some contexts? Yes. In the context you used, it’s irrelevant. You need to be careful about context when comparing one item to another. An apple and a tomato are both red, if you’re making a comparison based on color it’s a valid one, but if you try to use a tomato in an apple pie, it likely won’t be as good.

Not really. The justification is still the same, different quality items come from different content. The “Staff of Ultimate Power” translates into “Staff with loads of particles” in GW2.

It reeeeaaallly doesn’t. If you’re a P&P GM and your players want a “Staff with loads of particles”, there’s no reason not to give it to them. It won’t make the next challenges any easier, which would be the problem if you munchkin them all up with destructive gear. Apples and tomatoes.

It was a very specific cave among dozens of specific caves and the treasure was far from random, maybe you should re-read the Lotr books.

Oh, did that do that in LotR? Seriously though, it was random, it’s just that in narrative fiction, “random” tends to work out. In a game, the player controls the narrative, which is why linear storytelling can be problematic. One player could find a piece of Legendary armor at the bottom of a raid dungeon. Another player might find it at the bottom of some random cave (not that I’m really suggesting it should be an RNG drop, but whatever). But really, while that cave was “random,” to that player it was “that great cave that had the awesome armor in it!” It develops narrative purpose after the fact.

Getting “Spark” after raiding a destroyer base in Timberline falls and defeating a Champion of Primordus (content) is completely different than getting Spark from a random Destroyer crab outside the cave.

Not really. They are all just part of the player’s story.

I disagree with that. There is a reason raids in other games usually have very little RNG but bosses drop good loot all the time.

Yeah, but in practice it’s about the same thing. I remember discussing this with Wildstar raiders years ago. Yeah, there is minimal RNG in a WoW-type dungeon, a certain amount of loot is guaranteed, but it’s not enough for everyone. Forty people go in, and only 2-3 of the really good pieces drop, and potentially not even the pieces anyone needs after a raid has been going on. So everyone has to decide who gets anything, and basically for most players it will still take dozens of runs to get their full kit, because they’ll only be allowed to personally take a piece of gear every 5-10 runs. No game has raids where you’re intended to be able to beat it once and get all the rewards that first time.

GW2’s RNG method, assuming they use similar trends, has both the potential to take you considerably longer, but also the potential to take considerably less time, depending on your luck, but on average it’s likely to take about as many runs (assuming that’s their goal).

Ohoni.6057:

Talking about main RPGs like the ones I posted about that follow exactly the idea of challenging content rewarding better items. But if after so many years you don’t get the concept…

I don’t enjoy some of the same games you do, that does not mean that my opinion is less valid than yours.

I’m talking about RPGs and they all follow the same concept on how to award their loot from content. Different content means different rewards, it’s how the industry always worked like and will always be like.

In a rather similar way, Raids will eventually get their guides and become way easier over time, allowing more and more players to do them.

To a point, but if ANet meets their own expectations, it’ll never get that much easier, never get as easy as raids get in WoW, for example, because players will be unable to outlevel/outgear the raid like they can in WoW.

From what we’ve been told so far, like gliding to avoid the boss attack, others doing this and that during the raid, I belive GW2 raids will be more on the technical/mechanical side than pure skill. In a sense even Liadri was a technical fight but Lupicus is more of a skill fight. We will see what they come up with.

Not really. The justification is still the same, different quality items come from different content. The “Staff of Ultimate Power” translates into “Staff with loads of particles” in GW2.

It reeeeaaallly doesn’t. If you’re a P&P GM and your players want a “Staff with loads of particles”, there’s no reason not to give it to them. It won’t make the next challenges any easier, which would be the problem if you munchkin them all up with destructive gear. Apples and tomatoes.

If you are a P&P GM and your players want the “Staff of ultimate power” you won’t hand it to them as easily. As I said, The “Staff of Ultimate Power” translates into “Staff with loads of particles” in GW2.

Getting “Spark” after raiding a destroyer base in Timberline falls and defeating a Champion of Primordus (content) is completely different than getting Spark from a random Destroyer crab outside the cave.

Not really. They are all just part of the player’s story.

One is getting an item through actual story, the other is just a game-way of getting it. There is no similarity. And from a real story perspective, getting it from the champion of primordus has way more story potential than getting it from a random crab.

I disagree with that. There is a reason raids in other games usually have very little RNG but bosses drop good loot all the time.

Yeah, but in practice it’s about the same thing. I remember discussing this with Wildstar raiders years ago. Yeah, there is minimal RNG in a WoW-type dungeon, a certain amount of loot is guaranteed, but it’s not enough for everyone. Forty people go in, and only 2-3 of the really good pieces drop, and potentially not even the pieces anyone needs after a raid has been going on. So everyone has to decide who gets anything, and basically for most players it will still take dozens of runs to get their full kit, because they’ll only be allowed to personally take a piece of gear every 5-10 runs. No game has raids where you’re intended to be able to beat it once and get all the rewards that first time.

Only in those raids with 40 people every time one of them gets the items you are also one step closer to your goal. If you don’t play the raid at release and go 1 year later (assuming it is still being run by people) you will likely get most entry level rewards without opposition because everyone else would already have those. It also works in an excellent way with guild teams and organized teams, if I go with 40 guildies I’m guaranteed to get that drop after ~40 runs, there is a light in the tunnel and after each raid you make some progress towards one or two items that someone else in the raid got already.

GW2’s RNG method, assuming they use similar trends, has both the potential to take you considerably longer, but also the potential to take considerably less time, depending on your luck, but on average it’s likely to take about as many runs (assuming that’s their goal).

Only it doesn’t work that way because GW2’s RNG is pure RNG. Your 100th run is the same as your first one RNG-wise and someone else in your team earning the reward doesn’t put you one step closer in getting it yourself. In a traditional raid system you always make some progress, in GW2 you might never even make progress. In other MMORPGs it’s a journey and progress towards your goal, in GW2 it’s binary, you either get the item or you don’t. That’s why they use token systems heavily (which is good)

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

Seera.5916:

I don’t recall a single thread with the direct complaint of I can’t get X skin because it’s tied to Y content. Not even with dungeons.

You have a short memory. PvP dungeon reward tracks were made as a response to player feedback, for example. I don’t believe there was a single exclusive reward that hasn’t been complained against at some point.

Actually some of the dungeon skins were available from PVP at the start. Only they required an excessive rank to get, then they made them available for glory+gold and then they put them in the reward tracks. Then when they removed glory as a currency they added them to the new PVP tracks. Obviously since they removed glory they had to introduce new ways of getting those skins.
Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_reward_
They didn’t add the dungeon skins at a later time, they were there at the start. And sadly getting dungeon skins from PVP rewards is more of a reward for PVE players who can’t do dungeons rather than reward for PVP players. Badly designed reward system.

They had pvp versions of those skins, that couldn’t be used anywhere besides pvp. What reward tracks offered however was the same, pve gear, that dropped from dungeons. As well as dungeon tokens for the legendary gift, that was up until that point impossible to make without running the dungeon in question.

Coulter.2315:

‘Put up with’ and ‘earn’ were nice touches, language really far from fun and gaming. This is why I said it isn’t for you – you can’t even see the fun.

Neither can you, apparently. If you could, you would not require exclusives to keep you interested.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

Seera.5916:

I don’t recall a single thread with the direct complaint of I can’t get X skin because it’s tied to Y content. Not even with dungeons.

You have a short memory. PvP dungeon reward tracks were made as a response to player feedback, for example. I don’t believe there was a single exclusive reward that hasn’t been complained against at some point.

Actually some of the dungeon skins were available from PVP at the start. Only they required an excessive rank to get, then they made them available for glory+gold and then they put them in the reward tracks. Then when they removed glory as a currency they added them to the new PVP tracks. Obviously since they removed glory they had to introduce new ways of getting those skins.
Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_reward_
They didn’t add the dungeon skins at a later time, they were there at the start. And sadly getting dungeon skins from PVP rewards is more of a reward for PVE players who can’t do dungeons rather than reward for PVP players. Badly designed reward system.

They had pvp versions of those skins, that couldn’t be used anywhere besides pvp. What reward tracks offered however was the same, pve gear, that dropped from dungeons. As well as dungeon tokens for the legendary gift, that was up until that point impossible to make without running the dungeon in question.

Since it was reward for those playing PVP, actual PVPers didn’t need the dungeon PVE gear, just the skins. Making the Legendary gifts accessible in PVP was indeed a nice change though, earning tokens so they can make the Legendary of their choice is good for PVP players but it’s too bad that there are a bazilion other requirements for a legendary not available in PVP

I’m talking about RPGs and they all follow the same concept on how to award their loot from content. Different content means different rewards, it’s how the industry always worked like and will always be like.

In that context we were discussing how you believed most RPGs had areas that were vastly more difficult than the standard difficulty curve of the game, which I had disputed, as this was true in none of my favorite RPGs, and it’s typically accepted as poor game design to buck players off the difficulty curve you’ve established. To this you questioned my credentials as a gamer to dare have a differing opinion to your own, to which I indicated kitten that.

From what we’ve been told so far, like gliding to avoid the boss attack, others doing this and that during the raid, I belive GW2 raids will be more on the technical/mechanical side than pure skill.

It’ll require skillful use of those mechanics. Anything like gliding, I think is assumed that the party will have these as a baseline, not that players will start running the raid without them, but once you have all the masteries it becomes easy mode. The way I read their comments, while they will be adding masteries over time, those masteries will be specific to new content, and they aren’t likely to add masteries that would have any application to the Maguuma raids. For example if they did a Bubbles expansion, it might have crazy swimming masteries, they wouldn’t make the jungle raid any easier.

In a sense even Liadri was a technical fight but Lupicus is more of a skill fight. We will see what they come up with.

I’ve never heard anyone question that Liadri was a skill fight before. I am genuinely flabbergasted.

If you are a P&P GM and your players want the “Staff of ultimate power” you won’t hand it to them as easily. As I said, The “Staff of Ultimate Power” translates into “Staff with loads of particles” in GW2.

/sigh, you’re running around in circles because you seem to refuse to understand the point either of us is making, least of all your own, for some reason. The reason you don’t give players the “staff of ultimate power” is because it would make future encounters easier. This does not translate to GW2 because the shiniest armor will not make future content any easier. If the players in the P&P just want an item that looks cool but will have no impact on future content, then give it to them, no reason not to.

If you insist on comparing the two on those grounds, then it is a worthless comparison to make.

And from a real story perspective, getting it from the champion of primordus has way more story potential than getting it from a random crab.

That entirely depends on what you do next.

Only in those raids with 40 people every time one of them gets the items you are also one step closer to your goal. If you don’t play the raid at release and go 1 year later (assuming it is still being run by people) you will likely get most entry level rewards without opposition because everyone else would already have those.

This can be simulated with token systems, and the “everyone already has one so why not take it” effect can also be put into effect by upping the drop rates or reducing the token prices over time. In any case, while the raid is still frontline, RNG systems do not offer less total rewards over time, are more fair to non-leader players, and do not cause “loot drama.”

Only it doesn’t work that way because GW2’s RNG is pure RNG. Your 100th run is the same as your first one RNG-wise and someone else in your team earning the reward doesn’t put you one step closer in getting it yourself.

That’s only if you do it every time with the same 40 people and are in some kind of queue. If you’re doing random groupings then your odds reset each time.

Coulter.2315:

You can live without the rewards.
.

So can raiders.

So I’m glad we’re in agreement: remove rewards from raids.

maddoctor.2738:

There is a reason raids in other games usually have very little RNG but bosses drop good loot all the time.

lolwut?

I’d love to know which raid based MMOs you’ve been playing, because they sure as hell aren’t any of the most recent ones, aside from maybe FF14.

You guys need to leave Ohoni alone. It’s bad enough he can’t do the content for his skin. He knows more about this game than all of you combine.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m talking about RPGs and they all follow the same concept on how to award their loot from content. Different content means different rewards, it’s how the industry always worked like and will always be like.

In that context we were discussing how you believed most RPGs had areas that were vastly more difficult than the standard difficulty curve of the game, which I had disputed, as this was true in none of my favorite RPGs, and it’s typically accepted as poor game design to buck players off the difficulty curve you’ve established. To this you questioned my credentials as a gamer to dare have a differing opinion to your own, to which I indicated kitten that.

I find it hard to belive there are RPGs without that kind of difficulty curve but oh well if you think so. Maybe you don’t feel that difficulty curve because you find the games too easy. How is it “typically accepted as poor game design” if that’s how most main stream RPGs work is another weird thing also. I cannot name many RPGs that don’t have at least ONE difficult optional boss fight, and most I can think of are solo games (players uses one character). RPGs that have you form a party are a different story.

In a sense even Liadri was a technical fight but Lupicus is more of a skill fight. We will see what they come up with.

I’ve never heard anyone question that Liadri was a skill fight before. I am genuinely flabbergasted.

Liadri was a fight that required a good amount of skill but also required memorization of the mechanics. In fact knowing the mechanics very well could make the fight a LOT easier. Knowing how her shadow attack works allowed players with excellent knowledge of the mechanic to get out without even dodging, proper usage of blink/teleport skills made going to the orbs easier. Not to mention the fact that she had no way to remove conditions which made killing her with conditions a breeze since her immunity during her second release didn’t give her immunity to conditions.
That’s why I call Liadri a more technical than a skill fight.

Let’s have another example, Simin in Arah P4, is a fight that requires knowledge of how to lure the sparks effectively and how to use the orbs. It takes hardly any kind of awesome dodging ability to fight Simin. The fight is hard because it offers a different kind of challenge: technical/mechanical challenge. I believe (and maybe even hope so) raids will have enough technical/mechanical challenge mixed in the reflex/twitch challenge. Mechanical fights are like puzzles

If you insist on comparing the two on those grounds, then it is a worthless comparison to make.

Why? The pretty legendary staff of GW2 is the equal of the ultimate power staff in other games. It might not make content easier but it’s the worthy end-reward. And besides you are looking at the awesome “Staff of Power” from the side of the power it gives, trivializing future content, why not look at it from where you get it? Look at its story/legend and what it actally means for the universe it is a part of. Same as a legendary in GW2, their legend and story is what makes them worth getting.

This can be simulated with token systems, and the “everyone already has one so why not take it” effect can also be put into effect by upping the drop rates or reducing the token prices over time. In any case, while the raid is still frontline, RNG systems do not offer less total rewards over time, are more fair to non-leader players, and do not cause “loot drama.”

There is enough “loot drama” in GW2 already, look at all the “my luck sucks thread, but my friend got 5 precursor in 1 week”. Or how some have killed Tequatl 100 times and still got no hoard, while others got it first try. A system that doesn’t cause trouble is to make items without monetary available for distribution, items that cannot be sold on the TP for example could be “party-bound” and players could give them to anyone they want.

Only it doesn’t work that way because GW2’s RNG is pure RNG. Your 100th run is the same as your first one RNG-wise and someone else in your team earning the reward doesn’t put you one step closer in getting it yourself.

That’s only if you do it every time with the same 40 people and are in some kind of queue. If you’re doing random groupings then your odds reset each time.

They don’t reset every time, they are just different every time. If I do the content a few months later chances are 30 of the players already have a few of the rewards so they won’t roll on them. When NOT running the raid you are making progress.

maddoctor.2738:

Why? The pretty legendary staff of GW2 is the equal of the ultimate power staff in other games. It might not make content easier but it’s the worthy end-reward. And besides you are looking at the awesome “Staff of Power” from the side of the power it gives, trivializing future content, why not look at it from where you get it? Look at its story/legend and what it actally means for the universe it is a part of. Same as a legendary in GW2, their legend and story is what makes them worth getting.

The only reason why in games you don’t get the “cool stuff” in the beginning is because of possible power unbalance due to stats. When stats are not an issue this problem disappears. From the story point however there’s no such restriction. Many a story begins with the protagonist finding an artifact. So no, “staff of unbalancing power” and “Staff of cool glowy particles” are in no way equivalent.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Why? The pretty legendary staff of GW2 is the equal of the ultimate power staff in other games. It might not make content easier but it’s the worthy end-reward. And besides you are looking at the awesome “Staff of Power” from the side of the power it gives, trivializing future content, why not look at it from where you get it? Look at its story/legend and what it actally means for the universe it is a part of. Same as a legendary in GW2, their legend and story is what makes them worth getting.

The only reason why in games you don’t get the “cool stuff” in the beginning is because of possible power unbalance due to stats. When stats are not an issue this problem disappears. From the story point however there’s no such restriction. Many a story begins with the protagonist finding an artifact. So no, “staff of unbalancing power” and “Staff of cool glowy particles” are in no way equivalent.

And how is that going to affect how they got said artifact? IT’s still one way of getting the artifact (one type of content) that cannot be bypassed. There is a restriction from the story too, if the items are worthy enough of legend status you can’t just walk in the local pub and buy it. Unless the item is going to be the story itself

I find it hard to belive there are RPGs without that kind of difficulty curve but oh well if you think so. Maybe you don’t feel that difficulty curve because you find the games too easy. How is it “typically accepted as poor game design” if that’s how most main stream RPGs work is another weird thing also. I cannot name many RPGs that don’t have at least ONE difficult optional boss fight, and most I can think of are solo games (players uses one character). RPGs that have you form a party are a different story.

There are some that are slightly more difficult, I said as much when we first addressed this point, but not significantly so, not too far outside the standard curve of the game. It’s like, to take a recent game, Dragon Age Inquisition, the dragon fights are meant to be challenging, and they can be early on if you choose to approach them at even level or below, but they aren’t that much harder than the baseline content, AND you can outlevel and outgear them to make them fairly trivial, to the point where the last few dragons I was fighting Sera could basically solo them with minor risk.

Liadri was a fight that required a good amount of skill but also required memorization of the mechanics. In fact knowing the mechanics very well could make the fight a LOT easier.

I consider both to be an application of skill. But basically a pure mechanics fight is one where if you know the mechanics in advance, you pretty much can’t fail it, you can’t “stumble.” Liardri you needed to know what to do, but actually doing it was fairly tricky for a lot of players. If Liadri had the same mechanics, only the telegraphs were significantly longer so that you always had a ton of time to move out of the way, then it could be considered a pure mechanics fight.

Why? The pretty legendary staff of GW2 is the equal of the ultimate power staff in other games.

As I keep saying, tomatoes and apples. It can be considered similar along some axis, but not along all axis. It can be similar in terms of desirability, but vastly different in terms of impact. If the item provides significant mechanical advantage, then that is a better reason to not let them have it than because they like the way it looks, even if the rarity and player interest in the item is identical.

Same as a legendary in GW2, their legend and story is what makes them worth getting.

You mean off the TP? Yeah, very dramatic.

There is enough “loot drama” in GW2 already, look at all the “my luck sucks thread, but my friend got 5 precursor in 1 week”.

GW2 depersonalizes it though. It’s player verses dev, not player verses player. You might begrudge that your friend had better RNG than you, but unless you’re fairly irrational you don’t actually blame him for his luck. In games where there is manual loot splitting though, there is plenty of room for drama. A Jedi player rolling “need” on a Commando chestpiece in SWTOR (against my commando), practically killed my interest in dungeons for that game.

The only reason why in games you don’t get the “cool stuff” in the beginning is because of possible power unbalance due to stats. When stats are not an issue this problem disappears. From the story point however there’s no such restriction. Many a story begins with the protagonist finding an artifact.

You mean like how Arthur drew Caliburn right at the beginning of his journey?

Ohoni.6057:

There are some that are slightly more difficult, I said as much when we first addressed this point, but not significantly so, not too far outside the standard curve of the game. It’s like, to take a recent game, Dragon Age Inquisition, the dragon fights are meant to be challenging, and they can be early on if you choose to approach them at even level or below, but they aren’t that much harder than the baseline content, AND you can outlevel and outgear them to make them fairly trivial, to the point where the last few dragons I was fighting Sera could basically solo them with minor risk.

Then THAT is the bad game design. Outgearing and outleveling making content trivial. Especially when at the later part of a game it becomes a no-difficulty anymore. I’ve seen it countless times in many games and it is a clear sign of lack of foresight and/or understanding of their own mechanics. That’s why DLCs and expansions exist, to push the mechanics of a game further and further.

it could be considered a pure mechanics fight.

It wasn’t a pure mechanics fight but it did have a great deal of it. The thing is Raids might be more like that and less like Kholer.

Same as a legendary in GW2, their legend and story is what makes them worth getting.

You mean off the TP? Yeah, very dramatic.

That was a bad thing. legendary weapons in GW2 have no story of their own indeed. So what will make Legendary armor worth is the story of the Raid and how it is presented, since the items themselves are highly unlikely to have any kind of story behind them.

GW2 depersonalizes it though. It’s player verses dev, not player verses player. You might begrudge that your friend had better RNG than you, but unless you’re fairly irrational you don’t actually blame him for his luck. In games where there is manual loot splitting though, there is plenty of room for drama. A Jedi player rolling “need” on a Commando chestpiece in SWTOR (against my commando), practically killed my interest in dungeons for that game.

It’s worse in Neverwinter because the loot is unidentified so you don’t even know if it’s for you or not, a total mess. But yes SWTOR’s system (which is the same that most MMORPGs use) was notorious for that because the dungeon loot wasn’t always bound on acquire so players of different classes rolled for loot just to sell it. That was bad design and I don’t want a pure need/greed system either, the GW2 system is perfectly fine on most occasions.

However what I’d like to see is the ability to split items that have no monetary value among the players of the party using a “party bound” item, or something similar. If there is no way to get money of an item and you can only delete it (like a Fractal skin you already own) why not allow players to trade it WHILE IN THE SAME PARTY?

It takes the best of both systems and combines them well.

To be perfectly clear I HATE the need/greed roll loot system, it’s disgusting and the main reason I stopped playing many MMORPGs in the past (like SWTOR and NWN), I just want a better distribution method for the HIGHEST quality gear, gear that should be bound on acquire and have NO MONETARY value at all.

You mean like how Arthur drew Caliburn right at the beginning of his journey?

And that’s still irrelevant to the point that certain content rewards certain items and there is no bypassing it. There weren’t 2 Caliburns and Arthur chose one of them, there was only one with one option to get it.

Anet is extremely fair what they give to you as a non-raider/dungeoneer. You still can get max stats items. Let us at least exclusive skins – it’s the least they can do, or the instance will end up what we have with Aetherpath (yeah I know they have exclusive skins, too, but with horribly low RNG-drop rate.)

Then THAT is the bad game design. Outgearing and outleveling making content trivial. Especially when at the later part of a game it becomes a no-difficulty anymore.

I tend to agree, but it’s necessary if you have a “more challenging than the rest” portion. You need some sort of “out” for those, some way for people to get around it that don’t have the skills to do it “as intended”. I agree that this was a bit too easy to stumble through on DAI, but it should always be an option too.

That was a bad thing. legendary weapons in GW2 have no story of their own indeed. So what will make Legendary armor worth is the story of the Raid and how it is presented, since the items themselves are highly unlikely to have any kind of story behind them.

I really hope that it doesn’t have any real story to it, story should not be combined with difficulty. If there is any real personal journey to completing the raid then it needs to be something that everyone is capable of doing, everyone. It’s only allowed to be a rel skill challenge if it’s completely optional “and then we went some place and killed some guys, but back to the real story. . .”

However what I’d like to see is the ability to split items that have no monetary value among the players of the party using a “party bound” item, or something similar. If there is no way to get money of an item and you can only delete it (like a Fractal skin you already own) why not allow players to trade it WHILE IN THE SAME PARTY?

Eh, maybe. I kind of think that if they’re going to do that though, it should be sharing, not gifting. Basically, if you can potentially gift a drop as you describe, and another player in the group gets that thing you want, and does need it, and does want to keep it, then part of you understands that this is fair and he deserves it, but that selfish part is annoyed that he didn’t give it to you anyways, it erodes subtly. If, on the other hand, he has zero option to give it to you, well, there’s literally nothing he could do for you.

I think that if they decided that account-bound drops could be traded within a party, they might as well just skip to the chase and make it so that if anyone in the party gets the account bound drop, then everyone in the party gets it. That way, nobody has reason to begrudge anyone else. Obviously this wouldn’t work with a WoW-like “every raid drops several of the items, split it up,” but it would make an RNG system more tolerable, because it wouldn’t just be your rolls, it would be everyone in the party.

And that’s still irrelevant to the point that certain content rewards certain items and there is no bypassing it. There weren’t 2 Caliburns and Arthur chose one of them, there was only one with one option to get it.

Well, but again that sort of narrative only applies to a linear fixed narrative, and does not function in interactive fiction. The thing to remember about good interactive fiction is that it’s a collaborative process with the player. In good interactive fiction, the developer doesn’t write a single story and the player just follows along through it. Instead, the developer creates multiple options and paths, and the story that results is completely different based on which options the player chooses along the way. People complained that ME3’s narrative was a bit stilted because it ended up with a single three-point decision, but if you think about it, the story is not just about that ending, it’s about all the things you did in between, and while I’m sure that roughly 1/4+ of everyone who beat ME3 picked the exact same choice I did at that point, I’m fairly sure that no one made all the exact same choices along the way that I did, so aside from the last few pages, my book would be different than their book.

So that’s how a good MMO works, maybe your hero did trudge into the Maguuma raid three score times, and on that final time, just minutes away from having to delve the dungeon for the threescore and first time, the mob he’d killed two score and nineteen times finally drops the Legendary Helm of Legendary, and that’s your character’s story.

My hero, on the other hand, traveled all over the realms, taking on all variety of challenges, collecting badges that proved his worth and prowess, and eventually presented them to the Exalted Forgemaster who, in recognition of these great feats, crafted for him a Helm of Legend.

Different options, still a cool story, depending on how you tell it.

Anet is extremely fair what they give to you as a non-raider/dungeoneer. You still can get max stats items. Let us at least exclusive skins – it’s the least they can do, or the instance will end up what we have with Aetherpath (yeah I know they have exclusive skins, too, but with horribly low RNG-drop rate.)

If the raid will end up like the Aetherpath without exclusive skins then it deserves to end up like Aetherpath. If the gameplay of raiding is not a sufficient enough draw then raiding does not deserve to be a thing, and the rewards that they plan to attach to raiding should move to something people enjoy enough to do it even without raid rewards.

But I enjoy raiding, and even if only a small part (i.e. 5-10%) of the playerbase loves raiding/hard content, then why not? As I already mentioned: in this MMO you can still get max stat gear. This is rather unique and we have already a kittenload of skins available for everyone.

For example: I have a friend who returns to the game be cause of raiding.

Ohoni.6057:

The only reason why in games you don’t get the “cool stuff” in the beginning is because of possible power unbalance due to stats. When stats are not an issue this problem disappears. From the story point however there’s no such restriction. Many a story begins with the protagonist finding an artifact.

You mean like how Arthur drew Caliburn right at the beginning of his journey?

Yes, for example. The other well known case is of course LotR, where Frodo starts the journey with several magical/unique items (one ring, but also Sting and the mithril mail) that were just given to him at the very beginning. Notice, how he loses every single one of them by the end of the story. There are many other, less known books that use similar approach as well. There are also rpg systems that go in this direction, by the way (just look at White Wolf’s Exalted 3rd edition and the reasons behind the Evocations system – the best weapon in the game might end up to be the one you started with).

maddoctor.2738:

You mean like how Arthur drew Caliburn right at the beginning of his journey?

And that’s still irrelevant to the point that certain content rewards certain items and there is no bypassing it. There weren’t 2 Caliburns and Arthur chose one of them, there was only one with one option to get it.

That’s because it is a story with only one protagonist, who is controlled by author, not the reader. In a RPG game Arthur the character would draw Caliburn out of the rock because Bob, it’s controlling player, would want to draw Caliburn out of the rock. If Bob preferred to get his rewards after big fights, Arthur would have found Caliburn in the treasure trove of the local magical beast/villain. And if Bob was partial to magical throwing hammers, it would not be sword embedded in the stone, but a Legendary Not-Mjollnir waiting to be picked up.

ProtoGunner.4953:

But I enjoy raiding, and even if only a small part (i.e. 5-10%) of the playerbase loves raiding/hard content, then why not?

As mentioned many times, raids themselves are not a problem. It’s raids with exclusive rewards that are.

What the kitten am I reading. Are your really trying to prove your point of not having exclusive rewards in hardest content this game ever had by comparing gw2 to a bunch of movies?

TheRandomGuy.7246:

What the kitten am I reading. Are your really trying to prove your point of not having exclusive rewards in hardest content this game ever had by comparing gw2 to a bunch of movies?

You might want to reconsider what you are saying. We’re not talking about PvP here, just about raids.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

What the kitten am I reading. Are your really trying to prove your point of not having exclusive rewards in hardest content this game ever had by comparing gw2 to a bunch of movies?

It was about every other game in existence also having exclusive rewards in all types of content yet somehow it went to movies, books and literature in general.